Book: The Fighting Chance

R >> Robert W. Chambers >> The Fighting Chance




Now he was attempting it again, with more sincerity, energy, and
determination than he ever before had been forced to display. Even in
his most profane violence the rage and panic were only partly real. He
was, it is true, genuinely scared, and horribly shaken physically, but
he had counted on violence, and he stimulated his own emotions and made
them serve him, knowing all the while that in the reaction his ends
would be accomplished, as usual. This policy of alternately frightening,
dragooning, and supplicating Leila had carried him so far; and though it
was true that this was a more serious situation than he had ever yet
faced, he was convinced that his wife would pull him out somehow; and
how that was to be accomplished he did not very much care, as long as he
was pulled out safely.

“What this household requires,” he said, “is economy. He spread his
legs, denting the Aubusson carpet with his boot-heels, and glanced
askance at his wife. “Economy,” he repeated, furtively wetting his lips
with a heavily coated tongue; “that’s the true solution; economical
administration in domestic matters. Retrenchment, Leila! retrenchment!
Fewer folderols. I’ve a notion to give up that farm, and stop trying to
breed those damfool sheep. They cost a thousand apiece, and do you know
what I got for those six I sent to Westbury? Just twelve hundred dollars
from Fleetwood--the bargaining shopkeeper! Twelve hundred! Think of
that! And along comes Granby and sells a single ram for six thousand
plunks!”

Leila’s head was lowered. He could not see her expression, but he had
always been confident of his ability to talk himself out of trouble, so
he rambled on in pretence of camaraderie, currying favour, as he
believed, ingratiating himself with the coarse bluntness that served him
among some men, even among some women.

“We’ll fix it somehow,” he said reassuringly; “don’t you worry, Leila.
I’ve confidence in you, little girl! You’ve got me out of sticky messes
before, eh? Well, we’ve weathered a few, haven’t we?”

Even the horrible parody on wedded loyalty left her silent, unmoved,
dark eyes brooding; and he began to grow a little restless and anxious
as his jocularity increased without a movement in either response or
aversion from his wife.

“You needn’t be scared, if I’m not,” he said reproachfully. “The house
is worth two hundred and fifty thousand, and there’s only fifty on it
now. If that fat, Dutch skinflint, Plank, shows his tusks, we can clap
on another fifty.” And as she made no sound or movement in reply: “As
far as Plank goes, haven’t I done enough for him to square it? What have
we ever got out of him, except a thousand or two now and then when the
cards went against me? If I took it, it was practically what he owes me.
And if he thinks it’s too much--look here, Leila! I’ve a trick up my
sleeve. I can make good any time I wish to. I’m in a position to marry
that man to the girl he’s mad about--stark, raving mad.”

Mrs. Mortimer slowly raised her head and looked at her husband.

“Leroy, are you mad?”

“I! Not much!” he exclaimed gleefully. “I can make him the husband of
the most-run-after girl in New York--if I want to. And at the same time I
can puncture the most arrogant, the most cold-blooded, selfish, purse-
proud, inflated nincompoop that ever sat at the head of a director’s
table. O-ho! Now you’re staring, Leila. I can do it; I can make good.
What are you worrying about? Why, I’ve got a hundred ways to square that
cheque, and each separate way is a winner.”

He rose, shook out the creases in his trousers, and adjusted the squat,
gold fob which ornamented his protruding waistcoat.

“So you’ll fix it, won’t you, Leila?” he said, apparently oblivious that
he had expressed himself as able to adjust the matter in one hundred
equally edifying and satisfactory manners.

She did not answer. He lingered a moment at the door, looking back with
an ingratiating leer; but she paid him no attention, and he took himself
off, confident that her sulkiness could not result in anything
unpleasant to anybody except herself.

Nor did it, as far as he could see. The days brought no noticeable
change in his wife’s demeanour toward him. Plank, when he met him, was
civil enough, though it did occur to Mortimer that he saw very little of
Plank in these days.

“Ungrateful beggar!” he thought bitterly; “he’s toadying to Belwether
now. I can’t do anything more for him, so I don’t interest him.”

And for a while he wore either a truculent, aggrieved air in Plank’s
presence, or the meeker demeanour of a martyr, sentimentally
misunderstood, but patient under the affliction.

Then there came a time when he needed money. During the few days he
spent circling tentatively and apprehensively around his wife he learned
enough to know that there was nothing to be had from her at present. No
doubt the money she raised to placate Plank--if she had placated him in
that fashion--was a strain on her resources, whatever those resources
were.

One thing was certain: Plank had not remained very long in ignorance of
the cheque drawn against his balance, if indeed, as Mortimer feared, the
bank itself had not communicated with Plank as soon as the cheque was
presented for payment. Therefore Plank must have been placated by Leila;
how, Mortimer was satisfied not to know.

“Some of these days,” he said to himself, “I’ll catch her tripping, and
then there’ll be a decent division of property, or--there’ll be a
divorce.” But, as usual, Mortimer found such practices more attractive
in theory than in execution, and he was really quite contented to go on
as things were going, if somebody would see that he had some money
occasionally.

One of these occasions when he needed it was approaching. He had made a
“killing” at Desmond’s, and had used the money to stop up the more
threatening gaps in the tottering financial fabric known as his
“personal accounts.” The fabric would hold for a while, but meantime he
needed money to go on with. And Leila evidently had none. He tried
everybody except Plank. He had scarcely the impudence to go to Plank
just yet; but when, completing the vicious circle, he found his
borrowing capacity exhausted, and himself once more face to face with
the only hope, Plank, he sat down to consider seriously the possibility
of the matter.

Of course Plank owed him more than he could ever pay--the ungrateful
parvenu!--but what Plank had thought of that cheque transaction he had
never been able to discover.

Somehow or other he must put Plank under fresh obligations; and that
might have been possible had not Leila invaded the ground, leaving
nothing, now that Plank was secure in club life.

Of course the first thing that presented itself to Mortimer’s
consideration was the engineering of Plank’s matrimonial ambitions.
Clearly the man had not changed. He was always at Sylvia’s heels; he was
seen with her in public; he went to the Belwether house a great deal. No
possible doubt but that he was as infatuated as ever. And Quarrier was
going to marry her next November--that is, if he, Mortimer, chose to keep
silent about a certain midnight episode at Shotover.

It was his inclination, except in theory, to keep silent, partly because
of his native inertia and unwillingness to go to the physical and
intellectual exertion of being a rascal, partly because he didn’t really
want to be a rascal of that sort.

Like a man with premonitions of toothache, who walks down to the
dentist’s just to see what the number of the house looks like, and then
walks around the block to think it over, so Mortimer, suffering from
lack of money, walked round and round the central idea, unable to bring
himself to the point.

Several times he called up Quarrier on the ’phone and made appointments
to lunch with him; but these meetings never resulted in anything except
luncheons which Mortimer paid for, and matters were becoming desperate.

So one day, after having lunched too freely, he sat down and wrote Plank
the following note:

My Dear Beverly: You will remember that I once promised you my aid in
securing what, to you, is the dearest object of your existence. I have
thought, I have pondered, I have given the matter deep and, I may add
without irreverence, prayerful consideration, knowing that the life’s
happiness of my closest friend depended on my judgment and wisdom and
intelligence to secure for him the opportunity to crown his life’s work
by the acquisition of the brightest jewel in the diadem of old
Manhattan.

“By George! that’s wickedly good, though!” chuckled Mortimer, refreshing
himself with his old stand-by, an apple, quartered, and soaked in very
old port. So he sopped his apple and swallowed it, and picked up his pen
again, chary of overdoing it.

All I say to you is, be ready! The time is close at hand when you may
boldly make your avowal. But be ready! All depends upon the
psychological moment. An instant too soon, an instant too late, and you
are lost. And she is lost forever. Remember! Be faithful; trust in me,
and wait. And the instant I say, “Speak!” pour out your soul, my dear
friend, and be certain you are not pouring it out in vain.
L. M.

Writing about “pouring out” made him thirsty, so he fortified himself
several times, and then, sealing the letter, went out to a letter-box
and stood looking at it.

“If I mail it I’m in for it,” he muttered. After a while he put the
letter in his pocket and walked on.

“It really doesn’t commit me to anything,” he reflected at last, halting
before another letter-box. And as he stood there, hesitating, he glanced
up and saw Quarrier entering the Lenox Club. The next moment he flung up
the metal box lid, dropped in his letter, and followed Quarrier into the
club.

Then events tumbled forward almost without a push from him. Quarrier was
alone in a window corner, drinking vichy and milk and glancing over the
afternoon papers. He saw Mortimer, and invited him to join him; and
Mortimer, being thirsty, took champagne.

“I’ve been trying a new coach,” said Quarrier, in his colourless and
rather agreeable voice; and he went on leisurely explaining the points
of the new mail-coach which had been built in Paris after plans of his
own, while Mortimer gulped glass after glass of chilled wine, which
seemed only to make him thirstier. Meantime he listened, really
interested, except that his fleshy head was too full of alcohol and his
own project to contain additional statistics concerning coaching.
Besides, Quarrier, who had never been over-cordial to him, was more so
now--enough for Mortimer to venture on a few tentative suggestions of a
financial nature; and though, as usual, Quarrier was not responsive, he
did not, as usual, get up and go away.

A vague hope stirred Mortimer that it might not be beyond his persuasive
tongue to make this chilly, reticent young man into a friend some day--a
helpful friend. For Mortimer all his life had trusted to his tongue; and
though poorly enough repaid, the few lingual victories remained in his
memory, along with an inexhaustible vanity and hope; while his countless
defeats and the many occasions on which his tongue had played him false
were all forgotten. Besides, he had been drinking more heavily all day
than was his custom.

So Quarrier talked, sparingly, about his new coach, about Billy
Fleetwood’s renowned string of hunters, about Ashley Spencer’s new
stable and his chances at Saratoga with Roy-a-neh, for which he had paid
a fabulous sum--the sum and the story probably equally fabulous.

Mortimer’s head was swimming with ideas; he was also talking a great
deal, much more than he had intended; he was saying things he had not
exactly intended to say, either, in just that way. He realised it, but
he went on, unable to stop his own tongue, the noise of which
intoxicated him.

Once or twice he thought Quarrier looked at him rather strangely; but he
would show Quarrier that he was nobody’s fool; he’d show Quarrier that
he was a friend, a good, staunch friend; and that Quarrier had long,
long undervalued him. Waves of sentiment spread through and through him;
his affection for Quarrier dampened his eyes; and still he blabbed on
and on, gazing with brimming eyes upon Quarrier, who sat back silent and
attentive as Mortimer circled and blundered nearer and nearer to the
crucial point of his destination.

Midway in one of his linguistic ellipses Quarrier leaned forward and
caught his arm in a grip of steel. Another man had entered the room.
Mortimer, made partly conscious by the pain of Quarrier’s vise-like
grip, was sober enough to recognise the impropriety of his continuing
aloud the veiled story he had been constructing with what he supposed to
be a cunning as matchless as it was impenetrable.

Later he found himself upstairs in a private card-room, facing Quarrier
across a table, and still talking and quenching his increasing thirst.
He knew now what he was telling Quarrier; he was unveiling the parable;
he was stripping metaphor from a carefully precise story. He used
Siward’s name presently; presently he used Sylvia’s name. A moment
later--or was it an hour?--Quarrier stopped him, coldly, without a trace
of passion, demanding corroborative detail. And Mortimer gave it,
wagging his head and one fat forefinger as emphasis.

“You saw that?” repeated Quarrier, deadly white of a sudden.

“Yes; an’ I--”

“At three in the morning?”

“Yes; an’ I want--”

“You saw him enter her room?”

“Yes; an’ I wan’ tersay thish to you, because I’m your fr’en’. Don’ wan’
anny fr’en’s mine get fooled on women! See? Thash how I feel. I respec’
the sect! See! Women, lovely women! See? Respec’ sect! Gimme y’han’,
buzzer--er--brother Quar’er! Your m’ fr’en’; I’m your fr’en’. I know how
it is. Gotter wife m’own. Rotten one. Stingy! Takes money outter m’
pockets. Dam ’stravagant. Ruin me! … Say, old boy, what about dividend
due ’morrow on Orange County Eclectic--mean Erlextic--no!--mean ’Letric!
Damn!--Wasser masser tongue?”

Opening his fond and foggy eyes, and finding himself alone in the card-
room, he began to cry; and a little later, attempting to push the
electric button, he fell over a lounge and lay there, his shirt-front
soiled with wine, one fat leg trailing to the floor; not the ideal
position for slumber, perhaps, but what difference do attitudes and
postures and poses make when a gentleman, in the sacred seclusion of his
own club, is wooing the drowsy goddess with blasts of votive music
through his empurpled nose?

In the meantime, however, he was due to dine at the Belwether house; and
when eight o’clock approached, and he had not returned to dress, Leila
called up Sylvia Landis on the telephone:

“My dear, Leroy hasn’t returned, and I suppose he’s forgotten about the
Bridge. I can bring Mr. Plank, if you like.”

“Very well,” said Sylvia, adding, “if Mr. Plank is there, may I speak to
him a moment?”

So Leila rose, setting the receiver on the desk, and Plank came in from
the library and settled himself heavily in the chair:

“Did you wish to speak to me, Miss Landis?”

“Is that you, Mr. Plank? Yes; will you dine with us at eight? Bridge
afterward, if you don’t mind.”

“Thank you.”

“And, Mr. Plank, you had a note from me this morning?”

“Yes.”

“Please disregard it.”

“If you wish.”

“I do. It is not worth while.” And as Plank made no comment, “I have no
further interest in the matter. Do you understand?”

“No,” said Plank doggedly.

“I have nothing more to say. I am sorry. We dine at eight,” concluded
Sylvia hurriedly.

Plank hung up the receiver and sat eyeing it for a while in silence.
Then his jaw began to harden and his under lip protruded, and he folded
his great hands, resting them in front of him on the edge of the desk,
brooding there, with eyes narrowing like a sleepy giant at prayer.

When Leila entered, in her evening wraps, she found him there, so
immersed in reverie that he failed to hear her; and she stood a moment
at the doorway, smiling to herself, thinking how pleasant it was to come
down ready for the evening and find him there, as though he belonged
where he sat, and was part of the familiar environment.

Recently she had grown younger in a smooth-skinned, full-lipped way--so
much younger that it was spoken of. Something girlish in figure, in
spontaneity, in the hesitation of her smile, in the lack of that hard,
brilliant confidence which once characterised her, had developed; as
though she were beginning her début again, reverting to a softness and
charm prematurely checked. Truly, her youth’s discoloured blossom,
forced by the pale phantom of false spring, was refolding to a bud once
more; and the harsher tints of the inclement years were fading.

“Beverly,” she said, “I am ready.”

Plank stood up, dazed from his reverie, and walked toward her. His white
tie had become disarranged; she raised her hands, halting him, and
pulled it into shape for him, consciously innocent of the intimacy.

“Thank you,” he said. “Do you know how pretty you are this evening?”

“Yes; I was very happy at my mirror. Do you know, the withered years
seem to be dropping from me like leaves from an autumn sapling. And I
feel young enough to say so poetically. … Did Sylvia try to flirt with
you over the wire?”

“Yes, as usual,” he said drily, descending the stairs beside her.

“And really you don’t love her any more?” she queried.

“Scarcely.” His voice was low and rather disagreeable, and she looked
up.

“I wish I knew what you and Sylvia find to talk about so frequently, if
you’re not in love.”

But he made no answer; and they drove away to the Belwether house, a
rather wide, old-style mansion of brown stone, with a stoop dividing its
ugly façade, and a series of unnecessary glass doors blockading the
vestibule.

A drawing-room and a reception-room flanked the marble-tiled hall;
behind these the dining-room ran the width of the rear. It was a typical
gentlefolk’s house of the worst period of Manhattan, and Major Belwether
belonged in it as fittingly as a melodeon belongs in a west-side flat.
The hall-way was made for such a man as he to patter through; the
velvet-covered stairs were as peculiarly fitted for him as a runway is
for a rabbit; the suave pink-and-white drawing-room, the discreet, gray
reception-room, the soft, fat rugs, the intricacies of banisters and
alcoves and curtained cubby-holes--all reflected his personality, all
corroborated the ensemble. It was his habitat, his distinctly, from the
pronounced but meaningless intricacy of the architecture to the studied
but unconvincing tints, like a man who suddenly starts to speak, but
checks himself, realising he has nothing in particular to say.

There were half a dozen people there lounging informally between the
living-room on the second floor and Sylvia’s apartments in the rear--the
residue from a luncheon and Bridge party given that afternoon by Sylvia
to a score or so of card-mad women. A few of these she had asked to
remain for an informal dinner, and a desperate game later--the sort of
people she knew well enough to lose to heavily or win from without
remorse--Grace Ferrall, Marion Page, Agatha Caithness. Trusting to the
telephone that morning, she had secured the Mortimers and Quarrier,
failing three men; and now the party, with Plank as Mortimer’s
substitute, was complete, all thorough gamesters--sex mattering nothing
in the preparation for such a séance.

In Sylvia’s boudoir Grace Ferrall and Agatha Caithness sat before the
fire; Sylvia, at the mirror of her dresser, was correcting the pallor
incident to the unbroken dissipation of a brilliant season; Marion, with
her inevitable cigarette, wandered between Sylvia’s quarters and the
library, where Quarrier and Major Belwether were sitting in low-voiced
confab.

Leila, greeted gaily from the boudoir, went in. Plank entered the
library, was mauled effusively by the major, returned Quarrier’s firm
hand shake, and sat down with an inquiring smile.

“Oh, yes, we’re out for blood to-night,” tittered Major Belwether,
grasping Quarrier’s arm humourously and shaking it to emphasise his
words--a habit that Quarrier thoroughly disliked. “Sylvia had a lot of
women here playing for the season score, so I suggested she keep the
pick of them for dinner, and call in a few choice ones to make a night
of it.”

“It’s agreeable to me,” said Plank, still looking at Quarrier with the
same inquiring expression, which that gentleman presently chose to
understand.

“I haven’t had a chance to look into that matter,” he said carelessly.
“Some day, when you have time to go over it--”

“I have time now,” said Plank; “there’s nothing to go over; there’s no
reason for any secrecy. All I wrote you was that I proposed to control
the stock of Amalgamated Electric and that I wished your advice in the
matter.”

“I could not give you any advice off-hand on such an extraordinary
suggestion,” returned Quarrier coldly. “If you know where the stock is,
you’ll understand.”

“Do you mean what it is quoted at, or who owns it?” interrupted Plank.

“Who owns it. Everybody knows where it has dropped to, I suppose. Most
people know, too, where it is held.”

“Yes; I do.”

“And who is manipulating it,” added Quarrier indifferently.

“Do you mean Harrington’s people?”

“I don’t mean anybody in particular, Mr. Plank.”

“Oh!” said Plank, staring, “I was sure you couldn’t have meant
Harrington; because,” he went on deliberately, “there are other theories
floating about that mysterious pool, one of which I’ve proved.”

Quarrier looked at him out of his velvety-lidded eyes:

“What have you proved?”

“I’ll tell you, if you’ll appoint an interview.”

“I’ll come too,” began Belwether, who had been listening, loose-mouthed
and intent; “we’re all in it--Howard, Kemp Ferrall, and I--”

“And Stephen Siward,” observed Plank, so quietly that Quarrier never
even raised his eyes to read the stolid face opposite.

Presently he said: “Do you know anybody who can deliver you any
considerable block of Amalgamated Electric at the market figures?”

“I could deliver you several blocks, if you care to bid,” said Plank
bluntly.

Belwether grew red, then pale. Quarrier stiffened in his chair, but his
eyes were only sceptical. Plank’s under lip had begun to protrude again;
he swung his massive head, looking from Belwether back to Quarrier:

“Pool or no pool,” he continued, “you Amalgamated people will want to
see the stock climb back into the branches from which somebody shook it
out; and I propose to put it there. That is all I had meant to say to
you, Mr. Quarrier. I’m not averse to saying it here to you, and I do.
There’s no secrecy about it. Figure out for yourself how much stock I
control, and who let it go. Settle your family questions and put your
house in order; then invite me to call, and I’ll do it. And I have an
idea that we are going to stand on our own legs again, and recover our
self-respect and our fighting capacity; and I rather think we’ll stop
this hold-up business, and that our Inter-County friend will let go the
sand-bag and pocket the jimmy, and talk business across the line-fence.”

Quarrier’s characteristic pallor was no index to his feelings, nor was
his icy reticence. All hell might be boiling below.

When anybody gave Quarrier a letter to read he took a long time reading
it; but if he was slow he was also minute; he went over every word again
and again, studying, absorbing each letter, each period, the
conformation of every word. And when he ended he had in his brain a
photograph of the letter which he would never forget.

And now, slowly, minutely, methodically, he was going over and over
Plank’s words, and his manner of saying them, and their surface import,
and the hidden one, if any.

If Plank had spoken the truth--and there was no reason to doubt it--Plank
had quietly acquired a controlling interest in Amalgamated Electric.
That meant treachery in somebody. Who? Probably Siward, perhaps
Belwether. He would not look at the latter just yet; not for a minute or
two. There was time enough to see through that withered, pink-and-white
old fraud. But why had Plank done this? And why did Plank suspect him of
any desire to wreck his own property? He did suspect him, that was
certain.

After a silence, he spoke quietly and without emotion:

“Everybody concerned will be glad to see Amalgamated Electric declaring
dividends. This is a shock to us,” he glanced impassively at the
shrunken major, “but a pleasant shock. I think it well to arrange a
meeting as soon as possible.”

“To-morrow,” said Plank, with a manner of closing discussion. And in his
brusque ending of the matter Quarrier detected the ringing undertone of
an authority he never had and never would endure; and though his pale,
composed features betrayed not the subtlest shade of emotion, he was
aware that a new element had come into his life--a new force was growing
out of nothing to confront him, an unfamiliar shape loomed vaguely
ahead, throwing its huge distorted shadow across his path. He sensed it
with the instinct of kind for kind, not because Plank’s millions meant
anything to him as a force; not because this lumbering, red-faced
meddler had blundered into a family affair where confidence consisted in
joining hands lest a pocket be inadvertently picked; not because Plank
had knocked at the door, expecting treachery to open, and had found it,
but because of the awful simplicity of the man and his methods.

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