Bucking the Tiger/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
AN OPTION
IF the consciousness of their fidelity and the loyal sense of their friendship had caused Walsh and the count to discover the real reasons for Macdonald's stubborn resolve to carry out his part of the suicide compact, Graham had arrived at the same conclusion through a complication of hatred and a sinister purpose of malice.
It was not only that he hated Macdonald because the latter had knocked him down that day in the room of the manicure, nor because he was so evidently booming along toward big success with all sails set to the wind.
It was rather because Macdonald's decent, unselfish intentions toward the girl shamed his own foul corruption into a yet deeper abyss, because he was conscious of the fact that he himself had neither the pluck, nor the stamina, nor the moral conviction to lift himself up as the other had done and to reconstruct his life on a saner, sweeter basis.
His was the eternal hatred of the weak and unclean for the strong and clean; and his hatred grew day by day until finally he persuaded himself that it was a just and right hatred and until he nursed it into something secularly holy.
Like many cowards, he was peculiarly sensitive to the mental and moral atmosphere which surrounded him, and so he felt a crazy sense of outrage when he saw that Walsh and the count were also about to reconstruct their lives with the help of Macdonald, and that they freely acknowledged the debt of gratitude and friendship which they owed to the latter.
He knew from Hayes that, according to Houghton senior, Macdonald intended to acquire a controlling interest in the Western Crown. He himself, believing the stock of the concern to be an extremely good buy, had already written home for money so as to be able to purchase a substantial block of shares, and his friend Hillyer had done likewise.
But when a casual word which the cow-puncher let drop one evening at the Eslick showed him that Macdonald was ready to act, that in fact he was about to trade in some valuable real estate in Lincoln Park for some of Pat Kenny's Western Crown holdings, he felt more than ever convinced that it was up to him to move heaven and earth so as to get there ahead of Macdonald.
He wanted more than a mere voting slice of the company's stock. He wanted control. He wanted to frustrate the very deal which, he thought, Macdonald had set out to accomplish before he died.
Both he and Hillyer had saved a few hundred dollars from the commissions which they had been earning. He had a short talk with his compatriot. Then he called on Houghton senior.
That elderly mining stock and real estate corsair smiled rather a wry smile when the Englishman sat down beside his desk.
"Sacred wild-cats!" he thought. "I wager this diligent sub-agent of mine has sandbagged another insurance victim, and I gotta shell out more cash for commission."
He put his hand in his pocket and fingered coquettishly a roll of bills which was reposing there.
"How much?" he inquired with a loud voice and a subdued sigh.
Graham waved the proffered money aside with a lordly gesture.
"Nothing," he replied. "I have come here to talk business, Mr. Houghton."
Houghton felt relieved. He let the roll of money drop back into his pocket with a little satisfactory plump. Business, with him, spelt the taking, not the giving of money.
"Gladly! Gladly!" he exclaimed, shaking Graham fervently by the hand. "Proceed! You interest me."
That last statement was perfectly true.
"I would like to acquire an interest in the Western Crown; that is if it's for sale," the Englishman began lamely.
It seemed to Houghton that sweet and soothing chimes were tinkling in the distance. But he never winked an eyelash. In fact, he managed to look slightly bored.
"Yes, yes," he replied with a voice which was as throbbing with emotion as an ossified bagpipe. "Lots of people want that." He paused and stifled an elaborate yawn. "Cash transaction?" he asked casually.
The Englishman blushed. He felt uncomfortable and cheap; the very thing Houghton wanted him to feel.
"Why, no," he stammered. "That is—I fancy I can muster a little cash. Not very much though. Fact is I want an—" He hunted nervously for the right word, but neither Eton, nor Oxford, nor the Army came to the rescue. "I want a—what the deuce do you call those dashed things?—you don't exactly buy, don't you know, but you have the right to buy at a future date."
"Oh, I get you, you mean an option," Houghton suggested suavely.
"Quite so. Quite so."
Houghton senior thought rapidly. Not for the tiniest fraction of a second did he believe that Graham wanted the option for himself. Of course he had come here only as an agent for Ritchie Macdonald. Pat Kenny had told him this very morning that Macdonald had very nearly traded in a lot in Lincoln Park for some of his Western Crown holdings, but had backed out at the last moment with a laugh.
It was evident to Houghton that Kenny had asked too much. But it was also evident that Macdonald wanted the stock badly. Macdonald seemed to think that he would be able to strike a better bargain through Graham than if he came in person. All right. He'd see that he was mistaken! He was altogether too eager to buy.
So Houghton discouraged Graham's proposition with his first words.
"Not for sale," he declared with inexorable accent. "Not for sale!" he repeated, and turned to the work on his desk.
But Graham was not so easily discouraged. Somewhere, in a half-forgotten cell in the back of his brain, the huckstering spirit of the ennobled fried-fish monopolist who was his father rose screaming.
"Look here, Mr. Houghton," he commenced with a firm voice.
There followed a homeric battle of words. The curious thing about it was that both Graham and Houghton—though they did not suspect each other of it—were unanimously intent on doing Macdonald: the former by trying to keep him from obtaining the stock, the latter by trying to sell it to him under a guise of coy unwillingness.
Both men were moved by the lust of gold: Graham wanted to buy something which he thought was good, Houghton to sell what he knew to be bad. Added to this was Graham's bitter hatred of Macdonald. Houghton, on the other hand, rather liked Macdonald; still, business was business, and so he felt toward him like an undertaker who is about to plant his best friend in a palatial, two-thousand-dollar, silver-edged, velvet-lined coffin, and the bereft widow ready to hand over the cash.
At the end of an hour the two gentlemen agreed. Graham paid over as margin most of the cash he had in his pocket, and received a ninety days' option from Houghton for fifty-one per cent of the capital stock of the Western Crown.
"I suppose you're acting for Macdonald?" Houghton inquired as he was about to fill in the name of the option buyer.
"Nothing of the sort! I am acting for myself!" Graham replied so heatedly that the aged financier shrugged his shoulders and filled in Graham's name.
But he smiled as Graham left the office. What infantile precautions and subterfuges, he thought to himself. He knew better. Of course Macdonald was the man behind the gun. So he ambled over to the club where he bought an especially good lunch for himself and his admiring descendant.
"Marshall, my lad," he said, rubbing his hands, "you have a right to be proud of your old dad. Efficiency is my middle name. My dome is mahogany trimmed and satinwood lined. I am an under-sea boat in the ocean of trade, and nobody can hit my periscope."
"What's the matter, dad?"
Houghton senior covered a piece of bread with butter, covered the butter with Neufchatel cheese, the cheese with a pimento, and the pimento with paprika pepper. Then he inhaled the whole, smiled beatifically, and replied:
"I have done young Mac. I have done him richly and for keeps. I have sold him an option on the Western Crown stocks. How much per share would you say at a rough guess?"
"Four hundred and seventeen," Marshall opined, quoting the market price.
When Houghton senior shook his head and told him the real price he had asked and obtained, his son paled with emotion.
"Father," he said with a firm voice, "the next round of drinks is on me."
Graham meanwhile returned to the Hotel Eslick. He felt elated, pleased with himself. He looked with an approving eye at the many evidences of the town's opulence and prosperity. In the past, while he had been at Brazenose College and, later on, when he had borne his majesty's commission he had felt secretly ashamed because his father had made the peerage via the fried-fish route.
But to-day the commercial instincts of his blood came to the surface with a pop. He had the option on the Western Crown stock snugly tucked away in his inside pocket. He would manage to take it up when the time came; he would make the thing pay; and—best of all—would spoil Macdonald's plans thoroughly.
When he entered the room which he shared with his compatriot Hillyer, he found the latter in an attitude of deep dejection; but he was so primed with his own news that he did not stop to inquire after the cause.
"Did it, old chap!" he exclaimed. "Got a ninety days' option on fifty-one per cent of the Western Crown stock! I paid down the few hundred dollars we saved up, as a sort of retainer don't you know. Jolly proper piece of business, I call it," he added triumphantly.
Hillyer's answering voice was hollow.
"Did you pay out all the money we saved up?"
"Well—nearly all," Graham said airily; "there's about thirty dollars left."
Hillyer groaned.
"Good Lord!" he said. "I wish you hadn't." And he buried his face in his hands.
Graham looked at him with digust.
"What's the matter with you? Off your feed? My word! We talked it all over before I went to see old Houghton. What the devil's wrong?"
Hillyer pointed at a letter which lay on the table and which bore an English stamp.
"This came while you were gone," he replied in a hollow voice. "From the guv'nor, in answer to my letter—the one in which I asked him for money to buy Western Crown shares with."
"Yes, yes," Graham interrupted eagerly. "What does he say?"
"What does he say? What the dooce doesn't he say? He says all sorts of things; rude, hard, unfeeling, not at all paternal. He reminds me of the fact that he passed his blooming word of honour over a year ago that he wouldn't give me another ruddy penny as long as he lived. He reminds me—curse him!—that the Hillyers have lived in Sussex since the days before the Conqueror—curse him, too!—that they are pure Saxon, and that they've never broken their word of honour. Then he winds up by asking me if I wanted him to break his word of honour! Silly old josser! Pure Saxon be damned!" he added in an agony of grief. "I wish to God the Hillyers had intermarried a little with peasants and trade. I wish somebody had taught them how to break their blooming word of honour once in a while! I wish—"
Graham patted his shoulder.
"Never mind, old chap," he said soothingly. "My guv'nor hasn't answered me yet. There's still hope. Meanwhile I'll write to him again. I shall also cable to him. Don't give up the ship. We shall carry this thing through somehow."
He said this with such steely resolve that Hillyer looked at him in surprise. Graham was indeed surprised at himself. For the first time in his life he had decided to do something, to carry it through to the end with single-minded purpose. For the first time in his life he felt energy and diligence fermenting within him. And it was hatred, hatred of Macdonald, which had brought the two qualities to the surface.
So he wrote and cabled to his father. And he wrote and cabled so urgently, so imploringly, but with so much sense and grasp of business conditions appearing between and in the lines, explaining how he had earned the money he had paid down as retaining-fee on the option by working as agent for the company, how he had obtained an option on the majority of the stock, enclosing the option itself as well as a mass of newspaper clippings to show how the shares of the concern were booming and how the business of the company was increasing, that Lord Graham of Penville rubbed his eyes when he read the letter, eleven days later.
He turned to his sweet-faced wife with a broad smile.
"Go'blyme!" he said. "You can call me a bloomin' donkey's horphan; you can call me a—a—a plurry, man-eatin', nose-ringed 'Ottentot if the age of miracles hain't come back on this 'ere earth! Why, Ludd love me, 'ere is this 'ere brass-'eaded, mouldy-'earted son of ours wot useter break my 'eart, livin' like a bloated millionaire, eatin' dinners down at the 'Otel Cecil at foive quids an 'ead, and gettin' jolly well kicked out of the harmy on top of it—'ere is this 'ere Ralph turnin' into a bloomin' financier, so 'elp me! Hooray!" he added after a short pause for breath. "Hoo-bloomin'-ray!"
His wife smiled delightedly. She walked over to her husband and patted his pudgy, rosy hands.
"I'm so glad, dear," she said, her aged voice trembling with joy. "Remember that time when Ralph wired you to send him the money so he could buy off that horrid Indian wife of young Hillyer? Why, dear, I thought at the time it was real unselfish of the boy. Standing up for his pal, and never even asking a single farthing for himself!"
"Right-oh! Not 'arf! Bit of arl right!" agreed Lord Graham heartily. "That warn't 'arf dusty of 'im, now I come to think on it."
Lady Graham smiled. She knew her husband's stanch pride under all his rough cockney phrases. She knew how nearly heart-broken he had been that day when their only son had been drummed out of the army. And now she was glad at the little ray of sunshine.
"What does Ralph write, dear?" she asked softly.
"Read for yourself, old gal," he replied, giving her the letter; then he said, half to himself, "I've 'arf a mind to—to—yuss, blyme if 'avent—"
She finished the letter. There were happy tears in her eyes, and she took her husband's hands in hers.
"William dear," she whispered, "do you remember the day Ralph was born?"
"Yuss! Wasn't 'e the cunnin' little shaver?"
"And the plans we made for him," she continued, "do you remember? The plans for his future! We were old, you and I, when Ralph was born to us. You had already made your money. Perhaps"—her voice trembled a little—"perhaps it wasn't all his fault—what came later—perhaps we spoilt him a little."
He drew her to him.
"Don't you fret, old gal," he said, patting her white hair. "We tried our bloomin' best. But perhaps you're right. Perhaps we did spoil 'im."
He stared into the fire which was burning in the grate; for a thick white fog was drifting over the Sussex Downs in spite of the June sun.
"Say, Syrah old dear," he continued after a pause in a low voice; "Remember them old days down the Tottenham Court Road when I was a-courtin o' you? I wasn't no bloomin' lord then, with a coronet and a town 'ouse and a country estite. I was just plain Bill Graham; fried-fish retail—and bloomin' good fish they was, too! Remember when I proposed to you?"
"You didn't, dear," she smiled.
"I didn't wot?"
"No, dear, you didn't. I was still calling you Mister Graham, quite formal-like. And all of a sudden—it was on a bank holiday and we were lookin' at the tulips in Regent's Park—you put your arms around my waist right in front of everybody and you said: 'Dammit! Call me Bill, can't you, and give us a buss.' Remember?"
Lord Graham smiled reminiscently.
"Yuss, old dear. I was always one of them straight-a'ead, grabbin' kind. Ludd love me," he added musingly, "I do wish Ralph was a bit like 'is old dad."
His wife pointed at the letter.
"William dear, why—why don't you—"
Lord Graham rose very suddenly.
"Right, Syrah, right as rain! I'll do it!"
He walked into the outer hall, picked up his ancient stick and his high hat, which was of solemn, ultra-conservative Sheraton architecture, and, a few minutes later, the motor-car was whizzing him toward the station.
And so, two weeks later, in his room at the Hotel Eslick in Spokane, young Graham was gazing rapturously at a fat draft on a New York bank. It was for the full amount of his option on the controlling interest of the Western Crown.
There was also a letter from his father. It was partly congratulatory and partly minatory. For while his father praised him in moderate terms for his business acumen and foresight in having secured the option and for having evidently turned over a new leaf, he warned him of the consequences if he should lose the money.
He told him in plain terms that he had made his will in such a way that, if Ralph should by any chance, as he expressed it, "flivver away" the substantial sum he was sending him, every penny of his vast fortune would go to endow a Home for Retired and Impecunious Retail Fish-mongers, The letter wound up:
I don't care what happens, and how you lose your money. I don't care if it should be your own fault or rotten circumstances. But I shall be in Spokane toward the end of next year and see what you have done with the money, and how your Western Crown company is coming on. I shall bring a chartered accountant with me, so you needn't try to flimflam me. And if your affairs aren't up to snuff, off goes my money to Lord Graham of Penville's Home for Retired and Impecunious Retail Fish-Mongers. You will be able to fight my will, and perhaps even to break it. But I warn you that my will has been made and drawn up by the most competent and guileful legal talent in Great Britain and Ireland. So, if you fight and break the will, it will take you thirty years, and by the time you get through there won't be enough left of my money to buy yourself a glass of bitters.
So look out, behave, and don't you squander that money!
Your loving father,
Graham of Penville.