Siward, at his desk, over which the May sunshine streamed, his crutches
laid against his chair, sat poring over the piles of papers left there
by Beverly Plank some days before with a curt recommendation that he
master their contents.
Some of the papers were typewritten, some appeared to be engraved
certificates of stock, a few were in Plank's heavy, squat handwriting.
There were several packages tied in pink tape, evidently legal papers of
some sort; and also a pile of scrap-books containing newspaper clippings
to which Siward referred occasionally, or read them at length, resting
his thin, fatigued face between two bony hands.
The curious persistence of youth in his features seemed unaccountable in
view of the heavy marks imprinted there; but they were marks, not
lines; bluish hollows under eyes still young, marred contours of the
cheek-bone; a hardness about the hollow temples above which his short,
bright hair clustered with all its soft, youthful allure undimmed; and
in every movement, every turn of his head, there still remained much
of that indefinable attractiveness which had always characterised his
race--much of the unconscious charm usually known as breeding.
In men of Mortimer's fibre, dissipation produced coarser
symptoms--distended veins, and sagging flesh--where in Siward it seemed
to bruise and harden, driving the colour of blood out of him and leaving
the pallor of marble, and the bluish shadows of it staining the hollows.
Only the eyes had begun to change radically; something in them had been
quenched.
That he could never hope to become immune he had learned at last when
he had returned, physically wholesome, from his long course of training
under the famous Irish specialist on the Hudson. He had expected to be
immune, spite of the blunt and forcible language of Mulqueen when he
turned him out into the world again:
“Ye'll be afther notin',” said Mr. Mulqueen, “that a poonch in the
plexis putts a man out; but it don't kill him. That's you! Whin a man
mixes it up wid the booze, l'ave him come here an' I'll tache him a
thrick. But it's not murther I tache; it's the hook on the jaw that
shtops, an' the poonch in the plexis that putts the booze-divil on the
bum! L'ave him take the count; he'll niver rise to the chune o' the bell
av ye l'ave him lie. But he ain't dead, Misther Sayward; mark that, me
son! An' don't ye be afther sayin', 'Th' inimy is down an' out fur good!
Pore lad! Sure, I'll shake hands over a dhrink wid him, for he can do me
no hurrt anny more!' No, sorr! L'ave him lie, an' l'ave the years av ver
life count him out; fur the day you die, he dies, an' not wan shake o'
the mixer sooner! G'wan, now, fur the rub-down. Ye've faught yer lasht
round, if ye ain't a fool!”
He had been a fool. He had imagined that he could control himself, and
practise the moderation that other men practised when they chose. The
puerile restraint annoyed him; his implied inability to master himself
humiliated him, the more so because, secretly, he was horribly afraid in
the remote depths of his heart.
Exactly how it happened he did not remember, except that he had gone
down town on business and had lunched with several men. There was
claret. Later he remembered another café, farther up town, and another,
more brilliantly lighted. After that there were vague hours--the fierce
fever of debauch wrapping night and day in flame through which he moved,
unseeing, unheeding, deafened, drenched soul and body in the living
fire; or dreaming, feeling the subsiding fury of desire pulse and ebb
and flow, rocking him to unconsciousness.
His father's old servants had found him again, this time in the area;
and this time the same ankle, not yet strong, had been broken.
Through the waning winter days, as he lay brooding in bitterness,
realising that it was all to do over again, Plank's shy visits became
gradually part of the routine. But it was many days before Siward
perceived in the big, lumbering, pink-fisted man anything to attract
him beyond the faintly amused curiosity of one man for another who is in
process of establishing himself as the first of a race.
As for reciprocation in other forms except the most superficial, or of
permitting a personal note to sound ever so discreetly, Siward
tolerated no such idea. Even the tentative advances of Plank hinting
on willingness, and perhaps ability, to help Siward in the Amalgamated
tangle were pleasantly ignored. Unpaid services rendered by men like
Plank were impossible; any obligation to Plank was utterly out of the
question. Meanwhile they began to like one another--at least Siward
often found himself looking forward with pleasure to a visit from
Plank. There had never been any question of the latter's attitude toward
Siward.
Plank began to frequent the house, but never informally. It is doubtful
whether he could have practised informality in that house even at
Siward's invitation. Something of the attitude of a college lower
classman for a man in a class above seemed to typify their relations;
and that feeling is never entirely eradicated between men, no matter how
close their relationship in after-life.
One very bad night Plank came to the house and was admitted by
Gumble. Wands, the second man, stood behind the aged butler; both were
apparently frightened.
That something was amiss appeared plainly enough; and Plank,
instinctively producing a card, dropped it on a table and turned to go.
It may have been that the old butler recognised the innate delicacy
of the motive, or it may have been a sudden confidence born of the
necessities of the case, for he asked Plank to see his young master.
And Plank, looking him in the eyes, considered, until his courage began
to fail. Then he went up-stairs.
It was a bad night outside, and it was a bad night for Siward. The
master-vice had him by the throat. He sat there, clutching the arms of
his chair, his broken leg, in its plaster casing, extended in front of
him; and when he saw Plank enter he glared at him.
Hour after hour the two men sat there, the one white with rage, but
helpless; the other, stolid, inert, deaf to demands for intercession
with the arch-vice, dumb under pleadings for a compromise. He refused to
interfere with the butler, and Siward insulted him. He refused to go and
find the decanters himself, and Siward deliberately cursed him.
Outside the storm raged all night. Inside that house Plank faced a more
awful tempest. There was a sedative on the mantel and he offered it to
Siward, who struck it from his hand.
Once, toward morning, Siward feigned sleep, and Plank, heavy head on his
breast, feigned it, too. Then Siward bent over stealthily and opened a
drawer in his desk; and Plank was on his feet like a flash, jerking the
morphine from Siward's fingers.
The doctor arrived at daylight, responding to Plank's summons by
telephone, and Plank went away with the morphine and Siward's revolver
bulging in the side-pockets of his dinner coat.
He did not come again for a week. A short note from Siward started him
toward lower Fifth Avenue.
There was little said when he came into the room:
“Hello, Plank! Glad to see you.”
“Hello! Are you all right?”
“All right. … Much obliged for pulling me through. Wish you'd pull me
through this Amalgamated Electric knot-hole, too--some day!”
“Do--do you mean it?” ventured Plank, turning red with delight.
“Mean it? Indeed I do--if you do. Sit here; ring for whatever you
want--or perhaps you'd better go down to the sideboard. I'm not to be
trusted with the odour in the room just yet.”
“I don't care for anything,” said Plank.
“Whenever you please, then. You know the house, and you don't mind my
being unceremonious, do you?”
“No,” said Plank.
“Good!” rejoined Siward, laughing. “I expect the same friendly lack of
ceremony from you.”
But that, for Plank, was impossible. All he could do was to care the
more for Siward without crossing the border line so suddenly made free;
all he could do was to sit there rolling and unrolling his gloves into
wads with his clumsy, highly coloured hands, and gaze consciously at
everything in the room except Siward.
On that day, at Plank's shy suggestion, they talked over Siward's
business affairs for the first time. After that day, and for many days,
the subject became the key-note to their intercourse; and Siward at
last understood that this man desired to do him a service absolutely and
purely from a disinterested liking for him, and as an expression of that
liking. Also he was unexpectedly made aware of Plank's serenely unerring
business sagacity.
That surface cynicism which all must learn, sooner or later, or remain
the victims of naive credulity, was, in Siward, nothing but an outer
skin, as it is in all who acquire wisdom with their cynicism. It was not
long proof against Plank's simple attitude and undisguised pleasure in
doing something for a man he liked. Under that simplicity no motive, no
self-interest could skulk; and Siward knew it.
As for the quid pro quo, Siward had insisted from the first on a
business arrangement. The treachery of Major Belwether through sheer
fright had knocked the key-stone from the syndicate, and the dam which
made the golden pool possible collapsed, showering Plank's brokers who
worked patiently with buckets and mops.
The double treachery of Quarrier was now perfectly apparent to Plank.
Siward, true to his word, held his stock in the face of ruin. Kemp
Ferrall, furious with the major, and beginning to suspect Quarrier, came
to Plank for consultation.
Then the defence formed under Plank. Legal machinery was set in motion,
meeting followed meeting, until Harrington cynically showed his hand and
Quarrier smiled his rare smile; and the fight against Inter-County
was on in the open, preceded by a furious clamour of charge and
counter-charge in the columns of the daily press.
That Quarrier had been guilty of something or other was the vague
impression of that great news-reading public which, stunned by the
reiteration of figures in the millions, turns to the simpler pleasures
of a murder trial. Besides, whatever Quarrier had done was no doubt done
within the chalk-marked courts of the game, though probably his shoes
may have become a little dusty.
But who could hope to bring players like Quarrier before the ordinary
umpire, or to investigate his methods with the everyday investigations
reserved for everyday folk, whose road through business life lay always
between State's prison and the penitentiary and whose guide-posts were
policemen?
Let the great syndicates join in battle; they could only slay each
other. Let the millions bury their millions; the public, though poorer,
could never be the wiser.
Siward, at his desk, the May sunshine pouring over him, sat conning the
heaps of typewritten sheets, striving to see between the lines some
sign of fortune for his investments, some promise of release from the
increasing financial stringency, some chance of justice being done on
those high priests who had been performing marvellous tricks upon their
altar so that by miracle, mine and thine spelled “ours,” and all the
tablets of the law were lettered upside down and hind-side before, like
the Black Mass.
Gumble knocked presently. Siward raised his perplexed eyes.
“Miss Page, sir.”
“Oh,” said Siward doubtfully; then, “Ask Miss Page to come up.”
Marion strolled in a moment later, exchanged a vigorous hand shake with
Siward, pulled up a chair and dropped into it. She was in riding-habit
and boots, faultlessly groomed as usual, her smooth, pale hair sleek in
its thick knot, collar and tie immaculate as her gloves.
“Well,” she said, “any news of your ankle, Stephen?”
“I inquired about my ankle,” said Siward, amused, “and they tell me it
is better, thank you.”
“Sit a horse pretty soon?” she asked, dropping one leg over the other
and balancing the riding-crop across her knee.
“Not for awhile. You have a fine day for a gallop, Marion,” looking
askance at the sunshine filtering through the first green leaves of the
tree outside his window.
“It's all right--the day. I'm trying Tom O'Hara's new mare. They say
she's a little devil. I never saw a devil of a horse--did you? There may
be some out West.”
“Don't break that pretty neck of yours, Marion,” he said.
She lifted her eyes; then, briefly, “No fear.”
“Yes, there is,” he said. “There's no use looking for trouble in a
horse. Women who hunt as you hunt take all that's legitimately coming to
them. Why doesn't Tom ride his own mare?”
“She rolled on him,” said Marion simply.
“Oh. Is he hurt?”
“Ribs.”
“Well, he's lucky.”
“Isn't he! He'll miss a few drills with his precious squadron, that's
all.”
She was looking about her, preoccupied. “Where are your cigarettes,
Stephen? Oh, I see. Don't try to move--don't be silly.”
She leaned over the desk, her fresh young face close to his, and reached
for the cigarettes. The clean-cut head, the sweetness of her youth and
femininity, boyish in its allure, were very attractive to him--more so,
perhaps, because of his isolation from the atmosphere of women.
“It's all very well, Marion, your coming here--and it's very sweet of
you, and I enjoy it immensely,” he said: “but it's a deuced imprudent
thing for you to do, and I feel bound to say so for your sake every time
you come.”
She leaned back in her chair and coolly blew a wreath of smoke at him.
“All right,” he said, unconvinced.
“Certainly it's all right. I've done what suited me all my life. This
suits me.”
“It suits me, too,” he said, “only I wish you'd tell your mother before
somebody around this neighbourhood informs her first.”
“Let 'em. You'll be out by that time. Do you think I'm going to tell my
mother now and have her stop it?”
“Oh, Marion, you know perfectly well that it won't do for a girl to
ignore first principles. I'm horribly afraid somebody will talk about
you.”
“What would you do, then?”
“I?” he asked, disturbed. “What could I do?”
“Why, I suppose,” she said slowly, “you'd have to marry me.”
“Then,” he rejoined with a laugh, “I should think you'd be scared into
prudence by the prospect.”
“I am not easily--scared,” she said, looking down.
“Not at that prospect?” he said jestingly.
She looked up at him; and he remembered afterward the poise of her small
head, and the slow, clear colour mounting; remembered that it conveyed
to him, somehow, a hint of courage and sincerity.
“I am not frightened,” she said gravely.
Gravity fell upon him, too. In this young girl's eyes there was no
evasion. For a long while he had felt vaguely that matters were not
perfectly balanced between them. At moments, even, he had felt an
indefinable uneasiness in her presence. The situation troubled him, too;
and though he had known her from childhood and had long ago learned
to discount her vagaries of informality, her manners sans façon, her
careless ignoring of convention, and the unembarrassed terms of her
speech, his common-sense could not countenance this defiance of social
usage, sure to involve even such a privileged girl as she in some
unpleasantness.
This troubled him; and now, partly sceptical, yet partly conscious,
too, of her very frank liking for himself, he looked at her, perplexed,
apprehensive, unwilling to credit her with any deeper meaning than her
words expressed.
She had grown pink and restless under his gaze, using her cigarette
frequently, and continually flicking the ashes to the floor, until the
little finger of her glove was blackened.
But courage characterised her race. It had required more than he knew
for her to come into his house; and now that she was there loyalty to
her professed principles--that a man and a woman were by right endowed
with equal privileges--forced her to face the consequences of her theory
in the practise.
She had, with calm face and quivering heart, given him an opening. That
was a concession to her essential womanhood and a cowardice on her part;
and, lest she turn utterly traitor to herself, she faced him again,
cool, quiet, and terror in her heart:
“I'd be very glad to marry you--if you c-cared to,” she said.
“Marion!”
“Yes?”
“Oh--I--it is--of course it's a joke.”
“No; I'm serious.”
“Serious! Nonsense!”
“Please don't say that.”
He looked at her, appalled.
“But I--but you don't love--can't be in love with me!” he stammered.
“I am.”
Gloved hands tightening on either end of her riding-crop, she bent her
knee against it, balancing there, looking straight at him.
“I meant to tell you so,” she said, “if you didn't tell me first. So--I
was rather--tired waiting. So I've told you.”
“It is only a fancy,” he said, scarcely knowing what he was saying.
“I don't think so, Stephen.”
But he could not meet her candour, and he sat, silent, miserable,
staring at the papers on his desk.
After a while she drew a deep, even breath, and rose to her feet.
“I'm sorry,” she said simply.
“Marion--I never dreamed that--”
“You should dream truer,” she said. There was a suspicion of mist in her
clear eyes; she turned abruptly to the window and stood there for a few
moments, looking down at her brougham waiting in front of the house. “It
can't be helped, can it!” she said, turning suddenly.
He found no answer to her question.
“Good-bye,” she said, walking to him with outstretched hand; “it's all
in a lifetime, Steve, and that's too short for a good, clean friendship
like ours to die in. I don't think I'd better come again. Look me up for
a gallop when you're fit. And you might drop me a line to say how you're
getting on. Is it all right, Stephen?”
“All right,” he said hoarsely.
Their hands tightened in a crushing clasp; then she swung on her spurred
heel and walked out, leaving him haggard, motionless. He heard the front
door close, and he swayed forward, dropping his face in his hands, arms
half buried among the papers on his desk.
Plank found him there, an hour later, fumbling among the papers, and
at first feared that he read in Siward's drawn and sullen face a
premonition of the ever-dreaded symptoms.
“Quarrier has telephoned asking for a conference at last,” he said
abruptly, sitting down beside Siward.
“Well,” inquired Siward, “how do you interpret that--favourably?”
“I am inclined to think he is a bit uneasy,” said Plank cautiously.
“Harrington made a secret trip to Albany last week. You didn't know
that.”
“No.”
“Well, he did. It looks to me as though there were going to be a ghost
of a chance for an investigation. That is how I am inclined to consider
Harrington's trip and Quarrier's flag of truce. But--I don't know.
There's nothing definite, of course. You are as conversant with the
situation as I am.”
“No, I am not. That is like you, Plank, to ascribe to me the same
business sense that you possess, but I haven't got it. It's very nice
and considerate of you, but I haven't it, and you know it.”
“I think you have.”
“You think so because you think generously. That doesn't alter the
facts. Now tell me what you have concluded that we ought to do and I'll
say 'Amen,' as usual.”
Plank laughed, and looked over several sheets of the typewritten matter
on the desk beside him.
“Suppose I meet Quarrier?” he said.
“All right. Did he suggest a date?”
“At four, this afternoon.”
“Do you think you had better go?”
“I think it might do no harm,” said Plank.
“Amen!” observed Siward, laughing, and touched the electric button for
the early tea, which Plank adored at any hour.
For a while they dropped business and discussed their tea, chatting very
comfortably together. Long ago Siward had found out something of the
mental breadth of the man beside him, and that he was worth listening to
as well as talking to. For Plank had formed opinions upon a great many
subjects; and whatever culture he possessed was from sheer desire for
self-cultivation.
“You know, Siward,” he was accustomed to say with a smile, “you inherit
what I am qualifying myself to transmit.”
“It will be all one in a thousand years,” was Siward's usual rejoinder.
“That is not going to prevent my efforts to become a good ancestor to
my descendants,” Plank would say laughingly. “They shall have a chance,
every one of them. And it will be up to them if they don't make good.”
Sipping their tea in the pleasant, sunny room, they discussed matters
of common interest--Plank's recent fishing trip on Long Island and the
degeneracy of liver-fed trout; the North Side Club's Experiments with
European partridges; Billy Fleetwood's new stables; forestry, and the
chance of national legislation concerning it--a subject of which Plank
was very fond, and on which he had exceedingly sound ideas.
Drifting from one topic to another through the haze of their cigars,
silent when it pleased them to be so, there could be no doubt of their
liking for each other upon a basis at least superficially informal; and
if Plank's manner retained at times a shade of quaint reserve, Siward's
was perhaps the more frankly direct for that reason.
“I think,” observed Plank, laying his half-consumed cigar on the silver
tray, “that I'd better go down town and see what our pre-glacial friend
Quarrier wants. I may be able to furnish him with a new sensation.”
“I wonder if Quarrier ever experienced a genuine sensation,” mused
Siward, arranging the papers before him into divisional piles.
“Plenty,” said Plank drily.
“I don't think so.”
“Plenty,” repeated Plank. “It's your thin-lipped, thin-nosed,
pasty-pale, symmetrical brother who is closer to the animal under his
mask than any of us imagine. I--” He hesitated. “Do you want to know
my opinion of Quarrier? I've never told you. I don't usually talk about
my--dislikes. Do you want to know?”
“Certainly,” said Siward curiously.
“Then, first of all, he is a sentimentalist.”
“Oh! oh!” jeered Siward.
“A sentimentalist of the weakest type,” continued Plank obstinately;
“because he sentimentalises over himself. Siward, look out for the man
with elaborate whiskers! Look out for a pallid man with eccentric hair
and a silky beard! He's a sentimentalist of the sort I told you, and is
usually utterly remorseless in his dealings with women. I suppose you
think me a fool.”
“I think Quarrier is indifferent concerning women,” said Siward.
“You are wrong. He is a sensualist,” insisted Plank.
“Oh, no, Plank--not that!”
“A sensualist. His sentimental vanity he lavishes upon himself--the
animal in him on women. His caution, born of self-consideration, is the
caution of a beast. Such men as he believe they live in the focus of a
million eyes. Part of his vanity is to deceive those eyes and be what he
is under the mask he wears; and to do that one must be the very master
of caution. That is Quarrier's vanity. To conceal, is his monomania.”
“I cannot see how you draw that conclusion.”
“Siward, he is a bad man, and crafty--every inch of him.”
“Oh, come, now! Only characters in fiction have no saving qualities. You
never heard of anybody in real life being entirely bad.”
“No, I didn't; and Quarrier isn't. For example, he is kind to valuable
animals--I mean, his own.”
“Good to animals! The bad man's invariable characteristic!” laughed
Siward. “I'm kind to 'em, too. What else is he good to?”
“Everybody knows that he hasn't a poor relation left; not one. He is
loyal to them in a rare way; he filled one subsidiary company full of
them. It is known down town as the 'Home for Destitute Nephews.'”
“Seriously, Plank, the man must have something good in him.”
“Because of your theory?”
“Yes. I believe that nobody is entirely bad. So do the great masters of
fiction.”
Plank said gravely: “He is a good son to his father. That is perfectly
true--kind, considerate, dutiful, loyal. The financial world is
perfectly aware that Stanley Quarrier is to-day the most unscrupulous
old scoundrel who ever crushed a refinery or debauched a railroad! and
his son no more believes it than he credits the scandalous history of
the Red Woman of Wall Street. Why, when I was making arrangements
for that chapel Quarrier came to me, very much perturbed, because he
understood that all the memorial chapels for the cathedral had been
arranged for, and he had desired to build one to the memory of his
father! His father! Isn't it awful to think of!--a chapel to the memory
of the briber of judges and of legislatures, the cynical defier of
law!--this hoary old thief, who beggared the widow and stripped the
orphan, and whose only match, as a great unpunished criminal, was that
sinister little predecessor of his, who dreamed even of debauching the
executive of these United States!”
Siward had never before seen Plank aroused, and he said so, smiling.
“That is true,” said Plank earnestly; “I waste little temper over my
likes and dislikes. But what I know, and what I legitimately infer
concerning the younger Quarrier is enough to rouse any man's anger.
I won't tell you what I know. I can't. It has nothing to do with his
financial methods, nothing to do with this business; but it is bad--bad
all through! The blow his father struck at the integrity of the bench
the son strikes at the very key-stone of all social safeguard. It isn't
my business; I cannot interfere; but Siward, I'm a damned restless
witness, and the old, primitive longing comes back on me to strike--to
take a stick and use it to splinters on that man whom I am going down
town to politely confer with! … And I must go now. Good-bye. … Take
care of that ankle. Any books I can send you--anything you want? No? All
right. And don't worry over Amalgamated Electric, for I really believe
we are beginning to frighten them badly.”
“Good-bye,” said Siward. “Don't forget that I'm always at home.”
“You must get out,” muttered Plank; “you must get well, and get out into
the sunshine.” And he went ponderously down-stairs to the square hall,
where Gumble held his hat and gloves ready for him.
He had come in a big yellow and black touring-car; and now, with a brief
word to his mechanic, he climbed into the tonneau, and away they sped
down town--a glitter of bull's-eye, brass, and varnish, with the mellow,
horn notes floating far in their wake.
It was exactly four o'clock when he was ushered into Quarrier's private
suite in the great marble Algonquin Loan and Trust Building, the upper
stories of which were all golden in the sun against a sky of sapphire.
Quarrier was alone, gloved and hatted, as though on the point of
leaving. He showed a slight surprise at seeing Plank, as if he had
not been expecting him; and the manner of offering his hand subtly
emphasised it as he came forward with a trace of inquiry in his
greeting.
“You said four o'clock, I believe,” observed Plank bluntly.
“Ah, yes. It was about that--ah--matter--ah--I beg your pardon; can you
recollect?”
“I don't know what it is you want. You requested this meeting,” said
Plank, yawning.
“Certainly. I recollect it perfectly now. Will you sit here, Mr.
Plank--for a moment--”
“If it concerns Inter-County, it will take longer than a moment--unless
you cannot spare the time now,” said Plank. “Shall we call it off?”
“As a matter of fact I am rather short of time just now.”
“Then let us postpone it. I shall probably be at my office if you are
anxious to see me.”
Quarrier looked at him, then laid aside his hat and sat down. There was
little to be done in diplomacy with an oaf like that.
“Mr. Plank,” he said, without any emphasis at all, “there should be some
way for us to come together. Have you considered it?”
“No, I haven't,” replied Plank.
“I mean, for you and me to try to understand each other.”
“For us?” asked Plank, raising his blond eyebrows. “Do you mean
Amalgamated Electric and Inter-County, impersonally?”
“I mean for us, personally.”
“There is no way,” said Plank, with conviction.
“I think there is.”
“You are wasting time thinking it, Mr. Quarrier.”
Quarrier's velvet-fringed eyes began to narrow, but his calm voice
remained unchanged: “We are merely wasting energy in this duel,” he
said.
“Oh, no; I don't feel wasted.”
“We are also wasting opportunities,” continued Quarrier slowly. “This
whole matter is involving us in a tangle of litigation requiring our
constant effort, constant attention.”
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Quarrier, but you take it too seriously. I
have found, in this affair, nothing except a rather agreeable mental
exhilaration.”
“Mr. Plank, if you are not inclined to be serious--”
“I am,” said Plank so savagely that Quarrier, startled, could not doubt
him. “I like this sort of thing, Mr. Quarrier. Anything that is hard
to overcome, I like to overcome. The pleasure in life, to me, is to
win out. I am fighting you with the greatest possible satisfaction to
myself.”
“Perhaps you see victory ahead,” said Quarrier calmly.
“I do, Mr. Quarrier, I do. But not in the manner you fear I may hope for
it.”
“Do you mind saying in what manner you are already discounting your
victory, Mr Plank?”
“No, I don't mind telling you. I have no batteries to mask. I don't care
how much you know about my resources; so I'll tell you what I see, Mr.
Quarrier. I see a parody of the popular battle between razor-back and
rattler. The rattler only strives to strike and kill, not to swallow.
Mr. Quarrier, that old razor-back isn't going home hungry; but--he's
going home.”
“I'm afraid I am not familiar enough with the natural history you quote
to follow you,” said Quarrier with a sneer, his long fingers busy with
the silky point of his beard.
“No, you won't follow me home; you'll come with me, when it's all over.
Now is it very plain to you, Mr. Quarrier?”
Quarrier said, without emotion: “I repeat that it would be easy for you
and me to merge our differences on a basis absolutely satisfactory to
you and to me--and to Harrington.”
“You are mistaken,” said Plank, rising. “Good afternoon.”
Quarrier rose, too. “You decline to discuss the matter?” he asked.
“It has been discussed sufficiently.”
“Then why did you come here?”
“To see for myself how afraid of me you really are,” said Plank. “Now I
know, and so do you.”
“You desire to make it a personal matter?” inquired Quarrier, in a low
voice, his face dead white in the late sunlight which illuminated the
room.
“Personal? No--impersonal; because there could be absolutely nothing
personal between us, Mr. Quarrier; and the only thing in the world that
there ought to be between us are a few stout, steel bars. Beg pardon
for talking shop. I'm a shopkeeper, and I'm in the steel business, and I
lack opportunities for cultivation. Good day.”
“Mr. Plank--”
“Mr. Quarrier, I want to tell you something. Never before, in business
differences, has private indignation against any individual interfered
or modified my course of action. It does now; but it does not dictate
my policy toward you; it merely, as I say, modifies it. I am perfectly
aware of what I am doing; what social disaster I am inviting by this
attitude toward you personally; what financial destruction I am courting
in arousing the wrath of the Algonquin Trust Company and of the powerful
interests intrenched behind Inter-County Electric. I know what the
lobby is; I know what judge cannot be counted on; I know my peril and my
chances, every one; and I take them--every one. For it is a good fight,
Mr. Quarrier; it will be talked of for years to come, wonderingly; not
because of your effrontery, not because of my obstinacy, but because
such monstrous immorality could ever have existed in this land of ours.
Your name, Harrington's, mine, will have become utterly forgotten long,
long before the horror of these present conditions shall cease to be
remembered.”
He stretched out one ponderous arm, pointing full between Quarrier's
unwinking eyes.
“Take your fighting chance--it is the cleanest thing you ever touched;
and use it cleanly, or there'll be no mercy shown you when your time
comes. Let the courts alone--do you hear me? Let the legislature alone.
Keep your manicured hands off the ermine. And tell Harrington to shove
his own cold, splay fingers into his own pockets for a change. They'll
be warmer than his feet by this time next year.”
For a moment he towered there, powerful, bulky, menacing; then his arm
dropped heavily--the old stolid expression came back into his face,
leaving it calm, bovine, almost stupid again. And he turned, moving
slowly toward the door, holding his hat carefully in his gloved hand.
Stepping out of the elevator on the ground floor he encountered
Mortimer, and halted instinctively. He had not seen Mortimer for weeks;
neither had Leila; and now he looked at him inquiringly, disturbed at
his battered and bloodshot appearance.
“Oh,” said Mortimer, “you down here?”
“Have you been out of town?” asked Plank cautiously.
Mortimer nodded, and started to pass on toward the bronze cage of the
elevator, but something seemed to occur to him suddenly; he checked his
pace, turned, and waddled after Plank, rejoining him on the marble steps
of the rotunda.
“See here,” he panted, holding Plank by the elbow and breathing heavily
even after the short chase across the lobby, “I meant to tell you
something. Come over here and sit down a moment.”
Still grasping Plank's elbow in his puffy fingers, he directed him
toward a velvet seat in a corner of the lobby; and here they sat down,
while Mortimer mopped his fat neck with his handkerchief, swearing at
the heat under his breath.
“Look here,” he said; “I promised you something once, didn't I?”
“Did you?” said Plank, with his bland, expressionless stare of an
overgrown baby.
“Oh, cut that out! You know damn well I did; and when I say a thing I
make good. D'ye see?”
“I don't see,” said Plank, “what you are talking about.”
“I'm talking about what I said I'd do for you. Haven't I made good?
Haven't I put you into everything I said I would? Don't you go
everywhere? Don't people ask you everywhere?”
“Yes--in a way,” said Plank wearily. “I am very grateful; I always will
be. … Can I do anything for you, Leroy?”
Mortimer became indignant at the implied distrust of the purity of his
motives; and Plank, failing to stem the maudlin tirade, relapsed into
patient silence, speculating within himself as to what it could be that
Mortimer wanted.
It came out presently. Mortimer had attended a “killing” at Desmond's,
and, as usual, had provided the pièce de résistance for his soft-voiced
host. All he wanted was a temporary deposit to tide over matters. He had
never approached Plank in vain, and he did not do so now, for Plank had
a pocket cheque-book and a stylograph.
“It's damn little to ask, isn't it?” he muttered resentfully. “That will
only square matters with Desmond; it doesn't leave me anything to go on
with,” and he pocketed his cheque with a scowl.
Plank was discreetly silent.
“And that is not what I chased you for, either,” continued Mortimer. “I
didn't intend to say anything about Desmond; I was going to fix it
in another way!” He cast an involuntary and sinister glance at the
elevators gliding ceaselessly up and down at the end of the vast marble
rotunda; then his protruding eyes sought Plank's again:
“Beverly, old boy, I've got a certain mealy-faced hypocrite where any
decent man would like to have him--by the scruff of his neck. He's fit
only to kick; and I'm going to kick him good and plenty; and in the
process he's going to let go of several things.” Mortimer leered,
pleased with his own similes, then added rather hastily: “I mean, he's
going to drop several things that don't belong to him. Leave it to me to
shake him down; he'll drop them all right. … One of 'em's yours.”
Plank looked at him.
“I told you once that I'd let you know when to step up and say 'Good
evening' didn't I?”
Plank continued to stare.
“Didn't I?” repeated Mortimer peevishly, beginning to lose countenance.
“I don't understand you,” said Plank, “and I don't think I want to
understand you.”
“What do you mean?” demanded Mortimer thickly; “don't you want to marry
that girl!” but he shrank dismayed under the slow blaze that lighted
Plank's blue eyes.
“All right,” he stammered, struggling to his fat legs and instinctively
backing away; “I thought you meant business. I--what the devil do I care
who you marry! It's the last time I try to do anything for you, or for
anybody else! Mark that, my friend. I've plenty to worry over; I've
a lot to keep me busy without lying awake to figure out how to do
kindnesses to old friends. Damn this ingratitude, anyway!”
Plank gazed at him for a moment; the anger in his face had died out.
“I am not ungrateful,” he said. “You may say almost anything except
that, Leroy. I am not disloyal, no matter what else I may be. But you
have made a bad mistake. You made it that day at Black Fells when you
offered to interfere. I supposed you understood then that I could never
tolerate from anybody anything of such a nature. It appears that you
didn't. However, you understand it now. So let us forget the matter.”
But Mortimer, keenly appreciative of the pleasures of being
misunderstood, squeezed some moisture out of his distended eyes, and sat
down, a martyr to his emotions. “To think,” he gulped, “that you, of all
men, should turn on me like this!”
“I didn't mean to. Can't you understand, Leroy, that you hurt me?”
“Hurt hell!” retorted Mortimer vindictively. “You've had sensation
battered out of you by this time. I guess society has landed you a few
while I was boosting you over the outworks. Don't play that old con game
on me! You tried to get her and you couldn't. Now I come along and
offer to put you next and you yell about your hurt feelings! Oh, splash!
There's another lady, that's all.”
“Let it go at that, then,” said Plank, reddening.
“But I tell you--”
“Drop it!” snapped Plank.
“Oh, very well! if you're going to take it that way again--”
“I am. Cut it! And now let me ask you a question: Where were you going
when I met you?”
“What do you want to know for?” asked Mortimer sullenly.
“Why, I'll tell you, Leroy. If you have any idea of identifying yourself
with Quarrier's people, of seeking him at this juncture with the
expectation of investing any money in his schemes, you had better not do
so.”
“Investing!” sneered Mortimer. “Well, no, not exactly, having nothing
to invest, thanks to my being swindled into joining his Amalgamated
Electric gang. Don't worry. If there's any shaking down to be done, I'll
do it, my friend,” and he rose, and started toward the elevators.
“Wait,” said Plank. “Why, man, you can't frighten Quarrier! What did you
sell your holdings for? Why didn't you come to us--to me? What's the
use of going to Quarrier now, and scolding? You can't scare a man like
that.”
Mortimer fairly grinned in his face.
“Your big mistake,” he sneered, “is in undervaluing others. You don't
think I amount to very much, do you, Beverly? But I'm going to try to
take care of myself all the same.” He laughed, showing his big teeth,
and the vanity in him began to drug him. “No, you think I don't know
much. But men like you and Quarrier will damn soon find out! I want you
to understand,” he went on excitedly, forgetting the instinctive caution
which in saner moments he was only too certain that his present business
required--“I want you to understand a few things, my friend, and one of
them is that I'm not afraid of Quarrier, and another is, I'm not afraid
of you!”
“Leroy--”
“No, not afraid of you, either!” repeated Mortimer with an ugly stare.
“Don't try any of your smug, aint-it-a-shame-he-drinks ways on me,
Beverly! I'm getting tired of it; I'm tired of it now, by God! You keep
a civil tongue in your head after this--do you understand?--and we'll
get on all right. If you don't, I've the means to make you!”
“Are you crazy?”
“Not a bit of it! Too damn sane for you and Leila to hoodwink!”
“You are crazy!” repeated Plank, aghast.
“Am I? You and Leila can take the matter into court, if you want
to--unless I do. And”--here he leaned forward, showing his teeth
again--“the next time you kiss her, close the door!”
Then he went away up the marble steps and entered an elevator; and
Plank, grave and pale, went out into the street and entered his big
touring-car. But the drive up town and through the sunlit park gave him
no pleasure, and he entered his great house with a heavy, lifeless step,
head bent, as though counting every crevice in the stones under his
lagging feet. For the first time in all his life he was afraid of a man.
The man he was afraid of had gone directly to Quarrier's office, missing
the gentleman he was seeking by such a small fraction of a minute
that he realised they must have passed each other in the elevators, he
ascending while Quarrier was descending.
Mortimer turned and hurried to the elevator, hoping to come up with
Quarrier in the rotunda, or possibly in the street outside; but he was
too late, and, furious to think of the time he had wasted with Plank, he
crawled into a hansom and bade the driver take him to a number he gave,
designating one of the new limestone basement houses on the upper west
side.
All the way up town, as he jolted about in his seat, he angrily
regretted the meeting with Plank, even in spite of the cheque. What
demon had possessed him to boast--to display his hand when there
had been no necessity? Plank was still ready to give him aid at a
crisis--had always been ready. Time enough when Plank turned stingy to
use persuasion; time enough when Plank attempted to dodge him to employ
a club. And now, for no earthly reason, intoxicated with his own vanity,
catering to his own long-smouldering resentment, he had used his club on
a willing horse--deliberately threatened a man whose gratitude had been
good for many a cheque yet.
“Ass that I am!” fumed Mortimer; “now when I'm stuck I'll have to go at
him with the club, if I want any money out of him. Confound him,
he's putting me in a false position! He's trying to make it look like
extortion! I won't do it! I'm no blackmailer! I'll starve, before I go
to him again! No blundering, clumsy Dutchman can make a blackmailer out
of me by holding hands with that scoundrelly wife of mine! That's the
reason he did it, too! Between them they are trying to make my loans
from Plank look like blackmail! It would serve them right if I took them
up--if I called their bluff, and stuck Plank up in earnest! But I won't,
to please them! I won't do any dirty thing like that, to humour them!
Not much!”
He lay back, rolling about in the jouncing cab, scowling at space.
“Not much!” he repeated. “I'll shake down Quarrier, though! I'll make
him pay for his treachery--scaring me out of Amalgamated! That will be
restitution, not extortion!”
He was the angrier because he had been for days screwing up his courage
to the point of seeking Quarrier face to face. He had not wished to do
it; the scene, and his own attitude in it, could only be repugnant
to him, although he continually explained to himself that it was
restitution, not extortion.
But whatever it was, he didn't like to figure in it, and he had hung
back as long as circumstances permitted. But his new lodgings and his
new friends were expensive; and Plank, he supposed, was off somewhere
fishing; so he hung on as long as it was possible; then, exasperated
by necessity, started for Quarrier's office, only to miss him by a
few seconds because he was fool enough to waste his temper and his
opportunity in making an enemy out of a friend!
“Oh,” he groaned, “what an ass I am!” And he got out of his cab in front
of a very new limestone basement house with red geraniums blooming on
the window-sills, and let himself in with a latch-key.
The interior of the house was attractive in a rather bright, new, clean
fashion. There seemed to be a great deal of white wood-work about, a
wilderness of slender white spindles supporting the dark, rich mahogany
handrail of the stairway; elaborate white grilles between snowy,
Corinthian pillars separating the hall from the drawing-room, where
a pale gilt mirror over a white, colonial mantel reflected a glass
chandelier and panelled walls hung with pale blue silk.
All was new, very clean, very quiet; the maid, too, who appeared at
the sound of the closing door and took his hat and gloves was as
newly groomed as the floors and wood-work, and so noiseless as to be
conspicuous in her swift, silent movements.
Yet there was something about it all--about the bluish silvery
half-light, the spotless floors and walls, the abnormally noiseless maid
in her flamboyant cap and apron--that arrested attention and fixed it.
The soundless brightness of the house was as conspicuous as the contrast
between the maid's black gown and her snow-white cuffs. There was
nothing subdued about anything, although the long, silvery blue curtains
were drawn over the lace window hangings; no shadows anywhere, no
half-lights. The very stillness was gay with suspense, like a pretty
woman's suppressed laughter glimmering in her eyes.
And into this tinted light, framed in palest blue and white, waddled
Mortimer, appropriate as a June-bug scrambling in a Sèvres teacup.
“Anybody here?” he growled, leering into the drawing-room at a tiny
grand piano cased in unvarnished Circassian walnut.
“There is nobody at home, sir,” said the maid.
“Music lesson over?”
“Yes, sir, at three.”
He began to ascend the stairway, breathing heavily, thud, thud over the
deep velvet strip, his fat hand grasping the banister rail.
Somewhere on the second floor a small dog barked, and Mortimer traversed
the ball and opened the door into a room hung with gold Spanish leather
and pale green curtains.
“Hello, Tinto!” he said affably as a tiny Japanese spaniel hurled
herself at him, barking furiously, then began writhing and weaving
herself about him, gurgling recognition and welcome.
He sat down heavily in a padded easy-chair. The spaniel sprang into his
lap, wheezing, sniffling, goggling its protruding eyes. Mortimer liked
the dog, but he didn't like what the owner of the dog said about the
resemblance between his own and Tinto's eyes.
“Get down!” he said; “you're shedding black and white hairs all over
me.” But the dog didn't want to get down, and Mortimer's good nature
permitted her to curl up on his fat knees and sleep that nervous,
twitching sleep peculiar to overpampered toy canines.
The southern sun was warm in the room; the windows open, but not a
silken hanging stirred.
Presently another maid entered, with an apple cut into thin wafers and a
decanter of port; and Mortimer lay back in his chair, sopping his apple
in the thick, crimson wine, and feeding morsels of the combination to
himself and to Tinto at intervals until the apple was all gone and the
decanter three-fourths empty.
It was very still in the room--so still, that Mortimer, opening his eyes
at longer and longer intervals to peer at the door, finally opened them
no more.
The droning gurgle that he made kept Tinto awake. When his lower jaw
sagged, and he began to really show what snoring could be, Tinto, very
nervous, got up and hopped down.
It was still daylight when Mortimer awoke, conscious of people about
him. As he opened his eyes, a man laughed; several people seated by
the windows joined in. Then, straightening up with an effort, something
tumbled from his head to the floor and he started to rise.
“Oh, look out, Leroy! Don't step on my hat!” cried a girl's voice; and
he sank back in his chair, gazing stupidly around.
“Hello! you people!” he said, amused; “I guess I've been asleep. Oh, is
that you Millbank? Whose hat was that--yours, Lydia?”
He yawned, laughed, turning his heavy eyes from one to another,
recognising a couple of young girls at the window. He didn't want to
get up; but there is, in the society he now adorned, a stringency of
etiquette known as “re-finement,” and which, to ignore, is to become
unpopular.
So he got onto his massive legs and went over to shake hands with a
gravity becoming the ceremony.
“How d'ye do, Miss Hutchinson? Thought you were at Asbury Park. How de
do, Miss Del Garcia. Have you been out in Millbank's motor yet?”
“We broke down at McGowan's Pass,” said Miss Del Garcia, laughing the
laugh that had made her so attractive in “A Word to the Wise.”
“Muddy gasoline,” nodded Millbank tersely--an iron-jawed, over-groomed
man of forty, with a florid face shaved blue.
“We passed Mr. Plank's big touring-car,” observed Lydia Vyse, shifting
Tinto to the couch and brushing the black and white hairs from her
automobile coat. “How much does a car like that cost, Leroy?”
“About twenty-five thousand,” he said gloomily. Then, looking up, “Hold
on, Millbank, don't be going! Why can't you all dine with us? Never
mind your car; ours is all right, and we'll run out into the country for
dinner. How about it, Miss Del Garcia?”
But both Miss Del Garcia and Miss Hutchinson had accepted another
invitation, in which Millbank was also included.
They stood about, veils floating, leather decorated coats thrown back,
lingering for awhile to talk the garage talk which fascinates people of
their type; then Millbank looked at the clock, made his adieux to Lydia,
nodded significantly to Mortimer, and followed the others down-stairs.
There was something amiss with his motor, for it made a startling racket
in the street, finally plunging forward with a kick.
Lydia laughed as the two young girls in the tonneau turned to nod to her
in mock despair; then she came running back up-stairs, holding her skirt
free from her hurrying little feet.
“Well?” she inquired, as Mortimer turned back from the window to
confront her.
“Nothing doing, little girl,” he said with a sombre smile.
She looked at him, slowly divesting herself of her light leather-trimmed
coat.
“I missed him,” said Mortimer.
She flung the coat over a chair, stood a moment, her fingers busy with
her hair-pegs, then sat down on the couch, taking Tinto into her lap.
She was very pretty, dark, slim, marvellously graceful in her every
movement.
“I missed him,” repeated Mortimer.
“Can't you see him to-morrow?” she asked.
“I suppose so,” said Mortimer slowly. “Oh, Lord! how I hate this
business!”
“Hasn't he misused your confidence? Hasn't he taken your money?” she
asked. “It may be unpleasant for you to make him unbelt, but you're a
coward if you don't!”
“Easy! easy, now!” muttered Mortimer; “I'm going to shake it out of him.
I said I would, and I will.”
“I should hope so; it's yours.”
“Certainly it's mine. I wish I'd held fast now. I never supposed Plank
would take hold. It was that drivelling old Belwether who scared me
stiff! The minute I saw him scurrying to cover like a singed cat I was
fool enough to climb the first tree. I've had my lesson, little girl.”
“I hope you'll give Howard his. Somebody ought to,” she said quietly.
Then gathering up her hat and coat she went into her own apartments.
Mortimer picked up a cheap magazine, looked over the portraits of
the actresses, then, hunching up into a comfortable position, settled
himself to read the theatrical comment.
Later, Lydia not appearing, and his own valet arriving to turn on
the electricity, bring him his White Rock and Irish and the Evening
Telegraph, he hoisted his legs into another chair and sprawled there
luxuriously over his paper until it was time to dress.
About half past eight they dined in a white and pink dining-room
furnished in dull gray walnut, and served by a stealthy, white-haired,
pink-skinned butler, chiefly remarkable because it seemed utterly
impossible to get a glimpse of his eyes. Nobody could tell whether there
was anything the matter with them or not--and whether they were only
very deep set or were weak, like an albino's, or were slightly crossed,
the guests of the house never knew. Lydia herself didn't know, and had
given up trying to find out.
They had planned to go for a spin in Mortimer's motor after dinner, but
in view of the Quarrier fiasco neither was in the mood for anything.
Mortimer, as usual, ate and drank heavily. He was a carnivorous man, and
liked plenty of thick, fat, underdone meat. As for Lydia, her appetite
was as erratic as her own impulses. Her table, always wastefully
elaborate, no doubt furnished subsistence for all the relatives of her
household below stairs, and left sufficient for any ambitious butler to
make a decent profit on.
“Do you know, Leroy,” she observed, as they left the table and sauntered
back into the pale blue drawing-room, “do you know that the servants
haven't been paid for three months?”
“Oh, for Heaven's sake,” he expostulated, “don't begin that sort of
thing! I get enough of that at home; I get it every time I show my
nose!”
“I only mentioned it,” she said carelessly.
“I heard you all right. It isn't any pleasanter for me than for you. In
fact, I'm sick of it; I'm dead tired of being up against it every day
of my life. When a man has anything somebody gets it before he can
sidestep. When a man's dead broke there's nobody in sight to touch.”
“You had an opportunity to make Howard pay you back.”
“Didn't I tell you I missed him?”
“Yes. What are you going to do?”
“Do?”
“Of course. You are going to do something, I suppose.”
They had reached the gold and green room above. Lydia began pacing the
length of a beautiful Kermanshah rug--a pale, delicate marvel of rose
and green on a ground of ivory--lovely, but doomed to fade sooner than
the pretty woman who trod it with restless, silk-shod feet.
Mortimer had not responded to her last question. She said presently:
“You have never told me how you intend to make him pay you back.”
“What?” inquired Mortimer, turning very red.
“I said that you haven't yet told me how you intend to make Howard
return the money you lost through his juggling with your stock.”
“I don't exactly know myself,” admitted Mortimer, still overflushed.
“I mean to put it to him squarely, as a debt of honour that he owes. I
asked him whether to invest. Damn him! he never warned me not to. He is
morally responsible. Any man who would sit there and nod monotonously
like a mandarin, knowing all the while what he was doing to wreck the
company, and let a friend put into a rotten concern all the cash he
could scrape together, is a swindler!”
“I think so too,” she said, studying the rose arabesques in the rug.
There was a little click of her teeth when she ended her inspection and
looked across at Mortimer. Something in her expressionless gaze seemed
to reassure him, and give him a confidence he may have lacked.
“I want him to understand that I won't swallow that sort of contemptible
treatment,” asserted Mortimer, lighting a thick, dark cigar.
“I hope you'll make him understand,” she said, seating herself and
resting her clasped, brilliantly ringed hands in her lap.
“Oh, I will--never fear! He has abused my confidence abominably; he has
practically swindled me, Lydia. Don't you think so?”
She nodded.
“I'll tell him so, too,” blustered Mortimer, shaking himself into an
upright posture, and laying a pudgy, clinched fist on the table. “I'm
not afraid of him! He'll find that out, too. I know enough to stagger
him. Not that I mean to use it. I'm not going to have him think that my
demands on him for my own property resemble extortion.”
“Extortion?” she repeated.
“Yes. I don't want him to think I'm trying to intimidate him. I won't
have him think I'm a grafter; but I've half a mind to shake that money
out of him, in one way or another.”
He struck the table and looked at her for further sign of approval.
“I'm not afraid of him,” he repeated. “I wish to God he were here, and
I'd tell him so!”
She said coolly: “I was wishing that too.”
For a while they sat silent, preoccupied, avoiding each other's direct
gaze. When she rose he started, watching her in a dazed way as she
walked to the telephone.
“Shall I?” she asked quietly, turning to him, her hand on the receiver.
“Wait. W-what are you going to do?” he stammered.
“Call him up. Shall I?”
A dull throb of fright pulsed through him.
“You say you are not afraid of him, Leroy.”
“No!” he said with an oath, “I am not. Go ahead!”
She unhooked the receiver. After a second or two her low, even voice
sounded. There came a pause. She rested one elbow on the walnut shelf,
the receiver tight to her ear. Then:
“Mr. Quarrier, please. … Yes, Mr. Howard Quarrier. … No, no name. Say it
is on business of immediate importance. … Very well, then; you may say
that Miss Vyse insists on speaking to him. … Yes, I'll hold the wire.”
She turned, the receiver at her ear, and looked narrowly at Mortimer.
“Won't he speak to you?” he demanded.
“I'm going to find out. Hush a moment!” and in the same calm, almost
childish voice: “Oh, Howard, is that you? Yes, I know I promised not to
do this, but that was before things happened! … Well, what am I to do
when it is necessary to talk to you? … Yes, it is necessary! … I tell
you it is necessary! … I am sorry it is not convenient for you to talk
to me, but I really must ask you to listen! … No, I shall not write. I
want to talk to you to-night--now! Yes, you may come here, if you care
to! … I think you had better come, Howard. … Because I am liable to
continue ringing your telephone until you are willing to listen. … No,
there is nobody here. I am alone. What time? … Very well; I shall expect
you. Good-bye.”
She hung up the receiver and turned to Mortimer:
“He's coming up at once. Did I say anything to scare him particularly?”
“One thing's sure as preaching,” said Mortimer; “he's a coward, and I'm
dammed glad of it,” he added naively, relighting his cigar, which had
gone out.
“If he comes up in his motor he'll be here in a few minutes,” she said.
“Suppose you take your hat and go out. I don't want him to think what
he will think if he walks into the room and finds you waiting. You have
your key, Leroy. Walk down the block; and when you see him come in, give
him five minutes.”
Her voice had become a little breathless, and her colour was high.
Mortimer, too, seemed apprehensive. Things had suddenly begun to work
themselves out too swiftly.
“Do you think that's best?” he faltered, looking about for his hat.
“Tell Merkle that nobody has been here, if Quarrier should ask him. Do
you think we're doing it in the best way, Lydia? By God, it smells of a
put-up job to me! But I guess it's all right. It's better for me to just
happen in, isn't it? Don't forget to put Merkle wise.”
He descended the stairs hastily. Merkle, of the invisible eyes, held his
hat and gloves and opened the door for him.
Once on the dark street, his impulse was to flee--get out, get away from
the whole business. A sullen shame was pumping the hot blood up into his
neck and cheeks. He strove to find an inoffensive name for what he was
proposing to do, but ugly terms, synonym after synonym, crowded in to
characterise the impending procedure, and he walked on angrily, half
frightened, looking back from moment to moment at the house he had just
left.
On the corner he halted, breathing spasmodically, for he had struck a
smarter pace than he had been aware of.
Few people passed him. Once he caught a glimmer of a policeman's buttons
along the park wall, and an unpleasant shiver passed over him. At the
same moment an electric hansom flew noiselessly past him. He shrank
back into the shadow of a porte-cochere. The hansom halted before the
limestone basement house. A tall figure left it, stood a moment in
the middle of the sidewalk, then walked quickly to the front door. It
opened, and the man vanished.
The hansom still waited at the door. Mortimer, his hands shaking, looked
at his watch by the light of the electric bulbs flanking the gateway
under which he stood.
There was not much time in which to make up his mind, yet his fright
was increasing to a pitch which began to enrage him with that coward's
courage which it is impossible to reckon with.
He had missed Quarrier once to-day when he had been keyed to the
encounter. Was he going to miss him again through sheer terror? Besides,
was not Quarrier a coward? Besides, was it not his own money? Had he not
been vilely swindled by a pretended friend? Urging, lashing himself into
a heavy, shuffling motion, he emerged from the porte-cochere and lurched
off down the street. No time to think now, no time for second thought,
for hesitation, for weakness. He had waited too long already. He had
waited ten minutes, instead of five. Was Quarrier going to escape again?
Was he going to get out of the house before--
Fumbling with his latch-key, but with sense enough left to make no
noise, he let himself in, passed silently through the reception-hall
and up to the drawing-room floor, where for a second he stood listening.
Then something of the perverted sportsman sent the blood quivering into
his veins. He had him! He had run him down! The game was at bay.
An inrush of exhilaration steadied him. He laid his hand on the banister
and mounted, gloves and hat-brim crushed in the other hand. When he
entered the room he pretended to see only Lydia.
“Hello, little girl!” he said, laughing, “are you surprised to--”
At that moment he caught sight of Quarrier, and the start he gave
was genuine enough. Never had he seen in a man's visage such white
concentration of anger.
“Quarrier!” he stammered, for his acting was becoming real enough to
supplant art.
Quarrier had risen; his narrowing eyes moved from Mortimer to Lydia,
then reverted to the man in the combination.
“Rather unexpected, isn't it?” said Mortimer, staring at Quarrier.
“Is it?” returned Quarrier in a low voice.
“I suppose so,” sneered Mortimer. “Did you expect to find me here?”
“No. Did you expect to find me?” asked the other, with emphasis
unmistakable.
“What do you mean?” demanded Mortimer hoarsely. “What the devil do you
mean by asking me if I expected to find you here? If I had, I'd not have
travelled down to your office to-day to see you; I'd have come here for
you. Naturally people suppose that an engaged man is likely to give up
this sort of thing.”
Quarrier, motionless, white to the lips, turned his eyes from one to the
other.
“It doesn't look very well, does it?” asked Mortimer; and he stood
there, smiling, danger written all over him. “It's beginning rather
early,” he continued, with a sneer. “Most engaged men with a conscience
wait until they're married before they return to the gay and frivolous.
But here you are, it seems, handsome, jolly, and irresistible as ever!”
Quarrier looked at Lydia, and his lips moved: “You asked me to come,” he
said.
“No; you offered to. I wished to talk to you over the wire, but “--her
lip curled, and she shrugged her shoulders--“you seemed to be afraid of
something or other.”
“I couldn't talk to you in my own house, with guests in the room.”
“Why not? Did I say anything your fashionable guests might take
exception to? Am I likely to do anything of that kind?--you coward!”
Quarrier stood very still, then noiselessly turned and made one step
toward the door.
“One moment,” interposed Mortimer blandly. “As long as I travelled down
town to see you, and find you here so unexpectedly, I may as well take
advantage of this opportunity to regulate a little matter. You don't
mind our talking shop for a moment, Lydia? Thank you. It's just a little
business matter between Mr. Quarrier and myself--a matter concerning a
few shares of stock which I once held in one of his companies, bought at
par, and tumbled to ten and--What is the fraction, Quarrier? I forget.”
Quarrier thought deeply for a moment; then he raised his head, looking
full at Mortimer, and under his silky beard an edge of teeth glimmered.
“Did you wish me to take back those shares at par?” he asked.
“Exactly! I knew you would! I knew you'd see it in that way!” cried
Mortimer heartily. “Confound it all, Quarrier, I've always said you were
that sort of man--that you'd never let a friend in on the top floor, and
kick him clear to the cellar! As a matter of fact, I sold out at ten and
three-eighths. Wait! Here's a pencil. Lydia, give me that pad on your
desk. Here you are, Quarrier. It's easy enough to figure out how much
you owe me.”
And as Quarrier slowly began tracing figures on the pad, Mortimer
rambled on, growing more demonstrative and boisterous every moment.
“It's white of you, Quarrier--I'll say that! Legally, of course, you
could laugh at me; but I've always said your business conscience would
never let you stand for this sort of thing. 'You can talk and talk,'
I've told people, many a time, 'but you'll never convince me that Howard
Quarrier hasn't a heart.' No, by jinks! they couldn't make me believe
it. And here's my proof--here's my vindication! Lydia, would you mind
hunting up that cheque-book I left here before dinn--”
He had made a mistake. The girl flushed. He choked up, and cast a
startled glance at Quarrier. But Quarrier, if he heard, made no motion
of understanding. Perhaps it had not been necessary to convince him of
the conspiracy.
When he had finished his figures he reviewed them, tracing each total
with his pencil's point; then quietly handed the pad to Mortimer who
went over it, and nodded that it was correct.
Lydia rose. Quarrier said, without looking at her: “I have a blank
cheque with me. May I use one of these pens?”
So he had brought a cheque! Had he supposed that a cheque might be
necessary when Lydia called him up? Was he prepared to meet any demand
of hers, too, even before Mortimer appeared on the scene?
“As long as you have a cheque with you, Howard,” said Lydia quietly,
“suppose you simply add to Mr. Mortimer's amount what you had intended
to offer me?”
He stared at her without answering.
“That little remembrance for old time's sake. Don't you recollect?”
“No,” said Quarrier.
“Why, Howard! Didn't you promise me all sorts of things when I wanted
to go to your friend Mr. Siward, and explain that it was not his fault I
got into the Patroons Club? Don't you remember I felt dreadfully that he
was expelled--that I was simply wild to write to the governors and tell
them how I took Merkle's clothes and drove to the club and waited until
I saw a lot of men go in, and then crowded in with the push?”
Mortimer was staring at Quarrier out of his protruding eyes. The girl
leaned forward, deliberate, self-possessed, the red lips edged with
growing scorn.
“That was a dirty trick!” said Mortimer heavily. He took the pad, added
a figure, passed it to Lydia, and she coolly wrote a total, underscoring
it heavily.
“That is the amount,” she said.
Quarrier looked at the pad which she had tossed upon the desk. Then he
slowly wetted his pen with ink, and, laying the loose cheque flat, began
to fill it in. Afterward he dried it, and, reading it carefully, pushed
it aside and rose.
“It wouldn't be advisable for you to stop payment, you know,” observed
Mortimer insolently, lying back in his chair and stretching his legs.
“I know,” said Quarrier, pausing to turn on them a deathly stare. Then
he went away. After awhile they heard the door close. But there was
no sound from the electric hansom, and Mortimer rose and walked to the
window.
“He's gone,” he said.
Lydia stood at the desk, examining the cheque.
“We ought to afford a decent touring-car now,” she suggested--“like that
yellow and black Serin-Chanteur car of Mr. Plank's.”