Blow the Man Down, Holman Day [e ink epub reader TXT] 📗

opportunity. The sight of them was a rebuke to the agitated thoughts of treason which assailed him. But the mere papers had no voice to make that rebuke pointed.
Mr. Fogg did have a voice. "Five thousand dollars in your fist, my boy, as soon as I can work the wire to New York--and there's no piker about the man who can have five thousand flashed in here when he asks for it. You can see what kind of men are behind me. What do you care about old man Vose and his crowd?"
"There's Mr. Franklin! I'll be doing a mighty mean trick, Mr. Fogg. No, I'll not do it."
Mr. Fogg did not bluster. He was silent for some time. He pursed his lips and stared at Boyne, and then he shifted his gaze to the ceiling.
"It's too bad--too bad for a young fellow to turn down such an opportunity," he sighed. "It can be done without you, Boyne, in another way. The same result will happen. But you might as well be in on it. Now let me tell you a few instances of how some of the big men in this country got their start."
Mr. Fogg was an excellent raconteur with a vivid imagination, and it did not trouble his conscience because the narratives he imparted to this wide-eyed youth were largely apocryphal.
"You see," he put in at the end of the first tale, "what a flying start will do for a man. Suppose that chap I've just told you about sat back and refused to jump when the road was all open to him! You don't hear anybody knocking that man nowadays, do you? And yet that's the trick he pulled to get his start."
With a similar snapper did Mr. Fogg touch up each one of his stories of success.
"I--I didn't have any idea--I thought they managed it some other way," murmured David Boyne.
"Your horizon has been limited; you haven't been out in the world enough to know, my son."
"I have heard of all those men, of course. They're big men to-day."
"You didn't think they got to be millionaires by saving the money out of clerks' salaries, did you? Of course, Boyne, I admit that in this affair you'll be up to a little sharp practice. But you're not stealing anything. Nobody can lug off steamships in a vest pocket. It's only a deal--and deals are being made every day."
Fogg was a keen judge of his fellow-men. He knew weakness when he saw it. He could determine from a man's lower lip and the set of his nose whether that person were covetous. And he knew now what signified the flush on Boyne's cheeks and the light in his eyes. However, there was something else to reckon with.
"I will not betray Mr. Franklin's confidence in me. Positively, I will not," said the young man. "He's sick, and that would make it worse."
"How sick is he?"
"He is very, very ill. It was an operation, and he has had a relapse. But we hope he's coming out all right."
"What hospital is he in?"
Boyne gave the name.
"I think I'll call up and ask when it is expected that he can see visitors," announced Fogg, with business briskness. "I wish Franklin had been here on deck--Franklin, himself."
"I don't believe Mr. Franklin would turn a trick of this sort," asserted the clerk. "I'd hate to face him, after doing it myself."
"Franklin would be able to see further into a financial deal than a young chap," said Mr. Fogg, severely, and then he found his number and made his call. "Good heavens!" he blurted, after a question. "I am in his office. Yes, I'll tell Boyne."
With a fine affectation of grief and surprise, he snapped the transmitter upon the hook and whirled on Boyne. His back had been toward the young man--he had spoken with hand across the receiver.
"He has just died--he's dead! Franklin has passed away."
"I would have been notified," gasped Boyne.
"They were just going to call you. You heard me say I'd inform you."
"But I must call the hospital--offer my services. I must go up there."
Mr. Fogg put out his hand and pressed the young man back into his chair. "A lulu must be played quick and the pot raked sudden," he reflected.
"Just a moment, my son. Now you're standing on your own bottom. You won't have to explain to Mr. Franklin."
He pointed to the clock. His stories had consumed time. The hour was ten-thirty-five.
"That annual meeting of the Vose line was called for ten of the clock to-day. Mr. Franklin was alive at that hour. He was the clerk of that corporation. What happens now will not embarrass you so far as he's concerned. Be sensible. Make a stroke for yourself. You're out of a job, anyway. Go to it, now."
Fogg spoke sharply, imperiously. He exerted over the young man all the force of his personality.
"Five thousand dollars--protected by my interests--slipped out of sight for a few months--it's easy. Sit down there and make up your records; vote those proxies. Vote 'em, I say. This meeting was held at ten o'clock. Make up your records."
He stood over Boyne, arguing, promising, urging, and the young man, at last, sweating, flushed, trembling, bent over his documents, sorted them, and made up his records.
"We'll send on a copy to the office of the Vose line by registered mail," commanded Fogg. "Attest it as a copy of the true record by notary. When it drops in on 'em I will be there, with my directors and my little story--and the face of Uncle Vose will be worth looking at, though his language may not be elevating. You come out with me, Boyne. I'm going to the telegraph office."
"But I must get in touch at once with Mr. Franklin's family--offer my services," pleaded the clerk.
"There isn't a thing you can do right now," snapped the masterful gentleman from New York. "I suggest that you close the office. Send the girl home. You should do that much out of respect to your employer's memory."
Ten minutes later the record had been mailed and the flustered Boyne was trotting around town with Mr. Fogg. The latter seemed to have a tremendous amount of business on his hands. He hired a cab and was hustled yon and thither, leaving the young man in the vehicle, with instructions to stay there, whenever a stop was made. But at last Mr. Fogg returned from an errand with some very tangible results. He put a packet of bank-notes into Boyne's shaking hands.
"Did you ever see as much real money before, my son?" asked Fogg, genially. "That's your five thousand. And here's five hundred toward that expense money we promised. I'm suggesting that you leave town to-night. Tuck that cash away on yourself and duck out of sight."
Having secured the money and placed that powerful argument in the young man's hands, Mr. Fogg's hurry and anxiety seemed to be over. When he had seen the packet buttoned inside Boyne's coat he smiled.
"The trade is clinched and the job is done, son, and I feel sure that, being a healthy young American citizen with plenty of cash to pay your way, you're not going to let go that cash nor do any foolish squealing."
"I've gone too far to back out," admitted Boyne, patting the outside of his coat. "But it seems like a dream."
"I've heard a little piece of good news while I've been running around--forgot to tell you," said Fogg, in a matter-of-fact way. "That fool attendant at the hospital must have misunderstood me, or I misunderstood him. Franklin isn't dead."
"He-isn't-dead?"
"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