JOE BARRETT
The Du Cane house on Pacific Avenue was—is, in fact—a monstrous affair,
at least viewed as the residence of a single man. Old Harley’s tastes
were big and florid and he had entertained on a large scale; at his
death George would have sold or let the place, but something held him,
maybe Harley’s ghost, for the old man’s personality was so strong
that it had imprinted itself everywhere, so that to sell or let the
place would, so George felt, have been equivalent almost to selling or
letting the old man himself.
George had closed a lot of the rooms, cutting down the servants to four
or five in number, reserving for himself only a sitting-room and a
bedroom, a dressing-room and bathroom.
This morning, the morning after the Jake business, he was awakened by
a knock at the door and the entrance of his valet Farintosh. He had
picked up Farintosh in England as a sort of curio. He had been his
valet at the Carlton Hotel. Farintosh’s father had been own man to the
Marquis of Bristol, his grandfather butler to the Duke of Hamilton,
his brother was head waiter at Boodle’s and his sister in service at
Sandringham House. He had small side whiskers.
Farintosh, having closed the door cautiously, announced that a
gentleman of the name of Fisher had called to see George and was
waiting in the sitting-room.
“What’s the time?” asked George.
“Half past seven, sir.”
George lay back with a groan.
“Show him right in here,” said he.
George, on parting from Hank the day before, had dined with some
friends at the Palatial. Released from the hypnotism of the town lot
speculator, he had begun to cool ever so slightly over the Vanderdecken
business. The cooling had gone on during sleep. Awakened, an hour
before his usual time, to the ordinary facts of life, his feet were
frankly cold. Shultz, the man he had dined with at the Palatial, was
going off to the Rockies on a shooting expedition and had asked him to
join. There would be plenty of fun and plenty of sport—yet he had to
refuse.
But there was something more than that, Farintosh. The absolutely sane
and correct Farintosh acted as an underscore to the whole of this
business. Farintosh, whose lips rarely said more than “Yes, sir,” or
“No, sir,” was voiceful in all sorts of subtle ways, as, for instance,
when he had announced a “gentleman of the name of Fisher.”
Entered Hank, suddenly, backed by Farintosh, who closed the door on the
pair.
“Say, Bud, ain’t you up yet?” cried Hank. “Why, I’ve been running round
since five. Say—shall I pull the blinds?” He pulled them up, letting in
a blaze of early sunlight. Then he looked round the room, took in its
magnificence and seemed to wilt a bit. He sat down on a chair.
“Who’s the old boy with the whiskers?” he asked.
George explained, yawning, and Hank, without waiting to hear him
out, went on. He seemed suddenly to have recovered his confidence in
himself; the radium-like activity of his mind broke forth, and he
talked the other out of bed, into the bathroom and through his bathing
and shaving operations. If you had been listening, you would have heard
George’s contributions to the conversation, at first monosyllabic, then
in words of more than one syllable, then in long sentences. He was
losing his cold feet, blossoming again in the atmosphere of Hank, for
Hank was at once an individual and an atmosphere, an atmosphere wherein
extraordinary ideas, seeming scarcely strange, could flourish like
tropical plants in a green house.
At breakfast, George was his same old self again and as keen as
yesterday about the Dutchman business.
“I didn’t tell you,” said the Rat Trap Inventor, “I’ve been cooking
it up—but I’ve done another deal. Y’remember I said I’d want five
thousand dollars to push the thing through? Well, now listen, you saw
what I did with Tyrebuck, well I’ve done better with Barrett.”
“Which Barrett?”
“Joe.”
Instantly before George’s eyes arose the picture of Barrett’s Stores on
Market Street in all their vastness, and Joe Barrett himself, dapper
and debonair. Eccentric by nature, Barrett used his eccentricity as a
means toward publicity. If he had possessed a wooden leg or a glass eye
or a skeleton in his cupboard, he would without doubt have used them as
a means of advertisement. It was the only thing he really cared for.
His business was less to him than the advertising of it; heaven for
J. B. existed only as a background for sky signs and if he could have
printed “Barrett” on the moon in indelible ink, he would have done so,
even at the risk of being skinned alive by all the poets.
“Yes?” said George.
“I met him last night at the Bay Club,” said Hank, “and the idea struck
me. He’d provision us better and cheaper than anyone else seeing that I
know him so well. He’s a sport, and I just let him into the thing, told
him the whole business and how I’d got the _Wear Jack_ from Tyrebuck
for nothing and how you were joining in. Then I opened my batteries
about the provisions. I want enough for six men for three months, to
say nothing of gasoline and oil and some new bunk bedding. He offered
to do it for two thousand dollars. I offered a thousand, to take him
down, and he forked out a dollar. ‘I’ll toss you two thousand or
nothing,’ he says. Luck seemed running so strong I took him, and lost.”
“Oh, you lost.”
“One minute. ‘Best out of three,’ said he, and tosses again. I won;
then he tosses again and I won. You see he’d got it in his head,
somehow, that we were tossing best out of three, either that or he
wanted me to win. I tell you, he’s a sport. The Dutchman proposition
had taken such a hold on him I guess he wanted to help, somehow.
Anyhow, there it is; boat and provisions won’t cost me a cent. How’s
that for luck?”
“Good,” said George laughing. “And now if you get a crew for nothing,
you’ll be fixed.”
“Well, I’ve got you for one,” said Hank. “You won’t cost anything and
you can steer.”
George put down his coffee cup.
“That reminds me,” said he, “how about the navigation—are you any good?”
“Well, I don’t say I’m good,” said Hank, “but I’m good enough to take
that old cat boat down the coast and bring her back again. Now if
you’re finished, let’s get, for I’m just longing to begin the sweep of
her decks and start clearing her down and overhauling the rigging.”
“But see here,” said George, “aren’t you going to get men to work on
her?”
“Yep. I’m a man, aren’t I, and you’re another. Now, you get it in your
head, Bud: I’m starting out in this business to catch the Dutchman, not
to support a lot of bone lazy union fumblers for half their natural.
Why you don’t know what these dockyard dandies are, you don’t indeed.
Y’ remember Elihu Stevens when he started out on that cruise of his in
the _Maryland_? I’ve seen him near crying over the dollar-snatchers at
work on her. They robbed him of time and they robbed him of money, and
they damn near robbed him of his life with their rotten spars and mush
planking.”
“But I’m as innocent as Solomon’s aunt of how rigging should be fixed.”
“I’ll learn you,” said Hank.
George was silent. He seemed thinking about things. Hank leaned forward
across the table.
“Bud,” said he, “you’re not backing out, are you? You’re not afraid of
a bit of work? Why, look here, Bud, I’d only to put my hand in your
pocket, so to speak, and pull out the dollars to pay for fitters and
riggers enough to fit out a battleship, let alone the _Wear Jack_. But,
leaving alone being robbed of time and dollars, where’d be the game in
that? I’m doing this thing with my own hands and head and so are you.
Forget money—it spoils everything.”
“You’re pretty keen after it all the same, Hank,” said George laughing.
“Yep. When I’m chasing it, but I’m not chasing it now, I’m chasing the
Dutchman. I’m not thinking of the twenty-five thousand, I’m thinking of
the Dutchman. It’s a game and I don’t want money to help me. Why, I’d
blush to be helped by money in chasing a man, unless he’d done me some
wrong. When I get this fellow by the scruff, I wanta say to myself,
‘Hank, you took this man by the work of your own hands and your own
head, and against odds. He had as good chances as you, and you didn’t
shoot him sitting.’ If you don’t take me, Bud, then we don’t understand
each other and I’ll leave you to that gink with the whiskers and your
millionaire ways and start off on my lonesome.”
“We understand each other,” said George, ringing the bell. “I’m not
afraid of a bit of work with my hands. Farintosh.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Send round the car.”
In the hall, as they passed out to the car, Hank picked up a bundle he
had brought with him.
“What’s in that?” asked George.
“Overalls,” said Hank.
They drew up in Malcolm Street close to the wharves.
“Take her back,” said George to the chauffeur, “and tell Farintosh to
come along at half-past twelve with enough sandwiches for two and a
bottle of—Oh, damn—two bottles of lemonade. You can drink lemonade,
Hank?”
“Sure.”
“Tell him he’ll find me in the yacht that’s moored at Sullivan’s wharf.
It’s close to this place, he can’t mistake.”
The car drove off, and they started for the water side, Hank carrying
the bundle.