When Egypt Went Broke - Holman Day (intellectual books to read TXT) 📗

Vaniman did manage to control his tongue.
After the silence had continued for some time, the guard slipped down from the stool and marched to and fro with his rifle in the hook of his arm, affording a fine display of attention to duty.
After he had returned to his stool, Wagg gave the ex-cashier plenty of time to take up the topic. "Considering my position in this place, I reckon I've said about enough," suggested the guard.
"I think you have said enough!" returned Vaniman, grimly.
"What have you to say?"
"I didn't take that money from the Egypt Trust Company. I don't know where it is. I never knew where it went. And I'm getting infernally sick of having it everlastingly thrown up at me."
"I thought I had you sized up better--but I see I was wrong," admitted Wagg.
"Of course you're wrong! You and the chaplain and the warden and the jury! I didn't take that money!"
"I didn't mean I was wrong on that point," proceeded Wagg, remorselessly. "But I had watched you bang around your cell and I concluded that you was ready to make about a fifty-fifty split of the swag with the chap who could get you out of here. If you're still stuffy, you'll have to stay that way--and stay in here, too!"
He took another promenade, pursuing his regular policy of starting the fire and letting the kettle come aboil on its own hook.
"What good would it do me to escape from this prison--to be hounded and hunted from one end of the world to the other?" Vaniman demanded, when Wagg had returned to the stool. "I do want to get out. But I want to get out right! I have a job to do for myself when I'm out of here!" Mr. Wagg nodded understandingly. "And that job is right in the same town where I have been living."
"Exactly!" agreed the guard. "And speaking of a job, you don't think for one moment, do you, that I'd be earning a fifty-fifty split by boosting you over that wall or smuggling you out of the gate to shift for yourself? Small wonder that you got hot, thinking I meant it that way. My plan will put you out right! My plan is a prime plan that can be worked only once. Therefore, it's worth money."
"Damn it, I haven't the money!" Vaniman, exasperated by this pertinacity, was not able to control his feelings or his language.
"It's too bad you are still at the point where you _think_ you haven't got it," returned Mr. Wagg. "I'm a terrible good waiter. Reckon I have showed that kind of a disposition already. When you get to the other and sensible point where you want to be out of here, and out right, with nobody chasing and hectoring you, you and I will do business on the fifty-fifty basis. It may seem high," he pursued. "But all prices are high in these times. They're so blamed high that I'm in debt, simply trying to give my family a decent living. The state won't raise my wages. The state practically says, 'You'll have to do the best you can!' The state owes me a living. So I'll grab on to the assets that the state has hove into my reach, and will speculate as best I know now."
"You think I'm your asset, eh?"
"You're not worth a cent to me or yourself until I operate. And when you're ready to have me operate--fifty-fifty--give me the high sign. And something will be done what was never done before!"
Then Wagg carried his stool to the lee of a shop wall, seeking shade--too far away for further talk.


CHAPTER XIX
AND PHARAOH'S HEART WAS HARDENED
By the wiles of Wagg and a soap diet Frank Vaniman had been able to secure his modest slice of God's sunlight.
There was aplenty of that sunshine in Egypt. It flooded the bare hills and the barren valleys; there were not trees enough to trig the sunlight's flood with effective barriers of shade.
Tasper Britt walked out into it from the door of Files's tavern.
He had just been talking to the landlord about the tavern diet. His language was vitriolic. Even Vaniman could not have used more bitter words to express his detestation for soap as a comestible.
Britt's heat in the matter, the manner in which he had plunged into the diatribe all of a sudden, astonished Mr. Files tremendously. Britt seemed to be acting out a part, he was so violent. Usually, Britt did not waste any of the heat in his cold nature unless he had a good reason for the expenditure. There seemed to be something else than mere dyspepsia concerned, so Files thought. He followed Mr. Britt and called to him from the door. Britt had stopped to light his cigar.
"I've had my say. I'm all done here. Let that end it," declared the departing guest.
There were listeners, the usual after-dinner loafers of the tavern's purlieus. Mr. Britt did not seem to mind them. He even looked about, as if to make sure of their numbers.
"All you needed to do was to complain in a genteel way, and I would have been just as genteel in rectifying," pleaded Files.
"The people of this town are still saying that I'm a hard man. If that's so, I'm waking up to the reason for it--your grub has petrified me. My real friends have noticed it." Here was more of Britt's unwonted garrulity about his private concerns. "Some of those friends have taken pity on me. I have been invited to board with the Harnden family."
Mr. Britt did not look around to note the effect of that piece of news. He gazed complacently up into the sunshine.
He made quite a figure--for Egypt--as he stood there. Mr. Britt had "togged out." His toupee, when he first flashed it, had signified much. But the manner in which he had garbed himself for summer was little less than hardihood, considering the sort of a community in which he lived. He was "a native." The style of his attire declared that he was completely indifferent to any comments by his townsmen--and such a trait exposed in a New England village revealed more fully than his usurious habits the real callousness of the Britt nature. There was not a man in sight who did not have patches either fore or aft, or both! Mr. Britt wore a light, checked suit with a fitted waist, garishly yellow shoes, a puff tie of light blue, and a sailor straw with a sash band. He was a peacock in a yard full of brown Leghorns. But nobody laughed at Mr. Britt. Nobody in Egypt felt like laughing at anything, any more. They were accepting Britt, in his gorgeous plumage, as merely another strange item in the list of the signs and wonders that marked the latter days in Egypt.
More tawdry than ever appeared Prophet Elias's robe in that sunshine, though his umbrella did seem to comport better with the season. He stood in front of Usial's home. For a long time he had been keeping his tongue off the magnate of the town. For some weeks he had been away somewhere. To those who indulgently asked where he had been he replied tartly that he had volunteered as a scapegoat for the woes and sins of Egypt, had gone in search of a wilderness, and had come back because all other wildernesses were only second-rate affairs compared with the town from which he had started.
The Prophet seemed to feel that the appearance of Mr. Britt required comment. He raised his voice and made that comment:
"'And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; and yet I say unto you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these.'"
The Prophet bestowed a momentary benefit on gloomy Egypt--the listeners did manage to crease their countenances with grins; Britt surveyed those grins before he turned his attention to Elias. But all he did turn was his attention--silent, bodeful, malicious scrutiny. The onlookers were considerably surprised by Britt's silence; they wondered what controlled his tongue; but they were not in doubt on one point--every man of them knew that when Tasper Britt wore that expression it meant that he had settled upon the method of his revenge in the case of one who had offended him.
After a few moments Britt turned from his stare at the Prophet and dropped what was nigh to being a bombshell; it was more effective because it had nothing to do with the matter in hand.
"Listen, fellow townsmen! We all know that we ought to put our shoulders to the wheel and do something for poor Egypt. I propose to start off." He pointed to the old Britt mansion. "I'm going to tear down my house."
The men of Egypt goggled at him.
"Aye! And start off with it?" queried the Prophet. "Good riddance!"
But Mr. Britt was not troubling himself about the mouthings of Elias.
"I shall put a crew on it to-morrow. A city contractor will arrive here this afternoon with equipment and men. But he can also use all the local men who want to work. All who will pitch in can hire with him at the regular scale of wages. As soon as the site is cleared I shall start work on a new house. The plans are drawn. I have them here."
He snapped the rubber bands off a roll which he carried under his arm. He exhibited a watercolor facade elevation, stretching his arms wide and holding the paper in front of his face. The men came crowding around. They saw the drawing of a pretentious structure with towers and porticoes. Britt, holding the architect's broad sheet so that his features were hidden, explained the details of his project in regard to rooms and grounds. There was a hateful expression on the hidden face; it was the face of a man who hoped he was stirring jealous envy in those whom he wished to punish.
"It will be a mansion to the queen's taste, when you get it done," observed one man; he took advantage of the fact that Britt could not see him and winked at a neighbor. But if the man hoped to get a rise out of the builder in regard to a possible queen, he was disappointed.
Another citizen was more venturesome: "I'm taking it for granted that you don't intend to keep old-bach hall in a house like that, Tasper!"
Britt took down the shield. He displayed a countenance of bland satisfaction. "I don't think I'll be allowed to do it," he retorted, answering jest with jest. "You know what women are when they see a good-looking house needing a mistress." He rolled the paper up carefully. "And now, talking of something sensible, I hope you're going to turn out in good numbers when that contractor begins to hire. And pass the word!"
Nobody showed much enthusiasm. One man with a querulous mouth suggested: "It will seem like helping waste money, tearing down a stand of buildings that ain't in any ways due to be scrapped; I ain't sure but what it will seem like a worse waste of money, building a palace in a town like this. Don't you expect to be taxed like Sancho?"
"Until we get some kind of legislation or court action to make our town acts legal, the taxation question isn't worrying me much," said Britt, grimly. "I'll take my chances along with the rest of you on getting an act allowing us to compound with creditors."
"Probably can be arranged," said a man with the malice against the usurer that prevailed in