inexhaustible, spilling over with energy and vitality, deep down
he was a very weary man. And sometime under the liquor drug,
snatches of wisdom came to him far more lucidity than in his
sober moments, as, for instance, one night, when he sat on the
edge of the bed with one shoe in his hand and meditated on Dede’s
aphorism to the effect that he could not sleep in more than one
bed at a time. Still holding the shoe, he looked at the array of
horsehair bridles on the walls. Then, carrying the shoe, he got
up and solemnly counted them, journeying into the two adjoining
rooms to complete the tale. Then he came back to the bed and
gravely addressed his shoe:–
“The little woman’s right. Only one bed at a time. One hundred
and forty hair bridles, and nothing doing with ary one of them.
One bridle at a time! I can’t ride one horse at a time. Poor
old Bob. I’d better be sending you out to pasture. Thirty
million dollars, and a hundred million or nothing in sight, and
what have I got to show for it? There’s lots of things money
can’t buy. It can’t buy the little woman. It can’t buy
capacity. What’s the good of thirty millions when I ain’t got
room for more than a quart of cocktails a day? If I had a
hundred-quart-cocktail thirst, it’d be different. But one
quart–one measly little quart! Here I am, a thirty times over
millionaire, slaving harder every day than any dozen men that
work for me, and all I get is two meals that don’t taste good,
one bed, a quart of Martini, and a hundred and forty hair bridles
to look at on the wall.”
He stared around at the array disconsolately. “Mr. Shoe, I’m
sizzled. Good night.”
Far worse than the controlled, steady drinker is the solitary
drinker, and it was this that Daylight was developing into. He
rarely drank sociably any more, but in his own room, by himself.
Returning weary from each day’s unremitting effort, he drugged
himself to sleep, knowing that on the morrow he would rise up
with a dry and burning mouth and repeat the program.
But the country did not recover with its wonted elasticity.
Money did not become freer, though the casual reader of
Daylight’s newspapers, as well as of all the other owned and
subsidised newspapers in the country, could only have concluded
that the money tightness was over and that the panic was past
history. All public utterances were cheery and optimistic, but
privately many of the utters were in desperate straits. The
scenes enacted in the privacy of Daylight’s office, and of the
meetings of his boards of directors, would have given the lie to
the editorials in his newspapers; as, for instance, when he
addressed the big stockholders in the Sierra and Salvador Power
Company, the United Water Company, and the several other stock
companies:–
Burning Daylight
206
“You’ve got to dig. You’ve got a good thing, but you’ll have to
sacrifice in order to hold on. There ain’t no use spouting hard
times explanations. Don’t I know the hard times is on? Ain’t
that what you’re here for? As I said before, you’ve got to dig.
I run the majority stock, and it’s come to a case of assess.
It’s that or smash. If ever I start going you won’t know what
struck you, I’ll smash that hard. The small fry can let go, but
you big ones can’t. This ship won’t sink as long as you stay
with her. But if you start to leave her, down you’ll sure go
before you can get to shore. This assessment has got to be met
that’s all.”
The big wholesale supply houses, the caterers for his hotels, and
all the crowd that incessantly demanded to be paid, had their hot
half-hours with him. He summoned them to his office and
displayed his latest patterns of can and can’t and will and
won’t.
“By God, you’ve got to carry me!” he told them. “If you think
this is a pleasant little game of parlor whist and that you can
quit and go home whenever you want, you’re plumb wrong. Look
here, Watkins, you remarked five minutes ago that you wouldn’t
stand for it. Now let me tell you a few. You’re going to stand
for it and keep on standin’s for it. You’re going to continue
supplying me and taking my paper until the pinch is over. How
you’re going to do it is your trouble, not mine. You remember
what I did to Klinkner and the Altamont Trust Company? I know
the inside of your business better than you do yourself, and if
you try to drop me I’ll smash you. Even if I’d be going to smash
myself, I’d find a minute to turn on you and bring you down with
me. It’s sink or swim for all of us, and I reckon you’ll find it
to your interest to keep me on top the puddle.”
Perhaps his bitterest fight was with the stockholders of the
United Water Company, for it was practically the whole of the
gross earnings of this company that he voted to lend to himself
and used to bolster up his wide battle front. Yet he never
pushed his arbitrary rule too far. Compelling sacrifice from the
men whose fortunes were tied up with his, nevertheless when any
one of them was driven to the wall and was in dire need, Daylight
was there to help him back into the line. Only a strong man
could have saved so complicated a situation in such time of
stress, and Daylight was that man. He turned and twisted,
schemed and devised, bludgeoned and bullied the weaker ones, kept
the faint-hearted in the fight, and had no mercy on the deserter.
And in the end, when early summer was on, everything began to
mend. Came a day when Daylight did the unprecedented. He left
the office an hour earlier than usual, and for the reason that
for the first time since the panic there was not an item of work
waiting to be done. He dropped into Hegan’s private office,
before leaving, for a chat, and as he stood up to go, he said:–
Burning Daylight
207
“Hegan, we’re all hunkadory. We’re pulling out of the financial
pawnshop in fine shape, and we’ll get out without leaving one
unredeemed pledge behind. The worst is over, and the end is in
sight. Just a tight rein for a couple more weeks, just a bit of
a pinch or a flurry or so now and then, and we can let go and
spit on our hands.”
For once he varied his program. Instead of going directly to his
hotel, he started on a round of the bars and cafes, drinking a
cocktail here and a cocktail there, and two or three when he
encountered men he knew. It was after an hour or so of this that
he dropped into the bar of the Parthenon for one last drink
before going to dinner. By this time all his being was
pleasantly warmed by the alcohol, and he was in the most genial
and best of spirits. At the corner of the bar several young men
were up to the old trick of resting their elbows and attempting
to force each other’s hands down. One broad-shouldered young
giant never removed his elbow, but put down every hand that came
against him. Daylight was interested.
“It’s Slosson,” the barkeeper told him, in answer to his query.
“He’s the heavy-hammer thrower at the U.C. Broke all records
this year, and the world’s record on top of it. He’s a husky all
right all right.”
Daylight nodded and went over to him, placing his own arm in
opposition.
“I’d like to go you a flutter, son, on that proposition,” he
said.
The young man laughed and locked hands with him; and to
Daylight’s astonishment it was his own hand that was forced down
on the bar
“Hold on,” he muttered. “Just one more flutter. I reckon I
wasn’t just ready that time.”
Again the hands locked. It happened quickly. The offensive
attack of Daylight’s muscles slipped instantly into defense, and,
resisting vainly, his hand was forced over and down. Daylight
was dazed. It had been no trick. The skill was equal, or, if
anything, the superior skill had been his. Strength, sheer
strength, had done it. He called for the drinks, and, still
dazed and pondering, held up his own arm, and looked at it as at
some new strange thing. He did not know this arm. It certainly
was not the arm he had carried around with him all the years.
The old arm? Why, it would have been play to turn down that
young husky’s. But this arm–he continued to look at it with
such
dubious perplexity as to bring a roar of laughter from the young