The Veiled Lady, and Other Men and Women Part 19

"Who is the black-bearded man with him?"

"He is his intimate friend, Count Lovusski. Been all over the world together."

"Is Lovusski his ONLY name?" This seemed to be my chance.

Alcorn turned quickly and looked into my face.

"On the dead quiet, is it?"

"Yes, Alcorn, you can trust me."

"No--he's got half a dozen of 'em. In Paris in '70 he was Baron Germunde with estates in Hungary. Lived like a fighting-c.o.c.k; knew everybody at the Palace and everybody knew him--stayed there all through the Franco-Prussian War. In London in '75 he was plain Mr.

Loring, trying to raise money for a mine somewhere in Portugal--knew n.o.body but stockbrokers and bank presidents. In New York five years ago he was Mr. Norvic Bing, and worked on some kind of a dictionary; lived in a boarding-house on Union Square."

I could not conceal my delight.

"I knew I was right!" I cried, laying my hand on his arm. "I lived with him there a whole winter."

"Yes, he told me so. That's why I am telling you the rest of it."

Alcorn was smiling, a curious expression lighting his face.

"And how came he to be such a friend of the Prince's?" I asked.

"He isn't his friend--isn't anybody's friend. He's a special agent of the Russian Secret Service."

CAPTAIN JOE AND THE SUSIE ANN

Wide of beam, stout of mast, short-bowspritted, her boom clewed up to clear her deck load of rough stone; drawing ten feet aft and nine feet for'ard; a twelve-horse hoisting engine and boiler in her forecastle; at the tiller a wabbly-jointed, halibut-shaped, moon-faced (partially eclipsed, owing to a fringe of dark whiskers), sleepy-eyed skipper named Baxter,--such was the sloop Susie Ann, and her outfit and her commander, as she lay alongside the dock in New London Harbor, ready to discharge her cargo at the site of Shark Ledge Lighthouse, eight miles seaward.

On the dock itself, over a wharf post sprawled her owner, old Abram Marrows, a thin, long, badly put together man, awkward as a stepladder and as rickety, who, after trying everything from farming to selling a patent churn, had at last become a shipowner, the Susie Ann, comprising his entire fleet. Marrows had come to see her off; this being the sloop's first trip for the season.

Lying outside the Susie Ann--her lines fast to an off-sh.o.r.e spile, was the construction tug of the lighthouse gang, the deck strewn with diving gear, water casks and the like,--all needed in the furthering of the work at the ledge. On the tug's forward deck, hat off and jacket swinging loose, stood Captain Joe Bell in charge of the submarine work at the site, glorious old Captain Joe, with the body of a capstan, legs stiff as wharf posts, arms and hands tough as cant hooks and heart twice as big as all of them put together.

Each and every piece of stone,--some of them weighed seven tons,--stowed aboard the Susie Ann, was, when she arrived alongside the foundation of the lighthouse, to be lowered over her side and sent down to Captain Joe to place in thirty feet of water. This fact made him particular both as to the kind of vessel engaged and the ability of the skipper. Bad seamanship might not only endanger the security of the work but his own life as well,--a diver not being as quick as a crab or blackfish in getting from under a seven-ton stone dropped from tripdogs at the signal to "lower away."

Captain Joe's inspection of the Susie Ann's skipper was anything but satisfactory, judging from the way he opened his battery of protest.

"Baxter ain't fittin', I tell ye, Abram Marrows," he exploded. "He ain't fittin' and never will be. Baxter don't know most nothin'. Set him to grubbin' clams, Abram, but don't let him fool 'round the Ledge.

He'll git the sloop ash.o.r.e, I tell ye, or drop a stone and hurt somebody. Go and git a MAN som'ers and put him in charge,--not a half-baked--" here he lowered his muzzle and fired point-blank at the object of his wrath,--"Yes, and I'll say it to your face, Captain Baxter. You take my advice and lay off for this v'yage,--it ain't no picnic out to the Ledge. You ain't seen it since we got the stone 'bove high water. Reg'lar mill tail! You go ash.o.r.e, I tell ye,--or ye'll lose the sloop."

Many of the men ranged along the top of the cabin of the tug, or perched on its rail, wondered at the vehemence of the captain's attack, "Moon-faced Baxter," as he was called, having a fair reputation as a seaman. They knew, too, that Captain Joe was aware of the condition of Marrows's affairs, for it had been common talk that the bank had loaned Abram several hundred dollars with the sloop as security on the captain's own personal inspection. Some of them had even been present when Mrs. Marrows,--a faded old woman with bleached eyes and a pursed-up mouth, her shawl hooding her head and pinned close under her chin with her thumb and forefinger,--had begged Captain Joe to try the Susie Ann for a few loads until Abram could "ketch up," and had heard his promise to help her.

But they made no protest. Such outbursts on the captain's part were but the escaping steam from the overcharged boiler of his indignation.

Underneath lay the firebox of his heart, chock full of red-hot coals glowing with sympathy for every soul who needed his help. If his safety valve let go once in a while it was to escape from greater danger.

His long range ammunition exhausted, Captain Joe turned on his heel and walked aft to where his diving gear was piled, venting his indignation at every step. This time the outburst was directed to me,--(it was my weekly inspection at the Ledge).

"Can't jam nothin' into his head, sir. Stubbornest mule 'round this harbor. Warn't for that wife o' his Abe Marrows would a-been high and dry long ago. Every time he gits something purty good he goes and fools it away;--sold his farm and bought that sloop; then he clapped a plaster on it in the bank to start a cook shop. But the wife's all right;--only last week she come to me lookin' like she'd bu'st out cryin',--sayin' the sloop was all they had, and I promised her then I'd use the Susie, but she never said nothin' 'bout Baxter being in charge, or I'd stopped him 'fore he loaded her. Well, there ain't no tellin'

what nat'ral born fools like Abe Marrows'll do, but it's something ornery and criss-cross if Abe Marrows does it. That woman's worked her fingers off for him, but he'll git her in the poor-house yit,--see if he don't."

Marrows had heard every word of Captain Joe's outburst, but he made no answer except to lift his thin elbows and spread his fingers in a deprecatory way, as if in protest. Baxter maintained a dogged silence;--the least said in answer the better. Captain Joe Bell was not a man either to contradict or oppose;--better let him blow it all out.

Both owner and skipper determined to take the risk. The Susie Ann had been laid up all winter awaiting the opening of the spring work, and the successful carrying out of the present venture was Marrows's only escape from financial ruin, and Baxter's only chance of getting his back wages. There was an unpaid bill, too, for caulking, then a year old, lying in Abram's bureau drawer, together with an account at Mike Lavin's machine shop for a new set of grate bars, now almost worn out.

Worse than all the bank's lien on the sloop was due in a few weeks.

What money the sloop earned, therefore, must be earned quickly.

And then again, Abram ruminated, Shark Ledge wasn't the worst place on the coast,--despite Captain Joe's warning,--especially on this particular morning, when a light wind was blowing off sh.o.r.e. Plenty of other sloops had delivered stone over their rails to the divers below.

Marrows remembered that he had been out to the Ledge himself when the Screamer came up into the wind and crawled slowly up until her forefoot was within a biscuit toss of the stone pile.

What Marrows forgot was that Captain Bob Brandt of Cape Ann had then held the spokes of the Screamer's wheel,--a man who knew every twist and turn of the treacherous tide.

So Baxter shook out the sloop's jib and mainsail and started on his journey eight miles seaward, with orders to make fast on arrival to the spar buoy which lay within a few hundred yards of the Ledge, and there wait until the tide turned, when she could drop into position to unload. The tug with all of us on board would follow when we had taken on fresh water and coal.

On the run out Captain Joe watched the sloop until she had made her first tack, then he turned to his work and again busied himself in overhauling his diving dress; tightening the set-screws in his copper collar, re-cording his breastplate and putting new leather thongs in his leaden shoes. There was some stone on the sloop's deck which was needed to complete a level down among the black fish and torn cod,--twenty-two feet down,--where the sea kelp streamed up in long blades above the top of his helmet and the rock crabs scurried out of his way. If Baxter didn't make a "tarnel fool of himself and git into one o' them swirl-holes," he intended to get these stones into place before night.

He knew these "holes," as he did every other swirl around the ledge and what they could do and what they couldn't. They were his swirls, really,--for he had placed every individual fragment of the obstructions that caused them with his own hands, in thirty feet of water.

Some three years before the site had been marked by a spindle bearing an iron cage and fastened to a huge boulder known as Shark Ledge Rock, and covered at low water. The unloading of various sloops and schooners under his orders had enlarged this submerged rock to a miniature island, its ragged crest thrust above the sea. This obstruction to the will of the wind and tide, and the ever-present six-mile current, caused by the narrowing of Long Island Sound in its onrush to the sea, acted as a fallen log that blocks a mountain stream, or a boulder that plugs a torrent. That which for centuries had been a steady "set" every six hours east and west, had now become a "back-and-in suck" fringed by a series of swirling undercurrents dealing death and destruction to the ignorant and unwary.

Not been long since a schooner loaded with concrete had been saved from destruction by the merest chance, and later on a big scow caught in the swirl had parted her buoy lines and would have landed high and dry on the stone pile had not Captain Joe run a hawser to her, twisted its bight around the drum of his engine and warped her off just in time to save her bones from sea worms.

As the tug approached, the Ledge, looming up on the dim horizon line, looked like a huge whale spouting derricks, a barnacle of a shanty clinging to its back. Soon there rose into relief the little knot of men gathered about one of the whale's fins--our landing stage,--and then, as we came alongside, the welcome curl of the smoke, telling of fried pork and saleratus biscuit.

Captain Joe's orders now came thick and fast.

"Hurry dinner, Nichols,"--this to the shanty cook, who was leaning out of the galley window,--"And here,--three or four o' ye, git this divin'

stuff ash.o.r.e, and then all hands to dinner. The wind's ag'in Baxter,--he won't git here for an hour. Startin' on one o' them long legs o' his'n now,"--and the captain's eye rested on the sloop beating up Fisher's Island way.

"And, Billy,--'fore ye go ash.o.r.e, jump into the yawl and take a look at that s.n.a.t.c.h block on the spar buoy,--that clam digger may want it 'fore night."

This spar buoy lay a few hundred yards off the Whale's Snout. Loaded vessels were moored to this quill bob, held in place by a five-ton sinker, until they were ready to drop into the eddy and there discharge their stone.

Dinner over the men fell to work, each to his job. The derrick gang was set to shifting a boom on to the larger derrick, the concrete mixers picked up their shovels, and I went to work on the pay-roll of the week. This I always figured up in the little dry-goods box of a room opening out of the galley in the end of our board shanty, its window looking toward Montauk.

As I leaned my arms on the sill for a glimpse of the wide expanse of blue and silver, the cotton rag that served as a curtain flapped in my face. I pushed it aside and craned my neck north and south. The curtain had acted as a weather vane,--the wind had hauled to the east.

The sky, too, had dulled. Little lumpy clouds showed near the horizon line, and, sailing above these, hung a dirt spot of vapor, while aloft glowed some prismatic sundogs, shimmering like opals. Etched against the distance, with a tether line fastened to the spar buoy, lay the Susie Ann. She had that moment arrived and had made fast. Her sails were furled, her boom swinging loose and ready, the smoke from her hoister curling from the end of her smoke pipe thrust up out of the forward hatch.

Then I looked closer in.

Below me, on the concrete platform, rested our big air pump, and beside it stood Captain Joe. He had slipped into his diving dress and was at the moment adjusting the breastplates of lead, weighing twenty-five pounds each, to his chest and back. His leaden shoes were already on his feet. With the exception of his copper helmet, the signal line around his wrist, and the life line about his waist, he was ready to go under water.

Pretty soon he would don his helmet, and, with a last word to Jimmy, his tender, would tuck his chin whisker inside the round opening, wait until the face plate was screwed on, and then, with a cheerful nod behind the gla.s.s, denoting that his air was coming all right, would step down his rude ladder into the sea,--down,--down,--down to his place among the crabs and the seaweed.

Suddenly my ears became conscious of a conversation carried on in a low tone around the corner of the shanty.