XIII.

THE SPIDER

In the vast cream-and-blue office all the lamps were discreetly shaded and cast a mild, steady light; the electric radiators exuded an even, purified warmth. Lord Ottercove seemed to go on with his work unencumbered, nay, stimulated by Frank’s presence. Frank would arrive at any time after six o’clock in the evening, and the braided commissionaire who confronted applicants with questionnaires would at once call out to the lift boy: “Mr. Dickin to see his lordship.” And Frank would be taken straight up, without relays on the way, and handed by the original lift boy to the topmost page, who, without a second’s hesitation, announced him to his master: “Mr. Dickin, m’lord,” immediately followed by a “Show him in.” He would saunter in noiselessly across the polished floor, Lord Ottercove taking no notice of him, and lounge luxuriously in one of the enormous blue chairs, and dream. Now visitors would be shown in, and Frank would listen, wonder and learn. Learn of the enormous net of activities controlled by Lord Ottercove. Now the page would announce that the editors of Lord Ottercove’s newspapers whom he had called for a conference were on the landing, and indeed one could already hear the shuffling of editorial feet. But Lord Ottercove might be settling a point with Frank as to the relative value of Buddha’s philosophy in the light of Einsteinian physics, or the historic veracity of the Immaculate Conception, and he would call out to the page: “Don’t let them in, unless it be over your dead body!” And the page, flattered by the momentous responsibility thrust on his slender shoulders, leaned zealously against the door behind which editorial feet were still shuffling, till the great chief, the historic or philosophic point settled, shouted: “Let ’em in!” They entered in a thin file, men of assorted girths, sizes and physiognomies, and Lord Ottercove as he beheld them would call out to Frank, with the leer of a Nero: “How do you like them, Dickin? eh? Aren’t they a gang of bloody ruffians, what?” while the editors with solemn mien and stately port settled round the octangular table, Lord Ottercove among them but eminently presiding. And now for matters of high policy! “Damn John Knox,” Lord Ottercove would say. “These interminable Sunday articles about him! I am sick to death of him. Let us have something new and fresh.” And gradually he would expand into a living message and tell them what it was he wanted his newspapers to say; his hands would rise, his fingers spread and come together, till they held the extracted substance, the salt, the Bovril-like quintessence of the meaning he wished to have conveyed to the waiting world outside. Fascinated, his editors watched him, fascinated and mesmerised, while he, like a conductor of orchestra, played on their heart strings, till even the sulky and backward ones melted.

They rose, the conference being over. Tired, he sat there, his hand on his brow.

“To get them to pull in a team. Not so easy,” he said.

“I don’t think your staff likes me very much,” said Dickin. “They think I have wormed myself into your heart and become an evil influence. A sort of Rasputin.”

“Ha, ha, ha!” laughed Ottercove. He rose, pressed the bell, ordered dinner.

The butler sprang out of the floor, the octangular table was cleared of papers and fittings. Chicken, caviare took their place. And champagne bottles.

They sat down to dinner. The host, who had had the telephone placed at his elbow, would every now and then take up the receiver and communicate with the editors of his newspapers, or the editors would themselves telephone to ask for instructions, when he would say: “I am supporting the Air Force against the Admiralty. All you need know.”

“But last Friday when I had tea with you at your house you were supporting the Admiralty against the Air Force,” Frank said.

“Getting too cocky,” Lord Ottercove explained.

“I suppose they are.”

“Besides, it doesn’t do for a newspaper proprietor to be one-sided. He must steer the middle course.”

“I suppose he must.”

To be alone with a man who has wrecked more than one Ministry, and register his sigh cumulative of a strenuous day’s work, to feel the contact of power! By no means a negligible experience. Frank felt he would like to incite Lord Ottercove to further action. But what action? Something big, something shattering, something gigantic. Wreck the Celestial Empire? Establish a Kingdom of Jewdom? a Negro Republic? Imbue the Fascisti with Socialist sense?

His heart swelled at the thought and he looked at his host tenderly. “I should like to write ... to describe ... all this....”

“Well,” said Lord Ottercove, “and why not?”