CHAPTER XTHE SMOLDERING EMBERS
If Mercer’s avowal surprised the colonel, there was no trace of such emotion in his face or his manner. “I rather thought it might be,” he said. “And our young friend who is promoting Fireless Stoves with the solemn energy he learned doing Dicky stunts?”
“Mr. Endicott Tracy.” Mercer had the manner of a ceremonious introduction. Tracy flavored the customary murmur of pleasure with his radiant smile.
“Pleased, I am sure,” said the colonel in turn, bowing. “Your father, I suppose, is the president of the Midland; and Mr. Keatcham will, I suppose, not be able to prevent his reëlection to-morrow. Is that the game?”
Mr. Tracy’s son admitted that it might be.
“Ah, very clever,” said the colonel, “very. Any side-show, for example?”
“I did not go into this for money.” Mercer’slevel gaze did not relax, and he kept his dreary eyes unflinchingly on Winter’s. A peculiar look in the eyes recalled some tragic and alien memory, just what, Rupert could not capture; it flitted hazily through his thoughts ere the next words drove it off. “Nevertheless, it is true that if we win out I shall have enough to pay back to all the people who trusted me the money they lost when they were frightened into selling their stock in the Tidewater, and your aunt and Mr. Tracy stand to make money.”
“How do you expect to make it?”
“The M. and S. stock is away down because of rumors Keatcham is likely to control it. When it is settled it is not to be looted by him, the stock will rise—we are sure of the ten points; we may make twenty—”
“And my aunt has financed your scheme, has she?—paid all your expenses?”
The Harvard man laughed out. “Ourexpenses? Oh, yes, she has grub-staked us, all right; but she has done a good deal more—she has furnished more than half a million to us for our gamble.”
The colonel considered; then: “But why did you keep him here so long beforehand?” said he.
“It was not long beforehand,” said Mercer. “The meeting was adjourned for a day—we don’t know why—we fancy that his partners suspect something. It is called for to-morrow, in spite of their efforts to have it put off a week. But we want more; we want to induce Keatcham to vote his own stock for us, and to call off his dogs himself.”
“And you can’t force him to do it?”
“We shall force him, easily enough,” returned Mercer, “but we don’t trust him. We want his private code book to be sure he is playing fair. In fact, we have to have it, because nothing gets any attention that isn’t, so to speak, properly introduced.”
“And he will not give it to you?”
“Says he has lost it.”
“Perhaps hehas,” mused the soldier. “But now, all this is not my concern, except that I have no right, as a soldier, even passively to aid in breaking the laws. It is my duty to rescue and free Mr. Keatcham.”
But before he could speak further Mercer lifted a hand in apologetic interruption. Would Colonel Winter excuse him, but he must ask Mr. Tracy to go back to thepatioand have an eye on thedetective. Endicott only exchanged a single glance before he obeyed. Mercer’s eyes followed him. “It was not to be helped,” he said, half to himself, “but I have been sorry more than once that I had to take him into this.”
Winter looked at him, more puzzled than he wanted to admit to himself; indeed, he was rather glad to have the next word come from Mercer.
“I have a few things I want to say to you; they go easier when we are alone—but won’t you sit down?” When the colonel had seated himself he went on: “I’d like to explain things a bit.”
“I’d like to have you,” answered the soldier. “I think you have the clue to Archie’s whereabouts and don’t recognize it yourself; so put me wise, as the slang goes.”
Then, without preface, in brief, nervous sentences, spoken hardly with a quiver of a muscle or a wavering cadence of the voice, yet nevertheless instinct with a deadly earnestness, Mercer began to talk. He told of his struggling youth on the drained plantation, mortgaged so that after the interest was paid there was barely enough to get the meagerest living for his mother and sister and little brother; of his accidental discovery of iron ore on the place; of his working as a commonlaborer in the steel mills; of his being “rooster,” “strand-boy,” “rougher,” “heater,” “roller,” during three years while he was waiting for his chance; of his heart-draining toil; of his solitary studies.
“I never was the kind of fellow to make friends,” he said, in his soft, monotonous voice, “so I expect I was the fonder of my own kin. I’d a mighty good mother, sir, and sister; and there was Phil—my little brother. We were right happy all together on the old place that’s been in our family for a hundred years, and it was all we asked to stay there; but it had every dollar of mortgage it could stand, and the soil all worn-out, needing all kinds of things; and I wish you could have seen the makeshifts we had for machines! I was blacksmith and carpenter and painter—just sixteen, and not an especially bright chap, but mighty willing to work; and my mother and Sis and I—we did a heap. When I stumbled on the ore I couldn’t be sure, but I wrote to Aunt Rebecca Winter. She sent a man down. He looked up things. It would take a heap of money to work the mines, but it might be a big thing. She paid off the mortgage and took another. First to last, she’s been mighty kind tous. She would have done more had we let her. So I went to Pittsburgh and learned my trade, and I made enough to pay interest, and the people at home got a fairly good living. When I was twenty-one I was back home, and got a company started and put up a mill. You know how those things have to creep up. But there was ore, all right, and I understood my business and taught the hands. We’d a right sweet little mill. Well, I don’t want to take up your time, suh. Those next ten or twelve years were right hard work, but they were happy, too. We prospered; we helped the whole county prosper. We paid Aunt Becky. We were in good shape. We went through ’93 paying our dividends just as regular, and making them, too, though we didn’t much more—it was close sailing. But we were honest; we made a mighty good article; and everybody trusted us. Then came the craze for mergers, and a number of us got together. Still we weren’t very big, but we were big enough to be listed. I didn’t want it, but some of the men thought it was a terrible fine thing to be ‘Iron Kings.’ That was how. Keatcham was looking over the country for fish for his net; he somehow heard that here was a heap of good ore and new mills. The firstintimation we had was his secretary coming as a Northern invalid—why, he stayed at our house because we were so sorry for him, the hotel being in new hands and not right comfortable. He seemed so interested in our mills, and bought some stock, and sent presents to Phil and my mother after he went.”
“That was Keatcham’s private secretary, you say?”
“Yes, suh, Atkins. You met him on the train—as sleek and deadly a little scoundrel as ever got rich quick. Oh, he’s deep. Well, suh, you know the usual process. Convinced of the value of the property, Keatcham and one or two others set out to buy it. They got little blocks of it here and there. Then Atkins wrote me in confidence that some men were after the controlling interest and meant to squeeze us all out—offered to lend me money to buy—of course, on a margin. And I was plumb idiot enough to be tolled into his trap! I, who had never speculated with a dollar before, I didn’t borrowhismoney, but I took all I could raise myself, and I bought enough to be sure I could control the next election. Then—the slump came, and after the slump the long, slow crumbling. I controlled the electionall right, of course, but before the next one came I was ruined, and Keatcham put his own men in. I went desperately to New York. I didn’t know how to fight those fellows; it was a new game. I didn’t find Atkins. Maybe because that wasn’t his name when I had known him. I was so sure that the property was good—as if that mattered! As if anything mattered with these gamblers who play with loaded dice and dope the horses they bet against! Phil had all his property in the mills; we all had. We mortgaged the house; we had to, to protect our stock. You know how the fight ended, and what happened at Cambridge. That isn’t all. My wife—” He stood a little straighter, and the light went out of his eyes. “I told you I don’t make friends easily, and I am not the kind of man women take to; all the same, the loveliest girl in the South loved me ever since I jumped over the mill-dam to save her rag doll, once, when she was visiting her aunt near us. I’d married, when we seemed prosperous. Now, understand me, I don’t say it was my ruin and Phil’s death that killed her and the baby; she had pneumonia, and it may be that seeing that paper by accident didn’t turn the scale; but I do say that she had her last hoursembittered by it. That’s enough for me. When I got home with—with Phil, she was dead.”
“Tough,” said the colonel. He began to revise his impressions of Mercer.
“Wasn’t it?” the other asked, with a simplicity of appeal that affected the listener more than anything he had heard. He jumped out of his chair and began pacing the room, talking more rapidly. “You’re aman; you know what I wanted to do.”
“Kill somebody, I suppose.Ishould.”
“Just that. I ran Atkins to cover after a while through Endicott Tracy. That boy is one of the noblest fellows that ever lived; yes, suh. He was going to help poor Phil, Phil’s room-mate had told him. All those boys—look a-here, Colonel Winter, if ever anybody talks to you about Harvard fellows being indifferent—”
“I shall tell him he can’t get under the American surface. A Harvard boy will do anything on earth for his friends.”
“They were mighty good to me. It was Endy found out about Atkins, just from my description of him. I found out about Keatcham for myself. And you are quite right—for a little while I wanted to kill them both. Looked like I just naturallyhadto kill them! But there was mymother. There was nobody to take care of her but Sis and me, and a trial for murder is terribly expensive. Of course, anybody can get off who has got money and can spend it; but it takes such an awful heap of money. And we were all ruined together, for what little was left was all in the company, and that promptly stopped paying dividends. I couldn’t risk it. I had to wait. I had to go to work to support my mother, to pay Sis and her back, don’t you see? We came here. I got a job, a well-paid one, too, through Endy’s father, reporting on the condition of the mills—a kind of examiner. And the job was for Keatcham.”
“Why did you take it? I know, though. You did it to familiarize him with your appearance, so that he would not be warned when your chance came.”
“How did you know that?”
“A man I knew in the Philippines—a Filipino—was wronged by a white man, who took his wife and threw her aside when he tired of her. The girl killed herself. Her husband watched his chance for a year, found it at last—thanks to that very fact that his victim wasn’t on guard against him—and sent his knife home. He’dbeen that fellow’s servant. I picked the dead man up. That Filipino looked as you looked a minute ago.”
“What became of the Filipino?” inquired his listener.
The colonel had not told the story quite without intention. He argued subconsciously, that if Mercer were a good sort under all, he would have a movement of sympathy for a more cruelly wronged man than he; if not, he would drive ahead to his purpose, whatever that might be. His keen eyes looked a little more gentle as he answered: “He poisoned himself. The best way out, I reckon. I should hate to have had him shot after I knew the story. But there was really no option. But I’m interrupting you. You did your work well and won Keatcham’s confidence?”
“He isn’t a very confiding man. I didn’t see him often. My dealings were with Atkins. He didn’t know that I had found him out; he thought that he had only to explain his two names, and expected gratitude for his warning, as he called it. He is slimy; but I was able to repay a little of my score with him. I was employed by more than Keatcham, and I saw a good many industrial back-yards. Just by chance, I came on a clue, andEndy Tracy and I worked it up together. Atkins was selling information to Keatcham’s enemies. We did not make out a complete case, but enough of one to make Keatcham suspect him, and at the right time. But that happened later—you see, I don’t know how to tell a story even with so much at stake.” He pulled out his handkerchief, and Winter caught the gleam of the beads on his sallow forehead. “It was this way,” he went on. “At first I was only looking about for a safe chance to kill him, and to kill that snake of an Atkins; but then it grew on me; it was all too easy a punishment—just a quick death, when his victims had years of misery. I wanted him to wade through the hellIhad to wade through. I wanted him to knowwhyhe was condemned. Then it was I began to collect just the cases I knew about—just one little section of the horrible swath of agony and humiliation and poverty and sin he and his crowd had made—the one I knew every foot of, because I’d gone over it every night I wasn’t so dead tired Ihadto sleep. God! do you know what it is to have the people who used to be running out of their houses just to say howdy to you, curse you for a swindler or a fool or turn out of one street and down the other notto pass you? Didyouever have a little woman who used to give you frosted cake when you were a boy push her crape veil off her gray hair and hand you the envelope with her stock, with your handwriting on the envelope, and beg you—trying so hard not to cry, ’twas worse than if she had—beg you to lend her just half her interest money—and you couldn’t do it? Did you—never mind. I said I waded through hell. Idid!Not I alone—that was the worst—all the people that had trusted me! And just that some rich men should be richer. Why shouldtheyhave the lion’s share? The lion’s share belongs to the lion.Theyare nothing but jackals. They’re meaner than jackals, for the jackals take what the lion leaves, and these fellows steal the lion’s meat away from him. We made honest money; we paid honest wages; folks had more paint on their houses and more meat in their storehouses, and wore better clothes Sunday, and there were more school-houses and fewer saloons, and the negroes were learning a trade instead of loafing. The whole county was the better off for our prosperity, and there isn’t a mill in the outfit—and I know what I’m talking about—there isn’t a shop or a mine that’s as well run or makes as big an output nowas it did when the old crowd was in. You find it that way everywhere; and that’s what is going to break things down. We saw to all the little affairs; they wereouraffairs, don’t you know? But Keatcham’s new men draw their salaries and let things slide. Yet Keatcham is a great manager if he would only take the time; only he’s too busy stealing to develop his businesses; there’s more money in stealing a railway than in building one up. Oh, he isn’t a fool; if I could once get him where he wouldhaveto listen, I know I could make him understand. He’s pretty cold-blooded, and he doesn’t realize. He only sees straight ahead, not all round, like all these superhumanly clever thieves; they have mighty stupid streaks. Well, I’ve got him now, and it is kill or cure for him. He can’t make a riffle. I knew I couldn’t do anything alone; I had to wait. I had to have stronger men than I am to help. By and by they tried their jackal business on a real lion—on Tracy. They wanted to stealhisroad. I got on to them first. I see a heap of people in a heap of different businesses—the little people who talk. They notice all right, but they can see only their own little patch. I was the fellow riding round and seeing the township. I pieced together theplot and I told Endy Tracy. He wouldn’t believe me at first, because his father had given Keatcham his first start and done a hundred things for him. To be sure, his father has been obliged as an honest man to oppose Keatcham lately, but Keatcham couldn’t mean to burn him out that way. But he soon found that was precisely what Keatcham did mean. Then he was glad enough to help me save his father. The old man doesn’t know a thing; we don’t mean he ever shall know. We let him put up the best sort of a fight a man can with his hands tied while the other fellow is free.Myhands are free, too. I don’t respect the damned imbecile laws that let me be plundered any more than they do; and since my poor mother died last summer I am not afraid of anything; theyare; that’s where I have the choice of weapons. I tell you, suh,nobodyis big enough to oppress a desperate man! Keatcham had one advantage—he had unlimited money. But Aunt Rebecca helped us out there. Colonel, I want you to know I didn’t ask her for more than the bare grub-stake; it was she herself that planned our stock deal.”
“She is a dead game sport,” the colonel chuckled. “I believe you.”
“And I hope you don’t allow that I was willingto have her mix herself in our risks. She would come; she said she wanted to see the fun—”
“I believe you again,” the colonel assured him, and he remembered the odd sentence which his aunt had used the first night of their journey, when she expressed her hankering to match her wits against those of a first-class criminal.
“We didn’t reckon on your turning up, or the complication with Archie. I wish to God we’d taken the boy’s own word! But, now you know all about it, will you keep your hands off? That’s all we ask.”
“Well,”—the colonel examined his finger-nails, rubbing his hands softly, the back of one over the palm of the other—“well, you haven’t quite told me all. Don’t, unless you are prepared to have it used against you, as the policemen saybeforethe sweat-box. What did you do to Keatcham to get him to go with you so like Mary’s little lamb?”
“I learned of a little device that looks like a tiny currycomb and is so flat and small you can bind it on a man’s arm just over an artery. Just press on the spring and give the least scratch, and the man falls down in convulsions. I showed him a rat I had had fetched me, and killed it like a flash. He had his choice of walking out quietlywith me—I had my hand on his arm—or dropping down dead. He went quietly enough.”
“That was the meaning of his look at me, was it?” Winter thought. He said only: “Did Endicott Tracy know about that?”
“Of course not,” Mercer denied. “Do you reckon I want to mix the boy up in this more than I have? And Arnold only knew I was trying some kind of bluff game.”
“I will lay odds, though,” the colonel ventured in his gentlest tone, “that Mr. Samurai, as Haley calls him, knew more. But when did you get rid of Atkins?”
“Mr. Keatcham discharged him at Denver. I met Mr. Keatcham here; it was arranged on the train. We had it planned out. If that plan had failed I had another.”
“Neat. Very neat. And then you became the secretary?”
Mercer flushed in an unexpected fashion. “Certainly not!” he said with emphasis. “Do you think I would take his wages and not do the work faithfully? No, suh. I assumed to be his secretary in the office; that gave me a chance to arrange everything. But I did it to oblige him. I never touched a cent of his money. I paid, in fact, for our boardout of our own money. It would have burned my fingers, suh!”
“And the valet? Was he in your plot? Don’t answer if you—”
“He was not, suh,” replied Cary Mercer. “He is a right worthy fellow, and he thought, after he had seen to the tickets—which he did very carefully—and given them to me, he could go off on the little vacation which came to him by his master through me.”
“That’s a little bit evasive. However, I haven’t the right to ask you to give away your partners, anyhow.” He was peering at Mercer’s face behind his glasses, but the pallid, tired features returned him no clue to the thoughts in the head above them. “What have you done with Mr. Keatcham?” he concluded suddenly.
The question brought no change of expression, and Mercer answered readily: “I put him off by himself, where he sees no one and hears nothing. I read a good deal about prisons and the most effectual way of taming men, and solitary confinement is recommended by all the authorities. His meals are handed to him by—by a mechanical device. He has electric light some of the time, turned on from the outside. He has a comfortableroom and his own shower-bath. He has comfortable meals. And he is supplied with reading.”
“Reading?” repeated the colonel, his surprise in his voice.
For the first time he saw Mercer smile, but it was hardly a pleasant smile. “Yes, suh, reading,” he said. “I have had type-written copies made of all the cases which I discovered in regard to his stealing our company. I reasoned that when he would get absolutely tired of himself and his own thoughts he would just naturally beobligedto read, and that would be ready for him. He tore up one copy.”
“Hmn—I can’t say I wonder. What did you do?”
“I sent him another. I expected he would do that way. After a while he will go back to it, because it will draw him. He’ll hate it, but he will want to know them all. I know his nature, you see.”
“What are you going to do with him?”
“Let him go, after he does what we want and promises never to molest any of us.”
“But can you trust him?”
“He never breaks his word,” replied Mercer indifferently, “and besides, he knows he will bekilled if he should. He isn’t given to being scared, but he’s scared of me, all right.”
“What do you want him to do?”
“Promise to be a decenter man and to let Mr. Tracy alone in future; meanwhile, to send a wire in his secret code saying he has changed his mind. It will not surprise his crowd. He never confides in them, and he expects them to obey blindly anything in that code language. I reckon other telegrams are just for show, and they don’t notice them much.”
The colonel took a turn around the room to pack away this information in an orderly fashion in his mind. Mercer waited patiently; he had said truly that he was used to waiting. Perhaps he supposed that Winter was trying the case in his own mind; but in reality Rupert was seeking only one clue, as little diverted from his purpose as a bloodhound. He began to understand the man whose fixed purpose had his own quality, but sharpened by wrong and suffering. This man had not harmed Archie; as much as his warped and fevered soul could feel softer emotions, he was kindly intentioned toward the lad. Who had carried him away, then? Or was he off on his own account, really, this time? Or suppose Atkins,the missing secretary discharged at Denver, coming back for another appeal to his employer, finding Keatcham gone, but, let one say, stumbling on some trace of mystery in his departure; suppose him to consider the chance of his having his past condoned and a rosy future given him if his suspicions should prove true andheshould release the captive—wouldn’t such a prospect spur on a man who was as cunning as he was unprincipled? Mightn’t he have watched all possible clues, and mightn’t he have heard about Archie and plotted to capture the child, thinking he would be easily pumped? That would presuppose that Atkins knew that Archie was at the Arnolds’ or—no, he might only have seen the boy on the street; he knew him by sight; the colonel remembered that several times Archie had been with him in Keatcham’s car. It was worth considering, anyhow. He spoke out of his thoughts: “Do you think Keatcham could have told the truth, and that code of his be lost or stolen? Why couldn’t Atkins have stolen it? He had the chance, and he isn’t hampered by principle, you say.”
Mercer frowned; it was plain the possibility had its argument for him. “He might,” he conceded, “but I doubt it. Why hasn’t he done somethingwith it? He hasn’t. They wouldn’t have postponed that meeting if he had wired his proxy and his directions in the code. He’d have voted his employer’s stock. He’s got too much at stake. I happen to know he thought it a sure tip to sell short, and he has put almost all he has on it. You see, Keatcham was banking on that; he knew it. He thought Atkins wouldn’t dare give any of his secrets away or go against him in this deal, because they were in the same boat.”
“Still, I reckon I’ll have to see Keatcham.”
Mercer shook his head, gently but with decision. “I hate to refuse you, Colonel, but unless you promise not to interfere, it is impossible. But I’ll gladly go with you to see if we can find any trace of Archie. I’ll risk that much. And if you will promise—”
“Such a promise would be impossible to an officer and a gentleman,” the colonel urged lightly, smiling. “Besides, don’t you see I have all the cards? I have only to call in my men. I’d hate to do it, but if you force me, you would have no chance resisting.”
“We shouldn’t resist, Colonel, no, suh; your force is overwhelming. But it would do no good; you couldn’t find him.”
“We could try; and we may be better sleuths than you imagine.”
“Then it would be the worse for him; for if you find him, you will find him dead.”
There was something so chilling in his level tones that Winter broke out sharply: “Are you fooling with me? Have you been such an incredible madman as to kill him already?”
Mercer’s faint smile made the colonel feel boyish and impetuous. “Of course not, suh,” he answered. “I told you he was alive, myself. I reckoned you knew when a man is lying and when he is telling the solemn truth. YouknowI have told you the truth and treated you on the square. But, just the same, if you try to take that man away, you’ll only have his dead body. He can’t do any more harm then, and a dead man can’t vote.”
The colonel, who had taken out his cigarette case, opened it and meditatively fingered the rubber band. “Do you reckon,” he suggested, in his most amiable voice, “do you reckon young Arnold and Endicott Tracy will stand for such frills in warfare as assassination?”
“I do not, suh,” replied Mercer gravely, and as he spoke he pushed back the heavy tapestry hiding a window opposite the colonel’s head, “butthey can both prove an alibi. Mr. Arnold is in Pasadena, and there goes Mr. Tracy now in his machine—to try to find Archie. Do you see?”
The colonel saw. He inclined his head, at the same time proffering his case.
“I rather think, Mr. Mercer, that I was wrong.Youhave the last trump.”