The Quickening Part 40

XXVIII

THE BURDEN OF HABAKKUK

During the first half of the year 1894, with Norman too busy at the pipe foundry to worry him, and the iron-master president too deeply engrossed in matters mechanical, Mr. Henry Dyckman, still bookkeeper and cas.h.i.+er for Chiawa.s.see Consolidated, had fewer nightmares; and by the time he had been a month in undisputed command at the general office he had given over searching for a certain packet of papers which had mysteriously disappeared from a secret compartment in his desk.

Later, when the time for the return of the younger Gordon drew near, there was encouraging news from Europe. Dyckman had not failed to keep the mails warm with reports of the Gordon and Gordon success; with urgings for the return of the exiled dynasty; and late in May he had news of the home-coming intention. From that on there were alternating chills and fever. If Colonel Duxbury should arrive and resume the reins of management before Tom Gordon should reappear, all might yet be well.

If not,--the alternative impaired the bookkeeper's appet.i.te, and there were hot nights in June when he slept badly.

When Tom's advent preceded the earliest date named by Mr. Farley by a broad fortnight or more, the bookkeeper missed other of his meals, and one night fear and a sharp premonition of close-pressing disaster laid cold hands on him; and nine o'clock found him skulking in the great train shed at the railway station, a ticket to Canada in his pocket, a goodly sum of the company's money tightly buckled in a safety-belt next to his skin--all things ready for flight save one, the courage requisite to the final step-taking.

The following morning the premonition became a certainty. In the Gordonia mail there was a note from the younger Gordon, directing him to come to the office of the pipe foundry, bringing the cash-book and ledger for a year whose number was written out in letters of fire in the bookkeeper's brain. He went, again lacking the courage either to refuse or to disappear, and found Gordon waiting for him. There were no preliminaries.

"Good morning, Dyckman," said the tyrant, pus.h.i.+ng aside the papers on his desk. "You have brought the books? Sit down at that table and open the ledger at the company's expense account for the year. I wish to make a few comparisons," and he took a thick packet of papers from a pigeonhole of the small iron safe behind his chair.

Dyckman was unbuckling the shawl-strap in which he had carried the two heavy books, but at the significant command he desisted, went swiftly to the door opening into the stenographer's room, satisfied himself that there were no listeners, and resumed his chair.

"You have cut out some of the preface, Mr. Gordon; I'll cut out the remainder," he said, moistening his dry lips. "You have the true record of the expense account in that package. I'm down and out; what is it you want?"

The inexorable one at the desk did not keep him in suspense.

"I want a written confession of just what you did, and what you did it for," was the direct reply. "You'll find Miss Ackerman's type-writer in the other room; I'll wait while you put it in type."

The bookkeeper's lips were dryer than before, and his tongue was like a stick in his mouth when he said:

"You're not giving me a show, Mr. Gordon; the poor show a common murderer would have in any court of law. You are asking me to convict myself."

Gordon held up the packet of papers.

"Here is your conviction, Mr. Dyckman--the original leaves taken from those books when you had them re-bound. I need your statement of the facts for quite another purpose."

"And if I refuse to make it? A cornered rat will fight for his life, Mr.

Gordon."

"If you refuse I shall be reluctantly compelled to hand these papers over to our attorneys--reluctantly, I say, because you can serve me better just now out of jail than in it."

Dyckman made a final attempt to gain fighting s.p.a.ce.

"It's an unfair advantage you're taking; at the worst, I am only an accessory. My princ.i.p.als will be here in a few days, and--"

"Precisely," was the cold rejoinder. "It is because your princ.i.p.als are coming home, and because they are not yet here, that I want your statement. Oblige me, if you please; my time is limited this morning."

There was no help for it, or none apparent to the fear-stricken; and for the twenty succeeding minutes the type-writer clicked monotonously in the small ante-room. Dyckman could hear his persecutor pacing the floor of the private office, and once he found himself looking about him for a weapon. But at the end of the writing interval he was handing the freshly-typed sheet to a man who was yet alive and unhurt.

Gordon sat down at his desk to read it, and again the roving eyes of the bookkeeper swept the interior of the larger room for the means to an end; sought and found not.

The eye-search was not fully concluded when Gordon pressed the electric b.u.t.ton which summoned the young man who kept the local books of the Chiawa.s.see plant across the way. While he waited he saw the conclusion of the eye-search and smiled rather grimly.

"You'll not find it, Dyckman," he said, divining the desperate purpose of the other; adding, as an afterthought: "and if you should, you wouldn't have the courage to use it. That is the fatal lack in your makeup. It is what kept you from taking the train last night with the money belt which you emptied this morning. You'll never make a successful criminal; it takes a good deal more nerve than it does to be an honest man."

The bookkeeper was sliding lower in his chair.

"I--I believe you are the devil in human shape," he muttered; and then he made an addendum which was an unconscious slipping of the under-thought into words: "It's no crime to kill a devil."

Gordon smiled again. "None in the least,--only you want to make sure you have a silver bullet in the gun when you try it."

Hereupon the young man from the office across the pike came in, and Gordon handed a pen to Dyckman.

"I want you to witness Mr. Dyckman's signature to this paper, Dillard,"

he said, folding the confession so that it could not be read by the witness; and when the thing was done, the young man appended his notarial attestation and went back to his duties.

"Well?" said Dyckman, when they were once more alone together.

"That's all," said Gordon curtly. "As long as you are discreet, you needn't lose any sleep over this. If you don't mind hurrying a little, you can make the ten-forty back to town."

Dyckman restrapped his books and made a show of hastening. But before he closed the office door behind him he had seen Gordon place the type-written sheet, neatly folded, on top of the thick packet, snapping an elastic band over the whole and returning it to its pigeonhole in the small safe.

Later in the day, Tom crossed the pike to the oak-s.h.i.+ngled office of the Chiawa.s.see Consolidated. His father was deep in the new wage scale submitted by the miners' union, but he sat up and pushed the papers away when his son entered.

"Have you seen this morning's _Tribune_?" asked Tom, taking the paper from his pocket.

"No; I don't make out to find much time for it before I get home o'

nights," said Caleb. "Anything doin'?"

"Yes; they are having a hot time in Chicago and Pullman. The strike is spreading all over the country on sympathy lines."

"Reckon it'll get down to us in any way?" queried the iron-master.

"You can't tell. I'd be a little easy with Ludlow and his outfit on that wage scale, if I were you."

"I don't like to be scared into doin' a thing."

"No; but we don't want a row on our hands just now. Farley might make capital out of it."

Caleb nodded. Then he said: "Didn't I see Dyckman comin' out of your shanty 'long about eleven o'clock?"

"Yes; he came out to do me a little favor, and it went mighty near to making him sweat blood. Shall you need me any more to-day?"

"No, I reckon not. Goin' away?"

"I'm going to town on the five-ten, and I may not be back till late."

Tom's business in South Tredegar was unimportant. There was a word or two to be said personally in the ear of Hanchett, the senior member of the firm of attorneys intrusted with the legal concernments of Gordon and Gordon, and afterward a solitary dinner at the Marlboro. But the real object of the town trip disclosed itself when he took an electric car for the foot of Lebanon on the line connecting with the inclined railway running up the mountain to Crestcliffe Inn. He had not seen Ardea since the midwinter night of soul-awakenings; and Alecto's finger was still pressing on the wound inflicted by the closed doors of Mountain View Avenue and his father's misdirected sympathy.

He found Major Dabney smoking on the hotel veranda, and his welcome was not scanted here, at least. There was a vacant chair beside the Major's and the Major's pocket case of long cheroots was instantly forthcoming.

Would not the returned Bachelor of Science sit and smoke and tell an old man what was going on in the young and l.u.s.ty world beyond the mountain-girt horizons?

Tom did all three. His boyish awe for the old autocrat of Paradise had mellowed into an affection that was almost filial, and there was plenty to talk about: the final dash in the technical school; the outlook in the broader world; the great strike which was filling all mouths; the business prospects for Chiawa.s.see Consolidated.