Cupid's Middleman Part 24

On the way home in the hack and the trolley, Jim wanted to know why I had gone so far out of my way. Was it part of my work for the city? Did I think I could manage his affairs with so much lost time? He was as restless and nervous as a hungry dog shivering before a meat-shop. As for myself, I never yielded a point in my dignity, but tried hard to add to my supply of superiority, a.s.suring him the hour would soon be at hand when I could report a complete victory in his cause, and my own vindication as a middleman in the sort of business that had run me through the tortures specially prepared for those who flatter themselves they are better able to manage other people's business than their own. I had gone in so deep I determined to wade through to the finish, no matter if I did botch it. A craftsman such as I was could not be balked.

I left Jim at home and hurried down to Miss Tescheron's office, reaching there about two o'clock. I sent in my card by the boy, and it was returned, with the information that Miss Tescheron was too busy to see me.

I took the card and wrote on it:

"To the very last day of your life you will regret this act of folly.

I have great good news for you. HOPKINS."

The boy did not return for ten minutes. I knew then that my message was working its leaven, and in time the moment of victory would arrive. At the end of ten minutes the boy returned and requested that I follow him into Miss Tescheron's office. There I found that charming young lady struggling to maintain an air of disinterested dignity behind a desk which I could not approach within three feet, because a railing had been planted as an outpost to guard against the bore emergency. But three feet was near enough for me that day.

I could have done the work anywhere within range of my voice or pen, it was such an easy matter; at least, I thought so when I gained admission to the judge who was to be moved by my plea in behalf of the defendant, Hosley.

As I drew near, making my most dignified bow, I beheld the form of a gray-haired man, who was advancing in years beyond the middle period of life. He was seated near Miss Tescheron, whom I now faced for the first time. I knew he must be John MacDonald, the famous lawyer. Miss Tescheron, I imagined, had called him in to be a witness to all I might have to say. Two judges, therefore, were to hear the presentation I was about to make in behalf of the outcast.

In my capacity as middleman, I had always relied on the pen; but it was up to me now to make good the claims of my client with a verbal argument before two of the most discriminating lawyers.

I relied more, however, on the woman's heart.

CHAPTER XXIII

How fortunate I was in my judges or my jury of two--a fond woman and a plain man of common-sense! As our lives have been so bound with theirs, I must reveal the man more fully here.

Mr. MacDonald was widely known among that cla.s.s of corporations that sought knowledge of the law and not opinions as to how it might be corrupted. They came to him to carry their cases through the courts, and not through the legislatures via the lobby.

Therefore, he was not what is commonly called a corporation lawyer.

He never drew bills designed to conceal franchise grabs or tax evasions, or crooked contracts with dummies in subsidiary corporations organized to bleed a mother concern of its profits.

Some laws not on the books governed him in such matters, so that he never became an accomplice in these forms of thievery. He did more than pray "lead us not into temptation"; he kept both of his keen eyes open to make sure that he did not fall into it, and when he found that he had fallen, he quickly made every effort to extricate himself. This meant that he turned away volumes of business which would have brought large returns, but he would not have his office fouled by this stream of corruption any more than he would seek health in a sewer. When these degenerate concerns were admitted to his office, they came as penitents seeking reformation. His regular clients were the corporations who had come to take his view, that a big business must be laid on broad and deep foundations of integrity all-around; that all compromises with blackmailing legislatures are but makeshifts; that the thing to seek is justice, not only for themselves, but with a greater zeal for the people whose resources they use. The whole solution of our economic problems, in the mind of this simple student of the law--including its ninety per cent. of human nature--lay in the corporations training their lawyers upon themselves as their most unmerciful critics--as conscience, the censor, lays down the laws which every strong individual must follow or meet his doom in ruin. The underlying principles of the thing involving millions were as simple in his mind as the obligation to pay his washerwoman, if he were to maintain his self-respect. The officers and directors of a corporation, he believed, could no more successfully cheat the State of its just taxes, or rob the stockholders by paying them a small profit on their holdings while draining the earnings of the concern with their subsidiary National Packing & Transportation Companies, United States Terminal Companies and American Warehouse & Bonding Corporations, without in the end reaping the reward of their crimes. Mr. MacDonald would no more give his consent to the swindling of innocent stockholders by their trustees, than he would rob an apple-stand. He had that rare discernment so seldom found now among big business men and their lawyer followers--he could see the wrong involved in the stealing of a million dollars and would gladly have aided in a movement to amend the penal code so as to prevent it, for he believed it possible for law to bring within the scope of its crushing penalties the audacity of these modern Captain Kidds. When he read the formal advertis.e.m.e.nt of a great industrial monopoly declaring a dividend of a few per cent, per annum basis on a lake of water owned by "outsiders," he thought of the beautifully worded contracts made between the officers of the concern, the "insiders," and their dummies, in the dozen or so parasitic companies whose stock was nearly all in their own hands, and paid from twenty to forty and even a hundred per cent, on the investment in unadvertised dividends. He thought of this and hundreds of other forms of legalized theft practiced by these men of church standing, who made it a point never to engage in pet.i.t larceny. They preferred to steal millions and keep on the safe side. They divided up the "swag" in the office of the American Transportation and Terminal Company, organized solely for that respectable purpose. It had a fine name, but the Bowery thieves would recognize it as a "fence." John MacDonald used to say: "A corporation is not known by the companies it keeps."

For five years Gabrielle Tescheron had advanced under the guidance of this simple, wise and good man, so that at the time of our story she had been well grounded in her profession, in its philosophy, in the routine of its office practice, and to some extent in the knowledge of human nature its successful followers must command.

The long rows of sheepskin-bound books in the office library were less formidable; the grind of detail was no longer an obstacle to her ambition, which nerved her onward to the higher slopes of professional occupation, for she now had reliable subordinates trained according to the MacDonald system of thoroughness to complete for her the irksome tasks. Mixed up as the business was in corporation matters, it had much to look after that had fallen to it through legal processes, but which, of itself was pure business management and far away from the law. There were receiverships, and fortunate was the weak-kneed concern that fell into John MacDonald's hands; it generally meant new life and success for a dying venture. He worked no magic, but he applied a lot of common-sense where it had been scarce before, so that the results seemed much as if a fairy in finance had touched the difficult problems with a mystic wand. It was, however, the effect of truth entering where promotors had held sway before, or where addle-pated sons of constructive fathers, now departed, had been trying to make the business go on what they knew of actresses and automobiles.

These concerns did so well under the receivership that when they began business anew, John MacDonald was generally engaged to remain in control of the management. If he found the right man in the shop--the fellow who might have saved it--or could put his finger on such a man elsewhere, he would a.s.sume the task with that man in charge under him. Concerns that were tottering to a fall through bad management naturally drifted into his office before the worst happened, and engaged him to save their corporate lives by his superior executive ability. This he would do also if he could find his man. As a lawyer, he had less regard for the law's power to effect transformations than a layman, and a higher conception of the value of good men. While the ignoramuses at the head of the capital and labor trusts were for leveling all the men in our big business concerns, MacDonald continued to have faith in strong individuals.

The effect of close relationship with this man was to gain strength. Gabrielle had studied his methods until they became her own. As I stood there before them, I did not know them as I do now.

MacDonald's fame I knew, and that tended to frighten me. It should have given me confidence, for John MacDonald was what I call an "elemental man." He kept close to the earth--the simples of the world, he dealt in. It may appear from what I have said that he was loaded down with responsibilities and care; then I have not made it clear that the exercise of these executive gifts was chiefly to secure leisure and the opportunity for relaxation--a most important thing in the MacDonald philosophy. He and his staff worked hard that they might have time to play, and with short hours and good pay they came near to having the right proportions of labor and leisure to keep men and women sound in health and contented with the world. Therefore, there were not many employed in his office.

Why, down in one of the city departments so familiar to Jim and me, the same volume of business would have required ten times as many employes, and at least thirty different systems.

During his leisure, which John MacDonald planned to maintain against all comers, and the on-rush of business, he practiced the art of relaxation; he had formed a habit of returning to the simple from confusing contact with the complex, and he practiced it largely in his home, with his wife and children. Lincoln is the best-known master of this art, necessary to maintain the equilibrium of a busy man, and keep him fresh, sane, sociable and interestingly boyish.

MacDonald had gone into the thick of the world's strife, and through the ordeal had shielded himself from its poisoned arrows of ambition. At a board meeting, it was said of John MacDonald, that when the three minutes of real business were over and his a.s.sociates then began to discuss matters in the domain of irrelevancies, he resolved into smiles and found somebody to crack a joke with. He figured that about a third of his available time was given to actual work, and the rest to play, because his colleagues had so much ground to cover without reaching anywhere.

There were days when he worked a full sixteen hours, but they were few, and he was always alone. On the days he had to a.s.sociate with talking business men, he made up for these busy days by relaxing at a more rapid pace in a revel of bracing fun. I never knew a man who understood so thoroughly how to live and succeed, because it seemed to me he knew how to discount everything unnecessary, so that he might take the time others gave to straining their nerves to save his.

I suppose the character of Gabrielle Tescheron might have yielded to the unstable influences of her home, where her impulsive and irascible father sought to be an influential factor, were it not for the counteracting effect of the day's a.s.sociations in that calm realm of business activity, where so much of the brain-work of vast industrial enterprises was conducted as noiselessly as the movements of one of those powerful machines that run in an oil bath. I do not say that she would not have been superior to her home environment without her fortunate a.s.sociations down-town. I give the business small credit, for our superior jewels are intrinsically precious before the artisan gives the polish by which we more often make our comparisons. But there can be no question that she worked among a.s.sociations which strengthened and emphasized all her admirable qualities and placed her above the petty things that annoyed her fretful father and seemed like mountains to his magnifying eyes.

These, then, were Hosley's judges.

"Miss Tescheron, I come to right a great wrong, for which I am wholly responsible; will you hear me?" I asked as softly and politely as the meekest penitent ever tutored for the book agent's business.

"I have no desire to hear you," she answered firmly, but with a slight nervousness betraying the deep interest she denied.

"I trust you will be persuaded to at least hear me, and then--"

"But there is nothing you can say, as the subject I know you wish to allude to is closed. Please do not refer to it." It was a woman's "No."

Mr. MacDonald tilted back his chair and eyed me closely, but not discouragingly.

"You are supposed to deal in justice here, are you not, Miss Tescheron?" I continued, not heeding her frigid, uninviting air. I had planned to deal tenderly with her wound, but soon realized that my sympathetic beginning had proved more irritating than bluntness; accordingly I introduced the spice of severity in tone in equivalent degree as an experiment, and as I proceeded I noted the interest of John MacDonald increasingly reflected in the features of his pupil.

"Justice demands that I be heard. Unfortunately, I deserve nothing here, for I have done about all a fool could reasonably be expected to do to upset my own and others' plans. And now I demand but a few minutes of your time to square the account. My point is that every dog has his day. I shall have had mine as a meddler in the affairs of my friend when I am through here. James Hosley, for whom I appear, is charged with something by somebody, he doesn't know what or by whom, and he was convicted by your father, and the conviction has finally been sustained on appeal to you. As you alone exercise the pardoning power, I come before you to-day to have the case reopened for the presentation of new evidence. Would it not seem ridiculous to blast your lives or even to upset the plans of the caterer now forming for the great event next Wednesday, if on the morning following that date we should read in the papers the true story of this affair in place of the usual formal wedding notice?

Would it not seem cruel to have it published that jealousy, founded on love-letters the man never wrote, turned the woman from him at the very altar? Yes, he never wrote a line of that gush--that silly drivel--it was a joke; but it was as nothing to the culmination of the villainy of those detectives who have swindled your father, for it now threatens to ruin two lives."

Briefly I ran over the account of our trip to farther Mount Vernon, and of the effect of the third degree's pressure on Jim.

Mr. MacDonald relaxed control of his dignity, and burst into a hearty laugh. Gabrielle blushed deeply and faltered until I proceeded a few sentences farther.

"Yes, Jim's old love-letters that I wrote for literary exercise years ago, failed to impress the girls, who returned them. At the fire they proved to be fireproof, and fell through the floor. The sneaking detectives found them and brought them to me. Jim is now at my room, completely ignorant of the charges against him, poor abandoned wretch!"

I then subsided and reviewed carefully all the particulars, concluding with the statement:

"I submit to your honors that there is no getting around my proposition that every dog has his day."

As I closed, Gabrielle hastily withdrew. Her face told the story.

She pa.s.sed out, my card tightly held in her hand. I knew I had won the verdict.

Mr. MacDonald chatted with me for a few minutes, and thanked me for my promptness in sending that telegram the night before, for without it the postponement of the wedding would have revealed an absurd situation and held us all up to public ridicule.

"I liked the way you put this thing," said he, as we parted. "Let me see you again."

I now figure that the cash I paid Obreeon I would have won back at that interview a good hundredfold, in view of what MacDonald has done for me since, had there been no other developments.

CHAPTER XXIV

I was not satisfied with my partial victory before the lawyers. I hastened to Fulton Market and there found Mr. Tescheron surrounded by the slippery remnants of a big day's business in cold-storage and fresh merchandise. Here the art of making a three-cent Cas...o...b..y lobster worth two thousand per cent. more on the New York City restaurant table is largely developed. The middleman who stands between the inhabitants of the sea and those of the land is indeed a fisher of men as well as fish. As an Inspector of Offensive Trades, I am ready to testify that the odor of the market is generally an index of the strength of the bank balance. The richness of the atmosphere around Tescheron's office convinced me that Jim could not afford to alienate the affections of such a father-in-law. As I advanced toward the small box in which Mr.

Tescheron sat wrapped in his scaly ulster, I caught a glimpse of a live flounder, who appealed to me in whispers, as he made an effort to turn over and find some cooler ice. I did not interrupt him. He spoke as follows:

THE MARKET FLOUNDER'S ICY REMARKS

For Friday morn is hangman's day; Fast in the noose I dangle.

At four A. M. the clam I seek, And get into a tangle.

Alas! my wish--a one-eyed fish[B]-- To find a juicy ration; The clam on high began to die-- A sweet antic.i.p.ation!

Beware the scent, tho' hunger groan!

My gentle kiss (a fishing smack) Shot far amiss and with a hiss I landed pretty well for'ard.

A smack I smote with a fearful thwack, A stunning whack across the back, On the upper deck of the Judy Peck.

At noon to-day, the fishermen say, We ornament the table-- O, wretched deed!--or chicken feed, Two rods behind the stable.