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The Yazoo Mystery: A Novel

by Irving Craddock · English · Gutenberg #41483 · 317,844 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Yazoo Mystery: A Novel

Author: Irving Craddock


        
Release date: November 25, 2012 [eBook #41483]
                Most recently updated: October 23, 2024

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE YAZOO MYSTERY: A NOVEL ***

Transcriber's note

Minor punctuation inconsistencies have been repaired. Variable spelling
has been retained. A list of the changes made can be found at the end
of the book.

 Mark-up: _italics_




THE YAZOO MYSTERY




  THE

  YAZOO MYSTERY

  A Novel

  BY

  IRVING CRADDOCK

  BRITTON PUBLISHING COMPANY
  NEW YORK




  COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY
  BRITTON PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.
  MADE IN U.S.A.

  _All Rights Reserved_




TO THOSE WHO LOVE ADVENTURE




The Yazoo Mystery

CHAPTER I


THE harbor-master entered briskly but dubiously the room of the ship's
first officer.

"What about the five men for the _Domus_?" he bellowed.

"All ready to sign, sir," assured the manager of the employment agency,
pointing toward two saddle colored negroes, a Spaniard, and a limp
figure half asleep, slouching in the corner on a narrow bench, one hand
clutching an expensive leather bag.

"It is the best I could do on such short notice," assured the agency man
in an undertone, noticing that the first officer's inventory was not
very encouraging.

"Get them up here to sign. We're anchored in the stream, losing two
thousand dollars every hour we stay here. We need five more
firemen--anything that looks human," he added impatiently, spreading
the ship's articles on the counter that reached across the smelly
water-front den.

"Come on and sign up, boys," said the agency man with assumed good
nature.

While the two negroes and the Spaniard were signing, the ship's first
officer went to the sleeping figure in the corner, took up his free hand
and felt of the palm, then dropped it disgustedly as he took the man by
the shoulders and shook him vigorously.

"Come on and sign up, Strong," he shouted into his ear.

Strong labored with himself, still holding to his bag, half staggered to
the counter and signed on the line indicated--"Hiram Strong, Jr."

The signature was plain and businesslike. Evidently the Candidate had
known better days.

"He's been kicked out or disowned," muttered the first officer to me
while he was signing up. "He won't be worth a cuss. Look--those hands
never did a lick of work--but he will fill the list," he added, walking
about nervously and sizing me up with apparent approbation.

The agency man came up at once and held the pen towards me, and without
hesitation I signed "Ben Taylor" on the line beneath. While I was thus
engaged Hiram leaned against the counter weak and listless, his bag
between his feet. We had both signed as firemen or stokers on the
steamship _Domus_ for a round trip to an unnamed Gulf, or Mexican port.

Although pretty well awake by this time Strong did not resent my taking
his arm and helping him a bit. He made no comment at first, but after he
got used to the lively walk along the dock, he began to show signs of
saying something.

"Old pal," he began, without turning his head, "I--I've got a
headache--top's coming off--and my stomach is all jelly. It shakes as I
walk and makes me sick," he ended under his breath.

"You'll be all right after you get some sleep."

"Y-e-s--I think--I h-h-ope so----I've had an awful time--an awful time,
pardee--but this is my last--this is my last," he added, more to
himself.

His bloodless face and lips, pink lids and bloodshot eyes indicated a
disordered system urgently rebelling against recent abuses.

After we got aboard the harbor-master's tug, although very weak, he
refused to sit down. Noting that I had found a seat, he lurched over to
me.

"Old pal, everything looks yellow to me, even the sun looks yellow--sort
of faded. Does it look yellow to you?" he asked, blinking at the clear
setting sun, and although his power to realize was at low ebb, he picked
me out evidently as being different from the others. By that act he
exercised a discrimination that predestined an exciting and almost
unbelievable career.

"The sun looks all right to me," I told him, smiling up in sympathy.

"I guess it's me--it's terrible--but this is the last--I'm going to work
now. Little Hiram is going to work for the balance of his life--I got
to, that's all," he ended, with a dogged determination that I hoped
would survive after he recovered from his unsettled and polluted
condition. I steadied him a little when climbing the ladder from the tug
to the ship, which attention he seemed to appreciate.

"Old pal, I must go to bed. If I don't I will die," said he as we went
forward to the firemen's sleeping quarters. There he tumbled into a
lower bunk, not stopping to remove even the cheap cap he wore. In an
incredibly short time he was "dead to the world" and snoring at a lively
clip.

Upon returning to the deck I heard a loud grunt from the Siren and at
once the ship began to swing out into the stream, heading toward the
Statue of Liberty and that great sea beyond the Narrows.

The captain still leaned over the bridge, taking stock of his
nondescript crew of firemen that loitered about, forward. His bulk
evidenced a growing appetite and his almond shaped eyes suggested the
prenatal influence of a Chinaman. It was hard to understand how so much
tallow and bone, in a florid lumpy skin, ever became master of a big
ship. Such luggage as Hiram Strong, Jr. and I had brought aboard might
have told him a story, but he didn't care; all he wanted was thirty-five
human machines, capable of shoveling coal--in four-hour shifts--in a
temperature of a hundred and twenty-five degrees. He knew that his ship
was marked as a "hell," and that no fireman would ship for a second
trip.

While standing beside the rail and studying the retreating outlines of
Battery Park and its wonderful skyline, I was approached by the
firemen's mess steward, who wore a dirty white jacket and apron.

"I don't suppose that young feller will want anything to eat?"

"No--I guess sleep is better now," I replied, interpreting in his round
greasy face evident good-will.

"The firemen are eating and you had better go in," he said, but
seemingly in no hurry for me to tear myself away. The tip seemed a good
one, so I made an opening for a better acquaintance.

"Where are we bound, steward?"

"We're bound out and back to this port, but at how many places we will
call, God knows. I don't! When we start, lately, we never know when
we'll get back. Sometimes we call at Key West, and usually at Galveston
or New Orleans. Don't you know what you signed for?" he asked, without
surprise, but grinning significantly.

"Yes," I replied, hesitating somewhat. I wondered why he continued to
grin. Then he again asked:

"Are you coming down to mess yourself?"

"Yes, I will come right down."

Following him below, I crowded over on one of the nondescript crew to a
seat on the end of a bench at a narrow, bare table, and received from
the steward a half-gallon of thick soup dished up in an enameled pan
from a galvanized-iron wash-tub. Later I was supplied from the same
laundry utensil a liberal portion of what was intended for a meat stew,
and a war allowance of bread. I was wondering how Hiram Strong, Jr.,
accustomed to uptown dining, would relish this atmosphere with its
filthy service and coarse food. The men along the bench beside me
consumed the soup noisily, like Bowery bums, and bit from chunks of meat
on the ends of their forks like swine with their forefeet in a trough.

Sitting at one end, I was able to size up my fellow-firemen, twenty-five
of whom were devouring food with great relish as they chattered like
magpies, mostly in a foreign tongue. Negroes of all shades, Mexicans,
Poles, Italians, Greeks, all sweated out, thin and bleached to the shade
of a cadaver. I speculated again as to how young Strong would mix with
this motley crew, and why he had allowed himself to choose stoking as a
means of livelihood.

After eating I went below, but Strong had not moved and it seemed that
his thin white hands and expensive footwear were more out of place than
ever. I wondered if he had any money left. Usually were to be found some
light-fingered gentry among tramp-steamer firemen, so I took a small
chain and padlock from my bag and chained his grip with mine to a bunk
stanchion.

Returning to the deck, it was something of a shock to note the ship in
complete darkness, no light visible save the red and green signals on
either side. Later I learned that the globes were removed from the
passenger cabins to prevent even a flash from the rooms of any one
disinclined to obey "Lights out" at seven p. m. by order of the Naval
authorities.

After clearing Sandy Hook and rounding Scotland lightship, by locating
the North Star I saw that the skipper was heading a little east of south
against a sharp, cold wind, close in to the Jersey coast, where lights
were plainly visible. I was rather astonished to see all lifeboats
lowered from their davits to the level of the steerage deck, and by
edging down that way, saw they were provisioned with water, biscuits,
lanterns and all necessary equipment for immediate use. Then I realized
that young Strong had not only chosen an unusual occupation but a
rather unpropitious time in which to sign up for duty on the high seas.

But with visions of four o'clock in the morning, the hour assigned us to
begin our work, I returned to the bunkroom to go to bed.

Hiram Strong had moved neither hand nor foot, but his breathing was more
normal. A dark blue light was the only illumination in the place, giving
to everything a mere shadowy appearance. I was glad to notice that the
place was well ventilated, fairly clean, and likely to be free from
vermin.

At three-thirty in the morning a heavy hand was laid on us, and we were
told to roll out to go on watch. To my surprise, young Strong responded
at once, with much yawning and stretching. Now and then he would sigh
deeply, ending in a sort of dismal moan, hard to tell whether from
resignation or abandon. He spoke for the first time after I had tumbled
out and had begun pulling on my shoes. He seemed to recognize me in the
uncertain light.

"Do we get anything to eat before we go to work?" he asked, leaning
against his bunk dressed in the correct street attire in which he had
slept.

"Yes, I think by going aft to the ship's kitchen we can get something;
coffee, anyhow," I replied, stripping down to my underwear.

"Is that the way you go to work?" he asked, quickly noticing my
matter-of-fact preparations.

"Yes."

"Why?" he asked, surprised.

"Well, it's pretty hot down there; and besides, it's very dirty," I
replied, pleasantly but convincingly. "Shoes, pants and undershirt are
about all you can stand," I added.

I had to wait a while for him to remove all but those needful garments
before starting for the kitchen, there to find good hot coffee and a
dish of that same thick soup.

He followed my lead again, silently, deliberately drinking two cups of
coffee and eating the soup. Then it was time for us to go.

He negotiated the several narrow iron stairs leading down to the
boiler-room like a cat avoiding water, and looked ruefully at his hands
blackened by contact with the greasy handrail. A pink silk undershirt
and polished shoes contrasted strangely with the coarse, black pull-on's
and dingy brogans of those at work. He must have noticed the contrast.
Stripped, he showed a compact figure, with good lung capacity and likely
a good heart, that being an absolute necessity in order to tolerate the
extreme heat of a boiler-room.

The engineer on watch asked me if I had ever fired, as though expecting
an affirmative.

"Yes," I replied.

"But this young fellow is a 'greeny'?"

"Yes--I think so."

"You and him take the two end boilers on the left--they are as cool as
any--and give him a few tips, will you, till he gets his hand in? Two
hundred and eighty pounds on the gauge," he added, as a hint to keep the
dial at that notch. He then told Strong I would show him what to do.

As we moved down over the piles of coal between a battery of boilers
facing the rather narrow corridor between them, Strong remarked to me,
"I'll do the best I can, sir!"

It did not seem so very hot when we first went in, but I noticed there
was only one ventilator, which came down about midway.

Strong followed me over to the end and watched me with interest when I
took the twelve-foot poker--a one-inch steel bar with a big eye bent on
one end and spatula shaped at the other--for the purpose of freeing the
clinkers from the grates before shaking them down into the ash pan.

"I will clean your fire for you this time and you can see how it's
done," I suggested, and proceeded to do so. "You know, the first thing
you do when going on watch is to clean the fire, but it must be done
quickly to keep the steam from going down too much." He listened
attentively and good-naturedly, but still silent, as one about to be
initiated into a college fraternity and was waiting for something to
happen.

I handed him a scoop and told him to put in a half dozen scoop-loads at
a time and to be sure and get it well back on the grates. I then
proceeded to clean my own grate.

Taking up the scoop, he filled it brimful, and started for the furnace
door like a girl shoveling snow. He missed the narrow opening and the
coal fell off into the ashes. He did not swear as I had expected but
glanced sheepishly at me, then about him, to see if others noticed it,
but we were all too busy with our own back-breaking jobs to pay heed to
his worries.

Determined to be successful, he walked close to the furnace door,
exposing his face and hands to the glaring fire, and succeeded in
getting the next shovelful pretty well back on the grates. After
repeating this a half dozen times his face took on a "Turkey red" and he
puffed like a lizard.

After a few more trials and a little more instruction the novelty of
doing it well seemed to interest him, and two hours wore away. He soon
learned to watch the steam gauge above him and kept it pointing at the
requisite two hundred and eighty.

At the end of the shift he leaned heavily against the bulkhead next to
his furnace, panting like a race-horse. The perspiration rolled off of
him until even his well-tailored trousers were wet and his pink silk
undershirt a sight to behold. His face was the shade of pickled beets
mixed with coal dust, and his hands the color of the lobsters he was
accustomed to eat after midnight, his palms blistered and sore, from the
friction of the shovel handle.

His neat black shoes, now grimy and rough, were full of water and
pinched his feet. I did not give him the extra pair of soft cotton
flannel gloves I had brought along for him until he asked me where I had
got mine. Then I showed him how to cool off by standing under the
ventilator, for which he seemed very grateful. He looked curiously at
me, evidently discovering that he and I were the only ones down in the
furnace room not of a hardened class. He seemed inclined to stay under
the refreshing ventilator, and I noted the hands of his steam gauge drop
back to two hundred and seventy, so I opened the door, cleaned the
grates and spread over a fresh bed of coal.

He came over while I was doing this, and I gave him some little tricks
on how to spread the fuel and not expose his hands and face to the heat.

He seemed to appreciate this and surprised me by his cleverness in
making use of my tips. For a time he revived and I thought he was going
to pull through his first watch all right, but at the end of another
hour he became shaky on his legs, and his arms scarcely supported the
empty shovel. The intense heat and effort had a telling effect on him
and it did not surprise me when he toppled over on the coal pile in a
dead faint.




CHAPTER II


WHEN Hiram Strong collapsed it did not surprise the other firemen. It
was not a rare occurrence for even seasoned firemen to faint. But it did
amaze the engine-room crew at the ease with which I took him in my arms,
for he weighed at least one hundred and sixty pounds. I laid him down
beneath the ventilator, where the others had prepared a place for him. I
then removed his cap and dashed a pail of cold water over his face and
chest, coal dust and dirt having washed up in his black, wavy hair.

For the first time since I had met him I got a good look at the
youngster's face. Even during this temporary lapse the slightly upturned
corners of his mouth and the red of his lips showed, lending the
impression that he was about to break out into a sunny smile. There was
nothing about his features to indicate the confirmed inebriate or
debauchee. He had a good, honest ear, a clean neck and a generous
breadth of shoulder. After making sure of his respiration and heart
action, I returned to my post to feed his furnace and mine. To maintain
two hundred and eighty pounds of steam on the gauge required constant,
back-breaking shoveling. In a few minutes both furnaces were roaring,
with one blowing off a notice to the engineer that, although one of the
crew had fainted, the boilers were hot.

It was perhaps a quarter of an hour before Strong raised himself to a
sitting posture and looked over toward me. He was dazed, and blinked
like an owl. I waved to him to stay where he was and rest. For answer he
made a "cat's cradle" by clasping his hands before his knees, unmindful
of the fact that he was seated in a pool of water and saturated coal
dust.

We evidently had a good head wind outside, for it rushed down through
the big ventilator as though driven by an exhaust fan, thus rapidly
reviving Strong. However, it would not be well for him to remain in the
draft too long, so I crossed over and helped him to regain his feet. He
reeled and stumbled as he walked back to his station, which took grit,
but there was no evidence of self-pity.

For the remainder of the watch Strong was unable to do much work. First
he tried to shovel coal, but found he couldn't lift it. However, he
insisted on staying around while I shoveled, occasionally opening and
closing the furnace doors. All the while he maintained his attitude of
silence, apparently taking it for granted that I understood the
situation and was willing to help him. At last the eight o'clock relief
crew came, and although still weak, he made the narrow iron stair to the
deck much easier than when he descended four hours before. He was
adapting himself to the conditions the best he could.

Strong soon washed up and donned clean wear, which seemed to refresh
him, but coal dust still showing about his eyes, ears and brow gave him
the appearance of an actor made up for his part. At mess he devoured
soup with relish, but when he tried the stew, made up of overdone neck,
cuts of fried beef and cold potatoes, he tossed the pan and its contents
overboard.

"I need sleep more than that stuff," he said, and straightway made for
his bunk.

Six hours later I found him standing beside me at the rail in the waist
of the ship and he appeared to be much improved. His fine skin glowed,
but his hands looked as though they had been parboiled, with palms badly
blistered. His trousers were dirty, dry, stiff, baggy and wrinkled. On
the upper part of his body he wore nothing but a silk undershirt, and
for his overworked feet he had pulled on a pair of sandals.

It is quite as impossible to disguise a real man as it is for a
make-believe to pass himself off for a gentleman. Though unaware of how
to go about it, he began taking my measure quite as coldly as I was his,
after which he spoke his first connected words since we came together.

"It was mighty decent of you to help me out last night," he said,
affably, holding a lighted cigarette contemplatively. Evidently his
decision favored me.

"Every one has to make a beginning; you did very well to stay there
during the whole of your first watch," said I, ignoring his thanks.

"Is it always as hot down there as it was last night?"

"Yes; sometimes more so. You see, last night we had a head wind."

"After my hands harden, and my stomach becomes accustomed to the food,
I guess I'll be able to stand it all right." As he said this he looked
at the palms of his hands ruefully. The backs were scarlet and glossy.

"You can if you want to," I replied. "You have the build. The food is
coarse, but perhaps the best for that kind of work. Four hours is not
very long to stand anything; you have not worked lately?"

"Lately?--never!" Then as though frightened at my reference to his past
or even himself, he surprised me by asking, "How soon do we eat
again?--I believe I could eat some of that horse-meat now."

"You think it's horse-meat?"

"Well, if it's not horse-meat, it came off a bull just behind the horns.
However, my grates are clean and there's a good draft; I believe I can
get up steam on it now," he ended with a reckless laugh, indicating
that, although languid from his final fling in New York, he had noted
fully how to proceed with his work in the boiler-room.

"Perhaps by going back to the galley we can get a bite. It's nearly two
hours before we go on watch, but it's better to give the stomach a
chance before doing hard work," I suggested, leading the way to that
mysterious quarter of the ship where the cook is king.

This time we inherited mutton stew and the usual bread allowance, which
we ate as we sat on the edge of a hatch.

Looking across the water, I noted that we were still hugging shore, but
were now far enough south to be free from the chill November winds of
New York. We were now favored with a balmy, invigorating breeze.

Strong's first question was not unexpected after he glanced at some
curious passengers on the deck above us, amused at our sumptuous meal
and manner of taking it.

"How do you happen among this gang?" he asked, laying his bread
allowance on the hatch and poising a knife and fork that came with the
ship direct from the builders twenty years before.

I looked at him squarely and knew I had to give a logical reply. His
straight nose showed the power of logical analysis. The thought came to
me that he had somehow robbed a marble image of Cleopatra of its nose
and clapped it on his own face. There could be no question of his
inherent refinement. Such a person one usually answers civilly, though
the questions be frivolous.

"Well, you see, in order to get a marine license you must do a certain
amount of sea duty in the fire room."

"Is a marine license so very desirable?"

"Chief engineer is a pretty good berth, especially now. Those running in
the war zone get good pay and a big bonus besides, you know."

"Are we in the war zone?" he asked with some surprise.

"Yes--don't you see those lifeboats swung out? One of the firemen told
me last night that this line had lost two ships--both torpedoed."

"And I suppose the firemen get the worst of it on account of being so
far below?" he queried, glancing nervously at the dim shore line.

"Yes. Then, you know, there are supposed to be mines all along the
coast."

Without comment he gnawed the last piece of meat from the bone and
tossed the refuse overboard. Two young girls among the passengers above
giggled at that. Strong flushed, but gave no other outward sign of
annoyance.

"Then we are liable to be plugged any time?" he asked.

"Yes; there is a possibility."

"Well, if I get another dose like I got last night I believe I would
welcome it," he laughed, looking at his blistered hands.

"You will soon learn how to favor yourself, and the work won't be so
hard."

"But you say the men who do the actual work get the worst of things."

"Yes--I think so. Firemen are the feet of the ship, you know."

"I think I was all feet last night," he replied, smiling dolefully. "I
have heard professors rant about the dignity of labor," he replied,
arising with the empty pan, having enjoyed the first full meal he had
ever actually earned. "However, I have signed for a round trip and I'm
going to stick if it kills me," he added, half to himself, as he went
below.

When he came on watch at four the fire of adventure had taken the place
of Hiram Strong's glassy stare of debauchery. He cleaned and shook his
grates without coaching, heaving the coal well back in the fire-box. I
knew that every bone and muscle of his body was crying out in protest.
Later I saw blood from the blisters show through the cotton gloves, but
he worked stolidly, silent and grim. Surely he was game.

We were getting farther south, the wind coming hot and the boiler-room
an inferno. As Strong worked he perspired to the point of melting. I saw
him grit his teeth, determined not to show another white feather, and
when we were washing up at the end of that four-hour watch, there was
something of unction in his remark, to himself: "Thank God, it didn't
get me this time!" Sensibly he went to his bunk without eating.




CHAPTER III


OUR shift was off at eight p. m. with duty ahead at four o'clock in the
morning. But not feeling disposed to sleep just then, I began to study
our position. Twenty-four hours ago we had cleared Scotland lightship,
and I figured we were something like three hundred miles south of New
York, off the Virginia capes.

The ship, as on the previous night, was wrapped in complete darkness as
we emerged from the boiler-room, and I could just make out the shadowy
form of the officer on the bridge, who moved about nervously. I glanced
across the expanse of water but no light could be seen in any direction.
The only activity was the sounding lead which was thrown overboard
occasionally.

We still had the southern head wind which made it too hot for sleeping
below, so I decided to bunk on deck, and went below for a blanket. Young
Strong slept as though dead, even though the quarters were close and
stuffy. I was glad to escape to the deck with my covering. As I laid
down, expecting to doze off at once, I began to hear subdued voices. I
heard some one say: "You know, we passed him this afternoon at three. He
couldn't be over two hours behind us." At first I wasn't sure I was
awake, for the voices were almost inaudible. I was sure I had slept some
time.

"Did the wireless say all were taken off?"

I could now make out two officers talking near me, but they were unaware
of my proximity. Then came the answer to the question:

"Yes; the report came from the shore station where the lifeboats landed,
but if the subs are operating up there, we're probably safe."

Manifestly they referred to some ship that was torpedoed two or three
hours behind us.

"That's all right, but you know well enough that mines have been sown
here for the Chesapeake traffic."

"We're not due there yet, and it's a thousand-to-one shot that we'll get
by. We've passed that spot many times. I believe that talk about mines
is all bunk. Anyway, you know the Old Man changes his course at that
point to keep the supposed mine field shoreward. Go to bed: you'll be
bawled out quick enough if we hit anything."

Then all became quiet, but now thoroughly awakened, I went down to the
galley to cajole some food from the cook. There, to my surprise, I found
young Strong on the same errand.

"You had a good sleep?" was my greeting. I needn't have asked, for he
looked rested and bright, even jaunty.

"Five hours; it's past one now. Where did you sleep?--I did not see you
in your bunk." His voice sounded rather chummy, as the cook relented and
helped us liberally. We told him we had both gone off watch without
eating.

We took the food into the firemen's messroom, lighted by a single dark
blue bulb, and sat opposite each other, a long, narrow, oak plank
between us, picnic style. The cook enjoined us to shut the door, to
cover even the dim illumination. The closed windows of the messroom were
painted black so that not the slightest trace of light could escape.

"How do you feel this morning?" I asked.

"I am surprised at how well I do feel. If it wasn't for my hands I would
feel fine," he replied cordially, sort of self-congratulatory, a half
smile creeping about his non-secretive mouth.

"Moisten the inside of your gloves with petroleum, and your hands will
soon heal if you are careful," I advised quietly. "The oilers will give
you some."

"It is the first time in my life that my system has had the nicotine and
other bug juices washed out of it; a cigarette tastes different now," he
exulted, though evidently looking for sympathy.

"Do you know," he continued, as he cornered a chunk of meat in the
bottom of the pan and tried to sever it with the ancient cutlery, "I
always thought I could work, and now I know it."

"Then this is really your maiden labor sweat?" I asked, seemingly
incredulous.

"Say," he began, still laboring with the meat, "I think this ship bought
a job lot of sheep, and there were some granddaddies in the lot." I
smiled an assent.

"If any one had told me a few days ago that I would be sitting on board
a ship before an oak plank, eating old ram with relish, and out of a
laundry vessel at that, I would have believed him insane."

I laughed outright and mumbled something about "crises in every one's
life."

"My crisis came, all right, the other day. It was like the sidewalk
coming up and hitting me in the face, it so upset me--oh, it was
terrible. I am surprised that I can talk about it so soon." There was a
ruefulness and disappointment in his tone.

I smiled encouragingly as he went on.

"I knew there was trouble ahead when the Governor called me into his
office--there always was--but I expected, as usual, to win him over. I
found for the first time why men called him a 'Gold-Beater.' I sat
across a long table from him, never before realizing how big a man he
was, his chest seemingly as broad as those of two ordinary men. He
wasn't mad, just cold and immovable. He gave me some money and told me
that was the last. I had to get out and work or starve. What I decided
to do did not interest him. He said he didn't want to see me again and
that he didn't care whether I went to hell or to work." Strong spoke as
one recalling a nightmare.

"I suppose you have not been able to figure out yet who is right?" I
asked.

"Oh, I think there is little doubt who is right, but just how long it
will take me to recognize the fact is the question. You see, the
Governor was never stingy or tight with me. That's why he was called a
'Gold-Beater'; he has made money, but he owns the money instead of it
owning him--at least that's what his cronies say. And there's no doubt
about the fact that I should go to work, but in the two or three days I
have had to think about it I can't see why he waited so long. It's
downright wrong to allow a fellow to believe he's got nothing to do but
spend money and get into trouble for years at a stretch, then stop
everything all of a sudden. I think that's where the Governor's wrong.
But, you see, I can work, and I'm going to fool the old man." Bending
over toward me, he added, "But I don't know how I would have come out on
my first try if it hadn't been for you."

"Oh--I have done nothing but pass on to you what was done for me when I
started. Later on you will perhaps admit that men who work with their
hands, if approached right, are more kindly disposed and even more
generous than others. But I am glad you speak English, to say nothing of
finding a good fellow," I replied, approvingly.

"Well, I am not only glad to find some one who uses English, but, like
the kid I really am, I am glad you listen to me. I got such a jolt. You
see, it was the first time I ever felt the lash of the paternal whip,
and one or two cuts were enough. I now know why the Governor is such a
power among men--he does things so thoroughly and quietly. There wasn't
any row--he was ready for me and I don't realize yet how well he
prepared things, or how much he apparently knows of my movements----" He
hesitated with a sorrowful shake of his head and resumed eating.

"You found he was checking you up pretty close?" said I, to urge him on.

"He must have known just how many breaths I took. He said I was a poor
investment: that since my mother died when I was three I had cost him
about two hundred thousand, and he was closing out a poor proposition.
He informed me that I was to consider myself no more a son of his; was
even sorry I would have to use his name. And the two thousand, his
share of fixing up a man that I, and three others, ran down in the park
with an auto, was the last assessment he would stand; and before I knew
what was really happening I was leaving without even a good-by. I knew I
was going to work, but thought I would have a last grand night and then
pull out. But do you know, that in less than an hour, wherever I went,
every one knew that Hiram Strong, Jr., had been disinherited and kicked
out. I then learned what New York thinks of a 'has-been.' I tried to
drown the thought in liquor, but it floated in spite of my most frantic
efforts. I guess there was a good deal of the last pickle in me when you
saw me first?"

I laughed and Strong continued:

"Oh, I'm going to beat it--I've got to beat it," he said, closing his
mouth savagely and tossing the empty pan down toward the other end of
the table. "I guess it's about time for us to go to hell, isn't it?" he
added, lighting a cigarette.

"Yes--all we need down in that hole is the boss with a pitch-fork tail;
we've got the shovel, coal and heat."

"Say, Ben--I believe I heard them call you Ben--do you think the 'Old
Boy' with the forked tail gives his furnace men four hours on and eight
off, and great granddaddy sheep stew for eats and makes 'em sleep in
tiers?" he asked, as we laughed our way to the boiler-room.




CHAPTER IV


HIRAM Strong was in need of oil for his gloves, and, left to myself, my
mind reverted to the conversation I had overheard between the ship's
officers. Shoreward, about a half-mile, I could make out a lightship.
Being somewhat familiar with the coast, I decided it must be the Cape
Charles light. As soon as we were abreast of it, our ship changed its
course several points to the west and seaward, just as the officer said
it would. I observed this and recalled the other officer's cocksureness
that the ship had been running by or through the supposed mine field for
months. Nevertheless I confessed to myself a distinct feeling of anxiety
as we went down into the region Hiram had properly designated as "Hell,"
to begin another four-hour draft on endurance and vitality. Though
silent, Strong remained cheerful and never for a moment allowed his
steam gauge to drop. The draft was good, making the work easier.

There is something about labor in intense heat that calls for silence,
but after an extended stillness there comes an oppressive feeling that
makes one want to break out into a yell. Often in a steel mill a weird
howl will be started by some one, to be taken up by others until a
bedlam is created among the thousands of workers. There is a certain
rhythm in it, a sort of boisterous chant, a good-natured protest against
conditions. Then, suddenly, it will die out just as quickly as it
started and quiet will reign for an hour or two.

Such a yell had been started by an Italian standing under the
ventilator. Then it was that I learned that Hiram Strong had a voice,
and although more than half our watch had passed, he felt vigorous
enough to join in the general outbreak.

As though in protest against the riotous exhibition, the engines
stopped, a circumstance that regular firemen secretly desire, for it
means a respite in their conflict with the blazing furnace and grates,
with the excitement of uncertainty added. The pause may continue for a
minute or an hour. At any rate the trouble in this case had been shifted
to the engine room.

Before the engines first stopped I thought I heard a noise, but it
wasn't loud enough to attract the attention of others, so concluded it
must have been a slight shift in the cargo near us and gave it no
further thought.

Hiram accompanied me to the far end of the furnace room for water, after
which we returned and sat down on the hot, iron-sheeted floor against
the bulkhead that flanked our station, from which point we viewed the
whole length of the narrow corridor between the battery of blazing
furnaces that generated the ship's power.

"Did you ever read Dante's Inferno?" he surprised me by asking.

"Yes, but not recently."

"A tutor made me read it as punishment. You know, I never would study. I
guess that's what makes the Governor so sore. I tried three colleges and
flunked. I was so infernally worthless that I wouldn't even go in for
athletics; but what I started to say was that I believe Dante must have
known about the furnace room of a steamship, when the engines were at a
standstill." He said all this with a sleepy grin.

I could see what he meant. The engines had been stopped but a few
minutes when the entire fire-room crew succumbed to a lethargic sleep. A
serrated ridge of coal two feet high extended the entire length of the
room, on which they had disposed themselves in all sorts of
postures--some curled up like animals going into hibernation, others
sprawled out full length, and there were many who lay as though stricken
dead while in a reclining position. Most of the crew who worked in
overalls, with bodies bared above the waist, black and grimy to the
tousled hair now matted with sweat, laid carelessly about as in death
from convulsions. In some cases they were in such a position that the
fierce light from the cracks in the furnace doors gave their faces a
weird, deathly appearance, and after noting this, I glanced at Hiram and
saw that he, too, had succumbed, his head resting heavily against the
supporting bulkhead.

A sweet, irresistible languor now dulled my perseverance to keep awake.
How long I slept was uncertain, but I do know that I was awakened with a
start by dreaming of an immense wave, much higher than the ship, a solid
perpendicular wall of green sea bearing us down--a veritable tidal wave.
I was sure the ship could not survive. Hiram was tugging at my sleeve.

"Ben--Ben, wake up; we have struck something and the ship is sinking!"
He did not seem frightened, just urgent.

"What!--What's that?" I asked, wondering if I was still dreaming.

"We've been asleep an hour. The ship's deserted; I can't find a living
soul on board! Passengers, crew, and boats are all gone!" he cried,
catching me by the arm and helping me to rise hastily. "Nobody on board
but the engine-room shift."

If the effect of this information on me was magical, it was electrical
on other firemen and the coal passers. One and all seemed to hear it
instantly and made a rush for the narrow, iron stairs leading up, which
could accommodate but one at a time. Here they fought, as if in death's
last throes.

With a fiendishness indescribable, twelve or fifteen men massed
seemingly into one great squirming monster, all legs and arms, kicking,
striking, biting, shouldering and trampling each other, emitting groans
and execrations in all languages. The struggle was to determine who
should ascend the stairs first.

Young Strong seemed deeply moved by this exhibition, but stood beside
me, superior, contemptuous, little impressed with the danger. He turned
toward me, saying--

"Let 'em fight it out; she isn't going to sink at once; she has floated
an hour. It's full daylight and good weather. Did you ever see human
beings so quickly turned into writhing snakes?"

"Suppose we turn the water on them," I suggested, and we both ran for an
inch hose used to wet down the coal.

Hiram aimed the nozzle at the struggling mass while I opened the valve
releasing the high pressure stream which shot forth upon their bodies.
This had a cooling effect upon all but two who were lost to their own
safety in the vicious fight over a screaming woman. These we shoved
aside, while the prospective victim escaped. We then hurried up the
three flights of stairs to the main deck where others were attempting to
lower one of two remaining lifeboats.

Strong, cool and collected, said, "The bow sunk an hour ago. The sea is
washing over it." The damage was located ahead of the forward bulkheads
and the ship would probably float until they gave way.

"We must get our bags, Strong," said I, starting forward to our steerage
quarters. He followed, though a little dubious about taking the time.
Our quarters, though not flooded, were very wet.

Strong grabbed up all of his belongings that were outside of his bag,
while I attempted to free the chain that held them to the stanchion
against possible larceny. It seemed an interminable time before I found
the key. Then we hurried back to where a mass of fighting men were
lowering a lifeboat.

"Good God, Ben; what is this?" exclaimed Hiram, as we rounded the
deckhouse to where the boats had been hanging. All but one had been
lowered and apparently all would be saved but ourselves and one officer
in uniform--he was the captain! There was no mistaking his great bulk,
lumpy skin and small piggish eyes.

As we approached he turned upon us as though we had done him great
injury and swore like a pirate. He held in his hand a pistol of ancient
pattern as big as an anchor shank.

"I don't believe they would have stopped if I had killed every damned
one of 'em!" he shouted, as if to overawe us, "but you needn't think you
are going to get away. You've got to stay," he added, gritting his teeth
as he moved toward us, holding the aged shooting-iron down at his hip as
clumsily as the usual officer of a merchantman.

I was greatly reassured by his presence on the ship, and also the
remaining lifeboat. We were two against one and I was inclined to
consider the humor of the situation.

"Why should we stay when every one else has gone, captain?" Hiram asked
this question respectfully enough, glancing at me; then placed his grip
against the deckhouse and deliberately laid across it his shirt, coat,
necktie, hat and shoes.

The captain continued to focus his two ferocious eyes upon us, and took
full time in which to answer Strong's question.

"Because this ship ain't goin' to sink, and you've got to help work it
over to the beach!" he fairly shouted, unable to control himself. He was
evidently of the old school and as appropriate on a passenger ship as a
pig in a parlor. He was unable to see in us anything more than ordinary
firemen.

"How can two men run a big ship like this?" Strong asked, keeping
himself well in hand, though there was a glitter in his eye as he
glanced at me, while advancing toward the captain, who still held the
firearm in a hip position against his six feet and two hundred and fifty
pounds of flesh.

"That's for me to say," he shot back threateningly, "an' if you don't do
it I'll put you in irons."

"We can't see it that way, captain; besides, I'm afraid----" Then
something happened which indicated that Strong had acquired the art of
jiujitsu.

With the litheness of a cat he sprang violently forward, struck the
captain's wrist that held the gun, and the immense revolver dropped to
the deck with a thud. Strong quickly kicked it overboard with the same
agility.

"Captain, I was just going to say that you seemed to handle that gun
awkwardly and I feared it might go off accidentally," he said, as he
jumped back beyond reach. The captain's florid, lumpy face now ran
scarlet, his eyes glaring like those of an old dog in futile rage. He
swallowed hard but could not articulate.

"You allowed the passengers and crew to leave, but left the firemen down
in that hell hole to drown like rats. We are inclined to hold that
against you, captain," said Strong, quietly enough. "There is one boat
left and we are going along, too," he said, turning to me as I edged
over toward the boat.

"Didn't I stay?" the captain was finally able to say in a shaky voice,
with some trace of a plea.

"Yes, you stayed, because you would be put down for a coward if you
hadn't, and if there is any profit or glory you get it. I've traveled on
ships before when I wasn't firing," Strong replied forcefully, but with
no trace of anger, coming over to where I was engaged in placing our
baggage in the lifeboat.

"But we can save the ship if you'll help--I'm willing to pay you extra
if you'll stay," said the captain, pleading outright now.

"Well, that sounds different--how much will you give us to stay and take
chances?" Strong asked quickly, assuming a bargaining attitude, but
still assisting me to lower the boat.

"Why, I'll--I'll give you fifty dollars apiece," he offered, as though
making a tremendous sacrifice.

"Fifty dollars don't look good to me--how about it, Ben?" he asked, as
we halted the boat a few feet from the water. "The news headlines will
state that the captain went down with the ship, but two firemen drowning
with him wouldn't be worth an agate line."




CHAPTER V


HIRAM STRONG, JR., amazed me. Surely this was an outcropping of the
Gold-Beater's blood. He may not ever be a Gold-Beater as the term was
applied to his male parent, but he was destined to be a gold-getter, for
he displayed evidence of that trait when he stood there actually
dickering with the captain for a sum beyond a month's wages as a
fireman.

The seas breaking over the sunken bow of the vessel, and a cargo in the
hold worth at least a million and a half, he had only the captain's word
that the ship would not sink at any moment. However, he saw by my
attitude that I also thought that the wreck could be salvaged.

And he also saw that the ship was wallowing in the trough of the sea,
while the lifeboat was near the water on the lea side, and he knew that
I could handle it.

"You see, captain, we have only your word that she isn't going to sink,
and we have lost confidence in you. You left us three stories down
there to drown like rats. You got everybody else off and never thought
of your firemen."

"I couldn't think of everything, and I tell you she is not going to
sink," shouted the captain, coming closer and pounding the rail with his
big fat hand. "I've got to get her to anchorage or on the beach, and
you've got to help. Fifty dollars is enough; that's nearly a month's
wages," he added, trying to avoid his usual overbearing.

"Why did you let the crew go?" Hiram shot at him.

"I didn't know the for'd bulkhead was holding then. You know if the
for'd head holds she can't sink," he said vehemently, appealing to me
this time. But before I could answer Hiram was after him again.

"And you left us to drown! Our lives are just as valuable to us as any
of the rest of the crew, and maybe more than some of them," he said,
looking meaningly at the captain, who squirmed visibly, now realizing
that we were not ordinary firemen.

"I'll give you a hundred apiece. Now stop talking and come on. We'll
have to run her stern fore-most, and if we can keep the wheel going
enough for steerage way, the wind will blow us in," haggled the captain
like an old market woman.

"A hundred dollars will not interest me; how about you, Ben?" Hiram
turned to me and began taking the lifeboat's rope from the cleet and I
did the same. "You can stay here and drown if you want to, but we're
going. The water here looks pretty deep, and I understand when a ship
goes down it makes a pretty big hole into which we might fall," he added
as we began to lower the boat.

"How much do you want? I've got to save her," he pleaded now, walking
back and forth like a caged hyena.

"If you hadn't let your wireless man go you would have had a tug or
another ship here by this time and they would take as salvage only about
a quarter of a million," suggested Hiram with a cynical smile, stopping
the descent of the boat and making fast again. "We'll stay, but you've
got to pay. Ben here knows something about the engines and I will shovel
the coal, but you've got to give us two-fifty apiece," he added, taking
away my breath and almost prostrating the captain.

The captain began to pace the deck again, then pausing in front of
Hiram, he said, as though imbued with a big idea: "All right, I guess
I'll have to do it, but you've got to hustle." Moving over to me, he
asked if I knew how to start the engines, to which I nodded an
affirmative.

"But, Captain," interrupted Hiram forcibly, "it's got to be cash," and
there came to his mirthful mouth a certain hardness that surprised me,
and again started incipient apoplexy within the captain.

"If I say you'll get it, you'll get it. Isn't my word good for that
much?" he blurted out, trying to control his rage.

"Captain, you left us to drown just like kittens you would like to be
rid of. Your word isn't worth a counterfeit dollar. I wouldn't trust you
for shoestrings. We've got to have the cash--now!" There was genuine
bitterness in Hiram's voice.

"I haven't that much cash on the ship," pleaded the captain, but with a
sort of wolfish gleam in his eyes.

"All right, then. Come on, Ben, let's get out of this. I wouldn't take
his word for one of his firemen's rations of soup and lumpy stew, and if
he gave us the company's I. O. U., we wouldn't get it for a month, and
they'd red-tape it to death," he ended, starting for the ropes again.

"Wait a minute and I'll see," coaxed the captain, starting up to his
quarters nearby.

"The old liar; he's got it, all right. Say, Ben, do you really think she
will float--it seems to me the bow is farther down than it was?" he
queried me with something of a chuckle.

"Yes, I think it will. The sea is a little higher than it was, and that
makes the ship seem lower, but if it gets worse there may be some
danger."

"Do you think we can afford to take the chance?"

"I think we can get away in the lifeboat if the ship gets lower. I'll
watch closely, but if we take the money we are bound to take the risk."

"Oh, if we take the money we will deliver the goods, but hang the money
if the risk is too big."

"It's a fair bet. If we back in it will take the strain off the
bulkhead, but if it does not hold, we'll have time to get away."

"Watch this old jockey; he'll come rushing back with part of the money,
saying that's all he could find." Hiram, Jr., had hardly finished when
the captain came rushing down and gave us in bills the exact amount,
cheerfully, and apparently disposed to treat us as equals.

"Now, boys, we're only about twenty miles off Hampton Roads, and if you
can keep a couple of boilers hot, we'll be there in three hours, and
your job's done. The tide is right and we might be able to get clear
in."

We hauled the lifeboat up so that the sea would not wash over it, but
left our belongings in it, and then hurried below. There was enough
steam left in the boilers to swing the ship, stern shoreward, and
matters looked well. I hurried to the furnace room, where I found Hiram
stripped to the waist, working as if the ship belonged to him. He had
wisely selected the four boilers beside which was the most coal, and
seemed to forget that his hands were sore and his body all too green for
such an effort. I aided him as much as I could and then ran back to the
engines, repeating this operation for two hours. I noticed that the
lightship off the harbor was gradually growing plainer. The upper part
of our propeller blades were exposed because of the ship's nose dip. We
were losing a great deal of power due to that fact. Soon we picked up a
pilot and in another two hours we slowly made the harbor on less than
one leg, and we were through.

"The greatest job ever pulled off! No salvage on this ship or cargo,"
the captain chuckled, rubbing his hands. "Now, let's go ashore and get
some food," he added as cheerfully as would a miser fingering gold. He
had not left the wheel house or given an order since we started.
However, before we got through washing up Hiram began to droop and was
hardly able to walk to a Turkish bath after we got ashore at Norfolk.

He did not improve much, even with a good rub-down after the bath, and I
knew it was the hospital for him. Before the doctors got through with
his examination he was in a wild delirium and they shook their heads. It
was a bad case of exhaustion, and nothing but a strong heart would save
him.




CHAPTER VI


THE newspapers spread on the wreck story next morning and I read about
it while sitting by Hiram Strong's bedside in the hospital. The captain
got the glory and credit, although the man, a mere boy, now tossing
unconscious on the pillow, was the one to whom all credit belonged. In
his delirium he muttered from time to time. Every now and then he would
say--"Ben, he was going to let us drown--drown like rats in a trap!"

The nurse gently unbandaged his hands to show me their condition. The
palms were cooked--black and seamy--like an overdone roast. But he was
now clean, and handsome, his dark, wavy hair mounting high against the
white pillow, all trace of dissipation having disappeared from his skin.
That was fair and clear, though slightly flushed with fever. The smile
hovering about his mouth appeared to be at the point of breaking out
into a hearty laugh.

Surely his first attempt at a useful life was not a success, for which
I held myself partly to blame. If I had said "no" to the captain's
proposal we would have come away like the rest of the crew.

Three days found him much better, and when I came to see him he
delighted me with his cheerful manner.

"Hello, Ben!" he chanted with an infectious smile. "I would like to
shake, but my hands are wrapped up just like a petrified mummy."

Naturally I looked pleased that matters were no worse, and he continued
to talk.

"Say, Ben, it was good of you to stick, bring me here, and then come
every day to see me. I woke up in the night and the nurse--God bless
her--she is a kind soul--she told me all about it."

"Hiram, as we were sort of partners in crime I had to stick."

"But say, we brought the ship in, didn't we? Sit around nearer the foot
of the bed where I can see you. My tongue is about the only part of me I
can move. Every bone in my body feels as though it was broken twice, and
every rib creaks when I breathe. Job never had anything on me." He
tried to laugh, but brought up short, ending with a groan.

"You'll be all right in a day or two if you take things easy."

"Oh, I'll not stay here long, Doc or no Doc. I'm only sore and that
doesn't count for much. Ben, do you know what I would like to have right
now?--a porterhouse steak, thick as a flagstone, smothered in mushrooms,
and I'm going to have it if there's one in the town. By the way, what
town are we in, Ben?"

"Better stick here till to-morrow anyway, then we will see how you
feel," I said, ignoring his question.

"All right, old partner, but not a minute longer--they're mighty good to
me, but I don't like the carbolic odor that comes floating down the
hall. It makes me think of a Long Island fertilizing plant, or a
morgue."

The next morning he put on his clothes, which had been renovated and
pressed, with many "Oh's" and "Ah's" and "Ouch's," but withal he was
good-natured and smiling. Then we started after the much coveted
porterhouse and mushrooms. At first he toddled like an aged man,
holding on to me. The effort was painful, but in a short time his
locomotion was normal and likewise his good nature.

After a prodigious meal and a favorite cigarette he again surprised me
by putting a question that was hard to answer.

"Where do we go from here?" he asked, looking inside his hands, which
were still in a deplorable state.

"What--so soon?" I parried.

"Yes--after I came out of my luny funk at the hospital, I had time to
think things over, duly and truly and soberly. You know, I haven't had a
drink since we left New York, and I don't want one. This strenuous life
rather appeals to me now that I have found I have a good body--as good
as any one's--and it's got to work without getting sore or fluffing up
with blisters. Besides, the Governor gave me the toe of his shoe and
said I wasn't worth a 'cuss,' and I am going to show him." There was
great determination in the manner in which he blew out the smoke of his
cigarette.

"I think we will find an employment office here," I suggested mildly.

"Take me to it. I'm ready now," he said quickly, though hardly able to
sit up in bed, but when we came to the employment office he hung back,
insisting that I should be the spokesman. The face of the man in charge
was heavy and florid. He might easily have passed for a gambler,
confidence man, or race-horse tout. He sized us up critically before he
replied:

"The only man I need is quartermaster--ship bound for New Orleans to
take on cotton. You can sign again there for Liverpool if you want to."

Strong heard what was said and I moved toward him inquiringly.

"I don't care what it is, so long as you think it's all right. It can't
be any worse than firing."

I explained to him in an undertone that the quartermaster steered the
vessel, the hardest part of the job being to remain on one's feet four
to six hours at a time, to which he replied quickly:

"That sounds good if I can do it."

"I can teach you in a few hours."

"All right, let's sign," he said, coming over.

We went to a second-hand store, found a book on practical seamanship,
and I spent the afternoon familiarizing him with his duties, after
which we went aboard. He seemed keen to know everything about a ship.

The captain, a jolly good fellow, asked us a few questions, seemed
pleased, winked knowingly, and gave us a room to ourselves on deck just
back of the officers' quarters, and told us to arrange the watches to
suit ourselves. It was to be six hours on, six off, and we would sail at
eight that night.

The next five days went by speedily. Our course was down the coast
through the Straits of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico to the bar; thence
to the little white lighthouse at the entrance of the Mississippi, over
a hundred miles from New Orleans.

I wondered at Hiram constantly. He was so alert and apt that he never
came in for a reprimand, never again referred to his father or his
future plans, or craved liquor--an ample supply of his favorite
cigarettes seemed to satisfy him. He had no time for stories, nor did he
speak of women, or of any escapades in which he may have been involved.
He was actually glad to be making his way by toil. With hands all healed
he became quite normal, and was altogether a fine minded man. While
such a rapid change might not be permanent, he appeared not only to have
turned over a new leaf, but to have lost all taste for the habits and
customs of his previous life.

Things went well with us and we sped along at a lively clip. I was at
the wheel on the last watch that would take us into dock at New Orleans
about midnight.

"Pop has been talking some"--Strong, from the beginning, had referred to
the captain as Pop--"and wants us to sign up for a round trip to
Liverpool. He says it's sixty dollars and fifty per cent extra for going
the submarine zone."

"Then I guess we must have done our work all right," I replied,
noncommittal. "What do you----"

"Ben," he interrupted, "why are you married to the sea?"

"I never considered that I was--I have never been blessed or cursed by
being married to any one or anything--one has to make a living somehow."
It was perfectly dark in the wheel-house with the exception of the tiny
hooded light over the compass, and I couldn't see Hiram's face.

"A fireman can become an engineer and stops there?" he surprised me by
putting forth a question in just that way. I paused before replying.

"Yes--usually."

"A seaman can become captain, and then his road gets very narrow and
steep toward further advancement?" he persisted.

"Yes," I replied, wondering what was on his mind.

"It strikes me a man of your ability is wasting his time at sea--I don't
see any future--what about wireless men?"

"They get ninety dollars a month," I replied, amused and still
wondering.

"What about telegraphing?" he then asked.

"Some of our best men started as operators, Edison, for instance. I am
inclined to think it's the methodical drill they get that helps."

"Ben, are you going to sign up for the other side?" he asked, as though
expecting a negative answer.

"Well, I think the subs are getting quite plentiful--more than they tell
us about. Don't you?" At last I knew what he had been driving at.

"That settles it," said he. "I won't, either. We've got a stake now and
can afford to look around a little."

"Our stake won't last long unless we get busy," I warned.

"Oh, I'm willing to work, and I don't expect to go up on an escalator or
an express elevator--but I do want to know that the stairs lead
somewhere worthwhile. Do you get me, Ben?" he laughed. "I'll tell Pop
we're not anxious to play hide-and-seek with the subs."

I did not reply, but wondered what effect "a stake" would have on an
idle man like him in New Orleans.




CHAPTER VII


TO Strong's mind satisfactory quarters meant rooms of good size, and
well lighted. We finally found connecting space in a private house. He
seemed anxious to see New Orleans, and started out while I looked up
some old acquaintances, but I found him awaiting me at our lodgings in
the early evening.

"Ben, I have done it. I've paid out the money, and I'm going to see it
through," was his greeting.

"Paid for what?" I asked, unable to avoid smiling at his cheerful
optimism.

"Fifty dollars to learn telegraphy. They say I can do it in sixty days,
and when I have completed my course I will get a job. New Orleans looks
to me like a regular place. I like it."

For a moment I thought he might have been indulging in some of the
mixtures for which the Southern Metropolis is noted, but it was only the
wine of youthful credulity that did the talking.

"That's good," I assented quickly. "When do you commence?"

"Oh, I have already started in. I took my first lesson this afternoon.
How did you make out? Can you get a job here?" There could be no doubt
of his keen desire to have me stay near him.

"Yes--two or three things turned up to-day."

"And any one of them better than going to sea, I'll bet?"

"Yes, as far as the money goes," I replied, reservedly.

"Bully, old boy!" he shouted, seizing my hand in a vise-like grip. From
then on the days were full of interest for both of us. Hiram's intention
to master telegraphy became almost an obsession with him. From the
moment he started in he seemed to forget everything else, and he worked
as though his welfare in this world and the world to come depended upon
his learning telegraphy in the shortest possible time. He ate, drank,
inhaled, and absorbed the Morse system during every waking moment, and
in less than three weeks he was substituting for a sick operator on the
Yazoo & Mississippi Railroad.

Strong's was undoubtedly an intensive nature; the height and especially
the width of his forehead clearly indicated power of concentration,
which, apparently, he had done nothing to build up. It was the same way
when he met the girl, Anna Bell Morgan, and when an intensive man meets
a comprehensive girl there is apt to be trouble, or a wedding, or
something equally interesting. If he had spent money with the same
tenacity of purpose that he set about learning telegraphy I do not
wonder that Hiram Strong, Sr., became tired to the bone of his folly and
would have no more of it.

After working a week as a substitute he blew into quarters one evening
like a cyclone and gave me a thump on the back that made me grunt.

"I've got it!--I've got it!--I've got it!" he shouted, his face aglow
and his eyes snapping.

This time I was sure he had broken over into old habits, especially when
I well knew the lure of that celebrated New Orleans gin fizz to which
all newcomers seemed to succumb. But again I was wrong. Strong had
simply boiled over with exuberant spirits and he certainly had a jag on
board. His ardor not in the least dampened by my hesitation, he grabbed
my hand and shook it vigorously, then capered about in front of me as a
boy in his teens might do.

"Congratulate me, Old Man, I've got it!" he roared. "The Yazoo Railroad
has offered me a station. Quarrytown, Ben--Quarrytown, Louisiana, is my
address after to-morrow!"

Of course, that was pleasant news to me and naturally I became as
excited as he, so much so that I became fearful we would jeopardize our
joint reputations for sobriety.

"There's only one thing, and you've got to fix that--eh? I don't know
just how: I must have a surety bond for a thousand dollars and also
three first-class references--can we do it, Ben? Can you do it?" he
repeated.

I hesitated a moment, wondering how I was going to get three first-class
references for a man who had spent a big part of his twenty-four years
in riotous living, even to the point of being disowned. But there was no
such thing as resisting him now.

"Oh, I don't have to wait for it; that can be done any time. But we can
fix it some way, can't we, Ben?--I've got to," he added with emphasis.

"Yes, if we have a little time I think it can be arranged," said I,
soberly, wondering somewhat over the details of the job. But he hardly
waited for my assurance before he seized me by the hand and began
dragging me about the room.

"Come on, let's get out--out in the air--let's go out and have a good
time," he commanded as he got my hat and jammed it down over my head.
"It's up the river, only about a hundred miles. You can come up Sunday.
It's big enough to have a day and night man, and I get the day job!" he
added, loud enough for the whole house to hear him as we passed
downstairs to the street.

The following Sunday I went to see him. His station was delightfully
located. There was enough level space between the river and its very
high bluffs for two long sidetracks convenient for the meeting of
freight trains, which made a night and day operator necessary.

Hiram was expecting me and waved his arms wildly as I stepped off the
train, but as he was busy rushing mail, express, and trunks into the
baggage car, there was no chance for a handshake for the time being.

The depot looked like the cabin in which De Soto died from malaria and
disappointment in 1539, although somewhat modernized and adapted to the
needs of railroading.

Quarrytown was a rambling village around D. R. Morgan's General Store,
and he was Anna Bell's father. Near the ancient depot was a considerable
stone quarry, high clay bluffs, and the Mississippi River. Pickaninnies,
starved dogs, mules, razorback hogs and malaria seemed to thrive along
with the willow and pepper trees. The question of moment was how long
would Hiram Strong, Jr., late of Broadway, Sherry's, and Delmonico's, be
satisfied here? In the place of porterhouse steaks there would be
sow-belly and corn bread, and a very dry section to live in.

As soon as the train was out of the way Hiram came rushing over to me.

"Ben, old man, you look good to me!" he exclaimed. "I'm getting away
with it; haven't made a bull yet. Excuse me a little bit until I take
this mail over, then I'm through." Thus he greeted me, enthusiastic and
confident, then rushed away with the small mail bag to Morgan's store
and the post office.

While awaiting his return I examined a two-wheeled baggage truck he had
left standing after being loaded from the train. This contained an old
trunk fastened with a clothes line, a bunch of bananas, some castings
for a cotton gin, three boxes of chill-and-fever remedy, and five cases
of dynamite.

As Strong hurried across the street his eyes shone with anticipation
from under the visor of a cheap cap that had replaced the jaunty derby.

"Say, how do you like my new station? All the white people here are
mighty nice," said he, pushing the truck toward the depot.

I nodded approval and helped him to push the load up a steep incline
into the freight house adjoining the ticket office.

"Do you get much of that stuff?" I asked, pointing to the dynamite.

"Yes--the quarry uses quite a bit, but it usually comes by freight and I
don't have to handle it," he said, locking the door and leading the way
to the ticket and telegraph office, located in a small bay-windowed
room facing the track. We walked through a dingy waiting-room, in the
center of which stood a wooden box, half filled with sand, which stood
permanent duty as a cuspidor.

"You see, there is no hotel here, and Mr. Morgan has kindly taken me to
board with him. The night man stays there also. Sunday is such a busy
day, especially for freights, that I can't leave for my dinner, so they
send it over to me. They'll send enough for two to-day. You won't mind,
will you?"

Before I could reply the dispatcher called him and he began taking a
train order while I sat down upon the one remaining sixty-nine-cent
chair.

Opposite the bay-window was the regulation standing-counter, a
ticket-cabinet, and little window opening out to the waiting-room, aged
and dingy, especially the floor.

"That chair will go down with you some time," I suggested, when he
turned about after copying the order,--and setting a red signal for the
train.

"It looks as though it had served its full time," he replied, laughing,
as he arose in answer to a tap on the waiting-room door. A darky boy
with a market basket and a white pitcher stood grinning outside with
our dinner.

"Ben, this dinner is not like some we've had, but it's better than the
soup and mutton stew we got on the boat. Do you know, I would rather be
dead and in torment than fire again on that boat, but I would have
stayed, though, if you had," said he, opening the basket and setting out
a liberal portion of fried chicken and hot biscuit on the small
instrument table.

"We can tell only by comparison when we are well off," I replied.

"That's beginning to dawn on me, also," said he, dryly.

We had hardly begun eating when a big panting Mogul stopped with her
nose opposite the window and the conductor came trotting up and signed
for the orders. He gave one copy to the engineer and scuttled away.

"I was telling you about the white people here," he began, as we resumed
eating. "Old Mr. Morgan, who runs the store and post office, is about
the biggest man here, and his daughter, Anna Bell! Say, boy, she is as
pretty as any woman I ever saw." Then, for some reason, he checked
himself on the "Anna Bell" subject and became absorbed in the
well-cooked dainties spread before us.




CHAPTER VIII


IT was not what Hiram Strong said about Anna Bell Morgan, but the tone
in which he said it, that raised the big interrogation point in my mind.
Matters as they stood suggested the possibility that the youngster had
plans in mind to "face the Governor" and that Quarrytown was a place
quite good enough to settle down in if Anna Bell said the right word.

A chicken leg in one hand and a hot biscuit piled with jam in the other,
he stood facing me, with an excited glitter in his eyes. Continuing, he
said in a tense undertone:

"The night man is half gone on her, but he is a German--at least has a
German name--and this place is intensely patriotic. As I told you, he
boards there and when he is not sleeping he hangs----"

At this moment a north-bound freight rushed by, and with the noise of
the locomotive and banging of the trucks over a poor railroad joint
opposite the wide-open window, together with the slapping of brake
beams, made further conversation impossible. He turned, watching it as
though expecting something, and as the way car passed something did
happen. I heard a metallic thud on the floor, at which Hiram dropped his
food and began to hunt for the thing that caused the noise. Finally, by
getting down on all fours, he brought out from between the old iron safe
and the letter press a rail spike to which was fastened by a rubber band
a piece of white paper which he carefully unfolded. It was a train order
reporting train No. 192 passing at that time with two cars picked up at
a siding below where there was no telegraph office. Strong sprang to his
instrument and dispatched the message forthwith. I wondered if he
realized the danger to himself from messages thrown in upon him that
way. A railroad spike weighs about a pound, and while he was
telegraphing I speculated on what would happen if one struck him, or if
by any chance it struck one of the fifty-pound cases of dynamite that
had come by express.

"The conductor drops his reports that way to save time," he said, calmly
resuming his seat.

Hiram's days were full of things to do, therefore we never had ten
minutes' connected conversation. I would have been glad to learn the
situation inside the fellow's active mind. I don't think he knew. He was
doing honest, useful work, and received its immediate reward in full
satisfaction--his first real satisfaction--that intoxicating lure that
fans a spark of ambition into a flame.

Later in the day, at a hint from Hiram, the conductor of a refrigerator
train invited me to ride to New Orleans with him.

"He makes better time than the passenger," said Hiram, who in less than
a week knew all the road employees by their first names. Somehow he took
it for granted that I had satisfactory employment and never asked me
what it was. As a matter of fact I was employed in connection with the
American Defense League, a patriotic organization, which was destined to
throw me in contact with Hiram Strong very often and sometimes
unexpectedly. Ours was not the kind of friendship to end through mere
separation.

We exchanged letters frequently. He asked me to send him a typewriter,
which, though not required in the service, was "the only way to do
things right," he wrote me. I noted that his letters avoided any
reference to the night man or Anna Bell Morgan. I wondered if it was an
oversight or intentional evasion.

The Yazoo Railroad had reported, as required by law, that they had
shipped ten cases of dynamite, but only nine were delivered. As soon as
I had time I was asked to look it up, as fifty pounds of dynamite in bad
hands would make a great deal of excitement in or about the shipping of
New Orleans.

I was astonished to find, upon examination of the papers, that the
explosive had been shipped to the quarries at Quarrytown, together with
an affidavit by the train conductor that he had delivered ten cases on
the platform there. This put it squarely up to the agent, Hiram Strong,
Jr.

On arriving at Quarrytown I found Hiram as busy as ever, but overjoyed
to see me. He was considerably surprised when I inquired about the lost
dynamite, but he was not worried and evidently had not been. He was
looking splendid; hard work and regular hours had accomplished wonders,
and he seemed completely unmindful of discomforts. As to the explosive,
he took me out on the platform to where it had been unloaded.

"It came here," said he, "in the evening, along with half a car of mixed
merchandise about the time I was going off duty. I had to work overtime
to put it all in the freight house. The next morning the quarry man came
for it and signed for the nine cases which I had delivered to him.
That's all I could find and I believe that is all that was unloaded,
although the way bill called for ten," he admitted.

"The stuff was locked up, wasn't it?" I enquired.

"Oh, yes, I locked the warehouse myself, and carry the only keys," he
replied, as we returned to his office.

The place looked to me darker and more dingy than before, but the day
was gloomy. The rickety kitchen chair had finally collapsed and was
substituted by a box covered with a burlap bag, with some padding on the
end for a cushion.

"How about this door?" I asked, pointing to the one leading into the
freight house.

"That has no lock, but I never leave here until the night man comes on.
It couldn't get away through here."

"How about this night man; who is he?"

"He's been here for two years. The company must know he is all right.
His name is Gus--Gus Schlegel. I think he is too stupid to be crooked;
he knows enough to report trains at night."

At that moment a dark boy came to the ticket window and reported three
cars of granite on the quarry siding, and Hiram sat down on the
burlapped box in front of his instruments and notified the dispatcher
that three cars were ready. He then took up a pad of blank bills of
lading and began to fill them out rapidly, though in the attitude of
listening.

"One of your chairs went on strike?" I observed, eyeing the artistic
arrangement of the burlap.

"Yes; Gus's avoirdupois finally carried it down. He found an old
molasses box that was so sticky he had to cover it with burlap. I
believe I like it better than the chair; it requires less room," he
added, looking up, while changing his carbon paper.

The thought occurred to me that it might be the missing case of
dynamite, but I decided that was quite impossible. If Gus had really
driven nails into a case filled with dynamite, he would be at that
moment in Kingdom Come and an architect busy with plans for a new
station.

"How is his love affair progressing with Anna Bell Morgan?" I asked,
without great show of interest.

"Oh, I know she hates his name, and I think--I think she hates him, too;
but these Southern girls are so polite and considerate of one's
feelings, I can't tell for sure; besides, she is pretty deep," said he,
as one having given the matter much consideration.

Hiram scratched a match on the burlap covering and lit a cigarette.

"He both sleeps and eats there, doesn't he?" I was beginning to consider
Gus Schlegel in connection with the disappearance of the case of
explosive.

"Yes, he eats and rooms there, but lately he doesn't sleep much. Why, he
came in here the other afternoon and sat where you are and cried like a
baby. He said he didn't think she cared anything for him, and that he
loved her so much he couldn't live without her--even hinted at suicide."

Here Hiram Strong, Jr., looked up and laughed--a cynical laugh--as he
glanced at me. His eyes showed that he was in earnest, and evidenced a
combination of amusement and anger. He brushed the ashes from his
cigarette on the box and continued: "I told him the river water was nice
and warm and muddy, and that the alligators would finish the job cheaper
than an undertaker."

"And do you know," he continued with a smile creeping about his mouth,
"it went completely over his head, didn't even penetrate the tallow. I
don't believe a German has any sense of humor--they only laugh at
something ribald or salacious--they make a terrible mess of simulating
virtue. Then he asked me to advise him."

"Did you?"

"Yes--I told him he had been there nearly two years and that was long
enough for her to learn to appreciate him--that the only way was for him
to ask her and thus settle the question for good and all."

"Did he take your advice?" I asked.

"He wanted to know if he shouldn't speak to her father first, but I
told him the preliminary skirmish should be with her. He decided on the
spot to do that and if she refused him he was going to leave."

"I suppose he got his answer?"

"He went over immediately--what happened there I never learned, exactly,
but I do know he came back in about an hour squealing like a razorback
pig kicked in the ribs by a mule, and wired in his resignation. He was
an awfully poor loser," Hiram added, as he sealed the big yellow
envelope for the auditor. "Why, the poor dub was so sorry for himself,
he snuffled and groaned, and his breath back-fired like a four-cylinder
motor hitting only on two."

"Who are his associates here, and does he have any one come to see him?"
I asked, detecting something like resentment in his tone.

"No one has been here to see him since I came. No; he is just a big
boob, with this love-stuff working overtime."

"Has anything whatever--however insignificant--happened that would
connect him with the disappearance of the dynamite?"

"No, not the least thing--the claim agent and I went over that several
times. There is a certain low cunning in him, a disposition to be tricky
in small things, but there's nothing to him--just grease. Of course, he
has the wires here all night, and I may underestimate him. By the use of
a code he might pull off something."

"Did the company accept his resignation?"

"Yes; they had to."

"And you don't attach any importance to his going now, further than this
love affair?"

Before he could reply the train he flagged for orders pulled past the
station. He obligingly took the tissue order pad out on the platform for
the conductor to sign. While he was gone I raised the burlap skirt
covering from the box. It stuck and I had to pull it loose to get it up.
It was undoubtedly a molasses case, a can that had fermented or been
punctured and had run out at the corners, but to be sure I took my
pencil point, gouged some of the stuff off the side, sniffed and then
tasted it. It was mixed with grit and dirt, but it tasted sweet and I
was satisfied.

"Ben, take a walk over to the quarry switch with me. I've got to get
the numbers of three cars standing there. I will introduce you to the
head quarry man and he will tell you all he knows about it--and that's
nothing at all. Still you might get a pointer there," he added.

To this I assented without comment, but wondered why he was so careful
to put everything in the safe and lock it; also the office door, when
the big center sash of the bay-window facing the main track was entirely
raised.

"You have light-fingered gentry here?" I queried.

"Oh, if anything were left lying around loose it might disappear. I
don't take any chances because I leave that window open so that the
conductors can throw their reports inside. There's one coming now," he
said, looking up the line as we picked our way over the main track and
two switches, toward the quarry under the bluff, about two hundred yards
distant.

"Hiram, have you any theory at all about the disappearance of this case
of dynamite?" I insisted.

"I don't believe it ever came here--I know the waybill called for ten
cases, and the conductor of the local checks up everything as it comes
out of the car on the platform, and they're careful and good fellows,
but that day he had a lot of freight; he must have checked in another
case to make up his ten--you know there's a lot of goods packed in cases
about that size. I'm not worried; that case of dynamite never came here,
and will show up somewhere else," he said definitely, and with complete
candor, as we approached the three flat cars loaded with granite on the
short quarry switch.

While he was taking the numbers I stopped and looked back at the
disreputable-looking station house and D. R. Morgan's store and
residence beyond, the pepper trees along the highway, and the dwindling
sized houses behind them. Two or three mule teams with cotton bales
could be seen creeping toward the station.

"Do you want to come over to the office and see the boss here? I must go
in and give him a copy of these bills," he explained, looking over at a
board shanty they called an office some distance away.

"No--I think not. Where do they store their explosives, Hiram?" I
asked, not noticing the usual isolated brick or stone receptacle.

"They tunneled into the granite bluff about four hundred feet down the
track. This road leads to it," he replied, pointing to a cart-track
which led in that direction.

"You go and deliver your bills--I will stay and make a little diagram or
map of the place." He glanced up the track at a heavily loaded
locomotive laboring down toward the station, but when the engineer gave
no signs of stopping he went over to the quarry office, while I took out
my pencil and pad to make my map and notes.

As I drew with my pencil the full length of the pad to represent the
railroad running midway between the river and the bluff, a most
extraordinary thing occurred. I could not believe my senses. The point
of my pencil sputtered like a parlor match, but before it reached the
end of the pad it exploded like a firecracker and blackened the paper.
In an instant I recalled having used my pencil to gouge some of the
sticky stuff off the box Hiram, Jr., was using as a seat. I then knew
positively it was the lost case of dynamite.




CHAPTER IX


IN an instant my senses were flogged into a stupendous state of
excitement, and my eyes must have bulged when I looked again at the
blackened pad and then at the pencil point that had been blown off as
though it had itself exploded. Then I thought of that crazy, love-sick
Gus who had been driving nails into the case, and I sickened. Surely
there is a Divine Providence that protects fools at least. Hiram had
scratched matches against that case!

My knees shook and my hand trembled, and I do not think I could have
uttered a sound. I looked for Strong. He was just coming out of the
quarry office. I took one long step to rush back to the station, but saw
the locomotive approaching, laboring hard with its immense load and
throwing clouds of black smoke from its stack that slowly expanded into
an immense dirigible in the still, sluggish atmosphere.

Should the conductor fling his report in at the window fastened to a
spike or a piece of granite and hit that case of dynamite--what would
happen? This had been done many times, and nothing occurred, but the law
of average must prevail in due time. A sickening sensation took
possession of me, and I became as rigid as stone. I felt as though ten
pounds of lead was in the pit of my stomach; my mind was filled with
monstrous forebodings, for one hundred persons were within easy range of
that case of explosive--including Anna Bell. I could not prevent Hiram's
arrest and trial for criminal negligence if the facts became known. But
Gus was the culprit, if any one.

As I looked back, Hiram was approaching. Somehow I did not want to tell
him. It seemed unnecessary, and I could save him that much apprehension.
I must have looked strange to him when he came up to where I stood as
one ossified. He took hold of my arm, and said fraternally: "Come on,
Ben; you look as white as if you had seen a ghost." But I could not
move. I only stared at the passing train.

Hiram plucked my sleeve. "Ben, you look as though you were standing
before a firing squad--just as I must have looked when the Gold-Beater
told me to 'git up and git.'"

I could only raise my hand warningly and stare at the passing train. It
seemed to me the longest train I ever knew one locomotive to haul, and
though it was moving at least twenty miles per hour it appeared to
creep.

I raised my hand to my forehead and found it dripping with perspiration;
Hiram grabbed my shoulders with both hands and shook me.

"Ben, have you gone stark mad?"

I had forgotten he was there and scarcely heard or felt him. I saw the
way-car emerge from the trees and approach the station. I could not help
raising my arm and point that way and did not lower it until we were
both thrown violently to the ground.

It is useless to try to describe the crashing of the intonation on my
ears. I thought my hearing was destroyed. Before the concussion threw us
prone there was a fleeting impression of a dense red flame that came
from the station. The instant the way-car passed it was lifted from the
track. I afterward learned it was detached from the cars ahead and
rolled over twice.

The man who said there are words to describe everything groveled in
ignorance. I saw Hiram running toward the station; he fairly flew, his
legs moving rapidly as though motor-driven. I saw he did not even relax
his speed when he ran around the deep hole where the station had stood a
few moments before, but continued to D. R. Morgan's store and beyond
that to the residence--or maybe he was going to the river to do as he
had advised the love-sick Gus. I only know what he told me about it
afterward. How the conductor and rear brakeman, after being rattled
about in the way-car as dice in a box, escaped with only bruises and
cuts was a wonder to me, and when I finally learned that the fatalities
were confined to a team of mules forced through the front of Morgan's
store, my relief was immense.

Gus escaped from the Morgan house in his night shirt, and ran down under
the river bank, cowering and cringing, along with most of the black
population. It was difficult to convince him he could go back to bed in
safety. The darkies eventually realized that it was not Gabriel's last
call, and were coaxed away from the protecting bank to help remove the
mules from the front of Morgan's wrecked store.

When Hiram returned from the Morgan residence he was fairly composed. He
came to me at once.

"This is pretty bad business; was any one killed?" he asked, bracing
himself.

"No, but it is a marvel."

"They will blame me?"

"Yes, likely, at first. Make no statement to any one. Was your safe
locked? How about cash and station records?"

"Yes, it is always locked; kept everything there since Gus acted luny;
but hasn't it been destroyed?"

"We'll go and see."

The hole where once stood the depot would easily contain a freight house
and more. Rails of the main track were ripped up and twisted as though
made of wheat straw. We found the safe apparently intact, sticking out
of the débris.

Railroad tickets were scattered about like fallen leaves. When he found
his ticket stamp he was greatly relieved and almost laughed. How had he
suddenly acquired such fortitude and acumen? Was it the Gold-Beater's
blood unleashed by work and decent living? When we found parts of the
new typewriter he laughed grimly, tossing his head backward.

I thought it best for Hiram that he should not know how it happened
until after he was grilled, as I knew he would soon be.

The Yazoo railroad did one thing quickly and well. In less than an hour
they had a wrecker on the job, and by utilizing the outside track had
established a detour which let Superintendent Kitchell's "special"
through from the north.

The wrecker reached into the débris with its long steel arm, picked up
the safe, and swung it into the superintendent's car. He told Hiram and
Gus they were relieved, and to come with him to New Orleans.

Hiram obeyed the order without a murmur, but nevertheless took plenty of
time to pack all of his belongings. He seemed to know he was through in
Quarrytown. I suspected he was rather deliberate in bidding the Morgan
family good-by, taking some time to do it, and was apparently much
excited and flushed when he boarded the superintendent's car and waved a
cordial good-by to a girlish figure who stood in front of the Morgan
store waving back at him.




CHAPTER X


THERE is something about the duties and ambitions of a railroad
superintendent that make him wish to appear inscrutable. The reason,
perhaps, is the man behind him who wants his job, or the man ahead whose
job he wants--or both. Anyhow, an attempt at inscrutability is the
typical refuge for the ignorant and the smaller the road the more futile
the attempt. Though I established my identity and purpose beyond a
doubt, he at first refused to allow me passage to New Orleans in his
car. He seemed to be suspicious of me, perhaps that I intended to
burglarize the safe, make off before his eyes with a locomotive or some
of the numerous scrap iron along the right-of-way. However, he finally
became rational and reversed himself.

His car was divided about the center, one end being private to himself
and his clerk. The other part was sort of a reception room, the
"anxious" seat for subordinates. In this apartment they had placed the
safe.

After we left Quarrytown, his undersized clerk emerged from the private
quarters and requested Hiram to open the safe, which he did promptly and
with a firm hand. The clerk took the contents to the superintendent.
Meanwhile Gus wore a very red face and sighed repeatedly, as though
already on the way to the penitentiary instead of New Orleans.

After examination of Hiram's records Gus was called in before the
Superintendent and given the third degree. When he came out he was
muchly upset and perspiring. Hiram, disgusted, looked upon him with
contempt, which feeling was intensified when the flabby Gus dropped into
a chair and glared back at him ominously. It may have been because of
the high speed of the light engine and the solitary car, but I surely
saw Gus's knees knock together from sheer fright. He had likely
overstated his alibi in an abandoned and frantic attempt to protect
himself to Hiram's disadvantage.

When the superintendent's clerk finally came to the door and beckoned
Hiram, the latter's attitude pleased me. Neither defiant nor
disrespectful, he walked into the presence of his superior, and when he
emerged from the interview he had not changed a hair.

Presently the little clerk stuck his head out of the dividing door and
beckoned to me in the same curt manner he had signaled the two men who
were under suspicion. I had no notion of being placed in the same
category and made it clear to the clerk that such was the case. At once
he became civil and led the way.

When I entered his sanctum the superintendent sat facing me at the flat
top desk in the corner of the car. He was a short, stocky man, and
evidenced much perturbation of mind by mopping his florid face. A
Flounder had been clapped on his head and when it came away it brought
all the hair under it, leaving only a slight fringe. His lips and
cherubic mouth were pursed and screwed up to simulate an executive air.
As he jerked his thumb indicating a wicker chair opposite him, I noticed
the little clerk sat at a small desk at the side of the car, with
notebook and pencil poised significantly.

"What have you to say about this matter?" he asked without delay,
withdrawing his eyes and winking violently as soon as they met mine.

"Nothing," I answered good naturedly.

"I understand you were here investigating the loss of the dynamite when
the explosion occurred. Have you no theory as to how it occurred?"

"No, I have no theory: I _know_ how it occurred."

"Would you"--he hesitated, looking down and bringing his chubby hands
together before him--"would you mind telling me what you know about it?"

"My information will not be available to the railroad through me, but if
you will dismiss your clerk, I will give you, as man to man, enough
information to ease your mind." In saying this I was thinking only of
Hiram.

After some hesitation, he nodded to the expectant clerk, who rose
instantly and left the apartment.

"Mr. Taylor--I believe you said your name was Taylor--this matter has
upset me, and I may have been rude," he apologized, and lapsed into the
attitude of a very decent fellow with troubles of his own. I then gave
him enough details to put Hiram right. He was immensely relieved and
pleased to gain such valuable information.

"You seem to know something of this young Strong?" he queried. My reply
was that I thought I had a very good line on Hiram Strong, Jr.

"His cash and station records are as clean and straight as a pin--he
seems to be rather under-classed and is capable of better things. What
are his antecedents?" The superintendent's interest was aroused.

"My knowledge does not extend beyond his father, a Southerner, now a
prominent financier in New York. It appears he decided that the only way
to make something of this boy was to throw him out entirely on his own
resources, and apparently the old gentleman's reasoning was good."

"I believe you are right; there is good blood in him. Our big trouble is
in making good railroad men from material without any blood base. We
frequently have to make 'a silk purse from a sow's ear,' which is
generally considered impossible--but we do it. Now the case of this
other fellow--can you conceive of a full grown man with no better sense
than to take a fifty-pound case of dynamite, drive nails into it, and
then use it as a chair? But I am greatly relieved to know just how it
happened, and if I can ever be of any service to you, don't fail to
make it known--will you?" he asked, rising formally, to end the
audience.

When I came out Hiram glanced at me searchingly, as though he would
learn something from my attitude. He had been absorbing information from
the train conductor. Hiram had developed a penchant for burrowing into
the confidence of every one and getting inside knowledge of their
difficulties.

At this time we succeeded in running around a freight train that had
been holding us back, and entered New Orleans so fast that conversation
was quite impossible.

Before we reached the station the clerk came out and told Hiram and Gus
to report at the office at nine the next morning, at which Hiram became
thoughtful, but not downcast.

He was able to get his old room next to mine, which pleased him, and
after opening the connecting door and cleaning up a bit, he came in and
gave me one of his strenuous whacks between my shoulders.

"Old man Ben, what do I draw to-morrow morning at nine?"

"Hiram, I don't know," I truthfully replied, working my shoulders where
he had hit me, "but I think you will be drawn and quartered and made
into good fertilizer; that's all you're fit for." At this he began to
cavort and caper about like a colt.

"Well, I don't mind telling you how I feel--I don't give a Continental
sou Marquis what I draw. I feel like fighting wild cats and buzz-saws.
Now that Anna Bell Morgan has promised to marry me, nothing else
matters."




CHAPTER XI


HIRAM and I were soon ready for the next thing in order--something to
eat.

"I suppose now you will want a porterhouse as big as Rhode Island----"

"And as thick as a London fog, with enough mushrooms to choke an
alligator," he broke in joyously. "Ben--I want you to know right now
that I think you are an infernal scoundrel. You know why my brand-new
typewriter blew up this morning and started the whole of Quarrytown over
into the river, incidentally putting the main line on the bum--and won't
tell me!" he added, squaring himself in front of me.

"You'd better wait until to-morrow and see what your sentence is before
you begin to accuse me," I replied, with a solemn wink which he couldn't
quite fathom.

"Oh, I suppose the 'Sauerkraut' and I will get bounced incontinently.
But what do I care? Had it not been for what happened this morning I
wouldn't know that a perfectly sweet and innocent girl really loves me.
I don't care if this part of the world comes to an end, you can't get me
into the doldrums. Besides, I know my hands are clean, and I have done
nothing for which they should blame me, but they may be looking for a
horrible example--a railroad is a railroad--eh, Ben?"

Then, assuming a more serious attitude, he continued:

"I've got a trade now--a way of making a living. I can walk up the
street and look any man or woman in the eye, as one who can account for
himself, who can do something useful, and at the same time possess the
love of a good girl--it's great, Ben! Do you know anything about such
things? I shall be no man's dog in the future. Already I've kicked the
can off of my tail, to use a figure of speech."

"I don't quite understand you, Hiram," said I, recalling the fact that
this was the second time he had referred to some such handicap.

"I've been up there on the river where it's so quiet that one's own
thoughts are as loud as grand opera, and I have figured it out," he
began, inserting his thumbs in the arm-holes of his vest and moving
over to look out of the window. "Of course, you understand, I used the
word dog as a figure of speech, but what I mean is that the Gold-Beater,
instead of making me work and learn something at the right time, gave me
money to spend, and then, along with old women and maidens, old men, and
gentry in general, he winked knowingly, indulgently, as I was
toboganning to Hades; then of a sudden, inside of a day, I am kicked
out, and told to go to work or--Blazes--he didn't care which--me with my
head as empty as a base drum and muscles as soft as a jelly fish. Oh,
I'm not exactly sore on the Gold-Beater--he did no worse than a million
others, but it's all wrong, Ben," he emphasized, turning his eyes upon
me.

I preferred not to take him seriously.

"Hiram, there's a store on the corner where we can get a soap box, and
I'll try to arrange with the police for a place in the square----"

"Oh, I see you are like the rest of them; your head is like a
cocoanut--a shell that you have to open with a hatchet; then some soft,
indigestible stuff, and real brains no more than the milk space inside.
Come on, let's get some food," he sneered, grabbing me by the arm, and
fairly rushing me out on the street.

He spent most of the evening talking about Anna Bell Morgan and his
plans. Like every man in love, he gave me a poor idea of her--but I
inferred she was about twenty-two, and from my distant view of her I
knew she did not run to flesh. I was ready to give her a high mark on
that score.

"Suppose you'll marry her at once?" said I, arching my brows knowingly.

"Oh, no; not yet; she says I must make good before she will marry me,"
he replied in answer to my query, "and besides, she has plans. She wants
to learn something, too. She is coming down to New Orleans to go to
school--her father has promised her that for a long time. Perhaps that
mule team going through the front of the store may delay things, but not
long. Anna Bell has been helping with his books and knows a lot for one
who has always been shut in."

The next evening when I heard him coming up the stairs four steps at a
time I backed into a corner. When he felt that way I knew I would get a
thump on my back equal to being kicked by an ox.

"Ben, you scoundrel, come out of there; I want to hit you. I've got
it--I've got it this time right!" he began, reaching for me excitedly,
and playful as a young lion. "I believe it's all your work--I'm
promoted--I didn't get bounced; the big chief did the handsome
thing--right here in New Orleans!" This was as coherent as he was able
to make himself.

"Sit down, Hiram;--what is he going to give you?"

"Going to give me? I've already got it; been at work all day. Four
tracks on the wharf. Got charge of all the perishable freight--meat
incoming and fruit outgoing--office to myself on the dock. First thing I
did was to wire Anna Bell--then went to it. Great job, Ben, and I'm
going to like it. Got a new typewriter to replace the one I lost. Beats
Quarrytown, and twice the money. Why don't you warm up and congratulate
me?" he almost shouted, rising quickly from the chair and reaching for
my shoulders again, but I dodged him.

"Already received a wire from Anna Bell," he continued. "She's a great
girl; the best ever. You sly old dog, you knew it was the box we were
using for a stool; I can see it now, but do you know, I somehow feel
sorry for Gus; he was just love-sick--he didn't know half the time what
he was doing. He was not so much to blame, but Anna Bell wasn't to
blame, either, for she never led him on."

"What did they do for him?" I interrupted, fearful that he would lose
his breath entirely.

"I did all I could to save him, and they didn't fire him. They gave him
another night station somewhere in the swamps. But say, I've got to step
pretty lively to keep up with this job--however, it won't be so bad when
I get things straightened out," he bubbled. At first I was afraid he had
been drinking, but it was just Hiram Strong, Jr., finding himself.

I had something special on for that night, or I think he would have
talked me to sleep. He made me promise to come around the next day and
see his layout. As I left him, he began writing to Anna Bell, telling
her all about everything.

When I saw him the next afternoon, he had on a hickory jumper and cap,
and was bossing the final cleaning of a long, roofed-over wharf, strewn
with broken cases, trash and dirt--the accumulation of years.

As soon as he saw me he began to smile. He was full of energy, urging
the negro laborers to take away the last load, so that he could leave on
time. He pointed out how he had charge of the tracks on the wharf. The
worst feature of the situation was that he had to be there at 4.30 a. m.
with Government meat inspectors, to let the packing-house people have
their meat early, but he was through about the middle of the afternoon,
as soon as the north-bound fruit was loaded.

"That means you must get out about four in the morning?"

"Yes, but I don't mind that."

"Hiram, it is not so long ago that you did not think seriously of going
to bed until that time."

"Yes, that's a fact--but," said he, sobering, "it seems an age and
appears to me now like a nightmare. Say, do you want to make an
investment?" he asked, changing the subject abruptly, and assuming the
air of good-natured bargaining that seemed so natural with him.

"Yes, what is it?"

"There is a barrel of filings the agent told me to sell for junk. He
says a foundry can use it to melt up. It's been kicking around here for
years. It weighs seven hundred pounds net; give me a cent a pound and
you can have it," said he, walking over to one side of the dock, a sort
of warehouse, and giving an old dingy barrel, lying on its bilge, a
shove with his foot.

Mechanically I did the same, and wondered why filings were packed in
that kind of a barrel. I leaned over to examine it more closely, and
noted the word "Filings" marked on each head. Then I suddenly recalled
that very day I had been asked to look inside of a storage place nearby,
the same being suspected of contraband operations, and this would offer
a genuine excuse. I examined the barrel more closely. It was very
strong, and old, scarred, mysterious. I planned to send it to a certain
suspected warehouse, and later would go there to draw a sample, thereby
gaining admittance without revealing my real mission.

"Will you deliver it, Hiram?"

"Yes, deliver anywhere you want; will put it on the back of that cart
right now," he replied, with a bantering smile.

"All right; here is your money; give me a receipted bill as the
railroad's agent," I said, walking around the barrel.

Hiram grabbed the money from my hand, and after a parting injunction to
the laborers went to his little office in the corner. I gave the heavy
barrel a shove with my foot and rolled it over. I wet my finger, pressed
it close to the chimes on a slight sifting that might be sand, but when
I brought my finger away it had turned black at the point of contact and
violet at the edges where the contact was less firm.

I was examining it critically when Hiram returned with the change and a
receipted bill. After giving the dray directions where to take the
barrel, and saying that he would be there soon to get the warehouse
receipt, Hiram intimated that he was through for the day.

"Wait until I change my clothes and I will go with you," he said,
hurrying to the little office.

"You see, this is a great system," he began to explain enthusiastically,
when he returned in his street attire. "These tracks hold a train of
refrigerator cars containing meat that comes in every morning on
passenger trains. The packing-house agents get it out first thing in the
morning while it is cool, for the early market. Then, you see, fruit
steamers from Gulf and South American ports come alongside the wharf,
load bananas, oranges, and so on, into the same cars. The refrigerator
system keeps them cool in the summer and prevents freezing in the
winter. Then they return north as special, fast, perishable. The
packing-house centers at Memphis, Chicago, Kansas City, and Missouri and
Mississippi River points get fresh fruit each twenty-four to thirty
hours. The train has got to be out of here before three p. m., after
which I'm through. Looks pretty nice when it's all cleaned up," he
enthused, waving his arm about the wide dock about eight hundred feet
long, paralleling the river, now swept and clean.

A refreshing breeze came from Algiers across the wonderful Mississippi,
now literally jammed with ocean-going and river vessels.

"I imagine it is very interesting work, but will require great care and
diligence," I suggested, as we walked out to Canal street and started
uptown.

"Yes, but not so hard. The fruit is easy, but the meat comes in with
three seals--a Government seal, the shippers' seal, and the railroad
seal. Three of us open the cars. A Government inspector breaks the
Government seal, I break our seal and the packing-house agent breaks
their seal. Then the car is checked on the spot. You see, there is not
much chance for error that way; besides, meat is all billed 'Shipper's
weight and count,' but the freight agent--you know I am under the New
Orleans freight agent--has cautioned me to be very careful. From the way
he acts and talks I think my predecessor got into some kind of trouble,
but no more trouble for your Uncle Dudley. What could be worse than
sitting on a case of dynamite every day and scratching matches on it?"

We had now turned off Canal Street, and arrived at the warehouse where
the barrel was sent. I was given a regular receipt, and we resumed our
way uptown.

"Hiram, there's something else in that barrel--it's not iron filings;
it's something that may be worth much more, and now I'm going to take
you in as a partner on it. Give me three-fifty, half what I paid, and we
will go fifty-fifty," I said, with little apparent concern.

Hiram stopped still and looked at me keenly, then gave me the money.

"Ben, if you were to tell me to jump in the river I would, knowing I
would get out and get something for it--after that deal at Quarrytown. I
started to say what Anna Bell said about you in connection----" He was
abruptly interrupted by our meeting a man from the Department who wanted
me at once, so I told Hiram I would see him later.




CHAPTER XII


THE next day I returned to the warehouse, and with great formality drew
samples from both ends of the barrel into small manila envelopes and, as
anticipated, this resulted in quite a talk with the owner of the place,
whom I interrogated closely, for I wanted to learn just what kind of a
business he was doing, although it seemed legitimate enough. The
Department said it was worth seven dollars to get that information, and
I intended to return Hiram's money.

The presumption was that some frugal machinist had saved his bench
filings until he had a barrel full and sold it as junk. But how did it
get there without an address marking?

The big interrogation point was up on everything at that time, owing to
the acute stage of the war. Steel filings were not soluble and would not
blacken my finger. The stuff looked more like rifle powder. I finally
decided to mail a sample to a chemist in New York for analysis.

The whirligig of events took me out of New Orleans the next day to
various Gulf ports and along the coast as far north as New York. In his
first communication Hiram said he was doing fine, and the remainder of a
six-page letter was a laudation of the charms of Anna Bell Morgan. There
in New Orleans she was realizing her lifelong ambition, and taking a
course, but he did not say what kind. Soon after I heard from him again
and he hinted at trouble, but finished with a lengthy encomium of the
Quarrytown young woman.

The third letter was unmistakably a storm signal, a cry for relief he
was sure I could give were I there; not a wail, but a courageous man's
request for suitable weapons with which to battle. "When did I expect to
get back?" Directly or indirectly he asked this question several times
in his communication, but did not mention Anna Bell Morgan, and by which
token I concluded his trouble lay in that quarter. When we did meet
again there was no mistaking his concern about his troubles, and his
esteem of my ability to aid him.

Three months had worked a most remarkable change. There was no doubt
that his buoyant optimism and sense of humor had received a shock.
About his up-curving, laughing, clean-chiseled mouth had crept a curious
drooping tendency. Fear, corroding, soul-destroying fear, had found a
footing there. His eyes had retreated under a shelf and his black brows
moved down, while his remarkably straight nose appeared more prominent;
his upstanding, wavy raven hair evidenced neglect, and instead of a
resounding whack on my back came the firm, sure, hearty grip of a man.

He would not let me look over my hat full of mail, much of which bore
many redirections and additional post-office stamps. I had retained my
room adjoining his while away, and it was there we were now seated.

"You know, Ben," he began, after leaning his chair back against the
window sill--there was a sort of dogged intensity in the manner he
raised both his feet to the corner of the table--"the general freight
agent hinted at trouble down on the wharf when I went there. I didn't
pay much attention because I knew I could do the work, and, being on the
level, why should I care what had happened previously?

"Well, for a month or more everything went on splendidly. Then I became
aware that my work was being scrutinized closely. I learned by accident
that all my records were checked and double checked, which was
altogether unusual. I seemed to be getting under a cloud, and the cloud
kept getting darker all the time. The specials came nosing about, first
from the consigning packing houses, then the railroad and finally the
Government inspectors from the Bureau of Animal Industry, under whose
supervision all meat is shipped interstate. I paid no attention except
to be more careful. If I did my work right, why should I care if the
packing-house agents and meat inspectors that break the seals on the
cars with me in the morning began looking at me as though I had horns
and a forked tail concealed about me?

"I lived quietly--in fact I had to. When you get out at three-thirty in
the morning, you've got to be in bed before nine; besides, the old life
doesn't appeal to me any more. In fact, I experience loathing and actual
nausea when I happen to think of it. And then, while my salary is pretty
good now, I had no money to spend when trying to save every cent. It is
true that for a long time I had my dinners with Anna Bell--you know she
is here--but lately I don't even do that.

"Now the losses run up into the thousands--and--and I am
suspected--suspected of being a thief, Ben----"

"How do you know you are?" I asked abruptly.

"Well, after a lot of this mysterious stuff, the agent, Mr. Powell--who
appears to be a pretty nice fellow--came over to my office and let it
out. He said he believed in me and had decided to tell me, but I think
it was just a smooth plan to trap me--to make me the goat. I was shy and
chary of him, and am yet.

"He told me that since I came the meat cars were checking up short, and
in one instance fresh hams were short ten or fifteen tons, and the
packing-house people, the Government, and the road's inspectors, who
have been working on it for months, were stumped.

"No, he didn't accuse me--he asked me to see if I couldn't help find
some clew to the crimes. But, Ben, maybe you can't quite see how much
alone I feel. You were away, I don't see Anna Bell any more, and I
haven't a soul to talk with about it."

"Where is Anna--Miss Morgan--now?"

"Oh, she's right here, and that is the devil of it. I was getting along
fine and so was she, and she promised, after she got a little further
advanced and I had saved a little money on which to start, we were to be
married. But, after this infernal thing came up, I not only stopped all
plans, but quit going to see her. I made up my mind not to go near her
as long as I was suspected of being a thief."

"Maybe you are going too far--are you sure she could not----"

"This is no youthful escapade, to make young women smile and older ones
nudge each other and the Gold-Beater pull his check book with a half
hearted protest. This is a felony, a penitentiary offense. I may be
railroaded up against bars and perhaps stripes.

"Anna Bell Morgan is as pure as she is beautiful, and if I don't get out
of this clean, I love her so much that I don't want it known that she
ever knew me. It would be the act of a dog, and a downright
coward--and, I am not a coward." He ended by glaring at me with burning
eyes, as though I might have been the author of his troubles.

"But, Hiram--it may be you are somewhat morbid, and magnify the gravity
of the matter--there is always a way out for clean hands--pinch and kick
yourself into a normal condition and answer a few questions as though it
were another man's trouble."

"Well, I will admit at the sight of you I do feel better," he said,
still keeping his feet almost as high as his head, on the corner of my
table. "I am on the rack--go ahead with your third degree stuff," he
said, with a trace of a smile as though daring me, and pulling out a
plebeian pipe, began filling it.

"When did you see Miss Morgan last?"

"Five weeks ago to-morrow."

"Have you written or telephoned?"

"Neither, I tell you----"

"All right," I said, raising my hand in tolerant good humor; "you feel
certain there were shortages before your time on the wharf?"

"Yes, I know it--that's why my predecessor lost his job."

"But you don't know just what has been done?" I asked, idly fingering my
mail before me.

"No, I don't; but Mr. Powell, the agent, said the packing-house and
railroad specials were at a standstill, and the government was so short
of men they could not do anything just now. He also said that he had
personally asked the local office of the Department of Justice to take
it up, and while it was something outside of their line, they promised
to coöperate as soon as they had men available. Hang it!" he exclaimed,
passing his fingers through his hair, "it ought not to be so hard to
smoke 'em out."

"Hiram, I will see what can be done to-morrow. In the meantime lose that
'going-to-hell-sure' long face, and cheer up. I've been living at Barns
& Sheds for three months, taking Greek insolence and grease at Greek
restaurants until I feel polluted inside, and want one of those----"

"Real porterhouse steaks," he interrupted, laughing as though they had
become only a memory.

"Give me a few moments to glance over this mail before we go--here,
this ought to interest you, Hiram," I said, discovering one from the
chemist to whom I had sent a sample from our partnership barrel in
storage.

"Why--how?" he asked, looking sharp as though expecting a joke.

I tore open the letter, first noticing it was nearly three months old.
The chemist had replied promptly. I read aloud:

     "Your sample suffered a little in the mail and is too small. Will
     you oblige me by forwarding a larger one by parcel post? If my
     guess is right, the market is particularly bare of this class of
     goods, and I can assure a prompt sale at fancy prices."

"You mean that old barrel of junk--those filings you made me pay
three-fifty for a half interest in your foolishness?" he asked, with an
incredulous smile.

"Hiram," I began jestingly, "that barrel will make us rich some day; but
seriously, I do know it is not castings nor junk. However, this letter
is now three months old, and perhaps our best chance has gone."

That night I wired a certain person a code message to the effect that I
was willing to handle the New Orleans case. It was either that or some
day I'd miss being made best man at Anna Bell's wedding.




CHAPTER XIII


THERE was little trouble getting the assignment; in fact, the
authorities were glad some one was willing to tackle the case, for it
had become a nightmare and a stench, but it was a case of "don't begin
unless you can finish it." Others had given it up, perhaps because of
the press of other work. I was amply warned that it was a hard nut to
crack, and I had a fair chance of making a failure of it. Yes, the
railroad and packing-house people would coöperate and do all they could.
I was told to go over and see Mr. Powell, the New Orleans agent, who all
but went crazy over it, and work out a plan with him.

Before night I was on the payroll of the Yazoo, with a private office
and a sub-title of some sort under the auditor, having decided to begin
on the perishable freight records, or rather it was necessary for me to
have them under my hand, as they were set down each day, though with
little confidence that they would yield results.

"I don't know what kind of a clerk I can give you, for the whole system
is short of help, but I will do the best I can," Mr. Powell assured me,
placing at my disposal the voluminous reports on the cases settled, and
those that were still pending, unsettled, with the shippers.

There was hardly room for the female clerk and myself to move about in
the room after the perishable records were all in there--big volumes of
yellow tissue made it look like a storehouse, though they only extended
back to the time of the first loss.

In addition to this arrangement it was generally given out that the
night business on the wharf tracks had been so largely increased by the
heavy movement of fruit that an extra man was to be put on to work
opposite Hiram, who went on at four a. m., and came off at three p. m.
As the general office was uptown, more than a mile from the dock tracks,
it was unlikely that I would be noticed working in the dual capacity of
night clerk on the wharf and something or other under the auditor in the
general offices. But in this we soon found we had miscalculated.

When Hiram learned the arrangement he was jubilant. In an incredibly
short time he had come to look on my capacity to clear up a mystery as
unlimited. The joy of anticipation supplanted fear, but he did not fully
recover his old, buoyant, optimistic self.

He never mentioned Anna Bell Morgan, but I was sure he thought of her
about all the time he was not busy.

"Ben," he began one night, laughing, "did you send your friend in New
York another sample of those steel filings on which we are paying
storage? I believe you will soon graduate into the 'Prince of conmen,'
or a second-story worker. I tell you it takes a pretty good man to stop
me in the middle of the street and subtract three-fifty from my jeans
for a half-interest in a barrel of junk."

"No, not yet, but I expect to soon."

But after I had been working in the dual rôle of wharf night clerk and
assistant auditor for a week and nothing happened, he began to get
uneasy, but somehow did not doubt the final outcome.

We usually ate dinner together, then we would come down to his little
office in the corner of the wharf and he would stay with me until his
early bed-time.

"How long are you going to stand this night-and-day business? I don't
see when you get any sleep?" he asked, evidently edging over for some
information, not volunteered.

"One doesn't need much sleep on a loafing job like this. You see, there
is little to do here nights, and less in the day time, so I manage
pretty well." I had told him little about my office work.

"Why can't I stay here every other night for you, so that you can get
more sleep? I can stand it."

"I don't look as though I was getting thin, do I? By the way, who is
that fat party I notice about here occasionally, who seems to be
interested in loading for Becker & Co.?"

"You mean that fellow whose face looks like over-ripe cow's liver, and
waddles, and whose clothes are smelly?"

"Yes, I think that is the man," I replied, smiling.

"That is Becker himself. He buys all the rejects of the city's provision
inspectors and almost anything that's got grease or fertilizer in it. He
used to load that stuff during the day, but they got to making a fuss
about his taking it through the street and made him handle it at night,
when graveyards hold their noses. Gad, I always hate to see him coming."

"Becker & Co., fertilizer works?"

"Yes, somewhere up the river."

The next morning I was late and was hurrying into the building occupied
by the auditor, in which I had my office. It contained more than four
stories, was about two hundred feet long, with a wide hall through the
center of each floor. The room assigned to me was on the third floor,
and was reached by narrow stairs.

When I passed the second floor I saw Becker at the far end of the hall
talking to a young woman clerk, and I was sure I saw him pinch her
cheek, and furthermore, I was absolutely certain that the object of his
frolicsome caress was my clerk, who entered the office immediately after
me. She appeared to be somewhat flustered, and her cheeks flamed with
color.

The incident was not particularly significant, but enough to make me
want to know all about Mr. Becker, of Becker & Co., fertilizer
manufacturers, and also about the young woman who compiled my data and
wrote my letters.

I recalled that our association had been so perfunctory that I failed to
remember her name. She took dictation well, was a good typist and her
records were neat. Withal she worked hard. Like good oil on bearings,
she made the wheels go round without attracting my attention.

Ideal office assistants try to make themselves into humanized machines.
Miss Bascom had accomplished this so well that I had to inquire about
her name even after a week's service.

My desk was near the hall entrance, while hers was over near the window,
partially obscured by stacks of records. She was, on closer inspection,
more than comely, and the way she punched the keys of the typewriter
indicated she was purposeful--not an accident. That she could allow a
greasy, uncouth man like Becker to make up to her seemed absurd. More to
amuse Hiram, I mentioned the matter to him that night.

"My Heavens," said he, holding his nose between finger and thumb, "it
would take a pretty strong stomach to stand for that fellow--but you
can't tell! Maybe there are enough dollar signs on his face to make up
for his smelly clothes and age. But, even in my palmiest days of riot,
the 'beauty and beast' idea was a shock--too much 'bargain and sale' to
suit me"--and I believe he was wondering if Anna Bell Morgan would ever
succumb to such a love for the sake of money.

"Hiram, I don't quite sympathize with your attitude toward Miss Morgan.
Are you sure you are doing the right thing?"

"Perhaps not," he replied, thoughtfully, as we walked down the wharf.
"It may be the pendulum has swung the other way and I am at the farthest
point away from her. But after all, that is something one must settle
for himself. She promised to wait in absolute silence until I had the
matter straightened. And again, perhaps you don't understand--they have
a different code here."

I waited for him to continue, looking westward across the shipping in
the river at the setting sun, now enlarged into a great ball of dull red
fire. Another moment and it would perish from sight behind the waters of
the Gulf.

"You see, Ben, down here they have a way of making a man feel he is
either something or nothing. If something, he respects women, and must
protect them. Women are either good or bad. If good they receive every
consideration; it is expected--demanded. The ways of New York would not
be tolerated here, and it is perfectly right they should not be.

"Mormonism, and other degeneracy, usually dubbed 'Bohemianism,' doesn't
go here. Fathers, big brothers, or next of male kin stand guard for the
women of the South. When they put a bullet through a licentious
scoundrel the judge shakes hands with them. And it's the same way about
honor. If a man's honesty is in question he has no business to
compromise a good woman's name by forcing his attentions upon her. When
he has cleared himself it is time enough to straighten things out. So,
if our love will not stand the strain of waiting it's no good--not love,
at all."

The next day at the noon hour I saw my female clerk in a certain
situation that led me into all sorts of information. Miss Bascom of the
golden locks was openly dangling her feminine charms before Chief Clerk
Burrell.

I had only to glance through an open door from the hall on my floor into
a long room occupied by a lot of clerks of which he had charge as chief.
Evidently he was a married man, and of a species easily susceptible.

I would have continued to think it was a case of old-fashioned man
hunting to win free board and a little credit at the stores, had it not
been reported by a man detailed at my request to see just what kind of
smoke Mr. Becker was making during his stay in New Orleans. There was a
lengthy conference that night between Burrell and Becker, of Becker &
Company, with liberal quantities of gin fizz on the side, in a private
room back of a prominent hotel bar.

This was exceedingly interesting and filled with possibilities--a party
of three, two men and a woman, an unusually attractive young woman at
that, and all were interested in the movement of freight, with this
difference, that Becker might be the chief beneficiary, and both men
might be rising to the lure of beauty.

I spent most of that night looking up the antecedents of this
interesting trio and did not go down to the wharf, but went to bed just
before Hiram arose to go to work. Burrell, I found, lived with his wife
and two children and was inclined to be sporty; Becker was a rounder,
and the girl was just a clerk before she came to me.

I heard Hiram leaving the house and had not been sleeping long before a
messenger came from him, requesting me to hurry down to the wharf. I had
asked him to send for me the instant the next irregularity was observed.

He was very much excited when I got there, as were also the Government
meat inspector and the packing-house representative. The three of them,
together as usual, had broken the seals of a Kansas City car of fresh
sausages in ten-pound cartons, and about half of it, from the center of
the car, was gone. This could be seen at a glance.

The four of us went into Hiram's little office at the corner of the
wharf. He was so furious that he had become stoical, even sullen, which
was promptly misunderstood by the Government inspector and the
packing-house agent as proof of guilt. In order to protect him and get
a full expression from them I took the attitude of favoring their view.
He did not quite understand this and felt it keenly.

Each of them was ready, like dogs held in leash, to spring at his
throat. But it might have been a sorry leap: Hiram was magnificent under
such fire. Surely the Gold-Beater had given him good blood and a
fighting spirit if nothing else.

"Strong," I began, in a somewhat authoritative manner, "have you
preserved the railroad's seal that was on this car?"

"Yes--here it is--I have been saving and marking every one."

Then it developed that the Government inspector and the packing-house
agent had been doing the same thing, and all three were handed to me.
After that, at my suggestion, we went out and removed the seals from the
unopened door on the other side of the car, which I took charge of after
they had been carefully marked. I then suggested they go about their
duties and routine as though nothing had happened.

I had decided on a secret, drastic inquisition. The ax must fall now
and cut where it would, the details of which shall be avoided, only so
far as they concern this son of a man who was given the credit of
beating gold--who owned the gold instead of it owning him.

I could still feel Hiram's flesh quiver under my touch when I tried to
assure him, by a pressure on his arm, as I was leaving.

Notwithstanding the fact that it was four o'clock in the morning, I
began the job by summoning by telephone the rotund and hairless
Superintendent Kitchell from his bed, and reminding him of his promise
to help me at any time. Besides, this was his funeral anyhow, that was
to be held at ten o'clock that morning in Hiram's little office on the
wharf.

I then demanded the presence of every man who had handled that car--the
loaders, the icers, weighmasters, conductors, dispatchers and the
yard-men between Kansas City and New Orleans, something over a thousand
miles of road. Those who could not be there in so short a time must
telegraph a transcript of their records, in affidavit form. The sworn
records were finally decided on as the only thing possible in so short a
time.

"I will come down to the general office and start the necessary
machinery, but the time, less than six hours, is too short--it can't be
done," he said, evidently lashing himself out of the drowse and
comprehending the magnitude of the order.

"The iron is hot and now is the time to strike," I warned.

"All right, we will do the best we can. I'll get the agent and be there
anyhow."

"No; that's just what I don't want. This investigation must not attract
attention. Your presence there would only advertise it. After we are
through you can have all the data, and do as you wish," I insisted,
having in mind to assume an attitude that would allow Hiram to work out
his own salvation if possible. The only way is to expose a weak or
yellow spot, so that he would see it for himself.

Superintendent Kitchell again demonstrated that he was not an accident.
Before ten o'clock that morning he had accomplished almost the
impossible. The wire that Hiram worked for a while was soon hot with
sworn statements from every man who had anything to do with that car,
from its loading until it landed on the wharf. It remained for Hiram,
the Agent of the Bureau of Animal Industry, and the local packing-house
agent to open the car.

I glanced over the mass of stuff before handing it to Hiram.

The shipping clerk of the packing-house swore that there was put in the
car six thousand cartons, each ten pounds net weight, of prime loose
sausages. This was verified by the affidavit of a checker, then a second
and third checker, before the doors were sealed by agents of the
Government, packing-house and railroad agents. The railroad
weighmaster's figures on the track scale verified that. It was loaded
and iced in zero weather, so that no delay was necessary for re-icing
all the way to New Orleans.

A verified transcript of train sheets of all the train dispatchers of
both roads showed that the car came in a solid train of perishable
provisions, over the Kansas City, Fort Scott & Gulf Railroad to Memphis,
without longer pause than to change engines at the end of each division,
where it was delivered to the Yazoo and weighed again--which weight
tallied with the Kansas City weight--and traveled into New Orleans on
passenger time. All this without incident or delay of any kind, and
delivered on the unloading wharf track at 2:30 a. m.

When I took the records to Hiram and told him what they were, I found
him going about his work as usual. His attitude was disconcerting. Were
his hands clean? One could have taken him for a man who had been caught
with the goods. If guilty, I had little chance to shield him.

He carried his head erect, his stride was sure and determined, but he
had a glitter that indicated a tumult inside, with an attitude of
suspicious aloofness. The erstwhile mirthful smile on his lips was now
supplanted by one of sarcastic severity, but a smile that evidently
meant much. I would have given the world just then to know what.
However, all he would say was: "Ben, this is a devil of a mess and I am
in the center of it."




CHAPTER XIV


AFTER leaving the sworn records with Hiram I started for my temporary
offices uptown. I wanted him to have time to thoroughly digest them.

At that time we had not been at war long and the public mind of New
Orleans was in a very excited condition. The big interrogation point was
raised on every person whose acts did not bear instant analysis.
Pacifists and enemy aliens were promptly and vigorously coerced into
outward decency at least. No trifling was permitted.

These continued thefts from the railroad might mean much more than a
risky enterprise for profit. I was given to understand that while time
enough would be allowed, definite results were expected soon.

When I reached my office, my clerk, Miss Bascom, seemed to be expecting
me. Her greeting, though intended to be casual, was so gladsome I
wondered if she was trying to practice on me the same brand of coquetry
she used on the chief clerk--Burrell--or was it to be a wheedling
process? Surely I was justified in expecting something and I awaited the
onset with great interest, convinced that she was playing a rôle. One of
Miss Bascom's duties was to prepare for me each day a record of every
car that arrived on Hiram's wharf or departed therefrom.

The first sheets of outbound records of the day were of cars from Becker
& Co. to Becker & Co., Becker's Landing, Louisiana, and the time of
departure was marked 3:30. I began to wonder if it was purely accidental
that they were on the top; then came an exciting moment when I recalled
that a car of sausages arrived at 2:30. But the insuperable difficulty
of making the transfer, replacing the seals, and the like, reassured me.

I gave Miss Bascom the two slips and requested her to get me a memo of
the contents of those two cars. As she went about the errand I wondered
how such a refined looking young woman could ally herself with that
carcass of rancid tallow whose very clothing emitted an odor which
advertised his business.

Miss Bascom returned in a few moments and laid the two slips before me
without comment, hesitating at the end of my desk, indicating interest
and willingness to be of further assistance. On the bottom of each slip
was delicately penciled "Soap Grease." I knew that plebeian soap grease
was worth more than prime lard had been a short time ago, but why the
precaution of shipping in refrigerator cars?

"Do you happen to know this shipper--Becker & Co.?" I decided to
venture, uncertain whether Miss Bascom knew I had seen them together in
the hall.

Miss Bascom backed to the end of my desk and laid a very pretty elbow on
top, the better to display her figure--palpable acting, so it seemed to
me. Her speech had a Southern accent which lends itself to
dissimulation. "Yes," she replied, "he is an important patron of the
road, and is about the office considerably. Everybody knows him." She
did not meet my eye, but looked at the door leading to the hall
expectantly. At that moment a boy burst into the room wholly
unannounced, laid a telegram addressed to me on my desk, and was gone as
quickly as he came.

"I wonder why they ship that kind of freight in refrigerator cars--the
rate is much higher," I said, shoving the telegram back unopened.

"I think I heard him tell Mr. Burrell one day he could afford to pay
extra in order to receive his freight the same day," she replied with a
naïveté difficult to simulate.

"Miss Bascom, stop the work you are now on and prepare an abstract from
these records of all freight sent by refrigerator cars to Becker & Co.
during the last twelve months," I requested after weighing the chance
that she might be working with Becker and Chief Clerk Burrell and the
disadvantage of their knowing through her that an investigation was
proceeding along those lines.

Miss Bascom seemed unwilling to think the interview ended or perhaps was
disappointed it had yielded so little, but finally removed her elbow,
and, nonplussed, passed her small white hand over her eyes and hair, so
unusually bronze that one might suspect that it was "chemically pure."
As she slowly passed behind me to her desk she half murmured to herself,
"I wish I were a man."

"I suppose you would be wearing a soldier's uniform if you were," said
I, assuming a semi-preoccupied attitude.

"That's on the basis that a uniform makes a dull person look
intelligent," she rejoined, looking seriously out of the window over her
desk.

I was reading my telegram and was too much astonished at its contents to
reply. It was from the chemist in New York to whom I had sent a larger
sample from the partnership barrel Hiram and I had in storage.




CHAPTER XV


THE dispatch was very interesting indeed. I was about to go down and
show the telegram to Hiram, the contents of which would astonish him
more than it did me, at least cheer him up a bit, but when I reached the
street something happened to intensify my interest in Becker & Co. I ran
into a man I very much wanted to talk with.

"Taylor, you are just the man I want to see," said he. "Come to lunch
with me." It was the chief's assistant who grabbed me by the arm and led
me into a nearby restaurant.

"I have just left the chief," the assistant continued, after we had
seated ourselves, "and he has given me a hard nut to crack; complaints
have piled up from wholesale and retail dealers that bad meat, hams and
lard--even horse-meat--have appeared in this market, which bear the
genuine stamps and tags of the Bureau of Animal Industry, and it has
started a devil of a row," he whispered across the table. "You are still
working on that car robbery case, and I thought you might pick up
something for me. Who is Becker & Co.?" He ended by asking this question
so suddenly that I could scarcely conceal my astonishment.

"I know there is a concern by that name, with a plant up the river
somewhere. They are quite heavy shippers," I replied easily.

"You can get the freight records and perhaps give me a line on their
operations, can't you?"

I knew then that Becker & Co. had been mentioned in some of the
complaints. Before parting I promised to have some information for him
by the next morning.

I spent the rest of the afternoon obtaining commercial reports on them
and making arrangements to have their mail censored, and I did not reach
my room until dinner time.

The door was open as usual between our rooms. Glancing into the other
room, I saw Hiram lying on his bed asleep, which was something unusual
for him, and there was something about his color that drew my attention
at once. He did not stir when I came alongside the bed.

He was lying on his back with his head comfortably pillowed and his
arms relaxed at his sides like a corpse. His face was bloodless, and his
high, wavy black hair intensified by the white pillow. It reminded me of
the time I saw him in the hospital at Hampton, Virginia, after his
fearful experience in firing on the steamer; but his body had now filled
out and was even athletic.

He was either very tired or--or had he lapsed into drink again--or was
it drugs?

Though usually a light sleeper, my touch on his wrist did not arouse
him; his pulse was regular, and bending low, I could not detect the
fumes of liquor. No, Hiram Strong, Jr., was just tired out--worried into
fatigue that called for sleep. He was going through the fire that either
refines or destroys. Would he stand it? That was my anxiety as I
returned to my room to prepare for dinner.

"Ben, is that you?" he called presently in a sleepy voice.

For answer I came to the door, wiping my hands and looking interested.

"I fell asleep waiting for you to come, Ben. I want to tell you that I
acted the damned cad this morning." Then coming over, he put two strong
hands on my shoulders and looked straight at me with clear eyes.

"Ben," he continued, as though suddenly realizing he was taking himself
too seriously, "I know you are on the square with me, I know you are
doing everything you can for me, but your movements are maddeningly
deliberate. You act as though you were an old-stager at the game and was
going sure. But I feel like I was bound hand and foot with these fellows
darting javelins into my skin every time they look at me; and you know I
can't see Anna Bell Morgan until----" He dropped his hands from my
shoulders and looked out of the window. "Perhaps I am expecting too
much--you cleaned up that Quarryville matter so----"

"But, Hiram, this is a big matter, reaching God only knows how far. It
involves a number of men, clever in crookedness, and perhaps women.
There's more to it than a bone-headed, love-sick German and a case of
dynamite. The amounts involved are big, and it must move slowly. I know
how you feel, but you've got to grin and bear it. But about Anna Bell
Morgan, I think you are foolish. If she is the kind of girl you should
marry she would want very much to stand by you. But if you adopt a
drastic code of your own and insist on living up to it, how can she or
any one help you in that respect?"

"Ben," he began deliberately, after taking a chair and cocking himself
back against the window-sill, "I know that Anna Bell Morgan wants to
help me. I am nursing the delusion, perhaps, that she would give one of
her hands--make any sacrifice--but I don't believe a real man, under
similar circumstances, would bid for help from the woman whom he really
loves. If this thought proves a delusion I must stand it somehow, but I
don't believe I will ever have faith in a woman again. I am beginning to
see things differently now. I can see more and more why the Gold-Beater
was given that name by friend and enemy. He fought fair and in the open
and took punishment without a whimper. Ben, he made a mistake with me,
but he gave me a decent sense of honor, and lately I realize he has
given me a good-sized body that will stand real punishment. No, sir, my
'drastic code,' as you call it, has got to go. And now, with that out of
my system, I am going to give you a real shock."

Then, with exasperating deliberation, he lighted his pipe, drew his
feet up on the lower front rungs of his chair, meanwhile watching me as
I walked back and forth before him intensely interested.

"I am going to quit the railroad and----"

"No, you are not--not now----" I warned. But he interrupted me as I
paused in front of him, pointing a finger at him, and I soon saw that I
might as well have raised my arm to stay the flood of Niagara.

"I expected you to protest until----"

"But they will think----"

"I don't care a damn what they think now. I've got to do it and you've
got to help me," he said with set jaw.

"But just now that would be suicide----"

"No--not after I explain--I don't intend to run away--I am going to stay
right here the remainder of my life if necessary and clear this thing
up; I've got to. But I can't do it working all day until I'm woozy. Now,
you have got to help me."

"But I think you are hasty----"

"You won't think so after I have stated my case. I am going to
constitute you the court, attorney for the prosecution and defense, and
the jury; in fact, give you all constitutional rights except my right
of appeal; that will enable a quick decision and that's what I'm after
right now--before we go to dinner," he ended with his wonderfully
contagious smile that seemed impossible only a few minutes ago.

He continued to sit cocked back in his chair against the window-sill
with his legs drawn up so his feet rested on the lower rungs, blowing
smoke at me, as I paced back and forth before him across the room.

"Well--go ahead," I said finally.

"First let me tell you why you've got to help me. You have the know-how
and more general experience, and can do it. I take it you are 'in right'
in New Orleans. You can help me when you are helping yourself. I believe
in you thoroughly--except--except perhaps when you go off on a little
tangent, like you did when you put that barrel of iron filings in
storage, and made me pay half----" He hesitated, smiling broadly. I did
not reply, and he continued, "but even that has its advantages, because
it makes me smile whenever I think of it and that's worth something. And
that brings me to the second reason why you must help me. There is
something about your long nose that seems to smell out things pretty
well, your general attitude toward me and everything, that awakens a
sense of humor. If they put me in jail, and you come to see me, I
believe I could see the humorous side of that, even. Now do you
understand?" he asked, relieved and confident.

"I am waiting to hear why you propose to resign," I insisted, ignoring
his complimentary terms as directed toward me.

"I'll make that short enough--as long as I stay at work there I don't
have time or ginger to do anything else. I believe that Becker is the
head of the stealing--I have got several tips lately and I believe he's
the man. Several train-men, who learned I was in trouble, informed me
that his place up the river is queer. In ordinary water it is an island,
between the track and the river, the switch running to it over piles,
and several times when they rode cars into his unloading doors they have
seen things they believe will bear investigation. But it's going to be
hard to get into the old fox's place. He receives by rail from here and
the north, too, but ships out everything by an old boat on the river."

"Now"--hesitated Hiram shrewdly--"that car of sausage that was short
the other night sat on track One--exactly opposite two cars that were
loaded for him on track Two. The space between cars on those two tracks
is so narrow that I was nearly killed one day between them; the time
between the arrival of the sausage car and the departure of his cars was
only a little more than half an hour, but it was between 2:30 and 3:30
a. m., when no one was there, and I believe the transfer was made in
that time--do you follow me?"

"Yes--go ahead. But what about the three seals being intact when you
opened the car?"

"I knew you would ask that--but I believe, with help from those 'higher
up,' and the seals could be had--stolen of course. There are two hard
nuts to crack; one is the seals, and the other is to get into his
place--and that's where you must help."

"Now here is another funny thing." Hiram hesitated to bring from his hip
pocket an envelope. "Some one who knew my full name sent this to me,
care of the office," and he read from a typewritten slip of paper,

"Why does Becker & Co. get freight by rail and ship out only by water?"

I stopped in front of him and reached for the slip to examine it
critically.

"Hiram--let me keep this?" It looked like railroad stationery.

"Yes--help yourself."

"Have you any plan to get into Becker & Co.'s plant?" I asked, recalling
that I had not mentioned that I suspected them, and that this was the
third definite lead in that direction.

"He is a foxy old rat and would take any ordinary bait off a trap and
send it to you by mail. The only thing I can think of is a boat--maybe I
didn't tell you it is a fertilizer plant and uses lots of dead animals.
With a boat to take him some of this stock, one might finally get to
carrying his river freight at a cut price and that would open the door
wide."

"But boats that will carry even a little freight are scarce now."

"Yes, I know that--but we've got to have a boat. Buy it, build it, or
dig one out of the mud somewhere."

"You have made out a pretty good case, Hiram. I will think it over--in
the meantime this may interest you," I said, handing him the telegram I
had received from the chemist. Though half fearing it a joke, he sprang
from his chair and took it eagerly.




CHAPTER XVI


STANDING in the middle of the floor Hiram read the missive several
times. He seemed amazed as well as incredulous. Finally, as he read it
with evident desire to grasp its meaning thoroughly, his face lighted up
with joy. "Bully stuff!" he exclaimed. Then he read it aloud:

     "The larger sample of color received. The market just now is
     particularly bare of this grade. Can get you unusual price of a
     dollar a pound. If satisfactory ship Morgan Line, send memo. of
     weight and will forward check at once.

                                     "MORGENSTEIN & BRUN."

"Then it's not steel filings--you never told me," he said finally,
laughingly grasping my shoulders.

"You insisted it was filings, your railroad insisted it was junk, and
you sold it for junk as instructed, so why the argument?"

"No argument at all, Ben; the Morgan Line steamer sails to-morrow. Sell
the stuff and buy a boat. I've saved some money, but boats are scarce
and high. I haven't enough--what d'ye say, eh?"

"You haven't found a boat to buy yet, and maybe you will not need
one--besides, if Morgenstein & Brun offer a dollar a pound and are in a
hurry, it may be worth more--I only asked them for an analysis to know
for certain what it was. I didn't ask for a market," I insisted
formally.

"But you may miss the only chance--and--we need the money. We've got to
have a boat," he said, visibly disappointed.

"So far we are out less than a ten-dollar bill and can afford to take a
chance--as I say, we must first decide definitely that a boat is
necessary, and then the hardest part comes--everything from a row-boat
up is working overtime now."

"Maybe you are right, but if it was up to me I would sell it so
infernally quick it would make 'em dizzy," he replied, manifestly
consumed with the single idea of releasing himself from suspicion.

"Don't resign, Hiram," I said, hesitating, before going out of the room
to dine, "until I have had a chance to speak to the Super to-morrow. I
think I will be able to arrange it so that you can be released to
devote all of your time to clearing up this matter and remain in the
employ of the company. You will see the decided advantage of the plan,
later."

"All right, Ben--but bear in mind that as soon as I get out of this I am
going to quit 'em for good; there's something else for me to do in this
town. The railroad game is too strenuous at best for the returns. It's
good drill and I'm glad to get the experience and discipline, but the
returns are a minus quantity."

During the meal he mentioned his father several times, to whom he always
referred as "the Gold-Beater," but he more frequently mentioned Anna
Bell Morgan. In fact, had I not purposely changed the subject he would
have talked of her constantly. I could not tell him I thought it a great
error for him to completely suspend communication with her. A big city
offers enticements that a country-bred girl does not always understand
at first. I could see he writhed under the stigma of being thought a
member of a gang of crooks, and was most powerfully propelled by two
most laudable motives. He wanted to redeem himself in his father's eyes,
but most compelling was his desire to be able to go back to Anna Bell
Morgan with clean hands. His affection for her was deep and sincere, a
mighty thing to him, accounted for in his prominent, broad, round chin,
but difficult to harmonize with his conduct during his first score of
years.

He seemed to sense my perplexity.

"Ben," he began, with every evidence of chastened bigness, "I have been
trying to discover one single good reason why I should impose my
personal affairs on you, unless it is because you let me. So far, I have
been unable to reciprocate in a single instance. I feel at times as
though I am a great care and trial to you--a responsibility the
Gold-Beater would assume if things were right. I feel as though I were
on my way but with some one else at the wheel and compass, with a
disturbing and perhaps ungrateful feeling that the navigator is on
uncharted waters, and is himself in doubt. I think I must have a yellow
streak up my back as broad as the moral law."

At this I chose to assume a lighter attitude. Scanning him smilingly, I
replied, "Can't you see that just now, at least, my professional
reputation is at stake?"

"That's so, Ben. You take to investigation as a duck to water and I
believe you are much better suited for that than sea life. But, my dear
fellow, you move so maddeningly slow and deliberate," said he; but I
made no reply. I could have said:

"Real genius and cleverness apparently do move so slow and deliberate
that most any one would feel as though he could do much better." But I
merely laughed as we arose to leave the little French restaurant where
we had dined.

There was no difficulty in arranging for Hiram's release and also for
transportation good on any passenger, freight or work train of the
entire system, in order to work out a solution of the robberies that had
spread over the entire system from Kansas City and St. Louis to Chicago,
where the consignments originated.

His first suggestion was that he should take a look at Becker & Co.'s
plant, and he purposely boarded a train that had a car for delivery to
them.

After he left I went to my office in the main building to find both an
extended report and a short one from a man assigned to watch Becker's
movements while in New Orleans, and as I began to read I could feel my
hair rigidly standing on end.

My clerk, Miss Bascom, had met Becker in a private room, known to but
few, back of the bar of a prominent hotel. For the purpose of detecting
enemy aliens many dictaphones had been installed by the Government in
such places and with a certainty, almost uncanny, the Government
possessed itself of information that could not have been gained in any
other way.

As soon as I reached Miss Bascom's name in the report I stopped short
and looked at her at work over by the window, less than twenty feet
away. If she was conscious of my undisguised wonder she gave no sign of
it. She worked so fast and dexterously as to give the impression that
she fully lived up to the axiom promulgated by well governed
corporations:

     "If you never do more than you are paid for, you will never get
     paid for more than you do."

As I looked upon her I decided that although Becker was exceedingly
ambitious, his taste was discriminating, indeed. Miss Bascom in a good
light revealed a velvety skin and a neck, rising column-like from her
plump chest and shoulders as though chiseled from rare white marble. A
tiny ear peeped from under a plethora of wonderful hair, tastefully
arranged, and I noticed that her nose, chin and lips were perfect. I
wondered why I had overlooked these points of feminine charm when she
first came to me. Seemingly oblivious to everything but the work she was
doing, I wondered how she could maintain the attitude after such an
affair as had occurred the night before. There was no evidence of
fatigue or loss of sleep, or over-indulgence of any kind. I was
astounded that a woman of her general charm could fall for the Becker
type, and I shuddered at the knowledge that she had gone with him to
such a place. My next thought was that she might have given out some
very confidential information. There was but one thing to do, and at
once--find out how she came to be sent to me.

I rushed through the several pages of close typing, then began again for
detail and analysis.

She drank nothing intoxicating according to the report. His brutal
proposal, that came in due course, she met with astonishing diplomacy
and succeeded in staving off time and place. But the details, recorded
minutely, indicated that she was compelled to submit to his embrace. The
record revealed that the young woman had exclaimed, "Don't--don't, Mr.
Becker," indicating that the fossilized degenerate of fifty years was
trying to caress her. It required little tax on the imagination to know
that his big, greasy hands were drawing her tightly to his huge frame.
Why had she laid herself liable to his advances? What kind of a game was
she playing? I was on the point of calling her over and demanding an
explanation, but there was the second report to analyze--concerning
Burrell, the chief clerk. I decided to wait.

When Miss Bascom left Becker the night before at the side door of the
hotel, he entered the lobby and joined Burrell in a pretty wet dinner,
spending several hours thereafter at a questionable resort. Evidently
Miss Bascom knew something of their whereabouts, for here she was
standing at Burrell's desk in close conversation with him, occasionally
laughing as though recalling some ludicrous incident. There was nothing
to do but await events. She was up to something and I determined I would
lose no time in arriving at the facts.




CHAPTER XVII


WHEN Hiram returned late that night he looked as disreputable as a bull
dog that had been out all night in the rain and mud, defending his title
as a neighborhood boss. He had evidenced some cleverness in preparing
for such a trip, but when he got through he looked as though he had
overdone it. An unbecoming cap of Bolshevik origin, nine cents pre-war
push-cart cost, flannel shirt, open at the neck, and covered with mud
from head to foot, he reminded me of a smuggler or bootlegger who had
taken to the swamps to avoid capture. But his enthusiasm seemed to blind
him to his appearance and to the fact that he had not eaten since
morning.

"Well," he began, "I believe I am right--not so much on account of what
I saw to-day, but of what I didn't see."

"Yep," said I. "Go on with it."

"Their plant is on an island except at very low stages of the river and
then it's swamp on one side. It is a big place but mostly one-story.
Their switch, of course, is on a trestle built by them, and some one has
to come out and unlock a high gate before a car can be set in. The man
at the gate stated that they do this so that there will always be a man
there to warn the train crew that the trestle is not strong enough to
support the engine." He looked at me somewhat knowingly while filling
his pipe.

"Well, I went inside on the car we had for them and saw all there was to
see--which wasn't much. Their black help live in cabins on the island.
Becker is building a big addition--the car we set in contained cement
for that purpose, presumably. All of the train-men believe that the
place is phony.

"We saw a packet coming down the river and the train boy slowed up a
trifle to let me off near a landing, but I made a bad jump, rolled over
twice in soft mud and came out like a cray-fish, but I made the packet
coming to town and just arrived."

"Fine, go on," I encouraged.

"The fertilizer plant shows nothing from the river but a floating wharf.
On the way down we passed Becker's boat going up. It isn't much of a
craft, and the packet captain said it wouldn't carry five tons and has
hardly power enough to beat the five-mile current of the river, even
when empty. A boat, Ben!--a boat is all we need to catch that fellow,
and he's the boy we're after. If some one would offer to carry all the
material he will need for that new construction he will fall for it--and
say, I believe I am on track of one."

"But you are not sure of anything yet."

"Yes--I am sure they got the two refrigerator cars that sat alongside
the car that was robbed of fifteen tons of sausage, and that they use
anything that contains grease. Of that I am as certain as any one can be
without being able to prove it, and we've got to get him, and we can't
get him until we get inside of the plant," he insisted, his jaws coming
together with a snap.

"He has a regular castle--moat and all," Hiram continued, "and we can't
storm it. His people are all black and speak only Creole."

"What about this boat you are on track of--but wait, Hiram, don't you
want something to eat?"

"Yes, I'm hungry as a wolf. I've seen the time I would give ten dollars
for the appetite I now have--but wait till I tell you about the boat.
For some time past there has been an old fellow coming down to the
wharf to pick up bananas, those that break from the bunches when they
come out of a ship on the carriers. After a while I noticed that he
talked good English, Creole, Spanish, French, in fact he seemed to be
able to talk with almost any of the rats that work on the fruit
steamers. After I had talked with him I asked what he did with the
bananas. He said he kept them until ripe and ate them. Later he told me
he lived on a boat as caretaker and had not seen his boss lately.
Evidently he has run out of money. He hinted that if he could get his
back wages he did not care what became of the boat. I saw him again
to-day and he says he has starved long enough, and I am going to see the
boat in the morning. It is not in the river, but is in the canal just
above the Yazoo station. And say, I've got another scheme to make all
the money we want after this matter is settled," said he, coming to his
feet as though unloosed by a steel spring.

"What is it, Hiram?" I asked, amused.

"Wait until I clean up a bit. Then I want you to come out with me and
watch a real hungry man eat. I have a long story, and a good scheme.
Your blood will be on my hands if you say it isn't. How much is a
thousand feet of lumber?" he called to me through the communicating
door, just after I heard his wet, muddy shoes go down like a cord of
wood on the floor.

"A thousand feet of lumber is a thousand square feet an inch thick. In
boards a foot wide and an inch thick they would reach a thousand feet,"
I explained.

"That's what I thought, but I can't recall ever having been told."

After seating ourselves in the restaurant, Hiram, his mind filled with
many notions, began to talk.

"I never see a cargo of lumber go by that I don't think of it as
something immensely valuable. I don't understand it, unless--well--of
course, I can't figure out who is to blame, but do you realize I
actually don't know what business my--I mean the Gold-Beater--is in? I
never knew whether he ran a pawn-shop, a gambling-house, or a real
business; my knowledge of his activities is limited to a vague
impression I have, an indistinct memory of hearing him talk one night at
our house with some man--and he was some man, too, if the Gold-Beater
brought him home--about stumpage, stump land and market conditions. I
don't recall much, for then I was about as much interested in it as I
would now be in a divinity student's theory on Heaven and the other
place.

"I don't know whether it's in my blood, but anyhow, a nice, newly sawed,
clean board of timber looks better to me than anything--except a certain
girl. I figured it out to-day, that she is the only one I don't want to
disgrace. The Gold-Beater has nothing better coming to him--if I have to
go to jail in the clean-up of this gang----"

"Come to the point, Hiram. You're wandering all around Robin Hood's
barn," said I laughingly.

"I know I'm long-winded, Ben, but I've got to speak my prologue, or you
won't understand. You know I have stood on the dock day after day and
have seen the river carry down big trees and big logs, some real
saw-logs, some days lots of them, and to-day, up the river, I saw a
great many floating along down stream. Some of the bayous are full of
them. There's a mass of logs in that moat back of Becker's smell
factory."

"Well,--what is the answer?" I asked languidly.

"Here's what I propose: Arrest these fugitive logs, cut 'em into lumber
and put 'em to work. I saw logs up the river that will make a thousand
feet of lumber and they tell me even rough lumber is worth fifty dollars
a thousand. It won't take many of them to amount to the hundred and
twenty-five dollars per that I'm pulling down monthly from the
railroad--eh? You know, just as soon as I get out of this I'm going to
marry, and----"

"But they tell me those logs have been in the water so long they are
dead sea fruit, rotten in the center?" I interposed.

"I noticed that in some of them, but many are first class--you watch me
after I get out. Do you know, I feel sure this river is going to make me
some money. I'm going to be out to-night, down on the wharf. The packet
men say that Becker's old tub, the one we met going up this
afternoon,--called the _Turgia_--and she is well named--goes up there
every afternoon and brings down a load in the night. I've got to find
out where she lands and what she brings down. I forgot to tell you he
gets dead animals from the city, in barges, and has to hire a tug to
take them up. A good chance for a deal there, if we have a boat big
enough to do his work, don't you think so?" he asked, pausing from his
food.

"He seems to have an eye for bargains--why not in towing?" I agreed,
much impressed with his determination, amounting to a mania.

"Now, there is another thing, Ben. Suppose this old half-starved
geezer's story is right, and they owe him a lot of wages, and the boat
is something we can use, isn't there some quick, legal way in which we
can get possession of it?"

"He would be classed as a seaman, with wages due, and I think there is a
Federal statute to reach such a case quickly--I will find out, Hiram."

"Do that, Ben, and if I don't show up in the morning you will know I got
knocked in the head by the water-front gang, but I'm going to see what
Becker sends down here in the night, or die in the attempt."




CHAPTER XVIII


I HAD to be up that night too, and I had not been in long before he
arrived--just before daylight.

"Ben--Ben, awake, and get up! I've got it--I've got it--see here!" he
persisted, holding a piece of cardboard before my eyes now dazzled by
the sudden light. "Do you know what that is?" he roared, standing on
tiptoes while I gazed at it. He was more energetic and enthusiastic than
the night before, although he had not been to bed. His eyes appeared to
be a bit bloodshot.

Raising up in bed, I took the piece of cardboard and sat blinking at it
when, all of a sudden, Hiram lost patience.

"Damn it, Ben, can't you see what it is?--that's a piece of a ten-pound
sausage carton, and it came from Becker's place. Now then, we've got
'em," he said with suppressed voice. What he handed me was
unquestionably a part of a folding box, one of the corner locks, and a
part of the end on which there was tell-tale printing.

"You see, this sausage that was stolen was in ten-pound boxes, and this
is part of one of them," he insisted.

"Where did you get this, Hiram?" I finally managed to ask.

"I had to lie on one of the wharfs upstream until after midnight when
Becker's _Turgid_ came slipping down the current, like a thief, and I
had to leg it hard to keep up with her. About a mile below she slid in
alongside a Mexican, bound for Vera Cruz, unloaded a hundred and fifteen
tubs of something--it went down on the manifest as lard, and I guess it
was grease, anyhow. On her deck there still remained five bales of
something. I wanted to know what it was. The _Turgia_ then slid
downstream to the Southern Pacific docks and unloaded there. They billed
five bales of waste paper to New York. Yes, I got the name of the
consignee--Cassinis & Cassinis, Water Street--but I wondered how Becker
collected waste paper up there in that swamp and I didn't believe it was
waste paper. It was covered with burlap and baled tight.

"Do you see what this crafty old crook has done? He took the sausage out
of the folding boxes, which he laid out flat, then baled them carefully
and is shipping them to New York to get the best price and put such
evidence clear out of the way. Well, it cost me I don't know how many
drinks of water-front whiskey to get those watchmen in condition--there
were two of them--before I could dig into one of the bales for a sample.
I know it was tough on the watchmen, but there you are, and as sure as
shooting Becker & Co. got the stolen sausages and we've got to get
Becker before he has a chance to try to hang it on me, or some other
boob clerk.

"Ben, are you awake? do you understand what I am saying?" he asked,
giving my shoulder a tap that made me sway as though kicked by a mule.

"Yes, Hiram, I understand. Was there a Southern Pacific ship at the
dock?" I asked, rubbing my shoulder.

"No--the next ship is due to-morrow, and they're always late now."

"I believe you have something really tangible. I'll stop that shipment
this morning, but you'd better get to bed. And," I hastily added, "we
must have more than empty sausage cartons to make a case against him."

"I know that, and there is nothing doing in the way of sleep for me
now. The old man is down at a rummy, waiting to take me up to the canal
to see that boat. If the boat looks good to me, will you come and look
it over?" he asked, getting up and walking the floor like a caged lion.

"Yes--meet me here at noon, and in the meantime I'll try to learn
something about the matter----" But before I had time to finish he was
out of the room, going downstairs two steps at a time.

When I told Superintendent Kitchell that morning in his office as much
as I thought good for him to know at that time, and especially about
Hiram's plans and what he had already accomplished, his face began to
glow, and he otherwise evidenced intense interest.

"Taylor," he began, without any attempt now at inscrutability, "I would
give ten years of my life to have that robbery matter ferreted out
quickly. All the other division superintendents on the system are
laughing at me and the General Super and President are raising Hell. It
seems to me that the boy's theory as to how to round up the gang is
good, and I will help you all I possibly can. I've looked at Becker's
plant several times while passing and I think the boy is right. You
can't really get the goods on him without getting into his plant, and
that must be done by starting some kind of trade. Do you think he has
any chance of getting a boat?"

"He will, or rather may have, something definite about that before
night."

"I wonder----" hesitated the man of many troubles; "when I was up in
Memphis the other day I met the man in charge of the Illinois division.
He happened to mention that the state was killing whole herds of
tubercular-infected cattle there. I wonder if I couldn't get a few
carloads sent here and let the boy--Strong, did you say his name
was?--get in by boating them up to him--but you are not sure of
obtaining a boat?"

"I feel sure we can get some kind of a boat."

"Here is something--Ever since we entered the war Central and South
America have been revolution incubators, especially for Mexico. Some
never hatch but die in the shell, others hatch but die before they can
walk, then once in a while, out of the great number one of them grows
big enough to buy all sorts of ridiculous stuff they think they need or
want, and ship it down here. Then they get shot, macheted, put in prison
or exiled, and a lot of this stuff is never claimed, so we have to sell
it for freight charges. We've got a whole warehouse of that kind of junk
we should have disposed of long ago. Go down and look it over--anything
you can use I will see that you get it pronto. We've had about
everything except industry, virtue and honesty."

"Wire the Illinois division regarding the slaughtered cattle, and I will
look over your unclaimed freight. I may find something----"

"And do you think," he interrupted, sore to the bone at the thought,
"that it involves any one in the offices?"

I hesitated, recalling that I had not mentioned either Chief Clerk
Burrell or Miss Bascom, or their conversations with Becker. "Yes--Becker
couldn't work without some one to give him information about arrivals
and keep him posted at the river."

"Rotten--rotten!" he exploded; "just think of it, a mess like this
putrefying right under our noses and we don't get wise until they smell
it in Kansas City and Chicago. And now, Ben Taylor, while I feel sure
you are on the right track at last, and are going to make good, you seem
to be moving so maddeningly slow and deliberate." He said this with a
deep sigh from the depths of his waistband, his chubby hand fingering a
number of yellow slips used for official railroad messages and reminding
me of the mysterious one sent to Hiram about Becker & Co. receiving
freight by rail, but invariably shipping out by water.

"But, Mr. Kitchell, haste in this matter will be fatal to final
results," I said casually.

"Yes, perhaps--at any rate I hope that's so, but I'm so damnably worked
up over this matter that I am about wild. Then another thing, I don't
quite understand why you have so much confidence in this young Strong,
though I'll admit he shows good mettle. I recall at our first interview
you said he was well connected in the North?" said he, still glancing
nervously over the messages on his desk.

"Hiram Strong is well connected. He has inherited a great pride and
along with it what seems to be honor. He feels keenly the onus cast upon
him in this matter, but has withal a saving sense of humor. He is
working out his own salvation and feels he is heading off an attempt to
make him the goat--to him it is simply a matter of keeping out of jail.
He has, I believe, demonstrated that he can do head work as well as leg
work, and I feel like giving him room to turn around," I insisted,
perhaps too testily.

"I wonder if he is kin of this man Hiram Strong, who was reported this
morning as coming in on our system at Chicago in his private car. Do you
know, Taylor, I wish every private car was in hell--as though we didn't
have enough trouble already! Our passenger engines are loaded with every
pound they can keep rolling and every once in a while we get a private
car of some millionaire pork-sticker or quick-rich, who wants to come
down here to shoot ducks or some other fool thing. Do you think it is
the same man?" he demanded.

"It might be."

"Do you suppose the boy has got word to him, and he is coming down here
to raise the devil?" he asked, eyeing me as though I might have
something to do with it.

"As I understand it, from the boy, he was thrown out entirely on his own
resources--disinherited--and as far as appearances go, is completely
estranged from his father."

"Well, by Heaven, if he shows up here with a chip on his shoulder, I'm
going to turn him over to you--do you understand?--I'll turn him over to
you. You know all about it, and I've had a stomachful of educating rich
men's sons, and all the other troubles I want," he insisted,
disgustedly, as I started to go to my office.

"I will be glad to do all I can for you, Mr. Kitchell. Let me know as
far as possible in advance."

"I can tell you that right now. He is hooked to Number Seven, and is due
here to-morrow at 11:15, unless his old special car makes her late."




CHAPTER XIX


SO far I had regarded Miss Bascom as one of the hundreds of others that
just chanced to take the place of the men who had been drafted from the
railroad employees. They came from everywhere, cities, villages and
rural districts, and substitutes for man-power were in such demand that
"no questions" was the rule; no disposition to "look a gift horse in the
mouth" or even to see if they had a spavin, ringbone, or inflicted with
"string halt."

Very likely she may have written the anonymous suggestion to Hiram. I
did know that she entered the back room of a hotel with Becker and had
received his embraces and proposals, which would surely shock a maiden's
ears, but admittedly she did not drink, and she had acted with singular
astuteness.

I knew she was flirting with Burrell, the chief clerk, and that Becker
and Burrell frequented low places together. Altogether it looked as
though she was playing a double rôle and I was not at all sure just
where I fitted into the planning going on in her head, although I'll
admit the latter was very attractive.

At once I decided to put her to a test that would make each blonde hair
stand without support, and the opportunity came sooner than I expected.

As the warehouse to which Superintendent Kitchell referred was not far
away, I went there before keeping my noon appointment with Hiram. It
was, as he said, a veritable graveyard of disappointed hopes and plans
gone wrong--bleached, grinning skeletons of blue-sky finance and
religio-political scheming reduced to the irreducible. They couldn't
even pay the freight to New Orleans, not to mention their Gulf and
Caribbean destinations.

Shippers always receive money in advance for antiquated or experimental
devices from their "bone-yard" and therefore they had no further
interest. Cannon, more deadly at the breech, airships that would do
everything but fly, rifles rejected by shop inspectors, cartridges that
wouldn't explode, and so on. Threshing machines and engines, sawmills
and agricultural implements, cases of rifles and cartridges and other
war-like material in astonishing abundance--but nothing apparently for
our purpose. I did observe a big case made of two-inch lumber, heavily
iron-bound, that might contain an engine or motor, but I needed help to
reach it.

When Hiram returned to the room, a little ahead of time, his pep and
ginger seemed to have been largely augmented. His energy appeared to
have no limit, but with it all there was a shade of disappointment, or
apprehension. He began at once about the boat.

"_Fearsome_ is her name," said he. "She is just what we want, a dandy
for our purpose, but I'm afraid she's too big. While fitted with a
propeller and rudder, and steers from a chicken-coop up front, she has
no power. But she's a peach for size and width!" he exclaimed, with
breath no faster from running up the stairs three steps at a time. "How
the devil are we going to get something to make her go?" he added,
sitting down in front of me, holding his left knee between his hands,
and looking appealingly at me.

"How big a boat is it?" I asked, suppressing my amusement.

"About a hundred and fifty feet long and twenty five or thirty beam.
Not deep in the water, but she draws enough. She looks like an overgrown
canal boat. But I brought the captain along; he can tell you more; do
you want to see him? It's only a matter of getting power into her."

"How much will it cost to get possession of her?"

"Well, that is another thing--the captain says that it's to be auctioned
for the crew's wages. He hints that the owners may have gone to jail, or
back to the mountains to resume their legitimate business as
highwaymen."

"Who is the captain you refer to?"

"Captain Marianna--I told you about him. He's the caretaker, and has
been living on her--starved out, is an Italian, has a shipmaster's
license from the Government. He has it hanging in the boat. I'm sure he
will stay with us if we want him. He is downstairs now--want to see
him?" Then, coming toward me, he asked in an earnest undertone, "Can we
raise the money to put some kind of power in her? I can root out the
Becker crowd, clean my slate and then make a fortune with her if we
can," he insisted with fierce determination.

"When is it to be sold?" I queried.

"The time is up now--I'd say to-morrow or next day."

"I don't know, Hiram, it will be a pretty big lump to swallow. We don't
know how high they will bid it up, but perhaps, with luck, we can manage
it." I knew he was thinking of Anna Bell Morgan, and, as a close second,
the Gold-Beater.

The captain was undoubtedly an old salt, past middle age, looked
dependable, repeated the same story about the boat, but not within
Hiram's hearing would he tell from whence it came, or how, or why they
brought it through the canal instead of up the river, the usual way of
getting into New Orleans. However, I was doubtful about power.

As soon as the captain had gone we started for the unclaimed freight
warehouse to investigate further. While we were on the way Hiram caught
me by the arm and, bringing his face nearly in front of mine, half
whispered:

"Ben, I have some money--I did not spend all the Gold-Beater gave me as
my last dot. I've got the money we pried from the old captain who was
going to drown us, and I have saved my wages, but the heck of it is to
get some kind of power. No one will pay much for the boat. How about
selling that barrel? The last offer was something like seven hundred
dollars, wasn't it?" His tone was of the wheedling variety.

"Perhaps I had forgotten to tell you, Hiram, that I have had some
favorable news about that barrel of steel-filings," said I, at the same
time giving him a gentle nudge. "But as soon as I can get in touch with
the right market I expect to get a much better offer. I don't want to
sell that just now, but I, too, have saved a little money we can use if
necessary." I then explained the possibility of finding something in the
way of a motor in the warehouse for which we were then bound, and if so,
no immediate outlay would be necessary, but of course that was only a
chance, and besides, we were not sure some fool would not bid it well
up.

"I don't care how fast it goes, just so it can beat the river current,"
he urged. "Oh, she looks tough. No one will bid much, that's certain."

"Have you figured on the fact that this boat is in the canal, and while
only a mile from the river, you must go a long way by water to get
there?"

"Yes, I know it is two hundred miles or more, clear out through the
Mississippi and Chandeleur Sound, but that won't take long if she can
move at all," he replied without hesitation. "You see, it is practically
inland water all the way," he added.

"Hiram, are you still keeping away from Anna Bell Morgan? Don't you hear
from her at all?" I asked this question suddenly, as we approached the
warehouse, and the change of subject appeared to have startled him.

"No--and, I never shall unless this matter is cleaned up completely. If
I go to the bow-wows I won't take any one with me," he said, looking far
away down the sidewalk.

"You haven't seen her for some time. Are you cooling off?"

"No, Ben, not one bit. That girl is the only one who has ever held me. I
don't believe there is a half hour of the time that I am awake I do not
think of her, and I believe it is the thought of her that makes me
fight. I tell you it must be no halfway business. If they try to pin
anything on me and have me arrested, which they may, some people will
always believe me guilty even if I am acquitted. And if that comes to
pass I don't believe I will ever see her again; in fact I told her so.
It is a fearful thing to think of, and while we are making headway, the
delay almost drives me wild when I stop to think about it," he said,
still downcast.

"You'll forget--most men do."

"Yes--I may forget--I may not be different from other men, but I don't
feel that way now, and I don't think I ever will," he replied with a
certain convincing firmness. But when we got to the warehouse, the
possibility of failure, suggested by the reference to Anna Bell Morgan,
seemed to lend strength to his body. He lifted big cases with ease and
smaller ones left his hands with a toss until we uncovered the big case
that had attracted my attention.

A sledge broke the iron binding and I lifted one of the thick planks.
When I told Hiram it was a steam engine, and worthless to us, it was the
first time I ever heard him use voluble profanity, to which I listened,
amused.

But in uncovering this case, bigger ones back of it were revealed. We
went at them. The next one we opened contained an antiquated automobile,
not worth the expense of packing for sea-shipment. Another case that
had just been unloaded from a car that morning promised something and
our hopes arose; it was much longer and larger than any of the others
and readily answered to the blows of the sledge. It contained the body
of an air-ship. Hiram was about to sulphurize the warehouse again but
sat down instead, wet with perspiration.

"Ben, that infernal thing contains a gasoline motor--is it possible to
use it?" He waited expectantly for a reply.

"Perhaps; rip off another plank so that I can see."

Two more blows from the flying sledge sent another plank flying.

"There you are!" he exulted.

We were astonished to find a twelve-cylinder motor of standard
manufacture, which I thought might be used in a boat. And, of course, a
self-contained plant, ready for running.

Hiram's spirits rose to the heights with this information and he began
his habit of cavorting like a colt, apparently forgetting the sad
disappointment of only a moment before. In many respects he was yet a
boy.

I called Mr. Kitchell on the telephone, told him briefly about the boat
and of the motor in the air-plane.

"Yes, take it, and anything there you can use; you know we can
requisition anything we want when necessary. Take it quick if you can
use it to get us out of this nightmare," he snapped back at me. "A
complaint from Washington has reached the president of the road, who has
passed it down the line with a stinger in every word. Both the railroad
administration and the Bureau of Animal Industry are riding on my neck
without a saddle. Go as far as you like, only hurry."




CHAPTER XX


HIRAM suggested that he and the captain would get the motor out on the
floor and test it in order to make sure that another crooked
revolutionist had not met a crooked manufacturer.

While they were doing this I went to my office to get a better line on
the traffic between that very interesting trio--Becker, Burrell and my
clerk, Miss Bascom.

Captain Marianna helped Hiram, so they soon had the motor on skids, and
'phoned me to come down and try it out. The working test was
satisfactory and after computing its horsepower, we decided it would
drive the boat, and, possibly, at a fair speed. Before leaving the
warehouse Hiram called my attention to a small portable sawmill outfit.

"If this works out, that's mine, too," he whispered, evidently still
clinging to the idea of capturing logs in the river.

Hiram was right, nothing like the hull of the _Fearsome_ had ever been
produced before. A hundred and fifty feet long, and over thirty foot
beam, and with a bulwark not more than a foot high about the entire
outside. It looked like an immense skimming dish. Hiram thought it came
from the canals of Mars, possibly a cup challenger there. Captain
Marianna assured us, though she didn't look it now, she was very sturdy
and seaworthy and she did not leak even a little since he had been on
her. No doubt it had previously had gasoline power in it, for there were
left intact the foundation beams. Hiram said that the captain, now
penniless and almost starving, if given some cash and a good job, would
likely be distinctly different from now on. I told him I thought the
fellow was a fair bet, and left them at work getting the motor ready to
move on board. The captain assured me the sale was to take place at nine
the next morning. No one had been around to see it and I felt sure it
would go for very little.

As I was up all night I did not see Hiram until the next morning. The
sale looked as though it had been arranged for our benefit. The officer
said the claims were nearly a thousand dollars, sold it promptly for
that bid, got away as though in a hurry, and I attended to the details,
leaving Hiram serious but jubilant.

It was late that night when he returned, tired and hungry but
enthusiastic. He took little interest in a letter awaiting him until he
told me all about his progress in moving the motor and getting it aboard
the boat.

"We got the motor aboard late this evening and it fits as if made for
the foundation beams, and it will connect with the propeller shaft and
clutch with little trouble. But, say, the captain says we must have an
air compressor for the whistle and an auxiliary gasoline tank,--and,
say," he continued, while stripping down to wash--"I believe the captain
is going to prove a jewel--he's all right."

"You still think him reliable?"

"Well, if he is as loyal to us as he was to his old employers he will be
all right--and willing to turn his hand to anything."

"Did you see the letter that came for you?"

"Yes, I'm going to read it in a minute--it's nothing, for I don't know
any one who would write to me. I've got something more important to do
now than keeping up a line of correspondence," he said, as he finished
his ablutions and buttoned his flannel shirt at the collar. Then he
reached for the letter and as he opened it his face changed to
astonished resentment.

"Say, who the devil can it be that is writing me these notes? This is
the second one I have received, not dated or signed by any one. I don't
understand this one at all," he added, handing it to me.

I took it and read from the same yellow paper and typed as the last one
had been:

     "Becker & Co. know of the Railroad's plan to ship slaughtered
     cattle from Illinois to their plant."

His astonishment was no greater than mine, for instantly I knew that
only some one connected with the railroad and telegraph could learn
anything regarding Superintendent Kitchell's plan. I also recalled that
I had not mentioned anything about the plan to Hiram, or any other
important thing concerning the case. I wanted him to move uninfluenced
by anything I knew or suspected.

After examining the note critically a few moments, I said:

"Hiram, these notes may come from a woman--they have such earmarks. Do
you know--have you anything to do with a woman?" I asked, really alarmed
at the moment, and scrutinizing him closely.

Hiram stood straight before me and looked me square in the eye with
magnificent candor.

"Ben, I have scarcely a speaking acquaintance with any woman in New
Orleans except Anna Bell Morgan--and I have not seen her or communicated
with her since--well, you know how long--ever since this damned thing
came up like a black fog from Hades, out of which it seems impossible to
get--and----"

"The plan of getting into Becker's plant is yours. I mentioned it to
Superintendent Kitchell. Getting some slaughtered tubercular cattle from
Illinois is Kitchell's idea. He wired or wrote, or both, from his office
and this is the result. Somebody inside, sure--somebody for them and
somebody for you--who is it, Hiram?" I ended by demanding of him to
speak only the truth.

"I haven't mentioned one word to a soul other than you," he stoutly
insisted, his face as open as a printed page.

"Have you mentioned your boat scheme to any one?" I asked, fearful of
the incaution of youth.

"Not a person knows of it from me but you and Captain Marianna, and he
doesn't know much yet. But this is absolute evidence our finger is on
the right spot," he observed shrewdly, then added, less
confidently--"they must have some organization."

"Go ahead, Hiram, I still think your boat scheme a very good one, but be
very discreet and see if you can think of any one who would send these
notes to you," I added darkly, much puzzled and annoyed.

"He is building and must have lumber--he'll fall for some cheap stuff
and the river is full of logs--and it's perfectly feasible to saw
them----"

"Maybe so, Hiram--provided he doesn't keep on knowing what we have for
breakfast. I will learn more in a day or two--go ahead as fast as you
can about getting ready, but again I ask you to have an interrogation
point in front of you all the time."

"Ben"--he began, walking about the room nervously, as though he felt his
soul in danger--righteously angered, but as one who showed real
bigness--"I am convinced that they have power enough, so that when they
get ready they can for a time make me the goat. I was in sole charge of
that wharf when the big thefts were pulled off; what would be easier
than to link me up with some poor teamster and send the two of us to
slaughter, and even by arrest plant an imputation that could be cited
against me all my life? I could take this Becker and tear his purple
tallow person into bits with my bare hands and throw the pieces into his
own rendering tanks with pleasure!" he shouted, and he looked as though
he could do it.

"Yes, Hiram, that possibility is present, but perhaps you magnify it."
Then believing his efficiency would be augmented by a little less fear,
I told him, for the first time, that the provision market was flooded
with spurious goods bearing a genuine government stamp as having been
inspected and passed, and that on this night I was going with a Federal
party in a move against Becker for that.

"What are you going to do?" he asked quickly.

"Locate him as soon as he leaves his New Orleans office, then a safe
expert, employed by the government in alien-enemy work, will open his
safe for evidence, and possibly will find the stolen seals, stamps, and
ink of the Department of Animal Industry."

"I have figured the case in just that way and supposed you had, and that
is why we must get inside his plant. Opening his safe may help--finding
the seals don't prove the larceny--suppose they should secrete those
seals about the wharf, or worse still, put them inside, or under my
desk, in the wharf office, what chance would I have to escape the
implication?" he asked, still walking about the room looking at the
floor.

"A dog having the bone will not prove he stole the ham," I suggested.

"But that won't save the dog's ribs when he's found with it," he
retorted, relaxing.

"It is true, Hiram, their organization must begin in Kansas City--and is
pretty well oiled--but perhaps not as efficient as you imagine; crooks
always forget something with a certainty that suggests fatality."

"Let us hope so. But these notes--what makes you think they are from a
woman?" He stopped and looked squarely at me. "I don't like it," he
finished with a snap of his jaws.

"My reason just now is scarcely more than an impression, hardly more
than 'because,'" I replied.




CHAPTER XXI


THAT night at dinner I asked Hiram how much he knew about gasoline
engines, and he looked up at me sharply.

"Not very much; very little, in fact. The Gold-Beater gave me a car
once--a pretty good one--and I was learning about motors fairly fast
when something happened. I knew motors needed water, oil and gasoline,
and that when I did certain things it went, and sometimes it moved
pretty fast. That was the trouble--I met a bigger car and we both went
over in a man's front yard. I lost two wheels and other things--I never
saw it again. The Gold-Beater and the insurance company settled somehow.

"Do you know," he continued after a pause, "I don't blame the
Gold-Beater much--two thousand was my share for putting an innocent
pedestrian in the park on the bad side--I wonder he didn't get the
marble heart sooner." As he said this his lips curled with
self-criticism.

"How soon will you have the motor ready to start? I am going to be very
busy to-morrow. Can you and the captain manage to start it alone?"

"To-morrow at noon we will have everything ready for a try-out and if I
don't feel safe we will not attempt to start without you. Don't want to
take any chances; there's too much at stake," he insisted with rare
judgment.

"Everything is fair in love and war," is the libertine's comfort in the
case of a love contest--and in war it depends on the kind of an enemy we
have. In this war any means of obtaining evidence against our enemy was
justified. That was my firm belief. That night Becker & Co.'s office was
entered as planned and his safe opened. While there was plenty of
evidence that he was trading illicitly and with the enemy, I was
disappointed in finding no evidence of his thieving propensity, except a
letter he had received that day from the captain of a Swedish ship,
_Sparticide_, then in port, who in poor English explained that he had
"received the sample and thought it would do, though the price was
altogether too high. If he would pack in half barrels and deliver as
suggested, he would take the lot for cash, delivered alongside."

This letter was carefully copied and replaced.

When I reached home just before daylight, Hiram, Jr., was fast asleep,
but when I awakened later in the day he had gone.

I spent the greater part of the morning getting the five bales of waste
paper that had been unloaded from Becker's boat on the steamship docks,
into a private fireproof room in the storage warehouse where we had our
barrel of "steel filings" stored, and secured an affidavit from the
steamship company that they were rece

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