“Money paid,” he reported. “Them’s the dockyments. Come up into the wheel-house. There’s the place to talk the rest of our business.”
Marcena Keedy did most of the talking that forenoon. He loved to lollop the words “three million dollars’ worth of gold ingots” in his mouth. He had wormed out of me at breakfast-time admissions enough so that he knew I was favorably disposed. He proposed to try to take advantage of me and I saw his game and resolved to do some bluffing on my own part. He put a lot of verbal plush around his propositions, but I could feel the hard nub just the same.
After all that conversational fluff he wanted me to sign a contract to take day’s wages for the job—double pay for the days when I recovered any gold.
I turned that wages suggestion down, flat and final. You would have thought I had money plastered all over me.
“It has got to be on shares,” I said.
“You doggone bean-eater, have you got the nerve to talk shares on an investment of a diving-suit against our steamer and our information about the Golden Gate?” stuttered Keedy.
“That isn’t the way the thing shakes down, Mr. Keedy. You have made it plain to me that you’re gambling in this—it isn’t a straight deal.”
He swore at me, but I didn’t mean the thing the way he cook it.
“If you were going down there,” I said, “with a big expedition, and proposed to build coffer-dams, and all that, and go at it scientific fashion, I would hire as a regular diver. I couldn’t demand anything else. But I’m not merely investing a diving-suit, as it stands. I’m playing a lone hand in the diving part of the scheme; I’m investing all my experience, all my skill; I’m investing life itself, for, as near as I can find out from what you say, it will be up to me to know how to get that gold, and then go get it. I want one-third of the velvet after all bills are paid, and I want a contract drawn before I start.”
Perhaps I wouldn’t have jabbed the thing so hard at Holstrom, but I did not propose to be the monkey for Keedy. I looked innocent and suggested that they’d better talk with another diver. Keedy flapped like a speared fish for half an hour—and then he came over. Captain Holstrom walked up and down with his hands behind his back during all the talk. I judged from his general air that he was viewing the whole thing as more or less of a dream, and did not want to get too wide awake about it from fear of losing courage and interest.