"Yes—I am sure they got the two refrigerator cars that sat alongside the car that was robbed of fifteen tons of sausage, and that they use anything that contains grease. Of that I am as certain as any one can be without being able to prove it, and we've got to get him, and we can't get him until we get inside of the plant," he insisted, his jaws coming together with a snap.
"He has a regular castle—moat and all," Hiram continued, "and we can't storm it. His people are all black and speak only Creole."
"What about this boat you are on track of—but wait, Hiram, don't you want something to eat?"
"Yes, I'm hungry as a wolf. I've seen the time I would give ten dollars for the appetite I now have—but wait till I tell you about the boat. For some time past there has been an old fellow coming down to the wharf to pick up bananas, those that break from the bunches when they come out of a ship on the carriers. After a while I noticed that he talked good English, Creole, Spanish, French, in fact he seemed to be able to talk with almost any of the rats that work on the fruit steamers. After I had talked with him I asked what he did with the bananas. He said he kept them until ripe and ate them. Later he told me he lived on a boat as caretaker and had not seen his boss lately. Evidently he has run out of money. He hinted that if he could get his back wages he did not care what became of the boat. I saw him again to-day and he says he has starved long enough, and I am going to see the boat in the morning. It is not in the river, but is in the canal just above the Yazoo station. And say, I've got another scheme to make all the money we want after this matter is settled," said he, coming to his feet as though unloosed by a steel spring.
"What is it, Hiram?" I asked, amused.
"Wait until I clean up a bit. Then I want you to come out with me and watch a real hungry man eat. I have a long story, and a good scheme. Your blood will be on my hands if you say it isn't. How much is a thousand feet of lumber?" he called to me through the communicating door, just after I heard his wet, muddy shoes go down like a cord of wood on the floor.
"A thousand feet of lumber is a thousand square feet an inch thick. In boards a foot wide and an inch thick they would reach a thousand feet," I explained.
"That's what I thought, but I can't recall ever having been told."
After seating ourselves in the restaurant, Hiram, his mind filled with many notions, began to talk.
"I never see a cargo of lumber go by that I don't think of it as something immensely valuable. I don't understand it, unless—well—of course, I can't figure out who is to blame, but do you realize I actually don't know what business my—I mean the Gold-Beater—is in? I never knew whether he ran a pawn-shop, a gambling-house, or a real business; my knowledge of his activities is limited to a vague impression I have, an indistinct memory of hearing him talk one night at our house with some man—and he was some man, too, if the Gold-Beater brought him home—about stumpage, stump land and market conditions. I don't recall much, for then I was about as much interested in it as I would now be in a divinity student's theory on Heaven and the other place.