XXV
THE County Treasurer, who had just come in, looked blank for a moment, then greeted his visitor with effusive cordiality.
“Always glad to see you, Mr. Compton. It does a poor clerk’s heart good just to look at a man who’s such a favourite of fortune. Sit down, sir.”
“I will. I’ve a good deal to say.”
“Staked off the rest of your ranch? It’ll be some little time yet before you get those patents through you’ve applied for already——”
“What do the taxes foot up on the Oro Fino Primo Mine?”
“Ah—What?” The man’s face turned scarlet, then white. He was a young man, clerically able, but otherwise insignificant. “Why——” Then he became voluble.
“The Primo mine, over there near your place? It’s a new claim, isn’t it? Never heard of it before those fellows from New York sank a shaft and struck it rich. Why should there be any taxes before the regular——”
“You know as well as I do that Judge Stratton patented that mine and did the necessary amount of development work, then found it salted and abandoned it. That was twenty-eight years ago. He forgot it, and so, apparently, did this office. It was regarded as an abandoned prospect hole, if anyone thought about it at all. I haven’t discussed the matter with Mr. Blake, but assume that he’s merely been waiting for his bill. Now, for reasons of my own, I’ve telegraphed him to meet me here this morning, but in case he can’t come I’m prepared to pay the amount myself. How much?” and he took out his checque book.
The treasurer looked as if the cane seat of his chair had turned to hot coals. “Really—that is a large order, Mr. Compton. Twenty-eight years. It will take time to go over the records.”
“I’m prepared to wait all day if necessary.”
“But why this haste?”
“I have my reasons. They don’t concern you in the least. Do they?”
“Why—no—but I am very busy——”
“Then put someone else on the job. I assume that the county is not averse to raking in a tidy little sum in a hurry.”
“Really——”
Gregory leaned back in his chair and smiled pleasantly.
“You had a telephone from Mr. John Robinson this morning.”
This time the man started visibly, but he made an effort to control himself. “I have just come in——”
“He telephoned to you last night, did he not? What did he offer you to permit him to pay those taxes today?”
“I will not be insulted, sir.” The man’s voice was almost a scream. He heartily wished he had been in training a few years longer, a graduate of the famous Heinze-Amalgamated orgy of corruption, or of the Clark-Daly epoch, when nearly every man in office had been bribed or hoped to be. “I never heard of Mr. Robinson!”
“Of course he reminded you that as the taxes are long delinquent the county has the right to put the property up at public auction, and that in any case Mrs. Blake would hardly be given the usual year in which to redeem it. But why auction when the money is ready to be paid over at once? How much did he offer you?”
“I repeat——”
“I think I can guess. It was five thousand dollars. I’ll make it ten. Get to work.”
The man, in whom excitement had destroyed his appetite for breakfast, and who had started out in life with the usual negative ideals of honesty, burst into tears. “My God!” he sobbed. “I’ve heard of the third degree. Your eyes bore a hole through one. They hurt, I say. To think that you should come in here and accuse me of taking bribes.”
“Oh, hell, cut it out. Montana may be a great state, but she has her rotten spot like any other. She’s been so debauched the last twenty years by open bribery that I doubt if you could lay your hand on a hundred men in her that haven’t had a roll anywhere from five hundred to twenty thousand dollars passed to them, and pocketed it. Estimable citizens, too, but a man never knows hisweak spot until he has a wad of easy money thrust under his nose—or flung over his transom. You are no worse than the rest. Do you take my offer?”
The County Treasurer recovered himself with amazing alacrity. Ten thousand dollars in a lump never had haunted his wildest dreams.
“All right, sir. It’s a bargain. But I want bills. No checks for me.”
“I congratulate you on your foresight! But there have been times in this state when checque books were not opened for months. You shall have it in bills. Where are the records?”
“In the vault there.”
“I’ll sit here. If you attempt to leave the room to go to a telephone I’ll drag you out on the Court House steps and tell the story to the town. Now get to work.”
“I’ll keep my word, sir, and I know you’ll keep yours.” He went into the vault and appeared later trundling out a pile of records, then sat down at a table and concentrated his mind as earnestly as if corruption had never blighted it. Gregory watched him until Mark entered. Then the two men went out into the corridor, standing where they could see the table. Gregory recounted his interview with Mr. John Robinson, and the present sequel.
Mark listened with his mouth open, an expression of profound chagrin loosening the muscles of his cheerful healthy shrewd face.
“By George!” he cried. “And to think that was the one thing I never thought of. Of course I knew about the delinquent taxes, and intended to pay them when I was good and ready; but what’s the use of forking over till you have to? But not to have thought of this! And I pride myself upon sleeping with one eye open—never was caught napping yet!” And for five minutes he exploited his vocabulary of profanity, heaping each epithet upon his own humiliated head.
Gregory laughed. “Merely another proof that two heads are better than one. Do you stand for the ten thousand? If not I’ll pay half.”
“I’d pay fifty——”
“I’ll pay half,” said Gregory definitely. “It means as much to me as to you.”
“All right. Jimminy, but they’re clever!” He wascalmer and his astute legal brain was moved to admiration. “But you are cleverer. I’ve always sworn by you. They’ll get a jolt all right. How did you catch on, anyhow?”
“I fancy I got a wireless. The other man was thinking hard and so was I—had practically nothing else in our minds. Those things will be better explained some day. Perhaps it was merely a good guess.”
“You hit the nail on the head all right. I’ll have a letter to write to Ora next Sunday! She’s had a narrow squeak, and she shall know whom to thank for it.”
“Oh, cut that out.”
Gregory went to the bank and drew the ten thousand dollars, while Mark kept watch. When the bill was finally made out, Mark examined it critically, and then gave his personal checque. Three months later the County Treasurer resigned his office on the ground of ill health and bought an orange grove in Southern California. There he and his growing family enjoy a respected, prosperous, bucolic life.