CHAPTER XIX
MR. WINGFIELD CALLS ON MR. WALSH
WAYNE not appearing at luncheon, Wingfield ate alone and then watched the street traffic from the Club window with listless interest. Across the street rose the grimy façade of Memorial Church, its spires piercing the fuliginous cloud the wind was blowing across the city. A battery of automobiles discharged a party of young people bent upon a wedding rehearsal, and Wingfield sighed softly as the girls fluttered out of sight through the church doors. Shortly afterward he left the Club and walked slowly in the direction of the warehouse of the Wayne-Craighill Company. Wingfield was given to roaming and frequently sauntered through the jobbing district, dodging the clattering trucks, noting the destination of merchandise and dropping in upon friends in their counting rooms to exchange anecdotes and question them as to the state of trade.
His business this afternoon was to call on Tom Walsh, whose silhouette he presently observed at a window of the counting-room on the second floor of the Wayne-Craighill Mercantile Company’s establishment. A truckman bawled to him to look out for himself as he entered the main door where, in a small room, a number of gentlemen were gathered about little tables containing specimens of coffee and the agent for a California canning factory was opening his “line” for the enlightenment of the chief buyer of the house, a person who, with his last summer’s straw hat tipped over his eyes, spent his days trying to reconcile the pictured peach of the label with the fruit inside the can. A boy, engaged with marking pot and brush in decorating a soap-box with cabalistic characters, stopped chewing gum and whistled to a comrade to give heed to the strange being who had entered the front door and was now ascending the counting-room steps. As Mr. Wingfield was careful of his raiment, his manner of gathering up the skirts of his ulster on the stair, and the fact that he wore spats, caused the artist and his comrade to exchange signals of derisive delight. As Wingfield disappeared into the office, an inquiry as to “what the old man would do to ut,” was shouted across the warehouse beneath him.
When Walsh had kicked the door shut and offered Wingfield a cigar, he went to a sliding window in the partition of his den and gave orders for a few minutes to his chief clerk on the other side; then he returned to his desk and lighted a cigar.
“Well, I’m glad you came in; I was just thinking about you. How’s Wayne?”
“All right; we spent a few days in Philadelphia and he was as good as gold. He’s been sober for nearly three months.”
“Then he’s overdue,” remarked Walsh. “He usually comes down with a jar when he’s let it alone so long.”
“He’s been at work, too—as regular as the clock. Your retirement from the office seems to have had a stimulating effect on Wayne’s energies. How do you account for it?”
“Um. Maybe he wanted to see what’s inside the pot. He got me up there one day last week and put me through a cross-examination that gave me the headache. I noticed that the boys in the office jump when he comes in now; they didn’t use to know he was there.”
“New stepmother doing it?” asked Wingfield.
Walsh looked at the end of his cigar carefully and smoked quietly for a few minutes before replying.
“He’s deeper than that; Wayne has a game on hand. His conversion is too sudden. He’s saving up like a volcano. He’ll let go one of these days and there will be hell. I don’t like it.”
“Maybe he wants to make money and get rich,” suggested Wingfield.
“And maybe—maybe,” replied Walsh contemptuously, “he wants to buy airships so he can call on the man in the moon. I don’t know what it is, but the signs point to trouble.”
Walsh took off his hat and caressed his bald head. Then he threw up a section of his glass cage that looked out upon the street and bade a truck driver stop beating his horses. He dominated his establishment like the captain of a ship, his office serving as a bridge. A clear tenor voice, singing a ballad, rose from the wareroom below. Walsh touched a button and when the chief shipping-clerk appeared bade him discharge the singer at once.
“Chuck him! I warned him myself I wouldn’t stand for it.”
“I hope it’s the one that guyed my clothes as I came up,” said Wingfield. “My spats seemed to pain him; he was painting things with a brush.”
“He’s the one,” growled Walsh. “I’ll let his voice rest for a week and then I’m going to put him on the road. He’s the likeliest colt on the place.”
“Fire him first, then promote him?” asked Wingfield.
“Yep. But I don’t make a fixed rule of takin’ ’em back. Fired the office boy last week and he’ll stay fired—hung a couple of these ‘Get Busy,’ ‘Keep on smiling,’ signs over my desk. Well, where’s Wayne now?” he demanded.
“He went to his office this morning after breakfasting with me and didn’t show up at the Club for lunch—he’ll probably be there for dinner—there’s nobody at home, you know. The Colonel took his bride to Boston to hear him deliver his oration.”
“Mrs. Craighill went to Boston?”
“Why, certainly.”
“I guess not,” said Walsh; “she’s home—hasn’t been out of town.”
“Wayne didn’t know it; he thought they both went.”
“They didn’t; I’m quite positive. Very likely Wayne didn’t know. They may have intended going together and then something happened and Mrs. Craighill stayed at home.”
“I didn’t know you were so thick with the family. One might think you and Mrs. Craighill were on telephonic terms of intimacy.”
“No; hardly that. I haven’t heard from her but I know she’s in town. My information may be private and exclusive; I guess most likely it is.”
“Where does that leave us?”
“It doesn’t leave us anywhere; it just brings us to the starting point!”
It was hot in the glass box and Wingfield fanned himself with his hat. Since the night of Mrs. Blair’s reception, at which he and Walsh had spoken of Wayne with a common understanding and sympathy, Walsh had been much in his thoughts. Wingfield was a student of character and it pleased him to think that in this grim, bald old fellow he had discovered a type. Walsh’s traits were of a sort to appeal to him and now that he was learning that Walsh gathered information through secret and mysterious channels, his liking warmed to admiration. It was precisely this sort of thing that Wingfield liked to do himself. He took off his ulster and drew his chair closer.
“Do you mean——”
“I mean that Wayne and Mrs. Craighill should not see too much of each other. They are both young and foolish. The Colonel is a good deal wrapped up in himself; one roof isn’t big enough to cover an elderly husband—an important, busy man—his young wife and a youngster who’s a past-master at the business of jollying women.”
“But Wayne has a sense of honour; there’s a place where he would draw the line.”
The cashier brought in the bank deposit which Walsh surveyed carefully. When the man had gone he lighted a fresh cigar and when it burned to his satisfaction he laid a broad hand on Wingfield’s knee and said:
“We seem to understand each other. I don’t talk much, neither do you. This is all on the dead level, is it?”
“You can trust me. What we say here is strictly between ourselves.”
Walsh nodded in sign that the compact was understood.
“You and I can’t quarrel over Wayne’s good qualities nor over his bad ones either, for that matter. If managed right, he’d be a fine, big, manly fellow. The Colonel never knew how to handle him. We spoke of that up at Mrs. Blair’s that night. You’ve noticed that Wayne’s going to the office now and that he’s been straight ever since the Colonel got married. A change like that doesn’t just happen; you’ve got to account for it. You haven’t accounted for it, have you? Well I have! He’s got the idea that the Colonel hasn’t treated him square. The Colonel’s rubbed it into him pretty hard and often—not by roasting him and that sort of thing, but in a thousand worse ways. He’s made the mistake—and I’ll be damned if I think the Colonel knows it himself—of posing to the boy as a pattern of what he ought to be. All this God-and-morality business—these speeches about the wickedness of politics in Jupiter and that kind of thing—make the boy tired. It’s worse than that: he wants to catch the Colonel napping and prove him a fraud! It’s a devilish sort of thing—you don’t like to think of it; but that’s my explanation of this sudden devotion to business. The thing’s in his eye; he’s looking for spots on the sun.”
Wingfield caressed his gloves gently. Walsh smoked hard.
“I don’t believe it’s in him. He’s as sweet as cream inside and wholesome and clean. The thing you suggest wouldn’t be possible in the Wayne Craighill I know,” and there was rebuke in Wingfield’s tone.
“Don’t misunderstand me. I’m for the boy all the time. I wish to God he was mine! He’ll wobble right some day, but just now that’s what he’s up to. And there’s a little more at the back of my head—— Not ready yet,” he called to a clerk who had entered with a mass of correspondence. “Wait till I ring. There’s that; and that woman up at the house gives him another chance at the Colonel; I see you flinch at it, but he’s out for revenge—he’s been getting ready for it for a long time.”
“No!” ejaculated Wingfield sharply. “I don’t believe it—it’s beneath him. We don’t understand each other at all if you think Wayne Craighill capable of anything so low, so base, so utterly despicable.”
He took off his eye-glasses, swung them the length of their gold chain, and glared at Walsh when he had replaced them.
“I should take the same view if I didn’t know some things that you don’t. I don’t question Wayne’s honour, but it’s no stronger than his sense of justice, and it’s the injustice that rankles and the feeling that the Colonel isn’t above magnifying his own virtue at the boy’s expense.”
Wingfield nodded in affirmation, but his astonishment grew at the wide range Walsh’s thoughts had taken.
“You imply that there are circumstances that confirm your impression that Wayne and Mrs. Craighill are not suitable companions for each other?”
“I imply nothing as to the future, or the present either, for that matter. What may interest you—and this is entirely in confidence—is the fact that Mrs. Craighill knew Wayne before she knew the Colonel!”
Walsh thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his office coat and chewed his cigar. He was no pedlar of gossip and Wingfield saw that he had not parted with this piece of information without a wrench.
“How did he know her? Was it bad or good?”
Walsh shook his head, and compressed his thin lips.
“I guess it was all right. He might have married her himself if the circumstances had been quite normal, but he found that they were trying to railroad him into it, and he backed water.”
“They?” queried Wingfield.
“Um,” answered Walsh, looking out upon the snow-storm that raged in the narrow street. In the windows over the way blue shaded lamps in other counting rooms were lighted, and he rose to turn on his own. Wingfield saw that beyond the simple statement of fact Walsh would not go. Walsh was troubled. The light of the desk lamp sought out the deep lines of his face; his small gray eyes narrowed. Outside the door several of the clerical staff wondered at the length of the interview accorded by their chief to the tall gentleman with the dark beard. The fact that the shipping-clerk’s assistant had been dismissed in the midst of the call had sent a cold chill through the establishment: the old man, it was whispered, was out of sorts, and his state of mind they attributed to the malign influence of the tall person in spats.
“Of course the Colonel didn’t know,” suggested Wingfield.
“No; and that works into my general idea of what Wayne’s up to. Wayne had risen to the same fly but they failed to hook him. When he saw the Colonel about to swallow, bait and all, he lay low. It was the kind of thing he wanted. It tickled him to see the Colonel make a mistake.”
“You think the Colonel was trapped. He’s an old hand—he knows the world. He must have had a lot of chances to marry women of position and wealth.”
Walsh rubbed his face raspingly with his thick fingers.
“When a man’s sixty or thereabouts any woman that plays the game right can land him. If she’s young and pretty and naturally smart, he’s fruit—simply fruit! A vain man is the easiest mark; tickle him a little and he’ll goo-goo. We’re all chumps where the women are concerned, Wingfield; they nail us every time. The Colonel was bound to walk into the trap. Lord, man, even I’ve had ’em after me! A few yards of crêpe coming in to ask my advice about managing their property; sympathy gag; helpless woman; no one to appeal to; comes to Tom Walsh because of his success in business, his reputation for being square and so on. Now that I’m down here alone and the impression’s abroad that I’m a solid citizen, they’re looking me up rather more freely. While I was with Craighill the Colonel got all the crêpe. Now I’m getting my proper share of the business. They jolly me about my horses and say they think it’s so fine for a man to have some form of recreation. I tell ’em I always drive alone! But the Colonel shied at the widows, grass-fed and otherwise, and married a woman nobody ever heard of before. He probably thought he was doing a smart thing to cut out the local crowd. I guess Mrs. Blair wouldn’t have let him marry anybody in town. He did well, according to his light. The reel’s wound up and the fish is in the basket.”
“I fancy we’re neither of us deeply concerned about the Colonel; it’s Wayne we’d like to help; am I right?”
Walsh nodded gravely.
“I don’t think the woman is a bad woman. I went up to Mrs. Blair’s that night at the rash expense of a white waistcoat just to look her over. She’s pretty and friendly. I don’t suppose she’s buncoed the Colonel any more than he’s buncoed her. It’s about even. She struck me as being kind of pathetic, some way.”
“Ah! I hadn’t noticed it,” remarked Wingfield. “She struck me as a young person who would take care of herself. They’re an interesting type, these young women who corral old gentlemen of established position and wealth. The Colonel must have a fine estate; he’s made money ever since he inherited the Wayne fortune and he’s never lost any.”
“Um!”
This grunt of Walsh’s was discouraging. Wingfield’s own reticence had been admired, but Walsh’s was even more opaque; he felt that the old fellow was a hooded falcon who could, if given free flight, penetrate far into the mystery that surrounded Mrs. Craighill.
“I guess we might call there to-night,” Walsh continued. “I’m not on to the social game, but I suppose that, having had the Colonel’s announcement cards and having met the bride at Mrs. Blair’s, it’s up to me to call. As I have no official knowledge of the Colonel’s absence I guess I’ll drop in to-night and it wouldn’t be a bad idea for you to come along. You can dine with me at the Club. Do you put on a white vest for evening calls or will a black one do?”
The proposed visit was not to Wingfield’s taste. Wayne had distinctly told him that Mrs. Craighill was in Boston with her husband, and in the circumstances for him to call at the house with Walsh, of all men, would be an event whose implication would not be wasted on a man of Wayne Craighill’s sharp perception. He was averse to going; the very idea was repugnant; but Walsh clearly wished his company and he finally agreed to go.
“Very well, I’ll arrange the transportation”; and Walsh dismissed him with an injunction not to break his neck on the office steps.