Bucking the Tiger/Chapter 6

T was early the following morning.

Macdonald was warming his toes at the glow of the cast-iron stove in the lobby of the Hotel Eslick, while Graham, Hillyer, and count Jean de Salle La Terriere were sitting about in corners of the room, in various attitudes of dejection, silent, brooding, unhappy.

The only sound was the plaintive, minor note of a Chinese love song which drifted in from the bar where Chung was wiping glasses and dreaming of former joys when he was still a peaceful bean-planter on the banks of the Pai-Ho.

The song got on Graham's nerves. He rose, walked up to the bar-room, and shut the door with a bang. Then he sat down again in his former attitude of despair.

Macdonald burst out laughing.

"What's the matter with you fellows?" he asked. "Each and every one of you has earned seven hundred dollars in two days. If you don't want to tell me how you did it, that's your own look-out. I am not kicking at that. But can't you even say a decent word?"

There was no answer.

"Say," Macdonald commenced again, "you two Britishers look like Liverpool shipowners whose last turbiner has just been submarined. And you, count—why, man, you've the guilty appearance of a cat coming from an alley-way … its whiskers still wet and white with tell-tale cream. Fess up! Did you rob anybody? Are you expecting a plain-clothes man to drag his broken arches across the threshold and lead you off to the jug?"

The count gave a little shudder at the last suggestion, and glanced furtively at the two Englishmen who kept their stony silence.

"Can't you say a word?" Macdonald asked again. "What is it? A hang-over? You seemed quite sober when you came home last night."

Hillyer looked up with a snarl. He was formulating a series of disparaging remarks concerning Macdonald's face, figure and moral habits. But he suppressed them as once more the pathetic remembrance of his financial loss came back to his mind.

Seven hundred dollars gone up a perfectly useless spout! He hadn't even got as much as a cocktail's worth of change out of it. If he only had not listened to Graham, and had invested it the way he had wanted to, in a large and festively alcoholic spree!

"My word!" he turned to his countryman. "You're all sorts of a bloody fool, aren't you?"

"Chivy it! Go to the devil!" came the uncompromising answer.

Hillyer turned purple with rage. He would have clenched his fists and gone for the other if he had not been constitutionally averse to all unnecessary bodily exercise. For he had endowed indolence with a profound, semi-religious impulse which was every bit as mysterious and coercing as the millionaire's hunt after the glittering double-eagle.

"What's the matter with you?" Macdonald asked once more. "You have done nobly. You've earned your ante in no time. Do you regret our compact?"

"No," bellowed Graham.

Macdonald smiled.

"All right," he commented peacefully, "if you can't talk, for heaven's sake don't try to."

A minute later Walsh came down the steps and walked into the lobby. The others looked at him in surprise. For in spite of his threadbare clothes, a certain indefinable aura of happiness and solid prosperity surrounded the rugged bulk of the cowpuncher.

There was an almost dewy freshness about him; his boots were shiny; his thick, black hair was parted down the middle with mathematical precision; his cheeks were freshly shaven and rubbed to a hard, glossy, hygienic red.

He walked up to Macdonald with a heavy swagger and plumped a fat roll of yellow-backs down in front of him.

"Cast yer peepers over these, old hoss, and count 'em!" he said with a loud voice. "Count 'em careful and slow! Seven hundred plunks even, or I'm a Mormon!"

The others heard, and looked up with starts of surprise. Walsh enjoyed the sensation for a few seconds, tried to strike a negligent attitude, failed miserably, and continued with a yet louder voice:

"Pay 'em in to our account at the Old National, Mac, if you happen to pass that way."

"Why don't you pay them in yourself, Andy?" Macdonald inquired.

"I hain't got the time," Walsh declared pompously, and produced another roll of bills, even larger than the one which he had handed over. "I've a little business to see to; got to invest some of these here boys. So long, gents." And he walked to the door with the same heavy-rolling swagger.

"Hey, Andy! Wait a second. I'm coming with you," a high voice piped from the bar-room door, which had just opened.

It was Hayes, the insurance agent.

"All right, Hayes," the cowpuncher replied.

They left the Hotel Eslick together and turned up Sprague Street.

"Real money?" the insurance agent demanded, as he looked at the roll of bills in the other's hand.

"You bet yer sweet life," Walsh replied, and patted the roll of money with a caressing, paternal hand.

Hayes surveyed this evidence of luxury and opulence with approving, but envious eyes. He drew his arm through Walsh's.

"What are you going to do with it?" he inquired.

Walsh tried to assume the festive air of a Wall Street broker who has just sold out his best friend over a stock deal.

"Invest it," he remarked casually.

"All of it?"

"Yep.

"How much have you got there?

"Fourteen hundred plunk."

Hayes made a rapid calculation. Then he asked, trying to keep his trembling voice on an octave of solid, disinterested friendship.

"What're you going to invest in? Anything special?"

Walsh drew a gaudy prospectus from his pocket.

"Fasten your lill' orbs on this here, pard," he said. "A perspectus of the International Coal and Coke Company; the swellest and most attractive proposition in the whole Northwest. Ten cents a share and dead-sure to pop to par inside of the year. Just listen."

And he read out loud the glowing passages of the promoters; the usual comparison of the new mine with the Bunker Hill, the Calumet, and the LeRoy.

"I'm hikin' right round to old man Houghton at the Peyton Block to stump up my little ante," Walsh continued. "Say, ain't it a swell chance?"

Hayes smiled.

"Andy," he said, "are you going to speculate, or are you going in for a straight, solid investment?"

"Invest, surest thing you know. I don't believe in no speculatin', and there ain't no speculatin' about this here mine. Not by a darned sight. It's a cinch—that's what it is—a double-barrelled Canadian cinch fixed up with round Oregon stirrups for safety's sake. Listen once more."

Hayes winked elaborately at nothing in particular.

"Listen here, Andy," he said. "If you really want to invest, you listen to me."

And he pulled from his bulging pocket a pamphlet of the Western Crown Life Insurance Company.

Now be it remembered that, before selling life insurance, Hayes had been a real estate agent in Los Angeles, that he had sold Cannery stock in Portland, Oregon, apple ranches on the Hood River, Placer Gold shares in Seattle, Oil properties in Vancouver, and Building and Loan units in Calgary, Edmonton, and Saskatoon.

Thus, two hours later, Andy Walsh had taken out a nice, all-wool burglar-proof, Harveyized-steel life insurance policy with the Western Crown. The first year's premium was a little over two thousand dollars, of which he had paid fourteen hundred in cash and the rest in notes. Needless to say, Hayes had manipulated the deal so that the company received the notes while he himself retained the cash as commission; which the cashier of the company, being a friend of Hayes's, may or may not have known.

Walsh returned to the Eslick, while Hayes walked to the Old National Bank, where he deposited seven hundred dollars to Macdonald's account.

He said to himself that he had deserved a little alcoholic refreshment. So he turned into Post Street and entered the festive swinging-doors of Jake Messerstecher's Germania café.

In the entrance he bumped against Traube. They exchanged greetings.

Sympathy was not one of the Californian's many failings. He was a firm believer in single-minded Nietzscheism, brought up to an up-to-date American business basis.

But now, his share in the suicide syndicate paid up, and fat, yellow-backed prosperity lining his inside pocket, he felt a little affected as he beheld the lugubrious, hatchet-like face of the German.

"What seems to be the trouble, Dutch?" he inquired. "Has a blight struck the sauerkraut crop? Have the limburger veins of the Westphalian mountains pinched out? Has the Kaiser shaved off his moustache?"

"Ach, Gott! nein! Vorse dan datt!" Traube sighed, and pointed a broad, short-nailed thumb in the direction of Jake Messerstecher's Germania café.

"Jake—he—," he continued after a pause, and was silent again.

"Well, what's Jake gone and done?"

Traube explained. It appeared that Jake Messerstecher was an old friend of his; that they had visited the same school together, back in Germany. So he had tried to borrow from the wealthy saloon-keeper the seven hundred dollars which he needed. He had offered him security. For he had told him that at the end of the year he was sure to receive a large amount in cash, and that he was then going to open up his café, and, as a bonus for the loan of seven hundred he had offered to Jake a half-interest in the future enterprise.

"Black on vite did I offer it to him," Traube wound up his tale, "before vitnesses and mit a seal of der notary bublic attached."

"And Jake didn't want to come through with the spondulix, I take it?" Hayes asked grinning.

"Eggsactly! He laughed at me. He sed I vos a damned fool, und den he called me very bad names in Cherman vich I am ashamed to translate into English."

Haes laughed.

"Forget your troubles, Traube," he commented, "and have a drink on me."

"No, tanks! I am too sad; beer vould not taste good mit dis sadness inside of me. Ach Je! I am so onhappy!"

Again a wave of sympathy swept over the Californian.

"I tell you what I'll do," he said. "I'll play you a game of cards."

"Pinochle?" Traube asked, with a hopeful gleam in his eyes.

"Sure, pinochle it is," Hayes replied, and he led the other up the street and into the back-room of Miller's cigar store.

"Two bits a game, Traube, and not a cent more," he remarked as he sat down. "I ain't much of a pinochle player."

"Sure. Two bits soots me fine," the German agreed, and broke the seal of the deck against the edge of the table.

They played.

Late that night, Ritchie Macdonald was again presiding over the gathering in the lobby of the Eslick. The six contributing members of the suicide syndicate were present. They had all paid up their full shares of seven hundred dollars each; but they were all singularly quiet as to the methods by which they had earned it.

Traube had been the last to pay up. He had come into the lobby only a few minutes before, tightly holding on to a roll of bills which he had given to Macdonald.

Now he sat in a corner, next to Hayes, whose usually pasty complexion was tinged with an angry red.

The insurance agent was talking to the German in an earnest, passionate whisper. But the other was defending himself stoutly.

His words boomed out clear and distinct.

"Veil, it ain't my fault if you keep on raising der limit, iss it? Vot good iss a limit onless you shtick to it? Dere ain't no damned sense in a limit vot's got no limit!"

"What's the row?" Macdonald inquired.

"Nothing, nothing," Hayes replied.

And the German seconded him.

"Nodings at all."

Macdonald rose.

"All right, fellows," he said. "You've done nobly. You've done your part. To-morrow, bright and early, I'll step round to the Western Crown with Hayes and have that painless little insurance operation performed. And the same evening I shall begin to wrestle with the three thousand bones you so kindly contributed."

There was a long silence. They looked at Macdonald, who sat hunched up like a large bird of prey, his pipe casting a grotesque shadow over his square chin.

He walked to the door.

"So, I bid you all good-night—and good-bye."

"What d'you mean 'good-bye'?" Hayes asked. "Ain't we going to see you any more?"

Macdonald laughed.

"I told you that I was going to be a gentleman of leisure during my last year on earth. I can't afford to run round with a bunch of bums who live at the Eslick."

"Say, honest—" it was Walsh who spoke. "Ain't we going to see you no more at all?"

"Sure you'll see me. To-morrow's the first of April, isn't it? All right. You'll all see me at my funeral, a year from to-morrow."

He walked as far as the door.

Then Graham ran after him.

"I say, Mac," he commenced.

"What is it?" Macdonald demanded stiffly.

"Do you think you could lend me a hundred to-morrow? Just for a few days? I am rather stony-broke, you know—"

Macdonald laughed.

"Hold out another year, Graham," he replied. "You won't be broke twelve months from to-morrow."

And he walked into the bar-room.