The Vultures Part 36

"There's bombs about, and it's me that has been carrying them," he concluded. "That is what I have got to tell you."

"How do you know?" asked Cartoner, in his gentle and soothing way.

The captain settled himself in his chair, and crossed one leg over the other.

"Know the Johannis Bulwark, in Hamburg?"

Cartoner nodded.

"Know the Seemannshaus there?"

"Yes. The house that stands high up among the trees overlooking the docks."

"That's the place," said Captain Cable. "Well, one night I was up there, on the terrace in front of the house where the sailors sit and spit all day waiting to be taken on. Got into Hamburg short-handed. I was picking up a crew. Not the right time to do it, you'll say, after dark, as times go and forecastle hands pan out in these days. Well, I had my reasons.

You can pick up good men in Hamburg if you go about it the right way.

A man comes up to me. Remembered me, he said; had sailed with me on a voyage when we had machinery from the Tyne that was too big for us, and we couldn't get the hatches on. We sailed after nightfall, I recollect, with hatches off, and had the seas slopping in before the morning.

He remembered it, he said. And he asked me if it was true that I was goin'--well, to the port I was bound for. And I said it was G.o.d's truth.

Then he told me a long yarn of two cases outshipped that was lying down at the wharf. Transshipment goods on a through bill of lading. And the bill of lading gone a missing in the post. A long story, all lies, as I ought to have known at the time. He had a man with him--forwarding agent, he called him. This chap couldn't speak English, but he spoke German, and the other man translated as we went along. I couldn't rightly see the other man's face. Little, dark man--with a queer, soft voice, like a woman wheedlin'! Too d--d innocent, and I ought to have known it. Don't you ever be wheedled by a woman, Mr. Cartoner. Got a match?"

For the captain's cigar had gone out. But he felt quite at home, as he always did--this unvarnished gentleman from the sea--and asked for what he wanted.

"Well, to make a long yarn short, I took the cases. Two of them, size of an orange-box. We were full, so I had them in the state-room alongside of the locker where I lie down and get a bit of sleep when I feel I want it. And they paid me well. It was government stuff, the soft-spoken man said, and the freight would come out of the taxes and never be missed.

We went into heavy weather, and, as luck would have it, one of the cases broke adrift and got smashed. I mended it myself, and had to open it.

Then I saw that it was explosives. Lie number one! It was packed in wadding so as to save a jar. It was too small for sh.e.l.ls. Besides, no government sends loaded sh.e.l.ls about, 'cepting in war time. At the moment I did not think much about it. It was heavy weather, and I had a new crew. There were other things to think about. And, I tell you, when I got to port, a chap with gold lace on him came aboard and took the stuff away."

Cartoner's attention was aroused now. There was something in this story, after all. There might be everything in it when the captain told what had brought these past events back to his recollection.

"I'm not going to tell you the port of discharge," said Captain Cable, "because in doing that I should run foul of other people who acted square by me, and I'll act square by them. I'll tell you one thing, though, I sighted the Scaw light on that voyage. You can have that bit of information--you, that's half a sailor. You can put that in your pipe and smoke it."

And he glanced at Cartoner's cigarette with the satisfaction of a conversationalist who has pulled off a good simile.

"'Safternoon," he continued, "I went to see some people about a little job for the _Minnie_. She'll be out of dock in a fortnight. You will not forget to come down and see her?"

"I should like to see her," said Cartoner. "Go on with your story."

"Well, this afternoon I went to see some parties that had a charter to offer me. Foreigners--every man Jack of them. Spoke in German, out of politeness to me. The Lord knows what they would have spoken if I hadn't been there. It was bad enough as it was. But it wasn't the lingo that got me; it was the voice. 'Where have I heard that voice?' thinks I.

And then I remembered. It was at the Seemannshaus, at Hamburg, one dark night. 'You're a pretty government official,' I says to myself, sitting quiet all the time, like a cat in the engine-room. I wouldn't have taken the job at any rate, owing to that voice, which I have never forgotten, and yet never thought to hear again. But while the parley voo was still going on, up jumps a man--the only man I knew there--name beginning with a K--don't quite remember it. At any rate, up he jumps, and says that that room was no place for me nor yet for him. Dare say you know the man, if I could remember his name. Sort of thin, dark man, with a way of carrying his head--quarter-deck fashion--as if he was a king or a Hooghly pilot. Well, we gets up and walks out, proudlike, as if we had been insulted. But blessed if I knew what it was all about. 'Who's that man!' I asks when we were in the street. And the other chap turns and makes a mark upon the door, which he rubs out afterwards as if it was a hanging matter. 'That's who that is,' he says."

Cartoner turned, and with one finger made an imaginary design on the soft pile of the table-cloth. Captain Cable looked at it critically, and after a moment's reflection admitted in an absent voice that his hopes for eternity were exceedingly small.

"You are too much for me," he said, after a pause. "You that deal in politics and the like."

"And the other man's name is Kosmaroff," said Cartoner.

"That's it--a Russian," answered Captain Cable, rising, and looking at the clock. His movements were energetic and very quick for his years. He carried with him the brisk atmosphere of the sea and the hardness of a life which tightens men's muscles and teaches them to observe the outward signs of man and nature.

"It beats me," he said. "But I've told you all I can--all, perhaps, that you want to hear. For it seems that you are putting two and two together already. I think I've done right. At any rate, I'll stand by it. It makes me uneasy to think of that stuff having been below the _Minnie's_ hatches."

"It makes me uneasy, too," said Cartoner. "Wait a minute till I put on another coat. I am going out. We may as well go down together."

He came back a moment later, having changed his coat. He was attaching the small insignia of a foreign order to the lapel.

"Going to a swarree?" asked Cable, as between men of the world.

"I am going to look for a man I want to see to-night, and I think I shall find him, as you say, at a soiree," answered Cartoner, gravely.

Out in the street he paused for a moment. A cab was already waiting, having dashed up from the club stand.

"By-the-way," he said, "I shall not be able to come down and see the _Minnie_ this time. I shall be off by the eight o'clock train to-morrow morning."

"Going foreign?" asked the captain.

"Yes, I am going abroad again," answered Cartoner, and there was a sudden ring of exultation in his voice. For this was after all, a man of action who had strayed into a profession of which the strength is to sit still.

XXVI

IN THE SPRING

The Mangles pa.s.sed the winter at Warsaw, and there learned the usual lesson of the traveller: that countries reputed hot or cold are neither so hot nor so cold as they are represented. The winter was a hard one, and Warsaw, of all European cities, was, perhaps, the last that any lady would select to pa.s.s the cold months in.

"I have my orders," said Mangles, rather grimly, "and I must stay here till I am moved on. But the orders say nothing about you or Netty. Go to Nice if you like."

And Julie seemed half inclined to go southward. But for one reason or another--reasons, it may be, put forward by Netty in private conversation with her aunt--the ladies lingered on.

"The place is dull for you," said Mangles, "now that Cartoner seems to have left us for good. His gay and sparkling conversation would enliven any circle."

And beneath his s.h.a.ggy brows he glanced at Netty, whose smooth cheek did not change color, while her eyes met his with an affectionate smile.

"You seemed to have plenty to say to each other coming across the Atlantic," she said. "I always found you with your heads close together whenever I came on deck."

"Don't think we sparkled much," said Joseph, with his under lip well forward.

"It is very kind of Uncle Joseph," said Netty, afterwards, to Miss Mangles, "to suggest that we should go south, and, of course, it would be lovely to feel the sunshine again, but we could not leave him, could we? You must not think of me, auntie; I am quite happy here, and should not enjoy the Riviera at all if we left uncle all alone here."

Julie had a strict sense of duty, which, perhaps, Netty was cognizant of; and the subject was never really brought under discussion. During a particularly bad spell of weather Mr. Mangles again and again suggested that he should be left at Warsaw, but on each occasion Netty came forward with that complete unselfishness and sweet forethought for others which all who knew her learned to look for in her every action.

Warsaw, she admitted, was dull, and the surrounding country simply impossible. But the winter could not last forever, she urged, with a little shiver. And it really was quite easy to keep warm if one went for a brisk walk in the morning. To prove this she put on the new furs which Joseph had bought her, and which were very becoming to her delicate coloring, and set out full of energy. She usually went to the Saski Gardens, the avenues of which were daily swept and kept clear of snow; and as often as not, she accidentally met Prince Martin Bukaty there.

Sometimes she crossed the bridge to Praga, and occasionally turned her steps down the Bednarska to the side of the river which was blocked by ice now, wintry and desolate. The sand-workers were still laboring, though navigation was, of course, at a stand-still.

Netty never saw Kosmaroff, however, who had gone as suddenly as he came--had gone out of her life as abruptly as he burst into it, leaving only the memory of that high-water mark of emotion to which he had raised her. Leaving also that blankest of all blanks in the feminine heart, an unsatisfied curiosity. She could not understand Kosmaroff, any more than she could understand Cartoner. And it was natural that she should, in consequence, give much thought to them both. There was, she felt, something in both alike which she had not got at, and she naturally wanted to get at it. It might be a sorrow, and her kind heart drew her attention to any hidden thought that might be a sorrow. She might be able to alleviate it. At any rate, being a woman, she, no doubt, wanted to stir it up, as it were, and see what the result would be.

Prince Martin was quite different. He was comparatively easy to understand. She knew the symptoms well. She was so unfortunate. So many people had fallen in love with her, through no fault of her own. Indeed, no one could regret it more than she did. She did not, of course, say these things to her aunt, Julie, or to that dear old blind stupid, her uncle, who never saw or understood anything, and was entirely absorbed in his cigars and his newspapers. She said them to herself--and, no doubt, found herself quite easy to convince--as other people do.

Prince Martin was very gay and light-hearted, too. If he was in love, he was gayly, frankly, openly in love, and she hoped that it would be all right--whatever that might mean. In the mean time, of course, she could not help it if she was always meeting him when she went for her walk in the Saski Gardens. There was nowhere else to walk, and it was to be supposed that he was pa.s.sing that way by accident. Or if he had found out her hours and came there on purpose she really could not help it.