Directly luncheon was over and Cappy Ricks had returned to his office, J. Augustus Redell moved into action. He called on Messrs. Ford & Carter, talked the situation over with them, and showed them where they, having the necessary tonnage in hand with which to guarantee delivery, could bring a couple of million bushels of fine Number One white Australian wheat to the Pacific Coast, cut the price a cent, and doubtless unload every kernel of it at a fair profit. There was every probability that wheat would go to two dollars. For his part in producing this profit Mr. Redell desired a commission of five per cent on all sales of wheat imported in the bottoms he had under option and which he stood ready to turn over to Ford & Carter without profit, since the owners of the vessels would pay him the customary broker's commission on the freight money earned on the voyage. Ford & Carter said they would think the matter over; so Mr. Redell tactfully withdrew, stating that he would call up the following day for an answer.
He knew Ford & Carter would promptly dispatch a long cablegram to their agent in Australia, instructing him to get a forty-eight-hour option on the wheat, with a guaranty of delivery to the vessels as they arrived from time to time. Meantime, Ford & Carter would quote every milling company in the West, subject to prior acceptance and their ability to deliver Number One Australian wheat at a price that would be of interest. If the milling companies accepted this rather nebulous quotation and telegraphed orders, and Ford & Carter's Australian agent could purchase at a satisfactory price the wheat to fill these orders, then Ford & Carter would make formal acceptance and purchase the wheat. If, on the other hand, their agent in Australia failed to get the wheat, then Ford & Carter had an “out” with the milling companies who desired to buy the wheat from them, and the entire matter would be off, with Ford & Carter merely out a couple of hundred dollars in telegraph bills. That was the bet they had to make to put their fortune to the touch; and right cheerfully did they make it.
J. Augustus Redell gave them all the time he could. His forty-eight-hour options on the vessels then en route to Australia had cost him nothing; that was a courtesy which one shipowner always extends to another, free of charge, unless the vessel happens to be on demurrage at the time the option is given. When his options were within two hours of expiring he called on Ford & Carter.
“We'll take 'em all,” Carter almost shouted at him. “They'll be arriving with sufficient time elapsing between arrivals to guarantee us immunity from any undue delay or embarrassment in loading them. We've bought the wheat and sold it; now give us the tonnage to freight it, Redell, and we'll all be happy, and a little richer than we were the day before yesterday.”
Redell took up the telephone and called each shipowner, in turn, to inform him that he would exercise his option on the latter's ship, and for the owner to prepare charter parties and send them up to his office for signature.
“I will have no difficulty in getting the owners to agree to an assignment of these charters to you,” he advised Carter. “You and Ford are brothers in good standing, I take it. However, if they insist on doing business through me, in order that they may hold me responsible, I'll simply recharter to you at the same rate.”
“Lovely!” cried Messrs. Ford & Carter in unison.
Ten minutes later J. Augustus Redell burst into Cappy Ricks' sanctum and wakened the old gentleman from his afternoon siesta.
“The trap is set,” he announced. “Come on, Cappy! We're going up to the broker's office now and give the order to sell our December wheat. I can't go alone, you know. There wouldn't be an odor of sanctity about the transaction if I did.”
“We'll have Gregg & Company attend to it for us,” Cappy announced. “You remember Harry Gregg, don't you? Used to be in the steamship business years ago. Gosh, that boy knows me! He'll take a stiff finger bet from Alden P. Ricks.”
Together they motored uptown to the office of Gregg & Co., where Cappy's card gained him instant admittance to the broker's private office. Redell remained in the anteroom on pretense of speaking to an acquaintance, and the instant Cappy disappeared into Gregg's office Redell stepped out into the hall, where he waited until Cappy had booked his order and came hunting for him.
“Well, I've sold my two hundred and fifty thousand bushels at a dollar-ninety,” Cappy announced.
“How much margin?” Redell demanded.
“Oh, Gregg didn't sting me very hard. Ten cents a bushel. It seemed like a good bet to him. He looks for a drop in December wheat.”
“Met a pest out here and couldn't seem to get away from him,” Redell explained. “Take me in and introduce me to Gregg, and I'll give him an order to sell a jag of wheat for me.”
Cappy complied and Redell gave the broker his order.
“It will take about twenty-five thousand dollars to margin this trade, Mr. Redell,” the latter remarked easily as he wrote out the order and handed a copy to Redell.
“Nonsense!” Cappy struck in. “Mr. Redell is one of our most delightful, trustworthy and popular young men, and to ask him for twenty-five thousand dollars today would prejudice his standing with his banker. I guarantee him, Harry. Treat him as you'd treat me. I guarantee him up to a hundred thousand dollars.”
“Your guaranty goes with me, Mr. Ricks,” Gregg answered promptly, and shoved the copy of the order he had just booked over to Cappy, together with the fountain pen. Cappy wrote: “O. K. Alden P. Ricks.” Redell gave his check for ten thousand dollars margin and the deal was closed. When the scheming pair returned to Cappy's office the latter gave Redell his check for ten thousand to reimburse Redell for margining the trade, in accordance with Cappy's verbal agreement to provide the sinews of war.
“Now then, Cappy,” Redell announced as he stuffed Cappy's check into his pocket, “the next move is to return to my office, close those charters with the owners and turn the ships over to Ford & Carter. That matter attended to, I shall, with eighteen charter parties in my pocket, drift casually over to the Merchants' Exchange. There I shall find the market reporters for both of our sunrise sheets; if they are not there I shall wait until they arrive. These gifted young men I shall draw to one side; to them I shall, with great gusto, relate a tale of Number One white Australian wheat, shortly to descend upon the United States of America in no less than eighteen vessels, now chartered for that purpose, with more to follow. In proof of this statement I shall exhibit the charter parties; and then—”
“Front-page story!” Cappy declared, interrupting.
“Not yet—but soon. To get on the front page a story must be rather unusual. A perusal of our daily rags will convince the most skeptical that the sensational, the unusual, the bizarre are what appeal most to the men who make the newspapers. The unusual thing about our deal lies in the fact that this is the first time in the history of Australia or the United States that the former country has exported wheat into the latter—the first time the latter has ever had to call on an outsider for help. Then, Cappy, it will be a front-page story—and how those boys will hop to it! Why, we'll get a column about Australian wheat invading the land of the free whose rapacity threatens the very food that goes into the mouths of little children! Little children and their mouths is good stuff! I'll use that line when slipping the story to the boys. They might overlook it if I didn't. I'll remind them of the six-cent loaf of bread, the sufferings of the poor, and how far the importation of Australian wheat will go to knock the Chicago wheat barons for a goal.”
“Here, here! You're too precipitate,” Cappy cautioned. “Don't tip this story off to both reporters. That's coarse work. Tell it to one only. Put him under obligations to you by seeming to give him a scoop. Tell him you won't say a word to his competitor, and he'll tell his city editor the story is exclusive; then they'll be certain to play it up big.”
“Cappy, you're the shadow of a rock in a weary land! Who'll tip off the other reporter?”
“I will, of course. Leave it to me. A man doesn't go through the mill of Big Business without knowing the way of that singularly useful individual, the newspaper man.”
Redell sat down and laughed until the tears ran down his merry countenance. Cappy thought the outlook sufficiently cheerful to warrant that laugh, and suspected nothing. He even joined in the laugh.
“And to-morrow morning, when that story appears, the local brokerage firms will be calling up Ford friend and gave him a paternal hug. He winked wickedly.
“My dear boy,” he suggested, “suppose you and I go out and pin one on? Hey? How about you, boy? A pint of '98, in order that we may properly drink confusion to the wolf of want and damnation to dull care!”
Late that afternoon Cappy Ricks graciously summoned the Chronicle reporter to his office and told him in detail all he knew about the Australian wheat invasion.
“Of course,” he added, “this may be mere street gossip; but I think there's something in it, my boy. At any rate, I thought you might care to be tipped off to the situation. It looks like a corking story to me. I suggest that you call up Ford & Carter and see what they have to say about it.”
“I wonder whether the Examiner reporter has a tip on this?” the Chronicle man queried hopefully.
“Not from me. This story is for you, young man. That's why I called you down to my office.”
About the same hour J. Augustus Redell might have been seen at the press table on 'Change, unfolding a similar story to the market reporter of the Examiner, who thought it was a humdinger of a story, and so declared.
“All right. Glad you think so,” Mr. Redell replied, beaming upon him. “And just to show you I'm right, I'll not breathe a word of it to the Chronicle man.”
Having planted his journalistic bomb, Mr. Redell glanced at his watch. It was exactly eleven o'clock. “I still have time,” he murmured, and departed immediately to the office of Gregg of December wheat, but to cease selling the instant the market hesitated to absorb it or the price broke a point. At the same moment, in another brokerage office, Cappy Ricks was issuing a similar order. Before the market closed, Cappy had succeeded in selling a hundred and eighty thousand bushels, while Redell had disposed of a hundred and thirty. Evidently the bears took it as it came, for the market closed strong at $1.89.
Neither Cappy nor Redell reported at his office the following day. At the hour when the market opened in Chicago both schemers appeared on the floor of the Merchants' Exchange and bent their gaze upon the only blackboard on 'Change they had not heretofore honored with their scrutiny—the board in back of the Grain Pit, which carried the quotations on the Chicago Board of Trade, already beginning to come in by wire.
For an hour the trading was inactive. Then suddenly the price broke half a point as somebody tossed a lot of fifty thousand bushels on the market. Cappy and Redell each wondered whether he might not be the responsible party; and while they pondered somebody unloaded a hundred thousand bushels at $1.88. Cappy gasped as the quotations appeared on the blackboard.
“Something doing, Gus!” he whispered; Redell nodded.
And now commenced a period of wild trading. The price crept back to $1.89, only to be assaulted and beaten back to $1.87; then, fraction by fraction and point by point, the price fell; and J. Augustus Redell wagged his head approvingly.
“They have received our message,” he said. “The riot is on!”
When the price had been beaten down to $1.83 Cappy turned to his associate.
“I'm through!” he said. “Time to cover my shorts.” And he trotted away to a telephone booth.
As for Redell, he would not intrust his fortune to a telephonic order, but sprang into 'his runabout, parked at the curb outside the Exchange, and scorched uptown to Gregg & Co.'s offices, where he learned that he had sold four hundred and ten thousand bushels of December wheat. One hundred thousand had been sold at $1.90, two hundred and eighty thousand at prices varying from $1.89 to $1.88 1/8, and the remainder at 1.88.
“Buy me four hundred and ten thousand bushels at the market,” he ordered.
Before he left the office the sale had been confirmed and Mr. Redell's shorts had been covered at a price ranging from $1.83 to $1.83 5/8, whereupon he closed out his trade and received a check for his margin and his profits. An hour later he met Cappy Ricks again on 'Change.
“Well, Cappy?” he queried.
“I cleaned up, thank you,” the old gentleman informed him. “Sold, bought, and got the money. This is one time it rained duck soup and I was there with a bucket.”
He prodded Mr. Redell playfully in the short ribs and the incident was closed. They had made a profit of more than twenty thousand dollars each; and when each returned to his office he forgot all about December wheat until half past five that evening, when both met on the deserted floor of the exchange to scan the blackboard. December wheat had closed that day at $1.83! Two days later J. Augustus Redell called Cappy Ricks on the telephone.
“That you, Cappy?”
“Yep!”
“Redell speaking. Read the story on the front page of the Chronicle this morning?”
“No; what was it?”
“The British Government has placed an embargo on the exportation of wheat from Australia; so all those eighteen charters I negotiated with Ford were placed with Ford & Carter subject to Ford & Carter's ability to make delivery and to prior sale. Before Ford & Carter could make them firm orders and get in over their heads, I tipped them off to the possibility of this government embargo.”
“You tipped them off! How did you know the British Government was going to clap an embargo on Australian wheat?”
“Why, I didn't know,” Redell confessed. “I just guessed it would; so I advised Ford than I did—and I made a trifle more than twenty-four thousand dollars.”
“Is that so? Well, listen to me tell it; When you and I cashed in that day our deal was closed wasn't it?”
“Yes.”
“And I'd played fair with you?”
“You certainly did, Gus.”
“Then I was freed from any further obligations to take you into partnership with me, was I not?”
“That's how I figure it, my boy.”
“That's how I figured it also, Cappy. Consequently, being morally certain that the British Government would place an embargo on the exportation of Australian wheat—Cappy, you must admit that the British Government would have been absolutely crazy if it hadn't—I just called on Gregg & Co. and bought another half million bushels of December wheat at $1.83 to $1.84 a bushel. Then I sat tight and waited for that embargo story to break. Cappy, do you know that story just raised hell on the Chicago Pit today? The bears were caught napping; and the bulls got busy and kicked the price up to $1.90 again, at which figure I unloaded and took my profit.”
“You amazing rascal! Why didn't you tip your partner off to that deal?”
“We were no longer partners. You admitted that a moment ago. When I first outlined this scheme I didn't have a dollar to spare with which I could speculate. Every last cent was tied up in the business of the West Coast Trading Company. So I schemed to take you in as a partner on one-half of the deal; and you not only financed me but guaranteed me to the broker! Your introduction was all I wanted. After that my credit was as good as December wheat; in consequence of which, without a cent invested, I was actually enabled to carry a trade for half a million bushels! Much obliged to you, Cappy. You're a fine old sport, and I like you—I wouldn't be surprised if you laid off on me after this—eh, Cappy?”
“Gus,” said Cappy Ricks, “one of these days the Democratic party is going to wake up and discover that America isn't where they left it the night before! And when that happens they're going to ask you about it, you—you—infer-nal—”
The phone clicked. J. Augustus Redell had hung up.
“Drat it!—God bless him!” murmured Cappy Ricks—and hung up, too.
Whenever Cappy Ricks made up his mind that his Blue Star Navigation Company ought to add another vessel to its rapidly growing fleet, he preferred to build her; for a few bitter experiences early in life had convinced him that the man who buys the other fellow's ship quite frequently is given a bonus in the shape of the other fellow's troubles—troubles which have the unhappy faculty of tilting the profit-and-loss account over into the red-ink figures. In order to avoid these troubles, therefore, Cappy would summon his naval architect, whom he would practically drive to distraction by fussing over the plans submitted before giving a final grudging acceptance. The blue prints approved, Cappy would spend a week picking holes in the specifications, and when there was no more fault to find Mr. Skinner, his general manager and the president of the Ricks Lumber & Logging Company, would send a list of the timbers, planking, and so on required, to one of Cappy's sawmills in Washington; for Cappy had a theory—the good Lord knows why or where acquired—that Douglas fir from the state of Washington was better for shipbuilding purposes than Douglas fir grown in Oregon. Perhaps he figured that the Columbia River, which separates the two states, made a difference in grade.
The woods boss would then be adjured to select his trees with great care. No tree would do that sprouted a limb within eighty feet of the butt, and the butt had to be at least six feet in diameter, in order that it might produce fine, clear, long-length planks that would not contain “heart” timber—the heart of a log having a tendency to check or split when seasoned. When the material was sawed a Blue Star steam schooner would transport it to San Francisco Bay, and it would be stored in Cappy's retail lumber yard in Oakland, to be seasoned and air-dried; following which Cappy Ricks would let the contract for the building of the vessel to a shipyard on Oakland Estuary, and sell the builder this seasoned stock at the price of rough green material, even though it was worth two dollars a thousand extra—not to mention the additional value for the extra-long lengths furnished specially. Cappy's ancestors, back in Maine, had built too many ships to have failed to impress upon him the wisdom of this course; for, on this point at least, initial extravagance inevitably develops into ultimate economy.
Following the laying of the keel, Cappy would come out of retirement and become an extremely busy man. He had the vessel's engines to consider; and for two weeks his private office would resound with the arguments and recriminations of Cappy and his port engineer. There would be much talk of pistons, displacement of cylinders, stroke, reciprocating engines, steeple compound and triple-expansion engines, Scotch boilers, winches, compressors, dynamos, composition and iron propellers and the latest developments in crude-oil burners. And on the day when the port engineer, grown desperate because of the old man's opposition to some detail, would fly into a rage and resign, Cappy would know that, at last, everything was all right; whereupon he would scornfully reject the resignation and take his port engineer to luncheon at the Commercial Club, just to show he wasn't harboring a grudge.
In the meantime the port captain would be making daily visits to the shipyard to make certain that the builder was holding rigidly to the specifications and not trying to skimp here and there; and on Saturdays Cappy would accompany him and satisfy himself that the port captain wasn't being imposed upon. Finally the ship would be launched; and as she slid down the ways Cappy Ricks would be standing on her forecastle head, his old heart fluttering in his thirty-six-inch chest and his coat-tails fluttering in the breeze, one arm round the port captain and the other round the port engineer. As the hull slipped into the drink he would say:
“Boys, this is the life! I love it! By the Holy Pink-Toed Prophet, there's more romance in ships than you'll find in most married lives!” Then he would wave an arm up Oakland Estuary, which prior to the great war was the graveyard of Pacific Coast shipping, and say with great pride: “Well, we've done a good job on this craft, boys; she'll never end in Rotten Row! Every sliver in her is air-dried and seasoned. That's the stuff! Build 'em of unseasoned material and dry rot develops the first year; in five years they're punk inside, and then—some fine day they're posted as missing at Lloyd's. Did you ever see a Blue Star ship lying in Rotten Row? No; you bet you didn't—and you never will! I never built a cheap boat and I never ran 'em cheap. By gravy, the Blue Star ships are like the Blue Nose that owns 'em! They'll be found dead on the job!”
Quite early in 1915 the Blue Star Navigation Company had found ample opportunity, due to a world scarcity of tonnage, to dispose of several of their oldest and smallest steam schooners at unbelievably fine prices.
“Get rid of them, Matt,” Cappy advised his son-in-law, Captain Matt Peasley, whom he had made president of the company. “You have the permission of the president emeritus to go as far as you like. Big boats for us from now on, boy. Slip the little ones while the slipping is good. These high prices will not prevail very long—only while the war continues; and at the rate they're slaughtering each other over in France the war will be over in six months; then prices will fall kerflump! Then we'll build a couple of real steamers.”
So Matt Peasley promptly sold five steam schooners, following which he made up his mind that the world still had two years of war ahead of it. Accordingly he urged the letting of contracts for two seven-thousand-five-hundred-ton steel freighters immediately.
“Nothing doing!” Cappy declared. “Why, it's rank nonsense to think of building now at wartime prices. If our recent sales have pinched us for tonnage we'll have to charter from our neighbors and worry along as best we can until the war is over.”
“You're making a mistake, Cappy Ricks,” his son-in-law warned him.
“Ask Skinner if I am. Skinner, let's have your opinion.”
Mr. Skinner, always cautious and ultra-conservative promptly advised against Matt Peasley's course; but Matt would not be downed without a fight.
“I know prices for ship construction are fearfully high just now,” he admitted; “but—mark my words!—they're going to double; and if we place our contracts now, while we have an opportunity to do so, we'll be getting in on the ground floor. I tell you that war hasn't really started yet; and the longer it continues the higher will prices on all commodities soar—but principally on ship construction. Father-in-law, I beg of you to let me get busy and build. Suppose the boats do cost us a quarter of a million dollars more each than we could have built them for in 1914. What of it? We have the money—and if we didn't have it we could borrow it. I don't care what a ship costs me when freight rates are soaring to meet the advance in construction costs.”
Nevertheless, Cappy and Mr. Skinner hooted him down. Three months later, however, when Cappy Ricks had changed his mind, and Mr. Skinner was too heartbroken to curse himself for a purblind idiot, it was too late to place the contracts. Every shipyard in the United States and abroad was loaded up with building orders for three years in advance, and the Blue Star Navigation Company was left to twiddle its corporate thumbs. Matt Peasley was so angry that he almost speculated on the delight of being at sea again, in command of a square rigger, with Cappy Ricks and Mr. Skinner signed on as A.B.'s; in which condition of servitude he might dare to call them aft and knock their heads together. However, he managed to have his revenge. Every time nitrate freights went up a dollar a ton he told them about it with great gusto, and the day he chartered theTillicumfor Vladivostok, with steel for the Russian Government at seventy-five dollars a ton, he had poor Cappy moaning in his wretchedness.
“Just think how nice it would be,” he taunted his aged relative, “if we had only placed contracts for two big boats when I urged it. By the middle of summer I'd have them both on the Vladivostok run—perhaps at a hundred dollars a ton; and long before the war is over you could do what you've been trying to do for the past ten years.”
“Do what?” Cappy queried.
“Retire!” Matt retorted meaningly.
“In-fernal young scoundrel!” Cappy was angry enough to commit murder. “Out of my office!” he shrilled, and pointed to the door.
For once in his busy life it was, figuratively speaking, raining duck soup, and poor Cappy was there with a fork! When he had recovered his composure he sent for Matt Peasley.
“Matt, my dear boy,” he confessed miserably, “this is certainly one occasion upon which father appears to have overlooked his hand. However, none of us is perfect; and if we're caught out without an umbrella, so to speak—”
“We?” Matt reminded him witheringly. “Cappy, it's all right to use that 'we' stuff when you're talking to Skinner, but trot out the perpendicular pronoun when you're talking to me. I hate to say 'I told you so'; but—”
“Lay off me!” Cappy pleaded. “I'm an old man, Matt; so be easy on me. Besides, I don't make a mistake very often, and you know it.”
“I do know it. But when you blocked me on that building scheme you certainly made up for lost time. Really, Cappy, you mustn't make me play so close to my vest in these brisk times. If I'm to manage the Blue Star Navigation Company I mustn't have my ideas pooh-poohed as if I were a hare-brained child.”
“I know, Matt; I know. But I built up the Blue Star Navigation Company and the Ricks Lumber & Logging Company by playing 'em close, and it's a hard habit to break.
“However, let us forget the past and look forward with confidence to the future. Matt, my dear boy, since we cannot get a shipyard to build a steamer for us, I'm going to break a rule of forty years' standing and buy one in the open market. I guess that'll prove to you I'm not so hide-bound with conservatism as you think. Go forth into the highways and the byways, Matt, and see what they have for sale.”
“How high do you want me to go?”
“As high as they hung Haman—if you find it necessary.”
“That's certainly a free hand; but I'm afraid it comes too late. I doubt if there is an owner with the kind of steamer we want who is crazy enough to sell her.”
“Tish! Tush! All things are for sale all the time. Scour the market, Matt, and you'll find Cappy Ricks isn't the only damned fool left in the shipping business. My boy, you'd be surprised at the number of so-called business men who are entirely devoid of imagination. Dozens of them still think the war will end this fall, but I'm willing to make a healthy bet that the fall of 1917 still finds them going to it to beat four of a kind.”
“You said something that time, father-in-law,” Matt replied laughingly.
Then he roughed the old man affectionately and went forth into California Street, where he wore out much shoe leather before he located what he considered a bargain and reported back to the president emeritus.
“You're right, Cappy!” he declared. “You aren't the only boob in the shipping business. I've located another.”
“That's what you get by taking father's advice,” Gappy retorted proudly. “Have you bought a steamer?”
“No; but I'm going to buy one this afternoon. She's going to cost us half a million dollars, cash on the nail, and I have an option on her at that figure until noon today. Skinner has a lot of lumber money he isn't using, and I'm going to borrow a quarter of a million from his company on the Blue Star note at six per cent. Don't want to run our own treasury too low.”
“Dog-gone that Skinner! That's some more of his efficiency. I own both companies, and it's just like taking money out of one pocket and putting it into the other; but Skinner's a bug on system. Just think of making me pay myself six per cent interest! However, I suppose we must have some kind of order. What's the name of the steamer?”
“ThePenelope.”
Cappy Ricks slid out to the edge of his chair, placed one hand on each knee, and appraisingly eyed his son-in-law over the rims of his glasses.
“Say that again, Matt—and say it slow,” he ordered.
“I saidPenelope—P-e-n-e-l-o-p-e. Maybe you call her thePen-elope!”
“Are you buying her as is?” Matt nodded. “To hear you tell it, Matt, one might gather the impression that half a million dollars is about what we give the janitor at Christmas. Boy, half a million dollars is real money.”
“Not in the shipping business these days, Cappy. Why, you have to wave that much under an owner's nose before he'll look up and show interest enough to ask you who you are and who let you in.”
“Well, the man who would, in cold blood, consider paying half a million dollars for thePenelopeis certainly ripe for a padded cell,” Cappy jeered. “That fellow Hudner, of the Black Butte Lumber Company, owns her, does he not?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Then you know exactly the condition she's in. I'll bet a cooky her bottom plates are rusted so thin from lack of an occasional coat of red paint that if you were to stand on her bridge and toss a tack hammer down her main hatch you'd punch a hole in her. She's a long, narrow-gutted, cranky coffin—that's what she is; and the worst-found ship in Pacific waters. Why, let me tell you something, young man: she can't get by the inspectors this minute.”
“She has just gotten by them,” Matt contradicted. “Passed yesterday.”
“What does that signify? When her skipper has her up for inspection he scours the water front like a hungry dog, borrowing a boathook here, a sound life-boat there, some fire buckets elsewhere, a hose from the fire tug, and a lot of engine-room tools wherever he can get them. As for life preservers, he rents them for ten cents each from a marine junk dealer. So, when the inspectors arrive, thePenelopeis a well-found ship; as soon as they pass her the skipper returns the equipment, with thanks. As for paint—why, the only painting she ever gets is when Hudner lays her alongside some British ship to discharge a foreign cargo of lumber into the lime-juicer; then her mate steals all the paint in the Britisher's lazaret. The poor, unfortunate devil! He has to do something to make a showing with thePenelope'sowner! I tell you, Matt, I know this man Hudner! He's as thrifty as an Armenian and as slippery as a skating rink. He's laying to stab you, boy. Mind your step!”
“Even so, Cappy, she's a bargain. I expect to spend fifty thousand dollars putting her in first-class condition after we get her.”
“You expect to spend it! Why, how you talk! Hudner is the one that should spend that money. For the love of trade, what is he selling you? A ship or a hulk?”
“I don't care what she is; we can make her pay for herself and earn half a million or a million extra before this war ends. And she won't be such a bad vessel after she's shipped a couple of new plates. She has a dead weight capacity for six thousand tons and was built at Sunderland in 1902. When she went ashore off Point Sur, in 1909, Hudner bought her from the underwriters for five thousand dollars and spent more than half her original cost repairing her. That, of course, made her tantamount to a ship built in the United States, and under American registry she can run between American ports. And that's what we want. She'll be just the thing to carry lumber to New York, via the Canal, when the war ends and the nitrate harvest is over.”
Cappy Ricks threw up his hands.
“You see before you, my boy,” he said mournfully, “a dollar-burdened, world-weary old man, who for ten years has been trying to retire from active business, and cannot. The reason is he dassent; if he dassed, this shebang would be in the hands of the sheriff within a year. Now, listen, young feller! I know all about thePenelope. Before the war she had repaid Hudner, with interest, every cent she cost him, and since the war I suppose she's made half a million dollars. Now when Hudner finds he has to spend a lot of money fixing her up, he figures it's best to get rid of her and saddle somebody else with the bill. Her intrinsic value is just about one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars, and when Hudner asks half a million for her he expects to get four hundred and fifty thousand. In order to play safe, go back and offer him four hundred thousand dollars; presently he'll come down fifty thousand and you'll come up fifty thousand, and the trade will be closed on that basis. Meantime I'll sit here and weep as I reflect on the cost of putting that ruin in fit shape to receive a Blue Star house flag. I tell you, Matt, I wouldn't send Pancho Villa to sea in her as she is now.”
Matt Peasley, like Cappy Ricks, was a Yankee; when he did business he liked to chaffer; and, after all—he thought—there was a certain shrewd philosophy in what his foxy father-in-law had said. At least Cappy had supplied him with ammunition for argument; so he went back to Hudner's office and argued and pleaded and ridiculed, but all to no avail. He returned to Cappy Ricks' office.
“I fought him all over his office,” he complained, “but he wouldn't come down a cent. I think we'd better take a chance and give him half a million.”
“Fiddlesticks! Stay with him, Matt. I know Hudner. He acts like he's full of bellicose veins, but anybody can outgame him. Let your option expire; then to-morrow meet him accidentally on 'Change and talk with him half an hour about everything on earth except the S. S.Penelope. Just before you leave him he'll grab you by the lapel of your coat and ask if you're still interested in thePenelope. Then you say: 'Why, yes—moderately; but not at half a million.' Then you make him a firm offer—for the last time—of four hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and he'll say: 'I'll split the difference with you'—and before he can crawfish you accept. You're bound to make at least twenty-five thousand by following my advice, Matt.”
Matt Peasley ran his big hand through his thick black locks.
“By jingo,” he declared, “we'd make twenty-five thousand dollars while we're dickering with Hudner!”
“I know, my boy; but then I don't like Hudner, and it's awful to do business with a son of a horsethief you don't like and let him put one over on you. That's the thrill of doing business, Matt. Though I'd hate to have anybody think I'm in business for fun, still, if I thought I couldn't get some fun out of business I'd go right down to Mission Street Wharf and end all.”
“Nitrate freights are up to thirty dollars a ton,” said Matt later that day. “They were twelve a year and a half ago. Cappy, we can't risk the delay; and I'm sorry I took your advice and let my option expire. I insist on buying.” He reached for Cappy's desk 'phone. “I'm going to tell Hudner to prepare the bill of sale—that I'll be up in fifteen minutes with the check. He who hesitates is lost, and—”
The door opened and a youth stood in the entrance.
“Mr. J. O. Heyfuss is calling,” he announced.
“Show him in immediately,” Cappy ordered, glad of the opportunity to delay Matt's telephonic acceptance of the vessel at Hudner's price. “Hold on a minute, Matt,” he continued, turning to his son-in-law. “Heyfuss is a ship broker; maybe he has a ship to sell us; she might prove to be a better buy than thePenelope... Howdy, Heyfuss? Come in and sit down.”
Mr. Heyfuss entered smilingly, saluted both satellites of the Blue Star and sat down.
“Well, gentlemen,” he announced, “wonders will never cease. Every day I'm seeing, hearing and doing wonderful things in the shipping business. Day before yesterday I bought the old barkentineMayfair. She'd been laid up in Rotten Row for seven years, and for at least four years the tide has been rising and falling inside her. She cost me seven hundred and fifty dollars, and I sold her the same afternoon to Al Hanify for a thousand. Not very much of a profit; but then it was Saturday and everybody closes up shop at noon, you know. So I felt the day wasn't a blank, anyhow.
“And what do you suppose Al did? You'll laugh. He called up Crowley her out on Hanlon's Marine Way, putting a new bottom in her. They're going to spend twenty thousand dollars on her; and when she's ready for sea Redell has a cargo of fir for Sydney waiting for her.
“She'll come back with coal and make her owners at least fifty thousand dollars.”
“That's all very interesting to outsiders, but commonplace stuff to us,” Cappy reminded his visitor. “Have you got a commission to sell a ship for somebody?”
“Want one?”
“Surest thing you know!”
“All right. I'll sell you theAlden Besse. She's an old tea clipper, built in the forties; but she's sound and tight. Been a motion picture ship for the past five years. I can deliver her to you for forty thousand dollars.”
“No, you'll not. I sold her to the motion picture people for fifteen hundred,” Cappy countered, “and I don't want her back at any price. I send my boys to sea to earn a safe living, not to visit Davy Jones' locker.”
“Well, I think I might get you the old Australian prison ship,Success. She was built at Rangoon in 1790, of teak, and will last forever. Perhaps you saw her when she was exhibited at the Exposition last year. Might get her for you kind of cheap.”
“Nothing doing. Heyfuss, we want a steamer.”
“Sorry, but I haven't a thing in steamers. Just sold the last one I had ten minutes ago—thePenelope.”
“The what!” Matt Peasley and Cappy cried in chorus.
“ThePenelope. Sold her to a big Eastern powder company. She goes into the nitrate trade, of course. These munition manufacturers must have powder, and to get powder they must have nitrate, and to get nitrate they must have ships, and to get ships they must pay the price. I got Hudner a million dollars for that ruin of aPenelope.”
Matt Peasley gently seized J. O. Heyfuss by the ear and led him to the door.
“Out, thief!” he cried. “You can't sell us anything; so we don't want you hanging round this office. You might steal the safe or a roll-top desk, or something.”
Heyfuss departed, laughing good-naturedly, and Matt Peasley turned to confront Cappy Ricks. The latter had shrunk up in his chair and was looking as chopfallen and guilty as a dog caught sucking eggs. He favored his big son-in-law with a quick, shifty glance, and then looked down at the carpet.
Matt folded his arms and stared at him until he looked up.
“Don't you go to pick on me!” he warned Matt furiously. “I'll not be picked on in my own office, even by a relative.”
Matt threw back his head and chanted,