Complete Works of Frank Norris

by Frank Norris

  “Cards?” said Condy, picking up the deck after the deal.

  “I’ll stand pat, Condy.”

  “The deuce you say,” he answered, with a stare. “I’ll take three.”

  “I’ll pass it up to you,” continued Blix gravely.

  “Well — well, I’ll bet you five chips.”

  “Raise you twenty.”

  Condy studied his hand, laid down the cards, picked them up again, scratched his head, and moved uneasily in his place. Then he threw down two high pairs.

  “No,” he said; “I won’t see you. What did you have? Let’s see, just for the fun of it.”

  Blix spread her cards on the table.

  “Not a blessed thing!” exclaimed Condy. “I might have known it. There’s my last dollar gone, too. Lend me fifty cents, Blix.”

  Blix shook her head.

  “Why, what a little niggard!” he exclaimed aggrievedly. “I’ll pay them all back to you.”

  “Now, why should I lend you money to play against me? I’ll not give you a chip; and, besides, I don’t want to play any more. Let’s stop.”

  “I’ve a mind to stop for good; stop playing even with you.”

  Blix gave a little cry of joy.

  “Oh, Condy, will you, could you? and never, never touch a card again? never play for money? I’d be so happy — but don’t unless you know you would keep your promise. I would much rather have you play every night, down there at your club, than break your promise.”

  Condy fell silent, biting thoughtfully at the knuckle of a forefinger.

  “Think twice about it, Condy,” urged Blix; “because this would be for always.”

  Condy hesitated; then, abstractedly and as though speaking to himself:

  “It’s different now. Before we took that — three months ago, I don’t say. It was harder for me to quit then, but now — well, everything is different now; and it would please you, Blixy!”

  “More than anything else I can think of, Condy.”

  He gave her his hand.

  “That settles it,” he said quietly. “I’ll never gamble again, Blix.”

  Blix gripped his hand hard, then jumped up, and, with a quick breath of satisfaction, gathered up the cards and chips and flung them into the fireplace.

  “Oh, I’m so glad that’s over with,” she exclaimed, her little eyes dancing. “I’ve pretended to like it, but I’ve hated it all the time. You don’t know HOW I’ve hated it! What men can see in it to make them sit up all night long is beyond me. And you truly mean, Condy, that you never will gamble again? Yes, I know you mean it this time. Oh, I’m so happy I could sing!”

  “Good Heavens, don’t do that!” he cried quickly. “You’re a nice, amiable girl, Blix, even if you’re not pretty, and you—”

  “Oh, bother you!” she retorted; “but you promise?”

  “On my honor.”

  “That’s enough,” she said quietly.

  But even when “loafing” as he was this evening, Condy could not rid himself of the thought and recollection of his novel; resting or writing, it haunted him. Otherwise he would not have been the story-writer that he was. From now on until he should set down the last sentence, the “thing” was never to let him alone, never to allow him a moment’s peace. He could think of nothing else, could talk of nothing else; every faculty of his brain, every sense of observation or imagination incessantly concentrated themselves upon this one point.

  As they sat in the bay window watching the moon rise, his mind was still busy with it, and he suddenly broke out:

  “I ought to work some kind of a TREASURE into the yarn. What’s a story of adventure without a treasure? By Jove, Blix, I wish I could give my whole time to this stuff! It’s ripping good material, and it ought to be handled as carefully as glass. Ought to be worked up, you know.”

  “Condy,” said Blix, looking at him intently, “what is it stands in your way of leaving the ‘Times’? Would they take you back if you left them long enough to write your novel? You could write it in a month, couldn’t you, if you had nothing else to do? Suppose you left them for a month — would they hold your place for you?”

  “Yes — yes, I think they would; but in the meanwhile, Blix — there’s the rub. I’ve never saved a cent out of my salary. When I stop, my pay stops, and wherewithal would I be fed? What are you looking for in that drawer — matches? Here, I’ve got a match.”

  Blix faced about at the sideboard, shutting the drawer by leaning against it. In both hands she held one of the delft sugar-bowls. She came up to the table, and emptied its contents upon the blue denim table-cover — two or three gold pieces, some fifteen silver dollars, and a handful of small change.

  Disregarding all Condy’s inquiries, she counted it, making little piles of the gold and silver and nickel pieces.

  “Thirty-five and seven is forty-two,” she murmured, counting off on her fingers, “and six is forty-eight, and ten is fifty-eight, and ten is sixty-eight; and here is ten, twenty, thirty, fifty-five cents in change.” She thrust it all toward him, across the table. “There,” she said, “is your wherewithal.”

  Condy stared. “My wherewithal!” he muttered.

  “It ought to be enough for over a month.”

  “Where did you get all that? Whose is it?”

  “It’s your money, Condy. You loaned it to me, and now it has come in very handy.”

  “I LOANED it to you?”

  “It’s the money I won from you during the time you’ve been playing poker with me. You didn’t know it would amount to so much, did you?”

  “Pshaw, I’ll not touch it!” he exclaimed, drawing back from the money as though it was red-hot.

  “Yes, you will,” she told him. “I’ve been saving it up for you, Condy, every penny of it, from the first day we played down there at the lake; and I always told myself that the moment you made up your mind to quit playing, I would give it back to you.”

  “Why, the very idea!” he vociferated, his hands deep in his pockets, his face scarlet. “It’s — it’s preposterous, Blix! I won’t let you TALK about it even — I won’t touch a nickel of that money. But, Blix, you’re — you’re — the finest woman I ever knew. You’re a man’s woman, that’s what you are.” He set his teeth. “If you loved a man, you’d be a regular pal to him; you’d back him up, you’d stand by him till the last gun was fired. I could do ANYTHING if a WOMAN like you cared for me. Why, Blix, I — you haven’t any idea—” He cleared his throat, stopping abruptly.

  “But you must take this money,” she answered; “YOUR money. If you didn’t, Condy, it would make me out nothing more nor less than a gambler. I wouldn’t have dreamed of playing cards with you if I had ever intended to keep one penny of your money. From the very start I intended to keep it for you, and give it back to you so soon as you would stop; and now you have a chance to put this money to a good use. You don’t have to stay on the ‘Times’ now. You can’t do your novel justice while you are doing your hack work at the same time, and I do so want ‘In Defiance of Authority’ to be a success. I’ve faith in you, Condy. I know if you got the opportunity you would make a success.”

  “But you and I have played like two men playing,” exclaimed Condy. “How would it look if Sargeant, say, should give me back the money he had won from me? What a cad I would be to take it!”

  “That’s just it — we’ve not played like two men. Then I WOULD have been a gambler. I’ve played with you because I thought it would make a way for you to break off with the habit; and knowing as I did how fond you were of playing cards and how bad it was for you, how wicked it would have been for me to have played with you in any other spirit! Don’t you see? And as it has turned out, you’ve given up playing, and you’ve enough money to make it possible for you to write your novel. The Centennial Company have asked you to try a story of adventure for them, you’ve found one that is splendid, you’re just the man who could handle it, and now you’ve got the money to make it possible. Condy,” she ex
claimed suddenly, “don’t you see your CHANCE? Aren’t you a big enough man to see your chance when it comes? And, besides, do you think I would take MONEY from you? Can’t you understand? If you don’t take this money that belongs to you, you would insult me. That is just the way I would feel about it. You must see that. If you care for me at all, you’ll take it.”

  The editor of the Sunday Supplement put his toothpick behind his ear and fixed Condy with his eyeglasses.

  “Well, it’s like this, Rivers,” he said. “Of course, you know your own business best. If you stay on here with us, it will be all right. But I may as well tell you that I don’t believe I can hold your place for a month. I can’t get a man in here to do your work for just a month, and then fire him out at the end of that time. I don’t like to lose you, but if you have an opportunity to get in on another paper during this vacation of yours, you’re at liberty to do so, for all of me.”

  “Then you think my chance of coming back here would be pretty slim if I leave for a month now?”

  “That’s right.”

  There was a silence. Condy hesitated; then he rose.

  “I’ll take the chance,” he announced.

  To Blix, that evening, as he told her of the affair, he said: “It’s neck or nothing now, Blix.”

  Chapter XII

  But did Blix care for him?

  In the retired corner of his club, shut off by the Japanese screen, or going up and down the city to and from his work, or sitting with her in the bay window of the little dining-room looking down upon the city, blurred in the twilight or radiant with the sunset, Condy asked himself the question. A score of times each day he came to a final, definite, negative decision; and a score of times reopened the whole subject. Beyond the fact that Blix had enjoyed herself in his company during the last months, Condy could find no sign or trace of encouragement; and for that matter he told himself that the indications pointed rather in the other direction. She had no compunction in leaving him to go away to New York, perhaps never to return. In less than a month now all their companionship was to end, and he would probably see the last of her.

  He dared not let her know that at last he had really come to love her — that it was no pretence now; for he knew that with such declaration their “good times” would end even before she should go away. But every day; every hour that they were together made it harder for him to keep himself within bounds.

  What with this trouble on his mind and the grim determination with which he held to his work, Condy changed rapidly. Blix had steadied him, and a certain earnestness and seriousness of purpose, a certain STRENGTH he had not known before, came swiftly into being.

  Was Blix to go away, leave him, perhaps for all time, and not know how much he cared? Would he speak before she went? Condy did not know. It was a question that circumstances would help him to decide. He would not speak, so he resolved, unless he was sure that she cared herself; and if she did, she herself would give him a cue, a hint whereon to speak. But days went by, the time set for Blix’s departure drew nearer and nearer, and yet she gave him not the slightest sign.

  These two interests had now absorbed his entire life for the moment — his love for Blix, and his novel. Little by little “In Defiance of Authority” took shape. The boom restaurant and the club of the exiles were disposed of, Billy Isham began to come to the front, the filibustering expedition and Senora Estrada (with her torn calling card) had been introduced, and the expedition was ready to put to sea. But here a new difficulty was encountered.

  “What do I know about ships?” Condy confessed to Blix. “If Billy Isham is going to command a filibustering schooner, I’ve got to know something about a schooner — appear to, anyhow. I’ve got to know nautical lingo, the real thing, you know. I don’t believe a REAL sailor ever in his life said ‘belay there,’ or ‘avast.’ We’ll have to go out and see Captain Jack; get some more technical detail.”

  This move was productive of the most delightful results. Captain Jack was all on fire with interest the moment that Condy and Blix told him of the idea.

  “An’ you’re going to put Billy Isham in a book. Well, strike me straight, that’s a snorkin’ good idea. I’ve always said that all Billy needed was a ticket seller an’ an advance agent, an’ he was a whole show in himself.”

  “We’re going to send it East,” said Blix, “as soon as it’s finished, and have it published.”

  “Well, it ought to make prime readin’, Miss; an’ that’s a good fetchin’ title, ‘In Defiance of Authority.’”

  Regularly Wednesday and Sunday afternoons, Blix and Condy came out to the lifeboat station. Captain Jack received them in sweater and visored cap, and ushered them into the front room.

  “Well, how’s the yarn getting on?” Captain Jack would ask.

  Then Condy would read the last chapter while the Captain paced the floor, frowning heavily, smoking cigars, listening to every word. Condy told the story in the first person, as if Billy Isham’s partner were narrating scenes and events in which he himself had moved. Condy called this protagonist “Burke Cassowan,” and was rather proud of the name. But the captain would none of it. Cassowan, the protagonist, was simply “Our Mug.”

  “Now,” Condy would say, notebook in hand, “now, Cap., we’ve got down to Mazatlan. Now I want to sort of organize the expedition in this next chapter.”

  “I see, I see,” Captain Jack would exclaim, interested at once. “Wait a bit till I take off my shoes. I can think better with my shoes off”; and having removed his shoes, he would begin to pace the room in his stocking feet, puffing fiercely on his cigar as he warmed to the tale, blowing the smoke out through either ear, gesturing savagely, his face flushed and his eyes kindling.

  “Well, now, lessee. First thing Our Mug does when he gets to Mazatlan is to communicate his arrival to Senora Estrada — telegraphs, you know; and, by the way, have him use a cipher.”

  “What kind of cipher?”

  “Count three letters on from the right letter, see. If you were spelling ‘boat,’ for instance, you would begin with an E, the third letter after B; then R for the O, being the third letter from O. So you’d spell ‘boat,’ ERDW; and Senora Estrada knows when she gets that despatch that she must count three letters BACK from each letter to get the right ones. Take now such a cipher word as ULIOH. That means RIFLE. Count three letters back from each letter of ULIOH, and it’ll spell RIFLE. You can make up a lot of despatches like that, just to have the thing look natural; savvy?”

  “Out of sight!” muttered Condy, making a note.

  “Then Our Mug and Billy Isham start getting a crew. And Our Mug, he buys the sextant there in Mazatlan — the sextant, that got out of order and spoiled everything. Or, no; don’t have it a sextant; have it a quadrant — an old-fashioned, ebony quadrant. Have Billy Isham buy it because it was cheap.”

  “How did it get out of order, Captain Jack?” inquired Blix. “That would be a good technical detail, wouldn’t it, Condy?”

  “Well, it’s like this. Our Mug an’ Billy get a schooner that’s so bally small that they have to do their cooking in the cabin; quadrant’s on a rack over the stove, and the heat warps the joints, so when Our Mug takes his observation he gets fifty miles off his course and raises the land where the government forces are watching for him.”

  “And here’s another point, Cap.,” said Condy. “We ought to work some kind of a treasure into this yarn; can’t you think up something new and original in the way of a treasure? I don’t want the old game of a buried chest of money. Let’s have him get track of something that’s worth a fortune — something novel.”

  “Yes, yes; I see the idea,” answered the Captain, striding over the floor with great thuds of his stockinged feet. “Now, lessee; let me think,” he began, rubbing all his hair the wrong way. “We want something new and queer, something that ain’t ever been written up before. I tell you what! Here it is! Have Our Mug get wind of a little river schooner that sunk fifty years before his ti
me in one of the big South American rivers, during a flood — I heard of this myself. Schooner went down and was buried twenty feet under mud and sand; and since that time — you know how the big rivers act — the whole blessed course of the river has changed at that point, and the schooner is on dry land, or rather twenty feet under it, and as sound as the day she was chartered.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, have it that when she sank she had aboard of her a cargo of five hundred cases of whiskey, prime stuff, seven thousand quart bottles, sealed up tight as drums. Now Our Mug — nor Billy Isham either — they ain’t born yesterday. No, sir; they’re right next to themselves! They figure this way. This here whiskey’s been kept fifty years without being moved. Now, what do you suppose seven thousand quart bottles of fifty-year-old whiskey would be worth? Why, twenty dollars a quart wouldn’t be too fancy. So there you are; there’s your treasure. Our Mug and Billy Isham have only got to dig through twenty feet of sand to pick up a hundred thousand dollars, IF THEY CAN FIND THE SCHOONER.”

  Blix clapped her hands with a little cry of delight, and Condy smote a knee, exclaiming:

  “By Jove! that’s as good as Loudon Dodds’ opium ship! Why, Cap., you’re a treasure in yourself for a fellow looking for stories.”

  Then after the notes were taken and the story talked over, Captain Jack, especially if the day happened to be Sunday, would insist upon their staying to dinner — boiled beef and cabbage, smoking coffee and pickles — that K. D. B. served in the little, brick-paved kitchen in the back of the station. The crew messed in their quarters overhead.

  K. D. B. herself was not uninteresting. Her respectability incased her like armor plate, and she never laughed without putting three fingers to her lips. She told them that she had at one time been a “costume reader.”

  “A costume reader?”

  “Yes; reading extracts from celebrated authors in the appropriate costume of the character. It used to pay very well, and it was very refined. I used to do ‘In a Balcony,’ by Mister Browning, and ‘Laska,’ the same evening! and it always made a hit. I’d do ‘In a Balcony’ first, and I’d put on a Louis-Quinze-the-fifteenth gown and wig-to-match over a female cowboy outfit. When I’d finished ‘In a Balcony,’ I’d do an exit, and shunt the gown and wig-to-match, and come on as ‘Laska,’ with thunder noises off. It was one of the strongest effects in my repertoire, and it always got me a curtain call.”