VI
THE RETURNED HERO
It is said that no two persons see another in exactly the same light. Bethat as it may, it is extremely doubtful if Uncle Bill Griswold wouldhave immediately recognized in the debonair raconteur who held a circlebreathless in the Bartlesville Commercial Club the saffron-colored,wild-eyed dude whom he had fished off the slide rock with a pair of"galluses" attached to a stout pole.
The account of Sprudell's adventure had leaked out and even gotten intoprint, but it was not until some time after that his special croniessucceeded in getting the story from his own lips.
There was not a dry eye when he was done. That touch about thinking ofthem and the Yawning Jaws, and grappling hand to hand with The WhiteDeath--why, the man was a poet, no matter what his enemies said; and, asthough to prove it, Abe Cone sniffled so everybody looked at him.
"We're proud of you! But you musn't take such a chance again, old man."
A chorus echoed Y. Fred Smart's friendly protest. "'Tain't right totempt Providence."
But Sprudell laughed lightly, and they regarded him inadmiration--danger was the breath of life to some.
But this reckless, peril-courting side was only one side of themany-sided T. Victor Sprudell. From nine in the morning until four inthe afternoon, he was the man of business, occupied with facts andfigures and the ever-interesting problem of how to extract the maximumof labor for the minimum of wage. That "there is no sentiment inbusiness" is a doctrine he practised to the letter. He was hard,uncompromising, exact.
Rather than the gratifying cortege which he pictured in his dreams, ahansom cab or a motorcycle could quite easily have conveyed all thesorrowing employees of the Bartlesville Tool Works who voluntarily wouldhave followed its president to his grave.
But when Sprudell closed his office door, he locked this adamantine,quibbling, frankly penurious, tyrannical man of business inside, and thechameleon does not change its color with greater ease than Sprudell tookon another and distinct personality. On the instant he became the "goodfellow," his pink face and beaming eyes radiating affability,conviviality, an all-embracing fondness for mankind, also a susceptibleDon Juan keenly on the alert for adventure of a sentimental nature.
In appearance, too, he was a credit to the Bartlesville Commercial Club,when, with his pink face glowing above a glimpse of crimson neck scarf,dressed in pearl-gray spats, gray topcoat, gray business clothesindistinctly barred with black, and suede gloves of London smoke, hebounded up the clubhouse steps with the elasticity of well-preservedfifty, lightly swinging a slender stick. His jauntily-placed hat was atrifle, a mere suspicion, too small, and always he wore a dewyboutonniere of violets, while his thick, gray hair had a slight partbehind which it pleased him to think gave the touch of distinction andoriginality he coveted.
This was the lighter side of T. Victor Sprudell. The side of himselfwhich he took most seriously was his intellectual side. When he was thescholar, the scientist, the philosopher, he demanded and received thestrictest attention and consideration from his immediate coterie offriends. So long as he was merely _le bon diable_, the jovial clubman,it was safe to banter and even to contradict him; but when theconversation drifted into the higher realms of thought, it was tacitlyunderstood that the privileges of friendship were revoked. At suchmoments it was as though the oracle of Delphi spoke.
This ambition to shine as a man of learning was the natural outcome ofhis disproportionate vanity, his abnormal egotism, his craving forprominence and power. Sprudell was a man who had had meager youthfuladvantages, but through life he had observed the tremendous impressionwhich scholarly attainments made upon the superficially educated--whichthey made upon him.
So he set about acquiring knowledge.
He dabbled in the languages, and a few useful words and phrases stuck.He plunged into the sciences, and arose from the immersion dripping witha smattering of astronomy, chemistry, biology, archaeology, and what not.The occult was to him an open book, and he was wont temporarily toparalyze the small talk of social gatherings with dissertations upon theteachings of the ancients which he had swallowed at a gulp. Hecriticised the schools of modern painting in impressive art terms, whilehe himself dashed off half-column poems at a sitting for the _Courier_,in which he had acquired controlling stock.
In other words, by a certain amount of industry, T. Victor Sprudell hadbecome a walking encyclopaedia of misinformation with small danger ofbeing found out so long as he stayed in Bartlesville.
Certainly Abe Cone--born Cohen--who had made his "barrel" in ready-madeclothing, felt in no position to contradict him when he stated hisbelief in the theory of transmigration as expounded by Pythagoras, andexpressed the opinion that by chance the soul of Cleopatra might beoccupying the graceful body of the club cat. Abe was not acquainted withthe doctrine of Pythagoras, though he had heard somewhere that the ladywas a huzzy; so he discreetly kept his mouth closed and avoided the cat.Intellectually Sprudell's other associates were of Abe's caliber, so heshone among them, the one bright, particular star--too vain, toofundamentally deficient to know how little he really knew.
Nevertheless he was the most thoroughly detested, the most hated man inBartlesville. And those who hated feared him as they hated and fearedthe incendiary, the creeping thief, the midnight assassin; for he usedtheir methods to attain his ends, along with a despot's power.
No man or woman who pricked his vanity, who incurred his displeasure,was safe from his vengeance. No person who wounded his self-esteem wastoo obscure to escape his vindictive malice, and no means that he couldemploy, providing it was legally safe, was too unscrupulous, too petty,to use to punish the offender. Hounding somebody was his recreation, hisone extravagance. He exhumed the buried pasts of political candidateswho had crossed him; he rattled family skeletons in revenge for socialslights; he published musty prison records, and over night blastedreputations which had been years in the building. His enmity costsalaried men positions through pressure which sooner or later he alwaysfound the way to bring to bear, and even mere "day's jobs" were notbeneath his notice. Yet his triumphs cost him dear. Merry groups had away of dissolving at his coming. He read dislike in many a hostess'seye, and, save for the small coterie of inferior satellites, Sprudell inhis own club was as lonely as a leper. But so strong was this dominatingtrait that he preferred the sweetness of revenge to any tie offellowship or hope of popularity. The ivy of friendship did not grow forhim.
By a secret ballot, Sprudell in his own town could not have been electeddog-catcher, yet his money and his newspaper made him dangerous and apower.
When he regaled his fellow members with the dramatic story of hissufferings, he said nothing of Bruce Burt. Bruce Burt was dead, of thathe had not the faintest doubt. He intended to keep the promise he hadmade to hunt the Naudain fellow's relatives, but for the present he feltthat his frosted feet were paramount.