XIV—THE KICK-BACKS IN THIS SAMARITAN BUSINESS
I WAS too much upset to go to sleep very early that night, even though Dodovah Vose had given me another of those slumber-coaxing suppers of fried chicken.
So Zebulon Kingsley was ruined, according to his own tell!
But what else besides ruin was fronting him? I knew him and the stuff that was in him. When a man like the judge came humping back to his home town, packing a gun on each hip and headed for his woods, there to do himself destruction, it meant something more than that he was flat broke. The fact that he had two guns suggested that he did not propose to take any chances on failure.
His troubles might have skeow-wowed his mind temporarily, I pondered. The fact that he had given me, one of the despised Sidneys, a half-dozen decent words hinted at aberration, as I thought upon the matter. I hoped that he would stay crazy long enough so that he would allow me to poke myself still further into his affairs and his family, and show me a little appreciation. Up to that time I certainly had been using ax and crowbar on the intimacy proposition!
It was my conviction that he would be obliged to be pretty nice to me from that time on. I knew something very private and personal in regard to Judge Kingsley, Levant magnate! All at once I found myself feeling rather like sticking my thumbs in my vest armholes and showing condescension to that man who had loomed so largely before my admiration. At any rate, no Sidney had ever committed suicide or had tried to, unless it might be hinted that it mightily resembled suicide when my father ran the ridge-pole of the Butler barn after wetting down the occasion with a quart or so of hard cider.
I felt decidedly cocky when I started over to his house the next morning. I had his secret—I had manhandled him to save his life. A man might make up his mind to commit suicide, thought I, and then be particularly and almighty grateful, after a night’s sleep, because some chap happened along at the right time and stopped him before he had made a fool of himself.
I headed for the front door like a friend of the family.
Judge Kingsley opened his office door in the ell and called to me.
“I do not transact business in my home,” he informed me, stiffly. He tapped the sign beside his door. “Z. Kingsley” was its sole inscription, curtly hinting that no further information was needed regarding that gentleman. “I do all business in my office, sir.”
I don’t know in just what condition I had been expecting to find the judge, and I had not planned how I would act when I met him, but I know mighty well I had not calculated on the sort of meeting we did have.
I found him just as I had found him in times past when we had had a word or so together—and that was my surprise that day!
I would not have been much astonished if he had fallen on my neck and sobbed out his gratitude; I rather looked for some demonstration. To find him the same old, cold, stiff ramrod was outside all my anticipations. I went in meekly and sat down.
“In the matter of the wood-lot,” he said, perfectly at ease and putting that jew’s-harp twang in his nose. “I have looked the contracts over. Young man, I don’t know whether to compliment you as one of the smartest business men I have ever met, or to have you arrested for an attempt at grand larceny!”
I did not know what to say to that, and sat and fiddled my finger across the brim of my plug-hat.
He put out his hand. “Please allow me to look at that receipt I gave you.”
I handed it over—obedient as a pup. He read it and tore it up.
“It is as irregular a document as your operations have been irregular. I will give you a deed, taking back your note and a mortgage—”
“But I want no deed, sir. I said so to you last evening. I don’t want the land. You keep it.”
He gave me a chilly stare. “My price of two thousand dollars was on the lot—not merely the wood on the lot. The land will be yours when we have passed our papers. I don’t know why I should place myself under obligations to you by any such foolish child’s play as you suggest.” Say, I felt myself slipping out of the Kingsley family circle as if I were going down a cellar slide in a puddle of soft soap. I made a desperate clutch.
“Judge Kingsley,” I said, “I made you another offer last night. I offered to turn the whole proposition over to you—profits and all! I had no business starting in on the operation. If you are in some sort of trouble—”
“Who said I was in trouble?”
“You said so last evening,” I faltered.
“Have you told anybody I said so, sir?” he demanded, sharply.
“No, sir! Certainly not.”
“If you permit yourself to hint that to anybody I shall promptly brand you as a falsifier and have you before the court on the charge of slander. You must realize that I could secure large damages because a financial man’s reputation forms his stock in trade. I could have you sent to prison on a criminal charge.”
“I don’t see any need of your sitting there and threatening me in that fashion,” I protested, with some heat. “I have tried to help you—”
“I have not asked for any of your help—I do not need it, sir.”
“I don’t suppose you do,” I admitted, sourly.
“Certainly not!”
I couldn’t figure what his game was—it was his own business, anyway—but I did not propose to have him sneering at me. His manner when he said, “Certainly not!” was mighty nasty. I rose and kicked my chair away from me.
“You needn’t show any gratitude if you don’t feel like it, Judge Kingsley. You’ll never hear a word from me about anything that has happened, but I’m not keeping still because you have threatened me. I’m keeping my mouth shut because I’m man enough to do so! And, by gad! I hope you’re man enough, on your side, to show me a little decency and to remember that you have a wife and daughter to protect from scandal and shame. Good day!” I put on my hat and marched out.
I’m making due allowance for the judge’s state of mind, but truly that old hyampus did have the natural ability to stir a man’s temper. A Kingsley and a Sidney got along together about as well as the two parts of a Seidlitz powder do when they meet in a glass of water!
I slammed the door after me, but I had gone only a few feet when I remembered that I had left behind my contracts. Furthermore, I had not finished my business in regard to the deed and the payments. So I whirled and went back in without stopping to knock.
It was as if he had been playing a part with me with a mask to hide his face! He had laid down the mask.
I looked on a fairly hideous scroll of awful, utter woe. That was his face. He was crumpled down in his chair. He did not look at me. I picked up the packet.
“Are you ready to attend to the matter of the deed, sir?”
He wagged his head weakly from side to side. “Later!” he muttered. “Come later. Come this evening, perhaps.”
I went down into the woods and hunted for hours until I found those two revolvers. That face of his was before me all the time. I expected to look up and find him hunting, too. There were other ways of committing suicide than by shooting, but I did not propose to leave those revolvers around loose, seeing that he had made up his mind to use that means of shuffling off. That face which he had exposed to me showed that Judge Kingsley’s soul was near the limit of endurance.
I went about that day sick with fear. My helplessness in the matter was maddening. He was holding me off with his disdain like a man holding an enemy at bay with a pitchfork. And I knew that even if he gave me his confidence there was little a poor devil of my caliber could do in affairs such as his must be.
I wondered if the knowledge that he was ruined was behind his desperate resolve to die. Of course he had a lot of pride, but other proud men had failed in business and lived through it.
I was obliged to confess to myself that the judge must have a deeper motive. I remembered my uncle’s threats and wondered what that disturber had up his sleeve.
I almost whipped my courage up to the point of tackling him on the subject, but when I met him on the street in the afternoon and fronted his savage scowl I walked right on past, minding my own little business. His face had an extra touch of flame in it that day. That he had something special on the docket was plain to be seen. I went down to the wood-lot and checked up with Henshaw Hook so as to be out of my uncle’s way. His looks rather scared me. Just as I was walking away from the wood-lot at dusk he hopped out of his wagon ahead of me and tacked a printed paper to a wayside tree, glowering at me while I waited at a little distance. It was evident that he meant that paper especially for my attention.
So I walked up and had a look at it when he was out of the way.
It called a special town meeting thirty days from that date. As was necessary in a call of that sort, the purpose of the meeting was stated: “To see what action the town will take to pay off its indebtedness in full. Notice is hereby given that all creditors of the town must present notes or other evidences of claims at that meeting on the 15th day of April.”
What did that call signify in the case of Zebulon Kingsley, town treasurer? I had seen behind his mask and I guessed! If I guessed rightly he would feel, when his eyes fell on that paper, like a man who had been notified of the date of his execution.
I started on toward the village, and when I passed Brickett’s duck-pond I threw the revolvers into the water.
I hurried to Judge Kingsley’s house, for I had the excuse of business, and he himself had made the appointment. There was a light in his office, but it went out suddenly when I was some distance away. I started to run, and then I checked myself. I decided that caution rather than haste was needed. I was right. Standing behind a tree, I saw him come out of the office door in a sneaking fashion, the early evening hiding him. He went around the house, and I followed. Young eyes can see in the dark better than old ones, and he did not spy me where I stood in the dusk, watching him hack off with a jack-knife a section of the family clothes-line.
Stooping and almost staggering he went down into the orchard, and I trod close behind him undetected, for the trees plastered shadows into which I dodged. I waited until he had settled a noose around his neck and had thrown an end of the cord over a limb. I was taking no chances on having any misunderstanding between Judge Kingsley and myself that trip. In my own way I was just about as desperate as he was. I marched up to him, took him by both arms and pushed him against the tree-trunk.
He was in such a state, physically and mentally, that he did not protest or resist; it did not seem to frighten him specially to be overhauled in that fashion. Honestly, I felt like spanking his face as I would have whipped a child. This game of “tag the suicide” was getting on my nerves.
“Judge Kingsley, you need a guardian and I have appointed myself one,” I told him, and I was mighty resolute, for I had determined to brace up to him with all the power in me. “You have no right to kill yourself, and you’re not going to kill yourself, by gad! not if I have to camp with you day and night till you get back your nerve. I’m going to take you straight to your folks and tell ’em you’re out of your head temporarily and will have to be taken to a hospital!”
That brought him out of his numbness, and I knew it would. I believe he would have struck me if his arms had been free. But I needed to have him in another mood than the fighting one. I hit him hard.
“You’re an embezzler!” I cracked out. “How much?” He crumpled, and I let him slide down and sit on the ground, his back against the tree. It was the first time he had ever had that word put to him from man’s mouth, even though he may have confessed to himself in his heart.
“Judge Kingsley,” I said, bravely, knowing that I had an advantage from then on, “I’m only a young man and I know you don’t think much of me. But I’m going to grab in on this thing, whether you want me to or not. I have special reasons of my own. I’ll do everything I can to balk my uncle.”
“You’re a spy he has set on me!”
“You’re a liar!” I wasn’t going to take any of his sneers or his abuse. I hated to talk to him as I did, but only by being coarse and rough and bossy could I hope to pound anything helpful into him.
He stared up at me with his jaw hanging down and I did not let up on my punches.
“I have tried to head off my uncle Deck. I have told him straight out that I am for you and against him. He and I don’t speak to each other. I have promised your wife and your daughter that I’ll do everything I can to beat my uncle out in this thing. They don’t understand it! I don’t understand it all. But, before God, my promise to them is holy, even if you do not believe in me! I’m in this affair and I’m in to stay.”
He began to wag his head as he had done before that day. “Brace up, Judge Kingsley! You’re not licked yet!”
“Those three selectmen have signed my death-warrant. That notice which has been posted!”
I saw that I had him going and I kept him going. “But when an embezzler stays alive and does his best to straighten matters—”
“Don’t call me that name!” he groaned.
“If you will take me into your confidence, Judge Kingsley, so that I can turn to and help you, I swear before Almighty Jehovah that I will set to work for you with body and soul. I can help you—I know I can help. No man can feel as I feel and be useless! But let me tell you this much on the other side!” I bent down and snapped my finger under his nose. That was no time for half-way and mealy-mouthed stuff. “If you throw me down after this honest offer, it means that you think I’m too cheap to be of use and too low to associate with. And that’s an insult I’ll never swallow! So help me, I’ll drag you up into the village with that rope around your neck and blow the whole business and hand you over to those who will take care of you. I will! My mind is made up. Take your choice!”
I am sure that with no less bitter alternative could I have jounced any of his secrets out of Zebulon Kingsley.
“I’m just enough of a hellion to do that very thing if you don’t treat me right,” I warned him, angrily.
“You leave me no choice in the matter,” he mourned. “You are—”
“Look out, sir! I’m doing what I’m doing out of pure and honest desire to help you. I want fair treatment.”
“Nothing can make my situation worse than it is, I suppose,” he stated, after meditating for a time. “On the fifteenth day of April it will become known in town meeting that more than ten thousand dollars of town notes are out, drawing interest and bearing my name as town treasurer. I have issued those notes without warrant.”
“But the people who hold them know they are out!” He was coldly, numbly patient with me, the untamed animal who had promised to pounce on him and drag him to his shame in the village.
“I have borrowed the money in various small lots and in each case the note-holder is keeping absolutely still in order to escape taxation.”
“But great Scott! Judge Kingsley, ten thousand dollars for a rich man like you—”
“I am no longer rich. I am ruined. I cannot take up those town notes prior to the meeting. So I shall be arrested as a criminal! I have lost money intrusted to me for investment, but though I have lost it I cannot be prosecuted criminally—it was breach of trust. I hoped to get money to stave off exposure in the criminal matter so that I could set myself to earning more money and restoring what I owe to the investors. But I have not been able to raise that money. That’s why I decided to kill myself. I knew I couldn’t face it!”
“Did you just find out that you couldn’t raise the money, sir?”
He looked up at me, shame and agony in his face showing even in the dark. It began to swell in him—I could see it in his eyes—that longing which comes to every man in deep trouble—the wild hankering to confide in somebody—to rush into confession, to unload the heart, to speak the words which have been pressing to the lips. I was only Ross Sidney, to be sure, but I was a man and Judge Kingsley had been bottling his grief for a long time.
“What I did last was worst of all! Nobody could have convinced me that I would ever do such a piece of folly. Think of me doing such a thing—a man used to the ways of money! A financier! Oh, I have been dreading the scorn, the sneers, the ridicule more than I have dreaded the exposure of my town notes! I want to die!”
“What have you done, sir?”
“My investments were good in years past! I knew how to handle money—but what I did a few days ago!”
“What was it, Judge?” He had been hesitating between his declarations, and therefore I kept prodding him. But confession of his last affair seemed to stick in his throat.
“Oh, I am not guilty—I am not ashamed because I lost money in my investments! The pirates who have manipulated this country’s industrials and wrecked the railroads are the guilty ones—they should be ashamed of what they did to the honest investors! But that I should run the scale of speculation as I have—to the depths! Down, down, as I got more desperate! And that I should do what I have just done when I was most desperate—when your uncle was rushing me toward a cell door!”
He twisted his fingers together and cracked his knuckles.
I felt like a man waiting for a woodchuck to come out of his hole—getting an occasional glimpse of a nose and seeing it everlastingly dodging back.
“But I had to have money quick. I had lost my grip. I could not raise more money in a regular way.”
“When I was in the city I heard swindlers talk about such men, sir. There are blacklegs who go about the country hunting for such men. Have you been swindled?”
“Foully—vilely!”
“How?”
He hooked his fingers inside his collar as if speech had stuck in his throat.
“Laugh!” he advised me. He was as hoarse as a crow and looked as crazy as a coot. “Go ahead and laugh! I may as well get used to the ridicule.”
“I don’t feel much like laughing at anything these days, Judge Kingsley. I wish that you could understand me better and know how sorry—”
“Yes, and you and everybody else will pity me as a fool to be classed in with the other fools who are gulled by the shell-and-pea game.”
“For the sake of Mike, what have you done?” I demanded with a bit of temper, for I was in no frame of mind to guess riddles.
“I—Zebulon Kingsley—a financier, a man supposed to be in his right mind,” he squealed, beating his breast as he struggled to his feet, “I bought a gold brick!”