Glencannon, page 8
"Lost it!" exclaimed the other, horrified. "Oh, jeest, buddy!"
"Aye," said Mr. Glencannon, "'tis vurra onconvenient. I had it made to order i' Jerko-Slovakia, and ye cud hardly tell it fra' the real one."
"Oh!" said the waiter, greatly relieved, "Oh, I getcha now! You mean it was a cheater, hey—a phoney—don'tcha, buddy?"
"No," said Mr. Glencannon, "I mean it was a gloss eye, and a vurritable mosterpiece o' the eyemaker's art. I paid fufty dollars for it i' Prog, and I'd gladly gi' twice that much to get it back."
"Yair?" said the waiter, glancing around beneath the tables. "Well, a hunnert smackers is a pretty fair chunk a change! Got any idea where ya lost it, buddy?"
"No," sighed Mr. Glencannon. "Ye see, I canna tell by the feeling whuther it's in or no'. I'm only sairtain that it must ha' popped oot somewhere betwixt here and the foot o' East Fufteenth Street. By noo it's dootless smoshed to smuthereens."
"Oh, I dunno; maybe it fell on sumpin soft," the other cheered him. "Why, you even might a dropped it while you was in here. Tell ya what I'll do: When the crowd starts comin' in, I'll ask everybody did they find it. Yair, and I'll soich around careful fer it when I sweep out the jernt tonight. I could use them hunnerd plasters myself, I'll tell the woild!"
"It's kind o' ye to tak' the trooble," said Mr. Glencannon. "But if ye find it, ye'll be a hoonderd dollars reecher for yere pains."
"Okay, bud!" the waiter grinned. "Stop in here later on. And now lemme mix y' up a Special."
Having finished this drink as well as another to keep it from rattling around, Mr. Glencannon emerged upon Second Avenue, opened his left eye, and joined Mr. Levy, who was waiting for him on the opposite corner.
"Well, what-o? 'Ow'd it go?" inquired the wireless operator.
"Losh, it worked lik' a charm!" exulted Mr. Glencannon, poking him playfully in the ribs. "I tell ye, Sparks m' lad, the plon is pairfict!"
Mr. Levy licked his lips nervously. "Tell me just h'exackly wot I 'ave to do," he said.
"Weel, t'wull be reedeeculously sumple," Mr. Glencannon told him. "Merely gae into the place, sit doon at a table, and order a drink. When the roofian comes back to sairve ye, ye shud be rolling the gloss eye aroond on the table or polishing it off wi' yere nopkin. When he osks ye where ye foond it, as o' coorse he will, tell him that ye just picked it up i' the gutter as ye were coming in."
"Yus, and wot then?"
"Why, then, o' coorse, our friend will offer to buy it fra' ye at a nominal feegure, which ye will scornfully refuse. Then he'll dootless mak' a higher bid, to whuch ye'll onswer no, ye dinna care to part wi' it, as ye mean to mak' a scarf pin oot o' it, or to use it i' a dead horse ye're inteending to stuff. Oh, ony plausible excuse will do. All the time he'll be thinking o' the hoonderd dollars reward, and his greed will be his doonfall. Mak' him gi' ye fufty dollars, lad—aye, fufty dollars at the least!"
"Orl right," said Mr. Levy, squaring his padded shoulders. "Wyte fer me across the h'avenue. Well, 'ere goes!"
IV
Several hours later, as Mr. Glencannon stood in the shelter of a doorway down the street from Ye Olde Pickwick Taverne, he felt that the world was a pleasant place after all. A hundred and fifty dollars reposed in a pocket but recently occupied by a few small bills. Yes, and Mr. Levy, even now disposing of the fourth and final eye, would return with fifty dollars more. Of course, young Levy had his price, but after all, what was 10 percent?
"Haw!" chuckled Mr. Glencannon. "I've won back my ain again, and i' another five minutes I'll hae a tidy profeet besides! I foncy these Yonkee cutpurses will think twice before they rob another Scot! After a', we sturdy sons o' the North are a-muckle too keen for the oncouth louts."
His contented musings were interrupted by Mr. Levy, who arrived breathless and agitated.
"Here! What's amuss?" asked Mr. Glencannon, shaking him by the arm. "Didn't ye get the money?"
"Yus," panted Sparks, "but never mind that now! Quick, tell me where in 'ell did yer get those blarsted eyes, anyw'y?"
"Why," confessed the engineer, "they boonced oot o' the case o' Jerko-Slovak optical goods that fell overboard last nicht. But—"
"I thought so!" nodded Mr. Levy, wiping the perspiration from his brow. "Ah, they're crafty beggars, them Jerko-Slovaks! D'yer know wot they'd 'idden h'inside of them eyes?"
"No," said Mr. Glencannon hoarsely. "Dinna keep me i' suspense!"
Mr. Levy peered around the edge of the doorway before he answered.
"There's diamonds h'inside of them," he whispered. "Smuggled diamonds, don't yer see? Smuggled diamonds as big as pigeons' h'eggs, worth a h'emperor's ransom. Yus, gor blyme, and 'ere's us, a pair of bally idjits peddling 'em orff fer a mere spittance."
Mr. Glencannon leaned against the shop window and fanned himself with his cap. "Diamonds!" he breathed. "Guid losh, lad, how did ye deescover it?"
"Well," explained Mr. Levy, "I'd just palmed orff the larst eye on the bloke in that Old Picnic plyce, and was myking ready to be on my w'y, when I sees 'em showing it to a couple of other coves at the bar. They're passing it from 'and to 'and when one of 'em drops it. It falls on the tiles and busts to pieces, and out of it rolls the most h'enormous sparkler I ever be'eld. They grabs it h'up and starts gloating h'over it, and I grabs my 'at and nips out. They looked like 'ard customers, yer see, and I was afryde they'd shyke me down to see if I 'ad any more."
"Aye, but what aboot the other ones—the other ones?" barked Mr. Glencannon. "How can we get them back? Great swith, there's no' a seecond to lose!"
"Yer ruddy right there ayn't!" agreed Sparks. "Yer'll 'ave to close yer eye, go back to them other plyces, and fork up the 'undred-dollar rewards. And if they arsks why you don't put yer eye in when they gives it to yer, tell 'em you need a special shoe 'orn or something."
"Exockly!" agreed Mr. Glencannon, slapping him on the back. "Ye're richt, lad—ye're richt! But feerst I must roosh doon to the ship and borrow some money. Hoot, Muster Levy, our foortunes are made!"
Captain Ball and Mr. Montgomery were seated at the breakfast table.
"D'ye know, sir," said the mate; "Mr. Glencannon's acting a bit strynge of late."
"Strange?" repeated Captain Ball. "Er—that is, I mean to say, has he stopped drinking or anything?"
"Well, I'd 'ardly go as far as that," said Mr. Montgomery. "But just the syme"—he leaned across the table and lowered his voice—"just the syme, I believe 'e's orff 'is nut. Larst night I 'ears a bit of a noise from aft, so I creeps back to see wot's hup. There 'e was, sitting on the deck outside 'is room, busting glass marbles with a 'ammer, and vainly 'unting fer something among the pieces. Lawks, 'e was swearing 'orrible!"
Captain Ball smiled, winked, and nodded his head reassuringly. "Oh, I fancy he'd had a drop too much of this Yankee liquor—that was all that ailed him. He's been going ashore with Mr. Levy quite a bit, and I understand that Levy's brother-in-law owns four what-you-m'call-'ems, right here in the neighborhood."
"Speaklies?" suggested Mr. Montgomery.
"No, speaklies are a sort of a noisy cinema; I'll think of the word in a minute," said Captain Ball, reaching for the condensed milk.
PARDON THE FRENCH
I
In the sixth year of the reign of the Sacred and Imperial Hirohito the world's affairs had reached a sorry state, and certain little gentlemen in the Yokohama offices of the Hoshino Kisen Kaisha—two yellow bands on a black funnel—fell prey to a deep and bitter concern. Especially was it deep when they thought of the S.S. Miyako Maru, and bitter as gall when they brooded on her age; for the good ship Miyako—ex-Odile, ex-Ernst von Kleydorff, ex-Paxton Merchant—was on the brink of her twenty-fourth year, and she wasn't such a good ship at that.
Now, to owners of elephants a twenty-fourth anniversary is nothing to worry about, and to proprietors of wine cellars it is even a matter for congratulation; but to gentlemen with many thousands of yen tied up in a ship, it is the occasion for a huge and splitting headache. If the ship is not adequately covered by insurance, its owners are haunted by the realization that she has all but fulfilled her expectancy of life, and their dreams are crowded with symbolic pitchers en route to the well. Should the vessel be insured to a figure approximating her replacement value, Lloyd's Second No. 3 Special Survey looms upon the horizon—looms, as runs the phrase, very darkly indeed. For the Second No. 3 is the most drastic of the periodical inspections prescribed by the underwriters, and involves the complete dismantling of engines and boilers, the stripping of pipe casing, the drawing of tail shafts, the tearing up of all wood deck to expose steel plating, the removal of tank top and spar ceilings, and some hundreds of additional items, even including the drilling of holes in the hull to gauge the thickness of the plates. It is only slightly less trouble than building an entire new ship, but when you finish the job you still have nothing but an old one. And the cost of it! Ah, the cost! As they contemplated the figures, Baron Hoshino and his associates felt even lower than nature had fashioned them, which was four feet eleven on the average.
So they went into a huddle, these little Japanese gentlemen; they had in the statistician, the auditor and the books; they telephoned their bankers, the Tokyo branch of an American oil company, and a Russian lady known to be friendly with a cabinet minister having something to say in the allotment of government subsidies; but all to no avail. By five o'clock they were thoroughly despondent; at seven they were in shrill panic; at eight, the Baron's thoughts were turning to hara-kiri. But along toward eleven, over their thirty-sixth cup of tea, they suddenly realized that they had talked their way to the brink of a felicitous solution. For a moment they sat silent. Then one of them rose, locked the door and quietly resumed his place. Baron Hoshino cleared his throat and put into whispered words what was tacitly in the minds of them all. The little gentlemen listened, nodded, and forthwith set about drafting cablegrams in the company's private code. Shortly after midnight the meeting adjourned; they bowed to one another, sent for their cars and, inwardly glowing with a sense of their own shrewdness, departed to the repose which in Japan, as elsewhere, is often loosely described as the sleep of the just.
Now, Oriental acumen is proverbial among the nations, but London shipping circles are unanimous in holding that of all living mortals Mr. Virgil Hazlitt is the one least populous with flies. Myopic, misanthropic, dyspeptic and sixty-three, Mr. Hazlitt is general manager of Clifford, Castle & Co., Ltd., and the reason why the firm has never passed a dividend. When the H. K. K.'s slant-eyed representatives waited upon him with their proposition for the sale of the Miyako Maru, he listened carefully, answered neither yea nor nay, but spent the remainder of the week in discreet inquiry, exhaustive research and canny conjecture. When finally he consented to sign the option, the Japs were highly elated. When he expressed his intention of sending a man to St. Nazaire to journey from there to London aboard the Miyako and report on the state of her engines, there was a split second's sag in their elation which any but he would have overlooked. But as Mr. Hazlitt smiled, nodded, polished his glasses and wished them a very good day, his mind was occupied with proverbs having less to do with Oriental guile than with rats and sinking ships.
II
Like his employer Mr. Hazlitt, Mr. Colin Glencannon, chief engineer of the S.S. Inchcliffe Castle, is widely noted for his perspicacity. In seven hundred ports around the seven seas, tall tales are told of his canniness.
On this particular evening, however, it chanced that Mr. Glencannon's discernment was somewhat dulled by the state of his temper and his considerable alcoholic content. He stamped up the gangplank from the dry dock's edge to the vessel's side, burst into the saloon and scaled his cap across it.
"Foosh!" he snarled. "'Tis the dom black luck o' the deevil, and it dogs my footsteps still!"
Half a dozen masticating jaws were arrested as one, as the company gazed at him blankly.
"Wot kind of dogs?" inquired Mr. Montgomery, peering under the table. "Lawks, 'ave yer got the deleery and tremens or something? Yer talking like an idjit with a screw loose!"
"A screw loose?" stormed Mr. Glencannon. "A screw loose? Ach, it's worse than that, Muster Mate! There's screws loose, bearings loose, key ways loose, and pinions loose—aye, the whole dom thing is loose, but that's no' the worst o' it."
"Er—ker-huff—you mean the crystal's busted too?" inquired Captain Ball, his perplexity suddenly dispelled by a gleam of sympathetic understanding. "I'll tell you what, Mr. Glencannon—why don't you try holding it upside down and joggling it a little?"
The engineer wagged his head dolefully. "'Tis no' my watch that's ruined; it's my career," he explained. "Hazlitt's just had me ower to the office, and though the sly auld glaggy didn't actually tell me i' so monny words, I was keen enough to see he's plonning to tronsfer me to the unluckiest ship that floats. I refer to the Miyako Maru, whuch I sairved in as seecond during the war, when she was called the Paxton Merchant."
"The Miyako Maru! Hell's bones! Is he buying that old pot?" exclaimed Captain Ball. "Why, I mean to say, I remember two years ago we was moored alongside her in Santiago de Cuba, and I couldn't sleep a wink o' nights from the rivets dropping out of her and splashing in the water."
"Weel, he has no' exoctly bocht her yet, but he's got an option on her," growled Mr. Glencannon. "He's sending me ower to St. Nazaire tomorrow nicht so's I can ride back in her and inspect her engines. And then—and then he'll buy her and tronsfer me aboord her like a rotten galley slave, may his bunions boil i' his Sunday shoes and his oily tongue turn to sondpaper!"
"H'm, dear me," said Captain Ball. "Well, I fancy I don't have to tell you how much we'll hate to lose you. You've been a leading spirit among us, Mr. Glencannon, and I mean to say—ker-huff—we'll miss you. But after all, if it's any consolation to you, I don't suppose you'll find her so much worse than this here old rusty scrap pile."
"Pairhops not," admitted Mr. Glencannon. "But 'tis no' only her physical deeficiencees whuch worrit me, losh no! 'tis the ootrageous bod luck whuch stalks me whene'er I'm aboord o' her, the whuch is frichtful! Throughout the war, 'twas just one calomity after another. One time, for instance, we rammed a Portygee mine layer in a fog, blew her to smuthereens and then collected a bounty fra' the Portygee Government, who thocht we'd sunk a Hun soobmarine; but the skipper and the chief mulcted me oot o' my honest share o' it. And even worse was the time when a blackleg named O'Brien, a blethering War Office civilian, robbed me o' sixteen cases o' whusky. Aye, Duggan's Dew o' Kirkintilloch, it was, than whuch the archangels drink no finer!"
"Haw, yer don't s'y!" snorted Mr. Montgomery. "Anybody who could do you out of money was a genius, but if O'Brien really got aw'y with yer whisky, he was simply a flyming wizard, that's wot 'e was!"
Mr. Glencannon wrinkled his brows. "Fra' the vurra fairst minute I set eyes on the rapscallion, when he came aboord wi' ten kegs o' bullion, I knew there was something feeshy aboot him. Weel, it soobsequently turned oot I was richt."
"Do yer mean to s'y 'e swiped some bullion too?" inquired Mr. Swales.
"Aye, he stole a whole keg o' it. He must hae been daft," nodded Mr. Glencannon reminiscently. "Still, come to look back upon it, there was sheer wartime modness i' the whole affair. Ye see, it was airly i' nineteen fufteen and we wair i' Leeverpool aboot to clear for Makalla, Arabia, wi' field guns, caissons and forty or fufty casual noncoms. The War Office held us up for three days while a gang o' their own men built a little strong room i' the hold, port side, richt against the top corner of the after engine-room bulkhead. It was a' vurra secret and hush-hush, and none o' us was pairmeeted to go near it. Then the mon O'Brien arrived wi' his bullion and seeveral tin trunks full o' secret maps and documents, and wi' a-muckle o' insoolting ceeremony he locked it a' up, just as if the rest o' us wair so monny thieves. It appeared he was an Inteelligence agent or summat such, on a mission to the sumple-minded A-rabs who had been deriving innocent amusement fra' sniping at ships going through the Suez Canal. He was to gi' them the bullion and osk them please to desist.
"Noo, just what the jockosses i' the War Office imogined the A-rabs oot i' the desert cud do wi' ten kegs o' bullion, heaven only knows—ten barrels o' oysters wud hae been just as useful. But being o' a more proctical turn o' mind mysel', I had bocht sixteen cases o' Duggan's as a speeculation, knowing full weel that I cud sell it to the officers' mess at Makalla for double or treeble what I'd paid for it. I had the cases stacked i' my room. Noo, this was a' vurra weel until we got doon into steaming hot weather; but then I was no langer able to keep my door closed. I cud tell by the wistful look o' the dom noncoms that the whusky was a sore teemptation to them whene'er they passed my room, and I didna trust them. The vurra day before we got to Port Said we ran into an oogly heavy beam sea, and some o' the warriors took to moaning for a drap for seasickness. Well, I got so worrit that I asked O'Brien wud he be guid enough to lock it i' his strong room. After a great show o' reeluctance and much talk aboot the trooble he'd get into if his superiors shud come aboord to inspect his bullion, he finally consented. That was the last I e'er saw o' my whusky—aye, and o' O'Brien, too. Sixteen cases—think o' it!"
"Lawks!" gasped Mr. Montgomery. "He simply nipped ashore in Port Said with the whisky and the bullion, is that it?"
"Aye, apparently," said the engineer. "Ye see, we didn't miss him until after we'd coaled next day. Then some Army people came rooshing aboord i' a dither o' excitement, blew open the strong room, and found one keg and the trunks o' secret documents missing. O' coorse, there wasn't a sign o' my whusky. They swore that O'Brien had sold oot to the Toorks, and I foncy they wair richt. I' any event, it was just another exomple o' my hard luck on yon dom ship, and why I loathe the thocht o' sairving i' her again."
"But now see here," said Captain Ball, "can't you give Hazlitt such a rotten report about her engines that he won't buy her?"
"I misdoot it wud discourage him." Mr. Glencannon shook his head dismally. "Ye see, he smells a bargain, and besides, he micht get somebody else to check me up. Oh, he was acting vurra strange—vurra strange—nudging me i' the ribs, wunking his eye at me every two minutes, and talking i' riddles which I cud plainly inteerpret to mean that he intends to tronsfer me. He's smart—aye, smart as paint—but he's no' smart enough to fool me! 'Keep yere eyes and ears open every second yere aboord her, my guid mon,' he says to me. 'We've a chonce to buy her dirt cheap, and I'm depending upon you to prevent any of their Oriental chicanery.' Oriental chicanery, foosh!" And Mr. Glencannon spat explosively, if not accurately, at the open porthole. "When it comes to plain oot and oot shiftiness, I'd motch auld psalm-singing Hazlitt against the whole o' Asia ony time, wi' the city o' Aberdeen thrown in!"
