The Edge of the Evening - Page 2

hospitality. She
represents one of the most wonderful institutions in the world. The next
is the one we are going to. Mrs. Zigler uses 'em, and they break her up
every week on returned empties.'

'Oh, you mean the Stores?' I said.

'Mrs. Zigler means it more. They are quite ambassadorial in their
outlook. I guess I'll wait outside and pray while you wrestle with 'em.'

My business at the Stores finished, and my bag retrieved from the hotel,
his moving palace slid us into the country.

'I owe it to you,' Zigler began as smoothly as the car, 'to tell you
what I am now. I represent the business end of the American Invasion.
Not the blame cars themselves--I wouldn't be found dead in one--but the
tools that make 'em. I am the Zigler Higher-Speed Tool and Lathe Trust.
The Trust, sir, is entirely my own--in my own inventions. I am the
Renzalaer ten-cylinder aërial--the lightest aeroplane-engine on the
market--one price, one power, one guarantee. I am the Orlebar
Paper-welt, Pulp-panel Company for aeroplane bodies; and I am the Rush
Silencer for military aeroplanes--absolutely silent--which the Continent
leases under royalty. With three exceptions, the British aren't wise to
it yet. That's all I represent at present. You saw me take off my hat
to your late Queen? I owe every cent I have to that great an' good Lady.
Yes, sir, I came out of Africa, after my eighteen months' rest-cure and
open-air treatment and sea-bathing, as her prisoner of war, like a giant
refreshed. There wasn't anything could hold me, when I'd got my hooks
into it, after that experience. And to you as a representative British
citizen, I say here and now that I regard you as the founder of the
family fortune--Tommy's and mine.'

'But I only gave you some papers and tobacco.'

'What more does any citizen need? The Cullinan diamond wouldn't have
helped me as much then; an'--talking about South Africa, tell me--'

We talked about South Africa till the car stopped at the Georgian lodge
of a great park.

'We'll get out here. I want to show you a rather sightly view,' said
Zigler.

We walked, perhaps, half a mile, across timber-dotted turf, past a lake,
entered a dark rhododendron-planted wood, ticking with the noise of
pheasants' feet, and came out suddenly, where five rides met, at a small
classic temple between lichened stucco statues which faced a circle of
turf, several acres in extent. Irish yews, of a size that I had never
seen before, walled the sunless circle like cliffs of riven obsidian,
except at the lower end, where it gave on to a stretch of undulating
bare ground ending in a timbered slope half-a-mile away.

'That's where the old Marshalton race-course used to be,' said Zigler.