When the fight begins

Front matter

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CHAPTER ONE The Test of Love

URING the week of John Lang’s absence from the city, affairs for his attention had piled up. Clients had become aware of his unexpected return and had come crowding into his waiting room. However, at four o’clock that afternoon, he abruptly shut off conferences and ordered his secretary to turn away those who were still in line. He hastily dragged on his topcoat, took hat and stick and left his office suite by the private exit. He trotted down the stairs, avoiding chance meetings in the elevator.

Opposite the towering office building was the midurban park of the metropolis, and he headed straight across, treading along the broad, gravelled path, taking the most direct route to the county buildings. Out¬ wardly, he was quite himself—the dominant John Lang, the doughty defender in the State’s most notable criminal cases, a particularly well recognized figure in the city’s life. Inwardly, he was conscious that he was not at all his usual self; he was ashamed of the quest which he had undertaken on uncontrollable impulse. He was ashamed, too, because this quest involved sen¬ timent. He had never before allowed that emotion to divert him from serious affairs.

As he marched past them, men saluted him deferenl daily. Women turned to give him an admiring survey after he had passed on.

“He will be our next mayor,” was the gist of mascu¬ line comment by those on the inside of affairs as the situation was developing. “The office will be handed to him on a silver platter—like everything else that has come his way.”

The women’s estimate took account of personality, not politics. First of all, his bachelorhood at thirty-five presented a problem for strictly feminine con¬ sideration. There were detractors, of course. Some women did not approve his bold features, almost heavy; and they found his eyes disconcerting under the out-thrust bristle of brows which met above his nose. On the other hand, his defenders found his facial aspect in complete harmony with his rugged physical architecture.

All women were agreed on the interesting quality of one characteristic; it was revealed when Lang lifted his hat in respectful response to smiling greetings: a lock of white hair sprayed upward from the middle of his forehead, contrasting oddly with the rest of his shaggy mane of dead black.

Women insisted on perceiving in that white lock the memento of some buried sorrow. For men it had an entirely different meaning, especially for prosecuting attorneys against whom John Lang battled in his role as the State’s most astute, most aggressive counsel for the defense in criminal cases. He had the habit of twisting that white lock into a veritable horn just be¬ fore he arose to attack the tender spots in the flanks of circumstantial evidence.

As he swung along in the first shadows of the autumn’s late afternoon, he seemed to be exulting in his physical well-being and in the consciousness of fortune’s favor. His inner, secret humiliation was his own affair and he concealed it. He had stopped argu¬ ing with himself, however, and was going to the job, hateful as he found it. He did relish the nip of the frost in the air; he would have been glad if the snows of the north woods had swept far enough to the south to hide the sere raggedness of the park. He was freshly down from those woods, out of those snows where he had been satisfying his virile zest for musclewearying exertion.

He had intended to take at least two weeks for his annual hunting trip, but he had cut in half the vacation to which he had looked forward all the year. Now he was rasped by the wire edge of resentment though he did not know whether to blame himself or others.

He had impressed upon Reba Donworth that he would be away from the city for two weeks. To fortify his spirit in what he was now doing he tried to con¬ vince himself that she was in fault, provided gossip, and his own suspicions were well founded.

In the past he had been punctilious in his methods of meeting Reba. There had been none of the betray¬ ing, uncalculating, obvious fervor of a lover and none of his friends had construed his attentions as love making. He always apprised her by telephone of his intention to call at her home of an evening. His reserved delicacy in the matter of springing surprises squeezed all the spontaneity out of his affair with the girl, such as it was. Undoubtedly, if she were asked bluntly what were John Lang’s intentions, Reba would have been unable to tag them accurately.

As a lawyer, he had occasion to drop into the office of the clerk of courts where she was first assistant.

When he walked up the court house steps this after¬ noon he felt helplessly incapable of assuming the mask of an offhand caller attending to business. His con¬ science was working. Straightforwardness was a prin¬ ciple of action with him. His sense of shame told him he had come sneaking on her—a week ahead of the time he had set. He was demeaning himself, as if he had come to play a game of peek-a-boo, squawking at her childishly. He resented his actions and his state of mind; they were something new and foreign in the nature of John Lang, whose custom it was to go boldly and serenely straight at any objective.

Among the other apothegms which Lang, keen law¬ yer, had hammered out on the anvil of court experience was this: “Let the mouth speak the story; but let the eyes tell the truth.”

Lang wrathfully beat his cane against his leg as he walked down the corridor; whether to drive himself along to the job or to flog himself as a fool and a spy he did not bother to consider.

His chief thought was on what he might surprise in her eyes.

Reba rose from her desk when he called to her over the rail barrier. She came to him without haste or visible evidence of surprise, her hand outstretched. Avidly Lang sought in her eyes; they were clear pools of composure. Her tone was placidly noncommittal when she answered his first question.

“Why, no!” she told him. “You haven’t surprised me, John! I’ve been thinking the politicians wouldn’t allow you to stay two weeks at this time.”

His bristle of brows crawled down in a scowl. “I don’t intend to take the nomination; I’ve come back to tell them so.”

“Don’t try to make out that you’re not human, John!” She laughed at him, frankly, disconcertingly.

Walking across the park he had come to realize with chagrin how human he was—human in a cheap and childish way!

All at once, in his new temper, he found himself demanding something from her in the way of love demonstration although in the past he had never tried to evoke it. Nor had he given her any reason to think that he was seeking from her anything except the unsexed friendliness based on office association and casual calls on her at her home.

Naturally he did not expect that she would display an inclination to fall into his arms, there in a public office! But her eyes were too serene!

“May I walk home with you?” he blurted abruptly. His glance at the clock preceded the query.

“But it’s nearly an hour before the office closing time! ” she protested. “Come and see us, some evening soon! That will be better. Mother wants to know the latest about politics.”

He no longer was satisfied with this mere friendli¬ ness, so matter-of-fact, so casually imperturbable. He had come freshly from out of the forest. The woods, like the sea, develop in a man hunger for love of woman. In his case this new yearning for her was wire-edged by a growing fear. Devilish gossip had given her a lover.

He stared hard at her. In the past her straightfor¬ ward candor had been for him her chief charm. She was tall above the average, with the contours of hale and vigorous youth; her handclasp was almost mascu¬ line. All these qualities, with none of the tricks of mere femininity, had attracted him.

Gossip had now hinted at some sort of an attach¬ ment between her and young Trask—the nephew, namesake and heir of Serenus Skidmore Trask, baron of timberlands. Lang, attorney for the elder Trask, could not remember how many vulgar harpies he had bought off, settling cases to clear the little bounder on whom his bachelor uncle had enjoined idleness as part of a plan to “make a gentleman of him.”

“Skiddy” Trask—tolerated by Reba Donworth, with the blood of old General Donworth in her! Surely she must have inherited the caste and spirit of her father, even if she and the widow received nothing else! Lang vigorously shook his head, busy with his thoughts of negation.

“Do you mean you will not call?” questioned Reba, awaking him from his ponderings.

“No—no! Surely I’ll come! Grateful for the invi¬ tation!” He started away, fearing to trust himself further. But he turned hastily back to her.

He refused to call his new feeling jealousy, though he was conscious of something tearing wickedly at him within. He knew he was growing bitter. No longer did he admire her composure; it was now a perfectly damnable aggravation. He wanted to grasp the round, firm neck and beat his palm against her cheek and command her to come out with all the truth. He satisfied the animal impulse by reaching out with an abrupt motion, giving her cheek a sort of love pat.

She flushed and backed away from the rail, look¬ ing around in sudden trepidation, fearing lest his act had been observed by others in a public office.

In his mood he did not view her retreat as a proper precaution in that place; he was conscious of the same rancor which would have been developed if he had detected her in unmistakable aversion for his per¬ sonality. He did not solicit her pardon. His temper of the moment was too rudely vicious to permit polite¬ ness. He went out into the dusk; he was settled into the sullen determination to find out for himself how much of truth there was in gossip.

Lang threw his scruples to the wind. The conscious¬ ness of doing so for the sake of a woman—for what was called love—torched his temper still more. He made up his mind to place Reba under espionage—to do for himself the same kind of sneaking work which paid agents did in criminal cases—agents whom he excoriated in court. He knew Reba’s orbit well enough. At five-thirty each day she left the office and, rain or shine, walked briskly home by way of the boulevard and the park. No longer did John Lang march with head up and shoulders swinging. He stole stealthily by unfrequented ways.

He hastened to post himself in the park where he could observe Reba’s usual route from her office, con¬ cealing himself behind a boxed-in fountain.

The girl’s preoccupation helped his precautions when she appeared and after he had started to trail her. And the shadows were deep except where the park’s lights shone in the early twilight. A thickset hedge shielded the route he chose—a narrow path paralleling the avenue along which she was walking.

When he saw Trask waiting for her—Trask too much taken up with adoring contemplation to see aught else than the girl who was approaching—Lang made a quick detour and posted himself behind the other man. There was a spruce bough shelter for tender shrubbery and it served excellently. Trask was waiting in the radiance cast by a pole light.

The lawyer was able to look directly into Reba’s eyes, when she came close to Trask, and he recognized instantly what he saw in those eyes. For himself, what he had found previously in Reba’s gaze had been only the pellucid candor which pleased him. But he had never seen this veiled softness with which she was regarding young Trask.

It was confession, compliance, surrender. Mere physical surrender of herself, an embrace, a kiss, would not have stirred Lang so profoundly as that visual caress in the uplifted eyes. He knew what it meant in the case of a woman. He was not pausing to diagnose his emotions—to determine what was impulse of love and what was rage at being robbed of a prize which catered to his personal pride and fed his passion for possession. He did not pause to look longer.

“Just a minute!” He called harshly and he followed his words, striding close to them. He jabbed his cane past Trask’s face in mute command for that person to be off.

“Seeing you’re here, we may as well settle it,” blus¬ tered the young man, desperately courageous.

Lang, too, felt his own spurring emotion in the pres¬ ence of the female—the brutal urge of the ownership he was now at last claiming. He was clinging to that ownership. He declared it, disregarding the lack of her sanction of any such pact. “Do I need to remind you that this young lady and myself are engaged to be married? Away with you!”

“I won’t go!”

The girl put one hand against the cane when it came back as if Lang were poising it for a blow. With the other hand she waved dismissal to Trask, and he turned and went away obediently. It was complete and instant subservience to her wish and she was unable to keep her feminine satisfaction out of her expression when she turned to Lang.

Just then a woman passed with a fuzzy dog trotting obediently at the end of a leash. Lang pointed his cane in the direction of the retreating woman, dog and Trask. “Oh, it’s what they want in these days— ballots instead of babies—lap dogs in lieu of real, he men!”

“Don’t you want to leave it just as it is?” she pleaded. “I’m going to find it hard to explain to you. You’re the kind who won’t understand very easily.”

“I wouldn’t say a word if you had gone over to a real man. But when you drop me and take up with a chow pup, I must be in a bad way without knowing it. I demand information.”

“I may be the one who’s in a bad way,” she declared earnestly. “Perhaps you should seek and find the right woman to mate with the real man, as you like to call yourself.”

He caught her up on the note of bitterness which he detected. “Well, am I not the real man?”

“I suppose so, seeing you are so positive on that matter as well as on others where you claim to know it all.”

“Reba, what has come over you?”

“Call it rebellion against a real man, if you like,” she replied listlessly. “I don’t know. I’m tired try¬ ing to figure it out. Perhaps the times are making the women into something they ought not to be, as part of the general punishment the human race is getting. On the other hand, perhaps the ideal life for women is to drudge for the household boss, with a dole of pocket money which he counts down with a sigh or scowl.”

“You know I’m not that sort, Reba. Tell me-”

“John, I don’t want to tell you what you are. You wouldn’t believe it. As for myself, I have worked all my life. Now I want to play. Skiddy Trask knows how to play.”

“Do you think I’d make you work?”

“But you don’t know how to play!” She almost wailed her complaint. “One can’t learn how—one must just feel that way. It spoils it all to be obliged to argue about every hop, skip and giggle of life to prove it isn’t silly business. You look at me as if I had gone out of my senses. Maybe I have, but I’m only a girl who wants to play, after all the work. Skiddy Trask has nothing to do except play.”

Lang gritted his teeth. “I saw the look you gave him a few minutes ago.”

“I wasn’t conscious there was anything special in my look.” He opened his mouth—but he promptly closed it. Her unconsciousness of having made a revelation stopped all argument on the matter.

“I don’t understand the kind of looks you are giving me,” she said. “But I suppose it’s all because of my weak folly. You’re calling it by that name—and I’ll agree. So much for that! You don’t want a fool for a wife.” She was pleading wistfully. “Skiddy will be a fool along with me—hop, skip and dance and giggle.”

“Don’t try to make a fool of me any longer,” he commanded irefully. “You’re secretly a domineering sort. You want a man who will kowtow. You’ve probably been reading this sentiment slop on how to be lovers though married, and have picked a mushy, love-cracked fool who’ll attend to it as his regular business instead of going to an office every day and making something of himself.”

“Perhaps it’s that way,” she said resignedly. “But I do value your good opinion of me, John, as you have expressed it in the past. I don’t want you to think the fault is all mine. I don’t want anything to happen to you through me to spoil your good opinion of yourself.”

“What about this thing that’s happening?”

“My confession of my frivolous longings must have cured you in regard to me.”

“I’ll say it ought to. But-” he narrowed his

eyes and surveyed her, from the brown hair under her toque down over her shapeliness to the very toes of her shoes—“I am not cured. I’m not going to give you up.”

“I have something to say for myself on that point, John.”

“Well, let’s narrow my declaration for the present. I’ll not give you up to Skiddy Trask. If it were a case in which I would not be insulted by your choice-”

“There speaks your selfish vanity.”

“I won’t allow you to arraign my honest consider¬ ation for you, Reba,” he retorted with heat. “I won’t permit you to be soiled and debased by what that poisoned renegade calls love.”

“I’ll confess openly I want a gay life and travel and clothes and not much of anything except mere fun to think about,” she cried with a sort of desperate urgency. “You ought to despise me for admitting it. Please do. I want Skiddy Trask for a husband.”

“There’s something the matter with you. I’ll cure it,” he declared grimly.

“I am breaking our engagement, as you have called it, at this moment—though I must confess that I didn’t know there was an engagement.”

“The matter is not so easily disposed of, Reba. You listen to me! Before God, I swear you shall not marry Skiddy Trask. I won’t suffer hell’s torments thinking of you in his possession. I take my stand in regard to that one man. If you persist, it’s going to be bad—bad! Now, may I walk along with you?”

“I prefer to go alone.”

“Very well, Reba. I have other matters to attend to, anyway.” He lifted his hat. “This has been an unpleasant topic. Let’s forget it. I’ll not refer to it again.”

He spoke mildly and smiled. After he had started away he turned and smiled again, but she did not seem to be reassured by that smile.

Chapter Two

ANG left the park and strode on his way to the Talisman Club, seeking its exclu¬ siveness as his haven. His progress along the street at that juncture was torture for him. He tried to smile at those who greeted him, but he accomplished only a series of grimaces. He was thankful when the door of the club clicked shut behind him.

He snapped back into something like his normal self when venerable Judge Anderson struggled out of his deep chair in the lounge, both hands out in cordial welcome. “Heard you were back from the woods, boy! The campaign needs you.”

“I don’t intend to take the nomination, sir!”

Judge Anderson was unruffled. “Oh, yes, you will! You are solidly conservative, a director in two banks, and we don’t propose to have Demagogue MacMurray win out and have the spending of the money in that million-dollar condemnation of buildings for the new traffic avenue. If there isn’t confidence in the next mayor, may God help the city’s bonds—the banks won’t!”

“I hate the pawing, gripping hands! I won’t be like the knob on a post-office door!”

The judge’s wrinkled face was creased into a smile of mock compassion. He was hampered by no repres¬ sions in his dealings with John Lang. John had been the judge’s protege ever since the death of the young man’s father; Cyrus Lang and Anderson had been associate justices of the State’s supreme bench.

“John, old Doc Anson was psycho-analyzing you here in the club the other night, taking advantage of your trip to the woods, so you couldn’t eavesdrop. So I eavesdropped for you, as a loving mentor should. Doc says you’re as selfish as hell!”

Flame mounted in Lang’s face. His scowl was por¬ tentous.

“Oh, come along upstairs and dine with me, young¬ ster. Probably Anson was half right. It’s a good thing for you to have his expert opinion—and without a fee. You can take thought and correct your nature.” He pushed Lang along ahead.

“But this politics thing is driving me mad, Judge!”

“Then we’ll immediately get as far away from poli¬ tics as we can, my boy! In our talk at dinner, I mean!”

When they were seated privately in a corner of the club dining room Judge Anderson, still smiling, said, “We’ll let the politics rest with this one statement from me: you’re to be our next mayor. You have been drafted for the financial good of your city. You’re a fighter and can stand up against the grafters. Your persecution by the admiring public is already sig¬ nificant of your coming success. Well, then! To get to another and a pleasing topic! The mayor of this city ought to have a wife. That fact gives me a good excuse to ask what I’ve wanted to ask before¬ times. Why don’t you get married, John?”

That was truly a leap to another extreme in the way of a topic! Lang was usually ready for the judge, who delighted in jumping his intimates by such bombshells in conversation. On this occasion the young man was tongue-tied.

“For instance, there’s Minna Kennedy, my ward!” pursued the other. “A half million goes with her,

John! I’m revealing a secret of my trust, to be sure, but this is a way to make her happy. She likes you!”

Lang was able to reply then; he was defending a principle which he had adopted. “You oblige me to say something, sir! I have promised myself most solemnly never to marry a woman who has money. I have been obliged to listen to too many dreadful stories in my law practice. So have you, Judge Ander¬ son! Twits, troubles, and jealousies! If I marry, it will be a girl who must depend wholly on my pocketbook.”

“Making sure of rule and domination, eh?”

He apologized when Lang flushed. “Oh, I don’t agree wholly with Anson about you, John. I’m joking rather roughly. I see your point—I have listened to the same kind of stories. I reckon parsons are the only real optimists in regard to matrimony. They are in on the gay launching. The lawyer later views the wreck. But are you so much of a pessimist you don’t intend to get married?”

Then Lang blurted an admission. He had halfmockingly threatened Reba to clinch matters by an announcement. Now, harried by his doubts, he wanted to put himself on record, at any rate.

“I’ll confess I’m very much interested in Reba Donworth—you know her, of course!”

“Why, John, I make errands for myself in her office just to have a peep at that fine young woman. Dis¬ tinguished ancestry! All noble qualities of self-reliance! Not a silly notion in her, is there?”

“I’m sure there’s not one!”

“When? Soon?”

“We haven’t decided definitely.” The afterthought which followed the admission rebuked Lang’s sense of delicacy. But he had been impelled to seek anxiously confirmation of his judgment from one in whom he trusted.

“In these safe days of rectitude—in public, at least, we cannot pledge in anything but this,” smiled the justice, raising his glass of water. “But here’s my earnest hope for all happiness, John!”

The young man returned his thanks composedly, showing no trace of love’s enthusiasm. Judge Ander¬ son surveyed this matter-of-fact placidity with an interest which was somewhat quizzical and he seemed about to comment in a jocose spirit but held his peace. Then his countenance softened into a reminiscent smile.

“I suppose there’s just as much love in the world as ever, John—unselfish love, uncalculating love. But when I look on the young folks these days I wonder, sometimes! Probably I’m not as good a judge of modern love as I am of equity law.

“I married very young, John. Borrowed money to take the honeymoon trip. Eliza did scold me for that! But I insisted to her we could have a honeymoon only once. I was a bit wrong—the honeymoon has lasted all these years. I would not be maundering along on the subject if I did not feel as if you’re now in a mood to understand what I’m talking about. A man does know when he’s really in love. It has come to you late—but it’s a great awakening, isn’t it? You haven’t been realizing there is any such wonderful thing in the world, till it comes!”

Lang was woefully aware that he was not follow¬ ing the topic with real clarity of understanding.

The old man’s eyes brimmed with tears, his voice trembled. “Sometimes it just bursts on a chap! But more often, I think, it springs from a true man’s innate desire to protect. All the race of women appeals to his chivalry. Then he singles out one. Not merely to possess—that isn’t love. To protect—that’s love. Of course you know what the feeling is! ”

Lang, puzzling over the matter, knew he had never been conscious of the presumption of desiring to pro¬ tect Reba, except to interfere in the case of Skiddy Trask. It did seem like presumption in her self-sufficient case.

“I know what I am talking about,” insisted the justice. “I’ve had a good many years to test out the thing in my own case.”

If Judge Anderson, to whom men ascribed all quali¬ ties of discernment and ability to value, did know, as he seemed to know, what he was talking about, what then was the matter with the love of John Lang for Reba Donworth? Lang gave quick, alarmed thought to the subject. Then he put it away from himself, declining to consider it seriously as a problem. He had said he loved Reba; when he said a thing he meant it. There was no room for argument at that stage. His natural dogmatism asserted itself in this affair.

“You are fortunate at last, John!” Judge Anderson rose as he spoke. “Many go through life and never wake up to know what love is! ”

The young man had an opportunity to ponder, fol¬ lowing his old friend down to the lounge, and he was more than ever disquieted. What was this quality in him which Doctor Anson claimed to be able to diag¬ nose? Was it selfishness which was keeping him from perception and participation where the finer qualities of human relationship were concerned? He was not complacently the satisfied lover at that time, and he knew it.

He saw Skiddy Trask in the lounge and fatuously hung the blame for his muddled ideas upon that insig¬ nificant thorn in his affairs. And he found his unrea¬ soning anger springing from doubts of which he was ashamed.

He swung abruptly from the judge and other mem¬ bers who formed a group. He went to his favorite rocker in a corner of the lounge; his isolation was always respected when he sat in that chair and slowly clapped palm upon a nested fist, deep in cogitation.

In another corner of the lounge, alone because nobody seemed to care for such companionship, sat young Trask, a member who did not tally in the Talis¬ man’s exclusiveness; he was merely tolerated.

Hoping that the environment and association with men of standing would cure certain developing ten¬ dencies in his heir, Uncle Serenus had turned the trick of Skiddy’s admission by donating a new wing which housed squash and tennis courts. Larry Devon, the Talisman satirist, averred that the club paid a big price for the wing. Skiddy never seemed to be at ease in the club. But he was obliged by his uncle to live there after Serenus had yanked the young rois¬ terer out of bachelor quarters which the old woods baron had characterized with profane and vulgar bluntness.

This evening Skiddy seemed both fascinated and frightened, looking across the room toward Lang. Every now and then he ground the coal of a cigarette in the tray and hitched forward in his chair as if he had finally mustered the courage to act. But after each false start he slumped back and lighted another cigarette. Finally, Skiddy was helped by the ogre himself. Lang caught the young fellow’s eye without difficulty. Skiddy obeyed an uplifted finger and hur¬ ried across the room; the monitory finger pointed to a chair close beside the rocker, and Skiddy took his seat.