The Fortune Hunter Part 32

"Me?" Duncan queried simply. "Only just because I'm a business man. If you don't believe it, ask Mr. Graham."

"He's got a perfect right to advise me, Mr. Burnham," interposed Graham, rising.

"Well, but--but what objection 've you got to his making a little money out of this patent?" Burnham bl.u.s.tered.

"None; only I want to look into the matter first. I think it might be-- ah--advisable."

"What makes you think so?" demanded Burnham, his tone withering.

"Well," said Nat, with an effort summoning his faculties to cope with a matter of strict business, "it's this way: I've got an _idea_," he said, poking at Burnham with the forefinger which had proven so effective with Pete Willing, "that you wouldn't offer five hundred iron men for this burner unless you expected to make something big out of it, and... it ought to be worth just as much to Mr. Graham as to you."

"Ah, you don't know what you're talking about."

"I know that," Nat admitted simply, "but I do happen to know you're promoting a scheme for making gas from crude oil, and if Mr. Graham will listen to me you won't get his patent until I've consulted my friend, Henry Kellogg."

"_Kellogg!_"

"Yes. You know--of L.J. Bartlett & Company." Nat's forefinger continued to do deadly work. Burnham backed away from it as from a fiery brand.

"Oh, well!" he said, dashed, "if you're representing Kellogg"--and Nat took care not to refute the implication--"I--I don't want to interfere.

Only," he pursued at random, in his discomfiture, "I can't see why he sent you here."

"I'd be ashamed to tell you," Nat returned with an open smile. "Better ask him."

Burnham gathered his wits together for a final threat. "That's what I will do!" he threatened. "And I'll do it the minute I can see him. You can bet on that, Mister What's-Your-Name!"

"No, I can't," said Nat navely. "I'm not allowed to gamble."

His ingenuous expression exasperated Burnham. The man lost control of his temper at the same moment that he acknowledged to himself his defeat. In disgust he turned away.

"Oh, there's no use talking to you--"

"That's right," Nat agreed fairly.

"But I'll see you again, Mr. Graham--"

"Not alone, if I can help it, Mr. Burnham," Duncan amended sweetly.

"But," Burnham continued, severely ignoring Nat and addressing himself squarely to Graham, "you take my tip and don't do any business with this fellow until you find out who he is." He flung himself out of the shop with a barked: "Good-day!"

"Well, Mr. Graham?" Duncan turned a little apprehensively to the inventor. But Sam's expression was almost one of beatific content. His weak old lips were pursed, his eyes half-closed, his finger tips joined, and he was rocking back and forth on his heels.

"Margaret used to talk that way, sometimes," he remarked. "She was the best woman in the world--and the wisest. She used to take care of me and protect me from my foolish impulses, just as you do, my boy...."

For a s.p.a.ce Duncan kept silent, respecting the old man's memories, and a great deal humbled in spirit by the parallel Sam had drawn. Then: "I was afraid what I said would sound queer to you, sir," he ventured-- "that you mightn't understand that I'm not here to do you out of your invention..."

"There's nothing on earth, my boy,"--Graham's hand fell on Nat's arm-- "could make me think that. But five hundred dollars, you see, would have repaid you for taking up that note, and--and I could have bought Betty a new dress for the party. But I'm sure you've done what's best.

You're a business man--"

"Don't!" Nat pleaded wildly. "I've been called that so much of late that it's beginning to hurt!"

XIV

MOSTLY ABOUT BETTY

Sam Graham said to me, that night: "I don't know when so many things have happened to me in so short a time. It don't seem hardly possible it's only four days since that boy came in here asking for a job. It's wonderful, simply wonderful, the change he's made."

He waved a comprehensive hand, and I, glancing round the transformed store, agreed with him. Everything was spick and span and mighty attractive--clean and neat-looking--with the new stock in the s.h.i.+ning cases and arranged on the glistening white shelves: not all of it set out by any means, of course, but no unplaced goods in sight, cluttering up the counters or kicking round the floor.

"The way he's worked----! You'd hardly believe it, Homer. He said he wanted to get home early so's to write a letter to a friend of his in New York, a Mr. Kellogg, junior member of L. J. Bartlett & Company, about my invention. But he insisted on leaving everything to rights for business to-morrow. And just look!"

"But I thought Roland Barnette----?" I suggested with guile. Of course I'd heard a rumour of what had happened--'most everyone in town had--and how Roland and his friend, Mr. Burnham, had sort of fallen out on the way from the Bigelow House to the train; but no one knew anything definite, and I wanted to get "the rights of it," as Radville says.

So I had dropped in at Graham's, on my way home from the office, as I often do, for an evening smoke and a bit of gossip: something I rarely indulge in, but which I've found has a curious psychological effect on the circulation of the _Citizen_--like a tonic. Sam was just at the point of closing up. He was alone, Duncan having gone home about an hour earlier, and Betty being upstairs, while (since it was quite half-past nine) all the rest of Radville, with few exceptions (chiefly to be noted at Schwartz's and round the Bigelow House bar) was making its final rounds of the day: locking the front door, putting out the lamp in its living-room, banking the fire in the range, ejecting the cat from the kitchen and wiping out the sink, and finally, odoriferous kerosene lamp in hand, climbing slowly to the stuffy upstairs bed-chamber. Indeed, the lights of Radville begin to go out about half-past eight; by ten, as a rule, the town is as lively as a cemetery.

But I am by nature inexorable and merciless, a masterful man with such as old Sam; and it was an hour later before I left him, drained of the last detail of the day. He was a weary man, but a happy one, when he bade me good-night, and I myself felt a little warmed by his cheerfulness as I plodded up Main Street through the thick oppression of darkness beneath the elms.

After a time I became aware that someone was overtaking me, and waited, thinking at first it would be one of my people. But it wasn't long before I recognised from the quick tempo of the approaching footfalls that this was no Radvillian. There was just light enough--starlight striking down through the thinner s.p.a.ces in the interlacing foliage--to make visible a moving shadow, and when it drew nearer I saluted it with confidence.

"Good-evening, Mr. Duncan."

He stopped short, peering through the gloom. "Good-evening, but--Mr.

Littlejohn? Glad to see you." He joined me and we proceeded homeward, he moderating his stride a trifle in deference to my age. "Aren't you late?"

"A bit," I admitted. "I've been gossiping with Sam Graham."

"Oh...?"

"You're out late yourself, Mr. Duncan, for one of such regular, not to say abnormal, habits."

He laughed lightly. "Had a letter I wanted to catch the first morning train."

"Then you're interested in Sam's burner?"

"No, I'm not, but I hope to interest others....Oh, yes: Mr. Graham told you about it, of course.... It just struck me that if a man of Burnham's stamp was willing to risk five hundred dollars on the proposition, he very likely foresaw a profit in it that might as well be Mr. Graham's. So I've sent a detailed description of the thing to a friend in New York, who'll look into it for me."

He was silent for a little.

"Who's Colonel Bohun?" he asked suddenly.

"Why do you ask?"

"I saw him this evening. He was pa.s.sing the store and stopped to glare in as if he hated it--stopped so long that I got nervous and asked Miss Lockwood (she'd just happened in for a parting gla.s.s--of soda) whether he was an anarchist or a retired burglar. She told me his name, but was otherwise inhumanly reticent."

"For Josie?" I chuckled; but he didn't respond. So I took up the tale of the first family of Radville.