The Man on Horseback/Chapter 28
CHAPTER XXVIII
HAMBURG-TACOMA
A few days later Tom received a letter from Alec Wynn in detailed explanation of the cable that the suit against his ownership of the Yankee Doodle Glory had been thrown out of court.
First the lawyer described the visit of Baptiste Lamoureux, the French-Canadian half-breed, to his office. Together, as soon as Tom had wired the five thousand dollars, they had taken the train to Nelson, B.C., where they had met a friend of Baptiste, another half-breed by the name of Jean Marie Trudeau, a trapper, who had returned a few days earlier from a look at his traps in the Elk River country, where Truex had prospected and where he had supposedly found his death. The three of them had left Nelson on horseback, and had struck across the hills. With the utmost silence and caution, the trapper guiding, they had dropped into a cup-like valley where they had come face to face with …
"With Truex," the letter went on, "alive, tied, gagged, and as mad as a hornet—and watched by a two-gun ruffian. But we had the drop on him, released 'Old Man' Truex, who at this writing is still swearing terrible cuss words, and turned Mister Ruffian over to the sheriff at Nelson. The trapper, who had come across the thing by accident, received two and a half thousand dollars, so did Baptiste, and on last accounts they are both still painting Nelson, B.C., a rich crimson. I returned straight to Spokane, and had a talk with the Prosecuting Attorney. Of course the case was clear. Truex had been kidnapped, and the coroner as well as the three witnesses had been bribed and had perjured themselves. But at first we kept quiet. We did not say a word to Herr Eberhardt Lehneke or his side-kicks. You see, we wanted to catch him good and for keeps. In certain respects, we succeeded. In another, we failed.
"As to the latter, while we got the coroner and the three witnesses by their short hair, we found it impossible to establish legal connection between them—the kidnapping, the fake burial, the perjured statement—and Lehneke. Those fellows must have been paid darned well, for they absolutely refused to implicate their principal. Too, his papers seemed all right. We had to accept them as such, since there were the several sworn statements of the German Consul-General in New York who, thanks to his office, is above suspicion.
"On the other hand, Herr Lehneke made one little mistake. He was too all-fired impatient. You see, the mine had been turned over to a receiver, Seafield Granahan, until the case was completely settled. There was an injunction "against your working it. But, as long as the litigation was not finished one way or the other, the same injunction applied to Lehneke. He had no right to work the mine.
"But he did, with the connivance of Granahan, the receiver, who also must have been thumpingly well bribed.
"Lehneke mined some of the ore, treated, and shipped it. We jugged both him and Granahan and caught the ore shipment, twenty-seven car loads, at Tacoma, where they were backed into a water-front siding awaiting transportation by sea.
"By the way, and this is funny, Lehneke may be a clever crook, but he is a rotten judge of ore. For, after treating it, he carefully left the gold at the mine, merely taking the bulky residue, which contained just a little silver and copper, and of course that unknown ingredient, metal or whatever it is, which disturbed the scientific world so much at the time when Newson Garrett made his assay …"
That evening Tom met Vyvyan at the "Gross Berlin American Bar." The Colonel had said no more to Tom about his friendship with the Englishman since their scene on the subject, and so the Westerner saw a good deal of his British friend.
They were sitting in a box, to the left of the bar, where McCaffrey had served them with his own hands.
Tom read the letter to his friend.
Vyvyan listened without a word. Only when it came to the passage of the ore shipment, he gave a little exclamation.
"Well," he said, "it makes no difference. For you …" He cleared his throat, and was silent.
Poole, the American Vice-Consul, had come into the room, saw the two, and gave greeting:
"Hullo, fellows!"
"Hullo yourself! What're you drinking?" came Tom's hospitable voice.
"The usual!" Poole said to McCaffrey, who brought him a high-ball of rye and ginger ale.
Poole sat down, opened his evening paper, the Vossische Zeitung, read a few lines, chuckled, and looked up.
"Say," he gave judgment, "these Dutchmen aren't half as smart as they imagine."
"Aren't they?" drawled the Englishman.
"Exactly! Greedy pigs, that's what they are. Forever trying to cop all the world's trade by fair means or foul. But once in a while their greed sort of absquatulates with their gray matter."
"Ah—dry up!" Tom gurgled into his glass. "We know you're in the Consular line of easy job and got to look after the dollar-squeezing end of the diplomatic game. But what do we care?"
"Well," replied Poole, "you and I are both from the Wild and Woolly. And this … Well, I don't want to bore you …" He folded the paper and put it in his pocket.
"What is it?" asked the Englishman.
Poole laughed.
"Just what I told you. Once in a while the Germans overshoot their mark. You see, the paper says that the German Government has decided to subsidize a line of steamships, fast steel freighters, half-a-dozen of 'em owned by the H. A., to run between Hamburg and Tacoma, through the Suez Canal, stopping at Singapore and Hongkong for coal."
"Well?" asked Tom.
"Heavens, man!" went on the Vice-Consul, "there isn't enough direct business between Hamburg and Tacoma to subsidize a measly tramp boat. Governments only pay subsidy to compete with foreign ships. And what great foreign line goes direct from Europe to the Northwestern ports? Why, it's ridiculous. It's a great, big, reeking, nickel-plated commercial bull! Yes—these Dutchmen sure overreach themselves once in a while. Hullo?" to Vyvyan, who had risen and had taken his coat and hat, "leaving us?"
"Yes. I have some business to attend to."
"Mighty sudden," said Tom. "I thought we were going to spend the evening together."
"Yes, yes!" The Englishman was already on the threshold. "I forgot something rather important!" and he was out of the room.