Chapter 501: Scattering Silver

Especially for the top players in the trade, a chance on this scale could not be missed.

The more critical the moment, the faster he had to push Sunflight’s plans for staking out the market.

For now, the heart of those plans was still the fight for men.

Whoever could first snatch up a great crowd of men of science in the field of the new carriages would hold the greatest promise of all.

* * *

Thousands of miles of railroad lay behind him.

Caleb traveled from the Riverport Polytechnic to the National Institute of Science at Halford, and on to other leading colleges of science, among them the Western Engineering College at Fort Sumner and the Pueblo Springs School of Mines.

The papers were printing more and more about him.

First, on the seventh of March, he gave three hundred and sixty thousand dollars to the Riverport Polytechnic.

Then he gave half a million dollars to the higher-ranked National Institute of Science, and at every college after that he handed over sums of varying size, anywhere from three to four hundred thousand dollars.

It bore out the old saying: “When you’re flying high, you scatter silver on the ground below.”

In a little under half a month, he attended six college hiring days and took part in twelve scientific meetings at various colleges.

His gifts came to two million two hundred thousand dollars in all, and not one cent of it went out in his own name.

Every dollar was given in Sunflight’s name, for the colleges’ research projects.

Back at Sunflight’s headquarters, letters of application came in thick as snowflakes.

Every one of them was from a graduate in the fields they wanted; his trip had borne fine fruit indeed.

The twentieth of March.

Startling news came from the Bay City headquarters.

The territorial government in Bay City was actually trying to bring in the giant of the new carriage trade, the Tessler works, to build a factory there.

The news hadn’t been made public yet; the local officials had come to him first of all.

As things stood in the new carriage market, no company in the country could compete with Tessler; for all the years of subsidies, the results hadn’t been much to boast about.

Bringing in Tessler, like a catfish dropped among sleepy sardines, could do the whole trade a world of good.

The moment Caleb got the news, he hurried back to Bay City and spent two days taking afternoon tea at the invitation of the officials there.

Only then did he learn exactly how far matters had gone.

He needn’t give another thought to the Everett Land Company, to Silas Pryor, or to Jennison’s works; Tessler was the undisputed top predator of the trade.

If Ezra Musgrave came into the home market, the whole new carriage trade was bound to be turned upside down by him.

There would be benefits, but there would be plenty of hard competition too.

It all depended on the terms the officials set for bringing him in.

Even the mighty Tolliver engine works of England, strong as it was, had been made to take a local partner when it came into the country, with a set share held by local men.

If Tessler wanted to come in, there would certainly be plenty of conditions too.

When Caleb got back home, he found his wife wasn’t there.

So he drove over to the Cloudwater headquarters, famous for its army of women.

They were all young ladies, every one of them neat and trim.

Seeing him, they wished him good afternoon, calling him “the big boss.”

Caleb waved and returned their greetings. His wife worked on the top floor.

As soon as Clara learned he’d arrived, she put off the meeting she’d called.

She’d talk with her husband first and then decide whether to hold it at all.

“Honey, what brings you here all of a sudden?”

“I’ve come to ask how much money you’ve got altogether.”

Uh… Clara was a little surprised, though she knew exactly how much was in her own account.

“Counting the nine million six hundred thousand from the auction lately, and the dividends these last few months, it ought to be around eleven million. Why, is something important afoot?”

“Yes. Move all of it through Empire City, turn it into gold and then into Eastern dollars, and send it to Wall Street to buy Tessler shares.”

Tessler coming into the country was inside news of the first water.

Once it was confirmed, the share price was bound to soar, given that this country was the largest home market in the world.

In share speculation, small profits came from study, but big money needed inside news.

He himself had only about eight million dollars left for any large use; nearly three million of that was set aside for buying shares of Antler Coffee House, and the remaining five-odd million couldn’t be touched for the moment.

But his wife’s money could all go into Tessler.

The family had its own headquarters in Empire City and on Wall Street, and matters of this kind were handled very quickly.

And on the twenty-fourth of March, by New York reckoning, Tessler’s whole value on the Exchange stood at roughly five hundred million dollars.

They reckoned this money could buy them about two percent of all Tessler’s shares.

He wasn’t the only one speculating in Tessler shares.

At the same time, the Pelican Telegraph Company had spent some twenty-four million dollars buying Tessler shares.

They expected to end up with five percent of the whole stock.

He wasn’t the only man with inside news. If you didn’t buy Tessler now, when would you?

The way things stood at home, the new carriage trade had at least ten more golden years ahead; he told himself he’d hold these shares for three to five years at the very least.

By now he’d invested in three of the great new concerns.

They were three percent of the Penny-Pool Mail Order Club, two percent of the Merchants’ Delivery Union, and two percent of Tessler.

These three he counted the most valuable long-term investments he had.

The Penny-Pool Club and the Merchants’ Delivery Union were still out raising money on every side; he only had to follow along each time.

That way his shares wouldn’t be watered down before he cashed out.

Clara didn’t even ask why he wanted all the family’s money in a company listed back East; her husband always had his reasons.

Trusting him firmly and understanding him was the right thing to do.

“Clara, your belly’s getting bigger and bigger. Don’t come here unless you must. If there’s a meeting or some such, they can be told to come to the house.”

“I’m not as delicate as you think.”

Clara said, her big belly before her, “I only came in for a meeting. There’s nothing to fret about.”

“All the same, you ought to be careful.”

Caleb said, “This time, going round all those top colleges in the country, I came to see that the biggest regret of our lives is probably that we never got to go to college when we were young.”

“Isn’t that the truth?”

Clara poured him a cup of tea. “Don’t think on it too much. Life’s pretty good now. Maybe when you’re old you could even be a college professor.”

“What kind of professor could I be, with my schooling?”

Caleb said with a smile, “There’s still plenty of places for us to spend money. The other day, when I went up for afternoon tea, they hinted at whether I’d think about building a Rising Star headquarters in Bay City. It seemed they were hoping I would.”

“Do you want to?” Clara tilted her head and asked.

“I do, rather,” Caleb said. “Look at us. For years we’ve been buying a headquarters here and a headquarters there. It looks grand, but because they’re scattered so far apart, we have to give everyone two days’ notice for a meeting of the senior managers, and anything urgent can only be settled by wire.”

“And there’s another important point. For college graduates just starting work, we have to rent them lodgings, and that’s a big expense too. I really have been thinking of building a great headquarters park for the Rising Star Group, with our works and offices all together.”

Clara asked, “How much would a thing like that cost?”

Caleb thought for a moment. “It depends on the size. With so many of our companies listed on the Exchange now, the headquarters staff across the country must come to more than a hundred thousand people. If we built a headquarters park for the whole Group, we’d need at least six office buildings and five first-class apartment houses, plus lawns and gardens and all manner of other works, and that’s not counting what the land costs.”

“I don’t reckon it could be done for much less than thirty million dollars.”

Thirty million sounded like a great deal, but it was only about the price of that headquarters building in Empire City.

He really was thinking of buying a few hundred acres of land zoned for works and building a park for the Group.

Everything inside could be laid out just as he wished.

Land for works wasn’t dear; this year’s highest price for such a lot in Bay City had been out in the Millbank district.

It had sold at a little over two thousand dollars an acre.

What was dear was land for houses; if you wanted to build first-class apartment houses, you had to buy residential land.

Buying the land would probably cost around two million dollars, and there was no saving on that.

Caleb was talking it over with Clara now because the family couldn’t lay hands on thirty million at the moment.

They could easily get it by borrowing from the banks; there was simply no need to.

This month he still had to send nearly three million dollars to Wall Street to buy ten percent of Antler Coffee House, which would leave him only about five and a half million of his own.

That was nowhere near enough.

It looked as if he’d have to hurry Snack Dash’s listing on the Exchange, and New Summit Vaudeville’s too.

Otherwise he couldn’t make things work here.

The Rising Star Group had grown so big that it really needed a headquarters park of its own.

It wasn’t a matter of show; it was about making the whole Group run better.

Caleb urged Clara to be careful and simply work from home from now on; their house was big enough, after all.

Chapter 502: Rising Star Town

The end of March.

Snack Dash at last finished floating its shares on the Empire City Exchange.

It went so quickly mainly because he’d made some concessions himself.

Snack Dash’s value had been pulled down to twenty-four million dollars.

It had more than eighteen hundred lunch counters of its own and over eight thousand agency counters, with a total investment of over four million dollars.

Altogether, he’d raised three million dollars from backers.

A value of twenty-four million meant the return on what had been put in was multiplied three and a half times.

Caleb himself had held forty-two percent of Snack Dash’s shares, and with that watered down to sixty percent of what it had been, it came to roughly twenty-five percent.

At a value of twenty-four million, that was a straight return of six million dollars.

Setting aside all the money he’d put in before.

[Chime! Congratulations, Holder. Your income today is $2,400,000. Would you like to activate the random multiplier?]

“Activate.”

This was likely why he pushed his companies onto the Exchange.

If they didn’t list, how could he cash out with his dear old Golden Ledger?

The familiar Golden Die appeared again, rattling and tumbling on and on until at last it stopped on five.

This run of luck was not bad.

One minute, two minutes, until five minutes had passed.

Then twelve million dollars arrived in his bank account, and the original six million went into his wife’s account.

Together that made eighteen million dollars, plus the five and a half million he already had.

After this latest windfall, he had more than twenty million dollars ready to put to work.

Caleb went to the territorial government in Bay City to talk about buying land for business.

Since it was to build the Group’s headquarters, the local government would offer all sorts of favorable terms.

Their aim was to draw big companies in, to develop the city and bring in taxes and jobs.

Of the four great cities of the country, Pueblo Springs undoubtedly had the least land.

Because its land was so small, it had strict rules about the use of land for works and factories.

Its land had to yield no less than two hundred and eighteen thousand, seven hundred and fifty dollars’ worth of manufactured goods a year for every hectare of it.

That is, a company’s yearly output had to come to no less than fourteen million dollars before it could buy and use land for works there.

By setting a firm figure for yearly output, it pushed companies to use their land well and helped the growth of industry.

Bay City, of the four great cities, had the most land by far.

Its standards for how much the land must yield were set somewhat lower in comparison.

Pueblo Springs was only a third the size of Bay City.

His Rising Star Group owned six companies listed on the Exchange, so it certainly met the conditions for buying such land.

A group like that building a headquarters and a park of works in Bay City was sure to enjoy a great many favorable terms.

Bay City had sixteen districts in all; his Sunflight works had been built out by the Harborside flats, and the charity hotel had been built in Goldhill.

Given the size of the Rising Star Group’s headquarters park, it would take up at least three hundred acres.

Moving away from the high-priced heart of the city was therefore unavoidable.

The district heads had come calling too, each hoping to draw him onto his own ground.

The better to show a fine record of achievement in office.

He wavered a good while, until at last it was Tabitha Lane who came over and advised him, “Stop turning it over. You ought to build the headquarters park in Goldhill. It’s not as fashionable as Westbury or as splendid as the Embarcadero, but it wins out because its house prices are lower and it’s quieter. With so many ordinary employees in your Group, not many of them could afford houses at thirty dollars a square foot.”

That was quite true.

Goldhill was an outlying suburb, home to the famous old Dunlin Mission, the old river village of Fenwick Landing, the Goldhill Strand, the Seaflower Gardens and the like.

Goldhill was the most comfortable place to live in all of Bay City.

The natural surroundings were lovely, life went at an easy pace, and there was a pleasant air of old culture about it.

If he moved to Goldhill, he could take advantage of a good many favorable conditions.

Caleb at once arranged a meeting with the officials of Goldhill at the headquarters, to see what favorable terms they could offer.

He wasn’t only buying land for business; ideally he wanted over a hundred acres of residential land as well.

The heart of the city would never approve so much land for his use, but Goldhill was different.

It was a suburb; once he moved there, his would be one of the biggest groups in the whole district.

On the strength of that, he could surely bargain for more favorable terms.

After seven full days of talks, the Goldhill officials at last approved five hundred and sixty acres of business land for him.

The price was one million nine hundred and sixty thousand dollars.

On top of that, they allotted him a hundred and eighty acres of residential land next to it, meant for building first-class apartment houses for his employees.

Drawing big companies in brought jobs, trade, taxes and more.

A group the size of Rising Star could easily send land prices soaring within a three-mile circle around it.

It would also bring more trade and more jobs to the area.

Those advantages were exactly why every district was scrambling to get him to move onto its ground.

A hundred acres of residential land could hold perhaps fifteen apartment houses.

Built to first-class standards, they could house at least ten thousand people.

The contract stated plainly that the buildings on this land were chiefly to serve as lodgings for employees.

For that reason, the price of the residential land was a full thirty percent below the market.

A mere two million four hundred thousand dollars was enough.

Adding in the leveling of the land, the planting of lawns and trees, the building and the rest, a total of a little over four million dollars for the work would be entirely sufficient.

But the truly heavy spending was still the five hundred and more acres of business land for the headquarters.

There he had to put up his own headquarters buildings and a whole series of works and facilities to go with them.

The design was far too complicated; he was no architect.

Better to hire the finest firm of architects in the country to draw up the plans for him.

Caleb offered a sky-high fee of three hundred and sixty thousand dollars for the design, to draw the country’s best firms of architects to compete for the work.

For a plot as big as his, simply producing a satisfactory full set of plans for the headquarters would take at least three months.

Only once the plans were settled could the real building begin.

He also named the project Rising Star Town.

It was a way of announcing to the world that this was his place.

The size of a project always depended on how much money stood behind it.

The four-odd million dollars spent on land was a trifle; the real challenge lay in building Rising Star Town, which would be no easy matter.

As Caleb himself wished it, he wanted to build not merely a place of offices but a place people would come to for pleasure and sightseeing.

To bring offices, homes, parks, amusements, doctors’ care and schools all together in one.

To finish a headquarters park as complete as that, an investment of no less than thirty million dollars would be absolutely necessary.

That wasn’t counting the money spent buying the land.

The general plan for Rising Star Town caused an immediate stir among the big firms of architects.

The main reason was that the three-hundred-and-sixty-thousand-dollar fee for the design was terribly tempting.

Winning it would do wonders for a firm’s reputation, among other benefits.

After all, it covered more than six hundred acres, business and residential land together.

With an investment of over thirty million dollars, this was a grand project of the first rank.

Chapter 503: A Girl With Her Eyes Open

The news that the Rising Star Group meant to put thirty million dollars into building Rising Star Town spread quickly through Bay City.

In recent years, as many private companies grew stronger, more and more money had gone into building headquarters.

The Great Western Express Company, for one, had spent thirteen million four hundred thousand dollars in Hampton to put up a modern headquarters.

The Pelican Telegraph Company had grand headquarters in every one of the great cities.

His forty-odd million, all told, was meant to gather the Group’s scattered branches together again.

Only a somewhat remote suburb could give him more than six million square feet on which to build a company town of his own.

Never mind the outside world; the news caused a stir inside the Group first of all.

The top managers were all asking about the headquarters town he meant to build, and Caleb explained it to all of them at once.

Once Rising Star Town was finished, the scattered brands and companies under its wing would all be brought together.

These included the Rising Star Theatrical Company, the Fat Lamb Dining Company, Bobo’s Soda Parlor, Antler Coffee House, New Summit Vaudeville, the Sunburst Department Stores, the Rising Star Picture-Card Company, the Rising Star penny-serial parlors, Snack Dash, the Dream Fund and a whole string of powerful companies besides.

Only when all of them stood united would the outside world truly understand how he had come to secure seven hundred acres of land in Bay City to build a company town of his own.

Once the headquarters town was finished, the headquarters buildings he already had in Sterling City, Bay City, Galveston and Pueblo Springs, and in Empire City too, would serve as the Group’s local branches.

Goldhill might be an outlying suburb, but it had the advantage of clean air.

Driving there, the roads weren’t so choked with traffic, and getting about the city was fairly easy.

There were lovely beaches and lakes too; it was surely a fine place for rest and for keeping in good health.

He was rather fond of the place himself.

“Brother-in-law, are we going to move here someday?”

Sweet little Polly Jessup had come along with him to look over the headquarters site, where a few old factories were still waiting to be torn down.

That was all the government’s business, none of his concern.

The site even stretched along the shore of a very large lake; once it was tidied up, the scenery was sure to be splendid.

“Near enough,” he said. “Look, all this land here will soon be ours.”

Caleb was in high spirits, and even the little cousin at his side had shining eyes. “Brother-in-law, it’d be so beautiful if we planted some oak trees here.”

“That’s a fine idea.”

Caleb said, “Once the building here is done, we can have the engineering department bring over a great many full-grown oaks.”

Oak trees, of the family Quercus, have leaves that turn yellow or red in the fall.

Once enough of them were planted, the whole of Rising Star Town would seem to be nestled in the forest.

The cost of moving full-grown oaks was tremendously high as well.

Caleb was already spending tens of millions of dollars; why would he think of pinching a few hundred thousand on trees?

The park had to be built to match the ideal he held in his heart.

To make the headquarters a secluded paradise of a town, full of the newest inventions, was exactly the sort of thing he loved.

A messenger boy came trotting up to Polly with a note; she unfolded it, and it was her cousin Danny Sutton writing to her again.

He was Clara’s own cousin too.

“Brother-in-law, Danny wants to come see you.”

Caleb said, curious, “What could he want?”

“I don’t know. It looks like he’s bringing his sweetheart along too.”

“All right, then.”

Danny Sutton had trained at the Fat Lamb Stew House for two years, and after getting four thousand dollars to start out with in Bay City, he’d opened a little chophouse serving chili-hot Southern Territory cooking.

Business wasn’t very good, but with his Fat Lamb training behind him, he was doing no worse than some and no better than others.

He barely cleared forty or sixty dollars a year.

Thirty-six hundred dollars put in, to earn forty or sixty a year, his own wages included, wasn’t worth it by any reckoning.

Of course, for Danny, who hadn’t had to put up any of the money himself, it suited him fine.

It was a great deal better than working for another man.

A cook starting his own business had to go steady, and this was generally how it went.

Things were different now from when the Fat Lamb had first opened; this year the competition in the eating-house trade was fierce, and it was the same everywhere.

Making a steady thousand dollars or so a year was counted very good.

It was only lately that he’d heard from his wife that this Danny seemed to have found himself a decent sweetheart.

She’d been to one of the fine Eastern colleges and worked for a big company too, though his wife hadn’t paid much attention to which one.

But she kept hearing that the young woman seemed to want to make their acquaintance through Danny.

That was why Clara hadn’t met her cousin’s sweetheart.

She always felt the girl had some motive of her own.

When Danny had first gone out into the world, he’d been pretty unsteady, an idle drifter who spent his days eating and drinking with his friends.

Only after training at the Fat Lamb for a few years had he slowly pulled himself together, and before coming to Bay City he’d even saved up to buy a new buggy costing a hundred-odd dollars.

His sweetheart was called Stella Thornton; she had a pretty name and was not bad looking either.

Danny had met her in his own chophouse, and for whatever reason they’d quickly taken up together.

Danny truly liked her, to the point of doing whatever she said.

Stella could talk her way around him, but she was a very clever girl too.

They’d been together a long while, and she hardly ever spent Danny’s money.

Every time they went shopping, she’d plead thrift as a reason to make him spend less.

That made Danny fall for her all the harder.

It could only be said that women, too, came in different grades.

Only a short-sighted woman was forever thinking of getting her man to buy her more handbags, the newest fashions and such.

Stella’s aim clearly lay elsewhere; the only thing that interested her was who Danny was and whom he was connected to.

Beyond that, no cook, even one with a decent little chophouse of his own, had anything that could draw her.

Once a woman passes twenty-five, unless you’re truly strong enough to master her, she turns very practical.

Especially in a big city, she’d rather stay single and be as choosy as she pleased.

“Stella, my cousin is really somebody. Try not to be nervous when you meet him,” Danny said.

“Who is this cousin of yours? How come you never mentioned him before?” Stella asked.

“He’s my cousin by marriage. I only saw him a few times when I was a boy. Every year I went home he was always surrounded by important folks, and I hardly ever got to speak to him,” Danny explained.

“I think you’re the one who’s nervous!” she said.

Stella had known for a long time who his cousin was, and it had come as a surprise even so.

One time when she’d gone out to eat, she’d happened to see a stunningly beautiful woman driving a Kimball cabriolet, bringing a little girl along to eat there.

After a few questions, she’d learned that this goddess of a woman was actually his cousin.

What Danny didn’t know was that the Cloudwater Free Library in Bay City had been designed by the very firm of architects Stella worked for.

How could she not know who the boss’s wife at Cloudwater was?

Never mind that she ran the finest chain of beauty and health parlors in the country; her husband was even more remarkable.

He was a great man of business forever appearing in the money pages.

It was because of what she knew that Stella had struck up an acquaintance with Danny straightaway.

How could a man from a small place resist the charms of a smart, well-paid office woman from the big city?

She was clever and never greedy for small gains.

Everything was for the long game.

Being able to strike up a conversation with a man of that stature was worth more than ten fine Paris handbags put together.

As for handbags, she could buy them with her own salary.

But a man like Caleb Walker was beyond her reach even standing on tiptoe.

Next to him, she naturally didn’t care about the little presents Danny offered.

She simply played the part of a girl pure of heart who’d throw everything away for love.

How much of the world could a small-town man have seen? With a little maneuvering, she had him head over heels.

The pity was that, easy as it was for Stella to fool Danny, she could never fool his cousin, a man of that stature.

She’d even imagined many times how she ought to present herself when she first met him.

Should she be as Danny saw her now, with him purely out of affection?

Or should she be blunt, make her position clear, and say openly that she was with Danny because she wanted to break through that iron wall between the classes?

They might even marry someday, and she’d stay home like an honest wife, standing by her husband and raising the children.

Or perhaps she’d go into the chophouse business alongside Danny.

Stella knew very well that if she chose this road, she’d most likely be staking her whole life on it.

It couldn’t be helped; though she earned over forty dollars a month, that meant nothing in Bay City.

Setting up a home of her own was terribly hard.

Rather than that, she might as well gamble on this slim chance.

Any dream of a love affair is terribly fragile in the face of hard reality.

Only a woman born with everything can afford to talk of love without a care.

Where Stella was cleverer than most women was that she knew playing the innocent before a powerful man was the height of folly.

Because anyone who could be a boss had seen more people than you’d eaten hot dinners.

Their eyes could see straight through all the pleasantries of human dealings.

However elaborate the scheming, it was flimsy before a formidable man.

Such men either said nothing or struck a killing blow.

They wouldn’t give you a second chance to pretend; so, for this meeting,

Stella had spent dozens of nights studying all manner of books on the mind and on behavior, working out the best way to win the boss’s favor.

After all that study, her final plan was to say little and be more genuine.

Out of Danny’s hearing, she would own her selfish motives frankly.

Perhaps that was the only way to make so great a man think well of her, even a little.

And even if he didn’t think well of her, at least he wouldn’t despise her.

Wasn’t everyone living to better themselves?

She was doing the same, so what was wrong with that!

It must be said that even Danny himself didn’t fully understand what his cousin by marriage meant to the average office worker or college student in the city.

He stood for a ladder to heaven and wealth without end.

For any woman, those two together were deadly.

And she was certainly no exception.

So what is love?

Love is being with a man when you haven’t many choices.

And when someone better turns up at your side, better than you’d ever imagined possible, you’re bound to be drawn to him.

If that’s so, then what is love?

It’s all for the sake of a better life.

Chapter 504: Understood Without Words

When Danny and Stella arrived,

Caleb was still talking with the Goldhill officials, mostly about clearing the old buildings off the land.

In the past there had been a great many chemical and soap works in Goldhill, most of them bunched around Goldhill New Town.

But Fenwick Landing and Juniper Crossing lay a good way off from the new town, and they were no chemical district.

With the Rising Star Group settling in Fenwick Landing, the village had become the central town of all Goldhill.

Every time Danny saw Caleb he felt a little nervous, especially when his cousin Clara wasn’t around.

He always felt there was a great gulf between them, nothing like the easy joshing you’d expect among relations.

“Caleb.”

Danny came over with his sweetheart Stella. Caleb gave her only a glance and said little.

“What brings you out to Goldhill?”

Danny wanted to say he’d come to see his cousin-in-law’s masterpiece, the headquarters to be.

But the words just wouldn’t come out, mostly because he was no talker and hated buttering up his own relations so openly.

“My girl has a few days off, so I brought her specially to meet you, Caleb. And we’d like to ask my cousin to supper tonight.”

“Oh, so you’re planning to get married?”

Danny was embarrassed. He truly liked Stella, and of course it would be grand if they could marry.

But with all her schooling, she might not be willing to marry him.

In a good match, a man will often put himself in the weaker position.

That’s quite unlike most women.

Seeing him tongue-tied, Stella went nearly red in the face and hurried to explain, “Danny and I really are planning to marry.”

Caleb nodded without committing himself. “Then you’d best ask your cousin to supper first, and when she comes this evening, see whether you want to tell your folks.”

The girl certainly hadn’t agreed to marry him beforehand; she hadn’t even let Danny bring the matter up.

Now that the subject had come up and Danny couldn’t answer, she’d taken it on herself to speak of marriage plans.

What was she so deliberately trying to prove? He couldn’t be bothered to think about it.

Perhaps a little carried away, Danny at once said, “Caleb, Stella works for a big firm of architects.”

“Oh… and?”

Stella cursed inwardly; she’d never expected Danny to blurt out something so foolish at a moment like this.

Wasn’t that as good as saying she wanted to land the grand job of designing the Rising Star Group’s headquarters?

She reckoned he might well think right now that she’d put Danny up to saying it.

Stella hurried to set things straight. “I do work for a firm of architects, but I haven’t much experience yet, and I’m not able to take on big projects.”

“All right, you needn’t be so careful.”

Caleb said, “If my cousin likes you and wants to marry you, just marry him honestly, and you’ll have everything.”

Danny felt awkward. Was that a compliment?

It seemed to be.

He was just too slow at reading people; it was as though Caleb had stopped just short of saying Stella was a great deal smarter than he was.

She had plenty of little schemes in her head.

She’d meant to draw closer to the family, but she didn’t let it show too plainly on her face.

For Danny, having a woman like that at his side had plenty of benefits, but the drawbacks were plain too.

It all depended on how he handled it.

That evening Clara had them to supper at her home, and it was Stella’s first time setting foot in the Tanglewood Heights mansion in Bay City.

The people inside were all either rich or high-born, and treated others like pieces on a chessboard.

In the most trifling-seeming actions, they laid out how ordinary folks would live.

That was the reach that came with standing at the very top of society.

It was also the real reason ordinary people knocked their heads against the wall trying to climb into those ranks.

Who wouldn’t want to change the fate of a whole place with ease, while swirling a glass of claret?

That was the summit of power and endless allure.

For Stella, at least, a well-paid office woman in Bay City, that was just what Tanglewood Heights was.

Danny might be a poor talker and slow at reading people, but he could bring her through this door with ease.

And that was enough.

Who doesn’t live by climbing higher, whatever the cost?

Clara was more than five months along, and her husband was busy with a great many outside affairs.

He wouldn’t trouble himself with petty family squabbles.

It hardly needed saying, what with the tremendous change in her family’s fortunes.

As a result, even the distant relations of the Walker and Sutton families had reaped tremendous benefits when it came to finding a match.

In the old days, a high-flying graduate of one of the fine Eastern colleges, earning forty dollars a month in Bay City, wouldn’t have spared a glance for someone like Danny, a fellow who’d quit school and cooked over a skillet.

Being a woman herself, Clara understood Stella’s hidden motives perfectly well.

Having an aim of your own wasn’t frightening; what was frightening was using it for wicked ends.

Clara had her secretary send a note to Stella’s employer, inviting him specially to supper, so that he’d happen to see Stella was there.

The next day, Stella was promoted three grades at once.

Her pay went from forty dollars a month to more than twelve hundred dollars a year.

Clara said nothing, but Stella’s employer seemed to understand everything.

Without asking a single question, he simply delivered the outcome she wanted.

That was the silent understanding of the upper ranks.

Everything understood without a word.

Though Stella’s aim in taking up with Danny had been to get close to the Rising Star Group in Bay City, the speed of the result went beyond her wildest dreams.

The lady of the house was telling her through this one supper:

“I can raise you up with ease, and just as easily give you the most respectable life in Bay City.

“But you must understand that none of this comes free.

“You must be sincere and keep up the face you wear now, and fool my cousin for a lifetime.”

When a deception is kept up for a lifetime, then she, too, is a fine wife and mother.

Stella had guessed right; she could never have fooled a family like this.

And even when they saw through her, they didn’t expose her.

Instead they carelessly handed her what she wanted; a rich family was something else.

She, at least, still couldn’t fully make sense of such a way of doing things.

Perhaps they simply didn’t care to dwell on such matters.

Not only with her cousin Danny; even with her own sister Winnie, Clara didn’t stop her from finding happiness her own way.

Her husband had his own ideas too.

What of it? So long as nothing went wrong with her family, all those dark thoughts would have to stay buried deep inside.

Unless they themselves wanted to throw away such fine prospects and such a fine view.

Once you’d crossed the threshold of a rich family, it was hard to go back to an ordinary life.

Clara stroked her belly, where the third little one lay, and watched the Little Scamp squabbling like a bantam hen.

If her big sister Annie was one to spend money like water, the little sister had lost all notion of money altogether.

With everything she could wish for, she couldn’t understand why anyone would want to live in what she called a “pet room.”

To her mind, a house of under a thousand square feet was fit only for pets.

Wherever she lived had to be enormous.

To be honest, Clara was beginning to worry about how the next generation was being raised.

If the Little Scamp grew up this way, however gifted she was, with a memory that forgot nothing, she’d still end up a pampered, spoiled rich man’s child.

That was absolutely not to be allowed.

By comparison, her mischievous elder daughter had still managed to keep her native kindness toward ordinary folks.

Chapter 505: A Summer in the Fields

April showers brought the spring rains.

The weather was damp, and there was a hint of rain in the air.

Caleb was driving his newly bought English racing sulky home, with the team of four matched Arabians, something he hadn’t done in a very long time.

Compared with the fiery Arabian and the big Kentucky thoroughbred, the English rig rode noticeably more comfortably.

The lower slung a racing rig was, the rougher it usually was to drive.

Of course, it cost more too.

He no longer cared to drive those very low racing rigs, and his wife liked to drive nothing but her Kimball cabriolet.

The house was as noisy as ever; with two little treasures at home, how could a single day pass quietly?

The Little Scamp was about to turn three and still liked wearing overalls.

Her face still had its baby fat, and her short, stubby legs took little steps, and her cheeks were round and chubby.

“Daddy!”

“Little Joy, did you say your Mother Goose rhymes today?”

“Yes, I can already say ‘Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star’ backwards.”

When she said backwards, she really meant backwards.

Caleb scooped the adorable Little Scamp up in his arms; her big sister was about to start the fourth grade.

She was nearly nine, the age at which a child is so naughty even the dogs can’t stand her.

“Well, you really are something. Much better than your sister.”

“Really?”

The Little Scamp tilted her head and pictured it. Didn’t her sister always get a hundred on her tests?

She’d have to do even better; when she grew up, she meant to get a hundred and one.

“Daddy, sister says I’m not very smart.”

He pinched her little nose, and then Clara called him, and the two of them went upstairs to talk things over.

Clara mentioned her cousin Danny’s sweetheart, Stella, as well, but her main worry was how the Little Scamp would be raised as she grew up.

The Little Scamp had had no notion of money from the time she was tiny; whenever they went out, she bought whatever she fancied.

She never looked at the price.

That was a small matter, though; the main worry was that she was too far removed from ordinary folks.

That wouldn’t help her grow up with good values.

The Big Scamp had poor marks, but she didn’t have this trouble.

Caleb said, “You needn’t worry too much. When she’s a little older, I mean to take them both to work on a farm for two months every summer.”

“Will you even have the time? The company’s grown so big.”

“However busy I am, I have to make time for my children growing up.”

Caleb settled her comfortably on the settee. “You see, we work so hard to earn money just so our children can have a decent future and don’t have to fret over money every day the way we did when we were young. If we neglect them growing up because we’re rich, we might regret it when we’re old.”

Clara thought it over and agreed; some things are just that way once you become a parent.

A great many things had to be thought of from the children’s side.

If they grew old and the children turned out badly, no amount of money could put it right.

“Honey, if the third one turns out to be a boy, I want to send him to be raised in the country.”

“The country?”

Caleb understood what she meant; they’d both grown up in the country.

Country life might have plenty of drawbacks, but it meant something for how a child was raised.

Especially for a family like theirs.

“No need to hurry on that. Even after the baby’s born, we ought to wait at least till he’s a year old before we talk it over.”

Clara nodded. “Husband, has Rising Star Town, the land included, already cost us nearly forty million?”

“Yes.” Caleb said, “There’s no helping it. House prices in the middle of the city keep climbing. Last year you could still get a nice place at thirty dollars a square foot on average, but that’s impossible this year. The Riviera Terraces and a few other fine neighborhoods have already broken through forty dollars a square foot.

“Plenty of our Group’s people earning two thousand a year look like they’re doing well, but ask them how things really stand and every one of them is carrying a mortgage of more than twenty thousand dollars, and easily over forty thousand once you count the interest.

“So long as the Group stays steady, their mortgages won’t be a problem; but if the Group ever runs into trouble and we have to cut wages, those mortgages could crush a whole crowd of well-paid people.

“Better safe than sorry. We ought to move our headquarters out to a suburb where houses cost less.”

Clara agreed; even rich folks like them felt the bubble in house prices had grown absurdly large.

Two thousand a year was surely top pay for any employee.

Yet they still had to struggle through the better part of their lives for a square box of brick and stone, toiling with barely enough to live on.

That was frightening.

A good company, if only for the sake of its employees, ought to pick the most livable spot first of all.

After all, when employees think about buying a home, the first thing they consider is how close it is to their work.

Never mind his own affairs; he knew that Hallworth, too, had moved out to Pine Mountain Lake outside Galveston because of high house prices.

Dodging high house prices wasn’t something only ordinary folks had to think about.

Even great groups like theirs faced the same choice.

“I’ve seen the place. If we build apartment houses on all hundred and eighty acres, we can put up about eighteen buildings, and housing fifteen or twenty thousand people won’t be any trouble. If the family can manage it in the second half of the year, I mean to bid for an even bigger residential plot out there and build a fine Rising Star neighborhood that can house at least ten thousand more.

“If we want to draw good people better in the future, we first have to settle the worries they’ll have.”

Caleb thought about the growing expenses at home.

Naturally he wouldn’t give away the houses he built to his employees for nothing, but selling them at cost would be enough.

They could pay by installments, too, only without any interest on the loan.

Chapter 506: A Forest in the City

It would settle the housing needs of tens of thousands of people, and if word of it got out, their family could truly be known as a great house of charity.

A good boss’s kindness wasn’t only in giving his people respectable work and a handsome income.

Better still to see to some of their basic needs as well, and most of his employees would be well content.

The building of Rising Star Town was still at the planning stage.

A detailed set of plans from a firm of architects was needed before the big public-works contractors could be formally invited to take on the building.

For that reason, Caleb set up a special building fund for Rising Star Town.

The first money put in was eighteen million dollars, including the twelve million multiplied by his dear old Golden Ledger.

It also included his own original six million.

With these eighteen million dollars behind it, all the work was moving faster.

On the twelfth of April, the Rising Star Group formally held a design competition for Rising Star Town in Bay City.

At the event, thirty-nine of the finest firms of architects, from home and abroad, competed with their proposals for the Rising Star Town contract.

Some proposed building a City of the Future, with everything centered on the wonders of the scientific romances.

Others proposed building a European town, with European-style streets, a first-class design of its own full of European castles and townscapes.

This proposal won a good deal of approval.

The firm that put it forward was also one of the most celebrated firms of architects in the world.

The advantage of a European town was that it would be especially beautiful and majestic; the drawback was that it squeezed the space for the headquarters.

Where fifty thousand people might have worked, the European style would let only twenty thousand work at their desks at the same time.

Another of the representatives was rather a special case.

Stella Thornton, unexpectedly, was speaking for her firm in such exalted company.

She herself was astonished, for her employer had brought only her along, on purpose.

The main reason, without a doubt, was that Clara had invited her to a private supper at her home.

Stella’s proposal was anything but simple; it was called “A Peach-Blossom Haven in the City.”

Her plan paid no heed at all to the Rising Star Group’s budget; its chief idea was to use the seven hundred acres of land to join the newest inventions with natural scenery.

By bringing in great numbers of famous trees and notable landmarks from at home and abroad, Rising Star Town would be transformed entirely into a choice place that combined modern offices, leisure and a peaceful setting perfect for rest and recovery.

The part of the plan that called for the most money wasn’t even the trees around the grounds, but that every headquarters building would mix the style of the modern sky-scraper with that of the ancient forest.

That meant growing all manner of famous plants inside the buildings themselves.

The project was expected to need between thirty-six and forty-eight million dollars, not counting the cost of buying the land or the rest of the works.

That is to say, building such a modern forest in the city for a headquarters would take at least fifty-six to sixty million dollars all told.

Beyond doubt, that was a staggering figure.

The Group could have only one final verdict, and that was up to Caleb himself.

It must be said that, apart from being expensive, her proposal had no real drawbacks.

Who wouldn’t want to enjoy a little natural scenery while working, and feel the untamed charm of nature?

When everyone had presented, the outcome was that Autumn Carrow, Grace Keller, Chet Fuller, Hugh Gordon and the others all agreed as one.

They would take the design from Stella’s firm.

When the decision was hammered home, Stella felt as if she were dreaming.

Such a proposal, of course, wasn’t drawn up by her alone.

She didn’t have the ability; the plan came from her employer working with all the ablest people in the firm over ten days of discussion.

It was also because he knew that Rising Star Town meant to bring a great many oak trees into the Rising Star headquarters.

That was how he’d hit on the clever idea of a town built like a modern forest.

Of course, he’d taken a big risk.

Because everyone knows that trying to create perfect natural scenery inside a modern headquarters building is like burning money.

Burning through great sums every second.

What first-rate designer wouldn’t want to take on a design like that?

In the future, whoever visited Rising Star Town would remember their firm’s name.

And it would leave its mark on the world of architecture.

A headquarters town costing tens of millions of dollars; a design like that was bound to become famous in the trade.

And it would set countless people fighting fiercely for such work.

When she got back that evening, the whole firm celebrated for Stella.

At that moment, all she really wanted was to cry.

She understood more deeply than ever the tremendous influence rich families had over ordinary people like them.

For the Rising Star Group, it was merely a first design plan that had been approved.

For architects like them, it truly could make them famous in the best circles of their profession in the country.

That was the power of wealth.

A word or a smile from such people could cause endless sorrow and tears in ordinary circles.

A design job so big naturally couldn’t be finished by one or two people.

In the months to come, their whole office would be busy with Rising Star Future Town.

As for Stella herself, she received a bonus of ten thousand dollars outright.

It was because of the inside word she’d given about bringing in oaks that her employer had been able to propose the forest design.

At their level, most design proposals ran neck and neck.

Hardly any stood far out from the rest.

The key was who could design something closer to what the boss had in mind.

A design fee of three hundred and sixty thousand dollars, and fame across the whole world of architecture besides.

Beyond doubt, this was an order of the first rank.

* * *

With the first plan confirmed, it would still take a team of people several months of work before the final design could be settled.

From breaking ground to finishing, it would take about another two years.

This was what it looked like when money was no object; if money ran short, the work would go in fits and starts, and no date for finishing could be set at all.

Expecting over fifty million dollars to be spent was beyond the imagination of everyone inside the Group.

Everyone was quite excited and looking forward to moving into the new headquarters one day.

As for Caleb himself, having sold his twenty-five percent of Snack Dash’s listed shares, of all the listed companies, he still held the most shares in the Rising Star Theatrical Company.

Forty percent.

At its present value, that came to roughly a hundred million dollars.

Besides that, he still owned twenty-four percent of the Sunburst Department Stores.

As for Antler Coffee House, Bobo’s Soda Parlor, the Fat Lamb and the rest, he’d already cashed out when they listed.

Only the last five percent was left in each.

When money was short, it had to come fast and hard. Caleb had Tabitha Lane look for buyers in Empire City.

He hoped to sell nineteen percent of the Sunburst Department Stores’ shares and cash out six million dollars.

At present, Sunburst was valued on the Exchange at forty-four million.

In a private sale, naturally, he’d have to give a discount of twenty percent on the share price.

The Sunburst Department Stores didn’t have very many stores, but they had the advantage of running steadily and owning every one of their buildings outright.

Nothing was more favored in Empire City than assets steady like that.

However the department-store trade might change in the future, their position was very secure.

Especially now that they’d bought four great store buildings in Empire City and opened four Sunburst Department Stores there.

A fifth of the shares for six million dollars could hardly be called too high a price.

In the end, the man who took them up was none other than Gilbert Gould, who wanted to buy his nineteen percent.

There was one more condition, though: he hoped to buy ten percent of New Summit Vaudeville’s shares at the same time.

With the rise of the picture-card craze, the Sunburst Department Stores had another great advantage.

They had set up Global Select together with the Kwik-Peek Company’s stronghold, New Summit Vaudeville.

Selling through the Kwik-Peek halls and the catalogs, they could solve the problems of goods piling up in the storerooms and of sales in the stores all at once.

Joining the two was the main reason the Sunburst Department Stores were valued at over forty million.

Its property had already been split off into Sunrise Property Management.

Caleb thought it over and agreed.

In truth there was another important reason: New Summit Vaudeville was already on its way to listing on the Exchange.

Once that succeeded, the return on Gilbert Gould’s investment would plainly be very high.

Nineteen percent of the Sunburst Department Stores plus ten percent of New Summit Vaudeville.

Together, the price came to eight million dollars.

Since these shares were held by Sunburst Capital, the sale would naturally take place in Empire City.

He hurried off to Empire City as well to get ready for the signing.

Chapter 507: The Russian Patents

Empire City, the middle of April.

Caleb had finished signing over the shares with Gilbert Gould at his Empire City headquarters.

At a price of eight million dollars, he’d sold nineteen percent of his shares in the Sunburst Department Stores.

Plus another ten percent of New Summit Vaudeville.

After this sale, his holdings in the four listed companies he’d put money into early on had all dropped to a mere five percent.

He certainly wouldn’t sell any more of those.

As for New Summit Vaudeville, he had only twenty percent of the shares left.

[Chime! Congratulations, Holder. Your income today is $8,000,000. Would you like to activate the random multiplier?]

“Activate.”

Caleb gave the silent command, and the familiar Golden Die appeared once more.

It rattled and tumbled without stopping, and at last it landed on four.

One minute, two minutes, until eight minutes had passed.

Thirty-two million dollars arrived in his bank account.

Adding the original eight million, that made forty million in cash.

It looked like a great deal, but it was still a long way from covering what he was spending now.

Caleb took twenty million of it and put it into the special fund for Rising Star Town.

With that money, Rising Star Town would need only another eighteen million to be finished completely.

The Rising Star headquarters project, reckoned to cost more than fifty-six million dollars in all, was now unlikely to run short of money again.

Besides that, he set aside three million dollars for Sunfield Farming.

Every time a big sum came in, he put some of it into Sunfield Farming.

That would speed up his projects for helping the farming country and win him more standing among the local folks as well.

Eight million dollars was nothing much to the Gould family; Gilbert Gould was the eldest grandson of the third generation, and he’d done remarkably well these past years.

That evening he’d also arranged for a few young stage beauties of Empire City to come over, among them a pair of sisters.

The sisters had only just made their debut, and they were pretty.

According to the agency that managed them, both were still maidens.

Gilbert Gould paid twenty-four thousand dollars in gold to the agency for their first night.

The merchants of Empire City were great believers in luck and omens, and held that a woman’s first time could raise a man’s fortunes.

It was a common belief all along the Gulf Coast.

So a girl who was especially beautiful, past eighteen and still untouched could command a high price, if she knew the right people.

Gilbert Gould wanted to invite Caleb to join in the fun too, but he had no interest and declined.

A man with a wife and children had no business doing something he’d regret over a moment’s frivolity.

Gilbert Gould was different; his wife had been chosen for him by his family.

It was a typical marriage among the rich. As long as he didn’t bring any of those messy women home, his wife wouldn’t care.

A great many marriages in high society were like that.

After Caleb left, he had no idea how Gilbert Gould got on with those beautiful twins that night.

He didn’t stay long himself, and the next day he went back to Bay City in his private railroad car.

With the seventeen million left over, he still hoped to buy an old-established carriage works somewhere in the world with sound carriage-building know-how.

That would shore up the weakest, most basic part of Sunflight.

If he could pull off the purchase, what it would mean for Sunflight went without saying.

Tabitha Lane had been keeping an eye out all over the world for him. Buying know-how was a thing that followed rules the whole world kept to.

Take the newest electrical apparatus, for instance: however rich you were, you couldn’t buy the latest inventions; you could buy only what had been out of date for more than five years.

The rules for licensing patents from abroad were very clear.

The English would never let them pay to get their hands on the most advanced research.

To buy more advanced carriage patents, it was best to keep away from places the English had a grip on.

Tabitha had searched the world for nearly a month before she found a well-known old carriage and engine works in Russia.

In the time of the old empress Catherine, Russia’s works and foundries had been highly developed.

It was only afterward that they hadn’t kept pace.

With all those years of groundwork, you might say they couldn’t match the great works of England or France, and certainly not the great German works.

But compared with ordinary carriage works, their know-how was far better.

The works had been founded more than eighty years before, and its know-how in the old coal-fired steam carriages was particularly mature.

Their biggest drawback was that their engines ate coal like a furnace, which was no problem at all in Russia.

Coal and fuel there really were cheap, but plainly that wouldn’t do anywhere else in the world.

They had a complete set of carriage-building know-how, exactly what Caleb lacked.

The two sides quickly made contact, and Caleb sent a team of Sunflight’s senior men.

They went abroad in person to negotiate. He didn’t need to buy their works.

He needed only their complete set of carriage-building know-how.

To the Russian works, so long as they got a good price, they didn’t care about the know-how.

After all, they had no market in this country.

And in the world market, they were no rivals to the English or the German works.

They sold well only inside their own country, and the two wouldn’t compete, so selling to him was no great matter.

More important still, the Russians didn’t give a hoot for the English.

They paid no mind whatever to the rules the English laid down, and sold if they pleased, as if the English could rule heaven and earth and reach all the way into Russia.

The details of the negotiation wouldn’t produce a result for at least half a month.

The final sum planned was between twelve and sixteen million dollars.

They weren’t buying the whole works, only a complete set of second-rank carriage-building know-how.

With that much money, it was entirely enough.

Once this purchase of patents was done, they really wouldn’t lack any of the basic patents for building the new horseless carriages.

All that would remain was improving on them, and Caleb was looking forward to it.

* * *

Bay City, the eighteenth of April.

The heat had shot up, with a blazing sun high in the sky.

It wasn’t even summer yet, and at noon the thermometer was already near ninety degrees.

Caleb, with nothing much to do, was getting ready to go to the swimming bath and exercise for a few hours.

Yesterday he’d paid another three million dollars to settle the balance on his great yacht.

In another year, his five-million-two-hundred-thousand-dollar ocean steam yacht might just arrive at the port of Empire City.

Then he could set out on a voyage around the world.

“Brother-in-law, the Group has a few new players. Aren’t you going to take a look?”

His little cousin Polly Jessup, who had won a bit of fame on the stage now, still liked to come over and join the fun whenever she was free.

It had been a long time since he’d paid attention to his Rising Star Theatrical Company.

The main reason was that it had no competition.

With the Sunburst Department Stores cashed out, the next big projects he’d be cashing out were only the Rising Star Picture-Card Company, the Rising Star penny-serial parlors and New Summit Vaudeville.

There was also, of course, the standing event, Cloudwater’s Splendid Night Gala.

“New players who join the company go through the usual screening. I don’t need to see them, do I?”

“Brother-in-law, I think you’d better take a look. The two of them are so pretty.”

Polly said with sparkling eyes, “The one called Mona Ziegler is even prettier than me, and that Rosie York is ever so pure-looking. It’s just that she’s a bit flat in front and her behind isn’t very pert. Otherwise, with her looks, she could be one of the five top beauties on the stage.”

“Tsk… who taught you to start by judging folks by their chests and behinds? That’s not proper!”

Caleb tapped her little head. “Winona Shaw has gone off to play in a grand spectacle for Director Mowbray, the great master of the stage, and you’re still loafing around in the touring plays. Haven’t you got any ambition?”

“How could I? Winona’s talented in her own right; that’s why the great master picked her. He said my face is just right for playing the belle of the schoolhouse. I can’t help it.”

“The belle of the schoolhouse, eh?”

Caleb thought a moment and said, “The most popular one playing schoolhouse belles is the girl who was in ‘Under the Falling Stars,’ isn’t she?”

“That’s her. She’s ever so popular.”

She was a star of the first magnitude, and Polly wouldn’t dare compare herself to her. Polly always tried not to use the back door to grab the best parts at Rising Star.

She went to auditions on her own; if a part suited her she played it, and if not, she looked elsewhere.

She certainly couldn’t use her brother-in-law’s position the way Sweet Dottie Dane had, starting out in supporting parts above the leading players themselves.

The result was that Dottie still hadn’t caught on, and was forever being attacked instead as a hog for the best parts.

That wasn’t what Polly wanted.

“All right, then, take your time,” Caleb said. “I don’t really hope for you to become some star of the first magnitude. You’re the best-looking girl in both the Walker and the Sutton families, after all. If you really became a great star, everything about who you are now would be dug up too, and you couldn’t go out anywhere in peace.”

Polly nodded hard. She’d never really dreamed of becoming a great star; being able to earn a few thousand dollars a year with ease was already grand.

A body ought to be content and happy.

As for her brother-in-law himself, rich as he was, he always kept a low profile.

It was hard for outsiders to imagine he was a tycoon of enormous wealth.

“So are you going to take a look at the two of them? They really are awfully pretty!”

“All right. I’ve bought a private club near here. You can bring them over at noon,” Caleb said.

A private club was a staple of the rich.

It was a place that brought together dining, drinking, amusement and leisure, where every person and every thing inside existed solely to serve their family.

Caleb had bought his private club himself for two hundred and forty thousand dollars.

It stood on Sheldon Hill, with a great hot spring and an enormous swimming bath.

There was also a first-class private dining hall, a little magic-lantern theater, a music room with a band to sing to, and an open-air bathing pool for wine parties, among other things.

Practically any luxury you could think of was there.

And there were five exceedingly luxurious rooms.

He used the place specially to invite his own friends or business acquaintances for gatherings.

With the weather so hot, it was just the place to relax.

And he could take the chance to meet the company’s newly signed players.

He had some recollection of that Mona Ziegler.

When the Big Scamp had first come to the Group as its little president, hadn’t she rewarded the girl with a hundred-odd dollars?

But the girl had simply turned on her heel and run off.

As if they were all going to go bankrupt the very next day.

Chapter 508: Five Steps Ahead

Rosie York and Mona Ziegler were both newcomers at the Rising Star Theatrical Company.

Polly Jessup was about their age, but she’d been at Rising Star three years already, so she was something of a senior to them.

Polly was very kind to the newcomers, mainly because she figured they were all there to make money for her brother-in-law.

She still drove that white open-top Hooper landau, worth over twenty thousand dollars.

Caleb had given it to her, and she’d been driving it a few years now.

Mona had just finished college; she’d been born in ‘55.

Rosie, on the other hand, had been born in ‘58 and had only just started at the conservatory.

She’d won her place at Rising Star chiefly on the strength of her extraordinary looks; her face was the very picture of the sweet, moonlit first love of every young man’s memory.

The three of them rode together, and though Mona’s family wasn’t poor, they weren’t rich enough to own a Hooper landau.

She was quite surprised; the truth was, she’d had the chance to join the Rising Star Theatrical Company two years earlier.

But back then she’d thought it was preposterous for such a little girl to be head of the company.

It had seemed only a matter of time before the company shut its doors.

Later on, even the Hartley Brothers had gone under, and yet Rising Star was still thriving, which she’d never expected.

“Polly, are we really going to meet the big boss?”

“Yep. He said he wanted to take you two to lunch.”

“That’s rare. Rosie’s been with the company so long, but I think this is the first time she’s meeting the big boss, isn’t it?”

Rosie, who came from the Gulf Coast, might not have been the center of everyone’s adoration, but she was well liked wherever she went.

“I’ve met Secretary Whitney several times, but it’s true, I’ve never met the big boss.”

Polly giggled. “My brother-in-law’s a good sort. Just don’t be nervous when you meet him. If he takes a liking to you, you’ll get whatever parts you want. Winona was his favorite. The moment the trainees’ contest was over, she started playing in Director Mowbray’s grand spectacle, ‘The Royal Counselor.’ Nobody else could brag of a start like that.”

Mona was outspoken, a girl whose looks had a bold sort of beauty; she was undeniably handsome, but lacked a little innocence.

What she had instead was charm in abundance.

“Rosie, loosen up a bit when you meet the big boss. It’d be best if your dress showed a little more.”

“Nonsense. My brother-in-law isn’t one for that sort of thing.”

Polly said sternly, “Don’t you get any crooked ideas. Plenty of girls in the Group have tried dirty tricks like that, and every one of them got fired afterward.”

“I’m only joking. I just think Rosie’s wound up a bit tight.”

Mona was nervous herself, but she wouldn’t admit it, and teased Rosie beside her on purpose.

The three of them soon arrived at Sheldon Hill.

The private club wasn’t in the bustle of the city but set among scenic woods up on the hill.

It was perched on the hillside, surrounded by great trees, and stood three stories high.

Each floor had more than ten thousand square feet.

Mona’s family had some means, but a private club so luxurious still astonished her.

Rosie, beside her, was plainly even more amazed.

It was Polly’s first visit too; her brother-in-law had only just bought the place, after all.

As they drove in, a beautifully laid-out garden greeted them.

There was even a butler to wait on them, and after the landau was taken to the stable, he led them up to a private dining room on the third floor.

Caleb wasn’t alone there; Shirley Sutton and his old schoolmate Annabel Yount were there too.

Once Polly arrived with the others, the meal could properly begin.

The way of dining at the club was much like in Empire City, where guests ordered for themselves by turning over the dish cards.

There were all sorts of cooking and flavors.

The bill of fare was varied, covering a whole range of famous American and French dishes.

Well, private clubs were meant for entertaining guests, so naturally the basic comforts weren’t lacking.

“Brother-in-law, why’d you wait specially for me?”

“You said you were coming. How could I not wait for you?”

Caleb fixed his eyes on the striking young woman beside her. “Mona Ziegler, you stood my daughter up two years ago. Back then she kept asking why Sister Mona didn’t come to work.”

“Er… you remember that?”

Mona scratched her head awkwardly. “Something came up back then, so I couldn’t come. But look, I’ve joined the Rising Star Theatrical Company now. Just two years late, no great matter, no great matter.”

“You’re quite a character.”

Caleb said, “My daughter really likes you. She said you didn’t seem very bright, just like her, and I never thought it’d turn out to be true.”

How was she supposed to handle the big boss remembering her embarrassing past?

Even Polly hadn’t known about this business between the two of them.

As for Rosie, she looked more bewildered still.

“I won’t say another word. I’ll punish myself with three drinks.” Mona lifted her glass.

“Boss, your bourbon’s here!”

“Wasn’t it beer?”

With Mona’s head for liquor, three glasses of hard spirits would have her out cold on the table.

She’d have no need to do any more work that afternoon.

“All right, nobody’s making you drink. Just find somewhere to sit down.”

Mona was dressed quite fashionably today, in a short, uncommon little jacket.

She’d even tied its ends in a knot at her waist.

Below it she’d chosen a close-fitting riding skirt that never went out of style, and her wavy hair was half pinned up, the rest falling over her bosom.

She’d wanted to sit far away from Caleb, but Rosie played a trick on her and made her sit right across from him.

Every time she looked up, there was the big boss’s rather stern face, and it was hard for her to eat in peace.

“Brother-in-law, this place is so big. Can I come here often?”

“Of course you can. The place is for private parties, and there’s an open-air terrace at the top. If you like, you can invite people over for a party. Just tell the housekeeper what you need.”

“Brother-in-law, you’re so good to me!”

“That’s enough of that. You’re old enough to find a beau, and yet I’ve never seen you bring anyone home.”

“I’m in no hurry. Not till at least your thirty-sixth birthday, brother-in-law.”

“That’s only two years off.”

Caleb said, “Time surely flies. I still remember your baby fat, and you running around bare-bottomed when you were little.”

How enviable; the big boss treated Polly so well.

And in surroundings so luxurious, one mustn’t stay too long; it corrupted the heart far too easily.

Only by following the big boss could one enjoy luxuries like these.

Mona felt like a counterfeit rich man’s daughter.

“Brother-in-law, there you go bringing that up again.”

Polly blushed; she knew that without Caleb, she’d still be slaving in a sweatshop for four or six dollars a month.

“I just think you were especially comical when you were little.”

The meal was ready, but he hadn’t come here to eat.

The main thing was that the Group’s big projects had all been cashed out when their time came.

Most of those left still needed a great deal of time.

He ought to start raising new projects for the market now, or it would be embarrassing if there were none to list in the next few years.

Mona and Rosie both knew this.

The big boss, though he was the greatest capitalist in the theater world, didn’t actually put his energy into the theater at all, but into the new horseless carriages, which had always been the focus of his investments.

Besides, the Group had too many big projects under its wing.

It was hard to imagine how he managed them all by himself.

Now the big boss had invited them to a meal, and sitting quietly and listening was better than anything.

It was Annabel Yount who spoke. “Walker, the Tick-Tock picture parlors are rising fast, and their customers are growing by leaps in every direction. It’s still in its wild, untamed stage of growth. I reckon in another year it’ll reach the height of its golden season, when the crowds pour in.

“The Rising Star Picture-Card Company hasn’t cashed out a cent yet; instead it’s putting in a million or twelve hundred thousand dollars a year.

“The aim is to make a great crowd of picture-card favorites during this wild stage of growth.

“Then, when the golden season comes, they can change along with Tick-Tock and start finding their own ways of turning their fame into money.”

“The times move fast. It used to be the age of starting up on the wire, and now the crowds have actually shifted to picture cards. Who’d have thought it a year ago!”

Caleb said, “Whether it’s the Rising Star Picture-Card Company or New Summit Vaudeville, their rise has proved one thing: the age of picture cards has truly arrived, and the new wire trade has begun to revolve around the crowds at the picture parlors. Maybe in the future the big companies will be fighting over the crowds there. The reason I called you here this time is to give you another two million dollars to open real clothing stores.”

Uh… Annabel was surprised. “Walker, wasn’t it you who told me to close down the stores and put everything into the selling shows in the Kwik-Peek halls and the catalog?”

“Yes, I did tell you to close the stores and put everything into the selling shows. That was because I figured your energy was limited and better spent all in one place, which plainly suited how things stood for you then. And the fact is, it was the right move.”

Caleb said, “Now, giving you two million to open clothing stores is to pave your road for the next five or even ten years. You’ve run a clothing store yourself, so you ought to understand that the two biggest costs of running an old-fashioned clothing store are rent and stock.

“Now that you’ve got the selling shows as a channel, you must understand it deeply. Given the chance to open stores again and use the selling shows to trim your stock, the profits of the stores are bound to rise a good deal.

“Besides, there’s a crucial point: picture cards are in their golden season right now. Money is still pouring in wildly, and the young folks in the trade are like headless flies, bumping around everywhere.

“That only happens in the early days of the picture-card trade. Once the real golden season comes, the number of people pouring into the trade every day will likely grow by leaps. By then, the flood of companies and people will quickly cut the golden season down to just one to three years.

“After that, it’ll be like the wire trade and the old trades you see now: everything will come back down to basics, and the same cutthroat round of fighting among the crowd.

“The reason I want you to open clothing stores now is to prepare for the coming age of deadlock. To put it more bluntly, others rely on sales to earn a markup, but you can rely on sales to earn money from the Exchange, that is, from a rise in your share price. As a matter of competition, those are two entirely different levels.

“Plan carefully before you act, and think five steps ahead with every move you make, so you can handle whatever comes in the future with ease.”

Annabel was utterly stunned.

Her old classmate’s business sense reached far indeed.

When she’d been only middling, he’d had her leave the clothing stores to specialize in the selling shows.

And just when she was doing very well and even feeling a touch proud, he came along with a wake-up call, telling her it was no great thing.

She’d merely caught the golden season of the picture-card trade.

If she wanted to stand unbeatable in the future, she had to prepare for danger in times of safety.

Spend nine-tenths of her time planning for the next five years, so that when the golden season was over and everyone else was stuck in deadlock, she could sit back and watch at her ease.

And laugh at the ups and downs of life.

All of it rested on his own judgment of the future.

If he was right, and they moved five years ahead of the rest, they’d surely stand at the very top of the clothing trade.

If he was wrong…

That surely couldn’t be; after all, he was putting up two million dollars himself.

Even if it lost money, he’d bear the brunt of it.

The Rising Star Group had lost plenty on small projects.

Countless ones, but not a single big one had ever failed.

Mainly because her old classmate steered the big projects himself.

As for the small ones, they were really hand-me-downs for the Group’s new investment managers to cut their teeth on.

A loss didn’t matter.

Without plenty of failures, how could you raise truly excellent investors?

Annabel understood why the Rising Star Group’s big projects always came through at the critical moment.

It was mainly because her old classmate would step in himself and promptly pour cold water on you.

With hard figures to show you that you were in no position yet to rest easy.

Chapter 509: Walking on Two Legs

The times were moving fast.

From the dawn of the age of rail and wire in 1870 to the undeniable rise of the picture cards now, it had been only a few years.

Caleb had been devoted to managing the crowds from early on.

You might say that wherever the crowds went, there was a company of his.

What Annabel had achieved so far wasn’t bad; she, at least, was quite satisfied with it.

But to Caleb it was only so-so.

In the golden season, you could earn tens of thousands of dollars a month; once it was over, there might be only a few thousand left.

Most of the young picture-card favorites were like that; they shone for a while, and afterward went back to whatever they’d been doing before.

That was why he needed to plan ahead and build a market that sold through two channels at once, the halls and catalogs on one side and the stores on the other.

Whatever happened, the trade in everyday goods was still the biggest consumer market in the country.

It was true the old clothing trade had seen worse days each year under the blows of the mail-order houses and the wire.

But that didn’t mean there was no chance left for clothing stores.

On the contrary, the rise of the picture cards had given them one.

First of all, looked at as a matter of business, why could the mail-order clothing sellers sell so cheap?

There were a few main reasons: one was that they paid no rent for a storefront, and another was that many makers dealt with the customers directly.

With no middlemen taking a cut, prices were naturally low.

Those two reasons alone could wipe out every advantage of knowing what the customer didn’t, and smash the countless little clothing stores and one-man shops.

But only the smaller merchants could be wiped out that way.

Any small dealer who’d sold through the big mail-order catalogs knew that the old saying, “no business under heaven is hard,” was a joke.

Say you wanted to sell something; you had to spend money on the “Front Row.”

That is, paid placement, charged by the inquiry.

Only then would your goods be shown at the very front of the catalog pages and the picture-parlor cabinets, where customers’ eyes fell first; otherwise, among thousands of other goods, if you didn’t raise your Front Row bid, nobody would see your goods at all.

Let alone buy them.

And the catalog houses didn’t charge for the Front Row after a sale; instead, the moment a customer wrote in to ask about your goods, you had to pay a fee of a fifth of a cent or more.

That was a deadly blow to small merchants; plenty of them sold a few dollars’ worth a day, yet at the end of the month they’d end up losing twenty or sixty dollars, and that was why.

The Front Row was essentially the same thing as the Bainbridge Telegraph Company’s paid notices, charged by every inquiry.

For the moneyed men, of course, it was wonderfully profitable, because whether the customer bought or not, they earned the moment someone asked.

The cost turned out to be far higher than ordinary rent.

The Front Row was also the catalog houses’ most profitable source of income.

Around 1873 or so, you needed at least two thousand dollars to start out if you meant to sell goods in a major line through the catalogs.

Because otherwise you couldn’t even afford the Front Row.

Stores had rent to pay, while selling by catalog meant burning money on fees for every inquiry.

By catalog, you could deal straight with the mills and factories; with stores, after putting in two million dollars, the wider reach could even secure goods at the lowest prices straight from the very biggest factories, according to the size of the orders.

Set side by side, the costs came out about the same.

The key was still the battle for the crowds.

That was al