The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Plunderer, by Henry Oyen

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Title: The Plunderer

Author: Henry Oyen

Release Date: September 28, 2006 [EBook #19401]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PLUNDERER ***

Produced by Al Haines

THE PLUNDERER

BY

HENRY OYEN

AUTHOR OF

BIG FLAT, GASTON OLAF, THE SNOW BURNER, ETC.

NEW YORK

GROSSET & DUNLAP

PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1920,

BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY

COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY

THE PLUNDERER

I

Roger Payne had come to a decision. He waited until the office door
had closed behind the departing stenographer, then swung his long legs
recklessly upon his flat-top desk and shouted across the room at his
partner:

"Jim Tibbetts!"

Tibbetts frowned. He was footing a column of cost figures and the
blast from his young partner nearly made him lose count.

Payne grinned. He liked his partner. Had he not done so he would
never have allowed himself to be dragged into business--Tibbetts &
Payne, Manufacturers' Agents. Two years of it. Two years from the day
on a Western irrigation dam when Payne had installed the cement machine
that Tibbetts was selling. Two years--to Payne--of prison. And now
his moment of decision had arrived.

Roger Payne was out of place. He did not fit the furniture. There was
a look of permanence to the dark tan upon his face which labeled it not
the surface sunburn which may be collected during a two weeks' vacation
or gradually acquired by spending Saturday afternoon and Sunday on the
golf links. It was a tan that suggested leather, and which comes as
much from frostbite as sunburn, and from the whip of frozen snowflakes
as the heated winds of summer.

Beneath the tan the face was too lean and hard to be in sympathy with
the high polish of flat-top desks.

His body also was lean and hard. Even the proper cut of a carefully
tailored business suit could not conceal a certain bunchiness about the
shoulders which had nothing at all in common with office efficiency.
The shoulders were outrageously broad, the barrel of his chest wa