MY face was set to the West, to be sure, but my thoughts were traveling back over my shoulder to the East. I wish I could say that a lively sense of injury enabled me to put out of my mind Levant and everybody in Levant—box and dice! But I’m not much of a liar.
I do not propose to dwell on the bitterness which stuck in me day after day, along with softer sentiments. This narrative goes into a gallop at about this point and there is no time to be wasted on self-communings. However, if I do not mention my old home and the folks back there it must not be understood that the problem of my life ceased to go to bed with me, rise with me, and keep pace with me as I hurried through the day’s work. I obeyed Jodrey Vose’s counsel about giving bulletins of my progress west. After I had bought my railroad ticket and had counted up, I felt that I could not afford to take any chances on those strangers losing their interest in me. I needed a job almighty sudden after I landed in San Francisco.
On the last leg of the journey I was able to forecast the hour of my arrival and I suggested by wire that somebody meet me—knowing that my diver’s kit in its duck bag would be identification enough. This telegraph business was shooting arrows into the air and I would have welcomed a return message; I thought they ought to be able to guess closely enough to intercept me somewhere along the line. But, although no answer came, I had the comfortable feeling that they’d be likely to be on the lookout for me. And at last I got my first peek at Pacific waters.
Our train was hung up outside the yard over in Oakland while they opened our track to the ferry, and a chap I had chatted with more or less in the smoking-room on the trip, and who knew my business, rushed out, climbed down beside the roadbed, and scooped a tumblerful of water. He ran back into the car and dumped the water over me for a joke, and I’m so accustomed to water that the joke did not jar me. I took it as it was meant.
“I baptize thee in the name of the Pacific,” he said. “Now I hope the old dame will be good to you in your line.”
Well, whether she was or not depends on how one looks at those things.
I walked slowly through the ferry-house, hoping to be hailed, and stepped out on to the foot of Market Street into the old San Francisco of the days before the great calamity. In my right hand I tugged along the duck bag that was bulging with my diving equipment. In my left hand I had the rest of my earthly possessions in a grip which was about the size of a ten-cent loaf of bread. It was early evening, and all the lights were aglare.
There was a turn-table for the cable cars at the foot of Market Street. The cars were coming down in constant procession, and the turn-table was busy. It was a regular merry-go-round kind of an affair. It interested me, but it didn’t interest me so much that I had no eye for a girl who stood beside me at the edge of the thing. It seemed to me right then—fresh from a tedious train ride, where I’d been penned in with a frumpy set of women passengers—that I had never seen a prettier girl. She had her finger pointed at some one on the turn-table, and was saying “Father!” over and over, with a new inflection on the word every time she spoke it. Her finger traveled as the table revolved, and I was able to pick out father fight away. I was right-down sorry for that girl when I laid eyes on father. Father was grinning like a sculpin in deep water, and he was good and drunk, and he was evidently taking a joy ride on that turn-table.
It struck me right then, as a stranger, that San Francisco had a good trait pretty well developed; it was willing to let a man mind his own business as long as he didn’t make too much of a nuisance of himself. The street-car men did not push father off the turn-table, and two policemen took a look at him and went off about their business.
I took a good look at the man, too, when the turntable brought him near me and stopped to let a car on. He had a face about as square as the front of a safe, and his nose was the shape of a safety-lock knob, and was red. His pot-bellied body was set on legs like crooked wharf pilings. I had father sized up in a second. Double-breasted blue coat, cap of blue, with the peak pulled rakishly down over one eye, gray beard which radiated in spills from his chin like tiller spokes—he was a steamboat man, sure! I don’t know what in the devil possessed me to butt in and make certain—perhaps I wanted to start something so as to get a rise out of the girl. I’m not naturally fresh and you may be sure I was in no mood for a flirtation. I was crusted with Yankee reserve even when I was young. But that impish air of San Francisco was in my nostrils—did you ever sniff it? It makes your head buzz and your thoughts froth, and it takes hold of an Easterner as quickly as a stiff cocktail grabs a man who isn’t used to a mixed drink. You’ll do almost anything in San Francisco when the sparkle from that trade-wind gets into your lungs.
So I tipped father the wink.
“Give her the jingle when she starts again,” I said.
I was right in my guess. He crooked his forefinger, reached down, and yanked empty air.
“Clang!” he barked. In a few seconds the turntable began to revolve again. Father gave me as silly a grin as I ever saw on a grown-up man’s face. “Yingleyingle—yingle!” he yelled in falsetto. And away he went!
I never got a more awful look from a pretty girl than I got from that one when I turned and caught her eyes. There was nothing shrinking or bashful about her when she was mad, so I found out then and there.
“You fool! You have started him all over again.”
“He seemed to be well started before I came along, miss.” It was that confounded air that was making me reckless and saucy.
“Clang!” yelped father, coming around again. “Yingle—yingle—yingle! Pull in them port fenders and mouse that anchor; we’re going outside this trip.”
“Just see the fool notion you have gone and put into him when he was all ready to come along with me!” she blazed. She knocked her little knuckles together in as fine a state of temper as I ever viewed spouting in a female. She turned suddenly and drove one of her fists against a man whom I had not noticed till then. He was tall—as long as the moral law, as we say East—as thin as a pump-handle, and he had a tangle of gray whisker and beard on top of him that made him look like a window-mop. He fell down when she hit him. She kicked him with the point of a little shoe, and he came up, unfolding in sections like a carpenter’s two-foot rule.
“Slap this man’s face, Ike, and send him along about his business,” she commanded.
But he only teetered and grinned and drooled, and winked at me over her shoulder.
“Oh, you are only another drunken fool!” she raged; and she stretched on tiptoe, and beat his face with the flat of her hand. “You have stood here without putting up a finger to help me get him off that turn-table, where he’s disgracing himself. I wonder whether there are any real men left in San Francisco!” She was in such a state of mind that I was mighty ashamed by then, I tell you that!
I dropped my baggage and took off my hat.
“I don’t know much about San Francisco and the real men, miss,” I told her, “for I’ve been in town only about five minutes. I reckon it makes an Easterner dizzy to be rushed in and dropped here. I didn’t mean to make trouble for you. Seeing that I’ve made it, I’ll unmake it if I can. Do you want your father—saying it is your father—brought off that turn-table?”
“No!” she snapped, still spiteful and all worked up. “I want you to think up something else for him to do on there as soon as he gets tired of doing what you suggested.”
Well, it was up to me to butt into that affair still farther—I could see that. I couldn’t sneak off and leave that girl feeling that way about me. I hopped on to the moving turn-table, took father by the arm, and told him his daughter wanted him to come along. He braced himself and shook loose.
“Nossir,” said he. “I’ve paid my money, and I’ll stay aboard till I get to where I’m bound.”
“Look here, you are not getting anywhere, man. You are only riding around and around, making a show of yourself, and there’s your nice daughter waiting for you.”
“It’s no place for a daughter—going where I’m going. Daughter ought to be in bed.” And then he braced himself back still farther, and—well, I suppose I’ll have to call it “singing” in order to describe the sound:=
````"I’m bound for the foot of Telegraph Hill,
`````To the Barbary Coast so gay.
````I’m starting there for a peach of a tear—fill
`````’Em up all round—hooray!”=
I took hold of his arm once more, and it was some arm.
“Look here,” he snarled, squinting at me, “I don’t know who you are, but I’ll let you know who I am blamed quick.”
I don’t know just what he might have done to me if he had been sober—but he wasn’t sober. I was, and my line of work had made me lithe and quick. I snapped my man before he had time to open his mouth, and ran him off that turn-table and presented him to his daughter with my compliments. He kicked and thrashed around in a logy style, and I kept him circling so that he could not get foothold, on the same principle that you keep a boa-constrictor from hooking his tail around a tree.
“Where will you have him delivered, miss?” I asked, as politely as I could.
“Father, you come along with me this instant!” she cried. “We don’t want strangers interfering in our affairs any longer.” She said that to him for my benefit.
“I don’t mean to be interfering, miss,” I pleaded. “I only want to square myself for being thoughtless and starting trouble for you—more trouble, I mean.”
She put her hand against me and pushed me away from her father—no, I can hardly say that I was pushed away. That hand was too little to push a man of my size. But the gesture of pushing was enough for me. I let him loose. She reached for his ear, but he dodged away, cantering like a cart-horse, and whooped that he was bound for the “Barbary Coast.” The human belay-ing-pin with the oakum topknot followed, plainly relishing the fact that the procession had started. The girl took a few steps in pursuit, and then she stopped and began to cry. She had grit—I had seen that—but after a girl gets about so mad she has to cry on general principles.
“Look here,” I told her, “I’m a stranger, all right, but you need a man’s help right now. I’ll help for every ounce that’s in me if you’ll say the word. But I’m a Yankee and I need to be asked.”
“He has a lot of money in his pockets,” she sobbed. “He must pay out that money to-morrow morning. He will be butchered and robbed where he’s going. I never saw him so silly and obstinate before. His head has been turned by some good luck which has come to him. He—”
“I haven’t got time to listen to details, miss. He’s getting out of sight. I’ve got to work quick. I’m square and decent and honest, and I’m mighty sorry for the scrape you are in. Do you want me to chase that father of yours for you?”
“Yes,” she gasped; “yes, I do.”
“About all I’m worth in the world is in that bag there. It’s my diving-dress. I’ve got to leave it.”
“Your name is Sidney!” she cried, her eyes opening wide on me. “You’re the man we came to meet!”
So, after all, I had butted in on my reception committee! “And that’s Captain Holstrom?” I demanded, pointing up the street.
“Yes! Yes! Hurry, sir. I will watch your bag! I will stay here. Hurry, sir! He has gone up Market Street, but he’ll turn to the right pretty soon. That’s the way to the horrible Barbary Coast.”
I patted her shoulder—I couldn’t help it. She looked up at me through her tears. And off I hiked, leaving my earthly possessions in charge of a girl whom I had met for the first time less than ten minutes before.
Of course, I knew what every one knows, whether he has been in San Francisco or not, that Market Street cuts straight across the city from bay to ocean. But at just what street on the course Captain Rask Holstrom proceeded to port his helm and swing to starboard blessed if I had the least idea. I didn’t know the name of another street in the city. I knew what the Barbary Coast was in San Francisco. I had read descriptions of its dance-halls, its dens, its haunts of iniquity, and its dangers. And here I was, galloping straight toward it before the creases of a railroad journey across the continent were out of my clothes. That is to say, I hoped I was galloping toward it, for I wanted to catch father for that nice girl. Captain Holstrom was out of sight among the crowds on that long Market Street before I had started the chase. I didn’t dare to run too fast.
San Francisco, as I have said, seemed to be inclined to let a man tend to his own business, but I didn’t want to provoke some ass to start a “stop thief” yell behind me. I craned and peered ahead as I trotted on. I stopped for a moment at the head of streets which led away to the right—the girl had said he would turn to the right—but I caught no glimpse of a bobbing blue cap nor of a lofty thatch of grizzled beard and whisker.
I took a chance after a while, for Market Street showed ahead an upward slope and I couldn’t spot my man there. I turned off to the right, and hurried. I didn’t know what street I was on. I came to a square at last where there were a statue and a fountain, and there were large buildings on the right. I ran across the square, and the next moment I realized that I was in Chinatown—and I had read of that part of San Francisco, too. I knew then that I was headed toward the Barbary Coast all right, having a memory of what I had read. But in a few minutes I was lost in a maze of narrow streets which traveled up and down the little hills. I was peering and goggling here and there. I must have looked like a tourist trying to do Chinatown in record time. I came into a street or alley that was roofed—and I came out again, for it seemed to be closed in at the upper end. By that time I realized that not only had I lost Capt. Rask Holstrom, but that I had also succeeded in losing myself—a rather silly predicament for a young man who so boldly offered himself as knight errant to a damsel in distress.
I stood still and wiped sweat out of my eyes, and addressed a few pregnant remarks to myself on the subject of a man’s making a fool of himself for a woman. However, I had a mighty good reason of my own for wanting to meet up with Captain Holstrom—and to safeguard that money of his, for I hoped to rake some of it down in wages.
AWHITE-LIVERED, sneaky-looking chap sidled up to me and stuck out a dirty card.
“That’s my name on there,” said he; “Jake Beason, and I’m the best Chinatown guide that’s on the beat; I’ll show you everything from joss-house to hop-holes.”
“Do you know the Barbary Coast?”
“Do I know—Oh, come now! Why, say, I live over that way,” he snarled through the corner of his mouth; and he looked at me as though I had insulted his intelligence.
I decided that I would be plain and direct with that chap.
“I’m on the trail of a steamboat captain by the name of Holstrom, and he is two-thirds pickled, and has money on him. Do you think you know the places where a man like that would be likely to drop in?”
“What’s the lay—a touch and a divvy?”
“Nothing of the kind. I’m his friend, and I want to catch him and take him home out of trouble.”
“The same old stall,” he sneered. “You’ve got to let me be a friend, too.”
I reached out and got my crowbar clutch on that fellow. “I don’t suppose you ever had a man tell you the truth, son,” I said, “so I’m not going to blame you much. I say that I’m after this man to take him home to his daughter. That’s truth, and it’s on my say-so. If you propose to call me a liar, out with it, and we’ll settle the thing.”
“She stands as you say—and you needn’t pinch so,” he whined.
There’s nothing like a good grip to press home conviction in a sneak.
“I’ll give you ten dollars if you’ll locate that man for me before the evening is over,” I told him. “I’ll make it twenty dollars if you’ll turn the trick inside of an hour.”
“I know all the joints—I know the steamboat hangouts.”
“It ought to be an easy trick. He is with an old belay-ing-pin who has enough hair on his head and face to stuff a bolster—and I heard somebody call him Ike.”
“Aw, that’s ‘Ingot Ike.’ Everybody between Dupont Street and Telegraph Hill knows that old hornbeam and his everlasting hum about three million dollars’ worth of buried gold ingots. Come along! I ought to pull down that twenty easy.”
“Let me tell you one thing,” I said, chasing along with him. “I’m not worth robbing. I’m going to keep close to you, and if you put me against any frame-up I’ll get you first, and I’ll get you quick.” And I grabbed him by the wrist and let him have that honest old grip once more. I kept hold of him. And led thus like a blind man through this street and that, by short cuts along dark alleys, across courts, and now and then skirting vacant lots, we came at last into purlieus that my ears, eyes, and nose told me must be that “Barbary Coast so gay,” as Captain Holstrom had caroled.
Out of open doors came liquor fumes and music blended, if there is any such thing as blending noise and odors; the two seemed to be associated there so regularly and invariably that my senses told me that they were blended.
The women sauntered on the sidewalks; the men loafed there. We two seemed to be about the only ones who were headed for something definite.
“We’ll tap the regular joints first,” said Beason. “If he’s pretty drunk he won’t be using his mind much to think up new places to go. He’ll fall into the rut like a ball in a crooked pin-game.”
I was young enough to be interested in that panorama of iniquity. I would have gaped longer than I did in those places, but Mr. Beason proved to be a very active guide. That matter of twenty dollars proved to be like a bur under a bronco’s saddle. He would gallop into a place, leave me to goggle at the antics on the dance floor; he would weasel his way through the crowd, chop out a few staccato questions, and then yank me out with my eyes behind me and my chin hanging over my shoulder like the tailboard of a cart.
Beason rattled me down another length of street—and if the folks we bumped hadn’t known him I reckon we would have had a few things on our hands besides that man hunt. They all seemed to know Beason. He snapped questions right and left.
All at once my guide got a clue. He barked a few more questions at this illuminative party, and turned and scooted back along our trail.
“The old cuss has taken to a back room,” he gasped. “I ought to have figured that he would be hiding.”
He rushed me around comers, across streets, down alleys, and into more streets. We came up against a saloon at last where the front window was lettered in red paint, “Holding Ground Cove.” Knowing, as a deep-sea diver, that a good holding ground means a mud bottom, I could have thought up a highly moral and somewhat humorous apothegm on that name for a saloon if I had had the time; but Mr. Beason was cutting comers on Time that night. He rushed me into the saloon, into a back room at the rear, and when he didn’t see what we were looking for up-stairs we went. There were cribs of private rooms, furnished with bare tables and hard chairs—drinking-rooms. From the half-open door of one came the cackle of much laughter, and we peeped in.
A girl, whose face was painted in almost as gaudy hues as her red stockings, was standing on a table in the middle of the little room.
Capt. Rask Holstrom was seated in a chair, straddling the back, and was busily engaged in tickling the girl’s nose with the tip of a very long peacock feather—and wherever he secured that feather I never found out. But always leave it to a hilarious drunken man to find something odd to carry around with him. In the room was the human belaying-pin, also seated. But his chair had evidently slipped from under him when he tried to lean against the wall, and he was jack-knifed down in a corner, with his broomstick legs waving in the air, and was surveying the scene between that frame. He was squealing laughter in a key that would have put a guinea-hen out of business.
“There’s Ingot Ike,” affirmed Beason, “and if t’other one is your pertickler friend then I’ll cash in.”
He held up his cheap watch, with his dirty forefinger indicating the hour.
“I get the twenty with nine minutes’ ‘velvet,’ if that’s your friend.”
But Captain Holstrom did not display any very ardent friendship for any one just then. He turned an especially malevolent stare in my direction and poised his peacock feather like lance in rest. I could see that something was going to break loose there mighty soon, and after what I had told Beason I didn’t want that young sneak to overhear. It would be like him to come back with a gang and “do” me on the excuse that I was a stranger who was “frsking” Captain Holstrom for his pocketful.
I hauled out two ten-dollar bills mighty quick, and passed them to Beason. He held one in each hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger, and looked at them in turn, wrinkling his nose with as much disgust as though he were holding lizards by the tails.
“Soft money,” said he, “and the stink of the East still on it! I’ll bet you both of these poultices that you haven’t been in San Francisco twenty-four hours—and how do you happen to be such a pertickler friend of a China Basin steamboat cap’n, hey?”
A freshly arrived Easterner is always given away by his paper money.
“Who’s a friend?” inquired Captain Holstrom, the one eye I could see as staring and as baleful as the “eye” on the peacock feather.
“Look-a-here,” said I, bracing up to him savagely, for I knew that soft soap wouldn’t grease the ways, “I want to know what you mean by running away from me after my telegrams to you.”
I whirled on Beason, pushed him out of the room, and slammed the door in his face.
“You have been paid,” I yelled at him through the crack. “Now, keep your nose out of the rest of the thing, or I’ll pinch it off.”
“See here,” growled Captain Holstrom, vibrating the feather as menacingly as though it were a sled stake, “don’t you know a private party when you see one?”
I walked right up to him.
“My name is Sidney. I’m the diver you are expecting.”
“You’re a liar,” he returned, promptly.
“I tell you you were down to the ferry to meet me. I pulled you off that turn-table!”
“Who are you?”
“I am Ross Sidney, I say! You’re expecting me. I’m a diver.”
But he did not show the least evidence of understanding what I was talking about. It’s a familiar phase of drunkenness in many men—that dogged determination to hang on to one notion and admit no others.
He shook his head and waggled the feather under the girl’s nose.
“This is a private party,” he growled.
“But your daughter is waiting for you—she is very much worried about you and the money.”
“Say, who does this money and this daughter and this room here belong to, anyway? Who do I belong to? Who am I? Ain’t I Rask Holstrom, fifty-six years old, and fully able to take care of myself anywhere between Point Lobo and India Basin?” He squinted at me along the peacock’s plume. “Who areyou?You say my girl is at the ferry, hey? How do you know she is there?” He leaned back in his chair, dropped the feather, and yanked a canvas bag from the right-hand pocket of his trousers. It was a plump bag, and a heavy bag, and it plainly contained hard money. He banged it down on the table with such a thump that the girl hopped and squealed, and it barely missed her toes. He pulled another canvas bag from the left-hand pocket, and crashed that down. This time he connected with the girl’s toes. She screamed in pain, leaped down from the table, and began to hop around the room, kicking her foot out behind her. She stumbled into a corner, braced herself there, and began to swear volubly, clutching the tip of her faded red-velvet slipper in both hands.
I had not broken in on his monologue. I could not match him in roaring. Then for the first time he seemed to note that the girl was not in an amiable state of mind.
“You’ve insulted my lady friend. I’ll have your life for that!” He plunged out of his chair and drove against the wall in his unsteadiness.
The girl was profanely advising me—no, entreating me—to kill the “drunken fool.” I didn’t blame her for her fire, and I could excuse her language. To shift from a tickling under the chin to a mally-hackling of toes was a little too strong for a woman’s nature even if the toes had been cracked with money.
That was no time for fine figuring as to ways, means, or chances. Before Captain Holstrom recovered his balance I grabbed his sacks and stuffed them into my pockets. I started for the door. I had a sort of muddled memory of a maxim, or proverb, or something of the kind which says that “where a man’s treasure is there will his heart be also.” It occurred to me that Captain Holstrom’s body would go with his heart if I made off with that money, and I preferred to have the body chase me on two legs rather than be lugged on my shoulders. If he would chase me back to the ferry the situation would be simplified. Of course, mine was a crazy expedient, considering the place where I was, but it was a crazy evening, anyway.
“I’m not stealing it,” I yelled at him as I opened the door. “I’m going to give it to your girl, and if you run hard enough you’ll see me give it to her.”
I had plenty of help in opening that door. There were men outside who helped me so promptly and unanimously that it was evident they had been lying in wait.
Two of them grabbed me by the neck as they would have clutched a bat stick in choosing sides in a game of three old cat. They rammed me back into the room. There were three other men who came in, and one of them was that rat of a Beason.
They were all talking at one another, and Beason was spitting words the fastest. But Captain Holstrom drowned out all other sounds by a bellow of delight. He knew these men, all right. He seemed especially tickled to behold the two men who held me. He slapped them on their backs, cuffed their faces with drunken affection, and adjured them to hold me tighter.
“He took my money! He stole it! He insulted a lady friend of mine. He’s been chasing me and picking a row with me for three days,” he lied, or else the rum he had been drinking had elongated his notions of time.
“You see, I get your twenty, Mr. Keedy,” insisted Beason. “I told you straight. I called the turn on this fly guy. He’s what I told you he was. You just heard what the captain said.”
I was mighty busy just then with the two men who were holding me, and Captain Holstrom was giving me some slaps which were drunkenly heavy, but not affectionate. However, I heard what Beason said, and I saw the man whom he called Keedy pass over a twenty-dollar gold piece. Beason grinned at me and scuttled out of the room. The Keedy person pushed the scolding girl out after him and slammed the door.
I did not like the looks of the Keedy person—no, not at all. I may have instinct in such matters; I don’t know. A diver is obliged to do most of his work in pitch darkness and by the sense of touch, and such work may develop instinct in general. I won’t stop to discuss the question.
But that yellow face with a black mustache smacked across it like a smear of paint, and arrows of eyebrows shooting up northeast and northwest from a regular gouge of a wrinkle between the man’s eyes wasn’t the kind of physog worn by the deacon who takes up the collection in a Sunday-school. He stood with back against the door.
“Go through him, gents,” he directed. “And hand me the gun when you come to it.”
There wasn’t any gun, but they got the two sacks of gold, and my little stock of paper money as well. Then they gave me a shove into a corner, and all of them stood off and looked at me. The excitement had brought old Ingot Ike on to his feet and he joined the ring of spectators.
“You are in bad,” stated Mr. Keedy.
Silence gives consent; so I kept still.
“Who is backing you in this job? Where’s the rest of your gang? You’re in here without a gun. Now, where’s the main party?”
“The main party,” said I, mad enough now to do a little talking, “is down at the ferry, foot of Market Street. She is that old fool’s daughter, and she was crying when I left her. I’m just in from the East, and when I came out on to the street from the ferry this evening, setting foot in San Francisco for the first time—”
“You’re a liar!” yelped Captain Holstrom. “You’ve been on my trail for seven days, and you have just knocked me down when I was entertaining a lady friend and wasn’t looking. You robbed me. The money was found on you. But Rask Holstrom has got friends who won’t see him done. Here they are. And into the dock you go, blast ye!”
“You’re in bad,” reiterated the Keedy person, narrowing the crease between his eyes.
“If you’re a friend of Captain Holstrom, see if you can’t pound it into his head that I’m the diver he is expecting.”
“You’re the what? Is your name Sidney?”
“That is my name.”
“Rask,” snapped Keedy at last, “were you down at the ferry turn-table as this man says? You’ve been pretty drunk. This thing here is taking a new tack. I’d like to believe this chap here if I can.”
“Might have been there,” owned up the captain.
“Wasthere,” stated that old fool of an Ike, who had been standing by without a word in my behalf. Now he was ready and willing to leap with the popular side. “I was there with him.”
“Was your daughter there with you? Did you leave her there?”
Captain Holstrom looked a little ashamed, and hesitated.
“She was there,” stated Ike. “She was following us and trying to get my noble cap’n to go along with her, but it wasn’t right to bother my noble cap’n when he was happy over a lucky trade.”
“The two of you must have been good and fine,” growled Mr. Keedy. “Look here, Cap, I believe this gent is telling a lot of the truth about you. No matter now about his high jinks with the coin. I want to believe what he says. As your partner, Captain Holstrom, my advice to you is to hustle out, get a cab, and get to that ferry station in quick time. If that diving-suit is there bring it back here.”
The captain rolled out of the room, growling, but subdued.
Mr. Keedy gave me what was for him an affable smile, a hitching up nearer to his nose of that paint-streak mustache.
“We may as well start in an acquaintance,” he said. He passed my pocket-book back. “My name is Marcena Keedy, partner of Cap’n Holstrom. Step up here, gents,” he commanded the two men who had squatted my windpipe. “This is Number-one Jones; this is Number-two Jones.” They ducked salute. They had paint-brush chin beards and cock eyes, and were evidently twins. “First and second mates, new hired for theZizania.” He did not bother to introduce Ingot Ike.
He pushed a button on the wall.
“We’ll take something to gum the edges of sociability, gents. There’s nothing like gents starting in sociable when they can, and staying sociable as long as they can, providing any gent proves himself all right, as he says he is.”
He gave me a significant and mighty sharp look, sat down, and jigged one leg over the other, trying hard to keep up his affable smile.
We kept on being sociable for half an hour or more.
At last back came Capt. Rask Holstrom. He was tugging my duffle-bag, and on his heels was his daughter. She had my little valise. She did not show any especial symptoms of embarrassment at being in such a joint alone with men. She walked straight to me and gave me the valise. What was better, she gave me a smile.
“I misunderstood you, sir, on short acquaintance,” she said. “I hope you will excuse me.”
She looked me straight in the eyes without coquetry, a gaze as level and candid as that of man to man.
I gulped some reply—I don’t know what. I wasn’t half as cool as she was.
Keedy right now put that yellow face between us. The affable smile wasn’t there. I got a quick and sharp impression that he didn’t relish the way the girl and I were getting chummy. She was putting out her hand to me, for I had made a motion as though to shake on our general understanding. He took her hand and whirled her around and pointed to a chair.
“You’d better sit down, Kama dear. We’re going to talk a little business, and you can listen, for you are too much father’s girl to be kept out of any deal of ours.”
She pulled her hand out of his, but she went and sat down without shaking my hand.
“Father’s girl sees more clearly every day that he needs a guardian,” she said, with a rather hard laugh. “Thank you, Mr. Keedy, but I do not need your invitation to stay.”
Captain Holstrom looked very sheepish. It was plain that he had been listening to some plain and frank opinions on his way back from the ferry station.
He tried to act unconcerned, and spying the drink I had not touched, started to lift it to his lips. His daughter snatched it away and sprayed the liquor on the wall. He sat down, coughing behind his hand. I had seen men like Capt. Rask Holstrom before—a bully and a braggart among men, but half a fool where women were concerned—pliable in the hands of the loose female, and mortally afraid of his own womenkind.
The men in the room were silent for some time. Keedy was looking at Holstrom; then his eyes fell on my canvas sack at Holstrom’s feet. He spoke to me in almost the same fawning tone he had used with the girl. It was that almost indescribable air—that cheap assumption of gentility that a professional gambler uses when he is prosecuting his business, and it rather jars on an honest man.
“I’m sure it would be almighty interesting to me and to these other gents and the lady to see an Eastern divingsuit. I reckon you’re pretty much up to date back there.” Liar and knave himself, he wasn’t exactly sure I had been telling the truth. He wanted to see the goods. But I did not mind much. I knelt on the floor, and opened the sack and dug out the equipment. This yam of mine goes back before the days of the compressed-air chamber which the modern diver carries on his back just as an automobile carries fuel. But I had a mighty good suit, almost a new one. There wasn’t a dent in the helmet or a patch oh the rubber or canvas.
“We have had a long talk, this gent and I,” said Keedy, after he had squatted like a frog and had peered at all I had to show him. “I’m naturally a man to get to cases quick. I’m open and free with them I take a liking to.” He went to the door and peeked into the corridor. “Number-two Jones, you stand here and keep an eye and ear out,” he directed. “Now, Brother Sidney, you Eastern chaps are apt to be pretty cold-blooded, and you need first-hand evidence. I’m going to open up to you one of the biggest prospects you ever heard of—reckoning that, as a human being, you simply can’t resist coming into it. If you don’t see fit to come in after it has been opened up to you—well—” He scowled at me like a demon, snapped his fingers above his head, and turned on old Ike.
“Get up and take the floor,” he directed.
“First-hand evidence is what counts,” went on Mr. Keedy. “Now, here’s a man who has told his story over a lot of times on the water-front. He has told it so many times it has grown to be a joke. They’ve given him the nickname of ‘Ingot Ike.’ Lots of big things in this world have been buried under a joke.”
He leaned back in his chair and twisted up the ends of his mustache.
“Court is open for first-hand evidence, gents. Ike is the first witness. I’m going to ask him questions and make him answer snappy, for if he ever gets to rambling on this story of his he’ll make it longer than a dime novel. Look-a-here, Ike, what was the steamerGolden Gate?”
“Passengers, bullion in ingots, and general cargo ’tween here and Panama.”
It was rather comical to see that old bean-pole straighten up and try to imitate the snappy style of Mr. Keedy.
“What was your job aboard of her?”
“Quartermaster.”
“What happened to her?”
“Caught fire off coast of Mexico when she was bound for Panama, beached well north of Acapulco, rolled over and over in surf, what was left of her, and bones still there. Three ribs show at low tide if you know where to look for ’em.”
“What was she carrying for treasure?”
“Over three million dollars’ worth of gold in ingots in her strong-room abaft second bulkhead, between pantry and boiler-room.”
“Was the treasure ever recovered?”
“Wreck was abandoned to underwriters, and after underwriters had worked for a long time, keeping very mysterious, they reported that they had got the ingots all out of her. Then they came away. Everybody believed that the underwriters had cleaned out the wreck, just as they reported they had. But I was in that wrecking crew. I kept my eye out. It was a bluff about getting that treasure.” The old man began to show excitement. “Their divers couldn’t get at it. They didn’t have nerve, and they didn’t have the right outfits in those days. The underwriters didn’t want it shown that they hadn’t pulled up the stuff. They knew that every Tom, Dick, and Harry would go down there, peeking and poking around that wreck, and that some fellow might think up a way to call the turn.
“So they bribed the divers, and the divers brought up fake boxes of gold, and the report was made that all the treasure had been taken from theGolden Gatewreck. But it’s all there, gents. The underwriters haven’t been able yet to think of a sensible way of getting at it. They don’t want to make another splurge and attract attention till they’re sure of what they’re doing. Them’s facts what I’m telling. I know. I haven’t done much of anything but keep tabs. I don’t care if they do call me Ingot Ike. I know what I’m talking about. The trouble down there has been that the old Pacific has rolled on and rolled in and piled up sand over that treasure, and they didn’t know how to handle the proposition in those days.”
“The idea is, Brother Sidney,” broke in Keedy, “firsthand evidence informs us that three or four millions are cached in a place we know of. Now, because man has failed once, years ago, when man wasn’t as bright as he is now, is that any sign that man shall give up? Captain Holstrom and I say, ‘No.’ We’re partners. We have been talking over this proposition for a long time. Now, up to date, are you in any way interested?”
I was, and I said so.
“There they lie,” said Keedy, “bars of yellow gold. Boxes and boxes of shiny gold. More than three million dollars’ worth of finest gold—and only a little water and sand over ’em. No bars to break through, no vaults to drill. Only sand and water—and we ought to be able to match that sand with grit, and the water with good red blood.”
There are some men who can talk about money, and it will not start a thrill in you.
Marcena Keedy could talk about gold in a way to make your soul hungry. He rolled the sound in his mouth—a big, round, juicy sound—as a boy sucks a candy marble. It made the moisture ooze in my own mouth to hear him talk.
Mr. Keedy gave over leaning back in his chair. He sat on the edge of it, and leaned forward.
“It’s right at this point that we go into this thing clear to the necks, my friend. I have studied men a lot in my life. I can see about what kind of a fellow you are. If another fellow opens up to you in honest fashion you arewithhim—and if you can’t stay with him you are not going off and squeal and hurt him. There’s nothing half-way between Holstrom, here, and myself. We’re partners. We’re in together, whole hog. I’ll spread the cards for you just as they are spread for the captain and myself. He and I have been having a run of good luck to date in our partnership. We’ll have some more firsthand evidence. Rask, how was it you got the inside clinch in theZizaniamatter?”
“For the benefit of a man from the East, where they ain’t as shrewd as the Yankees think they be,” stated Captain Holstrom in his husky voice, “I will say that we’ve got a devilish good close combine on the waterfront—we fellows have been on the job for a long time. When the Government auctions off anything we get together and fix the top price at which any bid shall go, and then we cut the cards to settle who shall pick the plum at that price. It means that the lucky man will pick a bargain, don’t forget that. Price can’t be budged above that bid—and it’s a blamed measly price.” He smacked his lips. “So that is how I have got hold of the old __Zizania__, Government lighthouse-tender and buoy steamer, side-wheeler, one hundred and seventy feet long, new derricks, boilers in fair shape, and engine fresh overhauled. I’ve cut the cards for eleven years, and this has been my first look-in. But it’s worth waiting for. I could junk her and make four times what I pay for her.”
“Whatwepay for her,” corrected Mr. Keedy. “Remember that I’m your partner. Now I’ll take the stand myself. Holstrom here sold his tugboat the minute he struck luck on theZizania. He pulled what money he had in the bank. He lacked half the price, at that. He was going to borrow on a bill of sale. ‘No,’ says I to him. ‘Bring along your cash to the place where I’m dealing faro. I’ll go in partner with you and double your pot.’ Holstrom knew that when I talked that way with him I was square. Some men would have double-crossed him and pulled the pickings for the bank. I ain’t that kind,” declared Mr. Keedy, pulling himself up virtuously and giving the girl a side-glance. “I know who my friends are, and who I’d like to help. And I can deal faro! Don’t worry about that! Captain Holstrom walked out with his pot doubled. The money goes down on theZizaniato-morrow morning, making up the balance after the forfeit money was paid. That’s the way Holstrom and I do business after we have come to an agreement.” He gave the girl a look which he intended to be melting. “I said I’d do it, and I did it.”
“I’m ashamed of my father,” she said, crisply.
“I don’t much blame you, Kama,” stammered Captain Holstrom, missing the point of her rebuke. “For me to go and do what I done after scooping in that money was a fool performance, and I ask the pardon of all concerned. But I reckon my head was turned by having all that good luck come in a bunch. I just went into the air, that’s what I done. But I’m back on earth to stay now.”
“Let us hope so, partner,” chided Kir. Keedy. “That crazy Beason and our new friend here made such a racket chasing you through the Coast that I heard of it, and started out on the chase myself. It has turned out lucky, but that’s no credit to you.”
The girl stood up. “I have listened, and now I understand. If you want to keep my respect, father, you’ll hand back the part of that money which is stolen, and borrow enough to make your payment.”
“Hold on, Miss Kama!” cried Keedy. “That money wasn’t stolen. A man who tackles a faro-bank isn’t stealing if he wins.”
“I heard what you said a few minutes ago, Mr. Keedy.”
“And I said it to show I can be a friend to those I like. I’ve known you a long time, and now when I’ve had a chance to show you that I’m a friend you can’t afford to chuck me.”
He jumped up and went near to her.
“No more faro for me—no cards any more,” he said, dusting his hands before her. “I know you haven’t liked to have me do it.”
“I have never made any remarks to you about your affairs, Mr. Keedy. It’s only when my father gets mixed into them that I protest.”
“I reckon that after all the years I’ve dealt crooked for the sake of the bank I’ve got the right to deal crooked for once in my life to help my friends,” muttered Keedy. “But I’m all done with faro, I tell you, Kama. We’re all going to be rich. I want you to remember that I’ve done my full share in this thing.”
Captain Holstrom banged the sacks of coin upon the table.
“You bet you have, Marcena. And you’re my partner. I stand by you. I never saw a girl yet who didn’t have foolish notions. But they grow out of them.” He winked at Keedy. “This money goes down on the oldZizaniato-morrow morning. She’s ours from snout to tail—from keelson to pennant block. And she’s going to make our everlasting fortunes. You shall see, Kama, my girl!”
For a moment she stood there, her eyes narrowed, her cheeks flaming up, as fine a picture of protesting and indignant maidenhood as I ever laid eyes on. Then she compressed her lips and choked back an outburst.
“Yes, Ishallsee,” she said at last. “For I shall go on board theZizania, and stay there and watch you, father, and try to keep you out of State’s prison for the sake of my poor dead mother.”
“It has been all right for you to live with me aboard the tug,” growled Captain Holstrom, blinking sourly at her. “But this is a different proposition. This is going to be a man’s game.”
“With one woman along,” she insisted.
“You have got to stay here in the city,” he declared.
“If you leave me here alone, deserting me for men who are leading you into dangers and trouble, you’ll find me dancing in one of the worst holes on this street when you come back. I swear it!” she said.
She did not raise her voice. There was no elocution, and hysterics were absent. But there are women who can say a thing and make you believe it. Captain Holstrom cracked his knuckles and gasped, and said nothing. Keedy ran his thin tongue along the line of his sooty mustache.
“As a partner, I’m in favor of keeping a good girl near her father,” said he.
“You are not a partner in my family affairs, Mr. Keedy!” cried the girl, hotly.
Keedy, much embarrassed, and willing to hide his feelings, turned to me.
“We seem to be drifting off the main subject, Brother Sidney.” I wanted to yank him up for calling me by that title—resentment surged in me as hotly as it did in the girl. There are some men who seem to make your soul feel sticky when they try to be intimate.
I told him I’d like a night to think the matter over.
“All right,” said Keedy, dryly; “I’ll take you with me to a place where you can do some steady thinking and won’t be bothered. Stuff your things back into your bag.”
As I plodded along the narrow street with him, my sack propped on my shoulder, Captain Holstrom and his daughter passed me in a cab.
Mr. Keedy’s voice and manner were well padded with velvet that night, but he couldn’t fool me. He caged me—that’s what he did. I remember that I slept in a closet of a room, and, Mr. Keedy was on a cot in the room which opened into the hall. I didn’t mind any of his precautions. I had made up my mind to go along. I was dog-tired and slept all night.