YUMA OIL
The blood rushed through Lang’s veins again. His face, which had been
cold, felt suddenly flaming.
“Just as I expected,” said Carroll. “I see you’ve found his cache.
Don’t look like much, does it?”
“So you trailed me out here?” Lang found voice to say.
“Not at all. I didn’t trail you. I was sure you’d be here early this
morning. Of course I knew the old man passed some kind of tip to you.
That was why I was so careful to tell you just how to find the house.
Didn’t have any trouble, did you?”
Lang had a humiliating consciousness that he had been played with, and
he kept angrily silent.
“Let’s have a look at it,” Carroll continued, coming to the table.
“Keys won’t open it? Let me try.”
He fumbled with the lock for half a minute and gave it up. Searching
about the kitchen he found a heavy steel screw driver, and by
inserting the blade at the back he was able to break a hinge. The
other followed, and the lid swung open, still held by the lock.
Together they peered in eagerly. Lang had had visions of bales of
yellow-backed notes, but there was nothing of the sort in sight. There
were a few envelopes like old letters, a thick package of engraved
documents resembling bonds, a couple of smaller packages, and several
lumps of metallic-looking rock.
Lang snatched out the larger bundle. The papers were not even bonds.
They were stock certificates—hundred-dollar shares in the Yuma
Southwestern Oil Company, a name which he had never heard, but which
had a most worthless sound. The ten thousand dollars’ worth of scrip
was probably worth less than as many cents.
Carroll glanced briefly at the certificates, smiled, and went on
examining the other parcels. One was a package of small water-color
drawings, apparently by Rockett’s own hand, depicting a series of
rocky and forbidding coast scenes. Another packet contained
photographs of much the same sort of landscapes; the third had
negatives, in labeled groups, and the odd envelopes held more
sketches, photographs, and a couple of rough sketch maps.
Lang was bitterly disappointed. There was no value in the whole box.
He had approached burglary for no reward. Carroll looked up with a
smile at his disgust.
“Oh, I don’t know,” he remarked. “I never expected to find much
plunder planted here, anyway. Let’s see that stock again. Gad! that
old man always was lucky. He must have had a private tip. Bought it
outright, too.”
“It isn’t worth anything, is it?”
“It’s worth what it’ll bring. It was selling at around twenty-five a
few months ago, when Rockett must have picked it up. The last I heard,
it was about sixty. It’s a manipulated stock, fixed to sky-rocket and
then break, I guess.”
“This block of stock may be worth six thousand dollars, then?” said
Lang, with more interest.
“Can’t say. It mayn’t be worth anything. We must see a broker about it
right away.”
He crammed the sketches and photographs into his pockets, and tipped
up the box. Nothing was left but the bits of rock, dark stones bearing
greenish crystalline veins and nodules. Carroll looked at them with a
good deal of interest, and pocketed them with the rest.
“Some sort of specimens, I suppose,” he commented. “The old man was
bugs on rocks, I’ve heard. You can keep the valuables and I’ll take
charge of this truck. Let’s get out of here.”
Lang was overjoyed to get out of there. He was in terror lest some one
else should enter unawares. He had cold chills at the thought of being
arrested for housebreaking, a newspaper exposure, his career doubly
ruined. He tucked the stock certificates in his inside pocket, and
after reconnoitering the road they slipped out and started for the
Gulf coast shell road.
It was still early morning when they reached the electric car line and
rode into Biloxi; and still early in the day when the railway placed
them again in Mobile. Carroll was impatient to visit a brokerage
office at once; he knew the cashier at Norcross & Dixon’s, he said;
but Lang insisted on a delay while he revisited his hotel room and
changed his water-stained suit, had a shave and his shoes shined, put
on a better hat, and made himself look fit for business negotiations.
Afterward he congratulated himself a thousand times on this
forethought.
Norcross & Dixon dealt principally in cotton and grain, and there was
a flurry on the cotton exchange that day. The customers’ room was
crowded; prices were rushing up. Farmers, planters, smart city men,
shabby hangers-on, bulls all of them, watched the blackboard and
applauded wildly at every advance, and the wires to New Orleans were
hot with orders.
Lang looked on while Carroll went to find the cashier he knew, and
presently Carroll came back and conducted him to Mr. Dixon’s office.
The broker was a little dapper man, with a pointed black beard, and a
dry, punctilious manner. He looked wary and nervous and tired, and he
acknowledged the introduction curtly.
“How’s Yuma Oil?” Carroll inquired.
“It closed yesterday at 63; opened this morning at 60-1/2. It’s now
at”—he went to look at the ticker—“the last quotation was 59-3/4.”
“We want to sell,” said Carroll promptly.
“It’s a lively proposition just now. I’d have to ask ten or fifteen
points margin.”
“Oh, we’ve got the certificates,” Carroll returned. “Get them out,
doctor.”
Lang had not expected to be rushed into action so quickly. He produced
the stock reluctantly.
“I don’t know—what would you advise?” he hesitated.
“Oh, you’ve got the scrip,” said the broker, flipping the papers over.
“A hundred. If you want to sell you’d better be quick. We never advise
our customers. We only give them the facts as we see them. But the
bottom’s dropping right out of it.”
Still wavering uneasily, Lang gave the order to sell.
There was nothing then but to wait till it was executed. They lighted
cigars and added to the volume of smoke that swirled through the
excited room of the cotton gamblers. The market was still going up;
the excitement was crescendo. But Lang and Carroll continually
returned to watch the New York stock ticker.
Yuma Oil read 59-1/4, then 59-1/8, then 59, then up an eighth, then it
broke all at once to 58-3/4. At what price their stock had been sold
they could not tell.
But they got quick action, after all. Within half an hour Dixon
announced that he had sold at 58-1/4. By the time they got the news,
the stock had sunk to 57-1/2. Clear of all commissions, the sale would
net about five thousand eight hundred dollars.
“Good!” exclaimed Carroll. “But this is only a start. It’s going
lower—a lot lower. Now’s our chance for a killing!”
He spoke in an intense whisper; his face was flushed. The broker came
back holding the slip.
“Do you want your check, gentlemen, or are you trading again?”
“Again? That’s all the stock we have,” said Lang, not understanding,
but Carroll broke in eagerly.
“We’ll go short now. She’s going lower. What margin——”
“I’ll sell for you on a ten-point margin. Yes, I’ll make it eight
points, on this market. I’m selling myself.”
Dixon’s manner was perceptibly livelier. Lang protested, startled at
the idea of using the money as gambling margin.
“Oh, just as you like,” said the broker with impatience. “I never
advise customers. I only tell ’em what I think. I think the time has
come for Yuma Oil to break. The ring up North has let go. I think it’s
good for ten to twenty points down. I’m playing it across the board,
myself.”
“Don’t be a fool!” insisted Carroll explosively. He chewed his cigar
in one corner of his mouth and spoke with the other, feverish,
hungering. “Don’t you see the chance we’ve got? With a run of luck
we’ll wipe out Rockett’s whole loss.”
The excitement of the game was beginning to gain upon Lang himself. He
made a rapid calculation.
“Eight points? We might sell—let’s sell five hundred shares, then.”
If they lost it there would be still nearly two thousand dollars left.
Dixon snapped at the order slip and had it almost instantly on the
wire. They got it executed at 57, and the stock was still falling by
eighths. Then in a flurry it dropped half a point at a time, rallied a
little, and broke heavily to 55, then to 54, and within fifteen
minutes to 53. They were two thousand dollars ahead—on paper.
As comparatively high players now, Dixon installed them in armchairs
in his private office, close to the New York ticker. His cold
punctiliousness of manner broke down; he hurried from them to his
cotton customers, almost excited, almost talkative, and they watched
the clattering tape slowly spinning out its cabalistic figures
straight from the great gambling house in lower New York.
Fifty-two and a half—51—and then it rallied strongly, and almost
touched 53.
Dixon came and stood holding the tape, looking anxious. For some
twenty minutes the stock held firm, up an eighth, down an eighth, and
then broke half a point, and then another. The broker let out an
explosive sound of relief.
“That’s its last dying kick. It had me scared for a minute. But she’s
on the toboggan slide now, and she won’t stop till she hits bottom.”
Lang had held his breath while the wheel of fortune had seemed to be
turning the wrong way. Triumphant excitement rushed over him again as
the downward rush of the stock was resumed. Every point lower meant a
win of five hundred dollars. He fixed his eyes on the printing point
of the tape, impatient as other stock quotations came out, hardly
hearing the racket of the cotton speculators, watching for the letters
YU OIL—52—51—50-1/2—49. They had made eight points. They had doubled
their money.
Then all at once, as he watched the unrolling paper, a destructive
thought came to Lang’s mind. It was not his money. It belonged to the
general assets of the Automotive Fuel Company. He could not take his
losses out of it. It would be his duty to turn every cent in to the
official receivers.
His legal share of these gambling gains would be hardly anything. The
golden prospect turned blank. He forgot the game for a moment.
“Sell another thousand. We’ve got enough ahead to margin that much,”
said Carroll, poking his side.
“Sure you have. That’s the stuff I like. Make it or lose it!”
exclaimed Dixon.
Lang made no objection, though he had a dull sense that he ought not
to risk his fellow creditors’ money. But they did not seem to be going
to lose it. The order was put in at 48, and within ten minutes it was
at 47-1/2, and thence dropped by quarter points.
Lang began to forget again that it was not for himself that he was
winning. The fascination of the game took hold on him. He imagined the
swirl and flurry at that moment on the New York Exchange, where some
manipulation must have culminated, where mighty operators had come out
into the open and were devouring their prey as it ran. With their tiny
speculation they were jackals on the edge of that killing.
Down it went—46—45. Dixon had sold a large block for his private
account. Flushed and excited, he camped beside the ticker, ceasing to
take any interest in the cotton market, chewing a dead cigarette to
pieces, talking incessantly. Lang and Carroll ceased to be
“gentlemen.” He called them “boys,” and Carroll addressed him as
“Dix,” and hit him furiously on the back when the stock made a
half-point drop at once. With a thousand shares at stake, every point
down meant a win of a thousand dollars.
Where would it stop? Where was the bottom? Forty-four—43—42-1/2—43
again.
Lang drew himself painfully out of the pit of fascination.
“We must get out of it—cover our sales. It’s rallying,” he exclaimed.
“Nonsense! Don’t be a quitter!” Carroll snapped.
“Don’t worry,” said Dixon. “It’s only the rally before the closing
market—people taking profits. I expected it. It’ll open down to 40
to-morrow morning. Let it stand over night.”
Forty-three—43-1/8—43-1/4, then down an eighth, up a quarter, a rally,
forty-four.
“Sell out!” insisted Lang.
He had a sudden amazement at what he had done, at what he had risked.
Suppose they had been wiped out—how could he ever have explained the
transaction?
Carroll protested wildly, drunk with winning. It was the chance of a
lifetime; they stood to clear a fortune; but Lang was inflexible.
Desperately anxious to close before the stock could rally further, he
insisted on instant buying in, and Dixon sent the order.
While they waited, the stock swayed up and down by fractions, and
their covering was not made at one point, but between 39-1/2 and
44-1/2. Dixon calculated the commissions, and wrote the check. It came
to twelve thousand five hundred and twenty-seven dollars—just enough
to cover his losses in Automotive Fuel, Lang reflected.
The sunlight and air seemed strange after those smoky, excited rooms.
Lang felt slightly dizzy and drunk, and remembered that he had eaten
nothing since before dawn. The bank where he had his small deposit was
only a block away, and they went there at once, while he wondered
uneasily as to the next development. Carroll assuredly expected the
money to be divided; and, slight as his own rights in it might be,
Lang was perfectly convinced that Carroll had none at all.
The check was made out to them jointly, and they both indorsed it.
Lang presented it to the cashier, who knew him, and who made no
difficulty. The money was counted out in hundred-dollar bills, a
hundred and twenty-five of them, with the twenty-seven dollars odd.
Lang separated the five hundred and twenty-seven dollars from the
rest. It did seem that they deserved as much as that by way of
commission. Carroll clung to his shoulder as he moved from the wicket,
his eyes on the money. Lang handed him half the share he had
separated, which Carroll took, looking puzzled.
“We’d better not split it here,” he murmured. “Let’s go to your hotel,
or somewhere.”
Lang stowed the rest of the money in his inner pocket.
“Look here, Carroll,” he said, “this money isn’t ours, you know. We
can’t split it. I’m going to turn it all in to Rockett’s receivers,
all but the odd sum, which perhaps we might stretch a point and hold
out.”
“Are you joking—or crazy?” exclaimed Carroll, looking absolutely
dumfounded.
“Neither. I’m sane and serious. We can’t keep this money. I’m going to
put it in safe-keeping till I find out where I ought to deliver it.”
Carroll’s handsome face turned ugly.
“Great heavens, what a bluff to try and pull! I think I see you
turning any of it in to the creditors! Want to put it in safe-keeping?
I guess not. I’m not a fool. Come now, split that cash, fifty-fifty,
or—well, it’ll never do you any good. Do you hear, damn it?”
He had raised his voice, his temper out of control. Several men turned
to look. A uniformed bank guard, who had been watching, moved over to
them.
“Now, gentlemen!” he said.
“I want to rent a safe-deposit box,” said Lang, seizing this
opportunity. “Please show me the wicket.”
“You can’t put that across——” began Carroll furiously, then stopped
and followed Lang and the porter to the vault office, where he again
began to protest. The clerk looked dubiously at the two of them.
“It’s trust money that I want to put away,” Lang explained. “This
gentleman here has some claim on it, but I’ve no authority to pay any
of it. I’m a customer of this bank. Here’s my card.”
The clerk surveyed them both again—Lang immaculate in a freshly
pressed suit and white linen, Carroll still in the faded sweater and
shapeless trousers that he had worn through the wreck, wrinkled and
stained with sea water. He looked both alarmed and threatening and
evil, while Lang had assumed his utmost professional dignity of
manner; and appearances carried the day, as usual.
“We can’t refuse to rent boxes,” said the clerk to Carroll. “It’s not
our business what’s put into them. If you want to, you can leave your
name; and you can get an order from the courts to have the box sealed
and your claim adjusted. Please sign this, doctor.”
Lang went back into the vault, and delayed as long as possible in
stowing away the twelve thousand dollars, but when he came out Carroll
was awaiting him on the steps of the bank. He had calmed his temper,
but his voice was hard and menacing.
“Don’t you touch any of that money, Lang,” he said. “Leave it where it
is. Don’t think of sending it to Rockett’s creditors. You don’t know
what you’re monkeying with. I tell you, it’ll fly up and hit you.
You’ve no idea of the inside of this business yet, and don’t you do
anything foolish till you get your eyes open.
“I’ll be at the St. Andrew Hotel,” he added. “You’ll see me again.
Take my tip or you’ll regret it all your life, Doctor Lang.”
He went down the street, leaving Lang really impressed by his tone of
cold earnestness. He did not blame Carroll for being bitter and
disappointed. He was bitterly disappointed himself, and of course it
looked plain to Carroll that he was confiscating all the profits of
their common gamble.
He felt tired and irritable, and knew that he must be famished, but
when he went to a restaurant he could swallow nothing solid. He
managed to take a glass of hot milk, and went wearily home to his
hotel room, where he called up the Iberville, and asked for Miss
Morrison. It seemed the only bright spot in a disappointing world.
She was out. She had left the hotel. The clerk did not know whether
she would be back. She had left town, he thought. Her address? He
could not say, but any letters would be forwarded.
He hung up the receiver, in a state of weary disgust that was like
prostration. Eva’s relatives had called for her at last; they had
taken her away. He would not see her again. He might write. But what
was the use?
The whole thing was over, the farce—drama—tragedy. He had taken risks,
nearly lost his life, skirted the edge of crime, all for less than
nothing. He was back where he had started, _minus_ several dollars, a
suit of clothes, a gold watch and a medical case. Then he recollected
his half of the odd five hundred and twenty-seven dollars—a gain,
indeed, but it was not pleasant money. He felt disposed to give it
away, to clear away the whole wretched business, which, according to
Carroll, he had not yet fully plumbed.
He lay down on the bed and closed his eyes. The chatter of the stock
ticker echoed in his ears—forty—forty and an eighth—forty-one——
He awoke and found the room pitchy dark. It was hardly five o’clock
when he had lain down. He must have fallen into a dead slumber. He got
up drowsily, switched on the light, and found to his amazement that
his watch said nine o’clock.
He was still stupid with sleep, and he decided to go definitely to
bed, began to undress, and removed the small articles from his
pockets, as he most methodically did every night. He wound up his
dollar watch, laid it on the bureau, took out his money, felt for his
bunch of keys.
They were not in his trousers pocket. He must have left them in the
other trousers when he changed. The crumpled, sea-stained clothes from
the _Cavite’s_ disaster lay on a chair, but the bunch of keys was in
none of the pockets. He had had them last in Rockett’s bungalow, while
trying to unlock the box, and he realized with cold consternation that
he must have left them there.
It was not the loss of the keys, but the fact that the key ring bore a
celluloid tag with his full name and address. It would be found,
sooner or later, along with the disordered house, the smashed strong
box, the hole in the garden—evidence enough to convict him of burglary
several times over.
He cursed himself for his carelessness. Chance seemed determined to
seize every opening to ruin him. Now there was only one course—to go
back to that house and recover the keys before any one else could find
them.
He shrunk horribly from the thing. He would have rather done almost
anything else, but there was no possible choice. Grimly he resumed the
garments he had taken off, and went downstairs to consult the night
clerk about trains to Biloxi.
There was none, it appeared, before five next morning. Lang could not
wait. He wanted to finish with this whole episode, clear it away
forever. He telephoned for a taxi, specifying a good car and a good
driver, for a long-distance trip.
While he awaited it he went to the lunch counter, hungry now, and
consumed coffee and thick ham sandwiches. This refreshment reanimated
him. He remembered that he would need a flash light, and he brought
one down with an overcoat as the car arrived.
It turned out to be a really good car, and, once out of the city and
upon the good shell road they made fast time. Lang told the driver to
cut loose, and he dozed periodically behind the closed curtains as the
big machine roared and swayed down the coast road, past Grand Bay,
Pascagoula, Biloxi, steadily through the quiet night, with the sea
occasionally flashing on their left. Good luck was with him for once,
for without a single breakdown and only one stop for gas and water
they came to the side road that led up to Persia.
Lang was afraid to drive to Rockett’s bungalow and he feigned that
Persia was his destination. The car was to wait till he came back—till
morning, if necessary. He got out and walked around the store in the
dark to conceal his direction from the driver, and started rapidly up
the road.
He was stiff and sleepy, and it was barely light enough to see the
road. All the houses along the way were dark; it was well after
midnight. Strangely enough, a man seems to walk faster at night than
by day, and he reached Rockett’s house before he expected it. There
was no light; it looked dim and deserted. He had no doubt that no one
had approached the place since he and Carroll had left it that
morning, though it seemed an eternity ago.
He did not approach the front door. He knew that the keys must be in
the kitchen, whose door, he was sure, was not locked. It held when he
tried it, however, and then yielded suddenly with a loud crack that
echoed through the empty house.
Lang paused, his heart thumping. Dead silence followed. He entered the
room, turning on the flash light.
The keys were not on the table, as he had expected. They must have
fallen to the floor. He stooped, crawled under the table, turning the
light this way and that, growing more perturbed. He was on his knees,
groping along the wall, when he half heard something like a light
step. Before he could rise, a brighter flash light than his own
blinded him with its blaze in his face.
For a moment he crouched there, paralyzed with the shock and the
terror. He could half see the dim figure behind that white beam. He
expected a threat, or a bullet, but he heard nothing except a sound
like a faint moaning.
Then with the courage of despair he turned his own light on the
antagonist.
Eva Morrison stood there, in a long blue dressing gown, one sleeve
falling back from the arm that held the light, the other hand holding
a little shiny revolver half hidden in the folds of the gown. The two
light rays crossed like swords between them; the girl’s face looked
deathly pale, and he heard, tongue-tied himself, again that faint
moaning from her lips.
“You! You!” she whispered, and the horror and amazement in her tone
were echoes of Lang’s own emotions.