Chapter 32

ARMSTRONG ASKS A FAVOR

Neva, arranging to go West on the afternoon express, was stopped by a note from Armstrong:

"I hope you will come to my office at eleven to-morrow. I beg you not to refuse this, the greatest favor, except one, that I have ever asked."

At eleven the next morning she entered the ante-room to his office. He and his secretary were alone there, he walking up and down with a nervousness Morton had never seen in him. At sight of her, his manner abruptly changed. "I was afraid something would happen to prevent your coming," he said as they shook hands. He avoided her glance. "Thank you. Thank you." And he took her into his inner office. "I have an engagement�a meeting that will keep me a few minutes," he went on. "It's only in the next room here."

"Don't hurry on my account," said she.

"I'll just put you at this desk here," he continued, with a curious elaborateness of manner. "There are the morning's papers�and some magazines. I shall be back�as soon as possible. You are sure you don't mind?"

"Indeed, no," she replied, seating herself. "This is most comfortable."

There were sounds of several persons entering the adjoining room. "I'll go now," said he. "The sooner I go, the sooner I shall be free. You will wait?"

"Here," she assured him, wondering that he would not let his eyes meet hers even for an instant.

He went into the next room, leaving the door ajar, but not widely enough for her to see or to be seen. She took up a magazine, began a story. The sound of the voices disturbed her. She heard enough to gather that some kind of business meeting was going on, resumed the story. Suddenly she heard Armstrong's voice. She listened. He, all of them, were so near that she could hear every word.

"You will probably be surprised to learn, gentlemen," he was saying, loudly, clearly, "that I have been impatiently awaiting your coming. And now that you are here, I shall not only give you every opportunity to examine the affairs of the O.A.D., but I shall insist upon your taking advantage of it to the fullest. I look to you, gentlemen, to end the campaign of calumny against your association and its management."

Neva's magazine had dropped into her lap. She knew now why he had asked her to come. If only she could see! But no�that was impossible; she must be content with hearing. She sat motionless, eager, yet in dread too; for she knew that Armstrong had summoned her to his trial, that she was to hear with her own ears the truth, the whole truth about him. The truth! Would it seem to her as it evidently seemed to him? No matter; she believed in him again. "At least," she said, "he thinks he's right, and the best man can get no nearer right than that."

If she could have looked into the next room, she would have seen two large tables, men grouped about each. At one were Armstrong and the five committee-men, and the lawyer, Drew, whom they had brought with them from Chicago to conduct the examination and cross-examinations. At the other sat a dozen reporters from the newspapers.

"I have told the gentlemen of the press," said Armstrong, "that my impression was that the sessions of the committee were to be public. It is, of course, for you to decide."

Drew rubbed his long lean jaw reflectively. "I see, Mr. Armstrong," said he, in a slow, bantering tone, "that you are disposed to assist us to the extent of taking charge of the investigation. Now, I came with the notion that I was to do that, to whatever extent the committee needed leading."

"Then you do not wish the investigation to be public?" said Armstrong.

"Public, yes," replied Drew. "But I doubt if we can conduct it so thoroughly or so calmly, if our every move is made under the limelight."

"Before we go any further," said Armstrong, "there is a matter I wish to bring to the attention of the committee, which it might, perhaps, seem better to you to keep from the press. If so, will you ask the reporters to retire for a few minutes?"

"Now, there's just the kind of matter I think the press ought to hear," said Drew. "We haven't any secrets, Mr. Armstrong."

"Very well," said Armstrong. "The matter is this: The campaign against the O.A.D. and against me was instigated and has been kept up by Mr. Atwater and several of his associates, owners and exploiters of our rivals in the insurance business. In view of that fact, I think the committee will see the gross impropriety, the danger, the disaster, I may say, of having as its counsel, as its guide, one of Mr. Atwater's personal lawyers?"

"That's a lie," drawled Drew.

Armstrong did not change countenance. He rested his gaze calmly on the lawyer. "Where did you dine last night, Mr. Drew?" he asked.

"This is the most impertinent performance I was ever the amused victim of," said Drew. "You are on trial here, sir, not I. Of course, I shall not answer your questions."

Farthest from Drew and facing him sat the chairman of the committee, its youngest member, Roberts of Denver�a slender, tall man, with sinews like steel wires enwrapping his bones, and nothing else beneath a skin tanned by the sun into leather. He had eyes that suggested the full-end view of the barrel of a cocked revolver. "Speak your questions to me, Mr. Armstrong," now said this quiet, dry, dangerous-looking person, "and I'll put 'em to our counsel. Where did you dine last night, Mr. Drew?"

Drew glanced into those eyes and glanced away. "It is evidently Mr. Armstrong's intention to foment dissension in the committee," said he. "I trust you gentlemen will not fall headlong into his trap."

"Why do you object to telling us where you dined last night?" asked Roberts.

"I can see no relevancy to our mission in the fact that I dined with my old friend, Judge Bimberger."

"Ask him how long he has known Judge Bimberger," said Armstrong.

"I have known him for years," said Drew. "But I have not seen much of him lately."

"Then, ask him," said Armstrong to Roberts, "why it was necessary for Mr. Atwater to give Bimberger a letter of introduction to him, a letter which the judge sent up with his card at the Manhattan Hotel at four o'clock yesterday afternoon."

Drew smiled contemptuously, without looking at either Armstrong or the chairman. "It was not a letter of introduction. It was a friendly note Mr. Atwater asked the judge to deliver."

"It had 'Introducing Judge Bimberger' on the envelope," said Armstrong. "There it is." And he tossed an envelope on the table.

Drew sprang to his feet, sank back with a ghastly grin. "You see, we have a very clever man to deal with, gentlemen," said he, "a man who stops at nothing, and is never so at ease as when he is stooping."

"Ask him," pursued Armstrong tranquilly, "how much he made in counsel fees from Atwater, from the Universal Life, from the Hearth and Home Defender, last year."

"I am counsel to a great many men and corporations," cried Drew, ruffled. "You will not find a lawyer of my standing who has not practically all the conspicuous interests as his clients."

"Probably not," said Roberts dryly. "That's the hell of it for us common folks."

"Ask him," said Armstrong, "what arrangements he made with Bimberger to pervert the investigation, to make it simply a slaughter of its present management, to��"

"Gentlemen, I appeal to you!" exclaimed Drew with great dignity. "I did not come here to be insulted. I have too high a position at the bar to be brought into question. I protest. I demand that this cease."

"Ask him," said Armstrong, "what he and Bimberger and Atwater and Langdon talked about at the dinner last night."

"You have heard my protest, gentlemen," said Drew coldly. "I am awaiting your answer."

A silence of perhaps twenty seconds that seemed as many minutes. Then Roberts spoke: "Well, Mr. Drew, in view of the fact that the reporters are present��"

Involuntarily Drew wheeled toward the reporters' table, wild terror in his eyes. He had forgotten that the press was there; all in a rush, he realized what those silent, almost effaced dozen young men meant�the giant of the brazen lungs who would in a few brief hours be shrieking into every ear, from ocean to ocean, the damning insinuations of Armstrong. He tried to speak, but only a rattling sound issued from his throat.

"As the reporters are present," Roberts went on pitilessly�he had seen too much of the tragic side of life in his years as Indian fighter and cowboy to be moved simply by tragedy without regard to its cause�"I think, and I believe the rest of the committee think, that you will have to answer Mr. Armstrong's grave charges."

Drew collected himself. "I doubt if a reputable counsel has ever been subjected to such indignities," said he in his slow, dignified way. "I not only decline to enter into a degrading controversy, I also decline to serve longer as counsel to a committee which has so frankly put itself in a position to have its work discredited from the outset."

"Then you admit," said Roberts, "that you have entered into improper negotiations with parties interested to queer this investigation?"

"Such a charge is preposterous," replied Drew.

"You admit that you deceived us a few moments ago as to your relations with this judge?" pursued Roberts.

Drew made no answer. He was calmly gathering together his papers.

"I suggest that some one move that Mr. Drew's resignation be not accepted, but that he be dismissed."

"I so move," said Reed, the attorney-general of Iowa.

"Second," said Bissell, a San Franciscan.

The motion was carried, as Drew, head in the air, and features inscrutably calm behind his dark, rough skin, marched from the room, followed by several of the reporters.

"As there are two lawyers on the committee," said Roberts, "it seems to me we had better make no more experiments with outside counsel."

The others murmured assent. "Let Mr. Reed do the questioning," suggested Mulholland. It was agreed, and Reed took the chair which Drew had occupied, as it was conveniently opposite to that in which Armstrong was seated. The reporters who had pursued Drew now returned; one of them said in an audible undertone to his fellow�"He wouldn't talk�not a word," and they all laughed.

"Now�Mr. Armstrong," said Reed, in a sharp, businesslike voice.

"I was summoned," began Armstrong, "as the first witness, I assume. I should like to preface my examination with a brief statement."

"Certainly," said Reed. Roberts nodded. He had his pistol-barrel eyes trained upon Armstrong. It was evident that Armstrong's exposure of Drew, far from lessening Roberts's conviction that he was a bandit, had strengthened it, had made him feel that here was an even wilier, more resourceful, more dangerous man than he had anticipated.

"For the past year and a half, gentlemen," said Armstrong, "I have been engaged in rooting out a system of graft which had so infected the O.A.D. that it had ceased to be an insurance company and had become, like most of our great corporations, a device for enabling a few insiders to gather in the money of millions of people, to keep permanently a large part of it, to take that part which could not be appropriated and use it in gambling operations in which the gamblers got most of the profits and the people whose money supplied the stakes bore all the losses. As the inevitable result of my effort to snatch the O.A.D. from these parasites and dependents, who filled all the positions, high and low, far and near, there has been a determined and exceedingly plausible campaign to oust me. Latterly, instead of fighting these plotters and those whom they misled, I have been silent, have awaited this moment�when a committee of the policy holders would appear. Naturally, I took every precaution to prevent that committee from becoming the unconscious tool of the enemies of the O.A.D."

Armstrong's eyes now rested upon the fifth member of the committee, De Brett, of Ohio. De Brett's eyes slowly lowered until they were studying the dark leather veneer of the top of the table.

"I think," continued Armstrong, "that I have gone far enough in protecting the O.A.D. and myself and my staff which has aided me in the big task of expelling the grafters. I have here��"

Armstrong lifted a large bundle of typewritten manuscript and let it fall with a slight crash. De Brett jumped.

"I have here," said Armstrong, "a complete account of my stewardship."

De Brett drew a cautious but profound breath of relief.

"It shows who have been dismissed, why they were dismissed, each man accounted for in detail; what extravagances I found, how I have cut them off; the contrast of the published and the actual conditions of the company when I became its president, the present condition�which I may say is flourishing, with the expenses vastly cut down and the profits for the policy holders vastly increased. As soon as your committee shall have vindicated the management, the O.A.D. will start upon a new era of prosperity and will soon distance, if not completely put out of business, its rivals, loaded down, as they are, with grafters."

Armstrong took up the bundle of typewriting and handed it to Reed. "Before you give that document to the press," he went on, "I want to make one suggestion. The men who have been feeding on the O.A.D. are, of course, personally responsible�but only in a sense. They are, rather, the product of a system. No law, no safeguards will ever be devised for protecting a man in the possession of anything which he himself neglects and leaves open as a temptation to the appetites of the less scrupulous of his fellow men. These ravagers of your property, of our property, are like a swarm of locusts. They came; they found the fields green and unprotected; they ate. They have passed on. They are simply one of a myriad of similar swarms. If we leave our property unguarded again, they will return. If we guard it, they will never bother us again. The question is whether we�you�would or would not do well to publish the names and the records of these men. Will it do any good beyond supplying the newspapers with sensations for a few days? Will the good be overbalanced by the harm, by the�if I may say so�the injustice? For is it not unjust to single out these few hundreds of men, themselves the victims of a system, many of them the unconscious victims�to single them out, when, all over the land, wherever there is a great unguarded property, their like and worse go unscathed, and will be free to swell the chorus of more or less hypocritical denunciations of them?"

"We shall let no guilty man escape," said Roberts, eying Armstrong sternly, "not even you, Mr. Armstrong, if we find you guilty."

"If there is any member of the committee who can, after searching his own life, find no time when he has directly or indirectly grafted or aided and abetted graft or profits by grafting�or spared relatives or friends when he caught them in the devious but always more or less respectable ways of the grafter�if there is such a one, then�" Armstrong smiled�"I withdraw my suggestion."

"We must recover what has been stolen! We must send the thieves to the penitentiary!" exclaimed Mulholland.

"But you can do neither," said Armstrong.

"And why not?" demanded Reed.

"Because they have too many powerful friends. They own the departments of justice here and at Washington. We should only waste the money of the O.A.D., send good money after bad. As you will see in my statement there, I have recovered several millions. That is all we shall ever get back. However, I shall say no more. I am ready to answer any questions. My staff is ready. The books are all at your disposal."

"I think we had better adjourn now," said Reed, "and examine the papers Mr. Armstrong has submitted�adjourn, say until Thursday morning. And in the meanwhile, we will hold the document, if the rest of the committee please, and not give it to the press. We must not give out anything that has not been absolutely verified."

"I can't offer the committee lunch here," said Armstrong. "We have cut off the lunch account of the O.A.D.�a saving of forty thousand a year toward helping the policy holders buy their lunches." And he bowed to the chairman, and withdrew by the door by which he had entered.

"A smooth citizen," said Roberts, when the reporters were gone.

"Very," said De Brett, at whom he was looking.

"He's that�and more," said Mulholland. "He's an honest man."

"We must be careful about hasty conclusions," replied Roberts.

"He is probably laughing at us, even now," said De Brett.

Roberts turned the pistol-barrel upon him again. "We've got to be a damned sight more careful about prejudice against him," said he.

And De Brett hastily and eagerly assented.

In the next room the man who "is probably laughing at us, even now" was standing before a woman who could not lift her burning face to meet his gaze. But he, looking long at her, thought he saw that there was no hope for him, and shut himself in behind his stolidity of the Indian and the pioneer.

"Well," he said, "you don't believe. I was afraid it'd be so. Why should you? I hardly believe in myself as yet." And he turned to stare out of the window.

She came hesitatingly, slid her arm timidly through his. She entreated softly, earnestly, "Forgive me, Horace." Then in response to his quick glance, "Forgive me, I won't again, ever."

"Oh," was all he said. But his tone was like the arm he put round her shoulders to draw her close against his broad chest, the rampart of a dauntless soul. And as with one pair of eyes, not his nor hers, but theirs, they gazed serenely down upon the vast panorama of snow-draped skyscrapers, plumed like volcanoes and lifting grandly in the sparkling air.

THE END.