Making Money Part 28

"I ought to take it--there's no reason why--you're not telling me a fake story?"

"I certainly am not," said Bojo cheerily, taking up his check-book at the desk. "Come on now."

But DeLancy, unconvinced, still wavered.

"How about Roscy?" he said slowly, his eyes fixed, his mouth parted as though hanging on the answer.

"The same thing goes with Roscy, naturally," said Bojo, carelessly.

DeLancy drew a long breath and approached.

"How much? Confess up!"

"Twenty-seven thousand eight hundred."

Bojo restrained a start of amazement.

"Say twenty-eight flat," he said carefully. "Does that include Louise Varney's account?"

"Yes, everything," said DeLancy slowly. He stood at the desk, staring, while Bojo wrote a check, watching the traveling pen as though still incredulous.

"There you are, old rooster, and good luck," said Bojo.

"Here, I say, you've made it out for thirty-eight thousand, said DeLancy, taking the check.

"Ten thousand is profits, sure."

"Here, I say, that's not right. I couldn't take that--no, never, Bojo!"

"Shut up and be off with you!" said Bojo. "You don't think for a moment I'd use my friends and not see they got a share of the winnings, do you?"

"It doesn't seem right," said DeLancy again. He gazed at the check, a prey to conflicting desires.

"Rats!"

"I don't feel as though I ought to."

Bojo, watching his struggle with his conscience a moment, perceived the inherent weakness at the bottom of his nature, suddenly feeling a sense of distance intervening in the old friendship, sadly disillusioned. When he spoke, it was abruptly, as a superior:

"Shut up, Fred--you're going to take it, and that's all!

"How can I thank you?

"Don't."

He turned on his heel and went back to his room to hide the flash of scorn that came to his eyes. "Great Heavens," he thought, "is that the way men behave under great tests?"

But all at once he added, "And myself?"

For at the bottom there was an uneasy stirring feeling, awakened by the sudden incredulous laugh of his friends that had greeted his a.s.sertion of Drake's innocence, which was bringing him to a realization that he was to face a decision more profoundly significant to his own self-esteem than any he had yet confronted.

"Thank heaven for one thing--nothing happened to Fred! That's settled. I have nothing on my conscience," he said with a sigh. The ten thousand he had added represented in a confused way a tribute to that conscience, to those others, unknown and unvisualized, whom unwittingly he might have caused to suffer.

"Bojo!"

"h.e.l.lo! What is it?"

He came out hurriedly at the sound of Granning's voice.

"Roscy on the 'phone.... What?... Good G.o.d!"

"What's that? What's happened?" he cried, as Fred came rushing out.

"Forshay--committed suicide--this morning--at his club--cut his throat!"

CHAPTER XVII

PAYING THE PIPER--PLUS

To go down to the office with the pall of disaster and tragedy over it, to face the accusatory looks of Hauk and Flaspoller with the dread consciousness of his own personal responsibility, was the hardest thing Bojo had ever had to do. Several times in the subway, filled with the Wall Street crowd excitedly discussing the sudden turn of yesterday, alarmed for the future, he had a wild impulse toward flight. Before him were the startling scare-heads of the _Morning Post_, the sole paper to have the story.

DRAKE BUYS AND SELLS PITTSBURGH AND NEW ORLEANS

SECURED CONTROL AT 6 MONDAY. SOLD AT MIDNIGHT. PROFIT IN MILLIONS. BROKERS HARD HIT. THREE FIRMS SUSPEND. CLIMAX OF DRAMATIC DAY.

He saw only dimly what every one else was poring over frantically. He was reading over for the twentieth time the ugly story of Forshay's suicide.

WELL-KNOWN BROKER ENDS LIFE AT CLUB

W. O. FORSHAY THOUGHT TO HAVE BEEN CAUGHT IN DRAKE'S CLEAN UP

The bare facts followed, with a history of Forshay's career, his social connections, an account of his marriage, city house, and country house.

"But after all am I responsible?" he said to himself miserably, and though he returned always to the premise that he had been an innocent partic.i.p.ant, he began to be obsessed with the spreading sense of ruin which such victories could occasion.

Forshay would not have blamed him, perhaps, for Forshay had played the game to the limit of the law and asked no favors. It was not that which profoundly troubled him and awoke the long dormant ethical sense. Had Drake figured out just what his conclusions would be and the effect on the public from allowing him to proceed blindly on a wrong start? In a word, had Drake deliberately used him to mislead others, knowing that after the success of Indiana Smelter his prospective son-in-law would be credited with inside information?

He did not as yet answer these questions in the affirmative; to do so meant a decision subversive of all his newly acquired sense of success.

But though he still denied the accusations, they would not be thus answered, constantly returning.

At the offices it was as though the dead man were lying in wait. A sense of fright possessed him with the opening of the door. The girl at the telephone greeted him with swollen eyes, swollen with hysterical weeping; the stenographers moved noiselessly, hushed by the indefinable sense of the supernatural. The bra.s.s plate on the door--W. O.

Forshay--seemed to him something inexpressibly grim and horrible. He had the feeling which the others showed in their roving glances, as though that plate hid something, as though there was something behind his door, waiting.

He went into the inner offices, at a sudden summons. Hauk was at the table, gazing out of the window; Flaspoller worrying and fussing in the center of the rug, switching aimlessly back and forth.