University of Virginia Library

24. CHAPTER XXIV.

WEATHERCOCK John carried out his plan
for getting up a new and revised edition of
his character as Honest John Vane.

He let Sharp and Ironman go on working for
him, declaring that he was the most upright creature
on this footstool, and recommending him as
fit to investigate the very claims of saints to their
crowns. But when his name was read as a member
of the committee, he rose and requested to be
excused from serving.

“My reason is simply this,” he said, calmly
turning his honest face and dignified abdomen
towards every quarter of the house; “I own stock
—to the amount of one thousand dollars—in the
corporation in question. I will offer no explanations
here and now as to my motives in taking it,
because those motives will doubtless be demanded
of me by the committee of investigation. I shall

be happy to appear before it, but I cannot conscientiously
be a member of it. I trust that the
House, and you, Mr. Speaker, will excuse me.”

The Honorable Sharp looked icicles from his
arm-chair, and Dorman looked coals of fire from
his rear corner. But as our member sat down
there was a general murmur of perfunctory applause,
and by next morning he was newspapered
all over as “Honest John Vane.”

Still, he was not out of danger. As the rain of
fire and brimstone into the Congressional Sodom
continued, and especially when the blazing flames
of investigation began to light on his own combustible
garments, he was in a state of mind to
flee into the mountains and dwell in a cave.
When he appeared before the committee, he did
not look much like one of those just men whose
mere presence can save a wicked city. Moreover,
Sharp and Dorman testified against him to the
full extent of their naughty knowledge. Nevertheless,
Vane came out of his furnace without
much of a singeing. He exhibited Dorman's

receipt of payment for the stock, and triumphantly
remarked that “the document spoke for itself.”
As for the thousand dollars which Sharp had refunded
to him, he said that he had always regarded
it as a loan, and stood ready to repay it. As for
the singular profitableness of the investment,—
well, he had expected it would bring him in something
handsome; it was his habit as a business
man to invest for a profit.

He tried to raise a smile here, turning his genial
visage from one to another of the committee,
with an almost pathetic effort at humor. But the
sad synagogue of investigators did not smile back;
it had been engaged that morning in digging
graves for some of the fairest reputations in politics;
for once a body of Congressional Yoricks
could not appreciate a poor joke.

“What we mainly wish to know,” hummed and
hawed the worried chairman, “is whether you
were aware, at the time of purchase, that the Hen
Persuader was a branch of the Great Subfluvial
corporation.”

Weathercock John was in dire trouble; if he
said “Yes,” his character and career were ruined;
if he said “No,” he was a perjurer. It cost him
many seconds of penal meditation to hit upon that
happy dodge known as the non mi ricordo.

“Gentlemen, I will frankly confess that I did
not inquire so closely as I perhaps should have
done into that point,” he answered, remembering
distinctly that he had not inquired into it at all,
but had been told all about it by Dorman. “I
did, however, know that the two companies were
acting under different and independent charters.
It seemed fair to infer that investing in one was
not the same thing as investing in the other.”

It was done. Congressman Vane had found
his own way out of his entanglements. The committee-men
were ready to rise and salute his
escape with benevolent cheers. How in the name
of political human nature could they want to find
guilty their brother lawgiver, brother worker in
the party traces, and, perhaps, brother sinner in
special legislation? They bowed him away from

their operating table with a look which said
plainly, We rejoice that we shall not be obliged
to amputate your able and honored head, Mr.
Vane.

Only a few people remarked on the shallowness
of this show of innocence. Here was stock sold
at par which was worth three hundred, which on
the day after purchase paid a dividend of sixty
per cent., and, only a few weeks later, forty more.
How could a legislator and business man doubt
that it was a swindle? How could he fail to
divine that Mr. Sharp's Hen Persuader was but
an adjunct of Mr. Sharp's Great Subfluvial?

But the public,—the great, soft-hearted American
public,—that public which has compassion on
every species of scoundrel,—which tries murderers
under jury restrictions warranted to save four-fifths
of them,—which cannot see one condemned
to death without pleading with tears for his noxious
life,—that forgiving, milk-and-water public
was as mild in its judgment as the committee.
It magnified our dishonorable member for not

lying, and exalted his name for not committing
perjury. What a pity, said this lamblike public
which was so bent on getting itself fleeced to the
skin,—what a pity that our other shepherds could
not have used the shears with a steadier hand and
avoided snipping off their own fingers! In contrast
to these unlucky and somewhat ridiculous
bunglers, what a straightforward, workmanlike,
admirable creature was “Honest John Vane.”

And so he escaped all exposure that could injure
him in the eyes of a community of humanitarians,
and all punishment that could hurt a
man whose conscience lay solely in the opinions
of others. Even the Subfluvial people did not
follow him up vindictively; they admired him so
much for his ability in sneaking that they could
not hate him; moreover, they considered that
he might still be useful. Not long after Vane's
escape from the committee, he held with Dorman
one of those friendly colloquies which rogues are
capable of when it no longer pays to quarrel.

“What a horrid scrape Christian and Greatheart

have got themselves into!” observed John,
with cheerful self-complacency. “Why couldn't
those fellows have told a straight story?”

“Half-honesty is cursed poor policy,” smirked
the lobbyist. “After all, those chaps are the
cleanest-handed of the whole gang. They wanted
to make an actual investment,—something
that would show like a fair business transaction,
—just to ease their consciences. The real sharpers
took greenbacks and kept their names off
paper. Do you suppose that the committee is
raking up the Subfluvial to the bottom? Why,
our very first move, the mere getting our charter
through, cost us half a million. We have paid
out hundreds of thousands to men against whom
we haven't a particle of proof beyond our verbal
statements.”

“Exactly,” nodded Vane, who had long since
heard as much. “Well, do you mean to swear in
these things?”

“Of course we don't,” Dorman chuckled.
“We know enough not to kill the goose that lays
our golden eggs.”

“So much the worse for the Greatheart lot,”
inferred Weathercock John. “They will have to
go out, I suppose.”

“Don't you believe it,” scoffed the lobbyist.
“I can tell you exactly how this thing is sure to
come out. There will be a one-legged report,—
somebody giving bribes, but none of the takers
guilty of being bribed,—like a gambling case in
which only one of the players is a gambler.
Then, if the public excitement keeps up, a couple
or so will be picked out as scapegoats, to bear
off the sins of the congregation. This report
will be so manifestly unfair that it can't help
rousing opposition. As soon as it appears, a
debate will be arranged. All the old war-horses
will gallop up and down among charges, counter-charges,
precedents, and points of law, raising
such a dust that the public won't be able to see
what is going on. When the dust clears away, it
will be found that nobody is expelled. The two
scapegoats will be almost expelled, but not quite.
It will be like the pig going through the crooked

hollow log and always coming out on his own side
of the fence. Then the wire-pullers at home will
take a hand in the job. All the convicted chaps
will have receptions got up for them in their
districts, and be whitewashed all over with resolutions
expressing unshaken confidence. You
won't have any reception, John. You are not
far gone enough to need such vigorous treatment.
Your case is lobby varioloid, instead of lobby
small-pox.”

Vane felt somewhat offended at this plain
speaking, for it is a curious fact that he had not
lost his self-esteem; but, looking at matters in
his habitual profit-and-loss way, he decided that
wrath would bring him in nothing.

“Take care of yourself, Dorman,” he said, with
a tranquil good nature which did him dishonor.
“If I owned a million of your style of property,
I shouldn't feel rich. There'll be suits against
your inside corporation.”

“I'm out of it,” replied the lobbyist, flashes of
cunning dancing about his sooty eyes, as sparks

run over the back of a foul fireplace. “I have
failed.”

For the life of him, and notwithstanding the
long-faced decorum which sham honesty requires,
John Vane could not help laughing. The fact
that a financier should declare himself bankrupt
the moment he saw himself in danger of being
called on to refund his swindlings, did not strike
our self-taught legislator as a very disgusting
exhibition of rascality, but as a very amusing bit
of cleverness.

“But you're going to hang around here, I
hope,” he added, unwilling to lose a trickster who
had been helpful, and might be so again.

“No, I am going back,” said Dorman, in a tone
which would have been significant of forebodings
and horrors to any soul less carnal than a spare-rib.
His face, too, was strange; it had an unusually
seared, cindered, and smoke-stained look;
one would have said that the cuticle was drying
up with inward heat. If that scorched envelope
had cracked open, and the creature within had

bounced forth in some different hide, or in a
raw-head-and-bloody-bones state of nudity, there
would have been no great cause of wonderment.
But Congressman Vane saw nothing remarkable;
he simply inquired, with calm, oleaginous interest,
“Going back where?”

“Where I came from,” grimaced Dorman, and
disappeared abruptly, either by stepping briskly
around a corner, or by slipping under a flagstone.

Not in the least disturbed by this singular
circumstance, and, indeed, altogether failing to
perceive anything noteworthy in it, Weathercock
John marched on majestically to the Capitol, and
commenced his day's work of statesmanship.

Well, there he is still, a lawgiver to this tax-burdened
people, and ex-officio a director of its
finances. As soon as he has recovered from his
present slight scare, he will resume his labor
(the only legislative labor which he knows much
about) of enacting the national revenue into the
safes of huge corporations and into the hats of
individual mendicants, for the sake of a small

percentage thereof to himself. Can nothing be
done to stop him, or at least to shackle and limit
him, in his damaging industry? Can we not
wrest from him and from his brother knaves or
dunces this fearfully abused privilege of voting
the public money for other objects than the
carrying on of the departments of the government?
Can we not withdraw altogether from
Congress the power of aiding corporations and
schemers out of an income which is contributed
by all for the equal benefit of all? Can we not
provide, for instance, that, if a man has a claim
for injuries to property against the United States,
he shall prosecute that claim in the courts?

Such men as John Vane will inevitably find
their way in numbers to the desks of the Capitol.
Better and wiser men than he will be corrupted
by a lobby which has thoroughly learned the
easy trick of paying a hundred thousand out of
every stolen million. Nothing in the future is
more certain than that, if this huge “special

legislation” machine for bribery is not broken
up, our Congress will surely and quickly become,
what some sad souls claim that it already is, a
den of thieves.