CHAPTER XI
CALEB CONOVER MAKES TERMS
“Well,” remarked Caleb Conover, Railroader, with a Gargantuan sigh of relief as he flung himself into the great desk chair in his study, and lighted one of his eternal black cigars, “that’s over!”
“It sure is!” chuckled Billy Shevlin, who, alone of the cheering throng that had escorted the gubernatorial nominee home from the convention, had been permitted to enter the sanctum. “But, Boss, I wisht that Standish feller hadn’t stampeded the herd like he did. It’ll cut holes in your ‘landslide’ scheme.”
“What can the crank do?” grinned Caleb. “Not a paper in Granite’ll report his speech. And we’ll work the same game up-State we did during his tour. If worst comes to worst, there’s always a quiet, orderly way of losing sight of him at the polls. No, son, Standish’s yawps don’t bother me any more. I’ve got him about where I want him, I guess. Here’s the cash for the rooters. And here’s something for the boys to-night, too. Whoop it up all you like, so long as you keep on the other side of the railroad tracks. That’ll be all. Come around by eight to-morrow. And say, Billy!” he called after his departing henchman, “see if you can find Miss Lanier downstairs anywhere. I want to speak to her.”
The Railroader leaned farther back in the depths of the soft chair, drawing in great draughts of strong tobacco-reek and expelling it in duplex clouds through his thick nostrils.
It was good to rest. As far as his iron frame and cold nerves could feel such a weakness, reaction from the long strain of the day was upon him. In Conover’s case it took the form of lazy comfort; of enjoyment in his rank cigar, in the sensuous delight of relaxing every tense muscle and of sprawling idly, happily before his coal fire. The grim lines of the mouth relaxed, the keen eyes took on a pleasanter light.
He had fought. He had won. He would continue to win. For him the joy of fighting lay more in the battle itself than in the victory. But in the pause between two conflicts it was good to stretch one’s self out in a great, comfortable chair, to smoke, to blink drowsily into the red coals. The one thing remaining to complete his sense of utter well-being was the presence of some congenial soul wherewith to talk over his achievement. And——
Anice Lanier’s knock sounded at the door. Caleb’s placid expression deepened into a smile of real pleasure.
“Come in!” he called. “I was just hoping you’d——”
He checked himself. Across the threshold stepped Anice. She wore a hat and was dressed for the street. Over her shoulder Caleb caught sight of Clive Standish.
“Here’s all sorts of unexpected honors!” exclaimed the Railroader. “I heard you’d bolted, Standish, but I never thought you’d bolt so far as this poor shanty of mine. Come in and sit down. We’ll make a real merry family party, us three.”
There was something peculiarly happy in this advent of the defeated man to swell the victor’s triumph. Caleb vaguely felt this. He was glad Anice should see Clive and himself together; should be able to observe his own reserved strength as opposed to the bombastic denunciation Standish had doubtless come to deliver. It would amuse her to note the contrast between the two; to see her employer’s superiority in self-control and repartee.
So, as Standish followed the girl into the room, the host actually beamed on his intended victim. Then he noticed that neither Anice nor her escort sat down. Also that the latter remained near the door, while Miss Lanier advanced toward the desk chair Caleb had drawn so snugly into the hearth-angle. But she ignored a second and even softer chair he had arranged on the opposite side of the fire. And all this dimly troubled Caleb Conover.
“Anything the matter?” he asked, with somewhat less assurance. “Come to propose a compromise, Standish? Or maybe a campaign partnership? Good idea, that! Only I’m afraid it wouldn’t work this time. In business partnership, you know, one man puts up the money and the other the experience. And by the end of sixty days they’ve usually swapped. But in politics one man always has both the experience and the money. Or the means of getting ’em. Otherwise he wouldn’t be there at all. So I’m afraid I’ll have to refuse.”
He ended with a laugh that did not carry conviction, even to himself. No one replied. Neither of his guests’ faces showed sign of having heard. Conover’s good temper wavered.
“What’s up?” he demanded of Clive. “Speak out, can’t you?”
But it was Anice Lanier who replied.
“Mr. Conover,” she said, “you recollect the unsigned letter, enclosing some of your campaign plans, that was sent back to you by Mr. Standish last week?”
Caleb’s red hair bristled.
“Yes,” he answered, deep in his throat. “Have you found out who sent it?”
“I have,” she returned, in the same level voice. “Also the sender of two other letters of the sort, earlier in the campaign. One of these was to Mr. Standish. It contained a description of your plan for the county caucuses and of the measures you had framed against his up-State tour. Mr. Standish destroyed that letter and refused to act on its suggestion.”
“More fool he. Who wrote it?”
“The second letter was to Mr. Ansel,” went on Anice. “It gave him the idea for scattering issues of an out-of-State paper along the speech-route, with advertisements and report of——”
“Who wrote it, I asked you?”
“The same person wrote all three.”
“Then who——”
“I did.”
“This isn’t a thing to joke about. There’s a leak somewhere pretty high up, and I must find——”
“I wrote them.”
She spoke slowly, as though imparting a lesson. The Railroader’s eyes searched her face one instant. Then he dropped back, heavy and inert, into the farthest recess of his chair.
“Good Lord!” he whispered, staring at her blankly.
“I wrote them,” reiterated Anice. “No one knew, not even Mr. Standish, until to-day. I brought him here this evening, because something that is to be said must be said in his hearing. I have his promise not to interfere in this interview, but to let me take my own course. It was I, too, at whose advice he bolted the ticket at——”
“You’ve done all this?” blurted Caleb, finding his shattered self-poise at last. “Are you crazy, girl?”
“No; I am quite sane. From the start I have helped Mr. Standish. By my help, I believe, he will win the Governorship. I have learned much from you, in practical politics, Mr. Conover. I intend to put some of that education into use. You see——”
“You’ve backtracked me? You, of all the folks alive! Why, I’d ’a’ gambled my whole pile on your whiteness, girl. This is a measly joke of some kind. It’s——”
“It’s the truth, Mr. Conover.”
And Caleb, looking deep into her eyes, could at last doubt no longer. A dull red crept into his face.
“Well, I’ll be damned!” he said, slow, measured of voice, rigid of body. “Jockeyed by the one person in the world I ever had any trust in! Cleaned out like any drunken sailor in a dance hall! Say,” he added in puzzled querulousness, “what’d the Almighty mean by putting eyes like yours in the face of a——”
A sudden forward movement from Standish checked him, and, incidentally, drove from his brain the last mists of bewilderment. The Railroader settled forward in his chair, his teeth meeting in the stump of the cigar he had so contentedly lighted but a few minutes before. He was himself again; arrogant, masterful, vibrant with quick resource. A sardonic smile creased his wooden face.
“You’re a noble work of God, Miss Lanier, ain’t you?” he sneered. “In Bible days the man who betrayed his Master was made the star villain for all time. But when it’s a woman that does the betraying, I guess even the Bible would have to go shy on words blazing enough to show her up. For three years,” he went on, as Anice, by a quick gesture, silenced Clive’s fierce interruption—“for three years and more you’ve eaten my bread and lived on my money. For three years I’ve treated you like you were a queen. Whatever I’ve done or been to other folks, to you I’ve been as white as any man could be. You’ve had everything from me and mine. And you pay me by playing the petticoat-Judas. Look here, there’s something behind all this! Tell me what it means.”
“It means,” answered Anice, who had borne without wincing the hot lash of the angry man’s scorn—“it means that I have tried to pay a debt. Part I have paid. Part I am paying.”
“A debt? What rot are you trying to talk? I——”
“If you care to listen I’ll tell you. I will make it as short as I can. Shall I go on?”
Conover nodded assent as a man in a dream.
“My father,” began Anice, speaking dispassionately, her rich voice flattened to a quiet monotone—“my father was Foster Lanier. You never knew him. You never knew many of the men you have wrecked. But he was chief stockholder in the Oakland-Rodney Railroad. He was not a business man. The stock was left him by his father. It was all we had to live on. It was enough. You owned the C. G. & X. Little by little you bought up the other Mountain State roads. At last you came to the Oakland-Rodney. Do you remember?”
“I remember my lawyer told me there was some stiff-necked old fossil who owned the majority stock and wouldn’t sell.”
“So you crushed him,” went on Anice, unmoved, “as you have crushed others. You cut off the road’s connecting points and severed its communication with your own and your allied lines. After isolating it you lowered your own freight rates and mileage until all the Oakland-Rodney patronage was gone. The road collapsed, and you bought it in. My father was a pauper. Other men have been driven to the same straits by you—men whose very names you did not take the trouble to learn. My father knew little of business. To save others who had bought Oakland-Rodney stock at his advice, he sold what little property he had and bought their worthless stock back at par. He was ruined and above his head in debt. My mother was an invalid. The doctors said a trip to the Mediterranean might save her life. We had not a dollar. So she died. My father—he was out of his mind from grief and from financial worry—my father shot himself. It was hushed up by our friends, and he was reported accidentally killed while hunting. It was only one of the countless victories you ‘financiers’ are so proud of. He and my mother were but two of the numberless victims each of those victories entails.”
She paused. Caleb made no reply. He sat looking in front of him into the pulsing heart of the fire. He had scarce heard her. His mind was occupied to bursting by the shock and acute pain of this rupturing of his last intimate bond with humanity.
“I was left to make my own way,” continued Anice, “and I came here. Out of one hundred applicants you accepted me. It was not mere coincidence. I believe it was something more. Something higher. I entered your service that I might some day pay the debt I owed my father, who was not strong enough to bear your ‘victory,’ and my mother, whose life the money you wrested from us might have saved. This is melodramatic, of course. But I think most things in real life are. I came here. I worked for you. I won your confidence, your respect, your trust. Perhaps you think it was a pleasant task I had set myself? I am not trying to justify it. If it was unworthy, I have paid. You say I’ve ‘eaten your bread and lived on your money.’ I have. And I have received your confidence. But have I ever eaten a mouthful or received one penny that I did not earn three times over? You yourself have said again and again that I was worth to you ten times what you paid me. You have begged me to let you raise my salary, to accept presents from you. Have I ever consented? If there is a money balance between us, the debit is all on your side. I owe you nothing for what confidences you have lavished on me. Have I ever asked for them or lured you into bestowing them? Have not all such confidences come unsought, even repelled, by me? Have I ever spoken to you with more than ordinary civility? Have I ever so much as voluntarily shaken your hand? The Judas parallel does not hold good, Mr. Conover.”
She waited again for a reply. But none came. Conover merely shifted his heavy gaze from the fire to her pale, drawn face.
“In all these years,” said Anice, “I have waited my chance. I could not take your life to atone for the two gentle lives you crushed out. Nor would a life like yours have paid one-hundredth of the debt. So I have waited until your life-happiness, your whole future, should be bound up in some one great aspiration. Until you should stake all on one card. When such a time should come I resolved I would make you taste the bitter shame and despair you have made others groan under. Oh, it was long, weary waiting, but I think the end is coming. It has come.”
“You talk fine, Miss Lanier,” observed Caleb, all master of himself once more, “but talking’s never quoted at par, except in a poker game and a wedding ceremony. You’ve been reading novels, and you’ve framed up a dandy line of story book ree-venge. It’s as good as any stage villainess could have thought of. But, honest, it clean surprises me how a woman with all your brains could have took such a fool plan seriously. It’s a grand stunt to grab the centre of the stage and drive the wicked oppressor out into the snow. Only it don’t happen to be snowing to-night. Neither really nor fig’ratively. No, no, Miss Lanier, your hand’s a four-flush, and I hold a whole bunch of aces. Go ahead with your little fireworks, if that’s your diversion. It won’t bother anyone. Certainly not me. The only regret I’ve got in the whole business is finding you’ve so little horse sense.”
“If I had so little,” answered Anice calmly, “the affair would have to end here and now. As it is——”
“Well?”
“It’s going on.”
“Oh, you’ve extra cards to turn that four-flush into a win, eh? Show ’em out. I call.”
“If you put it that way. I’m told it only needs one card to convert a ‘four-flush’ into a good hand. Perhaps I can play that card later. Perhaps you won’t oblige me to play it at all. I hope you won’t.”
“Go ahead.”
“I have not been, unwillingly, in your confidence all these years for nothing.”
Caleb whistled.
“I’m on!” said he curtly. “If I don’t stand aside and let your little friend Standish win the race, you’ll do some exposing? Sort of like the girl who showed up John D. in a magazine? Well, fire away. In the first place, I’m not John D., and the American public (outside the Mountain State) ain’t laying awake nights to find out how Caleb Conover got his. And if you mean to use ‘Confessions of a Secretary’ for a campaign document this fall, you’re welcome to. I’ll take my chance on getting a little more mud than usual slung at me. It won’t affect the election, and you know it won’t. And you ought to know by this time how little I care what folks think of my character. No, it won’t do, Miss Lanier. If that’s the card you’re counting on using to change your four-flush into a winning hand——”
“You are mistaken. This time, Mr. Conover, it is I who am surprised at your lack of perception. The ‘card’ I spoke of is the Denzlow correspondence.”
“The Denzlow—? I burned that a year ago—burned it in this very room. In this fireplace. You were here and saw me. And Denzlow died last May. I’m afraid your ‘card’ won’t help that poor, lonely four-flush hand of yours after all. I’m sorry, but——”
“You burned a package of letters wrapped in a sheet indorsed ‘Denzlow,’” interposed Anice, “but they happened to be a sheaf of insurance circulars. With Mr. Denzlow’s permission (and on my promise not to make use of them while he was alive) I bought those letters at the time you thought you bought them back from him. He got extra money, and the letters were supposed to be transmitted to you through me. I kept the originals. If you doubt it, here are certified copies. You will see the notary’s signature was dated last June. Does that convince you?”
“Where’s the letters themselves?”
“With my brother. He is one of the subeditors of the Ballston Herald. He is holding them subject to my orders. When he receives word from me he will either turn them over to the Federal authorities (for it is a United States Government matter, as you know, with a term of imprisonment involved, and not a mere State offence that can be settled with a few thousand dollars), or else he will publish the whole correspondence in his paper, and leave the Government to act as it sees fit. Does the card improve my hand?”
Conover made no immediate answer. When he spoke there was no emotion in his dry, business-like tones.
“Yes, it does,” he admitted, “and I’m glad to see I was wrong about the condition of those brains of yours. You’ve got me. I could bluff anybody else, but I guess you know my game too well. A bluff’s a blamed good anchor in a financial storm. But after the ship’s wrecked I never heard that the cap’n got any special good out of the anchor. So we’ll play straight, if you like. How much do you want?”
“How much?” she repeated, doubtful of his meaning.
“How much will you take for those Denzlow letters? Come now, let’s cut out the measly diplomacy and get to the point. The man who gets ahead in my line of work is the man who knows when to pay hush-money and when not to. This is the time to pay. How much? Make me a cash offer.”
“You don’t understand,” protested Anice, again with a pretty, imperious gesture restraining Clive. “I am not one of the blackmailers you spend so much of your time silencing. I——”
“No? I never yet heard a scream that was so loud a big enough check wouldn’t gag it. This interview isn’t so allooring that I’m stuck on stretching it out any longer. Make your offer.”
“I’ve explained to you that I want none of your money.”
“Then what—Oh!” broke off Conover, clicking his teeth and narrowing his eyes to gleaming slits, “I think I see. The Governorship, eh?”
Anice inclined her head.
“So I’m to throw it to Standish? H’m! And yet you say you’re not putting the hooks in me! If that isn’t cold, straight, all-wool blackmail, I don’t know what is. You think you owe me something because I didn’t treat your father just square. So you pay the grudge off by blackmailing me. Maybe your holy New England conscience is too near-sighted to see it’s only in the devil’s ledger that two wrongs make a right.”
“Do you speak from experience? Because it doesn’t fit this case. I propose nothing of the sort.”
“Then what in thunder do you want?” snarled Caleb, thoroughly mystified. “If it ain’t cash or——”
“I want you to give Mr. Standish a fair chance. That is all. I want you to remove the embargo from his speeches and advertising; to open the columns of every paper in the Mountain State to him. To promise not to molest him in any way, not to allow your rowdies to break up his meetings nor to prevent him from hiring halls. Not to stuff the ballot-boxes, falsify the returns, employ ‘floaters’ or—in short, I want you to give him an equal chance with yourself; to conduct the campaign honestly, and to leave the issue solely to the voters. Will you do this?”
“And if I beat him at that?”
“If you are elected by an honest majority, that is no concern of ours. All I demand is that you fight in the open and leave the result to the people.”
Caleb thought in silence for a few moments.
“If I do this?” he asked at last.
“Then, on the afternoon of Election Day, my brother shall turn over to you, or to your representative, the entire Denzlow correspondence.”
“I have your word for that? Certified copies and all?”
“Yes.”
“You don’t lie. That’s about the one foolish trait I’ve ever found in you. If I’ve got your word, you’ll stand by it. Can’t say quite the same of me, eh?”
“I don’t think that needs an answer.”
“Can’t turn over the letters to me now, on my pledge to——?”
“I’m afraid not,” said Anice, almost apologetically. “I must——”
“And you’re dead right. A promise is such a sacred thing that it’s always wise to keep your finger on the trigger till the real money’s handed over. Just to keep the sacredness from spoiling. As I understand it, I’m to loosen up on Standish; and then if I lick him fair, you and I are quits? I’ll do it. Such a fight ought to prove pretty amusing. It’ll be an experience anyhow, as Sol Townsley said when Father Healy told him he’d some day burn in hell. I’ll accept those silly terms of yours for the same reason so many men stay honest. They don’t enjoy it, but it’s more fun than going to jail. I’ll send out the orders first thing in the morning. And on the afternoon of Election Day I’ll get that Denzlow stuff?”
“Yes. And the certified copy the following morning.”
“In case I should get absent-minded that night when the votes are counted? You’re a clever girl, Miss Lanier. Pity you’re to be wasted on Standish! Oh, that’s all right. I don’t need to be told. A girl like you isn’t acting the way you do just for the sake of a measly principle. And now,” his bantering tone changing to one of brusque command, “if there’s nothing more, maybe you’ll both get out. I’m tired, and——”
Clive and Anice withdrew. The latter, looking back as she left the room, saw Caleb sitting doubled over, motionless, in his chair, his gaze again on the fire.
Perhaps it was the flicker from the coals that made his face seem to her to have grown in a moment infinitely old; his keen, light eyes inexpressibly lonely and desolate. Undoubtedly so, for when he glanced up and saw she was not yet gone, there was no expression save the shadow of a sardonic grin stamped on his rugged features.
Long and late Caleb Conover sat there alone in his big, silent study. The lamp on the table flickered, guttered and went out. The live coals died down to embers. The cold of early autumn crept through the great room, along with the encroaching darkness. The clock on the wall chimed. Then again, and a third time, but the Railroader sat motionless.
At length he gathered himself together with an impatient grunt. He reached across to his table and drew from a drawer a gaudy velvet case. As he opened it, the dying firelight struck against a multi-pointed cluster of tiny lights.
“She wouldn’t have took it from me,” Caleb grumbled, half-aloud, as though explaining to some invisible companion, “but I would ’a’ made Letty give it to her. It’d ’a’ looked fine against that soft baby throat of hers. Hell!”
There was a swirling little eddy of cinders and sparks as the case crashed into the heart of the dull red embers.
The Railroader had fallen back into his former cramped, awkward attitude of reflection.
“First it was Jerry,” he whispered to the imaginary auditor among the shadows. “First Jerry. Then Blanche. And now—her. That’s worse than both the others put together. Not a one left.”
The study door behind him was timidly opened. Caleb did not hear.
“Not a one left!” he murmured again. “And——”
“Is anything the matter, dear?” nervously queried his wife from the threshold. “It’s nearly——”
“You don’t count!” shouted Caleb Conover, with odd irrelevance. “Go to bed, can’t you?”