The Wayfarers Part 27

"No," said Cater. He hooked his legs under his chair, and leaned back, the light from the high unshaded window striking full on his lean yellow countenance. "No, there's nothing wrong. Got some things off my mind, things that have been bothering me for a long time, and I reckon I don't feel quite easy without 'em."

"I think you're very lucky," said Justin. The light from the high window fell on his face, too-on his brown hair, turning a little gray at the temples, on the set lines of his face, in which his eyes, keen and blue, looked intently at his friend. He was well dressed; the foot that was crossed over his knee was excellently shod.

Cater shifted a little in his seat. "Well, I don't know. My experience is some different from the usual run, I reckon; I never had any big streak of luck that it didn't get back at me afterwards. There was my marriage-I know it ain't the thing to talk about your marriage, but you do sometimes. My wife's a fine woman,-yes, sir, I was mighty lucky to get her,-but I didn't know how to live up to her family. It's been that-a-way all my life. Sure's I get to ringin' the bells, the floorin'

caves in under me."

"We'll see that the flooring holds, now that you're coming in with us,"

said Justin good-naturedly. "I've got some propositions to put up to you to-day."

Cater shook his head. "There's no use of your putting up any propositions. I've been drawin' on my well of thought so hard lately that I reckon you could hear the pumps workin' plumb across the street.

I've been cipherin' down to the fact that I can't go it alone, any more'n you,-there we agree; hold on, now!-but I can't combine."

"You can't!" cried Justin, with unusual violence. "Why not?"

"Well, you know my feelin's about trusts, and-I like you, Mr.

Alexander, you know that, mighty well, but I balk at your backin'. I don't believe in it. It'll fail when you count on it most, it'll cramp on you merciless if you come short of its expectations. Leverich isn't so bad, but Martin cramps a hold of him, and I can't stand Martin havin'

a finger in any concern _I_ have a hold of."

"He's clever enough to make what he touches pay," said Justin.

Cater's eyebrows contracted. "You say he's clever because he's tricky-because he's sharp. He isn't clever enough to make money honestly, he isn't big enough. You and me, we're honest, or try to be, but we haven't the brain to give every man his just due, and get ahead, too. It's the greatest game there is, but you got to be a genius to play it! You and me, we can't do it; we ain't got the brain and we ain't got the nerve; _I_ haven't. You've just ever-lastingly got to do the best for yourself if you've got a family; the best _as_ you see it."

"What's all this leading up to? What change have you been making, Cater?" asked Justin, with stern abruptness.

"I've given the agency of the machine to Hardanger."

"Hardanger!" Justin's face flushed momentarily, then became set and expressionless. To stand out on abstract questions of honor, and then tacitly break all faith by going in with Hardanger!

"I shut down on part of my plant when I began figuring on this change,"

continued Cater. "I've been getting the steel fittin's on contract from Benschoten again, as I did at first; it'll come cheaper in the end.

Gives us a pretty big stock to start off with. I was sorry-I was sorry to have to turn off a dozen men, but what you going to do? I've got to cut down on the manufacturing as close as I can now."

"I suppose so."

"I wanted to tell you the first one," said Cater.

"Well, I congratulate you," said Justin formally, rising.

"This isn't going to make any difference in the friendship between me and you, Mr. Alexander? I've thought a powerful lot of your friendship.

If I'd 'a' seen any way to have come in with you, I'd 'a' done it. But business ain't going to interfere between two such good friends as we are!"

"Why, no," said Justin, with the conventional answer to an appeal which still pitifully claims for truth that which it has made false. The handshake that followed was one in which all their friendship seemed to dissolve and change its character, hardening into ice.

_Hardanger!_

Hardanger & Co. represented one of the greatest factors in the trade of two hemispheres. To say that a thing was taken up by Hardanger & Co.

meant its success-they took nothing that was not likely to succeed; they _made_ it succeed-for them. Their agents in all parts of the known world had easy access to firms and to opportunities hard to be reached by those of lesser credit. Their reputation was una.s.sailed; they kept scrupulously to the terms agreed upon. The only bar to putting an article into their hands was the fact that their terms-except in the case of certain standard articles which they were obliged to have-embraced nearly all the profits, only the very narrowest margins coming to the original owners. Everything had to be figured down, and still further and further down, by those owners, to make that margin possible. It was cut-throat all the way through-a policy that made for the rottenness of trade.

Justin and Leverich had once made tentative investigations as to Hardanger, with the conclusion that there was far more money outside, even if one must go a little more slowly. It was better to go a little more slowly, for the sake of getting so much more out of it in the end.

Hardanger was to be kept as a last resort, if everything else failed.

Cater had expressed himself as feeling the same way; that was the understanding between them. But now? Backed by this powerful agency, the timoscript a.s.sumed disquieting proportions. In the distance, a time not so very far distant either, Justin could see himself squeezed to the wall, the output of his factory bought up by Hardanger for the price of old iron-forced into it, whether he would or no. Why had he been so short-sighted? Why hadn't he made terms himself sooner? But Cater had been a fool to give in to those terms when, by combining, they could have swung trade between them to their own measure. Then Hardanger might have been obliged to seek _them_, to take their price!-Hardanger, who could afford to laugh at his pretensions now!

He thought of Cater without malice-with, instead, a shrewd, kind philosophy, a sad, clear-visioned impulse of pity mixed with his wonder.

So that was the way a man was caught stumbling between the meshes, blinded, dulled, unconsciously maimed of honor, while still feeling himself erect and honest-eyed! There had been no written agreement between them that either should consult the other before seeking Hardanger; but some promises should be all the stronger for not being written.

This thing _couldn't_ happen; in some way, he must get his foot inside the door, so that it couldn't shut on him. There was that note of Lewiston's, due in thirty days-no, twenty-five now. What about that?

Later in the day, after he had been seeing drayful after drayful of boxes leave the factory opposite, Bullen, the foreman, came into the office with some estimates, pointing out the figures with a small strip of steel tubing held absently in his fingers.

While the clerks were all deferential, and those of foreign birth obsequious, Bullen had an air that was more than st.u.r.dily independent-the air and the eye of the skilled mechanic. On his own ground he was master, and Justin, with a smile, deferred to him. But Justin broke into Bullen's calculations abruptly, after a while, to ask:

"What's that you've got there? It looks like one of those bars that nearly smashed us."

"You've got a good eye, sir," said Bullen approvingly. "A year and a half ago you'd not have seen any difference between one bit of steel and another. But there's one thing I didn't see about it myself until Venly-he's a new man we've taken on-pointed it out to me. He came across a case of these to-day we'd thrown out in the waste-heap. We thought our machine had jarred them out of shape, because they were a fraction off size; well, so they were. But Venly he spotted them in a minute, when he was out there, and he asked me if they weren't from the Benschoten factory-he was turned off from there last week, they're cutting down the force; they always do, come spring. He said they looked like part of a b.u.m lot that had flaws in them. He got the magnifying-gla.s.s and showed me, and, sure enough, 'twas right he was! He says they've got piles of them they've been workin' off on the trade at a cut price. Venly he said he didn't have any stomach for a skin game like that."

"That's a pretty ruinous way to do business, isn't it?" asked Justin.

"Oh, they're going to sell out in July, so they don't care. I pity anyone that's counting on any sort of machine that's got these in 'em.

Would you take the gla.s.s and look for yourself, sir? Every one of 'em is flawed!"

CHAPTER NINETEEN

"Slipped through your fingers like that! Like a-" Leverich's words were not fit for print. He had been away for a couple of days, and now sat tilted back in his office chair, a heavy, leather-covered thing not meant for tilting, his face puffed with anger, his mouth snarling-a wild beast balked of his prey. His eyes, ferociously insolent, dwelt on Justin, who, fine and keen and smiling a little, sat opposite him. Brute anger never had any effect on Justin but to give him a contemptuous, chill self-possession.

"You're sure the agreement's made?"

"Cater's been sending new consignments as fast as they could go for the past three days; he's loaded up with machines."

Leverich swore again. "D--d fools, not to have made terms with Hardanger first! If we'd only known! If there was only some way to put a spoke in the wheel, even yet!"

"Oh, I've got the spoke, easily enough," said Justin indifferently, "the only trouble is, I can't use it."

"Got a spoke! Why in heaven didn't you say that before?" Leverich came down on the front legs of his chair with a force that sent it rolling ahead on its casters. "What are you sitting here for? What do you mean by telling me that you can't use it?"

"Just what I say. But it's not worth talking about."

"See here, Alexander, could you get our machine in now instead of his?"

"I suppose I might."

"And you're not going to do it?"

"I can't, I tell you, Leverich. The information came to me in such a way that I can't touch it."

"'The information-' It's something damaging to do with the machine?"