Burned Bridges Part 23

"What is your proposition?" he asked at length. "I daresay I could handle it. But I can't commit myself offhand."

"Of course not," Tommy agreed. "You can go over my books from the beginning, and see for yourself what the business amounts to. I'd be willing to allow you seventy-five per cent. of the net. Based on last year's business you should clear twelve thousand per annum. Sales are on the up. You might double that. I would hold an option of taking over the business on ninety days' notice."

"It sounds all right," Thompson admitted. "I'll look into it."

"I want quick action," Tommy declared. "Say, to-morrow you arrange for some certified accountant to go over my books and make out a balance sheet. I'll pay his fee. I'm anxious to be free to work on the ship end."

"All right. I'll do that. We can arrange the details later if I decide to take you up," Thompson said.

Tommy stretched his arms and yawned.

"By jove," said he, "I'm going to be the busiest thing on wheels for awhile. It's no joke running a big show."

"I didn't know you were a shipbuilder," Thompson commented.

"I'm not," Tommy admitted, stifling another yawn. "But I can hire 'em--both brains and labor. The main thing is I've got the contracts.

That's the chief item in this war business. The rest is chiefly a matter of business judgment. It's something of a jump, I'll admit, but I can negotiate it, all right."

"As a matter of fact," he continued presently, and with a highly self-satisfied note in his voice, "apart from the executive work it's what the Americans call a lead-pipe cinch. We can't lose. I've been fishing for this quite a while, and I put it over by getting in touch with the right people. It's wonderful what you can do in the proper quarter. The Vancouver Construction Company consists of Joe Hedley and myself. Joe is a very clever chap. Has influential people, too. We have contracts with the I.M.B. calling for ten schooners estimated to cost three hundred thousand dollars per. We finance the construction, but we don't really risk a penny. The contracts are on a basis of cost, plus ten per cent. You see? If we go above or under the estimate it doesn't matter much. Our profit is fixed. The main consideration is speed. The only thing we can be penalized for is failure to launch and deliver within specified dates."

Thompson did a rough bit of mental figuring.

"I should say it was a cinch," he said dryly. "n.o.body can accuse you of profiteering. Yet your undertaking is both patriotic and profitable. I suppose you had no trouble financing a thing like that?"

"I should say not. The banks," Tommy replied with cynical emphasis, "would fall over themselves to get their finger in our pie. But they won't. Hedley and I have some money. Sam Carr is letting us have fifty thousand dollars at seven per cent. No bank is going to charge like the Old Guard at Waterloo on overdrafts and advances--and dictate to us besides. I'm too wise for that. I'm not in the game for my health. I see a big lump of money, and I'm after it."

"I suppose we all are," Thompson reflected absently.

"Certainly," Tommy responded promptly. "And we'd be suckers if we weren't."

He took a puff or two at his cigar and rose.

"Run over to the plant on the North Sh.o.r.e with me to-morrow if you have the time. We'll give it the once over, and take a look at the Wallace yard too. They're starting on steel tramps there now. I'm going over about two o'clock. Will you?"

"Sure. I'll take time," Thompson agreed.

"Come down to MacFee's wharf and go over with me on the _Alert_," Tommy went on. "That's the quickest and easiest way to cross the Inlet. Two o'clock. Well, I'm off to bed. Good night, old man."

"Good night."

The hall door clicked behind Ashe. Thompson sat deep in thought for a long time. Then he fished a note pad out of a drawer and began pencilling figures.

Ten times three hundred thousand was three million. Ten per cent. on three million was three hundred thousand dollars. And no chance to lose.

The ten per cent. on construction cost was guaranteed by the Imperial Munitions Board, behind which stood the British Empire.

Didn't Tommy say the ten schooners were to be completed in eight months?

Then in eight months Tommy Ashe was going to be approximately one hundred and fifty thousand dollars richer.

Thompson wondered if that was why Sam Carr looked at Tommy with that ambiguous expression when Tommy was chanting his work or fight philosophy. Carr knew the ins and outs of the deal if he were loaning money on it.

And Thompson did not like to think he had read Carr's look aright, because he was uncomfortably aware that he, Wes Thompson, was following pretty much in Ashe's footsteps, only on a smaller scale.

He tore the figured sheet into little strips, and went to bed.

CHAPTER XXIV

--AND THE MATCH THAT LIT THE FUSE--

At a minute or two of ten the next morning Thompson stopped his car before the Canadian Bank of Commerce. The bolt-studded doors were still closed, and so he kept his seat behind the steering column, glancing idly along Hastings at the traffic that flowed about the gray stone pile of the post-office, while he waited the bank's opening for business.

A tall young man, a bit paler-faced perhaps than a normal young fellow should be, but otherwise a fine-looking specimen of manhood, sauntered slowly around the corner of the bank, and came to a stop on the curb just abreast the fore end of Thompson's motor. He took out a cigarette and lighted it with slow, deliberate motions. And as he stood there, gazing with a detached impersonal air at the front of the Summit roadster, there approached him a recruiting sergeant.

"How about joining up this morning?" he inquired briskly.

"Oh, I don't know," the young man responded casually. "I hadn't thought about it."

"Every man should be thinking about it," the sergeant declared. "The army needs men. Now a well-set-up young fellow like you would get on capitally at soldiering. It's a great life. When we get the Germans whipped every man will be proud to say he had a hand in it. If a man struck you you wouldn't stand back and let some other fellow do your fighting for you, now would you? More than that, between you and me, it won't be long before an able-bodied man can't walk these streets in civvies, without the girls hooting him. It's a man's duty to get into this war. Better walk along with me to headquarters and sign on."

The young man gazed across the street with the same immobility of expression.

"What's the inducement?" he asked presently.

The sergeant, taking his cue from this, launched forth upon a glowing description of army life, the pay, the glory, the manifold advantages that would certainly accrue. He painted a rosy picture, a gallant picture. One gathered from his talk that a private in khaki was greater than a captain of industry in civilian clothes. He dwelt upon the brotherhood, the democracy of arms. He spilled forth a lot of the buncombe that is swallowed by those who do not know from bitter experience that war, at best, is a ghastly job in its modern phases, a thing that the common man may be constrained to undertake if need arises, but which brings him little pleasure and less glory--beyond the consciousness that he has played his part as a man should.

The young man heard the recruiting sergeant to an end. And when that worthy had finished he found fixed steadily upon him a pair of coldly speculative gray-green eyes.

"How long have you been in the army?" he asked.

"About eighteen months," the sergeant stated.

"Have you been over there?"

"No," the sergeant admitted. "I expect to go soon, but for the present I'm detailed to recruiting."

The young man had a flower in the lapel of his coat. He removed it, the flower, and thrust the lapel in the sergeant's face. The flower had concealed a bronze b.u.t.ton.

"I've been over there," the young man said calmly. "There's my b.u.t.ton, and my discharge is in my pocket--with the names of places on it that you'll likely never see. I was in the Princess Pats--you know what happened to the Pats. You have hinted I was a slacker, that every man not in uniform is a slacker. Let me tell you something. I know your gabby kind. The country's full of such as you. So's England. The war's gone two years and you're still here, going around telling other men to go to the front. Go there yourself, and get a taste of it. When you've put in fourteen months in h.e.l.l like I did, you won't go around peddling the brand of hot air you've shot into me, just now."

"I didn't know you were a returned man," the sergeant said placatingly.

A pointed barb of resentment had crept into the other's tone as he spoke.

"Well, I am," the other snapped. "And I'd advise you to get a new line of talk. Don't talk to me, anyway. Beat it. I've done my bit."

The sergeant moved on without another word, and the other man likewise went his way, with just the merest suggestion of a limp. And simultaneously the great doors of the bank swung open. Thompson looked first after one man then after the other, and pa.s.sed into the bank with a thoughtful look on his face.