Page:The Mating of the Blades.djvu/63

 the eccentric Cockney-South-African millionaire had poured a bottle of vintage champagne over the New Yorker's bald, dignified head, exclaiming:

“'Erewith I baptize you Hemperor of Dollars and Cents! Drink 'earty, cocky!”

Warburton had never forgotten the “outrageous insult,” as he styled it, had fought the other tooth and nail since then, in many a Homeric, financial battle, and had refused ever to see him again, Mr. Preserved Higgins retaliating in kind. Both men were cursed with a full-blown vanity, the result of their too-big success. In both, the selfish battle for ever more money and power had finally left no room for any outside interests, for abstract enthusiasms or abstract ideals; and it is an interesting commentary on modern financial history to consider that the congenital pettiness of the two commercial giants—for they were giants—had turned their passionate, even admirable crusade after success and might into a mean wreaking of personal malice, with the public and similar small fry paying the piper as often as not.

When Mr. Preserved Higgins arrived at the Savoy, he knew better than to have himself announced, since he was sure that the American would not see him on any pretext. Instead, by the indirect method of his chauffeur and a subsidized boy in buttons, he found out the number of his rival's suite, and went upstairs, rather an odd figure with his russet, crumb-spotted beard and his choice of attire which, from rainproof burberry coat to galoshes, was gloomily barometric and rationally Londonesque.