HORACE Boyce was too enraged to preserve a polite demeanor toward the
sympathizers who had followed him out of the hall, and who showed
a disposition to discuss the situation with him now the street was
reached. After a muttered word or two to Tenney, the young man abruptly
turned his back on the group, and walked with a hurried step down the
street toward his hotel.
Entering the building, he made his way direct to the bar-room back of
the office--a place where he had rarely been before--and poured out for
himself a heavy portion of whiskey, which he drank off without noticing
the glass of iced water placed for him beside the bottle. He turned to
go, but came back again to the bar after he had reached the swinging
screen-doors, and said he would take a bottle of the liquor up to his
room. “I haven’t been sleeping well these last few nights,” he explained
to the bar-keeper.
Once in his room, Horace put off his boots, got into easy coat and
slippers, raked down the fire, looked for an aimless minute or two at
the row of books on his shelf, and then threw himself into the arm-chair
beside the stove. The earlier suggestion of gray in his hair at the
temples had grown more marked these last few weeks, and there were new
lines of care on his clear-cut face, which gave it a haggard look now as
he bent his brows in rumination.
An important interview with Tenney and Wendover was to take place in
this room a half hour later; but, besides a certain hard-drawn notion
that he would briskly hold his own with them, Horace did not try to form
plans for this or even to fasten his mind upon it.
The fortnight or more that had passed since that terrible momentary
vision of Kate Minster running up the stairs to avoid him, had been to
the young man a period of unexampled gloominess and unrest, full of
deep wrath at the fate which had played upon him such a group of scurvy
tricks all at once, yet having room for sustained exasperation over the
minor discomforts of his new condition.
The quarrel with his father had forced him to change his residence, and
this was a peculiarly annoying circumstance coming at just such a time.
He realized now that he had been very comfortable in the paternal house,
and that his was a temperament extremely dependent upon well-ordered and
satisfactory surroundings. These new rooms of his, though they cost a
good deal of money, were not at all to his liking, and the service was
execrable. The sense of being at home was wholly lacking; he felt as
disconnected and out of touch with the life about him as if he had been
travelling in a foreign country which he did not like.
The great humiliation and wrong--the fact that he had been rejected with
open contumely by the rich girl he had planned to marry--lay steadily
day and night upon the confines of his consciousness, like a huge black
morass with danger signals hung upon all its borders. His perverse mind
kept returning to view these menacing signals, and torturing him with
threats to disregard them and plunge into the forbidden darkness. The
constant strain to hold his thoughts back from this hateful abyss wore
upon him like an unremitting physical pain.
The resolve which had chilled and stiffened him into self-possession
that afternoon in the drawingroom, and had even enabled him to speak
with cold distinctness to Mrs. Minster and to leave the house of insult
and defeat with dignity, had been as formless and unshaped as poor,
heart-torn, trembling Lear’s threat to his daughters before Gloster’s
gate. Revenge he would have--sweeping, complete, merciless, but by what
means he knew not. That would come later.
Two weeks were gone, and the revenge seemed measurably nearer, though
still its paths were all unmapped. It was clear enough to the young
man’s mind now that Tenney and Wendover were intent on nothing less than
plundering the whole Minster estate. Until that fatal afternoon in the
drawingroom, he had kept himself surrounded with an elaborate system of
self-deception. He had pretended to himself that the designs of these
associates of his were merely smart commercial plans, which needed only
to be watched with equal smartness. Now the pretence was put aside.
He knew the men to be villains, and openly rated them as such in his
thoughts.
He had a stem satisfaction in the thought that their schemes were in
his hands. He would join them now, frankly and with all his heart,
only providing the condition that his share of the proceeds should
be safe-guarded. They should have his help to wreck this insolent,
purse-proud, newly rich family, to strip them remorselessly of their
wealth. His fellow brigands might keep the furnaces, might keep
everything in and about this stupid Thessaly. He would take his share in
hard coin, and shake the mud and slush of Dearborn County from off his
feet. He was only in the prime of his youth. Romance beckoned to him
from a hundred centres of summer civilization, where men knew how to
live, and girls added culture and dowries to beauty and artistic dress.
Oh, yes! he would take his money and go.
The dream of a career in his native village had brought him delight only
so long as Kate Minster was its central figure. That vision now seemed
so clumsy and foolish that he laughed at it. He realized that he had
never liked the people here about him. Even the Minsters had been
provincial, only a gilded variation upon the rustic character of the
section. Nothing but the over-sanguine folly of youth could ever have
prompted him to think that he wanted to be mayor of Thessaly, or that it
would be good to link his fortunes with the dull, under-bred place. Oh,
no! he would take his money and go.
The two men for whom he had been waiting broke abruptly in upon his
revery by entering the room. They came in without even a show of
knocking on the door, and Horace frowned a little at their rudeness.
Stout Judge Wendover panted heavily with the exertion of ascending the
stairs, and it seemed to have put him out of temper as well as breath.
He threw off his overcoat with an impatient jerk, took a chair, and
gruffly grunted “How-de-do!” in the direction of his host, without
taking the trouble to even nod a salutation. Tenney also seated himself,
but he did not remove his overcoat. Even in the coldest seasons he
seemed to wear the same light, autumnal clothes, creaseless and gray,
and mouselike in effect. The two men looked silently at Horace, and he
felt that they disapproved his velveteen coat.
“Well?” he asked, at last, leaning back in his chair and trying to equal
them in indifference. “What is new in New York, Judge?”
“Never mind New York! Thessaly is more in our line just now,” said
Wendover, sternly.
The young man simulated a slight yawn. “You’re welcome to my share
of the town, I’m sure,” he said; “I’m not very enthusiastic about it
myself.”
“How much has Reuben Tracy got to work on? How much have you blabbed
about our business to him?” asked the New Yorker.
“I neither know nor care anything about Mr. Tracy,” said Horace, coldly.
“As for what you elegantly describe as my ‘blabbing’ to him, I daresay
you understand what it means. I don’t.”
“It means that you have made a fool of us; got us into trouble; perhaps
ruined the whole business, by your God A’mighty stupidity! That’s
what it means!” said Wendover, with his little blue-bead eyes snapping
angrily in the lamplight.
“I hope it won’t strike you as irrelevant if I suggest that this is my
room,” drawled Horace, “and that I have a distinct preference for civil
conversation in it. If you have any criticisms to offer upon my conduct,
as you seem to think that you have, I must beg that you couch them in
the language which gentlemen--”
“Gentlemen be damned!” broke in the Judge, sharply. “We’ve had too much
‘gentleman’ in this whole business! Answer me a plain question. What
does Tracy mean by his applications?”
“I haven’t the remotest idea what you are talking about. I’ve already
told you that I know nothing of Mr. Tracy or his doings.”
Schuyler Tenney interposed, impassively: “He may not have heard of the
application, Judge. You must remember that, for the sake of appearances,
he then being in partnership, you were made Mrs. Minster’s attorney, in
both the agreements. That is how notices came to be served on you.”
The Judge had not taken his eyes off the young man in the velveteen
jacket. “Do you mean to tell me that you haven’t learned from Mrs.
Minster that this man Tracy has made applications on behalf of the
daughters to upset the trust agreement, and to have a receiver appointed
to overhaul the books of the Mfg. Company?”
Horace sat up straight. “Good God, no!” he stammered. “I’ve heard
nothing of that.”
“You never do seem to hear about things. What did you suppose you were
here for, except to watch Mrs. Minster, and keep track of what was going
on?” demanded Wendover.
“I may tell you,” answered Horace, speaking hesitatingly, “that
circumstances have arisen which render it somewhat difficult for me
to call upon Mrs. Minster at her house--for that matter, out of the
question. She has only been to my office office within the--the last
fortnight.”
Schuyler Tenney spoke again. “The ‘circumstances’ means, Judge, that
he--”
“Pardon me, Mr. Tenney,” said Horace, with decision: “what the
circumstances mean is neither your business nor that of your friend.
That is something that we will not discuss, if you please.”
“Won’t we, though!” burst in Wendover, peremptorily. “You make a fool of
us. You go sneaking around one of the girls up there. You think you’ll
set yourself in a tub of butter, and let our schemes go to the devil.
You try to play this behind our backs. You get kicked out of the house
for your impudence. And then you sit here, dressed like an Italian
organ-grinder, by God, and tell me that we won’t discuss the subject!”
Horace rose to his feet, with all his veins tingling. “You may leave
this room, both of you,” he said, in a voice which he with difficulty
kept down. His face was pale with rage.
Judge Wendover rose, also, but it was not to obey Horace’s command.
Instead, he pointed imperiously to the chair which the young man had
vacated.
“Sit down there,” he shouted. “Sit down, I tell you! I warn you, I’m in
no mood to be fooled with. You deserve to have your neck wrung for what
you’ve done already. If I have another word of cheek from you, by God,
it _shall_ be wrung! We’ll throw you on the dungheap as we would a dead
rat.”
Horace had begun to listen to these staccato sentences with his arms
folded, and lofty defiance in his glance. Somehow, as he looked into his
antagonist’s blazing eyes, his courage melted before their hot menace.
The pudgy figure of the Judge visibly magnified itself under his gaze,
and the threat in that dry, husky voice set his nerves to quaking. He
sank into his seat again.
“All right,” he said, in an altered voice. “I’m willing enough to talk,
only a man doesn’t like to be bullied in that way in his own house.”
“It’s a tarnation sight better than being bullied by a warder in Auburn
State’s prison,” said the Judge, as he too resumed his chair. “Take my
word for that.”
Schuyler Tenney crossed his legs nervously at this, and coughed. Horace
looked at them both in a mystified but uneasy silence.
“You heard what I said?” queried Wendover, brusquely, after a moment’s
pause.
“Undoubtedly I did,” answered Horace. “But--but its application escaped
me.”
“What I mean is”--the Judge hesitated for a moment to note Tenney’s mute
signal of dissuasion, and then went on: “We might as well not beat about
the bush--what I mean is that there’s a penitentiary job in this thing
for somebody, unless we all keep our heads, and have good luck to boot.
You’ve done your best to get us all into a hole, with your confounded
airs and general foolishness. If worse comes to worst, perhaps we can
save ourselves, but there won’t be a ghost of a chance for you. I’ll see
to that myself. If we come to grief, you shall pay for it.”
“What do you mean?” asked Horace, in a subdued tone, after a period of
silent reflection. “Where does the penitentiary part come in?”
“I don’t agree with the Judge at all,” interposed Tenney, eagerly. “I
don’t think there’s any need of looking on the dark side of the thing.
We don’t _know_ that Tracy knows anything. And then, why shouldn’t we be
able to get our own man appointed receiver?”
“This is the situation,” said Wendover, speaking deliberately. “You
advised Mrs. Minster to borrow four hundred thousand dollars for the
purchase of certain machinery patents, and you drew up the papers for
the operation. It happens that she already owned--or rather that the
Mfg. Company already owned--these identical rights and patents. They
were a part of the plant and business we put into the company at one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars when we moved over from Cadmus. But
nobody on her side, except old Clarke, knew just what it was that we put
in. He died in Florida, and it was arranged that his papers should
pass to you. There was no record that we had sold the right of the nail
machine.”
Horace gazed with bewilderment into the hard-drawn, serious faces of
the two men who sat across the little table from him. In the yellow
lamplight these countenances looked like masks, and he searched them in
vain for any sign of astonishment or emotion. The thing which was now
for the first time being put into words was strange, but as it shaped
itself in his mind he did not find himself startled. It was as if he had
always known about it, but had allowed it to lapse in his memory. These
men were thieves--and he was their associate! The room with its central
point of light where the three knaves were gathered, and its deepening
shadows round about, suggested vaguely to him a robber’s cave. Primary
instincts arose strong within him. Terror lest discovery should come
yielded precedence to a fierce resolve to have a share of the booty. It
seemed minutes to him before he spoke again.
“Then she was persuaded to mortgage her property, to buy over again at
four times its value what she had already purchased?” he asked, with an
assumption of calmness.
“That seems to be about what you managed to induce her to do,” said the
Judge, dryly.
“Then you admit that it was I who did it--that you owe the success of
the thing to me!” The young man could not restrain his eagerness to
establish this point. He leaned over the table, and his eyes sparkled
with premature triumph.
“No: I said ‘_seems_,’” answered Wendover. “_We_ know better. _We_
know that from the start you have done nothing but swell around at our
expense, and create as many difficulties for us and our business
as possible. But the courts and the newspapers would look at it
differently. _They_ would be sure to regard you as the one chiefly
responsible.”
“I should think we were pretty much in the same boat, my friend,” said
Horace, coldly.
“I daresay,” replied the New Yorker, “only with this difference: we can
swim, and you can’t. By that I mean, we’ve got money, and you haven’t.
See the point?”
Horace saw the point, and felt himself revolted at the naked selfishness
and brutality with which it was exposed. The disheartening fact that
these men would not hesitate for an instant to sacrifice him--that they
did not like him, and would not lift a finger to help him unless it was
necessary for their own salvation--rose gloomily before his mind.
“Still, it would be better for all of us that the boat shouldn’t be
capsized at all,” he remarked.
“That’s it--that’s the point,” put in Tenney, with animation; “that’s
what I said to the Judge.”
“This Tracy of yours,” said Wendover, “has got hold of the Minster
girls. He’s acting for them. He has been before Judge Waller with a
whole batch of applications. First, in chambers, he’s brought an action
to dissolve the trust, and asked for an order returnable at Supreme
Court chambers to show cause why, in the mean time, the furnaces
shouldn’t be opened. His grounds are, first, that the woman was
deceived; and second, that the trust is against public policy. Now,
it seems to me that our State courts can’t issue an order binding on
a board of directors at Pittsburg. Isn’t it a thing that belongs to a
United States court? How is that?”
“I’m sure I don’t know,” answered Horace. “It’s a new question to me.”
“Tenney told me you knew something as a lawyer,” was Wendover’s angry
comment. “I’d like to know where it comes in.”
The hardware merchant hastened to avert the threatened return to
personalities. “Tell him about the receiver motion,” he said.
“Then Tracy, before the same judge, but in special term, has applied for
a receiver for the Thessaly Mfg. Company, on the ground of fraud.”
“That’s the meanest thing about the whole business,” commented Tenney.
“Well, what do you advise doing?” asked Horace, despondently.
“There are two things,” said Wendover. “First, to delay everything until
after New Year, when Mrs. Minster’s interest becomes due and can’t be
paid. That can be done by denying jurisdiction of the State court in the
trust business, and by asking for particulars in the receiver matter.
The next thing is to make Thessaly too hot for those women, and for
Tracy, too, before New Year. If a mob should smash all the widow’s
windows for her, for instance, perhaps burn her stable, she’d be mighty
glad to get out of town, and out of the iron business, too.”
“But that wouldn’t shut Tracy up,” observed Tenney. “He sticks at things
like a bull-dog, once he gets a good hold.”
“I’m thinking about Tracy,” mused the Judge.
Horace found himself regarding these two visitors of his with something
like admiration. The resourcefulness and resolution of their villainy
were really wonderful. He felt his courage coming back to him. Such
men would be sure to win, if victory were not absolutely impossible. At
least, there was nothing for it but to cordially throw in his lot with
them.
“Whatever is decided upon, I’ll do my share,” he said, with decision.
Upon reflection, he added: “But if I share the risks, I must be clearly
understood to also share the profits.”
Judge Wendover looked at the young man sternly, and breathed hard as he
looked. “Upon my word,” he growled at last, “you’re the cheekiest young
cub I’ve seen since before the war!”
Horace stood to his guns. “However that may be,” he said, “you see what
I mean. This is a highly opportune time, it strikes me, to discover just
how I stand in this matter.”
“You’ll stand where you’re put, or it will be the worse for you!”
“Surely,” Schuyler Tenney interposed, “you ought to have confidence that
we will do the fair thing.”
“My bosom may be simply overflowing with confidence in you both”--Horace
ventured upon a suggestion of irony in his intonation--“but experience
seems to indicate the additional desirability of an understanding.
If you will think it over, I daresay you will gather the force of my
remark.”
The New Yorker seemed not to have heard the remark, much less to have
understood it. He addressed the middle space between Horace and Tenney
in a meditative way: “Those two speech-making fellows who are here from
the Amalgamated Confederation of Labor, or whatever it is, can both be
had to kick up a row whenever we like. I know them both of old. They
notified me that they were coming here ten days ago. We can tell them
to keep their hands off the Canadians when they come next week, and
lead their crowd instead up to the Minster house. We’ll go over that
together, Tenney, later on. But about Tracy--perhaps these fellows
might--”
Wendover followed up the train of this thought in silence, with a
ruminative eye on vacancy.
“What I was saying,” insisted Horace, “was that I wanted to know just
how I stand.”
“I suppose it’s out of the question to square Tracy,” pursued Wendover,
thinking aloud, “and that Judge Waller that he’s applied to, he’s just
another such an impracticable cuss. There’s no security for business at
all, when such fellows have the power to muddle and interfere with it.
Tenney, _you_ know this Tracy. Why can’t you think of something?”
“As I remarked before,” Horace interposed once more, “what am I to get
out of this thing?”
This time the New Yorker heard him. He slowly turned his round,
white-framed face toward the speaker, and fixed upon him a penetrating
glance of wrath, suspicion, and dislike.
“Oh, _that_ is what you want to know, is it?” he said, abruptly, after a
momentary silence. “Well, sir, if you had your deserts, you’d get
about seven years’ hard labor. As it is, you’ve had over seven thousand
dollars out of the concern, and you’ve done seven hundred thousand
dollars’ worth of damage. If you can make a speech before Judge Waller
this week that will stave off all these things until after New Year’s,
perhaps I may forgive you some of the annoyance and loss your infernal
idiocy and self-conceit have caused us. When you’ve done that, it will
be time enough to talk to me about giving you another chance to keep
your salary. But understand this, sir! You never made a bigger mistake
in your life than in thinking you could dictate terms to Peter Wendover,
now or any other time! Why, you poor empty-headed creature, who do you
suppose _you_ could frighten? You’re as helpless as a June-bug in a
cistern with the curb shut down.”
The Judge had risen while speaking, and put on his overcoat. He took his
hat now, and glanced to note that Tenney was also on his feet. Then he
added these further words to the young man, whose head was drooping in
spite of himself, and whose figure had sunk into a crouching posture in
the easy-chair:
“Let me give you some advice. Take precious good care not to annoy me
any more while this business is on. I never did take much stock in you.
It was Tenney who picked you out, and who thought you could be useful.
I didn’t believe in you from the start. Now that I’ve summered and
wintered you, I stand amazed, by God! that I could ever have let you get
mixed up in my affairs. But here you are, and it will be easier for us
to put up with you, and carry you along, than throw you out. Besides,
you may be able to do some good, if what I’ve said puts any sense into
your head. But don’t run away with the idea that you are necessary to
us, or that you are going to share anything, as you call it, or that you
can so much as lift your finger against us without first of all crushing
yourself. This is plain talk, and it may help you to size yourself up as
you really are. According to your own notion of yourself, God Almighty’s
overcoat would have about made you a vest. My idee of you is different,
you see, and I’m a good deal nearer right than you are. I’ll send the
papers over to you to-morrow, and let us see what you will do with
them.”
The New York magnate turned on his heel at this, and, without any word
of adieu, he and Tenney left the room.
Horace sat until long after midnight in his chair, with the bottle
before him, half-dazed and overwhelmed amidst the shapeless ruins of his
ambition.