Tongues of Flame (MacFarlane)/Chapter 11
BY THE old Horny!" greeted Scanlon, a very worried expression making sudden departure from his face. "Henry, old man! I sure am glad to see you alive and back among us. I thought that bunch had croaked you. It was easy to guess you'd butted in."
Henry was staggered once more and must have given Scanlon a queer look, for the tones of his voice were again the very tones he had heard in the dark of early morning. They were exactly like the tones of Count Eckstrom. True, the speech of the two men was totally different. Count Eckstrom's choice of words was precise; he articulated them with distinction. Tom Scanlon's choice was apt to be vulgar, his accent slovenly and provincial. But yonder in the dark Henry heard only tones—a voice. Whose voice? . . . Which voice? . . . The puzzle banged his sore head like a blow.
"Where you been? What happened? Are you much hurt? Got any clues to who they were or where they went?" Scanlon spouted these queries excitedly, eagerly, as a man would who was vitally interested and spotlessly innocent. The manner of them should have allayed every doubt. But the voice . . . the voice! Henry swallowed hard. So help him, this of Scanlon's was the same voice. Helplessly Harrington's eyes shifted to where Billie's coupé was gathering speed with Count Eckstrom in it. That too was the same voice.
"No clues, Scanlon; no," he mumbled rather absently. "Nothing but a bust on the bean. What did they take?"
"Book One of Deeds from the Recorder's office. From our office the old man's original patents, the original map of the Wilkinson survey made in 1890, and a certified copy of the treaty with the Salisheuttes in 1855 fixing reservation limits. A-course, it's just some melodrama of that nut, Hornblower's. Bunk to lend color to his threats. You'd ought to 'a' let them hang that fellow, Henry. You and J. B. ought. But J. B. is such a generous old sport that he'd keep a knife ready to lend to any fellow that was trying to cut his throat.
"However, that's neither here nor there now, Henry. What's eating me is, I've got some business with you for the Old Man." Scanlon had lowered his voice, for a crowd was gathering.
But Henry was inattentive. The perplexity of the dual voices had entangled him again. Every tone of Scanlon's revived his first suspicion; yet every word of the man and his manner tended to allay that suspicion. Henry was ninety-nine percent convinced that he had done Scanlon a grave injustice. But there remained that stubborn one percent.
"How soon can we talk?" urged Scanlon, nudging in close, for the group on the sidewalk was gaping and exclamatory, threatening momentarily to edge up and ask questions. "The Old Man's a nut for getting these things down in black and white and locked up in the safe. He was worried about you personally all day, but the minute he hears you're back and half-way all right, he won't give a darn for anything till I've got you signed up."
Henry straightened. "I was satisfied with Mr. Boland's simple assurance. Is he not satisfied with mine?"
"Of course he's satisfied with it, Henry," assured Scanlon, who assumed a fatherly manner. "That's just the habit of his mind. The letter—the letter—the letter of the contract—the letter of the law. That's Old Two Blades—to the last hair in his pernickety disposition. Remember that and it will help you a lot in dealing with him."
"Pernickety?" Henry stuck at the word. "I thought he was most reasonable."
"Reasonable, yes. But he wants what he wants the way he wants it. Give him that and he's reasonable. Most men are." Scanlon laughed; but it was a laugh of admiration, of devotion as of one who knew and loved the very weaknesses of his chief. "How soon can I talk to you, Henry, on this?"
"Oh, soon as I can get a bath and a beefsteak," consented Harrington.
"All right, come to my office at eight o'clock," proposed Scanlon.
"Your office?" demurred Henry. "It's you after me, isn't it?"
Scanlon hunched his shoulder as if someone had popped an awl into it. "Oh, all right," he smiled amiably, admiringly even; after a moment—"Your office it is." He gripped Henry's hand heartily; in turning from him he encountered that steadily augmenting group about the hotel door. "Say, you fellows!" he announced in friendly tones. "Henry's back; bunged up a little but not hurt. He nipped into 'em just as we figured; but they shook him off. He didn't get a clue and doesn't know a darned thing any more than we do. What he needs is a tub and a shave. Now, let him get it."
At the desk a headline in the evening paper caught the young attorney's eye—"Mysterious Disappearance of Henry Harrington!" He gazed at it with a smile and a vain feeling.
"That's the first time anybody ever cared whether I disappeared, or not," he chuckled to the clerk as the latter handed him his key, and made for the stairway.
But Titmarsh was too quick for him. Titmarsh was editor and leading descriptive writer on the Edgewater Blade. He buttonholed unerringly; but Henry's cunning set forth the details most sketchily against a background of calculating voids. Titmarsh, however, was a very modern reporter. He saw the "story" first and the facts second. He perceived dramatic values even in the voids and legged it for his office, organizing a column as he ran.
"Bad contusion. . . . Temporary shock. . . . No fracture. . . . By Jupiter! But you're tough, Henry. They must have hit you with a railroad tie!" This was Dr. Austin's verdict, as he clipped away blood-matted hair and took stitches.
Bathed and shaved and fed, Harrington met Scanlon, and was tendered a retainer of five thousand dollars and a contract which provided a salary of five hundred dollars per month, with generous per diem for appearances. Henry had a feeling that he was being enormously overpaid, but, understanding that he was to represent Mr. Boland in other than the Shell Point interests, did not demur for a moment. These were shrewd men; and they must not be permitted to infer that he was cheap. Besides, there was his new principle of thrift. He signed the contract in duplicate at that same desk across which he had boasted to Miss Marceau, "I shall never be retained by the other side"; and sat fingering the check for the retainer.
"You could make an awful hit with the old man, Henry, by investing that five thousand in the new cedar company," smiled Scanlon.
"I'm going to buy an auto—an auto built for two," answered Henry seriously, as if it was something he had thought over quite carefully.
Scanlon's yellow eyes lighted and his shoulders were shaken by a perceiving chuckle. "Oh, all right," he beamed, still in entire good-fellowship. "Spend it your own way. Our business is that you earn it."
Earn it! That was really a tactful expression which contributed to Henry's sense of comfort and good feeling; while now, as recognizing a new associate, he freshly considered Scanlon in the mass and on the hoof—Scanlon with that voice yonder in the dark, so identical with that voice which had ridden away in the coupé with Billie.
Just what was back of Scanlon, Henry wondered. He was a likable old buffalo—the Chief Counsel—but how thoroughly did Mr. Boland know him? Very thoroughly, no doubt, yet a study of Scanlon's broad, shrewd face did not tell Henry the story of their relations.
The story was that the two men had been associated almost from the beginning of things in Socatullo County. They had drifted into the timber together, a lawyer without clients and a king without a kingdom. Boland was ambitious and constructive; he employed talents where he found them; he was no haggler, no heckler; he asked only for results. There were times when he did not even ask questions and his reward was sure. He rewarded Scanlon; for Scanlon's results were obvious.
There were men in Boland's law department whose learning and whose legal acumen far exceeded Scanlon's. But besides these regulars at the law, he maintained a small force of irregulars, and he himself was the crafty strategist. He knew when the men of learning should exert their wits in framing contracts or battling in the courts; he knew when they should lay off and let the "irregulars" take the field. It would have been a shock to Henry Harrington to know that he had just been signed up as an irregular.