ROGERS MAKES AN OFFER
The October day was sinking to its close as David, who was walking
southward through Broadway, came to a pause at Thirty-fourth Street to
wait till a passage should break through the vortex of cabs, trucks, and
street cars, created here by the crossing of three counter-currents of
traffic.
As he stood waiting he saw a woman in disarranged dress, about whom
there instantly seemed to be a vaguely familiar air, step from the crowd
and walk unsteadily into the turbulence of vehicles. A policeman called
a sharp warning to her, but she went on, and the next second the
shoulder of a horse sent her to the pavement, and only the prompt
backward jerking of the driver saved her from the horse's feet. The
policeman dragged her out of danger, and David joined the curious group
that ringed the pair.
"That'll be your finish some day if you don't leave the bottle alone,"
he heard the policeman say severely.
Her answer was a reckless, half-fearful laugh. Her voice roused again in
David the sense of vague familiarity. Presently she turned her face. It
was the face of Lillian Drew.
He stared at her a moment, then, careful to hide himself from her eyes,
he hurried through the passage that had opened, and on down crowded
Broadway. The sight of her had startled him deeply. His one meeting with
her flashed back into his mind, and all the horrible business of his
discovery of Morton's guilt, his own accusation, his trial, his
sentence--and he lived them through again with sickening vividness.
Presently he began to study if there was any way in which Lillian Drew
might affect the future. Morton she could not injure. Morton was too
long dead; she had sunk to too low a level for her unsupported word to
have belief, and the letters which were her only power had been ashes
these five years. As for himself, him she could not touch. No, Lillian
Drew was harmless.
And yet he could not wholly rid himself of a feeling of uneasiness.
When David reached home he found Tom waiting at the head of the little
stairway that led down into the basement. The boy had grown much in the
last nine months, and the pinched look had given place to a healthy
fulness. But he was still the same boy: his cow-lick still was like a
curling wave; his clothes would not stay in order, nor his hands clean,
despite his desire to please David and Helen Chambers; and the
vernacular of the street, notwithstanding his efforts to "talk
schoolroom," still mastered his tongue.
He stopped David with an air of subdued excitement. "Say," he whispered,
"de owner o' de house here, he's downstairs waitin' for you. And
say!--but ain't he mad!"
The owner of the tenement, who had recently moved into another house he
owned in the neighbourhood, had before shown an irascible disposition to
interfere in the tenement's management, so Tom's news was no surprise to
David.
"What's he want?"
"I dunno. But he's swearin' like he'd like to eat you alive."
The owner, drawn by their voices, came out of David's room and mounted
the steps. He belonged to that class of men whose life is a balance
between gratification of appetite and the relentless pursuit of small
gain, and his coarse, full-lipped, small-eyed face bore the family
likeness.
"Ain't you this fellow Aldrich?" he demanded aggressively, blocking the
head of the stairway.
"You know I am," said David.
"Yes--but I wanted to hear you confess it with your own lips. I have
been hearin' about you from St. Christopher's Mission. Ain't you the
fellow that stole that money from there?"
David saw the brink of a new disaster. But the owner's manner made him
bristle.
"Well?"
"Well, no crook can be janitor in my house! Take your things out o' that
room, and git!"
David wanted to seize the owner by the shoulders and shake his mean
little soul out upon the sidewalk. "I take my orders from Mr. Rogers,"
he returned, controlling himself.
"And Rogers takes his orders from me. See? Now you git!"
"Rogers is my employer."
He swore fiercely at David. "Get too fresh, you dirty thief, and I'll
punch your face in!"
"Please try!"
He looked into David's gleaming eyes, at the shoulders that promised too
much strength, and his threatening attitude subsided.
"Well, if you won't go for me, we'll see what you'll say to Rogers!" he
snorted. "You come with me to his office."
"If you want me, you'll find me in my room."
David brushed roughly by the owner and went down the stairway. A minute
later, the owner and Rogers entered the room.
"Now you fire him," the owner ordered Rogers. "I ain't goin' to have no
jailbirds around."
"But he's given most excellent service for almost a year," Rogers
protested in his quiet voice.
"I ain't to be fooled by that trick," sneered the owner, with a wise
look. "I ain't one o' them muckheads that believes because a thief's
been straight for nine months he's always goin' to be straight. No sir!
He's nine months nearer his next crooked stunt! Now fire him."
"But--"
"Cut out your 'buts'!" he roared, savagely. "Fire him or"--he looked
threateningly at Rogers--"there's agents that will!"
Rogers turned slowly upon David who was standing beside his table with
burning eyes and clenched face.
"I think you'll have to go, Aldrich," he said, after a moment.
Without a word David picked up his hat and, followed by Tom, walked out
of the room. As he tramped hotly through the streets--the boy, pale and
silent, beside him--his bitterness was at first directed even against
Rogers. But in a little while he remembered Rogers's situation, and that
Rogers could not have saved him--and the bitterness ran out of him. In
its place came the sharp realisation that he was again in the
abyss--stronger, better able than a year before to make his way from its
smooth-walled depths--but nevertheless in the abyss. What should he do?
how should he get out?--these questions were constantly begging answers
till, two hours later, wearied from walking, he came again into his
room.
Rogers rose from his table as he entered and looked questioningly at
him.
"You understand?--I had to do it?"
"Yes," said David, taking the hand he held out.
Rogers sent Tom out on an errand. After the boy had gone, anger slowly
lit its fires in Rogers's thin white cheeks.
"The hardest part of it all is, I dare not be a man, be myself!" he
burst out fiercely. "You don't know how heavy and revolting this mask of
discretion, of control, of subserviency, becomes at times! He should
have been kicked out, stamped on! Ah, to be unafraid!--that's the
greatest thing in the world!"
He stood leaning on his tightened fists, which rested on the table, his
eyes blazing across at David. But after a moment the red and flame began
to die from his face and eyes.
"Come, sit down," he said abruptly. "There's something I want to say to
you."
They both took chairs. "I've been thinking of a plan for several weeks,
and I guess this is the time to tell you," Rogers began. "As you know,
the land syndicate that's been secretly buying in land up along the
Palisades has been sending its agents to me. The syndicate is still
keeping itself in the dark, but I've learned that it's called the New
Jersey Home Company, and that Alexander Chambers is its president. The
active work of making a deal with them has just begun, and the deal
ought to come to a head in a month or six weeks."
He paused and gazed steadily at David, his thin face drawing with
despair. Then he said in a low voice:
"Haven't you noticed--during the last year--I've been losing strength?"
David nodded.
"Yes--these prison lungs!" he breathed, with fierce bitterness. "I saw
my doctor last week. He told me in this climate I might last a year--a
little more, a little less. If I went to Colorado or New Mexico I might
last several years, might even get well. That's what I want to
do--finish up this deal, then drop everything and go West.
"He told me I must do no work, and keep away from excitement. I knew
that already. Yet this deal's going to mean a lot of both. I simply
haven't got the strength to see it through. I must have someone to help
me--and I want that someone to be you."
"Me!" cried David. "Why, I don't know the first thing about real
estate."
"You don't need to. The chief thing will be just to stick to the price I
set. There'll be a lot of stiff talking--you can do that. And Mr.
Hoffman will help some; he's got a little interest in the deal."
"But my record. They'll doubtless learn about it. Aren't you afraid that
may endanger you?"
"I count that they'll say I've taken you in to give you a new chance in
life--and perhaps think no more about it. As for the danger, I'd rather
have a man I can trust whose record they may find out, than have near me
a man who may find out _my_ record--and tell."
David nodded. "I see your point."
"You'll be with me, won't you?"
"Can a drowning man refuse a rope thrown him?"
They shook hands.
"The financial situation is like this," Rogers went on. "In my option I
guaranteed the owners to sell the land for one hundred and fifteen
thousand; I had to guarantee high to keep the land. I am to have half of
all I get over that amount, and in addition, an agent's commission of
five per cent. of the sale price. I am demanding from the syndicate a
very much larger price than it has been paying for similar tracts. And
I'll get my price, too--for they must have the land; and besides, the
price is fair, much less than the land is worth to the syndicate. I'm
asking one hundred and fifty thousand.
"That makes my share twenty-five thousand. And I shall have earned it.
Several times in the last five years the owners--they're a pretty weak
lot--have wanted to sell at insignificant prices, but I wouldn't let
them. And if I hadn't been holding them together, they would have sold
out months ago to the syndicate at the syndicate's price--eighty or
ninety thousand. So you see I'm doing a mighty good thing for the
owners.
"Now as to terms between you and me. Twenty-five thousand is more than
I'll need even if I live longer than the doctor has promised me. Now I
know what you want to do about that Mission money. If the deal comes off
as I expect, five thousand will be your share."
"Five thousand dollars!" gasped David. "For a month's work? I can't take
it. I shall not have earned the smallest fraction of it!"
"Yes, you will take it. Without your help, I'll fail--so you'll earn it
all right. Besides, even if you didn't earn it, with whom should I
divide the money I don't need if not with you?"
David still objected, and at length Rogers cried out:
"Oh, take it as a loan, then, and pay off the Mission! You'd rather owe
me than it, wouldn't you? You can pay me back when I need it. The
proposition is the same either way, for I'll be dead before I need it,
and I'll make you a present of the amount in my will."
In the end David consented. Rogers went on with the other details of his
plan. David should live with him, and Tom could sleep on a cot in the
office. It would be wise, with this big deal on, to make a more
pretentious office show; Kate Morgan (he spoke of her calmly, but David
surmised the quality of the calmness within), who had recently finished
her business course and was looking for a better place than her present
one, should be their stenographer. For the sake of the help it would be
to her, and to try the effect of the work-cure upon him, old Jimmie
should succeed to David's place as janitor, and of course he and Kate
should have the basement flat as their home.
When Rogers had gone David walked up and down his basement room--his
last night there!--and looked excitedly into the future. The book--he
expected nothing of that. But here only a month away, almost within his
hand, was the sum which, as far as money alone could pay for it, would
buy his fair name. He felt an impulse to write Helen of the great
promise the next month held, but the memory that her father was engaged
on the other side vaguely prompted him not to do so; and then came the
second thought that it would be better to surprise her. Yes, he would
wait till he had repaid the money to St. Christopher's, and then go to
her with the receipt in his hand.