THE OUTCASTS OF POKER FLAT 7 страница
«Lost!» exclaimed Keogh, jumping up. «Didn't you get paid for the picture?»
«Yes, I got paid,» said White. «But just now there isn't any picture, and there isn't any pay. If you care to hear about it, here are the edifying details. The president and I were looking at the painting. His secretary brought a bank draft on New York for ten thousand dollars and handed it to me. The moment I touched it I went wild. I tore it into little pieces and threw them on the floor. A workman was repainting the pillars inside the fiatio. A bucket of his paint happened to be convenient. I picked up his brush and slapped a quart of blue paint all over that ten-thousand-dollar nightmare. I bowed, and walked out. The president didn't move or speak. That was one time he was taken by surprise. It's tough on you, Billy, but I couldn't help it.»
There seemed to be excitement in Coralio. Outside there was a confused, rising murmur pierced by high-pitched cries. «Bajo el traidor-Muerte el traidor!» were the words they seemed to form.
«Listen to that!» exclaimed White, bitterly; «I know that much Spanish. They're shouting, "Down with the traitorl" I heard them before. I felt that they meant me. I was a traitor to Art. The picture had to go.»
« "Down with the blank fool" would have suited your case better,» said Keogh, with fiery emphasis. «You tear up ten thousand dollars like an old rag because the way you've spread on five dollars' worth of paint hurts your conscience. Next time I pick a side-partner in a scheme the man has got to go before a notary and swear he never even heard the word "ideal" mentioned.»
Keogh strode from the room, white-hot. White paid little attention to his resentment. The scorn of Billy Keogh seemed a trifling thing beside the greater self-scorn he had escaped.
In Coralio the excitement waxed. An outburst was imminent. The cause of this demonstration of displeasure was the presence in the town of a big, pink-cheeked Englishman, who, it was said, was an agent of his government come to clinch the bargain by which the president placed his people in the hands of a foreign power. It was charged that not only had he given away priceless concessions, but that the public debt was to be transferred into the hands of the English, and the custom-housesturned over to them as a guarantee, The long-enduring people had determined to make their protest felt.
On that night, in Coralio and in other towns, their ire found vent. Yelling mobs, mercurial but dangerous, roamed the streets. They overthrew the great bronze statue of the president that stood in the centre of the plaza, and hacked it to shapeless pieces. They tore from public buildings the tablets set there proclaiming the glory of the «Illustrious Liberator.» His pictures in the government offices were demolished. The mobs even attacked the Casa Morena, but were driven away by the military, which remained faithful to the executive. All the night terror reigned.
The greatness of Losada was shown by the fact that by noon the next day order was restored, and he was still absolute. He issued proclamations denying positively that any negotiation of any kind had been entered into with England. Sir Stafford Vaughn, the pink-cheeked Englishman, also declared in placards and in public print that: his presence there had no international significance. He was a traveller without guile. In fact (so he stated), he had not even spoken with the president or been in his presence since his arrival.
During this disturbance, White was preparing for his homeward voyage in the steamship that was to sail within two or three days. About noon, Keogh, the restless, took his camera out with the hope of speeding the lagging hours. The town was now as quiet as if peace had never departed from her perch on the red-tiled roofs.
About the middle of the afternoon, Keogh hurried back to the hotel with something decidedly special in his air. He retired to the little room where he developed his pictures.
Later on he came out to White on the balcony, with a luminous, grim, predatory smile on his face.
«Do you know what that is?» he asked, holding up a 4x5 photograph mounted on cardboard.
«Snap-shot of a senorita sitting in the sand-alliteration unintentional,» guessed White, lazily.
«Wrong,» said Keogh with shining eyes. «It's a slung-shot. It's a can of dynamite. It's a gold mine. It's a sight-draft on your president man for twenty thousand dollars-yes, sir-twenty thousand this time, and no spoiling the picture. No ethics of art in the way. Art! You with your smelly little tubes! I've got you skinned to death with a kodak. Take a look at that.»
White took the picture in his hand, and gave a long
whistle.
«Jove!» he exclaimed, «but wouldn't that stir up a row in town if you let it be seen. How in the world did you get
it, Billy?»
«You know that high wall around the president man's back garden? I was up there trying to get a bird's-eye of the town. I happened to notice a chink in the wall where a stone and a lot of plaster had slid out. Thinks I, I'll take a peep through to see how Mr. President's cabbages are growing. The first thing I saw was him and this Sir Englishman sitting at a little table about twenty feet away. They had the table all spread over with documents, and they were hobnobbing over them as thick as two pirates. Twas a nice corner of the garden, all private and shady with palms and orange trees, and they had a pail of champagne set by handy in the grass. I knew then was the time for me to make my big hit in Art. So I raised the machine up to the crack, and pressed the button. Just as I did so them old boys shook hands on the deal-you see they took that way in the picture.»
Keogh put on his coat and hat.
«What are you doing to do with it?» asked White.
«Me,» said Keogh in a hurt lone, «why, I'm going lo tie a pink ribbon to it and hang it on the what-not, of course. I'm surprised at you. But while I'm out you just try to figure out what gingercake potentate would be most likely to want to buy this work of art for his private collection-just to keep it out of circulation.»
The sunset was reddening the tops of the cocoanut palms when Billy Keogh came back from Casa Morena. He nodded to the artist's questioning gaze; and lay down on a cot with his hands under the back of his head.
«I saw him. He paid the money like a little man. They didn't want to let me in at first. I told 'em it was important. Yes, that president man is on the plenty-able list. He's got a beautiful business system about the way he uses his brains. All I had to do was to hold up the photograph so he could see it, and name the price. He just smiled, and walked over to a safe and got the cash. Twenty one-thousand-dollar brand-new United States Treasury notes he laid on the table, like I'd pay out a dollar and a quarter. Fine notes, too-they crackled with a sound like burning the brush off a ten-acre lot.»
«Let's try the feel of one,» said White, curiously. «I never saw a thousand-dollar bill.» Keogh did not immediately respond.
«Carry,» he said, in an absent-minded way, «you think a heap of your art, don't you?»
«More,» said White, frankly, «than has been for the financial good of myself and my friends.»
«I thought you were a fool the other day,» went on Keogh, quietly, «and I'm not sure now that you wasn't. But if you was, so am I. I've been in some funny deals, Carry, but I've always managed to scramble fair, and match my brains and capital against the other fellow's. But when it comes to-well, when you've got the other fellow cinched, and the screws on him, and he's got to
чр-why, it don't strike me as being a man's game, -y've got a name for it, you know; it's-confound you, don't you understand.'A fellow feels-it's something like that blamed art of yours-he-well, I tore that photograph up and laid the pieces on that stack of money and shoved the whole business back across the table. "Excuse me, Mr. Ix)sada," I said, "but I guess I've made a mistake in the price. You get the photo for nothing." Now, Carry, you get out the pencil, and we'll do some more figuring. I'd like to save enough out of our capital for you to have some fried sausages in your joint when you get back to New York.»
Stephen Crane