The Fighting Chance Part 77

"It isn't healthy," said Fleetwood.

"It attracts me," persisted the ruddy young man, voicing naively that curious truth concerning the attraction that disease so often exerts on health--the strange curiosity the normal has for the sub-normal--that fascination of the wholesome for the unhealthy. It is, perhaps, more curiosity than anything, unless, deep hidden under the normal, there lie one single, perverted nerve.

Sylvia, pa.s.sing the hall, glanced in through the gun-room door with an absentminded smile at the men and their laughing greeting, as they rose with uplifted gla.s.ses to salute her.

"The sweetest of all," observed a man, disconsolately emptying his gla.s.s. "Oh irony! What a marriage!"

"Do you know any girl who would not change places with her?" asked another.

Every man there insisted that he knew one girl at least who would not exchange Sylvia's future for her own. That was very nice of them; it is to be hoped they believed it. Some of them did--for the moment, anyhow.

Then Alderdene, blinking furiously, emitted one of his ear-racking laughs; and everybody, as usual, laughed too.

"You d.a.m.ned cynic," observed Voucher affectionately.

"Somebody," said Fleetwood, "insists that she doubled up poor Siward."

"She never met Siward until she was engaged to Howard," remarked Voucher.

"Well?"

"Oh, don't you consider that enough to squelch the story?"

"Engaged girls," mused Alderdene, "never double up except at Bridge."

"Everybody has been or is in love with Sylvia Landis," said Voucher, "and it's a man's own fault if he's. .h.i.t. Once she did it, innocently enough, and enjoyed it, never realising that it hurt a man to be doubled up."

Fleetwood yawned again and said: "She can have me to-morrow. But she won't. She's tired of the sport. Any girl would get enough with the pack at her heels day in and day out. Besides she's done for--unless she looses Quarrier and starts on a duke-hunt over in Blinky's country!

Is anybody on for a sail? Is anybody on for anything? No? Oh, very well.

Shove that decanter north by west, Billy."

This was characteristic of the dog-days at Shotover. The dog-days in town were very different; the city threw open the parks to the poor at night; horses fell dead in the streets; pallid urchins, stripped naked, splashed and rolled and screeched in the basin of the City Hall fountain under the indifferent eyes of the police.

As for Plank he was too busy to know what the thermometer was about; he had no time for anything outside of his own particular business except to go every day to the big, darkened house in lower Fifth Avenue where the days had been hard on Siward and the nights harder.

Siward, however, could walk now, using his crutches still, but often stopping to gently test his left foot and see how much weight he was able to bear on it--even taking a tentative step or two without crutch support. He drove when he thought it prudent to use the horses in the heat, usually very early in the morning, though sometimes at night with Plank when the latter had time to run his touring-car through the park and out into the Bronx or Westchester for a breath of air.

But Plank wanted him to go away, get out of the city for his convalescence, and Siward flatly declined, demanding that Plank permit him to do his share in the fight against the Inter-County people.

And Plank, utterly unable to persuade him, and the more hampered because of his anxiety about Siward--though that young man did not know it--wore himself out providing Siward with such employment in the matter as would lightly occupy him without doing any good to the enemy.

So Siward, stripped to his pajamas, pored over reams of typewritten matter and took his brief walking exercise in the comparative cool of the evening and drove when he dared use his horses; or, sitting beside Plank, whizzed northward through the starry darkness of the suburbs.

When it was that he first began to like Plank very much he could not exactly remember. He was not, perhaps, aware of how much he liked him.

Plank's unexpected fits of shyness, of formality, often and often amused him. But there was a subtler feeling under the unexpressed amus.e.m.e.nt, and, beneath all, a constantly increasing sub-stratum of respect. Too, he found himself curiously at ease with Plank, as with one born to his own caste. And this feeling, unconscious, but more and more apparent, meant more to Plank than anything that had ever happened to him. It was a tonic in hours of doubt, a pleasure in his brief leisure, a pride never to be hinted at, never to be guessed, never to be dreamed of by any living soul save Plank alone.

Then, one sultry day toward the last week in August, a certain judge of a certain court, known among some as "Harrington's judge," sent secretly for Plank. And Plank knew that the crisis was over. But neither Harrington nor Quarrier dreamed of such a thing.

Fear sat heavy on that judge's soul--the G.o.dless, selfish fear that sends the first coward slinking from the councils of conspiracy to seek immunity from those slowly grinding millstones that grind exceeding fine.

Quarrier at Shotover, with his private car and his locomotive within an hour's drive, strolled with Sylvia on the eve of her departure for Lenox with Leila Mortimer; then, when their conference was ended, he returned to Agatha, calmly unconscious of impending events.

Harrington, at Seabright, paced his veranda, awaiting this same judge, annoyed as two boats came in without the expected guest. And never for one instant did he dream that his creature sat closeted with Plank, tremulous, sallow, nearing the edge of cringing avowal--only held back from utter collapse by the agonising necessity of completing a bargain that might save himself from the degradation of the punishment that had seemed inevitable. All day long he sat with Plank. n.o.body except those two knew he was there. And after a very long time Plank consented that n.o.body else except Siward and Harrington and Quarrier should ever know.

So he called up Harrington on the telephone, saying that there was, in the office, somebody who desired to speak to him. And when Harrington caught the judge's first faint, stammered word he reeled where he stood, ashen, unbelieving, speechless. The shaking but remorseless voice went on, dinning horribly in his ear, then ceased, and Plank's heavy voice sounded the curt coup de grace.

Harrington was an old man, a very old man, mortally hurt; but he steadied himself along the wall of his study to the desk and sank into the chair.

There he sat, feeling the scars of old wounds throbbing, feeling his age and the tragedy of it, and the new sensation of fear--fear of the wraith of his own youth, wearing the mask of Plank, and menacing him with the menace he had used on others so long ago--so very long ago.

After a little while he pa.s.sed a thin hand over his eyes, over his gray head, over the mouth that all men watched with fear, over the shaven jaw now grimly set, but trembling. His hand, too, shook with palsy as he wrote, painfully picking out the words and figures of the cipher from his code-book; but he closed his thin lips and squared his unsteady jaw and wrote his message to Quarrier:

"It is all up. Plank will take over Inter-County. Come at once."

And that was all there was to be done until he could come into Plank's camp with arms and banners, a conquered man, cynical of the mercy he dared not expect and which, in all his life, he had never, never shown to man, to woman, or to child.

Plank slept the sleep of utter exhaustion that night; the morning found him haggard but strong, cool in his triumph, serious, stern faced, almost sad that his work was done, the battle won.

From his own house he telegraphed a curt summons to Harrington and to Quarrier for a conference in his own office; then, finis.h.i.+ng whatever business his morning mail required, put on his hat and went to see the one man in the world he was most glad for.

He found him at breakfast, sipping coffee and wrinkling his brows over the eternal typewritten pages. And Plank's face cleared at the sight and he sat down, laughing aloud.

"It's all over, Siward," he said. "Harrington knows it; Quarrier knows it by this time. Their judge crawled in yesterday and threw himself on our mercy; and the men whose whip he obeyed will be on their way to surrender by this time.

Well! Haven't you a word?"

"Many," said Siward slowly; "too many to utter, but not enough to express what I feel. If you will take two on account, here they are in one phrase: thank you."

"Debt's cancelled," said Plank, laughing. "Do you want to hear the details?"

They talked for an hour, and, in the telling, even Plank's stolidity gave way sufficient to make his heavy voice ring at moments, and the glimmer of excitement edge his eyes. Yet, in the telling, he scarcely mentioned himself, never hinted of the personal part--the inspiration which was his alone; the brunt of the battle which centred in him; the tireless vigilance; the loneliness of the nights when he lay awake, perplexed with doubt and n.o.body to counsel him--because men who wage such wars are lonely men and must work out their own salvation. No, n.o.body but his peers could advise him; and he had thought that his enemy was his peer, until that enemy surrendered.

The narrative exchanged by Plank in return for Siward's intensely interested questions was a simple, limpid review of a short but terrific campaign that only yesterday had threatened to rage through court after court, year after year. In the sudden shock of the cessation from battle, Plank himself was a little dazed. Yet he himself had expected the treason that ended all; he himself had foreseen it. He had counted on it as a good general counts on such things, confidently, but with a dozen plans as subst.i.tutes in case that plan failed--each plan as elaborately worked out to the last detail as though it alone existed as the only hope of victory. But if Siward suspected something of this it was not from Plank that he learned it.

"Plank," he said at last, "there is nothing in the world that men admire more than a man. It is a good deal of a privilege for me to tell you so."

Plank turned red with surprise and embarra.s.sment, stammering out something incoherent.

That was all that was said about the victory. Siward, unusually gay for awhile, presently turned sombre; and it was Plank's turn to lift him out of it by careless remarks about his rapid convalescence, and the chance for vacation he so much needed.

Once Siward looked up vacantly: "Where am I to go?" he asked. "I'd as soon stay here."

"But I'm going," insisted Plank. "The Fells is all ready for us."

"The Fells! I can't go there!"

"W-what?" faltered Plank, looking at Siward with hurt eyes.

"Can't you--don't you understand?" said Siward in a low voice.

"No. You once promised--"