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fellow." Clay told the story of the fifty-five-dollar suit that I. Bernstein had wished on him with near-tears of regret at parting from it. The cowpuncher dramatized the situation with some native talent for mimicry. His arms gestured like the lifted wings of a startled cockerel. "A man gets a chance at a garment like that only once in a while occasionally. Which you can take it from me that when I. Bernstein sells a suit of clothes it is shust like he is dealing with his own brother. Qvality, my friendts, qvality! Why, I got anyhow a suit which I might be married in without shame, un'erstan' me." Colin Whitford was of the West himself. He had lived its rough-and-tumble life for years before he made his lucky strike in the Bird Cage. He had moved from Colorado to New York only ten years before. The sound of Clay's drawling voice was like a message from home. He began to grin in spite of himself. This man was too good to be true. It wasn't possible that anybody could come to the big town and import into it so na�vely such a genuine touch of the outdoor West. It was not possible, but it had happened just the same. Of course Manhattan would soon take the color out of him. It always did out of everybody. The city was so big, so overpowering, so individual itself, that it tolerated no individuality in its citizens. Whitford had long since become a conformist. He was willing to bet a hat that this big brown Arizonan would eat out of the city's hand within a week. In the meantime he wanted to be among those present while the process of taming the wild man took place. Long before the cowpuncher had finished his story of hog-tying the Swede to a hitching-post with his own hose, the mining man was sealed of the large tribe of Clay Lindsay's admirers. He was ready to hide him from all the police in New York. Whitford told Stevens to bring in the fifty-five-dollar suit so that he could gloat over it. He let out a whoop of delight at sight of its still sodden appearance. He examined its sickly hue with chuckles of mirth. "Guaranteed not to fade or shrink," murmured Clay sadly. He managed to get the coat on with difficulty. The sleeves reached just below his elbows. "You look like a lifer from Sing Sing," pronounced Whitford joyously. "Get a hair-cut, and you won't have a chance on earth to fool the police." "The color did run and fade some," admitted Clay. "Worth every cent of nine ninety-eight at a bargain sale before the Swede got busy with it--and he let you have it at a sacrifice for fifty-five dollars!" The millionaire wept happy tears as a climax of his rapture. He swallowed his cigar smoke and had to be pounded on the back by his daughter. "Would you mind getting yore man to wrop it up for me? I'm goin' to have a few pleasant words with I. Bernstein," said Clay with mock mournfulness. "When?" asked Whitford promptly. "Never you mind when, sah. I'm not issuin' any tickets of admission. It's goin' to be a strictly private entertainment." "Are you going to take a water hose along?" "That's right," reproached Clay. "Make fun of me because I'm a stranger and come right from the alfalfa country." He turned to Beatrice cheerfully. "O' course he bit me good and proper. I'm green. But I'll bet he loses that smile awful quick when he sees me again." "You're not going to--" "Me, I'm the gentlest citizen in Arizona. Never in trouble. Always peaceable and quiet. Don't you get to thinkin' me a bad-man, for I ain't." Jenkins came to the door and announced "Mr. Bromfield." Almost on his heels a young man in immaculate riding-clothes sauntered into the room. He had the assured ease of one who has the run of the house. Miss Whitford introduced the two young men and Bromfield looked the Westerner over with a suave insolence in his dark, handsome eyes. Clay recognized him immediately. He had shaken hands once before with this well-satisfied young man, and on that occasion a fifty-dollar bill had passed from one to the other. The New Yorker evidently did not know him. It became apparent at once that Bromfield had called to go riding in the Park with Miss Whitford. That young woman came up to say good-bye to her new acquaintance. "Will you be here when I get back?" "Not if our friends outside give me a chance for a getaway," he told her. Her bright, unflinching eyes looked into his. "You'll come again and let us know how you escaped," she invited. . . . . . . .
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Sir Thomas can't get rid of. Bat made it his base. He sent down the banquet in two motor lorries--dinner for five hundred and drinks for ten thousand. Huckley voted all right. Don't you make any mistake about that. No vote, no dinner. A unanimous vote--exactly as I've said. At least, the Rector and the Doctor were the only dissentients. We didn't count them. Oh yes, Sir Thomas was there. He came and grinned at us through his park gates. He'll grin worse to-day. There's an aniline dye that you rub through a stencil-plate that eats about a foot into any stone and wears good to the last. Bat had both the lodge-gates stencilled "The Earth _is_ flat!" and all the barns and walls they could get at.... Oh Lord, but Huckley was drunk! We had to fill 'em up to make 'em forgive us for not being aeroplanes. Unthankful yokels! D'you realise that Emperors couldn't have commanded the talent Bat decanted on 'em? Why, 'Dal alone was.... And by eight o'clock not even a bit of paper left! The whole show packed up and gone, and Huckley hoo-raying for the earth being flat.' 'Very good,' I began. 'I am, as you know, a one-third proprietor of _The Bun_.' 'I didn't forget that,' Ollyett interrupted. 'That was uppermost in my mind all the time. I've got a special account for _The Bun_ to-day--it's an idyll--and just to show how I thought of you, I told 'Dal, coming home, about your Gubby Dance, and she told Winnie. Winnie came back in our char-�-banc. After a bit we had to get out and dance it in a field. It's quite a dance the way we did it--and Lafone invented a sort of gorilla lockstep procession at the end. Bat had sent down a film-chap on the chance of getting something. He was the son of a clergyman--a most dynamic personality. He said there isn't anything for the cinema in meetings _qua_ meetings--they lack action. Films are a branch of art by themselves. But he went wild over the Gubby. He said it was like Peter's vision at Joppa. He took about a million feet of it. Then I photoed it exclusive for _The Bun_. I've sent 'em in already, only remember we must eliminate Winnie's left leg in the first figure. It's too arresting.... And there you are! But I tell you I'm afraid of Bat. That man's the Personal Devil. He did it all. He didn't even come down himself. He said he'd distract his people.' 'Why didn't he ask me to come?' I persisted. 'Because he said you'd distract me. He said he wanted my brains on ice. He got 'em. I believe it's the best thing I've ever done.' He reached for _The Cake_ and re-read it luxuriously. 'Yes, out and away the best--supremely quotable,' he concluded, and--after another survey--'By God, what a genius I was yesterday!' I would have been angry, but I had not the time. That morning, Press agencies grovelled to me in _The Bun_ office for leave to use certain photos, which, they understood, I controlled, of a certain village dance. When I had sent the fifth man away on the edge of tears, my self-respect came back a little. Then there was _The Bun's_ poster to get out. Art being elimination, I fined it down to two words (one too many, as it proved)--'The Gubby!' in red, at which our manager protested; but by five o'clock he told me that I was _the_ Napoleon of Fleet Street. Ollyett's account in _The Bun_ of the Geoplanarians' Exercises and Love Feast lacked the supreme shock of his version in _The Cake_, but it bruised more; while the photos of 'The Gubby' (which, with Winnie's left leg, was why I had set the doubtful press to work so early) were beyond praise and, next day, beyond price. But even then I did not understand. A week later, I think it was, Bat Masquerier telephoned to me to come to the Trefoil. 'It's your turn now,' he said. 'I'm not asking Ollyett. Come to the stage-box.' I went, and, as Bat's guest, was received as Royalty is not. We sat well back and looked out on the packed thousands. It was _Morgiana and Drexel_, that fluid and electric review which Bat--though he gave Lafone the credit--really created. 'Ye-es,' said Bat dreamily, after Morgiana had given 'the nasty jar' to the Forty Thieves in their forty oil 'combinations.' 'As you say, I've got 'em and I can hold 'em. What a man does doesn't matter much; and how he does it don't matter either. It's the _when_--the psychological moment. 'Press can't make up for it; money can't; brains can't. A lot's luck, but all the rest is genius. I'm not speaking about My people now. I'm talking of Myself.' Then 'Dal--she was the only one who dared--knocked at the door and stood behind us all alive and panting as Morgiana. Lafone was carrying the police-court scene, and the house was ripped up crossways with laughter. 'Ah! Tell a fellow now,' she asked me for the twentieth time, 'did you love Nellie Farren when you were young?' 'Did we love her?' I answered. '"If the earth and the sky and the sea"--There were three million of us, 'Dal, and we worshipped her.' 'How did she get it across?' Dal went on. 'She was Nellie. The houses used to coo over her when she came on.' 'I've had a good deal, but I've never been cooed over yet,' said 'Dal wistfully. 'It isn't the how, it's the when,' Bat repeated. 'Ah!' He leaned forward as the house began to rock and peal full-throatedly.. . . . . . .
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appeared men without nerves and without fear, as though upheld by some overwhelming power or carried in the hollow of some superhuman hand. The captain, a sad-eyed, strong-featured American, was cartooned in the papers as "Gloomy Gus" (the pessimistic hero of the comic supplement). Some sea-captain recognized the _Energon_ as the yacht _Scud_, once owned by Merrivale of the New York Yacht Club. With this clue it was soon ascertained that the _Scud_ had disappeared several years before. The agent who sold her reported the purchaser to be merely another agent, a man he had seen neither before nor since. The yacht had been reconstructed at Duffey's Shipyard in New Jersey. The change in her name and registry occurred at that time and had been legally executed. Then the _Energon_ had disappeared in the shroud of mystery. In the meantime, Bassett was going crazy--at least his friends and business associates said so. He kept away from his vast business enterprises and said that he must hold his hands until the other masters of the world could join with him in the reconstruction of society--proof indubitable that Goliah's bee had entered his bonnet. To reporters he had little to say. He was not at liberty, he said, to relate what he had seen on Palgrave Island; but he could assure them that the matter was serious, the most serious thing that had ever happened. His final word was that, the world was on the verge of a turnover, for good or ill he did not know, but, one way or the other, he was absolutely convinced that the turnover was coming. As for business, business could go hang. He had seen things, he had, and that was all there was to it. There was a great telegraphing, during this period, between the local Federal officials and the state and war departments at Washington. A secret attempt was made late one afternoon to board the _Energon_ and place the captain under arrest--the Attorney-General having given the opinion that the captain could be held for the murder of the ten "statesmen." The government launch was seen to leave Meigg's Wharf and steer for the _Energon_, and that was the last ever seen of the launch and the men on board of it. The government tried to keep the affair hushed up, but the cat was slipped out of the bag by the families of the missing men, and the papers were filled with monstrous versions of the affair. The government now proceeded to extreme measures. The battleship _Alaska_ was ordered to capture the strange yacht, or, failing that, to sink her. These were secret instructions; but thousands of eyes, from the water front and from the shipping in the harbour, witnessed what happened that afternoon. The battleship got under way and steamed slowly toward the _Energon_. At half a mile distant the battleship blew up--simply blew up, that was all, her shattered frame sinking to the bottom of the bay, a riff-raff of wreckage and a few survivors strewing the surface. Among the survivors was a young lieutenant who had had charge of the wireless on board the _Alaska_. The reporters got hold of him first, and he talked. No sooner had the _Alaska_ got under way, he said, than a message was received from the _Energon_. It was in the international code, and it was a warning to the _Alaska_ to come no nearer than half a mile. He had sent the message, through the speaking tube, immediately to the captain. He did not know anything more, except that the _Energon_ twice repeated the message and that five minutes afterward the explosion occurred. The captain of the _Alaska_ had perished with his ship, and nothing more was to be learned. The _Energon_, however, promptly hoisted anchor and cleared out to sea. A great clamour was raised by the papers; the government was charged with cowardice and vacillation in its dealings with a mere pleasure yacht and a lunatic who called himself "Goliah," and immediate and decisive action was demanded. Also, a great cry went up about the loss of life, especially the wanton killing of the ten "statesmen." Goliah promptly replied. In fact, so prompt was his reply that the experts in wireless telegraphy announced that, since it was impossible to send wireless messages so great a distance, Goliah was in their very midst and not on Palgrave Island. Goliah's letter was delivered to the Associated Press by a messenger boy who had been engaged on the street. The letter was as follows: "What are a few paltry lives? In your insane wars you destroy millions of lives and think nothing of it. In your fratricidal commercial struggle you kill countless babes, women, and men, and you triumphantly call the shambles 'individualism.' I call it anarchy. I am going to put a stop to your wholesale destruction of human beings. I want laughter, not slaughter. Those of you who stand in the way of laughter will get slaughter. "Your government is trying to delude you into believing that the destruction of the _Alaska_ was an accident. Know here and now that it was by my orders that the _Alaska_ was destroyed. In a few short months, all battleships on all seas will be destroyed or flung to the scrap-heap, and all nations shall disarm; fortresses shall be dismantled, armies disbanded, and warfare shall cease from the earth. Mine is the power. I am the will of God. The whole world shall be in vassalage to me, but it shall be a vassalage of peace. "I am "GOLIAH." "Blow Palgrave Island out of the water!" was the head-line retort of the newspapers. The government was of the same frame of mind, and the assembling of the fleets began. Walter Bassett broke out in ineffectual protest, but was swiftly silenced by the threat of a lunacy commission. Goliah remained silent. Against Palgrave Island five great fleets were hurled--the Asiatic Squadron, the South Pacific Squadron, the North Pacific Squadron, the Caribbean Squadron, and half of the North Atlantic Squadron, the two latter coming through the Panama Canal. . . . . . . .
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