talk of a movement to fuse the reform voters of all parties, but it left
him cold. He had been a successful prosecutor, and his name was familiar
to newspaper readers; his advocacy of Leighton had won him a prominence,
even a certain following, among the public; but the irony of life was
too much for him; he had, at this period, an eye too appreciative of the
odds against him. He saw Betty two or three times a week, took her
motoring and to the theaters, but he refrained from showing her that he
loved her, because he saw no chance of offering her himself as a man
worth while. The lethargy of his manner became more marked. He began
to bear the outward tokens of one that does not care. To this he had
come after four years in New York.
*CHAPTER V*
Sec.1. The hideous North Bridge disaster occurred on a spring morning
during the last year of Leighton's first term in office. The
District-Attorney, whose habitual disparagement of his post did not dull
his desire to retain it, was busy planning for re-election, and the work
of his staff, labor how they would, was congested. The assistants were
straining to make a record of convictions with which their chief might
go before the electors in the autumn, and were giving to participation
in political councils every half-hour that they dared spare from their
legal tasks; they were hard driven and worn to the nerves; yet the news
of the wreck of the Manhattan & Niagara Railway, immediately within the
city's limits, burst through doors that had been opened only to men with
power or appointments and swept, even from the collective mind of the
corps, the bulking thought of jury lists and ballots.
The Manhattan and Niagara had entered New York only a few years before,
with a line that tapped fresh territory. Along this line real-estate
operators forthwith plotted ten or a dozen towns, and white-and-yellow
suburbs leaped up like mushrooms. They were peopled by clerks and small
businessmen that came into the city over the M. & N. every morning and
returned home by the same route each evening.
From the opening of the new line, complaints had been common: it was
said that the service was inadequate, that the cars and other
rolling-stock were largely second-hand material purchased from the older
New York & New Jersey Railroad; that the rails were the cheapest
obtainable, the ties bought from an abandoned branch line near Buffalo.
One serious wreck had preceded that at the North Bridge, but had not
been followed by the improvements the company had promised. The patrons
had protested with all the vigor Americans exhibit when they feel that a
public-service corporation is cheating them, and had stopped as far on
the discreet side of action as protesting Americans usually stop: the M.
& N.'s parsimony became grist for the mill of the humorous weeklies and
produced no further reaction. This morning, a train crowded with men
going to their offices plunged through a bridge crossing an uptown
street: a hundred passengers were wounded and twenty-five killed.
The earliest editions of the evening papers shrieked the news, and
special editions rushed from the presses. In most of them the M. & N.
had taken care to be a heavy advertiser, but here was an event so
clearly due to the railway's known policy that no paper could belittle
the culpability of the management: the bridge had been recently examined
and pronounced safe by state inspectors, yet all reports agreed that it
was constructed of the very lightest material, and the earliest evidence
showed that a rail had flattened and thrown the train. To persons
having a fair knowledge of current finance, it was known that the M. &
N. was controlled by the group of capitalists who were actively at the
management of the nominally rival N. Y. & N. J.
Luke sent his office-boy to buy him the first edition that he heard
called beneath his window. It placed the dead at a hundred and the
injured at thrice that figure, and when Huber's eyes caught the obscure
paragraph that hinted at the real ownership of the road, his cheeks, now
so generally pale, reddened, and the hand that held the paper trembled.
Something of his old indignation and purpose woke in him. He ordered
the boy to bring him a copy of each fresh edition as it appeared on the
street, and though the lists of victims shrank to their true number, the
outstanding fact of the owners' guilt remained.
Leighton passed through Luke's room on his return from luncheon. His
face was drawn with the long worry of his campaign; he had been eating
with two politicians and shaping plans while he bolted food.
"Begins to look as if we can get the indorsement of the anti-Tammany
Democrats," he said as he hurried by. "I've just had a talk with Seeley
and Ellison. They're coming here at three o'clock."
Luke held up his paper.
"This is an awful thing," he said.
"What?" asked Leighton. He passed beside Luke's desk. "Oh, the North
Bridge wreck? Yes, isn't it? When Ellison and Seeley come, don't let
anybody butt in on me."
"You know who are really the responsible crowd in the M. & N.?" Luke
persisted. His manner was the sleepy manner that had grown upon him for
the past twelvemonth, but his eyes were keen.
"Yes," said Leighton absently. He ran his fingers through his always
disordered hair. "Yes I know, but we couldn't prove it." He looked at
his watch. "Don't forget," he concluded, "you're to head off anybody
that comes after three o'clock, and if you're busy, then turn them over
to one of the other fellows."
Sec.2. At half-past four Luke's office-boy announced James T. Rollins.
Luke looked up heavily from the latest edition of the _Evening World_.
"Who's James T. Rollins?" he inquired.
The boy did not know. "But he looks like he owned the Stock Exchange,"
he said. "Wanted the Boss: I told him he was busy."
Luke wearily laid aside his paper.
"Very well, bring him in."
The boy went out and straightway reopened the door to admit the visitor.
Dressed in a russet brown, Rollins was short and stout; his eyebrows
were bushy, and he made an effort to keep his thick lips drawn in a firm
line. He so much resembled the pictures of the man just then predominant
in Luke's mind that the assistant District-Attorney was startled.
"Mr. Rollins?"
The visitor tried to speak, but seemed to be unable to accomplish
articulation. He nodded. He stood erect in the attitude of one
accustomed to receive orders, and his right hand tapped his stiff hat
against his thigh.
Luke indicated a chair beside his desk.
"Sit down."
Rollins complied. He sat far forward in the chair, as if expecting to
be ordered out of it at the next moment. Both hands now clutched the
brim of his hat, which he held between his fat, outspread knees.
"You wanted to see Mr. Leighton?" inquired Luke.
Rollins coughed.
"Yes, sir."
"I'm sorry." Luke was accustomed to callers of the hesitant sort: he
wished that this one would go and leave him alone with the new idea that
was growing in his brain; but Leighton, like the good politician that he
was, had always given strict orders that every caller should be well
received. "I'm afraid Mr. Leighton's very busy now. He has some most
important business in hand."
Rollins made an effort toward dignity; his words succeeded, but his
manner of uttering them failed:
"My business is important, too."
"And immediate?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then perhaps I can attend to it for you."
Rollins shook his head.
"I've got to see the District-Attorney."
"But I am his assistant."
"Yes, sir, I know. But this is confidential."
Luke began to lose patience.
"Well," he said, "as I told you, I'm sorry, but you can't see him."
In spite of Leighton's orders and his own customary obedience to them,
Luke's voice had become sharp. It was just then only the sharpness of
an underling; but, because Rollins himself was an underling, the visitor
resented it, and this resentment gave him the courage he wanted. He
stood up, and he bore himself with an erectness which had a fresh
character.
"It's him that will be sorry," he said. "I came here to give him
information that'd re-elect him."
Notwithstanding the man's new attitude, Luke thought he scented the
crank. All sorts of cranks infested the District-Attorney's office, and
every sort was certain it could purge the city or re-elect Leighton.
Luke lost his temper. He spoke with the drawl with which he commonly
spoke, but his tone was bitter. His tongue laid hold of the uppermost
thought in his head.
"I suppose," he said, "you've come here to place the blame for the North
Bridge wreck?"
The breath caught in Rollins's throat.
"How did you know?" he demanded.
It was not a crank that asked that question: it was a sane man badly
startled. Luke recognized the distinction and instantly resolved to
push the advantage he had fortuitously gained. He rose, smiling slowly.
"You've told me you knew I was one of the assistant district-attorneys
of New York," he drawled. "I would advise you to act on the knowledge,
Mr. Rollins, and not to lose any time about it."
"I----" began Rollins; but bluster came to the aid of his timidity.
"No," he said, "I've got to see Mr. Leighton."
Luke had no idea who his visitor was or what information he might
possess, but he was now certain that worth-while information was in
Rollins's possession. Without further fencing, the lawyer, therefore,
resorted to an old stratagem that he had learned when he first entered
the District-Attorney's office: on the bare chance that the evidence
might be documentary and within reach, he took a quick stride towards
Rollins, raising his right hand as if to seize him. At once the right
hand of Rollins shot upward and stopped protectingly over his breast.
"Now then," said Luke, "hand me those papers that you've got in your
breast-pocket."
"No," said Rollins; "no; they're for Mr. Leighton."
"Hand them over.'"
"They're mine."
"If you don't hand them over," said Luke lazily, "I shall take them."
"You've got no right to!"
"You'd better save yourself trouble, Mr. Rollins."
"I won't!"
From under his lazy lids, Luke saw that the man was only frightened.
With a flash of inspiration, the lawyer guessed something of the truth.
This fellow was probably a clerk in the M. & N. offices.
"You won't be arrested for robbing the office-files, if that's what
you're scared about," he said; "and you won't be told on and
discharged."
Rollins was visibly relieved.
"You give me your word, Mr. Huber?"
"I do. Come on now: let's see what you've got."
"And--I'm not a rich man, Mr. Huber."
Luke's face showed his disgust.
"I shan't pay you a cent," he said; "but I daresay Leighton won't mind
paying. Only even he won't buy a pig in a poke. Give me those papers.
If they're worth anything, I'll take you into the District-Attorney's
room right away--or, if there's somebody in there, I'll have him out
here."
Rollins realized that Luke meant what he said. He believed, moreover,
that his inquisitor was merely cautious.
"All right," he agreed, though with some reluctance. "This is a letter
from my employer to a man that always had to return such letters after
he's read them. The other letter is the letter from the rail
manufacturers that's referred to in the first one. I got them both
by----"
"I can guess how," said Luke.
He put out his hand and into it Rollins placed two sheets of paper, that
were headed on top simply by an embossed Wall Street address and dated
almost five years before.
Luke read:
"_Confidential_.
"MR. ROBERT M. DOHAN,
"Delaware Avenue,
"Buffalo, N. Y.
"DEAR MR. DOHAN:
"I understand that the bill of which you have spoken to me will be
passed and become a law to-day. I have just seen Messrs. Hallett and
Rivington and have secured their agreement to the plan outlined in my
personal conversation with you last week. In view of the favors that
you have done me in the past, I think it fair to tell you, _for your own
use only_, that my friends have decided that they and I ought to do what
you thought they might decide, viz.: unload at the end of five years.
Considering your contemplated resignation next year, this will not
affect you, except favorably in case you care to manipulate your own
holdings in accordance with this news.
"I note what you say about the estimate submitted by the
construction-department; also the letter of the steel-rail manufacturers
which you inclosed, in which they say that the grade I suggested might
not wear well. I think their use of the word 'dangerous' is absurdly
exaggerated. We have used this grade on several of our roads and feel
sure from long experience that, with proper repair-gangs, it will wear
for five years as well as the best.
"My desire and the desire of my associates is to protect the interests
of the stockholders. With that in mind, I should state, what you have
probably already gathered, that we feel that the new line must be built
and operated with all possible economy."
The signature was the signature that Luke expected.
"Those rails," said Rollins, "weren't replaced. Dohan resigned, and
these letters have been in our office ever since. The crowd was
planning to unload in November."
"Yes," said Luke dryly. His face was immobile and his voice calm, but
his heart seemed to beat against his ribs, demanding freedom. "Come on
in here to Mr. Leighton's office."
Sec.3. He had forgotten Seeley and Ellison, but they were already gone,
and Leighton was alone. Apparently the conference had been satisfactory,
for the District-Attorney's face was a little less careworn.
"Mr. Leighton," said Luke, closing the door, "this man"--he indicated
Rollins by a lazy movement of his hand--"is a secretary in the employ of
the person to whom these letters belong--or belonged." He held out the
letters that Rollins had given him.
Leighton's face clouded.
"Office business? I thought I told you I had some personal matters to
think over."
Luke choked an impulse of resentment.
"If you'll look at these letters," he said, "I believe you'll find they
apply to--both sorts of duties."
Leighton took the papers with a gesture of annoyance, but when he saw
the signature to the more important of them, his eyes shone, and he
looked up quickly.
"Where did you get these?" He flung the question at Rollins.
The informer had been standing behind Luke, as if seeking his shelter.
His breath came heavily.
"I found them in the office-files," he mumbled.
"He stole them," said Luke quietly.
"Oh, Mr. Huber, if you're going to talk like that----"
"He stole them," Luke pursued--"or so he says. The only question in my
mind is: are they genuine?"
Rollins showed signs of resenting this suggestion more keenly than the
declaration that he was a thief. Leighton, however, interrupted: he was
squinting at the letter that Luke had read in full.
"No," he said, "this is real enough. I know the signature."
"You know it?" Luke was surprised.
"Yes, yes." Leighton read the letter through; then turned upon Rollins
with a resumption of his cross-examining manner. "How much d'you want
for these?"
Rollins beat his hat upon his thigh.
"Well," he said, "they ought to be worth a good deal to you, Mr.
Leighton."
"I'll give you five hundred dollars."
"Mr. Leighton!" Rollins was deprecating. "Five hundred dollars!"
"What do you want, then? Speak up."
"Five thousand would be nearer value, Mr. Leighton."
Luke turned away. This was the part of the business that he loathed.
"I'll give you two thousand and not a cent more," said Leighton.
Rollins thought himself now in a commanding position.
"I can't consider that," he said with the nearest approach to firmness
he had yet shown.
"All right," said Leighton. "Huber!" He handed the letters to Luke.
"Put these in your safe while I telephone this fellow's employer."
"Mr. Leighton!" Rollins bounded forward. His fat face worked with rage,
disappointment, and fear. "You wouldn't do that. This is robbery.
It's blackmail! For God's sake, Mr. Leighton----"
"Two thousand dollars," said Leighton.
"But think a minute, Mr. Leighton! I've been in my job for seven
years--worked up to it from office-boy. I could any time have sold tips
along the street for twice that money, and yet this is the first time
I've ever--ever----"
"Ever double-crossed your boss. Well, why'd you do it?"
"I don't know. It was because this wreck is so awful."
"And what else?"
"Nothing else."
Leighton thrust a forefinger into the informer's face.
"_What else?_"
Rollins jumped back.
"Well, he--he didn't raise my pay. I've got a big family, and there's a
mortgage on my little house in Roseville, and a man in my position has
to live well, or people'd talk."
Leighton relaxed. He swung back in his chair and cocked his feet on the
desk.
"I'll make it two thousand five hundred for your family's sake. That's
my last word."
Luke, who had again turned his back on the hagglers, the letters safely
buttoned in an inside pocket of his coat, wondered how his chief could
afford such an outlay.
"Is that really the best you can do?" whined Rollins.
"It is the best I _will_ do," said Leighton. Without lowering his feet,
he pulled toward him the telephone, which was attached to his desk by an
arm that could be lengthened or shortened at the user's will. "Now,
then, your boss has gone home long ago; but I can get him at his house;
do you want to lose your job or make this money?"
Rollins surrendered.
"I guess I'll have to take your price," he said. "But it's almost a
charity I'm doing."
"Right!" Leighton released the telephone, quickly swung his legs from
the desk and sat straight.
"And you'll promise nobody'll ever know where you got these letters?"
"Certainly."
Rollins looked toward Luke's significant back.
"And Mr. Huber, too?"
Luke turned.
"I've already promised you that," he said.
Leighton smiled faintly as he said to Luke:
"I guess you don't happen to have two thousand five hundred in loose
change about you, do you, Huber?"
"No," said Luke. He saw nothing humorous anywhere in the situation.
"Well, this is no affair for checks, and my bank's uptown," Leighton
continued. "I don't suppose," he said to Rollins, "you would care to
give credit, my dear sir?"
Rollins could smile, if Luke could not. He shook his head.
"My bank," said Luke, anxious to end the scene, "is just around the
corner. It's closed, but the clerks will still be there. They know me.
I can get them to let me in the side door, and I know they'll do me a
favor. I've got just about that much on deposit." He looked at
Leighton. "Shall I take Rollins along?"
"Rollins? Yes." Leighton's good-humor seemed to have returned to stay.
"Then hurry back here--alone. I'll want to talk this thing over with
you."
Sec.4. Luke paid and dismissed Rollins. Returning, he found Leighton
walking rapidly up and down his office.
"Shut the door," said the District-Attorney. His face was flushed; he
spoke quickly.
Luke shut the door.
Leighton came forward and brought his hand down on Luke's shoulder with
a resounding smack.
"Do you know what this means?" he cried. His mouth was wide with
laughter; the whole man exulted. "This re-elects me! Nothing can keep
us out now, Huber--not a thing on God's green footstool. All we've got
to do is use these letters and then sit back and fold our arms and
attend to office business. Politics? These two pieces of paper will
play all the politics we need, and more besides. I could shout, Huber;
I could sing a regular Song of Deborah. What about Mr. Timothy Heney,
_now_? And his Tammany? Gone the way of Sisera, my boy. Tim Heney!
'At her feet he bowed, he fell, he lay down; at her feet he bowed, he
fell: where he bowed, there he fell down dead!'"
Luke's old enthusiasm was rekindled. He thought that he had been
misjudging Leighton. Of course the man had been discouraged: he had
never before been able to seize an efficient weapon with which to
shatter the forces of wrong; even at this time it was only reasonable
that his first thought should be of his immediate political opponents;
but the weapon was put into his hand at last, the blow would be given
against both Tammany and Wall Street; it would be the blow that Luke had
hoped for when he read the first accounts of the North Bridge wreck.
"There must be a special Grand Jury to investigate the disaster," said
Luke, his words falling over one another much as Leighton's had done.
"We must keep the letters dark till it's in session, and then produce
them. We can give them to the papers right afterward. It will be jail
for the lot of them. Big as they are, it'll be that. It'll be the end
of the whole crowd!"
Leighton drew away. His face changed. His entire attitude altered.
"What are you talking about?" he asked dryly.
"Why"--Luke was amazed--"about these letters, of course."
"Well, do you think I'm green enough to waste them on a jury? Not
much!"
Luke began to comprehend. He felt unsteady. He was standing close to
Leighton's desk, and he put out a hand and gripped the edge of its top
shelf.
"Not give them to the jury?" But perhaps he was wrong. Of course he
was wrong. "Oh, I see," he said; "maybe it's better not to risk any
more lives by waiting. You're going to force this crowd to put down a
decent road-bed? Only if you do that---- Well, it's fine of you, but
you'll not be any better off politically."
Leighton turned his swivel-chair and sat down in it. His manner became
that of an employer trying to be calm and to instill reason into an
annoying employee.
"Young man," said he, "just you listen to me for about two minutes.
Those fellows do control this road, but they didn't operate it. In
spite of Rollins's blessed letters, you can't absolutely say they
operate it. But what they do operate, when they want to, are the
politics of this city, and if they tell Tammany, yes, or me, to hold off
and let an election go the way they want it, why, hold off Tammany or
anybody else has to. Nobody could win if they said 'No.' Now,
then"--Leighton punctuated his words with the rise and fall of an index
finger--"they're not actually morally responsible for the conduct of the
M. & N., but they'll know the publication of these letters would make
the public think they were. They'll know the publication would wreck
the road they're still interested in, smash all their other stocks and
depreciate all their other interests, start a panic that might swamp
even them, and maybe begin a public row that would send them close to
jail, on general principles, legal evidence or no legal evidence. To
stop that, they'd be willing to have me elected, which they weren't yet
quite certain about being to-day. I'll go to them quietly, and then
I'll surrender these letters, when they've kept their part of the
bargain I'll make. And don't you worry about loss of life. That
engineer was probably green or drunk, or the signal man got rattled.
You'll see the coroner's jury says so. But, anyhow, once I'm safely
re-elected, I'll take care the M. & N. is better regulated than it has
been. There's no use in a row: a little moral suasion will do the
trick."
He tossed back, and clasped his hands behind his head.
The explanation had been too long: it was long enough to allow Luke to
master the shock of what it implied. He saw his last illusions
concerning Leighton fall under the impact of Leighton's own words. He
was aghast. He was ashamed of his master; he was ashamed of himself for
ever having served such a master. But he was not crushed. As his chief
proceeded, Luke's soul rose through indignation to red revolt. By the
time that Leighton ceased speaking, Luke, except for two spots of
crimson on his cheeks, was captain of his rage. He leaned against the
desk-side indolently, his eyelids lowered, and when he replied it was
with an indifferent drawl.
"It doesn't much matter whether the engineer was drunk or the signal man
rattled," he said: "the rail flattened, and the bridge fell. The rail
was drunk and the bridge was rattled."
Leighton shook himself peevishly.
"You're trying to be humorous," he said.
"No; oh, no," said Luke gently. "What I'm getting at is, it seems to me
the men who directly controlled this road were directly responsible for
its operation. I mean that the men who authorized that letter, and
insisted on the policy it lays down, are guilty. It strikes me they
ought to be either reformed or punished."
"Oh, hell!" said Leighton. Heretofore, Luke had always appeared to be
on his side, so that the District-Attorney did not know the meaning of
his assistant's outward calm. "Those letters aren't legal evidence
enough."
"I think they are, Leighton. Besides, I think there are times when
moral evidence goes ahead of legal evidence, and ought to--and I think
this is one of those times."
"Well," said Leighton, "I don't. So that ends it."
"Of course," Luke calmly pursued, "if you could make these fellows
re-lay the road, it might be worth while to do no more than scare them,
at least if you don't consider the political ethics and consider only
the immediate protection of life."
"I told you I'd take care of the regulation of the road as soon as I was
re-elected."
"Ye-es. But could you?"
"Certainly I could."
"I should say that once they'd got their letters back, _you'd_ be in
_their_ power."
Leighton got to his feet. He was angry. He faced Luke, who did not
shift his lazy pose.
"Look here," he said, "we've been friends, and you've done good work for
me, especially this afternoon----"
"Thanks," said Luke.
"But it looks as if the time had come when you'd better understand who's
the head of this office."
"You are," Luke assured his chief; and then added: "I'm glad to say."
"Well, then, Huber, I've got to tell you that if you don't act
accordingly, we must part company."
Luke raised his listless eyes.
"You've quite made up your mind to do this thing, Leighton?"
"Let you go? Not if you'll only be reasonable."
"I mean this thing about the letters."
"Yes."
"You're going to make use of these fellows' money-power in politics?"
"It's already in politics. It always has been."
"But you are going to try to use it for yourself?"
"Yes, I am. It's my own business."
"Is it? That money is blood-money, Leighton."
"You're a fool!"
"I know I am. But it's you that I'm worried about. You're quite
determined?"
"_Absolutely._"
Luke shrugged his shoulders. He began to move slowly toward the door.
"Here!" said Leighton sharply. "Where're you going?"
Luke scarcely looked at him.
"I'm going to write my resignation."
Leighton was startled, but he tried not to show it.
"Very well," he said, "write it. But don't be too fast: you may hand
over those letters first."
"Letters?" Luke seemed never to have heard the word before. "What
letters?"
"Why do you try so hard to be an ass, Huber?" The District-Attorney
extended his hand for the papers that he had given Luke during the
interview with Rollins. "Drop all this resignation rot--_My_ letters,
of course."
Luke's face met Leighton's fairly.
"The only letters I have about me," he said with quiet distinctness,
"are two that are my property. I bought them with the last two thousand
five hundred dollars of my own money."
As the words came home to him, Leighton's face grew purple. His brows
met in a knot. At his temples two veins pulsed visibly.
"What's that?" he cried with a straining throat. "What's that? You----
Give them here this minute; they're mine! They're mine. They're mine!
You know damned well they're mine!"
He had not counted on this. The unexpected disappointment tossed him
from the summit of the hopes to which, that afternoon, he had been so
unexpectedly lifted. He made a blind dash at Huber.
Luke's two hands caught both of Leighton's wrists. By the exertion of a
superior strength that scarcely showed itself, the assistant forced down
the master's arms and held them at his flanks.
"They are my letters," said Luke.
"Let go!" Leighton wrenched at the imprisoning grip; but he wrenched
without effect. "Let me go!"
"Certainly," said Luke. He freed the panting man. "I merely wanted to
protect myself and show you it wouldn't help you to use force."
Leighton, his face still contorted, tried another tone.
"It isn't fair of you, Huber. I'm sorry I went at you that way; but you
know well enough those letters belong to me."
"They belong," said Luke, "to the man that can make the better use of
them."
"What use can _you_ make?"
"A better one than you say you will."
"They were brought here for me."
"By a thief."
"Well, you're not going to restore them to their owner, are you?"
"Perhaps."
"What?" Leighton laughed cynically. "So _that's_ what your moral tone's
for, is it?"
"Perhaps."
"Oh, come on, Huber, I didn't mean that. Anyhow, you know, I only asked
you to lend me the money."
"The letters," said Luke again, "belong to the man that can make the
better use of them."
"I'll do the right thing by you, Huber, if you give them back to me."
"Thank you. The real owner of the letters can do more--when I'm for
sale."
Leighton bent forward and began to whisper.
"I'll tell you what I'll do for you politically," he began. "I'll----"
"No thank you," said Luke.
"Well, then,"--Leighton, his face now white from fear of loss, appeared
to capitulate-"give them back and I'll use them the way you want them
used."
The two men's eyes probed one another.
"I don't believe you," said Luke.
It was final, and it drove Leighton back to his purple rage.
"I'll ruin you!" he threatened. "And they'll ruin you. Go ahead and
resign. Resign? You can't. You're fired! Do you hear that? You're
fired! Now go and try to do something. You can't do a thing but sell
those letters to the people they were stolen from. If you try that,
I'll show you up, and if you try anything else with those people,
they'll bury you so deep nobody ever can dig down far enough to find
you. Do you know who you're up against when you buck that crowd? They
won't let you walk the same earth with them! Go on. You'll be killed,
and I'll be damned glad of it. Fight them, will you? You might as well
draw a gun on God Almighty! Now, then, get out of here. Get out, or
I'll have you kicked out!"
*CHAPTER VI*
To his office on the twentieth floor of a Wall Street skyscraper--that
office with the mahogany table at its center and the engraving of George
Washington between two windows--the master came at his usual time on the
morning of the day following the North Bridge wreck. He was dressed
neatly, as always, in a suit of russet brown. Breathing visibly, but
noiselessly, he passed the resting ticker and walked to one of the
windows overlooking the labyrinth. His near-sighted, beady eyes peered
toward the web of streets below, on the cross-threads of which the black
dots that were hurrying men and women bobbed like struggling flies.
The master rang for his secretary.
"Rollins," he said, "what's in the----" He stopped. He had not looked
up, yet he asked: "What's the matter with you this morning?"
"Nothing," said Rollins. "I----" He coughed behind his hand. "I
didn't sleep well last night."
"Take more exercise," said his master. "What's in the mail?"
"Thirty letters that need your personal attention, sir."
Nimbly the master ran them through his short and stumpy fingers, the
tips of which were delicately rounded. He dictated his terse
instructions. With the daily routine again in motion, Rollins recaught
his employer's calm.
"Simpson has the begging letters?"
"Yes, sir."
"I guess," said the master in his most commonplace tone, "there were
more than the usual number of anonymous threats."
"Only ten or twelve more."
"Burn them."
"Yes, sir. I always do."
"And, Rollins, draw up a letter to the cancer hospital and tell the
management I have decided to give them a special ward for fibroid tumor
cases. Their lawyers may consult with Judge Stein; I gave him the
details last evening. Bring me the letter for revision."
"Yes, sir."
The master proceeded through his customary schedule.
"Rollins," he said, when it was at last completed and the secretary had
been recalled. "Mr. Hallett and Mr. Rivington will be here"--he
consulted his watch--"in five minutes. We are on no account to be
disturbed."
Hallett and Rivington came in, five minutes later. Hallett looked angry,
and Rivington frightened. Though the hour was early, Hallett's white
waistcoat, fresh every morning, showed wrinkles, and its wearer chewed
hard at an unlighted cigar; there was a deep perpendicular line over his
short, thick nose. Rivington, immaculate, pulled at his slightly gray
mustache.
"Good-morning," said their host. His voice was as nearly cheerful as it
was ever. "Sit down."
They took their places at the table, where there was a pad of scribbling
paper and a freshly sharpened pencil before each. Their host sat at the
head of the table, his hands flat upon the table-top, their fingers
extended, his elbows pointing ceilingward.
Rivington began at the midst of what worried him.
"It's a terrible thing!" he groaned. "Think of it; twenty-five
people--and the women too!"
Hallett's comment was almost a bark.
"As soon as the coroner's jury lets 'em down easy," he said, "we've got
to see that everybody's fired, from the division-superintendent to the
president of the road; that's what we've got to do. There's one kind of
carelessness that's not much better than murder."
"Twenty-five people!" repeated Rivington. The numbers seemed to
hypnotize him; he made a futile gesture. "And the morning papers----
Their tone---- I don't like it."
The man at the head of the table watched them both, but said nothing.
"Oh, the newspapers never worry me," said Hallett. "We can stop all but
one or two, and nobody cares what they say, anyhow. They've been
talkin' for years. They've got to fill their columns."
"Then there's the Board meeting," said Rivington. "Next Thursday---- I
don't see---- Really I don't."
"The Board of Directors of the M. & N.'s all right," Hallett reassured
him.
"Perhaps. But then, too, there is this new reform element in town.
Talk of a fusion movement: a fourth candidate for District-Attorney----
They will be only too eager to get hold of something, and this terrible
accident---- It will give them just what they want."
"They can't elect."
"I am not so sure. The people--they aren't what they used to be.
Something--I don't know what--has taken possession of them."
Hallett bobbed assent to that.
"Yes," he said, "nowadays as soon as a man gets a vote he stops minding
his own business. But we've still got our grip on the wires."
"They may break." Rivington's fingers returned to their tugging at his
mustache. "The wires, I mean. It's ugly. Twenty-five dead and a
hundred hurt----"
"_We_ didn't hurt 'em."
Rivington looked toward the man at the head of the table, but he sat
crouched and silent.
"No," said Rivington; "but----" His sentence ended in a helpless waving
of the hand.
"Then what are you worryin' about?" Hallett challenged. "We were only
tryin' to keep up dividends. We had to choose between a little risk and
protecting the stockholders. Lots of the stockholders are widows and
orphans. Besides, it wasn't a real risk; it was a recognized,
legitimate business risk. Lots of other roads do it right along. Our
own roads do."
"That bridge----" said Rivington.
"The state inspectors passed it a month ago. And they passed the rails,
too. It's all up to them."
In his turn, Hallett glanced at the man at the head of the table. He
saw the man's hairy hands, fat and white against the mahogany, begin to
move as they always began to move before he made a verbal attack upon
conversation; but the man did not speak.
"I know," Rivington was saying, "but with the four candidates for the
district-attorneyship all looking for vote-getting material----"
"Buy 'em," said Hallett.
"Four?"
"Who's the fourth?"
"They haven't chosen him yet; but----"
"Buy 'em," repeated Hallett.
"Out of the four there might be one we couldn't----"
"Anybody can buy anybody. There are more ways than one. Anyhow, we're
not even directors."
"We own the road. Practically----"
"Nobody knows that."
"It seems to me----"
"They don't!" Hallett spat to the floor a bit of tobacco that, bitten
from the end of his cigar, had clung to his lips. "They only think they
do. It'd be the hardest thing in the world to prove that was ever
tried."
"Would it?" Rivington questioned. "I really believe----"
The quick, cold voice of the third man flashed across their talk. It
was as if he leaped at them.
"We may own the road," he said; "but we don't operate it. Not one of us
has officially any administrative power in the matter of its operation.
You gentlemen have forgotten that." He smiled: his teeth were pointed.
"Still," said Rivington, "if the fusion movement----"
He stopped there, not because of his habit of speaking in tangents, but
because the door opened, and an old man timidly paused at its threshold.
The master of the office turned his head slowly.
"Simpson?" he said.
"Yes, sir," said the man at the door.
"What does this mean? Where's Rollins?"
"He was using my room to compose that letter about the hospital, and so
I took his place."
"Didn't he tell you we were not to be disturbed?"
"Yes, sir; but this man"--Simpson held out an envelope--"got by
everybody. He told me you would see him at once if you only received
his message."
The man at the head of the table reached for the envelope. He read a
card that it had contained.
"Show him in," he said.
He waited until Simpson had left to obey. Then, without wasting a
glance on his associates, he explained:
"This is the card of a man called Luke Huber, Assistant
District-Attorney. He's written on it: 'Five minutes in regard to the
North Bridge wreck and your letters about it.'"
"Letters?" said Hallett. "What letters?"
As he replied, the strong jaw of the man at the head of the table worked
as if he were chewing.
"That's what I mean to find out."
"Here? Now?" Rivington gasped.
The man addressed nodded. When a nod could save words, he saved words.
"Is that the careful thing?" asked Hallett.
"I'll bet his card's a bluff and he never expected to get in at all."
"That is precisely why I am having him in."
"Mr. Huber," announced Simpson.
Huber was still a young man. He was so young, and his youth was so
ostentatious, that he immediately courted the rebuke once administered
to Pitt. Moreover, he seemed to lack energy. He was thin; his face,
though pleasant, was white. The lids dropped wearily over eyes that
were at first veiled from the three men who looked up, but did not rise
at his entrance. His mouth, the lips of which were only a pale pink,
might have appeared firm, but would certainly have given the impression
of being tired of firmness, and, when he bowed gravely to his host, his
bristling head inclined itself so slowly and so slightly that the effort
of the inclination, whether mental or physical, was insultingly
apparent.
There was no form of presentation. Instead, there was a pause that only
Huber seemed not to notice. Rivington drummed on the table with his
long fingers. Hallett chewed his cigar. The other man smiled so
enigmatically that it was impossible to say whether he intended to
welcome or was amused by his friends' discomfiture.
"Bring a chair for Mr. Huber."
Simpson did as he was bid.
Luke deposited a carefully brushed hat on the table. Then he sank into
the proffered chair opposite the leader of the trio and extended his
long legs under the mahogany. His feet touched Rivington's, and
Rivington jumped.
"Well?" asked the man at the head of the table.
Huber did not raise his heavy lids.
"I am glad I found you three together," he said slowly in a low and
extremely gentle voice, "because you are the three men that control the
railroad."
Hallett grinned a broad grin. This young fellow talked as if there were
but one railroad in which the group was interested.
"What railroad?" he asked.
Luke slowly drew in his legs. He regarded the figure of the Persian rug
that happened to be between the points of his patent-leather boots.
"The railroad," said he, "that I suppose you have been talking most
about this morning."
"The Manhattan & Niagara?" blurted Rivington.
"We're not directors of that road," said Hallett hurriedly.
"No," agreed Rivington.
"No," said Luke, quite as heartily, "you aren't directors, but you
direct it."
"We don't," snapped Rivington.
The man at the head of the table raised a soothing hand. He was still
smiling.
"Come, come," he said, with an air of good-nature that his friends had
seldom seen him assume during business hours. "We're all gentlemen, I'm
sure. Anything that Mr. Huber wants to say to us in confidence----"
Huber interrupted.
"I never talk in confidence," said he; "and I don't want anybody to say
anything to me that he would be ashamed to say in public."
His eyes were still hidden, and he still spoke slowly and gently; but
the mere import of his words brought up short even the leader of the
trio before him. That one's manner changed. He was curt.
"We are busy men, Mr. Huber," he said. "There are not many people in New
York that we would have allowed to take up our time this morning. What
do you want?"
Luke studied the figure on the rug.
"I want you three," he said in a tone not to be quickened, "to tear up
every mile of rails on the M. & N. and replace those pieces of
scrap-iron with rails of a grade fit to bear the traffic they have to
carry."
Rivington's drumming fingers closed into his palms. Hallett let out an
ugly laugh. Only the man at the head of the table, again changing his
manner, equaled Luke in tranquillity.
"Really, Mr. Huber," he said pleasantly, "without admitting for a moment
that we have the power to do what you suggest, don't you think your
request is a rather large one?" He had the air of indulgently
correcting a mistaken child.
The young man, gazing at the rug, shook his round head.
"No," he said, "not so large for you as its alternative."
"And that? It is----"
Rivington had put the question, but it was toward the man at the head of
the table that Luke as he shot out his sudden reply, raised his eyes.
"Jail," said Luke.
"Do you mean to threaten us?" cried Rivington angrily.
Hallett laughed.
The man at the head of the table only smiled.
"Not at all," said Luke. "I am merely stating a fact. In coming here,
the only thing I hesitated about was whether it would be better for the
people to have safe transportation immediately guaranteed or to have you
three in jail."
"You seem to forget, young man," said Hallett, "who it was elected the
man that made you assistant district-attorney."
Luke gave him the briefest of glances.
"It was because I found out who elected him that I resigned the job," he
answered. "I have just been offered the Municipal League's nomination
for District-Attorney. When _I_ am elected, it will be by the people."
"That will be about 2000 A.D.," sneered Hallett.
Luke shrugged his thin shoulders and returned his gaze toward the leader
of the trio.
"A bridge falls on one of your roads in this county," he said. "It
kills twenty-five people and wounds a hundred--all passengers in one of
your trains. You will say the state inspectors declared the bridge O.K.
Maybe they did, though they ought to go to the electric chair for it.
That doesn't matter. What I can prove by thirty witnesses is that the
train left the bridge before the bridge fell. A rail flattened and
threw the train. Instead of sending you men to jail--and only because I
think this is better for the safety of the public--I will give you one
month to begin laying decent rails on this road--actually get _bona
fide_ work under way. If you don't do that, I'll make public the whole
truth, get you indicted, go into court as a witness and produce two
letters, one forwarded to you and the other signed by you. The first of
these is a letter to the president of the road written by the steel
manufacturers; it warns him that the cheap rails he's ordered are
dangerous: that letter he sent to you. The second is a letter from you
to the president of the road in which you say you want the poor-grade
rails used because you don't want to increase the running expenses, and
you order a general keeping-down of the road's expenses because of a
plan for you three to unload your stock along about this December."
Luke rose. He relapsed into the weary young man of ten minutes before.
"You have one month," he said.
He picked up his hat, rubbed it with a caressing hand, and left the
room.
The three that he left stared at one another. Then both Hallett and
Rivington looked at their leader.
"It's an infamous--it must be an infamous lie!" cried Rivington.
"Letters like that--men don't write them!"
Without moving a muscle of his face, the man at the head of the table
looked at Rivington.
"All men say they don't," he corrected, "and all men do."
"What?" asked Hallett. "You're joking, and this fellow can't ever make
it good. It's a bluff."
"Gentlemen," said the man at the head of the table, "it's the truth."
*CHAPTER VII*
Sec.1. When Luke, on the afternoon preceding his Wall Street interview,
had walked out of Leighton's office and the city's employ, it was with
no certain plan for further action. His years of experience as an
assistant prosecutor had demonstrated to him that something was
drastically wrong with the modern administration of justice and practice
of the law; his life in New York had shown him the evil influence of the
money-power that seemed to be set in motion by the author of the Rollins
letter and certainly corrupted the entire body of the nation, and his
political work had discovered to him what he came to consider the
inherent rottenness of the organized political parties. The effect of
all this was made acute by the horror at the North Bridge wreck and the
culmination of his mistrust in Leighton. Luke's sole immediate
sensation was that of a man who finds himself in a bog: he did not think
of draining the bog for the benefit of future pedestrians; he thought
only of extricating himself from the mire.
That night at his club, however, he began to consider the larger aspects
of the case. He was in the writing-room, intent on composing for the
next evening's papers a statement of his reasons for parting company
with Leighton. In formulating these, he found his charges to be
precisely the charges recently formulated by the group of municipal
reformers who were clamoring for a fusion of the best elements of all
parties to elect, by honest methods, honest men that would purge New
York of its civic shame. He recalled how this Municipal Reform League,
growing steadily, had worried Leighton, and how its promoters prophesied
that, if successful in the place of its origin, it might well spread
throughout the country. When he first heard of it, Luke had been too
deep in the affairs of his chief to be warmed by it; but to-night his
vision was cleared.
He telephoned to two of the League's leaders. They came to his club and
talked with him until long past midnight, themselves telephoning
inquiries and instructions to friends and lieutenants, and summoning
other leaders to join them.
Luke told them much. He betrayed no secrets of his recent employer, but
he could honorably tell enough to make it clear to them that their
belief in the necessity of reform was correct, enough to have weight
with the voters should he speak to them in the new cause. His public
record, it appeared, had long impressed the reformers; the firmness
underlying his slow habit of talk, and the determination imperfectly
covered by his lazy manner, impressed them now. He moved and fired
them.
The Rollins letter he did not mention. He was more than once tempted,
but he had resolved upon provisional silence before ever he sent for
these leaders. He weighed carefully the merits of the courses open to
him and decided that, large as would be the benefit of a public airing
of his charges, and excellent as might prove the salutary example of a
prison term for America's chief financiers, the airing might be lessened
by those financiers' subtle influences upon popular opinion, the prison
term might be escaped through similar influences, and all good results
would in any case be long delayed. On the other hand, it was evident to
him, in his present frame of mind, that the immediate safety of the M. &
N.'s patrons was paramount, and that this safety could probably be
secured by threatening those morally responsible for it. Such a threat,
with a rigid time-limit, he therefore elected to administer.
The first result of his conference with the reformers was unexpected.
At eight o'clock next morning, three of their most prominent men, who
had not been with him on the night before, came to his apartments at the
Arapahoe in Thirty-ninth Street. They had been in all-night
consultation, and they told him that their organization had determined
to put a full ticket in the field at the coming municipal election, but
to center efforts in a struggle for the district-attorneyship: they had
chosen him for their candidate.
Luke, in dressing-gown and pajamas, his unbrushed hair more than ever
erect, looked from one of his callers to the other. There was Venable,
a man of small but independent means, who had grown gray in the long war
for civic betterment, meeting defeat at the polls and, what is harder to
bear, disappointment in elected candidates, and again and again emerging
to hope and fight on; Nelson, a successful wholesale druggist, whose
business seemed divorced from politics, and whose hobby was the
improvement of political conditions; and Yeates, a young man of family
and fortune who belonged to Luke's club. Luke was flattered and
confident, but did not show it.
"Do you really think I can do it?" he asked slowly. "Do you think I am
the best man for the job?"
Each of the committee assured him he was. They said he had given a good
account of himself as assistant district-attorney, won influential
friends in his daily life, and secured, through his political
speech-making for Leighton, a strong following among the voters.
"Of course," persisted Luke, "it's unnecessary to ask men of your
standing that there shan't be anything but clean politics in our
campaign."
Venable tossed his head proudly.
"My record is a guarantee of that," he said.
"No undue influence?" asked Luke. "No outside interests coming in to
boss us or affect us in any way?"
"Rot!" said Yeates.
"And I am to have an absolutely free hand?"
They assured him of that.
Luke's lowered lids hid his eyes, but his eyes gleamed. Here, at last,
was his Great Chance. Here was what he had lived and hoped for. He
wanted to shout his war-cry, to go out and fight at once. Would he be
worthy? The wing of that doubt brushed the farthest edges of his
conscience, but he was young, and he did not heed it. He thought of all
that he could do with this opportunity; and he thought, too, of Betty
Forbes.
He had not seen much of Betty for some weeks. The lethargy that the slow
process of his recent disillusionment flung over him, had left him
despairing of her, kept her beyond his reach. But now he saw the
way--saw that the way to win his ideals of honorable victory was also
the way to win her.
He asked again a hundred questions, some that he had asked of his other
counselors the night before and more that he had not: questions about
purpose, ways-and-means, finances, organization, headquarters, district
leaders, probable support, the temper of the public mind. To all of
them he received sanguine answers.
"And your other candidates?" asked Luke. "The Mayor? Comptroller?
President of the Board of Aldermen and the Borough Presidents?"
They gave him the names of known and honest men.
Luke stood up, but his air was the languid air that had become part of
him.
"Good," he said, "of course, I'm pleased that you think of me as you do,
and I accept."
Sec.2. He would be a busy man now, but he must have that morning and
afternoon to himself. However much he might want to start his campaign,
he must make that visit to Wall Street, and after luncheon he intended
to go to Betty.
The Wall Street interview seemed to him as successful as he could have
expected. He was unterrified by the strength of the fortress to be
attacked, but he had not looked forward to speedy surrender, so he was
satisfied with the conviction that he affected the three financiers more
than they cared to show. If they did not obey him, he would make the
Rollins letters a part of his appeal to the electors; but he felt that,
in the end, he would be offered obedience.
He lunched leisurely in the cafe attached to his apartment house, and
then went to his own room to change his clothes before seeking Betty.
He had completed the change and was about to leave when the telephone
rang and the voice of the clerk below stairs announced a visitor:
"Judge Marcus F. Stein."
It had begun already. Luke knew who Stein was, though the two had never
met. The man's title had been earned by a political appointment to fill
the unexpired term of a judge that died while on the bench. Stein had
begun his career as a young lawyer who specialized in damage suits
against the N. Y. & N. J. railway. He was once charged, before the Bar
Association--though the charges were never proved--with being a
"hospital runner": that is, with employing men to hurry to the hospital,
or the scenes of accidents, and induce victims to retain Stein to press
their claims for damages against the railroad on which they had been
injured. By devoting his best efforts against the N. Y. & N. J., he
tried to make the corporation realize that it would be cheaper to employ
him than to fight him, and he was, indeed, at last given a place on the
legal staff of the company's claim department. There was an ugly story
to the effect that, for a brief time before this charge was openly
announced, he received a salary from the road while apparently acting
for claimants against it and inducing them to compromise their claims
for trivial sums.
It was a subject of common rumor at the New York Bar. Stein soon worked
his way to the head of the claim department and thoroughly reorganized
it. He used old tactics for his new employers: he had the news of all
accidents immediately communicated to him, whereupon he would despatch
his agents, with no loss of time, to the hospital, there to persuade the
wounded, half stupefied by pain or drugs, to sign releases in return for
pittances in ready money. It was said he built up a secret service,
composed of men and women from private detective agencies, whose duty it
was to discover discreditable secrets in the lives of such claimants as
refused to compromise, or, failing in discovery, to manufacture or
invent such incidents. One married woman from Syracuse, who had been
injured in a wreck in New York and came there to press her suit, was
inveigled into a friendship with a woman detective commissioned to
engage a neighboring room in the house where the plaintiff took
temporary lodgings. The detective succeeded in getting the claimant
drunk and brought her, in this condition, with two of the road's
employees, to a house in which, when the four were partially unclothed,
another detective took a flashlight photograph of them. Then when the
victim's case was called for trial, she was told that, unless she
dropped her suit, the picture would be shown to her husband. By methods
of this sort, Stein was said to have reduced his road's expenses for
damages by two-thirds in three years.
Directly from his desk in the offices of the N. Y. & N. J., Stein was
appointed to the bench, where he did not cease his usefulness to his
employers. When his brief judicial term had ended, he took offices of
his own, and cultivated the higher branches of corporation law. The men
controlling the N. Y. & N. J. controlled many other corporations and saw
to it that Stein received a regular annual retainer as a consulting
lawyer from each of these. His business was not to win cases, but so to
aid in directing his clients' plans that they would avoid litigation;
he, therefore, rarely nowadays appeared in court and, though not one of
the most learned men so engaged by his principals, he was one of the
most serviceable, because to his merely crafty skill in the law he added
a deep knowledge of practical politics and a wide intimacy with
politicians.
Luke's first impulse was to deny himself to this caller, for he wanted
to hurry to Betty and he thought there might be a strategic value in
refusing to negotiate with any emissary. Curiosity, however, proved
strong, and he reflected that the emissary might just possibly come with
a word of complete capitulation.
"Show him up," said Luke into the telephone.
The ex-Judge was an imposing figure. He was big and broad and
frock-coated, and he moved with befitting gravity. His hair was
plentiful and white, his face clean-shaven. He had a strong nose and a
wide, firm mouth, and his eyes were large and benevolent. His air was
that of a man who has dealt with great interests for so many years that
they have become the weighty commonplaces of his existence.
Luke had resolved not to shake hands with his visitor, but the Judge
gave him no opportunity for refusal. He bowed courteously, smiled
politely, and settled into the most comfortable of Luke's chairs, which
he deliberately turned so that the light from the windows fell full on
his own face, thus leaving Luke to front him from the shadow.
Luke, who had been prepared for the contrary move, managed to show no
surprise. He sat down, extended his legs, and lowered his eyes. He
made no inquiry concerning the reason of the Judge's call: he wanted the
Judge to begin the talk.
Stein required no urging.
"I have never had the pleasure of meeting you before, Mr. Huber," he
said, speaking with what was evidently no more than characteristic
deliberation, "but I have watched your career with a great deal of
interest--a very great deal. It reminded me so much of my own early
struggles." He was looking steadily at Luke, whose eyes remained
lowered. "You will forgive an old man who is a scarred veteran of the
law for speaking frankly with you and for taking such an interest, I'm
sure."
"Very kind of you, indeed," Luke murmured.
"I thought," said the Judge, "that you handled that Maretti case
excellently, and the Dow trial, too; you showed an original cleverness
there. More than that, Mr. Huber, you showed promise. There has been a
great deal of promise in your professional work, and I thought I
detected the same promise in the reports of your political speeches.
With influential friends--for, of course, everybody needs influential
friends in these days: people of real and solid standing--you ought to
go far."
"Thank you," said Luke.
"Now," the Judge pursued, "I see by the early evening papers you may be
offered the candidacy for District-Attorney on the Municipal League
ticket."
"I believe there is some talk of that, Judge."
"Well, we need such a movement as this reform movement: we need it
badly. With proper backing, you ought to win. With proper backing, of
course."
Luke gave no sign of hearing this. Quite out of the air he drawled:
"I suppose you came about those letters, Judge Stein?"
For all the disturbance that he produced, he might as well have said
that it was a pleasant day, or that he expected rain. When his eyes at
this question were raised to meet the Judge's, the benevolent eyes of
the Judge did not quiver: like his voice, they were steady and
deliberate.
"Yes," said the Judge, "and I had them in mind when I spoke of your
career. Now, Mr. Huber, my friends think, and I think, that you have
been a little hasty and unreasonable because--and remember, it is an old
man who tells you so--you are still rather young. But because I know
you are an able young man, I have told them I was sure you would see
your haste and unreasonableness when you came to consider the matter.
As their friend and as a lawyer who has watched your career and
remembers his own start in life, I undertook to say so to you and to
offer my advice."
Luke's eyelids were again lowered. His hands were clasped in his lap.
To a less astute man than Stein, he might have seemed asleep.
"I shall be glad," continued Stein, "if I can help you out of your
embarrassing position."
"Who are your friends, Judge?" asked Luke.
The Judge smiled tolerantly.
"Come, come, Mr. Huber," he said; "you don't expect me to mention names,
I know. All I will say on that point--all you can justly ask me to
say--is that I don't come from them in my professional capacity. They
haven't retained me to do this. They haven't even asked me to do it. I
am acting entirely of my own volition, and on my own initiative, out of
good will for all the parties concerned and not least of all for you."
"Yet you seem prepared to plead their case."
"I am--on my own initiative, I am, because their case is the right one,
as I am sure you will end by seeing. In the first place, these letters
are their property."
"I doubt," said Luke, "whether they would go into court to prove
property."
"I do not think," said the unruffled Judge, "that they will go into
court for any purpose--unless their burden of good nature is rendered
intolerable. They can afford to appeal to their own conscience, because
they are morally clear."
"Of the North Bridge wreck?"
"Of the North Bridge wreck, Mr. Huber. Granting that those letters are
admissible evidence--which I shouldn't grant, if I were in the case--the
one is not an expert declaration; it is merely an expression of opinion
from persons with many grades of rails to sell and naturally anxious to
sell their most expensive and most profitable grade. As for the other
letter, it is informed by the knowledge of what prompted the
rail-makers' opinion, and in itself offers only a counter-opinion based
on the writer's long and successful experience with the cheaper rails."
"Yes--but the accident happened."
"Exactly: it merely happened and it was an accident. In other words, it
was something unforeseen and contrary to the experience of the writer of
the second letter."
The Judge waited a moment for a reply but, as Luke gave none, presently
continued:
"Now, the course I propose--quite personally, you will understand--is
honorable, harmless, and in the best interests of all concerned: you,
us, and even the public."
"What is it?" asked Luke.
"All that I would grant my friends is the return of those letters, which
are their own property, and are not admissible evidence in a court of
law. That is all I would grant them. On their part, I should exact a
pledge from them to have better rails laid throughout the suspected
sections of the M. & N. road."
Luke's eyes opened.
"That's all _I_ asked them to do," he said.
"Ah, yes; but to do it at once would be taken as a public confession of
guilt--and my friends are not guilty. You will see that the coroner's
jury says so."
Luke relapsed.
"It will," he said. "I'm sure of it."
"Therefore, the thing must be done slowly and discreetly, and meanwhile
we must protect the public by an increase of track-walkers and
road-inspectors."
"Would your friends," inquired Luke, "instruct the road not to fight the
damage claims growing out of the wreck?"
"Of course not," chuckled Stein. "You are too good a lawyer to expect
that, Mr. Huber, and too good a lawyer not to know how the sorrow or
wounds of the claimants--yes, and the big appetites of their attorneys,
too, I'm afraid--exaggerate their losses on the one hand and the riches
of the company on the other. No, no; the most we could get for them
would be liberal settlements. We mustn't bankrupt the road. There are
more widows owning stock in it than there are widows caused by this
wreck."
"Well," said Luke, "I'm afraid you don't convince me, Judge."
"Not if I could promise all this?"
"No. You see, there was a smaller wreck some months ago, and the
additional track-walkers and inspectors were promised the public then."
Undisturbed, the Judge repeated all his arguments. "I really think you
must see this as I do," he concluded. "And all we want is the
letters----. By the way, Mr. Huber, I congratulate you on getting hold
of them. That was a clever piece of work. How did you manage it?"
Luke grinned.
"I found them growing on an apple tree in Madison Square," he said.
The Judge nodded a smiling approval.
"At any rate," he submitted, "you will not mind telling me if any other
person knows of their existence?"
"No, I don't mind. Except you and your friends and me and the apple
tree, there is only one other person that knows as yet, and he's in no
position to mention them." Luke rose as if to end the interview. "I've
told nobody because I keep my bargains, Judge. But I do keep my
bargains to the letter. You haven't convinced me, and you can't. I've
given your clients----"
"My friends," Stein suavely corrected.
"Your friends, then; I've given them one month. If they don't do as I've
suggested----"
The judge raised a hand gravely.
"I think you mean 'ordered,' Mr. Huber," said he.
"Thank you. Yes, of course, I meant 'ordered.' If they don't begin to
do as I've ordered by one month from to-day, and do it in a way that
convinces everybody of their intention to finish the job--yes, and their
consciousness of guilt--I'll make those letters public."
The Judge remained seated. He looked at Luke sadly, and his voice rang
true as he said:
"I wonder if you have fully considered, I shall not say the dangers, but
the difficulties and annoyances your course may expose you to--may very
well expose you to?"
"No," said Luke shortly. "I'm too busy."
"A great many men have tried what you are trying," the Judge went on,
"and they have all failed. I tried it once myself. None has succeeded;
not one. Some of them, of course, entirely through their own faults,
were ruined by it, Mr. Huber."
"I dare say," said Luke, unmoved.
"And you," warned the Judge, "have the success of a new and valuable
political movement in your hands. You are responsible for it and to it.
This might end by losing you the nomination."
"I can stand that."
"It might even hurt the men in the movement that have trusted you."
"I sha'n't blame myself for it, if it does."
"And if it did not do these things, it would surely wreck the faction at
the polls--a faction that you believe in and that, if successful, could
do such a wide public good."
Luke was standing above his caller, his hands deep in his pockets.
"Look here, Judge," he drawled, "are you by any chance threatening me?"
The Judge was not at all threatening him. "I am only telling you," he
frankly explained, "what a long life in New York has shown me. I like
you, Mr. Huber; I believe you could make a great success in life if you
were less hot-headed; but I believe your hot-headedness can ruin you at
the bar, can ruin you socially and financially, and can put a stop to
your political career forever. I knew one man that attempted something
such as you are attempting and never had another client afterward. I
knew another that people heard a nasty story about and shut all their
doors against. I knew a dozen that became political corpses, and I knew
more that went bankrupt."
Luke smiled.
"And some," he suggested, "disappeared altogether, I dare say?"
The Judge looked him full in the eyes.
"I have heard so," said he. Then he brightened somewhat. "But you will
not defy the lightning," he continued. "You are too practical. I am
quite sure you must see how very right I am and how very well disposed
my friends are toward you, Mr. Huber. Think what they could do for you,
socially, financially, politically. Think what they could do for you
personally and for this reform movement."
Luke's smile broke into a laugh.
"Help the reform?" he exploded. "Oh, Lord!" Then, as quickly, the
laugh ended. "In plain terms," he said, "what have you been telling
me?" His languor had disappeared, and a sharp rage succeeded it. His
words cracked like a whip. "You've been telling me that if I handed the
safety of the M. & N. patrons over to the men that hire you, and let
those men go free on the strength of a promise already broken, they
would make me rich, elect me District-Attorney to do their work for
them, advance me in their own social set and maybe, if I kept on doing
all they asked, turn me into a Judge or a Governor or a millionaire!
And you've been saying if I don't do it, they'll have me forced out of
politics, out of the practice of the law, out of decent people's
houses--and maybe knocked over the head or shot in the back at a dark
corner. Well, here's my answer: I don't believe they would help me, I
don't believe they can hurt me, and I don't care a damn, one way or the
other!"
The Judge bowed. He rose. He knew the world too well to give way to
anger: he never lost his temper; he only sometimes advisedly loosed it.
"Is this," he asked, "your final decision, Mr. Huber?"
"Yes," raged Luke; "and you may bet your last cent on that. It's my
final decision, and it's a plain 'No.' If these fellows don't do what
I've ordered, I'll show them up--the whole bunch of them. I'll do
it--why, I'd do it if they were the seraphim and cherubim, and all the
Thrones, Dominions, Virtues, Powers, Principalities, and Archangels
rolled into one!"
*CHAPTER VIII*
Sec.1. Ex-Judge Marcus Stein had mastered, in common with most truly
dignified men, the art of acting quickly without hurrying. Upon leaving
Luke's apartments, he exercised this art.
His motor-car was waiting for him at the door. He climbed into it with a
judicial deliberation and gave his order to the chauffeur. The car
started noiselessly. By proceeding with an even speed that avoided
blind dashes into the back-waters of the traffic-stream, it made better
time than its more impetuous peers and, without jolt or pause, bore its
occupant quickly to the building in which the firm of Stein,
Falconridge, Falconridge & Perry had their offices.
As Judge Stein passed through the outer room of the suite, he spoke to
the girl who was seated at the firm's telephone switchboard:
"Good-afternoon, Miss Weston."
The girl's neurasthenic face lighted with pleasure: Marcus Stein was
liked and respected by his office-force.
"Good-afternoon, Judge Stein," she said.
"I think," said the Judge, "that you might see if you can get Mr.
Hallett on his private wire, and connect him with my telephone. Will
you, please?"
Miss Weston always felt that the Judge conferred a favor when he asked
one. Consequently, she made a practice of giving his calls precedence
over those of anybody else connected with the firm.
"Right away," she said. "And if he's left his office, shall I try his
house or his club?"
"Both, please, Miss Weston. But I have an idea that he will be at his
office."
The Judge passed on to his own handsome room overlooking the turmoil of
lower Broadway. He had scarcely reached his desk, and was just bending
to smell of the two Abel Chatney roses that stood in a vase there, when
the soft bell of his telephone tinkled.
"Stein?" asked Hallett's voice through the black receiver that the Judge
placed to his ear.
"Yes. This is Mr. Hallett?"
"Yes."
"I was about to telephone you, and I have just been to see our young
friend."
"Well--well?"
"It is no use, Mr. Hallett."