Spurrier entered the smoke room and stood for a moment in its
threshold.
There were uniforms there, and some men in them whom he had known,
though now these other-time acquaintances avoided his eye and the
necessity of an embarrassment which must have come from meeting it.
But from an alcove seat near the door rose a stocky gentleman, well
groomed and indubitably distinguished of guise, who had been tearing
the covering from a bridge deck.
"Spurrier, my boy," he exclaimed cordially, "I'm glad to see you. I
read your name on the list. Won't you join us?"
This was the man who had rolled away the mountains of official inertia
and saved him from prison; who had stipulated with his daughter that
she should not write to him in his cell; and who now embraced the
first opportunity to greet him publicly with cordial words. Here,
reflected the cashiered soldier, was poise more calculated than his
own, and he smiled as he shook his head, giving the answer which he
knew to be expected of him.
"No, thank you, senator." Then he added a request: "But if these
gentlemen can spare you for a few minutes I would appreciate a word
with you."
"Certainly, my boy." With a glance about the little company which
made his excuses, Beverly rose and linked his arm through Spurrier's,
but when they stood alone on deck that graciousness stiffened
immediately into manner more austere.
"I've seen Augusta," began the younger man briefly, "and told her I
wouldn't seek to hold her to her promise. I suppose that meets with
your approval?"
The public man, whom rumor credited with presidential aspirations,
nodded. "Under the circumstances it is necessary. I may as well be
candid. I tried vainly to persuade her to throw you over entirely, but
I had to end in a compromise. She agreed not to communicate with you
in any manner until your trial came to its conclusion."
The cashiered officer felt his temples hammering with the surge of
indignant blood to his forehead. This man who had so studiedly and
successfully feigned genuine pleasure at seeing him, when other eyes
were looking on, was telling him now with salamander coolness that he
had urged upon his daughter the policy of callous desertion. The
impulse toward resentful retort was almost overpowering, but with it
came the galling recognition that, except for Beverly's bull-dog
pertinacity, Spurrier himself would have been a life-termer, and that
now humility became him better than anger.
"Did you seek to have Augusta throw me over, without even a
farewell--because you believed me guilty, sir?" His inquiry came
quietly and the older man shook a noncommittal head.
"It's not so much what I think as what the world will think," he made
even response. "To put it in the kindest words, Spurrier, you rest
under a cloud."
"Senator," said the other in measured syllables, "I rest, also, under
a great weight of obligation to you, but, there were times, sir, when
for a note from her I'd willingly have accepted the death penalty."
"I won't pretend that I fail to understand--even to sympathize with
you," came the answer. "You must see none the less that I had no
alternative. Augusta's husband must be--well, like Caesar's wife."
"There is nothing more to be said, I think," admitted Spurrier, and
the senator held out his hand.
"In every other matter, I feel only as your friend. It will be better
if to other eyes our relations remain cordial. Otherwise my efforts on
your behalf would give the busy-bodies food for gossip. That's what we
are both seeking to avoid."
Spurrier bowed and watched the well-groomed figure disappear.
The cloudless days and the brilliant nights of low-hung stars and
phosphor waters were times of memorable opportunity and paradise for
other lovers on that steamer. For Spurrier they were purgatorial and
when he realized Augusta Beverly's clearly indicated wish that he
should leave her free from the embarrassment of any tete-a-tete, he
knew definitely that her silence was as final as words could have made
it. The familiar panama hat seen at intervals and the curve of the
cheek that he had once been privileged to kiss seemed now to belong to
an orbit of life remote from his own with an utterness of distance no
less actual because intangible.
The young soldier's nature, which had been prodigally generous, began
to harden into a new and unlovely bitterness. Once he passed her as
she leaned on the rail with a young lieutenant who was going to the
States on his first leave from Island duty, and when the girl met his
eyes and nodded, the cub of an officer looked up--and cut him dead
with needless ostentation.
For the old general, who had pretended not to see him, Jack Spurrier
had felt only the sympathy due to a man bound and embarrassed by a
severe code of etiquette, but with this cocksure young martinet, his
hands itched for chastisement.
Throughout the trying voyage Spurrier felt that Snowdon, the engineer,
was holding him under an interested sort of observation, and this
surveillance he mildly resented, though the entire politeness of the
other left him helpless to make his feeling outspoken. But when they
had stood off from Honolulu and brought near to completion the last
leg of the Pacific voyage, Snowdon invited him into his own stateroom
and with candid directness spoke his mind.
"Spurrier," he began, "I'd like to have a straight talk with you if
you will accept my assurance of the most friendly motive."
Spurrier was not immediately receptive. He sat eying the other for a
little while with a slight frown between his eyes, but in the end he
nodded.
"I should dislike to seem churlish," he answered slowly. "But I've had
my nerves rubbed raw of late, and they haven't yet grown callous."
"You see, it's rather in my line," suggested Snowdon by way of
preface, "to assay the minerals of character in men and to gauge the
percentage of pay-dirt that lies in the lodes of their natures. So
I've watched you, and if you care to have the results of my
superficial research, I'm ready to report. No man knows himself until
introduced to himself by another, because one can't see one's self at
sufficient distance to gain perspective."
Spurrier smiled. "So you're like the announcer at a boxing match," he
suggested. "You're ready to say, 'Plunger Spurrier, shake hands with
Jack Spurrier--both members of this club.'"
"Precisely," assented Snowdon as naturally as though there had been no
element of facetiousness in the suggestion. "And now in the first
place, what do you mean to do with yourself?"
"I have no idea."
"I suppose you have thought of the possibilities open to a West Point
man--as a soldier of fortune?"
"Yes," the answer was unenthusiastic. "Thought of them and discarded
them."
"Why?"
The voice laughed and then spoke contemptuously.
"A man's sword belongs to his flag. It can no more be honorably hired
out than a woman's love. I can see in either only a form of
prostitution."
"Good!" exclaimed Snowdon heartily. "I couldn't have coached you to a
better answer. Are you financially independent?"
"On the contrary, I have nothing. Until now there was my pay and----"
He paused there but went on again with a dogged self-forcing. "I might
as well confess that the gaming table has always left a balance on my
side of the ledger."
"I haven't seen you playing since you came aboard."
"No. I've cut that out----"
"Good again--and that brings us to where I stop eliciting information
about yourself and begin giving it. I had heard of your gambling
exploits before I saw you. I found that you had that cold quality of
nerve which a few gamblers have, fewer than are credited with it, by
far! Incidentally, it's precisely the same quality that makes notable
generals--and adroit diplomats--if they have the other qualities to
support it. It's sublimated self-control and boldness. You were using
it badly, but it was because you were seeking an outlet through the
wrong channels. So I studied you, quite impersonally. Your situation
on board wasn't easy or enviable. You knew that eyes followed you and
tongues wagged about you with a morbid interest. You saw chatting
groups fall abruptly silent when you approached them and officers you
had once fraternized with look hurriedly elsewhere. In short, my young
friend, you have faced an acid test of ordeal, and you have borne
yourself with neither the defiance of braggadocio, nor the visible
hint of flinching. If I were looking for a certain type of specialized
ability, I should say you had qualified."
A flush spread on the face of the listener.
"You are indeed introducing me to some one I haven't known," he said.
"I know, too," went on Snowdon, "that there has been a girl--and," he
hastened to add as his companion stiffened, "I mention her only to
show you that my observations have not been _too_ superficial. Those
qualities which I have catalogued have engaged my attention, because
they are rare--rare enough to be profitably capitalized."
"All this is parable to me, sir."
"Quite probably. I mean to construe it. There are men who originate or
discover great opportunities of industry--and they need capital to
bring their plans to fruition--but capital can be approached only
through envoys and will receive only ambassadors who can compel
recognition. The man who can hope to be successfully accredited to the
court of Big Money must possess uncommon attributes. Pinch-beck
promoters and plausible charlatans have made cynics of our lords of
wealth."
"What would such a man accomplish," inquired Spurrier, "aside from a
sort of non-resident membership in the association of plutocrats?"
"He would," declared Snowdon promptly, "help bridge the chasm between
the world's unfinanced achievers, and its unachieving finances."
"That," conceded the ex-soldier, "would be worth the doing."
"John Law at twenty-one built a scheme of finance for Great Britain,"
the engineer reminded him. "He could come into the presence of a king
and in five minutes the king would urge him to stay. Force and
presence can make such an ambassador, and those things are the veins
of human ore I've assayed in you in paying quantities."
Spurrier looked across at the strange companion whom chance had thrown
across his path with a commotion of pulses which his face in no wise
mirrored into outward expression. It had begun to occur to him that if
a man is born for an adventurous life even the Articles of War cannot
cancel his destiny.
"It would seem," he suggested casually enough, "that this need of
which you speak is for fellows, in finance, who can carry the message
to Garcia, as it were. Isn't that it?"
"That's it, and messengers to Garcia don't tramp on each other's
heels. Yet I have spoken of only one phase of the career I'm
outlining. It has another side to it as well, if one man is going to
unite in himself the whole of the possibility."
Snowdon broke off there a moment and seemed to be distracted by some
thought of his own, but presently he began again.
"My hypothetical man would act largely as a free lance, knocking about
the world on a sort of constantly renewed exploration. He would be the
prospector hunting gold and the explorer searching for new continents
of industrial development, only instead of being just the one or the
other he would be a sort of sublimation. His job would sometimes call
him into the wildernesses, but more often, I think, his discoveries
would lie under the noses of crowds, passed by every day by clever
folk who never saw them--clever folk who are not quite clever
enough."
"It would seem to me that those discoveries," demurred Spurrier
thoughtfully, "would come each time to some highly trained technician
in some particular line."
Snowdon shook his head again. "That's why they have come slowly
heretofore," he declared with conviction. "That man I have in mind is
one with a sure nose for the trail and a power of absorbing readily
and rapidly what he requires of the other man's technical knowledge.
It's the policy that Japan has followed as a nation. They let others
work the problems out over there--then they appropriate the results.
I'm not commending it as a national trait, but for this work it's the
first essential. Having made his discovery, this new type of business
man will enlist for it the needful financial support." He paused again
and Spurrier, lighting a fresh cigarette, regarded him through eyes
slit-narrowed against the flare of the match.
"He must be a sort of opportunity hound," continued Snowdon smilingly.
"He would go baying across the world in full cry and come back to the
kennel at the end of each chase."
Spurrier laughed. "If you'll pardon me, sir," he hazarded, "you make a
very bad metaphor. I should fancy that the opportunity hound would do
the stillest sort of still hunting."
The older man smiled and bowed his head affirmatively.
"I accept the amendment. The point is, do I give you the concept of
the work?"
"In a broad, extremely sketchy way, I think I get the picture,"
replied Spurrier. "But could you give me some sort of illustration
that would make it a shade more concrete?"
His companion sat considering the question for a while and at last
inquired: "Do you know anything about oil? I mean about its
production?"
"I've been on the Pennsylvania Railroad, coming west," testified the
former lieutenant. "And I've run through ragged hills where on every
side, stood clumsy, timber affairs like overgrown windmills from which
some victorious Don Quizote had knocked off the whirligigs. Then I've
read a little of Ida Tarbell."
"Even that will serve for a sort of background. Now, people in general
think of striking oil as they might think of finding money on the
sidewalk or of lightning striking a particular spire--as a matter of
purest chance. To some extent that idea is correct enough, but the
brains of oil production are less haphazard. In the office of a few
gentlemen who hold dominion over oil and gas hangs a map drawn by the
intelligence department of their general staff. On that map are traced
lines not unlike those showing ocean currents, but their arrows point
instead to currents far under ground, where runs the crude petroleum,
discovered--and undiscovered."
"Undiscovered?" Spurrier's brows were lifted in polite incredulity,
but his companion nodded decisively.
"Discovered and undiscovered," he repeated. "Geological surveys told
the mapmakers how certain lines and structures ran in tendency. Where
went a particular formation of Nature's masonry, there in probability
would go oil. The method was not absolute, I grant you, but neither
was it haphazard. Sitting in an office in Pittsburgh a certain man
drew on his chart what has since been recognized as the line of the
forty-second degree, running definitely from the Pennsylvania fields
down through Ohio and into the Appalachian hills of Kentucky--thence
west and south. Study your fields in Oklahoma, in old Mexico, and you
will find that, widely separated as they are, each of them is marked
by a cross on that map, and that each of them lies along the current
trend which the Pittsburgh man traced before many of them were touched
by a drill."
"That, surely," argued Spurrier, "testifies for the highly skilled
technician, doesn't it?"
"So far. I now come to the chance of the opportunity hound. The
present fields are spots of production here and there. Between them
lie others, virgin to pump or rig. Much of that ground is, of course,
barren territory, for even on an acre of proven location dry holes may
lie close to gushers; one man's farm may be a 'duster' while his
neighbor's spouts black wealth. But along that charted line run the
probabilities."
Into Spurrier's eyes stole the gleam of the adventuring spirit that
was strong in him.
"It sounds like Robert Louis Stevenson and buried treasure," he
declared with unconcealed enthusiasm, but Snowdon only smiled.
"Remember," he cautioned, "I'm illustrating--nothing more. Now in the
foothills of the Kentucky Cumberlands, for example, some years ago men
began finding oil. It lay for the most part in a country where the
roads were creek beds--remote from railway facilities. It was an
expensive sort of proposition to develop, but the cry of 'Oil! Oil!'
has never failed to set the pack a-running, and it ran."
"I don't remember hearing of that rush," admitted Spurrier.
"No, I dare say you didn't. It was a flare-up and a die-down. The men
who rushed in, plodded dejectedly out again, poorer by the time they
had spent."
"Then the boom collapsed?"
"It collapsed--but why? Because the gentlemen who hold dominion over
oil and gas caucussed and so ordained. They gathered around their map
and stuck pins here and there. They said, 'This oil can come out in
two ways only: by pipe line or tank cars. We will stand aloof and
develop where the cost is less and the profit greater--and without us,
it cannot succeed.'"
"Were there no independent concerns to bring the stuff to market?"
Snowdon laughed. "The gentlemen who hold dominion have their own
defenses against competition. You may have heard of a certain dog in
the manger? Well, they said as they sat about their table on which the
map was spread, 'Some day other fields may run out. Some day something
may set oil soaring until even this yield may be well worth our
attention. We will therefore hold this card in reserve against that
day and that contingency.' So quietly, inconspicuously, yet with a
power that strangled competition, lobbies operated in State
legislatures. The independents failed to secure needful charters--the
lines were never laid. Those particular fields starved, and now the
ignorant mountaineers who woke for a while to dreams of wealth, laugh
at the man who says 'oil' to them. Yet at some properly, or improperly
designated day, those failure fields will flash on the astonished
world as something risen from the dead, and fortunes will blossom for
the lucky."
"Yes?" prompted the listener.
"Now let us suppose our opportunity hound as willing to go
unostentatiously into that country; as willing to spend part of each
year there for a term of years; nipping options here and there,
waiting patiently and watching his chance to slip a charter through
one of those bound and gagged legislatures in some moment of relaxed
vigilance. Such a man might find himself ultimately standing with the
key to the situation in his own hand. It's just a story, but perhaps
it serves to give you my meaning."
"Did I understand you to suggest," inquired Spurrier with a forced
calmness, "that you fancy you see in me the qualities of your
opportunity hound?"
"Our own concern," said Snowdon quietly, "is fortunate enough to have
passed through the period of cooling its heels in the anterooms of
capital, but we can still use a man such as I have described. There's
a place for you with us if you want it."
"When do I go to work?" demanded the former lieutenant rising from his
seat, and Snowdon countered:
"When will you be ready to begin?"
"When we dock at 'Frisco," came the immediate response, "provided I be
allowed time for an affair of my own, two months from now. A certain
private in my old company will be discharged from the service then. I
fancy he'll land there, and I want to be waiting for him when he steps
ashore."
"A reprisal?" inquired Snowdon in a disappointed tone, but the other
shook his head.
"He is the one man through whom there's a chance of clearing my name,"
Spurrier said slowly. "I hope it won't call for violence."