Every Man for Himself

by Herbert Joseph Moorhouse

Because of this ingrained sentimental streak in his make-up and because of this inherent honesty he had created some enemies. There were those who looked hungrily in the direction of the Interprovincial and imagined what could be accomplished in a very big way in several different directions if only the man in control of the stock were—say, a little more modern. If it were not for the close tab which that energetic young secretary kept upon things, Lawson would have run the concern into the ditch long ago, whispered the ambitious ones. The young and energetic secretary, J. C. Nickleby, may have been the first to whisper it—very confidentially, of course. For it would ill become so promising a young financier as J. Cuthbert Nickleby to be guilty of ingratitude, and there had been one raw wet night in the spring of a year long past when Nathaniel Lawson had rescued a miserable travesty of a man from the gutter—a night that Nickleby, once his benefactor had set him firmly upon his feet with a new lease of life, no doubt had schooled himself to forget for all time.

At any rate there had come an annual meeting at which Nat Lawson found himself in a quandary. It followed on the heels of a rumor that it was the desire of certain shareholders to inject some "new blood," and thereby new life, into the loan company—that it would be a good thing, in short, for the "revered old Chief" to retire to a pedestal where he could sit as inanimate as a bronze bust upon the official label, "Honorary President," while a younger man took upon his shoulders the burden of the expanded business, and so forth.

The campaign against him had been of a most insidious character and Lawson had pretended with dignity to ignore it, even while his resentment grew to the proportions of great indignation. And all the time he was worried because he could not find a certain power-of-attorney which authorized him to vote a large block of stock belonging to a personal friend who had invested heavily in Lawson's company—Bradford, the arctic explorer, who had gone into the hinterland on a Government expedition, and who was not expected to get into communication with civilization again for about two years. Bradford had left everything in connection with his investment in his friend Lawson's hands. While the status of this stock on the books of the Interprovincial was unquestioned, the power-of-attorney had been given to Lawson personally and had not been placed officially in the hands of the secretary with instructions.

Herein lay the quandary. For when at the annual meeting in question Nat Lawson had tried to vote the stock in the usual way, he was asked for the power-of-attorney by some of the new shareholders and could not produce it. Proxies which Nickleby had manipulated then were thrown on the scale and when the meeting was over, the Interprovincial had a new president by the name of J. Cuthbert Nickleby. In making the announcement, the newspapers had quite a story about "Old Nat" and his career; they printed in full the account which was handed to them regarding the presentation of a gold-headed cane, suitably engraved, and an illuminated address which marked the esteem in which the directors held the retiring president and founder.

Convinced though he was that the power-of-attorney had been stolen deliberately and that the whole thing was a cunning frame-up to get him out of the way in order that certain transactions of which he never would have approved might go through—although convinced that this was the truth of the matter, Nat Lawson had no evidence to prove a case against Nickleby or any of his associates. It would have been a dangerous procedure to give publicity to his suspicions, or to attempt legal action without definite proof of his charges, as this could result only in destroying public confidence in the institution itself without in the least altering the situation. At the worst, the reign of the Nickleby faction could be but temporary, as the situation would adjust itself with the return of the explorer who owned the stock. But it was exceedingly humiliating, and there was always the possibility that those now in control of the Interprovincial meanwhile would undermine the whole financial fabric by loose policies of administration, or even by questionable practices.

These apprehensions were shared by the only two friends whom Nat Lawson had admitted fully to his confidence—President Benjamin Wade, of the Canadian Lake Shores Railway, and McAllister, the keen-eyed editor of the Recorder, which of all the city newspapers was the most consistently independent in politics. Wade was an old friend of long standing, himself holder of a small block of stock in the Interprovincial Loan & Savings Company, and it was to him that Lawson had turned for advice in his extremity. Immediately Wade had called into counsel the chief of his railroad's very competent detective staff, Bob Cranston, and thereupon began a series of quiet investigations with the object of obtaining the necessary evidence to depose the Nickleby faction from control of Interprovincial affairs.

Although equally anxious to help, McAllister had no part in Wade's plans; he preferred to work along special lines of his own. He and Wade differed in their theories of the situation, and much to Nat Lawson's amusement they had argued with some heat the first night that they happened to meet at the Lawson home; so that the two were somewhat in friendly rivalry, each anxious to prove that he was right, and each determined to play a lone hand.

It may have been his interest in the case that led McAllister to call so frequently of late at the old-fashioned brick house that stood back from the street, surrounded by spacious grounds and a wealth of carefully tended shrubbery, in the older residential section of the city. No doubt it was this that made him stop for a smoke with the former president of the Interprovincial about three evenings a week on the way to his office in the brightly-lighted Recorder building, where hummed activity during the hours that others slept, in order that the public might have a morning newspaper to prop against the sugar-bowl while it breakfasted.

Even so, it is necessary to add that Nathaniel Lawson had a beautiful and accomplished daughter whose name was Cristobel. It is necessary to record further that being a young woman of spirit, Miss Cristy Lawson had insisted upon taking up newspaper work as a profession when the need of adding to the family resources presented itself. For most of the Lawson capital had gone into the loan company and her father's philanthropic tendencies in the heyday of his earnings had made greater inroads upon his personal fortune than he had realized at the time. Her father's objections to the plan had been overruled finally when McAllister had offered Miss Lawson a position on the Recorder's day staff as "Society Editor," and it was not long before her interest in the work and her natural aptitude for it rejuvenated the Society Page into one of the best features the paper boasted.

Not content with this success, Miss Lawson became ambitious to try her journalistic wings in other directions; but her desire for more important assignments than the reporting of afternoon teas brought down the paternal foot—flat! No daughter of Nathaniel Lawson was going to be allowed to roam the city at all hours. "No night work," her father had insisted. Nevertheless, the young woman continued to hope that this edict would be removed eventually, and she never lost an opportunity of coaxing if she happened to be at home when McAllister was present; but there came a night finally when Nat Lawson grew impatient at her persistence and kindly but firmly put a final period to the topic.