The Stowaway Girl Part 24

"Is it wrong?" she asked.

"Well--no, provided we kill no one. We are justified in saving our own lives, and the average German or Italian shipmaster would hand us over to the Brazilians without scruple."

Iris was far from Bootle and its moralities.

"I don't care what happens so long as you are not hurt," she whispered.

"Mr. Hozier," said c.o.ke thickly.

"Yes, sir."

"You've got good eyes an' quick ears. Lay out as far forrard as you can, an' pa.s.s the word for steerin'."

Hozier obeyed. The discordant bleat of a foghorn came again, apparently right ahead. In a few seconds he caught the flapping of a propeller, and silenced the launch's engines.

"We are close in now," he said to c.o.ke, after a brief and noiseless drift. "Why not try a hail!"

"Ship ahoy!" shouted c.o.ke, with all the force of brazen lungs.

The screw of the unseen ship stopped. The sigh of escaping steam reached them.

"_Holla_! _Wer rufe_?" was the gruff answer.

"Sink me if it ain't a German!" growled c.o.ke, _sotto-voce_, "Norrie, you must stick here till I sing out to you. Then open your exhaust an'

unscrew a sea-c.o.c.k. . . . Wot ship is that?" he vociferated aloud.

Some answer was forthcoming--what, it mattered not. The launch b.u.mped into the rusty ribs of a twelve-hundred ton tramp. A rope ladder was lowered. A round-faced Teuton mate--fat and placid--was vastly surprised to find a horde of nondescripts pouring up the ship's side in the wake of a short, thick, bovine-looking person who neither understood nor tried to understand a word he was saying.

These extraordinary visitors from the deep brought with them a girl and three wounded men. By this time the captain was aroused; he spoke some English.

"Vas iss diss?" he asked, surveying the newcomers with amazement, and their bizarre costumes with growing nervousness. "Vere haf you coomed vrom?"

c.o.ke pushed him playfully into the cook's galley.

"This is too easy," he chortled. "Set about 'em, you swabs. Don't hurt anybody unless they ax for it. Round every son of a gun into the fo'c'sle till I come. Mr. Watts, the bridge for you. Olsen, take the wheel. Mr. Hozier, see wot you can find in their flag locker. _Now_, Mr. Norrie! Sharp for it. You're wanted in the engine-room."

And that is how ex-President Dom Corria Antonio De Sylva acquired the nucleus of his fleet, though, unhappily, an accident to a sea-c.o.c.k forthwith deprived him of a most useful and seaworthy steam launch.

CHAPTER XI

A LIVELY MORNING IN EXCHANGE BUILDINGS

c.o.ke and his merry men became pirates during the early morning of Thursday, September 2d; the curious reader can ascertain the year by looking up "Brazil" in any modern Encyclopedia, and turning to the sub-division "Recent History." On Monday, September 6th, David Verity entered his office in Exchange Buildings, Liverpool, hung his hat and overcoat on their allotted pegs, swore at the office boy because some spots of rain had come in through an open window, and ran a feverish glance through his letters to learn if any envelopes bearing the planetary devices of the chief cable companies had managed to hide themselves among the ma.s.s of correspondence.

The act was perfunctory. Well he knew that telephone or special messenger would speedily have advised him if news of the _Andromeda_ had arrived since he left the office on Sat.u.r.day afternoon. But it is said that drowning men clutch at straws, and the metaphor might be applied to Verity with peculiar aptness. He was sinking in a sea of troubles, sinking because the old buoyancy was gone, sinking because many hands were stretched forth to push him under, and never one to draw him forth.

There was no cablegram, of course. d.i.c.key Bulmer, who had become a waking nightmare to the unhappy shipowner, had said there wouldn't be--said it twelve hours ago, after wringing from Verity the astounding admission that Iris was on board the _Andromeda_. It was not because the vessel was overdue that David confessed. Bulmer, despite his sixty-eight years, was an acute man of business. Moreover, he was blessed with a retentive memory, and he treasured every word of the bogus messages from Iris concocted by her uncle. They were lucid at first, but under the stress of time they wore thin, grew disconnected, showed signs of the strain imposed on their author's imagination.

Bulmer, a typical Lancashire man, blended in his disposition a genial openhandedness with a shrewd caution. He could display a princely generosity in dealing with Verity as the near relative and guardian of his promised wife; to the man whom he suspected of creating the obstacles that kept her away from him he applied a pitiless logic.

The storm had burst unexpectedly. Bulmer came to dinner, ate and drank and smoked in quiet amity until David's laboring muse conveyed his niece's latest "kind love an' good wishes," and then----

"Tell you wot," said d.i.c.key, "there's another five thousand due to-morrow on the surveyor's report."

"There is," said Verity, knowing that his guest and prospective partner alluded to the new steamer in course of construction on the Clyde.

"Well, it won't be paid."

David lifted his gla.s.s of port to hide his face. Was this the first rumbling of the tempest? Though expected hourly, he was not prepared for it. His hand trembled. He dared not put the wine to his lips.

"Wot's up now?" he asked.

"You're playin' some underhand game on me, David, an' I won't stand it," was the unhesitating reply. "You're lyin' about Iris. You've bin lyin' ever since she disappeared from Bootle. Show me 'er letters an'

their envelopes, an' I'll find the money. But, of course, you can't.

They don't exist. Now, own up as man to man, an' I'll see if this affair can be settled without the lawyers. You know wot it means once _they_ take hold."

Then David set down the untasted wine and told the truth. Not all--that was not to be dreamed of. In the depths of his heart he feared Bulmer. The old man's repute for honesty was widespread. He would fling his dearest friend into prison for such a swindle as that arranged between c.o.ke and the shipowner. But it was a positive relief to divulge everything that concerned Iris. From his pocket-book David produced her frayed letter, and Bulmer read it slowly, aloud, through eyegla.s.ses held at a long focus.

Now, given certain definite circ.u.mstances, an honest man and a rogue will always view them differently. David had interpreted the girl's guarded phrases in the light of his villainous compact with c.o.ke.

d.i.c.key, unaware of this disturbing element, was inwardly amazed to learn that Verity had lied so outrageously with the sole object of carrying through a commercial enterprise.

"'Tell him I shall marry him when the _Andromeda_ returns to England from South America,'" he read. And again . . . "'The vessel is due back at the end of September, I believe, so Mr. Bulmer will not have long to wait.'"

If, in the first instance, David had not been swept off his feet by the magnitude of the catastrophe, if he had not commenced the series of prevarications before the letter reached him, he might have adopted the only sane course and taken Bulmer fully into his confidence. It was too late now. Explanation was useless. The only plea that occurred to him was more deadly than silence, since it was her knowledge of the contemplated crime that made Iris a stowaway. He had never guessed how that knowledge was attained and the added mystery intensified his torture.

d.i.c.key rose from the table. His movements showed his age that night.

"I'll think it over, David," he said. "There's more in this than meets the eye. I'll just go home an' think it over. Mebbe I'll call at your place in the mornin'."

So here was Verity, awaiting Bulmer's visit as a criminal awaits a hangman. There was no shred of hope in his mind that his one-time crony would raise a finger to save him from bankruptcy. Some offenses are unforgivable, and high in the list ranks the folly of separating a wealthy old man from his promised bride.

Now that a reprieve was seemingly impossible, he faced his misfortunes with a dour courage. It had been a difficult and thankless task during the past month to stave off pressing creditors. With Iris in Bootle and Bulmer her devoted slave, Verity would have weathered the gale with jaunty self-confidence. But that element of strength was lacking; nay, more, he felt in his heart that it could never be replaced. He was no longer the acute, bl.u.s.tering, effusive Verity, who in one summer's afternoon had secured a rich partner and forced an impecunious sailor to throw away a worn-out ship. The insurance held good, of course, and there simply _must_ be some sort of tidings of the _Andromeda_ to hand before the end of September. Yet things had gone wrong, desperately wrong, and he was quaking with the belief that there was worse in store.

He began to read his letters. They were mostly in the same vein, duns, more or less active. His managing clerk entered.

"There's an offer of 5s. 6d. Cardiff to Bilbao and Bilbao to the Tyne for the _h.e.l.lespont_. It is better than nothing. Shall we take it, sir?"

The _h.e.l.lespont_ was the firm's other ship. She, too, was old and running at a loss.

"Yes. Wot is it, coal or patent fuel?"

"Coal, with a return freight of ore."

"Wish it was dynamite, with fuses laid on."

The clerk grinned knowingly. Men grow callous when money tilts the scale against human lives.