THE PROPOSITION
He sat down and lit a cigarette. The others showed little surprise or
interest, with the exception of George du Cane.
It seemed to George that this was a new kind of proposition coming in
these dull times.
“Are you in earnest?” said he.
“I sure am,” said Hank.
Abrahams, who was over forty with an expanding waist-line, and Carolus,
who was a creature dead when divorced from cities and the atmosphere of
Art, laughed.
Hank cocked his eye at them. Then he rose to his feet. “I was joking,”
said Hank, “believe I could make you ginks swallow anything. Well, I’m
off, see you to-morrow.”
George du Cane followed him out.
In the street he linked arms with him.
“Where are you going?” asked Hank.
“Wherever you are,” said George.
“Well, I’m going to the office,” said Hank.
“I’ll go with you,” said George. “I’ve got an idea.”
“What’s your idea?” asked Hank.
“I’ll tell you when we get to your office,” replied George.
Fisher and Company’s offices were situated as near heaven as the
ordinary American can hope to reach. An express elevator shot them out
on a concrete-floored landing where the faint clacking of typewriters
sounded from behind doors marked with the names of business firms. The
Bolsover Trust Syndicate; Moss Muriatti and Moscovitch; Fisher and Co.
The Fisher offices consisted of two rooms, the outer room for a
typewriter and an inner room for the company.
The company’s room contained four chairs and a desk-table, a
roll-topped desk and a cuspidor. The bare walls were hung with maps of
towns and places. There was a map of San Francisco and its environments
reaching from Valego to Santa Clara. There were maps of Redwood and San
Jose, Belmont and San Mateo, Oakland and San Rafael and others.
George looked at the maps, whilst Hank sat down and looked at the
morning’s correspondence spread on the table by the office boy.
These maps and town plans, marked here and there with red ink, spoke of
big dealings and a prosperous business; the trail of Fisher and Company
was over them all. They interested George vastly. It was the first time
he had been in the office.
“I say, old man,” said George, suddenly breaking silence and detaching
himself from the maps. “I didn’t know you had a company attached to
you. Where’s the company?”
“Well, I expect it’s in Europe by this,” said Hank, laying down the
last of his letters. “Or sunning itself on Palm Beach, or listening
to the band somewhere. It bolted with the cash box three weeks ago,
leaving me a thousand dollars to carry on with.”
“Good Lord,” said George, horror-stricken, yet amazed at the coolness
of the other and the way he had managed to keep his disaster concealed
from all and sundry; for at the Club Hank was considered a man of
substance, almost too much substance for a Bohemian.
“It’s true,” said Hank.
“How many men were in it?”
“No men, it was a woman.”
“You were in partnership with a woman?”
“Yep.”
“Well, she might have done worse,” said George, “she might have married
you.”
Hank, by way of reply, took a photograph from a drawer in the table and
handed it to George, who gazed at it for half a minute and handed it
back.
“I see,” said he, “but what made you have anything to do with her?”
The town lot speculator tilted back in his chair and lit a cigarette.
“Driscoll was her name,” said he, “and she didn’t care about her looks,
she used to boast she could put a whole potato in her mouth. She was
my landlady when I lived in Polk Street and she ran a laundry and had
a hand in ward politics and the whole of the Irish contingent at her
back. She had a better business head on her than any man in ’Frisco,
and when I made some money over that trap of mine, she started me in
the real estate business. We were good partners and made big money—and
now she’s bolted.”
“Have you set the police after her?”
“Gosh, no,” said Hank. “What do you take me for? She’s a woman.”
“But she’s boned your money.”
“Half of it was hers, and anyhow, she’s a woman. I’m not used to
kicking women and I don’t propose to learn.”
George remembered what Carolus had said about the Female Sanctity
business and did not pursue the subject.
Hank smoked, his chair tilted back, his heels on the desk. Ruin seemed
to sit easy on the town lot speculator. His mind seemed a thousand
miles away from San Francisco and worry.
Then George broke into his reverie. “Look here,” he said, “I told you
in the street I had an idea. Are you going after this man Vanderdecken
or not?”
“And what if I am?” asked the cautious Hank.
“Then I’ll join you, if you’ll let me.”
“Well,” said Hank, “I told those two ginks at the Club I wasn’t.
They’ve no understanding, for one thing, and for another I don’t want
them to be spreading the news. But I am. For one thing I want a holiday
and for another I want that twenty-five thousand dollars. Twenty, I
mean, for it will take me all of five thousand dollars to catch him.”
“How much have you?”
“One thousand, about, and then I’ve got my royalties for the trap
coming in.”
“That rat trap thing?”
“Yep.”
“How much does it bring you a year, if it’s not rude to ask?”
“Well, I reckon to net in royalties about one thousand five hundred a
quarter and the returns are rising. The British are taking to it and
Seligmann’s had an order for five thousand traps only last week for
London delivery. I can borrow from them in advance of royalties.”
George sat down on a chair and nursed his knee and contemplated the toe
of his boot. George, despite his easy way of life was no fool in money
matters.
“You are going to spend five thousand in trying to catch this pirate,”
said he, “and if you fail, where will you be?”
“Ask me another,” said Hank.
George took his cigarette case from his pocket, chose a cigarette and
lit it; the two sat for a moment in silence.
“Besides,” said George suddenly, “you’ll most likely get a bullet
through your head.”
“Most like,” said Hank.
“To say nothing of weather. You know what Pacific weather is on the
coast here, and you’ll have to lay up maybe months waiting for the
fellow in a cramped boat with beastly grub.”
“Sure,” said Hank.
“Well, there it is, the whole thing’s mad, rotten mad, it hasn’t
a sound plank in it. What did you mean dragging me here with that
proposition for bait?”
“Me drag you!” cried the outraged Hank.
“Yes, you, doped me and dragged me here with your talk at the Club,
turned my head till I’m sure not sane, for I’m in this business with
you up to the neck. I’m as mad as yourself, I want to be off, I
wouldn’t be out of it for ten thousand dollars, though I’m hanged if I
know what the draw is.”
“Man hunting,” said Hank.