JAMES BANSEMER
In the City of New York there was practising, at that time, a
lawyer by the name of Bansemer. His office, on the topmost floor
of a dingy building in the lower section of the city, was not
inviting. On leaving the elevator, one wound about through narrow
halls and finally peered, with more or less uncertainty and misgiving,
at the half-obliterated sign which said that James Bansemer held
forth on the other side of the glass panel.
It was whispered in certain circles and openly avowed in others
that Bansemer's business was not the kind which elevates the law;
in plain words, his methods were construed to debase the good and
honest statutes of the land. Once inside the door of his office--and
a heavy spring always closed it behind one--there was quick evidence
that the lawyer lamentably disregarded the virtues of prosperity,
no matter how they had been courted and won. Although his transactions
in and out of the courts of that great city bore the mark of
dishonour, he was known to have made money during the ten years
of his career as a member of the bar. Possibly he kept his office
shabby and unclean that it might be in touch with the transactions
which had their morbid birth inside the grimy walls. There was no
spot or corner in the two small rooms that comprised his "chambers"
to which he could point with pride. The floors were littered with
papers; the walls were greasy and bedecked with malodorous notations,
documents and pictures; the windows were smoky and useless; the
clerk's desk bore every suggestion of dissoluteness.
But little less appalling to one's aesthetic sense was the clerk
himself. Squatting behind his wretched desk, Elias Droom peered
across the litter of papers and books with snaky but polite eyes,
almost as inviting as the spider who, with wily but insidious
decorum, draws the guileless into his web.
If one passed muster in the estimation of the incomprehensible
Droom, he was permitted, in due season, to pass through a second
oppressive-looking door and into the private office of Mr. James
Bansemer, attorney-at-law and solicitor. It may be remarked at
this early stage that, no matter how long or how well one may have
known Droom, one seldom lingered to engage in commonplaces with
him. His was the most repellent personality imaginable. When he
smiled, one was conscious of a shock to the nervous system; when
he so far forgot himself as to laugh aloud, there was a distinct
illustration of the word "crunching"; when he spoke, one was almost
sorry that he had ears.
Bansemer knew but little of this freakish individual's history; no
one else had the temerity to inquire into his past--or to separate
it from his future, for that matter. Once, Bansemer ironically
asked him why he had never married. It was a full minute before
the other lifted his eyes from the sheet of legal cap, and by that
time he was in full control of his passion.
"Look at me! Would any woman marry a thing like me?"
This was said with such terrible earnestness that Bansemer took
care never to broach the subject again. He saw that Droom's heart
was not all steel and brass.
Droom was middle-aged. His lank body and cadaverous face were
constructed on principles not generally accredited to nature as it
applies to men. When erect, his body swayed as if it were a stubborn
reed determined to maintain its dignity in the face of the wind; he
did not walk, he glided. His long square chin, rarely clean-shaven,
protruded far beyond its natural orbit; indeed, the attitude of
the chin gave one an insight to the greedy character of the man.
At first glance, one felt that Droom was reaching forth with his
lower jaw to give greeting with his teeth, instead of his hand.
His neck was long and thin, and his turndown collar was at least
two sizes too large. The nose was hooked and of abnormal length,
the tip coming well down over the short, upper lip and broad mouth.
His eyes were light blue, and so intense that he was never known to
blink the lashes. Topping them were deep, wavering, black eyebrows
that met above the nose, forming an ominous, cloudy line across
the base of his thin, high forehead. The crown of his head, covered
by long, scant strands of black hair, was of the type known as
"retreating and pointed." The forehead ran upward and back from the
brows almost to a point, and down from the pinnacle hung the veil
of hair, just as if he had draped it there with the same care
he might have used in placing his best hat upon a peg. His back
was stooped, and the high, narrow shoulders were hunched forward
eagerly. Long arms and ridiculously thin legs, with big hands and
feet, tell the story of his extremities. When he was on his feet
Droom was more than six feet tall; as he sat in the low-backed,
office chair he looked to be less than five feet, over all. What
became of that lank expanse of bone and cuticle when he sat down
was one of the mysteries that not even James Bansemer could fathom.
The men had been classmates in an obscure law school down in
Pennsylvania. Bansemer was good-looking, forceful and young; while
Droom was distinctly his opposite. Where he came from no one knew
and no one cared. He was past thirty-five when he entered the
school-at least twelve years the senior of Bansemer.
His appearance and attire proclaimed him to be from the country;
but his sophistry, his knowledge of the world and his wonderful
insight into human nature contradicted his looks immeasureably.
A conflict or two convinced his fellow students that he was more
than a match for them in stealth and cunning, if not in dress and
deportment.
Elias Droom had not succeeded as a lawyer. He repelled people,
growing more and more bitter against the world as his struggles
became harder. What little money he had accumulated--Heaven alone
knew how: he came by it--dwindled to nothing, and he was in actual
squalor when, later, Bansemer found him in an attic in Baltimore.
Even as he engaged the half-starved wretch to become his confidential
clerk the lawyer shuddered and almost repented of his action.
But Elias Droom was worth his weight in gold to James Bansemer from
that day forth. His employer's sole aim in life was to get rich
and thereby to achieve power. His ambition was laudable, if one
accepts the creed of morals, but his methods were not so praise-worthy.
After a year of two of starvation struggles to get on with the
legitimate, he packed up his scruples and laid them away--temporarily,
he said. He resorted to sharp practice, knavery, and all the forms
of legal blackmail; it was not long before his bank account began
to swell. His business thrived. He was so clever that not one of his
shady proceedings reacted. It is safe to venture that ninety-nine
per cent, of the people who were bilked through his manipulations
promised, in the heat of virtuous wrath, to expose him, but he had
learned to smile in security. He knew that exposure for him meant
humiliation for the instigator, and he continued to rest easy while
he worked hard.
"You're getting rich at this sort of thing," observed Droom one
day, after the lawyer had closed a particularly nauseous deal to
his own satisfaction, "but what are you going to do when the tide
turns?"
Bansemer, irritated on perceiving that the other was engaged in his
exasperating habit of rubbing his hands together, did not answer,
but merely thundered out: "Will you stop that!"
There was a faint suggestion of the possibility of a transition of
the hands to claws, as Droom abruptly desisted, but smilingly went
on:
"Some day, the other shark will get the better of you and you'll
have nothing to fall back on. You've been building on mighty slim
foundations. There isn't a sign of support if the worst comes to
the worst," he chuckled.
"It's a large world, Droom," said his employer easily.
"And small also, according to another saying," supplemented Droom.
"When a man's down, everybody kicks him--I'm afraid you could not
survive the kicking."
Droom grinned so diabolically as again he resumed the rubbing of
his hands that the other turned away with an oath and closed the
door to the inside office. Bansemer was alone and where Droom's
eyes could not see him, but something told him that the grin hung
outside the door for many minutes, as if waiting for a chance to
pop in and tantalise him.
Bansemer was a good-looking man of the coarser mould--the kind of
man that merits a second look in passing, and the second look is not
always in his favour. He was thirty-five years of age, but looked
older. His face was hard and deeply marked with the lines of
intensity. The black eyes were fascinating in their brilliancy,
but there was a cruel, savage light in their depths. The nose and
mouth were clean-cut and pitiless in their very symmetry. Shortly
after leaving college to hang out his shingle, he had married the
daughter of a minister. For two years her sweet influence kept his
efforts along the righteous path, but he writhed beneath the yoke
of poverty. His pride suffered because he was unable to provide
her with more of the luxuries of life; in his selfish way, he loved
her. Failure to advance made him surly and ill-tempered, despite
her amiable efforts to lighten the shadows around their little
home. When the baby boy was born to them, and she suffered more
and more from the unkindness of privation, James Bansemer, by nature
an aggressor, threw off restraint and plunged into the traffic that
soon made him infamously successful. She died, however, before the
taint of his duplicity touched her, and he, even in his grief, felt
thankful that she never was to know the truth.
At this time Bansemer lived in comfort at one of the middle-class
boarding houses uptown, and the boy was just leaving the kindergarten
for a private school. Bansemer's calloused heart had one tender
chamber, and in it dwelt the little lad with the fair hair and grey
eyes of the woman who had died.
Late one November afternoon just before Bansemer put on his light
topcoat to leave the office for the day, Droom tapped on the
glass panel of the door to his private office. Usually, the clerk
communicated with him by signal--a floor button by which he could
acquaint his master with much that he ought to know, and the
visitor in the outer office would be none the wiser. The occasions
were rare when he went so far as to tap on the door. Bansemer was
puzzled, and stealthily listened for sounds from the other side.
Suddenly, there came to his ears the voices of women, mingled with
Broom's suppressed but always raucous tones.
Bansemer opened the door; looking into the outer office, he saw
Droom swaying before two women, rubbing his hands and smiling. One
of the women carried a small babe in her arms. Neither she nor her
companion seemed quite at ease in the presence of the lank guardian
of the outer office.