He endeavored, while dressing, to map out a plan of campaign, but
the map was but a meaningless whirligig of lines leading nowhere when
Primmie called from the foot of the stairs that breakfast was ready.
During breakfast he was more absent-minded than usual, which is saying a
good deal, and Martha herself was far from communicative. After the
meal he was putting on his hat and coat preparatory to going out for his
usual walk when Primmie came hurrying through the hall.
“She wants you,” said Primmie, mysteriously, her eyes shining with
excitement. “She wants to see you in the settin' room. Come on, come on,
Mr. Bangs! What are you waitin' for?”
As a general rule Galusha's thoughts started upon the morning ramble
some little time before he did and recalling them was a rather slow and
patience-taxing process. In this case, however, they were already in the
sitting room with Martha Phipps and so had a shorter road home. But they
came slowly enough, for all that.
“Eh?” queried Galusha, peering out between the earlaps of his cap. “Eh?
What did you say, Primmie?”
“I say Miss Martha wants to see you a minute. She's in there a-waitin'.
I bet you she's goin' to tell you about it. Hurry! hurry!”
“Tell me?... About what?”
“Why, about what 'tis that's worryin' her so. About that Raish Pulcifer
and all the rest of it.... Oh, my Lord of Isrul! Don't you understand
NOW? Oh, Mr. Bangs, won't you PLEASE wake up?”
But Galusha was beginning to understand.
“Dear me! Dear me!” he exclaimed, nervously. “Do you think that--Did she
say she wished to see me, Primmie?”
“Ain't I been tellin' you she did? Now you talk right up to her, Mr.
Bangs. You tell her I don't want no wages. Tell her I'll stay right
along same as ever and--You TELL her, Mr. Bangs.”
Martha was standing by the stove in the sitting room when her lodger
entered. She turned to greet him.
“I don't know as I'm doin' right to keep you from your walk, Mr. Bangs,”
she said. “And I won't keep you very long. But I did want to talk with
you for just a minute or two. I wanted to ask your advice about--about a
business matter.”
Now this was very funny indeed. It would have been hard to find a richer
joke than the idea of consulting Galusha Bangs concerning a matter of
business. But both parties to this consultation were too serious to see
the joke at that moment.
Galusha nodded solemnly. He faltered something about being highly
honored and only too glad to be of service. His landlady thanked him.
“Yes,” she said, “I knew you would be. And, as I say, I won't keep you
very long. Sit down, Mr. Bangs. Oh, not in that straight up-and-down
thing. Here, in the rocker.”
Galusha lifted himself from the edge of the straight-backed chair upon
which he had perched and sat upon the edge of the rocking-chair instead.
Martha looked at him sitting there, his collar turned up, his cap brim
and earlaps covering two thirds of his face and his spectacles at least
half of the remaining third, his mittened hands twitching nervously in
his lap, and, in spite of her feelings, could not help smiling. But it
was a fleeting smile.
“Take off your things, Mr. Bangs,” she said. “You'll roast alive if you
don't. It's warm in here. Primmie forgot and left the dampers open and
the stove was pretty nearly red-hot when I came in just now. Yes, take
off your overcoat and cap, and those mittens, for mercy sakes.”
Galusha declared that he didn't mind the mittens and the rest, but she
insisted and he hastily divested himself of his wrappings, dropping
them upon the floor as the most convenient repository and being greatly
fussed when Miss Phipps picked them up and laid them on the table.
“I--I beg your pardon,” he stammered. “Really, I DON'T know why I am
so thoughtless. I--I should be--ah--hanged or something, I think. Then
perhaps I wouldn't do it again.”
Martha shook her head. “You probably wouldn't in that case,” she said.
“Now, Mr. Bangs, I'm going to try to get at that matter I wanted to
ask your opinion about. Do you know anything about stocks--stockmarket
stocks, I mean?”
Her lodger looked rather bewildered.
“Dear me, no; not a thing,” he declared.
She did not look greatly disappointed.
“I didn't suppose you did,” she said. “You--well, you don't look like
a man who would know much about such things. And from what I've seen
of you, goodness knows, you don't ACT like one! Perhaps I shouldn't say
that,” she added, hastily. “I didn't mean it just as it sounded.”
“Oh, that's all right, that's all right, Miss Phipps. I know I am
a--ah--donkey in most matters.”
“You're a long way from bein' a donkey, Mr. Bangs. And I didn't say
you were, of course. But--oh, well, never mind that. So you don't know
anything about stocks and investments and such?”
“No, I don't. I am awfully sorry. But--but, you see, all that sort of
thing is so very distasteful to me. It bores me--ah--dreadfully. And so
I--I dodge it whenever I can.”
Martha sighed. “Some of the rest of us would like to dodge it, too,” she
said, “if we only could. And yet--” she paused and regarded him with the
odd expression she had worn more than once when he puzzled her--“and yet
I--I just can't make you out, Mr. Bangs. You say you don't know anything
about money and managin' money, and yet those Egypt trips of yours must
cost a lot of money. And somebody must manage them. SOMEBODY must 'tend
to payin' the bills and the wages and all. Who does that?”
Galusha smiled. “Why, I do,” he admitted, “after a fashion. But it is a
very poor fashion. I almost never--I think I may safely say never come
in from one of those trips without having exceeded the--ah--estimate of
expenses. I always exceed it more or less--generally more.”
He smiled again. She looked more puzzled than ever.
“But some one has to pay the extra, don't they?” she asked. “Who does
pay it, the museum people?”
“Why--ah--no, not exactly. It is--ah--ah--generally provided. But,” he
added, rather hastily, as if afraid she might ask more questions along
this line, “if I might make a suggestion, Miss Martha--Miss Phipps, I
mean--”
“Plain Martha will do well enough. I think you're the only one in
East Wellmouth that calls me anything else. Of course you can make a
suggestion. Go ahead.”
“Well--ah--well, Miss Phipps--ah--Miss Martha, since you permit me to
call you so.... What is it?”
“Oh, nothin', nothin'. I was goin' to say that the 'Miss' wasn't
necessary, but never mind. Go on.”
“Well--ah--Mar--ah--Miss Martha, I was about to suggest that you tell me
what you intended telling me. I am very anxious to help--ah--even if I
can't, you know. Only I beg of you not to think I am actuated by idle
curiosity.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Even if you were I don't know that I shouldn't want to tell you, just
the same,” she observed. “The fact is I've just GOT to talk this over
with some one. Mr. Bangs, I am so worried I don't know what to do. It is
a money matter, of course, that's worryin' me, an investment father made
a little while before he died. Mr. Bangs, I don't suppose it's likely
that you ever heard of the Wellmouth Development Company? No, of course
you haven't.”
And yet, as she looked into her lodger's face, she was surprised at its
expression.
“Why, you never have heard of it, have you?” she demanded.
Galusha stroked his chin. “That day in the cemetery,” he murmured. “That
day when I was--ah--behind the tomb and heard Captain Hallett and Mr.
Pulcifer speaking. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that they
mentioned the name of--ah--ah--”
“The Development Company? Of course they did and you told me so when you
got home. I remember now. Well, Cap'n Jeth and Raish were both mixed up
in it along with father. Yes, and Doctor Powers and a lot more, though
not so much. Raish, of course, was at the back of it in the beginnin'.
He got 'em all in it, got himself into it, as far as that goes. You see,
it was this way.”
She told the story of the Wellmouth Development Company. It--the
story--began when the Eagle Fish Freezing Company of Denboro, a concern
then running and operating one large cold storage plant in that village,
were looking about for a favorable spot upon which to build a second.
The spot which appealed to their mind to purchase was the property at
the mouth of Skoonic Creek in East Wellmouth.
“It's a real pretty place,” said Martha, “one of the prettiest spots
alongshore, and the view from the top of the bluff there is just
lovely. You can see miles and miles out to sea and all up and down the
shore--and back over the village, for that matter. But, come to think of
it, you know the place, Mr. Bangs. It's only a little way from the old
Baptist buryin' ground.”
Galusha nodded. “Isn't it where my--ah--late lamented hat set sail?” he
asked.
“Why, of course it is. Just there. Well, the Eagle Fish folks made their
plans to buy all that property, the hills on both sides, and the low
land down by the creek. It was just the place for 'em, you see. And they
were quietly makin' arrangements to pick up the different parcels of
land from the owners here and there, when Raish Pulcifer got wind of it.
There's precious little goin' on down this part of the Cape that Raish
doesn't get wind of, particularly if it's somebody else's secret. He's
got a reg'lar pig's nose for rootin' up other people's private concerns.
Well, Raish found out what the Eagle Company was up to and he started
bein' up to somethin' himself.”
Mr. Pulcifer, so Miss Phipps went on to say, conceived the idea of
buying the Skoonic Creek property before the Eagle Company could do so.
The principal difficulty was that just then his own limited capital was
tied up in various ways and he lacked ready money. So, being obliged to
borrow, he sought out Captain Hallett, got the shrewd old light keeper's
cupidity aroused--not a very difficult task at any time--and Captain
Jethro agreed to help finance the deal.
“It didn't need a whole lot of real money,” explained Martha. “Most
folks that owned that land had owned it for mercy knows how long and had
done nothin' but pay taxes on it, so they were glad enough to sell for
somethin' down to bind what Raish and Jethro called 'options.' Anyhow,
when the Eagle people finally started in to put their grand plan into
workin', they bumped bows on into a shoal, at least that's the way
father used to tell about it. They found that all that Skoonic Creek
land was in the hands of Raish Pulcifer and Cap'n Jeth Hallett; those
two either owned it outright or had options where they didn't own.”
At first the Eagle Company declined to have anything to do with the new
owners. They declared the whole affair off, so far as the Skoonic
Creek location was concerned, and announced their intention of going
elsewhere. But there was no sufficiently attractive “elsewhere” to go.
There followed much proposing and counter-proposing and, at last, an
entirely new deal. A new corporation was formed, its name The Wellmouth
Development Company.
“I don't know a great deal about it,” confessed Martha, “that is, not
about the reasons for it and all, but, as near as I can make out, Raish
and Jethro wouldn't sell outright to the Eagle Company, but wanted to
come in on the profits from the cold storage business, which were
pretty big sometimes. And they couldn't get into the reg'lar Eagle Fish
Freezing Company, the old one. So they and the Eagle folks together
undertook to form this new thing, the Development Company, the name
meanin' nothin' or a whole lot, 'cordin' to how the development
developed, I presume likely. The capital stock--I know all this because
Cap'n Jethro and father used to talk it over so much between 'em and
Cap'n Jeth and I have talked so much since--was fifty thousand. An awful
lot of money, isn't it, Mr. Bangs?”
Her tone was awe-stricken as she mentioned the amount. Galusha gravely
admitted that it was an “awful lot of money.” All sums were awful to
him; he would have agreed if the Wellmouth Development Company had been
capitalized from one thousand to a million. Miss Phipps went on.
“They put out the stock somethin' like this: The Eagle folks took pretty
near half, somewhere around twelve hundred shares, I think they had.
And Raish he took five hundred shares, and Cap'n Jeth four hundred, and
father--after listenin' to Jethro and Raish talk about dividends and
profit sharin' and such till, as he said, the tar on his top riggin'
began to melt, he drew out money from the savin's bank and sold some
other bonds and stocks he had and went in for two hundred and fifty
shares. Twenty dollars a share it was; did I tell you that? Yes, five
thousand dollars father put into that Development Company. It seemed
like a lot even then; but, my soul and body, WHAT a lot it seems to me
now!”
She paused for an instant, then sighed, and continued.
“If you've figured this all out in your head, Mr. Bangs,” she said,
“which I suppose you haven't--?”
Galusha, surprised by the direct question, started, colored, and
guiltily admitted the correctness of her supposition.
“I--I haven't,” he faltered. “Dear me, no. In fact I--ah--doubt if I am
capable of doing such a thing.”
“Well, never mind, you don't have to. What it amounted to was that the
Eagle folks had twelve hundred shares and Raish and Jeth and father had
eleven hundred and fifty together. You see, neither side would let the
other have more'n half, or even quite half, because then whichever had
it could control things. So the remainin' one hundred and fifty shares
was sold around Wellmouth and Trumet. Doctor Powers has a few shares
and Eben Taylor's got some, and so have lots of folks, scattered around
here. You see, all hands were anxious to get in, it looked like a real
good investment.
“'But,' says father--right here in this very room I heard him say it
one night--'it's that one hundred and fifty shares that worry me. If
the Eagle crowd ever COULD buy up those shares they would control, after
all, and freeze us out. Freezin' is their business, anyhow,' he said,
and laughed that big laugh of his. Seems as if I could hear him laugh
now. Ah, hum!... But there, let's get under way again or you'll go to
sleep before the ship makes port. I declare, that was father's word,
too, I'm always quotin' him.... Let me see.... Oh, yes.... When father
said that about the one hundred and fifty shares controllin' Cap'n
Jethro looked at Raish and Raish looked at him. Then Raish laughed, too,
only his laugh isn't much like father's.
“'_I_ got those extra shares taken up,' he said, 'and I was particular
who took 'em. There's mighty few of those shares will be sold unless
I say the word. Most of the folks that bought those shares are under
consider'ble obligation to me.' Just what he meant by that I don't know,
of course, but I can guess. Raish makes it a point to have people
under what he calls 'obligations' to him. It comes in handy for him, in
politics and other ways, to have 'em that way. He lends money and holds
mortgages and all that, and that's where the obligations come in....
Well, anyhow, that's what he said and, although father didn't look any
too happy at the time and wouldn't talk about it afterward, it seemed
to settle the objection about the hundred and fifty shares. So the new
company got under way, the stockholders paid their money in, old Cap'n
Ebenezer Thomas of Denboro was made president and Raish Pulcifer was
vice president and Judge Daniel Seaver of Wellmouth Centre was secretary
and treasurer. The Judge was Wellmouth Centre's biggest gun, rich--at
least, that's what everybody thought then--and pompous and dignified and
straight-backed as an old-fashioned church pew.
“Well, I'm pretty near to the end, although it may not seem that way.
For the first few months all hands were talkin' about what great things
the Wellmouth Development Company was goin' to do. Then Judge Seaver
gave 'em somethin' else to talk about. He shot himself one night, and
they found him dead and all alone in the sittin' room of his big house.
And when they came to look over his papers and affairs they found that,
instead of bein' rich, he hadn't a cent in the world. He had lost all
his own money gamblin' in stocks, and, not only that, but he'd lost all
that other folks had given him to take care of. He was treasurer of the
Eagle Fish Freezin' Company and he'd stolen there until that company had
to fail. And, bein' secretary and treasurer of the Wellmouth Development
Company, he had sent the fifty thousand its stockholders paid in after
the rest of his stealin's. All there was left of that new Development
Company was the land over here by Skoonic Creek. He couldn't steal that
very well, although, when you think of the stealin' he did do, it's a
wonder he hadn't tried to carry it off by the wheelbarrow load.
“It isn't worth while my tellin' you all the hullabaloo that came after
the smash. It would take too long and I don't know the ins and outs of
it, anyway. But the way it stands now is this: The Eagle Fish Freezin'
Company is out of business. Their factory is run now by another concern
altogether. The Wellmouth Development Company is still alive--at least
it's supposed to be, but nobody but a doctor could tell it wasn't
dead. The Denboro Trust Company has the Eagle Company's twelve hundred
shares--I don't know how it got 'em; a long snarled-up tangle of loans,
and security for loans, and I don't know what--and the rest of us have
got ours. All that's back of those shares--all that the Development
Company owns--is that Skoonic Creek property and that is goin' to be
worth a lot some day--maybe. But I guess likely the some day will be a
long, long time after MY day. There, Mr. Bangs, that's the story of the
Wellmouth Development Company. And I presume likely you're wonderin' why
I tell it to you.”
Galusha, who had been faithfully endeavoring to grasp the details of
his hostess' narrative, passed a hand in bewildered fashion across his
forehead. He murmured that the story was--ah--very interesting, very
interesting indeed--yes. Martha smiled faintly.
“I'm glad you think so,” she said. “It is interestin' enough to some of
us here in Wellmouth, those of us who have our money tied up in it, but
I shouldn't think a stranger would find much in it to amuse him.
But, you see, Mr. Bangs, I didn't tell it to amuse you. I told it
because--because--well, because, I--I wondered if in any way you knew,
or could find out, how I could sell my two hundred and fifty shares.
You see, I--I've GOT to sell 'em. At least, I've got to get more money
somehow or--or give up this house. And I can't tell you what it would
mean to me to do that.”
Galusha murmured something, something meant to be sympathetic. Miss
Phipps' evident distress and mental agitation moved him extraordinarily.
He wanted to say many things, reassuring things, but he could not at the
moment think of any. The best he could do was to stammer a hope that she
would not be obliged to sell the house.
She shook her head. “I'm afraid I shall,” she said. “I don't see how
I can possibly keep it much longer. When father died he left me, so he
thought, with enough income to get along on. It wasn't much--fact is, it
was mighty little--but we could and did get along on it, Primmie and
I, without touchin' my principal. But then came the war and ever since
livin' costs have been goin' up and up and up. Now my income is the same
as it was, but what it will buy is less than half. It doesn't cost much
to live down here, but I'm afraid it costs more than I can afford. If I
begin to take away from my principal I'll have to keep on doin' it and
pretty soon that will be all gone. After that--well, I don't want to
look any further than that. I shouldn't starve, I presume likely; while
I've got hands I can work and I'd manage to keep alive, if that was all.
But it isn't all. I'd like to keep on livin' in my own home. And I can't
do that, Mr. Bangs. I can't do that, as things are now. I must either
get some more money somehow, or sell this house, one or the other.”
Galusha leaned eagerly forward. He had been waiting for an excuse and
now he believed he saw one.
“Oh, Miss Phipps,” he cried, “I--I think I can arrange that. I do
indeed. You see, I have--ah--more money than I need. I seldom spend my
money, you know, and--”
She interrupted him and her tone was rather sharp.
“Don't, Mr. Bangs,” she said. “Don't say any more. If you've got the
idea that I'm hintin' for you to LEND me money--you or anybody else--you
never was more mistaken in your life. Or ever will be.”
Galusha turned red. “I beg your pardon,” he faltered. “Of course I know
you were not hinting, Miss Martha. I--I didn't dream of such a thing. It
was merely a thought of my own. You see, it would be such a favor to me
if you would permit me to--to--”
“Don't.”
“But, Miss Phipps, it would be doing me such a GREAT favor. Really, it
would.”
He was so very much in earnest that, in spite of her own stress of mind,
she could not help smiling.
“A great favor to help you get rid of your money?” she asked. “You
havin' such a tremendous lot of it, I presume likely.”
“Yes--ah--yes, that's it, that's it.”
Her smile broadened. “And 'twas because you were so dreadfully rich that
you came here to East Wellmouth to live, I suppose. Mr. Bangs, you're
the kindest, best-hearted man that ever stepped, I do believe, but truly
I doubt if you know whether you're worth ten dollars or ten hundred.
And it doesn't make the least difference, so far as I am concerned. I'll
never borrow money while I'm alive and I'll try to keep enough one side
to bury me after I'm dead. So don't say any more about lendin'. That's
settled.”
Galusha reluctantly realized that it was. He tried a new idea.
“I fear,” he stammered, “that my being here may have been a contributory
cause to your--ah--difficulties. Dear me, yes! I have realized since the
beginning that the amount I pay you is ridiculously small.”
“WHAT? The board you pay SMALL? Rubbish! You pay me altogether too much
and what I give you to eat isn't worth half of it. But there, I didn't
mean to go into all this at all. What I told you all this long rigmarole
for was to see if you could think of any way for me to turn those
Development Company shares of mine into money. Not what father paid
for them, of course, or even half of it. But SOME money at least. If I
thought they weren't worth anything I shouldn't think of tryin' to sell
'em. I don't want to cheat--or steal. But they tell me they are worth
somethin', maybe will be worth quite a good deal some day and I must
wait, that's all. But, you see, that's what I can't do--wait.”
She had been, she said, to every one she could think of, to Pulcifer,
who would not give her any encouragement, declaring that he was “stuck”
worse than she was and was only hoping some one might make a bid for his
holdings; to Captain Jethro, who, relying as usual upon his revelations
from the beyond, blandly told her to wait as he was waiting. It had been
communicated to him that he was to sell his own shares at a profit; if
she waited she might do likewise. The president of the Denboro Trust
Company had been very kind, but his counsel was not too encouraging.
The Development shares were nonsalable at the present time, he said, but
that did not mean that they were valueless. The Skoonic Creek property
was good. Shore land on the Cape was becoming more valuable every year.
Some time--perhaps ten years from now--she might--
“And where will I be in ten years?” asked Martha, sadly. “Goodness
knows, Mr. Bangs, I don't. I tried to get the Trust Company man to take
my shares at almost any price and do the waitin' for me, but he didn't
see it that way. Said the bank was goin' to hold on to what it had, but
it certainly didn't want any more. So there I am.... And yet, and yet if
I COULD sell--if I COULD get two thousand dollars, yes, or even fifteen
hundred just now, it might tide me over until the cost of livin' comes
down. And everybody says they ARE comin' down. Mr. Bangs, can you see
any way out for me? Can you think of any one who would know about--Oh,
my soul and body! Look OUT!”
She sprang to her feet with a little scream. Her lodger's rocking-chair,
with its occupant, had suddenly tilted over backward. Fortunately his
proximity to the wall had prevented a complete overturn, but there sat
Galusha, the back of the chair against the wall and his knees elevated
at a very acute angle. The alarming part of it was that he made no
effort to regain his equilibrium, but remained in the unusual, not to
say undignified, posture.
“What IS the matter?” demanded Miss Phipps, seizing him by the arm and
pulling him forward. “What was it? What happened?”
Galusha's face was beaming. His eyes shone with excitement.
“It--it struck me at that moment,” he cried. “At that very moment.”
“Struck you?” Miss Phipps looked about the room. “What struck you?
Where? Are you hurt?”
Mr. Bangs' beaming smile broadened.
“I mean the idea struck me,” he declared. “Dear me, how odd that it
didn't do so before. Yes, he is exactly the right person. Exactly. Oh,
dear me, this is VERY good!”
Martha said afterward that she never in her life felt more like shaking
a person.
“What do you mean?” she demanded. “What was it that struck you?”
“Why, Cousin Gussie,” announced Galusha, happily. “Don't you see? He
will be EXACTLY the one.”