All this time David worked hard upon his story—becoming closer friends with Rogers, frequently seeing Kate, who was studying with all her energy, occasionally meeting Dr. Franklin, and now and then walking with Helen from the Mission to her car, or part of the way to her home. Most of the time his belief in the story was strong, and he worked with eagerness and with a sense that what he wrote had life and soul. But at intervals depression threw him into its black pit, and all his confidence, his strength of will, were required to drag himself out.
Several times Helen Chambers rescued him. Once she took him to visit her Uncle Henry, whom she had told of David's struggle. The old man's genial courtesy, and genuine interest in the book, were an inspiration for days. And once she forced him to come to her home and read to her a part of what he had written; and her eager praise lifted him again into the sunlight of enthusiasm.
So, working hard, the winter softened into spring, the spring warmed into summer, the summer sharpened into early autumn—and the book was done. He immediately sent it, as he had promised, to Helen, who was then at one of the family's country places. Three days afterward there came a note from her. It told how the story had gripped her, and how it had gripped her Uncle Henry, who was visiting them—how big it was just as a story—how splendid it was in purpose; it told what a great promise the book was for his future; and finally it told that she had sent the manuscript to her publisher friend.
But the flames of enthusiasm enkindled by this note sank and died away; and he was possessed by the soul-chilling reaction, the utter disbelief in what one has done, that so often follows the completion of a sustained imaginative task. His people were wooden, their talk wooden, their action wooden, and the wires that were their vital force were visible to the dullest eye. Helen, he told himself, had judged his work with the leniency of a friend for a friend. Hers was not a critical estimate. He knew that the publisher's answer, when it came after the lapse of a month or two months, would be the formal return of his manuscript. Success meant too much to him to be possible—his promotion to more pleasant work, a rise in the world's opinion, the partial repayment of his debt, a higher place in Helen's regard, the beginning of his dreamed-of part in saving the human waste.
No, these things were not for him. He had failed too often with his pen for success to come at last.
The October day was sinking to its close as David, who was walking southward through Broadway, came to a pause at Thirty-fourth Street to wait till a passage should break through the vortex of cabs, trucks, and street cars, created here by the crossing of three counter-currents of traffic.
As he stood waiting he saw a woman in disarranged dress, about whom there instantly seemed to be a vaguely familiar air, step from the crowd and walk unsteadily into the turbulence of vehicles. A policeman called a sharp warning to her, but she went on, and the next second the shoulder of a horse sent her to the pavement, and only the prompt backward jerking of the driver saved her from the horse's feet. The policeman dragged her out of danger, and David joined the curious group that ringed the pair.
"That'll be your finish some day if you don't leave the bottle alone," he heard the policeman say severely.
Her answer was a reckless, half-fearful laugh. Her voice roused again in David the sense of vague familiarity. Presently she turned her face. It was the face of Lillian Drew.
He stared at her a moment, then, careful to hide himself from her eyes, he hurried through the passage that had opened, and on down crowded Broadway. The sight of her had startled him deeply. His one meeting with her flashed back into his mind, and all the horrible business of his discovery of Morton's guilt, his own accusation, his trial, his sentence—and he lived them through again with sickening vividness.
Presently he began to study if there was any way in which Lillian Drew might affect the future. Morton she could not injure. Morton was too long dead; she had sunk to too low a level for her unsupported word to have belief, and the letters which were her only power had been ashes these five years. As for himself, him she could not touch. No, Lillian Drew was harmless.
And yet he could not wholly rid himself of a feeling of uneasiness.
When David reached home he found Tom waiting at the head of the little stairway that led down into the basement. The boy had grown much in the last nine months, and the pinched look had given place to a healthy fulness. But he was still the same boy: his cow-lick still was like a curling wave; his clothes would not stay in order, nor his hands clean, despite his desire to please David and Helen Chambers; and the vernacular of the street, notwithstanding his efforts to "talk schoolroom," still mastered his tongue.
He stopped David with an air of subdued excitement. "Say," he whispered, "de owner o' de house here, he's downstairs waitin' for you. And say!—but ain't he mad!"
The owner of the tenement, who had recently moved into another house he owned in the neighbourhood, had before shown an irascible disposition to interfere in the tenement's management, so Tom's news was no surprise to David.
"What's he want?"
"I dunno. But he's swearin' like he'd like to eat you alive."
The owner, drawn by their voices, came out of David's room and mounted the steps. He belonged to that class of men whose life is a balance between gratification of appetite and the relentless pursuit of small gain, and his coarse, full-lipped, small-eyed face bore the family likeness.
"Ain't you this fellow Aldrich?" he demanded aggressively, blocking the head of the stairway.
"You know I am," said David.
"Yes—but I wanted to hear you confess it with your own lips. I have been hearin' about you from St. Christopher's Mission. Ain't you the fellow that stole that money from there?"
David saw the brink of a new disaster. But the owner's manner made him bristle.
"Well?"
"Well, no crook can be janitor in my house! Take your things out o' that room, and git!"
David wanted to seize the owner by the shoulders and shake his mean little soul out upon the sidewalk. "I take my orders from Mr. Rogers," he returned, controlling himself.
"And Rogers takes his orders from me. See? Now you git!"
"Rogers is my employer."
He swore fiercely at David. "Get too fresh, you dirty thief, and I'll punch your face in!"
"Please try!"
He looked into David's gleaming eyes, at the shoulders that promised too much strength, and his threatening attitude subsided.
"Well, if you won't go for me, we'll see what you'll say to Rogers!" he snorted. "You come with me to his office."
"If you want me, you'll find me in my room."
David brushed roughly by the owner and went down the stairway. A minute later, the owner and Rogers entered the room.
"Now you fire him," the owner ordered Rogers. "I ain't goin' to have no jailbirds around."
"But he's given most excellent service for almost a year," Rogers protested in his quiet voice.
"I ain't to be fooled by that trick," sneered the owner, with a wise look. "I ain't one o' them muckheads that believes because a thief's been straight for nine months he's always goin' to be straight. No sir! He's nine months nearer his next crooked stunt! Now fire him."
"But—"
"Cut out your 'buts'!" he roared, savagely. "Fire him or"—he looked threateningly at Rogers—"there's agents that will!"
Rogers turned slowly upon David who was standing beside his table with burning eyes and clenched face.
"I think you'll have to go, Aldrich," he said, after a moment.
Without a word David picked up his hat and, followed by Tom, walked out of the room. As he tramped hotly through the streets—the boy, pale and silent, beside him—his bitterness was at first directed even against Rogers. But in a little while he remembered Rogers's situation, and that Rogers could not have saved him—and the bitterness ran out of him. In its place came the sharp realisation that he was again in the abyss—stronger, better able than a year before to make his way from its smooth-walled depths—but nevertheless in the abyss. What should he do? how should he get out?—these questions were constantly begging answers till, two hours later, wearied from walking, he came again into his room.
Rogers rose from his table as he entered and looked questioningly at him.
"You understand?—I had to do it?"
"Yes," said David, taking the hand he held out.
Rogers sent Tom out on an errand. After the boy had gone, anger slowly lit its fires in Rogers's thin white cheeks.
"The hardest part of it all is, I dare not be a man, be myself!" he burst out fiercely. "You don't know how heavy and revolting this mask of discretion, of control, of subserviency, becomes at times! He should have been kicked out, stamped on! Ah, to be unafraid!—that's the greatest thing in the world!"
He stood leaning on his tightened fists, which rested on the table, his eyes blazing across at David. But after a moment the red and flame began to die from his face and eyes.
"Come, sit down," he said abruptly. "There's something I want to say to you."
They both took chairs. "I've been thinking of a plan for several weeks, and I guess this is the time to tell you," Rogers began. "As you know, the land syndicate that's been secretly buying in land up along the Palisades has been sending its agents to me. The syndicate is still keeping itself in the dark, but I've learned that it's called the New Jersey Home Company, and that Alexander Chambers is its president. The active work of making a deal with them has just begun, and the deal ought to come to a head in a month or six weeks."
He paused and gazed steadily at David, his thin face drawing with despair. Then he said in a low voice:
"Haven't you noticed—during the last year—I've been losing strength?"
David nodded.
"Yes—these prison lungs!" he breathed, with fierce bitterness. "I saw my doctor last week. He told me in this climate I might last a year—a little more, a little less. If I went to Colorado or New Mexico I might last several years, might even get well. That's what I want to do—finish up this deal, then drop everything and go West.
"He told me I must do no work, and keep away from excitement. I knew that already. Yet this deal's going to mean a lot of both. I simply haven't got the strength to see it through. I must have someone to help me—and I want that someone to be you."
"Me!" cried David. "Why, I don't know the first thing about real estate."
"You don't need to. The chief thing will be just to stick to the price I set. There'll be a lot of stiff talking—you can do that. And Mr. Hoffman will help some; he's got a little interest in the deal."
"But my record. They'll doubtless learn about it. Aren't you afraid that may endanger you?"
"I count that they'll say I've taken you in to give you a new chance in life—and perhaps think no more about it. As for the danger, I'd rather have a man I can trust whose record they may find out, than have near me a man who may find outmyrecord—and tell."
David nodded. "I see your point."
"You'll be with me, won't you?"
"Can a drowning man refuse a rope thrown him?"
They shook hands.
"The financial situation is like this," Rogers went on. "In my option I guaranteed the owners to sell the land for one hundred and fifteen thousand; I had to guarantee high to keep the land. I am to have half of all I get over that amount, and in addition, an agent's commission of five per cent. of the sale price. I am demanding from the syndicate a very much larger price than it has been paying for similar tracts. And I'll get my price, too—for they must have the land; and besides, the price is fair, much less than the land is worth to the syndicate. I'm asking one hundred and fifty thousand.
"That makes my share twenty-five thousand. And I shall have earned it. Several times in the last five years the owners—they're a pretty weak lot—have wanted to sell at insignificant prices, but I wouldn't let them. And if I hadn't been holding them together, they would have sold out months ago to the syndicate at the syndicate's price—eighty or ninety thousand. So you see I'm doing a mighty good thing for the owners.
"Now as to terms between you and me. Twenty-five thousand is more than I'll need even if I live longer than the doctor has promised me. Now I know what you want to do about that Mission money. If the deal comes off as I expect, five thousand will be your share."
"Five thousand dollars!" gasped David. "For a month's work? I can't take it. I shall not have earned the smallest fraction of it!"
"Yes, you will take it. Without your help, I'll fail—so you'll earn it all right. Besides, even if you didn't earn it, with whom should I divide the money I don't need if not with you?"
David still objected, and at length Rogers cried out:
"Oh, take it as a loan, then, and pay off the Mission! You'd rather owe me than it, wouldn't you? You can pay me back when I need it. The proposition is the same either way, for I'll be dead before I need it, and I'll make you a present of the amount in my will."
In the end David consented. Rogers went on with the other details of his plan. David should live with him, and Tom could sleep on a cot in the office. It would be wise, with this big deal on, to make a more pretentious office show; Kate Morgan (he spoke of her calmly, but David surmised the quality of the calmness within), who had recently finished her business course and was looking for a better place than her present one, should be their stenographer. For the sake of the help it would be to her, and to try the effect of the work-cure upon him, old Jimmie should succeed to David's place as janitor, and of course he and Kate should have the basement flat as their home.
When Rogers had gone David walked up and down his basement room—his last night there!—and looked excitedly into the future. The book—he expected nothing of that. But here only a month away, almost within his hand, was the sum which, as far as money alone could pay for it, would buy his fair name. He felt an impulse to write Helen of the great promise the next month held, but the memory that her father was engaged on the other side vaguely prompted him not to do so; and then came the second thought that it would be better to surprise her. Yes, he would wait till he had repaid the money to St. Christopher's, and then go to her with the receipt in his hand.
At the end of a few days Jimmie Morgan had been settled into David's place, and David was established in Rogers's room and thoroughly drilled into his part. Finally, toward the last of the week, a rented typewriter was installed in the office and Kate Morgan installed before it.
"As I told you, there'll be little for you to do," Rogers said to her the afternoon she began work. "When anybody's about you can make a show of being busy—but the rest of the time do as you please."
He went into his room and closed the door. Kate turned to David, who sat at a desk beside her looking a very different man in the well-tailored suit Rogers had made him buy.
"Isn't he fine!" she said in a low voice.
"He certainly is," David returned warmly.
"The way he pretended to get all that money for our furniture! But I'll pay him back some day—you see. I didn't think I could, but I know now that after a little experience I'll be making good money. They told me at the school I was the fastest girl on the machine they'd had for years. Some day I hope my chance'll come to do him a good turn."
David wondered if she guessed, as he had, the kind of turn Rogers, in his dreams, would like best for her to do him. She had guessed, and she guessed too what was running that instant in David's brain, for she shook her head and whispered meaningly:
"You know I don't care for him that way."
David looked abruptly back at his desk, and her machine began a whizzing tattoo that fully corroborated the statement of her teachers. But Kate as he had first known her a year before came into his mind, and his eyes slipped surreptitiously up to view the contrast. She wore a white cotton dress, its folds as smooth as the iron's bottom, in which she looked very fresh and girlish. The hardness and cynicism had gone from her face, and her exaggerated pompadour had subsided into a dressing which allowed the hair to fall loosely about brow and ears, lending an illusion of fulness to her rather thin face. She was a far softer, far more controlled Kate Morgan than the Kate Morgan who had been his first post-prison friend. But the control, he knew, had not extinguished her old personality. It was there, ready to flame forth when occasion provoked it.
That evening, in response to a request sent down by the Mayor of Avenue A, David went up to the Mayor's flat. The sitting-room was a chaos of chairs, newspapers, clothes and photographs of feminine admirers—the confirmed disorder of an unmarried man of forty-five. The Mayor, standing amid his household goods in evening clothes, noted that David was observing the quality of his housekeeping.
"You've seen this before, Aldrich," he said brusquely, "so don't turn your nose up so much, or you'll spoil the ceilin'."
He glanced about the room. "It does look like I was boardin' a pet hurricane, don't it," he admitted. "Sometimes I've been on the point o' askin' Mrs. Hahn (who attended to the three-room flat) to clean up a bit—but, oh say! I can't boss a woman!"
Early in their friendship the Mayor had discovered that David had some acquaintance with the social customs of Fifth Avenue, and he had gradually adopted David as his social and sartorial mentor—though in the item of vests he grumbled against David's taste as altogether too conservative. So David was not now surprised when the Mayor said, "I sent for you to look me over," stepped into the best light, pulled down his vest and coat, and demanded complacently: "Well, friend, do I look fit to be two-steppin' with the ladies?"
David's gaze travelled upward from the broad, but not broad enough, patent-leather shoes, past his large, white-gloved hands, to the white vest girdled with a heavy gold chain, across the broad and glistening area of his evening shirt, and upward to the culminating glory of his silk hat.
"You certainly do!" said David.
"I thought you'd think so," said the Mayor, nodding. "When I get into my dress suit I ain't such a slouch, am I. But since you made me quit wearin' them handy white bows that hooks in the back o' the neck, my ties always look like I'd tied 'em with my feet. Here, fix this blamed thing on me right."
When David had complied, the Mayor lowered himself into a chair, taking care to pull up his trousers and to see that the bending did not crumple his shirt bosom.
"It's the first fall affair—at the Liberty Assembly Hall—very small crowd—very select," he announced to David in a confidential voice that could have been heard in the street. "If only the dear ladies—oh Lord!—leave me alone!"
He sighed, and shook his head.
"I may look like a happy man, friend, but I ain't. I'm gettin' near my finish. Yes, sir! The bunch after me is narrowin' down to a few—the rest has sorter dropped out o' the runnin'. And them few is closin' in on me—closin' in on me. They're in earnest, every one of 'em. Oh, you can't count the chances I have to set alone with 'em in their parlours, walk home alone with 'em at night, and all them sort o' tricks. And me"—he groaned, and despair made a vain effort to wrinkle his smooth face—"me, I like it. That's the hell of it!
"Yes, one's goin' to get me sure. I wish I knew which one'd win out. I'd be almost willin' to put my money on Carrie Becker. I guess she's as good as any of 'em. She's just had a row with Mrs. Schweitzer. You know Mrs. Schweitzer sets in one corner o' Schweitzer's café every afternoon, and holds a kind o' reception with the people that drop in. Carrie Becker wants to marry me and do the same thing in my café, which is ten times as good as Schweitzer's. She wants to snow Mrs. Schweitzer under. Oh, I'm onto her! That makes two reasons she has for marryin' me. Yes—if I was bettin', I'd bet on Carrie Becker."
He heaved a great sigh and rose. "Well, I'd better be goin'. You're sure, are you, that I look all right?"
"Perfect."
The joy of living spread over his face. "Yes, I guess I do."
They walked together to the stoop. David watched the Mayor's progress down the street, saw the heads turn to stare at his effulgent amplitude, and he guessed how the Mayor's gratification was chirrupping to itself beneath the Mayor's waistcoat.
David had ceased cooking his own meals since he had moved from his basement room, and had become a boarder at the Pan-American Café. When he, Rogers and Tom appeared at breakfast the next morning the Mayor, pale and agitated, yet striving to look composed, hurried over to their table.
"I want to see you as soon's you're through eatin'," he whispered in David's ear.
"All right," said David.
The Mayor kept an impatient eye on David, and the moment breakfast was done he was at David's side, hat in hand. "We can't talk in here," he said. "I've got a key to the Liberty Assembly Hall. Let's go over there." And excusing themselves to Rogers, he led David out.
The big ball-room, scattered about with the débris of the previous night's pleasure, had in the cold light of morning a look of desolation which even the mural cascades and seas and mountains could not dispel. The room was a fit setting for the despairing face the Mayor turned upon David when the hall door was locked behind them. The Mayor did not speak for several seconds, held his gaze straight on David; then he shouted, his mask of self-control flung aside:
"Well, you see me! What d'you think o' me?"
"What's up?
"It's all up! I've gone and done it!"
"Done what?"
"What?—I've doneIt!—I'm engaged!"
There was frantic hopelessness in the Mayor's voice and in the Mayor's face.
"You don't say so!" David ejaculated.
"I did say so!"
David could hardly restrain a laugh at the Mayor's desperate appearance. "Engaged! You don't look it!"
"A-a-h! quit your kiddin'!" roared the Mayor fiercely. "This ain't nothin' to laugh at. It's serious."
"To which one?" David queried, with the required gravity.
"Carrie Becker. I knew she'd get me. Oh, she's a slick one all right! Say, friend, if you want a job kicking me at five dollars an hour, get busy!"
He began to pace wildly to and fro across the room, then let himself drop with a groan into a chair beneath an Alpine cascade, so that it seemed the water was splashing upon his polished head.
"It was last night—in this damned hall—in that damned corner there—that it happened," he burst out to David, who had taken a chair beside him. "The hall was all fixed up fancy. There was a line o' them green, shiny, greasy-lookin' perpetuated palms across each corner. What's anybody want a hall fixed like that for!—ain't the old way good enough, I'd like to know?
"Them palms made little holes, with settees inside, that the women could rope you into. Cosy and invitin'—oh, sure! And about how many unmarried females in the bunch d'you think missed tryin' to lead me in? Nary a blamed one! But I was wise to their little game, and I says to myself, 'None o' them palms for mine.'
"I balked every time they led me that way—till that last dance with Carrie Becker. I was prancin' along with her in my arms, comfortable and thinkin' nothin' about danger, when she says her shoe's untied and won't I fasten it. I'll bet my hat she undone it herself, and on purpose! Well, in I went behind her, doubled myself up and fastened her shoe. I held out my arm to her, but she said she was out o' breath and didn't I want to rest a minute, and she throwed me up a smile. You know she's got a real smile, even if it has been workin' forty years. Right there's where I ought t've run, but I didn't. I set down.
"The window was open, and outside was a new moon. Well, she leaned over close to me—you know how they do it!—and began to talk about that moon. It looked like a piece o' pie-crust a man leaves on his plate. I knew it was time for me to be movin', and I started up good and quick. But just then her hand happened to fall on mine—accident, oh, sure!—and what d'you think I done? Did I run? No. I'm a fool. I set down. And it was good-bye for me.
"When a woman gets hold o' my hand she's got hold o' my rudder, and she can steer me just about where she likes. Outside was the moon, there behind them palms playin' goo-goo music was the orchestra, and there beside me a little closer'n before was Carrie Becker. Well, I ain't no wooden man, you know; I like the ladies. I began to get dizzy. I think I enjoyed it. Yes, while it lasted I enjoyed it.
"She said a few things to me, and I said a few things to her—and pretty soon there she was, tellin' me how unpleasant it was livin' with her brother's family. I was plumb gone by that time. 'Why don't you get married?' I asked her. Oh, yes, I was squeezin' her hand all right. 'Nobody'll have me,' she said. 'Oh, yes,' I said, and I named half a dozen. 'But I don't care for any o' them—I only care for one man,' she said. I asked who. She give me that smile o' hers again and said, 'You.'
"I was dizzy, you know—way up in the air, floatin' on clouds, and—oh, well, I asked her! I ain't goin' to deny that. I asked her! And you can bet she didn't lose no time sayin' yes and fallin' on my shirt-front. As for me—well, friend, I won't go into no details, but I done what was proper to the occasion. And I enjoyed it. Yes, while it lasted I enjoyed it.
"She didn't give me no chance to back out. Not much! As soon as we come from behind them palms she told, and then come the hand-shakin'. The ladies shook my hand, too; but cold—very cold! And soon they all wanted to go home. Understand, don't you? And everybody's been shakin' hands this mornin'. They think I'm happy. And I've got to pretend to be. But, oh Lord!"
He glared despairingly, wrathfully, at the corner wherein had been enacted the tragedy of his wooing, then looked back at David.
"There's the whole story. Now I want you to help me."
"Help you?" queried David. "What do?"
"What do!" roared the Mayor, sarcastically. "D'you think I'm chasin' down a best man!"
"If I can help you that way——"
"Oh, hell! See here—I want you to help me out o' this damned hole I'm in. You ought to know how to get me out."
"Oh, that's it." David thought for a moment, on his face the required seriousness. "There are only three ways. Disappear or commit suicide——"
"Forget it!"
"Break it off yourself——"
"And get kicked out o' this part o' town!"
"Or have her break it off."
"Now you're comin' to the point, friend. She must break it off, o' course. But how'll I get her to?"
"Isn't there something bad in your past you can tell her—so bad that she'll drop you?"
"Oh, I've tried that already. As soon as I got outside the hall last night and struck cool air, I come to. I began to tell her what a devil of a fellow I'd been—part truth, most lies. Oh, I laid it on thick enough!"
"And what did she say?"
"Say? D'you suppose she'd take her hooks out o' me? Not much! Say? She said she was goin' to reform me!"
They looked steadily at each other for a long time; then David asked:
"You really want my advice?—my serious advice?"
"What d'you suppose I brought you here for? Sure I do."
"Here it is then: Marry her."
David expected an outburst from the Mayor, but the Mayor's head fell hopelessly forward into his hands and he said not a word. David took advantage of the quiet to speak as eloquently as he could of the advantages of marrying in the Mayor's case. At length the Mayor looked up. Hopelessness was still in his face, but it was the hopelessness of resignation, not the hopelessness of revolt.
"Well, if it had to be one o' them, I'd just as soon it was her," he said, with a deep sigh.
David found a keen pleasure in the business on which he was now engaged. For four years he had talked to no one, and for a year he had talked to but four or five. Now he was actively thrown among men of the world—Jordon, the general agent of the New Jersey Home Company, his assistants, and the attorneys of the company. He instinctively measured himself beside them, and he exulted, for though they were the shrewder in business, he felt himself bigger, broader, than they.
The deal progressed hopefully. David discovered the five owners in Rogers's syndicate to be five ordinary men, with no particular business courage and no courage of any other kind, and whose interest in their own welfare was their only interest in life. However, they had confidence in Rogers's success, and stood solidly behind him—which was all that could be desired of them. From his first meeting with Jordon, David, too, was confident of success. Jordon held off, talked about preposterous prices—but David felt surrender beneath the grand air with which the general agent brushed Rogers's proposition aside. The company had to have the land, so it had to meet Rogers's terms. And after each subsequent meeting David felt that much nearer the day of surrender.
One morning, two weeks after he had entered upon his new duties, he was looking through some papers in the living-room relating to the land, when Kate knocked and entered.
"There's a woman out there wants to see you," she said, with a sharp glance.
"What's she want?"
"She wouldn't tell me. She said you'd see her all right—she was an old friend. If she is, I think some of your friends had better sign the pledge!"
David followed Kate into the office. A tall woman rose from his chair and smiled at him. It was Lillian Drew. The life went out of him. He stood with one hand against the door jamb and stared at her.
When he had seen her five years ago she had had grace, and lines, and a hardened sort of beauty—and she had worn silks and diamonds. Now the face was flushed, and coarsened, and lined with wrinkles—the hands were gemless, the hair carelessly done—and in place of the rich gown there was an ill-fitting jacket and skirt. It was evident that for her the last five years had been a dizzy incline.
"What a warm welcome!" she said, with a short laugh.
David did not answer her. Kate's quick eyes looked from one to the other.
"Wouldn't you just as soon our talk should be private?" Lillian Drew asked, with a smile of irony. "You'd better run out for awhile, little girl."
Kate glanced at her with instinctive hatred. Lillian Drew, whom the five years had made more ready with vindictiveness, glared back. "Come, run along, little girl!"
Kate turned to David. "You'd better leave us alone for a few minutes," he said with an effort.
Kate jerked on her hat, jabbed in the pins, marched by Lillian Drew with "you old cat!" and passed out into the street.
"Well, now—what do you want?" David demanded.
"Oh, I've just come to return your call. May I sit down?—I'm tired." And smiling her baiting smile she sank back into David's chair.
David crossed to his desk and looked harshly down upon her. "How did you find me?"
"Surely you thought I'd look you up when I got back to town! I asked at the Mission. A girl in the office there wrote your address down on a card for me. And told me a few things." She narrowed her eyes—almost all their once remarkable brilliance was gone. "A few things, mister."
"Please say at once what you want," he asked, trying to speak with restraint.
"Just to see an old acquaintance."
"Come to the point!" he said sharply.
"Well, then—I'm broke."
"I don't see why that brings you to me."
"Because you're going to give me money—that's why."
"I certainly will not!"
"Oh, yes, you will—when I get through with you. You wouldn't want me to tell all I know of Phil Morton, now would you?"
"Tell if you want to." Anger at her as the cause of his five hard years was rising rapidly. He pointed savagely to a mirror that Kate had put up behind the door. "Look at yourself. Who'll believe your word?"
"But I won't ask 'em to believe my word," she said softly, her eyes gleaming triumph at him.
Her words and manner startled him. "What do you mean?"
"Why, I'll show the letters, of course."
"Letters! What letters?"
"Morton's letters."
"Morton's letters!" He stared at her. "You gave them to me."
"Part of them." She laughed quietly, and ran the tip of her tongue between her lips. "Oh, you were easy!"
David choked back an impulse to lay vengeful hands upon her. "You're lying!" he said fiercely.
"Oh, I am, am I?"
She slipped a hand into the pocket of her skirt, paused in the action, and her baiting smile turned to a look of threat. "If you try to grab them, if you make a move toward me, I'll scream, people will rush in here, and the whole thing will come out at once! You understand?"
The tormenting smile returned, and she slowly drew from her skirt a packet of yellow letters held together by an elastic band. She removed the band, drew one sheet from its envelope, and held it up before David's eyes.
"You needn't bother about reading it. You've read one bunch—and they're all alike. But look at the handwriting. I guess you know that, don't you? And look at the signature: 'Always with love—Phil.' That's one letter—there are fourteen more. And look at this photograph of the two of us together, taken while he was in Harvard. And look at this letter written five years ago, saying he'd send me five hundred the next day—and at this letter, written two days before he died, saying he hadn't another cent and couldn't get it. I guess you're satisfied."
She coolly snapped the band over the bundle and returned the letters to her pocket. "I guess I'll get some money, won't I?"
"I see," David remarked steadily, "that I must again call your attention to the fact that there are such things as laws against blackmailing."
She looked at him, amusedly. "That worked once—but it won't work twice. Arrest me for blackmail, and there'll be a trial, and at it the truth about Morton will come out. You told me five years ago you didn't care if the truth did come out—but I know a lot better now!" She laughed. "Please send for a policeman!"
He was helpless, and his face showed it.
"Oh, I've got you! But don't take it so hard. You scared me out of town—but I've got nothing against you. I really like you; I'm sorry it's you I'm troubling. I've got to have money—that's all."
There was an instant of faint regret in her face—but only an instant. "Yes, I've got you. But I haven't showed you all my cards yet. Mebbe you'll tell me you won't pay anything to keep me still about Phil Morton, who's been dead for five years. All right. But you'll pay me to keep still about yourself."
David looked at her blankly.
"You don't understand? I'll talk plainer then. I've been doing a little putting one and one together. You didn't take that five thousand dollars from the Mission. Phil Morton didn't have a cent of his own—he told me that when he was half crazy with trying to beg off; he said I was driving him into crime. He took that money, and I got it. Well, for some reason, I don't know why, you said you took it, and went to prison."
Wonderment succeeded to hardness and sarcasm. "You're a queer fellow," she said slowly. "Why did you do it?"
"Go on!"
"I don't understand it—you're a queer lot!—but I know you've got your reason for wanting to make the world think it was you that took the money and not Phil Morton. And I know it's a mighty strong reason, too—strong enough to make you willing to go to prison and to keep still while people are calling you thief. Well—and here's my ace of trumps, mister—if you don't hand out the cash I'll tell thatyou didn't take the money!"
David sank slowly into Kate Morgan's chair, and gazed stunned at the woman, whose look grew more and more triumphant as she noted the effect of her card. His mind comprehended her threat only by degrees, but at length the threat's significance was plain to him.
If he didn't pay her, she would clear his name, He must pay her money to retain his guilt.
"I guess I'll get the money—don't you think?" she asked.
He did not answer. Temptation closed round him. Temptation coming in its present form would have been stronger in his darker days, but even now it was mighty in its strength. Why should he bear his disgrace longer? This woman could clear him; would clear him, if he did not pay. And he had no money—almost none. He had merely to say "no"—that was all.
In these first dazed moments he really did not know which was the voice of temptation and which the voice of right. One voice said, "To refuse will be to destroy hundreds of people." And the other voice said, "To pay blackmail is wrong." Desire took advantage of this moral disagreement to order his reply.
"I shall not pay you a cent!"
"Oh, yes you will," she returned confidently.
"I shall not!—not a cent!" he said, with wild exultation.
"You know what'll happen if you don't?"
"Yes. You'll tell. All right—tell!"
She studied his flushed face and excited eyes. "You're in earnest?"
"Don't I look it! I shall not pay you a cent! Understand? Not a cent!"
He had risen, and she too now rose. "Oh, you'll pay something," she said with a note of coaxing. "I'm not as high as I once was. Fifty dollars would help me a lot."
"Not a cent!"
"Twenty-five?"
"Not a cent, I said."
"Well, you'll wish you had!" she said vindictively, and turned and walked out of the office.
He dropped back into his chair. So he was going to be righted before the world!—at last! Vivid, thrilling dreams flashed through his brain—dreams of honour, of success, of love!... Then, slowly, his mind began to clear; he began to see the other results of Lillian Drew's disclosure. His five years would have been uselessly spent—lost. And the people of the Mission—Quick visions pictured the consequence to them.
He sprang up, holding fast to just one idea among all that confused his brain. He must stick to his old plan; the people must keep Morton. He must find Lillian Drew and silence her. But where find her? He had not asked her address, he had not even watched which direction she had gone. Perhaps even now she might be telling someone.
He seized his hat, and hurried from the room. As he came out upon the sidewalk, a tall woman who had been standing across the street, started over to meet him. At sight of her he stopped, and gave a great sigh of relief.
"You're looking for me, aren't you?" she asked, when she had come up.
"Yes."
"I knew you'd be changing your mind, so I waited," she said with a smile of triumph. "I knew you'd pay!"
Lillian Drew, as she had said, was not as high as she once was; so David, after making plain to her his poverty, managed to put her off with fifteen dollars—though for this amount she refused to turn over the letters. Before giving her the money he asked if she had kept secret her knowledge of Morton, and her answer was such as to leave him no fear. "This kind of thing is the same as money in the bank; telling it is simply throwing money away."
After he had paid her, and she had gone, he fell meditating upon this new phase of his situation. She would soon come again, he knew that—and his slender savings could not outlast many visits. When his money was gone and she still made demands, what then, if the ending of the deal was not fortunate?
And, now that he was quieter, the irony of this new phase of his situation began to thrust itself into him. Here he was, forced to pay money that the world might continue to believe him a thief! He laughed harshly, as the point struck home. He and Rogers were a pair, weren't they!—the great fear of one that he might be found out to be a thief, the great fear of the other that he might be found out not to be a thief. What would Helen Chambers think if she knew that not only was he trying to pay a debt he did not owe, but that he was paying to retain that debt?
Presently Rogers came in and they started for lunch, first leaving a note that would send Kate Morgan on a long errand so as to have the office clear for a conference with the Mayor in the afternoon. As they passed through the hall they brushed by Jimmie Morgan, who hastily slipped a bottle into his pocket. The experiment with Kate's father had not been successful. David had advised Rogers to discharge him, but Rogers, while admitting that to do so seemed a necessity, said that it would be as well to wait two or three weeks, when the end of the land deal would send them all away. David needed no one to tell him that what kept the father in his place was the fear of the daughter's disappointment.
An hour later David and Rogers, accompanied by the Mayor, re-entered the office, and the three plunged into a discussion of matters relating to the deal. After a time the Mayor asked:
"Chambers ain't showed his hand in this thing at all yet, has he?"
"No," said Rogers.
"I s'pose he's savin' himself for the finishin' touches. He's like this chap Dumas that wrote them stories I used to like to read. He's got so many things goin' on together, he's only got time to hand out the original order and then take the credit when it's done. But say—did you see the way the Reverend What-d'you-call-him jumped on him this mornin' in the papers? No? You didn't. Well, it was about that hundred and fifty thousand he's tryin' to give to help found a seminary for makin' missionaries. The preacher ordered his church not to cast even one longin' look at the coin. He said it was devil's money, and said it was diseased with dishonesty, and mentioned several deals that Chambers had got people into, and left 'em on the sandy beach with nothin' but the skin God'd give 'em. Oh, he gave Chambers what was comin' to him! Me, I ain't never seen a diseased dollar that when it come to buyin', wasn't about as able to be up and doin' as any other dollar—but, all the same, I say hurrah for the preacher."
The dozen or more times David had been with Mr. Chambers he had met him socially, and he remembered him as a man of broad reading and interest, and of unfailing courtesy. David could not adjust his picture of the man to the characterisations he sometimes saw in the papers and magazines, and to the occasional vituperative outbursts of which that morning's was a fair example. So he now said with considerable heat:
"I certainly do not believe in the centralisation of such vast wealth in one man's purse, but, the rules of the game being as they are, I can't say that I have much sympathy with those persons who call a man a thief merely because he has the genius to accumulate it!"
"And neither do I, friend," said the Mayor soothingly. "If there's any gent I don't press agin my bosom, it's a sorehead. But I know about Chambers!—you set that down!" He paused for a moment, then asked meditatively: "I suppose Miss Chambers don't believe any o' them stories?"
"She believes the stories spring either from jealousy, or vindictiveness, or from a totally mistaken impression of her father."
"I thought she must look at him about that way." The Mayor nodded thoughtfully. "D'you know, I've thought more'n once about her and her father. She's about as fine as they're turned out—that's the way I size her up. Conscience to burn. Mebbe some o' these days she'll find out just what her old man's really like. Well, when she finds out, what's she goin' to do? That's what I've wondered at. Somethin' may happen—but I don't know. Blood's mighty thick, and when it's thickened with money—well, sir, it certainly does hold people mighty close together!"
David quickly shifted the conversation back to business. They were all agreed that success seemed a certainty.
Rogers turned his large bright eyes from one to the other. "There's only one danger of failure I can see."
"And that?" said David.
"If they find out I'm Red Thorpe."
"How'll they learn you're Red Thorpe?" The Mayor dismissed the matter with a wave of a great hand. "No danger at all."
"I suppose not. But I've been fearing this for ten years, and now that my work is coming to its climax I can't help fearing it more than ever."
"Two more weeks and you'll be on your way to Colorado," the Mayor assured him. "By-the-bye, have you had an answer yet from that sanitarium at Colorado Springs?"
"Yes. This morning. I want to show it to you; it's in the other room."
Rogers walked over the strip of carpet through the open door into the living room. The next instant David and the Mayor heard his strained voice demand:
"What're you doing here?"
They both hurried to the door. On Rogers's couch lay Jimmie Morgan. The half-swept floor, the broom leaning against a chair, and the breath of the bottle, combined to tell the story of Morgan's presence.
"What're you doing here?" Rogers demanded, his thin fingers clutching the old man's shoulder.
Morgan rose blinking to his elbows, then slipped to his feet.
"Sweepin'," he said with a grin.
"Why weren't you doing it then?"
"I must 'a' had failure o' the heart and just keeled over," explained Morgan, still grinning amiably.
The Mayor sniffed the air. "Yes, smells exactly like heart failure."
"Yes, it was my heart," said old Jimmie, more firmly, and he began to sweep with unsteady energy.
Rogers, rigidly erect, watched him in fearing suspicion for a space, then said, "Finish a little later," and led him through the other door of the room into the hall. When the door had closed Rogers leaned weakly against it.
"What's the matter?" cried David.
"D'you think he heard what we said about Red Thorpe?"
"Him!" said the Mayor. "Didn't you bump your nose agin his breath? Hear?—nothin'! He was dead to the world!"
"He didn't hear me come up," returned Rogers with tense quiet. "When I saw him first his eyes were open."
"Are you sure?" asked David.
"Wide open. He snapped them shut when he saw me."
They looked at each other in apprehension, which the Mayor was first to throw off. "He probably didn't hear nothin'. And if he did, I bet he didn't understand. And if he did understand, what's he likely to do? Nothin'. You've been a friend to him and his girl, and he ain't goin' to do you no dirt. Anyhow, in a week or two it'll all be over and you'll be pointed toward Colorado."
They heard Kate enter the office and they broke off. The Mayor, remarking that he had to go, drew David out into the hall.
"He dreams o' troubles—I've got 'em," the Mayor whispered. "I asked her to fix the weddin' day last night. She'd been leadin' up to it so much I couldn't put off askin' any longer. And o' course I had to ask it to be soon—oh, I've got to play the part, you know! Did she put it away off in the comfortable distance? Not her! She said she could get ready in a month. Now what d'you think o' that? Who ever heard of a woman gettin' ready in a month! She said since I seemed so anxious she'd make it four weeks from yesterday. Only twenty-seven more days!
"And say, you remember all them lies I told her about myself when I was tryin' to scare her off. Well, she's already begun to throw my past in my face! Rogers there, he dreams o' troubles—but, oh Lord, wouldn't I like to trade!"
With a dolorous sigh the Mayor departed and David went into the office. As he sat down at his desk Kate Morgan looked sharp questions at him—questions concerning Lillian Drew. She did not speak her questions that afternoon, but they had planned a walk for the evening and they were hardly in the street when the questions began to come. David was instantly aware that the Kate Morgan beside him was the Kate Morgan of a year ago, whose impulses were instantly actions and whose emotions were instantly words.
"Who was that woman this morning?" she demanded.
"Her name is Lillian Drew."
He offered her his arm, but she roughly refused it.
"Who is she?"
"I know little of her; I have spoken to her but once before," he answered evasively.
But in thinking he could parry her with evasion, he had forgotten her old persistent directness. "I know better—you know a great deal about her! And she has something to do with you. Do you suppose I didn't see that in a second this morning?"
David looked with dismay down on the tense face the light from shop-windows revealed to him. He saw that she had to be answered with facts or blank refusals, and he studied for a moment how much of the first he could give her.
"Except for one glimpse of her in the street I haven't seen her for five years—" he was beginning guardedly, when she broke in with,
"That was just before you were sent away?"
"Yes."
Like a flash came her next question. "And it was for her you stole the money? She got the five thousand dollars?"
He was fairly staggered. "I cannot say," he returned.
She quickly moved a step ahead, and looked straight up into his face. "A-a-h!" she breathed. "So that's it!"
"I tell you that, except for a mere glimpse the other day, I never saw her but once before in my life; and that before that time I had never even heard the name; and that, since then, I had never heard of her or seen her till to-day."
Her gaze fairly pierced to his inner self. "You wouldn't lie to me—I know that," she said abruptly. "But she's got some hold on you; she means something in your life—don't she?"
"I've told you all I can tell you," David answered firmly.
She exploded. "I hate her! You hear me?—I hate her!"
He did not answer, and they walked on to the eastward in silence, through streets effervescent with playing children. In Tompkin's Square they sat down on one of the benches which edged both sides of the curving walks and which were filled with husbands, wives, lovers, German and Jewish and Magyar, who had come out for an hour or two of the soft October air. David tried to draw Kate into casual conversation, but she remained silent, and soon they rose and walked on. After several blocks the window of a delicatessen store showed him she was more composed, and he again offered her his arm. She now took it.
Presently they saw the gleam of water at the end of the street, and continuing they came out upon a dock. It was crowded with trucks, and against its one side creakingly rubbed a scow loaded with ashes and against its other a scow ridged high with empty tin cans. Sitting in the tails of some of the trucks were parlourless lovers—their courtship flanked by garbage, presided over by the odour of stables. They did not break their embraces as David and Kate brushed by them and passed on to the end of the dock.
Kate sank upon the heavy end timber and gazed at the surging tide-river that swept along under the moonlight. It came to David, who leaned against a snubbing-post at her side, that this was the very dock on which he had stood on New Year's eve; and half his mind was thinking of the hopelessness of that night and of the bitter days preceding it, when a whispered "David" reached up to him.
He glanced down. The moon, which dropped full into her face, revealed no hardness—showed appealing eyes and a mouth that rippled at its corners.
"What is it?" he asked.
"I hate her—yes." Her voice flamed slightly up with its old fire, but it immediately subsided into tremulous appeal. "But I had no right to talk to you like I did. I can't brag about what I've been, you know."
"There, let's say no more about it," he said gently.
"Yes, I must. I've been thinking about myself while we were walking along. Thinking of your past isn't always pleasant, is it, when there's so much of it that don't suit you. But I've wanted to improve, and I've tried. Do you think I've improved, a little—David?"
The wistful voice drew his hand upon her shoulder.
"I wish I had grown as much!" he breathed.
She pressed his hand an instant to her cheek, then rose and peered up into his face. "Do you say that!" she said eagerly. "If I've tried to improve—you know why."
He looked quickly from her tremulous face, out upon the million-faceted river. He writhed at the pain she must be feeling now, or would some day feel, and was abased that he was its cause.
"Oh, why did things have to happen so!" he exclaimed in a whisper.
"What happen?"
"That you should want—to please me."
She did not speak at once, but her hand locked tightly upon his arm and he felt her eyes burning into him. At length she whispered, in a voice taut with emotion:
"Then you still care—forher?"
He nodded.
She was again silent, but the locked grip told him of her tensity.
"But she's impossible to you. She lives in another world. You still believe this?"
"Yes."
Silence. "And I'm still next?"
"Yes."
"And do you like me any less than you did at first?"
He looked back upon her impulsively, and caught her hands.
"This is a miserable affair, Kate!" he cried. "Can't we forget it—wipe it out—and be just friends?"
"Do you like me any less than you did at first?" she repeated.
"More!"
Her next words tumbled out breathlessly. "I'll keep on improving—you'll like me more and more—and then—!"
Her impetuous force fairly dazed him.
"Ah, David!" she whispered almost fiercely, gripping his hands, "you can't guess how I love you!"
He could not bear her passionate eyes, they pained him so—and he looked back across the river to where a blast furnace was thrusting its red fangs upward into the night. There was a silence, broken only by the monotonous chatter of the ripples among the piles below. Then she went on, still tense, but quieter, and slightly meditative.
"Nor how differently I love you. Sometimes there is a tiger in me, and I could kill anyone that stood between us. And then again I'm not the same person; I want first of all what is the best thing for you. When I feel this way I would do almost anything for you, David. I think"—her voice dwindled to the barest whisper—"I think I could almost give you up."
Mr. Alexander Chambers sat in the center of his airy private office, panelled to the ceiling in Flemish oak, looking through the selections from the Monday morning's mail his secretary had just laid upon his great glass-topped desk. His lofty forehead, crowned with soft, white hair, made one think of the splendid dome of Walter Scott. But below the forehead, in the face that was beginning to be netted with fine wrinkles, there was neither poetry nor romanticism: power, that was all—power under perfect mastery. The gray eyes were quiet, steady; the mouth, half hid under a thick, short-cropped, iron-gray moustache, was a firm straight line; the jaw was a great triangle with the squared apex as a chin. Facetious persons sometimes referred to that triangular chin as "Chambers's cowcatcher;" but many there were who said that those that got in Chambers's way were never thrown aside to safety, but went down beneath the wheels.
As he skimmed the letters through with a rapidity that in him seemed ease, there was nothing about him to suggest the "human dynamo," which has come to be the popular conception of the man of vast business achievement—no violent outward show of effort, no whirring of wheels, no coruscating flashes of escaping electricity. He ran noiselessly, effortlessly, reposefully. Those who knew him intimately could no more have imagined Alexander Chambers in a strain than Providence.
He glanced the last letter through—a report from Mr. Jordon on the negotiations for the land controlled by Rogers—pushed the heap aside and touched a button. Immediately there entered a young man of twenty-eight or thirty.
"Please have Mr. Jordon come over as soon as he can," Mr. Chambers said in a quiet voice to his secretary.
"Yes, sir. I was just coming to tell you, when you rang, that Mr. Allen is waiting to see you."
"Have him come in."
As Allen entered Mr. Chambers raised his strong, erect figure to his feet and held out his hand with a smile. "How are you, Allen. You look as fresh as a spring morning."
"Then I look as I feel. I'm just back from Myrtle Hill. It was a glorious two days—though we missed you a lot."
"Come now, some of the party may have missed me—but you, did you think of me once?" Those who knew Mr. Chambers in a business way alone, would have felt surprise at the humorous wrinkles that radiated from the outer corners of his eyes. "The next time I arrange for a weekend party I'll see that the wires to Boston are cut. But how did you leave Helen?"
They sat down. "With nothing to be desired in point of health"—Allen hesitated a moment—"and everything to be desired in point of her regard for me."
Mr. Chambers considered Allen's strongly masculine face. "You'll win her in the end, as you've won everything else—by fighting right on. There's no one that ranks higher with her than you."
"She's told me if an edict were passed compelling her to marry to-morrow, I'd be the man. But—she's not eager for the edict."
"You've won her head, at least. That's progress."
"Not even all her head. She disapproves of my ideas. She made that clear to me again yesterday. I tell you, I do wish her concern in St. Christopher's and such things could be—well, at least lessened quite a bit."
"That's hardly possible—her concern is too deeply rooted." Mr. Chambers shook his head reminiscently. "She has it from her mother."
"Yes, but the strength with which she holds to it—that she has from you. I suppose there is little chance of uprooting her convictions. But—I feel I've gained one concession."
"Yes?"
"She's promised at the end of five weeks to give me her yes or no."
Mr. Chambers leaned forward and grasped Allen's hand. "You know which answer I want. And I'm sure it will be that."
They looked at each other steadily a moment, then settled back into their chairs.
"Now about that merger," said Allen. "That's what brought me in." And Allen, who handled the legal side of many of Mr. Chambers's affairs, began to discuss certain legal details of a railroad consolidation Mr. Chambers had under consideration.
The instant Allen was out of the office, the secretary announced Mr. Jordon and at Mr. Chambers's order ushered him in. Mr. Jordon, a man whom prosperity had flushed and bulked, wished Mr. Chambers good morning with that little tone of deference which a successful business man uses to a more successful business man, and seated himself in the leather-covered chair Allen had just vacated.
Mr. Chambers picked up Mr. Jordon's letter from the heap on his desk.
"I wanted to speak to you about the price this Mr. Rogers insists on for the land he controls," he said in his even voice. "It is at a far higher rate than we paid for the rest of the land. You've done all that's possible to get him to lower his terms?"
"Everything!" For emphasis Mr. Jordon clapped two fat hands down upon two fat knees. "But he's as solid as a rock. If we were dealing with the real owners individually, it would be different. They're anxious to sell and they're all short on nerve. It's him that holds them together and keeps them braced up."
"I suppose you've tried to get them to withdraw their land from his control?"
"I tried that long ago. But it wouldn't work. He's promised them a big price, and he's made them believe they'll get it."
"Then you think as you say here"—he laid his hand upon the letter—"that we'd better pay him what he demands and close the deal?"
"I certainly do. We've got to have that land, and to get it we've got to pay his price. He knows that and he won't come down a dollar. Since we've got to pay the price in the end, I'm for paying it right now and not losing any more time in launching the company before the public."
"Your reasoning is sound. But you're aware, of course, that the difference between his price and the rate we've been paying is considerably over fifty thousand?"
"Yes, but we're not going to lose money on it even at that." Mr. Jordon nodded knowingly. "Besides, when we come to counting up the profits on the whole deal, we'll never miss that fifty thousand."
"Fifty thousand dollars, Mr. Jordon," Mr. Chambers said quietly, "is fifty thousand dollars."
Mr. Jordon blushed as though caught in an ill deed. "Yes—yes—of course," he stammered. "We don't want to lose it, but how are we going to help it?"
Mr. Chambers did not answer—gave no sign of having noticed the other's embarrassment. "Suppose we have a meeting here to-morrow afternoon, and try again to get him to lower his price."
"Very well—I'll write him to be here. But I warn you that he'll not come down a cent."
"Then I suppose we'll have to settle on some other basis." There was a moment's pause. "By the way, who is this Mr. Rogers?"
"Never heard of him till I ran across him in this deal. Nobody seems to know much about him. He's just a little two-for-a-cent agent that was cute enough to see this chance and grab it."
Mr. Chambers said no more, and Mr. Jordon, seeing that use for himself was over, departed.
Mr. Chambers had an instinct for loss that was like a composer's ear for false notes. In his big financial productions he detected a possible loss instantly; it pained him as a discord, and he at once set about correcting it. The New Jersey Home Company was but one of the many coexisting schemes that had sprung from his creative brain, and the fifty thousand dollars was a beggar's penny compared to the sums that floated through his mind. But the fifty thousand dollars was a loss, a flaw, and he could not pass it by.
Mr. Chambers had the theory, proved by long practice, that many men have something hidden away in their lives which if discovered and properly used, or some vulnerable business spot which if struck, will so disable them that they cannot stand up against your plans. This theory, applied, had turned for him many a hopeless struggle into a quiet, easy victory—so that it had become his practice, when dealing with a man whose past life and whose present business relations he did not know, to acquaint himself with all that could be uncovered.
The moment Mr. Jordon had gone Mr. Chambers wrote a line, requesting full information about Rogers, and enclosed it in an envelope which he addressed to the man who usually served him in such confidential matters. He touched a button and handed the note to his secretary. "See that Mr. Hawkins gets this at once," he said.
That afternoon a man, whom David afterward remembered as a diamond ring, a diamond shirt-stud and a heavy gold watch-chain, walked into the office of John Rogers.
"Is this Mr. Rogers?" he asked of David, who was alone in the room.
"No. Aldrich is my name. But I represent him. Can I do anything for you?"
"I'd like to see him if I can. I'm thinking of investing in some real estate in this neighbourhood, and I've been looking at a couple of houses that I was told he was agent for."
"I'll call him—wait a minute."
David went into the living room, and at once returned. "Mr. Rogers will be right in," he said.
"Thanks." The man turned his pinkish face about the room. "Cosy little office you've got, for this part of town," he remarked, with an air of speaking pleasantries to kill time.
"Yes—we think so."
"How long's Mr. Rogers been interested in real estate in this neighbourhood?"
"I've been with him for less than a year, so I don't exactly know. But I believe about eight or nine years."
"In the same business before then?"
But the entrance of Rogers at that instant saved David a reply. The caller, who had sat down, rose and held out his hand.
"Is this Mr. Rogers? Harris is my name—William Harris."
Rogers, as he came up, laid hold of the back of a chair. He did not see Mr. Harris's hand.
"I'm glad to meet you," he returned in his low voice. "Won't you sit down?"
The three took chairs, and the next hour was filled with talk about the houses Mr. Harris had examined. Mr. Harris was very eager for the buildings, and David became excited at the prospect of the agent's commission that would come from the sale. But Rogers was quiet and reserved as always—answering all questions fully, save a few casual personal queries which he evaded. When Mr. Harris went away he said in so many words that the deal was as good as settled, except for a small difference in the price which would bother them little.
The instant the office door closed upon Mr. Harris David turned eagerly to Rogers, who was sitting motionless in his chair.