Miss Waters’ volume, while fuddled as to business details, contains the better account of the chambermaid Florence Whitehill’s discovery that she was pregnant by Noel Constant, and her discovery that Noel Constant was a multi-multi-millionaire.
Noel Constant married the chambermaid,, gave her a mansion and a checking account with a million dollars in it. He told her to name the child Malachi if it was a boy, and Prudence if it was a girl. He asked her to please keep coming to see him once every ten days in Room 223 of the Wilburhampton Hotel, but not to bring the baby.
Gomburg’s book, while first-rate on business details, suffers from Gomburg’s central thesis, to the effect that Magnum Opus was a product of a complex of inabilities to love. Reading between the lines of Gomburg’s book, it is increasingly clear that Gomburg is himself unloved and unable to love.
Neither Miss Waters nor Gomburg, incidentally, discovered Noel Constant’s investment method. Ransom K. Fern never discovered it either, though he tried hard enough.
The only person Noel Constant ever told was his son, Malachi, on Malachi’s twenty-first birthday. That birthday party of two took place in Room 223 of the Wilburhampton. It was the first time father and son had ever met.
Malachi had come to see Noel by invitation.
Human emotions being what they are, young Malachi Constant paid more attention to a detail in the room’s furnishings than he did to the secret of how to make millions or even billions of dollars.
The money-making secret was so simple-minded to begin with, that it didn’t require much attention. The most complicated part of it had to do with the manner in which young Malachi was to pick up the torch of Magnum Opus when Noel had, at long last, laid it down. Young Malachi was to ask Ransom K. Fern for a chronological list of the investments of Magnum Opus, and, reading down the margin, young Malachi would learn just how far otd Noel had gone in the Bible, and where young Malachi should begin.
The detail in the furnishings of Room 223 that interested young Malachi so was a photograph of himself. It was a photograph of himself at the age of three — a photograph of a sweet, pleasant, game little boy on an ocean beach.
It was thumbtacked to the wall.
It was the only picture in the room.
Old Noel saw young Malachi looking at the picture, and was confused and embarrassed by the whole thing about fathers and sons. He ransacked his mind for something good to. say, and found almost nothing.
“My father gave me only two pieces of advice,” he said, “and only one of them has stood the test of time. They were: ‘Don’t touch your principal,’ and ‘Keep the liquor bottle out of the bedroom.'” His embarrassment and confusion were now too great to be borne. “Good-by,” he said abruptly.
“Good-by?” said young Malachi, startled. He moved toward the door.
“Keep the liquor bottle out of the bedroom,” said the old man, and he turned his back.
“Yes, sir, I will,” said young Malachi. “Good-by, sir,” he said, and he left.
That was the first and last time that Malachi Constant ever saw his father.
His father lived for five more years, and the Bible never played him false.
Noel Constant died just as he reached the end of this sentence: “And God made two great lights: the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.”
His last investment was in Sonnyboy Oil at 17 1/4.
The son took over where the father had left off, though Malachi Constant did not move into Room 223 in the Wilburhampton.
And, for five years, the luck of the son was as sensational as the luck of the father had been.
And now, suddenly, Magnum Opus lay in ruins.
There in his office, with the floating furniture and the grass carpet, Malachi Constant still could not believe that his luck had run out.
“Nothing left?” he said faintly. He managed to smile at Ransom K. Fern. “Come on, guy — I mean there’s got to be something left.”