Part 29 (1/2)

When Siegfried Harvey talked, he looked straight at one with his clear blue eyes, and there was no doubting his honesty. ”I am very much obliged to you,” said Montague. ”Pray tell me what you have to say.”

”All right,” said the other. ”It can be done very quickly. You have taken a case which involves a great many sacrifices upon your part. And I wondered if it had ever occurred to you to ask whether you might not be taken advantage of?”

”How do you mean?” asked Montague.

”Do you know the people who are behind you?” inquired the other. ”Do you know them well enough to be sure what are their motives in the case?”

Montague hesitated, and thought. ”No,” he said, ”I couldn't say that I do.”

”Then it's just as I thought,” replied Harvey. ”I've been watching you--you are an honest man, and you're putting yourself to no end of trouble from the best of motives. And unless I'm mistaken, you're being used by men who are not honest, and whom you wouldn't work with if you knew their purposes.”

”What purposes could they have?”

”There are several possibilities. In the first place, it might be a 'strike' suit--somebody who is hoping to be bought off for a big price.

That is what nearly every one thinks is the case. But I don't; I think it's more likely some one within the company who is trying to put the administration in a hole.”

”Who could that be?” exclaimed Montague, amazed.

”I don't know that. I'm not familiar enough with the situation in the Fidelity--it's changing all the time. I simply know that there are factions struggling for the control of it, and hating each other furiously, and ready to do anything in the world to cripple each other.

You know that their forty millions of surplus gives an enormous power; I'd rather be able to swing forty millions in the Street than to have ten millions in my own right. And so the giants are fighting for the control of those companies; and you can't tell who's in and who's out--you can never know the real meaning of anything that happens in the struggle. All that you can be sure of is that the game is crooked from end to end, and that nothing that happens in it is what it pretends to be.”

Montague listened, half dazed, and feeling as if the ground he stood on were caving beneath his feet.

”What do you know about those who brought you this case?” asked his companion, suddenly.

”Not much,” he said weakly.

Harvey hesitated a moment. ”Understand me, please,” he said. ”I've no wish to pry into your affairs, and if you don't care to say any more, I'll understand it perfectly. But I've heard it said that the man who started the thing was Ellis.”

Montague, in his turn, hesitated; then he said, ”That is correct--between you and me.”

”Very good,” said Harvey, ”and that is what made me suspicious. Do you know anything about Ellis?”

”I didn't,” said the other. ”I've heard a little since.”

”I can fancy so,” said Harvey. ”And I can tell you that Ellis is mixed up in life-insurance matters in all sorts of dubious ways. It seems to me that you have reason to be most careful where you follow him.”

Montague sat with his hands clenched and his brows knitted. His friend's talk had been like a flash of lightning; it revealed huge menacing forms in the darkness about him. All the structure of his hopes seemed to be tottering; his case, that he had worked so hard over--his fifty thousand dollars that he had been so proud of! Could it be that he had been tricked, and had made a fool of himself?

”How in the world am I to know?” he cried.

”That is more than I can tell,” said his friend. ”And for that matter, I'm not sure that you could do anything now. All that I could do was to warn you what sort of ground you were treading on, so that you could watch out for yourself in future.”

Montague thanked him heartily for that service; and then he went back to his office, and spent the rest of the day pondering the matter.

What he had heard had made a vast change in things. Before it everything had seemed simple; and now nothing was clear. He was overwhelmed with a sense of the utter futility of his efforts; he was trying to build a house upon quicksands. There was nowhere a solid spot upon which he could set his foot. There was nowhere any truth--there were only contending powers who used the phrases of truth for their own purposes! And now he saw himself as the world saw him,--a party to a piece of trickery,--a knave like all the rest. He felt that he had been tripped up at the first step in his career.

The conclusion of the whole matter was that he took an afternoon train for Albany; and the next morning he talked the matter out with the Judge. Montague had realized the need of going slowly, for, after all, he had no definite ground for suspicion; and so, very tactfully and cautiously he explained, that it had come to his ears that many people believed there were interested parties behind the suit of Mr. Hasbrook; and that this had made him uncomfortable, as he knew nothing whatever about his client. He had come to ask the Judge's advice in the matter.