Argosy, Vol. 123, No. 2 — page 111: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

PRIDE OF outbreak of joyous exclamations from the Mexicans, and then he saw the strong, pale hands of Kennedy go up to his throat and tear the necktie loose. The bright silk was dangled before his eyes, and as he took. it he heard Kennedy say: ‘‘ Another score, Sefor Tyson. But the longest reck- oning can be paid in one lump sum, eh?”’ . But Tyson could not answer. The retort came up in his throat and stuck there; he was too happy for talk. CHAPTER XXII. SUCCESS. CERTAIN measure of success makes men cruel. The best-of us are flav- ored with viciousness in varying propor- tions; if we are kindly one moment we strike an average with satire or irony the next. The politician snarls at his wife’s supper, and thus erases from his mouth the lines of good-nature which the practise of the day has engraved there; we are all more or less children, and smash our toys for the pleasure—if,no other—of self- torture. Now Edward Garth was winning. The dam was nearly done. He was already receiving congratulatory letters. Engineers were coming thousands of miles to see this masterpiece in the making. Scientific magazines sent out representatives to write articles about the Napoleon of the thirsty desert. 7 | To be sure, Garth did not take time off to taste these pleasures. He was in sight of his goal, but his ship was still in deep water, and might conceivably sink before he touched the shore. He had the confidence, then, of success, and he had the spur of danger goading him on remorselessly to full speed. He would have been more than human if moral con- siderations had not to some extent fallen by the wayside. Ordinarily, he would never have stooped to double-dealing with Tyson or any one elsé, for the name of ‘‘ Honest ” Ed Garth was not an empty one, but now the end began to justify the means, in his eyes. After all, his crime against Tyson was a TYSON. 243 more or less imaginary one. No harm was done to the man, and as for his sister, it was certainly not a dangerous plot against her—his attempt to bring her out to the Chiluah. 3 But when’ he made these deductions he overlooked one thing: one cannot do gra- tuitous wrong to another without poisoning one’s own mind. He still felt the distance between himself and Tyson. It was as strong when he talked to the man in the cement-house as it had been when he sat at Tyson’s table in the New York house on Gramercy Park. That perfect breeding and graceful manner of Tyson’s became some- thing of a personal insult. Eight hours of sound sleep would have cleared the brain of Garth and reduced him to the normal; as it was, he felt a danger in the flamelike pride of Tyson. The fel- low actually looked up: to him—but only as a model of muscular manhood. If Tyson dreamed for an instant that the rough-handed engineer aspired to his sister’s shand—ah, there would be the rub! » Something of this was passing through the mind of Garth as he sat in his office this evening. He had dined with a great consulting engineer and two men of money —overlords of the street—and now he was back in harness. For the dinner he had had to don a Tuxedo, but when he sat again in. the office he lapsed to the normal, rolled up his sleeves to the hairy elbows, tore off his high collar, and turned in. the neck. of his shirt. He could think better in such a costume. ‘A. stiff-bosomed shirt cramped his mind. : Something went wrong outside; it brought half-a dozen of his lesser bosses into the office, and for ten minutes Garth was shout- ing at them from blueprints and pinching home his ideas with a brandished fist. He finished with a little profane exhortation that brought them out of their chairs like horses urider the spur and curb, and then they were gone, pell-mell, through the door, and clattering down the high, wooden stair- way, / He turned back, perspiring, when he heard the sound of a woman’s voice from his secretary’s room, the waiting chamber. The sound of it stopped him—held him COmiclboo Cc SS C@