SPARRING FOR A FEE.
Pierce Langford drove the automobile, in which he made his first trip to
Stony Point, up to the end of his drive near the Graham cottage, and
advanced to the front entrance. The porch on which he stood awaiting the
appearance of someone to answer his knock—there was no bell at the
door—was bordered with a railing of rough-hewn, but uniformly selected,
limbs of hard wood or saplings. The main structure of the house was of
yellow pine, but the outer trimmings were mainly of such rustic material
as the railing of the porch.
The front door was open, giving the visitor a fairly good view of the
interior. The front room was large and fairly well furnished with light
inexpensive furniture, grass rugs and an assortment of nondescript,
“catch-as-catch-can,” but not unattractive, art upon the walls.
Langford, who was not a sleepy schemer, was able to get a good view of
the room before any one appeared to answer his knock.
It was a woman who appeared, a sharp featured, well-dressed matron with
a challenging eye. Perhaps no stranger, or person out of the exclusive
circle that she assumed to represent, ever approached her without being
met with the ocular demand. “Who are you?”
Pierce Langford recognized this demand at once. If he had been of less
indolent character this unscrupulous attorney might have made a
brilliant success as a criminal lawyer in a metropolis. The fact that he
was content with the limitations of a practice in a city of 3,500
inhabitants, Fairberry, his home town, was of itself indicative of his
indolence. And yet, when he took a case, he manifested gifts of
shrewdness that would have made many another lawyer of much greater
practice jealous.
Attorney Langford’s shrewdness and indolence were alternately
intermittent. When the nerve centers of his shrewdness were stimulated
his indolence lapsed and he was very much on the alert. The present was
one of those instances. He knew something, by reputation, of the woman
who confronted him. He had had indirect dealing with her before, but he
had never met her. However, he was certain that she would recognize his
name.
“Is this Mrs. Graham?” he inquired, although he scarcely needed to ask
the question.
“It is,” she replied with evidently habitual precision.
“My name is Langford—Pierce Langford,” he announced, and then waited for
the effect of this limited information.
The woman started. It was a startled start. The challenge of her
countenance wavered; the precision of her manner became an attitude of
caution.
“Not—not Pierce Langford of—of—?” she began.
The man smiled on one side of his mouth.
“The very one, none other,” he answered cunningly. “Not to be in the
least obscure, I am from the pretty, quiet and somewhat sequestered city
of Fairberry. You know the place, I believe.”
“I’ve never been there and hope I shall never have occasion to go to
your diminutive metropolis,” she returned rather savagely.
“No?” the visitor commented with a rising inflection for rhetorical
effect. “By the way, may I come in?”
“Certainly,” Mrs. Graham answered recovering quickly from a partial
lapse of mindfulness of the situation.
The woman turned and led the way into the house and the visitor
followed. Mrs. Graham directed the lawyer to a reed rocking chair and
herself sat down on another reed-rest of the armchair variety. The woman
by this time had recovered something of her former challenging attitude
and inquired:
“Well, Mr. Langford, what is the meaning of this visit?”
“Very much meaning, Mrs. Graham,” was the reply; “and of very much
significance to you, I suspect. I come here well primed with information
which I am sure will cause you to welcome me as you perhaps would
welcome nobody else in the world.”
Mrs. Graham leaned forward eagerly, expectantly, apprehensively.
“You come as a friend, I assume,” she said.
“Have you any reason to doubt it?” the man inquired. “If it were
otherwise, I must necessarily come as a traitor. I hope you will not
entertain any such opinion of me as that. As long as you treat me
fairly, you’ll find me absolutely on the square for you and your
interests.”
“I hope so,” returned the woman in a tone of voice that could hardly be
said to convey any significance other than the dictionary meaning of the
words. “But let’s get down to business. What is this information that
you come here primed with? Has it to do with the old subject?”
“Certainly, very intimately, and with nothing else.”
“In what way?” Mrs. Graham asked with more eagerness than she intended
to disclose.
“Well, there are some spies in this neck of the woods.”
“Spies!” the woman exclaimed, betraying still more of the eagerness she
was still struggling against.
“Yes spies. That’s exactly what they call themselves.”
“Who are they?—how do you know they are here to spy on me?”
“I overheard their plans. I got wind in a roundabout way, as a result of
talk on the part of Mrs. Hutchins’ servants, that there was something
doing, with Twin Lakes as a central point of interest. I suspected at
once that your interests were involved; so I stole slyly, Willie
Hawkshaw-like, up to their rendezvous one night and listened to some of
them as they discussed their plans and—”
“Some of them,” Mrs. Graham interrupted, “How many are there?”
“Oh, a whole troup of them.”
“That’s a funny story,” the woman commented dubiously, searching the
face of her visitor for an explanation of his, to her, queer statements.
“Not at all so funny when you hear it in detail,” Langford returned
quietly.
“Well hurry up with the details,” the impatient Mrs. Graham demanded.
“There’s no need of being in a hurry,” the lawyer said with provoking
calmness. “Business is business, you see, and full confidences should
never be exchanged in a situation of this kind until a contract is drawn
up, signed, sealed, witnessed, and recorded. In other words, I ought to
have an understanding and a retainer before I go any farther.”
Mrs. Graham had no reason to doubt that this was coming sooner or later,
but she winced nevertheless when it came.
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