Scribner's/"For This Relief Much Thanks"

by Francis Lynde

"FOR THIS RELIEF MUCH THANKS"

By Francis Lynde

IT was the third day after the tragedy of the $10,000, and Tenbroeck was still treading the wine-press of perplexity and wretchedness; otherwise tramping the floor of his office in the Baralone Building, and wishing in his soul that the earth might yawn for him before it should become necessary to report the tragedy to his principal.

It had been a thunder-clap out of a clear sky, and it was the more grievous because he had latterly come to believe that his shallop was well out of the storm-zone. His life voyage had not been a summer yachting cruise by any means. There had been difficulties and tempest-tossings; as when his father's death left him to get his degree at the German University as best he might, and again, when Kate Winton refused to set the day so long as her invalid mother needed a nurse. But these obstacles had been surmounted. The degree was won by sheer hard work and rigid economy, and the winner of it had come home to find his father's friends willing to help his father's son. Kate Winton had taken her mother to Colorado to try what virtue there might be in the clean air of the altitudes, and thither Tenbroeck had betaken himself, armed with a Freiburg diploma, a light heart, and sun-dry business commissions from his father's friends.

As a matter of course, Colorado made instant room for a man who was an expert mining engineer, and whose opinions were backed unhesitatingly by eastern capital; and up to the day of the $10,000 tragedy the sun shone brightly and the wind set fair for the young man whose office was on the fifth floor of the Baralone Building. He earned money and saved it, paid his university debts, and made his calling and election so sure that the informal syndicate of New York investors presently came to honor his drafts unquestioningly. Moreover, Colorado sunshine and the clean, crisp air of the altitudes had done for Kate's mother what they could not do for Tenbroeck's father; and when Mrs. Winston's recovery was a fact assured, Kate rewarded the waiting one by naming a certain day in June when they two should forthfare as one.

This was the blissful status of affairs one short week before the prefigured chiming of the wedding-bells. Then came the tragedy and three days of undivided wretchedness; and in the afternoon, when Tenbroeck was tramping out his sentry-beat of despair and longing for the obliterative earthquake, it wanted but four double sweeps of the clock-hands to the appointed morning of fruition.

"Three whole days, and no sign of a clew yet," he groaned. "I shall go stark staring mad if I have to carry this thing much longer without telling somebody. And yet if I raise the hue and cry I'm done for, world without end. Nobody will believe the truth; shouldn't believe it myself if the saddle were on some other fellow's horse. If I could only talk it over with somebody——" There was a hesitant tap at the door and he stopped in mid-flight to say: "Come!"

It was Jamieson, his neighbor across the corridor, and the manner of his entering accorded perfectly with the hesitant tap. He had an open letter in his hand.

"Excuse me," he said, and there was meek apology in every line of the womanish face. "I found this in my box a few minutes ago, and was thoughtless enough to open and read it without looking at the address on the envelope. It's for you."

Tenbroeck took the letter and read it absently. It was from one of his New York patrons announcing that the expected party of English investors had come over in the Etruria, and would presently arrive in Denver with a note of introduction from the writer. "I have given you a good send-off," wrote this father's friend to his friend's son. "I have told Mr. Montague that you probably know more about the Vindex property than any other man in Colorado; that your opinion may be taken as final; and that your fee will be proportionately high. They have plenty of money and will be prepared to buy on the spot for cash. They will want to use you in the double capacity of expert and solicitor, English fashion, and you needn't scruple to ask your price. They won't stick at a couple of hundred pounds."

Tenbroeck tossed the letter upon the pile of unopened mail on his desk, and said: "Much obliged. It's merely a bit of routine, as you doubtless saw. Won't you sit down?"

Jamieson slid into a chair, and the movement was as apologetic as his incoming.

"I oughtn't to trespass on your good nature," he protested. "But it does get pretty lonesome sitting in there day after day, waiting for something to turn up." Tenbroeck twirled his pivot-chair, opened a drawer and found a box of cigars.

"Have a smoke," he said, hospitably. "You look hacked, Jamieson. Are they coming hard for you?"

The despondent one clipped the end of the cigar as one who makes the most of luxuries few and far between, and his smile was wan.

"No, they're not coming hard; they're not coming at all."

Tenbroeck smoked reflectively, tilting his chair to the appraisive angle. Jamieson was an old acquaintance—and a new. He remembered the man dimly as a senior in his college when he himself was a Freshman, and the memory had for a nucleus Jamieson's capital gift for acting in the college theatricals. Years afterward someone had told him that Jamieson had gone on the stage, but he had never met the histrionic senior until one day Jamieson turned up in Denver, took the room across the corridor, and lettered his door, "Mining Expert and Consulting Engineer." It was in view of the memory that Tenbroeck said:

"Whatever set you in the scientific field, Jamieson? As I recollect them, your gifts were of another kind."

"What sets a man at anything? I'm afraid I'm a sorry failure all around."

"Don't get anything to do?"

"Not enough to keep body and soul together. You tossed that letter aside just now and said it was merely a matter of routine, and the phrase went through me like a knife. Two hundred pounds, he says; a thousand dollars. I could live two years on a thousand dollars, Tenbroeck."

Now Tenbroeck was of those who weep with the mourners, and he was cudgelling his brain to devise some way of helping the workless one without flaying him alive with the whip of charity. He was not good at such devisings, and the upshot of the matter was that he took a bank-note from his pocket, crumpled it and tossed it across to the confessed failure. It fell on the floor, and Jamieson picked it up and put it on the desk.

"Thank you, Tenbroeck, but I haven't come to that. I know what you're going to say—that it's a loan and all that. But I can't take it; and when I tell you that I've gone on one meal a day for a week you'll understand that I know how to starve like a man."

Tenbroeck's chair came upright with a crash.

"Jamieson, old fellow, I'm ashamed of myself! I didn't stop to measure the crass brutality of it. Fact is, I'm so desperately mired in a puddle of my own that I'm not quite myself."

"Mired!—you? From my dismal point of view you seem to be the luckiest man under the sky. Health, strength, youth and a business in which thousand-dollar fees are matters of routine. And—and you're to be married next week, aren't you?"

Tenbroeck nodded. "Yes, I'm to be married next week—if I can keep out of the penitentiary in the meantime. Listen, and you shall learn that you haven't a monopoly of the world's visible supply of trouble. You know something of my business; that I've been buying mines here and there for Eastern investors. Three days ago an old fellow came here with a piece of property for which I've been trying for a long time to find an owner. It was a good thing, worth more than he asked for it, and I closed with him on the spot. He came back in the afternoon with his deed, and I offered him a draft for $10,000 on my principal, who in this case happened to be a New York banker. He is an ignorant old fellow—it's Jack Hargin; maybe you know him?—and he shied at the draft; wanted it in cash. At that I made the draft payable to my own order, told him to wait a moment, and went around to the bank to get the money for him. Am I boring you?"

The visitor's lips were dry, and he moistened them to say, "No; go on."

"Well, I explained the situation at the First National and got the money all right. It was in five-hundreds, most of it, and I rolled it up, snapped a rubber band on it, and dropped it into my pocket. I was in a rush, and in that dark place in the corridor just this side of the elevator I ran into somebody and nearly knocked him down. It must have been Hargin, though I didn't recognize him at all. When I got back to the office the door was open and Hargin was gone. And when I felt in my pocket for the money that was gone, too. I tell you, Jamieson, it came pretty near wrecking me."

The dry-lipped one rose unsteadily and thrust his hand into his pocket.

"It was enough to wreck anybody; ten—thousand—dollars"—he weighed the words each by itself as if they were so many pieces of coin. "And you have no clew?—no theory or anything?"

"Not the flimsiest thread of a clew; that's the maddening phase of it. Of course, the first thought was of pickpockets and the fellow I stumbled over in the corridor; but that is blankly incredible."

"Quite incredible"—Jamieson's hand began to come out of his pocket by quarter inches, and the parched lips were tremulous—"quite incredible, one would say. But you were very careless—terribly careless." The inching hand came forth with a little jerk at the last word and he laid a compact roll of bank-notes on Tenbroeck's desk. "There is your money. I found it on the floor in the corridor late that night when I came up to go to bed. I sleep in the office to save room-rent, you know."

Tenbroeck's heart skipped a beat, and for a moment his sight failed and the air was full of black notes. Then the pivot-chair righted itself with a crash again, and he sprang up to wring the hand of restitution.

"Great Heavens!" he burst out; "and you've been going around here hungry with ten thousand ownerless dollars in your pocket! By Jove, Jamieson, it's the finest thing I ever heard of. Of course, you couldn't say a word; there would have been a hundred claimants in as many minutes. You've saved my life, old man, and you've simply got to let me help you now. Tell me how I can do it without making a brute of myself—as I did a few minutes ago."

"I don't know that anyone can help me, Tenbroeck. All I need is work, and work doesn't come to me as it does to others—as it does to you."

He was staring absently at the letter from the New York capitalist, and, following the eye-trajectory, Tenbroeck had an inspiration white-hot from the forge of generous impulse. These Englishmen who were coming to buy the Vindex; the investment was perfectly safe at the price asked by the Vindex owners. Why not let Jamieson earn the two-hundred-pound fee?

"What do you know about the Vindex, Jamieson?" he asked, abruptly.

"A good bit more than the owners, themselves, I fancy. I've worked in the mine with a pick and shovel."

"The dickens you have! Now that's what I call a stroke of Providence. I'm going to give you a note of introduction to Mr.—er—what's his name?—Montague, and turn the job over to you, lock, stock, and barrel. Don't say you won't take it; it's a case of must."

Jamieson was shaking his head and raising objections.

"I need it bad enough, God knows; but it wouldn't work. They wouldn't accept me as your substitute."

"Why wouldn't they? They don't know me from Adam's off ox."

"You forget that your friend in New York has already nominated you. Unless I could pose as Mr. Charles Tenbroeck for the time being, they wouldn't have anything to do with me. It's quite hopeless, you see."

"I'll be hanged if it is. Let's see; they'll be here to-morrow morning, and will probably want to go right on up to the mine. Suppose I give you my card-case and take a day off. You used to be pretty good at impersonations in the old days. If I can't lend you money, I can at least lend you my identity for a few hours. Don't say no; I'm bound to get even with you, some way, or the obligation you've just piled on will smother me."

But Jamieson still made difficulties, and Tenbroeck had to go all over it again, smoothing away the most trivial of the obstacles before he would consent. At the end of the ends there was the difficulty reluctantly admitted by Jamieson, of a lack of ready money to defray the expenses of the one-day trip to the mine, and Tenbroeck cut this knot by taking a hundred-dollar bill from the roll on the desk and fairly forcing it upon the reluctant one.

"Not a word; I sha'n't listen. You can pay it back out of the thousand you're going to earn to-morrow, you know. And now go right away up to Tortoni's and let the cook put a little heart into you. I'd make you go with me, but I have a luncheon engagement. By Jove! I'm fifteen minutes overdue now. Meet me here to-night and we'll go over the details again to make sure."

When Jamieson was gone, Tenbroeck shut his desk with a cheerful bang, buttoned the recovered treasure into the inside pocket of his waistcoat and went to keep his luncheon engagement at Mrs. Winton's with a heart so light that the pavements were to his feet as the air under the wings of a bird. The simile held good from the first, but it reinforced itself when he had stopped at the bank and gotten rid of the treasure; and from thence to the house of anticipation in the Highlands the tramway-car crept all too slowly.

At table in the cottage in Douglas Road Tenbroeck borrowed authority of the future and broke the trousseau-finishing strain arbitrarily, like a man and a master.

"You two are simply wearing yourselves to frazzles over the fuss and feathers, and I'm not going to have it," he declared. "We are booked to take a day off to-morrow, and go somewhere, and you may make your arrangements accordingly. Savez?"

"How like a man!" said Mrs. Winton. "Of course, we can't go!" And Kate affirmed it.

"You can go, and you must," insisted Tenbroeck; and thereupon ensued a knocking down of obstacles; a cheerful game of verbal tenpins in which a wilful man scored twice to two weary women's once. It was settled finally in terms of accommodation. The dressmakers and seamstresses were to be given day-long allotments, and the trio was to go up the cañon to Idaho Springs for a quiet day of rest.

"If you can leave your precious business, I suppose our trumpery affairs can be abandoned," said Kate. "But I give you fair warning: you are setting a bad precedent."

Tenbroeck laughed joyously. It was easy to laugh now.

"Oh, I've got a substitute," he retorted; and therewith he told the story of the loss and recovery of the $10,000 to a chorus of sympathetic ejaculations from the women.

"And you've been carrying that terrible burden for three whole days—alone!" said Kate, reproachfully, when he had finished. "What am I here for?"

"Not to suffer vicariously for my idiotic carelessness," Tenbroeck asserted. "Besides, I was fairly ashamed to tell anyone; shouldn't have told Jamieson, if he hadn't made it plain that I couldn't help him without making him in some sense a sharer in my own woes."

It was rather late in the afternoon when Tenbroeck left the cottage in Douglas Road, and Kate went with him to the door.

"Is it quite prudent? this thing you are going to do for Mr. Jamieson, Charles?" she asked. "Quite honest," she wanted to say; and Tenbroeck instantly translated the euphemism.

"It's safe enough; only that wasn't what you meant to say. I'll confess it doesn't seem quite as honest to me now as it did at the first blush. But it's entirely harmless. The Englishmen will buy the mine and go their ways, and Jamieson will pocket a fat fee, and nobody will be hurt."

Kate drew a long breath. "It is the most generous thing I ever heard of, and I love you for it, Charles; but——"

"But you think I was a bit impulsive. It's true; that is my major weakness, as you know better than anyone else in the world. But I believe I can trust Jamieson. Why, I fairly had to bully him into consenting to do it. He made all manner of objections."

"I hope it will come out all right," she said, a little dubiously. "I know how you felt about it—that you just must do something for him. But I wish it could have been something else."

"I don't know but I do—now," Tenbroeck rejoined; and that thought kept even pace with the generous impulse when he went to keep the appointment with Jamieson in the evening.

The details arranged themselves easily, though he found Jamieson with a fresh accession of reluctance and had once more to argue the facility of the thing. Inevitably, the argument reacted upon the maker of it, and the prudent under-thought became less insistent. The plan of campaign was exceedingly simple. Jamieson was to meet the Englishmen at the train—with Tenbroeck's card-case for his credentials—and was to place himself at their service, being governed thereafter by the exigencies of the case. The exigencies would be wholly of business, and Jamieson's information about the mine seemed to be all that the most careful purchaser could ask. So much Tenbroeck ascertained in a brief cross-examination of the substitute. At the close of the interview it was Jamieson himself who gave the final coup de grâce to the prudent under-thought by raising the precise question of probity suggested by Kate Winton.

"It seems perfectly feasible to me now, Tenbroeck, and I believe I can carry it through. But there is one point that troubles me. I shall be earning this money under false pretences."

Whereupon Tenbroeck humbled himself, and entered into another argument to disprove Kate's scruples, his own, and those of the proxy expert. It was dishonest only in terms of enallage; a mere substitution of personalities. What the English investors wanted was an expert opinion on the Vindex, and this they would get; a sounder opinion than the real Charles Tenbroeck could give them. What more could anyone ask?

"Oh, I've got to do it, I suppose," said the scrupulous one. "But I shall shake in my shoes till it's all over. Did you say you were going out of town for the day?"

"Yes. That'll give you a clear field all around. You can take them to the hotel when you get back and close your deal. Is there anything else I can do to help you out?"

"Nothing, I believe." Jamieson's hand was on the door-knob, but he turned back with a queer nervous twitching at the corners of his mouth. "Say, Tenbroeck, you're no end of a good fellow! If I wasn't such a hardened vagrant I couldn't—oh, damn it all, man, don't you see what a corner you're crowding me into?"

Tenbroeck met him half way and wrung the hand of restitution yet once again.

"You go across to your den and go to bed. You're a bit shaken up by the prospect of earning a little money, that's all. Go to bed and rest your nerve; you'll need it all to-morrow. Good-night and good luck to you."

The day of the excursion to Idaho Springs dawned bright and flawless, as Colorado summer days are wont to dawn; and during its speeding Tenbroeck renewed his youth, and Kate lost some of the pallor which wedding preparations entail upon the gentle and simple. They spent the morning at the baths, dined at the hotel, and idled afterward of set purpose until train-time, going early to the station, so that there might be no semblance of haste in the day of tranquillity.

While they were waiting for the train Tenbroeck went out on the platform to smoke, and the first man he recognized in the outdoor contingent was one John Hargin. The old prospector was sitting on a baggage-truck, smoking a short clay pipe; and his greeting ignored the $10,000 interlude as if it had never been.

"Howdy, Mr. Tenbroeck? Been layin' off to go down to Denver to see you for a week back. Some feller was tellin' me you was wantin' to buy that there prospect o' mine up in Boulder County."

"Wanting to buy it? I thought I had bought it. Why didn't you wait a minute or two longer last Tuesday and get your money?" Tenbroeck said it in good faith, forgetting for the moment that his loss would have intervened.

The grizzled old man shut one eye and stared hard with the other. "Las' Tuesday? Was I dickerin' with you las' Tuesday?"

"Of course you were. Didn't you come to my office and agree to sell me your interest in the 'Mysie' for $10,000?"

The old man winked hard at that and shook his head. "I ain't goin' to conterdict you, Mr. Tenbroeck, 'cause I don't b'lieve you tell lies. I wuz in Denver Tuesday, cert'inly. Also, I wuz drunk—as usual. But I wuz a heap drunker'n I set out to be if ever I offered you the Mysie for that money. She's worth twice that, an' you know it, Mr. Tenbroeck."

"Do you mean to say you weren't in my office in the Baralone Building Tuesday?"

"I ain't sayin' nothin' about it. If you say I wuz, I wuz; an' that settles it. But I don't ric'lect the first livin' thing about it."

"Well, you were; and you didn't act like a drunken man, either."

"That's nothin'. Ever'body says I'm soberer when I'm drunk. Be in your office to-morrow?"

"Yes."

"All right. I'll swear off an' sign the pledge for a day, and come down an' talk business with you. There comes your train."

Tenbroeck was unusually silent during the ride down the cañon, and after a half-dozen ineffectual attempts to make him talk, Kate let him alone. If Mrs. Winton had been out of the way he would have told Kate about the Margin episode; but as it was, he kept his own counsel and tried to invent explanations of the antiphlogistic sort.

The effort was not altogether successful; was prolonged, in fact, beyond the arrival at Denver and through the evening which he spent at the cottage in Douglas Road. For this cause he cut the evening short, taking an early car to town and meaning to go straightway to his room and to bed. But at the Opera House corner he changed his mind and dropped from the car to go to the Baralone Building for his mail. Being exclusively an office building the Baralone is deserted after the elevators stop running at six o'clock, and when Tenbroeck had climbed the five flights to his corridor there was a double surprise awaiting him.

From the angle beyond the elevator-well he could see the length of the passage. A broad beam of light from his own transom cut the obscurity of the hallway, and from behind the closed door came the sound of voices in sober conference. That was surprise number one; and the other was still more disconcerting. At the instant when he was wondering if Jamieson had boldly lengthened his inch of privilege into a goodly ell, a pair of muscular arms went about him from behind, and a hand was clapped over his mouth.

"Hist!—not a sound, for your life, Mr. Tenbroeck," whispered a voice at his ear. "Come along with us and be quiet."

He suffered himself to be dragged in a sort of coma of bewilderment into the room next to his own. There was a door of communication between, and a narrow slit had been sawn in one of the panels. Through this slit came a thin wedge of light from the room beyond, and Tenbroeck saw that his captors were two.

"Don't speak," said the voice at his ear. "It's all right, but we couldn't let you flush the covey. Kneel down and squint through that crack."

Tenbroeck knelt, and saw enough to give him a sudden qualm of disquietude. Four gentlemen, indubitably English, sat around the office table, which was littered with papers. Jamieson, his whole demeanor changed from abject disheartenment to confident ease, was tilting comfortably in his own particular pivot-chair. But the qualm of disquietude hinged chiefly upon the opened desk and the wide-spread double doors of the safe. Curiously enough, he charged the unlocked safe and desk to his own carelessness, and saw, in the lighted room, only a confirmation of his suspicion that Jamieson had taken an ell for his inch, but the qualm remained.

"It's all right," he whispered to the man crouching beside him. "Mr. Jamieson has my authority. You are an officer, I take it."

"It ain't all right. You listen a minute."

Tenbroeck did listen, and what he heard sent cold chills creeping up and down his spine. Jamieson, posing as Charles Tenbroeck, was selling the Englishmen, not the Vindex, but a worthless mine in Boulder Cañon whose stock had long since gone to the wall.

"We came over purposing to buy the Vindex, Mr. Tenbroeck"—it was the Honorable Arthur Montague who was speaking—"but this mine of yours that you have been showing us to-day is by far the better bargain. You admit that, and Mr. Vandergrift, of New York, said we could rely entirely on your judgment. You needn't be reluctant; we are not committed in any way to the Vindex people, and you are not doing them an injustice, as you seem to fear. Shall I give you a draft on London? We can have it cashed in the morning, you know."

"As you please," said Jamieson, nonchalantly. "You may add the exchange. It's cheap enough at £40,000. If I had the capital I'd never part with it, I assure you. I'd develop it myself."

The Englishman took out his check-book and began to write. At that moment Tenbroeck felt himself shoved forcibly aside and the door of communication crashed open. There was a swift transformation scene in the lighted room. The surprise was complete, and the man in the tilting pivot-chair was handcuffed before he could spring to his feet. He smiled grimly when he saw Tenbroeck, and laughed outright when the four elderly victims began to start up like flushed partridges to a gasping chorus of "What's this? what's this?"

Jamieson rose and stood between the two officers.

"Mr. Charles Tenbroeck, who was good enough to lend me his identity for a few hours, will explain," he said, with brazen hardihood. Then he glanced at Tenbroeck, saw that the trap was not of his setting, and fell back into the chair to cover his face with his manacled hands. There was silence for a full minute, a silence big with terrible possibilities for Tenbroeck, and then Jamieson stood up again, with his assurance gone and the queer nervous twitches tugging at the corners of his mouth.

"I beg your pardon all around, gentlemen. It was a big game and not so clumsily played. I knew Mr. Tenbroeck was going to be out of town, and I had keys to his door and his desk. The rest was easy." He made shift to take a card-case from his pocket and to toss it across to Tenbroeck. "I found that in your desk, among other things; also the combination to your safe, which you were careless enough to write out and label. Now I'm ready." This last to the officers.

Then Charles Tenbroeck found his manhood and came between.

"One moment, if you please. May I have a word with your prisoner?"

"Not out of our sight, Mr. Tenbroeck. He's a smooth one, he is."

Tenbroeck drew the manacled one aside while the officers guarded the door and the Englishmen were gathering up their papers.

"Keep a stiff upper lip, Jamieson," he whispered, "and I'll pull you out of this if it costs me all I can earn in a year. It's more than half my fault, and you've stood by me like a man. It makes me chilly to think what would have happened if you'd kept still and let them find that card-case on you."

Jamieson laughed. "Do you remember how we used to yell 'Legpull!' at college when somebody put up a job on the crowd? Well, that's what this was from the start. I've been opening your mail and reading your letters. I rigged up as old Jack Hargin and sold you the 'Mysie,' and it was I who picked your pocket of the ten thousand in the corridor so I could have it to hand back to you—a sprat thrown out to catch this British whale. You take a fool's advice and leave me to the 'tender mercies.' You couldn't pull me out with a derrick."

Tenbroeck was shocked and looked it.

"Then there are other things?—behind this?"

"A string of 'em as long as your arm. I'm good for twenty years, if the darbies hold."

Tenbroeck saw the Englishmen to their hotel, and then made a round of the newspaper offices. By this means he had the telling of the story to Kate in speech of his own devising. It was told on the eve of their wedding-day, and Kate's eyes were misty when he finished.

"He wasn't all bad, after all," she said, softly. "Oh, Charles! think what a terrible thing it would have been if he had made you tell the whole truth! Have you done anything for him?"

"I've retained the best criminal lawyer in the State, and he says he thinks he ran let the fellow off with something less than twenty years."

"I'm so glad you did it. Have you seen the man—Jamieson—since?"

Tenbroeck smiled. "No; but he sent me a line by the lawyer. It's a quotation from Hamlet: 'For this relief much thanks; 'tis bitter cold, and I am sick at heart.'"