The Fighting Chance Part 71

"Certainly. I recollect it perfectly now. Will you sit here, Mr.

Plank--for a moment--"

"If it concerns Inter-County, it will take longer than a moment--unless you cannot spare the time now," said Plank. "Shall we call it off?"

"As a matter of fact I am rather short of time just now."

"Then let us postpone it. I shall probably be at my office if you are anxious to see me."

Quarrier looked at him, then laid aside his hat and sat down. There was little to be done in diplomacy with an oaf like that.

"Mr. Plank," he said, without any emphasis at all, "there should be some way for us to come together. Have you considered it?"

"No, I haven't," replied Plank.

"I mean, for you and me to try to understand each other."

"For us?" asked Plank, raising his blond eyebrows. "Do you mean Amalgamated Electric and Inter-County, impersonally?"

"I mean for us, personally."

"There is no way," said Plank, with conviction.

"I think there is."

"You are wasting time thinking it, Mr. Quarrier."

Quarrier's velvet-fringed eyes began to narrow, but his calm voice remained unchanged: "We are merely wasting energy in this duel," he said.

"Oh, no; I don't feel wasted."

"We are also wasting opportunities," continued Quarrier slowly. "This whole matter is involving us in a tangle of litigation requiring our constant effort, constant attention."

"I beg your pardon, Mr. Quarrier, but you take it too seriously. I have found, in this affair, nothing except a rather agreeable mental exhilaration."

"Mr. Plank, if you are not inclined to be serious--"

"I am," said Plank so savagely that Quarrier, startled, could not doubt him. "I like this sort of thing, Mr. Quarrier. Anything that is hard to overcome, I like to overcome. The pleasure in life, to me, is to win out. I am fighting you with the greatest possible satisfaction to myself."

"Perhaps you see victory ahead," said Quarrier calmly.

"I do, Mr. Quarrier, I do. But not in the manner you fear I may hope for it."

"Do you mind saying in what manner you are already discounting your victory, Mr Plank?"

"No, I don't mind telling you. I have no batteries to mask. I don't care how much you know about my resources; so I'll tell you what I see, Mr.

Quarrier. I see a parody of the popular battle between razor-back and rattler. The rattler only strives to strike and kill, not to swallow.

Mr. Quarrier, that old razor-back isn't going home hungry; but--he's going home."

"I'm afraid I am not familiar enough with the natural history you quote to follow you," said Quarrier with a sneer, his long fingers busy with the silky point of his beard.

"No, you won't follow me home; you'll come with me, when it's all over.

Now is it very plain to you, Mr. Quarrier?"

Quarrier said, without emotion: "I repeat that it would be easy for you and me to merge our differences on a basis absolutely satisfactory to you and to me--and to Harrington."

"You are mistaken," said Plank, rising. "Good afternoon."

Quarrier rose, too. "You decline to discuss the matter?" he asked.

"It has been discussed sufficiently."

"Then why did you come here?"

"To see for myself how afraid of me you really are," said Plank. "Now I know, and so do you."

"You desire to make it a personal matter?" inquired Quarrier, in a low voice, his face dead white in the late sunlight which illuminated the room.

"Personal? No--impersonal; because there could be absolutely nothing personal between us, Mr. Quarrier; and the only thing in the world that there ought to be between us are a few stout, steel bars. Beg pardon for talking shop. I'm a shopkeeper, and I'm in the steel business, and I lack opportunities for cultivation. Good day."

"Mr. Plank--"

"Mr. Quarrier, I want to tell you something. Never before, in business differences, has private indignation against any individual interfered or modified my course of action. It does now; but it does not dictate my policy toward you; it merely, as I say, modifies it. I am perfectly aware of what I am doing; what social disaster I am inviting by this att.i.tude toward you personally; what financial destruction I am courting in arousing the wrath of the Algonquin Trust Company and of the powerful interests intrenched behind Inter-County Electric. I know what the lobby is; I know what judge cannot be counted on; I know my peril and my chances, every one; and I take them--every one. For it is a good fight, Mr. Quarrier; it will be talked of for years to come, wonderingly; not because of your effrontery, not because of my obstinacy, but because such monstrous immorality could ever have existed in this land of ours.

Your name, Harrington's, mine, will have become utterly forgotten long, long before the horror of these present conditions shall cease to be remembered."

He stretched out one ponderous arm, pointing full between Quarrier's unwinking eyes.

"Take your fighting chance--it is the cleanest thing you ever touched; and use it cleanly, or there'll be no mercy shown you when your time comes. Let the courts alone--do you hear me? Let the legislature alone.

Keep your manicured hands off the ermine. And tell Harrington to shove his own cold, splay fingers into his own pockets for a change. They'll be warmer than his feet by this time next year."

For a moment he towered there, powerful, bulky, menacing; then his arm dropped heavily--the old stolid expression came back into his face, leaving it calm, bovine, almost stupid again. And he turned, moving slowly toward the door, holding his hat carefully in his gloved hand.

Stepping out of the elevator on the ground floor he encountered Mortimer, and halted instinctively. He had not seen Mortimer for weeks; neither had Leila; and now he looked at him inquiringly, disturbed at his battered and bloodshot appearance.

"Oh," said Mortimer, "you down here?"

"Have you been out of town?" asked Plank cautiously.

Mortimer nodded, and started to pa.s.s on toward the bronze cage of the elevator, but something seemed to occur to him suddenly; he checked his pace, turned, and waddled after Plank, rejoining him on the marble steps of the rotunda.

"See here," he panted, holding Plank by the elbow and breathing heavily even after the short chase across the lobby, "I meant to tell you something. Come over here and sit down a moment."

Still grasping Plank's elbow in his puffy fingers, he directed him toward a velvet seat in a corner of the lobby; and here they sat down, while Mortimer mopped his fat neck with his handkerchief, swearing at the heat under his breath.

"Look here," he said; "I promised you something once, didn't I?"

"Did you?" said Plank, with his bland, expressionless stare of an overgrown baby.

"Oh, cut that out! You know d.a.m.n well I did; and when I say a thing I make good. D'ye see?"