The Banker and the Bear

by Henry Kitchell Webste

  For the last hour or two of the trading that day Sponley’s plight was desperate. Pickering was indeed making him sweat; but the Bear’s nerve was not shaken, and he fought furiously. Twice he was within two minutes of being sold out ; but both times he was able, though barely, to put up his margins. When the closing bell rang, and he was safe for another twenty hours, he went to the nearest cafe and drank enough whiskey to make his attendant stare at him ; and then with steady hands and lips, and the old purposeful look in his eye, he went out and drove straight home.

  “ Shall you want the carriage again this after- noon, sir ? “ asked the coachman, when they reached the house.

  “ I think in about an hour.”

  Still the man hesitated, holding the impatient horses which had started to move off toward the stable. He had worked for Sponley for fifteen years, and he felt a profound admiration for him. He knew that something troubled his employer, and he was halting on the brink of taking a liberty.

  “ Well,” said Sponley, “ what is it ? “

  “ I beg your pardon, sir ; I hope nothing has gone wrong.”

  “ Nothing,” Sponley spoke shortly. It annoyed him to think that he was showingthe effect of the pounding he had taken that day. He turned to go into the house, then stopped and called after the man:

  “Wait a minute. Haven’t you got what money you’ve saved in Bagsbury’s bank ? “

  “ Yes, sir.”

  “ I guess you’ll do well to take it out first thing to-morrow morning. I don’t know that they’re going to fail, but you’d better be on the safe side.”

  He dismissed the man with a nod and went in to the telephone. He called up the Herald building and asked for Mr. Hauxton. “ Can you come out to my house at once, on a matter of some importance ? “ he asked. “ It’s not the sort of thing I want to discuss over the ‘phone.”

  The financial man on the Herald is an im- portant person, unused to being telephoned for in that summary way; but to this request of Sponley’s he replied with alacrity.

  The Bear greeted him with impressive cordiality.

  “ Have you heard anything to-day, Mr. Hauxton ? “ he asked when they were seated, “anything that leads you to think that Bags- bury’s bank is in trouble ? “

  The financial reporter mopped his bald spot, and then taking off his spectacles he wiped them nervously.

  “ Have you heard anything of that sort, Mr. Sponley ? “

  A man may attain to certain great eminences, may be a constitutional lawyer, or an arch- bishop, and still an easy prey to cozenage and false speaking, but he can never be the finan- cial man on a great newspaper. Hauxton, peering wistfully through his powerful spec- tacle lenses, could see through the skin of the fair-seeming apple of truth, even to the very worm at the core. You would gain nothing by telling an ordinary cock-and-bull story to him ; it would never go beyond his ears.

  Yet, knowing all this, Sponley settled con- fidently to his task. He did not try to con- vince the reporter that the bank was really in a dangerous condition; he did not want him to believe that. And there was no question of Hauxton’s actually printing anything in the paper. Hauxton held his highly salaried posi- tion because he held the confidence of the big financial men about the city, and he held their confidence because they knew he could hold his tongue. Discretion was his stock in trade. But if Sponley could excite his curiosity suffi- ciently to set him to making inquiries here and there as to the truth or the bare existence of a rumor that the bank was in trouble, that was enough for the Bear. The rumor would exist by the time Hauxton had asked three men if there were a rumor; and inside of twenty-four hours it would prove itself true.

  Sponley made very light of what little in- formation he had, professed to discredit it utterly, and said finally that he should have paid no attention to it, or should have referred it straight to headquarters, except that his present operations in lard put him in an atti- tude of apparent hostility to the bank, and that he didn’t care to go there on such an errand. He could see that he was impressing Hauxton ; by the time he finished, the tip of the reporter’s long pointed nose seemed fairly to twitch and to twinkle with excited curiosity.

  “You’d better be very careful whom you ask about it,” said the Bear. “ It’s easy enough to start people talking just that way. I’d go right to one of the officers of the bank first, if I were you.”

  Hauxton laughed. “ I don’t exactly relish the idea of asking Bagsbury if it’s true that his bank is likely to have to suspend. They say, you know, that he’s never lost his temper but twice, and that he didn’t quite kill his man either time. Once was when Drake went to him to get a loan for that skate Suburban Rapid Transit. He offered Bagsbury a com- mission, and at that Bagsbury got up, took him by the arm, marched him to the head of the stairs, and said he didn’t know whether to kick him down or not. Drake thought he meant to, though, and jumped halfway and rolled the rest. He was black and blue for two weeks. And the other time was when Smith tried to blackmail him. Bagsbury bent him backward over a table and nearly brained him. He got off alive, too ; but I might not be so lucky.”

  Sponley knew that Hauxton was speaking in jest, but he answered seriously :

  “ Oh, Bagsbury can’t afford to lose his tem- per these days, and he’d treat you all right, anyway ; but I think you’d get more out of one of the other officers. I think Curtin’s your man. He may refuse to talk, or he may lie to you, but he’s no good at concealing the facts.”

  As soon as Hauxton took his leave, Sponley called up Curtin on the telephone. Just as Curtin answered the call, Harriet, who had heard Hauxton go out, entered the room, and Sponley was forced to give his instructions to the assistant cashier in her hearing.

  “ I just sent Hauxton of the Herald over to see you. He’ll ask you if it’s true that the bank’s in trouble. You’ll deny it, of course. Deny it vigorously as you can. Do you under- stand?”

  Then after a word of greeting to Harriet, he telephoned to Mr. Meredith.

  “ I was afraid you might be alarmed over the rumors that have been going about this afternoon concerning Bagsbury’s bank. I don’t think there’s anything to be afraid of. They may have some temporary difficulty, but they’re sure to come out all right. If any one speaks to you about it, you’ll be quite safe in denying that there’s any serious difficulty, and you’ll be doing Bagsbury a good turn. When people get to talking, it sometimes plays the very devil with a bank Not at all. Good-by.”

  You can see that Dawson was right about the extra ace.

  CHAPTER XVI

  HARRIET

  SPONLEY talked to Mr. Meredith somewhat longer than was strictly necessary; and when there was nothing more to say, he still delayed a little in hanging up the receiver. He could not decide just what he had best say to Harriet when he turned away from the telephone. To some ears his messages would have sounded innocent enough, but Harriet was different; still he could not be sure that she had listened at all.

  As he rang the bell for disconnection, he fancied he heard a movement in the room, and when he turned to speak to her, Harriet was gone. He called her name, but there was no answer, and while he listened for it, he thought he heard her step on the stairs. Considerably surprised, though somewhat relieved at having his awkward explanation deferred for a moment, he went out into the hall and again called to her, but still there was nothing to show him that she had heard, though there had been hardly time for her to get quite out of ear-shot. He walked part way up the stairs, hesitated, and finally turned back ; then, after ringing for his carriage, he went out.

  He had enough on his mind during the next few hours without thinkingof Harriet or trying to explain her apparently unaccountable behavior.

  Harriet would not have listened to the mes- sages he had sent over the telephone if the first word he said as she entered the room had not been the name of Curtin. Harriet hated Curtin exactly as she hated a rat, and equally strongly she loathed the thought of Melville Sponley’s association
with him. In all the months since it had begun she had never been able to con- quer that feeling or even to conceal it from her husband. So she listened to the enigmatical instructions, and was so fully occupied in won- dering what they might mean that she did not catch the import of Sponley’s message to Mr. Meredith until just as he was at the end of it. Then it suddenly came over her that her hus- band, who always knew so well the effect his words would have, must be aware that what he was saying to poor, timorous Mr. Meredith was anything but reassuring. The full meaning of the move was not then apparent to her; but with the first dim perception of it came the feeling that she must be alone, and without trying to resist it or to account for it, she had literally fled upstairs. Before she reached her room she regretted having yielded to the impulse, and after standing a moment irresolute, she turned to go back. When he called to her the second time, she tried to answer, but could not command her voice, so taking from a drawer a fresh handkerchief which should serve as the excuse for her flight, she walked back to the head of the stairs; just as she reached it, she heard her husband go out. With a feeling of relief at being left alone, she threw her- self upon her bed, and for a long time she lay there, staring at the ceiling and trying not to think.

  As Dawson had suggested, Melville Sponley had a strong preference for truth and fair deal- ing whenever they were practicable ; but it will not be imagined that in the course of a quarter century of commercial privateering he had not many times committed acts as irregular and as immoral I am not speaking of commercial morality as this attempt to wreck Bagsbury’s bank. He had concealed none of these things from her, and she had heard of them and taken her part in them with such entire equanimity that he had quite naturally been surprised at her outburst when she had first learned of his putting Curtin in the bank as a spy upon John.

  Harriet looked upon life from a thoroughly unmoral point of view. Of abstract right and wrong she had little conception. So long as Sponley’s operations were directed against men she did not know, except as her husband’s opponents, she never applied the criterion of fair play. But all that was changed as soon as John Bagsbury was concerned in the fighting. She regarded him almost as a brother, her loy- alty to him was only less than her loyalty to her husband, and the mere suspicion of what Sponley had been doing that afternoon, of the meaning of his talk with Hauxton and of his two tele- phone messages, was intolerable.

  About an hour after Sponley went out, the butler knocked at her door. “ Mr. Curtin is here,” he said, “to see Mr. Sponley. He says it is important and wishes to know when Mr. Sponley will be back.”

  Harriet said that she knew nothing about it, but presently the man returned, saying that Mr. Curtin wished to see her. She asked to be excused, but Curtin was persistent, and once more the butler came back, this time with a message.

  “ He says, will you please tell Mr. Sponley when he comes in that Mr. Curtin has seen Mr. Hauxton and is sure he has started him off on the right track.”

  “ I will take no message,” said Harriet, impa- tiently. “If Mr. Curtin wishes to leave any word for Mr. Sponley, he may write a note. Don’t come back again, whatever Mr. Curtin says.”

  But though the servant obeyed her, Harriet could not banish Curtin from her thoughts. She had always hated him, even before he hadgiven her cause. His covert admiration was almost nauseating, and his miserable makeshift excuses for seeking her company “when he knew that she could barely tolerate him exasperated her. She recalled with disgust the evening when he had forced himself into their dining room, and she wondered that his accusation of her husband had affected her as it did; she wished now that Sponley had sent him to prison.

  His message, though she had declined to re- ceive it, and though she tried not to think of it, went over and over in her thoughts, and in spite of herself she wondered what it meant. What could “the right track “mean except the sus- picion that the bank was in trouble ? Why should her husband wish Hauxton to entertain that suspicion unless he was deliberately plan- ning to ruin John Bagsbury? If he were.

  But this guessing, she told herself, was non- sense, useless nonsense. When her husband came home, she would tell him just what she suspected and ask him to show her everything. He would surely set her mind at rest. Then with a sharp sensation of pain she realized that she would not be able to believe his word. While he talked to her, while he was with her, she would be convinced that his course was not dishonorable, and it was that conviction rather than the truth that she wanted, but with the next morning, when she was alone, waiting to learn what was happening, to-day’s fears and to-day’s distrust would come back again stronger than ever. No, she could not look to him for help. She must fight out this battle, this last battle alone.

  Going to her desk she pencilled a little note :

  “ Will you please excuse me if I don’t come down to dinner? Don’t bother about it, it’s nothing serious. I’m tired that’s all and I’m trying to get a long rest.

  Then she called her maid. “ I’m not going down to dinner. I wish you’d give this to Mr. Sponley when he comes in.” As she gave the note to the maid, their fingers touched. “ How cool your hands are ! “ she exclaimed. “ Don’t go just yet. I want them on my forehead. Why are your hands so cold, child ? “

  “Your head is very hot,” the maid answered. “ I think that is the reason.”

  “They feel cool, anyway,” said Harriet. “ There, that will do. I’m a great deal better already.”

  “ Shall I bring you anything anything to eat or a cup of tea ? “

  “ I think I should like some coffee,” Harriet answered, after a moment’s reflection. “ Oh, and anything to eat that you please; I don’t want to think about it.”

  Harriet regretted her decision the moment the maid was fairly out of the room; she needed company, not something to eat. At the end of ten minutes she was wondering impa- tiently why the maid did not come back, and her uneasiness grew steadily greater during the half hour that elapsed before she heard the familiar step outside her door. But the repri- mand that was on Harriet’s lips was checked by the look of misery in her attendant’s face. Neither spoke, and there was silence until, as the girl spilled some of the coffee she was try- ing to pour, and then dropped the cup, she burst out crying.

  “ Oh, don’t cry, don’t cry ! “ said Harriet, easily ; “ that doesn’t matter. But you shouldn’t have stopped to quarrel with James. That always makes you unhappy afterward, you know.”

  “ I didn’t, I haven’t quarrelled with him since yesterday morning.”

  Harriet smiled. “You aren’t going to tell me that James has at last got up heart enough to scold you. You ought to be glad if he has.

  It’s very good for people to be scolded when they are young ; but I’ve never been able to do it.”

  But the girl refused to be comforted, and Harriet saw that here was something more serious than the almost daily lovers’ quarrels which had been affording her so much enter- tainment in the past few months.

  “Stop crying,” she commanded quietly, “and try to tell me just what the trouble is.”

  With an effort the girl controlled herself. “James is going to lose all his money, the money he saved up so we could get married. It’s in the bank, and he says the bank is going to fail.”

  “ What bank is it in ? “

  “Mr. Bagsbury’s.” Her voice failed, and with a sob she buried her face in her hands.

  “ Stop it,” Harriet commanded, almost roughly. She laid her hand on the girl’s arm. “You are very foolish to be frightened. The bank isn’t going to fail. Do you understand ? I tell you it isn’t going to fail. Who “ and now it was her voice that halted in the throat “ who told James that it would ? “

  “The coachman told James, and he said “

  But Harriet knew who had told the coach- man before the bewildered maid had time to speak the name.

  For a little, though Harriet’s words had quite reassured her, the mere impetus of her emotion kept the g
irl whimpering, her face still buried in her hands; but when she looked up the change that had come over her mistress startled her out of the very recollection of it.

  “ What is it ? “ she cried, “ what is the matter ? “

  “ Nothing at all. Only go away ; I want to be by myself.”

  “ But you are sick,” the maid persisted ; “ can’t I get you something ? Shall I call Mr. Sponley?”

  “Certainly not,” Harriet spoke slowly and evenly; “there is nothing the matter;” but her affected composure vanished as the girl still hesitated at the door. “ Oh, why won’t you leave me alone ! Go, I tell you ! Go ! “

  The frightened maid ran out of the room, and Harriet closed the door behind her.

  So now she knew. Oh, why was it all so hopelessly evident! She had been trying to comprehend; but now she clasped her hands over her dry eyes as if to blot out the clear, cruel understanding that had come to her of her husband’s devious strategy. It was bad enough that the temptation of a promising campaign should have led him to turn upon his friend ; but why why should it not have been fair open fighting ; why need it come to a piece of loathsome treachery like this blow from behind ? She must stand by and see it struck ; and then for always, she told herself, she must despise the author of it In that hour Harriet felt the very foundation of her world trembling under her. She had no children, no friends, no interests but his, nothing but her absolute devotion to Melville Sponley. And stanch as that was, the stroke he was aiming at John Bagsbury would cut to the root of it.

  She recalled that evening when first she had heard of his understanding with Curtin, and when she had asked him if there was anything that counted with him beside his one great ambition ; whether his friendship for John and his affection for her were anything more than good investments. She had her answer now.