In the City of New York there was practising, at that time, alawyer by the name of Bansemer. His office, on the topmost floorof a dingy building in the lower section of the city, was notinviting. On leaving the elevator, one wound about through narrowhalls and finally peered, with more or less uncertainty and misgiving,at the half-obliterated sign which said that James Bansemer heldforth on the other side of the glass panel.
It was whispered in certain circles and openly avowed in othersthat Bansemer's business was not the kind which elevates the law;in plain words, his methods were construed to debase the good andhonest statutes of the land. Once inside the door of his office--anda heavy spring always closed it behind one--there was quick evidencethat the lawyer lamentably disregarded the virtues of prosperity,no matter how they had been courted and won. Although his transactionsin and out of the courts of that great city bore the mark ofdishonour, he was known to have made money during the ten yearsof his career as a member of the bar. Possibly he kept his officeshabby and unclean that it might be in touch with the transactionswhich had their morbid birth inside the grimy walls. There was nospot or corner in the two small rooms that comprised his "chambers"to which he could point with pride. The floors were littered withpapers; the walls were greasy and bedecked with malodorous notations,documents and pictures; the windows were smoky and useless; theclerk's desk bore every suggestion of dissoluteness.
But little less appalling to one's aesthetic sense was the clerkhimself. Squatting behind his wretched desk, Elias Droom peeredacross the litter of papers and books with snaky but polite eyes,almost as inviting as the spider who, with wily but insidiousdecorum, draws the guileless into his web.
If one passed muster in the estimation of the incomprehensibleDroom, he was permitted, in due season, to pass through a secondoppressive-looking door and into the private office of Mr. JamesBansemer, attorney-at-law and solicitor. It may be remarked atthis early stage that, no matter how long or how well one may haveknown Droom, one seldom lingered to engage in commonplaces withhim. His was the most repellent personality imaginable. When hesmiled, one was conscious of a shock to the nervous system; whenhe so far forgot himself as to laugh aloud, there was a distinctillustration of the word "crunching"; when he spoke, one was almostsorry that he had ears.
Bansemer knew but little of this freakish individual's history; noone else had the temerity to inquire into his past--or to separateit from his future, for that matter. Once, Bansemer ironicallyasked him why he had never married. It was a full minute beforethe other lifted his eyes from the sheet of legal cap, and by thattime he was in full control of his passion.
"Look at me! Would any woman marry a thing like me?"
This was said with such terrible earnestness that Bansemer tookcare never to broach the subject again. He saw that Droom's heartwas not all steel and brass.
Droom was middle-aged. His lank body and cadaverous face wereconstructed on principles not generally accredited to nature as itapplies to men. When erect, his body swayed as if it were a stubbornreed determined to maintain its dignity in the face of the wind; hedid not walk, he glided. His long square chin, rarely clean-shaven,protruded far beyond its natural orbit; indeed, the attitude ofthe chin gave one an insight to the greedy character of the man.At first glance, one felt that Droom was reaching forth with hislower jaw to give greeting with his teeth, instead of his hand.
His neck was long and thin, and his turndown collar was at leasttwo sizes too large. The nose was hooked and of abnormal length,the tip coming well down over the short, upper lip and broad mouth.His eyes were light blue, and so intense that he was never known toblink the lashes. Topping them were deep, wavering, black eyebrowsthat met above the nose, forming an ominous, cloudy line acrossthe base of his thin, high forehead. The crown of his head, coveredby long, scant strands of black hair, was of the type known as"retreating and pointed." The forehead ran upward and back from thebrows almost to a point, and down from the pinnacle hung the veilof hair, just as if he had draped it there with the same carehe might have used in placing his best hat upon a peg. His backwas stooped, and the high, narrow shoulders were hunched forwardeagerly. Long arms and ridiculously thin legs, with big hands andfeet, tell the story of his extremities. When he was on his feetDroom was more than six feet tall; as he sat in the low-backed,office chair he looked to be less than five feet, over all. Whatbecame of that lank expanse of bone and cuticle when he sat downwas one of the mysteries that not even James Bansemer could fathom.
The men had been classmates in an obscure law school down inPennsylvania. Bansemer was good-looking, forceful and young; whileDroom was distinctly his opposite. Where he came from no one knewand no one cared. He was past thirty-five when he entered theschool-at least twelve years the senior of Bansemer.
His appearance and attire proclaimed him to be from the country;but his sophistry, his knowledge of the world and his wonderfulinsight into human nature contradicted his looks immeasureably.A conflict or two convinced his fellow students that he was morethan a match for them in stealth and cunning, if not in dress anddeportment.
Elias Droom had not succeeded as a lawyer. He repelled people,growing more and more bitter against the world as his strugglesbecame harder. What little money he had accumulated--Heaven aloneknew how: he came by it--dwindled to nothing, and he was in actualsqualor when, later, Bansemer found him in an attic in Baltimore.Even as he engaged the half-starved wretch to become his confidentialclerk the lawyer shuddered and almost repented of his action.
But Elias Droom was worth his weight in gold to James Bansemer fromthat day forth. His employer's sole aim in life was to get richand thereby to achieve power. His ambition was laudable, if oneaccepts the creed of morals, but his methods were not so praise-worthy.After a year of two of starvation struggles to get on with thelegitimate, he packed up his scruples and laid them away--temporarily,he said. He resorted to sharp practice, knavery, and all the formsof legal blackmail; it was not long before his bank account beganto swell. His business thrived. He was so clever that not one of hisshady proceedings reacted. It is safe to venture that ninety-nineper cent, of the people who were bilked through his manipulationspromised, in the heat of virtuous wrath, to expose him, but he hadlearned to smile in security. He knew that exposure for him meanthumiliation for the instigator, and he continued to rest easy whilehe worked hard.
"You're getting rich at this sort of thing," observed Droom oneday, after the lawyer had closed a particularly nauseous deal tohis own satisfaction, "but what are you going to do when the tideturns?"
Bansemer, irritated on perceiving that the other was engaged in hisexasperating habit of rubbing his hands together, did not answer,but merely thundered out: "Will you stop that!"
There was a faint suggestion of the possibility of a transition ofthe hands to claws, as Droom abruptly desisted, but smilingly wenton:
"Some day, the other shark will get the better of you and you'llhave nothing to fall back on. You've been building on mighty slimfoundations. There isn't a sign of support if the worst comes tothe worst," he chuckled.
"It's a large world, Droom," said his employer easily.
"And small also, according to another saying," supplemented Droom."When a man's down, everybody kicks him--I'm afraid you could notsurvive the kicking."
Droom grinned so diabolically as again he resumed the rubbing ofhis hands that the other turned away with an oath and closed thedoor to the inside office. Bansemer was alone and where Droom'seyes could not see him, but something told him that the grin hungoutside the door for many minutes, as if waiting for a chance topop in and tantalise him.
Bansemer was a good-looking man of the coarser mould--the kind ofman that merits a second look in passing, and the second look is notalways in his favour. He was thirty-five years of age, but lookedolder. His face was hard and deeply marked with the lines ofintensity. The black eyes were fascinating in their brilliancy,but there was a cruel, savage light in their depths. The nose andmouth were clean-cut a
nd pitiless in their very symmetry. Shortlyafter leaving college to hang out his shingle, he had married thedaughter of a minister. For two years her sweet influence kept hisefforts along the righteous path, but he writhed beneath the yokeof poverty. His pride suffered because he was unable to provideher with more of the luxuries of life; in his selfish way, he lovedher. Failure to advance made him surly and ill-tempered, despiteher amiable efforts to lighten the shadows around their littlehome. When the baby boy was born to them, and she suffered moreand more from the unkindness of privation, James Bansemer, by naturean aggressor, threw off restraint and plunged into the traffic thatsoon made him infamously successful. She died, however, before thetaint of his duplicity touched her, and he, even in his grief, feltthankful that she never was to know the truth.
At this time Bansemer lived in comfort at one of the middle-classboarding houses uptown, and the boy was just leaving the kindergartenfor a private school. Bansemer's calloused heart had one tenderchamber, and in it dwelt the little lad with the fair hair and greyeyes of the woman who had died.
Late one November afternoon just before Bansemer put on his lighttopcoat to leave the office for the day, Droom tapped on theglass panel of the door to his private office. Usually, the clerkcommunicated with him by signal--a floor button by which he couldacquaint his master with much that he ought to know, and thevisitor in the outer office would be none the wiser. The occasionswere rare when he went so far as to tap on the door. Bansemer waspuzzled, and stealthily listened for sounds from the other side.Suddenly, there came to his ears the voices of women, mingled withBroom's suppressed but always raucous tones.
Bansemer opened the door; looking into the outer office, he sawDroom swaying before two women, rubbing his hands and smiling. Oneof the women carried a small babe in her arms. Neither she nor hercompanion seemed quite at ease in the presence of the lank guardianof the outer office.
CHAPTER IV
THE FOUNDLING