Читать книгу: «The Way of the Strong», страница 32

"Gee! That was a narrow shave," cried the chauffeur, with a gasp of relief.

"What the devil – !" cried Leyburn, struggling back to his seat, while the engine roared free, vibrating the whole car violently, as if in angry protest.

But the driver had jumped to the ground, and stood contemplating a huge tangle of barbed wire spreading right across the trail, less than a dozen yards beyond the front wheels.

Leyburn climbed down and followed him. There were no bluffs, there were no fields with barbed wire fencing anywhere in sight. It was plain enough, even in the darkness, that they were surrounded on either hand by nothing but bare, open prairie. He approached the tangled mass, and his man pointed at it.

"We must clear it," he said. "It's these cursed farmers. They're so darned careless – Say, if we'd gone headlong into that, it would have torn our running gear right out. Look at that." He stooped and fingered the great strands of wire.

Leyburn bent down. His suspicions were fully aroused.

"Say," he cried. "This didn't get here by – "

"Hands up!"

The cry came sharply from directly behind the labor leader, and its threat was unmistakable.

Leyburn turned at the hoarse demand. The chauffeur stood up. Both found themselves looking into the muzzles of revolvers. Two masked men stood confronting them, while a third was waiting close by.

The chauffeur promptly complied with the order. He felt that he had nothing to gain by refusing. He remembered in time that he had only a few dollars in cash on him, and no valuables.

Leyburn was less quick to respond. Light had broken in upon his quick brain, and his thoughts had gone back to the telephone message.

Another sharp order brought his wandering attention back to the exigencies of the moment, and his hands were slowly raised above his head.

Then the third man became active. Without a moment's hesitation, and in absolute silence, he ran his hands down the labor leader's pockets. Then he produced a rope, and taking hold of his arms forced them to his sides, finally securing them behind his back. Once his man was completely trussed he turned his attention to the other, treating him to similar attentions.

The whole thing was the work of a few moments. Leyburn, impotently raging, was left quite helpless. So sudden and startling had been the attack, so unsuspected, that its success was complete; and even protest became impossible before the threat of his assailants' weapons.

Now more than ever he knew he had been trapped by the telephone message. But why, and by whom? Robbery? It was absurd. The money he had on him would not pay these men for their trouble and risk.

No, it was not robbery. Then he remembered Hendrie and the firing of his crop. In a moment he became anxious, and narrowly scrutinized the figures of his assailants. Two of them were large, and the third was a lean creature, tall enough, but small beside the other two. Each man's face was completely covered by a long black mask. He could not tell even if they were bearded.

His suspicions once aroused, however, he quickly made up his mind that this was the work of his arch-enemy, and he knew that, for the time, at least, he stood at his mercy.

Suddenly a hand was laid upon his shoulder. He was turned about. Then he was thrust forward.

"Walk," commanded the man who had first spoken. The next moment he found himself moving out on to the prairie.

In the meantime the chauffeur was hustled back to the automobile. His captor secured him in the front seat, while the third man dragged the barbed wire clear of the road. Then the other took his place at the wheel, and the car rolled away.

The third man looked after it. Then he finally turned off the trail and followed Leyburn and his captor. By the time he reached them, both men were in the saddle, waiting. Two other horses stood by. He sprang into the saddle of one and led the other, and the whole party set off across the prairie.

CHAPTER XVIII
HIS BACK TO THE WALL

"Phew!"

Hendrie threw off the long cloth mask he had been wearing. It dropped into the wastepaper basket beside the desk. Angus Moraine followed his example.

In the center of the room, sitting on a high-legged armchair, his arms still bound, Austin Leyburn silently watched his captors' movements.

They were in the library at Deep Willows.

Long before their arrival Leyburn had become aware of his captors' identity. The identity of the third man, who was no longer with them, puzzled him – was still puzzling him. The journey to Deep Willows had been made with the passing of scarcely a single word. Once the captive attempted to break the silence, but a swift threat had left him no alternative.

Leyburn was no physical coward. But he knew men; and his understanding of them left him convinced that Leo, as he preferred to think of him, was utterly reckless when goaded as he had been goaded by the total loss of his crop. Therefore he waited, watchful and alert, ready to fight the moment any reasonable opportunity offered, or to submit, according to circumstances.

The millionaire's manner had lost something of its severity. For the moment he felt he was back in the old fighting days when lawlessness had no terrors for his impulsive heart. It felt good to have his wits pitted against his old associate with all law and order thrust into the background. Besides, he knew that something far more precious than his own life was dependent upon the result of this night's work.

He switched on additional light and then moved over to the desk, against which he propped himself.

"Hot. Hot as hell, under those things, Tug, my boy," he said, while Angus unostentatiously seated himself in a chair somewhat behind the prisoner. "Still, I guess they were necessary. I wouldn't have had your man recognize us. You didn't matter. He did. You are only one. Say, he's a smart lad – your chauffeur. If he hadn't been you'd both likely have been on the way to glory now, traveling on a barbed wire. You were moving some. Still, I had to risk all that. I needed you out in the open, with no one around, and I hadn't time to worry out a better plan. You see, I wanted you – without any halo. Guess I'll have to hand your boy a wad – later. He did me a right good turn saving your neck."

Leyburn smarted under the jibing manner. He strove to twist himself into a position of ease, which his bound arms made almost impossible. He wanted to answer. He wanted to fling back some stinging retort, but prudence kept him silent.

Hendrie watched his endeavor to ease his position, and signed to Angus.

"Better loose him," he said, as he might have spoken of some dog. "He's harmless – anyway."

Angus obeyed. And Leyburn could no longer keep silence.

"Maybe he didn't do you so good a turn as you think," he cried, his voice husky with rage. "But you'll pay him all right. You'll pay me, too, for this night's work. It was like you – a highway robber."

Angus looked from one to the other. There was some meaning in Leyburn's words he could not quite follow.

But the millionaire seemed undisturbed by them.

"Yes," Hendrie said, reaching round to the cabinet behind him and taking a cigar.

He bit the end off, and Angus noted the vicious clip of his sharp, white teeth. He lit the cigar deliberately, and eyed his prisoner through the smoke.

"Yes," he said again, "later I'll be ready to pay most anything. Just now it's you who're going to pay. Guess you ought to understand that. You've known me with my back to the wall before. I'm dangerous with my back to the wall. You likely know that. You paid before – guess you're going to pay now."

Leyburn stirred. The cold ease of this man's manner troubled him. This reference to his doings in the past – before another – had an ominous flavor. Policy kept him silent, though he was longing to shout another furious defiance at him.

"I'm generally ready to take my chances 'bout things," Hendrie went on, "but," he added with a contemptuous movement of the hand, "this isn't as big a chance as no doubt you figure it is. It don't amount to a heap taking forcible possession of a low-down labor man who's set the boys on to firing a million-dollar crop. Also incited them to murder a lot of harmless niggers."

Leyburn's eyes grew hot, but he answered in a tone that matched the other's for contempt.

"That wouldn't go in a court of law," he said. "You've got to prove it. You'd find yourself up against a proposition doing it. The strikers fired that crop because they were drunk." He laughed; but his mirth was little better than a snarl.

"Wouldn't it?" said Hendrie, removing his cigar and seriously contemplating the perfect white ash at its tip. "Maybe you're right though. Guess you know the limits you can go to. Still, you're apt to be overconfident. Guess you were that way some time back. You remember. You warned me you intended to 'smash' me. That was the word. It's a good word to impress folks who're carried away by words. But it's too showy for me. Besides, it's a fool trick to warn folks you're going to hunt 'em. You need to do the smashing first and warn afterwards. That's my way. In your case that warning was fatal. It left me time to get busy. Oh, I got busy all right. Maybe you know I went East, just after. I s'pose you kept track of me. I went East for two reasons. One to make it so you couldn't hurt me through your labor machinery. The other to – hunt you up."

He paused and their eyes met. A quick, furtive inquiry was in Leyburn's. In Hendrie's there was simply a deadly cold light as he nodded.

"Oh, yes," he went on. "I hunted you up all right. P'r'aps you don't know it – but you ought to – my work is to study and watch the money market. It is for me to find out who're moving, who're manipulating. It's not always easy. So, to do it successfully, and to keep myself just ahead of other folks, I have a bureau of secret information that would be a credit to New York Tammany Hall. Do you follow me?"

Leyburn abruptly shifted his position.

"I don't," he denied, with unnecessary force.

Hendrie knocked his ash on to the Turkey carpet.

"I'll make it plainer. It will enlighten Angus, here, as well. When you're in conspiracy to play the stock market through labor strikes which you control, it's best not to threaten to smash one of the biggest operators in the country. If you're sensible, and finish with me as I want you to finish, these things don't matter. But if you're foolish, and headstrong, there are a heap of things may happen. One of them is the prisoners' dock for criminal conspiracy in your labor work. Not only for you, but for the other 'heads' of your movement."

Leyburn suddenly burst into a laugh. It was forced. It was so evidently forced that it drew a reluctant smile from the watchful Scot behind him, and a contemptuous smiling response from Hendrie, himself.

"Funny, isn't it?" the millionaire observed calmly. "It would be funnier still if your union members heard of it. Gee, they'd be tickled to death."

But the humor suggested by Hendrie passed his prisoner by. His laugh had died out, and his angry eyes snapped.

"You didn't bring me here to tell me this – this fool talk," he cried, striving desperately for calmness.

Hendrie relit his cigar, which had gone out.

"No I didn't, Tug, my boy," he said, glancing over the flame of the match at the man's furious face. "There are other things." He blew the light out, and placed the dead match carefully in an ash tray. "Guess you don't need me to preach sense to a man like you. Still, if I'd a grievance against a man – and," he smiled, "I allow you have reason to feel unfriendly toward me – I should just get right up on my hind legs and hand him all I knew – dead straight. I wouldn't worry with a bum organization of labor to do it. It's unwieldy, it's rarely effective. You leave me free to get out of it, to protect myself. Say, you haven't robbed me of a thing to-night. All you've done is to manure the soil, and do me a service toward next year's crop, which I doubt, when the time comes, if you'll be in a position to hurt."

He crossed over to the window and drew the curtains aside. The red glow of the still burning crop was shining in every direction. The window looked out upon a land of fire, with the house, an oasis in the center of it, cut off by wide "fire breaks," which left it beyond all danger.

"Look," he cried. "It's a pretty sight. Fire in every direction. But, from your point of view, wholly uneffective."

The curtains fell back in their place, and the millionaire returned to the desk. Leyburn had not moved. Like an obstinate child he had refused to look as invited, and Angus's grim face displayed his appreciation of the manner in which Hendrie was, in his own phraseology, "putting him through it."

"Then there's those niggers," the millionaire continued, as soon as he had taken up his position at the desk again. "You told the boys to shoot 'em up to-night." He shook his head sadly. "Quite ridiculous. Quite impossible. You should have thought more – and hated less. Angus has paid 'em off, and they're quitting right now, as fast as panic can chase 'em. You see, there's no more work here now for black or white for six months to come. All the hands are out of a job, whether they like it or not. When they've starved till their bones are rattling they'll come back to us on their hands and knees. You've done that. It's the way you raise their wages. The way you better their lot. Pshaw! you're like the rest of 'em, only you're worse, because you're legally dishonest, too. So long as the papers are full of you, so long as your workers cheer you to the echo, and you can sign orders giving the world permission to go on moving around in space, so long as your pocketbooks are fattened by the blind ignorance of those you represent, what in hell do you care for the worker? I'm sick to death of you and your rotten kind. To do good there must be honesty in you – and there's none. You make the worker suffer weeks and weeks of misery and hardship, goading him into the belief that he is all-powerful, for some paltry betterment that does not begin to make up for what he has suffered. You never let him rest and prosper. You drive him, year after year, till, by the time he ends up his miserable life in poverty, he can reckon a large proportion of it has been spent in wilful idleness which has helped further to rob him of any adequate provision for his wife and children. It makes me sick. As long as the world lasts labor must be the under dog. You cannot lift labor if it cannot lift itself. Brute force must remain subservient to brain. With your unclean human hands you are striving to drive labor to a vain effort to overthrow one of the greatest laws of all life."

For the moment Hendrie seemed to have lost himself in the interest of his own subject, but he was abruptly brought back to the affairs in hand by the smiling sarcasm of his prisoner.

"Quite a lecture," he cried. "Say, Leo – "

But he reckoned without the loyal Scot behind him.

"Quit your gas," cried Angus, in a threatening tone.

Leyburn turned with sudden ferocity. But before he could voice his exasperation Hendrie broke in.

"Easy," he cried. "Don't raise your voice here. There's a sick woman upstairs. A woman sick to death. And it's because of her you're here now."

Leyburn looked quickly up into the big man's face. It had changed, changed utterly. All the old calm had gone. Memory, memory inspired by thoughts of the desperate straits of the woman he loved, had left the millionaire's every nerve straining.

"Sick woman?" cried Leyburn. "What in hell have I to do with your sick women folk?"

Hendrie's eyes had become bloodshot. The Scot watched him closely and with some apprehension.

"I'll tell you," cried the millionaire, his jaws shutting tight on his cigar. "The woman who's sick is – my wife."

Leyburn burst into a derisive laugh.

"Your wife?" he cried. "Your wife? What about Audie? What about the woman you left to starve – to die out on the Yukon trail?" He glanced round at Angus to witness the effect of his challenge. "His wife," he said deliberately addressing the Scot. "He left her, deserted her with her unborn child."

There are moments in life when a man is face to face with death without being aware of it. This was such a moment. Hendrie's hand was on a loaded revolver in his coat pocket, and a mad impulse urged him to silence that virulent, taunting tongue then and there. Fortunately Leyburn ceased speaking in time, and the impulse passed.

"We'll talk of that later," cried Hendrie, the blood still beating madly at his temples, but his words almost calm. "Meanwhile it's about my wife you're here. Mrs. Hendrie is sick to death upstairs for want of a surgeon's aid. The man who can save her is in Winnipeg. Your strike on the railroad keeps him from getting here in time to save her. Do you understand? You're here to save her by giving an order to your union members, and those in authority over them, to permit a special train to bring him here. That's what you're here for, and – by God, you're going to give it."

The veins were standing out like ropes on his forehead as he uttered his final threat. Leyburn understood. But he could not resist an impulse to challenge him further.

"And if I refuse?" he demanded, with brows raised superciliously.

"But you won't," retorted Hendrie. "Oh, no, you won't, my friend." Then in a moment his eyes blazed up with that curious insane light Angus knew so well. A deep flush overspread his great face. "I told you my back was to the wall," he cried. "I told you that. And you – you poor, miserable fool, believed it was because of your pitiful attempt to break me. I could laugh to think that you – you – Tug – the man I robbed on the Yukon trail, could ever hope to beat me when it came to measuring our strength. Never in your life. But, all unconsciously, you have hurt me; yes, you have hurt me – and you're going to undo that hurt." Slowly he withdrew his right hand from his coat pocket, and continued, pointing his words with the shining revolver his hand was gripping.

"You're going to write that order out now – here, in this room. You're going to write it so there can be no mistake. One of your men – one of your lieutenants – the man you call Frank Smith is going to take it and see that it is obeyed. He will also accompany the train. You'll write it now – this moment, do you understand? Now – here – or I'll shoot you down for the miserable cur you are."

Angus was sitting bolt up in his chair. His hard eyes were alight. He knew the mood of his employer, and even he dreaded what might follow.

But Leyburn, too, had realized something of the insane passion driving this man. Nor had he any desire to test it too far. However, he still demurred. He knew that for the second time in his life this great Leo had the best of him, and he must submit. But his submission should be full of fight.

"This man. This Frank Smith," he said, looking squarely into the millionaire's eyes. "Does he know what relation he is to you?"

"No. Do you?" Hendrie's reply bit through the silence.

Leyburn nodded. He was grinning savagely.

"Yes," he said. "I discovered it soon after I – discovered you."

Hendrie's eyes were blazing.

"Good," he said. "Then it'll help to embellish the story you'll have to tell him – after he returns from Winnipeg."

"After?" Leyburn started.

Hendrie nodded. But his revolver was still tightly clutched in his hand.

"Perhaps I have a poor estimate of human nature," he said. "Anyway – of yours. I've taken all the chances with you I intend to take. You are going to stop right here – after you've written that order."

"But – if I write this order as you want it, you can't, you've no right – "

"Right?" Hendrie laughed savagely. "Right?" he reiterated scornfully. "We've done with all question of right just now. For the moment I'm the top dog, and until you've complied with all my demands, you can put the question of right out of your mind. There's the paper and ink," he went on, moving away from the desk. "Make out that order – at once."

Leyburn made no attempt to comply. He sat there with his narrow eyes on the man standing threateningly confronting him. He was thinking – thinking rapidly. He was afraid, too. More afraid than he would have admitted. Besides, if he were detained until Frank returned – then what of Calford? What of the railroad strike? What of a thousand and one demands awaiting his attention. It was impossible. He broke into a cold sweat. Then his eyes wandered to the shining barrel of that revolver. He noted the tremendous pressure of muscle in the hand grasping it. There was a storm of passion lying behind that pressure. He raised his eyes to the greenish gray of Hendrie's. To him their expression was surely not sane.

"Write that order!"

The millionaire's revolver hand was slowly raised. Leyburn saw the movement. At the same time he became aware that Angus was moving his chair out of the direct line of fire. He was beaten, and he knew it.

"Hell take you!" he cried, rising from his seat. "Give me the paper!"

Hendrie pointed at the desk without a word. Leyburn followed the indication. Then he walked over and seated himself in the millionaire's chair.

For several minutes there was no sound in the room but the scratching of the labor leader's pen. Angus looked on, watching his employer and wondering. He was wondering what really would have happened had Leyburn refused. Somehow he felt glad he had moved out of the line of fire. Hendrie's eyes never left the figure bending over the desk.

At last Leyburn flung down the pen.

"There's the order," he cried, rising from the desk. "It's absolutely right. No one will disobey it," he declared ostentatiously. "Now I demand to be allowed to go free."

The millionaire picked up the paper, blotted it, and then carefully read it over. He was satisfied. It seemed all he could desire. He looked up and shook his head.

"You'll remain my – guest – till the surgeon arrives," he said.

Leyburn suddenly threw up his hands, and the movement was an expression of panic.

"It will take a – week!" he cried desperately.

"You'll remain my – guest – until he comes." Hendrie's voice and manner were utterly savage. "If he is too late to save her, my promise goes if – I swing for it."