THE maid surveyed Carson a bit inquiringly.
“What is the name, sir?” she asked parrot-like. “And the business?”
Carson allowed himself the shadow of a smile as he handed her his card which would tell Mr. Smock quite nothing of his mission there. In a second the maid was back, and leading him through a gorgeous hall with great thick velvety rugs and carved banister, conducted him into a library at the further end.
In this room, furnished with massive leather furniture and a mahogany desk, but seated just now on an ornate hand-carved radio stool before a great elegant televisic radio cabinet of a make costing, as Carson knew, close on to a thousand dollars, sat a man smoking an apparently after-dinner cigar and adjusting the micrometer dial of a hidden spanning disk whose whirling spiral points were even now fused into a pair of comic negro faces, one with wide white collar and flowing tie, the other with derby hat and checkered vest and coat. The man at the cabinet stared coldly at Carson from his round pious eyes framed in great round glasses, and indicated — by a nod at the cabinet and a gesture towards a close-by leather chair of stiffly uncomfortable construction, for his visitor to take a seat — that he was busy at his hobby. And Carson, dropping down into the proffered chair, half listening to the negro patter coming in through the magnificent clear speaker, curiously surveyed the man who was thus amusing himself. The latter’s hair was a trifle thin on top and parted in the middle; the nearly round face was smooth-shaven and unctuous, the hands rather fat and pudgy. The lips were thin, hardly even red, and an artist mixing pigments for those features and the blue orbs above them would have used the coldest and chilliest colors on his palette. “Just a moment, young man,” he was saying, “I never like to miss Ham and Abner. They’re just finishing up for tonight.”
Which they were. For Abner, were one to judge from the lips that, on the brightly illuminated screen, moved in synchronism with the clear words coming from the loud speaker, was addressing Ham, and he was saying, in a melodious negro voice:
“Don’ make no diff’unce, Ham. Ah tells you ain’ no man evah a’vertise f’r no snek less’n dat snek is a tri’k snek w’at do dances — an’ sich like.”
“Hm,” said Ham, in a deep, raucous, belligerent voice. “Whoevvah hu’d uh a snek w’at dance?”
“Go on, niggah, ain’ you nevah hu’d o’ de snek dance?”
“‘Cose Ah is. I’s ejjicated. But it tain’t dataway ‘tall. Read dat ad again — no — don’ nevah min’ readin’ it. I ‘members it. Dat man wo’t advuhtise — he’s a puffessor. Kind a man wot runs de zoo in one o’ dem collitches. Well, Abner, kain’ you see it now? Dat snek is de las’ of its breed — you evah huh’d o’ de las’ of de Mohicans, Abnah? An’ if’n dis perfessor don’ git dat snek, Abnah, some lady snek ain’ evah goin’ to complete huh love life.”
“Huh! Snekkses can ma’hy oder kin’ sneks. Dey don’ gotta mah’y in de same tribe, do dey?”
“Well if dey don’t, what does you git fo’ young sneks? You gits reptiles, Abnah — reptiles! Dat’s ‘xactly wo’t comes when two sneks mahies out o’ each oder’s fambly.”
There was a pause, and then Ham suddenly spoke again:
“Abnah, ah’s got a won’erful idea. Lessen us go hunt dis yeah snek. We gits a thousan’ bucks if we fin’s him.”
“Weah us hunt? Dat snek been makin’ his feetses move some.”
“Feetses! An’ you talkin’ ‘bout snek’s feetses? Don’ you know sneks ain’ got no feetses? If dey had, dey’d waste all de time dey got liftin’ ‘em up an’ puttin’ ‘em down. Dey ain’ got no feetses.”
“Aint heh? How dey moves so fas’ den?”
“You is, Abnah, de mos’ ignuntest man Ah eber imfronted on de subjec’ o’ veg’table life. A snek he lays hisself down and cu’ls hisself up in a figgah S — S, de fo’ty-fo’th lettah in de anphambelt, see?”
“Yeah? An’ what good de S do him, I ax?”
“Den he all fix to slither. See? Dat snek he can slither dataway fass’er dan any feetses evah made.”
“Den you means to say, Ham, if Ah lays me down on de sidewalk like a figgah G — ”
“S, Abnah. Gotta be a S. Iff’n you wrop youse’f in a buhlap sack, an’ tie it aroun’ you neck, an’ lay youse’f down on de sidewalk, and commence slitha’in’, man, you is goin’ to hab to watch dem traffic lights hahd when you flies ‘cross de crossin’s.”
“Hm. I goin’ to mek dat ‘speriment. Sound halfway reas’nble at dat. Don’ know iff’n Ah kin get me into a figgah S. But Ah try, anyway.”
“Yeah? Well you des pick you out a Sunday w’en de traffic ain’ heaby. Hosses don’ perk up none to no niggah slitha’in’ ‘long de sidewalk, I can tol’ you dat. De question now, do’, is us gotta git aftah dis ‘ticulah snek.”
“Well, Ah axes ag’in, weah us gon’ hunt?”
“Why, we go fus’ to de Uniung Station. You play one o’ dem sweet chunes soft-like on your Jews-harp. Dat snek’ll come out. We cotch him. Mebbe, Abnah, we goes into de business. Ab an’ Ham, snek cotchers. Go on, niggah, try out dat Jews-harp o’ yourn fo’ we leaves fo’ de Uniung Station.”
With which invitation the televisic figure representing the squat-faced Abner pulled from his vest pocket a tiny bowed instrument and applying it to his shiny white teeth, proceeded to draw from it a second later the sweetest of tones, in an old Southern Dixie melody, tones which came clear and bell-like through the loud speaker as he twanged away at the prong of the instrument. With the finishing of the rendition, the figure Ham looked at a gargantuan brassy watch, as large as an alarm clock, which he extricated from a special breast pocket made in his vest.
“Soun’s fus’ rate to me,” he commented, business-like. “Us call dat de ‘Slitha’in’ Blues.’ So come on. We got to huh’y! Sneks retiahs uhly to bed. Wait — anny mo’ ads tonight? No? Den le’s go.” With which the two figures bowed, the illuminated screen went black as the particular frequency on which the visual part of the machine was operating was turned off at the broadcasting station, and the announcer’s voice, traveling on the accompanying frequency, came on the speaker announcing: “Abner and Ham, reading the ads, over WXOY. Every night at this hour.”
The man at the instrument turned off the reception entirely. He rose from his stool. “Not very good tonight,” he commented sadly. “Too impromptu, I guess. Some nights those fellows are screamingly funny, but they have their forced days.” He took a chair. “And what did you wish to see me about, young man?”
With which invitation he deposited his cigar on a nearby ash tray, folded his hands piously over his white stiffly starched vest and waited.
“Mr. Smock,” Carson began, “I am interested in a certain way in the former Rocky Ridge tract owned in non-individually-transferable joint-tenancy by yourself and Mr. Henry Desmond, formerly of Chicago.”
The human iceberg across from him appeared to thaw a bit, and a crafty smile crept into the corners of its thin lips. “I see. I presume you are here to make an offer on it. Henry Desmond, as you know, is dead. I shall have complete title Friday morning when the probate court hands down its official declaration of his death. What is your offer? Prior to that time it cannot be sold, except that — ” He paused.
Carson shook his head slowly. “Well, Mr. Smock, to be exact, I am not interested in the Outer Ravenswood tract as a purchaser. I am, to be frank with you, a foster-son of Henry Desmond’s — and in addition to this I am engaged to marry his daughter, Miss Marcia Desmond.”
A fear — a sudden tightening of the thin lips — forced itself to the face of Matthias Smock, the money lender. “You — you — were legally adopted by Henry Desmond?” he managed to utter in a hurt and incredulous tone. “You — ” He stopped. He passed a pudgy hand over his forehead. It was plain that consternation had come to him — that he had perceived immediately some sort of flaw in his plans to sell to Whitlock, Spayne, Critchley and Evans. He had made no negotiations toward purchasing the rights of this third and adopted child in Henry Desmond’s quitclaim.
“No,” said Carson finally, unwilling to put this pious-looking pillar of financial astuteness at his ease, but realizing that he must perforce adhere to the facts. “I was not legally adopted.”
The smile of satisfaction and relief which came to Smock’s lips showed only too plainly what a shock the first information had caused him. “Then what is it you want?” he asked, his voice more gelid than ever.
“I dropped in,” Carson declared amicably, “to see whether we could not get together on some arrangement regarding the quitclaim on that Outer Ravenswood tract which would be more advantageous to Marcia and Cary Desmond than the present one. There has been offered by you, I believe, the sum of two thousand dollars for Mr. Desmond’s quitclaim — a thousand apiece for each of his two children. It strikes me that this is manifestly illiberal. I do not see why the situation does not call for at least fifty percent of the selling price to be paid to them in exchange for that paper.”
Smock laughed harshly. “You have a strange idea of the situation then, young man. If you know anything about law — particularly the form of ownership known as joint-tenancy — you ought to know that survivor takes all. Why is it incumbent on me, if I may ask, to pay over to Henry Desmond’s relatives whom I hardly know, part of what he forfeits by dying?”
“But of course,” ventured Carson politely, “we don’t really know that he is dead.”
“Pish!” Smock waved away the suggestion with an impatient gesture of his hand. “There isn’t a doubt in the world that the body of that man found floating in the Drainage Canal shortly after Henry’s escape from Joliet was his body. Henry Desmond is dead, and I should by rights have had ownership seven years ago.” He took up the cudgel which Carson had, courteously enough, to be sure, thrown down to him. “But why, I ask you, should I pay over to outsiders any part of what comes legally to me?”
“For the reason,” was Carson’s prompt reply, “that there appears to be a moral question involved. If I am not mistaken, Henry Desmond, at the time you went under an operation some seven years or more ago, protected your wife by sending you a special delivery letter containing a paper giving her all of your rights in the event of your death. Being the co-holder with you, he had a legal right to perpetuate your rights in her, something that you yourself could not legally do for her in a non-individually-transferable ownership such as this was. He was not compelled, either, to do this, and most men would have grasped the opportunity of perhaps getting full ownership of that little tract of scrub land, worth two thousand dollars anyway.”
“I never saw such a letter as you describe,” said Smock gruffly, his round face betraying by its flood of color which reached even the ears that not only had he seen such a letter, but that he undoubtedly had it locked safely away today.
“Yet I did,” responded the younger man quietly, “for I was visiting him in the prison the day it was written, and I myself mailed it for him in a Joliet mailbox.”
An awkward silence filled the room. Smock swallowed audibly once or twice. “Well, I know nothing about it,” he said. He made haste to get off the subject of the letter. “If Henry Desmond was so anxious to legally protect each other’s heirs against that precarious joint-tenancy, why didn’t he transfer that property with me over to simple joint-ownership before he died? That’s what I’d like to know.”
“The reason, so it appears to me, is self-evident, Mr. Smock,” was Carson’s retort. “Because he was in the penitentiary unjustly; because he found an opportunity to escape; and, once escaped, it meant that if he ever showed up again he must go back to what was literally hell to him. Prior to his flight he drew up one paper for his children — a quitclaim in your favor on that old proposed twenty-five hundred dollar deal — a quitclaim for which presumably you would have paid each of his children one thousand two hundred and fifty dollars if the deal had materialized. I do not see how he could enter into the drawing up of any legal papers with you after he became a fugitive from the law.”
“Well, it was up to him,” declared Smock airily. “I had written many letters to him in the prison urging this change in the form of title.”
“Henry Desmond told me, however, Mr. Smock, that after I mailed that paper addressed to you, he could not seem after that to bring things to a climax. One’s natural deduction would be that so long as one of the two parties was protected against his own death, he would not be in particular haste to protect the other likewise. However, let’s drop that point which may be open to serious misinterpretation. Mr. Smock, I don’t believe Henry Desmond is dead. I believe that declaration to come down Friday in the probate court is to cost him and his children fifty thousand dollars. Would you be willing to grant us six months of grace so that we could make a final attempt to locate him?”
“How can I do that?” countered Smock very adroitly. “Unless I’m in a position to sell to Whitlock, Spayne, Critchley and Evans before tomorrow noon, I’m left with the property on my hands to parcel off into small lots which will not only take a lot of my time to dispose of, but may even bring five thousand dollars to eight thousand dollars less than the one big offer.”
This was precisely the admission which Carson wished to force Smock to make. Smock had walked nicely into the trap. A pause followed Smock’s reply, and then the younger man made a new proposal.
“Then suppose we all get together and agree to take the offer of Whitlock, Spayne, Critchley and Evans while the getting is good, but you on your hand agree to give us the six months of grace by depositing Henry Desmond’s half of the purchase money in trust or escrow until we fail to make good on our belief that we might produce him?”
A laugh that was more of a cackle escaped Smock.
“What you ask is impossible,” he declared point-blank. “I am not willing to do that at all — and don’t intend to do it. That old Rocky Ridge tract is mine — and that ends it. If you have come here to propose wild ideas such as that, you are wasting your time, young man.”
Carson surveyed that cold face, and the realization was borne in on him only too indubitably that the human iceberg across from him was immovable, unthawable. He wondered what Smock would say were he to tell the money-lender that incontrovertible evidence had turned up proving that Henry Desmond really was alive. But he dared not even mention this vital point for the reason that Smock might, after obtaining ownership and failing to sell to Whitlock, Spayne, Critchley and Evans for one hundred thousand dollars, sell off the entire tract at as high a figure as he could get consistent with quick disposal. For so long as Smock himself kept possession of the tract, Gordon had assured him, the return of the living man, declared dead, could, by law, set aside the declaration of death. But — once sold or transferred, even to Smock’s own wife — and Henry Desmond was out of things forever so far as regaining the tiniest tithe in the Rocky Ridge tract went. In all probability, Henry Desmond was due to suffer a huge loss. But, Carson told himself, were he to drop the lightest hint here tonight of what he knew, it was absolutely certain that Henry Desmond would be the loser.
He sighed. Then he resumed the argument doggedly, trying to see just how much he could move this Gibraltarlike rock. “I do not believe Henry Desmond is dead. I feel convinced that we will see him. But this has little conviction to you, Mr. Smock. Then so long as this is the case, I wonder if there is still not a compromise we can make which will at least protect his children, if not him. By your own statement a while back, Whitlock, Spayne, Critchley and Evans stand willing to pay one hundred thousand dollars for this Outer Ravenswood tract. Also by your own estimate of what the tract will bring if dealt out in small parcels at footage rates, which procedure will drag along possibly for two or three years, ninety-two thousand dollars may be about the total of what will be gotten out of it providing it is not held several years longer for its inevitable rise. From this it appears that Henry Desmond’s quitclaim is worth exactly eight thousand dollars to you. On top of this, there is the significant fact that if you can sell right now, you will draw interest for a couple of years on the sales money, which you won’t do if you sell two years from now! That potential interest, at six percent, amounts roughly to — say — twelve thousand dollars. And eight thousand dollars plus twelve thousand dollars equals twenty thousand dollars. Could you not see your way to be fair in the matter and pay over to Marcia and Cary at least the value which that quitclaim possesses to you?”
“Pay them twenty thousand dollars?” bit out Smock. “Well I should say not! I am a business man — not a charity giver. And I should like to tell you that your logic about interest, which is not yet earned, is very faulty. For if I should die next month, I personally wouldn’t earn any interest, would I? So that puts us back again to the sum of eight thousand dollars which you have an idea I ought to pay them. Well, the answer is ‘nothing doing.’ I have made an offer. That offer stands or falls.” The red which rose to his face this time was the red of anger. He raised a forefinger with which he gestured emphatically as he spoke. “Young man, when I first went into business with a capital of fifty dollars, I made one rule: that was that when I made an offer of any sort, the offer was to stand. For forty years I have followed that rule to the hair — and more than once I have taken losses by standing pat. And I don’t intend to break it now. If you people think you can hold me up simply because I need your quitclaim to put over this particular sale, you will find that you are vastly mistaken. I’ll take my loss, no matter what it is; I’ll take it down to the last dollar. But not one cent — not one penny — will I go beyond the point I have offered. And the day will come — mark you, young man — the day will come — when that boy and girl will wish they had taken their respective thousand dollars while the taking was good.”
“Well,” said Carson a bit heatedly, “if they decide not to take it, they can, I think, bear their loss of two thousand dollars just as stoically as you will bear yours of eight thousand dollars or so.” He paused. “Then I take it that not one penny more than you offer will you pay for that quitclaim?” He looked curiously at the other man.
“I’ve made my offer — there it stands.” Mr. Smock took up his cigar and puffed furiously on it. “What have you got to do with this Desmond case anyway, young man?”
“As I told you, I am merely a foster-son of Henry Desmond and engaged to Marcia Desmond. Marcia has practically delegated to me the authority to say what she shall do about this entire matter. Quite naturally I have therefore come to you in order to obtain a more fair deal for her and her brother. If I cannot, I do not see that I can advise her to turn over the quitclaim.”
Matthias Smock rose and paced about the room. Then he dropped into his chair. “Well, if you’re expecting me to relinquish one jot of my legal rights, the whole pack and parcel of you are badly mistaken. I’ve offered those two young people one thousand dollars apiece for that quitclaim by or before tomorrow noon. The offer stands — not one penny more. If they throw good money over their shoulders by your advice, they’ve picked out a mighty poor advisor. They’ll not thank you for your counsel ninety days later, I’m telling you that.”
Carson made no reply to this. Then suddenly he asked: “Mr. Smock, have you any children?”
He thought he detected a fleeting look of disappointment creep across Smock’s face, but it was supplanted in an instant by the hard, hard look of the inexorable financial man.
“I have not, Mr. Carson. What of it, if I may ask?”
To Carson, that fleeting look urged one last tack. He leaned forward. His tone was the tone used by one man to another.
“Mr. Smock, suppose you had a couple of kidlets — a boy and a girl. Suppose you — not some other man, but you yourself — were sent to the penitentiary for a crime you hadn’t committed. Suppose you escaped. Suppose you didn’t know that events later exonerated you. Suppose the only legacy you had in the world to leave your children was to be lost to them simply because you were unable to come out in the open and draw up the necessary legal papers to protect them. Wouldn’t you be driven nearly desperate at such a predicament? Wouldn’t it strike you to the heart to know that your children were being absolutely despoiled of their rights purely by the web of circumstance?”
Smock’s lip curled in the most scornful glance he had yet given his visitor. “In answer to that,” he said sneeringly, “let me ask you this: If you were a young man who was engaged to a pretty girl whose father’s land, held in joint-tenancy, had multiplied in value fifty times, would you work hard or wouldn’t you to get the new owner to relinquish his claims, to threaten him, to cajole him, to bargain with him, so that your wife, coming to you, could bring along a nice dower?”
At this pregnant retort, Carson reddened from neck to ears. For the first time there was borne in on him the possibility of this misconstruction of his motives in coming here. In simpler language he was put down as a fortune hunter. He rose without a single word.
“I had a faint idea when I came here tonight, Mr. Smock, that we might adjust this thing fairly for all parties concerned, with no bitterness anywhere. But I see I was over-sanguine. I’ll bid you good evening now. And in leaving I should like to give you official notification that neither Marcia nor Cary Desmond will deliver that quitclaim tomorrow.” He would like to have hurled a further bombshell at that monument of avariciousness by telling him that Henry Desmond was alive, if not located. But for reasons which he had made quite clear to himself he kept his lips tightly sealed on this most vital of all facts. “And if you expect to sell the Outer Ravenswood tract in the future, you may as well prepare to cut it up into small lots and sell it to the little people who will use up two or three years of your time.” And he added: “And pay real estate taxes on it in the meanwhile!”
And with this last combined hot-shot picturing to Smock the long-drawn-out and not inexpensive procedure in which he must indulge in order to transform the former Rocky Ridge tract into money, Carson bowed himself out of the library door. The white-capped maid, catching sight of him striding down the hallway, came to the front door and let him out, and Carson found himself a moment later out in the fresh night air uncontaminated by the presence of the grasping money-lender.
He turned his footsteps toward a drugstore at the further end of the street, and reaching it entered its telephone booth. He knew that Marcia must be just rising from bed to prepare her little late meal and start for her night trick on the Kildare exchange. As he rang the St. Giles Lane number, he felt quite clear in his mind as to the procedure for the coming days. First, Cary must be saved from disgrace by the twenty thousand dollar bill his father had sent “for thirty days.” That bill would completely square up his nine thousand and six hundred dollars defalcations at the bank and also allow him to pay in full the ten thousand dollar note he had given Carson for the lost Helium Gas stock certificate, and Carson himself in turn could pay off Mrs. Galioto and save his own office and brilliant future prospects. And in the meantime Henry Desmond must be located some way — even if they had to trace the blotter in devious ways as yet unthought of, and a warning gotten to him to come back at once and seize his property before it trickled from Smock’s hands. This done, explanations could follow in due course. Marcia’s voice came upon the wire. Carson spoke.
“Honey-girl, this is Cliff. Under no conditions deliver that quitclaim to Smock. If any attorneys come to you tonight at the Kildare exchange, refuse to sign any papers. Cary will do likewise and I have already advised him. Something of the greatest importance has developed, and we must see that Smock is forced to hold the Outer Ravenswood tract for a short while, rather than turn it into money which he can get rid of. Now, is this all clear, honey? Cary will explain more fully in the morning. He is coming back to live at home again with you and Grandfather.”
Her delighted answer showed her pleasure at what she thought must be some self-inflicted change of heart on the part of her brother, and betrayed only too well how she cared for that little play-partner of her youth. Then saying a hurried good-bye, Carson hung up.
When he reached his rooms on Scott Street, a short thoroughfare within walking distance of the Loop, he found Cary there sitting in a chair with the electric lights lit. The latter looked as though he had had a good cold shower and a general brightening up, but there were deep lines in his face that had never been there before. His face lighted and he rose as Carson came in, closed the door behind him and threw his hat on the bed.
“Which was it, Cliff?” he inquired anxiously. “Did — did you locate van Twillingham in some way and get an advance on my man-trap idea — or — or — or was it Smock? Did he — did he suffer a change of heart?”
Carson laughed sardonically at the thought of the two quite impossible things Cary had just projected. “Neither,” he said briefly. “To get an advance from a millionaire on an idea which he has never yet seen, particularly when his location is unknown, is quite unachievable. And what is the most impossible of all is to convey a sense of moral obligation into a bloodsucker such as Matthias Smock, your revered second-cousin. No — ” He delved into his breast pocket, and unpinning from it the twenty thousand dollar gold note which had come to him through the mails, handed it to the amazed Cary whose eyes stared at it almost unbelievingly. “Cary, that gold note is yours for thirty days, come what may. It’s from my friend — the best friend I ever had on this earth. Why it was sent to me to be used I do not know — but I do know that the only possible use for it now is to save you. The friend who sent it, by the way, is your father!”