The Lockwood Concern (17 page)

been going through the box, but Mr. Dunkelberger had done his work so skillfully that in all the four years George was at St. Bartholomew's the hidden money was never discovered. It could be said that George Lockwood made no close friendships at St. Bartholomew's, or, with equal truth, that he had made many. He changed friends as often as he changed roommates. Only in the last year were the boys allowed to choose roommates, and George, permitted by the rules to choose two roommates, chose only one and left the selection of the other up to the head prefect. The one he chose, and who accepted his invitation, was Sterling Downs. In the beginning George had not liked Sterling any more than Sterling liked him; but in their second year at St. Bartholomew's they had got along somewhat better; and in their third year George felt sorry for Sterling Downs, as did all the boys in the school. In that year Sterling's father committed suicide. The joint speculative account maintained by Harry Penn Downs and Abraham Lockwood had gone from the original $10,000 to as much as $600,000 in less than ten years, largely, but not entirely, through purchases and sales of stocks that Downs had studied. At unstated intervals Abraham Lockwood would suggest that they liquidate their holdings, and he would take his profits, reinvest them in other securities or real estate, and wait until Downs came to him again with a new proposition. Abraham Lockwood never refused to go in with Downs, but he did not always go in for the amount Downs asked; he demurred sometimes because he regarded the particular stock as too dangerously speculative, sometimes because his money was tied up in other ventures; but there was scarcely any doubt that Downs was a successful speculator. The figures $10,000 and $600,000 were basic; the larger figure did not nearly represent the sum that had been divided between the partners. In actuality they had each taken more than a million out of the stock market during their partnership, and $600,000 was the high point of the account as of the year 1889. The two men had made money together from the start, but they had been making larger amounts of money during the latter years, when relations between them were less cordial than ever before. Downs knew no reason for his partner's attitude, since he could not have divined that his friend Locky had been offended by Sterling Downs's rudeness to George Lockwood. He attributed the coolness - when he thought about it - to Lockwood's preoccupation with his other business enterprises, and so long as Lockwood continued to put up 60 percent of the cash for their speculations, Downs was willing to dispense with the amenities. Not that Lockwood was overtly rude; but their meetings latterly had no social character, did not occur so much at mealtimes. At one point, briefly, Downs contemplated a gesture toward improving social relations: his wife had never met Adelaide Lockwood, and his only meeting with her had been at Adelaide's wedding. But Martha Sterling Downs was not the most gracious hostess, and she would be at her least gracious while entertaining for an upstate woman who had her trouble with her Vs and w's and had probably never heard of the Philadelphia Assembly. Downs quickly dismissed the social idea, and went on meeting Lockwood at their offices in Philadelphia and Swedish Haven. At these meetings Lockwood usually had an accurate estimate of the condition of their joint account. "You've made thirty thousand, I've made twenty," he would say. "Let's take our profit now." He seldom was insistent when Downs would urge their staying in a stock a little while longer, but there were exceptions to this amenability and Lockwood could be stubborn. When that occurred, Downs would yield, and there was no sharp difference between the partners until the spring of 1890. They met in Downs's office, and Lockwood wasted no time. "Harry, let's sell our sugar stock," he said. "Why? It looks pretty good to me. We're going to clean up in that, Locky. That's one of the best things we've ever had." "Haven't I got any say in the matter?" "Of course you have. But in this case you're making a mistake. Do you know anything about Havemeyer?" "I don't know anything about Havemeyer. But I know about the Bank of America and those other banks failing, not to mention the life insurance company, also here in Philadelphia. I want to get out and stay out for a while. You can do what you please, but let me have my share now. It comes to a hundred and twenty thousand." "I can't," said Harry Penn Downs. "Why not?" "I haven't got it." "What's the matter, you haven't got it?" "We have no sugar stock at all. I lied to you. I didn't buy any. This was the one time you shouldn't have asked me." "It sounds like the one time I should have asked you." "No. I've always been honest before, Locky, and I've made money for both of us. What did you do with the money?" "Well, it's none of your damn business as long as I admit I'm a crook. But I'll tell you. I lost it playing poker." "You lost $150,000 playing poker?" "More than that." "Where? Who with?" "At the Union League, never mind who with, although I suppose you could find that out if you tried hard enough." "Yes, I suppose I could. Even at the Union League they don't have many games as big as that. I didn't know you belonged to the Union League. I thought you were a Philadelphia Club member." "I am in the Philadelphia Club, but I won't be much longer, I guess. Laddy, I was cleaned out. I have my house and my job here, and that's about all I have." "But a year ago you were worth well over a million." "Indeed I was, and winning at poker. But I've had a run of bad cards, and I did the usual things. I stayed in with hands that I should have dropped." "Why didn't you get them to play whist?" "These men are poker players, not whist players." "Do you mean to tell me that you've lost over a million dollars playing poker?" "I mean to tell you exactly that." "How could you do that? Well, you could, of course." "I lost over $400,000 in one night. Then I went to New York to play with some of the same men, and I lost almost the same amount." "Oh, those men! Why, you never had any right to be playing against them. They can keep playing till their luck changes." "I had as much right to be playing poker against them as I had to be outguessing them in the stock market. And don't forget, for a while I was a winner." "How long have you been playing for such high stakes?" "About three years." "You should have let me know." "I didn't think so. As long as I was making money for you." "Is this pretty well known in Philadelphia, that you've been losing all this money?" "I guess so." "Does your wife know?" "She does now. The point is, Locky, what are you going to do? You can have me arrested, of course." "I could, but that wouldn't get me my $120,000." "No, it wouldn't." "You're cleaned out, you say. But what about your house? I'll take your house." "Oh, no you won't. I've given that to my wife, long since." "My dear fellow, you'd be insulted if I gave your wife a house, but that's what you're suggesting I do." "If that's the way you want to look at it." "That's the only way, Harry. If it's so well known here that you've been losing so heavily, where would you be able to raise fifteen cents? Not in this town. These Quakers are going to be very silent when you try to borrow money." "They have been." "'Thee has been dishonest, Harry.' But why should I lose $120,000 because you've been paying the money to multi-millionaires in New York City? They weren't friends of yours, or partners. The men I have in mind are older than we are, very rich, but it's your old friend and partner that takes the loss. Why should I give Martha Sterling a house? She wouldn't remember me if she came in this office. No, you've got to find another loser. I didn't even have the fun of looking at a hand." "What if I still refuse?" "Harry, you know that my father killed two men." "Yes, I heard that. Are you going to kill me?" "No, hardly that. But I've lived all my life under that cloud. Could I get into the Philadelphia Club?" "No." "Of course not. And not for something I did. You're in the Philadelphia Club, and the Assembly, and I never could be. Although my father was acquitted. And here you sit, having stolen money from me, a lot of money. I'll give you a month to find $60,000. That's half. We were in on a speculation, so I'll take that much of a loss." "Well, I suppose you're being decent, Locky. As decent as I have any right to expect. But I won't ask Martha to give up the house, and I know damn well I can't raise $60,000." "Take a month. Your luck may change. Won't your multimillionaire friends take your I. O. U. ?" "No. The losers pay by cheque at the end of the evening. I can't write a cheque for $10,000 at this moment, and we start those games by buying $10,000 worth of chips." "Take me to one of those games. I might win." "I can't. They don't ask me to play anymore." "Well, then I guess we have nothing more to say to each other. A month from now I hope you'll have raised sixty thousand somehow. I do. You and I are through, but I hope you'll land on both feet again." "Thank you, Locky. Sorry about this." "Yes, it is too bad," said Abraham Lockwood rising. "Harry do you think I'm entitled to a truthful answer to one more question?" "Maybe. "You didn't lose all that money playing poker, did you?" Downs stroked his chin. "No." "You were also speculating in some things you didn't let me in on?" "Yes." "Were you doing that as a favor to me? Keeping me out because you didn't want me to lose money?" "How easy it would be for me to lie to you now. No, Locky, I wasn't protecting you. I often traded in stocks that I didn't think you were entitled to know about." "Why wasn't I? It was my understanding that I was to be in on everything that looked good." "Let's just say that I made a mental reservation." "From the very beginning?" "I suppose so. Go ahead and say it. I've been a crook all along-" "You saved me the trouble. Well, at last we do understand each other." "No, not quite. I never did understand you, Locky. I've never known just what you wanted. Still don't. Something besides money, and it isn't social position." "I'd tell you, but right now it doesn't seem like a very worthwhile ambition. In fact it seems very foolish. But I'm talking in riddles. Good day, Harry." "So long, Locky. Will you shake hands?" Downs got to his feet. "Harry, I can't. I wish you luck, but I can't shake your hand." "Good. I understand. It's a very dirty hand. Filthy dirty." "Good day, Harry." On his way to the early evening train Abraham Lockwood distinguished the name "H. P. Downs" in the midst of the newsboys' gibberish. He bought a newspaper and felt the shock of confirmation without surprise upon reading that Harry had placed a pistol to his ear while seated at his office desk. The newspaper could not entirely leave out references to his stock market operations, but obviously an effort was being made to show no connection with the recent bank and insurance company collapses. On the homeward train Abraham Lockwood was glad to be headed for Swedish Haven, away, away from Philadelphia. He thought he knew precisely the degree of his guilt in Harry Penn Downs's suicide; he had given his partner and friend the final push. But before the homeward journey was over Abraham Lockwood was once again involved in his Concern. One human life could not be charged up against the Concern, but the unknowing victim had known what he was doing, and he had jeopardized the Concern itself - stealing from it - and threatened harm of a sort to one of the beneficiaries, George Lockwood. The irony of George's subsequent invitation to Sterling Downs was not lost on Abraham Lockwood; having his son extend a kindness out of pity was very nearly laughable. But the irony interested Abraham Lockwood less than the fact that a Lockwood was now in the gracious position vis-a-vis a Sterling Penn Downs, and the other fact that a man had committed suicide as an indirect result of his interfering with the Concern. Somehow the Harry Penn Downs suicide and George Lockwood's invitation to Sterling Downs became, in Abraham Lockwood's mind, proof that the Concern had achieved the dignity of an establishment, the substance of an establishment. It was getting to be like one of those private banking firms that can maneuver a nation into war; or perhaps like a railway, a coal mine, a powder mill, in which human life must be counted among the production costs. Or - coming back to what the Concern really was - a man's suicide and a boy's gracious act belonged rightly in the general scheme of the building of a dynasty. During those weeks that followed Harry's suicide Abraham Lockwood often wished he knew someone in whom he could confide the secret of the Concern. He had already dismissed Adelaide as a possible confidante. He had a wild, short-lived impulse to confide in old Peter Hofman, who as a man of power would understand some aspects of the Concern but as an unimaginative, conventional individual could not be expected to see very far into a future that for him had no reality. Morris Homestead, a member of a dynasty, would understand some aspects of the Concern but the dynasty of which Morris was a member was already in being, and nothing so new as the Lockwood Concern would hold as much interest for the present head of a dynasty already in its third century. Morris Homestead's placid acceptance of his inherited and continuing place in Pennsylvania history was an attitude that Abraham Lockwood viewed with admiring envy, and Morris served better as an unconscious model than as a contemporary confidant. And so, for the time being, the secret of Abraham Lockwood's Concern remained intact, having survived some vague suspicions on the part of Harry Penn Downs. It was, of course, much too early to explain the Concern to George Bingham Lockwood. The boy might not take kindly to the notion that his regimen was being ordered with his grandsons' and not his own life the beneficiary. George, his father knew, was an obedient boy, but not a subservient one and not an unimaginative one. The younger son, Penrose, was already in the habit of obedience to his father, his mother, and his older brother, and Abraham Lockwood was already sure that Penrose would go through his entire life always obeying someone, therefore would not be a hazard to the Concern so long as the right kind of person gave him the right kind of guidance. Abraham Lockwood looked forward to the time when George, married and with children of his own, could be apprised of the existence of the Concern in such a way as to make him a willing convert to it. That time, however, was not now. (It was often remarked upon in Swedish Haven that Abraham Lockwood was a wonderful father to his sons.) In his preoccupation with the Concern and his growing