Every Man for Himself

by Herbert Joseph Moorhouse

From the hallway they filed into the library—McAllister, of the Recorder; President Wade, of the Canadian Lake Shores Railway; Nathaniel Lawson, ex-president of the Interprovincial Loan & Savings Company; Timothy Drexel and another director of the same concern. Detective Sainsbury from Headquarters and Parsons, official court stenographer, brought up the rear with Pardeau, star reporter for the Recorder. Their faces were serious and their entry partook of the solemnity of a jury bringing a verdict into court.

A brief whispered colloquy with his editor quickly smoothed the perplexity from Brennan's face. McAllister had picked up Pardeau on the street and had sent a belated message to the office. It was a big "story" that was breaking and he ordered Brennan and Pardeau back to their desks with instructions to hold the galleys till he arrived shortly. Kerr could handle the present end of it. He waved his hand impatiently and focussed his undivided attention upon what was transpiring.

A silence had fallen upon the crowded room and as the Honorable Milton Waring allowed his gaze to rove upon their tense, expectant faces he smiled reassuringly. He began with an explanation of the circumstances leading up to the present situation. It was not merely to adjust Interprovincial Loan Company affairs by the exposure of its official head that he had brought them together. His integrity as a public servant had been questioned and there were certain features that in the interests of clean government required official enquiry. He was prepared to move for the appointment of a royal commission to investigate and report upon conditions vitally affecting financial institutions, election laws and other matters. It was something with which he had concerned himself seriously for several years, and it was partly to prove his theories in this connection that with the assistance of Mr. Blatchford Ferguson he had taken advantage of the situation which had developed in the affairs of the Interprovincial. As a result of their investigations they stood prepared to prove gross mismanagement, falsification of the returns required by the Federal authorities, misuse of trust funds for private ends, attempted corruption of government officials, et cetera.

The Honorable Milton was frank in his admission that during the recent orgy of speculation into which the discovery of new mineral wealth had led the public, he had become personally involved. He was only human and the general excitement had induced him to make several disastrous investments which had left his personal affairs in a precarious tangle for a time. But it was an ill wind that blew nobody good. The financial crisis through which he had passed had brought him in touch with J. C. Nickleby, and it was not long before his eyes had been opened to the unscrupulous methods that were being followed by the president of the Interprovincial Loan & Savings Company. He had called in his learned friend, Mr. Ferguson, and as a result of their consultations it had been decided to make a few experiments in high finance with the object of uncovering the whole system.

To this end they deliberately had cultivated Nickleby's confidence. It was apparent from the first that the man was utterly devoid of common honesty. It was his idea that government graft was an established method of revenue and he seemed to be obsessed with the belief that no Minister of the Crown would allow his oath of office to interfere with the acquisition of personal wealth. As their relations had ripened he had grown bolder and had organized a construction company with the object of using his "connection" to swing certain tenders for public works into the graft column. Nickleby had felt so sure of himself by this time that he even had proposed a contribution of $50,000 to the party campaign funds in return for "privileges." He had been told quite plainly that he would make such a contribution at his own risk. Nevertheless he had gone ahead with it on his own initiative. The money had mysteriously disappeared between the office of the construction company and its destination; it had never reached the party exchequer.

Which brought the Honorable Milton Waring to the point of paying high compliment to the editor of the Recorder. He bowed to McAllister. He had never before quite realized, he said, what a debt all lovers of clean government owed to the press. No man with designs upon the public treasury could go very far without some journalistic watch-dog being on his trail, and it was so in the present instance.

The Alderson Construction Company had aroused the suspicions of Mr. McAllister shortly after it became active. In some way he had learned of the proposed campaign fund contribution and, as it turned out, it was due to the zeal of a Recorder reporter that Nickleby's contribution had been intercepted and photographed. It had then fallen into the hands of Mr. Benjamin Wade by accident and Mr. Wade had deposited the $50,000 in trust, pending proof of ownership.

A few days ago Mr. Wade had come to him with these facts and also to warn him that the Recorder was preparing to accuse him of being implicated with Nickleby and Blatchford Ferguson in a certain doubtful real-estate transaction. Not until then had he realized the risk which Mr. Ferguson and he had assumed in attempting to follow their own line of investigation in secret. The possibility that the hunter might in turn be hunted—and quite legitimately hunted on the face of it—had not occurred to them. They had taken Mr. McAllister into their confidence as soon as they realized the extent of his knowledge, and only his patience and co-operation had enabled them to carry their investigations to fruition.

The real-estate transaction in question had been planned by Mr. Ferguson for the purpose of quieting suspicion in the mind of Nickleby. It was a case of fighting the devil with fire; for had Nickleby not believed that he was dealing with men who were as greedy as himself they would never have succeeded in uncovering the evidence they were after.

As part of their plan, therefore, they had gone to Nickleby with the proposal that the three of them—Nickleby, Ferguson and himself—form a little syndicate on the quiet to buy up a tract of land on which the Government had its eye as a prospective location for the new Deaf & Dumb Institute. The land had a market value of $100,000 and this sum the Government was quite ready to pay. Nickleby had advanced the loan to negotiate the deal and Ferguson had bought up the land in small lots at sacrifice prices from individual owners for a total of $50,000. The Honorable Milton had told Nickleby that he was acting for the Government; but the cheque with which he had "purchased" the land from the syndicate of three had been his personal cheque. The amount was $200,000. The syndicate's profit, therefore, was $150,000 and this sum they had divided in three, $50,000 each. But Nickleby did not know—nor McAllister, either—that the whole thing had been juggled for a purpose, with the sanction of the Attorney General, and that the "profits" which had gone to Mr. Ferguson and himself had been thrown back into the deal when the site had been turned over to the Government, which therefore obtained the land at its legitimate market value, $100,000.