“You've got to take your chances on it, Mayo. What do you say?”
“I'll take my chances.”
“By gad! sir, you're a square chap, and I'm not meeting many of that sort in these days! Let this thing hang. Before you leave the city, slip word to me here. I'll tell you the news!”
With that understanding they parted.
Three days later, acknowledging to himself that he was a thoroughly beaten young man, Mayo walked into the Nicholas Hotel. He had been unable to secure either encouragement, money, or credit. There were parties who would back him in any attempt to junk the Conomo; but his proposition to raise her with the aid of the tribe of Hue and Cry made his project look like a huge joke and stirred hearty amusement all along the water-front. Everywhere he found proof of Fogg's neat work of discouragement. If a real salvaging company had turned the scheme down as impracticable, how could penniless amateurs hope? It was conceded in business and financial circles that they hoped because they were amateurs.
Mayo's outlook on his own strictly personal affairs was as dismal as his view of the Razee project in which his associates were concerned. He went to the hotel merely because he had promised Burkett that he would notify that modern buccaneer regarding any intended departure. He despondently reflected that if Fogg and Burkett had agreed again, the combination against him still existed. If they were persistently on the outs, Burkett was merely a discredited agent whose word, without proofs, could be as easily brushed away as his connection with Fogg in the' matter of the Conomo. In fact, so Mayo pondered, he might find association with Burkett dangerous, because demands for consideration can be twisted into semblance of blackmail by able lawyers. He entertained so few hopes in regard to any assistance from Burkett that he was rather relieved to discover that the man was no longer a guest at the hotel.
“Has he left town?”
“I suppose there's no secret about the thing,” explained the clerk. “Mr. Fogg had the man arrested yesterday, for threatening words and actions. Something of that sort. Anyway, he is in jail and must give bonds to keep the peace.”
Mayo's flagging interest in the possibilities of Burkett as an aid in his affairs was a bit quickened by that piece of news, and he hurried up to the jail. If ever a captured and fractious bird of passage was beating wings against his cage's bars in fury and despair, Mr. Burkett was doing it with vigor. Mayo, admitted as a friend who might aid in quelling the disturbance that was making the deafened jailers and noise-maddened prisoners regret the presence of Mr. Burkett, found the man clinging to the iron rods and kicking his foot against them.
“It's the last thing he did before he left town, this what he has done to me. I can't give bonds. I don't know anybody in this city,” raved the prisoner.