Are you the d.a.m.nedest fool or the biggest scoundrel out of jail?
Write and let me know.
I told you there was something wrong; that some outside influence was queering us all along the line and I let myself be talked out of my conviction by you instead of getting busy and finding out the truth.
The stock and bondholders have had a meeting and are going to ask the court to appoint a Receiver, and when he gets through with us we"ll cut as much ice in the affairs of the Company as two office-boys, with no cause for complaint if we keep out of jail.
There"s been a high-priced engineer doing detective work on the project for days and his report wouldn"t be apt to swell your head.
The bondholders know more about the Symes Irrigation Company and conditions under the project than I ever did.
They know that your none too perfect water-right won"t furnish water for a third of the land under the ditch. They know that if you had every water-right on the river that there"s some ten thousand acres of high land that couldn"t be reached with a fire-hose. They know that there"s another thousand or so where the soil isn"t deep enough to grow radishes, let alone sugar-beets. They know, too, that instead of the $250,000 of your estimate to complete the ditch it will require nearly half a million, and they"re on to the fact that in order to get this estimate you cut your own engineer"s figures in two, and then some, upon the cost of making cuts and handling loose rock.
Rough work, Symes, raw even for a green hand. You"ve left a trail of blood a yard wide behind you.
Furthermore, the report contained the information that the wide business experience which you lost no occasion to mention consisted chiefly of standing off your creditors in various sections of the country.
I trust that I have made it quite plain to you that we"re down and out. I have about as much weight in financial circles as a second-story man, and am regarded in much the same light, while you are as important as a cipher without the rim.
And the man behind all this, the largest bond-holder, the fellow that has pulled the strings, is not the Fly-Trap King, or even J.
Collins Prescott, but the man he works for, Ogden Van Lennop, whose present address happens to be Crowheart.
What"s the answer? Why has a man like Van Lennop who is there on the ground and has long been familiar with conditions, why has he become the largest investor? Why should he tie up money in a project which the engineer reports will never pay more than a minimum rate of interest upon the investment even when the Company is re-organized and the ditch pushed to completion under economical and capable management? Why has he come in the Company for the one purpose of wrecking it? Why has he stuck the knife between your short ribs and mine--and turned it? What"s the answer, Symes, you must know?
We might as well buck the Bank of England as the Van Lennops, or match our wits against the Secret Service. They"ve got us roped and tied and I"d advise you not to squeal.
Truly yours, S. B. MUDGE
Symes laid down the letter and smoothed it carefully, setting a small bra.s.s crocodile exactly in the centre. Wiping his clammy palms upon one of the handkerchiefs purchased on his wedding tour, the texture of which always gave him a pleasurable sense of refinement and well-being, he read again the line which showed below the paper-weight:
There"s one thing sure--we"re down and out.
Symes"s head sunk weakly forward. Down and out! Not even Mudge knew how far down and out!
Stripped of the hope of success, robbed of the position which he had made for himself, his self-esteem punctured, his home-life a mockery, no longer young--it was the combination which makes a man whose vanity is his strength, lose his grip. To be little where he had been big; to be the object of his ruined neighbors" scorn--men have blown their brains out in his mood, and for less.
What Mudge and the Company regarded as wilful misrepresentations had in the beginning been due to inexperience and ignorance of an undertaking which it required scientific knowledge to successfully carry out. When the truth had been gradually borne in upon him as the work progressed, he felt that it was too late to explain or retract if he would raise more money and keep his position. The real cost he believed would frighten possible investors and with the peculiar sanguineness of the short-sighted, he thought that it would work out somehow.
And all had gone well until Mudge"s unheeded warning had come that some subtle but formidable influence was at work to their undoing.
The dull red of mortification crept slowly over Symes"s face as he realized that Ogden Van Lennop, before whom he had boasted of his lineage, and patronized, was a conspicuous member of a family whose name was all but a household word throughout the land!
But why, Symes asked the question that Mudge had asked, why should Van Lennop thrust the knife between his short ribs--and turn it? It could not be because Van Lennop had resented his patronage and his vaporings to any such extent as this; he was not that kind. No; he had been touched deeper than his pride or any petty vanity.
Another question like an answer to his first flashed through his mind.
Could it be--was it possible that his attentions to Essie Tisdale, the biscuit-shooter of the Terriberry House, had been sincere?
Symes rose in sudden excitement and paced the floor.
He believed it was! The belief grew to conviction and he dropped again into his chair. If this was it he need expect no quarter. As his thoughts flashed back over the past the fact began to stand out clearly that nearly every unfriendly act he had shown the girl had been instigated by Doctor Harpe and accomplished through Augusta.
"That woman!" The veins swelled in his temples. "Always that woman!" and as though in answer to her name he saw her pa.s.s the window and shake the latched door.
"Let me in!" It was a peremptory demand.
Symes threw the catch back hard.
"Yes, Dr. Harpe, I"ll let you in. I"ve business with you. For the first time in my life I want to see you." His tone was brutal. "Sit down!" He laid his huge hand upon her shoulder and thrust her into a chair.
Towering above her in the red-faced, loud-voiced fury of a man who has lost his self-control, he shouted:
"I want you to get out! To quit! To leave this town! Twenty-four hours I"ll give you to get your traps together. Do you hear? If you don"t, so help me G.o.d, I"ll put you where you belong! Don"t speak," he raised his hand as though to forestall her, "lest I forget your s.e.x." He went on, inarticulate with pa.s.sion: "I"ve protected you as long as I can--as long as I"m going to. Do you understand? I"m done. I"ve got some little self-respect left; not much, but enough to see me through this. And you can tell Augusta Symes that if she wants to go, every door is open wide!
Tell her--tell her that for me!"
He stopped, choked with the violence of his feelings, and in the pause which followed she sat looking up at him unmoved. The shock seemed to quiet her. Then, too, it was so like another scene indelibly engraved upon her memory that she wanted to laugh--actually to laugh. Yet Symes"s violence cut her less than had the cool, impersonal voice of the coroner back there in that little Nebraska town. She found his blazing eyes far easier to meet than the cold unfriendliness in the gaze of the man who had delivered that other ultimatum. Perhaps it was because she believed she had less to fear. Symes dared not--_dared_ not, she told herself--enforce his threats.
Symes read something of this thought in her face and it maddened him.
Was it not possible to make her comprehend? Was she really so callous, so thick-skinned that she was immune from insult? His hand dropped once more upon her shoulder.
"I"m ruined--do you understand?" He shook her. "I"m down and out. I"m broke; and so is Crowheart!" She winced under his tightening grip. "The smash was due when Van Lennop said the word. He"s said it." He felt her start at the name and there was something like fear in her face at last.
"Van Lennop," he reiterated, "Van Lennop that you"ve made my enemy to gratify your personal spite and jealousy." He continued through clenched teeth:
"From the beginning you"ve used me to further your petty ends. It"s plain enough to me now, for, with all your fancied cleverness, you"re transparent as a window-pane when one understands your character. You"ve silenced me, I admit it, and blackmailed me through my pride and ambition, but you"ve reached the limit. You can"t do it any more. I"ve none left.
"You expect to cling to my coat-tails to keep yourself up. You look to my position for shelter, but let me make it clear to you that you can"t hide behind my prestige and my position any longer. You human sponge!
You parasite! Do you think I"m blind because I"ve been dumb? Go!
you--DEGENERATE! By G.o.d! you go before I kill you!"
In his insane fury he pulled her to her feet by the shoulders of her loose-cut coat where she stood looking at him uncertainly, her faded eyes set in a gray mask.
"See here, Mr. Symes, see here----" she said in a kind of vague belligerence.
Symes pushed her toward the door as Adolph Kunkel pa.s.sed.
"Will you go?" Symes shouted.
She turned on the sidewalk and faced him. The gray mask wore a sneer.
"Not alone."
"Hi, Doc!" Kunkel pointed to a straight, black pillar of smoke rising at the station, and yelled in local parlance: "Look there! Your beau"s come! That"s the Van Lennop Special!"
XXIX
"THE BITTER END"
"She ain"t here." Nell Beecroft, with arms akimbo, blocked the hospital door.