Max Brand

The Luck of the “Spindrift”

Warsaw 2017

Contents

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

CHAPTER III

CHAPTER IV

CHAPTER V

CHAPTER VI

CHAPTER VII

CHAPTER VIII

CHAPTER IX

CHAPTER X

CHAPTER XI

CHAPTER XII

CHAPTER XIII

CHAPTER XIV

CHAPTER XV

CHAPTER XVI

CHAPTER XVII

CHAPTER XVIII

CHAPTER XIX

CHAPTER XX

CHAPTER XXI

CHAPTER XXII

CHAPTER XXIII

CHAPTER XXIV

CHAPTER XXV

CHAPTER I

SAMUEL PENNINGTON CULVER, Doctor of Philosophy, never used the titles he had acquired at Harvard and the Sorbonne because he was a man who did not believe in useless ornament. He considered himself a person of eminently practical mind; nature had bestowed on him, he felt, the glorious gift of a mind to use, and the wretched handicap of a body to support. For that support he had to work eight hours a day, and to fight off decrepitude or the danger of illness he spent another hour in exercise. It was his body, again, which demanded six hours of sleep. On the whole he considered it an unhappy bargain that required fifteen hours to meet physical needs, and left him only nine hours for his books. His chief quest was a search for a key to the Etruscan language, some Rosetta Stone which he might decode and so give to the world the buried mind of that great people.

Samuel lived in a small room that overlooked a backyard surrounded by a high wooden fence and bright with laundry on Mondays. To the east, through a slot between two buildings, he had a glimpse of San Francisco Bay and the blue, feminine curves of the Berkeley hills beyond; but the distances he yearned for were not those that feet can wander through; and most of his time at home was spent seated at his corner table, where the light from the window streamed over his shoulder–or beside his reading lamp.

He worked at night for an express company, his task ending somewhere between one and three o’clock in the morning, after which he walked briskly up the hills from the water front, ran up the stairs to his room, threw off his clothes, slipped into his bed, and was asleep the instant he closed his eyes. That was because he never permitted himself the luxury of sufficient rest. Six hours after he closed his eyes, a pin-prick of conscience roused him. He rose at once and commenced the hour of exercise which kept doctors and doctor bills from his way of life. At thirty-five his body was still garnished with exactly the same two hundred pounds of lean muscle that had caused the college football coach to yearn after him. Having finished this task, Samuel Culver bathed, dressed, and ate the breakfast which in the meantime had been simmering on the gas stove in the corner of that tenement room. After this, Samuel sat down to his books. He remained with them for eight hours and twenty minutes.

Books, in fact, filled his friendless existence as utterly as God ever filled the life of an ascetic hermit. Once a year he was compelled to buy clothes for the sake of common decency; otherwise every penny he saved from his steady work and his monastic spareness of living went into new volumes. Nearly three thousand volumes were new within the walls of that small room.

If Samuel Culver had a friend in the world, perhaps it was that doddering old bibliophile James McPherson, who kept the second-hand bookstore and watched the market to find items for Culver; and the only pleasure excursions that Culver took into the world were among the musty stacks of books in the shop of McPherson. Only the day before, he had gone with his month’s savings to McPherson and come away with Diodorus Siculus in a fine old edition. Jolly Diodorus! What a credulous fellow he was! Culver, at his work, could not help chuckling and wondering how he had got on so long without the old fellow.

As he chuckled, the sharp, hard lead of his pencil was running rapidly over the paper, putting down the names and addresses which Tommy Lester called from outside the little glassed-in booth where Culver sat writing out the labels.

It was after eleven and the night’s work promised to be short, so Samuel Culver already was foretasting the happy return to his studies. He breathed more deeply of the savor of the air off the Bay, but his eyes never shifted from the pad over which his pencil flew.

“From T.W. Langer,” intoned Tommy Lester, “Eleven forty-nine Haight Street, S.F.; going to Mrs. Randall Scott, Nine eighteen Franklin Avenue, Fruitvale. It’s a parcel–”

The pencil was flying over the address of Mrs. Randall Scott, when Culver’s spectacles slid off suddenly, as though a sudden gust of wind had jerked them. Vainly he caught in the air to save them. They slithered off the tips of his fingers and left him to fumble in the obscure mist in which, without his glasses, he lived.

Touching the floor, he felt rapidly across its surface. Outside the window of the booth he could hear the stifled laughter of Tommy Lester, and knew that Tommy, with a reaching fingertip, must have played the trick on him. Now his hand found the glasses. He arose. His head banged heavily against the writing shelf. He stood up, vaguely peering out the window at the dark cavern of the warehouse. All was blurred, as though he were looking at a scene under sea. It was high time, he felt, to give his eyes that rest recommended by his doctor. He rubbed the bump on his head as he readjusted his glasses.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Tommy,” he said. He had a mild voice, low-pitched and musical.

“Shouldn’t’ve done what, you mug?”

Culver considered Tommy steadily; he had to use a surprising effort of the will to master a desire to lay on hands. Then he was able to say: “Go back to the Randall Scott address, if you please. I’ve forgotten what followed.”

“Watch yourself!” whispered Tommy. “Here comes the old dope himself!”

And now Culver saw “the old dope” in person, standing in the truck runway. Channing floor-bossed the whole warehouse. He had a bad leg, and went about with two canes to steady a weight that was increasing every year faster than his salary. By sheer luck, as he stood now at watch, the horn of an approaching truck, as it swung around the inside turn, blasted the ear of Channing. He had to move with undignified speed to get out of the way, and Channing’s dignity was his greatest possession. That was the moment when Channing heard Samuel Pennington Culver say again: “Go back to the Randall Scott address.”

That was when Channing exploded. He eased his way into a speech that began: “The Randall Scott address? To hell with the Scott address! What’s your address? You inside, there–you, Culver, what’s your address? You may not know where the Scotts live, but do you know your own home number?”

Tommy, as he listened, shrank his head down between his lifting shoulders and squinted his eyes, as though he were facing a biting wind. Culver, on the other hand, leaned out the window and studied Channing with intense interest. With such a voice Achilles must have shrunk the waters of the Scamander and loosened the knees of the frightened Trojans; with such a voice old Rustum had thundered by the Indus when the sword of Sohrab had wounded him.

“A blow is about to fall,” said big Samuel Culver to himself, “and apparently it is to strike me.” Meantime, he made careful note of the parted lips, the shaking jowls, the bulging eyes of Channing.

“Yes,” said Culver, “I know my home address.”

“Then why in hell don’t you use it?” bellowed Channing. “Leave Randall Scott–leave everything, leave me, leave the whole damned company, and get out. And don’t come back. If you know your way home, go there and stay there.”

“The language of passion,” said Culver, pleased to the smiling point. “I discover that it is rhythmical. I’ll leave as soon as I’ve made a note of your speech.”

And pulling out the notebook which always was with him, he wrote in it with his quick pencil; then he stepped outside as the floor boss cried: “Rhythmical? I’ll rhythmical you, you four-eyed flat-foot. Get out!”

“Personal abuse–passion–rhythm. Extremely interesting,” said Samuel Culver, and wrote again in his notebook.

The red flower of anger faded suddenly in the face of Channing.

“Clean batty!” he muttered, and swung himself away on his two sticks.

Culver looked up to find a disconsolate Tommy staring after the boss.

“I’m going after him,” said Tommy. “I gummed it, and I’m going to tell him what I done. Why didn’t you bluff it through? Why’d you have to stop and ask questions when that dope was right here in our hair? Damn your glasses, anyway,” groaned Tommy. “How would I know it would knock hell out of everything if I gave them a job?”

He set his jaw and started after Charming, but Culver’s big hand stopped him.

“You stay here with your job,” he advised. “I’ve only myself to think of; and you’ll have yourself and your wife on your hands.”

“Have you saved up some dough? Are you O.K. till you get a new job?” asked Tommy, biting his lip with anxiety.

“I’ll do very well,” answered Culver.

“You’re a great guy!” broke out Tommy. “You’re the greatest guy I ever knew! Listen, big boy–by God, I’d go to hell for you!”

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