The Harbor of Doubt Part 9

That was enough for Tanner. He was convinced now that the insurance man had come to carry out the threat made in St. John's, and that Nat Burns was more intimately connected with the scheme than he had at first supposed.

Bijonah set down his package of groceries on the counter inside and turned away toward the wharf where the _Charming La.s.s_ was tied up for a final tr.i.m.m.i.n.g. She already had her salt aboard and most of her provisions and was being given her final touches by Pete Ellinwood, Jimmie Thomas, and the other members of the crew that had signed on to sail in her.

Tanner hailed Ellinwood from the wharf and beckoned so frantically that the big man swarmed up the rigging to the dock as though he were going aloft to reef a topsail in a half a gale.

"Code's in a pile of trouble," said the old man, and went on briefly to narrate the whole circ.u.mstance of the insurance company's possible move. "That feller came on the steamer this afternoon, an' if he serves Code with the summons or attachment or whatever it is, it's my idea that the _La.s.s_ will never round the Swallowtail for the Banks.

Where is the boy?"

"Went up to Castalia to see a couple of men who he thought he might get for the crew, but I don't think Burns or any one else knows it. He wanted to make the trip on the quiet an' get them without anybody's knowing it if he could. But what do you cal'late to do, Bige?"

"By the Great Snood, I don't know!" declared Tanner helplessly.

"Wal," said Pete rea.s.suringly, "you just let me handle this little trouble myself. We'll have the skipper safe an' clear if we have to commit murder to do it. Now, Bige, you just keep your mouth shut and don't worry no more. I'll do the rest."

Feeling the responsibility to be in capable hands and secretly glad to escape events that might be too much for his years, Captain Tanner walked back to the road, secured his package of groceries at the store, and made his way home to the widow Sprague's house.

For five minutes Pete Ellinwood lounged indolently against a spile, engrossed in thought. Then he put on his coat and crossed the King's Road to the Schofield cottage.

He had hardly opened the gate when a strange youth in a gray suit and Panama hat came out of the front door and down the path. Pete recognized the newcomer from St. John's, and the newcomer evidently recognized him.

"Ha! Captain Code Schofield, I presume," he announced, thrusting his hand nervously into his pocket and bringing out a fistful of papers.

So eager and excited was he that, unnoticed, he dropped one flimsy sheet, many times folded, into the gra.s.s.

"No, I'm not Schofield," rumbled Ellinwood from the depths of his mighty chest. "Get along with you now!"

"Please accept service of this paper, Captain Schofield," said the other, extending a legal-looking doc.u.ment, and shrugging his shoulders as though to say that Pete's denial of ident.i.ty was, of course, only natural, but could hardly be indulged.

"I'm not Schofield!" bellowed Pete, outraged. "My name's Ellinwood, an' anybody'll tell you so. I won't take your durned paper. If you want Schofield find him."

The young man drew back, nonplussed, but might have continued his attentions had not a pa.s.ser-by come to Pete's rescue and sworn to his ident.i.ty. Only then did the young lawyer--for he was that as well as private secretary--withdraw with short and grudged apologies.

Pete, growling to himself like a great bear, was starting forward to the house when his eye was caught by the folded paper that had dropped from the packet in the lawyer's hand. He stooped, picked it up, and, with a glance about, to prove that the other was out of sight, opened it.

As he read it his eyes widened and his jaw dropped with astonishment.

Twice he slowly spelled out the words before him, and then, with a low whistle and a gigantic wink, thrust the paper carefully into his pocket and pinned the pocket.

"That will be news to the lad, sure enough," he said, continuing on his way toward the house.

The little orphan girl Josie admitted him. He found Mrs. Schofield on the verge of tears. She had just been through a long and painful interview with the newcomer, and had barely recovered from the shock of what he had to tell.

Code, since learning of what was in the air, had not told his mother, for he did not wish to alarm her unnecessarily, and was confident he would get away to the Banks before the slow-moving St. John firm took action.

Pete, smitten mightily by the distress of the comely middle-aged widow, melted to a misery of unexpressible tenderness and solicitude.

In his words and actions of comfort he resembled a great, loving St.

Bernard dog who had accidentally knocked down a toddling child and is desirous of making amends. Ma Schofield took note of his desire to lighten her burden, and presently permitted it to be lightened.

Then they talked over the situation, and Pete finally said:

"I'm sending Jimmie Thomas down to Castalia in his motor-dory to find Code. Of course, the skipper took his own dory, and we may meet him coming back. What we want to do is head him off an' keep him away from here. Now, there's no tellin' how long he might have to stay away, an'

I've been figgerin' that perhaps if you was to take him a bundle of clothes it wouldn't go amiss."

"I'll do it," announced ma st.u.r.dily. "Just you tell Jimmie to wait a quarter of an hour and I'll be along. Now, Pete Ellinwood, listen here. What scheme have you got in your mind? I can see by your eyes that there is one."

"May!" cried Pete reproachfully. "How could I have anythin' in my mind without tellin' you?"

Nevertheless, when he walked out of the cottage door it was to chuckle enormously in his black beard and call himself names that he had to deceive May.

He called Jimmie Thomas up from the duties of the paint-pot and brush, and gave him instructions as to what to do. They talked rapidly in low tones until Mrs. Schofield appeared; then Jimmie helped her into the motor-dory and both men pushed off.

"I cal'late I'll have it all worked out when you come back, Jim," said Pete as the engine caught the spark and the dory moved away.

Mrs. Schofield turned around and fixed her sharp, blue eyes upon the giant ash.o.r.e.

"Peter!" she cried. "I knew there was some scheme. When I get back--"

But the rest was lost, for distance had overcome her voice. Ellinwood stood and grinned benignly at his G.o.ddess. Then he slapped his thigh with an eleven-inch hand and made a noise with his mouth like a man clucking to his horse.

"Sprightly as a gal, she is," he allowed. "Dummed if she ain't!"

CHAPTER VIII

JIMMIE THOMAS'S STRATEGY

On a chart the island of Grande Mignon bears the same relation to surrounding islands that a mother-ship bears to a flock of submarines.

Westward her coast is rocky and forbidding, being nothing but a succession of frowning headlands that rise almost perpendicularly from the sea. It is one of the most desolate stretches of coast in moderate lat.i.tudes, for no one lives there, nor has ever lived there, except a few hermit dulce-pickers during the summer months.

Along the east coast, that looks across the Atlantic, are strung the villages, nestled in bays and coves. And it is out from this coast that the dozen little islands lie. First, and partially across the mouth of the bay where the fishing fleet lies, is Long Island. Then comes High Duck, Low Duck, and Big Duck. Farther south there are Ross's, Whitehead, and Big Wood islands, not to mention spits, points, and ledges of rock innumerable and all honored with names.

It was the fact of so many treacherous ledges and reefs to be navigated safely in a four-knot tide that was agitating the half-dozen "guests" at Mis' Shannon's boarding-house. It need hardly be said that Mis' Shannon was a widow, but her distinction lay in being called mis'

instead of ma.

She made a livelihood by putting up the "runners" who made periodical trips with their sample cases for the benefit of the local tradesmen, and took in occasional "rusticators," or summer tourists who had courage enough to dare the pa.s.sage of the strait in the tiny steamer.

The princ.i.p.al auditor of the harrowing tales that were flying about the table over the fish chowder was Mr. Aubrey Templeton, the young lawyer from St. John's who had arrived on the steamer that afternoon.

Just opposite to Mr. Templeton at the table sat Jimmie Thomas, who, being a bachelor, had made his home with Miss Shannon for the last three years. And it was Jimmie who had held the table spell-bound with his tales of danger and narrow escapes.

He had just concluded a yarn, told in all seriousness, of how a shark had leaped over the back of a dory in Whale Cove and the two men in the dory had barely escaped with their lives.

"And I know the two men it happened to," he concluded; "or I know one of 'em; the other's dead. Ol' Jasper Schofield never got over the scare he got that day."

The lawyer sat bolt upright in his chair.

"Do you know the Schofields?" he demanded of Thomas.