“That shows they ain't rogues on top of being fools.”
“But I have faith that they can succeed and make a lot of money if they get a start,” she insisted. “I see you do not understand, sir, what I need of you. I want you to lend them that money, just as if it came from you. I'll give you the book and a writing, and you can draw it.”
“No, ma'am.”
“Won't you help a girl who needs help so much? You're a Christian man, you say.”
“That's just why I can't lie about this money. I'll have to tell 'em I'm lending it.”
“You will be lending it.”
“How's that, miss?”
“For your trouble in the matter I'll let you collect the interest for yourself at six per cent. Oh, Deacon Rowley, all you need to do is hand over the money, and say you prefer not to talk about it. You're a smart business man; you'll know what to say without speaking a falsehood. You'll break my heart if you refuse. Think! You're only helping me to help my own father. He has foolish notions about this. You can say you'll let them have it for a year, and you'll get three hundred dollars interest for your trouble.”
“I don't believe they'll ever make enough to pay the interest—much less the principal.”
“Give them five thousand dollars and draw a year's interest for yourself out of my interest that has accrued.”
“Say, how old be you?”
“I'll be twenty-two in June.”
Deacon Rowley looked at her calculatingly, fingering his nose.
“Being of age, you ought to know better, but being of age, you can do what you want to with your own. Do you promise never to let on to anybody about this?”
“I do promise, solemnly.”
“Then you sign some papers when I get 'em drawn up, and I'll hand 'em the money; but look-a-here, if I go chasing 'em with five thousand dollars, I'll have 'em suspecting that I'm crazy, or something worse. It ain't like Rufus Rowley to do a thing of this sort with his money.”
“I know it,” she confessed, softening her frank agreement with an ingenuous smile. “But Captain Mayo is coming to you to-morrow morning on business about the schooner, and you can put the matter to him in some way. Oh, I know you're so keen and smart you can do it without his suspecting a thing.”
“I don't know whether you're complimenting me or sassing me, miss. But I'll see it through, somehow.”
She signed the papers giving him power of attorney, left her bank-book with him, and went away into the night, her face radiant.
She threw a happy kiss at the dim anchor light which marked the location of the Ethel and May in the harbor.
“I am helping you get the girl you love,” she said, aloud.
She went on toward the widow's cottage. Her head was erect, but there were tears on her cheeks.
Polly Candage, covering her emotions with that mask of demureness which nature lends to the weaker sex for their protection, received a tumultuous Mayo next morning in the parlor of the cottage.
“I don't know how it has happened. I don't understand it,” he exploded. “I didn't suppose anybody could blast money out of his pocket with dynamite—your father said it couldn't be done. But Deacon Rowley has loaned us five thousand dollars. Here's his check on the Limeport First National. Only charges six per cent. I'm so weak it was all I could do to walk up here.”
“What did he say to explain it?” inquired Polly, with maiden's curiosity in learning to what extent of prevarication a deacon would go in order to make three hundred dollars.
“Wouldn't say much of anything. Handed out this check, said my indorsement on it would be enough for a receipt, and said your father and I could sign a joint note later—sometime—when he got around to it. Have you heard any rumor that the old fellow is losing his mind? But this check looks good!”
“Well, I think he's been pondering on the matter since father was here. In fact, Deacon Rowley has said a few things to me,” said the girl, meeting Mayo's gaze frankly. “Not much, of course, but something that hinted he had a lot of confidence in both of you, seeing that you have used him nicely in the other business he has done with you. Sometimes, you know, these hard old Yankees take a liking to somebody and do things all of a sudden.”
“This is sudden, all right enough,” stated Mayo, scratching the serrated edge of the check across his palm as if to make sure it was real and not a shadow. “Yes, he told me not to mention the note to him till he said something to us about it himself, and to keep quiet about the loan. Didn't want others running to him with their schemes.”
“And if I were in your place,” advised the girl, “I wouldn't tell father where you got the money—not for a time. You know, he doesn't get along so very well with Deacon Rowley—old folks sometimes do quarrel so—and he might be worried, thinking the deacon had some scheme behind this. But you don't think that way, do you?”
“I have the money, and he hasn't asked me to sign any papers. There's no come-back there, far as I can see,” declared the young man.
“Now what will you do?”
“Rush for Limeport, hire equipment—for I've cash to pay in advance for any leases—and get to that wreck and on to my job.”
“Simply tell father you raised the money—from a friend! If he is worrying about anything, he doesn't work half as well. I'll ask God to help and bless you every hour in the day.”
“Polly Candage,” cried Mayo, taking her warm, plump hands, “there's something about you that has put courage and grit and determination in me ever since you patted my shoulder there in the old Polly. I have been thinking it over a lot—I had time to think when I was out aboard that steamer, waiting.”
“There's only one girl for you to think about,” she chided.
His face clouded. “And it's the kind of thinking that isn't healthy for a man with a normal mind. Thank the Lord, I've got some real work to think about now—and the cash to do that work with.” He fondled his pocket.
She went with him to the wharf, and when the schooner slid to sea behind Hue and Cry her white handkerchief gave him final salute and silent God-speed.
Captain Boyd Mayo, back in Limeport once more, was not the cowed, apologetic, pleading suppliant who had solicited the water-front machinists and ship-yard owners a few days before. He proffered no checks for them to look askance at. He pulled a wallet that was plethoric with new yellowbacks. He showed his money often, and with a purpose. He drove sharp bargains while he held it in view. He received offers of credit in places where before he had been denied. Such magic does visible wealth exert in the dealings between men!
He did not come across Fletcher Fogg in Limeport, and he was glad of that. Somebody informed him that the magnate had gone back to New York. It was manifest to Mayo that in his contempt Fogg had decided that the salvaging of the Conomo intact had been relegated to the storehouse of dreams. His purpose would be suited if she were junked, so the young man realized. Only the Conomo afloat, a successful pioneer in new transportation experiments alongcoast, would threaten his vested interests.
There had been wintry winds and intervening calms in the days since Mayo had been prosecuting his projects ashore. But by word of mouth from straying fishermen and captains of packets he had been assured that the steamer still stuck on Razee.
And when at last he was equipped he went forth from Limeport; he went blithely, although he knew that a Titan's job faced him. He kept his own counsel as to what he proposed to do with the steamer. He even allowed the water-front gossips to guess, unchallenged, that he was going to junk the wreck. He was not inviting more of that brazen hostility that characterized the operations of Fogg and his hirelings.
He was at the wheel of a husky lighter which he had chartered; the rest of the crew he supplied from his own men. The lighter was driven by its own power, and carried a good pump and a sturdy crane; its decks were loaded high with coal. The schooner was now merely convoy. It was an all-day trip to Razee, for the lighter was a slow and clumsy craft, but when Mayo at last made fast to the side of the Conomo and squealed a shrill salute with the whistle, the joy he found in Captain Candage's rubicund countenance made amends for anxiety and delay.
“I knew you'd make a go of it, somehow,” vouchsafed the old skipper. “But who did you have to knock down in a dark place so as to steal his money off'n him?”
“That's private business till we get ready to pay it back, with six per cent, interest,” stated the young man, bluntly.
“Oh, very well. So long as we've got it I don't care where you stole it,” returned Candage, with great serenity. “I simply know that you didn't get it from skinflint Rowley, and that's comfort enough for me. Let me tell you that we haven't been loafing on board here. We rigged that taakul you see aloft, and jettisoned all the cargo we could get at. It was all spoiled by the water. There's pretty free space for operations 'midships. I've got out all her spare cable, and it's ready.”
“And you've done a good job there, sir. We've got to make this lighter fast alongside in such a way that a blow won't wreck her against us. Spring cables—plenty of them—and we are sailors enough to know how to moor. But when I think of what amateurs we are in the rest of this job, cold shivers run over me.”
“That Limeport water-front crowd got at you, too, hey?”
“Captain Candage, I have watched men more or less in this life. It's sometimes a mighty big handicap for a man to be too wise. While the awfully wise man sits back and shakes his head and figures prospects and says it can't be done, the fool rushes in, because he doesn't know any better, and blunders the job through and wins out. Let's keep on being fools, good and plenty, but keep busy just the same.”
And on that basis the rank amateurs of Razee proceeded with all the grit that was in them.
The men of Hue and Cry had plenty of muscle and little wit. They asked no questions, they did not look forward gioomily to doubtful prospects. The same philosophy, or lack of it, that had always made life full of merry hope when their stomachs were filled, taking no thought of the morrow, animated them now. Fate had given Mayo and his associate an ideal crew for that parlous job. It was not a question of union hours and stated wages; they worked all night just as cheerily as they worked all day.
An epic of the sea was lived there on Razee Reef during the weeks that followed.
The task which was wrought out would make a story in itself, far beyond the confines of such a narrative as this must be.
Bitter toil of many days often proved to be a sad mistake, for the men who wrought there had more courage in endeavor than good understanding of methods.
Then, after disappointment, hope revived, for further effort avoided the mistakes that had been so costly.
The brunt of the toil, the duty of being pioneer, fell on Mayo.
He donned a diving-suit and descended into the riven bowels of the wreck and cleared the way for the others.
On deck they built sections of bulkhead, and he went down and groped in the murky water, and spiked the braces and set those sections and calked the spaces between bulkhead and hull.
There were storms that menaced their lighter and drove the little schooner to sea in a welter of tempest.
There were calms that cheered them with promise of spring.
The schooner was the errand-boy that brought supplies and coal from the main. But the men who went ashore refused to gossip on the water-front, and the occasional craft that hove to in the vicinity of Razee were not allowed to land inquisitive persons on the wreck.
After many weeks the bulkheads were set and the pumps were started. There were three crews for these pumps, and their clanking never ceased, day or night. There was less water in the fore part; her bow was propped high on the ledges. The progress here was encouraging.
Aft, there were disasters. Three times the bulkhead crumpled under the tremendous pressure of the sea, as soon as the pumps had relieved the opposing pressure within the hull. Mayo, haggard, unkempt, unshorn, thin with his vigils, stayed underwater in his diving-dress until he became the wreck of a man. But at last they built a transverse section that promised to hold. The pumps began to make gains on the water. As the flood within was lowered and they could get at the bulkhead more effectively from the inside, they kept adding to it and strengthening it.
And then came the need of more material and more equipment, for the gigantic job of floating the steamer was still ahead of them.
Mayo felt that he had proved his theory and was now in a position to enlist the capital that would see them through. He could show a hull that was sound except for the rent amidships—a hull from both ends of which the trespassing sea was being evicted. With the money that would furnish buoying lighters and tugs and the massive equipment for floating her, he felt that he would be able to convert that helpless mass of junk into a steamer once more—change scrap-iron into an active value of at least one hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
And when he and Captain Candage had arrived at that hopeful and earnest belief, following days of tremulous watching of the work the pumps were doing, the young man went again to the main on his momentous errand.
As they sailed into Limeport, Mayo was a bit astonished to see green on the sloping hills. He had been living in a waking dream of mighty toil on Razee; he had almost forgotten that so many weeks had gone past.
When he went ashore in his dory from the schooner, the balmy breath of spring breathed out to him from budding gardens and the warm breeze fanned his roughened cheeks.
As he had forgotten that spring had come, so had he forgotten about his personal appearance. He had rushed ashore from a man's job that was now waiting for him to rush back to it. He did not realize that he looked like a cave-man—resembled some shaggy, prehistoric human; his mind was too full of his affairs on Razee.
When Captain Mayo strode down the main street of Limeport, it troubled him not a whit because folks gaped at him and turned to stare after him. He had torn himself from his gigantic task for only one purpose, and that idea filled his mind.
He was ragged, his hands were swollen, purple, cut, and raw from his diver's labors, his hair hung upon his collar, and a beard masked his face. They who thronged the streets were taking advantage of the first warm days to show their spring finery. The contrast of this rude figure from the open sea was made all the more striking as he brushed through the crowds.
Here and there he bolted into offices where there were men he knew and whom he hoped to interest. He had no fat wallet to exhibit to them this time. He had only his empty, swollen hands and a wild, eager, stammering story of what he expected to do. They stared at him, many of them stupidly, some of them frankly incredulous, most of them without particular interest. He looked like a man who had failed miserably; there was nothing about him to suggest success.
One man put the matter succinctly: “Look here, Mayo, if you came in here, looking the way you do, and asked me for a quarter to buy a meal with, I'd think it was perfectly natural, and would slip you the quarter. But not ten thousand—you don't look the part.”
“What have my clothes got to do with it? I haven't time to think about clothes. I can't wear a plug hat in a diving-suit. I've been working. And I'm still on the job. The way I look ought to show you that I mean business.”
But they turned him down. In half a dozen offices they listened and shook their heads or curtly refused to look into the thing. He had not come ashore to beg for assistance as if it were a favor. He had come feeling certain that this time he had a valuable thing to offer. His labors had racked his body, his nerves were on edge, his temper was short. When they refused to help he cursed them and tore out. That they allowed his personal appearance to influence their judgment stirred his fury—it was so unjust to his self-sacrificing devotion to his task.
He soon exhausted his circle of acquaintances, but the rebuffs made him angry instead of despondent. Thrusting rudely past pedestrians who were polite and sleek, he marched along the street, scowling.
And then his eyes fell on a face that gave a fresh stir to all the bitterness that was in him.
He saw Fletcher Fogg standing outside the Nicholas Hotel. The day was bland, the spring sun was warming, but it was evident that Mr. Fogg was not basking contentedly; his countenance was fully as gloomy as that of Captain Mayo, and he chewed on an unlighted cigar and spat snippets of tobacco over the curb while he pondered.
Mayo was not in a mood to reason with his passion. He had just been battering his pride and persistence up against men whose manner of refusal showed that they remembered what Fletcher Fogg had said regarding the prospects of successful floating of the Conomo. There stood the ponderous pirate, blocking Mayo's way on the sidewalk, just as he had blocked the young man's prospects in life in the Montana affair—just as he had closed avenues of credit. Mayo bumped against him and crowded him back across the sidewalk to the hotel's granite wall. He put his two raw, swollen hands on Fogg's immaculate waistcoat and shoved salt-stained, work-worn, and bearded face close.
Even then the promoter did not seem to recognize Mayo. He blinked apprehensively. He looked about as if he intended to summon help.
“You don't seem to have your iron wishbone in your pocket this time,” growled the assailant. He jabbed his thumbs cruelly into Fogg's ribs.
“Gad! You're—you're Captain Mayo! I'll be cursed if I knew you till you spoke!”
“I managed to hold myself in the last time you saw me, Fogg. I was waiting. Now, damn you, I've got you!”
He was making reference merely to the physical grip in which he held the man. But Fogg seemed to find deeper significance in the words.
“I know it, Mayo,” he whined. “That's why I'm down here. I have been wondering about the best way to get to you—to meet you right!”
“You got to me all right, you infernal renegade!”
“But, see here, Mayo, we can't talk this matter here on the street.”
“There isn't going to be any talking!” The meeting-up had been so unexpected and Mayo's ire was so hasty that the young man had not taken thought of what he intended to do. His impulse was to beat that fat face into pulp. He had long before given up all hope that any appeal to Fogg as a man would help. He expected no consideration, no restitution.
“But there must be some talk. I'm here to make it. You have me foul! I admit it. But listen to reason,” he pleaded. “It isn't going to do you any good to rave.”
“I'm going to mash your face for you! I'll take the consequences.”
“But after you do that, you still have got to talk turkey with me about those papers.”
In spite of his fury, Mayo realized from Fogg's demeanor and his words that mere fear of a whipping was not producing this humility; there was a policeman on the corner.
“Don't talk so loud,” urged Fogg. “Come up to my room where we can be private.”
Mayo hesitated, puzzled by his enemy's attitude.
“It's a word from the Old Man himself. He ordered me down here. It's from Marston!” whispered the promoter. “I'm in a devil of a hole all around, Mayo.”
“Very well! I'll come. I can beat you up in your room more comfortably!”
“I'm not afraid of the beating! I wish that was all there was to it,” muttered Fogg. He led the way into the hotel and Mayo followed, getting a new grip on himself, conscious that there was some new crisis in his affairs, scenting surrender of some sort in Fogg's astonishing humility.
“Will you smoke?” asked Fogg, obsequiously, when they were in the hotel room.
“No!” He refused with venom. He saw himself in one of the long mirrors and had not realized until then how unkempt and uncouth he was. He was ill at ease when he sat down in a cushioned chair. For weeks he had been accustomed to the rude makeshifts of shipboard. In temper and looks he felt like a cave-man.
“I'm in hopes that we can get together on some kind of a friendly basis,” entreated Fogg, humbly. “Simply fighting the thing over again won't get us anywhere. I had to do certain things and I did them. You spoke of my iron wishbone! Now about that Montana matter—”
“I don't want any rehearsal, Mr. Fogg. What's your business with me?”
“It's hard to start unless I can feel that you'd listen to some explanations and make some allowances. When a man works for Julius Marston he has to forget himself and do—”
“I have worked for Julius Marston!”
“But not in the finance game, Mayo!” There was a tremble in the promoter's voice. “Men are only shadows to him when it's a matter of big finance. He gives his orders to have results produced. He doesn't stop to think about the men concerned. It's the figures on his books he looks at! He uses a man like he'd use a napkin at table!”
“As you used me! You have had good training!”
“Well, if the trick was passed on down, it's now being passed on up,” stated Fogg, despondently. “I'm the goat, right now. Can't you view me personally in this matter?”
“I don't want to. I would get up and use these fists on you, sore as they are!”
“I'm afraid it's going to be a tough matter for us to settle,” sighed the promoter. “I thought I had everything tied up in the usual way. Damn it, if it wasn't for a woman being mixed into it, the thing would have worked out all right!” He let his temper loose. “You can never reckon on business when a woman sticks in her fingers! I don't care if you are in love with Marston's daughter, Mayo! She is like a lot of other cursed high-flier girls who have always had more time and money than is good for them. She is Trouble swishing petticoats! And you must have considerable of a mortgage on her, seeing that she has double-crossed her own father in order to pull your chestnuts out of the fire!”
Having not the least idea what Mr. Fogg was talking about, Mayo was silent.
“You're a cool one! I must hand it to you!” snapped the promoter.
“You'd better leave the name of Miss Marston out of this business with me, sir.”
“How in blazes can I leave it out, seeing what she has done?”
And Mayo, not knowing what new outbreak had marked the activities of the incomprehensible young lady, resumed his grim silence, his own interests suggesting that watchful waiting would be his best policy.
“Well, what are you going to say about the papers?” demanded Fogg. “We may as well get down to cases!”
“I'm not going to say anything.”
“You've got to say something, Mayo. This is too big a matter to fool with. If you are reasonable, you can help me fix it up—and that will help the girl. She's Mar-ston's daughter, all right, and her father understands how erratic she is and makes allowances for her freaks. But he can't stand for some things.”
At that moment curiosity was more ardent in Mayo than resentment, though Fogg's tone in regard to Alma Marston did provoke the latter emotion. It was evident that she had undertaken something in his behalf—had in some manner sacrificed her father's interests and her own peace of mind in order to assist the outcast. He wondered why he did not feel more joy when he heard that news. He remembered her promise to him when they parted, but he had erected no hopes on that promise. It had not consoled him while he had been struggling with his problems. He was conscious that his sentiments in regard to the whole affair were rather complex, and he did not bother to analyze them; he sat tight and stared at Mr. Fogg with non-committal blankness of expression.
“Have you the papers with you?”
“No!” He added, “Of course not!”
“That's all right. It may be better, providing they are in a safe place. Now see here, Mayo! I'm not going to work any bluffs with you. I can't, under the circumstances. I don't know where Burkett went and—”
“Burkett is with me on the Conomo. I'm not going to work any bluffs with you, either, Fogg!”
“I don't care where he is nor what he has told you. Any allegations from regular liars and men who have been fired can be taken care of in court, under the blackmail law. But in the case of those papers it's different. I'm open and frank with you, Mayo. We have been betrayed from inside the fort. Through some leak in the office that girl got hold of those papers. I don't know what your sense of honor is in such matters. I'm not here to appeal to it. Too much dirt has been done you to have that argument have any special effect. I'm open and frank, I say!” He spread his hands. “Probably she didn't half realize what she was doing! But now that you have the papers, you realize!”
Not by a flicker of an eyelid did Mayo betray his total ignorance of what Fogg referred to.
“I want to ask you, man to man,” proceeded the emissary, “whether you propose to use those papers simply for yourself—to get back—well—you know!” He waved his hand. “Or are you going to slash right and left with 'em, for general revenge?”
“I haven't decided.”
“It's a fair question I have asked. So far as you are concerned in anything which may be in those papers—and that's mostly my own reports—you will be squared and more, captain. You can have the Triton with a ten-years' contract as master, contract to be protected by a bond, your pay two hundred and fifty dollars a month. Of course that trade includes your reinstatement as a licensed master and the dropping of all charges in the Montana matter. There is no indictment, and the witnesses will be taken care of, so that the matter will not come up, providing you have enemies. This is man's talk, Mayo! You'll have to admit it!”
“There's another thing which must be admitted, Fogg! I have been disgraced, hounded, and persecuted. The men along this coast, the most of them, will always believe I made a mistake. You know what that means to a shipmaster!”
Mr. Fogg wiped the moisture off his cheeks with a purple handkerchief.
“You were put in devilish wrong. I admit it. I went too far. That's why Marston is making me the goat now. I shall be dumped if this matter isn't straightened out between us!”
“I was in this very room one day, Mr. Fogg, and saw how you dumped one Burkett. You seemed to enjoy doing it. Why shouldn't I have a little enjoyment of my own?”
“I had to dump him. He was a fool. He had bragged. I had to protect interests as well as myself. But you haven't anything to consider, right now, but your own profit.”
“Is that so?” inquired Mayo, sardonically. “You seem to have me sized up as one of these mild and forgiving angels.”
“Now, look here, Mayo, don't let any fool notions stand in the way of your making good. It isn't sense; it isn't business! You have something we want and we're willing to come across for it.”
“What other strings are hitched on?” asked the young man, feigning intractability as his best resource in this puzzling affair.
“Well, of course you give up that fool job you're working on. Quit being a junkman!”
“I'm not a junkman. We're going to float the Conomo.”
“Mayo, talk sense! That job can't be done!”
“So you've been telling every outfitter and banking-man in this city, Fogg! But now you are talking to a man who knows better. And let me say something else to you. I'll do no business with the kind of a man you have shown yourself to be.”
“Don't be a boy, Mayo. I'm here with full powers. We'll take that wreck off your hands.”
“Want to kill her as she stands, do you?”
“It's our business what we do with her after we pay our money,” declared Fogg, bridling.
“There's something more than business—business with you—in this matter.”
“Yes, I see there is! It's your childish revenge you're looking after. I'll give you ten thousand dollars to divide among that bunch of paupers. Send them along about their fishing, and be sensible.”
“It's no use for us to talk, Fogg. I see that you don't understand me at all. You ought to know better than to ask me to sell out myself and my partners.” He rose and started for the door.
“Partners—those paupers?”
“They have frozen and sweat, worked and starved, with me out on Razee Reef, Fogg. They are partners.”
“What's your lay? What are the writings?” insisted the promoter, following Mayo.
“Not the scratch of a pen. Only man's decency and honor. You and your boss haven't got money enough to buy—There isn't anything to sell!”
“But there are some things we can buy, if it has come to a matter of blackmail,” raged Fogg. “Are you cheap enough to trade on a foolish girl's cursed butting into matters she didn't understand? You have been pawing those papers over. You know what they mean!”
Mayo turned and looked at the excited man.
“They have nothing to do with you or your affairs, the most of those papers,” sputtered Fogg. “Mayo, be reasonable. We can't afford to have our holding companies shown up. The syndicate can get by that infernal Federal law if we work carefully.”
“Otherwise Marston and you and a few others might go to Atlanta, eh?”
“It isn't too late to send you there.”
“You are worrying about those papers, are you?”
“Of course I'm worrying about them! What do you suppose I'm down here for?”
“You keep on worrying, Mr. Fogg! Come on into the little corner of hell where I have been for the last few months; the fire is fine!”
He yanked open the door and slammed it behind him, shutting off the promoter's frenzied appeals.
Captain Mayo carried only doubts and discouragement back to the wreck on Razee. His doubts were mostly concerned with the matter of the documents which Mr. Fogg was seeking so insistently. Mayo himself had done a little seeking. He inquired at the post-office, but there was no mail for him. If no papers had been abstracted from the Marston archives, if this affair were some new attempt at guile on the part of Fogg, the promoter had certainly done a masterly bit of acting, Mayo told himself. He determined to keep his own counsel and wait for developments.
Two days later the developments arrived at Razee in the person of Captain Zoradus Wass, who came a-visiting in a chartered motor-boat. He climbed the ladder, greeted his protégé with sailor heartiness, and went on a leisurely tour of inspection.
“Something like a tinker's job on an iron kittle, son,” he commented. “You must have been born with some of the instincts of a plumber. Keep on the way you're operating and you'll get her off.”
“I'll never get her off by operating as I am just now, Captain Wass. We are standing still. No money, no credit, no grub. I made a raise of five thousand and have spent it. I don't dare to go to the old skinflint again.”
“Well, why not try the heiress?” inquired the old skipper. “You know I have always advised you strong about the heiress.”
“Look here, Captain Wass, I don't want to hear any more jokes on that subject,” objected the young roan, curtly.
“No joke to this,” stated the captain, with serenity. “Let's step into this stateroom.” He led the way and locked the door.
“There's no joke, son,” he repeated, “and I don't like to have you show any tartness in the matter. Seeing what friends we have been, I ain't taking it very kindly because you have been so mighty close-mouthed. I'm a man to be trusted. You made a mistake in not telling me. The thing 'most fell down between me and her!”
He frowned reproachfully at the astonished Mayo.
“She came expecting, of course, that I was about your closest friend, and when I had to own up that you have never mentioned her to me she thought she had made a mistake in me, and wasn't going to give me the thing!”
“What thing, and what are you talking about?”
Captain Wass patted his coat pocket.
“I convinced her, and it was lucky that I was able to, for it's a matter where only a close and careful friend ought to be let in. But after this you mustn't keep any secrets away from me if you expect me to help you. However, you have shown that you can take good advice when I give it to you. I advised you to grab Julius Marston's daughter and, by thunder! you went and done it. Now—”
Mayo impatiently interrupted. Captain Wass was drawling, with manifest enjoyment of the part he was taking in this romance.
“You have brought something for me, have you?”
“She is a keen one, son,” proceeded the captain, making no move to show the object he was patting. “Hunted me up, remembering that I had you with me on the old Nequasset, and put questions to me smart, I can tell you! You ought to have been more confidential with me.”
“Captain Wass, I can't stand any more of this nonsense. If you have anything for me, hand it over!”
“I have taken pains for you, traveled down here, four or five hundred miles, taking—”
“Yes, taking your time for the trip and for this conversation,” declared Mayo, with temper. “I have been put in a mighty mean position by not knowing you had these papers.”
“Safe and sure has always been my motto! And I had a little business of my own to tend to on the way. I have been finding out how that fat Fogg snapped himself in as general manager of the Vose line. Of course, it was known well enough how he did it, but I have located the chap that done it for him—that critter we took along as steward, you remember.”
In spite of his anxiety to get into his hands the parcel in the old skipper's pocket, Mayo listened with interest to this information; it related to his own affairs with Fogg.
“I'm going to help the honest crowd in the Vose line management to tip over that sale that was made, and when the right time comes I'll have that white-livered clerk in the witness-box if I have to lug him there by the ears. Now, Mayo, that girl didn't say what was in this packet.” He pulled out a small parcel which had been carefully tied with cords. “She is in love with you, because she must be in love to go to so much trouble in order to get word to you. If this is a love-letter, it's a big one. Seems to be all paper! I have hefted it and felt of it consid'able.”
He held it away from Mayo's eager reach and investigated still more with prodding fingers.
“Hope she isn't sending back your love-letters, son. But by the look she had on her face when she was talking about you to me I didn't reckon she was doing that. Well, here's comfort for you!” He placed the packet in Mayo's hands.
The parcel was sealed with three neat patches of wax, and on each blob was imprinted the letters “A M” in a monogram. Mayo turned the packet over and over.
“If you want me to step out, not feeling as confidential toward me as you used to, I'll do it,” proffered Captain Wass, after a polite wait.
“I'm not going to open this thing—not yet,” declared the young man. “That's for reasons of my own—quite private ones, sir.”
“But I'd just as soon step out.”
“No, sir. Your being here has nothing whatever to do with the matter.” He buttoned the packet into his coat pocket. He had little respect for Fletcher Fogg's delicacy in any question of procedure; the promoter's animus in the matter of those papers was clear. Nevertheless, the agent had crystallized in bitter words an idea which was deterring Mayo: would he take advantage of a girl's rash betrayal of her father? Somehow those seals with her monogram made sacred precincts of the inside of the packet; he touched them and withdrew his hand as if he were intruding at the door which was closed upon family privacy.
“I suppose you'd rather keep your mind wholly on straight business, seeing what a bad position you're in,” suggested Captain Wass. “Very well, we'll put love-letters away and talk about something that's sensible. It's too bad there isn't some tool we could have to pry open that Vose line sell-out. The stockholders got cold feet and slid out from under Vose after the Montana was laid up.”
“What has been done with her?”
“Nothing, up to now. Cashed in with the underwriters and are probably using the money to play checkers with on Wall Street. Maybe they're using her for a horrible example till they scare the rest of the independents into the combination.”
“Have the underwriters sold?”
“Yes. She has been bid in—probably by some tinder-strapper of the big pirates. It's a wonder they let you get hold of this one.”
“They thought she was spoken for. When they found that she wasn't, they sent Burkett out here to blow her up.”
Captain Wass was not astonished by that information.
“Probably! All the talk which has been circulated says that you were junking her. I didn't have any idea you were trying to save her.”
“We have been blocked by some busy talkers,” admitted the young man.
“It's too bad the other folks can't do some talking and have the facts to back 'em up, son. Do you know what could be done if that syndicate could be busted? The old Vose crowd would probably hitch up with the Bee line folks. The Bee-liners are discouraged, but they haven't let go their charter. You wouldn't have to worry, then, about getting your money to finish this job, and you'd have a blamed quick market for this steamer as soon as she was off this reef.”
The bulging packet seemed to press against Mayo's ribs, insistently hinting at its power to help.
“I am going back and have a talk with old man Vose about this steamer,” said Captain Wass. “Now, son, a last word. I don't want to pry into any delicate matters. But I sort of smell a rat in those papers in your pocket. When she took 'em out of her muff all I could smell was violet. Do you think you've got anything about you that would help me—help us—help yourself?”
“No, sir; only what you see for yourself in this steamer's possibilities.”
“Very well; then I'll do the best I can. But confound this girl business when it's mixed into man's matters!” It was heartfelt echo of Mr. Fogg's sentiments.
Captain Wass departed on his chartered motor-boat, after eating some of the boiled fish and potatoes which made up the humble fare of the workers on Razee.
Mayo based no hopes on the promised intervention of the old skipper. He had been so thoroughly discouraged by all the callous interests on shore that he felt sure his project was generally considered a failure. When he was on shore himself the whole thing seemed to be more or less a dream. {*}