The Price. Lynde Francis

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СКАЧАТЬ all know; and most of us drop a little something into the hat and pass on. But Griswold isn't built that way. He jumped into the breach like a man and tried to save the mother. It was too late, and when the woman died he took the child to his own eight-by-ten attic and nursed and fed it until the missionary people took it off his hands. He did that, mind you, when he was living on two meals a day, himself; and I'm putting it up that he went shy on one of them to buy milk for that kid."

      "Holy Smoke!—and he calls himself an anarchist?" was the gruff comment. "It's a howling pity there ain't a lot more just like him—what?"

      "That is what I say," Bainbridge agreed. Then, with a sudden twinge of remorse for having told Griswold's story to a stranger, he changed the subject with an abrupt question.

      "Where are you headed for, Broffin?"

      The man who might have passed for a steamboat captain or a plantation overseer, and was neither, chuckled dryly.

      "You don't expect me to give it away to you, and you a newspaper man, do you? But I will—seeing you can't get it on the wires. I'm going down to Guatemala after Mortsen."

      "The Crescent Bank defaulter? By Jove! you've found him at last, have you?"

      The detective nodded. "It takes a good while, sometimes, but I don't fall down very often when there's enough money in it to make the game worth the candle. I've been two years, off and on, trying to locate Mortsen: and now that I've found him, he is where he can't be extradited. All the same, I'll bet you five to one he goes back with me in the next steamer—what? Have a new smoke. No? Then let's go and turn in; it's getting late in the night."

III

       Table of Contents

THE RIGHT OF MIGHT

       Table of Contents

      Two days after the supper at Chaudière's and the clearing of the fruit steamer Adelantado for the banana coast, or, more specifically, in the forenoon of the second day, the unimpetuous routine of the business quarter of New Orleans was rudely disturbed by the shock of a genuine sensation.

      To shatter at a single blow the most venerable of the routine precedents, the sensational thing chose for its colliding point with orderly system one of the oldest and most conservative of the city's banks: the Bayou State Security. At ten o'clock, following the precise habit of half a lifetime, Mr. Andrew Galbraith, president of the Bayou State, entered his private room in the rear of the main banking apartment, opened his desk, and addressed himself to the business of the day. Punctually at ten-five, the stenographer, whose desk was in the anteroom, brought in the mail; five minutes later the cashier entered for his morning conference with his superior; and at half-past the hour the president was left alone to read his correspondence.

      Being a man whose mental processes were all serious, and whose hobby was method, Mr. Galbraith had established a custom of giving himself a quiet half-hour of inviolable seclusion in which to read and consider his mail. During this sacred interval the stenographer, standing guard in the outer office, had instructions to deny his chief to callers of any and every degree. Wherefore, when, at twenty minutes to eleven, the door of the private office opened to admit a stranger, the president was justly annoyed.

      "Well, sir; what now?" he demanded, impatiently, taking the intruder's measure in a swift glance shot from beneath his bushy white eyebrows.

      The unannounced visitor was a young man of rather prepossessing appearance, a trifle tall for his breadth of shoulder, fair, with blue eyes and a curling reddish beard and mustache, the former trimmed to a point. So much the president was able to note in the appraisive glance—and to remember afterward.

      The caller made no reply to the curt question. He had turned and was closing the door. There was a quiet insistence in the act that was like the flick of a whip to Mr. Galbraith's irritation.

      "If you have business with me, you'll have to excuse me for a few minutes," he protested, still more impatiently. "Be good enough to take a seat in the anteroom until I ring. MacFarland should have told you."

      The young man drew up a chair and sat down, ignoring the request as if he had failed to hear it. Ordinarily Mr. Andrew Galbraith's temper was equable enough; the age-cooled temper of a methodical gentleman whose long upper lip was in itself an advertisement of self-control. But such a deliberate infraction of his rules, coupled with the stony impudence of the visitor, made him spring up angrily to ring for the watchman.

      The intruder was too quick for him. When his hand sought the bell-push he found himself looking into the muzzle of a revolver, and so was fain to fall back into his chair, gasping.

      "Ah-h-h!" he stammered. And when the words could be managed: "So that's it, is it?—you're a robber!"

      "No," said the invader of the presidential privacies calmly, speaking for the first time since his incoming. "I am not a robber, save in your own very limited definition of the word. I am merely a poor man, Mr. Galbraith—one of the uncounted thousands—and I want money. If you call for help, I shall shoot you."

      "You—you'd murder me?" The president's large-jointed hands were clutching the arms of the pivot-chair, and he was fighting manfully for courage and presence of mind to cope with the terrifying emergency.

      "Not willingly, I assure you: I have as great a regard for human life as you have—but no more. You would kill me this moment in self-defence, if you could: I shall most certainly kill you if you attempt to give an alarm. On the other hand, if you prove reasonable and obedient your life is not in danger. It is merely a question of money, and if you are amenable to reason——"

      "If I'm—but I'm not amenable to your reasons!" blustered the president, recovering a little from the first shock of terrified astoundment. "I refuse to listen to them. I'll not have anything to do with you. Go away!"

      The young man's smile showed his teeth, but it also proved that he was not wholly devoid of the sense of humor.

      "Keep your temper, Mr. Galbraith," he advised coolly. "The moment is mine, and I say you shall listen first and obey afterward. Otherwise you die. Which is it to be? Choose quickly—time is precious."

      The president yielded the first point, that of the receptive ear; but grudgingly and as one under strict compulsion.

      "Well, well, then; out with it. What have you to say for yourself?"

      "This: You are rich: you represent the existing order of things. I am poor, and I stand for my necessity, which is higher than any man-made law or custom. You have more money than you can possibly use in any legitimate personal channels: I have not the price of the next meal, already twenty-four hours overdue. I came here this morning with my life in my hand to invite you to share with me a portion of that which is yours chiefly by the right of possession. If you do it, well and good: if not, there will be a new president of the Bayou State Security. Do I make myself sufficiently explicit?"

      Andrew Galbraith glanced furtively at the paper-weight clock on his desk. It was nearly eleven, and MacFarland would surely come in on the stroke of the hour. If he could only fend off the catastrophe for a few minutes, until help should come. He searched in his pockets and drew forth a handful of coins.

      "You СКАЧАТЬ