“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. Locky, 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 thing. 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 multimillionaires 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 any more.”
“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 Perm 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-à-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 établissement. 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.