His quarrel with himself was that he seemed to himself a rather vulgar sort of hypocrite. This was highly disagreeable to him, as his whole nature tended to make him wish to be himself, to make him shrink from the part of the truckler and the sycophant which he was playing so haughtily and so artistically. At times it exasperated him that he could not regard his change of front as a deliberate sale for value received, and not as the weak and cowardly surrender which he saw that it really was.
On the day after Howard’s forty-fourth birthday Coulter fell dead at the entrance to the Union Club. When Stokely heard of it he went direct to the News-Record office.
“I happen to know something about Coulter’s will,” he said to Howard. “The News-Record stock is to be sold and you and I are to have the first chance to take it at three hundred and fifty—which is certainly cheap enough.”
“Why did he arrange to dispose of the most valuable part of his estate?”
“Well, we had an agreement about it. Then, too, Coulter had no faith in newspapers as a permanent investment. You know there are only the widow, the girl and that worthless boy. Heavens, what an ass that boy is! Coulter has tied up his estate until the youngest grandchild comes of age. He hopes that there will be a son among the grandchildren who will realise his dream.”
“Dream?” Howard smiled. “I didn’t know that Coulter ever indulged in dreams.”
“Yes, he had the rich man’s mania—the craze for founding a family. So everything is to be put into real estate and long-term bonds. And for years New York is to be reminded of Samuel Coulter by some incapable who’ll use his name and his money to advertise nature’s contempt for family pride in her distributions of brains. I think even a fine tomb is a wiser memorial.”
“Well, how much of the stock shall you take?” Howard asked.
“Not a share,” Stokely replied dejectedly. “Coulter couldn’t have died at a worse time for me. I’m tied in every direction and shall be for a year at least. So you’ve got a chance to become controlling owner.”