The services of Mr William Terence Keogh as acting consul, pro term., were suggested and accepted, and Johnny sailed with the Hemstetters back to his native shores.
Keogh slipped into the sinecure of the American consulship with the ease that never left him even in such high places. The tintype establishment was soon to become a thing of the past, although its deadly work along the peaceful and helpless Spanish Main was never effaced. The restless partners were about to be off again, scouting ahead of the slow ranks of Fortune. But now they would take different ways. There were rumors of a promising uprising in Peru; and thither the martial Clancy would turn his adventurous steps. As for Keogh, he was figuring in his mind and on quires of Government letter-heads a scheme that dwarfed the art of misrepresenting the human countenance upon tin.
What suits me, Keogh used to say, in the way of a business proposition is something diversified that looks like a longer shot than it is something in the way of a genteel graft that isnt worked enough for the correspondence schools to be teaching it by mail. I take the long end; but I like to have at least as good a chance to win as a man learning to play poker on an ocean steamer, or running for governor of Texas on the Republican ticket. And when I cash in my winnings I dont want to find any widows and orphans chips in my stack.
The grass-grown globe was the green table on which Keogh gambled. The games he played were of his own invention. He was no grubber after the diffident dollar. Nor did he care to follow it with horn and hounds. Rather he loved to coax it with egregious and brilliant flies from its habitat in the waters of strange streams. Yet Keogh was a business man; and his schemes, in spite of their singularity, were as solidly set as the plans of a building contractor. In Arthurs time Sir William Keogh would have been a Knight of the Round Table. In these modern days he rides abroad, seeking the Graft instead of the Grail.
Three days after Johnnys departure, two small schooners appeared off Coralio. After some delay a boat put off from one of them, and brought a sunburned young man ashore. This young man had a shrewd and calculating eye; and he gazed with amazement at the strange things that he saw. He found on the beach some one who directed him to the consuls office; and thither he made his way at a nervous gait.
Keogh was sprawled in the official chair, drawing caricatures of his Uncles head on an official pad of paper. He looked up at his visitor.
Wheres Johnny Atwood? inquired the sunburned young man, in a business tone.
Gone, said Keogh, working carefully at Uncle Sams necktie.
Thats just like him, remarked the nut-brown one, leaning against the table. He always was a fellow to gallivant around instead of tending to business. Will he be in soon?
Dont think so, said Keogh, after a fair amount of deliberation.
I spose hes out at some of his tomfoolery, conjectured the visitor, in a tone of virtuous conviction. Johnny never would stick to anything long enough to succeed. I wonder how he manages to run his business here, and never be round to look after it.
Im looking after the business just now, admitted the pro term. consul.
Are you then, say wheres the factory?
What factory? asked Keogh, with a mildly polite interest.
Why, the factory where they use them cockleburrs. Lord knows what they use em for, anyway! Ive got the basements of both them ships out there loaded with em. Ill give you a bargain in this lot. Ive had every man, woman and child around Dalesburg that wasnt busy pickin em for a month. I hired these ships to bring em over. Everybody thought I was crazy. Now, you can have this lot for fifteen cents a pound, delivered on land. And if you want more I guess old Alabam can come up to the demand. Johnny told me when he left home that if he struck anything down here that there was any money in hed let me in on it. Shall I drive the ships in and hitch?
A look of supreme, almost incredulous, delight dawned in Keoghs ruddy countenance. He dropped his pencil. His eyes turned upon the sunburned young man with joy in them mingled with fear lest his ecstasy should prove a dream.
A look of supreme, almost incredulous, delight dawned in Keoghs ruddy countenance. He dropped his pencil. His eyes turned upon the sunburned young man with joy in them mingled with fear lest his ecstasy should prove a dream.
For Gods sake tell me, said Keogh, earnestly, are you Dink Pawson?
My name is Pinkney Dawson, said the cornerer of the cockleburr market.
Billy Keogh slid rapturously and gently from his chair to his favorite strip of matting on the floor.
There were not many sounds in Coralio on that sultry afternoon. Among those that were may be mentioned a noise of enraptured and unrighteous laughter from a prostrate Irish-American, while a sunburned young man, with a shrewd eye, looked on him with wonder and amazement. Also the tramp, tramp, tramp of many well-shod feet in the streets outside. Also the lonesome wash of the waves that beat along the historic shores of the Spanish Main.
The Lotus and the Bottle
Willard Geddie, consul for the United States in Coralio, was working leisurely on his yearly report. Goodwin, who had strolled in as he did daily for a smoke on the much coveted porch, had found him so absorbed in his work that he departed after roundly abusing the consul for his lack of hospitality.
I shall complain to the civil service department, said Goodwin; or is it a department? perhaps its only a theory. One gets neither civility nor service from you. You wont talk; and you wont set out anything to drink. What kind of a way is that of representing your government?
Goodwin strolled out and across to the hotel to see if he could bully the quarantine doctor into a game on Coralios solitary billiard table. His plans were completed for the interception of the fugitives from the capital; and now it was but a waiting game that he had to play.
The consul was interested in his report. He was only twenty-four; and he had not been in Coralio long enough for his enthusiasm to cool in the heat of the tropics a paradox that may be allowed between Cancer and Capricorn.
So many thousand bunches of bananas, so many thousand oranges and coconuts, so many ounces of gold dust, pounds of rubber, coffee, indigo and sarparilla actually, exports were twenty per cent greater than for the previous year!
A little thrill of satisfaction ran through the consul. Perhaps, he thought, the State Department, upon reading his introduction, would notice and then he leaned back in his chair and laughed. He was getting as bad as the others. For the moment he had forgotten that Coralio was an insignificant republic lying along the by-ways of a second-rate sea. He thought of Gregg, the quarantine doctor, who subscribed for the London Lancet, expecting to find it quoting his reports to the home Board of Health concerning the yellow fever germ. The consul knew that not one in fifty of his acquaintances in the States had ever heard of Coralio. He knew that two men, at any rate, would have to read his report some underling in the State Department and a compositor in the Public Printing Office. Perhaps the typesticker would note the increase of commerce in Coralio, and speak of it, over the cheese and beer, to a friend.
He had just written: Most unaccountable is the supineness of the large exporters in the United States in permitting the French and German houses to practically control the trade interests of this rich and productive country when he heard the hoarse notes of a steamers siren.
Geddie laid down his pen and gathered his Panama hat and umbrella. By the sound he knew it to be the Valhalla, one of the line of fruit vessels plying for the Vesuvius Company. Down to ninos of five years, every one in Coralio could name you each incoming steamer by the note of her siren.
The consul sauntered by a roundabout, shaded way to the beach. By reason of long practice he gauged his stroll so accurately that by the time he arrived on the sandy shore the boat of the customs officials was rowing back from the steamer, which had been boarded and inspected according to the laws of Anchuria.
There is no harbor at Coralio. Vessels of the draught of the Valhalla must ride at anchor a mile from shore. When they take on fruit it is conveyed on lighters and freighter sloops. At Solitas, where there was a fine harbor, ships of many kinds were to be seen, but in the roadstead off Coralio scarcely any save the fruiters paused. Now and then a tramp coaster, or a mysterious brig from Spain, or a saucy French barque would hang innocently for a few days in the offing. Then the custom-house crew would become doubly vigilant and wary. At night a sloop or two would be making strange trips in and out along the shore; and in the morning the stock of Three-Star Hennessey, wines and drygoods in Coralio would be found vastly increased. It has also been said that the customs officials jingled more silver in the pockets of their red-striped trousers, and that the record books showed no increase in import duties received.
The customs boat and the Valhalla gig reached the shore at the same time. When they grounded in the shallow water there was still five yards of rolling surf between them and dry sand. Then half-clothed Caribs dashed into the water, and brought in on their backs the Valhallas purser, and the little native officials in their cotton undershirts, blue trousers with red stripes, and flapping straw hats.
At college Geddie had been a treasure as a first-baseman. He now closed his umbrella, stuck it upright in the sand, and stooped, with his hands resting upon his knees. The purser, burlesquing the pitchers contortions, hurled at the consul the heavy roll of newspapers, tied with a string, that the steamer always brought for him. Geddie leaped high and caught the roll with a sounding thwack. The loungers on the beach about a third of the population of the town laughed and applauded delightedly. Every week they expected to see that roll of papers delivered and received in that same manner, and they were never disappointed. Innovations did not flourish in Coralio.