Miss Ellersly bit her lip and colored, but I noticed also that her eyes were dancing.
Sam introduced the Englishman to me--Lord Somebody-or-other, I forget what, as I never saw him again. I turned like a bulldog from a toy terrier and was at Miss Ellersly again. "Let me put a little something on Mowghli for you," said I. "You"re bound to win--and I"ll see that you don"t lose. I know how you ladies hate to lose."
That was a bit stiff, as I know well enough now. Indeed, my instinct would have told me better then, if I hadn"t been so used to the sort of women that jump at such an offer, and if I hadn"t been casting about so desperately and in such confusion for some way to please her. At any rate, I hardly deserved her sudden frozen look. "I beg pardon," I stammered, and I think my look at her must have been very humble--for me.
The others in the box were staring round at us. "Come on," cried Sam, dragging at my arm, "let"s go."
"Won"t you come?" I said to his sister. I shouldn"t have been able to keep my state of mind out of my voice, if I had tried. And I didn"t try.
Trust the right sort of woman to see the right sort of thing in a man through any and all kinds of barriers of caste and manners and breeding.
Her voice was much softer as she said: "I think I must stay here. Thank you, just the same."
As soon as Sam and I were alone, I apologized. "I hope you"ll tell your sister I"m sorry for that break," said I.
"Oh, that"s all right," he answered, easy again, now that we were away from the others. "You meant well--and motive"s the thing."
"Motive--h.e.l.l!" cried I in my anger at myself. "n.o.body but a man"s G.o.d knows his motives; he doesn"t even know them himself. I judge others by what they do, and I expect to be judged in the same way. I see I"ve got a lot to learn." Then I suddenly remembered the Travelers Club, and asked him what he"d done about it.
"I--I"ve been--thinking it over," said he. "Are you _sure_ you want to run the risk of an ugly cropper, Matt?"
I turned him round so that we were facing each other. "Do you want to do me that favor, or don"t you?" I demanded.
"I"ll do whatever you say," he replied. "I"m thinking only of your interests."
"Let _me_ take care of _them_," said I. "You put me up at that club to-morrow. I"ll send you the name of a seconder not later than noon."
"Up goes your name," he said. "But don"t blame me for the consequences."
And my name went up, with Mowbray Langdon"s brother, Tom, as seconder.
Every newspaper in town published the fact, most of them under big black headlines. "The fun"s about to begin," thought I, as I read. And I was right, though I hadn"t the remotest idea how big a ball I had opened.
V. DANGER SIGNALS
At that time I did not myself go over the bills before the legislatures of those states in which I had interests. I trusted that work to my lawyers--and, like every man who ever absolutely trusted an important division of his affairs to another, I was severely punished. One morning my eye happened to light upon a minor paragraph in a newspaper--a list of the "small bills yesterday approved by the governor." In the list was one "defining the power of sundry commissions." Those words seemed to me somehow to spell "joker." But why did I call up my lawyers to ask them about it? It"s a mystery to me. All I know is that, busy as I was, something inside me compelled me to drop everything else and hunt that "joker" down.
I got Saxe--then senior partner in Browne, Saxe and Einstein--on the "phone, and said: "Just see and tell me, will you, what is the "bill defining the power of sundry commissions"--the bill the governor signed yesterday?"
"Certainly, Mr. Blacklock," came the answer. My nerves are, and always have been, on the watchout for the looks and the tones and the gestures that are just a shade off the natural; and I feel that I do Saxe no injustice when I say his tone was, not a shade, but a full color, off the natural. So I was prepared for what he said when he returned to the telephone. "I"m sorry, Mr. Blacklock, but we seem unable to lay our hands on that bill at this moment."
"Why not?" said I, in the tone that makes an employee jump as if a whip-lash had cut him on the calves.
He had jumped all right, as his voice showed. "It"s not in our file," said he. "It"s House Bill No. 427, and it"s apparently not here."
"The h.e.l.l you say!" I exclaimed. "Why?"
"I really can"t explain," he pleaded, and the frightened whine confirmed my suspicion.
"I guess not," said I, making the words significant and suggestive. "And you"re in my pay to look after such matters! But you"ll have to explain, if this turns out to be serious."
"Apparently our file of bills is complete except that one," he went on. "I suppose it was lost in the mail, and I very stupidly didn"t notice the gap in the numbers."
"Stupid isn"t the word I"d use," said I, with a laugh that wasn"t of the kind that cheers. And I rang off and asked for the state capitol on the "long distance."
Before I got my connection Saxe, whose office was only two blocks away, came fl.u.s.tering in. "The boy has been discharged, Mr. Blacklock," he began.
"What boy?" said I.
"The boy in charge of the bill file--the boy whose business it was to keep the file complete."
"Send him to me, you d.a.m.ned scoundrel," said I. "I"ll give him a job. What do you take me for, anyway? And what kind of a cowardly hound are you to disgrace an innocent boy as a cover for your own crooked work?"
"Really, Mr. Blacklock, this is most extraordinary," he expostulated.
"Extraordinary? I call it criminal," I retorted. "Listen to me. You look after the legislation calendars for me, and for Langdon, and for Roebuck, and for Melville, and for half a dozen others of the biggest financiers in the country. It"s the most important work you do for us. Yet you, as shrewd and careful a lawyer as there is at the bar, want me to believe you trusted that work to a boy! If you did, you"re a d.a.m.n fool. If you didn"t, you"re a d.a.m.n scoundrel. There"s no more doubt in my mind than in yours which of those horns has you sticking on it."
"You are letting your quick temper get away with you, Mr. Blacklock," he deprecated.
"Stop lying!" I shouted, "I knew you had been doing some skulduggery when I first heard your voice on the telephone. And if I needed any proof, the meek way you"ve taken my abuse would furnish it, and to spare."
Just then the telephone bell rang and I got the right department and asked the clerk to read House Bill 427. It contained five short paragraphs. The "joker" was in the third, which gave the State Ca.n.a.l Commission the right "to inst.i.tute condemnation proceedings, and to condemn, and to abolish, any ca.n.a.l not exceeding thirty miles in length and not a part of the connected ca.n.a.l system of the state."
When I hung up the receiver I was so absorbed that I had forgotten Saxe was waiting. He made some slight sound. I wheeled on him. I needed a vent. If he hadn"t been there I should have smashed a chair. But there was he--and I kicked him out of my private office and would have kicked him out through the anteroom into the outer hall, had he not gathered himself together and run like a jack-rabbit.
Since that day I have done my own calendar watching.
By this incident I do not mean to suggest that there are not honorable men in the legal profession. Most of them are men of the highest honor, as are most business men, most persons of consequence in every department of life.
But you don"t look for character in the proprietors, servants, customers and hangers-on of dives. No more ought you to look for honor among any of the people that have to do with the big gilded dive of the dollarocracy.
They are there to gamble, and to prost.i.tute themselves. The fact that they look like gentlemen and have the manners and the language of gentlemen ought to deceive n.o.body but the callow chaps of the sort that believes the swell gambler is "an honest fellow" and a "perfect gentleman otherwise,"
because he wears a dress suit in the evening and is a judge of books and pictures. Lawyers are the doorkeepers and the messengers of the big dive; and these lawyers, though they stand the highest and get the biggest fees, are just what you would expect human beings to be who expose themselves to such temptations, and yield whenever they get an opportunity, as eager and as compliant as a _cocotte_.
My lawyers had sold me out; I, fool that I was, had not guarded the only weak plate in my armor against my companions--the plate over my back, to shed a.s.sa.s.sin thrusts. Roebuck and Langdon between them owned the governor; he owned the Ca.n.a.l Commission; my ca.n.a.l, which gave me access to tide-water for the product of my Manasquale mines, was as good as closed. I no longer had the whip-hand in National Coal. The others could sell me out and take two-thirds of my fortune, whenever they liked--for of what use were my mines with no outlet now to any market, except the outlets the coal crowd owned?
As soon as I had thought the situation out in all its bearings, I realized that there was no escape for me now, that whatever chance to escape I might have had was closed by my uncovering to Saxe and kicking him. But I did not regret; it was worth the money it would cost me. Besides, I thought I saw how I could later on turn it to good account. A sensible man never makes fatal errors. Whatever he does is at least experience, and can also be used to advantage. If Napoleon hadn"t been half dead at Waterloo, I don"t doubt he would have used its disaster as a means to a greater victory.
Was I downcast by the discovery that those bandits had me apparently at their mercy? Not a bit. Never in my life have I been downcast over money matters more than a few minutes. Why should I be? Why should any man be who has made himself all that he is? As long as his brain is sound, his capital is unimpaired. When I walked into Mowbray Langdon"s office, I was like a thoroughbred exercising on a clear frosty morning; and my smile was as fresh as the flower in my b.u.t.tonhole. I thrust out my hand at him. "I congratulate you," said I.
He took the proffered hand with a questioning look.
"On what?" said he. It is hard to tell from his face what is going on in his head, but I think I guessed right when I decided that Saxe hadn"t yet warned him.
"I have just found out from Saxe," I pursued, "about the Ca.n.a.l Bill."
"What Ca.n.a.l Bill?" he asked.