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

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 _protege_ 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