The Pagan Madonna Part 2

All about were rocking lights, yellow and green and red, from warships, tramps, pa.s.senger ships, freighters, barges, junks. The water was streaked with shaking lances of colour.

In the salon, under a reading lamp, sat a man whose iron-gray hair was patched with cowlicks. Combs and brushes produced no results, so the owner had had it clipped to a short pompadour. It was the skull of a fighting man, for all that frontally it was marked by a high intellectuality. This sort of head generally gives the possessor yachts like _Wanderer II_, tremendous bank accounts; the type that will always possess these things, despite the howl of the proletariat.

The face was sunburned. There was some loose flesh under the jaws. The nose was thick and pudgy, wide in the nostrils, like a lion's. The predatory are not invariably hawk-nosed. The eyes were blue--in repose, a warm blue--and there were feathery wrinkles at the corners which suggested that the toll-taker could laugh occasionally. The lips were straight and thin, the chin square--stubborn rather than relentless. A lonely man who was rarely lonesome.

His body was big. One has to be keen physically as well as mentally to make a real success of anything. His score might have tallied sixty. He was at the peak of life, but hanging there, you might say. To-morrow Anthony Cleigh might begin the quick downward journey.

He had made his money in mines, rails, ships; and now he was spending it prodigally. Prodigally, yes, but with caution and foresight. There was always a ready market for what he bought. If he paid a hundred thousand for a Rembrandt, rest a.s.sured he knew where he could dispose of it for the same amount. Cleigh was a collector by instinct. With him it was no fad; it was a pa.s.sion, sometimes absurd. This artistic love of rare and beautiful creations was innate, not acquired. Dealers had long since learned their lesson, and no more sought to impose upon him.

He was not always scrupulous. In the dollar war he had been sternly honest, harshly just. In pursuit of objects of art he argued with his conscience that he was not injuring the future of widows and orphans when he bought some purloined masterpiece. Without being in the least aware of it, he was now the victim, not the master, of the pa.s.sion. He would have purchased Raphael's Adoration of the Magi had some rogue been able to steal it from the Vatican.

Hanging from the ceiling and almost touching the floor, forward between the entrance to the dining salon and the owner's cabin, was a rug eight and a half by six. It was the first object that struck your eye as you came down the companionway. It was an animal rug, a museum piece; rubies and sapphires and emeralds and topaz melted into wool. It was under gla.s.s to fend off the sea damp. Fit to hang beside the Ardebil Carpet.

You never saw the rug except in this salon. Cleigh dared not hang it in his gallery at home in New York for the particular reason that the British Government, urged by the Viceroy of India, had been hunting high and low for the rug since 1911, when it had been the rightful property of a certain influential maharaja whose _Ai, ai!_ had reverberated from Hind to Albion over the loss. Thus it will not be difficult to understand why Cleigh was lonely rather than lonesome.

Queer lot. To be a true collector is to be as the opium eater: you keep getting in deeper and deeper, careless that the way back closes. After a while you cannot feel any kick in the stuff you find in the open marts, so you step outside the pale, where they sell the unadulterated. That's the true, dyed-in-the-wool collector. He no longer acquires a Vand.y.k.e merely to show to his friends; that he possesses it for his own delectation is enough. He becomes brother to Gaspard, miser; and like Gaspard he cannot be fooled by spurious gold.

Over the top of the rug was a curtain of waxed sailcloth that could be dropped by the pull of a cord, and it was generally dropped whenever Cleigh made port.

It was vaguely known that Cleigh possessed the maharaja's treasure.

Millionaire collectors, agents, and famous salesroom auctioneers had heard indirectly; but they kept the information to themselves--not from any kindly spirit, however. Never a one of them but hoped some day he might lay hands upon the rug and dispose of it to some other madman. A rug valued at seventy thousand dollars was worth a high adventure. Cleigh, however, with cynical humour courted the danger.

There is a race of hardy dare-devils--super-thieves--of which the world hears little and knows little. These adventurers have actually robbed the Louvre, the Vatican, the Pitti Gallery, the palaces of kings and sultans.

It was not so long ago that La Gioconda--Mona Lisa--was stolen from the Louvre. Cleigh had come from New York, thousands of miles, for the express purpose of meeting one of these amazing rogues--a rogue who, had he found a rich wallet on the pavements, would have moved heaven and earth to find the owner, but who would have stolen the Pope's throne had it been left about carelessly.

It is rather difficult to a.n.a.lyze the moral status of such a man, or that of the man ready to deal with him.

Cleigh lowered his book and a.s.sumed a listening att.i.tude. Above the patter of the rain he heard the putt-putt of a motor launch. He laid the book on the table and reached for a black cigar, which he lit and began to puff quickly. Louder grew the panting of the motor. It stopped abruptly. Cleigh heard a call or two, then the creaking of the ladder. Two minutes later a man limped into the salon. He tossed his sou'wester to the floor and followed it with the smelly oilskin.

"h.e.l.lo, Cleigh! Devil of a night!"

"Have a peg?" asked Cleigh.

"Never touch the stuff."

"That's so; I had forgotten."

Cleigh never looked upon this man's face without recalling del Sarto's John the Baptist--supposing John had reached forty by the way of reckless pa.s.sions. The extraordinary beauty was still there, but as though behind a blurred pane of gla.s.s.

"Well?" said Cleigh, trying to keep the eagerness out of his voice.

"There's the devil to pay--all in a half hour."

"You haven't got it?" Cleigh blazed out.

"Morrissy--one of the squarest chaps in the world--ran amuck the last minute. Tried to double-cross me, and in the rough-and-tumble that followed he was more or less banged up. We hurried him to a hospital, where he lies unconscious."

"But the beads!"

"Either he dropped them in the gutter, or they repose on the floor of a Chinese shop in Woosung Road. I'll be there bright and early--never you fear. Don't know what got into Morrissy. Of course I'll look him up in the morning."

"Thousands of miles--to hear a yarn like this!"

"Cleigh, we've done business for nearly twenty years. You can't point out an instance where I ever broke my word."

"I know," grumbled Cleigh. "But I've gone to all this trouble, getting a crew and all that. And now you tell me you've let the beads slip through your fingers!"

"Pshaw! You'd have put the yacht into commission if you'd never heard from me. You were crazy to get to sea again. Any trouble picking up the crew?"

"No. But only four of the old crew--Captain Newton, of course, and Chief Engineer Svenson, Donaldson, and Morley. Still, it's the best crew I ever had: young fellows off warships and transports, looking for comfortable berths and a little adventure that won't entail hunting periscopes."

"Plenty of coal?"

"Trust me for that. Four hundred tons in Manila, and I shan't need more than a bucketful."

"Who drew the plans for this yacht?" asked Cunningham, with a roving glance.

"I did."

"Humph! Why didn't you leave the job to someone who knew how? It's a series of labyrinths on this deck."

"I wanted a big main salon, even if I had to sacrifice some of the rest of the s.p.a.ce. Besides, it keeps the crew out of sight."

"And I should say out of touch, too."

"I'm quite satisfied," replied Cleigh, grumpily.

"Cleigh, I'm through." Cunningham spread his hands.

"What are you through with?"

"Through with this game. I'm going in for a little sport. This string of beads was the wind-up. But don't worry. They'll be on board here to-morrow. You brought the gold?"

"Yes."

The visitor paused in front of the rug. He sighed audibly.

"Scheherazade's twinkling little feet! Lord, but that rug is a wonder!

Cleigh, I've been offered eighty thousand for it."

"What's that?" Cleigh barked, half out of his chair.

"Eighty thousand by Eisenfeldt. I don't know what crazy fool he's dealing for, but he offers me eighty thousand."

Cleigh got up and pressed a wall b.u.t.ton. Presently a man stepped into the salon from the starboard pa.s.sage. He was lank, with a lean, wind-bitten face and a hard blue eye.

"Dodge," announced Cleigh, smiling, "this is Mr. Cunningham. I want you to remember him."

Dodge agreed with a curt nod.