“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 242 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 damn 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 God! 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!”
