He looked about the large bare office. That there was some conspiracy he had known for a long time; the knowledge had been intuitive. He would not find out about it here. Eugene was too brilliant, too clever, for that.
The door opened, and Tom entered with his usual big boisterousness. “Hey, you, Gene!” he shouted, before he realized that Oliver was in the room. His cunning eyes narrowed to slits, and his large, heavy face darkened. But he said, casually enough, in a lower voice: “Oh, hello, Oliver.” He stood there, quite near the door, but still far off, and now there was a wary suspicion about him. His eyes slid from Oliver to Eugene, and back again, with great rapidity.
So, he’s using Tom, thought Oliver. Or they’re in it together. What is it they are “in”? Tom was still young; he could not conceal his uneasiness, his dislike. He even ran the tip of his tongue over his lips. His massive shoulders drooped slightly, as if he was afraid, and his nostrils widened.
“Has Mr. Prescott returned?” asked Eugene, with cool aplomb. “Oliver is waiting to see him. Your father asked him to call.”
“Eh?” said Tom. He turned to Oliver. His ruddy color had faded somewhat. “He wants to see you? Why?”
Oliver stood up. “I don’t know why,” he replied, curtly. “That’s why I came to find out. Didn’t you know he’d sent for me?”
“No,” replied Thomas, in the usual bullying tone he used towards Oliver. “I don’t know all the old man’s business.” It was evident he believed Oliver to be lying, for he studied him craftily. “He sees you almost every night. Why didn’t he talk to you at home?”
“Why don’t you ask him?” said Oliver. Thomas jerked his head a little. He looked at Oliver, glowering, surprise glinting in his eyes. “What?” he muttered. “Oh. Well, if it’s important to you, he’s in his office now. We went out to lunch together.”
He seemed bemused and taken aback. Very intently, he watched Oliver go to the door.
“Good-bye,” called Oliver over his shoulder. He went out, closing the door decisively behind him.
There was silence in the room after he had gone. Tom still stood there, clenching his huge meaty hands, which hung at his side. Eugene watched him, calmly amused. When Thomas saw this, he said with low pent rage: “What’re you laughing at? What’s he doing in here, with you?”
“Oh, sit down and stop being dramatic,” said Eugene. Thomas sat down. He obeyed Eugene automatically, as he had never obeyed anyone before. “Your father sent for him,” continued Eugene. “So he came. It must be some private matter, of no particular importance. Perhaps your father is thinking of giving him a little business.”
He tapped his fingers on his desk. “Your father does his business here, you remember. Calling Oliver here makes the call official. Why are you glaring at me like that, Tom? It isn’t my fault that he came in here looking for your father.”
Thomas rubbed his temple with his knuckles.
“He’s sly,” he muttered. “You think he’s going to give up anything he can get? Lawyers are pretty shrewd, you know. Pa calls them ‘the devil’s race’. Think he thinks he can get—anything?”
“No,” said Eugene. He spoke abstractedly. He turned sideways and stared at the gleaming river beyond. “I don’t think he wants ‘anything’. In fact, I don’t think he’d take ‘anything’—from your father.”
“Well, he’s a fool. He was always a fool.”
Thomas waited for Eugene to answer. But the other man continued to look at the river. His sharp profile was outlined against a silvery light. “I’ve got it!” exclaimed Thomas. “Do you know something? He looks like you!”
The fingers that tapped on the desk, slowly and rhythmically, stopped. They lay on the wood; they curled a little, like a spring. Eugene turned again to Thomas, who was scrutinizing him acutely.
“I’ve wondered for a long time who he looked like,” said Thomas, grinning. “It’s you, that’s who it is. Funny, isn’t it?”
Eugene did not answer.
Thomas began to chuckle. “It’s the funniest damned thing I ever saw! Old Oliver getting to look like you. Why, he even sounded like you, a minute ago!”
The idea amused him intensely. Then, after a long time, even Thomas became aware of something terrible in this room, and he no longer chuckled.
“What’s the matter with you, Gene?” he asked, uncertainly. “Why do you look at me like that? Just because I said he’s beginning to look like you?”
Eugene picked up his pen. He said, coolly: “Don’t talk nonsense, Tom. I have a few things to check here. We’ll go through the mills this afternoon.”
Thomas got to his feet in his lumbering, awkward fashion. He was his father’s heir, and Eugene was only William’s employee. But during these past few months Eugene had begun to dominate him smoothly, subtly. Thomas knew this, felt it. It had never antagonized him, he was intelligent, he knew a master when he met one, and was prepared to follow, especially when the following was to his own advantage. “All right,” he said, sullenly. “I’ll go back to my office and do some little things, myself.”
He stamped out, loudly, like a child who has been reprimanded by an inexorable schoolmaster. He glanced back once, Eugene was writing notes swiftly, his fair head bent over the papers. Thomas banged the door angrily behind him.
When he was alone, Eugene slowly and carefully laid down his pen. He sat with his hands on the desk, and again they were curled, like springs.
William, lowering and gloomy, faced Oliver across his own desk. He was aging fast, so fast indeed that he seemed older than his actual years. Something had broken in him since Matthew had gone away, or, rather, something had begun to seep away from him, like the slow leeching of blood.
“Why didn’t you come to me in the first place?” he demanded, angrily. “Why all this sneaking around, asking questions in what you probably thought was a very bright and clever way, not likely to arouse suspicion? I could have told you what there is to know. You didn’t have to go prowling around that asylum, sniffing up every tree, until the superintendent felt it incumbent upon himself to tell me. You had no right to humiliate me like this, make a fool of me.”
“I’m sorry,” said Oliver, quietly. “I can see now that I’ve been making myself a little ridiculous. You know I wouldn’t want to cause you any embarrassment. After all, it was a long time ago.”
“Yes,” agreed William, still angrily. He paused. He regarded Oliver with unusual somberness, and now he was no longer infuriated. “Why do you want to know, anyway? Aren’t you satisfied with things the way they are?”
Oliver said: “It isn’t that. Please believe me. After all, it’s a natural curiosity, isn’t it? I’d really like to know who I am, whether I still have a mother or a father, or perhaps a brother or a sister.”
William tried again to he enraged. It was a useless attempt. He looked at Oliver more closely. The vulnerable spot in him was touched. He said, roughly: “I don’t think so. Yes,” he added, “I can understand your wanting to know. I suppose it’s natural. And you’re dissatisfied, too?”
“I didn’t say that, Father,” said Oliver, quickly, full of compassion. He tried to smile. “Put it down to my legal training, if you want to.”
William managed a saturnine smile. He could not remember having smiled at Oliver for years. “A good training,” he even managed to say, with heavy banter. “I know. I paid the bills. And you’ve done well at it, I’ve got to admit that. Just heard a report about you from old Owens last week. First time the dried-up old rascal ever spoke to me without being spoken to first. ‘Wonderful mind that son of yours has,’ he said.” William stopped. He frowned. “Well, you might have come to me,” he went on, hastily. His fallen cheeks and jowls had mottled with color. Vaguely, he wondered why he should feel this sad aching.
“I don’t suppose there is anything to know, beyond what I’ve already learned,” said Oliver.
William tried for sarcasm. “You lawyers! Perhaps you’ve suspected you might be a secret h
eir or something, eh? Hidden away, so someone else will inherit? A wicked step-mother, or something? Well, you’re wrong.”
Oliver sat up straighter. He spoke carefully. “No doubt I am, Father. But is there anything else you can tell me?”
William leaned back in his chair, scowling. “I know what they’ve told you. It wasn’t all. Oh, I went into it before I adopted you. Thoroughly. Wanted to be sure there’d be no future claims.” He stopped again, looked at Oliver as if seeing him clearly for the first time in a long while. “No claims,” he repeated, almost inaudibly. “I didn’t want that. I wanted to be sure you’d belong only to me.” Again, his face mottled with unhealthy color.
Oliver was unendurably moved. He waited.
William said, loudly and harshly, pushing back his chair so that it almost fell over with him. “Or perhaps you thought you might prove I was your real father!”
“No,” said Oliver, gently. He lied without hesitancy, out of compassion. “I’d have liked to have found that out, if it were so.”
“Eh?” muttered William. He put his hand over the lower part of his face, and his eyes, once so dominant, so powerful, were the eyes of a broken old man. Oliver looked away. He said: “You’ve given me so much. I don’t want anything else from you, Father. I’ve taken too much from you already. I only wish I could return it in some way. You know there isn’t anything I wouldn’t do for you.”
William’s fingers trembled about his lips and chin. “I know,” he said, then he dropped his hand. He sat upright. For a brief moment he was again the strong and dominant man of his younger years. He spoke concisely:
“There’s just this you don’t know. On the night you were left at the hospital, someone rang the janitor’s bell. It was late. He was an old feller, that janitor, and he came sleepily to the door. There was a woman there, with a child in her arms. Not a young woman. Just a poor woman, about fifty years old, in a shawl. She said she wanted to talk to the manager about leaving the child—you—there for a few days. The janitor let her come into the hall. He was still half asleep. He said he’d go for the manager. Then the woman said to him: ‘The baby’s name is Oliver.’ Apparently she wanted to be sure he had heard her, for she took him by the arm, and repeated that.”
“Oliver!” said the younger man.
William nodded. “Yes, that’s what she said. I never liked the name, myself.” Again he smiled gloomily. “He left her to call the manager. When he’d brought her down, the woman who had brought the baby was gone. She had left the child—you—on a couch in the hall. No one heard her go. Everybody was asleep. And that,” concluded William, “is all there is to tell.”
“And she never came back?” asked Oliver.
“Of course not. They looked for her. She couldn’t have been your mother. She was too old. They examined your clothes. They were poor, but clean and warm. You’d evidently had good care, for you were healthy and plump, they told me. And you weren’t afraid, so you hadn’t been abused. A few months later I adopted you.”
Oliver tried to smile lightly. “So I wasn’t exactly left on a doorstep, as the story goes.”
“No. But almost.”
Oliver stood up. “Thank you, Father,” he said.
William said, with annoyance: “And now, you’ve got to stop this nonsense. There’s nothing more to find out. You’re only irritating me, going about asking questions.”
“I’ll remember,” agreed Oliver, somewhat ambiguously.
He walked back slowly to the court-house, thinking intently. At any rate, he had been given a name. Oliver. Oliver what? And then he had a most fantastic idea. He began to hurry. He reached the courthouse in a state of breathlessness.
Within a short time he had found a copy of Chauncey Arnold’s probated will. It was dated two years, or a trifle less, before he had died. It was a brief will, but a sound one; at that time he had had a fortune, a position and a prosperous business. He had left his money to Alice. And then came a curious paragraph:
“Upon the death of my wife, Alice Arnold, the principal is to be divided between or among my issue, equally, without reservation, or prejudice, under any circumstances.”
Now all the other phrases of the will were blurred away, and Oliver stared grimly at the last paragraph. “Between or among my issue.” Chauncey Arnold, then, had known that another woman was about to bear him a child. He had not named her. He had not named any child, not even Eugene. He had referred only to his “issue.”
Chauncey Arnold had been swept into bankruptcy. But he had left a sum in trust, and this had educated Eugene. No one questioned the will, or wondered at it. It had been assumed that Chauncey Arnold had had hopes that Alice would bear him more children. She had borne only one child.
Oliver was breathing unevenly. All at once he was certain that Eugene Arnold knew the exact wording of the will.
Oliver returned to the court-room, pale and stern.
CHAPTER XLVIII
It was only after the court had adjourned that Oliver remembered that Ezra Bassett had sent a message asking the younger man to call upon him. It was odd. He could not remember that Ezra had ever spoken to him with interest or kindliness, or even noticed him. Then he remembered that of late Mr. Bassett had often followed him curiously with his eyes. An obscure excitement took possession of Oliver, but he repressed it. He found a telephone in the court building and called the bank. It was after banking hours; Ezra had probably gone home. But Mr. Bassett, he was informed by a clerical voice, would talk to him immediately.
Ezra’s rich voice, cosy and warm, came to Oliver’s ears in the friendliest of fashions. Indeed, he wished to see Oliver. “Quite important, my boy,” concluded Ezra, mysteriously. Oliver replaced the receiver, looked at it with deep thoughtfulness.
He was admitted to Mr. Bassett’s inner office, where he found the rubicund old banker smoking pleasantly before the fire. He took Oliver’s hand; he pressed it warmly in his plump fingers, and his clever old eyes twinkled at the young man as if with affection. Oliver was not deceived. The smell of something queer was very strong in this room. He expressed gratitude for Ezra’s offer of brandy. Ezra went to a locked and inlaid cabinet and drew out a musty old bottle and two small glasses. “Pleasant, this,” he commented. “I’ve been hearing a lot about you lately, Oliver. Very good things. Been following some of your cases, in the papers. Real brilliance. Only last night I said to Mrs. Bassett: ‘That young man is brilliant. He’ll go a long way.’” He carefully replaced the bottle, and said, casually, “But then, anyone might have expected that.”
Oliver became alert. He said, as if respectfully amused: “Why should anyone ‘expect’ brilliance, or anything else of that kind, from me, Mr. Bassett? No one knows who I am or where I came from.”
Mr. Bassett put his keys in his pocket, chuckled. He came back to the fire, sat down. His comfortable paunch pushed against his waistcoat, which was of black silk. He smiled benevolently at Oliver.
“You’ve had a good education, Oliver,” he said. “The best.”
Oliver sipped at the brandy, which was most excellent. “Thanks to my father,” he said.
Again Mr. Bassett chuckled. He held up his glass to the firelight, nodded his head as if satisfied, drank a little. “Oliver,” he said, “you’re a lawyer. I want to engage your services. In short, I want your advice.”
Oliver said: “Thanks, Mr. Bassett. But Mr. Scott, or Mr. Meredith, or Mr. Owens, would have been a better choice, though I can’t help but be gratified at your calling me.”
“Nonsense,” replied Mr. Bassett sturdily. He set his glass down on the table at his elbow. He put the pink tips of his fingers together. He studied Oliver. Then he began to nod his head. His next words, however, were very innocuous: “I want you, my boy. As I said, I want your advice. Strictly confidential, of course.”
“Strictly confidential,” agreed Oliver. He had not known what it was he had expected, but now he was aware of the deep emptiness of disappointment. “Anything said to a
lawyer is sacred, as you know, Mr. Bassett. As sacred as what transpires in the confessional.”
Mr. Bassett smiled. “Yes, I know,” he said. “Sacred. I knew it wasn’t necessary for me to remind you of that, Oliver.”
Was there a warning in his voice, a suety threat? Oliver put down his own glass. But Mr. Bassett was beaming with paternal kindliness.
“It is, in a way, a very personal matter, Oliver, and, as I said, strictly confidential. It is also a matter of conscience. You would not think a banker would have a conscience, would you?”
“One is likely to encounter a conscience in the most unlikely places,” answered Oliver, smiling.
“I must first tell you a rather sordid story,” said Mr. Bassett. He took up his glass, and again examined it critically. “I reserve this only for those whom I know to have the most cultivated taste,” he added, idly. “I suspect you have such taste, Oliver, though poor William is notably lacking in the appreciation of good liquor.”
“Thank you,” said Oliver.
Mr. Bassett touched a bell on the table beside him. At the hard clear jingle, Oliver started. A clerk came in. Mr. Bassett said: “Curtis, you will please make out a check, as retainer, for Mr. Oliver Prescott.” He turned to Oliver. “Say about two hundred dollars, Oliver?”
Oliver sat very still. He said: “Two hundred dollars will be quite sufficient, Mr. Bassett.”
“Now, then,” said Mr. Bassett. His voice had subtly changed. It had become less friendly. He clasped his hands over his paunch, looked dreamily at the fire. “A very sordid story, Oliver. It concerns an old friend of mine who died many years ago. Mr. Chauncey Arnold.
“An old friend,” he repeated. He coughed. “Of course, you were only an infant at the time Mr. Arnold died, so you could not be expected to know all the details of the matter between your—father, and Chauncey.”
“I know them,” said Oliver.
“Indeed,” murmured Mr. Bassett. He sighed. He looked at Oliver out of the corners of his eyes. “I suppose it was inevitable that you’d get to know them. And then, there was Gene Arnold. Very good of William to employ him. William couldn’t have made a better choice. He has an instinct for the proper men.”