Tongues of Flame (MacFarlane)/Chapter 32
YES; if Henry could have known, events were be ginning already to take their revenge on Boland. At this moment Old Two Blades was walking to and fro in his private office, all but sweating blood. For these five nights he had hardly slept. He had aged and withered, yet the most that he suffered from was anxiety—fear. Nothing had happened; but something might; and all his life he had left little to the hazard. He had made sure of uneventuated things in a thousand ways—simple, little honorable ways, he would have said; ways quite natural with him—as he made sure of the loyalty of his associates by profiting them; as he made sure of the judgment of his fellow townsmen on election days and at chamber of commerce meetings; sure of courts and juries and legislature, by managing to make his causes in some sense and after some fashion their causes.
Put baldly, in its most ignoble light, as Senator Murphy had put it, this was mere back-scratching. John Boland had, in his generous, inoffensive, unobtrusive way, scratched the backs of jurors and legislators and even judges and they, respondent to one of the noblest impulses of human nature, had in turn scratched his back whenever they found it itching.
But now an appalling situation for John Boland had come to pass, All his fortune was in the balance, hinging upon the decision of nine men, of whose mental processes he had never done anything to make sure. He had never entertained one of them in his home, never laughed himself nearly into suffocation at one of their pet and venerable jokes, never favored them with the genial flattery of his smile, never deserved the gratitude of one of them through the opportunity to make an unerringly safe and immensely profitable investment. His wife had never poured tea for one of their wives, never rolled her glittering limousine to her door and said: "Use it this afternoon as your own, my dear, I beg of you." She had never helped one with the glamor of her social prestige, for the wife of a Supreme Court Justice outshines the wife of an encrusted western millionaire as the sun outshines the moon.
No; the arm of Boland had never been long enough to scratch a back in the Supreme Court of the United States. With all his plannings to insure men's right performance, he had now to depend upon the scales of simple justice—scales that turn upon a hair. It was just one man's right against another man's right; just John Boland, a straddling biped, against any other straddling biped—against Julius Hornblower, against Adam John, against Adolph Salzberg, against Henry Soderman. That, to one who thought as John Boland had been accustomed to think, was unthinkable—unendurable. Therefore, he walked the floor.
All the accumulations of his life, forty years of scheming, toiling, planning; all the industrial empire he had built; all the civilization he had created—for so it seemed to Old Two Blades, that he was the creator of civilization—all turned upon the decision of men upon whose backs he never once had bestowed a brotherly caress. Why, they might not even know that he was a brotherly fellow. They might deal with him just as abstractly as if he were a sordid, avaricious, selfish person instead of—what he was.
Yes—it seemed unthinkable; yet it was so. Today all the vast upreared mountain of his possessions trembled as if based upon a sea of jelly. One rude wrench and the mountain might careen and go upside down like an iceberg when the bottom melts off. Each thought of this brought a lump into Boland's hard old throat. That such a situation had been permitted to come to pass was bad management, bad strategy, he reflected bitterly. But then it was such an unforeseen development that ever this Supreme Court of the United States would perversely overlook the briefs before, and opinions of, the lower courts and go digging into the record itself where there was skilfully buried, deeply covered over—a crime. It was a crime in the interest of civilization, to be sure, but, if a court were inclined to be extremely technical, none the less a crime.
And judging by the frantic telegrams that had been passing between Wendell and Scanlon this Supreme Court, with its unscratched backs, was inclined to be very technical. For this reason Boland was tramping by day and tossing by night; for this reason he sweated in helplessness—because there was nothing that he could do. The issues of his life hung in the balance and not a breath could he blow upon those balances. Inactivity had never been so agonizing. He had dispatched letter-long telegrams, he had sent urgent and excited representatives to Washington. For twenty-four hours they had hurried hither and yon. They had found entrée to congressmen, to senators, to cabinet secretaries; they had even found entrée to the White House, and there been listened to comprehendingly; but there was not one of all of these who could conduct the emissaries of Boland to a side entrance into the United States Supreme Court. There was, it appeared, no side entrance—a most appalling defect in architecture; quite as appalling as this error in the strategy of his life. How absurd, irritating, maddening—just to have to sit and do nothing, merely wait helplessly to see whether this heady-minded tribunal would happen upon the right point of view, instead of being able through trustworthy ambassadors and by well tried means, to make sure that it happened on it.
"It was a mistake ever to let it get up there," gloomed Scanlon. "We could better 'a' bought this fellow Hornblower off. I was always afraid of it."
"But you never told me you were!" reproached Boland, surprised.
"Who the devil ever wanted the job of telling you anything unpleasant till they had to?" retorted Scanlon.
"You lied to me," accused his chief.
"You like liars," defied Scanlon. "You're fond of 'em. There's never been but one fellow that told you the truth all the time—and he told it to you once too often! Look where you put him!"
Boland straightened up in silent rage; then rasped at Scanlon: "It was your scheme in the first place. You showed me the ambiguity in the treaty calls and old Wilkinson's mistake. You—you gave me your opinion that it was safe—safe to go ahead."
"And, damn it, it did figure to be safe," scowled Scanlon. "Besides, it was in the interest of development anyhow. You didn't connive at the mistake." This sentiment was always instantly mollifying to the roused wrath of Old Two Blades. "The lands were already being thrown open to patent," Scanlon soothed skilfully. "You merely took advantage of that. It wasn't wrong. Why, John, it was destiny."
Mr. Boland's face expressed satisfaction at this tribute to the magnificent probity of all his purposes. "Yes, yes," he assured himself, "it wouldn't have been right to keep this magnificent tract of timber a wilderness just so a few drunken, loafing Siwashes could have a place to hunt and fish in."
"Well, perhaps the court'll see it that way," the Chief Fixer comforted, moving toward the door. "The bigger justice is all on our side."
"Of course it is," asseverated Mr. Boland, self-righteously. But after Scanlon went out, his chin fell upon his breast again and he resumed his pacing, quite as if he chafed in a cell like Henry Harrington.
Scanlon, remembering that Adam John was to be sentenced, sauntered over to Judge Allen's court to lend the favor of his countenance to this important pronouncement of law and order. Some of the preliminaries had been got over. Eric Lindbloom had made his motion for a new trial and it had been denied. Just as the Chief Fixer took a privileged seat near the rail, Adam John was asked if he had anything to say why sentence should not be passed upon him. The Siwash broke his taciturn calm to declare eagerly that he had! And yet it seemed to have been not so much to object to being hanged as it was to express resentment at having been called a traitor in the prosecuting attorney's speech to the jury, that he rose to his feet.
Brokenly but earnestly, a sorry little figure of a man and yet dignified withal, Adam John insisted that it was not against the flag that he was fighting. He declared proudly that he had fought for the flag himself. He had been wounded and he pointed to the hideous scar upon his cheek; he had been gassed, and he coughed to remind the jury of the husk that would never leave his vocal chords. "But me no fight to make world safe for Boland take my island. I no shoot flag. Shoot rotten man carry the flag. I no traitor; him traitor." And Adam John pointed to Thomas Scanlon, yawning just inside the rail. "Him traitor." And Adam John pointed to the prosecuting attorney. "You traitor." And he indicated by a nod the white-headed Judge Allen, sitting so impassive upon the bench. "All mans traitor when they make law do wrong to poor Indian. That all." The Indian sat down.
It had been quite enough. Judge Allen's classic features frowned a lofty disapproval. The man had further convicted himself out of his own mouth.
"Adam John, stand up!" the Judge commanded solemnly, and when the Indian was standing defiantly straight, went on with: "You have been found guilty of the crime of first-degree murder; and it becomes my painful duty to sentence you to be hanged by the neck until you are dead, dead, dead!"
Adam John looked a proper gravity for the case in which he stood but fidgeted and his twisted mouth began to work. "Indian die," he jerked out presently. "But right not die. Long time go bad governor take lands from Indians. Fifty years after, mebbe so, good President give back. Today bad judge take island from me, some day good judge gonna give back."
So Adam John voiced his faith in the ultimate triumph of justice, but all at once he seemed to realize that this could not be done with human life. "S'pose today you put rope round my neck; s'pose tomorrow you want to take off that cannot do—when I'm dead Indian. That rotten!" This with profound conviction. "You rotten judge! . . . You go to hell!"
Adam John, having pronounced his vituperative sentence upon the man who had just pronounced sentence upon him, sat down apparently quite satisfied with himself, while a blush mantled Judge Allen's marble cheek and he bristled at the indignity put upon him; yet before he could utter the burning reproof that rose to his lips, a shot rang out in the court room. Everybody started and then everybody was still but with eyes fixed on Henry Soderman. He was tall, with billowing, unkempt yellow hair, with gesticulating arms, one hand holding a pistol, from the muzzle of which a faint scarf of smoke made serpentine curves upon the air.
The most surprised-looking person in all the room, the most incensed and outraged, was Judge Allen. He stared for an instant with burning eyes, and yet already he was changed. In the center of his forehead a blue spot no bigger than the end of a lead pencil had appeared, and his marble pallor took on a faint yellowish shade. After that first burning glance, too, his figure stiffened, then began to wilt. From the blue spot in the center of the forehead issued a tiny rivulet of crimson. It trickled between his eyebrows, down over the bridge of his splendidly chiseled nose and dropped crimson spatterings into the fleecy white of his beard, just as the massive head bent and sagged forward upon the desk.
"I have killed injustice!" shouted Soderman, still brandishing his weapon and avoiding those who sought to grasp him.
"I wish to God you had!" declared Eric Lindbloom; for Eric, as he defended Adam John, had himself gained an inkling of real knowledge as to conditions in Socatullo County. "Instead you have only murdered a good man who didn't even know he was part of the machine."
"He give my homestead to Boland," raved Soderman. "Just because I'm captain of one of his ships I let dem use de water-power five, six, seven years for not'ing, den dey take it 'way from me by de statute of limitations. Dey make me take ten t'ousand tollars for my waterfall dat make power to run all de Boland mills. He did it. Dis old robber did it." And Soderman shook his fist at the crumpled, classic figure upon the bench.
"You fool! You crazy nut!" cried Lindbloom impatiently, and by this time enough deputy sheriffs and bailiffs had surrounded the murderer to subdue him completely while Eric and others hurried up to the side of Judge Allen. He was past all mortal aid. Still with that expression of outrage and resentment on his features, he was dead. Confusion reigned for several minutes and then, as Soderman was subdued and taken from the room, it occurred to the custodian of the prisoner at the bar, who had been very much occupied, to look about for Adam John; but the Indian was not to be found.
"The Siwash flew the coop," announced Deputy Lunt in amazement so frank that it was ludicrous; but so great were the distractions round that for some time he was unable to get anyone to listen to his excited clamorings.
Adam John was indeed gone. Having surrendered voluntarily and sought justice according to the law of his new citizenship, and having failed, in his judgment, to get it, he confessed no further obligations. In the general confusion, he had departed—unobtrusively.
It was Scanlon who brought the word of the shooting to his chief, whereupon Mr. Boland's startled features framed a slowly mounting horror; he half-rose, with white showing in his eyes, a manifestation seldom observed in those deeply caverned orbs. "Horace . . . assassinated? . . . Assassinated!" In the changed inflection with which he breathed and then repeated that bloody word, the stern practical nature of Old Two Blades registered first his sense of shock and second his acceptance of the cruel fact that a man very useful to him had been stricken in the line of duty. He settled slowly back into his chair, the network of his cares deepening upon his forehead. Solemnly, his head was shaken from side to side.
"This community—that I have created," he reproached, in horrified voice, "that for thir-r-ty years I have been setting an example to—becoming hysterical—excitable—inclined to violence. And now, they shoot a judge down on the bench!" His soul revolted at such bloody profanation of the very altar of justice; at the same time that his heart was shot through with a pang like the stab of a rusty knife, for he had loved Horace Allen since boyhood. They had come west from the same little Iowa town.
But Old Two Blades would be the stern old Roman still, "See they keep the murderer safe, Scanlon," he directed, coming out of his abstraction, yet speaking in tones which showed that every word was anguish. "Respect for law must be maintained. A painful crisis like this is our opportunity. Judge Allen was very popular. The people are sure to be wild, but we mustn't let them get in a lynching mood, Scanlon."
"I'll tell Jordan to be very careful," replied the Chief Fixer.
"Yes—yes" the magnate reflected, sadly. "The provocation is great and it is all the better opportunity to show that after all respect for law is fundamental in Socatullo County. It would be a burning reproach if anything like a lynching happened among us."
"Yes," agreed Scanlon, drily. "Us law-abiding people!" But as before, the minute Scanlon was gone, the harried magnate let himself go a little. His lips quivered; a moisture got into his eyes. "Poor Horace!" he groaned, "Poor Horace!" For if the judge was ever pliant to the magnate's purpose, it was without either ever realizing that it was pliancy at all. Horace Allen was to John Boland an upright man, an incorruptible jurist and a dear friend. He had fallen a martyr. He had been stricken on the bench by one murderer as he meted out justice to another—a bright and shining victim of that spirit of lawlessness against which he always set himself so sternly and which, of late, had manifested itself rather disquietingly to the sweet, benignant natures of thoughtful and upright men like himself and Old Two Blades.
For a time Boland was still—wrestling with his grief, and with poignant speculations as to why Horace Allen of all men had had to become a sacrifice. It was Harrington's example of riotous duplicity, he decided, which must have infected the whole community—that Harrington who had once said to him quite coolly: "You can't have respect for the law except when law is respectable."
Bowing to his sorrow and perplexity, Mr. Boland laid down his head upon his desk, but presently raised it again—abruptly, and sat up very straight, listening acutely. A sixth sense had told him there was some sort of sensation afloat in his outer office, A moment later, Oskison, his secretary, a flaxen-haired, literal-minded person, came breathless through the door.
"There's a bulletin on the Star window, sir," he blurted, "that says the Supreme Court has announced its decision in the townsite case, Salzberg vs. The First National."
Mr. Boland's self-control was perfect. No subordinate had ever seen his guard down, his spirits wilted; nor should. "Yes, I suppose it's about due," he remarked in a crisp, dry tone; then looked at Oskison as in mild surprise that this should be deemed a thing to be excited over.
"But the decision's gone against us, sir," sputtered the secretary.
"Against us?" Again Mr. Boland's inflection was the most casual, as if nothing, in its final analysis, could go against him.
"Yes, sir!" panted Oskison. "It says your underlying deeds, although U. S. patents, couldn't hold; because they covered land that had already been ceded to Indians by treaty. Isn't that terrible, sir? Isn't that awful news for us?" groaned Oskison.
Mr. Boland's manner was still that of a sphinx, his self-control complete. He was wild to have this blundering young man rush on and tell him all that was on the bulletin board. But he must not do it. He must wait and lap up drop by drop such information as excited youth would spill. That was a humiliating circumstance—that he had to get his information from a clerk, and the clerk from the bulletin board of a newspaper. There must have been a telegram from Wendell and it had gone astray. Fate was playing him mean tricks today. But he must act the man, the superman even. Mr. Boland actually maneuvered a slight smile, or, at least, a grim parting of the thin lips that might have been construed as a smile.
"Oh, then—it's not as bad as I supposed," gasped Oskison, relieved momentarily. "I thought it meant the title to everything was gone—in fact that is what the bulletin said—the title to the townsite, the title to the timber, to the ground the mills stand on. Why—everything you have, sir—everything swept away; and that you'll have to pay back for everything you've taken off—with interest. That's what the bulletin says, Mr. Boland. It can't be right, can it?" The young man's agitation showed, however, that he feared it might be right.
"No, of course, it can't be right. Thank you, Oskison. That will do. Send Scanlon in when he is at leisure."
The secretary went out hurriedly. When the door had closed, John Boland straightened and glanced about him, as making sure of his surroundings and that he was alone; then slowly withered in his chair, an aged, shrunken bankrupt. He shivered once, and was still—very still, draining the dregs.
He had discounted the blow so many times in the last few days that its actual fall did not stun him—left him in possession of all his faculties. Realization was keen, vivid, splitting to the marrow.