"In what way can we be of assistance?" "My client is seeking clarification of the mining laws promulgated by the BSA Company," Aaron replied, and two hours later Ralph was groping desperately through a maze of jargon and convoluted legal-side-roads as he tried to follow the discussion, and his irritation was becoming increasingly obvious.
Aaron made a silent plea for patience, and with an effort Ralph stopped the angry words reaching his lips, instead he hunched further down in his chair, and in a deliberately boorish gesture of defiance, he placed one boot on the polished table top amongst the scattered legal papers and crossed his other ankle on top of it.
For another hour he listened, sinking lower and still lower in his chair and scowling at the lawyers opposite him, until Aaron Fagan asked humbly. "Does that mean in your opinion my client has not fulfilled the requirements of Section 27 B Clause Five read in conjunction with Section 7 Bis?" "Well, Mr. Fagan, we would first have to examine the question of due performance as set out in Section 31," replied the pack leader carefully, smoothing his moustache and glancing at his assistants who nodded brightly again in concert. "In terms of that section--2
Abruptly Ralph reached the far frontier of his patience. He brought his boots down off the table onto the floor with a crash that startled the four grey-suited men across the table. One of them knocked his folder onto the floor, and papers flew like the feathers when a red caracal cat gets into the henhouse.
"I may not know the difference between "due performance" and the aperture between your buttocks," announced Ralph in a voice that made the leader pale and shrink in size. Like all men of words, he had a horror Of violence, and that was what he sensed in the gaze with which Ralph fixed him. "However, I do know a wagonload of horse manure when I see one. And this, gentlemen, is grade-one horse manure you are giving me." "Mr. Ballantyne." One of the younger assistants was bolder than his chief. "I must protest your use of language! Your insinuation-" "It is not an insinuation," Ralph rounded on him. "I am telling you outright that you are a bunch of bandits, is that still not clear enough? How about robbers then, or pirates?" "Sir-" The assitant sprang to his feet, flushed with indignation, and Ralph reached across the table and caught him by the front of his stock. He twisted it sharply, cutting off the man's protest before it emerged.
"Pray be silent, my good fellow, I am speaking," Ralph admonished him, and then went on, "I am sick of dealing with little thieves. I want to speak to the head bandit. Where is Mr. Rhodes?" At that moment a locomotive down in the shunting yards whistled. The sound only just carried even in the silence which followed Ralph's question, and Ralph remembered Jordan's excuse for ending lunch the previous day. He released the struggling lawyer so abruptly that the man collapsed back into his chair, fighting for breath.
"Aaron," Ralph demanded. "What time is it?" "Eight minutes of noon." "He was fobbing me off the cunning bastard was fobbing me off!" Ralph whirled and ran from the boardroom.
There were half a dozen horses at the hitching rack outside the front of the De Beers building. Without checking his speed, Ralph decided on a big strong looking bay and ran to it. He clinched the girth, unhitched the reins, and turned its head out into the road.
"Hey, you," shouted the janitor. "That's Sir Randolph's mound" "Tell Sir Randolph he can have his suite back," Ralph called, and vaulted to the saddle. It had been a good choice, the bay drove strongly between his knees. They galloped past the mine st agings through the gap between the hillocks formed by the high tailing dumps and Ralph saw Mr. Rhodes" private train.
It was already crossing the points at the southern end of the yards and running out into the open country. The locomotive was hauling four coaches, steam spurted from the pistons of the driving wheels with each stroke. The signal arm was down and the lights were green. The locomotive was picking up speed swiftly.
"Come boy," Ralph encouraged the bay, swinging it towards the barbed-wire fence beside the track. The horse steadied himself, pricking his ears forward as he judged the wire. Then he went for it boldly. "Oh good boy." Ralph lifted him with hands and knees.
They flew over it with two feet to spare and landed neatly. There was flat open ground ahead, and the railway tracks curved slightly.
Ralph aimed to cut the curve. He lay against the horse's neck, watching the stony ground for holes. Five hundred yards ahead the train was pulling gradually away from them, but the bay ran on gamely.
Then the locomotive hit the gradient of the Magersfontein Hills and the huffing of the boiler changed its beat and slowed. They caught it a quarter of a mile from the crest, and Ralph pushed the bay in close enough for him to lean from the saddle and grab the handrail of the rear balcony on the last coach. Ralph swung across the gap and scrambled up onto the balcony. He looked back. The bay was already grazing contentedly on the Karroo bush beside the tracks.
"Somehow, I knew you were coming." Ralph turned quickly. Jordan was standing in the door of the coach. "I even had a bed made up for you in one of the guest compartments." "Where is he?" Ralph demanded.
"Waiting for you in the saloon. He watched your daredevil riding with interest. I won a guinea on you." Ostensibly the train was for the use of all the directors of De Beers, though none of them, apart from the Chairman of the Board, had yet shown the temerity to exercise that right.
The exteriors of the coaches and the locomotive were varnished in chocolate brown and gold. The interiors were as luxurious as unlimited expenditure could make them, from the fitted Wilton carpets and cut-glass chandeliers in the saloon to the solid gold and onyx fittings in the bathrooms.
Mr. Rhodes was stumped in a buttoned calf-leather chair beside the wide picture window in his private car. There were sheaves of paper on the Italian gold-embossed leather top of his bureau, and a crystal glass of whisky at his elbow. He looked tired and ill. His face was bloated and blotched with livid purple. There was more silver than ruddy gold in his moustache and wavy hair now, but his eyes were still that pale fanatical blue and his voice high and sharp.
"Sit down, Ballantyne," he said. "Jordan, get your brother a drink." Jordan placed a silver tray with a ship's decanter, a Stuart crystal glass and a matching claret jug of water on the table beside Ralph. While he did so, Mr. Rhodes addressed himself once more to the papers in front of him.
"What is the most important asset of any nation, Ballantyne?" he demanded suddenly, without looking up again. "Diamonds?" suggested Ralph mockingly, and he heard Jordan draw breath sharply behind him.
Then," said Mr. Rhodes, as though he had not heard. "Young, bright men, imbued during the most susceptible period of their lives with the grand design. Young men like you, Ralph, Englishmen with all the manly virtues." Mr. Rhodes paused. "I am endowing a series of scholarships in my will. I want these young men to be chosen carefully and sent to Oxford University." For the first time he looked up at Ralph. "You see, it is utterly unacceptable that a man's noblest thoughts should cease, merely because the man dies. These will be my living thoughts.
Through these young men, I shall live for ever." "How will you select them?" Ralph asked, intrigued despite himself by this design for immortality, devised by a giant with a crippled heart.