“Humph! Don't bother me any more, Raish.”
“Well, say eighteen dollars a share. Lord sakes, that's reasonable enough, ain't it?”
“Cruise along towards home, Raish. I've talked all the business I want to on Sunday. Good-by.”
“Look here, Jethro, I—I'm hard up, I'm desp'rate, pretty nigh. I'll let you have my five hundred shares of Wellmouth Development Company for just half what I paid for it—ten dollars a share. If you wasn't my friend, I wouldn't—What are you laughin' at?”
Galusha Bangs, hiding behind the tomb, understanding nothing of this conversation, yet feeling like an eavesdropper, wished this provoking pair would stop talking and go away. He heard the light keeper laugh sardonically.
“Ho, ho, ho,” chuckled Hallett. “You're a slick article, ain't you, Raish? Why, you wooden-headed swab, did you cal'late you was the only one that had heard about the directors' meetin' over to the Denboro Trust Company yesterday? I knew the Trust Company folks had decided not to go ahead with the fish storage business just as well as you did, and I heard it just as soon, too. I know they've decided to put the twelve hundred shares of Wellmouth Development stock into profit and loss, or to just hang on and see if it ever does come to anything. But you cal'lated I didn't know it and that maybe you could unload your five hundred shares on to me at cut rates, eh? Raish, you're slick—but you ain't bright, not very.”
He chuckled again. Mr. Pulcifer whistled, apparently expressing resignation.
“ALL right, Cap'n,” he observed, cheerfully, “just as you say. No harm in tryin', was there? Never catch a fish without heavin' over a hook, as the feller said. Maybe somebody else that ain't heard will buy that stock, you can't tell.”
“Maybe so, but—See here, Raish, don't you go tryin' anything like this on—on—”
“I know who you mean. No danger. There ain't money enough there to buy anything, if what I hear's true.”