The Three Partners

Demorest felt himself hurried forward by the energetic Stacy, preceded by the obsequious manager, through a corridor to a handsomely furnished suite, into whose bathroom Stacy incontinently thrust him.

“There! Wash up; and by the time you’re ready Barker ought to be back, and we’ll have supper. It’s waiting for us in the other room.”

“But how about Barker, the dear boy?” persisted Demorest, holding open the door. “Tell me, is he well and happy?”

“About as well as we all are,” said Stacy quickly, yet with a certain dry significance. “Never mind now; wait until you see him.”

The door closed. When Demorest had finished washing, and wiped away the last red stain of the mountain road, he found Stacy seated by the window of the larger sitting-room. In the centre a table was spread for supper. A bright fire of hickory logs burnt on a marble hearth between two large windows that gave upon the distant outline of Black Spur. As Stacy turned towards him, by the light of the shaded lamp and flickering fire, Demorest had a good look at the face of his old friend and partner. It was as keen and energetic as ever, with perhaps an even more hawk-like activity visible in the eye and nostril; but it was more thoughtful and reticent in the lines of the mouth under the closely clipped beard and mustache, and when he looked up, at first there were two deep lines or furrows across his low broad forehead. Demorest fancied, too, that there was a little of the old fighting look in his eye, but it softened quickly as his friend approached, and he burst out with his curt but honest single-syllabled laugh. “Ha! You look a little less like a roving Apache than you did when you came. I really thought the waiters were going to chuck you. And you ARE tanned! Darned if you don’t look like the profile stamped on a Continental penny! But here’s luck and a welcome back, old man!”

Demorest passed his arm around the neck of his seated partner, and grasping his upraised hand said, looking down with a smile, “And now about Barker.”

“Oh, Parker, d—n him! He’s the same unshakable, unchangeable, ungrow-upable Barker! With the devil’s own luck, too! Waltzing into risks and waltzing out of ‘em. With fads enough to put him in the insane asylum if people did not prefer to keep him out of it to help ‘em. Always believing in everybody, until they actually believe in themselves, and shake him! And he’s got a wife that’s making a fool of herself, and I shouldn’t wonder in time—of him!”

Demorest pressed his hand over his partner’s mouth. “Come, Jim! You know you never really liked that marriage, simply because you thought that old man Carter made a good thing of it. And you never seem to have taken into consideration the happiness Barker got out of it, for he DID love the girl. And he still is happy, is he not?” he added quickly, as Stacy uttered a grunt.

“As happy as a man can be who has his child here with a nurse while his wife is gallivanting in San Francisco, and throwing her money—and Lord knows what else—away at the bidding of a smooth-tongued, shady operator.”

“Does HE complain of it?” asked Demorest.

“Not he; the fool trusts her!” said Stacy curtly.

Demorest laughed. “That is happiness! Come, Jim! don’t let us begrudge him that. But I’ve heard that his affairs have again prospered.”

“He built this railroad and this hotel. The bank owns both now. He didn’t care to keep money in them after they were a success; said he wasn’t an engineer nor a hotel-keeper, and drew it out to find something new. But here he comes,” he added, as a horseman dashed into the drive before the hotel. “Question him yourself. You know you and he always get along best without me.”

In another moment Barker had burst into the room, and in his first tempestuous greeting of Demorest the latter saw little change in his younger partner as he held him at arm’s length to look at him. “Why, Barker boy, you haven’t got a bit older since the day when—you remember—you went over to Boomville to cash your bonds, and then came back and burst upon us like this to tell us you were a beggar.”

“Yes,” laughed Barker, “and all the while you fellows were holding four aces up your sleeve in the shape of the big strike.”

“And you, Georgy, old boy,” returned Demorest, swinging Barker’s two hands backwards and forwards, “were holding a royal flush up yours in the shape of your engagement to Kitty.”

The fresh color died out of Barker’s cheek even while the frank laugh was still on his mouth. He turned his face for a moment towards the window, and a swift and almost involuntary glance passed between the others. But he almost as quickly turned his glistening eyes back to Demorest again, and said eagerly, “Yes, dear Kitty! You shall see her and the baby to-morrow.”

Then they fell upon the supper with the appetites of the Past, and for some moments they all talked eagerly and even noisily together, all at the same time, with even the spirits of the Past. They recalled every detail of their old life; eagerly and impetuously recounted the old struggles, hopes, and disappointments, gave the strange importance of schoolboys to unimportant events, and a mystic meaning to a shibboleth of their own; roared over old jokes with a delight they had never since given to new; reawakened idiotic nicknames and bywords with intense enjoyment; grew grave, anxious, and agonized over forgotten names, trifling dates, useless distances, ineffective records, and feeble chronicles of their domestic economy. It was the thoughtful and melancholy Demorest who remembered the exact color and price paid for a certain shirt bought from a Greaser peddler amidst the envy of his companions; it was the financial magnate, Stacy, who could inform them what were the exact days they had saleratus bread and when flapjacks; it was the thoughtless and mercurial Barker who recalled with unheard-of accuracy, amidst the applause of the others, the full name of the Indian squaw who assisted at their washing. Even then they were almost feverishly loath to leave the subject, as if the Past, at least, was secure to them still, and they were even doubtful of their own free and full accord in the Present. Then they slipped rather reluctantly into their later experiences, but with scarcely the same freedom or spontaneity; and it was noticeable that these records were elicited from Barker by Stacy or from Stacy by Barker for the information of Demorest, often with chaffing and only under good-humored protest. “Tell Demorest how you broke the ‘Copper Ring,’” from the admiring Barker, or, “Tell Demorest how your d–d foolishness in buying up the right and plant of the Ditch Company got you control of the railroad,” from the mischievous Stacy, were challenges in point. Presently they left the table, and, to the astonishment of the waiters who removed the cloth, common brier-wood pipes, thoughtfully provided by Barker in commemoration of the Past, were lit, and they ranged themselves in armchairs before the fire quite unconsciously in their old attitudes. The two windows on either side of the hearth gave them the same view that the open door of the old cabin had made familiar to them, the league-long valley below the shadowy bulk of the Black Spur rising in the distance, and, still more remote, the pallid snow-line that soared even beyond its crest.

As in the old time, they were for many moments silent; and then, as in the old time, it was the irrepressible Barker who broke the silence. “But Stacy does not tell you anything about his friend, the beautiful Mrs. Horncastle. You know he’s the guardian of one of the finest women in California—a woman as noble and generous as she is handsome. And think of it! He’s protecting her from her brute of a husband, and looking after her property. Isn’t it good and chivalrous of him?”

The irrepressible laughter of the two men brought only wonder and reproachful indignation into the widely opened eyes of Barker. HE was perfectly sincere. He had been thinking of Stacy’s admiration for Mrs. Horncastle in his ride from Boomville, and, strange to say, yet characteristic of his nature, it was equally the natural outcome of his interview with her and the singular effect she had upon him. That he (Barker) thoroughly sympathized with her only convinced him that Stacy must feel the same for her, and that, no doubt, she must respond to him equally. And how noble it was in his old partner, with his advantages of position in the world and his protecting relations to her, not to avail himself of this influence upon her generous nature. If he himself—a married man and the husband of Kitty—was so conscious of her charm, how much greater it must be to the free and INEXPERIENCED Stacy.

The italics were in Barker’s thought; for in those matters he felt that Stacy and even Demorest, occupied in other things, had not his knowledge. There was no idea or consciousness of heroically sacrificing himself or Mrs. Horncastle in this. I am afraid there was not even an idea of a superior morality in himself in giving up the possibility of loving her. Ever since Stacy had first seen her he had fancied that Stacy liked her,—indeed, Kitty fancied it, too,—and it seemed almost providential now that he should know how to assist his old partner to happiness. For it was inconceivable that Stacy should not be able to rescue this woman from her shameful bonds, or that she should not consent to it through his (Barker’s) arguments and entreaties. To a “champion of dames” this seemed only right and proper. In his unfailing optimism he translated Stacy’s laugh as embarrassment and Demorest’s as only ignorance of the real question. But Demorest had noticed, if he had not, that Stacy’s laugh was a little nervously prolonged for a man of his temperament, and that he had cast a very keen glance at Barker. A messenger arriving with a telegram brought from Boomville called Stacy momentarily away, and Barker was not slow to take advantage of his absence.

“I wish, Phil,” he said, hitching his chair closer to Demorest, “that you would think seriously of this matter, and try to persuade Stacy—who, I believe, is more interested in Mrs. Horncastle than he cares to show—to put a little of that determination in love that he has shown in business. She’s an awfully fine woman, and in every way suited to him, and he is letting an absurd sense of pride and honor keep him from influencing her to get rid of her impossible husband. There’s no reason,” continued Barker in a burst of enthusiastic simplicity, “that BECAUSE she has found some one she likes better, and who would treat her better, that she should continue to stick to that beast whom all California would gladly see her divorced from. I never could understand that kind of argument, could you?”

Demorest looked at his companion’s glowing cheek and kindling eye with a smile. “A good deal depends upon the side from which you argue. But, frankly, Barker boy, though I think I know you in all your phases, I am not prepared yet to accept you as a match-maker! However, I’ll think it over, and find out something more of this from your goddess, who seems to have bewitched you both. But what does Mistress Kitty say to your admiration?”

Barker’s face clouded, but instantly brightened. “Oh, they’re the best of friends; they’re quite like us, you know, even to larks they have together.” He stopped and colored at his slip. But Demorest, who had noticed his change of expression, was more concerned at the look of half incredulity and half suspicion with which Stacy, who had re-entered the room in time to hear Barker’s speech, was regarding his unconscious younger partner.

“I didn’t know that Mrs. Horncastle and Mrs. Barker were such friends,” he said dryly as he sat down again. But his face presently became so abstracted that Demorest said gayly:—

“Well, Jim, I’m glad I’m not a Napoleon of Finance! I couldn’t stand it to have my privacy or my relaxation broken in upon at any moment, as yours was just now. What confounded somersault in stocks has put that face on you?”

Stacy looked up quickly with his brief laugh. “I’m afraid you’d be none the wiser if I told you. That was a pony express messenger from New York. You remember how Barker, that night of the strike, when we were sitting together here, or very near here, proposed that we ought to have a password or a symbol to call us together in case of emergency, for each other’s help? Well, let us say I have two partners, one in Europe and one in New York. That was my password.”

“And, I hope, no more serious than ours,” added Demorest.

Stacy laughed his short laugh. Nevertheless, the conversation dragged again. The feverish gayety of the early part of the evening was gone, and they seemed to be suffering from the reaction. They fell into their old attitudes, looking from the firelight to the distant bulk of Black Spur without a word. The occasional sound of the voices of promenaders on the veranda at last ceased; there was the noise of the shutting of heavy doors below, and Barker rose.

“You’ll excuse me, boys; but I must go and say good-night to little Sta, and see that he’s all right. I haven’t seen him since I got back. But”—to Demorest—“you’ll see him to-morrow, when Kitty comes. It is as much as my life is worth to show him before she certifies him as being presentable.” He paused, and then added: “Don’t wait up, you fellows, for me; sometimes the little chap won’t let me go. It’s as if he thought, now Kitty’s away, I was all he had. But I’ll be up early in the morning and see you. I dare say you and Stacy have a heap to say to each other on business, and you won’t miss me. So I’ll say good-night.” He laughed lightly, pressed the hands of his partners in his usual hearty fashion, and went out of the room, leaving the gloom a little deeper than before. It was so unusual for Barker to be the first to leave anybody or anything in trouble that they both noticed it. “But for that,” said Demorest, turning to Stacy as the door closed, “I should say the dear fellow was absolutely unchanged. But he seemed a little anxious to-night.”

“I shouldn’t wonder. He’s got two women on his mind,—as if one was not enough.”

“I don’t understand. You say his wife is foolish, and this other”—

“Never mind that now,” interrupted Stacy, getting up and putting down his pipe. “Let’s talk a little business. That other stuff will keep.”

“By all means,” said Demorest, with a smile, settling down into his chair a little wearily, however. “I forgot business. And I forgot, my dear Jim, to congratulate you. I’ve heard all about you, even in New York. You’re the man who, according to everybody, now holds the finances of the Pacific Slope in his hands. And,” he added, leaning affectionately towards his old partner, “I don’t know any one better equipped in honesty, straightforwardness, and courage for such a responsibility than you.”

“I only wish,” said Stacy, looking thoughtfully at Demorest, “that I didn’t hold nearly a million of your money included in the finances of the Pacific Slope.”

“Why,” said the smiling Demorest, “as long as I am satisfied?”

“Because I am not. If you’re satisfied, I’m a wretched idiot and not fit for my position. Now, look here, Phil. When you wrote me to sell out your shares in the Wheat Trust I was a little staggered. I knew your gait, my boy, and I knew, too, that, while you didn’t know enough to trust your own opinions or feeling, you knew too much to trust any one’s opinion that wasn’t first-class. So I reckoned you had the straight tip; but I didn’t see it. Now, I ought not to have been staggered if I was fit for your confidence, or, if I was staggered, I ought to have had enough confidence in myself not to mind you. See?”

“I admit your logic, old man,” said Demorest, with an amused face, “but I don’t see your premises. WHEN did I tell you to sell out?”

“Two days ago. You wrote just after you arrived.”

“I have never written to you since I arrived. I only telegraphed to you to know where we should meet, and received your message to come here.”

“You never wrote me from San Francisco?”

“Never.”

Stacy looked concernedly at his friend. Was he in his right mind? He had heard of cases where melancholy brooding on a fixed idea had affected the memory. He took from his pocket a letter-case, and selecting a letter handed it to Demorest without speaking.

Demorest glanced at it, turned it over, read its contents, and in a grave voice said, “There is something wrong here. It is like my handwriting, but I never wrote the letter, nor has it been in my hand before.”

Stacy sprang to his side. “Then it’s a forgery!”

“Wait a moment.” Demorest, who, although very grave, was the more collected of the two, went to a writing-desk, selected a sheet of paper, and took up a pen. “Now,” he said, “dictate that letter to me.”

Stacy began, Demorest’s pen rapidly following him:—

“DEAR JIM,—On receipt of this get rid of my Wheat Trust shares at whatever figure you can. From the way things pointed in New York”—

“Stop!” interrupted Demorest.

“Well?” said Stacy impatiently.

“Now, my dear Jim,” said Demorest plaintively, “when did you ever know me to write such a sentence as ‘the way things pointed’?”

“Let me finish reading,” said Stacy. This literary sensitiveness at such a moment seemed little short of puerility to the man of business.

“From the way things pointed in New York,” continued Stacy, “and from private advices received, this seems to be the only prudent course before the feathers begin to fly. Longing to see you again and the dear old stamping-ground at Heavy Tree. Love to Barker. Has the dear old boy been at any fresh crank lately?

“Yours, PHIL DEMOREST.”

The dictation and copy finished together. Demorest laid the freshly written sheet beside the letter Stacy had produced. They were very much alike and yet quite distinct from each other. Only the signature seemed identical.

“That’s the invariable mistake with the forger,” said Demorest; “he always forgets that signatures ought to be identical with the text rather than with each other.”

But Stacy did not seem to hear this or require further proof. His face was quite gray and his lips compressed until lost in his closely set beard as he gazed fixedly out of the window. For the first time, really concerned and touched, Demorest laid his hand gently on his shoulder.

“Tell me, Jim, how much does this mean to you apart from me? Don’t think of me.”

“I don’t know yet,” said Stacy slowly. “That’s the trouble. And I won’t know until I know who’s at the bottom of it. Does anybody know of your affairs with me?”

“No one.”

“No confidential friend, eh?”

“None.”

“No one who has access to your secrets? No—no—woman? Excuse me, Phil,” he said, as a peculiar look passed over Demorest’s face, “but this is business.”

“No,” he returned, with that gentleness that used to frighten them in the old days, “it’s ignorance. You fellows always say ‘Cherchez la femme’ when you can’t say anything else. Come now,” he went on more brightly, “look at the letter. Here’s a man, commercially educated, for he has used the usual business formulas, ‘on receipt of this,’ and ‘advices received,’ which I won’t merely say I don’t use, but which few but commercial men use. Next, here’s a man who uses slang, not only ineptly, but artificially, to give the letter the easy, familiar turn it hasn’t from beginning to end. I need only say, my dear Stacy, that I don’t write slang to you, but that nobody who understands slang ever writes it in that way. And then the knowledge of my opinion of Barker is such as might be gained from the reading of my letters by a person who couldn’t comprehend my feelings. Now, let me play inquisitor for a few moments. Has anybody access to my letters to YOU?”

“No one. I keep them locked up in a cabinet. I only make memorandums of your instructions, which I give to my clerks, but never your letters.”

“But your clerks sometimes see you make memorandums from them?”

“Yes, but none of them have the ability to do this sort of thing, nor the opportunity of profiting by it.”

“Has any woman—now this is not retaliation, my dear Jim, for I fancy I detect a woman’s cleverness and a woman’s stupidity in this forgery—any access to your secrets or my letters? A woman’s villainy is always effective for the moment, but always defective when probed.”

The look of scorn which passed over Stacy’s face was quite as distinct as Demorest’s previous protest, as he said contemptuously, “I’m not such a fool as to mix up petticoats with my business, whatever I do.”

“Well, one thing more. I have told you that in my opinion the forger has a commercial education or style, that he doesn’t know me nor Barker, and don’t understand slang. Now, I have to add what must have occurred to you, Jim, that the forger is either a coward, or his object is not altogether mercenary: for the same ability displayed in this letter would on the signature alone—had it been on a check or draft—have drawn from your bank twenty times the amount concerned. Now, what is the actual loss by this forgery?”

“Very little; for you’ve got a good price for your stocks, considering the depreciation in realizing suddenly on so large an amount. I told my broker to sell slowly and in small quantities to avoid a panic. But the real loss is the control of the stock.”

“But the amount I had was not enough to affect that,” said Demorest.

“No, but I was carrying a large amount myself, and together we controlled the market, and now I have unloaded, too.”

“You sold out! and with your doubts?” said Demorest.

“That’s just it,” said Stacy, looking steadily at his companion’s face, “because I HAD doubts, and it won’t do for me to have them. I ought either to have disobeyed your letter and kept your stock and my own, or have done just what I did. I might have hedged on my own stock, but I don’t believe in hedging. There is no middle course to a man in my business if he wants to keep at the top. No great success, no great power, was ever created by it.”

Demorest smiled. “Yet you accept the alternative also, which is ruin?”

“Precisely,” said Stacy. “When you returned the other day you were bound to find me what I was or a beggar. But nothing between. However,” he added, “this has nothing to do with the forgery, or,” he smiled grimly, “everything to do with it. Hush! Barker is coming.”

There was a quick step along the corridor approaching the room. The next moment the door flew open to the bounding step and laughing face of Barker. Whatever of thoughtfulness or despondency he had carried from the room with him was completely gone. With his amazing buoyancy and power of reaction he was there again in his usual frank, cheerful simplicity.

“I thought I’d come in and say goodnight,” he began, with a laugh. “I got Sta asleep after some high jinks we had together, and then I reckoned it wasn’t the square thing to leave just you two together, the first night you came. And I remembered I had some business to talk over, too, so I thought I’d chip in again and take a hand. It’s only the shank of the evening yet,” he continued gayly, “and we ought to sit up at least long enough to see the old snow-line vanish, as we did in old times. But I say,” he added suddenly, as he glanced from the one to the other, “you’ve been having it pretty strong already. Why, you both look as you did that night the backwater of the South Fork came into our cabin. What’s up?”

“Nothing,” said Demorest hastily, as he caught a glance of Stacy’s impatient face. “Only all business is serious, Barker boy, though you don’t seem to feel it so.”

“I reckon you’re right there,” said Barker, with a chuckle. “People always laugh, of course, when I talk business, so it might make it a little livelier for you and more of a change if I chipped in now. Only I don’t know which you’ll do. Hand me a pipe. Well,” he continued, filling the pipe Demorest shoved towards him, “you see, I was in Sacramento yesterday, and I went into Van Loo’s branch office, as I heard he was there, and I wanted to find out something about Kitty’s investments, which I don’t think he’s managing exactly right. He wasn’t there, however, but as I was waiting I heard his clerks talk about a drop in the Wheat Trust, and that there was a lot of it put upon the market. They seemed to think that something had happened, and it was going down still further. Now I knew it was your pet scheme, and that Phil had a lot of shares in it, too, so I just slipped out and went to a broker’s and told him to buy all he could of it. And, by Jove! I was a little taken aback when I found what I was in for, for everybody seemed to have unloaded, and I found I hadn’t money enough to pay margins, but I knew that Demorest was here, and I reckoned on his seeing me through.” He stopped and colored, but added hopefully, “I reckon I’m safe, anyway, for just as the thing was over those same clerks of Van Loo’s came bounding into the office to buy up everything. And offered to take it off my hands and pay the margins.”