Reid Dawson of The Dawson’s The Man In Black

They sat squarely gazing into each other's eyes. Bat Marker had only one mood to express. It was a mood that suggested determination to fight to a finish, to fight with the last ounce of strength, the last gasp of breath. He was sitting at the desk, opposite his friend and employer, Leslie Standing, and his small grey eyes were shining coldly under his shaggy, black brows. His broad shoulders were squared aggressively.

There was far less display in the eyes of Leslie Standing. They were wide with a deep pre-occupation. But then Standing was of very different type. His pale face, his longish black hair, brushed straight back from an abnormally high forehead, suggested the face of a student, even a priest. Harker was something of the roused bull-dog, strong, rugged, furious; a product of earth's rough places.

"Give us that last bit again."

Bat's tone matched his attitude. It was abrupt, forceful, and he thrust out a hand pointing at the letter from which the other had been reading.

Standing's eyes lit with a shadow of a smile as he turned again to the letter.

"There's just one thing more. It's less pleasant, so I've kept it till the last. Hellbeam is in Quebec. So is his agent-the man Idepski. My informant tells me he saw the latter leaving the steam-packet office. It suggests things are on the move your way again. However, my man is keeping tab. I'll get warning through at the first sign of danger."

Standing looked up. His half smile had gone. There was doubt in his eyes, and the hand grasping the letter was not quite steady. But when he spoke his tone was a flat denial of the physical sign that Bat had been quick to observe.

"Charlie Nisson's as keen as a needle," Standing said. "His whisper's a sight more than another fellow's shout."

Bat regarded the letter. He watched the other lay it aside on a pile of papers. He was thinking, thinking hard. And his thought was mostly of the man whose shaking hand betrayed him. Suddenly an explosive movement brought his clenched fist down on the table with a thud.

"Hell!" he cried, in a fury of impatience. "What's the use? The danger sign's hoisted. I know it. You know it. Nisson knows it. Well? Say, Hellbeam's been in Quebec a score of times since-since-. That don't worry a thing. No. He's got big finance in the Skandinavia bunch in Quebec. We know all about that. It's Idepski. Idepski ain't visiting the packet office for his health. He ain't figgerin' on a joy trip up the Labrador coast. No. That's the signal, sure. Idepski at the packet office. Their darn mud-scow mostly runs here, to Sachigo, and there ain't a thing along the way to interest Idepski-but Sachigo. We'll be getting word from Charlie Nisson in some hurry."

"Yes, we'll get it in a hurry."

Standing nodded. He was transparently perturbed. Bat watched him closely. Then, in a moment, his mind was made up.

"See right here, Les," he cried, in a tone he vainly endeavoured to restrain. "I've figgered right along this thing would need to happen sometime. You can't beat a feller like Hellbeam all the time and leave him without a kick. It don't need me to tell you that. But I want to get a square eye on the whole darn game. Maybe you don't get all you did to that guy when you cleaned him out of ten million dollars on Wall Street seven years ago.

"Say, you were a mathematical professor at a Scottish University before you reckoned to buck the game on Wall Street, weren't you?" he went on, more moderately. He forced a grin into eyes that were scarcely accustomed. "One of those guys who mostly make two and two into four, and by no sort of imagination can cypher 'em into five. I know. You figgered out that Persian Oil gamble to suit yourself, and forgot to figger that Hellbeam was at the other end of it. No. The other feller don't cut any ice with you while you're playing around with figgers. It's only afterwards you find that figgers ain't the whole game, and wrostling ten million dollars out of one of the biggest railroad kings and bank presidents in America has something to it liable to hand you nightmare. Well, you got that nightmare. So did I. You've had it for most the whole of the last seven years. But it ain't a nightmare now. It's dead real, which is only a way of sayin' Hellbeam's set his dogs on a hot trail, and we're the poor darn gophers huntin' our holes right up here on the Labrador coast.

"Oh, yes. I know what you'd say. You've said it all before. Hellbeam hasn't a kick comin'. You were both operators on Wall Street. You were both playing the financial game as all the world knows it. You beat him on a straight financial fight. It was just a matter of the figgers which it's your job to play around with.

"Now I'm just going to say the thing that's in my mind," he went on, his tone changing again to something clumsily persuasive. "You can take it easy from me. You see, you picked me up when I was down and out. You passed me a hand when there wasn't a hope left me but a stretch of penitentiary. I fought that darn lumber-jack to a finish, which is mostly my way in things. And it was plumb bad luck that he went out by accident. Well, it don't matter. It was you who got me clear away when they'd got the penitentiary gates wide open waiting for me, and it's a thing I can't never forget. I'm out for you all the time, and I want you to know it when I'm telling you the things in my mind. Hellbeam's got a mighty big kick coming. It's the biggest kick any feller of his sort can have. He's the money power of Sweden. He's one of the big money powers of the States. He lives for money and the power it hands him. Well? This is how I figger. Just how you played him up I can't say. But it's his job to juggle around with figgers same as it's yours, and if you beat him out of ten million dollars you must have played a slicker hand than him. All of which says you must have got more to windward of the law than him-and he knows it. Why, it's easy. The feller who has the money power to hold the crown jewels of Sweden from falling into the hands of yahoo politicians out to grab the things they haven't the brains to come by honestly, is mostly powerful enough to buy up the justice he needs, or any other old thing. Hellbeam means to get his hands on you. He's going to get you across the darn American border. And when he's got you there he's going to send you down, by hook or crook, to the worst hell an American penitentiary can show you. It's seven years since you hurt him. But that ain't a circumstance. If it takes him seventy-seven he'll never quit your trail."

Bat paused, and, for a moment, turned from the wide black eyes he had held seemingly fascinated while he was talking. It almost seemed that the emotions stirring in his broad bosom were too overpowering for him, and he needed respite from their pressure. But he came again. He was bound to. It was his nature to drive to the end at whatever cost to himself.

"I'm handing you this stuff, Les, because I got to," he went on. "It ain't because I'm liking it. No, sir. And if you've the horse sense I reckon you have, you'll locate my object easy. Those words of Nisson's have told us plain we got to fight. We got to fight like hell. And the time's right now. Oh, yes, we're going to fight. You an' me, just the same as we've fought a heap of times before. There ain't a feller I know who's got more fight in him than you-when you feel that way. But-well, say, you just need a boost to make you feel like it. You ain't like me who wants to fight most all the time. No. Well-I'm going to hand you that boost."

"How?"

Standing's unruffled interrogation was in sharp contrast with the other's earnestness. There was a calm tolerance in it. The tolerance of a temperament given to philosophy rather than passion. Perhaps it was a mask. Perhaps it was real. Whatever it was, Bat's next words sent the hot fire of a man's soul leaping into his eyes.

"When your boy's born, what then?"

"Ah!"

Bat's fists clenched at the sound of the other's ejaculation. It was the nervous clenching at a sound that threatened danger. Swift as a shot he followed up his challenge.

"Your pore gal's down there in Quebec hopin' and prayin' to hand you that boy child you reckon Providence is going to send you. Well, when he gets along, and Hellbeam's around-and-"

Bat broke off. Standing had risen from his chair. He had moved swiftly, his lean figure propelled towards the window by long, nervous strides. His voice came back to the man at the table, while his eyes gazed down upon the waters of Farewell Cove, over the widespread roofs of the great groundwood mill, the building of which was the result of his seven years' sojourn on the Labrador coast.

"You've handed it me, Bat," he said, in a quick, nervous way. "I'll fight. I know. You guess I'm scared at Nisson's news. Maybe I am, I don't know. I'm not a man of iron guts. Maybe I never shall be. It's hell to me to feel a shadow dogging my every step. Yes, you're right. It's been a nightmare, and now-why, now it's real. But get your mind at rest. I'm going to fight Hellbeam all I know. And with the thought of Nancy, and the boy she's going to give me, I don't need a thing else. No."

"That's how I figgered."

Bat's delight softened his hard eyes for the moment, and his attitude relaxed as Standing went on.