"For the very good reason that he doesn't know any better than to talk that way. He hasn't got any more sense. He didn't talk that way to me."
"Then you have got it—you've made the discovery—it'll work?"
"Our machines not only will work, but have been working," said he calmly. "I haven't seen fit to tell your father. I'm going to tell you, however, that all this was my idea from the first. If I haven't been a competent manager, let him get some one more competent. I'll take what I know with me in my own head. I'm saying to you, his daughter, that I worked out this idea, myself, and all he did was to get the money in the first place for it. For that reason I call this discovery mine, to do with as I like. I haven't been bought and paid for, myself. I don't want money when it costs too much. I've just begun to understand things lately."
"Yes, I've worked it out into practical form," he concluded, as she sat silent. "Your father never did and never can. He's got to come to me, to me, right here. Since you drive me to it, I'll just tell you one thing. I've had this whole thing in my own hands for more than eight months! The company doesn't know it, he doesn't know it, no one knows it. I've been just waiting—to see whether I had a wife or not."
"You never told? Then you've been disloyal, you've been a coward! You took his money—"
"All right," said Halsey suddenly, grimly, "that's all I need. I see, now. I know what to do now."
"But you didn't tell father!" she went on fiercely. "And we all knew how much has been depending on that factory. Weren't we all in that—didn't we all help, from the very first? Didn't I?"
"Yes, you did, you and your mother," said Halsey. "You've had or will have all you earned. She got divorced from her husband, you may get divorced from me! It's a fine world, isn't it? We've all been chasing for more money. Well, here we are! There's a couple over there, here's another one here. Fine, isn't it?"
VI
"But, Charles!" She moved toward him and laid a hand on his arm. "You don't stop to reflect on what you are saying! If you have that secret in your hands, why, don't you see—don't you see—"
"What do you mean?"
"Why, even Pa will have to come to you! You won't be poor then."
"I should say he would have to come to me!" said Charles Halsey slowly. "Yes, I dare say. I dare say, also, I could make a lot of money whether he did or didn't."
"Listen, Charley. He's got everything, and he wants everything. He's my father, but he doesn't care. He—he sold me out. What do we owe to him and her? What did he do to my mother? I tell you, he thinks of no one but himself. Yet you and I—we who found that idea and worked it out, who have it in our own hands now, as you say—you and I have got the whip in our own hands now, it seems to me."
"You talk excellent business sense, Mrs. Halsey. I compliment you. It seems that you begin to discover something in your husband and his possibilities. It's a trifle late, but you delight me!"
"Well, I didn't know, you see," she murmured, pawing at him vaguely, in a fitful and inefficient essay at some coquettish art, grotesque in these conditions.
She was a woman of small feminine charm at best. She sat there now, angular, stiff, unbeautiful, the sort of woman no clothes can make well-dressed. Already she had disclosed somewhat of her soul. What appeal, then, physical, emotional, moral, could she make to him—a student, a visionary, an idealist—at such a moment? And did there not remain that same cool distant figure from whom he had so constantly to wrench his eyes—and his heart? Yes; and his heart! Halsey's face was dull red. He was unhappy. The world seemed to him only a hideous nightmare, full of disappointments, injustices, of wrongs that cried aloud for righting. Ah, the comparison now was here, fair and full and unavoidable!
VII
"No, you didn't know," said he slowly. "A lot of people don't. Now let me tell you a few things more. You didn't know that something like a year ago your father told me that he'd make me a present of fifty-thousand dollars the day I could run a car from the factory to this place on a charge taken from our own overhead receiver-motors."
"A start for a million dollars!" she murmured. "You get that—when you succeed?"
"Yes, that is to say, I could have had that any day in the week these past eight months—if he really has got that much left where he can realize on it. He's pretty well spread out."
"Then you have had it—what have you done with the money?"
"I presume I look as though I'd spent or could spend a mere fifty thousand dollars or so, don't I?" was his quiet answer. "No, I didn't have it, and I haven't got it. I'll say this much to you, however, that I ran my little old car over here to-night on a charge taken out of one of the overhead receiver-motors of the International Power Company—a motor completed on my own ideas, and by my own hands. It's mine, I tell you—mine!"
"Charley!" She caught him by the wrists, with both hands, eagerly. "You can give me the things I've got used to having! I'll go back—oh! I'll go back—we'll go on together! I hate her so—you don't know!"
"That's nice of you, Grace; but you've guessed wrong. I've not got that fifty thousand yet."
"But you can have."
"Yes, I can. What could I buy with it? For one thing, I could buy back my wife?"
"But Charley! We're rich! You've succeeded!"
"No, I am poor, I've failed. I'm just beginning to see how much I've failed!"
"If you don't tell me the truth about this I'll do it myself!" she exclaimed fiercely. "You've not been loyal—you've taken pay!"
"Your father took his pay from me," was his half-savage answer. "He's been paid enough! As for me, I don't want any more of this sort of pay."
"What are you going to do—you're not going to sell out to some one else?"
"No, my dear, I'm not going to do precisely what you suggested I should do just a moment ago. I'm not going to sell out. I could do that, too, and make more than any fifty thousand. The foreman in our factory, who knows very little, can sell out to-morrow morning for ten thousand dollars, maybe double or treble that now. The watchman on our door can sell out when he likes. We can all sell out, any of us sell out. But we haven't! If there has been any selling out it has been done by those who built this place here—the place which you found better than the best home I could offer you."
She sat back stiff, silent, somber. "You—you never mean that you are going to throw this away, then!" she asked at length. "What earthly good will that do? Pa'll have it out of you somehow! I'll—I'm going to tell him!"
"Try it," said Charles Halsey easily.
She had courage. "Father," she called out. "Pa! Come here—at once!"
VIII
Rawn rose suddenly up from his chair at the startling quality in her voice. "What's that, Grace?" he called across the long gallery.
"Come here, I want you! We've got something to say to you."
Halsey sat motionless.
Rawn approached slowly, obviously annoyed. "If it's important—" he began. He had found love-making to his young wife especially delicious this evening, although he mistook her strange silence and preoccupation merely for wifely coyness.
"It is important!" Grace exclaimed; and rising, clutched at his arm.
"Well, then, what's it all about, what's it about? Come, come!"
"Charley's done it, he's got it—he's got the machines finished—over there—!" Her voice was almost a scream, hoarse, croaking. She stood bent, tense.
"What's that?" demanded Rawn. "What do you mean? Is that the truth, boy?"
"He came over in his own car, under International overhead—he told me so, right now," she went on, half hysterically. "You owe him money—a lot, a pile of money—he told me so right now—it's worth more than any fifty thousand. Oh, we're going to have money too. You see!"
Rawn shook off her arm and half flung her back in her chair. "What's this about, Halsey?" he said. "Is it true?"
Halsey nodded calmly, but said nothing.
Rawn half-assailed him, his large hand on his shoulder. "Did you get the current?" he demanded. "Did you really come over under power out of one of our overheads?"
"Yes, to-night," said Halsey calmly. "Often before."
IX
"Why, my boy, my boy!" began John Rawn. At once he stood back, large, complaisant, jubilant. "My boy!" was all he could say. Not even his soul could at once figure out in full acceptance all the future which these quiet words implied.
"Come!" he explained after a moment, excitedly. "Let's get to the telephone! I want the wires right away! I'll make a million out of this before morning!"
"And write me a check for my fifty thousand to-night?" smiled Halsey.
"Surely I will—I've told you I would—I'll do more than that—I'll make it a twenty-five thousand extra for good measure. I'll have the check taken care of to-morrow at my bank, as soon as I can get down-town! Oh, things'll begin to happen now, I promise you!"
"I wouldn't be in too big a hurry to use the wire, Mr. Rawn," said Charles Halsey quietly. "And never mind about your check."
"What do you mean? You're going to try to hold me up?"
"No, I'm not going to try to hold you up at all. If there's any question about that possibility, I can get a million to-morrow as easily as I can any fraction of a million to-night, Mr. Rawn, and it's just as well you should know that, perhaps."
"A million?" croaked John Rawn. "You'd sell us out?"
"No, I said. I'm not going to sell you out, Mr. Rawn. And you're not going to buy me out."
"Of course not, of course not," laughed Rawn hoarsely. "You didn't understand me."
"You haven't understood me either, Mr. Rawn. Now, what would you do if I told you that after taking my charge for the little car yonder I turned about and dismantled every motor in the shop—destroyed them all—locked up the secret, ended the whole game now—to-night? What would you say to that?"
"By God! I'd kill you!" said John Rawn.
CHAPTER III
THE STEP-MOTHER-IN-LAW
I
On this very beautiful evening, in this very beautiful scene—as beautiful as any to be found in all that luxurious portion of a great city representing the flower of a great country's civilization—Graystone Hall was a double stage. At the back of the tall mansion house countless auto-cars passed in brilliant procession, carrying countless men and women, personal evidences of all the ease and luxury that wealth can bring; and of these who passed, the most part looked in with envy at the tall mansion house beyond the curving lines of shrubbery, brilliantly illuminated now, the picture of beauty and ease, of peace and content. More than one soft-voiced woman murmured, "Beautiful!" as she passed. More than one man, more than one woman, envied the owners of this palace.
"He's awfully gone on his wife, they say," commented one young matron, much as many did. "Not that I see much in her myself—although she seems to have a sort of way about her, after all."
"Lucky beggar!" growled her husband.
"Yes, they're both lucky."
That both Mr. and Mrs. Rawn were lucky seemed to be the consensus of opinion of the procession of those passing at this moment along the great driveway, and hence looking upon the rear stage of the drama then in progress. But they saw no drama. The evening was beautiful. The spot was one of great beauty. Apparently all was peace and content. There was no drama visible, only a stage set for a scene of happiness. Yet, two hundred yards from the point of this belief, on the stage of the dimly-lighted gallery facing the lake, the comedy of life and ambition, of success and sorrow, moved on briskly; moved, indeed, to its appointed and inevitable end.
II
Rawn's voice, harsh, half animal in its savagery, wakened some sudden kindred savagery in young Halsey's soul. In a flash the spark rose between steel and flint. The accumulated resentment of many days made tinder enough for Halsey now.
"All right, Mr. Rawn," said he, his head dropping, his chin extended. "Go on with the killing now, if you like. I'm going to tell you right here, that sort of talk will do you no good. If you kill me you kill my secret. It isn't yours, and neither you nor any other man is apt to set it going again."
"You hound, you cur!" half sobbed Rawn. His daughter stood, tense, silent, unnoticed at his elbow.
"Thank you! Now, I'll tell you. I dismantled every motor, and I'm never going to build them again for you. I meant every word of what I said. Also I mean this!"
As he spoke he rose and struck Rawn full in the face with his half-clenched hand. The sound of the blow could have been heard the whole length of the gallery—was so heard. An instant later, half roaring, John Rawn closed with the younger man....
The women, plucking at their arms, could do nothing to separate the two, indeed were not noticed in the struggle. As to that, the whole matter was over in an instant. Halsey was far the stronger of the two. He caught the right wrist of Rawn as he smote down clumsily, caught his other wrist in the next instant, and then slowly, by sheer strength, forced him back and down until at last he crowded him into the chair which Grace a moment earlier had vacated. The bony fingers of his hand worked havoc on John Rawn's wrist, on his twisted arm. Halsey was not so long from his college athletics, where he had been welcome on several teams. He was younger than Rawn, his body was harder from hard work and abstemiousness. He was the older man's master.
"Sit down!" he panted. "I don't think you'll do this killing very soon!"
III
Rawn, for the first time in his life, faced a situation which he could not dominate by arrogance and bluster. For the first time in his life he had met another man, body to body, in actual physical encounter; and that man was his master! All at once the consciousness of this flashed through every fiber of him, bodily and mental. He had met a man stronger than himself—yes, stronger both in body and in mind. The consciousness of that latter truth also sank deep into his heart. It was a moment of horror for him. He, John Rawn, master of this place, rich, happy, prosperous—he, John Rawn, beaten—subdued—it could not be! Heaven never would permit that!
They all remained tense, silent, motionless, for just half an instant; it seemed to them a long time. Halsey at length straightened and turned toward the door.
"I'm going," said he dully. "Good by, Grace."
Rawn turned, confused, distracted. He cared for no more of the physical testing of this difference. But he saw Success passing in the reviled figure of his son-in-law. "No, no!" he cried—"Jennie—he fouled me—but don't let him go—he'll ruin us, do you hear?"
Halsey was within the tall glass doors and passing toward the front entry. He heard the rustle of skirts back of him and felt a light hand upon his shoulder.
"Well," he began; and turning, faced young Mrs. Rawn!
IV
"I'm sorry," he stammered, "it's disgraceful. I beg your pardon with all my heart. But I couldn't help it. He struck me first with what he said. He threatened me. Let me go. I'll never come back here again. I'm sorry—on your account—"
"Charles," she said softly, "Charley, wait. Where are you going?"
"To the divorce courts, and then to hell."
"But you mustn't go away like this. I'm sorry, too. Wait!"
Suddenly moved by some swift, irresistible impulse, perhaps born of this unregulated scene where all seemly control seemed set aside, she put both her white bare arms about his neck and looked full into his eyes, her own eyes bright. He caught her white wrists in his hands; but did not put away her arms. He stood looking at her, frowning, uncertain. His blood flamed.
"It's disgrace," he said, "I admit it. I can't square it any way in the world. I'm sorry on your account—awfully sorry!" His blood flamed, flamed.
"Listen!" she said, panting, eager, her voice with some strange, new, compelling quality in it, foreign to her as to himself. "You mustn't go. You mustn't ruin the future of us all in just a minute of temper. Yen mustn't ruin yourself, or—me. Besides, there's Grace!"
"Oh, Grace!"
"But she's your wife."
"Not any longer. She's chosen for herself. She left me and would not come back. I'm going now. I'm on my own from this time."
"Why not?" she asked coolly. "But why wreak ruin on us all? You don't stop to think!"
"Yes, it will set him back pretty badly—" Halsey nodded toward the bowed frame of Rawn, dimly visible, in the gallery's shade, through the tall glass doors.
"Yes," she said slowly, "he's my husband, surely."
—"Who has given you everything."
She nodded, her arms still about his neck. "Let me think this out for all of us, Charley. Keep matters as they are until I have time to think—won't you do that much—just that little—for me?"
His hands were still upon her wrists as he looked down upon her from his height, his eyes angry, his face frowning, disturbed. Worn almost to gauntness, tall, sinewy, of a certain distinction in look, as he stood there before her now an ignorant observer might have thought the two lovers, he her lover, not her stepson, she at the least his younger sister, surely not his mother by mixed marriage.
V
As they stood thus, Rawn turning, saw them through the tall glass door. His face grew eager. "He's not gone," he whispered hoarsely to his daughter, who stood rigid, close at his arm. "She's got him! By Jove! She's a wonder—my wife, my wife—she'll land him yet—she will!"
"Do you see that?" hissed Grace at last, pointing at the door.
"Do I see it—didn't you hear me? Yes, of course I see it!"
"And you'll allow that, between your wife and my husband?"
"Allow it—wife!—why! damn you, girl, what are you talking about—wives and husbands?—what's that to do with this? There's many a million dollars up now, I tell you, on those two standing there. You make a move now—say a word—and I'll wring your neck, do you hear?" He caught her by the wrist. She sank into a chair, sobbing bleakly.
A moment later the two figures beyond the door stood a trifle apart. The arms of Virginia Rawn dropped from Halsey's neck. She laid a hand upon his arm and, side by side, neither looking out toward the gallery, they drew deeper into the room, behind the shelter of a heavy silken curtain which shut off the view.
It was a beautiful night. The long ladder of the moon still lay across the gently rippling lake, which murmured at the foot of Graystone Hall's retaining sea-wall. The scent of flowers was about. It was a scene of peace and beauty and content. John Rawn and his daughter remained upon the gallery for a time.
CHAPTER IV
THE SECOND CURRENT
I
"Charles," said Virginia Rawn, "Charley—" And always her white hand touched his shoulder, his arm, his hand—"You really mustn't go. Believe me, you'll both be sorry to-morrow. You don't know what you're doing! You're only angry now. You'll both be sorry." Her eyes glowed, evaded.
Halsey shook his head. "It's all over, so far as I'm concerned." His eyes, glowing, sought hers.
"Why, Charley, boy, that's all foolishness. Don't you know how wrong it is to talk in that way? What hasn't Mr. Rawn done for you? And she's your wife!"
"He has done little for me and much for himself," he answered hotly. "As for her, his daughter, she left me for him and what he could give her. She liked this sort of thing rather better than what I could do for her. She weighed it up, one side against the other, and she chose this. Most women would, I suppose."
"Charley, how you talk!" Her voice, reproving, none the less was very gentle, very soft. "One would think you were a regular misanthrope. The next thing, you'll be saying that I was that sort of a woman because I live here. Of course, other things being equal, any woman likes comfort. But you seem to think that we all would choose luxury to love."
"Don't you—don't you all?" demanded the unhappy youth. "Some do, of course. Would you? Haven't you?" He was reckless, brutal, now. The young woman before him started, shivered. She passed a hand gropingly across her bosom, across her brow.
II
There was a strained, very strong quality in the air of Graystone Hall that evening. Thought seemed to leap to thought, mind to mind, swiftly, without trouble for many words. These two at last looked at each other face to face, deliberately, she gazing beneath heavy, half-closed lids, a superb, a beautiful woman, a creature for any man's admiration. He was a manly young chap. He stood a victor, as she had seen but now. He gazed at her out of eyes open and direct. Reckless, brutal in his despair, he now allowed—for the first time in all their many meetings—his heart to show through his eyes. For the first time, their eyes met full.
"You must not ask that," said she quickly. "I wouldn't want to tell you anything but the truth about it." She was breathing faster now.
"What is the truth about it? I want to know if any woman is worth while. I'm down and out myself, and it doesn't matter for me. I just wondered."
"I used to see you often about the office," said she irrelevantly, "when you came in to see Mr. Rawn. I rather thought Grace was lucky, then! I was just a girl then, you know, Charley."
"What do you mean, Mrs. Rawn?"
"Nothing. What did you think I meant?"
"I didn't know. I've never dared think much. I supposed everything was going to come out right somehow. Now it's come out wrong. I don't know just where it began. Don't you see, Mrs. Rawn, it's all like a faulty conclusion in logic? It builds up fine for a long time. Then all at once things go wrong—it's absurd, and you wonder why. Well, it's because there's what you call a faulty premise somewhere down close to the start. If that's the case, there isn't anything in all the world is ever going to make a conclusion come out right. I reckon there's a wrong premise somewhere down in my life, or ours, or in this!"—He swept an arm, indicating Mr. Rawn's opulent surroundings.
"I'm only a woman, Charley. Maybe I don't understand you."
"Well, I'll tell you. There's wealth, luxury, everything here. Where did they get it? They took more than their share."
"Now you're talking like a Socialist. Mr. Rawn tells me you are a Socialist, Charley."
"I don't believe I am. But I believe a good many would be if they'd gone through what I have. Now, what those two took, they took from me—what you've got here you got from me. I don't mind that. The big trouble is—the wrong premise about it is—that what they took they took from this people, this country. And there are so many who even are hungry."
"Oh, we'd never get done if we began that way! All success does that way, you know that. Not all can be rich." Her eyes still came about to him.
"Yes, all success succeeds—until that wrong premise comes out. Then there's trouble!"
III
"Are you going to sell us out, Charley?" she demanded suddenly.
"I never sold out anybody. I'm the one that's been sold out."
"Aren't we your real friends?"
"No. You ought to be, but you aren't. The only friends I've got are over there in the factory—Jim and Ann Sullivan, Tim Carney—a few of the working-men that stuck it through. They've killed five men for us over there. Their sluggers are out all the time. As for me, I don't fit in, either there or here. Look here, Mrs. Rawn," he went on, turning upon her suddenly and placing his hand impulsively on hers. "Let me tell you something. I haven't sold out—I'm not going to. Where do you stand yourself?"
Her eyelids fluttered. "Charley," said she, "you know better than to ask me that."
"Yes, I suppose I do," he answered slowly and bitterly. "You stand for this place, for everything that money can buy. Have they made you happy? I often wonder—does money really make people happy? Are you happy?" His eyes were very somber, very direct.
"I wonder if I am," said she suddenly; "and I wonder how you dare ask me. Oh, I'll admit to you I've been ambitious, and always will be. But do you know, some time I'd like to talk with your friend—with Ann Sullivan!"
"Then you'd begin to get at life. You'd be getting down to premises, then, that aren't wrong—with Ann Sullivan and her sort!"
"What do you mean?"
"Oh, well, I reckon you'd only find a little sincerity and honesty, and, well—maybe—love, that's all. Just the things I didn't get myself. Have you?"
"Why didn't you?" She ignored his brutal query.
"Because I'm a theorist. Because I'm a visionary and a fool, I reckon. Because I like to see fair play even in a dog fight, and the people of this country aren't getting fair play. Because I'm the sort of fool that Mr. Rawn isn't. There's the difference!
"Are you happy, Mrs. Rawn?" again he demanded suddenly, since she still was silent. "Tell me the truth. I think you know I'm not going to talk. I'm going away somewhere—anyhow for the summer. I suppose, maybe, this is the last time I'll ever see you—in all my life."
She felt the candor of his speech and replied in like kind, smiling slowly. "No use my lying," she said. "You know I'm not happy. And, yes, I know you'll not talk. Who is happy? We all just get on just the best we can. I can take my joy in making other women envy me. Isn't that about what all women want? Isn't that the height and limit of their ambition? Isn't that success, so far as a woman is concerned? Don't they cling to it, all of them—till they get old? I suppose so, but I know it isn't happiness. Yes, I'll admit to you I do miss something." His eyes rested upon her, searching.
Unconsciously she looked down at her wrists. The red mark of his fingers still lingered there. "I'll have to ask Ann Sullivan some time," she laughed.
"One thing," answered Halsey. "She'd tell you that she isn't trying to get the envy of her neighbors. I don't believe she'd be happy in that!"
"Oh, but she's fresh over—she's not American yet, don't you see? She hasn't had a chance—you can't tell what she would do if she were rich."
IV
"There are two ways of looking at it," said Halsey musingly, his anger passing, now leaving him meditative, relaxed. They were talking now as though there were not two others, unhappy, waiting on the gallery near by. "I'll tell you something, if you'll let me talk about myself, Mrs. Rawn."
"Go on; I'm glad!"
"I don't suppose you care for things that interest me. You called me a Socialist. I'll admit that I studied a lot about that, attended their meetings, all that sort of thing. Maybe that made me think. It seems to me that money is rolling up too fast in this country now—we're all mad about money. It's like the big apple with no taste to it. I had it offered me to choose between those two, and I took the little apple that to me seemed sweeter.
"Now, I've perfected that invention. It'll make somebody rich any time I say the word—any time I like that big apple and not the little one—any time I like that success which comes from outside and not from inside. But I've figured that that doesn't mean happiness. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. Somehow I believe that Abraham Lincoln, or John Ruskin, or Jim Sullivan, or Tim, or Ann, or Sir Isaac Newton—any thinking person—any philosopher—would come in with me about this. I broke up the machines."
"Why—where it meant ruin?"
"Because they'd tighten up the grip of a few men on the neck of the people! I don't know whether you call that being a Socialist or not, and I don't care. Change is coming. It's not the fault of the poor that it's coming. It's the fault of the rich. I broke them up—because things can't go on this way, money rolling Up all the time for a few, and life getting harder all the time for so many. God didn't make the rivers and the mountains and the forests for that purpose—to give them to a few. We've got to make changes, and big ones, in this government, or we're gone. I'm no Socialist at all. I don't want what some one else has won—if he's won it fair. But the wrong is in our government—the very one of all on earth that meant fair play. We don't get it—now. Some day we must. I don't see what difference it makes what name you give the new form of government. There must be change, that's all; or else we're gone!
"Well now, what they wanted me to do was to give that all to a few. I couldn't do it! By God! Mrs. Rawn, I faced it and I tried, and I couldn't do it! Maybe I was wrong. Anyhow, here I stand."
V
"Do you know," she said at length, slowly, "these are things that never came to my mind in all my life? I never in all my life thought of any of these things. I only wanted—"
"You wanted to win. You wanted what most American women do—money—station—power—to be envied; that's what you played for. Well, you've won! Look at all this about you. I don't suppose there's a woman in this town more admired by men or more envied by women than you. You've got what you craved, I reckon."
"I thought I had. But now, to-night, I'm not so sure!"
"You couldn't give it up," he sneered, "any more than Grace could, and she couldn't any more than a leopard could change its spots. It goes too deep. You couldn't expect anything different.
"I told you I was a student, Mrs. Rawn," he went on after a time. "I haven't got much mind. But somehow, while I don't suppose religion can change business very much, I think of those twelve disciples and their Master, trying to lift the load off of human beings, trying to lift the people of the world up above the day of tooth and claw. I don't reckon they can do it. But you see, each fellow has to choose for himself. I've had this put before me. I could have thrown in with Rawn—-I can do so yet, right here, now, as you know. I can hold him up, as he would hold me up, or any one else—I can take his money—fifty-thousand, a million—I don't think he's really got as much money as most people think. He's in debt, deep. That's all right so long as your credit is good. He has had all sorts of credit—and it depended on me—on my invention. It wasn't his. It isn't going to be. I've told you why.—But you see, I could make him divide even with me—make him take a third, a fourth, of what I'd won. He'd have to come to terms. He knows that. All right, I'm not going to do it! Failure as I am, I've got a few ideas which I think are right. Maybe I got them from Ann Sullivan—I don't know! Go ask her about things."
"And you won't put back the machines? Not even for me?"
"Not even for you," he smiled. "Not that I know what you mean by that." He looked at her keenly. His toil-stained hands twitched uneasily in his lap.
VI
"You're talking about things that never came into my thoughts in all my life," said she, with the same strange deliberation, the same strange direct look at him. "But you couldn't expect an ignorant woman to learn it all in one night, could you?"
"I'm not trying to convert you, Mrs. Rawn. I'm going to leave this place. You'll not see me again. But I'm not trying to change you. I wouldn't—"
"Listen!" she broke out sharply. "I'm set to do that for you—I'm expected by him, out there, to change you. Isn't that the truth? Didn't you see?"
"Yes, it's easy to see," he answered grimly. "It's up to you."
"It's up to you and me, Charley, yes. You can ruin me and all of us by walking out that door. You can break the lives of those two people out there, and mine, yes, of course you can, and your own.—You can do all that. You can make me come down from this place where you say everybody envies me, and you can have everybody laughing at me and forgetting me in less than six months' time. You can get me snubbed, if you like; you can make me wretched and miserable, if you like. Of course you can. Do you want to do that?"
"It isn't fair to put it before me in that way."
"I do put it before you in that way. But that isn't the worst of what you could do—you'd leave me unsettled and unhappy for ever if you went away to-night that way—Charley!—"
"What can you mean—?"
"Things are moving fast to-night, Charley, and we're discussing matters pretty openly—"
"Yes," he nodded. "I don't want to set a wife against her husband. Neither must you. But the truth is, Mr. Rawn is not what a good many think he is—"
VII
"Do you think that's news to me?" she asked of him, and looked full into his eyes.
"Good God, Mrs. Rawn! What do you mean?"
"Much what you do!"
"But you loved him—you married him!"
"Oh, yes, surely. That was some months ago. But you see, there's a distinction between master and superior."
"I'm very miserable," was his simple answer. "Things are getting too much confused for me. And now you say you'd never be happy if I left you now, to-night—"
"Then why go, so long as we are so confused? Why don't you wait? I've asked you to! Do you expect to settle all this in a half-hour's time, in a passion of anger? Now listen. Although he's my husband, and she's your wife, I don't blame you. I'm only asking you to wait a little. I'm making it personal, Charley!"
"How dare you do that, Mrs. Rawn?"
"Because I have the right to do it! I don't intend to have you make me more unhappy than I am. I've just told you I'm not happy. I don't know—" she laughed a little amused ripple of laughter—"but I'd have been happier if he had handled you as you did him! I'm not talking just the way I meant to when I came through those doors to stop you. I'm like you—it's all confusing—I'll have to wait, the same as you. There's a lot of things to be figured out! I'm covetous of everything in the world—that any woman ever had—from the Queen of England to Ann Sullivan! Yes, I'm ambitious, I'll admit that. And you've set me thinking—I'm wondering—wondering what really is the best a woman can get out of life."
"Mrs. Rawn, you've got success as you understand it, by marrying a middle-aged man. You're young."
She shook her head. "It isn't possible," said she frankly, catching his thought. "I'm far enough along to see that!"
"You know what Mr. Rawn did when he wished to change—he put away what he had, and reached out for that which he had not. For my own part, I don't see how any woman could be happy with him. He ruined the life of one woman, his wife; of another, his daughter. Now, you tell me he hasn't made an absolutely happy life for yet another woman—yourself. Oh, it's brutal for me to say it, but it's true, and you've just said it's true."
"If only it could come to the question of what a woman really wanted—" she resumed, pondering.
"That's for each woman to figure out for herself, Mrs. Rawn. I've only said what most American women want. We're living in a wholesome and beautiful age, Mrs. Rawn!"
"I thought I was right!" said she suddenly, looking up. "Now I believe I was wrong. Charley!—"
VIII
"It's in the air," she said, as though to herself, after a time, finding him silent, troubled, pale. "Don't you know, Charley—" She turned to him.
He leaned toward her now, his lined young face illuminated with sudden emotion. "I wish I could explain that to you, Mrs. Rawn," said he. "I feel it, too! Now maybe we can understand! How did I drive my car over here, charged from one of our overhead motors? Ah, that's my secret. But I took it out of the air! That motor of ours was in tune with it—the great power that's in the air, everywhere. Mrs. Rawn, it's getting in tune with the world that makes you happy. Nothing else is going to do it! Get in tune with the plan! All I've ever done in my receiving-motor has been to get in tune with the hills and the rivers and the forests—with life."
IX
She leaned toward him now, that on her face which he had never seen there before. He looked her fair in the eyes and went on, firmly, strongly.
"I've done that; and I've said to myself that I wasn't going to throw that away and give it to a few, when it belonged to everybody. I am unhappy as you are; more so. I'm not in tune with life as we live it. No, I certainly am not. But I know that to be perfectly happy we've got to get in tune with the purpose of the world. What is it? What is that second current? I don't know. What is it? You tell me—"
"I'll tell you what I believe," said Virginia Rawn slowly, her hands dropping in her lap, her face pale. "I shouldn't wonder if it was—love!"
"And that belongs to everybody, not just a few—to every one—not just to the rich men, with money to buy what they want?" He was looking at her keenly now.
"To everybody?" She shook her head. "Not always, Charley."
"Why not—Virginia?"
CHAPTER V
MEANS TO AN END
I
"Well, he's gone, then?"
Rawn turned toward his wife a face years older than it had been an hour ago, a face haggard and lined, pasty in color. His bitter agitation was evident in his voice, in his expression, in the stoop of his shoulders—in a score of signs not usual with him. Virginia was even more noncommittal than her wont as she faced him. Grace had disappeared.
"What did you do—how did you handle him, Jennie?" he began—"you were talking for over an hour there! Did you manage to hold things together—will he let up?"
She faced him full now, as he stood in the blaze of the electric lights in the interior of the house, where Halsey had left her, in the chair from which she had not moved since his departure. Every delicate, clear-cut feature was fully visible now. Her lips just parted to show the double row of her white teeth in a faint smile. Her chin was a trifle up, her head high.
"He will wait a little while," she answered quietly. "At least, I think so."
"Good! Fine! I knew you'd do it, Jennie! You're a wonder!—I don't think there's a woman in all the world like you!" He advanced toward her.
"Don't paw me over!" she exclaimed, drawing back.
"Well, now, then—I only meant—"
"I don't want to talk," she said. "He's gone, yes, and he'll not do anything for a little while, I think. It's enough for to-night—I'm tired. This has been a horrible evening for me. I never thought to see a time like this!"
"Horrible for all of us!" exclaimed John Rawn. "That man took advantage of me out there—I ought to have wrung his neck for him, and I would have done it if it hadn't been for you two women. Of course, we don't want scenes if they can be avoided, for there's no telling what talk might run into if it got out. But just the same, Jennie, don't you see—" and his face assumed a still more anxious look—"he can ruin us all whenever he gets ready, and he's wise enough to know that. I can't do anything with him now. Something's gone wrong with him, and I don't know what!"
II
"No, you don't know what," she said slowly. "I don't think you in the least imagine what!"
"Do you, then?" he demanded. "If you do, why don't you tell? Do you know that everything we've got in the world is up at stake on this? He can kill my credit, he can split this company wide open, he can break me in spite of all. See what he's done in return for what I've done for him! Sometimes I wonder if there's such a thing as honor left in the world!"
"So! Do you?" She rose now, and would have left him.
"Well, I want to talk this over with you. Please, Jennie. Sit down," he said. "Tell me what you said. I want to know where things are, so I can act to-morrow—or maybe even before to-morrow. You don't realize what a hole I'm in."
"What did I say to him?" she repeated, looking down at her wrists. "Nothing very much. I told him if he went on he'd ruin us all; that it wasn't right for him to do it. I told him we wanted him—I wanted him—to wait—for my sake."
"For your sake?"
"Yes, I did," she answered calmly. "I said that."
"It was best!" he cried, rising and walking up and down excitedly. "What a mind you have, Jennie—what a woman you are! Where'd I be without you, I wonder now? Why, of course, that was the way! Any man will do anything that you tell him to, especially a young man—of course, of course!"
"Thank you," she commented coldly; "thank you very much."
III
He sought to put a consoling or an explanatory hand on her shoulder, but she shook him off, shivering.
"I don't mean anything," he began confusedly. "Get me straight, now. I only wanted to say that when you work for me in this you are working for your own sake also. It's all up to you, Jennie, right now. If you can't land him, we're gone—it's no use my trying to do anything with him. Do you know, I'm going to send you out after him."
"Send me out?"
"Yes; things have to be done the best way they can be done. That fellow can say one word which'll ruin us in one day's time. He can break the values in International more than we can mend in months. Our men would begin to cover as soon as they caught a hint that anything was really wrong. As for me, I'm spread out for millions in the general market. If they began to hammer me I couldn't come through—I wouldn't last a week. The thing to do is to keep this news safe until I can protect myself—until I can protect us all. Now it's you, Jennie, that's got to do that—it's you! I'm sending you out after him."
"I always thought, Mr. Rawn," said she, "that you played a dangerous game, so long as you simply trusted that he'd do anything you told him."
"Yes, I see it now. But he always was odd—he always held something back. I tell you, he's crazy! Now, he's either just crazy over his fool Socialist ideas, or else he's going to hold out for a squeeze. In the first case you can handle him. In the second, I can.
"You see—I couldn't tell our directorate," he went on; "but there was always something lacking which I couldn't handle myself. We need him, and we've got to have him! You can get him, I know you can. You can do anything you like. You're wonderful!"
She sat and looked at him, her lips still parted in the same enigmatic smile which he did not like to see; but she made no answer.
"What's wrong with him?" he went on immediately. "What does he say is the trouble, anyway? And is it the truth that he's got the overhead current?"
She nodded. "Of course, I know something about it from my work in the office. Yes, he told me that he had done what you have all been trying to do so long. He said he came over under power from the overhead—just as he told you."
"He may be lying, for all we know. You can't look at a car and tell where its charge came from. Electricity is electricity, to all intents and purposes. What I want to know is, what he's got against us, anyhow, Jennie?"
"Well, for one thing, he seemed troubled because Grace would not go back with him. He seemed to think that you and the life you could give her had been the reason for her abandoning him."
"Why, what nonsense! Grace hasn't abandoned him! And I only got her over here because I needed her myself—before—well, before we were married. Who was to take care of me, I'd like to know? And you say he complains of that!"
"That was one of the things."
"But Grace would go back! She's none too well pleased now, since you and I have taken charge here. She'd go back to Charley to-morrow if he asked her—why, I'd make him take care of her, of course. The trouble with him is, he values his own personal affairs too much. That's no way to begin in the business world. A man has to bend everything to the one purpose of success. Look at me, for instance."
IV
She did look at him, calmly, coldly, without the tremor of an eyelid, without raising a hand to touch him as he stood close by, without indeed making any verbal answer. A slight shudder passed over her, visible in the twitch of her shoulders.
"It's getting cooler!" he exclaimed. "I'll fetch a wrap for you." And so hastened away, obsequious, uxorious, as he always was with her.
"But Charley never would take any counsel from anybody," resumed he presently. "He's always been tractable enough, that's true; never raised much of a disturbance until to-night—I don't see why he cut up so ugly now. He's not crazy over Grace, and if the truth be told, Grace isn't the sort of girl that a man would get crazy over. You're that sort."
"Perhaps not," she smiled faintly. "Just the same, Grace's attitude may have started him to thinking. When he began thinking he seemed to conclude that all the world was wrong."
"And he's starting in to set it right! He's going in for the uplift stunt, eh? That's the way with a lot of these reformers! They want to set the world right according to their own ideas. They don't pay any attention to the men who keep them from starving. I made that boy—what he's got he owes to me."
"Indeed! How singular! He says that it's just the other way about; that what you have you took from him! He says you want to take more—more than your share—from things that belong to everybody."
"What's that! What's that! Well, now, of all the insane idiocy I ever heard! Good God, what next! Him, Charles Halsey, the man I brought up with me! Jennie, I never heard the like of that in all my time."
"But if that's the way he feels, now's not the time to argue that with him!"
"But, good God, the effrontery—"
"All the world is full of effrontery, Mr. Rawn," she said—continuing to address him formally, as she always did. "It's buy and sell. Everything we get we pay for in one way or another. Even if we took power out of the air by our overhead motors, we'd pay for that, one way or another—nothing comes from nothing—we pay, we pay all the time, Mr. Rawn!"
"You don't need to go into theories and generalizations," said he testily. "We've had enough of that from him. We are both practical. You simply get that man and bring him back into the fold, that's all! Do your share."
V
"My share? It's easy, isn't it?" She smiled at him again annoyingly.
"But you can do it?"
"Yes, I can do it. But I can't evade the truth I just told you. I'd have to pay. You'd have to pay."
"We're beggars, and can't choose," said John Rawn savagely. "Besides, there's no harm done—I'm not asking you to do anything improper, anything to compromise yourself—but get him, that's all! And when we've got him in hand—when I know what I want to know—I'll wring him dry and throw him on the scrap heap. That's what I'll do with him!"
"Yes, I think you would," she said.
"It's the only right thing to do," Rawn fumed. "He'll get what's coming to him. He's been throwing down his one best friend."
"Are there any best friends in business, Mr. Rawn?" she asked.
"Of course there are. Haven't I been a friend to him; haven't I got a lot of friends of my own?"
"What would they do for you to-morrow, Mr. Rawn?"
"Well, that's a different matter; they might take care of themselves—I would take care of myself. But this fool here that I'm asking you to handle isn't taking care of himself or any one else. He's crazy, that's all about him! Did he hand you out any of this talk about the rights of man? I more than half suspect him of sympathizing with these labor unions. He's a Socialist at heart, that's what he is!"
She nodded her head a little. "Names don't make much difference in such matters."
VI
"Isn't it a funny thing," he rejoined, turning to her in his walk, "that the very men who have failed, the very ones who most need help themselves, are the ones who are out to help everybody else! The blind always want to lead the blind! These labor unions depend on us for their daily bread and butter, yet they want to fight us all the time. There's no trust in this country so big as the labor trust, and there's no ingratitude in the world like that of the laboring man's.
"Why, look at me, Jennie—you know something of my plans. This very month I was going to put fifty thousand dollars more into my cooperative farm in the South, a thing I have been working out for the benefit of my laboring people. I'm going to do more than old Carnegie has done! You and I ought to have set up some kind of prizes, medals—start some sort of hero competition. Helping colleges is old, and so are libraries old. I don't place myself any station back of Rockefeller himself. The Rockefeller Foundation was a great idea. Just wait! I'll raise him out of the game! When I get all my plans made, they'll speak of John Rawn when they mention philanthropy!
"And just to think, Jennie," he went on excitedly, "that all such big plans as that, plans for the good of humanity, should come to nothing! To be held up and handicapped by the folly of a man who has never been able to do anything for himself or any one else! It makes me sick to think of it. He claims to be a friend of the laboring people, and here he's tying the hands of the greatest friend of the laboring men in this town to-day—myself, John Rawn, standing here! Why, if I'd hand this country the John Rawn Foundation for industrial assistance, all thought out, all financed, all ready to go to work to-morrow, that crazy fool there, with his Socialist ideas, would block it all. He's going to block it all.
"Now, it's up to you. You're the only one that can keep him from doing that very thing. Don't you see, it isn't just you and me he's ruining. It isn't himself he's ruining. He's going to hurt the whole country. Jennie, there's a considerable responsibility on you to-night. Where he is wrong is in thinking that the weak can help the weak. It's the other way about—it's the strong that can help—Power!—that's what counts! It's for you to show him that. Jennie, girl—it's not so much myself. But think of your country."
"Yes," she nodded, "that's precisely it!"
"But he didn't affect you in the least, Jennie—he didn't get you going with that kind of foolishness."
"I never heard any one talk just as he did, before," said she slowly. "You see, I hadn't thought of these things myself, for I'm only a woman. He said that all this power, taken from the hills and the forests and the air and the rivers, belongs to everybody—to all the world—"
"But he didn't impress you with that nonsense, Jennie?"
"He said things—I told him that I'd never thought of life just that way. And I haven't, Mr. Rawn. I told him, as I admit to you, that I hadn't thought of anybody much but myself—I just tried to climb. I think all women do."
"It's right they should, it's the only way. Selfishness is the one great cause of the world's progress, my dear."
"Well, I told him that his way of thinking was so new to me, that I needed time to think it over."
"But you didn't believe a word he said—you never would!"
VII
"Mr. Rawn," said she, looking him full in the face, "we've both of us climbed pretty fast. I always put my family out of memory all I could. But somehow I seem to recollect that my father used to talk of things a good deal as Mr. Halsey does. I begin to realize what I told you a while ago—no matter how or where we climb, we pay for what we get, sometime, somewhere, somehow!
"But listen," she leaned toward him with some sudden access of emotion. "I can do this much! I'll agree to bring in Charley Halsey, bound hand and foot! You can throw him and me, too, on the scrap heap when the time comes! It's a game. I'll play it. I'll take my chance." She half rose, thrilling, vibrant.
"I knew you would, Jennie."
"Yes, but you'll have to pay."
"Have I ever said I wouldn't? Didn't I just get done telling him I'd make him rich the minute he said the word?"
"It doesn't seem to be money he wants. I—don't—believe—that's what the pay would have to be."
"What do you mean? You're getting too deep for me now. I'm only a plain man, my girl!"
She smiled at him, still enigmatic, still cool and calm, still almost insolent, as she often was with him. "He's been talking all sorts of folly about getting things in tune—getting gravitation in tune with labor—all sorts of abstractions. Well, don't you see, if I got in tune with his notions, I might be able to influence him!"
Rawn grew cold and hard. "There's one thing we can't do, Jennie," said he. "We can't side in with any of his socialistic talk. What he wants to do is to give to the people of this country for nothing what this International Power Company is planning to sell them for ever. What we want is monopoly! I've been gambling everything I've got on the certainty of that monopoly. I'm in soak, in hock, up to my eyes on the market, this minute. I'm margined to the full extent of my credit. The biggest men of America are back of me. I'll be rich if this thing goes through—one of the richest men in America. But I'd almost rather lose it all than to see you side in with him, or listen for five minutes to his rotten talk about the 'rights of man.' There are no rights of man except what each man can take for himself! As for him, I'd kill him, or get him killed, if I knew first how he got that current through the receivers. Give me that, and I'll let the rights of man wait a while. I'll show them a thing or two!
"But of course," he added, frowning again in helpless perturbation, "we've got to get him in hand. Grace couldn't do it."
"No; on the contrary. I can—if I pay!"
"Then pay!" he snarled suddenly, his voice harsh, half choking. "What's the price—nothing worth mentioning. But it's got to be paid, no matter what it is. We're caught, and we're squeezed! We've got to pay, no matter what it is, Jennie!"
"Is it no matter to you, Mr. Rawn?"
"How can it be? I'm almost crazy to-night! Do it, that's all, and draw on me to the limit!"
"To the limit, Mr. Rawn?"
"To the limit!" He looked her straight in the eye, and she met his gaze fully. She shivered slightly again, but her delicately clean-cut face showed no further sign. Only she shivered, and pulled her wrap a trifle closer about her shoulders.
"Very well," she said. "I may have to draw on you—and myself, too."
"It's all in the game, Jennie—we've got to play it together—we're two of the same sort—we've got to climb, to succeed. We run well together. One must help the other's hand."
"Yes, it's a game," she answered; and so rose, and left him without further word.
VIII
John Rawn followed her up the stair, mumbling some sort of conjugal affection, but she left him at the landing and passed toward her own apartments down the hall, giving him hardly even a look of farewell. He followed her with his eyes, standing a little time, his hand resting on the lintel of his own door.
Alone, Rawn seated himself in the Elizabethan armchair devised by his most favored decorator as fitting for this Elizabethan room. A vast oak bed, heavily carved, with deep and heavy curtains, represented the decorator's idea of what the Virgin Queen preferred. The walls were deeply carved in wainscot and cornice. A rude attempt was made at strength and simplicity in this, the sanctum of the master of Graystone Hall. Granted the aid of a lively imagination, this might have been the apartment of some feudal lord of another day; as the designer and architect had not failed delicately to suggest to Mr. Rawn.
It is possible that in the time of Elizabeth pier glasses with heavily carved frames were not common in the size affected by Mr. Rawn in his private apartment. He stood before the great glass now and gazed at what he saw; a face haggard and lined, shoulders stooping a little forward, body a little stooped, a little heavy, a little soft; the watch charm hanging in free air—the figure of a man no longer athletic, if ever so.
Rawn stood engaged in his regular nightly devotions—he made no prayers of eventide beyond that to his mirror. But now something he saw caused him to fling himself into a seat at a smaller glass, where the light was better. He gazed into this also, intently. Something seemed strange about his eyes, about his mouth. He turned his face slightly sidewise and studied the deep triangular lines at the corner of the chin. He saw a roll of fat at the back of his neck, and observed a certain throatiness, a voluminousness of flesh below the chin. The latter stood out distinct, pushing forward;—the rich man's chin, the old man's chin. He lifted a finger and touched the arteries on his temples. They were firmer to the touch than once they had been. He looked at the veins on his hands, and realized that they stood fuller than was once the case. His nose, large, just a trifle bulbous, seemed to him to have gained somewhat in color in late years. He looked at his eyes in eager questioning. Yes, they belonged to him! But for some reason they lacked brilliance and fire. They were colder, less impressive, less responsive;—the rich man's eyes, the old man's eyes. He looked at his hair, now almost white at the temples. He hesitated for a moment, then picked up a hand glass and deliberately turned his back to the mirror. Yes, it was there, a shiny spot of naked epidermis. He knew that, but always he shunned the knowledge and the proof. For many years his thick mane of wiry hair had been his pride.
John Rawn turned and put the hand mirror on the dresser top again. He looked full into the glass at his image once more. His pendulous lower lip drooped, tremulously. He saw his eyes winking. He saw something else. Yes, to his wonder, to his gasping horror, he saw something strange and revolutionary! A tear was standing in the corner of his eye! It dropped, it trickled down his cheek.
John Rawn for the first time in his life was learning what the one game is—and learning that time is the one winner in that one game! He was old.
CHAPTER VI
AN INFORMAL MEETING
I
It must surprise those simple folk, Messieurs Washington, Jefferson, and their like, were they to return to life at this advanced day and gaze upon the admirable republic which they fancied to be founded on immutable principles. As in politics to-day those principles would seem proved to have been not quite immutable, so, in commerce, men and methods would appear wholly different from those known in that earlier day. For instance, in commercial matters, the men of that day would now find in daily application a fourth dimension of affairs once wholly unknown; the sixth sense of the modern business man, a delicately differentiated faculty evolved in the holy of holies where events cast their financial shadows far in advance of themselves. John Jay, or any financier of Revolutionary time, very likely lacked in that regard, and had but his five senses.
This keen sense of prophecy, property of modern leaders in finance, was not lacking in the case of the directors of the International Power Company, all and several; and more especially several. Capitalists hunt in packs—but only up to a certain point. The sauve qui peut has small chivalry about it even in the holy of holies.
Within a few days after the turbulent scenes which took place in the quiet surroundings of Graystone Hall, there was held, quite informally, indeed on a wholly impromptu basis, a meeting of the greater portion of the directors of the International Power Company. It was a meeting not called by the president, and the president knew nothing of it. It was not set for the usual headquarters in the East; on the contrary, by merest chance, these keen-witted men met by accident in the western city where were located the works and central operating offices of the International Power Company. They made their stopping place, as usual, at the National Union Club, where they were less certain to become the prey of prying reporters—a breed detested above all things by these and their like.
II
There was, this afternoon, casually present, a certain gray-haired, full-bodied man, of full beard and rather portly body. He was speaking with President Standley, of St. Louis, who also by merest chance happened to be in town. To them presently came the former general traffic manager of Mr. Standley's road, Ackerman, also present by merest accident. Two or three others, moreover, by mere accident, joined them, figures which were familiar at the long table in the New York headquarters. They looked at one another frankly, and laughed without much reservation.
"Well," said Ackerman, after a time, "let's sit down and have a little powwow—informally, you know."
The gray-haired man grinned pleasantly again and said nothing, but drew up a chair.
"Of course, you know," said Standley, as he seated himself, "that our dissatisfied friend, Van, is here in town to-day?"
The full-bearded man nodded, and an instant later jerked his head toward the door. "He's here in the club, too," said he, and smiled. "Just happened in, I suppose." Indeed, as they turned to look they saw advancing, talking animatedly, a rather slender, youngish man of brown eyes and pointed beard; none less than the disgruntled director who had long ago been so summarily handled by John Rawn, president of the International Power Company.
"Hasn't he got the nose for news, though?" commented Standley admiringly. "Now, who told him there was anything doing!"
"He didn't need to have anybody tell him," growled Ackerman. "He can take care of himself. And by Jove! I'm half inclined to think that he was the lucky one—to get out the way he did, and when he did."
"Yes, he's lucky," said Standley gravely. He turned to see the vast round belly of the gray-bearded man heaving in silent mirth. The railway magnate obviously was amused.
"I don't know!" remarked Ackerman suddenly. "Others, eh?"
III
"Well, boys, why not admit it?" rejoined the older man. "We all know the facts. We all know why we're here. As you said, Ack, let's hold a little informal meeting, and talk over what we had better do!"
"How much did you sell!" demanded Standley casually.
"Twenty thousand last week. You sold about double that."
"Yes, it's leaking out, no use denying that! You don't need to list this thing—it leaks!"
"Of course, Van's buying it," said Standley, nodding toward the slender figure of the ex-director. "First time I ever knew him to go out for revenge. It doesn't very often pay."
"Well, I can't figure it out," ventured Ackerman. "The stock won't do him any more good than it does us. He can't get the control over that old bonehead Rawn—I mean our respected president—anyhow, any more than we can. He's sitting tight, with the papers in his box. I admit that I let go a little, because I figured it was time we were doing something better than six per cent. with that stock, and all Rawn has done is to make one explanation on top of another. He can't keep on putting that across with me, anyhow. But he can sit there, as I say, with the control in his hands, looking at those nice pictures of the Lady of the Lightnings, which he had engraved as our trademark."
"He's awfully gone on her," spoke up one. "Not that I blame him, either. I hate to sell my stock, because I like the looks of our engraved goddess so much!"
"There's most always a lady standing around somewhere, with the lightning in her hands," ventured the gray-bearded man solemnly. They looked at one another again suggestively, but no one spoke more definite words than that.
IV
"Well, we've had high-sounding talk put up to us about long enough," commented Ackerman, at length. "I was one of the first to go in for this, and I believe in it yet, but I don't want this thing with Rawn in control. Why, look at him,—he was just a clerk when he came to us, and here he's putting on more side than any other man in the town. He's taken advantage of his situation to play the market in and out, all the time, which he couldn't have done if it hadn't been for friends like us. He squeezed us into backing him—after we gave him that first little flyer in Rubber, and some Oil—that hadn't cost us anything and didn't look worth anything. In return he's handed us promises and explanations and hot air, and nothing else. I've just got an idea that there's a man-sized nigger somewhere around this woodpile. For me, I prefer being hung as a little lamb rather than as a full-sized goat. Yes, I let go a little International—to Van—I'll admit. Time enough to get back into the game when we've put Rawn out!"