Blow the Man Down - A Romance of the Coast

Mr. Fogg did have a voice. "Five thousand dollars in your fist, my boy,

as soon as I can work the wire to New York--and there's no piker about

the man who can have five thousand flashed in here when he asks for it.

You can see what kind of men are behind me. What do you care about old

man Vose and his crowd?"

"There's Mr. Franklin! I'll be doing a mighty mean trick, Mr. Fogg. No,

I'll not do it."

Mr. Fogg did not bluster. He was silent for some time. He pursed his

lips and stared at Boyne, and then he shifted his gaze to the ceiling.

"It's too bad--too bad for a young fellow to turn down such an

opportunity," he sighed. "It can be done without you, Boyne, in another

way. The same result will happen. But you might as well be in on it.

Now let me tell you a few instances of how some of the big men in this

country got their start."

Mr. Fogg was an excellent raconteur with a vivid imagination, and it did

not trouble his conscience because the narratives he imparted to this

wide-eyed youth were largely apocryphal.

"You see," he put in at the end of the first tale, "what a flying start

will do for a man. Suppose that chap I've just told you about sat back

and refused to jump when the road was all open to him! You don't hear

anybody knocking that man nowadays, do you? And yet that's the trick he

pulled to get his start."

With a similar snapper did Mr. Fogg touch up each one of his stories of

success.

"I--I didn't have any idea--I thought they managed it some other way,"

murmured David Boyne.

"Your horizon has been limited; you haven't been out in the world

enough to know, my son."

"I have heard of all those men, of course. They're big men to-day."

"You didn't think they got to be millionaires by saving the money out of

clerks' salaries, did you? Of course, Boyne, I admit that in this

affair you'll be up to a little sharp practice. But you're not stealing

anything. Nobody can lug off steamships in a vest pocket. It's only a

deal--and deals are being made every day."

Fogg was a keen judge of his fellow-men. He knew weakness when he saw

it. He could determine from a man's lower lip and the set of his nose

whether that person were covetous. And he knew now what signified the

flush on Boyne's cheeks and the light in his eyes. However, there was

something else to reckon with.