The black eyes flashed a little under the iron-gray, bushy eyebrows, but the sallow face showed no other sign of interest and none of impatience.
"I know of a transaction--an investment--" pursued Carter, "which will probably enable you to pocket--to realize--perhaps twenty thousand dollars."
"I should be indebted to you for life. Whatever service I can render in return will be given with all my heart."
"It requires secrecy. May I ask you to pledge your word?"
"I pledge it, Colonel--my word of honor--as a Louisiana gentleman."
Carter drew a long breath, poured out another dose of brandy, partially raised it and then set it, down without drinking.
"There are ten river steamboats here," he went on--"ten transports which are not wanted. I have received a message from headquarters to the effect that we no longer need our present large force of transports. The army will not retreat from Grande Ecore. It is sufficiently reinforced to go to Shreveport. I am empowered to select eight of these transports for sale--you understand."
"Precisely," bowed Hollister. "If the army advances, of course it does not need transports."
As to the military information he neither believed nor disbelieved, knowing well that the Colonel would not honestly tell him anything of consequence on that score.
"Well, they will be sold," added Carter, after a pause, during which he vainly tried to imagine some other method of covering his enormous defalcation. "They will be sold at auction. They will probably bring next to nothing. I propose that you be present to buy them."
The broker closed his eyes for a moment or two, and when he had opened them he had made his calculations. He inferred that the United States Government was not to profit much by the transaction; that, in plain words, it was to be cheated out of an amount of property more or less considerable; and, being a Confederate at heart, he had no objection.
"Why not have a private sale?" he asked.
"It is contrary to the Regulations."
"Ah! Then it might be well not to have the auction made too public."
"I suppose so. Perhaps that can be arranged."
"I can arrange it, Colonel. If I may select the parties to be present, men of straw, you understand--the auction will wear a sufficient air of publicity, and will yet be substantially a private sale. All that is easily enough managed, provided we first understand each other thoroughly. Listen, if you please. The ten steamboats are worth, we will say, an average of twenty-five thousand dollars, or two hundred and fifty thousand for the lot. If I buy them for an average of ten thousand, which is respectable----"
Here he looked gravely at Carter, and, seeing a.s.sent in his eyes, continued.
"If I buy them at an average of ten thousand, there will remain a profit--in case of sale--of one hundred and fifty thousand. That is very well--exceedingly well. Of course I should only demand a moderate proportion of so large a sum. But there are several other things to be considered. If I am to pay cash down, it will oblige me to borrow immensely, and perhaps to realize at a loss by forcing sales of my stocks. In that case I should want--say a third--of the profit in order to cover my risk and my losses, as well as my expenses in the way of--to be plain--hush-money. If I can pay by giving my notes, and moreover can be made sure of a purchaser before the notes mature, I can afford to undertake the job for one sixth of the profits, which I estimate to be twenty-five thousand dollars."
There was a flash of pleasure in Carter"s eyes at discovering that the broker was so moderate in his expectations. There was a similar glitter in the dark orbs of Hollister at seeing that the Colonel tacitly accepted his offer, from which he would have been willing to abate a few thousands rather than lose the job.
"The boats will have to go before an Inspector before they can be sold,"
said the Colonel, after a few moments of reverie, during which he drank off his brandy.
"I hope he will be amenable to reason," said Hollister. "Perhaps he will need a couple of thousands or so before he will be able to discover his line of duty. It may answer if he is merely ignorant of steamboats."
"Of course he is. What can an army officer know about steam engines or hulls?"
"I will see that he is posted. I will see that he has entirely satisfactory evidence concerning the worthless nature of the property from the captains, and engineers, and carpenters. That will require--say three thousand--possibly twice that. I will advance the money for these incidental expenses, and you will reimburse me one half when the transaction is complete."
The Colonel looked up uneasily, and made no reply. He did not want to make money out of the swindle: curiously enough he still had too much conscience, too much honor, for that; but he must be sure of enough to clear off his defalcation.
"Well, we will see about that afterward," compromised Hollister. "I will pay these expenses and leave the question of reimburs.e.m.e.nt to you. By the way, what are the names of the boats? I know some of them."
"Queen of the South, Queen of the West, Pelican, Crescent City, Palmetto, Union, Father of Waters, Red River, Gulf State, and Ma.s.sachusetts," repeated Carter, with a pause of recollection before each t.i.tle.
The broker laughed.
"I used to own three of them. I know them all, except the Ma.s.sachusetts, which is a northern boat. All in running order?"
"Yes. Dirty, of course."
"Very well. Now permit me to make out a complete programme of the transaction. The boats are recommended for the action of an Inspector. I see to it that he receives sufficient evidence to prove their unserviceable condition. It is ordered that they be sold at public auction. I provide the persons who are to be present at the auction.
These men--my agents--will purchase the boats at a net cost of one hundred thousand dollars, for which they will give my notes payable a month from date. Within the month I am supposed to refit the boats and make them serviceable, while the Government is certain to need them back again. I then sell them to you--the purchasing agent of the Government--for a net sum of at least two hundred and fifty thousand dollars. I receive my notes back, and also a cash balance of one hundred and thirty thousand dollars, of which I only take thirty thousand, leaving the rest in your hands under a mutual pledge of confidence. I desire to make one final suggestion, which I consider of great importance. It would be well if the boats, when re-bought, should accidentally take fire and be destroyed, as it would prevent inspection as to the amount which I might have expended in repairs. Colonel, is that perfectly to your satisfaction?"
The unfortunate, unhappy, degraded officer and gentleman could only reply, "Yes."
Such is the supposed secret history of this scandalous stroke of business. It is only certain that the boats were inspected and condemned; that at an auction, attended by a limited number of respectably dressed persons, they were sold for sums varying from seven to fifteen thousand dollars; that the amounts were all paid in the notes of L. M. Hollister, a well-known broker, and capitalist of supposed secession proclivities; that within a month the transports were repurchased by the Government at sums varying from fifteen to thirty thousand dollars; that thus a net profit of one hundred and fifty thousand dollars accrued to the said Hollister; and that three days after the sale the boats caught fire and burned to the water"s edge. Of course there was talk, perhaps unjustifiable; suspicions, which perhaps had no foundation in fact. But there was no investigation, possibly no serious cause for it, probably no chance for it.
Colonel Carter sent a square balance-sheet to the Quartermaster"s Department at Washington, and paid all his private debts in New Orleans.
But he grew thin, looked anxious, or ostentatiously gay, and resumed to some extent his habits of drinking. Once he terrified his wife by remaining out all night, explaining when he came home in the morning that he had been up the river on pressing business. The truth is that the Colonel had got himself stone-blind drunk, and had slept himself sober in a hotel.
CHAPTER x.x.xI.
A TORTURE WHICH MIGHT HAVE BEEN SPARED.
A week after the conflagration Carter received his commission as Brigadier-General. His first impression was one of exultation: his enemies and his adverse fate had been beaten; he was on the road to distinction; he could wear the silver star. Then came a feeling of despondency and fear, while he remembered the crime into which he had been driven, as he thought or tried to think, by the lack of this just recognition of his services. Oh the bitterness of good fortune, long desired, which comes too late!
"A month ago this might have saved me," he muttered, and then burst into curses upon his political opponents, his creditors, himself, all those who had brought about his ruin.
"My only crime! The only ungentlemanly act of my life!" was another phrase which dropped from his lips. Doubtless he thought so: many people of high social position hold a similarly mixed moral creed; they allow that a gentleman may be given to expensive immoralities, but not to money-getting ones; that he may indulge in wine, women, and play, but not in swindling. All over Europe this curious ethical distinction prevails, and very naturally, for it springs out of the conditions of a hereditary aristocracy, and makes allowance for the vices to which wealthy n.o.bles are tempted, but not for vices to which they are not tempted. A feeble echo of it has traversed the ocean, and influenced some characters in America both for good and for evil.
Carter was almost astonished at the child-like joy, so contradictory to his own angry remorse, with which Lillie received the news of his promotion.
"Oh!--My General!" she said, coloring to her forehead with delight, after a single glance at the commission which he dropped into her lap.
She rose up and gave him a mock military salute; then sprang at him and covered his bronzed face and long mustache with kisses.
"I am so happy! They have done you justice at last--a little justice.
Oh, I am so glad and proud! I am going with you to buy the star. You shall let me choose it."
Then, her mind taking a forward leap of fifteen years, she added, "We will send Ravvie to West Point, and he shall be a general, too. He is going to be very intelligent. And brave, also. He isn"t in the least timid."
Carter laughed for the first time since he had received the commission.
"My dear," said he, "Ravvie will probably become a general long after I have ceased to be one. I am a volunteer. I am only a general while the war lasts."
"But the war will last a long time," hopefully replied the monster in woman"s guise, who loved her husband a hundred times as much as she did her country.
"There is one unpleasant result of this promotion," observed Carter.