TREACHERY
_Who was the traitor?--Slocum's logic--We send for our accomplice--One
look is enough--The poison of envy--I see the last of an old
friend--Slocum points the moral--What people know--Public
opinion--Cousin Farson again--We lunch at a depot restaurant--I
touch granite_
The Monday morning after Mr. Hardman's outbreak, Slocum was waiting for
me at my office. In reply to my telegram he had come back from St.
Louis, where he had been attending to some business in connection with
Farson's railroad.
"They got it pretty straight this time," was all he said as a greeting,
with a care-worn sort of smile.
"They can't prove it! We'll bring suit for libel. I must put myself
straight--for family reasons."
But the lawyer shook his head doubtfully.
"That wouldn't be safe, Van! It's too close a guess. I rather think
they've got all the proof they want."
"Where did they get it, then? Not out of Lokes. He hasn't any reason to
squeal. Nor the judge, nor his brother-in-law!"
"Of course not; but how about Frost? This is the way I figure it out:
when those rats were euchred in their hold-up game by Garretson's
dismissing his injunction, they were mad enough and determined to find
out who sold them. It didn't take them long to see that the judge had
been fixed in some way. They nosed around, and spotted the judge's
brother-in-law as the one who made the trade. Then they started out to
get proof."
"Well?"
Slocum looked at me shrewdly.
"I have been thinking about that all the way back from St. Louis. There
is only one man left in the combination."
We stared at each other for a minute.
"You don't mean _him_!" I gasped.
"Who else?"
"Not Hostetter--not Ed!"
"Send for him, and we'll find out," he answered shortly.
I telephoned out to our office in the Yards to send Hostetter to the
city, and while we waited we discussed the story in all its bearings.
"We've got the trick," Slocum commented in reply to my desire for
action. "And Marx, who managed this business for Carmichael, is shrewd
enough to see it. _They_ won't bother us."
There was some comfort in that reflection: no matter what the scandal
might be, we had the London and Chicago properties in our possession,
and nothing short of a long fight in court could wrest them from our
control.
"The only thing to do," the lawyer continued, "is to keep quiet. The
papers will bark while the election is on, and it looks mighty bad for
Garretson. But out here most people forget easily."
It was queer to hear old Slocum talking in that cynical tone, as if,
having accepted the side that was not to his taste, he took pleasure in
pointing out its safety.
"Well," I grumbled, thinking of May and Sarah, "it's mighty
uncomfortable to be held up by rats like Lokes, Frost, and company, and
then be branded as a briber!"
"What do you care?" Slocum asked harshly. "It won't hurt _you_ much.
You'll make money just the same, and there aren't many who would lay
this up against you. Of course, there are always a few who are shrewd
enough to guess just about what has happened, and remember,--yes,
remember a story for years! But you don't care for their opinion!"
I knew that he was thinking of the honest men in his own profession, the
honorable men at the head of the bar, who would mark him henceforth as
my hired man.
Hostetter arrived soon, a shifty look in his eyes. He had changed a good
deal since that time he had slept out on the lake front. He was a heavy
man, now, with a fleshy face, and his dress showed a queer love for loud
finery. He wore a heavy seal ring, and a paste diamond in his tie, which
was none too clean. His sandy mustache dropped tight over his mouth. Yet
in spite of his dress and his jewellery, he was plainly enough the
countryman still.
"Ed," I said at once, "have you been talking to any one about that
matter of the bonds--the deal with Lucas Smith?"
He glanced at Slocum and then at me. One look at his face was enough:
the story was there.
"You low dog!" I broke out.
Slocum tried to hush me. Hostetter muttered something about not knowing
what we were talking about.
"You're lying, Ed! Tell me the whole truth. Did you sell what you knew
to the _Nationalist_, or to Frost and his crowd?"
He became stubborn all at once, and refused to answer. I turned to the
lawyer:--
"See that man! I picked him out of the bankruptcy court two years ago,
after giving him his third start in business. Last winter I sent his
wife South and kept her there six months so that she could get well."
I turned to Ed.
"Whose bread are you eating now, to-day?"
He picked up his hat and started for the door. But I called him back. It
came over me all at once what we had been through together, and I
couldn't let him leave that way, sneak out of my sight for good and all.
"Tell me, Ed," I asked, more miserable than he, "are you going over to
Carmichael to get some more pay for this?"
"Maybe, if I did," he replied sullenly, "it'd be some better than it is
working for you."
"I don't think so--not long. Folks like you aren't worth much. Come, Ed!
Did I ever do a mean thing to you? Didn't I give fifteen cents when we
hadn't but twenty between us? What were you thinking when you did this
dirty piece of business? Just tell me you were drunk when you did it. I
would have given you ten times as much as you ever got from them to know
you couldn't do it!"
[Illustration: "_You have done something the taste of which will never
get out of your mouth._"]
Then he began to go to pieces and cry, and he told me all I wanted to
know. It was a plain case of the poison of envy. I was rich and on top,
and he was working for thirty dollars a week for me. His wife, who had
always kept a grudge against me for not making up to her in the old
days, had taunted him for taking his wages from me. She kept telling him
that I did nothing for him, and when she found out about his dealing
with Lucas Smith for me, she saw her chance. Somehow Frost got on his
track, and evidently they thought his information was worth paying
something for. That was the whole story.
While we were talking, Slocum slipped out of the room. It was a pitiful
scene.
"Ed," I said finally, "you must go back to the country. That is the only
place for you. You'll grow worse in the city the longer you stay. Your
belly's got bigger than your brain, and your heart is tainted at the
core. I will start you on a ranch I've got in Texas. Think it over and
get out of this place as soon as you can. I'm sorry for you, Ed. For you
have done something the taste of which will never get out of your
mouth."
He left my office without a word, and that was the last I ever saw of
him. When he had gone Slocum came back and sat down.
"It was a pretty tough thing for Ed to do," he remarked calmly, looking
out into the muddy street, where men were hurrying along the pavements.
I made no remark, and he added in the same far-off tone of voice:
"That's the worst of any piece of crooked business: it breaks up the man
you work with. Ed is a rascal now--and he was never that before!"
"That's true enough," I assented gloomily.
Slocum advised me to leave the city for a while, because should the
_Nationalist_ charges be investigated by the Grand Jury, it might be
awkward for me. But I refused to leave the city: no matter what
happened, I was not the man to run and hide. The Democratic papers made
all they could out of the affair, and then after the election it died
away. Garretson was reƫlected, and that was a kind of vindication for
him.
But the insiders in the city knew that something had been wrong, and, as
Slocum said, the scandal connected with quashing that injunction
followed us for many years. It was of less importance to me than to
Slocum; for the men with whom I dealt were used to stories like mine.
They believed what they had a mind to, and did business. But for Slocum
it was more serious.
The worst of it for me was at home. Sarah brooded over the newspaper
talk until she was morbid, refusing to go almost anywhere she would be
likely to meet people she knew. The Bible classes had been given up,
and, naturally enough, we never went back to Mr. Hardman's church, nor
returned to our old church. Sarah and I talked about it once or twice,
but we got nowhere.
"I should think you would care for the children!" she would cry,
persisting in considering me as a criminal.
"You'll see that it won't make the smallest difference to any one a year
hence, if you'll only hold up your head!"
"Well, I don't understand business, but May thinks it pretty bad, I
know, because she doesn't come to the house any more when you are at
home."
"She has no reason to act that way. And I don't mean to have you or May
or any other woman holding me up with your notions of what's right and
wrong, just because the newspapers make a lot of talk."
That ended the matter between us; but for a long time Sarah avoided our
old friends, and the house was unusually quiet.
What troubled me more than the racket in Chicago was the way that Dround
and Farson and a few other of our backers might take the story. The
Drounds were in Egypt, but they would hear the news quickly enough. Mr.
Dround was the president of our corporation, and the most influential
single stockholder. With his ideas, he might become a nuisance, or draw
out altogether, which would be awkward in the present condition of the
company.
As for Farson, I always counted a good deal on that crusty bit of rock,
and he had never failed me yet. One thing after another had come up in
the last four years, and he and his friends had backed me solidly. We
were pretty deep in other enterprises than this packing
business--railroads and land in that Southwest where I had set my eyes.
While the scandal was the worst we never heard a word from Farson, and I
was congratulating myself that he had overlooked the matter, when one
morning I received a despatch: "Meet me Union Station twelve to-morrow.
FARSON." That was all.
When he got out of the sleeper that noon I missed his usual warm smile.
He refused my invitation to lunch at the City Club, and led the way into
the fly-specked, smelly restaurant at the station. We ate our miserable
meal, and he said little while I talked to him about our affairs. It was
like talking to a blank wall: he listened but said nothing. After a
while he interrupted me in a kind of thin whisper, as if his mind had
been absent all the time:--
"What about this Judge Garretson? It isn't true?"
"You mean what the papers say?"
The old gentleman didn't like newspapers. But he waived that aside with
a frown.
"The facts!" he whispered across the table. "I should not have mentioned
it had it not been for a conversation which I had the other day in New
York with Judge Sloan, of the Chicago bar. He tells me that it is
generally believed to be true that this Garretson was bribed, and that
my old friend Jeff Slocum was mixed up in it. He says that Slocum has
lost his reputation among the best men of the profession on account of
his connection with this scandal. What are the facts?"
"This is hardly the place to go into all that," I replied somewhat
tartly.
"I don't know but that the place is good enough," the banker observed
dryly, "provided you have the right things to say." But he took the
frost out of his severe tone by one of his most genial smiles, and added
more gently:--
"Perhaps you young men don't realize how serious it is to have such
rumors get around about your reputation. Why, my boy, it puts you in
another class! You are no longer gentlemen, who can be trusted with
honest people's money and confidence."
Farson would be a hard man to bring to my point of view! I said by way
of allegory:--
"When a man comes out of the alley and puts a pistol in your face, and
asks for all the money you have on you, you don't wait to see where you
hit him, do you? We don't here in Chicago. The men who are making all
this talk were the hold-ups, and they did not get our money." I laughed.
[Illustration: "_When a man comes out of the alley and puts a pistol in
your face, and asks for all the money you have on you, you don't wait to
see where you hit him, do you?_"]
But he did not laugh with me--instead, he shut up like a clam all at
once. He finished his corned beef hash and tea, making a few remarks
about the train service on the road he had come over. I asked him some
questions about our railroad matters, but he merely mumbled "Um, um" to
all I had to say. Finally he said with his usual calm courtesy that he
had some letters to write, and as the train for the West he was to take
did not leave for some time he would not detain me, but would go
upstairs to the waiting-room and write his letters. So he seized his
worn old grip and marched off.
"Cursed old Maine Yankee," I said to myself, and I repeated the remark
over the telephone to Slocum, telling him the result of my luncheon with
the banker.
"Maybe so," the lawyer telephoned back. "But we can't afford to let him
get his back up."
"It's up already--he's been talking with Sloan, and I gather the judge
didn't speak highly of you or me."
"I suppose not," came the answer over the wire, and Slocum's voice
sounded dreary. "That kind of thing dies hard."
It _was_ dying hard, and no doubt about it!