The Fighting Chance

“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.

If Plank suspected him, he must also suspect him of complicity in the Inter-County grab; he must suspect him of the ruthless crushing power that corrupts or annihilates opposition, making a mockery of legislation, a jest of the courts, and an epigram of a people’s indignation.

And yet, in the face of all this, careless, fearless, frank to the outer verge of stupidity—which sometimes means the inability to be afraid—this man Plank was casually telling him things which men regard as secrets and as weapons of defence—was actually averting him of his peril, and telling him almost contemptuously to pull up the drawbridge and prepare for siege, instead of rushing the castle and giving it to the sack.

As Quarrier sat there meditating, his long, white fingers caressing his soft, pointed beard, Sylvia came in, greeting the men collectively with a nod, and offering her hand to Plank.

“Dinner is announced,” she said; “please go in farm fashion. Wait!” as Plank, following the major and Quarrier, stood aside for her to pass. “No, you go ahead, Howard; and you,” to the major.

Left for a moment in the room with Plank, she stood listening to the others descending the stairs; then: