Barter

“ The Steinberg spider was supposed to be waiting there, coldly patient and insatiable, and Barter dreaded him. Philip had never entered the rooms, but they had an attraction for him. He accepted his companion’s invitation, and they entered the chambers together. A fire lingered in the grate, and Barter replenished it, and, having produced a box of cigars and a bottle of cognac, proffered refreshment to his guest. The honest man began somewhat to recoil from himself and from his companion. ”

“ The striking of a wax vesta at the door of the chambers, the shaky hunt for the key, the well-known obstinacy of the lock, the opening of the door, the fevered working of Bommaney’s fingers, and the flushed eagerness of his face, were all memorable to young Barter for many and many a day. They entered together the room in which their interview had taken place; and Barter, nursing the remnant of the flaming vesta, lit the gas with it, and then, dropping it on the floor, set his foot upon it, and looked at his companion. ”

“ Barter rubbed shoulders with young men—very young men they were—who would one day have handles to their names, and enjoy the control of considerable estates. He sat at the same table with men whose birth and antecedents, like those of the immortal Jeames, were shrouded in a mystery. He met men of his own position, who like himself were desperately glad of being numbered in the same club society with men eminent on the turf, or familiar in the gilded saloons of the great. ”

“ So the temptation to drop the cards upon the table, to look his companion in the face, and to ask simply, ‘How about that eight thousand pounds?’ grew more and more upon him, and had to be more and more strenuously resisted. It seemed worth while to resist it To begin with, if young Barter should be innocent, the querist could evidently expect nothing else than to be taken for a madman. ”

“ In the quiet of these legal chambers many chance noises from without had from time to time been clearly audible. He heard now a hurrying step upon the pavement of the quadrangle, and, with a palpitation at the heart, he moved swiftly to put out the light, and listened. The step stumbled at the entrance to the staircase, at the foot of which the outer door stood closed. Young Mr. Barter’s heart beat, if possible, faster than before; and the veins in his head so throbbed, that only the confining rim of his hat seemed to keep his head itself from bursting. ”

“ But there was an old friend of his, and an old friend of Brown’s into the bargain, a solicitor, keen as a needle and kindly as sunshine, one Barter, whose business chambers were in Gable Inn, and who was of all men the man he could confide in with least shame and best hope of help. He hailed a cab, and bade the driver drive his fastest. Gable Inn lay tranquil, the afternoon shadows already settling deeper on the little quadrangle than on the broad and roaring thoroughfare without. ”

“ Philip judged Barter to be a nervous man, and supposed him, even when strung to his bent, to have no great tenacity or continuance of courage. He had learned more and more to believe his father’s story, though he had perhaps too carefully guarded himself from his own eager desire to accept it Barter’s every action with the cards offered confirmation of the belief that he had taken possession of the lost notes. He was certainly a petty rascal, and there was obviously nothing but opportunity needed to make him bloom into a rascal on a larger scale. ”

“ Barter’s limited accomplishments as almost any man alive.
Phil’s interest in the game had grown grimly observant in the first ten minutes. Young Mr. Barter had a knack, when he shuffled the cards, of slily inclining the painted sides upwards. He had another knack of leaving an honour at the bottom. He made a false cut with fair dexterity for an amateur. ”

“ Phil, having been inspired at least with a suspicion that this engaging young man was responsible for the actual disgrace which had fallen upon Bommaney senior, always bent a grave scrutiny upon him. Barter sometimes wondered whether his new-found acquaintance’s way of looking at him were habitual or particular, but he could never solve that problem. To Barter’s nerves the glance of dispassionate analysis always seemed to ask—Did you steal those notes? and whether his mind and nerves were at accord or no made but little difference to him. ”

“ With the colossal heaving, with the strength of a demon he rocked from wall to wall of the barter-house, crashing its trappings this way and that, dragging the five backward and forward with the tremendous Viking power that was in him. ”

“ In plain English, the eight thousand pounds which had once so lightly passed from the hands of Mr. Brown to the hands of Mr. Bommaney had now passed, with just as little profit to the man who parted with them, from the hands of young Barter to the hands of Steinberg.
It was just about the time when this lingering but inevitable transaction was completed that chance led young Barter to his encounter with the son of the man whose belongings he had appropriated. Everybody knows how apt newly-made acquaintances sometimes are to renew themselves again and again. ”

“ You meet a man whom you have never seen before, see him just long enough to take a passing interest in him, and to know generally who and what he is, and you run against him on the morrow, and again on the morrow, and so on, until in a week he has grown as familiar to your thoughts as any other mere acquaintance of whose identity you may have been aware for years. This happened in the case of Philip Bommaney and younger Mr. Barter. They entered the Inn together, or left it together, or Philip ran upstairs or downstairs as Barter was in the very act of leaving or entering his chambers. ”

“ He often carried about with him, in a pocket-book, or in neat little packages of grocer’s gay paper, borne in the waistcoat-pocket, a collection of gems of considerable value, and would show them to his intimates with the insouciance of a man who was accustomed to handling things of price. He never was without money, made little journeys at times, which rarely took him away from town for more than a day or two, and was, almost always, wholly unoccupied except for the cards.
Now young Barter had a prodigious idea of this gentleman’s astuteness. ”

“ These descriptions, written many years ago, with others at hand not necessary to repeat, apply well to the trade-rat of the Rocky Mountains, save that they do not mention the creature's curious habit of barter.
I have already spoken of their great strength and celerity of movements. To an observer these traits are a never-failing surprise. If a light is steadily burning and all is quiet, they are easily watched, darting back and forth, carrying goods each way—round trip, so to speak, and often long trips. ”

“ Phil in the morning?’
‘Yes, go, James,’ said Bommaney, sobbing outright by this time. ‘Perhaps—perhaps he may believe me.’
V
When young Mr. Barter took time to think about things, he began, for more reasons than one, to be sorry. It is necessary for the due development of this history to go back a little, and to take up Mr. Barter on the day following the commission of his crime. The young man felt that he was unable to afford candour, and discreetly avoided the naming of his own action. Eight thousand pounds is a sum which most people would find tempting. Young Mr. ”

“ THE BARTER-HOUSE "LISTEN for the end of the dance, Lance," reminded Taylor as, half an hour later, he slipped over the rail of the Star of the Sea into his dory. "And watch for the two boats and don't lose a second. The thing must be done in a flash before Marie is missed. It's a good job I stowed my made fish aboard as they came from old Peter's flakes. The Graywing is ready for the sea except for some light tackle that I'm going up to the barter-house to get."
"Better be careful," cautioned Lance in farewell. "It's a drunken gang Peter has ashore. I'll do my part, all right. ”

“ Barter, recognising the fact that his own purpose was already exposed, made a desperate dash.
‘About those notes old Bommaney was supposed to have run away with. I think—I think, mind you, that if there was any way of using them, I could lay my hands upon them.’
‘I remember,’ said Steinberg, ‘you said something of the kind last night. I shouldn’t advise you to touch ‘em. It’s a dangerous game. They’re very worthless, and the game isn’t worth the candle.’
‘Worthless?’ echoed Barter. ”

“ No––has he an operating room where all sound can be shut out? I’ve got a hunch I’d like somehow to try and drop a screen around us as we work. Maybe your dad would know what to do. You see, I’m positive that Barter sees everything we do and if he sees me turning into an ape he would just chuckle and pass up the trap. ”

“ What could he do? There was no way open, so far as young Mr. Barter could see, and he was wonderfully engaging and innocent of the world’s wickeder ways as he talked thus with the ablest of his fellow professionals.
The fellow professionals cited cases. There was Rosenthal, a noted receiver in his day, to whom a dishonest clerk had sold five thousand pounds for five hundred. Rosenthal had held the notes for six years, and had then put them cautiously on the Continental market. He was an old hand, was Rosenthal, and very clever and leary, but they had bowled him out. ”

“ But this I know full well,—if all men should carry their own private troubles to market for barter with their neighbours, not one but when he had looked into the troubles of other men would be right glad to carry home again what he had brought. ”

“ One evening, I had got my chair on the green before the door, and was watching the sun as he set in a blaze of gold. 'And oh!' exclaimed I, 'soon must I set like thee, fair luminary;—when I am interrupted by a stifled sigh, just behind me. I turn. Heaven and earth! who should be leaning over me, with looks of unutterable love, but—Stuart! In an instant, I see him, I shriek, I run, I leap into his arms.——
Unfortunate leap; for it wakened me from a delicious reverie, and I found myself in the arms,—not of Stuart,—but of the old butler! ”

“ His lordship sprang into the closet, and closed the door.
'I can hear no tidings of your father,' said Stuart, entering the room. 'I have searched every hotel in Town, and I really fear that some accident——'
'Mercy upon me! who's here?' cried his lordship from the closet. 'As I hope to be saved, the place is full of people. Let me go; whoever the devil you are, let me go!'
'Take that—and that—and that:—you poor, pitiful, fortune-hunting play-actor!' vociferated the landlady, buffetting him about. ”

“ John Barrett was a villain; also a vulgar man.
"The proof of the pudding is in the eating," he said. "If I haven't seemed to love you, why—I haven't."
And he grinned; it was not by any means a smile. She shuddered as if those hands of his, made for gripping great burdens, had closed on a vital nerve that ran to her heart. She turned away, veiling her eyes with her hand. Surely it was strange that a man could give up such beauty!
"And will you defend him?" she asked in a whisper.
"If you love him,", said Barrett, "I shall set him free for you. Good night, Elizabeth!" ”

“ Barty modestly disclaimed all pretensions, and said he was only an art student—a painter.
"All the arts are brothers," said the signore, and the little signorina stole her hand into Barty's and left it there.
[Pg 194] "Listen," said the signore; "why not arrange to live together, you and we? I hate throwing away money on mere pomposity and grandiosity and show. We always take a little furnished apartment, elle et moi. Then I go and buy provisions, bon marché—and she cooks them—and we have our meals better than at the hotel and at half the price! ”

“ About two o'clock, the breeze freshening, the Faithful Friend changed her course and we with her, and for two hours we ran west, though the wind had been more prosperous for making south. Yet did the black ship follow us in the course persistently as in the other, keeping always the same distance in our wake. Then did Sir Bartlemy signal us to open all our ports for the guns to play, and to stand every man to his post, which we did very cheerfully and as smartly as ever the company on the Faithful Friend did. ”

“ And after dinner we talked of Barty—she with that delightful frankness that always characterized her through life, I am told:
"Dear Barty Josselin! how desperately in love I was with that man, to be sure! Everybody was—he might have thrown the handkerchief as he pleased in Riffrath, I can tell you, Sir Robert! He was the handsomest man I ever saw, and wore a black pork‐pie hat and a little yellow Vandyck beard and mustache; just the color of Turkish tobacco, like his hair! All that sounds odd now, doesn't it? Fashions have changed—but not for the better! ”

“ Barty, I will never doubt you again, and we will do great things together. They will not be quite what I used to hope, but they will be worth doing, and all the doing will be yours. All I can do is to set your brains in motion—those innocent brains that don't know their own strength any more than a herd of bullocks which any little butcher boy can drive to the slaughter-house. ”

“ He had seen the deformed look of the gray’s head [Pg 13] straighten out as Bart drew near; the red flame of the eye die down. Bart had something on him—a new feel with a horse.
‘I belong to the old school,’ he muttered. ‘All we know is that a hoss has to be broke; that a hoss is ruined that once gets his own way. Bart ain’t a part of that. He makes a hoss forget his own way. He gives him his courage back. But it’s disobedience—I dasn’t let Bart get away with it. They’d think I was crazy—if I didn’t get rid of the rat-tail.’
Mort Cotton took the old outlaw back to the Cup Q as a led-horse. ”