CHAPTER XXVII
MR. BALCOMB’S EASY CONSCIENCE
Ezra Dameron had never been happier than during this summer. His life had run for years an eventless course; his interests had been small and he had been content to have them so. But since the gambler’s passion had fixed its gyves upon him he had become a changed being. He walked with a quicker step; his drooping shoulders grew erect; he was a new man, living in a new paradise that folly was constructing for him. He enjoyed the farm greatly, rising betimes to direct the work of his laborers. He permitted Zelda to drive him in her runabout to the interurban station—a concession in itself significant of a greater deference to the comfort and ease of living.
Jack Balcomb’s flat scheme had hung fire during the spring, with only half the stock of the Patoka Land and Improvement Company sold; but Balcomb had taken it up again, determined to carry it through. Dameron always insisted, when Balcomb approached him, that he did not care to sell the tract on the creek which the promoter coveted; but he never rebuffed Balcomb entirely. It had occurred to Dameron that Balcomb might be of use to him. The young man was, moreover, a new species, who talked of large affairs in an intimate way that fell in well with Dameron’s new ideas of business, and he accepted Balcomb at as high a valuation as he ever placed upon any one.
Balcomb was quick to act on the hint given unexpectedly by Dameron at the farm. He called at once at the dingy office in the Dameron Block. It was a hot midsummer morning and Balcomb was a pleasing object as he appeared at the door of Ezra Dameron’s private office. Balcomb had lately fallen under the spell of a New York tailor who solicited business among Mariona young men, and his figure lent itself well to metropolitan treatment. The blue silk socks that filled the margin between his half-shoes and gray trousers expressed a fastidious taste, and his negligée shirt matched them exactly. Having discarded a waistcoat for greater comfort in the hot weather, he wore his watch in the outer pocket of his coat, with a bit of chain and the key of the Phi Beta Kappa Society showing.
“Good morning, Mr. Dameron. Your office is positively cool. You ought to advertise it—the coolest place in the city. That’s what I’d do if I had it. I have a south exposure, cheerful in winter, but ghastly in summer. These inside rooms are the only thing, after all; and they’re cheaper. We youngsters can still sit with profit at the feet of our elders.”
He eyed a decrepit chair by Dameron’s desk, sat down in it with misgivings, and fanned himself with his straw hat, whose blue ribbon, it may be said, was of exactly the same tint as his shirt and socks.
“You are very prompt, Mr. Balcomb. I trust my chance word of the other night hasn’t put you to inconvenience.”
“Don’t worry about me! I flatter myself that I know when to go and when to come, and a word from a man of your standing is enough for a novice like me. There’s a disposition all along the line to crowd out old men, but I tell you, Mr. Dameron, we’ve got a lot to learn from the senior class. I flatter myself that I have among my friends some of the grandest old men in the state, and I’m proud of it.”
“A worthy sentiment,—a very worthy sentiment, Mr. Balcomb.”
“I consider, Mr. Dameron, that anything I may be able to do for you is to my credit. It looks well to the public for a young tyro in business to win the confidence of one of the conservatives. Doctor Bridges, over at Tippecanoe—you know the doctor?—”
“I know him very well, indeed.”
Doctor Bridges, the president of Tippecanoe College, was a venerable Presbyterian minister, widely beloved for his many virtues. Dameron’s face lighted at the mention of the name. Balcomb saw that he had struck the right note and continued volubly:
“Well, sir, I was the doctor’s secretary in my junior and senior years, and I shall always feel that I learned more from that venerable old patriarch than from my books. The doctor used to say to me in that sweet, winning way of his: ‘Balcomb,’ he would say, ‘be honest, be just.’ Over and over again he would repeat those words, and they got to be a sort of rule of life with me. It’s wonderful how many places they fit. I tell you, sir,”—and a quaver crept into his voice—“a young man’s temptations these days are mighty hard to deal with. Half a dozen times I’ve seen places where I could have fixed myself for life by doing things—promoting schemes and all that—that most any business man would call legitimate. But every time the doctor’s dear old face has risen up before me and I’ve heard that admonition of his, ‘Balcomb, be honest, be just,’ and it lost me money; but I guess it saved my conscience.”
Dameron listened sympathetically to this recital, nodding his head gravely from time to time.
“Doctor Bridges is a splendid man, a man of great spiritual power. I consider myself fortunate in having had him for my friend these forty-odd years.”
“Well,” said Jack, with an air of suddenly wakening to present duty; “I didn’t come here to take up your time with reminiscences.”
“I have enjoyed your remarks very much,” said Dameron, who had not, indeed, heard a great deal of what Balcomb said. He was thinking of his own enterprises, and of his present need of money to maintain his margins. He wished to make use of Balcomb without committing himself to the sale of the strip on the creek. That was a valuable piece of land; it was increasing rapidly in value, and even in his extremity Ezra Dameron had no thought of fooling it away. But Balcomb’s airiness and persistence had made their impression on Dameron. He did not realize it, but he and the young promoter had much in common. They belonged to different eras and yet there was a certain affinity between them.
“Mr. Balcomb,” said Dameron, tipping himself back in his chair, “you have suggested to me the possibility of selling a strip of land I hold as trustee out here on the creek. As I have told you before, I do not care to sell at this time. I have, however, some lots southwest of town, also a part of a trust, which I have about decided to dispose of. Several factories have been built in the neighborhood, and the lots are already in demand by mechanics who wish to build themselves homes. I have declined to sell them separately, as most of those people wish to pay a little at a time, and I don’t care to sell in that way. I am at an age, Mr. Balcomb, when I don’t like to accept promises for the future. Do I make myself clear?”
“Certainly, Mr. Dameron,” said Balcomb, with a note of sympathy that was almost moist with tears.
“But if you can manage this and sell those lots so as to bring me cash I shall be willing to pay you a commission,—the usual commission.”
“In other words,” said Balcomb, “you wish me to find purchasers for the lots and sell them out so as to bring you the money in a lump. How much do you want for them?”
“I think for the corner lots I should get twelve hundred and fifty dollars each; the inside lots I hold to be worth a thousand. But we’ll say fifty thousand for all.”
There was an inquiry in his words and his eyes questioned Balcomb in a way that made the young man wonder. It is not the part of what is known as a good trader to show anxiety, and the old man’s tone and look were not wasted on Balcomb. The young fellow knew a great many things about human nature, and ever since he had seen Ezra Dameron enter the broker’s office he had set the old man down as a fraud. The reason Dameron gave for turning the lots over to him to sell was hardly convincing. Balcomb was nothing if not suspicious, and it occurred to him at once that Dameron was in straits; and at the same moment he began to devise means for turning the old man’s necessities to his own advantage.
“Here is a plat of the property. Suppose you study the matter over and let me know whether you care to attempt the sale.”
“As you wish, Mr. Dameron. I’ll come in, say, to-morrow at this hour.”
“Very well,” said Dameron, coldly. “I don’t want you to undertake the matter unless you can handle it in bulk.”
The Dameron addition of fifty lots was an inheritance from old Roger Merriam, Zelda Dameron’s grandfather. It had been a part of Margaret Dameron’s share of her father’s estate, and was held by Ezra Dameron in trust for Zelda. Manufacturing interests had lately carried improvements that way, but Dameron’s efforts to sell lots had not been successful, as his prices were high and the menace of expensive improvements gave pause to the working people who were the natural buyers. Then Dameron had become interested in larger matters than the peddling of lots, and he had given no serious thought to selling until he felt the need of obtaining more ready money for use in his speculations.
As Balcomb turned to go a boy came in with a telegram. It was from the brokers in Chicago through whom Dameron was trading in grain. The market had opened wildly on news that the drought had done little actual damage to the corn crop. An hour later he was advised that his margins had been wiped out; he made them good from funds he was now carrying in Chicago and ordered the sale of unimpeachable securities to replenish his account.
Dameron, whose mind was singularly prosaic, had of late been reading into his speculations a certain poetic quality, though he did not suspect it. He had never been a farmer and had only the most superficial knowledge of farming. Yet he had studied all summer long the growth of the corn in his own fields at The Beeches. He had reckoned the rainfall of the region and compared it with the figures given in books of statistics for other years. He covered hundreds of sheets of paper during the long summer days with computations, and played with them as a boy with the knack of rhyming plays at tagging rhymes. He cherished first the idea that the year would be marked by excessive rainfalls which would be detrimental to the corn crop, and when the government bulletins failed to bear him out in this he assured himself that the year would be marked by late frosts that would destroy the crop over a wide area. He proved to his own satisfaction, by means of the tables he had compiled, that dollar corn was inevitable.
This idea took a strong hold upon his imagination. It was fascinating, the thought of playing a great game in which the sun and winds and clouds of heaven were such potent factors. There was a keen satisfaction in the fact that he could study the whole matter from the secure vantage ground of his own office, and that when he went home at night, there it was across the road from his own gate, under his eye, the beloved corn, tall and rustling, beautiful and calm, but waiting for the hand of the destroyer. Even this, his own, should perish, and yet he was accumulating scraps of paper that called for thousands of bushels of corn at a time when it would grieve many short-sighted men sorely to deliver it to him.
An enormous conceit was bred in him and he fed it upon his dreams,—dreams of power. The Chicago broker sent him prognostications and forecasts which the old man threw away in disgust. They were fools, all of them. He asked no man’s suggestions; they were afraid of him, he assured himself, when the reports were contrary to his own ideas; and when they coincided with his own notions he flattered himself that they proved his own wisdom. He made good his margins as fast as called on, but continued to buy October corn, basing his purchases on a short crop. Always it was corn, corn, corn!
He waited patiently for Balcomb to report, for if he could get fifty thousand dollars more to put into corn his triumph would be all the greater. He waited feverishly for the hour which the promoter had set and when Balcomb appeared he could scarcely conceal his impatience. He had just learned by consulting the files of old newspapers at the public library that there was a certain periodicity in the fall of frosts. There seemed to him every reason for thinking that early frosts were to be expected and he was anxious to increase his investment in October contracts. It was the greatest opportunity of a lifetime; to lose it was to miss a chance that a wise Providence would hardly again put into his hands.
There was a gleam of excitement in the old man’s eyes which Balcomb did not fail to note. He found a pleasure in playing with Ezra Dameron, the hard old reprobate who had always exacted the last ounce of flesh. He quoted again from Doctor Bridges, imputing to that gentleman sentiments that were original in Balcomb’s fertile brain, though none the less noble for being purely fictitious. Balcomb enjoyed his own skill at lying, and it was a high testimony to the promoter’s powers that Ezra Dameron believed a good deal that Balcomb told him. When Balcomb mentioned casually that he had been president of the Y. M. C. A. at college the old man’s heart warmed to him.
“Well, sir,” said Balcomb, presently, after he had given a résumé of one of Doctor Bridges’ Easter sermons, “I’ve been thinking over your proposition about the lots, and I’m sorry—”
The old man’s face fell and Balcomb inwardly rejoiced that his victim was so easily played upon.
“—sorry,” Balcomb continued, “that I can’t do anything in the matter—”
He paused and made a feint of dropping his hat to continue the suspense as long as possible.
“—along the lines you indicated the other day.”
“Oh, yes, to be sure! I remember that it was rather a large proposition,” said Dameron, recovering himself and smiling in tolerance of Balcomb’s failure.
“Yes; the sale of those lots means time and work, and, as I understood you, you wished to avoid both. Well, I don’t blame you. I feel myself that I should prefer to have some other fellow tackle the job. These mechanics can’t pay more than a hundred or so dollars a year on property. I have friends who went through that in the building associations of blessed memory.”
“I don’t believe I need any information on the subject,” said Dameron, indifferently. “If you can’t handle the lots—”
“I haven’t said that, Mr. Dameron. What I said was that I couldn’t do it in the way you indicated. It would take a long time to sell those fifty lots on payments to working people. But I have a better plan. I propose selling them in a bunch.”
“Oh!” exclaimed the old man, non-committally, though his face flushed with returning hope.
“Yes. Large bunches are more in my line. But my friends that I may possibly interest can’t carry them for their health or yours or mine. You’ll have to make a good easy price on them if we do any business. There are only two or three factories in that neighborhood and there may never be any more. And they’re getting ready to stick a whole lot of fancy street improvements down there. It may cost a thousand dollars to stop that,”—and Balcomb grinned cheerfully.
“I can’t countenance any irregular dealing,” said the old man, severely.
“Of course, you can’t! You’re going to turn that over to me. It isn’t regular, but, as the saying is, it’s done! You’ve got to see a man that knows a man that knows another man that has the ear of the Board of Public Works. There’s nothing in it to make a Christian gentleman shy. I see only the first man!” And Balcomb laughed his cheerful, easy laugh and stroked his beard.
“Now, Mr. Dameron, I’ll give you twenty thousand dollars for those lots as they lie. That’s cash.”
There was no mistaking the gleam that lighted the old man’s eyes.
“Who’s your purchaser?” he asked.
“I think I’ve mentioned to you the Patoka Land and Improvement Company. We’ve decided not to confine ourselves to our flat scheme alone. We’re going to handle big real estate schemes wherever we see anything good enough and big enough to make it worth while. That wasn’t our intention at first, but I’ve persuaded our people to see it that way. All the big fortunes in this country have been made in real estate, and the possibilities haven’t been exhausted yet. If we can hit a fair price, we’ll take your lots and work them off in our own way; but I shouldn’t bother with the thing at all if it weren’t that I hope to get that creek strip from you.”
“Who are in your company?” asked the old man. His need for cash was great, but he tried to conceal his anxiety, and he was really curious to know who were behind Balcomb.
The promoter reeled off a long list of names, most of them unknown to Dameron, but Balcomb’s ready explanation imparted stability to all of them. There were half a dozen country bankers and a number of men who were or had been state officers.
“You seem to have drawn largely on the country,” remarked the old man, dryly.
“You are quite right, I did. It’s easier. There’s lots of money in these country banks that’s crying for investment. I know a lot of business houses right here in our jobbing district that go to the country for their loans. These old Mariona bankers have never got over the panic of seventy-three. Every time they make a loan they make an enemy. A man whose credit is A1 doesn’t like to have to go over his past and the history of his wife’s relations even unto the third and fourth generation every time he borrows a few thousand dollars. Not much!”
Dameron laughed, a little uneasily, but he laughed. Two years before he would have shuddered at such heresy.
“Well,” said Balcomb, rising, “you think over the matter and let me know whether you care to sell. I’ll give you one thousand dollars for an option on the creek strip at sixty thousand. I’ll see you in a few days.”
“No! No!” The old man’s voice rose querulously. Delays were dangerous. If Balcomb could do it he must effect the sale at once.
“The figure I named yesterday,” began Dameron.
“—is out of the question,” said Balcomb, with finality.
“Then nine hundred dollars apiece for the block of lots.”
“Perfectly absurd.” And Balcomb turned toward the door.
The old man rose and rested against his desk heavily. His bent figure was wholly pitiful; the claw-like fingers on which he leaned trembled so that his thin, worn body shook.
“Suppose you name a figure, Mr. Balcomb,” he said, with a pathetic attempt at jauntiness.
“I am authorized to close at twenty thousand cash; and my commission comes out of that. We’ll say fifteen hundred commission. But I am not anxious to buy at that price,—it’s quite immaterial to me. What I want is the option.”
“I have better use for the money; yes, I can use it to advantage,” said Dameron, as though he were pondering the matter gravely and seeking to justify himself.
Balcomb took a step toward him.
“In other real estate, by the terms of the trust,” he said, smiling in an insinuating way.
“Yes; yes, of course,” said Dameron, hastily.
“And there’s the order of court.”
“To be sure,—there’s an order of court required by the terms of the trust. I suppose you wouldn’t mind waiting a little for that. The trust expires in a few weeks,—I prefer to go to the judge with the whole settlement at once.”
“But you prefer not to go to the judge to ask his approval of this particular deed. All right. The abstract needn’t show these requirements,—our attorney will not be particular. I’ll fix that for you.”
“Yes, you can arrange that, I suppose,” said the old man, weakly. He was trembling now, visibly, and his voice shook.
“That will be worth five hundred more,—as special commission and guaranty that you won’t forget the court’s approval,” said Balcomb, coolly.
“No, oh, no!” wailed the old man. “I’m giving it away. You are taking unfair advantage. I am not well—I am not quite myself to-day.”
He sank into his chair, breathing hard; but he recovered instantly and smiled at Balcomb with an effort.
“I’m not a man to back out when I have pledged my word,” he said grandly. “A trade’s a trade.” And Balcomb grinned.
“Now, one other thing, Mr. Dameron. I’ll be square with you and tell the truth. I’ve got to have the option on the creek strip. My people are not a bit crazy to buy lots like these, but our apartment scheme is a big thing, and to get your strip of ground out there on the creek bank we’re willing to buy these lots of yours,—just, as the fellow said, to show there’s no hard feeling.”
“At seventy-five thousand for the creek strip. Not a cent less. It’s a part of the trust. It’s my daughter’s. I shall not give it away. There are only a few weeks more in which I shall have any right to sell,—and—and I have had another offer,” he ended weakly.
“Quite likely; but it isn’t so easy to get so much cash on short notice. And there’s the difficulty of finding other real estate to reinvest the money in, and the order of court and all that.”
Balcomb stroked his beard and eyed his prey. He dropped the suggestion about the reinvestment of the proceeds in real estate merely to show his acquaintance with the terms of the trust. It amused him to remember Ezra Dameron’s old reputation as a hard customer. He was proving, in Balcomb’s own phrase, almost too easy.
“We’ll call it twenty thousand, then, for the block of lots,” said the old man, smiling and rubbing his hands.
“Very well,” said Balcomb, “with two thousand as my fee in the matter; and an option to buy the creek strip at sixty thousand.”
The old man stared at him with a sudden malevolent light in his eyes, but he said with exaggerated dignity:
“Very well, Mr. Balcomb.”
Dameron drew from his desk an abstract of title covering the Roger Merriam addition. It was in due form, the work of a well-known title company. Balcomb took it and ran his eye through its crisp pages.
“You’ll take care of us on this order of court matter if I pass it for the present,” said Balcomb.
“I’m a man of my word,” declared Ezra Dameron.
So the next afternoon a deed was filed with the county recorder, conveying the block of lots to the Patoka Land and Improvement Company, Ezra Dameron receiving eighteen thousand dollars as consideration and J. Arthur Balcomb two thousand dollars as commission. Opportunities to make two thousand so easily were not to be put aside, and Balcomb’s conscience troubled him not at all over the transaction. Van Cleve, the vice-president and attorney, did exactly what Balcomb, the treasurer, told him to do without question; and when Balcomb expressed himself as satisfied that the court’s approval would be forthcoming shortly when the whole estate was settled, and that meanwhile the deed should be recorded, Van Cleve readily acquiesced. Balcomb told his associates that it was the only way in which Dameron would give the option.
Balcomb did not, of course, tell his associates that he was accepting a commission from Dameron; for there were times when J. Arthur Balcomb’s volubility gave way to reticence of the austerest kind. He plumed himself upon at last having secured at sixty thousand dollars an option on the creek strip, where the ideal apartment house was to be built; and he sent notices to his directors of a meeting to consider plans for building. The fact that the company had just bought, through his shrewd agency, something like fifty thousand dollars’ worth of lots for twenty thousand would, he told Van Cleve, “look good to the jays,” and it did.