THE FUSE—
It was in this period that certain phases of the war began to shake the foundation of things. I do not recall who said that an army marches on its stomach, but it is true, and it is no less a verity that nations function primarily on food. The submarine was waxing to its zenith now, and Europe saw the gaunt wolf at its door. Men cried for more ships. Cost became secondary. A vessel paid for herself if she landed but two cargoes in an Allied port.
Every demand in the economic field produces a supply. On this side of the Atlantic great shipbuilding plants arose by some superior magic of construction in ports where the building of ships had been a minor industry. In this Vancouver did not lag. Wooden ships could be built quickly. Virgin forests of fir and cedar stood at Vancouver's very door. Wherefore yards, capable of turning out a three-thousand-ton wooden steamer in ninety days, rose on tidewater, and an army of labor sawed and hammered and shaped to the ultimate confusion of the Hun.
Thompson had seen these yards in the distance. He read newspapers and he knew that local shipbuilding was playing the dual purpose of confounding the enemy and adding a huge pay-roll to Vancouver's other material advantages. Both of which were highly desirable.
But few details of this came personally to his attention until an evening when he happened to foregather with Tommy Ashe and two or three others at Carr's home—upon one of those rare evenings when Sophie was free of her self-imposed duties and in a mood to play the hostess.
They had dined, and were gathered upon a wide verandah watching the sun sink behind the rampart of Vancouver Island in a futurist riot of yellow and red that died at last to an afterglow which lingered on the mountain tops like a benediction. A bit of the Gulf opened to them, steel-gray, mirror-smooth, more like a placid, hill-ringed lake than the troubled sea.
But there was more in the eye's cast than beauty of sea and sky and setting sun. From their seats they could look down on the curious jumble of long sheds and giant scaffolding that was the great Coughlan steel shipyard in False Creek. Farther distant, on the North Shore, there was the yellowish smudge of what a keen vision discerned to be six wooden schooners in a row, sister ships in varying stages of construction.
Some one said something about wooden shipbuilding.
"There's another big yard starting on the North Shore," Sophie said. "One of our committee was telling me to-day. Her husband has something to do with it."
"Yes. I can verify that," Tommy Ashe smiled. "That's my contribution—the Vancouver Construction Company. I organized it. We have contracted to supply the Imperial Munitions Board with ten auxiliary schooners, three thousand tons burden each."
The fourth man of the party, the lean, suave, enterprising head of a local trust company, nodded approval, eyeing Tommy with new interest.
"Good business," he commented. "We've got to beat those U-boats."
"Yes," Tommy agreed, "and until the Admiralty devises some effectual method of coping with them, the only way we can beat the subs is to build ships faster than they can sink them. It's quite some undertaking, but it has to be done. If we fail to keep supplies pouring into England and France. Well—"
He spread his hands in an expressive gesture. Tommy was that type of Englishman in which rugged health and some generations of breeding and education have combined to produce what Europe calls a "gentleman." He was above middle height, very stoutly and squarely built, ruddy faced—the sort of man one may safely prophesy will acquire a paunch and double chin with middle age. But Tommy was young and vigorous yet. He looked very capable, almost aggressive, as he sat there speaking with the surety of patriotic conviction.
"We're all in it now," he said simply. "It's no longer our army and navy against their army and navy and the rest of us looking on from the side lines. It's our complete material resources and man power against their complete resources and man power. If they win, the world won't be worth living in, for the Anglo-Saxon. So we've got to beat them. Every man's job from now on is going to be either fighting or working. We've got to have ships. I'm organizing that yard to work top-speed. I'm trying to set a pace. Watch us on the North Shore. The man in the trenches won't say we didn't back him up."
It sounded well. To Thompson it gave a feeling of dissatisfaction which was nowise lessened by the momentary gleam in Sophie's eyes as they rested briefly on Tommy and passed casually to him—and beyond.
He was growing slowly to understand that the war had somehow—in a fashion beyond his comprehension—bitten deep into Sophie Carr's soul. She thought about it, if she seldom talked. What was perhaps more vital, she felt about it with an intensity Thompson could not fathom, because he had not experienced such feeling himself. He only divined this. Sophie never paraded either her thoughts or her feelings. And divining this uneasily he foresaw a shortening of his stature in her eyes by comparison with Tommy Ashe—who had become a doer, a creator in the common need, while he remained a gleaner in the field of self-interest. Thompson rather resented that imputation. Privately he considered Tommy's speech a trifle grandiloquent. He began to think he had underestimated Tommy, in more ways than one.
Nor did he fail to wonder at the dry smile that hovered about Sam Carr's lips until that worthy old gentleman put his hand over his mouth to hide it, while his shrewd old eyes twinkled with inner amusement. There was something more than amusement, too. If Wes Thompson had not known that Sam Carr liked Tommy, rather admired his push and ability to hold his own in the general scramble, he would have said Carr's smile and eyes tinged the amusement with something like contempt.
That puzzled Thompson. The Dominion, as well as the Empire, was slowly formulating the war-doctrine that men must either fight or work. Tommy, with his executive ability, his enthusiasm, was plunging into a needed work. Tommy had a right to feel that he was doing a big thing. Thompson granted him that. Why, then, should Carr look at him like that?
He was still recurring to that when he drove down town with Tommy later in the evening. He was not surprised that Tommy sauntered into his rooms after putting up his machine. He had been in the habit of doing that until lately, and Thompson knew now that Tommy must have been very busy on that shipyard organization. It had been easy for them to drop into the old intimacy which had grown up between them on that hard, long trail between Lone Moose and the Stikine. They had a lot of common ground to meet on besides that.
This night Tommy had something on his mind besides casual conversation. He wasted little time in preliminaries.
"Would you be interested in taking over my car agencies on a percentage basis, Wes?" he asked point-blank, when he had settled himself in a chair with a cigar in his mouth. "I have worked up a good business with the Standard and the Petit Six. I don't like to let it go altogether. I shall have to devote all my time to the ship plant. That looms biggest on the horizon. But I want to hold these agencies as an anchor to windward. You could run both places without either suffering, I'm confident. Ill make you a good proposition."
Thompson reflected a minute.
"What is your proposition?" he asked at length. "I daresay I could handle it. But I can't commit myself offhand."
"Of course not," Tommy agreed. "You can go over my books from the beginning, and see for yourself what the business amounts to. I'd be willing to allow you seventy-five per cent. of the net. Based on last year's business you should clear twelve thousand per annum. Sales are on the up. You might double that. I would hold an option of taking over the business on ninety days' notice."
"It sounds all right," Thompson admitted. "I'll look into it."
"I want quick action," Tommy declared. "Say, to-morrow you arrange for some certified accountant to go over my books and make out a balance sheet. I'll pay his fee. I'm anxious to be free to work on the ship end."
"All right. I'll do that. We can arrange the details later if I decide to take you up," Thompson said.
Tommy stretched his arms and yawned.
"By jove," said he, "I'm going to be the busiest thing on wheels for awhile. It's no joke running a big show."
"I didn't know you were a shipbuilder," Thompson commented.
"I'm not," Tommy admitted, stifling another yawn. "But I can hire 'em—both brains and labor. The main thing is I've got the contracts. That's the chief item in this war business. The rest is chiefly a matter of business judgment. It's something of a jump, I'll admit, but I can negotiate it, all right."
"As a matter of fact," he continued presently, and with a highly self-satisfied note in his voice, "apart from the executive work it's what the Americans call a lead-pipe cinch. We can't lose. I've been fishing for this quite a while, and I put it over by getting in touch with the right people. It's wonderful what you can do in the proper quarter. The Vancouver Construction Company consists of Joe Hedley and myself. Joe is a very clever chap. Has influential people, too. We have contracts with the I.M.B. calling for ten schooners estimated to cost three hundred thousand dollars per. We finance the construction, but we don't really risk a penny. The contracts are on a basis of cost, plus ten per cent. You see? If we go above or under the estimate it doesn't matter much. Our profit is fixed. The main consideration is speed. The only thing we can be penalized for is failure to launch and deliver within specified dates."
Thompson did a rough bit of mental figuring.
"I should say it was a cinch," he said dryly. "Nobody can accuse you of profiteering. Yet your undertaking is both patriotic and profitable. I suppose you had no trouble financing a thing like that?"
"I should say not. The banks," Tommy replied with cynical emphasis, "would fall over themselves to get their finger in our pie. But they won't. Hedley and I have some money. Sam Carr is letting us have fifty thousand dollars at seven per cent. No bank is going to charge like the Old Guard at Waterloo on overdrafts and advances—and dictate to us besides. I'm too wise for that. I'm not in the game for my health. I see a big lump of money, and I'm after it."
"I suppose we all are," Thompson reflected absently.
"Certainly," Tommy responded promptly. "And we'd be suckers if we weren't."
He took a puff or two at his cigar and rose.
"Run over to the plant on the North Shore with me to-morrow if you have the time. We'll give it the once over, and take a look at the Wallace yard too. They're starting on steel tramps there now. I'm going over about two o'clock. Will you?"
"Sure. I'll take time," Thompson agreed.
"Come down to MacFee's wharf and go over with me on the Alert," Tommy went on. "That's the quickest and easiest way to cross the Inlet. Two o'clock. Well, I'm off to bed. Good night, old man."
"Good night."
The hall door clicked behind Ashe. Thompson sat deep in thought for a long time. Then he fished a note pad out of a drawer and began pencilling figures.
Ten times three hundred thousand was three million. Ten per cent. on three million was three hundred thousand dollars. And no chance to lose. The ten per cent. on construction cost was guaranteed by the Imperial Munitions Board, behind which stood the British Empire.
Didn't Tommy say the ten schooners were to be completed in eight months? Then in eight months Tommy Ashe was going to be approximately one hundred and fifty thousand dollars richer.
Thompson wondered if that was why Sam Carr looked at Tommy with that ambiguous expression when Tommy was chanting his work or fight philosophy. Carr knew the ins and outs of the deal if he were loaning money on it.
And Thompson did not like to think he had read Carr's look aright, because he was uncomfortably aware that he, Wes Thompson, was following pretty much in Ashe's footsteps, only on a smaller scale.
He tore the figured sheet into little strips, and went to bed.