HOW RICHARD MET INSPECTOR VAL
When, prior to the hour of Mr. Gwynn's dinner, Richard talked with Mr.
Bayard, the burden of their conversation was Northern Consolidated, and
what manner of report might be expected from Senator Hanway's committee.
Mr. Bayard was sure the members of the osprey pool designed a "bear"
campaign. For all that, he could not overstate the importance of getting
possession of the Hanway report the moment it was prepared. Mr. Bayard's
belief in a "bear" movement to occur was only a deduction; it was not
information--he did not know. There was no such thing as being positive
until the written report was in Mr. Bayard's hands. He would then have
absolute knowledge of the pool's intentions. Once clear in that behalf,
he would be able to meet and defeat them.
"Our start," quoth Mr. Bayard, "will be the Hanway report. Nor can we
come by that report too soon. It may lie buried for weeks before Senator
Hanway produces it in open Senate. Its production will take place the
day before the pool's activities begin. It will be deferred until the
market in its strength or weakness favors their aims. Wherefore, my
young friend," concluded Mr. Bayard, clapping a slim hand on Richard's
shoulder, "to work! That report is the key. Every day we have it in our
hands before it is read in the Senate means a million dollars."
Mr. Bayard forced upon Richard the mighty propriety of getting hold of
Senator Hanway's report; and Richard--to whom the report meant Dorothy
the peerless, not paltry millions--was carried to the impolite length of
bringing up the topic of Northern Consolidated at Mr. Gwynn's dinner.
Richard asked Senator Hanway the plump question of the committee's
labors, and what time its report would appear.
"The sessions," said Senator Hanway, who, being about his departure, was
getting into his Inverness at the time, "are still in progress. It will
be several weeks before the close of the hearings. Then there must be
time for deliberation; and finally a day or more for writing the report.
You may be sure, however," concluded Senator Hanway, "that the _Daily
Tory_ shall have it before the other papers. It shall be an exclusive
story; I promise you that."
And the next day comes the veracious Mr. Sands asking whether a verbatim
copy of that report would be of service to him!
No marvel Richard stared.
"Because," observed Mr. Sands, puffing an extremely repulsive cigar,
"I've got it here."
"Do you mean the report of Senator Hanway's committee that is
investigating Northern Consolidated?" cried Richard.
Mr. Sands tilted his derby over a confident left eye, blew a devastating
cloud, and said he did.
"It was only last night," observed Richard, still bitten of doubt, "that
Senator Hanway told me the committee had not ended its hearings."
Mr. Sands of the malignant cigar was not discouraged. Senator Hanway had
lied. All Senators lied, according to Mr. Sands. No man could be a
Senator unless he were a liar any more than a man could be a runner
without first being able to walk. The committee was through with the
inquiry; the report had come into the Government printing office the day
before in the handwriting of the truthless Senator Hanway himself. It
was now set up in types, and the forethoughtful Mr. Sands had abstracted
a copy.
"As I said," explained that enterprising printer, "I've got a nose for
news. I thought it might do for a scoop, d'ye see, so I swiped it for
you."
"Let me look at it," said Richard, whose pulses were beginning to beat a
quickstep. He was remembering the value of the report as explained by
Mr. Bayard. "Let me see it, please."
Mr. Sands took from his pocket two strips of paper. Richard looked at
one and then the other; they were white as snow, guiltless of mark or
sign of ink.
"There's nothing here," said Richard, the thing beginning to be
mysterious.
For a moment Richard feared that Mr. Sands might be again immersed in
his cups. That follower of Franklin reassured him.
"The report is there all right," he observed, "only we can't read it out
here in the light. Now if we could find a dark room, one with a window,
I'd show you what I mean."
Richard returned to Mr. Gwynn's. Before they entered he gave Mr. Sands a
perfecto. The latter, who knew a good cigar from smoking many bad ones,
threw away the devastator and lighted Richard's. He rolled it from one
corner of his mouth to the other, sucked it tentatively, then passed the
fire end beneath his nose after the manner of a connoisseur. His
experiments exhausted, he pronounced it a "corker."
Richard conveyed Mr. Sands to his own apartments. The front window was
what Mr. Sands required. He pinned the slips to the top of the lower
sash. As the depended slips were brought with their backs to the light,
Mr. Sands showed Richard how they were in the nature of stencils, the
white light showing through in printed words. Richard was dumb; it was a
kind of prodigy. He read the stencils, beginning at the top of the one
which Mr. Sands said was the "lead."
[Illustration: It was a Kind of Prodigy]
"The report is set in minion," explained Mr. Sands, "and with this light
you can read it plain as ink."
Richard discovered the truth of what Mr. Sands averred; here indeed was
Senator Hanway's Northern Consolidated report, and as readily made out
as though printed in a book.
"This is the idea," vouchsafed Mr. Sands, who saw that Richard was warm
for explanations. "The boss gave out the report in little 'takes' of
about fifty words each. That was because it must be kept secret. Fifty
printers set it up; then the boss locked the galleys in the strong room.
No one except the boss himself had had a glimpse of it. Of course, that
made me the more eager to nail it; anything a fellow wants to hide is
bound to be big news, d'ye see. Now I'm the man who takes the proofs,
and this morning the boss tells me that Senator Hanway wants a copy--one
proof, no more. The boss goes to the strong room and brings the galleys
to the proof-press. I'm ready for him; I've dampened two sheets of
proof-paper and pasted them together. I spread both of them on the
types. After I've sent the roller over them, I peel the sheets apart and
throw the white one, the one that was on top, on the floor. The bottom
one that has the ink-impression on it I pass to the boss. He sees me
peel the top sheet off, and it rouses his suspicions.
"'What's that for?' he asks.
"I'm filling my pipe as calm as duck-ponds, and explain that the
proof-press in which the galley lies is too deep. It takes two
thicknesses to force the sheet down on the face of the types and get a
good impression. The boss is only a politician, not a printer, so this
explanation does him. While he's locking up the galleys again, I get
away with these. You see, with two thicknesses of paper, the types cut
through; it makes a stencil of it. With a little light behind, the
stencil shows up as well as a regular proof. After I'd got organized, I
took a day off, clapped a 'sub' on my stool, and headed for you. As I've
said, it struck me like a big piece of news."
"It's bigger than you know, Mr. Sands," observed Richard, giving that
worthy's hand a squeeze that made him flinch. "If you don't mind, I'll
not use it as news. You will not mention the fact, but there's a deal on
in Wall Street; I can do better with it there. I cannot thank you too
much for what you've done."
Mr. Sands was pleased, and departed for the nearest rum counter, his
face expressing complacency. He had partly evened up, he said, for what
Richard did the night that he, Mr. Sands, became entangled with the
Hottentots. He, Mr. Sands, would lie in ambush for further scoops; he
could promise Richard everything in the Government printing office which
any statesman was trying to conceal.
Richard drew his desk before the window and, reading the stencils line
by line, made a perfect copy. As his pen swept across the paper he
reflected on the deceitfulness of Senator Hanway, who, with the report
written out in full, was for having him think that the committee would
not conclude its labors for weeks.
"What a mendacious ingrate it is!" thought Richard.
Mr. Bayard had taken the ten-o'clock limited for New York that identical
morning. Richard caught a train a trifle after one, wiring Mr. Bayard to
meet him at the hotel. They would have dinner together. To make sure of
Mr. Bayard, Richard's message read:
"I have that report. You were right."
Mr. Bayard pored over the Hanway findings, and the further he read the
more his satisfaction stood on tiptoe. Conceive a gallery hung round
with paintings that would baffle a Rubens and set a Murillo to biting
the nail of envy! Have an orchestra polished to the last touch of
execution, discoursing the divinest work of some highest priest of
music. Sentinel the scene with marbles that would have doubled the fame
of a Praxiteles. Now, with your stage set, invite to its sumptuous midst
some amateur of all the arts whose senses were born for the beautiful.
Do what you will to endow your artist with contentment in perfection.
Fill his pockets with gold, give him wine of his fancy, have the woman
he loves by his side, so surround him that the eye, the ear, the
stomach, the heart, the pocket, or whatever is the soul of his soul may
be appealed to and enthralled--this artist, with whom love is a
religion, wine a cult, music a passion, and pictures are as dreams! When
you have him thus fortunately established, this artist of yours--for you
are not to forget he is none of mine--peruse his face. You should find
it expressing ecstasy in sublimation--you should discover it wearing the
twin to that look which mounted the brow of Mr. Bayard as he devoured
the Hanway report.
"Beautiful!" he whispered when he had finished.
Then he fell silent, prisoner to himself, walled in with his own
thoughts. A moment passed and the clouds rolled away; the delight faded,
and this artist among gamblers for whom speculation possessed harmony
and color and form, and whose life had been an Odyssey of Stocks,
recovered the practical.
"It is as I surmised," he said, with a sigh of content. "They will fall
upon Northern Consolidated bear-fashion--all claw and tooth. This report
finds the road to be a thief for millions; and a debtor for millions
upon that. The Attorney General must collect. The road must be taken by
a receiver until the public is repaid--the public indeed! Then those
priceless grants are to be repealed. Northern Consolidated is to be
stabbed with a score of knives at once. Beautiful! What a trap they have
set for themselves!"
Richard, not knowing what reply might be expected, smiled to fetch his
countenance into sympathy with Mr. Bayard's, and retreated to his usual
refuge of a cigar.
"Now," went on Mr. Bayard briskly, "I can give you the rougher outlines
of what will occur. This report, as I told you, may be weeks in finding
its way into the Senate. Stocks opened the year very strong; the markets
are upon an upgrade. While the boom continues, the pool will do
nothing. The moment prices show a weakness our friends will act. Given
three days of falling prices, this report will come out. The Senate will
be invoked to an attack upon Northern Consolidated. The pool will spring
upon the market, right and left, selling thousands upon thousands of
shares. They will try for a stampede. They look to drop Northern
Consolidated twenty-five points, as woodmen fell a tree."
"And what is to be our course?" asked Richard.
"We shall buy every share of Northern Consolidated as fast as it is
offered; go with them to the end. They will find themselves in their own
net.
"Since our first talk," Mr. Bayard continued, "I have been gathering
information. Of the one million shares which form the stock of Northern
Consolidated, over six hundred thousand are held in England, France,
Belgium, Holland, Germany, Denmark, and even a bundle or two in Sweden.
I shall keep the cables warm to-morrow. The day following, our agents
will be quietly buying those European shares at private sale in London,
Paris, Brussels, Berlin, Copenhagen, Hamburg, Stockholm, wherever they
are to be found. Should they give us a week, we shall have so narrowed
the field of operations for our 'bears' that their first day's sales
will land them in a corner. Once we have them penned, we may take our
time. They will be as helpless as so many caged animals."
When Storri on that jealous evening left the San Reve, his nerves were
somewhat tossed and shaken. It was not over-late; he would stroll to the
club by roundabout paths, the walk and cold night air might steady him.
That roundabout route led Storri past the Treasury Building, and, as he
slowly paced the pavement bordering one side of the massive structure,
he was brought to sudden stop by a heavy timber platform six feet square
and lifted a foot and a half from the ground, which cumbered the
sidewalk nearest the curb. Storri surveyed the platform in a lack-luster
way. It had, from its appearance, been there years; it was strange he
had never noticed it before.
An old man, one of the night guards of the Treasury, buttoned to the
chin, was standing in a narrowish basement door-way of the great building
not fifteen feet away. The old man took his pipe out of his mouth, and
seeing Storri survey the obstructing platform, observed:
"If I had a sack or two of the billions of gold that's been dumped on
that platform, I wouldn't be smokin' my pipe 'round here to-night."
Gold as a term never failed to attract the Storri ear. He opened
converse with the old man of the pipe. It was to this heavy platform the
treasure-wagons backed up when they brought bullion to the Treasury.
Storri learned another thing that gave him the sort of thrill that
setters feel when in the near vicinity of a covey of grouse. The vault
that held the gold reserve was within sixty feet of him as he stood in
the street. Just inside those thick, hopeless walls they lay--millions
of piled-up yellow treasure. Storri stared hard at the impassive granite
and licked his lips. The nearness of those millions pleased him like
music.
"Sixty feet!" exclaimed Storri unctuously. "That doesn't sound far, but
before a robber pierced such a wall as that he would fancy it far
enough."
"Oh, a robber wouldn't try the wall," said the old man, turning to look
at it. "I've often wondered though that no one ever thought of the sewer
out there;" and the old man marked a line in the air with his pipe-stem
as though tracing the direction of the great street drain that ran
beneath the pavement.
Storri kept on his journey to the club, but the notion of those
millions, almost within hand's touch of the open street, continued to
haunt him pleasantly. The sewer, too! Would a tunnel reach this
treasure? The question used to come back upon Storri. Also he got into
the habit, as he went about the streets, of walking by the Treasury.
This was not offspring of any purpose; Storri had none. It was only that
he took an instinctive satisfaction in the nearness of that heaped-up
gold. He could feel its close neighborhood, and the feeling was as wine
to his imagination.
Storri was not permitted respite by the San Reve concerning the Harleys.
The jealous one of the green-gray eyes insisted upon seeing Storri
often; and he, putting on a best face, pretended that he loved the San
Reve the better for her jealousy. To keep the peace, he was wont to drop
round to Grant Place three or four times a week.
These concessions to the San Reve and her rather too fervid love would
not get in the way of Storri's dinners at the Harleys'. For a time he
should go there but once a week. When despair had chilled Dorothy to
tameness he would go oftener. Just then he must give her terrors
opportunity to do their freezing work.
Storri could not have told whether he loved or hated Dorothy; he was
only conscious of a fire-fed passion that consumed him. He must possess
her; or, if not that, then he must grind her into the earth. He would
torture her as he was tortured; he would blacken her by blackening Mr.
Harley; with her pride in the dirt, with disgrace upon her, where then
was that man who would wed her? The daughter of a forger--she would
stain the name of wife! Richard might have her then; Storri would give
her to him for a revenge! These were the mutterings of Storri as he went
preyed upon by love and hate at once.
"If you do not love Miss Harley," said the flushed but logical San Reve,
"why do you go there? You say, 'Once a week!' Why once a week? Why once
a month? Why at any time? Storri, you do love her! And you come to me
with lies!" This was on the evening following the scene that gave Storri
such disquiet.
Storri, being spurred, and resolute to silence the San Reve, took that
pertinacious beauty into his confidence, lying wherever it was
inconvenient to tell the truth, and bragging always like a Cheyenne.
Storri strode about the San Reve's rooms and told his tale grandly. His
San Reve must listen; he would show her how a Russian gentleman avenged
himself. He, Storri, hated the Harleys. Mr. Harley had cheated him;
Dorothy had laughed at him; her lover, that Richard, bah! he had even
threatened Storri. Chastise him? Could a nobleman chastise a toad--a
reptile? No; there was a debt due his caste.
Mrs. Hanway-Harley?--a vapid fool! Storri despised her. He despised them
all and hated them all. They had affronted him. And for those injuries
done his pride he would punish and spare not. He, Storri, would bring
sorrow and shame to them; he would mark their lives with black.
Being launched, Storri drew great joy from the rehearsal of what griefs
he had devised against the Harleys. To prove his own superior
cleverness, Storri told the San Reve how he trapped Mr. Harley into
forging his name to the French shares.
"There is my weapon!" cried the triumphant Storri. "With that I may
smite them when I choose! To-morrow, within the hour, I could have this
scoundrel Harley in a criminal's cell! Some day I shall do that.
Meanwhile, he knows; the proud girl knows. It is for vengeance I go to
the Harleys', my San Reve, not love. I sit at their table, I eat their
food, I drink their wine; and I laugh and I gloat over them--these
little people! Yes, my San Reve, the hand of the coward Harley shakes as
he lifts his glass; the fair, proud Dorothy shows me my triumph in her
whitened cheek and frightened eye. And best of all, the empty chatter of
the magpie Mrs. Hanway-Harley--who knows nothing, being a fool! It is
that magpie chatter to be poison in the ears of the others! Oh, you
should behold them, my San Reve! You should witness how they writhe and
how they tremble in the presence of your Storri!"
The San Reve listened, but the gloom hung low on her brow. She did not
believe her Storri who said he ate a weekly dinner for revenge. Yes, he
had obtained a mastery over Mr. Harley; he had forced his way into the
company of Dorothy and shut the door on Richard! The San Reve shook her
jealous head; that was not vengeance, that was love.
And Storri would succeed, too! This Dorothy would come to love him as
she, the San Reve, loved. Dorothy was a woman; and what woman could
resist Storri? This Dorothy loved him even now; her coldness was an
attitude, a fiction. It was meant to be a lure to Storri and whet his
eagerness!
These were the thoughts like living coals which the San Reve hid in her
heart. But while her head whirled, and her sight was blurred, and her
pulses set a-throb with the jealous storms that swept her, it was
wonderful to note how the San Reve's office-trained mind seized upon and
registered those French shares. It was those shares that constituted
Storri's hold upon the Harleys. Could she break the hold? Those shares
were the locks of her Samson. Oh, if she might but shear the locks! Then
she would have her Storri again--in his weakness she would have him. The
San Reve knitted her brows.
* * * * *
These days of separation were more easily borne by Richard than by
Dorothy. Richard was rich in a dogged fortitude common enough with men.
Moreover, he had his work, and he went into it more deeply than before.
Eleven o'clock still found him in the study with Senator Hanway, albeit
Dorothy was no longer there to make a lovely third. Perhaps for that
reason more politics and news of legislation were discussed by Richard
and Senator Hanway.
The latter gentleman, these days, was in the best of tempers. Nothing
could be more smoothly hopeful than the outlook for that nomination.
Senator Gruff, who was indefatigable for Senator Hanway, told him that
Speaker Frost reported his own State delegation as already in line. Also
the President of the Anaconda, from whom Senator Gruff had letters every
week, described the Hanway sentiment in Anaconda regions as invincible.
The National Convention, in the interests of Senator Hanway and over the
objection of the friends of Governor Obstinate, had been fixed for the
last of May. This was a help; Senator Hanway's forces were organized and
Governor Obstinate's were not. The less space permitted that candidate
and his henchmen, the better for Senator Hanway. As Senator Gruff and
Richard sat together in Senator Hanway's study one morning, the Senator
pointed out on the map a sufficient number of States, and each certain
to send a Hanway delegation, to carry the nomination.
"If the convention were held to-morrow," observed Senator Gruff, "we
would win. The effort now must be to head off encroachments by Governor
Obstinate."
The above came on an occasion when Senator Gruff was in a confidential
mood. Commonly, as a chief Hanway manager, he lay as blandly close and
noncommittal as a clam.
There was the issue of finance, Senator Gruff explained, and that was a
growing source of trouble to Senator Hanway. The latter gentleman's
endeavor had always been to say nothing upon finance, but silence was
becoming difficult. Governor Obstinate was openly and offensively for
gold in a sod-pawing, horn-lowering, threatening way, and just as a
buffalo bull might have been for gold. This settled the standing of
Governor Obstinate in silver communities; they would have none of him.
Those same silver people, however, demanded all the more that Senator
Hanway define his position in the money war. They gave tongue to those
pig-and-poke objections voiced by Senator Coot. It was clamors such as
these, so Senator Gruff told Richard, that made silence a work of
weariness.
"Now I thought," observed Richard, "that Mr. Bayard talked wisely upon
silver and gold the evening of the dinner. Why wouldn't it be well to
talk to the people in the same manner even if one did not adopt the
theories expressed? Let Senator Hanway clearly announce his views and
give his reasons. The latter should defend him with thinking men."
"Thinking men," retorted Senator Gruff with an experienced smile, "are
in a hopeless minority. Talk reason to the public? One might as well
talk reason to the winds. Politics, as a science, is not addressed to
the intelligence but to the ignorance of men."
Senator Hanway, after sundry conferences with Senator Gruff and others,
offered the resolution asking for a committee to meet with the Ottawa
government on the matter of that Georgian Bay-Ontario Canal. The
majority opinion of those consulted was that the resolution ought to
strengthen Senator Hanway. Certain railways might object; there were
influences infinitely larger, however, that would applaud. Besides, the
resolution had a big look and sounded like statesmanship. It could not
do otherwise than dignify Senator Hanway in public estimation. Senator
Hanway gave Richard for the _Daily Tory_ an interview of depth and power
in which he urged the international value of such a waterway America
and Canada should dig and own it together; it would be a bond to unite
them. It would promote friendship, and what was better than friendship
between countries? Senator Hanway said nothing about Credit Magellan,
nor did he intimate any relationship between his Georgian Bay-Ontario
Canal and the investigation of Northern Consolidated.
* * * * *
Storri had become very fond of the company of Mr. Harley. He would find
him in the Marble Room in the rear of the Senate Chamber, or he might
cross his path at Chamberlin's. Washington is a small town; there it is
not difficult to keep a man in sight. Storri kept Mr. Harley excessively
in sight; and it wore visibly on Mr. Harley, whose health was breaking
down. Storri liked the pain his presence gave Mr. Harley; and besides,
he argued that to see him frequently strengthened his hold upon that
unhappy man. When they were together, Storri's manner was hideously
cheerful; he would talk Credit Magellan and consider Northern
Consolidated as though nothing were awry. This was the refinement of
cruelty, as when a cat pretends to let the mouse escape.
One day, when Storri and Mr. Harley were together, the former's face was
purposely dark. Mr. Harley grew uneasy; his courage had all slipped from
him by now, and he waited in terror upon the looks of Storri.
"Harley," cried Storri, having sufficiently enjoyed the effect of his
scowls, "you John Harley, I have ever your credit at heart. Yes, Harley,
I have kept a guard, what you call a spy, about your house to see if the
vile Storms would enter when you were not there to repel him. He goes
each day, I find, to see the honorable Senator Hanway. It does not
please me, who am a Russian gentleman and a nobleman, that so low a
being, although he does not personally meet her, should yet come beneath
the same roof with your lovely daughter who is to become my Countess
wife. You will correct this; eh, you Harley--you John Harley?"
Mr. Harley had not named Storri to Dorothy since that awful New Year's
night. However, so worn to abject thinness was now his spirit on the
constant wheel of fear that he carried Storri's latest word to her
without apology. Richard must not visit Senator Hanway in his study. Mr.
Harley could not go to Senator Hanway, he could not go to Richard; he
could come only to her.
Dorothy, whose trembling concern was her father, and who felt ever more
and more like some fly caught fast in a spider's web, made no reply.
There was nothing to say--nothing save obedience. She wrote Richard that
Storri had set a spy upon the house, and asked him to forego his calls
upon Senator Hanway. The close of the letter was a hysteria of love and
grief.
Richard sought Bess; he saw much of the pythoness now. Dorothy, for her
part, never crossed the street lest she meet him, and bring down
Storri's wrath upon her father. Richard knew what Bess would say, but he
must have someone to converse with. Bess took the course anticipated: he
must obey Dorothy in this as in the rest.
"It comes to little either way, the calling upon Senator Hanway," was
Bess's comment.
"It comes to this," cried Richard, "that we are the slaves of Storri!
I'd give ten years off my life if he and I might settle this together."
"The real settlement would be made by Mr. Harley--by Dorothy. You must
not go near Storri. But isn't there a hint in this?" Bess considered.
"Would it not be wise to imitate the gentleman and set a spy to dogging
him? Perhaps something worth while might be discovered."
The thought found favor with Richard, who, under usual circumstances,
would have been against the proposal. Yes, he would have Storri shadowed
day and night. It would be a retort for that spy about the Harley house.
Richard sent a message to Mr. Bayard, reciting his determination and
asking advice. He desired to do nothing that might work an interference
in Mr. Bayard's arrangements concerning Northern Consolidated.
Mr. Bayard replied that he thought a better knowledge of Storri could do
no harm; news of the enemy was ever a good thing. Mr. Bayard went a step
beyond, and said that he would send a man to Richard whom he could trust
for the work.
The morning following the receipt of Mr. Bayard's message, a foppish,
slender young gentleman accosted Richard.
"Mr. Storms, I believe?" remarked the foppish stranger, lifting his hat.
"Yes, sir; Mr. Storms," said Richard.
"Mr. Bayard asked me to say that I am Inspector Val of the Central
Office, New York, with two months' leave of absence at your service."