taken a draw, he seemed to remember the presence of the other.
“Yes,” said he, “it’s a sure-enough job if you wish to take it. I’d have had it myself, only I’m no hand at the deep-sea-cable business; but when the thing was spoken of to me I said: ‘I’ve got the man you want who can do any job in that way better’n any man in Frisco.’ You see, I knew you’d served two years on the Groper.”
“The Grapnel, you mean.”
“It’s all the same; she were a cable ship, weren’t she? And I said: ‘If he’ll go, I’ll go meself as second off’cer. I can do the navigatin’.’ ”
“When the whisky bottle is out of sight,” put in Blood.
“ ‘And what’s more,’ said I, ‘I’ll get you a crew that’s up to snuff and won’t make no bother nor tell no yarns. You leave the job to me,’ said I, ‘and if I can get the Captain to come along it’s fixed,’ I says.”
“Now look here, Bill Harman,” said Blood, shifting his position on the mooring bitt so as to get his informant face to face, “what are you driving at? What do you mean, anyhow? Who’s the owner of the cable boat that’s willing to ship you as first mate and me as skipper? Is this a guy you are letting off on me, or is it delirium tremens? A cable boat! Why, what cable company is going to fish round promiscuous and pick up its officers from sweepings like you and me?”
“This is no company,” replied Harman. “It’s a private venture.”
“To lay or to mend?”
“Well, if you ask me,” said Harman, “I’d say it was more like a breaking job. If you ask me, I wouldn’t swear to it being an upside business, but it’s a hundred dollars a month for the skipper and a bonus of two thousand dollars if the job’s pulled off, and half that for the mate.”
The Captain whistled.
The darkness in this business revealed by Billy Harman jumped up at him; so did the two thousand dollars bonus and the hundred a month pay.
“Who asked you to come into this?” said he.
“A chap named Shiner,” replied Harman.
“A Jew?”
“A German. I don’t know whether he is a Jew or not, but he’s got the splosh.”
“Look here,” said the Captain, half resuming his place on the mooring bitt with one leg dangling, “let’s come to common sense. To begin with, you can’t run a cable boat with a skipper and a mate and even a couple of engineers alone. You want an electrician. Where’s your electrician to come from?”
“You don’t want no electricians to cut cables with,” said Harman.
“That’s true,” said the Captain, falling into meditation.
“Yet, all the same,” went on Harman, “this chap Shiner said we would want an electrician, and that he’d come as electrician himself. Says he has a good knowledge of the work.”
“Oh, he said that, did he?”
“Yes, and I guess he told no lie. This chap Shiner is no bar bummer by a long chalk. I reckon he’s all there.”
The Captain made no reply. He was thinking. At first he had fancied this to be a simple business; some rascal person or syndicate wishing to cut a deep-sea cable and so interrupt communication between the business centres. There were only two or three Pacific cables where this piece of rascality could bring any fruitful results. That is to say, there were only two or three cables the cutting of which would not have been negatived by collateral cables or wireless, and the simple cutting of those cables could not conceivably produce a financial result worth the risk and the cost of an expedition.
But this was evidently more than a simple cutting job, since the presence of an electrician was required.
“Look here,” said he, “where is this man Shiner to be seen?”
“Why,” said Harman, “he’s to be seen easy enough in his office on Market Street.”
“Well, let’s go and have a look at him,” said the Captain, detaching himself from the mooring bitt. “He’s worth investigating. Would he be in now, think you?”
“He might,” replied Harman. “Anyhow, we can try.”
They walked away together.
Harman, unlike Blood, was a typical sailor of the tramp school, a man who knew more about steam winches and cargo handling than masts and yards. He was all right to look at, a stocky man with a not unpleasant face, a daring eye, and a fresh colour, but his certificates were not to match. Drink had been this gentleman’s ruin. Had he been a lesser man, drink would have crushed him down into the fo’c’sle. As it was, he managed to get along somehow by his wits. He had not made a voyage for two years now, but he had managed to make a living; he had been endowed by nature with a mind active as a squirrel. He was in with a number of men: ward politicians knew him as a useful man, and used him occasionally. Crimps knew him, and tavern keepers. Had he been more of a scamp and less of a dreamer, he might have risen high in life. His dream was of a big fortune to be “got sudden and easy,” and this dream, stimulated at times by alcohol, managed somehow to keep him poor.
The public life of Frisco, like a rotten cheese, supports all sorts of mites and maggots, and the wharf edge is of all cheese the most rotten part.
Harman could put his hand on men to vote at a city election, or men to man a whaler; he was under political protection, he was in with the port officers and the customs, and he could have been a very considerable person despite his lack of education but for the drink. Drink is fatal to successful scoundrelism, and the form in which it afflicted Harman is the most fatal of all, for he was not a consistent toper. He would go sober for months on end, and then, having made some money and some success, he would “fly out.”
Having reached Market Street, Harman led his companion into a big building where an elevator whisked them up to the fifth floor.
Here, at the end of a concrete passage, Harman pushed open a door inscribed with the legend “The Wolff Syndicate,” and, entering an outer office, inquired for Mr. Shiner. They were shown into a comfortably furnished room where at a roll-top desk a young man was seated busily at work with a stenographer at his side. He asked them to be seated, finished the few words he had to dictate, and then, having dismissed the stenographer, turned to Harman.
Shiner, for it was he, was a very glossy individual, immaculately dressed in a frock coat, broad-striped trousers, spats, and patent-leather shoes.
He did not look more than thirty—if that—he was good looking, and yet a frankly ugly man would have produced a more pleasing impression on the mind than Mr. Shiner. Despite his good looks, his youth, and his manner, which was intended to please, there was something inexpressibly hard and negative about this individual.
The Captain felt it at once. “Now, there’s a chap that would do you in and sit on your corpse and eat sandwiches,” said he to himself, “and smile—wonder how Harman got a hold of a chap like that? But there’s money here; the place smells of it, and the chap, too. Well, we’ll see.”
“This
