Somewhere in the Caribbean/Chapter 10
CHAPTER X.
A THIEF IN THE NIGHT.
Though the Waikiki's electric-light plant was out of commission and would be until I could take time to overhaul it there were candles and ship's lanterns enough to give us what light we needed and after arrangements for the night had been made, with the Minorcans to take alternate watches of two hours each, I was making a round of the deck preparatory to turning in when Alison came out and joined me on the after deck. The red glow in the western sky was still undiminished and the reflection of it was strong enough to make the yacht stand out white and ghostlike in the rose-tinged night.
“You see now, Dick, what a beastly bacchanalian lot I sailed with,” she began. “I didn't know beforehand, and of course daddy didn't know when he wrote me to come down with Wickham's party what sort of people Wickham had invited.”
“Of course not,” I agreed; then: “In this letter you speak of, did he say he would meet you in Havana?”
“Yes; and I suppose he is there now, crazy with anxiety. He must know that the Waikiki cleared from Miami for Havana four days ago and that she hasn't been heard of since the hurricane.”
“Did he write from Havana?”
“No; his letter was sent from Puerto Barrios, Honduras.”
Ever since she had told me about the letter I had been wondering if it too might not be a part of Wickham Jeffreys' plot.
“I don't suppose, by any chance, you brought that letter with you, did you?” I asked.
“Why, yes; I think it is in my writing case in the steamer trunk.”
“Would you mind letting me see it?”
“I'll be glad to.”
I went with her as far as the main cabin and waited while she went into her stateroom and searched for the letter. When she brought it I was obliged to admit that it seemed perfectly genuine. It was typewritten on ordinary letter paper without any printed heading and though the paper bore the trade-mark of an American mill, that proved nothing. And the signature, the single word, “Daddy,” proved still less. It was written in Hiram Carter's familiar backhand and I doubted if even a handwriting expert would have questioned it.
It was not until I began to examine the inclosing envelope that the hopeful suspicion I had been cherishing raised its head again. The stamp and postmark were Hondurian, to be sure, though the date in the postmark was blurred so as to be entirely undecipherable. But it was the address that interested me most. At a casual glance there seemed to be nothing wrong with it; it was in typewriting, like the letter, and its three lines bore Alison's name, the Carter street and house number, and “New York City, U. S. A.” It was this final line that gave the clew. It was not quite parallel with the other two and it unmistakably was in a slightly different type.
“See here,” I said, holding the envelope nearer the candle. “Why do you suppose your father, or his Puerto Barrios amanuensis if he had one, used two different typewriters in addressing this?”
“The 'New York City' is different, isn't it?” she breathed, examining it closely. “What does that mean, Dick?”
I tore the back from the envelope and held the address face up before the light. At once the trick became as transparent as the paper upon which it had been turned. There had formerly been another address on the envelope and the first two lines of it had been erased and Alison's name and the Carter street and house number substituted. It has been said that the most careful criminal always misses a bet somewhere in the course of his undertaking. It would have been perfectly feasible to erase and rewrite all three lines of the address in which case the clew would have been buried. But the forger—Wickham Jeffreys or another—had slipped.
“It is a forgery,” I asserted, “just as I have been suspecting it might be. Whoever wrote this letter was obliged to have an envelope with the Hondurian stamp and postmark on it and since the Carter Company has a contract in Honduras any waste-basket in the New York offices of the company would furnish that. If you will look carefully you will see a faint shadow of the original address, which was to the company and not to you, under the typing of your name.”
She looked, saw, and gasped; but the gasp was of relief rather than of shocked astoundment.
“Of course it's a forgery!” she exclaimed. “How could I ever have imagined that daddy would write such a letter to me!” Then: “What unspeakable villainy! And yet in the light of what has happened since Oh, Dick! what would have become of me if you hadn't turned mutineer and pirate captain or if your ship hadn't been wrecked on the same island with the Waikiki!”
“It has all been mighty providential thus far,” I admitted. “But now you see how desperately the two Jeffreys must be involved. I am glad to know about this letter and to have my suspicion confirmed. Forewarned is forearmed. Having gone so far Wickham isn't likely to stick at anything now to make his plot go through.”
“But what can he do, when they have no boat?”
“I can't say as to that. But you may be sure we'll hear from him in some way as soon as he finds out that we are here in the yacht. He knows he can never go back to civilization unless he takes his hostage with him—and you are the hostage.”
The candlelight wasn't very good but I made sure her eyes were suspiciously bright when she turned to face me and put her hands on my shoulders and said: “I'm thanking God more and more for you every minute, Dick, dear!”
Of course I went clear off my head at that. If I have said anything heretofore to give the impression that I wasn't a human man like other men, it was a mistake. I was and am. Right there and then in that white-and-gold dismantled dining saloon I crushed her in my arms and kissed her until she was fairly gasping for breath. But swift upon the heels of the uncontrollable passion fit came repentance and remorse.
“Forgive me if you can, Alison,” I stammered. “I know what you meant, but—but it pushed me over the edge. I'm a cad, a brute—anything you like to call me, for I haven't forgotten for a single minute that you told me there is another man. Just the same, I've loved you ever since we were children together and it isn't my fault that your father's money came between us to keep me from telling you so.”
Blurting all this out most shamefacedly I stepped back prepared to take what was coming to me. But she didn't say any of the things I had given her a right to say. She had turned away and was covering her face with her hands and I thought she was crying. But there were no tears in her voice when she said softly, behind the shielding hands: “I—I think you'd better go away, now, Dick, and—and leave me. For—for, you see, I love that other man very madly and if he should ever find out what”
I didn't wait to hear any more and shortly after I reached the deck I heard her stateroom door close behind her. Feeling more like a sheep thief than I had ever thought a man of my blood and breeding could feel I went aft to substitute a lock and chain for the whaleboat's rope painter, this purely on Israel Brill's account. His surly attitude kept me constantly suspicious of him and Dorgan's warning also carried weight. I knew Brill was charging the loss of his schooner and her cargo up to me, as in a way he was justified in doing, and I didn't doubt for a moment that he would sell us out if he could get in communication with Jeffreys and the bribe should be big enough.
After locking the boat I made one more round of the deck before going up to the bridge to turn in on the lounge seat in the chart house. In the bow I found José on watch and to my question he answered that he had neither seen nor heard anything stirring on shore. At the foot of the bridge ladder I came upon Dorgan smoking a pipe and nursing his splint-bound arm.
“Trouble?” I queried, halting to look him over.
“She's achin' like hell,” he returned, meaning the broken arm, “and I reckoned I might as well get up and smoke me a pipe.”
The big fellow's patience under his woundings made me feel uncomfortably conscience-stricken.
“I'm mighty sorry I broke your arm, Dorgan,” I said. “I didn't mean to cripple you as bad as that.”
“I ain't a-kickin', am I?” he returned good-naturedly. “It was a free-for-all and somebody had to get the worst of it. Besides, I ain't forgettin' that you lugged me up out o' the Vesta's cabin to give me a show for my life when we all thought she was goin' to Davy Jones. But about these cusses on shore. Reckon they got them rifles out o' the schooner afore they burned her?”
“Your guess is as good as anybody's,” I said. “But there's this about it—we'll probably find out in the morning. If they have the guns they'll be taking pot shots at us from the beach.”
“Say, lookee here,” he put in curiously; “you told me this mornin' that this here Jeffreys pup would try to get the wimmen back; is it bad enough to be a fight for blood?”
“It is just that. Unless Jeffreys can take Miss Carter back to the United States as his wife he can't go back himself.”
“Huh!” he said. “Reckon you could make that a little plainer?”
“It's a long story but I can give you the nib of it. Jeffreys and his father have been doing crooked work and Miss Carter's father is the one who can make them do time for it. But his hands will be tied if his daughter is married to young Jeffreys. That's the whole plot in a nutshell.”
“But he can't make the gal marry him if she don't want to.”
“He can make her wish she'd never been born,” I said and he took my meaning.
“Why, the damn' dirty hound!” he said. “If I could get holt of him with this one good hand o' mine”
“I feel a good bit that way myself,” I cut in. “Maybe one or both of us will get a chance before the show is over. We'll be hearing from him shortly.”
Dorgan turned to scan the distant shoreline looming faintly in the darkness.
“That li'l' bird,” he said, meaning José; “I shouldn't wonder if he wouldn't be a good enough li'l' hellion in a scrap. But this here's a time when there ortn't to be nobody but a white man on watch—somebody 'at's goin' to be derned sure not to forgit and go to sleep. You tell José to turn in and I'll stand his watch and call you at midnight 'r so.”
It will be understood that I had no fear of treachery on Dorgan's part, by this time, so I gave the order as he suggested. And when I had seen the crippled giant begin a slow march back and forth between the bitts forward and the bridge ladder I climbed to the chart room and turned in, not doubting Dorgan's loyalty any more than I did my own.
When Dorgan awakened me I found that his “midnight or so” had stretched to the small hours of the morning.
“Anything stirring?” I asked.
“They're on,” he reported. “Couple of hours ago some of 'em come along with torches and found the stuff we put ashore. Looked as if they was luggin' it all off somewheres—back around the headland.”
“That settles it,” I said. “They know we're here—unless they think we've gone to sea in the Vesta's boat. It's a small matter. They'd know it anyway when we try to get steam on the yacht.”
“Reckon we can make out to do that?” he asked.
“We've got it to do,” I told him; whereupon I descended to the deck to take my turn at the sentry go.
It proved to be a lonely watch. Toward morning the thin sickle of a dying moon rose out of the sea and in the ghostly half light the yacht, the silvered sea, the white line of the beach and the background of dense tropical jungle figured as the stage setting in a weird spectacle, lacking nothing but the people of the play. What would the day now lingering just beyond the eastern horizon bring forth? Rather feverishly I fell to estimating or trying to estimate the time it would take to pump the yacht free of water—if we should be lucky enough to get steam on the boilers and set the pumps at work. And if we should succeed in getting the water out of her would the twin screws develop power enough to back her off the shoal? Only the trial actual would answer that question. A greater power than any man-made engines could develop had driven the steel hull into the sand; would the hurricane demons, looking on from whatever upper world to which they had withdrawn, laugh mockingly at our puny efforts to undo their work?
At the first graying of the dawn I took my stand in the sharp prow and swept the shore line with the glass. The red glow from the burning schooner had long since died out of the western sky and in all the wide prospect the grounded yacht alone spoke of the presence a of humankind or the works of man. As the beach line came into clearer view I was able to confirm Dorgan's report as to the removal of the supplies we had put ashore. They had all disappeared.
Just before sunrise I called Brill and the two sailors and tapped on the door of Alison's stateroom and asked her to wake Hedda, who had volunteered to serve as ship's cook. Taking a leaf out of the book of the probabilities I argued that the liquor orgy of the previous day, followed, as it doubtless was, by a gorging feast on the provisions we had put ashore, would make it pretty difficult for Jeffreys to get his forces in action until after the effects of the carouse had worn off. With one uninterrupted day I thought we might clear the fire hold of water; and with that accomplished we could put fire under the boilers and set the power pumps at work.
While Hedda was cooking breakfast I dropped into the engine room for another look at the machinery. Though I had taken the course in civil engineering in college and had majored in that branch I had always had a strong mechanical turn and on the one short voyage I had made in the Waikiki as a guest of the Carters I had spent most of the time in the engine room—gaining a bit of experience which was now about to prove invaluable. What would have been merely “gadgets” to other men—and to me, for that matter, if I hadn't previously made their acquaintance—were now parts of a familiar mechanism with which I had once eaten and slept.
As I have said before the machinery, or so much of it as I could get at with half a foot of water on the floor, seemed to be uninjured by the shock of the grounding; and after I had overhauled the bilge pumps and ascertained the possibility of getting steam to them without any hand bailing I climbed back to the deck and was just in time to meet Alison as she came out of the main cabin. If she had made me pay for my passionate outburst of the night by putting me in a class with Wickham Jeffreys, I couldn't have blamed her. But there was nothing in her greeting to show that she even remembered the outburst.
“I hope the pirate captain rested well,” she said, with the grimacing little smile that was always, for me, one of her most alluring charms. And then: “When do we sail?”
“I wish I could tell you,” I returned, trying, rather ineffectually I'm afraid, to match her cheerful mood, “but I can answer only in negatives. It won't be to-day.”
In a flash the cheerful mood vanished. “Poor daddy!” she said and her lip trembled; and then again: “Poor, poor daddy! It breaks my heart, Dick, to think how he must be suffering! And it may be days and days before we can get to him.”
“But, see here,” I said, trying to comfort her, “since that letter was a forgery, you don't know positively that he is in Cuba.”
“No; I only know that he said in a former letter that he would return by way of Cuba.”
“But that was indefinite as to time, wasn't it? And even if he has left Honduras and is now in Havana he may not have heard of the possible loss of the Waikiki and even if he has heard of it he has no reason to suppose that you were on board—inasmuch as he didn't write that letter you thought he wrote.”
“Oh, dear me! that is so,” she said with a deep sigh of relief. “I am still all tangled up and bewildered and I keep on forgetting. Of course he wouldn't know that I was in the yacht—at least not unless he has cabled to New York and found out in that way.”
“We'll hope he hasn't cabled and we'll also hope that we are going to float the Waikiki before Wickham Jeffreys thinks up some scheme to stop us.”
“Do you know anything more than you did last night?” she queried.
“Only that they have found the provisions and clothing and have carried them away from the beach. Which means that they know we are here in the yacht or have been here.”
“But they can't come off to us without a boat.”
“No,” I said.
We had been walking slowly aft as we talked, expecting momently to hear Hedda beating the gong to summon us to breakfast. At the taffrail Alison leaned over to look down at the water. When she turned to face me her lips were pale.
“Dick!” she gasped; “where is our boat?”
I sprang to the rail and looked over. The whaleboat was gone.