III
At the mocking tones Slack looked up and into a face whose black, commanding eyes rivetted his very soul; whose straight, firm-set mouth was drawn to a hair-line in its wisp of a smile.
“Acey Smith!”
The visitor ignored the startled salutation. “I’m not so sure,” he ruminated, “that if you did meet J.C.X. in the regions you mentioned that you would not change your mind.”
“But Smith, you are aware of the instructions forwarded to me to-day?”
“I have a pretty fair idea of the gist of those instructions.”
“Don’t you think J.C.X. could be prevailed upon to modify them?”
“With regard to precipitating a strike of the tugmen. Such a move would be folly—downright folly.”
“I am certain no such modification could be obtained,” declared Acey Smith. “You know quite as well as I that an order from J.C.X. is a command, and—well, you know what has happened to those that have failed in carrying on for the North Star.”
“But the North Star has never had a strike in its history. It has been known for its fair and generous treatment of its men,” argued Slack. “Its policy has always been to pay employés the highest wages and a bonus.”
“Correct. But for this once J.C.X. has seen fit to change the policy of the North Star, with the North Star’s own particular ends in view.”
“It spells disaster.”
“For whom?”
“For the North Star Company—for all of us. Why—”
“That’s not the point that’s worrying you, Mr. Slack!”
The challenge came swift and sharp like the crack of a whip. Though nominally his subordinate, there were crises in the history of the North Star Company when Slack had to mentally acknowledge a master in Acey Smith’s presence. That was perhaps because he knew Smith in some way held the confidence of the directing mind of the firm, and—there was another reason that was not as tangible.
A wan remnant of what was meant to be a patient smile broke over the politician’s fat face. “We’ll be absolutely candid then,” he agreed. “There’s a Dominion election coming—the House may go to the country at any time. Smith, this proposed strike, with us refusing a settlement, would alienate every solitary labour vote in the North. Why, man, I couldn’t run against a yellow dog and win; it would ruin my political future.”
Acey Smith approached the other deliberately. He leaned forward until the tips of his inordinately long, tapering white fingers supported him on the edge of the desk.
“Slack,” he pronounced with cold insolence, “you have no political future.”
“One moment!” He raised a detaining hand, as Slack, ashen to the throat, opened his mouth in a sort of sickly gasp. “I am merely uttering the judgment of J.C.X., whose spokesman I am for the time being. Your future, as mine, belongs utterly to the North Star. The day you took over the president’s desk you became a pawn, body and soul. You knew that; it was put coldly to you. You accepted in the knowledge that the decisions of the anonymous head of the North Star Towing and Contracting Company must be absolute law, to be obeyed without equivocation of any kind.
“Slack, the North Star made you; picked you up when you were a hand-to-mouth, soap-box demagogue with about as much chance of carving a name in Canadian politics as a celluloid beetle has of cruising the drought-belts of hell. You were a brief-hunting, small-town lawyer in those days, dependent on the political crumbs the big fellows brushed off the table. If it hadn’t been for a mean portion of party patronage you would have had to tackle honest toil or starve.
“Let me refresh your mind on what happened. You got into the political game in a small way. The North Star backed you with its money, its influence and its strategy. You won out against a stronger man—a victory that surprised no one more than yourself.
“You had the front, were a hail fellow and well met. The North Star needed a man of that very type with the open sesame to inner political circles. In a single day it elevated you from hopeless penury and insignificance to the highest office in its gift as nominal head of the North Star and its coterie of subsidiary companies. You were made the master of millions, with precedence over many of us who had served the company faithfully since its earliest beginnings. What did you promise in return for all these things?
“Come here!”
Acey Smith, a strange, smouldering glow in his coal-black eyes that held the trembling Slack transfixed, took the other by the arm and led him to the south side of the office, to a window that overlooked the city, its smoked-smudged waterfront, the great lake and the rugged sweep of the North Shore.
“Don’t you remember, John J.?” Acey Smith’s voice was low and vibrant. “It was on this very hill, on the very site of this office, that I stood with my arm linked in yours as I stand now. You confessed to me your ruling passion was for power. You intimated you would sell your very soul to be great, to be mighty.
“I, as the representative of the powerful J.C.X., came to offer you the thing you craved most. I asked you to look to the South, to the East and to the West. As far as you could see and beyond would be your absolute domain. The North Star was prepared to make you ruler of the whole North Shore and the Upper Lakes, and a mighty force in the woods beyond and across the prairie West. You were to have power of a kind—a figurehead ’tis true—but executive power patently greater than any other one individual in this whole Dominion of Canada—and that was what your heart yearned for.
“There was a price named for this prize—you remember? It was your unquestioning obedience at all times to the will of J.C.X. None was to know whence your instructions came. This was all laid down very definitely to you—and, you accepted gladly, without reservation.”
Slack stood dumb, his gaze averted from the accusing blaze of the other man’s. His relentless inquisitor went on:
“I need not here dilate on how the North Star has lived up to its covenant with you. Your family’s social prominence here and at the Capital, the political honours that have been showered upon you all attest the might that was loaned you. The North Star has demanded only service in return and cared not whether it had your gratitude or not.
“Think you, Slack, that the power that made you a leader among men has not the will to cast you down again into the depths from which you came—that the unseen arm that reached out and lifted you to wealth and affluence has not the strength to unmake you and brush you from its path into the discard?
“Listen.” The voice beside Slack was terrible in its cold intensity. “The zero hour in the history of the North Star is about to strike. Strong men alone can guide its destinies through that critical hour; the North Star will brook no vacillating weakling at its helm when it heads out into the teeth of the tempest.
“I am authorised to bring you this message: The fiat of J.C.X. is that you accept his recent instructions and carry them out to the letter or immediately vacate the presidency of the North Star.”