"Eh?" queried Galusha, peering out between the earlaps of his cap. "Eh?
What did you say, Primmie?"
"I say Miss Martha wants to see you a minute. She"s in there a-waitin".
I bet you she"s goin" to tell you about it. Hurry! hurry!"
"Tell me?... About what?"
"Why, about what "tis that"s worryin" her so. About that Raish Pulcifer and all the rest of it.... Oh, my Lord of Isrul! Don"t you understand NOW? Oh, Mr. Bangs, won"t you PLEASE wake up?"
But Galusha was beginning to understand.
"Dear me! Dear me!" he exclaimed, nervously. "Do you think that--Did she say she wished to see me, Primmie?"
"Ain"t I been tellin" you she did? Now you talk right up to her, Mr.
Bangs. You tell her I don"t want no wages. Tell her I"ll stay right along same as ever and--You TELL her, Mr. Bangs."
Martha was standing by the stove in the sitting room when her lodger entered. She turned to greet him.
"I don"t know as I"m doin" right to keep you from your walk, Mr. Bangs,"
she said. "And I won"t keep you very long. But I did want to talk with you for just a minute or two. I wanted to ask your advice about--about a business matter."
Now this was very funny indeed. It would have been hard to find a richer joke than the idea of consulting Galusha Bangs concerning a matter of business. But both parties to this consultation were too serious to see the joke at that moment.
Galusha nodded solemnly. He faltered something about being highly honored and only too glad to be of service. His landlady thanked him.
"Yes," she said, "I knew you would be. And, as I say, I won"t keep you very long. Sit down, Mr. Bangs. Oh, not in that straight up-and-down thing. Here, in the rocker."
Galusha lifted himself from the edge of the straight-backed chair upon which he had perched and sat upon the edge of the rocking-chair instead.
Martha looked at him sitting there, his collar turned up, his cap brim and earlaps covering two thirds of his face and his spectacles at least half of the remaining third, his mittened hands twitching nervously in his lap, and, in spite of her feelings, could not help smiling. But it was a fleeting smile.
"Take off your things, Mr. Bangs," she said. "You"ll roast alive if you don"t. It"s warm in here. Primmie forgot and left the dampers open and the stove was pretty nearly red-hot when I came in just now. Yes, take off your overcoat and cap, and those mittens, for mercy sakes."
Galusha declared that he didn"t mind the mittens and the rest, but she insisted and he hastily divested himself of his wrappings, dropping them upon the floor as the most convenient repository and being greatly fussed when Miss Phipps picked them up and laid them on the table.
"I--I beg your pardon," he stammered. "Really, I DON"T know why I am so thoughtless. I--I should be--ah--hanged or something, I think. Then perhaps I wouldn"t do it again."
Martha shook her head. "You probably wouldn"t in that case," she said.
"Now, Mr. Bangs, I"m going to try to get at that matter I wanted to ask your opinion about. Do you know anything about stocks--stockmarket stocks, I mean?"
Her lodger looked rather bewildered.
"Dear me, no; not a thing," he declared.
She did not look greatly disappointed.
"I didn"t suppose you did," she said. "You--well, you don"t look like a man who would know much about such things. And from what I"ve seen of you, goodness knows, you don"t ACT like one! Perhaps I shouldn"t say that," she added, hastily. "I didn"t mean it just as it sounded."
"Oh, that"s all right, that"s all right, Miss Phipps. I know I am a--ah--donkey in most matters."
"You"re a long way from bein" a donkey, Mr. Bangs. And I didn"t say you were, of course. But--oh, well, never mind that. So you don"t know anything about stocks and investments and such?"
"No, I don"t. I am awfully sorry. But--but, you see, all that sort of thing is so very distasteful to me. It bores me--ah--dreadfully. And so I--I dodge it whenever I can."
Martha sighed. "Some of the rest of us would like to dodge it, too," she said, "if we only could. And yet--" she paused and regarded him with the odd expression she had worn more than once when he puzzled her--"and yet I--I just can"t make you out, Mr. Bangs. You say you don"t know anything about money and managin" money, and yet those Egypt trips of yours must cost a lot of money. And somebody must manage them. SOMEBODY must "tend to payin" the bills and the wages and all. Who does that?"
Galusha smiled. "Why, I do," he admitted, "after a fashion. But it is a very poor fashion. I almost never--I think I may safely say never come in from one of those trips without having exceeded the--ah--estimate of expenses. I always exceed it more or less--generally more."
He smiled again. She looked more puzzled than ever.
"But some one has to pay the extra, don"t they?" she asked. "Who does pay it, the museum people?"
"Why--ah--no, not exactly. It is--ah--ah--generally provided. But," he added, rather hastily, as if afraid she might ask more questions along this line, "if I might make a suggestion, Miss Martha--Miss Phipps, I mean--"
"Plain Martha will do well enough. I think you"re the only one in East Wellmouth that calls me anything else. Of course you can make a suggestion. Go ahead."
"Well--ah--well, Miss Phipps--ah--Miss Martha, since you permit me to call you so.... What is it?"
"Oh, nothin", nothin". I was goin" to say that the "Miss" wasn"t necessary, but never mind. Go on."
"Well--ah--Mar--ah--Miss Martha, I was about to suggest that you tell me what you intended telling me. I am very anxious to help--ah--even if I can"t, you know. Only I beg of you not to think I am actuated by idle curiosity."
She shrugged her shoulders.
"Even if you were I don"t know that I shouldn"t want to tell you, just the same," she observed. "The fact is I"ve just GOT to talk this over with some one. Mr. Bangs, I am so worried I don"t know what to do. It is a money matter, of course, that"s worryin" me, an investment father made a little while before he died. Mr. Bangs, I don"t suppose it"s likely that you ever heard of the Wellmouth Development Company? No, of course you haven"t."
And yet, as she looked into her lodger"s face, she was surprised at its expression.
"Why, you never have heard of it, have you?" she demanded.
Galusha stroked his chin. "That day in the cemetery," he murmured. "That day when I was--ah--behind the tomb and heard Captain Hallett and Mr.
Pulcifer speaking. I may be mistaken, but it seems to me that they mentioned the name of--ah--ah--"
"The Development Company? Of course they did and you told me so when you got home. I remember now. Well, Cap"n Jeth and Raish were both mixed up in it along with father. Yes, and Doctor Powers and a lot more, though not so much. Raish, of course, was at the back of it in the beginnin".
He got "em all in it, got himself into it, as far as that goes. You see, it was this way."
She told the story of the Wellmouth Development Company. It--the story--began when the Eagle Fish Freezing Company of Denboro, a concern then running and operating one large cold storage plant in that village, were looking about for a favorable spot upon which to build a second.
The spot which appealed to their mind to purchase was the property at the mouth of Skoonic Creek in East Wellmouth.
"It"s a real pretty place," said Martha, "one of the prettiest spots alongsh.o.r.e, and the view from the top of the bluff there is just lovely. You can see miles and miles out to sea and all up and down the sh.o.r.e--and back over the village, for that matter. But, come to think of it, you know the place, Mr. Bangs. It"s only a little way from the old Baptist buryin" ground."
Galusha nodded. "Isn"t it where my--ah--late lamented hat set sail?" he asked.
"Why, of course it is. Just there. Well, the Eagle Fish folks made their plans to buy all that property, the hills on both sides, and the low land down by the creek. It was just the place for "em, you see. And they were quietly makin" arrangements to pick up the different parcels of land from the owners here and there, when Raish Pulcifer got wind of it.
There"s precious little goin" on down this part of the Cape that Raish doesn"t get wind of, particularly if it"s somebody else"s secret. He"s got a reg"lar pig"s nose for rootin" up other people"s private concerns.
Well, Raish found out what the Eagle Company was up to and he started bein" up to somethin" himself."
Mr. Pulcifer, so Miss Phipps went on to say, conceived the idea of buying the Skoonic Creek property before the Eagle Company could do so.
The princ.i.p.al difficulty was that just then his own limited capital was tied up in various ways and he lacked ready money. So, being obliged to borrow, he sought out Captain Hallett, got the shrewd old light keeper"s cupidity aroused--not a very difficult task at any time--and Captain Jethro agreed to help finance the deal.