Chapter 31

“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.

XXX ~ THE MATTER OP A MONOGRAM IN WAX

O come list awhile and you soon shall hear. By the rolling sea lived a maiden fair. Her father followed the sum-muggling trade Like a warlike he-ro, Like a warlike he-ro that never was aff-er-aid! --The Female Smuggler.

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. {*}

* When the steamer _Carolyn_ was wrecked on Metinic Rock a few years ago a venturesome young man, without money or experience in salvaging, managed to raise a few thousand dollars, bought the steamer for $1,000 from a frightened junk concern, and after many months of toil, during which he was mocked at by experienced men, managed to float her. She was sold recently for $180,000, and is now carrying cargoes to Europe.

They were reduced to extremities on board the _Conomo_. There was no more coal for the lighter's engine, equipment was disabled, parts were needed for worn machinery, Smut-nosed Dolph was pounding Hungryman's tattoo on the bottom of the flour-barrel, trying to knock out enough dust for another batch of biscuit.

Mayo had kept his promise and had not confided to Captain Candage the source of the loan which had enabled them to do what they had done. After a few days of desperate consideration Mayo sailed on the _Ethel and May_ for Maquoit.

He avoided the eyes of the villagers as much as was possible; he landed far down the beach from the house which was the refuge for the folks from Hue and Cry. In his own heart he knew the reason for this slinking approach: he did not want Polly Candage to see him in this plight. Her trust had been so absolute! Her confidence in him so supreme! In his mental distress he was not thinking of his rags or his physical unsightliness. He went straight to the store of Deacon Rowley and his looks startled that gentleman into some rather unscriptural ejaculations.

However, Deacon Rowley promptly recovered his presence of mind when Mayo solicited an additional loan. The refusal was sharp and conclusive.

“But you may as well follow your hand in the thing,” insisted Mayo. “That's why I have come to you. I hated to come, sir. I have tried all other means. You can see how I have worked!” He spread his tortured hands. “Come out and see for yourself!”

“I don't like the water.”

“But you can see that we are going to succeed if we get more money. You have five thousand in the project; you can't afford to drop where you are.”

“I know what I can afford to do. I have always said, from the first, that you'd never make a go of it.”

At this statement Mayo displayed true amazement.

“But, confound it all, you lent us money! What do you mean by crawfishing in this way?”

Deacon Rowley was visibly embarrassed; he had dropped to this vitally interested party a damaging admission of his real sentiments.

“I mean that I ain't going to dump any more money in, now that you ain't making good! I might have believed you the first time you came. I reckon I must have. But you can't fool me again. No use to coax! Not another cent.”

“Aren't you worried about how you're going to get back what you have already lent?” demanded Mayo, with exasperation.

“The Lord will provide,” declared Deacon Rowley, devoutly.

The young man stared at this amazing creditor, worked his jaws a few moments wordlessly, found no speech adequate, and stamped out of the store. He no longer dreaded to meet Polly Candage. He felt that he needed to see her. He was seeking the comfort of sanity in that shore world of incomprehensible lunacy; he had had experience with Polly Candage's soothing calmness.

She came out from her little school and controlled her emotions with difficulty when she saw his piteous condition.

“Let's walk where I can feel the comfort of green grass under my feet,” he pleaded; “that may seem real! Nothing else does!”

By her matter-of-fact acceptance of him and his appearance and his mood she calmed him as they walked along.

“And even Rowley,” he added, after his blunt confession of failure, “he has just turned me down. He won't follow his five thousand with another cent. The old rascal deserves to be cheated if we fail. He is telling me that he always believed we would never make good in the job. Is he crazy, or am I?”

“Make all allowances for Deacon Rowley,” she pleaded. “Keep away from him. He is not a consoling man. But there must be some way for you, Boyd. Let us think! You have been keeping too close to the thing--to your work--and there are other places besides Limeport.”

“There's New York--and there's a way,” he growled.

“You must try every chance; it means so much to you!”

“Is that your advice?”

“Certainly, Boyd!”

He stopped and pulled the sealed packet from his coat. In the stress of his despair and resentment he was brutal rather than considerate.