Peter the Brazen Part 3

"Chinamen!"

Blanchard tilted the rusted spectacles to his forehead, and the motionless gray orbs seemed to glint with a half-dead light.

"Chinamen? What Chinamen?" The spectacles slid back into place.

"One, a woman, came aboard as we were pulling out this afternoon. Who is she? Where is she? Where's she from? Where's she going? Who's with her? That's what I want to clear up."

"Is that all?" squeaked Blanchard. His wrinkled, dried lips were struggling as if with indecision. A veiled, a thinly veiled conflict of emotions apparently was taking place behind that ancient gray mask.

"What--what for?" was the final outcome in a hesitant half-whisper.

"My private information," smiled Peter. "Just curious, that's all.

Didn't mean to pry open any dark secrets." He made as if to go.

"Sparks! Don't be in a hurry. I'm not so busy."

"Well?"

"What's botherin' you? Maybe I could straighten you out."

"Who are the occupants of stateroom forty-four?" Peter replied.

Again the expression shifted like water smitten by an evil wind.

"Forty-four!" The words were mild explosions.

A long cardboard sheet with blue and red lines was produced from a noiselessly opened drawer.

"The pa.s.senger list. We shall see." Blanchard's red, shiny forefinger clawed down the column of names, halting at the numeral forty-four.

The s.p.a.ce was blank. "You see?"

"Empty?"

"Empty." A restrained note of triumph was unquestionably evident in the purser's cracked voice.

"I'll bother you with just one more question. What is Len Yang?"

A look of doubt, of incredulity bordering upon feeble indignation, settled upon the serrated countenance. But Blanchard only shook his head as if he did not comprehend.

Peter slipped down from the bunk. "Guess I'll take a turn on deck, if the fog's lifted, and roll in. G'night, purser."

Blanchard started to say something, evidently thought better of it, and retrieved his pen. As he dipped the fine point into the red ink by mistake he flung another frown over his shoulder. The wireless man lingered on the threshold, swinging the door tentatively.

"G'night, Sparks."

CHAPTER V

The _Vandalia_ was wallowing majestically through long, dead black swells. Peter poked his way up forward to the solitary lookout in the peak and glanced overside. Broad, phosph.o.r.escent swords broke smoothly with a rending, rushing gurgle over the steep cut-water. His eyes darted here and there over the void as his mind struggled to straighten out this latest kink.

What facts of significance he might have discovered from Blanchard were overshadowed by the purser's suspicious att.i.tude. Blanchard knew, and Blanchard, for some reason, did not choose to divulge. This made matters more interesting, if slightly more complicated.

He was now reasonably sure of several things, without really having definite grounds for being sure. The malignant-eyed Chinese woman and whoever she had successfully concealed behind her in the loft above Ah Sih King's were now aboard the _Vandalia_. He was quite positive that he had recognized her in the woman who had come aboard in company with the gray-cloaked figure at the last minute before sailing-time.

He recalled the scene on the pierhead, and it occurred to him that the eyes behind the gray veil, before their owner was whisked up to the deck and from his sight, had fastened upon him for a long breath.

"Four bells, all well!" bawled the lookout as four clanging strokes rang out from abaft the wheel-house.

And Blanchard had proved that stateroom forty-four was unoccupied.

Peter decided to borrow a master key in the morning, from the chief engineer, perhaps, and investigate stateroom forty-four. And with the feeling that he was on the verge of discovering something which did not exist, he prepared to turn in.

He was not undressed when the lock grated, the door lurched open, and the pale visage of Dale teetered at his shoulder. An attempt at grinning ended in a hissing sob of in-taken breath. The limp frame flung itself in the bunk beside Peter, and Dale's white, perspiring face was buried in palsied hands.

"Feel the motion?" Peter pulled down one of the hands, gently uncovering the expressionless eye.

"I wish I was dead!"

"Want me to finish your trick?"

Dale's face disappeared in the pillow. A moment he was stark. His head partly revolved, profiling a yellow, pointed nose against the white of the linen.

"Static's much worse, Mr. Moore. Frisco's sent me the same message three times now. It's for Honolulu. He says he won't repeat it again." The pale lips trembled in misery. "And there seems to be a funny sort of static in the receivers. The dynamos in the engine-room may cause it."

"That's strange," Peter reflected as he slipped on his blue coat.

"There's never been any induction on board as far back as I can remember. Does it hum--or what?"

"No, it grates, like static. Sounds like static, and yet it doesn't.

Kind of a hoa.r.s.e rumble, like a broken-down spark-coil."

Two even rows of white teeth drew in the trembling lip and clung to it.

"That awful staticky sound---- And the _Rover's_ been calling us." He groaned miserably. "I couldn't answer either of them. I was lying on the carpet!"

"Get some sleep," advised Peter. "When you feel better come up and relieve me. If I were you I wouldn't smoke cigarettes when you think it's rough."

"I won't smoke another cigarette as long as I live!"

Peter slipped into his uniform, draped an oil-skin coat about his slender shoulders, and made his way up to the wireless house. The receivers were lying on the floor.

The _Vandalia_ was entering a zone of pale, thin mist, which created circular, misty auras about the deck-lights. The tarpaulined donkey-engine beneath the after-cargo booms rattled as the _Vandalia's_ stern sank into a hollow, and the beat of the engines was m.u.f.fled and deeper. A speck of white froth glinted on the black surface and vanished astern.

The wireless-house seemed warm and cozy in the glare of its green and white lights. An odor of cheap cigarette-smoke puffed out as he opened the door.

Peter slipped the hard-rubber disks over his ears and tapped the slider of the tuner. Static was bad to-night, trickling, exploding and hissing in the receivers.

The electric lights became dim under the strain of the heavy motor, as he slid up the starting handle. The white-hot spark exploded in a train of brisk dots and dashes. He snapped up the aerial switch and listened.

KPH--the San Francisco station--rang clear and loud through the spatter of the electric storm. Peter flashed back his O.K., tuned for the Kahuka Head station at Honolulu, and retransmitted the message.