On a day in early August the Nequasset came walloping laboriously up-coast through a dungeon fog, steel rails her dragging burden, caution her watchword.
The needle of her indicator marked “Half speed,” and it really meant half speed. Captain Zoradus Wass made scripture of the rules laid down by the Department of Commerce and Labor. There was no tricky slipping-over under his sway—no finger-at-nose connivance between the pilot-house and the chief engineer's grille platform. No, Captain Wass was not that kind of a man, though the fog had held in front of him two days, vapor thick as feathers in a tick, and he had averaged not much over six nautical miles an hour, and was bitterly aware that the rate of freight on steel rails was sixty-five cents a ton.
“And as I've been telling you, at sixty-five cents there's about as much profit as there would be in swapping hard dollars from one hand to the other and depending on what silver you can rub off,” said Captain Wass to First-mate Mayo.
The captain was holding the knob of the whistle-pull In constant clutch. Regularly every minute Nequasset's prolonged blast sounded, strictly according to the rules of the road.
Her voice started with a complaining squawk, was full toned for a few moments, then trailed off into more querulousness; the timbre of that tone seemed to fit with Captain Wass's mood.
“It's tough times when a cargo-carrier has to figger so fine that she can lose profit on account of what the men eat,” he went on. “If you're two days late, minding rules in a fog, owners ask what the tophet's the matter with you! This kind of business don't need steamboat men any longer; it calls for boarding-house keepers who can cut sirloin steak off'n a critter clear to the horn, and who are handy in turning sharp corners on left-overs. I'll buy a book of cooking receets and try to turn in dividends.”
The captain was broad-bowed, like the Nequasset, he sagged on short legs as if he carried a cargo fully as heavy as steel rails, his white whiskers streamed away from his cutwater nose like the froth kicked up by the old freighter's forefoot. He chewed slowly, conscientiously and continuously on tobacco which bulged in his cheek; his jaws, moving as steadily as a pendulum swings, seemed to set the time for the isochronal whistle-blast. Sixty ruminating jaw-wags, then he spat into the fog, then the blast—correct to the clock's tide!
The windows of the pilot-house were dropped into their casings, so that all sounds might be admitted; the wet breeze beaded the skipper's whiskers and dampened the mate's crisp hair. While the mate leaned from a window, ear cocked for signals, the captain gave him more of the critical inspection in which he had been indulging when occasion served.
Furthermore, Captain Wass went on pecking around the edges of a topic which he had been attacking from time to time with clumsy attempt at artful inquisition.
“As bad as it is on a freighter, I reckon you ain't sorry you're off that yacht, son?”
“I'm not sorry, sir.”
“From what you told me, the owner was around meddling all the time.”
“I don't remember that I ever said so, sir.”
“Oh, I thought you did,” grunted Captain Wass, and he covered his momentary check by sounding the whistle.
“Now that you are back in the steamboat business, of course you're a steamboat man. Have the interests of your owners at heart,” he resumed.
“Certainly, sir.”
“It would be a lot of help to the regular steamboat men—the good old stand-bys—if they could get some kind of a line on what them Wall Street cusses are gunning through with Marston leading 'em—or, at leastways, he's supposed to be leading. He hides away in the middle of the web and lets the other spiders run and fetch. But it's Marston's scheme, you can bet on that! What do you think?”
“I haven't thought anything about it, Captain Wass.” “But how could you help thinking, catching a word here and a word there, aboard that yacht?”
“I never listened—I never heard anything.”
“But he had them other spiders aboard—seen 'em myself through my spy-glass when you passed us one day in June.”
“I suppose they talked together aft, but my duty was forward, sir.”
“It's too bad you didn't have a flea put into your ear about getting a line on Marston's scheme, whatever it is. You could have helped the real boys in this game!”
Mayo did not reply.
Captain Wass showed a resolve to quit pecking at the edges and make a dab at the center of the subject. He pulled the whistle, released the knob, and turned back to the window, setting his elbows on the casing.
“Son, you ain't in love with that pirate Marston, are you?”
“No, sir!” replied the young man, with bitterness that could not be doubted.
“Well, how about your being in love with his daughter?” The caustic humor in the old skipper's tones robbed the question of some of its brutal bluntness, and Mayo was accustomed to Captain Wass's brand of humor. The young man did not turn his head for a few moments; he continued to look into the fog as if intent on his duty; he was trying to get command of himself, fully aware that resentment would not work in the case of Zoradus Wass. When Mayo did face the skipper, the latter was discomposed in his turn, for Mayo showed his even teeth in a cordial smile.
“Do you think I have been trying the chauffeur trick in order to catch an heiress, sir?”
“Well, there's quite a gab-wireless operating along-coast and sailors don't always keep their yawp closed after they have taken a man's money to keep still,” stated Captain Wass, pointedly. “I wouldn't blame you for grabbing in. You're good-looking enough to do what others have done in like cases.”
“Thank you, sir. What's the rest of the joke?”
“I never joke,” retorted the skipper, turning and pulling the whistle-cord. Nequasset's squall rose and died down in her brazen throat. “Her name is Alma?” he prodded. “Something of a clipper. If Marston ever makes you general manager, put me into a better job than this, will you?”
“I will, sir!”
The skipper gave his mate a disgusted stare. “You're a devil of a man to keep up a conversation with!” He spat against the wall of the fog and again let loose the freighter's hoarse lament.
From somewhere, ahead, a horn wailed, dividing its call into two blasts.
“Port tack and headed acrost us,” snarled the master, after a sniff at the air and a squint at the sluggish ripple.
“Why ain't the infernal fool anchored, instead of drifting around underfoot? How does he bear, Mr. Mayo?” He was now back to pilot-house formality with his mate.
“Two points and a half, starboard bow, sir. And there's another chap giving one horn in about the same direction.”
“Another drifter—not wind enough for 'em to know what tack they're really on. Well, there's always Article Twenty-seven to fall back on,” grumbled the skipper. He quoted sarcastically in the tone in which that rule is mouthed so often in pilot-houses along coast: '“Due regard shall be had to all dangers of navigation and collision, and to any special circumstances which may render a departure from the above rules necessary, and so forth and et cetry. Meaning, thank the Lord, that a steamer can always run away from a gad-slammed schooner, even at half speed. Hope if it ever comes to a showdown the secretary of the bureau of commerce will agree with me. Ease her off to starboard, Mr. Mayo, till we bring 'em abeam.”
The mate gave a quick glance at the compass. “East by nothe, Jack,” he commanded.
“East by nothe, sir,” repeated the quartermaster in mechanical tones, spinning the big wheel to the left.
It was evident that the Nequasset had considerable company on the sea that day. A little abaft her beam a tugboat was blowing one long and two short, indicating her tow. She had been their “chum” for some time, and Mayo had occasionally taken her bearings by sound and compass and knew that the freighter was slowly forging ahead. He figured, listening again to the horns, that the Nequasset was headed to clear all.
“You take a skipper who studies his book and is always ready to look the department in the eye, without flinching, he has to mind his own business and mind the other fellow's, too,” said Captain Wass, continuing his monologue of grouch. “Dodging here and there, keeping out of the way, two days behind schedule, meat three times a day or else you can't keep a crew, and everybody hearty at meal-time! My owners have never told me to let the law go to hoot and ram her for all she's worth! But when I carry in my accounts they seem to be trying to think up language that tells a man to do a thing, and yet doesn't tell him. What's that?” He put his head far out of the window.
Floating out of the fog came a dull, grunting sound, a faint and far-away diapason, a marine whistle which announced a big chap.
“I should say it is a Union liner, sir—either the Triton or Neptune.”
They listened. They waited two long minutes for another signal.
“Seems to be taking up his full, legal time,” growled Captain Wass. “Since Marston has gobbled that line maybe he has put on a special register to keep tabs on tooting—thinks it's waste of steam and will reduce dividends. Expects us little fellows to do the squawking!”
The big whistle boomed again, dead ahead, and so much nearer that it provoked the skipper to lash out a round oath.
“He is reeling off eighteen knots for a gait, or you can use my head for a rivet nut!” He yanked the cord and the freighter howled angrily. The other replied with bellowing roar—autocratic, domineering. With irony, with vindictiveness, Captain Wass pitched his voice in sarcastic nasal tone and recited another rule—thereby trying to express his irate opinion of the lawlessness of other men.
“Article Sixteen, Mr. Mayo! He probably carries it in his watch-case instead of his girl's picture! Nice reading for a rainy day! 'A steam-vessel hearing apparently forward of her beam the fog signal of a vessel, the position of which is not ascertained, shall, so far as the circumstances of the case permit, stop her engines and then navigate with caution until all danger of collision is over.' Hooray for the rules!”
Captain Wass hooked a gnarled finger into the loop of the bell-pull and yanked upward viciously. A dull clang sounded far below. He pulled again and the vibration of the engine ceased.
“Gad rabbit it! I'll go the whole hog as the department orders! If he bangs into me we'll see who comes off best at the hearing.”
He gave the bell-loop two quick jerks; then he shifted his hand to another pull and the jingle bell sounded in the engine-room—the Nequasset was ordered to make full speed astern.
The freighter shook and shivered when the screw began to reverse, pulling at the frothing sea, clawing frantically to haul her to a stop. The skipper then gave three resentful, protesting whistle-blasts.
But the reply he received from ahead was a hoarse, prolonged howl. In it there was no hint that the big fellow proposed to heed the protest of the three blasts. It was insistence on right of way, the insolence of the swaggering express liner making time in competition with rivals; it hinted confident opinion that smaller chaps would better get out of the way.
The on-comer had received a signal which served to justify that opinion. Captain Wass had docilely announced that he was going full speed astern, his whistle-blasts had declared that he had stepped off the sidewalk of the ocean lane—as usual! The big fellows knew that the little chaps would do it!
Mate Mayo leaned from the window, his jaw muscles tense, anxiety in his eyes.
The big whistle now was fairly shaking the curtains of the mists and was not giving him any comforting assurance that the liner was swinging to avoid them.
The quartermaster was taking the situation more philosophically than his superiors. He hummed:
“Does that gor-righteously fool ahead there think I blowed three whistles to salute Marston's birthday or their last dividend, Mr. Mayo?” shouted Captain Wass.
Fogs are freaky; ocean mists are often eerie in movements. There are strata, there are eddying air-currents which rend the curtain or shred the massing vapors. The men in the pilot-house of the Nequasset suddenly found their range of vision widened. The fog did not clear; it became more tenuous and showed an area of the sea. It was like a thin veil which disclosed dimly what it distorted and magnified.
In a fog, experienced steamboat men always examine with earnest gaze the line where fog and ocean merge. They do not stare up into the fog, trying to distinguish the loom of an on-coming craft; they are able to discern first of all the white line of foam marking the vessel's cutwater kick-up or her wake.
“There she comes, sir!” announced the mate. He pointed his finger at a foaming upthrust of tossing water.
“Yes, sir! Eighteen knots and both eyes shut!” But there was relief mingled with the resentment. His quick glance informed him that the liner would pass the Nequasset well to starboard—her bow showed a divergence of at least two points from the freighter's course. But the next instant Captain Wass yelped a shout of angry alarm. “Yes, both eyes shut!” he repeated.
Right in line with the liner's threshing bow was a fisherman's Hampton boat, disclosed as the fog drifted.
The passenger-steamer gave forth a half-dozen “woofs” from her whistle, answering the freighter's staccato warning, but gave no signs of slowing. But that they were making an attempt to dodge the mite in their path was made known by a shout from their lookout and his shrill call: “Port! Hard over!”
The fisherman had all the alertness of his kind, trained by dangers and ever-present prospect of mischance to grab at desperate measures. He leaped forward and pulled out his mast and tossed mast and sail overboard.
He knew that he must encounter the tremendous wash and wake of the rushing hull. His shell of a boat, if made topheavy by the sail, would stand small show.
“He's a goner!” gasped Captain Wass. “She's a-going to tramp him plumb underfoot—unless she's going to get up a little more speed and jump over him!” he added, moved to bitter sarcasm.
They saw the little boat go into eclipse behind the black prow, the first lift of the churning waters flipping the cockleshell as a coin is snapped by the thumb. The fisherman was not in view—he had thrown himself flat in the bottom of his boat.
“He's under for keeps,” stated the skipper, with conviction. “If her bilge-keel doesn't cooper him, her port propeller will!”
So rapidly was the liner moving, so abrupt her swoop to the right, that she leaned far over and showed them the red of her huge bilge. Her high speed enabled her to make an especially quick turn. As they gaped, her two stacks swung almost into line. Her shearing bow menaced the Nequasset.
“The condemned old hellion is going to nail us, now!” bellowed Captain Wass. In his panic and his fury he leaped up and down, pulling at the whistle-cord.
She was almost upon them—only a few hundred yards of gray water separated the two steamers.
She was the Triton!
Her name was disclosed on her bow. Her red hawse-holes showed like glowering and savage eyes. There was indescribably brutal threat in this sudden dart in their direction. It was as if a sea monster had swallowed an insect in the shape of a Hampton boat and now sought a real mouthful. But her great rudder swung to the quick pull of her steam steering-gear and again she sheered, cutting a letter s. The movement brought her past the stern of the Nequasset, a biscuit-toss away. The mighty surge of her roaring passage lifted the freighter's bulk aft, and the huge wave that was crowded between the two hulls crowned itself with frothing white and slapped a good, generous ton of green water over the smaller steamer's superstructure.
Captain Wass grabbed down his megaphone; he wanted to submit a few remarks which seemed to fit the incident.
But the captain of the Triton was beforehand with a celerity which matched the up-to-date speed of his craft. He was bellowing through the huge funnel which a quartermaster was holding for him. His language was terrific. He cursed freighters in most able style. He asked why the Nequasset was loafing there in the seaway without steering headway on her! That amazing query took away Captain Wass's breath and all power to retort. Asking that of a man who had obeyed the law to the letter! A fellow who was banging through the fog at eighteen knots' speed blaming a conscientious skipper because the latter had stopped so as to get out of the way!
And, above all, going so fast when he asked the question that he was out of ear-shot before suitable answer could be returned!
Captain Wass revolved those whirling thoughts in a brain which flamed and showed its fires through the skipper's wide-propped eyes.
Then he banged his megaphone across the pilot-house. It rebounded against him, and he kicked it into a corner. He began to whack his fist against a broad placard which was tacked up under his license as master. The cardboard was freshly white, and its tacks were bright, showing that it had been recently added as a feature of the pilot-house. Big letters in red ink at the top counseled, “Safety First.” Other big letters at the bottom warned, “Take No Chances.” The center lettering advised shipmasters that in case of accident the guilty parties would feel all the weight of Uncle Sam's heavy palm; it was the latest output from the Department of Commerce and Labor, and bore the signature of the honorable secretary of the bureau.
Mayo noted that his chief was wholly absorbed in this speechless activity; therefore he pulled the bells which stopped the backward churning and sent the freighter on her way. They passed the fisherman in the Hampton boat; he was bailing his craft.
“That was a rather close call, sir! I am glad that I have been trained by you to be a careful man. You took no chances!”
“And where have I got to by obeying the United States rules and never taking chances, Mr. Mayo? At sixty-five I'm master of a freight-scow, sassed by owners ashore and sassed on the high seas by fellows like that one who just slammed past us! If that passenger-steamer had hit me the lawyers would have shoved the tar end of the stick into my hands! It's all for the good of the hellbent fellows the way things are arranged in this world at the present time. I'll be lucky if he doesn't lodge complaint against me when he gets to New York, saying that I got in his way!” He cut off a fresh sliver of black plug and took his position at the whistle-pull. “You'd better go get an heiress,” he advised his mate, sourly. “Being an old-fashioned skipper in these days of steam-boating is what I'm too polite to name. And as to being the other kind—well, you have just seen him whang past!”
However, as they went wallowing up the coast, their old tub sagging with the weight of the rails under her hatches, Mate Mayo felt considerable of a young man's ambitious envy of that spick-and-span swaggerer who had yelled anathema from the pilot-house of the Triton. It was real steamboating, he reflected, even if the demands of owners and dividend-seekers did compel a master to take his luck between his teeth and gallop down the seas.
Mr. Ralph Bradish, using one of the booth telephones in the Wall Street offices of Marston & Waller, earnestly asked the cashier of an up-town restaurant, as a special favor, to hold for twenty-four hours the personal check, amount twenty-five dollars, given by Mr. Bradish the evening before.
Ten minutes later, with the utmost nonchalance and quite certain that the document was as good as wheat, Mr. Bradish signed a check for one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.
That amount in no measure astonished him. He was quite used to signing smashing-big checks when he was called into the presence of Julius Marston. Once, the amount named was two millions. And there had been numbers and numbers of what Mr. Bradish mentally termed “piker checks”—a hundred thousand, two and three hundred thousand. And he had never been obliged to request any hold up on those checks for want of funds. Because, in each instance, there had been a magic, printed line along which Mr. Bradish had splashed his signature.
Before he blotted the ink on this check Bradish glanced, with only idle curiosity, to note in what capacity he was serving this time. The printed line announced to him that he was “Treasurer, the Paramount Coast Transportation Company, Inc.” He remembered that in the past he had signed as treasurer of the “Union Securities Company,” the “Amalgamated Holding Company,” and for other corporations sponsoring railroads and big industries with whose destinies Julius Marston, financier, appeared to have much to do. It was evident that Financier Marston preferred to have a forty-dollar-a-week clerk do the menial work of check-signing, or at least to have that clerk's name in evidence instead of Marston's own.
That modesty about having his name appear in public on a check seemed to attach to the business habits of Mr. Marston.
Mighty few person were ever admitted to this inner sanctuary where Bradish sat facing his employer across the flat-topped desk. And men who saw that employer outside his office did not turn their heads to stare after him or point respectful finger at him or remark to somebody else, “There's the big Julius Marston.” In the first place, Mr. Marston was not big in a physical sense, and there was nothing about him which would attract attention or cause him to be remarked in a crowd. And only a few persons really knew him, anyway.
He sat in his massive chair; one hand propped on the arm, his elbow akimbo, and with the other hand plucked slowly at the narrow strip of beard which extended from his lower lip to the peaked end of his chin.
“Very well, Mr. Bradish,” he remarked, after the latter had lifted the blotter from the check.
Bradish rose and bowed, and started to leave. He was a tall and shapely young man, with a waist, with a carriage. His garb was up-to-the-minute fashion—repressed. He was a study in brown, as to fabric of attire and its accessories. One of those white-faced chaps who always look a bit bored, with a touch of up-to-date cynicism! One of those fellows who listen much and who say little!
“Just a moment, Bradish,” invited Marston, and the young man stopped. “I like your way in these matters. You don't ask questions. You show no silly interest in any check you sign.”
Bradish reflected an instant on the check in the restaurant cashier's drawer, and pinched his thin lips a little more tightly.
“I'm quite sure you don't do any broadcast talking about the nature of these special duties.” The financier pointed to the check. “I'll say quite frankly that I didn't select you for this service until I had ascertained that you did no talking about your own affairs in the office with my other clerks.”
Bradish inclined his head respectfully.
“In financial matters it is necessary to pick men carefully. I trust you understand my attitude. These transactions are quite legitimate. But modern methods of high finance make it necessary to manipulate the details a little. Your attitude in accepting these duties, as a matter of course is very gratifying from a business standpoint. As a little mark of our confidence in you, you will receive seventy-five dollars per week hereafter.”
“Thank you.”
Mr. Martson allowed himself a quick, dry smile. “This isn't a bribe, you understand. There is nothing attached to this nominal service which requires bribing. We merely want to make it worth while for a prudent and close-mouthed young man to remain with us.”
A buzzer, as unobtrusive as were all the characteristics of Financier Marston, sounded its meek purr.
“Yes,” he murmured into the receiver of the telephone which communicated with the watchful picket of the Marston & Waller offices. “Who? Oh, she may come in at once.”
“Wait here a moment, if you please, Mr. Bradish. It is my daughter who has dropped in for a moment's word with me. I have something more for you to attend to.”
Bradish walked to one of the windows. He stared sharply at the girl who hurried in. Her hat and face were shrouded in an automobile veil, and the cloistered light of the big room helped to conceal her features. But Bradish seemed to recognize something about her in spite of the vagueness of outline. When she spoke to her father the young man's eyes snapped in true astonishment.
“I couldn't explain it very well over the telephone, papa, so I came right down. Do forgive me if I bother you for just a minute.” She glanced quickly at the young man beside the window, but found him merely an outline against the light.
“Only one of our clerks,” said her father. “What is it, my girl?”
“It's Nan Burgess's house-party at Kingston! There's to be an automobile parade—all decorated—at the fête, and I want to go in our big car, and have it two days. I was afraid you'd say no if I asked you over the telephone, but now that I'm right here, looking you in the eyes with all the coaxing power of my soul, you just can't refuse, can you, papa?”
“I think perhaps I would have consented over the telephone, Alma.”
“Then I may take the car?” Her playful tones rose in ecstatic crescendo. The impulsiveness of her nature was displayed by her manner in accepting this favor. She danced to her father and threw her arms about him. She exhibited as much delight as if he had bestowed upon her a gift of priceless pearls. The exuberance of her joy appeared to annoy him a bit.
“Gently, gently, Alma! If you waste your thanks in this manner for a little favor, what will you do some day for superlatives when you are really eager to thank some-body for a big gift?”
“Oh, I'll always have thanks enough to go around—that's my disposition. The folks who love me, I can love them twice as much. You're a dear old dad, and I know you want me to run along so that you can go to making a lot more money. So I'll just take myself out from underfoot.”
When she turned she glanced again at the person near the window, and this time she got a good look at his face. Even the veil could not hide from Bradish the color which spread into her cheeks. She was so conscious of her embarrassment and of her appearance that she did not turn her face to her father when he spoke to her.
“One moment, Alma! Seeing that my big car is going to have a two days' vacation in the country, I may as well make it do one last business errand for me.”
He called Bradish to the desk by a side jerk of the head.
“I want that check put into the hands of the brokerage firm of Mower Brothers as quickly as possible. My car is at the door, and it may as well take you along. Alma, allow this young man of ours to ride with you to the place where I'm sending him.”
He did not present Bradish to Miss Marston. Bradish did not expect the financier to do so. But this dismissal of him as a mere errand-boy—with the young lady staring him out of countenance in a half-frightened way—did cut the pride a bit, even in the case of a mere clerk. And this clerk was pondering on the memory that only the night before he had clasped this young lady—then a party unknown who was evidently bent upon an escapade incog.—had encircled this selfsame maiden with his arms during many blissful dances in one of the gorgeous Broadway public ball-rooms. And he had regaled her and a girl friend on viands for which his twenty-five-dollar check had scarcely sufficed to pay.
Bradish was pretty familiar with the phases and the oddities of the dancing craze, but this contretemps rather staggered him.
They had asked no questions of each other during those dances. They had been perfectly satisfied with the joy of the moment. She had looked at him in a way and with a softness in her eyes which told him that she found him pleasing in her sight. She had been enthusiastic, with that same exuberance he had just witnessed, over his grace in the dance. They had promised to meet again at the ball-room where social conventions did not prevent healthy young folks from enjoying themselves.
“Good heavens!” she whispered to him, as she preceded him through the door. “You work in my father's office?”
“You are surprised—a little shocked—and I don't blame you,” he returned, humbly. “As for me, I am simply astounded. But I am not a gossip.”
She stole a look at his pale, impassive face, and some of her father's instinct in judging men seemed to reassure her.
“One must play a bit,” she sighed. “And it's so stupid most of the time, among folks whom one knows very well. There are no more surprises.”
As he shut the door softly behind them Bradish heard Marston, once more immersed in his affairs of business, directing over the telephone that one Fletcher Fogg be located and sent to him.
“I apologize,” said Bradish, in the corridor. They were waiting for the elevator.
“For what?” She lifted her eyebrows, and there was no hint of annoyance in her dark eyes.
“For—well—seeing how the matter stands, it almost seems as if I had presumed—was masquerading. I am only a clerk, and—”
“But you are a clerk in Julius Marston's offices,” she said, with pride, “and that means that you are to be trusted. I require no apology from you, Mr.—er—”
“My name is Ralph Bradish.”
“I dodged away from dullness last evening; I was hoping to have a bit of a frolic. And I found a young gentleman who asked no impertinent questions, who was very gracious, and who was a delight in the dance. It was all very innocent—rather imprudent—but altogether lovely. There!”
“I thank you.”
“And—well, after Nan Burgess's house-party, I—”
She glanced up at him, provocation in her eyes.
“But I don't dare to hope, do I, that you will condescend to come again and dance with me?”
“Julius Marston has taught his daughter to keep her promise, sir. If I remember, I promised.”
He did not reply, for the elevator's grille door clashed open for them to enter.
And in the elevator, and later in the car, he was silent, as became the clerk of Marston's offices in the company of Marston's daughter when there were listeners near.
Her eyes gave him distinct approval and her lips gave him a charming smile when he alighted at his destination.
Bradish stood for a moment and gazed after the car when it threaded its way into the Broadway traffic.
“She's a flighty young dame, with a new notion for every minute,” he told himself. “You can see that plain enough. It's probably all jolly on her part. However, in these days, if a fellow keeps his head steady and his feet busy, there's no telling what the tango may lead to. This may be exactly, what I've been paying tailors' bills for.”
Indicating that in these calculating times the spirit of youth in the ardor of love at first sight is not as the poet of romance has painted it.
Mr. Fletcher Fogg privately and mentally and metaphorically slapped himself on the back whenever he considered his many activities.
He was perfectly certain that he was the best little two-handed general operator of an all-around character that any gentleman could secure when that gentleman wanted a job done and did not care to give explicit instructions as to the details of procedure.
The look of grief and regret that the fat face of Mr. Fogg could assume when said gentleman—after the job was done—blamed the methods as unsanctioned, even though the result had been achieved—that expression was a study in humility—humility with its tongue in its cheek.
If Mr. Fogg could have advertised his business to suit himself—being not a whit ashamed of his tactics—he would have issued a card inscribed about as follows:
Mr. Fogg, in the presence of Julius Marston, was properly obsequious, but not a bit fawning. He wiped away the moisture patches beside his nose with a purple handkerchief, and put it back into his outside breast pocket with the corners sticking out like attentive ears. He crossed his legs and set on his knee an ankle clothed in a purple silk stocking. On account of his rotundity he was compelled to hold the ankle in place in the firm clutch of his hand. He settled his purple tie with the other hand.
“I'm glad I was in reach when you wanted me,” he assured Mr. Marston. “I'm just in on the Triton. And I want to tell you that you're running that steamboat line in the way an American business man wants to have it run. If I had been on any other line, sir, I wouldn't have been here to-day when you were looking for me. Everything else on the coast prowling along half-speed, but down slammed the old Triton, scattering 'em out from underfoot like an auto going through a flock of chickens, but not a jar or a scrape or a jolt, and into her dock, through two days of thick fog, exactly on the dot. That's the way an American wants to be carried, sir.”
“I believe so, Mr. Fogg,” agreed Julius Marston. “And that's why we feel it's going to be a good thing for all the coast lines to be under one management—our management.”
“Exactly!”
“It's true progress—true benefit to travelers, stockholders, and all concerned. Consolidation instead of rivalry. I believe in it.”
“Exactly!”
“As a broad-gauged business man—big enough to grasp big matters—you have seen how consolidation effects reforms.”
“No two ways about it,” affirmed Mr. Fogg.
“That was very good missionary work you did in the matter of the Sound & Cape line—very good indeed.”
“It's astonishing what high and lofty ideas some stockholders have about properties they're interested in. In financial matters the poorest conclusion a man can draw is that a stock will always continue to pay dividends simply because it always has done so. I had to set off a pretty loud firecracker to wake those Sound & Cape fellows up. I had to show 'em what damage the new deals and competition and our combination would do to 'em if they kept on sleeping on their stock certificates. Funny how hard it is to pry some folks loose from their par-value notions.” Mr. Fogg delivered this little disquisition on the intractability of stockholders with reproachful vigor, staring blandly into the unwinking gaze of Mr. Marston. “I don't want to praise my own humble efforts too much,” he went on, “but I truly believe that inside another thirty days the Sound crowd would have been ready to cash in at fifty, in spite of that minority bunch that was hollering for par. That was only a big yawp from a few folks.”
“Fifty was a fair price in view of what's ahead in the way of competition, but we have made it a five-eighths proposition in order to clinch the deal promptly. I just sent one of our boys around with the check.”
Mr. Fogg beamed. He used his purple handkerchief on his cheeks once more. He allowed to himself a few words of praise: “They'll understand some day that I saved 'em from a bigger bump. But it's hard to show some people.”
“Now, Mr. Fogg, we come to the matter of the Vose line. What's the outlook?”
Mr. Fogg looked sad. “After weeks of chasing 'em, I can only say that they're ugly and stubborn, simply blind to their best interests.”
“Insist on par, do they?”
“Worse than that. Old Vose and his sons and those old hornbeam directors—retired sea-captains, you know, as hard as old turtles—they have taken a stand against consolidation. They belong in the dark ages of business. Old Vose had the impudence to tell me that forming this steamboat combine was a crime, and that he wouldn't be a party to a betrayal of the public. He won't come in; he won't sell; he's going to compete.”
Mr. Marston stroked his strip of beard. “In order for our stock to be what we intend it to be, the Paramount Coast Transportation has got to operate as a complete monopoly, as you understand, Mr. Fogg. A beneficent monopoly—consolidation benefiting all—but nevertheless a monopoly. With one line holding out on us, we've got only a limping proposition.”
“Exactly!”
“What are we going to do about the Vose line?”
“Let it compete, sir. We can kill it in the end.”
“Possibly—probably. But that plan will not serve, Mr. Fogg.”
“It's business.”
“But it is not finance. I'm looking at this proposition solely as a financier, Mr. Fogg. I hardly know one end of a steamboat from the other. I'm not interested in rate-cutting problems. I don't know how long it would take to put the Vose line under. But I do know this, as a financier, handling a big deal, that the Paramount stock will not appeal to investors or the bonds to banks unless we can launch our project as a clean, perfect combination, every transportation charter locked up. I handle money, and I know all of money's timidity and all of money's courage. You think the Vose directors are able to hold their stockholders in line, do you?”
Mr. Fogg uncrossed his legs, put both feet on the floor, hooked his hands across his paunch, and gazed up at the ceiling, evidently pondering profoundly.
“I repeat, I'm not viewing this thing as a steamboating proposition, not figuring what kind of tariffs will kill competition,” stated Mr. Marston. “I'm not estimating what kind of tariffs will make a profit for the Paramount. I'd as soon sell sugar over the counter. My associates expect me to make money for them in another way—make it in big lumps and on a quick turn. The Vose line, competing, kills us from the financial viewpoint.”
“Exactly.”
There was silence in the room for some time.
“There's never any telling what stockholders will do,” remarked Mr. Fogg, his eyes still studying the panels of the ceiling.
Mr. Marston did not dispute that dictum.
His field-marshal slowly tipped down his head and gave his superior another of those bland stares.
“So I'll go right ahead and see what they'll do, sir.”
He rose and kicked the legs of his trousers into place.
“You understand that in this affair, as in all matters where you have been employed, there must be absolutely clean work. There must be no come-back. Of course, I have instructed you to this effect regularly, but I wish to have you remember that I have repeated the instructions, sir.”
“Exactly!” Mr. Fogg's eyes did not blink.
“You will be prepared to testify to that effect in case the need ever arises.”
“Exactly!”
Mr. Fogg delivered that word like a countersign. Into it, in his interviews with Julius Marston, he put understanding, humility, promise.
“May we expect quick action?” asked the financier. “The thing mustn't hang fire. We have a lot of our nimble money tied up as it is.”
“Exactly!” returned Mr. Fogg, on his way to the door. “Quick action it is!”
“This is probably the craziest idea that ever popped into a man's head when that man was sitting in Julius Marston's office,” reflected Mr. Fogg, marching through the anteroom of this temple of finance. “There's one thing about it that's comforting—it's so wild-eyed it will never be blamed on to Julius Marston as any of his getting up. And that's his principal lookout when a deal is on. It seems to be up to me to deliver the goods.”
He sat down on a bench in the waiting-room and rubbed his knuckles over his forehead.
“Just let me get this thing right end to,” he told himself. “How did the idea happen to hit me, anyway? Oh, yes! Old Vose bragging to me that every stockholder in the Vose line was behind him, and that the annual meeting was about to come off, and then I would see what a condemned poor show I stood to get even the toe of my boot into the crack of the company door. He's a Maine corporation. I've known of cases where that fact helped a lot. There are plenty of ifs and buts in this thing, but here goes!”
He applied himself to one of the office telephones, asked for several numbers, one after the other, and put questions with eagerness and rapidity.
The information he received seemed to disturb him considerably. He came out of the booth and scrubbed his cheeks with his purple handkerchief.
“Their annual meeting at ten o'clock to-morrow morning, four hundred miles from here! Well, I suppose I ought to be thankful that it's not being held right now,” Mr. Fogg informed himself, determined to fan that one flicker of hope with both wings of his optimism. “But I've got to admit that twenty-four hours is almighty scant time for a job of this sort, even when the operator is the little Fogg boy himself. Damme, I haven't come to a full, realizing sense yet of all I've got to do and how I'm going to do it.”
He hurried out, dove into an elevator, and was shot down to the street.
He was lucky enough to find a taxi at the curb.
“Grand Central,” he told the driver. “I've got five dollars that says you can beat the Subway express and land me in season for the ten-o'clock limited for Boston.”
As soon as it became evident to Mr. Fogg that his driver had seen his duty and was going to do it, traffic squad be blowed, the promoter settled back, and his thoughts began to revolve faster than the taxi's wheels.
“It's going to be like the mining-camp 'lulu hand,'” was his mental preface to his plans. “It can be played only once in a sitting-in; it has got to be backed with good bluff, but it's a peach when it works. And what am I a promoter for? What have I studied foreign corporation laws for?”
Mr. Fogg took off his hat and mopped his bald spot, wrinkling his eyelids in deep reflection.
“The idea is,” he mused, “I'm a candidate for the presidency of the Vose line at to-morrow's meeting. But I haven't been elected yet!”
However, Mr. Fogg's preliminary sniffing at the affairs of the Vose line had informed him where he could pick up at least ten scattered shares of their stock. He figured that before midnight he would have them in his possession. As to the next day and the next steps, well, the nerve of a real American plunger clings to life until the sunset of all hopes, even as the snake's tail, though the serpent's head be bruised beyond repair, is supposed to wriggle until sunset.
He despatched a telegram at New Haven. He received a reply at Providence, and he read it and felt like a gambler who has drawn a card to fill his bobtail hand. When a design is brazen and the game is largely a bluff, plain, lucky chance must be appealed to.
The telegram had been addressed to Attorney Sawyer Franklin, in a Maine city. It had requested an appointment with Mr. Franklin on the following morning.
The reply had stated that Mr. Franklin was critically ill in a hospital, but that all matters of business would be attended to by his office force, as far as was possible.
Attorney Sawyer Franklin, as Mr. Fogg, of course, was fully aware, was clerk of the Vose line corporation, organized according to the Maine law as a “foreign corporation,” under the more liberal regulations which have attracted so many metropolitan promoters into the states of Maine and New Jersey.