"And what did you say?" I inquired with equal gravity.
"Naturally I told him I must consult my partner."
"’Oh, sure,’ he said, ’but it isn’t a large loan—only fifteen millions. All we want you to take is about three millions.’"
"Well, what d’you say, partner, shall we take it?"
I scrutinized his baffling expression and roared with laughter. He joined me, laughing, until the tears trickled down his cheeks.
"But look here," he began, the flamboyancy of his manner persisting even in private, "three millions isn’t so much—and the profit would be large."
So long as it was horseplay I enjoyed the joke. But with Fred the barrier between jest and earnest is very thin, often indistinguishable.
"Don’t talk rot," I told him. "Do you want a short cut to bankruptcy?"
"Well, it would be in a great cause," he grinned. "Got to help dear old Roumania!" And humming a musical-comedy tune, he left me. But I am still conscious of a dread lest Fred, in some moment of irresistible magnificence, should commit poor little Salmon and Byrd to the devil or the deep.
To-day is a red-letter day for me. The red letter came from Dibdin. As a matter of fact his brief scrawl in the peculiar, heavy, unadorned script which I love is written on the minutely ruled paper and in the violet ink of the Hotel de France at Papeete. But it was so delightfully cheering to see his dear old fist again—almost like seeing the man himself. The sheet is dated more than two months ago, and postmarked San Francisco six days ago. I wonder what brute intrusted with mailing it has carried it about in his pocket.
Without a word of preamble it begins in Dibdin’s abrupt manner.
"I’ve got you on my mind. How are the kids prospering—and you, old bookworm? I’ve picked up something for you even out here—a first edition of Balzac’s ’Père Goriot’, somewhat fly-blown and the worse for wear, but intact all the same. I won’t intrust it to the mails. I’ll bring it to you.
"I am enclosing a check for a thousand dollars. Now don’t be an idiot, however difficult that may prove. I know all you can say, and believe me it isn’t worth a damn. Use it in some way for the kids and make me feel happy out here among the wrecks and loafers of white humanity. I wish you could come out here some day and see to what creatures that once were white men will stoop just to avoid a little work. However, that’s by the way. I count on you to do as I ask or you’ll make me sore.