XVIII
DOWN, BRUNO!
For six days after the night of revelations Kent dived deep, personally and by paid proxy, in a sea of secrecy which, but for the five pregnant minutes in the doorway of the governor's office, might easily have proved fathomless.
On the seventh day the conflagration broke out. The editor of the Belmount Refiner was the first to smell smoke and to raise the cry of "Fire!" but by midnight the wires were humming with the news and the entire State was ablaze.
The story as it appeared under the scare headlines the next morning was crisply told. An oil company had been formed with Senator Duvall at its head. After its incorporation it was ascertained that it not only held options on all the most valuable wells in the Belmount region, but that its charter gave it immunity from the law requiring all corporations to have their organizations, officers, and operating headquarters in the State. By the time the new company was three days old it had quietly taken up its options and was the single big fish in the pool by virtue of its having swallowed all the little ones.
Then came the finishing stroke which had set the wires to humming. On the sixth day it was noised about that Senator Duvall had transferred his controlling interest to Rumford—otherwise to the Universal Oil Company; that he had served only as a figurehead in the transaction, using his standing, social and political, to secure the charter which had been denied Rumford and his associates.
It had all been managed very skilfully; the capping of the wells by the Universal's agent, the practical sealing up of the entire district, being the first public intimation of the result of Duvall's treachery and the complete triumph of a foreign monopoly.
The storm that swept the State when the facts came out was cyclonic, and it was reported, as it needed to be, that Senator Duvall had disappeared. Never in the history of the State had public feeling risen so high; and there were not lacking those who said that if Duvall showed himself his life would not be safe in the streets of the capital.
It was after the Argus had gone to press on the night of explosions that Editor Hildreth sought and found David Kent in his rooms at the Clarendon, and poured out the vials of his wrath.
"Say, I'd like to know if you cue-call this giving me a fair show!" he demanded, flinging into Kent's sitting-room and dropping into a chair. "Did I, or did I not understand that I was to have the age on this oil business when there was anything fit to print?"
Kent gave the night editor a cigar and was otherwise exasperatingly imperturbable.
"Keep your clothes on, and don't accuse a man of disloyalty until you have all the documents in the case," he said. "I didn't know, until I saw your bulletin a few hours ago, that the thing had been pulled off. In fact, I've been too busy with other things to pay much attention to the Belmount end of it."
"The ded-devil you have!" sputtered Hildreth, chewing savagely on the gift cigar. "I'd like to know what business you had to mix up in other things to the detriment of my news column. You were the one man who knew all about it; or at least you did a week or two ago."
"Yes; but other and more important things have intervened. I have been desperately busy, as I say."
"Well, you've lost your chance to get your grip on the capitol gang, anyway; that is one comfort," growled the editor, getting what consolation he could out of Kent's apparent failure. "They played it too fuf-fine for you."
"Did they?" said Kent.
"It looks pretty much that way, doesn't it? Duvall is the scapegoat, and the only one. About day after to-morrow Bucks' organ, the Tribune, will come out with an 'inspired' editorial whitewashing the entire capitol outfit. It will show how Rumford's application for the charter was refused, and how a truly good and beneficent state government has been hoodwinked and betrayed by one of its most trusted supporters."
Kent threw off his street coat and went to get his dressing-gown from the wardrobe in the bedroom. When he came back he said: "Hildreth, you have taken me at my word thus far, and you haven't had occasion to call me either a knave or a fool. Do it a little longer and I'll put you in the way of touching off a set-piece of pyrotechnics that will double discount this mild little snap-cracker of the Belmount business."
"Can't you do it now?"
"No; the time isn't ripe yet. We must let the Tribune's coat of whitewash dry in first."
Hildreth wriggled in his chair.
"Kent, if I thought it would do any good, I'd cuc-curse you out; I would for a fact. You are too blamed close-mouthed for any ordinary newspaper use."
But Kent only laughed at him. Now that the strain was in some measure relaxed he could stand any amount of abuse from so good a friend as the night editor.
"Turn on the hot water if you want to, and if it will relieve the pressure. I know about how you feel; and I'd be as sore as you are if I didn't know that I am going to make it up to you a little later on. But about this oil blaze and to-morrow's—or to-day's—issue of the Argus. I hope you haven't said too much."
"I haven't sus-said anything. The stuff trickled in by Associated wire at the last minute, and we had to cut and slash for space and run it pretty much as it came—the bare story."
"All right; that's better. Now suppose you hint darkly that only half of the truth has come out; that more—and more startling—developments may be safely predicted in the immediate hence. Hit it up hard toward the capitol, and don't be afraid of libeling anybody."
Hildreth's eyes narrowed.
"Say, Kent; you have grown a lot in these last few weeks: what is your diet?"
"Hard work—and a determination to make my brag good."
"To down the ring, you mean?"
"Yes; to down the ring."
"Are you any nearer to it than you were when you began?"
"A good many parasangs."
"By Jove! I more than half believe you've got hold of something ded-definite at last!"
"I have, indeed. Hildreth, I have evidence—printable evidence—enough to dig a dozen political graves, one of them big enough to hold Jasper G. Bucks' six-feet-two."
"Let me see it!" said the night editor, eagerly; but Kent laughed and pushed him toward the door.
"Go home and go to bed. I wouldn't show it to you to-night if I had it here—as I have not. I don't go around with a stick of dynamite in my pocket."
"Where is it?" Hildreth asked.
"It is in a safety-deposit box in the vault of the Security Bank; where it is going to stay until I am ready to use it. Go home, I say, and let me go to bed. I'm ragged enough to sleep the clock around."
In spite of his weariness, which was real enough, Kent was up betimes the next morning. He had a wire appointment with Blashfield Hunnicott and two others in Gaston, and he took an early train to keep it. The ex-local attorney met him at the station with a two-seated rig; and on the way to the western suburbs they picked up Frazee, the county assessor, and Orton, the appraiser of the Apache Building and Loan Association.
"Hunnicott has told you what I am after," said Kent, when the surrey party was made up. "We all know the property well enough, but to have it all fair and above-board, we'll drive out and look it over, so that our knowledge may be said to be fully up to date."
Twenty minutes afterward the quartet was locating the corners of a square in Gaston's remotest suburb; an "addition" whose only improvements were the weathered and rotting street and lot stakings on the bare, brown plain.
"'Lots 1 to 56 in Block 10, Guilford & Hawk's Addition,'" said Kent, reading from a memorandum in his note-book. "It lies beautifully, doesn't it?"
"Yes; for a chicken farm," chuckled the assessor.
"Well, give me your candid opinion, you two: what is the property worth?"
The Building and Loan man scratched his chin.
"Say fifty dollars for the plot—if you'll fence it."
"No, put it up. You are having a little boom here now: give it the top boom price, if you like."
The two referees drew apart and laid their heads together.
"As property is going here just now, fifty dollars for the inside lots, and one hundred dollars apiece for the corners; say three thousand for the plot. And that is just about three times as much as anybody but a land-crazy idiot would give for it." It was Frazee who announced the decision.
"Thank you both until you are better paid. Now we'll go back to town and you can write me a joint letter stating the fact. If you think it will get you disliked here at home, make the figure higher; make it high enough so that all Gaston will be dead sure to approve."
"You are going to print it?" asked the Building and Loan appraiser.
"I may want to. You may shape it to that end."
"I'll stand by my figures," said Frazee. "It will give me my little chance to get back at the governor. I had it assessed as unimproved suburban property at so much the lot, but he made a kick to the board of equalization and got it put in as unimproved farm land at fifty dollars an acre." Then, looking at his watch: "We'd better be getting back, if you have to catch the Accommodation. Won't you stay over and visit with us?"
"I can't, this time; much obliged," said Kent; and they drove to the Building and Loan office where the joint letter of appraisal was written and signed.
Kent caught his train with something to spare, and was back at the capital in good time to keep a dinner engagement at Miss Van Brock's. He had understood that Ormsby would be the only other guest. But Portia had a little surprise in store for him. Loring had dropped in, unannounced, from the East; and Portia, having first ascertained that Mrs. Brentwood's asthma was prohibitive of late dinings-out, had instructed Ormsby to bring Elinor and Penelope.
Kent had been saving the results of his deep-sea divings in the oil-field investigation to spread them out before Miss Van Brock and Ormsby "in committee," but he put a padlock on his lips when he saw the others.
Portia gave him Elinor to take out, and he would have rejoiced brazenly if the table talk, from the bouillon to the ices, had not been persistently general, turning most naturally upon the Universal Oil Company's successful coup in the Belmount field. Kent kept out of it as much as he could, striving manfully to monopolize Elinor for his own especial behoof; but finally Portia laid her commands upon him.
"You are not to be allowed to maroon yourself with Miss Brentwood any longer," she said dictatorially. "You know more about the unpublished part of this Belmount conspiracy than any one else excepting the conspirators themselves, and you are to tell us all about it."
Kent looked up rather helplessly.
"Really, I—I'm not sure that I know anything worth repeating at your dinner-table," he protested.
But Miss Van Brock made a mock of his caution.
"You needn't be afraid. I pledged everybody to secrecy before you came. It is understood that we are in 'executive session.' And if you don't know much, you may tell us what you know now more than you knew before you knew so little as you know now."
"Hold on," said Kent; "will you please say that over again and say it slowly?"
"Never mind," laughed Ormsby. "Miss Portia has a copyright on that. But before you begin, I'd like to know if the newspapers have it straight as far as they have gone into it?"
"They have, all but one small detail. They are saying that Senator Duvall has left the city and the State."
"Hasn't he?" Loring asked.
"He hadn't yesterday."
"My-oh!" said Portia. "They will mob him if he shows himself."
Kent nodded assent.
"He knows it: he is hiding out. But I found him."
"Where?" from the three women in chorus.
"In his own house, out in Pentland Place. The family has been away since April, and the place has been shut up. I took him the first meal he'd had in thirty-six hours."
Portia clapped her hands. The butler came in with the coffee and she dismissed him and bade him shut the doors.
"Now begin at the very tip end of the beginning," she commanded.
Kent had a sharp little tussle with his inborn reticence, thrust it to the wall and told a plain tale.
"It begins in a piece of reckless folly. Shortly after I left Mrs. Brentwood's last Thursday evening I had a curious experience. The shortest way down-town is diagonally through the capitol grounds, but some undefinable impulse led me to go around on the Capitol Avenue side. As I was passing the right wing of the building I saw lights in the governor's room, and in a sudden fit of desperation resolved to go up and have it out with Bucks. It was abnormally foolish, I'll confess. I had nothing definite to go on; but I—well, I was keyed up to just about the right pitch, and I thought I might bluff him."
"Mercy me! You do need a guardian angel worse than anybody I know!" Portia cut in. "Do go on."
Kent nodded.
"I had one that night; angel or demon, whichever you please. I was fairly dragged into doing what I did. When I reached the upper corridor the door of the public anteroom was ajar, and I heard voices. The outer room was not lighted, but the door between it and the governor's private office was open. I went in and stood in that open doorway for as much as five minutes, I think, and none of the four men sitting around the governor's writing-table saw me."
He had his small audience well in hand by this time, and Ormsby's question was almost mechanical. "Who were the four?"
"After the newspaper rapid-fire of this morning you might guess them all. They were his Excellency, Grafton Hendricks, Rumford, and Senator Duvall. They were in the act of closing the deal as I became an onlooker. Rumford had withdrawn his application for a charter, and another 'straw' company had been formed with Duvall at its head. I saw at once what I fancy Duvall never suspected; that he was going to be made the scapegoat for the ring. They all promised to stand by him—and you see how that promise has been kept."
"Good heavens!" ejaculated Loring. "What a despicable lot of scoundrels! But the bribe: did you learn anything about that?"
"I saw it," said Kent, impressively. "It was a slip of paper passed across the table by Rumford to Bucks, face down. Bucks glanced at it before he thrust it into his pocket, and I had my glimpse, too. It was a draft on a Chicago bank, but I could not read the figures, and I doubt if either of the other conspirators knew the amount. Then the governor tossed a folded paper over to the oil man, saying, 'There is your deed to the choicest piece of property in all Gaston, and you've got it dirt cheap.' I came away at that."
Elinor's sigh was almost a sob; but Miss Van Brock's eyes were dancing.
"Go on, go on," she exclaimed. "That is only the beginning."
Kent's smile was of reminiscent weariness.
"I found it so, I assure you. So far as any usable evidence was concerned, I was no better off than before; it was merely my assertion against their denial—one man against four. But I have had a full week, and it has not been wasted. I needn't bore you with the mechanical details. One of my men followed Bucks' messenger to Chicago—he wouldn't trust the banks here or the mails—and we know now, know it in black on white, with the proper affidavits, that the draft was for two hundred thousand dollars, payable to the order of Jasper G. Bucks. The ostensible consideration was the transfer from Bucks to Rumford of a piece of property in the outskirts of Gaston. I had this piece of land appraised for me to-day by two disinterested citizens of Gaston, and they valued it at a possible, but highly improbable, three thousand."
"Oh, how clumsy!" said Portia, in fine scorn. "Does his Excellency imagine for a moment that any one would be deceived by such a primitive bit of dust-throwing?" and Ormsby also had something to say about the fatal mistakes of the shrewdest criminals.
"It was not so bad," said Kent. "If it should ever be charged that he took money from Rumford, here is a plain business transaction to account for it. The deed, as recorded, has nothing to say of the enormous price paid. The phrasing is the common form used when the parties to the transfer do not wish to make the price public: 'For one dollar to me in hand paid, and other valuable considerations.' Luckily, we are able to establish conclusively what the 'other valuable considerations' were."
"It seems to me that these documents arm and equip you for anything you want to do," said Loring, polishing his eye-glasses after his ingrained habit.
Kent shook his head.
"No; thus far the evidence is all circumstantial, or rather inferential. But I picked up the final link in the chain—the human link—yesterday. One of the detectives had been dogging Duvall. Two days ago the senator disappeared, unaccountably. I put two and two together, and late last evening took the liberty of breaking into his house."
"Alone?" said Elinor, with the courage-worshiping light in the blue-gray eyes.
"Yes; it didn't seem worth while to double the risk. I did it rather clumsily, I suppose, and my greeting was a shot fired at random in the darkness—the senator mistaking me for a burglar, as he afterward explained. There was no harm done, and the pistol welcome effectually broke the ice in what might otherwise have been a rather difficult interview. We had it out in an upper room, with the gas turned low and the window curtains drawn. To cut a long story short, I finally succeeded in making him understand what he was in for; that his confederates had used him and thrown him aside. Then I went out and brought him some supper."
Ormsby smote softly upon the edge of the table with an extended forefinger.
"Will he testify?" he asked.
Kent's rejoinder was definitive.
"He has put himself entirely in my hands. He is a ruined man, politically and socially, and he is desperate. While I couldn't make him give me any of the details in the Trans-Western affair, he made a clean breast of the oil field deal, and I have his statement locked up with the other papers in the Security vaults."
It was Penelope who gave David Kent his due meed of praise.
"I am neither a triumphant politician nor a successful detective, but I recognize both when they are pointed out to me," she said. "Mr. Kent, will you serve these gentlemen up hot for dinner, or cold for luncheon?"
"Yes," Portia chimed in. "You have outrun your pace-setters, and I'm proud of you. Tell us what you mean to do next."
Kent laughed.
"You want to make me say some melodramatic thing about having the shackles forged and snapping them upon the gubernatorial wrists, don't you? It will be prosaic enough from this on. I fancy we shall have no difficulty now in convincing his Excellency of the justice of our proceedings to quash Judge MacFarlane and his receiver."
"But how will you go about it? Surely you can not go personally and threaten the governor of the State!" this from Miss Brentwood.
"Can't I?" said Kent. "Having the score written out and safely committed to memory, that will be quite the easiest number on the programme, I assure you."
But Loring had something to say about the risk.
"Thus far you have not considered your personal safety—haven't had to, perhaps. But you are coming to that now. You are dealing with a desperate man, David; with a gang of them, in fact."
"That is so," said Ormsby. "And, as chairman of the executive committee, I shall have to take steps. We can't afford to bury you just yet, Kent."
"I think you needn't select the pall-bearers yet a while," laughed the undaunted one; and then Miss Van Brock gave the signal and the "executive committee" adjourned to the drawing-room. Here the talk, already so deeply channeled in the groove political, ran easily to forecastings and predictions for another electoral year; and when Penelope began to yawn behind her fan, Ormsby took pity on her and the party broke up.
It was at the moment of leave-taking that Elinor sought and found her chance to extract a promise from David Kent.
"I must have a word with you before you do what you say you are going to do," she whispered hurriedly. "Will you come to see me?"
"Certainly, if you wish it. But you mustn't let Loring's nervousness infect you. There is no danger."
"There is a danger," she insisted, "a much greater danger than the one Mr. Loring fears. Come as soon as you can, won't you?"
It was a new thing for her to plead with him, and he promised in an access of tumultuous hope reawakened by her changed attitude. But afterward, when he was walking down-town with Loring, the episode troubled him a little; would have troubled him more if he had not been so deeply interested in Loring's story of the campaign in the East.
Taking it all in all, the ex-manager's report was encouraging. The New Englanders were by no means disposed to lie down in the harness, and since the Western Pacific proper was an interstate line, the Advisory Board had taken its grievance to Washington. Many of the small stockholders were standing firm, though there had been panicky defections in spite of all that could be done. Loring had no direct evidence to sustain the stock deal theory; but it was morally certain that the Plantagould brokers were picking up Western Pacific by littles wherever they could find it.
"I am inclined to believe we haven't much time to lose," was Kent's comment. "Things will focus here long before Washington can get action. The other lines are bringing a tremendous pressure to bear on Guilford, whose cut rates are demoralizing business frightfully. The fictitious boom in Trans-Western traffic is about worked out; and for political reasons Bucks can't afford to have the road in the hands of his henchmen when the collapse comes. The major is bolstering things from week to week now until the Plantagould people get what they are after—a controlling majority of the stock—and then Judge MacFarlane will come back."
They were within two squares of the Clarendon, and the cross-street was deserted save for a drunken cow-boy in shaps and sombrero staggering aimlessly around the corner.
"That's curious," Loring remarked. "Don't you know, I saw that same fellow, or his double, lurching across the avenue as we came out of Alameda Square, and I wondered what he was doing out in that region."
"It was his double, I guess," said Kent. "This one is many pegs too drunk to have covered the distance as fast as we have been walking."
But drunk or sober, the cow-boy turned up again most unexpectedly; this time at the entrance of the alley half-way down the block. In passing he stumbled heavily against Kent; there was a thick-tongued oath, and Loring struck out smartly with his walking-stick. By consequence the man's pistol went off harmlessly in the air. The shot brought a policeman lumbering heavily up from the street beyond, and the skirling of relief whistles shrilled on the night. But the man with a pistol had twisted out of Kent's grasp and was gone in a flash.
"By Jove!" said Loring, breathing hard; "he wasn't as drunk as he seemed to be!"
Kent drew down his cuffs and shook himself straight in his coat.
"No; he wasn't drunk at all; I guess he was the man you saw when we came out of the square." Then, as the policeman came up puffing: "Let me do the talking; the whisky theory will be good enough for the newspapers."
XIX
DEEP-SEA SOUNDINGS
"Oof! I feel as if I had been dipped in a warm bath of conspiracy and hung up to dry in the cold storage of nihilism! If you take me to any more meetings of your committee of safety, I shall be like the man without music in his soul—'fit for treasons, stratagems and spoils.'"
Thus Penelope, after the breaking up of the Van Brock dinner party. Elinor had elected to walk the few blocks intervening between Alameda Square and Tejon Avenue, and Ormsby had dismissed his chauffeur with the motor-car.
"I told you beforehand it was going to be a political confab," said the club-man in self-defense. "And you mustn't treat it lightly, either. Ten prattling words of what you have heard to-night set afloat on the gossip pool of this town might make it pretty difficult for our David."
"We are not very likely to babble," retorted Penelope. "We are not so rich in intimates in this aboriginal desert." But Elinor spoke to the penal clause in his warning.
"Then Mr. Kent's danger is more real than he admitted?" she said.
"It's real enough, I fancy; more real for him than it might be for another man in his place. He is a curious combination, is David: keen and sharp-witted and as cold as an icicle in the planning part; but when it comes to the in-fighting he hasn't sense enough to pound sand, as his New Hampshire neighbors would say."
"I like that side of him best," Penelope averred. "Deliver me from a man of the cold and calculating sort who sits on his impulses, sleeps on his injuries, and takes money-revenge for an insult. Mr. Loring tells a story of a transplanted Vermonter in South America. A hot-headed Peruvian called him a liar, and he said: 'Oh, pshaw! you can't prove it.'"
"What a merciless generalizer you are!" said Ormsby, laughing. "The man who marries you will have his work cut out for him if he proposes to fill the requirements."
"Won't he?" said Penelope. "I can fancy him sitting up nights to figure it all out."
They had reached the Tejon Avenue apartment house, and to Elinor's "Won't you come in?" Ormsby said: "It's pretty late, but I'll smoke a cigar on the porch, if you'll let me."
Penelope took the hammock, but she kept it only during the first inch of Ormsby's cigar. After her sister had gone in, Elinor went back to the lapsed topic.
"I am rather concerned about Mr. Kent. You described him exactly; and—well, he is past the planning part and into the fighting part. Do you think he will take ordinary precautions?"
"I hope so, I'm sure," rejoined the amateur chairman. "As his business manager I am responsible for him, after a fashion. I was glad to see Loring to-night—glad he has come back. Kent defers to him more than he does to any one else; and Loring is a solid, sober-minded sort."
"Yes," she agreed; "I was glad, too."
After that the talk languished, and the silence was broken only by the distant droning of an electric car, the fizz and click of the arc light over the roadway, and the occasional dap of one the great beetles darting hither and thither in the glare.
Ormsby was wondering if the time was come for the successful exploiting of an idea which had been growing on him steadily for weeks, not to say months.
It was becoming more and more evident to him that he was not advancing in the sentimental siege beyond the first parallel thrown up so skilfully on the last night of the westward journey. It was not that Elinor was lacking in loyalty or in acquiescence; she scrupulously gave him both as an accepted suitor. But though he could not put his finger upon the precise thing said or done which marked the loosening of his hold, he knew he was receding rather than advancing.
Now to a man of expedients the interposition of an obstacle suggests only ways and means for overcoming it. Ormsby had certain clear-cut convictions touching the subjugation of women, and as his stout heart gave him resolution he lived up to them. When he spoke again it was of the matter which concerned him most deeply; and his plea was a gentle repetition of many others in the same strain.
"Elinor, I have waited patiently for a long time, and I'll go on doing it, if that is what will come the nearest to pleasing you. But it would be a prodigious comfort if I might be counting the days or the weeks. Are you still finding it impossible to set the limit?"
She nodded slowly, and he took the next step like a man feeling his way in the dark.
"That is as large an answer as you have ever given me, I think. Is there any speakable reason?"
"You know the reason," she said, looking away from him.
"I am not sure that I do. Is it because the moneygods have been unpropitious—because these robber barons have looted your railroad?"
"No; that is only part of it—the smallest part."
"I hoped so: if you have too little, I have a good bit too much. But that corners it in a way to make me sorry. I am not keeping my promise to win what you weren't able to give me at first."
"Please don't put it that way. If there be any fault, it is mine. You have left nothing undone."
The man of expedients ran over his cards reflectively and decided that the moment for playing his long suit was fully come.
"Your goodness of heart excuses me where I am to blame," he qualified. "I am coming to believe that I have defeated my own cause."
"By being too good to me?" she suggested.
"No; by running where I should have been content to walk; by shackling you with a promise, and so in a certain sense becoming your jailer. That is putting it rather clumsily, but isn't it true?"
"I had never thought of it in that light," she said unresponsively.
"You wouldn't, naturally. But the fact remains. It has wrenched your point of view hopelessly aside, don't you think? I have seen it and felt it all along, but I haven't had the courage of my convictions."
"In what way?" she asked.
"In the only way the thing can be stood squarely upon its feet. It's hard—desperately hard; and hardest of all for a man of my peculiar build. I am no longer what you would call a young man, Elinor, and I have never learned to turn back and begin all over again with any show of heartiness. They used to say of me in the Yacht Club that if I gained a half-length in a race, I'd hold it if it took the sticks out of my boat."
"I know," she assented absently.
"Well, it's the same way now. But for your sake—or rather for the sake of my love—I am going to turn back for once. You are free again, Elinor. All I ask is that you will let me begin where I left off somewhere on the road between here and Boston last fall."
She sat with clasped hands looking steadily at the darkened windows of the opposite house, and he let her take her own time. When she spoke there was a thrill in her voice that he had never heard before.
"I don't deserve it—so much consideration, I mean," she said; and he made haste to spare her.
"Yes, you do; you deserve anything the best man in the world could do for you, and I'm a good bit short of that."
"But if I don't want you to go back?"
He had gained something—much more than he knew; and for a tremulous instant he was near to losing it again by a passionate retraction of all he had been saying. But the cool purpose came to his rescue in time.
"I should still insist on doing it. You gave me what you could, but I want more, and I am willing to do what is necessary to win it."
Again she said: "You are too good to me," and again he contradicted her.
"No; it is hardly a question of goodness; indeed, I am not sure that it escapes being selfish. But I am very much in earnest, and I am going to prove it. Three years ago you met a man whom you thought you could love—don't interrupt me, please. He was like some other men we know: he didn't have the courage of his convictions, lacking the few dollars which might have made things more nearly equal. May I go on?"
"I suppose you have earned the right to say what you please," was the impassive reply.
It was the old struggle in which they were so evenly matched—of the woman to preserve her poise; of the man to break it down. Another lover might have given up in despair, but Ormsby's strength lay in holding on in the face of all discouragements.
"I believe, as much as I believe anything in this world, that you were mistaken in regard to your feeling for the other man," he went on calmly. "But I want you to be sure of that for yourself, and you can't be sure unless you are free to choose between us."
"Oh, don't!—you shouldn't say such things to me," she broke out; and then he knew he was gaining ground.
"Yes, I must. We have been stumbling around in the dark all these months, and I mean to be the lantern-bearer for once in a way. You know, and I know, and Kent is coming to know. That man is going to be a success, Elinor: he has it in him, and he sha'n't lack the money-backing he may need. When he arrives——"
She turned on him quickly, and the blue-gray eyes were suspiciously bright.
"Please don't bury me alive," she begged.
He saw what he had done; that the nicely calculated purpose had carried straight and true to its mark; and for a moment the mixed motives, which are at the bottom of most human sayings and doings, surged in him like the sea at the vexed tide-line of an iron-bound coast. But it was the better Brookes Ormsby that struggled up out of the elemental conflict.
"Don't mistake me," he said. "I am neither better nor worse than other men, I fancy. My motives, such as they are, would probably turn out to be purely selfish in the last analysis. I am proceeding on the theory that constraint breeds the desire for the thing it forbids; therefore I remove it. Also, it is a part of that theory that the successful David Kent will not appeal to you as the unspoiled country lawyer did. No, I'm not going to spoil him; if I were, I shouldn't be telling you about it. But—may I be brutally frank?—the David Kent who will come successfully out of this political prize-fight will not be the man you have idealized."
There was a muttering of thunder in the air, and the cool precursory breeze of a shower was sweeping through the tree-tops.
"Shall we go into the house?" she asked; and he took it as his dismissal.
"You may; I have kept you up long enough." And then, taking her hand: "Are we safely ashore on the new continent, Elinor? May I come and go as heretofore?"
"You were always welcome, Brookes; you will be twice welcome, now."
It was the first time she had ever called him by his Christian name and it went near to toppling down the carefully reared structure of self-restraint. But he made shift to shore the tottering walls with a playful retort.
"If that is the case, I'll have to think up some more self-abnegations. Good night."
XX
THE WINNING LOSER
Editor Hildreth's prophecy concerning the probable attitude of the administration newspapers in the discussion of the oil field affair waited but a day for its fulfilment. On the Friday morning there appeared in the Capital Tribune, the Midland City Chronicle, the Range County Maverick and the Agriculta Ruralist able editorials exonerating the People's Party, its policy and the executive, and heaping mountains of obloquy on the name of Duvall. These editorials were so similar in tone, tenor and texture, as pointedly to suggest a common model—a coincidence which was not allowed to pass unremarked by Hildreth and other molders of public opinion on the opposite side of the political fence.
But Hildreth did not pause at generalities. Two days after the Universal's triumph in the Belmount field, the Argus began to "hit it up" boldly toward the capitol, and two things came of it. The first was an attempt by some party or parties unknown to buy up a controlling interest in the Argus. The second was the waylaying of David Kent in the lobby of the Clarendon Hotel by no less a personage than the Honorable Melton Meigs, attorney-general of the State.
In his first conversation with Ormsby, Kent had spoken of the three leading spirits of the junto as from personal knowledge; but of the three, Bucks, Hendricks and Meigs, the attorney-general was the least known to him. Prior to his nomination on the State ticket Meigs had been best known as the most astute criminal lawyer in the State, his astuteness lying not so much in his ability as a pleader as in a certain oratorical gift by which he was able to convince not only a jury but the public of the entire innocence of his client.
He was a small man physically, with womanish hands and feet, and a beardless face of that prematurely aged cast which is oftenest seen in dwarfs and precocious infants; and his distinguishing characteristic, the one which stuck longest in the mind of a chance acquaintance or a casual observer, was a smile of the congealed sort which served to mask whatever emotion there might be behind it.
Kent had seen little of Meigs since the latter had turned him down in the quo warranto matter; and his guard went up quickly when the attorney-general accosted him in the lobby of the hotel and asked for a private interview.
"I am very much occupied just now, Mr. Meigs," he demurred; "but if it is a matter of importance——"
"It is; a matter of the greatest importance," was the smooth-toned reply. "I am sure you will not regret it if you will give me a few moments, Mr. Kent."
Kent decided quickly. Being forewarned, there was nothing to fear.
"We will go up to my rooms, if you please," he said, leading the way to the elevator; and no other word was spoken until they were behind closed doors on the fourth floor.
"A prefatory remark may make my business with you seem a little less singular, Mr. Kent," Meigs began, when Kent had passed his cigar-case and the attorney-general had apologized for a weak digestive tract. "On wholly divergent lines and from wholly different motives we are both working toward the same end, I believe, and it has occurred to me that we might be of some assistance to each other."
Kent's rejoinder was a mute signal to the effect that he was attending.
"Some little time ago you came to me as the legal representative of the stock-holders of the Trans-Western Railway Company, and I did not find it possible at that time to meet your wishes in the matter of a quo warranto information questioning Judge MacFarlane's election and status. You will admit, I presume, that your demand was a little peremptory?"
"I admit nothing," said Kent, curtly. "But for the sake of expediting present matters——"
"Precisely," was the smiling rejoinder. "You will note that I said 'at that time.' Later developments—more especially this charge made openly by the public press of juggling with foreign corporations—have led me to believe that as the public prosecutor I may have duties which transcend all other considerations—of loyalty to a party standard—of——"
Kent took his turn at interrupting.
"Mr. Meigs, there is nothing to be gained by indirection. May I ask you to come to the point?"
"Briefly, then: the course pursued by Senator Duvall in the Belmount affair leaves an unproved charge against others; a charge which I am determined to sift to the bottom—you see, I am speaking quite frankly. That charge involves the reputation of men high in authority; but I shall be strong to do my sworn duty, Mr. Kent; I ask you to believe that."
Kent nodded and waved him on.
"You will readily understand the delicacy of the task, and how, in the nature of things, I am handicapped and hedged up on every side. Evidence—of a kind to enable me to assail a popular idol—is exceedingly difficult to procure."
"It is," said Kent, grimly.
"Exactly. But in revolving the matter in my own mind, I thought of you. You are known at the capitol, Mr. Kent, and I may say throughout the State, as the uncompromising antagonist of the State administration. I have asked myself this: Is it possible that a cool-headed, resolute attorney like Mr. David Kent would move so far and so determinedly in this matter of antagonism without substantially paving the ground under his feet with evidence as he went along?"
Kent admitted that it was possible, but highly improbable.
"So I decided," was the smile-tempered rejoinder. "In that case it only remains for me to remind you of your public duty, Mr. Kent; to ask you in the name of justice and of the people of the State, to place your information in the hands of the public prosecutor."
Kent's face betrayed nothing more than his appreciation of the confidence reposed in him by the man whose high sense of official honor was making him turn traitor to the party leader who had dragged him through a successful election.
"I have what evidence I need, Mr. Meigs," he declared. "But if I make no secret of this, neither do I conceal the fact that the motive pro bono publico has had little to do with its accumulating. I want justice first for what might be called a purely private end, and I mean to have it."
"Pre-cisely," smiled the attorney-general. "And now we are beginning to see our way a little clearer. It is not too late for us to move in the quo warranto proceedings. If you will call at my office I shall be glad to reopen the matter with you."
"And the price?" said Kent, shortly.
"Oh, my dear sir! must we put it upon the ground of a quid pro quo? Rather let us say that we shall help each other. You are in a position to assist me very materially: I may be in a position to serve your turn. Come to my office to-morrow morning prepared to do your duty as an honest, loyal citizen, and you will find me quite willing to meet you half-way."
Kent rose and opened his watch.
"Mr. Meigs, I have given you your opportunity, and you have seemed to give me mine," he said coolly. "Will you pardon me if I say that I can paddle my own canoe—if I ask you to assure his Excellency that one more device of his to escape punishment has been tried and found wanting?"
For a flitting moment the cast-iron smile faded from the impassive face of the attorney-general and an unrelenting devil came to peer out of the colorless eyes. Then Meigs rose cat-like and laid his hand on the door-knob.
"Do I understand that you refuse to move in a matter which should be the first duty of a good citizen, Mr. Kent?" he asked purringly.
"I certainly do refuse to fall into any such clumsy trap as you have been trying to bait for me, Mr. Meigs," said David Kent, dropping back into his former curtness.
The door opened slowly under the impulse of the slender womanish hand.
"You have a task of some magnitude before you, Mr. Kent. You can scarcely hope to accomplish it alone."
"Meaning that you would like to know if the fight will go on if I should chance to meet another drunken cow-boy with a better aim? It will."
The door closed softly behind the retreating figure of the attorney-general, and Kent released the spring of the night-latch. Then he went to the dropped portière at the farther end of the room, drew it aside and looked in on a man who was writing at a table pushed out between the windows.
"You heard him, Loring?" he asked.
The ex-manager nodded.
"They are hard pressed," he said. Then, looking up quickly: "You could name your price if you wanted to close out the stock of goods in hand, David."
"I shall name it when the time comes. Are you ready to go over to the Argus office with me? I want to have a three-cornered talk with Hildreth."
"In a minute. I'll join you in the lobby if you don't want to wait."
It was in the afternoon of the same day that Kent found a note in his key-box at the Clarendon asking him to call up 124 Tejon Avenue by telephone. He did it at once, and Penelope answered. The key-box note had been placed at Elinor's request, and she, Miss Penelope, could not say what was wanted; neither could she say definitely when her sister would be in. Elinor had gone out an hour earlier with Mr. Ormsby and Miss Van Brock in Mr. Ormsby's motor-car. When was he, David Kent, coming up? Did he know they were talking of spending the remainder of the summer at Breezeland Inn? And where was Mr. Loring all this time?
Kent made fitting answers to all these queries, hung up the ear-piece and went away moodily reflective. He was due at a meeting of the executive committee of the Civic League, but he let the public business wait while he speculated upon the probable object of Elinor's telephoning him.
Now there is no field in which the inconsistency of human nature is so persistent as in that which is bounded by the sentimentally narrowed horizon of a man in love. With Ormsby at the nodus of his point of view, David Kent made no secret of his open rivalry of the millionaire, declaring his intention boldly and taking no shame therefor. But when he faced about toward Elinor he found himself growing hotly jealous for her good faith; careful and fearful lest she should say or do something not strictly in accordance with the letter and spirit of her obligations as Ormsby's fiancée.
For example: at the "conspiracy dinner," as Loring dubbed it, Ormsby being present to fight for his own hand, Kent, as we have seen, had boldly monopolized Miss Brentwood, and would have committed himself still more pointedly had the occasion favored him. None the less, when Elinor had begged him privately to see her before moving in the attack on the junto, he had almost resented the implied establishing of confidential relations with her lover's open rival.
For this cause he had been postponing the promised visit, and thereby postponing the taking of the final step in the campaign of intimidation. The unexplained telephone call decided him, however. He would go and see Elinor and have the ordeal over with.
But as a preliminary he dined that evening with Ormsby at the Camelot Club, and over the coffee had it out with him.
"I am going out to see Miss Brentwood to-night," he announced abruptly. "Have you any objection?"
The millionaire gave him the shrewdest of over-looks, ending with a deep-rumbling laugh.
"Kent, you are the queerest lot I have ever discovered, and that is saying a good bit. Why, in the name of all the proprieties, should I object?"
"Your right is unchallenged," Kent admitted.
"Is it? Better ask Miss Brentwood about that. She might say it isn't."
"I don't understand," said Kent, dry-tongued.
"Don't you? Perhaps I'd better explain: she might find it a little difficult. You have been laboring under the impression that we are engaged, haven't you?"
"Laboring under the—why, good heavens, man! it's in everybody's mouth!"
"Curious, isn't it, how such things get about," commented the player of long suits. "How do you suppose they get started?"
"I don't suppose anything about it, so far as we two are concerned; I have your own word for it. You said you were the man in possession."
Ormsby laughed again.
"You are something of a bluffer yourself, David. Did you let my little stagger scare you out?"
David Kent pushed his chair back from the table and nailed Ormsby with a look that would have made a younger man betray himself.
"Do you mean to tell me that there is no engagement between you and Miss Brentwood?"
"Just that." Ormsby put all the nonchalance he could muster into the laconic reply, but he was anticipating the sequent demand which came like a shot out of a gun.
"And there never has been?"
Ormsby grinned.
"When you are digging a well and have found your stream of water, it's folly to go deeper, David. Can't you let 'good enough' alone?"
Kent turned it over in his mind, frowning thoughtfully into his coffee-cup. When he spoke it was out of the mid-heart of manliness.
"I wish you would tell me one thing, Ormsby. Am I responsible for—for the present state of affairs?"
Ormsby stretched the truth a little; partly for Elinor's sake; more, perhaps, for Kent's.
"You have done nothing that an honorable rival—and incidentally a good friend of mine—might not do. Therefore you are not responsible."
"That is putting it very diplomatically," Kent mused. "I am afraid it does not exonerate me wholly."
"Yes, it does. But it doesn't put me out of the running, you understand. I'm 'forninst' you yet; rather more stubbornly than before, I fancy."
Kent nodded.
"That, of course; I should think less of you if you were not. And you shall have as fair a show as you are giving me—which is saying a lot. Shall we go and smoke?"