The card preceded him through noiselessly swinging doors and across heavily carpeted passages until it reached the inner core of Mr. James Stacys private offices, and was respectfully laid before him. He was not alone. At his side, in an attitude of polite and studied expectancy, stood a correct-looking young man, for whom Mr. Stacy was evidently writing a memorandum. The stranger glanced furtively at the card with a curiosity hardly in keeping with his suggested good breeding; but Stacy did not look at it until he had finished his memorandum.
There, he said, with business decision, you can tell your people that if we carry their new debentures over our limit we will expect a larger margin. Ditches are not what they were three years ago when miners were willing to waste their money over your rates. They dont gamble THAT WAY any more, and your company ought to know it, and not gamble themselves over that prospect. He handed the paper to the stranger, who bowed over it with studied politeness, and backed towards the door. Stacy took up the waiting card, read it, said to the messenger, Show him in, and in the same breath turned to his guest: I say, Van Loo, its George Barker! You know him.
Yes, said Van Loo, with a polite hesitation as he halted at the door. He wasI thinkerin your employ at Heavy Tree Hill.
Nonsense! He was my partner. And you must have known him since at Boomville. Come! He got forty shares of Ditch stockthrough youat 110, which were worth about 80! SOMEBODY must have made money enough by it to remember him.
I was only speaking of him socially, said Van Loo, with a deprecating smile. You know he married a young womanthe hotel-keepers daughter, who used to wait at the tableand after my mother and sister came out to keep house for me at Boomville it was quite impossible for me to see much of him, for he seldom went out without his wife, you know.
Yes, said Stacy dryly, I think you didnt like his marriage. But Im glad your disinclination to see him isnt on account of that deal in stocks.
Oh no, said Van Loo. Good-by.
But, unfortunately, in the next passage he came upon Barker, who with a cry of unfeigned pleasure, none the less sincere that he was feeling a little alien in these impressive surroundings, recognized him. Nothing could exceed Van Loos protest of delight at the meeting; nothing his equal desolation at the fact that he was hastening to another engagement. But your old partner, he added, with a smile, is waiting for you; he has just received your card, and I should be only keeping you from him. So glad to see you; youre looking so well. Good-by! Good-by!
Reassured, Barker no longer hesitated, but dashed with his old impetuousness into his former partners room. Stacy, already deeply absorbed in other business, was sitting with his back towards him, and Barkers arms were actually encircling his neck before the astonished and half-angry man looked up. But when his eyes met the laughing gray ones of Barker above him he gently disengaged himself with a quick return of the caress, rose, shut the door of an inner office, and returning pushed Barker into an armchair in quite the old suppressive fashion of former days. Yes; it was the same Stacy that Barker looked at, albeit his brown beard was now closely cropped around his determined mouth and jaw in a kind of grave decorum, and his energetic limbs already attuned to the rigor of clothes of fashionable cut and still more rigorous sombreness of color.
Barker boy, he began, with the familiar twinkle in his keen eyes which the younger partner remembered, I dont encourage stag dancing among my young men during bank hours, and youll please to remember that we are not on Heavy Tree Hill
Where, broke in Barker enthusiastically, we were only overlooked by the Black Spur Range and the Sierran snow-line; where the nearest voice that came to you was quarter of a mile away as the crow flies and nearly a mile by the trail.
And was generally an oath! said Stacy. But youre in San Francisco NOW. Where are you stopping? He took up a pencil and held it over a memorandum pad awaitingly.
At the Brook House. Its
Hold on! Brook House, Stacy repeated as he jotted it down. And for how long?
Oh, a day or two. You see, Kitty
Stacy checked him with a movement of his pencil in the air, and then wrote down, Day or two. Wife with you?
Yes; and oh, Stacy, our boy! Ah! he went on, with a laugh, knocking aside the remonstrating pencil, you must listen! Hes just the sweetest, knowingest little chap living. Do you know what were going to christen him? Well, hell be Stacy Demorest Barker. Good names, arent they? And then it perpetuates the dear old friendship.
Stacy picked up the pencil again, wrote Wife and child S. D. B., and leaned back in his chair. Now, Barker, he said briefly, Im coming to dine with you tonight at 7.30 sharp. THEN well talk Heavy Tree Hill, wife, baby, and S. D. B. But here Im all for business. Have you any with me?
Barker, who was easily amused, had extracted a certain entertainment out of Stacys memorandum, but he straightened himself with a look of eager confidence and said, Certainly; thats just what it isbusiness. Lord! Stacy, Im ALL business now. Im in everything. And I bank with you, though perhaps you dont know it; its in your Branch at Marysville. I didnt want to say anything about it to you before. But Lord! you dont suppose that Id bank anywhere else while you are in the businesschecks, dividends, and all that; but in this matter I felt you knew, old chap. I didnt want to talk to a banker nor to a bank, but to Jim Stacy, my old partner.
Barker, said Stacy curtly, how much money are you short of?
At this direct question Barkers always quick color rose, but, with an equally quick smile, he said, I dont know yet that Im short at all.
But I do!
Look here, Jim: why, Im just overloaded with shares and stocks, said Barker, smiling.
Not one of which you could realize on without sacrifice. Barker, three years ago you had three hundred thousand dollars put to your account at San Francisco.
Yes, said Barker, with a quiet reminiscent laugh. I remember I wanted to draw it out in one check to see how it would look.
And youve drawn out all in three years, and it looks dd bad.
How did you know it? asked Barker, his face beaming only with admiration of his companions omniscience.
How did I know it? retorted Stacy. I know YOU, and I know the kind of people who have unloaded to you.
Come, Stacy, said Barker, Ive only invested in shares and stocks like everybody else, and then only on the best advice I could get: like Van Loos, for instance,that man who was here just now, the new manager of the Empire Ditch Company; and Carters, my own Kittys father. And when I was offered fifty thousand Wide West Extensions, and was hesitating over it, he told me YOU were in it tooand that was enough for me to buy it.
Yes, but we didnt go into it at his figures.
No, said Barker, with an eager smile, but you SOLD at his figures, for I knew that when I found that YOU, my old partner, was in it; dont you see, I preferred to buy it through your bank, and did at 110. Of course, you wouldnt have sold it at that figure if it wasnt worth it then, and neither I nor you are to blame if it dropped the next week to 60, dont you see?
Stacys eyes hardened for a moment as he looked keenly into his former partners bright gray ones, but there was no trace of irony in Barkers. On the contrary, a slight shade of sadness came over them. No, he said reflectively, I dont think Ive ever been foolish or followed out my OWN ideas, except once, and that was extravagant, I admit. That was my idea of building a kind of refuge, you know, on the site of our old cabin, where poor miners and played-out prospectors waiting for a strike could stay without paying anything. Well, I sunk twenty thousand dollars in that, and might have lost more, only CarterKittys fatherpersuaded mehes an awful clever old fellowinto turning it into a kind of branch hotel of Boomville, while using it as a hotel to take poor chaps who couldnt pay, at half prices, or quarter prices, PRIVATELY, dont you see, so as to spare their pride,awfully pretty, wasnt it?and make the hotel profit by it.