Chapter 14

But Hildreth did not pause at generalities. Two days after the Universal's triumph in the Belmount field, the _Argus_ began to "hit it up" boldly toward the capitol, and two things came of it. The first was an attempt by some party or parties unknown to buy up a controlling interest in the _Argus_. The second was the waylaying of David Kent in the lobby of the Clarendon Hotel by no less a personage than the Honorable Melton Meigs, attorney-general of the State.

In his first conversation with Ormsby, Kent had spoken of the three leading spirits of the junto as from personal knowledge; but of the three, Bucks, Hendricks and Meigs, the attorney-general was the least known to him. Prior to his nomination on the State ticket Meigs had been best known as the most astute criminal lawyer in the State, his astuteness lying not so much in his ability as a pleader as in a certain oratorical gift by which he was able to convince not only a jury but the public of the entire innocence of his client.

He was a small man physically, with womanish hands and feet, and a beardless face of that prematurely aged cast which is oftenest seen in dwarfs and precocious infants; and his distinguishing characteristic, the one which stuck longest in the mind of a chance acquaintance or a casual observer, was a smile of the congealed sort which served to mask whatever emotion there might be behind it.

Kent had seen little of Meigs since the latter had turned him down in the _quo warranto_ matter; and his guard went up quickly when the attorney-general accosted him in the lobby of the hotel and asked for a private interview.

"I am very much occupied just now, Mr. Meigs," he demurred; "but if it is a matter of importance----"

"It is; a matter of the greatest importance," was the smooth-toned reply. "I am sure you will not regret it if you will give me a few moments, Mr. Kent."

Kent decided quickly. Being forewarned, there was nothing to fear.

"We will go up to my rooms, if you please," he said, leading the way to the elevator; and no other word was spoken until they were behind closed doors on the fourth floor.

"A prefatory remark may make my business with you seem a little less singular, Mr. Kent," Meigs began, when Kent had passed his cigar-case and the attorney-general had apologized for a weak digestive tract. "On wholly divergent lines and from wholly different motives we are both working toward the same end, I believe, and it has occurred to me that we might be of some assistance to each other."

Kent's rejoinder was a mute signal to the effect that he was attending.

"Some little time ago you came to me as the legal representative of the stock-holders of the Trans-Western Railway Company, and I did not find it possible at that time to meet your wishes in the matter of a _quo warranto_ information questioning Judge MacFarlane's election and status. You will admit, I presume, that your demand was a little peremptory?"

"I admit nothing," said Kent, curtly. "But for the sake of expediting present matters----"

"Precisely," was the smiling rejoinder. "You will note that I said 'at that time.' Later developments--more especially this charge made openly by the public press of juggling with foreign corporations--have led me to believe that as the public prosecutor I may have duties which transcend all other considerations--of loyalty to a party standard--of----"

Kent took his turn at interrupting.

"Mr. Meigs, there is nothing to be gained by indirection. May I ask you to come to the point?"

"Briefly, then: the course pursued by Senator Duvall in the Belmount affair leaves an unproved charge against others; a charge which I am determined to sift to the bottom--you see, I am speaking quite frankly. That charge involves the reputation of men high in authority; but I shall be strong to do my sworn duty, Mr. Kent; I ask you to believe that."

Kent nodded and waved him on.

"You will readily understand the delicacy of the task, and how, in the nature of things, I am handicapped and hedged up on every side. Evidence--of a kind to enable me to assail a popular idol--is exceedingly difficult to procure."

"It is," said Kent, grimly.

"Exactly. But in revolving the matter in my own mind, I thought of you. You are known at the capitol, Mr. Kent, and I may say throughout the State, as the uncompromising antagonist of the State administration. I have asked myself this: Is it possible that a cool-headed, resolute attorney like Mr. David Kent would move so far and so determinedly in this matter of antagonism without substantially paving the ground under his feet with evidence as he went along?"

Kent admitted that it was possible, but highly improbable.

"So I decided," was the smile-tempered rejoinder. "In that case it only remains for me to remind you of your public duty, Mr. Kent; to ask you in the name of justice and of the people of the State, to place your information in the hands of the public prosecutor."

Kent's face betrayed nothing more than his appreciation of the confidence reposed in him by the man whose high sense of official honor was making him turn traitor to the party leader who had dragged him through a successful election.

"I have what evidence I need, Mr. Meigs," he declared. "But if I make no secret of this, neither do I conceal the fact that the motive _pro bono publico_ has had little to do with its accumulating. I want justice first for what might be called a purely private end, and I mean to have it."

"Pre-cisely," smiled the attorney-general. "And now we are beginning to see our way a little clearer. It is not too late for us to move in the _quo warranto_ proceedings. If you will call at my office I shall be glad to reopen the matter with you."

"And the price?" said Kent, shortly.

"Oh, my dear sir! must we put it upon the ground of a _quid pro quo_? Rather let us say that we shall help each other. You are in a position to assist me very materially: I may be in a position to serve your turn. Come to my office to-morrow morning prepared to do your duty as an honest, loyal citizen, and you will find me quite willing to meet you half-way."

Kent rose and opened his watch.

"Mr. Meigs, I have given you your opportunity, and you have seemed to give me mine," he said coolly. "Will you pardon me if I say that I can paddle my own canoe--if I ask you to assure his Excellency that one more device of his to escape punishment has been tried and found wanting?"

For a flitting moment the cast-iron smile faded from the impassive face of the attorney-general and an unrelenting devil came to peer out of the colorless eyes. Then Meigs rose cat-like and laid his hand on the door-knob.

"Do I understand that you refuse to move in a matter which should be the first duty of a good citizen, Mr. Kent?" he asked purringly.

"I certainly do refuse to fall into any such clumsy trap as you have been trying to bait for me, Mr. Meigs," said David Kent, dropping back into his former curtness.

The door opened slowly under the impulse of the slender womanish hand.

"You have a task of some magnitude before you, Mr. Kent. You can scarcely hope to accomplish it alone."

"Meaning that you would like to know if the fight will go on if I should chance to meet another drunken cow-boy with a better aim? It will."

The door closed softly behind the retreating figure of the attorney-general, and Kent released the spring of the night-latch. Then he went to the dropped portière at the farther end of the room, drew it aside and looked in on a man who was writing at a table pushed out between the windows.

"You heard him, Loring?" he asked.

The ex-manager nodded.

"They are hard pressed," he said. Then, looking up quickly: "You could name your price if you wanted to close out the stock of goods in hand, David."

"I shall name it when the time comes. Are you ready to go over to the _Argus_ office with me? I want to have a three-cornered talk with Hildreth."

"In a minute. I'll join you in the lobby if you don't want to wait."

* * * * *

It was in the afternoon of the same day that Kent found a note in his key-box at the Clarendon asking him to call up 124 Tejon Avenue by telephone. He did it at once, and Penelope answered. The key-box note had been placed at Elinor's request, and she, Miss Penelope, could not say what was wanted; neither could she say definitely when her sister would be in. Elinor had gone out an hour earlier with Mr. Ormsby and Miss Van Brock in Mr. Ormsby's motor-car. When was he, David Kent, coming up? Did he know they were talking of spending the remainder of the summer at Breezeland Inn? And where was Mr. Loring all this time?

Kent made fitting answers to all these queries, hung up the ear-piece and went away moodily reflective. He was due at a meeting of the executive committee of the Civic League, but he let the public business wait while he speculated upon the probable object of Elinor's telephoning him.

Now there is no field in which the inconsistency of human nature is so persistent as in that which is bounded by the sentimentally narrowed horizon of a man in love. With Ormsby at the nodus of his point of view, David Kent made no secret of his open rivalry of the millionaire, declaring his intention boldly and taking no shame therefor. But when he faced about toward Elinor he found himself growing hotly jealous for her good faith; careful and fearful lest she should say or do something not strictly in accordance with the letter and spirit of her obligations as Ormsby's _fiancée_.

For example: at the "conspiracy dinner," as Loring dubbed it, Ormsby being present to fight for his own hand, Kent, as we have seen, had boldly monopolized Miss Brentwood, and would have committed himself still more pointedly had the occasion favored him. None the less, when Elinor had begged him privately to see her before moving in the attack on the junto, he had almost resented the implied establishing of confidential relations with her lover's open rival.

For this cause he had been postponing the promised visit, and thereby postponing the taking of the final step in the campaign of intimidation. The unexplained telephone call decided him, however. He would go and see Elinor and have the ordeal over with.

But as a preliminary he dined that evening with Ormsby at the Camelot Club, and over the coffee had it out with him.

"I am going out to see Miss Brentwood to-night," he announced abruptly. "Have you any objection?"

The millionaire gave him the shrewdest of over-looks, ending with a deep-rumbling laugh.

"Kent, you are the queerest lot I have ever discovered, and that is saying a good bit. Why, in the name of all the proprieties, should I object?"

"Your right is unchallenged," Kent admitted.

"Is it? Better ask Miss Brentwood about that. She might say it isn't."

"I don't understand," said Kent, dry-tongued.

"Don't you? Perhaps I'd better explain: she might find it a little difficult. You have been laboring under the impression that we are engaged, haven't you?"

"Laboring under the--why, good heavens, man! it's in everybody's mouth!"

"Curious, isn't it, how such things get about," commented the player of long suits. "How do you suppose they get started?"

"I don't suppose anything about it, so far as we two are concerned; I have your own word for it. You said you were the man in possession."

Ormsby laughed again.

"You are something of a bluffer yourself, David. Did you let my little stagger scare you out?"

David Kent pushed his chair back from the table and nailed Ormsby with a look that would have made a younger man betray himself.

"Do you mean to tell me that there is no engagement between you and Miss Brentwood?"

"Just that." Ormsby put all the nonchalance he could muster into the laconic reply, but he was anticipating the sequent demand which came like a shot out of a gun.

"And there never has been?"

Ormsby grinned.

"When you are digging a well and have found your stream of water, it's folly to go deeper, David. Can't you let 'good enough' alone?"

Kent turned it over in his mind, frowning thoughtfully into his coffee-cup. When he spoke it was out of the mid-heart of manliness.

"I wish you would tell me one thing, Ormsby. Am I responsible for--for the present state of affairs?"

Ormsby stretched the truth a little; partly for Elinor's sake; more, perhaps, for Kent's.

"You have done nothing that an honorable rival--and incidentally a good friend of mine--might not do. Therefore you are not responsible."

"That is putting it very diplomatically," Kent mused. "I am afraid it does not exonerate me wholly."

"Yes, it does. But it doesn't put me out of the running, you understand. I'm 'forninst' you yet; rather more stubbornly than before, I fancy."

Kent nodded.

"That, of course; I should think less of you if you were not. And you shall have as fair a show as you are giving me--which is saying a lot. Shall we go and smoke?"

XXI

A WOMAN INTERVENES

It was still early in the evening when Kent mounted the steps of the Brentwood apartment house. Mother and daughters were all on the porch, but it was Mrs. Brentwood who welcomed him.

"We were just wondering if you would imagine the message which Elinor was going to send, and didn't, and come out to see what was wanted," she said. "I am in need of a little legal advice. Will you give me a few minutes in the library?"

Kent went with her obediently, but not without wondering why she had sent for him, of all the retainable lawyers in the capital. And the wonder became amazement when she opened her confidence. She had received two letters from a New York broker who offered to buy her railroad stock at a little more than the market price. To the second letter she had replied, asking a price ten points higher than the market. At this the broker had apparently dropped the attempted negotiation, since there had been no more letters. What would Mr. Kent advise her to do--write again?

Kent smiled inwardly at the good lady's definition of "legal advice," but he rose promptly to the occasion. If he were in Mrs. Brentwood's place, he would not write again; nor would he pay any attention whatever to any similar proposals from any source. Had there been any others?

Mrs. Brentwood confessed that there had been; that a firm of Boston brokers had also written her. Did Mr. Kent know the meaning of all this anxiety to buy in Western Pacific when the stock was going down day by day?

Kent took time for reflection before he answered. It was exceedingly difficult to eliminate the personal factor in the equation. If all went well, if by due process of law the Trans-Western should be rescued out of the hands of the wreckers, the property would be a long time recovering from the wounds inflicted by the cut rates and the Guilford bad management. In consequence, any advance in the market value of the stock must be slow and uncertain under the skilfullest handling. But, while it might be advisable for Mrs. Brentwood to take what she could get, the transfer of the three thousand shares at the critical moment might be the death blow to all his hopes in the fight for retrieval.

Happily, he hit upon the expedient of shifting the responsibility for the decision to other shoulders.

"I scarcely feel competent to advise you in a matter which is personal rather than legal," he said at length. "Have you talked it over with Mr. Ormsby?"

Mrs. Brentwood's reply was openly contemptuous.

"Brookes Ormsby doesn't know anything about dollars. You have to express it in millions before he can grasp it. He says for me not to sell at any price."

Kent shook his head.

"I shouldn't put it quite so strongly. At the same time, I am not the person to advise you."

The shrewd eyes looked up at him quickly.

"Would you mind telling me why, Mr. Kent?"

"Not in the least. I am an interested party. For weeks Mr. Loring and I have been striving by all means to prevent transfers of the stock from the hands of the original holders. I don't want to advise you to your hurt; but to tell you to sell might be to undo all that has been done."

"Then you are still hoping to get the railroad out of Major Guilford's hands?"

"Yes."

"And in that case the price of the stock will go up again?"

"That is just the difficulty. It may be a long time recovering."

"Do you think the sale of my three thousand shares would make any difference?" she asked.

"There is reason to fear that it would make all the difference."

She was silent for a time, and when she spoke again Kent realized that he was coming to know an entirely unsuspected side of Elinor's mother.

"It makes it pretty hard for me," she said slowly. "This little drib of railroad stock is all that my girls have left out of what their father willed them. I want to save it if I can."

"So do I," said David Kent, frankly; "and for the same reason."

Mrs. Brentwood confined herself to a dry "Why?"

"Because I have loved your elder daughter well and truly ever since that summer at the foot of Old Croydon, Mrs. Brentwood, and her happiness and well-being concern me very nearly."

"You are pretty plain-spoken, Mr. Kent. I suppose you know Elinor is to be married to Brookes Ormsby?" Mrs. Brentwood was quite herself again.

Kent dexterously equivocated.

"I know they have been engaged for some time," he said; but the small quibble availed him nothing.

"Which one of them was it told you it was broken off?" she inquired.

He smiled in spite of the increasing gravity of the situation.

"You may be sure it was not Miss Elinor."

"Humph!" said Mrs. Brentwood. "She didn't tell me, either. 'Twas Brookes Ormsby, and he said he wanted to begin all over again, or something of that sort. He is nothing but a foolish boy, for all his hair is getting thin."

"He is a very honorable man," said Kent.

"Because he is giving you another chance? I don't mind telling you plainly that it won't do any good, Mr. Kent."

"Why?" he asked in his turn.

"For several reasons: one is that Elinor will never marry without my consent; another is that she can't afford to marry a poor man."

Kent rose.

"I am glad to know how you feel about it, Mrs. Brentwood: nevertheless, I shall ask you to give your consent some day, God willing."

He expected an outburst of some sort, and was telling himself that he had fairly provoked it, when she cut the ground from beneath his feet.

"Don't you go off with any such foolish notion as that, David Kent," she said, not unsympathetically. "She's in love with Brookes Ormsby, and she knows it now, if she didn't before." And it was with this arrow rankling in him that Kent bowed himself out and went to join the young women on the porch.

XXII

A BORROWED CONSCIENCE

The conversation on the Brentwood porch was chiefly of Breezeland Inn as a health and pleasure resort, until an outbound electric car stopped at the corner below and Loring came up to make a quartet of the trio behind the vine-covered trellis.

Later, the ex-manager confessed to a desire for music--Penelope's music--and the twain went in to the sitting-room and the piano, leaving Elinor and Kent to make the best of each other as the spirit moved them.

It was Elinor's chance for free speech with Kent--the opportunity she had craved. But now it was come, the simplicity of the thing to be said had departed and an embarrassing complexity had taken its place. Under other conditions Kent would have been quick to see her difficulty, and would have made haste to efface it; but he was fresh from the interview with Mrs. Brentwood, and the Parthian arrow was still rankling. None the less, he was the first to break away from the commonplaces.

"What is the matter with us this evening?" he queried. "We have been sitting here talking the vaguest trivialities ever since Penelope and Loring side-tracked us. I haven't been doing anything I am ashamed of; have you?"

"Yes," she confessed, looking away from him.

"What is it?"

"I asked a certain good friend of mine to come to see me when there is good reason to believe he didn't want to come."

"What makes you think he didn't want to come?"

"Why--I don't know; did he?" She had turned upon him swiftly with an outflash of the playful daring which had been one of his major fetterings in time past--the ecstatic little charm that goes with quick repartee and instant and sympathetic apprehension.

"You have never yet asked anything of him that he wasn't glad enough to give," he rejoined, keeping up the third person figurative.

"Is that saying very much--or very little?"

"Very little, indeed. But it is only your askings that have been lacking--not his good will."

"That was said like the David Kent I used to know. Are you really quite the same?"

"I hope not," he protested gravely. "People used to say of me that I matured late, and year by year as I look back I can see that it was a true saying. I have done some desperately boyish things since I was a man grown; things that make me tingle when I recall them."

"Like wasting a whole summer exploring Mount Croydon with a--a somebody who did not mature late?"

"No; I wasn't counting that among my lapses. An older man than I ever hope to be might find excuses for the Croydon summer. I meant in other ways. For one thing, I have craved success as I think few men have ever craved it; and yet my plowings in that field have been ill-timed and boyish to a degree."

She shook her head.

"I don't know how you measure success; it is a word of so many, many meanings. But I think you are your own severest critic."

"That may be; but the fact remains. It is only within the past few months that I have begun to get a true inkling of things; to know, for example, that opportunities are things to be compelled--not waited for."

She was looking away from him again.

"I am not sure that I like you better for your having discovered yourself. I liked the other David Kent."

He smiled rather joylessly.

"Somebody has said that for every new point of view gained we have to sacrifice all the treasures of the old. I am sorry if I am disappointing you."

"I don't know that you are. And yet, when you were sitting at Miss Van Brock's table the other evening telling us about your experience with the politicians, I kept saying to myself that I didn't know you--that I had never known you."

"I wish I knew just how to take that," he said dubiously.

"I wish I knew how to make you understand," she returned; and then: "I could have made the other David Kent understand."

"You are in duty bound to try to make this one understand, don't you think? You spoke of a danger which was not the violent kind, such as Loring fears. What is it?"

"You have had two whole days," she rejoined. "Haven't you discovered it?"

"I haven't found anything to fear but failure," was his reply.

"That is it; you have given it a name--its only true name--failure."

"But I am not going to fail."

"You mean you are going to take our railroad away from these men who have stolen it?"

"That is what I mean."

"And you will do it by threatening to expose them?"

"I shall tell Governor Bucks what I know about the oil field deal, assuring him that I shall publish the facts if he doesn't let the law take its course in ousting Judge MacFarlane and the receiver."

She rose and stood before him, leaning against one of the vine-clad porch pillars with her hands behind her.

"David Kent, are there any circumstances in which you would accept a bribe?"

He answered her in all seriousness.

"They say every man has his price: mine is higher than any bid they have yet made--or can make, I hope."

"Why don't you let _them_ bribe _you_?" she asked coolly. "Is it because it is inexpedient--because there is more 'success' the other way?"

He tried to emulate her coolness and made a failure of it.

"Have I ever done anything to make you think I had thrown common honesty and self-respect overboard?" he demanded.