BERT had started out with the intention of telling the Butterfly Man nothing . . . but now he knew he would have to tell him all. For the fear that had arisen in him all in a moment demanded immediate counsel and advice.
Old Man Clud, absorbed in the secrets of the little red book, had not seen him. Noiselessly he backed away, past the porch, out among the crowd. His bicycle was where he had left it. With the auctioneer's clamor for a higher bid in his ears he rode away, and his tires sang a higher note of speed than they had ever sung before to the gritty surface of the county highway.
To-day it was not necessary for him to ride all the way to the cabin. Scarcely had he left the highway for the dirt road than he saw a tall figure ahead striding along with legs that seemed to annihilate distance. Bert sounded his horn once, twice, three times. The man swung around and then hastily scrambled for the side of the road.
"Nothing doing," he shouted. "You had one chance at me out here and failed. Bea gentleman and let well enough alone."
There was no answering laughter in Bert's eyes, and the man's face sobered. The boy swung off the wheel.
"I'm in trouble," he said abruptly.
"Home, school or business?"
"Business. Do you know a man in Springham named Clud?"
"I've heard of him. Sweet individual with a fat, warm body and a cold, thin heart. He'd sell a man's soul for a dollar. He's a shark, a buzzard and a polecat all rolled into one. Talks like a honeybee and stings like a snake. He's a trickster and a schemer, a liar and a cheat, a rascal and a rogue. If he got his just deserts he'd be down in State's Prison in a convict's cell. Every time I pass him in the street I come home and take a strong bath. The night he dies the angels will have to hold their noses. The church they take him into—if they take him into one—will have to be disinfected. Yes; I've heard of him. Why?"
The whimsical Tom Woods, full of dry humor and homely wisdom, was gone, and in his place was a man breathing fire and indignation. Every word of the unexpected denunciation thrust Bert through and through. The fears that had overwhelmed him at the farmhouse, then, were substantial and real. His last hope that he might be mistaken was gone. He sank down, and put his back against the trunk of a tree, and stared at the ground.
Light broke in upon the Butterfly Man. He gave an exclamation, and caught the boy's arm. "Bert! He hasn't got you, has he?"
"Yes, sir."
"Christopher!" After that one explosive outburst the man was silent. He seemed to be fighting down his wrath, bringing his mind back to its customary state of calm and disciplined control. He sat down beside the boy. Methodically he drew out the ever ready pipe and filled it with a deliberate measurement of tobacco from a pouch.
"When did you borrow the money?" he asked.
"Yesterday."
"You weren't afraid of Clud then. Why are you afraid of him now?"
Bert told of what he had seen at the farmhouse.
"That's Clud," Tom Woods said grimly. "It isn't the first time it's happened to people through here. How much did you borrow?"
"One hundred and fifty dollars."
"And you gave him a note for about $175. Is that right?"
Bert lifted his head and nodded, and looked at the man with mingled respect and surprise. "How did you know?"
"It's an old dodge," Tom Woods said. "Every skinflint of a loan shark practices it. That's how they beat the law which says that no interest above six per cent must be charged. On the face of that note Clud is getting only legal interest. You can't prove he put the screws on you for $25 interest."
"But he did."
"You can't prove it. The note says he gave you $175. You signed to that effect. He's got your signature to it. He's got you hooked."
"Suppose we can't pay it?"
"He'll sell you out as he sold out the farmer."
And then the business would be gone! Bert drew a long breath.
"I should have come to you first."
"You should have gone to your father," the man said quietly. "You promised me you would."
The silence that followed ran on for many minutes. When Bert spoke again his utterance showed that he had been thinking.
"Old Man Clud will never get $175 for the things in our store. How is he going to get the balance?"
"Clud usually knows how to protect himself. By the way, who signed that note? You and Sam together, or you alone?"
"I signed it alone."
Tom Woods bit hard on his pipe stem. One hand found its way to Bert's shoulder.
"Does that make it worse for me?" the boy demanded.
"I'm afraid it does," the Butterfly Man said quietly. "Here! There's a way out of this. Let me lend you $175 and go down and pay off Clud."
In that moment the current of the boy's life was changed. The first vital, definite spark of manhood was struck from his fiber, hammered out—after the fashion of such sparks—on the hard anvil of adversity. He sprang to his feet.
"I got myself into this mess," he cried passionately, "and I'm not going to use a friend to climb out. How do I know how long you'd have to wait to get your money back? Anyway, you were against this business from the start. Why should you get mixed up in it? If I've got a licking coming to me out of this I'll take it."
Tom Woods' grip on his pipe relaxed. He was conscious, all at once, that this was a November day, and that the ground was damp, and that he was rapidly becoming chilled. He scrambled to his feet.
"You're not sore at me?" Bert asked. His tone said that, sore or not, his mind was fixed.
"Sore?" The Butterfly Man laughed to himself. "Bert, they may get you down on your back, and you may have a tough time of it, but they'll never lick you."
The boy's face seemed older, more mature, as he rode back to Springham. The crowd was gone from in front of the farmhouse; the auction was over. Reaching the store he went in and, bluntly and concisely, told Sam the story of what he had seen that day.
Sam was thoughtful. "If anything should go wrong. . . . Mind, I'm not saying it will; I think the Christmas trade will make us a big winner. But if anything should go wrong, and Clud sells these few things in the store, where's he going to get the balance of his $175?"
"Tom Woods said he knew where he could get it or he'd never have let us have the money."
Sam digested this. "Going home to supper?" he asked.
"No; I'll telephone my mother."
"All right. I'll get a breath of air. I want to think this over."
An hour later Sam was back. There was about him a triumphant air of cunning and craft, a pride in his own astuteness, an atmosphere of trium* phant foxiness that Bert had never quite noticed before.
"Look here," Sam began, "you've been saving most of your five dollars a week, haven't you?"
"Yes."
"And I've got a little private bank account of my own. I didn't put everything I had into this business. I guess Clud knows that; he's got to have a way of finding out things in his game. He figures that when the time comes he'll get what's coming to him by going after what we have in the bank in our own private accounts. Well, I'm going to fool him. I'm going to take my money out of this bank and go to the city and put it in a bank there. Then he won't know where it is. You had better do the same."
Bert shook his head. "I'm not going to play any shady tricks."
"Shady!" Sam cried indignantly. "That's not shady; that's a business precaution. Clud's the one who's done the shady trick. Didn't he squeeze us for $25 and then cover it up by making us sign a note for more than we got?"
"But I agreed to it," said Bert, "and signed it."
"You're a fool," Sam said impatiently, and gave him up as hopeless.
That night Bert began to have misgivings of the partnership, but it was something other than failure he was thinking of.
Thanksgiving came and went, and made no appreciable change in the fortunes of The Shoppers' Service. Directly after the holiday winter came on with a rush of intense cold and deep snow. For three days Springham shivered in the teeth of icy blasts and dug itself out. Then the tide of trade began once more to move through frozen Washington Avenue; and Bert, figuring the slimmest week's receipts the partnership had ever known, could again write down a loss instead of a gain.
Because his hopes for December had been so high, the result was doubly disappointing. Hour after hour the Christmas shoppers flowed past his door, buying, buying, buying, but not from him. The ice cream sale fell to nothing. There was a day when coffee and sandwiches netted only ninety cents. Bert became silent and glum. At home he had very little to say. Twice his father and mother, sitting in the dining room, heard him pacing the floor of his bedroom overhead.
"Things are going bad with him," Mrs. Quinby said with an ache of sympathy in her voice.
"He brought it on himself," said the man.
"Oh!" she said in reproach.
The man got up from his chair and his worried footsteps echoed those of his son. "Oh, I know! I know! I'd give a hundred dollars this minute if I could get him out of it. Of course things are going the wrong way; they couldn't go any other way. He's carrying too big a load for a boy. It was a crack-brained scheme to start with. He's got to learn his lesson. If I jumped into this thing and got him off with a whole skin, he'd forget the experience in a year. He'd always have a feeling in the back of his head that no matter how big a fool he made of himself, he could always count on me to get him out. He's got to come to me and ask for help. He's got to admit that he was wrong. When he does that I'll wind up that business of his and save him every dollar I can. But he's got to swallow his medicine and admit that he was wrong."
Mrs. Quinby had a mental picture of her son's sullen eyes and stubborn chin. "He's not the kind to admit failure," she sighed. She did not know that he had already admitted far more than that to the Butterfly Man.
In the morning, while Bert ate, she sat across from him at the breakfast table. Mr. Quinby had already left the house.
"Were you expecting big things this month?" she asked.
The boy nodded.
"It couldn't be, Bert. Christmas shopping is very trying. People just go around in a sort of frenzy. Half the time they don't know what they want. They don't pay much attention to ads. They go from store to store, roaming through the aisles in the hope of finding something that will make a gift for somebody they've got to remember. A lot of people put off shopping until the last minute, and that makes it worse. They're in such a hurry to reach the city in the morning that there's no time to step into your place and look at newspapers, and when they come home in the afternoon they're too tired. Didn't you think of that?"
"Neither of us did," said Bert. There was no need to question his mother's reasoning. Hadn't he seen the restless stream passing and repassing the store day after day? Only a few months ago Sam, spouting second-hand opinions he had formed from a book, had seemed to him to be an oracle. That was past.
"You'll have to wait until after Christmas for people to get interested in your business again, Bert."
"Next month?" He was on the point of saying that next month would be too late, but checked himself and went off to school. That day he flunked in every subject.
Two days before Christmas Bill Harrison came to the store, bought a plate of ice cream, and ate it as though he had something on his mind. "I got a letter to-day from Tom Woods," he said at length. "He asked me to find out how you're making it. I'm going to write an answer to-night."
That the Butterfly Man had sent Bill on this errand meant that Bill knew the facts. Bert spread his hands in a sweep that took in the whole place. "You're the first customer in two hours," he said.
Bill pushed his plate across the counter. "Another," he said. With the refilled dish before him, he toyed with his spoon. "Sam certainly ran you up a fine alley, didn't he?"
"Sam's losing his money, too," said Bert.
Bill looked at him shrewdly. "As much as you?"
"N . . . no. He's been drawing out two dollars to my one."
"Why?"
"Well, it was his idea. . . ."
"He's certainly been getting paid pretty liberally for a burn idea," Bill drawled, and finished his cream. "Just what shall I tell Tom Woods?"
Bert took the dish and began to wash it. Bill leaned across the counter.
"If you're going to tell him anything, Bert, tell him the truth."
"I've always told Tom Woods the truth," Bert said in a low voice. "Tell him it's worse than he thought it would be."
The admission seemed to break down in him the last barrier of pretense and false hope. The end was in sight. He knew it. Yet it was not in him to surrender until the ball had been taken from him on downs.
Every dollar he had in the bank would probably be swept away in the crash. As the daring adventurer, facing death, makes his final gesture of disdain, Bert now had his wild moment of bravado, his defiance of Fate. Even though next Christmas might find him without a penny, this Christmas he could be gloriously lavish. It did not occur to him that, facing a debt he could not meet in full, he was bound by a moral obligation to hold fast to every dollar of his funds. To spend now was, in effect, to take money that rightfully belonged to his creditors. But what he did not know did not worry him.
He drew $20 from the bank and went shopping along Washington Avenue. Eight dollars secured him a box of good cigars for his father. The other $12 bought a handbag for his mother. He carried the gifts home under his coat and secreted them in his bedroom.
Christmas morning he brought them downstairs. His father, appraising the cigars, opened his eyes wide in surprise. Bert felt no elation, but what—a difference it would have made had that look been testimonial to secure success instead of to a dying gasp!
"Bert," his mother whispered, holding the bag. "it's beautiful, but you shouldn't have spent so much money."
"What's the difference," he said; "I wanted you to have it."
Something in the words told her the whole story.
His own gifts scarcely moved him. He brightened at dinner, and ate his share of the good things, only to fall silent after the meal. He tried to read, but the book held no interest. He went out for a walk, found himself heading toward the store, and abruptly returned to the house. There was a new calendar in the hall showing the January page. The date, 18th, seemed to stare at him. He went into the living room, and sat at a window, and looked out at the street. January 18!
Mr. Quinby, studying him from the dining room, suddenly stood up and walked toward his chair.
"Bert, haven't you had enough yet of this confounded foolishness?"
Had the question been put in any other form, the boy would have melted. But he read the words as holding accusation instead of sympathy and they rasped along an old wound. His spine stiffened.
"You haven't heard me complain," he said.
"Oh!" The man drew back, baffled, helpless, thwarted. His expression said plainly, "I can't understand you," but Bert was not looking at his face. The boy himself was conscious, the next moment, that his reply had been foolish and headstrong. The right word then would have saved them both. Neither seemed able to say it.
The day after Christmas. The Shoppers' Service reopened. The Christmas school vacation meant no classes, and at nine o'clock Bert came down to Washington Avenue. Sam was in the rear of the store cleaning one of the burners of the gas stove. A newspaper lay on the counter opened at the help wanted page. Two of the ads, calling for the services of an experienced clerk, had been checked in lead pencil. Bert was standing with the newspaper in his hand when Sam emerged from the kitchen.
"Running away?" the boy demanded bitterly.
Sam took the question calmly. "You know where we stand."
"I'm going to stick it out to the finish."
"That's all you can do," Sam observed practically.
"There's Clud's note to meet."
"Oh, I suppose I'll be around until then; jobs don't grow on bushes." The clerk through force of habit, began to dust the counter even though he knew there was little likelihood of any one coming in and demanding attention. "There's more than Clud to think of. You've forgotten something."
"Forgotten what?"
"The lease on this store. We hired it for a year. Even if we close up the rent has to be paid every month until the lease runs out."
The newspaper dropped from Bert's hands. His mind made a half-blind but wholly accurate calculation. After January the lease would have six months to run, and at $22.50 a month that meant $135. Added to the $175 due on Old Man Clud's note the firm would face an indebtedness of $310.
"How are we going to pay it?" Bert asked with an effort.
Instead of answering Sam took a penknife from his pocket and cut the two ads from the newspaper. Later Bert saw him writing letters at one of the tables.
Early January ushered in mid-year examinations. The goodly promise with which Bert had started the term had not been fulfilled. Business worries had played havoc with his lessons; and the examination papers wrought destruction to what was left of his peace of mind. When the ordeal was over, he hoped for the best but feared the worst.
Sam's days were now given over to an intensive search for another job. Right and left the props were being kicked out from under the business. Customers were beginning to give up the Service, and Sam made no attempt to fill their places. And so January ran on toward the fatal eighteenth.
The sixteenth fell on a Saturday. The cold wave had broken, a south wind had brought a warm rain, and the hard snow that had lain in the streets piled high near the curb ran in dirt-colored torrents toward corner catch basins. It was the last Saturday. The Shoppers' Service would be in existence, and Bert lay late in bed watching the rain blow in gusts across the windowpanes. His father, too, seemed in no hurry to be off that morning, and was still at home when the postman's whistle blew at the door. The whistle aroused the boy and he began to dress.
"Bert!" His father's voice came up sharply from the lower hall.
"Yes, sir."
"Get down here at once."
The summons admitted of no delay. Bert drew on a bath robe and descended the stairs. Mr. Quinby, a letter in his hand, was pacing the dining room with wrathful steps.
"I have a notice here from your school," he said grimly.
Bert gulped.
"You failed in four examination subjects. Is there to be no limit to the trouble you cause me? Have you no sense of responsibility? Other fellows, at your age, are reporting at seven o'clock each morning to a factory and putting in a day of hard work. I give you four years of high school, and you throw it away. I've submitted to your whims and fancies long enough. This is the end. You're going to quit this so-called business of yours and you're going to quit it at once. I give you five days to wind up your affairs with Sam Sickles and get out. After that you'll either do your school work or you'll leave school and do real work. I won't put up with having you waste your time and my money. That's final."
To Bert it was better than final—it was salvation. Now. The Shoppers' Service could close its doors without an open confession of failure. Now he could quit and still save his face. The news was so good that later, as he dressed, he began to whistle and abruptly choked off the melody. He had a fear that it would sound distinctly out of place to his father.
The jeweler's big clock stood at eleven as he came sloshing through Washington Avenue in the rain. The store was locked. That was surprising. He opened the door and passed inside. A note lay open on the counter: Bert: I've been offered a job in the city and I'm taking it. There's no use in hanging around until Monday. I'll see you later.
Bert sank into a chair. The note, to his mind, could mean only one thing. Sam had already departed from Springham and had left him to assume the firm's debts;
How long he sat there sunk in gloom he did not know. The door opened. He heard a cough, a sound as of a strangling breath, and then another cough. He swung around.
"My friend," Old Man Clud wheezed, "I envy you your excellent health. A little hot coffee, if I may trouble you. These damp days chill me to the marrow."
Bert, in silence, prepared the drink.
"Excellent," said the lender of money, and smacked his lips. "Springham should be delighted to support an establishment that provides such truly splendid coffee. A gift for the gods, I assure you. And might I ask how your enterprise has been coming on?"
Bert was wiser than he had been at Thanksgiving. "It hasn't been coming on," he said bluntly, "and you know it."
Old Man Clud peered at him with sharp eyes. "Softly! Softly! I have regarded you highly as a young man who knew his place and wagged a civil tongue. And if I have kept my own tabulations, is that to my discredit? Consider! Some of my money is invested in this business. Is it not natural for me to have some curiosity as to how I was to be paid? And that brings us to a matter that will soon be pressing for attention. Monday the note I hold falls due. May I inquire if you are prepared to meet it?"
"Not . . . not in full," Bert found himself saying. The voice did not seem to be his.
Old Man Clud showed neither surprise nor consternation. "The fortunes of business, my friend. Man cannot always order things as he would have them. And we, who lend money, must take that fact into consideration. Where there is a willingness to pay, there must be a willingness, on our part, to give the debtor needed time. We might be compared to doctors: the doctor ministers to the sick body, we minister to a sick business. Is it not a just comparison? Come, come; there is nothing to worry about. You will find me easy to deal with. How much, might I ask, do you feel that you can pay me on Monday?"
"About $100."
"That would leave a $75 balance. A trifle. Another little note that nobody knows about but you and me, and the thing is done."
"For how much?"
"The note? A fair question, but bear with me a moment. When first you came we agreed upon a slight bonus. It was necessary, because your outlook was uncertain. The fact that you cannot pay as you agreed to pay makes the second note even more uncertain. It raises a question of your ability. . . ."
"How much?" Bert cut in.
"There, there!" the man wheezed soothingly. "I do not mean to criticize you. I have always spoken of you favorably. But business is business and. . . ."
"Mr. Clud, what note must I sign?"
The man leaned across the table. "I must insist upon a note for $125."
The thing was robbery—extortion. Bert sprang to his feet. "I won't sign it."
The man spread his hands in a smooth gesture of benevolence. "Then I must ask you to pay me in full."
"I can't. I've told you that. I'll give you $100, and you can auction off the goods here for the balance."
"My friend, the goods here do not interest me in the least. At auction they would not bring so much as a pocketful of silver coins. Believe me, I have had experience in such things and I know."
"Then all you get is $100. I haven't the money and you can't get it. That's all."
Old Man Clud stood up, and not an ounce of fat on his pale, hairless face gave any hint that he was disturbed. "Oh, but that is not all. You misjudge my astuteness. Did it never occur to you that I would not lend my money to one of your age unless I knew of a certainty that there was a means by which I could get it back? Your father happens to be one of Springham's leading merchants. He has a reputation to sustain and protect. Is it not possible that he would rather pay the note, were it called to his attention, than to have his son known through the town as one who had defaulted on a business promise involving credit?"
Bert, of a sudden, went cold.
"If you are of a mind to be reasonable, you will find it wise to continue to do business with me. Do not act rashly. Take time to think. Either you pay me in full, or else pay me $100 cash and give me your note for $125 . . . or I go to your father. See, I hold the door open for you to save yourself from an embarrassing position. And now, my friend, I will bid you good day. I will be in on the eighteenth for your answer."
He was gone, and Bert stood there staring straight ahead. The threat to tell his father had left him with a still and icy calm more dangerous than anger. Sam had run away and left him to face all this alone! His lips twitched. Absently he carried the cup and saucer behind the counter and began to wash them. And then the door opened and Sam came in, carrying a traveling bag.
A cry broke from Bert. "You haven't gone! I thought you had left me to buck everything."
"Well, I will be gone soon," Sam said hurriedly. "There's ten dollars coming to me for this week. That's what I came in to get. I'm going away on the one o'clock train."
"Ten dollars! We need every dollar to square things."
"Ten dollars! You heard me. I've worked this week, and I've earned it."
"But how about the lease? We've got to go on paying $22.50 a month for six more months."
"They won't collect it from me," Sam said, with conviction. "Springham won't see me again after one o'clock. I think I've lost enough fooling around here since August."
"Are you leaving me to pay it all?" The cup was in Bert's hand and he was drying it without being conscious of the act.
"I'm not asking you to pay anything, am I? All I know is that this business has got all it's going to get out of me."
"How about Old Man Clud's note?" Bert de manded desperately. "He was in here a little while ago. He says he'll go to my father. You've got to pay half of that now. It comes due Monday. This is a partnership."
A look of sly craft came down like a veil over Sam's features. "Partnership? Yes; in some things. But not on that note."
"Why not?"
"Because that's not a partnership note. You signed it alone. That makes it a personal note. I have nothing to do with it. Just the same I'll do something for you. I didn't think you'd give me that ten dollars; I came in on a chance. Keep the ten dollars and put it toward the note money. That's as far as I'll go."
He swung the handbag out of the way of his knees and turned to go. The ice in Bert was beginning to change to the rage of one who finds himself miserably tricked, deftly hoodwinked, shamelessly swindled.
"You had that in your mind all the time," he said thickly.
"I didn't. I ran across that in the book the other night in the chapter on partnership agreements. You ought to read up more about business."
"But you know it was understood that we were to pay that note!"
"Show it to me in writing. Youcan't. In business nothing counts but written agreements unless you have witnesses to a verbal contract."
"You mean . . ." Bert found the words choking in his throat. "You mean you're going to play the skunk and skin out of this?"
"What a sucker I'd be," Sam said in scorn, "to hand over money when I don't have to. You want to wake up. It isn't my fault you left me out of that note, but I'd be a fool not to take advantage of it. Well, I've got to hustle along or I'll miss my train."
Something violent broke loose in Bert at the cold-blooded treachery. The cup was still in his hand. Without a clear realization of what he did, without a thought as to consequences, he hurled it at the head going through the doorway.
The cup found its mark. Sam's hat flew upward, and the bag dropped from his hand. His knees sagged, his step stumbled. A moment he stood swaying; then he sprawled forward and lay on his face out in Washington Avenue in the rain.