The Red Book Magazine/Volume 19/Number 3/The Weak Spot

by Edwin Balmer

 

The
WEAK SPOT

By
EDWIN BALMER
Author of “Waylaid by Wireless” etc.

IT was the night of the great wheat corner in Chicago—the hot, breathless night after the July day upon which Gideon Nash, mercilessly surprising the “shorts” with the tremendous total of his buying and the strength of the alliances which had quietly been bringing him control of the market, forced the price up and up, point after point, from the first wild panic of the opening moment of the Chicago Board of Trade, to the last frantic, Bedlam sixty seconds before trading closed at three.

The surprise was as complete as it was pitiless. In the newspaper offices where the headlines “Wheat at a Dollar Forty, a Further Rise Certain To-day,” topped the right hand columns of the first page, the financial writers now knew—as everyone now knew—that Gideon Nash had been gathering this storm for weeks, had been secretly preparing it for months.

As they realized what must have been the tremendous strain of his long-continued, absolutely concealed gathering of tens of millions after tens of millions of liabilities, waiting for this day upon which he gave them the power of assets, the newspaper men stared with incredulity at the stolid photograph of the brush-haired, stubby figure of Gideon Nash, snapped as he left the board of Trade that afternoon. Those who had seen him reported that though now they were able to look for it, there was as little sign upon him of the long liability to total ruin at any moment as there was mark upon him of the fact that he had made twenty millions that day and possessed the certain power of exacting twenty more to-morrow.

He gave no sign.

So it was with no illusion that they could influence the conduct of Gideon Nash that the newspaper men, explaining the totally artificial, “created” condition of the market, sought for adjectives to describe the effect upon the public of this one man’s power for greed. It was not for Nash’s sympathy that the reporters wrote slowly and carefully the columns which told the story of the deaths of the three men already ruined and disgraced and unable to survive their failures. The reporters held no illusions about Gideon Nash.

No one held illusions after seeing him—least of all Esther Giles, the twenty-two year old daughter of Rutherford Giles, who had survived ruin that day but was the first of those facing it upon the resumption of trading in the morning.

Without her father’s knowledge, she had called young Peyton Lombard to take her to see Gideon Nash. Together they had said to him all that could have been said. They knew he understood that he would kill Rutherford Giles, his neighbor, as surely as he forced the ruin of him and of his friends involved with him. Gideon Nash had replied by pointing them to the door. Lombard could do no more, then, than to take the girl home. He walked back, slowly, along the lake shore.

He lived next door to Gideon Nash, in the suburban country place built upon the bluffs over the lake twenty-five miles north of Chicago. As he reached Nash’s house again, it was midnight; but the trader in wheat was not yet in bed. The lighted window in the rear of the house was his bed-room.

It was not Gideon Nash’s usual sleeping-apartment, Peyton knew. That was at the front of the great house, a large room with three wide windows looking out toward the road; this was a small room with a single window which looked out over the edge of the bluff to the lake. Gideon Nash’s family was in Europe. The wheat-trader was alone in the house with his man Foley.

Peyton likewise was alone in his father’s house, a hundred yards north across the lawns. That week he had visiting him an English friend, Torrington, with whom Peyton had hunted in Uganda the year before. Peyton went up to the room where Torrington was sprawled in a chair by the window, his long, lanky form in pongee pajamas. The room happened to be in the wing which commanded Gideon Nash’s lighted window. Torrington’s light was out; enough moonlight came in to let him find siphons, bottles and ice upon the stand beside him.

“Well, Peyt?” he asked, as his host tramped in. “What luck?”

“What do you really think of me, Tommie?” Peyton returned, looking down at his tall, strong form in the moonlight. “Can you beat me for peacefulness and decorum? Can you beat all of us Twentieth Century Americans? Over there”—he pointed to the lighted window in the next house—“is the man that almost doubled the price of bread to-day—he’ll have it doubled to-morrow. What my neighbor’s doing to us makes what you blamed bally Britishers tried to put over on us as harmless as playing marbles for keeps. We revoluted for far less. And yet he goes to bed inside an open window with the curtain up. He knows nobody’ll touch him. The people with real nerve—the rough-necks with the bombs—aren’t hit directly enough. He’s killed three of our sort to-day—as far as the evening papers had the census. He’ll get a dozen more, probably, beginning with Rutherford Giles to-morrow morning. But he knows we're polite. Me, for instance! I’m trying to show Giles’ daughter reasons why she should marry me. I know as sure as I’m standing here that that brute over there is going to do for her father to-morrow morning. He’s going to fix him, Tommie; he’s going to fix old Rutherford Giles forever. And I protest by calling upon him with Esther and ask him to please not to.”

“What ought we do with him?” Torrington inquired.

“Anything to keep him off the floor—the Board of Trade—till eleven o'clock to-morrow morning—till half past ten would do. If we made him only a quarter of an hour late, and he was out of communication with his brokers, that would be enough. A quarter of an hour late without explanation and without orders from him, and his corner will be smashed—and the decent men on the floor saved!”

“Well?” the English guest asked. “What?”

“Exactly—what? He belongs to an age of argument by murder or kidnaping, and that’s barred for us. Esther wouldn’t marry me even if the jury let me off and she knew I did it for her father. He’s not assailable by any other sort of argument. He hasn’t a weak spot—for his purposes. He hasn’t a weak spot.”

“I shouldn’t say he’s too entirely trustful of your manners, however,” Torrington observed, quietly. “He’s not only shifted his diggings from the front of the house to this one-windowed nook of his at the back, but now he’s barring himself in, isn’t he?”

“Barring himself in?”

Torrington fumbled among his bags on the floor and arose with binoculars. He focused them upon the window in which, Peyton now observed, the curtain had been drawn. The light still burned in the room so the bars of the grating, which had been drawn over the window, showed in clear black squares, dividing the yellow glow on the curtain. The light in the room then went out; the curtain was raised. Peyton took the binoculars. Through them he could see. in the soft shimmer of the moon, the bars of the grating over the window.

“It must be hinged and swung over from the inside,” Peyton observed.

“He’s got a guard down there, too!” Torrington pointed to a figure standing under a tree twenty yards from Gideon Nash’s window.

Peyton shifted his glasses.

“Get dressed, Tommie,” he bade, abruptly. “That’s not a guard; that’s a girl.” He started from the room.

“Who? What? Do you mean—”

Peyton returned. “Perhaps we'd better watch for a minute more.” He came back and stood at the window. Torrington pulled his clothes on swiftly.

“I’m going down, now. You can come if you want to, Tommie; you may be needed. She’s at the window—trying to open it.”

Tommie sprang after him. The girl had been upon the low, wide porch at the end of Gideon Nach’s house, as they left the room; before they came out upon the lawn, she had opened the window at which she had been working, and disappeared within the house. They crossed the lawn and looked into the window. Already, she had cleared the passage inside. They entered and, following her by the doors she had left open behind her, they heard her in the upper hall. She gave no sign of having heard them. All the doors from the rooms opening into the upper hall were closed. It was absolutely dark except for the least possible glint at the top of the front stairs, from the moonlight through the big, curtained windows below. Even after a moment had accustomed them to the dark, neither could make out the form of the girl whom they followed. But they could hear her feeling her way along the side of the wall on which lay the door of Gideon Nash’s room. She seemed to stop at each door and feel of it carefully; but she made no effort to open any of them, or even to turn the knob.

She reached another door; in the silence there came the sound of her hand over the frame; then, after an instant, came the click of a key in the lock.

Peyton strained, for a moment, to hear the rasp of the door opening or to see the glow into the hall from a moonlit room. But he heard and saw nothing. He felt for Torrington in the blackness beside him and put his lips against his guest’s ear.

“That’s Gideon Nash’s room,” he whispered.

“I thought so,” Tommie answered. “The thing is, she didn’t put that key in that lock. It was there—outside the door. She just turned it.”

“Yes, that’s it,” Peyton breathed. The girl, without attempting to open the door she had unlocked, was coming back toward them. For an instant they saw her figure in dim silhouette before the dimly reflected glow at the head of the stairs. She descended. As they crept forward to keep her in sight, they saw her go directly to the front door, unlock it, open it silently—perhaps half a foot—then close it and lock it again. With a jerk of relief, which told almost audibly that she had finished that part, she turned about and made, less carefully, for the window at which she had entered.

The two upstairs followed her. She was through the window again well ahead of them and had gained the front of the house before they came out. She stopped under a tree by the front door and stood watching it. The door remained closed; all the west front of the house, dark and indistinct in the green moon-shadow, was silent. Beyond closed the circle of elm and maple which half hid the house from the road. There was no sound on land; from the lake behind the house came only the softened sound of the exhaust of a far-away motor-boat.

Peyton advanced to the girl, boldly, his guest following him. Peyton grasped her arm, steadying her. She was trembling violently.

“Then it was you inside there?” she asked. “It was you?”

Torrington saw a slender, young little figure, and a fair, sensitive face. The features were straight and good and palely delicate in the moonlight. She was of medium height but beside Peyton she seemed small; her hands, which were ungloved, were slight.

“You heard us inside?” Peyton whispered.

“Just before I went down stairs.”

“You kept your nerve,” he approved. “But, Esther, what—”

“Who is he?” she interrupted.

“He’s Torrington—the Englishman that shot with me in Uganda last year. Remember? Tommie, this is Miss Giles.”

The girl gave Torrington her hand. It was wet and cold with nervousness. He spoke to her, formally.

“He’s got to come out!” she informed Torrington, in reply. “He was locked in by Foley, just as Ingal said. He was locked in and there’s been sand in his bed every morning for the week Ingal was there—wet sand. Wet sand! He’s got to come out, soon!”

Torrington dropped her hand, looking his perplexity to Peyton.

“What did you say, Esther?” Peyton demanded. “What do you mean?”

“That he’s got to have a weak spot. I said so. He must have! He has! After I sent you back, Ingal—our new maid, who used to work here—told me about that: I mean the sand in his bed every morning. Then she found Foley locked him in his room. So I guessed he walked. When there’s a long, secret strain on a person and he doesn’t show it, he often walks. Ruth Grenwick’s aunt did it; and nobody knew it for a long time. They found it out from sand in her bed in the mornings, too. She used to walk on the lake shore. But we must keep still—we must keep still. What time is it?”

Tommie showed her his watch. She read the time, mechanically, in the moonlight. “Half past seven,” she repeated, without recognition.

Peyton shook his head at Tommie to prevent him from speaking. He took hold again of Esther’s arm.

“Tommie always keeps his watch London time wherever he is,” he explained. “It’s half past one.”

“Half past one,” she repeated. “I think he’s coming! He’s coming!”

The others had heard no sound; there was no light from within the house; but the lock of the front door had turned, for the door opened. No light from within followed the opening of the door. It made only a darker gap above the steps; then appeared the figure of a man—the muscular, stubby, brush-haired figure of Gideon Nash, with paunch rather too prominent in pajamas, with thick forearms and hands protruding from the sleeves, with feet bare.

He proceeded steadily down the walk, and turned toward the beach.

“He does it! He does it!” the girl repeated.

“Yes,” Peyton said, very gently. “Now, what were you going to do with him?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I don’t know. I wasn’t sure that he did it!”

“Of course not,” Peyton answered. “He’s going toward the beach now; if there’s been sand in his bed, of course, he must usually have gone that way.” He was following, drawing Esther with him. Torrington came behind.

Gideon Nash ahead, alone, reached the wooden steps by which one descended the bluff to the beach. The bluff there was perhaps seventy feet high.

Esther sprang forward.

“He’ll fall and be hurt. He'll fall!” she whispered, as Peyton restrained her.

“You forget. They look out for themselves all right, on steps and things of that sort. He’ll get down all right.”

“But he musn’t get back! He musn’t get back by to-morrow morning!”

“Of course not,” Peyton said. He turned to Torrington. “He’s walking in his sleep—you understand, Tommie? Well, we’re going to take him where he can’t get back by ten o’clock to-morrow morning. We can’t tell when he'll wake up. What did Ruth Grenwick’s aunt do, Esther?”

The three were descending the steps—Peyton leading, Esther following him. Nash had reached the beach and was walking along it at the water’s edge. The lake was absolutely calm. The moon shimmered upon it in a path of silver. The motor-boat, whose exhaust they had heard on the lawns, had passed beyond sight, as well as out of sound. Far out, and a little to the north, shone the yellow masthead light and the green star board lantern of a freight steamer bound for Chicago. Far up the beach a turning light-house lamp gleamed and darkened and gleamed and darkened and gleamed again, slowly, steadily.

“She never woke up till the usual time in the morning—unless something happened to wake her,” Esther informed the others, in whispers. “The family watched her, after they found out that she walked. She’d be gone from bed different lengths of time and go different distances; but, unless something happened of the sort to wake her, she stayed asleep till she got back to bed. She always got back there when they left her alone. When they led her to some place she couldn’t get out of, she’d lie down and get back to regular sleep—heavy sleep. Then she’d wake up in the morning without knowing at all what she’d done. She’d been under a strain which she didn’t show—like him!”, She nodded ahead to the wheat trader.

“What sort of things waked her up?” Peyton asked. They were following Gideon Nash along the beach. “Or rather, what didn’t?”

“You could guide her, without waking her up—but not oppose her. You could talk to her and she’d answer—but you couldn’t argue.”

Peyton glanced ahead, quickly. Gideon Nash was passing the boat house where Peyton kept his motor-boat.

“I have it. Tommie, catch up with our neighbor and be nice to him. Get him back to the boathouse in five minutes without waking him up. Esther, you better go along with him. Tommie isn't too deeply decorated with tact.”

“You could give her a part—I mean; you could make her think she was a certain person or doing a certain thing, and she’d answer in character,” Peyton heard Esther explaining to Torrington, as the three went as far as the boathouse together. “—That is, if she wasn’t already thinking she was somebody else or doing something else, when you suggested it to her. She could see people and things but wouldn’t always know them.”

 

Peyton unlocked his boat-house, threw the padlock from his motor-boat and started the engine. He brought the boat out beside the pier. A couple of hundred yards up the beach, Tommie and Esther had caught up with Gideon Nash, and were walking alongside him. They were trying to turn him, but unsuccessfully. Another pier ran out from the shore a couple of hundred yards beyond them. Peyton skimmed his boat swiftly up to it; and the other two had no trouble guiding Gideon Nash’s steps out upon the pier.

“There’s your flagship, admiral!” Tommie pointed out the lights of the freight-steamer to Gideon Nash. “Here’s your launch to take you to it.”

“Salute!” Peyton whispered to Tommie, himself standing and saluting.

Gideon Nash acknowledged their salute stiffly, and stepped into the stern of the boat. Torrington and Esther followed.

“He’s in,” Tommie announced, triumphantly, as the boat shot into the lake.

“So I observed,” Peyton acknowledged. “Bonehead, we can’t put him aboard that boat: But we’ve got to make for it, now.”

“Where were you going to take him?”

Peyton answered with a spurt of speed. It was a perfect night for speed. The air was soft and warm over the water and as still as upon the lawns above the bluffs. The sky was clear, shining silver from the moon. The deep, blue waters were absolutely quiet and smooth, with a surface that, before the bow, seemed fragile and splitting; while astern it was firm, cohesive, to give push to the propeller. The incessant staccato of the exhaust, which was at once accepted by the sleeping man, seemed as undisturbing in nature as the sound of the following froth. Observing this, Peyton gradually increased speed till the stem pointed higher and higher and began to rush clear of the water as the screw fought deeper and deeper for its thrust. The whirlpool at the stern seemed to rise above the stern-deck, but the boat leaped ever more quickly forward from under it.

Peyton felt Esther beside him. Gideon Nash remained stiffly in the stern, staring ahead. Torrington watched him silently.

“Where are we going?” the girl asked Peyton, nervously.

Peyton evaded.

“We're hitting it up toward twenty-two miles now. I think I can whip it up to twenty-six without splashing him. That might wake him.”

“Where are you taking him? What are you going to do, Peyton?”

They had approached near to the freighter, which was about four miles out from shore.

“We can’t take him there, of course. We don’t want them even to see us close.” He shifted his course so as to pass well astern, and turned in his seat, calling to Tommie and Gideon Nash. “That’s not your flag-ship, after all, admiral. It must be further out, somewhere.

Gideon Nash nodded, solemnly; his staring, glassy eyes, which had remained steadily upon the freighter, now searched the empty moonlit waters beyond.

“It’s about eighty-five miles across here, Esther,” Peyton explained. “I’ve made it in three hours and a half. I can make it in a little over four to-night, all right—without splashing too much!”

“Peyton!”

He felt her hand over his—her little, slender fingers closing over his strong ones, in their relief. “Thanks, Esther,” he murmured. “I’ll fix everything without hurting him. But,” he added, ordering her away, quickly, “you'd better go back to Torrington. Nash is getting over being an admiral. He’s starting something on his own account. Coach Tommie.”

“Who are you?” Gideon Nash was demanding of Tommie. “‘Who are you?”

“Passengers!” Esther replied to him at once. “Passengers!”

“Passengers!” Nash repeated. “Then you must pay.”

“Of course.” Esther felt for her purse, motioning to Tommie also to prepare himself. “How much?” she asked of Gideon Nash.

“A dollar forty, of course,” the sleeping man replied. “And you must pay—you must pay every cent. You can’t settle for a cent less.” His voice went hard and cold. “A dollar forty!”

“Of course,” Esther replied. She found the change in her purse and handed it to Gideon Nash. He took it and turned to Tommie.”

“I say, I’ve only English silver.” He appealed to the girl.

“What’s the Liverpool price?” she immediately asked the wheat-trader, before the difficulty could register on him.

“Five shillings, eight,” the man in pajamas replied.

Tommie paid it. Gideon Nash placed the coins under the cushions on a seat, stared about the circle of the waters, doubtfully, then laid himself down upon the seat and went naturally to sleep. Torrington watched him a few moments, then left him to Esther.

“Will he stay asleep that way, now?” he asked Peyton.

“He’s snoring, Peyton announced, superfluously.

“I say, what made him insist so on the dollar forty?”

“It’s the price he put wheat to to-day—or yesterday, rather. You could settle in English money, of course, at the Liverpool price.”

Tommie glanced with admiration toward Esther. “Quick, wasn’t she?”

Peyton nodded, keeping the motor steadily to its greatest speed. The patent log beside him showed twenty-six miles an hour. Behind him, Gideon Nash—still sleeping naturally, with his mouth open—continued to snore. Esther Giles searched in a locker and drew out a light robe. She spread it gently over him. His coarse, thick hands clutched it and, turning as he slept, he rolled himself up in it.

Torrington returned to watch beside him. Esther crept back to the place beside Peyton. Torrington refrained from watching ahead. Peyton held the boat to her course with one hand and closed his other around both of Esther’s.

“We're past the middle of the lake,” he said.

She looked up at him and drew nearer. He drew her close against him. “How did you know this, Esther?” he asked.

“I knew he must have a weak spot. I knew it! After I sent you home and I heard father in his room, I thought about Ingal having been in his house just before she came to us. I asked her about him. She told me about the sand in his bed, and how queerly he acted when she told him—and how Foley locked him in the next night. So I—”

“Then, why didn’t you send for me, at once. Why didn’t you let me know?”

“I didn’t know myself. I came to find out. I remembered about Ruth Grenwick’s aunt—how there had been sand in her bed. I couldn’t think of anything before I found out. Then I was going to call you!”

“I see,” he said, simply.

“He will not be on the floor when trading starts to-day?” she asked mechanically.

“No.” Peyton stroked her cheek. “He will not be on the floor—or in communication either.”

“Yes,” she murmured, faintly. “Yes; I understand. I understand.”

He thought, as he held all her little weight now, and felt her strong little figure quite nerveless, that she had fainted. He bent his head and kissed her forehead and then her lips. It roused her, but she made no resistance. He kissed her lips again—and hers met his. Then she sank back again. But she did not sleep; too tired and spent for sleep, she rested awake, but with eyes closed most of the time.

The moon began to fade; a fresher whiteness suffused the eastern sky. Slowly, it showed in the horizon the high dunes and white beach of the Michigan shore. Gradually details could be made cut. A little to the north a small pier extended out from a beach before dunes behind which appeared houses.

Peyton steered for this, slowing his motor easily. The girl on his shoulder roused and sat up, patting her hair and adjusting her clothes. The deep grunting snores of Gideon Nash continued unbroken. Torrington crept from beside him to Peyton.

“What are you going to do, now?”

“Put him ashore,” Peyton replied. “They are kind, simple fisher-people right here along this shore. And just a little farther back, there are very practical, careful small farmers—raising tomatoes, I think. Of course, they wont believe him when he tells them he’s Gideon Nash, so we can count upon them being decently humane to him. They'll give him breakfast and clothing, maybe. You see, he knows he walks in his sleep, but he can’t remember anything that happens to him. So when he comes to and tells them he’s Gideon Nash and accounts for his presence here in pajamas by explaining that he just wandered over here from Illinois in his sleep, I figure that the tomato-raisers will take care of him till ten, anyway. We’ve only got to get away with ourselves and the boat—Miss Giles and I. He knows us. So you’ve got to carry him ashore, Tommie, and stick around till he wakes up to see he’s all right. He’s never seen you.”

As he spoke he steered the boat softly against the pier. “Tommie!” He pointed in command, and then added: “Join us in New York afterward—Regis.”

Esther seemed not to sense what he said. Tommie hesitated only a moment.

There was no one in sight on the shore. The sun was just beginning to show itself. Torrington bent, obediently, and straightened up with the robe-wrapped form of the snoring man in his arms. He stepped carefully upon the pier, carried Gideon Nash the length of it and laid him, still sleeping heavily, down upon the sands. Then Tommie turned and waved his hand. Peyton pushed off and pointed the boat out.

“My blessings,” Tommie called, cautiously, from the end of the pier. Peyton looked to Esther. She faced him directly, without flushing. “I heard him,” she said. “Also what you said to him about New York.”

“Us?” Peyton asked.

She nodded.

“It’s the only way for us to explain skipping with the boat to-night,” he said. “Then it’s all right?”

She nodded again. So, for a few moments, the boat steered badly—very badly. Soon, however, it skimmed straight and swift to that Michigan port, where pastors wait upon the piers for the Chicago boats.

Accordingly, in the afternoon newspapers which “extra-ed” all over Chicago the news of the wild collapse of the wheat corner, following the disappearance of Gideon Nash, was an item in the society columns, which recorded that Esther Giles, the daughter of Rutherford Giles, had eloped to St. Joe and there married Mr. Peyton Lombard, whose family were all in Europe.

There was in the same editions another item which told in a humorous paragraph how a lunatic in pajamas had been found upon the beach by truck-farmers near Petrony, claiming to be Gideon Nash.

It had been necessary to bind him hand and foot, because of the violent persistence of his delusion that he must communicate, instantly, with the Chicago wheat pit.