Джеймс Кейн - Mignon

“Certainly. Goodbye.”

“Give my love to Marie.”

So I came, I saw, and I certainly did not conquer. I didn’t do anything, even remember John Wilkes Booth, and it didn’t help any, when I got back to my horrible sitting room, that I was all atremble just from seeing her, hearing her and, worst of all, smelling her. But then, little by little, it began to dig at me there was something funny about it — that receipt, I mean. Because, although Burke might once have been big with the Army, I knew of no heft he had with the Navy, and it was the Navy that had grabbed the cotton. And the legal aspect of it, from what Dan had said, was so peculiar it seemed incredible they would have waived it in any way. It also seemed incredible, considering that icy smile, that if Burke had thought of some shyster trick, or her father had, or she had, she wouldn’t have walloped me with it, just for fun. And yet I was mortally certain, from the bragging way she had acted, that the receipt had been signed, and so the question was: How could it have been, and at the same time not have been? I didn’t have the answer, but did have someone to go to for background information that might throw light on the subject. That was Sandy Gregg, whose ship, the Eastport , had made the cotton “capture,” according to Dan.

By then the rain had stopped, so I piled out on the street again, asked my way of a bluejacket, and off the lower end of the town spotted an ironclad lying out in midstream. Her texas and staterooms had all been stripped away, and she was dented, scarred, and scaly, but did answer my hail. Then there was Sandy, at one of the gunports, staring in disbelief. He’s a trim, dark, medium-sized lad, fairly good-looking, but right now in his old blues almost as rusty as his ship. However, he called to the cutter lying at the wharf I was talking from and had them bring me out. He welcomed me aboard cordially, and introduced me to three or four friends, but the whole time he was shaking hands kept asking over and over: “Bill, what are you doing here? What the hell are you doing here?”

Well, what was I doing there?

The truth, supposing I even knew it, was the last thing I wanted to own, so I fell back on my original story, the one I’d told to Dan before he smoked me out. “Well,” I said, pretty testy, “ you ought to know what I’m doing here. We need twenty-five thousand dollars, and this looked like the quickest place to get it.” And then, not giving him time to speak: “And I can get it, I think, if the parties I’ve been referred to as having cotton to sell me show up as they’re supposed to. But what worries me is this: If I do buy their titles, can I get a receipt?”

“You’re here as a trader then?”

“I came up on the Black Hawk today.”

“And the cotton you’re after was stored?”

“In Rachal’s Warehouse, I believe it’s called.”

“Bill, we captured that cotton last week.”

“Oh I know about that — I saw it; we passed the barge coming up. But condemnation rests with a court, and fact of the matter, the battle hasn’t started till a court calls the case in New Orleans.” “Springfield.”

“... Springfield?”

“Illinois. That cotton’s headed for Cairo.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that.”

“Bill, if you buy titles, you’re sunk.”

“You mean, on-the-bottom sunk?”

“I mean, in-the-mud sunk. We’re both sunk.”

“But tell me: Have any receipts been signed?”

“No, Bill, none.”

“If any had been, would you know it?”

“Detail from this ship made the capture — I wasn’t in command, but was there, and if receipts had been signed, I’d know it.”

But one of the boys he’d introduced me to, who was in earshot as we talked on the bow, said something, and Sandy corrected himself: “Oh that’s right, I forgot. One of our officers, Lieutenant Powell, could have signed something; of that we can’t be sure. He did shore duty evenings, up at the Ice House Hotel, hearing civilian complaints — and got plugged by a skulker one night as he stepped out of the hotel to come back to the ship.”

“Why doesn’t Cresap talk to Ball?”

That was the boy who had interrupted, and Sandy said: “That’s right, Ball would know. He’s on that duty now, and has all Powell’s notes.”

“Can I see him?”

“He’s asleep, but he’ll be at the hotel tonight.”

“Then — I’ll talk to him there.”

“Now, Bill, let’s get back.”

“... Back? To what?”

“The twenty-five thousand dollars.”

I was in the unfortunate position, I discovered, that he’d swallowed my whole yarn. He took the twenty-five thousand dollars very seriously, feeling he was to blame, not only for our needing it but, still worse, for our not having it. So for an hour I had to fence, while he asked all kinds of questions about who my “parties” were. Finally, when I admitted I had no idea, he looked so utterly baffled I had to do something, quick. I slipped off a bill from the roll I had in my pocket, tore it in two with my fingertips, then came up with one half and said: “All I know is, they’re to present me with identification, the matching half of this. Until they do, I don’t know them from Adam, and can’t even guess who they are. And maybe, from your account of the seizure, or capture as you call it, they won’t even show at all.” It satisfied him, but I went back to my flat more shaken than before, if such a thing was possible. I was no nearer the answer to my riddle, but quite a lot nearer the poorhouse. I had supposed, when I tore the bill, that I was wrecking a twenty, but saw when I looked it was fifty. Perhaps, I told myself, it would be just as good as new if pasted together again, but as I fingered and folded and eyed it, it was one more silly thing in a dreary, complete fiasco.

I’d done better than I knew.

Whatever I had or hadn’t found out, I still had to eat, so around 6:30 I walked up to the hotel. It was jammed, and I didn’t get a seat until the third or fourth table. But I bought my ticket, and then saw Dan come in and beckon to the newspapermen. When they’d gathered around him, he gave them the latest: the Army was moving up, being now in Natchitoches — “Nackitosh,” he called it; the Navy was having some trouble from low water on the falls, the stretch of rapid water just above the town, but several boats were up, and no serious delay had been caused. In other words, everything was moving according to schedule. But when he’d finished with them and dropped into a chair beside me, he had nothing to say and seemed in a sour humor. I said: “Why all the gloom if the sun is shining so bright?” He said: “It is, in a pig’s eye,” and then, mysterious: “You want to see something, Bill? Meet me out back.”

So I did, slipping out past the desk in under the stairs, through a door between the dining room and a big lounge with a stove in it. In a moment, there he was, in among the hotel’s steam boiler, gas tank, and cistern, pointing. I looked; in the gathering dark, the sky back of town was pink. He said: “That glow is cotton they’re burning out there — from some plantation gin on the Opelousas Road. They’ve been doing it, I’m told, every night since the Navy crossed them. We hear they hate our guts.”

“Yes, but since when did they love us?”

“They were all ready to think things over.”

“You’re hipped on that hoodoo, Dan.”

“I’m telling you, it’s going to dog us.”

“The cotton’s gone — it’s on its way to Cairo for condemnation in Springfield. The rest is a new deal.”

“We haven’t heard the end.”