Captain Pott's Minister Part 28

The Captain caught his breath. "He ain't a minister? What do you mean by that?"

"Nothing more than what it conveys to your mind. I cannot tell you more, just now."

"Jim, you're lying to me!"

"Be careful, Josiah. You are making a very serious charge, and I may decide to make you prove it in court."

The seaman reached into his coat-pocket for the yellow bit of paper which Miss Pipkin had given him that morning. But he quickly withdrew his hand without the paper. The thought flashed through his mind that he could not prove with certainty the truth of the message written thereon.

"I've got something here in my pocket that'd interest you a heap, Jim.

But I ain't able to prove it all, so it can wait for a spell. But if it leads in the direction I think it does, the Lord pity you!"

"I'd advise you to hold your tongue, as it might get you into trouble.

If you will drop all that foolishness about getting even with me for imaginary wrongs, we shall be able to talk business. Here are the receipts for the full amount I loaned you, and here are papers waiting your signature and mine that will put you in command of the best vessel put out by our company in many years. It all depends now on your willingness to help me get Mr. McGowan out of our town."

Mr. Fox shoved the papers temptingly across the table, keeping one hand on the corner of them. The Captain appeared to waver. Of course, he acknowledged, it did seem easy. But he did not touch the papers. He rather drew back as though they were deadly poison. He eyed the Elder narrowly.

"Well, what do you say?"

"Jim Fox,"--began the seaman slowly, his voice lowering with the rise of his anger,--"you're a white-livered coward! You've always been getting others to do your dirty work for you, and I'm sartin now that you're offering me a bribe to help stack your d.a.m.n cards against Mack.

There ain't money enough in the world to make me do that. I see your game just as plain as though you'd written it out like you done them papers. You mean to wreck Mack's life, and you're asking me to sit in with you and the devil while you do it. You mean to throw him out of a job, and you mean to keep him from getting another by working through that Means hypocrite. Yes, I can see through you, as plain as a slit canvas. There's something infernal back of all this, and that something is your goat. You're skeered that the minister is going to get it, and that's what is ailing you. By G.o.d! I'll be on deck to help him, whether he's a preacher or a detective from Australia looking for crooks. You've been lying all these years about where you made your money. You've been telling that you got it in Africa, trading in diamonds. I've got a piece of paper in my pocket that blows up your lies like dynamite. You was in Australia all them years. By the Almighty! I'm going to sign up with the preacher, and I don't care a tinker's dam if you get the last cent I have, and send me up Riverhead way to the Poor Farm to eat off the county. Foreclose on my property! That ain't no more than you've been doing to others all your miserable life. It ain't no more than you done to Clemmie Pipkin years ago, leaving her nothing to live on. But mine will be the last you'll foreclose on, and I'm going to see one or two of the best lawyers in the city afore you do that!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "There ain't money enough in the world to make me do that."--_Page 242._]

The Captain strode from the room and down the stair. Mr. Fox called feebly, begging him to return. But the seaman was deaf with rage, and he left the house without hearing the mumbled pet.i.tion of an apparently penitent Elder.

Captain Pott half ran, half stumbled, down to the wharf. He hurriedly untied his dory, and rowed out to the _Jennie P._ A little later he anch.o.r.ed his power-boat in the harbor of Little River where the railroad station was located. He rowed ash.o.r.e, secured his dory, and ran to the depot. He climbed aboard the city-bound train just as it began to move.

CHAPTER XIII

Daylight was beginning to peep through the morning darkness when the Captain threaded his way along the crooked path to the rear of his house. He drew off his boots outside the kitchen door, and tiptoed to his room. Without removing his clothing he threw himself on the bed. The sunlight was streaming through the eastern windows when he awoke. He stretched himself off the bed, and threw back the covers so that Miss Pipkin would think he had slept there the night through. He went down to the kitchen.

"Anything special to tell me this morning, Josiah?" whispered the housekeeper as he entered. "How pale you look! Ain't been seeing ghosts, have you? You look like one yourself."

"Maybe 'twas ghosts I see, but they looked purty tolerable real to me.

Yes, Clemmie, I've sartin been looking on things what ain't good for a healthy man to see. One of 'em is that I'm a ruined man, and there ain't no help for it."

"Don't talk such nonsense! Get out and fill your lungs with fresh air.

That cures the blues quicker than anything I know."

"It won't cure this fit. If it would, I'd had it cured long ago, 'cause that's all I've been doing for a good many weeks. If I'd talked less and done more I'd been a heap sight better off."

"I thought from the way you was staying up there last night that you was doing something. I never heerd you come in at all."

"Maybe I wa'n't up there all that time. The fact is, Clemmie, I went into the city last night."

"You went into New York last night? What did you do that for?"

"I went in and pulled a lawyer friend of mine out of bed for a little confab. I don't mind telling you who it was. It was Harold Fox....

Clemmie, that feller that was here to see me about that mortgage lied to me about the date it was due. Harold says the time is up on it next Sat.u.r.day."

"Josiah!"

"I also talked with another friend of mine who knew Jim purty well in his palmy days, and he says what that letter of yours says is so. He told me a lot more stuff, too."

"What? About Jim or Adoniah?"

"Both. What would you do if there wa'n't no way to save my place excepting by ruination of the other feller?"

"You'd see him stop for you, wouldn't you? I'd not give it a second thought, I'd just----"

"That ain't it, Clemmie. There's his darter, the sweetest little thing that G.o.d ever made. It would kill her, and I ain't got no right to hurt her just to save my own skin."

"You're right, Josiah."

"But what I'm to do, I don't know."

Mr. McGowan entered with an armful of wood, and as he stooped to drop it into the box Miss Pipkin looked sorrowfully at the Captain and shook her head.

"I've done my best," said the seaman, slowly.

"You'd think he was making his last will and testament from the way he's talking," remarked Miss Pipkin, trying hard to appear as though she was without the least concern.

"Maybe I be, Clemmie. Maybe I be."

"What's the cause for all this dejection?" asked the minister.

"Cause enough, Mack.... I'll be going back to the city to-morrow. I hate to leave you to the wiles of the menagerie, for if I ain't terrible mistook they're out for your blood, and they think they've got a whiff of it. But I cal'late they've got their ropes crossed. They've got the idea they're h'isting the mains'l, but it ain't nothing but the spanker.

If I was going to stay aboard I'd give 'em a few lessons the next few days that they'd not forget all the rest of their lives."

"You're certainly mixing your figures in great shape this morning,"

commented the minister good-naturedly.

"Well, if mixing figures is like mixing drinks, making 'em more elevating to the thoughts, I cal'late I'd best do a little more mixing.

There's going to be a squall right soon that'll test the ribs of the old salvation ark to the cracking p'int. If I was you I'd furl my sails a mite, and stand by, Mack."

"We're so accustomed to trouble now that----"

"Trouble? This is going to be h.e.l.l, that is, unless luck or Providence takes a hand and steers her through. Your Elder thinks he's on the home stretch to winning his laurels, but if I was going to hang round here he'd wake up right sudden one of these fine mornings to find his wreath missing."

"Josiah, you're as wicked as you can be this morning. What on earth has come over you?" exclaimed Miss Pipkin with deep concern.

"You'd feel wicked, too, if you was dealing with that kind. But that there Elder puts me in mind of a tramp printer that come to work for Adoniah one time. Adoniah was a brother of mine," he explained in answer to a quizzing look from the minister. "Adoniah was managing a country paper down the line then, and being short on help he took this tramp printer on. He gave him something to set up that the editor had writ,--you couldn't tell one of the letters of that editor from t'other, hardly,--and that feller had a time with it. The piece was about some chap that was running for office, and it closed up with something like this: 'Dennis, my boy, look well to your laurels.' When that tramp got through with it, it come back to the editor like this: 'Dammit, my boy, bark well at your barrels.'"