When Mr. Ruferton and Mr. Hendricks presented themselves at the door of
Hamilton Burton's house the clock was striking nine. After divesting
himself of his overcoat the politician stood waiting before the open
fire with the manner of one who faces a doubtful half-hour and who faces
it with grave anxiety.
Ruferton meanwhile made opportunity to slip his portfolio to the butler
with the request that Mr. Burton should run through its contents before
he came down-stairs and that was a request with which his employer fully
complied.
Yet within a few minutes the financier entered the library, his face lit
with a sunny smile of cordiality. Hendricks took a hasty step forward.
"Mr. Burton," he questioned tensely, "in heaven's name, what is this
menace of which you sent me warning?"
"It is grave enough," came the prompt response, "to warrant my asking
you to come--at whatever inconvenience. But, first, may I put to you a
brief question? Will you sell to me your holdings of Coal and Ore
stock--at a price well above the market?" The question came casually at
a moment when Hendricks burned for personal information and it took him
off his feet. Incidentally it informed him subtly that whatever Hamilton
Burton was willing to do for him would be predicated on what he was
willing to do for Hamilton Burton. Burton bargains were rarely
charities.
"My Coal and Ore is not for sale," he answered vaguely.
"Though I offer your own price?"
"No. The question is not one of price, but of loyalty."
"Loyalty to Malone and Harrison?"
"Among others, yes. To the heads of the Consolidated group. Now will you
please give me the news for which I have come a long distance?"
Hamilton Burton's eyes grew flinty. "Do you not recognize in me one of
the heads of Consolidated?" he curtly inquired.
Already the active mind of this successful and tricky manipulator of
politics was piecing together fragments and glimpsing the connection
between the threatened scandal and Burton's anxiety to buy. He became
wary, covering himself with an assumption of boldness.
"To be candid, Mr. Burton, your effort to augment your holdings so
largely and suddenly on the eve of the annual meeting might indicate
that the interests of yourself and Malone run counter each to each. Why
should I antagonize those in supreme power?"
"I shall be equally frank." Hamilton Burton came closer and his lips
drew themselves in a taut line. "Tomorrow I shall wrest from the Malone
gang this supreme power of which you speak. I mean to force Malone and
Harrison to their knees and to assume complete mastery."
The state senator lifted his brows ironically. "It's a large contract,"
he commented. "So you call on me to slip you the ace you need to fill.
Well, I can't see it."
"Then I'll assist you. I expect you to remain, as you have shown
yourself in the past, a practical man. I expect you to realize that you
have more to gain by allying yourself with a victorious leader than in
walking the plank at the heels of Malone and Harrison."
"I am so practical," the other reminded him, "that I want stronger
evidence than mere assertion that you can overthrow these men."
"At all events I can overthrow you." The words were suddenly fierce.
Hamilton Burton spread on the table several sheets of paper, drawn from
the breast-pocket of his evening-coat and previously from Ruferton's
portfolio. "That memoranda in the hands of certain civic-reform
societies would sound the death knell of your political future. You talk
of what evidence you want--that would satisfy a grand jury."
The master schemer glanced hurriedly at the too-familiar contents of the
typed pages and gasped.
"A half-million dollars!" he exclaimed weakly.
"Incontrovertible evidence," Hamilton assured him, "as to how you, while
a member of the state senate, spent five hundred thousand dollars to
secure the Coal and Ore charter. Malfeasance, bribery--you know the
legal terms in which such conduct might be defined better than I."
For a moment Hendricks laughed--then with a well-simulated coolness he
retorted. "A weapon hardly available to your hand, Mr. Burton. You will
recall that I acted for you. To accuse me as agent would be to convict
yourself as principal."
But Hamilton's laugh was the more confident.
"Think again. I may have erred in granting you too free a hand as an
agent, but I left the details to you. My only offense was
over-confidence in you. It was not I who debauched a senate. Moreover,
this accusation will not come from me--ostensibly. It will come through
the press tomorrow morning--and come hot."
Hendricks drew back a step and his face paled.
"By God!" he exclaimed in a voice of betrayed bitterness. "There is only
one name for this--sheer blackmail."
"In that case," warned Burton ominously, "I would, in your position,
refrain from using any name. I have neither the time to bargain nor the
inclination to plead. The bull that charges my railroad train must take
his chance. The engine will not stop. You can rise with me to power and
rely on my stanch friendship, or--well, there won't be much left to go
down with Malone."
The two men stood facing each other, one implacably resolute, the other
in a torture of quandary. At last, Burton added:
"You may believe me when I tell you that I cannot be legally touched in
this matter and that you can be sent to Sing Sing. Choose your
course--and choose quickly. I offer you a fair chance between uniting
your fortunes with a rising dynasty and shackling them to one which is
tottering."
Hendricks took a step in the direction of the door. "From here," he
said, "I go direct to the district attorney."
Burton stretched a hand toward the telephone and smiled as he suggested.
"Whom you will find so busy with preparations for prosecuting you that
he will not at once find leisure to prosecute for you."
Hendricks sought to veil his terror under a seeming of bluster.
"Will you buy the district attorney, too? Some men are not
purchasable."
"That may resolve itself into a matter of price. I am not shopping in
ten-cent stores, Mr. Hendricks."
The politician had been thinking fast as he talked. Suppose Burton had
the strength of which he boasted? His own interest was to stand with
winners, not losers, but before he changed flags he wished to be sure
that he jumped toward victory. That determined, the rest was expediency.
"Let's come to a decision." Hamilton Burton showed just a glow of brick
red on his cheekbones that argued an early break in his over-strained
temper.
"If I am a tyrant at least I do not call myself a lord-protector. Will
you sell at your own price and go with me to the top--or refuse and take
your chances on substituting the state-prison for the bench?"
An abrupt change came over Mr. Hendricks. He smiled through his pallor.
"Are you prepared to show me that if I make common cause with you, there
is no chance of defeat?"
"I offer you my personal and positive assurance--and access to my papers
within an hour--during which time you will not be bound." The reply was
prompt; the voice hypnotic in its persuasiveness.
Hendricks lighted a cigar, and nodded. "Very well," he announced slowly.
"But understand this. If I jump to you I jump with all four feet. It
happens that certain other proxies have been put into my hands--by
Malone interests. Had I not come to town I should have mailed them
today--as it is I still have them. I shall vote them as you direct."
With this chameleon turn of complexion, the astute contriver realized
that he had scored. To Hamilton Burton's eyes came a quick flash of
gratification and he held out his hand. "If I can be implacable in
battle," he said quietly, "I can also be a friend to my friends. I told
you that in an hour I could guarantee victory--or release you. I am
awaiting two men with whom I have yet to deal. Will you also wait?"
Mr. Hendricks bowed. "This--this evidence--" he questioned suddenly.
"Has any other possible enemy access to it?"
Hamilton Burton smiled as he shook his head. "No, it is in my sole
keeping. I shall not surrender it to other 'possible enemies.'"
With the two bankers, whom Tarring shortly ushered in, Hamilton came
even more promptly to conclusions.
"Malone is ill," he began. "Any alarms thrown into the Street just now
would start pandemonium. If tomorrow should bring such conditions, would
your banks suffer?"
Fairley of the Metallic shook his head gravely. "If a panic developed
just now many institutions would go to the wall. As to how many or which
ones, I could not answer off-hand."
Henry of the Deposit supplemented with added detail. "The national mind
is hysterical beyond the usual and this is a time of heightened danger.
It's the period when $200,000,000 are needed for crop-transportation and
delivery. That means financial equinox."
The young Titan glanced seriously from one to the other. "I know of
influences coming to a head tomorrow which are calculated to throw the
Street and Exchange into panic condition--unless we devise means of
averting that catastrophe. For that reason I asked you to come here
tonight."
The bankers stood silent, but upon their faces was stamped the shock of
the news. Coming from so authoritative a source, it required no actual
proof.
"We may gather then," suggested Henry at last, "that you stand with us
in our desire to avert this calamity?"
"Gentlemen," Burton's voice again became compelling and crisp--but very
hard, "on certain conditions I shall avert this panic--on others I shall
cause it. The alternative is for your decision."
Fairley and Henry drew a little closer together by common impulse as if
for alliance in danger. A long silence, freighted with tensity, followed
until Fairley inquired in a stunned voice: "Please explain."
With the crisp impersonality of a prosecutor Hamilton Burton talked. He
outlined his plans, gave a glimpse of his tremendous levers of power;
let them see what engines of destruction he controlled and finally made
his demand. When he was through neither of his visitors could doubt his
might or his intent. At the end he said:
"You hold among the securities of your two banks just the margin of Coal
and Ore which I need for complete safety. Turn your proxies over to me
tonight and tomorrow will pass quietly. I will support every market
depression caused by Malone's illness. There will be no panic. Fail to
do that and ten minutes after the gong sounds on the floor, I shall be
ripping the entrails out of the Street! Full-page advertisements in
every paper in town will feed the general uneasiness into an orgy of
terror. Frightened mobs will clamor about the doors of your banks. Other
things will happen which it is not now necessary to enumerate. It will
be the blackest day in Exchange history and one that will reflect
itself in all the bourses of Europe."
After eleven o'clock, when Mary Burton and Jefferson Edwardes returned
from the theater, the girl caught a glimpse of a strange picture as she
paused in the hall.
Six silent men stood or sat about the brightly lighted library with blue
wreaths of cigar smoke drifting upward above them. It was plain that
this silence had fallen upon them only as they heard the door slam, and
that, like their attitudes, it was strained and artificial.
Hamilton Burton stood before the hearth with his face set as unyielding
and immobile as chiseled granite. Ruferton eyed the two bankers with a
sidewise stare between drooping lids, and Hendricks, at the window,
presented to view only his back. But the features of the bankers
themselves were haggard and miserable; like the faces of men making a
last desperate stand, yet fronting inevitable defeat. Such faces one
might imagine in a nightmare, staring on a passerby and failing to see
him, from a rack of torture.
Mary Burton shuddered a little, though she did not know why, and the
lips of Jefferson Edwardes compressed themselves as he followed her to
the music-room on the second floor. He had caught the tigerish cruelty
and power-lust in the eyes of Mary's brother, and he knew that for their
satisfaction someone must pay very dear.
Paul sat at the piano as they entered the music-room and the emotions
which he expressed upon the keys were emotions of deep unrest. They ran
in strains of folklore plaintiveness and rhythmic sobs of wailing
cadences. When Mary spoke the musician turned with a start. He had not
heard their entrance.
"I didn't know we should find you here, Paul."
He nodded as he rose from the instrument. "Hamilton asked me to wait,"
he explained. "He's having some tremendously important conference--and
after a trying fight he always likes me to play for him."
The three sat for a time unaccustomedly silent. Mary could not forget
the impression of those conquered faces, and Edwardes, with the same
thought, forebore from comment. Within a half-hour Hamilton himself
joined them. His eyes were glowing beacons of triumph and his lips wore
a smile of victory.
"Tonight I have met and defeated Malone's attempt to crush me," he
announced with a half-savage elation. "Tomorrow the financial world will
recognize in me the actual and unchallenged head of Coal and Ore." Then,
turning to Jefferson, he added: "You know what that signifies,
Edwardes."
The visitor nodded, but no words of enthusiastic congratulation came to
his tongue. "It means," he replied slowly, "that you hold a mightier
financial power than any other business man in New York."
"And now that you have all that," Mary put the question slowly and
gravely, "to what use will you put it?"
Hamilton bent upon her a gaze of tense visioning and his answer came in
rapt eagerness: "To build a greater structure of power than any man
before me has ever reared."
After a moment's pause he went on: "Edwardes, have you no word of
congratulation? It was you who first kindled my dreams into a blaze, you
know."
The visitor spoke with his eyes fixed on those of the man who had
outgrown him in financial stature and become a Colossus.
"I was thinking of that," he responded, "and I was wondering at what
cost you had won this victory."
"Conquest," retorted Hamilton Burton shortly, "can take no thought of
cost."
"I wonder!" Edwardes spoke reflectively; then with a straightforward
honesty he went on: "It rather seems to me that once in a great while
there rises in the world a marvel-man. To such a spirit the impossible
is possible and opportunity is pliant. He may become the greatest boon
or the greatest scourge of his generation. Such a man uses or
prostitutes his great gifts in just so far as he uses, or fails to use,
a conscience."
For an instant Hamilton's cheeks flamed, then he laughed:
"A very pretty golden rule of finance, Edwardes," he observed quietly,
"and since I suppose you feel in a way responsible for me it's a homily
you have the right to read. Does it carry a personal implication?"
Edwardes smiled and held out his hand. "You are the best judge of that,"
he replied. "Good-night."
But as the door closed upon him the smile died on the guest's lips, and
a premonition of evil settled upon his mind. No one had ever defied this
man and come through unscathed. His power held leashed lightnings that
might destroy, and Edwardes had been frank to a point which might stir
that wrath. To his direct manner of thinking his answer had been
unavoidable, yet to put Hamilton Burton among his enemies was a
dangerous thing. His love for Mary and the very endurance of the
business which had stood so long in honor and prosperity might have to
suffer for the over-frankness of his words. For a moment before entering
his car he stood on the curb and looked back at the house he had just
left.
"The man is a tyrant--and conscienceless," he exclaimed. "He is as
destructive as a sawed-off shotgun!"