“What did you do out West, Mr. Rourke?” Louise, Elizabeth’s sister, said in a purring voice. He had met the pinched-face woman in the receiving line. Spite dripped from her. “Well? Do not keep us in suspense. Did you ride in an elegant coach from place to place?”
Louise did not hold a candle to her older sister and confirmed her birth at the top of the brainless tree. “I explored, lived off the land. Saw the Mississippi, the vast plains, the Grand Canyon. The Rockies.”
“Did you ride with Jessie James’ gang?” Louise persisted, compelling Zachary to think she had fallen from the top of the brainless tree, hitting every branch on the way down.
“You must have seen Indians,” Elizabeth said.
“Plenty. Some skirmishes as well, especially when I was working on the railroads.”
“You worked on the railroads?” asked Edward Spencer, the man who spent his time lunching with kings or emperors or buying Raphaels.
“Yes, sir. I was a manager with the Union Pacific, saw it to the end. Was there to see the golden stake hammered in at Promontory Point.”
“Then you know something about railroads?” Spencer’s fierce intolerant eyes were set just close enough to suggest rigid and ruthless discipline. Yet those same eyes grew warm when they fell on Elizabeth.
Zachary raised a brow. Edward Spencer, the procurer of thousands of miles of track, was a driven, meticulously groomedman of few words and clever instincts. “If I may, I have some suggestions during this economic downturn.”
Alva glowered. “What could a cowboy possibly share with a man who knows everything about railroads?”
He angled his head. “Plenty, Ma’am.”
“Let the man talk, Alva. People on the lines have real experience that rarely gets to the man at the top. Go ahead, young man,” said Spencer.
Like giving advice to the Mephistopheles of the banking world. “As you know, the railroads have created a national mass market by providing cheap, quick, all-weather, long-distance transport for enormous quantities of freight. A lot of the country’s wilderness has been carved up, galvanizing its industrial imagination, stimulating technological innovation, spurring production of coal, iron, and steel.”
Dyer waved a dismissive hand. “We know all that.”
“Unfortunately, the rail lines crossing the country have been built by competing companies in disconnected patches with no standard track gauge and no national plan. Each company runs its own cars on its own tracks, which means that passengers must change trains—and carloads of freight must be unpacked and reloaded at each new stretch of road. This takes hours. Time is money.”
Edward Spencer nodded. “It is a problem.”
“Also, longer trains loaded full and running fast can be operated far more cheaply and efficiently than small ones. Think economies of scale: it cost less per unit to make or carry a lot of something than a little. A banker might see the economic sense to lower operating costs so the rail lines can earn enough money to service its debt.
“There is also the variable of the unfinished line intended to run from Lake Superior to Puget Sound. It’s bankrupt. You could slowly reorganize and appeal to bondholders. The railline uncompleted is wholly unremunerative. But completed, it becomes one of the great highways of the nation.”
“You are very astute,” said Elizabeth’s father. “I could offer you a job–”
“I’m flattered sir, but I’m here for financing of an invention I’ve made as introduced by Shawn Fitzgerald. I was hoping after dinner we could convene, and I could share with you my ideas.”
“Harrumph,” snorted Isaac Havemeyer, taking out his pocket watch and snapping it open. “I wouldn’t give it a bit of notice. Wolves don’t lose sleep over the opinion of sheep.”
The sugar baron begged to showcase himself as prominent. Zachary inclined his head. “Aristotle.”
“Who?” said the sugar baron.
Zachary said nothing. He never underestimated the power of stupid people in large groups.
Elizabeth’s eyes sparkled. “Mr. Havemeyer, you must know you have paraphrased Aristotle’s classic work,Politics, where he tells the story of Thrasybulus, the seventh century BC tyrant who asked his fellow oppressor, Periander of Corinth how he should govern his people. To demonstrate, Periander lopped off the heads of poppies.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” demanded the sugar baron, whose dysfunction scattered to impossible higher thoughts. Did the man pout by being outwitted by a woman?
“Good God,” ranted Alva. “Elizabeth, you give me a headache with all that learning. Why your father allowed you to have a college education is beyond me.”
Guests cleared their throats, some shifted awkwardly. In the social world, an educated woman was an undesirable quality.
Zachary tamped down a grin. Elizabeth was a cougar. She’d have the sugar baron for her breakfast.
Undeterred by her mother’s remark, Elizabeth continued. “Wouldn’t you agree, Mr. Rourke, that Thrasybulus understood that it was necessary to get rid of eminent citizens.”
