growing fear. How many minutes I searched for him I do not know. It
seemed many hours. His cabin, where first I sought him, was empty and
dismantled, and by that I was reminded that if for any desperate purpose
Talbot were seeking to conceal himself there now were hundreds of other
empty, dismantled cabins in which he might hide. To my inquiries no one
gave heed. In the confusion of departure no one had observed him; no one
was in a humor to seek him out; the passengers were pressing to the
gangway, the stewards concerned only in counting their tips. From deck
to deck, down lane after lane of the great floating village, I raced
blindly, peering into half-opened doors, pushing through groups of men,
pursuing some one in the distance who appeared to be the man I sought,
only to find he was unknown to me. When I returned to the gangway the
last of the passengers was leaving it.
I was about to follow to seek for Talbot in the customs shed when a
white-faced steward touched my sleeve. Before he spoke his look told me
why I was wanted.
"The ship's surgeon, sir," he stammered, "asks you please to hurry to
the sick-bay. A passenger has shot himself!"
On the bed, propped up by pillows, young Talbot, with glazed, shocked
eyes, stared at me. His shirt had been cut away; his chest lay bare.
Against his left shoulder the doctor pressed a tiny sponge which quickly
darkened.
I must have exclaimed aloud, for the doctor turned his eyes.
"It was _he_ sent for you," he said, "but he doesn't need you.
Fortunately, he's a damned bad shot!"
The boy's eyes opened wearily; before we could prevent it he spoke.
"I was so tired," he whispered. "Always moving me on. I was so tired!"
Behind me came heavy footsteps, and though with my arm I tried to bar
them out, the two detectives pushed into the doorway. They shoved me to
one side and through the passage made for him came the Jew in the sable
coat, Mr. Adolph Meyer.
For an instant the little great man stood with wide, owl-like eyes,
staring at the face on the pillow.
Then he sank softly to his knees. In both his hands he caught the hand
of the card-sharp.
"Heine!" he begged. "Don't you know me? It is your brother Adolph; your
little brother Adolph!"
BILLY AND THE BIG STICK
Had the Wilmot Electric Light people remained content only to make
light, had they not, as a by-product, attempted to make money, they need
not have left Hayti.
When they flooded with radiance the unpaved streets of Port-au-Prince no
one, except the police, who complained that the lights kept them awake,
made objection; but when for this illumination the Wilmot Company
demanded payment, every one up to President Hamilcar Poussevain was
surprised and grieved. So grieved was President Ham, as he was lovingly
designated, that he withdrew the Wilmot concession, surrounded the
power-house with his barefooted army, and in a proclamation announced
that for the future the furnishing of electric light would be a monopoly
of the government.
In Hayti, as soon as it begins to make money, any industry, native or
foreign, becomes a monopoly of the government. The thing works
automatically. It is what in Hayti is understood as _haut finance_. The
Wilmot people should have known that. Because they did not know that,
they stood to lose what they had sunk in the electric-light plant, and
after their departure to New York, which departure was accelerated as
far as the wharf by seven generals and twelve privates, they proceeded
to lose more money on lobbyists and lawyers who claimed to understand
international law; even the law of Hayti. And lawyers who understand
that are high-priced.
The only employee of the Wilmot force who was not escorted to the wharf
under guard was Billy Barlow. He escaped the honor because he was
superintendent of the power-house, and President Ham believed that
without him the lightning would not strike. Accordingly by an executive
order Billy became an employee of the government. With this arrangement
the Wilmot people were much pleased. For they trusted Billy, and they
knew while in the courts they were fighting to regain their property, he
would see no harm came to it.
Billy's title was Directeur Général et Inspecteur Municipal de Luminaire
Electrique, which is some title, and his salary was fifty dollars a
week. In spite of Billy's color President Ham always treated his only
white official with courtesy and gave him his full title. About giving
him his full salary he was less particular. This neglect greatly annoyed
Billy. He came of sturdy New England stock and possessed that New
England conscience which makes the owner a torment to himself, and to
every one else a nuisance. Like all the other Barlows of Barnstable on
Cape Cod, Billy had worked for his every penny. He was no shirker. From
the first day that he carried a pair of pliers in the leg pocket of his
overalls, and in a sixty-knot gale stretched wires between ice-capped
telegraph poles, he had more than earned his wages. Never, whether on
time or at piece-work, had he by a slovenly job, or by beating the
whistle, robbed his employer. And for his honest toil he was determined
to be as honestly paid--even by President Hamilcar Poussevain. And
President Ham never paid anybody; neither the Armenian street peddlers,
in whose sweets he delighted, nor the Bethlehem Steel Company, nor the
house of Rothschild.
Why he paid Billy even the small sums that from time to time Billy wrung
from the president's strong box the foreign colony were at a loss to
explain. Wagner, the new American consul, asked Billy how he managed it.
As an American minister had not yet been appointed, to the duties of
the consul, as Wagner assured everybody, were added those of diplomacy.
But Haytian diplomacy he had yet to master. At the seaport in Scotland
where he had served as vice-consul, law and order were as solidly
established as the stone jetties, and by contrast the eccentricities of
the Black Republic baffled and distressed him.
"It can't be that you blackmail the president," said the consul,
"because I understand he boasts he has committed all the known crimes."
"And several he invented," agreed Billy.
"And you can't do it with a gun, because they tell me the president
isn't afraid of anything except a voodoo priestess. What is your
secret?" coaxed the consul. "If you'll only sell it, I know several
Powers that would give you your price."
Billy smiled modestly.
"It's very simple," he said. "The first time my wages were shy I went to
the palace and told him if he didn't come across I'd shut off the juice.
I think he was so stunned at anybody asking him for real money that
while he was still stunned he opened his safe and handed me two thousand
francs. I think he did it more in admiration for my nerve than because
he owed it. The next time pay-day arrived, and the pay did not, I didn't
go to the palace. I just went to bed, and the lights went to bed, too.
You may remember?"
The consul snorted indignantly.
"I was holding three queens at the time," he protested. "Was it _you_
did that?"
"It was," said Billy. "The police came for me to start the current going
again, but I said I was too ill. Then the president's own doctor came,
old Gautier, and Gautier examined me with a lantern and said that in
Hayti my disease frequently proved fatal, but he thought if I turned on
the lights I might recover. I told him I was tired of life, anyway, but
that if I could see three thousand francs it might give me an incentive.
He reported back to the president and the three thousand francs arrived
almost instantly, and a chicken broth from Ham's own chef, with His
Excellency's best wishes for the recovery of the invalid. My recovery
was instantaneous, and I switched on the lights.
"I had just moved into the Widow Ducrot's hotel that week, and her
daughter Claire wouldn't let me eat the broth. I thought it was because,
as she's a dandy cook herself, she was professionally jealous. She put
the broth on the top shelf of the pantry and wrote on a piece of paper,
'Gare!' But the next morning a perfectly good cat, who apparently
couldn't read, was lying beside it dead."
The consul frowned reprovingly.
"You should not make such reckless charges," he protested. "I would call
it only a coincidence."
"You can call it what you please," said Billy, "but it won't bring the
cat back. Anyway, the next time I went to the palace to collect, the
president was ready for me. He said he'd been taking out information,
and he found if I shut off the lights again he could hire another man in
the States to turn them on. I told him he'd been deceived. I told him
the Wilmot Electric Lights were produced by a secret process, and that
only a trained Wilmot man could work them. And I pointed out to him if
he dismissed me it wasn't likely the Wilmot people would loan him
another expert; not while they were fighting him through the courts and
the State Department. That impressed the old man; so I issued my
ultimatum. I said if he must have electric lights he must have me, too.
Whether he liked it or not, mine was a life job."
"What did he say to that?" gasped the new consul.
"Said it _wasn't_ a life job, because he was going to have me shot at
sunset."
"Then you said?"
"I said if he did that there wouldn't be any electric lights, and _you_
would bring a warship and shoot Hayti off the map."
The new consul was most indignant.
"You had no right to say that!" he protested. "You did very ill. My
instructions are to avoid all serious complications."
"That was what I was trying to avoid," said Billy. "Don't you call being
shot at sunset a serious complication? Or would that be just a
coincidence, too? You're a hellofa consul!"
Since his talk with the representative of his country four months had
passed and Billy still held his job. But each month the number of francs
he was able to wrest from President Hamilcar dwindled, and were won only
after verbal conflicts that each month increased in violence.
To the foreign colony it became evident that, in the side of President
Ham, Billy was a thorn, sharp, irritating, virulent, and that at any
moment Ham might pluck that thorn and Billy would leave Hayti in haste,
and probably in handcuffs. This was evident to Billy, also, and the
prospect was most disquieting. Not because he loved Hayti, but because
since he went to lodge at the café of the Widow Ducrot, he had learned
to love her daughter Claire, and Claire loved him.
On the two thousand dollars due him from Ham they plotted to marry. This
was not as great an adventure as it might appear. Billy knew that from
the Wilmot people he always was sure of a salary, and one which, with
such an excellent housekeeper as was Claire, would support them both.
But with his two thousand dollars as capital they could afford to
plunge; they could go upon a honeymoon; they need not dread a rainy day,
and, what was of greatest importance, they need not delay. There was
good reason against delay, for the hand of the beautiful Claire was
already promised. The Widow Ducrot had promised it to Paillard, he of
the prosperous commission business, the prominent _embonpoint_, and four
children. Monsieur Paillard possessed an establishment of his own, but
it was a villa in the suburbs; and so, each day at noon, for his
_déjeûné_ he left his office and crossed the street to the Café Ducrot.
For five years this had been his habit. At first it was the widow's
cooking that attracted him, then for a time the widow herself; but when
from the convent Claire came to assist her mother in the café, and when
from a lanky, big-eyed, long-legged child she grew into a slim, joyous,
and charming young woman, she alone was the attraction, and the Widower
Paillard decided to make her his wife. Other men had made the same
decision; and when it was announced that between Claire and the widower
a marriage had been "arranged," the clerks in the foreign commission
houses and the agents of the steamship lines drowned their sorrow in rum
and ran the house flags to half-staff. Paillard himself took the
proposed alliance calmly. He was not an impetuous suitor. With Widow
Ducrot he agreed that Claire was still too young to marry, and to
himself kept the fact that to remarry he was in no haste. In his mind
doubts still lingered. With a wife, young enough to be one of his
children, disorganizing the routine of his villa, would it be any more
comfortable than he now found it? Would his eldest daughter and her
stepmother dwell together in harmony? The eldest daughter had assured
him that so far as she was concerned they would not; and, after all, in
marrying a girl, no matter how charming, without a dot, and the daughter
of a boarding-house keeper, no matter how respectable, was he not
disposing of himself too cheaply? These doubts assailed Papa Paillard;
these speculations were in his mind. And while he speculated Billy
acted.
"I know that in France," Billy assured Claire, "marriages are arranged
by the parents; but in _my_ country they are arranged in heaven. And who
are we to disregard the edicts of heaven? Ages and ages ago, before the
flood, before Napoleon, even before old Paillard with his four children,
it was arranged in heaven that you were to marry me. So, what little
plans your good mother may make don't cut enough ice to cool a green
mint. Now, we can't try to get married here," continued Billy, "without
your mother and Paillard knowing it. In this town as many people have to
sign the marriage contract as signed our Declaration of Independence:
all the civil authorities, all the clergy, all the relatives; if every
man in the telephone book isn't a witness, the marriage doesn't 'take.'
So, we must elope!"
Having been brought up in a convent, where she was taught to obey her
mother and forbidden to think of marriage, Claire was naturally
delighted with the idea of an elopement.
"To where will we elope to?" she demanded. Her English, as she learned
it from Billy, was sometimes confusing.
"To New York," said Billy. "On the voyage there I will put you in charge
of the stewardess and the captain; and there isn't a captain on the
Royal Dutch or the Atlas that hasn't known you since you were a baby.
And as soon as we dock we'll drive straight to the city hall for a
license and the mayor himself will marry us. Then I'll get back my old
job from the Wilmot folks and we'll live happy ever after!"
"In New York, also," asked Claire proudly, "are you directeur of the
electric lights?"
"On Broadway alone," Billy explained reprovingly, "there is one sign
that uses more bulbs than there are in the whole of Hayti!"
"New York is a large town!" exclaimed Claire.
"It's a large sign," corrected Billy. "But," he pointed out, "with no
money we'll never see it. So to-morrow I'm going to make a social call
on Grandpa Ham and demand my ten thousand francs."
Claire grasped his arm.
"Be careful," she pleaded. "Remember the chicken soup. If he offers you
the champagne, refuse it!"
"He won't offer me the champagne," Billy assured her. "It won't be that
kind of a call."
Billy left the Café Ducrot and made his way to the water-front. He was
expecting some electrical supplies by the _Prinz der Nederlanden_, and
she had already come to anchor.
He was late, and save for a group of his countrymen, who with the
customs officials were having troubles of their own, the customs shed
was all but deserted. Billy saw his freight cleared and was going away
when one of those in trouble signalled for assistance.
He was a good-looking young man in a Panama hat and his manner seemed to
take it for granted that Billy knew who he was.
"They want us to pay duty on our trunks," he explained, "and we want to
leave them in bond. We'll be here only until to-night, when we're going
on down the coast to Santo Domingo. But we don't speak French, and we
can't make them understand that."
"You don't need to speak any language to give a man ten dollars," said
Billy.
"Oh!" exclaimed the man in the Panama. "I was afraid if I tried that
they might arrest us."
"They may arrest you if you don't," said Billy.
Acting both as interpreter and disbursing agent, Billy satisfied the
demands of his fellow employees of the government, and his fellow
countrymen he directed to the Hotel Ducrot.
As some one was sure to take their money, he thought it might as well go
to his mother-in-law elect. The young man in the Panama expressed the
deepest gratitude, and Billy, assuring him he would see him later,
continued to the power-house, still wondering where he had seen him
before.
At the power-house he found seated at his desk a large, bearded stranger
whose derby hat and ready-to-wear clothes showed that he also had but
just arrived on the _Prinz der Nederlanden_.
"You William Barlow?" demanded the stranger. "I understand you been
threatening, unless you get your pay raised, to commit sabotage on these
works?"
"Who the devil are you?" inquired Billy.
The stranger produced an impressive-looking document covered with seals.
"Contract with the president," he said. "I've taken over your job. You
better get out quiet," he advised, "as they've given me a squad of
nigger policemen to see that you do."
"Are you aware that these works are the property of the Wilmot Company?"
asked Billy, "and that if anything went wrong here they'd hold you
responsible?"
The stranger smiled complacently.
"I've run plants," he said, "that make these lights look like a stable
lantern on a foggy night."
"In that case," assented Billy, "should anything happen, you'll know
exactly what to do, and I can leave you in charge without feeling the
least anxiety."
"That's just what you can do," the stranger agreed heartily, "and you
can't do it too quick!" From the desk he took Billy's favorite pipe and
loaded it from Billy's tobacco-jar. But when Billy had reached the door
he called to him. "Before you go, son," he said, "you might give me a
tip about this climate. I never been in the tropics. It's kind of
unhealthy, ain't it?"
His expression was one of concern.
"If you hope to keep alive," began Billy, "there are two things to
avoid--"
The stranger laughed knowingly.
"I got you!" he interrupted. "You're going to tell me to cut out wine
and women."
"I was going to tell you," said Billy, "to cut out hoping to collect any
wages and to avoid every kind of soup."
From the power-house Billy went direct to the palace. His anxiety was
great. Now that Claire had consented to leave Hayti, the loss of his
position did not distress him. But the possible loss of his back pay
would be a catastrophe. He had hardly enough money to take them both to
New York, and after they arrived none with which to keep them alive.
Before the Wilmot Company could find a place for him a month might
pass, and during that month they might starve. If he went alone and
arranged for Claire to follow, he might lose her. Her mother might marry
her to Paillard; Claire might fall ill; without him at her elbow to keep
her to their purpose the voyage to an unknown land might require more
courage than she possessed. Billy saw it was imperative they should
depart together, and to that end he must have his two thousand dollars.
The money was justly his. For it he had sweated and slaved; had given
his best effort. And so, when he faced the president, he was in no
conciliatory mood. Neither was the president.
By what right, he demanded, did this foreigner affront his ears with
demands for money; how dared he force his way into his presence and to
his face babble of back pay? It was insolent, incredible. With
indignation the president set forth the position of the government.
Billy had been discharged and, with the appointment of his successor,
the stranger in the derby hat, had ceased to exist. The government could
not pay money to some one who did not exist. All indebtedness to Billy
also had ceased to exist. The account had been wiped out. Billy had been
wiped out.
The big negro, with the chest and head of a gorilla, tossed his kinky
white curls so violently that the ringlets danced. Billy, he declared,
had been a pest; a fly that buzzed and buzzed and disturbed his
slumbers. And now when the fly thought he slept he had caught and
crushed it--so. President Ham clinched his great fist convulsively and,
with delight in his pantomime, opened his fingers one by one, and held
out his pink palm, wrinkled and crossed like the hand of a washerwoman,
as though to show Billy that in it lay the fly, dead.
"_C'est une chose jugée_!" thundered the president.
He reached for his quill pen.
But Billy, with Claire in his heart, with the injustice of it rankling
in his mind, did not agree.
"It is not an affair closed," shouted Billy in his best French. "It is
an affair international, diplomatic; a cause for war!"
Believing he had gone mad, President Ham gazed at him speechless.
"From here I go to the cable office," shouted Billy. "I cable for a
warship! If, by to-night, I am not paid my money, marines will surround
our power-house, and the Wilmot people will back me up, and my
government will back me up!"
It was, so Billy thought, even as he launched it, a tirade satisfying
and magnificent. But in his turn the president did not agree.
He rose. He was a large man. Billy wondered he had not previously
noticed how very large he was.
"To-night at nine o'clock," he said, "the German boat departs for New
York." As though aiming a pistol, he raised his arm and at Billy pointed
a finger. "If, after she departs, you are found in Port-au-Prince, you
will be shot!"
The audience-chamber was hung with great mirrors in frames of tarnished
gilt. In these Billy saw himself reproduced in a wavering line of
Billies that, like the ghost of Banquo, stretched to the disappearing
point. Of such images there was an army, but of the real Billy, as he
was acutely conscious, there was but one. Among the black faces scowling
from the doorways he felt the odds were against him. Without making a
reply he passed out between the racks of rusty muskets in the anteroom,
between the two Gatling guns guarding the entrance, and on the palace
steps, in indecision, halted.
As Billy hesitated an officer followed him from the palace and beckoned
to the guard that sat in the bare dust of the Champ de Mars playing
cards for cartridges. Two abandoned the game, and, having received
their orders, picked their muskets from the dust and stood looking
expectantly at Billy.
They were his escort, and it was evident that until nine o'clock, when
he sailed, his movements would be spied upon; his acts reported to the
president.
Such being the situation, Billy determined that his first act to be
reported should be of a nature to cause the president active mental
anguish. With his guard at his heels he went directly to the cable
station, and to the Secretary of State of the United States addressed
this message: "President refuses my pay; threatens shoot; wireless
nearest war-ship proceed here full speed. William Barlow."
Billy and the director of telegraphs, who out of office hours was a
field-marshal, and when not in his shirt-sleeves always appeared in
uniform, went over each word of the cablegram together. When Billy was
assured that the field-marshal had grasped the full significance of it
he took it back and added, "Love to Aunt Maria." The extra words cost
four dollars and eighty cents gold, but, as they suggested ties of blood
between himself and the Secretary of State, they seemed advisable. In
the account-book in which he recorded his daily expenditures Billy
credited the item to "life-insurance."
The revised cablegram caused the field-marshal deep concern. He frowned
at Billy ferociously.
"I will forward this at once," he promised. "But, I warn you," he added,
"I deliver also a copy to _my_ president!"
Billy sighed hopefully.
"You might deliver the copy first," he suggested.
From the cable station Billy, still accompanied by his faithful
retainers, returned to the power-house. There he bade farewell to the
black brothers who had been his assistants, and upon one of them pressed
a sum of money.
As they parted, this one, as though giving the pass-word of a secret
society, chanted solemnly:
"_A huit heures juste_!"
And Billy clasped his hand and nodded.
At the office of the Royal Dutch West India Line Billy purchased a
ticket to New York and inquired were there many passengers.
"The ship is empty," said the agent.
"I am glad," said Billy, "for one of my assistants may come with me. He
also is being deported."
"You can have as many cabins as you want," said the agent. "We are so
sorry to see you go that we will try to make you feel you leave us on
your private yacht."