Complete Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (Illustrated) (195 page)

No answer came. The telephone vibrated and hummed in miniature with all the numerous talk of a great city; but the voice of 2241 was silent. Once and twice I put my question; but the tiny, sing-song English voice, I heard no more. The man, then, had fled? fled from an impertinent question? It scarce seemed natural to me; unless on the principle that the wicked fleeth when no man pursueth. I took the telephone list and turned the number up: “2241, Mrs. Keane, res. 942 Mission Street.” And that, short of driving to the house and renewing my impertinence in person, was all that I could do.

Yet, as I resumed my seat in the corner of the office, I was conscious of a new element of the uncertain, the underhand, perhaps even the dangerous, in our adventure; and there was now a new picture in my mental gallery, to hang beside that of the wreck under its canopy of sea-birds and of Captain Trent mopping his red brow — the picture of a man with a telephone dice-box to his ear, and at the small voice of a single question, struck suddenly as white as ashes.

From these considerations I was awakened by the striking of the clock. An hour and nearly twenty minutes had elapsed since Pinkerton departed for the money: he was twenty minutes behind time; and to me who knew so well his gluttonous despatch of business and had so frequently admired his iron punctuality, the fact spoke volumes. The twenty minutes slowly stretched into an hour; the hour had nearly extended to a second; and I still sat in my corner of the office, or paced the marble pavement of the hall, a prey to the most wretched anxiety and penitence. The hour for lunch was nearly over before I remembered that I had not eaten. Heaven knows I had no appetite; but there might still be much to do — it was needful I should keep myself in proper trim, if it were only to digest the now too probable bad news; and leaving word at the office for Pinkerton, I sat down to table and called for soup, oysters, and a pint of champagne.

I was not long set, before my friend returned. He looked pale and rather old, refused to hear of food, and called for tea.

“I suppose all’s up?” said I, with an incredible sinking.

“No,” he replied; “I’ve pulled it through, Loudon; just pulled it through. I couldn’t have raised another cent in all ‘Frisco. People don’t like it; Longhurst even went back on me; said he wasn’t a three-card-monte man.”

“Well, what’s the odds?” said I. “That’s all we wanted, isn’t it?”

“Loudon, I tell you I’ve had to pay blood for that money,” cried my friend, with almost savage energy and gloom. “It’s all on ninety days, too; I couldn’t get another day — not another day. If we go ahead with this affair, Loudon, you’ll have to go yourself and make the fur fly. I’ll stay of course — I’ve got to stay and face the trouble in this city; though, I tell you, I just long to go. I would show these fat brutes of sailors what work was; I would be all through that wreck and out at the other end, before they had boosted themselves upon the deck! But you’ll do your level best, Loudon; I depend on you for that. You must be all fire and grit and dash from the word ‘go.’ That schooner and the boodle on board of her are bound to be here before three months, or it’s B. U. S. T. — bust.”

“I’ll swear I’ll do my best, Jim; I’ll work double tides,” said I. “It is my fault that you are in this thing, and I’ll get you out again or kill myself. But what is that you say? ‘If we go ahead?’ Have we any choice, then?”

“I’m coming to that,” said Jim. “It isn’t that I doubt the investment. Don’t blame yourself for that; you showed a fine, sound business instinct: I always knew it was in you, but then it ripped right out. I guess that little beast of an attorney knew what he was doing; and he wanted nothing better than to go beyond. No, there’s profit in the deal; it’s not that; it’s these ninety-day bills, and the strain I’ve given the credit, for I’ve been up and down, borrowing, and begging and bribing to borrow. I don’t believe there’s another man but me in ‘Frisco,” he cried, with a sudden fervor of self admiration, “who could have raised that last ten thousand! — Then there’s another thing. I had hoped you might have peddled that opium through the islands, which is safer and more profitable. But with this three-month limit, you must make tracks for Honolulu straight, and communicate by steamer. I’ll try to put up something for you there; I’ll have a man spoken to who’s posted on that line of biz. Keep a bright lookout for him as soon’s you make the islands; for it’s on the cards he might pick you up at sea in a whaleboat or a steam-launch, and bring the dollars right on board.”

It shows how much I had suffered morally during my sojourn in San Francisco, that even now when our fortunes trembled in the balance, I should have consented to become a smuggler and (of all things) a smuggler of opium. Yet I did, and that in silence; without a protest, not without a twinge.

“And suppose,” said I, “suppose the opium is so securely hidden that I can’t get hands on it?”

“Then you will stay there till that brig is kindling-wood, and stay and split that kindling-wood with your penknife,” cried Pinkerton. “The stuff is there; we know that; and it must be found. But all this is only the one string to our bow — though I tell you I’ve gone into it head-first, as if it was our bottom dollar. Why, the first thing I did before I’d raised a cent, and with this other notion in my head already — the first thing I did was to secure the schooner. The Nora Creina, she is, sixty-four tons, quite big enough for our purpose since the rice is spoiled, and the fastest thing of her tonnage out of San Francisco. For a bonus of two hundred, and a monthly charter of three, I have her for my own time; wages and provisions, say four hundred more: a drop in the bucket. They began firing the cargo out of her (she was part loaded) near two hours ago; and about the same time John Smith got the order for the stores. That’s what I call business.”

“No doubt of that,” said I. “But the other notion?”

“Well, here it is,” said Jim. “You agree with me that Bellairs was ready to go higher?”

I saw where he was coming. “Yes — and why shouldn’t he?” said I. “Is that the line?”

“That’s the line, Loudon Dodd,” assented Jim. “If Bellairs and his principal have any desire to go me better, I’m their man.”

A sudden thought, a sudden fear, shot into my mind. What if I had been right? What if my childish pleasantry had frightened the principal away, and thus destroyed our chance? Shame closed my mouth; I began instinctively a long course of reticence; and it was without a word of my meeting with Bellairs, or my discovery of the address in Mission Street, that I continued the discussion.

“Doubtless fifty thousand was originally mentioned as a round sum,” said I, “or at least, so Bellairs supposed. But at the same time it may be an outside sum; and to cover the expenses we have already incurred for the money and the schooner — I am far from blaming you; I see how needful it was to be ready for either event — but to cover them we shall want a rather large advance.”

“Bellairs will go to sixty thousand; it’s my belief, if he were properly handled, he would take the hundred,” replied Pinkerton. “Look back on the way the sale ran at the end.”

“That is my own impression as regards Bellairs,” I admitted. “The point I am trying to make is that Bellairs himself may be mistaken; that what he supposed to be a round sum was really an outside figure.”

“Well, Loudon, if that is so,” said Jim, with extraordinary gravity of face and voice, “if that is so, let him take the Flying Scud at fifty thousand, and joy go with her! I prefer the loss.”

“Is that so, Jim? Are we dipped as bad as that?” I cried.

“We’ve put our hand farther out than we can pull it in again, Loudon,” he replied. “Why, man, that fifty thousand dollars, before we get clear again, will cost us nearer seventy. Yes, it figures up overhead to more than ten per cent a month; and I could do no better, and there isn’t the man breathing could have done as well. It was a miracle, Loudon. I couldn’t but admire myself. O, if we had just the four months! And you know, Loudon, it may still be done. With your energy and charm, if the worst comes to the worst, you can run that schooner as you ran one of your picnics; and we may have luck. And, O, man! if we do pull it through, what a dashing operation it will be! What an advertisement! what a thing to talk of, and remember all our lives! However,” he broke off suddenly, “we must try the safe thing first. Here’s for the shyster!”

There was another struggle in my mind, whether I should even now admit my knowledge of the Mission Street address. But I had let the favourable moment slip. I had now, which made it the more awkward, not merely the original discovery, but my late suppression to confess. I could not help reasoning, besides, that the more natural course was to approach the principal by the road of his agent’s office; and there weighed upon my spirits a conviction that we were already too late, and that the man was gone two hours ago. Once more, then, I held my peace; and after an exchange of words at the telephone to assure ourselves he was at home, we set out for the attorney’s office.

The endless streets of any American city pass, from one end to another, through strange degrees and vicissitudes of splendour and distress, running under the same name between monumental warehouses, the dens and taverns of thieves, and the sward and shrubbery of villas. In San Francisco, the sharp inequalities of the ground, and the sea bordering on so many sides, greatly exaggerate these contrasts. The street for which we were now bound took its rise among blowing sands, somewhere in view of the Lone Mountain Cemetery; ran for a term across that rather windy Olympus of Nob Hill, or perhaps just skirted its frontier; passed almost immediately after through a stage of little houses, rather impudently painted, and offering to the eye of the observer this diagnostic peculiarity, that the huge brass plates upon the small and highly coloured doors bore only the first names of ladies — Norah or Lily or Florence; traversed China Town, where it was doubtless undermined with opium cellars, and its blocks pierced, after the similitude of rabbit-warrens, with a hundred doors and passages and galleries; enjoyed a glimpse of high publicity at the corner of Kearney; and proceeded, among dives and warehouses, towards the City Front and the region of the water-rats. In this last stage of its career, where it was both grimy and solitary, and alternately quiet and roaring to the wheels of drays, we found a certain house of some pretension to neatness, and furnished with a rustic outside stair. On the pillar of the stair a black plate bore in gilded lettering this device: “Harry D. Bellairs, Attorney-at-law. Consultations, 9 to 6.” On ascending the stairs, a door was found to stand open on the balcony, with this further inscription, “Mr. Bellairs In.”

“I wonder what we do next,” said I.

“Guess we sail right in,” returned Jim, and suited the action to the word.

The room in which we found ourselves was clean, but extremely bare. A rather old-fashioned secretaire stood by the wall, with a chair drawn to the desk; in one corner was a shelf with half-a-dozen law books; and I can remember literally not another stick of furniture. One inference imposed itself: Mr. Bellairs was in the habit of sitting down himself and suffering his clients to stand. At the far end, and veiled by a curtain of red baize, a second door communicated with the interior of the house. Hence, after some coughing and stamping, we elicited the shyster, who came timorously forth, for all the world like a man in fear of bodily assault, and then, recognising his guests, suffered from what I can only call a nervous paroxysm of courtesy.

“Mr. Pinkerton and partner!” said he. “I will go and fetch you seats.”

“Not the least,” said Jim. “No time. Much rather stand. This is business, Mr. Bellairs. This morning, as you know, I bought the wreck, Flying Scud.”

The lawyer nodded.

“And bought her,” pursued my friend, “at a figure out of all proportion to the cargo and the circumstances, as they appeared?”

“And now you think better of it, and would like to be off with your bargain? I have been figuring upon this,” returned the lawyer. “My client, I will not hide from you, was displeased with me for putting her so high. I think we were both too heated, Mr. Pinkerton: rivalry — the spirit of competition. But I will be quite frank — I know when I am dealing with gentlemen — and I am almost certain, if you leave the matter in my hands, my client would relieve you of the bargain, so as you would lose” — he consulted our faces with gimlet-eyed calculation — ”nothing,” he added shrilly.

And here Pinkerton amazed me.

“That’s a little too thin,” said he. “I have the wreck. I know there’s boodle in her, and I mean to keep her. What I want is some points which may save me needless expense, and which I’m prepared to pay for, money down. The thing for you to consider is just this: am I to deal with you or direct with your principal? If you are prepared to give me the facts right off, why, name your figure. Only one thing!” added Jim, holding a finger up, “when I say ‘money down,’ I mean bills payable when the ship returns, and if the information proves reliable. I don’t buy pigs in pokes.”

I had seen the lawyer’s face light up for a moment, and then, at the sound of Jim’s proviso, miserably fade. “I guess you know more about this wreck than I do, Mr. Pinkerton,” said he. “I only know that I was told to buy the thing, and tried, and couldn’t.”

“What I like about you, Mr. Bellairs, is that you waste no time,” said Jim. “Now then, your client’s name and address.”

“On consideration,” replied the lawyer, with indescribable furtivity, “I cannot see that I am entitled to communicate my client’s name. I will sound him for you with pleasure, if you care to instruct me; but I cannot see that I can give you his address.”

“Very well,” said Jim, and put his hat on. “Rather a strong step, isn’t it?” (Between every sentence was a clear pause.) “Not think better of it? Well, come — call it a dollar?”

“Mr. Pinkerton, sir!” exclaimed the offended attorney; and, indeed, I myself was almost afraid that Jim had mistaken his man and gone too far.

“No present use for a dollar?” says Jim. “Well, look here, Mr. Bellairs: we’re both busy men, and I’ll go to my outside figure with you right away — ”