Free The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge by Robert J. Pearsall Page A

“Consolidated Air Power! Is that what you’re carping about?”
    My tone roused Sanderson from his lethargy; he turned on me in a flash.
    “Yes. Why? Do you know—”
    “Why, of course. Why didn’t you tell me before? For a man to have fortune thrust upon him and then go weeping over it!”
    It was touching how the old man caught at my words.
    “What’s that? Don’t be joking, man.”
    “It’s you that’s the joke. No wonder Damron wouldn’t let you tell everybody; it’s too good a thing to let everybody in on. Wasn’t that what he told you?”
    “Yes, but— On your word of honor,” cried Sanderson, gripping my arm, “is it all right?”
    “On my word of honor,” I replied, “your brother-in-law is no more nor less than a pneu-alchemist. You said it yourself; he’s turning air into money. The man who’s selling Consolidated Air Power is the man I want to meet. I haven’t your amount of money, and maybe five thousand is too little for Damron to monkey with, but it’s five thousand spot cash. As a friend of mine, won’t you help manage it?”
    Of course, Sanderson’s reaction from despair threw him into a mood that made him willing to promise me anything.
    A crook in the company of his dupe rarely encourages other acquaintances; so it was only natural that Damron had so far held aloof from his fellow passengers. That afternoon I met him formally, however, and, though Sanderson would not confess to him that he had told me anything about Consolidated Air Power, he had no objection to telling Damron confidentially that I had five thousand dollars loose cash that I was anxious to invest.
    I smiled inwardly as I noticed how Damron’s interest in me quickened after he had that information. Still it was two days before the dénouement came which I planned, notwithstanding that I always did my best in our conversations to play the financial simpleton. Despite that crooked twist in his soul of which his twist-lipped smile was the outward symbol, Damron was a very clever man. It was hard to make him believe that I was the sort of trustful bird for which the Air Power net had been laid.
    But I relied upon his cupidity and merely went on playing the simpleton—except for one preparatory step that I took the same day Sanderson told me how he had been fleeced. That afternoon I took a bundle of very useful keys I always carry with me, on the principle that an honest man has the right to all the facilities used by thieves, and with one of them I opened the door of Damron’s stateroom. When I came out, I was quite sure I had left everything behind quite as it should be.
    It was the second evening thereafter, in Sanderson’s stateroom, that Damron introduced to me the stock of Consolidated Air Power. We had just had dinner together, a very congenial trio. After we had entered the stateroom, Damron excused himself for a moment, as I had expected he would, and, through the one wall that separated us, we heard him stirring around for a moment in his own cabin.
    He began to talk on the subject of investments immediately upon his return.
    BREATH of violets! Mingled somewhat with clover, fragrance of the meadow and hillside. Surely there could be nothing in the mild and gentle reminder of Springtime that began to pervade the air of the stateroom to cause Damron, launched in the full flood of eloquence, to hesitate, pale, waver in his speech and show every sign of a man distraught by a sudden and mastering fear.
    He had taken his seat on the side of the cabin opposite the wall of his own stateroom. Sanderson sat near the berth; I had brought a camp-stool in from the deck and sat with my back against the door. The ship was running on a very even keel; if it hadn’t been for the vibrations of the screw and the rhythm of the pistons, we might have fancied ourselves back in the big world again instead of on that detached fragment of it known as the Antioch.
    And up to a certain point Damron’s talk helped to complete the