"I'm glad, very glad!" she cried, catching his enthusiasm, her mind for the first time occupying itself seriously with the mechanism of the deal. At first, when he had been explaining, she had not thrown off the impression that he had been drinking, and so had paid little attention to his explanations. "It sounds like magic. Tell me again--how you did it."

Nothing loath, he went over it again, making clear the double clouding of the t.i.tles.

But Nan, being much alone, had the habit, shared with few women of that time, of reading the newspapers. She had followed Rowlee's campaign, and she had taken seriously the editor's diatribes, Rowlee had been talking for effect. The ideals of ultimate civic honesty were yet fifty years in the future, but he had stumbled on their principle. Nan's mind, untrained in any business ethics, caught them; and her sure natural instincts had accepted their essential justice. In recognizing Milton's connection as promoter with just this deal, she was suddenly called upon to make adjustments for which there was no time. She knew Milton would do nothing wrong, and yet--he was waiting in triumph for her response.

"It was very clever. And yet, somehow, it doesn't sound right--" she puzzled, "Are you sure it's honest?"

"Honest?" he snorted, halted in mid-career, "Of course it's honest! Why isn't it honest?"

Confronted with the direct question, she really did not know. She groped, proffering tentatively some of the arguments half remembered from Rowlee's editorial columns. But she confronted now a lawyer, sure of himself. Keith explosively, and contemptuously demolished her contentions. Everything was absolutely legal, every step of it. If a man hadn't a right to buy in property at any sale and sell it again where he wanted, where in thunder was our boasted liberty? Just the kind of fool notion women get! Keith in his honest pride and triumph had come for sympathy and admiration. Turned back on himself, he became vaguely resentful, and shortly left the house.

Hardly had the front door closed after him when Nan burst into tears.

She had not meant it to come out that way at all. Of course she had had no real thought that Milton would do anything dishonest; how absurd of him to take it that way! She had simply expressed a queer instinctive thought that had flashed across her mind; and now she could not for the life of her guess how she had come to do so. Miserably and pa.s.sionately she realized that she had bungled it.

XXVI

But if Keith missed the appreciation of his triumph at home, he received full meed of it downtown. In a corner of the Empire a dozen of the biggest men in town were gathered. They were Sam Brannan; Palmer, of Palmer, Cook & Co.; Colonel E. D. Baker, the original "silver-tongued orator"; d.i.c.k Blatchford, the contractor; Judge Terry, of the Supreme Court; oily, coa.r.s.e Ned McGowan; Nugent and Rowlee, editors, and some others. They were doing an exceedingly important part of their daily business: sipping their late afternoon c.o.c.ktails.

Calhoun Bennett joined them.

"Little item of news to interest you-all," drawled the Southerner.

"I've just come down from the recorder's office. The deeds for the water lots have just been recorded." He paused.

"Have a drink, Cal," urged d.i.c.k Blatchford, "and sit down. What of it?"

"They were recorded in the names of Malcolm Neil and young Keith. I'll have a c.o.c.ktail."

"That so? Pretty shaky t.i.tle. Which sale did they record under?"

"Both!" said Bennett.

He stood until he saw that the significance of this had soaked in; then he drew out a chair and sat down. Ned McGowan chuckled hoa.r.s.ely.

"Pretty slick!" said he. "Wonder some of us didn't think of that! I suppose they went around and scared the purchasers until they got them, pretty cheap. Trust old Neil to drive a bargain!"

But Palmer, the banker, who had been thinking, here spoke up:

"The purchasers were undoubtedly their agents," he surmised quietly.

"By G.o.d, you're right!" cried Terry. "Old Malcolm is certainly the devil without a tail!"

"Speak of him and you get him," remarked Colonel Baker, pointing out Neil, who had just entered.

They raised a shout at him, until finally the old man, reluctantly and crabbedly, sidled over to join them.

"You're discovered, old fox!" cried Terry; "and the outraged dignity of the law demands a drink."

They plied him with half-facetious, half-envious congratulations. But Neil would have none of them.

"Not my scheme," he growled. "Entirely Keith's. I'm a sleeping partner only. He engineered it all, thought of it all, dragged me in."

"You must have made a good thing out of it, Mr. Neil," suggested Palmer respectfully.

The formidable old man eyed the speaker grumpily for a moment.

"About a quarter million, cool, between us," he vouchsafed finally. He was, for some reason, willing to brag a bit.

This statement was received in admiring silence by all but Terry.

Everybody but that devil-may-care and lawless pillar of the law was afraid of Neil. But Terry would joke with anybody.

"I hope you're going to let him have a little of it, Neil," he laughed.

The old man shifted his eyes from Palmer to Terry with much the air of restraining heavy guns. Terry met the impact untroubled.

"Judge," grunted the financier at last, "that young man will get his due share. He has tied me up in a contract that even your honoured court would find difficulty in breaking."

With this parting shot he arose and stumped out.

"If Malcolm Neil acknowledges he is tied up," observed Terry, who had not been in the slightest degree disturbed, "he is certainly tied up!"

"Consider the man who tied him," begged Colonel Baker. "He must, in the language of the poets, be a lallapaloozer."

"He's worth getting hold of," said d.i.c.k Blatchford.

Therefore, when, a little later, Keith appeared, he was hailed jovially, and invited to drink. Everybody was very cordial. Within five minutes he was hail fellow with them all, joking with the most august of them on terms of equality. Judge Terry, in whose court he had stood abashed, plied him with c.o.c.ktails; Colonel Baker told several stories, one of which was new; Sam Brannan, with the mixture of coa.r.s.eness, overbearing manners, and fascination that made him personally attractive to men and some women, called him "my boy"; and the rest of the party had whole-heartedly taken him in and were treating him as one of themselves. Keith had known all these men, of course, but they had been several cuts above him in importance, and his relations with most of them had been formal. His whole being glowed and expanded. After the first c.o.c.ktail or two, and after a little of this grateful petting, he had some difficulty in keeping himself from getting too expansive, in holding himself down to becoming modesty, in not talking too much. He quite realized the meaning of this sudden cordiality; but he welcomed it as another endors.e.m.e.nt, from the highest, most unimpeachable sources, of his cleverness and legal ac.u.men.

They drank and talked until twilight. Then Keith began to make his excuses. They shouted him down.

"You're going to dinner with us, my son," stated Brannan. "They've opened an oyster palace down the street, and we're going to sample it."

"But my wife--" began Keith.

"Permit me," interrupted Terry, bending his tall form in courtesy. "I am about to dispatch a messenger to Mrs. Terry, and shall be pleased to instruct him to call at your mansion also."

It was so arranged. Immediately they adjourned to the new "Oyster Palace," a very gaudy white and gilt monstrosity with mirrors and negro minstrels. There were small private rooms, it seemed, and one of these was bespoken from the smiling manager, flattered at the patronage of these substantial men.

San Francisco lived high in those days. It could pay, and for pay the best will go anywhere. The dinner was quite perfect. There were more c.o.c.ktails and champagne. Under the influence of good fellowship and drinks, Keith was finally prevailed upon to give the details of the whole transaction. Perhaps this was a little indiscreet, but he was carried away by the occasion. The noisy crowd suddenly became quiet, and listened with the deepest attention. When Keith had finished, there ensued a short silence. Then Judge Terry delivered his opinion.

"Sound as a dollar," he p.r.o.nounced at last. "Not a hole in it. Is that your opinion, Colonel Baker?"

"Clever piece of work," nodded the orator gravely. After this interim of sobriety the dinner proceeded more and more noisily. The drink affected the different men in different ways. A flush appeared high on the cheek bones of Terry's lean face and an added dignity in his courtly manner. Brannan became louder and more positive. On Blatchford his potations had no appreciable effect except that his round face grew redder. Ned McGowan dropped even his veneer of good breeding, became foul mouthed and profane, full of unpublishable reminiscence to which n.o.body paid any particular attention. Calhoun Bennett's speech became softer, more deliberate, more consciously Southern. Keith, who was really most unaccustomed to the heavy drinking then in vogue, was filled with a warm and friendly feeling toward everybody. His thoughts were a bit vague, and he had difficulty in focussing his mind sharply.

The lights were very bright, and the room warm.

Suddenly they were all in the open air under the stars. There seemed to have been an unexplained interim. Everybody was smoking cigars. Keith was tugging at his pocket and expostulating something about payment--something to do with the dinner. Evidently some part of him had gone on talking and thinking. The fresh air brought him back to the command. Various suggestions were being proffered. Blatchford was for hiring rigs and driving out to the Mission; Calhoun Bennett suggested the El Dorado; but Sam Brannan's bull voice decided them.

"I'm going to Belle's!" he roared, and at once started off up the street. The idea was received with acclamation. They straggled up the street toward the residential portion of town.