“Oh—not necessarily … I was a good while debating whether to do anything about my affair … I was a pretty rummy lot, Brent … I’d have ducked it if I could.”
“How do you mean—rummy? … Hadn’t stolen anything, had you?”
“Never needed to steal anything … Had everything … Had too much! … Corrupted a lot of people with it! … You’ve had too little. I suppose that’s the main difference between us.”
“D’you think there’s anything I could do—to square up for what you’ve done for me?”
“Perhaps—if that sort of thing interests you?”
“What—for instance?”
Merrick rose and took up his coat.
“You’ll have to figure that out for yourself.”
“I’d like to, you know,” said Brent earnestly.
“You mean that?” challenged Merrick, putting both hands on Monty’s shoulders and looking him squarely in the eyes.
“Yes—more than I ever meant anything in my life!”
It seemed to Monty that his athletic young benefactor would never emerge from the brown study into which his words had driven him. He stood, leaning against the table, hands deep in his pockets, oblivious to his surroundings.
“In that case,” he said slowly, “I presume I’ll have to help you. I don’t want to! But—there’s just a slim chance that … See here! You shave and dress for dinner. I’ll be in the lobby when you come down. We’ll eat—and I’ll tell you all I know about it. After that—it will be up to you! … Better put some iodine on those scratches … Sorry I hurt you.”
They went in a taxi to a down town restaurant. It was somewhat after the dinner hour and their table in the corner permitted them to talk undisturbed. Counselled to forget the experience of the past two hours, Monty had regained his self-confidence and listened with rapt attention to his host. If it was not good soil for the reception of a new idea, it was for no lack of sufficient plowing and harrowing.
“I am going to tell you a strange story, Brent, about a sculptor named Randolph. If it seems incredible to you, I shall not be surprised. It was to me when I first heard it.”
It was a long story. Dinner courses came and went. In the hour, Monty had spoken but once.
“He’d quite lost his mind, hadn’t he?”
Dessert glasses had now been pushed aside and cigars lighted.
“Of course,” Merrick was saying, “if you should decide to experiment with this projection of yourself through investments in other people, you must be prepared for all manner of failures, disillusionments, disgusts. You will frequently go to no end of trouble and expense for somebody who turns out to be a pest and a piker. You will be imposed upon, lied to, lied about! You will run into cases of ingratitude so rank that it will sicken you! But—now and again, you will manage to put the thing over … and when you do you will discover it has squared for all the failures you’ve had!”
He paused, and his mood seemed reminiscent.
“I expect you’re wondering,” risked Monty, “whether you’ve been wasting your time and money on me.”
“So far as the money’s concerned, I’m afraid that wasn’t an investment in you. I just wanted to be rid of you. But—you’re quite right about my wondering whether it’s really been worth while to confide to you this theory of personality projection.”
“Do you mind if I inquire whether you think it would give you additional personal power in your undertakings, if I managed to make good?”
“Oh, unquestionably!”
“And—if it ever got out—that you had started me on the way up—then this whole investment of yours in my behalf would be a total loss to you?”
Merrick smiled and toyed preoccupiedly with his ashtray.
“Well—no! … Randolph was a bit obsessed, you know. He was for breaking people’s necks if they told of his investments in them. That was going it rather stronger than necessary … Hudson was careful to caution his beneficiaries against telling, and threw every possible safeguard around his investments to protect them from discovery; but I don’t believe he felt they hadn’t been worth doing if the facts leaked out … The really important feature of it is here: if you succeed in expanding your personality, I shall come in on the reward by just as much as I’ve been responsible for it … In the process of expanding yourself, you are almost sure to help somebody else make himself bigger. He, in turn, energizes other people … If you know anything about chemistry, you will be helped by considering this as a process of catalysis … Personality projection is like any other investment. The thing goes on! It earns compound interest. If you were the agent that set it going, the credit’s yours … Some of it will be going at full blast long after you have been declared dead. In actual fact, the real you may be more alive, as to personality energy, fifty years after you’re gone, than when you seem to be at the top of your power!”
“But—if your beneficiary does not succeed in making good on your investment? …”
Merrick shrugged.
“In that case, you can see for yourself that nothing comes of it.”
“But—you tried! Isn’t there any satisfaction to be had of that?”
“Oh, it’s good practice, I suppose … But—if you had spent twenty thousand dollars and six months’ time sinking an oil-shaft, and got nothing but a dry hole, would you have much satisfaction in reflecting that—at all events—you’d tried?”
When they parted at the kerb, Brent said, “May I write to you, sometimes, and report?”
“Glad to have you … But you needn’t try to tell me what you’re doing for anybody else. That’s your affair. Write and tell me if it works—but not what you did to make it work. Do you get me? … Good luck! … Goodbye!”
Bobby went to the Ritz-Carlton for the night, stood for a long time at the counter of the Western Union office in the lobby trying to compose a cable to Vienna, gave it up, bought a few magazines and took the elevator.
Having made himself comfortable in a dressing-gown, he drew up
