New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [205]
Master was in cotton, tea, meat-packing, property speculation. But he wasn’t getting into this deal.
“Gentlemen,” he said, “I want no part of it. And if you take my advice you’ll give it up before the commodore comes back. Because when he does, it’s my belief, he’ll skin you alive.”
“Won’t be much he can do,” said one of them.
“He ain’t so tough,” said the other.
“Wrong,” said Master, “on both counts.”
There was always something Cornelius Vanderbilt could do.
Steam-powered vessels had been in use on the River Hudson for more than thirty years, yet the steamship had taken a surprising time to enter the Atlantic trade. A British rail company had started it off, but it was an enterprising Loyalist family named Cunard, who’d fled to Canada a couple of generations back, who’d first run steamships successfully across the ocean. The New York men aimed to catch up quickly, though. And none had been more daring than Vanderbilt.
He came from old New Yorkers, English and Dutch, but he’d started poor—even poorer than Astor. Hetty Master didn’t like him. “That foul-mouthed waterman,” she called him. It was true that he’d started life rowing a boat, and his language was certainly colorful, but he had genius, he was ruthless, and his steamships had made him one of the richest men in the city. Crossing the commodore was a bad idea.
Frank Master never crossed Vanderbilt. He’d made friends with him. When Master had wanted to run steamships down to Panama for the California trade in which Vanderbilt was powerful, he’d gone to the commodore and asked him what he thought.
“How many ships?” the commodore had asked.
“A couple, maybe.”
“All right.” Vanderbilt had favored him with a curt nod.
“You asked his permission?” Hetty had said in disgust.
“Better than being run out of business.”
Yet while the commodore was abroad, these two men, both employed by Vanderbilt, were planning to steal a piece of his empire.
You had to admire the audacity of the plan. Instead of running his goods across Panama, the commodore had opened up a cut-price route across Nicaragua, and taken a thousand sailing miles off the journey.
“But the government of Nicaragua ain’t too strong,” the two men told Master. “What if we could finance a revolution there? Put in our own man as president, who’ll give us an exclusive contract to run goods across the place, and leave Vanderbilt out?”
“You really think it could be done?”
“Yes, and for no great outlay. Do you want in?”
“Gentlemen,” said Master with a laugh, “I’m not afraid to topple the government of Nicaragua, but annoying Cornelius Vanderbilt? That frightens me. Please don’t include me in your plans.”
He was still chuckling about the two rogues an hour later, when he went uptown to meet his wife.
Hetty Master stood at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fortieth, with the great fortress of the distribution reservoir behind her. Half the world was passing by the place that day, so you might have expected her to be taking some notice of them. Or you might have thought, at least, that she’d be looking out for her faithful husband who was coming to meet her.
But she wasn’t. She was reading. Just standing there like a statue, under her parasol, and reading.
If she’d taken any notice of the scene around her, she might have reflected that close by, nearly eight decades ago, poor George Washington had beaten his troops with the flat of his sword, to try to stop them running away from the redcoats. Or she’d surely have recalled that this was where Frank proposed to her. But she didn’t. She just read her book.
Of course, she’d always loved to read. Back in the days when she and Frank were courting, the great Charles Dickens had come over from London to begin his triumphal tour of America. People had turned out in thousands, and she’d dragged Frank to no less than three events to see her favorite author, and listen to him read. “I love his characters and stories,” she’d told Frank, “and his plea for social justice