Young Mr. Boyce was spared the trouble of going to Florida, and relieved from the embarrassment of inventing lies to his partner about the trip, which was even more welcome. Only a few days after the interview with Mrs. Minster, news came of the unexpected death of Lawyer Clarke, caused by one of those sudden changes of temperature at sunset which have filled so many churchyards in that sunny clime. His executors were both resident in Thessaly, and at a word from Mrs. Minster they turned over to Horace the box containing the documents relating to her affairs. Only one of these executors, old ’Squire Gedney, expressed any comment upon Mrs. Minster’s selection, at least in Horace’s hearing.
This Gedney was a slovenly and mumbling old man, the leading characteristics of whose appearance were an unshaven jaw, a general shininess and disorder of apparel, and a great deal of tobacco-juice. It was still remembered that in his youth he had promised to be an important figure at the bar and in politics. His failure had been exceptionally obvious and complete, but for some occult reason Thessaly had a soft corner in its heart for him, even when his estate bordered upon the disreputable, and for many years had been in the habit of electing him to be one of its justices of the peace. The functions of this office he avowedly employed in the manner best calculated to insure the livelihood which his fellow-citizens expected him to get out of it. His principal judicial maxim was never to find a verdict against the party to a suit who was least liable to pay him his costs. If justice could be made to fit with this rule, so much the better for justice. But, in any event, the ’squire must look out primarily for his costs. He made no concealment of this theory and practice; and while some citizens who took matters seriously were indignant about it, the great majority merely laughed and said the old man had got to live somehow, and voted good-naturedly for him next time.
If Calvin Gedney owed much to the amiability and friendly feeling of his fellow-townsmen, he repaid the debt but poorly in kind. No bitterer or more caustic tongue than his wagged in all Dearborn County. When he was in a companiable mood, and stood around in the cigar store and talked for the delectation of the boys of an evening, the range and scope of his personal sneers and sarcasms would expand under the influence of applauding laughter, until no name, be it never so honored, was sacred from his attack, save always one—that of Minster. There was a popular understanding that Stephen Minster had once befriended Gedney, and that that accounted for the exception; but this was rendered difficult of credence by the fact that so many other men had befriended Gedney, and yet now served as targets for his most rancorous jeers. Whatever the reason may have been, however, the ’squire’s affection for the memory of Stephen Minster, and his almost defiant reverence for the family he had left behind, were known to all men, and regarded as creditable to him.
Perhaps this was in some way accountable for the fact that the ’squire remained year after year in old Mr. Clarke’s will as an executor, long after he had ceased to be regarded as a responsible person by the village at large, for Mr. Clarke also was devoted to the Minsters. At all events, he was so named in the will, in conjunction with a non-legal brother of the deceased, and it was in this capacity that he addressed some remarks to Mr. Horace Boyce when he handed over to him the Minster papers. The scene was a small and extremely dirty chamber off the justice’s court-room, furnished mainly by a squalid sofa-bed, a number of empty bottles on the bare floor, and a thick overhanging canopy of cobwebs.
“Here they are,” said the ’squire, expectorating indefinitely among the bottles, “and God help ’em! What it all means beats me.”
“I guess you needn’t worry, Cal,” answered Horace lightly, in the easily familiar tone which Thessaly always adopted toward its unrespected magistrate. “You’d better come out and have a drink; then you’ll see things brighter.”
“Damn your impudence, you young cub!” shouted the ’squire, flaming up into sudden and inexplicable wrath. “Who are you calling ‘Cal’? By the Eternal, when I was your age, I’d have as soon bitten off my tongue as dared call a man of my years by his Christian name! I can remember your great-grandfather, the judge, sir. I was admitted before he died; and I tell you, sir, that if it had been possible for me to venture upon such a piece of cheek with him, he’d have taken me over his knee, by Gawd! and walloped me before the whole assembled bar of Dearborn County!”
The old man had worked himself up into a feverish reminiscence of his early stump-speaking days, and he trembled and spluttered over his concluding words with unwonted excitement.
Horace felt disposed to laugh. People always did laugh at “Cal” Gedney, and laugh most when he grew strenuous.
“You’d better get the drink first,” he said, putting the box under his arm, “and then free your mind.”
“I’ll see you food for worms, first!” shouted the ’squire, still furiously. “You’ve got your papers, and I’ve got my opinion, and that’s all there is ’twixt you and me. There’s the door that the carpenters made, and I guess they were thinking of you when they made it.”
“Upon my word, you’re amusing this morning, ’squire,” said Horace, looking with aroused interest at the vehement justice. “What’s the matter with you? Don’t your clothes fit you? Come around to the house and I’ll rig you up in some new ones.”
The ’squire began with a torrent of explosive profanity, framed in gestures which almost threatened personal violence. All at once he stopped short, looked vacantly at the floor, and then sat down on his bed, burying his face in his hands. From the convulsive clinching of his fingers among the grizzled, unkempt locks of hair, and the heaving of his chest, Horace feared he was going to have a fit, and, advancing, put a hand on his shoulder.
The ’squire shook it off roughly, and raised his haggard, deeply-furrowed face. It was a strong-featured countenance still, and had once been handsome as well, but what it chiefly said to Horace now was that the old man couldn’t stand many more such nights of it as this last had evidently been.
“Come, ’squire, I didn’t want to annoy you. I’m sorry if I did.”
“You insulted me,” said the old man, with a dignity which quavered into pathos as he added: “I’ve got so low now, by Gawd, that even you can insult me!”
Horace smiled at the impracticability of all this. “What the deuce is it all about, anyway?” he asked. “What have you got against me? I’ve always been civil to you, haven’t I?”
“You’re no good,” was the justice’s concise explanation.
The young man laughed outright. “I daresay you’re right,” he said, pleasantly, as one humors a child. “Now will you come out and have a drink?”
“I’ve not been forty-four years at the bar for nothing—”
“I should think not! Whole generations of barkeepers can testify to that.”
“I can tell,” went on the old man, ignoring the jest, and rising from the bed as he spoke; “I can tell when a man’s got an honest face. I can tell when he means to play fair. And I wouldn’t trust you one inch farther, Mr. Horace Boyce, than I could throw a bull by the tail. I tell you that, sir, straight to your teeth.”
Horace, still with the box snugly under his arm, had sauntered out into the dark and silent courtroom. He turned now, half smiling, and said:
“Third and last call—do you want a drink?”
The old man’s answer was to slam the door in his face with a noise which rang in reverberating echoes through the desolate hall of justice. Horace, still smiling, went away.
The morning had lapsed into afternoon, and succeeding hours had brought the first ashen tints of dusk into the winter sky, before the young man completed his examination of the Minster papers. He had taken them to his own room in his father’s house, sending word to the office that he had a cold and would not come down that day; and it was behind a locked door that he had studied the documents which stood for millions. On a sheet of paper he made certain memoranda from time to time, and now that the search was ended, he lighted a fresh cigar, and neatly reduced these to a little tabular statement:
0196
When Horace had finished this he felt justified in helping himself to some brandy and soda. It was the most interesting and important computation upon which he had ever engaged, and its noble proportions grew upon him momentarily as he pondered them and sipped his drink. More than two and a quarter millions lay before his eyes, within reach of his hand. Was it not almost as if they were his? And of course this did not represent everything. There was sundry village property that he knew about; there would be bank accounts, minor investments and so on, quite probably raising the total to nearly or quite two millions and a half. Oh, to think of it!
And he had only put things down at par values. The telegraph stock was quoted at a trifle less, just now, but if there had been any Minster Iron-works stock for sale, it would command a heavy premium. The scattering investments, too, which yielded an average of five per cent., must be worth a good deal more than their face. What he didn’t like about the thing was that big block of Thessaly Manufacturing Company stock. That seemed to be earning nothing at all; he could find no record of dividends, or, in truth, any information whatever about it. Where had he heard about that company before? The name was curiously familiar to his mind; he had been told something about it—by whom?
All at once it flashed upon him. That was the company of which the mysterious Judge Wendover was president. Tenney had talked about it; Tenney had told him that he would hear a good deal about it before long.
As these reflections rose in the young man’s mind, the figures which he had written down on the paper seemed to diminish in size and significance. It was a queer notion, but he couldn’t help feeling that the millions had somehow moved themselves farther back, out of his reach. The thought of these two men—of the gray-eyed, thin-lipped, abnormally smart Tenney, and of that shadowy New York financier who shared his secrets—made him nervous. They had a purpose, and he was more or less linked to it and to them, and Heaven only knew where he might be dragged............