A Desperate Bridegroom
A Desperate Bridegroom
Author of “For Henry of Navarre,” “The Spy of Valley Forge,”
“The World Upside Down,” etc.
What Fate Did to a Young Man Compared to Whom Jonah Was the Original Lucky Jim.
(Complete in This Number.)
CHAPTER I.
A laggard.
“YOU'VE heard about the ship that went down in sight of port?” observed Clyde Maxwell. “Well, for sheer bad luck, I've got that ship looking like a golden argosy of joy. And this I am sure I can show you.”
“Is it a matter of life and death?” asked the purser.
“Life and death? Worse!”
“I wish I could help you out,” said the purser, watching the tall, ulster-clad man with a new interest. “Is it—is it anything you'd care to tell me about? Not that I've got any authority to help you out,” he added as a cautious afterthought. “I've explained that to you already.”
“You certainly have. So has the captain. So has the health officer. So has everybody in sight. You're an exception to the rest, in one way—you're the only soul on the ship who has shown the faintest interest in my possible reasons for wanting to get ashore. The rest all—”
“You say it's 'worse than a matter of life and death,'” explained the purser; “so I suppose it's something with a story to it. That's why I asked. That and because you and I have been good friends since the old business college days. But if you'd rather not tell—”
“It's a relief to jabber it to some one. Here goes. I told you I was engaged. Well, I'm on my way home to my wedding. The date set for it is March 1st—day after to-morrow. I had to make this European trip for the firm. The ship was scheduled to dock at New York on February 25th—two days ago. I figured out that I'd have fully three days' leeway. Then came the broken shaft that delayed us two days, and, now that we've struck quarantine, comes this diphtheria scare. And we're all held up, by law, for two days longer, till they find out whether there'll be any more cases to—”
“I get the idea. You're liable to be late for your wedding. Hard luck! But you can send the girl word by wireless, can't you? She'll surely understand. In two days you'll be able to land. Let's see. This is February 27th. Twenty-eight days in February, aren't there? Two days after this will—will bring it up to March 2d. The wedding need be put off only one day. And—”
“You don't understand,” cried Maxwell.
“That has nothing to do with it. Here's the idea. Miss Sylvia Tennant—the girl I'm going to marry—is my third cousin. I've known her since she was a child. We've always been in love with each other. Our families always favored the match—especially her grandfather. He died last year, leaving six hundred and twenty thousand dollars. According to his will, the money was to be divided equally between Sylvia and myself—”
“Good old grandpa!” put in the purser.
“On condition,” resumed Clyde, “that we marry each other on or before her twenty-first birthday. A fool sort of a will, wasn't it? But his heart was set on the match. And he didn't believe in long engagements.”
“Nobody would believe in them,” chuckled the purser, “if there was six hundred and twenty thousand dollars waiting at their end. You're a lucky chap, Maxwell. For a struggling young lawyer to come into three hundred and ten thousand dollars, and to marry a girl with the same amount of wealth, seems almost too good to be true.”
“It is too good to be true,” groaned Clyde. “That's the trouble. I might have known it could never happen. I'm the original Jonah from Jonahopolis.”
“Hasn't thrown you over, has she?”
“No, but—”
“She won't be silly enough to break the engagement, just because you're held up a couple days on a quarantined boat?”
“No, no! But her twenty-first birthday; falls on the 1st of March. That's all. Now, do you, see?”
The purser whistled long and reflectively.
“I understand!” he exclaimed. “You are in bad, for a fact. The wedding scheduled for March 1st, a fortune depending on it, and you booked to get to town one day late. Say! I've got an idea. Why not send for Miss. Tennant to come down here and marry you on shipboard? That would—”
“That would be fine!” scoffed Maxwell. “Only, you seem to forget no one but health officers are allowed to board the ship or to leave it. I believe the law even forbids any private boats to come within a hundred feet of us. So there we are.”
“But, can't the will be set aside, or—”
“No. We all agreed to it, and it has been probated. Unless Sylvia and I are married day after to-morrow, the six hundred and twenty thousand dollars reverts to the Something-or-Other Charitable Gild. The old chap wasn't really so much of a crank, though, as you might think.
“He knew Sylvia and I were in love with each other. He knew I was too hard up to marry. He knew I would be too proud, as a poor man, to marry an heiress. So he divided the money between us, and made that little proviso against a long engagement. It all seemed for the best.
“And it would have been, if I hadn't got delayed on this confounded old floating hospital of a broken-down liner.”
“Easy—easy, old man!” laughed the purser. “Remember, I'm supposed to have a certain amount of loyalty for the ship, and I don't enjoy hearing her roasted like that. It's your own fault you're in such a hole. Why did you wait so long? If I'd been in your shoes, I'd have been married on the very day the will was read. I wouldn't have waited till the eleventh hour and taken chances on some accident like this.”
“We planned to marry two months ago—just before I sailed for England. She was coming with me for a wedding trip. But her mother fell ill, and we had to postpone the wedding for her sake. Don't rub it in. I'm so sore I wish I had a third foot to kick myself with. Here I'm robbing the girl I love. I don't mind my own loss. I can always earn some sort of a living. But to think I'm making her lose a fortune! I'm not going to do it, either!” he went on fiercely.
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Do about it? I've nearly forty-eight hours left. We are at anchor off Staten Island, not a quarter of a mile from shore. Ferries are running between Staten Island and New York every few minutes. In one hour from now I could be at Sylvia Tennant's door. I could be with the girl I love, and I could save six hundred and twenty thousand dollars—all in one hour. Do you think I'll lose that chance for the sake of all the quarantine that ever happened? Not I.”
“And perhaps carry diphtheria germs to her by way of a wedding present?”
“Nonsense! The health officer himself says it's probably only tonsilitis; and even if it's something worse, all the half-dozen cases are in the steerage or the second cabin. I haven't been brought into contact with any of them. It's worth the risk. And I'm going to try it.”
“How?” queried the purser, with incredulous amusement.
“If you ask as an officer of the ship, it's none of your business. If you ask as a friend, I don't know. Hallo! I thought no private craft were allowed alongside.”
The two men were leaning over the vessel's port-rail, their gaze fixed on the hilly shores of Staten Island. From the Rosebank wharf at natty white launch had chugged out into the gray, ice-strewn water. It was now nearing the vessel, and “rounded to” at the foot of the hanging companion-ladder.
Several men, members of the crew, were lugging one or two trunks to the companionway. Just behind them, escorted by the obsequious captain, walked a portly, middle-aged man.
“Isn't that the chap you pointed out to me yesterday as old McCue, president of the Bird Seed Trust?” asked Clyde.
“That's the man,” assented the purser. “Don't you envy him? He's to be an exception to the rule that holds the rest of us here. By special permission. You see, he's one of the directors of the line, and— Where are you going?”
Maxwell had left his friend, and was racing across the twilight deck. He halted in front of the captain and McCue as they reached the head of the companionway.
“Pardon me, Mr. McCue,” he began. “I am to be married March 1st. A fortune depends on it. May I go ashore with you? I will pay for my—”
“Step back!” thundered the captain, aghast that an ordinary passenger should dare accost the great Bird Seed Trust president. “Stand free of that gangway!”
“Mr. McCue,” implored Maxwell, “I beg you will take me along. It is necessary—much depends on—”
He got no further. A shove from the captain pushed him away from the gangway. And Mr. McCue, balanced by two sailors, had begun his descent of the ladder. Before Clyde could recover his lost ground, the bird seed magnate had entered his launch, and the little craft was puffing shoreward.
“What d'ye mean by interfering like that?” snarled the captain, glowering at Maxwell.
“What do you mean by letting one man break quarantine, and not another?” snapped Clyde. “McCue can carry infection to the land as well as I can. Besides, if he can go, why can't I?”
“I don't wish to argue with you, young man,” said the captain loftily as he moved away.
“You won't get the chance,” retorted Maxwell; “for I'm going to leave this ship, by fair means or foul.”
“If I hear any more threats of that sort from you,” howled the captain, “I'll put you in irons! You'd have me fined or suspended, would you, for letting you go ashore in defiance of the health officer's orders, and maybe spread disease germs all over New York? I'll have you ironed if you make one attempt to—”
“Very good!” shouted Clyde, reckless with impotent fury as he shook aside the heavy ulster. “Try it, if you can! I'm off!”
With one hand on the rail, Maxwell vaulted over the side, kicked his heel against the projecting ledge, reversed, and plunged head downward into the water far below.
It was a pretty dive. And it was executed not only with the skill of a trained swimmer, but with a suddenness that left the captain gaping, open-mouthed, with dumb amaze.
CHAPTER II.
A leap in the dark.
NOW, the distance from a liner's second deck to the water below does not look very great. A diver will speedily find it far longer than it appears.
Also, a man who, under ordinary circumstances, can readily swim a mile or more in moderately cool salt water, will find it quite another thing to swim twenty strokes in a February sea that is thick with floating ice fragments. The more so, if he be weighted by shoes and clothing.
As Clyde Maxwell, expert swimmer, struck water, the chill of it bit his very bone. He sank like, a plummet, the cold numbing his every faculty. Dimly he realized he must swim as never before, if he would counteract this.
He was coming to the surface. With arms and legs he struck out madly.
At first his numbed limbs almost refused to obey him. His heart seemed hammering in his throat, choking him.
As he came up, he was aware of the liner's side, rising, miles upon miles, like a top less precipice, above his head. To the right, far away, through the gathering twilight, glowed the lights of Rosebank and of the Quarantine Station. In that direction he began to swim.
His clothes held him back. Once his head came in contact with a bit of floating ice, with a force that almost stunned him. He could hear, as though from a vast distance, the captain's booming voice, howling orders.
Clyde Maxwell knew that a boat would be lowered at once and sent in search of him. He knew, too, that no swimmer can hope to keep headway against a rowboat. But the night was fast settling down. By that dim light, and amid so many fragments of flotsam and dirty ice, he might possibly hope to avoid observation.
Shore was less than a quarter mile away. If he could gain its shelter unseen, he might readily get to New York within an hour or so. It was worth the chance.
Ordinarily, Clyde would have thought little enough of such a swim, even fully dressed as he was. But now, every stroke was anguish.
Yet it comforted him to note that as he continued swimming, the first numbness began to wear off; to be succeeded, in fact, by a certain glow of physical reaction. He was young, barely twenty-five, and in fine physical condition. Where many a man would have sunk, through shock and exhaustion, he battled on.
He swam for what seemed hours. The yellow shore lights through the gray murk appeared to draw little nearer. The tide was almost at ebb. So he must swim upstream at an angle of forty-five degrees, to make any straight course.
A strong man, a young man, a trained swimmer, Clyde Maxwell found himself confronted with the hardest task of his life. It was an athletic contest where the prize was a safe landing; where loss meant a decidedly unpleasant form of death.
The numbness was all gone now. His body seemed to burn, as the blood stung to the surface in defiance to the surrounding cold. But his clothes weighed a ton, and his first burst of physical prowess was failing. He longed unspeakably for a minute's rest, that he might get second-wind and call upon his wearied muscles for a newer, stronger effort.
But he dared not float, lest some crosscurrent sweep him out to sea. Turning, he swam on his back, to shift the strain.
At the second stroke, some gigantic invisible hand apparently gripped his right leg in an agonizing clasp that doubled the limb tight under him.
“Cramp!” he muttered, to himself. “This won't do. It'll spread to the other leg or to my body; and then I'm a goner.”
His shoulder struck against some rough surface. Instinctively, he threw out his arm to seize or push away the obstruction. He had come alongside a great splinter of mast, some twelve feet in length and as thick as his own body.
At the same instant his other leg doubled under him with an excruciating wrench of pain. The swimmer threw an arm over the broken spar and hung there exhausted, helpless, trying to force his knotted leg-muscles to straighten out from their chill-induced cramp.
For the moment, he was safe. This bit of wreckage had been whirled hither and yon, for weeks perhaps in the thousand tides, currents and eddies of the sea. It might even be a vestige of some wreck on the Labrador or the Florida coast. It and himself—two atoms of hopeless jetsam—had been brought into accidental touch in his hour of dire need.
There he clung, panting, exhausted, in agony. And, with the cessation of his own motion, he could hear the steady slap-slap-slap of water against the prow of a fast-moving boat, and the steady chum of rowers' blades.
The boat was coming. The boat sent from the liner to find his body or to bring him back to legal captivity.
At the thought, his blood ran warm again and his slack jaw set firmly. He had risked life in that mad effort to reach shore, to reach the girl he loved, to save her from poverty.
Was he to be hauled forth ignominiously from the water, lugged back to the ship and be perhaps clapped into irons? A pretty wind-up, was it not, to so wildly daring a venture? The thought roused his cooling rage to fever point.
The boat was drawing very near. It was perhaps midway between the liner and the shore. Lying there alongside of his spar, Clyde could see the craft silhouetted against the paler eastern sky-line. Four men were rowing. In the bow, stood a petty officer, bending forward and scanning the waters. A white-capped coxswain was at the tiller.
“He can't have come much farther in this time,” the standing man was saying. “Either we're close to him, or else he's sunk. Most likely he's gone down. It's ten to one against any one keeping afloat in zero water like that.”
He spoke indifferently, as if commenting on some impersonal fact. Clyde Maxwell, barely fifty feet away, heard him and illogically resented the fellow's calm.
“Hold hard!” called the steersman suddenly, rising in his seat and pointing toward Maxwell. “There he is!”
“Where? Oh, over there? You idiot, that thing's twelve feet long. It's a broken spar.”
“I thought I saw it move. It—”
“Move? Every wave makes it bob up and down. Give way there!”—to the rowers—“Keep her a point more upstream, Saunders. He'd make for shore at the nearest point—not so far down as this.”
The boat swept by, not forty feet from the spar. Clyde clenched his teeth over his tongue to keep from crying for help as the rowers faded away into the gloom. But the picture of his own humiliation and the prospect of losing his one chance held him silent.
He was in no instant danger of drowning. He could hang onto this spar for hours before numbness would shake off his clutch from the slimy wood.
If he floated out toward sea, there was always a chance of some incoming craft hearing his hail and picking him up. And no rescuer need know he had come from a quarantined ship.
It was a chance and he resolved to take it. He shut his eyes and held on.
The chill was creeping all over him now, and his teeth were chattering. He was seized by a ridiculous desire to sleep. He tried once to climb atop the spar. But before his numbed muscles could accomplish the task, the fragment of mast rolled over.
He was knocked off under water. Only by a mighty effort could he catch a fresh hold on his treacherous support.
Thus, it seemed, centuries of time crawled by.
Suddenly, as the drowsiness was growing too powerful to be longer combated, something grated underneath the spar. The wood shook, floated a second longer, then came to a standstill with a slight shock.
Light as was the impact it served to loosen Clyde's stiffened hold. He sank—into three feet of water!
The feeling of hard, rough sand under his feet jerked the man back to life. He looked up. Above him, not twenty feet away rose the bank. The spar, caught in an eddy, had drifted ashore, a half mile or so south of Quarantine Station.
Clyde Maxwell was still too numb to stand. On all fours, groaning and panting, he scrambled weakly to land. There, forcing himself to kick to twist quickly about, he at last restored some semblance of life to his deadened body.
Staggering up the bank, more than once falling from sheer fatigue, the drenched, exhausted man found himself a mile or so away from a lighted village. Beyond the far houses he saw a train moving northward, toward the New York ferry.
The sight put new life into him. He reeled onward a few yards. But the longing for sleep had come back upon him with redoubled force. He lurched sideways and fell.
As he struck the frozen ground, some hard, bulky object in his hip pocket was pushed painfully against his thigh. Dully, he wondered what it was. Then he remembered.
His pocket flask!
With stiff, sensationless fingers he hauled the thing from his pocket, knocked off the neck against a stone (his fingers were far too numb to manage the cork) and set the flask to his lips.
A deep draft of the fierce, biting liquid. Then another. And warmth began to replace the deadly chill of his body.
He got to his feet. Every movement was pain. But he could move. And he no longer yearned for sleep.
He stumbled onward toward the town.
In the middle of a vacant lot stood a little one-story wooden building, rough-hewn, unpainted. It was apparently a tool-house. From between the gaping boards streaks of warm red light streamed out. A tin chimney poured forth smoke.
Maxwell climbed a low fence and crossed the field toward the tiny shack. The prospect of warmth was too strong for the chattering man to resist. In another minute he had groped his way through the dark, to the side of the building.
There he paused. How was he to account for his soaked clothes, his tremendous fatigue? Yet, so tempting was the mental vision of a warm room that he did not hesitate.
He was feeling his way around the shanty in search of the door, when a truly terrifying voice from within broke upon the silence of the winter night.
“Hist!” growled the voice, with an odd mixture of gruffness and natural soprano quality. “We must dissemble! Should the minions of the law track us to our lair in these mountain fastnesses, all would be lost. As we depart hence, let each man make his own way homeward. We must not be seen together, lest some shrewd sleuth suspect that the Dauntless Pirates of Staten Island are—”
“Say, Tim!” interrupted another treble voice, “ma says I can't be a Dauntless Pirate after next Saturday. She say's it's nonsense to—”
“Peace!” thundered the first speaker. “What have we here? Rank mutiny, varlet, I—”
“Tim,” put in a third pirate, “if old Masterson ever gets onto our using his tool shed for a pirate lair, he'll—”
“Cheese it!” suddenly whispered the chief of the Dauntless Pirates of Staten Island. “Someone's outside! I heard—”
“It's Masterson!” squealed another. “He'll—”
Terror smote the Dauntless ones. Blind, unreasoning terror. There was a scuffle. A rickety door, not three feet from where Maxwell stood, burst open. Half a dozen small boys dashed forth at top speed.
At a safe distance they turned and shrilled a wild defiance to their unseen grown-up foe. Then, evidently fearing pursuit, they vanished homeward. Maxwell lurched into the deserted “lair.”
The warmth and comfort of the place stretched forth and enveloped him. He entered, shut the creaking door behind him and looked about.
The room was about twelve feet by twelve in area. The walls were of unplaned shoring, the tarred flat roof low. The place was hot to suffocation. In one corner was a pile of farming implements. In the center of the apartment stood a cheap, air-tight stove, red hot. On the floor beneath it a heap of driftwood.
A table held two candles, and was further burdened by a feast of rough sandwiches, new roasted potatoes and similar viands. A skull and crossbones in charcoal covered half the door. Old coats and other farm-clothes hung from pegs on the wall. Such was the Dauntless Pirates' lair.
Clyde Maxwell paid scant heed at first to his surroundings.
Scarce had he spread his blue fingers in front of the stove when he began to divest himself of his clothing. Each wringing wet garment he hung up near the red-hot center of warmth. Then, with a cast-off jumper that he found lying among the tools, he set to work vigorously to rub himself down.
Soon, he was not only in a glow, but in perspiration as well. The menace of pneumonia was past. There had been nine chances in ten that such exposure as he had undergone would bring on congestion of the lungs.
The hut had providentially afforded the tenth chance. Warmed, in a glow, rested from his exertions, Maxwell all at once realized that he was hungry.
“I'm afraid,” he murmured, “I'll have to be an unbidden guest at the Dauntless Pirates' board.”
His meal over, and his clothing dry, he redressed, and prepared to go. He laughed softly to himself at the tame ending of his rash adventure.
He had sprung melodramatically from the rail of an ocean liner, had plunged into ice-laden waters, had battled like mad with grim death, had eluded pursuit and had saved his well-nigh extinct life. He had come ashore, found warmth, food and a place to dry his clothes.
All that remained was to walk a mile to the nearest station, board a train for the ferry, then take a boat to New York, and arrive at Sylvia Tennant's home almost in time for dinner.
The adventure promised to end tamely enough. Now that it was all over, he half-wished there had been one or two more details of excitement in it. It would make better telling.
He was fully dressed again, even to the tweed sea-cap which, jammed down to his ears, had somehow stayed on his head throughout the icy swim. Nothing about him would suggest to the casual eye a man who had illegally escaped from a quarantined ship.
It had been a big risk. He saw that, now. But it was over. And Sylvia and the six hundred and twenty thousand dollars were well worth the superhuman task he had accomplished.
Clyde stepped to the door and opened it. A blast of chill air made him shiver. To go as he was, from that hot room out into the windy February night would be suicidal.
He wished yearningly for the heavy ulster he had shed when he jumped overboard. Then his eye fell on the row of old clothes on the wall.
“I'll have to borrow something more,” he told himself. “I can send it back by express or bring it back myself when the honeymoon's over. And I'll slip the owner a dollar or two by way of rent.”
He was glancing over the motley assortment of garments, as he spoke. All were evidently such clothing as a man might keep in barn or shed to year while working in the fields.
From under a line of battered overalls, jumpers, jackets and torn sweaters, Clyde fished out at last an overcoat.
Its sleeves were frayed. It was shiny at elbow. Several buttons were gone. There was dried mud here and there on its worn plaid surface. But the coat was warm and big. Maxwell brushed away the mud, dusted the mangy plush collar and slipped into the garment.
Then, fastening it as best he could, he put on his cap again and set forth, turning his back upon the hospitable lair of the Dauntless Pirates.
Somehow, as he started briskly toward the railroad track, his buoyant spirit seemed to fail.
Now that all peril was apparently over, he felt an odd sense of impending trouble.
CHAPTER III.
A new turn in the road.
A CHURCH clock somewhere was striking eight, as Clyde Maxwell boarded the last car of a train bound for the New York ferry.
There were few passengers, and such as chanced to be in the same car seemed to find nothing unusual in the spectacle of a tall, gloveless young man in a shabby, ill-fitting plaid overcoat and a brown tweed sea-cap.
When he came to pay his fare, Clyde mechanically thrust his fingers into the change pocket of the overcoat. One coin was there; a nickel. It was only after he had handed this over that he realized he had unconsciously robbed the coat's real owner of the money.
“I'll make it good when I send back the coat,” he thought. “It was probably a nickel he stuck here to buy a cigar or a glass of beer next time he happened to be wearing that old coat to the village.”
Then the refugee's mind turned with a joyous rush to the welcome that lay before him. Each revolution of the train's wheels was carrying him nearer and nearer to the girl he adored. In another hour he would feel her dear arms about his neck, her lips pressed to his.
How she would thrill at the story of what he had dared and done in order to come to her and to save her fortune!
Surely no knight errant of old had hazarded more, in so brief a space, for his lady-love. Now that he was safe he knew he had run a fearful risk. But it was past. And it was worth it all.
But for his daring, he must even now have been back on that horrible ship, herded with the rest of the human sheep, awaiting the quarantine's end, for another two days.
If, according to the health officer, no new cases were reported by the morning of the third day, the passengers would be allowed to land.
The third day! This was the night of February 27. The morning of the third day would be the morning of March 2.
A whole day too late! A day whose loss would mean over half a million dollars. And the difference between wealth and grinding, toil-ridden semipoverty. If—
The train drew into the terminal. With a handful of other passengers, Clyde Maxwell rushed toward the ferry. He could see a boat in the slip.
A uniformed guard was motioning a group of people aboard. That meant the boat was about to start. He.would be just in time.
Maxwell thrust his fingers again, by custom, into the overcoat's change pocket, drew them out with a laugh at his own absent-mindedness, thrust his hand into his trousers pocket, and fished forth a fistful of small change.
Hastily glancing at the coins as he ran, he selected a quarter, slipped the rest back into his pocket, reached the ticket window; and, with one eye on the boat, pushed the piece of silver across to the ticket-seller.
“Hurry, please!” he said, as the seller hesitated, “I want to catch that boat.”
“Whatcher given me?” growled the ticket
“I say I want to catch that boat. Give me my ticket.”
“An' I say,” retorted the ticket-seller, with ponderous sarcasm, “whatcher given me? What's this?”
He thrust back the coin.
“It's a quarter,” cried the exasperated Maxwell. “What's the matter with it. Hurry or—”
“It ain't a quarter,” snapped the ticket-seller. “I don't know what it is. But it don't go here. Nothin' but good United States money is taken on the—”
“What a fool I am!”
Clyde had glanced down at the coin and had seen it was an English shilling.
“Wait a second!” he added, pulling out his pocketful of change and pawing it over, “I'll give—”
“Get a move on, there!” shouted the next man in line behind him. “You'll make us all miss our boat.”
Reluctantly, Clyde left his place at the head of the little line and stood aside under an electric light, looking down with ever-increasing despair at his handful of change.
There were several shillings, a two-shilling piece, a couple of sixpences, a copper or so, and a gold sovereign.
English coins, every one of them. Of excellent monetary value in London, but, for Clyde's present needs, of far less value than one battered five-cent piece would have been.
He had gotten rid of most of his English money before coming on shipboard, and had calculated on using up the rest in tips before going ashore.
Hence, in the clothes he had been wearing when he left the vessel, he had not one cent of American money. Safe in his cabin below was all his United States currency.
And now, the lack of a nickel was liable to halt him in sight of his destination. He could have sworn aloud in his vexation.
He had risked life, health, freedom. And he had won. Only to be balked now for the lack of a five-cent disk of metal.
He resolved on an appeal to the ticket-seller. Turning, he took his place at the end of the dwindling line before the window.
And, as he fell into place, the coveted ferry-boat started lumberingly away from her slip.
Far away, the lights of New York flashed him a mocking invitation. There, in the city behind that clifflike rampart of tall waterfront office buildings, was Sylvia Tennant. And for want of five cents, he could not reach her side.
The rest of the line before the window had melted away. Clyde approached the ticket-seller. Holding out his palm, with its little burden of copper, silver, and gold, he said:
“I've only English money with me. I didn't land till a little while ago. I want to get to New York. Here is a two-shilling piece. It is silver. You can prove that by ringing it. Will you give me a ferry-ticket in exchange? You'll make forty-five cents on the deal.”
He paused, half expecting a gruff refusal, and preparing to offer the gold piece next. But the ticket-seller did not answer at once. Instead, he backed away, in his booth, to get a better look at Maxwell.
Then, eying Clyde doubtfully, he said:
“We ain't supposed to do that sort of thing. But wait there just a minute, and I'll see if I can't fix it for you.”
Surprised and pleased at the erstwhile gruff attendant's gentler manner, Clyde leaned against the ticket-window and waited.
Again his gaze strayed to New York. This time he returned the lights' gaze defiantly, and their twinkle seemed to take on a friendlier aspect.
There would be another boat in a few minutes. The attendant would give him a ticket for it. A short sail and he would be at Battery Park. Then—having no American money—he would probably have to walk all the way to Sylvia's home in West Eightieth Street. But what did that matter? He would easily—
The ticket-seller's voice was in his ear once more. But it was not to him the fellow was speaking.
“I guess that's your man, orf'cer!” said the seller.
Clyde whirled about. In front of him stood the attendant, and at his side three other men. Two policemen and a thick-set young fellow whom he remembered as one of the health officer's assistants on board the liner that day.
“That's him!” went on the ticket-seller. “Answers the description to a T. I suspicioned it the second I clapped eyes onto that English money of his an' heard him say he'd just landed. So I hustled off to fetch you. I hope I ain't caught any disease for being so near him.”
The Health Department doctor stepped up to Clyde.
“Yes,” said he, “you're the man. I remember seeing you on board to-day. I was sent here an hour ago to watch for you. There's a watcher at every ferry. I hope you'll come quietly.”
“Quietly?” sputtered Clyde. “Where?”
“Back to the ship. I have a launch waiting down at the dock, and—”
“I am not going back. I—”
“You prefer to go to the Ellis Island inspection hospital? Or to the inspection hospital at Ward's Island? If you insist, I can have you sent to either of those institutions, and you can wait there a fortnight until quarantine is lifted. Or you can go back to the ship and stay there two days. Take your choice.”
“You have no right to—”
“I am acting within the department's rights and by its orders. These policemen will back my authority. Will you—?”
Clyde dodged suddenly to one side of the thick-set doctor. Ducking under the outthrown arm of one of the policemen, he made a rush for the street outside.
His plan of action was by no means clear. But he was resolved to escape. Once out in the darkness, he might be able to formulate some scheme whereby to cross the Kill von Kull to New Jersey, and so back to New York.
So sudden was his ruse and so quickly did he execute it, that he was a good ten feet in the lead before the policemen could make after him in pursuit.
Through a knot of arriving Staten Islanders he flew, darted to the street entrance, slipped on a bit of ice, and fell with a crash to the ground.
His head struck against the flagstones with a thud. A thousand stars seemed to burst before his eyes. Then things went black, and he lay very still.
CHAPTER IV.
Another chance.
“IT was a nasty crack on the head,” some one was saying; “but it is nothing serious. He's coming to, all right.”
Then came a throbbing that shook Maxwell and made his head ache abominably.
Vaguely he knew he was aboard a gasoline-launch. He opened his eyes.
By the light of a boat lantern, he could see the young health doctor bending over him. There were two other men in the launch.
Raising his head, Clyde noted the boat was skirting the northeast shore of Staten Island.
“All right now?” asked the doctor. “You might have got concussion from a fall like that. The thick sea-cap saved you from anything worse than a five-minute knockout.
“You'll have a bruised place on your scalp for a day or so. But otherwise you're as good as new.
“What did you try to bolt for? It was no use. Every ferry was watched. Every police station, roadhouse, and depot in Staten Island was notified. You'd have been caught again before morning. That's why I asked you to come with us quietly.”
“If I hadn't slipped,” answered Maxwell shakily, “I'd have gotten away somehow. Even if the ferries were watched, I'd have found a way out. Just as I would have done half an hour ago, if I'd had a nickel with me.”
“Yes,” agreed the young doctor, “you'd have got clear that time, I grant you. You see, we were watching the ferries for a man with no overcoat and with clothes that were wringing wet. When you came along in dry clothes and an overcoat, you'd have passed scot free but for the English money. It would not have worked a second time, though; for we'd have sent out a better description. Why did you risk your life just to reach New York three days earlier?”
“If I'm not married two days from now, I forfeit more than half a million dollars. You won't believe that, of course; and I don't care whether you do or not. But it's true. So I took chances.”
“Say, Mr. Maxwell,” observed the official, dropping his voice and speaking with a reluctant admiration, “you interest me. I like your pluck. The man who had the nerve to dive over a ship's side on a February evening, and the strength to swim a quarter of a mile in such water, is worth helping. That's why I'm helping you.”
“Helping me?” sneered Clyde. “By nabbing me and lugging me back to the ship? Thanks, vastly; but I'd have preferred to go unhelped.”
“Don't get hot under the collar. I caught you; and I'm taking you to the ship. That's true. I had to. I'm a sworn employee of the Health Department, and I can't go back on my duty. But I've helped you, none the less.”
“How? By trying Russian police methods, and—”
“By interesting the health officer in your case, and getting him to persuade the captain not to put you in irons or bringing criminal proceedings against you, as that worthy commander had threatened to. By arranging that you should be brought privately back to the ship, if you were caught, and treated there as if nothing had happened. Maybe you think it was easy to do all that? The captain was as mad as a wet hen. Steer clear of him.”
“Thanks.”
“Also,” went on the official, “I arranged that you be brought to the ship instead of going into worse and longer confinement. And I kept those two policemen at the ferry from fanning you with their clubs and then dragging you off to jail for resisting an officer.”
“I'm much obliged,” muttered Clyde. “If I'm not more grateful, just remember what I've been up against.”
“You speak of getting married,” hazarded the other. “If you'd care to scratch off a note to—to the young lady, I'll dip it in carbolic solution, and then see it's mailed to her.”
Clyde started up in delight. Headache and shakiness were forgotten. The official handed him a pocket-pad and a pencil.
“Don't make it too confidential,” he advised; “for, while I'm dipping it and putting it in an envelope I might happen to see some of the writing.”
Clyde was scribbling away furiously. On one sheet he wrote Sylvia's full name and address. This he handed the official, who promised to copy it on an envelope. Then, on a second sheet, he wrote:
- Sylvia:
- I am quarantined off Staten Island. The quarantine will end two days from to-morrow morning. Then I will come at once to you. But it will be a day late.
- I won't try to tell you how I suffer at the thought of all that my delay must mean to you. We have lost a fortune. But we still have each other. And that is the real happiness. I've risked all to reach you on time. And I have failed.
- Forgive me—I write stiffly, in case this note should be read by other eyes before it reaches you. In two days—from to-morrow morning, I shall be with you. A whole day too late. Clyde.
It was a miserably stilted, unsatisfactory note. Yet, he could say no more; and it gave him a vague sense of comfort that she would know he had not failed through negligence.
He handed the paper to the official, who took and pocketed it, just as the launch ran under the companionway of the liner.
“If I haven't already overburdened you,” said Clyde, slipping off the borrowed overcoat, “would you mind having this coat sent to one 'Masterson,' a farmer near Rosebank? And send him this sovereign as payment for the forced loan. I'd like to send something to the Dauntless Pirates, too,” he muttered under his breath, “if I knew their names. They saved me an attack of pneumonia.”
None of the passengers was about as Maxwell ran up the companionway to the deck. A petty officer eyed him askance. The captain, as Clyde passed on toward his own stateroom, met him, glowered, made as though to speak, then grunted and turned aside.
Arrived in his cabin, Maxwell's first act was to plunge both hands in his steamer-trunk and scatter its contents right and left until he came upon a roll of American money. Then, changing into other, less wrinkled, clothes, he stuck the bills into his pocket, along with several pieces of silver.
“It's like locking the stable door after the horse is stolen,” he grumbled; “but it does me good to feel a bunch of honest Uncle Sam currency in my suit. If I'd had one nickel of this with me an hour ago—”
His stateroom door silently flew open. A man slipped in softly and swiftly, closed and locked the door behind him, and stood facing the amazed Clyde.
The newcomer was a dapper little keen-eyed man of about fifty. Maxwell remembered chatting with him once or twice in the smoking-room. His name was Deane.
“I don't know what part of the country you come from, Mr. Deane,” observed Clyde, recovering, with a tinge of anger, from his surprise, “but you won't be offended, I hope, if I tell you that in civilized communities there is a quaint, old-fashioned custom which demands that people knock at a door before bursting in. It is a custom I believe in encouraging. I merely mention it, in case you—”
“No offense! No offense!” broke in Deane in a low, hurried voice. “My apologies. I had to come in quickly. The captain was crossing the passage below. I was afraid he'd see me.”
“Well?” queried Maxwell. “What if he had? There's no law against people coming here to see me. I'm not under arrest. Or—”
“No offense!” repeated Deane soothingly, adding: “No, you're not under arrest; though it's a miracle that you aren't. The captain raged like a bull of Basham after you went overboard. Swore he'd do all sorts of things to you. After a while the health officer calmed him down, and—”
“I still don't see why you popped in upon me like a confounded jack-in-the-box,” said Clyde irritably. “You'll pardon me if I say I'm in no humor to receive callers.”
“I think you'll be in humor to receive me,” returned Deane, quite unruffled. “Will you be patient while I explain my errand? I'll be as brief as I can. Then, if you say so, I'll get out. Believe me, Mr. Maxwell, it's to your advantage to listen.”
“Go ahead, then,” gruffly vouchsafed Clyde, somewhat impressed by the other's air of earnest mystery. “But I can't see how it's to my interest to—”
“Perhaps you will,” Deane assured him. “To come to the point, first of all, I understand you want to escape from this ship.”
“That's my affair. I did escape. I'm back again. It isn't a subject I want to discuss.”
“Don't be cranky. You wanted to escape. You still want to escape. I think I can help you do it.”
“You?” exclaimed Clyde, incredulous, yet with a tiny thrill of foolish hope pounding away at his heart. “I don't understand.”
“Let me explain. I happened—by the merest chance, of course—to be smoking a before-dinner cigar, just behind the corner of one of the deck-cabins this afternoon, when you were telling your tale of wo to our honest friend, the purser.”
“You listened?”
“Quite by chance, as I said. At first, because so improbable a story amused me; then with an idea of helping you. But before I could broach my plan to you, you had gone over the side. So I am hunting you up, at this late hour, to offer my services. Now, do you understand why I didn't want the captain or anybody else to see me come in here?”
“Go ahead,” answered Clyde, perplexed by a mingled hope of escape and instinctive dislike to the glib, smooth-spoken fellow.
“After you escaped,” resumed Deane, “I took the liberty of sending one or two wireless messages in cipher to certain friends of mine in New York. One was to a firm of inquiry agents. I asked for details about you.”
“About me? Why?”
“In reply,” went on Deane, “I have just received a couple of wireless telegrams. From them I learn that, though you are not particularly well off, you have a name for rigid honesty that is almost a byword among your friends—that you are honest, often to your own disadvantage, and that you are strictly a man of your word.”
“That is highly flattering,” scoffed Clyde. “But may I ask why you took the trouble to set detectives to scraping up my record? What business was it of yours? I call it a piece of abominable impertinence.”
“Go easy,” smiled Deane. “Wait till you have heard me out. I wanted to see if you were O.K., and those details came to me along with the rest. I also verified your story about having to lose six hundred and twenty thousand dollars unless you are married by March 1st.”
“My private affairs are no concern of—”
“Oh, yes, they are. That's why I'm going to help you. Now do you want to hear my plan?”
“I've been waiting to, for five minutes.”
“You saw old McCue, the Bird Seed Trust man, go ashore this afternoon? Well, he only took a small part of his luggage along. He has arranged that the rest of it shall go up at five o'clock in the morning, so as to be at the dock when the custom-house people start in.”
“Well, how does that concern me?”
“Want to go along?”
“Do I? Do I? But, pshaw, it's impossible. If—”
“It isn't at all impossible. That's why I'm here. A tug is coming for the luggage at five. It's pitch dark at that hour. The tug belongs to a company I've had dealings with. I sent a cipher telegram to them, too. Then I found out what sailors would be on watch at 5 a.m., and I slipped a ten-spot to one of them. He'll be on duty at the companionway when the tug comes alongside. Two men from the tug will carry the trunks down, one at a time. You will take the place of one of those men on the second trip. No one will know, in the dark, except the tug people and the sailor on watch at the gangway. It's absurdly simple.”
“Yes—if it weren't impossible.”
“How is it impossible?” challenged Deane. “You'll be waiting in the dark, behind the pile of trunks. As the two tug men come for their second load, one of them will stand aside, and you'll take his place. I don't think it was really necessary to tip that sailor. In the dim light the change would not be noticed. But I wanted to make sure. Of course, you can't carry your luggage ashore. But you can readily wait for that until the ship docks.”
“Look here!” said Maxwell, more moved than he cared to show. “It's a crazy trait of humanity always to seek something in exchange for nothing. That trait fills the poor-houses and potters' fields and the Wall Street men's pockets. But I am still a little sane. You come here almost a total stranger, offering to help me out. You say you have paid out money, and sent cipher telegrams, and spent time and trouble on the scheme. Why? There must be an answer. No one does that sort of thing to help a stranger evade the law. That's why I say 'Impossible.'”
“Quite right,” assented Deane, with a careless shrug of the shoulders. “If you care to look at it that way. But there are other points of view. If you were a sentimentalist I might say I'm interested in seeing two loving souls united, and in saving them a fortune that they would lose unless I—”
“I am not a sentimentalist,” interrupted Clyde. “Try another.”
“If, on the contrary,” argued Deane, “I knew a shrewd young man who had to get to New York at a certain time or lose six hundred and twenty thousand dollars, and if I knew that the young man were so eager to get to New York that he had already risked his life to do so—if I knew all that, I say, mightn't it occur to me that the young man would pay me a pretty penny for engineering a scheme that would put him safely ashore in Battery Park?”
“Now we're getting down to facts,” agreed Clyde. “You will get me safely out of this, as a purely business proposition. Is that the idea?”
“If you choose to put it that way—yes.”
“And your terms?”
“For a man who stands to win six hundred and twenty thousand dollars, do you think one thousand dollars is too big a bonus?”
“H'm!” muttered Clyde. “Let me think. No, it isn't too much. Of course, in a sense, it is extortion pure and simple; just as it would be if you charged one thousand dollars to lift a drowning man out of the water. But it would be worth it to the drowning man. And it's worth it to me.”
“Good! Shake on it.”
“Thanks. But, if you don't mind, I'd rather not. This is a business deal. I accept because I have to. But you can't expect me to feel much personal liking for a man who does me a good turn at a price like that.”
“As you choose. Be on deck, in the corner beyond the gangway, a little before five. Remember, when the men come for the trunk—”
“Hold on!” broke in Clyde. “I haven't one thousand dollars with me. I've barely ninety dollars in American money.”
“That's all right. You'll pay me when I come ashore two days from to-morrow morning. I'll hunt you up.”
“But what guarantee have you that I—”
“That's why I made those inquiries about your honesty. You are a man of your word. You've agreed to pay me. You'll pay.”
“You're taking chances. Shall I give you a note for the debt?”
“It isn't necessary. I read faces pretty well. It's part of my trade. I've never been mistaken in one yet. And if you say you'll pay, you'll do it.”
Clyde felt his heart warm unaccountably toward the man.
“That's very decent of you,” said he. “I'm sorry if I spoke roughly; but, you see, it was an odd proposition. I was a bit staggered at first. By the way, you spoke just now of your 'trade.' What is that trade?”
“A little bit of everything, if you like,” laughed Deane. “Just at present my trade is to enable a rather excitable young man to evade the quarantine laws and win a fortune. And speaking of trades reminds me of my mission to Europe. I went to get some decidedly important papers—mortgages, notes, and that sort of thing. It was needful that some of those papers reach New York not later than to-morrow. There's a lot of money involved. As they can't, I am a pretty heavy loser. So you see you aren't the only unfortunate on board.”
“Hard luck! Can't you smuggle them ashore the same way you're smuggling me?”
“Turn them over to a tugboat captain to lose or forget? Not much. That would mean a bigger loss than their not getting there to-morrow. And, in my case, there is no kind stranger to butt in—for a consideration—and help me. There are mortgages and—”
“If you're hinting that you'd like to have me take them—”
“You?” cried Deane, in slow wonder. Then: “Why not? I was a fool not to think of it. The very thing!”
“Wait! I haven't said I would. I'll have enough business of my own to transact, without—”
“Don't say that!” pleaded Deane. “Now that you've given me the idea, don't refuse. Listen. I'll make a new bargain with you. Like yourself, I'm up against it, and extortion is permissible. If you'll take that little satchel of papers with you and deliver them to my partner, whom I'll telegraph in cipher to meet you in Battery Park at 6 a.m.—so you won't be delayed in having to go to my office—if you'll do this for me, we'll cancel the one thousand dollars payment, and call it square.”
“But—”
“There's a lot more than one thousand dollars involved in that packet of documents,” said Deane. “Is it a deal?”
“Why, yes—if you insist. But I get all the best of it.”
“Good! I'll telegraph Coan, my partner, to meet you in Battery Park—or say at the foot of the South Ferry 'L' stairway—as near 6 a.m. as he can. All you have to do is to give him the bag. I'll slip it to you on deck just before you start. You can button it inside your coat. Coan is a big chap, with a brown beard. I'll tell him to call you by name, and that'll be all the 'countersign' needed. Give him the bag, and your debt to me is wiped out. How about it?”
“It's a go,” said Maxwell. “But I still feel I ought to pay you cash for all you're doing to—”
“If that little bag gets safe to Coan tomorrow morning,” answered Deane, “it'll be worth more cash to me than any payment you could make.”
He smiled oddly and quitted the cabin.
CHAPTER V.
The man with the bag.
CLYDE MAXWELL did not dare go to bed. He did not even take the risk of dozing in his chair lest, after the exhaustion and hard exercise of the day, he should oversleep.
He must be on deck, alert, waiting, before five in the morning. He was weary. He ached in every limb. His eyelids seemed lead-weighted. He had slept badly the previous night, and had waked at dawn.
He had that afternoon undergone more violent physical effort than falls to most athletes in a week. All his system cried out for a long, refreshing sleep, to knit the raveled nerves, to replenish the worn-out tissues.
Yet, everything depended on his keeping awake. And by sheer will-power he sought to beat back the lures of slumber. He walked back and forth in his narrow stateroom, planning the future.
If all went well, the tug should bring him to New York before six in the morning. It would doubtless land him somewhere off Battery Park, before going on with its load of trunks to the steamer's dock. He would cross the “L” stairway, wait there for Coan—if the latter was not already there awaiting him—give up the satchel, and then make a bee-line for West Eightieth Street.
He smiled as he thought of Sylvia's amaze when she should find him camping on the front door-step of her home before seven o'clock—a whole day before the wedding's time limit should expire.
Somehow, he could not think as coolly and as calmly as was his wont. Nature can stand only a certain amount of strain. The man who has plowed all day cannot run fast foot-races at sunset. The system that has been overexhausted balks when concentrated mental or physical effort is called for.
Clyde made such few arrangements as were needful. He replaced and locked his steamer-trunk, thrusting it under his berth. He saw to it that all his money was safe in his pocket. He put on his thickest overcoat, and changed his sea-cap for a derby.
He dared not risk the suspicion of any of the ship's officers by carrying even the lighttest hand-luggage with him. He would be lucky, he knew, if he could thrust Deane's small handbag, unobserved, under his overcoat.
He looked at his watch when all preparations were complete. Just eleven o'clock. Six more hours to wait.
To fight off drowsiness, he went on deck. A fine, misty rain was falling, and the footing was slippery. He paced back and forth along the almost deserted decks, smoking and trying to bring his jaded faculties up to concert pitch.
Back and forth the tired man walked, while the drizzle fell cold on his face and dampened his thick coat. Eight bells struck. Twelve o'clock. Five more hours of waiting.
To the north a broad, pale glow painted the lowering skies. That was New York. Sylvia was there. To the right an arc of tiny, twinkling lights spanned a black abyss. That was Brooklyn Bridge.
If he were on the bridge he could walk to Sylvia's house in an hour and a half. He could ride there by Subway in twenty minutes—maybe less.
If he could find a hotel on the way, with a thousand white beds in it, he would tumble into the first one and sleep the clock round. If—
He roused himself with a start. Leaning against a stanchion, while he viewed the distant city, he had fallen asleep on his feet. Only the forward lurch of his unbalanced body had waked him. He fell to walking once more, this time more briskly.
The captain, on his way to bed, passed Clyde on deck, and favored him with another glower. Maxwell thought he read suspicion in his surly glare. If the captain should suspect him of planning to escape a second time a secret watch would undoubtedly be set upon him.
Perhaps such a watch was already set. It might be wiser to go below. And down into the warm, stuffy interior of the vessel the weary man went.
In his stateroom he forced himself to move rapidly about, to go through a series of “setting up” exercises that still further tired him, to reading aloud as he walked up and down.
And so, in the course of what seemed an eternity, the endless night dragged itself away.
Red-eyed and half-drunk from sheer sleepiness, Clyde Maxwell looked at his watch for the fiftieth time. Quarter before five. Time to go on deck.
He had not dared go earlier lest some officer, noting his presence, should suspect him of an intention to dive overboard a second time.
Cautiously, yet smoking a cigarette to allay any idea of secrecy, Clyde made his way to the deck and strolled along toward the gangway. His senses were alert enough now. He glanced furtively from side to side, on the lookout for any officer who might question his presence there at such an hour.
At last he saw a little pile of trunks near the gangway, with a sailor on watch beside it. Below, a tug was working its way alongside. Maxwell shrank back into the shadows behind the trunk-pile and waited.
An officer came to the gangway, exchanging a low-voiced hail with the tug's captain. Then he gave an order to the sailor, and moved along in the darkness.
A moment later Clyde, crouching moveless and tense in the shadows, felt a light touch on his arm.
He almost cried out with nervous shock.
Whirling round, he found himself confronting a faintly discerned figure that had crept up to him unheard.
CHAPTER VI.
Victory in sight.
THE dim-seen man laughed softly at Maxwell's start of surprise.
“Your nerves are bad, my friend!” he commented.
“I—I didn't know it was you, Deane,” faltered Clyde. “I was afraid it might be—”
“And well it might,” replied Deane in the same low-pitched voice. “That sailor chap I bribed just told me that word has been passed along to keep an eye on you. The captain's afraid you'll make another bolt for freedom. I shall relish hearing his comments when he finds you're gone. Here's the bag. Take all sorts of care of it. Some of these papers are worth their weight in gold to my partner and me.”
He pressed a small brown leather satchel into Clyde's hand.
“It's very heavy,” observed Clyde, thrusting it into the breast of his overcoat.
“Paper is about the heaviest thing, in bulk, that you can find,” said Deane. “For Heaven's sake, don't let that bag slip out or drop. I've telegraphed ahead to my partner. You'll remember the directions?”
“Yes. I'm to meet a big brown man named Coan at the foot of the South Ferry 'L' stairs about six o'clock. He's to ca}l me by name, and I'm to give him the bag. By the way, suppose he doesn't show up?”
“He will. Don't worry about that. He's as anxious to get the bag as I am to send it. It— Look sharp! Here come the two roustabouts from the tug for McCue's luggage.”
A couple of men stamped up the companionway-stairs, picked up a trunk from the pile pointed out to them by the sailor on guard, and started down with it to the tug. A minute later they were back.
“Take the rear end of the trunk,” whispered Deane to Maxwell, “and hold it high, so your face will be hidden. I hope that fresh officer won't happen to pass just as you— Go ahead.”
The two tug-men had returned. At a sign from Deane, they stooped over a trunk at the darkest corner of the pole. Deane gave Clyde a shove forward.
At once, the nearest of the two men from the tug stepped backward noiselessly into the shadow cast by the single near-by light. Clyde as quickly and silently darted forward and caught up the far end of the trunk which the second man was lifting.
No one had observed the maneuver. The nearest outsider was the sailor on guard, who stood with his back to them.
Across the few feet of dark deck moved Clyde and the roustabout, their burden between them. Then the tug-man started down the companionway, Clyde at his heels.
“That's the gawkiest way I ever saw a grown man handle a trunk,” observed the returning officer to a companion. “The hindmost man. He holds his end of it up against his face like a mask. And he can hardly keep his feet. If that's the way they are going to shift the luggage, they'll be at it for another hour.”
“Queer,” remarked his companion, “what worthless men those tugboat captains pick up. That's some amateur who struck him for a job. Did you notice he wore an overcoat and derby? Imagine a regular trunk-mover wearing such togs. Big chest development, though. His chest stuck out like a pouter pigeon's.”
They passed on. Clyde, who had caught every word of comment, never knew how he completed the rest of the journey down the steep, slippery stairs. It was not until he felt the tug's little deck beneath his feet that he dared to breathe.
Creeping along the narrow footway, he came to an open door, and found himself looking into the empty galley. He crawled in, and shut the door behind him.
There for another eternity he waited, straining his ears for every sound from the liner. After a veritable eon of time the tug cast off. He heard her screw churning the water. She turned, puffed as she got under weigh, then settled down into steady onward motion.
Clyde drew a deep breath of relief. It was as though the burden of the universe had just been lifted from his tired shoulders. He was safe—free!
He opened the galley-door and ventured out on deck, or, rather, onto the three-foot runway that serves that purpose on a tug.
A full quarter-mile behind him rose the bulk of the anchored liner. Ahead, momentarily drawing nearer, was New York. In the east, above the dim Long Island shoreline, the night was paling into the faint approach of dawn.
Clyde found the steep little stair that ran up to the pilot-house. Up he went, opened the door of the little room, and entered it. A row of benches ran around the wall. In the middle was a stove, with a lantern above it. At the end farthest from the door was the wheel. At this stood a sweatered, red-whiskered man.
“You're the mizzable stowaway, ain't you?” asked the man at the wheel. “I was waiting for you to show up. You sure handle a trunk awkward. I watched you come aboard. There'll be fine doings on that old hulk when they find you gone. If I hadn't been paid blamed well, I wouldn't 'a' took the risk.”
“Can I sit down here?” asked Clyde, pointing to the long, leather-covered benches.
“Sure. Make yourself to home. You look played out. Lay down there an' get a mite of sleep. We won't be to New York for half an hour yet. I'll wake you in plenty of time. I've got orders to run alongside Schaefer's pier at Battery wall an' put you off there.”
Clyde scarce heard the last words. He had tumbled, exhausted, upon the bench, and was dead asleep before he had time to answer. Heavily he slept—the slumber of utter exhaustion, oblivious of everything about him. Ten hours of such sleep refresh both mind and body. A half-hour of it is barely enough to relax the system, and leave it in worse case, apparently, than before.
Maxwell seemed scarce to have closed his eyes when he was dragged back to painful consciousness by the pilot's grip on his shoulder. Shaking the dazed sleeper to and fro roughly, the man was shouting:
“Hey, you! Wake up there! Are you doped? We're off Battery wall. Get a move on! We can't wait all day!”
Blinking, gasping, Clyde Maxwell stumbled to his feet. Slowly he realized where he was. At first, he made as though he would fall back again on the bench. But the pilot's shouts and shakes gradually brought him to his senses.
Down the steep little stairway he blundered. The tug was slackening speed, and warping into an open pier. Gray dawn filled Battery Park, just beyond.
The sight of his long-coveted goal spurred Clyde to momentary activity. As the tug grated along the pier's edge he jumped to the string-piece, hurried down the dock and onto solid land.
He was in New York at last. A full day ahead of the date he had risked so much to keep. He was in the same city with Sylvia. Within a half-hour of her home.
He looked at his watch. Three minutes before six. Broad daylight. Then, somewhat conscience-stricken at memory of how he had neglected the satchel of papers, he clapped his hand to the breast of his coat. The bag was still there—undisturbed.
“Now to pay my debt to Deane by handing this thing over to a big, brown-whiskered person named Coan, at the foot of the 'L stairs!” he reflected. “And then—for the nearest Subway that will take me to—Sylvia.”
He crossed the empty park, and came to the nearest of the two “L” stairways. Except for one or two early Brooklynites, who had just emerged from the ferry-house and were climbing the steps, the stairs were deserted. No big, brown-whiskered man.
Maxwell moved across to the other stairway of the “L.” This was totally empty. Taking up a position where he could watch both sides of stairs, Clyde muttered impatiently :
“I wish my brown-whiskered friend would show up. It's cold waiting here.”
Five minutes passed, then ten. No sign of Coan. Maxwell had taken out the bag, and was holding it in his hand. But the chill early morning air bit his fingers. So he returned the bag to its place in the bosom of his overcoat, and rammed both hands into his pockets.
Quarter past six. No Coan. The deserted section was beginning to wake up. But Clyde was beginning to grow sleepy again.
The excitement of reaching his goal had for the moment pushed aside the pall of slumbrous exhaustion that had encompassed him. Now, gradually, steadily, it was settling down again.
The half-hour's sleep had served only to make him ravenous for more. The cold air that had at first revivified him now added to his drowsiness.
Maxwell looked about him. Coan had not appeared. But from one of the benches at the northeastern end of the little park, Clyde was sure he could watch both stairways as well as bv standing in the center of a side walk.
So he moved over to the nearest bench, sat down, glanced against the foot of each stair, and—promptly fell asleep.
The sun was shining in his face. Some one was shaking him and calling in his ear.
The pilot! No, he had left the tug.
At last he thought he remembered.
Clyde Maxwell opened his eyes stupidly. A man in blue was leaning over him; a man in blue with brass buttons; a big man.
“Are—are you Coan?” Clyde murmured drowsily.
“No,” retorted the bluecoat. “I'm an orf'cer of the law. What are you doin' sleepin' off a jag in the freezin' cold? Get up!”
But Maxwell had once more sank peacefully back into slumberland.
Glancing about to see no one was observing his treatment of a well-dressed and apparently respectable civilian, Officer Mahan applied the one unfailing police cure for undue slumber.
Pulling out his night-stick, he smote the upturned soles of Clyde's shoes a resounding blow. Maxwell, with a growl of pain, sprang to his feet, wide-awake.
“What's—what's up?” he demanded.
“You are!” retorted the policeman. “An' it's high time. This is no place to sleep off a load. Get home with you, before I run you in!”
Clyde, shamefaced, moved a few steps away. The officer continued on his beat.
Maxwell looked across at each stairway, now swarming with people. But in the hurrying crowds he could see no loitering brown-whiskered giant. A glance at a near by clock told him the hour was eight-thirty.
Had Coan come and gone while he slept? And, if so, to whom was he to deliver the bag? He had promised Deane to deliver it. And, unconsciously, he had broken his word. For the first time in his life. A hot lash of shame stung him.
What was to be done? He did not know the address of Deane's partner, nor how to get the bag to him. To think matters out, he sat down again on the bench. He was keenly awake now, and his mind had resumed its old activity.
Deane had said the bag contained papers whose arrival in New York on that particular day meant much financially to both partners. And he had-promised—
An odd thought flashed into Maxwell's brain. Deane, by money and cipher telegrams, had had no trouble in getting him off of the liner. Why had he not gotten himself off in the same way? It would surely have been as easy to smuggle two, men aboard the tug as one.
If it had been worth so much money to Deane to get those papers to New York by February 28, why had he not brought them himself, and thus have won one thousand dollars for which he had bargained with Maxwell?
It did not seem logical. Clyde could not understand. Why, too, had he arranged so odd a meeting-place for Maxwell and Coan? Any hotel lobby, or Coan's own office, would surely—
“Now, then,” roared the exasperated officer, “didn't I tell you to beat it home? Git!”
He yanked Clyde sharply to his feet. The pull burst the two upper buttons on Maxwell's overcoat.
Out flew the bulging brown satchel. Through the air it hurled, struck the iron corner of the bench with a force that burst the locked clasp, and fell to the ground wide open.
Out upon the grimy pavement between Clyde and the policeman cascaded a mass of fire-bright diamonds.
A full quart of precious stones, in necklaces, bracelets, rings, and unset.
All piled in a blazing, sprawling heap upon the sidewalk.
CHAPTER VII.
A dock for—nowhere.
FOR an instant both men gazed spellbound, agape, at the flashing, dazzling mass of wealth at their feet.
It was Clyde Maxwell whose trained mentality was first to awaken. While the officer was still staring, hypnotized, down at the jewel-strewn sidewalk, Clyde's brain set to work with a lightning swiftness.
Deane was undoubtedly a diamond thief. A wholesale smuggler, at the very least. He was known to the police. The haul he had brought across seas would not be brought ashore by himself.
Some wireless tip from confederates on land had undoubtedly apprised him that the police were on the lookout for his arrival. And he had chosen this means of getting the loot safe into his accomplice's hands.
The whole talk of one thousand dollars' payment for engineering Clyde's escape—the whole scene—had evidently led up from the very point to that one proposition—that Maxwell bring the bag to New York.
Deane had chosen an unconscious agent whom he knew to be honest, desperate, resourceful. It had failed only because Clyde had fallen asleep at the moment when he should have been on the lookout for Coan.
All this, in a fraction of time, flashed wordlessly through Maxwell's mind. He was finely caught. How could he explain to an already suspicious policeman his possession of thousands of dollars' worth of precious stones? Would the honest owner of such treasures be sleeping in a public park with the jewels stuck carelessly in the front of his overcoat?
He could not tell his story. If he did, he would be haled back to the ship or to one of the quarantine islands. If, on the contrary, he did not tell the truth he would be taken at once into custody.
In either case his hope of marrying Sylvia Tennant by the first of March would be at an end.
He had been used as a catspaw by a smuggler or a thief. He felt he no longer owed Deane anything. He must escape now, as best he could. A blind, irresistible impulse of flight seized him.
Something else seized him at the same instant. Officer Mahan, shaking off his daze of wonder, had sprung forward and caught him by the shoulders.
“A flash yeggman, eh!” roared the officer, his dull face alight with visions of promotion. “Worked all night to get the stuff and came down here to sleep it off, did you? Well—”
He got no further. With a sudden tremendous wrench, Clyde tore himself free, leaving his overcoat in the policeman's grasp. The wrench also gripped under his coat and yanked away his linen collar.
He whirled to run, missed his footing on the curb, and rolled in the snowy mud of the gutter. Mahan hurled himself upon the fallen man. Clyde, with the skill of old football days, wriggled from under his clumsy assailant, gained his feet and set off at top speed.
People had begun running up from all directions. As Mahan gained his feet, no less than four street boys had launched themselves with howls of delight upon the diamonds. The bulk of the little crowd, divided in desire between fun of a man-hunt and the incredible spectacle of a fortune in jewels starring the sidewalk, chose the latter attraction.
This gave Clyde a start. So did the fact that Mahan, torn between two duties, rushed at the juvenile diamond-grabbers instead of directly giving chase to the runner.
Across Battery Park sped Maxwell. In his ears rang the shouts, whistles and stick rappings wherewith the policeman, mounting guard over the hoard, strove to summon aid for his pursuit.
Hatless, his overcoat gone, his other coat ripped and dirt-stained, his collar lost, his tie awry, his hair disheveled, Clyde knew his running figure would be a mark for the first policeman who might answer Mahan's frantic summons.
So he dropped into a brisk walk. Even yet, he realized that the first policeman who, hearing the whistles and raps, should catch sight of him would arrest him on suspicion. He cast about for a hiding-place.
Now Battery Park is a delightfully picturesque spot. “Guides to New York” devote much space to its beauties and historic memories. But it is about as devoid of effective hiding-places as was the shaven crown of Pharaoh's head.
Clyde, glancing back, could see several bluecoats running from all directions toward the crowd whose center was Mahan, the jewel-guardian. In another moment they would know, and the chase would begin. Hemmed in at one pointed end of Manhattan Island, he must be caught like a rat in a blind drain.
Some forty feet ahead of him stood a motley, jostling crowd. They were swarming against a wicket that led to a boat landing. Between them and a little steamboat that lay at anchor stood a determined old man with a white goatee, thrusting back the foremost of the throng and holding the passageway to the boat against them while he scanned certain passes and tickets.
Maxwell, with a primal instinct of a hunted thing that seeks to lose itself and hide its trail by plunging into a crowd, wriggled his way through the rearmost rank of the waiting men and women.
He understood well enough now where he was. This was the dock of the government boat that plies between Battery Park and Ellis Island. Here come foreigners of all grades on their way to Ellis Island to greet immigrant friends. Here, too, are brought such “undesirables” as have eluded governmental vigilance at Ellis Island, reached New York, and been captured and ordered back for deportation.
From the incoming steamers big barges carry steerage passengers to Ellis Island. There, the newcomers are sorted out, examined for disease, poverty or other official crimes and eventually—if they are in luck—allowed to set foot in the glorious Land of the Free.
As each ship discharges its barge-loads there, a horde of friends and agents cross in the government boat to meet the late arrivals. In the outskirts of such crowd did Clyde Maxwell now find himself. For a few minutes—if no one had observed his stealthy advent—he was safe.
His soiled, tattered attire caused less notice in this, nondescript gathering than it would have done elsewhere in the park. Nevertheless it could not long pass muster.
Every minute or so, the crowd would roll confusedly forward of its own weight, toward the barrier. Then before the onslaught of the white-goateed man, it would recoil in even more dire confusion. At each such maneuver, Clyde managed to work his way deeper in the mass.
In a few minutes at most the boat would be ready for its passengers. Then the crowd would go aboard. His shelter gone, he would once more stand exposed to the eye of the first searching officer. Something must be done, and quickly.
At his shoulder, as the people once more recoiled, he found a tall, slender man, of much his own general appearance. The stranger wore a rather dilapidated but still fairly presentable slouch hat, and a long greenish ulster.
He looked hard up. Maxwell had an idea.
“Friend,” he whispered, not seeming to speak directly to the man, “I will give you forty dollars for your hat and ulster. If you accept, next time the crowd gets into a mixup, slip off the hat and coat and pass them to me. And I will hand you the money.”
The other paid no heed. Covertly nudging him, Clyde began his whispered speech again, this time closer to his ear. The stranger turned ever so slightly; and copying Maxwell's furtive manner whispered:
“Qu'est ce que c'est que vous dites? Je no comprends pas l'Anglais.”
In French Clyde repeated his request.
“Show me the money!” muttered the stranger, doubtfully, in the same tongue.
Drawing four ten-dollar bills from his roll of currency, Clyde displayed them in the hollow of his hand. The stranger nodded, almost imperceptibly, and began carelessly to unbutton his long coat.
“When we are pushed back,” he murmured in French, “I will stumble as if I were knocked off my feet. You do the same. That will jostle the rest. In the confusion we can change.”
Clyde vaguely wondered at the fellow's quick agreement and ready resource. But he did not grudge paying forty dollars for coat and hat that were not worth ten. Thus garbed he could easily walk unnoticed past policemen who were scouring the square for a hatless, coatless man, and could reach Sylvia.
Again the mass of people rolled forward. Once more the man with the white goatee drove them back. The recoil was more violent than usual, whirling the human atoms this way and that into a veritable whirlpool of confused, tangled groups.
Several persons were shoved bodily off their feet. There were some laughs and profanity and renewed turmoil as these sought to scramble to a standing posture once more.
Two tall men, especially, were a long time regaining their balance and in rising again to the surface, of the human whirlpool.
But when they did emerge, the Frenchman's tousled head was bare. His ulster was gone, disclosing a decidedly ragged coat beneath. In his fist he clenched four ten-dollar bills. Clyde's own torn coat, on the other hand, was covered by a long, faded green ulster. His recently bare head was crowned with a black slouch hat.
It had been very simple, very unexciting, wholly unobserved; this quick exchange. Clyde turned, as if weary of waiting for the boat to take on passengers, and began to thread the crowd toward the open park.
But the Frenchman was ahead of him. Working his way with the unerring, wriggling swiftness of a snake, he went just in front of Clyde and at a far more rapid unopposed pace.
Gaining the street, the Frenchman set off at a run, toward the elevated stairway. He had not gone a hundred feet before Clyde, still elbowing through the crowd, saw two policemen bear down upon him, seize him and bring him to earth. They had been looking for a hatless, overcoatless man in disheveled clothes. And, in the luckless Frenchman, they had found one.
Clyde drew a long breath. He was safe. The Frenchman would come to no ultimate harm. Mahan at a glance would see he was the wrong man.
But, for the time, the pursuit of Maxwell himself was at an end. The way before him lay clear. He had reached the outskirts of the boat crowd. The Subway was not five minutes away. Sylvia—
“Get back there!”
An official with a rattan cane, (insignia of office in immigrant circles) bellowed the order, just as Maxwell passed the verge of the crowd. He bore down upon Clyde, a second portly man following by way of re-enforcement.
“He doesn't understand you,” suggested this second man.
“He'll understand this, then,” retorted the first, putting out a ham-like hand, placing its flattened palm against Maxwell's breast and thrust him backward into the throng. Clyde was dumfounded. The police were after him. He had sought refuge in this throng. Now that he was preparing to leave it two beefy giants were bent on driving him once more into the herd. Not to arrest him, but to keep him with a hundred or more excited people.
“What does this mean?” he demanded wrathfully. “Keep your hands off me, or—”
“Well, I'll be blessed!” exclaimed the man with the rattan cane. “What do you know about that? Here, Frenchy couldn't speak one word of English this morning and they had to get an interpreter to tell him he was to be deported as an anarchist. And now he hands out a line of English as good as you or me. The cuteness of these furreners!”
“I am not a foreigner!” cried Maxwell. “I am an American citizen.”
“You're slick enough to be one,” agreed the second man. “But the game won't work here. You were turned over to us with orders to put you in Ellis Island pen. And there's where you'll go.”
“It's a mistake,” declared Maxwell, “I'm not the man—”
“No?” queried the first official with elephantine irony. “You look a bit cleaner than you did when they turned you over to us here a half hour ago. I didn't take much notice of your face. But I'd swear to that coat anywhere. I let you stand free in the crowd, knowing you couldn't make a getaway, and not caring to be jostled by that bunch. But I've never taken eyes off that coat since I put you there. Now, cut out the smooth talk and chase back where you belong, unless you want us to put bracelets on you.”
“Hold on!” said the second man. “Boat's ready at last. One on each side now, so he won't give us the slip again!”
There was a forward surge of the crowd. The two big officials each linked an arm in Maxwell's and hurried him through the press aboard the boat.
“This is an outrage!” shouted Clyde, struggling vainly in the double grip. “You've got the wrong man, I tell you! You'll smart for this.”
“Wrong man, eh?” chuckled the official. “Too bad about that! The wrong man can generally prove pretty easy that he's the wrong man. And you'll get a chance to—over on the island—I don't think.”
CHAPTER VIII.
An “undesirable.”
THE boat cast off, for her short trip to Ellis Island. Once more Clyde Maxwell had the annoyance of seeing the New York shoreline recede before him just when he most eagerly yearned to approach it.
Herded amid a deckful of chattering, jolly foreigners and lynx-eyed agents, he stood miserable, hopeless. His first impulse was to declare his identity to the two men who had hustled him aboard, and to prove it by the letters in his pocket.
But these men were port officials. By this time they would undoubtedly have heard of his escape from the liner. In which case he must at once be rushed unceremoniously back to the ship or transported to one of the quarantine islands. No, he could do nothing—could say nothing.
Twenty-four hours ago he had been a blameless, honored member of society. Today, he was “wanted” on the liner for breaking quarantine; he was “wanted” in New York for the supposed theft of many thousand dollars' worth of diamonds.
He was, meanwhile, being carried to Ellis Island, for deportation as an undesirable immigrant.
Truly, one day had played sorry tricks with a respectable young New York lawyer.
There seemed absolutely no way of escape. Or, if there were, his jaded brain could not grasp it. He had struggled long and gamely. But destiny had proved too much for him. *Now, he was fain to drift, inert, with the resistless fate-stream.
The port laws of our government for the prevention of epidemics and the barring out of undesirable immigrants are stringent. They are excellent. But this particular stray fish that had been caught by mistake in the relentless net could have cursed their splendid efficiency.
A policeman on board was chatting with one of Clyde's captors a bare ten feet from where he stood. Maxwell, turning from his own wretched thoughts, caught a word or two of their talk.
“Yes,” the policeman was saying, “'twas a queer enough sight. There stood old Mahan, waving his club and keeping guard over the prettiest heap of real jewelry you'd care to see. And a dozen street-kids trying to pinch bits of it, under his very eyes.
“We hunted high and low for the fellow who dropped the loot. Pretty soon a couple of South Ferry cops came up with a man that looked like the right one. He was jabbering French and fighting like a wildcat.”
“Could Mahan identify him?”
“No. That's the funny part. Swore it wasn't the same. But they've locked Frenchy up, just the same, on suspicion. Just before I had to catch the boat, a Central Office man hustles up. He gets one look at the diamonds and recognizes them from cabled descriptions that was pulled off in London last month.
“It seems, the Scotland Yard people got an idea it was the work of a Yankee crook, and they heard he'd sailed for New York. They cabled a description of him to our people here, and—”
“And the crook landed safe with the jewels and then went to sleep in Battery Park. He sure deserved to be caught.”
“But it wasn't the crook. The man they were looking out for was a dapper, short cuss, about fifty years old. He's known as 'Atlantic' Donnelly because he plays both sides of the ocean, and has a gang of accomplices in New York, and London, too. But Mahan swears the fellow who had the jewels is tall and under thirty. Must be a confederate. But how he could be so stupid as to—”
The boat drew in to the Ellis Island wharf, and Clyde heard no more. Nor did he need to. Deane—or 'Atlantic' Donnelly—had made a pretty catspaw of him. As an all-round dupe, he felt he had no living equal.
But he felt, none the less, a grim consolation in knowing the jewels were forever lost to the thieves. He had smiled as he thought of Coan's feverish vigil at the foot of the “L” stairs while the innocent go-between was peacefully snoring on a Battery Park bench not a hundred yards away.
He could picture Coan's long wait—of perhaps an hour or more—his conclusion at last that the game must be up, and his departure before Maxwell had awakened.
How furious and how utterly puzzled both Deane and Coan would be when they read of the discovery of the stolen diamonds, strewn on the sidewalk.
His guardians put an end to Clyde's reflections by seizing his arms once more and walking him ashore and into the nearest of the top-heavy buildings, whose weight seems forever to be crushing the tiny island down under the water-line.
Dully, he noted the joyous, noisy greetings between new-landed immigrants and their friends. Dully, he saw his captors go through formulas, and accompanied them through the babel of many sounds, to the main building's second floor, past the “main pen”—jammed with vociferous or sadly silent immigrants—past the inspectors and doctors to the “detention pen” at the far rear.
There, into a sort of cubby-hole his guardians pushed him, and he was left alone to his reflections. Here, with other undesirables, he was locked for safe keeping, lest his presence contaminate the Land of the Free.
Clyde Maxwell awoke with a sense of being buried alive. From afar came the sound of swishing waves. But this was half-drowned by the nearer clamor that is never wholly stilled—the noise of herded, unhappy humanity.
Clyde lay on his hard, narrow cot, watching gray, early daylight filter into the stuffy alcove where he had slept the sleep of utter fatigue. Little by little he pieced together the events of the long, dreary day of detention, the futile plans he had formed, only to dismiss the dreary inactivity, the abject hopelessness. And now it was the morning again.
“The morning of March first,” he muttered aloud. “My wedding day.”
“Shut up there!” bawled a voice in the next apartment. “Can't you let a man sleep.”
Clyde lay still, looking miserably upward. His wedding day! The day whereon he must marry or else forfeit six hundred and twenty thousand dollars. And here, in the guise of a French anarchist, he was about to be deported from his native land. When or how or where he would be able to clear up the wretched mystery and regain his freedom, he could not guess.
He had made two useless attempts, the previous afternoon, to get the attention of keepers, and to tell his story. But they had refused to listen to him. Long experience with undesirables had taught them to take such tales at their face value. Which was usually—nothing.
At breakfast-time he set aside his coarse food untasted. The long day wore on. At dusk he was led downstairs and put aboard a tug, along with four others from the “detention pen.” He did not know where they were being taken. Nor did he go through the useless formality of asking.
In fact, it was not until the tug rounded the Staten Island shore that he took note of his surroundings. There, in the distance, straight in line with their course, he could see, off Quarantine Station, the liner he had left two nights before.
He wondered if they would pass near to her. Near enough, perhaps, for him to recognize familiar faces on deck. Of one thing he was certain. He would not be able to see Deane.
News of the jewel fiasco would have reached the thief before now, and his fertile brain would have devised a way of escape from the ship. He was not the sort of man to stay aboard and face the Central Office men at the dock.
Nearer and nearer to the liner they came. And, as they were approaching, it seemed to him the tug slowed down. A guard came across to where Clyde and the four other undesirables were huddled in one corner.
“You're going to be put aboard that ship!” he said gruffly. “And you'll go quiet, so as not to put the passengers wise. See? The first man that raises a rumpus will get the club end of this stick over his head.”
The next moment they were alongside. So many tugs came back and forth daily, that the advent caused no interest on the promenade deck. A ladder was run out, from the steerage gangway, and the five were ordered to climb it.
“What—what does it all mean?” murmured Clyde, in blank amaze, while these proceedings were under way.
“I know,” answered a squat, dwarfish-looking undesirable, who spoke with a strong Scotch accent. “The pen was overcrowded. They had to thin it out. So they took the first batch of us away. I heard one of the guards talkin'. The orders was to put us aboard the first outgoing ship that carries the likes of us. An' this is the one. She's stuck in quarantine till to-morrer.
“But she sails again as soon as she can dump her cargo an' passengers. We're brought here at dusk, so the passengers won't get riled at bein' aboard the same ship with us. I know. It's happened to me once before. But next time I'll land all right. An' when I do—”
“Silence, back there!” growled the guard.
Up the ladder, one after another, crawled the five—Maxwell last of all. They were rushed along dark passageways, and at last were all pushed into a small, dimly lighted cabin, with rows of bunks along one side of its wall, and a single smoky lantern hung from the low ceiling. One little port-hole, locked “half open,” served for ventilation.
“Tell the ship-doctor I want him,” whined the Scotchman, just as the guard was about to close the door behind them. “My head aches turrible an' I've got a sore throat.”
The guard made no reply, but slammed and locked the door.
“Are you very sick?” asked Clyde of the Scotchman. “If you are, I've a bit of cash with me and I'll be glad to buy you some sort of better fare than they're likely to give us.”
“Sick?” grinned the Scot. “Not me. I never was sick in my life. I just wanted to bother 'em a bit.”
“They probably won't give him the message,” said Clyde in disgust.
“Oh, won't they, just? You'll see. They run us out of their country. But they won't risk our gettin' any contagion into their ships. That doctor'll be told. An' he'll come, on the hop. But I guess he'll hop back faster'n he came. Say, what was it you told me about havin' a little cash? Hand it over.”
He moved threateningly toward Clyde. So, at the magic mention of money, did the three others.
Clyde sprang backward, to the little blank space beside the port-hole.
It was bad enough to be cabined with these four specimens of the genus Undesirable—these lowest of Old World blackguards—without being robbed by them as well.
He resolved to fight to the last breath. Fate had already robbed him of a fortune—perhaps of a wife as well. These guttersnipe into whose company fate had forced him, should not rob him of the few valuables he had left.
A Berserk rage stirred within him. He had been misfortune's lifeless puppet long enough. Here was a chance, at last, for violent action.
No one man, outside of a dime novel, could hold his own against four. But ere he should go down under the heap of battling foes, he would give a good account of himself.
Flinging off the green overcoat, he stood on guard, awaiting the onslaught.
“Rush him, boys!” sang the Scotchman.
Silently, fiercely, the four closed in upon their lone victim.
CHAPTER IX.
A friend in need.
IN the fraction of a second, as Clyde Maxwell stood tense, alert, on guard, facing the impending attack—even as the four undesirables moved to within arm's reach—the door of the cabin was unlocked and thrown open.
It was an odd anticlimax from the deadly crisis. At sound of the turning key, the quartet of assailants started back as if by magic, and fell at once into attitudes of unconcern.
None of them thirsted for irons or for solitary confinement. This stranger and his money could Be parted at leisure, later on.
A young man stepped briskly into the room and glanced about. Except for the guard in the passage outside, he was alone.
“Now, then!” he said, in pleasant, businesslike fashion. “Which of you five was asking for a doctor? Speak up. Which one was it? And what's the matter?”
“You ain't the ship's doctor,” challenged the Scotchman. “You ain't got no uniform.”
“The ship's doctor is busy just now. I belong to the Health Department force at Quarantine Station. I happened to be on board when word was brought that one of you—”
His voice trailed away. His eyes, moving rapidly from one to the other, had fallen upon Clyde Maxwell. The rays of the single light were full upon Clyde's haggard face.
The recognition was mutual. At the newcomer's first word, Clyde had known him for the young official who had brought him back to the ship two nights before, and whose intervention had saved him from trouble with the captain.
The Health Department doctor's face showed a momentary spasm of surprise. Then it settled into a mask of indifference. Walking up to Maxwell, as the Scotchman was about to speak, he said sharply:
“You're the sick one, my man! Step outside with me. You're in bad condition and likely to carry infection to the others. I must have you isolated.”
“No, doctor,” pleaded the Scotchman. “I'm the sick one. “This feller's all well. Leave him with us.”
He got no further. The young doctor had linked his arm in Clyde's and was propelling him from the room, past the astonished guard, and down the passageway.
Reaching a bench beside a port-hole, he sat down and stared in unfeigned amazement at the dilapidated figure before him.
“What on earth does this mean?” he demanded. “Two nights ago I brought you back here. Yesterday morning you were gone. To-night, I find you here looking like a hobo and locked up with a gang of criminals who are to be deported.”
In as few words as he could, Maxwell told his story, the doctor listening open-mouthed. At the close of the recital the official's only comment was:
“My friend, compared to you, Jonah was the original Lucky Jim.”
Clyde made no reply to this palpable, if unpalatable, truth. The doctor knit his brows in thought. For a space, neither spoke.
“You were mistaken in your story,” said he. “Let me set you right. What really happened to you is this. The night I brought you back to the ship, you couldn't sleep. You wandered about till you got down here and happened into the calaboose. The spring door shut behind you and you couldn't get it open. So you've had to stay there ever since. Till I happened to find you just now. In your mad efforts to get out, you tore your clothes and lost your collar.”
“But,” protested Clyde, bewildered, “I—”
“Never mind all that. It's the account I'm going to give the captain. If I told him your version of the story, he'd have you in irons. If I tell him mine, he'll be so glad that you didn't get away that he'll let you go back to your old stateroom and land with the rest to-morrow morning. If it isn't the truth, it's as much of it as the surly old brute is entitled to. By the way, he's worse than usual to-day. Another passenger somehow decamped last night. Strangely enough, it was your friend Deane. Come along, and let's get the ordeal over with.”
An hour later, in his own stateroom, Clyde Maxwell looked keenly at himself in the mirror. A bath, a complete change of clothes, and a shave had wrought miracles in his looks. The young doctor, who was dining aboard, sat on the berth edge.
“Feel better now,” he asked.
“Physically, I'm all right again,” answered Maxwell, “but I wasn't staring into the mirror for that. I was practising the very difficult art of looking myself in the face. I find it harder than I thought.”
“Are you so homely as all that?” laughed the doctor.
“No. I'm worse. I'm a fool. Two days ago I learned I couldn't get to New York in time to be married to-day. What did I do? Instead of planning things out and trying to pull political wires, I jumped overboard. You brought me ignominiously back. I became a thief's catspaw and got away again. Safe to New York that time. Only to be chased as a burglar, and to land at last in the coop at Ellis Island.
“Then I was condemned to be deported as an undesirable, came near being murdered, and—at last, find myself just where I was two days ago. All that danger and adventure gone for nothing. Do you wonder I find it hard to look at such an idiot's image in the glass?”
“It's the worst hard-luck story of the year,” sympathized the doctor. “But, after all, you might be worse off. For instance, you might be in the Tombs, charged with jewel robbery. You might still be at Ellis Island.
“Or you might be below, fighting for life against those four foreign crooks. You're like one of those bobbing mandarin toys. Fate has knocked you over, often enough. But, each time, you've managed to bob up serenely.”
“I haven't bobbed up at all from the biggest blow of all. You forget, I won't get to town till to-morrow morning. A whole day late for the wedding. To-day was the last day of grace. I expected by this time to be the husband of the loveliest girl on earth, and to be part owner with her of a fortune of six hundred and twenty thousand dollars. As it is, I lose the fortune. I make her lose it. And I'm still too poor to marry. There's no prospect now of my being able to afford committing matrimony for another two years.”
“Cheer up, old chap! You'll soon make a name for yourself. There's lots of money in the law.”
“There ought to be,” growled Maxwell. “I, for one, have taken little enough out of it. Shall we go to dinner now? Unless dining with the original hoodoo will bring you bad digestion.”
In spite of his effort at cheerfulness, Maxwell carried a heavy heart to bed with him that night. And dawn of the next morning found him awake and miserable.
The wedding day had come and gone. Through his detention on shipboard he had lost a fortune. He had lost the immediate hope of marriage. He had made Sylvia lose wealth that would have brought her all the little luxuries that women love.
If ever they could marry, she must struggle along as a poor lawyer's wife.
The thought was wormwood to him. He half feared to face her at the dock. Perhaps, chagrined at his failure, she would not even come to meet him.
As the liner moved slowly through the upper bay, Maxwell could scarce bring himself to talk coherently with the doctor, who had decided to run up to town with him.
Together they stood at the rail, watching the city's line of piers and busy life beyond. Clyde could scarce repress a reminiscent shiver as they passed the Battery.
Into her dock the steamship was hauled by her frantic little tugs. A mass of faces from the pier below gazed up at the returning wanderers. Waving handkerchiefs fluttered everywhere. Long-range hails were exchanged between rail and stringpiece.
Suddenly the doctor noticed Clyde start. Following the latter's gaze, he noticed a tall, slender girl, in the foremost rank of the waiting crowd. Her decidedly pretty face lifted toward Maxwell's was alight with joy and with eager welcome.
“Miss Tennant, I suppose?” hazarded the doctor.
“Yes,” nodded Clyde. “And the sight of her brings a lump into my throat the size of a goose-egg. Just look! She is as glad to see me as if my delay and my rank stupidity hadn't robbed her of a fortune. There's something divine about women. Something before which we men must stand awed, with bare head.”
“That's right,” acquiesced the doctor. “Now, if it was she whose hard luck had made you lose six hundred and twenty thousand dollars, I suppose you'd be glowering at her like a cross between Richard III and Macbeth.”
“I'm afraid so,” confessed Maxwell, “but the sight of her face with no reproach or sadness in it, hits me harder than if she had begun shouting maledictions at me when we were a mile offshore.
“It isn't only the money. It's the fact that we must wait ages and ages now before I can afford to marry. The junior partner of a struggling young law firm is not a Croesus. Come on and help me get the first agony over. The gangway is ready at last, I see.”
Down the railed inclined plane they moved, side by side. In front hurried passengers with loads of hand luggage, hastening to be swallowed up in the eager, welcoming throng below. Behind them pushed and pressed onward many others.
Maxwell's eye had never once left Sylvia's glowing face. She had not been able to force her way close to the gangplank, but stood some yards back, waiting with laughing impatience for Clyde to come and greet her.
The pier was reached at last. The doctor by his side, Maxwell prepared to thrust a path to the girl he loved. Amid the clamor of welcome rose the shrill squeals of newsboys hawking early extras of afternoon papers.
One youthful vender, finding most of the people too busy greeting each other to be interested in the news of the day, held one of his papers on high, in hope that sight of the glaring headlines might tempt passengers to buy.
As Clyde began to shoulder his short journey through the press, toward Sylvia, he found the front page of the paper stuck almost into his face.
He raised an impatient hand to push aside the sheet. Then, his hand in mid air, his eyes fairly bulging, he stared agape at the black-lettered front page.
“What's up?” asked the doctor, wondering at the sudden halt, and the look of crass amazement on Clyde's face, “have you seen a ghost?”
Instead of replying, Maxwell snatched the paper from the boy and stood with his eyes glued to the top of the page.
“Hey, you! Gimme me money!” shrilled the newsboy.
Clyde did not hear. The doctor tossed the vociferous boy a nickel. The youngster at once ducked in the crowd and disappeared.
Maxwell still stood, forgetful of Sylvia, forgetful of the turmoil about him, glaring wildly at the news sheet. He was muttering something under his breath; apparently the same sentence over and over again.
“What is it?” demanded his friend more imperatively. “Wake up, man! You're blocking the whole crowd. And there's your fiancée trying to get to you. Have you gone crazy, that you'd rather read a 'yellow newspaper' than speak to the girl you're engaged to?”
Clyde Maxwell stirred, as from a trance.
“It's—It's a mistake, of course!” he muttered weakly. “The newspaper's made a mistake. But please look at that date, doctor.”
With shaky forefinger he pointed at the date line running across the top of the printed page.
The doctor, thoroughly mystified, followed the trembling track of Maxwell's forefinger and read aloud:
“Tuesday, March 1, 1904.”
Then he glanced at Clyde.
“Well?” he queried, “what is there so odd about that?”
“It's—it's a mistake,” reiterated Maxwell, “but—”
“The date? There's no mistake. This is Tuesday, March 1. What of it?”
“No!” shouted Clyde. “Yesterday was Monday, March 1. We were stuck at Quarantine on February 27. We were stuck there till this morning. That's three days. February 28, March 1, March 2. To-day is March 2. March 1 was to have been my wedding day. Sylvia's birthday. The last day of grace named in the will. The day we were to marry or to forfeit the—”
“You told me, on the evening I met you—the evening of the 27th,” interrupted the doctor, “that you must marry two days later or else forfeit—”
“That's what I said. And two days later was March 1. And—”
“Two days later,” cried the doctor, with sudden understanding, “was February 29. Nineteen hundred and four is a leap year and February has twenty-nine days. Do you mean to say you didn't stop to think of that? Why, if you'd told me you were due to marry on March 1, instead of saying in two days, I could have set you right in a minute. This is March 1. You're in plenty of time to—”
But Clyde had left him. With a shout of utter, boyish delight, he clove the indignant intervening crowd and seized Sylvia by both hands.
“I'm back on time, sweetheart! I'm back on time!” he cried in wild exhilaration. “I'm—”
“Why, of course you are!” laughed Sylvia. “We have planned for a noon-wedding. Mother scolded me for coming down to meet the ship instead of staying at home and dressing. But I wanted—”
“And you weren't worried for fear I'd be too late?” he gasped, marveling at her coolness.
“Why, no,” she returned. “Not after I got that carbolic-smelling note from you, saying you'd be here this morning. But what did you mean in the note by saying this would be 'a day too late'?”
“Fate stole a day from me,” he answered, dizzily happy. “Or else I lost it overboard. By the way, dear, I want you to meet the best friend I've got. And”—laying a hand on the doctor's shoulder—“I want him to be my best man at the wedding.
“Miss Tennant,” he went on in mock formality, “may I present Dr.—Dr.— Say, old chap, you've saved my life once and saved me from irons' twice, and—I don't even know your name!”
(The end.)
This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published in 1910, before the cutoff of January 1, 1929.
The longest-living author of this work died in 1942, so this work is in the public domain in countries and areas where the copyright term is the author's life plus 81 years or less. This work may be in the public domain in countries and areas with longer native copyright terms that apply the rule of the shorter term to foreign works.
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