CHAPTER XV
South Street had more to do with seafaring men than lawyers. It was a strange thoroughfare along which to have searched for a legal adviser. Enoch’s office, which we have already peeped into, and which so rarely saw its owner, lay tucked away as snug as a stowaway in the old building he owned, sandwiched in between two even older structures, two long-established ship-chandler’s warehouses, whose lofts were pungent with the odor of tarred rope, and whose iron-bound thresholds led to dark interiors, where one could be accommodated with anything from a giant anchor down to a vessel’s port and starboard lights.
A raw, cold street in the short winter days, taking the brunt of blizzards and cruel winds, whirling snow and biting cold, fog-swept, or shimmering in heat, greasy and roughly paved. A street to stand rough knocks from rough men, who owned the clothes they stood in, and little else; clothes in which they worked, drank, and quarrelled, joked, and swore, shipped on long voyages, and returned; men whose sentiment was indelibly vouched for by the ballet-girl tattooed on their brawny arms, and whose love of country was guaranteed by the Union Jack or the Stars and Stripes—often by both—pricked in indigo and vermilion ontheir solid chests and further embellished with hearts, true-lovers’ knots, and anchors.
It was an odoriferous, happy-go-lucky sort of street, where things had an odor all their own. Bundles of rawhides lay stacked on greasy platforms. Drafty interiors held stout casks of oil, gallons of the best spar varnish, sails, pulley-blocks, and tow for calking—scores of ship necessities in solid brass and galvanized iron made for rough usage in all kinds of weather—capstans, rudders, cleats, robust lanterns, reliable compasses, their needles steadily pointing north—and a saloon within reach of every reeling sailor.
It was the street of the stranger from far-off lands, of able seamen whose sturdy boots had knocked about the worst sections of Port Said, Marseilles, Singapore, or Bilbao—a street where honest ships poked their bowsprits up to its very edge, a long, floating barrier, a maze of masts, spars, and rigging, of vessels safe in port, whose big hulls lay still in the flotsam and jetsam and swill of the harbor, where the hungry, garrulous gulls wheeled, gossiped, and gorged themselves like scavengers.
There was an atmosphere of adventure, of the freedom of the sea along its length, that the staid old business streets back of it could not boast of; that charm, sordid as it was, that holds the sailor and his nickels in port, close to his quay, for he rarely ventures as far inland as the city’s midst. At night jewels of lights hung in the maze of rigging, others gleamed forth a broad welcome from the saloons. When thesewent out, only the jewels in the rigging remained, leaving the old, busy street of the day dark and deserted, save for an occasional prowler of the night—or a stray cat foraging for food.
There were women, too—fat ogresses in cheap finery, skeletons in rouge and rags, their ratlike eyes ever watchful for their prey—and now and then some shuffling human derelict, those who have no definite destination, neither friends nor home nor bed nor bunk to go to; worse off even than the poor sailor in port, robbed, cajoled, flattered, tempted, and always enticed, down to his last nickel.
None knew them better than Enoch. Many an empty pocket he brightened with a coin. Others he helped out of more serious difficulties. Had he accepted all the chattering monkeys and profane parrots he had been offered from time to time in grateful remembrance, he would have had enough to have started a bird-store.
It was along this street that Ebner Ford picked his way the next morning to Enoch’s office, eager for the interview, and never more confident of selling him enough of his laundry stock, to be rid of old Mrs. Miggs and her lawyer forever.
At five minutes to ten his lean figure might have been seen dodging among the trucking, slipping around crates and bales, and only stopping now and then to verify the address on Enoch’s note.
So elated was he over the prospect of the interview that he entered Enoch’s building whistling a livelytune, continued snatches of it up in the shaky elevator, insisted he had “an appointment at ten with Mr. Crane,” and was led half-way down the corridor by the Irish janitor to Enoch’s modest door, which he opened briskly with a breezy “Well, neighbor, ain’t a minute late, am I?” and with a laugh, ending in a broad, friendly grin, shot out his long hand in greeting.
Simultaneously Enoch swung sharply around in his desk chair with a savage glance; not only did he refuse the proffered hand, but left his visitor staring at him bewildered.
“Sit down!” snapped Enoch.
“Well, say!” drawled Ford. “Ain’t you a little mite nervous this mornin’, friend?”
“Sit down!” repeated Enoch curtly, indicating the empty chair beside his desk. “Do not delude yourself for an instant, sir, that you are here to interest me in your laundry stock.”
“Well, that beats all,” declared Ford. “You to be all-fired interested in your note. That’s what you said, wa’n’t it?”
“I’ve been enlightened as to the precise value of that laundry stock of yours, sir,” came Enoch’s sharp reply—“your gilt-edged securities relative to the Household Gem as well.”
Ford started.
“Have, eh? Well, it’s at par. That’s what you wanted—er—that’s what you said you wanted,” he blurted out, slinking into the empty chair and fumbling his dusty derby nervously.
Well, neighbor, ain’t a minute late, am I?“Well, neighbor, ain’t a minute late, am I?”
“Well, neighbor, ain’t a minute late, am I?”
“Well, neighbor, ain’t a minute late, am I?”
“Par!” snapped Enoch. “It’s at zero, and you know it. Below zero, I should say, judging from all reports.” And before Ford could reply: “Let us come to the point. You are in arrears for your rent, sir.”
Ford gaped at him in amazement.
“I refer, sir, to your apartment in Waverly Place; with the exception of your first month’s payment, you have not paid a dollar’s worth of rent since you moved in, not a penny, sir; rents are made to be paid, sir, not avoided. You have not even made the slightest excuse or apology to your landlord over the delay. Any other landlord would have ousted you from the premises.”
Ford laid his dusty derby on the desk, planting his long hands over his bony knees, his small eyes regarding Enoch with a curious expression.
“Oh, I haven’t, have I?” he exclaimed. “Wouldn’t like to take a bet on it, would you?”
“No, sir!” cried Enoch, squaring back in his seat. “You have not, not a penny of it. Can you deny it?”
“What’s my rent got to do with you?” returned Ford. “You seem to be almighty interested in other folks’ rents.”
“I’ve let you run on,” continued Enoch firmly, “so far without troubling you.”
“Oh,you have, have you? Well, say, you take the cake! Talk as if you owned the place.”
Enoch sprang out of his chair, his under lip shot forward.
“I do,” said he.
“You what?” gasped Ford, opening his small eyes wide. “You don’t mean to tell me that there house isyourn?”
“Yes, sir—it’s mine, from cellar to roof. If you want further proof of it,” he cried, wrenching open a drawer of his desk, fumbling among some papers and flinging out on his desk the document of sale in question, stamped, sealed, and witnessed, “there it is.”
“Well, I’ll be jiggered!”
“Jiggered or not, sir, your lease is up! You are behind in your rent, and out you go.”
“Well, hold on now; I guess we can fix up this little matter,” returned Ford, with a sheepish grin. “Hadn’t no idea it wasyou, friend, who owned the house, or I wouldn’t have kept you waitin’.”
“I can assure you,” retorted Enoch, “there is no friendship concerned in this matter. You will desist, sir, in calling me your friend; that phase of our acquaintanceship never existed.”
For a moment neither spoke.
“See here, neighbor,” Ford resumed by way of explanation, and in a tone that was low and persuasive, “with our increasin’ business I’ve been under some mighty heavy expenses lately; new machinery has exacted heavy payments. Our long list of canvassers on the road’s been quite an item in salaries. S’pose I was to let you have a little of our gilt-edged at par, as collateral for the rent?”
“Stop, sir!” cried Enoch. “Do you take me for a fool? Your laundry stock is not worth the paper itis printed on—wasn’t at the time you sold it to Mrs. Miggs.” He slammed his closed fist down on the desk. “There is not a judge on the bench that would take four minutes to decide a case against you for embezzlement. It’s as plain as daylight.”
Ford stared at him dumfounded. He started to speak, but Enoch cut him short in a towering rage.
“You’ve swindled my friend, Miss Ann Moulton, as well,” he cried. “You took seven thousand five hundred dollars from her in payment for your worthless stock—from a helpless lady—half she owned in the world, you despicable hound—from a helpless woman.” Ford reddened. “Half, I say—from the support of a sister who is ill—a poor, pitiful wreck of a woman dying of consumption.”
“Oh! Now see here, Crane—go slow—let me explain.”
“Systematically swindled her, robbed her, talked her into it—persuaded her until she gave you her check. Your kind stop at nothing.” His voice rang out over the half-open transom and down the corridor. Ford sat gripping his chair.
“I tell you, Miss Moulton ain’t lost a penny of her money,” he stammered. “What I done for her I done out of neighborly kindness.”
“Stop, sir! Don’t lie to me. Answer me one question. How much of Miss Moulton’s money have you got left?”
Ford glowered at him in silence.
“Answer me! How much have you got left? Iintend to get at the bottom of this damnable business. What you’ve got left of Miss Moulton’s money, you’ll return to her.”
“Why, there ain’t a penny of it missin’,” declared Ford blandly, paling visibly.
“You call a credit in your bank of five thousand two hundred and some odd dollars, nothing missing? Where’s the rest?”
“Who told you that?” cried Ford, half rising, with a sullen gleam in his eyes.
“Your bank!” cried Enoch sharply. “Its president, my old friend, John Mortimer, told me. Under criminal circumstances such information is not difficult to obtain.”
Enoch drove his hands in his pockets and started to pace the room. Ford was the first to break the silence that ensued. His voice had a whine in it, and most of the color had left his lean cheeks.
“You don’t want to ruin me, do yer?” he said thickly.
“Ruin you! No one can ruin you! You were born ruined! Answer me—where’s the rest of Miss Moulton’s money?”
“Spent,” faltered Ford. “You don’t suppose a man can live on nothin’, do yer? We all have our little ups and downs in business. Fluctuations, they call ’em. Why, the biggest men with the biggest business acumen, in the biggest business deals in the world have ’em. I ain’t no exception. That’s what all business is—chuck full of little ups and downs.No man ever complains when business is boomin’—only boomin’ is never regular. Good times pay for the bad. A feller has to have grit to weather ’em. Then, if we didn’t risk nothin’, we wouldn’t have nothin’. What does the Bible say? Sow and ye shall reap.”
His voice faltered weakly.
“See here,” returned Enoch. “If I’ve got the slightest pity for you, you personally are not responsible for it. Your stepdaughter is adorable. Your wife is an honest woman.”
“There ain’t no better,” declared Ford meekly, moistening his lips with a long finger that shook. “Girlie, too; her ideas ain’t mine, but I ain’t got nothin’ agin her.”
“Good gad, sir! I should hope not. You have not a thought in common! No dearer child ever lived! The very soul of honesty and sincerity—a joy to my house, sir! A joy to every one who has come in contact with her. That you should have so little love and respect for her as to have acted as you have is astounding!”
“Girlie thinks an awful lot of you,” returned Ford, heaving a sigh, Enoch’s tender allusion to his stepdaughter bringing with it his first ray of hope. “Ever stopped to think,” he went on, with sudden courage, “what this hull business will mean to her when she knows it? See here, neighbor, you’re human, I take it. ’Tain’t human in no man to crowd another feller to ruin like you’re crowdin’ me. It’ll like to kill mywife when she hears it. As for girlie—well, you know what it’ll mean to her—her little home gone, after all I’ve tried to do to make it pleasant for ’em both. S’pose I was to tell you I’ll make good—only you’ve got to give me time; that I’ll pay the rent and give every cent back to Miss Moulton—square her up as clean as a whistle.”
Enoch turned sharply.
“On what, I’d like to know? And when? Out of the chimeric profits of your vast laundry business, I suppose?”
“Hold on, neighbor, not so fast. I ain’t told you all. S’pose you was to give me a couple of weeks’ time. I’ve got a little property I’ve been bangin’ on to up-State. Four neat buildin’ lots on the swellest outskirts of Troy—Fairview Park, they call it—neatest lookin’ place you ever see; gas and water piped right from the city. I’ve been waitin’ for the right party, but if I’ve got to sell now, Crane, I’ll do it. At the lowest figger they’ll square up all these little differences between us—Mrs. Miggs and Miss Moulton will get their satisfy, you’ll get your rent, and girlie and Emma won’t know no more than if it never happened.”
“You’ll pay Miss Moulton first,” declared Enoch firmly. “I am not concerned with Mrs. Miggs’s affairs. Her own lawyer can attend to them; as for the rent, I wish you to understand plainly, that if it was not for your wife and stepdaughter——”
He ceased speaking. His teeth clenched. Therewas little doubt in Ford’s mind that the worst was over; that Enoch was softening. He already felt more at his ease, and for the first time leaned back in his chair, and with the vestige of a forced smile crossed his long legs, feeling that half the battle was won. What he exactly intended to do he had not the slightest idea. Mrs. Miggs’s lawyer had given him until noon. It was now past eleven. He decided to wire him: “Sending check to-morrow.” Meanwhile Enoch had resumed his pacing before him, muttering to himself words that even Ebner Ford’s quick ears did not catch.
“How about this property of yours?” cried Enoch with renewed heat. “Your four lots in Troy? You are rather vague, sir, about their value. This Fairview Park you speak of? Anything there but gas and water-pipes and a chance for the right party, as you say to come along? Any railroad or street-car communication that would persuade any one to build?”
Ford’s lean jaws, to which the color had now returned, widened in a condescending smile over Enoch’s abject ignorance.
“Fairview Park!” he exclaimed with quick enthusiasm. “Why, neighbor, it’s a bonanza! Has any onebuilton it? Well, I guess yes! Take the Jenkins mansion alone—the candy king. Mansard roof alone cost a fortune, to say nothin’ of a dozen other prominent homes—brand-new and up to date—not a fence in the hull park. Everybody neighborly. Course,soon as we get our railroad-station things will boom. Quick transportation to the city and plenty of fresh air for the children. Come to think of it, I was lucky to have bought when I did. Got in on the ground floor, ’twixt you and me, and ain’t never regretted it. Big men like Jenkins have been pesterin’ me a dozen times to sell, but I’ve held on, knowin’ I could double my money. Property has already advanced fifty per cent out there in the last few years, friend, and is——”
“Stop, sir!” cried Enoch. “I believe we have already discussed the question of friendship between us.”
“Oh, well now, see here, Crane.”
“In future, sir, you will address me as Mr. Crane. I trust that is clear to you, Mr. Ford.”
“Well, suit yourself. What’s the use of our bein’ so all-fired unfriendly? Neighbors, ain’t we? Livin’ under the same roof!”
“You are living undermyroof, sir! Not I underyours! That you continue to live there is purely due to the presence of a woman who has had the misfortune to marry you, and a stepdaughter—thank Heaven, she is not your daughter—whom I hope, with all my heart, some day will be rid of you forever. You ask me for two weeks’ time. Very well, you shall have it. I trust you fully realize your situation. Remember, I shall hold you to your promise in regard to Miss Moulton. Mr. Ford, I have nothing more to say to you—good morning.”
Ford picked up his dusty derby slowly from the desk, and as slowly rose to his feet.
Enoch, with his hands plunged deep in his trousers pockets, stood grim and silent, gazing irritably at the floor; if he saw Ford’s outstretched hand reach toward him slowly across the desk between them, he did not move a muscle in recognition.
“Well, so long,” ventured Ford.
“Good morning,” repeated Enoch gruffly, without raising his head.
“Well, now, that’s too bad,” drawled Ford, slowly withdrawing his hand. “I was just thinkin’ if you and me was to go down for a little straight Bourbon you’d feel better.”
Enoch jerked up his head.
“Drink with you!” he exclaimed sharply. “Drink withyou!” His keen eyes blazed.
“Well, now, that wouldn’t hurt the quality of the whiskey any, would it?” grinned Ford. “Sorter smooth down the remainin’ little rough places between us—warm us both up into a more friendly understandin’, seem’ I’ve agreed to do for you all any man can do for another—give you my bona-fide guarantee.”
Enoch sprang forward, his clenched hands planted on his desk, his face livid.
“Get out, sir!” he shouted. For an instant his voice stopped in his throat, then broke out with a roar: “Out, sir! Out! When you have anything more substantial to offer me than an invitation to a rum mill I will listen to you.”
Before this volley of rage Ford backed away from him, backed out through the door that Enoch swung open to him, and the next instant slammed in his face with a sound that reverberated through the whole building.
Any other man but Ebner Ford would have turned down the corridor, dazed and insulted. As for Enoch’s door, it was not the first that had been slammed in his face. He could recall a long list of exits in his business career that were so alike in character they had ceased to make any serious impression upon him. His rule had been to allow time for the enraged person to cool off, and to tackle him again at the earliest opportunity—preferably after luncheon, when experience had taught him men were always in a more genial and approachable humor.
All of his past interviews, however, had been trivial compared to this with Enoch. He had entered his office keyed up with confidence and exuberance, and had backed out of it under the fury of a man who had laid bare his character and every secret detail of what he chose to call his “own private affairs”; bad enough when he arrived but ten times worse now as he realized the man he had to deal with.
Three things, however, were comforting. Enoch’s affirmed respect for his wife and stepdaughter in regard to the overrent; his open, almost paternal affection for Sue, and his word that he would give him two weeks in which to settle with Miss Moulton. As forold Mrs. Miggs, he decided to send her a check for half the amount out of Miss Ann’s money and see what would happen.
That he drank his Bourbon alone on the first corner he reached, the bartender agreeably changing another one of Miss Ann’s dollars, only helped to sharpen his wits. He stood on the sawdusted floor of the saloon, at the bar, hemmed in between the patched elbows of a boatswain’s mate and a common sailor, ruminating over the overwhelming events of the morning.
Now that he was out of Enoch’s drastic presence and voice, he felt at his ease, and more so when he had laid another one of Miss Ann’s dimes on the bar, freshly wiped from the beer spill, and ordered a second Bourbon.
“Thinks a heap of girlie,” he mused. “Wa’n’t so savage about the rent, after all.” As he thought of Sue there flashed through his mind an idea, so sudden that he started, and his small eyes sparkled, so perfectly logical to him that he grinned and wondered why, during the whole of the strenuous interview, he had not thought of it before.
Instead, he had clutched at the idea of “Fairview Park,” his entire acquaintance with its existence dating from a real-estate advertisement he had read in a newspaper several weeks old, he adding to its popularity and magnificence by capping the mythical mansion of the candy king with a mansard roof worth a fortune, and further embellishing its undesirable acres with the hope of a railroad-station. Only the airchanged in Fairview Park; the rest had lain a flat failure for years, the home of crows and the sign-boards they avoided, announcing the best cigar and the cheapest soap.
That Enoch would investigate the truth of his statements gave him little apprehension. He was certain he had convinced him of his good faith, building lots and all. What elated him now was his sudden idea—an inspiration-and his first step in that direction took him out of the saloon and on his way to see Lamont.
On a crowded corner in Fulton Street a newsboy bawled in his passing ear:
“Here yer are! Git the extry, boss! All about the big club scandal——”
Ford stopped and glanced at the head-line, “Millionaire Slaps Clubman’s Face,” and below it saw the face in question.
It was Jack Lamont’s.