Roden's Corner

by Henry Seton Merriman

“If you don't believe me, there you are,” said Roden, throwing the letter upon the table—not ill-pleased, in the heat of the moment, to show that he was a more important person than his companion seemed to think.

Von Holzen read the letter slowly and thoughtfully. The fact that it was evidently intended for Roden's private eye did not seem to affect one or the other of these two men, who had travelled, with difficulty, along the road to fortune, only reaching their bourn at last with a light stock of scruples and a shattered code of honour. Then he folded it, and handed it back. He was not likely to forget a word of it.

“I suppose you will go,” he said. “It will be interesting to hear what he has to say. That letter is a confession of weakness.”

In making which statement Von Holzen showed his own weak point. For, like many clever men, he utterly failed to give to women their place—the leading place—in the world's history, as in the little histories of our daily lives. He never detected Dorothy between every line of Cornish's letter, and thought that it had only been dictated by inability to meet the present situation.

“I cannot very well refuse to go since the fellow asks me,” said Roden, grandly. He might as well have displayed his grandeur to a statue. If love is blind, self-love is surely half-witted as well, for it never sees nor understands that the world is fooling it. Roden failed to heed the significant fact that Von Holzen did not even ask him what line of conduct he intended to follow with regard to Cornish, nor seek in his autocratic way to instruct him on that point; but turned instead to other matters and did not again refer to Cornish or the letter he had written.

So the day wore on while Cornish impatiently walked the deck of the steamer, ploughing its way across the North Sea, through showers and thunderstorms and those grey squalls that flit to and fro on the German Ocean. And some tons of malgamite were made, while a manufacturer or two of the grim product laid aside his tools forever, while the money flowed in, and Otto von Holzen thought out his deep silent plans over his vats and tanks and crucibles. And all the while those who write in the book of fate had penned the last decree.

Cornish arrived punctually at The Hague. He drove to the hotel, where he was known, where, indeed, he had never relinquished his room. There was no letter for him—no message from Percy Roden. But Von Holzen had unobtrusively noted his arrival at the station from the crowded retreat of the second-class waiting-room.

The day had been a very hot one, and from canal and dyke arose that sedgy odour which comes with the cool of night in all Holland. It is hardly disagreeable, and conveys no sense of unhealthiness.

It seems merely to be the breath of still waters, and, in hot weather, suggests very pleasantly the relief of northern night. The Hague has two dominant smells. In winter, when the canals are frozen, the reek of burning-peat is on the air and in the summer the odour of slow waters. Cornish knew them both. He knew everything about this old-world city, where the turning-point of his life had been fixed. It was deserted now. The great houses, the theatre—the show-places—were closed. The Toornoifeld was empty.

The hotel porter, aroused by the advent of the traveller from an after-dinner nap in his little glass box, spread out his hands with a gesture of surprise.