Jasper County Democrat, Volume 20, Number 45, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 September 1917 — The Real Man [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Real Man

By Francis Lynde

CHAPTER I. spank Cashier and Society Man. It was ten minutes of eight when J. Montague Smith had driven his runabout to its garage and was hastening across to his suite of bachelor apartments in the Kincaid terrace. There was reason for the haste. It was his regular evening for calling upon Miss Verda Richlander, and time pressed. The provincial beatitudes had chosen a tit subject for their illustration in the young cashier of the Lawrenceville Bank and Trust. From his earliest recollections Montague Smith had lived the life of the well-behaved and the conventional. He had his niche in the Lawrenceville social structure, and another in the small-city business world, and he filled both to his own satisfaction and to the admiration of all and ■sundry. Ambitions, other than to take promotions in the bank as they came to him, and, eventually, to make money enough to satisfy the demands which Josiah Richlander might make upon a prospective son-in-law, had never troubled him. An extremely well-balanced young man his fellow townsmen called him, one of whom it might safely be predicted that he would go straightforwardly on his way to reputable middle life and old age; moderate in all things, impulsive in none. , . Even in the affair with Miss Richlander sound common sense and sober second thought had been made to stand in the room of supersentiment. Smith did not know what it was to be violently in love; though he was a charter member of the Lawrenceville Athletic club and took a certain pride in keeping himself physically fit and up to the mark, it was not his habit to be violent in anything. Lawrenceville expected its young men and young women to marry and “settle down,” and J. Montague Smith, figuring in a modest way as a leader in the Lawrenceville youngest set, was far too conservative to break with the tradition, even if he had wished to. Miss Richlander was desirable in many respects. Her father’s ample fortune had not come early enough or rapidly enough to spoil her. In moments when his feeling for her achieved its nearest approach to sentiment the conservative young man perceived what a graciously resplendent figure she would make as the mistress of her own house and the hostess at her own table, , Smith snapped the switch of the electrics and began to lay out his evening clothes, methodically but with a certain air of calm deliberation, inserting the buttons in the waistcoat, choosing hose of the proper thinness, rummaging a virgin tie out of its box in the top dressing-case drawer. It was in the search for the tie that

lie turned up a mute reminder of his nearest approach to any edge of the real chasm of sentiment: a small glove, somewhat soiled and use-worn, with a tiny rip in one of the fingers. It had been a full year since he had seen the glove or its owner, whom he had met only once, and that entirely by chance. The girl was a visitor from the West, -the daughter of a ranchman, he had (understood; and she had been stopping over with friends in a neighboring /Y 'town? Smith had driven over one evening in his runabout to make a call (upon the daughters of the house, and ’had found a lawn party in progress, with the western visitor as the guest of honor. Acquaintance —such an acquaintance as can be achieved in a short social hour—had followed. At all points the bewitching young woman from the wilderness had proved to be a mocking critic of the comibonplace conventions, and had been moved to pillory the same in the person of her momentary entertainer. Some thrills this young person from the wide horizons had stirred in him were his only excuse for stealing her glove. There remained now nothing of the clashing encounter at the lawn party save the soiled glove, a rather obscure memory of a face too piquant and attractive to be cheapened by the word “pretty;” these and a thing she had said at the moment of parting: “Yes; lam going back home very soon. I don’t like your smug middle West civilization, Mr. Smith —it smothers me. I don’t wonder that it breeds men who live and grow up and die without ever having a chance to find themselves.” Some day, perhaps, he would tell Verda Richlander of the sharp-tongued little Western beauty. .Verda—and all sensible people—would smile at the Idea that he, John Montague Smith, was of those who had not “found” themselves, or that the finding—by which he had understood the Western young woman to mean something radical and upsetting—could in any way be forced upon a man who was old enough and sane enough to know his own lengths and breadths and depths. ' He was stripping off his coat to dress when he saw two letters which hntjnerideptly been thrust under the door dur-

Ing his absence with Debritt. One of the envelopes was plain, with his name scribbled on it in pencil. The other bore a typewritten address with the card of Westfall Foundries company in Its upper left-hand corner. Smith opened Carter Westfall’s letter first and read it with a little twinge of shocked surprise, as one reads the story of a brave battle fought and lost. “Dear Monty,” it ran. “I have been trying to reach you by phone off and on ever since the adjournment of our stockholders’ meeting at three o’clock. We. of the little inside pool, have got It where the chicken got the ax. Richlander had more proxies up his sleeve than we thought he had, and he has put the steam roller over us to a finish. He was able to vote 55 per cent of the stock straight, and you know what that means: a consolidation with the Richlander foundry trust, and the hearse and white horses for yours truly and the minority stockholders. We’re dead —dead and buried. , “Of course, I stand to lose everything, bur that isn’t all of it. I’m horribly anxious for fear you’ll be tangled up personally in some way in the matter of that last loan of SIOO,OOO that I got from the Bank and Trust. You will remember you made the loan while Dunham was away, and I am certain you told me you had his consent to take my Foundries stock as collateral. That part of it is all right, but, as matters stand, the stock isn’t worth the paper it is printed on, and —well, to tell the bald truth, t’m scared of Dunham. Brickley. the Chicago lawyer they have brought down here, tells me that your bank is behind the consolidation deal, and if that is so, there is going to be a bank loss to show up on my paper, and Dunham will carefully cover his tracks for the sake of the bank’s standing. “It is a hideous mess, and it has occurred to me that Dunham can put you in bad. if he wants to. When you made that SIOO,OOO loan, you forgot—and I forgot for the moment —that, you own ten shares of Westfall Foundries in your own name. If Dunham wants to stand from under, this might be used against you. You mustyget rid of that stock. Monty, and do it quick. Transfer the ten shares to me, dating the transfer back to Saturday. I still have the stock books in my hands, and I’ll make the entry in the record and date it to fit. This may look a little crooked. on the surface, but it’s your salvation, and we can't stop to split hairs ■when we've just been shot full of holes. “WESTFALL.”

Smith folded the letter mechanically and thrust it into his pocket. Carter Westfall was his good friend, and the cashier had tried, unofficially, to dissuade Westfall from borrowing after he had admitted that he was going to use the money in an attempt to buy up the control of his own company’s stock. Smith was thinking of the big bank loss and the hopeless ruin of Carter Westfall when he tore the second envelope across and took out the inclosed slip of scratch-paper. It was a note from the president and it was dated within the hour. Mr. Dunham was back in Lawrenceville earlier than expected, and the note had been written at the bank. It was a curt sum* mons; the cashier was wanted, at once. At the moment. Smith did not connect the summons with the Westfall cataclysm, or with any other untoward thing. Mr. Watrous Dunham had a habit of dropping in and out unexpectedly. Also, he had the habit of sending for bis cashier or any other member of the banking force at whatever hour the notion seized him. Smith went to the telephone and called up the Richlander house. The promptness with which the multimillionaire’s daughter came to the phone was an Intimation that his ring was not entirely unexpected. “This is Montague,” he said, when Miss Richlander’s mellifluous “Main four six eight —Mr. Richlander’s residence” came over the wire. Then: “What are you going to think of a man who calls you up merely to beg off?” he asked. Miss Richlander’s reply was merciful and he was permitted to go on and explain- Tm awfully sorry, but It can’t very well be helped, you know. Mr. Dunham has returned, and he wants me at the bank, mbeup a little later on. if I can break away, and you’ll let me come. . . . Thank you, ever so much. Goodby.” The Lawrenceville Bank and Trust, lately installed Mits new m;!rble-ve-neered quarters, four squares distant. As he the corner. Smith saw were only two lights in the bank, one in the vault corridor and another in the railed-off open space in front which held the president’s desk and his own . Through the big plate-glass windows he could see Mr. Dunham. The president was apparently at work, his portly figure filling the padded swing-chair. He had one elbow on the desk, and the fingers

bf thfe uplifted hand were thrust into his thick mop of hair. Smith had his own keys and he let himself in quietly through the door on the side street. The night-watchman’s chair stood In its accustomed place in the vault corridor, but it was empty. To a suspicious person the empty chair might have had 'its significance; but Montague Smith was not suspicious. The obvious conclusion was that Mr. Dunham had sent the watchman forth upon some errand; and the motive needed not to be tagged as ulterior. Without meaning to be .particularly noiseless, Smith —rubber heels on tiled floor assisting—was unlatching the gate in the counter railing before his superior officer heard him and looked up. There was an irritable note in thq president’s greeting. “Oh, it’s you, at last, is it?” he rasped. “You have taken your own good time about coming. It’s a halfhour and more since I sent that note to your room.” bj , CoNtinued _,