putting the bottle down, and he started as if the mellow cadence had
been a pistol shot. For fifteen minutes longer he could live and
breathe and be as other men are; and after that.... He saw himself
looking back upon the normal world from the new view-point, as he
fancied Cain might have looked back after the mark had been set upon his
brow. Would it really make the hideous, monstrous difference that all
men seemed to think it did? He would know, presently, when the revocable
should have become the irrevocable. He heard the sick man stir feebly,
and then the sound of his slow, labored breathing made itself felt,
rather than heard, in the crushing, stifling silence. How the minutes
dragged! He leaned his head against the window jamb and closed his eyes,
striving fiercely to drive forth the thronging thoughts; to make his
mind a blank. Gradually the effort succeeded. He was conscious of a
dull, throbbing, soothing pulse beating slow measures in his temples,
and a curious roaring as of distant cataracts in his ears; and after
that, nothing.
* * * * *
A tempestuous thunder shower was lashing the trees on the lawn when he
awoke with a start and found Margery bending over him to close the
window. With every nerve a needle to prick him alive he dragged out his
watch. It was a quarter-past two. Miserably, wretchedly he pulled
himself together and stood up to face her, putting his hands on her
shoulders to make her look up at him.
"Margery, girl; do you know what I have done?--Oh, my God! I am a
murderer--a murderer at last!"
She turned her face away quickly.
"Oh, no, no, boy!--not meaning to be!" she murmured.
"What is the difference?" he demanded harshly. And then: "God knows--He
knows whether I meant it or not."
She looked up again, and, as once or twice before in his knowing of her,
he saw the dark eyes swimming.
"It was too hard; I shouldn't have asked it of you, Kenneth. I knew what
a cruel strain you've been under all these bad days. And there was no
harm done. I--I have been here a long time--ever since half-past eleven;
and I've been giving Mr. Galbraith his medicine. Now go down-stairs and
stretch out on the hall lounge. I'll run down and send you home as soon
as it stops raining."
XXXV
MARGERY'S ANSWER
"Well, it has come at last," said Raymer, passing a newly opened letter
of the morning delivery over to Griswold. "The railroad people are
taking their work away from us. I've been looking for that in every
mail."
Griswold glanced at the letter and handed it back. The burden of the
night of horrors was still lying heavily upon him, and his only comment
was a questioning, "Well?"
"I've been thinking," was the reply. "I know Atherton, the new president
of the Pineboro, pretty well; suppose I should run over to St. Paul and
see him--make it a personal plea. We have enough of the hoboes now to
run half-gangs; and perhaps, if I could make Atherton believe that we
are going to win----"
"You couldn't," Griswold interrupted, shortly. "And, besides, you have
told me yourself that Atherton is only a figurehead. Grierson's the
man."
At this, Raymer let go again.
"What's the use?" he said dejectedly. "We're down, and everything we do
merely prolongs the agony. Do you know that they tried to burn the plant
last night?"
"No; I hadn't heard."
"They did. It was just before the thunder storm. They had everything
fixed; a pile of kindlings laid in the corner back of the machine-shop
annex and the whole thing saturated with kerosene."
"Well, why didn't they do it?" queried Griswold, half-heartedly. After
the heavens have fallen, no mere terrestrial cataclysm can evoke a
thrill.
"That's a mystery. Something happened; just what, the watchman who had
the machine-shop beat couldn't tell. He says there was a flash of light
bright enough to blind him, and then a scrap of some kind. When he got
out of the shop and around to the place, there was no one there; nothing
but the pile of kindlings."
Griswold took up the letter from the railway people and read it again.
When he faced it down on Raymer's desk, he had closed with the
conclusion which had been thrusting itself upon him since the early
morning hour when he had picked his way among the sidewalk pools from
Mereside to upper Shawnee Street.
"You can still save yourself, Edward," he said, still with the colorless
note in his voice. And he added: "You know the way."
Raymer jerked his head out of his desk and swung around in the
pivot-chair.
"See here, Griswold; the less said about that at this stage of the game,
the better it will be for both of us!" he exploded. "I'm going to do as
I said I should, but not until this fight is settled, one way or the
other!"
Griswold did not retort in kind.
"The condition has already expired by limitation; the fight is as good
as settled now," he said, placably. "We are only making a hopeless
bluff. We can hold our forty or fifty tramp workmen just as long as we
pay their board over in town, and don't ask them to report for work. But
the day the shop whistle is blown, four out of every five will vanish.
We both know that."
"Then there is nothing for it but a receivership," was Raymer's gloomy
decision.
"Not without a miracle," Griswold admitted. "And the day of miracles is
past."
Thus the idealist, out of a depth of wretchedness and self-exprobration
hitherto unplumbed. But if he could have had even a momentary gift of
telepathic vision he might have seen a miracle at that moment in the
preliminary stage of its outworking.
The time was half-past nine; the place a grotto-like summer-house on the
Mereside lawn. The miracle workers were two: Margery Grierson, radiant
in the daintiest of morning house-gowns, and the man who had taken her
retainer. Miss Grierson was curiously examining a photographic print:
the pictured scene was a well-littered foundry yard with buildings
forming an angle in the near background. Against the buildings a pile of
shavings with kindlings showed quite clearly; and, stooping to ignite
the pile, was a man who had evidently looked up at, or just before, the
instant of camera-snapping. There was no mistaking the identity of the
man. He had a round, pig-jowl face; his bristling mustaches stood out
stiffly as if in sudden horror; and his hat was on the back of his head.
"It ain't very good," Broffin apologized. "The sun ain't high enough yet
to make a clear print. But you said 'hurry,' and I reckon it will do."
Miss Grierson nodded. "You caught him in the very act, didn't you?" she
said coolly. "What did he do?"
"Dropped things and jumped for the camera. But the flash had blinded
him, and, besides, the camera had been moved. I let him have a foot to
fall over, and he took it; after which I made a bluff at tryin' to hold
him. Lordy gracious! new ropes wouldn't 'a' held him, then. I'll bet
he's runnin' yet--what?"
"What did he hope to accomplish by setting fire to the works?"
"It was a frame-up to capture public sympathy. There's been a report
circulating 'round that Raymer and Griswold was goin' to put some o' the
ringleaders in jail, if they had to _make_ a case against 'em. Clancy
had it figured out that the fire'd be charged up to the owners,
themselves."
Miss Grierson was still examining the picture. "You made two of these
prints?" she asked.
"Yes; here's the other one--and the film."
"And you have the papers to make them effective?"
Broffin handed her a large envelope, unsealed. "You'll find 'em in
there. That part of it was a cinch. Your governor ought to fire that man
Murray. He was payin' Clancy in checks!"
Again Miss Grierson nodded.
"About the other matter?" she inquired. "Have you heard from your
messenger?"
Broffin produced another envelope. It had been through the mails and
bore the Duluth postmark.
"Affidavits was the best we could do there," he said. "My man worked it
to go with MacFarland as the driver of the rig. They saw some mighty
fine timber, but it happened to be on the wrong side of the St. Louis
County line. He's a tolerably careful man, and he verified the
landmarks."
"Affidavits will do," was the even-toned rejoinder. Then: "These papers
are all in duplicate?"
"Everything in pairs--just as you ordered."
Miss Grierson took an embroidered chamois-skin money-book from her bosom
and began to open it. Broffin raised his hand.
"Not any more," he objected. "You overpaid me that first evening in
front of the Winnebago."
"You needn't hesitate," she urged. "It's my own money."
"I've had a-plenty."
"Enough so that we can call it square?"
"Yes, and more than enough."
"Then I can only thank you," she said, rising.
He knew that he was being dismissed, but the one chance in a thousand
had yet to be tested.
"Just a minute, Miss Grierson," he begged. "I've done you right in this
business, haven't I?"
"You have."
"I said I didn't want any more money, and I don't. But there's one other
thing. Do you know what I'm here in this little jay town of yours for?"
"Yes; I have known it for a long time."
"I thought so. You knew it that day out at the De Soto, when you was
tellin' Mr. Raymer a little story that was partly true and partly made
up--what?"
"And when you were sitting behind the window curtains listening," she
laughed. "Yes; I knew it then. What about it?"
"I've been wonderin' as I set here, if there was anything on the top
side of God's green earth that'd persuade you to tell me how much o'
that story was made up."
She was smiling deliciously when she said: "You are from the South, Mr.
Broffin, and I didn't suppose a Southerner could be so unchivalrous as
to suspect a lady of fibbing."
He shook his head. "I wish you'd tell me, Miss Grierson. I'm in pretty
bad on this thing, and if----"
"I can tell you what to do, if that will help you."
"It might," he allowed.
"Go away and take some other commission. It's a cold trail, Mr.
Broffin."
"But you won't say that Griswold isn't the man?"
"It is not for me to say. But Miss Farnham says he isn't, and Mr.
Galbraith--you tried him, didn't you? What more do you want?"
"I want _you_ to say he isn't; then I'll go away."
"You may put me in jail for contempt of court, if you like," she jested.
"I refuse to testify. But I will tell you what you asked to know--if
that will do any good. Every word of the story about Mr. Griswold--the
story that you overheard, you know--was true; every single word of it.
Do you suppose I should have dared to embroider it the least little
bit--with you sitting right there at my back?"
"But you did think for a while that he might be the man--what?"
"Yes; I did think so--for a while."
Broffin got up and took a half-burned cigar from the ledge of the
summer-house where he had carefully laid it at the beginning of the
interview.
"You've got me down," he confessed, with a good-natured grin. "The man
that plays a winnin' hand against you has got to get up before sun in
the morning and hold _all_ trumps, Miss Grierson--to say nothin' of
being a mighty good bluffer, on the side." Then he switched suddenly.
"How's Mr. Galbraith this morning?"
"He is very low, but he is conscious again. He has asked us to wire for
the cashier of his bank to come up."
Broffin's eyes narrowed.
"The cashier is sick and can't come," he said.
"Well, some one in authority will come, I suppose."
Once more Broffin was thinking in terms of speed. Johnson, the paying
teller, was next in rank to the cashier. If he should be the one to come
to Wahaska....
"If you haven't anything else for me to do, I reckon I'll be going," he
said, hastily, and forthwith made his escape. The telegraph office was a
good ten minutes' walk from the lake front, and in the light of what
Miss Grierson had just told him, the minutes were precious.
Something less than a half-hour after Broffin's hurried departure, Miss
Grierson, coated and gauntleted, came down the Mereside carriage steps
to take the reins of the big trap horse from Thorsen's hands. Contrary
to her usual custom, she avoided Main Street and drove around past the
college grounds to come by quieter thoroughfares to the industrial
district beyond the railroad tracks.
For the first time in a riotous week, Pottery Flat was outwardly
peaceful and its narrow streets were practically empty. Just what this
portended, Margery did not know; but she found out when she turned into
the street upon which the Raymer property fronted. Smoke was pouring
from the tall central stack of the plant, and it had evidently provoked
a sudden and wrathful gathering of the clans. The sidewalks were filled
with angry workmen, and an excited argument was going forward at one of
the barred gates between the locked-out men and a watchman inside of the
yard.
The crowd let the trap pass without hindrance. However coldly Lake
Boulevard and upper Shawnee Street might regard Miss Grierson, there was
no enmity in the glances of the Flat dwellers--and for good reasons. In
want, Miss Margery had poured largesse out of a liberal hand; and in
sickness she had many times proved herself the veritable good angel that
some people called her.
It was one of the strikers who offered to hold the big Englishman when
the magnate's daughter sprang from the trap at the office door, and for
the young fellow who offered she had a smile and a pleasant word. "I
wouldn't trouble you to do that, Malcolm; but if you'll lead him along
to that post and hitch him, I'll be much obliged," she said.
Though it was the first time she had been in the new offices, she seemed
to know where to find what she sought; and when Raymer took his face out
of his desk, she was standing on the threshold of the open door and
smiling across at him.
"May I come in?" she asked; and when he fairly bubbled over in the
effort to make her understand how welcome she was: "No; I mustn't sit
down, because if I do, I shall stay too long--and this is a business
call. Where is Mr. Griswold?"
"He went up-town a little while ago, and I wish to goodness he'd come
back. You'd think, to look out of the windows, that we were due to have
battle and murder and sudden death, wouldn't you? It's all because we
have put a little fire under one battery of boilers. They tried to burn
us out last night, and I'm going to carry steam enough for the fire
pumps, if the heavens fall."
"You have been having a great deal of trouble, haven't you?" she said,
sympathetically. "I'm sorry, and I've come to help you cure it."
Raymer shook his head despondently.
"I'm afraid it has gone past the curing point," he said.
"Oh, no, it hasn't. I have discovered the remedy and I've brought it
with me." She took a sealed envelope from the inside pocket of her
driving-coat and laid it on the desk before him. "I'm going to ask you
to lock that up in your office safe for a little while, just as it is,"
she went on. "If there are no signs of improvement in the sick situation
by three o'clock, you are to open it--you and Mr. Griswold--and read the
contents. Then you will know exactly what to do, and how to go about
it."
Her lip was trembling when she got through, and he saw it.
"What have you done, Margery?" he asked gently. "If it is something that
hurts you----"
"Don't!" she pleaded; "you mu-mustn't break my nerve just at the time
when I'm going to need every shred of it. Do as I say, and please,
_please_ don't ask any questions!"
She was going then, but he got before her and shut the door and put his
back against it.
"I don't know what you have done, but I can guess," he said, lost now to
everything save the intoxicating joy of the barrier-breakers. "You have
a heart of gold, Margery, and I----"
"Please don't," she said, trying to stop him; but he would not listen.
"No; before that envelope is opened, before I can possibly know what it
contains, I'm going to ask you one question in spite of your
prohibition; and I'm going to ask it now because, afterward, I may
not--you may not--that is, perhaps it won't be possible for me to ask,
or for you to listen. I love you, Margery; I----"
She was looking up at him with the faintest shadow of a smile
lurking in the depths of the alluring eyes. And her lips were no
longer tremulous when she said: "Oh, no, you don't; I know just how
you feel; you are excited, and--and impulsive, and there's a sort of
getting-ready-to-be-grateful feeling roaming around in you, and all
that. If I were as mean as some people think I am, I might take
advantage of all this, mightn't I? But I sha'n't. Won't you open the
door and let me go? It's _very_ important."
"Heavens, Margery! don't make a joke of it!" he burst out. "Can't you
see that I mean it? Girl, girl, I want you--I need you!"
This time she laughed outright. Then she grew suddenly grave.
"My dear friend, you don't know what you are saying. The gate that you
are trying to break down opens upon nothing but misery and wretchedness.
If I loved you as a woman ought to love her lover, for your sake and
for my own I should still say no--a thousand times no! Now will you open
the door and let me go?"
He turned and fumbled for the door-knob like a man in a daze.
"Don't you--don't you think you might learn to--to think of me in that
way?--after a while?" he pleaded.
He had opened the door a little way, and she slipped past him. But in
the corridor she turned and laughed at him again.
"I am going to cure you--you, personally, as well as the sick
situation--Mr. Raymer," she said flippantly. Then, mimicking him as a
spoiled child might have done: "I might possibly learn to--think of
you--in that way--after a while. But I could never, never, _never_ learn
to love your mother and your sister."
And with that spiteful thrust she left him.
XXXVI
THE GRAY WOLF
As it chanced, Jasper Grierson was in the act of concluding a long and
apparently satisfactory telephone conversation with his agent in Duluth
at the moment when the door of his private room opened and his daughter
entered.
As on a former occasion, she went to sit in the window until the way to
free speech should be open, and she could not well help hearing the
closing words of the long-distance conference.
"You sit tight in the boat; that's all you've got to do," her father was
saying. "Keep the young fellow with you as long as you can; the other
man is too sick to talk business, right now. When you can't hold the
young one any longer, let me know. We'll play the hand out as it lays.
Get that? I say, we'll play the hand out as it lays."
He had hung the receiver on its hook and was pushing the bracketted
telephone-set aside when Margery crossed the room swiftly and placed an
envelope, the counterpart of the one left with Raymer, on the desk.
"There is your notice to quit," she said calmly. "You threw me down and
gave me the double-cross the other day, and now I've come back at you."
Another man might have hastened to meet the crisis. But the gray wolf
was of a different mettle. He let the envelope lie untouched until after
he had pulled out a drawer in the desk, found his box of cigars, and had
leisurely selected and lighted one of the fat black monstrosities. When
he tore the envelope across, the photographic print fell out, and he
studied it carefully for many seconds before he read the accompanying
documents. For a little time after he had tossed the papers aside there
was a silence that bit. Then he said, slowly:
"So that's your raise, is it? Where does the game stand, right now?"
"You stand to lose."
Again the biting silence; and then: "You don't think I'm fool enough to
give you back your ammunition so that you can use it on me, do you?"
"Those papers and that picture are copies: the originals are in a sealed
envelope in Mr. Raymer's safe. If you haven't taken your hands off of
Mr. Raymer's throat by three o'clock this afternoon, the envelope will
be opened."
Jasper Grierson's teeth met in the marrow of the fat cigar. Equally
without heat and without restraint, he stripped her of all that was
womanly, pouring out upon her a flood of foul epithets and vile names
garnished with bitter, brutal oaths. She shrank from the crude and
savage upbraidings as if the words had been hot irons to touch the bare
flesh, but at the end of it she was still facing him hardily.
"Calling me bad names doesn't change anything," she pointed out, and
her tone reflected something of his own elemental contempt for the
euphemisms. "You have five hours in which to make Mr. Raymer understand
that you have stopped trying to smash him. Wouldn't it be better to
begin on that? You can curse me out any time, you know."
Jasper Grierson's rage fit, or the mud-volcano manifestation of it,
passed as suddenly as it had broken out. Swinging heavily in his chair
he took up the papers again and reread them thoughtfully.
"You had a spotter working this up, I suppose: who is he, and where is
he?" he demanded.
"That is my affair. He was a high-priced man and he did his work well.
You can see that for yourself."
Once more the papers were tossed aside and the big chair swung slowly to
face the situation.
"Let's see what you want: show up your hand."
"I have shown it. Take the prop of your backing from behind this labor
trouble, and let Mr. Raymer settle with his men on a basis of good-will
and fair dealing."
"Is that all?"
"No. You must cancel this pine-land deal. You have broken bread with Mr.
Galbraith as a friend, and I'm not going to let you be worse than an
Arab."
Grierson's shaggy brows met in a reflective frown, and when he spoke the
bestial temper was rising again.
"When this is all over, and you've gone to live with Raymer, I'll kill
him," he said, with an out-thrust of the hard jaw; adding: "You know me,
Madge."
"I thought I did," was the swift retort. "But it was a mistake. And as
for taking it out on Mr. Raymer, you'd better wait until I go 'to live
with him,' as you put it. Besides, this isn't Yellow Dog Gulch. They
hang people here."
"You little she-devil! If you push me into this thing, you'd better get
Raymer, or somebody, to take you in. You'll be out in the street!"
"I have thought of that, too," she said, coolly; "about quitting you.
I'm sick of it all--the getting and the spending and the crookedness.
I'd put the money--yours and mine--in a pile and set fire to it, if some
decent man would give me a calico dress and a chance to cook for two."
"Raymer, for instance?" the father cut in, in heavy mockery.
"Mr. Raymer has asked me to marry him, if you care to know," she struck
back.
"Oho! So that's the milk in the cocoanut, is it? You sold me out to buy
in with him!"
"You may put it that way, if you like; I don't care." She was drawing on
her driving-gloves methodically and working the fingers into place, and
there were sullen fires in the brooding eyes.
"I've been thinking it was the other one--the book-writer," said the
father. Then, without warning: "He's a damned crook."
The daughter went on smoothing the wrinkles out of the fingers of her
gloves. "What makes you think so?" she inquired, with indifference, real
or skilfully assumed.
"He's got too much money to be straight. I've been keeping cases on
him."
"Never mind Mr. Griswold," she interposed. "He is my friend, and I
suppose that is enough to make you hate him. About this other matter:
ten minutes before three o'clock this afternoon I shall go back to Mr.
Raymer. If he tells me that his troubles are straightening themselves
out, I'll get the papers."
"You'll bring 'em here to me?"
"Some day; after I'm sure that you have broken off the deal with Mr.
Galbraith."
Jasper Grierson let his daughter get as far as the door before he
stopped her with a blunt-pointed arrow of contempt.
"I suppose you've fixed it up to marry that college-sharp dub so that
his mother and sister can rub it into you right?" he sneered.
"You can suppose again," she returned, shortly. "If I should marry him,
it would be out of pure spite to those women."
"If?"
"Yes, 'if.' Because, when he asked me, I told him No. You weren't
counting on that, were you?" And having fired this final shot of
contradiction she departed.
After Miss Grierson had driven home from the bank between ten and eleven
in the morning, an admiring public saw her no more until just before
bank-closing hours in the afternoon. Broffin was among those who made
obeisance to her as she passed down Main Street in the basket phaeton
between half-past two and three; and a minute later he abandoned his
chair on the hotel porch to keep the phaeton in view and to mark its
route.
"It's Raymer, all right, and not the other one," he mused when the
little vehicle had gone rocketing over the railroad crossing to take the
turn toward the Iron Works. "The iron-man is the duck she's tryin' to
help out of the labor-rookus. She was over there this morning, and she's
goin' there again, right now."
As the phaeton sped along through the over-crossing suburb there were
signs of an armistice apparent, even before the battle-field was
reached. Pottery Flat was populated again, and the groups of men bunched
on the street corners were arguing peacefully. Miss Grierson pulled up
at one of the corners and beckoned to the young iron-moulder who had
offered to be her horse-holder on the morning visit.
"Anything new, Malcolm?" she asked.