The Apple of Discord

The man appeared carried away with fright; his claw-like hands worked convulsively, and a perspiration started on his forehead. I saw in his eyes a foretaste of the terrors of unsuccessful crime, and that as he remembered the purposes that lay behind those rifles in the Council's armory, his conscience conjured up the vision of the police and the hangman stretching forth their hands to seize him.

"Good God, Bolton!" cried General Wilson again. "What have you been doing? You couldn't look more upset if you had murdered your grandmother and Hampden had uncovered the corpse."

"It's nothing–nothing," gasped Bolton, recovering himself with an effort; "just a little joke we have–just a little joke." And he framed his thin lips into the semblance of a ghastly smile.

General Wilson's red face grew redder yet as an angry color swept over it.

"Well, you've got too many jokes to suit me, and a damned queer taste in humor–that's all I've got to say about it. I came to talk business, and you've been wasting my time with your tomfoolery." And with an angry wave of his hand he got to his feet and strode out.

Almost before General Wilson had reached the hall, Bolton had turned eagerly to me.

"Come in and shut the door," he said with a quavering voice. "That gilded ass may stop to listen."

He was silent a minute as I obeyed him, and I surmised that he was turning over in his mind the possible plans by which I might be gagged. And as he motioned me to a seat his calculating eye was taking my measure with all the coolness of a butcher estimating the value of a steer.

"You are a young man," he began with an insinuating drawl.

I admitted the charge, but offered him the consolation to be drawn from the theory that I should probably get over it in time. He paid no attention to my flippant suggestion, but continued in a slow tone of ironic emphasis:

"You are old enough, though, to know that you have got to look out for your own Interests. That's what every Man must do, if he wants to keep in Business." Peter Bolton's sarcastic drawl punctuated his important words with capitals. "If you don't think enough of your Interests to look out for Yourself, nobody is going to look out for them for you."

"If you want to do me a good turn," I said with strategic frankness, "you might tell me what your business is with Big Sam."

He was not to be caught off his guard again. He paid no attention to my words, but continued with more of propitiation in his voice than I had considered possible.

"Now, you're a Man of the World–young as you are–and you have seen something of Business. You have seen the man who has given his best years to making money for the other fellow turned adrift as soon as the other fellow finds somebody who can make more money for him. That's the Gratitude of Business, young man–the Gratitude of Business. I've seen a man who made fifty thousand dollars for his employer in a trade turned out inside of six months because somebody offered to work for twenty-five dollars less a month. That's what you get when you look out for your Employer's interests instead of your Own." The depth of sarcasm in Peter Bolton's drawl was portentous.

I did not know whether to be amused or indignant at this attempt to teach me the folly of loyalty and the essential respectability of treachery. So I gave a nod of comprehension, which he took for encouragement, and he continued:

"Now, I'm a plain-speaking old fellow, and I won't talk nonsense to you about Gratitude or Friendship. I won't say a word about the things I'll do for you Some day. I'll just talk Cash in Hand to you, with no back bills to be paid with promises on either side."

"Very good," I replied, "but I'd rather you would answer the questions about Big Sam and the Council of Nine."

Bolton gave me a cunning look.

"I want you to take up some private business for me," he said slowly, "and I'll give you ten thousand dollars for sixty days' work."

"What work?" I asked sharply, my indignation getting the better of my amusement.

"Confidential work," said Bolton deliberately. "I want a representative in Kendrick's office, and you're the best man I know for the job."

My repressed indignation broke forth at this brazen proffer of a bribe, and I jumped to my feet and shook my fist in Peter Bolton's face.

"You old scoundrel!" I cried. "If you were a younger man, I'd thump the breath out of you!"

"You are a bigger Fool than I thought," said Bolton in his most sarcastic voice. And he threw back his head and opened his mouth in silent laughter.

"I give you warning," I continued, "that I shall tell Colonel Kendrick of your offer."

The unabashed Bolton drew down the corners of his mouth in a sarcastic smile, and his sarcastic voice followed me as I opened the door:

"If Kendrick offers you eleven thousand, come back and I'll see if I can do better."

CHAPTER X

A COUNCIL OF WAR

"No," said Laura Kendrick, in her piquant voice, "uncle isn't at home, but he sent word he would be back at nine o'clock. You look very important, but I'm sure it's something that will wait an hour."

"It is a bit important," I replied, thinking grimly of the thirty-thousand-dollar contribution to the Council of Nine, the thousand rifles, and Peter Bolton's self-revelations in his attempt to bribe me. "I've been hunting Mr. Kendrick all day about it. But it has kept without spoiling for eight or nine hours already, so another sixty minutes will do no harm."

"Well, then," said Miss Kendrick, "I won't keep you standing in the hall. I came out when your name was announced, to let you know that Mr. Baldwin is in the library, and Mercy will be down in a few minutes. So you can have your choice of waiting in there, or you can find an easy chair in uncle's den."

"Oh, if that is the choice, give me the library, by all means."

"You may think your tone is complimentary, but I'll tell you I don't consider it so. He's a very agreeable man, and you had better be very civil, or I shall banish you to the den, after all." Then she changed her half-bantering tone to one of earnestness, and halted me at the library door. "What is it you are about?" she asked. "Is uncle in danger?"

"I believe not," I replied.

She laid her hand upon my arm.

"You would not answer so unless he were. What is it that you fear?" And her brown eyes looked anxiously up into mine.

"There is no danger that I can learn of that threatens your uncle. I believe he is perfectly safe."

She threw my arm aside with a gesture of irritation.

"Do you think I have not the right to know?" she exclaimed. "Do you think I could be of no use? Do you think I ought to be shut up in the dark, wondering what is going to happen?"

"You are worrying yourself without need," I said. "You can hold me responsible for his safety."

"It is the trouble with old Mr. Bolton, is it not?" she asked after a pause.

I balanced the advantages of a lie and the truth.

"Yes, it is on that business that I am engaged."

"And you will tell me nothing about it." There was a trace of bitterness in her tone, and giving a shrug of resentful resignation she opened the door to the library and preceded me into the room.

Mr. Baldwin sat there wrapped in his superiority to all created things, and gave me a stiff nod of recognition, but melted into something resembling geniality as Laura Kendrick took a chair by his side. Mercy Fillmore had come in at the other door while we had been carrying on our skirmish in the hall, and now made room for me on the sofa beside her.

"I'm glad you came," she said. "I wanted to ask you something." The soothing quality of Mercy Fillmore's voice and manner was doubly welcome after the rasping that Laura Kendrick had managed to inflict upon my spirit as the just punishment for the crime of incommunicativeness.

I responded to Miss Fillmore's greeting with fitting words.

"Well," she continued, "what I wanted to ask you was this: Do you think there is any danger to this house from having the Chinese girl here?"

"Why, no; I hardly think so. Big Sam assured me that there was not." Then, after a moment's hesitation, I added: "While I don't doubt Big Sam's good faith in the matter, I have taken the precaution to have the place well guarded. There are four watchmen outside at the present moment–unless I underestimate the attractions of the corner grocery; and the highbinder who tries to get in will have the warmest five minutes of his life."

"How kind of you to attend to that!" said Miss Fillmore. "But I wasn't thinking of the highbinders. What set me to asking you was a meeting I had with Mr. Parks to-day."

"Parks!" I exclaimed in surprise. "You know him?"

"Oh, yes, indeed. We were children together, and I count him as a good friend." A blush that tinted her cheeks suggested that the friendship was a little nearer than she would have me believe.

"Then I wish you would get him to cut his hair! I think it would save him from getting hanged."

"How absurd you are!"

"Merely an application of the theory of clothes–Sartor Resartus, and all that, you know. Dress to a part, and you get the spirit of it."

"You are joking," said Miss Fillmore, with the seriousness of one to whom the sense of humor is beyond understanding.

"Not at all," I returned. "If Parks came down to the normal supply of hair he might get rid of some abnormal ideas that are going to bring him into trouble."

Miss Fillmore looked at me doubtfully a moment, and again expressed her opinion that I was joking. Then she put aside the subject as one beyond her comprehension, and continued:

"But never mind. I met him this afternoon when I was out taking the air, and he said that there was going to be trouble in the city, and asked if we kept any Chinese servants."

"Yes? And if you did–?"

"Well, we don't, and I told him so, and he said if we did we had better turn them away in a hurry. Then he went on to tell me that there was going to be an uprising of the people, and that the unemployed might make an attack on the Chinese and those who hire them. Now, do you think that the presence of our poor little Moon Ying will bring the mob here?"

"Mr. Parks could answer that question much better than I."

"I asked him, and he said 'Oh, no'–that his people were not warring on women or the sick; but I feared he was too hopeful."

"I do not think there is the slightest danger," I replied. "If Mr. Parks' friends get to be too obstreperous, the police will make short work of them. But I don't think they are enterprising enough to get so far away from Tar Flat." I spoke with a confidence that was more assumed than real.

"Oh, indeed they are. There was some one here to-day about the matter. Laura, my dear," she said, raising her voice and earning a frown from Mr. Baldwin by breaking into his monopoly; "Laura, my dear, didn't you say there was some one here to-day inquiring about Chinese?"

"Indeed there was," said Miss Laura, emphasizing the statement with an indignant nod. "He was a very disagreeable man, and insisted on seeing the lady of the house, so at last I went to the door. I found him horribly impolite. I had to tell him three times that I was the lady before he would believe me."

"What sort of looking man was he? And what did he say?" I asked.

"Oh, he was well-looking enough–a man of good size, about thirty, with a black mustache and an insolent way. What he said was that he hoped we didn't employ any Chinese. I just told him that I was much obliged to him for his interest in us, but as I couldn't see that it concerned him I would ask to be excused. Then he got saucy, and said that if I wouldn't listen to him I would have to listen to a mob–that wasn't what he called it, but that's what he meant. He said he was a delegate from some anti-coolie club or convention, or something of the sort, with a hundred thousand members, and they were going to see that the Chinese were discharged and white men put in their places."

"That's rather a large contract," said Mr. Baldwin. "I hope you shut the door in his face. I should like to have given employment to one white man to boot him off the place."

"Well," continued Miss Kendrick, "I was too mad to tell him that uncle is so opposed to the Chinese that he's never allowed one about the house. I just said that we hadn't any Chinese now, but if he would come around in about two weeks we would try to accommodate him."

"A soft answer," I said. "I hope it turned away wrath."

"Well, he got saucier, and I told him to go, and he went. I'm afraid I wasn't polite. But I'm as sorry as sorry can be now, for he told me he had been out of work for six months because the Chinese had taken the factory that had employed him, and I'm sure it is a very unpleasant thing to be turned out of the place where you make your living." Miss Kendrick's voice had softened with her last words, and the light of womanly sympathy shone in her eyes.

"You are right, my dear," said Miss Fillmore. "It has been a hard year for many. We have been appealed to by scores of men who have been turned out of one place and could find no other."

"Serves 'em right," said Mr. Baldwin shortly. "If they can't keep their jobs, they ought to lose them. This talk about Chinese competition is absolute nonsense. A competent man can find work any time. The anti-Chinese howl comes from the fellows who don't want to work, and wouldn't work if there wasn't a Chinaman within eight thousand miles."

"I hope you are right," said Miss Kendrick. "It isn't good for the spirits to think of men going hungry when they are willing to labor."

"You needn't distress yourself, Miss Laura," said Mr. Baldwin, with an air of contempt for the difficulties of the unemployed. "You couldn't drive those fellows to work with a Gatling gun. This talk about Chinese taking away their jobs is just an excuse for them to get out on street corners and howl about their wrongs, in the hope that somebody like you and Mercy will set up a soup-house for them."

"I am afraid you haven't looked into the matter," said Miss Fillmore. "Our Helping Hand Society has found much real distress from want of employment. You don't agree with Mr. Baldwin, do you, Mr. Hampden?"

"Certainly not," said I, with some irritation at Mr. Baldwin's scornful airs. "The anti-Chinese cry may have been taken up by those who had rather talk than work, but there is plenty of foundation for the statement that the Chinese are driving white men out of employment."

"I have found nothing of the sort in my experience," said Mr. Baldwin contemptuously.

"Well, your experience is not that of men in business," I returned warmly. "You will find that class for class the Chinaman can run the white man out of any line he enters. The Chinese laborer can work and live on less wages than the white laborer; the Chinese merchant can grow wealthy in a market that would throw the white merchant into bankruptcy, and the Chinese manufacturer thrives under conditions that drive his white competitor to the wall."

"What do you mean by talking that way, Hampden?" cried Mr. Baldwin with irritation. "You know well enough that you're not serious. It's impossible."

A sharp answer was on the tip of my tongue when Miss Kendrick interposed.

"That will do for a very stupid debate," she said. "You can put the rest of it in the papers. I think I hear the doctor, and I want Mr. Hampden to come and see him." And with a peremptory wave of her hand she rose, and I followed her out into the hall. As the door closed she dropped her commanding manner. "Do you know it is ten o'clock?" she said, "and uncle hasn't come in yet." Her tone was troubled.

"Is it anything unusual?" I asked.

"I suppose you think it's a case of nerves," she said, "and maybe it is. But I shouldn't worry if he hadn't sent word to me that he would be here by nine. I'm afraid something has happened, and I want you to see about it."

"Have you any idea where he went?"

"He spoke of going to Mr. Coleman's."

"William T. Coleman's?"

"Yes."

"Well, that will be a good place to start a search, then." And I secured my hat.

"It's good of you to go," said Miss Kendrick.

"Am I forgiven?" I asked, taking the small hand that lay so temptingly near my own, and bending over it.

"There, that will do," she said, snatching her hand away and retreating in some confusion. "Your pardon for being an obstinate man-creature is signed, and you'd better not imperil it by any Louis Quatorze manners. And I'm sure you'd better not waste any more time."

Once out of the house my fears for Wharton Kendrick became more lively, and I hastened to the Coleman residence.

"Take my card to Colonel Kendrick," I said briskly to the man who opened the door.

He looked at it doubtfully a moment. But my assured air, and the "Attorney at law" that announced my business in unmistakable type impressed him, and he called a fellow servant to his side, gave him the card with a word of instruction, and advised me to be seated.

After a few minutes of waiting I wondered whether I would not have done better, after all, to ask speech with the master of the house, and I was just on the point of requesting the Cerberus to take my name to Mr. Coleman, when my dubitations were cut short by the opening of a door, and a sudden outburst of voices, which softened to an indistinguishable murmur as it closed again, and Colonel Kendrick came walking down the hall.

"Ah, Hampden," he said gravely, stroking his flame-tinted whiskers, "I'm not sure whether I am glad to see you or not. What has happened? Anything?"

"Well, I'm in no doubt about being glad to see you," I returned. "I've been suspecting you were knocked on the head."

"Pooh!" said Wharton Kendrick. "I'm in no danger. Don't worry about me. What you want to do is to find out what the other fellow is doing. Can you tell me that?"

"Certainly. He left his office at six o'clock, went directly to his house, and hasn't stirred out of it since."

"Very good. Now, I believe you had something to tell me." And his eye wandered uneasily to the door from behind which the confused murmur swelled with tantalizing indistinctness.

"Yes: I have been hunting you all day to tell you that I received word this morning that the Council of Nine had bought a thousand rifles."

This bit of news brought no answering sign of surprise on the face of my client.

"Well," he said thoughtfully, "I wasn't much behind you in getting the information. I heard about it this afternoon on the street."

"On the street!" I exclaimed. "It was told to me as a profound secret." It seemed an altogether perplexing thing that the information that Clark had considered it death to reveal should be the talk of commercial San Francisco.

"Well," said Wharton Kendrick with a smile, "if it's a secret it's one that needs a good deal of help in keeping it. I heard it from a dozen different directions."

"There will be some astonished men in the Council if they hear of this report," I said.

A grim smile wrinkled Wharton Kendrick's ruddy cheeks, and drove for a moment the thoughtful look from his eyes. He put his hands in his pockets and threw himself back in his chair.

"Well," he said, "you can expect them to have an attack of heart disease at the breakfast-table then. It will all be in the papers in the morning. But, to tell the truth, I got the impression that the nine members of the Council and all their friends were giving their afternoon to circulating the report."

I was a little piqued at the staleness of my information.

"Since you are so well-posted about the purchase of the rifles–" I began.

"The alleged purchase of the rifles," interrupted Wharton Kendrick.

"The purchase of the rifles," I repeated. "I suppose I don't need to tell you where the money came from to pay for them."

"Oh," said Wharton Kendrick carelessly, "it doesn't take much money to get up a report."

"Well, it took thirty thousand dollars for this one."

"Pooh, Hampden, you've been dreaming. That crowd couldn't raise thirty thousand cents."

"Not alone, I grant you. But you will admit that it might be done with the assistance of a generous-hearted millionaire who has been convinced of the loftiness of their aims."

"What the devil are you driving at, Hampden? Talk plain United States." Wharton Kendrick sat bolt upright, and looked at me sternly, with the light of half-comprehension in his eyes.

"In plain language, then, Peter Bolton paid thirty thousand dollars into the treasury of the Council of Nine night before last, and the rifles have been bought with his money."

Kendrick jumped to his feet. His ruddy face went pale, and then turned ruddier than ever.

"Bolton!" he cried. "How do you know that?"

I gave Clark's account of the matter, recalled Bolton's dealings with the Council, and clenched the conclusion with the corroborative testimony of my interview with Bolton in his office. Wharton Kendrick settled back in his chair and received my tale in a brown study. Before I had done, he interrupted me.

"I see his game. This puts a different face on the matter. Come in here." And rising suddenly he seized me by the arm and marched me into the room from which he had come, with the authoritative air of a policeman haling a burglar to prison.

The room to which I was introduced in this ignominious fashion was of moderate size, and the score or so of men who were gathered there filled it comfortably. I had noted in the company several of the leading financial men of the city, when Wharton Kendrick brought me to a halt before a tall, broad-shouldered, full-faced man, with a long gray mustache, kindly gray eyes, and a calm, resourceful expression.

"Coleman, let me introduce my attorney, Mr. Hampden,"–I became suddenly grateful that he had presented me in this character–"son of Dick Hampden, you remember. He brings news that puts a different face on affairs."

I had seen William T. Coleman on the street, and had known something of his romantic history. His leadership of the forces of order in the city, when the criminals of 1851 and 1856 left no remedy to honest men but that of revolution, had impressed my imagination, and I was prepared to feel the glow of admiration that warmed my spirit as he shook my hand with a kindly word. No one could approach the man without receiving the impression of quiet force; yet it was, after all, difficult to realize that this kindly merchant had developed the highest qualities of leadership at two critical periods in the history of the city and state, had headed a successful revolution against a criminal administration of the law, and had, after showing gifts that in another day would have made him a Cromwell or a Simon de Montfort, quietly surrendered his powers when his work was done, and settled contentedly back to the prosaic business of buying and selling goods. I felt proud to be in his presence.

"What is this important information?" asked Coleman, his gray eyes searching my face with penetrating glance.

"Chiefly," said Wharton Kendrick, "that we are mistaken in supposing that the story of the purchase of arms is false."

"There is no doubt of its truth, gentlemen," I said. "The conspirators have received a large sum of money, and have put a good part of it into guns. They have, on my information, about one thousand rifles."

This assurance produced a visible effect on the company.

"Where did they get this money?" asked the doubting voice of a man who had been introduced as Mr. Partridge.

"That's not the important point," said Wharton Kendrick, striking in smoothly. "The main thing is to know what they are going to do with it."

I understood from this hint that I was to keep the name of Peter Bolton out of the discussion.

"I have a little special information on that point," I said. And I described the multiform purposes of the Council of Nine as they had appeared from my investigations.

"How do you know all this?" came from several of the assembled magnates.

Wharton Kendrick took the reply out of my mouth.

"He has practically direct communication with the conspirators," he said. "I think we shall all agree that it is best not to mention names."

"Well, this certainly makes it a horse of another color," said Partridge. "In the light of Mr. Hampden's information I withdraw my objections to the plan proposed by Mr. Kendrick."