Diamond Tolls/Chapter 5
CHAPTER V
DELIA looked at the diamond case. On it was stamped the name of "Ofsten & Groner," in gilt letters. The envelopes were of stiff linen paper, lined with tissue, and each one contained a diamond, with a few rubies held apart from the others by a rubber band.
"What does it mean?" Delia breathed. "I don't understand!"
She repacked the diamonds in their case and hid them on her own boat, under the floor in one of the traps. Then she worked all day with her housecleaning. As she cleaned, she wondered what thing had befallen her? The money—tens of hundreds of dollars—was more than she had ever dreamed of having.
She carried the newspapers to her own cabin and began to read them. Everyone of them was turned to a page that contained an article or item about the mysterious disappearance of Obert Goles, a jewellery salesman, with his stock in trade.
She realized, then, that she had come upon the gems which Obert Goles had carried. She wondered if she had shot Goles? She wondered if she had shot the man who made away with Goles?
More than these things, she wondered where her own position would be, for as she looked the papers over she discovered another item of news that had run through several days of interest and wonder for the reporters and editors—a pretty, prepossessing telephone girl had dropped out of sight in Cincinnati on the very day that Obert Goles had disappeared.
Something like a thrill of fear, of terror, swept over the mind of Delia. The coincidence would be hard to explain.
"Suppose they should think something. Suppose I went back with these diamonds. What'd they say to me?" she whispered to herself.
She pondered on many things.
That other river tripper, whom she had shot overboard, and whose possessions she had fallen heir to, was a better river traveller than herself. She had been satisfied with the pretty and well-built shantyboat. Yet a great deal was lacking when she was most comfortable—paradoxical as that seemed. Her lack of knowledge vexed her very much. She had believed that she would not care where she was, and that she would not want to know where she was.
Nevertheless, she knew that this was the reach below Hickman and the most interesting and valuable of the finds on the cruiser from her viewpoint were not the diamonds, but a complete set of maps which were bound in a single volume, each sheet showing a section of the river from Lake Itasca to The Passes—every sheet numbered and all the sections indexed on several small-scale maps.
There on No. 1 was Cairo, III., at the forks of the Ohio.
"The jumping-off place!" she mused, smiling with approval.
She found her own location on one of the inch-to-the-mile sheets and, though she felt as if she had travelled for ages on the river, her distance from the Ohio was less than seventy miles. Only seventy miles! In that short stretch she had definitely passed out of an old life into a novel one.
Not for an instant did she regret what she had done. Much that she liked had been of course given over for something that she loved and could not do without. She was doing even better than she had ever dreamed of doing—expenses were ridiculously small. The money and treasure in precious stones were a safeguard against any future worry from the question of income, should she determine to her own satisfaction that she must retain them.
She debated the matter of the gems frankly enough in her own mind. They were not hers. They were owned by a firm as she knew very well. The firm was wealthy, and could afford to lose a diamond once in a while. As an advertisement, the mystery and robbery had already paid excellent returns without question. No doubt the loss already had been charged off on the books—of course it had! All diamond salesmen are under bonds! An impersonal insurance company long since must have computed the cost and paid it.
But there are things easier to toss aside than the habit of perfect honesty in financial matters. It would be easier to toss social conventions aside than to neglect the scruples of respect for property.
Delia again brought out the diamonds and rubies, to stare at them. She stood before her fine mirror and looked first at the diamonds and then, meditatively, at the reflection of her own face and figure. Already she detected something in her expression as elusive as a nice question of honour. If she gazed steadfastly at her reflection, she did not see what puzzled her. But when she had been looking through the window at the eddying waters and her glance returned to her image, as her glance lighted upon her countenance, she saw fading that underlook of baffling but ominous meaning.
"It's a hard look!" she decided. "It's not plain, but it's there—a tough, a savage expression!"
She frowned at that thought, only to laugh lightly.
"That's what I need," she whispered.
She returned the gems to their hiding place, and cleared away the little confusion that was the result of her luncheon. Her work done, she sat on the stern deck reading some of the newspapers of varying age which she found on the cruiser.
She was reading, unconscious of the flight of time, when a loud hail startled her.
"Hue-e-e!" someone cried, and looking, she saw a shantyboat swinging into her eddy. On the bow, each pulling an oar, were Mrs. Mahna and her son.
"Hello!" she called, smiling. The arrival of people whom she had known awakened something in her heart.
"Looks like you are going into the boat business!" Mrs. Mahna declared with a laugh.
Delia looked at the stern of the cruiser, surprised by the statement. Her possession of that boat might make people think. How could she explain it? She had not thought of that phase of the situation.
"Your friend on board?" Mrs. Mahna asked her as though her curiosity were overcoming her tact.
"My friend on board?" Delia repeated, wonderingly, looking around her in a kind of bewilderment. "I have no friend here."
"Sho!" Mrs. Mahna exclaimed. "You got that man's gasolene boat tied up—I 'lowed—I sure 'lowed he was a friend of yourn!"
"Oh," Delia smiled, enlightened. "Oh, no! He was no friend of mine"
"But he left his boat with you?"
"Yes, he kept right on going," Delia admitted, "but he left his boat."
"Lawse!" Mrs. Mahna exclaimed, staring at the self-possessed girl. "We 'lowed—we got to thinking like's not that scoundrel might harm you—we knowed him! Course, hit were none of our business, but we just dropped down. When I seen you sitting on the stern there, reading comfy, I knowed you was all right. Then the cruiser there—we 'lowed perhaps you-all'd taken a boarder or—or he was some friend or husband or something like that"
"No, nothing like that," Delia replied, keeping a composed countenance with difficulty. "Won't you come over? I would like to talk to you, Mrs. Mahna."
"All right," the river woman replied. "I'll sure come."
They had dropped their anchor a few yards distant, and Mrs. Mahna immediately crossed the open water in a little skiff that rocked at the end of a short line from the stern of their boat.
"I sure am glad I found you all right and well took care of," Mrs. Mahna declared. "You wa'n't no reg'lar river girl, I could see that, and I told the folks up in Putney's Bend I bet you'd know more about Old Mississip' at the end the week than at the beginning. How came hit?"
"You're friendly?" Delia asked, absently, "I mean I can talk to you?"
"You sure can!" Mrs. Mahna declared, emphatically. "I don't know what happened, but that man who was in that cruiser was a mean scoundrel, I could see it by his face. Now, wa'n't he?"
"Yes—as mean as possible," the girl shook her head.
"Looks like you took care of yourself."
"The law did"
"The law?" Mrs. Mahna repeated, wonderingly. "Did any sheriff or such like take care of a river girl? I never heard the beat of that"
"Oh—this is the law!" Delia exclaimed, drawing her automatic.
"Ah-h!" Mrs. Mahna caught her breath. "That's the law! Sure! I might have knowed! There's no law to beat it on the river. So you killed him?"
"I don't know; he came aboard right there, up the gangplank and opened the door. I'd left them both unlocked, so I could run either way. He began to talk to me—I forget what he said, and I—and I"
"Served the law on him—then what?"
"He coughed, and went on through the boat, and into the river," she said. "I didn't see nor hear him again. I just—well, I didn't care! I took his boat, and here it is"
"You'd better not stay here with it." Mrs. Mahna shook her head. "We'll all drop down the river to Tiptonville Chute, or somewhere. When you've shot a man, you always want to just move up or down a bit. Course, in this lonely reach, it don't matter, really. But you kind of want to get used to going on a bit. Roy!"
The youth, who had returned to the other shantyboat, called an answer.
"We're going to drop on down again—night trip a bit. Get up that anchor and pull over here, and cut us loose. Hitch them boats together, ourn outside the cruiser, so's they'll tow. Put on the lights d'rectly."
Mrs. Mahna returned to Delia's cabin, and sat down in a motherly way.
"I just knowed you all was a soft-paw doing this away," the river woman asserted. "You didn't pull a clean stroke with the oars, kind of crabbing them. But shucks! That's nothing; lots of girls comes down here as soft and sissy as a lady-daisy, but when they tie in to N'Orleans, I tell you, they mostly knows a thing or two! They sure do! River rats don't mostly kill a lady down here, 'thout they thinks they got a lot of money, or something like that, but they maul 'em awful, sometimes. You see, on Old Mississip' ladies got to take care of themselves. 'Tain't many that brings the law with them, right off at first, the way you did. Some'd get along lots better if they did. So you plugged him—shoot many times?"
"Just once"
"Just once! Well, I declare! Hit him the first whack! That's the best way. After you've done that a few times, I tell you they'll treat you mighty respectful down thisaway. They ain't nothing makes a man step around like a lady that knows the law, and ain't afraid to use it. Late years, and since I was married, I ain't lawed it none to speak of. Little birdshot into fellows trying to steal a skiff or lift a hoop net, but that's all. Sho! Where'd you hit him?"
"I don't know"
"Didn't see no blood?"
"No."
"Well, likely he had on coat and vest and shirt and undershirt and so on. They don't bleed to amount to anything if they move away quick, like he did. Say who he was, or anything?"
"No—just that he had come visiting and that he knew I wouldn't mind. Then I shot."
"Good! He's learned his lesson if he isn't dead. Gracious."
There was a shock as the other shantyboat bumped into the cruiser and shook all three boats.
Mrs. Mahna went to the stern deck and scolded about the way the two men were roughing around. Then she returned into the cabin again.
"It's calming down awful," she remarked. "This is cyclone weather—warm and no wind and graying up. We'll drop into the eddy down by Point Pleasant, or under the Two State point across from New Madrid. I wouldn't pull out to-night, only you oughtn't to stay in the eddy where you've shot up a man. This is Kentucky—United States marine laws along here—but down there it's Tennessee. It'll help a lot if some fee-hunting sheriff should take a notion to investigate. Nobody said anything about your shooting?"
"I told no one but you."
"And I'll tell no one at all," Mrs. Mahna shook her head. "You see, the best way when you've killed a man is not to say anything if you're away off by your lonesome. Course, if there's witnesses, you kind of want to fix them right off. I ain't even a witness now. You see, I know ladies that's been tried for shooting folks. I never did get to be. But I never talked none. Don't say a word to those boys outside! They're the darndest gossips from Cairo to The Passes. Course, it'd be better, if men kinda knowed you'd shot a fresh fellow. But after you've looked at them, they'll know you'll shoot fast enough. Course, you're pretty—prettiest girl I've seen dropping down alone in five or six years. Course, there's pretty girls drop down, but they're married ladies mostly, and they have folks with them. But you're alone! That's what got me. No man with you! Honest, you'd ought to have some kind of a man along, if it wa'n't more than a ten-year-old boy. They're a heap of company, on the average, s'pecially the right ones. Still, take a good dog now"
"I don't want a dog," Delia sniffed, "much less a man!"
"Oh, that's the tune you play, is it? Well, everybody to his own biting, as the man said when he bit his tongue. I was just telling you. No 'fence, of course. I've lived alone, and I've had husbands and sons and boarders, and I come to the conclusion a man's of some consequence even if he is kind of sickening. Well, they got that anchor up."
The two women went out to the bow deck and saw the boats drifting out into the main current, hitched three abreast, with the cruiser in the centre. Roy Mahna, the son, was pulling the starboard sweep of the girl's cabin-boat and Mahna, the father, was pulling the port sweep of the Mahna boat. Thus they navigated the boats out into the river, and as dusk fell, they were in mid-channel, floating down at the rate of nearly six miles an hour.
"That motor run all right?" Mahna called across.
"All right," Delia answered, "I'll start it any time you want the power. If I'd thought, I would have towed us out instead of using the sweeps."
"There wa'n't much pulling," Mahna answered. "The current handled us, and all we needed was to keep them going across the sucks."
"We're all going to eat on our boat to-night," Mrs. Mahna declared. "Come on over, and I'll set up a snack."
Delia crossed the cruiser's cabin and entered the Mahna boat, which was larger and as clean as her own. Except for the lack of desk and books there was little difference in their furnishings. In the large, sweet kitchen, Mrs. Mahna proceeded to set out hot bread, cans of fruit, beefsteak, and other river foodstuffs.
"We'll trip down aways to-night, and run into Don't-Know-Where, and then after a day or two tripping down, they'd never find you in God's world!" Mrs. Mahna whispered. "I didn't want to tell you, but that man you plugged run up the sandbar and they found him this morning, out of his head and crazy as a loon. Whisky Williams is taking him up to Hickman, to the hospital. He's White Collar Dan—a mean feller. Course, Williams won't never say a word, but they might think something, up around Hickman, if some of them knowed he was shot and then seen you with his boat. Men folks is awful particular about ladies that shoots and robs men. You know how that is."
"I know all about it!" Delia exclaimed, with so much emphasis that Mrs. Mahna nodded sympathetically.