University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.

WHEN the Honorable Mr. Vane was shown
into Senator Ironman's library, his usually
pink face wore that pallor which anxieties will
bring, especially when they are accompanied by
discontent with one's self.

The equally pink, though bony and narrow
visage of the senator also lost some of its natural
color as he advanced to welcome his visitor.
It was, by Jove, very queer, he thought, that
Vane should drop in at that time of day, just
after a fellow's breakfast, as though he were an
intimate friend. The two men, we must understand,
were not fundamentally fond of each other,
as is often the case with two men who admire
the same lady.

“I don't altogether fancy Vane,” the senator
had confessed to his familiars. “Now Mrs. Vane
is a magnificent creature, thoroughly well bred

and well educated—that is, enough so for society,
you understand,—a whole-souled, splendid, dazzling
woman, and—and as jolly as possible. She
is a woman that shows well in a dance or anywhere.
By Jove, she's a stunner, that woman is.
I don't know another lady in Washington that
could wear crimson roses in her hair without
looking faded. She becomes a bouquet superbly,
and, by Jove, I love to give them to her,—she
shows one off so! But Vane is another sort of
animal altogether. He is rather—rather—in fact,
rather dull,” judged the great man, hitting on the
right word at last. “And just a little low, too,”
he added. “Don't always speak the best grammar.
One of your heavy, self-taught men,” he
explained, forgetting that his own father had
begun life as an hostler. “Low man on the
whole; in some points, very low—and dull.”

So you perceive he did not admire his visitor,
not as much as Slowburgh would have expected.
But there were other causes for the Dundreary
perplexity which now winked from his pale eyes

and crisped his limited forehead. He had noted
Vane's unusual ghastliness, and the circumstance
alarmed him. What had the man got on his low
and dull mind? Was he going to say anything
disagreeable about the Ironman bouquets and carriage-drives
and other marks of esteem accorded
to Mrs. Vane. The senator was so eager and
hurried in his expressions of amity and welcome
that he fairly stuttered.

“Mr. Ironman, I just dropped in to talk about
this Great Subfluvial row,” commenced our member
in a slightly paralytic voice, for he was at
least as much agitated as his host.

“O,—O, indeed!” answered the relieved dignitary
of the upper house. “Sit down, sit down,”
he went on, smiling as cheerily as if the subject
were an entirely delightful one. “Had your
breakfast? Just as lieve order you up something
as not. Say a devilled kidney, now. Well, take
a glass of sauterne, then, or a cigar,” he urged,
forgetting that John was a tee-totaler and a nonsmoker.

“I don't use either, thank you,” said Vane,
holding on to what habits of virtue he had left,
though he wanted a glass of wine sadly. “Well,
—about this affair, now: do you think there'll be
an investigation?”

“Yes, O, yes; such a row about it, you know;
can't help coming to one; bad for those fellows
that are in it,” prattled the senator, either forgetting
that the bulk of his own fortune had come
out of the lobby, or remembering with satisfaction
that it had been harvested years ago.

“With closed doors, I s'pose,” hoped Dishonest
John.

“Don't know about that, by Jove!” and Ironman
shook his statesmanlike head. “You see
we don't want them open; but now and then
we have to give in to the newspaper fellows;
there's such a row about it, you know! I'm
afraid some fellows have got to go overboard,”
he added, much consoled by the thought that
the fellows in question would be out of his way.
“You see, when a man is found out, it's bad for
him.”

“Well,” sighed Vane, after a long silence, “I
may have to quit Washington, then.”

The senator opened his eyes. So Honest
John Vane was “in it,” was he? It was curious,
by Jove! and he wondered he had n't thought of
it before, and then wondered how it was that all
those honest fellows ended so badly. But these
ideas were almost immediately chased out of the
confined boundaries of his mind by the reflection
that, if Vane left Washington, his wife would go
too.

“By Jove, that's bad,” he broke out. By Jove,
that won't do. We can't spare you and Mrs.
Vane. My wife won't know what to do,” he
explained, “if she loses Mrs. Vane.”

The heart of Mrs. Vane's husband grew a
little lighter under these acknowledgments of
her importance to the Ironmans.

“Look here! something might be done, you
know,” continued the senator, thinking harder
than he had been accustomed to think since he
left school. “I'll run around, myself, among the

House fellows, by Jove! I'll ask 'em if something
can't be done.”

In another instant he had an inspiration.
“Look here! Put you on the investigating committee!
You needn't investigate your own case,
you know. That's it; I'll try to get you put on
the investigating committee. It'll help you with
the people,—clear up your record; don't you
see? And then, if the doors can be kept shut,
why, you do that, you know. Just the very
idea!” he concluded, quite happy over his unexpected
attack of shrewdness.

“I'm afraid,” confessed John Vane, still retaining
a little grain of conscience, and rendered
timorous by it, “it's a leetle too bold for me,—
with this stock on my hands.”

“I don't see why that should hinder,” stared the
experienced senator. “Of course you bought the
stock, (it 's the inside stock, is n't it?) without
knowing that it was hitched on to the Great Subfluvial.”

“But I have n't paid for it,” sighed Vane.

“That 's the awkward part of the business. And
that is partly what I dropped in to see you about,”
he concluded, his face turning crimson with
shame.

“How much?” asked Ironman instantly. He
understood that a loan was wanted, and he was
willing to make a moderate one; in fact, glad to
do it.

“A thousand par,” explained our fallen great
man.

“O, that 's nothing!” laughed the millionnaire,
highly amused that Vane should have sold his
honesty for so little. “Let me lend you enough
to cover it. How much will you have? Say fifteen
hundred, now. Here,” he continued to laugh,
as he went to his safe for the money to hide a
bribe, “this trap is always open to a friend. I 've
had too many good dinners and pleasant evenings
at your house not to call you by that name.”

“I hope you 'll call often,” mumbled John Vane
in a stifled voice, as he pocketed the greenbacks.
We shall always be delighted to see you.”

He felt driven to utter these commonplaces,
but he could not return thanks for the
loan. He had a bitter feeling or suspicion that
he was not under obligations to Ironman, and he
was so far from being grateful to him that he positively
hated him. It was a satisfaction to him,
after he had got into the street, to look back at
the house menacingly, and mutter, “You won't
see your funds again in one while, old fellow, if
you ever do.”

This speech of his, by the way, is one of the
circumstances of his life from which we can most
accurately take his measure in regard to delicacy
of feeling and sensitiveness to dishonor.

His next business was to hurry to Dorman's
office, and announce that he had come to settle
for “that stock.”

“What 's the damage?” he asked, not at all
alluding to the damage which his soul had
received.

“How much do you propose to pay?” replied
the lobbyist, his smoky eyes giving forth sparks
of commingled satire and greed.

“Why, par, of course,” said John Vane, a little
alarmed. “That 's the figure we talked of when
I took it.”

Dorman skipped about the room and rubbed
himself violently, much like a man who discovers
that he has a hornet inside his clothes.

“It 's been worth three hundred all the while,”
he exclaimed. “I could have sold it for three
hundred the day you got it.”

Now Vane could not pay three hundred, nor
two hundred, without great inconvenience. Moreover,
he was a bargainer born; a bargainer, too, by
life-long habit, and valued himself on it. He was
as proud of his instinctive, functional, and inevitable
dexterity in a dicker as a crab is said to be
of walking sideways. So, although he was afraid
of Dorman, he resolved to show what he called
the spirit of a man, and to resist this low attempt
at extortion.

“Look here, Darius, that won't go down,” he
remonstrated. “The stock may have been worth
three hundred once, but it ain't worth it now.

People don't want it any more than they want
shares in a broken bank with stockholders liable.
I 'll bet a cookey” (John Vane was not a sporting
man, and did not mean to bet anything), “I 'll bet a
cookey that you can't sell my share, nor anybody's
share, for a hundred. But I 'll give that for it,
because I agreed to and like to stand by my
word,” he concluded nobly.

“O, very well, anything you like!” grumbled
the corruptionist, who saw that he must relinquish
his plan for getting back a part of the price which
he had paid for a soul.

“And I want a receipt dated back to day of
transfer,” continued Vane.

“Of course you do,” grinned Dorman. “You
want it very much indeed. Well, if we give you
one, what can you do for us?”

“O, well, I don't know,” drawled John, who by
this time had caught that easy jog-trot of manner
which was his bargaining gait. “You 'll need a
good deal done for you before the thing is over,”
he added, picking up the morning Chronicle and

pretending to read it. “If I was in the right
place,” he continued, after a little, “of course I
could help you more or less.” After a further
perusal of the Chronicle, he resumed, “By the
way, I met Ironman just now, and he gave me an
idea which might work well for you, providing it
would work at all.”

“Nice fellow, Ironman,” smirked Dorman. He
guessed immediately that Vane had been drawing
on the rich senator for money to pay for the stock;
and he wanted to stop him from making use of
that resource, for he wanted him poor and in his
own power. “Eccentric person in some respects,”
he went on; “but genial, generous fellow.”

Either because there was offence in these
remarks, or because this black little creature's
breath had some pungent quality, Vane suddenly
turned away his head and had a slight spasm of
coughing, like a man who had caught a whiff from
a lucifer match.

“Yes,” he assented presently, looking rather
glum. “Well, what was I saying? O, I know

(and by the way, this is between us), he suggested
putting me on the committee of investigation!”

Dorman laughed so violently that Vane could
not help joining him. The peach-blow face of
the Congressman turned crimson, and the sombre
visage of the lobbyist turned almost black, so
apoplectic was their merriment. There was also
a sound of other hilarity, not so distinct and therefore
all the more singular, about the office. There
were faint but audible chuckles in the walls, along
the lofty ceiling, and under the floor.

“What's that?” asked Vane, looking about him
with a merely earthly and rather stolid suspicion
of eaves-droppers.

“O, nothing that need interrupt us!” smiled
Dorman. “This used to be a dwelling-house, and
had the name of being haunted. Curious noises
about it, you observe; perhaps from subterranean
passages to the devil knows where; perhaps nothing
but echoes. Well, John. I like your plan.
Here is your receipt for payment, dated back to
the day of transfer. Give me one thousand; no

interest from you. We are friends, John, forever,”
he concluded, with a peculiar accent on the last
word.

“I hope so,” answered Vane mechanically, and
not as much alarmed as he ought to have been.
“O, by the way, where is Sharp? I want to see
him about this.”

“Yes, you 'd better see him,” said Dorman, who
was counting his bills, all miser again. “You 'll
find him at home.”