Held to Answer/Chapter 31
Counting back from the scene in the vault room of the Amalgamated National, which took place at about nine-thirty, it was five and one-half hours to the time when Marien Dounay and Rollie Burbeck had steamed out with Mrs. Harrington upon her luxurious launch, the Black Swan, which was so commodious and powerful that it just escaped being a sea-going yacht.
But now, after the lapse of this five and one-half hours, neither Marien nor Rollie had returned, and only one of them had an inkling of what might have been happening in their absence. Information from the Harrington residence that the Black Swan would return to the pier about ten-thirty, caused a group of hopeful young men from the newspaper offices to take up their station on the yacht pier slightly in advance of that hour. But their wait was long, so long in fact that one by one they gave up their vigil and returned to their respective offices with no answer as yet to the burning question of what had led Miss Dounay to suspect that her diamonds were in the minister's safe deposit vault. But the distress and disappointment of the reporters was nothing like so great as the distress and disappointment upon the Black Swan, although for a very different reason.
The evening with Mrs. Harrington and her guests had begun pleasantly enough. The party itself was a jolly one, and so far as might be judged from outward appearances, Miss Marien Dounay was quite the jolliest of all; excepting perhaps Mrs. Harrington herself who was elated over the unexpected appearance of the actress; and Rollie, over its effect in immediately restoring him to the lost favor of his hostess. As many times as it was demanded, Miss Dounay told and retold the story of the loss of her jewels. She was the recipient of much sympathy and of many compliments because of the admirable fortitude with which she endured her loss.
Rollie thought Miss Dounay appeared able to dispense with the sympathy, but perceived that she greatly enjoyed the compliments. That she should keep the company in ignorance that her diamonds were to be recovered and continue to enact the rôle of the heroine who had been cruelly robbed of her chief possession, did not even surprise him. It was her affair entirely since she had bound him to secrecy, and whatever the motive, in the present state of his nerves, he was exceedingly grateful for it; having meantime not a doubt that the disclosure would be made ultimately in a manner which would permit the actress to gratify to the full her childish love of theatrical sensation.
The cruise began with a run far up San Pablo Bay toward Carquinez Straits, followed by a straightaway drive out through the Golden Gate to watch the sun sink between the horns of the Farallones; but here the heavy swells made the ladies gasp and clamor for a return to the shelter of the Bay. Re-entering the Gate as night fell, there was good fun in playing hide-and-seek from searchlight practice of the forts on either side the famous tideway, and some mischievous satisfaction in lounging in the track of the floundering, pounding ferryboats, and getting vigorously whistled out of the way. It was even enjoyable to grow sentimental over the phosphorescent glow of the waves in the wake or the play of the moonbeams on the bone-white crest at the bow. But after an hour or so of this, when it would seem that all of these things together with the tonic of the fresh salt breeze had made everybody wolfishly hungry, Mrs. Harrington's butler, expertly assisted, opened great hampers of eatables and drinkables, and began to serve them in the cabin which would have been rather spacious if the crowd had not been so large.
"Calmer water, James, while supper is being served!" Mrs. Harrington had ordered with a peace-be-still air.
James communicated the order to the captain, who understood very well that Mrs. Harrington was a lady to be obeyed. But it happened that there was a very fresh breeze on the Bay that night, and that a swell which was a kind of left-over from a gale outside two days before was still sloshing about inside, so that "calmer water" was not just the easiest thing to find, though the captain looked for it hard.
"Calmer water, James, I said!" Mrs. Harrington directed reprovingly, after an interval of watchful impatience, accompanying the observation by a look that shot barbs into the eye of the butler. A close observer would have noticed—and James was a close observer of his mistress—that Mrs. Harrington's neck swelled slightly, and that a flush began to mount upon her cheeks.
James knew this pouter-pigeon swelling well and its significance. Mrs. Harrington must now be obeyed. Calmer water had to be had, if it had to be made.
"Back of Yerba Buena, it is calmer," the lady concluded, with an increase of acerbity.
James lost no time in conveying this second command and a description of its accompanying signal, to the captain.
"'Behind the Goat,' she said," James concluded.
Now this island which humps like a camel in the middle of the San Francisco Bay is known to the esthetics as Yerba Buena, but to folks and to mariners it is Goat Island. James was folks; the captain was a mariner. Mrs. Harrington might have been esthetic.
"She draws too much to go nosin' round in there," replied the captain reluctantly, and explained his reluctance with a mixture of emphasis and the picturesque, by adding, "Behind the Goat it's shoal from hell to breakfast."
"She said it," replied James truculently; and stood by to see the helm shift.
"In she goes then, dod gast her!" muttered the captain.
"So much calmer in here under the sheltering lee of Yerba Buena," chirped Miss Gwendolyn Briggs, another quarter of an hour later.
"Why, to be sure," assented the hostess, as with a provident air she surveyed her contented and consuming guests who were ranged like a circling frieze upon the seat of Pullman plush which ran round the luxurious cabin, with James and his two assistants serving from the long table in the center.
It has been hinted that Mrs. Harrington was inclined to stoutness. She was also inclined to Russian caviar. Having seen her guests abundantly supplied, she lifted to her lips a triangle of toast, thickly spread with the Romanof confection. James stood before her, supporting a plate upon which were more triangles of toast and more caviar in a frilled and corrugated carton.
But quite abruptly Mrs. Harrington, who was proper as well as expert in all her food-taking manners, did an unaccountable thing. She turned the toast sidewise and smeared the caviar across her wide cheek almost from the corner of her mouth to her ear. At the same moment James himself did an even more unaccountable thing. He lurched forward, decorated his mistress's shoulders with the triangles of toast, like a new form of epaulette and upset the carton of caviar upon her expansive bosom, where the dark, oleaginous mass clung helplessly, quivered hesitantly, and then began to roll away in tiny, black spheres and to send out trickling exploratory streams, the general tendency of which was downward.
Nor was Mrs. Harrington alone in this sudden eccentricity of deportment. Over on the right Major Hassler, florid of person and extremely dignified of manner, was filling the wine glass of Mrs. Marston Conant, when abruptly he moved the mouth of the bottle a full twelve inches and began to pour its contents in a frothy gurgling stream down the back of the withered neck of John Ray, a rich, irascible, slightly deaf, and sinfully rich bachelor, who at the moment had leaned very low and forward to catch a remark that the lady next beyond was making. As if not content with the ruin thus wrought, Major Hassler next swept the bottle in a dizzy, cascading circle round him, sprinkling every toilet within a radius of three yards, and after dropping the bottle and flourishing his arms wildly, ended by plunging both hands to the bottom of the huge bowl of punch on the end of the table nearest him.
The only palliating feature of these amazing performances of Major Hassler, of James, and of Mrs. Harrington, was that nearly everybody else was executing the same sort of scrambling, lurching, colliding, capsizing, and smearing manœuvres upon their own account. For a moment everybody glared at everybody else accusingly, and then Ernest Cartwright, sitting on the floor where he had been hurled, offered an interpretation of the phenomena.
"We struck something!" he suggested brightly.
"By Gad!" declared Major Hassler with sudden conviction, as he straightened up and viewed his dripping hands and cuffs with an expression quite indescribable. "By Gad! That's just what I think!"
"James!" murmured a voice almost entirely smothered by rage.
James, despite the horrible fear in his soul, dared to turn his gaze upon his mistress, when suddenly a spasm of pain crossed the lady's face.
"Oh!" she gasped. "Oh, my heart!" Wrath had given way to fright, and the hue of wrath to pallor.
In the meantime, the Black Swan was standing very still, as still as if on land,—which to be exact was where she was. From without came the sound of waves slapping idly against her sides, and then she shivered while the screws were reversed and churned desperately. From end to end of the cabin there were "Ohs" and "Ahs," and shrieks of dismay, with short ejaculations, as the guests struggled to their feet and stood to view the ruin which the sudden stoppage of the craft had wrought upon toilets, dispositions, and the atmosphere of Mrs. Harrington's happy party.
The next half hour, to employ a marine phrase, was devoted to salvage of one sort and another. One thing became speedily clear. The Black Swan had her nose fast in most tenacious clay. No amount of churning of the screw could drag her off. And no amount of tooting of whistles brought any sort of craft to her assistance. She was stuck there till the tide should take her off. The tide was running out. By rough calculation, it would be eight hours till it came back strong enough to lift up her stern and rock her nose loose.
It was an unpleasant prospect.
With Mrs. Harrington sitting propped and pale in the end of the cabin, her guests tried to cheer her by making light of their plight and the prospect; but as the waters slipped out and out from under the Black Swan, till she lay on the bottom with a drunken list, and the hours crept along with dreary slowness through the tiresome night, one disposition after another succumbed to the inevitable and became cattish or bearish, according to sex. But the very first disposition of all to go permanently bad was that of Marien Dounay. Young Burbeck thought he understood to the full her capacity to be disagreeable, but learned in the first hour that this was a ridiculously mistaken assumption.
Nor could any mere petulance on account of weariness or cramped quarters among people who under these circumstances speedily became a bore to themselves and to each other, account for her behavior. Never had Rollie seen so many manifestations of her feline restlessness, or her wiry endurance. When other women had sunk exhausted to sleep upon a cushion in a corner, or upon the shoulders of an escort who obligingly supported the fair head with his own weary body, Miss Dounay sat bolt and desperate, staring at the myriad shoreward lights as if they held some secret her wilful eyes would yet bore out of them.
Though Rollie loyally tried, as endurance would permit, to watch with Marien through the night, sustaining snubs and shafts with humble patience and venturing an occasional dismal attempt at cheer, the first sign of relaxation in Miss Dounay's mood was vouchsafed not to him but to François.
This was when at eight o'clock the next morning, after toiling painfully up the steps at the landing pier, her eyes fell upon the huge black limousine, with the faithful chauffeur, his arms folded upon the wheel, his head leaning forward upon them, sound asleep. He had been there since ten-thirty of the night before. Other chauffeurs had waited and fumed, had sputtered to and fro in joy-riding intervals, and had gone home; but not François. A smile of pride and satisfaction played across Miss Dounay's face at this exhibition of faithfulness,—and especially in the presence of this jaded, dispirited crowd.
"François," Miss Dounay exclaimed, prodding his elbow until his head rolled sleepily into wakefulness, "I could kiss you!"
However, she did not. Rollie opened the door, Miss Dounay stepped back, motioned into the comfortable depths Mrs. Harrington and as many other of the ladies as the car would accommodate, and was whirled away.