Where Your Treasure Is. Holman Day
confess with some shame that during my hiding in the city, while I was tucked away in that boarding-house room, my chief regret was not that I was out of a job, was not that I had battered the face of my employer, but was because I could not go out and swell around the streets and the amusement places wearing that suit and looking that picture of myself which had been the ideal that lulled me to sleep every night during my boyhood.
I was having some of those dreams while I sat there and gazed up at the ceiling. At last a big dream had come true. I owned that suit and I knew I looked mighty well in it. I had put in a good many hours in front of the looking-glass making sure of that fact. But now that I owned it I was getting none of the thrills and but little of the satisfaction I had looked forward to. Realized ambitions in my case—and probably it’s true in most cases—have always seemed to have a lot of discomforting tag-ends tied to them. I was practically a prisoner in a dingy room, I could not go out and sport around in my new regalia, and Jodrey Vose, who had undertaken to make a man of me, was sitting across the table, scowling at me with a great deal of disfavor.
“Have you taken up drinking along with the rest, young Sidney?”
“No, sir; and I never shall. I’m sure of that, sir.”
“What are you going to do next?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’d better go back to Levant.”
“I’ll never do that.”
“Dod writes that your uncle has been enlarging his business and is making a lot of money and is going to run for town office. He must need a chap like you and has probably forgotten any little trouble he might have had with you.”
But I shook my head.
“You don’t expect me to do anything more for you, do you?”
Again I shook my head. That homesick feeling was swelling up once more.
“I hear that they are fitting out another Cocos Island expedition to hunt for the Peru treasure-ship. You might be able to sign on there. But it’s a fake job. There’s no sunken ship. However, you’ll get wages.”
“I believe I’ll try the Pacific coast, sir.”
He slid his forefinger back and forth slowly under his nose.
“It might do, son. I have thought of the same jump, myself. I have waited now till I’m too old. What started me thinking about it some years ago was the Golden Gate proposition. What troubled me about making up my mind was that some said the treasure had been got out of her and others said there was some guesswork. Nobody seemed to be willing to produce any proof that the treasure was still there. Looking back, I can see now why all interested parties would naturally rather have it thought that the treasure wasn’t there. But when a fellow like me has his living to make he doesn’t want to take too many chances. And the one job I did go on sickened me of treasure-hunting on somebody’s guesswork.”
He was silent for a time.
“I am sorry you are in your scrape, young Sidney. You’re done for as a diver in these parts for a time. Try the Pacific. I don’t say it’s a bad idea.” He grinned at me. “If you recover the Golden Gate treasure drop me a postal card.”
Then he went away, making no more ado about the matter of our parting. I was not surprised by that manner of leave-taking. I am a Yankee myself, and I had found myself wishing that when he went he would walk off without jawing me or coddling me.
I counted my money and sent out for some railroad folders and trailed my finger across the map—and stayed right on in the city, week after week. I don’t know exactly what I had lost—ambition or pluck or what it was! But that was a spell in my life when I was a plumb, square loafer, and rather enjoyed myself—reading cheap novels and playing solitaire in the daytime, then getting in with some of the rest of the boarders and playing poker evenings. In Levant we used to play for beans in barn-chambers. I had a country boy’s shrewdness in that game, and the city fellows did not get much of my money away from me; nor did I get any particular amount of theirs.
However, the pastime did bring me into touch with some sporting characters and with some queer characters, too. There were men who were hiding the same as I was. The fact that I was under cover gave me open sesame to their confidence. They talked a great deal, whiling away dull hours in the day. Several were in the house where I was stopping, and after a time I dared to go visiting around a bit evenings and went along to other houses, in the locality.
It was all new to me, this “flash” side of fife, and I listened to their stories with eyes and mouth open. I conceived an idea of writing out these stories into a book, and after I got back into my room nights I would jot down all I had heard, names and all. I had all the nicknames of operators down pat—those names rather fascinated me. There were names which were based on personal peculiarities or blemishes or system of operating. I found out that a great many of the parties were linked, either by relationship or by gang ties, and that the wise boys among the crooks or the police officers could tell in many cases just what crowd had operated, providing the identity of one man could be revealed. I reckon I calculated in those times that I was going to make an exposé, for I made many notes about the different coteries and their associates.
I will say at this point that I have no intention of writing such a book, and I have gone into a bit of detail about the matter in order that certain following activities of mine may be understood. Otherwise, I might, later on, be thought to be advertising myself as one of those know-it-all and do-it-all heroes of fiction instead of a plain and ordinary chap who has been swayed by circumstance and governed by accident in large measure.
But I did get a lot of fresh and lively information out of those chaps with whom I was thrown in.
After a time they were not at all bashful about asking me if I wouldn’t like a lay in some of their operations.
They frankly said that they had the best luck in country communities. Understand that they proposed nothing except brace games! No safe-breakers in that lot! They said I had an honest way about me that would take well in the country districts.
My money was getting so low I listened with increasing interest. I cannot say that I was tempted, exactly. But I was beginning to wonder how I was ever going to make a go of it if I didn’t get some money. My Pacific trip was all off by that time! My capital had shrunk below the price of a ticket.
They told me that a regular village skinflint with lots of money was, in most cases, a prime victim if the right bait was offered; with the right bait he bit more easily than the more liberal kind of an individual, because the skinflint was more crazy to make money fast and was already used to getting high rates of interest for all money he let out. They were making constant search for old chaps in country communities, well-to-do men who would be tempted to grab at a rich chance or could be induced to serve as decoys to pull in the neighbors, provided a sufficient rake-off were offered.
There, too, was another thing which surprised me—that so often really prominent men could be secured as decoys. The knaves I was training with gave me a lot of stories of the kind; in most cases, so they said, the men seemed to talk themselves into believing that they were offering the neighbors an opportunity to make money.
If I had not been idle and very curious, and all the time wondering how I could make a little money for myself, a lot of this would have gone into one ear and out of the other.. But I was in the mood to take it all in, and so, in that foolish belief that I could write a story, I set down many names and many instances until I had well filled a sheaf of papers which I sewed together into a sort of note-book.
There were various side-lines of the craft of cheaters where I was allowed to be an observer. I watched one of the chaps make up his face for a trip and learned about false beards attached by spirit gum. There was a cute little mustache in his kit and I asked him to affix it to my upper lip. He allowed me to keep it on when I asked permission.
I felt so much confidence in that alteration of my features that