Part 19

Fosdick stiffened as if an electric shock had passed through him. For the first time he lowered his eyes. Behind that veil, his brain was swiftly restoring order in the wild confusion which this exploding bomb had made. There was no time to consider how or why Westervelt had failed him, or how Morris had been stupid enough to permit such a situation. He could only make choice between standing to the original programme and retreating behind a pretense of bad memory. "I can always plead bad memory," he reflected. "Perhaps the day can be saved--Morris would have sent me a warning if it couldn't be." So he swept the faces of the committeemen and the few spectators with a glance like an unscathed battery. "I am astounded, Mr. Morris," said he steadily. "In search of an explanation, I happen to remember that Mr. Armstrong was recently compelled to relieve Mr. Westervelt from duty because of his failing health--failing faculties." His eyes turned to Westervelt with an apologetic look in them--and Westervelt was, indeed, a pitiful figure, suggesting one broken and distraught. Fosdick saw in the faces of committeemen and spectators that he had scored heavily. "I repeat," said he boldly, "it is impossible that any such transactions should have occurred."

He was addressing Morris's back; the lawyer had turned to the table behind him and was examining the papers there with great deliberation. Not a sound in the room; all eyes on Fosdick, who was quietly waiting. "Ah!" exclaimed Morris, wheeling suddenly like a duelist at the end of the ten paces.

Fosdick startled at the explosive note in his servant's voice, then instantly recovered himself.

"This letter--is it in your handwriting?" Fosdick took the extended paper, put on his nose-glasses, and calmly fixed his eyes upon it. His hand began to shake, over his face a dreadful, unsteady pallor, as if the flame of life, sick and dying, were flaring and sinking in the last flickerings before the final going-out.

"Is it your writing?" repeated Morris, his voice like the bay of the hound before the cornered fox.

Fosdick's hand dropped to his lap. His eyes sought Morris's face and from them blazed such a blast of fury that Morris drew back a step.

Morris was daunted only for a second. He said evenly, "It is your handwriting, is it not?"

Fosdick looked round---at Westervelt, whose wrinkled hand had paused on his beard midway between its yellowed end and his shrunken, waxen face; at Armstrong, stolid, statuelike; at the reporters, with pencils suspended and eyes glistening. He drew a long breath and straightened himself again. "It is," he said.

Morris extended his hand for the letter. "Thank you," he said with grave courtesy, as Fosdick gave it to him. "I will read--'Dear Bill--Tell A to draw three times this week--the usual amounts and give them to S.' Bill--that is Mr. Westervelt, is it not? And does not A stand for Armstrong? And is not S, Sigourney, at that time the O.A.D.'s representative in legislative and general political matters?"

"Obviously," said Fosdick, promptly and easily. "I see my memory has played me a disgraceful trick. I am getting old." He smiled benevolently at Morris, then toward Westervelt. "I, too, am losing my faculties." Then, looking at Armstrong, and not changing from kindly smile and tone, "But my teeth are still good."

"You now remember these transactions?"

"I do not. But I frankly admit I must have been mistaken in denying that they ever occurred."

"I trust, Mr. Fosdick," said Morris, "your memory will not fail you to the extent that you will forget you are on oath."

The muscles in Fosdick's spare jaws could be seen working violently. Morris was going too far, entirely too far, in realism for the benefit of the public. "Is it part of your privilege as examiner," said he, with more than a suggestion of master-to-servant, "to insult an old man upon his failing mind?"

"As none of these transactions was of older date than three years ago," replied Morris coldly, "and as the note bore date of only six months ago--the week before Sigourney died--it was not unnatural that I should be anxious about your testimony. We do not wish false ideas, detrimental to the standing of so notable and reputable a man as yourself, to get abroad."

A titter ran around the room; Fosdick flushed and the storm veins in his temples swelled. He evidently thought his examination was over, for he took a better hold on his coat and was rising from the chair. "Just a few minutes more," said Morris. "In the course of Mr. Westervelt's testimony another matter was accidentally touched on. We feel that it should not go out to the public without your explanation."

Fosdick sank back. Until now, he had been assuming that by some accident his plan to destroy Armstrong had miscarried, that Morris and Westervelt, to save the day, had by some mischance been forced into a position where they were compelled to involve him. But now, it came to him that Morris's icily sarcastic tone was more, far more, arrogant and insolent than could possibly be necessary for appearances with the public. The lawyer's next words changed suspicion into certainty. "We found several other items, Mr. Fosdick, which we requested Mr. Westervelt to explain--payments of large sums to your representatives--so Mr. Westervelt testifies they are--and to your secretary, Mr. Waller, and to your son--Hugo Fosdick. He is one of the four vice-presidents of the O.A.D., is he not?"

"He is," said Fosdick, and his voice was that of a sick old man.

"It was on your O.K. that one hundred thousand dollars were paid out to furnish his apartment?"

"You mean the uptown branch of the O.A.D.?" said Fosdick wearily, his blue-black eyelids drooped.

"Oh! We will inquire into that, later. But--take last year, Mr. Fosdick. Take this omnibus lease, turning over to corporations you control properties in Boston and Chicago which cost the O.A.D. a sum, two per cent. interest on which would be double the rental they are getting from you. Mr. Westervelt informs us that he knows you get seventeen times the income from the properties that you pay the O.A.D. under the leases they executed to you--you practically making the leases, as an officer of the company, to yourself as another corporation. My question is somewhat involved, but I hope it is clear?"

"I understand you--in the main," replied Fosdick. "But you will have to excuse me from answering any more questions to-day. I did not come prepared. My connection with the O.A.D. has been philanthropic, rather than businesslike. Naturally, though perhaps wrongly, I have not kept myself informed of all details."

He frowned down the smiles, the beginnings of laughter. "But the record is sound!" he went on in a ringing voice. "The O.A.D. has cost me much time and thought. I have given more of both to it than I have to purely commercial enterprises. But moneymaking isn't everything--and I feel more than rewarded."

"We all know you, Mr. Fosdick," said Morris, with an air of satiric respect.

"I ask you to excuse me to-day," continued the old man, in his impressive manner. "I wish to prepare myself. To-morrow, or, at most, in two or three days, I shall _demand_ that you let me resume the stand. I have nothing to conceal. Errors of judgment I may have committed. But my record is clear." He raised his head and his eyes flashed. "It is a record with which I shall soon fearlessly face my God!"

Josiah Fosdick felt that he was himself again. His eyes looked out with the expression of a good man standing his ground unafraid. And he smiled contemptuously at the faint sarcasm in Morris's cold voice, saying, "That is quite satisfactory--most satisfactory."

The committee rose; the reporters surrounded Fosdick. He was courteous but firm in his refusal to say a word either as to the testimony he had given or as to that he would give. A dozen eager hands helped him on with his coat, and he marched away, sure that he was completely reestablished--in the public esteem; his self-esteem had not been shaken for an instant. The good man doubts himself; not the self-deceiving hypocrite. There was triumph in the long look he gave Morris--a look which Morris returned with the tranquil shine of a satisfied revenge, a revenge of payment with interest for slights, humiliations, insults which the old tyrant had put upon him. Long trafficking upon the cupidity and timidity of men gives the ruling class a false notion of the discernment of mankind and of their own mental superiority, as well as moral. It was natural that Fosdick should believe himself above censure, above criticism even. He returned to his office, like a king upon whom the vulgar have sought to put indignities. His teeth fairly ached for the moment when they could close upon the bones of these "insolent curs."

It was not until he set out for lunch that another view of the situation came in sight. As he was crossing Waller's office, he was halted by that faithful servant's expression, the more impressive because it was persisting in spite of hysterical efforts to conceal it and to look serenely worshipful as usual. "What is it, Waller?" he demanded.

"Nothing--nothing at all, sir," said Waller, as with a clumsy effort at pretended carelessness he tossed into the wastebasket a newspaper which Fosdick had surprised him at reading.

"Is that an afternoon paper?"

Waller stammered inarticulately.

Fosdick shot a quick, sharp glance at him. "Let me see it."

Waller took the paper out of the basket, as if he were handling something vile to sight, touch and smell. "These sensational sheets are very impudent and untruthful," he said, as he gave it to his master.

Fosdick spread the paper. He sprang back as if he had been struck. "God!" he cried. "God in heaven!"

In the committee room, after the first unpleasantness, all had been smooth, and there was not to his self-complacent security of the divine right monarch the remotest suggestion of impending disgrace. Now--from the front page of this newspaper, flying broadcast through the city, through the country, shrieked, "Fosdick Perjures Himself! The eminent financier and churchman caught on the witness stand. Denies knowledge of political bribery funds and is trapped! Evades accusations of gigantic swindles and thefts."

Disgrace, like all the other strong tragic words, conveys little of its real meaning to anyone until it becomes personal. Fosdick would have said beforehand that the publication of an attack on him in the low newspapers would not trouble him so much as the buzzing of a fly about his bald spot. He would have said that there was in him--in his conscience, in his confidence in the approval of his God--a tower of righteous strength that would stand against any attack, as unimperiled as a skyscraper by a summer breeze. But, with these huge, coarse voices of the all-pervading press shrieking and screaming "Perjurer. Swindler! Thief!" he shook as with the ague and turned gray and groaned. He sat down that he might not fall.

"God! God in heaven!" he muttered.

"It's infamous," cried Waller, tears in his eyes and anger in his voice. "No man, no matter how upright or high, is safe from those wretches."

Fosdick gripped his head between his hands. "It hurts, Waller--it _hurts_," he moaned.

"Nobody will pay the slightest attention to it," said Waller. "We all know you."

But Fosdick was not listening. He was wondering how he had been able to delude himself, how he had failed to realize the construction that could, and by the public would, be put upon his testimony. Many's the thing that sounds and looks and seems right and proper in privacy and before a few sympathetic witnesses, and that shudders in the full livery of shame when exposed before the world. Here was an instance--and he, the shrewd, the lifelong dealer in public opinion, had been tricked at his own trade as he had never been able to trick anyone else in half a century of chicane.

"I want to die, Waller," he said feebly. "Help me back into my office. I can't face anybody."

Into Armstrong's sitting room, toward ten that night, Fosdick came limping and shuffling. Even had Armstrong been a "good hater" he could hardly have withstood the pathos of that abject figure. Being too broadly intelligent for more than a spasm of that ugliest and most ignorant of passions, he felt as if the broken man before him were the wronged and he himself the wronger. "But this man made a shameful, treacherous, unprovoked attempt to disgrace me," he reminded himself, in the effort to keep a just point of view for prudence's sake. It was useless. That ghastly, sunken face, those frightened, dim old eyes, the trembling step-- If a long life of soul-prostitution had left Josiah Fosdick enough of natural human generosity to appreciate the meaning of Armstrong's expression, he might have been able to change his crushing defeat into what in the circumstances would have been the triumph of a drawn battle. But, except possibly the creative geniuses, men must measure their fellows throughout by themselves. Fosdick knew what he would do, were he in Armstrong's place. He clutched at Armstrong's hand with a cringing hypocrisy of deference that made Armstrong ashamed for him--and that warned him he dared not yet drop his guard.

"I've been trying to get you since three o'clock this afternoon," said Fosdick. "I had to see you before I went to bed." He sank into a chair and sat breathing heavily. He looked horribly old. "You don't believe I deliberately lied about that money, do you, Horace?"

"Is it necessary to discuss that, Mr. Fosdick? Hadn't we better get right at what you've come to see me about?"

"I've wired the governor. He don't answer. Morris refuses to see me. Westervelt--it's useless to see him--he has betrayed me--sold me out--he on whom I have showered a thousand benefits. I made that man, Horace, and he has rewarded me. That's human nature!"

Armstrong recalled that, when he was winning over Westervelt by convincing him of Fosdick's perfidy to him, Westervelt had made the same remark, had cried out that he loaned Fosdick the first five hundred dollars he ever possessed and had got him into the O.A.D. "It seems to me, Mr. Fosdick, that recriminations are idle," said he. "I assume you have something to ask or to propose. Am I right?"

"Horace, you and I are naturally friends. Why should we fight each other?"

"You have come to propose a peace?"

"I want us to continue to work together."

"That can be arranged," said Armstrong.

"I hoped so!" Fosdick exclaimed. "I hoped so!"

"But," proceeded Armstrong, seeing the drift of the thought behind that quick elation, "let us have no misunderstanding. You were permitted to leave the witness stand when you did to-day because I wished you to have one more chance to save yourself. That chance will be withdrawn if you begin to act on the notion that my forbearance is proof of my weakness."

"All I want is peace--peace and quiet," said Fosdick, with his new revived hope and craft better hid. But Armstrong saw that it was temperamentally impossible for Fosdick to believe any man would of his own accord drop the sword from the throat of a beaten foe.

"You can have peace," continued Armstrong, "peace with honor, provided you give a guarantee. You cannot expect me to trust you."

"What guarantee do you want?"

"Control of the O.A.D."

Fosdick's feebleness fell from him. He sprang erect, eyes flashing, fists shaking. "Never!" he shouted. "So help me God, never! It's mine. It's part of my children's patrimony. I'll keep it, in spite of hell!"

"You will lose it in any event," said Armstrong, as calm as Fosdick was tempestuous. "You have choice of turning it over to me or having it snatched from you by Atwater and Trafford and Langdon."

"Atwater!" exclaimed Fosdick.

"When I found you had arranged to destroy me," explained Armstrong, "I formed a counter-arrangement, as I wasn't strong enough to fight you alone."

"You sold me out!"

Armstrong winced. Fosdick's phrase was unjust, but since his talk with Neva he was critical and sensitive in the matter of self-respect; and, while his campaign of self-defense, of "fighting the devil with fire," still seemed necessary and legitimate, it also seemed lacking in courage. If Fosdick had crept and crawled up on him, had he not also crawled and crept up on Fosdick? "I defended myself in the only way you left me," replied Armstrong. "I formed an alliance with the one man who could successfully attack you."

"So, it is Atwater who has bought the governor--and Morris--yes, and that ingrate, Westervelt!"

"However that may be," replied Armstrong, "you will be destroyed and Atwater will take the O.A.D. unless you meet my terms." He was flushing deep red before Fosdick's look of recognition of a brother in chicane.

He knew Atwater was simply using him, would destroy him or reduce him to dependence, as soon as Fosdick was stripped and ruined. He felt he was as fully justified in eluding the tiger by strategy as he had been in procuring the tiger to defeat and destroy the lion that had been about to devour him. Still, the business was not one a man would preen himself upon in a company of honest men and women. And Fosdick's look, which said, "This man, having sold me out, is now about to sell out his allies," hit home and hit hard.

But he must carry his project through, or fall victim to Atwater; he must not let this melting mood which Neva had brought about enfeeble his judgment and disarm his courage. "If you refuse my offer," he said to Fosdick, "the investigation will go on, and Atwater will get the O.A.D. and take from you every shred of your character and much of your fortune--perhaps all. If you accept my offer, the investigation will stop and you will retire from the O.A.D. peaceably and without having to face proceedings to compel you to make restitution."

"How do I know you can keep your bargain?"

"I have the governor and Morris with me," replied Armstrong, frankly exposing his whole hand. "They, no more than myself, wish to become the puppets of the Atwater-Langdon-Trafford crowd."

Fosdick reflected. Now that he knew the precise situation, he felt less feeble. Before Armstrong explained, he had been like a man fighting in a pitch dark room against foes he could not even number. Now, the light was on; he knew just how many, just who they were; and, appalling though the discovery was, it was not so appalling as that struggle in the pitch dark. "You evidently think I'm powerless," he said at last. "But if you press me too far, you will see that I am not. For instance, you _need_ me. You must have me or fall into Atwater's clutches. You see, I am far from powerless."

"But you forget," replied Armstrong, "you are heavily handicapped by your reputation. A man who has to fight for his good name is like a soldier in battle with a baby on his arm and a woman clinging to his neck. How can you fight without losing your reputation? The committee is against you. At Monday's session, if you let matters take their course, all that Westervelt's books show of your profits from the O.A.D. will be exposed--even the way you made it pay for the carpets on your floors, for the sheets on your beds, for towels and soap and matches."

Armstrong would not have believed there was in Fosdick's whole body so much red blood as showed in his face. "It's a custom that's grown up," he muttered shufflingly. "They all do it--in every big company, more or less, directly or indirectly."

"True enough," said Armstrong. "But you'll be the only one on trial. If you accept my offer, you'll be let alone. Cancel the worst of those leases, settle the ugliest accounts, all at comparatively trifling cost, and the public will soon forget."

"And what guarantee do you give that the agreement would be carried out?"

"My pledge--that's all," replied Armstrong--and again he flushed. He had avoided specifically giving his word to the Atwater crowd when he formed alliance with them; still, his "my pledge" had a hollow, jeering echo. "It's the only possible guarantee in the circumstances--and, as you are solely responsible for the circumstances, Mr. Fosdick, I do not see how you can complain."

Fosdick again reflected; the awful, deathly pallor, the deep scams, the palsylike trembling came back. After a long wait, with Armstrong avoiding the sight of him, he quavered, "Horace, I'll agree to anything except giving up the O.A.D." There he broke down and wept. "You don't know what that institution means to me. It's my child. It's my heart. It's my reason for being alive."

"Yes, it has been a source of enormous profit to you, Mr. Fosdick," said Armstrong calmly, for his own strengthening more than to get Fosdick back to facts. "I appreciate how hard it must be to give up such a source of easy wealth. But it must be done."

"You don't understand," mourned the old man. "You have no sentiment. You do not _feel_ those hundreds of thousands, those millions of helpless people--how they look up to me, how they pray for me and are full of gratitude to me. Do you think I could coldly turn over their interests to strangers? Why, who knows what might not be done with those sacred trust funds?"

"If you persist in letting Atwater get control," said Armstrong, "I fear those sacred trust funds will soon be larger by about two thirds of what you regard as your private fortune. I do not like to say these things; you compel me, Mr. Fosdick. It is waste of time and breath to cant to me."

If Fosdick had had anything less at stake than his fortune, he would have broken then and there with Armstrong. As it was, his prudence could not smother down the geyser of fury that boiled and spouted up from his vanity. "I must be mad," he cried, "to imagine that such matters of conscience would make an impression on you."

Armstrong laughed slightly. "When a man is in the jungle, is fighting with wild beasts, he has to put forward the beast in him. You tried to ruin me--a more infamous, causeless attack never was made on a man. You have failed; you are in the pit you dug for me. I am letting you off lightly." And now Armstrong's blue eyes had the green gray of steel and flashed with that furious temper which he had been compelled to learn to rule because, once beyond control, it would have been a free force of sheer destruction. "If you had not been interceded for, you would now be a pariah, with no wealth to buy you the semblance of respect. Don't try me too far! I do not love you. I have the normal instinct about reptiles."

At that very moment Fosdick was looking the reptile. "Yes, I did try to tear you down," he hissed. "And I'll tell you why. Because I saw your ambition--saw you would never rest until you had robbed me and mine of that which you coveted. Was I not right?"

Armstrong could not deny it. He had never definitely formed such an ambition; but he realized, as Fosdick was accusing him, that had he been permitted to go peacefully on as president, the day would have come when he would have reached out for real power.

Fosdick went on, with more repression and dignity, but no less energy of feeling, "I cannot but believe that God in His justice will yet hurl you to ruin. You are robbing me, but as sure as there is a God, Horace Armstrong, He will bring you low!"