The Governors Part 28

"Very good, sir!" the man replied. "You will not be going out to-night, sir? There are no orders for the garage?"

"Not to-night," Phineas Duge answered.

There was an unexpected sound of voices outside in the hall. Phineas Duge looked toward the door with a frown upon his face.

"What is that?" he asked sharply.

The butler was perplexed.

"I will go and see, sir," he said. "It sounds as if James were having trouble with some one."

The door was suddenly opened. Weiss and Higgins entered quickly, followed by the protesting and frightened footman. Phineas Duge rose from his seat, and, resting one hand upon the table, peered forward at the two men. His face, even under the rose-shaded electric lamp, was cold and set. The gleam of white teeth was visible between his lips. He looked like a man, metaphorically, about to spring upon his foes. One hand had stolen round to the pocket of his dinner coat, and was holding something hard, but to him very comforting. He offered no word of greeting. He uttered no exclamation of surprise. He simply waited.

"These gentlemen pushed past me in the hall, sir," the footman explained, deprecatingly. "My back was turned only for a moment, and Wilkins was down having his supper."

"You can go," Phineas Duge said coldly, waving him out of the room.

"What do you want with me, Weiss?"

"A few minutes' sensible talk," Weiss answered. "It will do you no harm to listen to us. Send your servant away and give us a quarter of an hour."

Phineas Duge hesitated, but only for a moment. These men had come openly, and they were known to be his enemies. It was not possible that they intended to use any violence. He turned to the butler, who stood behind his chair.

"Place chairs for these gentlemen," he ordered, "and leave the room."

They sat on his left-hand side, Phineas Duge pushed the decanter of Burgundy toward them, and the cigars. Then he leaned back in his chair and waited.

"Duge, we ought to have come to you before," Weiss began. "We are playing a child's game, all of us."

"Whatever the game may be," Duge answered, "it is not I who invented it."

"We grant that to start with," Weiss answered. "We were in the wrong.

You have done a little better than hold your own against us. We are several millions of dollars the poorer and you the richer for our split.

Let it go at that. We have other things to think about just now besides this juggling with markets. I take it that we are none of us particularly anxious to learn what the interior of a police court looks like."

Phineas Duge made no motion of a.s.sent or dissent.

"You refer," he said, "to the action against the Trusts which the President is supposed to be supporting so vigorously?"

Weiss nodded.

"The thing's further advanced than we were any of us inclined to believe," he answered. "Every one of us is interested in this, you more than any of us. If Harrison's Bill pa.s.ses the Senate, we are liable to imprisonment at any moment. We are up against it hard, Duge, and we can't face it as we ought while we're squabbling amongst ourselves like a set of children."

"You propose then," Phineas Duge said slowly, "to close our accounts on a mutual basis?"

"Precisely!" Weiss answered. "You have had the best of it, and it might be our turn to-morrow, so you can well afford to do this. We want to rest on our oars for a time, while we look round and face this new danger."

"Very well," Phineas Duge said, "I agree. We will meet at your office to-morrow and bring our brokers. I am quite willing to end this fight.

It was not I who began it."

Higgins drew a little breath of relief. He was perhaps the poorest of the group, and it was his stock which Duge had been handling so roughly. "Thank heavens!" he said. "Now we can have a moment's breathing time, to see what we can do for these fellows who want to teach us how to manage our affairs."

"In the first place," Weiss said, "what about that paper we signed? I can understand your wanting to hold it over us while we were at war. It was a fair weapon, and you had a right to it, but now we are united again you can see, of course, that although your name isn't on it, it would practically mean ruin to our interests if the other side once got hold of it."

"If I had that paper," Duge said quietly, "I would tear it up at this moment, but I regret to say that I have not. It was stolen during my illness."

"We know that," Weiss answered. "We know even in whose hands it is."

Phineas Duge looked up inquiringly.

"Norris Vine has it," Weiss continued. "We have offered him a million, but he declines to sell. He would have used it for his paper before now, and we should have been on the other side of the ocean, but for the fact that John Drayton advised him not to. Now he has taken it with him to London. He is going to ask Deane's advice. At any moment the thing may come flas.h.i.+ng back. We may wake up to find a copy of that doc.u.ment in black and white in every paper in New York State."

"You have offered him a reasonable sum for it," Phineas Duge said, "and he declines to sell. Very well, what do you propose to do?"

"It was stolen from you," Weiss said. "He may justly decline to treat with us; but it is your property, and you have a right to it."

"You propose, then?" Phineas Duge asked.

"That you should catch the _Kaiserin_ to London to-morrow," Higgins said, "and find out this man Vine. The rest we are content to leave with you, but I think that if you try you will get it."

Phineas Duge sat quite still for several moments. He sipped his wine thoughtfully, threw his cigar, which had gone out, into the fire, and lit a cigarette. He appreciated the force of the suggestion, and a trip to Europe was by no means distasteful to him, but he was not a man to decide upon anything of this sort without reflection.

"A week ago," he said softly, "even a day ago, and my absence from New York would have meant ruin. If I leave the country to-morrow, and trust myself upon the ocean for six days, what guarantee have I that you will keep to any arrangement which we might make to-morrow?"

"We will sign affidavits," Weiss declared, "that we will not, directly or indirectly, enter into any operations in any one of our stocks during your absence, except for your profit as well as our own. We will execute a deed of partners.h.i.+p as regards any transactions which we might enter into during your absence."

Phineas Duge nodded thoughtfully.

"I suppose," he said, "we might be able to fix things up that way. I should be glad enough to get the paper back again, but Vine is not an easy man to deal with, and he is pleased to call himself my enemy."

"The men who have called themselves that," Higgins remarked grimly, "have generally been sorry for it."

"And so may he," Phineas Duge answered, "but I am not sure that his time has come yet. You must let me think this over, gentlemen, until to-morrow morning. I will meet you with my broker and lawyer at ten o'clock at your office, Weiss, and if I make up my mind to go to Europe, my luggage will be on the steamer by that time. On the whole I might tell you that I am inclined to go."

Weiss drew a great breath of relief. He poured himself out a gla.s.s of wine and drank it off.

"It's good to hear you say that, Duge," he said. "I tell you we have come pretty near being scared the last week or so. I feel a lot more comfortable fighting with you in the ranks."

Phineas Duge forbore from all recrimination. He filled Higgins' gla.s.s and his own. He could afford to be magnanimous. He had fought them one against four, and they had come to him for mercy!

"We will drink," he said, "to the new President. This one has tilted against the windmills once too often. He must learn his lesson."

CHAPTER XI

CONSCIENCE

Virginia slept little that night. Her room, one of the smallest and least expensive in the cosmopolitan boarding-house where she was staying, was high up, almost in an attic. The windows were small, and opened with difficulty. The heat, combined with her own restlessness, made the weary hours one long nightmare for her. Early in the morning she rose and sat in front of the little window, looking out across the wilderness of house-tops, where a pall of smoke seemed to convert to luminous chaos the rising sun. There was a lump in her throat, and gathering tears in her eyes. It seemed to her that no one could ever realize a loneliness more absolute and complete than hers. She thought of the early summer mornings in that tiny farmhouse perched on the side of the lonely valley, where the air at least was clear and pure and bright, musical with the song of birds, and the west wind which stirred always in the pine-woods behind heralded the coming morning. If only she could have dropped from her shoulders the burden of the last few months, and found herself back there once more. Then a pang of remorse shook her heart. She remembered the happiness which through her had come to those whom she loved, and the thought was like a tonic to her. She forgot her own sorrows, she forgot that dim tremendous feeling, which had shown through her life for a minute or two, only to pa.s.s away and leave behind longings and regrets which were in themselves a constant pain. She forgot everything except the thought of what it might mean to those others who were dear to her if she should fail in her task. Her face seemed suddenly aged as she sat there, crus.h.i.+ng down the sweeter things, clenching her fingers upon the window-sill, and telling herself that at any cost she must succeed, hopeless though the task might seem.