Chapter 16

“No. Last report is that he's better this forenoon. But that's the way some of these crazy attendants mix things up when anybody inquires at a hospital. Now, of course, seeing that the registered copy is on its way and Franklin is getting better, that's all the more reason why you don't care to hang around these diggings and be annoyed. I've got a scheme. It will take you out of town in a very quiet style. I have telephoned down to the docks, and there's a Vose freighter in here discharging rails. Do you live at home or at a boarding-place?”

“I board,” said Boyne, still wrestling with the sickening information that he had betrayed an employer who was alive; somehow the sentiment that it was equally base to betray a deceased employer had not impressed itself on his benumbed conscience. He was now keenly aware that he feared to meet up with a living and indignant Lawyer Franklin. Fogg questioned, and Boyne gave his boarding-house address.

“We'll drive there, and I'll wait outside in the cab until you can scratch together a gripful of your things. Don't load yourself down too much. Remember, you've got plenty of cash in your pockets.”

A little later Fogg escorted the young man up the gang-plank of the _Nequasset_, from whose hold the last of her load of clanging rails was being derricked by panting windlass engines. To Captain Zoradus Wass, who was lounging against the rail just outside the pilot-house, Mr. Fogg marched with business promptitude, and spoke with assurance.

“Captain, my name is Fletcher Fogg. Within forty-eight hours the directors of the Vose line will elect me president and general manager. That news may be rather astonishing, but it's true.”

The veteran skipper did not reply. He shifted a certain bulge from one cheek to the other.

“Well?” queried Fogg, a bit sharply.

“I ain't saying anything”

“You believe what I tell you, don't you?”

“I don't know you.”

“This young man is David Boyne, acting clerk of the Vose line corporation. The annual meeting has just been held in this city. He made the official records. He will tell you that a new board of directors has been chosen--the old crowd is out.”

“That is so,” stated Boyne, obeying the prompting of Fogg's quick glance.

“I don't know you, either.”

Mr. Fogg was not abashed. “It isn't especially necessary that you know us. How soon do you leave?”

“We're going out light as soon as them rails are on the wharf.”

“I am sending Mr. Boyne with you on a tour of inspection, captain. Please give him quarters and use him right.”

“Nothing doing till I get orders from the owners,” declared Captain Wass.

“Haven't I told you that I shall be general manager of this line to-morrow, or next day, at the latest?”

“When you're general manager come around and give off your orders, sir.”

“I'll do it. I'll come aboard in New York--”

“I'm ordered to Philadelphia,” prompted Captain Wass. “That's where you'll find me.”

“Philadelphia, then! I'll come aboard and fire you.”

“Do just as you feel like doing.”

“You refuse to take along this young man?”

“This ain't a passenger-boat. I don't know you. Show orders from owners--otherwise nothing doing.”

Mate Mayo had come out of his cabin, near at hand. With a young man's quicker perception of possibilities and contingencies he realized that his skipper might be letting an old man's obstinacy block common sense.

The first mate had an eye for men and their manners. He had been listening to Mr. Fogg. That gentleman certainly seemed to know what he was talking about. And young Mate Mayo, having a nose for news as well as an eye for men, understood that the coast transportation business was in a touchy state generally. He gave Mr. Fogg further inspection and decided that a little skilful compromising was advisable.

“Captain Wass, will you step aside with me a moment?” asked the mate.

“What for?”

“I want to have a word with you.”

“Have it right here,” said the captain, tartly. “I never have any business that's got to be whispered behind corners.” He scowled when his mate gave him a wink, both suggestive and imploring. “Spit it out!”

“The law doesn't allow us to take passengers, as you suggest. And naturally you don't like to act without orders from owners.” He looked at Mr. Fogg as he spoke, plainly offering apology to that gentleman. “But we need a second steward and--”

“We don't!” Captain Wass was blunt and tactless.

“I beg pardon--we really do. And we can sign this young man in a--a sort of nominal way, and then when we get to Philadelphia we'll probably find the matter all straightened out.”

“What's your name?” asked Mr. Fogg.

“Boyd Mayo, sir. First mate.”

“Mr. Mayo, you're a young man with a lot of common sense,” declared Fogg.

To himself, staring at the young man, he said: “I'm going to play this game out with two-spots, and here's one ready for the draw!”

“I'll see you in Philadelphia, Mr. Mayo,” he continued, aloud. “I am exactly what I say I am. Captain Wass, you've got something coming to you. Mr. Mayo, you've got something coming to you, also--and it's good!” His assertiveness was compelling, and even the captain displayed symptoms of being impressed. “It isn't at all necessary that my agent make this trip with you, Captain Wass. Perhaps I had no distinct right to bring him here. But I am a hustling sort of a business man and I want to get at matters in short order. However, I ask no favors. Come on, Boyne!”

“We'll sign him on as steward to cover the law,” proffered the captain, as terse in consent as he was in refusal.

“Very well,” agreed Fogg. “You've got an able first mate, sir.” He flipped his watch out. “I've got a train to make, gentlemen. Good day!”

He took Boyne by the arm and led him to the ladder from the bridge. “Son,” said he, “you dig into that Mayo chap till you know him up and down and through and through. I'm going to use him. And you keep your mouth shut about yourself.” He backed down the ladder, feeling his way cautiously with his fat legs, trotted to the waiting cab, and was whirled away.

At high noon the next day Fletcher Fogg marched into the general offices of the Vose line in company with ten solid-looking citizens. Imperturbable and smiling, he allowed President Vose to shriek anathema and to wave the certified copy of the record of the annual meeting under the snub Fogg nose.

“What you say doesn't change the situation in the least,” affirmed Mr. Fogg. “You'll find the actual records of the meeting deposited in the usual place in the state of your incorporation. If you think these new directors are not lawfully and duly elected, you can apply to the courts.”

“You confounded thief, it's likely to take a year to get a decision. This is damnable. It's piracy. You know what courts are!”

“Poke up your courts, then. It isn't my fault if they're slow.”

The new directors filed into the board-room and with great celerity proceeded to elect Fletcher Fogg to be president and general manager of the Vose line.

“What are you going to do?” pleaded the deposed executive head. “My money is in here--my whole life is in it--my pride--my intention to see that the public gets a square deal. You infernal rogue, what are you going to do with my property?”

“That's my own business,” said Fletcher Fogg.

“You can't get away with it--you can't do it!” raged Vose. “I'll get at the inside of how that meeting was conducted. You'd better take backwater right now, Fogg, and save yourself. I'm not afraid to tell you what I'm going to do. I'll have a temporary injunction issued. I'll prove fraud was used at that meeting--bribery, yes, sir!”

Mr. Fogg smiled and sat down at the president's desk. “First he'll have to find a young man by the name of David Boyne,” he told himself.

“Vose,” said the new president, “all you can show a court is the record of an annual meeting, duly and legally held. And if the judge wants to have a look at me he'll find me running this line a blamed sight better than you have ever run it.”

“It's a cheap, plain trick,” bleated the aged steamship manager. “Your crowd is going to sell out to the Paramount--it's your plot.”

“Oh no! We're not inviting injunctions and law and newspaper talk and slurs and slander, Mr. Vose. If there's ever any selling out you'll be the first to suggest it; I never shall. You see, I'm just as frank with you as you are with me. Selling this line to the Paramount right now, just because the new board is in, would be ragged work--very coarse work. Thank Heaven, I have a proper respect for the law--and what it can do to bother a fool. I am not a fool, Mr. Vose.”

XIX ~ THE PRIZE PACKAGE FROM MR. FOGG

Our captain stood on his quarter-deck, And a fine little man was he! “Overhaul, overhaul, on your davit tackle fall, And launch your boats to the sea, Brave boys! And launch your boats to the sea.” --The Whale.

A slowing, tug, tooting fussy and staccato blasts which Captain Wass translated into commands to hold up, intercepted the _Nequasset_ in Hampton Roads.

Mr. Fletcher Fogg was a passenger on the tug. In a suit of natty gray, he loomed conspicuously in the alley outside the tug's pilot-house. He cursed roundly when he toilsomely climbed the ladder to the freighter's deck, for the rusty sheathing smutched the knees of his trousers.

“I'm doing a little better than I promised you, captain,” he stated when he arrived finally in the presence of the master. “I said Philadelphia. But here I am. Do you know me now?”

“Your name is Fogg,” returned Captain Wass, exhibiting no special delight.

“And I'm manager of this line. As it seems to be pretty hard for you to get anything through that thick nut of yours, I'll ask you to glance at a paper which will save argument.”

The paper was an attested notification, signed by the directors, stating in laconic legal phrase what Mr. Fogg had just declared.

“You recognize my authority, do you?”

“Your bill o' lading reads O. K.,” assented the skipper.

“Very well! Exactly! Then you take your orders. Proceed to an anchorage off Lambert Point below Norfolk, pick a berth well off the channel, and put down both hooks. The boat is going out of commission. I find you're not making any money for the owners.”

“It ain't my fault. With charters at--” began the master, indignantly.

“I haven't any time for a joint debate. You are laid off. Bring your accounts to the main office as soon as you have turned the steamer over to the caretaker--he'll come out from Norfolk.” Manager Fogg turned on his heel to meet Mate Mayo. “You will report at the main offices, too, Mr. Mayo. Have you master's papers?”

“I have, sir--Atlantic waters, Jacksonville to East-port.”

“Very good--you're going to be promoted. I shall put you aboard the passenger-steamer _Montana_ as captain.” He looked about sharply. “Where is my agent?”

“There, in the quartermaster's cabin. We gave him that,” replied Captain Wass, gruffly. “I'm glad I'm out of steamboating. I've learned how to run a boarding-house and make money out of it.”

Mr. Fogg did not understand that sneer, and he paid no attention to the captain's manner. He started for the cabin indicated.

“Well, you can swell around in gold braid now and catch your heiress,” observed Captain Wass to his mate.

“I'm sorry, skipper,” said the young man, with real feeling. “You are the man to be promoted, not I. It isn't right--it doesn't seem real.”

“There isn't any real steamboating on this coast any longer. It is--I don't know what the devil it is,” snarled the veteran. “I have been sniffing and scouting. I'd like to be a mouse in the wall of them New York offices and hear what it is they're trying to do to us poor cusses. Ordered one day to keep the law; ordered the next day to break the law; hounded by owners and threatened by the government! I'm glad I'm out of it and glad you've got a good job. That last I'm specially glad about. But keep your eye peeled. There are queer doings round about you!”

Fogg entered the cabin and shut the door behind him. He found Boyne sitting on a stool and looking somewhat apprehensive. “Hiding?” inquired Fogg.

“I thought I wouldn't show myself till I was sure about who was on that tug,” said the young man.

“That's the boy, David,” complimented Fogg, with real heartiness. “You're no fool. Nothing like being careful. Pack your bag and go aboard the tug.” He marched out.

“Philadelphia charter has been canceled, eh?” asked Captain Wass. The tone of his voice did not invite amity.

“It has, sir.”

“Seems queer to turn down a cargo that's there waiting--and the old boat can carry it cheaper than anybody else, the way I've got expenses fined down.”

“Are you trying to tell me my business?”

“I have beep steamboating forty years, and I know a little something about it.”

Mr. Fogg looked at the old mariner, eyes narrowed. He wanted to inform Captain Wass that the latter knew altogether too much about steamboating for the kind of work that was planned out along the coast in those ticklish times.

“Then I ain't to expect anything special from now on?” asked the skipper. In spite of his determination to be crusty and keep his upper lip stiff, he could not repress a little wistfulness, and his eyes roved over the old freighter with affection.

“Not a thing, sir!” Mr. Fogg was blunt and cool. He started for the ladder. He slapped the shoulder of Mayo as he passed the young man. “Here's the kind of chap we're looking for nowadays. The sooner you report, my boy, the better for you.”

With Boyne following him, he climbed down the swaying ladder, and was lifted from the lower rungs over the tug's rail to a secure footing.

After the lines had been cast off and the tug went floundering away at a sharp angle, Captain Wass scuffed into his pilot-house and gave the bells.

“She seems to feel it--honest she does!” he told Mate Mayo. “She goes off logy. She doesn't pick up her heels. Nor could I do it when I walked in here. Going to be scrapped--the two of us! Cuss their picking and stealing and fighting and financing. They ain't steam-boating any longer. They're using good boats to play checkers in Wall Street with. Well, son,” he mourned, hanging dispiritedly over the sill of the window and staring up the wind-swept Chesapeake, “I ain't going to whine--but I shall miss the old packet and the rumble and racket of the old machine down there in her belly. I'd even take the job of watchman aboard her if he would hire me.”

“He seems to fancy me a bit. I'll ask him to hire you,” proffered the mate, eagerly.

“I reckon you didn't get the look in his eye when he fired me,” said Captain Wass. “I won't allow you to say a word to him about me. You go ahead, boy, and take the job he has offered. But always remember that he's a slick operator. See what he has done to Uncle Vose; and we haven't been able to worm it out of that passenger how it was done, either. Financing in these days comes pretty nigh to running without lights and under forced draught. It gets a man to Prosperity Landing in a hurry, providing he doesn't hit anything bigger than he is. They're going to haul up this freighter and blame it on to me because I ain't making money for the owners. They'll have plenty of figgers to show it. Look out that they don't lay something worse and bigger to you. They're going to play a game with the Vose line, I tell you! In the game of big finance, 'tag-gool,' making 'it' out of the little chap who can't run very fast, seems to be almighty popular.”

He slowed the freighter to a snail's pace when he approached the dredged channel, and at last the leadsman found suitable bottom. Both anchors were let go.

The old skipper sounded the jingle, telling the chief engineer that the engine-crew was released. In a speaking-tube the captain ordered both boilers to be blown off.

“And there's the end of me as master of my ship,” he said.

Mate Mayo's eyes were wet, but words of sympathy to fit the case did not come to his sailor tongue, and he was silent.

When the tug was near Newport News, Manager Fogg took David Boyne apart from all ears which might hear. He gave the young man another packet of money.

“The rest of your expenses for a good trip,” he said. “You seem to be a chap who knows how to mind his own business--and able to get at the other fellow's business in pretty fair shape. You haven't told such an awful lot about young Mayo, but it's satisfactory to learn that he has lived such a simple and every-day life that there isn't much to tell.”

“I never saw a man so sort of guileless,” affirmed Boyne. “Not that I have had a lot of experience, but in a lawyer's office you are bound to see considerable of human nature.”

“He is no doubt a very deserving young man--and I'm glad I can use him,” said Fogg, not able to keep all the grimness out of his tones. “Now, son,” he went on, after a moment of pondering, “you stay on board this tug till I have been gone five minutes. There are a lot of sharp eyes around in these times, and some of Vose's friends would be glad to run to him with a story about me. After five minutes, you take your bag and walk to Dock Seven and go aboard the freighter _Ariel_--go just as if you belonged there. Tell the captain that you are Daniel Boyle--get the name--Daniel Boyle. And never tell anybody until you hear from me that your name is David Boyne. That freighter leaves to-night for Barbados with sugar machinery. You'll have a nice trip.”

“I don't care how far away I get,” declared Boyne, rather bitterly. “I have done a tough trick. I'm pretty much of a renegade. No, I don't care how far I go.”

“Nor I, either,” agreed Fogg, but a smile relieved the brutality of the speech. “You see, son, both of us have special reasons why it's just as well for you to be away from these diggings for a time. If some folks get hold of you they'll bother you with a lot of foolish questions. When you get tired of Barbados go ahead and pick out another nice trip, and keep going, and later on we'll find a good job for you up this way. Keep me posted. Good-by.”

The tug had docked and he hurried off and away.

“It's quite a game,” reflected Mr. Fogg. “I've bluffed a pot with one two-spot. Work was a little coarse because it had to be done on short notice. The work I do with my second two-spot is going to be smoother, and there won't be so much beefing after the pot is raked in. Too much hollering, and your game gets raided! I can see what would happen to me--Julius Marston doing it--if I give the strong-arm squad an opening. But if they see the little Fogg boy slip a card in the next deal he's going to make--well, I'll eat the _Montana_, if that's the only way to get rid of her.”

Boyd Mayo lost no time in obeying his orders to report in New York. He gave his name to a clerk at the offices of the Vose line and asked to see Mr. Fogg. He presented himself a bit timorously. He was not at all sure of his good fortune. It is rather bewildering for a young man to have the captaincy of a twin-screw passenger racer popped at one as carelessly as tossing a peanut to a child. He crushed his cap between trembling palms when he followed the clerk into the inner office.

Mr. Fogg rose and greeted Mayo with great cordiality. “Good morning, captain,” said the manager. “Allow me to hope that you're going to be as lively in keeping to schedule time as you have been in getting here from Norfolk.”

“I didn't feel like wasting much time, considering what was promised me,” stammered Mayo, not yet sure of himself.

“Afraid I might change my mind?”

“It seemed too good to be true. I wanted to get here as soon as I could and make sure that I had heard right, sir. Here are my papers.”

He laid them in the manager's hand. Fogg did not unfold them. He fanned them, indicating a chair.

“Sit down, Captain Mayo. You understand that new management has taken hold of the Vose line in order to get some life and snap into the business. We have strong competition. A big syndicate is taking over the other steamship properties, and we must hustle to keep up with the procession. I'm laying off freighters that are not showing a proper profit--I'm weeding out the moss-covered captains who are not up with the times. That's why I'm putting you on the _Montana_ in place of Jacobs.”

“He's a good man--one of the best,” ventured Mayo, loyalty to his kind prompting him. “I'll be sorry to see him step aside, as glad as I am to be promoted--and that's honest.”

“That's the way to talk; but we've got to have hustle and dash, and young men can give us what we're after. It doesn't mean that you've got to take reckless chances.”

“I hope not, Mr. Fogg. My training with Captain Wass has been the other way. And if you could only give him--”

“Captain, you've got your own row to hoe. Keep your eye on it,” advised the general manager, sharply. “I'm picking captains for the Vose boats, and I think I understand my business. Now what I want to know is, do you have confidence in me? Are you going to be loyal to me?”

“Yes, sir!” affirmed Mayo, impressed by his superior's brisk, brusque business demeanor.

“Exactly! And the only talk I want you to turn loose is to the effect that you believe I'm doing my best to make this line worth something to the stockholders. Where are you stopping?”

Mayo named a little hotel around the corner.

“I'll put you aboard the _Montana_ just as soon as I can arrange the details of transfer. I may let Jacobs make another trip or so. Report here each morning at nine. For the rest of the time keep within reach of the hotel telephone.”

Mayo saluted and went out.

Fogg called the observer at the weather bureau on the telephone and asked some questions. He was informed that the wind had swung into the northwest and that the long-prevailing fog had been blown off the coast.

Mr. Fogg appeared to feel somewhat peevish over this sudden departure of the weather phenomenon which bore his family name. He slammed the receiver on to the hook and said a naughty word. A person overhearing might have wondered a bit, for here was a steamboat manager cursing the absence of the fog instead of preserving his profanity to expend on the presence of the demoralizing mists. But the reign of the north wind in late summer is never long; three days later the breeze shifted, and the gray banks of the fog marched in from the open sea.

Mayo was awakened early by the clamor of the whistles of river craft, for the little hotel was near the water-front. He saw the fog drifting in shredded masses against the high buildings, shrouding the towers. He had been waiting his call to duty with much impatience, finding the confinement of the hotel irksome in the crisp days of sunlight, eager to be out and about this splendid new duty which promised so much.

It was the _Montana's_ sailing-day from the New York end.

He had gone to sleep thrilling with the earnest hope that he would be called to take her out. But when he looked out into that morning, saw the draping curtains of the stalking mists, heard the frantic squallings of craft in the harbor, frenzied howls of alarm, hoarse hootings of protests and warnings, he was suddenly and pointedy anxious to have his elevation to the pilot-house of the _Montana_ deferred. Better the smoky, cramped office of the little hotel where he had been chafing in dismal waiting. He was perfectly willing to sit there and study over again the advertising chromos on the walls and gaze out on the everlasting procession of rumbling drays. But at eight o'clock the telephone summoned him.

“This is General-Manager Fogg,” the voice informed him, though he did not require the information; he knew those crisp tones. “I am speaking from my apartments. Please proceed at once to the _Montana_. I'll come aboard within an hour.”

“Do you expect me to take command--to--take her out to-day?” faltered Mayo.

“Certainly. Captain Jacobs will transfer command as soon as I get down.”