Throughout these late trying experiences Dan had been further distressed
to discover that during the hours he was unavoidably separated from
Tamea, he thought more about her than he did of his business. He had
missed her bright presence far too keenly during her brief sojourn at
the convent—so much so, in fact, that when one day he asked himself if
it were really possible that he, sober, steady, dependable, sane Dan
Pritchard, had fallen in love with this lovely half-caste girl, his
common sense assured him that it was even so.
He told himself that this was silly, stupid, unintelligent, that he
could not afford to yield to this tremendous temptation, that it would
be a terrible mistake, bitterly to be repented. Nevertheless, he lacked
the courage or the steadfastness of purpose to take the offensive
immediately; he told himself he _would_ take the offensive, but not
immediately. . . and following his brief spat with Maisie over the
telephone he found Tamea’s society so comforting and stimulating that he
shuddered at the thought of hurting her—himself—with the promulgation
of a sophisticated argument she could not possibly understand and which
she would have rejected even had she possessed the gift of understanding
a white man’s reason for discarding her love, even while he yearned for
it.
From time to time Sooey Wan, growing impatient at his adored employer’s
shilly-shallying, urged definite action. Again and again he reminded Dan
that the sooner he married the lady queen the sooner would his adventure
in fatherhood commence. Sooey Wan confided that he had consulted with
the most eminent magicians in Dupont Street, with a priest who was a
very wise man and an oracle; he had sought signs of approbation from his
numerous Chinese gods and had propitiated them with much burning of punk
in the Joss houses; he had burned devil papers in every room of the
house and had strung fire crackers completely around the house and set
them off, to the signal terror of the neighbors.
The magician had predicted for Dan five brawny sons—a hard hand to
beat. The oracle had advised quick action since procrastination has ever
been the thief of time and the girl was young and comely. Why, then,
dally until she should become a hag? In his own mind Sooey Wan was fully
convinced, from certain signs, that his Mongolian gods looked with favor
upon the match, and since practically all of the fire crackers had
exploded, the old heathen was certain that the devils of bad luck, which
might or might not have interfered, had been thoroughly exorcised.
To all of this harangue Dan gave a stereotyped reply: “Sooey Wan, you
are an interfering and impudent old Chinaman. Keep your nose out of my
private affairs.”
Whereupon Sooey Wan would fairly screech: “Missa Dan, wh’ for you play
damn fool? Boy, you klazy. Sure you klazy.”
When Dan discovered that he would have to mark time until the convent in
Sacramento should be released from quarantine, he pleaded the urgent
necessity for an unavoidable absence from the city and sought to start
his offensive campaign against Tamea’s steadily mounting influence over
him by going away for a two weeks’ fishing and painting excursion in
Southern California. Tamea was somewhat piqued because he did not invite
her to accompany him, but he ignored her little pout, kissed her
tenderly and fled. And he had no sooner settled himself comfortably in a
hotel at Santa Catalina Island than Maisie Morrison rang up Julia.
“Julia,” she said, “where is Mr. Pritchard?”
“The dear Lord only knows, Miss Morrison.”
“I _must_ know where a telegram can reach him, Julia. Mr. Pritchard did
not tell his secretary where he was going, so it could not have been a
business trip. Put Graves on the line, Julia.”
Graves, summoned from the garage, informed Maisie that he had driven Mr.
Pritchard to the Southern Pacific depot. There he had heard his employer
direct a porter to stow his baggage in a compartment. Included in this
impedimenta had been a case of fishing rods and a sketching outfit.
Graves had noted that his employer had not taken a creel with him, hence
he opined that if any fishing was to be done it would be sea
fishing—and the boss had always had a weakness for Santa Catalina.
When Dan Pritchard came in from fishing that first day he found a
telegram in his box at the hotel. It was from Maisie and read:
Something has jarred Uncle John dreadfully. He is at home ill,
but mentally, not physically. Better assure yourself that
everything is quite right at the office. Would return
immediately if I were you, although when you do you need not
bother to call on me unless you feel you really ought to.
MAISIE.
Within the hour Dan Pritchard had chartered a seaplane and was flying
north. About ten o’clock that night the plane swooped down in the
moonlight and landed him at Harbor View; within half an hour he was
ringing the doorbell of John Casson’s home.
“Take me immediately to Mr. Casson’s room,” he ordered the butler who
admitted him. “It will not be necessary to announce me.”
The man eyed him sympathetically and silently led the way upstairs. John
Casson was not in bed, however. He was seated on a divan in his wife’s
upstairs sitting room, staring dully into a small grate fire. From her
seat across the room his wife watched him furtively.
“Good evening, Mrs. Casson. Good evening, Mr. Casson,” Dan greeted them.
“What’s gone wrong, Mr. Casson?”
The old dandy looked up, frightened. Dan could have sworn he shuddered.
“I’d rather not discuss the matter tonight, Pritchard,” he parried. “I’m
not well.”
“I’m sorry for that, sir. What appears to be the matter with you? Where
do you feel ill? Have you eaten something that didn’t agree with you
or——”
“He has,” Mrs. Casson interrupted bitterly. “He’s been on a diet of
high-priced rice for the past several weeks and it has made him ill.
John, do not evade Dan’s query. He is equally interested with you in
this matter. Tell him what happened the day he left town.”
“Well, Pritchard, my boy,” old Casson quavered, “the rice market has
gone to glory. It’s down to five cents and every rice dealer in this
city is a bankrupt.”
“Do you include Casson and Pritchard in the cataclysm?”
Casson nodded slowly and suddenly commenced to weep.
“But we sold our rice——”
“I know we did—on ninety days. Now the people we have sold it to are
wiped out and cannot pay for it. The damned Cubans are responsible. They
deliberately wrecked the market. Overnight they made up their minds they
had rice enough. The cargadores went on strike and refused to handle any
more rice. The port of Havana is glutted with rice. It’s on every dock
and on every barge. They jammed the docks with it and loaded all the
barges and then quit. Now the rice is being rained on; the ships that
brought it are lying under heavy demurrage because they cannot get
discharged; the rice brokers and wholesalers have treacherously refused
to accept delivery on bona fide orders because the Havana market broke
immediately when some frightened owners of cargoes cut their prices in
order to unload at any price. Panic, I tell you—worst rice panic
imaginable. Rice was up to twenty-one cents and overnight it broke to
five cents.”
Dan sat down. This was exactly what he had feared might happen. The war
was ended, but profiteers, still hungry for exorbitant gains, had put
the screws on rice, the staple food of Cuba. They had cornered the crop
there, such as it was, and the crop that year had been meager. Then they
had filled Havana harbor with ships loaded with Oriental rice and had
steadily jacked the price up to the point of saturation. And then the
Cubans, maddened at this brutal and perfectly legal form of brigandage,
had sprung their coup and, overnight, had smashed their oppressors by
the very simple method of refusing to handle longer the commodity which
was so necessary to their existence. They knew they could get rice when
they needed it, and get it at their price. These ships had brought rice
to Havana; now that Havana would not accept it or handle it, where could
another ready and highly profitable market be found? And would these
ships, chafing at the delay, agree to go elsewhere with their cargoes,
save at a prohibitive freight rate? Rice freights from the Orient would
collapse now, and that collapse would be followed by a debacle in other
lines.
In a flash Dan saw that the post-war slump had started—an economic
avalanche, traveling swiftly toward bankruptcy and ruin. “I see,” he
said quietly. “Beautiful work, beautiful. Three cheers for the Cubans. I
didn’t think they were up to a brilliant stroke like that. And now
you’re cussing them out, Mr. Casson, because they refused to let the
rice bandits take the food out of their mouths. Well, you deserve this,
Mr. Casson, but I’ll be hanged if I do. You dragged me into this,
without my knowledge or consent—you damned, silly, egotistical,
brainless idiot—Mrs. Casson, I forgot you were present. I crave your
pardon for my rudeness and I shall not again offend.
I—I—think—I—shall—sit down.”
He did, looking quite white and strained. His eyes burned like live
coals. “Well, Mr. Casson,” he said presently, “suppose we start in at
the beginning. To begin with, we had half a million bags of California
rice stored in warehouses here and there, and you hypothecated the
warehouse receipts and bought Philippine and Chinese rice. Well, we sold
our rice in warehouse at a huge profit, half cash, balance in ninety
days. How about Banning and Company, who bought it?”
“The chief clerk telephoned me today that they had filed a petition of
voluntary bankruptcy. They must be cleaned out because Banning blew his
brains out an hour after filing the petition. He had half a million
dollars’ worth of life insurance, without an anti-suicide clause in it.
His family will doubtless get that. I suppose he wanted to do the decent
thing.”
“Well,” said Dan, “Banning and Company jarred us but they didn’t put us
down. Lucky for us I sold that Shanghai rice, ex. steamer Chinook, for
cash. You raved at my idiocy when I made an eight thousand dollars’
profit on that deal and accused me of throwing away a potential profit
of a quarter of a million dollars. As a matter of fact, I threw away a
potential loss of about a million dollars. We’ll take a loss of more
than a dollar a bag on that million bags of California rice, however.
I’ll tell ’em you’re a smart business man, Mr. Casson. Well, how about
that eight thousand tons at Manila—the lot we sold to Katsuma and
Company at the market, against sight draft with bill of lading attached,
payable at the Philippine National Bank?”
“Our Manila agent cabled that the bank had refused to honor the
documents. I called up Katsuma and tried to get him to do something
about providing funds or a credit to meet that draft, but he wouldn’t or
couldn’t——”
“Katsuma didn’t want to. He was up to the usual Jap trick—running out
from a losing game. They never stand for their beating. You made him a
price, f.o.b. Havana, that included cost, insurance and freight, did you
not?”
Old Casson nodded miserably.
“Well, Katsuma got a notion that shipping rice to Havana was apt to lead
to great grief, so he just didn’t meet the draft. That keeps the owners
of the Malayan out of their freight money and the chances are they will
not permit the vessel to sail until the freight is paid. Did they come
back on us for the freight?”
“They did. I paid it, and the Malayan is at sea with a cargo of eight
thousand tons of rice fully insured but not paid for. It is going to
cost us eighteen cents a pound to deliver that rice in Havana, and when
it gets there we cannot deliver it. If we do it will be worth what we
can get for it—say three to five cents—and the demurrage on the
Malayan will be two thousand dollars a day. Of course we have a suit
against Katsuma and Company for breach of contract, but in the meantime
we have to pay for the rice and I’ve given a ninety-day draft on London
for that——”
“When it comes due we will not be able to meet it,” Dan said dully. “The
Katsuma assets are already nicely sequestrated. You monumental jackass!
Why didn’t you sue and attach their bank account, everything they have,
quietly and without notice, the instant you learned they had repudiated
their contract?”
“That would be a great deal like locking the stable door after the horse
had been stolen, wouldn’t it, Pritchard?”
Dan nodded. This was the first bright thing he could remember Casson
having said in years. Yes, the wily Orientals had seen the storm
gathering and had fled to their cyclone cellar, caring not a whit what
happened to others, to their own business honor, to their business,
provided their capital remained intact. They could always organize again
under a new name.
“Well, we’ve been sent to the cleaners, Mr. Casson. You have succeeded
magnificently, despite all I could do to thwart you. You have made a
hiatus of your own life and mine. You’ve smashed your wife and Maisie.
You were drowning; I tried to save you and you pulled me under with you.
Well, I don’t know what you intend doing with your private fortune—if
you have any, which I doubt—but I have assets close to two million
dollars and our creditors can have them. As your partner I am jointly
and severally responsible. If you cannot pay, I must. I shall. When the
squall hits us we will call a meeting of our creditors, tell them how it
happened, have a receiver appointed, turn over everything we have to him
and quit business with whatever dignity we can muster.”
He turned to Mrs. Casson. “If you will excuse me, Mrs. Casson, I will go
now. Good night.”
He went out into the hall and his head hung low on his heaving breast,
his shoulders sagged, his arms dangled loosely from his long, raw-boned
frame. He shook his head a little and mumbled something—curses,
doubtless. At the bottom of the stairs he ran into Maisie. Her face was
very white and she had been weeping.
“Thanks for your telegram, Maisie. I came as fast as I could. It’s too
late. Cleaned—cleaned—smashed by that madman—crooked as a can of
worms—lucky thing I didn’t ask you to marry me that day—lucky for you
you weren’t interested in my proposition. I couldn’t afford that luxury
now, my dear. It’s terrible to have made two million dollars doing work
one loathes, then lose the two million filthy dollars and have to start
in doing the loathsome job all over again.
“Well, I’m young—I suppose I can stand it. Good night, Maisie, good
night. Sorry for you and Mrs. Casson—mighty sorry.”
He fended away the imploring, uplifted arms that sought to enfold him,
for Maisie, like all women who trifle with a man’s heart when he is
prosperous and happy, desired to claim that heart now that it was
bruised and broken.
“Don’t—please—I can’t stand it—don’t want to be coddled,” he
muttered, and strode past her to the door. It opened and closed after
him swiftly, and Maisie, standing on the steps, watched through her
tears his tall, ungainly form stumbling down the street. She yearned
with a great yearning to run after him, to take that white face to her
heart, to whisper to him a torrent of love words, to cherish and comfort
him. Yet she knew that Dan, like all men, when cruelly hurt, preferred
to be alone, resenting sympathy and desiring silence.
“Poor dear,” she murmured, “when you have recovered a little from the
shock of this failure I shall go to you and nothing shall keep you from
me.”