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The Deluge, a novel by David Graham Phillips |
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Chapter 5. Danger Signals |
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_ CHAPTER V. DANGER SIGNALS At that time I did not myself go over the bills before the legislatures of those states in which I had interests. I trusted that work to my lawyers--and, like every man who ever absolutely trusted an important division of his affairs to another, I was severely punished. One morning my eye happened to light upon a minor paragraph in a newspaper--a list of the "small bills yesterday approved by the governor." In the list was one "defining the power of sundry commissions." Those words seemed to me somehow to spell "joker." But why did I call up my lawyers to ask them about it? It's a mystery to me. All I know is that, busy as I was, something inside me compelled me to drop everything else and hunt that "joker" down. I got Saxe--then senior partner in Browne, Saxe and Einstein--on the 'phone, and said: "Just see and tell me, will you, what is the 'bill defining the power of sundry commissions'--the bill the governor signed yesterday?" "Certainly, Mr. Blacklock," came the answer. My nerves are, and always have been, on the watchout for the looks and the tones and the gestures that are just a shade off the natural; and I feel that I do Saxe no injustice when I say his tone was, not a shade, but a full color, off the natural. So I was prepared for what he said when he returned to the telephone. "I'm sorry, Mr. Blacklock, but we seem unable to lay our hands on that bill at this moment." "Why not?" said I, in the tone that makes an employee jump as if a whip-lash had cut him on the calves. He had jumped all right, as his voice showed. "It's not in our file," said he. "It's House Bill No. 427, and it's apparently not here." "The hell you say!" I exclaimed. "Why?" "I really can't explain," he pleaded, and the frightened whine confirmed my suspicion. "I guess not," said I, making the words significant and suggestive. "And you're in my pay to look after such matters! But you'll have to explain, if this turns out to be serious." "Apparently our file of bills is complete except that one," he went on. "I suppose it was lost in the mail, and I very stupidly didn't notice the gap in the numbers." "Stupid isn't the word I'd use," said I, with a laugh that wasn't of the kind that cheers. And I rang off and asked for the state capitol on the "long distance." Before I got my connection Saxe, whose office was only two blocks away, came flustering in. "The boy has been discharged, Mr. Blacklock," he began. "What boy?" said I. "The boy in charge of the bill file--the boy whose business it was to keep the file complete." "Send him to me, you damned scoundrel," said I. "I'll give him a job. What do you take me for, anyway? And what kind of a cowardly hound are you to disgrace an innocent boy as a cover for your own crooked work?" "Really, Mr. Blacklock, this is most extraordinary," he expostulated. "Extraordinary? I call it criminal," I retorted. "Listen to me. You look after the legislation calendars for me, and for Langdon, and for Roebuck, and for Melville, and for half a dozen others of the biggest financiers in the country. It's the most important work you do for us. Yet you, as shrewd and careful a lawyer as there is at the bar, want me to believe you trusted that work to a boy! If you did, you're a damn fool. If you didn't, you're a damn scoundrel. There's no more doubt in my mind than in yours which of those horns has you sticking on it." "You are letting your quick temper get away with you, Mr. Blacklock," he deprecated. "Stop lying!" I shouted, "I knew you had been doing some skulduggery when I first heard your voice on the telephone. And if I needed any proof, the meek way you've taken my abuse would furnish it, and to spare." Just then the telephone bell rang and I got the right department and asked the clerk to read House Bill 427. It contained five short paragraphs. The "joker" was in the third, which gave the State Canal Commission the right "to institute condemnation proceedings, and to condemn, and to abolish, any canal not exceeding thirty miles in length and not a part of the connected canal system of the state." When I hung up the receiver I was so absorbed that I had forgotten Saxe was waiting. He made some slight sound. I wheeled on him. I needed a vent. If he hadn't been there I should have smashed a chair. But there was he--and I kicked him out of my private office and would have kicked him out through the anteroom into the outer hall, had he not gathered himself together and run like a jack-rabbit. Since that day I have done my own calendar watching. By this incident I do not mean to suggest that there are not honorable men in the legal profession. Most of them are men of the highest honor, as are most business men, most persons of consequence in every department of life. But you don't look for character in the proprietors, servants, customers and hangers-on of dives. No more ought you to look for honor among any of the people that have to do with the big gilded dive of the dollarocracy. They are there to gamble, and to prostitute themselves. The fact that they look like gentlemen and have the manners and the language of gentlemen ought to deceive nobody but the callow chaps of the sort that believes the swell gambler is "an honest fellow" and a "perfect gentleman otherwise," because he wears a dress suit in the evening and is a judge of books and pictures. Lawyers are the doorkeepers and the messengers of the big dive; and these lawyers, though they stand the highest and get the biggest fees, are just what you would expect human beings to be who expose themselves to such temptations, and yield whenever they get an opportunity, as eager and as compliant as a _cocotte_. My lawyers had sold me out; I, fool that I was, had not guarded the only weak plate in my armor against my companions--the plate over my back, to shed assassin thrusts. Roebuck and Langdon between them owned the governor; he owned the Canal Commission; my canal, which gave me access to tide-water for the product of my Manasquale mines, was as good as closed. I no longer had the whip-hand in National Coal. The others could sell me out and take two-thirds of my fortune, whenever they liked--for of what use were my mines with no outlet now to any market, except the outlets the coal crowd owned? As soon as I had thought the situation out in all its bearings, I realized that there was no escape for me now, that whatever chance to escape I might have had was closed by my uncovering to Saxe and kicking him. But I did not regret; it was worth the money it would cost me. Besides, I thought I saw how I could later on turn it to good account. A sensible man never makes fatal errors. Whatever he does is at least experience, and can also be used to advantage. If Napoleon hadn't been half dead at Waterloo, I don't doubt he would have used its disaster as a means to a greater victory. Was I downcast by the discovery that those bandits had me apparently at their mercy? Not a bit. Never in my life have I been downcast over money matters more than a few minutes. Why should I be? Why should any man be who has made himself all that he is? As long as his brain is sound, his capital is unimpaired. When I walked into Mowbray Langdon's office, I was like a thoroughbred exercising on a clear frosty morning; and my smile was as fresh as the flower in my buttonhole. I thrust out my hand at him. "I congratulate you," said I. He took the proffered hand with a questioning look. "On what?" said he. It is hard to tell from his face what is going on in his head, but I think I guessed right when I decided that Saxe hadn't yet warned him. "I have just found out from Saxe," I pursued, "about the Canal Bill." "What Canal Bill?" he asked. "That puzzled look was a mistake, Langdon," said I, laughing at him. "When you don't know anything about a matter, you look merely blank. You overdid it; you've given yourself away." He shrugged his shoulders. "As you please," said he. As you please was his favorite expression; a stereotyped irony, for in dealing with him, things were never as _you_ pleased, but always as _he_ pleased. "Next time you want to dig a mine under anybody," I went on, "don't hire Saxe. Really I feel sorry for you--to have such a clever scheme messed by such an ass." "If you don't mind, I'd like to know what you're talking about," said he, with his patient, bored look. "As you and Roebuck own the governor, I know your little law ends my little canal." "Still I don't know what you're talking about," drawled he. "You are always suspecting everybody of double-dealing. I gather that this is another instance of your infirmity. Really, Blacklock, the world isn't wholly made up of scoundrels." "I know that," said I. "And I will even admit that its scoundrels are seldom made up wholly of scoundrelism. Even Roebuck would rather do the decent thing, if he can do it without endangering his personal interests. As for you--I regard you as one of the decentest men I ever knew--outside of business. And even there, I believe you'd keep your word, as long as the other fellow kept his." "Thank you," said he, bowing ironically. "This flattery makes me suspect you've come to get something." "On the contrary," said I. "I want to give something. I want to give you my coal mines." "I thought you'd see that our offer was fair," said he. "And I'm glad you have changed your mind about quarreling with your best friends. We can be useful to you, you to us. A break would be silly." "That's the way it looks to me," I assented. And I decided that my sharp talk to Roebuck had set them to estimating my value to them. "Sam Ellersly," Langdon presently remarked, "tells me he's campaigning hard for you at the Travelers. I hope you'll make it. We're rather a slow crowd; a few men like you might stir things up." I am always more than willing to give others credit for good sense and good motives. It was not vanity, but this disposition to credit others with sincerity and sense, that led me to believe him, both as to the Coal matter and as to the Travelers Club. "Thanks, Langdon," I said; and that he might look no further for my motive, I added: "I want to get into that club much as the winner of a race wants the medal that belongs to him. I've built myself up into a rich man, into one of the powers in finance, and I feel I'm entitled to recognition." "I don't quite follow you," he said. "I can't see that you'll be either better or worse for getting into the Travelers." "No more I shall," replied I. "No more is the winner of the race the better or the worse for having the medal. But he wants it." He had a queer expression. I suppose he regarded it as a joke, my attaching apparently so much importance to a thing he cared nothing about. "You've always had that sort of thing," said I, "and so you don't appreciate it. You're like a respectable woman. She can't imagine what all the fuss over women keeping a good reputation is about. Well, just let her lose it!" "Perhaps," said he. "And," I went on, "you can have the rule about the waiting list suspended, and can move me up and get me in at once." "We don't do things in quite such a hurry at the Travelers," said he, laughing. "However, we'll try to comply with your commands." His generous, cordial offer made me half ashamed of the plot I had underneath my submission about the coal mines--a plot to get into the coal combine in order to gather the means to destroy it, and perhaps reconstruct it with myself in control. I made up my mind that, if he continued to act squarely, I would alter those plans. "If you don't mind," Langdon was going on, "I'll make a suggestion--merely a suggestion. It might not be a bad idea for you to arrange to--to eliminate some of the--the popular features from your--brokerage business. There are several influential members of the Travelers who have a--a prejudice--" "I understand," I interposed, to spare him the necessity of saying things he thought I might regard as impertinent. "They look on me as a keeper of a high-class bucket-shop." "That's about the way they'd put it." "But the things they object to are, unfortunately, my 'strong hold,'" I explained. "You other big fellows gather in the big investors by simply announcing your projects in a dignified way. I haven't got the ear of that class of people. I have to send out my letters, have to advertise in all the cities and towns, have to catch the little fellows. You can afford to send out engraved invitations; I have to gather in my people with brass bands and megaphones. Don't forget that my people count in the totals bigger than yours. And what's my chief value to you? Why, when you want to unload, I furnish the crowd to unload on, the crowd that gives you and your big customers cash for your water and wind. I don't see my way to letting go of what I've got until I get hold of what I'm reaching for." All this with not a suspicion in my mind that he was at the same game that had caused Roebuck to "hint" that same proposal. What a "con man" high finance got when Mowbray Langdon became active down town! "That's true," he admitted, with a great air of frankness. "But the cry that you're not a financier, but a bucket-shop man, might be fatal at the Travelers. Of course, the sacrifice would be large for such a small object. Still, you might have to make it--if you really want to get in." "I'll think it over," said I. He thought I meant that I'd think over dropping my power--thought I was as big a snob as he and his friends of the Travelers, willing to make any sacrifice to be "in the push." But, while Matthew Blacklock has the streak of snob in him that's natural to all human beings and to most animals, he is not quite insane. No, the thing I intended to think over was how to stay in the "bucket-shop" business, but wash myself of its odium. Bucket-shop! What snobbery! Yet it's human nature, too. The wholesale merchant looks down on the retailer, the big retailer on the little; the burglar despises the pickpocket; the financier, the small promoter; the man who works with his brain, the man who works with his hands. A silly lot we are--silly to look down, sillier to feel badly when we're looked down upon. _ |
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