Cod, Billy had worked for his every penny. He was no shirker. From
the first day that he carried a pair of pliers in the leg pocket of his
overalls, and in a sixty-knot gale stretched wires between ice-capped
telegraph poles, he had more than earned his wages. Never, whether on
time or at piece-work, had he by a slovenly job, or by beating the
whistle, robbed his employer. And for his honest toil he was determined
to be as honestly paid--even by President Hamilcar Poussevain. And
President Ham never paid anybody; neither the Armenian street peddlers,
in whose sweets he delighted, nor the Bethlehem Steel Company, nor the
house of Rothschild.

Why he paid Billy even the small sums that from time to time Billy wrung
from the president's strong box the foreign colony were at a loss to
explain. Wagner, the new American consul, asked Billy how he managed it.
As an American minister had not yet been appointed, to the duties of
the consul, as Wagner assured everybody, were added those of diplomacy.
But Haytian diplomacy he had yet to master. At the seaport in Scotland
where he had served as vice-consul, law and order were as solidly
established as the stone jetties, and by contrast the eccentricities of
the Black Republic baffled and distressed him.

"It can't be that you blackmail the president," said the consul,
"because I understand he boasts he has committed all the known crimes."

"And several he invented," agreed Billy.

"And you can't do it with a gun, because they tell me the president
isn't afraid of anything except a voodoo priestess. What is your
secret?" coaxed the consul. "If you'll only sell it, I know several
Powers that would give you your price."

Billy smiled modestly.

"It's very simple," he said. "The first time my wages were shy I went to
the palace and told him if he didn't come across I'd shut off the juice.
I think he was so stunned at anybody asking him for real money that
while he was still stunned he opened his safe and handed me two thousand
francs. I think he did it more in admiration for my nerve than because
he owed it. The next time pay-day arrived, and the pay did not, I didn't
go to the palace. I just went to bed, and the lights went to bed, too.
You may remember?"

The consul snorted indignantly.

"I was holding three queens at the time," he protested. "Was it _you_
did that?"

"It was," said Billy. "The police came for me to start the current going
again, but I said I was too ill.