Chapter 24

“How long ago was this?” asked Orde, who had listened with a warm glow of pride to the doctor's succinct statement.

“Seven days.”

“How is Mina getting on?”

“She'll get well. It was a mild case. Fever never serious after the eruption appeared. I suppose I'll have old Heinzman on my hands, though.”

“Why; has he taken it?”

“No; but he will. Emotional old German fool. Rushed right in when he heard his daughter was sick. Couldn't keep him out. And he's been with her or near her ever since.”

“Then you think he's in for it?”

“Sure to be,” replied Dr. McMullen. “Unless a man has been vaccinated, continuous exposure means infection in the great majority of cases.”

“Hard luck,” said Orde thoughtfully. “I'm going to step up to your house and see Mrs. Orde.”

“You can telephone her,” said the doctor. “And you can see her if you want to. Only in that case I should advise your remaining away from Bobby until we see how things turn out.”

“I see,” said Orde. “Well,” he concluded with a sigh, after a moment's thought, “I suppose I'd better stay by the ship.”

He called up Dr. McMullen's house on the telephone.

“Oh, it's good to hear your voice again,” cried Carroll, “even if I can't see you! You must promise me right after lunch to walk up past the house so I can see you. I'll wave at you from the window.”

“You're a dear, brave girl, and I'm proud of you,” said Orde.

“Nonsense! There was no danger at all. I'd been vaccinated recently. And somebody had to take care of poor Mina until we could get help. How's Bobby?”

XLIV

After lunch Orde went downtown to his office where for some time he sat idly looking over the mail. About three o'clock Newmark came in.

“Hullo, Joe,” said Orde with a slight constraint, “sorry to hear you've been under the weather. You don't look very sick now.”

“I'm better,” replied Newmark, briefly; “this is my first appearance.”

“Too bad you got sick just at that time,” said Orde; “we needed you.”

“So I hear. You may rest assured I'd have been there if possible.”

“Sure thing,” said Orde, heartily, his slight resentment dissipating, as always, in the presence of another's personality. “Well, we had a lively time, you bet, all right; and got through about by the skin of our teeth.” He arose and walked over to Newmark's desk, on the edge of which he perched. “It's cost us considerable; and it's going to cost us a lot more, I'll have to get an extension on those notes.”

“What's that?” asked Newmark, quickly.

Orde picked up a paper knife and turned it slowly between his fingers.

“I don't believe I'll be able to meet those notes. So many things have happened--”

“But,” broke in Newmark, “the firm certainly cannot do so. I've been relying on your assurance that you would take them up personally. Our resources are all tied up.”

“Can't we raise anything more on the Northern Peninsula timber?” asked Orde.

“You ought to know we can't,” cried Newmark, with an appearance of growing excitement. “The last seventy-five thousand we borrowed for me finishes that.”

“Can't you take up part of your note?”

“My note comes due in 1885,” rejoined Newmark with cold disgust. “I expect to take it up then. But I can't until then. I hadn't expected anything like this.”

“Well, don't get hot,” said Orde vaguely. “I only thought that Northern Peninsula stuff might be worth saving any way we could figure it.”

“Worth saving!” snorted Newmark, whirling in his chair.

“Well, keep your hair on,” said Orde, on whom Newmark's manner was beginning to have its effect, as Newmark intended it should. “You have my Boom Company stock as security.”

“Pretty security for the loss of a tract like the Upper Peninsula timber!”

“Well, it's the security you asked for, and suggested,” said Orde.

“I thought you'd surely be able to pay it,” retorted Newmark, now secure in the position he desired to take, that of putting Orde entirely in the wrong.

“Well, I expected to pay it; and I'll pay it yet,” rejoined Orde. “I don't think Heinzman will stand in his own light rather than renew the notes.”

He seized his hat and departed. Once in the street, however, his irritation passed. As was the habit of the man, he began more clearly to see Newmark's side, and so more emphatically to blame himself. After all, when he got right down to the essentials, he could not but acknowledge that Newmark's anger was justified. For his own private ends he had jeopardised the firm's property. More of a business man might have reflected that Newmark, as financial head, should have protected the firm against all contingencies; should have seen to it that it met Heinzman's notes, instead of tying up its resources in unnecessary ways. Orde's own delinquency bulked too large in his eyes to admit his perception of this. By the time he had reached Heinzman's office, the last of his irritation had vanished. Only he realised clearly now that it would hardly do to ask Newmark for a renewal of the personal note on which depended his retention of his Boom Company stock unless he could renew the Heinzman note also. This is probably what Newmark intended.

“Mr. Heinzman?” he asked briefly of the first clerk.

“Mr. Heinzman is at home ill,” replied the bookkeeper.

“Already?” said Orde. He drummed on the black walnut rail thoughtfully. The notes came due in ten days. “How bad is he?”

The clerk looked up curiously. “Can't say. Probably won't be back for a long time. It's smallpox, you know.”

“True,” said Orde. “Well, who's in charge?”

“Mr. Lambert. You'll find him in the private office.”

Orde passed through the grill into the inner room.

“Hullo, Lambert,” he addressed the individual seated at Heinzman's desk. “So you're the boss, eh?”

Lambert turned, showing a perfectly round face, ornamented by a dot of a nose, two dots of eyes set rather close together, and a pursed up mouth. His skin was very brown and shiny, and was so filled by the flesh beneath as to take the appearance of having been inflated.

“Yes, I'm the boss,” said he non-committally.

Orde dropped into a chair.

“Heinzman holds some notes due against our people in ten days,” said he. “I came in to see about their renewal. Can you attend to it?”

“Yes, I can attend to it,” replied Lambert. He struck a bell; and to the bookkeeper who answered he said: “John, bring me those Newmark and Orde papers.”

Orde heard the clang of the safe door. In a moment the clerk returned and handed to Lambert a long manilla envelope. Lambert opened this quite deliberately, spread its contents on his knee, and assumed a pair of round spectacles.

“Note for seventy-five thousand dollars with interest at ten per cent. Interest paid to January tenth. Mortgage deed on certain lands described herein.”

“That's it,” said Orde.

Lambert looked up over his spectacles.

“I want to renew the note for another year,” Orde explained.

“Can't do it,” replied Lambert, removing and folding the glasses.

“Why not?”

“Mr. Heinzman gave me especial instructions in regard to this matter just before his daughter was taken sick. He told me if you came when he was not here--he intended to go to Chicago yesterday--to tell you he would not renew.”

“Why not?” asked Orde blankly.

“I don't know that.”

“But I'll give him twelve per cent for another year.”

“He said not to renew, even if you offered higher interest.”

“Do you happen to know whether he intends anything in regard to this mortgage?”

“He instructed me to begin suit in foreclosure immediately.”

“I don't understand this,” said Orde.

Lambert shook his head blandly. Orde thought for a moment.

“Where's your telephone?” he demanded abruptly.

He tried in vain to get Heinzman at his house. Finally the telephone girl informed him that although messages had come from the stricken household, she had been unable to get an answer to any of her numerous calls, and suspected the bell had been removed. Finally Orde left the office at a loss how to proceed next. Lambert, secretly overjoyed at this opportunity of exercising an unaccustomed and autocratic power, refused to see beyond his instructions. Heinzman's attitude puzzled Orde. A foreclosure could gain Heinzman no advantage of immediate cash. Orde was forced to the conclusion that the German saw here a good opportunity to acquire cheap a valuable property. In that case a personal appeal would avail little.

Orde tramped out to the end of the pier and back, mulling over the tangled problem. He was pressed on all sides--by the fatigue after his tremendous exertions of the past two weeks; by his natural uneasiness in regard to Carroll; and finally by this new complication which threatened the very basis of his prosperity. Nevertheless the natural optimism of the man finally won its ascendency.

“There's the year of redemption on that mortgage,” he reminded himself. “We may be able to do something in that time. I don't know just what,” he added whimsically, with a laugh at himself. He became grave. “Poor Joe,” he said, “this is pretty tough on him. I'll have to make it up to him somehow. I can let him in on that California deal, when the titles are straightened out.”

XLV

Orde did not return to the office; he felt unwilling to face Newmark until he had a little more thoroughly digested the situation. He spent the rest of the afternoon about the place, picking up the tool house, playing with Bobby, training Duke, the black and white setter dog. Three or four times he called up Carroll by telephone; and three or four times he passed Dr. McMullen's house to shout his half of a long-distance and fragmentary conversation with her. He ate solemnly with Bobby at six o'clock, the two quite subdued over the vacant chair at the other end of the table. After dinner they sat on the porch until Bobby's bed-time. Orde put his small son to bed, and sat talking with the youngster as long as his conscience would permit. Then he retired to the library, where, for a long time, he sat in twilight and loneliness. Finally, when he could no longer distinguish objects across the room, he arose with a sigh, lit the lamp, and settled himself to read.

The last of the twilight drained from the world, and the window panes turned a burnished black. Through the half-open sashes sucked a warm little breeze, swaying the long lace curtains back and forth. The hum of lawn-sprinklers and the chirping of crickets and tree-frogs came with it.

One by one the lawn-sprinklers fell silent. Gradually there descended upon the world the deep slumbrous stillness of late night; a stillness compounded of a thousand and one mysterious little noises repeated monotonously over and over until their identity was lost in accustomedness. Occasionally the creak of timbers or the sharp scurrying of a mouse in the wall served more to accentuate than to break this night silence.

Orde sat lost in reverie, his book in his lap. At stated intervals the student lamp at his elbow flared slightly, then burned clear again after a swallow of satisfaction in its reservoir. These regular replenishments of the oil supply alone marked the flight of time.

Suddenly Orde leaned forward, his senses at the keenest attention. After a moment he arose and quietly walked toward the open window. Just as he reached the casement and looked out, a man looked in. The two stared at each other not two feet apart.

“Good Lord! Heinzman!” cried Orde in a guarded voice. He stepped decisively through the window, seized the German by the arm, and drew him one side.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.

Heinzman was trembling violently as though from a chill.

“Dake me somewheres,” he whispered hoarsely. “Somewheres quick. I haf broke quarantine, and dey vill be after me.”

“The place for you is at your own house,” said Orde, his anger rising. “What do you mean by coming here and exposing my house to infection?”

Heinzman began to blubber; choked, shivered all over, and cried aloud with an expression of the greatest agony:

“You must dake me somewheres. I must talk with you and your goot wife. I haf somedings to say to you.” He in his turn grasped Orde by the arm. “I haf broke quarantine to gome and tell you. Dey are dere mit shotguns to kill me if I broke quarantine. And I haf left my daughter, my daughter Mina, all alone mit dose people to come and tell you. And now you don't listen.”

He wrung his hands dramatically, his soft pudgy body shaking.

“Come with me,” said Orde briefly.

He led the way around the house to the tool shed. Here he lit a lantern, thrust forward one nail keg, and sat down on another.

Heinzman sat down on the nail keg, almost immediately arose, walked up and down two or three times, and resumed his seat.

Orde looked at him curiously. He was half dressed, without a collar, his thin hair unkempt. The usual bright colour of his cheeks had become livid, and the flesh, ordinarily firm and elastic, had fallen in folds and wrinkles. His eyes burned bright as though from some internal fire. A great restlessness possessed him. Impulsively Orde leaned forward to touch his hand. It was dry and hot.

“What is it, Heinzman?” he asked quietly, fully prepared for the vagaries of a half delirium.

“Ach, Orde!” cried the German, “I am tortured mit HOLLENQUALLE--what you call?--hell's fire. You, whose wife comes in and saves my Mina when the others runs away. You, my best friends! It is SCHRECKLICH! She vas the noblest, the best, the most kindest--”

“If you mean Mrs. Orde's staying with Mina,” broke in Orde, “it was only what any one should have done, in humanity; and I, for one, am only too glad she had the chance. You mustn't exaggerate. And now you'd better get home where you can be taken care of. You're sick.”

“No, no, my friend,” said Heinzman, vigourously shaking his head. “She might take the disease. She might die. It vas noble.” He shuddered. “My Mina left to die all alone!”

Orde rose to his feet with decision.

“That is all right,” said he. “Carroll was glad of the chance. Now let me get you home.”

But Heinzman's excitement had suddenly died.

“No,” said he, extending his trembling hand; “sit down. I want to talk business.”

“You are in no condition to talk business,” said Orde.

“No!” cried Heinzman with unexpected vigour. “Sit down! Listen to me! Dot's better. I haf your note for sefenty-five t'ousand dollars. No?”

Orde nodded.

“Dot money I never lent you. NO! I'm not crazy. Sit still! I know my name is on dot note. But the money came from somewheres else. It came from your partner, Joseph Newmark.”

Orde half rose from his keg.

“Why? What?” he asked in bewilderment.

“Den ven you could not pay the note, I vas to foreclose and hand over dot Northern Peninsula land to Joseph Newmark, your partner.”

“Impossible!” cried Orde.

“I vas to get a share. It vas a trick.”

“Go on,” said Orde grimly.

“Dere is no go on. Dot is all.”

“Why do you come to tell me now?”

“Because for more than one year now I say to mineself, 'Carl Heinzman, you vas one dirty scoundrel. You vas dishonest; a sneak; a thief'; I don't like to call myself names like dose. It iss all righdt to be smart; but to be a thief!”

“Why didn't you pull out?” asked Orde.

“I couldn't!” cried Heinzman piteously. “How could I? He haf me cold. I paid Stanford five hundred dollars for his vote on the charter; and Joseph Newmark, he know dot; he can PROVE it. He tell me if I don't do what he say, he put me in jail. Think of dot! All my friends go back on me; all my money gone; maybe my daughter Mina go back on me, too. How could I?”

“Well, he can still put you in prison,” said Orde.

“Vot I care?” cried Heinzman, throwing up both his arms. “You and your wife are my friends. She save my Mina. DU LIEBER GOTT! If my daughter had died, vot good iss friends and money? Vot good iss anything? I don't vant to live! And ven I sit dere by her always something ask me: 'Vy you do dot to the peoples dot safe your Mina?' And ven she look at me, her eyes say it; and in the night everything cry out at me; and I get sick, and I can't stand it no longer, and I don't care if he send me to prison or to hell, no more.”

His excitement died. He sat listless, his eyes vacant, his hands between his knees.

“Vell, I go,” he said at last.

“Have you that note?” asked Orde.

“Joseph Newmark, he keeps it most times,” replied Heinzman, “but now it is at my office for the foreclosure. I vill not foreclose; he can send me to the penitentiary.”

“Telephone Lambert in the morning to give it to me. No; here. Write an order in this notebook.”

Heinzman wrote the required order.

“I go,” said he, suddenly weary.

Orde accompanied him down the street. The German was again light-headed with the fever, mumbling about his daughter, the notes, Carroll, the voices that had driven him to righteousness. By some manoeuvring Orde succeeded in slipping him through the improvised quarantine without discovery. Then the riverman with slow and thoughtful steps returned to where the lamp in the study still marked off with the spaced replenishments from its oil reservoir the early morning hours.

XLVI

Morning found Orde still seated in the library chair. His head was sunk forward on his chest; his hands were extended listless, palms up, along the arms of the chair; his eyes were vacant and troubled. Hardly once in the long hours had he shifted by a hair's breadth his position. His body was suspended in an absolute inaction while his spirit battered at the walls of an impasse. For, strangely enough, Orde did not once, even for a single instant, give a thought to the business aspects of the situation--what it meant to him and his prospects or what he could do about it. Hurt to the soul he stared at the wreck of a friendship. Nothing will more deeply sicken the heart of a naturally loyal man than to discover baseless his faith in some one he has thoroughly trusted.

Orde had liked Newmark. He had admired heartily his clearness of vision, his financial skill, his knowledge of business intricacies, his imperturbable coolness, all the abilities that had brought him to success. With a man of Orde's temperament, to admire is to like; and to like is to invest with all good qualities. He had constructed his ideal of a friend, with Newmark as a basis; and now that this, which had seemed to him as solid a reality as a brick block, had dissolved into nothing, he found himself in the necessity of refashioning his whole world. He was not angry at Newmark. But he was grieved down to the depths of his being.

When the full sun shone into the library, he aroused himself to change his clothes. Then, carrying those he had just discarded, he slipped out of the house and down the street. Duke, the black and white setter dog, begged to follow him. Orde welcomed the animal's company. He paused only long enough to telephone from the office telling Carroll he would be out of town all day. Then he set out at a long swinging gait over the hills. By the time the sun grew hot, he was some miles from the village and in the high beech woods. There he sat down, his back to a monster tree. All day long he gazed steadily on the shifting shadows and splotches of sunlight; on the patches of blue sky, the dazzling white clouds that sailed across them; on the waving, whispering frond that over-arched him, and the deep cool shadows beneath. The woods creatures soon became accustomed to his presence. Squirrels of the several varieties that abounded in the Michigan forests scampered madly after each other in spirals around the tree trunks, or bounded across the ground in long undulating leaps. Birds flashed and called and disappeared mysteriously. A chewink, brave in his black and white and tan uniform, scratched mightily with great two-footed swoops that threw the vegetable mould over Orde's very feet. Blazoned butterflies--the yellow and black turnus, the dark troilus, the shade-loving nymphalis--flickered in and out of the patches of sunlight. Orde paid them no attention. The noon heat poured down through the forest isles like an incense. Overhead swung the sun, and down the slope until the long shafts of its light lifted wand-like across the tree trunks.

At this hint of evening Orde shook himself and arose. He was little nearer the readjustment he sought than he had been the previous night.

He reached home a little before six o'clock. To his surprise he found Taylor awaiting him. The lawyer had written nothing as to his return.

“I had things pretty well in shape,” he said, after the first greetings had been exchanged, “and it would do no good to stay away any longer.”

“Then the trouble is over?” asked Orde.

“I wouldn't say that,” replied Taylor; “but you can rest easy as to the title to your lands. The investigation had no real basis to it. There may have been some small individual cases of false entry; but nothing on which to ground a real attack.”

“When can I borrow on it?”

“Not for a year or two, I should say. There's an awful lot of red-tape to unwind, as there always is in such cases.”

“Oh,” said Orde in some disappointment.

Taylor hesitated, removed his eye-glasses, wiped them carefully, and replaced them. He glanced at Orde sidelong through his keen, shrewd eyes.

“I have something more to tell you; something that will be painful,” said he.

Orde looked up quickly.

“Well; what is it?” he asked.

“The general cussedness of all this investigation business had me puzzled, until at last I made up my mind to do a little investigating on my own account. It all looked foolish to me. Somebody or something must be back of all this performance. I was at it all the time I was West, between times on regular business, of course. I didn't make much out of my direct efforts--they cover things up well in those matters--but at last I got on a clue by sheer accident. There was one man behind all this. He was--”

“Joe Newmark,” said Orde quietly.

“How did you know that?” cried Taylor in astonishment.

“I didn't know, Frank; I just guessed.”

“Well, you made a good guess. It was Newmark. He'd tied up the land in this trumped-up investigation so you could not borrow on it.”

“How did he find out I owned any land?” asked Orde.

“That I couldn't tell you. Must have been a leak somewhere.”

“Quite likely,” said Orde calmly.

Taylor looked at his principal in some wonder.

“Well, I must say you take it coolly enough,” said he at last.

Orde smiled.

“Do I?” said he.

“Of course,” went on Taylor after a moment, “we have a strong presumption of conspiracy to get hold of your Boom Company stock, which I believe you put up as security. But I don't see how we have any incontestable proof of it.”

“Proof? What more do we want?”

“We'd have no witness to any of these transactions; nor have we documentary proofs. It's merely moral certainty; and moral certainty isn't much in a court of law. I'll see him, if you say so, though, and scare him into some sort of an arrangement.”

Orde shook his head.

“No,” said he decidedly. “Rather not. I'll run this. Please say nothing.”

“Of course not!” interjected Taylor, a trifle indignantly.

“And I'll figure out what I want to do.”

Orde pressed Taylor to stay to supper; but the latter declined. After a few moments' conversation on general topics the lawyer took his departure, secretly marvelling over the phlegmatic way in which Orde had taken what had been to Taylor, when he first stumbled against it, a shocking piece of news.

XLVII

Orde did not wish to return to the office until he had worked his problem out; so, to lend his absence the colour of naturalness, he drove back next morning to the booms. There he found enough to keep him occupied all that day and the next. As in those times the long distance telephone had not yet been attempted, he was cut off from casual communication with the village. Late in the afternoon he returned home.