Gladys, returning from her walk, went directly to Pauline's sitting-room.
"I'm off for New York and Europe to-morrow morning," she began abruptly, her voice hard, her expression bitter and reckless.
"Where can she have heard about Leonora?" thought Pauline. She said in a strained voice: "I had hoped you would stay here to look after the house."
"To look after the house? What do you mean?" asked Gladys. But she was too full of herself to be interested in the answer, and went on: "I want you to forget what I said to you. I've got over all that. I've come to my senses."
Pauline began a nervous turning of her rings.
Gladys gave a short, grim laugh. "I detest him," she went on. "We're very changeable, we women, aren't we? I went out of this house two hours ago loving him—to distraction. I came back hating him. And all that has happened in between is that I met him and he kissed me a few times and stabbed my pride a few times."
Pauline stopped turning her rings—she rose slowly, mechanically, looked straight at Gladys.
"That is not true," she said calmly.
Gladys laughed sardonically. "You don't know the cold and haughty Governor Scarborough. There's fire under the ice. I can feel the places on my face where it scorched. Can't you see them?"
Pauline gave her a look of disgust. "How like John Dumont's sister!" she thought. And she shut herself in her room and stayed there, pleading illness in excuse, until Gladys was gone.
On the third day from New York, Gladys was so far recovered from seasickness that she dragged herself to the deck. The water was fairly smooth, but a sticky, foggy rain was falling. A deck-steward put her steamer-chair in a sheltered corner. Her maid and a stewardess swathed her in capes and rugs; she closed her eyes and said: "Now leave me, please, and don't come near me till I send for you."
She slept an hour. When she awoke she felt better. Some one had drawn a chair beside hers and was seated there—a man, for she caught the faint odor of a pipe, though the wind was the other way. She turned her head. It was Langdon, whom she had not seen since she went below a few hours after Sandy Hook disappeared. Indeed, she had almost forgotten that he was on board and that her brother had asked him to look after her. He was staring at her in an absent-minded way, his wonted expression of satire and lazy good-humor fainter than usual. In fact, his face was almost serious.
"That pipe," she grumbled. "Please do put it away."
He tossed it into the sea. "Beg pardon," he said. "It was stupid of me. I was absorbed in—in my book."
"What's the name of it?"
He turned it to glance at the cover, but she went on: "No—don't tell me. I've no desire to know. I asked merely to confirm my suspicion."
"You're right," he said. "I wasn't reading. I was looking at you."
"That was impertinent. A man should not look at a woman when she doesn't intend him to look."
"Then I'd never look at all. I'm interested only in things not meant for my eyes. I might even read letters not addressed to me if I didn't know how dull letters are. No intelligent person ever says anything in a letter nowadays. They use the telegraph for ordinary correspondence, and telepathy for the other kind. But it was interesting—looking at you as you lay asleep."
"Was my mouth open?"
"A little."
"Am I yellow?"
"Very."
"Eyes red? Hair in strings? Lips blue?"
"All that," he said, "and skin somewhat mottled. But I was not so much interested in your beauty as I was in trying to determine whether you were well enough to stand two shocks."
"I need them," replied Gladys.
"One is rather unpleasant, the other—the reverse, in fact a happiness."
"The unpleasant first, please."
"Certainly," he replied. "Always the medicine first, then the candy." And he leaned back and closed his eyes and seemed to be settling himself for indefinite silence.
"Go on," she said impatiently. "What's the medicine? A death?"
"I said unpleasant, didn't I? When an enemy dies it's all joy. When a friend passes over to eternal bliss, why, being good Christians, we are not so faithless and selfish as to let the momentary separation distress us."
"But what is it? You're trying to gain time by all this beating about the bush. You ought to know me well enough to know you can speak straight out."
"Fanshaw's suing his wife for divorce—and he names Jack."
"Is that your news?" said Gladys, languidly. Suddenly she flung aside the robes and sat up.
"What's Pauline going to do? Can she—" Gladys paused.
"Yes, she can—if she wishes to."
"But—will she? Will she?" demanded Gladys.
"Jack doesn't know what she'll do," replied Langdon. "He's keeping quiet—the only sane course when that kind of storm breaks. He had hoped you'd be there to smooth her down, but he says when he opened the subject of your going back to Saint X you cut him off."
"Does she know?"
"Somebody must have told her the day you left. Don't you remember, she was taken ill suddenly?"
"Oh!" Gladys vividly recalled Pauline's strange look and manner. She could see her sister-in-law—the long, lithe form, the small, graceful head, with its thick, soft, waving hair, the oval face, the skin as fine as the petals at the heart of a rose, the arched brows and golden-brown eyes; that look, that air, as of buoyant life locked in the spell of an icy trance, mysterious, fascinating, sometimes so melancholy.
"I almost hope she'll do it, Mowbray," she said. "Jack doesn't deserve her. He's not a bit her sort. She ought to have married—"
"Some one who had her sort of ideals—some one like that big, handsome chap—the one you admired so frantically—Governor Scarborough. He was chock full of ideals. And he's making the sort of career she could sympathize with."
"Scarborough!" exclaimed Gladys, with some success at self-concealment. "I detest him! I detest 'careers'!"
"Good," said Langdon, his face serious, his eyes amused. "That opens the way for my other shock."
"Oh, the good news. What is it?"
"That I'd like it if you'd marry me."
Gladys glanced into his still amused eyes, then with a shrug sank back among her wraps. "A poor joke," she said.
"I should say that marriage was a stale joke rather than a poor one. Will you try it—with me? You might do worse."
"How did you have the courage to speak when I'm looking such a wreck?" she asked with mock gravity.
"But you ain't—you're looking better now. That first shock braced you up. Besides, this isn't romance. It's no high flight with all the longer drop and all the harder jolt at the landing. It's a plain, practical proposition."
Gladys slowly sat up and studied him curiously.
"Do you really mean it?" she asked. Each was leaning on an elbow, gazing gravely into the other's face.
"I'd never joke on such a dangerous subject as marriage. I'm far too timid for that. What do you say, Gladys?"
She had never seen him look serious before, and she was thinking that the expression became him.
"He knows how to make himself attractive to a woman when he cares to," she said to herself.
"I'd like a man that has lightness of mind. Serious people bore one so after a while." By "serious people" she meant one serious person whom she had admired particularly for his seriousness. But she was in another mood now, another atmosphere—the atmosphere she had breathed since she was thirteen, except in the brief period when her infatuation for Scarborough had swept her away from her world.
"No!" She shook her head with decision—and felt decided. But to his practised ear there was in her voice a hint that she might hear him further on the subject.
They lay back in their chairs, he watching the ragged, dirty, scurrying clouds, she watching him. After a while he said: "Where are you going when we reach the other side?"
"To join mother and auntie."
"And how long will you stay with them?"
"Not more than a week, I should say," she answered with a grimace.
"And then—where?"
She did not reply for some time. Studying her face, he saw an expression of lonesomeness gather and strengthen and deepen until she looked so forlorn that he felt as if he must take her in his arms. When she spoke it was to say dubiously: "Back to New York—to keep house for my brother—perhaps."
"And when his wife frees herself and he marries again—where will you go?"
Gladys lifted a fold of her cape and drew it about her as if she were cold. But he noted that it hid her face from him.
"You want—you need—a home? So do I," he went on tranquilly. "You are tired of wandering? So am I. You are bored with parade and parade—people? So am I. You wish freedom, not bondage, when you marry? I refuse to be bound, and I don't wish to bind any one. We have the same friends, the same tastes, have had pretty much the same experiences. You don't want to be married for your money. I'm not likely to be suspected of doing that sort of thing."
"Some one has said that rich men marry more often for money than poor men," interrupted Gladys. And then she colored as she recalled who had said it.
Langdon noted her color as he noted every point in any game he was playing; he shrewdly guessed its origin. "When Scarborough told you that," he replied calmly, "he told you a great truth. But please remember, I merely said I shouldn't be SUSPECTED of marrying you for money. I didn't say I wasn't guilty."
"Is your list of reasons complete?"
"Two more the clinchers. You are disappointed in love—so am I. You need consolation—so do I. When one can't have the best one takes the best one can get, if one is sensible. It has been known to turn out not so badly."
They once more lay back watching the clouds. An hour passed without either's speaking. The deck-steward brought them tea and biscuits which he declined and she accepted. She tried the big, hard, tasteless disk between her strong white teeth, then said with a sly smile: "You pried into my secret a few minutes ago. I'm going to pry into yours. Who was she?"
"As the lady would have none of me, there's no harm in confessing," replied Langdon, carelessly. "She was—and is—and—" he looked at her—"ever shall be, world without end—Gladys Dumont."
Gladys gasped and glanced at him with swift suspicion that he was jesting. He returned her glance in a calm, matter-of-fact way. She leaned back in her chair and they watched the slippery rail slide up and down against the background of chilly, rainy sea and sky.
"Are you asleep?" he asked after a long silence.
"No," she replied. "I was thinking."
"Of my—proposition?"
"Yes."
"Doesn't it grow on you?"
"Yes."
He shifted himself to a sitting position with much deliberateness. He put his hand in among her rugs and wraps until it touched hers. "It may turn out better than you anticipate," he said, a little sentiment in his eyes and smile, a little raillery in his voice.
"I doubt if it will," she answered, without looking at him directly. "For—I—anticipate a great deal."
Fanshaw versus Fanshaw was heard privately by a referee; and before Mrs. Fanshaw's lawyers had a chance to ask that the referee's report be sealed from publicity, the judge of his own motion ordered it. At the political club to which he belonged, he had received an intimation from the local "boss" that if Dumont's name were anywhere printed in connection with the case he would be held responsible. Thus it came to pass that on the morning of the filing of the decree the newspapers were grumbling over their inability to give the eagerly-awaited details of the great scandal. And Herron was Catonizing against "judicial corruption."
But Dumont was overswift in congratulating himself on his escape and in preening himself on his power.
For several days the popular newspapers were alone in denouncing the judge for favoritism and in pointing out that the judiciary were "becoming subservient to the rich and the powerful in their rearrangements of their domestic relations—a long first step toward complete subservience." Herron happened to have among his intimates the editor of an eminently respectable newspaper that prides itself upon never publishing private scandals. He impressed his friend with his own strong views as to the gravity of this growing discrimination between masses and classes; and the organ of independent conservatism was presently lifting up its solemn voice in a stentorian jeremiad.
Without this reinforcement the "yellows" might have shrieked in vain. It was assumed that baffled sensationalism was by far a stronger motive with them than justice, and the public was amused rather than aroused by their protests. But now soberer dailies and weeklies took up the case and the discussion spread to other cities, to the whole country. By his audacity, by his arrogant frankness he had latterly treated public opinion with scantiest courtesy—by his purchase of campaign committees, and legislatures, and courts, Dumont had made himself in the public mind an embodiment of the "mighty and menacing plutocracy" of which the campaign orators talked so much. And the various phases of the scandal gave the press a multitude of texts for satirical, or pessimistic, or fiery discourses upon the public and private rottenness of "plutocrats."
But Dumont's name was never directly mentioned. Every one knew who was meant; no newspaper dared to couple him in plain language with the scandal. The nearest approach to it was where one New York newspaper published, without comment, in the center of a long news article on the case, two photographs of Dumont side by side—one taken when he first came to New York, clear-cut, handsome, courageous, apparently a type of progressive young manhood; the other, taken within the year, gross, lowering, tyrannical, obviously a type of indulged, self-indulgent despot.
Herron had forced Fanshaw to abandon the idea of suing Dumont for a money consolation. He had been deeply impressed by his wife's warnings against Fanshaw—"a lump of soot, and sure to smutch you if you go near him." He was reluctant to have Fanshaw give up the part of the plan which insured the public damnation of Dumont, but there was no other prudent course. He assured himself that he knew Fanshaw to be an upright man; but he did not go to so perilous a length in self-deception as to fancy he could convince cynical and incredulous New York. It was too eager to find excuses for successful and admired men like Dumont, too ready to laugh at and despise underdogs like Fanshaw. Herron never admitted it to himself, but in fact it was he who put it into Fanshaw's resourceless mind to compass the revenge of publicity in another way.
Fanshaw was denouncing the judge for sealing the divorce testimony, and the newspapers for being so timid about libel laws and contempt of court.
"If a newspaper should publish the testimony," said Herron, "Judge Glassford would never dare bring the editor before him for contempt. His record's too bad. I happen to know he was in the News-Record office no longer ago than last month, begging for the suppression of an article that might have caused his impeachment, if published. So there's one paper that wouldn't be afraid of him."
"Then why does it shield the scoundrel?"
"Perhaps," replied Herron, his hand on the door of his office law-library, "it hasn't been able to get hold of a copy of the testimony." And having thus dropped the seed on good soil, he left.
Fanshaw waited several weeks, waited until certain other plans of his and Herron's were perfected. Then he suddenly deluged the sinking flames of the divorce discussion with a huge outpouring of oil. Indirectly and with great secrecy he sent a complete copy of the testimony to the newspaper Herron had mentioned, the most sensational, and one of the most widely circulated in New York.
The next morning Dumont had to ring three times for his secretary. When Culver finally appeared he had in his trembling right hand a copy of the News-Record. His face suggested that he was its owner, publisher and responsible editor, and that he expected then and there to be tortured to death for the two illustrated pages of the "Great Fanshaw-Dumont Divorce! All the Testimony! Shocking Revelations!"
"I thought it necessary for you to know this without delay, sir," he said in a shaky voice, as he held out the newspaper to his master.
Dumont grew sickly yellow with the first glance at those head-lines. He had long been used to seeing extensive and highly unflattering accounts of himself and his doings in print; but theretofore every open attack had been on some public matter where a newspaper "pounding" might be attributed to politics or stock-jobbery. Here—it was a verbatim official report, and of a private scandal, more dangerous to his financial standing than the fiercest assault upon his honesty as a financier; for it tore away the foundation of reputation—private character. A faithful transcript throughout, it portrayed him as a bag of slimy gold and gilded slime. He hated his own face staring out at him from a three-column cut in the center of the first page—its heavy jaw, its cynical mouth, its impudent eyes. "Do I look like THAT?" he thought. He was like one who, walking along the streets, catches sight of his own image in a show-window mirror and before he recognizes it, sees himself as others see him. He flushed to his temples at the contrast with the smaller cut beside it—the face of Pauline, high and fine icily beautiful as always in her New York days when her features were in repose.
Culver shifted from one weak leg to the other, and the movement reminded Dumont of his existence. "That's all. Clear out!" he exclaimed, and fell back into his big chair and closed his eyes. He thought he at last understood publicity.
But he was mistaken.
He finished dressing and choked down a little breakfast. As he advanced toward the front door the servant there coughed uneasily and said: "Beg pardon, sir, but I fear you won't be able to get out."
"What's the matter?" he demanded, his brows contracting and his lips beginning to slide back in a snarl—it promised to be a sad morning for human curs of all kinds who did not scurry out of the lion's way.
"The crowd, sir," said the servant. And he drew aside the curtain across the glass in one of the inside pair of great double doors of the palace entrance. "It's quite safe to look, sir. They can't see through the outside doors as far as this."
Dumont peered through the bronze fretwork. A closely packed mass of people was choking the sidewalk and street—his brougham was like an island in a troubled lake. He saw several policemen—they were trying to move the crowd on, but not trying sincerely. He saw three huge cameras, their operators under the black cloths, their lenses pointed at the door—waiting for him to appear. For the first time in his life he completely lost his nerve. Not only publicity, the paper—a lifeless sheet of print; but also publicity, the public—with living eyes to peer and living voices to jeer. He looked helplessly, appealingly at the "cur" he had itched to kick the moment before.
"What the devil shall I do?" he asked in a voice without a trace of courage.
"I don't know, sir," replied the servant. "The basement door wouldn't help very much, would it?"
The basement door was in front also. "Idiot! Is there no way out at the rear?" he asked.
"Only over the fences, sir," said the servant, perfectly matter-of-fact. Having no imagination, his mind made no picture of the great captain of industry scrambling over back fences like a stray cat flying from a brick.
Dumont turned back and into his first-floor sitting-room. He unlocked his stand of brandy bottles, poured out an enormous drink and gulped it down. His stomach reeled, then his head. He went to the window and looked out—there must have been five hundred people in the street, and vehicles were making their way slowly and with difficulty, drivers gaping at the house and joking with the crowd; newsboys, bent sidewise to balance their huge bundles of papers, were darting in and out, and even through the thick plate glass he could hear: "All about Millionaire Dumont's disgrace!"
He went through to a rear window. No, there was a continuous wall, a high brick wall. A servant came and told him he was wanted at the telephone. It was Giddings, who said in a voice that was striving in vain to be calm against the pressure of some intense excitement: "You are coming down to-day, Mr. Dumont?"
"Why?" asked Dumont, snapping the word out as short and savage as the crack of a lash.
"There are disquieting rumors of a raid on us."
"Who's to do the raiding?"
"They say it's Patterson and Fanning-Smith and Cassell and Herron. It's a raid for control."
Dumont snorted scornfully. "Don't fret. We're all right. I'll be down soon." And he hung up the receiver, muttering: "The ass! I must kick him out! He's an old woman the instant I turn my back."
He had intended not to go down, but to shut himself in with the brandy bottle until nightfall. This news made his presence in the Street imperative. "They couldn't have sprung at me at a worse time," he muttered. "But I can take care of 'em!"
He returned to the library, took another drink, larger than the first. His blood began to pound through his veins and to rush along under the surface of his skin like a sheet of fire. Waves of fury surged into his brain, making him dizzy, confusing his sight—he could scarcely refrain from grinding his teeth. He descended to the basement, his step unsteady.
"A ladder," he ordered in a thick voice.
He led the way to the rear wall. A dozen men-servants swarming about, tried to assist him. He ordered them aside and began to climb. As the upper part of his body rose above the wall-line he heard a triumphant shout, many voices crying: "There he is! There he is!"
The lot round the corner from his place was not built upon; and there, in the side street, was a rapidly swelling crowd, the camera-bearers hastily putting their instruments in position, the black cloths fluttering like palls or pirate flags. With a roaring howl he released his hold upon the ladder and shook both fists, his swollen face blazing between them. He tottered, fell backward, crashed upon the stone flooring of the area. His head struck with a crack that made the women-servants scream. The men lifted him and carried him into the house. He was not stunned; he tried to stand. But he staggered back into the arms of his valet and his butler.
"Brandy!" he gasped.
He took a third drink—and became unconscious. When the doctor arrived he was raving in a high fever. For years he had drunk to excess—but theretofore only when HE chose, never when his appetite chose, never when his affairs needed a clear brain. Now appetite, long lying in wait for him, had found him helpless in the clutches of rage and fear, and had stolen away his mind.
The news was telephoned to the office at half-past eleven o'clock. "It doesn't matter," said Giddings. "He'd only make things worse if he were to come now."
Giddings was apparently right. From a tower of strength, supporting alone, yet with ease, National Woolens, and the vast structure based upon it, Dumont had crumbled into an obstruction and a weakness. There is an abysmal difference between everybody knowing a thing privately and everybody knowing precisely the same thing publicly. In that newspaper exposure there was no fact of importance that was not known to the entire Street, to his chief supporters in his great syndicate of ranches, railroads, factories, steamship lines and selling agencies. But the tremendous blare of publicity acted like Joshua's horns at Jericho. The solid walls of his public reputation tottered, toppled, fell flat.
There had been a tight money-market for two weeks. Though there had been uneasiness as to all the small and many of the large "industrials," belief in National Woolens and in the stability of John Dumont had remained strong. But of all the cowards that stand sentinel for capital, the most craven is Confidence. At the deafening crash of the fall of Dumont's private character, Confidence girded its loins and tightened its vocal cords to be in readiness for a shrieking flight.
Dumont ruled, through a parent and central corporation, the National Woolens Company, which held a majority of the stock in each of the seventeen corporations constituting the trust. His control was in part through ownership of Woolens stock but chiefly through proxies sent him by thousands of small stock-holders because they had confidence in his abilities. To wrest control from him it was necessary for the raiders both to make him "unload" his own holdings of stock and to impair his reputation so that his supporters would desert him or stand aloof.
On the previous day National Woolens closed at eighty-two for the preferred and thirty-nine for the common. In the first hour of the day of the raid Giddings and the other members of Dumont's supporting group of financiers were able to keep it fairly steady at about five points below the closing price of the previous day, by buying all that was offered—the early offerings were large, but not overwhelming. The supporters of other industrials saw that the assault on Woolens was a menace to their stocks—if a strong industrial weakened, the weaker ones would inevitably suffer disaster in the frightened market that would surely result. They showed a disposition to rally to the support of the Dumont stocks.
At eleven o'clock Giddings began to hope that the raid was a failure, if indeed it had been a real raid. At eleven-twenty Herron played his trump card.
The National Industrial Bank is the huge barometer to which both speculative and investing Wall Street looks for guidance. Whom that bank protects is as safe as was the medieval fugitive who laid hold of the altar in the sanctuary; whom that bank frowns upon in the hour of stress is lost indeed if he have so much as a pin's-point area of heel that is vulnerable. Melville, president of the National Industrial, was a fanatically religious man, with as keen a nose for heretics as for rotten spots in collateral. He was peculiarly savage in his hatred of all matrimonial deviations. He was a brother of Fanshaw's mother; and she and Herron had been working upon him. But so long as Dumont's share in the scandal was not publicly attributed he remained obdurate—he never permitted his up-town creed or code to interfere with his down-town doings unless it became necessary—that is, unless it could be done without money loss. For up-town or down-town, to make money was always and in all circumstances the highest morality, to lose money the profoundest immorality.
At twenty minutes past eleven Melville and the president of the other banks of his chain called loans to Dumont and the Dumont supporting group to the amount of three millions and a quarter. Ten minutes later other banks and trust companies whose loans to Dumont and his allies either were on call or contained provisions permitting a demand for increased collateral, followed Melville's example and aimed and sped their knives for Dumont's vitals.
Giddings found himself face to face with unexpected and peremptory demands for eleven millions in cash and thirteen millions in additional collateral securities. If he did not meet these demands forthwith the banks and trust companies, to protect themselves, would throw upon the market at whatever price they could get the thirty-odd millions of Woolens stocks which they held as collateral for the loans.
"What does this mean, Eaversole?" he exclaimed, with white, wrinkled lips, heavy circles suddenly appearing under his eyes. "Is Melville trying to ruin everything?"
"No," answered Eaversole, third vice-president of the company. "He's supporting the market, all except us. He says Dumont must be driven out of the Street. He says his presence here is a pollution and a source of constant danger."
The National Woolens supporting group was alone; it could get no help from any quarter, as every possible ally was frightened into his own breastworks for the defense of his own interests. Dumont, the brain and the will of the group, had made no false moves in business, had been bold only where his matchless judgment showed him a clear way; but he had not foreseen the instantaneous annihilation of his chief asset—his reputation.
Giddings sustained the unequal battle superbly. He was cool, and watchful, and effective. It is doubtful if Dumont himself could have done so well, handicapped as he would have been on that day by the Fanshaw scandal. Giddings cajoled and threatened, retreated slowly here, advanced intrepidly there. On the one side, he held back wavering banks and trust companies, persuading some that all was well, warning others that if they pressed him they would lose all. On the other side, he faced his powerful foes and made them quake as they saw their battalions of millions roll upon his unbroken line of battle only to break and disappear. At noon National Woolens preferred was at fifty-eight, the common at twenty-nine. Giddings was beginning to hope.
At three minutes past noon the tickers clicked out: "It is reported that John Dumont is dying."
As that last word jerked letter by letter from under the printing wheel the floor of the Stock Exchange became the rapids of a human Niagara. By messenger, by telegraph, by telephone, holders of National Woolens and other industrials, in the financial district, in all parts of the country, across the sea, poured in their selling orders upon the frenzied brokers. And all these forces of hysteria and panic, projected into that narrow, roofed-in space, made of it a chaos of contending demons. All stocks were caught in the upheaval; Melville's plans to limit the explosion were blown skyward, feeble as straws in a cyclone. Amid shrieks and howls and frantic tossings of arms and mad rushes and maniac contortions of faces, National Woolens and all the Dumont stocks bent, broke, went smashing down, down, down, every one struggling to unload.
Dumont's fortune was the stateliest of the many galleons that day driven on the rocks and wrecked. Dumont's crew was for the most part engulfed. Giddings and a few selected friends reached the shore half-drowned and humbly applied at the wreckers' camp; they were hospitably received and were made as comfortable as their exhausted condition permitted.
John Dumont was at the mercy of Hubert Herron in his own company. If he lived he would be president only until the next annual meeting—less than two months away; and the Herron crowd had won over enough of his board of directors to make him meanwhile powerless where he had been autocrat.
Toward noon the next day Dumont emerged from the stupor into which Doctor Sackett's opiate had plunged him. At once his mind began to grope about for the broken clues of his business. His valet appeared.
"The morning papers," said Dumont.
"Yes, sir," replied the valet, and disappeared.
After a few seconds Culver came and halted just within the doorway. "I'm sorry, sir, but Doctor Sackett left strict orders that you were to be quiet. Your life depends on it."
Dumont scowled and his lower lip projected—the crowning touch in his most imperious expression. "The papers, all of 'em,—quick!" he commanded.
Culver took a last look at the blue-white face and bloodshot eyes to give him courage to stand firm. "The doctor'll be here in a few minutes," he said, bowed and went out.
Choking with impotent rage, Dumont rang for his valet and forced him to help him dress. He was so weak when he finished that only his will kept him from fainting. He took a stiff drink of the brandy—the odor was sickening to him and he could hardly force it down. But once down, it strengthened him.
"No, nothing to eat," he said thickly, and with slow but fairly steady step left his room and descended to the library. Culver was there—sat agape at sight of his master. "But you—you must not—" he began.
Dumont gave him an ugly grin. "But I will!" he said, and again drank brandy. He turned and went out and toward the front door, Culver following with stammering protests which he heeded not at all. On the sidewalk he hailed a passing hansom. "To the Edison Building," he said and drove off, Culver, bareheaded at the curb, looking dazedly after him. Before he reached Fifty-ninth Street he was half-sitting, half-reclining in the corner of the seat, his eyes closed and his senses sinking into a stupor from the fumes of the powerful doses of brandy. As the hansom drove down the avenue many recognized him, wondered and pitied as they noted his color, his collapsed body, head fallen on one side, mouth open and lips greenish gray. As the hansom slowly crossed the tracks at Twenty-third Street the heavy jolt roused him.
"The newspapers," he muttered, and hurled up through the trap in the roof an order to the driver to stop. He leaned over the doors and bought half a dozen newspapers of the woman at the Flat-iron stand. As the hansom moved on he glanced at the head-lines—they were big and staring, but his blurred eyes could not read them. He fell asleep again, his hands clasped loosely about the huge proclamations of yesterday's battle and his rout.
The hansom was caught in a jam at Chambers Street. The clamor of shouting, swearing drivers roused him. The breeze from the open sea, blowing straight up Broadway into his face, braced him like the tonic that it is. He straightened himself, recovered his train of thought, stared at one of the newspapers and tried to grasp the meaning of its head-lines. But they made only a vague impression on him.
"It's all lies," he muttered. "Lies! How could those fellows smash ME!" And he flung the newspapers out of the hansom into the faces of two boys seated upon the tail of a truck.
"You're drunk early," yelled one of the boys.
"That's no one-day jag," shouted the other. "It's a hang-over."
He made a wild, threatening gesture and, as his hansom drove on, muttered and mumbled to himself, vague profanity aimed at nothing and at everything. At the Edison Building he got out.
"Wait!" he said to the driver. He did not see the impudent smirk on the face of the elevator boy nor the hesitating, sheepish salutation of the door-man, uncertain how to greet the fallen king. He went straight to his office, unlocked his desk and, just in time to save himself from fainting, seized and half-emptied a flask of brandy he kept in a drawer. It had been there—but untouched ever since he came to New York and took those offices; he never drank in business hours.
His head was aching horribly and at every throb of his pulse a pain tore through him. He rang for his messenger.
"Tell Mr. Giddings I want to see him—you!" he said, his teeth clenched and his eyes blazing—he looked insane.
Giddings came. His conscience was clear—he had never liked Dumont, owed him nothing, yet had stood by him until further fidelity would have ruined himself, would not have saved Dumont, or prevented the Herron-Cassell raiders from getting control. Now that he could afford to look at his revenge-books he was deeply resenting the insults and indignities heaped upon him in the past five years. But he was unable to gloat, was moved to pity, at sight of the physical and mental wreck in that chair which he had always seen occupied by the most robust of despots.
"Well," said Dumont in a dull, far-away voice, without looking at him. "What's happened?"
Giddings cast about for a smooth beginning but could find none. "They did us up—that's all," he said funereally.
Dumont lifted himself into a momentary semblance of his old look and manner. "You lie, damn you!" he shouted, his mouth raw and ragged as a hungry tiger's.
Giddings began to cringe, remembered the changed conditions, bounded to his feet.
"I'll tolerate such language from no man!" he exclaimed. "I wish you good morning, sir!" And he was on his way to the door.
"Come back!" commanded Dumont. And Giddings, the habit of implicit obedience to that voice still strong upon him, hesitated and half turned.
Dumont was more impressed with the truth of the cataclysm by Giddings' revolt than by the newspaper head-lines or by Giddings' words. And from somewhere in the depths of his reserve-self he summoned the last of his coolness and self-control. "Beg pardon, Giddings," said he. "You see I'm not well."
Giddings returned—he had taken orders all his life, he had submitted to this master slavishly; the concession of an apology mollified him and flattered him in spite of himself.
"Oh, don't mention it," he said, seating himself again. "As I was saying, the raid was a success. I did the best I could. Some called our loans and some demanded more collateral. And while I was fighting front and rear and both sides, bang came that lie about your condition. The market broke. All I could do was sell, sell, sell, to try to meet or protect our loans."
Giddings heard a sound that made him glance at Dumont. His head had fallen forward and he was snoring. Giddings looked long and pityingly.
"A sure enough dead one," he muttered, unconsciously using the slang of the Street which he habitually avoided. And he went away, closing the door behind him.
After half an hour Dumont roused himself—out of a stupor into a half-delirious dream.
"Must get cash," he mumbled, "and look after the time loans." He lifted his head and pushed back his hair from his hot forehead. "I'll stamp on those curs yet!"
He took another drink—his hands were so unsteady that he had to use both of them in lifting it to his lips. He put the flask in his pocket instead of returning it to the drawer. No one spoke to him, all pretended not to see him as he passed through the offices on his way to the elevator. With glassy unseeing eyes he fumbled at the dash-board and side of the hansom; with a groan like a rheumatic old man's he lifted his heavy body up into the seat, dropped back and fell asleep. A crowd of clerks and messengers, newsboys and peddlers gathered and gaped, awed as they looked at the man who had been for five years one of the heroes of the Street, and thought of his dazzling catastrophe.
"What's the matter?" inquired a new-comer, apparently a tourist, edging his way into the outskirts of the crowd.
"That's Dumont, the head of the Woolens Trust," the curb-broker he addressed replied in a low tone. "He was raided yesterday—woke up in the morning worth a hundred millions, went to bed worth—perhaps five, maybe nothing at all."
At this exaggeration of the height and depth of the disaster, awe and sympathy became intense in that cluster of faces. A hundred millions to nothing at all, or at most a beggarly five millions—what a dizzy precipice! Great indeed must be he who could fall so far. The driver peered through the trap, wondering why his distinguished fare endured this vulgar scrutiny. He saw that Dumont was asleep, thrust down a hand and shook him. "Where to, sir?" he asked, as Dumont straightened himself.
"To the National Industrial Bank, you fool," snapped Dumont. "How many times must I tell you?"
"Thank you, sir," said the driver—without sarcasm, thinking steadfastly of his pay—and drove swiftly away.
Theretofore, whenever he had gone to the National Industrial Bank he had been received as one king is received by another. Either eager and obsequious high officers of King Melville had escorted him directly to the presence, or King Melville, because he had a caller who could not be summarily dismissed, had come out apologetically to conduct King Dumont to another audience chamber. That day the third assistant cashier greeted him with politeness carefully graded to the due of a man merely moderately rich and not a factor in the game of high finance.
"Be seated, Mr. Dumont," he said, pointing to a chair just inside the railing—a seat not unworthy of a man of rank in the plutocratic hierarchy, but a man of far from high rank. "I'll see whether Mr. Melville's disengaged."
Dumont dropped into the chair and his heavy head was almost immediately resting upon his shirt-bosom. The third assistant cashier returned, roused him somewhat impatiently. "Mr. Melville's engaged," said he. "But Mr. Cowles will see you." Mr. Cowles was the third vice-president.
Dumont rose. The blood flushed into his face and his body shook from head to foot. "Tell Melville to go to hell," he jerked out, the haze clearing for a moment from his piercing, wicked eyes. And he stalked through the gateway in the railing. He turned. "Tell him I'll tear him down and grind him into the gutter within six months."
In the hansom again, he reflected or tried to reflect. But the lofty buildings seemed to cast a black shadow on his mind, and the roar and rush of the tremendous tide of traffic through that deep canon set his thoughts to whirling like drink-maddened bacchanals dancing round a punch-bowl. "That woman!" he exclaimed suddenly. "What asses they make of us men! And all these vultures—I'm not carrion yet. But THEY soon will be!" And he laughed and his thoughts began their crazy spin again.
A newsboy came, waving an extra in at the open doors of the hansom. "Dumont's downfall!" he yelled in his shrill, childish voice. "All about the big smash!"
Dumont snatched a paper and flung a copper at the boy.
"Gimme a tip on Woolens, Mr. Dumont," said the boy, with an impudent grin, balancing himself for flight. "How's Mrs. Fanshaw?"
The newspapers had made his face as familiar as the details of his private life. He shrank and quivered. He pushed up the trap. "Home!" he said, forgetting that the hansom and driver were not his own.
"All right, Mr. Dumont!" replied the driver. Dumont shrank again and sat cowering in the corner—the very calling him by his name, now a synonym for failure, disgrace, ridicule and contempt, seemed a subtile insult.
With roaring brain and twitching, dizzy eyes he read at the newspaper's account of his overthrow. And gradually there formed in his mind a coherent notion of how it had come to pass, of its extent; of why he found himself lying in the depths, the victim of humiliations so frightful that they penetrated even to him, stupefied and crazed with drink and fever though he was. His courage, his self-command were burnt up by the brandy. His body had at last revolted, was having its terrible revenge upon the mind that had so long misused it in every kind of indulgence.
"I'm done for—done for," he repeated audibly again and again, at each repetition looking round mentally for a fact or a hope that would deny this assertion—but he cast about in vain. "Yes, I'm done for." And flinging away the newspaper he settled back and ceased to try to think of his affairs. After a while tears rolled from under his blue eyelids, dropped haltingly down his cheeks, spread out upon his lips, tasted salt in his half-open mouth.
The hansom stopped before his brick and marble palace. The butler hurried out and helped him alight—not yet thirty-seven, he felt as if he were a dying old man. "Pay the cabby," he said and groped his way into the house and to the elevator and mechanically ran himself up to his floor. His valet was in his dressing-room. He waved him away. "Get out! And don't disturb me till I ring."
"The doctor—" began Mallow.
"Do as I tell you!"
When he was alone he poured out brandy and gulped it down a drink that might have eaten the lining straight out of a stomach less powerful than his. He went from door to door, locking them all. Then he seated himself in a lounging-chair before the long mirror. He stared toward the image of himself but was so dim-eyed that he could see nothing but spinning black disks. "Life's not such a good game even when a man's winning," he said aloud. "A rotten bad game when he's losing."
His head wabbled to fall forward but he roused himself. "Wife gone—" The tears flooded his eyes—tears of pity for himself, an injured and abandoned husband. "Wife gone," he repeated. "Friends gone—" He laughed sardonically. "No, never had friends, thank God, or I shouldn't have lasted this long. No such thing as friends—a man gets what he can pay for. Grip gone—luck gone! What's the use?"
He dozed off, presently to start into acute, shuddering consciousness. At the far end of the room, stirring, slowly oozing from under the divan was a—a Thing! He could not define its shape, but he knew that it was vast, that it was scaly, with many short fat legs tipped with claws; that its color was green, that its purpose was hideous, gleaming in craft from large, square, green-yellow eyes. He wiped the sticky sweat from his brow. "It's only the brandy," he said loudly, and the Thing faded, vanished. He drew a deep breath of relief.
He went to a case of drawers and stood before it, supporting himself by the handles of the second drawer. "Yes," he reflected, "the revolver's in that drawer." He released the handles and staggered back to his chair. "I'm crazy," he muttered, "crazy as a loon. I ought to ring for the doctor."
In a moment he was up again, but instead of going toward the bell he went to the drawers and opened the second one. In a compartment lay a pearl-handled, self-cocking revolver. He put his hand on it, shivered, drew his hand away—the steel and the pearl were cold. He closed the drawer with a quick push, opened it again slowly, took up the revolver, staggered over to his desk and laid it there. His face was chalk-white in spots and his eyes were stiff in their sockets. He rested his aching, burning, reeling head on his hands and stared at the revolver.
"But," he said aloud, as if contemptuously dismissing a suggestion, "why should I shoot myself? I can smash 'em all—to powder—grind 'em into the dirt."
He took up the revolver. "What'd be the use of smashing 'em?" he said wearily. He felt tired and sick, horribly sick.
He laid it down. "I'd better be careful," he thought. "I'm not in my right mind. I might—"
He took it in his hand and went to the mirror and put the muzzle against his temple. He laughed crazily. "A little pressure on that trigger and—bang! I'd be in kingdom come and shouldn't give a damn for anybody." He caught sight of his eyes in the mirror and hastily dropped his arm to his side. "No, I'd never shoot myself in the temple. The heart'd be better. Just here"—and he pressed the muzzle into the soft material of his coat—"if I touched the trigger—"
And his finger did touch the trigger. Pains shot through his chest like cracks radiating in glass when a stone strikes it. He looked at his face—white, with wild eyes, with lips blue and ajar, the sweat streaming from his forehead.
"What have I done?" he shrieked, mad with the dread of death. "I must call for help." He turned toward the door, plunged forward, fell unconscious, the revolver flung half-way across the room.