Smith folded the letter mechanically and thrust it into his

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THE REAL MAN

BY FRANCIS LYNDE

_ILLUSTRATED BY_

ARTHUR E. BECHER

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

NEW YORK :::::::::: 1915

COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

Published August, 1915

TO

THOSE FRIENDS OF UNACQUAINTANCE

AMONG HIS READERS

WHO FROM TIME TO TIME EXPRESS, THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF

KINDLY AND HEART-WARMING LETTERS,

THEIR APPRECIATIVE SYMPATHY AND APPROVAL,

THIS BOOK

IS AFFECTIONATELY INSCRIBED,

WITH GRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS FROM

THE AUTHOR

[Illustration: There was time only for a mighty heave and shove.]

CONTENTS

I. HOST AND GUEST

II. METASTASIS

III. THE HOBO

IV. THE HIGH HILLS

V. THE SPECIALIST

VI. THE TWIG

VII. A NOTICE TO QUIT

VIII. TIMANYONI DITCH

IX. RELAPSINGS

X. THE SICK PROJECT

XI. WHEN GREEK MEETS GREEK

XII. THE ROCKET AND THE STICK

XIII. THE NARROW WORLD

XIV. A REPRIEVE

XV. "SWEET FORTUNE'S MINION"

XVI. BROKEN THREADS

XVII. A NIGHT OF FIASCOS

XVIII. A CHANCE TO HEDGE

XIX. TWO WOMEN

XX. TUCKER JIBBEY

XXI. AT ANY COST

XXII. THE MEGALOMANIAC

XXIII. THE ARROW TO THE MARK

XXIV. A LITTLE LEAVEN

XXV. THE PACE-SETTER

XXVI. THE COLONEL'S "DEFI"

XXVII. TWO WITNESSES

XXVIII. THE STRADDLER

XXIX. THE FLESH-POTS OF EGYPT

XXX. A STRONG MAN ARMED

XXXI. A RACE TO THE SWIFT

XXXII. FREEDOM

XXXIII. IN SUNRISE GULCH

ILLUSTRATIONS

There was time only for a mighty heave and shove

In a flash Smith knew what he had done

"Your friends have money, Montague--plenty of it"

"Catch him! catch him!" he shrilled. "It's Boogerfield, and he's going

to dy-dynamite the dam!"

Sketch map of the Timanyoni

[Illustration: Sketch map of the Timanyoni]

THE REAL MAN

I

Host and Guest

It is conceivable that, in Noah's time--say, on the day before the

heavens opened and the floods descended--a complacent citizenry of

Antediluvia might have sat out on its front porches, enjoying the sunset

over Mount Ararat and speculating upon the probable results of the next

patriarchal election, all unsuspicious of chaotic cataclysms. Under

similar conditions--fair skies, a good groundwork of creature comforts,

and a total lack of threatening portents--there was no reason why the

two men, smoking their after-dinner cigars on the terrace of the

Lawrenceville Country Club, should suspect that the end of the world

might be lying in wait for either of them just beyond the hour's

relaxation.

They had been dining together--Debritt, a salesman for the Aldenguild

Engraving Company of New York and the elder of the two, as the guest,

and Smith, cashier of the Lawrenceville Bank and Trust, as the host.

After banking hours, Smith had taken the engraving company's salesman in

his runabout for a drive through the residence district and up the river

road; and business, the business of printing a new issue of

stock-certificates for the local bank, had been laid aside. The return

drive had paused at the Country Club for dinner; and since Debritt's

train would not leave until eight o'clock, there was ample leisure for

the tobacco burning and for the jocund salesman's appreciative

enthusiasm.

"Monty, my son, for solid satisfaction and pure unadulterated enjoyment

of the safe-and-sane variety, you fellows in the little cities have us

metropolitans backed off the map," he said, after the cigars were fairly

alight. "In New York, believe me, you might be the cashier of a bank the

size of the Lawrenceville B. and T.--only you wouldn't be at your

age--for a thousand years and never get a glimpse out over the top of

things; never know the people who lived next door to you. Here you know

everybody worth knowing, drive your own motor, have more dinner

invitations than you can accept, and by and by--when you get

deliberately good and ready--you can marry the prettiest girl in town.

Am I right?"

The carefully groomed, athletically muscled younger man in the big

wicker lounging-chair laughed easily.

"You are not so far wrong, Boswell," he conceded. "I guess we get all

that is coming to us, and I get my share. Since we have only one

multimillionaire we can't afford to be very exclusive, and my bank job

answers the social purpose well enough."

"I'll bet it does!" the jocose one went on. "I've been piping you off

ever since we left the hotel. It's ''lo, Monty-boy,' everywhere you go,

and I know exactly what that means in a town of this size; a stand-in

with all the good people, a plate at anybody's table, the pick of

partners at all the social dew-dabs. Tell me if I'm wrong."

Again the younger man laughed.

"You might be reading it out of a book," he confessed. "That is the life

here in Lawrenceville, and I live it, like thousands of my kind all over

the land. You may scoff at it if you like, but it is pleasant and

harmless and exceedingly comfortable. I shouldn't know how to live any

other kind."

"I don't know why you should want to live any other kind," was the

prompt rejoinder. "To be a rising young business man in a rich little

inland city, beloved of the gods and goddesses--especially of the

goddesses.... Say, by Jove! here comes one of them, right now. Heavens!

isn't she a pomegranate!"

A handsome limousine had rolled silently up to the club carriage

entrance, and the young woman in question was descending from it. Only a

miser of adjectives--or a Debritt--would have tried to set forth her

triumphant charm in a single word. She was magnificent: a brown-eyed

blonde of the Olympian type, exuberantly feminine in the many dazzling

luxuriances of ripe-lipped, full-figured maidenhood. The salesman saw

his companion make a move to rise, but the beauty passed on into the

club-house without looking their way.

"You know her, I suppose; you know everybody in town," Debritt said,

after the cashier had again settled himself in the lounging-chair.

Smith's nod was expressive of something more than a fellow townsman's

degree of intimacy.

"I ought to," he admitted. "She is Miss Verda Richlander, the daughter

of our one and only multimillionaire. Also, I may add that she is my

very good friend."

Debritt's chuckling laugh proved that his prefigurings had already

outrun the mere statement of fact.

"Better and more of it," he commented. "I'm going to congratulate you

before you can escape--or is it a bit premature?"

"Some of the Lawrenceville gossips would tell you that it isn't; but it

is, just the same. Mr. Josiah Richlander has but one measure for the

stature of a man, and the name of it is money. The fellow who asks him

for Miss Verda is going to have a chance to show up his bank-account and

the contents of his safety-deposit box in short order."

"In that case, I should imagine you'd be lying awake nights trying to

study up some get-rich-quick scheme," joked the guest.

"Perhaps I am," was the even-toned rejoinder. "Who knows?"

The round-bodied salesman broke an appreciative cough in the middle and

grew suddenly thoughtful.

"Don't do that, Monty," he urged soberly; "try to take any of the short

cuts, I mean. It's the curse of the age; and, if you'll take it from me,

your chances are too good--and too dangerous."

The good-looking, athletic young cash-keeper planted in the opposite

chair met the salesman's earnest gaze level-eyed.

"Having said that much, you can hardly refuse to say more," he

suggested.

"I will say more; a little more, anyway. I've been wanting to say it all

the afternoon. My job takes me into nearly every bank in the Middle

West, as you know, and I can't very well help hearing a good bit of

gossip, Montague. I'm not going to insult your intelligence by assuming

that you don't thoroughly know the man you are working under."

The cashier withheld his reply until the Olympian young woman, who was

coming out, had stepped into her limousine to be driven away townward.

Then he said:

"Mr. Dunham--our president? Oh, yes; I know him very well, indeed."

"I'm afraid you don't."

"I ought to know him," was the guarded assumption. "I've been with him

six years, and during that time I have served a turn at every job in the

bank up to, and now and then including, Mr. Dunham's own desk."

"Then you can hardly help knowing what people say of him."

"I know: they say he is a chance-taker, and some of them add that he is

not too scrupulous. That is entirely true; true, not only of Mr. Dunham,

but of nine out of every ten business men of to-day who make a success.

The chance-taking is in the air, the Lawrenceville air, at any rate,

Debritt. We are prosperous. The town is growing by leaps and bounds, and

we've got the money."

The ash had grown half an inch longer on the salesman's cigar before he

spoke again.

"They say worse things of Mr. Watrous Dunham than that he is a

chance-taker, Montague. There are men, good, solid business men, in the

neighboring cities and towns who tell some pretty savage stories about

the way in which he has sometimes dropped his friends into a hole to

save himself."

"And you are a good enough friend of mine to want to give me a tip,

Boswell? I appreciate that, but I don't need it. It may be as you say.

Possibly Mr. Dunham does carry a knife up his sleeve for emergencies.

But I wasn't born yesterday, and I have a few friends of my own here in

Lawrenceville. My only present worry is that I'm not making money fast

enough."

The salesman waved the subject aside with the half-burned cigar. "Forget

it," he said shortly; "the Dunham end of it, I mean. And I don't blame

you for wanting to assemble money enough to call Mr. Richlander's hand."

Then, with the jocose smile wrinkling again at the corners of his

well-buried eyes: "You've got all the rest of it, you know; even to the

good half of a distinguished name. 'Mrs. J. Montague Smith.' That fits

her down to the ground. If it were just plain 'John,' now, it might be

different. Does she, too, call you 'Monty-boy'?"

The young man whose name pointed the jest grinned good-naturedly.

"The 'J' does stand for 'John,'" he admitted. "I was named for my

maternal grandfather, John Montague, and had both halves of the good old

gentleman's signature wished upon me. I stood for it until I grew old

enough to realize that 'John Smith' is practically nothing but an

_alias_, and then I dropped the 'John' part of it, or rather, let it

shrink to an initial. I suppose you can count all the Debritts there are

in the country on your fingers; but there are millions of

indistinguishable Smiths."

The fat salesman was chuckling again when he threw the cigar end away

and glanced at his watch.

"I don't blame you for parting your name in the middle," he said; "I'd

have done it myself, maybe. But if you should ever happen to need an

_alias_ you've got one ready-made. Just drop the 'Montague' and call

yourself 'John' and the trick's turned. You might bear that in mind.

It'll come in handy if the big ego ever happens to get hold of you."

"The big what?"

"The big ego; the German philosophers' 'Absolute Ego,' you know."

Smith laughed. "I haven't the pleasure of the gentleman's acquaintance.

I'm long on commercial arithmetic and the money market; long, again,

Lawrenceville will tell you, on the new dancing steps and things of that

sort. But I've never dabbled much in the highbrow stuff."

"It's a change," said the salesman, willing to defend himself. "I read a

little now and then, just to get away from the commercial grind. The ego

theory is interesting. It is based on the idea that no man is altogether

the man he thinks he is, or that others think he is; that association,

environment, training, taste, inclination, and all those things have

developed a personality which might have been altogether different if

the constraining conditions had been different. Do you get that?"

"Perfectly. If I'd been brought up some other way I might have been

cutting meat in a butcher's shop instead of taking bank chances on more

or less doubtful notes of hand. What's the next step?"

"The German hair-splitters go a little farther and ring in what they

call the 'Absolute Ego,' by which they mean the ego itself, unshackled

by any of these conditions which unite in forming the ordinary

personality. They say that if these conditions could be suddenly swept

away or changed completely, a new man would emerge, a man no less

unrecognizable, perhaps, to his friends than he would be to himself."

"That's rather far-fetched, don't you think?" queried the

practical-minded listener. "I can see how a man may be what he is

chiefly because his inherited tastes and his surroundings and his

opportunities have made him so. But after the metal has once been poured

in the mould it's fixed, isn't it?"

Debritt shook his head.

"I'm only a wader in the edges of the pool, myself," he admitted. "I

dabble a little for my own amusement. But, as I understand it, the

theory presupposes a violent smashing of the mould and a remelting of

the metal. Let me ask you something: when you were a boy did you mean

to grow up and be a bank cashier?"

Smith laughed. "I fully intended to be a pirate or a stage-robber, as I

remember it."

"There you are," drawled the travelling man. "The theory goes on to say

that in childhood the veil is thin and the absolute ego shows through.

I'm not swallowing the thing whole, you understand. But in my own

experience I've seen a good man go hopelessly into the discard, and a

bad one turn over a new leaf and pull up, all on account of some sudden

earthquake in the conditions. Call it all moonshine, if you like, and

let's come down to earth again. How about getting back to town? I'd be

glad to stay here forever, but I'm afraid the house might object. When

did you say Mr. Dunham would be home?"

"We are looking for him to-morrow, though he may be a day or two late.

But you needn't worry about your order, if that is what is troubling

you. I happen to know that he intends giving the engraving of the new

stock-certificates to your people."

The New York salesman's smile had in it the experience-taught wisdom of

all the ages.

"Montague, my son, let me pay for my dinner with a saying that is as old

as the hills, and as full of meat as the nuts that ripen on 'em: in

this little old round world you have what you have when you have it.

This evening we've enjoyed a nice little five-course dinner, well cooked

and well served, in a pretty nifty little club, and in a few minutes

we'll be chasing along to town in your private buzz-wagon, giving our

dust to anybody who wants to take it. Do you get that?"

"I do. But what's the answer?"

"The answer is the other half of it. This time to-morrow we may both be

asking for a hand-out, and inquiring, a bit hoarsely, perhaps, if the

walking is good. That is just how thin the partitions are. You don't

believe it, of course; couldn't even assume it as a working hypothesis.

What could possibly happen to you or to me in the next twenty-four

hours? Nothing, nothing on top of God's green earth that could pitch

either or both of us over the edge, you'd say--or to Mr. Dunham to make

him change his mind about the engraving job. Just the same, I'll drop

along in the latter part of the week and get his name signed to the

order for those stock-certificates. Let's go and crank up the little

road-wagon. I mustn't miss that train."

II

Metastasis

It was ten minutes of eight when J. Montague Smith, having picked up the

salesman's sample cases at the town hotel, set Debritt down at the

railroad station and bade him good-by. Five minutes later he had driven

the runabout to its garage and was hastening across to his suite of

bachelor apartments in the Kincaid Terrace. There was reason for the

haste. Though he had been careful, from purely hospitable motives, to

refrain from intimating the fact to Debritt, it was his regular evening

for calling upon Miss Verda Richlander, and time pressed.

The New York salesman, enlarging enthusiastically upon the provincial

beatitudes, had chosen a fit subject for their illustration in the young

cashier of the Lawrenceville Bank and Trust. From his earliest

recollections Montague Smith had lived the life of the well-behaved and

the conventional. He had his niche in the Lawrenceville social

structure, and another in the small-city business world, and he filled

both to his own satisfaction and to the admiration of all and sundry.

Ambitions, other than to take promotions in the bank as they came to

him, and, eventually, to make money enough to satisfy the demands which

Josiah Richlander might make upon a prospective son-in-law, had never

troubled him. An extremely well-balanced young man his fellow townsmen

called him, one of whom it might safely be predicted that he would go

straightforwardly on his way to reputable middle life and old age;

moderate in all things, impulsive in none.

Even in the affair with Miss Richlander sound common sense and sober

second thought had been made to stand in the room of supersentiment.

Smith did not know what it was to be violently in love; though he was a

charter member of the Lawrenceville Athletic Club and took a certain

pride in keeping himself physically fit and up to the mark, it was not

his habit to be violent in anything. Lawrenceville expected its young

men and young women to marry and "settle down," and J. Montague Smith,

figuring in a modest way as a leader in the Lawrenceville younger set,

was far too conservative to break with the tradition, even if he had

wished to. Miss Richlander was desirable in many respects. Her father's

ample fortune had not come early enough or rapidly enough to spoil her.

In moments when his feeling for her achieved its nearest approach to

sentiment the conservative young man perceived what a graciously

resplendent figure she would make as the mistress of her own house and

the hostess at her own table.

Arrived at his rooms in the Kincaid, Smith snapped the switch of the

electrics and began to lay out his evening clothes, methodically and

with a careful eye to the spotlessness of the shirt and the fresh

immaculacy of the waistcoat. There were a number of little preliminaries

to the change; he made the preparations swiftly but with a certain air

of calm deliberation, inserting the buttons in the waistcoat, choosing

hose of the proper thinness, rummaging a virgin tie out of its box in

the top dressing-case drawer.

It was in the search for the tie that he turned up a mute reminder of

his nearest approach to any edge of the real chasm of sentiment: a small

glove, somewhat soiled and use-worn, with a tiny rip in one of the

fingers. It had been a full year since he had seen the glove or its

owner, whom he had met only once, and that entirely by chance. The girl

was a visitor from the West, the daughter of a ranchman, he had

understood; and she had been stopping over with friends in a

neighboring town. Smith had driven over one evening in his runabout to

make a call upon the daughters of the house, and had found a lawn-party

in progress, with the Western visitor as the guest of honor.

Acquaintance--such an acquaintance as can be achieved in a short social

hour--had followed, and the sight of the small glove reminded him

forcibly of the sharp little antagonisms that the hour had developed. At

all points the bewitching young woman from the barbaric wildernesses,

whose dropped glove he had surreptitiously picked up and pocketed, had

proved to be a mocking critic of the commonplace conventions, and had

been moved to pillory the same in the person of her momentary

entertainer. Smith had recalled his first tasting of a certain French

liqueur with perfume in it, and the tingling sense of an awakening of

some sort running through his veins as an after effect not altogether

pleasant, but vivifying to a degree. Some similar thrillings this young

person from the wide horizons had stirred in him--which was his only

excuse for stealing her glove.

Though he was far enough from recognizing it as such, the theft had been

purely sentimental. A week later, when he would have courted a return of

the thrills, he had learned that she had gone back to her native wilds.

It was altogether for the best, he had told himself at the time, and at

other times during the year which now intervened. Perfumed liqueurs are

not for those whose tastes and habits are abstemious by choice; and

there remained now nothing of the clashing encounter at the lawn-party

save the soiled glove, a rather obscure memory of a face too piquant and

attractive to be cheapened by the word "pretty"; these and a thing she

had said at the moment of parting: "Yes; I am going back home very soon.

I don't like your smug Middle-West civilization, Mr. Smith--it smothers

me. I don't wonder that it breeds men who live and grow up and die

without ever having a chance to find themselves."

He was recalling that last little thrust and smiling reminiscently over

it as he replaced the glove among its fellow keepsakes: handkerchief

boxes, tie-holders, and what not, given him on birthdays and Christmases

by the home-town girls who had known him from boyhood. Some day,

perhaps, he would tell Verda Richlander of the sharp-tongued little

Western beauty. Verda--and all sensible people--would smile at the idea

that he, John Montague Smith, was of those who had not "found"

themselves, or that the finding--by which he had understood the Western

young woman to mean something radical and upsetting--could in any way be

forced upon a man who was old enough and sane enough to know his own

lengths and breadths and depths.

He had closed the drawer and was stripping off his coat to dress when he

saw that, in entering the room in the dark, he had overlooked two

letters which had evidently been thrust under the door during his

absence with Debritt. One of the envelopes was plain, with his name

scribbled on it in pencil. The other bore a typewritten address with the

card of the Westfall Foundries Company in its upper left-hand corner.

Smith opened Carter Westfall's letter first and read it with a little

twinge of shocked surprise, as one reads the story of a brave battle

fought and lost.

"Dear Monty," it ran. "I have been trying to reach you by

'phone off and on ever since the adjournment of our

stockholders' meeting at three o'clock. We, of the little

inside pool, have got it where the chicken got the axe.

Richlander had more proxies up his sleeve than we thought he

had, and he has put the steam-roller over us to a finish. He

was able to vote fifty-five per cent of the stock straight, and

you know what that means: a consolidation with the Richlander

foundry trust, and the hearse and white horses for yours truly

and the minority stockholders. We're dead--dead and buried.

"Of course, I stand to lose everything, but that isn't all of

it. I'm horribly anxious for fear you'll be tangled up

personally in some way in the matter of that last loan of

$100,000 that I got from the Bank and Trust. You will remember

you made the loan while Dunham was away, and I am certain you

told me you had his consent to take my Foundries stock as

collateral. That part of it is all right, but, as matters

stand, the stock isn't worth the paper it is printed on,

and--well, to tell the bald truth, I'm scared of Dunham.

Brickley, the Chicago lawyer they have brought down here, tells

me that your bank is behind the consolidation deal, and if that

is so, there is going to be a bank loss to show up on my paper,

and Dunham will carefully cover his tracks for the sake of the

bank's standing.

"It is a hideous mess, and it has occurred to me that Dunham

can put you in bad, if he wants to. When you made that $100,000

loan, you forgot--and I forgot for the moment--that you own ten

shares of Westfall Foundries in your own name. If Dunham wants

to stand from under, this might be used against you. You must

get rid of that stock, Monty, and do it quick. Transfer the ten

shares to me, dating the transfer back to Saturday. I still

have the stock books in my hands, and I'll make the entry in

the record and date it to fit. This may look a little crooked,

on the surface, but it's your salvation, and we can't stop to

split hairs when we've just been shot full of holes.

"WESTFALL."

Smith folded the letter mechanically and thrust it into his pocket.

Carter Westfall was his good friend, and the cashier had tried,

unofficially, to dissuade Westfall from borrowing after he had admitted

that he was going to use the money in an attempt to buy up the control

of his own company's stock. As Smith took up the second envelope he was

not thinking of himself, or of the possible danger hinted at in

Westfall's warning. The big bank loss was the chief thing to be

considered--that and the hopeless ruin of a good fellow like Carter

Westfall. He was thinking of both when he tore the second envelope

across and took out the enclosed slip of scratch-paper. It was a note

from the president and it was dated within the hour. Mr. Dunham had

evidently anticipated his itinerary. At all events, he was back in

Lawrenceville, and the note had been written at the bank. It was a curt

summons; the cashier was wanted, at once.

At the moment, Smith did not connect the summons with the Westfall

cataclysm, or with any other untoward thing. Mr. Watrous Dunham had a

habit of dropping in and out unexpectedly. Also, he had the habit of

sending for his cashier or any other member of the banking force at

whatever hour the notion seized him. Smith went to the telephone and

called up the Richlander house. The promptness with which the

multimillionaire's daughter came to the 'phone was an intimation that

his ring was not entirely unexpected.

"This is Montague," he said, when Miss Richlander's mellifluous "Main

four six eight--Mr. Richlander's residence" came over the wire. Then:

"What are you going to think of a man who calls you up merely to beg

off?" he asked.

Miss Richlander's reply was merciful and he was permitted to go on and

explain. "I'm awfully sorry, but it can't very well be helped, you know.

Mr. Dunham has returned, and he wants me at the bank. I'll be up a

little later on, if I can break away, and you'll let me come.... Thank

you, ever so much. Good-by."

Having thus made his peace with Miss Richlander, Smith put on his street

coat and hat and went to obey the president's summons. The Lawrenceville

Bank and Trust, lately installed in its new marble-veneered quarters in

the town's first--seven-storied--sky-scraper, was only four squares

distant; two streets down and two across. As he was approaching the

sky-scraper corner, Smith saw that there were only two lights in the

bank, one in the vault corridor and another in the railed-off open space

in front which held the president's desk and his own. Through the big

plate-glass windows he could see Mr. Dunham. The president was

apparently at work, his portly figure filling the padded swing-chair. He

had one elbow on the desk, and the fingers of the uplifted hand were

thrust into his thick mop of hair.

Smith had his own keys and he let himself in quietly through the door on

the side street. The night-watchman's chair stood in its accustomed

place in the vault corridor, but it was empty. To a suspicious person

the empty chair might have had its significance; but Montague Smith was

not suspicious. The obvious conclusion was that Mr. Dunham had sent the

watchman forth upon some errand; and the motive needed not to be tagged

as ulterior.

Without meaning to be particularly noiseless, Smith--rubber heels on

tiled floor assisting--was unlatching the gate in the counter-railing

before his superior officer heard him and looked up. There was an

irritable note in the president's greeting.

"Oh, it's you, at last, is it?" he rasped. "You have taken your own good

time about coming. It's a half-hour and more since I sent that note to

your room."

Smith drew out the chair from the stenographer's table and sat down.

Like the cashiers of many little-city banks, he was only a salaried man,

and the president rarely allowed him to forget the fact. None the less,

his boyish gray eyes were reflecting just a shade of the militant

antagonism in Mr. Watrous Dunham's when he said: "I was dining at the

Country Club with a friend, and I didn't go to my rooms until a few

minutes ago."

The president sat back in the big mahogany swing-chair. His face, with

the cold, protrusive eyes, the heavy lips, and the dewlap lower jaw, was

the face of a man who shoots to kill.

"I suppose you've heard the news about Westfall?"

Smith nodded.

"Then you also know that the bank stands to lose a cold hundred thousand

on that loan you made him?"

The young man in the stenographer's chair knew now very well why the

night-watchman had been sent away. He felt in his pocket for a cigar but

failed to find one. It was an unconscious effort to gain time for some

little readjustment of the conventional point of view. The president's

attitude plainly implied accusation, and Smith saw the solid foundations

of his small world--the only world he had ever known--crumbling to a

threatened dissolution.

"You may remember that I advised against the making of that loan when

Westfall first spoke of it," he said, after he had mastered the

premonitory chill of panic. "It was a bad risk--for him and for us."

"I suppose you won't deny that the loan was made while I was away in New

York," was the challenging rejoinder.

"It was. But you gave your sanction before you went East."

The president twirled his chair to face the objector and brought his

palm down with a smack upon the desk-slide.

"No!" he stormed. "What I told you to do was to look up his collateral;

and you took a snap judgment and let him have the money! Westfall is

your friend, and you are a stockholder in his bankrupt company. You took

a chance for your own hand and put the bank in the hole. Now I'd like to

ask what you are going to do about it."

Smith looked up quickly. Somewhere inside of him the carefully erected

walls of use and custom were tumbling in strange ruins and out of the

debris another structure, formless as yet, but obstinately sturdy, was

rising.

"I am not going to do what you want me to do, Mr. Dunham--step in and be

your convenient scapegoat," he said, wondering a little in his inner

recesses how he was finding the sheer brutal man-courage to say such a

thing to the president of the Lawrenceville Bank and Trust. "I suppose

you have reasons of your own for wishing to shift the responsibility for

this particular loss to my shoulders. But whether you have or haven't, I

decline to accept it."

The president tilted his chair and locked his hands over one knee.

"It isn't a question of shifting the responsibility, Montague," he said,

dropping the bullying weapon to take up another. "The loan was made in

my absence. Perhaps you may say that I went away purposely to give you

the chance of making it, but, if you do, nobody will believe you. When

it comes down to the matter of authorization, it is simply your word

against mine--and mine goes. Don't you see what you've done? As the

matter stands now, you have let yourself in for a criminal indictment,

if the bank directors choose to push it. You have taken the bank's money

to bolster up a failing concern in which you are a stockholder. Go to

any lawyer in Lawrenceville--the best one you can find--and he'll tell

you exactly where you stand."

While the big clock over the vault entrance was slowly ticking off a

full half-minute the young man whose future had become so suddenly and

so threateningly involved neither moved nor spoke, but his silence was

no measure of the turmoil of conflicting emotions and passions that were

rending him. When he looked up, the passions, passions which had

hitherto been mere names to him, were still under control, but to his

dismay his restraining hold upon them seemed to be growing momentarily

less certain.

"I may not prove quite the easy mark that your plan seems to prefigure,

Mr. Dunham," he returned at length, trying to say it calmly. "But

assuming that I am all that you have been counting upon, and that you

will carry out your threat and take the matter into the courts, what is

the alternative? Just what are you expecting me to do?"

"Now you are talking more like a grown man," was the president's crusty

admission. "You are in a pretty bad boat, Montague, and that is why I

sent for you to-night. It didn't seem safe to waste any time if you were

to be helped out. Of course, there will be a called meeting of the bank

board to-morrow, and it will all come out. With the best will in the

world to do you a good turn, I shan't be able to stand between you and

trouble."

"Well?" said the younger man, still holding the new and utterly

incomprehensible passions in check.

"You can see how it will be. If I can say to the directors that you have

already resigned--and if you are not where they can too easily lay hands

on you--they may not care to push the charge against you. There is a

train west at ten o'clock. If I were in your place, I should pack a

couple of suitcases and take it. That is the only safe thing for you to

do. If you need any ready money----"

It was at this point that J. Montague Smith rose up out of the

stenographer's chair and buttoned his coat.

"'If I need any ready money,'" he repeated slowly, advancing a step

toward the president's desk. "That is where you gave yourself away, Mr.

Dunham. You authorized that loan, and you meant to authorize it. More

than that, you did it because you were willing to use the bank's money

to put Carter Westfall in the hole so deep that he could never climb

out. Now, it seems, you are willing to bribe the only dangerous witness.

I don't need money badly enough to sell my good name for it. I shall

stay right here in Lawrenceville and fight it out with you!"

The president turned abruptly to his desk and his hand sought the row of

electric bell-pushes. With a finger resting upon the one marked

"police," he said: "There isn't any room for argument, Montague. You can

have one more minute in which to change your mind. If you stay, you'll

begin your fight from the inside of the county jail."

Now, as we have seen, there had been nothing in John Montague Smith's

well-ordered quarter century of boyhood, youth, and business manhood to

tell him how to cope with the crude and savage emergency which he was

confronting. But in the granted minute of respite something within him,

a thing as primitive and elemental as the crisis with which it was

called upon to grapple, shook itself awake. At the peremptory bidding of

the newly aroused underman, he stepped quickly across the intervening

space and stood under the shaded desk light within arm's reach of the

man in the big swing-chair.

"You have it all cut and dried, even to the setting of the police trap,

haven't you?" he gritted, hardly recognizing his own voice. "You meant

to hang me first and try your own case with the directors afterward. Mr.

Dunham, I know you better than you think I do: you are not only a damned

crook--you are a yellow-livered coward, as well! You don't dare to press

that button!"

While he was saying it, the president had half risen, and the hand which

had been hovering over the bell-pushes shot suddenly under the piled

papers in the corner of the desk. When it came out it was gripping the

weapon which is never very far out of reach in a bank.

Good judges on the working floor of the Lawrenceville Athletic Club had

said of the well-muscled young bank cashier that he did not know his

own strength. It was the sight of the pistol that maddened him and put

the driving force behind the smashing blow that landed upon the big

man's chest. Two inches higher or lower, the blow might have been merely

breath-cutting. As it was, the lifted pistol dropped from Mr. Watrous

Dunham's grasp and he wilted, settling back slowly, first into his

chair, and then slipping from the chair to the floor.

In a flash Smith knew what he had done. Once, one evening when he had

been induced to put on the gloves with the Athletic Club's trainer, he

had contrived to plant a body blow which had sent the wiry little

Irishman to the mat, gasping and fighting for the breath of life. "If

ever yez'll be givin' a man that heart-punch wid th' bare fisht, Misther

Montygue, 'tis you f'r th' fasht thrain widout shtoppin' to buy anny

ticket--it'll be murdher in th' first degree," the trainer had said,

when he had breath to compass the saying.

With the unheeded warning resurgent and clamoring in his ears, Smith

knelt horror-stricken beside the fallen man. On the president's heavy

face and in the staring eyes there was a foolish smile, as of one mildly

astonished. Smith loosened the collar around the thick neck and laid his

ear upon the spot where the blow had fallen. It was as the Irish

trainer had told him it would be. The big man's heart had stopped like a

smashed clock.

[Illustration: In a flash Smith knew what he had done.]

Smith got upon his feet, turned off the electric light, and, from mere

force of habit, closed and snap-locked the president's desk. The

watchman had not yet returned. Smith saw the empty chair beside the

vault door as he passed it on his way to the street. Since the first

impulse of the unwilling or unwitting homicide is usually sharply

retributive, the cashier's only thought was to go at once to police

headquarters and give himself up. Then he remembered how carefully the

trap had been set, and how impossible it would be for him to make any

reasonable defense. As it would appear, he had first taken the bank's

money to help Westfall, and afterward, when exposure had threatened, he

had killed the president. No one would ever believe that the blow had

been struck in self-defense.

It was at the hesitating instant that Debritt's curiously prophetic

words came back to him with an emphasis that was fairly appalling:

"To-morrow we may both be asking for a hand-out, and inquiring, a bit

hoarsely, perhaps, if the walking is good. That is just how thin the

partitions are." With one glance over his shoulder at the darkened

front windows of the bank, Smith began to run, not toward the police

station, but in the opposite direction--toward the railroad station.

This was at nine o'clock or, perhaps, a few minutes later. Coincident

with J. Montague Smith's dash down the poorly lighted cross street, a

rather weak-faced young man of the sham black-sheep type of the smaller

cities was lounging in the drawing-room of an ornate timber-and-stucco

mansion on Maple Street hill and saying to his hostess: "Say--I thought

this was Monty's night to climb the hill, Miss Verda. By Jove, I've got

it in for Monty, don't y' know. He's comin' here a lot too regular to

please me."

"Mr. Smith always puts business before pleasure; haven't you found that

out yet, Mr. Jibbey?" was the rather cryptic rejoinder of the Olympian

beauty; and after that she talked, and made the imitation rounder talk,

pointedly of other things.

III

The Hobo

For J. Montague Smith, slipping from shadow to shadow down the scantily

lighted cross street and listening momently for the footfalls of

pursuit, a new hour had struck. Psychology to the contrary

notwithstanding, the mental mutations are not always, or of necessity,

gradual. In one flaming instant the ex-cashier had been projected across

the boundary lying between the commonplace and the extraordinary; but

for the time he was conscious only of a great confusion, shot through

with a sense of his own present inability to cope with the

strangenesses.

In the projecting instant, time and the graspable realities had both

been annihilated. Was it conceivable that this was the evening of the

same day in which he had entertained Boswell Debritt at the Country

Club? Was it remotely thinkable that, only an hour or such a matter

earlier, he had been getting ready to call upon Verda Richlander?--that,

at this very moment, his dress clothes were lying on the bed in his

rooms, ready to be put on?

It was all prodigiously incredible; in the collapse of the universe one

scene alone stood out clearly cut and vivid: the railed space in the

bank, with the shaded drop-light and the open desk, and a fleshy man

stretched out upon the floor with his arms flung wide and a foolish

smile of mild astonishment fixed, as for all eternity, about the

loosened lips and in the staring eyes.

Smith hurried on. The crowding sensations were terrifying, but they were

also precious, in their way. Long-forgotten bits of brutality and

tyranny on Watrous Dunham's part came up to be remembered and, in this

retributive aftermath, to be triumphantly crossed off as items in an

account finally settled. On the Smith side the bank cashier's forebears

had been plodding farmers, but old John Montague had been the village

blacksmith and a soldier--a shrewd smiter in both trades. Blood will

tell. Parental implantings may have much to say to the fruit of the

womb, but atavism has more. Smith's jaw came up with a snap and the

metamorphosis took another forward step. He was no longer an

indistinguishable unit in the ranks of the respectable and the

well-behaved; he was a man fleeing for his life. What was done was

done, and the next thing to do was to avert the consequences.

At the railroad station a few early comers for the westbound

passenger-train due at ten o'clock were already gathering, and at the

bidding of a certain new and militant craftiness Smith avoided the

lighted waiting-rooms as if they held the pestilence. Nor was it safe to

pass beyond the building. The May night was fine, and there were

strollers on the train platform. Smith took no risks. A string of box

cars had been pushed up from the freight unloading platforms, and in the

shadow of the cars he worked his way westward to the yard where a night

switching crew was making up a train.

Thus far he had struck out no plan. But the sudden shift from the normal

to the extraordinary had not shorn him of the ability to think quickly

and to the definite end. A placed road-engine, waiting for the

conclusion of the car sorting, told him that the next train to leave the

yard would be a westbound freight. He would have given much to know its

exact leaving time, but he was far too clear-headed to give the pursuers

a clew by asking questions.

Keeping to the shadows, he walked back along the line of cars on the

make-up track, alertly seeking his opportunity. If worst came to worst,

he could select a car with four truss-rods and crawl in on top of the

rods after the manner of the professional ride-stealers. But this was a

last resort; the risk was large for his inexperience, and he was very

well aware that there must be some sort of an apprenticeship, even to

the "brake-beamer's" trade.

Half-way down the length of the train he found what he was looking for:

a box car with its side-door hasped but not locked. With a bit of stick

to lengthen his reach, he unfastened the hasp, and at the switching

crew's addition of another car to the "make-up" he took advantage of the

noise made by the jangling crash and slid the door. Then he ascertained

by groping into the dark interior that the car was empty. With a foot on

the truss-rod he climbed in, and at the next coupling crash closed the

door.

So far, all was well. Unless the start should be too long delayed, or

the trainmen should discover the unhasped door, he was measurably safe.

Still cool and collected, he began to cast about for some means of

replacing the outside fastening of the door from within. There was loose

hay under-foot and it gave him his idea. Groping again, he found a piece

of wire, a broken bale-tie. The box car was old and much of its inner

sheathing had disappeared. With the help of his pocket-knife he enlarged

a crack in the outer sheathing near the door, and a skilful bit of

juggling with the bent wire sufficed to lift the hasp into place on the

outside and hook it.

Following this clever removal of one of the hazards, he squatted upon

the floor near the door and waited. Though he was familiar with the

schedules of the passenger-trains serving the home city, he knew nothing

of the movements of the freights. Opening the face of his watch, he felt

the hands. It was half-past nine, and the thrust and whistle of the

air-brakes under the cars gave notice that the road engine had been

coupled on. Still the train did not pull out.

After a little he was able to account for the delay. Though his

knowledge of railroad operating was limited, common sense told him that

the freight would not be likely to leave, now, ahead of the ten o'clock

passenger. That meant another half-hour of suspense to be paid for in

such coin as one might be able to offer. The fugitive paid in keen

agonies of apprehension. Surely, long before this the watchman would

have returned to the bank, and the hue and cry being raised, the pursuit

must now be afoot. In that case, the dullest policeman on the force

would know enough to make straight for the railroad yard.

Smith knelt at the crack of the car door and listened, while the minutes

dragged slowly in procession. Once, through the crack, he had a glimpse

of the smoky flare of a kerosene torch in the hands of a passing

car-inspector; and once again, one of the trainmen walked back over the

tops of the cars, making a creaky thundering overhead as he tramped from

end to end of the "empty." But as yet there was no hue and cry, or, if

there were, it had not reached the railroad yard.

Keenly alive to every passing sound, Smith finally heard the

passenger-train coming in from the east; heard the hoarse stridor of the

engine's pop-valve at the station stop, and the distance-diminished

rumblings of the baggage and express trucks over the wooden station

platform. The stop was a short one, and in a few minutes the

passenger-train came down through the yard, its pace measured by the

sharp staccato blasts of the exhaust. It was the signal of release, and

as the quickening staccato trailed away into silence, Smith braced

himself for the slack-taking jerk of the starting freight.

The jerk did not come. Minute by minute the interval lengthened, and at

last the listener in the "empty" heard voices and saw through the crack

of the door a faint nimbus of lantern light approaching from the rear of

the train. The voices came nearer. By the dodging movements of the light

rays, Smith knew instantly what was coming. His pursuers were out, and

they were overhauling the waiting freight-train, searching it for a

stowaway.

He hardly dared breathe when the lantern-bearers reached his car. There

were a number of them, just how many he could not determine. But

McCloskey, the Lawrenceville chief of police, was one of the number.

Also, there was an Irish yardman who was carrying one of the lanterns

and swinging it under the cars to show that the truss-rods and

brake-beams were empty.

"'Tis not the likes of him that do be brake-beamin' their way out of

town, Chief," the Irishman was saying. "'Tis more likely he's tuk an

autymobile and the middle of the big road."

"There's no automobile missing, and his own car is still in the garage,"

Smith heard the police chief say. And then: "Hold your lantern up here,

Timmy, till we see if this car door is fastened shut."

It was a measure of the distance that the bank clerk and small-city

social leader had already travelled on the road toward a complete

metamorphosis that the only answer to this threat of discovery was a

tightening of the muscles, a certain steeling of thews and sinews for

the wild-beast spring if the door should be opened. One thought

dominated all others: if they took him they should not take him alive.

Happily or unhappily, as one may wish to view it, the danger passed.

"The door's fastened, all right," said one of the searchers, and the

menace went on, leaving Smith breathing hard and chuckling grimly to

himself over the cunning forethought which had prompted him to grope for

the bit of wire bale-tie.

Past this there was another interval of waiting--a brief one, this time.

Then the long freight began to move out over the switches. When he could

no longer see the sheen of the city electrics in the strip of sky

visible through his door crack, Smith gathered up the leavings of hay on

the car floor and stretched himself out flat on his back. And it was

another measure of the complete triumph of the elemental underman over

the bank clerk that he immediately fell asleep and did not awaken until

a jangling of draw-bars and a ray of sunlight sifting through the crack

of the door told him that the train had arrived at some destination, and

that it was morning.