A Master of Fortune Part 31

But Kettle felt that the men in the boat, who helped to adjust his stiff rubber dress, were regarding him with more than ordinary curiosity, and, for his own pride's sake, he preserved an unruffled face. He even tried a rude jest in their own tongue before they made fast the helmet on his head, and the cackle of their laughter was the last sound he heard before the metal dome closed the audible world away from him.

They hung the weights over his chest and back, and Tazzuchi signed to him to descend. Kettle hitched round the sheath-knife to the front of his belt, and signed with politeness, "After you."

Tazzuchi did not argue the matter. He lifted his clumsy lead-soled feet over the side of the boat, got on the ladder, and climbed down out of sight. Kettle followed. The chill of the water crept up and closed over his head; the steady throb-throb of the air-pump beat against his skull; and a little shiver took him in one small spot between the shoulder blades, because he knew that it was there that an Italian, if he can manage it, always plants a knife in his enemy.

He reached the end of the ladder and slid down a rope. He felt curiously corky and insecure, but still when he reached the bottom he sank up to his knees in impalpable mud. He could foggily see Tazzuchi a few paces away waiting for him, and he went up to him at once. If the men in the boat, acting on orders, cut his air-tube, he wanted to be in a position to cut Captain Tazzuchi's also with promptness.

However, everything went peacefully just then. The Italian set off down a track in the slime, and Kettle waded laboriously after him. It was terrible work making a pa.s.sage through that white glutinous ooze, but they came to the wreck directly, and, working round her rusty flank, stood beside a great shallow pit, where two weird-looking gray sea-monsters showed in dim outline through the dense fog of the water.

Sound does not carry down there in that quiet world, and the two new-comers stood for long enough before the two workers observed them.

But one chanced to look up and see them watching and jogged the other with his spade, and then both frantically beckoned the visitors to come down into the pit. Tazzuchi led, and Kettle followed, wallowing down the slopes of slime, and there at the bottom, in the dim, milky light, one of the professional divers slipped a shovel into his hand and thrust it downward, till it jarred against something solid underfoot.

It was clear they had come upon the gold boxes, and they wished to impress upon the visitors, in underwater dumb show, that the find had only been made that very minute. It was a strange enough performance.

Half-seen hands snapped red fingers in triumph. Ponderously booted feet did a dance of ecstasy in three feet of gluey mud. And meanwhile, Kettle, with a hand on the haft of his knife, edged away from this uncanny demonstration, lest some one should slit his air-tube before he could prevent it.

He had seen what he wanted; he had no reason to wait longer; and besides, being a novice at diving, his lungs were half burst already in the effort to get breath, and his head was singing like a tea-urn. The gold boxes were there, and if they were not brought to the surface, and carried honestly to Suez, the matter would have to be fought out above in G.o.d's open air, and not in that horrible choking quagmire of slime and cruel water. And so, still guarding himself cannily, he got back again to the boat, and almost had it in him to shake hands with the men who eased him of that intolerable helmet.

Now far be it from me to raise even a suspicion that Captain Owen Kettle resented the fact that he had been robbed of a scuffle when the little salvage steamer actually did bring up in Suez harbor with the specie honestly locked in one of her staterooms. But that he was violently angry he admits himself without qualification. He says he kicked himself for being such a bad judge of men.

The _Parakeet_ was in when they arrived, rebunkering for the run home, and Murray came off as fast as a crew could drive his boat to inquire the news.

He saw Tazzuchi on the deck and accosted him with a vigorous handshake, and a "Hullo, Fizz-hookey, old man, how goes it? Who'd have thought of seeing you here? Howdy, Captain Kettle. Had good fishing?"

"Do you know Captain Tazzuchi?"

"Somewhat. Why, we were both boys on the _Conway_ together."

"You're making some mistake. Captain Tazzuchi is an Italian."

"Oh, am I?" said Tazzuchi. "Not much of the Dago about me except the name."

"Well, you never told me that before."

"You never asked me, that I know of. I speak about enough of the lingo to carry on duty with, and I serve on an Italian ship because I couldn't get a skipper's billet on anything else. But I'm as English as either of you, and as English as Birds--or more English than Birds, seeing that they come from somewhere near Jerusalem. Great Scot, Captain Kettle, can't you tell a Dago yet for sure? Where have you been all your days?"

Murray laughed. "Well, come across and discuss it in the _Parakeet_.

I've got a case of champagne on board to wet my new ticket."

"Stay half a minute," said Tazzuchi, "we'll just get those boxes of gold down into your boat, Murray, and ferry them across. I sha'n't be sorry to have them out of my responsibility. They're too big a temptation to leave handy for the crew there is on board here."

"Phew!" said Kettle, "it's hot here in Suez. Great James! to think of the way I've been sweating about this blame' ship without a sc.r.a.p of need of it. Here, hurry up with the lucre-boxes. I want to get across to the old _Parakeet_ and wash the taste of a lot of things out of my mouth."

CHAPTER XI

THE DEAR INSURED

"He isn't the 'dear deceased' yet by a very long chalk," said Captain Kettle.

"If he was," retorted Lupton with a dry smile, "my immediate interest in him would cease, and the Company would shrug its shoulders, and pay, and look pleasant. In the mean while he's, shall we say, 'the dear insured,'

and a premium paying a.s.set that the Company's told me off to keep an eye on."

"Do much business in your particular line?" "Why yes, recently a good deal. It's got to be quite a fashionable industry of late to pick up some foolish young gentleman with expectations, insure his life for a big pile, knock him quietly on the head, and then come back home in a neat black suit to pocket the proceeds."

"Does this Mr.--" Kettle referred to the pa.s.senger list--"Hamilton's the rogue's name, isn't it?"

"No, he's the flat. Cranze is the--er--his friend who stands to draw the stamps."

"Does Mr. Hamilton know you?"

"Never seen me in his life."

"Does this thief Cranze?"

"Same."

"Then, sir, I'll tell you what's your ticket," said Kettle, who had got an eye to business. "Take a pa.s.sage with me out to the Gulf and back, and keep an eye on the young gentleman yourself. You'll find it a bit cold in the Western Ocean at first, but once we get well in the Gulf Stream, and down toward New Orleans, I tell you you'll just enjoy life.

It'll be a nice trip for you, and I'm sure I'll do my best to make things comfortable for you."

"I'm sure you would, Captain, but it can't be done at the price."

Kettle looked thoughtfully at the pa.s.senger list. "I could promise you a room to yourself. We're not very full up this run. In fact, Mr. Hamilton and Mr. Cranze are the only two names I've got down so far, and I may as well tell you we're not likely to have others. You see Birds are a very good line, but they lay themselves out more for cargo than pa.s.sengers."

"So our local agent in Liverpool found out for us already, and that's mostly why I'm here. Don't you see, Captain, if the pair of them had started off to go tripping round the Mexican Gulf in one of the regular pa.s.senger boats, there would have been nothing suspicious about that.

But when they book berths by you, why then it begins to look fishy at once."

Kettle turned on his companion with a sudden viciousness. "By James!" he snapped, "you better take care of your-words, or there'll be a man in this smoke-room with a broken jaw. I allow no one to sling slights at either me or my ship. No, nor at the firm either that owns both of us.

You needn't look round at the young lady behind the bar. She can't hear what we're saying across in this corner, and if even she could she's quite welcome to know how I think about the matter. By James, do you think you can speak to me as if I was a common railway director? I can tell you that, as Captain of a pa.s.senger boat, I've a very different social position."

"My dear sir," said Lupton soothingly, "to insult you was the last thing in my mind. I quite know you've got a fine ship, and a new ship, and a ship to be congratulated on. I've seen her. In fact I was on board and all over her only this morning. But what I meant to point out was (although I seem to have put it clumsily) that Messrs. Bird have chosen to schedule you for the lesser frequented Gulf ports, finding, as you hint, that cargo pays them better than pa.s.sengers."

"Well?"

"And naturally therefore anything that was done on the _Flamingo_ would not have the same fierce light of publicity on it that would get on--say--one of the Royal Mail boats. You see they bustle about between busy ports crammed with pa.s.sengers who are just at their wits' end for something to do. You know what a pack of pa.s.sengers are. Give them a topic like this: Young man with expectations suddenly knocked overboard, n.o.body knows by whom; 'nother young man on boat drawing a heavy insurance from him; and they aren't long in putting two and two together."

"You seem to think it requires a pretty poor brain to run a steam-packet," said Kettle contemptuously. "How long would I be before I had that joker in irons?"

"If he did it as openly as I have said, you'd arrest him at once. But you must remember Cranze will have been thinking out his game for perhaps a year beforehand, till he can see absolutely no flaw in it, till he thinks, in fact, there's not the vaguest chance of being dropped on. If anything happens to Hamilton, his dear friend Cranze will be the last man to be suspected of it. And mark you, he's a clever chap. It isn't your clumsy, ignorant knave who turns insurance robber--and incidentally murderer."

"Still, I don't see how he'd be better off on my ship than he would be on the bigger pa.s.senger packets."

"Just because you won't have a crowd of pa.s.sengers. Captain, a ship's like a woman; any breath of scandal damages her reputation,-whether it's true and deserved or not. And a ship-captain's like a woman's husband; he'll put up with a lot to keep any trace of scandal away from her."

"That's the holy truth."