Ellery H. Clark

“Reputation, reputation, reputation!”

Shakespeare.

It was long past closing time at Henry Carleton’s. Every one, from the oldest clerk to the smallest office boy, had long since gone home. For three hours, almost, the two men had had the office to themselves. A long, bitter battle of words it had been, all the stored-up brood of evil passions, hatred and envy, anger and fear, as with the bursting of some festering sore, had surged, foul and horrible, into the clear light of the open day.

Henry Carleton sat at his desk, but not in his usual attitude of calm composure, leaning back in his chair, the acknowledged lord and master of his little world, envied by all men who came to see him, to buy or sell, bargain and haggle, plot and plan. This Henry Carleton was a strangely different man. Wearily enough he leaned forward in his chair, his head propped on one hand, while in the other the pencil which ordinarily never moved but to some purpose, to jot down some pregnant list of facts or figures, now moved over the blank surface of the paper in little aimless scrawls and circles; fit index, perhaps, to its owner’s strange confusion of brain—a man for once troubled, wavering and irresolute, well-nigh, at times, despairing, yet still seeking feverishly the solution of the puzzle, making desperate hunt for the missing key.

Facing him sat Jack Carleton, astride of one of the office chairs, his hands grasping its back, his eyes never leaving the other’s face. His whole expression—the twitching mouth, the deep-set gleam in his troubled eyes, the unconsciously wrinkled brow—all seemed to bear witness to some storm of passion that had passed over him, and even in the comparative calm which had followed, had still left its traces behind. One might have hazarded that the man who sat there staring into Henry Carleton’s face was a man actuated by two feelings, one new, one old; one a fear, deep and deadly, the other a resentment so fierce and bitter, that unrestrained by time and place, it would have loosed him, like a bulldog, at the other’s throat.

Without looking up, Henry Carleton again began the argument, his tone an odd mixture, half threatening, half conciliatory, as one who, knowing that it lies within his power to effect his ends by force, yet for some reason strives first to gain them by gentler means. “Jack,” he said, “we have to find a way out somehow. And I want to play fair with you—I want even to be more than fair—”

Jack Carleton cut him short with a laugh so utterly devoid of mirth, so full of the bitterest malice, that a curse would have struck more pleasantly upon the ear. “Oh, yes,” he mocked, “of course you do. You want to be fair.” He paused a moment; then, with a naked, unrestrained, deliberate passion horrible to witness, he protruded his head with a gesture almost bestial, his tone lowered so that the words came sibilantly from between his teeth. “You damned sneak,” he said, “why, in the name of God, can’t you act like a man? Talk like a man? All these dirty, canting phrases of yours; they’ve grown on you now so you can’t drop ’em if you wanted to. You’ve stifled all the real man that was ever in you—and to start with that was precious little. You’re a money making machine; money distributing, too, if that’s any comfort to you; you credit to the Carleton name. You’ve sneaked and schemed your way so long that you do it from habit now; and a devil of a fine result you’ve got this time. You want to be fair. Fair! Oh, my God!” he laughed again.

Henry Carleton lifted a face flushed suddenly with angry crimson. “Stop it, Jack,” he commanded, and then, through force of long discipline, with a sigh he slowly shook his head, and let his clenched hands relax. “What’s the use?” he said, with infinite patience, “what’s the use now, of all times? Hear me out, Jack. I know that you hate me. And I know why. I’ve been a successful man, and you’ve been a failure, but our chances were the same. You could have done as well as I. Only you chose to use your energies in a different way. That’s all been your fault, not mine. And now this thing’s come up. You’ve had a surprise to-day. You’ve found things very different from what you expected. But what is my attitude all the while? Am I trying to press my advantage as I could? That’s the last thing I want to do. You think I hate you, Jack. Can’t you see that I don’t? If I did, would I be talking as I’m talking now? Would I talk with you at all, even? Would I above all sit here and take your insults—your abuse? Not for an instant. You sit there, alive and free—and yet a dead man, Jack. Think of it! Dead already. Dead as if you sat this instant in the electric chair. And what am I saying?—the man that you think hates you. What am I urging and advising all this time, when I could see you going in the prison door, never to come out again alive? I’m showing you how to get out of the whole thing scot-free; giving you every chance; and you won’t listen to me.”

Jack Carleton had heard him out in silence, indeed, but without further emotion, without any change of the hard, set look on his face. “Oh, you’re damned generous,” he sneered, as the other paused, “and you’re doing it all out of love for me. It’s awfully sudden, this affection, isn’t it? It’s been a long time coming.” He laughed with a jarring offensiveness, as if, strangely enough, he was deliberately trying to incense, instead of to placate, the man of whose good will he stood so sorely in need.

Again Henry Carleton’s face grew dark, as if at last his irritation had got the upper hand. “For Heaven’s sake, Jack,” he cried, “don’t be a child, just for the pleasure of trying to annoy me. I say again, I’m being fair with you. I say again, more than fair. And if you want to exercise your irony on me by implying that I’m not actuated by any love for you, I’ll say frankly that this is too complicated an affair for any one person’s claims to be paramount in trying to settle it. I’m considering every one interested; I’m weighing all the chances for everybody concerned; you and I, and Rose, and Vaughan, and Mrs. Satterlee—we’re all involved, and I say again, looking at everything from all possible points of view, it’s for our interest, Jack—for yours and mine—to stand together, whatever happens. There’s nothing I want more, whether you believe it or not, than to see you get out of the whole thing clear. And don’t—” he raised his hand as Jack started to speak—“don’t go running off on any abstract theory of what’s right and what isn’t. It’s no use. It’s waste of time. We’ve got to look at this matter as it is—not as perhaps it ought to be. It’s intensely practical for us, Jack, and so let’s look at it that way.”

His words seemed effectual, as far as any further protest from Jack Carleton was concerned. For a moment he sat silent, and then, with an air of resignation, mingled with a certain indifference, “Very well,” he said, “look at it in that way, if you choose, for all of me. How does that help? The whole thing’s as mixed as before; you can’t solve it satisfactorily, try as you may.”

Henry Carleton, well pleased, drew a quiet breath of satisfaction. So much, indeed, seemed to him a signal gain. Little by little—that was Henry Carleton’s way. “Good,” he said shortly, and then, “but it can be solved, Jack, for all that. Not with perfect satisfaction to everybody, perhaps; but it can be solved.”He spoke with such an air of assurance that Jack Carleton glanced at him quickly, as if seeking some underlying significance in his words. Henry Carleton’s face, however, was devoid of anything of enlightenment, and his eyes were looking idly across the room. “Yes,” he repeated, “still satisfactorily, in the main, I think. It’s a pure question of logic, Jack. Let’s start with the assumption that if it can be avoided, you’re not eager to die.”

Jack Carleton’s eyebrows were raised half grimly, half ruefully. Something of a kind of hysterical humor seemed to him to exist in the idea of asking a man with such seriousness whether or not he was eager to die. “Yes,” he returned, “you can assume that. That’s a good point to start with.”

There was something in his tone, despite the solemnity of the discussion, that made Henry Carleton force a sickly smile, which faded almost before it had come. “And second,” he said, “you’ll keep quiet as long as any one else will.”

Jack nodded again. “Certainly,” he said, perhaps with more of bitterness in his tone.Henry Carleton leaned forward, looking him now straight in the eye, and speaking with the most intense earnestness. “Then take the parties involved in their turn,” he cried, “if you stick to that, no harm can come from you. No harm will come from me, in any event. And Rose, of course, doesn’t know. Of the other two, Mrs. Satterlee—” he paused an instant, then continued, a little hastily, as it seemed. “Perhaps there’s no further need of going into that. As we know, she is safe, and if not, there are certain precautions—no, we may dismiss that entirely, I think. And that—” the pause was longer this time, “that leaves the man who’s been foolish enough to raise all this trouble to start with. That leaves your friend, and my prospective son-in-law,—one man to be reckoned with—Arthur Vaughan.”

This time there was no mistaking the gathering menace in his tone. But Jack Carleton seemed not to choose to understand his words. “Well?” he asked.

Henry Carleton frowned. “Well,” he snapped, “isn’t it perfectly plain? Vaughan wants something, of course. He’s got us where he wants us now. Of course I knew, for a man who, as a rule, is so pliable, that when he turned stubborn about this, it was a plain case of hold-up. So that’s what we’ve got to do. Square him, in any way he wants. He’s your friend. Sound him; see what he’s after. Whatever it is, if I can give it to him, and I guess I can, of course I will. Go ahead and see him right away. We’ve got to fix him quickly, whatever else we do.”

Jack Carleton shook his head in vigorous dissent. “You’re miles wide of the mark. That isn’t Vaughan at all. He’s not that kind. Arthur’s a visionary, almost. He’d never have kept quiet as long as he has if I hadn’t practically gone on my knees to him. No, this is principle with him. You’re altogether mistaken. You can’t stop him that way in a thousand years.”

Henry Carleton sighed. “I don’t believe it,” he said stubbornly. “I don’t want to believe it, but you ought to know him better than I. And if it’s so—I want to be fair with him—more than fair—” at the familiar phrase Jack Carleton smiled a grim little smile—“but we’re in a bad box, Jack; a terribly bad box; and we’ve got to pull out of it somehow. Make him the squarest offer you can—anything in reason he wants—and if he doesn’t see fit to accept—”

Jack Carleton sprang to his feet. “No, no,” he cried, “that won’t do. I won’t see anything happen to Vaughan. I’ll go to him; tell him he’s mistaken; tell him he mustn’t speak; tell him—”

Henry Carleton cut him short. “No use, Jack,” he said curtly. “I’ve thought of all that. It wouldn’t do any good. In the first place, Vaughan has this crazy idea about duty, and about Satterlee’s blood crying out to him from the ground, and all that nonsense; you know how a nervous man can get worked up over a thing; and he’s bound to speak anyway. And in the second place, he wouldn’t believe you. You can hardly blame him, either. All the evidence together; the affair you had with that woman, your stopping at the cottage that evening,—no, no, it won’t do. You might as well save your breath.”

There was a pause. Jack at last nodded grudgingly. “Well, then,” he cried. “I’ll let it go the other way. Let him go to the district attorney, if he chooses. Let him tell his story, and let them arrest me, and get me into court. Let him tell it over again there, for everybody to hear, and you can tell your story, and Jeanne Satterlee hers. And then, by God, I’ll tell mine, and if there’s such a thing as justice—”

Again Henry Carleton broke in upon him. “Nonsense, Jack,” he said, “law isn’t justice. You know that as well as I do. You wouldn’t have a chance. It’s open and shut against you. And don’t go up in the air about Vaughan; I didn’t mean to be melodramatic. We won’t need to go to extremes. We can think up some way of keeping his mouth shut. You can buy him off, I still maintain. And if you can’t, we can still get at him somehow. It isn’t hard. I’ll be frank with you, Jack. I’ll lay my cards on the table. It would mean death for you, but the scandal would hurt me, at the same time. And above all, the Carleton name, Jack. Think of your father. Think—”

Jack sprang to his feet. “Stop!” he cried. “It isn’t for you to talk of my father, and the Carleton name. Those words don’t belong in your mouth, Henry. And as for Vaughan, he’s doing what he thinks is right. And anything you do to him, reacts on Rose—on your own daughter. And that’s impossible. No, Henry, I tell you again, you can’t work it out that way. Whatever else you please, but I won’t see harm come to Arthur Vaughan.”

Henry Carleton, unmoved, shrugged his shoulders. “As you please,” he answered evenly. “You have your choice, Jack; there’s only one other way.”

Jack looked him full in the face. “For the last time,” he said, “you tell me that this is true. You’ll go ahead, and do as you say?”

The elder man inclined his head. “For the last time,” he answered calmly, “yes. Vaughan or yourself? The choice is yours.”

Jack Carleton stood suddenly erect, throwing back his head, almost with the gesture of a fighter on guard. “Then I tell you this,” he cried, “you’re crowding me too far. I’ve done the best I could; I’ve thought of others long enough; I’ll think of myself now. There’s a limit to what a man’s got to stand. I’ve been an awful fool, I know. I’ve wasted most of my life, so far; lost my money; lost the chance to marry the girl I loved. But for the last three years, I’ve got no apologies to make. I’ve tried with every bit that’s in me; I had my fight all but won. I made good out West there; made good with myself; with my prospects; with the girl I meant to marry—and then this damnable business had to come. And I tell you, Henry, I won’t quit now. You’ve got the best of me before; perhaps you will again; but I’ll take my chance. I’m willing to back Right against Wrong, and I give you fair warning now that I’m going to fight. You haven’t beaten me yet.”

He swung short around upon his heel, without waiting for a reply. The door crashed to behind him, and Henry Carleton was left alone in the room.