Little Lost Lambs, page 30
Due south from the Pennsylvania Station, it was, until abreast the landmark of the City Hall post-office; then south by south-east to his destination. And Barclay, having the guidance of a warm, early summer morning sun, was in no doubt as to which was north and which south.
Rather, he had not counted on the number of steps leading up to the Elevated. His bulky form was all of two hundred pounds, and the rains of fifteen years in the South Pacific had left their trace of gout. While he hesitated, the seaman sighted something which sent him hurrying into the street. This something was the placard at the masthead of a street-car—South Ferry. Here was a craft undoubtedly bound in the direction he wished to go, and the word "ferry" had a welcoming aspect.
Another moment and Skipper Barclay had tendered his nickel and was ensconced in the seat beside the conductor, his worn leather valise between his knees, while the car clanged through the traffic.
Breathing a trifle heavily from the impetus of his plunge for the car, Barclay fumbled in the breast of his coat. He drew out a fragment of paper, clipped from a newspaper on the train. It bore the legend:
BRADDOCK
Jewels Bought and Sold. Highest Prices
The address was Maiden Lane. Barclay had already located Maiden Lane on his chart. He stared at the advertisement mildly, wasting no time in looking out at the sights of the city. Frisco was much the same as New York, and he had come on business. His trip was the fruit of an idea.
This idea had been born of hours of thought when Barclay had been alone on his schooner in the South Pacific. He had had plenty of time to think. The life of a South Seas trader is quieter than many narrators choose to picture it.
Between dickering with islanders for copra and pearl-shell, and hours of selecting arrows and shark's teeth-swords for the tourist trade, the germ of the idea had grown. Barclay had sought and patiently accumulated pearls, bartering them for California-made clothing, knives, calico, pipes, and tobacco and English currency with the Kanakas. Venturing from the more familiar grounds of the Samoas and the Straits to the New Hebrides and Santa Cruz, Barclay had collected a fair assortment of pearls.
These he had kept for three or four years. It was part of his idea. The other part was that higher prices for his holdings might be had in New York than in Honolulu or Frisco. He was sure of this. He had heard of pearls sold by companion traders at Frisco which fetched double the price later in New York. So Barclay had come where the best prices were to be had.
Much was at stake on his trip. A month ago he had sold his schooner at Honolulu and taken passage to Frisco. Barclay had traded for fifteen years, and Matilda Barclay had asked him to stay ashore. They had a cottage on the coast near Oakland, a married daughter, and a grandson, who was in school.
Barclay hoped to get enough for his pearls added to the money he had for the schooner and certain other savings—to keep him and his wife in the semiluxury of a modern cottage with a phonograph, and to send the grandson to school.
Inquiry of the conductor of the car set the skipper afoot just south of City Hall. He caught the eye of a loitering teamster.
"Where might Maiden Lane be now?" he rumbled.
The man jerked his thumb indefinitely over his shoulder and Barclay passed on through the crowd of lower Broadway at noon. Eventually he came to the building that bore the brass sign: "Braddock—jeweler."
An elevator took him to an upper floor, and a similar inscription on the ground glass of a door admitted him to the sanctum of the jeweler. Barclay put down his bag, mildly surprised. Instead of the store he anticipated, he saw a boxlike office behind mahogany railing. At a stenographer's desk a well-dressed young woman was bending over a ledger. A table, a chair, and a row of filing-cabinets completed the furnishing. Barclay took off his felt hat, revealing a wide expanse of bald forehead, reddened by wind and sun.
"Is this Mr. Braddock's?" he asked.
The girl glanced up, noted the suit-case with a slight frown, looked again at the seaman's earnest face, and smiled perfunctorily.
"Yes, it is," she said sharply. "Do you want to see Mr. Braddock? What is the name, please?"
Barclay waited while she disappeared into a partitioned office behind her desk. Over the ground-glass partition Barclay heard a murmured conversation.
"Mr. Braddock will see you," she announced, holding open the door of the inner office.
"Thank ye, miss," said Barclay, and she smiled again, fleetingly, at his hearty tone.
Braddock proved to be a smooth-shaven individual of uncertain age, quietly dressed. He looked up inquiringly from a rolltop desk. Barclay was relieved to find the sanctum contained a glass cabinet, and a heavy safe. He had begun to wonder if this was really a jeweler's shop.
He took the chair that was offered him and scrutinized his companion. Braddock's lean face was strangely lifeless until he smiled, as he did now, cordially.
"What can I do for you—Captain Barclay?"
"I saw your advertisement in the paper," began the seaman. "I've got some pearls to sell—came all the way from Frisco to New York." He fumbled at his breast-pocket and drew out a leather case in which were two chamois bags. One of these he placed on the leaf of the jeweler's desk.
"There's no demand for pearls just now," observed Braddock indifferently. Too many on the market—"
He broke off, studying the contents of the bag which his visitor spread out carefully. There were a dozen pearls, of varying size, but all undeniably fine specimens.
"H-m. Where did these come from?"
Barclay fingered them slowly. "Some from the Straits, three or four from Malaita, some from Azore, and the two little fellows from Samoa. See that?" He held up a small, lustrous sphere. "Chief Tahuana sold that to me for trade worth maybe twenty pounds sterling. He was crazy for gin. I wouldn't sell it to him, but he knew he could get it from one of the copra pedlers. Tahuana got his gin, and came aboard again—drunk. He ripped the skin off my collar-bone before we got 'em off the deck. There's no trusting his kind—of that I'm quite positive.
Braddock smiled sceptically.
"Trader's tales—eh? I guess you figure you'll get more for your stuff by the telling of 'em. Stories don't sell pearls in N'York." Bending over the objects in question, he did not see the surprise that flashed into Barclay's gray eyes. After all, South Seas traders were not common in the metropolis, and the captain's speech savored of fiction—if it had not been true.
Barclay placed a heavy hand over his pearls.
"If ye do nor believe me, Mr. Braddock," he growled, "we'll not do business. I'm a man of my word. These pearls come from the islands."
The jeweler glanced up quicky at that, and his smile changed.
"No offense, cap'n—no offense, sir. We hear a lot of fake stuff about the South Seas pearl fisheries. I don't doubt your word. Not a bit." He fingered the pearls; then adjusted a jeweler's glass over one eye. "As I said, cap'n, I'm overstocked with these things, but—h-m—let me see. What are you asking for this pair? They aren't quite a match—"
This was familiar ground to Amos Barclay. Fifteen years he had bargained, bought and sold. Only it had been on the deck of his schooner, with the trade ranged before him, and a serviceable revolver slung at his waist. And the men he had bargained with were the shrewd, apparently childlike, but really treacherous islanders—or the human driftwood of Polynesia.
He had met with every trick of false dealing—traded a dozen bundles of arrows for as many sticks of tobacco with a certain chief, while the henchmen of that island potentate had rifled his cabin underneath, via the port, accessible to a nigger boy. He had passed over a Portuguese admiral's full-dress uniform—bought at a costumers in San Francisco—to a warrior of Aoba, while the dexterous toes of his client were engaged in drawing valuable knives from the stock of trade between them, and passing the spoil back to his comrades to be divided between them.
And he had paid over the full price of a good pearl to a Kanaka, who put the payment in his lava-lava and forthwith dived over the rail of the schooner with the pearl—until checked in his swim ashore by a few well-chosen shots.
Barclay had learned his lesson many years ago in the hard school of the sea-trader. Now, he thought, he was dealing with a white man, in a white man's city. They would haggle—they did haggle for more than an hour, over prices—but Braddock was a man of his own kind, who paid out good American money. Here was no concealed treachery, or the need of a drawn revolver. It was, Amos Barclay hoped, his last big trade. It was the fruit of his idea.
II
AND Braddock at length paid him a good price—the figure the captain had in mind when he had come to New York. The jeweler took all the pearls Barclay had in his bag. They were worth the price. Both men were satisfied with the deal that had just been closed.
Barclay's idea had worked out well. He had received forty per cent more than he would have got in Frisco. Braddock had met his demands readily.
"I'll take cash, I reckon," he said when the jeweler had mentioned a check. Braddock agreed.
"Wait ouside, Captain Barclay," he explained, " and I'll send to the bank for the money. We haven't got forty-six hundred dollars in our safe just now."
Barclay nodded cordially, gathered up his pearls and retired to the outer office, to fall into a pleasant reverie while the woman assistant went out for the cash.
Braddock closed the partition door carefully. Then he retired to a closet behind his desk. He shut the door of the Closet and unhooked a telephone.
"Give me Dorgan's café," he told the operator.
Evidently the switchboard operator was familiar with this call, for Braddock got his connection at once.
"Jim Mahoney there?" he asked briskly, and waited. " That you, Jim? This is Braddock—yes. Say, you're the man I want. I got a customer on the hook here —pearls, good ones. I'm handing him forty-six hundred in cash in a half-hour."
Mahoney's voice was sharp.
"What sort of a guy is he?"
"Ripe, and a real boob. A trader—the South Seas. Thinks he knows more 'n all N'York. Wants to retire and stay ashore, now that he has a pile—"
"I get you," laughed the man at the other end of the wire.
"Look here, Jim. Watch yourself. You know I got to keep clear of your little stunt—"
"Oh, don't worry yourself, Brad. You'll get fifty-fifty of what I get out'v—"
"Skipper Amos Barclay. If you get it—"
"Say, do I ever fail?"
"Well, watch yourself."
"You'll get your velvet—"
Mahoney hung up and Braddock returned to his desk, a satisfied gleam in his narrow eyes. Twenty-five minutes later he had paid the cash to Barclay, gripped the seaman's hand and wished him well. Barclay replied with gruff heartiness, took up his valise, and sought the door. Outside in the corridor he noticed a slender individual, in a light, summer suit and straw hat. They went down in the elevator together. At the entrance Barclay paused, wondering whither his way led.
The stranger stopped also and lit a cigarette. " Nice day, cap'n," he observed, flinging away the match. Barclay nodded, slightly curious.
"How d'ye know—"
"What I called you?" The man laughed pleasantly. He had a shrewd, youthful face and a frank manner. "Oh, I ought to know a seaman, cap'n. See a lot'v them. My business is ship construction— at one'v the big Jersey shipyards."
Barclay nodded again, looking about for a street-car that would bear him north-ward.
They walked out together apparently bound in the same direction.
"I'm going to visit the works now, cap'n," explained his companion. " One'v the biggest in the country. Say, you ought to see the neat little cargo-steamers we built for the Emergency Fleet—and the pair 'v dreadnoughts in the ways now. During the war visitors was barred, but now the plant's a great place for the sightseers." His quick glance swept sideways at the taciturn skipper. "We're ready to launch a sweet four-master right now."
"Didn't know they made 'em any more."
"Oh, we made everything during the war. Say, you ought to see that schooner. She's a beauty. For the coast trade."
Barclay scowled irresolutely. He had intended to spend his time otherwise. Still—
"The dreadnoughts will be the biggest afloat. Two thirty-five thousand-ton craft. Why don't you give 'em the once-over, cap'n—"
"Barclay." The skipper hesitated. He had heard much of the ships under construction in the New York yards. And he would never return to the metropolis. " Where might this place be, young man?"
An hour later the two were within the yard limits of one of the greatest shipbuilding-plants in the country. His companion had not overstated the magnitude of the work. Barclay scrutinized the panorama of steel fabrication keenly, and deeply interested in his tour of inspection.
He saw the new angle and plate shop, watched the seventy-ton traveling-crane in operation, looked into the power-house. The other, who seemed familiar with the place, led him to the ways, where the newly rivetted side of two great battle-ships loomed. Other visitors were there.
Barclay noticed an N. Y. S. C. initialed on the motor-trucks by the spur of railroad-track and his guide told him the name of the plant. Barclay recalled it vaguely.
He left the Jersey shore undeniably impressed with the aspect of the plant they had visited. It was late, and he accepted. his companion's invitation to dinner.
"I don't think you know my name," his host smiled when the waiter had been dismissed. He produced a card, which read:
"Mighty fine plant, that, Cap'n Barclay. I ought to know. I sell its stock for a living "—the flicker of a smile passed over the man's alert face unobserved by the seaman—" and it's pretty soft for me, because the stock just about sells itself. It pays thirty per cent a year, and it's so good everybody wants it."
He ordered a steak, well done, and gazed reflectively at Barclay. The skipper had said little. But Mahoney had not forgotten Braddock's tip..
"This shipyard stock is so safe," he said confidentially, "that it's an A1 investment f'or people who don't want to worry about their money. Thousands get a fine income from it."
Barclay nodded understandingly. He had heard of the great profits the shipyards had. been making. And he understood something of investment. He had bought up, in the past, little by little, the shares in his schooner until he was sole owner. He thought of the small schooner, compared with the giants of the sea he had just seen. It must be a fine thing to own even a tiny share of such craft. Even better to invest in the plant that built them—
Mahoney produced a newspaper and examined it.
"Let's see," he meditated, "N. Y. S. C. is selling at forty-two to-day. Dirt-cheap, and a bargain." He showed the list of stock prices to the skipper and the fleeting smile appeared again as Barclay verified what he had said. "Just think, it pays you thirty dollars on every hundred each year. Any man who has made a pile can profit by it."
Barclay nodded again. Slowly, he computed the income on four thousand dollars, at thirty per cent. It would be more than a thousand dollars a year. It would give Matilda—
"A man who has worked hard to make a pile," resumed Mahoney pleasantly, "has a right to get good money from it.. A good living."
"Yes," assented Barclay, " that's true."
The problem had worried him. He had some money — enough, as he had once thought. But Matilda had told him that prices had gone up during his last trip to the South Seas, and his grandson was in school. All these things cost a great deal.
"Look here, young man," he scowled thoughfully. "Could ye get me some of this here stock—a little?"
No elation showed in Mahoney's keen eyes. Instead he looked grave.
"It 'd be hard to do—and, say, cap'n—I didn't want to try to sell you anything. Business is business and friends are friends—that's my motto. But if you really want some—"
Barclay thought again of the giant ships. No need to tell him what money-makers these were, or how great the demand for more of their kind would be. Mahoney's words were echoing in his mind: "A man who has worked hard has a right—to a good living."
Twelve hundred dollars a year would keep him and his wife comfortably. He had seen the giant shipyard, and the price quoted in the newspaper. His only fear was that there might not be any of the stock to be had.
" I think I might be able to get you a hundred, shares—maybe," considered Mahoney. " I like you, Barclay, and I'll do my best. Suppose you meet me at the National Bank to-morrow, at ten?"
III
PRECISELY at ten o'clock the next morning Mahoney met Barclay at the marble lobby of one of the oldest banks of the city. Fifteen minutes later he had produced a formal looking stock-certificate, made out in Barclay's name and bearing the title and seal of the New York Shipyard Company.
The seaman read it through carefully, seated at one of the customer's tables in the lobby. He saw that the certificate was correct in form. He was further impressed with the magnificence of the National Bank corridors. Truly, he thought, this was the place where highest prices were to be had—the city of wealth.
He counted out forty-two hundred dollars to Mahoney, who drew up and handed him a receipt for the amount.
"You got a good thing there, Cap'n Barclay," Mahoney laughed jovially. "Hang onto it. Don't Iet any swindler make you sell it. Your name's on the books of the company, and they'll send you a check for your thirty per cent each year."
He slapped the burly seaman on the shoulder and leaned closer, confidentially.
"Say, it was hard to get this across to you. But—do I ever fail?"
Once more Captain Amos Barclay stood in the streets of Manhattan, this time with the stock-certificate buttoned where the money had been. He was well content. New York had more than satisfied him. He had got his money, and exchanged it for an investment that would fulfil all his needs. His idea had been put into effect successfully.
