Part 41 (2/2)

Larry the visionary, with the plunger's mirage always teasing him through the arid conditions of a low salaried exile, had, it seemed, caught at the fringes of success--and slipped into disaster. Through years he had h.o.a.rded small savings out of his frugal income with the gambler's eagerness to have a ”stake” against the swift pa.s.sing of the golden opportunity. Finally he had thought that it had not all been in vain. His eye had appraised other fields where the coal ran out in spa.r.s.e and attenuated veins but where the ”sand blossom” spoke of oil.

His h.o.a.rdings had gone straightway into options, at prices based on farming valuations where farms were cheap.

It had remained then to enlist the interest of capital in taking up these many options and securing others, and that required a large sort of sum. Larry had gone to the directors of the company that employed him. He had haunted their offices and they had endured his obdurate besieging only because he was an efficient man cheaply employed, and, as such, ent.i.tled to one hare-brained eccentricity.

Columbus striving to raise money from a world convinced of the earth's flatness, with which to sail round a sphere, encountered a scepticism no more stolid, and yet in the end Masters had convinced them. The persuasion was accomplished only when other adventurers were beginning to clip coupons from just such enterprises in adjacent fields. When, to the monied men, ”Masters' folly” became ”Masters' discovery,” the native landowners were growing as wary as ducks that have been decoyed, and dealing with them at a tempting profit required subterfuge. Besides the options already held there were more to be secured before the proposition was rounded into unity. Masters had therefore lined up, as his purchasing agents, men of native blood and apparently of no organized unity. Employing cash instead of checks bearing tell-tale signatures, they could still acquire at a song, and a poor song, too, large oil-bearing tracts virgin to the drill.

So, with his plan patiently built, like a house of cards that had often tumbled but which at last seemed steady, Masters had turned away from the Lexington interview with a black bag containing treasure enough to awaken all the old, long-prostrate dreams. A life tarnished with futility seemed on the bright verge of redemption. A share in the Eldorado would be his own, and after years of eating the bread of discontent his crushed pride could rise and stand erect, fuller nourished.

These grandiose prospects of the altered future called for celebration, very moderate, of course, because now above all other times he needed a dependable and clear brain. With the tingling of the alcohol in his arteries his dreams expanded--and he drank more.

Then he had been robbed.

”But how in G.o.d's name could it happen?” demanded the Colonel. ”You were stopping overnight at the Phoenix. Didn't you put your money in the safe?”

Masters raised a pair of nerveless hands in a deprecatory gesture.

”I was drinking. I had certain memoranda in the same bag and I took it up to my room to run over some details--then he came and knocked at the door.”

”Who came?”

”I don't know. He called me by name and seemed to be a man of means and cultivation. We drank and chatted together. It was in my bedroom in a city hotel, mind you. I didn't drink much.... The bag was locked ... the key was on the table by my hand.... Of course in some fas.h.i.+on he had learned of the money being turned over to me. How?”

The response was dry.

”I don't know. What happened?”

”G.o.d knows. I suppose it was some variation of the old device of knock-out drops or some sort of drug. I awoke sitting in my chair--very sick at my stomach--and had just time to make my train by rus.h.i.+ng off without breakfast. I had been there all night. I glanced in the bag and seeing the packet there with the rubber bands around it right as rain, I failed to suspect. It was when I got here that I found it had been rifled.”

”And the man?”

”I talked with the hotel by long distance. No one by the name he gave me had been registered there. The description meant nothing to them.”

”Why,” inquired the Colonel presently, ”didn't you tell me of this plan of yours in advance--this enterprise?”

Masters shook his head. ”You'd only have laughed at me like the rest. I was getting fed up on being laughed at. It gets on a man's nerves in time. For just once in my life I wanted to be the one who could say 'I told you so!'”

”What steps have you taken--toward catching the thief?”

The victim groaned. ”Don't you see that I couldn't take any? To report to the police would be an admission to the company. The whole thing was trusted to my hands after much reluctance. Can't you see that my story would seem a bit thin?”

Masters' words ended with a gulp, and in his eyes was the stark terror of panic reacting after the comatose silence of lethargy.

Colonel Wallifarro's face, too, had become drawn and distrait. For a time he paced the floor up and down without a word, his hands tight held at his back and his head bowed low on his breast. As he walked, Masters, from his chair by the table, followed his movements with eyes that held no light except that of fear and wretchedness.

Finally the lawyer halted before the chair. His brow was drawn, but in face and att.i.tude was the p.r.o.nouncement of a decision reached. Tom Wallifarro had been wrestling with complex and intermingled elements of the problem as he walked. When he halted, the s.h.i.+fting perplexities had resolved and settled into determination.

”I've got to see you through this, Larry, and it's going to be a hard scratch. I suppose you think of me as wealthy. Most people do, but it's necessary to be frank with you. I have a very handsome practice, and I have for many years lived well up to that income--at times I've overstepped the boundary. I have my farm in Woodford and my house in town. I have a considerable insurance, and that about sums up my resources. I draw from the running channel of my law fees and it's a generous flow, but one I've never dammed providently into a reservoir of surplus. If I have to raise twenty thousand dollars off-hand, I shall have to borrow. Thank G.o.d my credit will stand it.”

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