“She's got 'em all skinned a mile,” was Morris Shine's comment upon Olga's lithe, graceful figure. “Ain't that so, Abey?”
The remark was addressed to Abel Landover.
“Even so,” returned that gentleman, glaring at the offender, “it doesn't give you the right to call me Abey. You've got to cut it out, Shine. Understand?”
“Sure,” said the affable Morris. “Only I've got a brother named Abraham, and that was my father's name too. It comes natural to me to—Why, by gracious, she's got the Venus Belvedere lashed to the mast. Did you ever see—”
“I've never had the pleasure of seeing the Venus Belvedere,” interrupted Landover coldly.
“You haven't?” exclaimed Morris, amazed. “The armless wonder? You ain't seen her? Why, she's supposed to have the most perfect figger in the world. Maybe you've seen her without knowing what her name is. They never put the name on it, simply because every school boy and girl is supposed to know who it is without being told. Funny you don't know—Oh, she ain't alive, you know,—she ain't real. She's a statue,—thousands of 'em turned out every year. Gee, the feller that designed that statue must have cleaned up a pile. But, as I was saying, our little old Olga has got her—Say, did you ever see a figger like that?”
“Yes,” broke in Landover shortly, “thousands of them.”
Mr. Shine looked sceptical. “Well,” he said after a moment's reflection, and with studied politeness,—having already offended at the outset, “all I got to say is, you talk like a woman, that's all I got to say.”
Landover was a greatly changed man in these days. There had come a crisis in the affairs of Trigger Island, not many weeks before the second annual election in April, when he was obliged to show his true colours. The banker suddenly realized with a shock that he was actually involved in a well-organized, though secret plot to overthrow the so-called “government.” He had been completely deceived by the wily Manuel Crust and several of his equally wily friends. They professed to be organizing an opposition party to oust the dictatorial Percival and his clique from office at the ensuing election,—a feat, they admitted, that could be accomplished only by the most adroit and covert “educational” campaign, “under the rose” perforce, but justifiable in the circumstances. They had led Landover to believe that he was their choice for governor. They went among the people, insidiously sowing the seeds of discontent, hinting at the advantages to be obtained by the election of an entirely new set of officers, mostly from among the people themselves, but headed by the ablest man on the island,—Abel T. Landover. They argued that as treasurer and comptroller of currency he had shown himself to be the only man qualified to direct the affairs of the people.
And Landover believed them. Despite his superior intelligence and his vaunted ability to size up his fellow man, he was as blind and unsuspecting as a child when it came to penetrating the real motives of the conspirators. Vain, self-important, possessed of an abnormal conceit, men of his type go ahead ruthlessly, ignoring the details, bent only on achieving the ultimate. In Landover's case, he made the fatal error of underestimating the craftiness of Manuel Crust; he looked upon him as a blatant, ignorant ruffian of the stripe best known to him as a “beer saloon politician,”—and known only by hearsay, at that. He regarded himself as the master-politician and Crust as a contemptible necessity.