Part 147

“Now, look here, Mayo, don't let any fool notions stand in the way of your making good. It isn't sense; it isn't business! You have something we want and we're willing to come across for it.”

“What other strings are hitched on?” asked the young man, feigning intractability as his best resource in this puzzling affair.

“Well, of course you give up that fool job you're working on. Quit being a junkman!”

“I'm not a junkman. We're going to float the Conomo.”

“Mayo, talk sense! That job can't be done!”

“So you've been telling every outfitter and banking-man in this city, Fogg! But now you are talking to a man who knows better. And let me say something else to you. I'll do no business with the kind of a man you have shown yourself to be.”

“Don't be a boy, Mayo. I'm here with full powers. We'll take that wreck off your hands.”

“Want to kill her as she stands, do you?”

“It's our business what we do with her after we pay our money,” declared Fogg, bridling.

“There's something more than business--business with you--in this matter.”

“Yes, I see there is! It's your childish revenge you're looking after. I'll give you ten thousand dollars to divide among that bunch of paupers. Send them along about their fishing, and be sensible.”

“It's no use for us to talk, Fogg. I see that you don't understand me at all. You ought to know better than to ask me to sell out myself and my partners.” He rose and started for the door.

“Partners--those paupers?”

“They have frozen and sweat, worked and starved, with me out on Razee Reef, Fogg. They are partners.”

“What's your lay? What are the writings?” insisted the promoter, following Mayo.

“Not the scratch of a pen. Only man's decency and honor. You and your boss haven't got money enough to buy--There isn't anything to sell!”

“But there are some things we can buy, if it has come to a matter of blackmail,” raged Fogg. “Are you cheap enough to trade on a foolish girl's cursed butting into matters she didn't understand? You have been pawing those papers over. You know what they mean!”

Mayo turned and looked at the excited man.

“They have nothing to do with you or your affairs, the most of those papers,” sputtered Fogg. “Mayo, be reasonable. We can't afford to have our holding companies shown up. The syndicate can get by that infernal Federal law if we work carefully.”

“Otherwise Marston and you and a few others might go to Atlanta, eh?”

“It isn't too late to send you there.”

“You are worrying about those papers, are you?”

“Of course I'm worrying about them! What do you suppose I'm down here for?”

“You keep on worrying, Mr. Fogg! Come on into the little corner of hell where I have been for the last few months; the fire is fine!”

He yanked open the door and slammed it behind him, shutting off the promoter's frenzied appeals.

XXX ~ THE MATTER OP A MONOGRAM IN WAX

O come list awhile and you soon shall hear. By the rolling sea lived a maiden fair. Her father followed the sum-muggling trade Like a warlike he-ro, Like a warlike he-ro that never was aff-er-aid! --The Female Smuggler.

Captain Mayo carried only doubts and discouragement back to the wreck on Razee. His doubts were mostly concerned with the matter of the documents which Mr. Fogg was seeking so insistently. Mayo himself had done a little seeking. He inquired at the post-office, but there was no mail for him. If no papers had been abstracted from the Marston archives, if this affair were some new attempt at guile on the part of Fogg, the promoter had certainly done a masterly bit of acting, Mayo told himself. He determined to keep his own counsel and wait for developments.