The Harbor of Doubt Part 25

"I don't think so. Just because he did you, doesn't prove anything. He was in my employ all the time, and getting real money for his work."

"So it was all a plot, eh?" said Code dejectedly. "I give you credit, Burns, for more brains than I ever supposed you had. What's become of Pete Ellinwood and the _La.s.s?_"

"Pete is back on the schooner and she's gone out to fish. You needn't worry about them. At the proper time they'll be told you are safe and unhurt."

Code said nothing for a while. With hands rammed into his pockets he stood watching the white and blue sea whirl by. In those few minutes he touched the last depth of failure and despair. For a brief s.p.a.ce he was minded to leap overboard.

He shivered as one with an ague and shook off the deadly influence of the idea. Had he no more grit? he asked himself. Had he come this far only to be beaten? Was this insolent young popinjay to win at last?

_No!_ Then he listened, for Nat was speaking.

"If you give your word of honor not to try and escape you can have the run of the decks and go anywhere you like on the schooner. If not, you will be locked up and go home a prisoner."

It was the last straw, the final piece of humiliation. Code stiffened as a soldier might to rebuke. A deadly, dull anger surged within him and took possession of his whole being--such an anger as can only come to one who, amiable and upright by nature, is driven to inevitable revolt.

"Look here, Burns," he said, his voice low, but intense with the emotion that mastered him, "I'll give no word of honor regarding anything. Between you and me there is a lot to be settled. You have almost ruined me, and, by Heaven, before I get through with you, you'll rue it!

"I shall make every attempt to escape from this schooner, and if I do escape, look out! If I do not escape and you press these charges against me, I'll hunt you down for the rest of my life; or if I go to prison I will have others do it for me.

"Now you know what to expect, and you also know that when I say a thing I mean it. Now do what you like with me."

Burns looked at Schofield's tense white face. His eyes encountered those flaming blue ones and dropped sullenly. Whether it was the tremendous force of the threat or whether it was a guilty conscience working, no one but himself knew, but his face grew gradually as pallid as that of his captive. Suddenly he turned away.

"Boys," he called to the crew who were working near, "put Schofield in the old storeroom. And one of you watch it all the time. He says he will escape if he can, so I hold you responsible."

Code followed the men to a little shanty seemingly erected against the foremast. It was of stout, heavy boards about long enough to allow a cot being set up in it. It had formerly been used for storing provisions and had never been taken down.

When the padlock snapped behind him Code took in his surroundings.

There were two windows in the little cubby, one looking forward and the other to starboard. Neither was large enough to provide a means of escape, he judged. At the foot of the cot was a plain wooden armchair, both pieces of furniture being screwed to the floor. For exercise there was a strip of bare deck planking about six feet long beside the bed, where he might pace back and forth.

Both the cot and chair appeared to be new. "Had the room all ready for me," said Code to himself.

The one remaining piece of furniture was a queer kind of book-shelf nailed against the wall. It was fully five feet long and protruded a foot out above his bed. In its thirty-odd pigeonholes was jammed a collection of stuff that was evidently the acc.u.mulation of years.

There were scores of cheap paper-bound novels concerning either high society or great detectives, old tobacco-boxes, broken pipes, string, wrapping-paper, and all the what-not of a general depository.

With hours on his hands and nothing whatever to occupy him, Code began to sort over the lurid literature with a view to his entertainment. He hauled a great dusty bundle out of one pigeonhole, and found among the novels some dusty exercise books.

He inspected them curiously. On the stiff board cover of one was scrawled, "Log Schooner _M. C. Burns_; M. C. Burns, master."

The novels were forgotten with the appearance of this old relic. _The M. C. Burns_ was the original Burns schooner when Nat's father was still in the fish business at Freekirk Head. It was the direct predecessor of the _Nettie B._, which was entirely Nat's. On the death of the elder Burns when the _May Schofield_ went down, the _M. C.

Burns_ had been sold to realize immediate cash. And here was her log!

Code looked over pages that were redolent of the events in his boyhood, for Michael was a ready writer and made notes regularly even when the _M. C._ was not on a voyage. He had spent an hour in this way when he came to this entry on one of the very last pages:

"June 30: This day clear with strong E. S.-E. wind. This day Nat, in the _M. C. Burns_, raced Code Schofield in the _May Schofield_ from Quoddy Head to moorings in Freekirk Head harbor. My boy had the worst of it all the way. I never saw such luck as that young Schofield devil has. He won by half an hour. Poor Nat is heartbroken and swore something awful. He says he'll win next time or know why!"

"Just like old man Burns!" thought Code. "Pities and spoils his rascal of a son. But the boy loved him."

Code had not thought of that race in years. How well he remembered it now! There had been money up on both sides, and the rules were that no one in either schooner should be over twenty except the skippers.

What satisfaction it had been to give Nat a good tr.i.m.m.i.n.g in the fifty-year-old _May_. He could still feel an echo of the old proud thrill. He turned back to the log.

"July 1: Cloudy this day. Hot. Light S.-W. breeze. Nat tells me another race will be sailed in just a week. Swears he will win it.

Poor boy, what with losing yesterday and Caroline Fuller's leaving the Head to work in Lubec, he is hardly himself. I'm afraid the old _M.

C._ won't show much speed till she is thoroughly overhauled.

Note--Stmr. _May Schofield's_ policy runs out July 20th. See about this, sure."

There was very little pertaining to the next race until the entry for June 6, two days before the event. Then he read:

"Nat is quite happy; says he can't lose day after to-morrow. I told him he must have fitted the _M. C._ with wings, but he only grinned.

Take the stmr. to St. John to-morrow to look after policies, including _May Schofield's_. She's so old her rates will have to go up. Won't be back till day after the race, but Nat says he'll telegraph me. Wonder what business that boy's got up his sleeve that makes him so sure he will win? Oh, he's a clever one, that boy!"

Here the chronicle ended. Little did Michael Burns know he would never write in it again. He went to St. John's, as he had said, and completed his business in time to return home the day of the race instead of the day after.

The second race was never sailed, for Code Schofield received a telegram from St. John's, offering him a big price for a quick lighterage trip to Grande Mignon, St. John being accidentally out of schooners and the trip urgent.

Though loath to lose the race by default, the money offered was too good to pa.s.s by, and Code had made the trip and loaded up by nightfall. It was then that he had met Michael Burns, and Burns had expressed his desire to go home in the _May_ so as to watch her actions in a moderate sea and gale.

Neither he nor the _May_ ever saw dry land again. Only Code of the whole ship's company struggled ash.o.r.e on the Wolves, bruised and half dead from exposure.

The end of the old log before him was full of poignant tragedy to Code, the tragedy of his own life, for it was the unwritten pages from then on that should have told the story of a fiendishly planned revenge upon him who was totally innocent of any wrong-doing. The easy, weak, indulgence of the father had grown a crop of vicious and cruel deeds in the son.

CHAPTER XXII

A RECOVERED TREASURE

For five days Code yawned or rushed through the greater part of Nat's stock of lurid literature. It was the one thing that kept him from falling into the black pit of brooding; sometimes he felt as though he must go insane if he allowed himself to think. He had not the courage to tear aside the veil of dull pain that covered his heart and look at the bleeding reality. He was afraid of his own emotions.

It was impossible for him to go lower in the scale of physical events.

Nat was about to triumph, and Code himself was forced to admit that this triumph was mostly due to Nat's own wits. First he had stolen Nellie Tanner (Code had thought a lot about that ring missing from Nellie's hand), then he had attached the _Charming La.s.s_ in the endeavor to take away from him the very means of his livelihood.

Then something had happened. Schofield did not know what it was, but something evidently very serious, for the next thing he knew Nat had crushed his pride and manhood under a brutal and technical charge of murder.

But this was not all.

His victim escaping him with the schooner and the means of livelihood, Burns had employed a traitor in the crew to poison the bait and force him to come ash.o.r.e to replenish his tubs. Once ash.o.r.e, the shanghaiing was not difficult.

Code had no doubt whatever that the whole plan, commencing with the disappearance of the man in the motor-dory and ending with his abduction from St. Pierre, was part and parcel of the same scheme. In this, his crowning achievement of skill and cunning, Burns had showed himself an admirable plotter, playing upon human nature as he did to effect his ends.

For it was nothing but a realization of Peter Ellinwood's weakness in the matter of his size and fighting ability that resulted in his (Code's) easy capture. Schofield had no shadow of a doubt but that the big Frenchman had been hired to play his part, and that, in the howling throng that surrounded the fighters the crew of the _Nettie B._ were waiting to seize the first opportunity to make the duel a _melee_ and effect their design in the confusion.

Their opportunity came when the Frenchman tried to trip Pete Ellinwood after big Jean had fallen and Code rushed into the fray with the ferocity of a wildcat. Some one raised the yell "Police," he was surrounded by his enemies, some one rapped him over the head with a black-jack, and the job was done. It was clever business, and despite the helplessness of his position, Code could not but admire the brilliance of such a scheming brain, while at the same time deploring that it was not employed in some legitimate and profitable cause.

Now he was in the enemy's hands, and St. Andrew's was less than a dozen hours away; St. Andrew's, with its jail, its grand jury, and its pen.