When Egypt Went Broke, Holman Day [free ereaders .txt] 📗

known how to manage my womenfolks, Tasper. Not by threats and by tumulting around as you have been doing! You've got a lot to learn. Listen to me!"
Mr. Britt paused and blinked and listened.
Mr. Harnden plucked out a pencil and made believe write a screed on the palm of his hand while he talked. "'By the twining tendrils of their affections you can sway 'em to and fro,' as the poet said, speaking of women. I am loved in my home. I have important prospects, now that you are backing me."
Mr. Britt blinked more energetically, but he did not dispute.
"Another poet has said that's it's all right to lie for love's sake--or words to that effect. I know the right line of talk to give Vona. And I won't have to lie such a great lot to make her know how bad off I am right now. She has always had a lot of sympathy for me," declared Mr. Harnden, complacently. "I may as well cash in on it. She won't ruin a loving father and a happy home when she wakes up after a good cry on the wife's shoulder and gets her second wind and understands where she's at in this thing. Tasper, you sit down there in a comfortable chair and let me rub on some optimism anodyne where you're smarting the worst."
When Mrs. Harnden came into the room a half hour later she looked promptly relieved to find Mr. Britt in such a calm mood; when she had hurried out he was acting as if he were intending to kick the furniture about the place.
"A good cry--and all at peace, eh?--and a new view of things in the morning?" purred the optimist in the way of query.
"She didn't cry," reported the mother, with a disconsolateness that did not agree with the cheering words of the reports.
"Oh, very well," remarked Mr. Harnden, optimism unspecked. "That shows she is taking a common-sense view and is using her head. What says she?"
"I may as well post you on how the matter stands, Mr. Britt. By being honest all 'round we can operate together better."
Britt agreed by an emphatic nod.
After an inhalation which suggested the charging of an air gun, Mrs. Harnden pulled the verbal trigger. "Vona says she is all through at the bank."
"Oh, I know my girl," said Mr. Harnden, airily. "I'll handle her when morning's light is bright, and forgotten is the night!"
"I thought I knew my girl, too," the mother declared, gloomily. "But I guess I don't. I never saw her stiffen up like this before. She sat and looked at me, and I felt like a cushion being jabbed by a couple of hatpins--if there's any such thing as a cushion having feelings." Mrs. Harnden, settling her flounces, a soft and sighing example of "a languishing Lydia," was as unfortunate in her metaphor as Britt had been when he mentioned a bitter medicine.
"Tell her that I'll pay her ten dollars more a week," said President Britt, looking desperate. "She mustn't leave me in the lurch."
"She'll do it! Nothing to worry about!" affirmed the father. "And I'll grab in as cashier till my bigger projects get started. I've got a natural knack for handling money, Tasper."
The banker winced.
"We can make it all snug, right in the family," insisted Harnden. He jumped up, opened the door into the hallway, and called. He kept calling, his tones growing more emphatic, till the girl replied from abovestairs.
"She's coming down," reported the general manager of the household, taking his stand in front of the fireplace. He pulled on a chain and dragged out a bunch of keys and whirled them like a David taking aim with a sling.
Vona came no farther than the doorway, and stood framed there.
"What's this last nonsense--that you won't go to your work in the morning?"
"Your pay is raised ten dollars a week, starting to-morrow," supplemented Britt, appealingly.
But there was no compromise in the girl's mien. "Mr. Britt, I realize perfectly well that I ought to give you due notice--the usual two weeks. That would be the honorable business way. But you have set the example of disregarding business methods, in your treatment of Mr. Vaniman. You mustn't blame others for doing as you're doing. Therefore I positively will not come into the bank, as conditions are. As I feel to-night I shall feel to-morrow! If you, or my father and mother, think you can change my mind on the matter, you'll merely waste your arguments."
That time she did not run away. She surveyed them in turn, leisurely and perfectly self-possessed. Even the optimist recognized inflexibility when he was bumped against it hard enough! She stepped backward, challenging reply, but they were silent, and she went upstairs.
"Still, nobody knows what the morning may bring forth," persisted Harnden, after waiting for somebody else to speak. "As I have said, I have a knack--"
"Of blowing up paper bags and listening to 'em bust!" snarled the banker, permitting himself, at least, to express his real opinion of a man whom he had always held to be an impractical nincompoop. "If you count cash the way you count chickens before they're hatched, you'd make a paper bag out of my bank. I'll bid you good night!"
He wrenched away from Harnden's restraining hands and shook himself under the shower of the optimist's pattering words, as a dog would shake off rain. In the hall he pulled on his overcoat and turned up the collar, for the words still pattered. He went out into the night and slammed the door.
Britt began his program of general anathema by shaking his fist at the Harnden house after he had reached the street. He shook his fist at the other houses along the way as he went tramping in the middle of the road toward his home. He even brandished his fist at his own statue in the facade of Britt Block. The moonlight revealed the complacent features; the cocky pose of serene confidence presented by the effigy affected the disheartened original with as acute a sense of exasperation as he would have felt if the statue had set thumb to nose and had wriggled the stone fingers in impish derision.
"Gid-dap" Jones and a few citizens who could not make up their minds to go to bed till they had sucked all the sweetness out of an extraordinary evening in Egypt, were walking up and down the tavern porch, cooling off. Mr. Britt, tramping past, shook his fist at them, too.
"Hope you enjoyed the music!" suggested Jones, wrought up to a pitch where he would not be bull-dozed even by "Phay-ray-oh."
"Yes, and I hope we'll have some more to-morrow night," retorted the banker. "You still have the poorhouse, the cattle pound, and the lockup to serenade."
"All right! Which one of 'em do you expect to be in?" inquired Jones. "We wouldn't have you miss a tune for the world!"
When Britt arrived in the shadows of his own porch he stood and looked out over Egypt and cursed the people, in detail and in toto. He had become a monomaniac. He had set himself to accomplish one fell purpose.
In his office, earlier that day, he had resolved upon revenge; but his natural caution had served as a leash, and he had pondered on no definite plans that might prove dangerous. Now only one fear beset him--the fear that he would not be able to think up and put through a sufficiently devilish program.
He banged his door behind him and lighted a lamp which he kept on a stand in the hall. He creaked upstairs in the lonely house. His sense of loneliness was increased when he reflected that Vona would not be at her desk in the morning.
The village watchman noted that the reflector lamp shone all night on the door of the vault in the Egypt Trust Company; it was the watchman's business to keep track of that light. But he noted also, outside of his regular business, that there was a light for most of the night in Tasper Britt's bedroom.


CHAPTER X
THE MAN WHO WAS SORRY
It was a heavy dawn, next day; a thaw had set in and a drizzle of rain softened the snow; gray clouds trailed their draperies across the top of Burkett Hill.
Landlord Files had trouble in getting his kitchen fire started--in the sluggish air the draught was bad. Mr. Files's spirits were as heavy as the air. He knew it was up to him to be the first man in Egypt to come in contact with Tasper Britt that morning.
Stage-driver Jones had an early breakfast, for he had to be off with the mail. Mr. Jones had been up late, for him, and he was grouchy. In the matter of the warfare on Pharaoh his mood seemed to be less assertive than it had been the night before. Mr. Files detected that much after some conversation while the breakfast was served.
"All you have to do is 'gid-dap' and get away," said Files, sourly. "I have to stay here on my job and be the first to meet him and get the brunt of the whole thing. And I condoned, as you might say, and as he'll probably feel. I let my porch be used for meeting and mobbing, as you might say. And he ketched me grinning over his shoulder when I read them heading words after that old lunkhead of a Prophet passed him the paper."
"Shut up!" remarked Driver Jones, stabbing a potato.
"I owe him money--and I let my porch be used--"
"Figure out the wear and tear on the planks and pass me the bill. Now shut up and don't spoil my vittles any morn'n you have done in the way of cooking 'em."
Mr. Files, left alone to meet Britt, resolved to hand that tyrant a partial sop by having breakfast on the table the moment the regular boarder unfolded his napkin; food might stop Britt's mouth to some extent, the landlord reflected.
Result of this precautionary courtesy! The breakfast was a mess when Britt arrived, a half hour late. Mr. Files had depended on his boarder's invariable punctuality and had been obliged to keep "hotting up" the food, watching the clock with increasing despair.
Britt smiled on the landlord when they faced each other in the dining room. The smile made the landlord shiver. He was dreading the explosion. He set on the viands as timidly as a child holding out peanuts to an elephant. Mr. Britt beamed blandly and spoke of the change in the weather and said he was hoping that "Old Reliable Ike wouldn't be bothered too much by the soft footing on his way to Levant."
Mr. Files gasped when he heard this consideration expressed for the ringleader of the evening's demonstration. He recovered sufficiently to start in on an explanation of the condition of the food.
"It's all right, Files! It's my fault. I overslept."
Britt ate for a few minutes; then he suspended operations and looked Files hard in the face; that face, as to mouth, was as widely open as the countenance of the office alligator. "I did a whole lot of thinking last night, Files. I'm telling you first, like I propose to tell others in Egypt as I come in contact with 'em during the day--it has been my fault--how things have happened! The night brings counsel! Yes, sir, it surely does." He went on eating.
"Mr. Britt, I was afraid--"
Pharaoh waved his knife expostulatingly. "I know it, Files! Your face told me the whole story when I stepped in here. But I'm a changed man. I know when I'm down. However, it's my own fault, I repeat. I stubbed my