Kitabı oku: «Pirates' Hope», sayfa 9

At first I thought I would. Then the remembrance of what Grey had told me – about Van Dyck's newest trouble – came to oppress me, asking for solitude and some better chance of clarifying itself.

"I think I'll stay here and smoke a pipe," I said; and so we parted.

The pipe smoking had progressed no farther than the lighting of the match when I saw some one coming along the beach. I thought it was Grey returning to say something that he had forgotten to say, but when Billy Grisdale's dog came to sniff in friendly fashion at me, I knew that the approaching figure must be Billy.

"Jack Grey told me where I'd be likely to find you," said the infant, coming up to cast himself down upon the sand at my side. "Don't happen to have another pinch of tobacco in your inside pocket, do you?"

I had, and when his need was supplied he rolled a cigarette in a bit of brown paper saved from some of the provision wrappings and lighted it at the glowing dottel of my pipe.

"Tough old world, isn't it?" he mourned, stretching himself out luxuriously with his hands locked under his head. "Edie and I thought we were sittin' on top of it when we saw that smoke trail just after sunset, but it was only a false alarm."

"You are sure you saw a smoke?"

"Oh, yes; there was no doubt about that. We could see it as long as we could see anything. But I guess we just joshed ourselves into thinking that it was coming our way." He sat up to nurse his knees and was silent for a little time. When he began again it was to say: "You know these seas better than any of us; is there any chance at all that we'll ever be taken off?.. Lie down, Tige, old boy, and take it easy. There's nothing to bite in these diggings – more's the pity."

I answered Billy's question cheerfully as a duty incumbent upon me, and I fancied he took the forced optimism for exactly what it was worth. While I was expatiating upon the law of lucky chances, the bull pup was refusing to lie down and take it easy; he was standing stiffly with his crooked forelegs braced and his cropped ears cocked as if at the approach of an enemy.

"What is the matter with the dog, Billy?" I asked, and as I spoke, we both thought we saw the answer in the lagoon at our feet. A triangular black fin split the mirror-like surface for a brief instant, and a twist of some huge under-sea body turned the darkling water into lambent phosphorescent flames. It was not the first shark we had seen, but they seldom penetrated this far into the lagoon.

"Ah!" said Billy, stroking down the rising hackles on the dog's back, "there's a quick way out of it for you, little doggie, when the clock strikes thirteen. One jump, and you'll never know what hurt you. You won't jump, eh? You're foolish, in your brain, old boy. It'll be much easier than starving to death."

"Still in the doldrums, Billy?" I asked.

"Who wouldn't be? But I didn't chase out here to swap glooms with you, Uncle Dick. I wanted to ask you if you believe in this wild tale of the Spaniards' buried treasure."

"I'll believe anything that will help to pass the time," I replied evasively.

"Huh!" he said; "that is what you might call the retort meaningless. Supposing there was a treasure, and supposing you should stumble across it: would it be yours?"

"Why not?"

"I didn't know. I was just asking for information. You wouldn't feel obliged to chop it up into eighteen separate pieces and pass it around – like a watermelon at a picnic?"

"Why should I?"

"Oh, just on general principles, I thought maybe; all for one and one for all, and that sort."

With the miraculous discovery of the day – and Madeleine's rights – fresh in mind, it seemed a moment in which to tread carefully.

"Finders are keepers, the world over, Billy," I said. "I am a poor man, and I should probably hog the treasure if I should find it."

"That's better," he returned. "We're all growing so desperately inhuman that a fellow can't tell where to draw the line any more. If I find the Spaniards' gold, you needn't expect me to whack up with you. I'm going to put my feet in the trough and keep 'em there. Come on, old doggie; let's go and hunt us a hole to burrow in. There's another day coming, or if there isn't, we shan't have anything more to worry about."

He got up to go back to the camp, whistling to the dog as he moved off. For the second time the bull pup braced himself, showing his teeth and growling a bit, and this time there was no disturbance in the lagoon to account for it. But Billy whistled again and the dog started to follow his master, looking back from time to time, as if he went reluctantly; and once more I wondered what he saw or heard or smelled.

As it fell out, the answer to this wondering query did not keep me waiting. Billy Grisdale's shadowy figure had barely disappeared in the down-shore distance when another and much more substantial one broke out of the jungle just behind me, and I got upon my feet to find Ingerson confronting me.

"What's all this talk about things being buried?" he demanded morosely.

"Listening, were you?" said I, taking small pains to keep the contempt out of my voice.

He threw himself down on the sand and sat with his arms resting on his knees and his hands locked together.

"I'm in hell, Preble," he muttered. Then he unclasped his hands and held one of them up. "Look at that."

Dark as it was I could see the upheld hand shaking like a leaf in the wind.

"What is the matter with you?" I asked.

"You know well enough; I'm over the edge. Van Dyck's killing me by inches. He wants to kill me."

"Liquor, you mean?"

His answer was a groan. "I haven't had one good drink in three days – not enough to make one good drink. It's got me, Preble. I didn't know. I've always had it when I wanted it. If you've got a heart in you, you'll show me where he's hiding the stuff. I'll go mad if you don't."

I wanted to tell him that it would be small loss to the rest of us if he should, but I didn't. As a person who is strictly the architect of his own misery, a drink maniac may command little commiseration, but his sufferings are none the less real, for all that. Sitting there on the sands, with the fires of the drunkard's Gehenna burning inside of him, Ingerson was a pitiable object. Still, remembering some of the brutal things that had been charged up to his account, and not less the cold-blooded bargain he was seeking to drive with Holly Barclay, I didn't waste much sympathy upon him.

"It is a good time in which to show that you are a human being, and not a beast, Ingerson," I said. "Thus far, you've been merely a clog on the wheels, and the day is coming, if, indeed, it isn't already here, when those of us who are men will have to remember that there are nine helpless women on this island whose wants must be supplied before ours are."

He looked up at me. "You mean that the food's going – or gone?"

"Yes."

He was silent for a moment, and then he laughed. It was the cracked laugh of a man on the brink.

"Eighteen mouths to fill, and nothing to fill 'em with. You've said it, Preble; I'm nothing but a dead weight in the boat – a bump on a log. I'll remove one of the hungry mouths," and before I had the slightest idea of what he meant, he sprang up and hurled himself into the lagoon.

Thinking that the plunge was only the mad impulse of a half-crazed drunkard denied, and hoping that a salt-water soaking would bring him to his senses, I made no move at first. But when I saw him deliberately wade out over his depth and strike out with strong swimming strokes for the reef over which the ground swell was breaking, I remembered the black fin Grisdale and I had seen and shouted a warning.

"Come back here, you fool!" I called. "There's a man-eater in there! Come back, I say!"

I don't suppose he heard me; if he did, he paid no attention. I confess, with decent shame, that I hesitated when it became evident that he meant to carry out his threat of effacing himself. His life was of little benefit, to himself or to others, and if he lived, it would only be to add the care of a madman to our other calamities. I have been glad a thousand times since that this was merely a passing thought. The real motivating impulse came from the sight of a V-shaped ripple racing diagonally across the lagoon to intercept the swimmer; a ripple plainly discernible on the starlit surface of the reef-bound inlet. It was the shark again.

What happened after that will remain a nightmare to me as long as memory serves. I was stripping my coat and kicking off my shoes when Van Dyck came bursting out of the wood behind me.

"Who is that out there?" he gasped.

"Ingerson – he's gone off his head!"

Without another word Van Dyck ran down to the shore and took the water in a clean dive. When he came up he was within arm's reach of the dipsomaniac. There was a fierce grapple and both men went under. My heart was in my mouth. I made sure the shark had taken one or the other of them. But the end was not yet. As I waded out armpit deep, splashing and making all the noise I could in the hope of scaring the great fish, two heads bobbed up a few yards away, and I saw that Bonteck had either choked or drowned the would-be suicide into submission and was swimming in with him.

A few quick strokes gave me my chance to help, and together we dragged Ingerson ashore. He was half-drowned and was otherwise little more than a bedraggled wreck of a man. While we were working over him, Van Dyck explained – briefly. Edith Van Tromp had told him that she had seen Ingerson creeping into the wood on all fours, with a knife in his hand, and he – Bonteck – had followed. All day he had been suspecting that Ingerson was on the edge of delirium.

"You'll have to give him some of the hair of the dog that bit him, or we'll have a frantic maniac in our midst," I said. "Is there any liquor left?"

"A little. Stay with him and I'll go and get it."

He was gone only a few minutes, and by the time he came back, Ingerson was able to sit up. We fed him brandy in small doses, and as the fiery stuff got in its work some degree of sanity returned. Apparently he knew quite well what he had tried to do, and was surlily regretful that the attempt had failed.

"You made a bonehead play, Van Dyck," he shivered. "I was trying to do a decent thing to wind up with, and you blocked it. You'd better have let me alone."

Van Dyck did not reply, and the drink maniac went on monotonously:

"I wanted to wind it up. Old John B.'s got me. I didn't believe it, but the last three days have shown me where I was heading in. As long as you can keep me half lit up.. but you can't do that forever."

"No," said Bonteck gravely; "this is the last bottle."

Ingerson's head had fallen forward upon his breast.

"One more – little nip, and then – perhaps – I – can – go – to – sleep," he mumbled; and at this we gave him the sleeping potion and in another half-minute he was dead to the world.

Hard-hearted as it may seem, we made short work of disposing of him. We were a long quarter of a mile from the camp, and, short of carrying him, there was no way to get him there. So we merely dragged his limp and sodden bulk up to a little open space under the trees and left it.

"I'm beginning to think he was more than half right about the bonehead play," said Van Dyck sourly as he carefully hid the last of the brandy bottles. "It is only a question of a little time – and his swigging of the last thimbleful of the stuff – when we'll have to hog-tie him in self-defense. Let's do a sentry-go around to the far end of things. We may as well dry out tramping as any other way."

And it was not until he said this that I realized that we, too, were as sodden as the limp figure we had hauled up under the palms.

XII
BONTECK UNLOADS

Walking briskly to give our soaked clothes a chance to drip and dry out a bit, Van Dyck and I passed around the bay of the ancient wreck and in due course of time came to the heel of the sandspit in which the island terminated eastward. Here we found our signal rag hanging motionless on its tree mast, but the fire at the foot of the tree had gone out, and as our matches were wet we could not rekindle it.

I proposed going back to camp for more matches, but Bonteck said no, that it was hardly worth while and, pointing to a hazy gray mist bank in the east which was slowly rising to blot out the stars in that quarter of the heavens, he added: "That cloud means weather; most likely the kind that would put the fire out if we should make one. If you're not too chilly, sit down and put your back to a tree. There's a thing that needs to be hammered out between us, Dick, before we get any farther along."

I found a place where the sand was dry and warm, and sat down, and he squatted beside me. I wanted to smoke, and was absent-minded enough to fill my pipe with damp tobacco before I remembered that there were no matches. As to the chilliness, even the wet clothes merely gave the effect of a steam bath. Within the half-hour the night had grown oppressively hot and the dead air was like that of an oven.

"Go ahead with your hammering," I said, adding: "There are several little matters that need explaining – from my point of view."

"It's coming to you – and to the others," he returned promptly. "I've been standing it off from day to day, hoping that the explanations might be made after the fact, instead of in the thick of it. But I've about reached the end of my rope. Mrs. Van Tromp told me after dinner this evening that she could serve possibly half a dozen more meals for the eighteen of us."

"Six meals; two days. We should have gone on reduced rations long ago. We've been wasting like drunken sailors."

"I know it. But I kept putting that off, too. Hoping against hope, I guess you'd call it. You know what a scare it would have thrown into everybody if the food scarcity had been made public."

"Quite so. But the scare will have to come now, and the suddenness of it won't make it any lighter."

"That is one of the things that is grinding me, but only one. I've been carrying a pretty heavy back-load, Dick, and the time has come when I've got to shift some of it – if I'm to keep from going the way Ingerson did a little while ago. But first, a word about that treasure find we made a few hours back; you'll stand by me in that, won't you?"

"In the matter of convincing Madeleine of the justice of taking the treasure for her own? Certainly."

"Thanks. I thought I could count upon your help there. It is a godsend to her, Dick. Don't you see that it is?"

"I see that it will enable her to pay her father out of his theft debt, and by that means to purchase her own freedom," I rejoined. Then I added: "But I can't surround the miraculous part of it, Bonteck. In fact, I'm afraid I shall have to see and handle the gold again before I can be sure I'm not dreaming – as Madeleine said we all three were. There are too many impossibilities."

He was silent for a full minute before he said: "Yes, there are impossibilities – a good few of them. And yet there are not so many as there appeared to be." Another pause, and then: "Dick, I've had the shock of my life."

"I can believe it," I said; "so had I. But just what do you mean?"

Once more he seemed to be trying to shape things in his mind so that they should issue in some sort of orderly array.

"I'll tell you presently: that is why I wanted to get you by yourself. But there is something else that has to be told first. As I say, I've put it off as long as I can. You will want to tie a stone around my neck and heave me into the sea when you've heard what I have to say, and I shan't blame you. As the thing has turned out, I'm a cold-blooded assassin – no less."

"Open confession is good for the soul," I commented, but even as I spoke, all the surmises and half-suspicions that had been troubling me for days and weeks came tumbling in to make a mental chaos where there should have been calm judgment and a fair weighing of motives.

"To begin at the beginning, then," he went on doggedly. "So far as I knew at the time, there was no mutiny on board the Andromeda. It was a plant from start to finish. I had two objects in view. The first and craziest was the notion that I handed you that night at dinner in New Orleans – the notion of cutting out a little bunch of people from the world – my world – and making them pull off their masks. It was a barbarous idea; a crudely savage one, if you like; only I couldn't see that side of it. I meant to make it a sort of unexpected picnic, providing carefully against all of the real hardships, but at the same time letting the shock do what it might towards the unmasking."

"I am trying to give you what credit I can for the carefully planned ameliorations," I said. "But that doesn't excuse your appallingly selfish motive. Go on. It was all prearranged with Goff, I take it?"

"Thoughtfully prearranged. And the motive wasn't wholly selfish, as you will find out a little farther along. Goff was to steer for this island, the longitude and latitude of which, as I told you, I had obtained from the captain of the tramp steamer that rescued you and the other survivors of the Mary Jane, and at the critical moment there was to be a fake mutiny and a real marooning. It was by my instructions that Goff didn't appear in the marooning mix-up. I wanted him to be able to show a clean bill of health when the play was over. He was to pick his men for the mutiny demonstration and the marooning job, leaving the marooned ones to infer that he, and the handful of Americans in the engine-room and fire-hold, had been overpowered."

Again I said, "Go on," and tried to hold judgment in suspense until after the evidence should all be in.

"We were to be left here for three weeks, and at the end of that period the yacht was to come back and take us off; Goff with a sailor's yarn of how he had finally got the better of the rebellion and resumed his command."

"Good – excellent good!" I applauded cynically. "And the three weeks were up just an even fortnight ago yesterday."

"That is why I had to tell you!" he burst out. "It is killing me by inches, Dick! Something has gone wrong; something must have gone frightfully wrong. I was only stalling when I led you to believe that I didn't know Goff, personally; I do know him; I have known him for years, and I'd wager my life that he is as true as steel. I began to be scared when I found that the little black-eyed devil of an under-steward, Lequat, had been picked to play the part of the heavy villain. I couldn't imagine – I can't yet imagine – why Goff should have chosen him."

Again a silence came and sat between us. While Bonteck had been talking, the night had grown still hotter and more stifling. As yet, the stars were burning in a clear sky overhead, but there was a gray, shadowy blur in the east behind which a late moon was struggling to rise. The blur, cloud-bank or a gathering fog, had been growing and extending by almost imperceptible degrees as we sat staring afar at it. In any latitude it would have presaged a change of weather; in that of our island it might well be the forerunner of a tropical storm. Still, there was no breath of air stirring, and the surface of the inclosed lagoon was like that of burnished metal. And the heat, as I have said, was terrific.

"You once told me a tale about a certain fabulous sum of money that had been shipped in the Andromeda," I said at length. "Was that another of your romantic little inventions?"

"No; I suppose I shall have to confess that part of it, as well," he returned, more than half shamefacedly, I thought. "You know the criminal trap Holly Barclay has set for himself by squandering young Vancourt's fortune, and how he was purposing to get out of the trap. It is precisely as I told you when we spoke of it before; he is ready to sell Madeleine to the highest bidder. That is a pretty brutal way to put it, but stripped of all the civilized masqueradings that is exactly what it amounts to. And he had already given the option to Hobart Ingerson; I know it – knew it before I left New York. Do you get that?"

"Yes."

"I nearly went wild trying to think up some scheme that would break the Ingerson combination and at the same time pass muster with Madeleine. She loves me, Dick; she has admitted it; and if this miserable money tangle were out of the way, she'd marry me. But she wouldn't let me buy her freedom; she said if she had to be sold like a slave on the auction block, it certainly wouldn't be to the man she loved. God bless her sweet soul! I don't blame her for that. Do you?"

"Not in the least. But you found a way to whip the devil round the stump?"

"The maddest way you ever heard of – a perfectly idiotic way, you will say; and this winter cruise in the yacht was the chief move in it. I had to have Madeleine in the party, and, of course, I couldn't have her without her father. Including him meant including Ingerson. It says itself that Barclay, with the threat of a prison sentence hanging over him, wouldn't be willing to lose sight of his one best bet."

"I know," I nodded; "know more than you think I do, perhaps. Get on with your story."

"Reading a story is what put the notion into my head, in the beginning. In an old book of the Elizabethan voyages and discoveries I came across this tale of a burned galleon and a treasure that was never found. What I wanted to do was to put enough money into Madeleine's hands – money that she would believe was unquestionably her own – to square up her father's crooked accounts. This 'Treasure Island' business seemed to offer the means. About that time I ran across Captain Svenson, the commander of your rescue ship, and besides giving me the latitude and longitude of this island, he told me that he believed it to be the 'Lost Island' of the old English privateers, and the same which was known later, in the buccaneers' time, as 'Pirates' Hope.' Also, he told me that you had told him of the existence of the old wreck. Don't let me bore you with too much detail."

"I am too greatly infuriated to be bored. What is the rest of it?"

"Mere romantic flubdub, you'll say. I bought from the subtreasury a quarter of a million dollars in gold bars – and had a devil of a time cooking up a reasonable excuse for the purchase, as you would imagine. These bars I had remelted and cast into rough ingots of about forty pounds each. As a matter of secrecy, and to make them easily portable, each of the ingots was packed in a box by itself, the boxes were marked 'Ammunition,' and it was as ammunition that the stuff was secretly put aboard the Andromeda at her North River anchorage."

"Sure!" I derided. "When ostriches do a much less naïve thing we call them silly birds. I'd be willing to bet largely that any number of New York crooks knew what was in your cartridge boxes long before you ever got them overside in the Andromeda. What next?"

"Next, I cleared the yacht for Havana, having first made arrangements to have the winter-cruise party meet me in New Orleans some three weeks later. I'll admit now that I was a bit shaky about some part of my crew. I had told Goff that I didn't want too much intelligence aboard, and after we put to sea it struck me that he had rather overdone the thing. We had a few Provincetown Portuguese who were all right, but the lot Goff picked up in New York – foreigners to a man – didn't look very good to me; nothing especially desperate, you know, but with the gold on board it seemed up to me to keep a weather eye open."

"Some glimmerings of common sense now and then: you're to be congratulated," I said.

"Rub it in; I've got it coming to me. Holding that cautious notion in mind, I made the southward voyage look as much like a pleasure jaunt as possible, touching at Havana, again at Port au Prince, and a little later at Kingston. From Jamaica we shot across to South American waters, and at Curaçao I gave the bulk of the crew shore leave for two days. Then, with the bunch stripped down to Goff, the engine- and fire-room squads, and two or three of the Portuguese, we made a fly-by-night run to this island. You've got my notion by this time, haven't you?"

"Partly; but go on."

"We made land about two o'clock in the morning, rounded this point of the island, and dropped anchor just off the inlet opening to Spaniards' Bay. With all hands off duty for the night, Goff and I got the electric launch overside and landed the gold – which was some job for just the two of us; something over fifteen hundred pounds in the lot. But, as I say, we got it ashore, lugged it piecemeal to the little inland glade, and there, by the light of a ship's lantern, we buried it, taking the precaution to mark the place with that chunk of coral."

"Um," said I. "So the chunk of coral was there, waiting for you, was it? Didn't it occur to you then to wonder how it got there?"

"It didn't. I'll confess I was pretty well wrought up. A dark, deep-laid plot – even one that you have framed up yourself – gets hold of you at the climax, and all I thought of at the time was the need for getting the job finished without letting anybody but Goff into the secret of it."

"You had taken Goff into your confidence?"

"To some extent, of course; I had to. He knew we were burying a small fortune, but he didn't know, and doesn't yet know, what my object was. After we had buried the gold, we filled the boxes with sand so they wouldn't advertise too plainly the fact that they'd been tampered with, nailed them up, ferried them aboard, and stowed them in the forehold in the place from which we had taken them."

I chuckled. The whole thing was so childishly romantic that it sounded like a tale lifted bodily from the pages of a dime thriller. Moreover, it was so absurdly out of character with the Van Dyck I knew, or thought I had been knowing. Yet I fancy the wildly romantic vein lies but shallowly buried even in the soberest of us; and in Bonteck's case the incredulities were put out of court by the fact itself: he had actually done the incredible thing.

"It is all plain enough now," I said; "all but the silly childishness of the entire transaction. You were meaning to sow the seed by telling the old Spanish galleon fairy tale to the assembled company, taking a chance of inducing Madeleine to join in the treasure hunt – as you did this afternoon, most successfully, as I must admit."

"Yes; but hold on. We buried the gold and marked the place with the chunk of coral, as I have said; and that was the end of it until this afternoon. For the past fortnight I've been manoeuvering to get you and Madeleine together and away from the others, so that I could work the rabbit's foot of the old galleon story upon her, with you for a witness. When the chance came, it worked out just as I'd planned to have it – up to a certain point. Madeleine saw the stone, and she is persuaded she saw it first. We rolled it aside and dug the hole. It was after we had got down about two feet that my shock came along and hit me. I don't mind admitting that I nearly had a full-blown case of heart failure. Dick, my gold was gone!"

"Ha!" I exclaimed; "so that was what was the matter with you, was it? What is the answer? Did Goff come back after you'd gone to bed on the night of the funeral and disinter the corpse?"

Van Dyck shook his head. "He is one of the few men in this world whom I would trust to the limit, Richard. I can't believe it of him."

"Yet the deductions point plainly in his direction," I ventured. "Your gold is gone, you say, and he was the only person besides yourself who knew where to look for it. Past that, the yacht is gone, and it doesn't come back to take us off. How do you explain these two small inconsequences?"

"I can't explain them. There is only one explanation that I can think of – and that is merely a raw guess. There is a bare possibility that the mutiny was real instead of a fake. Lequat's part in it makes it look a bit that way. If you've got his identity right, I'm certain he didn't ship with us at New York, and equally certain that I saw him on shore in Havana. As you'd imagine, I've been trying mighty hard not to accept that solution of the thing. If a bunch of real pirates have captured the yacht, we stand a pretty poor chance of ever seeing it again."

While he was speaking, the first few precursor whiffs of wind came out of the rising cloud bank in the east. With the moon and a full half of the stars blotted out, the darkness had increased until the only thing visible to seaward was the white line of surf curling over the outer reef. I wasn't accepting Bonteck's belief in Goff's impeccability entirely at its face value. A quarter of a million dollars, in a form that couldn't possibly be traced – namely, in unmarked gold bars – was a pretty big temptation to any man.

"Are you quite sure that the gold we dug up wasn't your own hoard, merely buried a bit deeper than you thought it was?" I asked.

"Altogether sure," was the prompt reply. "The bars are not quite the same shape, and they are rougher and look immeasurably older. No; unbelievable as it may seem, the hundred-millionth chance shook itself out of the box at the first throw. It was the galleon's gold that we found."

"But wait a minute," I said. "Were the two lots buried under the same stone?"

"Why not?" he queried. "Why shouldn't they be? Goff and I found the stone there and rolled it aside and dug a shallow hole under it. When we were through, we rolled it back. If we had gone a little deeper we would have found what we three found this afternoon. The one unaccountable thing is the disappearance of my plant. It's gone; there is no question about that."

"What do you care for a quarter of a million dollars, so long as Madeleine has been put in the way of purchasing her freedom?" I mocked. "I don't imagine you are going to quarrel with the sheerly miraculous part of it. The thing that is worrying me most, just now, is the fear that the miracle won't go on miracling. Madeleine's gold bars won't do her much good if we've all got to stay on this cursed island and starve to death. And that brings us down to the threadbare old seam again. You say we have only six full meals left; if we all go on short commons at once we may live a week longer before we have to fall back upon the shell-fish and cocoanuts."