V
I DID not sleep late, but I lay in the bunk long after I had dressed. I had nothing to do but think, and I let thoughts come and go as it pleased them.
The bustling around, the shouting and clamor, the creak of the donkey-engine and the gentle sway of the moving ship pleased me: we were under weigh.
A Chinaman, a Cantonese, came down with coffee and rice about nine o'clock.
"What is your name?" I asked.
He shook his head slightly, but there was no expression on his face: a rather old empty face, and a Chinaman's face can be blank and empty as the inside of a scooped cantaloup.
"You are the steward?"
He nodded slightly.
"I may want to use your room for some time. Here."
I offered him a bit of money.
He took it as one takes his dues, and without comment, without expression.
"Can't you talk?"
He looked at me hard for some seconds and turned away and went out, saying nothing.
It is very easy to offend a Chinaman; but it is not easy to offend one to such an extent that he will show that he has been offended—until some time later when a hatchet or a knife acquaints one with the fact.
I had always kept out of trouble with the Chinamen, which was the more unusual be cause I knew many of them and was close friends with seven or eight. They are—without exception—the cleverest gamblers in the world, and though this is largely due to the fact that they are the most crooked, they have the qualities of poise and bluff but, excepting the Cantonese, are not particularly distinguished for what in the Occident is regarded as courage.
They prefer to meet a man from behind rather than to his face: a Saxon doesn't feel that he has paid an enemy unless that enemy knows who has struck him to death; but a Chinaman's soul, and the soul of almost any Oriental, is satisfied with poison or a blow from the dark.
About noon Swanson came down.
I don't know what he was intending to say, but I imagine something indicative of surprize. He got his surprize from another angle.
In about twenty words I gave him a calling down that he could not soon forget, pointing out that he was a fine fellow to put any faith in—to go to bed drunk when important work was to be done. Why had he not been on deck to meet Thompson and me when we came? Why had he waited until half the day was gone before coming near me? A fine fellow to have to trust!
Where was Thompson?
If he, Swanson, had not been drunk and asleep when we came he might have learned.
Yes, I was the man that had loafed around in the Ship's bar. I was also the man who was a friend of the bartender's. I was the man who had "something on" Thompson; and I had impressed upon Thompson the need of taking me into the game. Swanson was invited to notice that Sam Tyler was on board; and he was invited to consider the matter of going on with the game under the new deal or trying to get out and save his own hide, jn which case he would probably share the fate of the captain of whom we mutineers would soon dispose.
The lookout had not told him Thompson came with me?
Of course, the lookout hadn't. The lookout knew nothing: he had said the mate was asleep, and I had known that meant in a drunken sleep, so the launch had gone back without Thompson coming on deck. Thompson did not intend to come on deck anyway: he would have explained from the launch.
The mate was mystified: but when I showed the maps, he realized that I had got pretty close into the confidence of Thompson; and if I had not intended to go on with the plot, why had I not carried my story straight to the captain?
My procedure was a bit irregular, but effective. He was nervous, uneasy, but convinced. Besides, Swanson hated the captain.
What about Thompson?
I suggested that Thompson had seen fit to sell out his interest in the plan to me; that certain persuasions had been made which appealed to Thompson as irresistible; that whenever I saw a good thing, I naturally wanted to share.
"Is it or is it not a go?" I demanded.
He seemed to think I had the cards pretty well stacked; besides he wanted to even a grudge against the captain, and he believed in the map. A sailor always believes in a treasure-trove map. This one may have been genuine for all that I know.
It was never used. So, all things considered, and perhaps convinced that I would be as firm a leader as Thompson, he declared that it was "a go," and offered his hand.
I ignored the hand and told him that he had better walk a straight line. That made him angry, of course. But I had a better card up my sleeve than he suspected to keep him from trying to do away with me and getting the maps.
"Look here," I said. "I know what is going on inside your head. Here are the maps—three of them. I have copies. I have concealed them. When you find them—the copies—it will be time to slug me over the head and drop me over the side. But not before. Remember, the copies—very accurately made—are all that is left."
With that I struck a match and burned the maps under his nose, while his mouth hung agape.
"There are a half-dozen desperate fellows," I explained lest his slow brain did not fully appreciate the peril in which I had placed him, "enlisted by Thompson on this boat. They expect to go after gold. The ship can't be worked without them. You arc their ringleader. If they find out you can't produce the maps, your life won't be worth a salted herring—and you can't produce the maps if anything should happen to me. That's all."
I deliberately turned my back that he might see how little I cared for the boiling anger that reddened his face and heaved his chest. I don't think he noticed that I could watch him very well out of the corners of my eyes in the small mirror that hung on the bulkhead.
As I have said, I am very cautious. When I seem to be taking a chance I am usually playing safe—dealing from the bottom of the deck.
He contained his anger and went out. I supposed he wished my soul on the toasting fork of his satanic majesty's chief cook, but Mr. Swanson had given himself a little lesson in self-control. Perhaps he did not play poker, except in the crude draw-and-bet manner of the win-or-be-broken gambler, and so understood nothing of the refinements of bluff.
THE Chinese steward brought me something for dinner. Withered and wise and rather old he was. And I imperturbably tried further conversation with him, and received no answer. He watched me with a steady scrutiny not at all reassuring—but one can't tell what is reassuring, or ominous, in a Chinaman.
By night my hole had become unbearably wearisome.
The Chinaman visited me again. But I paid no attention to him. But he seemed to me to hesitate, to linger. However, he did nothing, said nothing, and went away.
I waited until it was dark, then went on deck to stretch my legs. I was of the opinion that I had been a little impetuous in coming on board the Jessie Darling. The situation was by no means clear, the future not reassuring. It would be wrong to suggest that I was afraid.
When I get into a fix from which my wit and guns can not extricate me, then it is time to die—and as long as I am not shot from behind, my ghost will hold no grudge against the man that sends me across the Border. I was not afraid, but the need for having left San Francisco did not seem so pressing a score of leagues from the Golden Gate on a ship pledged to mutiny.
It was no easy matter to stretch my legs for the moon was bright and dodged in and out among the clouds in a way that annoyed me. I had not yet got what sailormen call my bearings. The moon made little difference in that though. I knew nothing of ships. I did not learn much about the Jessie Darling either. I was kept too busy.
As I stood identifying myself as much as possible with a mast shadow, I heard voices, excited voices, aft, then a pattering of feet. A figure scooted by me and shouted down a doorway:
"Turn out an' search the ship. Woman hid—or overboard."
I had been given to understand the ship was short-handed. It seemed overcrowded to me. Voices, harsh laughter and harder jokes, rose in every direction; figures scampered by, some with lanterns; calls rang to and fro. From the poop-deck I could hear the voice of Captain Whibley. Questions and answers and directions—and jokes—all around. And reports. A man came by and flashed a lantern in my face; it was the man who had been detailed by Swanson to let me—or rather Thompson—on board.
I made inquiries.
He said she must have jumped overboard. Sam Tyler had been at the wheel and said he saw her come up and go down amidships. Later he heard a splash—thought he did. Listened, but there was no outcry. Looked, but saw nothing. Supposed maybe it was only a porpoise or something. Must have been her. Ship was searched high and low. "No trace. Old Man was furious—the captain, that is.
Was having words with the owner. Cussin' him out. Old Man could cuss some, he could. Seems like she wasn't the owner's daughter, but And wasn't that kind of a woman after all. Seemed like she'd been half-drunk or something when she come on board. And sick. Saw what she was into—and jumped.
"Who is the owner?"
"Don't know, sir. Ain't the owner after all. Old Man—I heard him—says, 'You're a liar. This boat is owned by John Collins.' They cussed back and forth. Owner a big man with—" the seaman swiped his cheeks to indicate a beard, and added, "black."
I was hot with anger, but I couldn't help anything. I could do nothing. I let women strictly alone because—well, I like them when they are not interfering with me, when they are at a distance, on other men's arms. But I don't like to, know of their being mistreated. I am cruel and at times cold-blooded, but I don't want to see anybody cruel to women, children or dogs. I was never put to the test, but I believe that I could without troublesome regret shoot a man who beat a dog.
I know I would if it was a stray that had ever poked its nose into my hand. And dogs are third on the list—though perhaps children are first—of the things it is not wise to abuse if my gun is not empty. In fact, I might be tempted in that case to overcome a strong aversion to using my fists on somebody's face.
I reflected that it was perhaps well that I had been on deck when the search was made. Somebody might have found me in the steward's hole—though I later heard that the steward had made his own report, and reported nothing.
I judged that I had better get out of the way in case somebody might take enough interest in my presence to carry a tale to the captain; though, I understood later, most of the crew knew I had taken Thompson's place.
I went to the hole. It was dark. I struck a match and lighted the lantern. It was a cubbyhole of a place. The bunk occupied almost a half of it. The lantern was smoky and dim, and flickered. I stood for a moment listening at the door. There was nothing to attract attention.
I closed the door and sat down and for a moment, rather fascinated, watched the lantern. It was spluttering away as if embarrassed. I loosed my shoes and placed them carefully by the chair. I am methodical. I removed my collar and tie and reached forward to the little shelf under the lantern. I unbuttoned my vest—and stopped.
There was some kind of a noise—only it wasn't loud enough to be a noise. My muscles became tense and the cold, rigidly icy contraction that always grips my body at the first whisper of alarm, and makes me appear so nerveless and calm, took hold of me.
"YOU can't stay here! Please. I'm here!"
I jerked my head back over my shoulder. A woman's face peered up out of the shadows from under the covers of my bunk.
I turned around in my chair and looked at her. I could not see her face very clearly. I said nothing for a few moments What is there one can say in a situation of the kind? I could not gallantly offer to withdraw myself. I had no place else to go on the ship. I had as good reasons as she for wishing to keep out of sight. So I looked hard and long and my eyes cleared a little and became accustomed to darkness.
She was in that bunk with the covers so ingeniously arranged that it would have taken more than a casual glance to tell that anybody was in it. There was no outline of the body visible. The covers had been drawn and bolstered evenly. Only her face showed and she only just before had drawn the cover from over it. Obviously she -could not have made so ingenious arrangement of them herself—even if she had blundered accidentally into the room.
"Who put you there?" I asked.
"The steward."
"That Chinaman?"
"Yes."
There is no telling anything about a Chinaman.
A pause. I looked at her hard. My back was against the fight—what there was of it. At last I was convinced. So I said—
"Well, Miss Curwen, how did you come to be on the Jessie Darling?"
She flung off the covers and sat upright, agitated, partly frightened:
"Then you are that man! I thought so—but—but you are in jail!"
"Let us not get excited," I said soothingly—or tried to say it soothingly. "You're supposed to be overboard and I seem supposed to be in jail. How do you account for it?"
She told me.
I have found that it is usually wisest to show surprize when you don't feel it; to pretend ignorance when you haven't it—and the reverse, too. So I did not seem surprised or appear to have heard anything not already very well known to me.
Miss Helen Curwen was of the slim dark type that are full of passions and wilfulness.
All women like to do things they have no business to do; but not all of them lack discretion, or, as a woman might call it if she is one of the kind that does do those things, the courage. The average woman feels that the world is cheating her: being filled with infinitely more desires, dreams, or whatever her urgent restlessness may be called, than can ever be gratified, she lives under a continual sense of repression—until at such a time as with a kind of volcanic folly she breaks loose.
The breaking loose may take the form of tearing up a dress that she really likes, of throwing a scalding coffee pot at her husband's head, or of throwing herself at some man mother and friends have warned her against. Incidentally, a sure way to make a normal girl interested in, if not in love with, a man—if he has any personality, good looks or suavity at all—is to try to tell her that he is "dangerous," color his reputation with black, call him those names that are sufficient to make him an outcast from society.
Let those who willingly make a study of the sex explain, if they can, why this is so. All, or at least most, of my experiences with women have been against my will. My knowledge of them has usually come from some such inescapable contact as discovering one of them ensconced in my bed, from which—as in this case literally, and in others figuratively, so to speak—they poke their heads to order me out of my own room.
In this case I went promptly, having found out some things of a really surprizing nature.
I went to the galley and roused the steward.
He looked at me steadily, quietly, but said nothing. He made no reply to my demand to know why he had stowed the woman in my bunk; and I am sure that he did not smile, though there were so many wrinkles in his face that I could not be positive about this. He said nothing.
I told him what I wanted and, without suggesting a threatening manner, conveyed to him that an easy way out would be to do it. I do not believe it is ever wise to threaten a Chinaman. Kill him if the situation requires—but threaten, no. His duplicity is so subterranean that he doesn't seem to hear the threat at all, though he is likely to accept it as a challenge to mortal combat and win by poison subsequently delivered with the humblest of smiles.
If he is a Cantonese he is more likely to use a dagger, gently slipping it between your ribs while you look upward to some spot on the ceiling, or to some cloud effect, that his esthetic perception points out. I am not, certainly not, a coward, but I never felt comfortable with strange Chinamen or any women.
He said nothing, but when I had finished he bowed and led the way.
I followed.
He indicated a door, stepped back and hesitated.
I made a gesture of dismissal and added a whispered—
"Thank you."
Gently, as gently as if screwing the lid from an infernal machine, I tried the door. It was not locked.
Cautiously, slowly, soundlessly, I opened it; inch by inch, imperceptibly, I opened it. And when it was wide open I stood in the doorway and waited—waited for the man who sat in a kind of heavy resignation, his face down, his arm thrown back over the chair and a tall, half-emptied glass of whisky in his hand, to look up.
He did.
I LIKE to make dramatic entrances when the opportunity affords. I like it for two reasons: one is that perhaps I am by nature a little theatrical, though certainly not melodramatic—there can't be melodrama anyway, without love of woman; the other and more sensible reason is that such an entrance is almost like a terrific nerve-bomb for the other person.
"My !" he muttered, every muscle frozen in fright, his mouth open, his eyes staring in widened horror.
I said nothing.
The light was good, but an oil light, and with the shadows of the passageway behind me perhaps I did take on a rather spectral effect in his crazed brain. The ship, a wooden ship, with long steady rolls veered from side to side, groaning and creaking as if built of dead men's bones.
He swerved abruptly around in his chair, dropping unnoticingly the glass, which fell and splintered, and continued to stare at me.
He passed his hands over his eyes to wipe out the vision, but flesh and blood like mine doesn't vanish so easily.
"You!" he said at last in something between a hiss and prayer.
"Yes, Thrope, you've guessed it," I said, stepping inside and closing the door without taking my eyes from him.
Perhaps he wanted to fight, but he is not greatly to be blamed for not attempting it. I offered no menace, except such menace as he may have read in my face; but if he read anything there his eyes were better than my effort to show no expression, unless an inscrutable lack of feeling and purpose may in itself be called an expression. The tips of my fingers were in the side pockets of my coat; there was no threat in face or manner.
"You, you were—arrested?"
He half asked it, half declared it; that is, he was having difficulty in reconciling the conflicting evidence between his ears and his eyes, between what he seemed to have heard and what he seemed now to see.
"Arrested? What for?" I asked innocently.
"They told me they had you—or would have—or"
Then suddenly, anxious to charge me with a great crime—
"You killed a man!"
"Oh, did I? Thrope, you seem to have me mixed with some one else."
I was not playing; I was tormenting him. The realities of the world, the things one knows and has heard, on land, take on almost misty distance, a sort of nebulous mirage, if their existence is contradicted at night in mid-ocean, when the ship is devoid of human sounds; particularly when the ship groans and wails—and a woman has just flung herself overboard or, which is just as effective, is thought to have done so.
"You did!" he shouted at me, saying it loudly to convince himself. "You killed Smith. Delaney was crazy because—because—" His voice trailed off indecisively. Then, strengthened by a new idea, he added—"Because it happened at his place!"
I understood. Thrope did not want me to know that Delaney was indignant, furious, because a frame-up had been planted against me—and especially so because it had been pulled off in his place.
No Thrope would not want me to know that. He would not want to believe it himself. Delaney was a power, a political power. He led the underworld to the polls. It was Delaney who knew best how to stuff and steal in a doubtful election, and Thrope was anxious to be governor. He would not want Delaney to be angry, even though he could shake much of the profit out of Delaney's business and graft. Still who could handle votes like Delaney?
If I had known precisely, as I did then where Delaney stood and how angry he was at the frame-up, I might have lain low and remained in San Francisco, not putting much faith in Delaney, but, so to speak, less distrust. But that was all behind me. Thrope and I were together on the high seas.
I looked the cabin over admiringly. It was capacious and beautifully furnished. So the Jessie Darling was something of a pleasure yacht.
A bottle of whisky and a piece of paper were on the table at which Thrope sat.
"How did you get here?" he demanded. Then quickly— "Won't you have a drink?"
I read his thoughts—not his thought either, but his intonations and expressions—as plainly as if he had put them into precise words. Between asking how I got there, and the proffer of a glass of whisky, it had occurred to him that if deftly managed I could be arrested on the ship, stowed away and carried back to stand trial.
The main thing, of course, in his mind was to keep me from shooting before help could arrive. I think that he was almost beginning to believe that fortune had played into his hands.
As he turned to pour out whisky for me his eye fell on the piece of folded paper. With a movement intended to be unobstrusive he placed his hand over it and with a very awkward effort at doing nothing suspicious was carrying it to his pocket.
"Something I would be interested in?" I inquired innocently.
"What?" And again and blusteringly, as he rammed it into his pocket—"What!"
Thrope was given to blustering. He seemed to think noise was strength. The world would be full of Samsons were it true.
"Let me share your confidence, Thrope," I said, extending a hand of which the forefinger beckoned slightly.
"Of all the"
"Impudence. Yes. Let me see that paper!"
"It's personal. I—I—it's personal."
I replied that I didn't care if it were intimate, or what it might be; that I was a very curious individual.
"Have a drink. We might as well make it up," he offered evasively.
I said nothing. I looked at him steadily. In about three seconds he handed me the paper.
"You keep both hands on the table and turn your face the other way," I instructed.
He hesitated, but did as told. I did not want him jumping at me while I was reading. I wouldn't greatly have minded having him do so if I had not already been in certain complications that would have become more embarrassing through having to explain how I happened to shoot millionaire Thrope, candidate for governor—and likely to be elected.
I glanced at the letter, and I came as near to feeling shame as ever I can. But I began and read it. I read it carefully. It was astounding.
"The envelope—the envelope," I said.
"You know to whom it's addressed—you've read it before," he replied half leering at me.
IT W0ULD have been useless to deny the charge. I had not read it before. I had not even been able to identify it as that letter—but I had had suspicions. So I asked for the envelope. I really did not care whether he gave it to me, for he had given me its equivalent in his remark.
Perhaps I should have destroyed the letter. I find in looking back over my years, however, that I have seldom done the sensible thing at crucial moments: I have done the safe thing, or tried to. I had some influence over Thrope as long as I kept the letter.
He would have given a foot, leg and all, to get it again. Besides, I rather looked to Mrs. Curwen to feel more relieved if she destroyed it herself—rather than heard, even from me, that it was destroyed. I could, too, understand her hesitation in ever destroying it. A letter of the kind is not the sort that a woman would ever destroy—and then not without committing it to memory.
I put it into my pocket.
"Name your price," said Thrope.
"I prefer to auction it," I told him. "Congressman Bryan is not a rich man, but he has friends. Then, too, a woman may want to bid—and have nothing but tears. Did you ever try to bid against a woman's tears, Thrope? What in would you have to offer then?"
Of course, he didn't know of what I was talking. All that got into his head was the idea that I was going to auction the letter.
He became excited and offered—it is useless to repeat his insane sums. Anyway he never expected to pay them, so he could afford to talk in large numbers. He never expected me to get off the ship with the letter. All he feared was that I might destroy it.
"By the way, Thrope, who was the woman that went overboard—to get away from you?"
I am all the time discovering that, though most men are better than the world thinks, yet some of whom I have the lowest opinion are worse even than I could have imagined. I don't like to repeat his exact words, but I believe it necessary: nothing else that the man ever did or said so vividly illuminated the utter meanness and subtlety within him.
Had I not known the facts even I—who was rather a sophisticated and suspicious youngster—would scarcely have doubted the truth, though I might have had contempt for his callousness. He said with a kind of careless regret:
"Her? Oh, a Tommy I picked up on the Coast. She was full of hop and got away from me—jumped the cabin when I wasn't looking."
A silence.
I don't think that I showed that I doubted him. I merely waited. Nothing so much as silence, nothing so much as pause, jangles the nerves of even the hardened guilty.
Then quietly I remarked—
"Helen Curwen never impressed me as a girl like that."
An explosion went off inside of him. For a third of a second he looked as if he was literally blowing up. He jumped and quivered in every muscle.
This governor-to-be was rather implicated in something more than mere scandal—he did not care for mere scandal—if I should tell my story to the public. He could lie, yes. His friends could lie. A mere outcast girl could have been pretty well disposed off by lies; but there were men courageous enough to investigate the facts concerning a reputable daughter, or the daughter of a reputable woman; and there is one thing that constantly reassures my faith in democracies.
Their publics never forgive at the polls the debauchery of young girls, of girls out of homes. The public will smirk and smile and say "Oh well, no men are saints," if a politician is merely a rounder—but let him even be suspected of having invaded the sanctuary of the hearthstone—neither money, lies nor stolen votes can save him.
But, of course, Thrope had the drop on me, figuratively—or thought that he had. Even if I got off the Jessie Darling alive, I could be turned over to the police, isolated by them, prevented from being communicated with any but attorneys of Thrope's own choosing, tried before a judge he held to heel and by a jury of the court's own choosing, convicted of Smith's murder, sent to San Quentin or hanged without ever a chance to tell my story; or if I did tell it, to have it reach none but ears of the cabal's own choosing.
Things like that had been done in San Francisco; they have been done in every city at some time or other. Thrope knew all about the effectiveness of such procedure. What he did not fully appreciate was my aversion to putting myself into the hands of justice.
Much of my inveterate dislike of police and courts, and all the machinery of law, much of my often foolhardy efforts to play a lone game, do what I think is right even to lawlessness, may be traced as having had an origin in the experiences and knowledge of what murderous farces were perpetrated around me in my youth.
"Helen Curwen," he lied. "Who is she?"
The girl was supposed to be dead, and I suppose he had thought there were none to identify her, none who recognized her or knew her, until I admitted a certain familiarity with his newest closet-skeleton.
"A friend of mine," I said.
"How did you get on my ship?"
He was angry, but he was doing his best not to show it. Perhaps he was wondering again, as he may have wondered before, just how ready I am to shoot.
A fellow who had led my kind of life, and who has, on occasion, shot, has his reputation magnified and distorted; but such distortion has a wholesome effect on men like Thrope.
"Supposing," I suggested, ignoring his question, "we call in Captain Whibley."
Thrope swore and wanted to know if that—oh, I don't remember how many kinds of something or other—man had let me on this private ship, which, so Thrope said, belonged to him.
"Let the captain speak for himself. He didn't impress me as a man who would lie easily."