The Main Chance
Produced by Suzanne Shell, Martin Pettit and the OnlineDistributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
THE MAIN CHANCE
THE MAIN CHANCE
BYMEREDITH NICHOLSON
ILLUSTRATED BYHARRISON FISHER
INDIANAPOLISTHE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANYPUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT 1903THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
MAY
PRESS OFBRAUNWORTH & CO.BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERSBROOKLYN, N. Y.
TOE. K. N.
WHO WILL REMEMBER AND UNDERSTAND
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE I A NEW MAN IN TOWN 1
II WARRICK RARIDAN 13
III SWEET PEAS 24
IV AT POINDEXTERS' 39
V DEBATABLE QUESTIONS 53
VI A SAFE MAN 70
VII WARRY RARIDAN'S INDIGNATION 82
VIII TIM MARGRAVE MAKES A CHOICE 92
IX PARLEYINGS 97
X A WRECKED CANNA BED 106
XI THE KNIGHTS OF MIDAS BALL 121
XII A MORNING AT ST. PAUL'S 136
XIII BARGAIN AND SALE 152
XIV THE GIRL THAT TRIES HARD 166
XV AT THE COUNTRY CLUB 174
XVI THE LADY AND THE BUNKER 193
XVII WARRY'S REPENTANCE 206
XVIII FATHER AND DAUGHTER 213
XIX A FORECAST AT THE WHIPPLES' 229
XX ORCHARD LANE 237
XXI JAMES WHEATON MAKES A COMPUTATION 241
XXII AN ANNUAL PASS 250
XXIII WILLIAM PORTER RETURNS FROM A JOURNEY 258
XXIV INTERRUPTED PLANS 266
XXV JAMES WHEATON DECLINES AN OFFER 272
XXVI THE KEY TO A DILEMMA 279
XXVII A MEETING BETWEEN GENTLEMEN 289
XXVIII BROKEN GLASS 299
XXIX JOHN SAXTON, RECEIVER 310
XXX GREEN CHARTREUSE 313
XXXI PUZZLING AUTOGRAPHS 319
XXXII CROSSED WIRES 323
XXXIII A DISAPPEARANCE 332
XXXIV JOHN SAXTON SUGGESTS A CLUE 339
XXXV SHOTS IN THE DARK 352
XXXVI HOME THROUGH THE SNOW 370
XXXVII "A PECULIAR BRICK" 379
XXXVIII OLD PHOTOGRAPHS 384
XXXIX "IT IS CRUEL" 389
XL SHIFTED BURDENS 399
XLI RETROSPECTIVE VANITY 403
XLII AT THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 407
THE MAIN CHANCE
CHAPTER I
A NEW MAN IN TOWN
"Well, sir, they say I'm crooked!"
William Porter tipped back his swivel chair and placidly puffed a cigaras he watched the effect of this declaration on the young man who sattalking to him.
"That's said of every successful man nowadays, isn't it?" asked JohnSaxton.
The president of the Clarkson National Bank ignored the question androlled his cigar from one side of his mouth to the other, as he waitedfor his words to make their full impression upon his visitor.
"They say I'm crooked," he repeated, with a narrowing of the eyes, "butthey don't say it very loud!"
Porter kicked his heels together gently and watched his visitor witheyes in which there was no trace of humor; but Saxton saw that he wasexpected to laugh.
"No, sir;" the banker continued, "they don't say it very loud, and Iguess they don't any of them want to have to prove it. I'm afraid thoseBoston friends of yours have given us up as a bad lot," he went on,waiving the matter of his personal rectitude and returning to theaffairs of his visitor; "and they've sent you out here to get theirmoney, and I don't blame them. Well, sir; that money's got to come outin time, but it's going to take time and money to get it."
"I believe they sent me because I had plenty of time," said Saxton,smiling.
"Well, we want to help you win out," returned Porter. "And now what canI do to start you off?" he asked briskly. "Have you got a place to stay?Well, sir, I warn you solemnly against the hotels in this town; butwe've got a fairly decent club up here, and you'd better stay there tillyou get acquainted. Been to breakfast? Breakfast on the train? That'sgood. Just look over the papers till I get rid of these letters and I'llbe free."
Porter turned to his desk and replaced the eye-glasses which he haddropped while talking. There was an air of great alertness in his small,lean figure as he pushed buttons to summon various members of theclerical force and rapidly dictated terse telegrams and letters to astenographer. He continued to smoke, and he shifted constantly thenarrow-brimmed, red-banded straw hat that he wore above his shrewd face.It was an agreeable face to see, of a type that is common wherever theNorth-Irish stock is found in America, and its characteristics wereexpressed in his firm, lean jaw and blue eyes, and his reddish hair andmustache, through which there were streaks of gray. He wore his hairshort, but it was still thick, and he combed it with precision. Hisclothes fitted him; he wore a bright cravat, well tied, and his shoeswere carefully polished. Saxton was impressed by the banker's perfectconfidence and ease; it manifested itself in the way he tapped buttonsto call his subordinates, or turned to satisfy the importunities of thedesk-telephone at his elbow.
John Saxton had been sent to Clarkson by the Neponset Trust Company ofBoston to represent the interests of a group of clients who had maderash investments in several of the Trans-Missouri states. Foreclosurehad, in many instances, resulted in the transfer to themselves of muchtown and ranch property which was, in the conditions existing in theearly nineties, an exceedingly slow asset. It was necessary that someone on the ground should care for these interests. The Clarkson NationalBank had been exercising a general supervision, but, as one of theinvestors told his fellow sufferers in Boston, they should have an agentwhom they could call home and abuse, and here was Saxton, aconscientious and steady fellow, who had some knowledge of the country,and who, moreover, needed something to do. Saxton's acquaintance withthe West had been gained by a bitter experience of ranching in Wyoming.A blizzard had destroyed his cattle, and the subsequent depression inland values in the neighborhood of his ranch had left him encumberedwith a property for which there was no market. His friends had beencorrect in the assumption that he needed employment, and he was,moreover, glad of the chance to get away from home, where the impressionwas making headway that he had failed at something in the vague,non-interest-paying West. When, on his return from Wyoming, it becamenecessary for his former acquaintances to identify him to one another,they said, with varying degrees of kindness, that John had gone broke atranching; and if they liked him particularly, they said it was too bad;if they had not known him well in his fortunate days, they mildlyintimated that a fool and his money found quicker divorce at ranchingthan in any other way. Most of Saxton's friends and contemporaries hadmade good beginnings at home, and he felt, unnecessarily perhaps, thathis failure made him a
marked man among them.
"Now," said Porter presently, scrutinizing a telegram carefully beforesigning it, "I'll take you up to the office we've been keeping for yourpeople, and show you what it looks like. Some of these things are run ascorporations, you understand, and in our state corporations have tomaintain a tangible residence."
"So that the sheriff may find them more easily," added Saxton.
"Well, that's no joke," returned Porter, as they entered the elevatorfrom the outer hall; "but they don't necessarily have much officefurniture to levy on."
The room proved to be a small one at the top of the building. On theground-glass door was inscribed "The Interstate Irrigation Company." Theroom contained a safe, a flat-top desk and a few chairs. Several mapshung on the wall, some of them railroad advertisements, and others wereengineers' charts of ranch lands and irrigation ditches.
"It ain't pretty," said Porter critically, "but if you don't like it youcan move when you get ready. The bank is your landlord, and we don'tcharge you much for it. You've doubtless got your inventory of stuffwith you, and here in the safe you'll find the accounts of thesecompanies, copies of public records relating to them, and so on." AsPorter talked he stood in the middle of the room with his hands in hispockets, and puffed at a cigar, throwing his head back in an effort toescape the smoke. He stood with one foot on a chair and pushed his hataway from his forehead as he continued reflectively: "You're going upagainst a pretty tough proposition, young man. You'll hear a hard luckstory wherever you go out here just now; people who owe your friendsmoney will be mighty sorry they can't pay. Many of the ranch lands yourpeople own will be worth something after a while. That Coloradoirrigation scheme ought to pan out in time, and I believe it will; butyou've got to nurse all these things. Make your principals let youalone. Those fellows get in a hurry at the wrong time,--that's myexperience with Eastern investors. Tell them to go to Europe,--get ridof them for a while, and make them give you a chance to work out theirmoney for them. They're not the only pebbles." A slight smile seemed tocreep over a small area about the banker's lips, but his cigar onlypartly revealed it. His eyes rarely betrayed him, and the monotonousdrawl of his voice was without humorous intention.
"I'll send the combination of the safe up by the boy," he said, movingtoward the door, "and you can get a bird's-eye view of the situationbefore lunch. Mr. Wheaton, our cashier, is away to-day, but he'sfamiliar with these matters and will be glad to help you when he getshome. He'll be back to-night. When you get stuck call on us. And dropdown about twelve thirty and go up to the club for lunch. Take it easy;you can't do it all in one day," he added.
"I hope I shan't be a nuisance to you," said the younger man. "I'mgoing to fight it out on the best lines I know how,--if it takes severalsummers."
"Well, it'll take them all right," said Porter, sententiously.
Left to himself Saxton examined his new quarters, found a feather dusterhanging in a corner and brushed the dirt from the scanty furniture. Thisdone, he drew a pipe from his pocket, filled it from his tobacco pouchand sat down by the open window, through which the breeze came cool outof the great valley; and here he could see, far over the roofs andspires of the town, the bluffs that marked the broad bed of the tawnyMissouri. He was not as buoyant as his last words to the banker implied.Here he was, he reflected, a man of good education, as such things go,who had lost his patrimony in a single venture. He had been sent, partlyout of compassion, he felt, to take charge of investments that wereadmitted to be almost hopelessly bad. The salary promised would providefor him comfortably, and that was about all; anything further woulddepend upon himself, the secretary of the Neponset Trust Company hadtold him; it would, he felt, depend much more particularly on the makingover by benign powers of the considerable part of the earth's surface inwhich his principals' money lay hidden. As his eyes wandered to one ofthe office walls, the black trail of a great transcontinental railroadcaught and held his attention. On one of its northern prongs lay theregion of his first defeat.
"Three years of life are up there," he meditated, "and all my gooddollars are scattered along the right of way." Many things came back tohim vividly--how the wind used to howl around the little ranch house,and how he rode through the snow among his dying cattle in the greatstorm that had been his undoing. With his eyes still resting on the map,he recurred to his early school days and to his four years at Harvard.There was a burden of heartache in these recollections. Incidents of theunconscious brutality of playmates came back to him,--the cruel candorwith which they had rejected him from sports in which proficiency, andnot mere strength or zeal, was essential. He had enjoyed at college noexperience of success in any of those ways which mark the undergraduatefor brief authority or fame. He had never been accepted for the crew norfor the teams that represented the university on diamond or gridiron,though he had always participated in athletics, and was possessed ofunusual strength. None of the professions had appealed to him, and hehad not heeded his father's wish that he enter the law. The elderSaxton, who was himself a lawyer of moderate success, died before John'sgraduation; he had lost his mother in his youth, and his only remainingrelative was a sister who married before he left college.
A review of these brief and discouraging annals did not hearten him; buthe fell back upon the better mood with which he had begun the morning;he had a new chance, and he proposed to make the best of it. He putaside his coat and hat, lighted the pipe which he had been holding inhis hand, and opened his desk. The banker had sent up the combination ofthe safe, as he had promised, and Saxton began inspecting its contentsand putting his office in order.
"I'm in for a long stay," he reflected. "Watson and Terrell and thoseother fellows are just about reaching Park Street, perhaps with virtuousthoughts of having given me a job, if they haven't forgotten me. It'sprobably a pleasant day in Boston, with the flowers looking their bestin the Gardens; but this is better than my Wyoming pastures, anyhow."The books and papers began to interest him, and he was soon classifyingthe properties that had fallen to his care. He was one of thosefortunate individuals who are endowed with a capacity for completeabsorption in the work at hand,--the frequent possession of persons,who, like Saxton, enjoy immunity from visits of the alluringwill-o'-the-wisps that beguile geniuses. He was so deeply occupied thathe did not mark the flight of time and was surprised when a boy camewith a message from Porter that he was ready to go to luncheon.
"Yon mustn't overdo the thing, young man," said the banker amiably, ashe closed his desk. "Don't you adopt our Western method of working allthe hours there are. I do it now because my neighbors and customerswould talk about me if I didn't, and say that I had lost my grip in myold age."
They started up the sloping street, which was intensely hot.
"In my last job I worked twenty hours a day," said Saxton, "and lostmoney in spite of it."
"You mean up in Wyoming; the Neponset people wrote me that you were areformed cattleman."
"Yes, I was winter-killed at the business." He assumed that Porter wouldnot care particularly for the details of his failure. Western men are,he knew, much more tolerant of failure than Eastern men; but he wasrelieved to hear the banker drawling on with a comment on Clarkson, itscommercial history and prospects.
At the twentieth anniversary of the founding of the Clarkson Chamber ofCommerce, the local boy orator, who made a point of quoting Holy Writ inhis speeches, spoke of Clarkson as "no mean city," just as many anotherorator has applied this same apt Pauline phrase to many anothermetropolis. The business of Clarkson had to do with primary employmentsand needs. The cattle of a thousand hills and of many rough pastureswere gathered here; and here wheat and corn from three states wereassembled. In exchange for these products, Clarkson returned to thecountry all of the necessities and some of the luxuries of life. Severalimportant railway lines had their administrative offices here. Ores werebrought from the Rockies, from Mexico, and even from British Columbia,to the great smelters whose smoke and fumes hung over the town. Neitherco
al, wood nor iron lay near at hand, so that manufacturing was almostunknown; but the packing-houses and smelters gave employment to manylaborers, drawn in great measure from the Slavonic races.
Varney Street cut through the town at right angles to the river,bisecting the business district. It then gradually threw off itscommercial aspect until at last it was lined with the homes of most ofClarkson's wealthiest citizens. An exaggerated estimate of the value ofcorner lots had caused many of them to be left vacant; and weeds andsignboards exercised eminent domain between booms. North and south ofVarney Street were other thoroughfares which strove to be equallyfashionable, and here citizens had sometimes built themselves housesthat were, as they said, as good as anything in Varney Street.Everywhere ragged edges remained; old unpainted frame buildings lingeredin blocks that otherwise contained handsome houses. Sugar-loaf cubes ofclay loomed lonesomely, with houses stranded high on their summits,where property owners had been too poor to cut down their bits of earthto conform to new levels. The clay banks were ugly, but they were doomedto remain until the next high tide of prosperity.
The Clarkson Club stood at the edge of the commercial district, and itsMilwaukee brick walls rose hot and staring in the July sun as Porter andSaxton approached.
"Here we are," said Porter, leading the way into the wide hall. "We'llarrange about your business relations later. There's a very bad lunchready upstairs, and we'll go against that first."
There were only a few men in the dining-room, seated at a round table.Porter exchanged salutations with them as he passed on to a small tableat the end of the room. Those who were of his own age called Porter,"Billy," and he included them all in the careless nod of oldacquaintance. Porter offered Saxton the wine card, which the young mandeclined with instinctive knowledge that he was expected to do so. Theytook the simple table d'hote, which was, as Porter had predicted, verybad. The banker ate little and carried the burden of the conversation.
They went from the table for an inspection of the club, and arrangedwith the clerk in the office for a room on the third floor, which Mr.Saxton was to have, so Porter told the clerk, until he didn't want itany more.
"It's all right about the rules," he said; "if the house committee kickabout it, send them to me." They stopped in the lounging room, where themen from the round table were now talking or looking at newspapers.Porter introduced Saxton to all of them, stating in his humorous way,with variations in every case, that this was a new man in town; thatvictims were scarce in hard times, and that they must make the most ofhim. Several of the men who shook hands with Saxton were railroadofficials, but nearly every line of business was represented. All seemedto wear their business consciously, and Saxton was made aware of theirseveral employments in one way or another as he stood talking to them.He felt that their own frankness should elicit a response on his part,and he stated that he had come to represent the interests of "Easternpeople,"--a phrase which, in that territory, has weight andsignificance. This, he thought, should be sufficiently explicit; and hefelt that his interlocutors were probably appraising him with selfisheyes as a possible customer or client. However, they were very cordial,and presently he found that they were chaffing one another for hisbenefit, and trying to bring him within the arc of their own easycomradeship.
"If you're going with me," said Porter at his elbow, "you'd better get amove on you." But the whole group went out together, Porter leavingSaxton to the others, with that confidence in human friendliness whichis peculiar to the social intercourse of men. They made him feel theirhonest wish to consider him one of themselves, making a point of sayingto him, as they dropped out one by one, that they hoped to see himoften. Porter led the way back down Varney Street, smoking meditativelyand carrying his hat in his hand. He said at the bank door: "Now youmake them give you what you want at the club, and if they don't, youwant to raise the everlasting Nick. I've got a house up here on VarneyStreet,--come up for dinner to-morrow night and we'll see if we can'traise a breeze for you. It's hotter than Suez here, and you'd bettertake my advice about starting in slow."
He went into the bank, leaving a trail of smoke behind him; and Saxtontook the elevator for his own office.