The newspapers said nothing more about the Hasbrook suit; but in
financial circles Montague had attained considerable notoriety because
of it. And this was the means of bringing him a number of new cases.
But alas, there were no more fifty-thousand-dollar clients! The first
caller was a destitute widow with a deed which would have entitled her
to the greater part of a large city in Pennsylvania—only unfortunately
the deed was about eighty years old. And then there was a poor old man
who had been hurt in a street-car accident and had been tricked into
signing away his rights; and an indignant citizen who proposed to bring
a hundred suits against the traction trust for transfers refused. All
were contingency cases, with the chances of success exceedingly remote.
And Montague noticed that the people had come to him as a last resort,
having apparently heard of him as a man of altruistic temper.
There was one case which interested him particularly, because it seemed
to fit in so ominously with the grim prognosis of his brother. He
received a call from an elderly gentleman, of very evident refinement
and dignity of manner, who proceeded to unfold to him a most amazing
story. Five or six years ago he had invented a storage-battery, which
was the most efficient known. He had organised a company with three
million dollars’ capital to manufacture it, himself taking a third
interest for his patents, and becoming president of the company. Not
long afterward had come a proposal from a group of men who wished to
organize a company to manufacture automobiles; they proposed to form an
alliance which would give them the exclusive use of the battery. But
these men were not people with whom the inventor cared to deal—they
were traction and gas magnates widely known for their unscrupulous
methods. And so he had declined their offer, and set to work instead to
organize an automobile company himself. He had just got under way when
he discovered that his rivals had set to work to take his invention
away from him. A friend who owned another third share in his company
had hypothecated his stock to help form the new company; and now came a
call from the bank for more collateral, and he was obliged to sell out.
And at the next stockholders’ meeting it developed that their rivals
had bought it, and likewise more stock in the open market; and they
proceeded to take possession of the company, ousting the former
president—and then making a contract with their automobile company to
furnish the storage-battery at a price which left no profit for the
manufacturers! And so for two years the inventor had not received a
dollar of dividends upon his million dollars’ worth of paper; and to
cap the climax, the company had refused to sell the battery to his
automobile company, and so that had gone into bankruptcy, and his
friend was ruined also!
Montague went into the case very carefully, and found that the story
was true. What interested him particularly in it was the fact that he
had met a couple of these financial highwaymen in social life; he had
come to know the son and heir of one of them quite well, at Siegfried
Harvey’s. This gilded youth was engaged to be married in a very few
days, and the papers had it that the father-in-law had presented the
bride with a cheque for a million dollars. Montague could not but
wonder if it was the million that had been taken from his client!
There was to be a “bachelor dinner” at the Millionaires’ on the night
before the wedding, to which he and Oliver had been invited. As he was
thinking of taking up his case, he went to his brother, saying that he
wished to decline; but Oliver had been getting back his courage day by
day, and declared that it was more important than ever now that he
should hold his ground, and face his enemies—for Alice’s sake, if not
for his own. And so Montague went to the dinner, and saw deeper yet
into the history of the stolen millions.
It was a very beautiful affair, in the beginning. There was a large
private dining-room, elaborately decorated, with a string orchestra
concealed in a bower of plants. But there were cocktails even on the
side-board at the doorway; and by the time the guests had got to the
coffee, every one was hilariously drunk. After each toast they would
hurl their glasses over their shoulders. The purpose of a “bachelor
dinner,” it appeared, was a farewell to the old days and the boon
companions; so there were sentimental and comic songs which had been
composed for the occasion, and were received with whirlwinds of
laughter.
By listening closely and reading between the lines, one might get quite
a history of the young host’s adventurous career. There was a house up
on the West Side; and there was a yacht, with, orgies in every part of
the world. There was the summer night in Newport harbour, when some one
had hit upon the dazzling scheme of freezing twenty-dollar gold pieces
in tiny blocks of ice, to be dropped down the girls’ backs! And there
was a banquet in a studio in New York, when a huge pie had been brought
on, from which a half-nude girl had emerged, with a flock of canary
birds about her! Then there was a damsel who had been wont to dance
upon the tops of supper tables, clad in diaphanous costume; and who had
got drunk after a theatre-party, and set out to smash up a Broadway
restaurant. There was a cousin from Chicago, a wild lad, who made a
speciality of this diversion, and whose mistresses were bathed in
champagne.—Apparently there were numberless places in the city where
such orgies were carried on continually; there were private clubs, and
artists’ “studios”—there were several allusions to a high tower, which
Montague did not comprehend. Many such matters, however, were explained
to him by an elderly gentleman who sat on his right, and who seemed to
stay sober, no matter how much he drank. Incidentally he gravely
advised Montague to meet one of the young host’s mistresses, who was a
“stunning” girl, and was in the market.
Toward morning the festivities changed to a series of wrestling-bouts;
the young men stripped off their clothing and tore the table to pieces,
and piled it out of the way in a corner, smashing most of the crockery
in the process. Between the matches, champagne would be opened by
knocking off the heads of the bottles; and this went on until four
o’clock in the morning, when many of the guests were lying in heaps
upon the floor.
Montague rode home in a cab with the elderly gentleman who had sat next
to him; and on the way he asked if such affairs as this were common.
And his companion, who was a “steel man” from the West, replied by
telling him of some which he had witnessed at home. At Siegfried
Harvey’s theatre-party Montague had seen a popular actress in a musical
comedy, which was then the most successful play running in New York.
The house was sold out weeks ahead, and after the matinée you might
observe the street in front of the stage-entrance blocked by people
waiting to see the woman come out. She was lithe and supple, like a
panther, and wore close-fitting gowns to reveal her form. It seemed
that her play must have been built with one purpose in mind, to see how
much lewdness could be put upon a stage without interference by the
police.—And now his companion told him how this woman had been invited
to sing at a banquet given by the magnates of a mighty Trust, and had
gone after midnight to the most exclusive club in the town, and sung
her popular ditty, “Won’t you come and play with me?” The merry
magnates had taken the invitation literally—with the result that the
actress had escaped from the room with half her clothing torn off her.
And a little while later an official of this trust had wished to get
rid of his wife and marry a chorus-girl; and when public clamour had
forced the directors to ask him to resign, he had replied by
threatening to tell about this banquet!
The next day—or rather, to be precise, that same morning—Montague and
Alice attended the gorgeous wedding. It was declared by the newspapers
to be the most “important” social event of the week; and it took half a
dozen policemen to hold back the crowds which filled the street. The
ceremony took place at St. Cecilia’s, with the stately bishop
officiating, in his purple and scarlet robes. Inside the doors were all
the elect, exquisitely groomed and gowned, and such a medley of
delicious perfumes as not all the vales in Arcady could equal. The
groom had been polished and scrubbed, and looked very handsome, though
somewhat pale; and Montague could not but smile as he observed the best
man, looking so very solemn, and recollected the drunken wrestler of a
few hours before, staggering about in a pale blue undershirt ripped up
the back.
The Montagues knew by this time whom they were to avoid. They were
graciously taken under the wing of Mrs. Eldridge Devon—whose real
estate was not affected by insurance suits; and the next morning they
had the satisfaction of seeing their names in the list of those
present—and even a couple of lines about Alice’s costume. (Alice was
always referred to as “Miss Montague”; it was very pleasant to be _the_
“Miss Montague,” and to think of all the other would-be Miss Montagues
in the city, who were thereby haughtily rebuked!) In the “yellow”
papers there were also accounts of the trousseau of the bride, and of
the wonderful gifts which she had received, and of the long honeymoon
which she was to spend in the Mediterranean upon her husband’s yacht.
Montague found himself wondering if the ghosts of its former occupants
would not haunt her, and whether she would have been as happy, had she
known as much as he knew.
He found food for a good deal of thought in the memory of this banquet.
Among the things which he had gathered from the songs was a hint that
Oliver, also, had some secrets, which he had not seen fit to tell his
brother. The keeping of young girls was apparently one of the
established customs of the “little brothers of the rich”—and, for that
matter, of many of the big brothers, also.
A little later Montague had a curious glimpse into the life of this
“half-world.” He had occasion one evening to call up a certain
financier whom he had come to know quite well—a man of family and a
member of the church. There were some important papers to be signed and
sent off by a steamer; and the great man’s secretary said that he would
try to find him. A minute or two later he called up Montague and asked
him if he would be good enough to go to an address uptown. It was a
house not far from Riverside Drive; and Montague went there and found
his acquaintance, with several other prominent men of affairs whom he
knew, conversing in a drawing-room with one of the most charming ladies
he had ever met. She was exquisite to look at, and one of the few
people in New York whom he had found worth listening to. He spent such
an enjoyable evening, that when he was leaving, he remarked to the lady
that he would like his cousin Alice to meet her; and then he noticed
that she flushed slightly, and was embarrassed. Later on he learned to
his dismay that the charming and beautiful lady did not go into
Society.
Nor was this at all rare; on the contrary, if one took the trouble to
make inquiries, he would find that such establishments were everywhere
taken for granted. Montague talked about it with Major Venable; and out
of his gossip storehouse the old gentleman drew forth a string of
anecdotes that made one’s hair stand on end. There was one all-powerful
magnate, who had a passion for the wife of a great physician; and he
had given a million dollars or so to build a hospital, and had provided
that it should be the finest in the world, and that this physician
should go abroad for three years to study the institutions of Europe!
No conventions counted with this old man—if he saw a woman whom he
wanted, he would ask for her; and women in Society felt that it was an
honour to be his mistress. Not long after this a man who voiced the
anguish of a mighty nation was turned out of several hotels in New York
because he was not married according to the laws of South Dakota; but
this other man would take a woman to any hotel in the city, and no one
would dare oppose him!
And there was another, a great traction king, who kept mistresses in
Chicago and Paris and London, as well as in New York; he had one just
around the corner from his palatial home, and had an underground
passage leading to it. And the Major told with glee how he had shown
this to a friend, and the latter had remarked, “I’m too stout to get
through there.”—“I know it,” replied the other, “else I shouldn’t have
told you!”
And so it went. One of the richest men in New York was a sexual
degenerate, with half a dozen women on his hands all the time; he would
send them cheques, and they would use these to blackmail him. This
man’s young wife had been shut up in a closet for twenty-four hours by
her mother to compel her to marry him.—And then there was the charming
tale of how he had gone away upon a mission of state, and had written
long messages full of tender protestations, and given them to a
newspaper correspondent to cable home “to his wife.” The correspondent
had thought it such a touching example of conjugal devotion that he
told about it at a dinner-party when he came back; and he was struck by
the sudden silence that fell. “The messages had been sent to a code
address!” chuckled the Major. “And every one at the table knew who had
got them!”
A few days after this, Montague received a telephone message from
Siegfried Harvey, who said that he wanted to see him about a matter of
business. He asked him to lunch at the Noonday Club; and Montague
went—though not without a qualm. For it was in the Fidelity Building,
the enemy’s bailiwick: a magnificent structure with halls of white
marble, and a lavish display of bronze. It occurred to Montague that
somewhere in this structure people were at work preparing an answer to
his charges; he wondered what they were saying.
The two had lunch, talking meanwhile about the coming events in
Society, and about politics and wars; and when the coffee was served
and they were alone in the room, Harvey settled his big frame back in
his chair, and began:—
“In the first place,” he said, “I must explain that I’ve something to
say that is devilish hard to get into. I’m so much afraid of your
jumping to a wrong conclusion in the middle of it—I’d like you to agree
to listen for a minute or two before you think at all.”
“All right,” said Montague, with a smile. “Fire away.”
And at once the other became grave. “You’ve taken a case against this
company,” he said. “And Ollie has talked enough to me to make me
understand that you’ve done a plucky thing, and that you must be
everlastingly sick of hearing from cowardly people who want you to drop
it. I’d be very sorry to be classed with them, for even a moment; and
you must understand at the outset that I haven’t a particle of interest
in the company, and that it wouldn’t matter to me if I had. I don’t try
to use my friends in business, and I don’t let money count with me in
my social life. I made up my mind to take the risk of speaking to you
about this case, simply because I happen to know one or two things
about it that I thought you didn’t know. And if that’s so, you are at a
great disadvantage; but in any case, please understand that I have no
motive but friendship, and so if I am butting in, excuse me.”
When Siegfried Harvey talked, he looked straight at one with his clear
blue eyes, and there was no doubting his honesty. “I am very much
obliged to you,” said Montague. “Pray tell me what you have to say.”
“All right,” said the other. “It can be done very quickly. You have
taken a case which involves a great many sacrifices upon your part. And
I wondered if it had ever occurred to you to ask whether you might not
be taken advantage of?”
“How do you mean?” asked Montague.
“Do you know the people who are behind you?” inquired the other. “Do
you know them well enough to be sure what are their motives in the
case?”
Montague hesitated, and thought. “No,” he said, “I couldn’t say that I
do.”
“Then it’s just as I thought,” replied Harvey. “I’ve been watching
you—you are an honest man, and you’re putting yourself to no end of
trouble from the best of motives. And unless I’m mistaken, you’re being
used by men who are not honest, and whom you wouldn’t work with if you
knew their purposes.”
“What purposes could they have?”
“There are several possibilities. In the first place, it might be a
‘strike’ suit—somebody who is hoping to be bought off for a big price.
That is what nearly every one thinks is the case. But I don’t; I think
it’s more likely some one within the company who is trying to put the
administration in a hole.”
“Who could that be?” exclaimed Montague, amazed.
“I don’t know that. I’m not familiar enough with the situation in the
Fidelity—it’s changing all the time. I simply know that there are
factions struggling for the control of it, and hating each other
furiously, and ready to do anything in the world to cripple each other.
You know that their forty millions of surplus gives an enormous power;
I’d rather be able to swing forty millions in the Street than to have
ten millions in my own right. And so the giants are fighting for the
control of those companies; and you can’t tell who’s in and who’s
out—you can never know the real meaning of anything that happens in the
struggle. All that you can be sure of is that the game is crooked from
end to end, and that nothing that happens in it is what it pretends to
be.”
Montague listened, half dazed, and feeling as if the ground he stood on
were caving beneath his feet.
“What do you know about those who brought you this case?” asked his
companion, suddenly.
“Not much,” he said weakly.
Harvey hesitated a moment. “Understand me, please,” he said. “I’ve no
wish to pry into your affairs, and if you don’t care to say any more,
I’ll understand it perfectly. But I’ve heard it said that the man who
started the thing was Ellis.”
Montague, in his turn, hesitated; then he said, “That is
correct—between you and me.”
“Very good,” said Harvey, “and that is what made me suspicious. Do you
know anything about Ellis?”
“I didn’t,” said the other. “I’ve heard a little since.”
“I can fancy so,” said Harvey. “And I can tell you that Ellis is mixed
up in life-insurance matters in all sorts of dubious ways. It seems to
me that you have reason to be most careful where you follow him.”
Montague sat with his hands clenched and his brows knitted. His
friend’s talk had been like a flash of lightning; it revealed huge
menacing forms in the darkness about him. All the structure of his
hopes seemed to be tottering; his case, that he had worked so hard
over—his fifty thousand dollars that he had been so proud of! Could it
be that he had been tricked, and had made a fool of himself?
“How in the world am I to know?” he cried.
“That is more than I can tell,” said his friend. “And for that matter,
I’m not sure that you could do anything now. All that I could do was to
warn you what sort of ground you were treading on, so that you could
watch out for yourself in future.”
Montague thanked him heartily for that service; and then he went back
to his office, and spent the rest of the day pondering the matter.
What he had heard had made a vast change in things. Before it
everything had seemed simple; and now nothing was clear. He was
overwhelmed with a sense of the utter futility of his efforts; he was
trying to build a house upon quicksands. There was nowhere a solid spot
upon which he could set his foot. There was nowhere any truth—there
were only contending powers who used the phrases of truth for their own
purposes! And now he saw himself as the world saw him,—a party to a
piece of trickery,—a knave like all the rest. He felt that he had been
tripped up at the first step in his career.
The conclusion of the whole matter was that he took an afternoon train
for Albany; and the next morning he talked the matter out with the
Judge. Montague had realized the need of going slowly, for, after all,
he had no definite ground for suspicion; and so, very tactfully and
cautiously he explained, that it had come to his ears that many people
believed there were interested parties behind the suit of Mr. Hasbrook;
and that this had made him uncomfortable, as he knew nothing whatever
about his client. He had come to ask the Judge’s advice in the matter.
No one could have taken the thing more graciously than did the great
man; he was all kindness and tact. In the first place, he said, he had
warned him in advance that enemies would attack him and slander him,
and that all kinds of subtle means would be used to influence him. And
he must understand that these rumours were part of such a campaign; it
made no difference how good a friend had brought them to him—how could
he know who had brought them to that friend?
The Judge ventured to hope that nothing that anyone might say could
influence him to believe that he, the Judge, would have advised him to
do anything improper.
“No,” said Montague, “but can you assure me that there are no
interested parties behind Mr. Hasbrook?”
“Interested parties?” asked the other.
“I mean people connected with the Fidelity or other insurance
companies.”
“Why, no,” said the Judge; “I certainly couldn’t assure you of that.”
Montague looked surprised. “You mean you don’t know?”
“I mean,” was the answer, “that I wouldn’t feel at liberty to tell,
even if I did know.”
And Montague stared at him; he had not been prepared for this
frankness.
“It never occurred to me,” the other continued, “that that was a matter
which could make any difference to you.”
“Why—” began Montague.
“Pray understand me, Mr. Montague,” said the Judge. “It seemed to me
that this was obviously a just case, and it seemed so to you. And the
only other matter that I thought you had a right to be assured of was
that it was seriously meant. Of that I felt assured. It did not seem to
me of any importance that there might be interested individuals behind
Mr. Hasbrook. Let us suppose, for instance, that there were some
parties who had been offended by the administration of the Fidelity,
and were anxious to punish it. Could a lawyer be justified in refusing
to take a just case, simply because he knew of such private motives?
Or, let us assume an extreme case—a factional fight within the company,
as you say has been suggested to you. Well, that would be a case of
thieves falling out; and is there any reason why the public should not
reap the advantage of such a situation? The men inside the company are
the ones who would know first what is going on; and if you saw a chance
to use such an advantage in a just fight—would you not do it?”
So the Judge went on, gracious and plausible—and so subtly and
exquisitely corrupting! Underneath his smoothly flowing sentences
Montague could feel the presence of one fundamental thought; it was
unuttered and even unhinted, but it pervaded the Judge’s discourse as a
mood pervades a melody. The young lawyer had got a big fee, and he had
a nice easy case; and as a man of the world, he could not really wish
to pry into it too closely. He had heard gossip, and felt that his
reputation required him to be disturbed; but he had come, simply to be
smoothed down the back and made at ease, and enabled to keep his fee
without losing his good opinion of himself.
Montague quit, because he concluded that it was not worth while to try
to make himself understood. After all, he was in the case now, and
there was nothing to be gained by a breach. Two things he felt that he
had made certain by the interview—first, that his client was a “dummy,”
and that it was really a case of thieves falling out; and second, that
he had no guarantee that he might not be left in the lurch at any
moment—except the touching confidence of the Judge in some parties
unknown.