XIITHE VICTOR

Some excerpts from an article on the late J. H. Osterman, by C. A. Gridley, Chief Engineer of the Osterman Development Company. This article appeared in the Engineering Record, for August last.

“Myadmiration for the late J. H. Osterman was based on his force and courage and initiative, rather than upon his large fortune and the speed with which he had accumulated it after he had passed the age of forty. Mr. Osterman was not always a pleasant person to be near. Not that he was given to violent rages, but in the prosecution of his various enterprises he had the faculty of giving one the impression that but a fraction of his thoughts was being revealed and that he was sitting apart and in judgment upon one, as it were, even while he talked. He had the habit of extracting the most carefully thought-out opinions of all those about him, and when all had been said of shaking his head and dismissing the whole matter as negligible, only to make use of the advice in some form later. At such times he was apt to convince himself, and quite innocently, I am sure, that his final opinion was his own.

“In so far as I could judge from hearsay and active contact with him for a period of something like fourteen years, Mr. Osterman was one who required little if any rest and at all times much work to keep him content. His was an intense and always dominant personality. Even after he had passed the age of sixty-five, when most men of means arecontent to rest and let others assume the strenuous burdens of the world, he was always thinking of some new thing to do. It was only the week before he died, stricken while walking upon his verandah, that he was in my office with a plan to subsidize the reigning authorities of a certain minor Asiatic state, in order that certain oil and other properties there might be developed under peaceful conditions. A part of this plan contemplated a local army to be organized and equipped and maintained at his expense. Of a related nature was his plan for the double-screw platform descents and exits for the proposed New York-New Jersey traffic tunnel, which he appears to have worked out during the spring which preceded his sudden demise and plans for which he was most anxious to have this department prepare in order that they might be submitted to the respective states. It is hardly needful to state, since the fact is generally known, that those plans have been accepted. Of a related nature were those Argentine-Chilean Trans-Andean railway projects so much discussed in the technical engineering as well as the trade papers of a few years since, and which recently have been jointly financed by the two governments. Only the natural tact and diplomacy of a man like Mr. Osterman, combined with his absolute genius for detecting and organizing the natural though oftentimes difficult resources of a country, would have been capable of making anything out of that very knotty problem. It was too much identified with diplomacy and the respective ambitions and prejudices of the countries involved. Yet it was solved and he succeeded in winning for his South American organization the confidence and friendship of the two governments.”

The facts concerning the founding and development of the fortune of the late J. H. Osterman, as developed by C. B. Cummings, quondam secretary to Mr. Osterman, special investigator for E. X. Bush, of counsel for theminority stockholders of the C. C. and Q. L., in their suit to compel the resale of the road to the original holders and the return of certain moneys alleged to have been illegally abstracted by J. H. Osterman and Frank O. Parm, of Parm-Baggott and Company, and by him set forth in his reminiscences of Mr. Bush and the Osterman-Parm-C. C. & Q. L. imbroglio.

1. The details of the Osterman-De Malquit matter were, as near as I have been able to gather, or recall, since I was Mr. Osterman’s secretary until that time, as follows: De Malquit was one of the many curb brokers in New York dabbling in rubber and other things at the time Osterman returned from Honduras and executed his very dubious coup. The afternoon before De Malquit killed himself—and this fact was long held against Mr. Osterman in connection with his sudden rise—he had come to Osterman’s office in Broad Street, and there, amid rosewood and mahogany and an unnecessary show of luxury which Osterman appeared to relish even at that time, had pleaded for time in which to meet a demand for one hundred thousand dollars due for ten thousand shares of Calamita Rubber, which Osterman then entirely controlled and for which he was demanding the par or face value. And this in spite of the fact that it had been selling on “curb” only the day before for seven and one-fourth and seven and three-fourths. De Malquit was one of those curb brokers whom Osterman, upon coming to New York and launching Calamita (which was built on nothing more solid than air), had deliberately plotted to trap in this way. Unwitting of Osterman’s scheme, he had sold ten thousand shares of Calamita on margin at the above low price without troubling to have the same in his safe, as Osterman well knew. That was what Osterman had been counting on and it had pleased him to see De Malquit, along with many others just at that moment, in the very same difficult position. For up to that day Calamita, like many another of its kind, had been a wildcatstock. Only “wash sales” were traded in by brokers in order to entrap the unwary from the outside. They traded in it without ever buying any of it. It had to fluctuate so that the outsider might be induced to buy, and that was why it was traded in. But when it did fluctuate and the lamb approached, he was sold any quantity he wished, the same being entered upon their books as having been sold or bought on his order. When a quotation sufficiently low to wipe out the margin exacted had been engineered among friends, the lamb was notified that he must either post more money to cover the decline or retire. In quite all cases the lamb retired, leaving the broker with a neat profit.

This was the very situation upon which Osterman had been counting to net him the fortune which it eventually did, and overnight at that. Unknown to the brokers, he had long employed agents whose business it was to permit themselves to be fleeced for small sums in order that these several brokers, growing more and more careless and finding this stock to be easy and a money-maker, should sell enough of it without actually having it in their safes to permit him to pounce upon them unexpectedly and make them pay up. And so they did. The promoters of the stock seeming indifferent or unable to manage their affairs, these fake sales became larger and larger, a thousand and finally a ten thousand share margin sale being not uncommon. When the stage was set the trap was sprung. Overnight, as it were, all those who at Osterman’s order had bought the stock on margin (and by then some hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth had been disposed of) decided that they would not lose their margins but would follow up their cash with more and take the stock itself, holding it as an investment. It then became the duty of these brokers to deliver the stock within twenty-four hours or take the consequences—say, a petition in bankruptcy or a term in jail. Naturally there was a scrambling about to find any loose blocks of the stock. But these had been carefully garnered into the safe of Mr. Osterman, who was the sole owner ofthe stock, and they were compelled to hurry eventually to him. Here they were met by the genial eye of the cat that is expecting the mouse. They wanted Calamita, did they? Well, they could have it, all they wanted ... at par or a little more. Did that seem harsh, seeing that it had been selling only the day before for seven and three-fourths or seven-eighths? Sorry. That was the best he could do. They could take it at that price or leave it.

Naturally there was a panic among those who were short. The trick was obvious, but so was the law. Those who could, pocketed their losses without undue complaint and departed; some who could not, and were financially unimportant, decamped, leaving Osterman’s agents to collect as best they might. Only one, Mr. De Malquit, finding himself faced by complications which he could not meet, took his own life. He had unfortunately let himself in for much more money than had the others and at a time when he could least stand the strain.

The day De Malquit came to see Osterman, he was behind his desk expecting many, and because, as I afterwards learned from Mr. Osterman himself, Mr. De Malquit had been so wary, making agreements at first, which made it hard to trap him, Osterman saw him as one of those who had made it most difficult for him to win, and therefore deserving to be sheared the closest. “One hundred per share, take it or leave it,” was his only comment in reply to Mr. De Malquit’s statement that he found himself in a bit of a hole and would like to explain how a little time would see him through.

“But, Mr. Osterman,” I recall De Malquit replying, “I haven’t so much now, and I can’t get it. These shares were being quoted at seven and three-fourths only yesterday. Can’t you let me off easier than that, or give me a few months in which to pay? If I could have six months or a year—I have some other matters that are pressing me even more than this. They will have to come first, but I might pull through if I had a little time.”

“One hundred, on the nail. That’s the best I can do,” Osterman replied, for I was in the room at the time. And then signaled me to open the door for him.

But at that Mr. De Malquit turned and bent on him a very troubled look, which, however, did not move Mr. Osterman any. “Mr. Osterman,” he said, “I am not here to waste either your time or mine. I am in a corner, and I am desperate. Unless you can let me have some of this stock at a reasonable price I am done for. That will bring too much trouble to those who are near and dear to me for me to care to live any longer. I am too old to begin over again. Let me have some of it now. To-morrow will be too late. Perhaps it won’t make any difference to you, but I won’t be here to pay anybody. I have a wife who has been an invalid for two years. I have a young son and daughter in school. Unless I can go on—” He turned, paused, swallowed, and then moistened his lips.

But Mr. Osterman was not inclined to believe any broker or to be worked by sentiment. “Sorry. One hundred is the best I can do.”

At that De Malquit struck his hands together, a resounding smack, and then went out, turning upon Osterman a last despairing glance. That same night De Malquit killed himself, a thing which Osterman had assumed he would not do—or so he said, and I resigned. The man had really been in earnest. And, to make matters worse, only three months later De Malquit’s wife killed herself, taking poison in the small apartment to which she had been forced to remove once the breadwinner of the family was gone. According to the pictures and descriptions published in the newspapers at the time she was, as De Malquit had said, an invalid, practically bedridden. Also, according to the newspapers, De Malquit had in more successful days been charitably inclined, having contributed liberally to the support of an orphan asylum, the Gratiot Home for Orphans, the exterior appearance of which Osterman was familiar with. This fact was published in all of the papersand was said to have impressed Osterman, who was said always to have had a friendly leaning toward orphans. I have since heard that only his very sudden death three years ago prevented his signing a will which contained a proviso leaving the bulk of his great fortune to a holding company instructed to look after orphans. Whether this is truth or romance I do not know.

2. The case of Henry Greasadick, another of Mr. Osterman’s competitors, was similar. Mr. Greasadick has been described to me as a very coarse and rough man, without any education of any kind, but one who understood oil prospecting and refining, and who was finally, though rather unfortunately for himself, the cause of the development by Osterman of the immensely valuable Arroya Verde field. It is not likely that Greasadick would ever have made the fortune from this field that Osterman and his confrères were destined to reap. However, it is equally true that he was most shabbily treated in the matter, far more so than was De Malquit in regard to his very questionable holdings and sales. The details of the Arroya Verde field and Greasadick are as follows: Greasadick has been described to me as a big, blustery, dusty soul, uncouth in manners and speech, but one who was a sound and able prospector. And Osterman, it appears, having laid the foundation of his fortune by treating De Malquit and others as he had, had come west, first to the lumber properties of Washington and Oregon, where he bought immense tracts; and later, to the oil lands of California and Mexico, in which state and country he acquired very important and eventually (under him) productive holdings. Now it chanced that in his wanderings through southern California and Arizona he came across Greasadick, who had recently chanced upon a virgin oil field which, although having very little capital himself, he was secretly attempting to develop. In fact, Greasadick had no money when he discovered this oil field and was borrowing from L. T.Drewberry, of the K. B. & B., and one or two others on the strength of his prospects. It also appears that Drewberry it was who first called the attention of Osterman to Greasadick and his find and later plotted with him to oust Greasadick. Osterman was at that time one of three or four men who were interested in developing the K. B. & B. into a paying property by extending it into Arizona.

At any rate, Greasadick’s holdings were one hundred miles from any main line road, and there was very little water, only a thin trickle that came down through a cut. True, the K. B. & B. was about to build a spur to Larston in order to aid him, but Larston, once the line was built to it, was fourteen miles away and left Greasadick with the problem of piping or hauling his oil to that point. Once he heard of it Osterman saw at a glance that by a little deft manœuvring it could be made very difficult for Greasadick to do anything with his property except sell, and this manœuvring he proceeded to do. By buying the land above Greasadick’s, which was a mountain slope, and then because of a thin wall of clay and shale dividing the Arroya Verde, in which lay Greasadick’s land, from the Arroya Blanco, which was unwatered and worthless, being able to knock the same through, he was able to divert the little water upon which Greasadick then depended to do his work. Only it was all disguised as a landslide—an act of God—and a very expensive one for Greasadick to remedy. As for the proposed spur to Larston—well, that was easy to delay indefinitely. There was Drewberry, principal stockholder of the K. B. & B., who joined with Osterman in this adroit scheme. Finally, there was the simple device of buying in the mortgage given by Greasadick to Drewberry and others and waiting until such time as he was hard-pressed to force him to sell out. This was done through Whitley, Osterman’s efficient assistant, who in turn employed another to act for him. Throughout, Osterman saw to it that he personally did not appear.

Of course Greasadick, when he discovered what the plotwas, roared and charged like a bull. Indeed before he was eventually defeated he became very threatening and dangerous, attempting once even to kill Drewberry. Yet he was finally vanquished and his holdings swept away. With no money to make a new start and seeing others prosper where he had failed for want of a little capital, he fell into a heavy gloom and finally died there in Larston in the bar that had been erected after the K. B. & B. spur had been completed. Through all of this Mr. Osterman appears to have been utterly indifferent to the fate of the man he was undermining. He cared so little what became of him afterwards that he actually admitted, or remarked to Whitley, who remained one of his slaves to the end, that one could scarcely hope to build a large fortune without indulging in a few such tricks.

3. Lastly, there was the matter of the C. C. and Q. L. Railroad, the major portion of the stock of which he and Frank O. Parm, of the Parm-Baggott chain of stores, had managed to get hold of by the simple process of buying a few shares and then bringing stockholders’ suits under one and another name in order to embarrass President Doremus and his directors, and frighten investors so they would let go of the stock. And this stock, of course, was picked up by Osterman and Parm, until at last these two became the real power behind the road and caused it to be thrown into the hands of a receiver and then sold to themselves. That was two years before ever Michael Doremus, the first president of the road, resigned. When he did he issued a statement saying that he was being hounded by malign financial influences and that the road was as sound as ever it had been, which was true. Only it could not fight all of these suits and the persistent rumors of mismanagement that were afoot. As a matter of fact, Mr. Doremus died only a year after resigning, declaring at that time that a just God ruled and that time would justify himself. But Mr. Osterman and Mr. Parm secured the road, and finally incorporated it with the P. B. & C. as is well known.

Some data taken from the biographic study of the late J. H. Osterman, multimillionaire and oil king, prepared for Lingley’s Magazine and by it published in its issue for October, 1917.

In order to understand the late J. H. Osterman and his great success and his peculiar faults one would first have to have known and appreciated the hard and colorless life that had surrounded him as a boy. His father, in so far as I have been able to ascertain, was a crude, hard, narrow man who had been made harder and, if anything, cruder by the many things which he had been compelled to endure. He was not a kind or soft-spoken man to his children. He died when John Osterman, the central figure of this picture, was eleven. Osterman’s mother, so it is said, was a thin and narrow and conventional woman, as much harried and put upon by her husband as ever he was by life. Also there was one sister, unattractive and rough-featured, an honest and narrow girl who, like her mother, worked hard up to nineteen, when her mother died. After that, both parents being dead, she and her brother attempted to manage the farm, and did so fairly successfully for two years when the sister decided to marry; and Osterman consenting, she took over the farm. This falling in with his mood and plans, he ceased farming for good and betook himself to the Texas oil fields, where he appears to have mastered some of the details of oil prospecting and refining.

But before that, what miseries had he not endured! He was wont to recount how, when grasshoppers and drought took all of their crops for two years after his father’s death, he and his mother and sister were reduced to want and he had actually been sent to beg a little cornmeal and salt from the local store on the promise to pay, possibly a year later. Taxes mounted up. There was no money to buy seed or to plant or replace stock, which had had to be sold.The family was without shoes or clothes. Osterman himself appeared to be of the fixed opinion that the citizens and dealers of Reamer, from near which point in Kansas he hailed, were a hard and grasping crew. He was fond of telling how swift they were to point out that there was no help for either himself or his mother or sister as farmers and to deny them aid and encouragement on that score. He once said that all he ever heard in the local branch of his mother’s church, of which he was never a confessing communicant, was “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”; also “with whatsoever measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again.” Obviously such maxims taken very much to heart by a boy of his acquisitive and determined nature might bring about some of the shrewd financial tricks later accredited to him. Yet he appears to have been a man of some consideration and sympathy where boys were concerned, for it was said that he made it a rule in all his adventures to select the poorest if most determined youths of his organization for promotion and to have developed all of his chief lieutenants from the ranks of farm or orphan boy beginners whom he encouraged to work for him. How true this is the writer is not able to state. However, of the forty or more eminent men who have been connected with him in his enterprises, all but four were farm or orphan boys who had entered his enterprises as clerks or menials at the very bottom, and some seven of the total were from his native State, Kansas.

The private cogitations of the late John H. Osterman in his mansion at 1046 Fifth Avenue, New York, and elsewhere during the last five years of his life.

Oh, but those days when he had been working and scheming to get up in the world and was thinking that moneywas the great thing—the only thing! Those impossible wooden towns in the Northwest and elsewhere in which he had lived and worked, and those worse hotels and boarding-houses—always hunting, hunting for money or the key to it. The greasy, stinking craft in which he had made his way up weedy and muddy rivers in Honduras and elsewhere—looking for what? Snakes, mosquitoes, alligators, tarantulas, horned toads and lizards. In Honduras he had slept under chiqua trees on mats of chiqua leaves, with only a fire to keep away snakes and other things. And of a morning he had chased away noisy monkeys and parroquets from nearby branches with rotten fruit so as to sleep a little longer. Alone, he had tramped through fever swamps, pursued by Pequi Indians, who wanted only the contents of his wretched pack. And he had stared at huge coyal palms, a hundred feet high, with the great feathery leaves fifteen feet long and their golden flowers three feet high. Ah, well, that was over now. He had shot the quetzal with its yellow tail feathers three feet long and had traded them for food. Once he had all but died of fever in a halfbreed’s hut back of Cayo. And the halfbreed had then stolen his gun and razor and other goods and left him to make his way onward as best he might. That was life for you, just like that. People were like that.

And it was during that time that he had come to realize that by no honest way at his age was he likely to come to anything financially. Roaming about the drowsy, sun-baked realm, he had encountered Messner, an American and a fugitive, he guessed, and it was Messner who had outlined to him the very scheme by which he had been able, later, to amass his first quick fortune in New York. It was Messner who had told him of Torbey and how he had come up to London from Central Africa to offer shares in a bogus rubber enterprise based on immense forests which he was supposed to have found in the wilds of Africa yet which did not exist. And it was the immense though inaccessible rubber forests in Honduras that had inspired him to try the samething in New York. Why not? A new sucker was born every minute, and he had all to gain and nothing to lose. Messner said that Torbey had advertised for a widow with some money to push his enterprise, whereupon he had proceeded to tell the London speculative public of his treasure and to sell two pound shares for as low as ten shillings in order to show tremendous rises in value—to issue two million pounds’ worth of absolutely worthless stock.

By these methods and by having the stock listed on the London curb he was able to induce certain curb or “dog” brokers to go short of this stock without having any of it in their possession. Finally they began to sell so freely and to pay so little attention to the amount that was being sold that it was easy for Torbey to employ agents to buy from all of them freely on margin. And then, as the law of the curb and the state permitted, he had demanded (through them, of course) the actual delivery of the shares, the full curb value of the stock being offered. Of course the brokers had none, although they had sold thousands; nor had any one else except Torbey, who had seen to it that all outstanding stock had been recalled to his safe. That meant that they must come to Torbey to buy or face a jail sentence, and accordingly they had flocked to his office, only to be properly mulcted for the total face value of the shares when they came.

Well, he had done that same thing in New York. Following the example of the good Torbey, he had picked up a few unimportant options in Honduras, far from any railroad, and had come to New York to launch Calamita. Just as Torbey had done, he had looked for a rich widow, a piano manufacturer’s wife in this case, and had persuaded her that there were millions in it. From her he had gone on to Wall Street and the curb and had done almost exactly as Torbey had done.... Only that fellow De Malquit had killed himself, and that was not so pleasant. He hadn’t anticipated that anything like that would happen! That unfortunate wife of his. And those two children madeorphans. That was the darkest spot. He hadn’t known, of course, that De Malquit himself was helping orphans—or—And from there he had gone on to the forests of Washington and Oregon, where he had bought immense tracts on which even yet he was realizing, more and more. And from there it had been an easy step to oil in southern California and Mexico—Ah, Greasadick, another sad case!—And from there to mines and government concessions in Peru and Ecuador, and the still greater ones in Argentina and Chile. Money came fast to those who had it. At last, having accumulated a fortune of at least nine millions, he had been able to interest Nadia, and through her the clever and well-to-do fashionable set who had backed his projects with their free capital. And by now his fortune had swollen to almost forty millions.

But what of it? Could he say he was really content? What was he getting out of it? Life was so deceptive; it used and then tossed one aside. At first it had seemed wonderful to be able to go, do, act, buy and sell as he chose, without considering anything save whether the thing he was doing was agreeable and profitable. He had thought that pleasure would never pall, but it had. There was this thing about age, that it stole over one so unrelentingly, fattening one up or thinning one down, hardening the arteries and weakening the muscles and blood, until it was all but useless to go on. And what was the import of his success, anyhow, especially to one who had no children and no friends worthy of the name? There was no such thing as true friendship in nature. It was each man for himself, everywhere, and the devil take the hindmost. It was life that used and tossed one aside, however great or powerful one might be. There was no staying life or the drift of time.

Of course there had been the pleasure of building two great houses for Nadia and living in them when he was not living in other parts of the world. But all that had come too late; he had been too old to enjoy them when they didcome. She had been a great catch no doubt, but much too attractive to be really interested in him at his age. His wealth had been the point with her—any one could see that; he knew it at the time and would not now try to deceive himself as to that. At the time he had married her she had had social position whereas he had none. And after she married him all her social influence, to be sure, had been used to advance his cause. Still, that scheme of hers to get him to leave his great fortune to those two worthless sons of hers. Never! They were not worthy of it. Those dancing, loafing wasters! He would see to it that his fortune was put to some better use than that. He would leave it to orphans rather than to them, for after all orphans in his employ had proved more valuable to him than even they had, hadn’t they?—That curious fellow, De Malquit!—So long ago. Besides wasn’t it Nadia’s two sons who had influenced their mother to interest herself in D’Eyraud, the architect who had built their two houses and had started Nadia off on that gallery idea. And not a picture in it that would interest a sensible person. And wasn’t it because of her that he had never troubled to answer the letters of his sister Elvira asking him to educate her two boys for her. He had fancied at the time that taking her two children into his life would in some way affect his social relations with Nadia and her set. And now Elvira was dead and he did not know where the children were. He could charge that to her if he wanted to, couldn’t he?

Well, life was like that. When he had built his two great houses he had thought they would prove an immense satisfaction to him, as they had for a time; but he would not be here much longer now to enjoy them. He wasn’t nearly as active as he had been, and the sight of the large companies of people that came to pose and say silly things to each other was very wearying. They were always civil to him, of course, but little more. They wanted the influence of his name. And as long as he permitted it, his homes would be haunted by those who wished to sell himthings—stocks, bonds, enterprises, tapestries, estates, horses. And those two boys of hers, along with Nadia herself where her so-called art objects were concerned, so busy encouraging them! Well, he was done with all that now. He would not be bothered. Even youth and beauty of a venal character had appeared on the scene and had attempted to set traps for him. But his day was over. All these fripperies and pleasures were for people younger than he. It required youth and energy to see beauty and romance in such things, and he hadn’t a trace of either left. His day was over and he might as well die, really, for all the good he was, apart from his money, to any one.

The reminiscences of Byington Briggs, Esq., of Skeff, Briggs & Waterhouse, private legal advisers to the late J. H. Osterman, as developed in a private conversation at the Metropolitan Club in New York in December, 19—.

“You knew old Osterman, didn’t you? I was his confidential adviser for the last eight years of his life, and a shrewder old hawk never sailed the air. He was a curious combination of speculator, financier and dreamer, with a high percentage of sharper thrown in for good measure. You’d never imagine that he was charitably inclined, now would you? It never occurred to me until about a year and a half before his death. I have never been able to explain it except that as a boy he had had a very hard time and in his old age resented seeing his two stepsons, Kester and Rand Benda, getting ready to make free use of his fortune once he was gone. And then I think he had come to believe that his wife was merely using him to feather her own nest. I wouldn’t want it mentioned to a soul as coming from me, but three months before he died he had me draw up a will leaving his entire estate of something like forty millions, not to her, as the earlier will filed by her showed, but tothe J. H. Osterman Foundation, a corporation whose sole purpose was to administer his fortune for the benefit of something like three hundred thousand orphans incarcerated in institutions in America. And but for the accident of his sudden death out there at Shell Cove two years ago, he would have left it that way.

“According to the terms of the will that I drew up, Mrs. Osterman and her two sons were to receive only the interest on certain bonds that were to be placed in trust for them for their lifetime only; after that the money was to revert to the fund. That would have netted them between forty and fifty thousand a year among them—nothing more. In the will I drew up he left $500,000 outright to that Gratiot Home for Orphans up here at 68th Street, and he intended his big country place at Shell Cove as the central unit in a chain of modern local asylums for orphans that was to have belted America. The income from the property managed by the foundation was to have been devoted to this work exclusively, and the Gratiot institution was to have been the New York branch of the system. His wife has leased the Shell Cove place to the Gerbermanns this year, I see, and a wonderful place it is too, solid marble throughout, a lake a mile long, a big sunken garden, a wonderful glassed-in conservatory, and as fine a view of the sea as you’ll find anywhere. Yet she never knew until the very last hour of his life—the very last, for I was there—that he planned to cut her off with only forty or fifty thousand a year. If we weren’t all such close friends I wouldn’t think of mentioning it even now, although I understand that Klippert, who was his agent in the orphan project, has been telling the story. It was this way:

“You see, I was his lawyer, and had been ever since the K. B. & B. control fight in 1906, and the old man liked me—I don’t know why unless it was because I drew up the right sort of ‘waterproof contracts,’ as he always called them. Anyway, I knew six or seven years before he died that he wasn’t getting along so well with Mrs. Osterman.She is still an attractive woman, with plenty of brain power and taste, but I think he had concluded that she was using him and that he wasn’t as happy as he thought he would be. For one thing, as I gathered from one person and another, she was much too devoted to those two boys by her first husband, and in the next place I think he felt that she was letting that architect D’Eyraud lead her about too much and spend too much of his money. You know it was common rumor at the time that D’Eyraud and his friend Beseroe, another man the old captain disliked, were behind her in all her selections of pictures for the gallery she was bringing together up there in the Fifth Avenue place. Osterman, of course, knowing absolutely nothing about art, was completely out of it. He wouldn’t have known a fine painting from a good lithograph, and I don’t think he cared very much either. And yet it was a painting that was one of the causes of some feeling between them, as I will show you. At that time he looked mighty lonely and forlorn to me, as though he didn’t have a friend in the world outside of those business associates and employés of his. He stayed principally in that big town house, and Mrs. Benda—I mean Mrs. Osterman—and her sons and their friends found a good many excuses for staying out at Shell Cove. There were always big doings out there. Still, she was clever enough to be around him sometimes so as to make it appear, to him at least, that she wasn’t neglecting him. As for him, he just pottered around up there in that great house, showing his agents and employés, and the fellows who buzzed about him to sell him things, the pictures she was collecting—or, rather, D’Eyraud—and letting it appear that he was having something to do with it. For he was a vain old soldier, even if he did have one of the best business minds of his time. You’d think largeness of vision in some things might break a man of that, but it never does, apparently.

“Whenever I think of him I think of that big house, those heavily carved and gilded rooms, the enormous eighty-thousand dollar organ built into the reception-room, andthose tall stained-glass windows that gave the place the air of a church. Beseroe once told me that if left to follow her own taste Mrs. Osterman would never have built that type of house, but that Osterman wanted something grand and had got his idea of grandeur from churches. So there was nothing to do but build him a house with tall Gothic windows and a pipe-organ, and trust to other features to make it homelike and livable. But before they were through with it Mrs. Osterman and D’Eyraud had decided that the best that could be done with it would be to build something that later could be turned into an art gallery and either sold or left as a memorial. But I think both D’Eyraud and Mrs. Osterman were kidding the old man a little when they had that self-playing attachment built in. It looked to me as though they thought he was going to be alone a good part of the time and might as well have something to amuse himself with. And he did amuse himself with it, too. I recall going up there one day and finding him alone, in so far as the family was concerned, but entirely surrounded by twenty-five or more of those hard, slick and yet nervous (where social form was concerned) western and southern business agents and managers of his, present there to hold a conference. A luncheon was about to be served in the grand dining-room adjoining the reception-room, and there were all these fellows sitting about that big room like a lot of blackbirds, and Osterman upon a raised dais at one end of the room solemnly renderingThe Bluebells of Scotland, one of his favorites, from the self-player attachment! And when he finished they all applauded!

“Well, what I wanted to tell you is this: One day while I was there, some dealer dropped in with a small picture which for some reason took his fancy. According to Beseroe, it wasn’t such a bad thing, painted by a Swedish realist by the name of Dargson. It showed a rather worn-out woman of about forty-three who had committed suicide and was lying on a bed, one hand stretched out over the edge and a glass or bottle from which she had taken the poison lyingon the floor beside her. Two young children and a man were standing near, commiserating themselves on their loss, I presume. It seemed to have a tremendous impression on Osterman for some reason or other. I could never understand why—it was not so much art as a comment on human suffering. Nevertheless, Osterman wanted it, but I think he wanted Nadia to buy it for her collection and so justify his opinion of it. But Nadia, according to Beseroe, was interested only in certain pictures as illustrations of the different schools and periods of art in different countries. And when the dealer approached her with the thing, at Osterman’s suggestion, it was immediately rejected by her. At once Osterman bought it for himself, and to show that he was not very much concerned about her opinion he hung it in his bedroom. Thereafter he began to be quarrelsome in regard to the worthwhileness of the gallery idea as a whole and to object to so much money being squandered in that direction. But to this day no one seems to know just why he liked that particular picture so much.

“What I personally know is that it was just about this time that Osterman began to be interested in that fellow Klippert and his plan for improving the condition of the orphan. He finally turned him over to me with the request that I go into the idea thoroughly, not only in regard to the work done by the Gratiot Home but by orphan asylums in general in America. He told us that he wanted it all kept very quiet until he was ready to act, that if anything was said he would refuse to have anything further to do with it. That was a part of his plan to outwit Mrs. Osterman, of course. He told us that he wanted some scheme in connection with orphans that would be new and progressive, better than anything now being done, something that would do away with great barracks and crowd regulations and cheap ugly uniforms and would introduce a system of education and home life in cottages. I had no idea then that he was planning the immense thing that was really in his mind, and neither did Klippert. He thought he might beintending to furnish enough money to revive the Gratiot Home as an experiment, and he urged me to use my influence to this end if I had any. As it turned out, he wanted to establish an interstate affair, as wide as the nation, of which the place at Shell Cove was to be the centre or head—a kind of Eastern watering-place or resort for orphans from all over America. It was a colossal idea and would have taken all of his money and more.

“But since he wanted it I went into the idea thoroughly with this fellow Klippert. He was very clever, that man, honest and thorough and business-like and disinterested, in so far as I could see. I liked him, and so did Osterman, only Osterman wanted him to keep out of sight of his wife until he was ready to act. Klippert made a regular business of his problem and went all over the United States studying institutions of the kind. Finally he came back with figures on about fifty or sixty and a plan which was the same as that outlined to me by Osterman and which I incorporated in his will, and there it ended for the time being. He didn’t want to sign it right away for some reason, and there it lay in my safe until—well, let me tell you how it was.

One Saturday morning—it was a beautiful day and I was thinking of going out to the club to play golf—I received a long distance call from Osterman asking me to get hold of Klippert and another fellow by the name of Moss and bring them out to Shell Cove, along with the will for him to sign. He had made up his mind, he said, and I have often wondered if he had a premonition of what was going to happen.

“I remember so well how excited Klippert was when I got him on the wire. He was just like a boy, that fellow, in his enthusiasm for the scheme, and apparently not interested in anything except the welfare of those orphans. We started for Shell Cove, and what do you think? Just as we got there—I remember it all as though it had happened yesterday. It was a bright, hot Saturday afternoon. There were some big doings on the grounds, white-and-greenand white-and-red striped marque tents, and chairs and swings and tables everywhere. Some of the smartest people were there, sitting or walking or dancing on the balcony. And there was Osterman walking up and down the south verandah near the main motor entrance, waiting for us, I suppose. As we drove up he recognized us, for he waved his hand, and then just as we were getting out and he was walking towards us, I saw him reel and go down. It was just as though some one had struck him with something. I realized that it must be paralysis or a stroke of apoplexy and I chilled all over at the thought of what it might mean. Klippert went up the steps four at a time, and as we all ran down the verandah they carried him in and I telephoned for a doctor. Klippert was very still and white. All we could do was to stand around and wait and look at each other, for Mrs. Osterman and her sons were there and were taking charge. Finally word came out that Mr. Osterman was a little better and wanted to see us, so up we went. He had been carried into an airy, sunny room overlooking the sea and was lying in a big white canopied bed looking as pale and weak as he would if he had been ill for a month. He could scarcely speak and lay there and looked at us for a time, his mouth open and a kind of tremor passing over his lips from time to time. Then he seemed to gather a little strength and whispered: ‘I want—I want—’ and then he stopped and rested, unable to go on. The doctor arrived and gave him a little whisky, and then he began again, trying so hard to speak and not quite making it. At last he whispered: ‘I want—I want—that—that—paper.’ And then: ‘Klippert—and you—’ He stopped again, then added: ‘Get all these others out of here—all but you three and the doctor.’

“The doctor urged Mrs. Osterman and her sons to leave, but I could see that she didn’t like it. Even after she went out she kept returning on one excuse and another, and she was there when he died. When she was out of the room the first time I produced the will and he nodded his approval.We called for a writing board, and they brought one—a Ouija board, by the way. We lifted him up, but he was too weak and fell back. When we finally got him up and spread the will before him he tried to grasp the pen but he couldn’t close his fingers. He shook his head and half whispered: The——the——boys—th—the—boys.’ Klippert was all excited, but Osterman could do nothing. Then his wife came into the room and asked: ‘What is it that you are trying to make poor Johnnie sign? Don’t you think you had better let it rest until he is stronger?’ She tried to pick up the paper but I was too quick for her and lifted it to one side as though I hadn’t noticed that she had reached for it. I could see that she was aware that something was being done that neither we nor Osterman wanted her to know about, and her eyes fairly snapped. Osterman must have realized that things were becoming a little shaky for he kept looking at first one and then another of us with a most unhappy look. He motioned for the pen and will. Klippert put down the board and I the paper, and he leaned forward and tried to grasp the pen. When he found he couldn’t he actually groaned: ‘The—the—I—I—I want to—to—do something—for—for—the—the—the—’ Then he fell back, and the next moment was dead.

“But I wish you could have seen Klippert. It wasn’t anything he said or did, but just something that passed over his face, the shadow of a great cause or idea dying, let us say. Something seemed to go out from or die in him, just as old Osterman had died. He turned and went out without a word. I would have gone too, only Mrs. Osterman intercepted me.

“You might think that at such a moment she would have been too wrought up to think of anything but her husband’s death, but she wasn’t. Far from it. Instead, as her husband was lying there, and right before the doctor, she came over to me and demanded to see the paper. I was folding it up to put into my pocket when she flicked it out of my hands. ‘I am sure you can have no objection to my seeing this,’ shesaid icily, and when I protested she added: ‘I am sure that I have a right to see my own husband’s will.’ I had only been attempting to spare her feelings, but when I saw what her attitude was I let it go at that and let her read it.

“I wish you could have seen her face! Her eyes narrowed and she bent over the paper as though she were about to eat it. When she fully comprehended what it was all about she fairly gasped and shook—with rage, I think—though fear as to what might have happened except for her husband’s weakness may have been a part of it. She looked at him, at his dead body, the only glance he got from her that day, I’m sure, then at me, and left the room. Since there was nothing more to do, I went too.

“And that’s the reason Mrs. Osterman has never been friends with me since, though she was genial enough before. But it was a close shave for her, all the same, and don’t you think it wasn’t. Just an ounce or two more of strength in that old codger’s system, and think what would have been done with those millions. She wouldn’t have got even a million of it all told. And those little ragamuffins would have had it all. How’s that for a stroke of chance?”

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