VI
OF THE MAKING OF LAWS
The session, the shortest in the history of the State, and thus far theleast eventful, was nearing its close; and the alarmists who hadprophesied evil and evil only of the "Populist" victory were fast losingcredit with the men of their own camp and with the country at large.
After the orthodox strife over the speakership of the House, and theequally orthodox wrangle over contested seats, the State Assembly hadsettled down to routine business, despatching it with such unheard-ofcelerity as to win columns of approval from the State press as a whole;though there were not wanting a few radical editors to raise theante-election cry of reform, and to ask pointedly when it was to begin.
Notwithstanding the lack of alarms, however, the six weeks had been aperiod of unceasing vigilance on the part of the interests which weresupposed to be in jeopardy. Every alien corporation owning property anddoing business in the State had its quota of watchful defenders on theground; men who came and went, in the lobbies of the capitol, in thevisitors' galleries, at the receptions; men who said little, but who sawand heard all things down to the small talk of the corridors and theclubs, and the gossip of the hotel rotundas.
David Kent was of this silent army of observation, doing watch-dog dutyfor the Western Pacific; thankful enough, if the truth be told, to have athing to do which kept him from dwelling overmuch upon the wreck of hishopes. But in the closing days of the session, when a despatchfulAssembly, anxious to be quit of its task, had gone into night sittings,the anodyne drug of work began to lose its effect.
The Brentwoods had taken furnished apartments in Tejon Avenue, two squaresfrom the capitol, and Kent had called no oftener than good breedingprescribed. Yet their accessibility, and his unconquerable desire to searhis wound in the flame that had caused it, were constant temptations, andhe was battling with them for the hundredth time on the Friday night whenhe sat in the House gallery listening to a perfunctory debate whichconcerned itself with a bill touching State water-ways.
"Heavens! This thing is getting to be little short of deadly!" fumedCrenshawe, his right-hand neighbor, who was also a member of the corps ofobservation. "I'm going to the club for a game of pool. Won't you comealong?"
Kent nodded and left his seat with the bored one. But in the great rotundahe changed his mind.
"You'll find plenty of better players than I am at the club," he said inextenuation. "I think I'll smoke a whiff or two here and go back. Theycan't hold on much longer for to-night."
Five minutes later, when he had lighted a cigar and was glancing over theevening paper, two other members of the corporation committee of safetycame down from the Senate gallery and stopped opposite Kent's pillar tostruggle into their overcoats.
"It's precisely as I wrote our people two weeks ago--timidity scare, pureand simple," one of them was saying. "I've a mind to start home to-morrow.There is nothing doing here, or going to be done."
"No," said the other. "If it wasn't for House Bill Twenty-nine, I'd goto-night. They will adjourn to-morrow or Monday."
"House Bill Twenty-nine is much too dead to bury," was the reassuringrejoinder. "The committee is ours, and the bill will not be heard of againat this session. If that is all you are holding on for----"
They passed out of earshot, and Kent folded his newspaper absently. HouseBill Twenty-nine had been the one measure touching the sensitive "vestedinterests"; the one measure for the suppression of which the corporations'lobby had felt called on to take steps. It was an omnibus bill put forthas a substitute for the existing law defining the status of foreigncorporations. It had originated in the governor's office,--a fact whichKent had ferreted out within twenty-four hours of its first reading,--andfor that reason he had procured a printed copy, searching it diligentlyfor the hidden menace he was sure it embodied.
When the search proved fruitless, he had seen the bill pass the House by asafe majority, had followed it to the Senate, and in a cunningly wordedamendment tacked on in the upper house had found what he was seeking.Under the existing law foreign corporations were subject to Statesupervision, and were dealt with as presumably unfriendly aliens. But theSenate amendment to House Bill Twenty-nine fairly swept the interstatecorporations, as such, out of existence, by making it obligatory upon themto acquire the standing of local corporations. Charters were to be refiledwith the secretary of State; resident directories and operatingheadquarters were to be established within the boundaries and jurisdictionof the State; in short, the State proposed, by the terms of the new law,to deal only with creatures of its own creation.
Kent saw, or thought he saw, the fine hand of the junto in all this. Itwas a still hunt in which the longest way around was the shortest wayhome. Like all new-country codes, the organic law of the State favoredlocal corporations, and it might be argued that a bill placing the foreigncompanies on a purely local footing was an unmixed blessing to the aliens.But on the other hand, an unprincipled executive might easily make the newlaw an engine of extortion. To go no further into the matter than therequired refiling of charters: the State constitution gave the secretaryof State quasi-judicial powers. It was within his province to pass uponthe applications for chartered rights, and to deny them if the question_pro bono publico_ were involved.
Kent put two and two together, saw the wide door of exactions which mightbe opened, and passed the word of warning among his associates; afterwhich he had watched the course of the amended House Bill Twenty-nine withinterest sharp-set, planning meanwhile with Hildreth, the editor of the_Daily Argus_, an expose which should make plain the immense possibilitiesfor corruption opened up by the proposed law; a journalistic salvo ofpublicity to be fired as a last resort.
The measure as amended had passed the Senate without debate, and had goneback to the House. Here, after the second reading, and in the very hourwhen the _Argus_ editorial was getting itself cast in the linotypes, therewas a hitch. The member from the Rio Blanco, favoring the measure in allits parts, and fearful only lest corporation gold might find a technicalflaw in it, moved that it be referred to the committee on judiciary for areport on its constitutionality; and, accordingly, to the committee onjudiciary it had gone.
Kent recalled the passing of the crisis, remembering how he had hastenedto telephone the _Argus_ editor to kill the expose at the last moment. Theincident was now a month in the past, and the committee had not yetreported; would never report, Kent imagined. He knew the personnel of thecommittee on judiciary; knew that at least three members of it were downon the list, made up at the beginning of the session by his colleagues inthe army of observation, as "approachables". Also, he knew by inference atleast, that these three men had been approached, not without success, andthat House Bill Twenty-nine, with its fee-gathering amendment, was safelyshelved.
"It's an ill-smelling muck-heap!" he frowned, recalling the incidents ofthe crisis at the suggestion let fall by the two outgoing lobbyists. "Andso much of this dog-watch as isn't sickeningly demoralizing is deadlydull, as Crenshawe puts it. If I had anywhere to go, I'd cut the galleriesfor to-night."
He was returning the newspaper to his pocket when it occurred to him thathis object in buying it had been to note the stock quotations; a dailyduty which, for Elinor's sake, he had never omitted. Whereupon he reopenedit and ran his eye down the lists. There was a decided upward tendency inwesterns. Overland Short Line had gained two points; and WesternPacific----
He held the paper under the nearest electric globe to make sure: WesternPacific, preferred, was quoted at fifty-eight and a half, which was onepoint and a half above the Brentwood purchase price.
One minute later an excited life-saver was shut in the box of the publictelephone, gritting his teeth at the inanity of the central operator whoinsisted on giving him "A-1224" instead of "A-1234," the Hotel Wellington.
"No, no! Can't you understand? I want twelve-thirty-four; one, two,_three_, four; the Hotel Wellington."
There was more skirling of bells, another nerve-trying wait, and a
t lastthe clerk of the hotel answered.
"What name did you say? Oh, it's you, is it, Mr. Kent? Ormsby? Mr. BrookesOrmsby? No, he isn't here; he went out about two minutes ago. What's thatyou say? _Damn_? Well, I'm sorry, too. No message that I can take? Allright. Good-by."
This was the beginning. For the middle part Kent burst out of thetelephone-box and took the nearest short-cut through the capitol groundsfor the street-car corner. At a quarter of nine he was cross-questioningthe clerk face to face in the lobby of the Wellington. There was littlemore to be learned about Ormsby. The club-man had left his key and goneout. He was in evening dress, and had taken a cab at the hotel entrance.
Kent dashed across to his rooms and, in a feverish race against time, madehimself fit to chase a man in evening dress. There was no car in sightwhen he came down, and he, too, took a cab with an explosive order to thedriver: "124 Tejon Avenue, and be quick about it!"
It was the housemaid that answered his ring at the door of the Brentwoodapartment. She was a Swede, a recent importation; hence Kent learnednothing beyond the bare fact that the ladies had gone out. "With Mr.Ormsby?" he asked.
"Yaas; Aye tank it vill pee dat yentlemans."
The pursuer took the road again, rather unhopefully. There were a dozenplaces where Ormsby might have taken his charges. Among them there was thelegislative reception at Portia Van Brock's. Kent flipped a figurativecoin, and gave the order for Alameda Square. The reception was perhaps theleast unlikely place of the dozen.
He was no more than fashionably late at the Van Brock house, andfortunately he was able to reckon himself among the chosen few for whomMiss Portia's door swung on hospitable hinges at all hours. Loring hadknown her in Washington, and he had stood sponsor for Kent in the firstweek of the exile's residence at the capital. Thereafter she had takenKent up on his own account, and by now he was deep in her debt. For onething, she had set the fashion in the matter of legislativereceptions--her detractors, knowing nothing whatever about it, hinted thatshe had been an amateur social lobbyist in Washington, playing the gamefor the pure zest of it--and at these functions Kent had learned manythings pertinent to his purpose as watch-dog for the railroad company andlegal adviser to his chief--things not named openly on the floor of theHouse or of the Senate chamber.
There was a crush in the ample mansion in Alameda Square, as there alwayswas at Miss Van Brock's "open evenings," and when Kent came down from thecloakroom he had to inch his way by littles through the crowdedreception-parlors in the search for the Brentwood party. It wasunsuccessful at first; but later, catching a glimpse of Elinor at thepiano, and another of Penelope inducting an up-country legislator into themysteries of social small-talk, he breathed freer. His haphazard guess hadhit the mark, and the finding of Ormsby was now only a question ofmoments.
It was Miss Van Brock herself who told him where to look for theclub-man--though not at his first asking.
"You did come, then," she said, giving him her hand with a frank littlesmile of welcome. "Some one said you were not going to be frivolous anymore, and I wondered if you would take it out on me. Have you been at thenight session?"
"Yes; at what you and your frivolities have left of it. A good third ofthe Solons seem to be sitting in permanence in Alameda Square."
"'Solons'," she repeated. "That recalls Editor Brownlo's little joke--onlyhe didn't mean it. He wrote of them as 'Solons,' but the printer got it'solans'. The member from Caliente read the article and the word stuck inhis mind. In an unhappy hour he asked Colonel Mack's boy--Harry, theirrepressible, you know--to look it up for him. Harry did it, and ofcourse took the most public occasion he could find to hand in his answer.'It's geese, Mr. Hackett!' he announced triumphantly; and after we wereall through laughing at him the member from the warm place turned it justas neatly as a veteran. 'Well, I'm Hackett,' he said."
David Kent laughed, as he was in duty bound, but he still had Ormsby onhis mind.
"I see you have Mrs. Brentwood and her daughters here: can you tell mewhere I can find Mr. Brookes Ormsby?"
"I suppose I could if I should try. But you mustn't hurry me. There is avacant corner in that davenport beyond the piano: please put me there andfetch me an ice. I'll wait for you."
He did as he was bidden, and when she was served he stood over her,wondering, as other men had wondered, what was the precise secret of hercharm. Loring had told him Miss Van Brock's story. She was southern born,the only child of a somewhat ill-considered match between a youngCalifornia lawyer, wire-pulling in the national capital in the interest ofthe Central Pacific Railroad, and a Virginia belle tasting the delights ofher first winter in Washington.
Later, the young lawyer's state, or his employers, had sent him toCongress; and Portia, left motherless in her middle childhood, had grownup in an atmosphere of statecraft, or what passes for such, in an era offrank commercialism. Inheriting her mother's rare beauty of face and form,and uniting with it a sympathetic gift in grasp of detail, political andother, she soon became her father's confidante and loyal partizan, takingthe place, as a daughter might, of the ambitious young wife and mother,who had set her heart on seeing the Van Brock name on the roll of theUnited States Senate.
Rensselaer Van Brock had died before the senatorial dream could berealized, but not before he had made a sufficient number of luckyinvestments to leave his daughter the arbitress of her own future. Whatthat future should be, not even Loring could guess. Since her father'sdeath Miss Van Brock had been a citizen of the world. With a widowed auntfor the shadowiest of chaperons, she had drifted with the tide ofinclination, coming finally to rest in the western capital for no betterreason, perhaps, than that some portion of her interest-bearing securitieswere emblazoned with the great seal of this particular western State.
Kent was thinking of Loring's recountal as he stood looking down on her.Other women were younger--and with features more conventionally beautiful;Kent could find a round dozen within easy eye-reach, to say nothing of thecalm-eyed, queenly _improvisatrice_ at the piano--his constant standard ofall womanly charm and grace. Unconsciously he fell to comparing the two,his hostess and his love, and was brought back to things present by asharp reminder from Portia.
"Stop looking at Miss Brentwood that way, Mr. David. She is not for you;and you are keeping me waiting."
He smiled down on her.
"It is the law of compensation. I fancy you have kept many a manwaiting--and will keep many another."
There was a little tang of bitterness in her laugh.
"You remind me of the time when I went home from school--oh, years andyears ago. Old Chloe--she was my black mammy, you know--had a growndaughter of her own, and her effort to dispose of her 'M'randy' was astanding joke in the family. In answer to my stereotyped question shestood back and folded her arms. 'Naw, honey; dat M'randy ain't ma'ied yit.She gwine be des lak you; look pretty, an' say, _Howdy! Misteh Jawnson_,an' go 'long by awn turrer side de road.'"
"A very pretty little fable," said Kent. "And the moral?"
"Is that I amuse myself with you--all of you; and in your turn you makeuse of me--or you think you do. Of what use can _I_ be to Mr. David Kentthis evening?"
"See how you misjudge me!" he protested. "My errand here to-night ispurely charitable. Which brings me back to Ormsby: did you say you couldtell me where to look for him?"
"He is in the smoking-room with five or six other tobacco misanthropes.What do you want of him?"
"I want to say two words in his ear; after which I shall vanish and makeroom for my betters."
Miss Van Brock was gazing steadfastly at the impassioned face lighted bythe piano candles.
"Is it about Miss Brentwood?" she asked abruptly.
"In a way--yes," he confessed.
She rose and stood beside him--a bewitching figure of a woman who knew herpart in the human comedy and played it well.
"Is it wise, David?" she asked softly. "I am not denying thepossibilities: you might come between them if you should try--I'm ratherafraid yo
u could. But you mustn't, you know; it's too late. You've marredher, between you; or rather that convention, which makes a woman deaf,blind and dumb until a man has fairly committed himself, has marred her.For your sake she can never be quite all she ought to be to him: for hissake she could never be quite the same to you."
He drew apart from her, frowning.
"If I should say that I don't fully understand what you mean?" herejoined.
"I should retort by saying something extremely uncomplimentary about yourlack of perspicacity," she cut in maliciously.
"I beg pardon," he said, a little stiffly. "You are laboring under anentirely wrong impression. What I have to say to Mr. Brookes Ormsby doesnot remotely concern the matter you touch upon. It's an affair of theStock Exchange."
"As if I didn't know!" she countered. "You merely reminded me of the otherthing. But if it is only a business secret you may as well tell me allabout it at first hands. Some one is sure to tell me sooner or later."
Now David Kent was growing impatient. Down in the inner depths of him hewas persuaded that Ormsby might have difficulty in inducing Mrs. Brentwoodto sell her Western Pacific stock even at an advance; might require time,at least. And time, with a Bucks majority tinkering with corporate rightsin the Assembly, might well be precious.
"Forgive me if I tell Ormsby first," he pleaded. "Afterward, if you careto know, you shall."
Miss Van Brock let him go at that, but now the way to the smoking-den onthe floor above was hedged up. He did battle with the polite requirements,as a man must; shaking hands or exchanging a word with one and another ofthe obstructors only as he had to. None the less, when he had finallywrought his way to the smoking-room Ormsby had eluded him again.
He went back to the parlors, wondering how he had missed the club-man. Inthe middle room of the suite he found Portia chatting with Marston, thelieutenant-governor; and a young woman in the smartest of reception gownshad succeeded to Elinor's place at the piano.
"You found him?" queried the hostess, excusing herself to the tall,saturnine man who had shared the honors at the head of the People's Partyticket with Jasper G. Bucks.
"No," said Kent. "Have you seen him?"
"Why, yes; they all came to take leave just a few moments after you leftme. I thought of telling Mr. Ormsby you were looking for him, but you shutme off so snippily----"
"Miss Van Brock! What have you done? I must go at once."
"Really? I am complimented. But if you must, you must, I suppose. I hadsomething to tell you--something of importance; but I can't remember whatit was now. I never can remember things in the hurry of leave-takings."
As we have intimated, Kent had hitherto found Miss Portia's confidencesexceedingly helpful in a business way, and he hesitated. "Tell me," hebegged.
"No, I can't remember it: I doubt if I shall ever remember it unless youcan remind me by telling me why you are so desperately anxious to find Mr.Ormsby."
"I wonder if you hold everybody up like this," he laughed. "But I don'tmind telling you. Western Pacific preferred has gone to fifty-eight and ahalf."
"And Mr. Ormsby has some to sell? I wish I had. Do you know what I'd do?"She drew closer and laid a hand on his arm. "I'd sell--by wire--to-night;at least, I'd make sure that my telegram would be the first thing mybroker would lay his hands on in the morning."
"On general principles, I suppose: so should I, and for the same reason.But have I succeeded in reminding you of that thing you were going to tellme?"
"Not wholly; only partly. You said this matter of Mr. Ormsby's concernedMiss Brentwood--in a way--didn't you?"
"You will have your pound of flesh entire, won't you? The stock is hers,and her mother's and sister's. I want Ormsby to persuade them to sell.They'll listen to him. That is all; all the all."
"Of course!" she said airily. "How simple of me not to have been able toadd it up without your help. I saw the quotation in the evening paper; andI know, better, perhaps, than you do, the need for haste. Must you gonow?" She had taken his arm and was edging him through the press in theparlors toward the entrance hall.
"_You_ haven't paid me yet," he objected.
"No; I'm trying to remember. Oh, yes; I have it now. Wasn't some onetelling me that you are interested in House Bill Twenty-nine?"
They had reached the dimly lighted front vestibule, and her hand was stillon his arm.
"I was interested in it," he admitted, correcting the present to the pasttense.
"But after it went to the House committee on judiciary you left it to moreskilful, or perhaps we'd better say, to less scrupulous hands?"
"I believe you are a witch. Is there anything you don't know?"
"Plenty of things. For example, I don't know exactly how much it cost ourgood friends of the 'vested interests' to have that bill mislaid in thecommittee room. But I do know they made a very foolish bargain."
"Beyond all doubt a most demoralizing bargain, which, to say the best ofit, was only a choice between two evils. But why foolish?"
"Because--well, because mislaid things have a way of turning upunexpectedly, you know, and--"
He stopped her in a sudden gust of feverish excitement.
"Tell me what you mean in one word, Miss Van Brock. Don't those fellowsintend to stay bought?"
She smiled pityingly.
"You are very young, Mr. David--or very honest. Supposing those 'fellows',as you dub the honorable members of the committee on judiciary, had alittle plan of their own; a plan suggested by the readiness of certain oftheir opponents to rush into print with statements which might derangethings?"
"I am supposing it with all my might."
"That is right; we are only supposing, you must remember. We may supposetheir idea was to let the excitement about the amended bill die down; tolet people generally, and one fiercely honest young corporation attorneyin particular, have time to forget that there was such a thing as HouseBill Twenty-nine. And in such a suppositional case, how much they would besurprised, and how they would laugh in their sleeves, if some one camealong and paid them handsomely for doing precisely what they meant to do."
David Kent's smile was almost ferocious.
"My argument is as good now as it was in the beginning: they have yet toreckon with the man who will dare to expose them."
She turned from him and spoke to the footman at the door.
"Thomas, fetch Mr. Kent's coat and hat from the dressing-room." And thento Kent, in the tone she might have used in telling him of the latestbreeziness of the member from the Rio Blanco: "I remember now what it wasthat I wanted to tell you. While you have been trying to find Mr. Ormsby,the committee on judiciary has been reporting the long-lost House BillTwenty-nine. If you hurry you may be in time to see it passed--it willdoubtless go through without any tiresome debate. But you will hardly havetime to obstruct it by arousing public sentiment through the newspapers."
David Kent shook the light touch of her hand from his arm and set histeeth hard upon a word hot from the furnace of righteous indignation. Fora moment he fully believed she was in league with the junto; that she hadbeen purposely holding him in talk while the very seconds were priceless.
She saw the scornful wrath in his eyes and turned it aside with a swiftdenial.
"No, David; I didn't do that," she said, speaking to his inmost thought."If there had been anything you could do--the smallest shadow of a chancefor you--I should have sent you flying at the first word. But therewasn't; it was all too well arranged--"
But he had snatched coat and hat from the waiting Thomas and was runninglike a madman for the nearest cab-stand.
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