The Postmaster Part 28

"No, we didn't. 'Twas in her name and we wouldn't have touched it, if we'd wanted to; but we didn't get the chance. She drew it all the very next mornin' and the pair of 'em cleared out. I judge they'd planned to skip in a few days anyhow, and our creditors' raid only hurried things up a little mite. The whole thing was a skin game-Frank and his precious wife had seen ruination comin' on and they'd laid plans to feather their own nest and let the rest of us whistle. We ain't seen 'em from that day to this."

He was shakin' all over. "You ain't?" he shouted, jumpin' from the chair. "You ain't? Why not? What did you let 'em get away for? Why didn't you set the police after 'em? What sort of managin' do you call that? I-I-"

"Hus.h.!.+" says I, surprised to see him act so. "Hush, Jim! you ain't heard the whole of it yet. Our bill-"

"Bill be hanged!" he broke in. "I don't care a continental about the bill. I invested fifteen hundred dollars of my own money in that road-house, and you let that fakir get away with the whole of it. You're a nice partner!"

_I_ was surprised now, and a good deal cut up and hurt. 'Twas an understandin' between us-not a written one, but an understandin' just the same-that neither should go into any outside deal without tellin'

the other. We'd agreed to that after the row concernin' Taylor and the "Palace Parlors." So I was surprised and hurt and mad. But I held in well as I could.

"That's enough of that, Jim Henry!" says I. "I'll talk about that later.

Now I'll tell you the rest of the yarn I started with. After that critter who called himself Frank, but whose name, it seemed, was Francis, had galloped away with the stewardess woman, there was consider'ble excitement around that dinin'-room, now I tell you.

However, Johnson and Washburn and me managed to get together in the private office and I told 'em all about how we come to be there, and about our gettin' their dinner, and all the rest of it. They seemed to think 'twas funny, laughed liked a pair of loons, but I was a long ways from laughin'.

"'Well, well, well!' says Johnson, when I'd finished, 'that's the best joke I've heard in a month of Sundays. You sartinly have your own ways of doin' business down here, Cap'n Snow. But the dinner was a good one and I'll pay you for it now. How much?'

"'Well,' says I, 'I suppose I ought to get what I can for our crowd to leave with their wives and relations afore we're carted to jail. Course the meal we got for you wa'n't what you expected and I can't charge that Frank thief's price for it; but I've got to charge somethin'. If you think a dollar a head wouldn't be too much, I-'

"'A _dollar_!' says both of 'em. 'A dollar!'

"'Do you mean that's all you'll charge?' says Johnson. 'A dollar for _that_ dinner! It was the best-'

"'You bet it was!' says Washburn.

"'Look here!' goes on Johnson. 'I was to pay Frank, or whatever his real name is, two-fifty a plate. Yours was wuth three of any meal I ever got here, but, if you will be satisfied with the contract price I made with him, I'll give you a check now. And, Cap'n Snow, let me give you a piece of advice. Now you've got this hotel, keep it; keep it and run it. If you can furnish dinners like this one every day in the week durin' the summer and fall you'll have customers enough. Why, I'll engage twenty-five plates for next Sunday, myself. I've got another week-end party, haven't I, Wash?'

"'If you haven't I can get one for you,' says Washburn. 'Johnson's advice is good, Cap'n. Keep this place and run it yourself. Don't be afraid of Francis. Confound him! I ought to have him jailed. The Club would pitch me out if they knew I had the chance and didn't take it. But I won't, for your sake. So long as he doesn't trouble you I'll keep quiet. But if he _does_ trouble you, if he ever comes back, just send for me. However, you won't have to send; he'll never come back.'

"And," says I, to Jim Henry, "he ain't ever come back. I talked the matter over with Mary and Alpheus and a few of the others and, after consider'ble misgivin's on my part, we reached an agreement. I decided to run the 'Sign of the Windmill' myself. We bounced the chef and his helpers and the foreign waiters and hired Alpheus's wife and Cahoon's daughter and four or five more. We fed ten folks that next day and they all said they was comin' again. They did and they fetched others. The upshot of it is that all that hotel's outstandin' bills have been paid, the place is out of debt, and the outlook for next season is somethin'

fine. There, Jim Henry, that's the yarn. I went through Purgatory because I figgered that you had trusted the store business in my hands and the Windmill's bill was so large and I thought I was responsible for it. If I'd known you'd put money into the shebang without tellin' me, your partner, a word about it, maybe I'd have felt worse. I _should_ have felt worse-I do now-but in another way. I didn't think you'd do such a thing, Jim! I honestly didn't."

He'd set down while I was talkin'. Now he got up again.

"Skipper," he says, sort of broken, "I-I don't know what to say to you.

I-"

"It's all right," says I, pretty sharp. "Your fifteen hundred's all right, I cal'late. The furniture and fixin's are wuth that, I guess. Is there anything else you want to ask me? If not I'm goin' to the store."

I was turnin' to go, but he stepped for'ard and stopped me.

"Zeb," he says, his face workin', "don't go away mad. I've been a chump.

You ought to hate me, but I-I hope you won't. I was a fool. I thought because you was country that you hadn't any head for business, and when you wouldn't invest in that Windmill proposition I was sore and went into it myself. My conscience has plagued me ever since. I'm a low-down chump. I deserve to lose the fifteen hundred and I'm glad I did. By the Lord Harry! you've got more real business instinct than I ever dreamed of."

He looked so sort of weak and sick and pitiful that I was awful sorry for him, in spite of everything.

"Don't talk foolish," says I. "You ain't lost your money. It's yours now; at least I don't think Brother Fred George Eben Frank Francis'll ever turn up to claim it."

He shook his head. "Not much!" he says. "You don't suppose I'll take a share in that hotel, after you and your smart managin' saved it, do you?

I ain't quite as mean as that, no matter what you think. No, sir, you've made good and the whole property is yours. All I want you to do is to give me another chance. If I live I'll show you how thankful I-"

"There! there!" says I, all upset, "don't say another word. Of course we'll hang together in this, same as in everything else. Shake, and let's forget it."

We shook hands and his was so thin and white I felt worse than ever.

"Skipper," he says, "I can't thank-"

"No need to thank me," I cut in. "If you've got to thank anybody, thank Mary Blaisdell. She's been the brains of that eatin'-house concern ever since I took hold of it. She's a wonder, that woman. If she'd been my own sister she couldn't have done more. I wish she was."

He looked at me, pretty queer.

"Skipper," says he, smilin', "if you wish that you're a bigger chump than I've been, and that's sayin' a heap."

What in the world he meant by that I didn't know-but I didn't ask him.

Not that I didn't think. I'd been thinkin' a lot of foolish things lately, but you could have cut my head off afore I said 'em out loud, even to myself.

He came down to the store the next mornin' and the sight of it seemed to be the very tonic he needed. He got better day by day and pretty soon was his own brisk self again. "The Sign of the Windmill"-by the way, I'd changed the name on my own hook and 'twas the "Sign of the Bluefish"

now-done fust rate all through the fall and when we closed it we was sure that next summer it would be a little gold mine for us. In fact, everything in the trade line looked good, by-products and all, and I ought to have been a happy man. But I wa'n't exactly. Somehow or other I couldn't feel quite contented. I didn't know what was the matter with me and when I hinted as much to Jacobs he just looked at me and laughed.

"You're lonesome, that's what's the matter with you," he says. "You're too good a man to be boardin' at a one-horse ranch like the Poquit."

"I'll admit that," says I. "I'll give in that I'm next door to an angel and ought to wear wings, if it'll please you any to have me say so. And the Poquit ain't a paradise, by no means. But I've sailed salt water for the biggest part of my life and it ain't poor grub that ails me."

"Who said it was?" says he. "I said you were lonesome. You ought to have a home."

"Old Mans' Home you mean, I s'pose. Well, I ain't goin' there yet."

He laughed again and walked off.

In October he went up to Boston and came back with his head full of new ideas and his pockets full of notions. He'd been to what the advertis.e.m.e.nts called the Industrial Exhibition in Mechanics' Buildin'

up there, and had fetched back every last thing he could get for nothin'

and some few that he bought cheap. He had a sample trap that, accordin'

to the circular, would catch all the able-bodied rats in a towns.h.i.+p the fust night and make all the crippled and bedridden ones grieve themselves to death of disappointment because they couldn't get into it afore closin' hours. And he had the Gunners' Pocket Companion, which was a foldin' hatchet and butcher knife, with a corkscrew in the handle; and samples of "cereal coffee" that didn't taste like either cereal or coffee; and safety razors that were warranted not to cut-and wouldn't; and-and I don't know what all. These was side issues, however, as you might say. What he was really enthusiastic over was the Eureka Adjustable Aluminum Window Screen. If he'd been a mosquito he couldn't have been more anxious about them screens.

"They're the greatest ever, Skipper!" he says to me, enthusiastic. "Fit any window; can't rust-and a child of twelve can put 'em up."

"That part don't count," says I. "Nowadays if a child of twelve ain't halfway through Harvard his folks send for the doctor. I may be a hayseed, but I read the magazines."

He went right along, never payin' no attention, and praisin' up them screens as if he was nominatin' 'em for office. Finally he made proclamation that he'd applied-in the store name, of course-for the Ostable County agency for 'em.

"But why?" says I. "We've got an adjustable screen agency now. And they're good screens, too. No mosquito can get through them-unless it takes to usin' a can-opener, which wouldn't surprise me a whole lot."

"I know they are good screens," says he; "but there's nothin' new or novel about 'em. And, I tell you, Cap'n Zeb, it's novelty that catches the coin. We want to get the contract for screenin' that new hotel at West Ostable. It'll be ready in a couple of months and there's two hundred rooms in it. Let's say there are two windows to a room; that's four hundred screens-besides doors and all the rest. That hotel will need screens, won't it?"

"Need 'em!" says I. "In West Ostable! In among all them salt meadows and cedar swamps! It'll need screens and nettin's and insect powder and 'intment-and even then n.o.body but the hard-of-hearin' bo'rders'll be able to sleep on account of the hummin'. Need screens! _That_ hotel! My soul and body!"

Well, then, we must get the contract-that's all. It was well wuth the trouble of gettin'. And with the Adjustable Aluminum to start with, and he, Jim Henry, to do the talkin', we would get it. He'd applied for the county agency and the Adjustable folks had about decided to give it to him. They'd write and let us know pretty soon.

A week went by and we didn't hear a word. Then, on the followin' Monday but one, come a letter. Jim Henry was openin' the mail and I heard him rip loose a brisk remark.