A minute later she was back again.
“He refuses to hang up. He told me to
tell you that Unwin is in the office now, waiting
to see you, and Harrison, too. Mr. Hegan said
that Grimshaw and Hodgkins are in trouble. That
it looks as if they are going to break. And
he said something about protection.”
It was startling information. Both Unwin and
Harrison represented big banking corporations, and
Daylight knew that if the house of Grimshaw and Hodgkins
went it would precipitate a number of failures and
start a flurry of serious dimensions. But Daylight
smiled, and shook his head, and mimicked the stereotyped
office tone of voice as he said:—
“Miss Mason, you will kindly tell Mr. Hegan
that there is nothing doing and to hang up.”
“But you can’t do this,” she pleaded.
“Watch me,” he grimly answered.
“Elam!”
“Say it again,” he cried. “Say
it again, and a dozen Grimshaws and Hodgkins can smash!”
He caught her by the hand and drew her to him.
“You let Hegan hang on to that line till he’s
tired. We can’t be wasting a second on
him on a day like this. He’s only in love
with books and things, but I’ve got a real live
woman in my arms that’s loving me all the time
she’s kicking over the traces.”
“But I know something of the fight you have
been making,” Dede contended. “If
you stop now, all the work you have done, everything,
will be destroyed. You have no right to do it.
You can’t do it.”
Daylight was obdurate. He shook his head and
smiled tantalizingly.
“Nothing will be destroyed, Dede, nothing.
You don’t understand this business game.
It’s done on paper. Don’t you see?
Where’s the gold I dug out of Klondike?
Why, it’s in twenty-dollar gold pieces, in
gold watches, in wedding rings. No matter what
happens to me, the twenty-dollar pieces, the watches,
and the wedding rings remain. Suppose I died
right now. It wouldn’t affect the gold
one iota. It’s sure the same with this
present situation. All I stand for is paper.
I’ve got the paper for thousands of acres of
land. All right. Burn up the paper, and
burn me along with it. The land remains, don’t
it? The rain falls on it, the seeds sprout in
it, the trees grow out of it, the houses stand on
it, the electric cars run over it. It’s
paper that business is run on. I lose my paper,
or I lose my life, it’s all the same; it won’t
alter one grain of sand in all that land, or twist
one blade of grass around sideways.
“Nothing is going to be lost—not
one pile out of the docks, not one railroad spike,
not one ounce of steam out of the gauge of a ferry-boat.
The cars will go on running, whether I hold the paper
or somebody else holds it. The tide has set toward
Oakland. People are beginning to pour in.
We’re selling building lots again. There
is no stopping that tide. No matter what happens
to me or the paper, them three hundred thousand folks
are coming in the same. And there’ll be
cars to carry them around, and houses to hold them,
and good water for them to drink and electricity to
give them light, and all the rest.”
