"Well, I hoped I was as good as those other fellows," said Raridan, more cheerfully; and he went to the clerk's desk and signed the bond.
Margrave came out now with his lawyer, and they were joined by Margrave's allies of the morning. Margrave stopped to give the reporters his side of the story. He assured them that this was merely a contest between two interests for the control of the Traction Company. There had been a misunderstanding, and until the differences between the two factions of stockholders could be reconciled, the business of the company would be managed by a receiver, who was, he said, "friendly to all parties." The fact was that he had objected strenuously to Saxton's appointment, but Fenton had insisted on it and the court had paid a good deal of attention to what Fenton said. Margrave made much to the reporters of his own election to the presidency, and intimated to them that the receiver would soon be discharged and that he would assume the active management of affairs.
The papers that had been filed in the case disclosed a somewhat different situation, which was fully laid before the public, greatly to its surprise. It appeared that William Porter owned all the bonds of the company, and only narrowly missed the stock control. The situation was thoroughly interesting. A contention between Porter and Margrave was novel in the history of Clarkson and the press made the most of it. The Gazette, Margrave's paper, proved him to be wholly in the right, and cited the summary action of the court in appointing an inexperienced man to the receivership as another proof of the brutal abuse of power by federal courts.
Margrave had put none of his own money into Traction stock, but had invested funds belonging to the stockholders of the Transcontinental, who had every confidence in his sagacity, and who trusted him implicitly. He advised them of the receivership in terms which led them to believe that he had brought it about as a part of his own plans. He maintained an air of mystery and winked knowingly at friends who joked him about the little coup by which Porter, though sick in bed, had, as they said, "cleaned him up." He told those who flattered him by twitting him on this score that he guessed Tim Margrave hadn't lost his grip yet, and that before he was knocked out, the place of eternal damnation would have been transformed into a skating rink.
CHAPTER XXX GREEN CHARTREUSE
There is a common law of character which is greater than the canons. It fills many volumes of records in the high court of Experience, and we add to it daily by our instinctive decisions in small matters; but only the finer natures, highly endowed with discernment, master its intricacies. The decalogue is a safe guidepost on the great highway of life; but it does not avail the lost pilgrim who stumbles in remote by-paths. The spirit is the only arbiter of the nicer distinctions between right and wrong. James Wheaton did not steal; he would do no murder; he was not even unusually covetous. If the tests which Destiny applied to him had related to the great fundamentals of conduct, he would not have been found wanting; but they were directed against seemingly unimportant weaknesses, along the lines of his least resistance to evil.
A week had passed since Saxton's appointment to the receivership and Wheaton went to and from his work with many misgivings. Several of Wheaton's friends had confided to him their belief that he ought to have been appointed receiver instead of Saxton, and there was little that he could say to this, except that he had no time for it. He had become nervous and distraught, and was irritable under the jesting of his associates at The Bachelors'. There was a good deal of joking at their table for several days after Saxton's appointment over Margrave's discomfiture, to which Wheaton contributed little. He felt decidedly ill at ease under it. Thompson, the cashier, had come home, and Wheaton found his presence irksome.
He had seen Margrave several times at the club since their last interview at the bank and Margrave had nodded distantly, as if he hardly remembered Wheaton. Wheaton assumed that sooner or later Margrave would offer to pay him for his shares of Traction stock. But while the loss of his own certificate, under all the circumstances, did not trouble him, Margrave's appropriation of Evelyn Porter's shares was an unpleasant fact that haunted all his waking hours.