Kitabı oku: «The Pagan Madonna», sayfa 4

CHAPTER VII

Jane had gone to meet his father. How to secrete this note without being observed by either the manager or the Chinaman? An accident came to his aid. Someone in the corridor banged a door violently, and as the manager’s head and Ling Foo’s jerked about, Dennison stuffed the note into a pocket.

A trap! Dennison wasn’t alarmed – he was only furious. Jane had walked into a trap. She had worn those accursed beads when his father had approached her by the bookstall that afternoon. The note had attacked her curiosity from a perfectly normal angle. Dennison had absorbed enough of the note’s contents to understand how readily Jane had walked into the trap.

Very well. He would wait in the lobby until one; then if Jane had not returned he would lay the plans of a counter-attack, and it would be a rough one. Of course no bodily harm would befall Jane, but she would probably be harried and bullied out of those beads. But would she? It was not unlikely that she would become a pretty handful, once she learned she had been tricked. If she balked him, how would the father act? The old boy was ruthless when he particularly wanted something.

If anything should happen to her – an event unlooked for, accidental, over which his father would have no control – this note would bring the old boy into a peck of trouble; and Dennison was loyal enough not to wish this to happen. And yet it would be only just to make the father pay once for his high-handedness. That would be droll – to see his father in the dock, himself as a witness against him! Here was the germ of a tiptop drama.

But all this worry was doubtless being wasted upon mere supposition. Jane might turn over the beads without bargaining, provided the father had any legal right to them, which Dennison strongly doubted.

He approached Ling Foo and seized him roughly by the arm.

“What do you know about these glass beads?”

Ling Foo elevated a shoulder and let it fall.

“Nothing, except that the man who owns them demands that I recover them.”

“And who is this man?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“That won’t pass. You tell me who he is or I’ll turn you over to the police.”

“I am an honest man,” replied Ling Foo with dignity. He appealed to the manager.

“I have known Ling Foo a long time, sir. He is perfectly honest.”

Ling Foo nodded. He knew that this recommendation, honest as it was, would have weight with the American.

“But you have some appointment with this man. Where is that to be? I demand to know that.”

Ling Foo saw his jade vanish along with his rainbow gold. His early suppositions had been correct.

Those were devil beads, and evil befell any who touched them.

Silently he cursed the soldier’s ancestors half a thousand years back. If the white fool hadn’t meddled in the parlour that afternoon!

“Come with me,” he said, finally.

The game was played out; the counters had gone back to the basket. He had no desire to come into contact with police officials. Only it was as bitter as the gall of chicken, and he purposed to lessen his own discomfort by making the lame man share it. Oriental humour.

Dennison and the hotel manager followed him curiously. At the end of the corridor Ling Foo stopped and knocked on a door. It was opened immediately.

“Ah! Oh!”

The inflections touched Dennison’s sense of humour, and he smiled. A greeting with a snap-back of dismay.

“I’m not surprised,” he said. “I had a suspicion I’d find you in this somewhere.”

“Find me in what?” asked Cunningham, his poise recovered. He, too, began to smile. “Won’t you come in?”

“What about these glass beads?”

“Glass beads? Oh, yes. But why?”

“I fancy you’d better come out into the clear, Cunningham,” said Dennison, grimly.

“You wish to know about those beads? Very well, I’ll explain, because something has happened – I know not what. You all look so infernally serious. Those beads are a key to a code. The British Government is keenly anxious to recover this key. In the hands of certain Hindus those beads would constitute bad medicine.”

Ling Foo spread his hands relievedly.

“That is the story. I was to receive five hundred gold for their recovery.”

“A code key,” said Dennison, musing.

He knew Cunningham was lying. Anthony Cleigh wasn’t the man to run across half the world for a British code key. On the other hand, perhaps it would be wise to let the hotel manager and the Chinaman continue in the belief that the affair concerned a British code.

“If I did not know you tolerably well – ”

“My dear captain, you don’t know me at all,” interrupted Cunningham. “Have you got the beads?”

“I have not. I doubt if you will ever lay eyes on them again.”

Something flashed across the handsome face. Ling Foo alone recognized it. He had glimpsed it, this expression, outside his window the night before. He recalled the dark stain on the floor of his shop, and he also recollected a saying of Confucius relative to greed. He wished he was back in his shop, well out of this muddle. The jade could go, valuable as it was. With his hands tucked in his sleeves he waited.

Dennison turned upon the manager. He wanted to be alone with Cunningham.

“Go down and make inquiries, and take this Chinaman with you. I’ll be with you shortly.” As soon as the two were out of the way Dennison said: “Cunningham, the lady who wore those beads at dinner to-night has gone out alone, wearing them. If I find that you are anywhere back of this venture – if she does not return shortly – I will break you as I would a churchwarden pipe.”

Cunningham appeared genuinely taken aback.

“She went out alone?”

“Yes.”

“Have you notified the police?”

“Not yet. I’m giving her until one; then I shall start something.”

“Something tells me,” said Cunningham, easily, “that Miss Norman is in no danger. But she would never have gone out if I had been in the lobby. If she has not returned by one call me. Any assistance I can give will be given gladly. Women ought never to be mixed up in affairs such as this one, on this side of the world. Tell your father that he ought to know by this time that he is no match for me.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Innocent! You know very well what I mean. If you hadn’t a suspicion of what has happened you would be roaring up and down the corridors with the police. You run true to the breed. It’s a good one, I’ll admit. But your father will regret this night’s work.”

“Perhaps. Here, read this.”

Dennison extended the note. Cunningham, his brows bent, ran through the missive.

Miss Norman: Will you do me the honour to meet me at the bridgehead at half-past nine – practically at once? My son and I are not on friendly terms. Still, I am his father, and I’d like to hear what he has been doing over here. I will have a limousine, and we can ride out on the Bubbling Well Road while we talk.

Anthony Cleigh.

“Didn’t know,” said Cunningham, returning the note, “that you two were at odds. But this is a devil of a mix-up, if it’s what I think.”

“What do you think?”

“That he’s abducted her – carried her off to the yacht.”

“He’s no fool,” was the son’s defense.

“He isn’t, eh? Lord love you, sonny, your father and I are the two biggest fools on all God’s earth!”

The door closed sharply in Dennison’s face and the key rasped in the lock.

For a space Dennison did not stir. Why should he wish to protect his father? Between his father and this handsome rogue there was small choice. The old boy made such rogues possible. But supposing Cleigh had wished really to quiz Jane? To find out something about these seven years, lean and hard, with stretches of idleness and stretches of furious labour, loneliness? Well, the father would learn that in all these seven years the son had never faltered from the high level he had set for his conduct. That was a stout staff to lean on – he had the right to look all men squarely in the eye.

He had been educated to inherit millions; he had not been educated to support himself by work in a world that specialized. He had in these seven years been a jeweller’s clerk, an auctioneer in a salesroom; he had travelled from Baluchistan to Damascus with carpet caravans, but he had never forged ahead financially. Generally the end of a job had been the end of his resources. One fact the thought of which never failed to buck him up – he had never traded on his father’s name.

Then had come the war. He had returned to America, trained, and they had assigned him to Russia. But that had not been without its reward – he had met Jane.

In a New York bank, to his credit, was the sum of twenty thousand dollars, at compound interest for seven years, ready to answer to the scratch of a pen, but he had sworn he would never touch a dollar of it. Never before had the thought of it risen so strongly to tempt him. His for the mere scratch of a pen!

In the lobby he found the manager pacing nervously, while Ling Foo sat patiently and inscrutably.

“Why do you wait?” inquired Dennison, irritably.

“The lady has some jade of mine,” returned Ling Foo, placidly. “It was a grave mistake.”

“What was?”

“That you interfered this afternoon. The lady would be in her room at this hour. The devil beads would not be casting a spell on us.”

“Devil beads, eh?”

Ling Foo shrugged and ran his hands into his sleeves. Somewhere along the banks of the Whangpoo or the Yang-tse would be the body of an unknown, but Ling Foo’s lips were locked quite as securely as the dead man’s. Devil beads they were.

“When did the man upstairs leave the beads with you?”

“Last night.”

“For what reason?”

“He will tell you. It is none of my affair now.” And that was all Dennison could dig out of Ling Foo.

Jane Norman did not return at one o’clock; in fact, she never returned to the Astor House. Dennison waited until three; then he went back to the Palace, and Ling Foo to his shop and oblivion.

Dennison decided that he did not want the police in the affair. In that event there would be a lot of publicity, followed by the kind of talk that stuck. He was confident that he could handle the affair alone. So he invented a white lie, and nobody questioned it because of his uniform. Miss Norman had found friends, and shortly she would send for her effects; but until that time she desired the consulate to take charge. Under the eyes of the relieved hotel manager and an indifferent clerk from the consulate the following morning Dennison packed Jane’s belongings and conveyed them to the consulate, which was hard by. Next he proceeded to the water front and engaged a motor boat. At eleven o’clock he drew up alongside the Wanderer II.

“Hey, there!” shouted a seaman. “Sheer off! Orders to receive no visitors!”

Dennison began to mount, ignoring the order. It was a confusing situation for the sailor. If he threw this officer into the yellow water – as certainly he would have thrown a civilian – Uncle Sam might jump on his back and ride him to clink. Against this was the old man, the very devil for obedience to his orders. If he pushed this lad over, the clink; if he let him by, the old man’s foot. And while the worried seaman was reaching for water with one hand and wind with the other, as the saying goes, Dennison thrust him roughly aside, crossed the deck to the main companionway, and thundered down into the salon.

CHAPTER VIII

Cleigh sat before a card table; he was playing Chinese Canfield. He looked up, but he neither rose nor dropped the half-spent deck of cards he held in his hand. The bronzed face, the hard agate blue of the eyes that met his own, the utter absence of visible agitation, took the wind out of Dennison’s sails and left him all a-shiver, like a sloop coming about on a fresh tack. He had made his entrance stormily enough, but now the hot words stuffed his throat to choking.

Cleigh was thirty years older than his son; he was a finished master of sentimental emotions; he could keep all his thoughts out of his countenance when he so willed. But powerful as his will was, in this instance it failed to reach down into his heart; and that thumped against his ribs rather painfully. The boy!

Dennison, aware that he stood close to the ridiculous, broke the spell and advanced.

“I have come for Miss Norman,” he said.

Cleigh scrutinized the cards and shifted one.

“I found your note to her. I’ve a launch. I don’t know what the game is, but I’m going to take Miss Norman back with me if I have to break in every door on board!”

Cleigh stood up. As he did so Dodge, the Texan appeared in the doorway to the dining salon. Dennison saw the blue barrel of a revolver.

“A gunman, eh? All right. Let’s see if he’ll shoot,” said the son, walking deliberately toward Dodge.

“No, Dodge!” Cleigh called out as the Texan, raised the revolver. “You may go.”

Dodge, a good deal astonished, backed out. Once more father and son stared at each other.

“Better call it off,” advised the son. “You can’t hold Miss Norman – and I can make a serious charge. Bring her at once, or I’ll go for her. And the Lord help the woodwork if I start!”

But even as he uttered the threat Dennison heard a sound behind. He turned, but not soon enough. In a second he was on the floor, three husky seamen mauling him. They had their hands full for a while, but in the end they conquered.

“What next, sir?” asked one of the sailors, breathing hard.

“Tie him up and lock him in Cabin Two.”

The first order was executed. After Dennison’s arms and ankles were bound the men stood him up.

“Are you really my father?”

Cleigh returned to his cards and shuffled them for a new deal.

“Don’t untie him. He might walk through the partition. He will have the freedom of the deck when we are out of the delta.”

Dennison was thereupon carried to Cabin Two, and deposited upon the stationary bed. He began to laugh. There was a sardonic note in this laughter, like that which greets you when you recount some incredible tale. His old cabin!

The men shook their heads, as if confronted by something so unusual that it wasn’t worth while to speculate upon it. The old man’s son! They went out, locking the door. By this time Dennison’s laughter had reached the level of shouting, but only he knew how near it was to tears – wrathful, murderous, miserable tears! He fought his bonds terrifically for a moment, then relaxed.

For seven years he had been hugging the hope that when he and his father met blood would tell, and that their differences would vanish in a strong handclasp; and here he lay, trussed hand and foot, in his old cabin, not a crack in that granite lump his father called a heart!

A childish thought! Some day to take that twenty thousand with accrued interest, ride up to the door, step inside, dump the silver on that old red Samarkand, and depart – forever.

Where was she? This side of the passage or the other?

“Miss Norman?” he called.

“Yes?” came almost instantly from the cabin aft.

“This is Captain Dennison. I’m tied up and lying on the bed. Can you hear me distinctly?”

“Yes. Your father has made a prisoner of you? Of all the inhuman acts! You came in search of me?”

“Naturally. Have you those infernal beads?”

“No.”

Dennison twisted about until he had his shoulders against the brass rail of the bed head.

“What happened?”

“It was a trick. It was not to talk about you – he wanted the beads, and that made me furious.”

“Were you hurt in the struggle?”

“There wasn’t any. I really don’t know what possessed me. Perhaps I was a bit hypnotized. Perhaps I was curious. Perhaps I wanted – some excitement. On my word, I don’t know just what happened. Anyhow, here I am – in a dinner gown, bound for Hong-Kong, so he says. He offered me ten thousand for the beads, and my freedom, if I would promise not to report his high-handedness; and I haven’t uttered a sound.”

“Heaven on earth, why didn’t you accept his offer?”

A moment of silence.

“In the first place, I haven’t the beads. In the second place, I want to make him all the trouble I possibly can. Now that he has me, he doesn’t know what to do with me. Hoist by his own petard. Do you want the truth? Well, I’m not worried in the least. I feel as if I’d been invited to some splendiferous picnic.”

“That’s foolish,” he remonstrated.

“Of course it is. But it’s the sort of foolishness I’ve been aching for all my life. I knew something was going to happen. I broke my hand mirror night before last. Two times seven years’ bad luck. Now he has me, I’ll wager he’s half frightened out of his wits. But what made you think of the yacht?”

“We forced the door of your room, and I found the note. Has he told you what makes those infernal beads so precious?”

“No. I can’t figure that out.”

“No more can I. Did he threaten you?”

“Yes. Would I enter the launch peacefully, or would he have to carry me? I didn’t want my gown spoiled – it’s the only decent one I have. I’m not afraid. It isn’t as though he were a stranger. Being your father, he would never stoop to any indignity. But he’ll find he has caught a tartar. I had an idea you’d find me.”

“Well, I have. But you won’t get to Hong-Kong. The minute he liberates me I’ll sneak into the wireless room and bring the destroyers. I didn’t notify the police from a bit of foolish sentiment. I didn’t quite want you mixed up in the story. I had your things conveyed to the consulate.”

“My story – which few men would believe. I’ve thought of that. Are you smoking?”

“Smoking, with my hands tied behind my back? Not so you’d notice it.”

“I smell tobacco smoke – a good cigar, too.”

“Then someone is in the passage listening.”

Silence. Anthony Cleigh eyed his perfecto rather ruefully and tiptoed back to the salon. Hoist by his own petard. He was beginning to wonder. Cleigh was a man who rarely regretted an act, but in the clear light of day he was beginning to have his doubts regarding this one. A mere feather on the wrong side of the scale, and the British destroyers would be atop of him like a flock of kites. Abduction! Cut down to bedrock, he had laid himself open to that. He ran his fingers through his cowlicks. But drat the woman! why had she accepted the situation so docilely? Since midnight not a sound out of her, not a wail, not a sob. Now he had her, he couldn’t let her go. She was right there.

There was one man in the crew Cleigh had begun to dislike intensely, and he had been manœuvring ever since Honolulu to find a legitimate excuse to give the man his papers. Something about the fellow suggested covert insolence; he had the air of a beachcomber who had unexpectedly fallen into a soft berth, and it had gone to his head. He had been standing watch at the ladder head, and against positive orders he had permitted a visitor to pass him. To Cleigh this was the handle he had been hunting for. He summoned the man.

“Get your duffle,” said Cleigh.

“What’s that, sir?”

“Get your stuff. You’re through. You had positive orders, and you let a man by.”

“But his uniform fussed me, sir. I didn’t know just how to act.”

“Get your stuff! Mr. Cleve will give you your pay. My orders are absolute. Off with you!”

The sailor sullenly obeyed. He found the first officer alone in the chart house.

“The boss has sent me for my pay, Mr. Cleve. I’m fired.” Flint grinned amiably.

“Fired? Well, well,” said Cleve, “that’s certainly tough luck – all this way from home. I’ll have to pay you in Federal Reserve bills. The old man has the gold.”

“Federal Reserve it is. Forty-six dollars in Uncle Samuels.”

The first officer solemnly counted out the sum and laid it on the palm of the discharged man.

“Tough world.”

“Oh, I’m not worrying! I’ll bet you this forty-six against ten that I’ve another job before midnight.”

Mr. Cleve grinned.

“Always looking for sure-thing bets! Better hail that bumboat with the vegetables to row you into town. The old man’ll dump you over by hand if he finds you here between now and sundown.”

“I’ll try the launch there. Tell the lad his fare ain’t goin’ back to Shanghai. Of course it makes it a bit inconvenient, packing and unpacking; but I guess I can live through it. But what about the woman?”

Cleve plucked at his chin.

“Messes up the show a bit. Pippin, though. I like ’em when they walk straight and look straight like this one. Notice her hair? You never tame that sort beyond parlour manners. But I don’t like her on board here, or the young fellow, either. Don’t know him, but he’s likely to bust the yacht wide open if he gets loose.”

“Well, so long, Mary! Know what my first move’ll be?”

“A bottle somewhere. But mind your step! Don’t monkey with the stuff beyond normal. You know what I mean.”

“Sure! Only a peg or two, after all this psalm-singing!”

“I know, Flint. But this game is no joke. You know what happened in town? Morrissy was near croaked.”

Flint’s face lost some of its gayety.

“Oh, I know how to handle the stuff! See you later.”

Cleigh decided to see what the girl’s temper was, so he entered the passage on the full soles of his shoes. He knocked on her door.

“Miss Norman?”

“Well?”

That was a good sign; she was ready to talk.

“I have come to repeat that offer.”

“Mr. Cleigh, I have nothing to say so long as the key is on the wrong side of the door.”

Cleigh heard a chuckle from Cabin Two.

“Very well,” he said. “Remember, I offered you liberty conditionally. If you suffer inconveniences after to-night you will have only yourself to thank.”

“Have you calculated that some day you will have to let me go?”

“Yes, I have calculated on that.”

“And that I shall go to the nearest authorities and report this action?”

“If you will think a moment,” said Cleigh, his tone monotonously level, “you will dismiss that plan for two reasons: First, that no one will believe you; second, that no one will want to believe you. That’s as near as I care to put it. Your imagination will grasp it.”

“Instantly!” cried the girl, hotly. “I knew you to be cold and hard, but I did not believe you were a scoundrel – having known your son!”

“I have no son.”

“Oh, yes, you have!”

“I disowned him. He is absolutely nothing to me.”

“I do not believe that,” came back through the cabin door.

“Nevertheless, it is the truth. The queer part is, I’ve tried to resurrect the father instinct, and can’t. I’ve tried to go round the wall – over it. I might just as well try to climb the Upper Himalayas.”

In Cabin Two the son stared at the white ceiling. It seemed to him that all his vitals had been wrenched out of him, leaving him hollow, empty. He knew his father’s voice; it rang with truth.

“I offer you ten thousand.”

“The key is still on the outside.”

“I’m afraid to trust you.”

“We understand each other perfectly,” said Jane, ironically.

The son smiled. The sense of emptiness vanished, and there came into his blood a warmth as sweet as it was strong. Jane Norman, angel of mercy. He heard his father speaking again:

“Since you will have it so, you will go to Hong-Kong?”

“To Patagonia if you wish! You cannot scare me by threatening me with travel on a private yacht. I had the beads, it is true; but at this moment I haven’t the slightest idea where they are; and if I had I should not tell you. I refuse to buy my liberty; you will have to give it to me without conditions.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t anything on board in shape of women’s clothes, but I’ll send for your stuff if you wish.”

“That is the single consideration you have shown me. My belongings are at the American consulate, and I should be glad to have them.”

“You will find paper and ink in the escritoire. Write me an order and I promise to attend to the matter personally.”

“And search through everything at your leisure!”

Cleigh blushed, and he heard his son chuckle again. He had certainly caught a tartar – possibly two. With a twisted smile he recalled the old yarn of the hunter who caught the bear by the tail. Willing to let go, and daring not!

“Still I agree,” continued the girl. “I want my own familiar things – if I must take this forced voyage. But mark me, Mr. Cleigh, you will pay some day! I’m not the clinging kind, and I shall fight you tooth and nail from the first hour of my freedom. I’m not without friends.”

“Never in this world!” came resonantly from Cabin Two.

Cleigh longed to get away. There was a rumbling and a threatening inside of him that needed space – Gargantuan laughter. Not the clinging kind, this girl! And the boy, walking straight at Dodge’s villainous revolver! Why, he would need the whole crew behind him when he liberated these two! But he knew that the laughter striving for articulation was not the kind heard in Elysian fields!