"You needn't be alarmed, Mr. Eaton. We're not going to injure you in the least," a low voice explained in his ear. "If you'll give me your word not to cry out, I'll release your throat."
Eaton nodded a promise, and, when he could find his voice, demanded: "Where are you taking me?"
"You'll see in a minute, sir. It's all right."
The carriage turned into an alley and stopped. Eaton was led to a ladder that hung suspended from the fire-escape, and was bidden to mount. He did so, following his guide to the second story, and being in turn followed by the other man. He was taken along a corridor and into the first of a suite of rooms opening into it. He knew he was in the Mesa House, and suspected at once that he was in the apartments of Simon Harley.
His suspicion ripened to conviction when his captors led him through two more rooms, into one fitted as an office. The billionaire sat at a desk, busy over some legal papers he was reading, but he rose at once and came forward with hand extended to meet Eaton. The young man took his hand mechanically.
"Glad to have the pleasure of talking with, you, Mr. Eaton. You must accept my apologies for my methods of securing a meeting. They are rather primitive, but since you declined to call and see me, I can hold only you to blame." An acid smile touched his lips for a moment, though his eyes were expressionless as a wall. "Mr. Eaton, I have brought you here in this way to have a confidential talk with you, in order that it might not in any way reflect upon you in case we do not come to an arrangement satisfactory to both of us. Your friends cannot justly blame you for this conference, since you could not avoid it. Mr. Eaton, take a chair."
The wills of the two men flashed into each other's eyes like rapiers. The weaker man knew what was before him and braced himself to meet it. He would not sit down. He would not discuss anything. So he told himself once and again to hold himself steady against the impulse to give way to those imperious eyes behind which was the impassive, compelling will.
"Sit down, Mr. Eaton."
"I'll stand, Mr. Harley."
"SIT DOWN."
The cold jade eyes were not to be denied. Eaton's gaze fell sullenly, and he slid into a chair.
"I'll discuss no business except in the presence of Mr. Ridgway," he said doggedly, falling back to his second line of defenses.
"To the contrary, my business is with you and not with Mr. Ridgway."
"I know of no business you can have with me."
"Wherefore I have brought you here to acquaint you with it."
The young man lifted his head reluctantly and waited. If he had been willing to confess it to himself, he feared greatly this ruthless spoiler who had built up the greatest fortune in the world from thousands of wrecked lives. He felt himself choking, just as if those skeleton fingers had been at his throat, but he promised himself never to yield.
The fathomless, dominant gaze caught and held his eyes. "Mr. Eaton, I came here to crush Ridgway. I am going to stay here till I do. I'm going to wipe him from the map of Montana—ruin him so utterly that he can never recover. It has been my painful duty to do this with a hundred men as strong and as confident as he is. After undertaking such an enterprise, I have never faltered and never relented. The men I have ruined were ruined beyond hope of recovery. None of them have ever struggled to their feet again. I intend to make Waring Ridgway a pauper."
Stephen Eaton could have conceived nothing more merciless than this man's callous pronouncement, than the calm certainty of his unemphasized words. He started to reply, but Harley took the words out of his mouth.
"Don't make a mistake. Don't tie to the paltry successes he has gained. I have not really begun to fight yet."
The young man had nothing to say. His heart was water. He accepted Harley's words as true, for he had told himself the same thing a hundred times. Why had Ridgway rejected the overtures of this colossus of finance? It had been the sheerest folly born of madness to suppose that anybody could stand against him.
"For Ridgway, the die is cast," the iron voice went on. "He is doomed beyond hope. But there is still a chance for you. What do you consider your interest in the Mesa Ore-producing Company worth, Mr. Eaton?"
The sudden question caught Eaton with the force of a surprise. "About three hundred thousand dollars," he heard himself say; and it seemed to him that his voice was speaking the words without his volition.
"I'm going to buy you out for twice that sum. Furthermore, I'm going to take care of your future—going to see that you have a chance to rise."
The waverer's will was in flux, but the loyalty in him still protested. "I can't desert my chief, Mr. Harley."
"Do you call it desertion to leave a raging madman in a sinking boat after you have urged him to seek the safety of another ship?"
"He made me what I am."
"And I will make you ten times what you are. With Ridgway you have no chance to be anything but a subordinate. He is the Mesa Ore-producing Company, and you are merely a cipher. I offer your individuality a chance. I believe in you, and know you to be a strong man." No ironic smile touched Harley's face at this statement. "You need a chance, and I offer it to you. For your own sake take it."
Every grievance Eaton had ever felt against his chief came trooping to his mind. He was domineering. He did ride rough-shod over his allies' opinions and follow the course he had himself mapped out. All the glory of the victory he absorbed as his due. In the popular opinion, Eaton was as a farthing-candle to a great electric search-light in comparison with Ridgway.
"He trusts me," the tempted man urged weakly. He was slipping, and he knew it, even while he assured himself he would never betray his chief.
"He would sell you out to-morrow if it paid him. And what is he but a robber? Every dollar of his holdings is stolen from me. I ask only restitution of you—and I propose to buy at twice, nay at three times, the value of your stolen property. You owe that freebooter no loyalty."
"I can't do it. I can't do it."
"You shall do it." Harley dominated him as bullying schoolmaster does a cringing boy under the lash.
"I can't do it," the young man repeated, all his weak will flung into the denial.
"Would you choose ruin?"
"Perhaps. I don't know," he faltered miserable.
"It's merely a business proposition, young man. The stock you have to sell is valuable to-day. Reject my offer, and a month from now it will be quoted on the market at half its present figure, and go begging at that. It will be absolutely worthless before I finish. You are not selling out Ridgway. He is a ruined man, anyway. But you—I am going to save you in spite of yourself. I am going to shake you from that robber's clutches."
Eaton got to his feet, pallid and limp as a rag. "Don't tempt me," he cried hoarsely. "I tell you I can't do it, sir."
Harley's cold eye did not release him for an instant. "One million dollars and an assured future, or—absolute, utter ruin, complete and final."
"He would murder me—and he ought to," groaned the writhing victim.
"No fear of that. I'll put you where he can't reach you. Just sign your name to this paper, Mr. Eaton."
"I didn't agree. I didn't say I would."
"Sign here. Or, wait one moment, till I get witnesses." Harley touched a bell, and his secretary appeared in the doorway. "Ask Mr. Mott and young Jarvis to step this way."
Harley held out the pen toward Eaton, looking steadily at him. In a strong man the human eye is a sword among weapons. Eaton quailed. The fingers of the unhappy wretch went out mechanically for the pen. He was sweating terror and remorse, but the essential weakness of the man could not stand out unbacked against the masterful force of this man's imperious will. He wrote his name in the places directed, and flung down the pen like a child in a rage.
"Now get me out of Montana before Ridgway knows," he cried brokenly.
"You may leave to-morrow night, Mr. Eaton. You'll only have to appear in court once personally. We'll arrange it quietly for to-morrow afternoon. Ridgway won't know until
it is done and you are gone."
CHAPTER 20. A LITTLE LUNCH AT APHONSE'S
It chanced that Ridgway, through the swinging door of a department store, caught a glimpse of Miss Balfour as he was striding along the street. He bethought him that it was the hour of luncheon, and that she was no end better company than the revamped noon edition of the morning paper. Wherefore he wheeled into the store and interrupted her inspection of gloves.
"I know the bulliest little French restaurant tucked away in a side street just three blocks from here. The happiness disseminated in this world by that chef's salads will some day carry him past St. Peter with no questions asked."
"You believe in salvation by works?" she parried, while she considered his invitation.
"So will you after a trial of Alphonse's salad."
"Am I to understand that I am being invited to a theological discussion of a heavenly salad concocted by Father Alphonse?"
"That is about the specifications."
"Then I accept. For a week my conscience has condemned me for excess of frivolity. You offer me a chance to expiate without discomfort. That is my idea of heaven. I have always believed it a place where one pastures in rich meadows of pleasure, with penalties and consciences all excluded from its domains."
"You should start a church," he laughed. "It would have a great following—especially if you could operate your heaven this side of the Styx."
She found his restaurant all he had claimed, and more. The little corner of old Paris set her eyes shining. The fittings were Parisian to the least detail. Even the waiter spoke no English.
"But I don't see how they make it pay. How did he happen to come here? Are there enough people that appreciate this kind of thing in Mesa to support it?"
He smiled at her enthusiasm. "Hardly. The place has a scarce dozen of regular patrons. Hobart comes here a good deal. So does Eaton. But it doesn't pay financially. You see, I know because I happen to own it. I used to eat at Alphonse's restaurant in Paris. So I sent for him. It doesn't follow that one has to be less a slave to the artificial comforts of a supercivilized world because one lives at Mesa."
"I see it doesn't. You are certainly a wonderful man."
"Name anything you like. I'll warrant Alphonse can make good if it is not outside of his national cuisine," he boasted.
She did not try his capacity to the limit, but the oysters, the salad, the chicken soup were delicious, with the ultimate perfection that comes only out of Gaul.
They made a delightfully gay and intimate hour of it, and were still lingering over their demi-tasse when Yesler's name was mentioned.
"Isn't it splendid that he's doing so well?" cried the girl with enthusiasm. "The doctor says that if the bullet had gone a fraction of an inch lower, he would have died. Most men would have died anyhow, they say. It was his clean outdoor life and magnificent constitution that saved him."
"That's what pulled him through," he nodded. "It would have done his heart good to see how many friends he had. His recovery was a continuous performance ovation. It would have been a poorer world for a lot of people if Sam Yesler had crossed the divide."
"Yes. It would have been a very much poorer one for several I know."
He glanced shrewdly at her. "I've learned to look for a particular application when you wear that particularly sapient air of mystery."
Her laugh admitted his hit. "Well, I was thinking of Laska. I begin to think HER fair prince has come."
"Meaning Yesler?"
"Yes. She hasn't found it out herself yet. She only knows she is tremendously interested."
"He's a prince all right, though he isn't quite a fairy. The woman that gets him will be lucky.
"The man that gets Laska will be more than lucky," she protested loyally.
"I dare say," he agreed carelessly. "But, then, good women are not so rare as good men. There are still enough of them left to save the world. But when it comes to men like Sam—well, it would take a Diogenes to find another."
"I don't see how even Mr. Pelton, angry as he was, dared shoot him."
"He had been drinking hard for a week. That will explain anything when you add it to his temperament. I never liked the fellow."
"I suppose that is why you saved his life when the miners took him and were going to lynch him?"
"I would not have lifted a hand for him. That's the bald truth. But I couldn't let the boys spoil the moral effect of their victory by so gross a mistake. It would have been playing right into Harley's hands."
"Can a man get over being drunk in five minutes? I never saw anybody more sober than Mr. Pelton when the mob were crying for vengeance and you were fighting them back."
"A great shock will sober a man. Pelton is an errant coward, and he had pretty good reason to think he had come to the end of the passage. The boys weren't playing. They meant business."
"They would not have listened to another man in the world except you," she told him proudly.
"It was really Sam they listened to—when he sent out the message asking them to let the law have its way."
"No, I think it was the way you handled the message. You're a wizard at a speech, you know."
"Thanks."
He glanced up, for Alphonse was waiting at his elbow.
"You're wanted on the telephone, monsieur."
"You can't get away from business even for an hour, can you?" she rallied. "My heaven wouldn't suit you at all, unless I smuggled in a trust for you to fight."
"I expect it is Eaton," he explained. "Steve phoned down to the office that he isn't feeling well to-day. I asked him to have me called up here. If he isn't better, I'm going to drop round and see him."
But when she caught sight of his face as he returned she knew it was serious.
"What's the matter? Is it Mr. Eaton? Is he very ill?" she cried.
His face was set like broken ice refrozen. "Yes, it's Eaton. They say—but it can't be true!"
She had never seen him so moved. "What is it, Waring?"
"The boy has sold me out. He is at the courthouse now, undoing my work—the Judas!"
The angry blood swept imperiously into her cheeks. "Don't waste any more time with me, Waring. Go—go and save yourself from the traitor. Perhaps it is not too late yet."
He flung her a grateful look. "You're true blue, Virginia. Come! I'll leave you at the store as we pass."
The defection of Eaton bit his chief to the quick. The force of the blow itself was heavy—how heavy he could not tell till he could take stock of the situation. He could see that he would be thrown out of court in the matter of the Consolidated Supply Company receivership, since Eaton's stock would now be in the hands of the enemy. But what was of more importance was the fact that Eaton's interest in the Mesa Ore-producing Company now belonged to Harley, who could work any amount of mischief with it as a lever for litigation.
The effect, too, of the man's desertion upon the morale of the M. O. P. forces must be considered and counteracted, if possible. He fancied he could see his subordinates looking shiftyeyed at each other and wondering who would slip away next.
If it had been anybody but Steve! He would as soon have distrusted his right hand as Steve Eaton. Why, he had made the man, had picked him out when he was a mere clerk, and tied him to himself by a hundred favors. Up on the Snake River he had saved Steve's life once when he was drowning. The boy had always been as close to him as a brother. That Steve should turn traitor was not conceivable. He knew all his intimate plans, stood second to himself in the company. Oh, it was a numbing blow! Ridgway's sense of personal loss and outrage almost obliterated for the moment his appreciation of the business loss.
The motion to revoke the receivership of the Supply Company was being argued when Ridgway entered the court-room. Within a few minutes the news had spread like wild-fire that Eaton was lined up with the Consolidated, and already the paltry dozen of loafers in the court-room had swelled into hundreds, all of them eager for any sensation that might develop.
Ridgway's broad shoulders flung aside the crowd and opened a way to the vacant chair waiting for him. One of his lawyers had the floor and was flaying Eaton with a vitriolic tongue, the while men craned forward all over the room to get a glimpse of the traitor's face.
Eaton sat beside Mott, dry-lipped and pallid, his set eyes staring vacantly into space. Once or twice he flung a furtive glance about him. His stripped and naked soul was enduring a foretaste of the Judgment Day. The whip of scorn with which the lawyer lashed him cut into his shrinking sensibilities, and left him a welter of raw and livid wales. Good God! why had he not known it would be like this? He was paying for his treachery and usury, and it was being burnt into him that as the years passed he must continue to pay in self-contempt and the distrust of his fellows.
The case had come to a hearing before Judge Hughes, who was not one of Ridgway's creatures. That on its merits it would be decided in favor of the Consolidated was a foregone conclusion. It was after the judge had rendered the expected decision that the dramatic moment of the day came to gratify the seasoned court frequenters.
Eaton, trying to slip as quietly as possible from the room, came face to face with his former chief. For an interminable instant the man he had betrayed, blocking the way squarely, held the trembling wretch in the blaze of his scorn. Ridgway's contemptuous eyes sifted to the ingrate's soul until it shriveled. Then he stood disdainfully to one side so that the man might not touch him as he passed.
Some one in the back of the room broke the tense silence and hissed: "The damned Judas!" Instantly echoes of "Judas! Judas!" filled the room, and pursued Eaton to his cab. It would be many years before he could recall without scalding shame that moment when the finger of public scorn was pointed at him in execration.
CHAPTER 21. HARLEY SCORES
What Harley had sought in the subornation of Eaton had been as much the moral effect of his defection as the tangible results themselves. If he could shake the confidence of the city and State in the freebooter's victorious star, he would have done a good day's work. He wanted the impression to spread that Ridgway's success had passed its meridian.
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