"I don't know what the hell you are talking about!" exclaimed the Senator, and his look at Louis had turned murderous.
"Well, I do," said Howard, smiling. "For instance, I was in Scranton recently, visiting friends, and I discovered that they were close friends of a certain Mrs. Edna Beamish, and—you know how people are, Senator—they mentioned that you were, yourself, a very close, a very dear, a very intimate friend of Edna's. Very intimate, indeed."
The Senator had turned a curious color. He glanced quickly at his son, who was listening alertly. "What of it?" asked Kenton Campion. "I knew her husband well."
Then Howard, watching him closely for signs of guilt and fear, said, "You and she also know Dr. Claude Brinkerman, don't you?" He had no proof of the involvement of Edna Beamish with the doctor, but he struck this blow deliberately, hoping.
The Senator's face had become the color and texture of wet lard. But he was not a politician for nothing. He said, "I know Claude Brinkerman. What of it?"
Howard shrugged. "I, too, know Brinkerman and all about him. News gets out. To support his wife in the manner to which she was never accustomed, he turned to performing abortions. Now, I have it on excellent authority that Mrs. Beamish had occasion to visit Brinkerman, and I also have it on authority that you two are very close to each other—in Washington—and people do talk, as I've reminded you before. I also have it on good authority that Mrs. Beamish recently had an abortion, and so there is the whole story."
The Senator said, and they saw the engorged arteries pulsing in his thick throat, "Ferrier aborted her in his office, and we have the proof and the affidavits."
Howard shook his head kindly. "No, you don't have any such proof, Senator. But we do have proof that Edna was your little friend, and little friends often get into difficulties, and so they have recourse to the Brinkermans. Er, do you wish me to proceed before your son?"
Francis had been listening closely, white with horror. He turned to his father and said, "Edna? Edna? That was Edna I saw in your house a year ago in Washington, Father, when I arrived unexpectedly! She was in your bedroom, Father." Francis' mouth twisted with pain and disgust. "Edna left very soon after my arrival, rather disheveled. But I knew all about you, Father, and it did not surprise me. I've known about your little friends since I was sixteen. I never knew the names of the others, but I heard you call her by her name that morning, very early, urging her to get out as fast as possible."
Howard smiled with glee at Louis Hedler, who had been having somewhat of a bad time for some minutes, and Louis smiled back.
"Filthy, mean, dirty little spy," said the Senator, with hatred bleak and open on his face as he looked at his son.
"Yes, I was. And I am glad, too. For I learned a great deal about you, Father. Enough to make me want to die very often."
"I wish you had, I wish you had," said the Senator. He turned to the others. "I think we should sit down and have a quiet talk, gentlemen."
"I think so, too," said Howard with alacrity. "After all, there is a lady involved, Mrs. Edna Beamish, or Mrs. Ernest Beamish, and she has been party to a crime, and she has also perjured herself freely in making out an affidavit against Jon. Oh, news does get around, and people do peek and read!" Howard smiled affably at the grim Senator. "Now, if and when little Edna is arrested, and knowing the nature of ladies, especially ladies like little Edna, I doubt if she will suffer in silence. But you know Edna best, don't you, Senator?" He was teeming with elation.
Again the Senator looked at his son, and the loathing he had concealed for years under a paternal amiability was stark on his large face. "Get out," he said.
"No," said Francis. "I stay. And if you take these gentlemen to your room and lock me out, they will tell me everything afterward. Won't you, gentlemen?"
"Indeed yes," said Howard. "I must do everything to protect my client, Jon Ferrier. Besides, it will all be in the news- papers shortly, the national newspapers—after all, Francis, your father is a very important man—and you can read it for yourself."
"Newspapers," said the Senator and sat down heavily. "Are you threatening me, Best?"
"I certainly am," said Howard. "Don't the newspapers love a juicy little romantic story! Sweet little Edna and Senator Kenton Campion—and an abortionist. Tut, tut. Americans are still very narrow-minded, still, Senator, as you doubtlessly know." He sat down and faced the Senator and gleamed happily upon him.
"Let's be finished with lies and start with the truth," said the Senator. "Louis, you are responsible for this. You betrayed a trust, a trust put in you by your own medical societies, not to mention betrayal of private matters to this shyster."
"In a few minutes," said Howard without rancor, "you will be glad that someone put trust in me, and very grateful. Indeed, let us start with the truth. Senator, I have here, in my briefcase, numerous documents. I don't think you will enjoy reading them, but you will find them interesting."
"I thought you might like to know, Kent," said Louis, who had regained his confidence, "that a warrant will be issued for Claude Brinkerman this morning. Men like Brinkerman don't keep their mouths closed. I think he may talk when the facts are presented to him, and then decide to throw himself on the mercy of the court. I've heard he was a close friend of yours, Kent, and not just a casual acquaintance. That is why he induced two young and frightened girls to perjure themselves and accuse Jon Ferrier of performing criminal operations on them. But read for yourself."
It was already hot even in this immense "second drawing room," as Beatrice Offerton called it, and the white and black marble floor glittered in the morning sun, which poured through the windows in cataracts of light. Edges of radiance surrounded the little statuettes which stood on their soaring pedestals of white and black marble, and the same radiance glowed through rosy alabaster groups on tables and consoles. It brightened the velvet colors of sofa and gilt chair and enlivened the shadowy hues in the Aubusson rugs, and turned the fretted metallic edges of marble tables into vivid gold. The light was so intense everywhere, glancing and sparkling and blazing, that it was hurtful to the eye, and there was no escape from it on looking through the windows at the smoldering mountains.
Senator Campion took the papers extended to him by Howard who, with Louis, was perched on a settee of gilt and pink silk, but the Senator looked fixedly at the younger man. The ripe color of his rich lips had turned purplish at the mention of Claude Brinkerman's name again; his blue eyes had narrowed, so that the color was hardly visible; his jowls quivered for an instant, and a lock of his thick chestnut hair fell over his sweating forehead. Then he began to read, after putting his pince-nez on his large well-formed nose.
He read with the suspicious and scrupulous care of the politician, alert to verbal traps and cunningly placed phrases, and sometimes he went back to reread a section of a previous page. He was poised and controlled by nature, and he had learned to be more so since he had become a politician. The three men watched him, his son Francis standing near a window, but except for his color and the sweat on his face he showed no emotion. Somewhere a big clock was ticking, ticking, and a gardener had begun to cut the grass outside, and a fountain splashed, and the cicadas raised their raucous song against the burnished sky.
Then the Senator carefully took off his glasses, let them spring back on the chain, which was fastened to his buttonhole, and laid the papers on a nearby ormulu table. He folded his hands on his flowered waistcoat. He looked at Howard Best. "What has this to do with me?"
Howard was, for a moment, flabbergasted. Then he smiled. "Everything, Senator. Everything. You surely have not missed Martin Eaton's remarks about you! That alone is very —incriminating. You surely understand we know about little Edna, and the abortion you procured for her at the hands of Dr. Brinkerman. It makes a nice story that you induced Brinkerman to seek out two of his more vulnerable patients to perjure themselves against Jon Ferrier. Then, of course, you and Jonas Witherby were overheard browbeating Louis here, by several of the st
aff. Oh, there's a lot that has to do with you, Senator! And that is not all. We have much more, which we are keeping for the final event. It would be very silly of us, wouldn't it, for us to tell you what they are?"
Again the Senator's eyes narrowed reflectively on Howard, and Howard knew that he was conjecturing if the lawyer were lying or not. Then Francis spoke. "There is what I know, also, of what I heard my father saying to his col- leagues in his house, when he thought I was asleep, absent for a time, or not in the city. I have already told Jon Ferrier some of it. It would make appalling reading to the American public, and I am ready to give it to them."
The Senator slowly turned his big chestnut head and looked at his son. There was no fear on his face, not even now, but his large nostrils flared and a most malignant expression passed over his face like the glare of an edge of a knife.
Francis said with sad bitterness, "I asked Jon, only a few months ago, if I should tell what I had heard and what I knew, and he said if it were his father, he would not do it. You owe that to Jon, Father. But now I am ready to tell everything to any newspaper, with names and dates—that you are in an international conspiracy involving munitions, and future wars, for profit and power."
Louis Hedler sucked in his breath, and Howard stared at the Senator with repulsion, but the Senator looked only at his son.
"You are a liar," said the Senator with loud, hard precision.
"The invariable reply of a liar to the truth," said Francis, and he turned away and again stared through the window.
The Senator said to Louis Hedler after a minute, "Then, you did indeed betray all that was confidential to this shyster?"
"Kent," said Louis, "you and I are of an age. I am a rich man, as you know. I am economically invulnerable. You cannot hurt me. Complain of me to the State Medical Board? Do you think I care any longer? Compared to what I have saved Jon Ferrier from, my retirement, forced or voluntary, is nothing."
"I thought you detested him," said the Senator.
Louis said, "I detested many of his personal characteristics and still do. But I know him for a puritanically righteous man, for all his deserved reputation with the ladies in this town. He is a good man, the best of physicians, an expert surgeon. He has done so much for Hambledon anonymously that if the people knew, they would rise up and call him blessed." He paused. "Just as they will rise up and call you an entirely different name when they know the facts we have about you."
The Senator's mouth twitched, but it was not with a smile. He was a redoubtable fighter. "I know he is hated here. I know I am regarded with, shall we say, admiration, and I am respected. I can fight this thing down, drive Ferrier out of town still, and come up triumphant. Do you doubt it?"
"You've forgotten what I know, Father," said Francis from the window.
The Senator laughed out loud. "You! A creature who tried to hang himself only last June! A nincompoop, a defected clerical student! A penniless whimperer! The newspapers wouldn't dare publish what you'd tell them."
"Now, that is interesting," said Louis Hedler. "You leave us no recourse, I, Howard and Francis, but to go to the Governor with this evidence we have shown you, and the more important evidence we have not shown you. I will send a telegram at once to the State Medical Board to delay sending members here until I have seen the Governor."
"I think," said Howard, "that the newspapers will be interested in what Louis and I and Francis, together, have to say, and the Governor's subsequent remarks. I have heard he is not very happy about you any longer, Senator, and you have powerful enemies in Washington. There are ambitious young State Senators with rich and influential families and friends who are itching to replace you, and I am sure that the State Legislature, which appointed you, would listen to them—after the Governor informed them of what we have against you, your lies, your suborning of perjury, your connection with a notorious abortionist, and much more."
The Senator's face became violent, not in any contortion of feature but more in contour of his cheeks and the swelling at his temples.
"We came to you," said Louis, "not for your sake, not to spare you, not to make or beg a bargain. We came for the sake of Jon Ferrier, and his mother, Marjorie, and the memory of Martin Eaton, and even for the sake of those two poor girls induced to put themselves in jeopardy to satisfy your hatred and malice. Perhaps, even, for Mrs. Edna Beamish, who will certainly be prosecuted for perjury, at the very least, and I understand that she is not only a rich lady in her own right, and able to procure good lawyers, but is a lady of spirit. When deserted by you, she will think of herself, and she will be indignant. There are many we'd like to spare, and above them all, Jon Ferrier, who has suffered too much as it is. We hope to persuade him not to prosecute his enemies, among them yourself. We can only do that with your cooperation, and I beg you to give it to save a scandal which will rock the whole Commonwealth."
"We are even willing to let you return to Washington in peace," said Howard, "though it goes against our patriotism. We are willing because of Jon."
"I never knew he had such friends," said the Senator with enormous contempt.
"It is unfortunate that you did not know," said Louis Hedler. "Had you known, you might not have been so sure and so rash."
The Senator sat in silence, twiddling his thumbs. He had never been thwarted nor opposed before. He kept swallowing, as if something vile repeatedly rose in his throat.
"You interest me," he said. "In the improbable event that I should submit to these falsehoods, this blackmail, how do you propose to handle the situation? I suppose Ferrier has already seen these—concocted papers?"
"Not all," said Louis, and wondered how much longer he would have to pretend to even more dreadful knowledge than contained in the documents. "But enough so that last night I was afraid he might come up here and murder you. But he was spent, and he had given us his word that he would do nothing until I gave him permission, or the matter was concluded. Otherwise," and Louis smiled, "Jon might really have committed a murder last night. You know how savage he can be and what a temper he has."
"And you think you can control such a madman?"
"I think I can," said Louis, and wished it were true. "He has no evidence against anyone except what we hold. He is sensible enough to know that he cannot make accusations without evidence, or at least I will impress that on him."
"And the evidence?"
"It will go to a very safe place, copies to me, copies to Howard, to be destroyed in the event of our deaths, or to be opened—if necessary. Jon will have no proof."
The Senator reflected. He looked from one face to the other carefully and they could not tell what he was thinking.
"You have forgotten those three women, Edna and the two girls. Their last true affidavits are a matter of public record?"
"No. Louise Wertner's and Mary Snowden's were made before me, at my behest," said Howard. "If we can settle this thing like reasonable gentlemen, if we can agree—then you, Senator, need only inform Mrs. Beamish that she must withdraw the complaint, which is the only one of public record and in the sheriff's hands. I wish I had known," said Howard with an affectionate smile, "and I would have dissuaded Mrs. Beamish from the very beginning with the information I have against her."
"Then, on whose public complaint to the sheriff will Brinkerman be arrested?"
"On Mrs. Beamish's. She is responsible, not I. But then she was following orders, was she not? As for the girls' affidavits, they were given to Louis, both sets, I may remark, the ones they falsely made—under orders—and the second true ones, admitting perjury."
Again the Senator reflected, and he sucked his purplish lips in and out and began to tap the table with his pince-nez.
"You have only to call your good friend, the sheriff, who received his support from you, Senator, and ask him, in the kindest way possible, to squash Mrs. Beamish's complaint and to destroy the warrant he has for Jonathan's arrest."
"And Brinkerman—you say he will be arrested?"
r /> Louis looked at him. "He will be, unless Mrs. Beamish's complaint is withdrawn, unless you ask the sheriff to overlook—with a laugh, of course—her indiscreet perjury. I shudder," said Louis, his face changing, "to let such a man get away from the punishment he deserves. Yet, for Jon Ferrier's sake I will not let the sheriff read Martin Eaton's last and true affidavit. What Jon will say to that I do not know. But again, he will have no evidence. I promise you that. We did not even permit him to keep a copy of Martin's affidavit."
"You have not been entirely frank with me," said the Senator. "You threatened and bullied me, implied you had already moved against me and Brinkerman, for effect. Is that fair or just?"
Howard could not help it. He burst out laughing with genuine mirth and threw back his head. He choked, "Senator, that remark of yours, about 'fair and just' tickles me almost to death, it honestly does!"
"Now, Howard," said Louis.
Francis came from the window, his fine face tense and tremulous. "You actually intend not to expose this man as he should be exposed?"
"My dear boy," said Louis, "sometimes one has to keep silence to protect others, even if it goes against the grain, even though it leaves bile in one's mouth. Isn't Jon more important to you than your father's ruin?"
"No, he isn't," said the Senator. "This white-faced whelp has been trying for years to ruin me, from his own admission."
With the faintest and most distressful of sounds Francis turned and went quickly from the room and Louis and Howard watched him go with sorrow and sympathy. Then Louis said, "If that were true, he could have done it before, and not almost died of what he knew about you, Kent. I've known him from childhood, from babyhood. He adored you. What did you do to turn him against you, Kent, your only son?"
The Senator's chestnut brows drew over his eyes and his mouth twitched again. He made no reply.