CHAPTER XXIII
Montague had taken a couple of days to think over Lucy's last
request. It was a difficult commission; but he made up his mind at
last that he would make the attempt. He went up to Ryder's home and
presented his card.
"Mr. Ryder is very much occupied, sir--" began the butler,
apologetically.
"This is important," said Montague. "Take him the card, please." He
waited in the palatial entrance-hall, decorated with ceilings which
had been imported intact from old Italian palaces.
At last the butler returned. "Mr. Ryder says will you please see him
upstairs, sir?"
Montague entered the elevator, and was taken to Ryder's private
apartments. In the midst of the drawing-room was a great library
table, covered with a mass of papers; and in a chair in front of it
sat Ryder.
Montague had never seen such dreadful suffering upon a human
countenance. The exquisite man of fashion had grown old in a week.
"Mr. Ryder," he began, when they were alone, "I received a letter
from Mrs. Taylor, asking me to come to see you."
"I know," said Ryder. "It was like her; and it is very good of you."
"If there is any way that I can be of assistance," the other began.
But Ryder shook his head. "No," he said; "there is nothing."
"If I could give you my help in straightening out your own
affairs--"
"They are beyond all help," said Ryder. "I have nothing to begin
on--I have not a dollar in the world."
"That is hardly possible," objected Montague.
"It is literally true!" he exclaimed. "I have tried every plan--I
have been over the thing and over it, until I am almost out of my
mind." And he glanced about him at the confusion of papers, and
leaned his forehead in his hands in despair.
"Perhaps if a fresh mind were to take it up," suggested Montague.
"It is difficult to see how a man of your resources could be left
without anything--"
"Everything I have is mortgaged," said the other. "I have been
borrowing money right and left. I was counting on profits--I was
counting on increases in value. And now see--everything is wiped
out! There is not value enough left in anything to cover the loans."
"But surely, Mr. Ryder, this slump is merely temporary. Values must
be restored--"
"It will be years, it will be years! And in the meantime I shall be
forced to sell. They have wiped me out--they have destroyed me! I
have not even money to live on."
Montague sat for a few moments in thought. "Mrs. Taylor wrote me
that Waterman--" he began.
"I know, I know!" cried the other. "He had to tell her something, to
get what he wanted."
Montague said nothing.
"And suppose he does what he promised?" continued the other. "He has
done it before--but am I to be one of Dan Waterman's lackeys?"
There was a silence. "Like John Lawrence," continued Ryder, in a low
voice. "Have you heard of Lawrence? He was a banker--one of the
oldest in the city. And Waterman gave him an order, and he defied
him. Then he broke him; took away every dollar he owned. And the man
came to him on his knees. 'I've taught you who is your master,' said
Waterman. 'Now here's your money.' And now Lawrence fawns on him,
and he's got rich and fat. But all his bank exists for is to lend
money when Waterman is floating a merger, and call it in when he is
buying."
Montague could think of nothing to reply to that.
"Mr. Ryder," he began at last, "I cannot be of much use to you now,
because I haven't the facts. All I can tell you is that I am at your
disposal. I will give you my best efforts, if you will let me. That
is all I can say."
And Ryder looked up, the light shining on his white, wan face.
"Thank you, Mr. Montague, he said. "It is very good of you. It is a
help, at least, to hear a word of sympathy. I--I will let you
know--"
"All right," said Montague, rising. He put out his hand, and Ryder
took it tremblingly. "Thank you," he said again.
And the other turned and went out. He went down the great staircase
by himself. At the foot he passed the butler, carrying a tray with
some coffee.
He stopped the man. "Mr. Ryder ought not to be left alone," he said.
"He should have his physician."
"Yes, sir," began the other, and then stopped short. From the floor
above a pistol shot rang out and echoed through the house.
"Oh, my God!" gasped the butler, staggering backward.
He half dropped and half set the tray upon a chair, and ran wildly
up the steps. Montague stood for a moment or two as if turned to
stone. He saw another servant run out of the dining-room and up the
stairs. Then, with a sudden impulse, he turned and went to the door.
"I can be of no use," he thought to himself; "I should only drag
Lucy's name into it." And he opened the door, and went quietly down
the steps.
In the newspapers the next morning he read that Stanley Ryder had
shot himself in the body, and was dying.
And that same morning the newspapers in Denver, Colorado, told of
the suicide of a mysterious woman, a stranger, who had gone to a
room in one of the hotels and taken poison. She was very beautiful;
it was surmised that she must be an actress. But she had left not a
scrap of paper or a clew of any sort by which she could be
identified. The newspapers printed her photograph; but Montague did
not see the Denver newspapers, and so to the day of his death he
never knew what had been the fate of Lucy Dupree.
The panic was stopped, but the business of the country lay in ruins.
For a week its financial heart had ceased to beat, and through all
the arteries of commerce, and every smallest capillary, there was
stagnation. Hundreds of firms had failed, and the mills and
factories by the thousands were closing down. There were millions of
men out of work. Throughout the summer the railroads had been
congested with traffic, and now there were a quarter of a million
freight cars laid by. Everywhere were poverty and suffering; it was
as if a gigantic tidal wave of distress had started from the
Metropolis and rolled over the continent. Even the oceans had not
stopped it; it had gone on to England and Germany--it had been felt
even in South America and Japan.
One day, while Montague was still trembling with the pain of his
experience, he was walking up the Avenue, and he met Laura Hegan
coming from a shop to her carriage.
"Mr. Montague," she exclaimed, and stopped with a frank smile of
greeting. "How are you?"
"I am well," he answered.
"I suppose," she added, "you have been very busy these terrible
days."
"I have been more busy observing than doing," he replied.
"And how is Alice?"
"She is well. I suppose you have heard that she is engaged."
"Yes," said Miss Hegan. "Harry told me the first thing. I was
perfectly delighted."
"Are you going up town?" she added. "Get in and drive with me."
He entered the carriage, and they joined the procession up the
Avenue. They talked for a few minutes, then suddenly Miss Hegan
said, "Won't you and Alice come to dinner with us some evening this
week?"
Montague did not answer for a moment.
"Father is home now," Miss Hegan continued. "We should like so much
to have you."
He sat staring in front of him. "No," he said at last, in a low
voice. "I would rather not come."
His manner, even more than his words, struck his companion. She
glanced at him in surprise.
"Why?" she began, and stopped. There was a silence.
"Miss Hegan," he said at last, "I might make conventional excuses. I
might say that I have engagements; that I am very busy. Ordinarily
one does not find it worth while to tell the truth in this social
world of ours. But somehow I feel impelled to deal frankly with
you."
He did not look at her. Her eyes were fixed upon him in wonder.
"What is it?" she asked.
And he replied, "I would rather not meet your father again."
"Why! Has anything happened between you and father?" she exclaimed
in dismay.
"No," he answered; "I have not seen your father since I had lunch
with you in Newport."
"Then what is it?"
He paused a moment. "Miss Hegan," he began, "I have had a painful
experience in this panic. I have lived through it in a very dreadful
way. I cannot get over it--I cannot get the images of suffering out
of my mind. It is a very real and a very awful thing to me--this
wrecking of the lives of tens of thousands of people. And so I am
hardly fitted for the amenities of social life just at present."
"But my father!" gasped she. "What has he to do with it?"
"Your father," he answered, "is one of the men who were responsible
for that panic. He helped to make it; and he profited by it."
She started forward, clenching her hands and staring at him wildly.
"Mr. Montague!" she exclaimed.
He did not reply.
There was a long pause. He could hear her breath coming quickly.
"Are you sure?" she whispered.
"Quite sure," said he.
Again there was silence.
"I do not know very much about my father's affairs," she began, at
last. "I cannot reply to what you say. It is very dreadful."
"Please understand me, Miss Hegan," said he. "I have no right to
force such thoughts upon you; and perhaps I have made a mistake--"
"I should have preferred that you should tell me the truth," she
said quickly.
"I believed that you would," he answered. "That was why I spoke."
"Was what he did so very dreadful?" asked the girl, in a low voice.
"I would prefer not to answer," said he. "I cannot judge your
father. I am simply trying to protect myself. I'm afraid of the grip
of this world upon me. I have followed the careers of so many men,
one after another. They come into it, and it lays hold of them, and
before they know it, they become corrupt. What I have seen here in
the Metropolis has filled me with dismay, almost with terror. Every
fibre of me cries out against it; and I mean to fight it--to fight
it all my life. And so I do not care to make terms with it socially.
When I have seen a man doing what I believe to be a dreadful wrong,
I cannot go to his home, and shake his hand, and smile, and exchange
the commonplaces of life with him."
It was a long time before Miss Hegan replied. Her voice was
trembling.
"Mr. Montague," she said, "you must not think that I have not been
troubled by these things. But what can one do? What is the remedy?"
"I do not know," he answered. "I wish that I did know. I can only
tell you this, that I do not intend to rest until I have found out."
"What are you going to do?" she asked.
He replied: "I am going into politics. I am going to try to teach
the people."
