Chapter 9

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_ CHAPTER IX

He endeavored, while dressing, to map out a plan of campaign, but the map was but a meaningless whirligig of lines leading nowhere when Primmie called from the foot of the stairs that breakfast was ready. During breakfast he was more absent-minded than usual, which is saying a good deal, and Martha herself was far from communicative. After the meal he was putting on his hat and coat preparatory to going out for his usual walk when Primmie came hurrying through the hall.

"She wants you," said Primmie, mysteriously, her eyes shining with excitement. "She wants to see you in the settin' room. Come on, come on, Mr. Bangs! What are you waitin' for?"

As a general rule Galusha's thoughts started upon the morning ramble some little time before he did and recalling them was a rather slow and patience-taxing process. In this case, however, they were already in the sitting room with Martha Phipps and so had a shorter road home. But they came slowly enough, for all that.

"Eh?" queried Galusha, peering out between the earlaps of his cap. "Eh? What did you say, Primmie?"

"I say Miss Martha wants to see you a minute. She's in there a-waitin'. I bet you she's goin' to tell you about it. Hurry! hurry!"

"Tell me?... About what?"

"Why, about what 'tis that's worryin' her so. About that Raish Pulcifer and all the rest of it.... Oh, my Lord of Isrul! Don't you understand NOW? Oh, Mr. Bangs, won't you PLEASE wake up?"

But Galusha was beginning to understand.

"Dear me! Dear me!" he exclaimed, nervously. "Do you think that--Did she say she wished to see me, Primmie?"

"Ain't I been tellin' you she did? Now you talk right up to her, Mr. Bangs. You tell her I don't want no wages. Tell her I'll stay right along same as ever and--You TELL her, Mr. Bangs."

Martha was standing by the stove in the sitting room when her lodger entered. She turned to greet him.

"I don't know as I'm doin' right to keep you from your walk, Mr. Bangs," she said. "And I won't keep you very long. But I did want to talk with you for just a minute or two. I wanted to ask your advice about--about a business matter."

Now this was very funny indeed. It would have been hard to find a richer joke than the idea of consulting Galusha Bangs concerning a matter of business. But both parties to this consultation were too serious to see the joke at that moment.

Galusha nodded solemnly. He faltered something about being highly honored and only too glad to be of service. His landlady thanked him.

"Yes," she said, "I knew you would be. And, as I say, I won't keep you very long. Sit down, Mr. Bangs. Oh, not in that straight up-and-down thing. Here, in the rocker."

Galusha lifted himself from the edge of the straight-backed chair upon which he had perched and sat upon the edge of the rocking-chair instead. Martha looked at him sitting there, his collar turned up, his cap brim and earlaps covering two thirds of his face and his spectacles at least half of the remaining third, his mittened hands twitching nervously in his lap, and, in spite of her feelings, could not help smiling. But it was a fleeting smile.

"Take off your things, Mr. Bangs," she said. "You'll roast alive if you don't. It's warm in here. Primmie forgot and left the dampers open and the stove was pretty nearly red-hot when I came in just now. Yes, take off your overcoat and cap, and those mittens, for mercy sakes."

Galusha declared that he didn't mind the mittens and the rest, but she insisted and he hastily divested himself of his wrappings, dropping them upon the floor as the most convenient repository and being greatly fussed when Miss Phipps picked them up and laid them on the table.

"I--I beg your pardon," he stammered. "Really, I DON'T know why I am so thoughtless. I--I should be--ah--hanged or something, I think. Then perhaps I wouldn't do it again."

Martha shook her head. "You probably wouldn't in that case," she said. "Now, Mr. Bangs, I'm going to try to get at that matter I wanted to ask your opinion about. Do you know anything about stocks--stockmarket stocks, I mean?"

Her lodger looked rather bewildered.

"Dear me, no; not a thing," he declared.

She did not look greatly disappointed.

"I didn't suppose you did," she said. "You--well, you don't look like a man who would know much about such things. And from what I've seen of you, goodness knows, you don't ACT like one! Perhaps I shouldn't say that," she added, hastily. "I didn't mean it just as it sounded."

"Oh, that's all right, that's all right, Miss Phipps. I know I am a--ah--donkey in most matters."

"You're a long way from bein' a donkey, Mr. Bangs. And I didn't say you were, of course. But--oh, well, never mind that. So you don't know anything about stocks and investments and such?"

"No, I don't. I am awfully sorry. But--but, you see, all that sort of thing is so very distasteful to me. It bores me--ah--dreadfully. And so I--I dodge it whenever I can."

Martha sighed. "Some of the rest of us would like to dodge it, too," she said, "if we only could. And yet--" she paused and regarded him with the odd expression she had worn more than once when he puzzled her--"and yet I--I just can't make you out, Mr. Bangs. You say you don't know anything about money and managin' money, and yet those Egypt trips of yours must cost a lot of money. And somebody must manage them. SOMEBODY must 'tend to payin' the bills and the wages and all. Who does that?"

Galusha smiled. "Why, I do," he admitted, "after a fashion. But it is a very poor fashion. I almost never--I think I may safely say never come in from one of those trips without having exceeded the--ah--estimate of expenses. I always exceed it more or less--generally more."

He smiled again. She looked more puzzled than ever.

"But some one has to pay the extra, don't they?" she asked. "Who does pay it, the museum people?"

"Why--ah--no, not exactly. It is--ah--ah--generally provided. But," he added, rather hastily, as if afraid she might ask more questions along this line, "if I might make a suggestion, Miss Martha--Miss Phipps, I mean--"

"Plain Martha will do well enough. I think you're the only one in East Wellmouth that calls me anything else. Of course you can make a suggestion. Go ahead."

"Well--ah--well, Miss Phipps--ah--Miss Martha, since you permit me to call you so.... What is it?"

"Oh, nothin', nothin'. I was goin' to say that the 'Miss' wasn't necessary, but never mind. Go on."

"Well--ah--Mar--ah--Miss Martha, I was about to suggest that you tell me what you intended telling me. I am very anxious to help--ah--even if I can't, you know. Only I beg of you not to think I am actuated by idle curiosity."

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Even if you were I don't know that I shouldn't want to tell you, just the same," she observed. "The fact is I've just GOT to talk this over with some one. Mr. Bangs, I am so worried I don't know what to do. It is a money matter, of course, that's worryin' me, an investment father made a little while before he died. Mr. Bangs, I don't suppose it's likely that you ever heard of the Wellmouth Development Company? No, of course you haven't."

And yet, as she looked into her lodger's face, she was surprised at its expression.

"Why, you never have heard of it, have you?" she demanded.

Galusha stroked his chin. "That day in the cemetery," he murmured. "That day when I was--ah--behind the tomb and heard Captain Hallett and Mr. Pulcifer speaking. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that they mentioned the name of--ah--ah--"

"The Development Company? Of course they did and you told me so when you got home. I remember now. Well, Cap'n Jeth and Raish were both mixed up in it along with father. Yes, and Doctor Powers and a lot more, though not so much. Raish, of course, was at the back of it in the beginnin'. He got 'em all in it, got himself into it, as far as that goes. You see, it was this way."

She told the story of the Wellmouth Development Company. It--the story--began when the Eagle Fish Freezing Company of Denboro, a concern then running and operating one large cold storage plant in that village, were looking about for a favorable spot upon which to build a second. The spot which appealed to their mind to purchase was the property at the mouth of Skoonic Creek in East Wellmouth.

"It's a real pretty place," said Martha, "one of the prettiest spots alongshore, and the view from the top of the bluff there is just lovely. You can see miles and miles out to sea and all up and down the shore--and back over the village, for that matter. But, come to think of it, you know the place, Mr. Bangs. It's only a little way from the old Baptist buryin' ground."

Galusha nodded. "Isn't it where my--ah--late lamented hat set sail?" he asked.

"Why, of course it is. Just there. Well, the Eagle Fish folks made their plans to buy all that property, the hills on both sides, and the low land down by the creek. It was just the place for 'em, you see. And they were quietly makin' arrangements to pick up the different parcels of land from the owners here and there, when Raish Pulcifer got wind of it. There's precious little goin' on down this part of the Cape that Raish doesn't get wind of, particularly if it's somebody else's secret. He's got a reg'lar pig's nose for rootin' up other people's private concerns. Well, Raish found out what the Eagle Company was up to and he started bein' up to somethin' himself."

Mr. Pulcifer, so Miss Phipps went on to say, conceived the idea of buying the Skoonic Creek property before the Eagle Company could do so. The principal difficulty was that just then his own limited capital was tied up in various ways and he lacked ready money. So, being obliged to borrow, he sought out Captain Hallett, got the shrewd old light keeper's cupidity aroused--not a very difficult task at any time--and Captain Jethro agreed to help finance the deal.

"It didn't need a whole lot of real money," explained Martha. "Most folks that owned that land had owned it for mercy knows how long and had done nothin' but pay taxes on it, so they were glad enough to sell for somethin' down to bind what Raish and Jethro called 'options.' Anyhow, when the Eagle people finally started in to put their grand plan into workin', they bumped bows on into a shoal, at least that's the way father used to tell about it. They found that all that Skoonic Creek land was in the hands of Raish Pulcifer and Cap'n Jeth Hallett; those two either owned it outright or had options where they didn't own."

At first the Eagle Company declined to have anything to do with the new owners. They declared the whole affair off, so far as the Skoonic Creek location was concerned, and announced their intention of going elsewhere. But there was no sufficiently attractive "elsewhere" to go. There followed much proposing and counter-proposing and, at last, an entirely new deal. A new corporation was formed, its name The Wellmouth Development Company.

"I don't know a great deal about it," confessed Martha, "that is, not about the reasons for it and all, but, as near as I can make out, Raish and Jethro wouldn't sell outright to the Eagle Company, but wanted to come in on the profits from the cold storage business, which were pretty big sometimes. And they couldn't get into the reg'lar Eagle Fish Freezing Company, the old one. So they and the Eagle folks together undertook to form this new thing, the Development Company, the name meanin' nothin' or a whole lot, 'cordin' to how the development developed, I presume likely. The capital stock--I know all this because Cap'n Jethro and father used to talk it over so much between 'em and Cap'n Jeth and I have talked so much since--was fifty thousand. An awful lot of money, isn't it, Mr. Bangs?"

Her tone was awe-stricken as she mentioned the amount. Galusha gravely admitted that it was an "awful lot of money." All sums were awful to him; he would have agreed if the Wellmouth Development Company had been capitalized from one thousand to a million. Miss Phipps went on.

"They put out the stock somethin' like this: The Eagle folks took pretty near half, somewhere around twelve hundred shares, I think they had. And Raish he took five hundred shares, and Cap'n Jeth four hundred, and father--after listenin' to Jethro and Raish talk about dividends and profit sharin' and such till, as he said, the tar on his top riggin' began to melt, he drew out money from the savin's bank and sold some other bonds and stocks he had and went in for two hundred and fifty shares. Twenty dollars a share it was; did I tell you that? Yes, five thousand dollars father put into that Development Company. It seemed like a lot even then; but, my soul and body, WHAT a lot it seems to me now!"

She paused for an instant, then sighed, and continued.

"If you've figured this all out in your head, Mr. Bangs," she said, "which I suppose you haven't--?"

Galusha, surprised by the direct question, started, colored, and guiltily admitted the correctness of her supposition.

"I--I haven't," he faltered. "Dear me, no. In fact I--ah--doubt if I am capable of doing such a thing."

"Well, never mind, you don't have to. What it amounted to was that the Eagle folks had twelve hundred shares and Raish and Jeth and father had eleven hundred and fifty together. You see, neither side would let the other have more'n half, or even quite half, because then whichever had it could control things. So the remainin' one hundred and fifty shares was sold around Wellmouth and Trumet. Doctor Powers has a few shares and Eben Taylor's got some, and so have lots of folks, scattered around here. You see, all hands were anxious to get in, it looked like a real good investment.

"'But,' says father--right here in this very room I heard him say it one night--'it's that one hundred and fifty shares that worry me. If the Eagle crowd ever COULD buy up those shares they would control, after all, and freeze us out. Freezin' is their business, anyhow,' he said, and laughed that big laugh of his. Seems as if I could hear him laugh now. Ah, hum!... But there, let's get under way again or you'll go to sleep before the ship makes port. I declare, that was father's word, too, I'm always quotin' him.... Let me see.... Oh, yes.... When father said that about the one hundred and fifty shares controllin' Cap'n Jethro looked at Raish and Raish looked at him. Then Raish laughed, too, only his laugh isn't much like father's.

"'_I_ got those extra shares taken up,' he said, 'and I was particular who took 'em. There's mighty few of those shares will be sold unless I say the word. Most of the folks that bought those shares are under consider'ble obligation to me.' Just what he meant by that I don't know, of course, but I can guess. Raish makes it a point to have people under what he calls 'obligations' to him. It comes in handy for him, in politics and other ways, to have 'em that way. He lends money and holds mortgages and all that, and that's where the obligations come in.... Well, anyhow, that's what he said and, although father didn't look any too happy at the time and wouldn't talk about it afterward, it seemed to settle the objection about the hundred and fifty shares. So the new company got under way, the stockholders paid their money in, old Cap'n Ebenezer Thomas of Denboro was made president and Raish Pulcifer was vice president and Judge Daniel Seaver of Wellmouth Centre was secretary and treasurer. The Judge was Wellmouth Centre's biggest gun, rich--at least, that's what everybody thought then--and pompous and dignified and straight-backed as an old-fashioned church pew.

"Well, I'm pretty near to the end, although it may not seem that way. For the first few months all hands were talkin' about what great things the Wellmouth Development Company was goin' to do. Then Judge Seaver gave 'em somethin' else to talk about. He shot himself one night, and they found him dead and all alone in the sittin' room of his big house. And when they came to look over his papers and affairs they found that, instead of bein' rich, he hadn't a cent in the world. He had lost all his own money gamblin' in stocks, and, not only that, but he'd lost all that other folks had given him to take care of. He was treasurer of the Eagle Fish Freezin' Company and he'd stolen there until that company had to fail. And, bein' secretary and treasurer of the Wellmouth Development Company, he had sent the fifty thousand its stockholders paid in after the rest of his stealin's. All there was left of that new Development Company was the land over here by Skoonic Creek. He couldn't steal that very well, although, when you think of the stealin' he did do, it's a wonder he hadn't tried to carry it off by the wheelbarrow load.

"It isn't worth while my tellin' you all the hullabaloo that came after the smash. It would take too long and I don't know the ins and outs of it, anyway. But the way it stands now is this: The Eagle Fish Freezin' Company is out of business. Their factory is run now by another concern altogether. The Wellmouth Development Company is still alive--at least it's supposed to be, but nobody but a doctor could tell it wasn't dead. The Denboro Trust Company has the Eagle Company's twelve hundred shares--I don't know how it got 'em; a long snarled-up tangle of loans, and security for loans, and I don't know what--and the rest of us have got ours. All that's back of those shares--all that the Development Company owns--is that Skoonic Creek property and that is goin' to be worth a lot some day--maybe. But I guess likely the some day will be a long, long time after MY day. There, Mr. Bangs, that's the story of the Wellmouth Development Company. And I presume likely you're wonderin' why I tell it to you."

Galusha, who had been faithfully endeavoring to grasp the details of his hostess' narrative, passed a hand in bewildered fashion across his forehead. He murmured that the story was--ah--very interesting, very interesting indeed--yes. Martha smiled faintly.

"I'm glad you think so," she said. "It is interestin' enough to some of us here in Wellmouth, those of us who have our money tied up in it, but I shouldn't think a stranger would find much in it to amuse him. But, you see, Mr. Bangs, I didn't tell it to amuse you. I told it because--because--well, because, I--I wondered if in any way you knew, or could find out, how I could sell my two hundred and fifty shares. You see, I--I've GOT to sell 'em. At least, I've got to get more money somehow or--or give up this house. And I can't tell you what it would mean to me to do that."

Galusha murmured something, something meant to be sympathetic. Miss Phipps' evident distress and mental agitation moved him extraordinarily. He wanted to say many things, reassuring things, but he could not at the moment think of any. The best he could do was to stammer a hope that she would not be obliged to sell the house.

She shook her head. "I'm afraid I shall," she said. "I don't see how I can possibly keep it much longer. When father died he left me, so he thought, with enough income to get along on. It wasn't much--fact is, it was mighty little--but we could and did get along on it, Primmie and I, without touchin' my principal. But then came the war and ever since livin' costs have been goin' up and up and up. Now my income is the same as it was, but what it will buy is less than half. It doesn't cost much to live down here, but I'm afraid it costs more than I can afford. If I begin to take away from my principal I'll have to keep on doin' it and pretty soon that will be all gone. After that--well, I don't want to look any further than that. I shouldn't starve, I presume likely; while I've got hands I can work and I'd manage to keep alive, if that was all. But it isn't all. I'd like to keep on livin' in my own home. And I can't do that, Mr. Bangs. I can't do that, as things are now. I must either get some more money somehow, or sell this house, one or the other."

Galusha leaned eagerly forward. He had been waiting for an excuse and now he believed he saw one.

"Oh, Miss Phipps," he cried, "I--I think I can arrange that. I do indeed. You see, I have--ah--more money than I need. I seldom spend my money, you know, and--"

She interrupted him and her tone was rather sharp.

"Don't, Mr. Bangs," she said. "Don't say any more. If you've got the idea that I'm hintin' for you to LEND me money--you or anybody else--you never was more mistaken in your life. Or ever will be."

Galusha turned red. "I beg your pardon," he faltered. "Of course I know you were not hinting, Miss Martha. I--I didn't dream of such a thing. It was merely a thought of my own. You see, it would be such a favor to me if you would permit me to--to--"

"Don't."

"But, Miss Phipps, it would be doing me such a GREAT favor. Really, it would."

He was so very much in earnest that, in spite of her own stress of mind, she could not help smiling.

"A great favor to help you get rid of your money?" she asked. "You havin' such a tremendous lot of it, I presume likely."

"Yes--ah--yes, that's it, that's it."

Her smile broadened. "And 'twas because you were so dreadfully rich that you came here to East Wellmouth to live, I suppose. Mr. Bangs, you're the kindest, best-hearted man that ever stepped, I do believe, but truly I doubt if you know whether you're worth ten dollars or ten hundred. And it doesn't make the least difference, so far as I am concerned. I'll never borrow money while I'm alive and I'll try to keep enough one side to bury me after I'm dead. So don't say any more about lendin'. That's settled."

Galusha reluctantly realized that it was. He tried a new idea.

"I fear," he stammered, "that my being here may have been a contributory cause to your--ah--difficulties. Dear me, yes! I have realized since the beginning that the amount I pay you is ridiculously small."

"WHAT? The board you pay SMALL? Rubbish! You pay me altogether too much and what I give you to eat isn't worth half of it. But there, I didn't mean to go into all this at all. What I told you all this long rigmarole for was to see if you could think of any way for me to turn those Development Company shares of mine into money. Not what father paid for them, of course, or even half of it. But SOME money at least. If I thought they weren't worth anything I shouldn't think of tryin' to sell 'em. I don't want to cheat--or steal. But they tell me they are worth somethin', maybe will be worth quite a good deal some day and I must wait, that's all. But, you see, that's what I can't do--wait."

She had been, she said, to every one she could think of, to Pulcifer, who would not give her any encouragement, declaring that he was "stuck" worse than she was and was only hoping some one might make a bid for his holdings; to Captain Jethro, who, relying as usual upon his revelations from the beyond, blandly told her to wait as he was waiting. It had been communicated to him that he was to sell his own shares at a profit; if she waited she might do likewise. The president of the Denboro Trust Company had been very kind, but his counsel was not too encouraging. The Development shares were nonsalable at the present time, he said, but that did not mean that they were valueless. The Skoonic Creek property was good. Shore land on the Cape was becoming more valuable every year. Some time--perhaps ten years from now--she might--

"And where will I be in ten years?" asked Martha, sadly. "Goodness knows, Mr. Bangs, I don't. I tried to get the Trust Company man to take my shares at almost any price and do the waitin' for me, but he didn't see it that way. Said the bank was goin' to hold on to what it had, but it certainly didn't want any more. So there I am.... And yet, and yet if I COULD sell--if I COULD get two thousand dollars, yes, or even fifteen hundred just now, it might tide me over until the cost of livin' comes down. And everybody says they ARE comin' down. Mr. Bangs, can you see any way out for me? Can you think of any one who would know about--Oh, my soul and body! Look OUT!"

She sprang to her feet with a little scream. Her lodger's rocking-chair, with its occupant, had suddenly tilted over backward. Fortunately his proximity to the wall had prevented a complete overturn, but there sat Galusha, the back of the chair against the wall and his knees elevated at a very acute angle. The alarming part of it was that he made no effort to regain his equilibrium, but remained in the unusual, not to say undignified, posture.

"What IS the matter?" demanded Miss Phipps, seizing him by the arm and pulling him forward. "What was it? What happened?"

Galusha's face was beaming. His eyes shone with excitement.

"It--it struck me at that moment," he cried. "At that very moment."

"Struck you?" Miss Phipps looked about the room. "What struck you? Where? Are you hurt?"

Mr. Bangs' beaming smile broadened.

"I mean the idea struck me," he declared. "Dear me, how odd that it didn't do so before. Yes, he is exactly the right person. Exactly. Oh, dear me, this is VERY good!"

Martha said afterward that she never in her life felt more like shaking a person.

"What do you mean?" she demanded. "What was it that struck you?"

"Why, Cousin Gussie," announced Galusha, happily. "Don't you see? He will be EXACTLY the one." _

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