Repressing his antipathies, he had done his duty. All that morning the two men had sat with their cigars in Charlie’s office at the top of the Tower of Resurrection; and Charlie had waved those hands of his, and spouted cigar smoke from his nostrils, and talked—God, how he had talked! As though he were one of those men in a red fez trying to make you buy an Oriental carpet—and incidentally, Mr. Stoyte reflected morosely, that was what Charlie looked like; only he was better fed than most of those carpet boys, and therefore greasier.
“Cut the sales talk,” he growled out loud. “You seem to forget I own the place.”
Charlie looked at him with an expression of pained surprise. Sales talk? But this wasn’t sales talk. This was real, this was earnest. The Pantheon was his baby; for all practical purposes, he had invented the place. It was he who had thought up the Tiny Taj and the Church of the Bard; he who, on his own initiative, had bought that bargain lot of statues at Genoa; he who had first clearly formulated the policy of injecting sex appeal into death; he who had resolutely resisted every attempt to introduce into the cemetery any representation of grief or age, any symbol of mortality, any image of the sufferings of Jesus. He had had to fight for his ideas, he had had to listen to a lot of criticism; but the results had proved him right. Any one who complained that there was no Crucifixion in the place could be referred to the published accounts. And here was Mr. Stoyte talking sarcastically about sales talk. Sales talk, indeed, when the demand for space in the Pantheon was so great that existing accommodation would soon be inadequate. There would have to be enlargements. More space, more buildings, more amenities. Bigger and better; progress; service.
At the top of the Tower of Resurrection, Charlie Habakkuk unfolded his plans. The new extension was to have a Poet’s Corner, open to any bona fide writer—though he was afraid they’d have to draw the line at the authors of advertising copy, which was a pity, because a lot of them made good money and might be persuaded to pay extra for the prestige of being buried with the moving picture people. But that cut both ways—because the scenario writers wouldn’t feel that the Poet’s Corner was exclusive enough if you let in the advertising boys. And seeing that the moving picture fellows made so much more than the others . . . well, it stood to reason, Charlie had concluded, it stood to reason. And, of course, they’d have to have a replica of Westminster Abbey in the Poet’s Corner. Wee Westminster—it would sound kind of cute. And as they needed a couple of extra mortuary furnaces anyhow, they’d have them installed there in
Dean’s Yard. And they’d put a new automatic record player in the crypt, so that there’d be more variety in the music. Not that people didn’t appreciate the Perpetual Wurlitzer; they did. But all the same it got a bit monotonous. So he’d thought they might have some recordings of a choir singing hymns and things, and perhaps, every now and then, just for a change, some preacher giving an inspirational message, so that you’d be able to sit in the Garden of Contemplation, for example, and listen to the Wurlitzer for a few minutes and then the choir singing “Abide with Me” and then a nice sort of Barrymore voice saying some piece, like the Gettysburg Address or “Laugh and the World Laughs with You,” or maybe some nice juicy bit by Mrs. Eddy or Ralph Waldo Trine—anything would do so long as it was inspirational enough.
And then there was his idea of the Catacombs. And, boy, it was the best idea he’d ever had. Leading Mr. Stoyte to the south-eastern window, he had pointed across an intervening valley of tombs and cypresses and the miniature monuments of bogus antiquity, to where the land sloped up again to a serrated ridge on the further side. There, he had shouted excitedly, there, in that hump in the middle; they’d tunnel down into that. Hundreds of yards of Catacombs. Lined with reinforced concrete to make them earthquake proof. The only class-A Catacombs in the world. And little chapels, like the ones in Rome. And a lot of phony-looking murals, looking like they were real old. You could get them done cheap by one of those W.P.A. art projects. Not that those guys knew how to paint, of course; but that was quite O.K., seeing that the murals had to look phony anyhow.
And they wouldn’t have anything but candles and little lamps for people to carry around—no electric light at all, except right at the very end of all those winding passages and stairs, where there’d be a great big sort of underground church, with one of those big nude statues that were going up at the San Francisco Fair and that they’d be glad to sell for a thousand bucks or even less when the show was over—one of those modernistic broads with muscles on them—and they’d have her standing right in the middle, there with maybe some fountains spouting all around her and concealed pink lighting in the water so she’d look kind of real. Why, the tourists would come a thousand miles to see it. Because there was nothing people liked so much as caves. Look at those Carlsbad Caverns, for example; and all those caves in Virginia. And those were just common-or-garden natural caves, without murals or anything. Whereas these would be Catacombs. Yes, sir; real Catacombs, like the things the Christian Martyrs lived in—and, by gum, that was another idea! Martyrs! Why couldn’t they have a Chapel of the Martyrs with a nice plaster group of some girls with no clothes on, just going to be eaten by a lion? People wouldn’t stand for the Crucifixion; but they’d get a real thrill out of that.
Mr. Stoyte had listened wearily and with repugnance. He loathed his Pantheon and everything to do with it. Loathed it, because in spite of statues and Wurlitzer, it spoke to him of nothing but disease and death and corruption and final judgment; because it was here, in the Pantheon, that they would bury him—at the foot of the pedestal of Rodin’s Baiser. (An assistant manager had once inadvisedly pointed out the spot to him and been immediately fired; but there was no dismissing the memory of his offence.) Charlie’s enthusiasm for Catacombs and Wee Westminsters elicited no answering warmth; only occasional grunts and a final sullen O.K. for everything except the Chapel of the Martyrs. Not that the Chapel of the Martyrs seemed to Mr. Stoyte a bad idea; on the contrary, he was convinced that the public would go crazy over it. If he rejected it, it was merely on principle—because it would never do to allow Charlie Habakkuk to think he was always right.
“Get plans and estimates for everything else,” he ordered in a tone so gruff that he might have been delivering a reprimand. “But no martyrs. I won’t have any martyrs.”
Almost in tears, Charlie pleaded for just one lion, just one early Christian Virgin with her hands tied behind her back—because people got such a kick out of anything to do with ropes or handcuffs. Two or three Virgins would have been much better, of course; but he’d be content with one. “Just one, Mr. Stoyte,” he implored, clasping his eloquent hands. “Only one.”
Obstinately deaf to all his entreaties, Mr. Stoyte shook his head. “No martyrs here,” he said. “That’s final.” And to show that it was final, he threw away the butt of his cigar and got up to go.
Five minutes later, Charlie Habakkuk was letting off steam to his secretary. The ingratitude of people! The stupidity. He’d a good mind to resign, just to show the old buzzard that they couldn’t get on without him. Not for five minutes. Who was it that had made the place what it was: the uniquest cemetery in the world? Absolutely the uniquest. Who? (Charlie slapped himself on the chest.) And who made all the money? Jo Stoyte. And what had he done to make the place a success? Absolutely nothing at all. It was enough to make you want to be a Communist. And the old devil wasn’t grateful or even decently polite. Pushing you around as though you were a bum off the streets! Well, there was one comfort: Old
