Tongues of Flame (MacFarlane)/Chapter 14
JUST back from your first successful mission?" Billie inquired radiantly; thus revealing unreservedly that she was keeping fairly close tab on the young man's movements. Besides it was ecstasy to have her gaze at him so interestedly; ecstasy to stand so close to the car window that he could feel the warmth of her breath upon his cheek; ecstasy to be frank with her even to the extent of disappointing her. "Not successful—no," he confessed; "not yet." And while the beautiful eyes continued their alert interested gaze, he told her something—not too much—but something of the ground of Adam John's refusal. Rather to his surprise, after the high-sounding last talk he had heard from Billie's lips, she manifested no perception even of Adam John's point of view.
"The poor Siwash!" she scorned. "Does he imagine the Boland Cedar Company will change its plans for him?" Then abruptly the scorn passed out of her expression and every line of her face seemed given over to personal concern for this young Mr. Henry Harrington's progress in her father's favor.
"You—you mustn't admit failure," she warned. "What business demands is results, you know. Father sticks out for them. The men who are going to the top in Boland General aren't the men who come back with an alibi. They're the men who come back with the goods. Be one of those, Mr. Harrington. Good luck," she beamed, and thrust out a cordial encouraging hand to him.
Henry watched her departure with tingling sensations of joy and pride. "I'll show her," he chuckled. "I'll show her!" But to Scanlon, "I didn't get the deed," he confessed with a glum smile, holding up empty hands.
"The hell!" ejaculated Scanlon, and by his expression revealed both what a calamity it would be for the Boland Cedar Company not to get the island and what a calamity it would be for Harrington to have failed in his first commission from J. B. "Darn stubborn lot, these Siwashes," he frowned, when Henry had completed his explanation. "What are you going to do now?"
"Let the Indian sleep on it. Then in the morning I'm going to Quackenbaugh for authority to pay more."
"That's the thing," said Scanlon, "we don't want to have just to kick him off. Finesse first is the Old Man's motto."
"And always, of course," appreciated Henry. "In this instance there's no way you could force him off. The man's got a U. S. patent." If at this moment the Chief Fixer looked upon his newest aide as a babe in his innocence, he veiled the fact; in part perhaps because such innocence made him more serviceable.
Next morning Harrington reported to Quackenbaugh, a most impatient person, ascetic in appearance, and more autocratic in manner than Old Two Blades himself.
"Offer him ten—offer him twenty thousand," directed Quackenbaugh with emphasis, "and close with him quick. Take it out there—twenty one-thousand dollar bills. Shake it in his face! He can't resist the sight of money. No Indian can. No white man can for that matter. My God, Harrington!" Quackenbaugh's lean and leathery face was tense and stern; his long squirrel tecth bit out his nervous speech. "This is important! Get that Siwash closed up and out of the way before Hornblower or some other crook gets hold of him."
Henry was assenting but thoughtful. "Paper money never looks much to an Indian," he reflected; "if it was gold—if I could pile up the gold—glittering before his eyes, it might win him."
"Well, take gold, then!" exclaimed Quackenbaugh with nervous eagerness; "that is, if there's twenty thousand gold in Gaylord's vaults since they don't circulate it any more. Most likely there is, though, if we want it. There's most anything in the town if we want it, eh, Henry?" And he reached for the telephone. This was the first time Mr. Quackenbaugh had called him Henry; and that young man might be pardoned for a sense of satisfaction in finding himself so cordially received and trusted by so eminent a member of that charmed circle of the Boland executives.
"Got twenty thousand dollars in gold twenties down there, Gaylord?"
"Just happen to have—owing to a whim of Mr. Boland's, yes." Gaylord was President of the First National but Mr. Boland was chairman of its board.
"I want it," said Quackenbaugh. "What's it weigh—that much coin?"
"About sixty-eight pounds," answered the banker after swift calculation.
"Henry Harrington will be in for it, also for twenty thousand currency. Get 'em both ready."
Just like that Quackenbaugh had ordered forty thousand dollars out of the First National vaults to be used as pawns in the playing of a little game.
Power, thought Henry. Power! It was astonishingly pleasant to sit so close to the reins of power; but reservations began to occur to him.
"We might bring the Indian in here and show it to him," he suggested.
"Wouldn't have one-tenth the pull," decided the relentlessly eager Quackenbaugh after one thoughtful moment. "Dump it in his lap out there, and he can't get away from it."
"He'd probably refuse to come in here anyway," reflected Henry. "However, I'm going to be uneasy with all that pile in a motorboat. She might turn turtle or the bottom drop out or something." He was unaccustomed to using huge sums of money to bait traps with.
Quackenbaugh was entirely accustomed to it. Yet he confessed quite frankly: "So am I. When it's the raw stuff we're handling, I never get over having the shivers; but the man that hasn't got the nerve to take a chance when the stake is big enough never gets on with J. B. In this instance, the game is worth the chance; but we'll reduce the hazard by reducing the length of the marine voyage. We'll put a man with a sawed-off shotgun in a car with you and have you driven to the mouth of Cub Creek. The motorboat will meet you there and it's only two hundred yards across the channel to the island."
Henry looked relieved for a moment, but then recalled. "And yet, if I bring anybody with me Adam John is likely to resent it and develop a sullen streak."
"You've got to go across alone," foresaw Quackenbaugh. "Nobody along but your engineer. When you're landed; the boat will go back and pick up the man with the shotgun and just keep casually circling the island. If anybody tries to leave it before you he will suspect something is wrong and investigate."
"All right," smiled Henry with resolution; "if you want to risk your forty thousand I'm willing."
"You try him first with ten of those bills and then you keep trying another and another till you get up to twenty. Twenty is the absolute limit!" The squirrel teeth of Quackenbaugh closed like the click of a steel trap. "If it's a question of more than twenty we don't pay anything. We fight! But if he doesn't fall for twenty thousand in pretty pictures, then you turn the gold loose at him."
So simply did Quackenbaugh conceive the matter. He wrote quickly "$20,000 currency $20,000 gold," on a piece of paper worth a fraction of a cent with a pen worth less than a nickel, scrawled his initials beneath and handed it to Henry.
But there was a little matter to be adjusted between Henry Harrington and James H. Gaylord, the matter of a necessary poke to the banker's jaw from the lawyer's fist, delivered some three days ago. This adjustment took time and it was all of eighteen minutes after Henry entered Gaylord's private office before that lithe, muscled young man stepped across the sidewalk with his spine stiffened by the weight of sixty-eight pounds contained in a coin sack with the seal of the U. S. mint upon it. This sack reposed upon his shoulder and leaned almost affectionately against his neck.
Now as Harrington stepped out upon the pavement, who should come striding along but Count Eckstrom—in golfing cap and knickers—to the links, perhaps, to meet Miss Billie Boland, quite evidently pleasure-bound. Rather to Henry's surprise, the count recognized him, although when they met last Harrington had been a sartorial wreck with a pyramidal bandage upon his head.
"You are a burden bearer, this morning, Mr. Harrington, I perceive," observed the count facetiously, pausing to offer a lofty and elegant clasp of his soft hand.
To take that hand, Henry had to shift his hold upon the ear of the coin sack, but he managed this. "Yes; that's my station in life," he bandied. "You belong to what we in America call the idle rich, I take it."
"Idle, but not rich," discriminated the count with a smile, and lightly detaching his fingers from Harrington's grasp, as though they had been held a little too close, he moved on at that unhurried but also unloitering stride which is supposed to distinguish the carriage of a gentleman.
As the car spun out along the Basin road, the blue water of South Inlet lay like a band of turquoise between sheets of emerald and the fragrance of the forest tingled in Henry's nostrils as zest for his duty and his opportunity tingled in his veins.
Three satisfactions warmed his breast: first, that he was going to do this thing for the Boland interests who were trusting him so largely and compensating him so generously; second, that he was going to do something nice for old Adam John, even over Adam John's silly objection; third, that he was going to prove thereby to Billie that he was a sure enough go-getter. After the first two or three minutes, it was the third of these reflections that occupied his mind most entirely and most happily.
As the car swung off the grade at the mouth of Cub Creek, the same motorboat which had conveyed him yesterday curved gracefully in from the channel. Thus precisely did the cogs in the machinery of a Boland General operation fit into each other.
Gently Harrington deposited his valuable burden in the exact center of the bottom of the launch and a few minutes later he stepped ashore upon the island. He swung the bag of coin to his shoulder as lightly as if it had been a present of corn for Adam John's horse, and made his way toward the lodge walking straight and blithely.
He wondered if Lahleet had softened Adam John any. Somehow he feared not; he feared that her instinct would have overmastered her reason; that she could not be counted on. He would even be relieved if she were not about this morning. Apparently she was not, for as he rounded the corner of the lodge he came upon Adam John alone.
"Hello, Adam!" hailed Henry cheerily. With an apologetic start the Indian rose to his feet and stood sheepishly.
"Good morning, Lieutenant Harrington," he responded with a jerky bow.
"Adam John," began Henry, instantly aggressive, "I can't let you make a mistake about this matter. Can we go inside? I've got something to show you."
The Indian's eyes fixed themselves on Harrington's face in an expression of dog-like devotion, but besides that there was a plea in them, as of one who prayed, "O well-meaning friend, lead me not into temptation!"
If Henry saw this he hardened himself against it and turned impatiently to the lodge. Resignedly, Adam John led him within. The narrow plank-walled shack was reeking with the smell of smoke and drying fish. Through the narrow windows light filtered, battling successfully enough with the smoke to reveal a table and two crudely homemade chairs. Upon the table was spread an army blanket. To one of the chairs Adam John motioned his visitor with ceremonious gravity.
"Now, Adam," Harrington appealed at once, "you mustn't be foolish. This is the rarest opportunity that ever came to a young man like you. I've got them to enlarge their offer. Adam John, they are willing to give you twenty thousand dollars for the island!"
Harrington in his headlong rush to jar Adam out of his obstinacy had forgotten entirely Quackenbaugh's instruction to bargain, thousand-dollar note by thousand-dollar note; or else had nobly disregarded it. But Adam John's countenance was sealed and hard as if it were the face of some old idol.
"Me no want money. Want farm!" affirmed the Indian more stubbornly than ever.
Henry bit his lip and frowned. "Look here, Adam!" he reproved. "I don't think you realize how much money twenty thousand dollars is. Look, I've brought it so that you could see."
Harrington drew from his pocket a long envelope, opened it, fanned out in his hand like cards twenty dark green Federal Reserve notes, with the face of Alexander Hamilton on each, and then papered the old army blanket with them. The Indian could not repress a start of surprise, but as if to make up for this, relapsed into a more profound stolidity.
"Twenty one-thousand-dollar bills!" Harrington expatiated, and swept them up and counted them down one by one before the Indian's eyes, which, despite the taciturnity of his expression, never missed a movement of the money.
"Each of these is one thousand!" emphasized the lawyer. "There are three hundred and sixty-five days in the year. A single one of these bills is a dollar a day for almost three years; and there are twenty of them; a dollar a day for sixty years, and that's longer than your father lived upon this island, Adam."
This must have seemed to the Indian an odd conceit, for his flat face was ornamented with a grotesque smile and for the first time since the money had been displayed, he raised his eyes to those of his friend and benefactor. But the smile faded. The look slowly changed to one of infinite perplexity, yet mingled with an infinite patience; as if he thought it strange that his friend could not understand him—as if he were being tortured but by one he loved and whose acts, therefore, he could not protest.
With a movement that was so gentle as not to be offensive, Adam John pushed the money from him. Yet the eager lawyer, watching every expression, thought he caught a twitch of the stolid facial muscles when the Indian's hand actually touched the money. He was weakening after all.
"Aha!" cried Harrington with a Mephistophelian laugh, as he restored the money to its envelope. "I almost got you that time, old scout. But if you waver before pretty pictures, what will you do when I show you the real stuff? Money isn't money till you see it in the raw."
He reached craftily for the coin sack and presently a stream of gold twenties gushed out upon the blanket—beautiful, untarnished mintings, every one of them, each a dazzling sunburst—dozens, scores, hundreds, one thousand of them to be exact.
Some of the yellow discs had begun to roll and Adam John shrank as if they were fiery serpents hissing and darting at him, then started up, slapping them down upon the blanket and pushing them into the general heap.