by Will Irwin
X
THE STREAMS CONVERGE
Bulger, trailing whiffs of out-door air, had dropped into the Norcrossoffices to join the late afternoon drink. He sat now sipping hishighball, tilted back with an affectation of ease. Norcross, in hisregular place at the glass-covered desk, laid his glass down; and hisgaze wandered again to the spire of Old Trinity and then, followingdown, to the churchyard at its foot. Had he faced about suddenly atthat moment, he would have surprised Bulger in a strained attitude ofattention. But he did not turn; he spoke with averted glance.
"You never asked me, Bulger, how I was making it with that mediumwoman."
Bulger took a deep swallow of whiskey and water that he might controlhis voice. When, finally, he spoke, he showed a fine assumption ofindifference.
"Well, no. Can't say I'm heavily interested. When I found for you thebest medium that money could buy, I decided that my job was done. Ofcourse," he added, "I was complimented to have you tell me--what I'veforgotten. If you want to consult a medium, it's really none of mybusiness. How the Lusitania does loom up at her dock out there!"
Norcross let his eyes wander in search of the Lusitania, but his mindrefused to stray from the vital subject.
"You've no business to be indifferent, Bulger. When you come to my age,you won't be. Martha says it's the most important thing. And she'sright--she's right. What's the ten or twenty years I've got to live inthis world, compared with all that's waiting us out there? Of course,"he added, "I don't know much about your private life; I don't know ifyou have another part of you waiting."
"Who's Martha?" enquired Bulger.
"No one in _this_ world," responded Norcross. "She's a controlnow--Mrs. Markham's best control." Norcross jumped up, and began topace the floor in his hurried little walk. Bulger did not fail tonotice that, within a minute or two, a heavy, beady perspiration cameout on his face and forehead. The room was cool; the railroad king wasold and spare. Nothing save some struggle of the inner consciousnesscould produce that effect of mighty labor.
"Bulger," said Norcross, speaking in quick, staccato jerks, "if I toldyou what I'd seen and heard in the last fortnight, I couldn't make youbelieve it. Proofs! Proofs! I've wasted thirty years. I might have hadher--the best part of her--all this time. You think I'm crazy--" hestopped and peered into Bulger's face. "If anyone had talked this wayto me six months ago, I'd have thought so myself. Do you or don't you?"he exploded.
"About as crazy as you ever were," responded Bulger. "Not to sugar coatthe pill, people have always said you were crazy--just before you letoff your fireworks. You've got there because you dared do things thatonly a candidate for Bloomingdale would attempt. But you always landed,and we've another name for it now."
"That's it!" exclaimed Norcross. "That's exactly it. I dare to say nowthat the dead do return! People have believed in ghosts as long asthey've believed in a Divine Providence--just as many centuries andages--every race, every nation. We hear in this generation that certainpeople have proved it--found! the way--set up the wires--and we laugh,and call it all fraud. I don't laugh! Why, we're on the verge of thingswhich make the railroad and the steamboat and the telegraph seem liketoys--if we only dared. I dare--I dare!" He went on pacing the floor;and now the beads had assembled into rivers, so that a tiny streamtrickled down and fogged his reading-glasses. He jerked them off, wipedthem, wiped his face and forehead. The action calmed him, brought himback to his reasonable grip on himself. At the end of his route acrossthe room, he sat down abruptly.
Bulger did not miss this shift of the new Norcross back toward the old,iron, inscrutable Norcross whom the world knew. The next remark hedirected against that aspect of his man.
"It's all right," said Bulger, "if you want to follow that line."During the short pause which ensued, he thought and felt intensely.Working under the direction of a mind infinitely his superior forintrigue and subtlety, he had instruction to play gently upon theNorcross contrariety, the Norcross habit of rejecting advice. This, ifever, seemed the time. With a bold hand, he laid his counter upon theboard. "Just one thing to be careful about--of course, it's a mousetrying to steer a lion for me to advise you--but watch those people,when they get on the subject of business. Sometimes they work people,you know."
Norcross's face, fixed on the third monument from the south door of OldTrinity, permitted itself the luxury of a slight smile.
"I'm safe there," he responded. "Don't think I haven't tried herout--put tests of my own. I know what you're thinking about--Marsh andDiss Debar. I tried at my very first seance to make her talk businessand I've tried it twice since. I couldn't get a single rise out of_that_. This medium receives from me her regular rate, and no more. Iestablished that in the beginning. Though I suppose the guides couldadvise on business as well as on anything else. But they think aboutother things on the other side than this"--his hand swept over LowerManhattan--"this money grubbing."
Bulger leaned his elbows on his knees.
"It sounds wonderful," he said.
"Not more wonderful than wireless telegraphy," answered Norcross. "Andthe ancients, she says, dreamed of talking with spirits long beforethey dreamed of talking to each other across an ocean. We only need anexceptional force to do it. And Mrs. Markham is that force. You knowthe locket I showed you?"
"I promised to forget it."
"Well, remember for a minute. I"--his voice exploded--"I may see her,Bulger--before the month is over, I may see her!"
Bulger threw himself back in his chair.
"What!" he exclaimed, jumping with an affectation of surprise.
It was as though the sudden motion, the exclamation had touched aspring in the mind of Norcross, had projected his spirit from thatdisintegrating, anaemic cell in his brain to the sound, full-bloodedcells by which he did his daily business. His form, which had seemedrelaxed and old, stiffened visibly. He turned his eyes on Bulger.
"Forget that, too," he said. "Some day, when I'm strong enough, you'llgo with me and you'll believe too." And now the secretary had signalledthe chauffeur, and Norcross had risen to go.
* * * * *
The streams of destiny were converging that afternoon; the lines weredrawing close together. Among the towers of Lower Manhattan, Norcrosssat baring his soul; on a bench in Stuyvesant Square, Rosalie Le Grangehad reported the consummation of her investigations to Dr. WalterHuntington Blake; in a back parlor of the Upper West Side, PaulaMarkham, with many a sidelong glance at the approaches, sat memorizingthe last syllable of a set of notes on yellow legal cap paper. But themaster current was flowing elsewhere. In the offices of the _EveningSun_, the stereotypers had just shot the front page of the Wall Streetedition down to the clanking basement. It carried a "beat"; and thatitem of news had as much to do with this story as with the ultimatedestinies of the L.D. and M. railroad. On October 19, two weeks hence,the directors of the road were to meet and decide whether to pay orpass the dividend. "The directors"--that, as the _Sun_ insinuated,meant none other than Norcross. Holding a majority of the L.D. and M.stock, holding the will of those directors, his creatures, he alonewould decide whether to declare the dividend or to pass it. The stockwavered at about fifty, waiting the decision. If Norcross put it on adividend-paying basis, it was good for eighty. To know which way hewould decide, to extract any information from that inscrutablemind--that were to open a steel vault with a pen-knife. "All trading,"the _Sun_ assured its readers, "will be speculative; it is considered apure gamble."
As Bulger parted with Norcross on the street and turned south, anewsboy thrust the Wall Street _Sun_ into his face. The announcement ofthe L.D. and M. situation jumped out at him from a headline. The insideinformation, held for two weeks by the group of speculators in whichBulger moved, was out; the public was admitted to the transaction; nowwas the time, if ever, to strike. He found a sound-proof telephone, anddid a few minutes of rapid talking. Then he proceeded to his office.
The force was gone. Alone at his desk, he went over the pap
ers in acomplicated calculation which he had made twenty times before. By alldevices, Watson could hold back the collapse of the Mongolia Mine untilafter October 19. By straining his credit to the utmost--liquidatingeverything--he himself could raise a trifle more than seventy thousanddollars. He hesitated no longer. Methodically, he apportioned out theseventy thousand dollars among a dozen brokers, who to-morrow shouldbuy for him, on a ten point margin, L.D. and M. stock at fifty tofifty-three.
This done, Bulger locked up the papers again, telephoned for a cab, andproceeded to his club, where he dined with his customary hilarity andgood humor.