CHAPTER II
AN INTRUDER
On the night following Stuart worked late in his office, developing his great case. He was disappointed in the final showing of the evidence to be presented to the Grand Jury. His facts were not as strong as he expected to make them.
At ten o'clock he quit work and hurried home to refresh his tired spirit with Harriet's music. He could think more clearly while she played for him.
As he hurried up the steps he suddenly collided with a handsome young fellow just emerging from the door.
His first hope was that he had crippled a lodger. He hated the sight and sound of them. He had always felt their presence in the house an unpardonable intrusion. A second look showed him that the youngster who had hurried down the steps with profound apologies and much embarrassment was not a lodger. He was dressed too handsomely and he had evidently been calling on some one.
Perhaps on Harriet!
A sudden fear gripped his heart. He felt like following him to the corner and demanding his reasons for such impudence.
Where had he seen that boy's face?
Somewhere, beyond a doubt. But he couldn't place him.
He let himself in softly and started at the sight of Harriet's smiling face framed in the parlor doorway. His worst fears were confirmed. She was dressed in a dainty evening gown and had evidently enjoyed her visitor.
Stuart pretended not to notice the fact and asked her to play.
He fell lazily into an arm chair while the deft fingers swept the keys. As he sat dreaming and watching the rhythmic movement of her delicate hands, he began to realize at last that his little pal, stub-nosed, red haired and freckled, had silently and mysteriously grown into a charming woman. He wondered what had become of the stub-nose? It seemed to have stretched out into perfect proportions. The freckles had faded into a delicate white skin of creamy velvet. And what once threatened to be a violent red head had softened into beaten gold.
But the most charming feature of all was the deep spiritual tenderness of her eyes, blue sometimes, gray and blue sometimes, but always with little brown spots in them which Nature seemed to have dropped by accident the day she painted them. Stuart always imagined she had picked up a brown brush by mistake. He thought with a sudden pang of the possibility of losing her. She was twenty-three now, in the pride and glory of perfect young womanhood, and yet she had no lovers. He wondered why? Her music of course. It had been the one absorbing passion of life. Her progress had been slow for the first years, while at college. But during the past two years of training every lesson seemed to tell. He had watched her development with pride and brooding tenderness. And her eyes had always sparkled with deep joy at his slightest word of praise. For the first time it had occurred to him as an immediate possibility that she might marry and their lives drift apart.
He resented the thought with unreasonable anger. Of course she must marry. And he would have to give her up.
He began to realize dimly how much he owed to her of peace and happiness during the past nine lonely years. A sweet comradeship had grown between them deeper and more tender than the tie which binds a brother and sister, and he had taken it as a matter of course. He resented the idea of a break in their relations. Yet why should he? What rights had he over her life? Absolutely none, of course. He wondered vaguely if she were sly enough to have a sweetheart and let nobody know? Who was that fellow? Where had he met him before?
He rose with a sudden frown. Sure as fate—the very boy—the tall, dreamy-looking youngster who danced with her so many times that night ten years ago at her birthday party! She said he was too frail—that her prince must be strong. Well, confound him, he had gotten strong. That's why he had failed to place him at first. He made up his mind to put a stop to it. He was her guardian anyway. Her father was so absorbed in saving the world, any thief could slip in and steal his daughter under his very nose. The fellow who took Harriet would have to measure up to the full stature of a man. He made up his mind to that.
He walked over to the piano and stood behind her a moment.
When the last note died softly away and she began turning the pages of a pile of music sheets without looking up, Stuart said, with a studied indifference:
"Tell me, little pal, who was that tall young fellow I ran into on the steps?"
"Why, don't you remember my frail young admirer of long ago?"
"Do you love him, girlie?"
Stuart bent low and looked searchingly into her eyes.
Her fingers slipped lazily over the keys in little touches of half-forgotten songs.
"When I was very, very young, I thought I did. It makes me laugh now. It's wonderful how much we can outgrow, isn't it?"
"I'm glad you've outgrown this."
"Why? He's an awfully nice fellow."
"Perhaps—but I don't like him."
"What's the matter with him?"
"I just don't like him and I don't want you to like him."
"Oh!"
"You see, little pal, I'm your guardian."
"Are you?"
"Yes, and I'm giving you due legal notice that you have no right to marry without my consent—you promise to make me your confidant?"
A soft laugh full of tenderness and joy came from the girl as she turned her eyes upward for the first time:
"All right, guardie, I'll confer with you on that occasion."
CHAPTER III
A STRAIGHT TIP
Nan received the announcement of Bivens's failure to settle Woodman's suit with a grim resolution to win now, at all hazards. The sensational reports of Stuart's action against the big financiers had given her quick mind the cue to a new line of stratagem. She began cautiously.
"You are not going to give up a thing I've set my heart on merely because old Woodman's a fool, are you?" she asked her husband, with a touch of scorn. "Jim Stuart is the best friend you ever had. He has become one of the most famous men in America. He would lend distinction to our house. I want him at our next entertainment."
"The thing that puzzles me," Bivens broke in, "is why the devil he will not come to the house. When I meet him down town he's always friendly."
Nan's lips quivered with a queer little smile.
"Will he succeed in this action against these men?"
"No."
"Why?"
"He can't get the facts."
"If he could get them and did succeed, what would happen?"
"He'd shake the foundations of the financial world."
"You could get the facts, couldn't you, dear?"
Nan spoke in the softest tones.
"I have them already."
"Why not give them to him?"
"I had thought of that—but it's dangerous."
"Why dangerous?"
"It might bring on a panic."
"What have you to lose by it?"
"Nothing, if I'm wise."
"I've never known anybody to call you a fool."
"A panic's a dangerous thing to monkey with."
"Nonsense!" Nan cried with enthusiasm. "I'll back you to win when the test comes."
Bivens smiled with pride.
"Yes. I could win, I think, having a little inside information about what may happen."
"Why don't you do it, then?"
"It's dangerous," Bivens repeated, thoughtfully.
"It couldn't injure Stuart?" his wife asked cautiously.
"No. It couldn't hurt him. On the other hand, I might make him the unconscious instrument of a great personal vengeance, double my fortune and possibly land Jim in the White House."
"You must do it, dear!" his wife cried, trembling with suppressed excitement. Bivens hesitated and shook his head.
"It's playing with dynamite."
"It's worth the risk to double your fortune—do it for my sake!"
Nan leaned close and pressed her husband's hand while her dark eyes found their way into his heart. The hard mouth smiled as he took her flushed face in his hands and kissed her.
"I'll do it," he said with firm accent.
"I know you'll win—you never fail!" she cried, "You'll not lose a moment?"
"No. I'll 'phone him at once."
Bivens called Stuart and made an appointment to meet him at the Algonquin Club for dinner two days later.
"Why two days' delay?" Nan asked petulantly.
"It will require that time to prepare the papers. Don't worry. I'll put the thing through now."
When Stuart sat down with Bivens in one of the magnificent private dining rooms of his millionaire club two days later, he was struck with the perfection of the financier's dress, and the easy elegance of his manners.
"Nan has surely done wonders with some pretty crude material!" he mused.
As the meal progressed the lawyer's imagination continued to picture the process of training through which she had put Bivens to develop from the poor white Southerner, the polished little man of the gilded world he now saw. No flight of his fancy could imagine the real humour of it all. He recalled Nan's diary with grim amusement.
While Bivens had really been wax in her skillful hands since the day of her marriage, the one task she found hard was her desperate and determined effort to make him a well-groomed man. She was finally compelled to write out instructions for his daily conduct and enforce them with all sorts of threats and blandishments. She pasted this programme in Bivens's hat, at last, and he was in mortal terror lest some one should lift the inside band and read them. They were minute and painfully insistent on the excessive use of soap and water. They required that he wash and scrub two and three times daily. Not only did they prescribe tooth brushes and mouth washes, with all sorts of pastes and powders, but that he should follow it with an invention of the devil for torturing the gums known as "dental floss." To get even with the man who invented the thing Bivens bought him out and stopped its manufacture—only to find the scoundrel had invented a new one and had it on the market three weeks later.
In the midst of this agony of breaking him to the copious use of water, Bivens found a doctor who boldly declared that excessive bathing was ruinous to the health—that water was made for fish and air for man. The little millionaire made him chief of the staff of his household doctors, but Nan refused to admit him when she learned his views. Bivens secretly built him a hospital, endowed it, and gave a fund to found a magazine to proclaim his gospel.
It took two years to thoroughly break him so that she could always be sure that his nails were trimmed and his clothes in perfect style. He had long since ceased to struggle and had found much happiness of late years in vying with her in the perfection of his personal appearance until he had come to fit into the great establishments, which he had built at her suggestion, as though to the manor born.
When the dinner was finished Bivens dismissed the waiter, lighted one of his huge cigars and drew from a morocco case which he had placed beside his chair a type-written manuscript. He turned its leaves thoughtfully a moment and handed them to Stuart.
"There's a document, Jim, that cost me ten thousand dollars to prepare; for whose suppression a million dollars would be paid and no questions asked."
"And you give it to me?" the District Attorney asked, with a smile.
"I give it to you."
"But why this generosity on your part, Cal?"
The sarcasm which the lawyer threw into the playful banter of his tone was not lost on the financier. The mask of his cunning, dark visage was not slipped for a moment as he slowly replied:
"I have anticipated that question. I answer it fully and frankly. There is enough dynamite in that document to blow up half of Wall Street and land somebody in the White House."
"And many in the morgue?"
"And some in the penitentiary. I've watched your work the past nine years with genuine pride, Jim. You've said a lot of hard things about rich malefactors, but you've never touched me."
"No, I think you're too shrewd to be caught in that class, Cal."
"I pride myself that I am. It's only the clumsy fool who gets tangled in the criminal law. But a lot of them have done it—big fellows whose names fill the world with noise. I've taken the pains to put into that type-written document the names, the dates, the places, the deeds, the names of the witnesses and all the essential facts. Do what you please with it. If you do what I think you will, some men who are wearing purple and fine linen will be wearing stripes before another year and you will be the biggest man in New York."
"And your motive?"
"Does it matter?"
"It vitally affects the credibility of this story."
"You must know my motive?"
"I prefer to be sure of it before taking so important and daring an action as you suggest."
Bivens rose and stood before his friend with his smooth hands folded behind his back.
"You believe me, Jim, when I say that my pride in your career is genuine?"
"I've never doubted it," was the quick answer.
"Then two suggestions will be enough. Perhaps I wish to get even with some men who have done me a dirty trick or two, and perhaps, incidentally, in the excitement which will follow this exposure of fraud and crime, I may make an honest penny—is that enough?"
"Quite."
"And you'll make the attack at once?"
Stuart glanced rapidly through the first page of the document and his eyes began to dance with excitement.
"The only favour I ask," Bivens added, "is twenty-four hours' notice before you act."
"I'll let you know."
Stuart rose quickly, placed the document in his inside pocket and hurried home.
CHAPTER IV
EVERY MAN'S SHADOW
The deeper the young lawyer probed into the mass of corruption Bivens had placed in his hands the more profound became his surprise. At first he was inclined to scout the whole story as an exaggeration invented in the fierce fight with financial foes.
It was incredible!
That men whose names were the synonyms of honesty and fair dealing, men entrusted with the management of companies whose assets represented the savings of millions of poor men, the sole defense of millions of helpless women and children—that these trusted leaders of the world were habitually prostituting their trusts for personal gain, staggered belief.
He delayed action and began a careful, patient, thorough investigation. As it proceeded, his amazement increased. He found that Bivens had only scratched the surface of the truth. He found that the system of fraud and chicanery had spread from the heads of the big companies until the whole business world was honeycombed with its corruption.
New York, the financial centre of the Nation, had gone mad with the insane passion for money at all hazards—by all means, fair or foul. The Nation was on the tidal wave of the most wonderful industrial boom in its history. The price of stocks had reached fabulous figures and still soared to greater heights. Millionaires were springing up, like mushrooms, in a night. Waiters at fashionable hotels, who hung on the chairs of rich guests with more than usual fawning, were boasting of fortunes made in a day. Broadway and Central Park and every avenue leading to the long stretches of good country roads flashed with hundreds of new automobiles, crowded with strange smiling faces.
Two months had passed since Bivens placed in the District Attorney's hands the document which was destined to make sad history in the annals of the metropolis. Stuart felt that the time had come to act. It was his solemn duty to the people.
He sat in his private office in one of the great skyscrapers down town holding in his hand a list of the men he was about to ask the Grand Jury to indict for crimes which would send them to prison, exile and dishonoured death. It was a glorious morning in May. The window was open and a soft wind was blowing from the south. The view of the blue expanse of the great harbour and towering hills of Staten Island in the distance was entrancing. The south wind filled his heart with memories of high ideals, and noble aspirations born in his own land of poverty and want.
His people in the South had known the real horrors of want, had fought the grim battle, won an honest living and kept their lives clean and strong. And just because they had, his heart was filled with a great pity as he read over and over again the illustrious names he was about to blacken with the stain of crime. He thought of women in sheltered homes up town whose necks would bend to the storm; of the anguish of old-fashioned fathers and mothers who could think no evil of their own, whose spirits would droop and die at the first breath of shame. He rose at last with calm decision.
"I've got to do it—that's all. But before I do, I'm going to know one or two things beyond the shadow of a doubt."
He seized his telephone and made an appointment to call at once on Bivens.
The financier extended his delicate hand and with a cordial smile led Stuart to a seat beside his desk. The only sign he betrayed of deep emotion was the ice-like coldness of his slender fingers.
"Well, Jim, you've completed your very thorough investigation?"
"How did you know I was making a thorough investigation?"
Stuart looked at Bivens with a quick movement of surprise. The little man was gazing intently at the ceiling.
"I make it my business to know things which vitally interest me. You found my facts accurate?"
"Remarkably so."
"And you are ready to strike?"
The black eyes flashed.
"When I have confirmed some statements you have made in your story concerning the private life of these men. How do you know the accuracy of the facts you state in a single line, for instance, about the private life and habits of the president of a certain trust company?"
A cold smile played about Bivens's mouth for a moment.
"You don't suppose I would make a statement like that unless I know it to be true?"
"I found all your other facts correct. This I haven't been able to verify. You make it incidentally, as though it were a matter of slight importance. To my mind it's the key to the man's character and to every act of his life. How did you discover it?"
"Very simply."
Bivens walked to his door, opened it, looked outside, stepped to one of the great steel safes and drew its massive doors apart. He pulled a slip from a cabinet fitted with a card-case index, noted the number, replaced the card, opened another door and drew out a manuscript notebook of some three hundred pages of type-written matter. Each page was written without spacing and contained as many words as the average page of a printed novel. On the back of the morocco cover was printed in plain gold lettering:
"THE PRIVATE LIFE OF NO. 560."
He handed the volume to Stuart, closed the safe, and resumed his seat.
"You may take that book with you, Jim," he said quietly. "I trust to your honour not to reveal its contents except in the discharge of your sworn duty as an officer of the law. You will find in it the record of the distinguished president's private life for the past ten years without the omission of a single event of any importance."
Stuart glanced through the book with amazement.
"How did you come into possession of such facts?"
"No trouble at all," was the easy answer. "It only requires a little money and a little patience and a little care in selecting the right men for the right job. Any man in the business world who thinks he can do as he pleases in this town will wake some morning with a decided jolt. The war for financial supremacy has developed a secret service which approaches perfection. The secret service of armies is child's play compared to it.
"Not only do I systematically watch my employees until I know every crook and turn of their lives, but I watch with even greater care the heads of every rival firm in every department of the industrial world where my interests touch theirs.
"I not only watch the heads of firms, I watch their trusted assistants and confidential men. In that big safe a thousand secrets lie locked whose revelation would furnish matter enough to run the yellow journals for the next five years.
"Every man who holds a position of trust and puts his hands on money has his shadow. It's a question of business. The wholesaler must know the character of the retailer to whom he extends credit. A trust must know what its remaining independent rivals are doing, what business they are developing, what big orders they seek. I must know, and I must know accurately and fully what every enemy is doing, what he is thinking, with whom he drinks, where he spends his time and how he lives.
"Modern business is war, the fiercest and most cruel the world has ever known. It is of greater importance to a modern captain of industry to know the plans of his enemy than it ever was to the commanding general of an opposing army."
"I see," Stuart responded, thoughtfully.
"There are men down there in the street now," Bivens went on dreamily, "who are wearing silk hats to-day for whom the prison tailor is cutting a suit. I have their records in that silent little steel-clad room. It's a pitiful thing, but it's life. And, believe me, the realities of our every-day life here are more wonderful than the wildest romance the novelist can spin.
"Last year I had a man of genius at the head of one of my corporations. Not the slightest suspicion had ever been directed against him. But my men reported to me that he was supporting two establishments, besides the one he kept for his family, and that in those two secret orchards which he tended he was making presents of fine jewelry. An examination of his office by experts revealed the fact that he was wrong. He was bounced. He would have gone no matter what his accounts showed. It is only a question of time and a very short time when such a man goes wrong.
"The scarcest thing in New York to-day, Jim, is the man who can't be bought and sold. The thing that's beyond price in the business world is character—combined with brains. That's why I made you the offer I did once upon a time to come in with me. There are positions to-day in New York with a salary of half a million a year waiting for men who can fill them. If I could find one man of the highest order of creative and executive ability who would stand by me in my enterprises I could be the richest man in the world in ten years."
Stuart lifted his eyes from the record he was casually scanning and smiled into Bivens's dark, serious face.
The look silenced the speaker. The little man knew instinctively that Stuart was at that moment weighing his own life and character by the merciless standard he had set up for others. Judged by conventional laws he had nothing to fear. He was a faithful member of his church. He gave liberally to its work and gave generously to a hundred worthy charities. He loved his wife with old-fashioned loyalty and tenderness and grieved that she was childless. He stood by his friends and fought his enemies, asking no quarter and giving none.
Yet in his heart of hearts he knew that, judged in the great white light of the Eternal when all things hidden shall be revealed, he could not stand blameless. He knew that while he had kept within the letter of the law, his genius consisted in the skill with which he had learned to divert other men's earnings into his own coffers.
And deep down in the depths of his memory there lay one particular deed which lent colour to all that followed. He knew that however loftily he might discourse at present about "character," "honour," "integrity," and "fair dealing," he had stolen the formula from his big-hearted employer with which he had laid the foundation of his fortune. It was the first half-million that came hard. It was this first half-million that bore the stain of shame. He had justified it with fine sophistry until he counted himself a benefactor to Woodman, but the grim fact stood out in his memory with growing clearness as his millions piled up with each succeeding year.
His other questionable acts on which the fate of millions had often hung he had no difficulty in justifying. Business was war. In war it was fair to deceive, to march in the night, to attack when least suspected, to strike to kill, to destroy and lay waste the fairest countries and starve your enemy into submission.
All this had flashed through Bivens's imagination when Stuart smiled, and in spite of his conscious dignity and power, he had fallen silent. The smile had made him nervous. He wondered vaguely what was in the mind of the tall quiet man that provoked a smile at such a serious moment.
He wondered particularly whether the lawyer could have suspected his hobby, for he had one of the most curious—a collection of historic material on the origin of American fortunes. The origin of his own had early made Bivens suspect that all great fortunes which had mounted into millions, like his own, may have been built in their first foundations on fraud. He wondered if Stuart had by any accident stumbled on this information. Even if he had he could not understand his real motive in such an investigation, and yet the lazy smile with which he looked up from that record was disconcerting.
Bivens waited for him to speak. The moment was one big with fate. Stuart was about to reach a decision that would make history. No one knew so well its importance as the keen intellect that gleamed behind the little black eyes watching with tireless patience.
Bivens was the one odd man in a thousand who knew that big events were not to be found in earthquakes, tornadoes and battles. He had long since learned that the events which shake the world are always found in the silent hours when the soul of a single man says, "I will!"
Below he could hear the roar of the city's life. On the Curb brokers were shouting their wares with their accustomed gusto. On the floor of the Exchange the tide of business ebbed and flowed with the fierce pulse of an apparently exhaustless strength. Men bought and sold with no fear of to-morrow. Yet a single word from the lips of the tall, clean-shaven young officer of the law and a storm would break which might tear from the foundations institutions on whose solidity modern civilization seemed to rest.
The silence at length became suffocating to Bivens. He moistened his lips and drew his smooth fingers softly over his silky beard.
"Well, Jim," he said at length. "You are going to act?"
In the moment's pause the little swarthy body never moved, his breath ceased and every nerve quivered with the strain and yet he betrayed nothing to the man who sat before him, silent, thoughtful.
Stuart rose abruptly, his reply sharp and clear.
"Yes, I'm going to act."
"At once?"
"It's my duty."
Bivens grasped his hand.
"I congratulate you, Jim. You are going to do a big thing, one of the biggest things in our history. You are going to teach the mighty that the law is mightier. It ought to land you at the very top in politics or any other old place you'd like to climb."
"That's something which doesn't interest me yet, Cal. The thing that stuns me is that I've got to do so painful a thing. But my business is the enforcement of justice. There's one thing I still can't understand."
He paused and looked at Bivens curiously.
"What's that?" the financier softly asked.
"Why you of all men on earth should have put this information in my hands. The honour of the achievement, if good shall come to the country, is really yours, not mine."
"And you can't conceive of my acting for the country's good?"
Bivens's black eyes twinkled.
"Not by the wildest leap of my imagination."
The twinkle broadened into a smile as the lawyer continued:
"Your code is simple, Cal. There's no provision in it for disinterested effort for others. Few financiers of modern times can conceive of a sane man deliberately working for the good of the people as against his own. In your face, there has never been any doubting, any perplexity, since you made your first strike in New York. Behind your black eyes there has always glowed the steady, deadly purpose of the man who knows exactly what he wants and how he is going to get it. This time you've got me up a tree. You have rendered the people a great service. You have placed me under personal obligations. But how you are going to get anything out of it is beyond me."
"Oh, I'll have my reward, my boy," Bivens answered jovially, as his dainty fingers again stroked his beard, pressing his mustache back from the thin lips, "and I assure you it will not be purely spiritual."
The door had scarcely closed on Stuart when Bivens pressed the button which called his confidential secretary.
In a moment the man stood at his elbow with the tense erect bearing of an orderly on the field of battle. The quick nervous touch of the master's hand on that button had told to his sensitive ears the story of a coming life-and-death struggle. His words came with sharp nervous energy:
"Yes sir?"
The financier slowly drew the big cigar from his mouth and spoke in low tones:
"A meeting of the Allied Bankers here in 30 minutes. No telephone messages. A personal summons to each. They enter one at a time that no one on the outside sees them come. You understand?"
"I understand."
Bivens raised his finger in warning. "Your life on the issue."
Trembling with excitement the secretary turned and quickly left the room.
CHAPTER V
GATHERING CLOUDS
The sensation which the District Attorney sprang in the sudden indictment of the president of the Iroquois Company was profound and far-reaching. The day before the indictment was presented to the Grand Jury stocks began to tumble without any apparent cause. The "big interests" who had hitherto counted on exhaustless funds to sustain them in any market they might choose to make were paralyzed by the suddenness of the attack on stocks and the daring of its hidden leader.
When the warrant for the arrest of the great man had been served and he was admitted to bail to await his coming trial, there was a feeble rally in the market, but the rats quickly began to desert a sinking ship. The president under indictment had ceased to be a power. There was a wild scramble of his associates who were equally guilty to save their own skins. The press, which at first denounced Stuart, now boldly demanded the merciless prosecution of all the guilty. And they hailed the brilliant young District Attorney as the coming man.
In the meantime all kinds of securities continued to tumble. For six consecutive days stocks had fallen with scarcely an hour's temporary rally. Every effort of the bull operators, who had ruled the market for the two years past, to stem the tide was futile. Below the surface, in the silent depths of growing suspicion and fear, an army of sappers and miners under the eye of one man were digging at the foundations of the business world—the faith of man in his fellow-man.
Each day there was a crash and each day the little financier and his unscrupulous allies marked a new victim. The next day the death notice was posted on a new door, and when the bomb had exploded they picked up the pieces and moved to a new attack.
In the midst of the campaign for the destruction of public credit which Bivens and his associates, the Allied Bankers, were conducting with such profound secrecy and such remarkable results, when their profits had piled up into millions, a bomb was suddenly exploded under their own headquarters.
The Van Dam Trust Company was put under the ban of the New York Clearing House. The act was a breach of faith, utterly unwarranted by any known law of the game. But it was done.
When the president of the company walked quietly into Bivens's office and made the announcement, for a moment the little dark man completely lost his nerve—cold beads of sweat started from his swarthy forehead.
"Are you joking?" he gasped.
"Do you think I'd joke about my own funeral?"
"No, of course not, but there must be some mistake."
"There's no mistake. It's a blow below the belt, but it's a knockout for the moment. They know we are solvent, two dollars for one. But they know we have $90,000,000 on deposit and we have some big enemies. They know that the group we have supported have smashed this market, and they've set out to fight the devil with fire. They're determined to force a show-down and see how much real money is behind us. We can pull through if we stand together."
The stolid face of the banker became a motionless mask as he asked:
"Are we going to stand together?"
Bivens sprang to his feet, exclaiming fiercely:
"Until hell freezes over!"
The banker smiled feebly for the first time in a week.
"Then it's all right, Mr. Bivens. We'll pull through. They'll start a run on us to-morrow. Five millions in cash will meet it and we'll win, hands down. We have powerful friends. Our only sin is our association with your group. We must have that five millions in the safe before the doors are opened to-morrow."
"You shall have it," was the firm answer.
With a cheerful pressure of the hand the president of the Van Dam Trust Company left and Bivens called his secretary.
"We turn the market to-morrow—orders to all our men. Knock the bottom out of it until the noon hour, then turn and send it skyward with a bound. You understand?"
"Yes sir."
With an instinctive military salute the secretary hurried to execute the order.
When Dr. Woodman returned home that night from one of his endless tramps among the poor, Harriet opened the door.
Something about the expression of his face startled her. For the first time in her life she saw in its gaunt lines the shadow of despair. He had aged rapidly of late, but the sunlight had never before quite faded from his eyes.
"What is it, Papa dear?" she asked tenderly, slipping an arm about his neck as she drew him down into his favourite chair.
"What, child?" he responded vaguely.
"You look utterly worn out. Tell me what's the matter. I'm no longer a child. I'm a woman now—strong and well and brave. Let me help you."
"You do help me, baby!" he laughed with an effort at his old-time joyous spirit. "Every time I touch your little hand, you give me new life. Every note from your sweet voice thrills me with new hope. And I dream dreams and build castles and plan for to-morrow as if I were a boy. What more can a woman do? What more did God mean for a beautiful daughter to do for her old father?"
"Well, I want to do more, I want to share your troubles and help you carry your burdens."
"And so you shall, my dear. Some day your voice will thrill thousands as it now thrills my heart. You'll win fame and wealth for your father. You shall care for him in old age. And his pride and joy shall be to say to those he meets—'the great singer, yes, my daughter, sir—my little baby!'"
Harriet nestled closer.
"But I want to help now. I'm afraid I've been thoughtless and selfish. You look so miserable to-night. It cuts me to the heart."
"Nonsense, Baby dear," he broke in cheerfully. "I'm not miserable. I've really had a good day. I've spent the whole afternoon superintending the distributing of flowers among the hospitals. And I've discovered a curious thing—you couldn't imagine what it is?"
The doctor paused and laughed in his old playful way.
"What?" she cried.
Harriet clapped her hands with a moment's childish happiness as she had done so often when her father propounded one of his mysterious problems for her solution.
The doctor whispered:
"I've discovered that pinks are feminine and roses masculine."
"How?"
"Because the men in the hospitals all beg for pinks and the women for roses. It's curious. I never hit on the explanation before. Isn't it reasonable?"
"Yes, quite," was the sober answer. "But it doesn't explain the lines of suffering in your dear face to-night—I'm worried."
"But I'm not suffering!" he insisted with a frown. "On the other hand I'm cheerful to-night. I saved a kid's life with a flower. His father used to work for me in the old days. They asked me to come to see him. There was no hope. He had been given up to die. I gave him a fragrant white pink. His thin feverish fingers grasped it eagerly. In all his life he had never held a flower in his hand before. He pressed it to his lips, his soul thrilled at its sweet odour, and the little tired spirit came staggering back from the mists of Eternity just to see what it meant. He will live. It was the feather's weight that tipped the beam of life the right way. How little it takes sometimes to give life and happiness. And how tragic and pitiful the fact that so many of us can't get that little at the right moment!"
The joy and laughter had slowly faded from his face and voice as he spoke until the last words had unconsciously fallen into accents of despair.
The girl's arms slipped around his neck in a tightening hold and she pressed her cheek against his a moment in silence.
"Papa dear, it's no use trying to deceive me. I've the right to know what is troubling you. I'm not a child. You must tell me."
"Why, it's nothing much, dearie," he answered gently. "I'm worried a little about money. I've a note due at the bank and they've called on me unexpectedly to meet it. But I'll manage somehow. Don't you worry about it. Everything will come out all right. I feel like a millionaire among the people I've seen to-day."
"I'll give up my music, go to work and help you right away."
"Sh!"
The father placed his hand gently over her lips and the tears sprang into his eyes in spite of his effort to keep them back.
"Don't talk sacrilege, my child. Such words are blasphemy. God gave me a man's body for the coarse work of bread-winning. He gave you the supreme gift, a voice that throbs with eloquence, a power that can lift and inspire the world. Only when you are cultivating that gift are you working. Then you are doing the highest and finest thing of which you are capable. I should be a criminal if I permitted you to do less. Never say such a thing again unless you would make me utterly miserable."
He paused and took her cheeks between his hands.
"Promise me, dear—it's the one wish of my heart, the one thing worth working and struggling for—promise me that you will never stop until the training of your voice is complete, that no matter what happens you will obey me in this. It is my one command. You will obey me?"
There was dignity and compelling power now in the deep tones of his voice.
The girl felt instinctively its authority.
"Yes, Papa, I promise, if it will make you happy."
"It's the only thing I live for. I've never said this to you before, but I say it now and I don't want you ever to forget it. Now run along to bed and never bother your pretty head again about such things. I'll find food and a home for my baby and she shall live her own beautiful life to the last reach of its power. All I ask is that you do your level best with the gift of God."
"I'll try, Papa dear," was the quiet answer as she kissed him again and softly left the room.
Harriet had scarcely reached her room when Adams, the cashier of one of the Allied Banks, who owed the doctor for three months' rent, entered the library with quick nervous tread.
"I've big news, sir," he said excitedly.
The doctor looked up with a half bantering smile.
"You don't mean that you've got the whole of your three months' rent? If you have, break it to me gently, Adams, or I'll faint."
"Better than three months' rent," the cashier whispered nervously. "I've a big tip on the stock market."
The older man grunted contemptuously.
"Yes, that's what ails you, I know. You've been getting them for some time. That's why you owe me for your rooms. That's why there's something the matter with your accounts."
"I swear to you, Doctor, my accounts are clean. My expenses have been so big the past year, with the doctor's bills I've had to pay, I simply couldn't live. The price of everything on earth has gone up fifty per cent. except my wages. I've bought a few stocks. I've made a little and lost a little. I've got the chance now I've been waiting for. I've a real piece of information from the big insiders who are going to make the market to-morrow."
The doctor shook his head and looked at the cashier with humourous pity. The man was trembling from excitement he could not control.
"So you've really got it straight, this time?"
"Beyond the shadow of doubt!" he cried excitedly. "I want you to share with me the fortune I'm going to make."
He paused and breathed heavily, his eyes widening into an unnatural stare, as he continued:
"My God, if I only had ten thousand dollars to-morrow I could be worth a hundred thousand before night!"
The doctor leaned forward with deepening interest.
"You really believe such rot?"
"Believe it, man, it's as certain as fate! There can't be any mistake about it. At twelve o'clock the tide will turn and they'll begin to leap upward in the wildest market that's been seen in a generation. Doctor, you've been so good to me and I can trust you implicitly. You're the only man on earth I've told. You need money. If you can raise five hundred dollars in cash you can make five thousand in six hours."
The older man's eyes flashed with sudden excitement, which he suppressed with an effort.
"Adams, you're crazy," was the gruff reply.
"I've got it straight, I tell you!" he went on breathlessly. "I got it from Bivens's private secretary. The little weasel has made millions on this break and he has been selling the market short for two weeks. To-morrow morning he is going to smash it for the last time and at noon throw his millions on the bull side. The market will go down three points on the break in the morning. It will jump five points in ten minutes when it turns the other way. There are stocks on the list that will recover ten points before the market closes."
"Bivens is going to do this?" the older man interrupted.
"Yes. I got it from the man who took his order."
"Then it's a trick. It's a lie. Take my advice and do just the opposite from what you understand. Bivens will sell out his partners in the deal."
"Man, he can't sell out!" the cashier insisted. "It's his own deal. He's in it for all he's worth!"
The doctor rose with sudden excitement.
"Adams, this is the first time in my life I've ever been tempted to buy stocks."
"You can't lose, sir."
"But I'm in desperate need of money. I've a note for three thousand due. I've two thousand dollars set aside to finish my little girl's musical studies. I've got to meet that note somehow and I've got to have the money for her. It looks like a chance. I'll go in and watch the market to-morrow."
"If it don't act exactly as I say—don't touch it. It if does, go in for all you're worth. If stocks start down as I say they will, sell short, cover at noon, and then buy for the rise. Don't listen to fools, just buy, buy, buy! You can sell before the market closes and make twenty thousand dollars."
"I'll drop into a broker's office and watch the market open any way, Adams."
The doctor seized his hand cordially.
"And I want to thank you for your thoughtfulness in coming to me."
"I wish I could do more, sir," the cashier said, with deep feeling. "I'll never forget your kindness to me the past three months. When the sun shines again, you'll hear from me."
"Oh, that's all right, my boy. Some men invest in stocks, some in bonds, some in real estate. My best investments have always been in the good turns I've done my neighbours. Good night."