Well, so long as all the boys was a-doin’ the same thing, the loss wa’n’t noticed, but somehow or other the company got a few honest men on the line, and they turned in so much more money than we did every night that the old man smelled a mouse. He put in the new Willis patent fare-box that was durned hard to beat. It had a little three-cornered wheel inside that acted like a valve, and nothin’ that went in would come out, either by turnin’ the box upside down, or by usin’ the wire pokers we experimented with. They wa’n’t nothin’ for it but to git keys, and so keys we got. It looked a heap more like stealin’ than it did before, but it was rather easier. Some of the boys was caught at it, but as luck would have it, nobody never suspected me, and I took out my little old percentage regular as a faro dealer.
I salted down my money in the Hibernia Bank, and I called it my sinkin’ fund, which it was for sure sinkin’ my soul down deeper and deeper into the bottomless pit. I’m a-goin’ to make a clean breast of it, howsomever, and I own up I was about as bad as the rest of ’em, and four times as sharp at the game.
After a while the system was improved, and the company got new rollin’ stock with all two-horse cars. I was a conductor then, and I ran on No. 27 till I was off the road. The Gardner punch was my first experience in knockin’ down fares right in the face and eyes of everybody, and I had figgered a way to “hold out” long before I had the nerve to try it. But Lord! it was as easy as fallin’ off a log, when you knew how. You see, we sold a five-coupon ticket for a quarter, and we had to slice off a section for every fare, with a candle-snuffer arrangement, the check droppin’ into a little box on the under jaw of the nippers. All we had to do was to “build up” on ’em. You held back a lot of clipped tickets, with two or three or four coupons left, as the case might be, and you kept ’em underneath the bunch of regular tickets for sale. Say a man handed you a whole ticket for two fares. You made a bluff at cuttin’ it, and handed him back a three-coupon ticket from underneath your rubber band. You kept his whole one for yourself, and sold it to the next passenger for two bits.
Well, Jim Williams was caught red-handed, and Gardner’s system went to Jericho. Next they sprung the regular bell-punch on us, the kind you “punch in the presence of the passenjaire.” We had no trouble with that. They was a dummy palm-bell manufactured almost simultaneous, and we’d ring up fares without punchin’ at all. The breastplate registers was worked similar, with a bell inside your vest connected with a button. It was as easy as pie, providin’ nobody watched the numbers on the indicator while you was ringin’ up.
I left the road before they adopted the stationary registers or clock machines. I admit they’re ingenious, but still I ain’t got no doubt that, given a good big crowd and no spotters, I could manage to make my expenses with the rest of the boys.
But I won’t go round Robin Hood’s barn to spin out the story. The result was that after about fifteen years of patient, unremittin’ industry, I had somethin’ like $12,000 in the bank, and what was left of my New England conscience shootin’ through me like rheumatism. It didn’t bother me so much at first, but when once Brewster blood begins to boil it don’t slow up in a hurry. Eli Cook didn’t seem to care a continental, but they was a whole lot of Pilgrim Fathers behind me that was bound to testify sooner or later.
I tried to settle down and get into some quiet business, where I wouldn’t have no more trickery to do than maybe put a little terra alba in the sugar and peanuts in the coffee. But after lookin’ round I hankered after makin’ money easier, and so I bought minin’ stocks and hung on, assessment after assessment, like grim Death, till, by Jimminy! one day I’ll be durned if I didn’t calculate I had $30,000 to the good, if I sold. I pulled out the day before the slump. I don’t know why Providence favored my fortune, which was so wickedly come by, and I don’t know why, after doin’ so well, I didn’t have spunk enough to pay back the company, but, anyhow, I wa’n’t yet waked up to feel full consciousness of sin, and I shut my ears to the callin’ to repentance.
Now, all this time, bein’ of a South Shore family of seafaring men mostly, I had a hankerin’ after the water. So, when the first lots was cut up, out to the Beach, I bought a parcel of land on the shore. I used to go out there all the time to sit on my own sand, and recollect how it used to feel to get a good dry heat on my bare legs when I was a boy down to Duxbury. If they had only been clams there, I’d have been as happy as a pollywog in a hogshead of rain water.
One day I was walkin’ out there, and as I passed the company’s stables I see a sign out, “Cars for Sale, Cheap,” and I went in to see ’em. I speered round the yard till what did I see but old 27, my car, settin’ there without wheels, lookin’ as shabby as Job’s cat! I asked the foreman how much they wanted for it, and I got it for ten dollars. I hired a dray and moved the thing out to the Beach that very afternoon. I set it up on two sills on my lot, calculatin’ I could use it for a cabin to hang out in, over Sunday, and it was as steady as Plymouth Rock, and made as cute a little room as you’d want to see. Every time I went I tinkered round and fixed her up more, till I had a good bunk at one end, lockers under the seats, and a trig little cellar beneath, where I kept canned stuff.
’Twa’n’t long before I regularly moved out there and stayed for good. Just from force of habit, I expect, at first, I rung two bells every time I got on, and one bell before I got off, and I always keep it up, just as if the old car was really on the rails. I never went in and set down but I felt as if No. 27 was poundin’ along toward Woodward’s Gardens, with the hosses on a jog trot. Sometimes when the rain was drivin’ down and the wind blowin’ like all possessed, and it was pitch dark outside, with the surf rollin’, I’d put down my pipe and go out on the platform, and set the brake up just as tight as I could. I don’t know why, but it kind of give me a sense of security.