Читать книгу The Fighter - Albert Payson Terhune - Страница 6

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“I suppose,” volunteered Caine, as he and Conover walked back to town together, “I suppose you know you behaved like a wild ass of the desert? That no man with an iota of breeding would ever have said the things you did, to the Committee members? I only mention it in case you don’t realize.”

“Oh, I realize it all right,” Conover answered him. “It ain’t a parlor stunt to sling off your coat an’ grab a lady by the back hair. But if she happens to be drownin’, it’s the c’rrect play to make. It was a case for coat-sheddin’ an’ back-hair-grabbin’, to-day, at the Club. That’s why I did it. It landed ’em. If I’d got up and sprung a flowery speech, they’d a’ yawned and voted me out. If I’d put up a whine, they’d a’ been at my throat like a pack o’ hungry wolf-dogs. Someone had to use a whip. An’ I wanted it should be me, not them, that used it. Which same it was.”

“No one will deny that, I think,” said Caine, drily, “If a poll were taken just now for the best hated man in Arareek, you’d be elected by acclamation. You said some things that ought to have been said. But you said them so vulgarly that you seemed to be spitting diamonds.”

“But I’m still in the Club. An’ they daren’t give me the cold shoulder at any more of their blowouts. They’ll still hate me like poison, maybe. But they’ll be civil; an’ when Desirée Shevlin goes there with Mrs. Hawarden, she won’t see folks treatin’ me like I was the original Invisible Man.”

Caine whistled.

“So?” he mused. “That’s the secret is it? I might have guessed. I’ve been wondering ever since, why you made such a point about being well received at the Club’s functions. For, unless I’m vastly mistaken, you’ve about as much desire for personal social welcome as a hermit thrush. I could see why you wanted to stay in the Arareek, but why you wanted to attend its—”

“You’re barkin’ up the wrong tree,” growled Caleb, uncomfortably. “At least you ain’t much more’n half right. Of course it’s nice not to have Dey made uncomfortable on my account. But I’m goin’ to push my way into that bunch for my own sake, too. You’ll see a whole lot of things if you look long enough. To-day was just a flea-bite to what’s comin’ before I’m done.”

“Still bent on ‘taking the Kingdom of Heaven by violence?’”

“Not quite that. I hear Heaven’s got only the best society. I ain’t after the best. Only the highest. So Granite’ll do as well. Care to tell me anything ’bout the details of what happened after I left the Committee room?”

“Everybody talked at once,” replied Caine. “The air fairly crackled with blue sparks of indignation. I never realized before how many names a man could be called. It was a liberal education in what not to say. Then, little by little, the Governors got out of breath, and I moved for a vote. Vroom amended my motion by suggesting a written ballot.”

“I might a’ knowed it,” crowed Conover in high glee, “No one wanted the rest to know he was votin’ for me. Good for Vroom! He comes nearer havin’ hooman intell’gence than I thought.”

“The amended motion was passed unanimously,” went on Caine. “Oh, it was a rare study in physiognomy when Standish announced the vote. Eleven to one in favor of retaining you.”

“If there’d been two votes against me, Blacarda could have been arrested for repeatin’,” ruminated Conover. “Yes, that’s just how I figgered it would be.”

“I wasn’t surprised at Vroom and Featherstone and the others you so pleasantly threatened to blackmail,” said Caine, “But I thought at least Standish and Hawarden—”

“I told you I’d helped Standish’s bank and that he’ll want me again, soon,” answered Caleb. “His gratitood market is strong on futurities.”

“But Hawarden? You didn’t threaten him. Yet he was muzzled after the very first attack.”

“No, I didn’t threaten Hawarden to any very great extent,” assented Conover, “I just reminded him, quiet-like, that I’m payin’ his wife $8,000 a season to help Desirée in the society game, an’ that maybe the news might leak out an’ the supplies be cut off if I was fired.”

“Mrs. Hawarden!” ejaculated Caine. “Are you in earnest?”

“I’m not given to springin’ measly jokes. I wanted that the little girl should have a show. She’s prettier an’ better educated an’ cleverer’n any of the people in the gold-shirt bunch. But I couldn’t get her into that crowd. I read in a noospaper about an English duchess that made a lot of coin by puttin’ American girls into the right surroundin’s, an’ it gave me an idee. There’s a slump in the Duchess market here at Granite. But the town’s crawlin’ with old fam’lies that are shy on cash. An’ about the oldest an’ hardest up are the Hawardens. So I arranged it with her. It was dead easy. She acted shy of the deal just at first; but that was only her way, I s’pose. Women that’s coy after they stop bein’ young an’ pretty always reminds me of a scarecrow left standin’ in a field after all the crop’s been carted away.”

“Does Miss Shevlin know about—?”

“Does she know? What do you think she is? No, son, she don’t know, an’ I’ll break the neck of the blackguard that dares tell her. You’re the only one except the Hawardens that’s onto it.”

“So I am the logical candidate for neck-breaking if the story gets out? Don’t be afraid, old man. I’d break my own neck sooner than to have Miss Shevlin’s pleasure spoiled. I suppose she does get pleasure from being a protegée of Mrs. Hawarden?”

“Pleasure? She’s tickled to death. It’s worth the money twice over to hear her tell ’bout the places she goes. Say, Caine, you know more about that game than I do. Has she got any chance?”

“Any chance?” echoed Caine in perplexity.

“You know what I mean. Her father was kind of common,—like me. But Desirée ain’t. Even you said that once. An’ I guess there’s few who can spot a streak of mud-color quicker’n you can. I’ve got her into a crowd where her father an’ the rest of her folks could never have gone. What I want to know is: Has she got a chance of stayin’ there always? Of bein’ took up permanent by ’em an’ made one of ’em?”

“It depends entirely, I should say, on whom she marries.”

“You mean if she marries some feller who’s high up in that set, she’ll be made to home there?”

There was something wistfully eager beneath the Fighter’s gruff tones,—a something Caine detected in time to check the flippant reply that had risen to his own lips. He eyed Conover with veiled curiosity as he asked:

“You would want her to marry such a man?”

“Sure! If he treated her right an’ she was happy. But if she’s goin’ to be looked down on, an’ guyed behind folk’s fans, an’ reminded that her old man used to eat corned beef and cabbage in his shirt-sleeves—why, then I’m damned if I don’t b’lieve I’d buy up the whole of Granite an’ turn the swells out into the next County.”

“It all depends, as I said, on the man she marries,” pursued Caine. “If she marries a man of good family and turns her back on her old associates and has enough money of her own—”

“She’ll have it,” interrupted Conover. “She’ll have enough to make her the richest woman in this burg,—an’ it’ll be in her own name, too. As for shakin’ folks like me,—if I haven’t got my own foot hold there by that time,—she’ll do that too. I’ll see that she does.”

“And yet you’re fond of her?”

“That’s why I’m doin’ it, son. An’ remember you’ll keep on bein’ the only one besides the Hawardens that knows anything ’bout my share in the deal. Speakin’ of ‘deals,’ Blacarda means trouble for us.”

“In the Steeloid affair?” queried Caine. “I thought you’d won that fight.”

“I won that, but there’s another a-comin’. I got a tip on it same time I heard of the incorp’ration, to-day. Blacarda pulls a pretty big oar in the Legislature. He’s back of that Starke Anti-Combine bill we side-tracked early in the session. If the Starke bill passes, then goodbye to our Steeloid corner! I’ve a tip he’s renewed it an’ tryin’ to rush it through before the session closes. It’s to be sprung on the Assembly, Monday. An’ he figgers on gettin’ it railroaded through. If it once passes the Assembly, we’re goners. For he’s got the State Senate where he wants it. An’ the Gov’nor’s on his side. Owns a nice block of stock in Blacarda’s comp’ny. So it all hangs on the Assembly.”

“You take it coolly—considering you stand to lose something like a million dollars.”

“A man who can’t keep his feet warm an’ his head cool has about as much show in finance as a tallow dog chasin’ an asbestos cat through hell,” observed Caleb, oracularly. “He goes up with a puff and there ain’t any remains to look for. I’m not in the Steeloid deal to cure me of weak heart or that tired feelin’. I’m in to win. An’ I’m goin’ to.”

“But the Assembly?”

“I’m not afraid about the Assembly. So long as I’m on hand myself, in the lobby, to hand out kicks or kisses, I’ll be able to kill the Starke bill. I’ve gone up to the Capital before, on what looked like a losin’ fight. An’ I’ve licked the obstinate one into shape, an’ scared some backbone into the weak one, an’ put a little bank-note oil on the rusty ones—an’ swung enough of ’em into line to give me the votes I needed. I know this Assembly pretty well. I know who to count on an’ who not to. I know who to buy, who to bully an’ who to promise. If I sent up anyone else, he’d make a fizzle of the thing. But, somehow, in all my business deals, I find if I’m on the ground myself I can make folks do what I want. You saw how that was, to-day, at the Club. If I’d been away, an’ you or anyone else representin’ me, I’d a’ been kicked out of the Arareek so far that I’d a-landed in another State. But I swung ’em. An’ I’ll swing ’em at the Capital. It’ll be a narrow squeak, but I’ll do it.”

“In other words, if you are there in person, the day the bill comes up, you can kill it. Otherwise not. Suppose you’re sick, or—”

“Sick!” scoffed Caleb, in lofty scorn. “I’ve got no time to be sick. An’ s’pose I was? When I worked that merger of the Porter-Hyde Park road, I had grippe. My temp’ture was up at 105, an’ I had lovely little icicles an’ red hot pokers runnin’ through every joint of me. Likewise a head that ached so loud you could hear it a block away. Gee, but I felt so bad I hated to look up at the undertaker signs on the street! An’ what’d I do? Worked, up to the Capital, three days an’ nights, twenty-four hours a day, not once gettin’ a chance to take my clo’es off or bat an eye. I carried through that merger by the skin of its teeth. Then when I got my charter I blew myself to the lux’ry of a whole gorgeous week in the hosp’tal. But not till ev’ry bit of work was wound up. Sick? H’m! A grown man don’t bother much about bein’ sick when there’s something that’s got to be done. Besides”—he added—“I ain’t sick now. An’ I’ll be on hand at the Capital the minute the Assembly opens, Monday. My bein’ there means the killin’ of the Starke bill. An’ they can set the date for the fun’ral without any fear of disappointin’ the mourners.”

“Did you ever hear of Napoleon?” asked Caine, whimsically.

“Sure I did,” responded Conover. “Read part of a book about him once. Why?”

“Like yourself he was the greatest hold-up man of his day,” explained Caine, “and he had a conscience of the same calibre as yours. If he’d been a little bit less of a highwayman they would have laughed at him. If you were a little bit less of a highwayman they’d put you in jail. He had magnetism. Probably almost as much of it as you have. That’s what made me think of him just then. Wellington used to say that Napoleon’s mere presence on a battlefield did more to win victories than an army of forty-thousand men. I suppose it’s the same at the Assembly.”

“That’s right,” agreed Caleb, unmoved. “An’ Blacarda knows it, too. He’d give ten thousand dollars. I’ll bet, to have me break a leg between this an’ Monday. But my legs are feelin’ first rate. An’ they’re goin’ to keep on feelin’ better all the time, till they kick the Starke bill into its grave.”

“I’ll do what I can through the ‘Star’ to help,” said Caine. “Just as I did for the Porter-Hyde Park merger and the Humason Mine charter. What’s the use of owning a newspaper if one can’t boost one’s friends?”

“An’ one’s own Steeloid stock at the same time?” supplemented Conover. “We understand each other all right, I guess. Steeloid’s goin’ to take a rise, after Monday. An’ it’s goin’ to keep right on risin’ for the next six months.”

“Conover,” protested Caine, “as a highwayman—or financier, to put it more politely—you are a genius. But as a man, you leave a ghastly amount to be desired. Have you a superstitious fear of the word ‘Thanks’? I offer to put the columns of the ‘Star’ at your disposal. Common decency at least should call for a word of gratitude. Or, if not for the Steeloid matter, at least for my championing you to-day at the Club. Surely that wasn’t in the interest of your wonderful Steeloid stock.”

Conover plodded ahead glumly for some moments. Then he observed, as though turning to a pleasanter subject:

“In the part of that Napoleon book I read it told how the old-line, patent-leather ’ristocrats of France fell over each other to do things that would make a hit with the big ‘hold-up man’. Wasn’t it real gen’rous of ’em? But then, maybe Napoleon had a cute little way of sayin’ ‘Thanks,’ oftener’n I do.”