When Egypt Went Broke Part 8

Prophet Elias stalked into the office. He carried limp, damp sheets across a forearm--papers that had been well wet down in order to take impressions from the Was.h.i.+ngton press. The men in the room waited for one of his sonorous promulgations of biblical truth. But he said no word, and his silence was more impressive because it was unwonted. He marched straight to the Squire and gave him one of the sheets. Then the Prophet turned and strode toward the door. Jones put out his hand, asking for one of the papers. Elias shook his head. "Yon scribe has a voice. Let him read aloud. I have but few papers--they must be spent thriftily." He pa.s.sed on and went out.

"One of the city newspapers ought to hire him for a newsboy," remarked Mr. Jones, acridly. "He could scare up a big circulation."

The only light in the dim room was afforded by the big lamp at the Squire's elbow. He spread the sheet on the table in the lamp's circle of radiance. "Boys, _The Hornet_ is out and it looks as if it has a barb in its stinger," he stated, and then paused while he fixed his spectacles upon his nose.

Vaniman, sitting close by, felt that a glance at a public sheet was not invading privacy.

A s.m.u.tted heading in wood type was smeared across the top of the page.

It counseled:

VOTE FOR BRITT. GIVE PHARAOH HIS KINGLY CROWN

There was a broad, blank s.p.a.ce in one of the upper corners of the sheet.

Under the s.p.a.ce was this explanation:

Portrait of Tasper Britt, with his latest improvements. But, on second thought, out of regard for the feelings of our readers, we omit the portrait.

The Squire, getting control of emotions which the observing Jones and his a.s.sociates noted with rising interest, demurely explained to them the layout of the page after he had carefully inspected the sheet.

Then Squire Hexter began to read aloud, in a tone whose twist of satire gave the text its full flavor:

"We hasten to proclaim in the land of Egypt that Pharaoh Britt has reached for the scepter, though he had not loosed his grip on the gouge.

You will know him here and hereafter by his everlasting grip on the gouge. He will take that gouge to Tophet with him. Then it will be heated red-hot and he will prance around h.e.l.l astraddle of it. But in the meantime he is hot after the honors of this world. Give him his crown, say we. He has prepared a nice, new hair mattress on his brow where the diadem will rest easy. Under his coat of arms--to wit, a yellow he-goat rampant in a field of purple thistles--let him write the word 'Victory.'"

The men in that room were Yankees, with a sense of humor as keen as a new bush scythe.

The Squire sat back and wiped his spectacles and beamed on their laughter. Then he read on down the column, through the biting satire to the bitter end, having an audience whose hilarity would have delighted a vaudeville performer's soul.

Therefore, it was with inspired unction that the reader delivered the "tag lines" of the screed.

"We confess that we have a selfish purpose in paying this affectionate, brotherly tribute to Pharaoh. When he has deigned to refer to us in the past he has called us 'Useless' Britt. Now, if this tribute has the effect that we devoutly hope for, Pharaoh may be of a mind to give us back our right name. We ask nothing else in the way of recompense."

The Squire folded the paper carefully and put it away in his breast pocket with the manner of one caching a treasure. "Boys, what are you waiting for?" he inquired, with an affectation of surprise.

Their wide grins narrowed into the creases of wonderment of their own.

Hexter patted his breast where he had stowed away the paper. "Egypt has a literary light, a journalist who wields a pen of power, a shoemaker philosopher. And modest--not grasping! See how little he asks for himself. Why not give him a real present? Why not--"

Spokesman Jones perceived what the counsel was aiming at and ecstatically shouted, "Gid-dap!"

"Why not use real sandpaper?" urged the squire, with innocent mildness.

Jones whirled and drove his delegation ahead of him from the room, both hands upraised, fingers and thumbs snapping loud cracks as if he were urging his horses up Burkett Hill with snapping whip. The men went tramping down the outside stairs, bellowing the first honest-to-goodness laughter that Egypt had heard for many a day.

Squire Hexter leaped up and grabbed his hat and coat from their hooks.

"Come on, boy! It looks as if there's going to be a nominating bee at _The Hornet_ office--and we mustn't miss any of the buzzing."

The two followed close on the heels of the noisy delegation.

Usial Britt opened his door and stood in the frame of light after Jones had halted his clamorous crowd. The amateur publicist rolled his inky hands in his ap.r.o.n and showed doubt that was growing into alarm.

"Hold your nippety pucket, Usial," counseled Hexter, calling over the heads of the men. "The boys had me guessing, too, a few minutes ago. But this isn't a lynching bee."

However, while the crowd laughed and others came hastening to the scene, and while Spokesman Jones was trying to make himself heard above the uproar, an element was added which seemed to discount the Squire's rea.s.suring words.

Tasper Britt rushed out from Files's tavern and stood on the porch. He had one of the papers in his hand. He ripped the paper to tatters and strewed about him the bits and stamped on the litter. He shrieked profanity. Then he leaped off the porch.

In the tavern yard was "Gid-dap" Jones's stage pung. Britt yanked the big whip from its socket and bounced across the street, untangling the lash.

"No, you don't!" bellowed Jones, getting in the way and making grabs at the whip. "Not with my own private persuader! Get aholt of him, men!

Down him. Don't let him whale the representative we're going to send from the town of Egypt!"

That declared hint of what was afoot put the last touch on Tasper Britt's fury. He fought savagely to force his way through the men.

The voice of Usial checked the melee. He shouted with a compelling quality in his tone. As the man on whom they proposed to bestow the town's highest honor, he had already acquired new authority. The men loosed Tasper Britt.

"This is between brothers," said Usial. He had stepped from his doorway.

He stood alone. "What outsider dares to interfere?"

Tasper Britt employed his freedom promptly and brutally; he leaped along the avenue the men left for him and began to lash Usial with the whip.

The stolid townsfolk of Egypt stood in their tracks.

"That's the best way--let 'em fight it out," counseled Spokesman Jones.

"Tasp Britt will get his, and it'll be in the family!"

But Usial merely tossed his big ap.r.o.n over his head and crouched and took the las.h.i.+ng.

"Isn't somebody going to stop that?" Vaniman demanded.

n.o.body moved. Egypt had its own ideas about interference in family matters, it seemed, and had been tartly reminded of those ideas by Usial Britt himself.

But Vaniman was an outlander. He saw his employer disgracing himself; he beheld an unresisting victim cruelly maltreated.

The young man jumped on Tasper Britt and tried to hold his arms. When Britt whirled and broke loose by the twist of his quick turn and struck the cas.h.i.+er with the whip, Vaniman wrested away the weapon, using all his vigorous strength, and threw it far. Then he seized the frothing a.s.sailant and forced him back toward the tavern. "Mr. Britt, remember what you are--the president of our bank--a prominent man--" Vaniman gasped, protesting. "When you're yourself you'll thank me!"

But there was no sign of grat.i.tude in Britt's countenance just then. His crazed rage was s.h.i.+fted to this presumptuous person who had interfered and was manhandling him; at that moment the liveliest emotion in Britt was the mordant jealousy that he had been trying to stifle. It awoke and raged, finding real excuse for the venting of its rancor on the man who had made him jealous.

"You d.a.m.nation sp.a.w.n of a jailbird--"

The young man had a rancor of his own that he had been holding in leash ever since he had sent Vona to fight her own battle, with his kiss on her cheek. He broke off that vitriolic taunt by dealing Britt an open-handed slap across the mouth, a blow of such force that the man went reeling backward. And when Britt beheld Vaniman's face, as the young man came resolutely along, the magnate of Egypt kept going backward of his own accord, flapping hands of protest. "Vaniman, here and now I discharge you from the bank."