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

at a bumblebee crawling across his bare foot. I don't ask to be taken into your bosom as your main and particular chum--understand that! But while there's business on between us I expect pleasant looks, even if you don't feel like handing me conversation."
Mr. Wagg was doing practically all the talking on that trip. He had emerged from his cocoon of taciturnity. He explained that naturally he was a great talker, but that prison rules had pretty nigh paralyzed his tongue and he was trying to get it back into good working order once more.
He made an especial point of vaunting himself upon the success of his scheme of deliverance. He tackled the thing from all angles. He played it up as the greatest achievement that ever had been worked in behalf of a convict. Mr. Wagg, serving as board of appraisal of his own feat, kept boosting the value. It was evident that he was suspecting that Vaniman, out and free, was in the mood that is characteristic of the common run of humanity: urgent desire is reckless about price; possession proceeds to haggle and demur.
"And there's one thing about it," insisted Wagg, "we've got to keep on going ahead. We can't back up. We can't dissolve partnership. And the trade has got to stand as it was made--fifty-fifty."
"I'm not going back on the trade."
They were sitting close to each other on a tussock behind their little tent. Mr. Wagg leaned close and bored Vaniman with earnest gaze. "We'll fetch Egypt on to-morrow's hitch. Of course, you're going to stick close to me, and you can bet that I'm going to stick close to you till the whack-up has been made. No shenanigan! Now, seeing how far I have gone in doing my part, don't you think it's about time for you to come across?"
Vaniman spread his hands. "How can I? Wait till we get to Egypt." Right then he had no notion of what he was going to do when he arrived in Egypt. He had not dared to look the proposition squarely in the face. He did not even analyze his feelings. He was dimly conscious that he was pitying Wagg. That ambitious person was in for a grievous disappointment. To be sure, Wagg had insisted on following a current belief and persisted in building his hopes on a fallacy and had forced human nature until weak human nature had snapped under the strain. Wagg had refused to believe the truth; he had preferred to indulge his own delusion in regard to the treasure of the Egypt Trust company. Nevertheless, Vaniman was ashamed--and he was afraid.
Britt was the crux of the situation--that was evident enough! Britt knew where the coin was. Vaniman was sure on that point. Britt had so maneuvered that wild-goose errand to Levant that he had made the affair furnish opportunity to himself and fix the odium on Vaniman. In spite of what the young man knew of Britt's lust for money, he believed that the usurer had worked a scheme to ruin a rival instead of merely operating to add to his riches. But Vaniman knew Britt well enough to reach the conclusion that, once having the hard cash in his possession, and the blame fastened on another man, Britt was allowing avarice to stand pat on the play.
But if, now being on the job in person, he could rig a scheme to make Britt disclose, what could be done for coadjutor Wagg? There was a reward posted for information leading to the recovery of the money. Britt had offered that reward. He had made quite a show of the thing in the public prints. He pledged himself to pay the sum of two thousand five hundred dollars from his own pocket, and Vaniman bitterly realized just why Britt had adopted that pose. Would Wagg be content with the sop of the reward?
The man who had been declared dead knew that he must play for time. He ran over various plans in his head. He did not feel like blurting out the truth to Mr. Wagg and asking what that effectually compromised gentleman was going to do about it. He needed Mr. Wagg. He thought of pleading that the summer landscape was so much different from the winter lay of the land, when the snow was heaped in the gullies and on the hills, that he was bothered in remembering just where he had planted the treasure that night; he reflected that he might show Mr. Wagg a hole in the rocks and assert that some of the persistent Egyptian gold hunters had undoubtedly located the money and taken it for themselves; being moved to more desperate projects, he meditated on the plan of coming across to Wagg with the whole story, showing him that Britt must be guilty, and thereby turning a blackmailer loose on the magnate with plenty of material to use in extorting what Wagg might consider fair pay for the work he had put in.
But Vaniman was freshly free from prison walls. Just then he was psychologically incapable of standing up for himself as a real man ought. His sense of innocence had not been able to withstand that feeling of intimidation with which a prisoner becomes obsessed. Right along with him was the man who had been persistently his guard in the prison. Wagg's narrow rut of occupation had had its full effect on his nature. His striated eyeballs had a vitreous look; they were as hard as marbles. Vaniman knew that he could not look at those eyes and tell a convincing lie. In view of Wagg's settled convictions in the matter of the treasure, the real truth might be harder to support than a lie.
Vaniman went into the van like a whipped dog into a kennel and lay awake and wrestled with his difficulties.
During the progress of the pilgrimage the next day Wagg halted frequently. Vaniman could hear the conversations between his charioteer and the natives of the section. Mr. Wagg was seeking information and at the same time he gave out a modest amount of revelation about himself and his need of a retired spot where he might recuperate. He explained that he wanted to find a camp in some place so remote that nobody would be coming around jarring his nerves.
Eventually he got on track of what he wanted. A native told him about an abandoned log house on the top of a mountain called "Devilbrow."
"They used it for a fire-warden station in the days when Egypt had enough timber to make it an object to protect it," said the man. "You'll be plenty lonesome up there. You can get your wagon within half a mile. Pack your truck on your hoss's back and lead him the rest of the way. That's what I used to do. I was warden till I found myself trying to carry on conversations with tumblebugs and whippoorwills."
When Wagg had driven along far enough so that the native could not overhear, he hailed Vaniman through the trap in the top of the van.
"Did you hear that?"
"Yes."
"Is that Devilbrow within grabbing distance of what we're after?"
Vaniman returned a hearty affirmative. He had been able to see those craggy heights from his window in Britt Block. The thought that what he wanted to grab and what Mr. Wagg wanted to grab were not exactly mated as desired objects did not shade his candor when he asserted that Devilbrow was just the place from which to operate.
"All right!" chirruped Wagg. "Us for it!" He displayed the first cheeriness he had shown on the trip. He whistled for a time. Then he sang, over and over, to a tune of his own, "Up above the world so high, like a di'mond in the sky." This display of Wagg's hopeful belief that the fifty-fifty settlement was near at hand served to increase Vaniman's despondency.
Obeying the native's instructions as to the route, Wagg soon turned off the highway and drove along a rutted lane which whiplashed a slope that continually became steeper. Soon he pulled up and told Vaniman to get out and walk and ease the load on the horse. Wagg got down and walked, too.
The trail up Devilbrow was on the side away from the village of Egypt. The way was through hard growth. There were no houses--no sign of a human being. Wagg's cheerfulness increased. And he said something which put a glimmer of cheer into Vaniman's dark ponderings.
"There's no call to hurry the thing overmuch. If I recuperate too sudden and show up back home it might look funny, after the way I bellowed about my condition. There's plenty of flour, bacon, and canned stuff in that van. I reckon we'd better get our feet well settled here and make sure that nobody is watching us; the money is safer in the hole than with us, for the time being. My pay is going on and the future looks rosy."
A cock partridge rose from the side of the lane and whirred away through the beech leaves that the first frost of early autumn had yellowed.
"And I've got a shotgun and plenty of shells! Son, let's forget that we have ever been in state prison. In the course of time that place is about as wearing on a guard as it is on a convict."
The log camp was behind a spur of the rocky summit and was hidden from the village below. Wagg commented with satisfaction on the location when they had reached the place. The van had been concealed in a ravine which led from the lane. The work of loading the horse with the sacked supplies, and the ascent of the mountain, had consumed hours. Twilight was sifting into the valleys by the time they had unloaded the stuff and stabled the horse in a lean-to.
There was a stove in the camp, and the place was furnished after a fashion with chairs and a table fashioned from birch saplings. The blankets of Wagg's camp equipment made the bunks comfortable.
Wagg had been the cook as well as the captain of the expedition. He did better that evening with the wood-burning stove than he had done with the oil stove of his kit.
After supper, before he turned in, Vaniman went out on a spur of Devilbrow and gazed down on the scattered lights of the village of Egypt. As best he could he determined the location of the Harnden house. He felt as helplessly aloof as if he were a shade revisiting the scene of his mortal experiences.


CHAPTER XXV
THE FIRST PEEP BEHIND THE CURTAIN
The next day Wagg went out and shot two partridges and contrived a stew which fully occupied his attention in the making and the eating. He had suggested to Vaniman that he'd better come along on the expedition after the birds. Vaniman found a bit more than mere suggestion in Wagg's manner of invitation. With his shotgun in the hook of his arm he presented his wonted appearance as the guard at the prison. It was perfectly apparent that Mr. Wagg proposed to keep his eye on the promiser of the fifty-fifty split. But Wagg did not refer to the matter of the money while they strolled in the woods.
As a matter of fact, days went by without the question coming up.
Wagg had previously praised himself as a patient waiter; the young man confessed in his thoughts that his guardian merited the commendation. Wagg was plainly having a particularly good time on this outing. He displayed the contentment of a man who had ceased to worry about the future; he was taking it easy, like a vacationer with plenty of money in the bank. On one occasion he did mention the money in