The Iron Pirate Part 7

"This discovery did not daunt me, for I had expected it. I should have been surprised if she had been at her berth; and the fact that she had weighed under cover of night fell in so well with my antic.i.p.ation that I waited only to ascertain officially what ships had left Spezia during the past twenty-four hours. They told me at the Customs that the Brazilian war-vessel built by Signor Vezzia weighed at three a.m.; but more I could not learn, for these men had evidently been well bribed, and were as dumb as unfee'd lawyers. I knew that their information was not worth a groat, and hurried back to the Albergo to a.s.sure myself that my neighbour with the necklace had sailed also. To my surprise, he was at breakfast when I arrived at the hotel; and so one great link in my theoretic chain snapped at the first test. As he had not sailed with the others, he could have no direct connection with the nameless ship, no nautical part or lot with her. But what was he, then? That I meant to know as soon as opportunity should serve.

"I have led you up, Strong, step by step, through the details of this work to this point, that you may have the facts unalloyed as I have them; and may construct your history from this preamble as I have constructed mine. I am now about to move over the ground more quickly.

I will quit Spezia, and ask you to come with me, after the interval of nigh a year--during which no man had known that which I now tell you--to London, where, in an hotel in Cecil Street, Strand, I was again the neighbour of the man with the jewels whom I had taken so daring an advantage of in Italy. Let me tell you briefly what had happened in the between-time. The day on which the nameless ship left the dock, this man--whom, I may say at once, I have always met under the name of Captain Black--quitted the town and reached Paris. Thither I followed him, staying one day in the French capital, but going onward with him on the following morning to Cherbourg. There he went aboard a small yacht, and I lost him in the Channel. I returned at once to Italy, and wired to friends in the police force at New York, at London, and San Francisco, and at three ports in South America for news (_a_) of a new war-ship lately completed at Spezia for the Brazilian republic; (_b_) of a man known as Captain Black, who left the port of Cherbourg in the cutter-yacht _La France_ on the morning of October 30th. For nearly twelve months I waited for an answer to these questions; but none came to me. To the best of my knowledge, the nameless war-ship was never seen upon the high seas. I began to ask myself, if she existed, how came it that a vessel, burnished to the beauty of gold, had been spoken of none, seen of none, reported in no harbour, mentioned in no despatch? Yet she remained known but to her crew and to me: and my study of shipping lists, gazettes, and papers in all tongues, never gave me clue to her. Only this, I had such a record of navigation as I think man never kept yet before; and I marked it as curious, if nothing more, that in the month when the cruiser quitted Spezia three ocean-going steamers, each carrying specie to the value of more than one hundred thousand pounds, went down in fair weather, and were paid for at Lloyd's. What folly! you say again; what are you going to conclude? I answer only--G.o.d grant that I conclude falsely--that this terrible thing I suspect is the phantom of a too-keen imagination.

"Now, when no tidings came, either of the ship I sought or of the man Black, I did not lose all hope. Indeed, I was much occupied making--during a month's leisure in London--a list, as far as that were possible, of all the gems and baubles which the dead men and women on the sunken steamers had owned. This was a paltry record of bracelets, and rings, and tiaras, and clasps, such stuff as any fellow of a jeweller may sell; unconvincing stuff, worth no more than a near relation for purposes of evidence. There was but one piece of the whole ma.s.s that did not come in my category--a great box with a fine painting by Jean Pet.i.tot upon its lid, and a curious circle of jasper all about the miniatures. This was a historic piece of _bijouterie_ mentioned as having once been the property of Necker, the French financier; then lost by a New York dealer, who was taking it from Paris to Boston in the steamship _Catalania_; the ship supposed to have foundered, with the loss of all hands, off the Banks of Newfoundland, sixteen days after the nameless ship left Spezia. I made a record of this trifle, and forgot it until, many months later, a private communication from the head of the New York Secret Service told me that the man I wanted was in London; that he was an American millionaire, who owned a house on the banks of the Hudson River; who had great influence in many cities, who came to Europe to buy precious stones and miniature paintings, a man who was considered eccentric by his friends. I kept the notes, and hurried to England--for I had been to Geneva some while--and took rooms in the hotel where Captain Black was staying.

Three days after I was disguised as you have seen me, selling him miniatures. Within a week, by what steps I need not pause to say, I knew that the jasper box, lost, by report, in the steamer _Catalania_, was under lock and key in his bedroom.

"I cannot tell you how that discovery agitated me. Here, indeed, was my second direct link. The man had in his possession an historic and unmistakable casket, which all the world believed to be lost in a steamer from which no soul had escaped. How I treasured that knowledge!

Three months the man remained in London; during three months he was not thirty hours out of my sight or knowledge. Day by day when with him, I consulted such shipping information as I could get; and scored another mark upon my record when I made sure that no inexplicable story from the sea was written while he remained ash.o.r.e. This was perplexing for a surety. I could not in any way connect the man with the nameless ship, and yet he knew her crew; he was the one in whose possession the jewels were; above all, while he was ash.o.r.e there were no disasters which could not be set down to ocean peril or the act of G.o.d, as the policies say. This further knowledge held me to him with the magnetic attraction of a mystery such as I have never known in my life. I resigned my work for the Government; and henceforth gave myself heart and soul to the pursuit of the man. I followed him to Paris, to St. Petersburg; I tracked him through France to Ma.r.s.eilles; I watched him embark, with three of the ruffians I had seen at Spezia, in his yacht again; and within a month the yacht was in harbour at Cowes without him; while a steamer, bound from the Cape to Cadiz, and known to have specie aboard her, went out of knowledge as the others had done. Then was I sure, sure of that awful dream I had dreamed, conscious that I alone shared with that man and his crew one of the most ghastly secrets that the deep has kept within her.

"The end of my story I judge now that you antic.i.p.ate. Though absolutely convinced myself, I had still lack of the one direct link to make a legal chain. I had positively to connect the man Black with the nameless ship, for this I had only done so far by pure circ.u.mstance.

For many months I have made no gain in this attempt. Last year in Liverpool I sketched in yet another point in my picture. I received tidings of the man in that city, and there I did trade with him in my old disguise; but he was not alone--the crew of ruffians you have known by this time kept company with him in that bold and b.e.s.t.i.a.l Bohemianism you will have witnessed with me. I kept vigil there a week, but lost him at the end of that time. When he reappeared in the circles of civilisation it was in Paris, but two days ago, when I asked you to accompany me. You know that I attempted to sail with him on his cruise, and your instinct tells you why. If I could, by being two days afloat in his company, prove beyond doubt that he used his yacht as a pretence; if I could prove that when he left port in her he sailed out to sea, and was picked up by the nameless ship, my chain was forged, my book complete, and I had but to call the Government to the work!

"But I have failed, and the labour I have set myself shall be done by others, but chiefly, Mark Strong, by you. From the valley of the dead whence soon I must look back, if it is to be on a life that has no achievement before G.o.d in it, I, who have laid down such a life as mine was in this cause, urge you upon it. You have youth, and money sufficient for the enterprise; you will get money in its pursuit. You have no fear of the black After, which is the end of life; but, after all, it may come to you as it came to me, that there is the finger of the Almighty G.o.d pointing to your path of duty. I have lived the life of a common eavesdropper; but believe me that in this work I have felt the call of humanity, and hoped, if I might live to accomplish it, that the Book of the Good should find some place for my name. So may you when my mantle falls upon you. What information I have, you have. The names of my friends in the cities mentioned I have written down for you; they will serve you for the memory of my name; but be a.s.sured at the outset that you will never take this man upon the sea. And as for the money which is rightly due to the one who rids humanity of this pest, I say, go to the Admiralty in London, and lay so much of your knowledge before them as shall prevent a robbery of your due; claim a fit reward from them and the steamship companies; and, as your beginning, go now to the Hudson River--I meant to go within a month--and learn there more of the man you seek; or, if the time be ripe, lay hands there upon him. And may the spirit of a dead man breathe success upon you!"

_On the yacht "Celsis" lying at Cowes, written in the month of August, for Mark Strong._

When I put down the papers, my eyes were tear-stained with the effort of reading, and the cabin lamp was nigh out. My interest in the writing had been so sustained that I had not seen the march of daylight, now streaming through the gla.s.s above, upon my bare cabin table. But I was burnt up almost with a fever; and the oppressive fumes from the stinking lamp seemed to choke me, so that I went above, and saw that we were at anchor in the Solent, and that the whole glory of a summer's dawn lit the sleeping waters. And all the yacht herself breathed sleep, for the others were below, and Dan alone paced the deck.

The first knowledge that I had of the true effect of Martin Hall's narrative was the muttered exclamation of this old sailor--

"Ye haven't slept, sir," said he; "ye're just the colour of yon ensign!"

"Quite true, Dan--it was close down there."

"Gospel truth, without a hitch! but ye're precious bad, sir; I never seed a worse figger-'ed, excusing the liberty. I'd rest a bit, sir."

"Good advice, Dan. I'll sleep here an hour, if you'll get my rug from below."

I stretched myself on a deck-chair, and he covered my limbs almost with a woman's tenderness, so that I slept and dreamt again of Hall, of Captain Black, of the man "Four-Eyes," of a great holocaust on the sea.

I was carried away by sleep to far cities and among other men, to great perils of the sea, to strange sights; but over them all loomed the phantom of a golden ship, and from her decks great fires came. When I awoke, a doctor from Southsea was writing down the names of drugs upon paper; and Mary was busy with ice. They told me I had slept for thirty hours, and that they had feared brain-fever. But the sleep had saved me; and when Mary talked of the doctor's order that I was to lie resting a week, I laughed aloud.

"You'd better prescribe that for Roderick," said I; "he'd rest a month; wouldn't you, old chap?"

"I don't know about a month, old man, but you mustn't try the system too much."

"Well, I'm going to try it now, anyway, for I start for London to-night!"

"What!" they cried in one voice.

"Exactly, and if Mary would not mind running on deck for a minute, I'll tell you why, Roderick."

She went at the word, casting one pleading look with her eyes as she stood at the door, but I gave no sign, and she closed it. I had fixed upon a course, and as Roderick, dreamingly indifferent, prepared to talk about that which he called my "madness," I took Hall's ma.n.u.script, and read it to him. When I had finished, there was a strange light in his eyes.

"Let us go at once," he said; and that was all.

CHAPTER VI.

I ENGAGE A SECOND MATE.

We caught the first train to London; and were at the Hotel Columbia by Charing Cross in time for dinner. Mary had insisted on her right to accompany us, and, as we could find no valid reason why she should not, we brought her to the hotel with us. Then by way of calming that trouble, excitement, and expectation which crowded on us both, we went to Covent Garden, where the autumn season of opera was then on, and listened to the glorious music of _Orfeo_ and the _Cavalleria_. Nor did either of us speak again that night of Hall or of his death; but I confess that the vision of it haunted my eyes, standing out upon all the scenes that were set, so that I saw it upon the canvas, and often before me the wind-worn struggle of a burning ship; while that awful "Ahoy!" of my own men yet rang in my ears.

When I returned to the hotel I wrote two letters, the beginning of my task. One was to the Admiralty, the other to the office of the Black Anchor Line of American Steamships. I told Roderick what I had done, but he laughed at the idea; so that I troubled him no more with it, awaiting its proof. On the next morning, in a few moments of privacy between us, he agreed to let me work alone for two days, and then to venture on suggestion himself. So it came to be that on the next day I found myself standing in a meagrely furnished anteroom at the Admiralty, and there waiting the pleasure of one of the clerks, who had been deputed to talk with me. He was a fine fellow, I doubt not: had much merit of his faultless bow, and great worth in the nicety of his spotless waistcoat, but G.o.d never made one so dull or so preposterous a blockhead. I see him now, rolling up the starved hairs which struggled for existence upon his chin, and letting his cuffs lie well upon his bony wrists as he asked me, with a floating drawl--

"And what service can I do for you?"

For me! What service could _he_ do for me? I smiled at him, and did not disguise my contempt.

"If there is any responsible person here," I said, with emphasis upon the word responsible, "I should be glad to impart to him some very curious, and, as it seems to me, very remarkable, information concerning a war-ship which has just left Spezia, and is supposed to be the property of the Brazilian Government."

"It's very good of you, don't you know," he replied, as he bent down to arrange his ample trousers; "but I fancy we heard something about her last week, so we won't trouble you, don't you know"; and he felt to see if his bow were straight.

"You may have heard something of the ship," I answered with warmth, "but that which I have to communicate is not of descriptive, but of national, importance. You cannot by any means have learnt my story, for there is only one man living who knows it."

He looked up at the clock a moment as though seeking inspiration, but his mind was quite vacant when he replied--

"It's awfully good of you, don't you know; we're so frightfully busy this month; if you could come up in a month's time----"

"In a month's time," I said, rising with scorn, "in a month's time, if you and yours don't stand condemned before Europe for a parcel of fools and incompetents, then you'll send for me, but I'll see you at blazes first--good-morning!"

I was outside the office before his exclamation of surprise had pa.s.sed away; and within half an hour I sat in the private room of the secretary to the Black Anchor Steamship Company. He was a sharp man of business, keen-visaged as a ferret, and restless as a nervous horse long reined in. I told him shortly that I had reason to doubt the truth of the statement that a warship recently built at Spezia was intended for the purposes set down to her; that I believed she was the property of an American adventurer whose motives I scarce dared to realise; that I had proof, amounting to conviction, that this man possessed jewels which were commonly accounted as lost in his firm's steamer, _Catalania_; and that if his company would agree to bear the expense, and to give me suitable recompense if I succeeded in supporting my conjectures, I would undertake to bring him the whole history of the nameless ship within twelve months; and also to give him such knowledge as would enable him to lay hands on the man called "Captain Black," should this man prove the criminal I believed him to be. To all which tale he listened, his searching eye fixing its stare plump upon me, from time to time; but when I had done, he rang the bell for his clerk, and I could see that he felt himself in the company of a maniac. So I left him, and breathed the breath of liberty again as I went back to the hotel, and told Roderick of the utter and crushing failure waiting upon the very beginning of the task which Martin Hall had left to me.

Roderick was not at all surprised--it seemed to me rather that he was glad.

"What did I tell you?" he said, as he sat up on the couch, and took the tube of his hookah from his mouth; "who will believe such a tale as we are hawking in the market-place--selling, in fact, to the highest bidder? If a man came to you with the same account, and with no more authority to support him than the story of a dead detective--who may have lost his wits, or may never have had any to lose--would you put down a shilling to see him through with the business? Pshaw! my dear old Mark, you, with your long head and that horribly critical eyes of yours, you wouldn't give him a groat."

"Exactly, I should consider him a dupe or a stark-staring madman; but the case is different as it stands. I know--I would stake my life on it--that every word Martin Hall wrote is true, true as my life itself.

I am not so sure that you are convinced, though."

I awaited his answer, but it did not come for many minutes. He had pa.s.sed through his momentary enthusiasm and lay at full length upon the couch, making circles, parabolas, and ellipses of fine white smoke, while he fixed his gaze upon the frieze of the wall, as if he were counting the architraves.

"Mark," he said at last, "when we were at Harrow together an aged sage impressed upon us the meaning of Seneca's line, '_Veritas odit moras_.'

I regard myself at the moment in a position of truth; but whether on calm reflection I believe the whole of your dead friend's story, I'm hanged if I know, and therefore"--here he made a long pause and smoked violently--"and therefore I have bought a steamer."

"You have done what?"

"At two o'clock to-day, in your absence, I bought the steam-yacht _Rocket_, lately the property of Lord Wilmer, now the property of Roderick Stewart, of the Hotel Columbia, London."

I think I must have laughed sorrowfully at him, as a man laughs at a drawing-room humorist, for he continued quickly--

"Before we go on board her, the yacht will be re-christened by Mary--who will stay with her dear maiden aunt in our absence--and will be named after your vessel _Celsis_. Her crew will consist of our silent friend, Captain York, of his brother as chief mate, and of your men now at Portsmouth, with half a dozen more. We shall need eight firemen, whom the agents will engage, and three engineers, already found, for I have taken on Lord Wilmer's men. Your cook, old 'Cuss-a-lot,' will serve us very well during the fourteen or fifteen days we shall need to go across the Atlantic, and we want now only a second and third officer. As these men will be mixed up with us on the quarter-deck, I have told the agents to send them up to see you here--so you'll run your eye over them and tell me if they'll do. I hate seeing people; they bore me, and I mean you to take the charge of this enterprise from the very beginning--you quite understand?"