MR. CORVET'S PARTNER
The instant of meeting, when Alan recognized in Sherrill's partner the
man with whom he had fought in Corvet's house, was one of swift
readjustment of all his thought--adjustment to a situation of which he
could not even have dreamed, and which left him breathless. But for
Spearman, obviously, it was not that. Following his noncommittal nod
of acknowledgment of Sherrill's introduction and his first steady
scrutiny of Alan, the big, handsome man swung himself off from the desk
on which he sat and leaned against it, facing them more directly.
"Oh, yes--Conrad," he said. His tone was hearty; in it Alan could
recognize only so much of reserve as might be expected from Sherrill's
partner who had taken an attitude of opposition. The shipmasters,
looking on, could see, no doubt, not even that; except for the
excitement which Alan himself could not conceal, it must appear to them
only an ordinary introduction.
Alan fought sharply down the swift rush of his blood and the tightening
of his muscles.
"I can say truly that I'm glad to meet you, Mr. Spearman," he managed.
There was no recognition of anything beyond the mere surface meaning of
the words in Spearman's slow smile of acknowledgment, as he turned from
Alan to Sherrill.
"I'm afraid you've taken rather a bad time, Lawrence."
"You're busy, you mean. This can wait, Henry, if what you're doing is
immediate."
"I want some of these men to be back in Michigan to-night. Can't we
get together later--this afternoon? You'll be about here this
afternoon?" His manner was not casual; Alan could not think of any
expression of that man as being casual; but this, he thought, came as
near it as Spearman could come.
"I think I can be here this afternoon," Alan said.
"Would two-thirty suit you?"
"As well as any other time."
"Let's say two-thirty, then." Spearman turned and noted the hour
almost solicitously among the scrawled appointments on his desk pad;
straightening, after this act of dismissal, he walked with them to the
door, his hand on Sherrill's shoulder.
"Circumstances have put us--Mr. Sherrill and myself--in a very
difficult position, Conrad," he remarked. "We want much to be fair to
all concerned--"
He did not finish the sentence, but halted at the door. Sherrill went
out, and Alan followed him; exasperation--half outrage yet half
admiration--at Spearman's bearing, held Alan speechless. The blood
rushed hotly to his skin as the door closed behind them, his hands
clenched, and he turned back to the closed door; then he checked
himself and followed Sherrill, who, oblivious to Alan's excitement, led
the way to the door which bore Corvet's name. He opened it, disclosing
an empty room, somewhat larger than Spearman's and similar to it,
except that it lacked the marks of constant use. It was plain that,
since Spearman had chosen to put off discussion of Alan's status,
Sherrill did not know what next to do; he stood an instant in thought,
then, contenting himself with inviting Alan to lunch, he excused
himself to return to his office. When he had gone, closing the door
behind him, Alan began to pace swiftly up and down the room.
What had just passed had left him still breathless; he felt bewildered.
If every movement of Spearman's great, handsome body had not recalled
to him their struggle of the night before--if, as Spearman's hand
rested cordially on Sherrill's shoulder, Alan had not seemed to feel
again that big hand at his throat--he would almost have been ready to
believe that this was not the man whom he had fought. But he could not
doubt that; he had recognized Spearman beyond question. And Spearman
had recognized him--he was sure of that; he could not for an instant
doubt it; Spearman had known it was Alan whom he had fought in Corvet's
house even before Sherrill had brought them together. Was there not
further proof of that in Spearman's subsequent manner toward him? For
what was all this cordiality except defiance? Undoubtedly Spearman had
acted just as he had to show how undisturbed he was, how indifferent he
might be to any accusation Alan could make. Not having told Sherrill
of the encounter in the house--not having told any one else--Alan could
not tell it now, after Sherrill had informed him that Spearman opposed
his accession to Corvet's estate; or, at least, he could not tell who
the man was. In the face of Spearman's manner toward him to-day,
Sherrill would not believe. If Spearman denied it--and his story of
his return to town that morning made it perfectly certain that he would
deny it--it would be only Alan's word against Spearman's--the word of a
stranger unknown to Sherrill except by Alan's own account of himself
and the inferences from Corvet's acts. There could be no risk to
Spearman in that; he had nothing to fear if Alan blurted an accusation
against him. Spearman, perhaps, even wanted him to do that--hoped he
would do it. Nothing could more discredit Alan than such an
unsustainable accusation against the partner who was opposing Alan's
taking his father's place. For it had been plain that Spearman
dominated Sherrill, and that Sherrill felt confidence in and admiration
toward him.
Alan grew hot with the realization that, in the interview just past,
Spearman had also dominated him. He had been unable to find anything
adequate to do, anything adequate to answer, in opposition to this man
more than fifteen years older than himself and having a lifelong
experience in dealing with all kinds of men. He would not yield to
Spearman like that again; it was the bewilderment of his recognition of
Spearman that had made him do it. Alan stopped his pacing and flung
himself down in the leather desk-chair which had been Corvet's. He
could hear, at intervals, Spearman's heavy, genial voice addressing the
ship men in his office; its tones--half of comradeship, half of
command--told only too plainly his dominance over those men also. He
heard Spearman's office door open and some of the men go out; after a
time it opened again, and the rest went out. He heard Spearman's voice
in the outer office, then heard it again as Spearman returned alone
into his private office.
There was a telephone upon Corvet's desk which undoubtedly connected
with the switchboard in the general office. Alan picked up the
receiver and asked for "Mr. Spearman." At once the hearty voice
answered, "Yes."
"This is Conrad."
"I thought I told you I was busy, Conrad!" The 'phone clicked as
Spearman hung up the receiver.
The quality of the voice at the other end of the wire had altered; it
had become suddenly again the harsh voice of the man who had called
down curses upon "Ben" and on men "in Hell" in Corvet's library.
Alan sat back in his chair, smiling a little. It had not been for him,
then--that pretense of an almost mocking cordiality; Spearman was not
trying to deceive or to influence Alan by that. It had been merely for
Sherrill's benefit; or, rather, it had been because, in Sherrill's
presence, this had been the most effective weapon against Alan which
Spearman could employ. Spearman might, or might not, deny to Alan his
identity with the man whom Alan had fought; as yet Alan did not know
which Spearman would do; but, at least, between themselves there was to
be no pretense about the antagonism, the opposition they felt toward
one another.
Little prickling thrills of excitement were leaping through Alan, as he
got up and moved about the room again. The room was on a corner, and
there were two windows, one looking to the east over the white and blue
expanse of the harbor and the lake; the other showing the roofs and
chimneys, the towers and domes of Chicago, reaching away block after
block, mile after mile to the south and west, till they dimmed and
blurred in the brown haze of the sunlit smoke. Power and
possession--both far exceeding Alan's most extravagant dream--were
promised him by those papers which Sherrill had shown him. When he had
read down the list of those properties, he had had no more feeling,
that such things could be his than he had had at first that Corvet's
house could be his--until he had heard the intruder moving in that
house. And now it was the sense that another was going to make him
fight for those properties that was bringing to him the realization of
his new power. He "had" something on that man--on Spearman. He did
not know what that thing was; no stretch of his thought, nothing that
he knew about himself or others, could tell him; but, at sight of him,
in the dark of Corvet's house, Spearman had cried out in horror, he had
screamed at him the name of a sunken ship, and in terror had hurled his
electric torch. It was true, Spearman's terror had not been at Alan
Conrad; it had been because Spearman had mistaken him for some one
else--for a ghost. But, after learning that Alan was not a ghost,
Spearman's attitude had not very greatly changed; he had fought, he had
been willing to kill rather than to be caught there.
Alan thought an instant; he would make sure he still "had" that
something on Spearman and would learn how far it went. He took up the
receiver and asked for Spearman again.
Again the voice answered--"Yes."
"I don't care whether you're busy," Alan said evenly. "I think you and
I had better have a talk before we meet with Mr. Sherrill this
afternoon. I am here in Mr. Corvet's office now and will be here for
half an hour; then I'm going out."
Spearman made no reply but again hung up the receiver. Alan sat
waiting, his watch upon the desk before him--tense, expectant, with
flushes of hot and cold passing over him. Ten minutes passed; then
twenty. The telephone under Corvet's desk buzzed.
"Mr. Spearman says he will give you five minutes now," the switchboard
girl said.
Alan breathed deep with relief; Spearman had wanted to refuse to see
him--but he had not refused; he had sent for him within the time Alan
had appointed and after waiting until just before it expired.
Alan put his watch back into his pocket and, crossing to the other
office, found Spearman alone. There was no pretense of courtesy now in
Spearman's manner; he sat motionless at his desk, his bold eyes fixed
on Alan intently. Alan closed the door behind him and advanced toward
the desk.
"I thought we'd better have some explanation," he said, "about our
meeting last night."
"Our meeting?" Spearman repeated; his eyes had narrowed watchfully.
"You told Mr. Sherrill that you were in Duluth and that you arrived
home in Chicago only this morning. Of course you don't mean to stick
to that story with me?"
"What are you talking about?" Spearman demanded.
"Of course, I know exactly where you were a part of last evening; and
you know that I know. I only want to know what explanation you have to
offer."
Spearman leaned forward. "Talk sense and talk it quick, if you have
anything to say to me!"
"I haven't told Mr. Sherrill that I found you at Corvet's house last
night; but I don't want you to doubt for a minute that I know you--and
about your damning of Benjamin Corvet and your cry about saving the
_Miwaka_!"
A flash of blood came to Spearman's face; Alan, in his excitement, was
sure of it; but there was just that flash, no more. He turned, while
Spearman sat chewing his cigar and staring at him, and went out and
partly closed the door. Then, suddenly, he reopened it, looked in,
reclosed it sharply, and went on his way, shaking a little. For, as he
looked back this second time at the dominant, determined, able man
seated at his desk, what he had seen in Spearman's face was fear; fear
of himself, of Alan Conrad of Blue Rapids--yet it was not fear of that
sort which weakens or dismays; it was of that sort which, merely
warning of danger close at hand, determines one to use every means
within his power to save himself.
Alan, still trembling excitedly, crossed to Corvet's office to await
Sherrill. It was not, he felt sure now, Alan Conrad that Spearman was
opposing; it was not even the apparent successor to the controlling
stock of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman. That Alan resembled some
one--some one whose ghost had seemed to come to Spearman and might,
perhaps, have come to Corvet--was only incidental to what was going on
now; for in Alan's presence Spearman found a threat--an active, present
threat against himself. Alan could not imagine what the nature of that
threat could be. Was it because there was something still concealed in
Corvet's house which Spearman feared Alan would find? Or was it
connected only with that some one whom Alan resembled? Who was it Alan
resembled? His mother? In what had been told him, in all that he had
been able to learn about himself, Alan had found no mention of his
mother--no mention, indeed, of any woman. There had been mention,
definite mention, of but one thing which seemed, no matter what form
these new experiences of his took, to connect himself with all of
them--mention of a ship, a lost ship--the _Miwaka_. That name had
stirred Alan, when he first heard it, with the first feeling he had
been able to get of any possible connection between himself and these
people here. Spoken by himself just now it had stirred, queerly
stirred, Spearman. What was it, then, that he--Alan--had to do with
the _Miwaka_? Spearman might--must have had something to do with it.
So must Corvet. But himself--he had been not yet three years old when
the _Miwaka_ was lost! Beyond and above all other questions, what had
Constance Sherrill to do with it?
She had continued to believe that Corvet's disappearance was related in
some way to herself. Alan would rather trust her intuition as to this
than trust to Sherrill's contrary opinion. Yet she, certainly, could
have had no direct connection with a ship lost about the time she was
born and before her father had allied himself with the firm of Corvet
and Spearman. In the misty warp and woof of these events, Alan could
find as yet nothing which could have involved her. But he realized
that he was thinking about her even more than he was thinking about
Spearman--more, at that moment, even than about the mystery which
surrounded himself.
Constance Sherrill, as she went about her shopping at Field's, was
feeling the strangeness of the experience she had shared that morning
with Alan when she had completed for him the Indian creation legend and
had repeated the ship rhymes of his boyhood; but her more active
thought was about Henry Spearman, for she had a luncheon engagement
with him at one o'clock. He liked one always to be prompt at
appointments; he either did not keep an engagement at all, or he was on
the minute, neither early nor late, except for some very unusual
circumstance. Constance could never achieve such accurate punctuality,
so several minutes before the hour she went to the agreed corner of the
silverware department.
She absorbed herself intently with the selection of her purchase as one
o'clock approached. She was sure that, after his three days' absence,
he would be a moment early rather than late; but after selecting what
she wanted, she monopolized twelve minutes more of the salesman's time
in showing her what she had no intention of purchasing, before she
picked out Henry's vigorous step from the confusion of ordinary
footfalls in the aisle behind her. Though she had determined, a few
moments before, to punish him a little, she turned quickly.
"Sorry I'm late, Connie." That meant that it was no ordinary business
matter that had detained him; but there was nothing else noticeably
unusual in his tone.
"It's certainly your turn to be the tardy one," she admitted.
"I'd never take my turn if I could help it--particularly just after
being away; you know that."
She turned carelessly to the clerk. "I'll take that too,"--she
indicated the trinket which she had examined last. "Send it, please.
I've finished here now, Henry."
"I thought you didn't like that sort of thing." His glance had gone to
the bit of frippery in the clerk's hand.
"I don't," she confessed.
"Then don't buy it. She doesn't want that; don't send it," he directed
the salesman.
"Very well, sir."
Henry touched her arm and turned her away. She flushed a little, but
she was not displeased. Any of the other men whom she knew would have
wasted twenty dollars, as lightly as herself, rather than confess, "I
really didn't want anything more; I just didn't want to be seen
waiting." They would not have admitted--those other men--that such a
sum made the slightest difference to her or, by inference, to them; but
Henry was always willing to admit that there had been a time when money
meant much to him, and he gained respect thereby.
The tea room of such a department store as Field's offers to young
people opportunities for dining together without furnishing reason for
even innocently connecting their names too intimately, if a girl is not
seen there with the same man too often. There is something essentially
casual and unpremeditated about it--as though the man and the girl,
both shopping and both hungry, had just happened to meet and go to
lunch together. As Constance recently had drawn closer to Henry
Spearman in her thought, and particularly since she had been seriously
considering marrying him, she had clung deliberately to this unplanned
appearance about their meetings. She found something thrilling in this
casualness too. Spearman's bigness, which attracted eyes to him always
in a crowd, was merely the first and most obvious of the things which
kept attention on him; there were few women who, having caught sight of
the big, handsome, decisive, carefully groomed man, could look away at
once. If Constance suspected that, ten years before, it might have
been the eyes of shop-girls that followed Spearman with the greatest
interest, she was certain no one could find anything flashy about him
now. What he compelled now was admiration and respect alike for his
good looks and his appearance of personal achievement--a tribute very
different from the tolerance granted those boys brought up as
irresponsible inheritors of privilege like herself.
As they reached the restaurant and passed between the rows of tables,
women looked up at him; oblivious, apparently, to their gaze, he chose
a table a little removed from the others, where servants hurried to
take his order, recognizing one whose time was of importance. She
glanced across at him, when she had settled herself, and the first
little trivialities of their being together were over.
"I took a visitor down to your office this morning," she said.
"Yes," he answered.
Constance was aware that it was only formally that she had taken Alan
Conrad down to confer with her father; since Henry was there, she knew
her father would not act without his agreement, and that whatever
disposition had been made regarding Alan had been made by him. She
wondered what that disposition had been.
"Did you like him, Henry?"
"Like him?" She would have thought that the reply was merely
inattentive; but Henry was never merely that.
"I hoped you would."
He did not answer at once. The waitress brought their order, and he
served her; then, as the waitress moved away, he looked across at
Constance with a long scrutiny.
"You hoped I would!" he repeated, with his slow smile. "Why?"
"He seemed to be in a difficult position and to be bearing himself
well; and mother was horrid to him."
"How was she horrid?"
"About the one thing which, least of all, could be called his
fault--about his relationship to--to Mr. Corvet. But he stood up to
her!"
The lids drew down a little upon Spearman's eyes as he gazed at her.
"You've seen a good deal of him, yesterday and to-day, your father
tells me," he observed.
"Yes." As she ate, she talked, telling him about her first meeting
with Alan and about their conversation of the morning and the queer
awakening in him of those half memories which seemed to connect him in
some way with the lakes. She felt herself flushing now and then with
feeling, and once she surprised herself by finding her eyes wet when
she had finished telling Henry about showing Alan the picture of his
father. Henry listened intently, eating slowly. When she stopped, he
appeared to be considering something.
"That's all he told you about himself?" he inquired.
"Yes."
"And all you told him?"
"He asked me some things about the lakes and about the _Miwaka_, which
was lost so long ago--he said he'd found some reference to that and
wanted to know whether it was a ship. I told him about it and about
the Drum which made people think that the crew were not all lost."
"About the Drum! What made you speak of that?" The irritation in his
tone startled her and she looked quickly up at him. "I mean," he
offered, "why did you drag in a crazy superstition like that? You
don't believe in the Drum, Connie!"
"It would be so interesting if some one really had been saved and if
the Drum had told the truth, that sometimes I think I'd like to believe
in it. Wouldn't you, Henry?"
"No," he said abruptly. "No!" Then quickly:
"It's plain enough you like him," he remarked.
She reflected seriously. "Yes, I do; though I hadn't thought of it
just that way, because I was thinking most about the position he was in
and about--Mr. Corvet. But I do like him."
"So do I," Spearman said with a seeming heartiness that pleased her.
He broke a piece of bread upon the tablecloth and his big, well-shaped
fingers began to roll it into little balls. "At least I should like
him, Connie, if I had the sort of privilege you have to think whether I
liked or disliked him. I've had to consider him from another point of
view--whether I could trust him or must distrust him."
"Distrust?" Constance bent toward him impulsively in her surprise.
"Distrust him? In relation to what? Why?"
"In relation to Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman, Connie--the company
that involves your interests and your father's and mine and the
interests of many other people--small stockholders who have no
influence in its management, and whose interests I have to look after
for them. A good many of them, you know, are our own men--our old
skippers and mates and families of men who have died in our service and
who left their savings in stock in our ships."
"I don't understand, Henry."
"I've had to think of Conrad this morning in the same way as I've had
to think of Ben Corvet of recent years--as a threat against the
interests of those people."
Her color rose, and her pulse quickened. Henry never had talked to
her, except in the merest commonplaces, about his relations with Uncle
Benny; it was a matter in which, she had recognized, they had been
opposed; and since the quarrels between the old friend whom she had
loved from childhood and him, who wished to become now more than a mere
friend to her, had grown more violent, she had purposely avoided
mentioning Uncle Benny to Henry, and he, quite as consciously, had
avoided mentioning Mr. Corvet to her.
"I've known for a good many years," Spearman said reluctantly, "that
Ben Corvet's brain was seriously affected. He recognized that himself
even earlier, and admitted it to himself when he took me off my ship to
take charge of the company. I might have gone with other people then,
or it wouldn't have been very long before I could have started in as a
ship owner myself; but, in view of his condition, Ben made me promises
that offered me most. Afterwards his malady progressed so that he
couldn't know himself to be untrustworthy; his judgment was impaired,
and he planned and would have tried to carry out many things which
would have been disastrous for the company. I had to fight him--for
the company's sake and for my own sake and that of the others, whose
interests were at stake. Your father came to see that what I was doing
was for the company's good and has learned to trust me. But you--you
couldn't see that quite so directly, of course, and you thought I
didn't--like Ben, that there was some lack in me which made me fail to
appreciate him."
"No; not that," Constance denied quickly. "Not that, Henry."
"What was it then, Connie? You thought me ungrateful to him? I
realized that I owed a great deal to him; but the only way I could pay
that debt was to do exactly what I did--oppose him and seem to push
into his place and be an ingrate; for, because I did that, Ben's been a
respected and honored man in this town all these last years, which he
couldn't have remained if I'd let him have his way, or if I told others
why I had to do what I did. I didn't care what others thought about
me; but I did care what you thought; yet if you couldn't see what I was
up against because of your affection for him, why--that was all right
too."
"No, it wasn't all right," she denied almost fiercely, the flush
flooding her cheeks; a throbbing was in her throat which, for an
instant, stopped her. "You should have told me, Henry; or--I should
have been able to see."
"I couldn't tell you--dear," he said the last word very distinctly, but
so low that she could scarcely hear. "I couldn't tell you now--if Ben
hadn't gone away as he has and this other fellow come. I couldn't tell
you when you wanted to keep caring so much for your Uncle Benny, and he
was trying to hurt me with you."
She bent toward him, her lips parted; but now she did not speak. She
never had really known Henry until this moment, she felt; she had
thought of him always as strong, almost brutal, fighting down fiercely,
mercilessly, his opponents and welcoming contest for the joy of
overwhelming others by his own decisive strength and power. And she
had been almost ready to marry that man for his strength and dominance
from those qualities; and now she knew that he was merciful
too--indeed, more than merciful. In the very contest where she had
thought of him as most selfish and regardless of another, she had most
completely misapprehended.
"I ought to have seen!" she rebuked herself to him. "Surely, I should
have seen that was it!" Her hand, in the reproach of her feeling,
reached toward him across the table; he caught it and held it in his
large, strong hand which, in its touch, was very tender too. She had
never allowed any such demonstration as this before; but now she let
her hand remain in his.
"How could you see?" he defended her. "He never showed to you the side
he showed to me and--in these last years, anyway--never to me the side
he showed to you. But after what has happened this week, you can
understand now; and you can see why I have to distrust the young fellow
who's come to claim Ben Covert's place."
"Claim!" Constance repeated; she drew her hand quietly away from his
now. "Why, Henry, I did not know he claimed anything; he didn't even
know when he came here--"
"He seems, like Ben Corvet," Henry said slowly, "to have the
characteristic of showing one side to you, another to me, Connie. With
you, of course, he claimed nothing; but at the office-- Your father
showed him this morning the instruments of transfer that Ben seems to
have left conveying to him all Ben had--his other properties and his
interest in Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman. I very naturally objected
to the execution of those transfers, without considerable examination,
in view of Corvet's mental condition and of the fact that they put the
controlling stock of Corvet, Sherrill, and Spearman in the hands of a
youth no one ever had heard of--and one who, by his own story, never
had seen a ship until yesterday. And when I didn't dismiss my business
with a dozen men this morning to take him into the company, he claimed
occasion to see me alone to threaten me."
"Threaten you, Henry? How? With what?"
"I couldn't quite make out myself, but that was his tone; he demanded
an 'explanation' of exactly what, he didn't make clear. He has been
given by Ben, apparently, the technical control of Corvet, Sherrill,
and Spearman. His idea, if I oppose him, evidently is to turn me out
and take the management himself."
Constance leaned back, confused. "He--Alan Conrad?" she questioned.
"He can't have done that, Henry! Oh, he can't have meant that!"
"Maybe he didn't; I said I couldn't make out what he did mean,"
Spearman said. "Things have come upon him with rather a rush, of
course; and you couldn't expect a country boy to get so many things
straight. He's acting, I suppose, only in the way one might expect a
boy to act who had been brought up in poverty on a Kansas prairie and
was suddenly handed the possible possession of a good many millions of
dollars. It's better to believe that he's only lost his head. I
haven't had opportunity to tell your father these things yet; but I
wanted you to understand why Conrad will hardly consider me a friend."
"I'll understand you now, Henry," she promised.
He gazed at her and started to speak; then, as though postponing it on
account of the place, he glanced around and took out his watch.
"You must go back?" she asked.
"No; I'm not going back to the office this afternoon, Connie; but I
must call up your father."
He excused himself and went into the nearest telephone booth.