CHAPTER XXV
THE END OF A DREAM
I don't think I was ever so glad in my life before to see any one. There he was in the flesh, dear old John, tall and grave and courteous, like any Spanish don, in a clean tussore suit and the inevitable cigar stuck in a comer of his mouth.
“John!” I exclaimed. “How on earth did you ever get here?”
He stared a time in astonishment. It was obvious that, for the moment, he did not recognize me. Well might he wonder who this begrimed tramp might be who greeted him so familiarly. But then he cried out and clapped me on the back.
“Desmond, by all that's holy! Man, you've given us an anxious time! What have you been up to to get yourself in that condition?”
“It's a long story now ended,” I answered soberly, “and it'll keep! At present I can't get over your turning up here!...”
“From enquiries I made about El Cojo and his gang after you left, I got seriously alarmed about you,” said this most faithful friend. “But when I heard that the Government coastal defence motor-boat, the fastest craft in these waters, was missing, I decided it was time I came to look for you. One of my fruit-ships, the Cristobal, happened to be in harbour, so I came along in her. She's lying outside now. Before we do any more talking, I suggest you come aboard with me and have a clean-up. And you look as though you could do with a drink as well!...
I explained the difficulty I was in regarding the disposal of Grundt.
“El Cojo, ah?” commented Bard, and whistled. “That's some capture you've got there, Desmond. We'll take him back with us to Rodriguez. He's hand in glove with the President, I believe, and I should like to give His Excellency a lesson.”
So we settled it. Bard arranged to send a boat ashore to fetch Clubfoot to the Cristobal. He promised to see to it that my enemy was safely bestowed.
So I turned my back on Cock Island and left it brooding sadly beneath the stars with the terraced rock and the image and the little bowl shaped clearing where von Hagel slept. I went on board the Cristobal and for a good half-hour, with a long “peg” within easy reach of my hand, lay and soaked the stiffness out of my bones in a boiling hot bath. John had volunteered, in the meantime, to send a boat over to the Naomi to fetch my luggage; for I had told him how things stood between me and Garth and he assumed that I would remain on the Cristobal. I had hesitated an instant before replying; for I desperately wanted to see Marjorie again. But, I reflected, a millionaire's daughter was not for me—it was better we should part thus. So I scribbled a note for the coloured steward to take to her: just a line to say good-bye and to thank her for the action that had saved my life.
They brought me some food in my cabin, and while, attired in a voluminous dressing-gown of my friend's, I ate, John Bard told me what he had learnt regarding the connection of El Cojo's gang with Cock Island.
“During the war,” he said, “the island was the dépôt for certain important gun-running operations carried out by Black Pablo and his friends for the Mexican insurgents. The idea of the scheme, which was directed by the German espionage heads in the United States, was to keep things humming on the American border and to detain United States troops there.
“In those days Black Pablo had a ship of his own. He used to call periodically and collect arms and ammunition deposited on the island by some German commerce raider or other—there is talk of a mysterious vessel under the Swedish flag that used to stand off here—and take this contraband to Rodriguez. Here in port, under cover of night, it was transferred to a Mexican steamer which ultimately ran it ashore somewhere on the Mexican coast.
“On the outward trip to Cock Island, Black Pablo used to carry large stocks of gasoline for German craft operating in these waters...”
“There's a group of sheds on the other side of the island which Clubfoot's men called 'The Petrol Store,'” I put in.
“Precisely,” said Bard. “There was a regular traffic here. The island is, after all, conveniently enough situated for the work they had in hand: not too far from the Central American coast, yet well off the trade routes. It was naturally, you might say, selected as the rendezvous in connection with what was intended to be Germany's biggest coup against the Americans in the war ... the destruction of the Panama Canal!”
“By George!” I commented.
“If it hadn't been for the Armistice,” Bard continued, “I believe they would have pulled it off. They spent months on the preparations: everything was worked out to the last detail. The most vulnerable points were to be dynamited: the Gatun Lock and the Culebra Cut, I know, were mentioned. The big bang was planned for November, '18...”
“I see! And the Armistice spoilt it?”
“Exactly. The H. E. had been passed by Black Pablo and Co. to the parties appointed to carry out the explosion, and it was agreed that, as soon as the coup had come off, Black Pablo should make for the island rendezvous to receive his pay from a trusted German emissary who would await him there. The sum was one hundred thousand pounds in American gold dollars and German gold marks. But the Armistice, as you say, knocked the whole thing on the head. The entire German fabric collapsed, its plots and intrigues with it, including the canal coup. The Allies took a very firm hand with the Rodriguez Government and forced them to expel Black Pablo and confiscate his ship. Pablo went to San Salvador and did his best to charter a vessel there. But there was a heavy slump in German stock and everybody had the wind up. So nothing was done...”
“And Grundt—El Cojo?”
“I did not succeed in finding out a great deal about his movements; for the people from whom I enquired either did not or would not know anything about him. But apparently he turned up from Havana some months ago. The rest of the story—how they got on to Dutchy and his tale of the message taken by the Englishman from the grave—you know...”
There was a tap at the cabin-door. The dark-skinned steward of the Cristobal was there with my kit from the Naomi. “El Cojo,” he told us, had just come on board. Bard threw a questioning glance at me.
“I leave him to you, John,” I said. “I don't want to see him again...”
My friend grinned understanding and left the cabin. In silence the steward laid out some clean clothes for me. He said nothing about my note to Marjorie. Had she had it? Surely she would have answered...
“You left my letter for the Señorita?” I asked at last.
“Si, si, Señor Comandante," the man replied. “The Señorita was on deck with the rich Inglés, her father, and I gave the Señor Comandante's note into her own hands!”
“And she read it?”
“Si, Señor!”
“And there was ... no reply?”
“No, Señor!”
Well, that settled it. I had my congé. Cock Island and those wonderful days with Marjorie must go into the storehouse of past memories.... Yet there was a tug at my heart as for a moment I thought of her as I had held her in my arms in the burial chamber and she had raised her face to mine. “Money doesn't count down here!” she had whispered; but now we were back in the workaday world where money could prove an insuperable barrier between true lovers....
In moody silence I dressed and went above. A crescent moon hung low down on the horizon and the deck was eerie with fantastic shadows. No one was about. On our starboard bow the rugged mass of Cock Island was a black blur against the stars.
It is one of the failings of the Celtic temperament that its moments of the highest elation are apt to be followed by phases of the deepest depression. Reaction had come upon me after our days of high adventure and floored me utterly. All the spice, so it seemed to me in that dark hour beneath the moon on the Cristobal's deserted deck, had gone out of the romance of my profession and left me with an ill taste in my mouth. As I paced up and down I revisualized the scenes through which I had passed in my quest: Adams gasping for breath in his hovel, Garth and I scrambling through the steaming jungle, that storm-tossed figure by the grave, Marjorie pillowing her gold-brown head on my breast in the darkness of the cave...
From every one of the pictures which passed across my mind her face seemed to look out, the narrow pencilled eyebrows above the clear grey eyes, the great tenderness of her mouth... Within a few hours, I pondered sadly, I had found my love and lost her as I had found and lost the treasure...
A voice was hailing us out of the gloom that hung over the opalescent sea.
“Cristobal, ahoy!”
The sound of oars came to me, and presently a ship's boat emerged from the night, a white figure in the stern. A few minutes later Marjorie Garth, wrapped in a white blanket coat, stepped out of the boat that rocked in the swell at the foot of the Cristobal's companion and mounted to the deck.
“You would have left me like this?” she said, and stood close by my side.
I shrugged my shoulders.
“It was not a friendly thing to do ... partner,” she added in a breathless sort of way.
“Your father...” I began.
“Oh!” she cried in a low voice, “I was ashamed for him. After what you risked to save me. But you must make allowances. I am all he has, you know. He'll be all right in a day or two. We're going back to Panama and home by way of America. And I've come to fetch you back to the Naomi!...”
I shook my head.
“No!” I said.
“If I ask you to come? And I'll make Daddy apologize, if you like...”
She laid her hand on my arm.
“No!” I said again.
Hurt, she withdrew her hand.
“Your stupid pride...” she began.
“Don't let us quarrel,” I pleaded. “Let me keep a wonderful dream unspoiled, Marjorie. But dreams can't last forever, my dear. One has to wake up sometime, you know!”
Questioningly her eyes sought mine.
“Even if Sir Alexander had not told me I was not wanted on the Naomi I continued, “I think I should yet have parted from you here. My dear, my dear, don't you see it's hopeless? I care far too much for you to be able to know you merely as a friend. I must make an end of it. The barrier between us is insurmountable...”
“Barrier?” she repeated. “What barrier?”
“Money! You're too rich, Marjorie, for me to ask you the question which, almost from the moment I first saw you in the smoke-room of the Naomi, I have wanted to put to you. I make enough out of this trade of mine to keep a wife. But as long as I'm in the Secret Service I'd ask no woman to marry me. It wouldn't be playing the game by her—nor by the Service, either!...”
She listened to me in silence. Then she said quite simply:
“Desmond, if you'll ask me, I'll be your wife. I've never met a man I'd marry before; but I'd marry you. Why should you let money stand between us? I shall have enough for both...”
I loved her for her words. But I shook my head again.
“It won't do, my dear,” said I. “And you know it won't do. If I'd found that cursed treasure, things might have been different. But now I've only to tell you I shall never forget that you paid me the greatest compliment a woman can pay a man... and to say good-bye...”
With a sob she turned from me and, ignoring my arm, ran down the ladder and stepped into the boat.
•••••••
Before morning came, Clubfoot had escaped. Loud shouts from Cock Island where, by Garth's permission, some of the crew of the Naomi had spent the night ashore, discovered the news to us. The Naomi's launch, which they had drawn up on the beach, was missing, and at the companion of the Cristobal a severed length of rope showed that the painter of one of the ship's boats which had been tied up there had been cut.
Bard held an enquiry. But his crew came from Rodriguez, “and,” he told me, “they have a holy fear of El Cojo. He simply blustered his way out of the lamp-room where I had him imprisoned! I'm not sure,” he added with a grin, “that old Clubfoot has not himself presented us with the simplest solution of a very difficult problem!”