Part 24

“Father’s girl sees more clearly every day that he needs a guardian,” she said, with a rather hard laugh. “Thank you, Mr. Keedy, but I do not need your invitation to stay.”

Captain Holstrom looked very sheepish. It was plain that he had been listening to some plain and frank opinions on his way back from the ferry station.

He tried to act unconcerned, and spying the drink I had not touched, started to lift it to his lips. His daughter snatched it away and sprayed the liquor on the wall. He sat down, coughing behind his hand. I had seen men like Capt. Rask Holstrom before--a bully and a braggart among men, but half a fool where women were concerned--pliable in the hands of the loose female, and mortally afraid of his own womenkind.

The men in the room were silent for some time. Keedy was looking at Holstrom; then his eyes fell on my canvas sack at Holstrom’s feet. He spoke to me in almost the same fawning tone he had used with the girl. It was that almost indescribable air--that cheap assumption of gentility that a professional gambler uses when he is prosecuting his business, and it rather jars on an honest man.

“I’m sure it would be almighty interesting to me and to these other gents and the lady to see an Eastern divingsuit. I reckon you’re pretty much up to date back there.” Liar and knave himself, he wasn’t exactly sure I had been telling the truth. He wanted to see the goods. But I did not mind much. I knelt on the floor, and opened the sack and dug out the equipment. This yam of mine goes back before the days of the compressed-air chamber which the modern diver carries on his back just as an automobile carries fuel. But I had a mighty good suit, almost a new one. There wasn’t a dent in the helmet or a patch oh the rubber or canvas.

“We have had a long talk, this gent and I,” said Keedy, after he had squatted like a frog and had peered at all I had to show him. “I’m naturally a man to get to cases quick. I’m open and free with them I take a liking to.” He went to the door and peeked into the corridor. “Number-two Jones, you stand here and keep an eye and ear out,” he directed. “Now, Brother Sidney, you Eastern chaps are apt to be pretty cold-blooded, and you need first-hand evidence. I’m going to open up to you one of the biggest prospects you ever heard of--reckoning that, as a human being, you simply can’t resist coming into it. If you don’t see fit to come in after it has been opened up to you--well--” He scowled at me like a demon, snapped his fingers above his head, and turned on old Ike.

“Get up and take the floor,” he directed.

“First-hand evidence is what counts,” went on Mr. Keedy. “Now, here’s a man who has told his story over a lot of times on the water-front. He has told it so many times it has grown to be a joke. They’ve given him the nickname of ‘Ingot Ike.’ Lots of big things in this world have been buried under a joke.”

He leaned back in his chair and twisted up the ends of his mustache.

“Court is open for first-hand evidence, gents. Ike is the first witness. I’m going to ask him questions and make him answer snappy, for if he ever gets to rambling on this story of his he’ll make it longer than a dime novel. Look-a-here, Ike, what was the steamer _Golden Gate?_”

“Passengers, bullion in ingots, and general cargo ’tween here and Panama.”

It was rather comical to see that old bean-pole straighten up and try to imitate the snappy style of Mr. Keedy.

“What was your job aboard of her?”

“Quartermaster.”

“What happened to her?”

“Caught fire off coast of Mexico when she was bound for Panama, beached well north of Acapulco, rolled over and over in surf, what was left of her, and bones still there. Three ribs show at low tide if you know where to look for ’em.”

“What was she carrying for treasure?”

“Over three million dollars’ worth of gold in ingots in her strong-room abaft second bulkhead, between pantry and boiler-room.”

“Was the treasure ever recovered?”

“Wreck was abandoned to underwriters, and after underwriters had worked for a long time, keeping very mysterious, they reported that they had got the ingots all out of her. Then they came away. Everybody believed that the underwriters had cleaned out the wreck, just as they reported they had. But I was in that wrecking crew. I kept my eye out. It was a bluff about getting that treasure.” The old man began to show excitement. “Their divers couldn’t get at it. They didn’t have nerve, and they didn’t have the right outfits in those days. The underwriters didn’t want it shown that they hadn’t pulled up the stuff. They knew that every Tom, Dick, and Harry would go down there, peeking and poking around that wreck, and that some fellow might think up a way to call the turn.

“So they bribed the divers, and the divers brought up fake boxes of gold, and the report was made that all the treasure had been taken from the _Golden Gate_ wreck. But it’s all there, gents. The underwriters haven’t been able yet to think of a sensible way of getting at it. They don’t want to make another splurge and attract attention till they’re sure of what they’re doing. Them’s facts what I’m telling. I know. I haven’t done much of anything but keep tabs. I don’t care if they do call me Ingot Ike. I know what I’m talking about. The trouble down there has been that the old Pacific has rolled on and rolled in and piled up sand over that treasure, and they didn’t know how to handle the proposition in those days.”

“The idea is, Brother Sidney,” broke in Keedy, “firsthand evidence informs us that three or four millions are cached in a place we know of. Now, because man has failed once, years ago, when man wasn’t as bright as he is now, is that any sign that man shall give up? Captain Holstrom and I say, ‘No.’ We’re partners. We have been talking over this proposition for a long time. Now, up to date, are you in any way interested?”

I was, and I said so.

“There they lie,” said Keedy, “bars of yellow gold. Boxes and boxes of shiny gold. More than three million dollars’ worth of finest gold--and only a little water and sand over ’em. No bars to break through, no vaults to drill. Only sand and water--and we ought to be able to match that sand with grit, and the water with good red blood.”

There are some men who can talk about money, and it will not start a thrill in you.

Marcena Keedy could talk about gold in a way to make your soul hungry. He rolled the sound in his mouth--a big, round, juicy sound--as a boy sucks a candy marble. It made the moisture ooze in my own mouth to hear him talk.

Mr. Keedy gave over leaning back in his chair. He sat on the edge of it, and leaned forward.

“It’s right at this point that we go into this thing clear to the necks, my friend. I have studied men a lot in my life. I can see about what kind of a fellow you are. If another fellow opens up to you in honest fashion you are _with_ him--and if you can’t stay with him you are not going off and squeal and hurt him. There’s nothing half-way between Holstrom, here, and myself. We’re partners. We’re in together, whole hog. I’ll spread the cards for you just as they are spread for the captain and myself. He and I have been having a run of good luck to date in our partnership. We’ll have some more firsthand evidence. Rask, how was it you got the inside clinch in the _Zizania_ matter?”

“For the benefit of a man from the East, where they ain’t as shrewd as the Yankees think they be,” stated Captain Holstrom in his husky voice, “I will say that we’ve got a devilish good close combine on the waterfront--we fellows have been on the job for a long time. When the Government auctions off anything we get together and fix the top price at which any bid shall go, and then we cut the cards to settle who shall pick the plum at that price. It means that the lucky man will pick a bargain, don’t forget that. Price can’t be budged above that bid--and it’s a blamed measly price.” He smacked his lips. “So that is how I have got hold of the old __Zizania__, Government lighthouse-tender and buoy steamer, side-wheeler, one hundred and seventy feet long, new derricks, boilers in fair shape, and engine fresh overhauled. I’ve cut the cards for eleven years, and this has been my first look-in. But it’s worth waiting for. I could junk her and make four times what I pay for her.”

“What _we_ pay for her,” corrected Mr. Keedy. “Remember that I’m your partner. Now I’ll take the stand myself. Holstrom here sold his tugboat the minute he struck luck on the _Zizania_. He pulled what money he had in the bank. He lacked half the price, at that. He was going to borrow on a bill of sale. ‘No,’ says I to him. ‘Bring along your cash to the place where I’m dealing faro. I’ll go in partner with you and double your pot.’ Holstrom knew that when I talked that way with him I was square. Some men would have double-crossed him and pulled the pickings for the bank. I ain’t that kind,” declared Mr. Keedy, pulling himself up virtuously and giving the girl a side-glance. “I know who my friends are, and who I’d like to help. And I can deal faro! Don’t worry about that! Captain Holstrom walked out with his pot doubled. The money goes down on the _Zizania_ to-morrow morning, making up the balance after the forfeit money was paid. That’s the way Holstrom and I do business after we have come to an agreement.” He gave the girl a look which he intended to be melting. “I said I’d do it, and I did it.”

“I’m ashamed of my father,” she said, crisply.

“I don’t much blame you, Kama,” stammered Captain Holstrom, missing the point of her rebuke. “For me to go and do what I done after scooping in that money was a fool performance, and I ask the pardon of all concerned. But I reckon my head was turned by having all that good luck come in a bunch. I just went into the air, that’s what I done. But I’m back on earth to stay now.”

“Let us hope so, partner,” chided Kir. Keedy. “That crazy Beason and our new friend here made such a racket chasing you through the Coast that I heard of it, and started out on the chase myself. It has turned out lucky, but that’s no credit to you.”

The girl stood up. “I have listened, and now I understand. If you want to keep my respect, father, you’ll hand back the part of that money which is stolen, and borrow enough to make your payment.”

“Hold on, Miss Kama!” cried Keedy. “That money wasn’t stolen. A man who tackles a faro-bank isn’t stealing if he wins.”

“I heard what you said a few minutes ago, Mr. Keedy.”

“And I said it to show I can be a friend to those I like. I’ve known you a long time, and now when I’ve had a chance to show you that I’m a friend you can’t afford to chuck me.”

He jumped up and went near to her.

“No more faro for me--no cards any more,” he said, dusting his hands before her. “I know you haven’t liked to have me do it.”

“I have never made any remarks to you about your affairs, Mr. Keedy. It’s only when my father gets mixed into them that I protest.”

“I reckon that after all the years I’ve dealt crooked for the sake of the bank I’ve got the right to deal crooked for once in my life to help my friends,” muttered Keedy. “But I’m all done with faro, I tell you, Kama. We’re all going to be rich. I want you to remember that I’ve done my full share in this thing.”

Captain Holstrom banged the sacks of coin upon the table.

“You bet you have, Marcena. And you’re my partner. I stand by you. I never saw a girl yet who didn’t have foolish notions. But they grow out of them.” He winked at Keedy. “This money goes down on the old _Zizania_ to-morrow morning. She’s ours from snout to tail--from keelson to pennant block. And she’s going to make our everlasting fortunes. You shall see, Kama, my girl!”

For a moment she stood there, her eyes narrowed, her cheeks flaming up, as fine a picture of protesting and indignant maidenhood as I ever laid eyes on. Then she compressed her lips and choked back an outburst.

“Yes, I _shall_ see,” she said at last. “For I shall go on board the _Zizania_, and stay there and watch you, father, and try to keep you out of State’s prison for the sake of my poor dead mother.”

“It has been all right for you to live with me aboard the tug,” growled Captain Holstrom, blinking sourly at her. “But this is a different proposition. This is going to be a man’s game.”

“With one woman along,” she insisted.

“You have got to stay here in the city,” he declared.

“If you leave me here alone, deserting me for men who are leading you into dangers and trouble, you’ll find me dancing in one of the worst holes on this street when you come back. I swear it!” she said.

She did not raise her voice. There was no elocution, and hysterics were absent. But there are women who can say a thing and make you believe it. Captain Holstrom cracked his knuckles and gasped, and said nothing. Keedy ran his thin tongue along the line of his sooty mustache.

“As a partner, I’m in favor of keeping a good girl near her father,” said he.

“You are not a partner in my family affairs, Mr. Keedy!” cried the girl, hotly.

Keedy, much embarrassed, and willing to hide his feelings, turned to me.

“We seem to be drifting off the main subject, Brother Sidney.” I wanted to yank him up for calling me by that title--resentment surged in me as hotly as it did in the girl. There are some men who seem to make your soul feel sticky when they try to be intimate.

I told him I’d like a night to think the matter over.

“All right,” said Keedy, dryly; “I’ll take you with me to a place where you can do some steady thinking and won’t be bothered. Stuff your things back into your bag.”

As I plodded along the narrow street with him, my sack propped on my shoulder, Captain Holstrom and his daughter passed me in a cab.

Mr. Keedy’s voice and manner were well padded with velvet that night, but he couldn’t fool me. He caged me--that’s what he did. I remember that I slept in a closet of a room, and, Mr. Keedy was on a cot in the room which opened into the hall. I didn’t mind any of his precautions. I had made up my mind to go along. I was dog-tired and slept all night.

XXVIII--SORTING THE CHECKER-BOARD CREW

MR. KEEDY evidently desired to impress on me that his hankering to make sure of my company during the night was inspired by pure and sudden friendship.

When he came to awaken me his mustache was lifted so high in an amiable smile that the twin sooty wings seemed to stick out of his nostrils. He hoped I was getting to like the West and the folks there. I returned that up to date I had not been homesick--a conservative statement, and true; I had had no time to be homesick.

He paid for my breakfast; further evidence of friendship. Then he called a cab and took me and my belongings down to the berth of the _Zizania_. The old steamer was docked in a place which, so he told me, was the China Basin, and we wormed our way through alleys and junk-piles and got aboard.

We hadn’t hurried that morning, and the time was well into the middle of the forenoon.

Captain Holstrom was stubbing to and fro on the main deck. He wore a fine air of proprietorship, and welcomed us with a flourish of his hand. He patted his breast, and the crackle of paper sounded.

“Money paid,” he reported. “Them’s the dockyments. Come up into the wheel-house. There’s the place to talk the rest of our business.”

Marcena Keedy did most of the talking that forenoon. He loved to lollop the words “three million dollars’ worth of gold ingots” in his mouth. He had wormed out of me at breakfast-time admissions enough so that he knew I was favorably disposed. He proposed to try to take advantage of me and I saw his game and resolved to do some bluffing on my own part. He put a lot of verbal plush around his propositions, but I could feel the hard nub just the same.

After all that conversational fluff he wanted me to sign a contract to take day’s wages for the job--double pay for the days when I recovered any gold.

I turned that wages suggestion down, flat and final. You would have thought I had money plastered all over me.

“It has got to be on shares,” I said.

“You doggone bean-eater, have you got the nerve to talk shares on an investment of a diving-suit against our steamer and our information about the _Golden Gate?_” stuttered Keedy.

“That isn’t the way the thing shakes down, Mr. Keedy. You have made it plain to me that you’re gambling in this--it isn’t a straight deal.”

He swore at me, but I didn’t mean the thing the way he cook it.

“If you were going down there,” I said, “with a big expedition, and proposed to build coffer-dams, and all that, and go at it scientific fashion, I would hire as a regular diver. I couldn’t demand anything else. But I’m not merely investing a diving-suit, as it stands. I’m playing a lone hand in the diving part of the scheme; I’m investing all my experience, all my skill; I’m investing life itself, for, as near as I can find out from what you say, it will be up to me to know how to get that gold, and then go get it. I want one-third of the velvet after all bills are paid, and I want a contract drawn before I start.”

Perhaps I wouldn’t have jabbed the thing so hard at Holstrom, but I did not propose to be the monkey for Keedy. I looked innocent and suggested that they’d better talk with another diver. Keedy flapped like a speared fish for half an hour--and then he came over. Captain Holstrom walked up and down with his hands behind his back during all the talk. I judged from his general air that he was viewing the whole thing as more or less of a dream, and did not want to get too wide awake about it from fear of losing courage and interest.

“There’s one thing about it--you’ll work harder if you have a lay,” said Keedy.

That’s usually the way with the grafter or loafer--he’s afraid the other fellow won’t work hard enough.

Frankly, I did not have any very brilliant hopes in regard to that expedition, for if old Ingot Ike had told the truth about the failure of the underwriters, I figured that the diving proposition must be a tough one. Keedy was hot about it, for he did not know enough about such work to judge chances; as for Captain Holstrom, ever since he had won this _Zizania_ elephant he was in a state of mind which made him ready for any project, even to putting wings on her and starting for the moon.

I didn’t pay much attention to the outfitting, except to make a list of such equipment in the way of lines, hose, air-pumps, and such matters as I needed for my part of the work. Keedy and Holstrom turned around and borrowed money on the security of the steamer, this debt to stand against our partnership. Keedy seemed so sure of that gold that he did not stop to ask me how I was fixed to stand my share in case of utter failure. Therefore, with plenty of funds to work with, we were ready for sea in short order, and to sea we went, swashing out past Point Lobos, the sea-lions hooting at us as we passed their rocks, and started down the coast.

I leaned over the rail and watched the shore melt in the hazy distance, and did not blame the sea-lions for their derogatory remarks. I did not know much about steamers, but I realized that the _Zizania_, condemned Government tub, wasn’t anything to brag about. She was a real old ocean-walloper, a broad-beamed duck of a thing, thrashing her warped paddles, her rusty walking-beam groaning, her patched boilers wheezing--a weather-worn, gray, and grunting ocean tramp.

Like all craft of the buoy-boat model, she had much deck room forward of the bridge, and here were nested, as dories are nested on a Gloucester trawler, four forty-foot lighters. Plenty of anchors accompanied these scows--huge, rusty second-hand anchors which Captain Holstrom had bought from junkmen. The _Zizania_ was naturally slow, and this load forward now made a snail of her. Hawsers and chains encumbered her deck space everywhere--age-blackened ropes, and iron from which rust scales were dropping. Captain Holstrom had ransacked the wharfs for hand-me-downs. Even the men whom he had shipped looked as though he had secured them at a rummage sale.

“It’s a checker-board crew,” the captain had informed me as they straggled on board. “Half black men, and half white. That’s the only way to sort men when you’re bound on a long cruise. Keep the blacks mad with the whites, and vitchy vici, and you’ve always got half the crew on your side in case of trouble. There can’t any general mutinies start when you’ve got a checker-board crew. Number-one Jones has the white men’s watch; Number-two Jones has the black watch; and as soon as we get this stuff stored and the rest moused on deck I’ll have Number-one sick his bunch on to Number-two’s, and let ’em fight long enough to get good and mad. Then they’ll sort of neutralize each other for the rest of the cruise.”

That system of gentle diplomacy was new to me, and I loafed around and kept an eye out, for I have always had a hearty relish for an honest scrap. Furthermore, in explaining to me later, the captain had stated that I was expected to jump in with himself and the mates and break up the fight with clubs when it had progressed far enough.

“You see, we want to leave both sides mad and neither side licked,” said Captain Holstrom. “It will be like cooking in a hot oven. The thing mustn’t get scorched on. I know how to handle it. Jump in when I say the word.”

He had given me these instructions leaning over the sill of the pilot-house window soon after we had got away from the dock.

“Not that the doodah will start for some time yet,” he added. “But I’m a great hand to have things all ready and understood. You can be looking up your club between now and to-morrow.”

I glanced into the wheel-house as I walked on. Marcena Keedy lounged in solitary state on the transom seat at the rear, puffing away at a cigar.

“You’re always welcome in here,” he called. But I had no appetite for the companionship of Mr. Keedy.

It occurred to me, with just a bit of relish in the thought, that Miss Kama Holstrom probably was of similar mind in regard to Mr. Keedy. She had taken a seat in the wheel-house when she had come on board that day. Now she was in her state-room, which was the cabin on the upper deck near the bridge, planned as the captain’s apartment. Either she had pre-empted it or Captain Holstrom had assigned her to it. I had seen that the Joneses--Number-one and Number-two--were in berths near my quarters below, and it was plain that partners Holstrom and Keedy had quartered themselves in the mates’ room on the upper deck.

Miss Holstrom’s door was on the hook, and I caught a glimpse of her more by accident than by design. She nodded without speaking, and I raised my cap and went below to the main deck.

I got there in season to see the lighting of a fuse which exploded Captain Holstrom’s “checker-board” plans ahead of scheduled time.

The first man I met on the deck was Ingot Ike. He was gnawing at a hunk of gingerbread with his snags of teeth, and was grinning amiably.

“This is going to be a comfortable trip for me,” he confided. “I find I know the cook. It’s a lucky thing if you stand in well with the cook. Him and me was shipmates together on a Vancouver packet. He’s the Snohomish Glutton.” He opened his eyes and looked at me as though he expected that I would show astonishment. “I said--he’s the Snohomish Glutton,” he repeated, more loudly.

But my face remained blank.

“You don’t mean to tell me that you never heard of the Snohomish Glutton!”

I shook my head.