# Adventure/A Canceled Sale

Extracted from Adventure magazine, Nov 1915, pp. 139–147. Title illustration by Chas B. Falls may be omitted.
A CANCELED SALE —
byARTHUR SOMERS ROCHE
Author of “For Bravery,” “The Sport of Kings.”
FRAZEE, business manager of the Morgantown Sun, entered the office of the paper's editor and owner, a frown on his face and in his hand a letter.
“Well, Chief,” he said gloomily, “they've went and gone and done it! Look at this!”
He smoothed the letter flat upon the editor's desk, and the latter read it swiftly. Minot must have been a good poker-player had he ever taken up that game. Not a trace of emotion, save possibly quizzical good humor, was in his voice as he spoke to Frazee.
“Well?”
Frazee merely stared, an admiration that he could not conceal in his snappy eyes. As if the admiration slightly embarrassed him, Minot turned his head back toward the litter of copy-paper and proofs before him.
“I'm awfully busy, Jack,” said the editor. “And if——”
Frazee exploded.
“Busy! You aren't too busy to take notice of a letter from the Morgantown Merchants' Mutual Association, are you? A letter in which they inform the Sun's business office that until the news and editorial policy of the Sun undergoes a radical change the members of the Association can no longer consider it good business to use our columns for advertising! You ain't too busy——
“Why, Chief, that's the last straw! We've lost the public printing; the city advertising went five months ago along with the printing. The traction company left us out of all their advertising of the new park at their terminal; the gas company quit us six weeks ago; the electric light and power company has given notice that they'll not renew their annual contract at its expiration next week! All those were bad enough; but if the retail merchants tie a can to us—Chief, we're out on a limb and they're down below with dogs and guns. It's about our cue to climb down!”
Minot drummed on his desk a moment before making reply. When he did speak his voice was calm, inflexible, as determined as on that day to which his words referred.
“Jack,” he said, “when I bought this paper six months ago and brought you with me from New York to help me run it, what did I say to you?”
“You said that you'd been a boy in Morgantown; that it had always been your ambition to run a paper here. An honest paper! That Morgantown had as rotten a political and business machine as Minneapolis or Philadelphia in the good old days, and that you were going to smash it; that you were going to run an honest paper—not a commercially honest paper, but an ethically honest paper.”
“You sum it up better than I could myself, Jack,” smiled Minot. “Well, have I ever done anything to make you think I'd go back on my word?”
“No, but——”
“Then why do you expect me to now?”
Frazee hit the desk with a clenched fist.
“Because you invested fifty thousand dollars your uncle had left you for the benefit of people that aren't worth it! You came to Morgantown to lift the people here out of their sloth! To be an expression of the better opinion of the city! You told me that Morgantown people stood for rottenness and corruption because there was no one to lead a fight for better things.
“You bought this sheet for twenty thousand dollars. You said you'd spend the rest of your inheritance to awaken the people to civic decency. And they haven't responded to you. You've pointed out rottenness; you've shown how cleanness may be achieved. And what happens? First the big corporations shut down on their advertising and now the retail merchants tie a can to you. Tom, you've got about five thousand left. Are you going to sink that for the benefit of a lot of ungrateful, unappreciative——”
“How do you know that?” snapped Minot.
“Know what?”
“What you said—about the people being unappreciative and ungrateful?”
“Good Lord! doesn't this letter prove that?”
“The retail merchants aren't the people—only a small portion of them,” said Minot. “The people—Jack, it's true I've alienated advertising, but I've gained subscribers.”
“And you can't run a daily newspaper on subscriptions,” said Frazee. “Look here, Tom, you've fought a good fight—against odds. You're down practically to a shoe-string. Another month or so and you'll have to mortgage the plant; then you won't meet the interest, and——”
“Then you advise me to quit fighting the rotten ring?”
“I advise you not to commit suicide,” said Frazee.
“Suicide, eh?” Minot smiled faintly. “Suicide? Well, Jack, if fighting the good fight means suicide—then suicide it is! I understand that the Bugle has made you a good offer to go over there. No use sticking to a sinking ship, Jack. I'll release you from your contract, and——”
“Look here, Tom Minot!” cried the business manager. “A little more of that talk and I'll hang one on your ear! Just because I'm a few years older than you and blessed with a lot more horse sense doesn't mean I'm a quitter! You can't stop me from giving you advice; I can't stop you from refusing to take it. But that doesn't mean that I'm not with you. If you've got to scuttle your own craft, why—well, it's your ship, isn't it? Bugle be ——!”
He blew his nose loudly and muttered much profanity in an undertone. He picked up the letter from the Merchants' Association.
“What'll I write to them?” he asked. “Tell 'em to go to the devil and be quick about it?”
“No,” said Minot. “I'll attend to that.”
He picked up pencil and paper and wrote rapidly. When he had finished he handed the result to Frazee. The business manager whistled.
“Say, Tom,” he said, “salt away enough to buy two tickets to New York, will you? I think we'll need them in a few short months.”
“Maybe,” said Minot, “but, Jack—a good fight, in a good cause—isn't that recompense enough? Even for defeat?”
“It's your money,” said Frazee. “And—and Tom, as your business manager I can't advise you to throw away your chances for making this paper a success, but as your friend, and as man to man—Tom, I'm proud of you!”
THEIR hands struck together; then, as if ashamed of such emotion, Frazee hurried from the editorial office. Minot struck a bell. A boy entered the room. Minot handed him the letter from the Merchants' Association and the few paragraphs he had penciled on copy paper. The boy left the office.
For a long time young Minot, editor and owner of the Morgantown Evening Sun, stared gloomily out of the window, seeing nothing save the wreck of high hopes, the passing of a proud ambition. An hour passed; then the rumble of the presses in the basement aroused him. With a bitter smile he unlocked a drawer in his desk and took out a bank-book.
It was not the first time he had checked up the balance there after visits from Frazee announcing the withdrawal of advertising. But this time the balance was smaller than ever before. At first, under his editorship, the paper had responded. Morgantown had hailed with delight a livening of the moribund Sun. People had rushed to advertise; but in the last few months receipts were not up to expenditures, and were growing steadily less.
“Five thousand four hundred and eight and forty-three cents,” he said with a grim smile. “And election is eight weeks away.”
He sighed.
“Well, I suppose I'll have to see if I can borrow ten thousand on the plant. No need of waiting until the last minute.”
He clapped his hat on his head and left the office, with a word to his city editor about extra editions if need arose. Then he went to the bank. There he was received with courtesy by the president, and in an hour his business was transacted. The Morgantown First National gladly lent him ten thousand on his note secured by his paper. But he had hardly left the president's office when that dignitary called up on the telephone one Stewart Morris.
“Why didn't you refuse the loan?” demanded Morris angrily, after the banker had finished talking.
“How could I? It's a good business proposition. And if I hadn't, some other bank, here or elsewhere, would have done so. He'd have got the money anyway, so it wasn't up to me to turn down a good piece of paper like his note, was it?”
The man at the other end of the wire was silent a moment. Then he said:
“No, I don't suppose it was, but—oh, well, it's all right, Benson. Much obliged for telling me.”
“Not at all; I thought you'd want to know.”
“Rather,” said Morris.
He hung up his receiver and looked about his small office—ostensibly a place for the transaction of real-estate business, but in reality the seat of the invisible government of Morgantown. He thought a while, then scribbled a hasty note, rang for a messenger and ordered a swift delivery.
The envelope was addressed to Philip Landers, mayor of Morgantown. Then the boss of Morgantown turned again to the copy of the Morgantown Evening Sun which lay before him. And he read for the third or fourth time the defiance which shrieked from its first page. For there, in a box, was the Merchants' Association's letter to the Sun's business office. Beneath the box was the line: “The Sun's Answer to Dictation.” And beneath that was a short editorial by Minot, in which he declared that not all the power of the invisible government of Morgantown could prevent him from continuing to expose the rottenness of the ring that governed the city.
Though the Sun be stripped of every line of advertising the Sun should still continue to expose the grafters. The Sun bore no ill will toward the members of the Merchants' Association; the Sun pitied them for their cowardice in not daring to defy the boss of Morgantown. And the Sun would continue to shine upon the dark places of the city, despite the shortsighted merchants who could not see that betterment of defy the conditions meant betterment of business.
Morris grunted as he finished reading.
“Why couldn't those —— fools just quit advertising without sending that letter?” he snapped. “That didn't help. Only fools write letters, anyway. Now I'll have to think——”
He was still thinking when he left his office; still thinking when he reached his house, still thinking through his lonely dinner. But thought had brought him a plan at nine o'clock when, in answer to the note of the afternoon, the Mayor of Morgantown slipped quietly into the house of the boss.
“Seen the Sun?” was the boss's first question.
The Mayor nodded.
“It didn't bring him down, did it?”
“No, blast him,” said the boss with a tinge of unwilling admiration in his voice. “That Minot is a real fighting guy. Wish he were on our side. But that's out of the question. Smoke?”
He shoved a box of cigars toward the Mayor, and there was silence for a while. The boss did not encourage conversation; naturally taciturn himself, he disliked loquaciousness in others. The Mayor awaited the boss' pleasure. But not until both cigars were half consumed did Morris speak. Then it was to the point, albeit slightly reminiscent.
“When Minot came here last Spring,” said the boss, “and started his attacks on you and me—chiefly on me—both of us decided that he, a New York newspaperman, was simply a cagy citizen, trying to put over a little hold-up. Didn't we?”
The Mayor made no reply; whatever the boss said, though couched in interrogatory, was assertion. The boss continued:
“So we sent him a little hint to the effect that he held good cards, and asked him to name what he wanted. But not even the promise of continuance of the public printing, that the Sun had always had, got him. Not even taking it away got him.
“Then you offered him a place on the Finance Commission. He couldn't see that. Then we hit his pocketbook some more. We've been hitting it ever since. Last week the Merchants' Association got the tip that unless they withdrew their advertising from the Sun the city ordinances would be enforced; fire-escapes would have to be built, sidewalks kept clear. Like suckers they write him a letter, and now he's published it.
“The people are beginning to believe that he's persecuted because of his attacks on us. They're beginning to believe in him and—Landers, you won't succeed yourself as Mayor of Morgantown unless he's called off.”
The Mayor paled.
“You mean you won't give me a renomination?”
“I'll nominate you all right,” said the boss. “But you'll be licked. This young feller will support a Citizens' Ticket and—we'll be licked. I happen to know that his circulation has increased eight thousand in the past two weeks. You know what that means. The people are waking up. And you also know what it means for you to be beaten.”
“It would be a poor reward for my services to—” began the Mayor pompously.
Morris cut him short with an oath.
“Your services be ——! I'm thinking of my contracting company! I'm thinking of all the business I'll lose if you're not Mayor. I'm not thinking of glory; I'm thinking of money! And now—Minot's centering his attack on the Morgantown Construction company; he's making that his main issue. He says that everything we build is overpaid and underdone. If a Citizens' Ticket wins, he'll have the new Mayor and council cancel the contracts already made. And if we go to court—we can't go to court.”
“Why not?” asked the Mayor. “Your construction company—I call it yours, as you do—does good work, doesn't it?”
The boss spat disgustedly.
“Why keep the front up with me, Landers? You know that—well, we do good work, yes. But other companies could do as well—for less money, maybe.”
“I—I don't care to hear details,” said the Mayor hastily. “I——”
“What a swell hypocrite you are, Landers,” sneered Morris. “However—never mind. The thing is, you've got to win; Minot must be called off.”
“How?” demanded the Mayor eagerly. Weak, a creature of the boss, Landers, of one of Morgantown's oldest families, prided himself on his gentility. It was not part of his gentility to know the methods of the boss. He closed his eyes to the details always, obeying his orders, and comforting himself with the reflection that politics was different from business anyway.
“Every man has his price, Landers,” said the boss sententiously. “Sometimes it's money, sometimes it's power, and sometimes it's woman. We've tried the first with Minot; we've tried the second—that Finance Commission job was enough for any man that'd lived in the city only a couple of months. Now we must try the third.”
“But Minot's a gentleman,” said Landers.
“I said woman—not women,” said the boss. “Minot's clean; I've had watchers on him since the first week he was here. But—did you know he was in love?”
“In love? With whom?” gasped the Mayor.
“That's a mighty pretty daughter you have, Landers,” said the boss.
The Mayor glared; he rose from his chair. “Morris, how dare——”
“Sit down,” rasped the boss. “You said yourself that Minot was a gentleman, and we know he's clean and honest. What are you kicking about?”
“But my daughter——”
“Yes, your daughter. I happen to know that he's got a photograph of her in his room,” snapped the boss. “Cut it out of a newspaper. Has it framed and on his bureau. What more do you want? Get her to invite him to call.”
“I'll see you——”
“Cut it,” said the boss. “Look here, Landers, you want to be reëlected. I tell you, with Minot against us, there's not a chance. With him with us—or with him just cutting out his yap about construction steals and graft—well, Landers, do you want to quit office or be Mayor again?”
THE weak are very often selfish. Chosen by the boss to be Mayor because of his family's standing, and because personally he was popular, Landers knew that without Morris he would never have held office. And holding office was the breath of existence to Landers.
He could not meet the eyes of the boss when he left his house with the tacit understanding between them that the Mayor's daughter should be used to win over young Minot. Even the weak and selfish may not be lost to a sense of shame. And it is possible that if his daughter had not made an opening for him next morning Landers might have ignored his tacit arrangement with the boss, for he loved his daughter and was proud of her, and the decency within him rebelled at making her an unconscious tool of Stewart Morris.
But she did make an opening, and he knew that a man reëlected to the mayoralty would have a fine chance, two years later, of winning his party's nomination for the governorship; and the governorship was but a step toward the Senate, and— What qualms a wakeful night had brought him were stifled at her first words after her good-morning kiss.
“Father,” she asked, as she poured his coffee, “how does one get something printed in the newspapers?”
“Advertisement or announcement of a meeting of the Woman's Club?” he asked smilingly.
“It's an advertisement and a meeting of the Woman's Club—both,” she replied. “The club is trying to raise ten thousand dollars to build a recreation ground for children, and we're going to hold an entertainment and——”
“That's news,” said the Mayor. “The papers will print that.”
“And how do I go about it? That part has been turned over to me.”
“Why,” and his Honor hid the exultation in his eyes by veiling them behind a morning paper, “I should say that it would be a good idea for you to call upon the editors of the papers. There's Moran of the Bugle, De Witt of the Times, and Minot of the Sun. Go direct to them; I don't think you'll have much difficulty in getting space from them.”
She frowned.
“The first two are all right, but Mr. Minot—I'd ask no favors of him. Why, he's abused you and your administration shamefully.”
Landers smiled.
“That won't affect his wanting to print news, my dear. And as regards has attacking me—that's not personal; it's politics. I don't hold it against him. In fact, I've thought of inviting him to dine with us. A fine young fellow.
“You're the hostess of this family, Janet. Mr. Minot, while young and overenthusiastic and too cocksure, has in him the makings of a most valuable citizen. If you don't mind, you might convey to him my desire to have him dine with us, when you see him. There are certain things I'd like to talk over with him. Of course, he's young, but he has brains. Invite him, my dear.”
“After what he's said about you?”
“Never carry politics into your private relations with people, my dear,” he smiled. She stared at him.
“Father,” she exclaimed, “you're the most magnanimous soul that ever lived.”
And he winced behind his paper.
“Not at all, my dear, not at all.”
THAT afternoon Janet,having been promised plenty of space by the other two of Morgantown's papers, called upon the publisher and editor of the Sun. There was a moment of frantic sweeping of litter behind a screen, a wild straightening of desk and chairs, when her name was brought in by an admiring office boy. Then, slightly flushed, Minot received his fair visitor, the girl whose picture was enshrined in his room, and whom he had worshiped from afar these several months.
He had never seen her as close to as this, and the realization that she was more beautiful than her picture, and that the nearer the view the greater her charm, was enough, almost, to render him tongue-tied. However, he hid his perturbation from her, and, after the request for publicity for the Woman's Club had been proffered and granted, she extended her father's invitation, and, attracted by his open, frank countenance, added to the invitation a little warmth on her own account. And Minot, surprised that the Mayor was so genuinely broad-minded and able to divorce politics from personality, accepted the invitation.
Three nights later he dined at the Landers home. Unfortunately, shortly after the meal, the Mayor was summoned to the telephone and later announced that a most important matter called him down-town. Would Mr. Minot forgive him? It was unpardonable, but—it was extremely important. And——
“Mr. Minot can come again,” said Janet. “Meanwhile, if he'd care to stay and be bored by the Woman's Club's plans——”
Minot stayed. Two nights later he called again. This time the Mayor and he had a most pleasant talk, in which the Mayor made no effort to win Minot over to his support, but led the discussion into channels of civic interest apart from Morgantown's own problems. Later Janet played for them and sang. Before leaving, Minot asked permission to call upon the girl. It was granted. Within a week he called again; and this time the Mayor was discreetly absent from the house.
And as he had attacked the rottenness of Morgantown, so did Minot attack the girl's heart. He had reached the age of thirty unscathed by Cupid's darts. So, having been immune so long, he was but the easier victim. Within two weeks he knew that first impressions—pre-impressions, for he had been strongly attracted by her photograph—were in his case but precursors of a lasting love.
For from the bottom of his heart, and with all that was fine and strong within him, he loved Janet Landers. He was not the one to dally; at the end of the third week he told her. And she accepted him, with the provision that her father should approve. And so they went to him. And he, with many an ejaculation of surprise and amazement, and with a secret feeling of shame, gave them his blessing.
“Perhaps,” said Landers, “Janet can win you over to our side.”
“That's the thing that bothers me, Mr. Landers,” said Minot frankly. “I—can't stop rapping the administration, sir. Personally, for you—I have the liking I want to have for my fiancée's father. But—perhaps, on the outside, I see more than you who are in the game, sir. I—I can't stand for the men behind you. I hope——”
“Not another word, sir,” said the Mayor benignly. “I should not attempt to influence you for the world.”
“Isn't father a noble man?” asked Janet a little later.
“Square as a die,” said Minot enthusiastically. And then they talked of other things.
That night Landers called up the boss.
“It's all right,” he said softly. “He's ours; we'll tighten the ropes in a day or so.”
“Nice work,” grunted Stewart. “Your Honor will remain your Honor.”
And to Landers's credit be it known that he grimaced in self-disgust at the twice-repeated word “honor.” But politics is politics. His ambition was stronger than anything else within him. And four nights later, with election but a month away, Janet met Minot in the Landers drawing-room with a smileless white face and in her nervous, shaky hand she held a copy of the day's Sun.
Minot winced as he saw the paper. Good reason! The day before Mayor Landers had been renominated by the machine. A reporter from the Sun, while the convention was in progress, had telephoned the office and asked for a relief. When his relief came, the reporter—his name was Atherton—had left the convention hall. He had not reported to his city editor until the next morning, and then he had written a story that fairly sizzled and that abounded in detail.
It seemed that Atherton had heard a delegate make the statement that “Jim Constant is up in Loring's place, stewed to the guards and anxious to shout all he knows to the whole world. Too bad he couldn't keep sober on convention day. Jim'll break his plate with the boss one of these days.”
Atherton was a very shrewd young man. He knew that Constant was a lawyer of parts, whose weakness for drink had made him sink to the level of a henchman for Morris. He knew that Constant's brain had often been invaluable to the boss, and that if Ćonstant wanted to talk—would talk——
Atherton managed, by heavy bribes, to get to the room in which Constant was drinking. It was easy to make the drunken lawyer talk, as Atherton did not scruple to state that he was a friend of Morris's, sent down to keep the lawyer company. And Constant had stated, in so many words, in the course of his drunken boasting, that Mayor Landers, as a preliminary to nomination, had agreed to use his whole influence, if again elected, to swing to the Morgantown Construction company all city building. In response to a question Constant stated that such an agreement had been a condition precedent to the Mayor's first nomination.
NOW a great many people in Morgantown knew of this—rather, believed it. But it had never been proved, never been admitted. For Constant to admit it was a most vital bit of news. Of course, it would later be denied, but—the Sun had printed Atherton's story. And now Minot faced the girl.
“Of course,” she began, “you know what I want to say.”
“About that story concerning Constant? I'm sorry, Janet, but—Atherton tells the truth.”
“But father says Constant lies,” she retorted.
He bowed, but said nothing. Her lips trembled.
“It's—it's been unpleasant, Tom, having you and father on opposite sides; but—I have borne it. But this—this accuses father of being—dishonest.”
“I didn't see it until it was printed,” said Minot truthfully.
“But if you had—you'd have printed it?”
He was forced to admit that he would have done so. Her voice and manner hardened.
“I've been talking with father. He is the noblest man God ever made. He says to let this attack on him in your paper make not the slightest difference in my feeling toward you. He says not to let politics interfere with love. But I am not as noble as my father. I can not love a man who calls my father dishonest, or permits him to be called dishonest.”
The great issue was raised, as Minot had known all along it must sooner or later be raised.
“Janet,” he said, “if your father does not carry political differences into private life, why should you? Your father and I look at things differently. He thinks that it is all right to promise contracts to Stewart Morris' company, for it's Morris who owns the Morgantown Construction Company. Now, if Morris' company built honestly I could appreciate your father's feelings, in a measure. But it doesn't. Every building erected for the city by Morris' company is weakened by graft. The materials are poor; lives are endangered and——”
“But father says that he made no promise,” she said indignantly. “Further, he says that the Construction company does good work.”
“Your father and I differ,” he said.
“And so do you and I,” she said coldly. She stripped her engagement ring from her finger. “I am glad we did not announce our engagement,” she said, “and that few people know of it. For it is ended now.”
The ring dropped into his palm and he stared, dazed, down at it.
“Janet,” he said hoarsely, “you can't mean—your father——”
“Father says not to mind; to love you just the same. But—I feel differently about the matter. Good-by.”
Now Minot loved the girl, and he knew that she loved him. Theirs had been one of those swift-kindled loves doomed ever to burn brightly. That he or she could ever forget was preposterous. He knew that she was suffering even as himself. So he pleaded. But she was adamant; she loved him, but—he must cease his attacks on her father and on the party.
Stewart Morris knew men. Tom Minot had his price; it was a woman. When he left her that night she still wore his ring, and he had pledged himself to cease attacking the personal integrity of the city administration, and to discontinue all articles that insinuated illicit agreement between Landers and the boss.
MINOT did not sleep that night until almost dawn. For he had sold himself. Nor could he blame the purchase—Janet. It was admirable of her to stand by her father. But for him supinely to yield to a woman his honor! Then he thought of the woman. And he went to sleep finally, thinking himself content; that self-respect was well lost for love. And he awoke a bit defiant, a bit contemptuous of all that was right and good. What did they count against a woman's love?
Frazee was in his private office that morning when he reached the Sun. The business manager fairly hurled himself upon his chief.
“By heck, Tom,” he cried, “we've got 'em on the run! We've got the last piece of meat for the voters to chew on! It's the Citizens' Ticket in a walk and then—my boy, victory! For you—for the Sun, for——”
“What's up?” snapped Minot.
“It's up to you to write the biggest editorial you ever pounded out! The Clinton Avenue School collapsed at five o'clock this morning. If it had been four hours later nine hundred kiddies would have gone down beneath it—to death! And the Morgantown Construction company built it! It proves what you've been shouting all along—that their work is rotten; for the school was only finished two months ago, and——
“But I'm keeping you. I only wanted to be the first to congratulate you, Tom, on your chance to make good; to show the people of Morgantown that you've told the truth about the rottenness of the city. It's your proof that the Construction company cheats the city. It's the proof that'll make the voters turn against the boss, defeat Landers, and—go to it, Tom, go to it!”
A boy entered, bringing proofs of the first-page story which told of the collapse of the Clinton Avenue School, built by Morris's company, and so poorly constructed that only the kindly fates were responsible for the fact that a thousand children had not lost their lives. Minot read the story. Then he opened his pocketbook and looked long at a little picture of Janet Landers. He kissed the smiling countenance once. Then he put it away and reached for his pen.
“Dear Janet,” he wrote. “Something has happened. The Clinton Avenue School collapsed early this morning. Fortunately no one was inside the building, but you can imagine what it would have been like if the collapse had occurred half an hour from now—at nine o'clock.
“Morris's company built it. Your father sanctioned the letting of the contracts to Morris's company. Whether because of an agreement, in fulfilling a preëlection promise or not, doesn't matter. What does matter is this: your father and his administration have let Morris have many contracts. If your father is reëlected Morris will have many more. The city will be robbed and lives endangered. And—and—I can't permit that to happen without a fight on my part.
“Dear, I've counted the cost and—the rule of Morris must be broken. The only way to do that is to defeat your father. The only way to make that defeat certain is to continue attacking the Morgantown Construction company. For your father's administration granted the company the contracts. Your father signed them and —— I'm sorry, dear, but—I must do what I think is right. Good-by. Tom.”
He sealed the note and sent it on its way. Then, white of face and stern of mouth and eyes, he began writing an editorial, the most powerful he had ever written, referring to the collapsed school building, pointing out that this was but a sample of what must occur to city buildings provided Morris's company continued erecting them, and showing that the company would undoubtedly continue to erect them if Landers were reëlected.
He finished and rang for a copy-boy. His door opened and he looked up.
“Boy, rush this up-stairs to the composing-room and tell——”
HIS jaw dropped and his words ceased. Janet Landers stood framed in the doorway.
“What is that?” she asked pointing to the sheets of copy-paper in his hand.
“An editorial attacking your father, with reference to this morning's incident of which I wrote you,” he told her.
She closed the door behind her. She advanced into the room.
“Tom! You love me?”
“You know it,” he said.
“Then why— Tom, could I marry a man who accused my father?”
“You know better than I.”
“Would you ask me to?”
“I've released you,” he said. “I thought, of course, you understood that I realized you wouldn't marry me—now.”
“And I'm not worth——”
“You're worth— Janet, you're worth life, death, heaven, hell— Janet, you're worth everything; but— Janet, I'd give you my life; I'd give you all I ever hope to be; I'd sacrifice my future; I'd do—but, girl, last night I gave you something that wasn't mine to give. I didn't realize it until this morning when that collapse of the school showed me what I had done.
“I'd given you my honor; and Janet, that was not mine to give. My right arm—I'd' cut that off for you. But my honor—God gave me my honor, clean, untarnished. He gave it to me in trust, to return to Him some day. Janet, I must keep it clean and——”
A copy-boy entered, to stare from girl to man in undisguised amazement. Minot handed him the editorial.
“Take that up-stairs,” he snapped.
But the girl put out her hand and took the sheets of paper from the amazed boy.
“Come back in a moment,” she said, and gently urged him toward the door, shutting it behind him. She faced Minot.
“Tom, it's your last chance. Look at me. Would you give me up?”
“Janet, you're more to me than anything except——”
“Then you'll give me up?”
“I must,” he said tensely.
One second their glances met, and hers was infinitely sweet. Then she opened the door; she beckoned to the boy and handed him, not Minot's editorial, but another paper.
“Here it is,” she said. “Mr. Minot wants you to run it on the first page.”
She shut the door quickly.
“You see, Tom—” and she blushed—“I could not give you up. No—” and she raised her hand—“don't call him back. You won't need to print your editorial attacking father, because he has resigned the nomination and will not run for Mayor. I gave his statement to the boy.”
“You mean——”
“I mean that after you called me up I spoke to father; I told him that I knew you were honest. I told him that I was convinced that you would not give me up unless you were sure you were right. And I told him that if you said the Morgantown Construction company had a hold on my father that—it must be true!”
“Good Lord,” cried Minot. “And your father——”
“Denied it. But I asked him why he let the city give contracts to the company; if he would do it again in view of what had happened this morning. Tom, Father never got a cent from Morris. You know that.”
“Of course,” said Minot. “Your father's not a grafter; he likes to hold office, and——”
“But he's resigned his candidacy now,” she said. “And so——”
“But why did you not tell me this when you came in? Why——”
“Last night, after you had gone, I thought of what you had done, Tom. Tom, as father—sold himself—for office, so you had sold yourself—for me. And I did not want to marry a man who would sell himself. I would have broken our engagement today. But this morning you wrote me and told me that you had not yielded; that you'd do the right. But I doubted, and I came down here to see if you would resist a personal appeal. If you hadn't—but you did, and——
“Tom Minot, are we engaged? If we are, why don't you say so, and ask me, and—do something?”
And Minot did something.
It was some time after the Citizens' Ticket had defeated the makeshift slate of the machine, and consigned Boss Morris to political oblivion, that that worthy was asked if he thought every man had a price of some sort.
“I used to think so,” said Morris. “I still think so. Only sometimes—” and his eye took on a far-away, reminiscent look—“the man you've bought will return the price and cancel the sale.”
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published before January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1935, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 88 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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