Tongues of Flame (MacFarlane)/Chapter 3
GUH morning, Henry," announced a huge windy person with largeness and looseness written all over him—wide flabby face, wide paunchy figure, large soft hands, large mushy legs, large hairless head, everything physical about him large except his eyes. They were small and hard, roving shiftily, peering cunningly.
"Good morning, Hornblower!" responded the young attorney, but with brusqueness and reserve. "What is it?"
"Big stuff today, Henry; big stuff!" breezed the large man, who seated himself uninvited and began to beam as if hoping thereby to warm his chilly welcome.
Julius Hornblower was an attorney well-known—too well-known—in the three towns. He was brilliant, slightly eccentric and considered crooked; yet made a great parade of honesty.
"Henry," began Hornblower, moistening his lip and assuming the attitude and the tone of spread-eagle oratory, though he remained sitting; "Henry! The cause of Justice, the cause of a grossly betrayed people sends me to you. Such a cause as has ever appealed to the chivalric instincts of my nature, as well you know. A great wrong has been perpetrated—is being perpetrated. It is a cause in which the contestants will endure scorn and ridicule and persecution; but in which ultimately justice will triumph and punishment will be meted out if—if we can get a man of your standing in the community, rather than of mine, to lead the fight. You know, Henry"—the large and pseudo-benevolent features of Hornblower passed for a moment under shadow—"you know folks don't quite appreciate me here, Henry, simply because they don't understand me."
But for some time Harrington's face had been a study in self-control. "Hornblower," he frowned, "I have a fairly vivid imagination but I am unable to conceive of any legal cause in which I could be associated with you. Suppose you get down out of the clouds with your proposition so that I can tell you to take it to the devil as quickly as possible. I'm rather busy this morning."
Hornblower looked surprised—and deflected, but neither humiliated nor offended. He smiled a gentle reproach and inquired in a voice meant to be craftily suggestive: "Henry, what would you say if I should tell you that the title to this Edgewater townsite is faulty—that it belongs every foot of it to clients of mine who entrusted the title to me by a power of attorney? That for all practical purposes it is mine? Every damn foot of the city of Edgewater, mine!" he exulted. "What would you say if I should tell you that, Henry?"
"I should say you were a liar," answered Harrington bluntly.
But Hornblower's lip only curled and he went on to loose his big sensation—for he always had a big sensation: "And if I told you that I was going to put a plat of the townsite upon that billboard across the corner from the bank there and climb up on that lumber pile on the curb in front of it and offer it for sale lot by lot, block by block, to the highest bidder this very afternoon, what would you say to that?"
"I should say that you were a fool besides," snapped Henry.
Hornblower's face was suddenly immobile, save that the small eyes blinked once. "Henry, don't laugh at me," he protested. "I'm serious."
"And hang it, man, can't you see that I am?" blazed Henry, patience quite departed. "Hornblower! The man who deliberately unsettles land titles is the most conscienceless of scoundrels!"
Hornblower's flat face became flatter for a moment before the blast of Harrington's indignation; yet in a second he was countering blandly with: "Correct, Henry, correct; but the real scoundrel is the man who made 'em uncertain in the first place."
"What do you mean by that now, that utterly Hornblower-like insinuation?" demanded Harrington with tightening lips.
"It isn't what I mean, but who I mean," responded Julius with nasty emphasis.
Harrington's eyes flashed and his cheeks mantled: "Hornblower, leave my office," he commanded in the low tones of controlled anger. "Never come into it. Never speak to me again."
This was enough to prick even Hornblower's thick skin. He rose huffily and retorted: "You needn't get so blamed cocky! When did you begin to work for John Boland? Everybody else does in the community, but I thought you were one man, by God, that called his soul his own."
Harrington's hand clenched at the insult, but he could not be a common brawler. Controlling himself and his voice with an effort that was obvious he urged: "Hornblower, will you please go?" And himself opened a door leading directly into the hall.
Hornblower, huge human squid, went out.
"The skunk!" remarked Harrington, quite inelegantly, and threw open the window.
Henry lunched that day with the gang at Ben's Beanery. The Beanery was a more elegant place to lunch than the name suggested and the gang was a coterie that styled itself "The Live Wire League." The talk today was all of Billie Boland, and Harrington, after listening with a bored air, thought he was leaving the whole subject behind him when he sauntered out; but to his astonishment found a sort of blurred Miss Billie Boland had come with him and seemed intent upon spending the afternoon there in his office. That was odd. It was even annoying!
At length, when a face, indistinct but beautiful, stared up at him from a page of the Pacific Reporter, Henry closed the vohmme upon it with an impatient bang, put on his hat and dropped casually down the stairs, meaning to smoke a cigar and take the air for half an hour. But as he gained the street, his attention was attracted by a voice and a crowd on the corner of that dock which was visited every thirty minutes by the Salmon Queen. This was the corner across from the bank, the corner upon which were the billboard and the lumber pile which Hornblower had pointed out. To Harrington's amused scorn the shyster was actually there now upon the lumber pile, a mountainous, gesticulating, vociferating figure. With a lath in his hand he pointed from time to time to the billboard on which some sign-painter had been employed to sketch neatly and largely the plat of the town site of Edgewater.
Of course, the crowd had gathered.
"Come on up and buy a lottery ticket," the fellow was bawling. "Take a chance and win a fortune! The site of the First National Bank now—how much am I offered for the site of the First National Bank?"
The very audacity of the proposal was breath-taking. The crowd laughed as it caught the idea.
"Offer! Offer! Make me a bid! How much am I offered for the site of the First National Bank?" chanted the auctioneer and was vastly enjoying his sensation when James H. Gaylord, president of this said First National Bank, appeared, and stared in wrathful astonishment as if unable to believe his ears.
Salzberg, president of the Socialist Local, smiled craftily. He stood for one thing in the community; Gaylord epitomized quite another.
"Five dollars!" he shouted to Hornblower, with a grin and a wink.
Hornblower snapped it up. "Five dollars! Five dollars I am offered, five dollars for the site of the First National Bank of Edgewater," he chanted.
There was a fresh burst of laughter. Even some of the property owners joined in this laugh.
Eventually the bank site was knocked down to Salzberg for twenty-four dollars, with Hornblower beaming, coat off, collar loosened, happy as Mephistopheles; and Gaylord redder and more wrathful still; while Salzberg, grinning widely, clambered up to a table which was also atop the lumber pile and before which sat a clerk and notary prepared to execute and witness "Agreements to Sell" which lay in blank before them.
And the show continued. Hornblower sold the site of Schuler's Department Store for nineteen dollars with Schuler looking on; he sold the site of the City Hall for forty-two dollars with His Honor, Mayor Foster, staring indignantly; and he capped this audacity by selling the ground from under the fire-engine house at the very moment when the Mayor was threatening to have the hose turned on him. Besides these he sold lots here and there throughout the town, always for absurdly low prices, because the purchasers never assented to more than a lottery-ticket scale of value and because to create as many widely scattered contestants as possible seemed both to gratify Hornblower's cheerful malevolence and to fall in with his plans.
And there would be contestants! Oh, yes, and bitter ones, for human nature is a strange thing. Usually, when a spectator began to bid it was a monstrous jest, but the minute that first bid was spoken he began to take the matter seriously. Resentment by the legitimate owners against these pseudo-purchasers was natural and inevitable; accusations, altercations, personal encounters resulted.
But it took full two hours to work the farce up to tragedy. Nobody save Harrington had yet discerned that it might develop into tragedy, and to him now it seemed so completely a farce that the mere shouting of his name made him forget it. Glancing across the way he recognized Griff Morrison, Louis Spaulding and two or three irresponsible familiars of the Live Wire League. They sat in an open car which they had pulled up at the curb to look on for a time at Hornblower's show.
"Pile in, Hen," they shouted; "we're just heading out for the Country Club."
"There as well as anywhere," thought Henry. "I'm no good in the office," and responding in kind to the quips and jests with which his entry was greeted, he allowed himself to be hilariously hauled into the car and borne away with all its occupants save himself chattering of the home-town heiress. The silent one experienced a feeling of decided superiority; yet inevitably a certain expectancy began to get up in his own breast.
This was magnified when, on entering the club grounds, he saw the whole place animated, for the club house had overflowed its broad piazza and the air was strident with the blare of jazz.