When Siegfried Harvey talked, he looked straight at one with his clear blue eyes, and there was no doubting his honesty. "I am very much obliged to you," said Montague. "Pray tell me what you have to say."
"All right," said the other. "It can be done very quickly. You have taken a case which involves a great many sacrifices upon your part. And I wondered if it had ever occurred to you to ask whether you might not be taken advantage of?"
"How do you mean?" asked Montague.
"Do you know the people who are behind you?" inquired the other. "Do you know them well enough to be sure what are their motives in the case?"
Montague hesitated, and thought. "No," he said, "I couldn"t say that I do."
"Then it"s just as I thought," replied Harvey. "I"ve been watching you--you are an honest man, and you"re putting yourself to no end of trouble from the best of motives. And unless I"m mistaken, you"re being used by men who are not honest, and whom you wouldn"t work with if you knew their purposes."
"What purposes could they have?"
"There are several possibilities. In the first place, it might be a "strike" suit--somebody who is hoping to be bought off for a big price.
That is what nearly every one thinks is the case. But I don"t; I think it"s more likely some one within the company who is trying to put the administration in a hole."
"Who could that be?" exclaimed Montague, amazed.
"I don"t know that. I"m not familiar enough with the situation in the Fidelity--it"s changing all the time. I simply know that there are factions struggling for the control of it, and hating each other furiously, and ready to do anything in the world to cripple each other.
You know that their forty millions of surplus gives an enormous power; I"d rather be able to swing forty millions in the Street than to have ten millions in my own right. And so the giants are fighting for the control of those companies; and you can"t tell who"s in and who"s out--you can never know the real meaning of anything that happens in the struggle. All that you can be sure of is that the game is crooked from end to end, and that nothing that happens in it is what it pretends to be."
Montague listened, half dazed, and feeling as if the ground he stood on were caving beneath his feet.
"What do you know about those who brought you this case?" asked his companion, suddenly.
"Not much," he said weakly.
Harvey hesitated a moment. "Understand me, please," he said. "I"ve no wish to pry into your affairs, and if you don"t care to say any more, I"ll understand it perfectly. But I"ve heard it said that the man who started the thing was Ellis."
Montague, in his turn, hesitated; then he said, "That is correct--between you and me."
"Very good," said Harvey, "and that is what made me suspicious. Do you know anything about Ellis?"
"I didn"t," said the other. "I"ve heard a little since."
"I can fancy so," said Harvey. "And I can tell you that Ellis is mixed up in life-insurance matters in all sorts of dubious ways. It seems to me that you have reason to be most careful where you follow him."
Montague sat with his hands clenched and his brows knitted. His friend"s talk had been like a flash of lightning; it revealed huge menacing forms in the darkness about him. All the structure of his hopes seemed to be tottering; his case, that he had worked so hard over--his fifty thousand dollars that he had been so proud of! Could it be that he had been tricked, and had made a fool of himself?
"How in the world am I to know?" he cried.
"That is more than I can tell," said his friend. "And for that matter, I"m not sure that you could do anything now. All that I could do was to warn you what sort of ground you were treading on, so that you could watch out for yourself in future."
Montague thanked him heartily for that service; and then he went back to his office, and spent the rest of the day pondering the matter.
What he had heard had made a vast change in things. Before it everything had seemed simple; and now nothing was clear. He was overwhelmed with a sense of the utter futility of his efforts; he was trying to build a house upon quicksands. There was nowhere a solid spot upon which he could set his foot. There was nowhere any truth--there were only contending powers who used the phrases of truth for their own purposes! And now he saw himself as the world saw him,--a party to a piece of trickery,--a knave like all the rest. He felt that he had been tripped up at the first step in his career.
The conclusion of the whole matter was that he took an afternoon train for Albany; and the next morning he talked the matter out with the Judge. Montague had realized the need of going slowly, for, after all, he had no definite ground for suspicion; and so, very tactfully and cautiously he explained, that it had come to his ears that many people believed there were interested parties behind the suit of Mr. Hasbrook; and that this had made him uncomfortable, as he knew nothing whatever about his client. He had come to ask the Judge"s advice in the matter.
No one could have taken the thing more graciously than did the great man; he was all kindness and tact. In the first place, he said, he had warned him in advance that enemies would attack him and slander him, and that all kinds of subtle means would be used to influence him. And he must understand that these rumours were part of such a campaign; it made no difference how good a friend had brought them to him--how could he know who had brought them to that friend?
The Judge ventured to hope that nothing that anyone might say could influence him to believe that he, the Judge, would have advised him to do anything improper.
"No," said Montague, "but can you a.s.sure me that there are no interested parties behind Mr. Hasbrook?"
"Interested parties?" asked the other.
"I mean people connected with the Fidelity or other insurance companies."
"Why, no," said the Judge; "I certainly couldn"t a.s.sure you of that."
Montague looked surprised. "You mean you don"t know?"
"I mean," was the answer, "that I wouldn"t feel at liberty to tell, even if I did know."
And Montague stared at him; he had not been prepared for this frankness.
"It never occurred to me," the other continued, "that that was a matter which could make any difference to you."
"Why--" began Montague.
"Pray understand me, Mr. Montague," said the Judge. "It seemed to me that this was obviously a just case, and it seemed so to you. And the only other matter that I thought you had a right to be a.s.sured of was that it was seriously meant. Of that I felt a.s.sured. It did not seem to me of any importance that there might be interested individuals behind Mr. Hasbrook. Let us suppose, for instance, that there were some parties who had been offended by the administration of the Fidelity, and were anxious to punish it. Could a lawyer be justified in refusing to take a just case, simply because he knew of such private motives?
Or, let us a.s.sume an extreme case--a factional fight within the company, as you say has been suggested to you. Well, that would be a case of thieves falling out; and is there any reason why the public should not reap the advantage of such a situation? The men inside the company are the ones who would know first what is going on; and if you saw a chance to use such an advantage in a just fight--would you not do it?"
So the Judge went on, gracious and plausible--and so subtly and exquisitely corrupting! Underneath his smoothly flowing sentences Montague could feel the presence of one fundamental thought; it was unuttered and even unhinted, but it pervaded the Judge"s discourse as a mood pervades a melody. The young lawyer had got a big fee, and he had a nice easy case; and as a man of the world, he could not really wish to pry into it too closely. He had heard gossip, and felt that his reputation required him to be disturbed; but he had come, simply to be smoothed down the back and made at ease, and enabled to keep his fee without losing his good opinion of himself.
Montague quit, because he concluded that it was not worth while to try to make himself understood. After all, he was in the case now, and there was nothing to be gained by a breach. Two things he felt that he had made certain by the interview--first, that his client was a "dummy," and that it was really a case of thieves falling out; and second, that he had no guarantee that he might not be left in the lurch at any moment--except the touching confidence of the Judge in some parties unknown.
CHAPTER XIX
Montague came home with his mind made up that there was nothing he could do except to be more careful next time. For this mistake he would have to pay the price.
He had still to learn what the full price was. The day after his return there came a caller--Mr. John C. Burton, read his card. He proved to be a canva.s.sing agent for the company which published the scandal-sheet of Society. They were preparing a de luxe account of the prominent families of New York; a very sumptuous affair, with a highly exclusive set of subscribers, at the rate of fifteen hundred dollars per set.
Would Mr. Montague by any chance care to have his family included?
And Mr. Montague explained politely that he was a comparative stranger in New York, and would not belong properly in such a volume. But the agent was not satisfied with this. There might be reasons for his subscribing, even so; there might be special cases; Mr. Montague, as a stranger, might not realize the important nature of the offer; after he had consulted his friends, he might change his mind--and so on. As Montague listened to this series of broad hints, and took in the meaning of them, the colour mounted, to his cheeks--until at last he rose abruptly and bid the man good afternoon.
But then as he sat alone, his anger died away, and there was left only discomfort and uneasiness. And three or four days later he bought another issue of the paper, and sure enough, there was a new paragraph!
He stood on the street-corner reading it. The social war was raging hotly, it said; and added that Mrs. de Graffenried was threatening to take up the cause of the strangers. Then it went on to picture a certain exquisite young man of fashion who was rushing about among his friends to apologize for his brother"s indiscretions. Also, it said, there was a brilliant social queen, wife of a great banker, who had taken up the cudgels.--And then came three sentences more, which made the blood leap like flame into Montague"s cheeks:
"There have not been lacking comments upon her suspicious ardour. It has been noticed that since the advent of the romantic-looking Southerner, this restless lady"s interest in the Babists and the trance mediums has waned; and now Society is watching for the denouement of a most interesting situation."
To Montague these words came like a blow in the face. He went on down the street, half dazed. It seemed to him the blackest shame that New York had yet shown him. He clenched his fists as he walked, whispering to himself, "The scoundrels!"