Daylight had been wholly truthful when he told Dede
that he had no real friends. On speaking terms
with thousands, on fellowship and drinking terms with
hundreds, he was a lonely man. He failed to
find the one man, or group of several men, with whom
he could be really intimate. Cities did not
make for comradeship as did the Alaskan trail.
Besides, the types of men were different. Scornful
and contemptuous of business men on the one hand, on
the other his relations with the San Francisco bosses
had been more an alliance of expediency than anything
else. He had felt more of kinship for the franker
brutality of the bosses and their captains, but they
had failed to claim any deep respect. They were
too prone to crookedness. Bonds were better than
men’s word in this modern world, and one had
to look carefully to the bonds.
In the old Yukon days it had been different.
Bonds didn’t go. A man said he had so
much, and even in a poker game his appeasement was
accepted.
Larry Hegan, who rose ably to the largest demands
of Daylight’s operations and who had few illusions
and less hypocrisy, might have proved a chum had it
not been for his temperamental twist. Strange
genius that he was, a Napoleon of the law, with a power
of visioning that far exceeded Daylight’s, he
had nothing in common with Daylight outside the office.
He spent his time with books, a thing Daylight could
not abide. Also, he devoted himself to the endless
writing of plays which never got beyond manuscript
form, and, though Daylight only sensed the secret
taint of it, was a confirmed but temperate eater of
hasheesh. Hegan lived all his life cloistered
with books in a world of agitation. With the
out-of-door world he had no understanding nor tolerance.
In food and drink he was abstemious as a monk, while
exercise was a thing abhorrent. Daylight’s
friendships, in lieu of anything closer, were drinking
friendships and roistering friendships. And
with the passing of the Sunday rides with Dede, he
fell back more and more upon these for diversion.
The cocktail wall of inhibition he reared more assiduously
than ever.
The big red motor-car was out more frequently now,
while a stable hand was hired to give Bob exercise.
In his early San Francisco days, there had been intervals
of easement between his deals, but in this present
biggest deal of all the strain was unremitting.
Not in a month, or two, or three, could his huge land
investment be carried to a successful consummation.
And so complete and wide-reaching was it that complications
and knotty situations constantly arose. Every
day brought its problems, and when he had solved them
in his masterful way, he left the office in his big
car, almost sighing with relief at anticipation of
the approaching double Martini. Rarely was he
made tipsy. His constitution was too strong
for that. Instead, he was that direst of all
drinkers, the steady drinker, deliberate and controlled,
who averaged a far higher quantity of alcohol than
the irregular and violent drinker. For six weeks
hard-running he had seen nothing of Dede except in
the office, and there he resolutely refrained from
making approaches. But by the seventh Sunday
his hunger for her overmastered him. It was a
stormy day.
