The Way of the Strong Part 83

Hendrie threw off the long cloth mask he had been wearing. It dropped into the wastepaper basket beside the desk. Angus Moraine followed his example.

In the center of the room, sitting on a high-legged armchair, his arms still bound, Austin Leyburn silently watched his captors' movements.

They were in the library at Deep Willows.

Long before their arrival Leyburn had become aware of his captors'

ident.i.ty. The ident.i.ty of the third man, who was no longer with them, puzzled him--was still puzzling him. The journey to Deep Willows had been made with the pa.s.sing of scarcely a single word. Once the captive attempted to break the silence, but a swift threat had left him no alternative.

Leyburn was no physical coward. But he knew men; and his understanding of them left him convinced that Leo, as he preferred to think of him, was utterly reckless when goaded as he had been goaded by the total loss of his crop. Therefore he waited, watchful and alert, ready to fight the moment any reasonable opportunity offered, or to submit, according to circ.u.mstances.

The millionaire's manner had lost something of its severity. For the moment he felt he was back in the old fighting days when lawlessness had no terrors for his impulsive heart. It felt good to have his wits pitted against his old a.s.sociate with all law and order thrust into the background. Besides, he knew that something far more precious than his own life was dependent upon the result of this night's work.

He switched on additional light and then moved over to the desk, against which he propped himself.

"Hot. Hot as h.e.l.l, under those things, Tug, my boy," he said, while Angus unostentatiously seated himself in a chair somewhat behind the prisoner. "Still, I guess they were necessary. I wouldn't have had your man recognize us. You didn't matter. He did. You are only one. Say, he's a smart lad--your chauffeur. If he hadn't been you'd both likely have been on the way to glory now, traveling on a barbed wire. You were moving some. Still, I had to risk all that. I needed you out in the open, with no one around, and I hadn't time to worry out a better plan.

You see, I wanted you--without any halo. Guess I'll have to hand your boy a wad--later. He did me a right good turn saving your neck."

Leyburn smarted under the jibing manner. He strove to twist himself into a position of ease, which his bound arms made almost impossible.

He wanted to answer. He wanted to fling back some stinging retort, but prudence kept him silent.

Hendrie watched his endeavor to ease his position, and signed to Angus.

"Better loose him," he said, as he might have spoken of some dog. "He's harmless--anyway."

Angus obeyed. And Leyburn could no longer keep silence.

"Maybe he didn't do you so good a turn as you think," he cried, his voice husky with rage. "But you'll pay him all right. You'll pay me, too, for this night's work. It was like you--a highway robber."

Angus looked from one to the other. There was some meaning in Leyburn's words he could not quite follow.

But the millionaire seemed undisturbed by them.

"Yes," Hendrie said, reaching round to the cabinet behind him and taking a cigar.

He bit the end off, and Angus noted the vicious clip of his sharp, white teeth. He lit the cigar deliberately, and eyed his prisoner through the smoke.

"Yes," he said again, "later I'll be ready to pay most anything. Just now it's you who're going to pay. Guess you ought to understand that.

You've known me with my back to the wall before. I'm dangerous with my back to the wall. You likely know that. You paid before--guess you're going to pay now."

Leyburn stirred. The cold ease of this man's manner troubled him. This reference to his doings in the past--before another--had an ominous flavor. Policy kept him silent, though he was longing to shout another furious defiance at him.

"I'm generally ready to take my chances 'bout things," Hendrie went on, "but," he added with a contemptuous movement of the hand, "this isn't as big a chance as no doubt you figure it is. It don't amount to a heap taking forcible possession of a low-down labor man who's set the boys on to firing a million-dollar crop. Also incited them to murder a lot of harmless n.i.g.g.e.rs."

Leyburn's eyes grew hot, but he answered in a tone that matched the other's for contempt.

"That wouldn't go in a court of law," he said. "You've got to prove it.

You'd find yourself up against a proposition doing it. The strikers fired that crop because they were drunk." He laughed; but his mirth was little better than a snarl.

"Wouldn't it?" said Hendrie, removing his cigar and seriously contemplating the perfect white ash at its tip. "Maybe you're right though. Guess you know the limits you can go to. Still, you're apt to be overconfident. Guess you were that way some time back. You remember.

You warned me you intended to 'smash' me. That was the word. It's a good word to impress folks who're carried away by words. But it's too showy for me. Besides, it's a fool trick to warn folks you're going to hunt 'em. You need to do the smas.h.i.+ng first and warn afterwards. That's my way. In your case that warning was fatal. It left me time to get busy. Oh, I got busy all right. Maybe you know I went East, just after.

I s'pose you kept track of me. I went East for two reasons. One to make it so you couldn't hurt me through your labor machinery. The other to--hunt you up."

He paused and their eyes met. A quick, furtive inquiry was in Leyburn's. In Hendrie's there was simply a deadly cold light as he nodded.

"Oh, yes," he went on. "I hunted you up all right. P'r'aps you don't know it--but you ought to--my work is to study and watch the money market. It is for me to find out who're moving, who're manipulating.

It's not always easy. So, to do it successfully, and to keep myself just ahead of other folks, I have a bureau of secret information that would be a credit to New York Tammany Hall. Do you follow me?"

Leyburn abruptly s.h.i.+fted his position.

"I don't," he denied, with unnecessary force.

Hendrie knocked his ash on to the Turkey carpet.

"I'll make it plainer. It will enlighten Angus, here, as well. When _you're_ in conspiracy to play the stock market through labor strikes which _you_ control, it's best not to threaten to smash one of the biggest operators in the country. If you're sensible, and finish with me as I want you to finish, these things don't matter. But if you're foolish, and headstrong, there are a heap of things may happen. One of them is the prisoners' dock for criminal conspiracy in your labor work.

Not only for you, but for the other 'heads' of your movement."

Leyburn suddenly burst into a laugh. It was forced. It was so evidently forced that it drew a reluctant smile from the watchful Scot behind him, and a contemptuous smiling response from Hendrie, himself.

"Funny, isn't it?" the millionaire observed calmly. "It would be funnier still if your union members heard of it. Gee, they'd be tickled to death."

But the humor suggested by Hendrie pa.s.sed his prisoner by. His laugh had died out, and his angry eyes snapped.

"You didn't bring me here to tell me this--this fool talk," he cried, striving desperately for calmness.

Hendrie relit his cigar, which had gone out.

"No I didn't, Tug, my boy," he said, glancing over the flame of the match at the man's furious face. "There are other things." He blew the light out, and placed the dead match carefully in an ash tray. "Guess you don't need me to preach sense to a man like you. Still, if I'd a grievance against a man--and," he smiled, "I allow you have reason to feel unfriendly toward me--I should just get right up on my hind legs and hand him all I knew--dead straight. I wouldn't worry with a b.u.m organization of labor to do it. It's unwieldy, it's rarely effective.

You leave me free to get out of it, to protect myself. Say, you haven't robbed me of a thing to-night. All you've done is to manure the soil, and do me a service toward next year's crop, which I doubt, when the time comes, if you'll be in a position to hurt."

He crossed over to the window and drew the curtains aside. The red glow of the still burning crop was s.h.i.+ning in every direction. The window looked out upon a land of fire, with the house, an oasis in the center of it, cut off by wide "fire breaks," which left it beyond all danger.

"Look," he cried. "It's a pretty sight. Fire in every direction. But, from your point of view, wholly uneffective."

The curtains fell back in their place, and the millionaire returned to the desk. Leyburn had not moved. Like an obstinate child he had refused to look as invited, and Angus's grim face displayed his appreciation of the manner in which Hendrie was, in his own phraseology, "putting him through it."

"Then there's those n.i.g.g.e.rs," the millionaire continued, as soon as he had taken up his position at the desk again. "You told the boys to shoot 'em up to-night." He shook his head sadly. "Quite ridiculous.

Quite impossible. You should have thought more--and hated less. Angus has paid 'em off, and they're quitting right now, as fast as panic can chase 'em. You see, there's no more work here now for black or white for six months to come. All the hands are out of a job, whether they like it or not. When they've starved till their bones are rattling they'll come back to us on their hands and knees. You've done that.

It's the way you raise their wages. The way you better their lot.

Pshaw! you're like the rest of 'em, only you're worse, because you're legally dishonest, too. So long as the papers are full of you, so long as your workers cheer you to the echo, and you can sign orders giving the world permission to go on moving around in s.p.a.ce, so long as your pocketbooks are fattened by the blind ignorance of those you represent, what in h.e.l.l do you care for the worker? I'm sick to death of you and your rotten kind. To do good there must be honesty in you--and there's none. You make the worker suffer weeks and weeks of misery and hards.h.i.+p, goading him into the belief that he is all-powerful, for some paltry betterment that does not begin to make up for what he has suffered. You never let him rest and prosper. You drive him, year after year, till, by the time he ends up his miserable life in poverty, he can reckon a large proportion of it has been spent in wilful idleness which has helped further to rob him of any adequate provision for his wife and children. It makes me sick. As long as the world lasts labor must be the under dog. You cannot lift labor if it cannot lift itself.

Brute force must remain subservient to brain. With your unclean human hands you are striving to drive labor to a vain effort to overthrow one of the greatest laws of all life."

For the moment Hendrie seemed to have lost himself in the interest of his own subject, but he was abruptly brought back to the affairs in hand by the smiling sarcasm of his prisoner.

"Quite a lecture," he cried. "Say, Leo----"

But he reckoned without the loyal Scot behind him.

"Quit your gas," cried Angus, in a threatening tone.