The Fighting Chance

And Plank, looking him in the eyes, considered, until his courage began to fail. Then he went up-stairs.

It was a bad night outside, and it was a bad night for Siward. The master-vice had him by the throat. He sat there, clutching the arms of his chair, his broken leg, in its plaster casing, extended in front of him; and when he saw Plank enter he glared at him.

Hour after hour the two men sat there, the one white with rage, but helpless; the other, stolid, inert, deaf to demands for intercession with the arch-vice, dumb under pleadings for a compromise. He refused to interfere with the butler, and Siward insulted him. He refused to go and find the decanters himself, and Siward deliberately cursed him.

Outside the storm raged all night. Inside that house Plank faced a more awful tempest. There was a sedative on the mantel and he offered it to Siward, who struck it from his hand.

Once, toward morning, Siward feigned sleep, and Plank, heavy head on his breast, feigned it, too. Then Siward bent over stealthily and opened a drawer in his desk; and Plank was on his feet like a flash, jerking the morphine from Siward's fingers.

The doctor arrived at daylight, responding to Plank's summons by telephone, and Plank went away with the morphine and Siward's revolver bulging in the side-pockets of his dinner coat.

He did not come again for a week. A short note from Siward started him toward lower Fifth Avenue.

There was little said when he came into the room: "Hello, Plank! Glad to see you."

"Hello! Are you all right?"

"All right. … Much obliged for pulling me through. Wish you'd pull me through this Amalgamated Electric knot-hole, too--some day!"

"Do--do you mean it?" ventured Plank, turning red with delight.

"Mean it? Indeed I do--if you do. Sit here; ring for whatever you want--or perhaps you'd better go down to the sideboard. I'm not to be trusted with the odour in the room just yet."

"I don't care for anything," said Plank.

"Whenever you please, then. You know the house, and you don't mind my being unceremonious, do you?"

"No," said Plank.

"Good!" rejoined Siward, laughing. "I expect the same friendly lack of ceremony from you."

But that, for Plank, was impossible. All he could do was to care the more for Siward without crossing the border line so suddenly made free; all he could do was to sit there rolling and unrolling his gloves into wads with his clumsy, highly coloured hands, and gaze consciously at everything in the room except Siward.

On that day, at Plank's shy suggestion, they talked over Siward's business affairs for the first time. After that day, and for many days, the subject became the key-note to their intercourse; and Siward at last understood that this man desired to do him a service absolutely and purely from a disinterested liking for him, and as an expression of that liking. Also he was unexpectedly made aware of Plank's serenely unerring business sagacity.