A Poor Wise Man

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  Willy Cameron was free that evening. Although he had not slept at allthe night before, he felt singularly awake and active. The Committeehad made temporary quarters of his small back room at the pharmacy,and there had sat in rather depressed conclave during a part of theafternoon. Pink Denslow had come in late, and had remained, silent andhaggard, through the debate.

  There was nothing to do but to start again in an attempt to get filesand card indexes. Greater secrecy was to be preserved and enjoined, thelocation of the office to be known only to a small inner circle,and careful policing of it and of the building which housed it to beestablished. As a further safeguard, two duplicate files would be keptin other places. The Committee groaned over its own underestimate of theknowledge of the radicals.

  The two buildings chosen for destruction were, respectively, the bankbuilding where their file was kept, and the club, where nine-tenthsof the officers of the Committee were members. The significance of thedouble outrage was unquestionable.

  When the meeting broke up Pink remained behind. He found it ratherdifficult to broach the matter in his mind. It was always hard for himto talk about Lily Cardew, and lately he had had a growing convictionthat Willy Cameron found it equally difficult. He wondered if Cameron,too, was in love with Lily. There had been a queer look in his face onthose rare occasions when Pink had mentioned her, a sort of exaltation,and an odd difficulty afterwards in getting back to the subject in hand.

  Pink had developed an enormous affection and admiration for WillyCameron, a strange, loyal, half wistful, totally unselfish devotion. Ithad steadied him, when the loss of Lily might have made him reckless,and had taken the form in recent weeks of finding innumerable businessopportunities, which Willy Cameron cheerfully refused to take.

  "I'll stay here until this other thing is settled," was Willy'sinvariable answer. "I have a certain amount of time here, and thefellows can drop in to see me without causing suspicion. In an office itwould be different. And besides, I can't throw Mr. Davis down. His wifeis in bad shape."

  So, that afternoon, Pink waited until the Committee had dispersed, andthen said, with some difficulty:

  "I saw her, Cameron. She has promised to leave."

  "To-day?"

  "This afternoon. I wanted to take her away, but she had some things todo."

  "Then she hadn't known before?"

  "No. She thought it was just talk. And they'd kept the papers from her.She hadn't heard about last night. Well, that's all. I thought you'dwant to know."

  Pink started out, but Willy Cameron called him back.

  "Have any of your people any influence with the Cardews?"

  "No one has any influence with the Cardews, if you mean the Cardew men.Why?"

  "Because Cardew has got to get out of the mayoralty campaign. That'sall."

  "That's a-plenty," said Pink, grinning. "Why don't you go and tell himso?"

  "I'm thinking of it. He hasn't a chance in the world, but he'll defeatHendricks by splitting the vote, and let the other side in. And you knowwhat that means."

  "I know it," Pink observed, "but Mr. Cardew doesn't, and he won't afteryou've told him. They've put a lot of money in, and once a Cardew hasinvested in a thing he holds on like death. Especially the old man.Wouldn't wonder he was the fellow who pounded the daylights out of Akerslast night," he added.

  Willy Cameron, having carefully filled his pipe, closed the door intothe shop, and opened a window.

  "Akers?" he inquired.

  "Noon edition has it," Pink said. "Claims to have been attacked in hisrooms by two masked men. Probably wouldn't have told it, but the doctortalked. Looks as though he could wallop six masked men, doesn't he?"

  "Yes," said Willy Cameron, reflectively. "Yes; he does, rather."

  He felt more hopeful than he had for days. Lily on her way home, clearonce more of the poisonous atmosphere of Doyle and his associates; Akerstemporarily out of the way, perhaps for long enough to let the normalinfluences of her home life show him to her in a real perspective; and arather unholy but very human joy that he had given Akers a part of whatwas coming to him--all united to cheer him. He saw Lily going home, anda great wave of tenderness flooded him. If only they would be tactfuland careful, if only they would be understanding and kind. If they wouldonly be normal and every-day, and accept her as though she had neverbeen away. These people were so hedged about with conventions andrestrictions, they put so much emphasis on the letter and so little onthe spirit. If only--God, if only they wouldn't patronize her!

  His mother would have known how to receive her. He felt, that afternoon,a real homesickness for his mother. He saw her, ample and comfortableand sane, so busy with the comforts of the body that she seemed toignore the soul, and yet bringing healing with her every matter-of-factmovement.

  If only Lily could have gone back to her, instead of to that greathouse, full of curious eyes and whispering voices.

  He saw Mr. Hendricks that evening on his way home to supper. Mr.Hendricks had lost flesh and some of his buoyancy, but he waspersistently optimistic.

  "Up to last night I'd have said we were done, son," he observed. "Butthis bomb business has settled them. The labor vote'll split on it, sureas whooping cough."

  "They've bought a half-page in all the morning papers, disclaiming allresponsibility and calling on all citizens to help them in protectingprivate property."

  "Have they, now," said Hendricks, with grudging admiration. "Can youbeat that? Where do they get the money, anyhow? If I lost my watch thesedays I'd have to do some high-finance before I'd be able to advertisefor it."

  "All right, see Cardew," were his parting words. "But he doesn't wantthis election any more than I want my right leg. He'll stick. You cantalk, Cameron, I'll say it. But you can't pry him off with kind words,any more than you can a porous plaster."

  Behind Mr. Hendricks' colloquialisms there was something sturdy andfine. His very vernacular made him popular; his honesty was beyondsuspicion. If he belonged to the old school in politics, he had mostof its virtues and few of its vices. He would take care of his friends,undoubtedly, but he was careful in his choice of friends. He would makethe city a good place to live in. Like Willy Cameron, he saw it, nota center of trade so much as a vast settlement of homes. Businesssupported the city in his mind, not the city business.

  Nevertheless the situation was serious, and it was with a sense of adesperate remedy for a desperate disease that Willy Cameron, after acareful toilet, rang the bell of the Cardew house that night. He had nohope of seeing Lily, but the mere thought that they were under one roofgave him a sense of nearness and of comfort in her safety.

  Dinner was recently over, and he found both the Cardews, father and son,in the library smoking. He had arrived at a bad moment, for the bomboutrage, coming on top of Lily's refusal to come home under the givenconditions, had roused Anthony to a cold rage, and left Howard with afeeling of helplessness.

  Anthony Cardew nodded to him grimly, but Howard shook hands and offeredhim a chair.

  "I heard you speak some time ago, Mr. Cameron," he said. "You made mewish I could have had your support."

  "I came to talk about that. I am sorry to have to come in the evening,but I am not free at any other time."

  "When we go into politics," said old Anthony in his jibing voice, "theordinary amenities have to go. When you are elected, Howard, I shalllive somewhere else."

  Willy Cameron smiled.

  "I don't think you will be put to that inconvenience, Mr. Cardew."

  "What's that?" Old Anthony's voice was incredulous. Here, in his ownhouse, this whipper-snapper--

  "I am sure Mr. Howard Cardew realizes he cannot be elected."

  The small ragged vein on Anthony's forehead was the storm signal for thefamily. Howard glanced at him, and said urbanely:

  "Will you have a cigar, Mr. Cameron? Or a liqueur?"

  "Nothing, thank you. If I can have a few minutes' talk with you--"

  "If you mean
that as a request for me to go out, I will remind you thatI am heavily interested in this matter myself," said old Anthony. "Ihave put in a great deal of money. If you people are going to drop out,I want to hear it. You've played the devil with us already, with yourindependent candidate who can't talk English."

  Willy Cameron kept his temper.

  "No," he said, slowly. "It wasn't a question of Mr. Hendrickswithdrawing. It was a question of Mr. Cardew getting out."

  Sheer astonishment held old Anthony speechless.

  "It's like this," Willy Cameron said. "Your son knows it. Even if wedrop out he won't get it. Justly or unjustly--and I mean that--nobodywith the name of Cardew can be elected to any high office in this city.There's no reflection on anybody in my saying that. I am telling you afact."

  Howard had listened attentively and without anger. "For a long time, Mr.Cameron," he said, "I have been urging men of--of position in the city,to go into politics. We have needed to get away from the professionalpolitician. I went in, without much hope of election, to--well, you cansay to blaze a trail. It is not being elected that counts with me, somuch as to show my willingness to serve."

  Old Anthony recovered his voice.

  "The Cardews made this town, sir," he barked. "Willingness to serve,piffle! We need a business man to run the city, and by God, we'll getit!"

  "You'll get an anarchist," said Willy Cameron, slightly flushed.

  "If you want my opinion, young man, this is a trick, a political trick.And how do we know that your Vigilance Committee isn't a trick, too?You try to tell us that there is an organized movement here to do heavenknows what, and by sheer terror you build up a machine which appeals tothe public imagination. You don't say anything about votes, but you seethat they vote for your man. Isn't that true?"

  "Yes. If they can keep an anarchist out of office. Akers is ananarchist. He calls himself something else, but that's what it amountsto. And those bombs last night were not imaginary."

  The introduction of Louis Akers' name had a sobering effect on AnthonyCardew. After all, more than anything else, he wanted Akers defeated.The discussion slowly lost its acrimony, and ended, oddly enough, inWilly Cameron and Anthony Cardew virtually uniting against Howard.What Willy Cameron told about Jim Doyle fed the old man's hatred ofhis daughter's husband, and there was something very convincing aboutCameron himself. Something of fearlessness and honesty that began,slowly, to dispose Anthony in his favor.

  It was Howard who held out.

  "If I quit now it will look as though I didn't want to take a licking,"he said, quietly obstinate. "Grant your point, that I'm defeated. Allright, I'll be defeated--but I won't quit."

  And Anthony Cardew, confronted by that very quality of obstinacy whichhad been his own weapon for so many years, retired in high dudgeon tohis upper rooms. He was living in a strange new world, a reasonable soulon an unreasonable earth, an earth where a man's last sanctuary, hisclub, was blown up about him, and a man's family apparently lived onlyto thwart him.

  With Anthony gone, Howard dropped the discussion with the air of a manwho has made a final stand.

  "What you have said about Mr. Doyle interests me greatly," he observed,"because--you probably do not know this--my sister married him someyears ago. It was a most unhappy affair."

  "I do know it. For that reason I am glad that Miss Lily has come home."

  "Has come home? She has not come home, Mr. Cameron. There was acondition we felt forced to make, and she refused to agree to it.Perhaps we were wrong. I--"

  Willy Cameron got up.

  "Was that to-day?" he asked.

  "No."

  "But she was coming home to-day. She was to leave there this afternoon."

  "How do you know that?"

  "Denslow saw her there this afternoon. She agreed to leave at once. Hehad told her of the bombs, and of other things. She hadn't understoodbefore, and she was horrified. It is just possible Doyle wouldn't lether go."

  "But--that's ridiculous. She can't be a prisoner in my sister's house."

  "Will you telephone and find out if she is there?" Howard went to thetelephone at once. It seemed to Willy Cameron that he stood there foruncounted years, and as though, through all that eternity of waiting, heknew what the answer would be. And that he knew, too, what that answermeant, where she had gone, what she had done. If only she had come tohim. If only she had come to him. He would have saved her from herself.He--

  "She is not there," Howard Cardew said, in a voice from which all lifehad gone. "She left this afternoon, at four o'clock. Of course she hasfriends. Or she may have gone to a hotel. We had managed to make itpractically impossible for her to come home."

  Willy Cameron glanced at his watch. He had discounted the worst beforeit came, and unlike the older man, was ready for action. It was he whotook hold of the situation.

  "Order a car, Mr. Cardew, and go to the hotels," he said. "And if youwill drop me downtown--I'll tell you where--I'll follow up somethingthat has just occurred to me."