“I never was the kind of fellow to make friends,” he said, in his soft, monotonous voice, “so I expect I was the fonder of my own kin. I’d a mighty good mother, sir, and sister; and there was Phil—my little brother. We were right happy all together on the old place that’s been in our family for a hundred years, and it was all we asked to stay there; but it had every dollar of mortgage it could stand, and the soil all worn-out, needing all kinds of things; and I wish you could have seen the makeshifts we had for machines! I was blacksmith and carpenter and painter—just sixteen, and not an especially bright chap, but mighty willing to work; and my mother and Sis and I—we did a heap. When I stumbled on the ore I couldn’t be sure, but I wrote to Aunt Rebecca Winter. She sent a man down. He looked up things. It would take a heap of money to work the mines, but it might be a big thing. She paid off the mortgage and took another. First to last, she’s been mighty kind to us. She would have done more had we let her. So I went to Pittsburgh and learned my trade, and I made enough to pay interest, and the people at home got a fairly good living. When I was twenty-one I was back home, and got a company started and put up a mill. You know how those things have to creep up. But there was ore, all right, and I understood my business and taught the hands. We’d a right sweet little mill. Well, I don’t want to take up your time, suh. Those next ten or twelve years were right hard work, but they were happy, too. We prospered; we helped the whole county prosper. We paid Aunt Becky. We were in good shape. We went through ’93 paying our dividends just as regular, and making them, too, though we didn’t much more—it was close sailing. But we were honest; we made a mighty good article; and everybody trusted us. Then came the craze for mergers, and a number of us got together. Still we weren’t very big, but we were big enough to be listed. I didn’t want it, but some of the men thought it was a terrible fine thing to be ‘Iron Kings.’ That was how. Keatcham was looking over the country for fish for his net; he somehow heard that here was a heap of good ore and new mills. The first intimation we had was his secretary coming as a Northern invalid—why, he stayed at our house because we were so sorry for him, the hotel being in new hands and not right comfortable. He seemed so interested in our mills, and bought some stock, and sent presents to Phil and my mother after he went.”
“That was Keatcham’s private secretary, you say?”
“Yes, suh, Atkins. You met him on the train—as sleek and deadly a little scoundrel as ever got rich quick. Oh, he’s deep. Well, suh, you know the usual process. Convinced of the value of the property, Keatcham and one or two others set out to buy it. They got little blocks of it here and there. Then Atkins wrote me in confidence that some men were after the controlling interest and meant to squeeze us all out—offered to lend me money to buy—of course, on a margin. And I was plumb idiot enough to be tolled into his trap! I, who had never speculated with a dollar before, I didn’t borrow his money, but I took all I could raise myself, and I bought enough to be sure I could control the next election. Then—the slump came, and after the slump the long, slow crumbling. I controlled the election all right, of course, but before the next one came I was ruined, and Keatcham put his own men in. I went desperately to New York. I didn’t know how to fight those fellows; it was a new game. I didn’t find Atkins. Maybe because that wasn’t his name when I had known him. I was so sure that the property was good—as if that mattered! As if anything mattered with these gamblers who play with loaded dice and dope the horses they bet against! Phil had all his property in the mills; we all had. We mortgaged the house; we had to, to protect our stock. You know how the fight ended, and what happened at Cambridge. That isn’t all. My wife—” He stood a little straighter, and the light went out of his eyes. “I told you I don’t make friends easily, and I am not the kind of man women take to; all the same, the loveliest girl in the South loved me ever since I jumped over the mill-dam to save her rag doll, once, when she was visiting her aunt near us. I’d married, when we seemed prosperous. Now, understand me, I don’t say it was my ruin and Phil’s death that killed her and the baby; she had pneumonia, and it may be that seeing that paper by accident didn’t turn the scale; but I do say that she had her last hours embittered by it. That’s enough for me. When I got home with—with Phil, she was dead.”
“Tough,” said the colonel. He began to revise his impressions of Mercer.
“Wasn’t it?” the other asked, with a simplicity of appeal that affected the listener more than anything he had heard. He jumped out of his chair and began pacing the room, talking more rapidly. “You’re a man; you know what I wanted to do.”
“Kill somebody, I suppose. I should.”
“Just that. I ran Atkins to cover after a while through Endicott Tracy. That boy is one of the noblest fellows that ever lived; yes, suh. He was going to help poor Phil, Phil’s room-mate had told him. All those boys—look a-here, Colonel Winter, if ever anybody talks to you about Harvard fellows being indifferent—”
“I shall tell him he can’t get under the American surface. A Harvard boy will do anything on earth for his friends.”
“They were mighty good to me. It was Endy found out about Atkins, just from my description of him. I found out about Keatcham for myself. And you are quite right—for a little while I wanted to kill them both. Looked like I just naturally had to kill them! But there was my mother. There was nobody to take care of her but Sis and me, and a trial for murder is terribly expensive. Of course, anybody can get off who has got money and can spend it; but it takes such an awful heap of money. And we were all ruined together, for what little was left was all in the company, and that promptly stopped paying dividends. I couldn’t risk it. I had to wait. I had to go to work to support my mother, to pay Sis and her back, don’t you see? We came here. I got a job, a well-paid one, too, through Endy’s father, reporting on the condition of the mills—a kind of examiner. And the job was for Keatcham.”
“Why did you take it? I know, though. You did it to familiarize him with your appearance, so that he would not be warned when your chance came.”