Quarrier's huge limestone mansion, looming golden in the sun, was tenantless; its owner, closing even The Sedges, his Long Island house, and driven northward for a breath of air, was expected at Shotover.
The house of Mrs. Mortimer was closed and boarded up; the Caithness mansion was closed; the Ferralls', the Bonnesdels', the Pages', the Shannons', Mrs. Vendenning's, all were sealed up like vaults. A caretaker apparently guarded Major Belwether's house, peeping out at intervals from behind the basement windows. As for Plank's great pile of masonry, edging the outer Hundreds in the north, several lighted windows were to be seen in it at night, and a big yellow and black touring-car whizzed down town from its bronze gateway every morning with perfect regularity.
For there was a fight on that had steadily grown hotter with the weather, and Plank had little time to concern himself with the temperature or to mop his red features over the weather bureau report. Harrington and Quarrier were after him, horse, foot, and dragoons; Harrington had even taken a house at Seabright in order to be near in person; and Quarrier's move from Long Island to Shotover House was not as flippant as it might appear, for he had his private car there and a locomotive at Black Fells Crossing station, and he was within striking distance of Rochester, Utica, Syracuse, and Albany. Which was what Harrington thought necessary.
The vast unseen machinery set in motion by Harrington and Quarrier had begun to grind in May; and, at the first audible rumble, the aspect of things financial in the country changed. A few industrials began to rocket, nobody knew why; but the market's first tremor left it baggy and spineless, and the reaction, already overdue, became a sodden and soggy slump. Nobody knew why.
The noise of the fray in the papers, which had first excited then stunned the outside public, continued in a delirium of rumour, report, forecast, and summing up at the week's end.
Scare heads, involving everybody and everything, from the District-Attorney to Plank's office boy, succeeded one another. Plank's name headed column after column. Already becoming familiar in the society and financial sections, it began to appear in neighbouring paragraphs. Who was Plank? And the papers told people with more or less inaccuracy, humour, or sarcasm. What was he trying to do? The papers tried to tell that, too, making a pretty close guess, with comments good-natured or ill-natured according to circumstances over which somebody ought to have some control. What was Harrington trying to do to Plank--if he was trying to do anything? They told that pretty clearly. What was Quarrier going to do to Plank? That, also, they explained in lively detail. A few clergymen who stuck to their churches began to volunteer pulpit opinions concerning the ethics of the battle. A minister who was generally supposed to make an unmitigated nuisance of himself in politics dealt Plank an unexpected blow by saying that he was a "hero." Some papers called him "Hero" Plank for awhile, but soon tired of it or forgot it under the stress of the increasing heat.