Poor Man's Rock Part 28

"Twenty per cent. on Folly Bay prices is too uncertain a basis."

Robbin-Steele changed his tactics. "We can send our own carriers there to buy at far less cost."

MacRae smiled.

"You can send your carriers," he drawled, "but I doubt if you would get many fish. I don't think you quite grasp the Squitty situation."

"Yes, I think I do," Robbin-Steele returned. "Gower had things pretty much his own way until you cut in on his grounds. You have undoubtedly secured quite an advantage in a peculiar manner, and possibly you feel secure against compet.i.tion. But your hold is not so strong as Gower's once was. Let me tell you, your hold on that business can be broken, my young friend."

"Undoubtedly," MacRae readily admitted. "But there is a world-wide demand for canned salmon, and I have not suffered for a market--even when influence was used last season to close the home market against me, on Folly Bay's behalf. And I am quite sure, from what I have seen and heard, that many of the big British Columbia packers like yourself are so afraid the labor situation will get out of hand that they would shut down their plants rather than pay fishermen what they could afford to pay if they would be content with a reasonable profit. So I am not at all afraid of you seducing the Squitty trollers with high prices."

"You are laboring under the common error about cannery profits,"

Robbin-Steele declared pointedly. "Considering the capital invested, the total of the pack, the risk and uncertainty of the business, our returns are not excessive."

MacRae smiled amusedly.

"That all depends on what you regard as excessive. But there is nothing to be gained by an argument on that subject. Canning salmon is a highly profitable business, but it would not be the gold mine it has been if canneries hadn't been fostered at the expense of the men who actually catch the fish, if the government hadn't bestowed upon cannery men the gift of a strangle hold on the salmon grounds, and license privileges that gave them absolute control. I haven't any quarrel with cannery men for making money. You only amuse me when you speak of doubtful returns.

I wish I could have your cinch for a season or two."

"You shouldn't have any quarrel with us. You started with nothing and made twenty thousand dollars in a single season," Robbin-Steele reminded.

"I worked like a dog. I took chances. And I was very lucky," MacRae agreed. "I did make a lot of money. But I paid the fishermen more than they ever got for salmon--a great deal more than they would have got if I hadn't broken into the game. Abbott made money on the salmon I delivered him. So everybody was satisfied, except Gower--who perhaps feels that he is ordained by the Almighty to get cheap salmon."

"You're spoiling those men," Robbin-Steele declared irritably. "My observation of that cla.s.s of labor is that the more money they get the less they will do and the more they will want. You can't carry on any industry on that basis. But that's beside the point. We're getting away from the question. We want you to deliver those fish to us, if you can do so at a reasonable price. We should like to have some sort of agreement, so that we may know what to expect."

"I can deliver the fish," MacRae a.s.serted confidently. "But I don't care to bind myself to anything. Not this far in advance. Wait till the salmon run."

"You are a very shrewd young man, I should say." Robbin-Steele paid him a reluctant compliment and let a gleam of appreciation flicker in his dead-fish eyes. "I imagine you will get on. Come and see me when you feel like considering this matter seriously."

MacRae went down the elevator wondering if the gentleman's agreement among the packers was off, if there was going to be something in the nature of compet.i.tion among them for the salmon. There would be a few more gill-net licenses issued. More important, the gill-netters would be free to fish where they chose, for whosoever paid the highest price, and not for the cannery which controlled their license. There would be scores of independent purse seiners. Would the packers bid against one another for the catch? It rather seemed to MacRae as if they must. They could no longer sit back secure in the knowledge that the salmon from a given area must come straight to their waiting cans. And British Columbia packers had always dreaded American compet.i.tion.

Following that, MacRae took train for Bellingham. The people he had dealt with there at the close of the last season had dealt fairly.

American salmon packers had never suffered the blight of a monopoly.

They had established their industry in legitimate compet.i.tion, without governmental favors. They did not care how much money a fisherman made so long as he caught fish for them which they could profitably can.

MacRae had no contract with them. He did not want a contract. If he made hard and fast agreements with any one it would be with Stubby Abbott.

But he did want to fortify himself with all the information he could get. He did not know what line Folly Bay would take when the season opened. He was not sure what shifts might occur among the British Columbia canneries. If such a thing as free and unlimited compet.i.tion for salmon took place he might need more than one outlet for his carriers. MacRae was not engaged in a hazardous business for pastime. He had an objective, and this objective was contingent upon making money.

From the American source he learned that a good season was antic.i.p.ated for the better grades of salmon. He found out what prices he could expect. They were liberal enough to increase his confidence. These men were anxious to get the thousands of British Columbia salmon MacRae could supply.

MacRae returned to Vancouver. Before he had finished unpacking his bag the telephone rang. Hurley, of the Northwest Cold Storage, spoke when he took down the receiver. Could he drop into the Northwest office? MacRae grinned to himself and went down to the grimy wharf where deep-sea halibut schooners rubbed against the dock, their stubby top-hamper swaying under the office windows as they rocked to the swell of pa.s.sing harbor craft.

He talked with Hurley,--the same gentleman whom he had once approached with no success in the matter of selling salmon. The situation was reversed now. The Northwest was eager to buy. They would pay him, _sub rosa_, two cents a pound over the market price for fresh salmon if he would supply them with the largest possible quant.i.ty from the beginning of the blueback run.

As with Robbin-Steele, MacRae refused to commit himself. More clearly he perceived that the scramble was beginning. The packers and the cold-storage companies had lost control. They must have fish to function, to make a profit. They would cut one another's throats for salmon. So much the better, MacRae cynically reflected. He told Hurley, at last, as he had told Robbin-Steele, to wait till the salmon began to run.

He left the Northwest offices with the firm conviction that it was not going to be a question of markets, but a question of getting the salmon.

And he rather fancied he could do that.

Last of all on the list of these men who approached him in this fashion came Stubby Abbott. Stubby did not ask him to call. He came to the Granada in search of Jack and haled him, nothing loth, out to the stone house in the West End. It happened that Betty Gower, Etta Robbin-Steele, and two gilded youths, whom MacRae did not know, were there. They had been walking in the Park. Nelly and her mother were serving tea.

It happened, too, that as they chatted over the teacups, a blue-bodied limousine drew up under the Abbott pergola and deposited Mrs. Horace A.

Gower for a brief conversation with Mrs. Abbott. It was MacRae's first really close contact with the slender, wonderfully preserved lady whose life had touched his father's so closely in the misty long ago. He regarded her with a reflective interest. She must have been very beautiful then, he thought. She was almost beautiful still. Certainly she was a very distinguished person, with her costly clothing, her rich furs, her white hair, and that faded rose-leaf skin. The petulant, querulous droop of her mouth escaped MacRae. He was not a physiognomist.

But the distance of her manner did not escape him. She acknowledged the introduction and thereafter politely overlooked MacRae. He meant nothing at all to Mrs. Horace A. Gower, he saw very clearly. Merely a young man among other young men; a young man of no particular interest. Thirty years is a long time, MacRae reflected. But his father had not forgotten. He wondered if she had; if those far-off hot-blooded days had grown dim and unreal to her?

He turned his head once and caught Betty as intent upon him as he was upon her mother, under cover of the general conversation. He gathered that there was a shade of reproach, of resentment, in her eyes. But he could not be sure. Certainly there was nothing like that in her manner.

But the manner of these people, he understood very well, was pretty much a mask. Whatever went on in their secret bosoms, they smiled and joked and were unfailingly courteous.

He made another discovery within a few minutes. Stubby maneuvered himself close to Etta Robbin-Steele. Stubby was not quite so adept at repression as most of his cla.s.s. He was a little more nave, more p.r.o.ne to act upon his natural, instinctive impulses. MacRae was aware of that.

He saw now a swift by-play that escaped the rest. Nothing of any consequence,--a look, the motion of a hand, a fleeting something on the girl's face and Stubby's. Jack glanced at Nelly Abbott sitting beside him, her small blonde head pertly inclined. Nelly saw it too. She smiled knowingly.

"Has the brunette siren hooked Stubby?" MacRae inquired in a discreet undertone.

"I think so. I'm not sure. Etta's such an outrageous flirt," Nelly said.

"I hope not, anyway. I'm afraid I can't quite appreciate Etta as a prospective sister-in-law."

"No?"

"She's catty--and vain as a peac.o.c.k. Stubby ought to marry a nice sensible girl who'd mother him," Nelly observed with astonishing conviction; "like Betty, for instance."

"Oh, you seem to have very definite ideas on that subject," MacRae smiled. He did not commit himself further. But he resented the suggestion. There was also an amusing phase of Nelly's declaration which did not escape him,--the pot calling the kettle black. Etta Robbin-Steele did flirt. She had dancing black eyes that flung a challenge to men. But Nelly herself was no shrinking violet, for all her baby face. She was like an elf. Her violet eyes were capable of infinite shades of expression. She, herself, had a way of appropriating men who pleased her, to the resentful dismay of other young women. It pleased her to do that with Jack MacRae whenever he was available. And until Betty had preempted a place in his heart without even trying, Jack MacRae had been quite willing to let his fancy linger romantically on Nelly Abbott.

As it was,--he looked across the room at Betty chatting with young Lane.

What a d.a.m.ned fool he was,--he, MacRae! All his wires were crossed. If some inescapable human need urged him to love, how much better to love this piquant bit of femininity beside him? But he couldn't do it. It wasn't possible. All the old rebellion stirred in him. The locked chambers of his mind loosed pictures of Squitty, memories of things which had happened there, as he let his eyes drift from Betty, whom he loved, to her mother, whom his father had loved and lost. She had made his father suffer through love. Her daughter was making Donald MacRae's son suffer likewise. Again, through some fantastic quirk of his imagination, the stodgy figure of Horace Gower loomed in the background, shadowy and sinister. There were moments, like the present, when he felt hatred of the man concretely, as he could feel thirst or hunger.

"A penny for your thoughts," Nelly bantered.

"They'd be dear at half the price," MacRae said, forcing a smile.

He was glad when those people went their way. Nelly put on a coat and went with them. Stubby drew Jack up to his den.

"I have bought up the controlling interest in the Terminal Fish Company since I saw you last," Stubby began abruptly. "I'm going to put up a cold-storage plant and do what my father started to do early in the war--give people cheaper fish for food."

"Can you make it stick," MacRae asked curiously, "with the other wholesalers against you? Their system seems to be to get all the traffic will bear, to boost the price to the consumer by any means they can use.

And there is the Packers' a.s.sociation. They are not exactly--well, favorable to cheap retailing of fish. Everybody seems to think the proper caper is to tack on a cent or two a pound wherever he can."

"I know I can," Stubby declared. "The pater would have succeeded only he trusted too much to men who didn't see it his way. Look at Cunningham--"

Stubby mentioned a fish merchant who had made a resounding splash in matters piscatorial for a year or two, and then faded, along with his great cheap-fish markets, into oblivion--"he made it go like a house afire until he saw a chance to make a quick and easy clean-up by sticking people. It can be done, all right, if a man will be satisfied with a small profit on a big turnover. I know it."

MacRae made no comment on that. Stubby was full of his plan, eager to talk about its possibilities.

"I wanted to do it last year," he said, "but I couldn't. I had to play the old game--make a bunch of money and make it quick. Between you and Gower's pig-headedness, and the rest of the cannery crowd letting me go till it was too late to stop me, and a climbing market, I made more money in one season than I thought was possible. I'm going to use that money to make more money and to squash some of these d.a.m.ned fish pirates. I tell you it's jolly awful. We had baked cod for lunch to-day.

That fish cost twenty cents a pound. Think of it! When the fisherman sells it for six cents within fifty miles of us. No wonder everybody is howling. I don't know anything about other lines of food supply, but I can sure put my finger on a bunch of fish profiteers. And I feel like putting my foot on them. Anyway, I've got the Terminal for a starter; also I have a twenty-five-year lease on the water frontage there. I have the capital to go ahead and build a cold-storage plant. The wholesale crowd can't possibly bother me. And the canneries are going to have their hands full this season without mixing into a sc.r.a.p over local prices of fresh fish. You've heard about the new regulations?"

MacRae nodded a.s.sent.

"There's going to be a free-for-all," Stubby chuckled. "There'll be a lot of independent purse seiners. If the canneries don't pay good prices these independent fishermen, with their fast, powerful rigs, will seine the salmon under the packers' noses and run their catch down to the Puget Sound plants. This is no time for the British Columbia packers to get uppish. Good-by, four hundred per cent."

"They'll wiggle through legislation to prevent export of raw salmon,"