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This closed the transaction, so far as we were concerned. A year passed two of them, in fact during which time no news of any kind reached us of the lighthouse. Mawkum kept the duplicate blue-print of the elevation tacked on the wall over his desk to show our clients the wide range of our business, and I would now and then try to translate the newspapers which Lawton sent by every mail.
This was a roll of plans concealed in a tin case the identical package which Mawkum had handed the "Bunch of Dried Garlic" months before, together with a document stamped, restamped and stamped again, containing an order in due form, signed "Carlos Onativia," for a lighthouse to be erected on the "Garra de Lobo" this last was in red ink with shipping directions, etc., etc.
He had spent the previous three weeks in elaborating the plans and specifications for a caisson to be used under a bridge pier our client assuring him that he had, to use his own words, "a dead sure thing on the award." When the bids were opened, Mawkum congratulated him on his foresight and offered to attend the funeral in a body, the client's bid being some thirty per cent too high.
Mawkum, my chief draftsman when you have only one it is best to label him "Chief" to your clients; they think the others are off building bridges for foreign governments, or lunching at Delmonico's with railroad presidents my chief draftsman, I say, occupies the room opening into mine.
The Tampico had come and gone, and had come again. Its arrivals, and departures were, as usual, always commented upon by Mawkum, generally in connection with "That Bunch of Dried Garlic," that being the irreverent way in which he spoke of his ivory-tinted Excellency. Otherwise the lighthouse, and all that pertained to it, had become ancient history.
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