University of Virginia Library

16. CHAPTER XVI.

DORMAN possessed in full measure the Luciferian
humor of higgling.

Discovering that Vane was in financial extremities,
he inferred that he would “sell out at a low
figure.” He had come empowered to offer five
thousand dollars for the respectability which lay
in Honest John's character; but he now decided
that he would throw out only the bait with which
he was accustomed to angle for the ordinary fry
of Congressmen. If one thousand dollars' worth
of stock sufficed to land his fish, there would remain
four thousand dollars for himself, a very fair
commission.

“You ought not to miss this chance, Vane,” he
said, with the calmness of a horsedealer. “We
will guarantee you ten per cent, and it is pretty
certain to pay fifty, and may pay twice as much.”

“Of course it will pay anything that you inside

fellows choose to make it pay,” answered the Congressman,
with a bluntness which revealed his
moral inflammation. He was in the condition of
a man who is having a tooth pulled, and who cannot
but desire to make a bite at his dentist's
fingers.

“Well, that's so, of course,” admitted Dorman,
with the smile of a trickster who decides to make
a merit of enforced frankness. “But it wouldn't
do for us to cut the profits too fat, you know.
We can't divide up the whole Subfluvial stock and
government loan among the construction ring.
We've got to draw a line somewhere. Say a
hundred per cent, now.”

“Say so, if you like,” returned John Vane, sullenly,
meanwhile searching in vain for some pecuniary
escape from this bargain, so full of risk for
his good name and of humiliation to his vanity.

“Well, I say so; that's agreed on,” winked Dorman.

There was a silence now which endured through
several eternal seconds. The statesman who was

for sale and the lobbyist who wanted to buy him
were both alike unwilling to name a price, the former
through shame and the latter through niggardliness.

“There isn't much of this left,” Dorman at last
resumed. “Stands at one or two hundred per
cent. above par. It's such a safe and paying thing
that there's been a loud call for it.”

Vane made no response. He had an appearance
even of not listening to the agent of the abysses
of corruption. The truth is that he was beginning
to recover his self-possession, and with it his faculty
for dickering.

“I could let you have five hundred of it, though,”
continued the lobbyist, still bent upon getting his
soul for a song.

“Do you mean to insult me?” demanded Vane,
with a glare which might mean either huckstering
anger at the meanness of the bribe or virtuous
indignation at being offered a bribe at all.

“Say a thousand, then,” added Dorman, with a
spasmodic start, as if the offer had been jerked

out of him by red-hot pincers, or as if the breath
in which he uttered it had been a scalding steam
of brimstone. “Senators Christian and Faithful
took a thousand each, and were glad to get it.
Let me see; we've had to go as high as that on
some of the House fellows, too,—such men as
Greatheart and Hopeful, for instance. Well, I
ought not to mention names.”

“Why, those are our biggest figure-heads!”
Vane almost shouted, springing up and pacing the
room in amazement.

“Of course they are,” grinned Dorman. The
very highest sign-boards in Congress, the saints
and the advocates of reform, and the watch-dogs
of the Treasury! There are no men of better
reputation inside politics.”

“I would n't have thought it—of them,” pursued
Vane. “I knew there was a raft of fellows who
took investments in things that they voted for.
But I supposed there were some exceptions.”

The lobbyist knew that there were exceptions;
he had learned by dint of rebuffs that Congressmen

existed who were either pure enough or rich
enough to be above pecuniary temptation; but he
was careful not to mention this fact to his proposed
victim.

“Well, you see how it is, at last,” he resumed.
You see that the candle of fame only lights up a
game for money, and now what's the use of your
holding different notions from everybody else?
You have n't been practical, John Vane; you 've
been eccentric and highfalutin. I put it to you,
as one fair-minded business man to another, is it
generous or just for a capitalist to ask a member
to work for him gratis? I say not. If I see an
honest chance to make five thousand dollars, and
you give me a lift which enables me to use that
chance, I ought to allow you a share in the
investment. And that 's what I do. I 've got
five thousand dollars of this inside stock—”

Here he had another spasmodic start, which
ended in a prolonged fit of coughing, as though
the brimstone fumes which we have imputed to
his breath were unusually dense and stifling. Of

course it could not have been remorse or shame
which interfered with his breathing, although the
five thousand dollars which he talked of had been
given him to transfer to Vane, and although his
own private share of the “Hen Persuader” stock
already amounted to fifty thousand. Of remorse
or shame he must have been fundamentally incapable.
If he felt any human passion at this moment,
it must have been a peanut peddler's gladness.

“And I offer you twenty per cent of it,” he
continued, when he had recovered his utterance.
“That 's about fair, I think, for I 've only this one
investment on hand, and can't possibly at end to
more, while you can dip into all the national enterprises
that are going. And don't you make Puritanic
faces over it. It is n't money, you see. So
help me Lucifer! I would n't think of offering
money to you. It 's just a business chance. Is
there anything low in a Congressman's putting
his money where his constituents put theirs?
Is n't he thereby joining his fortunes with theirs?

That 's what I said to Greatheart and he could n't
get round it, and he took the stock.

“I 'll—I 'll take it, too,” was John Vane's response,—a
mere choked gasp of a response, but
heard, perhaps, all through Pandemonium.

“All right!” laughed Dorman, leaping up and
giving his member's back a slap, which ought to
have left the imprint of a fiery hand. “Well, I 'll
hold the stock for you,” he promptly added, with
a sly sparkle in his smoky eyes. “Just to keep
your name off the books and out of the newspapers,
you understand.”

Our Congressman pondered a full minute before
he replied. He was no longer Honest John
Vane, but he desired to remain such in the eyes
of the public, and consequently he did not want
the stock in his own name. At the same time he
shrewdly doubted whether it would be worth much
to him, if it stood to the credit of Dorman. His
countenance was at this moment a study for a
painter of character. There were two phases in
it, the one growing and the other waning, like the

new moon encroaching upon the old. In a
moment you might say that it had undergone a
transfiguration, though not such a one as apostles
would desire to honor with tabernacles. All the
guile in his soul—that slow, loutish guile which
lies at the bottom of so many low-bred and seemingly
simple natures—rose to the surface of his
usually genial and hearty expression, like oily
scum to the surface of water. His visage actually
took a physical lubricity from it, and shone like
the fraudful superficies of a shaved and greased
pig.

“I won't trouble you to hold my property for
me, Darius,” he said. I 'll hold it in my own
name. Honesty is the best policy.”

This last phrase was a noteworthy one. It
showed that he had already entered upon the life
of a hypocrite. A little before he had been a
living body of honesty; now he was a vampire,
but he still retained his decent carcass.

“Now,—look here, John,—would you?” hesitated
the lobbyist, who had hoped to make the
shares stick to his own fingers. “Christian and

Greatheart and those fellows have n't. You see,
if there should be an exposure, and this stock
should be found in your name, you would n't be
on the investigating committee.”

“Never mind, I 'll do the square thing,” replied
Vane, to whom it had suddenly occurred that the
Great Subfluvial and its “Hen Persuader” worked
under separate charters, so that a man who held
property in one might plausibly claim a right to
vote on the other.

“O, well, if you insist upon it,” assented Dorman,
much chagrined. “If you choose to risk it,
why, of course—Well, now about paying for the
stock; as you are hard up, suppose we let the dividends
go towards that.”

“Suppose we don't,” promptly returned Vane,
remembering how direly he needed ready cash.
“Suppose you hand me the certificates at once,
and the dividends as fast as they fall in.”

The lobyist looked at his victim with an air of
spite qualified by admiration. Maelzel might have
had a similar expression (though not by any possibility

so vicious and diabolical) when he was
beaten at chess by his own automaton.

“I have caught a Tartar,” he grinned. “When
you turn your attention to finance, John, you show
your business training. Your game is n't the
safest, though. All the sly old hands,—all the
fellows who have graduated in the lobbies of the
State Legislatures, and bribed their way from
there into Congress,—all those shysters have had
the shares sold for them and taken nothing but
the plain greenbacks. I see what your false bosom
is made of, John,—the fair front of honest simplicity
and ignorance. It may do you, and it may
not. The faster a hog swims the more he cuts his
throat with his own hoofs,” he added, with a spite
which made him coarse. “You 'd better let me
keep the stock for you.”

“Well,” sighed the imp, who had not bought a
soul as cheaply as he had hoped, “have it your
own way, then. I'll bring the certificate to-morrow.”