“No – not for more than a week.”
“Well, it’s quite a yarn. From what has been said, I rather guess it’s the liquor dealers that are stirring it up this time. There is a story around that he has been counterfeiting the red-seal label on their bottles. I think they’re all off the track, though. Anybody could tell ‘em that there’s no such man. Every time a case of smuggling comes up, the papers talk about ‘Whiskey Jim,’ no matter if it’s up at the straits or down on the St. Lawrence.”
“But what’s the trouble now?”
“Oh, they’re saying that this fellow is a rich man that has a big smuggling system with agents all around the Lakes and dealers in the cities that are in his pay, – sort of a smuggling trust.”
“Sounds like a fairy story.”
“That’s about what it is. The regular dealers have taken up the fight to protect their trade, and one or two of the papers in particular have put reporters on the case, and all that sort of thing. And as usual they’re announcing just what they’ve done and what they’re going to do. The old Foote is to make a tour of the Lakes, and look into every port. And if there is any Whiskey Jim, I ‘ll bet he’s somewhere over in Canada by this time, reading the papers and laughing at ‘em.” Captain Stenzenberger was seated in his swivel chair in his dingy little one-story office at the corner of the lumber yard. His broad frame was overloaded with flesh. His paunch seemed almost to rest on his thighs as he sat there, chewing an unlighted cigar in the corner of his mouth, – a corner that had been moulded around the cigar by long habit and that looked incomplete when the cigar was not there. His fat neck – the fatter for a large goitre – was wider than his cheeks, and these again were wider than his forehead, so that his head seemed to taper off from his shoulders. A cropped mustache, a tanned, wrinkled face and forehead, and bright brown eyes completed the picture. When his two captains came in, he rested his pudgy hands on the arms of his chair, readjusted his lips around the cigar, and nodded. “How are you, boys?” said he, in a husky voice. “Have a good trip?” This last remark was addressed to Dick.
“First part was bad, but it cleared up later.”
“Did you put right out into that storm from Manistee?”
“Yes – you see I had the wind behind me all the way down. Got to get a new small boat, though.”
The “Captain” did not press the subject. In return for the privilege of buying the schooner by instalments he permitted Dick to pay for the insurance, so the young man could be as reckless as he liked.
Dick now explained that he had come to make a payment, and the transaction was accomplished.
“Step over and have a drink, boys,” was the next formality; and the two stood aside while Stenzenberger got his unwieldy body out of the chair, put on his hat, and led the way out.
Adjoining the lumber yard on the west was a small frame building, bearing the sign, “The Teamster’s Friend.” It had been set down here presumably to catch the trade of the market gardeners who rumbled through in the small hours of every morning. In the rear, backed up against a lumber pile, was a long shed where the teams could wait under cover while their drivers were carousing within. A second sign, painted on the end of this shed, announced that Murphy and McGlory were the proprietors of the “sample room and summer garden.” The three men entered, and seated themselves at a table. There was no one behind the bar at the moment, but soon a woman glanced in through the rear doorway.
Stenzenberger smiled broadly on her, and winked. “How d’ do, Madge,” he said. “Can’t you give us a little something with a smile in it, – one o’ your smiles maybe now?”
She was a tall woman, with a full figure and snapping eyes, – attractive, in spite of a crow’s-foot wrinkle or so. She returned the smile, wearily, and said, “I ‘ll call Joe, Mr. Stenzenberger.”
“You needn’t do that now, Madge. Draw it with those pretty hands of yours, there’s a dear.”
So she came in behind the bar, wiping her hands on her apron, and quietly awaited their orders.
“What ‘ll it be, boys?”
Dick suggested a glass of beer, but Henry smiled and shook his head. “You might make it ginger ale for me.”
“I don’t know what to do with that cousin of yours,” said Stenzenberger to Dick. “He’s a queer one. I don’t like to trust a man that’s got no vices. What are your vices, anyhow, Smiley?”
Henry smiled again. “Ask Dick, there. He ought to know all about me.”
Stenzenberger looked from one to the other; then he raised his foaming glass, and with a “Prosit” and a stiff German nod, he put it down at a gulp.
“Been reading about the revenue case?” Henry asked of his superior.
“I saw something this morning.”
“I’ve been quite interested in it. Billy Boynton told me yesterday that they had searched his schooner. It’s a wonder they haven’t got after us if they’re holding up fellows like him. Do you think they ‘ll ever get this Whiskey Jim, Cap’n?”
“No, they talk too much. And they couldn’t catch a mud-scow with that old side-wheeler of theirs.”
“Guess that’s right. The Foote must have started in here before the Michigan, and she’s thirty years old if she’s a day. The boys are all talking about it down at the city. I dropped around at the Hydrographic Office after I saw Billy, and found two or three others that had been hauled over. It seems they’ve stumbled on a pipe-line half built under the Detroit River near Wyandotte, and there’s been a good deal of excitement. There’s capital behind it, you see; and a little capital does wonders with those revenue men.”
Stenzenberger was showing symptoms of readiness to return to his desk, but Henry, who rarely grew reminiscent, was now fairly launched.
“They can’t get an effective revenue system, because they make it too easy for a man to get rich. It’s like the tax commissioners and the aldermen and the legislators, – when you put a man where he can rake off his pile, month after month, without there being any way of checking him up, look out for his morals. And where they’re all in it together, no one dares squeal. It’s a good deal like the railway conductors.
“You remember last year when the Northeastern Road laid off all but two or three of its old conductors for stealing fares? Well, it wasn’t a month afterward that one of the ‘honest’ ones came to me and hired the Schmidt to carry a twelve-hundred-dollar grand piano up to Milwaukee, where he lives. He had reasons of his own for not wanting to ship by rail. No, sir, it wouldn’t be hard for me to have sympathy with an honest thief that goes in and runs his chances of getting shot or knocked on the head, – that calls for some nerve, – but these fellows that put up a bluff as lawmakers and policemen and revenue officers and then steal right and left – deliver me!”
“Well, boys, I guess I ‘ll have to step back. I’m a busy man, you know. Have another before we go?”
“One minute, Cap’n,” said Dick. “There’s something I want to talk over with you, if you can spare the time.”
Stenzenberger sat down again. Henry, whose outbreak against the evils of society had stirred up, apparently, some pet feeling of bitterness, now sat moodily looking at the table.
“It’s about Roche, Cap’n,” Dick went on. “I had to leave him at Manistee.”
“Why?”
“He drinks too much for me – I couldn’t depend on him a minute. He bummed around up there, and got himself too shaky to be any use to me.”
Stenzenberger, with expressionless face, chewed his cigar. “What did you do for a mate?”
“Came down without one.”
“Have you found a man yet?”
“No