Harold MacGrath - The Best Man

CARRINGTON folded the document and thoughtfully balanced it on his palm. What an ironical old world it was! There was a perpendicular wrinkle about his nose, and his lips had thinned into a mere line which drooped at the corners. The drone of a type-writer in the adjoining room sounded above the rattle-tattle of the street below. Through the opened windows came a vague breath of summer redolent of flowers and grasses; for it was but eleven o'clock of the morning, and the smell of sun-baked brick and asphalt had not yet risen through the air. Far beyond the smoking, ragged sky-line Carrington could see the shifting, glittering river and the great ships going down to the sea. Presently the ashes from his dead cigar fell in a gray cascade down his coat and tumbled across his knees, but he gave no heed.

Ironical old world indeed! Here, suddenly and unexpectedly, he found himself upon the battle-field of love and duty, where all honest men find themselves, sooner or later. To pit the heart against the conscience, impulse against calculation! Heigh-ho! Duty is an implacable goddess, and those who serve her most loyally are most ruthlessly driven. She buffets us into this corner and into that, digs pitfalls for the hesitant foot, and crushes the vacillating.

As all men will, Carrington set about to argue down his conscience; the heart is so insistent a counselor. Why should he give up the woman he loved, simply because duty demanded he should? After all, was not duty merely social obligation? What was it to him that the sheep were sheared? Was it right that he, of all men, should divide the house, throw the black pall of dishonesty over it, destroy his own happiness and hers, when so simple a thing as a match would crumble into nothingness this monument to one man's greed and selfishness? The survival of the fittest; if he put aside Self, who would thank him? Few, and many would call him a fool or a meddler. So many voices spoke that he seemed to hear none distinctly.

He alone had made these astonishing discoveries; he alone had followed the cunningly hidden trail of the serpent. He could stop where he was and none would be the wiser. To be sure, it was only a question of time when the scandal would become public through other channels; but in that event he would not be held responsible for bringing about the catastrophe. Besides, the ways of the serpent are devious and many, and other investigators might not come so close to the trail.

He had gone about his investigations without the least idea where they would lead him. At the beginning he had believed that the guilty ones were none higher than petty officials; but presently he found himself going over their heads, higher and higher, until, behold! he was at the lair of the old serpent himself. A client had carelessly dropped a bit of information, and it had taken seed with this surprising result. Henry Cavenaugh, millionaire promoter, financier, trust magnate, director in a hundred money-gathering concerns; Henry Cavenaugh, the father of the girl he loved and who loved him! Could it be he, indeed? It seemed incredible.

It was not a case of misappropriation of funds, such as a man may be guilty of when temporarily hard pressed. It was a bold and fraudulent passing of dividends that rightfully belonged to the investors; of wrongfully issuing statements of bolstered expenses, lack of markets, long strikes (promoted by Cavenaugh and his associates!), insufficient means of transportation. An annual dividend of seven per cent. on many millions had been dishonestly passed over. The reports that there would be no dividends encouraged a slump in the listed price of the stock, and many had sold under par value, thereby netting to Cavenaugh and others several millions. And the proof of all this lay in his hand!

It had been a keen hunt. Many and many a blind trail had he followed, only to come back to the start again. All that now remained for him to do was to pass this document on to the hands of the intrepid district attorney, and justice would be meted out to the guilty.

Her father! The picture of him rose suddenly and distinctly in his mind. Tall, powerfully built, a hooked nose, keen blue eyes, an aggressive chin, a repellent mouth, Henry Cavenaugh was the personification of the modern Crœsus. Immutable in purpose, dogged in perseverance, a relentless enemy, a Jesuit in that the end always justified the means, he stood a pillar in the world of finance, where there is sometimes justice but never any mercy. Thirty-five years before he had been a messenger in a stock-broker's office. Of his antecedents nothing was known until he broke one of the famous gold corners in the seventies, when a handsome, ruddy-cheeked little Irishman bobbed up serenely from nowhere in particular and claimed to be the great Cavenaugh's father. But his proofs were not convincing, and when the son showed a decided contempt for him, he gently subsided into oblivion and was heard of no more. From time to time Carrington gathered a small crumb of information regarding his sweetheart's grandfather; but whenever he broached the subject, however tactfully, everybody concerned headed the conversation for a different port.

Carrington had never laid eyes on the old gentleman, and, for all he knew to the contrary, he might be a myth. He reasoned that in all probability the grandfather was illiterate, uncouth, and rather an awkward piece of family furniture to handle, when the family proper were ingratiating themselves into the Chippendales of society. Unfortunately, Mother Cavenaugh, good-hearted and amiable in her way, had been stung by the bee of the climbers, and her one ambition was to establish herself and daughters in society; and had not he, Carrington, come of an aristocratic family (poor, it is true), the doors of the Cavenaugh manor would never have opened to his knock. Even as it was, he was persona non grata to the millionaire, who was mad for a duke in the family. Besides, Cavenaugh had his suspicions of any lawyer who grubbed outside the breastworks.

Some doves circled above a church-spire a few streets over the way, breaking the sunbeams against their polished wings. Finally they settled on the slate roof and fell to strutting and waddling and swelling their breasts pompously. Carrington opened and refolded the document, but he did not take his eyes from the doves. What should he do? What ill wind had blown this thing into his doorway? Nothing had warned him of the impending tangle. Until two days ago Cavenaugh was at the other end of the world, so far as his investigations at that time were concerned.

He struck a match. The sliver of pine flared palely in the sunshine, writhed and dropped, black and charred, to the floor. He shrugged his shoulders. Chivalry of this sort was not the order of the day. There was something stronger than the voice of duty, something stronger than the voice of the heart; it was the voice of pity, which urged its appeal for the hundreds of men and women who had invested their all in the Cavenaugh concerns. The thought of their ultimate ruin, should Cavenaugh be permitted to pursue his course unchecked, bore heavily upon him. No, he could not do it. He must fight, even if he lost his all in the battle. It is a fine thing to right a wrong. All the great victories in the world have been won for others than the victors. That Cavenaugh was the father of the girl he loved must have no weight on the scales of justice.

Resolutely he thrust the document into his coat pocket, closed his desk and relighted his cigar. In that moment he had mapped out his plan of action. That very night he would lay the whole thing very clearly before the girl herself, and whatever decision she made, he would stand or fall by it, for he knew her to be the soul of honor.