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"Impossible! That infernal young scoundrel put it over me? Preposterous! Why, Mike Murphy was on the job. Get out, Matt, and don't come in here again today throwing scares into the old man." Nevertheless, Cappy's confidence in human nature was badly jarred when Captain Michael J. Murphy was announced two hours later.
Skinner, his general manager and the president of the Ricks Lumber & Logging Company, would send a list of the timbers, planking, and so on required, to one of Cappy's sawmills in Washington; for Cappy had a theory the good Lord knows why or where acquired that Douglas fir from the state of Washington was better for shipbuilding purposes than Douglas fir grown in Oregon.
When Cappy Ricks got that telegram he flew into a rage and refused to believe Matt Peasley's statement until he had first called up a dealer in hides and confirmed it. The entire office staff wondered all that day what made Cappy so savage. By the following day, however, Cappy's naturally optimistic nature had reasserted itself.
Michael J. Murphy, however, did not turn to see her disappear; he was gazing, instead, at a thin red trickle that came from under Cappy's cap band and was running down his wizened neck. "Mr. Ricks," he said anxiously, "you're wounded." Cappy rubbed the sore spot, and when he withdrew his fingers they were bloody. "By the Holy Pink-Toed Prophet!" he gasped wonderingly. "You're right, Mike.
William E. Peck and he desires to see you personally." Cappy sighed. "Very well," he replied. "Have him shown in." Almost immediately the office boy ushered Mr. Peck into Cappy's presence.
"Hum-m-m! Catch me on a yacht!" Cappy's tones were indicative of profound disgust. "Ricks, you're a kill-joy," old Gurney struck in. "All you think of is making money, and you've made so much of it I should think the game would have palled on you long ago. I tell Joey to go it while he's young while he has the capacity for enjoyment."
In the brief interval required to accomplish the journey from the door of the Merchants' Exchange to a telephone booth a flock of bright ideas capered through Cappy's ingenious head like goats on a tin roof. "Main 2000!" he barked, and in five seconds he had the connection. "Put Skinner on the line!" Cappy's own private exchange operator had the temerity to inform him that Mr.
Even had Cappy overlooked that suspicious clause in the charter, because of his age, Matt Peasley's youth and practical maritime knowledge should have offset Cappy's error; and even if both had erred, there still remained the matchless Skinner, as suspicious as a burglar, as keen as a razor, as infallible as a chronometer.
My house is big enough for three, isn't it?" "But this thing of living with your wife's relations " Matt began mischievously, until he saw the pain and the loneliness in Cappy's kind old eyes. "Oh, well," he hastened to add, "pull it off to suit yourself; but don't waste any time." "In-fer-nal young scoundrel!" Cappy cried happily. "We've waited too long already."
Captain Noah Kendall, Matt's predecessor on the Retriever, had been raised on clipper ships and as he grew old had allowed himself the luxury of a third mate, to which arrangement Cappy Ricks, having a certain affection for Captain Noah, had never made any objection; but something whispered to Matt Peasley that the quickest route to Cappy's heart would be via a short payroll, so he concluded to dispense with a third mate and tack ten dollars a month extra on the pay-check of the excellent Murphy.
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