Barter (Rowland)/Part 3
“Sling That Flat Tire of Yours Aboard and Heave Up Your Hook and Start Your Motor and Get Out!”
XI
WE HURRIED up the weedy path. There was a dim light in the kitchen. I stepped to the door and saw old Pompey huddled in a chair, the ancient hound crouched beside him. I clapped my hands, and as these two relicts of a bygone age roused themselves, told Pompey to bring the biggest lamp he had into the drawing-room. He ducked and grimaced and pointed to the front of the house, from which I gathered that this order had been anticipated. Evidently we had bought this old servant with the other antiques.
“What are we going to do with that mummy?” I asked Allaire, as we made our way round the corner of the house.
“Keep him on, I suppose. What else is there to do? Well, he's a good cook and still seems galvanized with some sort of uncanny activity.”
“Galvanized is right, Pom; as if he were being operated by wireless from some source removed. Perhaps he is.”
“It's that way sometimes when the human machine declines to quit after the soul moves out. I've read about such cases.”
There was a light streaming between tormented jalousies of the big room, of which the broad slats were partly missing or awry.
We entered and found that Pompey had set a lamp in the big quarter lantern. In so big a room the glare of it was thin, with awesome shadows in the recesses, while the mirrors, spotted and leprous from the rain that had dripped their backs, gave a ghostly broken reflection that augmented the vastness of the gloom, baffling all idea of its dimensions.
“Cheerful place for a honeymoon, Pom.” Allaire sank down in the huge prelate's chair at the head of the tarnished table.
“Well, I'm not sure but what that trying epoch might do better in a place like this. The bride would not be apt to slam off to sulk.”
“No, I'll say she'd stick tight. I've never been a 'fraid cat; but if you were Blackbeard, I'd rather take a chance with you than go upstairs alone.”
“And you really think you can sell this abysmal horror of a place to a cheerful libertine like Nick Sayles?”
“Who said anything about Nick Sayles?”
“It wasn't hard to guess. I've learned something about your methods. He would give it one look and run.”
“You lack imagination, Pom. I can see its possibilities. With a bit of money spent on the house and grounds, and light and color and servants and a gay crowd, it would be a dream place.”
“It's that now—a nightmare.”
“Rather worse; a shabby tomb with the bones all bare. But it could be rehabilitated. I can see it restored, rosy and sweet and with a background of old-time dignity, which modern places can't attain. You wait and see. If we get away with this stuff, I'm coming back to clean it up. Then I'll show it to Nick, in a sort of bathed but undressed way. He's got plenty of artistry of a splashy stage-manager sort beneath his barbarism. He will get it at the first glance and love to play with it. Think of all the money he could spend!”
“Well, perhaps you're right, Allaire. It would be fun to see what one could do, and it would be unique. The enchanted-island thing, with Persian gardens and a dash of old planter days. Something to hit your Philistine friends in the eye. Nick likes that sort of thing.... Listen! Here comes our visitor.”
We heard a brisk step outside, a stifled imprecation as it tripped on something, followed by a chuckle and an awed “My unsainted aunt!” Evidently the stark fearfulness of the old barrack looming with defiant blatancy in the brilliant moonlight had struck at our caller's æsthetic sense, more with humor than dismay, as if some coquettish grand dame in her ninetieth year had flung a silvered scarf over her gaunt bony shoulders and exposed herself for admiration on a moonlit terrace, boldly facing the searching rays of a lovers' moon.
He came up onto the porch with a caution that I felt to be more for the loose rotted planks than for ourselves and struck the big bronze knocker two light taps. I had risen, and went out into the antechamber to the door, which I threw open.
“Good evening,” I said. “Will you come in?”
“Thanks awfully. Hope I don't intrude.”
“Impossible, if you don't mind it a little subdued as to light and cheer. You see, we've just entered into possession, and there seems to be a bit to do.”
He laughed. The moonlight was behind him, and the interior being plunged in gloom, I was able to distinguish no more than a trim, broad-shouldered figure in white with a well-shaped head. I ushered him to the room where Allaire was sitting. She looked up with a smile and I found myself suddenly under an intense embarrassment. I did not want to present our caller to her as my wife, while on the other hand I certainly did not care to mention her as anybody else.
Allaire's quick wit and poise came to my rescue. She laughed and said easily, “We are not yet receiving officially, captain. But you have probably been here before and know what to expect.”
He did it for me then.
“Quite right, Mrs. Stirling. It's not the ghastly old ruin sets me aback. It's finding it so charmingly and unexpectedly tenanted. Can't quite get the why and wherefore of it—even after what your man tells me.”
This was said pleasantly enough so far as concerned the phrasing. But there was a cut to his tone that stiffened me, as if he had said, “What the devil right have you here anyhow?” Which was precisely the idea he intended to convey.
“Would you mind telling us who you are?” I asked, then got a surprise.
“Not a bit. I'm Carstairs, ci-devant lieutenant commander, R. N., at this moment skipper of the schooner Gadfly, Nassau to Halifax with rum.” He gave a short laugh. “The Halifax is a code word for New Jersey beach. Good name, Gadfly, what? Buzzes round for a chance to inject the jolly old poison and fly before gettin' swatted.”
“Will you sit down, Captain Carstairs?” said Allaire. “I think perhaps I know some of your people in England. Kent, isn't it?”
He accepted her invitation, and his face darkened. It seemed to me that I had never seen a handsomer man, so far as features went, or one who impressed me as more vicious in a high-bred way. Thick, wavy chestnut hair graying a little at the temples; a square face cleanly featured, with one of those absolutely straight and rather classic noses; lean cheeks and his mouth a clean-cut gash with a short, closely trimmed mustache. His eyes were what betrayed the wrongness of a face otherwise entirely right. They were a blue-gray, so light as to be startling, and their setting was a bit off. Not quite on the same horizontal line. Also it struck me that he was slightly drunk, after the way of these pale drinkers whose blood alcohol appears to chill rather than to warm, making them keen rather than confused, but with a savage keenness. It appeared that Allaire and I had reckoned pretty closely on his sort, merely from the distant intonation of his voice as it reached us across the still water.
Here, I perceived, was a dangerous man, whatever his errand might be. He would be anywhere at any time, and no matter how engaged, a dangerous man. One of those overbred, high-strung, supercharged members of an aristocracy that is effete only in spots, gone wrong at some time of his career, labeled a bad lot, black sheep, wrong 'un and all the rest of it; and having thrown his bonnet over the mill, accepted such a finding and determined to live up to it. Such an individual might be capable of anything until haply he was killed.
Now at Allaire's mention of knowing his people—which I was inclined to doubt—he flushed swarthily under his ruddy tan. I believed Allaire had given this touch the better to get his measure, for if there is anything that flicks such a type of aristocratic renegade on the raw it is a reference to his family and the family home.
“That's the other branch, Mrs. Stirling. Mine's Devon—or rather was. I'm the last. Just as well, maybe. I say, I am set flat aback to find you here and in possession—if you can call it that.”
“Why not call it that?” I asked.
His eyes shot me a pale glare from under eyebrows darker than his hair and too heavy for so young a man. He might be in the early thirties, I thought, though with twice that of hard living behind him; hard, yet healthy in a physical way.
“Why, because, chappy-o, I was under the distinct impression that the rummy old key and all atop it belonged to me.”
So here was the joker. I drew up a chair between Carstairs and Allaire and seated myself. Carstairs moved forward a little, not to have his view of Allaire obstructed. His pale eyes fastened on her in a devouring way. She was precisely type of young womanhood to appeal to a man of his sort and ancestry. Like a cool breath from home, reminiscent of the Devon girls of family he might have been permitted to know when he was a young scapegrace boy instead of a young scapegrace man, and worse.
This was enough to tauten me up, aside from the patronizing “chappy-o.”
I could not help but feel that it was going to take some piloting to get us past the reefs ahead without striking somewhere.
“Will you please tell us on what you base your claim?” I asked.
“Best in the world, old egg.” He looked round. “I say, it's a fairish hot night, and since we've got a bit of a gam ahead ”
I clapped my hands. Old Pompey came bobbing in. He had slipped on his quaint old tailed coat with the brass buttons.
“Fetch some wine, Pompey,” I said.
“And some water, if you don't mind my asking,” Carstairs said. “Don't know how you may happen to be off for ambrosia, but we can soon remove that doubt. Please tell that shriveled ape not to bother about the wine. Excuse me, Mrs. Stirling.”
He whipped out of his chair, went to the front door and blew a whistle, then waited there for his boatman. Allaire leaned toward me.
“This looks a little thick, Pom.”
“That joker you were asking for. Leave it to me. This is my game.”
“He's pure devil, Pom. I know that sort.”
“So do I. Very intelligent, highly efficient and decidedly mad sober, he might be amenable to some suggestions of the decency of early training. Drunk, he would do anything that came into his head. He is a little drunk now. You sit tight and leave him to me.”
“But, Pom, you can see that he's as strong as a lion, and you're not armed or—anything.”
“That last is wrong I'm always—something. If he wants to drink then let him. I could do with one myself.”
“But, Pom, he's got his crew, and they are probably horrors. I'm—I'm ”
“You are nothing of the sort. You wanted to run rum yourself, and here now is a sample of that brotherhood. Sit tight and watch I've handed men. Girls like you are where I come a cropper.”
“But he is not like other men. I tell you, Pom, he's ”
A cockney whine came nasally, “'Ere, sir.”
“Get out aboard, as fast as God'll let you and break out a case of Cordon Rouge champagne and sweat it up here. The best, mind you, under my berth. And while you're at it, fetch in a chunk of ice.”
“Wurry good, sir.”
Carstairs came back into the room.
Hope you don't think I'm officious, but really, when all's said and done, I'm host here.”
“That is what we are waiting to be shown,” I said.
He reseated himself, lightly as a cat.
“Well, you see, old bean ”
“One minute, Carstairs,” I interrupted. “Whether this happens to be your house or mine, and without reference to other interesting features of the situation, I am Pomeroy Stirling, of New York, late lieutenant, U.S. N., commanding a mine sweeper on the coast of France. You will therefore kindly refrain from addressing me as you might the fellow with his elbow next yours at the bar. That way we may get on a little better.”
He swung round in his chair and stared. I, not being a woman, found no peculiar compelling force in those bleached eyes of his. Looking closely at the pin-point pupils of them, it struck me that they were too contracted for an alcoholic. Then, it seemed to me, they went a little out of focus.
He gave his short metallic laugh.
“I say, old—Mr. Stirling, no need to get shirty. Just my way. Rotten bad form and all the rest of it, but we all get slack sometimes. Now about this silly place. I bought it from the old blighter last time I nosed in here, about three months ago. Got his note of hand. So that's that.”
I glanced at Allaire. The look of relief in her eyes was reflected in my own. Carstairs caught it and stared again, this time at Allaire.
“Well?”
“No good,” I said. “It wasn't the old captain's to sell.”
He swung on me then.
“The deuce you say! Why not?”
“Because he had already deeded it about six months before that time to a man named Sanders, over at Jupiter Inlet, on condition that Sanders was to keep him in supplies at the rate of four hundred dollars a year for as much longer as he might live. And we bought it from Sanders.”
Carstairs did not answer. He began to drum on the table with his fingers. Then he looked up at Allaire and laughed.
“Well, in that case it looks as if I'd been had—jolly well had.”
“You can always file your claim,” I said.
“No, that's not worth the bother, if the old scoundrel let me down as you say. The best I can do then is to call it a bad bet and take such of my rotten stuff as I rather fancy and clear.”
“What stuff?” I asked.
“Some of this old litter in the house. These filthy rugs and hangin's and things, and possibly an old glass or two, if there's a chance they are solid enough to shift. I bought all that dunnage from the old gaffer over a year ago. Surely you can't object to my taking that. Save you the trouble of rippin' it out and burning it. Besides, it's really mine, y'know.”
Allaire rested her bare elbows on the table, leaned forward and looked at him with a smile on her wide mouth.
“Why, of course not, Captain Carstairs—if it's really yours.”
Old Pompey came bobbing in with a decanter of the wine he had served us the evening before and some cut-glass tumblers. He set the tray on the table and began to serve us. Carstairs made a sweeping gesture that seemed to threaten the lot. But Allaire parried his arm.
“Please, Captain Carstairs. I happen to prefer this wine to your champagne.”
“Sorry; just as you like. Permit me, madame.” He rose in that alert way he had and served her. “What say, Stirling? Shall we wait for fizz and ice?”
“Before we drink,” I said, “let's hear a little more about this old stuff you bought. Because you see, Sanders sold us the whole works, just as they stand, key, house and everything in it.”
“Well, then he bilked you. All this junk wasn't his to sell. He'd scarcely have known though.”
“Have you your receipts?” Allaire asked.
He gave her another of his sea-gull glares, flat and menacing. But now for some reason it seemed to fail of its effect on Allaire.
“Oh, I say, Mrs. Stirling, that is a bit rough. Yes, I've got a receipt of sorts, or post obit, you might say, by which I'm to have all this inside gear after the old man's demise, in consideration for sundry cases of wine and spirits I left here.”
“When was that, captain?” asked Allaire.
“A little over a year ago. The date will be on this memorandum with my things in Nassau. We cupbearers to Uncle Sam keep a little hole in the wall ashore for our business rubbish. At sea one never knows when some accident might happen. But I mind that was early in September, because the glass was dropping and the weather looked so dusty that I ducked in here, bound north for the Highlands.” He reached out and sloshed a little of the red wine into a tumbler, tasted it and set it down. “Quite so. That's some of the choice Beaune I left the old cove.”
“Wouldn't he trade for the island then?”
Carstairs gave his short laugh.
“That never entered my head. Fact is, when I rambled up to see what sort of conch blowers lived in such a beastly place, and why, he asked if I had any rum aboard, and would I trade off some for fowls. My hencoop was chock-a-block, but some of this moth-eaten truck caught my eye and I offered to take a piece or two instead. He wouldn't hear of that though. Said he'd been shipmates with it for over half a century and he'd be blowed if he'd part with it. So I made a dicker for it when he popped off.”
“What sort of a man was he?” I asked.
“Seafarin' codger in his time, I'd say. Half dippy, like most such recluses. Told me he was committing the Bible to memory, so when the Lord called all hands on deck it would find him all shipshape and proper. I asked how much he could recite and he said precious little, but it was all stowed in the lockers of his brain where he could lay hand to it when the time came.”
And for Some Reason That I Have Never Been Able to Explain, He Failed Utterly to Ward It. The Point Seemed to Glide Out a Little Along His Ribs, Then the Blade Ripped Into Him
“Did you leave him much wine?” Allaire asked.
“Not such a great lot. The trash wasn't worth it. Too far gone. You couldn't get a hundred dollars for the lot. It struck me, though, I might cut out some of the best parts and get 'em cleaned and stick 'em round my diggin's ashore. I got a tidy little bungalow in Nassau and sometimes entertain a bit. Always did rather fancy old-fashioned furnishings.”
“Then you have come here after it?”
“That and to save gas. Might as well wait for the breeze here as outside. I didn't know the old boy had checked out, but thought it likely. He seemed on his last legs when I was here before, when he deeded me the whole works for a fresh lot. But from what you tell me it seems he put one over on me.”
There came at this moment a shuffling and panting outside the door, The cockney voice whined in its harsh nasal tone: “'Ere's the wine, sir. The myte's wurry bad, sir. Says as 'ow 'e carn't starnd it no longer. Cooky says as 'ow 'e could do wiv a bit of lookin' arfter.”
Carstairs muttered something and rose, a scowl on his handsome face.
“If you'll excuse me, I think I'd better get out aboard for a few minutes. One of my jokers is in a bad way—the mate. Been lushin' ashore and now he's floppin' on the edge of D. T.'s. I'll jump out and heave some bromide into him and jock him up. Otherwise he might take it into his silly head to swim back to Nassau, and I'm short-handed already. Might have a little toss before I go.”
The sailor had set down the case of champagne and a hunk of ice in a sack of matted grass. Carstairs took out a quart bottle of what looked to be and was good wine, whipped out a pocket knife and cut the wiring, then worked gently at the cork.
“Just chip off a little ice, will you, Mr. Stirling?”
I did so, and decorated the glasses—a frieze, as one might say.
The cork popped valiantly, and with a disregard for waste such as one sees no longer at home, Carstairs gently poured the amber vintage with a hand that as I observed was not steady.
Offering a tumbler to Allaire, who took it with a word of thanks, he raised his own.
“Well, here's to your national prohibition. Long may she wave! Cheerio!”
He drained his goblet, bowed, flashed a smile at Allaire and went out with a jerk of his trim patrician head at the sailor, who followed.
XII
ALLAIRE set down her glass, rested her bare elbows on the scratched rosewood table and leaned toward me.
“What do you think of it, Pom?”
“My word, but it 5its the bull's-eye on a thirsty night like this! My inside is singing Home Was Never Like This.”
“Chuck it! What do you think?”
“The wine is honest, but the man is not. He's a liar by the ship's chronometer.”
“My idea. How do you piece it out?”
“I think that Carstairs probably put in here as he told us, but not over a year ago. It was three months ago, on his last trip North. Mo doubt he traded some of his wares with the captain, but he did not get any deed for the furniture after the old man's decease. Neither did he get any deed for the place itself.”
Allaire nodded.
“That former visit was an afterthought. He shoved the date of his alleged claim on the furniture ahead when he learned that Sanders' agreement was made nearly a year ago.”
“Precisely. The chances are that Carstairs, as a man of some culture, suspected that this stuff might have considerable value, but he had no idea of how much. On the off chance, and to get an estimate, he took a piece or two in exchange for his wine. Then while North he got ashore and showed it to some dealer who put him right. Bought it of him for a price that may or may not have been high, but was high enough to show him where he might make a good bit of money on the side. So he made up his mind to drop in here on his next trip North and scoop the lot of it, whether the old captain wanted to trade or not.”
“That's it,” said Allaire. “He was in a hurry to get back to Nassau and bank his money and load a fresh cargo, and he did not think there was any great rush about plundering this place. Of course he'd scarcely have counted ”
“Sa-h-h!”
I caught at that moment a faint creaking on the planking of the porch outside; or it might have been the steps. Somebody was sneaking back, probably to eavesdrop.
Raising my voice, I said, “Well, anyhow, we're in a bit of luck to get this bully iced champagne.” Rising then, I stretched my arms above my head and added, “Swell chap, Carstairs, if he is a rum runner. Many a good man in that game now.”
Allaire was quick to catch the drift of this.
“He's been a high roller left flat by the war, and now he's out to catch up. I'll say he is doing it too. Splendid looking, isn't he?”
“Top notch. After all, why shouldn't he? He's entirely within the law. You can't help liking the chap.”
There came another creak outside, this time by the front window. A cat could scarcely have run anywhere about this rickety old shell without making its presence known. It was evident that for some reason Carstairs had seen fit to leave us under espionage. Probably that of the sailor who had lugged up the wine and ice.
“Since Captain Carstairs is so kind,” I said, “let's have another glass. This bottle's nearly empty. What if we open another?”
“Well, it's awfully good.” Allaire was following my lead without knowing precisely what I was heading for. “More ice please, Pom.”
“I'd like to give that sailor who brought it a drink,” I said. “Wonder if he went back aboard with Carstairs.”
Another creak, retreating this time.
“I'll go out and look,” I went on. “May not be discipline, but only decent.”
All of this would have been audible a dozen yards from the house, the long French windows offering no obstruction. I drained my glass, then sauntered out to the front door.
“Hullo,” I called, “you man off the Gadfly.”
“'Ere, sir,” said a voice from the foot of the steps.
“I want to give you a glass of iced wine. You deserve it, I think.”
“Yer wurry koind, sir.” He came up the steps.
“I suppose you get no lack aboard, but not champagne.”
“No fear, sir. Skipper's a bit 'ard, once we get away to sea. Serves us out our tot 'imself, sir, and that's all.”
“What's your name?”
“'Enery, sir; 'Enery Bligh.”
“Well, Henry, I don't know what some of us would do without you lads. If I'm committing a breach of discipline, you don't have to report it, do you?”
“No bloomin' fear, sir. It ain't all beer and skittles, this 'ere rum tryde.”
“So I imagine. Wait a moment.” I stepped inside, took Carstairs' glass, put in a chip of ice, then opening a fresh bottle filled all our tumblers, handing Henry his. “The Bible says, 'Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treadeth out the corn.'”
“Thank-ee kindly, sir. Them's my sentiments. Your good 'ealth, sir and lady.”
He took it at a gulp.
“Captain's treat, Henry,” I said, and filled his glass again. “Was it as hot as this when you were here the first time?”
“'Otter, sir. 'Urricane weather, and the hair dead like. Last July, sir.”
“How long have you sailed with Captain Carstairs?” I asked.
“Goin' on eighteen months, sir. Ever since skipper started tryde wiv 'is own wessel. She's little, but she ain't 'arf bad. Larst winter it was crool 'ard. Got a nor'easter and 'ad to run eout to sea a 'underd miles. We was near a week 'ove to, sir.”
I had gilled my fish. Here was just what I had cast my net for. Henry had been with Carstairs since Carstairs started with the Gadfly. And their first call here had been this last summer—midsummer—“'urricane weather.” So that Carstairs had lied, just as we had thought, in saying that his claim to the furniture antedated that of Sanders to the whole place.
Henry, thus kindly entreated, gave us some interesting side lights on the rum traffic. I handed him the bottle and told him to finish it, which he did with polite deliberation, standing against the jamb of the door. At any other time his description might have been absorbing to me, but I now listened abstractedly. So also did Allaire, whe had, of course, discovered what I had been driving at.
The focal point of the business now was what we were going to do about it. Carstairs had discovered the great value of this stuff for which we had that day traded our entire stock, and he was there to get it. I did not think that it would matter much to Carstairs whether we denounced him as a fraud. Here was perhaps a hundred thousand dollars' worth of antique furniture, museum pieces, for the disposition of which Carstairs had no doubt already made provision. And he did not impress me as the sort to be squeamish about helping himself to it if things came to a clinch.
Henry's blabbing had disclosed the fact that, as Carstairs himself had carelessly stated, the little schooner was short-handed this voyage, less for the running of her than for the defending of her cargo, should such need arrive. We learned that there were Carstairs, his mate, now flirting with delirium tremens from a shore debauch, the cook, Henry and another sailor. That made three huskies and Carstairs who might be opposed to Cyril and myself; and Cyril out aboard the boat, with instructions to remain there, and no knowledge of the situation.
And here was Allaire. I had not missed the predatory look in Carstairs' pale eyes as they had overhauled her. There was no telling to what extremities such a man as Carstairs might go. If it came to a clash, what might be expected for Allaire with Cyril and myself disposed of?
Turning all this in mind, I decided that if it came to a clash there was nothing to be done about it. We should have to take the loss—be pirated. It is one thing to defend your property at the risk of your life, and another to defend it at the risk of that more or less valuable possession plus the sanctity of person of a young, defenseless woman.
If then, at the end of a verbal dispute that promised to be futile on my part, Carstairs decided to help himself, backed as he must be in such procedure by his three able-bodied men, I did not see how I, unarmed and no great gladiator at the best, could stop him. I understood now why Henry had been posted there as sentinel. It was to prevent Cyril and myself from joining forces. Carstairs would have been content that Allaire and I should go back aboard our boat, but it was no part of his plan that I should summon Cyril. Carstairs may have suspected that we knew the value of the stuff that was ours, and that I might be so rash as to call in Cyril to help defend our property. So there we were.
Henry broke off in the middle of some remark to the effect that a twelve-mile limit would help rather than hinder trade, making it harder for the revenue people than the rum runners.
“'Ere comes skipper, sir.”
He slithered in, set the empty bottle on the table and slithered out again.
“What next, Pom?” Allaire asked quietly enough.
“We're out of luck, I'm afraid. Barring the mate with the jimjams, Carstairs has two sailors and the cook. He means to grab this stuff, and probably tonight, since he thinks we expect a work gang here tomorrow. Not that such a crowd would matter much to him.”
Allaire looked at me fixedly.
“What are you going to do about it?” she asked.
“Nothing.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don't see how I can stop him. I'll protest, of course, for all the good that will do.”
“Look here, Pom, is it on my account you are going to let him get away with this?”
“That's not my excuse, Allaire.”
“Well, I think better of you for that. Think quickly, Pom. Isn't there anything we can do? If he carries off this stuff, there's not only a hundred, maybe two hundred thousand dollars' loss, but it leaves us flat. No more stock, nothing but the boat. What's the good of that?”
“It's maddening, I know. But what can we do? You've seen the sort he is. That aristocratic-devil kind with no restraint at all. He's been drinking already and will have had some more aboard, but he won't be drunk—that is, in the ordinary blurred sense. His type merely goes criminally insane.”
“He seems to have got your goat already, Pom.”
“Call it that, if you like; call it anything you like.”
There came through the stillness the rattle of oars and clattering of the loose planks on the jetty. Allaire looked down at her left hand, then turned my signet ring to examine the motto on the scroll beneath the shield.
“Honor Comes First,” she translated. “Don't you think that might be changed to Safety First?”
“That's about the limit as a vicious stab,” I said. “But perhaps it may not be my own honor that I think comes first.”
“I'm not afraid of him.” Allaire's tawny eyes fastened on my face. “At least, I'm more afraid of seeing a fortune slip through my fingers.”
“Then say that I'm afraid of him and that I slack an issue by which he might help himself not only to my goods but also to the woman he believes to be my bride. I know what you think of me. Well, you can go on thinking it.”
“Here he comes,” said Allaire. “Since you're afraid to fight it out, then do your best to talk it out.”
We heard the murmur of voices coming toward the house. This fact congealed the molten process inside me produced by the blast flame of Allaire's scorching words. A great deal has been said and written about the quality of courage, physical and moral. By this time I understood my own, such as I could claim to possess. Great physical danger had made me uncomfortable at times in my life, but never afraid. If I avoided danger it was through reason rather than fear; and reason told me now that for an unarmed man to resist this desperado and his crew must result in something infinitely worse than the loss of our goods. If Allaire could not see it in this light, then so much the worse.
“Wait here,” Carstairs snapped in his curt voice. He came in with that lithe, catty step that bespoke his feline muscular activity.
“Sorry to break up the party,” he said, “but the night's wearing on and I've got to be getting on my way. So, with your kind permission and all due regret, I'll start loading this stuff of mine aboard.”
XIII
“CAPTAIN CARSTAIRS,” said Allaire composedly, “this stuff is not yours, as you very well know.
He stiffened suddenly, as if she had slapped him.
“What's that?”
“You were never here but once before,” Allaire continued in the same cool, even voice, “and that was about three months ago. Since the former owner deeded the island and everything on it to Sanders nearly a year ago, this act to take effect on the demise of the owner, you cannot possibly have any claim at all.”
“But, I say, Mrs. Stirling, I believe I had the honor to inform you that I called in here a year ago last September and made my dicker for the fittings at that time. You say yourself that Sanders' deal was made nearly a year ago, which is to say less than a year ago.”
“Quite so. But before you remove any of these things we must have proof that what you say is true, that you were really here and made your bargain for the furniture in this house over a year ago.”
Carstairs gave his short laugh.
“My word, but you are flattering! What d'ye think I am anyhow? A pirate?”
“I should surely think so if you tried to take our property by force and without showing us any evidence of ownership. It's not done, Captain Carstairs.”
He frowned, but seemed to make an effort to keep his patience,
“Circumstances must sometimes alter cases, Mrs. Stirling. I can't very well run round to my diggin's and get the bill of sale, and there's no telling when I may get back here again. There's just a chance that I may sell out and chuck the game if I get safely rid of this cargo.” His pale eyes stared at her curiously. “Where did you get the idea that I was spoofin' you about all this?”
“From your man Henry, Captain Carstairs, You ought to have primed him before you went out aboard just now, but I suppose in your contempt for what we could do to prevent you from looting the place you never thought about it. He tells us that he has sailed with you for over a year, and that you were never in here until your last trip North, about three months ago.”
Carstairs seemed to freeze. Sheer rage drove the color from under his ruddy tan to leave his face the dull yellow of an Oriental's. In that brief instant of pause I caught Allaire's design, which was to start a ruction by which we might profit. Throw the wretched Henry to this sea wolf and thus have one less of them to deal with.
For a moment it looked as if this strategic move might work. Carstairs' baleful eyes turned to the door. His tongue pushed quickly in and out between his tight lips. But his intelligence was too alert to fall into such a trap. With a tremendous effort he recovered his poise, looked back at Allaire and laughed.
“Nearly had me going, didn't you? Your work was good, my lady, but I've seen this game of bluff before.” He looked at me. “Clever wife you've got, Stirling. Female of the species, and all that sort of thing.”
I got the slur implied—“more dangerous than the male.” Rising slowly, I looked him up and down. His eyes were fearful now. Mere pin-prick pupils in a disk of flat white. As they met mine in that dead reptilian glare I felt the spinal reflex, the prickling along the nape of the neck that we humans inherit from an age when we had hackles to lift under violent emotions of rage and fear.
“You might as well admit it, Carstairs,” I said. “What's the use of shilly-shallying? If your intention is to gut the place whether we protest or not, then get on with it and leave us in peace.”
“Look here, you biscuit face; are you trying to tell me I'm a liar? No man has ever said that to me and got away with. it. You'll just apologize here and now or take the consequences.”
“Will you fight fair,” I asked, “or call in your bullies to help?”
“Help? Oh, my suffering country! Hear the mutton bleat! Fight? You fight? That is a rag!”
“Well, you may have heard the proverb, 'Beware the fury of the sheep,' Carstairs,” I said.
“Right-o! They get that way in the shambles just before they're slaughtered. I must say, though, when it comes to a fight, I'm still sportsman enough to like to tackle something a little in my class.” He flashed a look at Allaire, a wild, eager look. “You would think me an utter brute if I was to stretch him, and small blame to you. I'm not that kind. Used to follow the fancy a little, so it really wouldn't be fair. I say what if we whistle up that big Bermuda Jew of a sailing master out aboard your boat? Didn't care much for his tone, but let it pass. He might show some form.”
“Very well,” I said. “Shall I call him in?”
If I were to live another thousand years and pass through the various episodes of that epoch, I could never forget the expression on Allaire's pale face as I made this suggestion. It cannot be described. One may attempt only to imagine it. Perhaps the best description would be that of a courageous person valiantly attempting do his part aboard a boat in a squall, then stricken with a nausea that is all but overpowering. She sank back into her chair, reached for her half-filled tumbler of champagne and drank feebly, as a seasick person does.
Carstairs laughed.
“Why, yes, do. Let's hope, though, for the sake of sport it may not be a case of like master like man.”
“It might be that,” I said, and walked out to the front door.
“Tinker ahoy! Cyril!”
“Here, sir!”
“Come ashore! Come up here to the house!”
“Right away, sir!”
XIV
AS I TURNED to go back into the big room I noticed that Carstairs' three men, Henry, his mate and the cook, were standing by the long window, where they had been loitering, no doubt much entertained at what was going on inside. I doubted, though, that Henry's entertainment was entirely devoid of apprehension. He muttered some insult as I turned. Something that sounded like “Yallow-livered Yankee blighter.”
But sport is sport, and Carstairs' hands were joyously anticipating an event that would break the monotony of their hard-working rum-running lives. They would, I knew, offer no impediment to the sacrifice to their skipper's progress, now on his way to the altar. Cyril, I mean.
I went in to find that Carstairs had seated himself beside Allaire and was talking to her earnestly. She still had that nauseated look, leaning back against the painted Spanish leather, her beautiful bare forearms extended limply on the rests.
“My man is coming,” I said, “and I must give you due credit, Carstairs, for being more of a sportsman than I had thought.”
He chuckled.
“Thanks awfully, old egg. Some of us try to be that all the year round.”
“Of course you understand that my man is merely to be my second,” I said.
Allaire's drooping eyelids flickered. Carstairs turned and stared at me.
“Why, no; I counted on taking him on. Take you both on together, if you like. It's all one to me.”
“I'm afraid,” I said, “that you don't quite understand the situation. I have had the honor to challenge you to a duel. I did so on your previous assurance that you are—or let us say, you have been—an officer and a gentleman. As I happen to be the same, it is quite impossible for me to permit you to engage two adversaries at the same time.”
He glared at me, puzzled.
“Why not, if I waive the odds?”
“Because it isn't done. There's no precedent for it. You see, captain, affairs between gentlemen don't quite fall within the same rules as barroom fights. Some etiquette should obtain.”
Carstairs looked at the empty champagne bottle, drained by Henry. Then he glanced a little doubtfully at Allaire.
“I say, if your husband's drunk we'll just call it all off. I'll take my stuff and go.”
Allaire straightened suddenly.
“He is not my husband. He never has been my husband and he never will be my husband. Do you think I'd be married to a thing like that?”
The passion in her voice stabbed into Carstairs as if she had given him a knife thrust.
It seemed to sober him. Then a crimson flush crept up under the neck of his silk shirt and spread over his face.
“I—so that's it.”
“No,” I said, “that isn't it. Miss Forsyth and I happen to be associated in a business venture, a trade venture. Until today she has been duly chaperoned. That can wait, however, until we dispose of our little affair. I think I hear my man.” Cyril's brisk step arrested itself at the porch. “Come in,” I called. He came in, a big, handsome figure of a young man, his dark eyes questioning, alert, ready for whatever might be afoot. He stood there waiting, the sound of deep, labored breathing came from Carstairs' hands, peering through the window.
“Cyril,” I said, “Captain Carstairs and I have quarreled. He feels that I have insulted him by questioning his word, and he has insulted me by questioning my courage and by the use of sundry epithets. As we seem to be outside all jurisdiction and any chance of interference, there seems no reason for not settling our difficulties in the old-fashioned way—a duel.”
Allaire leaned forward. I caught for a moment the full size of her long amber-colored eyes. Carstairs jerked round his shoulders to stare at me. But Cyril never budged.
“Right, sir,” he said, and waited.
“Of course,” I continued, “fist fighting is a pretty low form of settling such disputes where gentlemen are concerned. Captain Carstairs tells us that he is a good barroom brawler, or implies that fact. He tells us also that he tries to be a sportsman the year round. The truth of this statement remains to be proved.”
Carstairs half rose.
“I say, what the devil are you drivin' at?”
“I am taking you at your word, captain. You tell me that you are an officer and gentleman and sportsman and fighting man. So am I. But unfortunately I am not a man of my fists, like you and—your man Henry, for instance. In fact until I started on this voyage of barter I was semi-invalid. Bit of a nervous wreck. But that need not interfere at all with my use of the weapons with which gentlemen have settled their disputes from time immemorial, which is to say, the sword.” I leaned forward and pointed at a pair of old cutlasses hanging crossed from a nail driven in above the chimney. “There seems to be precisely our affair. I do not know whether you happen to be a swordsman, but as a man of athletic habits I should say that probably you are. I have used singlesticks a little and used to be a fair broadswordman. So, if you are not afraid to risk your precious skin, I have the honor to suggest that we meet here and now, outside in the moonlight, armed with these time-honored weapons. That, you must admit, would be according to the best traditions of what we both pretend to be.”
The silence that followed these words of mine was like that in a theater where some histrionic coup is delivered by a popular idol of the stage. Then it was broken by Carstairs' laugh.
“Swords, is it? All right, old '
“Mr. Sterling, please,” I interrupted.
“ bean,” he snarled. “I'll just call your jolly old bluff.”
He sprang up from his chair, strode across the room, and reaching up over the chimney wrenched the ancient cutlasses from where they had been hanging God knows how many long years. He tugged at one of them.
“The old cleaver is jammed in the scabbard.”
“Whack it on the chimney,” I suggested.
He followed this advice and freed the blade. Then, as he stared at it, some new idea seemed to strike him. There is a good deal of reflection in the sight of naked steel; infinitely more than in that of mere naked fists.
“My word, I believe I've been had!”
“Not yet,” I said, “but soon. Unless you're the sheer coward and bully that I still give you credit for not being. If you like pistols better, then pistols it is.” I raised my voice. “I never heard, though, of a Devon Carstairs that shirked the steel.”
That fetched him, as I knew it would.
He said more quietly, “No, and you never will, you blighted Yankee bluffer.
He took the other cutlass and tossed it at me. I caught it by the tarnished scabbard.
“Thanks,” I said. “Now we shall soon see, you blighted British bounder.”
For a moment I thought he was going to rush me then and there. It would have been all up if he had, because my cutlass was also gripped with rust. I stepped quickly behind the table and struck it several times against the rim, when it shook free. Not good for the beautiful rosewood mahogany, but there was no immediate worry about that. There was still a doubt as to whose table it might be.
The edge of the broad curved blade was dull, but the point was always there, and tremendous comfort in the feel of it as my hand gripped the hilt. As long as men live and fight there will always be that satisfying thrill in the holding of an edged weapon, a sense of assurance that mere firearms can never give. I looked at Allaire and laughed. At that moment I felt more as if I were fighting her than about to fight for her.
She was sitting straight up in the chair, hands clasped under her chin, staring at me as though I were some newcomer who had just appeared upon the scene. The suddenness of this development had dazed her. Having accepted the idea that I had summoned Cyril to do my fighting for me, it now took a few seconds for her mind to adjust itself to the fact that I had merely used this pretext to mobilize our forces and to have him standing by to guard against a flank attack if by any chance I promised to get the better of the encounter.
This rascal of a Carstairs had been quicker to get the sense of it. That was what he meant when he burst out, “I believe I've been had.” It was not through fear of the result, but merely that he felt himself to have been outwitted on two counts—the first because I had put the fight on a different base and deprived him of the pleasure of beating me to a pulp with his fists, and the second because I had got this big backer on the field.
Cyril got it too. His eyes were blazing. All the old Phenician fighting blood was flaming out of him like the glow around superheated metal. He was like a Biblical Jew militant, the Old Testament Israelitic champion of stricken fields, a Joshua or Judas Maccabeus. His big-boned frame seemed to have broadened and deepened, and his well-shaped, powerful hands were opening and shutting, as if deploring their emptiness. Glancing at his face, I could have laughed at the modern conception of the average Judæophobe for that race.
“Well, Carstairs,” I demanded, “do you want your handsome head split in the house or out of it?”
Cyril's big voice boomed out resonantly:
“Better carve the swine in the open, Stirling, not to get his black blood on the furniture.”
“Good thought,” I said. “Besides, there's a lamp out there we can't knock down.”
I was nearer the door, so I turned and motioned Cyril to go out ahead. As we came onto the porch I turned on the group of three by the window.
“One of you said something when I went in. I'll get that man when this is over.”
They shrank back. Cyril and I went down the rickety steps and out into the vivid glare of moonlight in front of the house. Carstairs came after us. I do not think there was any fear in the man, or any dread about the result. But he was dazed at the way in which the whole affair, that had looked so easy, had been taken from his management. He could not for very shame before his own crew and before Allaire refuse to go on with it, though at the same time it must have sobered even such an adventurer as himself to realize that now, instead of beating the sort of harmless person he had imagined me to be and knocking out his Bermudian Jew sailing master, he had got to kill or to be killed. No doubt he saw it as a pretty ugly business taken full and by, and one for which some day he might get caught up.
In front of the house there was an open space of hard sand and turf, wide and smooth. I walked out on it, and sticking the cutlass into the ground threw off my coat. Perhaps the champagne may have had something to do with it, but I prefer to think that for the time I was in the grip of some hereditary emotion that was in the nature of a memory, as if I had done this thing before, and with success.
Carstairs came down the steps. He did not precisely swagger, but there was a jauntiness shout him that did not strike a true note. Allaire had come out on the porch end was standing beside one of the rotten old columns from which the paint had sealed perhaps a century ago but was bleached white with age and was now of a stark pallor in the moonlight. Henry and his two mates slunk down at the heels of their master, like the sort of sea curs they were. Cyril stood near me, like the statue of some sort of avenging angel of Israel.
“Whichever way it goes, there may be a rumpus out of this, Cyril,” I said. “Are you armed?”
“No, sir. We traded all our guns before we left, you know, for flutes and harmonicas and things. But it's going only one way. You've got his goat, sir.”
“I'm not so sure, but he hasn't got mine, and that's worth a lot. Just keep your eye on those three mutts of his.”
“No fear, sir.”
Carstairs sauntered up.
“I suppose you don't know half the silly ass you are, Stirling. Sort of cross between Don Quixote and Scaramouche.”
“Dilly, Dilly. come and be killed,” I mocked. “No use to stand there and bat your white eyes at me. I can see the yellow behind 'em.
“Barmy—sheer barmy, what with champagne and fright,” he began, but Cyril interrupted.
“If you want to call it off, captain, all you've got to do is to go out aboard your boat and beat it.”
Carstairs cursed him savagely for a Bermudian something and threw off his coat.
“En garde!” he snapped, and tapped the turf with his foot.
And so we engaged, though that seems scarcely the word for it. My only knowledge of the sword was from a little fencing done in college, and later broadsword and singlestick practice during five years when I had been a member of the naval reserve, mere drill. But there seemed now to be something instinctive about it, facing Carstairs there in the bright moonlight, with the big gleaming columns of the porch rearing on one side and the silver sea the other. And to complete this sense of some ancient episode restored, there was Allaire's white figure standing like a marble shaft against the deep purple shadow.
Just what ailed Carstairs I do not know, and never shall know. He slashed at me savagely and I parried, a right high parry, then a left. I followed with a lunge at his chest, a straight thrust. And for some reason. that I have never been able to explain, he failed utterly to ward it. The point seemed to glide out a little along his ribs, then the blade ripped into him. He gave a strangling cry and fell.
In sheer astonishment I stood there staring at him. There had been no fight at all. It was as if the man had become suddenly stupefied, and indeed it flashed across my mind that he had come down the steps in a curious, lethargic way, as if suddenly smitten by an overpowering fatigue, or some drug of cumulative action taking sudden effect. And that last is, I think, the explanation of it.
But there was no time to ponder on this now. The chances are that the others, not excepting Allaire and Cyril, were far less astonished than was I. To them it could have had but a single explanation, that I was a dark horse, a finished master of the sword, who had cleverly enticed Carstairs into a duel, then sabered him as easily as a rat terrier might toss the rodent, with no danger to himself and just about as quickly. My entire bearing from the start would have been enough for such conviction.
Seeing it now in such a light, a roar of rage went up from Carstairs' three men. In their eyes, here was a slender Yankee who was afraid and unable to use his fists tricking their skipper into a fashion of fighting now obsolete and killing him. Even Henry, who had every reason to expect a fearful beating once he got aboard, let out a Whitechapel yowl and started for me.
Carstairs had pitched forward as he fell, his sword arm flying out to the side. I had loosed my own cutlass and stepped clear, as otherwise it must have snapped or bent, depending on the metal.
My own opinion to this day is that Carstairs, whether through drink or a drug, had in the sudden effort and excitement of the moment suffered some sort of vertigo, and that he was already tottering against me when I thrust.
At any rate, here came the three of them on vengeance bent. But they never reached me. A big gaunt figure whirled past my shoulder, giving out a sort of guttural snarl. It crashed into the three of them, a whirling vortex of flailing blows. But they were useful blows and cleanly struck. If you have ever seen a tall gamecock of the Black Spanish breed fallen foul of three dunghill roosters, this simile will do.
Henry was the first to hit the turf, because he was the nearest. The other lout went down from a straight drive on the chin, and the cook up, from a hook just under it. I doubt if Cyril's part in this affair took actually much longer than my own.
I rolled Carstairs over on his back. He was lying in a welter of blood and breathing heavily. Slipping out the cutlass blade, I discovered that it had not transfixed his thorax, but slid along outside the heavy pectoral muscles and gone on through those of the back and side.
The question then was what to do with him. Cyril stepped up, tore off Carstairs' silk shirt and wiped the wounds with it. He then examined the blade of the cutlass. Allaire had come down from the porch and stood watching silently.
“Nothing but a flesh wound, sir,” Cyril said. “This old meat ax is too dull to do much cutting. It's bleeding a little now, but that will stop.”
“It's a filthy old blade,” I said.
“Quite so, sir. Best thing for him is to get back to Nassau and go to blighty. They'll give him a squirt of tetanus serum. We'll just h'ist him into his boat and start him on his way.”
He strode over and kicked Henry in the ribs.
“Get up, you blighter. You other sweep too, Pick up your bloomin' skipper here and load him aboard, then sling yer hook to hell out of here. Start and go!”
“But hold on, Cyril,” I protested; “you ought to dress his wound, or something.”
“It would be the 'something,' Mr. Stirling. I couldn't trust myself with that man. It's just his sort that are scattered over the globe to the disgrace of the empire. We have them sometimes in Bermuda. Let them lug him off. He's not going to die. No such luck.”
XV
THE unsteady Gadflies lurched down to the landing with the body of their skipper. Cyril picked up Carstairs' cutlass and started after them, a sort of armed guard to see them safely aboard.
“I'll go on out, sir,” he called back.
I had no anxiety about his safety. He had proved himself precisely the sort of Judas Maccabeus—not to be confounded with that sneak Iscariot—that I had always esteemed him.
I turned then to Allaire, who was still standing there like one of the marble statues, but straighter than most of them. I had not heard her speak a single word, make the slightest sound from the moment I had challenged Carstairs to fight with steel.
“Please give me back my ring,” I said. “We shall try to guard against your ever having to wear it again.”
She slipped it off and handed it to me.
“That was all cleverly managed, Pom.”
“Thanks. When your fists are not much use, you have to fall back on your brains.”
“Or some more familiar weapon.”
“Fists are not weapons,” I retorted; “and as a means of settling a dispute, they're only fit for boys and rowdies. If a well-bred person has got something worth fighting about, it's worth killing about. Why not stand off a few yards and pelt each other with stones?”
“You told me you weren't going to do anything about it,” said Allaire.
“About his taking our stuff by force? That's not what I fought him for. He might have called in his furniture movers and gone quietly ahead for all my attempt to stop it. But insult to a woman in my care is another matter.”
“I saw that you were leading him into a trap and guessed that you must be in the champion-fencer class.”
“Oh, did you? Well, you see you've still got quite a lot to learn about me.”
“Yes, I believe I have; and about Cyril too. Who'd have guessed him such a Ben-Hur?”
“I did, for one, the first day I laid eyes on him. Listen!”
In that breathless night air sounds carried with a megaphonic volume. Now, from out there on the still lagoon, came Cyril's sonorous tones admonishing the battered Gadflies.
“Sling that flat tire of yours aboard and heave up your hook and start your motor and get out! If you're still here tomorrow morning when our gang lands we'll clap the lot of you in irons and take you to stand trial for attempted piracy.”
Henry's voice protested in his nasal whine, “'Ow are us lads to shype a course, wot wiv skipper cut 'orrid and the myte seein' snykes?”
“You don't need your bloomin' skipper and your snyky myte, 'Arry,” Cyril retorted. “It ain't over two hundred and fifty miles back to Nassau, and just like walkin' down Whitechapel Road. Lamp-post on every corner. Anyhow you'll try it if you know what's good for you. B. W. I. law still goes bloody hard on pirates in these waters, as you're apt to bloomin' well find out.”
“Competent boy, Cyril,” I observed. “This honeymoon is over. We might as well get out aboard ourselves.”
“Don't be so bitter, Pom. How was I to know?”
“You weren't. You don't yet, and the chances are you never will know. But you might at least have given me credit for not not being yellow clear through.”
“I'm sorry. I apologize, Pom.”
“Then we will consider the incident as closed. No use to tell anybody anything about it, not even Mrs. Fairchild. It would only upset her. She thinks this game disreputable enough already.”
I picked up my cutlass and wiped it on the turf. At that moment an apelike figure came flitting round the corner of the house with an odd, uncanny agility. It was Pompey. Mowing and ducking, this little old afreet skipped up to where I was standing, and in the bright moonlight I could see that his wizened face was working in fearful grimaces, those of pleasure as it seemed. Coming to where I stood, he ducked, reached a skinny paw for my wrist, raised my hand and kissed the back of it. This curious gesture surprised and embarrassed me a little. But Allaire was quick to catch the sense of it.
“He is thanking you, Pom. That enters another black mark against Carstairs. Pompey has some score against him that he's glad to see paid off. The chances are Carstairs helped himself when he was here before, against the captain's wishes. He may have left some wine in payment, but it was an involuntary trade so far as the captain was concerned.”
“What are we to do with Pompey?” I asked.
“Leave him here until we get back.”
“Get back?”
“Yes; tomorrow we must load our stuff aboard and get out. When I dispose of it in New York we should be in funds—lots of funds. Then we will run back here and put this place in some sort of order and sell it to Nick Sayles.”
I whistled. Some trader, Allaire. She had bought her option for a secondhand radio set that was really a good and costly one, which Sanders ought to be able to sell for at least a hundred dollars. And the chances are that Allaire would want to take the option up and buy Pelican Key for five thousand dollars. Then, if I judged her rightly, she would ask Nick Sayles five times that for this unusual patch of sand with its imported plants and trees. Perhaps Allaire was right. No man could estimate the labor done here so many years ago, nor what the fruition of it might be worth today.
As we went out aboard, the windlass pawls of the Gadfly began to clatter. Evidently her dismembered crew had found it well to act on Cyril's advice and go whilst yet they might; or Carstairs might have come round and ordered that they get under way. This presently proved to be the case, for her motor started and she headed out for the entrance.
Too much money was represented in that cargo to risk its being put indefinitely in escrow. And no doubt there were some dates to keep off the Jersey beach, with friend Jimmy and others. Cyril kissed his hand to her as she plugged slowly out to sea.
“Bon voyage Gadfly! This is one time you didn't sting and get away without a swat.”
We saw then to our surprise that, once clear, the schooner held on to the northward instead of swinging down the Strait of Florida for the Northwest Providence Channel and Nassau. Either Carstairs or his “snyky myte” must have come round and more or less taken charge. In either case it would be a long time before Carstairs could be mischievous again. But not for us, I thought. Gentlemen of fortune of his sort are not apt to follow up a bad bet where the other fellow has played the game within his right. Double-crossing—gypping, to use a modern term—is quite a different matter.
At any rate, we had more pressing business for our attention. Snatching four hours' badly needed sleep, we turned to getting our stuff loaded aboard. It was grueling work in the hot sun, but by nightfall we had most of the precious articles, tapestries, carpets, mirrors that we could carry, chairs and the like aboard and under hatches. The heavy pieces were too much for us. Nick Sayles would be given the opportunity to purchase them—at a price.
We left Pompey some stores, managed to impress upon his mind that we were to return by Christmastime—if he had any knowledge of time—and put to sea, short-handed but happy and filled with hope. As we had made the run South almost entirely under sail, we were still well-found in fuel, and that saved time and work and distance. Moreover the weather was good, the winds mostly fair and the current in our favor.
The run of nearly a thousand sea miles took us eight days and some odd hours. Ostensibly we had not come from any foreign port or country, so on entering the port of New York we plugged boldly in for the North River. In the upper bay a revenue tug barged alongside and asked who we were, where from and what our apology for breathing the more or less free air of the port.
“We are moving our household goods from a cottage down the beach, captain,” said Allaire; “moving for the winter.”
“Yeah? What sort of goods, lady?”
“Furniture. Beating the security storage. We want to put it in a studio in Greenwich Village.”
“Well, I'll just take a squint at it, if you don't mind.” He came aboard. I felt very weak in the knees. So did Cyril, as he afterwards confessed. But Allaire stood firmly on her well-developed legs. I raised the skylight and let him look down at the horrid mess of tarnished impedimenta that we had dumped down into the saloon trade room. He shuddered.
“You folks artists?” he asked.
“Well, that seems to be the question, captain,” Allaire said smilingly. “I paint marines, but sometimes I have to prove that it's not the family wash. My brother” she looked at me—“is Pomeroy Stirling, whose name you probably know.”
“Oh, sure,” lied the officer gallantly. “Nice handy little schooner you got.”
“Yes, she was built in Friendship, Maine. Where would be the best place to land our duffel, captain?”
“Go right on up to the yacht anchorage off Riverside Drive. You can get in alongside the crib and swing it right aboard one of those vans you've saved a hundred miles on.” And with a friendly salute he went over the side aboard his tug
“I suppose you know that this is smuggling, Allaire,” I said.
“I don't know anything of the sort. Antique furniture and art objects over a hundred years old aren't dutiable. I haven't signed any declaration. The man asked me what I had, and I told him. Anyhow, it's to the interest of the country to get these gems of antique decorative art.”
“Well, if we get nabbed the country will be richer by the sale of them and our fines. Duty or no duty, the law requires that whatever is brought in from a foreign port must be declared and appraised. Why run the risk of seizure?”
“Because we don't want publicity,” said Allaire. “If the story were to get in the papers we might find ourselves let in for foreign litigation. The chances are the first old captain wrecked it, after his ship went on the reef.”
XVI
AFFAIRS now moved up rapidly. Allaire went ashore and telephoned Mrs. Fairchild at the Martha Washington, who climbed a Fifth Avenue-Riverside Drive bus and came right up. She reported everything shipshape with Sanders, whom she had found to be a worthy and honest sort—more perhaps than he might say of us if he were to discover how he had been trimmed.
Allaire kept right on going. She had a large list of very rich friends in New York and Washington, and she had counted on disposing of our wares amongst the former set. But no peddling was required. It took this talented young partner of ours who had been so furious at our trading instead of rum running, just about an hour to sell the whole cargo to a rich private collector who has a private museum built onto the rear of his old family mansion. He was a childless widower and he had willed his entire collection to a national museum.
The old chap looked over the list that Allaire and I had prepared to the best of our ability.
“Where did you get this stuff, my dear?” he asked.
“In a sale of the contents of an old barrack of a house on a small island in the Bahamas. The owner had died and left it to a local person who had no idea of its value.”
“Humph! Then it is dutiable.”
“No; because anybody can see that it was made over a hundred years ago.”
“All the same, it will have to come in through the customhouse. I cannot buy smuggled goods, or what has been brought in undeclared.”
“Then you cannot buy it at all,” said Allaire. “We have landed, coming directly from a foreign possession, so if we were to enter officially now we would find ourselves in trouble with the port authorities. We would lose our boat and everything.”
“Humph! This is a very serious matter.”
“It might be,” said Allaire. “But why should you bother with the customhouse when you are leaving it all to the country when you die? Especially since it is duty free.”
“Get thee behind me, temptress. You have no right yourself to make such an outrageous profit.”
“That,” said Allaire, “is for me to settle with my conscience.”
“You haven't any, when it comes to tumbling on a bargain in antique furniture. Few women have.”
“Did you ever patronize a bootlegger, Mr. Van Walkenburg?”
“Humph! That is different. I was in Europe when national prohibition went into effect and could not make provision. A certain amount of wine and spirits is essential to my life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.”
“Just as a certain amount of money is to mine,” Allaire retorted.
“Yes, I suppose a pretty lady must live, and your point is not badly made. After all, I am merely life custodian of art treasures that have cost me about half a million dollars and destined before many years for the pleasure and better culture of the American people.”
“Precisely,” said Allaire. “So why should you worry about the customhouse, especially when it is a mere formality? I want to keep this find a secret.”
“Humph! By Jumbo, I believe that you have some more tucked away down there! If these articles are all that you claim for them, how are we to fix on a price?”
“I will accept your own appraisal, Mr. Van Walkenburg. There is probably no person in this country who has a fuller knowledge of the value of such things. Since they are destined eventually for the benefit of the country, I shall not whine if you get them at a bargain.”
“Humph! Humph—humph! You are a very subtle young lady. You propose a transaction that is highly irregular, then put me on my honor to pay you a regular price. Very well. This seems to be an epoch of every man his own moral mentor—until he gets investigated by the Senate or some other band of saints. You may deliver this stuff here at your own risk. After that I will appoint myself keeper of the seals. The pleasure that I now derive from looking at a beautiful old tapestry is like that I formerly derived from looking at a beautiful young woman like yourself. May I offer you a cup of tea or a glass of sherry and a biscuit?”
Talk about trade, its ethics and its profits! In the broad light of day we laid the Tinker alongside the crib and loaded the loot—for that word is fairly exact—into a van. The movers eyed it with disfavor.
“Do with a little dry cleaning,” Allaire said, and they agreed with her.
Mr. Van Walkenburg also agreed with her, but on a different count. His ecstasy over this find swept away whatever scruples he may have felt. When he came to take his pen in hand he was not niggardly, and we found ourselves enriched by more money than our fondest expectations had achieved.
Our plans were now completely changed. Allaire changed them. She stated our position and pros with her characteristic cool and limpid business acumen.
“The first principle of gambling is to follow up your luck,” she said. “I don't consider this altogether luck, any more than if a trained prospector with a good outfit was to locate precious minerals. The best we can do now is to go back and take up our option for Pelican Key, then put it in some sort of decent order and sell it to Nick Sayles.”
“Better sound him out a little first,” I said. “Men that can have anything they want never want the same thing from one month to the next—unless it's a woman that's stand-offish.”
“True in the main,” Allaire agreed; “but Nick's different, because he's not entirely an idler. He likes to take things in the raw and develop them.”
“Then Pelican Key ought to be just the gentleman's meat, Miss Forsyth,” Cyril said.
“No, because that's not in the raw. It's a reconstruction job. On that account he ought to see it with some suggestion of its former beauty. As it stands, it's entirely too stark.”
Mrs. Fairchild nodded.
“It's without exception the most dreadful-looking place I ever saw. I can't imagine any rich man wanting it.”
“Not many would,” Allaire admitted. “But for one thing, the desolation doesn't matter much when you've got a big palace of a cruising houseboat with a speed of twenty knots. Only a five-hour run to Palm Beach. And Mr. Sayles has vision enough to see the possibilities of Pelican Key if he were given a little to go on, just a suggestion here and there.”
“Your psychology is good,” I agreed, “provided he still wants an island in Southern waters.”
“He does, Pom. I had tea with him yesterday at the Ritz and sounded him out. He is as keen as ever. I told him that I had just been down to Florida house-hunting for a friend, and had found a dream of a place on an island. I did not tell him that he was the friend. He knows that I do commissions of this sort. I made him promise not to do anything definite until he heard from me. Nick's got a lot of respect for my judgment.”
“Like some of the rest of us, Miss Forsyth,” Cyril murmured.
“Lots of people have to be told, Cyril. After that, they need to be shown. I've done the first, and now I think we ought to make our plans to do the other. Sayles is getting his yacht ready to start South soon after New Year's. That will give us time to get down there and groom the place a little. Not too much, but enough to take away that skeleton grin it's got.”
“You've said it, Miss Forsyth!” Mrs. Fairchild exclaimed. “That's just what it reminds me of, though I wouldn't have thought to put it that way. Like a skeleton uncovered by the wind.”
“Well, we can correct that. I talked about it a little with Sanders before he left, and he says that he can find us the labor and material. I feel as if Sanders ought to get a fair share of profit out of all this.”
“So do I,” Mrs. Fairchild said heartily. “He's a decent sort of man that's trying to get on. His wife is half invalid—anæmia or something. Hookworm, from the look of her. He was just as nice as he could be with me.”
“Well, Sanders is not going to lose anything in the end, Mrs. Fairchild. I try always to pay my debts. So if you all agree, let's go ahead and carry out my plans. There's no desperate hurry, though, and I think that for the next week or two we might rest a little.”
That suggestion looked good to the rest of us. Allaire had been invited to spend a week in Washington, at the home of a cabinet officer. Mrs. Fairchild desired to make a long-delayed visit to her girlhood home in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. I had communicated with the only member of my immediate family, a sister married to a Yale professor, and she had urged me to visit her for a week in New Haven. Cyril expressed an entire willingness to act as ship keeper in our absence.
I prolonged my visit to ten days, then stopped over at Greenwich for another week with a classmate who had a year-round home there. Then a letter from Cyril told me that Mrs. Fairchild had returned and was stopping at the Martha Washington again. Allaire also was back in town and had caused to be loaded aboard the schooner a big consignment of stores that she had bought at a U. S. Army quartermaster's sale.
“I was just locking up to go ashore when they came alongside,” Cyril wrote; “but Miss Forsyth came with them and told me not to wait, as the crew of the lighter could get them stowed. I wanted to wait, anyhow, and let my date slide, but she wouldn't hear of it. Fairly hustled me ashore and told me not to come back aboard till I got ready. You know Miss Forsyth's way, sir. I think she must have bought up a whole quartermaster's depot, to judge from the cases aboard the lighter.”
Well, here was Allaire again at her bargaining. When I got back aboard at noon of the next day I found that she had managed to get her purchases all stowed under the berth deck, in the three-foot space between it and the skin of the little schooner. Allaire was ashore, but Cyril said he could not see how the lightermen managed it. They must have had to crawl along shoving the cases ahead of them. But as he point out, it left us the trade room clear, and Allaire had a way about her when it came to persuading men to do things. No doubt in this case her purse helped her to no small extent.
“After all, food is food, Mr. Stirling,” Cyril said. “And if Miss Forsyth grabbed this off at a bargain, it might be worth as much as trade goods. Anyhow, we can always eat it.”
He had wired Mrs. Fairchild that we were ready for sea again. She arrived the next morning at nine, Cyril going to meet her. While he was gone a taxi drove down the side of the hill to the crib, and here was Allaire, looking a little pale and tired, but charged with high endeavor. I went over in the dinghy to fetch her.
“Well, here we are again, Pom. All set for the next whirl. I'll be glad to get to sea again, for one. This rest has done you good. You're not so cadaverous.”
“What have you been up to?” I asked.
“Seeing Washington by day and night, principally the latter, with a bunch of panned Americans, duly chaperoned by the State, War and Navy Departments, I've danced until my brains are scrambled. 'Fraid you'll have to stand my watch until I catch up with my sleep, Pom.”
“Can do. I've been sleeping, principally, and wandering over golf links. What possessed you to buy a cargo of grub?”
“Call it thrift. The boat could do with a general overhauling, Pom.”
“Yes, she's a little worn, but clean enough. Her bottom got a coat of bronze when Cyril and I went after her, and that will last her another couple of months.”
“Perfectly tight?”
“Tight as a hog's hide. Doesn't leak enough to keep her sweet, if any of your war grub down there starts a seam.”
“Then that's all right. I'm crazy to get back on Pelican. There was romance in that episode, Pom, Have you forgiven me?”
“Call it quits, Allaire. I bunked you at the send-off, when you thought you were going to run rum instead of rugs.”
“Well, this is cleaner, and just as profitable and exciting. I got a line on Carstairs in Washington. His embassy doesn't hold him very high. He got chucked off his ship in Plymouth for drunkenness and brutality.”
“He got chucked aboard his ship on Pelican for that same thing,” I said.
“Yes, so he did. Young Britons have a better chance in the colonies. Case of a bad man gone worse. I wonder how Mrs. Fairchild is going to feel about another jog down the coast with us moderns.”
“All right, I should say. But you're really the only modern, Allaire. The rest of us belong anywhere from a thousand to a hundred years ago.”
“That's true. Cyril is archaic Mediterranean, and you and Mrs. Fairchild Puritans. I'm the bad girl of the family. I've been flirting with everybody but the President. I made a bet that I could with him, but couldn't get away with it.”
“Well, let's hope you paid your bet.”
“I did. I always pay my bets. I pay other debts too. Perhaps some day you'll find that out, Pom.” And with this cryptic remark she went below to unpack.
(TO BE CONTINUED)