“When did a doctor look you over last?” Matt queried.  “I’m afraid you’ll die of heart disease before I finish.”

“I’m sound in wind and limb,” Cappy declared.  “I’m not so young as I used to be; but, by Jupiter, there isn’t any young pup on the street who can tell me where to head in!  What next?”

“Of course, Mr. Ricks, very shortly after I had rechartered the Tillicum to Morrow & Company I began to suspect they were shy of sufficient capital to run their big business comfortably.  I found it very hard to collect; so, fully a month before they went up the spout, I commenced to figure on what would happen to me if they did.  Consequently, I wasn’t caught napping.  On the day Morrow committed suicide the company gave me a check that was repudiated at the bank.  I protested it and immediately served formal notice on Morrow & Company that their failure to meet the terms of our charter party necessitated immediate cancellation; and accordingly I was cancelling it.”

“Did you send that notice by registered mail?” Skinner demanded.

“You bet!—­with a return registry receipt requested.”

Cappy nodded at Skinner approvingly, as though to say:  “Smart of him, eh?” Matt continued: 

“After sending my wireless to Captain Grant aboard the Tillicum I sent a cablegram to the Panama Railroad people informing them that, owing to certain circumstances over which I had no control, the steamer Tillicum, fully loaded and en route to Panama to discharge cargo, had been turned back on my hands by the charterers.  I informed them I had diverted the steamer to San Diego for orders, and in the interim, unless the Panama Railroad guaranteed me by cable immediately sixty per cent. of the through-freight rate for the Tillicum, and a return cargo to San Francisco, I would decline to send the Tillicum to Panama, but would, on the contrary, divert her to Tehuantepec and transship her cargo over the American-Hawaiian road there.  I figured—­”

“You infernal scoundrel!” Cappy Ricks murmured.  “You—­slippery—­devil!”

“Of course,” Matt went on calmly, “I had no means of knowing what freight rate Morrow & Company received; but I figured that they ought to get about forty per cent., the Panama Railroad about twenty per cent., and the steamer on the Atlantic side the remaining forty.  So I decided to play safe and ask sixty per cent. of the through rate, figuring that the Panama Railroad would give it to me rather than have the Tillicum’s cargo diverted over their competitor’s road at Tehuantepec.  In the first place they were depending on business from Morrow & Company’s ships; and, with Morrow & Company gone broke and a new company liable to take over their line, it would be a bad precedent to establish, to permit one cargo to go to the competitor.  Future cargoes might follow it!