Black Light by Talbot Mundy — Read

Joe sat at breakfast on the hotel verandah, prodding export bacon with an import fork and wondering why God had gone to all the trouble to create a universe. His mother had sent for him to her bedroom and had made him sign some documents of no particular importance except to nine unfortunates in New York, whose jobs had now ceased to exist. "Just like her. It's murder, as I sit here--long-distance murder by mail. They weren't rowing their weight. But is she? And am I? Are dividends the one criterion? If one of those poor devils--Weismuller--doesn't commit suicide I'll take my hat off to him--sick wife--seven kids--a mortgage--probably car and piano half paid for. Dad never did that kind of dirt. He flogged old horses, but he didn't turn them out to starve. It was the last nail in the old man's coffin when he learned about her firing all the old-timers. She has more than quadrupled the money Dad left. He never gave a cent to charity, and she has given away more than he earned in his whole lifetime. Nevertheless, he was human. And she isn't. Damn! I hate her."

Gone was last night's resolution. He looked around him at the white-clad servants standing along the verandah rail in abject adoration of his mother's millions. There were far too many of them; she had insisted on traveling like a circus, as he phrased it, with a private car on the railway and a private crew of rickshaw coolies, to say nothing of interpreters, bearers, a cook, two cook's assistants and a boy.