Back Home: Being the Narrative of Judge Priest and His People

At a more remote period he had been the authorized agent, on commission, for a lightning-rod company, selling rods with genuine guaranteed platinum tips; and rusty iron stringers, with forked tails, which still adhered to outlying farm buildings here and there in the county, testified to his activities in this regard. Again, Cash Poindexter had held the patent rights in four counties for an improved cream separator. In the early stages of the vogue for Belgian-hare culture in this country he was the first to import a family group of these interesting animals into our section. He had sold insurance of various sorts, including life, fire and cyclone; he was a notary public; he had tried real estate, and he had once enjoyed the distinction of having read lawbooks and works on medicine simultaneously. But in these, his later years, he had settled down more or less and had become general manager of the gasworks, which position also included the keeping of the books, the reading of meters and the making out and collecting of the monthly accounts. Nevertheless, he was understood to be working at spare moments on an invention that would make him independently wealthy for life. He was a tall, thin, sad man, with long, drooping aide whiskers; and he was continually combing back his side whiskers with both hands caressingly, and this gave him the appearance of a man parting a pair of string portières and getting ready to walk through them, but never doing so.

When this Mr. Betts came down from the North and bought the gasworks it was the general expectation that he would extensively overhaul and enlarge the plant; but he did nothing of the sort, seeming, on the contrary, to be amply satisfied with things as they were. He installed himself as general manager, retained Cash Poindexter as his assistant, and kept right on with the two Kettler boys as his engineers and the two darkies, Ed Greer and Lark Tilghman, as his firemen. He was a man who violated all traditions and ideals concerning how Northern capitalists ought to look. He neither wore a white piqué vest nor smoked long, black cigars; in fact, he didn’t smoke at all. He was a short, square, iron-gray person, with a sort of dead and fossilized eye. He looked as though he might have been rough-hewn originally from one of those soapstone days which grow the harder with age and exposure. He had a hard, exact way of talking, and he wore a hard, exact suit of clothes which varied not, weekdays or Sundays, in texture or in cut.

In short, Mr. Henry Betts, the pioneer Eastern investor in those parts, was a profound disappointment as to personality and performances. Not so with J. Hayden Witherbee. From his Persian-lamb lapels to his patent-leather tips he was the physical embodiment of all the town had learned to expect of a visiting Wall Street capitalist. And he liked the town – that was plain. He spoke enthusiastically of the enterprise which animated it; he referred frequently and with praise to the awakening of the New South, and he was even moved to compliment publicly the cooking at the Richland House. It was felt that a stranger and a visitor could go no further.

Also, he moved fast, J. Hayden Witherbee did, showing the snap and push so characteristic of the ruling spirits of the great moneymarts of the East. Before he had been in town a week he had opened negotiations for the purchase outright of the new Light and Power Company, explaining frankly that if he could come to terms he intended making it a part of his projected interurban railway. Would the present owners care to sell at a fair valuation? – that was what Mr. Witherbee desired to know.

Would a drowning man grasp at a life-preserver? Would a famished colt welcome the return of its maternal parent at eventide? Would the present owners, carrying on their galled backs an unprofitable burden which local pride had forced upon them – would they sell? Here, as manna sent from Heaven by way of Wall Street, as you might say, was a man who would buy from them a property which had never paid and which might never pay; and who, besides, meant to do something noble and big for the town. Would they sell? Ask them something hard!

There was a series of conferences – if two conferences can be said to constitute a series – one in Mr. Witherbee’s room at the hotel, where cigars of an unknown name but an impressive bigness were passed round freely; and one in the office of the president of the Planters’ National Bank. Things went well and swimmingly from the first; Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee had a most clear and definite way of putting things; and yet, with all that, he was the embodiment of cordiality and courtesy. So charmed was Doctor Lake with his manner that he asked him, right in the midst of vital negotiations, if he were not of Southern descent; and when he confessed that his mother’s people had come from Virginia Doctor Lake said he had felt it from the first moment they met, and insisted on shaking hands with Mr. Witherbee again.

“Gentlemen,” said Mr. Witherbee – this was said at the first meeting, the one in his room – “as I have already told you, I need this town as a terminal for my interurban road and I need your plant. I expect, of course, to enlarge it and to modernize it right up to the minute; but, so far as it goes, it is a very good plant and I want it. I suggest that you gentlemen, constituting the directors and the majority stockholders, get together between now and tomorrow – this evening, say – and put a price on the property. Tomorrow I will meet you again, here in this hotel or at any point you may select; and if the price you fix seems fair, and the papers prove satisfactory to my lawyers, I know of no reason why we cannot make a trade. Gentlemen, good day. Take another cigar all round before leaving.” They went apart and confabbed industriously – old Major Covington, who was the president of the Light and Power Company Doctor Lake and Captain Woodward, the two heaviest stockholders, Colonel Courtney Cope, the attorney for the company and likewise a director, and sundry others. Between themselves, being meanwhile filled with sweet and soothing thoughts, they named a price that would let them out whole, with a margin of interest on the original venture, and yet one which, everything considered – the growing population, the new suburbs and all that – was a decent enough price. They expected to be hammered down a few thousand and were prepared to concede something; but it would seem that the big men of the East did not do business in that huckstering, cheese-trimming way. Time to them was evidently worth more than the money to be got by long chaffering over a proposition.

“Gentlemen,” J. Hayden Witherbee had said right off, “the figures seem reasonable and moderate. I think I will buy from you.” A warm glow visibly lit up the faces of those who sat with him. It was as though J. Hayden Witherbee was an open fireplace and threw off a pleasant heat.

“I will take over these properties,” repeated Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee; “but on one condition – I also want the ownership of your local gasworks.”

There was a little pause and the glow died down a trifle – just the merest trifle. “But, sir, we do not own those gasworks,” said the stately Major Covington.

“I know that,” said Mr. Witherbee; “but the point is – can’t you acquire them?”

“I suppose we might,” said the major; “but, Mr. Witherbee, that gasworks concern is worn out – our electric-light plant has nearly put it out of business.”

“I understand all that too,” Mr. Witherbee went on, “perfectly well. Gentlemen, where I come from we act quickly, but we look before we leap. During the past twenty-four hours I have examined into the franchise of those gasworks. I find that nearly forty years ago your common council issued to the original promoters and owners of the gas company a ninety-year charter, giving the use of any and all of your streets, not only for the laying of gas mains, but for practically all other purposes. It was an unwise thing to do, but it was done and it stands so today. Gentlemen, this is a growing community in the midst of a rich country. I violate no confidence in telling you that capital is looking this way. I am merely the forerunner – the first in the field. The Gatins crowd, in Chicago, has its eyes upon this territory, as I have reason to know. You are, of course, acquainted with the Gatins crowd?” he said in a tone of putting a question.

Major Covington, who made a point of never admitting that he didn’t know everything, nodded gravely and murmured the name over to himself as though he were trying to remember Gatins’ initials. The others sat silent, impressed more than ever with the wisdom of this stranger who had so many pertinent facts at his finger tips.

“Suppose now,” went on Mr. Witherbee – “suppose, now, that Ike Gratins and his crowd should come down here and find out what I have found out and should buy out that gas company. Why, gentlemen, under the terms of that old franchise, those people could actually lay tracks right through the streets of this little city of yours. They could parallel our lines – they could give us active opposition right here on the home ground. It might mean a hard fight. Therefore I need those gasworks. I may shut them up or I may run them – but I need them in my business.

“I have inquired into the ownership of this concern,” continued Mr. Witherbee before any one could interrupt him, “and I find it was recently purchased outright by a gentleman from somewhere up my way named – named – ” He snapped his fingers impatiently.

“Named Betts,” supplied Doctor Lake – “named Henry Betts.”

“Quite so,” Mr. Witherbee assented. “Thank you, doctor – Betts is the name. Now the fact that the whole property is vested in one man simplifies the matter – doesn’t it? Of course I would not care to go to this Mr. Betts in person. You understand that.” If they didn’t understand they let on they did, merely nodding and waiting for more light to be let in.

“Once let it be known that I was personally interested in a consolidation of your lighting plants, and this Mr. Betts, if I know anything about human nature, would advance his valuation far beyond its proper figure. Therefore I cannot afford to be known in the matter. You see that?”

They agreed that they saw.

“So I would suggest that all of you – or some of you – go and call upon Mr. Betts and endeavor to buy the gasworks from him outright. If you can get the plant for anything like its real value you may include the amount in the terms of the proposition you have today made me and I will take over all of the properties together.

“However, remember this, gentlemen – there is need of haste. Within forty-eight hours I should be in Memphis, where I am to confer with certain of my associates – Eastern men like myself, but who, unlike me, are keeping under cover – to confer with them concerning our rights-of-way through the cotton-raising country. I repeat, then, that there is pressing need for immediate action. May I offer you gentlemen fresh cigars?” and he reached for a well-stuffed, silver-mounted case of dull leather.

But they were already going – going in a body to see Mr. Henry Betts, late of somewhere up North. Mr. J. Hayden Witherbee’s haste, great though it might be, could be no greater than theirs. On their way down Market Street to the gashouse it was decided that, unless the exigencies of the situation demanded a chorus of argument, Major Covington should do the talking. Indeed it was Major Covington who suggested this. Talking, with financial subjects at the back of the talk, was one of the things at which the major fancied himself a success.

Mr. Betts sat in the clutter of his small, untidy office like an elderly and reserved gray rat in a paper nest behind a wainscoting. His feet, in square-toed congress gaiters, rested on the fender of a stove that was almost small enough to be an inkstand, and his shoulders were jammed back against a window-ledge. By merely turning his head he commanded a view of his entire property, with the engine house in the near distance and the round tunlike belly of the gas tank rising just beyond it. He was alone.

As it happened, he knew all of his callers, having met them in the way of business – which was the only way he ever met anybody. To each man entering he vouchsafed the same greeting – namely, “How-do?” – spoken without emotion and mechanically.

Major Covington had intended to shake hands with Mr. Betts, but something about Mr. Betts’ manner made him change his mind. He cleared his throat impressively; the major did nearly everything impressively.

“A fine day, sir,” said the major.

Mr. Betts turned his head slightly to the left and peered out through a smudged pane as if seeking visual confirmation of the statement before committing himself. A look seemed to satisfy him.

“It is,” he agreed, and waited, boring his company with his geologic gaze.

“Ahem!” sparred Major Covington – “think I will take a chair.”

As Mr. Betts said nothing to this, either one way or the other, the major took a chair, it being the only chair in sight, with the exception of the chair in which Mr. Betts was slumped down and from which Mr. Betts had not stirred. Doctor Lake perched himself upon a bookkeeper’s tall stool that wabbled precariously. Three other anxious local capitalists stood where they could find room, which was on the far side of the stove.

“Very seasonable weather indeed,” ventured the old major, still fencing for his start.

“So you remarked before, I believe,” said Mr. Betts dryly. “Did you wish to see me on business?”

Inwardly ‘the major was remarking to himself how astonishing it was that one section of the country – to wit, the North – could produce men of such widely differing types as this man and the man whose delightful presence they had just quitted; could produce a gentleman like J. Hayden Witherbee, with whom it was a positive pleasure to discuss affairs of moment, and a dour, sour, flinty person like this Betts, who was lacking absolutely in the smaller refinements that should govern intercourse between gentlemen – and wasn’t willing to learn them either. Outwardly the major, visibly flustered, was saying: “Yes – in a measure. Yes, we came on a matter of business.” He pulled up somewhat lamely. Really the man’s attitude was almost forbidding. It verged on the sinister.

“What was the business?” pressed Mr. Betts in a colorless and entirely disinterested tone of voice.

“Well, sir,” said Major Covington stiffly, and his rising temper and his sense of discretion were now wrestling together inside of him – “well, sir, to be brief and to put it in as few words as possible, which from your manner and conversation I take to be your desire, I – we – my associates here and myself – have called in to say that we are interested naturally in the development of our little city and its resources and its industries; and with these objects in view we have felt, and, in fact, we have agreed among ourselves, that we would like to enter into negotiations with you, if possible, touching, so to speak, on the transfer to us of the property which you control here. Or, in other words, we – ”

“Do you mean you want to buy these gasworks?”

“Yes,” confessed the major; “that – that is it. We would like to buy these gasworks.”

“Immediately!” blurted out Doctor Lake, teetering on his high perch. The major shot a chiding glance at his compatriot. Mr. Betts looked over the top of the stove at the major, and then beyond him at the doctor, and then beyond the doctor at the others. Then he looked out of the window again.

“They are not for sale,” he stated; and his voice indicated that he regarded the subject as being totally exhausted.

“Yes, quite so; I see,” said Major Covington suavely; “but if we could agree on a price now – a price that would be satisfactory to you – and to us – ”

“We couldn’t agree on a price,” said Mr. Betts, apparently studying something in connection with the bulging side of the gas tank without, “because there isn’t any price to agree on. I bought these gasworks and I own them, and I am satisfied to go on owning them. Therefore they are not for sale. Did you have any other business with me?”

There was something almost insulting in the way this man rolled his r’s when he said “therefore.” Checking an inclination to speak on the part of Doctor Lake the major controlled himself with an effort and said:

“Nevertheless, we would appreciate it very much, sir, if you could and would go so far as to put a figure – any reasonable figure – on this property.. We would like very much to get an expression from you – a suggestion – or – or – something of that general nature,” he tailed off.

“Very well,” said Mr. Betts, biting the words off short and square, “very well. I will What you want to know is my price for these gasworks?”

“Exactly so,” said the major, brightening up.

“Very well,” repeated Mr. Betts. “Sixty thousand.”

Doctor Lake gave such a violent start that he lost his hat out of his lap. Captain Woodward’s jaw dropped.

“Sixty thousand!” echoed Major Covington blankly. “Sixty thousand what?”

“Sixty thousand dollars,” said Mr. Betts, “in cash.”

Major Covington fairly sputtered surprise and chagrin.

“But, Mr. Betts, sir,” he protested, “I happen to know that less than four months ago you paid only about twenty-seven thousand dollars for this entire business!”

“Twenty-six thousand five hundred, to be exact,” corrected Mr. Betts.

“And since that time you have not added a dollar’s worth of improvement to it,” added the dismayed major.

“Not one cent – let alone a dollar,” assented this most remarkable man.

“But surely you don’t expect us to pay such a price as that?” pleaded tie major.

“I do not,” said Mr. Betts.

“We couldn’t think of paying such a price as that.”

“I don’t expect you to,” said Mr. Betts. “I didn’t ask you to. As I said before, these gasworks are not for sale. They suit me just as they are. They are not on the market; but you insist that I shall name a price and I name it – sixty thousand in cash. Take it or leave it.”

Having concluded this, for him, unusually long speech, Mr. Betts brought his fingertips together with great mathematical exactness, matching each finger and each thumb against its fellow as though they were all parts of a sum in addition that he was doing. With his fingers added up to his satisfaction and the total found correct, he again turned his gaze out of the smudgy window. This time it was something on the extreme top of the gas tank which seemed to engage his attention. Cassius Poindexter opened the street door and started in; but at the sight of so much company he checked himself on the threshold, combed back his side whiskers nervously, bowed dumbly and withdrew, closing the door softly behind him.

“If we could only reach some reasonable basis of figuring now,” said the major, addressing Mr. Betts’ left ear and the back of Mr. Betts’ head – “say, forty thousand, now?” Mr. Betts squinted his Stone Age eyes the better to see out of the dirty window.

“Or even forty-five?” supplemented Doctor Lake, unable to hold in any longer. “Why, damn it, sir, forty-five thousand is a fabulous price to pay for this junkpile.”

“Sixty thousand – in cash!” The ultimatum seemed to issue from the rear of Mr. Betts’ collar.

Major Covington glanced about him, taking toll of the expressions of his associates. On their faces sorrowful capitulation was replacing chagrin. He nodded toward them and together they nodded back sadly.

“How much did you say you wanted down?” gulped the major weakly.

“All down,” announced Mr. Betts in a tone of finality; “all in cash. Those are my terms.”

“But it isn’t regular!” babbled Colonel Cope.

“It isn’t regular for a man to sell something he doesn’t want to sell either,” gulped Mr. Betts. “I bought for cash and I sell for cash. I never do business any other way.”

“How much time will you give us?” asked the major. The surrender was complete and unconditional.

“Until this time tomorrow,” said Mr. Betts; “then the deal is off.” Doctor Lake slid off his stool, or else he fell off. At any rate, he descended from it hurriedly. His face was very red.

“Well, of all the – ” he began; but the major and the colonel had him by the arms and were dragging him outside. When they were gone – all of them – Mr. Betts indulged himself in the luxury of a still, small smile – a smile that curled his lips back just a trifle and died of frostbite before it reached his fossilized eyes.

“Gentlemen,” Mr. Witherbee was saying in his room at the Richland House ten minutes later, “the man has you at his mercy and apparently he knows it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had not already been in communication with the Gatins crowd. His attitude is suspicious. As I view it, it is most certainly suspicious. Gentlemen, I would advise you to close with him. He is asking a figure far in excess of the real value of the works – but what can you do?”

“And will you take the gasworks at sixty thousand?” inquired Major Covington hopefully.

“Ah, gentlemen,” said Mr. Witherbee, and his smile was sympathetic and all-embracing, “that, I think, is asking too much; but, in view of the circumstances, I will do this – I will take them at” – he paused to consider – “I will take them, gentlemen, at fifty thousand. In time I think I can make them worth that much to me; but fifty thousand is as far as I can go – positively. You stand to lose ten thousand on your deal for the gasworks, but I presume you will make that back and more on your sale to me of the light and power plant. Can’t I offer you fresh cigars, gentlemen?”

If for any reason a run had started on any one of the three local banks the next day there would have been the devil and all to pay, because there was mighty little ready money in any one of them. Their vaults had been scraped clean of currency; and that currency, in a compact bundle, was rapidly traveling eastward in the company of a smallish iron-gray man answering to the name of Betts. At about the same moment Mr. Witherbee, with the assistance of the darky porter of the Richland House, was packing his wardrobe into an ornate traveling kit. As he packed he explained to Doctor Lake and Major Covington:

“I am called to Memphis twenty-four hours sooner than I had expected. Tomorrow we close a deal there involving, I should say, half a million dollars. Let us see – this is Wednesday – isn’t it? I will return here on Friday morning. Meanwhile you may have the papers drawn by your attorney and ready for submission to my lawyer, Mr. Sharkey, who should arrive tomorrow from Cincinnati. If he finds them all shipshape, as I have every reason to expect he will find them, then, on Friday morning, gentlemen, we will sign up and I will pay the binder, amounting to – how much? – ninety thousand, I believe, was the figure we agreed upon. Quite so. Gentlemen, you will find a box of my favorite cigars on that bureau yonder. Help yourselves.”

No lawyer named Sharkey arrived from Cincinnati on Thursday; no J. Hayden Witherbee returned from Memphis on Friday, – nor was there word from him by wire or mail. The papers, drawn in Colonel Cope’s best legal style, all fringed and trimmed with whereases and wherefores, waited – and waited. Telegrams which Major Covington sent to Memphis remained unanswered; in fact, undelivered. Major Covington suddenly developed a cold and sinking sensation at the pit of his stomach. In his associates he discerned signs of the same chilling manifestation. It seemed to occur to all of them at once that nobody had asked J. Hayden Witherbee for his credentials or had inquired into his antecedents. Glamoured by the grandeur of his person, they had gone along with him – had gone along until now blindly. Saturday, hour by hour, darkling suspicion grew in each mind and reared itself like a totem pole adorned with snake-headed, hawk-clawed figments of dread. And on Saturday, for the first time in a solid week the Daily Evening News carried no front-page account of the latest doings and sayings of J. Hayden Witherbee.

Upon a distracted conference, taking place Saturday night in the directors’ room of the bank, intruded the sad figure of Cassius Poindexter, combing back his side whiskers like a man eternally on the point of parting a pair of lace curtains and never coming through them.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but I’ve got something to say that I think you gentlemen oughter hear. If you thought those two – Witherbones, or whatever his name is, and my late employer, Henry Betts – if you all thought those two were strangers to one another you were mistaken – that’s all. Two weeks ago I saw a letter on Betts’ desk signed by this man Witherbee – if that’s his name. And Tuesday when Betts told me he was goin’ to sell out, I remembered it.”