The Deluge Part 17

"I've a special arrangement with them," I replied.

His face betrayed him. I saw that at no stage of that proceeding had I been wiser than in shutting off his last chance to evade. What scheme he had in mind I don't know, and can't imagine. But he had thought out something, probably something foolish that would have given me trouble without saving him. A foolish man in a tight place is as foolish as ever, and Corey was a foolish man--only a fool commits crimes that put him in the power of others. The crimes of the really big captains of industry and generals of finance are of the kind that puts others in their power.

"Buck up, Corey," said I. "Do you think I'm the man to shut a friend in the hold of a sinking s.h.i.+p? Tell me, who told you I was short on Textile?"

"One of my men," he slowly replied, as he braced himself together.

"Which one? Who?" I persisted. For I wanted to know just how far the news was likely to spread.

He seemed to be thinking out a lie.

"The truth!" I commanded. "I know it couldn't have been one of your men.

Who was it? I'll not give you away."

"It was Tom Langdon," he finally said.

I checked an exclamation of amazement. I had been a.s.suming that I had been betrayed by some one of those tiny mischances that so often throw the best plans into confusion.

"Tom Langdon," I said satirically. "It was he that warned you against me?"

"It was a friendly act," said Corey. "He and I are very intimate. And he doesn't know how close you and I are."

"Suggested that you call my loans, did he?" I went on.

"You mustn't blame him, Blacklock; really you mustn't," said Corey earnestly, for he was a pretty good friend to those he liked, as friends.h.i.+p goes in finance. "He happened to hear. You know the Langdons keep a sharp watch on operations in their stock. And he dropped in to warn me as a friend. You'd do the same thing in the same circ.u.mstances. He didn't say a word about my calling your loans. I--to be frank--I instantly thought of it myself. I intended to do it when you came, but"--a sickly smile--"you antic.i.p.ated me."

"I understand," said I good-humoredly. "I don't blame him." And I didn't then.

After I had completed my business at the National Industrial, I went back to my office and gathered together the threads of my web of defense. Then I wrote and sent out to all my newspapers and all my agents a broadside against the management of the Textile Trust--it would be published in the morning, in good time for the opening of the Stock Exchange. Before the first quotation of Textile could be made, thousands on thousands of investors and speculators throughout the country would have read my letter, would be believing that Matthew Blacklock had detected the Textile Trust in a stock-jobbing swindle, and had promptly turned against it, preferring to keep faith with his customers and with the public. As I read over my p.r.o.nunciamiento aloud before sending it out, I found in it a note of confidence that cheered me mightily. "I'm even stronger than I thought,"

said I. And I felt stronger still as I went on to picture the thousands on thousands throughout the land rallying at my call to give battle.

XVIII. ANITA BEGINS TO BE HERSELF

I had asked Sam Ellersly to dine with me; so preoccupied was I that not until ten minutes before the hour set did he come into my mind--he or any of his family, even his sister. My first impulse was to send word that I couldn't keep the engagement. "But I must dine somewhere," I reflected, "and there's no reason why I shouldn't dine with him, since I've done everything that can be done." In my office suite I had a bath and dressing-room, with a complete wardrobe. Thus, by hurrying a little over my toilet, and by making my chauffeur crowd the speed limit, I was at Delmonico's only twenty minutes late.

Sam, who had been late also, as usual, was having a c.o.c.ktail and was ordering the dinner. I smoked a cigarette and watched him. At business or at anything serious his mind was all but useless; but at ordering dinner and things of that sort, he shone. Those small accomplishments of his had often moved me to a sort of pitying contempt, as if one saw a man of talent devoting himself to engraving the Lord's Prayer on gold dollars. That evening, however, as I saw how comfortable and contented he looked, with not a care in the world, since he was to have a good dinner and a good cigar afterward; as I saw how much genuine pleasure he was getting out of selecting the dishes and giving the waiter minute directions for the chef, I envied him.

What Langdon had once said came back to me: "We are under the tyranny of to-morrow, and happiness is impossible." And I thought how true that was.

But, for the Sammys, high and low, there is no to-morrow. He was somehow impressing me with a sense that he was my superior. His face was weak, and, in a weak way, bad; but there was a certain fineness of quality in it, a sort of hothouse look, as if he had been sheltered all his life, and brought up on especially selected food. "Men like me," thought I with a certain envy, "rise and fall. But his sort of men have got something that can't be taken away, that enables them to carry off with grace, poverty or the degradation of being spongers and beggars."

This shows how far I had let that attack of sn.o.bbishness eat into me. I glanced down at my hands. No delicateness there; certainly those fingers, though white enough nowadays, and long enough, too, were not made for fancy work and parlor tricks. They would have looked in place round the handle of a spade or the throttle of an engine, while Sam's seemed made for the keyboard of a piano.

"You must come over to my rooms after dinner, and give me some music," said I.

"Thanks," he replied, "but I've promised to go home and play bridge.

Mother's got a few in to dinner, and more are coming afterward, I believe."

"Then I'll go with you, and talk to your sister--she doesn't play."

He glanced at me in a way that made me pa.s.s my hand over my face. I learned at least part of the reason for my feeling at disadvantage before him. I had forgotten to shave; and as my beard is heavy and black, it has to be looked after twice a day. "Oh, I can stop at my rooms and get my face into condition in a few minutes," said I.

"And put on evening dress, too," he suggested. "You wouldn't want to go in a dinner jacket."

I can't say why this was the "last straw," but it was.

"Bother!" said I, my common sense smas.h.i.+ng the spell of sn.o.bbishness that had begun to rea.s.sert itself as soon as I got into his unnatural, unhealthy atmosphere. "I'll go as I am, beard and all. I only make myself ridiculous, trying to be a sheep. I'm a goat, and a goat I'll stay."

That shut him into himself. When he re-emerged, it was to say: "Something doing down town to-day, eh?"

A sharpness in his voice and in his eyes, too, made me put my mind on him more closely, and then I saw what I should have seen before--that he was moody and slightly distant.

"Seen Tom Langdon this afternoon?" I asked carelessly.

He colored. "Yes--had lunch with him," was his answer.

I smiled--for his benefit. "Aha!" thought I. "So Tom Langdon has been fool enough to take this paroquet into his confidence." Then I said to him: "Is Tom making the rounds, warning the rats to leave the sinking s.h.i.+p?"

"What do you mean, Matt?" he demanded, as if I had accused him.

I looked steadily at him, and I imagine my unshaven jaw did not make my aspect alluring.

"That I'm thinking of driving the rats overboard," replied I. "The s.h.i.+p's sound, but it would be sounder if there were fewer of them."

"You don't imagine anything Tom could say would change my feelings toward you?" he pleaded.

"I don't know, and I don't care a d.a.m.n," replied I coolly. "But I do know, before the Langdons or anybody else can have Blacklock pie, they'll have first to catch their Blacklock."

I saw Langdon had made him uneasy, despite his belief in my strength. And he was groping for confirmation or rea.s.surance. "But," thought I, "if he thinks I may be going up the spout, why isn't he more upset? He probably hates me because I've befriended him, but no matter how much he hated me, wouldn't his fear of being cut off from supplies drive him almost crazy?" I studied him in vain for sign of deep anxiety. Either Tom didn't tell him much, I decided, or he didn't believe Tom knew what he was talking about.

"What did Tom say about me?" I inquired.

"Oh, almost nothing. We were talking chiefly of--of club matters," he answered, in a fair imitation of his usual offhand manner.

"When does my name come up there?" said I.

He flushed and s.h.i.+fted. "I was just about to tell you," he stammered. "But perhaps you know?"

"Know what?"

"That--Hasn't Tom told you? He has withdrawn--and--you'll have to get another second--if you think--that is--unless you--I suppose you'd have told me, if you'd changed your mind?"

Since I had become so deeply interested in Anita, my ambition--ambition!--to join the Travelers had all but dropped out of my mind.

"I had forgotten about it," said I. "But, now that you remind me, I want my name withdrawn. It was a pa.s.sing fancy. It was part and parcel of a lot of d.a.m.n foolishness I've been indulging in for the last few months. But I've come to my senses--and it's 'me to the wild,' where I belong, Sammy, from this time on."