He would have dreamed on had he not bethought himself suddenly of his modest capital—fifty thousand-odd dollars, out of which he owed Cappy Ricks a considerable sum on a promissory note due in one year. On such a meager bank balance it would not do to dream of buying a vessel worth nearly four hundred thousand dollars. Why, it would require twenty thousand dollars to put her in commission after all these years of idleness, and she had to have another boiler because she was a hog on coal; and, in addition, her operating cost would be between nine and ten thousand dollars a month.
Matt shook his head and looked round the great room as though in search of inspiration. He found it. His wandering glance finally came to rest on Jerry Dooley's alert countenance. Jerry crooked a finger at him and Matt strolled over to the desk.
“I've been watching you milling the idea round in your head,” said Jerry. “I saw you reject it. You're crazy! It can be done.”
“How?” Matt queried eagerly.
“Go get an option on her for the lowest price you can get—then form a syndicate and sell her to them at a higher price; or, if you don't want to do that, form your syndicate to buy her at the option price, and if you work it right you can get the job of managing owner. I want to tell you that two and one-half per cent. commission on her freight earnings would make a nice income.”
“I wonder whom I could get into the syndicate?” Matt queried.
Jerry scratched his head.
“Well,” he suggested, “you're mighty close to old Cappy Ricks. If you could hook him for a piece of her, the rest would be easy. Any shipping man on the Street will follow where Cappy Ricks leads. I'd try Pollard & Reilly; Redell, of the West Coast Trading Company; Jack Haviland, the ship chandler; Charley Beyers, the ship's grocer and butcher; A. B. Cahill & Co., the coal dealers; Pete Hansen, of the Bulkhead Hotel down on the Embarcadero—he's always got a couple of thousand dollars to put into a clean-cut shipping enterprise. Then there's Rickey, the ship-builder, and—yes, even Alcott, the crimp, will take a piece of her. I'd look in on Louis Wiley, the chronometer man, and Cox, the coppersmith—why I'd take in every firm and individual who might hope to get business out of the ship; and, you bet, I'd sell 'em all a little block of stock in the S. S. Narcissus Company.”
“It might be done,” Matt answered evasively. “I'll think it over.”
He did think it over very seriously the greater portion of that night. As a result, instead of going to his office next morning he went to Mission Street bulkhead and engaged a launch, and forty minutes later, in response to his hail, the aged watchman aboard the Narcissus came to the rail and asked him what he wanted.