Port O' Gold Part 44

CHAPTER LVIII

McTURPIN TURNS INFORMER

Benito stared, bewildered, at the Chinaman. "McTurpin dying? Wants to see me?"

Po Lun nodded. "He send-um China boy you' house. He wait outside."

Benito rose. Alice laid detaining fingers on his arm. "Don't go ... it's just a ruse. You know McTurpin."

"The time is past when he can injure me," he answered gravely.

"Something tells me it is right--to go." He kissed her, disengaged her arms about him gently, and went out. Adrian signaled to the Chinese.

"Follow him...."

Po Lun nodded understandingly.

A shuffling figure, face concealed beneath a broad-brimmed hat, hands tucked each within the opposite sleeve, awaited Windham just outside the door. He set out immediately in an easterly direction, glancing over his shoulder now and again to make certain that Benito followed. Down the steep slope of Washington street he went past moss-grown retaining walls; over slippery brick pavements, through which the gra.s.s-blades sprouted, to plunge at length into the eddying alien ma.s.s of Chinatown's main artery, Dupont street. Here rushing human counter-currents ebbed and flowed ceaslessly. Burdens of all sizes and of infinite variety swept by on swaying shoulder yokes.

Benito's guide paused momentarily on the farther side of Dupont street.

Then, with a beckoning gesture, he dived into a narrow alley. Benito, following, found himself before the entrance of a cellarway. As he halted, iron trapdoors opened toward him, revealing a short flight of steps. The Chinese motioned him to descend, but the lawyer hesitated with a sudden sense of trepidation. Beneath the pavement in this cul-de-sac of Chinatown, he would be hidden from the world, from friends or rescue, as securely as though he were at the bottom of the bay.

But he squared his shoulders and went down. A door opened noiselessly and closed, leaving him in total darkness. A lantern glimmered and he followed it along a narrow pa.s.sage that had many unexpected turns. An odor, pungent, acrid, semi-aromatic troubled his nostrils. It increased until the lantern-bearing Chinese ushered him into a large square room, lined with bunks, three-deep, like the forecastle of a ship. In each lay two Chinese, face to face. They drew at intervals deep inhalations from a thick bamboo pipe, relaxing, thereupon into a sort of stupored dream.

The place reeked with the fumes that had a.s.sailed Benito in the pa.s.sage.

Intuitively he knew that it was opium.

A voice in English, faint and dreamy, reached him. "This way ... Mr.

Windham.... Please."

A white almost-skeleton hand stretched toward him from a lower bunk. A bearded face, cadaverously sunken, in which gleamed bright fevered eyes, was now discernible.

"McTurpin!" he spoke incredulously.

"What's left of me," the tone was hollow, grim. "Please sit down here, close to me.... I've something to tell you.... Something that will--"

He sank back weakly, but his eyes implored. Benito took a seat beside the bunk. For a moment he thought the man was dead. He lay so limp, so silent!

Then McTurpin whispered. "Bend closer. I will tell you how to serve your country.... There's a schooner called the 'J.M. Chapman.' Do you know where it lies?"

"No," Benito answered, "but that's easily discovered. If you've anything to say--go on."

McTurpin's bony fingers clutched Benito's sleeve. "Listen," he said.

"Bend nearer."

His voice droned on, at times imperceptible, again hoa.r.s.e with excitement. Benito sat moveless, absorbed.

Above the iron-trap doors Po Lun waited patiently.

In an unlighted alley back of the American Exchange Hotel two figures waited, as if by appointment on the night of March 14. One was Ashbury Harpending, a young Southerner, and one of the Committee of Thirty which, several years before, had hatched an unsuccessful plot to capture California for the hosts of slavery. The other was an English boy named Alfred Rubery, large, good-looking, adventurous, nephew of the great London publicist, John Bright. It was he who spoke first in a guarded undertone:

"Is everything ready--safe?"

"Far as I can tell," responded Harpending.

"How many men d'you get?" asked Rubery.

"Twenty ... that's enough. We'll pick up more at Manzanillo. There we'll dress the Chapman into fighting trim, set up our guns aboard and capture the first Pacific Mail liner with gold out of California."

"You're a clever fellow, Harpending. How'd you get those guns aboard without suspicion?"

"Through a Mexican friend," replied Harpending. "He said he needed them to protect his mine in South America. Besides, we've a large a.s.sortment of rifles, revolvers, cutla.s.ses. They're boxed and marked 'machinery.'"

Further talk was interrupted by a group of men who approached, saluted, gave a whispered countersign. Others came, still others till the quota of a full score had arrived. At Harpending's command they separated to avoid attention. Silently they slipped through dimly-lighted streets, past roaring saloons and sailors' boarding houses to an unfrequented portion of the waterfront. There the trim black silhouetted shape of the schooner Chapman loomed against a cloudy sky.

At the rail stood Ridgely Greathouse, big, florid, his burnside whiskers twitching.

"Where the devil's Law?" he bellowed. "Lord Almighty! Here it's nearly midnight and no captain."

"He's not with us," said Harpending quietly. But his face paled.

Navigator William Law was the only one of whom he had a doubt. But the men must not suspect. "Law will be along soon," he added. "Let us all get aboard and make ready to sail."

The men followed him and went below. Harpending, Greathouse and Rubery paced the deck. "He's drunk probably," commented Greathouse savagely.

"Tut! Tut!" cried Rubery, "let us have no croaking." But at two o'clock, the navigator had not shown his face. They could not sail without a captain. Wearily they went below and left a sentinel on watch. He was a young man who had eaten heavily and drunk to even more excess. For a time he paced the deck conscientiously. Then he sat down, leaned against a spar and smoked. After a while the pipe fell from his listless fingers.

"Ahoy, schooner Chapman!"

The sleeping sentinel stirred languidly. He stretched himself, yawned, rose in splendid leisure. Then a shout broke from him. Like a frightened rabbit he dived through the hatchway, yelling at the top of his lungs.

"The police! The police!"

Harpending was up first. Pell mell, Rubery and Greathouse followed. A couple of hundred yards away they looked into the trained guns of the Federal warship Cyane. Several boatloads of officers and marines were leaving her side. From the San Francisco waterfront a police tug bore down on the Chapman.

Greathouse stumbled back into the cabin. "Quick, destroy the evidence,"

he shouted.

CHAPTER LIX

THE COMSTOCK FURORE

Press reports gave full and wide sensation to the capture of the "Chapman." Chief Lees took every credit for the thwarting of a "Plot of Southern Pirates" who "Conspired to Prey Upon the Golden Galleons From California." Thus the headlines put it. And Benito was relieved to find no mention of himself. Harpending he knew and liked, despite his Southern sympathies; Rubery he had met; an English lad, high-spirited and well connected. In fact, John Bright soon had his errant nephew out of jail. And when, a few months later, Harpending and Greathouse were released, Benito deemed the story happily ended. He heard nothing from McTurpin. No doubt the fellow was dead.

That troublesome proclivity of wooing chance was uppermost again in Windham's mind. It was only natural perhaps, for all of San Francisco gambled now in mining stocks. The brokers swarmed like bees along Montgomery street; every window had its shelf of quartz and nuggets interspersed with pictures of the "workings" at Virginia City. It was Nevada now that held the treasure-seeker's eye.

Within a year it had produced six millions. Scores of miners staked their claims upon or near the Comstock lode and most of them sought capital in San Francisco. Washerwomen, bankers, teamsters--every cla.s.s was bitten by the microbe of hysterical investment. Some had made great fortunes; none apparently thus far had lost.