Chapter 30

BY A TRICK

By itself, Armstrong's insult to Fosdick in refusing to "take care of" his son-in-law would have been of small consequence, unpleasant reminder of his shorn power and rude check to his benevolent instincts though it was. Fosdick was not likely, at least soon, to forget his lesson in the wisdom of letting the big Westerner alone. Also, Armstrong was useful to him�not so useful as a tool in the same position would have been; still, far more useful than a representative of some hostile interest. But this insult was the latest and the rashest of a series of similar insults which Armstrong had been distributing right and left with an ever freer, ever bolder hand. While he was "thinking over" Neva's plain talk with him, he, by more than mere coincidence, was experimenting with a new policy which was in the general direction of the one he had adopted as soon as he got control of the O.A.D. It was a policy of "anti-graft"; and once he had inaugurated it, once he had begun to look about him in the O.A.D. for opportunities to stop the plundering, and the pilfering as well, he had pushed on far beyond where he originally intended to halt�as a strong man always does, whatever the course he chooses.

Everyone belongs to some section or class. He may quarrel with individuals in that class, he may quarrel with individuals in another class, or with the whole of it; but he may not break with the whole of his own class. Be he cracksman or financier or preacher or carpenter or lawyer or what not, he must be careful not to get his own class, as a class, against him. If he does, he will find himself alone, defenseless, doomed. Armstrong belonged to the class financier; he had been in finance all his grown-up life. He stood for the idea financier in the minds of financiers, in his own mind, in the public mind. His battles with his fellow-financiers, being within the class lines, had strengthened him, had given him clear title to recognition as a power in finance; he had been like the politician who fights his way through and over his fellow politicians to a nomination or a boss-ship, like the preacher who bears off the bishopric from his rivals, the doctor who absorbs the patronage of the rich, the lawyer who succeeds in the competition among lawyers for the position of chief pander to the plutocratic appetite for making and breaking laws.

But this new policy of Armstrong's was a policy of war on his own class. Cutting down commissions, cutting out "good things," lopping off sinecures, bisecting salaries�why, he was hacking away at the very foundations of the dominance of his class! No privileges, no parasitism, no consideration for gentlemen, no "soft snaps," no ornaments on the pay rolls�where were the profits to come from, the profits that enabled the big fellows to fatten, that filled the crib for their business and social hangers-on? Reform, economy, stoppage of waste, all these were excellent to talk about; and, within limits that recognized the rights of the dominant classes, even might be practiced without offense, especially by a fellow trying to make a reputation and judiciously doing it at the expense of financiers who had lost their grip and so could expect no quarter. But to raise the banner of "anti-graft" for a serious campaign� Anarchy, socialism, chaos!

Armstrong had inaugurated and was pressing a war on his own class. And for whose benefit? Not for his own; he wasn't enriching himself�and therein was a Phariseeism, an effort to pose as a censor of his class, that alone would have made him a suspicious character. He was fighting his own class, was making traitorous, familicidal war for the benefit of the common enemy�the vast throng of the people who hated the upper classes, as everybody knew, and were impudently restless in their God-appointed position of hewers of wood and drawers of water for the financial aristocracy. Were not the people weakening dangerously in reverence for and gratitude to their superiors, the great and good men who provided them with work, took care of their savings for them, supported the church that guarded their souls and the medical profession that healed their bodies, paid all the taxes, undertook all the large responsibilities�and did this truly godlike work, supported this Atlantean burden, in exchange for a trivial commission that brought no benefit but the sorrows of luxury? These were the ignoramuses Armstrong was inflating, these the ingrates he was encouraging. Already he had doubled the dividends of the O.A.D., had made them a seeming rebuke to the other insurance companies. Competition�yes! But not the cutthroat, wicked, ruinous competition that would destroy his own class, its profits and its power. If he were permitted to persist, the clamor for so-called "honesty" might spread from policy holders to stockholders, to wage earners, to the whole mass of the wards of high finance. And they might compel the upper class to grant them more money to waste in drink and in wicked imitation of the luxury of their betters!

Armstrong was expelling himself from his own class�into what? Except in finance, high finance, what career was there for him? He would be like a politician without a party, like a general without an army, like a preacher without a parish, like a disbarred lawyer. His reputation would be gone�for morality is a relative word, and by his conduct he was convincing the only class important to him as a man of action that he had not the morality of his class, that he could not be trusted with its interests. Every era, every race, every class has its own morality, its own practical application of the general moral code to its peculiar needs. The class financier, in the peculiar circumstances surrounding life in the new era, had its code of what was honest and what dishonest, what respectable and what disreputable, what loyal and what disloyal. Under that code his new course was disloyal, disreputable, was positively dishonest. It would avail him nothing, should other classes vaguely approve; if his own class condemned, he was damned.

"A hell of a mess I'm getting into," reflected he, "with trying to play one game by the rules of another." He saw his situation clearly, but he had no disposition to turn back. "All in a lifetime!" he concluded with a shrug. "I'll just see what comes of it. Anything but monotony." To him monotony, the monotony of simply taking in and putting away for his own use money confided to him, was the dullest of lives�and it was beginning to seem the most contemptible�"like going through the pockets of sleepers," said he to himself.

He saw the storm coming. Not that there were any clouds or gusty winds; the great storms, the cyclones, don't come that way. No, his sky was serene all round; everything looked bright, brilliant. But there was an ominous stillness in the air�that dead, dead calm which fills an experienced weather expert with misgivings. Before the great storms that explode out of those utter calms, the domestic animals always act queerly; and, in this case, that sign was not lacking. The big fellows beamed on him, were most polite, most eager for his friendship. Not so the little fellows�the underlings, both in the O.A.D. and in its allied banks and in the institutions of high finance into which Armstrong happened to go. At sight of him they became agitated, nervous, stood aloof, watched him furtively.

But he went his new way steadily, as if he did not know what was impending. It secretly amused him greatly to observe his directors. The new board he had selected was composed of men of substantial fortune, who were just outside high finance�business men, trained in business methods. But they had been agitated by what they had seen and heard and read of the financiers�of the vast fortunes quickly made, of the huge mysterious profits, of the great enterprises where the financier risked only other people's money, and stood to lose nothing if the venture failed, kept all the profits if it succeeded. They longed for these fairylike lands where money grew on bushes and the rivers ran gold. And when they were invited into the directory of the O.A.D., they thought they were at last sweeping through the gates from the real world of business to the Hesperian Gardens of finance. As they sat at the meetings, hearing Armstrong and his lieutenants give accounts of economies and safe investments and profits for the policy holders, each felt like a child who had been led to believe it was going to a Christmas festival and finds that it has been lured into a regular session of the Sunday school. Why, the honor and the director's fees were all there was in it!

Then there were the agents, the officials, the staff of the company, high and low, far and near. To the easy-going, golden days of finance had succeeded these sober days of business. Instead of generosity, free flinging about of the money that came in so easily, there was now the most rigid economy�"regular, damn, pinch-penny honesty," complained Duncan, the magnificent agent at Chicago. "I tell you frankly, Armstrong, I'm going to get out. It isn't worth the while of a man of my ability to work for what the company now allows."

"Sorry to lose you, old man," said Armstrong, "but we can't allow any secret rake-offs."

It was Duncan who precipitated the cyclone. A cyclone at its start is a little eddy of air which happens to be set whirling by a chance twist of a sunbeam glancing from a cloud. Millions of these eddies occur every hour everywhere. Only when conditions are just right does a cyclone result, does the eddy continue to whirl, draw more and more air in commotion, get a forward impulse that increases, until in an incredibly short space of time destruction is raging over the land. The conditions in the O.A.D. were just right. Armstrong was hated by the whole personnel, at home and abroad, and hated as only the man is hated who cuts his fellows off from "easy money." And he had not a friend. Throughout high finance, he was hated and feared; at any moment, as the result of his doings, some other big institution, all other big institutions might have to adopt his policy. Directors, presidents, officials great and small, all the recipients of the profits from the system of using other people's money as if it were your own, regarded him as a personal enemy. When Duncan said to one of his fellow agents, "We must get that chap out," the right eddy had been started.

Within two weeks, Duncan was at the head of an association of agents gathering proxies from the policy holders to oust the Armstrong r�gime. Duncan and his fellow conspirators sent out a circular, calling attention to the recent rise in the profits to policy holders. "It is evident," said the circular, "that there has been mismanagement of our interests, and that the present powers have been frightened into giving us a little larger part of our own. We ought to have it all! Send your proxies to the undersigned, that the O.A.D. may be reorganized upon an honest, democratic basis. A new broom, a clean sweep!"

Duncan in person came to Armstrong with one of the circulars. "There's nothing underhand about me," said he as he handed it to the president. "Here's our declaration of war."

Armstrong glanced at it, smiled satirically. "You've sent copies to the newspapers also, haven't you?" replied he. "As you couldn't possibly keep the matter secret, I can't get excited about your candor." And he tossed the circular on his desk.

"When you read it, you'll see we're fighting fair," said Duncan.

"I've read it," was Armstrong's answer. "One of my friends among the agents sent me a copy a week ago�the day you drew it up."

Duncan began to "hedge." "I don't want you to have any hard feelings toward me," said he. "All the boys were hot for this thing, and I had to go in with them."

"You were displaced as general Western agent this morning," said Armstrong tranquilly. "I telegraphed your assistant to take charge. I also telephoned him a memorandum of what you owe the company, with instructions to bring suit unless you paid up in three days."

"It ain't fair to single me out this way," cried Duncan. "It's persecution."

"I haven't singled you out," said Armstrong. "I bounced the whole crowd of you at the same time, and in the same way. You charge me with extravagance. Well, you see, I've admitted the charge and have begun to retrench."

Duncan's fat, round face was purple and his brown eyes were glittering. "You think you've done us up," said he, with a nasty laugh. "But you're not as 'cute' as you imagine. We provided against just that move."

"I see that your committee of policy holders to receive proxies are dummies," replied Armstrong. "I know all about your arrangements."

"Then you know we're going to win."

Armstrong looked indifferent. "That remains to be seen," said he. "Good morning."

When Duncan had got himself out of the room, Armstrong laid the circular beside the one he himself had written and sent to each of the seven hundred thousand policy holders. His circular was a straight-forward statement of the facts�of how and why his policy of economy had stirred up all the plunderers of the company, great and small. It ended with a request that proxies be sent direct to him, by those who wished the new order to persist and did not wish a return to the old order with its long-standing and grave abuses. He compared the two circulars and laughed at himself. "Mine's the unvarnished truth," thought he. "But it doesn't sound as probable, as reasonable, as Duncan's lies. If the policy holders do stand by me, it'll be because most people are fools and hit it right by accident. Most of us are never so wrong as in our way of being right. The wise thing is always to assume that the crowd that's in is crooked."

If Armstrong had been a reformer, with the passion to reorganize the world on his own private plan, and in the event of the world's failure to recognize his commission as vice-regent of the Almighty, ready to denounce it as a hopeless case�if Armstrong had been a professional regenerator, those would have been trying days for him. The measures he took that were the most honest and the most honorable were the very measures that made the other side strong. He had weeded out a multitude of grafters and had shown an inflexible purpose to weed out the rest; and so he had organized and made powerful the conspiracy to restore graft. He had attacked the men�the big agents�who were using their influence with the policy holders to enable them to rob freely; and so he had stirred up those traitors still further to cozen their victims. He had cut down the enormous subsidies to the press, had cut off the graft of the great financiers who were the powers behind the great organs of public opinion; and so he had enlisted the press as an open and most helpful ally of the conspirators. The policy holders were told by agents�whom they knew personally and regarded as their representatives�that Armstrong was the "thieving tool of the Wall Street crowd"; the policy holders read in their newspapers that "on the whole the O.A.D. would probably benefit by a new management selected by the body of the policy holders themselves." It was ridiculous, it was tragic. Armstrong laughed, with a heavy and at times a bitter heart. "I don't blame the poor devils," he said. "How are they to know? I'm the damn fool, not they�I who, dealing with men all these years, have put myself in a position where I am appealing from the men who run the people to the people, who always have been run and always will be."

Still, he began to hope against hope, as the proxies rolled in for him�by hundreds, by thousands, by tens of thousands. Most of the letters accompanying the proxies justified his cynical opinion that the average man is never so wrong as when he is right; the writers gave the most absurd reasons for supporting him, not a few of them frankly saying that it was to the best interest of the company to leave the control to the man who was in with the powers of Wall Street! But there were letters, hundreds of them, from men and women who showed that they understood the situation; and, curiously enough, most of these letters were badly written, badly spelled, letters from so-called ignorant people. It was a striking exhibit of how little education has to do with brains. "I've always said," thought Armstrong, "that our rotten system of education is responsible for most of the fools and all the damn fools, but I never before knew how true it was."

And the weeks passed, and the annual meeting and election drew nearer and nearer. Instead of Armstrong's agitation increasing, it disappeared entirely. Within, he was as calm as he had all along seemed at the surface. It was an unexpected reward for trying to do the square thing. He was eminently practical in his morals, was the last man in the world to turn the other cheek, was disposed to return a blow both in kind and in degree. But he knew, also, that the calm he now felt was due to the changed course, could never have been his in the old course.

On the morning of the great day, he stopped shaving to look into his own eyes reflected in the glass. "Old man," said he aloud, "there's much to be said for being clean�reasonably, humanly clean. It begins to have compensations sooner than the preachers seem to think."

As Armstrong entered the splendid assembly chamber of the new O.A.D. building, the first figure his eyes hit upon was that of Hugo Fosdick, entering at the opposite door. To look at him was like hearing a good joke. He was walking as if upon air, head rearing, lofty brow corrugated, eyes rolling and serious, shoulders squared as if bearing lightly a ponderous burden. Of all the trifles that flash and wink out upon the expanse of the infinite, the physically vain man seems the most trivial. The so-called upper classes, being condemned to think about themselves almost all the time, furnish to the drama of life the most of the low comedy, with their struttings and swellings and posings. Those who in addition to class vanity have physical vanity are the clowns of the great show. Hugo was of the clowns�and he dressed the part, that day. He had on a tremendously loud tweed suit, a billycock hat of a peculiar shade of brown to match, a huge plaid overcoat; he was wearing a big, rough-looking chrysanthemum that seemed of a piece with his tie; he diffused perfume like a woman who wishes to be known by the scent she uses. As he drew off his big, thick driving gloves, he gazed grandly around. His eyes met Armstrong's, and his haughty lip curled in a supercilious smile.

"Did you come down in an auto?" some one asked him.

"No, not in an auto," he said in a voice intended to be heard by all. "I drove down. I've dropped the auto�it's become vulgar, like the bicycle. It was merely a fad, and the best people soon exhausted it. There's no chance for individual taste in those mechanical things, as there is in horses. Anyone can get together the best there is going in automobiles; but how many men can provide themselves with well turned out traps�horses, harness, the men on the box, just as a gentleman's turnout should be?"

One of the Western men laughed behind his hand, and said, "Wot t' hell!" But most of the assembly gazed rather awedly at Hugo. They would have thought him ridiculous had he been presented to them as a laugh-provoker; but, as he was presented as a representative of the "top notch" of New York, they were respectfully silent and obediently impressed.

And now, with Randall, a Duncan man, in the chair, the meeting began�formalities, reading of reports to which nobody listened, making of motions in which nobody was interested. Half an hour of this, with the tension increasing. Duncan had dry-smoked three cigars, and the corners of his fat mouth were yellow with tobacco stains; Hugo, struggling hard for a gentleman's sang froid, had half torn out the sweat band of his pot hat, had bit his lip till it bled. He was watching Armstrong, was hating him and envying him�for the big Westerner sat at the right of the chairman with no more trace of excitement on his face than there is in the features of a bronze Buddha who has been staring cross-legged into Nirvana for twenty-five centuries.

Nor did he rouse himself when the election began, though a nervous shiver like an electric shock visibly shook every other man in the room. His lieutenants proposed his list of candidates; Duncan's men proposed the "Popular" list; the voting began. Barry, for Armstrong, cast sixty-two thousand four hundred and fifteen votes�the proxies that had come in for Armstrong in answer to his appeal and also the uncanceled proxies of those he had had since the beginning of his term. Duncan and his crowd burst into a cheer, and in rapid succession nine of them cast forty-three thousand and eleven votes. Then they turned anxious eyes on Hugo. Armstrong, too, looked at him. He could not understand. Hugo's name was not on the Duncan list of persons to whom the "new broom" proxies were to be sent. Hugo, pale and trembling, rose. He fixed revengeful, triumphant, gloating eyes upon Armstrong and addressed him, as he said to the chairman, "For Mr. Wolcott here, I cast for the Popular, or anti-Armstrong ticket, the proxies of ninety thousand six hundred and four policy holders."

Armstrong looked at Hugo as if he were not seeing him; indeed, he seemed almost oblivious of his surroundings, as if he were absorbed in some tranquil, interesting mental problem. Silence followed Hugo's announcement, and the porters brought in and piled upon the huge table, over against the now insignificant bundles of Armstrong's proxies, the packages which were the tangible demonstration of the overwhelming force and power of his foes. As the porters completed their task, the spectacle became so inspiring to Duncan and his friends that they forgot their dignity, and gave way to their feelings. They yelled, they tossed their hats; they embraced, shook hands, gave each other resounding slaps upon the shoulders. Hugo condescended to join in their jubilations, never taking his eyes off Armstrong's face. Armstrong and Barry and Driggs sat silent, Armstrong impassive, Barry frowning, Driggs gnawing his mustache. Armstrong's gaze went from face to face of these "policy holders"; on each he saw written the basest emotions�emotions from the jungle, emotions of tusk and claw. The O.A.D. with all its vast treasures was theirs to despoil�and they were clashing their fangs and licking their savage chops in anticipation of the feast. The vast majority of the policy holders had been too indifferent to respond to the appeal of either side�this, though the future of their widows and their orphans was at stake! Of those who had responded, the overwhelming majority had declared against Armstrong.

He had long known it would be so and had resolved to accept the "popular mandate." But the gleam of those greedy eyes, the grate of that greedy, gloating laughter, was too horrible. "I can't let things go to hell like this!" he muttered�and he leaned toward Driggs and said in an undertone, "I've changed my mind. Carry out my original programme."

Driggs suddenly straightened himself, and his face changed from gloom to delight, then sobered into alert calmness. Gradually the victors quieted down. "Close the polls!" called Duncan. "Nobody else is going to vote."

"Before closing the polls, Mr. Chairman," said Driggs, "or, rather, before the proxies offered by Mr. Fosdick are accepted, I wish to ask Mr. Wolcott a question." And he turned toward young Wolcott, a distant relative and henchman of Duncan's and one of the three men in whose names stood all the "new-broom" proxies.

"How old are you, Mr. Wolcott, please?"

Wolcott stared at him, glanced at Hugo, at Duncan, grinned. "None of your business," drawled he. "I may say none of your damn business."

Driggs smiled blandly, turned to the chairman. "As a policy holder in the O.A.D.," he said gently, "I ask that all the proxies on which the name of Howard C. Wolcott appears be thrown out."

Duncan and Hugo sprang up. "What kind of trick is this?" shouted Duncan at Armstrong.

Armstrong seemed not to be listening, was idly twisting his slender gold watch guard round his forefinger.

"By the constitution of the association," proceeded Driggs, "proxies given to anyone under thirty years of age or to any committee any of whose members is under thirty years are invalid. I refer you to Article nine, Section five."

"But Wolcott's over thirty," bawled Duncan.

"I'm thirty-one�thirty-two the sixth of next month," blustered Wolcott. "I demand to be sworn."

Driggs drew several papers from his pocket. "I have here," he pursued, "an official copy of Wolcott's application for a marriage license, in which he gives the date of his birth. Also the sworn statement of the physician who presided over his entrance into this wicked world. Also, an official copy of Wolcott's statement to the election registrars of Peoria, where he lives. All these documents agree that Mr. Wolcott is not yet twenty-nine." Driggs leaned back and smiled benevolently at Wolcott. "I think Mr. Wolcott's own testimony would be superfluous."

"This is infamous�infamous!" cried Hugo, hysterically menacing Armstrong with his billycock hat and big driving gloves and crimson-fronted head.

"Of all the outrages ever attempted, this is the most brazen!" shouted Duncan.

"Mr. Chairman," said Driggs, in that same gentle voice, not unlike the purring of a stroked cat, "I believe the Constitution is self-executing. As I understand it, all the proxies collected for the Duncan-Fosdick party are on the same form�the one authorizing Wolcott and two others to cast the vote. Thus, the only legal votes cast are those for the regular ticket."

"The election must be postponed!" Duncan screamed, waving his fists and then beating them upon the table. "This outrage must not go on."

The chairman, Randall, had been a Duncan man. He now fled to the victors. "There is no legal way to postpone, Mr. Duncan," he responded coldly. "No other votes offering, I declare the polls closed. Shall we adjourn until this day week, gentlemen, according to custom, so that the tellers may have time to examine the vote and report?"

Armstrong spoke for the first time. "Move we adjourn," he said, rising like a man who is weary from sitting too long in the same position. Barry seconded; the meeting stood adjourned. Armstrong, followed by Barry and Driggs, withdrew.

As soon as they had gone, Hugo blazed on Duncan. "You are responsible for this!" he cried. "You damn fool!"

Duncan stared stupidly. Then, by a reflex action of the muscles rather than as the result of any order from his dazed brain, his great, fat-cushioned fist swung into Hugo's face and Hugo was flat upon his back on the floor.

"Come on, boys," said Duncan. "Let's go have a drink and feel ourselves for broken bones."