Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 5, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 January 1914 — JOHN RAWN PROMINENT CITIZEN [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

JOHN RAWN PROMINENT CITIZEN

by EMERSON HOUGH

AUTHORTHE MISSISSIPPI BUBBLE; 51-10 OR TIGHT. JUUSTPATIONS^g, COPTA/avr /SJ2 ay ysr&nsaft starts*

SYNOPSIS. John Rawn, a clerk In a Bt. Louis railway office, hears his daughter Grace s lover, a young engineer named Charles Halsey, speak of a scheme to utilise the lost current of electricity. He appropriates the idea as his own and Induces Halsey to perfect an experimental machine. He forms a company, with himself as president at a salary of SIOO,OOO a year, and Halsey as superintendent of the works, at A salary of $5,000. Hawn takes charge of the office th Chicago. Virginia Delaware is assigned as his stenographer. She assists In picking the furniture and decoration for the princely mansion Hawn has erected. Mrs. Rawn feels out of place in the new surroundings. Halsey goes to New York with Rawn and Miss Delaware to explain delays in perfecting the new motor to the He gets a message that a deformed daughter lias been born to his wife. Grace Rawn. Rawn bargains with Miss Delaware‘■to wear his Jewelry and appear in public with him. as a means to help him in a business way. Rawn Is fortunate In market speculations, plies up wealth and attains prominence. He gives his wife a million dollars to leave him. He asks his daughter. Mrs. Halsey, to take charge of his household. Grace moves to Graystone ha|l, and Halsey continues to live alone In the cottage near the works. Halsey’s machine proves a success, but he keeps the fact a secret. Virginia Delaware becomes more and more Indispensable to Rawn. He takes her to New York on a business trip. , Idle talk prompts him to offer her marriage. They are married. Halsey threatens to get a divorce because his wife refuses to return to him. He tells Rawn that he has broken up all the machines after proving the success of the Invention. -Rawn. te-a great rage, threatens to kill him. Halsey declares he will never build another machine for Rawn and slaps his face. Vlrglnla Rawn implores Halsey to reconsider, because his decision will ruin them all. Halsey tells Virginia that he has abandoned his Invention because it would jmt a great power In the hands of a few to the detriment of the many. At Rawn’s instigation Virginia agrees to try to bring Halsey to terms, no matter what it costs. The directors plan to get the control of the company away froip Rawn. They hold a conference In Chicago.

CHAPTER XVIII. They Who Sow the Wind. The Information given by the exdlrecttrMta regard to the whereabouts of Charlep Halsey was substantially, if not circumstantially, correct. He had, indeed, done the most unlikely thing. He had taken up his abode, for the time at least, at the very place to which he might have seemed leaßt apt to return; that is to say, the home of his father-in-law, John Rawn. Many things moved Halsey to this action. In the first place, having ended his labors, he found no reason for any pretense of continuing them. Again, although be fully intended to bring divorce proceedings, and fully intended to leave the city, he was unwilling to depart without seeing once more his wife and their child, because news came to him of the little cripple’s serious and continued illness. In point of fact, Grace Halsey, unhappy, morose, and now jealously suspicious, had brooded over her unfortunate situation in life until she also really was ill. Halsey grieved over this, in spite of all. As to the little hunchback, Laura, she had known only illness all her life; and Halsey, father after all, felt some foreboding which made him unready to leave for yet a time. Halsey, in spite of his own bitterness of soul, realised ’that Rawn himself was well-nigh crazed by the business situation, and his Conscience misgave him when he reflected upon the sudden consequences of his own acts. His sense of business honor and of personal justice told him he owed even so unreasonable a man as Rawn some sort of definite accounting for his own stewardship, unwelcome as another meeting between them must be to both.

Lastly, It may be added, Virginia Rawn had sent for him. * When he received her message he spent a night resolving that he would not go, that he would never again see either her or Grace; never again would set foot on ground belonging to John Rawn, come what could, let be lost what any of them all might lose. In the morning he changed his resolution. By evening of the next day he was at Graystone Hall. To his surprise, he found It not Immediately necessary to patch a peace with the master as Graystone Hall, for Rawn was absent. The great mansion seemed strangely and suddenly changed- An air of anxiety all, the place was oddly silent The servants went slipshod about their duties, and their mistress did not chide them. Swift disintegration of the domestic machine seemed to threaten; mysterious danger seemed to menace the very structure Itself, long of so bold and indomitable front. Halsey a till hesitated —and still remained. Rawn customarily divided his time between the operating headquarters in the western city and the general offices in the eastern capital, but now he had found it needful immediately to transfer all his activities to the latter scene. He did not know of bis wife’s invitation to Halsey, for he had started from his office, without even ladvlslng her of his intention, and even without conversation with her by telephone. He telegraphed from the train, rstating that he had been called East •os urgent matters. After that, no -word at all came from him. It was Inot known when he would return. Halisey could only wait. • In truth, he was 'little better than a man gone mad himtself, and Rawn was worse than suqh Gradually, day by day, hour by hour. Itfce terrible strain of this suddenly developed situation began to show its offsets upon Rawn. He slept but little

after his arrival In the Ea6t, showed himself more and more untidy in personar habits; find lastly, began' to seek the false strength of Intoxicating drink. His demeanor in his relations with his urbane associates lost its usual arrogance. John Rawn, late dictator, became explanatory, conciliatory—a change of mind which had visible physical tokeftg.' His eye became weaker and more watery, his shoulders more drooped, his voice more quavering, his address less abrupt and domineering. ’ 'John Rawn was a broken man, and began to show it. Wherefore his late friends exulted. The wolves, ranged in circle, lick their chops when the wounded bull totters upon his uncertain legs. Certain large financial figures in the eastern city licked their chops, and smiled grimly, wolfishly, in contemplation of John Rawn as he tottered. *

Yet Rawn himself could get no direct proof of the identity of those now secretly assailing him. At the directors’ meeting of the International he was received politely and respect-fully—-with too much politeness and respect, as hp felt, although himself unlike the man once wont to rule there with in iron hand. „He did not dare tell them of Halsey’s defection, could hot doubt that they already knew of it; but he met no queries regarding or anything else in the conduct of the western factory’s business. NoUhe seemed to know that the most important of all their factories was elosed, after a tedious term spent lp incompletion. His associates all were aB polite as himself, indeed, more sq; as ready as himself to discuss gravely and earnestly any detail of the business which now, as all politely agreed, seemed "somewhat involved,” or

“somewhat delayed.” No one offered any criticism of the executive. But, what was far more deadly to him, ffie market seemed most onerously and cruelly oppressive upon the outside investments of John Rawn. International Power was npt hammered, for the reason that there was little pf it out to hammer. The Rawn stock in International, of course, did not come upon the market. Rawn intended to hold on to that grimly, fighting for it to the last gasp, trusting to chance to mend matters for him at the' eleventh hour. But ruin in the general market faced him; and he knew that, with credit gone, the courts would take for his former creditors whatever property he could be shown to have. He saw the shadowy circle of the wolveß of high finance. Almost he felt their fangs snapping at his hamstrings. In these ravage hours the mind of John Rawn cast about for rescue, for hope. No rescue, no hope, appeared except one last desperate alternative, purchasable uot now with cash or power or influence —since these were gone—but with what other and dearer things remain to a man—things some men, not rotted with the love of self, keep through any or all disaster, prize, even above life and all a life’s busi-

ness success. Halsey! Ah! Halsey was the savior of Rawn—Halsey, the man who had humiliated him in his own home. How could Halsey be secured? There might be brought to bear upon him one influence—that of a beautiful and fascinating woman! What matter if the one woman was his wife, Virginia Rawn? He had already hinted to her of her duty. He wondered now continually whether she had really and fully understood. He wondered what she was doing with Halsey. As to Halsey, who knew little or nothing of all these turbulent emotions, all these crowding incidents, hie found his situation in the great house of John Rawn one wholly to his dislike. He saw little of his wife Grace after the first conventional greeting pn his arrival, and as to the young mistress of Graystone Hall, she seemed so regularly to have matters demanding her own presence elsewhere, was so busy with other matters, as. to have small time for him. The disturbed condition of the stock market was creating a furor in the business eWorld, reflected, of course, in the dally mar-

kets of the Western city; hut Halsey had never had many investments, had watched the markets little; add now, isolated at Grayatdne Hall almost as much as though upon a desert island, und too much disturbed and distracted in his own mind to find any definite in : terest in business matters,’W-ses hardly conscious ot the storm that raged. He Aiinply Waited on, unhappiiy. lt seemed to him there was no place for him in all the world. Why did Virginia remain aloof? Rawn, absent, in New York, imagined his wife engaged continuously in the struggle of persuading 1 Charles Halsey to see the light of reason, although he did not knot? Halsey was living under the same roof with her. As a matter of fact, Halsey and she met but rarely. Virginia breakfasted for the most part in her own rooms, and found, or pretended to find, something to occupy her for the moßt part of the day. Not once did she ask his attendance, not once did ,; she speak with him, when by chance she saw him, upon any but casual or conventional matters. She deemed always to evade him; and because she did this, he, rebelling, sought her out all the more, even while continually resold ing to take his departure, and never again to see this place, or her, again. He wondered at her reticence, avoidance of him. He wondered why she was so pale. He loitered' about, unhappily, in this or that /common mating ground of the great/mansion house, waiting to hear the rustle of a gown upon the stair, the sound of a light foot on a floor, the touch of a white hand, the sound of a voice—all things belonging, not to his wife, but to his young stepmother by law. YeS. Without his wish, in spite of her wish, these had become things desired, the only things desirable any more in bis distracted life. He lived under the same roof with two women, saw either rarely, and rarely thought

of but one—the wrong one. To atone, Halsey lavished all his time and care on his little hunchback daughter, and had her with him as much as the nurse and doctor would allow. The child, undersized, pale, deformed, silent and wistful, and pathetic always, now was listless and weak, obviously very seriously iH. It Wrung her father’s -heart to see her. But Charles Halsey wanted it wrung. He wanted to do bitterest penance for, what he now knew was his secret sin. So the ways of Inordinate power, the consequences, for this one or that one, which follow on Inordinate greed, worked themselves out toward their sure and logical ending, the mill of fate grinding those primarily, secondarily, even incidentally guilty. - . .., At this time, had Virginia Rawn asked of him to recant, to relent, to change, there IS likelihood he would have done so. John Rawn, cuckold, was right in his despicable reasoning. There are many prices which purchase principles. The weakness which had prompted Halsey to remain at Graystone hall on such a tenure—which held him there now, waiting for a voice, listening for a footfall—was the ancient weakness- of youth before youth, of strength before beauty, of the empty heart before one offering love, of the mind finding perfect echo In another mind. T With all his starved heart, all his repressed soul, all his mutinous body, Charles Halsey loved Virginia Rawn.

CHAPTER XIX. They Who Water With Tears. As at last the news of John Rawn’s collapse broke full and fair—disastrous enough to please even his late warmest friends, thw east and west, became scenes of riot. The truth, of course, had leaked out regarding Rawn’s fight in the last ditch. The newspapers swarmed upon Graystone hall, besieging any who could be found. Halsey refused to talk, and moreover, Rawn could not be found. This threw them upon their own resources, and what they did not know they imagined- Even thus, the wildest of them all could not imagine half; the shrewdest of the journalist? could not get their hands on the “inside story” here. No one in or around or back of the stock exchanges could be found possessed of secret information which he was willing to impart Throughout wild hours of hurrying, telegraphing, investigating, the papers kept up their frenzied search, for the truth, and found it not, and knew they had not found it. Halsey, one morning after a sleepless night, more than a week after Rawn’s departure to New York, secured copies of each of the morning papers. He stood uncertain, in the

great central room of Graystone hat!, with these black and frowning messengers of fate in his hands, scarce daring to look at them. He frit some sense of definite disaster at He glanced at last at? one, and Btarted as though struck. Calling a servant, he sent "word to Mrs. Rawn inquiring if he might meet her at once. -She joined him presently, smiling faintly, giving him her hand, then leading him to a breakfast table on the long gallery facing the lake front, a favorite spot with her. She gave the butler order! to serve them breakfast here at once; for she now learned Halsey had neither slept nor eaten. Halsey did not learn that the same also was true of her. They seated themselves and for the time | said nothing, each gazing out over Che lake. The morning was calm> and Dfeautiful. The blue lake, just dotted/ with little whitecap rolling waves, seemed in amiable mood, and. purred gently along the sea-wall, below the green and curving terrace which ran down from the gallery front). A bird chirped here and there. Ljrtle enough the peaceful scene rejected the feelings of these, Its only human figures. Virginia Rawn was pale. Dark rings showed below her eyes. Her mouth drooped just a trifle, plaintively, in a way not usual with her. She was pale, paler than her usual clean and clear Ivory. Yet she was coolly; beautiful in her morning gown of light figured lawn, with "its wide, flowing peeves, showing her round white arm!. Halsey, frowningly serious, felt the charm of her rise about him, overwhelm him. He knew that the hour had come for him In more ways than one; that hers, for ever, was the one face and figure and voice and presence for him, hopelesß and unhappy, and doomed for ever so to remain. She was not his wife. She was the wife of another man—of his enemy; the man in all the world least like himself; the man who, by virtue of that ufilikeness, had won this woman for his own. What hope for him, Charles Halsey, for whom was no place In the world? Without much comment he placed before her the morning papers, with their glaring head-lines. “Well,” said he, “It is the end.” “Yes?” said she, smiling; “I suppose now we can learn all about our earlleT life and career?"

"Quite so. Here is the entire history of Mr. Rawn’s career—what he did when he was a young man, where he came from, how he rose to power, how he failed and fell—it's all here. Here’s the story of the International Power company—they claim it was intended as a merger of all the traction companies of the eight leading cities of the country! Bond isdue one to eight billion dollars, capitalization one to tWo hundred billion in stocks —you can talie your choice in crazed figures. Here are biographical histories of all the known and unknown stockholders. Here, Mrs. Rawn, is a picture of yourself, as well as one of Mr. Rawn and one more of the house here—a new view, I think. The photographer must have made a flashlight of the grounds.” She smiled as he tried to jest, following his pointing finger along the blurred, brutal head-lines, shrieking their discordant, impossible and inconsistent tales. The first paper, the Forum, declared the ruin of John Rawn’s fortune to be now beyond all hope of repair. Rawn himself —really at that time often in a helpless stupor in a New York hotel room—was reported to have fled the country. Halsey, his son-in-law, and Halsey’s wife, who really had only denied themselves to visitors and reporters—were -declared to be in hiding in some secret apartments of the great castle on the North shore, a place actually but little known to any member of the select North side society in which Rawn had been, more or less on sufferance, received. Rawn’s wife was also located here, in a condition verging on Insanity, according to the imagination of the writers, which, after all, was fatefully near to the truth. (TO BE CONTINUED.)

John Rawn Was Right in. His Despicable Reasoning.