Читать книгу: «The Best Policy», страница 10

AN INCIDENTAL SACRIFICE

“I guess it’s all up with us,” said Sidney Kalin despairingly.

“It looks that way,” admitted his brother, Albert Kalin.

The father, Jonas Kalin, sat at his desk with his head half-buried in his hands.

“There is no chance for an extension, of course,” he said wearily.

“I should say not,” returned Sidney. “Telmer bought up the mortgage for just one purpose, and his only hope of success lies in foreclosing. He wants to get his hands on the invention.”

“Will he take an interest in the business?” asked Jonas.

“Why should he, when he can get the only thing he wants without?” returned Sidney.

“What does Dempsey say?” persisted the senior Kalin.

“It’s out of his line,” answered Albert, to whom the question was addressed. “If five thousand would straighten the thing out, he might risk it, but he wouldn’t put up a cent more than that, and he’d want a twenty-five per cent. interest in the business for that sum.”

“And, if we can save it, the thing is worth a fortune,” groaned Jonas. “We’ve got a start already, and there’s almost no limit to the possibilities. It ought to be worth fifty thousand a year inside of three years. He doesn’t want much.”

“Well, he’s out of the question, anyway,” said Sidney. “We’ve got to have twenty-five thousand, and we’ve got to have it mighty soon.”

“My life insurance is more than that,” mused Jonas.

“What good does that do?” retorted Sidney rather sharply. “Even if you wanted to surrender it, the cash surrender value is less than ten thousand at the present time.”

“That would help,” argued Jonas.

“Nothing will help that doesn’t put the full sum needed within our reach,” asserted Albert. “We’re about due to begin life over again with a little less than nothing.”

“I’ll think it over,” said Jonas, rising and wearily reaching for his hat. “I’ve always weathered the storms before. Perhaps I’ll find a way to weather this one.”

Jonas Kalin once had been accounted a successful real estate man, but he had lost a good deal of money in speculation, and the time and thought he gave to speculation had had an injurious effect upon his business. One of the sons had been for a time in the employ of a manufacturer of fountain pens. Later the elder Kalin had started both boys, as an independent firm, in that line of business, their pen differing sufficiently from others to avoid any infringement of patents on patented features. They had made no great amount of money, indeed barely a living income, but they had kept out of debt until Sidney invented a machine for finishing the shell or case of the pen.

His experiments had been rather costly, and the machine had been costly to construct, but he had convinced his father that it was a good thing, and Jonas had given up his dwindling real estate business and put what money he had left into his sons’ firm, becoming a partner in the enterprise. Even then it had been found necessary to borrow twenty-five thousand dollars in order to establish the business on the new and larger basis, giving a mortgage on the entire plant, which included the new machine, and this mortgage had passed into the hands of a more prosperous business rival at a time when the value of the invention was just becoming apparent. This invention largely reduced the cost of production, but the exploiting so far done, although expensive and reasonably successful, had not enabled the Kalins to accumulate anything to meet their obligation. Indeed, believing they would have no difficulty in securing an extension, they had not worried about this until they found themselves in the power of a rival.

The machine had not been patented, for reasons that most successful inventors will readily understand. While a patent is supposed to protect the inventor, it does not do so in many instances; on the contrary, it frequently gives a rival just the information he needs to duplicate the device with technical variations that will at least make the question of infringement a difficult one to decide. The inventor of limited means, opposed by a company with almost unlimited capital, is at a serious disadvantage when he gets into the courts, and there are cases where the value of an invention has been largely destroyed by having the market flooded with the article before the legal rights can be definitely determined. There is hardly a single patented device of great value that has not been the basis of long and costly litigation, involving either the unauthorized use or manufacture of the device as it is or the use or manufacture of a device suggested by the original and differing from it only enough to give technical plausibility to the plea that it is not an infringement. Even the great Edison is reported to have said that he has made practically no money on his patents, but has had to enter the manufacturing business to get any material benefit from his inventions.

“When you patent an invention,” the Kalins had been informed by a man of experience in such matters, “you are furnishing ammunition to the enemy. You are giving him your secret, and he will put some smart men at work to discover some method of using it himself. Edison is still busy with inventions, but you don’t see his name in the patent reports any more. He has become too wise for that. Secrecy is the best protection, provided you have something that can be kept secret.”

All this Jonas Kalin reviewed as he walked slowly and with bowed head toward his club. They had kept their invention secret, they had advertised extensively, and now, just as they were beginning to get returns on their investment, the dream was shattered. They had tried to interest various capitalists, but capitalists could not see the future as they saw it. Capital is exceptionally conservative when there is a question of investing in inventions that it does not understand, for inventors are proverbially optimistic and not infrequently cost capital a good deal of money.

“Thirty thousand dollars of life insurance!” muttered Jonas, as he settled himself in a corner of the reading-room. “If we could have the use of that money for a year we would be all right.”

Jonas was a widower, but his wife had been living when he had taken out this insurance. Now it would go to the sons eventually, if they survived him, but, meanwhile, they would lose a fortune. Since the death of his wife, Jonas had given his every thought to the boys and their future. He reproached himself for the speculations that had deprived him of the power of helping them as he had planned in earlier days; he felt that somehow he had defrauded them. So deeply did he feel this that from the day he gave up his real estate business he never had put one dollar into a speculation of any kind, except so far as his investment in their business was a speculation.

“If we could make that go,” he mused, as he crouched miserably in the big chair, “I should be content. I owe it to the boys to see them fairly started. I was in a position to do it once and I lost the money foolishly – their money, by rights, for I had put it aside for them. And here am I, almost useless – a business wreck – too old to begin again as an employee and lacking the capital to be an employer or to do business of any sort for myself. Instead of helping my boys, I am to be a burden to them – until I die. I am of value only in the grave.” He shuddered and seemed to sink still lower in the chair. “It is my duty to do what I can for them,” he added. “I am useless, but life is before them – a continuation of my life. I must be a success through my sons.”

Benson, a friend, stopped near him.

“What’s the matter, Kalin?” asked Benson. “You look blue.”

Kalin looked up at Benson in a dazed way, and for a moment seemed to be unable to grasp the fact that he had been addressed.

“Benson,” he said at last, his eyes wandering dreamily about the room, “is a man ever justified in committing suicide?”

Benson was startled, but he replied promptly and emphatically, “Never.”

“Suppose,” Kalin went on, “that your life intervened between those you love and happiness; suppose that your life meant misery and failure for them, while your death meant success and – and comfort.”

Benson drew up a chair and placed his hand on Kalin’s arm as if to emphasize his words.

“The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away,” he quoted earnestly. “Life is God’s gift and should be treasured as such. You may not return it until He calls, unless you would doubt His wisdom.”

Kalin nodded his head thoughtfully.

“Men have gone to certain death for those they love and been glorified for so doing,” he argued.

“A man may give his own life to save the life of another and be a hero,” returned Benson, “but he may not take his own life for any cause and be aught but a coward.”

“What matters it whether he takes it or gives it, so long as the purpose is the same?” asked Kalin.

Benson gripped the arm on which his hand lay and shook Kalin.

“Wake up!” he commanded sharply. “What’s the matter with you to-day?”

Kalin roused himself, as if from a dream, and laughed in a forced, dreary way.

“Nothing is the matter with me,” he replied. “I must have been reading something that gave my thoughts a morbid turn. Still, your reasoning seems to be that of a man who never has been tested. Your view has been my view, but I can see how a man’s views may change when he is confronted by the actual conditions concerning which he has previously only theorized. I don’t think you’re right.”

“It’s a disagreeable subject, even for abstract consideration,” asserted Benson. “Let’s drop it.”

“All right,” said Kalin. “I’m going in to lunch.”

In the dining-room he got into an obscure corner and the waiter had to joggle his elbow to rouse him from the reverie into which he immediately fell. Then, after barely tasting the lunch he ordered, he went to the office of the club and asked that all charges against him be footed up.

“There’s nothing against me at all now?” he said inquiringly as he paid the bill.

“Nothing at all, sir,” replied the clerk.

“I’d hate to leave any club debts,” he remarked, as if talking aloud to himself.

At his office he found his sons still gloomily discussing the situation.

“I think,” he said, “that I have found a way to save the business.”

“How?” they asked eagerly.

“The details are not quite clear in my mind yet,” he replied. “I would like to give them a little more thought before explaining the matter. But, if I succeed in pulling you through, you boys must be mighty careful in the future. A concern doesn’t get out of this kind of hole twice, and I’m going to turn it all over to you.”

“Why?” asked Albert in surprise.

“I ruined one business,” was the reply. “One is enough. Be cautious. Go slow. You’ve got a good thing – a fortune – if you handle your finances properly and don’t try to spread out too fast.”

He shook hands with both the boys, to their great bewilderment.

“Where are you going?” asked Sidney. “One would think you were starting on a long journey.”

“I’m taking leave of the business,” he answered, with a laugh that had something of pathos in it. “I’m going to shut myself up for a day or so until I get my little scheme elaborated, and then you shall have the benefit of it, but I am out of active business.”

Sidney and Albert were silent for some time after he had left. Jonas Kalin always had been a rather eccentric man, and they were accustomed to letting his whims and peculiarities of word and action pass without comment, but there was something in this parting that made them feel uncomfortable.

“I don’t like it,” remarked Sidney. “I wonder if the worry and disappointment have been too much for him.”

“It is a hard blow to him – not for himself, but for us,” returned Albert. “However, we’ll see him this evening.”

Mrs. Albert Kalin was the housekeeper for the three men. Sidney, being a bachelor, had always lived with his father, but Albert had married and moved away from the parental roof. Then, when his mother died, Jonas had called him back and practically turned the house over to him and his wife, reserving only one large room for himself. In this he had his own little library, and to this he frequently retired for long evenings of solitude, for, while not a recluse, he was a man who really needed no other companionship than his own thoughts and often seemed to avoid the society of others.

He was not at home, however, when his sons arrived for dinner. Mrs. Albert Kalin said he had brought home two or three bundles early in the afternoon, had gone directly to his room, where he remained for about an hour, and had then appeared with a valise.

“I never saw him look so haggard and distressed,” she explained. “He kissed me most affectionately and said he had some business to attend to and would not be home to-night.”

Late that evening Sidney Kalin went to his father’s club, where he saw Benson and learned enough to send him to police headquarters. There was no publicity, but a search for the missing man was begun at once. The circumstances were, to say the least, disquieting.

At the moment this search was begun Jonas Kalin was crossing Lake Michigan on one of the large steamers, and his actions were such as to attract the attention of some of the other passengers. It was a Friday night boat and was crowded with excursionists bound for a Saturday and Sunday outing in Michigan. Jonas had a state-room, but he merely put his valise in it, and then paced the deck, occasionally stopping to lean over the rail and look down at the water. Once or twice he sought a secluded corner and sat for a time buried in thought, but he moved away the moment others stopped near him. About eleven o’clock, as he passed through the main cabin, he saw a woman putting a little boy to bed on a sofa, and he offered her his state-room.

“I’m very grateful to you, sir,” she replied, “but we couldn’t think of taking it. You’ll need it yourself.”

“I shall not sleep to-night,” he said. “It will be vacant unless you take it. Shove the valise into a corner somewhere and I’ll get it in the morning.”

He dropped the state-room key on a chair and disappeared through a door leading to the deck before she could make further protest, but his face haunted her all that night. In the morning, after some search, she found him huddled up on a camp-stool against the rail of the forward deck, and she thanked him again.

“You don’t look well,” she ventured. “Can I do anything for you?”

“It’s not a question of what any one can do for me,” he answered, “but of what I can do for others.”

“I don’t understand you, sir,” she said.

“It’s a good thing you don’t,” he returned, and, fearing that she had to deal with a crazy man, she left him.

After landing, he went directly to a hotel, engaged a room, and shut himself up in it until afternoon. Then he went to the dock and wandered nervously back and forth, looking out over the water and occasionally down into it. The dock men watched him curiously, and one of them loosened a life-preserver that hung near, but he went back to the hotel without giving them an opportunity to use it.

He kept close to his room at the hotel, and was so unobtrusive that the clerks and the other guests hardly realized he was there, and, being registered under an assumed name, not one of them recognized him as the Jonas Kalin who was described in the Sunday papers as being missing. For, the secret search Friday night and Saturday failing to reveal any trace of him, his sons had decided to try the effect of publicity.

It was not until he had surrendered his room Sunday night that his identity was established. On the table was found a letter, sealed, addressed to Sidney Kalin.

“Kalin!” cried the clerk, when the letter was brought to him. “Good Lord! that’s the man who disappeared. And there’s a reward for information. I remember, too, he had all the Sunday papers sent to his room, and then kept out of the way until the moment he left.”

The clerk looked at the letter, uncertain as to what he ought to do. Finally, he decided to get the Chicago police department on the long-distance telephone.

“Jonas Kalin has been here for two days under an assumed name,” he reported, “but his identity was discovered only after he had taken the night boat back to Chicago. He left a letter. It is sealed and addressed to Sidney Kalin.”

“We’ll notify Kalin and meet the boat,” was the prompt reply. “Hold the letter until you hear from Kalin.”

A little later Kalin called up the hotel and instructed that the letter be mailed to him at once. As Jonas was already on his way back, nothing would be gained by having its contents transmitted by telephone. He was beyond reach until the boat arrived.

It was an anxious little crowd that waited at the wharf for the arrival of the boat. There were Albert and Sidney Kalin, two detectives and some newspaper men. The news of Jonas Kalin’s sojourn across the lake was already in the morning papers, having come by telegraph, and there was natural curiosity to learn the reason for this strange procedure. In addition, there was an undefined and unexpressed feeling that there might be a tragedy back of it. In any event, there was a mystery.

The boat reached its dock before five o’clock, but the state-room passengers had the privilege of sleeping until seven, so only the excursionists who had been obliged to sit up all night left the boat at once. There were many of these, however – a weary and disheveled lot of individuals, groups and couples straggling along to the dock. They were talking of something that had happened during the night, or was supposed to have happened. Something or some one certainly had gone over the rail, for the splash was distinctly heard, and an excitable passenger had raised the cry of “Man overboard!” The boat had been stopped, but investigation had failed to discover an actual witness to any such accident, although two people were sure they had seen something in the water just after the splash. The captain, however, insisted that it was all the result of some nervous person’s imagination.

To Albert and Sidney Kalin these rumors brought sinking hearts and a great dread. It took them a little time to locate the state-room that had been occupied by their father, but a description of him, coupled with the name he had used at the hotel, enabled them to do it.

His valise alone was found.

Several people remembered the haggard man who had tramped the deck so restlessly. He seemed to be in great mental distress, anxious only to keep away from all companionship, and no one could recall having seen him after the cry of “Man overboard!” Even the captain had finally to admit that it was probable he had lost a passenger, although, of course, no blame whatever attached to him or to any of the boat’s crew.

Then came the letter that had been forwarded from the hotel. It was pathetically brief and to the point, as follows:

“My Dear Sons: The insurance money will pull you through. It is all that I can give you. Your success is dearer to me than anything else in the world. Your affectionate father,

Jonas Kalin.

Of course, Dave Murray read the story in the papers – all but the letter. That was brought to him later by Albert Kalin.

“We wish to give you all the facts, without reservation,” Albert explained. “Father did this for us to save the firm, to save an almost priceless invention.” The young man choked a little. “We have hoped against hope that his letter might prove to be capable of some other interpretation, or that he may have changed his mind after writing it, and we have left no stone unturned – ”

“Neither have we,” said Murray quietly. “Perhaps we know more than you.”

“Have you got trace of him?” asked Albert quickly, and his face showed a dawn of hope that could not be misunderstood: he actually believed his father dead and would welcome any evidence to the contrary. It was not the expression of a man who was principally interested in the payment of the insurance money, although he was naturally presenting his and his brother’s claim.

“I am sorry to say we have not,” replied Murray, “but neither have we any proof of death.”

Albert plainly showed his disappointment at Murray’s first statement, and it was a moment or two before he replied to the second.

“I do not know your rules or aims,” he said, “but it is possible – indeed almost probable, under the circumstances – that there never will be any absolute proof of death. It – it happened in mid-lake, you know.”

“Our aim,” returned Murray, “is to pay every claim that we are convinced is just, without resorting to any quibbling or technical evasions, but we have to be careful. In saying this, I am merely stating a general proposition, without particular reference to this affair. Indeed, I concede that the presumption of death is unusually strong in this case. I shall be glad to have any facts bearing on it that you can give me.”

Albert fully reviewed the circumstances as he knew them, to all of which Murray listened attentively.

“I shall make a complete report to the home office,” said Murray at the conclusion of the recital. “Of course, after the lapse of a certain period there is a legal presumption of death, anyhow, but it is possible that the circumstantial evidence may be deemed strong enough to warrant an earlier settlement. Knowing the ostensible motive, I appreciate the value of time to you, and I assure you the company has no desire to delay matters longer than is necessary to assure itself of the justice of the claim.”

After Albert had departed, Murray went over the case carefully, and the evidence seemed quite convincing. In the first place, there could be no question as to a very strong motive. There was the certainty of ruin, which the death of Jonas alone could avert, and, after a lapse of two years from the date of the policy, suicide did not invalidate it. Therefore, by his own sacrifice, he could purchase a bright future for his sons. Then there could be no doubt that he had been depressed and worried for some time, and latterly unquestionably had brooded on the subject of self-destruction. In a talk with one man he had spoken of it as “self-elimination,” but he had spoken more bluntly to Benson at the club. There could be no doubt now that he contemplated such action at that time, and that he had reference to it when he told his sons he had discovered a way to raise the necessary money. Everything indicated that his troubles had made him temporarily insane.

Then there was the evidence of the woman to whom he had resigned his state-room on the boat, and of various other passengers who had noted his restlessness and his misery. One woman even asserted that she had said to a companion at the time that there was a man who contemplated some desperate act. It seemed probable that he had planned to jump overboard that first night, but had been deterred, either by lack of a favorable opportunity or because his courage failed him. His actions at the hotel, and especially at the dock, were wholly consistent with this theory, and the blunt note he left was further evidence of mental derangement. Although his purpose in no way affected his policy, a man in his right mind would hardly have stated it so frankly; indeed, a sane man probably would have tried to give the appearance of accident to his death. Finally, he had boarded the return boat and was missing when the boat reached Chicago, although his strange actions had directed particular attention to him during the early part of the trip.

After a brief delay the company paid the policy. The circumstantial evidence could hardly be more convincing, and the body of a man who drowned himself in mid-lake might never be recovered.

It was several years later that Albert Kalin called upon Murray and introduced himself a second time.

“We have just heard from father,” he said.

“What!” cried Murray.

“He died in South America,” explained Albert; “died there miserably – not because of any poverty, but because he was an exile and felt that he was a swindler. He left a letter which was forwarded to us. His life, he said, had been one long torture since that night on the boat, and he had a thousand times regretted that he did not actually throw himself into the lake. I fear,” added Albert sadly, “that he really did commit suicide finally. He made one dying request. I would like to read it to you.”

Albert took a letter from his pocket and read this paragraph:

“My life as an exiled swindler has been hell, but I have seen the Chicago papers and I know that I saved the firm and the invention and that you have prospered. That has been my only consolation. It would have been some relief if I could have communicated with you, but I would not make you a party to my crime. Now, at last, I ask you to do something for the old man: Refund to the insurance company every cent you received, less the premiums I actually paid. Refund it all, if necessary, but make my record clear. That was the only dishonest act of a long business career, and God only knows how I have suffered for it. You have prospered, you can do this, and I know you will. It is that alone that gives me consolation as my period of punishment at last draws to a close.”

“How did he do it?” asked Murray, before Albert could speak.

“He purchased and took with him a second-hand suit of clothes and a wig,” explained Albert. “He cut off his whiskers and mustache, so that he appeared as a man who had neglected to shave for a week – a pretty good disguise in itself, for father was always neat and clean. The clothes he had worn went overboard with a weight attached, which accounts for the splash, and he himself raised the cry of ‘Man overboard!’ After that he kept out of the light, and he had little difficulty in slipping ashore while we were hunting his state-room. His mental distress was real, for he was leaving all he held dear and condemning himself to exile.”

“Well,” commented Murray, “I guess the circumstances would have fooled any one, for his whole previous life made him about the last man who would be suspected of anything of that sort.”

“And now,” said Albert, “my brother and I are prepared to make a cash settlement with you on any basis that you deem satisfactory.”