“I’m sorry, Mr. Morton,” she says. “I’ll have to cancel the rest of my engagement, I’m afraid; my ladder got broken today, and I can’t work without it.”
“Oh, we can get you a new ladder.”
“Keep talking, Morton,” says Ayres. “We’re listening.”
Then Mort turned to me. “Dave, these guys don’t seem to believe me when I tell them we’re pulling the whale out tonight. Maybe if you’ll tell them, they’ll feel better. I guess you’re about ready to start, aren’t you?” And he kept giving me the wink.
He might just as well have winked at a stone. “I told you, Mort. I’m through with whales.”
“Just what I thought,” says Ayres. “You’ve been stringing us all the time.”
But Dr. Kruger shut him off. “Now get this, Morton,” he says; “the minute that whale dies, I’m going to act, and I’m going to act quick. I could act now on the basis of that mess you’ve got back there, but you say you’re going to clean that up, so we’ll give you a chance. But the minute he dies, I act, and my advice to you is: put him out of the way and get him out of there first.”
“But how do I get him out of there? It took a whole ship’s derrick to get him in and I’ve got no derrick. I don’t know how to move a whale.”
“Neither do I. You should have thought of that when you brought him in there. But I know how to bury a whale, and if I have to put a steam shovel in and bury him right in your pool, that’s just what I’m going to do. And how much you can collect from the city, — if anything, — I wouldn’t like to say.”
Mort turned to me once more, and he had tears in his eyes. “Dave! You’re the only one can do it when nobody can do it.”
“I told you, Mort.”
“Ha, ha, ha, ha!” says the girl, so loud everybody jumped. “Isn’t this charming!”
They all stood up. Then there came a knock on the door, and in stepped a young guy with a grin on his face. “Mr. William K. Morton?”
Nobody said anything.
“I found him,” he says to the girl. “I had to run clear out to the Banks, but I found the Judge. Some speedboat I got.”
Still nobody said anything. He seemed to think I was the one he was looking for, because he came over to me with a legal paper that had a dollar bill folded in it. I could see her name and mine at the top of it. Mort grabbed. “So,” he says, as he saw what it was, “you stabbed me in the back, the both of you! I’m on the spot, and you stabbed me in the back.”
I felt pretty bad. I knew Mort always gave himself the best of everything, and I hadn’t meant to stab him in the back, but he was on the spot, all right, and I didn’t like how I looked. But before I could say anything, he jumped up and began to wave the paper around. “Nolo contendere!” he yells at the top of his lungs. “Nolo contendere!”
“What?” says the boy.
“You’re claiming a share of the whale for them, aren’t you? I got to show cause in court, haven’t I? Well, I don’t do it, see? I don’t defend this. It’s their whale and they do what they please with it!”
“Oh, no, you don’t!” says the girl, and grabs for the paper.
“Oh, yes, I do!”
He ran over to the window-sill, wrote something on the paper, signed it, ran back to the boy and shoved it in his pocket. “There you are, Mr. Lawyer Man with the fast speedboat. There it is, in writing. The whale is all theirs.”
He put on his hat and opened the door. “So long, everybody. So long, Mr. Commissioner. Dave’ll move your whale for you. So long, Dave — hope you have a nice time over the Fourth.”
He was almost out, but he turned and tipped his hat to her. “Har, har, har!” he says. “Isn’t this charming!”
They pinned it on me, and after they all left, I tore into her so hard I almost socked her. I think I would have socked her, only she cracked up and burst out crying. And then, so dog-tired I could hardly lift one foot after the other, I started out on my heavy night’s work. I heard of paying for a dead horse; but believe me, a dead horse is nothing compared with a dead whale. I had to find the roustabouts. I had to start them cleaning out that mess in the pool. I had to find my guy with the trailer. I had to get more rope, and more planks, to loll the trailer down in the pool with, so I could float the whale again. I had to get dynamite to kill the whale with. You can’t get dynamite without a permit, and I had to go get a permit. I had to dig up six beer-kegs, to float the whale with when we started out to sea, because a whale don’t float when he dies; he sinks. I had to find a guy with a power-boat, to tow him with. Every one of those people had to be routed out of bed, and the money they wanted was awful and I was writing checks till it made me sick — and my money this time, not Mort’s. It was a gray, gray dawn when I finally loaded my gang on the trailer, and started down to the pool with them.
When I got inside, the girl was lying on the side of the pool, in a bathing-suit, smoking a cigarette and watching the sun come up.
“Well,” I says, “is he dead yet?”
“Oh, no. I fed him.”
“You what?”
“I fed him.”
I went over and looked in the pool, then, and it was only about a third full, but there was the whale, hanging over the intake, letting it tickle his belly where it was coming in, and showing more pep than he had since we got him.
“Are you trying to kid me?”
“No. I ran the water out, and then when he stranded down here under the springboard, I made a little dam of sand and canvas around him, and fed him.”
“What did you feed him? If you don’t mind my asking!”
“Milk.”
She waved her hand, and I saw there were fifty or sixty milk-cans piled up at one side. “You mean to say that thing drinks milk?”
“Anybody but an ignoramus would know a baby whale drinks milk. It took all the money I had, and I had an awful time getting it, but he took it. He gurgled and made a lot of noise, and had a fine time.”
“And you mean he’s not going to die?”
“Of course not. Look at him. Isn’t he cute? I just love him.”
I went out, sent my gang home, came back, and sat down. I thought of Mort. I thought of all those thousands of people that were due that day. I thought of the paper that said he was all ours. I could feel the grin spreading all over my face. I went over and held out my hand.
“Mabel, I guess we got a whale.”
“I guess we have — and a certain young man gets what’s coming to him at last.”
Well, he was a wow. When Ayres got it through his head the whale wasn’t going to die, he rushed posters to all Eastern cities by plane, and the morning papers were full of how we caught him; and by afternoon we had a mob. We had to rope off a place and run them through in batches. It was the only way we could clear the pool, else they would have stayed and looked at him all day. Then at night, she thought of a stunt that made him a bigger draw than ever. She cut the overhead lights, and turned on the underwater lights, and he was a sight to see. The only trouble was, the lights scared him to death, and he wore himself out running around the pool and bumping the sides, so the way we did was turn the lights on for one minute every fifteen minutes. That way we would clear a batch out, give the whale a rest, and then turn on the lights when another batch was in.
Midnight we closed down, turned off all lights, and counted up. We had taken in $48,384, and if there had been any way to handle the people, we would have taken in a lot more. About one o’clock, after we had shaken hands about twenty times, and started to run the water out to have him ready when the milk-train got in, we looked around, and there was Mort, standing there looking at him.