bank, Miss Grierson did a thing unprecedented in any of her former
grapplings with a crisis--she hesitated. Twice she drove down Sioux
Avenue with the apparent intention of stopping at the _Daily Wahaskan_
building, and twice she went on past with no more than an irresolute
glance for the upper windows beyond which lay the editorial rooms and
the office of Mr. Carter Randolph, the owner of the newspaper. But on
the third circuit of the square, decision had evidently come to its own
again. Turning the mare into Main Street, she drove quickly to the
Winnebago House and drew up at the carriage step. A bell-boy ran out to
hold the horse, but she shook her head and called him to the wheel of
the phaeton to slip a coin into his hand and to give him a brief
message.
Two minutes after the boy's disappearance, Broffin came out and touched
his hat to the trim little person in the basket seat.
"You wanted to see me, Miss Grierson?" he said, shelving his surprise,
if he had any.
"Yes. You are Mr. Matthew Broffin, of the Colburne Detective Agency, are
you not?" she asked, sweetly.
Broffin took the privilege of the accused and lied promptly.
"Not that anybody ever heard of, I reckon," he denied, matching the
smile in the inquiring eyes.
"How curious!" she commented.
Broffin's smile became a grin of triumph. "There's a heap o' curious
things in this little old world," he volunteered. "What?"
"But none quite so singular as this," she averred. Then she laughed
softly. "You see, it resolves itself into a question of
veracity--between you and Mr. Andrew Galbraith. You say you are not, and
he says you are. Which am I to believe?"
Broffin did some pretty swift thinking. There had been times when he
had fancied that Miss Grierson, rather than Miss Farnham, might be the
key to his problem. There was one chance in a thousand that she might
inadvertently put the key into his hands if he should play his cards
skilfully, and he took the chance.
"You can call it a mistake of mine, if you like," he yielded; and she
nodded brightly.
"That is better; now we can go on comfortably. Are you too busy to take
a little commission from me?"
"Maybe not. What is it?" He was looking for a trap, and would not commit
himself too broadly.
"There are two things that I wish to know definitely. Of course, you
have heard about the accident on the lake? Mr. Galbraith is at our
house, and he is very ill--out of his head most of the time. He is
continually trying to tell some one whom he calls 'MacFarland' to be
careful. Do you know any one of that name?"
Broffin put a foot on the phaeton step and a hand on the dash. There
were loungers on the hotel porch and it was not necessary for them to
hear.
"Yes; MacFarland is his confidential man in the bank," he returned.
"Oh; that explains it. But what is it that Mr. Galbraith wants him to be
careful about?"
Again Broffin thought quickly. If he should tell the plain truth....
"Tell me one thing, Miss Grierson," he said bluntly. "Am I doin'
business with you, or with your father?"
"Most emphatically, with me, Mr. Broffin."
"All right; everything goes, then. Mr. Galbraith has been figurin' on
buying some pine lands up north."
"I know that much. Go on."
"And he has sent MacFarland up to verify the boundary records on the
county survey."
"To Duluth?"
Broffin nodded.
"I thought so," she affirmed. And then: "The records are all right, Mr.
Broffin; but the lands which Mr. MacFarland will be shown will not be
the lands which Mr. Galbraith is talking of buying. I want evidence of
this--in black and white. Can you telegraph to some one in Duluth?"
Broffin permitted himself a small sigh of relief. He thought he had seen
the trap; that she was going to try to get him away from Wahaska.
"I can do better than that," he offered. "I can send a man from St.
Paul; a good safe man who will do just what he is told to do--and keep
his mouth shut."
She nodded approvingly.
"Do it; and tell your messenger that time is precious and expense
doesn't count. That is the first half of your commission. Come a little
closer and I'll tell you the second half."
Broffin bent his head and she whispered the remainder of his
instructions. When she had finished he looked up and wagged his head
apprehendingly.
"Yes; I see what you mean--and it's none o' my business what you mean
it for," he answered. "I'll get the evidence, if there is any."
"It must be like the other; in black and white," she stipulated. "And
you needn't say 'if.' Look for a red-faced man with stiff mustaches and
a big make-believe diamond in his shirt-front, and make him tell you."
Broffin wagged his head again. "There ain't goin' to be any grand jury
business about it, is there?" he questioned; adding: "I know your
man--saw him this afternoon over at the plant. He's goin' to be a tough
customer to handle unless I can tell him there ain't goin' to be any
come-back in the courts."
Miss Grierson was opening her purse and she passed a yellow-backed
bank-note to her newest confederate.
"Your retainer," she explained. "And about the red-faced man: we sha'n't
take him into court. But I'd rather you wouldn't buy him, if you can
help it. Can't you get him like this, some way?"--she held up a thumb
and finger tightly pressed together.
Broffin's grin this time was wholly of appreciation.
"You're the right kind--the kind that leads trumps all the while, Miss
Grierson," he told her. Then he did the manly thing. "I'll go into this,
just as you say--what? But it's only fair to warn you that it may turn
up some things that'll feaze you. You know that old sayin' about
sleepin' dogs?"
Miss Grierson was gathering the reins over the little Morgan's back and
her black eyes snapped.
"This is one time when we are going to kick the dogs and make them wake
up," she returned. "Good-by, Mr. Broffin."
XXXIII
GATES OF BRASS
It was an hour beyond the normal quitting time on the day of ultimatums
and counter-threatenings, the small office force had gone home, and the
night squad of deputies had come to relieve the day guard. Griswold
closed the spare desk in the manager's room and twirled his chair to
face Raymer.
"We may as well go and get something to eat," he suggested. "There will
be nothing doing to-night."
Raymer began to put his desk in order.
"No, not to-night. The trouble will begin when we try to start up with a
new force. Call it a weakness if you like, but I dread it, Kenneth."
Griswold's smile was a mere baring of the teeth. "That's all right, Ned;
you do the dreading and I'll do the fighting," he said; adding: "What
we've had to-day has merely whetted my appetite."
The man of peace shook his head dejectedly.
"I can't understand it," he protested. "Up to last night I was calling
you a benevolent Socialist, and my only fear was that you might some
time want to reorganize things and turn the plant into a little section
of Utopia. Now you are out-heroding Herod on the other side."
Griswold got up and crushed his soft hat upon his head.
"Only fools and dead folk are denied the privilege of changing their
minds," he returned. "Let's go up to the Winnebago and feed."
The dinner to which they sat down a little later was a small feast of
silence. Each was busy with his own thoughts, and it was not until after
the coffee had been served that Griswold leaned across the table to call
Raymer's attention to a man who was finishing his meal in a distant
corner of the dining-room, a swarthy-faced man who drank his coffee with
the meat course to the unpleasant detriment of a pair of long drooping
mustaches.
"Wait a minute before you look around, and then tell me who that fellow
is over on the right--the man with the black mustaches," he directed.
Raymer looked and shook his head.
"He's a new-comer--comparatively; somebody at the club said he gave
himself out for a lumberman from Louisiana."
Griswold was nodding slowly. "His name?" he asked.
"I can't remember. It's an odd name; Boffin, or Giffin, or something
like that. They're beginning to say now that he isn't a lumberman at
all--just why, I don't know."
Griswold's right hand stole softly to his hip pocket. The touch was
reassuring. But a little while after, when he was leaving the
dining-room with Raymer, he dropped behind and made a quick transfer of
something from the hip pocket to the side pocket of his coat. His hand
was still in the coat pocket when he parted from the young iron-founder
on the sidewalk.
"You'll be going home, I suppose?" he said.
Raymer made a wry face.
"Yes; and I wish to gracious you were the one who had to face my mother
and sister. They're all for peace, you know--peace at any old price."
Griswold laughed.
"Tell them we're going to have peace if we are obliged to fight for it.
And don't let them swing you. If we back down now we may as well go into
court and ask for a receiver. Good-night."
Though he had not betrayed it, Griswold was fiercely impatient to get
away. One tremendous question had been dominating all others from the
earliest moment of the morning awakening, and all day long it had fed
upon doubtings and uncertainty. Would Andrew Galbraith recover from the
effects of the drowning accident? At first, he thought he would go to
his room and telephone to Margery. But before he had reached the foot of
Shawnee Street he had changed his mind. What he wanted to say could
scarcely be trusted to the wires.
Twice before he reached the gate of the Grierson lawn he fancied he was
followed, and twice he stepped behind the nearest shade-tree and
tightened his grip upon the thing in his right-hand pocket. But both
times the rearward sidewalk showed itself empty. Since false alarms may
have, for the moment, all the shock of the real, he found that his hands
were trembling when he came to unlatch the Grierson gate, and it made
him vindictively self-scornful. Also, it gave him a momentary glimpse
into another and hitherto unmeasured depth in the valley of stumblings.
In the passing of the glimpse he was made to realize that it is the
coward who kills; and kills because he is a coward.
He had traversed the stone-flagged approach and climbed the steps of the
broad veranda to reach for the bell-push when he heard his name called
softly in the voice that he had come to know in all of its many
modulations. The call came from the depths of one of the great wicker
lounging-chairs half-hidden in the veranda shadows. In a moment he had
placed another of the chairs for himself, dropping into it wearily.
"How did you know it was I?" he asked, when he could trust himself to
speak.
"I saw you at the gate," she returned. "Are you just up from the Iron
Works?"
"I have been to dinner since we came up-town--Raymer and I."
A pause, and then: "The men are still holding out?"
"We are holding out. The plant is closed, and it will stay closed until
we can get another force of workmen."
"There will be lots of suffering," she ventured.
"Inevitably. But they have brought it upon themselves."
"Not the ones who will suffer the most--the women and children," she
corrected.
"It's no use," he said, answering her thought. "There is nothing in me
to appeal to."
"There was yesterday, or the day before," she suggested.
"Perhaps. But yesterday was yesterday, and to-day is to-day. As I told
Raymer a little while ago, I've changed my mind."
"About the rights of the down-trodden?"
"About all things under the sun."
"No," she denied, "you only think you have. But you didn't come here to
tell me that?"
"No; I came to ask a single question. How is Mr. Galbraith?"
"He is a very sick man."
Another pause, for which the questioner was responsible.
"You mean that there is a chance that he may not recover?"
"More than a chance, I'm afraid. The first thing Doctor Bertie did
yesterday evening was to wire St. Paul for two trained nurses; and
to-day he telegraphed Chicago for Doctor Holworthy, who charges
twenty-five dollars a minute for mere office consultations."
"Humph!" said Griswold, "money needn't cut any figure." And then, after
a moment of silence: "I did my best; you know I did my best?"
Her answer puzzled him a little.
"I could almost find it in my heart to hate you if you hadn't."
"But you know I did."
"Yes; I know you did."
Silence again, broken only by the whispering of the summer night breeze
rustling the leaves of the lawn oaks and the lapping of tiny waves on
the lake beach. At the end of it, Griswold got up and groped for his
hat.
"I'm going home," he said. "It has been a pretty strenuous day, and
there is another one coming. But before I go I want you to promise me
one thing. Will you let me know immediately, by 'phone or messenger, if
Mr. Galbraith takes a turn for the better?"
"Certainly," she said; and she let him say good-night and get as far as
the steps before she called him back.
"There was another thing," she began, with the sober gravity that he
could never be sure was not one of her many poses, and not the least
alluring one. "Do you believe in God, Kenneth?"
The query took him altogether by surprise, but he made shift to answer
it with becoming seriousness.
"I suppose I do. Why?"
"It is a time to pray to Him," she said softly; "to pray very earnestly
that Mr. Galbraith's life may be spared."
He could not let that stand.
"Why should I concern myself, specially?" he asked; adding: "Of course,
I'm sorry, and all that, but----"
"Never mind," she interposed, and she left her chair to walk beside him
to the steps. "I've had a hard day, too, Kenneth, boy, and I--I guess it
has got on my nerves. But, all the same, you ought to do it, you know."
He stopped and looked down into the eyes whose depths he could never
wholly fathom.
"Why don't you do it?" he demanded.
"I? oh, God doesn't know me; and, besides, I thought--oh, well, it
doesn't matter what I thought. Good-night."
And before he could return the leave-taking word, she was gone.
XXXIV
THE ABYSS
Raymer's prediction that the real trouble would begin when the attempt
should be made to start the plant with imported workmen was amply
fulfilled during the militant week which followed the opening of
hostilities.
The appearance of the first detachment of strike-breakers, a trampish
crew gathered up hastily by the employment agencies in the cities in
response to Griswold's telegrams, was the signal for active resistance.
Promptly the Iron Works plant and the approaches to it were picketed,
and of the twenty-five or thirty men who came in on the first day's
train only a badly frightened and cowed half-dozen won through the
persuading, jeering, threatening picket line to the offices of the
plant.
Other days followed in which the scenes of the first were repeated--with
the difference that each succeeding day saw the inevitable increase of
lawlessness. From taunts and abuse the insurrectionaries passed easily
to violence. Street fights, when the trampish place-takers came in any
considerable numbers, were of daily occurrence, and the tale of the
wounded grew like the returns from a battle. By the middle of the week
Raymer and Griswold were asking for a sheriff's posse to maintain peace
in the neighborhood of the plant; and were getting their first definite
hint that some one higher up was playing the game of politics against
them.
"No, gentlemen; I've done all that the law requires and a little more,"
was the sheriff's response to the plea for better protection. Then came
the hint. "You can take it as a word from a friend that this private
scrap of yours with your men is making everybody pretty tired. First and
last, it's only a question of whether you'll pay out a little more
money, or a little less money, not to a lot of imported hoboes, but to
certain citizens of Red Earth County,"--to which was added
significantly--"citizens with votes."
"In other words, Mr. Bradford, you've got your orders from the men
higher up, have you?" rasped Griswold, who was by this time lost to all
sense of expediency.
"I don't have to reply to any such charge as that," said the chief peace
officer, turning back to his desk; and so the brittle little conference
ended.
"All of which means that we shall lose the plant guard of deputies that
Bradford has been maintaining," commented Raymer, as they were
descending the Court House stairs; and again his prediction came true.
Later in the day the guard was withdrawn; and Griswold, savagely
reluctant, was forced to make a concession repeatedly urged and argued
for by the older men among the strikers, namely, that the guarding of
the company's property be entrusted to a picked squad of the
ex-employees themselves.
During these days of turmoil and rioting the transformed idealist passed
through many stages of the journey down a certain dark and mephitic
valley not of amelioration. With the bitter industrial conflict to feed
it, a slow fire within him ate its way into all the foundations, and as
the fair superstructure of character settled, the moral perpendiculars
and planes of projection became more and more distorted. Fairness was
gone, and in its place stood angry resentment, ready to rend and tear.
Pity and ruth were going: the daily report from Margery told of the
lessening chance of life for Andrew Galbraith, and the stirrings evoked
were neither regretful nor compassionate. On the contrary, he knew very
well that the news of Galbraith's death would be a relief for which, in
his heart of hearts, he was secretly thirsting.
It was at the close of the week of tumult that the dreadful beckoning
came. One of the two trained nurses installed at Mereside had been
called away to the bedside of a sick father. Another had been wired for
immediately, but between the going and the coming a night would
intervene. So much Griswold got from Margery over the Iron Works
telephone late in the afternoon of a day thickly besprinkled with the
sidewalk waylayings and riotings. When he reached his Shawnee Street
lodgings at nine o'clock that night he found Miss Grierson's phaeton
standing at the curb.
"Get in," she said, briefly, making room for him in the basket seat. And
when the mare had been given the word to go: "I hope you are not too
tired to chaperon me. I've got to drive over to the college infirmary.
We simply _must_ have another nurse for to-night."
He denied the weariness--most untruthfully--and after that, she made him
talk all the way across town to the college campus; compelled him, and
found him absently irresponsive. Oh, yes; the fight was still going on:
No, they would never give in to the demands of the strikers: Yes, he had
seen Miss Farnham twice since the trouble began; she was frankly agreed
with Raymer's mother and sister; they all wanted peace, and they were
all against him. She led him on, and meanwhile they encountered one
failure after another in the nurse-hunting. The town clock was striking
the quarter-past ten when Miss Grierson confessed that she had exhausted
the list of possibilities.
"I must go back at once," she declared. "Miss Davidson--the day
nurse--has been on duty constantly since six this morning, and I'm not
going to let her kill herself."
"But you haven't been able to find anybody. Who will relieve her?"
Then came the thunderbolt--and beyond it the beckoning. "You and I
will," she said calmly. And then, as if to forestall the possible
refusal: "It is merely to sit in the next room and to go in and give him
his medicine at half-hour intervals. Either of us can do that much for a
poor old man who is making his last stand in the fight for his life."
Three days earlier, nay, one day earlier, Griswold might have recoiled
in horror from the suggestion that thrust itself into heart and brain.
But now he merely pushed the unspeakable prompting into the background.
Of course, he would go; and, equally of course, he would share the night
watch with her. One question he permitted himself, and it was not asked
until after they had reached the darkened mansion on the lake's edge and
were mounting the stair to the sick-room. Was Mr. Galbraith conscious?
Could he recognize any one?
"No," was the low-voiced response; and presently they had reached the
outer room of shaded lights, and the sleepy day nurse had been released,
and Margery was explaining the medicines to her watch sharer.
It was a simple matter, as she had said; the medicine from the larger
bottle was to be given in tea-spoonful doses on the even hour, and that
in the smaller, ten drops in a little water, on the alternating
half-hours.
"It's his heart chiefly, now," she explained, "and this drop-medicine is
for that. If you should forget to give it--but I know you won't forget.
There are books in the hall case, and you can sit in here and read. When
you are tired, come and tap at the door of my room and I'll take what
you leave."
While she was speaking the softly chiming clock in the lower hall struck
the half-hour. "I'll help you give him the first dose," she went on; and
he stood by and watched her as she dropped the heart-stimulant into a
spoon and diluted it with a little water. "Come," she said; and they
went together into the adjoining room.
Griswold had been hardening himself deliberately to look unmoved upon
what the shaded electric night-light in the farther room should reveal:
it was nothing more terrible than the sight of a drawn face, half-hidden
in the pillows; a face in which life and death still fought for the
mastery as they had fought on that other day when life, unhelped, would
have been the loser.
The small service was quickly rendered. Griswold lifted the sick man,
and his companion, deft and steady-handed, administered the stimulant.
"Ten drops; no more and no less; exactly on the half-hour: those are
Doctor Bertie's orders," she said, when they had withdrawn to the outer
room. And then: "Good-night, for a little while. Don't hesitate to call
me when you've had enough."
For so long as he could distinguish her light step in the corridor,
Griswold stood motionless as she had left him. Then he flung himself
into the nearest chair and covered his face with his hands.
* * * * *
The quarter-hour passed, and after the three mellow strokes had died
away the silence grew slowly maddening. When inaction was no longer
bearable, Griswold sprang up and went to stand at the open window. The
summer night was hot and breathless. In the north-west a storm cloud was
creeping up into the sky, and he watched its black shadow climbing like
a terrifying threat of doom out of the illimitable and blotting out the
stars one by one.... "For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth
himself in vain...." Out of a childhood which seemed very far away and
unreal the words of the Psalmist came to ring in his ears like the
muffled tolling of a passing-bell. So it must be soon for all the
living; and whether a little sooner or a little later, what could it
matter? A breath more or less to be drawn; a longer or shorter
fluttering of the feeble heart; that was all.
The clock struck eleven, and mechanically he poured out the dose from
the larger bottle and gave it to the sick man. When it was done he left
the bedside and the inner room quickly and went back to the open window.
The air was thick and stifling, and when he sat down in the deep
window-seat he was gasping for breath. It was going to be harder than he
had thought it would, though now that the time had come he realized that
he had been subconsciously planning for it, preparing for it. And the
means which had been thrust into his hands could scarcely have been
simpler. He had only to sit still and do nothing--and no one would ever
know. He took up the small phial and held it to the light: ten drops, or
forty drops; they would neither be missed, nor counted if they should
remain.