Jaspar Panel owned a section of rough, hilly land to the north-east of
Paradise. Everybody called him Uncle Jap. He was very tall, very thin,
with a face burnt a brick red by exposure to sun and wind, and, born
in Massachusetts, he had marched as a youth with Sherman to the sea.
After the war he married, crossed the plains in a "prairie schooner,"
and, eventually, took up six hundred and forty acres of Government
land in San Lorenzo County. With incredible labour, inspired and
sustained by his natural acuteness, he wrought a miracle upon a
singularly arid and sterile soil. I have been told that he was the
first of the foothill settlers to irrigate abundantly, the first to
plant out an orchard and vineyard, the first, certainly, to create a
garden out of a sage-brush desert. Teamsters hauling wheat from the
Carisa plains used to stop to shake the white alkaline dust from their
overalls under Uncle Jap's fig trees. They and the cowboys were always
made welcome. To such guests Uncle Jap would offer figs, water-melons,
peaches, a square meal at noon, and exact nothing in return except
appreciation. If a man failed to praise Uncle Jap's fruit or his
wife's sweet pickles, he was not pressed to "call again." The old
fellow was inordinately proud of his colts, his Poland-China pigs, his
"graded" bull, his fountain in the garden.
"Nice place you have, Mr. Panel," a stranger might say.
"Yas; we call it Sunny Bushes. Uster be nothin' but sun an' bushes
onst. It's nice, yas, and it's paid for."
"What a good-looking mare!"
"Yas; she's paid for, too."
Everything on the ranch, animal, vegetable, and mineral, was "paid
for." Uncle Jap was the last man to hurt anybody's feelings, but the
"paid for" rankled on occasion, for some of his visitors stood
perilously near the edge of bankruptcy, and, as a rule, had not paid
for either the land they occupied, or the cattle they branded, or the
clothes they wore. To understand this story you must grasp the fact
that Uncle Jap lived with credit and not on it.
His wife, also of New England parentage, had a righteous horror of
debt bred in her bone. Uncle Jap adored her. If he set an extravagant
value upon his other possessions, what price above rubies did he place
upon the meek, silent, angular woman, who had been his partner,
companion, and friend for more than a quarter of a century. Sun and
wind had burnt her face, also, to the exact tint of her husband's. Her
name was Lily.
"And, doggone it, she looks like a lily," Uncle Jap would say, in
moments of expansion. "Tall an' slim, yas, an' with a little droop of
her head. I'd ought ter be grateful to God fer givin' me sech a flower
outer heaven--an' I am, I am. Look at her now! What a mover!"
Uncle Jap's Lily chasing a hen certainly exhibited an activity
surprising in one of her years. By a hairbreadth she missed
perfection. Uncle Jap had been known to hint, nothing more, that he
would have liked a dozen or so of babies. The hint took concrete form
in: "I think a heap o' young things, colts, kittens, puppies--an' the
like." Then he would sigh.
We came to California in the eighties, and in '93, if my memory serves
me, Uncle Jap discovered bituminous rock in a corner of his ranch. He
became very excited over this find, and used to carry samples of ore
in his pocket which he showed to the neighbours.
"There's petroleum whar that ore is--_sure_. An' ef I could
strike it, boys, why, why I'd jest hang my Lily with di'monds from her
head to her feet, I would."
This, mind you, was before the discovery of the now famous oil fields.
Even in those early days experts were of opinion that oil might be
found below the croppings of bituminous rock by any pioneer
enterprising enough to bore for it.
About this time we began to notice that Uncle Jap was losing interest
in his ranch. Cattle strayed through the fence because he neglected to
mend it, calves escaping were caught and branded by unscrupulous
neighbours, a colt was found dead, cast in a deep gulch.
"What's the matter with Uncle Jap?" we asked, at the May-Day picnic.
Mrs. Fullalove, a friend of Mrs. Panel, answered the question.
"I'll tell ye," she said sharply. "Jaspar Panel has gotten a disease
common enough in Californy. He's sufferin' from a dose o' swelled
head."
Mrs. Panel sprang to her feet. Her face was scarlet; her pale eyes
snapped; the nostrils of her thin nose were dilated.
"Susan Jane Fullalove," she cried shrilly, "how dare you?"
Mrs. Fullalove remained calm.
"It's so, Lily. Yer so thin, I didn't see ye sittin' edgeways, but ye
needn't to ramp an' roar. Yer ranch _is_ flyin' to flinders
because Mr. Panel's tuk a notion that it's a-floatin' on a lake of
ile."
"An' mebbe it is," replied Mrs. Panel, subsiding.
Shortly afterwards we heard that Uncle Jap was frequenting saloons,
hanging about the hotels in the county town, hunting, of course, for a
capitalist who would bore for oil on shares, seeking the "angel" with
the dollars who would transport him and his Lily into the empyrean of
millionaires. When he confided as much to us, my brother Ajax
remarked--
"Hang it all, Uncle Jap, you've got all you want."
"That's so. I hev. But Lily----Boys, I don't like ter give her away--
this is between me an' you--she's the finest in the land, ain't she?
Yas. An' work? Great Minneapolis! Why, work come mighty near robbin'
her of her looks. It did, fer a fact. An' now, she'd ought ter take
things easy, an' hev a good time."
"She does have a good time."
"Ajax, yer talkin' through yer hat. What do you know of wimmenfolk?
Not a derned thing. They're great at pretendin'. I dessay you, bein' a
bachelor, think that my Lily kind o' wallers in washin' my ole duds,
an' cookin' the beans and bacon when the thermometer's up to a hundred
in the shade, and doin' chores around the hog pens an' chicken yards?
Wal--she don't. She pretends, fer my sake, but bein' a lady born an'
bred, her mind's naterally set on--silks an' satins, gems, a pianner--
an' statooary."
"I can't believe it," said my brother. "Mrs. Panel has always seemed
to me the most sensible woman----"
"Lady, _if_ you please."
"I beg pardon--the most sensible lady of my acquaintance, and the most
contented with the little home you've made for her."
"She helped make it. O' course, it's nateral, you bein' so young an'
innercent, that you should think you know more about Mis' Panel's
inside than I do, but take it from me that she's pined in secret for
what I'm a-goin' ter give her before I turn up my toes."
With that he rode away on his old pinto horse, smiling softly and
nodding his grizzled head.
Later, he travelled to San Francisco, where he interviewed presidents
of banks and other magnates. All and sundry were civil to Uncle Jap,
but they refused to look for a needle in a haystack. Uncle Jap
confessed, later, that he was beginning to get "cold feet," as he
expressed it, when he happened to meet an out-of-elbows individual who
claimed positively that he could discover water, gold, or oil, with no
tools or instruments other than a hazel twig. Uncle Jap, who forgot to
ask why this silver-tongued vagabond had failed to discover gold for
himself, returned in triumph to his ranch, bringing with him the
wizard, pledged to consecrate his gifts to the "locating" of the lake
of oil. In return for his services Uncle Jap agreed to pay him fifty
dollars a week, board and lodging included. When he told us of the
bargain he had made, his face shone with satisfaction and confidence.
He chuckled, as he added slyly--
"I peeked in to some o' them high-toned joolery stores on Montgomery
and Kearney Streets. Yas, I did. An' I priced what they call a ti-
airy, sort o' di'mond crown. They run up into the thousands o'
dollars. Think o' Mis' Panel in a _ti_-airy, boys; but shush-h-h-
h! Not a word to her--eh?"
We pledged ourselves to secrecy, but when Uncle Jap's back was turned,
Ajax cursed the wizard as the Cardinal Lord Archbishop of Rheims
cursed the jackdaw. When we saw Mrs. Panel, she seemed to be thinner
and more angular, but her lips were firmly compressed, as if she
feared that something better left unsaid might leak from them. An old
sunbonnet flapped about her red, wrinkled face, her hands, red and
wrinkled also, trembled when we inquired after the wizard and his
works.
"He's located the lake," she replied. Suppressed wrath boiled over, as
she added fiercely: "I wish 'twas a lake o' fire an' brimstone, an' him
a-bilin' in the middle of it." Then, reading the sympathy in our eyes,
she continued quickly: "I ain't denyin' that Jaspar has a right to do
what he pleases with what lies out o' doors. He never interfered with
me in my kitchen, never! Would you gen'lemen fancy a glass o'
lemonade? No? Wal--I'm glad you called in, fer I hev been feelin' kind
o' lonesome lately."
What Uncle Jap's Lily suffered when he mortgaged all his cattle to
sink a well nobody knows but herself, and she never told. The wizard
indicated a certain spot below the croppings of bituminous rock; a big
derrick was built; iron casing was hauled over the Coast Range; the
well was bored.
Then, after boring some two thousand feet, operations had to be
suspended, because Uncle Jap's dollars were exhausted, and his
patience. The wizard swore stoutly that the lake was there, millions
and millions of barrels of oil, but he deemed it expedient to leave
the country in a hurry, because Uncle Jap intimated to him in the most
convincing manner that there was not room in it for so colossal a
fraud. The wizard might have argued the question, but the sight of
Uncle Jap's old Navy six-shooter seemed to paralyse his tongue.
After this incident Uncle Jap ranched with feverish energy, and Mrs.
Fullalove said that the old man had gotten over a real bad dose of
swelled head.
* * * * *
Five years later came the oil boom!
Everybody knows now that it flowed in prodigious quantities into the
vats of one man, whom we shall speak of with the respect which the
billionaire inspires, as the Autocrat of Petroleum. Let us hasten to
add that we shall approach him in the person of his agent, who, so far
as Uncle Jap was concerned, doubtless acted in defiance of the will of
the greatest church builder and philanthropist in the world.
Oil was struck in pints, quarts, gallons, buckets, and finally in
thousands and tens of thousands of barrels! It flowed copiously in our
cow-county; it greased, so to speak, the wheels--and how ramshackle
some of them were!--of a score of enterprises, it saturated all things
and persons.
Now, conceive, if you can, the triumphant I-told-you-so-boys
expression of Uncle Jap. He swelled again visibly: head first, then
body and soul. The county kowtowed to him. Speculators tried to buy
his ranch, entreated him to name a price.
"I'll take half a million dollars, in cold cash," said Uncle Jap.
The speculators offered him instead champagne and fat cigars. Uncle
Jap refused both. He was not going to be "flimflammed," no, sir! Not
twice in his life, _no, Siree Bob_! He, by the Jumping Frog of
Calaveras, proposed to paddle his own canoe into and over the lake of
oil. If the boys wished him to forgo the delights of that voyage, let
'em pungle up half a million--or get.
They got.
Presently, after due consultation with a famous mining engineer, Uncle
Jap mortgaged his cattle for the second time, and sank another well.
He discovered oil sand, not a lake. Then he mortgaged his land, every
stick and stone on it, and sunk three more wells. It was a case of
Bernard Palissy. Was Bernard a married man? I forget. If so, did he
consult his wife before he burnt the one and only bed? Did she
protest? It is a fact that Uncle Jap's Lily did not protest. She
looked on, the picture of misery, and her mouth was a thin line of
silence across her wrinkled impassive countenance.
When every available cent had been raised and sunk, the oil spouted
out. Who looked at the fountain in the patch of lawn by the old fig
trees? Possibly Mrs. Panel. Not Uncle Jap. He, the most temperate of
men, became furiously drunk on petroleum. He exuded it from every
pore. Of course he was acclaimed by the county and the State (the
Sunday editions published his portrait) as the star-spangled epitome
of Yankee grit and get-there.
At this point we must present, with apologies, the agent of the
Autocrat, _the_ agent, the High-muck-a-muck of the Pacific Slope,
with a salary of a hundred thousand a year and _perks_! In his
youth Nat Levi smelt of fried fish, unless the smell was overpowered
by onions, and he changed his lodgings more often than he changed his
linen. Now you meet him as Nathaniel Leveson, Esquire, who travelled
in his private car, who assumed the God, when the God was elsewhere,
who owned a palace on Nob Hill, and some of the worst, and therefore
the most paying, rookeries in Chinatown, who never refused to give a
cheque for charitable purposes when it was demanded in a becomingly
public manner, who, like the Autocrat, had endowed Christian Churches,
and had successfully eliminated out of his life everything which
smacked of the Ghetto, except his nose.
Nathaniel Leveson visited our county, opened an office, and began to
lay his pulpy white hands upon everything which directly or indirectly
might produce petroleum. In due season he invited Uncle Jap to dine
with him at the Paloma Hotel, in San Lorenzo. The old man, with the
hayseed in his hair, and the stains of bitumen upon his gnarled hands,
ate and drank of the best, seeing a glorified vision of his Lily
crowned with diamonds at last. The vision faded somewhat when
Nathaniel began to talk dollars and cents. Even to Uncle Jap, unversed
in such high matters as finance, it seemed plain that Leveson &
Company were to have the dollars, and that to him, the star-spangled
epitome of Yankee grit and get-there were to be apportioned the cents.
"Lemme see," he said, with the slow, puzzled intonation of the man who
does not understand; "I own this yere oil----"
"Subject to the mortgage, Mr. Panel, I believe?"
"That don't amount to shucks," said Uncle Jap.
"Quite so. Forgive me for interrupting you."
"I own this yere oil-field, lake I call it, and, bar the mortgage,
it's bin paid for with the sweat of my--soul."
He brought out the word with such startling emphasis, that Nathaniel
nearly upset the glass of fine old cognac which he was raising to his
lips.
"Yas, my soul," continued Uncle Jap, meditatively. "I risked
everything I'd got. Man," he leant across the gaily decorated table,
with its crystal, its pink shades, its pretty flowers, and compelled
his host to meet his flaming eyes,--"man, I risked my wife's love and
respect. And," he drew a deep breath, "by God, I was justified. I got
there. If I hadn't," the fire died down in his mild blue eyes, and the
thin body seemed to wither and shrink,--"if I hadn't struck it, it
would hev killed her, the finest lady in the land, an' me too. It was
nip an' tuck with both of us. And now," his voice warmed into life
again,--"and now you offer me fifty thousand dollars."
"I am anxious to treat you right, Mr. Panel. Another glass of brandy?
No. Between ourselves the market is getting weaker every day. Fifty
thousand profit, perhaps, may seem a small sum to you, but I cannot
offer more. You are at perfect liberty to refuse my cheque; others,
perhaps----"
Uncle Jap rose up grim and gaunt.
"I've ate dinner with you," he murmured, "so I'll say nothing more
than 'thank you' and 'good-bye.'"
"Good-bye, Mr. Panel. At any time, if you have reason to change your
mind, I shall be glad to talk business with you."
Uncle Jap returned to his own hotel to pass a restless night. Next day
he sought a certain rich man who had a huge ranch in our county. The
rich man, let us call him Dives, had eaten Uncle Jap's figs, and taken
his advice, more than once, about cattle.
"Who's a-buyin' oil lakes?" demanded Uncle Jap.
"Nathaniel Leveson."
"Who else?"
Dives eyed Uncle Jap keenly. Rich men don't tell all they know,
otherwise they would not be rich. Still, those figs and that water-
melon on a broiling July afternoon had tasted uncommonly good!
"Look here, Mr. Panel, I think I can guess what has happened. Somebody
has tried to squeeze you--eh?"
"That's so."
"Um! You're not the first."
"I wan't squeezed."
"Not yet, but----Mr. Panel, I should like to do you a service, and I
know you to be an intelligent man. Do you see this sheet of blotting-
paper?"
The blotting-paper lay immaculate upon the desk. Dives took a clean
quill, dipped it into ink, and held it poised over the white pad.
Uncle Jap watched him with interest.
"This," continued Dives, thoughtfully, "represents you and your ranch,
Mr. Panel," he made a small dot upon the blotting-paper. "This," he
made a much larger dot, "represents me and all I have. Now Leveson
represents--_this_."
With a violent motion, quite contrary to his usual gentle, courteous
manner, Dives plunged the quill to the bottom of the ink pot, withdrew
it quickly, and jerked its contents upon the blotting-paper. A huge
purple blot spread and spread till the other small blots were
incorporated.
"D--n him!" spluttered Uncle Jap.
Dives shrugged his shoulders, and smiled.
"My advice is: take what Leveson offers."
"Fifty thousand for millions?"
"Possibly. Can you touch them, if Omnipotence forbids?"
Dives stared moodily at the big purple blot; then picking up the sheet
of blotting-paper he tore it to pieces with his nervous, finely-formed
fingers, and dropped it into the waste-paper basket. When he looked
up, he saw that Uncle Jap's mild blue eyes were curiously congested.
"You might see So-and-so," Dives named a banker. "I'll write a note of
introduction." Then he added with a faint inflection of derision: "I
fear it will be of no service to you, because few business men care to
buy trouble even at a bargain."
All this Ajax and I heard from Uncle Jap, after he returned from San
Lorenzo without selling Sunny Bushes to So-and-so. None the less, he
brought back a pair of small diamond ear-rings.
"Lily's ears ain't pierced," he explained; "but she'll hev a reel
splendid time lookin' at 'em, jest as I uster hev with my nightie."
"Your--_nightie_?"
Uncle Jap chuckled and rubbed together his bony hands, cracking the
joints.
"Yas, my nightie. Never tole you boys about that, did I? Wal, about a
month before Lily an' me was fixin' up to get merried, she made me a
nightie. It was mos' too dressy fer a lady to wear, let alone a
critter like me who'd allus slep' in his pants an' day shirt. 'Twas of
fine linen, pleated, and fixed with ribands, yaller riband, I chose
the colour. Lily was kinder stuck on pale blue, but I liked yaller
best. Lily knew what I' do with that nightie, an' I done it. I put it
away in the tissoo paper 'twas wrapped in, an' I hev it still. I've got
more solid satisfaction out of lookin' at it than I ever hev out o' my
bank book. An," he concluded warmly, "Lily's goin' ter feel jest that
way about these yere sollytaires."
What followed immediately afterwards is county history. Uncle Jap
decided to borrow money to develop his bonanza. The Autocrat, with
tentacles stretching to the uttermost ends of the earth, may--I dare
not affirm that he did--have issued instructions that such money as
Jaspar Panel asked for was to be paid. Jaspar Panel asked for a good
deal, and got it. He sunk more wells and capped them; he built
reservoirs, he laid down pipe line. The day of triumph dawned when an
English company offered to take all the oil Uncle Jap could supply,
provided it were delivered free on board their vessels. Then came the
crushing blow that the railroad would not transport Mr. Panel's
petroleum. If they did--this was not the reason given by the shipping
agents--the Autocrat might be _displeased_.
Meantime the banks politely requested Jaspar Panel to meet his
obligations.
Hitherto, Uncle Jap had been a man of simple and primitive beliefs. He
had held, for instance, that a beneficent Providence will uphold Right
against Might; he had pinned his faith to the flag under which he
fought and bled when a boy; he had told his Lily (who believed him)
that American citizenship is a greater thing than a Roman's in Rome's
palmiest day: a phrase taken whole from the mouth of a Fourth of July
orator. Last of all, he had believed devoutly in his own strong hands
and will, the partnership of mind and muscle which confronts seemingly
insuperable obstacles confident that it can destroy them.
And now, hour by hour, day by day, conviction settled upon his soul
that in this world one only reigned supreme: the Autocrat of Oil,
whose High Priest was Nathaniel Leveson. After heart-rending months of
humiliation, upon the eve of foreclosure by the banks, Uncle Jap wrote
a forlorn letter to Nathaniel, accepting his offer of fifty thousand
dollars for the lake of oil. Mr. Leveson, so a subordinate replied,
_was not buying oil properties_! For the moment he was interested
in other matters ... Uncle Jap happened to read next day that Leveson,
treading in the footsteps of his Master, was about to present a
splendid church to the people of San Lorenzo. Uncle Jap stared at the
paper till it turned white, till he saw in the middle of it a huge
purple blot ever-increasing in size.
That evening he cleaned his old six-shooter, which had made the
climate of the county so particularly pestilential for the wizard with
the hazel twig.
"Pore critter," he muttered as he wiped the barrel, "he was down to
his uppers, but this feller------" Mrs. Panel, putting away the supper
things, heard her husband swearing softly to himself. She hesitated a
moment; then she came in, and seeing the pistol, a gasp escaped her.
"What air you doin' with that, Jaspar Panel?"
Uncle Jap coughed.
"There's bin a skunk around," he said. "I've kind o' smelled him for
weeks past, hain't you?"
"I never knowed you to shoot a skunk with anything but a shot-gun."
"That's so. I'd disremembered. Wonder if I kin shoot as straight as I
used ter?"
For answer his wife, usually so undemonstrative, bent down, took the
pistol from his hand, put it back into the drawer, and, slightly
blushing, kissed the old man's cheek.
"Why, Lily, what ails ye?"
His surprise at this unwonted caress brought a faint smile to her thin
lips.
"Nothing."
"Ye ain't tuk a notion that yer goin' to die?"
"Nothing ails me, Jaspar," her voice was strong and steady. "I'm
strong as I was twenty year ago, or nearly so. I kin begin life over
agen, ef I hev to."
"Who said you hed to?" enquired her husband fiercely. "Who said you
hed to?" he repeated. "Susan Jane Fullalove? I'd like ter wring her
dam neck. Oh, it wan't her, eh? Wal, you take if from me that you
ain't agoin' to begin life agen onless it's in a marble hall sech as
you've dreamed about ever since you was shortcoated. Let me hear no
more sech talk. D'ye hear?"
"I hear," she answered meekly, and went back to her kitchen.
* * * * *
Next day she came to us across the cow-pasture as we were smoking our
pipes after the mid-day meal. We guessed that no light matter had
brought her afoot, with such distress upon her face.
"I'm in trouble," she said nervously.
"We are your friends," said Ajax gravely.
"Jaspar's gone to town," she gasped.
Uncle Jap, since the striking of the oil, had been in the habit of
going to town so often that this statement aroused no surprise. We
waited for more information.
"I'm scared plum ter death," Mrs. Panel continued. "I want ter foller
him at onst. Jaspar's taken the team. I thought maybe you'd hitch up
and drive me in this afternoon--_now_."
The last word left her lips with a violence that was positively
imperative.
"Certainly," said Ajax. He turned to leave the room. We neither of us
asked a question. Upon the threshold he addressed me:
"I'll bring the buggy round while you change."
I reflected that it was considerate of Ajax to allow me to drive Mrs.
Panel the twenty-six miles between our ranch and San Lorenzo. I nodded
and went into my bedroom.
* * * * *
For the first ten miles, Mrs. Panel never opened her lips. I glanced
occasionally at her impassive face, wondering when she would speak.
Somehow I knew that she would speak, and she did. It was like her to
compress all she had left unsaid into the first sentence.
"Jaspar's gone plum crazy with trouble! he took his six-shooter with
him."
After that, details given with a descriptive realism impossible to
reproduce. The poor creature revealed herself to me during the next
few minutes as I feel sure she had never revealed herself to her
husband.
"He's mad, plum crazy," she pleaded. "Nobody knows what he's suffered
but me. I don't say it ain't a jedgment, mebbe it is. We thought we
was jest about right. The pride we took in Sunny Bushes was sinful;
yas, it was. The Lord has seen fit to chastise us, an' I'm willin', I
tole Jaspar so, ter begin agen. We're healthy, an strong, though we
don't look it, I'll allow. Jaspar is plum crazy. His words las' night
proved it. He said we might begin life agen in a marble hall sech as I
hed dreamed about. Good land o' Peter! I never dreamed of marble halls
in all my life, but I dassn't contradict him."
"He believes you dreamed of them," I said, "and he is quite sure you
ought to live in them."
"He thinks the world o' me," said Mrs. Panel, in a softer tone, "but
this world an' the next won't turn him from what he's set his mind to
do. I'd oughter be ashamed o' speakin' so of him, but it's so. Mercy!
I hev been talkin'."
She said no more till we descended from the buggy in the livery stable
where Jaspar was in the habit of putting up his horses.
"You ain't seen Mr. Panel, hev you?" she asked the ostler.
"He's around somewheres," the man replied. With this information we
started out to look for him. Away from the familiar brush hills,
confronted by strange faces, confused, possibly, by the traffic, my
companion seemed so nervous and helpless that I dared not leave her.
Almost unconsciously, we directed our steps towards the Amalgamated
Oil Company's office. Here we learned that Leveson was in town, and
that Uncle Jap had called to see him.
"Did he see him?" Mrs. Panel's voice quavered.
"No," the clerk answered curtly; then he added: "Nobody sees the boss
without an appointment. We told Mr. Panel to call to-morrow."
If the clerk had spoken with tongues of angels Lily could not have
assumed a more seraphic expression.
"An' where is he now?" she asked.
"Your husband, ma'am? I can't tell you."
"I mean Mr. Leveson."
"He's in there," the private room was indicated, "and up to his eyes
in work. He won't quit till he goes to dinner at the Paloma. D'ye hear
the typewriters clicking? He makes things hum when he's here, and
don't you forget it."
"I shall never forget that," said Mrs. Panel, in an accent which made
me remember that her grandfather had been a graduate of Harvard
University. "Good-afternoon."
We walked on down the street. Suddenly, Mrs. Panel staggered, and
might have fallen had I not firmly grasped her arm.
"I dunno' what ails me," she muttered.
"Did you eat any breakfast this morning?"
"I dunno' as I did," she admitted with reluctance.
"Did you eat any dinner?"
"Mebbee I didn't." Her innate truthfulness compelled her to add with a
pathetic defiance: "I couldn't hev swallered a mossel to save my
life."
I took her to a restaurant, and prescribed a plate of soup and a glass
of wine. Then I said with emphasis:
"Now, look here, Mrs. Panel! I want you to rest, while I hunt up Mr.
Panel. When I find him I'll bring him to you."
"An' s'pose he won't come?"
"He will come."
"No, he won't; not till he's done what he's set his mind to do. Was
you aimin' to hunt fer Jaspar up an' down this town?"
"Certainly. It's not as big as you think."
"'Pears to me it'd be a better plan to keep an eye on the other
feller."
With a woman's instinct she had hit the mark.
"Perhaps it would," I admitted.
"I noticed one or two things," she continued earnestly. "Near the
office is an empty lot with trees and bushes. I'd as lief rest there
as here ef it's the same to you. Then you kin look around for Jaspar,
if ye've a mind to."
"And if I find him?"
"Watch him, as I shall watch the other feller."
"And then----"
"The rest is in the dear Lord's hands."
She adjusted the thick veil which Southern Californian women wear to
keep the thick dust from their faces, and together we returned to
Leveson's office. Passing the door, I could hear the typewriters still
clicking. Mrs. Panel sat down under a tree in the empty lot, and for
the first time since we had met that day spoke in her natural tones.
"I come away without feeding the chickens," she said.
I looked at my watch; it was nearly six. One hour of daylight
remained. Leveson, I happened to know, was in the habit of dining
about half-past six. He often returned to the office after dinner.
Between the Hotel Paloma, which lay just outside the town and the
office ran a regular service of street cars. Leveson was the last man
in the world to walk when he could drive. It seemed reasonably certain
that Jaspar, failing to see Leveson at the office, would try to speak
to him at the hotel. From my knowledge of the man's temperament and
character, I was certain that he would not shoot down his enemy
without warning. So I walked up to the hotel feeling easier in my
mind. The clerk, whom I knew well, assigned me a room. I saw several
men in the hall, but not Uncle Jap.
"Does Mr. Leveson dine about half-past six?" I asked.
The clerk raised his brows.
"That's queer," he said. "You're the second man to ask that question
within an hour. Old man Panel asked the same thing."
"And what did you tell him?"
"Mr. Leveson don't dine till seven. He goes to the church first."
If the man had said that Leveson went to Heaven I could not have been
more surprised. Then I remembered what I had read in the local papers.
I had not seen the church yet. I had not wished to see it, knowing
that every stone in it was paid for with the sweat--as Uncle Jap had
put it--of other men's souls.
"Where is this church?"
"You don't know? Third turning to the left after passing the Olive
Branch Saloon."
"Leveson owns that too, doesn't he?"
The clerk yawned. "I dare say. He owns most of the earth around here,
and most of the people on it."
I walked quickly back towards the town, wondering what took Leveson to
the church. No doubt he wanted to see if he were getting his money's
worth, to note the day's work, perhaps to give the lie to the
published statement that he built churches and never entered them.
Nearly half-an-hour had passed since I left Mrs. Panel.
When I reached the third turning to the left I saw the church,
certainly the handsomest in San Lorenzo. It stood in a large lot,
littered with builders' materials. The workmen had left it at six. The
building had an indescribably lifeless aspect. An hour before men had
been busy within and without it, now not a soul was to be seen. I had
time to walk round it, to note that the doors were locked, to note
also, quite idly, that the window of the vestry was open. I could see
no signs of Uncle Jap.
Coming round to the front, I saw in the distance a portly figure
approaching, followed by a thin, dust-coloured wraith of a woman. I
slipped behind a tree and waited. Leveson strolled up, bland and
imposing. He stood still for a moment, staring intently at the outside
of his church now completed. Then, taking a key from his pocket, he
opened the vestry door and entered the building, closing the door
behind him. I went to meet Mrs. Panel.
"Seen Jaspar?"
"I haven't."
"What's that feller," she always spoke of Leveson as a 'feller,'
"doin' in a church?"
"It's his church. He built it."
"Good Land o' Peter! What's he doin' in it anyway?"
"Not praying, I think."
"Shush-h-h-h."
Mrs. Panel touched my arm, thrusting out her lean face in an attitude
of intense attention. I strained my own ears, fairly good ones, but
heard nothing.
"Jaspar's in there," said his wife. "I hear his voice."
She trembled with excitement. Obviously, Jaspar had concealed himself
somewhere in the vestry. No time was to be lost.
Turning the north-east corner of the building, where the vestry is
situated, I crawled under the window, followed by Mrs. Panel. The two
men were within a few feet of us. Uncle Jap's slightly high-pitched
tones fell sharply upon the silence.
"This is a leetle surprise party, ain't it?" he was saying.