[ Extracted from Windsor magazine, London, Vol 22, 1905 pp. 19-30, etc. Accompanying illustrations by J. H. Frampton omitted. ] Jack Steele speculates in business and love: with varying results. An adventure novella, which can also be read (as published) as a series of linked short stories.
The SPECULATIONS of JACK STEELE
By ROBERT BARR.
I.—THE STATION-MASTER.
THE STATION-MASTER said nonchalantly that he had nothing to do with it, and from out the telegraph-office he brought a stout, wooden chair which he set down in the dark strip of shade which ran along the pine platform under the eaves of the station. The back of this chair being tilted against the building, the station-master sat down in it, put his heels on the wooden round, took from his pocket a jack-knife, and began to whittle a stick, an occupation which the momentary pausing of the express seemed to have interrupted. There was nothing of the glass of fashion or the mould of form about the station-master. He was dressed in weather-worn trousers, held to his thin frame by a pair of suspenders quite evidently home-made, which came over his shoulders, and underneath this was a coarse, woollen shirt, open at the throat because the button had gone. On top of all this was a three-year-old, dilapidated straw hat which had once possessed a wide brim, but was now in a state of disrepair in thorough keeping with the costume. Yet in spite of appearances he was a capable young man who could work a telegraphic machine at reasonable speed, was well up in the business pertaining to Slocum Junction, and had definite opinions regarding the manner in which the affairs of the nation should be carried on. Indeed, at that moment he was an exemplification of the independence for which his country had fought and bled. No one knew better than he that the Greased Lightning Express would never have halted for an instant at Slocum Junction unless it did so to put off a person of some importance. But that important person had begun to give his opinion of the locality in language that was painful and free, the moment he realised the situation, and the station-master signified his resentment by sitting down in the chair and assuming a careless attitude, which told the stranger plainer than words that he could go to the devil if he wished. For all he knew, the obstreperous person who had stepped from the express might be his chief, but the station-master made no concession to that possibility.
Opposite him in the blazing sunlight stood a dapper young man grasping a neat hand-bag. He might have posed as a tailor's model, and he offered a striking contrast to the unkempt station-master. He cast an almost despairing look at the vanishing express, now a mere dot in the horizon, with a trail of smoke, as if it were a comet that had run aground. Then he turned an exasperated face upon the complacent station-master.
"You are not responsible for the situation, eh? You don't seem to care much, either."
"Well, to tell the truth, stranger, I don't."
"You mean to tell me there's no train for two hours and a half on the branch line?"
"I never said anything of the sort, because there isn't any branch line."
"No branch line? Why, there it is before my eyes! There's a locomotive, of a kind, and a composite passenger and freight-car that evidently dates from the time of the Deluge. Noah used that car!" cried the angry stranger.
"Well, if Noah was here, he wouldn't use it for two hours and a half," said the station-master complacently.
"I don't understand what you mean," protested the stranger. "Is there, or is there not, a train in two hours and a half?"
"Of course there is."
"You said a minute ago there wasn't."
"I didn't say anything of the kind; and if you weren't adding your own natural heat to the unnatural heat of the day, you'd learn something. You were talking about branch lines; I said there is no branch line. That's all."
"Then what's the meaning of those two lines of rust running to the right?"
"There's five or six thousand people," droned the station-master, "who'd like to know what that object you're referring to really is. Leastways, they used to want to know, but lately they've given up all curiosity on the subject. They're the shareholders, who put up good money to have that road made. We call it the Farmers' Road, and it isn't a branch, but as independent as the main line."
"Or as yourself," hazarded the young man.
"Well, it's independent, anyhow," continued the station-master, "and I've nothing to do with it."
"Haven't the cursed fools who own it the sense to make it connect with anything on the main line?"
"Of course, we're all fools unless we come from Chicago," said the station-master imperturbably.
"I didn't say that," commented the stranger.
"No, I did. If your dome of thought was in working order, I shouldn't need to explain these things; but as I've nothing particular to do, I may as well teach a man from Chicago his A B C. You stepped off the express just now owning the whole country, populated with fools, according to you. I've been station-master here for eighteen months, and I never saw that express stop before. Now, I'm not such a fool, but I know that a man who steps off the Greased Lightning is one of two things. He is either a big bug with pull enough on the railway company to get them to stop the Greased Lightning for him, or else he's a tramp who can't pay his fare, and so is put off."
"Oh, you've sized me up, have you? Well, which am I? The millionaire or the tramp?"
"When you stepped off, I thought you were the millionaire; but the moment you opened your mouth,. I knew you were the tramp."
Jack Steele laughed with very good-natured heartiness.
"Say, old man, that's all right. The drinks are on me, if there was a tavern near, which there doesn't seem to be. I suppose there's no place in this forsaken hole where on a hot day like this a man can get a cooling drink?"
"Stranger, you're continually jumping at conclusions and landing at the wrong spot. Allow me to tell you"—here he lowered his voice a bit—"that you don't raise no blush to my cheeks by anything you can say; but there's a lady in the waiting-room, and if I were you, I'd talk accordingly."
The change in the cocksure attitude of Jack Steele was so sudden and complete that it brought a faint smile of gratification to the gaunt face of the station-master.
"Great Heavens!" whispered the crestfallen young man, "why didn't you tell me that before?"
"Well, you've been kind of monopolising the conversation, and I haven't had much chance to speak up to now. One would suppose that if a man had a thinking-machine in his head at all, he would know that the little road couldn't connect with a train that never stopped here."
"Of course, of course," said Jack hurriedly, his mind running on the language he had used in the first moments of chagrin at finding himself marooned at this desolate junction, which might have been heard by the unseen lady in the waiting-room. He hoped his voice hadn't carried through the pine wall.
"Well, station-master, I apologise. And now, if you will kindly tell me what the Farmers' Road does connect with, I'll be very much obliged."
"The Farmers' Road runs two trains a day," said the station-master sententiously, as if he were speaking of some mighty empire. "The train consists, as you see, of a locomotive and a mixed car. The first train comes in here at nine o'clock in the morning, connecting with the local going east. It then returns to Bunkerville, and reaches here in the afternoon at three o'clock, to connect with the local going west. That little train doesn't know there are any flyers on our line; all it knows is that the eastern local comes in somewhere about nine o'clock in the morning, and the western local arrives anywhere between three and five in the afternoon. So a Chicago man can't step jauntily off the express he has managed to stop, and expect to get a train to Bunkerville whenever he chooses."
"Admirably stated," said Jack Steele. "And if you will condescend further to enlighten a beclouded intellect, would you mind explaining what the deuce the little train is doing here at this hour? If I follow your argument, it should have returned to Bunkerville after the nine o'clock local came in, and should not have arrived here until just before three o'clock."
"Your befogged brain is waking up," said the station-master encouragingly. "The phenomenon to which you have called attention happens once or twice a week. If you cast your eye to the other end of the platform, you will see piled there an accumulation of miscellaneous freight. The Farmers' Road has just dumped that upon us, and to do so has taken a special trip. That stuff will go east on Number Eight, which is a freight train that will stop here some time in the afternoon when it sees the signal set against it."
"I comprehend," said Jack; "and I venture on my next proposition with great diffidence, caused by increasing admiration of yourself and the lucid mind you bring to bear on Western railway procedure. If I have followed your line of argument as unerringly as the farmers' train follows the Farmers' Road, his nibs the engineer must take the train back to Bunkerville so that he may return here on his regular trip to meet the three o'clock western local. If I am right, what is to prevent him from going now, taking me with him, and giving me an opportunity at Bunkerville to transact my business and catch the regular train back? for I am going further west, and would like to intercept the local, which would save me spending an unnecessary night at Bunkerville, and wasting most of to-morrow as well."
"The reasons are as follows. His nibs, as you call him, is engineer, conductor, brakesman, and freight handler. When he came in, he had to carry that freight from his car to the platform where you see it. That takes time, even if the day were not so oppressively hot as it is. So, instead of keeping up his fire under the boiler, and burning useless coal, he banks the furnace as soon as he arrives. Then he takes his time bringing the boxes to the platform. If he returned to Bunkerville, they would give him something to do there: here he is out of reach; besides, he would have to draw his fires, and start anew about two o'clock, and that he doesn't want to do. He has, therefore, curled himself up in the passenger car, put a newspaper over his face to keep off the flies, and has gone to sleep. When the proper moment arrives, he will stir up his fire, go to Bunkerville, and then be ready to make the return trip on one expenditure of coal. Now do you understand?"
"Yes, thank you, I do; and this has given me an idea."
"That's a good thing, and I can easily guess what your idea is. But before putting it into operation, I should like to mitigate a slight you have put on Slocum Junction. You made a sarcastic remark about cool drinks. Now, I beg to inform you that the nine o'clock local from the west slides off on this here platform every morning a great big square cold chunk of ice. That chunk of ice is growing less and less in a big wooden pail in the telegraph-office, but the water that surrounds it is as cold as the North Pole. If you have anything in your hip pocket or in that natty little valise which mitigates the rigour of cold water, there's no reason why you shouldn't indulge in a refreshing drink."
"Station-master," said Jack, laughing, "you ought to be superintendent of this road, instead of junction boss. You're the wisest man I've met in two years."
Saying this, he sprang the catch of the handbag and drew forth a bulky, wicker-covered, silver-topped flask.
"I propose we adjourn to the telegraph-office," he added, "and investigate that wooden pail."
The station-master led the way with an alacrity that he had not heretofore exhibited. The result of the conference was cheerful and refreshing.
"Now," said the station-master, drawing the back of his hand across his lips, "what you want is a special train to Bunkerville. A man from the city would get that by telegraphing to the superintendent at the terminus and paying twenty dollars. A man from the country who had some sense would go to Joe the engineer and persuade him he ought to wake up and return to Bunkerville at once."
"How much would be required to influence Joe?"
"Oh, a couple of dollars would be wealth. A silver dollar in front of each eye will obscure the whole western prairie if placed just right."
"Very well, I'll go out and place 'em."
"You are forgetting your flask," said the station-master, as Mr. Steele snapped shut his valise.
"No, I'm not. That flask and its contents belong to you, as a reward for being patient and instructive when a darned fool let loose from the city happened your way."
And this showed Jack Steele to be a reader of his fellow-man; for while the engineer might accept the two dollars, the independent station-master certainly would not have done so. That glib official, however, seemed to have no particular words for this occasion, so he changed the subject and said—
"If you persuade Joe to go, I wish you'd remember the lady in the waiting-room. She's a Miss Dorothy Slocum, and a powerful nice girl, that teaches school in Bunkerville. Fact is, this junction was named after her father. Used to be the principal man round these parts; but he lost his money, and now his girl's got to teach school. I never knew him—he was dead long before I came here. She's been visiting relatives. This is vacation time, you know."
"All right. You tell her there's a special leaving in a few minutes, and that she's very welcome to ride upon it."
With that Jack Steele went out into the furnace of the sun across the dusty road and entered the composite car. The Farmers' Road did not join rails with the main line, and so caused much extra handling of freight. The engine stood there simmering in the heat, both external and internal, a slight murkiness of smoke rising from its funnel, shaped like an inverted bell.
"Hallo, Joe!" cried Steele, as he entered the car. "Don't you yearn for home and friends?"
The man was sprawling on two seats, with a newspaper over his head, as the station-master had predicted.
"Hallo!" he echoed, sitting up and shaking away the sheet of paper, "what's the matter?"
"Nothing, except that if the spirit should move you to get over to Bunkerville with this ancient combination, five dollars will be transferred from my pocket into yours."
"’Nough said," cried Joe, rising to his feet. "It'll take me about twenty minutes to get the pot boiling again. You don't happen to have the fiver about you, I suppose? I haven't seen one for a couple of years."
"Here you are," replied Steele, drawing a crisp bill from his purse.
The engineer thrust it into the pocket of his greasy overall.
"I'll toot the whistle when I'm ready," he said.
This financial operation accomplished, John Steele returned to the station. The station-master was standing by the door of the waiting-room conversing pleasantly with someone within. Jack Steele pushed past him and was amazed to see so pretty a girl sitting on the bench that ran round the bare walls of the uninviting room.
"Will you introduce me?" inquired the city man, handing his card to the station-master.
"Miss Slocum," said the latter, "this is Mr. John Steele, of Chicago."
The young man removed his fashionable straw hat.
"Miss Slocum," he said, "I desire to apologise to you. I'm afraid that when I found myself stranded on the platform outside, I used language which can hardly be justified, even in the circumstances. But I had no idea at the time that there was a lady within miles of us."
"I was much interested in my book," replied the girl, with a smile, "and was not paying attention to what was going on outside."
She held up a book, between whose leaves her forefinger was placed.
"Well, Miss Slocum. it must have been a pretty absorbing story, and I am deeply grateful to it for acting as a non-conductor between my impulsive observations and your hearing. Nothing excuses intemperate language, as the station-master here has taught me through the force of a benign example. Still, if anything could exculpate a man, I should think it would be the exasperating conduct of this Farmers' Railroad, as they call it."
"Indeed," said Miss Dorothy archly, "the book had really no right to interfere, because I am one of the owners of the railway, and so perhaps it was my duty to listen to complaints of a passenger. Not that I have anything to do with the management of the line; I am compelled to pay my fare just like the rest."
"I should be delighted if you would accept a ride on your own road as free as if you carried a superintendent's pass. I am going to Bunkerville in my own private car, as I shall feel honoured if I may extend the courtesies of the same."
"The station-master has just told me you were kind enough to offer a poor vagrant a lift to Bunkerville. I wished to buy a ticket, but this haughty official of the main line so despises our poor little road that he will not sell me one."
"Indeed," said the station-master, "I haven't the power, nor the tickets. They don't entrust me with any business so tremendous. Joe starts his rickety engine going, then leaves it to jog along as it likes, and comes through the car to collect the fares. They have no tickets, and perhaps that's why the road has never paid a dividend."
"Oh, you mustn't say that!" protested the girl. "Poor Joe has not got rich out of his occupation, any more than the shareholders have made money on their shares. If you will permit me to pay my fare to Joe, Mr. Steele, I shall be only too happy to take this early opportunity of getting to Bunkerville."
"I couldn't think of it, Miss Slocum; in fact, I must prohibit any communication between Joe and yourself, fearing you, as an owner of the road, may learn by what corrupt practices I induced Joe to make the trip."
The girl laughed, but before she could reply, a wheezy "Toot-toot!" outside announced that Joe had already got steam up.
"I'll carry your valise across," said the obliging station-master, while Miss Dorothy Slocum picked up her lighter belongings and accompanied Mr. John Steele to the shabby little passenger-car. Joe was leaning out with a grin on his smeared face, which was there probably because of the five-dollar bill in his trousers pocket. The station-master placed the valise in the baggage section of the car, and raised his tattered hat as the little train started gingerly out for the open country.
It was a pretty landscape through which they passed, with little to indicate that the prairies were so near at hand. The line ran along a shallow valley, well wooded, especially by the banks of the stream that wandered through it, which even at this parched season of the year was still running its course with dear water in it, and Miss Slocum informed the Chicago man that it flowed from a never-drying spring some ten miles on the other side of the main line. The little road was as crooked as possible, for the evident object of its constructors had been to avoid bridging the stream, piling up any high embankments, or excavating deep cuttings. The pace, therefore, was exceedingly slow; nevertheless, John Steele did not find the time hang heavily on his hands. At first the girl seemed somewhat shy and embarrassed to find herself the only passenger except this gallant young business man; but he tactfully put her at her ease by pretending much interest in the history of the road, with which he soon learned she was somewhat unfortunately familiar.
"Yes," she said, "the building of this road was the greatest financial disaster that ever occurred in this section of the country. My father was one of its chief promoters. When the Wheat Belt Line, by which you came here from Chicago, was surveyed through this part of the State, those interested in the neighbourhood expected that it would ran through Bunkerville, which would become a large town. The railway people demanded a large money bonus, which Bunker county refused, because Bunkerville was in the direct line, and they thought the railway must come through there, whether a bonus were paid or not. In fact, the first survey passed just north of Bunkerville. But our poor little village was not so important as its inhabitants imagined, and the next line surveyed was twenty miles away. For once the farmers were too shrewd. They thought, as they put it, that the new line was a bluff, and did not realise their mistake until too late. My father had been in favour of granting the bonus, but he was out-voted. Perhaps that is why the railway people called their station Slocum instead of Bunkerville, which was twenty miles distant. The next nearest railway line was forty-five miles away, and two years after the Wheat Belt Line began operations, it was proposed to organise a local company to construct a railway from Slocum, through Bunkerville to Jamestown, on the other line. Bonuses were granted all along the route, and besides this the State legislature gave a subsidy, and, furthermore, passed a Bill to prevent competition, prohibiting any railway to parallel the Farmers' Road for sixty miles on either side."
"Does that law still stand on the statute books of the State?" asked Steele, with increasing interest.
"I think so. It has never been repealed to my knowledge."
"Well, I should doubt its being constitutional. Why, that ties up more than seven thousand square miles of the State into a hard knot, and prevents it from having the privilege of further railway communication."
"In a measure it does," said the girl. "You may run as many lines as you like north and south, but not east and west."
"It's a wonder the Wheat Belt Line didn't contest that law," said Steele.
"Well, I've been told that this law is entirely in the interests of the Wheat Belt Line, although the farmers didn't think so when they voted for the Bill. You see, the Wheat Belt Line was already in operation east and west, and could not be affected by that Act, and, of course, the same Bill which prevented competition to the Farmers' Road also, in a measure, protected the Wheat Belt Line through the same district."
"By Jove!" said Steele, his eyes glistening, "this is a proposition which contains some peculiar points. Well, go on, what happened?"
"Oh, disaster happened. In spite of the legislation and bonuses, the road was a complete failure, and ruined all who were deeply interested in it. The farmers subscribed stock to the amount of something like a hundred thousand dollars, but this money, with the sum of the legislative grant and the bonuses, was all swallowed up in the first twenty miles, and in getting the rolling-stock and equipment, such as it is. The line was never pushed through to Jamestown, and there arose litigation about some of the bonuses that had been paid, and, all in all, it was a most disastrous business. It was hoped that the Wheat Belt Line would come to the rescue and buy the unfinished road, but they would not look at it. This section has never paid a dividend, and is supposed to be doing well when it produces enough money for expenses and repairs. The shares can now be bought for five cents on the dollar, or less."
"How much of it do you possess, Miss Slocum?"
"I have a thousand shares, and my father told me not to part with them, because he was certain that some day they would be valuable."
For a few moments there was silence in the car, and the girl, glancing up at her companion, found his ardent gaze fixed upon her with an intensity that was embarrassing. She flushed slightly and turned her head to look out of the window at the familiar scenery they were passing. It would have surprised the young man could he have read the thoughts that occupied the mind of this extremely pretty and charmingly modest girl who sat opposite him. Here is practically what she said to herself—
"I am tired of this deadly dull village in which I live, and here, at last, is a way out. I read in his eyes the beginning of admiration. He shall be the youthful Moses to lead me into the Promised Land. Through this lucky meeting I shall attain the city if I but play my cards rightly."
It would have astonished the girl if she had known what was in the man's mind. The ardent gaze was not for her, as she had supposed. Although he appeared to be looking directly at her, he was in reality almost ignorant of her presence, and saw unfolded before him a scene far beyond her—the whole range of the eastern States. The power that enabled him to stop the fast express at Slocum Junction gave a hint of Steele's position in the railway world to the station-master, but it conveyed no meaning to the girl. It was his business to be intimately acquainted with the railway situation in north-western America, and that involved the knowledge of what was going on in the eastern States. He knew that the Rockervelt system was making for somewhere near this point, and that, ultimately, it would need to cross the State, in spite of the opposition it must meet from the Wheat Belt Line. Whoever possessed the Farmers' bankrupt road held the right of way across the State, so far as a belt of one hundred and twenty miles was concerned. It seemed incredible that Rockervelt, this Napoleon of the railway world, should be ignorant of the obstacle that lay in his path. Rockervelt was in the habit of buying legislatures and crushing opposition; still, he never spent money where it was not required, and it would be infinitely cheaper to buy the Farmers' Road, and thus secure the privileges pertaining to it, than to purchase the repeal of the obstructing law. At that moment Jack Steele determined to camp across the path of the conqueror. If Napoleon accepted battle, Jack was under no delusion as to the result. The name of Steele would disappear from the roll of rising young men in Chicago, and he would have to begin at the bottom of the ladder again. However, he knew that Napoleon's eye was fixed on the Pacific coast, and that he never wasted time in a fight if a reasonable expenditure of money would cause the enemy to withdraw. Steele calculated that he could control the road for something under three thousand dollars, which would give him the majority of the stock at the price the girl had named. That was a mere bagatelle. Then he would withdraw from Rockervelt's front for anything between three hundred thousand dollars and half a million.
A sigh from the girl brought him to a realisation of his neglect of social duties, and the brilliant vision of loot faded from his eyes.
"What pretty scenery we are passing!" he said. "The wooded dell, and the sparkling little rivulet running through it. It is sweet and soothing after the rush and turmoil of a great city. It must be a delight to live here."
"Indeed it isn't!" cried the girl; "it is horrid! Deadly dull, utterly common place, with little chance of improving the mind, and none at all for advancing one's material condition. I loathe the life and yearn for the city."
As she said this, she bestowed upon him a fascinating glimpse of a pair of lovely eyes, and veiled within them he saw what he took to be a tender appeal for sympathy and, perhaps, for help. After all, he was a young man, and perhaps that glance had carried a hypnotic suggestion to his very soul; and, added to all this, the girl was undoubtedly beautiful.
"Really," he said, leaning forward towards her, "I think that might be managed, you know."
"Do you?" she asked, looking him full in the face.
At that interesting moment the car slowly came to a standstill at a wooden platform, and Joe thrust open the door and shouted—
"Here you are! Bunkerville!"
Dorothy Slocum held out her hand shyly to John Steele as she bade him "Good-bye." She thanked him once more for allowing her to ride on the special train, and added—
"If you ever come to Bunkerville again, I hope you will not forget me."
"Forget you!" cried the enthusiastic young man. "I think you entirely underrate the attractions of Bunkerville. It seems to me a lovely village. But I shall visit it again—not because of itself, but for the reason that a certain Miss Dorothy lives here."
To this complimentary speech Miss Slocum made no reply, but she laughed and blushed in a manner very becoming to her, and somehow managed to leave an impression on Mr. Steele's mind that she was far from being displeased at the words he had uttered.
When she had gone, the traveller asked Joe where the office of Mr. Hazlett, the lawyer, was situated; and being directed, he was speedily in the presence of the chief legal functionary that Bunkerville possessed. Steele had a considerable amount of money lent upon Bunkerville business property, and his lawyer had written him that as times were backward, there was some difficulty in persuading the debtors to meet the requirements of the mortgages. If the mortgages were foreclosed and the property sold, Hazlett did not think it would produce the money that had been borrowed upon it, and so Steele had informed him that he would drop off at Bunkerville on his way west, and see his security for himself.
The lawyer had been expecting him on the regular train, and so was not at the station to meet him. If Hazlett had expected a visit from a hard old skinflint, resolved on having his pound of financial flesh, he must have, been somewhat surprised to greet a smiling young fellow who seemed to be thinking of anything but the property in question.
"We will just walk down the street," said the lawyer, "and I'll show you the buildings."
"All right," said Steele, "if it doesn't take too long; for I must catch the three o'clock local at Slocum Junction."
During their walk together, Steele paid but the scan test interest to the edifices pointed out to him, and the lawyer soon found he was not even listening to the particulars he so circumstantially gave.
"Do you know anything about the Farmers' Railway?" was the question Steele shot at him in the midst of a score of reasons why it was better not to foreclose at the present moment.
"I know all about it," said the lawyer. "I have done the legal business of the road from its commencement."
"Have you a list of the shareholders?"
"I hold a partial list; but shares have changed hands a good deal, and sometimes no notification has been given me, which is contrary to law."
"I was told to-day that shares can be bought at five cents on the dollar. Is that true?"
"Many shares have been sold at that price; some for less, some for more."
"What is the total number of shares?"
"A hundred thousand."
"Could fifty thousand and an odd share be bought?"
"Do you mean to get control of the road? Yes, I suppose it might be done if you weren't in a hurry, and it was gone about quietly. Some farmers in the outlying districts refuse to sell, thinking the price of the stock will rise, which of course it won't do. Nevertheless, I imagine there should be no difficulty in collecting the fifty-one thousand shares."
"What would it cost?"
"Anywhere between three and five thousand dollars—all depending, as I said, on the thing being done circumspectly, for in these rural communities the wildest rumours get afloat, and so, if it became known that someone was in the market, prices would go up."
"Well, I have in my mind exactly the man to do the trick with discretion, and his name is Hazlett. I will lodge in the bank here five thousand dollars in your name, and I depend on you to get me at least one share over the fifty thousand, although, to be on the safe side, you may purchase at least a thousand in excess. Send the shares to me in Chicago as fast as you get them, and I'll take care of them."
"Very well, Mr. Steele, I shall do the best I can."
"We will return to your office now, Hazlett, and I'll give you the cheque. In these matters it's just as well not to lose any time."
"There's another building I want to show you, about five hundred yards down the street."
"We won't mind it to-day. I have determined to take your advice and not foreclose at the present moment. Let's get back to your office, for I mustn't miss Joe's train."
After Steele had returned to Chicago, shares in the Farmers' Railroad began to drop in on him in bulky packages, which he duly noted and placed in a safe deposit. Presently the packages became smaller and smaller, but as the total had already reached forty-nine thousand six hundred and thirty, Steele was not alarmed until he received the following letter from Hazlett:—
"Dear Mr. Steele,—
"About two weeks ago I became suspicious that somebody else was buying shares of the Farmers' Road. I came across at that time several people who had sold, although they did not know to whom; and a few days ago a young man called upon me to know if I had any shares for sale. I told him I had none, and as I showed very little interest in the matter, I got some information, and find that a man named Dunham, of New York, is the buyer, and apparently he has agents all over the country trying to purchase shares. I would have telegraphed this information to you were it not for the fact that our telegraph-office is a little leaky, and also because I thought I had the game in my own hands. A young woman in this town, a teacher, Dorothy Slocum by name, possesess a thousand shares, which I felt certain I could purchase for a reasonable figure. I began at ten cents, but she refused, and finally raised to fifty cents, and then a dollar. Higher than that I could not take the responsibility of going without direct authority from you. To my amazement, she has informed me to-day that she has been offered ten thousand dollars for her stock. I obtained her promise that she will not sell for a week. She telegraphed her decision to Dunham, and has received an answer from him saying he is on his way to see her. I learn from Miss Slocum that she is acquainted with you, and I surmise, without being certain, that you personally will prove the successful negotiator if you are on the spot. This letter should reach you in time to enable you to reach here at least as soon as Dunham, and I advise prompt action on your part if we are to secure that thousand shares. If you cannot come, telegraph me any one of the following words, and I shall understand I am authorised to offer the amount set down opposite that word.
"Yours most sincerely,
"James P. Hazlett."
There followed this a dozen words, signifying amounts from ten thousand dollars upwards.
Lawyer Hazlett received a telegram: "Will reach Slocum Junction at twelve to-morrow. Arrange special train on the Farmers' Road to Bunkerville to be at Junction.—Steele."
The moment Dunham's name caught Jack Steele's eye in the lawyer's letter, he knew he had to deal with the most unscrupulous man in the railway business, which is saying much. Dunham was in the employ of the Rockervelt system, and, as far as money was concerned, could outbid him a thousand to one.
When the Greased Lightning Express stopped at Slocum Junction on this occasion, John Steele had ample time to reach the platform, because the express detached itself from a sumptuous private car before it pursued its journey further west.
"Aha!" said Jack to himself, "friend Dunham travels in style."
The station-master greeted Steele with the cordiality of an old friend.
"Here is a letter which lawyer Hazlett sent out to be handed to you as soon as you arrived, and wished you to read it at once."
Steele tore open the envelope and read:—
"I am sorry about the special train, but Dunham had telegraphed from New York ordering it before your wire came. I have arranged, however, that Joe will return at once for you, as soon as he has landed Dunham in Bunkerville. This will make no difference in the negotiations; Miss Slocum has promised to be away from home when Dunham calls, and will see you first. I think you've got the inside track, although I surmise the young woman is well aware that she holds the key to the situation. I don't know if she's after all the money she can get, or whether there is something of friendliness in her action. I rather suspect the latter, and I think you can conclude negotiations before she sees Dunham at all.
"Yours most sincerely,
"James P. Hazlett."
Jack Steele gave no expression to the annoyance he felt at missing the special. He distrusted the lawyer's optimism, and like a flash resolved to be in Bunkerville as soon as his antagonist. Dunham had stepped down from his private car, asked the station-master where the special was to be found, and quickly ordered his car to be placed on a side track. When he had entered the Bunkerville composition car, and Joe had started up his wheezy engine, Steele darted from the shadow of the station, caught the car, and sat down on the rear steps outside, well concealed from the sight of anyone unless that person stood by the end window. All went well until they were about five miles from Bunkerville, when Steele thought he recognised a lady's figure on the highway ahead, and forgetting that he might expose himself to the sharp eyes of Dunham, he rose to his feet, clutched the stanchions, and leaned forward. An instant later the rear door was thrown open, a foot was planted energetically in the small of Steele's back, and that young man went hurtling over the embankment, head over heels. There were no half measures with Dunham. Steele sat up bruised and dazed, not knowing whether he was hurt seriously, or had escaped practically unscathed, which latter proved to be the case. It seemed to him, as he fell through the air, he heard a woman's scream. When he was somewhat stupidly debating whether this was real or imaginary, his doubts were solved by a voice he recognised.
"Oh, Mr. Steele, are you hurt? What a brutal thing for that villain to have done!"
"Why, Miss Dorothy, you of all persons! And here was I trying to sneak into Bunkerville to see you first. I thought you were teaching school?"
"Not on Saturdays, Mr. Steele," said the girl, laughing. "I see, after all, you are not very much hurt."
"I'm all right, I think. Fortunately Joe doesn't run sixty miles an hour. Dorothy, I want you to marry me and come to Chicago."
Again the girl laughed.
"Dear me," she said. "I thought you had come to buy my stock. I couldn't think of taking advantage of a proposal that had been literally shaken out of a man. I'm afraid your mind is wandering a bit."
"My mind was never clearer in its life. What is your answer, Dorothy?"
She sat down beside him, still laughing a little. The rivulet was at their feet, the railway embankment behind them, the highway, shrouded by trees, in front.
"Suppose we talk business first, and indulge in sentiment after?" said the girl, with a roguish twinkle in her eye. "I have been offered ten thousand dollars for my shares. Are you prepared to pay as much?"
"Yes."
"I imagine Mr. Dunham would never have come all the way from New York to see me if he were not prepared to pay a much larger sum. I have therefore two further provisos to make. You will pay me ten thousand down. Proviso number one is that you will give me ten per cent. on the profits you make in this transaction. Of course, in spite of Mr. Hazlett's caution, I know there is something very large going on, and naturally I wish to profit by it."
"You are quite right, Miss Slocum, and I agree to the ten per cent. suggestion; in fact, I offered you a hundred per cent. in the beginning, and myself into the bargain, which proposal you have ignored. What is the second proviso?"
"I am told you have a great deal of influence in railway circles in Chicago."
"Yes, I have."
"Can you get a good place for a capable and deserving young man?"
"I think so. Does he understand railroading?"
"Yes, he is the station-master at Slocum Junction."
"Oh, the station-master! Certainly. I should be delighted to offer him a good position. He is a splendid fellow, and I like him exceedingly."
"I am charmed to hear you say so," said Dorothy, with downcast eyes, pulling a flower and picking it to pieces; "for that brings us to the sentiment, and I show my confidence in you and the great esteem in which I hold you, by telling you this strict secret—that I am engaged to be married to the station-master, and am anxious to get to Chicago."
II.—OUR DAILY BREAD.
ROCKERVELT settled with Jack Steele by drawing his cheque for three hundred and ninety-eight thousand six hundred and seventy dollars, and it was the imperturbable Dunham himself who carried through the negotiations. Steele asked half a million at the beginning, but had made up his mind he would take three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. As he wished to have this sum clear, he added to it the amount he paid for the stock, including Miss Slocum's ten thousand dollars, and the percentage, which came to nearly forty thousand more. Then he informed Dunham he was forced to add ten thousand dollars for that kick, which he did. He told Dunham that he remembered the kick on an average of once a day, and that this thought humiliated him. Therefore he would be compelled to charge one hundred dollars a day for thinking of the assault while negotiations were pending. Whether this time-penalty hastened negotiations or not will never be known, but it accounts for the odd figures on the Rockervelt cheque.
The station-master of Slocum Junction was given the position of travelling man on the Wheat Belt Line, at a salary of fifty dollars a week, which seemed to him princely. Miss Dorothy Slocum insisted on finishing her year at the Bunkerville school, but during the Christmas holidays she married the station-master, and they set up house-keeping in Chicago with the nice little bank account of nearly fifty thousand dollars. The young lady's dream of life was now realised. She was an inhabitant of the western metropolis, in comfortable circumstances, with everything at her disposal that a large city had to offer her. Jack Steele, in the New Year, had the pleasure of escorting the young woman to a matinée, and when he asked her if the few weeks' experience of Chicago had changed her mind regarding the delights of the place, she replied that Chicago was heavenly; which called up a smile to the young man's lips as he remembered the story of a Chicago man who had died and gone to the other place, and told an inmate thereof that his new residence was preferable to Chicago. But Jack didn't tell the story to his companion. He complained pathetically that she had broken his heart by marrying the station-master, but she laughed and said she had broken his heart no more than Dunham had broken his neck by precipitating him down the railway embankment from the running train—winch, by the way, was true enough.
As time went on, he saw less and less of his Bunkerville friends. He was rising rapidly in the financial world, had resigned his position on the Wheat Belt Line, important as it was, and had set up an office for himself. The newspapers made a great deal of his encounter with old Rockervelt and his victory over that magnate, but Jack was a clear-headed man who had no delusions on the score of that episode. He had spent some very anxious days while negotiations were pending, and no one knew better than he that if Rockervelt had decided to fight, it might have cost the great railway king more than he had paid, but Jack Steele would have been wiped out when the battle was ended. He resolved never again to combat a force so many thousand times stronger than himself. He would be content with a smaller game and less risk. Jack attributed the few grey hairs at his temple to those anxious days while Rockervelt was making up his mind, keeping silent and giving forth no sign.
But grey hairs do not necessarily bring wisdom, and so little does a man suspect what is ahead of him, that a few tears from a pretty woman sent him into a contest without knowing who his adversary was, to find himself at last face to face with the most formidable financial foe that the world could offer.
He had almost forgotten his friends from the west, when one day the young woman's card was brought up to him as he sat in his office, planning an aggression which was still further to augment his ever-increasing bank account. He looked up with a smile as Dorothy entered, but it was stricken from his lips when he saw how changed she was. All colour had left her cheeks, and her eyes were red as if with weeping.
"Good gracious!" he cried, springing to his feet, "what is the matter? Have you been ill?"
"No," she said, with a catch in her voice, sinking into the chair he offered, "but I am nearly distracted. Oh, Mr. Steele! you said once that the country was sweet and soothing after the turmoil of the city, and I told you I was tired of the country's dulness. It was a foolish, foolish remark. I wish we were back there, and done with this dreadful town!"
"Why, what has happened? Is it your husband, then, who is ill?"
"No—yes, he is—or, rather, yes and no; for, like myself, he is at his wits' end and doesn't know what to do; therefore I have come to seek your advice," and with this she broke down and wept.
Jack thought at first that her husband had been dismissed; and if that were the case, Steele, being no longer connected with the railway, would be powerless to aid. Still, he did not see why such an event should cause so much distress, for a young couple in good health, with fifty thousand dollars in the bank, are not exactly paupers, even in Chicago.
"My husband," sobbed the woman at last, "has invested everything we possess in wheat, and since that time the price of wheat has been falling steadily. Now we are on the verge of ruin."
"What on earth did he meddle with wheat for? It is more dangerous than dynamite."
"I don't know," wept the young woman; "but Tom thought it was sure to rise."
"Yes. They always think that. How much did he purchase?"
"One million bushels."
"Good gracious! Do you happen to know the price?"
"Yes, seventy-eight cents."
"Great Scott! Do you mean to say that you two silly young people took on an obligation of seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, when you possess less than fifty thousand? When he made the deal, how much of a margin did he put up?"
"You mean the money he gave the broker? Ten thousand dollars."
"Ah! then a decline of a cent a bushel would wipe that out."
"Yes, it did, and ever since wheat has been falling, until now it is seventy-four and a quarter. We have given the brokers so far thirty-seven thousand five hundred dollars, and if wheat drops another cent, we have not the money to meet the call and will lose everything. These last three weeks have been the most anxious time of my life."
"I can well believe it. Now, what do you want me to do?"
"Mr. Steele, I want you to take over this wheat. It can't possibly go much lower, and Tom says it is bound to rise. This time last year it was eighty-nine, and if it went up to that now, we would net over a hundred thousand dollars. You see, you would not need to take the risk we have done, for we bought at seventy-eight, and you will be buying at seventy-four and a quarter."
"But I don't see how my taking it over would help you."
"Why, if it went up to over eighty—and Tom says it is sure to do that before many weeks are past—you would make a good profit and could give us back our money."
Serious as was the situation, Jack could scarcely refrain from a smile at such a beautiful specimen of feminine logic. Of course, if he wished to dabble in wheat, he could buy at seventy-four now, and if it went to eighty, secure the whole profit without paying anything to anyone.
"Is Tom at home just now?"
"Yes."
"Well, you ask him to call this afternoon, and we will talk the situation over."
The young woman rose and beamed on him through her tears.
"Oh, I am sure you two will hit upon a plan. When I told Tom this morning of the scheme I have just outlined to you, he scoffed at me; but you see its feasibilty, don't you?"
"Yes, I think I do. Anyhow, Tom and I will consult this afternoon about it, and he'll let you know at what decision we arrive." He shook hands with his visitor and was very glad to see her depart.
"Good gracious!" he said to himself when the door was shut, "how fatuously silly she is! And to think that a little more than a year ago I proposed to her! Poor girl! Beauty almost gone, too, at the first whiff of trouble. Still, the situation is serious enough; but it is easier to refuse a man than a woman. I'll tell Tom what I think of him when he comes. Imagine the cursed fool marching into Chicago like a hayseed from the backwoods, and losing fifty thousand dollars inside of three weeks! What he needs is a guardian; yet I'd like to help the little woman, too, although I don't see how I am. I wonder if wheat's going any lower. Hold up, Jack, my boy, don't get thinking about the price of wheat. That way madness lies. No, I'll confine myself to giving Tom a piece of my mind when I see him which will make him angry, so we'll quarrel, and then it'll be easy to refuse him."
At three o'clock the ex-station-master of Slocum Junction was shown into John Steele's private office. His face was so gaunt and haggard that for a moment Steele felt sorry for him; but business is business, and sympathy has no place in the wheat-pit. Tom shook hands and sat down without a word; all his old jauntiness had left him.
"Well, my Christian friend," began Steele in his severest manner, "when I was the means of getting you transferred from Slocum Junction to Chicago, and also had something to do towards endowing your wife-that-was-to-be with nearly fifty thousand dollars, hang me if I thought you would act the giddy farmer-come-to-town and blow it all away in the wheat-pit! God bless my soul! haven't you sense enough to know that the biggest men in Chicago have been crumpled up in the grain-market? How could you expect to win where the richest and shrewdest men in the city have failed? Don't you read the papers? Haven't you any brains in your head at all? Is it only an intellectual bluff that you are putting up before the public, pretending to be a man of sense? Why, a ten-year-old boy born in Chicago would know better! Wheat may be the staff of life when it leaves the flour-mill, but it's the cudgel of death in the speculative market!"
"So I've been told," said Tom quietly.
"Well, you haven't profited much by the telling. What in the name of all the saints made you speculate in wheat?"
"I didn't speculate."
"I understand you bought a million bushels?"
"I did."
"What's that but speculating, then?"
"Look here, Mr. Steele, are you quite done with your abuse of me? Isn't there some things more that you could say? That I wear a woollen shirt, and haven't any collar; that my trousers are turned up, and there's mud on my shoes? Do you see any straw out of the farmyard on my hair? If you do, why don't you mention it?"
Jack Steele laughed.
"Bravo, Tom!" he said; "that's quite your Slocum Junction manner. I supposed you were up a tree—that you had bought a million bushels of wheat, spent thirty thousand dollars odd upon margins, and that now you couldn't carry it any longer. Am I right?"
"Quite right. That's exactly the situation. Now, are you in the frame of mind to listen to the biggest thing that there is in America to-day! Are you in a financial position to take advantage of an opportunity that may not recur for years? If you are, I'll talk to you. If not, I'll bid you 'Good-bye,' and go to someone else."
"All right, Tom, I'm ready to listen, and willing to act if you can convince me."
"I can convince you quick enough; but are you able to act, as well as ready?"
"Well, to tell you the truth, Tom, if you mean going in for a big wheat speculation, I'm able, but not willing."
"I told you I wasn't speculating. Wheat will be over a dollar a bushel before three months are past."
"Is there going to be a war?"
"I don't know; but this I do know, that the wheat crop of the entire west is practically a failure—that is to say, late frosts this spring, and the wet weeks we have had since, will knock off anywhere from thirty to forty per cent. of the output. The Chicago wheat-pit is a pretty big thing, but it isn't the Almighty, neither is it the great and growing west. It can do many things, but it can't buck up against Nature. Wheat now, we'll say, is seventy-five cents a bushel, because of the belief that there's going to be an abundant crop; but if twenty-five per cent. of that crop fails, it means that twenty-five per cent. is going to be added to the present price of wheat. It means dollar wheat, that's what it means, and a man who knows this fact to-day can make unlimited millions of money if he's got the capital behind him. Of course, my mistake was in biting off more than I could chew. If I had gone in modestly, I could have carried it, and would have made a moderate profit; but I was too greedy, and too much afraid Chicago would learn the real state of the crops. I expected the news to be out long before now; but instead of that, the papers are blowing about full crops, which either shows that they don't know what they are talking about, or there's a nigger in the fence somewhere."
"What makes you so very sure the crop's a partial failure?"
"Because it's my business to know, for one thing. I have travelled from Chicago clear through to the Pacific coast; south as far as wheat is grown; and up north into Canada. I don't need to ask a farmer what crop he expects; I can see with my own eyes. I was brought up on wheat; I ploughed the fields and sowed the grain, and I may say I was cradled in wheat, if you'll forgive a farmer's pun. Wheat? Why, I know all about wheat on the field, even if I don't recognise it in the Chicago pit. You see, my business is looking after freight, and the chief freight of our road is wheat. Therefore, wherever wheat grows, I must visit that spot, and I have done so. I give you my oath that wheat is bound to be a dollar a bushel before two months are past. It's under seventy-five cents now, and it doesn't take much figuring to show the possibilities of the situation. Three things are wanted: knowledge, courage, money. I have given you the knowledge: do you possess the other two requisites?"
"Tom, I esteem you very much—more so now than when you came in; but, after all's said and done, I'd be simply banking on one man's word. Suppose I go in half a million dollars? You say that knowledge is the first requisite. Have I got that knowledge? I have not. I have merely your word that you have the knowledge."
"Yes, that's a good point to make," said Tom imperturbably. "You don't know me well enough to risk it. That's all right. Now, I see on your wall the big map of our road, which I suppose you have kept as a relic of your connection with the Wheat Belt Line. It's a lovely map, with the Wheat Belt Line in heavy black as the great thing, and the United States sort of hung around it as a background. There," continued Tom, waving his hand towards the huge map on the wall, "coloured yellow by Rand McNally and Co., are the wheat-producing districts of the United States and Canada. Now, I've been all over that yellow ground. I assert that in no part of it is the wheat crop normal. You pick out at random five or six spots in that yellow ground, and I'll tell you just what percentage of failure there'll be in those places you select. Then get on the train and visit them, question the farmers, and find out if they corroborate my statement. If they do, the chances are strong I am right about every other district."
Jack Steele got up and began pacing the floor, his hands thrust in his trousers pockets, his forehead wrinkled with a frown.
"Tom, that's pretty straight talk," he said at last. "I haven't been following the wheat-market—it's out of my line; but I dimly remember seeing in the papers not very long ago an estimate that we were going to have the most profitable wheat crop of recent years. Of course, that may be newspaper talk; but if recollection serves, it was backed up by telegrams from all over the west. How do you account for that?"
"I don't account for it. I am merely stating what I know. If the papers made such an estimate, they're wrong, that's all."
Steele stopped in his walk and touched an electric button on his desk. A young man appeared in response.
"Holmes," said Steele, "there was an account of the wheat crop all over the country in the papers the other day—occupied a page, I think. Go to the nearest newspaper office and get a copy. As you go out, tell Bronson to come in here."
When Bronson appeared, Steele said sharply: "Find out for me, from some reliable source, the lowest price of wheat for the last ten years."
In an amazingly short space of time Holmes reappeared with a newspaper a week old, and laid it on Mr. Steele's desk, and Bronson brought in an array of figures.
"Here we are!" cried Steele, jerking open the crackling sheet. "‘Wonderful harvests ahead! Tremendous wheat crops!' Of course, it must be remembered that prophesying prosperity is always popular, and newspapers like that sort of news. Now, I shall select twenty-five places named in this paper. The useful Bronson will find out for me a reliable man in each place, and I will telegraph him. By to-morrow we should have replies from some fifteen or twenty of them; and if the majority say that the wheat crop is a failure, then I think we may rely on your forecast. Now, let us see what Bronson's figures are. Sixty-five, sixty-two and a half, sixty-four and an eighth, fifty-three and five-eighths, forty-eight and three-quarters—gee-Whillikins, that's getting down to bedrock!—fifty, fifty-four and nine-eighths, sixty-nine and one-eighth, eighty-five—ah! that's something like—seventy-four and a quarter, and so on. Why, it seems from this that no man is safe in buying for a rise if he pays more than half a dollar a bushel, while you come sailing in at seventy-eight! Septimus Severus! I admire your nerve, but not your judgment. Well, drop in to-morrow, about two, and we'll see what the telegrams bring us."
"Suppose, meanwhile, wheat falls another cent or two, what am I to do?"
"Oh, they can't hurt you to-day—it's after four o'clock; and to-morrow we'll see what is best to be done. It is useless to conceal from you the fact that there is an unholy gulf between seventy-eight, at which you bought, and fifty, to which wheat has on more than one occasion fallen. That means a little deficit of two hundred and eighty thousand dollars on your gentle flutter."
"The truth must come out soon, Mr. Steele, and it may be published any morning. When that happens, wheat will go up like a balloon."
"All right, Tom, I can say nothing further just now. To-morrow you will find me brimful of information, and quite decided as to the course I shall take."
With this the visitor had to be content. Next day he arrived at Steele's office in a more cheerful frame of mind. Wheat had closed the day before one-eighth stronger than it was in the morning. The conference this time was short, sharp, and decisive. Steele was thoroughly the man of business.
"I received seventeen replies," he said, "and they all corroborate your forecast. Now, what do you wish me to do with the little parcel of wheat standing against your name?"
"I thought that in return for the tip you might relieve me of three-quarters of it."
"I'll relieve you of all of it. I've given orders to my brokers to buy a pretty large slice of the wheat crop. This purchase may perhaps send up the price to the seventy-eight at which you purchased it. If it does, I'll sell out your lot and send you the money, which I advise you to invest in gilt-edged securities and leave wheat alone."
"All right," said Tom. "I know when I've had enough. Nevertheless, it's a sure thing, and I hate to let go."
"If it's a sure thing," said Steele, "I'll hand over to you a percentage of what I win, in return for the information you have given me. You go straight home and take this newspaper with you. Write out a report similar in length to these Press Alliance telegrams, giving name of locality and the actual state of the crop in each district. Let nobody know what you are doing, and work all night, if necessary, until the report is complete. Then bring it to me, and I'll have it typewritten in this office. Now, this is my busy day. Clear out. Good-bye."
Steele's buying took the market by surprise. No one knew, of course, who the purchaser was, but the price rose rapidly, point by point, until seventy-eight was again reached, and then Steele instantly gave orders for the sale of the million bushels that stood in Tom's name, for the double purpose of getting the man his money, and lowering the price so that his own purchases might be accomplished at a less figure than seventy-eight. The sale took place an hour before the closing of business, and turned out to be just in the nick of time. Orders to sell came in from somewhere—supposedly from New York, and wheat was offered in any quantity at practically any price the buyers liked to pay. Someone was hammering down the market. A fight was on between two unknowns, and pandemonium was let loose in Chicago. The pit went wild, and prices came down with a run. Steele had already stopped his buyers, and he stood from under. Closing prices for wheat were sixty-five three-eighths. Jack Steele did some deep thinking and close figuring that night. In spite of his purchases of the day, he had still a million dollars left to gamble with.
"My friend the bear," he said to himself, "is very likely to keep up his antics to-morrow, so as to frighten the opposition. If he squeezes down prices to sixty, I'll buy five million bushels. Every cent of a drop will mean a loss of fifty thousand dollars. It reached fifty in '94, and next year a cent and a quarter less, but this price as never on any other occasion been touched in the last forty years. Even if it drops to that, I'll have lost half a million or so, but I'll still hang on. I'm not trying to corner the market, so, Mr. Bruin, go ahead, and let us see what happens."
Next day the panic and the slump continued. Wheat fell to fifty-nine, and between that price and sixty-one, John Steele secured his five million bushels.
Who were the operators? That was what the papers wanted to know. Was it, as surmised, a contest between New York and Chicago? All the well-known dealers were interviewed, but each and every one insisted he was merely an interested spectator, holding an umbrella over his head. There was going to be a blizzard, so everybody had his eye on the cyclone-cellar. It was a good time to seek cover, they said.
Of course, Jack Steele might have rested on his oars. He was reasonably safe—in fact, he was perfectly safe if he merely held on, which was a good position to be in. But he had a plan of his own, although he resolved not to buy further unless wheat reached the low limit of half a dollar. In that case he feared he would plunge. This night, however, he proceeded to carry out his plan, which led to amazing results. He put Tom's report of the wheat crop's condition, now nicely typewritten, into his inside pocket, and locked up his office.
All the upper windows of a commodious business block were aglow with electric light. It was the home of the Press Alliance, with telegraphic nerves reaching to the furthermost parts of the earth. Its business was to gather news which it furnished to newspapers belonging to the Alliance. Jack Steele knew Simmonds, the manager, and resolved to pay him an evening call at what was certainly a most inopportune moment. The great hive was a-hum with activity. The wild day on the Stock Exchange was enough of itself to keep it throbbing. Simmonds was a busy man, but he received Jack Steele, who came in cool and self-possessed, with courtesy and respect.
"Well, Simmonds, I suppose you're just rushed to death, so I'll not keep you a moment. I want to see one of your men who is less busy, if, indeed, he is here to-night."
"We're all here to-night, Steele. I hope you've not been dabbling in wheat?"
"Me? No fear. Wheat's rather out of my line."
"Somebody's going to get badly hurt before the week is out."
"So I understand," said Steele nonchalantly, as if it were none of his affair. "By the way, talking of wheat, you gather statistics of the crops from all over the country, don't you—your company, I mean?"
"Oh, yes, several times a year."
"From what office is that done, New York or Chicago?"
"Chicago, of course."
"Who is in charge of that department?"
"Nicholson. Why?"
"I would like to have a chat with him if he's not too busy."
"Well, you've struck the one man who isn't busy to-night. You see, his work is a daylight job."
"What sort of a fellow is he?"
"He's a new man—at least, he's been with us only six months— that is, at this office. He came on from New York. Splendid fellow, though, and well up to his work."
"Good. Can I see him?"
"I'll find out if he's in his room."
Simmonds spoke through a telephone and then said—
"Yes, Mr. Nicholson will see you; but I say, Steele, don't meddle with wheat. If you want any information from him, remember he can't give it out, except to the morning papers."
"Oh, I shan't buy a bushel of wheat; don't be frightened."
"This boy will take you to Mr. Nicholson's room. Good night."
Nicholson proved to be a man of uncertain age. His hair was closely cropped, his face smoothly shaven, and bore a look of determination and power which one might not have expected to find in a mere subordinate."
"Is this Mr. John Steele," he asked pleasantly, "the Napoleon of finance who stood out against Rockervelt?"
"Well, I don't know about the Napoleon part of it, Mr. Nicholson, but Rockervelt and I had a little negotiation awhile ago which I trust ended in our mutual advantage. Now, Mr. Nicholson," continued Steele, sitting down in the chair offered him, "if you are not too busy, I should like to ask you a few questions."
"I am not very busy, Mr. Steele, and shall be pleased to answer any question you like to ask, so long as the information sought belongs to me, and not to my employers."
"Who is your employer, Mr. Nicholson?"
"My employer? Why, the Press Alliance, of course."
"The Press Alliance is one of your employers, I know. Your nominal employer, let us say. It pays you to collect accurate information. Who pays you for disseminating false news in the newspapers of this country?"
If Jack Steele expected a start of guilty surprise or a flash of anger or a demand for explanation, he was disappointed. The impassive face remained impassive. The piercing eyes narrowed a little, perhaps, but he could have sworn that the faint glimmer of a smile hovered about the firm lips. The voice that spoke was under perfect control.
"They say that all things come to him who waits, and here is an illustration of it. The man for whom every reporter in Chicago is searching, and whom I am most desirous to meet, walks right into my office. How many million bushels of wheat did you buy to-day, Mr. Steele?"
Jack Steele was a much more genial person than this man from New York. He threw back his head and laughed.
"Mr. Nicholson, I am delighted to have made your acquaintance. Your wild guess that I am the buyer of wheat is really flattering to me. Yet your own reference to my little contest with Rockervelt should have reminded you that I deal in railways, and not in grain."
"The reason I wished to meet you," went on Mr. Nicholson, as if the other had not spoken, "is because I have a message to you from my chiefs."
"Yes, but you have not mentioned who your chiefs are."
"There is no need to mention them, Mr. Steele. When I tell you they own banks in every city in the United States; that the income of the head of our combination is fifty million dollars a year from merely one branch of his activity; that we have employés in the United States Treasury powerful enough to have the funds of this country placed for safety in our banks; that my principals can, if they wish, gamble with the savings of the people of the United States deposited in their keeping; that we have agents in every part of the world, and there is not a country in Europe, Asia, or Africa that does not pay tribute to them: when I have said all this, Mr. Steele, I think two things may be taken for granted—first, that no names need be mentioned; second, that you realise you are opposed to a power infinitely greater than that of Mr. Rockervelt or any other financial force that the world contains."
"You are right in both surmises, Mr. Nicholson, and I experience that keen joy which warriors feel with foemen worthy of their steel—if you will excuse the apparent pun on my own name. I am really quoting from Scott—not the railway man of that name, but the poet. And now for your message, Mr. Nicholson."
"You admit, then, that you are the buyer?"
"I'll admit anything in the face of such a formidable rival."
"Very well. My chiefs are the most generous of men."
"Oh, we all know that."
"If you have lost money these last two days, they will refund it. They are even willing to allow you a reasonable profit, and I am empowered to negotiate regarding the figures."
"And all this for pure philanthropy, Mr. Nicholson?"
"All this if you will merely stand aside and not interfere in a market you do not understand, and complicate a situation that is already somewhat delicate."
"And if I refuse to stand aside?"
"If you refuse, they will crush you, as they have crushed many a cleverer man."
"Ah! that's not tactful, Nicholson, and I'm sure it would not meet the approval of your employers. Your last remark is apt to provoke opposition rather than compliance. Would it surprise you to know that I possess a more potent backer than even your distinguished chief?"
"More potent? Yes, it would surprise me. Have you any reluctance in mentioning the name?"
"Not the slightest—it's a lady."
"A lady?"
"Yes. Dame Nature—a charming old woman if you stand in with her, a blue terror if you go against her. Wheat in America this year will be only three-quarters of a crop, if it is that much. You can joggle with the fact for a little time, but you can't conceal it. Even the great firm on Broadway cannot make a blade of wheat grow where one has been killed by the frost—not in the same year, at least. So you may telegraph to your distinguished principals and tell them that Jack Steele and Dame Nature are going to dance a minuet with those two Corsican brothers of New York, and your fraternal friends will find some difficulty in keeping pace with the music. And so good-bye, Mr. Nicholson."
"Good-bye, Mr. Steele. I am very sorry we cannot come to terms."
Once outside, Jack Steele hailed a cab and drove to the Chicago Daily Mail building. Here, as at the Press Alliance, everyone was hard at work; but Steele's name was good for entrance almost anywhere in Chicago, and the managing editor did not keep him waiting.
"Good evening, Mr. Stoliker," Steele began. "I have got in my pocket the greatest newspaper 'beat' that has ever been let loose on Chicago since the Brooklyn Theatre fire."
"Then, Steele, you're as welcome as flowers that bloom in the spring. Out with it."
"There's been a gigantic conspiracy to delude the Press and people of the United States."
"Oh, they're always trying that," said Stoliker complacently.
"Yes, but this time they've succeeded, up to this evening. Just cast your eye over this document."
A managing editor is quick to form an accurate estimate of the proportions of a piece of news submitted to him.
"If anyone else had brought this in," said Stoliker slowly, "do you know what I should have thought?"
"Yes, you would think it an attempt of the bulls to get in out of the rain."
"Exactly. You've hit it the first time. Can you vouch for the accuracy of this?"
"I can."
"You won't be offended, Steele, if I ask you one more question, and only one?"
"I know what the question is."
"What is it?"
"You are going to ask if I have been buying wheat?"
"Well, you seem to know exactly what's in my mind. Conversation is rather superfluous with so sharp a man as you. Have you been buying wheat?"
"Yes, I'm the person that has caused the flutter in the market these last two days."
"If I publish this, the price of wheat will instantly jump up."
"No, it won't."
"Oh, that's the evident object of the whole thing. If I prove that the wheat crop of America is from twenty-five to thirty per cent. short, up goes the price of wheat."
"My dear Stoliker, your paper will sell like hot cakes, but no one will believe a word you say. Everyone on 'Change will think exactly as you do—that this is a device of the bulls, and so the price of wheat is likely to remain stationary for some hours. But this sensational statement is bound to make everybody uneasy, and there will be a good deal of telegraphing going on during the forenoon. By the time the evening papers are out, it will begin to dawn on commercial Chicago that you've done the biggest thing that's been done for years. After that, every moment will enhance your reputation."
"Quite so, if—and that 'if' is the biggest word in the dictionary just now—if this article is accurate. If it isn't, then the reverse of all you have predicted will happen."
"My dear Stoliker, I was quite prepared for this unbelief. I therefore took the precaution before the bank closed to get a certified cheque for a hundred thousand dollars, and here it is. Pay that into your bank to-morrow, and offer in your paper a hundred thousand dollars to anyone who will prove the report inaccurate. I don't mean in a detail here or there, but the general truthfulness of the statement. It has been compiled by a man I can vouch for, in the employ of the Wheat Belt Line, who has visited every spot mentioned in the report. Now, time is precious; I give you five minutes in which to make up your mind."
"I don't need them; my mind is made up. I'll print it."
Next day, events proved that Steele was no false prophet. Wheat wobbled for a time up and down, then began to rise steadily, and at last shot up like a rocket, ending at eighty-three and a quarter. Before the week was out, it was well over the dollar mark, and Jack Steele was richer by more than two million dollars. The night of the day in which he sold out, he strolled into the Press Alliance offices and visited his perturbed friend Simmonds.
"I would like to see Mr. Nicholson again," he said.
"Oh, curse him!" cried Simmonds, "he's gone to New York; and I wish he had never left there. I suppose you don't know what a hole he put us into, because you're not interested in wheat."
"Really? Why, I was tremendously impressed by Nicholson's manner and appearance!"
"Oh, his manner and appearance were all right. He came here with the very highest recommendations—in fact, he was the one man in our employ of all the hundreds here that I had orders from headquarters not to dismiss on any account. I was as much taken with his looks as you were. I would have sworn he was true to his employers, yet I have not the slightest doubt he sold us out as if we were a flock of sheep."
"You are mistaken, Simmonds. He was perfectly true to his employers."
III.—A SWEET PROBLEM.
THERE now projects across these pages the sinister shadow of a man. He was one seldom seen except by his immediate business associates, and yet seldom has a newspaper been issued that did not contain his name. This was Peter Berrington, the greatest financial brain the world had hitherto produced—the modern embodiment of Mammon. In early life there had occurred to him the obvious proposition that if any one man could control the manufacture and sale of some simple article in universal use, he would secure a fortune greater than that of all the monarchs on earth put together. Peter Berrington chose soap as his medium, and the world-renowned trust called Amalgamated Soap had been the outcome. His methods were as simple as his products. He offered what he considered a fair price to a rival for his business,and if that rival refused, Peter crushed him by a competition the other could not withstand. Berrington seemed to act on one fixed rule in life, which was to avoid the law courts wherever possible; yet, nevertheless, he was haled to the bar on more than one occasion, but invariably he escaped unscathed, without a stain on his character, as if the soap he supplied to the universe had removed even the suspicion of dishonesty from himself. It pleases the world to buy soap under different titles, but it is all manufactured by the same company. Berrington's air-tight monopoly finally produced an annual income in excess of the fortune any man on earth possessed twenty-five years ago. With this ever-increasing income he bought banks, first in New York, then in each other great city, and finally in the larger towns. He purchased trust companies and insurance associations. He bought railways and steamship lines, also city councils and State legislators, judges, juries, and senators. He was now the guardian and manipulator of the people's savings, and his banks had the handling of all the money the United States Government possessed. Magazines printed vivid articles exhibiting the dark points of his career. Peter never entered a protest. Powerful newspapers hurled vigorous denunciations against him, but Peter never replied. The few who knew him in private life described him as a quiet, timorous man, apparently without opinions of his own, who was withal deeply religious. Yet all the histories printed of him never contained the record of any man who had defeated him.
It was but natural, then, that the Chicago papers should make much of Jack Steele's encounter with this giant of the financial world. Jack had met him on the battle-ground of the Chicago wheat-pit, and had routed him, horse, foot, and dragoons. Steele's exposure of the real wheat situation of the country had been so sudden that the barrels of money which Peter Berrington kept in readiness to buy the whole crop, when he had hammered the price low enough, remained unopened and unexpended.
Berrington would have made billions at one fell swoop had not this man Steele blindly, quite unwittingly, stumbled across his path and tripped him up. The newspapers exaggeratingly credited Steele with making many more millions than he had actually secured, and it was only when the anxious three days of panic had ended that Steele himself realised what a tremendous fortune had been within his grasp, if he had only had the money to manipulate the situation, or even if he had risked all he actually possessed. Indeed, Steele perceived when too late that he had blundered into the biggest deal ever projected upon this earth, and while he undoubtedly spoiled the game for its inaugurators, he did not himself profit nearly as much as might have been the case. He began to doubt his own judgment, and the uneasy thought came to him that if he had made terms that night with Nicholson in the office of the Press Alliance, he might have made from ten to twenty millions instead of three or four. Yet he was consoled by the belief that Peter would have been true to no bargain he might have made, and in the end would have robbed him of the agreed share. In spite of his religious reputation, Peter was accredited with no qualms of conscience in a business deal.
The newspapers re-recited Steele's brief besting of Rockervelt, which was now utterly eclipsed by his victory over Berrington, and they jocularly advised New York rustics to stay at home and not venture into a real city like Chicago. In face of all this ridicule, and in spite of accusations and denunciations levelled against him for his efforts to mislead a free and incorruptible Press, Peter Berrington made no sign, and New York silently swallowed up the mysterious Nicholson. A few wiseacres in Chicago shook their heads as they read the laudations of Mr. John Steele, saying the young man was not yet done with Peter Berrington; and later events proved the correctness of their surmise.
Steele himself was not particularly frightened at the outlook, but neither was he extremely pleased. He was sorry that Fate had brought him into opposition with Peter Berrington, but he had learned that fact too late to withdraw. When he met Nicholson, and learned for the first time that the Great Bear was Amalgamated Soap, he was already committed too deeply for half measures to aid him. He had acted at once, decisively and successfully, and would have been relieved had he merely got out even. It was his usual luck that he came away with large profits, and for that he thanked Fate, because he knew his enemy was ruthless. Success did not turn his head in the least. He was a cool thinker and detested all this newspaper notoriety. He knew fortunes were not made by the beating of drums, and he kept very quiet until the hubbub was over, refusing to see reporters or say anything about the matter, save to his most intimate friends. He hoped that some fresh sensation would speedily drive his name from the columns of the Press, and until that time came he sought shelter, doing nothing. He comforted himself with the thought that Peter Berrington, while merciless to an opponent, was merciless merely to acquire that opponent's business. He believed the great man to be entirely without sentiment, and therefore surmised he would not seek revenge when a deal was once completed and done with. Nevertheless, he resolved to keep his weather eye open, which was wise.
The new celebrity he had attained brought all sorts and conditions of men to his offices. He began to think that all the wild-cat schemes in the country were placed before him. Letters poured in from almost every part of the world, and he was offered gold-mines, patents, railways, steamship lines, industrial enterprises, and what not. He took larger offices and protected himself from intrusion. He became a much more difficult man to see than even the President of the United States—or perhaps it would be more fitting to say than Mr. Peter Berrington, for Peter allowed no outsider to penetrate to his den.
There was one man, however, who succeeded in reaching the inner room of Jack Steele, and his card bore the name of William Metcalfe. This card had been preceded, however, by some excellent letters of introduction, and so John Steele made an appointment with him. He was favourably impressed with the appearance of Mr. Metcalfe, who did not look like a city man, but rather a cross between a bluff farmer and a shrewd manufacturer—which, indeed, he turned out to be. After seating himself, William Metcalfe plunged directly into the heart of his business, without preliminary, which also pleased John Steele.
"I know your time is valuable," he said; "so is mine. I have undertaken an operation that proves too big for me, and I want you to help me carry it out."
"I have three rules, Mr. Metcalfe, which I rarely break. In the first place, I never finance anything. If, for instance, you wish to build a factory, or to exploit a patent, it is useless coming to me expecting help."
"I have no factory to build and no patent to exploit," said Metcalfe.
"My second rule is that the man with whom I go in, must be prepared to put up dollar for dollar with me in hard cash, and not in future prospects."
"I am prepared to do that," rejoined Metcalfe.
"My third rule is that I must see for myself and understand the business offered. I do not give a hang for the opinions of experts. If the proposal is complicated beyond my comprehension, I don't go in."
"Quite right," commended Metcalfe. "None of your three rules will be in the least infringed by me. Do you know anything of the beet-sugar business?"
"I do not."
"Did you ever hear of Bradley, of Bay City?"
"I did not,"
"Well, what Bradley accomplished may be understood by a ten-year-old boy. He went over to Germany, and came back with some seeds in his handbag, which seeds he planted. From those seeds have grown the beetroot industry of Michigan. There are now factories in that State capitalised at ten millions of dollars. There are nearly a hundred thousand acres of Michigan land in beets. Ten years ago I hadn't a penny; to-day I think I could put as much money on the table as yon, and all on account of those seeds Bradley brought from Germany. I own three big factories in Michigan, and four others in States further west. You hinted that you didn't wish to deal in possibilities; but, if you will forgive me for saying it, there is no industry in this country at the present moment which offers greater promise that the manufacture of sugar out of beetroot."
"I daresay," said Steele indifferently. "I am quite willing to applaud the excellent Bradley, who made millions of beets grow where none had grown before. I admire such a man exceedingly, even though unprepared to follow in his steps. You see, Mr. Metcalfe, I am not a useful citizen like yourself and Mr. Bradley. I simply make a raid at some project, filch what I can, and get back into my den. As I told you, I am not building factories, not even those that squeeze the succulent beet. My motto is large profits and quick returns."
"I am here to offer you immense profits and immediate returns. I understand the sugar business down to the ground, and have realised its possibilities for several years past. Therefore I determined to combine all the big sugar factories at present existing in the United States. Rapidly as I myself have acquired wealth, the sugar business has been growing too quickly for me, and at the beginning of this year I saw I had to put my project into action, or else interest a body of financiers, which I did not wish to do, for my ambition is to control the sugar-beet industry of the United States, and ultimately of the world."
"Ah, you hope to become a sort of sweetened Peter Berrington," said Steele, with a smile, and he thought of this remark somewhat grimly later on.
"Exactly," said Metcalfe seriously, without duplicating the other's smile. "As I told you, I own outright seven factories. I secured options on all the rest, and in each case have paid down a forfeit, for I shall be compelled to buy outright within the next month if I am to hold them. Now, the total cost of all the factories in the States at present, built or building, comes to almost double the capital I possess. If you will put up dollar for dollar with me, we will purchase these factories outright. Then we will form the whole into a gigantic company. When this is done, you can withdraw your money, and probably as much more as you put in. If the public do not subscribe the full amount we demand, I will guarantee to relieve you at par of all the shares that may fall to your portion."
"How can you guarantee to do that when at the present moment you have not got more than half the necessary capital for forming the company?"
"I can guarantee it because I am certain the public will subscribe; but even if they do not, the moment the company is formed there is a bank in this city willing to advance me cash to the amount of three-quarters of our capital. Therefore I can guarantee that you will double your money within a month—that is, within a month of your putting it in. You say you care nothing for the opinions of experts; neither do I, therefore I propose that you become my guest for two weeks, and visit most of the factories now under my control. You can see the books and balance-sheets of my own concerns, and from what you learn under my tuition you will be able to form a very good estimate of how the other factories are placed."
"I understand very little about company promoting," said Steele dubiously.
"I understood just as little a short time since, but it was necessary that I should learn, and I have learnt. Besides, I got letters of introduction to Farwell Brothers, the most substantial and honest firm connected with that business in Chicago. The same people introduced me to them that introduced me to you. Suppose, for instance, the combined factories were to cost us ten million dollars. With such prospects as there are ahead, we would be quite justified in forming a company for twenty millions. If the public subscribed only half of what we demanded, we would have our factories for nothing, and still control the combination."
"How about your working capital?"
"We don't need working capital. Every factory is making money."
"Well, candidly, Mr. Metcalfe, that project seems too easy and simple to be entirely feasible. There must be something lying in wait to wreck it."
"Nothing so far as I can see," said Metcalfe confidently.
"What if the public do not subscribe a penny?"
"Oh, I've looked out for that. When I got the options, there was, of course, no longer any need for keeping the affair secret, and I have already been promised subscriptions to the new company to the extent of one-third the proposed capital of twenty millions. That one-third will be subscribed in Michigan and Wisconsin alone, without touching the State of Illinois or the capitalists of Chicago."
"Very well, Mr. Metcalfe, you appear to have thought of everything. I'll accept your invitation, so long as it binds me to nothing, and will go wherever you lead me, beginning, let us say, with one of your own factories. I understand figures, and I shall want to see the books and make a somewhat thorough search into the income of at least the principal factories. You have no objection to that, I suppose?"
"No, not in the least. Big as our capitalisation will be, this is a thoroughly sound industrial proposition, and before five years are over I am certain that we will be justified in doubling our normal capital if we wish to do so, and paying a mighty good percentage on the same. Of course, I stand by the business. I suppose you wish to pull out as quickly as possible."
"Yes, that's the idea. I hope you have not offered extravagant prices for these factories?"
"That's just the point. I have not. You see, as I told you, I am thoroughly acquainted with the business. A capitalist from New York or Chicago might have been deluded, but they cannot delude a practical man like myself. Indeed, to convince you of the confidence that others show in the proposed company, I may tell you that the capital promised comes largely from the present owners of those factories, who appreciate the economies to be inaugurated by combination, and who in some instances are putting back into the new company the entire amount I shall pay them."
"Do they know you intend to capitalise for double what the property has cost?"
"Naturally not, Mr. Steele. Of course they understand I am not in this business entirely for my health; but apart from that, anyone conversant with the progress the beet industry has made during the last four or five years is well aware that the developments of the next five or six will be something enormous."
"All right, Mr. Metcalfe. I'm ready to go with you to-morrow, if that is not too soon for you."
John Steele's visits to the beet-sugar district more than corroborated all that Mr. Metcalfe had told him. Quietly he studied his host and guide during the excursion, and the more he saw of him the better he liked him. If there was an honest man in the country, that man appeared to be William Metcalfe, in spite of his determination to capitalise the properties for double what he paid for them. John's own conscience was not supersensitive on this point, and his private opinion would have been that a man was a fool not to take all he could get. So, before they returned to Chicago, he had quite made up his mind to become a partner with William Metcalfe in forming the Consolidated Beet Sugar Company. Metcalfe having no domicile in Chicago, the headquarters of the new trust was the private office of John Steele and the apartments adjoining. These adjoining apartments were occupied by Mr. William Metcalfe, upon whose shoulders naturally fell the bulk of the work. It was he who saw the lawyers to whom he had been introduced; who negotiated with the bank and made such outside arrangements as were necessary in the launching of so gigantic a scheme. Steele was more and more impressed with the business capacity of his new partner as the days went on, and he congratulated himself on being in conjunction with so capable a man. Notwithstanding his increasing confidence, he never for a moment relaxed his vigilance, nor was anything done without his sanction and approval, and he allowed no obscure point to pass without thoroughly mastering it. Towards the conclusion of preliminary arrangements, he saw with some apprehension that this project would involve every penny of capital he possessed, and this, of course, was cause for anxiety, though not for alarm, because all the omens were favourable. Yet his vigilance might have been of little avail had not Chance played into his hands. Steele was constantly in the office; Metcalfe was frequently called elsewhere, and in one of his absences a telegraph-boy brought in a message.
"Any answer?" asked the lad.
Steele tore open the envelope and gazed at the telegram for a moment, uncomprehending. It was in cipher. Then he looked at the envelope and saw it was addressed to his partner.
"No answer," said Steele to the boy; "but look here, my lad, do you want to earn fifty cents?"
"Sure," replied the messenger.
"Very well, get me another envelope from the nearest telegraph-office. I see this is for my partner, not for me."
He threw half-a-dollar on the table, which the boy grasped and left.
"Be as quick as you can," cried Steele, before he reached the door.
The cipher telegram was a long one, but speedily Steele wrote it out on a sheet of paper. When the boy returned with the envelope, Steele placed the telegram within it, sealed it, and addressed it in imitation of the telegraphic clerk. Then he walked into the adjoining office and placed the resealed telegram on Mr. Metcalfe's desk.
"Now, why does honest William Metcalfe receive a long telegram in cipher from New York," said Steele to himself, knitting his brows. "He has never even mentioned New York to me, yet he is in secret communication with someone there. Lord! one can never tell when the biggest sort of crank will not suddenly loom up as the most useful man in the world!" cried Steele, as he suddenly bethought himself of Billy Brooks, a jocular person who bored all Chicago with his knowledge of cipher, claiming there was nothing he couldn't unravel except the Knock Alphabet cipher of the Russian Nihilists. And Billy had his office in the fifteenth storey of the adjoining block. Steele shoved the copy of the telegram in his trousers pocket, put on his silk hat, went down one elevator, and up another, in almost less time than it takes to tell about it.
"Say, Billy, I've got a cipher here that you can't decode, and I've got twenty dollars to bet on it."
"Let's see your cipher," cried Billy, his eyes sparkling, "All ciphers fall into seven distinct classes. These classes are then sub-divided into"
"Yes, I know, I know!" cried Steele impatiently. "Here's the message."
Billy glanced at it.
"Hand over your twenty dollars, Steele."
"What! you haven't solved it already?"
"No, but I see at a glance it falls into division three and into sub-division nineteen. I'll decode it within an hour. Shall I bring it over to your office?"
"No, Billy, I'll sit right down here, even if you are six hours at it. I herewith place two ten-dollar bills on your desk, and if this proves important, which it may or may not, I'll multiply those bills by ten; and for that number of days, at least, I shall require the utmost secrecy."
"All right, John, sit down and keep quiet, and there's the latest evening paper."
There was silence in the room as Billy opened a bookcase and took down one bulky tome, two medium-sized books, and a number of smaller volumes that looked like dictionaries. Turning to his desk, he wrote the message in a variety of different ways, on as many sheets of paper. For nearly three-quarters of an hour no sound was heard but the scratching of a pen now and then, and the rustle of leaves. Then the stillness was broken by a war-whoop.
"Here you are, Jack, my boy; and I'll take my Bible oath on its accuracy. Couldn't be such a series of coincidences as to run so smoothly otherwise.
"Precious greenbacks! Loot divine!
Twenty dollars, you are mine!"
Billy jubilantly grasped the currency and shoved it into his pocket, handing the sheet of paper to Steele, who read—
"I shall occupy room one hundred and fifty at the Grand Pacific Hotel on Thursday, the twenty-seventh, at eleven a.m. Do not ask for me at the office, nor take the elevator, but come up the stair, and rap twice. Wait two minutes, and rap a third time. Bring all documents with you."
There was no signature.
"Billy," said Steele rather seriously, "we will now burn all your figuring, if you don't mind, and then I wish you to obliterate this from your memory. I cannot tell until after Thursday whether it is important or not. I think, however, if you keep mum, this will be worth an extra two hundred dollars to you."
"You can depend on me, Jack. We're not all making money as fast as you are. Of course, I know that financial ciphers are usually important. Here's the débris; burn it on the oilcloth, near the register."
Steele's investigation of the Grand Pacific Hotel floor occupied by room one hundred and fifty showed him that this apartment was well chosen, for neither of the rooms on either side had a communicating door. However, he engaged room one hundred and forty-nine, on the opposite side of the hall, and before ten o'clock on the twenty-seventh he took up his position inside that apartment. When eleven o'clock approached, he locked his door, shoved the table against it, stood thereon, and looked through the transom into the hall. He darkened his own window so that he could not be observed by anyone glancing up outside. He heard the first knock, then cautiously peered down and recognised William Metcalfe standing there, facing the opposite door, with a bundle under his arm. After the third knock, Metcalfe entered, but opened the door so slightly that Steele could see nothing within, nor did he hear any greeting voice. A full hour passed with not a sound from the closed room, then Metcalfe came out again, with the bundle still under his arm, and walked quietly away, leaving his partner on watch at the transom. Time goes slowly for a man on tip-toe with eyes strained, but at last his patience was rewarded. The door opposite opened, and the head of Nicholson appeared. He glanced quickly up and down the hall, and as the way was apparently clear, stepped out and vanished. John Steele came down from the table, drew aside the curtains, and let the light into the darkened room. He poured a glass of water from the carafe into a tumbler, swallowed the liquid at a gulp, then sank into the armchair beside the bed. He gave utterance to an uneasy laugh, then muttered a sentence which might be called unexpected—
"Billy Brooks, my boy, you'll get your two hundred dollars!"
Drawing a deep breath, he then concentrated his mind on the crisis with which he was confronted. Metcalfe was undoubtedly the owner of the sugar factories, and was, as he had said, a well-known business man in Michigan; but, nevertheless, here was undoubted proof that he was a minion of Amalgamated Soap, a mere pawn in the hands of Peter Berrington and his strong colleague, Nicholson. Every penny John Steele possessed was sunk in Consolidated Sugar, and that these men meant to ruin him he had not the slightest doubt. The question was: How could they do it? Even if Metcalfe's books had been false, even if a hundred per cent. too much had been paid for the factories, there would still be something left for him out of the wreck. Yet from the moment he saw the face of Nicholson at that door, he knew Amalgamated Soap had determined to strip him of every sou he possessed. The first obvious suggestion that occurred to him was that here was the occasion for consulting a first-class lawyer; yet what could a lawyer do for him? He had no money to fight. The more he thought of the situation, the worse it appeared. No doubt Farwell Brothers were employés of Amalgamated Soap. No doubt the bank in which their funds were deposited belonged to the same all-embracing combination. There were a hundred perfectly legal methods by which the amount lodged there could be tied up, while, if he appealed to the law, the expense would be tremendous, and he might be dragged from court to court; new trial could follow new trial, and appeal tread on the heels of appeal until his millions had vanished into thin air. He was as entirely in the hands of Amalgamated Soap as if he had been tied in a bundle and presented to that celebrated company. Terror was imported into the situation by his uncertainty as to what method these financial buccaneers would adopt. Yet at that distressful moment his mind wandered to the comic opera of the "Mikado," and a smile came to his lips. Would it be long and lingering, with boiling oil at the end of it, or would it be the short, sharp shock of the executioner's stroke? His resentment turned more against the apparently honest Metcalfe than towards even Nicholson or Peter Berrington. He would have liked to throttle that man, but he knew that, whatever the outcome, he must retain his grip on himself and present an impassive exterior to his colleague and the world.
Next morning, John Steele met his partner as usual with a smile on his face.
"Well, Metcalfe, how's things going?"
"Oh, everything's coming our way," said Metcalfe. "This thing will be done so easy you will wonder you ever doubted its success."
"Well, I hope so, I hope so," replied Steele, the possible double meaning of his partner's phrase striking him like a blow in the face; but the smile never wavered.
The company had already been technically formed—that is to say, a number of clerks in Steele's office, together with the brothers Farwell, had constituted themselves the Consolidated Beet Sugar Company, with various powers duly set forth, organised under the laws of the State of New Jersey; and when officers were selected, the beet sugar factories were bought by this company at just double the price Steele and Metcalfe had paid for them. Then the officials resigned in a body, when cheques had been passed and everything done with beautiful legality, while Steele and Metcalfe and their nominees took their places at the board. It was arranged that there should be seven directors. Steele was to nominate two, and Metcalfe was to nominate two, while they were to agree mutually on the chairman. Metcalfe had proposed that the elder Farwell should be chairman, and he nominated the younger as his colleague on the board. Farwell, who knew every intricacy of company law, was accepted by Steele, and there was still one nomination open to Metcalfe, which name he excused himself at this time from proposing, as he was not well enough acquainted with business men in Chicago to fill the place at the moment. He even intimated that he was willing to accept a nominee of Steele's, and this seemingly friendly suggestion had prevented any suspicion of the board being packed against him arising in Jack Steele's mind. He remembered this now with bitterness, when it was too late for remedy. Steele and his two colleagues could tie the vote of Metcalfe and his colleagues, but the chairman would have the casting voice. Since he had seen the determined face of Nicholson in the corridor of the Grand Pacific, he had no doubt that the Farwell brothers were the mere minions of Peter Berrington.
At last the trap laid for the public was sprung, and the public, as usual, was nipped. The success of the flotation was immediate, although applications did not come within a million of the sum asked for. After the flotation, Metcalfe's manner changed perceptibly. Steele watched him as a cat watches a mouse, and saw that he was now perturbed and apparently dissatisfied.
"Why!" cried Steele to him, the morning after the figures were known to them, "you don't seem nearly so happy as I expected. You surely did not look for the shares to be subscribed twice over?"
"No," said Metcalfe gloomily, "but the amount that has been subscribed shows what vitality there was in the scheme."
"Vitality!" cried Steele. "Why, bless my soul! you never doubted it, did you?"
"Oh, no, no," said Metcalfe hastily. "No. I told you we were dead sure of a third, and the actual subscriptions have more than justified my forecast."
"They have, indeed!" cried Steele enthusiastically. "I tell you what it is, Metcalfe, you're one of the first financiers of this country."
"Oh, nonsense!" cried Metcalfe, in no way cheered by the compliment.
"It isn't nonsense," said the genial Steele. "You've taken lessons from a first-rate master, for I look on Nicholson as one of the best men in the business."
When John Steele had plumped a similar pointed remark at Nicholson, not the slightest change of expression had disturbed that individual's calm visage. William Metcalfe kept his countenance under less perfect self-command. Steele's smile was gentle and friendly, but his keen eyes missed no note of the other's face. He watched a ruddy flush mount into his partner's cheeks. He noticed the embarrassed hesitation that accompanied his utterance.
"Mr. Nicholson! Ah, yes, certainly, certainly. He's not a friend of mine, of course, only a slight and recent acquaintance. Not the sort of man, Nicholson, to form friendships easily."
"Really?" asked Steele. "I met him only once, but he seemed rather genial."
"A great business man, a great business man," hurriedly muttered Metcalfe, obviously trying to get himself under control once more, playing for time, and not quite knowing what he was saying.
"So I have been informed," remarked Steele with easy carelessness. "One of the Amalgamated Soap group, I understand."
"Quite so," rejoined Metcalfe, his own man once more. "You see, Mr. Steele, I thought it would strengthen us tremendously if I could get a man like Nicholson to become interested in our project. The mere rumour that Amalgamated Soap was behind us would have been worth millions to us at the present juncture."
"I quite agree with you, Metcalfe. Amalgamated Soap is a name to conjure with. The public worship success, and there you have success in its most highly developed form. Why didn't you let me know? I might have been of some assistance to you."
"Well, in the first place, I did not wish to mention so important a matter until I was sure of carrying it through. Ne use of giving promises that you cannot make good. In the second place, I was not aware that you knew Nicholson."
"Oh, you were quite right; it was just a casual meeting, when we were introduced by a mutual friend. I don't flatter myself that my views would have any influence upon a man of Nicholson's standing in the financial world. But there is another part I don't quite understand. I admit the value of Nicholson's name to us, but why wasn't his connection divulged in time to influence subscriptions?"
"Well, you see, it was like this," hesitated Metcalfe, for a liar must be a most agile person, and Steele's questions had a fashion of touching the spot. "It was like this. I did not really conclude my arrangement with Nicholson until this morning. He's a very difficult man to handle, and he knows as well as anyone his own value. I imagine he wished to see which way the cat was going to jump before he committed himself."
"Well, Metcalfe, the cat has jumped entirely our way, even if the leap did not reach the furthest mark we staked out. The success of the subscriptions, then, induced Nicholson to join us?"
"Quite so, quite so, with the proviso that he is to have the vacant seat at the board, unless you have any objection."
"Objection? Certainly not. I am highly delighted with our acquisition. Besides, the seat at the board is entirely in your gift. I have no right to object, even if I wished to do so."
This was said with such an air of childlike simplicity that the perturbed Metcalfe, who seemingly still retained some remnants of conscience, showed confusion.
"True enough," he murmured. "Still, I should not like to nominate anyone who might be personally distasteful to you."
"I cannot imagine, Metcalfe, why you should suppose Nicholson could be distasteful to anyone. He is a tower of strength. I am delighted that you have induced him to join us."
"I am very much relieved to hear you say so," rejoined Metcalfe, who seemed bewildered at the turn things had taken.
The preliminary meetings of the company had all been held in Steele's offices. This afternoon, however, the directors were to forgather at the board-room of the bank in which the deposits of the subscribers were lodged. Steele was thus to beard the lion in the lion's own den, for he now no longer doubted that this bank was owned by Peter Berrington, Nicholson, and their colleagues. The appointed hour was three o'clock, and John Steele arrived on the stroke, the last man to appear. Nicholson stood in the centre of the group. Metcalfe, who had quite recovered his composure, said with a fine air of good comradeship—
"I think you two gentlemen have met before, so a formal introduction is not necessary between Mr. Steele and Mr. Nicholson."
"I had the somewhat chastened satisfaction of encountering Mr. Steele once under conditions I am not likely to forget," said Nicholson quietly, with impressive geniality. "I count myself one of Mr. Steele's numerous admirers."
"It is kind of you to say that, Mr. Nicholson," replied Jack, extending his hand, while that winning smile of his played about his lips. "On the occasion to which you refer, I was so unhappy as to be placed in opposition to Amalgamated Soap. I am the more gratified, therefore, to find myself in some measure a colleague of so distinguished a coterie, even if I am admitted into but an outer temple, as it were."
"Your gratification, Mr. Steele, is as nothing compared to my own at seeing you here amongst us."
Jack Steele bowed his acknowledgment. It was if the lion had begun by complimenting Daniel.
"Gentlemen, I think the hour has struck," said the grave Farwell senior, taking his seat at the head of the long table.
The directors ranged themselves on either side, Nicholson at the right hand of the chairman, Metcalfe next him, and the younger Farwell the third on that side. Opposite Nicholson sat John Steele, and beside him his two nominees. Thus quietly the lines of battle were formed, and to all outward appearance the meeting might have been supposed to be a love-feast. Bunches of papers were heaped before the chairman, while writing-pads, pens, and ink were placed in front of each director. Steele, assuming a negligent, unconcerned air that was admirably put on, wondered what particular battery Nicholson would unmask. The latter's eyes were bent on his writing-pad, and he tried one nib after another, as if to find a pen to his satisfaction. The chairman, in droning voice, recited the history of the company up to its going before the public, read documents, and gave various figures which it might be supposed were familiar to all there assembled. There was silence around the table. Nicholson never looked up until the chairman announced the amount of public subscription.
"What's that, Mr. Farwell?" he said quietly, raising his head. "What are the figures?"
Farwell repeated them.
"And how much do you say is the authorised capital of the company?"
Farwell named the sum.
"Then we are a million short?"
"Nearly so, Mr. Nicholson."
Nicholson's face became set and stern. Slowly he turned towards Metcalfe on his right hand, whose eyes shifted uneasily from one to another without ever resting on John Steele.
"I understood, sir," said Nicholson very slowly, as if weighing his words, "that all the money was in the bank?"
"I told you, sir," replied the hesitating Metcalfe, "that there was in the bank all the capital we thought necessary."
"Necessary?" echoed Nicholson, in cold, even tones. "We make a demand upon the public. We state that the value of our property is so much. The public responds by offering us a million less. Necessary? I have never yet had anything to do with a company whose capital was not over-subscribed. I have never yet sanctioned the sending out of letters of allotment unaccompanied by letters of regret."
John Steele had difficulty in keeping the smile from his lips. The tones of righteous indignation were not in the least overdone. The expression of virtuous disapproval at being tricked, on the splendidly chiselled, clear-cut face, was marvellous in its reserve; in its hint of unlimited power behind. Jack felt, rather than saw, the uneasiness of the two colleagues by his side, who realised, without exactly understanding why, that things were going desperately wrong, like an engineer who finds an open bridge in front of him, and finds the brakes will not act.
"Admirably acted," said Jack Steele to himself. "We pay good money to go to the theatre, and yet there is such histrionic talent as this in the business world!"
Then aloud, in a voice mildly protesting, he said—
"Nevertheless, Mr. Nicholson, the million shares left on our hands are quite marketable. We have ample capital to go on with, and Mr. Metcalfe will assure you that the factories themselves are all on a paying basis. You cannot surely mean that having arrived at this stage, we are not to proceed to allotment, Mr. Nicholson?"
"That is exactly what I do mean," replied Nicholson, speaking as mildly as his opponent had done. "My colleagues would never consent to admit connection with a company formed in the circumstances now before us. Our duty to the public"
"Mr. Nicholson, I quite appreciate your position, and that of your colleagues, Mr. Peter Berrington and the rest. The public would indeed be shocked to learn that Peter, one of our religious pillars, could be guilty of anything in the least oblique. As cleanliness in next to godliness, we are all aware that Amalgamated Soap stands close to the Pearly Gates, and the only thing we fear about Peter is that when he gets to heaven he shall find another saint of the same name there before him, which may lead to confusion of identity. I take it for granted, Mr. Nicholson, that you are about to propose a motion requiring all this money to be returned to the subscribers. If you will put that motion, I shall be very happy to second it."
An electric silence fell on the group, the kind of silence which on a hot summer's night precedes a clap of thunder. Nicholson drew a long breath and squared his shoulders. Metcalfe gazed in fascinated dismay at Jack Steele. Even the Farwells showed traces of human interest. Nicholson did not put his motion. After a few moments of this embarrassing stillness, he said gently—
"Perhaps Mr. John Steele has something else to propose?"
"No, I have not," said Jack; "but with the chairman's permission, there being no motion before the house, I should like to make you a personal explanation which may save future trouble."
The chairman nodded permission, and Nicholson said—
"We shall be interested to hear anything you say, Mr. Steele."
"To return the money is, of course, to wreck the company. Hitherto this company has been associated with the names of John Steele and William Metcalfe. To-morrow the sensation of the daily journals all over the country will be the collapse of the big scheme which those two men undertook to float. Mr. William Metcalfe is unknown in Chicago, is but a stool-pigeon well paid for the part he has enacted, and he disappears from the scene. John Steele stands the brunt. All the funds he possesses are in Amalgamated Soap's bank. His affairs are in the hands of Amalgamated Soap lawyers. One legal difficulty after another comes up; there is a long fight over the remains, and at last Amalgamated Soap steps in and sweeps up the débris. They are in possession of valuable property scattered throughout the west in the beet-sugar line, they announce their possession and the reconstruction of the company, and everything is beautiful, but John Steele is mangled in the collision, with no insurance, even for his relatives.
"When I learned the other week that Mr. Nicholson was interested in this company, I felt like the man who had gone down into a cave and unexpectedly clutched a huge bear at the black bottom of it. That man did not stop to question the intentions of the bear: he simply got out. I followed the example. In the wheat deal Mr. Nicholson knows of, I made several millions, and ever since then certain capitalists in this city have begged me if I fell in with a similar good thing, not to hug it all to myself, but allow them to come in on the ground floor, and I promised to do so. The moment I learnt Mr. Nicholson was to have anything to do with the beet-sugar project, I went directly to these capitalists, pledged them to secrecy, guaranteed that Amalgamated Soap was head and shoulders in this deal, and that no less a person than Mr Nicholson himself would assume charge of the company. Gentlemen, they bit instantly. I sold out my share to them for the money it had cost me, and fifty per cent. additional; and, furthermore, I got the cash. Now I shall read you a letter which will appear in the Chicago newspapers to-morrow morning.
"‘To the Editor,
"‘sir,—The Consolidated Beet Sugar Company, with which my name has hitherto been associated, and which has been so splendidly supported by western capital, as indicated by the subscriptions now in the bank, will hereafter be in charge of the eminent financiers associated with Amalgamated Soap. I am pleased to state that this will be almost entirely a Chicago enterprise, and that some of the best men in this city have bought out my interests therein. I have only to add that Mr. Nicholson himself is now a member of the board of directors, and nothing further need be said to assure all concerned of the immense prosperity which awaits this company, and the far-reaching advantages it will offer both to agriculture and manufacture in the west.
"‘Yours sincerely,
"‘John Steele.'
"And now, gentlemen," said Jack Steele, as he folded up the copy of this letter and placed it in his inside pocket, "nothing remains for me to do but to resign my seat on the board, as I am no longer interested in the least in this company. But before handing in my formal resignation, I shall be pleased to second any motion Mr. Nicholson cares to propose."
"Mr. Chairman," said Nicholson, quite unruffled, "I move we now proceed to allotment."
"I have pleasure in seconding the motion," said John Steele, rising, bowing to the company, and leaving the room.
IV.—A SQUARE MEAL
SUGAR is a fattening product, and the Consolidated Beet Sugar Company waxed fat and prospered. Its shares stood high on the Stock Exchange, and the members of the syndicate to whom Jack Steele had sold his portion were exuberantly grateful to the young man for the opportunity he had given them. His reputation of possessing a keen financial brain was enhanced by the forming of this company; for it was supposed that it was he who had induced Amalgamated Soap to take it up. It was erroneously surmised that the great Peter Berrington and his colleagues had been so much impressed with Steele's genius in the wheat deal, where he was opposed to them, that they now desired the co-operation of this rising young figure in the commercial world. No hint of the momentary death-struggle in the board-room of the bank had ever leaked out through the solid doors. Steele was now one of the men to be counted upon in the large affairs of the western metropolis. Everything he touched was successful. Personally he was liked, and great social success might have been his had he cared for society, which he did not. He was commonly rated as being worth anywhere from six to ten millions, and the world looked upon him as the most fortunate of men. It did him no harm to be thought to enjoy the backing of the powerful Peter Berrington, and probably not more than half-a-dozen men knew that such was far from being the case. He did not bask in Peter's smile, but rather shivered in his shadow.
The one man who had no delusions on the subject was John Steele himself. For the second time he had been entirely victorious over Nicholson and the gigantic coterie behind him; but this, strange as it may appear, gave him no satisfaction. If he had won the determined fight through his own superior skill, or because of some great display of mental power, he might have rested more at his ease. Had that been the case, he would have awaited the next onslaught with more equanimity than he at present possessed; but he knew that his victory came to him through chance—chance multiplied again and again. It was chance that his partner had been out of his room when the messenger-boy brought the telegram. It was chance that Steele had opened the telegram. It was chance that he knew a man who could decipher it before it was too late for him to take action on the information it carried. After these three lucky throws of the dice, he had to admit to himself that he handled the situation with diplomatic success; but it disturbed him to remember that all his vigilance would have proved unavailing had not pure luck stood his friend. Yet, after all, the initial mistake was Nicholson's, who should not have sent a cipher telegram to the office of the man he intended to destroy. Nicholson presumably did not know that his agent was actually housed with Steele, and it was a mistake on Metcalfe's part not to have furnished his chief with this information. But even putting the best face upon the matter, he could not conceal from himself the large part that chance had played in his salvation.
This never-lifted shadow of the silent Peter Berrington began to produce its effect upon him. He became timorous—afraid to venture in any large concern. He knew he was wasting time in pottering with small affairs—street railways in outside towns, the inaugurating of electric light here and there, and such enterprises, which furnished only a moderate revenue to an enterprising speculator. Time and again he refused chances involving large amounts which turned out tremendously lucrative to the promoters, but which he had been afraid to touch, fearing the grip of Peter Berrington's unseen hand on his throat. He began to acquire the unexpected reputation of being an over-cautious capitalist, and finally well-known people, who had much admiration for him, ceased to come to his office with their schemes. Steele laughed uneasily to himself as he thought that Peter Berrington might perhaps accomplish his purpose by the gradual wearing down of his courage. Of course, the fact that a project became successful was no proof that the hand of Nicholson was not concealed somewhere within its intricacies to clutch at John Steele if he had become involved. He tried to shake off this depression, and once or twice plunged rather recklessly, only to become nervous before the climax arrived and sell out, sometimes at a small profit and sometimes at a loss.
At last he came to the conclusion that it was not Peter Berrington at all, nor his shadow, that was affecting him, but the usual breakdown which afflicts strenuous business men in the stimulating atmosphere of a great American city.
"My nerve's gone; that's what's the matter with me," he said to himself. "I must go and rough it for a summer in the mountains, or else take a trip to some spa in Europe. If I keep on like this, I shall be utterly useless in a live city like Chicago."
He consulted several of his friends—many of them, in fact—and told them he was feeling far from fit. His complaint was common enough, and every man to whom he spoke suggested a remedy. Some advised the plunging into dissipation at a fashionable health resort, and some recommended various medicinal springs in Europe which would work wonders; but the majority counselled him to take rod and gun, and get into the Rocky Mountains, camp out, and live like an Indian.
"Then," they said jocularly, smiting him on the back, "you'll be all right, and come back yearning for scalps on the Stock Exchange."
The newspapers mentioned the fact that John Steele was going into the Rockies to hunt and fish and camp out for a month or two to recover tone.
It was at this interesting juncture that Miss Alice Fuller called to see him. Now, John Steele was the most susceptible of men, and one reason he had for not mixing in society was because he knew he would surely fall a victim to the first designing pretty girl who laid a trap for him—if, indeed, pretty girls ever do lay traps for men said to possess from six to ten millions. His weakness in this line was exemplified by his impetuous proposal to Miss Dorothy Slocum in the environs of Bunkerville, as has already been stilted. But Miss Alice Fuller was not the commonplace young person Dorothy Slocum had been. He often thought of his proposal to Dorothy with a shudder, and accounted it a narrow escape, which, indeed, it was not, for Dorothy was thoroughly devoted to her station-master, and never gave even a thought to Mr. Jack Steele of Chicago.
Alice Fuller was a blonde, and she brought in with her to the conventional private office of John Steele, with its extremely modern fittings of card indexes, loose-leaf ledgers, and expanding office furniture, an air of breezy freshness that told of the mountainous west. Although dressed as any Chicago woman might be, there was, nevertheless, something about her costume which suggested the riding of mountain ponies and even the expert handling of a rifle.
The glory of a woman is her hair, and in truth Miss Fuller's golden tresses were glorious enough, but her eyes were the most distinguished and captivating features of a face sufficiently beautiful to attract attention anywhere. They were of a deep, translucent blue, darkening now and then into violet, like a pair of those limpid mountain lakes in the Rockies whose depths are said to be unfathomable. It was impossible to look into those honest orbs without trusting the clear purity of the soul behind them, and Jack, whose nerves were wrong, almost shivered with apprehension when they were turned full upon him.
"Lord save me!" he thought with a gasp, "if this girl wants to sell shares in the most bogus company afloat, I'm her victim. Jack, Jack, if your bank account is to remain intact, now is the time to play St. Anthony."
But aloud he said calmly enough—
"Pray be seated, madam," and she sank gracefully into a chair some way from the flat-topped desk behind which he was entrenched, although small protection the barricade afforded him against such artillery as a handsome young woman might bring to bear upon the position.
"It is so good of you to see me," said the girl. "I have read much of you in the newspapers, and I know that your time is valuable, so I shall take up as little of it as may be necessary to explain my business."
Somehow this remark, although only introductory sparring, disappointed young Mr. Steele. Nearly every stranger he met said the same thing in almost identical words. They all referred to his newspaper reputation, of which he was exceedingly tired, and nearly everyone spoke of the value of his time, promised not to encroach upon it, and then stayed for hours if they were permitted.
"My time is of little value at the present moment, Miss Fuller, because I am doing nothing. For some months past I have been rather out of health, and, in fact, within a few days I expect to leave Chicago."
"Yes," she rejoined, "I saw that also in the papers. I read that you intended to go west among the mountains. Is that true?"
"Such are my present intentions, but they are always liable to change. A man who is fighting his own nerves is rather capricious, you know."
"Like a woman," laughed Miss Alice. "Well, it is on account of the statement in the Press that I am here. I have been meditating calling upon you for a long time, but it appears we have no mutual friends who could give me an introduction, and so, seeing you were about to leave the city, I said to myself: 'It's now or never.' The reference to the mountains struck me as a lucky omen. You know we women are rather superstitious, Mr. Steele, and I think it was that even more than your impending departure which gave me courage to venture up here."
"I am very glad you came," said Jack Steele gallantly, "and I shall be more than pleased if there is anything I can do for you."
"My father is the owner of a gold-mine in the Black Hills. Do you know anything of mines, Mr. Steele?"
Jack slowly shook his head. The mere mention of a gold-mine did something to clarify his brain from the glamour that was befogging it.
"I know nothing whatever about mines, Miss Fuller, excepting the fact that more gold has been sunk in gold-mines than has ever been taken out of them."
"Oh, I'm sorry to hear you say that," replied the girl, with a slight tremor of apprehension in her voice, "and, furthermore, I do not in the least believe it to be true. Nothing can be more lucrative than a good gold-mine, for its product is one of the few things taken from the earth which does not fluctuate in value. With copper, or silver, or iron, you are dependent on the market; not so with gold."
"You are a very eloquent advocate, Miss Fuller. Where is your father?"
The girl looked up quickly at this sudden change of subject, and once more Jack fell under the fascination of those enchanting eyes.
"My father? He is in Chicago."
"Then, Miss Fuller, the best plan will be to have him call upon me, and we can discuss the mine together."
"Alas!" said the young woman, with a mournful droop of the head, "if that had been possible, I should not have been here. My father at the present moment is very ill and quite unable to discuss business with anyone. You are going from the city to the mountains in search of health. He has come from the mountains to the city on the same quest. The gold-mine is at once our hope and our despair. If it can be properly worked, we are certain it will produce riches incalculable; but it takes money to make money, and my father knows no wealthy friends, nor has he wealth himself for the preliminary outlay. We are somewhat like King Midas, in danger of starving with gold all around us."
"Has the mine been opened, or is it only a prospective claim?"
"At the present moment there are from sixteen to twenty miners working upon it. The shaft, I believe, is something like a hundred feet deep, and one or two short galleries have been run. The ore assay is extremely rich: I have not the figures with me, but can easily bring them; and the reports are better and better as the miners proceed."
"If that be the case, Miss Fuller, I see no reason why you should lack for capital."
"There are a hundred reasons, but one is sufficient. Every capitalist shuns a gold-mine. They speak just as you spoke a moment ago. Then, you see, our lives having been spent in the west, we know very few eastern people, and those few have no money. The great difficulty is not in proving the wealth of the mine, but in getting a capitalist to listen. If you promise to listen, I shall undertake to prove to you that this is one of the most valuable properties in the world."
"Well, Miss Fuller, I am listening; but, as I told you, I know nothing whatever about gold-mines, and, indeed, am rather afraid of them. If the mine is producing ore in paying quantity, why does not your father have that ore crushed?—I suppose they could do that in the neighbourhood, or at Denver, or wherever the nearest mining town is—and with the product keep himself and pay his men?"
"That is exactly what he has done, Mr. Steele, and a ruinous thing it is to do. If it were not for that, we should have had to give up the struggle long ago. But there are no mines within miles of us, and we are two days and a half's journey from the nearest railway. Ore is bulky and heavy, and the transport alone, over those mountain roads, which are not roads at all, and scarcely even paths, is at once slow and expensive. Railway freight is high, and when it gets to the reducing-plant, we have to take exactly what is given us, because beggars cannot be choosers. We need machinery at the mouth of the pit, and whoever will furnish the money for that machinery is sure to reap a rich reward."
"Nevertheless" protested Jack, but the girl interrupted him, her eyes aglow with fervour.
"You promised to listen, you know, There is another point I wish to put before you. The ore is very rich, and if we ship much of it, there is bound to be inquiry as to where it came from. Now, my father has been able to stake out only a comparatively small claim. If once it becomes known where this ore originates, there will be the usual rush. The rush is ultimately inevitable in any case, but my father is anxious to be fully secure before it comes."
"I'll tell you what I'll do, Miss Fuller," said Jack in a burst of enthusiasm, "I'll give you a thousand dollars; and if you make money out of your mine, you can repay me at your leisure."
Miss Alice Fuller slowly shook her golden head.
"I could not accept money in that way," she said. "It is like the giving of charity when a pathetic tale is told. Besides, a thousand dollars would be of no particular use: it would not purchase the stamp-mills, nor freight them to the mine. In two months, or three, we should be just where we are now, and the thousand dollars would be gone."
"What is it, then, you wish me to do, Miss Fuller?"
"I wish our transaction to be upon a sane business basis, and I don't want you to offer me a thousand dollars, or twenty thousand dollars, or two hundred thousand dollars again."
"I beg your pardon. I had no thought of charity or anything of the sort when I made my offer."
"I am sure you hadn't," said the girl, with a naïve confidence which Jack found very charming. "I'll tell you what I came to propose. You are going to the mountains in any case. Very well, go to the Black Hills: there you will find the air pure and bracing; there are wild mountains and sparkling streams, and everything that a tired city man could wish. I want you to camp near our mine and investigate it thoroughly. If you are so satisfied with it as to justify the risk, I wish you to be prepared to buy a half share for three hundred thousand dollars."
John Steele drew a long breath.
"My purpose in going to the mountains was to get away from business, and not to take upon myself a new anxiety: to fish and shoot, not to pore over gold-bearing ore."
"Are you an enthusiastic sportsman, then?"
"Not at all. I was too busy when I was young to indulge in such recreation, and too poor. Since then I have become busier still."
"And too rich?" suggested the girl, with a smile.
"A man is never too rich, I am afraid."
"If you are not an enthusiastic sportsman, two days in the woods will prove more than enough for you. After that comes boredom, and a yearning for the ticker and the morning newspaper."
"I more than half believe you're right," said Jack ruefully.
"Of course I am right. Now, if you camp out beside the mine, you would have something to interest you. Don't bother about it for the first week. There is plenty of shooting and fishing in the neighbourhood."
"I hate to get two and a half days away from a telegraph-wire."
"Then you had better leave mountains alone and stay in Chicago."
Jack laughed.
"You are a very clever young lady, Miss Fuller, and I wonder you haven't made that gold-mine a success on your own."
"I am doing it now," she said with a flash almost of defiance from her eyes.
Again the young man laughed.
"Are you?" he said. "You women have us at a disadvantage when you talk business, but I am going to get right down to plain facts, and speak to you as if you were your own brother. You won't be offended?"
"Not in the least."
"Very well. Do you know what a salted mine is?"
"Certainly. I thought you said you knew nothing of mines? A salted mine is one in which rich ore has been planted for the cheating of fools."
"An admirable definition, Miss Fuller. Well, in the matter of mines I'm a fool, and a salted mine would take me in as a gold brick on State Street would delude an Illinois farmer."
"Then induce an expert to go with you—a mining expert who knows pay-ore when he sees it."
"I am more distrustful of mining experts than of salted mines."
The girl sighed.
"I suppose all faith has left Chicago?"
"It has—in gold-mines."
"Now, Mr. Steele, I'll talk to you as if you were your own sister. Have you ever done a stroke of useful toil since you were born?"
"Oh, yes; I worked on a railway."
"Very well. Go to the Black Hills and take a miner's outfit with you. Become for the time one of my father's employés—or, rather, boss of the gang, if you like. Go into that mine, and direct them where they are to run the next level, and follow that level for a month, working with the men and keeping clear of the blasts. After you have penetrated a month in any direction you please, take the ore from the last blast and have it assayed. A mine can't be salted under those conditions. If that whole mountain is salted with gold, you'd better buy it."
"No one can gainsay the honesty of that, Miss Fuller; but, to tell you the truth, I dread the two and a half days' journey from the railway."
"You don't need to. I will be your guide."
"What!" cried Jack, in amazement.
"I'll take you from the railway to the Hard Luck mine. Will you go?" she demanded with a touch of defiance.
"Go!" he cried, discretion struggling with enthusiasm. "Of course I'll go. Nothing would give me greater pleasure. But, then, on the other hand—you see—well—to speak quite frankly, for a young lady to—to, as one might say, journey across the plains"
"Yes, I know, I know. You are talking now, not to my brother, as you remarked a while ago, but to my brother's sister. All my life I have had not only to take care of myself, but of my father as well. This project is a matter of vital importance to me, and I cannot allow it to fail merely because the rules of Society would frown on what I intend to do. I shall take with me my own tent, and an old man who was in my father's employ long before I was born. This is a cold business deal, and no other consideration is going to enter into it. So let us brush aside every other consideration and come down to plain facts. You offered me a thousand dollars, and I refused it. If you will now give me the necessary money, which may be anything from two hundred dollars upwards, depending on what you want to take with you, I shall go at once to Pickaxe Gulch, which is the nearest railway station to the Hard Luck mine, and will collect what transport we need. There I shall await your coming. Do you intend to take any servants with you?"
"I shall be accompanied by Sam Jackson, a negro man, who is the best cook in this town."
"Very well, you will need a horse for him, and one for yourself; I shall need two horses: that's four. Then if you will give me an idea of the number of tents and boxes you require, I shall secure mules enough to carry them. We shall want two or three men to look after the mules, and you must give me a week at least to get this cavalcade together. Sometimes there are neither animals nor men at Pickaxe Gulch, but I intend to telegraph at once and secure whatever transport is available."
Jack Steele smiled his appreciation of the capability displayed by the fearless young woman, opened his drawer, and took out a cheque-book.
"Shall we say five hundred dollars?" he asked, looking across at her. "You must leave some money with your father, you know."
"Five hundred will be ample," she replied decidedly, and he wrote a cheque for that amount.
Later on in his life Jack Steele remembered that demand for money with admiration. It was just one of those little points where a less subtle person than Miss Fuller would have made a mistake, deluded by success in getting him to promise to make the trip. But the young woman was evidently shrewd enough to know that after she left he would wonder, she having pleaded poverty, where the money came from to pay for so long a railway journey and at the same time provide for an ailing father at home. He always regarded that request for expenses as the culminating climax of a well-thought-out plan.
When John Steele stepped down from the sleeping-car in the early morning at Pickaxe Gulch, he found Alice Fuller the sole occupant of the platform. She welcomed him with the cordiality of good comradeship. Her costume differed rather strikingly from the apparel she wore in his office. She reminded him of one of those reckless female riders he had seen at Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and he was forced to confess that the outfit suited her to perfection. She was even more attractive than when he had first seen her, and he could hardly have believed that possible. Before he ventured to compliment the young woman on her appearance, she complimented him on his.
"You are already looking very much better than you did in the city."
"Yes!" he cried jubilantly. "Your visit did me ever so much good; and, besides that, I am now out from under Peter's shadow."
"‘Peter's shadow?’" she repeated. "What is that? The shadow of a mountain?"
"In a way, yes," laughed Jack, "and a gold-producing mountain at that. I have been a pretty anxious man these many months past; but now, whether it is the exhilaration of the air in the west, or the prospect" he hesitated a moment, then continued—"of this journey, I am quite my own man once more."
Without reply she led the way to the dusty road which ran between two rows of roughly built shanties.
"Have you had breakfast?" she asked.
"No."
"I thought you might not have an opportunity to get anything to eat on the train, as it stops here so early, and I have ordered a meal for you at the one tavern in this place, which is far from being first-class. However, you possibly can endure such a repast for once, and then we can get on our way as soon as possible."
"Oh, the cuisine of the west is no surprise to me," said Steele. "I've had a good deal of experience with it in my time."
They walked up the street together, the negro cook following and carrying Steele's valise. At the tavern the caravan was collected, and more than ever the resemblance to the Wild West Show struck him. The boxes had been sent on some days ahead, and were now securely fastened to the backs of the mules. Four saddle-horses were tied to the rude pillars of the verandah. Steele went inside the building and partook of the breakfast, such as it was, and ten minutes later the procession started north.
Their route lay across the plain, and during the forenoon the party traversed a road of sorts, reasonably well defined. In the horizon loomed low mountains, which did not seem perceptibly nearer when a halt was called by the side of a stream to prepare lunch. Steele was more accustomed to a street-car than to the back of a horse, but the way was level, and the horse developed none of those buck-jumping peculiarities which Jack, in his eastern ignorance, had always associated with the steeds of the far west. His business heretofore had never taken him away from a line of railways, and where it had been necessary to make a road journey, the jaunt was accomplished in some sort of vehicle. However, he soon became accustomed to his new method of locomotion, and succeeded better than he had anticipated.
Miss Fuller proved a most expert horse-woman, and her superb attitude in the saddle still further enslaved this ardent young man, who began to think he had never really lived until now. He was rather disappointed, but rendered none the less eager, to find that he was not getting as much of her company as he had hoped. In the beginning they rode side by side in front of the cavalcade, to be out of the dust which the mule train raised. But every now and then she wheeled her horse round and allowed the procession to pass her, scanning each animal and its burden with an eye of an expert, seeing that everything was in order. When Steele expressed admiration of her capability, Miss Fuller told him she had many times been in full charge of a similar expedition going or coming from the mine; and once when he complained of lack of companionship, she informed him that success depended a great deal on the first few hours of the march, and she had to see that none of the animals fell lame, and that no burden shifted to cause a mule to lag behind its fellows.
"To-morrow," she said, "we will be among the foothills, and even this afternoon we shall be free of the road and the dust. Then, if everything is going well, I may find plenty of time to talk to you, for I see you are anxious to learn more about the mine before you reach it."
Jack threw a free-hearted laugh on the echoless air. Any little incident seemed now a fit subject for boisterous laughter. The clear atmosphere was as exhilarating as wine, and there was the further intoxicant of the girl's alluring presence.
Lunch by the side of the stream more than made amends for the unattractive breakfast. The efficient Jackson had caused each of the numerous boxes to be numbered, and he began on Number One, which his master said was a very good thing to look after. He produced a portable stove, and with a handful of coke performed miracles in the desert. It was soon evident that Jack Steele had no intention of starving himself while he wandered in the wilderness. He took from its straw envelope a bottle of prime champagne, a drink which doubtless had never quenched thirst on that particular route before. Miss Fuller partook of the wine but sparingly, and lifted her glass when he proposed the toast of success to the expedition, thrilling him as she did so with those enthralling eyes of hers, and the young man began to wonder whether he actually saw heaven in their depths, or was looking at a desert mirage through an atmosphere of sparkling wine.
He persuaded her to linger after the cavalcade had moved on, saying they would overtake it at a gallop, and the young woman, with scarcely concealed reluctance, acquiesced. He threw himself full length at her feet and gazed up at her, while she watched, with a suggestion of frown on her smooth brow, the procession lessening in the distance. He lit a cigarette, with her permission, and began the sort of conversation which a young man in the early stages of fascination is apt to indulge in. At first it seemed to him her thoughts were elsewhere, which was not in the least flattering to a person who was doing his best. On his chiding her for this, she drew a sharp breath and cast a glance upon him which he fancied was the reverse of friendly. It was veiled an instant after, and then, with something like a sigh, she appeared to accept the situation.
At this presaging of victory, Jack Steele's conscience began to trouble him. He guessed why she appeared so changeable. Her father's future and her own depended on the good-will of the young man stretched at her feet. She was anxious not to offend him, and yet her reluctance to remain alone with him, her absent-minded look, and the slight frown that now and then marred her brow, were hints that his attentions proved unwelcome. Jack surmised that any undue compliments or any too palpable indulgence in sentiment at this particular moment might prove disastrous to ultimate success. The resigned air with which she endeavoured to face a tête-à-tête not to her liking touched his pride, and also made him rather ashamed of himself for taking advantage of one who in the circumstances was helpless. He admired and respected women, but did not in the least understand them. Nearly all his dealings hitherto had been with men, and with men he knew what he was about, and could hold his own in any company, but with a pretty woman he felt awkward and inept. He wondered if he could put this girl at her ease by telling her he had quite made up his mind to finance the mine, whether it proved all she said or the reverse. Yet she might regard this statement as merely an unblushing bid for her preference, for she knew that until he had examined the mine any such avowal would be made merely because he thought it would please her. While these thoughts ran through his mind, a silence had fallen between them, which, however, the girl appeared not to notice, for her eyes were fixed on the distant mountains. She was quite startled by the suddenness with which he sprang to his feet.
"Miss Fuller," he cried, "I see you are anxious to be off towards the hills, and it is selfish of me to detain you here."
He held out his hand to her and helped her up. She smiled very sweetly and said—
"I think it is time we were on our way again. We have further to go than you suspect before we reach the regular camping-ground."
He had reason to congratulate himself on his intuition, for during that journey she was kinder to him than she had ever been before, as if anxious to make up for her former coldness.
The sun had gone down ere they reached the halting-station for the night. They were now on an elevated plateau among the hills, and an impetuous torrent near by gave forth the only sound that broke the intense stillness. Tents were pitched, horses and mules tethered, and Jackson set out a dinner which their keen appetites made doubly memorable. Night came down, and the moon rose gloriously in the east. Time and place were ideal for a lovers' meeting, but the adage which intimates that luck with gold does not run parallel with luck in love, proved true in this instance. Immediately after partaking of the excellent coffee Jackson had brewed, the young woman rose and held out her hand, pleading fatigue.
"I must bid you 'Good night,’" she said shortly.
"Oh! won't you stay a little while and enjoy this unexampled moonlight? It seems as if I had never seen the moon before."
The young woman smiled wanly, but shook her head.
"I'm really very tired," she explained. "I have had a week of it at that awful hotel in the Gulch. It is fearfully noisy at night with drinking cowboys and miners, and so I have had scarcely any sleep for a long while. If I have proved a dull companion to-day, that is the reason, and I am sure you will excuse me now."
"Miss Fuller, you could not be dull if you tried. I am sorry you should have had so much trouble on my account at that terrible station. I should have sent a man, but I did not know the horrors of the place before seeing it. Pray forgive my selfishness."
"Oh, that was really nothing. I am quite accustomed to the life; but, somehow, the first night in the mountains always leaves me stupid and drowsy."
"To-morrow night, then," he said very quietly, "we may perhaps view the moonlight together."
"To-morrow night," she murmured and was gone.
Jack Steele threw himself into the canvas camp-chair, and, reclining, gazed on the moonlit plain below and listened to the roar of the torrent. Dreamily he fancied himself floating in the seventh heaven of bliss.
Next morning the camp was early astir, for a long day of mountaineering lay ahead. The party numbered seven, all told, there being three men of peaceable demeanour, but rough aspect, in charge of the pack-train. At no time during that day did Jack have an opportunity of speaking with Miss Fuller alone. They could not ride together, as the mountain path was too narrow. After dinner, at the final camping-place, a wild spot in a profound valley, where Jack saw with dismay the moon would not be visible, the girl seemed as loth to keep him company as had been the case the night before. She laughed somewhat harshly, he thought, when he complained that she must have known they could not see the moon.
"You can study its rays on the northern peaks," she said. "Who would ever have expected a modern financier to yearn for the moon?"
"A modern financier is but a man, after all," protested Steele.
"I have sometimes doubted it," replied the girl cynically.
"Well, Miss Fuller, if you will sit down again, even in the absence of moonlight, I think I can remove your doubts."
She stood there hesitating for a few moments, but it was too dark to see the expression on her face. Finally she sat down in the chair from which she had risen.
"I am seated," she said; "but not to talk of moonlight, merely to tell you that I intend to go no farther. To-morrow morning we bid 'Good-bye' to each other. You go north, and I go south."
"Oh, I say!" cried Jack reproachfully, "that's contrary to contract. You promised to lead me to the mine."
"I know I did; but it is always a woman's privilege to change her mind. Perhaps you will understand I do not wish to influence you at all in the decision you may come to about the mine."
"Would it make you abjure your cruel resolve if I informed you that I have quite determined to invest in the mine if it gives any show of success, which I am sure it will do from what you have told me about it?"
"The mine must plead its own cause," she said, with an indifference that amazed him. "You have no real need of me as a guide, for the three men I engaged know the route as well as I do. They have been over it often enough. I am really very anxious about my father. He promised to telegraph me at Pickaxe Gulch, but has not done so. I sent a despatch the day before you arrived, but no reply came, and it may be waiting for me now at the office there."
"Why not send back one of the men?"
"Because of my own anxiety. I fear the telegram may call me to his side. I think you will understand now why I have been distraught while in your company."
"Miss Fuller, believe me, I am very sorry to hear that this worry has been hanging over you. If I had known, I should have proposed our remaining at Pickaxe Gulch until you had heard from your father. I fear my own conduct and conversation may have added to your discomfort."
"Oh, no, no," said the girl quickly, rising again.
"Will you accept this trifle from me?"
He spoke hurriedly, and took from his waistcoat pocket something that she knew to be a ring, for even in the dim light it sparkled as if fire were playing from its facets.
"I'd rather not," she replied, stepping backwards.
"It will bind you to nothing—nothing at all. It is simply to keep me in your memory until we next meet."
"Oh, I shall never forget you!" she cried, in a tone of bitterness that startled him.
"It is a mere trinket," he urged, "and I bought it for you before I left civilisation. If you do not accept it, I shall throw it into the darkness of the valley yonder."
"That would be foolish, even for you!"
"Why, Miss Fuller, such a remark has a very dubious sound. What do you mean by it? Do you think I am foolish?"
"Oh, I don't think anything at all of either you or your folly. I tell you I merely want to get away."
"Won't you take the ring with you?"
She stood for a long while with head bowed.
"I don't suppose it makes any difference one way or the other," she said at last.
"Of course it doesn't. I told you it wouldn't."
"Very well, I shall take the ring, if you will accept a much cheaper and more significant present from me in the morning."
"I shall accept anything you like to give me, Miss Fuller, gratefully, in the morning or at any future time."
"I wonder," was all her comment, as she took the ring and instantly disappeared.
Somehow this night held none of the glamour that distinguished the previous evening. The depth of the profound shadows surrounding him was merely emphasised by the touch of cold moonlight on the hilltops far away. Jack wondered if the exhilarating effect of the atmosphere had departed, leaving him sober again. He felt strangely depressed, and although he immediately entered his tent and flung himself, dressed as he was, upon his canvas cot, he found it difficult to fall asleep. It was after midnight before he dozed off, and then his slumber was troubled and uneasy. Towards morning, however, a kind of stupor descended upon him, leaving him dreamless and lost to the world. This was broken by a sharp and angry voice, whose meaning did not at first reach his consciousness, but the sentence lingered in his awakening mind and at last became clear to him, as an image comes out during the gradual development of a photographic plate.
"I tell you I will not leave until I bid 'Good-bye' to Mr. Steele."
It was Alice Fuller's voice, and in an instant the young man was on his feet and out of the tent. It was just daylight, grey and chill, but already the camp was astir and the young woman in her saddle.
"Did you call me?" he cried.
"No," she answered; but he seemed to detect a tremor of fear in her voice.
"I thought I heard you say you wished to bid 'Good-bye' to me!"
"You must have been dreaming. But I do wish to bid you 'Good-bye.’"
Two of the muleteers stood near, and the old attendant, mounted, had already started slowly on his way. Jack sprang to her side, and as he came to a stand by her horse, she stooped and slipped a small box into his coat pocket.
"Good-bye! good-bye!" she cried somewhat boisterously, with an exclamation that seemed to be half sob and half laugh. "Go back to your tent at once and brush your hair. It's enough to frighten anyone," and now she laughed with unnecessary vehemence, the near mountains echoing the peal with a strange mocking cadence that sent a chill up the spine of one listener.
"What does this mean?" he asked himself.
The man at the bridle turned the horse's head towards the distant railway, and the other smote the animal on the flank.
"Let go my horse!" commanded Miss Fuller savagely. The man slouched away. She touched the horse with her heel and galloped off, while Steele stood in a daze watching her. Only once she looked round, then made a quick motion to the pocket of her jacket and disappeared round the ledge of rock. Jack remembered the packet she had dropped into his pocket, and imagining her gesture might have reference to that, walked back to his tent to examine the present so surreptitiously given him, remembering that she had said the night before it would be more significant than the ring he had given her. It was a little, square parcel, tied in a bit of newspaper with a red string. He whisked this off, and held in his hand a box of white metal. Opening the box, he saw within it a simple cake of soap!
Jack Steele held this on his open palm, gazing at it like one hypnotised.
"My God!" he groaned at last, "soap—Amalgamated Soap! Peter Berrington and Nicholson! Trapped, as I am a fool and a sinner! These muleteers are the real chiefs of this expedition. They saw Alice Fuller weakening; but she weakened too late, and now they have sent her away. What's the object of all this? It is too fantastic to imagine that Nicholson supposes he can exact all I possess as ransom. Even the Black Hills are not the mountains of Greece. What is it, then? Murder? That's equally incredible, and yet possible. Here am I, unarmed, rifles in the boxes, no one with me but a cowardly nigger. Walked right into the trap with my eyes open, like a gaping idiot! Well, Jack Steele, you deserve all you will get. Let's see what it is."
He strode out of the tent. The negro was preparing breakfast. The three men stood in a group together, talking, but they looked round and became silent as he approached.
"I have changed my mind," said Steele; "we're going back to the railway."
"Oh, no, we're not," said one of the men, stepping forward, and taking a revolver from his hip-pocket; "we're going on to the mine."
"Is there a mine?" asked Jack, with a sneering laugh.
"Oh, there's a mine all right enough, and they're waiting for you there."
"Who?"
"You'll find out about twelve o'clock to-day."
"See here, boys," said Steele persuasively, "I'll make you three the richest men in this part of the country if you'll accompany me safely back to the railway."
"We've heard that kind of talk before," replied the man, "and have had enough of it. You tell that to the boss of the gang at the mine; and whatever he says, we'll agree to."
"Yes, but at the mine. How many are there, by the way?"
"You'll see when you reach the spot."
"Well, even if there's one more, he divides the loot with you. You can make better terms with me now than you can at the mine."
"Chuck it, stranger. There ain't no use giving us any more taffy. You're going on to the mine."
"All right," said Jack, turning on his heel. "I'll have breakfast first. Is the coffee ready, Jackson?"
"Yes, sir."
Jack sat down at the collapsible table and enjoyed a hearty meal.
At noon they reached the mine, which was there sure enough, and a dozen gaunt, wild-eyed men, who were sitting round, stood up when the riders came into sight. They gave no cheer when they saw the captive, nor did their attitude of listless, bored indifference change a particle as Steele stopped his horse and dismounted.
"Here's the goods," said the leader of the muleteers, and the boss of the mining gang nodded, but made no reply.
"Good day, gentlemen," began Steele, a smile coming to his lips in spite of the seriousness of the crisis, as he thought that this sombre, silent gang in the midst of the mountains bore a comical resemblance to the gnomes in "Rip Van Winkle" when that jovial inebriate appeared amongst them. "I take it, sir, that you are leader here, and I think there has been some mistake. During to-day's journey I have been forced to travel to this mine against my will. You seem to have been expecting me. Now, what's up?"
"You'll be, in about ten minutes," said the leader. "Dakota Bill, where's your rope?"
"Here it is," said Bill, stepping forward and exhibiting a slip-noose at the end of about thirty feet of stout line.
"Now, stranger, if you've got any messages to leave your friends, we'll give you ten minutes to write or say them."
"I've no messages, thank you, but I have a lively curiosity to know what all this means."
"Oh, of course you've no suspicion about what it means, have you?"
"No, I have not."
"You never saw your mine before, did you?"
"It isn't my mine."
"I knew you'd say that. Well, now, we've been left here for four months without a markee of pay. For the last month we would have starved if it hadn't been for Dakota Bill's good work with a rifle; but even the game has fled from this accursed place, and now we are starving. You're the man responsible, and you know it. We've sworn to hang you, and we're going to hang you."
"My dear sir, your statement is definite and concise, without being as illuminating as I should like. A mistake has been made, of which I am the innocent victim. You are the victims, too, for that matter; because, after all, it is not a mistake, but a conspiracy. I can see, however, that nothing I may say will mitigate the situation in the slightest degree. I shall, therefore, not indulge in useless declamation. Three things are fixed: I am the owner of this mine; I have cheated you out of your pay for four months; therefore I am to be hanged. There comes into my mind at this moment something I have read somewhere about hangings at Newgate prison in England. They drop a man, then all concerned go at once to enjoy what is called the 'hanging breakfast.' The gruesomeness of such a proceeding fastened the item in my mind. Let's have a 'hanging lunch.’"
"Stranger, as I understand your remarks, the person turned off didn't attend that breakfast."
"No, he didn't."
"Very well, stranger, we'll look after the lunch when you're strung up."
"But, excuse me, the victim had a hearty breakfast before he was hanged. Now, I beg to point out to you that I drank my coffee just about daylight this morning, and ever since I've travelled over the worst set of mountains it has ever been my privilege to encounter. I'm as hungry as a bear. I therefore insist on your lunching with me, and I shall give you a meal such as you wouldn't better at the Millionaire's Club. Before I left home, six manufacturers of portable stoves insisted on my accepting one each, in the hope of getting an unsolicited testimonial. I shall leave the stoves with you, and trust you will recommend them to your friends. I don't need them where I'm going."
"No," said one of the party, "they'd melt there."
"Now, Jackson," cried Steele enthusiastically, "set up the whole six stoves. You've got to cook dinner for the party. But, meanwhile, open some of those boxes of new sardines with the trimmings on, which they've just sent across to us from Brittany. A little caviare also may be a novelty in this district. I think we've plates enough to go round. If not, use saucers or the tins. Gentlemen, I take it you don't need an appetiser, but what will you drink before we begin?"
"I admit, stranger, you're a mighty plausible cuss, and we expected that; but you don't palaver this crowd. There's no drinking till after the ceremony."
For the first time there was a murmur of disapproval at this, but the leader held up his hand.
"See here, you fellows," he said, "we've got to deal with a pretty slippery customer. You know what them city men are. Now, there's no drinking till after the performance; you hear me. I'd string him up this moment, only we'd scare his cook white, and then we'd have to eat things raw."
Jackson handed round sardines and other tempting extras, while Steele put the collapsible table on its legs and opened various boxes, from one of which he took out a case of champagne, and another of Scotch whisky. Then, getting a large pitcher which had been intended as the water-holder of his tent, he poured two bottles of Scotch whisky into it, followed by bottle after bottle of champagne until the jug was full. Meanwhile the busy negro had got the six stoves ablaze, and the appetising smell that came from the utensils over the fires made the starving miners oblivious to everything else. The first course was devoured in silence.
"Although you may not care to consume intoxicating liquors—and I quite agree with you that it is best to keep sober—I hope you nave no objection to temperance drinks. Who'll have some cider?"
"Cider?" said the leader "Have you got any?"
"Here's a pitcher full."
"That's all right. Pour it out. I wish you had brought beer instead. We'd risk beer."
"Oh, well, you can risk the cider. I'm sorry I haven't any beer," and, hungry as he was, the young man himself poured out full glasses to each.
"By jiminy crickets!" cried the leader, "that's the best cider I ever tasted."
"It's the very best cider made in this country," said Steele earnestly, "and thank goodness, I've got plenty of it."
As course after course was served, and bumper after bumper was drunk, the geniality of the crowd rose and rose, until Steele at last saw he could possibly make terms with them, but he resolved not to chance that. He determined to leave them so drunk that none could move; then he would depart at his leisure. Under the exhilarating effects of the mixture he poured out, all objections to intoxicating liquor fled from the jovial assemblage, and Jackson now opened whisky bottle after whisky bottle. The miners were laughing, singing, weeping on each other's necks, utterly oblivious to owners of mines, lack of pay, lynching, or anything else, when Steele and Jackson mounted their horses, the coloured cook leading one of the mules laden with provisions ample for a week's journey.
When Jack Steele reached Pickaxe Gulch, he never thought he would be so glad to see a pair of rails again. He felt like throwing his arms round the neck of the station-master, but instead, asked that rough diamond if there was any news.
"No, not much," replied the station-master, "except that Peter Berrington, the billionaire, is dead."
"Thank God!" fervently ejaculated Steele, to the astonishment of the station-master.
"Yes," said the official, "he's gone where his money won't do him no good. Found dead in his chair in his office in New York, two days ago. There's the paper, if you want to read about it."
Steele went in and possessed himself of the paper.
"By Jove!" he muttered, as he gazed at the big, black headlines. "He or his system sent a man to death when he should have been preparing for death himself. That's as it should be. Thank goodness the shadow has lifted!"
John Steele forgot the words of Shakespeare—
The evil that men do lives after them.
V.—THIRD AND LAST TIME-GONE.
JACK STEELE'S friends were amazed to find him back in town almost within a week after he had left with such lavish preparations for a long stay in the wilderness. It was difficult for him to offer an adequate explanation, and it grew to be most annoying, once he had constructed his excuses, to be compelled to repeat them to every friend he met, and listen without cursing to the inane advice given by people who didn't in the least know what they were talking about.
"What! back already?" cried Richard K. Vernon, vice-president of the Wheat Belt Line, Jack's oldest friend and former chief, who had offered to place a private car at his disposal if he would keep close to the railway. Vernon held that camping out in a private car was the right way to do it, and that a canvas tent was a delusion and a snare. "Back already?" exclaimed this genial man. "Why, Jack, you look as haggard as if you'd been through a panic in the wheat market. Didn't the mountains agree with you? "
"No," said Jack shortly and truthfully; "threatened to develop throat trouble," and he tapped his neck significantly.
"How long were you in the mountains?"
"Five days."
"Oh, well, I told you how it would be before you left. That's what comes of sleeping in a cot-bed, over damp ground, under thin canvas. You should have taken both my advice and my private car; then you could have carried all the comforts of town with you."
Now that the immediate tension of the crisis had relaxed, John Steele found himself very close to a mental and physical collapse. It was true that the great Peter Berrington was dead, but the elation which that startling piece of news had first caused subsided long before he reached the city. Men die, but systems remain. Had the shadow of Peter Berrington been lifted, after all, even though Peter himself was now a shadow? The grotesque uncertainty of the situation was making rags of John Steele's nerves. Even as he walked through the crowded streets he had to fight down an impulse to shriek aloud, raising his hands to heaven and crying—
"In Heaven's name, if you're going to do anything, do it now, and let's have it over!"
It was not that he shrank from ruin, or even from death, both of which he had faced within the past year. It was the uncertainty of when and how the blow was to fall. He began to fear that something worse than either ruin or death would overtake him. In the privacy of his own room he would some- times march up and down with set teeth and clenched fists, saying to himself—
"You must quit thinking of this, or you'll go mad," and yet with all his strength of mind he could not stop his planning to circumvent the unseen danger which threatened him.
The fantastic nature of the peril that surrounded him was such that if it were made public, he would be laughed at from one end of the country to the other. In a busy, practical, work-a-day world, it was incredible that a group of men, only one of whom he had ever seen, and that most casually, should sit in a sky-scraper in New York and actually plan the murder of a young man in Chicago; for this group of men were churchgoers, Sunday-school teachers, philanthropists who had founded colleges, bestowers of charity on a scale of munificence hitherto unexampled. And yet more potent than all these things was the fact that they were hard-headed business men, the most successful business men in the world, intent on their own affairs, and naturally far removed from any thought of revenge, for the simple reason that revenge is not business, and there is no money in it. It was quite true that this same group, in early days, had been accused of burning rival factories, of inciting riots, and of many other crimes against the peace and security of the commonwealth, but these things had never been legally proven or brought home to the group by irrefutable evidence. Where investigation had followed crime, and the inquiry was not quashed, it had always been shown that the rash acts were the work of over-zealous employés exceeding their instructions. The hands of the financial group in the tall building on Broadway were clean. No band of Quakers were more set against violence than these mild-mannered men in New York. If Jack Steele had told the story of the attempted lynching among the Black Hills, the incredulous public would have looked upon the affair as a practical joke played by humorous mountaineers on a tenderfoot from the east. No one knew better than Jack Steele that to connect Dakota Bill of the Black Hills with Nicholson of New York was an impossibility He was certain that the miners knew nothing of Nicholson; that they held a genuine lynching grievance against the owner of the mine, whoever he was, and that they were acting quite, naturally according to their instincts when this supposed owner had fallen into their hands.
Alice Fuller, who led him so easily into the trap, as the tame animal in the stockyards leads its fellows to the slaughter-pen—she, of course, knew for whom she was acting, but Jack doubted if this knowledge led by any followable clue to Nicholson. When he thought of the handsome girl, he shuddered; and, for ten thousand reasons, that episode must never become public. To be hoodwinked by a pretty woman was merely to join the procession of fools that extended from the time of Adam to the year 1905.
It was difficult for Jack Steele to cease his thoughts of the Amalgamated Soap combination, for the papers continued full of Peter Berrington and the financial upheaval which his sudden death was certain to cause. The imagination of the world was touched by the fact that this tremendous power which Peter Berrington had wielded in ever-increasing force for nearly half a century now lapsed into the hands of a girl, Constance Berrington, aged twenty-four, the only child of the billionaire. The newspapers printed column after column about this young lady, who appeared to be even more of a recluse than her father was. They published portraits of her, no two alike—pictures ranging from the most beautiful woman in Christendom to the most gaunt and ugly hag; which seemed to indicate that photographs of Miss Constance were unobtainable, and that the artists drew on their imagination as well as on their Whatman pads. She avoided society, was never seen at such resorts as Newport or Lennox; she took no part in the festivities of a great city, and believed that the door of a theatre was the gate of hell. Gossip said she was haunted by a fear of being married for her money, and so at this early age had become a man-hater. It was also alleged that she had a conscience, a possession with which her father had never been credited even by the wildest imaginative writer. She was going to devote her life and her billions as far as possible to the undoing of the harm which her parent had accomplished.
"She is fanatically religious," proclaimed one newspaper.
"She is a plain, commonplace girl," said another, "whose father has bequeathed her his cash, but not his brains."
When Jack Steele found he could not cease thinking over his paralysing situation, which had entirely emasculated his initiative and wrecked his business career; when he feared lunacy awaited him, he resolved to meet this girl, and persuade her, if he could, to stop the huge, golden Juggernaut which threatened to crush the life or reason out of him. Yet it seemed cowardly for a grown man to make such an appeal to a young girl who was an entire stranger to him, and who, if he actually succeeding in reaching her presence, would most likely feel indignant and insulted that such crimes as he placed before her without the slightest proof should be attributed to her father. Thus his interview would doubtless end with his being turned out of the house by the servants. Then again, even if she believed him—and the chances were only as one in ten thousand—had she the actual as well as the nominal power to stop the persecution? Was she like the Czar of Russia, helplessly at the head of an organisation over whose movements the supposed chief had no control?
Yet, after all, Jack Steele had not gone so far towards insanity as to be in any error regarding the real mover in the conspiracies of which he was the victim. Nicholson was the man; there could be no doubt of that. Twice Steele had beaten Nicholson to the ground. In the great wheat deal he had exposed his treachery and dishonesty, had publicly shown him to be an unscrupulous scoundrel, had prevented him from making millions in a single coup, which was all prepared and certain to succeed had not Steele disarranged the machinery. He had humiliated the man personally, wounding his pride and crushing his self-esteem. Was it possible, then, ever to make terms with one naturally so embittered? Steele braced himself up and resolved to try. Twice he had defeated him, and there remained in Jack's hand the powerful weapon of publicity. After all, could Amalgamated Soap risk such an exposure as it was in Jack's power to cast forth to the eager Press of the country? Was it so certain that the public would not believe the story he might tell regarding Amalgamated Soap? Even though Nicholson was imbued with malice, his colleagues would be more reasonable, more amenable to persuasion. They might induce this angry man to refrain from tempting the avalanche. He resolved to propose a treaty of peace with Nicholson. Then came the doubt. Should Nicholson agree to such a pact, would he keep it? Would he merely use it as a sedative to lull his intended victim into false security? Such an outcome was very likely; still, a frank talk with Nicholson could do no harm, and Steele had not the slightest intention of being lulled into security by anything Nicholson might say. Recalling to his mind the stony countenance of that human sphinx, Steele could not delude himself that any appeal to conscience or any plea for mercy would have the least chance of success. Nicholson was as unemotional as the Pyramids; Steele could make no bargain with such a man unless he had something to offer. Therefore he did not go impetuously to New York and fling himself at the feet of Nemesis. He set about the preparation of the goods he would trade with this white Indian. It gratified him to think that after all these months of doubt and uncertainty he could at last come to a definite decision about anything.
There were no women in Jack Steele's office. His confidential stenographer was a quiet man a little older than himself, named Henry Russell. Steele touched an electric button on his desk, and Russell came in, note-book in hand.
"Sit down, Russell. If I remember rightly, you were connected with a newspaper in your early days?"
"In a very humble capacity, sir; I was merely a reporter."
"Oh, don't say merely. A reporter is ever so much more important than an editorial writer. Have you ever attempted a novel?"
"No, sir."
"Still, you know something of literary form and the way a book is put together, I suppose?"
"I know nothing about the writing of books, sir. I think I have a fair knowledge of how a sentence should read."
"Well, that's the main thing. Still, as a reporter you must have seen a good deal of the seamy side of life, and later you have had to do with important business affairs, even since you came into my employ."
"That is very true, Mr. Steele."
"Don't you think you could concoct the plot of a novel? A novel of every-day business life, let us say, like one of those that have been so successful lately—a book pulsating with the greed of gold, and all that sort of thing, you know? Unscrupulous men, and perhaps an adventuress here and there, of perfectly stunning beauty. For instance, someone resembling that girl who came in to see me a fortnight ago."
"Yes, I remember her. She was good looking."
"An amazing beauty, I thought her," said Steele, thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets and marching up and down the room. "Well, couldn't such a belle of the markets as that inspire you towards the writing of a great work of fiction?"
Russell shook his head. "I'm afraid not, Mr. Steele."
"There's nothing much doing just now," continued the promenading man. "At this present moment I intended to be off on my vacation, but I found the mountains too exciting—er—too dull, I mean—and so you see I am back among you earlier than I expected. Now, Russell, between ourselves, there is nothing more absurd than for a successful business man to attempt the writing of a novel. Yet I'm the sort of person who cannot remain idle, and there is nothing in sight to do for a month or two. I'm going to while away the time by composing a business novel, and I want you to assist me. I'll dictate the thing straight off to you, and you must invent the names and kick the sentences into shape."
"I'll do my best, sir."
"And remember, Russell, of all the confidential transactions you've been called upon to perform, this is the one in which I demand the utmost secrecy. I should be the laughing-stock of the town if it once got out that I were plunging into fiction instead of into wheat."
"I'll never breathe a whisper of it, sir."
"I am sure you won't, and that is why I trust you. Now, we'll just lock the doors and refuse ourselves to all comers. If a novel is to be a success nowadays, when people have so much to read and so little time for reading, it must be as sensational as possible, and I think I can do the trick. Anyhow, if it fails, there's no great harm done, and for a time we two will court that seclusion which I read in the papers all true literary men surround themselves with."
The two men worked together day after day, until the first draft of the history was completed and typed; then they revised this copy very thoroughly, and Steele directed that duplicates should be made, with blanks left for all proper names. He professed himself dissatisfied with the titles they had invented, and said that while the final manuscript was being prepared, he would concoct more suitable appellations for his main characters, and insert them with his own hand. This final revision was accomplished by John Steele alone, when he inserted the real names; then with his own hand he wrote the following letter to Stoliker, editor of the Chicago Daily Mail:—
"My dear Stoliker,—
"If the accompanying manuscript ever comes into your possession, I want you first of all to remember that on a certain night I brought to you a most remarkable article regarding the wheat situation in this country, the truth of which you quite legitimately doubted. After-events proved the accuracy of my statement, and you were thus enabled to score a great triumph for your paper. Believe me, then, when I tell you that every word here typed is true; for when you read the accompanying pages, I shall not be by your side to use arguments in favour of its publication. I shall either have disappeared or, more probably, I shall be dead. In either case, this manuscript, every name in which is real, will give you a clue to the disaster which has overtaken me. In the meantime I remain,
"Your friend,
"John Steele."
This letter and the manuscript he wrapped up into a parcel, which he securely sealed. On the outside he wrote instructions that in the case of his death or disappearance the package was to be handed intact to Stoliker, of the Chicago Daily Mail. The other package, with a duplicate of the letter to Stoliker, was placed in the vault of a depository, supposed to be the greatest strong-room in the city, which he afterwards learned, with some amusement, belonged to Amalgamated Soap. The thin key and the code word which opened this receptacle he placed in a sealed envelope which he left with his lawyers, with instructions to forward the envelope to Stoliker in case of his death or disappearance.
All this accomplished to his satisfaction, he took the Limited to New York, and entered the tall building on Broadway which was body to the brain that directed the activities of Amalgamated Soap. Asking that his card should be taken to Mr. Nicholson, and replying to an inquiry that he had no appointment, he was taken into a small but richly furnished waiting-room, which he saw to be one of many on the eleventh floor, and there he rested for nearly half an hour before a messenger entered and announced that Mr. Nicholson would be pleased to see him.
Nicholson's room was large and sumptuous, with several windows opening on Broadway. The two financiers, big and little, met on the plane of ordinary politeness, without any effusion of mutual regard on the one hand, or evidence of mutual distrust on the other.
"I have called," said Steele, "to see if we can come to any workable arrangement."
"In what line of activity?" asked Nicholson.
"In a line of passivity rather than of activity," explained Steele, with a smile. "When I was a youngster, and engaged in a light, it was etiquette that as soon as the under boy hollaed 'Enough!' the fellow on top ceased pummelling him. I have come all the way from Chicago to cry 'Enough!’"
Nicholson's eyebrows rose very slightly.
"I fear I do not understand you, Mr. Steele."
"Oh, yes, you do. It will save your time, which I know to be valuable, if we take certain things for granted. When we first met, I was so unfortunate as to find myself opposed to you. I admit frankly that I entirely underestimated your genius and your power. Since then, on one occasion you came within an ace of ruining me. On a second and more recent occasion you came within an ace of causing my death. Now, I have called at the captain's office to settle. In the language of the wild and woolly west, my hands are up, and you have the drop on me. What are your terms?"
For a few moments Nicholson regarded his visitor with an expression in which mild surprise was mingled with equally mild anxiety. When at last he spoke, his voice was perceptibly lowered, as if he addressed an invalid in a sick-room.
"You are not looking very well, Mr. Steele?"
"No, nor feeling well, either, Mr. Nicholson."
"I am sorry to hear it. What is the trouble?"
"Amalgamated Soap, I should say," said John, with a dreary laugh. "Excellent for the complexion, but mighty bad for the nerves."
"I shall make no pretence of misunderstanding your meaning, Mr. Steele," Nicholson went on with the patient enunciation one uses towards an unreasonable child. "You are hinting that in revenge for fancied opposition on your part, either I personally, or the Company with which I am associated, or both, have entered into a conspiracy, first to rob, and secondly to murder you. I hesitate to speak so bluntly, but, as you quite sensibly remark, we should be frank with each other."
"Your bluntness is more than compensated for by your accuracy, Mr. Nicholson. What you describe is exactly what you have done. Mere accident saved me from ruin in the Consolidated Beet Sugar formation. Less than a month ago I was led across the plains by one of your minions—a most charming, beautiful, and fascinating young woman—into a death-trap, from which I escaped largely through my own ingenuity. Now, I have written down a rather vivid and strictly accurate account of these doings. I have put in your name, and that of Amalgamated Soap, and my own, and there are three copies of this narrative in existence, two of them with a slow match attached which you can very easily light."
"Meaning that this interesting account will appear in print, Mr. Steele?"
"Quite so. Now, I ask you, Mr. Nicholson, is it worth while going any further with this feud? We're not illicit distillers in the mountains trying to pot-shot each other, hut two supposedly sane men; and the world is amply wide enough for both. What do you say?"
"Really, Mr. Steele, it's rather difficult to know what to say without seeming impolite. Many things have been printed about Amalgamated Soap during the last twenty years, and so far they have never been replied to, nor have our dividends been adversely affected. A few of the articles I have read. Some were largely statistical, others of a defamatory character, others, again, contained the two qualities combined. But you, Mr. Steele, threaten to inject a most unusual and interesting quality—namely, that of an attractive young man journeying across the prairies with a beautiful and mysterious young woman. If I raised a finger to prevent the publication of a human document so well calculated to touch the better and more sentimental parts of our nature, I should consider that I was depriving my fellows-creatures of a source of pure enjoyment. I believe we sometimes unite beauty and soap in our advertisements. Attractive pictures they are. But this romance of the Black Hills"
"How do you know it was the Black Hills?" asked Steele quickly.
"Didn't you mention the locality?"
"I said the plains."
"Then I beg pardon—this romance of the plains"
"Now, stop a moment, Nicholson, just stop where you are. Do you see what a mistake you've made? For your own purpose, whatever it may be, you have been pretending that this human document of mine, as you call it, is a myth. Yet, in the calm and choice language with which you are describing it, you have suddenly given yourself away. You know the mine was in the Black Hills, and, of course, I knew you knew from the very first. Now, let us quit sparring. I asked you what your terms were. I am not using threats at all; I am merely trying to come to an arrangement. Suppose, on the third attack, you succeed in driving me to the wall. What good will it do you?"
"None at all, Mr. Steele, and I assure you I have not the least desire to interfere even in the remotest degree with your affairs. You evidently attribute to me more power than I possess. The undertakings of our association are all matters of mutual arrangement between the directors, of whom I happen to be one. We meet each day at eleven o'clock, and I trust you will believe me when I say that if I proposed to my colleagues either the robbery or murder of Mr. John Steele, I should be very promptly asked to resign my position, and deservedly so. Really, Mr. Steele, if I may make an appeal to your own common sense, you must admit that the building up of the prestige of this company, its successful carrying on, its increase in all parts of the world, are not accomplished by such bizarre devices as you ascribe to us."
"Do you mean to say that you did not, in my own presence, attempt to wreck the Consolidated Beet Sugar Company when you thought I would be ruined by it, and immediately go to allotment when you learned I had escaped the trap?"
"I am very glad you mentioned that, Mr. Steele, because a few simple words will show you that I am not the Machiavelli you suppose me to be. To wreck you I should have had to wreck ourselves to at least an equal amount, and it is not the custom of Amalgamated Soap to purchase revenge at so excessive a price. It is one of our principles never to enter into any company put before the public unless the capital is fully subscribed. To my surprise, I learned that we were a million short, therefore I could not agree to go to allotment."
"But you went to allotment all the same when you learned I was out."
"Pardon me, it was not learning that you were out of it which caused me to change my mind. It was knowing you had sent a letter to the papers informing the public that we were interested in the Consolidated Beet Sugar Company. The moment our good name was involved, I proposed going to allotment; but before doing so, I myself drew my cheque for a million dollars and bought the unsold shares. Your being in or out of the Company had nothing to do with my action."
"You will not come to terms, then?"
"There are no terms to come to."
"Is this your last word, Mr. Nicholson?"
"If you will pardon the liberty I take, Mr. Steele, I shall venture some last words on another subject. As I said when you came in, you are not looking well. Do you know what paranœa means?"
"I do not."
"Then, if you take my advice, you will consult a physician and ask him about it."
"I'll ask you, to save the physician's fee. What is paranœa?"
"It is a disease of the brain, and its symptom is fear. The victim imagines that someone, or everyone, is plotting against him. All the energies he possesses are directed towards the circumvention of conspiracies that are wholly imaginary. This disease, if not checked, leads to insanity or suicide."
John Steele rose to his feet.
"Does paranœa ever lead to murder, Mr. Nicholson?"
"Quite frequently."
"Then as I understand the directors of Amalgamated Soap are a most piously inclined body, please solicit their prayers that I may not be afflicted with the malady you mention. I thank you for giving me so much of your time, and now bid you 'Good day.’"
"Good-bye, Mr. Steele," said Nicholson, rising; then speaking in his suavest manner, he said—
"If ever you entertain any project that requires more capital than you can command, I shall be most pleased to submit it to the Board, and perhaps we may be of assistance to you. As I told you before, I have the utmost admiration for your financial ability."
"Thank you, Mr. Nicholson; I shall bear your kind invitation in mind. However, I may inform you that I have entirely dropped out of all speculative business. I am one of the few men who knows when he has had enough. I have accumulated all the money I shall need during my lifetime, and I intend to take care of it."
"A most sensible resolution, Mr. Steele; and once more good-bye, with many thanks for the visit."
John Steele walked up Broadway the most depressed man in New York. His attempted compromise had proven a complete failure, his journey east a loss of time. And yet of what value was time to him, who dared not undertake the most innocent project through fear of the developments that might follow? Nicholson had said that fear was the symptom of the malady he had so graphically depicted. Could it be possible, Steele asked himself, that he was actually the victim of a disease, every indication of which he seemed to possess? Nicholson had evidently planted that thought in his brain to his further disquietude. That man, who rarely allowed a smile to lighten his face, had inwardly laughed at him, flouted him, defied him! and all done with soothing, contemptuous insults.
Steele walked slowly up Broadway until he came to its intersection with Fifth Avenue, and then he followed the latter street, aimlessly making for his hotel. Nevertheless, when he came opposite the hotel, he wandered past it and on up the Avenue. Suddenly he shook himself together and denied the cowardliness which he had hitherto attributed to the design forming in his mind. He would appeal to a woman, and if he could not thus circumvent the demoniac Nicholson, he would go out of business entirely, as he had threatened, and either travel or take up some interesting recreative occupation. He made inquiries, was directed to the Berrington residence, walked up the steps of that palace, and rang the bell. A servant in gorgeous livery opened the door.
"I wish to speak with Miss Berrington," he said.
"Not at 'ome, sir," was the curt answer.
Steele put his hand in his pocket and drew forth a twenty-dollar bill.
"I think the lady is in," he said quietly, handing this legal tender to the man in plush. Even in the residences of millionaires tips of this size are unusual, and the haughty menial at once melted. He pocketed the money.
"No, sir," he said, "she is not in town at all. Speaking confidentially, sir, Miss Berrington's that peculiar she don't like New York. Her ladyship—I beg your pardon, sir—Miss Berrington is at her country 'ome, some distance out of town, sir."
"How far? Where is it?"
"On a lake, sir. I don't quite remember its name."
"Lake Saratoga?" suggested Steele.
"It begins with an S, sir. Oh, yes, sir, Superior—Lake Superior, sir."
"Great Heavens!" cried Steele, unable to repress a smile, "that isn't just exactly in the environs of New York. I suppose you couldn't tell me whether the house is on the Canadian or the United States side?"
"No, sir, I couldn't say, sir, being it's in Michigan, sir."
"Oh, well, that's near enough; I can guess the rest."
The man in plush pronounced the name of the State as if the first syllable were spelt M-i-t-c-h.
"Yes, sir, her ladyship—beg your pardon—Miss Berrington owns a large estate there, so they tell me—thousands and thousands of acres, all covered with forests, and there's a big 'ouse there full of servants; but her lady—but Miss Berrington receives nobody, sir. Not if you brought a letter from the King of Hengland, sir."
"Ha! Rather exclusive, isn't she?"
"Yes, sir."
Thanking the man, Steele turned away and walked down the Avenue to his hotel, resolved to let the Berringtons or the Nicholsons do their worst. He would attempt no further parley with any of the gang, and—probably inspired by the accent of the servitor in plush—gave serious thought to the investing of all his money in British Consols, small as was the percentage granted by that celebrated security. He took it for granted that the Government of Britain was probably free from the influence of the Berrington crowd, and he was rapidly coming to the conclusion that no other sphere of human activity was.
Arriving at his hotel, he found a telegram waiting for him. It proved to be from his oldest and most trusted friend, the vice-president of the Wheat Belt Road, Richard K. Vernon. The telegram ran:—
"Congratulate me. Have just been appointed president of the Wheat Belt System. Important development. Great opening here that just suits you, and so I must see you at once. If you cannot come here, telegraph me, and I shall leave at once for New York."
"Ye gods!" cried Steele, bracing up his shoulders, while the look of anxiety lately customary to his countenance vanished like mist before the sun, "just at the point when I don't know what to do, here comes my chance. I'll bet a farm Vernon is going to offer me the vice-presidency of the road. I'll take it like a shot, and raise the freight rates on soap if Vernon will let me."
He seized a telegraph-form and wrote:—
"Heartiest congratulations. The right man in the right place. You need not come to New York, as I am leaving for home to-night; and to relieve your mind of any anxiety, I shall accept your opening, whatever it is."
Before two days were past, John Steele was closeted with his friend Vernon in the president's room of the huge Wheat Belt building. The great, flat table in the centre was covered over with broad maps taken from the civil engineer's department, maps unknown to the general public.
"Now, Jack," said his friend, "I'm in a position to offer yon the absolute surety of doubling, trebling, or even quadrupling your money."
"Thunder!" cried Jack in a tone of disappointment, "I thought you were going to offer me the vice-presidency of the road."
Vernon looked up at him in surprise.
"Would you take it?" he said.
"Take it? Of course, that's what I thought I was engaging to do when I telegraphed from New York."
"Why, no sooner said than done, Jack. I'd no idea you wished to get back into the railway business. I should think a man who can make millions outside wouldn't be content to sit here at a salary of ten or fifteen thousand a year."
"I am tired of making millions," said Jack.
"You don't mean to say," protested Vernon, with something like dismay in his words, "you don't mean to say you won't go in with us? I took your telegram as consent, and because I could thus guarantee the bringing in of a big capitalist, I have induced others to join and secured an extra slice for myself."
"Where there are millions to be made," said Jack dubiously, "there is always a risk, and I had determined not to accept any more chances."
"There is no chance about this, Jack; it is a sure thing, and the development of it rests entirely in my hands. You can double your money and pull out within ten days after I give the word, and I'll give the word whenever you say so."
"What's your project, Vernon?"
"Well, you see, the Wheat Belt Line, which has been one of the most prosperous roads in the country for some years past, is going to build a branch running two hundred and seventy miles north-west until it taps the Wisconsin Pacific. This red line shows you where the road will run. The Wheat Belt Line has secured all the timber-land on each side, but the former president, whose place I have taken, and myself have an option on the prairie and the stump-lands where timber has been cut. The president resigned simply to give his whole time to this land company, and that's why I am in his place. Now, we can get the property at prairie value just now; but the minute we begin surveying, up it will jump. You can trust me to keep my word. If you join us, I shall give the order for surveying the line the moment deeds of the land are in our possession."
"How much money do you expect me to put up, Vernon?"
"You couldn't invest twenty millions, I suppose?"
"Twenty millions! Heaven and earth, no! It would practically clean me out to furnish nine."
"I mentioned the bigger amount simply because I am sure you will double your money within a month, and the more you put in, the more you're going to take out. You see, this is not a speculation, but a certainty."
For a few minutes Jack Steele walked up and down the room, hands deep in his pockets, as was his custom, brow wrinkled and head bent. At last he said, with the old ring of decision in his voice—
"All right, Vernon, I'll go in; but if I fail, you must give me the vice-presidency, as a sort of consolation prize."
"I'll give it to you now," said Vernon. "But it can't fail. I tell you everything is in my hands. It is not as if this were any bluff. The proposed line is a road that is becoming more and more needed every day, and the land is good for the money, even if the road were never built. It's as safe as Government Bonds."
It would be going over ground already sufficiently covered to recount the history of the Western Land Syndicate. Steele had resolved not to invest more than half his fortune; but once a man is involved in an important enterprise, he rarely can predict where he will stop. A scheme grows and grows, and often the financier is compelled to involve himself more and more deeply in order to protect the money already ventured, and finally it becomes all or nothing. Besides this, every speculator is something of the gambler, and once the game has begun, the betting fever has him in its clutch. Before a month was past, Jack Steele had not only paid over every dollar he possessed, but had also become deeply indebted to his bank. In borrowing from the bank he made his irretrievable mistake. As the president had said, the land was intrinsically worth the money paid for it; and if John Steele had merely risked his own assets, he might have been penniless for ten years, but he would ultimately have been sure of getting back what he paid, and probably a good deal more. But to borrow hundreds of thousands at sixty days, in the expectation that he would take profits enough to pay the loan before that time expired, was an action he himself, in less feverish moments, would have been the first to condemn. He felt the utmost confidence in his old friend the new president, and it may be said at once that Vernon, throughout the history of what was known as the Great Land Bubble, was perfectly honest and sincere. He was merely a pawn on the board, moved by an unseen force of which he knew nothing.
On the afternoon of the day during which the final payment on the land made, the president, of the Wheat Belt Line entered the room of his subordinate with a piece of paper in his hand. His face was white as chalk, and he could not speak. He dropped into a chair before John Steele's desk, and the latter, with a premonition of what was coming, took the paper from his trembling hand. It was a telegram from New York, and ran as follows:—
"The Peter Berringtons Estate has acquired control of the Wheat Belt System. The new Board of Directors of the Wheat Belt System yesterday resolved to abandon the Wisconsin Pacific Branch. If the branch is built at all, which is doubtful, it will begin a hundred and seventy miles west of the point formerly selected. You will, therefore, countermand at once any instructions previously given regarding the Wisconsin Pacific connection. The Board also refuses to ratify the nomination of John Steele as vice-president of the road.—Nicholson."
"Cheer up!" said John, with a laugh that sounded just a trifle hollow. "Cheer up, old man. I know all about this, and you're not in the least to blame. You acted in good faith throughout."
"It's horrible, John, horrible! But still, you know, you have the land: that will realise all you've put in before long."
"Yes, Vernon, I've got the land, that's one consolation."
But he knew perfectly well he hadn't. He knew that when the sixty days were up, the bank would foreclose, which was exactly what happened. There were practically no bidders for so large a plot, and Nicholson purchased the property for the exact amount owing to the bank.
The ruin of John Steele was complete.
VI.—THE RICHEST WOMAN IN THE WORLD.
THE CLEARING in the primeval forest had been only partial, for several tall trees were left standing here and there, grouped around a log-house. The house itself, to a casual observer, resembled the dwelling of an ordinary pioneer, except that it was much larger than any residence a poor woodman was likely to erect. It was built of great pine logs, the ends roughly dovetailed together with a woodman's axe. Where log lay on log, the interstices were plastered with clay. A broad verandah ran completely round the oblong building, a luxury which the pioneer would have denied himself. A settler would also have been contented to cover his roof with split oak clapboards, but here the refinement of yellow pine shingles was used, which not only kept out the weather better than the pioneer's economical device, but caused the tone of the broad roof to harmonise well with the hue of the bark on the logs; and as one approached the edifice from the forest, the whole structure, standing out against the background of deep blue afforded by the lake and sky, formed a more pleasing colour scheme than might have been expected where contrasts were so vivid in that translucent air. Around the large log-house were grouped many other log-buildings, with no attempt at regulation and order. Each one appeared to have been put up as needed, and these ranged from an ordinary outhouse or shed, to complete residences. A few hundred yards away from the verandah of the house, down a sloping lawn, lay sands of dazzling whiteness, and along these sands rippled the smallest waves of the largest lake in the world.
No such body of fresh water as Lake Superior exists anywhere else on earth. The water in bulk is blue; taken in detail, it is almost invisible; and this was strikingly illustrated by an adjunct of civilisation which no stretch of the imagination could attach to pioneer days. Anchored in the bay floated a large white steam-yacht, with two funnels and two slender, sloping masts. It seemed resting, not on the surface of the lake, but in mid-air, for the details of the twin screws, the long, level keel, and submerged part of the prow were as plain to the eye as the upper works or the funnels or the masts. The waters of this thousand-feet deep lake are so cold that anyone who drops overboard is given up as lost. The Arctic chill of the crystal fluid, even in midsummer, is so great that it instantly paralyses effort, and the man sinks never to rise again, for the bodies of the drowned remain for ever in those depths.
To the south and east and west, this little oasis of civilisation was walled in by the eternal forest. To the north, blue lake and blue sky blended together. On this day in late summer the place was a Paradise of solitude. The great lake, which on occasion could raise a storm that might swamp an Atlantic liner, was now placid and on its good behaviour. The only sounds were the gentle whisper of the leaves in the forest and the impatient pawing of a horse, which a groom held, saddled, by the southern verandah.
Through the open doorway there presently emerged a young woman, in a tight-fitting riding-habit, so short in the skirt that it appeared more like a walking-dress than a costume for an equestrienne. The girl seemed very slight, and not as tall as the average woman. In spite of the frown on her brow, the face was redeemed from absolute ugliness by some indescribable spiritual intellectuality which beamed from it. The whole figure gave an impression of darkness. The hair was black, the complexion almost that of a North American Indian. The eyes of velvet midnight could sparkle with dark anger, but at times would melt into a glance of appeal that was strangely pathetic, which partially redeemed the harshness of the other features. The costume was of unrelieved black, but the attention of a stranger invariably returned again and again to the face, puzzled by it. It seemed to stamp its owner as querulous, fretful, supremely selfish perhaps, caring nothing for the feelings of others. She spoke with cutting sharpness to her groom, who had not placed the horse to please her. The man did his best, but the animal was restive from its long wait, and with a snarl of impatience at what she called the stupidity of the groom, the girl sprang with great dexterity into her saddle, gathered the reins in her left hand, and struck the animal a savage blow on the flank with her whip. The horse snorted and reared, pawing the air, and again the whip descended. Now he tried to bolt, but she held him firmly, in spite of her seemingly slight physique, and at last the frightened horse stood there trembling, but mastered.
"Shall I follow you, madam?" inquired the groom.
"Don't ask unnecessary questions!" snapped the girl, scowling at him as if she were in half a mind to hit him as well as the horse with the whip. "If I wished you to follow me, I should have told you so."
The cringing groom raised his forefinger to the peak of his cap and slunk away. The horse would have cantered, feeling the exhilaration of the air and the delight of the day in its supple limbs, but the girl appeared to take a grim pleasure in restraining the ardour of her steed and forcing him to a slow walk. The horse-woman certainly rode well and looked well the saddle, but in her face was marred by an expression of chronic discontent, which perhaps had a right to be there, for she was accounted the richest woman in the world, living what she supposed to be the simple life.
Constance Berrington was one of those unhappy persons whose every wish had been gratified almost before it could be expressed. Slight as she appeared, her health was excellent, and she had never yet come upon a crisis in life which money could not smooth away. It would have done her a world of good to be compelled to earn her living for a year, and meet a section of humanity she had never yet encountered, who cared not a rap whether she lived or died. But at this moment, when her ill-temper caused her to curb the eager horse to a slow walk, she was playing into the hands of the enemy in a manner that would have startled her had she but known.
Parallel with her course, a stooping man dodged from tree to tree. There was something of the stealthiness of the savage about him, and he took all the precautions of a savage to avoid observation—precautions that were unnecessary in this case, for the girl was absorbed in the conquering of her horse, and the horse's own hoofs in the pine needles made noise enough to render inaudible the footsteps of the pursuer. For more than a mile the conscious hunter and the unconscious hunted kept their course. The ground rose perceptibly all the way, but at last became tolerably level, and then the girl shook out the reins and settled herself for a gallop. But at that instant, the wary pursuer, who day after day during the past month had been baffled by the speed of the horse, sprang out from behind a tree and seized the bridle near the bit. The face of the woman became a shade less swarthy with the sudden fright of this assault, and although she did not cry out or scream, her inward panic was in no way lessened by the sight of the countenance turned upon her. The complexion had the pallor of one risen from the dead, the colourless lips were compressed, and the features drawn and haggard, like those of a man in the last stages of starvation. All the life of this person seemed concentrated in his eyes, which glowed upon her with the fierce light of lunacy.
"Let go my horse!" she said in a low, tense voice.
The man tightened his grip.
"Keep quiet!" he snarled.
She raised her arm and struck the animal with all the force at her command, then with both hands jerked the reins and tried to ride down her obstructor. The horse reared and for a brief second lifted the man off his feet; but he held on, and horse and man came to the ground together.
"By Heaven!" he cried, "if you try to do a trick like that again, I'll throw both you and the horse, and break your cursed neck! Drop that whip, you vixen!"
Instead of dropping it, she raised it again, leaning forward this time to strike the man; but he sprang towards her, holding the rein in his right hand, and with his left caught the whip as it descended, and wrenched it rudely from her grasp. For a moment she thought he was about to strike her, and her arm rose waveringly to protect her face.
"Will you keep still?" he demanded.
"If you want money," she said in the quiet, semi-contemptuous tone with which she would have addressed a beggar, "you might have the sense to know that I carry none with me in the forest."
"I want money," he replied, "and I have the sense to know you carry none with you."
"Then how do you expect to obtain it by this violence?"
"That I shall have the pleasure of explaining to you a little further on."
She folded her empty hands on her knee, now that he was possessed of both whip and rein.
"I advise you, sir, to turn my horse's head in the other direction, and warn you that you will make less by threats than by trusting to my good will."
"I reject your advice, Miss Berrington. The philanthropy of your family is well-known and widely advertised. Your good deeds rise up and call you blessed; but I am not an object of charity, although I may look it. The sum which I demand I shall exact by coercion."
"Oh, very well. Set about it, then. Pray do not allow me to hinder you in the least."
"Thank you, Miss Berrington; you shall not."
Placing the riding-rein over his arm, he turned his back upon her and led the horse along the level towards the west for perhaps half a mile further, when he deflected to the right until they arrived at the top of a high cliff overlooking the lake. Neither had spoken a word during the journey, and Constance Berrington sat very rigidly on her led horse, like a clothed Lady Godiva, sans the beauty. The look of discontent, however, had vanished from her face, and the expression which took its place was not unpleasing.
At the cliff her leader stopped, swung round, and said gruffly: "Get down!" without, however, making any offer to assist her.
She sprang lightly from the saddle to the ground and stood there, as if awaiting further commands.
"Seat yourself on that log."
A fallen tree which one of the winter storms had uprooted lay with its branches far out over the chasm. The girl sat down on the trunk as she had been directed.
"I am John Steele, of Chicago," he said.
"That does not interest me," replied the young lady.
"Have you ever heard the name before?"
"No, and don't wish to hear it again."
"Six months ago I was worth ten millions."
"That does not interest me, either."
"You need not reiterate the statement, madam; I shall interest you before I am done with you."
"I wish you were not so slow about it, then."
"Do you know a man named Nicholson?"
"Yes."
"Nicholson tried first to ruin me and then to murder me."
The young man paused, as if to allow this startling sentence to produce its effect. The young woman's eyes were upon the ground, but after a few moments of silence she looked up at him with a languid air of indifference and said—
"Is this the interesting part? Is any comment expected of me? If so,I can only say that Mr. Nicholson is usually successful in what he attempts, and I deeply regret the failure of his second project. It would have saved me from a most unpleasant encounter."
"Quite so," said Steele, tightening his lips. "I am glad you take it that way. Nicholson, as, of course, you know, was acting for the organisation which, I understand, contributes some fifty millions a year towards your support. In spite of your humane wish, he failed in his two attempts, but his third conspiracy succeeded."
"Ah! you were right, Mr. Steele, you do interest me. What did he endeavour to do on the third occasion? Consign you to a lunatic asylum?"
"No. To tell you the truth, madam, I feared that would come of itself. The fact that I have not gone mad under the silent persecution I was called upon to endure leads me to suppose that I shall hereafter be proof against any malady of the mind."
"I do not in the least doubt that. Nothing can damage a sanity already destroyed. If you are not a lunatic, you are worse—a to offer violence cowardly hound who dares to an unprotected woman."
Slowly the colour mounted in John Steele's pale face, and a glint of admiration came into his eyes. The little woman was absolutely at his mercy, yet she said these words with perfect serenity and turned upon him a gaze that was quite fearless. He noticed now for the first time the gloomy depths of those dark eyes, and thought how much more steadfast and beautiful they were than the blue orbs which had crazed his brain on the plains.
"Not such a coward as you think me, madam. Now that we are entirely free from any chance of molestation, when you must recognise your own helplessness, I beg to assure you that I shall treat you with the utmost courtesy."
"Thank you. But let us get to the point. You are John Steele. You were worth ten millions. Nicholson plotted against you and rained you. Nicholson is one of the combination in New York from which I draw my money. In spite of what you say, you are too much of a coward to face Nicholson; therefore you have endeavoured to kidnap me and terrorise me into giving you a cheque for ten million dollars. How near am I right?"
"You are exactly right, madam."
"Very well. Although I am no admirer of Mr. Nicholson, nevertheless it is easy to see why he defeated you. A man who takes so long to reach the kernel of his business may be all very well in Chicago, but he has no right to pit himself against a citizen of New York. I refuse to give you one penny."
"Don't say 'give,' madam, I beg of you. 'Restore' is the word. As I told you, I am making no appeal to the renowned philanthropy of the Berringtons. My ten millions, although lost to me, has gone into the coffers of your company. You have no more right to it than I have to this horse. I have a right to it because I made it without cheating anybody. I made it legitimately. I demand it back."
"I have already refused. What is your next move?"
"My next move will take some little time to tell, and you are so impatient of my loquacity that I almost fear to venture"
"Oh, pray go on!" she cried wearily.
"Does the height make you dizzy? I should like to have you look over this cliff."
"It doesn't make me in the least dizzy. I know the cliff very well, and have been here many times. There are five or six hundred feet of sheer precipice, then a ledge of rock, then the lake."
"Yon have described it admirably, madam. Well, what I shall do is this. I possess, within a mile and a half of this place, a log-cabin not so large or comfortable as your house. I intend to take you there and to hold yon prisoner until I receive back what is mine."
"Mr. Nicholson would have mapped out a more feasible plan. How long do you think I shall remain captive without being found? To-morrow there will be a hue and cry after me—to-night, indeed, if I do not return. I shall be tracked by dogs, or an Indian will be got and put on the trail. Your scheme is absurd, Mr. Steele."
"You have forgotten the cliff, madam. I shall lead your horse to the edge of the cliff, strike him with your whip, and send him over. He will be dashed to death on the ledge six hundred feet below. The Indian or the dog will trace the horse to this cliff. It will be naturally supposed that you have been flung into the waters of the lake, which are another six hundred feet deep. Then the search will end, madam. Lake Superior never gives up its dead, and to dredge at that depth is impossible."
"I beg your pardon," she said; "your plan is better than I thought. There is just the risk that the horse, poor creature, may bound from the ledge into the lake, and in that case the search would not end at the cliff."
Saying this, she rose and walked bravely to the extreme edge, looking over,
"Don't go near!" cried John Steele, taking a step towards her. She paid no heed to him, and for a moment he held his breath in alarm as she walked along the very brink of the precipice. Then she turned listlessly.
"Alas!" she said, "the ledge is quite wide enough for your purpose."
"Oh, I have planned it all out," replied John, relief coming to his voice as she turned away from danger with her head lowered as if in deep thought. Then she took him entirely unawares. With a spring forward like that of a lynx, she jerked the reins from his unprepared hand. Flicking the horse sharply with the loose leather, making him snort and shy with fear, she then smote him with her open palms on the flank, and away he galloped in a panic of fright. The face she turned to the astonished man seemed transformed. The black eyes danced with delight. She sank to the log again, shaking with laughter.
"Oh, I was wrong, Mr. Steele, when I said you didn't interest me! You do, you do! I have never met so interesting a man before. In twenty minutes, or thereabouts, the riderless horse gallops into my courtyard. Now, Mr. John Steele, of Chicago, what is the next move?"
"Well, logically," said John Steele, unable to repress a smile, grave as was his situation and quick his recognition of its seriousness, "logically the next move should be for me to throw you over the cliff."
"No, that wouldn't be logical. It seems, to the poor reason that a woman possesses, Mr. Nicholson is the man who should be thrown over."
"I am rather inclined to agree with you, Miss Berrington; but, alas! Nicholson is in New York, and you are the only member of the company now in my power."
"Are you quite sure I am in your power?" she asked, looking up at him.
"Frankly, I'm inclined to doubt it."
"I haven't laughed for years," she said, "not since I was a girl."
"Oh, you're nothing more than a girl now."
"I'm afraid I act like it," she said, flushing slightly, and that evidently not from displeasure. "You are mistaken about Mr. Nicholson being in New York. Did you see that white yacht in front of my house?"
"Yes."
"Well, that belongs to Mr. Nicholson."
"Is he your guest?" asked John, the light of battle coming into his eyes.
"No, he is in Duluth. He went there a few days ago in his yacht, and sent the vessel back, in case I should wish a sail on the lake. Shall I arrange a meeting between you?"
"I suppose you will not credit me, Miss Berrington, when I tell you that I do not wish to meet Mr. Nicholson, and it is not cowardice which keeps me from the encounter. If I met him, I should kill him; then the law would hang me, and I have no desire to be executed."
"Oh, you are quite safe in Michigan," said the girl encouragingly; "there is no capital punishment in this State."
"I had forgotten about that, if I ever knew it. You see, I live in Illinois, and Nicholson lives in New York. In the one State they hang, and in the other they electrocute. It may be weak in me, but I shrink from either of those ordeals, much as I detest Nicholson."
The girl rose to her feet, put up both hands to her hair, and arranged the black tresses that had gone astray.
"How long have you possessed your log-cabin, Mr. Steele?"
"About two months. One month I have spent around your house watching for you; but you have always left on a gallop, or else that confounded groom of yours was following you, and I didn't want to hurt him. In truth. I didn't wish to hurt anybody."
"Poor man! have you been lingering in the forest all that time? No wonder you look like an escaped convict."
"Do I?" asked Jack in alarm, glancing down at his ragged garments. "I suppose I do. Since I came into the forest I have paid no attention to my personal appearance. Pray accept my apologies."
"Oh, don't mention it. I imagine you didn't expect to meet a lady."
"Well, I've been frustrated so often that I suppose I did not."
"You are, then, my nearest neighbour? By the rights of etiquette I should have made the first call, being the older resident. I think, however, Mr. Steele, that your methods of teaching me politeness to a new-comer were somewhat rough. So, if you will excuse me, I shall not go with you to your log-cabin this evening. It is getting late; see how low the sun has sunk, and how gloriously he lights up the lake."
"Yes," said John somewhat dolefully, "it reminds me of the copper situation here."
"It is copper that brings Mr. Nicholson to this district," she replied brightly, "although I suppose I should not tell that to an opposing speculator."
"Oh, hang Nicholson!" said Jack hastily; then: "Really, I beg your pardon, madam. I have been a savage these two months past, as you very rightly remarked."
"I was going to say," she went on, "that if you will waive etiquette and come and dine with me to-night, I shall be very glad of your company."
"Oh, really, Miss Berrington, that is heaping coals of fire on this touzled head of mine. I could not venture into a civilised household in these rags. I am sure you will excuse me."
"Indeed I shall not. I make a bold appeal to your gallantry. I do not know my way; I am certain to get lost in the forest. You see, my horse has always been my guide, and, entirely through your fault, my horse is no longer here to lead me through the woods; so please be my pathfinder."
"Certainly, certainly I'll lead you to the gates; but don't ask me to come in. I'm very much ashamed of myself, and I assure you that if your horse were here, I should help you to mount, and allow you to depart unscathed."
"You didn't help me to dismount," said the girl, glancing at him with eyes brimful of mischief, and laughing again.
With something of his old-time heartiness, Jack laughed at her readiness of repartee.
"Ah! you should not hold that against me. We were not acquainted then. It seems years ago, instead of minutes. I think if you and I had met when I first called on you, my later troubles would all have been averted."
"Oh, they did not tell me you had called."
"My visit was to your palace on Fifth Avenue, where I was received by a gorgeous individual with a Cockney accent, whose knowledge of geography was such that he supposed Lake Saratoga and Lake Superior were neighbours and about of a size."
"Really? You met Fletcher, then? Poor man, he is quite lost now, for I have him here with me in the woods. Nicholson brought him in the yacht. I rather suspect that the quiet Mr. Nicholson wishes to acquire this man's services; but, thank goodness, I can always outbid him, and Fletcher is peculiarly susceptible to the charms of money."
"Fletcher seems to be in demand, then?"
"Oh, he is most useful; but I fancy—which is a word he is very fond of—that he is very unhappy, for I have compelled him to abandon the gorgeous raiment and dress as a northern farmer. I fear I shall need to restore his plumage, for he seems to think he has lost caste entirely. I am unable to convince him that he has gained it; but perhaps when he sees you in such raiment, and learns you were worth ten millions six months ago, he will be reconciled."
They were walking homeward through the forest, but at this remark John stopped and said ruefully: "Look here, Miss Berrington, if you are merely taking me with you to show Fletcher how badly a man may be costumed, I shall at once return to my cabin, for I have another suit there. I think that allusion to my clothes was most unkind, just as I was trying to forget them."
"Indeed, I am going to turn you over to Fletcher, who will see that you are clothed, now that you are in your right mind. I think this is the spot where I first had the pleasure of meeting yon, Mr. Steele."
"Now, that's another subject you are not to refer to."
"Dear me, I must get you to write out a list of them," and the sprightly little woman looked up at him with merriment sparkling in her fine eyes. No one would have recognised her as the Tartar who a short time before had browbeaten her servant and lashed her horse.
A cry rang out through the forest.
"They are looking for me," she said. "Answer the call."
Jack Steele lifted up his voice and gave utterance to a piercing scream that rent the silence like the soul-scattering screech of a locomotive.
"Bless us and keep us!" cried Constance Berrington, covering her small ears with her small hands, "is that an Indian war-whoop, that once used to resound in this wilderness?"
"No, it's the acme of civilisation—merely a college yell. If any of your people are graduates of Chicago University, they'll recognise it."
The people who were not graduates of anything, except the college of hard labour, hurried to meet them with anxious faces.
"No, I am not in the least hurt," said Constance Berrington quite composedly. "I was merely compelled to dismount more rapidly than I usually do. Did the horse get home all right?"
"Yes, miss."
"Oh, then everything is as it should be. Luckily this gentleman was near by, and I came to no harm. Fletcher!"
The dejected, crestfallen man came slowly to the front, while she advanced a few rapid steps towards him, gave him some instructions in an undertone, and the search-party left under his leadership for the house, Steele and the girl following them at their leisure.
"How true it is that fine feathers make fine birds!" said Jack. "I never should have recognised Fletcher, whom I once took to be the finest specimen of our race."
"It's a poor rule that doesn't work both ways," laughed the girl. "Did you notice that Fletcher failed to recognise you?"
"Oh, I will go back and get that other suit!" cried Jack, coming to a standstill. "Don't wait dinner for me."
"Nonsense!" she said, letting her hand rest for one brief moment on his arm. "I didn't think men were so vain."
"I'm afraid you don't know much about them, Miss Berrington."
"I didn't until to-day. I've had my eyes opened."
"Well, I must make one proviso. You are to return my visit."
"Will you wear the other suit then?"
"Yes, I will; and besides that, I have a negro cook who can prepare a meal that will surprise you, in our neck of the woods."
"A negro cook? Dear me, I thought you were ruined!"
"Oh, well, in a manner of speaking, so I am, now you mention it; but still, let us live by the way, you know."
When they reached the clearing, Fletcher was awaiting them on the verandah.
"If you will come with me, sir," he said, "I shall take you to the guest-house."
"Dinner at seven. Fletcher will show you the way to the dining-room. Until then, au revoir!" and the girl disappeared into the log-house, while Fletcher escorted Steele to a building near by and ushered him into a sumptuous bedroom facing the lake. On the bed was laid out a dress-suit and all that pertained to it.
"I think you will find this about your size, sir. If not, I can get you one larger or smaller, as you wish."
"Good gracious! " said Jack, "do you keep a clothing store out here in the backwoods?"
"Well, sir, for a country 'ouse situated as this is"
"So far from London, eh?"
"Well, yes, sir, we are very well stocked, sir. And now, sir, if you'd like a hair-cut, or your beard trimmed"
"What! do you keep a barber, too? Thank Heaven!"
"Well, sir, you see, I used to be servant to General Sir Grundy Whitcombe, of the British Army, sir, and they do be particular."
"Do you mean to hint you can shave me, Fletcher, and cut my hair?"
"Oh, yes, sir."
"Well, now, Fletcher, you don't look like an angel, but that's exactly what you are. I'll have the beard cut away entirely, but leave the moustache where it is; and if you give me the hair-crop of a British general, why, I've nothing more to ask in this life."
"Very good, sir," consented the admirable Fletcher.
When he had finished, and Jack looked at the result in the mirror, he absent-mindedly thrust his hand into his pocket, but brought it forth empty. Fletcher was regarding him with admiration.
"By Jove!" cried the young man, "I haven't got a sou markee on me; but I won't forget you, Fletcher. I'll see you later, as we say out West, and you won't lose by it."
"Well, sir, I think I remember you now, sir; and if I may make so bold as to say it, sir, I'm already in your debt. Her Ladyship—I mean, Miss Berrington—being as she was thrown from her horse, sir, and you 'andy to 'elp 'er, you got the right kind of introduction, after all, sir."
"Ah, Fletcher, it seems like it, doesn't it?"
A great deal of nonsense has been written about the inartistic qualities of the modern dress-suit. The truth is that no other costume so befits a stalwart good-looking young man. It is in plain black and white, and has none of the effeminacy of lace and ruffles and colour which made a fop of the dandy centuries ago. There is a manly dignity about dinner-dress which nothing else can give—except, perhaps, a suit of armour, and that has its inconveniences at table.
When Miss Berrington entered the dining-room, and found her guest standing by the huge open log-fire, awaiting her, she stopped still for a moment in amazement, and then an expression of unqualified admiration came over her ever-changing face.
"Why—why" she hesitated, as he came eagerly forward with a smile to meet her, "is this really Mr. Steele?"
"It is Fletcher's Mr. Steele, madam. You have tamed the bear, Miss Berrington, and Fletcher has groomed him, that's all."
"I remember, Mr. Steele, that you interdicted the topic of costume; but may I be permitted the vanity of congratulating Fletcher and myself on our collaboration?"
Jack laughed as he led her to her place at the table.
"In my youth I read once of an enchanted land, presided over by a fairy princess, so gracious and so good that when outside barbarians wandered into her realm, they became what we would call civilised; but I never knew this land and this princess existed until to-day."
In the soft glow of the shaded candles the expressive face of the girl seemed almost handsome. She wore no jewels, but even the young man's uncritical eye could not mistake the richness and exquisite design of her evening-gown, which indicated that if this young woman shunned Society, she had certainly chosen an artist for her dressmaker.
The dinner was so excellent that Jack Steele regretted he had mentioned his negro cook. White fish from the icy waters of Lake Superior is unequalled by anything that swims, unless it be the brook-trout which the northern streams that enter Lake Superior produce. Wild turkey of the Michigan woods is world-renowned as the choicest of game.
Although Steele's hostess drank nothing but cold spring water, an ancient and renowned vintage sparkled at his right hand. It is little wonder that Jack, healthily hungry, was brilliant that evening as even he had never been before, and this poor, rich girl who listened, delighted and amazed, began to wonder if, after all, she had not missed a good deal out of life by flouting smart Society which she considered frivolous.
After dinner, Constance Berrington put a shawl over her shoulders and asked her guest if he would come outside and see the lake glittering in the moonlight. On the verandah he found the unique arrangement of an outside fireplace facing the platform, and in its depths roared a hickory fire, which burns with a flame bright as electric light, and leaves an ash white as flour. Two screens of sailcloth drawn like curtains along the roof of the verandah partially fenced in this snug spot, leaving it open only towards the lake. The white yacht lay like a liner's ghost on the silver sea, bathed in the light of the moon, and now and then the phantom ship gave forth melodious sounds as it chimed the hours in nautical fashion, the peal sweetly mellowed by the intervening water. Jack laughed in boyish glee to find himself in such a Paradise.
"I never saw anything so beautiful," he said; "nor have I ever known so ambitious a fireplace, trying to warm all outdoors."
Two rocking-chairs awaited them, and between these chairs stood a round table, on which the silent servant placed coffee and liqueurs. The hickory fire kindled a gleam of ineffable satisfaction in Jack's eyes when a box of prime cigars was placed before him.
"May I really smoke?" he asked, taking one between his fingers.
"I believe that is what they are for," replied the girl, with a smile, rocking gently to and fro. Then, when they were alone, she said seriously—
"Mr. Steele, I want you to tell me the particulars of the conspiracies you referred to, that proved so disastrous to you."
"Dear princess," he answered earnestly, "do you think I am going to talk finance in the land of enchantment? Not likely. Do monetary centres exist in the world? I don't believe it. Are people struggling anywhere to defeat each other? This silver silence denies it."
"But the silence is not going to deny me," she persisted. "I must know. You said I was responsible."
"I said such a thing? Never! That is a mistake in identity. You are thinking of the barbarian whom you quite justly tried to ride down in the forest. He said many stupid and false things, for which I refuse to assume responsibility. Reluctantly I admit that that barbarian was my ancestor, but a thousand years have passed since he lived, and I say the race has improved."
He blew a whiff of smoke into the still air and, watching it waft upward, murmured softly—
"And yet those wretched comic papers say a woman cannot choose cigars."
"I am glad they are good. It was not I who selected them, but Mr. Nicholson."
If some of the icy water of Lake Superior had unexpectedly dropped upon him, he could not have appeared more startled than at the mention of this name.
"Ye gods!" he whispered huskily, "I had forgotten that man existed! For years he has never been out of my mind before."
The girl's eloquent eyes were fixed upon him.
"The smoke has disappeared into the blue," she said, "but that name has brought you to earth again. Now tell me what he did."
"Miss Berrington," he went on solemnly, "you are no more responsible for what Mr. Nicholson did, than I am for the actions of the savage who seized your horse. Let me forget again that either the white Indian or the savage ever lived."
"No," she said, "you must tell me." And so he told her, sometimes puffing at his cigar like a steam-engine, again almost allowing it to go out. The narration was vivid, but possibly it might have been more interesting if he had not substituted the father for the daughter in Miss Alice Fuller's case. When the recital was finished, the girl shivered a little; and seeing he noticed it, she said—
"I think it is getting cold, in spite of our fire. And now I shall bid you 'Good night.' I have to thank you for the most interesting day and evening I ever spent in my life. Good night, and I hope you will not dream of Mr. Nicholson."
He rose and took the hand she offered, raising it, before she was aware, to his lips.
"Princess," he said, "I know of whom I shall dream."
She laughed a little and was gone.
When the maid had girded round her the soft and trailing dressing-gown, and bade her mistress 'Good night,' Constance Berrington opened the window, knelt down before it, placed her elbows on the low sill, with her chin on her open palms, and remained thus gazing at the moonlit lake. The ship of mist tolled the unheeded hours as on a silver chime. At last, with a sigh that seemed to end in a sob, she murmured—
"Oh, how beautiful the world is! and yet I never appreciated it before!"
Then she closed her window.
The informative Fletcher told Steele that the breakfast-hour was nine, and the grandfather clock was striking as he entered the dining-room next morning. The fragrance of the coffee-urn was stimulating to a man from the keen outer air, and the girl who presided over it turned towards him a smiling face, radiant as the dawn. Steele spread out his arms.
"What do you think of this?" he cried, jovial as a lad with a holiday. "This is the other suit."
"Dear me!" replied Constance Berrington. "How came it here?"
"I was up this morning before five, donned my rags, tramped to my hut, comforted my negro, who was nearly white with panic at my absence, put on the other suit, and here I am."
The breakfast was even more intimate and delightful than the dinner had been. Daylight had not removed the glamour of the moon from the land of enchantment. When the meal was finished, Constance Berrington rose and said—
"Before you go, I wish to show you my library."
He followed her into this attractive room, its walls lined with books. Here and there were cosy alcoves and recesses, with leather-covered easy-chairs that might have graced a metropolitan club.
"I never had much time for reading," he said, "and I do envy you this room. My own library is small, consisting mainly of books by friends of mine who kindly presented me with some of their writings."
"Then I wish you to accept a specimen of my works. My writings may not be very literary, but they are concise and to the point."
Here she placed a slip of paper before him, and glancing at it, he saw it was a cheque for ten millions. Then he looked up at her, a slow smile coming to his lips, and shook his head.
"Princess, this is for the savage, not for me. The savage is dead."
"You are his heir, remember."
"No, we are too far removed from each other, the savage and I. Remember the centuries between us, and less than ten years outlaws all claim."
"You must accept it. It is mere transference, as you quite rightly pointed out. It does not belong to me, but to you."
The young woman spoke with tense eagerness, and the former frown came into her brow before she had finished. He picked up the cheque.
"That's right," she said, with a sigh of relief; but the smile broadening, he slowly tore the signature from the cheque and placed her autograph in his pocket-book.
"Give me the hope that this may prove my return ticket to Paradise, and I am satisfied. Miss Berrington, you called me a coward yesterday, and you spoke the truth. I was, but I hope I am one no longer. I am young and reasonably ambitious. The world is before me. I shall begin where I began half-a-dozen years ago. I do not need your money."
"I shall write you another cheque—you must accept it."
"You dare not."
"Why?"
"Because I am your guest, and I forbid you. The rules of hospitality, madam, extend even to the land of enchantment."
"Is the guest so cruel, then"—there was a pathetic quaver in the voice—"as to leave his hostess to brood over this weight of obligation? Will he not thus, in the only possible way, lift that weight from her shoulders?"
"No!" cried Jack, coming swiftly round the table to her, "I shall lift her and the obligation together," and, suiting the action to the word, he picked her up as if she were a child and seated her on the table before him. "I'll not accept your cheque, but I ask you to accept me."
For an instant her eyes blazed up as if lighted from within, then dulled again. She did not in the least resent his boisterous action, but she shook her head and said—
"I shall never marry a man who is not in love with me, and I am too insignificant a woman for any man to love me for myself."
"Insignificant! Magnificent is the word! Why, Constance Berrington, you are the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. Your face makes every other in the world insipid. I'm not going to try and persuade you that I love you, because you know it. You knew it last night. You saw it in my eyes, and I saw the knowledge in yours. Curse the money! I'll make all the money I need if I have you by my side. What is money, anyhow? I've made it and lost it, and I can make it again and lose it again. Constance, let us take that yacht, go to Duluth, and be married before a magistrate for ten dollars, like a lumberman and his girl."
She looked up at him and smiled, then down again, then up once more, and he kissed her.
"Oh, don't!" she cried. "There is someone coming!"
A knock sounded at the door, and Miss Berrington sprang from the table.
"You have touched the electric bell that is under the carpet," she whispered quickly, with a nervous laugh; then "Come in!" she cried, and the servant entered.
"Did you ring, miss?"
"Yes, tell the captain to get the yacht ready. I am going to Duluth.
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