The Fighting Chance Part 68

One very bad night Plank came to the house and was admitted by Gumble. Wands, the second man, stood behind the aged butler; both were apparently frightened.

That something was amiss appeared plainly enough; and Plank, instinctively producing a card, dropped it on a table and turned to go.

It may have been that the old butler recognised the innate delicacy of the motive, or it may have been a sudden confidence born of the necessities of the case, for he asked Plank to see his young master.

And Plank, looking him in the eyes, considered, until his courage began to fail. Then he went up-stairs.

It was a bad night outside, and it was a bad night for Siward. The master-vice had him by the throat. He sat there, clutching the arms of his chair, his broken leg, in its plaster casing, extended in front of him; and when he saw Plank enter he glared at him.

Hour after hour the two men sat there, the one white with rage, but helpless; the other, stolid, inert, deaf to demands for intercession with the arch-vice, dumb under pleadings for a compromise. He refused to interfere with the butler, and Siward insulted him. He refused to go and find the decanters himself, and Siward deliberately cursed him.

Outside the storm raged all night. Inside that house Plank faced a more awful tempest. There was a sedative on the mantel and he offered it to Siward, who struck it from his hand.

Once, toward morning, Siward feigned sleep, and Plank, heavy head on his breast, feigned it, too. Then Siward bent over stealthily and opened a drawer in his desk; and Plank was on his feet like a flash, jerking the morphine from Siward's fingers.

The doctor arrived at daylight, responding to Plank's summons by telephone, and Plank went away with the morphine and Siward's revolver bulging in the side-pockets of his dinner coat.

He did not come again for a week. A short note from Siward started him toward lower Fifth Avenue.

There was little said when he came into the room:

"h.e.l.lo, Plank! Glad to see you."

"h.e.l.lo! Are you all right?"

"All right.

Much obliged for pulling me through. Wish you'd pull me through this Amalgamated Electric knot-hole, too--some day!"

"Do--do you mean it?" ventured Plank, turning red with delight.

"Mean it? Indeed I do--if you do. Sit here; ring for whatever you want--or perhaps you'd better go down to the sideboard. I'm not to be trusted with the odour in the room just yet."

"I don't care for anything," said Plank.

"Whenever you please, then. You know the house, and you don't mind my being unceremonious, do you?"

"No," said Plank.

"Good!" rejoined Siward, laughing. "I expect the same friendly lack of ceremony from you."

But that, for Plank, was impossible. All he could do was to care the more for Siward without crossing the border line so suddenly made free; all he could do was to sit there rolling and unrolling his gloves into wads with his clumsy, highly coloured hands, and gaze consciously at everything in the room except Siward.

On that day, at Plank's shy suggestion, they talked over Siward's business affairs for the first time. After that day, and for many days, the subject became the key-note to their intercourse; and Siward at last understood that this man desired to do him a service absolutely and purely from a disinterested liking for him, and as an expression of that liking. Also he was unexpectedly made aware of Plank's serenely unerring business sagacity.

That surface cynicism which all must learn, sooner or later, or remain the victims of naive credulity, was, in Siward, nothing but an outer skin, as it is in all who acquire wisdom with their cynicism. It was not long proof against Plank's simple att.i.tude and undisguised pleasure in doing something for a man he liked. Under that simplicity no motive, no self-interest could skulk; and Siward knew it.

As for the quid pro quo, Siward had insisted from the first on a business arrangement. The treachery of Major Belwether through sheer fright had knocked the key-stone from the syndicate, and the dam which made the golden pool possible collapsed, showering Plank's brokers who worked patiently with buckets and mops.

The double treachery of Quarrier was now perfectly apparent to Plank.

Siward, true to his word, held his stock in the face of ruin. Kemp Ferrall, furious with the major, and beginning to suspect Quarrier, came to Plank for consultation.

Then the defence formed under Plank. Legal machinery was set in motion, meeting followed meeting, until Harrington cynically showed his hand and Quarrier smiled his rare smile; and the fight against Inter-County was on in the open, preceded by a furious clamour of charge and counter-charge in the columns of the daily press.

That Quarrier had been guilty of something or other was the vague impression of that great news-reading public which, stunned by the reiteration of figures in the millions, turns to the simpler pleasures of a murder trial. Besides, whatever Quarrier had done was no doubt done within the chalk-marked courts of the game, though probably his shoes may have become a little dusty.

But who could hope to bring players like Quarrier before the ordinary umpire, or to investigate his methods with the everyday investigations reserved for everyday folk, whose road through business life lay always between State's prison and the penitentiary and whose guide-posts were policemen?

Let the great syndicates join in battle; they could only slay each other. Let the millions bury their millions; the public, though poorer, could never be the wiser.

Siward, at his desk, the May sunshine pouring over him, sat conning the heaps of typewritten sheets, striving to see between the lines some sign of fortune for his investments, some promise of release from the increasing financial stringency, some chance of justice being done on those high priests who had been performing marvellous tricks upon their altar so that by miracle, mine and thine spelled "ours," and all the tablets of the law were lettered upside down and hind-side before, like the Black Ma.s.s.

Gumble knocked presently. Siward raised his perplexed eyes.

"Miss Page, sir."

"Oh," said Siward doubtfully; then, "Ask Miss Page to come up."

Marion strolled in a moment later, exchanged a vigorous hand shake with Siward, pulled up a chair and dropped into it. She was in riding-habit and boots, faultlessly groomed as usual, her smooth, pale hair sleek in its thick knot, collar and tie immaculate as her gloves.

"Well," she said, "any news of your ankle, Stephen?"

"I inquired about my ankle," said Siward, amused, "and they tell me it is better, thank you."

"Sit a horse pretty soon?" she asked, dropping one leg over the other and balancing the riding-crop across her knee.

"Not for awhile. You have a fine day for a gallop, Marion," looking askance at the sunshine filtering through the first green leaves of the tree outside his window.

"It's all right--the day. I'm trying Tom O'Hara's new mare. They say she's a little devil. I never saw a devil of a horse--did you? There may be some out West."

"Don't break that pretty neck of yours, Marion," he said.

She lifted her eyes; then, briefly, "No fear."

"Yes, there is," he said. "There's no use looking for trouble in a horse. Women who hunt as you hunt take all that's legitimately coming to them. Why doesn't Tom ride his own mare?"

"She rolled on him," said Marion simply.

"Oh. Is he hurt?"

"Ribs."

"Well, he's lucky."

"Isn't he! He'll miss a few drills with his precious squadron, that's all."

She was looking about her, preoccupied. "Where are your cigarettes, Stephen? Oh, I see. Don't try to move--don't be silly."

She leaned over the desk, her fresh young face close to his, and reached for the cigarettes. The clean-cut head, the sweetness of her youth and femininity, boyish in its allure, were very attractive to him--more so, perhaps, because of his isolation from the atmosphere of women.