"Who's going to make up if those fellows come on and sue me for damages? Who will make up this loss that I have been going to by sacrificing my property?"
"Leave that to me; I will fix that all right. You do just as I tell you, and you will come out all right.... Go wherever you like, stop where you like, and we will pay all your expenses while you are here."[467]
Albert loafed about Boston several weeks, sometimes helping to roll a barrel of oil in the Vacuum's store. When he wanted money he asked for it and got it. He had once been a hard drinker. Destruction was as carelessly invited upon the soul of a poor brother as upon the lives and property of competitors. He hung around Boston and Rochester nearly a year. Then his old employer, who was in California, sent for him to come there to help in a fruit cannery, his salary continuing as before. From the moment he deserted his partners, as Judge Edward Hatch, the counsel for Matthews, stated in the civil suit for damages in this conspiracy, Albert "never earned enough to cover the end of your knife-blade with salt at your dinner. But they pay him, in salary and bonus, over $4000. Why? To get him away, and to stifle lawful, legitimate, and honest competition; to stifle that which brings into every poor man's home an article of necessity at a cheaper rate." He stayed in California a few months, and, finally, sickened of the disgraceful part he was playing, turned at bay, and gave notice that he was going to leave. "This is kind of sudden," the agent of his employers replied, but said he would write to the principal director in New York and advise that he release him. "You will give me time, won't you? You know it takes a couple of weeks or longer to do business from here to New York." Albert waited, and in time the word came from New York. "I have heard from these parties, and they are willing to release you."[468]
Albert, who had put himself into the extraordinary position in which he was on the repeated pledges of the tempters that they would make it "all right" with him, and protect him from loss and harm, found that he had put his "trust in princes." When he came to settle he expected that those for whom he had sacrificed his honor, his property, and his career would make him some compensation. In answer to the question how much they ought to make up to him, he named $5000 or $10,000, which was certainly little enough, in view of the fact that the business he had sacrificed to them was one in which, as the Vacuum's career showed, $100 shares came to be worth $2666 each. But the representative of the trust declared he could not think of such a thing, and in full of all obligations gave him nothing but the balance due of the wages agreed on. Then he asked Albert to hold himself still further at their service. As they parted, he said: "Now we have settled up; now we are good friends.... If anything ever comes up in this matter I would like to have you stand by us.... We will see that you are paid all right, and give you $25 a day while we need your services." Albert replied that he did not feel under any obligations to the oil combination. "I do not know as my interest lays that way. I do not think I shall do anything to benefit them; they have injured me all that they can; they have switched me all around, all over the country; they have got me out of employ, not given me anything to do, which I sought to have them do. I do not think they have used me right, and I have sacrificed considerable money by this transaction, and you have always promised that it would be made good, and you have not done so."[469]
THROUGH THE WOMAN'S EYES
Matthews knew nothing and suspected nothing about the worst part of the plot against him until Albert's lawyer, Mr. Truesdale, nearly four years later, was called upon to testify in the suit Matthews brought for damages against the Vacuum people. This suit was to recover from them for having enticed Albert away, and having persecuted Matthews with false and malicious suits; but Truesdale's evidence at once revealed that there had been a deeper damnation still in the conspiracy against him. Mr. Matthews, one day on the street in Buffalo, ran across Albert, who had just come back from California.