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Page 80
"'But I can't go back, Barclay, old man; my tramping's over.
That was no fit I had on the dock.'
"He looked at me with his dead eyes in his tan-colored plaster
face. You've heard of the hemp-chewers and the betel-chewers;
well, all that's baby-food to a thing they've got in the Shamo.
It's a shredded root, bitter like cactus, and when you chew it,
you don't get tired and you don't get hot . . . you go on and you
don't know what the temperature is. Then some day, all at once,
you go down, cold all over like a dead man . . . that time you
don't die, but the next time . . . "
Barclay snapped his fingers without adding the word.'
"And you can calculate when the second one will strike you. It's
a hundred and eighty-one days to the hour."
Then he added:
"That was the first one on the dock. Tavor had six months to
live."
The big man broke the cigarette in his fingers and threw the
pieces into the fire. Then he turned abruptly toward me.
"And I know where he wanted to live for those six months. The
old dream was still with him. He wanted that country house in
his native county in England, with the formal garden and the
lackeys. The finish didn't bother him, but he wanted to round
out his life with the dream that he had carried about with him.
"I put him to bed and went down into Broadway, and walked about
all night. Tavor couldn't go back and he had to have a bunch of
money.
"It was no good. I couldn't see it. I went back Tavor was up
and I sat him down to a cross examination that would have
delighted the soul of a Philadelphia lawyer."
Barclay paused.
"It was all at once that I saw it - like you'd snap your fingers.
It was an accident of Charlie's talk . . . one of those obiter
dicta, that I mentioned a while ago. But I stopped Charlie and
went over to the Metropolitan Library; there I got me an expert -
an astronomer chap, as it happened, reading calculus in French
for fun - I gave him a twenty and I looked him in the eye.
"Now, Professor,' I said, `this dope's got to be straight stuff,
I'm risking money on it; every word you write has got to be the
truth, and every line and figure that you put on your map has got
to be correct with a capital K.'"
"'Surely,' he said, `I shall follow Huxley for the text and I
shall check the chart calculations for error.'
"'And there's another thing, professor. You've got to go dumb on
this job, for which I double the twenty.' He looked puzzled, but
when he finally understood me, he said `Surely' again, and I went
back to my apartment.
"'Charlie,' I said, `how much money would it take for this
English country life business?'
"His eyes lighted up a little.
"'Well, Barclay, old man,' he replied, `I've estimated it pretty
carefully a number of times. I could take Eldon's place for six
months with the right to purchase for two thousand dollars paid
down; and I could manage the servants and the living expenses for
another four thousand. I fear I should not be able to get on
with a less sum than six thousand dollars.'
"Then he added - he was a child to the last - 'perhaps Mr.
Hardman will now be able to advance it; he promised me "a further
per cent" those were his words, when the matter was finally
concluded.'
"Then ten thousand would do?"
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