[Illustration: “I saw there something missing from her great blue eyes.
I looked; gasped”]
Friday, the Thirteenth
A Novel by
Thomas W. Lawson
Frontispiece in colour by Sigismond de Ivanowski
1907
Copyright, 1906, 1907.
Copyright, 1907.
Published, February, 1907
To Her
I Dedicate This Book
All That Is Good In This Little Waif, Which Is Very
Dear To Me, I Know A Just God Will Place To
Her Credit. All That Is Mean And Low And
Human Could Never Have Been Birthed
Had She Been Nigh To Guide An
Ever Wayward Pen.
_The Author._
_The Nest, Dreamwold,
August, 1906._
Friday, the Thirteenth
Chapter I.
“Friday, the 13th; I thought as much. If Bob has started, there will be
hell, but I will see what I can do.”
The sound of my voice, as I dropped the receiver, seemed to part the mists
of five years and usher me into the world of Then as though it had never
passed on.
I had been sitting in my office, letting the tape slide through my fingers
while its every yard spelled “panic” in a constantly rising voice, when
they told me that Brownley on the floor of the Exchange wanted me at the
’phone, and “quick.” Brownley was our junior partner and floor man. He
talked with a rush. Stock Exchange floor men in panics never let their
speech hobble.
“Mr. Randolph, it’s sizzling over here, and it’s getting hotter every
second. It’s Bob—that is evident to all. If he keeps up this pace for
twenty minutes longer, the sulphur will overflow ‘the Street’ and get
into the banks and into the country, and no man can tell how much
territory will be burned over by to-morrow. The boys have begged me to ask
you to throw yourself into the breach and stay him. They agree you are the
only hope now.”
“Are you sure, Fred, that this is Bob’s work?” I asked. “Have you seen
him?”
“Yes, I have just come from his office, and glad I was to get out. He’s on
the war-path, Mr. Randolph—uglier than I ever saw him. The last time he
broke loose was child’s play to his mood to-day. Mother sent me word this
morning that she saw last night the spell was coming. He had been up to
see her and sisters, and mother thought from his tone he was about to
disappear again. When she told me of his mood, and I remembered the day, I
was afraid he might seek his vent here. Also I heard of his being about
town till long after midnight. The minute I opened his office door this
morning he flew at me like a panther. I told him I had only dropped in on
my rounds for an order, as they were running off right smart, and I didn’t
know but he might like to pick up some bargains. ‘Bargains!’ he roared,
‘don’t you know the day? Don’t you know it is Friday, the 13th? Go back
to that hell-pit and sell, sell, sell.’ ‘Sell what and how much?’ I asked.
‘Anything, everything. Give the thieves every share they will take, and
when they won’t take any more, ram as much again down their crops until
they spit up all they have been buying for the last three months!’ Going
out I met Jim Holliday and Frank Swan rushing in. They are evidently
executing Bob’s orders, and have been pouring Anti-People’s out for an
hour. They will be on the floor again in a few minutes, so I thought it
safer to call you before I started to sell. Mr. Randolph, they cannot take
much more of anything in here, and if I begin to throw stocks over, it
will bring the gavel inside of ten minutes; and that will be to announce a
dozen failures. It’s yet twenty minutes to one and God only knows what
will happen before three. It’s up to you, Mr. Randolph, to do something,
and unless I am on a bad slant, you haven’t many minutes to lose.”
It was then I dropped the receiver with “I thought as much!” As I had been
fingering the tape, watching five and ten millions crumbling from price
values every few minutes, I was sure this was the work of Bob Brownley.
No one else in Wall Street had the power, the nerve, and the devilish
cruelty to rip things as they had been ripped during the last twenty
minutes. The night before I had passed Bob in the theatre lobby. I gave
him close scrutiny and saw the look of which I of all men best knew the
meaning. The big brown eyes were set on space; the outer corners of the
handsome mouth were drawn hard and tense as though weighted. As I had my
wife with me it was impossible to follow him, but when I got home I called
up his house and his clubs, intending to ask, him to run up and smoke a
cigar with me, but could locate him nowhere. I tried again in the morning
without success, but when just before noon the tape began to jump and
flash and snarl, I remembered Bob’s ugly mood, and all it portended.
Fred Brownley was Bob’s youngest brother, twelve years his junior. He had
been with Randolph & Randolph from the day he left college, and for over a
year had been our most trusted Stock Exchange man. Bob Brownley, when
himself, was as fond of his “baby brother,” as he called him, as his
beautiful Southern mother was of both; but when the devil had possession
of Bob—and his option during the past five years had been exercised many
a time—mother and brother had to take their place with all the rest of
the world, for then Bob knew no kindred, no friends. All the wide world
was to him during those periods a jungle peopled with savage animals and
reptiles to hunt and fight and tear and kill.
It is hardly necessary for me to explain who Randolph & Randolph are. For
more than sixty years the name has spoken for itself in every part of the
world where dollar-making machines are installed. No railroad is financed,
no great “industrial” projected, without by force of habit, hat-in-handing
a by-your-leave of Randolph & Randolph, and every nation when entering the
market for loans, knows that the favour of the foremost American bankers
is something which must be reckoned with. I pride myself that at
forty-two, at the end of the ten years I have had the helm of Randolph &
Randolph, I have done nothing to mar the great name my father and uncle
created, but something to add to its sterling reputation for honest
dealing, fearless, old-fashioned methods, and all-round integrity.
Bradstreet’s and other mercantile agencies say, in reporting Randolph &
Randolph, “Worth fifty millions and upward, credit unlimited.” I can take
but small praise for this, for the report was about the same the day I
left college and came to the office to “learn the business.” But, as the
survivor of my great father and uncle, I can say, my Maker as my witness,
that Randolph & Randolph have never loaned a dollar of their millions at
over legal rates, 6 per cent, per annum; have never added to their hoard
by any but fair, square business methods; and that blight of blights,
frenzied finance, has yet to find a lodging-place beneath the old
black-and-gold sign that father and uncle nailed up with their own hands
over the entrance.
Nineteen years ago I was graduated from Harvard. My classmate and chum,
Bob Brownley, of Richmond, Va., was graduated with me. He was class poet,
I, yard marshal. We had been four years together at St. Paul’s previous to
entering Harvard. No girl and lover were fonder than we of each other.
My people had money, and to spare, and with it a hard-headed, Northern
horse-sense. The Brownleys were poor as church mice, but they had the
brilliant, virile blood of the old Southern oligarchy and the romantic,
“salaam-to-no-one” Dixie-land pride of before-the-war days, when Southern
prodigality and hospitality were found wherever women were fair and men’s
mirrors in the bottom of their julep-glasses.
Bob’s father, one of the big, white pillars of Southern aristocracy, had
gone through Congress and the Senate of his country to the tune of “Spend
and not spare,” which left his widow and three younger daughters and a
small son dependent upon Bob, his eldest.
Many a warm summer’s afternoon, as Bob and I paddled down the Charles, and
often on a cold, crispy night as we sat in my shooting-box on the Cape Cod
shore, had we matched up for our future. I was to have the inside run of
the great banking business of Randolph & Randolph, and Bob was eventually
to represent my father’s firm on the floor of the Stock Exchange. “I’d die
in an office,” Bob used to say, “and the floor of the Stock Exchange is
just the chimney-place to roast my hoe-cake in.” So when our college days
were over my able had saddled Bob’s youth with the heavy responsibilities
of husbanding and directing his family’s slim finances that he took to
business as a swallow to the air. We entered the office of Randolph &
Randolph on the same day, and on its anniversary, a year later, my father
summoned us into his office for a sort of tally-up talk. Neither of us
quite knew what was coming, and we thrilled with pleasure when he said:
“Jim, you and Bob have fairly outdone my expectations. I have had my eye
on both of you and I want you to know that the kind of industry and
business intelligence you have shown here would have won you recognition
in any banking-house on ‘the Street.’ I want you both in the firm—Jim to
learn his way round so he can step into my shoes; you, Bob, to take one of
the firm’s seats on the Stock Exchange.”
Bob’s face went red and then pale with happiness as he reached for my
father’s hand.
“I’m very grateful to you sir, far more so than any words can say, but I
want to talk this proposition of yours over with Jim here first. He knows
me better than any one else in the world and I’ve some ideas I’d like to
thrash out with him.”
“Speak up here, Bob,” said my father.
“Well, sir, I should feel much better if I could go over there into the
swirl and smash it out for myself. You see if I could win out alone and
pay back the seat price, and then make a pile for myself, if you felt
later like giving me another chance to come into the firm, then I should
not be laying myself open to the charge of being a mere pensioner on your
friendship. You know what I mean, sir, and won’t think I am filled with
any low-down pride, but if you will let me have the price of a Stock
Exchange seat on my note, and will give me the chance, when I get the hang
of the ropes, to handle some of the firm’s orders, I shall be just as much
beholden to you and Jim, sir, and shall feel a lot better myself.”
I knew what Bob meant; so did father, and we were glad enough to do what
he asked, father insisting on making the seat price in the form of a
present, after explaining to us that a foundation Stock Exchange rule
prohibited an applicant from borrowing the seat price. Four years after
Bob Brownley entered the Stock Exchange he had paid back the forty
thousand, with interest, and not only had a snug fifty thousand to his
credit on Randolph & Randolph’s books, but was sending home six thousand a
year while living up to, as he jokingly put it, “an honest man’s notch.” I
may say in passing, that a Wall Street man’s notch would make twice six
thousand yearly earnings cast an uncertain shadow at Christmas time. Bob
was the favourite of the Exchange, as he had been the pet at school and at
college, and had his hands full of business three hundred days in the
year. Besides Randolph & Randolph’s choicest commissions, he had the
confidential orders of two of the heavy plunging cliques.
I had just passed my thirty-second birthday when my kind old dad suddenly
died. For the previous six years I had been getting ready for such an
event; that is, I had grown accustomed to hearing my father say: “Jim,
don’t let any grass grow in getting the hang of every branch of our
business, so that when anything happens to me there will be no disturbance
in ‘the Street’ in regard to Randolph & Randolph’s affairs. I want to let
the world know as soon as possible that after I am gone our business will
run as it always has. So I will work you into my directorships in those
companies where we have interests and gradually put you into my different
trusteeships.”
Thus at father’s death there was not a ripple in our affairs and none of
the stocks known as “The Randolph’s” fluttered a point because of that, to
the financial world, momentous event. I inherited all of father’s fortune
other than four millions, which he divided up among relatives and
charities, and took command of a business that gave me an income of two
millions and a half a year.
Once more I begged Bob to come into the firm.
“Not yet, Jim,” he replied. “I’ve got my seat and about a hundred thousand
capital, and I want to feel that I’m free to kick my heels until I have
raked together an even million all of my own making; then I’ll settle down
with you, old man, and hold my handle of the plough, and if some good girl
happens along about that time—well, then it will be ‘An ivy-covered
little cot’ for mine.”
He laughed, and I laughed too. Bob was looked upon by all his friends as a
bad case of woman-shy. No woman, young or old, who had in any way crossed
Bob’s orbit but had felt that fascination, delicious to all women, in the
presence of:
A soul by honour schooled,
A heart by passion ruled—
but he never seemed to see it. As my wife—for I had been three years
married and had two little Randolphs to show that both Katherine Blair and
I knew what marriage was for—never tired of saying, “Poor Bob! He’s
woman-blind, and it looks as though he would never get his sight in that
direction.”
“Then again, Jim,” he continued in a tone of great seriousness, “there’s a
little secret I have never let even you into. The truth is I am not safe
yet—not safe to speak for the old house of Randolph & Randolph. Yes, you
may laugh—you who are, and always have been, as staunch and steady as the
old bronze John Harvard in the yard, you who know Monday mornings just
what you are going to do Saturday nights and all the days and nights in
between, and who always do it. Jim, I have found since I have been over on
the floor that the Southern gambling blood that made my grandfather, on
one of his trips back from New York, though he had more land and slaves
than he could use, stake his land and slaves—yes, and grandmother’s
too—on a card-game, and—lose, and change the whole face of the Brownley
destiny—those same gambling microbes are in my blood, and when they begin
to claw and gnaw I want to do something; and, Jim”—and the big brown eyes
suddenly shot sparks—“if those microbes ever get unleashed, there’ll be
mischief to pay on the floor—sure there will!”
Bob’s handsome head was thrown back; his thin nostrils dilated as though
there was in them the breath of conflict. The lips were drawn across the
white teeth with just part enough to show their edges, and in the depths
of the eyes was a dark-red blaze that somehow gave the impression one gets
in looking down some long avenue of black at the instant a locomotive
headlight rounds a curve at night.
Twice before, way back in our college days, I had had a peep at this
gambling tempter of Bob’s. Once in a poker game in our rooms, when a crowd
of New York classmates tried to run him out of a hand by the sheer weight
of coin. And again at the Pequot House at New London on the eve of a
varsity boat-race, when a Yale crowd shook a big wad of money and taunts
at Bob until with a yell he left his usually well-leaded feet and
frightened me, whose allowance was dollars to Bob’s cents, at the sum
total of the bet-cards he signed before he cleared the room of Yale money
and came to with a white face streaming with cold perspiration. These
events had passed out of my memory as the ordinary student breaks that any
hot-blooded youth is liable to make in like circumstances. As I looked at
Bob that day, while he tried to tell me that the business of Randolph &
Randolph would not be safe in his keeping, I had to admit to myself that I
was puzzled. I had regarded my old college chum not only as the best
mentally harnessed man I had ever met, but I knew him as the soul of
honour, that honour of the old story-books, and I could not credit his
being tempted to jeopardise unfairly the rights or property of another.
But it was habit with me to let Bob have his way, and I did not press him
to come into our firm as a full partner.
Five years later, during which time affairs, business and social, had been
slipping along as well as either Bob or I could have asked, I was
preparing for another sit-down to show my chum that the time had now come
for him to help me in earnest, when a queer thing happened—one of those
unaccountable incidents that God sometimes sees fit to drop across the
life-paths of His children, paths heretofore as straight and
far-ahead-visible as highways along which one has never to look twice to
see where he is travelling; one of those events that, looked at
retrospectively, are beyond all human understanding.
It was a beautiful July Saturday noon and Bob and I had just “packed up”
for the day preparatory to joining Mrs. Randolph on my yacht for a run
down to our place at Newport. As we stepped out of his office one of the
clerks announced that a lady had come in and had particularly asked to see
Mr. Brownley.
“Who the deuce can she be, coming in at this time on Saturday, just when
all alive men are in a rush to shake the heat and dirt of business for
food and the good air of all outdoors?” growled Bob. Then he said, “Show
her in.”
Another minute and he had his answer.
A lady entered.
“Mr. Brownley?” She waited an instant to make sure he was the Virginian.
Bob bowed.
“I am Beulah Sands, of Sands Landing, Virginia. Your people know our
people, Mr. Brownley, probably well enough for you to place me.”
“Of the Judge Lee Sands’s?” asked Bob, as he held out his hand.
“I am Judge Lee Sands’s oldest daughter,” said the sweetest voice I had
ever heard, one of those mellow, rippling voices that start the
imagination on a chase for a mocking-bird, only to bring it up at the pool
beneath the brook-fall in quest of the harp of moss and watercresses that
sends a bubbling cadence into its eddies and swirls. Perhaps it was the
Southern accent that nibbled off the corners and edges of certain words
and languidly let others mist themselves together, that gave it its
luscious penetration—however that may be, it was the most
no-yesterday-no-tomorrow voice I had ever heard. Before I grew fully
conscious of the exquisite beauty of the girl, this voice of hers spelled
its way into my brain like the breath of some bewitching Oriental essence.
Nature, environment, the security of a perfect marriage have ever
combined to constitute me loyal to my chosen one, yet as I stood silent,
like one dumb, absorbing the details of the loveliness of this young
stranger who had so suddenly swept into my office, it came over me that
here was a woman intended to enlighten men who could not understand that
shaft which in all ages has without warning pierced men’s hearts and
souls—love at first sight. Had there not been Katherine Blair, wife and
mother—Katherine Blair Randolph, who filled my love-world as the noonday
August sun fills the old-fashioned well with nestling warmth and restful
shade—after this interval, looking back at the past, I dare ask the
question—who knows but that I too might have drifted from the secure
anchorage of my slow Yankee blood and floated into the deep waters?
Beauty, the cynic’s scoff, is in the eye of the beholder, or in an angle
of vision—mere product of lime-light, point of view, desire—but Beulah
Sands’s was beauty beyond cavil, superior to all analysis, as definite as
the evening star against the twilight sky. In height medium, girlish, but
with a figure maturely modelled, charmingly full and rounded, yet by very
perfection of proportion escaping suggestion of “plumpness.” The head,
surrounded and crowned with a wealth of dark golden hair, rested on a neck
that would have seemed short had its slender column sprung less graciously
from the lovely lines of the breast and shoulders beneath. It was on the
face, however, and finally on the eyes that one’s glances inevitably
lingered—the face rose-tinted, with dimples in either of the full cheeks,
entering laughing protest against the sad droop that brought slightly down
the corners of a mouth too large perhaps for beauty, if the coral curve of
the lips had been less exquisitely perfect. The straight, thin-nostriled
nose, the broad forehead, the square, full jaw almost as low at the points
where they come beneath the ears as at the chin, suggested dignity and
high resolve coupled with a power of purpose, rare in woman. The
combination of forehead, jaw, and nose was seldom seen. Had it been
possessed by a man it would surely have driven him to the tented field for
his profession. But the greatest glory of Beulah Sands was her
eyes—large, full, very gray, very blue, vivid with all the glamour of her
personality, full of smiles and tears and spirituality and passion; one
instant, frankly innocent, they illuminated the face of a blonde Madonna;
the next, seen through the extraordinary, long, jet-black eye-lashes
underneath the finely pencilled black brows, they caressed, coquetted,
allured. I afterward found much of this girl’s purely physical fascination
lay in this strange blending of English fairness with Andalusian tints,
though the abiding quality of her charm was surely in an exaltation of
spirit of which she might make the dullest conscious. As she stood looking
at Bob in my office that long-ago noon, gracefully at ease in a suit of
gray, with a gray-feathered turban on her head, and tiny lace bands at
neck and wrist, she was very exquisite, exceedingly dainty, and, though
Southerner of Southerners, very unlike the typical brunette girl who comes
out of Dixie land.
This girl who came into our office that July Saturday, just in time to
interfere with the outing Bob Brownley and I had laid out, and who was
destined to divert my chum’s heretofore smooth-flowing river of existence
and turn it into an alternation of roaring rushes and deadly calms, was
truly the most exquisite creature one could conceive of, I know my
thought must have been Bob’s too, for his eyes were riveted on her face.
She dropped the black lashes like a veil as she went on:
“Mr. Brownley, I have just come from Sands Landing. I am very anxious to
talk with you on a business matter. I have brought a letter to you from my
father. If you have other engagements I can wait until Monday, although,”
and the black veiling lashes lifted, showing the half-laughing,
half-pathetic eyes, “I wanted much to lay my business before you at the
earliest minute possible.”
There was a faint touch of appeal in the charming voice as she spoke that
was irresistible, and we were both willing to forget we had lunch waiting
us on the _Tribesman_.
“Step into my office, Miss Sands, and all my time is yours,” said Bob, as
he opened the door between his office and mine. After I had sent a note to
my wife, saying we might be delayed for an hour or two, I settled down to
wait for Bob in the general office, and it was a long wait. Thirty minutes
went into an hour and an hour into two before Bob and Miss Sands came out.
After he had put her in a cab for her hotel, he said in a tone curiously
intent: “Jim, I have got to talk with you, got to get some of your good
advice. Suppose we hustle along to the yacht and after lunch you tell Kate
we have some business to go over. I don’t want to keep that girl waiting
any longer than possible for an answer I cannot give until I get your
ideas.” After lunch, on the bow end of the upper deck Bob relieved
himself. Relieved is the word, for from the minute he had put Miss Sands
into the carriage until then, it was evident even to my wife that his
thoughts were anywhere but upon our outing.
“Jim,” he began in a voice that shook in spite of his efforts to make it
sound calm, “there is no disguising the fact that I am mightily worked up
about this matter, and I want to do everything possible for this girl. No
need of my telling you how sacred we have got to keep what she has just
let me into. You’ll see as I go along that it is sacred, and I know you
will look at it as I do. Miss Sands must be helped out of her trouble.
“Judge Lee Sands, her father, is the head of the old Sands family of
Virginia. The Virginia Sands don’t take off their bonnets to another
family in this country, or elsewhere, for that matter, for anything that
really counts. They have had brains, learning, money, and fixed position
since Virginia was first settled. They are the best people of our State.
It is a cross-road saying in Virginia that a Sands of Sands Landing can go
to the bench, the United States Senate, the House, or the governor’s chair
for the starting, and nearly all of the men folks have held one or all of
these honours for generations. The present judge has held them all. I
don’t know him personally, although my people and his have been thick from
away back. Sands Landing on the James is some fifty miles above our home.
The judge, Beulah Sands’s father, is close on to seventy, and I have heard
mother and father say is a stalwart, a Virginia stalwart. Being rich—that
is, what we Virginians call rich, a million or so—he has been very active
in affairs, and I knew before his daughter told me, that he was the
trustee for about all the best estates in our part of the country. It
seems from what she tells, that of late he has been very active in
developing our coal-mines and railroads, and that particularly he took a
prominent hand in the Seaboard Air Line. You know the road, for your
father was a director, and I think the house has been prominent in its
banking affairs. Now, Jim, this poor girl, who, it seems, has recently
been acting as the judge’s secretary, has just learned that that coup of
Reinhart and his crowd has completely ruined her father. The decline has
swamped his own fortune, and, what is worse, a million to a million and a
half of his trust funds as well, and the old judge—well, you and I can
understand his position. Yet I do not know that you just can, either, for
you do not quite understand our Virginia life and the kind of revered
position a man like Judge Sands occupies. You would have to know that to
understand fully his present purgatory and the terrible position of this
daughter, for it seems that since he began to get into deep water he has
been relying upon her for courage and ideas. From our talk I gather she
has a wonderful store of up-to-date business notions, and I am convinced
from what she lays out that the judge’s affairs are hopeless, and, Jim,
when that old man goes down it will be a smash that will shake our State
in more ways than one.
“Up to now the girl has stood up to the blow like a man and has been able
to steady the judge until he presents an exterior that holds down
suspicion as to his real financial condition, although she says Reinhart
and his Baltimore lawyer, from the ruthless way they put on the screws to
shake out his holdings in the Air Line, must have a line on it that the
judge is overboard. The old gentleman can keep things going for six months
longer without jeopardising any of the remaining trust funds, of which he
has some two millions, and while his wife, who is an invalid, knows the
judge is in some trouble, she does not suspect his real position. His
daughter says that when the blow came, that day of the panic, when
Reinhart jammed the stock out of sight and scuttled her father’s bankers
and partners in the road, the Wilsons of Baltimore, she had a frightful
struggle to keep her father from going insane. She told me that for three
days and nights she kept him locked in their rooms at their hotel in
Baltimore, to prevent him from hunting Reinhart and his lawyer Rettybone
and killing them both, but that at last she got him calmed down and
together they have been planning.
“Jim, it was tough to sit there and listen to the schemes to recoup that
this old gentleman and this girl, for she is only twenty-one, have tried
to hatch up. The tears actually rolled down my cheeks as I listened; I
couldn’t help it; you couldn’t either, Jim. But at last out of all the
plans considered, they found only one that had a tint of hope in it, and
the serious mention of even that one, Jim, in any but present
circumstances, would make you think we were dealing with lunatics. But the
girl has succeeded in making me think it worth trying. Yes, Jim, she has,
and I have told her so, and I hope to God that that hard-headed
horse-sense of yours will not make you sit down on it.”
Bob Brownley had got to his feet; he was slipping the shackles of that
fiery, romantic, Southern passion that years in college and Wall Street
had taught him to keep prisoner. His eyes were flashing sparks. His
nostrils vibrated like a deer buck’s in the autumn woods. He faced me with
his hands clinched.
“Jim Randolph,” he went on, “as I listened to that girl’s story of the
terrible cruelty and devilish treachery practised by the human hyenas you
and I associate with, human hyenas who, when in search of dirty
dollars—the only thing they know anything about—put to shame the real
beasts of the wilds—when I listened, I tell you that I felt it would not
give me a twinge of conscience to put a ball through that slick scoundrel
Reinhart. Yes, and that hired cur of his, too, who prostitutes a good
family name and position, and an inherited ability the Almighty intended
for more honest uses than the trapping of victims on whose purses his
gutter-born master has set lecherous eyes. And, Jim, as I listened, a
troop of old friends invaded my memory—friends whom I have not seen since
before I went to Harvard, friends with whom I spent many a happy hour in
my old Virginia home, friends born of my imagination, stalwart, rugged
crusaders, who carried the sword and the cross and the banner inscribed
‘For Honour and for God.’ Old friends who would troop into my boyhood and
trumpet, ‘Bob, don’t forget, when you’re a man, that the goal is honour,
and the code: Do unto your neighbour as you would have your neighbour do
unto you. Don’t forget that millions is the crest of the groundlings.’
And, Jim, I thought my friends looked at me with reproachful eyes, as
they said, ‘You are well on the road, Bob Brownley, and in time your heart
and soul will bear the hall-mark of the snaky S on the two upright bars,
and you will be but a frenzied fellow in the Dirty Dollar army.’ Jim, Jim
Randolph, as I listened to that agonising tale of the changing of that
girl’s heaven to hell, I did not see that halo you and I have thought
surrounded the sign of Randolph & Randolph. I did not see it, Jim, but I
did see myself, and I didn’t feel proud of the picture. My God, Jim, is it
possible you and I have joined the nobility of Dirty Dollars? Is it
possible we are leaving trails along our life’s path like that Reinhart
left through the home of these Virginians, such trails as this girl has
shown me?”
Bob had worked himself into a state of frenzy. I had never seen him so
excited as when he stood in front of me and almost shouted this fierce
self-denunciation.
“For heaven’s sake, Bob, pull yourself together,” I urged. “The captain on
the bridge there is staring at you wild-eyed, and Katherine will be up
here to see what has happened. Now, be a good fellow, and let us talk
this thing over in a sensible way. At the gait you are going we can do
nothing to help out your friends. Besides, what is there for you and me to
take ourselves to task for? We are no wreckers and none of our dollars is
stained with Frenzied Finance. My father, as you know, despised Reinhart
and his sort as much as we do. Be yourself. What does this girl want you
to do? If it is anything in reason, call it done, for you know there is
nothing I won’t do for you at the asking.”
Bob’s hysteria oozed. He dropped on the rail-seat at my side.
“I know it, Jim, I know it, and you must forgive me. The fact, is, Beulah
Sands’s story has aroused a lot of thoughts I have been a-sticking down
cellar late years, for, to tell the truth, I have some nasty twinges of
conscience every now and then when I get to thinking of this dollar game
of ours.”
I saw that the impulsive blood was fast cooling, and that it would only be
a question of minutes until Bob would be his clearheaded self.
“Now, what is it she wants you to do?” I persisted. “Is it a case of
money, of our trying to tide her father over?”
“Nothing of that kind, Jim. You don’t know the proud Virginia blood.
Neither that girl nor her father would accept money help from any one.
They would go to smash and the grave first.”
He paused and then continued impressively:
“This is how she puts it. She and her father have raked together her
different legacies and turned them into cash, a matter of sixty thousand
dollars, and she got him to consent to let her come up here to see if
during the next six months she might not, in a few desperate plunges in
the market, run it up to enough to at least regain the trust funds. Yes, I
know it is a wild idea. I told her so at the beginning, but there was no
need; she knew it, for she is not only bright, but she has the best idea
of business I ever knew a woman to have. But it is their only chance, Jim,
and while I listened to her argument I came around to her way of
thinking.”
“But how did she happen to come to you with this extraordinary scheme?” I
interrupted.
“It’s this way—her father, who knew Randolph & Randolph through your
father’s handling of the Seaboard’s affairs, learned of my connection
with the house, and gave her a letter, asking me to do what I could to
help his daughter carry out her plans. She wants to get a position with
us, if possible, in some sort of capacity, secretary, confidential clerk,
or, as she puts it, any sort of place that will justify her being in the
office. She tells me she is good at shorthand, on the machine, or at
correspondence, also that she has been a contributor to the magazines. If
this can be arranged, she says she will on her own responsibility select
the time and the stock, and hurl the last of the Sands fortune at the
market, and, Jim, she is game. The blow seems to have turned this child
into a wonderfully nervy creature, and, old man, I am beginning to have a
feeling that perhaps the cards may come so she will win the judge out. You
and I know where less than sixty thousand has been run up to millions more
than once, and that, too, without the aid she will have, for I’ll surely
do all I can to help her steer this last chance into spongy places.”
Bob in his enthusiasm had completely lost sight of the fact that he was
indorsing a project that but a moment previously he had pronounced insane,
and with a start I realised what this sudden transformation betokened.
Inevitably, if the project he outlined were carried out, Bob and the
beautiful Southern girl would be thrown into close association with each
other, and further acquaintance could only deepen the startling influence
Beulah Sands had already won over my ordinarily sane and cool-headed
comrade. As I looked at my friend, burning with an ardour as unaccustomed
as it was impulsive, I felt a tug at my heartstrings at thought of the
sudden cross-roading of his life’s highway. But I, too, was filled with
the glamour of this girl’s wondrous beauty, and her terrible predicament
appealed to me almost as strongly as it had to Bob. So, although I knew it
would be fatal to any chance of his weighing the matter by common sense, I
burst out:
“Bob, I don’t blame you for falling in with the girl’s plans. If I were in
your shoes, I should too.”
Tears came to Bob’s eyes as he grabbed my hand and said:
“Jim, how can I ever repay you for all the good things you have done for
me—how can I!”
It was no time to give way to emotional outbursts, and while Bob was
getting his grip on himself, I went on:
“Come along down to earth now, Bob; let us look at this thing squarely.
You and I, with our position in the market, can do lots of things to help
run that sixty thousand to higher figures, but six months is a short time
and a million or two a world of money.”
“She knows that,” he said, “and the time is much shorter and the road to
go much longer than you figure,” he replied. “This girl is as
high-tensioned as the E string on a Stradivarius, and she declares she
will have no charity tips or unusual favours from us or any one else. But
let us not talk about that now or we’ll get discouraged. Let’s do as she
says and trust to God for the outcome. Are you willing, Jim, to take her
into the office as a sort of confidential secretary? If you will, I’ll
take charge of her account, and together we will do all that two men can
for her and her father.”