ON the very day following Roderick Warfield’s departure from Keokuk
there appeared in one of the morning newspapers an item of intelligence
that greatly surprised and shocked the banker, Allen Miller. It
announced the death of the wife of his old friend General John Holden,
of Quincy, Illinois, and with the ghoulish instincts of latter-day
journalism laid bare a story of financial disaster that had, at least
indirectly, led to the lady’s lamented demise. It set forth how some
years before the General had invested practically the whole of his
fortune in a western smelter company, how the minority stockholders had
been frozen out by a gang of financial sharps in Pennsylvania, and how
Mrs. Holden’s already enfeebled health had been unable to withstand
the blow of swift and sudden family ruin. The General, however, was
bearing his sad bereavement and his monetary losses with the courage and
fortitude that had characterized his military career, and had announced
his intention of retiring to a lonely spot among the mountains of
Wyoming where his daughter, the beautiful and accomplished Gail Holden,
owned a half section of land which had been gifted to her in early
infancy by an unde, a prominent business man in San Francisco. Allen
Miller was sincerely grieved over the misfortunes that had so cruelly
smitten a life-long friend. But what momentarily stunned him was the
thought that Gail Holden was the very girl designated, in mind at least,
by himself and his wife as a desirable match for Roderick. And because
the latter had not at once fallen in with these matrimonial plans, there
had been the bitter quarrel, the stinging words of rebuke that could
never be recalled, and the departure of the young man, as he had told
his aunt, to places where they would never hear of him unless and until
he had made his own fortune in the world.
As the newspaper dropped from his hands, the old banker uttered a great
groan—he had sacrificed the boy, whom in his heart he had cherished,
and still cherished, as a son, for a visionary scheme that had already
vanished into nothingness like a fragile iridescent soap-bubble. For
obviously Gail Holden, her only possessions an impoverished father and a
few acres of rocky soil, was no longer eligible as the bride of a future
bank president and leader in the financial world. The one crumb of
consolation for Allen Miller was that he had never mentioned her name to
Roderick—that when the sponge of time came to efface the quarrel the
whole incident could be consigned to oblivion without any humiliating
admission on his side. For financial foresight was the very essence of
his faith in himself, his hold over Roderick, and his reputation in the
business world.
The afternoon mail brought detailed news of General Holden’s
speculative venture and downfall. Allen Miller’s correspondent was a
lawyer friend in Quincy, who wrote in strict confidence but with a free
and sharply pointed pen. It appeared that Holden’s initial investment
had been on a sound basis. He had held bonds that were underlying
securities on a big smelting plant in Wyoming, in the very district
where his daughter’s patch of range lands was situated. It was during
a visit to the little ranch that the general’s attention had been
drawn to the great possibilities of a local smelter, and he had been the
main one to finance the proposition and render the erection of the
plant possible. At this stage a group of eastern capitalists had
been attracted to the region, and there had come to be mooted a big
consolidation of several companies, an electric lighting plant, an
aerial tramway, a valuable producing copper mine and several other
different concerns that were closely associated with the smelting
enterprise.
In the days that followed a Pennsylvanian financier with a lightning rod
education, by the name of W. B. Grady had visited Holden at his Quincy
home, partaken of his hospitality, and persuaded him to exchange his
underlying bonds for stock in a re-organized and consolidated company.
By reputation this man Grady was already well known to Allen Miller as
one belonging to the new school of unscrupulous stock manipulators that
has grown up, developed, flourished and waxed fat under the blighting
influence and domination of the Well Known Oil crowd. This new school
of financiers is composed of financial degenerates, where the words
“honor,” “fair dealing” or the “square deal” have all been
effectually expunged—marked off from their business vocabulary and by
them regarded as obsolete terms. Grady was still a comparatively young
man, of attractive manners and commanding presence, with the rapacity,
however, of a wolf and the cunning of a fox. He stood fully six feet,
and his hair, once black as a raven’s, was now streaked with premature
gray which was in no way traceable to early piety. But to have mentioned
his name even in a remote comparison to such a respectable bird as the
raven rendered an apology due to the raven. It was more consistent
with the eternal truth and fitness of things to substitute the term
“vulture”—to designate him “a financial vulture,” that
detestable bird of prey whose chief occupation is feasting on carrion
and all things where the life has been squeezed out by the financial
octopus, known as “the system.”
It developed, according to Banker Miller’s correspondent, that no
sooner had General Holden given up his underlying bonds of the smelter
company and accepted stock, than foreclosure proceedings were instituted
in the U. S. District Court, and the whole business closed out and sold
and grabbed by Grady and a small coterie of financial pirates no better
than himself. And all this was done many hundreds of miles away from the
home of the unsuspecting old general, who until it was too late remained
wholly ignorant and unadvised of the true character of the suave and
pleasant appearing Mr. Grady whose promises were innumerable, yet whose
every promise was based upon a despicable prevarication.
And thus it was when the affairs of General Holden were fairly threshed
out, that Allen Miller discovered his old friend had been the prey of
a financial vampire, one skilled in sharp practice and whose artful
cunning technically protected him from being arrested and convicted of
looting the victim of his fortune. Holden had fallen into the hands of
a highwayman as vicious as any stage robber that ever infested the
highways of the frontier. The evidence of the fellow’s rascality was
most apparent; indeed, he was in a way caught redhanded with the goods
as surely as ever a sheep-killing dog was found with wool on its teeth.
To the credit of Allen Miller, he never hesitated or wavered in his
generosity to anyone he counted as a true and worthy friend. That
very evening Mrs. Miller departed for Quincy, to offer in person more
discreetly than a letter could offer any financial assistance that might
be required to meet present emergencies, and at the same time convey
sympathy to the husband and daughter in their sad bereavement.
“Lois, my dear,” the banker had said to his wife, “remain a few
days with them if necessary. Make them comfortable, no matter what the
expense. If they had means they wouldn’t need us, but now—well, no
difference about the why and wherefore—you just go and comfort and
help them materially and substantially.”
It was in such a deed as this that the true nobility of Allen Miller’s
character shone forth like a star of the brightest magnitude—a star
guaranteeing forgiveness of all his blunders and stupid attempts to curb
the impulsive and proud spirit of Roderick War-field Yet sympathy for
Gail and her father in no way condoned their poverty to his judgment
as a man of finance or reinstated the girl as an eligible match for the
young man. He would have been glad of tidings of Roderick—to have him
home again and the offensive matrimonial condition he had attached to
his offer of an appointment in the bank finally eliminated.
But there was no news, and meanwhile his wife had returned from her
mission, to report that the Holdens, while sincerely grateful, had
declined all offers of assistance. As Mrs. Miller described, it was the
girl herself who had declared, with the light of quiet self-reliance in
her eyes, that by working the ranch in Wyoming as she proposed to work
it there would be ample provision for her father’s little luxuries and
her own simple needs.
So Allen Miller put Gail Holden out of mind. But he had many secret
heartaches over his rupture with Roderick, and every little stack of
mail matter laid upon his desk was eagerly turned over in the hope that
at last the wanderer’s whereabouts would be disclosed.