Chapter XLIX - Page 2

into my office to do some tall thinking, Skinner," Cappy continued. "Remember! No visitors until I've threshed this whole business out to my satisfaction. I'm not in to anybody."

Cappy retired to his office, sat down on his spine in his upholstered swivel chair, swung his thin old shanks to the top of his desk, bowed his head on his breast, and closed his eyes. Scarcely had he done so when the door opened and Matt Peasley thrust his head in.

"Well, Matt?" Cappy queried without opening his eyes.

"I have an offer of forty thousand dollars for our old bark Altair, Cappy. What do you think we ought to do?"

"Take it!" Cappy shrilled. "You jibbering jackdaw! Grab it! She's been a failure since the day I built her; never balanced, always burying her nose in the seas, and drowning a sailor about once a year. If we keep that ship much longer she'll sail herself under some day and we'll be out the forty thousand. Altair! Fancy name! Skinner got it out of Ben Hur. He'd been in the shipping game ten years then and hadn't learned that was the name of a star! We should have called her the Water Spaniel. Sell her, Matt, and we'll put the money into a steamer that can run foreign."

"If you can tell me where we can buy, even at three times her intrinsic value, a steamer that will run foreign, I'm willing to consider selling the Altair. Just at present she's earning big dividends; and until we can find a place to invest her selling price, the money will earn six per cent instead of sixty, as at present."

"Clear out and let me think!" Cappy commanded, and Matt Peasley retired to Mr. Skinner's office.

"Have you noticed the old gentleman lately?" he inquired of Skinner. "Ever since his grandson arrived grandpa has been paying attention to business."

"He's dissatisfied with his own and our efforts thus far. He thinks he's been a piker and that you and I are his first-assistant pikers. He has ships on the brain."

"He's getting pretty cocky," Matt agreed; "but, at that, I guess he has a license to be."

"I've been with him twenty-six--yes, twenty-seven--years; and I know him, Matt. He's cooking up something prodigious--and it will soon be done."

The door of Cappy's office opened and Cappy stood in the entrance.

"Skinner," he ordered, "get me a letter of credit for about twenty thousand dollars. I'm going travelling."

"Where?" Matt and Skinner queried in chorus.

"To Europe."

"You're not!" Matt Peasley declared. "You're liable to be torpedoed en route."

"I know, but then, too, I'm liable not to be; and if I am, why, I'm an old man, and I'll only be cheating the devil by a few years or a few months.