"The word can't, Skinner, was eliminated from my vocabulary some fifty years ago. We can—and I will! You needn't; but I've simply got to! Hey, you!"—to the launchman—"kick her wide open and show some speed."

Despite the warning cries from the quarantine officers in the health boat, the launch ran in along the Retriever's side; Cappy Ricks grasped the Jacob's ladder as the launch rasped by and climbed up with an agility that caused Mr. Skinner to marvel. As his silk hat appeared over the Retriever's rail a wind-bitten, bewhiskered, gaunt, hungry-looking semi-savage reached down, grasped him under the arms, snaked him inboard and hugged him to his heart.

Silence for a minute, while Cappy Ricks' thin old shoulders shook and heaved as from some internal spasm, and Matt Peasley's big brown hand patted Cappy's back. Presently he said:

"Well, father-in-law—"

From somewhere in Matt Peasley's whiskers Cappy's voice came plaintively:

"Not father-in-law, sonny. New title—this morning—six o'clock—nine—pounds—grandfather! Eh? Yes; grandfather! Grandpa Ricks!"

"Boy or girl?" Matt Peasley roared, and shook the newly-elected grandfather.

"Boy! Florry—fine—never lost hope!"

A port health officer came over the rail. He shook an admonitory finger at Cappy Ricks.

"Hey, you! Old man, you're under arrest—that is, you're in quarantine, and you'll have to stay aboard this ship until she's fumigated. Yes; and we'll fumigate you, too. Whadje mean by coming aboard ahead of us?"

"Cappy," Matt Peasley said, "tell that person to go chase himself! Why, there hasn't been any plague aboard the ship in nearly five months!"

Cappy looked up and wiped the tears of joy out of his whiskers.

"Scoundrel!" he cackled. "Infernal young scoundrel! What do you mean by risking my Retriever, sailing her through the Gate with a crew of one man?"

"Take a look at me!" Matt laughed. "I'm all hands! And didn't I prove I'm enough men to handle her? The pilots wouldn't board me, and by sailing her in myself I saved pilotage and salvage claims. I lost the lower topsail and the consignees are going to find a shortage in those hardwood logs; but that's all—except that I haven't had a decent meal in God knows when. Say, Cappy, what does he look like? A Peasley or a Ricks?"

"Both," Cappy chirped diplomatically. "Matt, are you all over the blue-water fever?"

"You bet!" he declared. "No more relief jobs for me. I've had plenty, although it might have been worse. It was lonely and sometimes I thought I was going crazy. Used to talk out loud to myself! I had some awful weather; but I just tucked her head under her wing and let her roll, and after I ran into the northeast monsoon, and later into the westerly winds, I had it easier and got more rest. You know, Cappy, when a ship is sailing on the wind, if you lash her helm a little bit below amidships she'll steer herself. Slow work, but—I got here; and, now that I'm here, I'm going to stay here.

"Of course, Cappy," he added, "I've just got to have something with sails to play with; but no more offshore sailing in mine—that is—well, I'm going to stay home for a long time—after a while, maybe—and meantime I'm going to build a little schooner yacht—"

"For the love of Mike, do!" Cappy pleaded. "I'll be stuck in quarantine with you for a couple of days and we'll kill time drawing up a rough set of plans. And when that schooner yacht is ready, Matt, I'll tell you what I want you to do."

"What, Cappy?"

"Send the bill to grandpa, Matthew!"

"If I hadn't been a case-hardened old fool I'd have cheered you on when you wanted to build that schooner yacht last year. I'd have saved myself a world of grief."

He placed his hand gently on Matt's shoulder and his face was ineffably sad as he continued: "Of course, with you away and your fate undecided, as it were, Matt, that infernal Skinner wasn't worth two hoots in a hollow. Why, the boy flopped around the office like a rooster with its head off, and as a result I've had to come out of my retirement and keep an eye on things. Thank God, I can let go now. Really, Matt, you have no idea how I long to separate myself from the hurly-burly of California street. What I want is peace and seclusion—"

"You can have my share of that commodity for the remainder of my natural life," Matt laughed happily, "I want noise and people. I want screaming and yelling and fighting and risks and profits and losses and liars and scoundrels and honest men all inextricably mixed." He tossed his great sun-tanned arms above his head. "Lord, I want Life," he half shouted.

Cappy sighed. These young pups! When they grow to see life as old dogs—

"Well, Matt, all I've got to say is that the first man that butts into my private office and starts unloading a cargo of grief on me, is going to get busted between the eyes with a paper weight. I'm through with grief and woe. I don't give a hoot what happens to the world or anybody in it. I want peace and a rest. I can afford it and wouldn't I be a first-class idiot not to take it while the taking is good, Matt?"

"No more mixing in the shipping end, eh?" Matt asked hopefully.

Cappy raised his right hand solemnly. "Never again, Matt. I'm through with ships and sailors and cargoes and the whole cussed Blue Star fleet can sink and be damned to it, but I'll not lift a hand to save it. I'm THROUGH."



CHAPTER XXVIII



ALAS! Man proposes, but God disposes. Cappy had smoked his post- prandial cigar next day and was in the midst of his mid-afternoon siesta, when the buzzer on his desk waked him with its insistent buzzing. He reached for the telephone.

"My dear," he reproved his private exchange operator, "how often have I told you not to disturb me between two and three o'clock?"

"I knew you wouldn't mind being disturbed this afternoon, Mr. Ricks. Your old friend Mr. Gurney, of New York, is calling."

"Old Joe Gurney? By the Holy Pink-Toed Prophet! Show him in." Cappy was at the door to meet his visitor when the latter entered. Mr Joseph Gurney, senior partner of the firm of Gurney & Harlan, was, like Cappy Ricks, a shiping man and a Down-Easter. He and Cappy Ricks had been a boyhood friends in Thomaston, Main, and Gurney & Harlan were the agents and controlling owners of the Red Funnel line plying between New York and ports on the West Coast.

"Well, Joe, you doddering old pirate?" cried Cappy Ricks affectionately. "Come in and rest your hands and feet. I'm tremendously glad to see you. When did you drift into down?"

He shook hands with Gurney and steered him toward a chair.

"Ten minutes ago, Alden, my boy. Delighted to see you again, and particularly pleased to see how carelessly you carry your years. I'm three months younger than you—and I feel like the last rose of summer."

"You look it, Joe. Take a leaf out of my book and let the young fellows 'tend to business for you. Don't let worry ride over you in the shank of your old age, my boy. I never do. Haven't paid a bit of attention to business in the last ten years, and that's why at my age I'm looking so fit."

"You'll live to be a hundred, Alden."

Cappy smiled.

"Well," he declared, "I'm going to live while I have the time. I never expect to be a walking corpse just stalling round in an effort to defer settlement with the undertaker, and I won't be a dead one until the neighbors hear a quartet singing Lead Kindly Light out at my house—Joe you look worried. Anything gone wrong with you, old friend? Need some money? Have you married a young wife?"

"It's Joey," Gurney confessed miserably.

"What? My godson, little Joey Gurney?"

"He's big Joey Gurney now."

"Yes, and a fine boy, Joe—no thanks to you. His mother's influence was strong enough to counteract any impulses for crime he might have inherited from his father."

Gurney smiled sadly at Cappy Ricks' badinage.

"He is a fine boy, Alden, but—he's only a boy, and I'm afraid he's going to make hash of his young life before it's fairly started."

"Booze?"

"No."

"Well, then where did he first meet this woman?"

Joe Gurney, Senior, hitched his chair close to his friend's and laid an impressive hand on Cappy's knee.

"Alden," he said feelingly, "you and I have been friends, man and boy, for about sixty-five years. I believe we were five years old when we robbed Deacon Follansbee's beehive and got stung to death."

"Yes, and we've both been getting stung more or less ever since, only somehow we still manage to recover and be none the worse for the experience. At least, Joe, we learned about bees. When it comes to boys, however, I've still got my experience coming. My little chap died when he was twelve, you know. I've never quite gotten over his loss; in fact, Joe, I was dreaming of him a minute ago when you called."

"You had him long enough, Alden, to realize how I feel about Joey."

Cappy nodded. "Let's see," he answered, reflectively pulling his whiskers, "Joey must be about twenty-four years old now, isn't he?"

"Twenty-four last Tuesday; and at twenty-five he comes into his mother's fortune. I've managed his little nest egg pretty well, Alden; invested it all in the vessel property of Gurney & Harlan, and since the war started I've swelled what originally was a quarter of a million to about a million and a half. His stock in the Red Funnel Line is worth a million at the very least, and the remaining half million is represented by cold cash in bank and bonds that can be converted into cash overnight.

"Hum-m-m! Harumph-h-h! Quite a fortune for a youth of a twenty-five to be intrusted with. I'll bet somebody will take it away from him before he's thirty."

"That's a safe bet, Alden. He has a candidate for his money on his trail right now."

"And he doesn't realize it?"

"Alden, he's only twenty-four years old. What does a boy know at twenty-four?"

"Well, Joe, you and I had accumulated a heap of experience and hard knocks at that age, and I seem to remember we each had a little money we'd managed to save here and there. I don't agree with you at all on this twenty-four-year-old excuse. My son-in-law, Matt Peasley—you remember the Peasleys of Thomaston; Matt's a nephew of Ethan, who was lost off the main yard of the Martha Peasley—was holding a master's ticket for sail, any ocean and any tonnage, before he was twenty-one. He's not much older than your Joey right now, but, nevertheless, he's president of the Blue Star Navigation Company and worth a million and a half, every dollar of which he has made by his own energy and ability."

"Well, of course, Alden, there are exceptions to every rule."

"Not if you raise 'em right and you've got the right kind of stock to work on and the boy is healthy and normal. Now I know your Joey comes from the right stock; I know his mother raised him right until he was sixteen when the good Lord took her away from you both; and I know he is healthy and normal. Hasn't he proved that by falling in love? The only conclusion I can draw, therefore, is that you've made a monkey out of him, Joe Gurney."

"Perhaps I have, Alden; perhaps I have," Gurney replied sadly.

"No 'perhaps' about it. I know you have. You sent him to college and gave him ten thousand dollars a year to spend. If you wanted to give him a fine education and turn out a man and a gentleman you might have gotten him into the Naval Academy at Annapolis, where he would have learned something of ships and graduated with a master's ticket; after serving a few years and getting the corners knocked off him he could have resigned and you would have had a sane, dependable man to sit in at your desk when you're gone. By the Holy Pink-Toed Prophet, Joe Gurney, you make me sick! You're like every other damphool American father who accumulates a few million dollars in excess of his legitimate needs and then gets all puffed up with the notion he's got to give his son all the so-called advantages his own parents were too poor to afford him—or too sensible. The result is you turn out an undeveloped or over-developed boob, too proud to work and not able to take a real man's place in the world because he hasn't been taught how. And in the course of time he marries a female boob who has been raised according to the same general specifications, and nine times out of ten she's too refined to be bothered with a family. And presently there's a trip out to Reno and the little squib in the paper and—er—ahem! Drat your picture, Joe, you're the responsible party. You created a ten-thousand-dollar-a-year parasite on the body politic while your boy was still in his teens, and now you want to know what the devil to do about it, don't you?"

"That's exactly what I want to know, Alden," Gurney confessed miserably, "and I've crossed the continent to get your advice. I haven't very many real friends—the kind I can open my heart to—"

"Tut, tut, Joe. Enough of vain repining. Now then, old friend, let's get to the bottom of this thing and see if we can't buy this wreck in from the underwriters, salvage it and put it in commission again. Never say die, Joe! Where there's a will there's a lawsuit or a heartache—particularly if the estate makes it worth while. Now then, Joe, you must realize that it's the fashion nowadays, when a fellow has to consult a specialist, to give his personal and family history for three generations back before receiving treatment. So if I am to diagnose Joey's case I'll have to have a history of Joey. Now then! He graduated from college at the age of twenty-two did he not?"

"He didn't graduate, Alden. He was requested to leave."

"Hum-m-m! I didn't know that. What for?"

"General uselessness and animal spirits, I suppose. It wasn't anything dishonorable. The main contributory cause was an alleged poem lampooning some individual they called Prexy."

"Hum-m-m! And since leaving college what has he done?"

"I've had him in my office."

"Joe, answer my question. I know you've had him in your office. But what has he done? Has he earned his salary?"

"I'm afraid he hasn't, Alden. Somehow golf and tennis and week-end parties and yachting and big-game hunting in Alaska and tarpon fishing in Florida sort of interfere with business."

"Well, that isn't much of a crime, Joe. I never had time to do those highly enjoyable things and I couldn't afford them. When I could afford them and had time to do them I was too old. You say the boy is fond of yachting?"

"It's his greatest hobby. In his taste for salt water he at least resembles his ancestors. The Gurneys were all sailors and shipping men."

"Is he a good yachtsman, Joe?"

"He has a schooner that's a hundred and six feet over all and he seems to win pretty regularly with her. I never knew him to get worse than second place in all the races he has entered."

"Too bad," Cappy Ricks murmured sadly. "A noble ambition absolutely misdirected. He would have been a skipper and, lastly, a good shipping man if you had only managed him like a sensible father should. Now about this girl he's in love with?"

"That happened about three months ago. He met her at one of those roof-garden, midnight cabaret, turkey-trot palaces in New York—"

"Yes, I know. I always take in the sights when I go to New York, but the last time I was at that one up near Fifty-fourth Street the noise bothered me. And the show was very poor; in fact, after seeing it I made up my mind I was off cabaret stuff for keeps."

"You ancient scalawag! What were you doing in a place like that?"

"Seeing life as it ought not to be, of course. Your boy Joey took me up there, by the way. In-fer-nal young scoundrel! He showed me the town and we had quite a time together."

Joe Gurney's old eyes popped with amazement.

"You went batting round with my Joey—an old ruin like you?"

"Why not? We behaved ourselves, and besides I always trot a heat with the young fellows whenever I get a chance. It keeps me young. I enjoyed Joey a heap, although I could see he was a jolly young jackass. Moreover, I'm his godfather, and I guess it was all right for me to tag along and see to it that my godson didn't get into deep water close to the shore, wasn't it? Don't you ever step out with Joey and get your nose wet?"

"Certainly not!"

Cappy Ricks smiled wistfully.

"If I had a son I'd pal up with him," he declared. "I'd want to get out with him and raise a little dignified hell once in a while, just to be a human being and keep him from being a mollycoddle. Ahem! Harumph. So he flagged this damsel in the leg show, eh?"

Joe Gurney nodded miserably.

"Have you given her the once over?" Cappy demanded.

"Yes, I went up there one night. I was afraid somebody would see me, so I took along Joey's aunt, Matilda. We saw the young woman. She does a dance specialty—an alleged Hawaiian hula-hula. It's fake from start to finish."

"You show a guilty technical knowledge of the hula, Joe," Cappy reminded him. "But passing that, what's the latest report on the situation?"

"Horrible, Alden, horrible!" replied Joe Gurney.

"Careful, Joe, careful! Many a wheat-straw skirt and sharks'-teeth necklace may conceal a pure and honest heart."

"Well, she's been married twice and divorced once, to begin with, and—"

"That's a-plenty, Joe."

"And she has just completed her contract in the show and gone out to Reno to acquire a six months' residence in order to get rid of husband number two so she can take on Joey."

"Who told you all this?"

"I found it out—by asking."

"Have you told Joey?"

"No."

"Does he know it?"

Gurney nodded.

"I had one of his young friends, whom I can trust, tip him off in confidence. The news didn't make any difference to Joey. He asked her about it, and she explained it all away to his entire satisfaction."

"I dare say. And you haven't given any indication to your son that you're on to him and his love affair?"

"I thought best to pretend ignorance, pending my arrival at a solution of the difficulty."

"Therein you showed a gleam of real intelligence. Having humored your boy all his life you could not expect to cross him in his first love affair and get away with it. No, sir-ree! The thing to do is to put the skids under Joey and his lady love before they know you know it. Tell me more about her, however, before I begin making skids and skid grease."

"She is thirty-one years old—"

Cappy Ricks threw up both hands.

"Farewell, O my countrymen!" he murmured.

"She has two children—one by her first husband and one by her second. They're living with her mother. She supports them from the proceeds of her hula dancing."

"Score a white mark for her, Joe. Is she a good looker?"

"A brunette, Alden, and Joey's Aunt Matilda admitted against her will that she was a beauty. My lawyer tells me, however, that she hasn't an ounce of brains, and proclaims the fact by laughing loudly when there is nothing particularly worth laughing at."

"I imagine you've had a detective agency investigating her."

"I have. She has little education and no refinement; her people are very ordinary. Her father is a whitewing in Philadelphia and is separated from her mother, who keeps a boarding house in Muncie, Indiana."

"I'm afraid, Joe, she won't do for your daughter-in-law," Cappy Ricks opined slowly. "But don't worry, my boy. You've come all the way from New York to confide in me and get my advice, and somehow I have a sneaking notion you've come to the right shop. If there's anybody calculated to put a crimp in love's young dream, I'm that individual."

"I knew Joey and you were good friends, and besides, you're his godfather. He thinks a lot of you, Alden, and I kind of thought maybe you might come East with me, see the boy, get him to confide in you and—er—sort of advise him in the way he should go. I'm—er—well, Alden, I'm afraid I feel too badly about this to talk to Joey. I might lose my temper, and besides—besides, he's all I have and he reminds me so much of his mother that I—"

"Yes, yes, I understand, Joe. Leave it to me and I'll advise with him. Yes, I will—with an ax handle! And I'll go East with you and tie knots in his tail—only he won't know anything about it. It may cost you a little money, but I assume expense is no object."

"It would be cheap at a million."

"Where that boy and your money are concerned you're such an ass, Joe, I'm almost tempted to charge you a million extra for the operation. However, considering Deacon Follansbee's beehive, and Joey's mother and my godson—"

Old Joe Gurney took Cappy Ricks' hand in both of his, that trembled so with age and anxiety.

"Dear old Alden," he declared. "I knew you wouldn't fail me."



CHAPTER XXIX



For a long time after old Joe Gurney had terminated his visit Cappy Ricks sat in the position which with him always denoted intense mental concentration. He had sunk low in his swivel chair and swung his old legs to the top of his desk; his head was bowed on his breast and his eyes were closed.

Suddenly he started as if snake-bitten, sat up at his desk and reached for the telephone.

"Get me the West Coast Trading Company," he ordered the private exchange operator, "and tell Mr. J. Augustus Redell I want to speak to him."

Redell answered presently.

"Gus, my dear young friend," Cappy began briskly, "I want you to do me a favor, and in so doing I think you'll find you are going to perform one for yourself also."

"Good news, Cappy. Consider it done."

"Thank you, my boy, but this particular favor isn't done quite so quickly. I want you to tell that Peruvian partner of yours, Live Wire Luiz Almeida to dig up a specification for a cargo of fir to be discharged on lighters at some open roadstead on the West Coast, and the more open the port and the more difficult it is to discharge there; and the harder it is to get any sane shipowner to charter a vessel to deliver a cargo there, the better I'll be pleased. Surely, Gus, you must have a customer down on the West Coast in some such port as I describe, who is actually watering at the mouth for a cargo of lumber and is unable to place it with a mill that will guarantee delivery? Look into the matter, Augustus, and see what you can do for me."

"Do you want to furnish such a cargo from one of the Ricks Lumber & Logging Company's northern mills and freight it in one of your Blue Star Navigation Company vessels?"

"No, I don't want to do it," Cappy replied; "but in this particular case the acceptance of such a cargo and the freighting of it via a Blue Star windjammer, even though the usual demurrage at such discharging ports will cause the vessel a loss, is a consummation devoutly to be wished. Ordinarily, if you made such a proposition to me I'd call in the boys from the general office and tell them to throw you out, but—well, in this case I'm willing to stand the loss, Augustus."

Yes, you are—not. Somebody else will recompense you for any loss, Cappy Ricks, never fear. Do you want the West Coast Trading Company to give you a bonus for accepting our order?"

"No, my boy. I'll make Skinner sell you the lumber at the regular base price at the mill, plus insurance and freight to point of discharge. And I won't stick you too deep on the freight, even in wartime."

"There's something wrong with you this morning, Cappy," Redell declared, highly mystified. "You're too obliging. However, I'm not to be outgamed. I have a specification for a cargo of half a million feet for delivery at Sobre Vista, Peru; I've been trying for a month to place the order and nobody will accept it because nobody wants to guarantee delivery. On the other hand, the purchasers have been unable to get any ship owner to charter them a vessel to go to Sobre Vista without a guaranty of a perfectly prohibitive rate of demurrage per diem; consequently I had just about abandoned my efforts to place the order."

"Fine business, Gus. And is Sobre Vista a rotten port at which to discharge?"

"It's vile, Cappy. It's an open roadstead and the vessel lies off-shore and discharges into lighters. About four days a week the surf is so high the lighters cannot lie alongside the ship or be run up on the beach without being ruined, and to complicate the situation they only have two or three lighters at the port. Labor is scarce, too, and the few cargadores a skipper can hire have a habit of working two days and staying drunk for the remainder of the week on the proceeds of those two days of labor. So you can see for yourself that discharge in Sobre Vista is very hard on the skipper's nerves, and that if he can work two days a week he's in luck. And when we deduct from those two days all the national holidays and holy days and saints' feast days that have to be duly celebrated, not to mention the three hundred and sixty-five days in the year the populace doesn't feel like exerting itself—well, Cappy, I couldn't give you anything worse than Sobre Vista if you paid me for it."

"May the good Lord bless you, Augustus! Come down and do business with Skinner on the cargo. Get him to quote you a price f.o.b. ship's tackles at the mill dock and tell him you'll furnish the tonnage when the cargo is ready for delivery. There's no sense in worrying poor Skinner until his worries are due, and when I send a Blue Star schooner to load your cargo for Sobre Vista I'm going to have to fight him and my son-in-law, Matt Peasley. But leave it to me, Gus. I'll guarantee the tonnage."

"This is certainly wonderful," the grateful Redell observed. "Thank you, Cappy. What I'll do to those Peruvian customers of mine on price will be a shame and a disgrace. Are you going to stick me for any demurrage on the vessel, Cappy? Because if you are, I'll have to stick my customers in order to get out clean."

"No demurrage, Gus, not a penny."

"Bully! Then I'll stick my customers anyhow. It makes the profit all the greater, and since they expect to pay a reasonable demurrage I see no reason why I should disappoint them."

When Redell had hung up Cappy summoned into his presence Captain Matt Peasley.

"Matt," he queried, "what schooners have you got due at any one of our northern mills within the next thirty days?"

Matt Peasley pondered and counted on his big fingers. "The Tyee will be in from Valparaiso about that time," he answered.

"Have you got her chartered?"

"Oh, no. We're using her in our own trade. Skinner will have a cargo ready for her by the time she gets back, although we don't know yet where we will send her."

"Well, Matt, you tell Skinner he can't have her and to look around for some other vessel to take her place. I may give her to him at the last minute, but then again I may not. When she arrives at the mill, Matthew, my boy, tie her up to the mill dock to await my pleasure."

"Why, what the devil are you going to do with the Tyee?" Matt demanded, astounded beyond measure.

"I might want to take a cruise for my health and use the Tyee as a pleasure boat," Cappy answered enigmatically. "They tell me she's as fast as a yacht in a breeze of wind."

"The longer I'm acquainted with you, father-in-law," Matt Peasley declared, "the less I know you. You can have your Tyee, but for every day she is held awaiting your pleasure your personal account will be charged with something in three figures. I'll figure out her average profit per day for the last five voyages and soak you accordingly."

"Fair enough," quoth Cappy Ricks.



CHAPTER XXX



Three weeks later Alden P. Ricks arrived in New York. After he had been driven to his hotel and had removed the stains of travel he telephoned the office of Gurney & Harlan and got Gurney, Senior, on the line.

"Well, I'm here, Joe," he announced. "Have you followed my instructions and cut Joey off at the pockets?"

"I have, Alden. He's rather desperate as a result, and has been trying to borrow money by hypothecating the inheritance due him on his twenty-fifth birthday. You see, I didn't give him a second's notice; just told him he was spending too much time in play and too much money for pleasure, and that until he came into his private fortune he would have to earn any money he desired to spend. I have been very firm."

"That's the stuff, Joe. And is he trying to earn it?"

"Yes, I think so. He's sticking round the office at any rate."

"Hum-m-m! That's because it costs money to go anywhere else. Has he succeeded in raising a loan by assigning an interest in his inheritance?"

"No, not yet. I blocked him at all the banks and with my old friends, and I do not think he can borrow as much as he needs from any of his friends. They, like him of course, are dependent on their fathers' generosity."

"Fine way to raise a boy! Bully. Well, I'll be down to your office in about an hour and take you and Joey to luncheon at India House. You haven't forgotten what I wrote you, Joe? You know your part, don't you? . . . Well, see that you play your hand well and we'll save that boy yet."

Two hours later the Gurneys were lunching with Cappy Ricks at the one New York club to which Cappy belonged—quaint old India House in Hanover Square, haunt of shipping men and shippers, perhaps the best and least-known club in New York City. Joey had been unaffectedly glad to see his godfather; so much so, indeed, that Cappy rightly guessed Joey had designs on the Ricks pocketbook; for after all, as Cappy admitted to himself, he is a curmudgeon of a godfather indeed who will refuse to loan his godson a much needed twenty-five thousand dollars on gilt-edged security. In expectation of an application for a loan before the day should be done, however, Cappy was careful not to be alone with Joey for an instant, for something told him that only the presence of Gurney, Senior, kept Gurney Junior from promptly putting his fortune to the touch.

"Well, Joey, you young cut-up," Cappy began as the trio settled in the smoking room and the waiter brought the coffee and cigars, "I see you're getting to be quite an amateur sailor. Your Dad tells me you won your last race with that schooner yacht of yours in rather pretty fashion."

"It was a bully race, Mr. Ricks. I wish you could have been aboard with me," Joey declared enthusiastically.

"Hum-m-m! Catch me on a yacht!" Cappy's tones were indicative of profound disgust.

"Ricks, you're a kill-joy," old Gurney struck in. "All you think of is making money, and you've made so much of it I should think the game would have palled on you long ago. I tell Joey to go it while he's young—while he has the capacity for enjoyment."

"Joe, I tell you now, as I've told you before, you're spoiling this boy. When he's twenty-five years old he comes into a fortune and you're not even preparing him for the task of handling that money wisely. You bought Joey that schooner yacht, didn't you?"

"I bought her cheap," old Joe Gurney protested lamely.

"They cost a fortune to maintain, Joe. Now if Joey wanted some salt-water experience you should have sent him to sea as quartermaster on one of your own Red Funnel liners; presently he would have worked up to second mate; then first mate, and finally skipper. By that time he would have known the salt-water end of his father's business, after which he could sit in at a desk and learn the business end. Somehow, Joe, when I see a shipping man's son fooling away his time on a pleasure yacht instead of learning the shipping business, I feel as if I'd just taken a dose of ipecac."

"Godfather is out of sorts," Joey soliloquized sagely, and resolved to wait a day or two before broaching the subject of a loan. Cappy Ricks surveyed the young fellow severely.

"Joey," he began, "I've no doubt you're quite a sailor on your handsome yacht, in your yachting uniform, with all the real head work to be done by your sailing master—"

"Not a bit of it," Joey protested. "I'm not that kind of a yachtsman. I'm the captain tight and the midshipmite, and the crew take orders from me, because I don't employ a sailing master."

"Do you mean to tell me that when you go on a cruise to the West Indies you navigate the yacht yourself—lay out your own courses and work out your own position?"

Joey smiled patronizingly.

"Certainly," he replied. "That's easy."

"Sure. Play is always easy. But let me tell you, young man, if you had command of a big three-legged windjammer, with a deckload of heavy green lumber fresh from the saws, and ran into a stiff sou'-easter such as we have out on the Pacific coast, you'd know what real sailoring is like."

"Joey could handle her like that," old Gurney declared with pride, and snapped his fingers.

"Could you, Joey?" Cappy Ricks demanded. "I have my doubts."

"Why, I think so, Mr. Ricks. I might be a little cautious at first—"

"Well, I don't think you could," Cappy interrupted.

"Well, I do," old Gurney declared with some warmth. "I've been out with Joey on his yacht and I know what the boy can do."

"Bah! You're a doddering old softy, Joe. Yachting is one thing and sailoring is another. I have an old lumber hooker on Gray's Harbor now, loading for a port in Peru, and I'd certainly love to see Joey with her on his hands. I'll bet fifty thousand dollars he couldn't sail her down to Sobre Vista, discharge her and sail back inside of six months." The old schemer chuckled. "Lordy me," he continued, "I'd like to see Joey trying to make her point up into the wind! She'd break his heart."

"Look here, Alden," Old Joe Gurney commenced to bristle. "Are you serious about that or are you just making conversation bets? Because if you're serious I'm just shipping man enough to call you for the sheer sporting joy of it."

"By the Holy Pink-Toed Prophet, you're on!" Cappy Ricks almost yelled. "Put up or shut up—that is, provided Joey is as big a sport as his father and will undertake to sail my schooner Tyee to Sobre Vista and back."

"Oh, she's a schooner!" There was relief in Joey's voice. "Why, I'll sail any vessel with a fore-and-aft rig. I thought perhaps you were trying to ring in a square-rigger on me, and I'm not familiar with them. But a schooner—pooh! Pie for little Joey!"

"She's got three legs, and with a deck-load of lumber she's cranky and topheavy. I'm warning you, Joey. Remember he is a poor ship owner who doesn't know his own ship."

Joey got up and went to a map laid out on a table, with a piece of plate glass over it, to compute the sailing distance from Gray's Harbor to Sobre Vista. He could not find Sobre Vista on the map.

"Figure the distance to Mollendo and you'll be close enough for all practical purposes," Cappy called to him, and winked at the boy's father. "A little pep, here, boy," he whispered to Gurney, "and we'll snare him yet."

Joey came back from his study of the map.

"I'd have the nor'west trades clear to the Line," he remarked to his father. "After that I'd be liable to bang round for a couple of weeks in the doldrums, but in spite of that—did you say I couldn't do it in six months, Mr. Ricks?"

"That's what I said, Joey."

"Take the bet, dad," said Joey quietly, "and I'll take half of it off your hands. I'll give you my note, secured by an assignment of a twenty-five-thousand-dollar interest in mother's estate to secure you in case Mr. Ricks should win and call you for his winnings—but he hasn't a chance in the world."

"Money talks," Cappy Ricks warned him and got out his check book. "Joe, I'll make a check in your favor for fifty thousand dollars and you make one in my favor for the same amount. We will then deposit both checks with the secretary of the club, who will act as stakeholder—"

"'Nuff said, Alden P. Ricks. I accept the dare. Sonny, if you're a worse sailor-man than you appear to be, you're liable to cost your father a sizable wad. However, I can't resist this opportunity to put a nick in the Ricks bank roll." Gurney snickered. "Alden," he declared, "you'll bleed for a month of Sundays. Really, this is too easy! For old sake's sake, I'll give you a chance to withdraw before it is too late."

"Let the tail go with the hide, Joe. I don't often bet, but when I do I'm no piker. Joey, there's just one little condition I'm going to exact, however. I'm going to send one of my own skippers along with you on the Tyee, because your license as master only permits you to skipper pleasure boats up to a hundred tons net register; so in order to comply with the law I'll have to have a sure-enough skipper aboard the Tyee. But he shall have orders from me to be nothing but a companion to you, Joey. Once the tugboat casts you off, you are to be in supreme command until you voluntarily relinquish your authority, when of course he will take the ship off your hands. Any relinquishment of authority, however, will be tantamount to failure, and you will, of course, lose your twenty-five thousand."

"That's a reasonable stipulation, godfather. I accept if father does—that is, provided dad lets me in on half the bet."

"Better let the young feller in, Joe," Cappy suggested. "If you don't he might throw the race."

"Well, I don't like to encourage the habit of betting, least of all with my own son, but in view of the fact that this is a friendly little bet and—er—well, you can have half, Joey."

"Thank you, sir," said Joey. "Mr. Ricks, when do I start?"

Cappy Ricks glanced at his watch.

"The sooner the better," he replied. "The Tyee is loading now, but I'll wire them you're coming and to hold her for you. You have time to arrange your affairs, pack a trunk and catch the Lake Shore Limited for Chicago at five o'clock. From Chicago you take the—"

"Never mind. I know the quickest route. Dad, I'll need some money before I go."

"How much, son?"

"Oh, a couple of thousand, just to play safe. And I'll have to leave you a batch of bills to settle for me."

"All right, son, I'll settle them. Here's your two thousand. You can pay me back out of your winnings on the voyage. And never mind about your note or the assignment of an interest in your inheritance. If I cannot take my own son's word of honor I don't deserve a son. Just take care of yourself, Joey, because if anything should happen to you it would go rather hard with your old man."

He wrote Joey a check for two thousand dollars and took an affectionate farewell of his son.

"Now listen to me, my dear young Hotspur," Cappy Ricks commanded him as he shook Joey's hand in farewell. "The schooner's name is Tyee and you'll find her at the Ricks Lumber & Logging Company's mill dock in Aberdeen, on Gray's Harbor, Washington. And don't be afraid of her. She was built to weather anything. The skipper's name is Mike Murphy, and if you can't get along with Mike and learn to love him before you're in the ship a week, there's something wrong with you, Joey. Just don't start anything with Mike though, because he always finishes strong, and whatever he does is always right—with me. When you get out there he'll show you the orders I will have telegraphed him and you have my word of honor, boy, that there'll be no double-crossing and no interference unless you request it."

"Right-o!" cried Joey, and was off to earn twenty-five thousand dollars of the easiest money he had ever heard of.

"Like spearing a fish in a bathtub," murmured Cappy Ricks dreamily, and tore up the fifty-thousand-dollar check he had just written. "Joe, if your boy is such easy game for a pair of old duffers like us, just think what soft picking he must have been for that nimble-footed lady with the raven hair, the pearly teeth and the eyes that won't behave!"

"But she's coarse and brainless, Alden. I can't imagine a boy like my Joey falling in love with a woman like that. He ought to know better. Just remember how he was raised."

"Fooey! Joey isn't in love. He only thinks he is, and the reason he thinks it is because she has told him so a hundred times. Can't you just see her looking up at Joey with her startled-fawn eyes and saying: 'Oh, you do love me, don't you, Joey?' As if the fact that Joey loved her constituted the eighth wonder of the world! And she's probably told Joey she'll die if he ever ceases to love her; and he's kind and obliging and wouldn't hurt a fly if he could avoid it. Why, Joe, you old idiot, you mustn't feel that Joey has disgraced himself. Isn't he planning to marry the woman? Only a decent man—a born idealist—could hold that designing woman in such reverence. Blamed if it isn't kind of sweet of the boy, although I would love to give him a kick that would jar all his relations—including his father!"

Old Joe Gurney gazed at Cappy in admiration.

"Alden," he declared, "you have a singularly acute knowledge of women."

"I employ about fifteen of 'em round my office; I had several narrow escapes in my youth; I have had a sweet and wonderful wife—and I have a replica of her in my daughter. And I do know young men, for I have been young myself; and I know old fools like you, Joe, because I've never had a son to make an old fool of myself over."

"Well, now that you've hooked Joey for a six months' voyage, what's next on the program?" Gurney asked after a brief silence.

Cappy smiled—a prescient little smile.

"Why, I'm going to pull off a wedding," he declared. "I'm going to marry Joey to the sweetest, nicest, healthiest, prettiest, brainiest little lady of twenty summers that ever threatened to put the Ricks organization on the toboggan. She's my private secretary and I've got to get rid of her or some of the young fellows in our office will be killing each other."

"Here, here, Alden, my boy, go slow! I ought to be consulted in this matter. Who is this young lady and what are her antecedents?"

"Say, who's running this layout?" Cappy demanded. "Didn't you come to me squealing for help? Joe, take a back seat and let me try my hand without any advice from you. The girl's name is Doris Kenyon and she's an orphan. Her father used to be the general manager of my redwood mill on Humboldt Bay, and her mother was a girlhood friend of my late wife's; so naturally I've established a sort of protectorate over her. She has to work for a living, and any time there's a potentially fine, two-million-dollar husband like Joey lying round loose I like to see some deserving working girl land the cuss. As a matter of fact, it's almost a crime to steer her against Joey in his present state. But," Cappy added, "I have a notion that before Joey gets rid of that hula-hula girl he's going to be a sadder, wiser and poorer young man than he is at present."

"Your plan, then, is to give Joey six months away from his captor in order that he may forget her?"

"Exactly. Absence makes the heart grow colder in cases like the one under discussion, and the sea is a great place for a fellow to do some quiet, sane, uninterrupted thinking. The sea, at night particularly, is productive of much introspection and speculation on the various aspects of life, and in order to make Joey forget this vampire in a hurry all that is necessary is to have a real woman round him for a while. The first thing he knows he'll be making comparisons and the contrast will appall him."

"You don't mean—"

"You bet I do. Joey's future wife accompanies him on the voyage, and my bully port captain, Mike Murphy, and his amiable sister go along to chaperone the party and make up a foursome at bridge. I've had a naval architect at work on the old cabin of the Tyee, putting in some extra staterooms, bathrooms, and so on, and in order to make a space for the passengers I subsidized the two squarehead mates into berthing with the crew in the fo'-castle. Doris always did want to take a voyage in one of the Blue Star windjammers, and I had promised to send her at the first convenient opportunity."

"You deep-dyed, nefarious old villain!"

"Old Cupid Ricks, eh? Well, it's lots of fun, Joe, this butting in on love's young dream. And I'm just so constituted I've got to run other people's affairs for them or I wouldn't be happy. I do think, however, that this house party on the old Tyee is about the slickest deal I have ever put over. Joe, they're going to be right comfortable. I've shipped a maid for the girls, and the cook this time is several degrees superior to the average maritime specimen, for there's nothing like a couple of days of bum cooking to upset tempers—and I'm taking no chances. Also, just before I left I gave your future daughter-in-law her quarterly dividend—you see, when her father died I had to sort of look after the family, and I ran a bluff that Kenyon had some Ricks Lumber & Logging Company stock—you know, Joe. Proud stuff! I had to hornswoggle them. Well, as I say, I gave her the money, and my girl Florry went shopping with her. Sports clothes? Wow! Wow! White skirts, blue jersey, little sailor hat—man—oh, man, the stage is set to the last detail! I even had them ship a piano. Doris plays the guitar and has a pleasing voice, and just for good measure I threw in a crackajack cabinet phonograph and a hundred records with enough sentimental drip to sink the schooner."

Joe Gurney stared at his old friend rather helplessly and shook his head. Such finesse was beyond his comprehension.

"You see, now," Cappy continued, "the wisdom of my course? I insisted that you cut off Joey's allowance and get him hungry for money. You did—and he got hungry. He would have been posted at his clubs in thirty days; it is probable he owed a few bets here and there; his tailor may have needed money. Consequently, by the time I arrived on the scene he was ripe for any legitimate enterprise that would bring him in the needful funds; we arranged the enterprise and he promptly smothered it. Right off, Joe, your son said to himself: 'It will be almost a year before I come into my inheritance, and in the interim I'm going to get married, and a married man who lives on the scale my wife will expect me to assume is going to need a lot more money than a clerkship in his father's shipping office will bring him. Now, there's Tootsy-Wootsy out in Reno with a five months' sentence staring her in the eye before she'll be free to marry me, and I can't very well go out to Reno to visit her without running the risk of incurring my father's displeasure or the tongue of gossip. Consequently, I have five months' time to kill, also, and how better can I kill it than by a jolly sea voyage in a bally old lumber hooker? I can easily win twenty-five thousand dollars from my godfather, and that twenty-five thousand will carry us along until dad turns over my mother's estate to me. Fine business! I'll go to it.' And, Joe, he's done gone! Of course I'm going to win his twenty-five thousand bet because he doesn't know what it means to discharge a vessel in Sobre Vista, and Mike Murphy has orders from me to hire all the available stevedores there to do something else while Joey is trying to hire them to discharge the Tyee. Don't worry, Joe! The country is safe in the capable hands of Mike Murphy."

"I see. And the twenty-five thousand dollars you will win from Joey—"

"Will reimburse me for the extraordinary expense I've been to in saving your son. If Joey's end of the bet doesn't cover I'll nick you, Joseph, although I figure Joey's end of it will pay the fiddler. He won't miss it out of his two millions. Besides, I've noticed that the only experience worth while is the kind you pay real money for—and Joey has to buy his experience the same as the rest of us."

Five days later Cappy Ricks dropped into the Red Funnel Line and laid a telegram on old Joe Gurney's desk.

"Read that," he commanded, "and see if you can't work up a couple of cheers."

Gurney read:

"Aberdeen, Wash., June 3, 1916

"Alden P. Ricks

"Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York

"Joey arrived bung up and bilge free. Had loaded and hauled into stream, waiting for him. Came out in launch, climbed Jacob's ladder and stood on rail, sizing up ship. Saw Doris and almost fell face down on deck. He says Doris is a dream, she says Joey is a dear. Take it from me, boss, it is all over but the wedding bells.

"M. CUPID MURPHY."

Old Joe Gurney took Cappy Ricks' hand in both of his and shook it heartily.

"My worries are over, Alden," he declared. "You have, indeed, been my friend in need."

"My troubles and Joey's are just commencing, however," Cappy retorted blithely. "However—'never trouble trouble until trouble troubles you' is my motto. Where's that hundred-and-six-foot schooner yacht of Joey's?"

"She's at her moorings in Greenpoint Basin. Why?"

"I want to borrow her for a cruise to San Francisco, via the Panama Canal. Joey and his bride can sail her back. May I have her, to do what I please with, Joe?"

"Alden, don't ask foolish questions. Take her and God bless you! Joey owns her, but I pay the bills; so her skipper takes orders from me."

Two days later Joey's schooner Seafarer was standing out to sea past Sandy Hook, but Cappy Ricks was not aboard her, for that ingenious schemer had boarded a train and gone back to San Francisco and his lumber and ships.



CHAPTER XXXI



Cappy Ricks' meditations were interrupted by a knock at the door of his private office.

"Come in," he piped, and his son-in-law, Captain Matt Peasley, stuck his head in.

"The Tyee is sailing in, Cappy," he announced. "The Merchants' Exchange has just telephoned."

"It's an infernal lie," Cappy shrilled excitedly. "It can't be the Tyee. If it is, she's two months ahead of her schedule, and by the Holy Pink-Toed Prophet, I fixed up that schedule myself."

Matt Peasley grinned.

"Perhaps Joey didn't like your schedule and re-arranged it to suit himself," he suggested.

"Impossible! That infernal young scoundrel put it over me? Preposterous! Why, Mike Murphy was on the job. Get out, Matt, and don't come in here again today throwing scares into the old man."

Nevertheless, Cappy's confidence in human nature was badly jarred when Captain Michael J. Murphy was announced two hours later. Indeed Cappy could scarcely credit his sense of sight when the redoubtable Michael entered the room. He glared at the worthy fellow over the rims of his spectacles for fully a minute while Murphy stood fidgeting just inside the doorway.

"Well," said the Blue Star despot presently, "all I've got to say to you, Mike Murphy, is that you're certainly a hell of a seaman to stand idly by and see that young Joey do me up like this. Give an account of yourself!"

"They're engaged," Murphy protested valiantly.

"That's my work, Mike, not yours. Don't take any credit that isn't coming to you. I want a report on your end of this deal. How does it happen that this boy harpoons me for twenty-five thousand dollars? Have the cargadores at Sobre Vista gone on the water wagon? Did Joey out-bid you for their services? Have they added a lot more lighters to their lighterage fleet? Has the surf quit rolling in on the beach? Have the inhabitants of Sobre Vista been converted to the Mohammedan faith and declined to celebrate saints' days and holy days? Is there smallpox in the town, that the quietus has been put on fiestas and fandangoes, and has Peru been annexed by Chile and the celebration of the national holidays forbidden?"

"No, Mr. Ricks. It's the same old manana burg. The trouble was that Joey is a better sailorman than he appeared to be. He cracked on all the way down and made a smashing voyage, and, of course, as soon as we got there he went ashore. Two other schooners were there ahead of us. One was loading general cargo and the other was discharging it, and when Joey heard they had been there a month he investigated conditions and saw where you had him. Mr. Ricks, he came back as mad as a hatter. Of course I saw he would have to wait until the other schooners were out of the way before he could begin discharging, because they had first call on the lighters; so in view of the situation and the fact that Miss Murphy and Doris were a bit tired of the ship and wanted to go ashore and see the back country, I organized a trip for them."

"You left Joey aboard the Tyee, of course."

"Yes, sir. And there's where I made my fatal break. The minute my back was turned the son of a pirate got busy. It appears there was a six-inch waste pipe leading from the crew's lavatory out under the stern of the ship, and this pipe had rusted away and broken off at the flange just inside the skin of the ship sometime during the vessel's previous voyage. Of course it happened while she was homeward bound in ballast, and was standing so high out of the water that this vent where the pipe was broken was above the waterline; consequently not enough of a leak developed to be noticeable. At the mill dock, however, after we got her under-deck cargo aboard, the vessel had settled until this vent was under water, and immediately she developed a mysterious leak. In fact, due to the enormous pressure, the water came in faster than the pumps could handle it. Fortunately, however, we discovered where the leak was, though it was then too late to mend it. To do so we would have had to take out the under-deck cargo again. So I just whittled out a six-inch wooden plug, fastened it to the end of the boat hook, ran it down the narrow space through which the broken pipe led, found the vent, hammered the plug home, stopped the leak, pumped out the well, finished taking on cargo and sailed for Sobre Vista."

"A small leak will sink a great ship," Cappy Ricks murmured. "I think I anticipate the blow-off, Mike; but proceed."

"Unfortunately for us that cargo of lumber we had was for the Peruvian government. They were going to use it in the construction of barracks or a new customhouse or something—and Joey knew this. And he knew about that plug. So the minute my back was turned he pulled out the plug and the water came in and trickled all through the cargo and the ship commenced to settle. But Joey didn't care. He knew a little salt water couldn't hurt the lumber. When the top of the Tyee's rail was flush with the water he plugged the hole again, got his crew busy with the pumps, and by judiciously plugging and unplugging that leak he kept the crew pumping all day and all night without raising the vessel an inch, and the people ashore could see the streams of water cascading overside and the crew pumping like mad. And presently Joey gave up, went ashore, sought the captain of the port and put up a hard luck story about a leak in his ship—a leak he couldn't find anywhere—a leak that was getting away from him, because his men were too exhausted to do any more pumping. And he said his ship would get water-logged and settle until the surf began to break over her. And presently the deck lashings would part under the battering of the surf and the deck load would go by the board. Half of it would drift out to sea, and the other half would pound on the beach and get filled with sand, which would dull the saws and planes of the carpenters when they came to cut it up. Also, the ship's cabin would be sure to go, and unless he had help he would have to abandon the vessel and she would lie there, submerged, at anchor, a menace to the navigation of the port."

"The scoundrel! The in-fer-nal young scoundrel!" cried Cappy Ricks.

"Well, he got away with it, sir. Remember our cargo was for the Peruvian government and they'd had the devil's own time getting it; consequently they couldn't afford to lose any part of it and have their anchorage ground menaced by a derelict. So the captain of the port took it up with the commandant of the local garrison, and the commandant, as Joey expressed it, heard the Macedonian cry and got busy. He commandeered all the lighters the other schooners were using; the soldiers rounded up the cargadores at the point of the bayonet, and they started discharging the American schooner Tyee, with the spiggoty soldiers swelling Joey's crew at the pumps and Joey doing business with that wooden plug according to the requirements. Fortunately there weren't any surf days that week, and the way the cargo poured out of the Tyee was a shame and a disgrace. And when it was all out Joey plugged the leak again, pumped out the ship, and wired me at Mollendo to hurry back with the ladies or he'd sail without me. So you can see for yourself, Mr. Ricks, it was a hard hand to beat. And his luck held. He cracked on all the way home and, as you know, sir, the Tyee is fast in a breeze of wind, and you told me not to interfere unless he asked me to."

Despite his disappointment Cappy Ricks lay back in his chair and laughed until he wept.

"Oh, Mike," he declared, "it's worth twenty-five thousand dollars to know a boy who can pull one like that. What do you think of him, anyhow?"

"He'll do. His father has spoiled him, but not altogether. I think a heap of him, sir. Remember I've been shipmates with him a trifle over four months, and that's a pretty good test."

"Very well, Mike. I forgive you, my boy. I hope Miss Murphy enjoyed the trip. Tell her—"

The door opened and Joey Gurney, accompanied by Miss Doris Kenyon entered unannounced.

"Hello, godfather," yelled Joey joyously. He jerked the old man out of his chair and hugged him. "I'm back with your schooner, sir. She was easy to navigate, but that was a cold deck you handed me in Sobre Vista—"

"Glad to see you, Joey, glad to see you," Cappy interrupted. "Ah, and here's my little secretary again. Miss Kenyon, this is a pleasure—"

"Mr. Ricks," Joey interrupted him, "the lady's name is no longer Miss Kenyon. She is now Mrs. Joseph K. Gurney, Junior. The minute we got ashore at Meiggs' wharf and could shake the Murphys, who stood out till the last for a church wedding, we chartered a taxicab, went up to the City Hall, procured a license, rounded up a preacher—and got married. What do you know about that?"

"You're as fast as a second-story worker, Joey. I shall kiss the bride." And Cappy did. Then he sat down and stared at the fruit of his cunning labors.

"Well, well, well!" cried Joey. "Kick in, godfather, kick in. You owe me twenty-five thousand dollars, and if I'm going to support a wife I'll need it."

Cappy summoned Mr. Skinner, who felicitated the happy pair and departed pursuant to Cappy's order, to make out a check for Joey.

"And now," said Cappy, as he handed the groom his winnings, "you get out of here with your bride, Joey, and I'll telephone Florry and we'll organize a wedding supper. And to-morrow morning, Joey, I'd like to see you at ten o'clock, if you can manage to be here."

Joey promised, and hastened away with his bride.



CHAPTER XXXII



True to his word he presented himself in Cappy's lair promptly at ten next morning. The old gentleman was sitting rigidly erect on the extreme edge of his chair; in his hand he held a typewritten statement with a column of figures on it, and he eyed Joey very appraisingly over the rims of his spectacles.

"My boy," he said solemnly, "sit down. I'm awfully glad you cabled that hula-hula girl of yours in Reno that the stuff was all off."

Joey's mouth flew open.

"Why—why, how did you know?" he gasped.

"I know everything, Joey. I'm that kind of an old man."

Joey paled.

"Oh, Mr. Ricks," he pleaded, "for heaven's sake don't let a whisper of that affair reach my wife." He wrung his hands. "I told her she was the only girl I had ever loved—that I'd never been engaged before—that I—oh, godfather, if she ever discovers I've lied to her—"

"She'll not discover it. Compose yourself, Joey. I've seen to all that. I knew you'd give Doris the same old song and dance; everybody's doing it, you know, so I took pains to see to it that you'll never have to eat your words."

"I must have been crazy to engage myself to that woman," Joey wailed. "I don't know why I did it—I don't know how it happened—Oh, Mr. Ricks, please believe me!"

"I do, Joey, I do. I understand perfectly, because at the tender age of twenty-four I proposed marriage to a snake-charmer lady in the old Eden Musee. She was forty years old if she was a day, but she carried her years well and hid the wrinkles with putty, or something. Barring a slight hare-lip, she was a fairly handsome woman—in the dark." He reached into a compartment of his desk and drew forth a package of letters tied with red ribbon. "You can have these, Joey," he announced; "only I shouldn't advise keeping them where your wife may find them. They are your letters to your Honolulu lady."

Joey let out a bleat of pure ecstacy and seized them.

"You haven't read them, sir, have you?" he queried, blushing desperately.

"Oh, yes, my boy. I had to, you know, because I was buying something and I wanted to make certain I got value received. Pretty gooey stuff, Joey! Read aloud, they sound like a cow's hoof settling into a wet meadow!"

"I'm so glad she took it sensibly," Joey announced, for he was anxious to change the topic of conversation. "I suppose she saw it was the only way."

"No, she didn't, my son. Don't flatter yourself. On your way out West to join the Tyee you wrote her every day on the train. You told her about your bet with me, and who I was and all about me. Lucky for you that you did, and doubly lucky for you that you cabled her the jilt from Sobre Vista, or she would not have come to me with her troubles. Joey, that must have taken courage on your part. It's mighty hard for a gentleman to cable a lady and break an engagement. That's the lady's privilege, Joey."

"I—I was desperate, Mr. Ricks. I had to. I had to have her out of the way by the time I got back, or Doris might have found it out. You see, I wanted to clear the atmosphere."

"Well, you clouded it for fair! You see, Joey, in all those letters it appears that you never once mentioned the words marriage or engagement. But your cablegram was an admission that an engagement existed, and the lady was smart enough to realize that. It appears also that about a week after you cleared for Sobre Vista her annoying husband was killed by a taxicab in New York, so that saved her any divorce proceedings; and when your cablegram reached her she was a single lady who had been heartlessly jilted. The first thing she did was to hire a lawyer, and the first person that lawyer called on was Alden P. Ricks, the old family friend. It appears a suit for breach of promise was to be instituted unless a fairly satisfactory financial settlement could be arrived at."

"How much did she want?" Joey barely whispered the words.

"Only a million."

"How much did you settle for? I'll pay it out of my inheritance, Mr. Ricks. Don't worry! I won't see you stuck, for you've stood by me through thick and thin."

"Why, I didn't give her anything, Joey. I just had her lawyer bring her on to San Francisco for a conference. Of course when lunch time came round and I hadn't heard any proposition I felt I could submit to your father, I invited Miss Fontaine and her lawyer to luncheon with me in the Palace Hotel Grill, and while we were lunching, who should come up and greet me but my old friend, the Duke of Killiekrankie, formerly Duncan MacGregor, first mate of our barkentine Retriever. Mac is an excellent fellow and for some time I had felt he merited promotion. So I made him a duke.

"Well, the duke was awfully glad to see me, and being a gentleman I couldn't do less than introduce him to the lady and her lawyer. He only stayed at our table a minute and then rejoined his friends, but all during the meal I could see Betsy Jane's mind wasn't on her breach-of-promise suit. She asked me several questions about the duke, and I told her I didn't know much about him except that he was sinfully rich and a globe-trotter, and that we'd met in Paris. Lies, Joey, but pardonable, I hope, under the circumstances.

"Well, Joey, it seems that she and the duke were registered at the same hotel and I'll be shot if his lordship didn't meet her—by accident, of course—in the lobby that afternoon. He lifted his hat and she smiled and they had a chat. The next day she cut an engagement with her lawyer and me to go motoring with the duke in my French car, and Florry's chauffeur driving, for, of course, the duke was an expensive luxury and I was trying to save a dollar wherever possible. That night the duke gave a dinner party in honor of the lady—and he gave it aboard his yacht, the Doris, formerly the Seafarer, right out here in San Francisco harbor—"

Joey went up and put his arm round Cappy's shoulders.

"Oh, Cappy Ricks, Cappy Ricks!" he cried, and then his voice broke and his eyes filled with tears.

"Yes," Cappy continued, "I had sort o' suspected she might pull that breach-of-promise stuff on you, Joey—"

"What made you suspect it?"

"Why, I sort of suspected you were going to marry Doris Kenyon—"

"You planned to get us together on the same ship—!"

"Only place I could think of where you were safe from the Honolulu lady and couldn't run away from Doris, Joey. Well, as I say, I had sort of suspected she might sue you and disgrace you and break the heart of that little girl I'd picked out for you long before you ever met her—so I started to get there first and with the heaviest guns, I borrowed your yacht for the duke and had him sail her round himself, so he'd have her here to give the dinner party on. Then I got a Burke's peerage and told MacGregor who he was and had him study up on his family history and get acquainted with his sister, Lady Mary, and his younger brother, the Honorable Cecil Something-or-other—in particular he was not to forget to rave about the grouse shooting in Scotland."

Cappy paused and puffed his cigar meditatively for half a minute.

"Joey," he continued, "any time you run a bluff, run a good one. If you're starring a globe-trotting duke, have his ancestry all straightened out in advance, because he's bound to break into the newspapers and the motto of the newspaper editor is 'Show me.' And the yacht—just one of the props of the comedy, Joey; and with a little cockney steward in livery to say 'Your ludship'; and the name of the yacht changed in case she'd ever heard you speak about the Seafarer; and the cabin done over in white enamel with mahogany trim; and a new set of dishes with your family crest and the name of the yacht on every piece in case you had ever had her aboard; and a private secretary—borrowed him from my general manager, Skinner, by the way—we were certainly there when it came to throwing the ducal front. And we got away with it, for MacGregor's accent is just Scotchy enough, and he comes of good family and has excellent manners. Yes, I must say Mac made a very comfortable duke. Skinner's young man tells me it would bring tears of joy to your eyes to see him kiss the lady's hand.

"Well, Joey, the upshot of it was that after paying violent court to the lady for two weeks—Mac said he could have pulled the stunt the night of the dinner, for she fell for the title right way, but I told him to make haste slowly—the duke received a cablegram calling him home from his furlough. Oh, yes, Joey, I had him in the army. Any young unattached duke that doesn't join the British army these days doesn't get by in good society, and I had my duke on a six months' furlough to recover from his wounds. Fortunately a bunch of cedar shingles had fallen on Mac's foot recently and he was dog lame, which strengthened the play.

"Of course the duke was up in the air right away. In a passionate scene he confessed his love for that damsel of yours, Joey, and laid his dukedom at her feet. Would she marry him P. D. Q. and help him sail the yacht home? Would she? 'Oh, darling, this is so sudden!' she cried, and almost swooned in his arms. From a cabaret to a dukedom. Some jump! Sail the yacht home to England through the mine fields and submarines? Perfectly ripping, by Jove! I give you my word, Joey, she tacked on one of those New York British accents for the duke's special benefit. There was a lot of beam to her a's, Mac told me, but blamed little molded depth to her mentality. So they were married in haste, and after the duke had seen his bride in the elevator bound for their rooms at the hotel, he excused himself to get a highball. And I guess he got the highball, because I find it in this expense account he turned in to me."

"It sounds like a fairy tale," Joey murmured in an awed voice. "What did the duke do next?"

"Came right down to this office and informed me he was, plumb weary of the life of a bon vivant and was anxious to get to sea again. So I made him master of a new steamer we acquired recently, and he's gone out to Vladivostok with munitions for the Russians."

"But didn't you give him some money, Mr. Ricks?"

"No. Why should I? Didn't I give him command of a steamer? You can slip him a fat check if you feel that way about it, but I never coddle my skippers, Joey, until I'm sure they're worth while. I think, however, that Mac will make good. He's very thorough."

"Wha—what became of Ernestine?"

"Oh, by Godfrey, that's a sad story, Joey. It seems she waited at the hotel for the duke to come back and he didn't come, so the following morning she went down to the water front looking for the yacht—and the yacht was gone. During the night I'd had it towed over to Sausalito; consequently the launchman she hired couldn't find it down in Mission Bay, and back to the beach she came. After a couple of days had passed, however, she commenced to smell a rat, so she came down to my office and asked me if I'd seen anything of the duke.

"'Why, yes, I have,' I told her. 'The old duke came in here yesterday afternoon, soused to the guards, and complaining he'd been cruelly deceived into marrying a two-time loser with a couple of youngsters, and inasmuch as he was certain the family wouldn't receive her he was leaving the United States immediately, never to return.

"'And this morning the justice of the peace who performed the ceremony mailed him the license, which has been duly recorded in the office of the Secretary of State in accordance with law; and inasmuch as the license was sent to him in my care I am holding it in our safe until he calls for it.'

"Well, Joey, she looked at me and she knew the stuff was all off. She'd married the duke; I had the license to prove it, and of course she realized her breach of promise suit and claim for a million dollars' worth of heart balm would be laughed out of court if she had the crust to present it. So she did the next best thing. She abused me like a pickpocket and ended up by getting hysterical when I told her how I'd swindled her. When she got through crying I lectured her on the error of her ways and suggested that inasmuch as she had had one divorce already, another wouldn't be much of a strain on her, and I'd foot the bill for separating her legally from John Doe, alias the duke, on a charge of desertion. Then I offered her a thousand dollars and a ticket back to New York for the surrender of all your letters to her and that infernal cablegram and a release of all claims against you. I guess she was broke for she grabbed it in a hurry, Joey. The atmosphere is now clear, my son, and nothing further remains to be done in the premises, save settle the bill of expense. Fortunately the Tyee made money on that fast voyage under your command, but the cost of bringing the yacht round from New York, doing over the cabin, buying the new dishes with the crest, and settling with the lady should rightfully be borne by you. As I say, the duke was expensive, for the rascal certainly rolled 'em high. Skinner has made me up a statement of the total cost, with interest at six per cent to date, and it appears, Joey, that you owe your godfather $12,143.18. On the day you come into your inheritance, add six per cent to that sum and send me a check."

"But the twenty-five thousand dollars I won from you—" Joey began, but Cappy held up a rigid finger, enjoining silence.

"I am going to stick your dub of a father for that, as a penance for his sins of omission, Joey; for by the Holy Pink-Toed Prophet, if ever a boy won a bet and was entitled to it, you're that young man. In-fer-nal young scoundrel! Keep it and split fifty-fifty with your wife. You won a straight bet from a crooked gambler, and if I haven't had a million dollars' worth of fun out of this transaction I hope I may marry a hula-hula woman—and I've passed my three score and ten and ought to know better!"

"But about this man MacGregor—"

"Don't worry about him. The Scotch are a hardy race and Mac is a sailor. Joey, I know sailors. The scoundrels have a wife in every port!"



CHAPTER XXXIII



During the period when Joey Gurney was busy doing all that Cappy Ricks desired him to do and some things that were slightly off Cappy's program, the president emeritus of the Blue Star Navigation Company and allied interests was discovering that it is one thing to declare for the simple life and quite another to live it. The Great War challenged so much of the Ricks interest that he could not bear to live far from morning and evening editions—and he wanted them red hot off the presses. Things were doing in the shipping world. The most inconceivable trades were being consummated daily, freights were soaring, lumber prices had reached an unprecedentedly high level and promised to go higher; there was something doing every minute and not enough minutes in a working day to accommodate half of these somethings. What more natural, therefore, than that Cappy presently should find himself caught in the maelstrom, even though he told himself daily that, come what might he would keep out of it.

The first indefinite evidence that he was about to be engulfed came in the form of a newspaper story, ex the steamer Timaru, from Sydney, via Tahiti. There it was, as big as a church—a paragraph of it, tucked away in a column-and-a-half story of the bombardment of Papeete by the German Pacific fleet early in September of 1914:

"An incident of the bombardment was the sinking of the German freight steamer Valkyrie by shells from the German fleet. The vessel had been captured by the French gunboat Zeile some weeks previous and was at anchor in the harbor, under the guns of the Zeile, when the German squadron appeared off the entrance. The gunboat immediately was made the target for the German guns, and sunk. During the attack, however, a wild shell missed the Zeile and struck the Valkyrie, tearing a great hole in her hull and causing her to sink in ten fathoms at her anchorage."

Ten fathoms! Sixty feet! Why, at that depth Cappy should have known that her masts and funnel would be above water; that in all probability she carried war-risk insurance; that she was so far from anywhere the underwriters would have abandoned her, even had she not been a prize of war, since there are no appliances in Papeete for salving a vessel of her size; that she could be raised if one cared to spend a little money on doing it; that one projectile probably had not ruined her beyond repair; that she was a menace to navigation in Papeete Harbor and hence would have to be gotten out of the way, either by dynamite or auction; that—well, any number of thats should have occurred to Cappy Ricks to suggest the advisability of keeping track of the wreck of the Valkyrie. However, for some mysterious reasons—his resentment against the German cause, probably—the golden prospect never appealed to him, for when he had finished reading the article he merely said:

"Well, what do you know about that? Skinner, it's a mighty lucky thing for that German admiral that I'm not the Kaiser, for I'd certainly make him hard to catch. The idea of sinking that fine steamer—and a German steamer at that! Here was the little old French gunboat, about as invulnerable as a red-cedar shingle; and instead of moving into proper position and raking her with their light guns—instead of calling on her to surrender—these Germans had to go to work in a hurry and inaugurate a campaign of frightfulness. The minute they were off the harbor—Zowie! Blooey! Bam! It was all over but the cheering, and they'd chucked an eight-inch projectile through a ship that was worth four of the gunboat.

"Skinner, that's what I call spilling the beans. Why they didn't take their time, recapture that freighter and give her skipper a chance to hustle across to San Francisco or Honolulu and intern, is a mystery to me. The idea! Why, for that German fleet to waste ammunition on that Jim-Crow town and a hand-me-down gunboat was equivalent to John L. Sullivan whittling out a handle on a piece of two-by-four common fir in order to attack a cockroach!"

Cappy was so incensed that he growled about the Germans for an hour. Then he forgot the Valkyrie, notwithstanding the fact that the press jogged his memory again when the German fleet, deciding that prudence was the better part of valor, fled from the Pacific to escape the Japanese, only to be destroyed in the South Atlantic by the British fleet. A resume of the operations of the German squadron in the Pacific brought forth mention of the destruction of the Zeile and the Valkyrie. However, Cappy's mind was not in Tahiti now, but off the Falkland Islands, for he was very much pro-Ally and devoted more thought to military and naval strategy than he did to the lumber and shipping business.

However, the climax of Cappy's indignation over the disaster to the Valkyrie was not attained until a few months later when, in conversation on the floor of the Merchants' Exchange with the skipper of the schooner Tarus, who happened to have been in Papeete at the bombardment, he learned he had done the German admiral a grave injustice. He came back to his office, boiling, declaring the French were a crazy nation, and that, after all, he could recall meeting one or two fine Germans during the course of a fairly busy career. He summoned Mr. Skinner and Matt Peasley to hear the sordid tale.

"Remember that steamer Valkyrie the Germans were supposed to have sunk by accident in the harbor of Papeete during the bombardment in September of 1914?" he queried.

"I believe I read something about it in the papers at the time," Mr. Skinner replied.

"What about her?" Matt Peasley demanded.

"Why, the Germans didn't sink her at all, Matt! The Frenchmen did it," Cappy shrilled. "The crazy, frog-eating jumping-jacks of Frenchmen! The tramp wasn't flying the German flag—naturally the Frenchmen had hauled it down; so the Germans didn't investigate her. Besides, they were in a hurry—you'll remember the Japs were on their trail at the time; so they just devoted forty minutes to shooting up the town, and beat it. I don't suppose they ever knew they hit the Valkyrie; perhaps they figured that, having sunk the gunboat, the Valkyrie could up hook and away at her leisure, since there was nothing left to prevent her.

"Huh! Makes me sick to talk about it; but the skipper of the Taurus was there at the time and he tells me that, though the Valkyrie was pretty well down by the stern, her bulkheads were holding and she wouldn't have sunk if those blamed Frenchmen, fearful that the German fleet was coming back after her, hadn't gone aboard and opened her sea cocks! Yes, sir. Rather than risk having her recaptured, they opened her sea cocks and sunk her! And, at that, they didn't have sense enough to run her out to deep water. No! They had to do the trick as she lay at anchor; and there she lies still, a menace to navigation and a perennial reminder to those Papeete Frenchmen that he who acts in haste will repent at leisure."

To this outburst Mr. Skinner made some perfunctory remark, attributing the situation to a lack of efficiency, while Matt Peasley went back to his office and grieved as he reflected on the corrosive action of salt water on those fine, seven-year-old engines.



CHAPTER XXXIV



Time passed. Mr. Skinner developed a pallor and irritability that bespoke all too truly an attack of nerves, from overwork, and sore against his will was hustled off to Honolulu for a rest while Cappy Ricks had the audacity to take charge of the lumber business. Whereupon Mr. J. Augustus Redell, of the West Coast Trading Company, discovered the unprotected condition of the Ricks Lumber & Logging Company and promptly, in sheer wanton deviltry, proceeded to sew Cappy Ricks up on an order for a million grape stakes.

A word here regarding the said J. Augustus Redell. He was a blithe, joyous creature, still in the sunny thirties, and what he didn't know about the lumber business—particularly the marketing of lumber products—could be tucked into anybody's eyes without impairing their eyesight. Mr. Redell had fought his way up from office boy with the Black Butte Lumber Company to lumber broker with offices of his own. He had owned a retail yard in which business he had gone "bust" for more money than the world appeared to contain. But he had fought his way back and paid a hundred cents on the dollar, including some hundred and forty thousand dollars he had owed the Ricks mills at the time of his collapse. Because he was young and fine and good-natured and brave and brilliant, Cappy had always admired J. Augustus Redell, but after the latter had so splendidly re-established his credit and formed a partnership with a Peruvian gentleman, one Senor Luiz Almeida, known locally as Live Wire Luiz, Cappy found that he had for the genial J. Augustus an admiration that amounted to affection. The West Coast Trading Company, under which title Live Wire Luiz and J. Augustus Redell did a lumber brokerage business with Mexico, Central American and South American countries principally, had Cappy Ricks' entire confidence, although he would have died rather than admit this. Live Wire Luiz he ignored and always dismissed as a factor in the affairs of that company, but whenever Redell had a deal on that was too heavy for his financial sinews, Cappy could always be depended upon to lend a helping hand. On his part, Redell revered Cappy Ricks as only an idealistic and naturally lovable rascal of a boy can revere an idealistic and lovable old man. To J. Augustus Redell little, old, naive, whimsical, gentle, terrible, brilliant, cunning, generous, altruistic, prudent, youthful old Cappy Ricks was a joy forever. With the impishness of his tender years, Mr. Redell could conceive of no greater joy than picking on Cappy Ricks just to see the latter fight back.

Quite early in their friendship, the astute Redell discovered a rift in Cappy's armor—two rifts, in fact. The first was that Cappy feared and loathed old age and fiercely resented even the most shadowy intimation that with age he was, to employ a sporting phrase, "losing his punch." The second weakness that lay exposed to Redell was Cappy's passion for wringing a profit, by ingenious means, from apparently barren soil where no profit had ever hitherto burgeoned. At heart Cappy was a speculator; only the fact that he was a prudent and careful speculator had conduced to enrich him rather than impoverish him.

Now, Cappy was fully convinced, from optical evidence, that J. Augustus Redell was a gambler. He admired Redell's genius for business, the soundness of his decisions, the alertness of his mind and the brilliance of his financial coups, but—he deprecated the younger man's daring. Cappy called it recklessness. By degrees the old gentleman had come to assume a proprietary interest in Gus Redell and the latter's affairs, for the younger man frequently sought counsel from Cappy and not infrequently, a loan! Cappy knew his young friend to be the soul of manly honor, but—he was young! Ah, yes! He was young. Ergo, he was foolish. True, his foolishness had not as yet been discovered, but Cappy was certain it would come to the surface sooner or later. The boy was reckless—a gambler. Cappy abhorred gambling. He never gambled. Occasionally he speculated! What more natural, therefore, than that little Cappy should presently arrogate to himself the privilege of stabbing young J. Augustus to the vitals from time to time, just to impress upon the boy the knowledge that this is a hard, cold, cruel world with a great many bad men in it!

Nothing could possibly have delighted Redell more. Whenever Cappy stabbed him, forthwith he set about to stab Cappy in return, and thus had developed a joyous business feud. These best of friends spent an hour and a half daily, at luncheon, "picking" on each other, telling tales on each other, eternally "joshing" for the edification of a coterie of their lumber and shipping friends who always lunched in a private dining room at the Commercial Club and who were known within that organization as the Bilgewater Club.

Early in 1915 Redell had seen an opportunity for inducing Cappy Ricks to speculate in grape stakes—to his financial hurt and humiliation. There was to be an election that fall—a special election to see whether California should "go dry" or "stay wet," and for some reason not quite apparent to Mr. Redell, a great many people believed the state would "go dry." Among the people who so believed, Redell discovered, were the woodsmen who, during the winter of 1914, would, under normal conditions, have split from redwood trees sufficient grape stakes to support such new vineyards as would come into bearing in the fall of 1915. Fearing that there would be no market for their grape stakes when the making of wine should be prohibited by law, these woodsmen had made no effort to supply the demand; wherefore the Machiavellian J. Augustus Redell, taking advantage of Mr. Skinner's absence from the office of the Ricks mills, cleverly managed to inculcate in Cappy Ricks the idea that it would be a splendid and profitable venture if he, the said Cappy, should wade into the grape stake market and corner it. The idea appealed to the speculative part of the old gentleman's nature and he had gone to work in a hurry, only to discover, after he had accepted orders from the West Coast Trading Company for a great many carloads of grape stakes for future delivery, that, when the day of reckoning should come, he would not be enabled to pick up enough grape stakes to fill his orders, for the very sufficient reason that nobody had manufactured grape stakes for that year's market, and they were not available at any price!

It had been a cruel blow and Cappy's weakness had been exposed without mercy to the members of the Bilgewater Club by Mr. Redell, who thereafter kept both eyes wide open, knowing that sooner or later Cappy would retaliate.

Retaliation was, of course, inevitable. Cappy realized this. For the first time in his career as a lumber and shipping king the sly old dog realized he had been out-thought, out-played, out-gamed and man-handled by a mere pup. And, though he had taken his beating like the rare old sport that he was, nevertheless the leaves of memory had a horrible habit of making a most melancholy rustling; and for two weeks, following his ignominious rout at the hands of J. Augustus Redell, Cappy's days and nights were entirely devoted to scheming ways and means of vengeance. Curiously enough, it was the West Coast Trading Company that accorded him the opportunity he craved.

Having massacred Cappy in the grape-stake deal and established an unlimited credit thereby, the West Coast Lumber Company, per Senor Felipe Luiz Almeida, alias Live Wire Luiz, decided to purchase a little jag of spruce from the Ricks Lumber & Logging Company. Cappy Ricks looked at the proffered order, saw that it called for number one clear spruce, and promptly accepted it at a dollar under the market. He was to bring the spruce in to San Francisco on one of his own schooners, lay her alongside the City of Panama and discharge it into her, for delivery at Salina Cruz, Mexico.

Cappy knew, of course, that Live Wire Luiz handled exclusively the West Coast Trading Company's Mexican, Central and South American business. He knew, also, that there were many points about the lumber business that the explosive little Peruvian had still to learn; so he decided to stab the West Coast Trading Company, through the innocent and trusting Senor Almeida, with a weapon he would not have dreamed of employing had J. Augustus Redell placed the order. Live Wire Luiz knew the Ricks Lumber & Logging Company always sold its output on mill tally and inspection; that Cappy Ricks' grading rules were much fairer to his customers than those of his competitors; that when he contracted to deliver number one clear spruce he would deliver exactly that and challenge anybody to pick a number two board out of the lot. But what Live Wire Luiz did not know was that there are two kinds of number one spruce on the Pacific Coast. One grows in California and the other in Oregon and Washington—and Cappy Ricks had both kinds for sale.

"Aha!" Cappy murmured as he glanced over Live Wire Luiz's order after the latter had gone. "Number one clear spruce, eh? All right, sir! Away down in my wicked heart I know you want some nice number one stock from our Washington mill, at Port Hadlock; but unfortunately you have failed to stipulate it—so we'll slip you a little of the California product and teach you something you ought to know."

Whereupon Cappy sent the order to his mill on Humboldt Bay, California. Though this plant manufactured redwood lumber almost exclusively, whenever the woods boss came across a nice spruce or bull-pine tree among the redwood he was wont to send it down to the mill, where it was sawed and set aside for trusting individuals like Live Wire Luiz. When seasoned this spruce was very good stock. Unfortunately, however, experts differ in their diagnosis of California spruce. There are those who will tell you it is not spruce, but a bastard fir; while others will tell you it is not fir, but a bastard spruce. Cappy Ricks had no definite ideas on the subject, for he didn't own enough of that kind of stumpage to grieve him. All he knew or cared was that when such outlawed stock was billed as spruce no judge or jury in the land could say it was fir; also, that in its green state it possessed an abominable odor!

The lumber was delivered to the City of Panama in due course and, as Cappy had suspected, Live Wire Luiz failed to come down to her dock and take a smell. This was a privilege left intact for the consignee at Salina Cruz; and he, according to Mexican custom, which only demands a ghost of an excuse to seek a rebate, promptly wired a protest and declared himself swindled to the extent of five dollars a thousand feet, gold.

Also, having been similarly outraged once before, he demanded to know why he had been sent California spruce; whereupon Live Wire Luiz called up Cappy Ricks, abused him roundly and sent him a bill for six dollars a thousand, rebate! Unfortunately for the West Coast Trading Company, however, it had already discounted Cappy's invoice; so the latter could afford to stand pat—which he did.



CHAPTER XXXV



Shortly after noon on the day of his small triumph over the West Coast Trading Company, Cappy Ricks bustled up California Street, bound for luncheon with the Bilgewater Club.

On this day, of all days, Cappy would not have missed luncheon with the Bilgewater Club for a farm. As he breezed along there was a smile on his ruddy old face and a lilt in his kind old heart, for he was rehearsing his announcement to his youthful friends of how he had but recently tanned the hide of a brother! He almost laughed aloud as he pictured himself solemnly relating, in the presence of J. Augustus Redell and Live Wire Luiz, the tale of the ill-favored spruce, excusing his own mendacity the while on the ground that he wasn't a mind reader; that if the West Coast Lumber Company desired northern spruce they should have stipulated northern spruce; that, as alleged business men, it was high time they were made aware of the ancient principle of caveat emptor, which means, as every schoolboy knows, that the buyer must protect himself in the clinches and breakaways. And lastly, he planned to claim it the solemn duty of the aged to instruct the young and ignorant in the hard school of experience.

Judge, therefore, of his disappointment when, on entering the lobby of the Merchants' Exchange Building, on the two top floors of which the Commercial Club is situated, he encountered Redell and Live Wire Luiz leaving the elevator.

The West Coast Trading Company had offices in the same building and, as Redell carried a plethoric suit case, while Live Wire Luiz followed with a small hand bag, Cappy realized they were bound for parts unknown. In consequence of which he realized he had rehearsed to no purpose his expose of the pair before the Bilgewater Club. He halted the partners and secured a firm grip on the lapel of each.