The Popular Magazine/Coral Sands/Chapter 20
CHAPTER XX.
GHOST OF THE PAST.
Cyrus did not rise at the sight of the pearl man. “Well,” said he, “you've come back. Thought you would, yesterday. Got the pearls?”
“Yes, captain,” said Yakoff, “I have got the pearls, and I have thought better of the price I asked you.”
“Let's see them again,” said Cyrus.
Yakoff produced the box and Cyrus took it and opened it.
“Beautiful, aren't they, captain?”
“You needn't call me 'captain.' I'm the owner. Well, Mr. What's-your-name, they're not bad pearls, but two thousand is all I can offer. I told you so, and I haven't changed my figure.”
“But I have,” said Yakoff.
“I beg your pardon,” said Cyrus. “What are you getting at?”
“I couldn't take two thousand for those pearls.”
Cyrus looked at the other. Was he mad? No, he did not seem mad. Yakoff, standing with the lamplight on his fat, greasy face, did not look mad—he looked evil. He was smiling.
“I couldn't take fifty thousand or a hundred thousand dollars for those pearls. No, captain—I beg your pardon—Mr.—I couldn't take less than half a million dollars, and they're cheap at that.”
A cold wind, ghostly, almost imperceptible, seemed suddenly to blow upon the mind of Cyrus.
He did not know Yakoff, could not remember ever having seen the man before, but this talk, which was evidently not the talk of madness, had about it something personal to himself; that was the first fleeting impression, followed by the recognition of the fact that Yakoff was asking him for half a million dollars.
Cyrus put the cotton wool in its place and handed the box back to the other.
“Bunk!” said he, indicating the smoke room door with his thumb. “Get off the ship before you're kicked.”
Yakoff put the box in his pocket and turned to the door.
“Very well, Brown,” said he. “Kicked! That's how you talk to a gentleman. Kicked—well, we will see. We will see—we will see who will do the kicking. You wait, Mr. Brown.”
The name “Brown” was Yakoff's test. It all depended how Cyrus took it. Yakoff watched closely.
“Stand there!” cried Cyrus.
The smoke room of the California possessed a stand of rifles, six Winchesters, most useful even in these days, especially should one visit the Melanesian islands that were in the California's itinerary. Cyrus at the name “Brown” had spread his chest wide. As Yakoff finished, Cyrus wheeled, seized a rifle and leveled it at the chest of the pearl merchant—to hold him from moving from the room.
Yakoff laughed.
It was now that his wisdom in having secured Chales as a partner in this business showed itself.
“No,” he said, “I am not Leeson, to be shot like a dog over a deal of cards. I'm Yakoff Abrahamovitch, a man who goes cautious and never gives himself away. My partner is outside in a canoe. At the sound of that gun he'd give the alarm to the French authorities; then you'd be hanged for me as well as Leeson.”
Cyrus laid the rifle on the table.
“Come away from that door,” said he. “Sit down. Who are you?”
“I am Yakoff Abrahamovitch, the friend of Goldberg and Leeson, and I was with them at Port Denison, twenty-one years ago. Goldberg went north and you were partner with Leeson, had been for years, gun running and such. You had lost all your money, but he had not lost his. You remember a young chap that used to do the cooking? That was me. It's a long time ago, Cy Brown, and I have changed since then, but my memory has not changed. Nor you. Look at your finger; look at your face.
“You were staying at the Black Farm some miles from the town. I had gone to the town for a jamboree. I came back to find Leeson dead. He was lying on the floor in the sitting room, his pistol in his hand. It hadn't been fired, a bullet was through his heart and your pistol was on the floor with one chamber discharged, and, by the way Leeson fell, it was clear how he'd been shot. And there was no signs of Brown. Right inland we followed his pugs, but he'd got clear away—and the reward of five hundred pounds was out against him—five hundred pounds, dead or alive.”
“Finished?” asked Cyrus. “Well, if you have, allow me to tell you that the killing of Leeson was an act of self-defense. As you say, Brown had lost all his money. Yes, but that night he sat down to écarté with Leeson and won all Leeson's; pretty near two thousand five hundred pounds was the amount. Then Leeson tried to shoot him. Would have done so only his revolver missed fire; that gave Brown time to whip out his, only just time. If he hadn't fired, Leeson would have drilled him. When you say Leeson's pistol hadn't been fired, you are a damn liar. It had been fired, but it hadn't gone off. The police are experts at that sort of thing and they would have examined his pistol and found the truth. Then, again, there was no money taken.”
“How do you mean?” asked Yakoff.
“I mean that Brown left the place. He was no killer. He was pretty well bowled over to see a man lie dead to his hand, and he'd been drinking and his nerve wasn't what it might have been. He left the place and left the country, for next morning when he saw things clear he saw too late he'd been a fool not to stick it out. But, as I was saying, he could have proved his story and he can prove it still.”
“In what way?” asked Yakoff.
“This way. There was no money taken. He left that house just as it was, with the fellow lying dead on the floor and the cards and money on the table.
“The money was stacked on the table by his chair. He was dead broke that night as he could and can prove, so he must have won the money from Leeson. Any quarrel must have come from Leeson, see? A man doesn't shoot a man because he has won money from him.”
“You're talking wild,” said Yakoff. “There was no money on the table or cards. When I got there after daybreak, Leeson was lying done in, your pistol was on the floor, and Leeson's strong box was open with his keys in the lock. He'd been killed for his keys and his money.”
Yakoff took a cigar from the box on the table, bit it and lit it and blew a cloud of smoke. The act was scarcely noticed by Cyrus.
He saw now the pit into which he had fallen. He recalled again that terrible night. Horrified by what had happened, shaken with alcohol, he had left cards, money, dead man and everything in his sudden flight from the scene. Yakoff must have come and instantly made his profit, taken the money, put the cards away, taken the dead man's keys, opened the safe, left it open. Then he would have gone for the police, with absolute safety to himself for everything pointed to Brown.
Brown had killed Leeson for his money; the fool had actually left his pistol behind with one chamber discharged.
Murderers are often accused of doing very stupid things that lead to their arrest. They do these stupid things, not because they are more stupid than other men, but because their minds are upset by the act they are committing or have committed.
Brown was not a murderer; all the same, his mind had been turned topsy-turvy by the stress of this business, helped, of course, by alcohol. It was not till several hours later that he discovered the loss of the pistol, the fact that he hadn't put it back in his pocket and that it must be lying there as evidence against him. It was then too late to go back.
Cyrus recalled all this. He saw the whole thing en bloc, just as a drowning man sees his life. He saw also that if Yakoff moved against him, there was no escape.
Once the law took the matter in hand it would probe back through his past. It would establish the fact that he was really Brown who had changed his name to Cyrus Hardanger, and it could do this quite easily, for he could not account for his movements over twenty years ago without disclosing the fact that he was Brown.
He had always felt safe up to this. The time was so long ago, the scene so far away there in Australia, and in those days he had been a man of no account; also, he was innocent of murder and sure in his mind that if he were ever held for this thing he could prove his innocence.
But Yakoff had upset all that. Cyrus had reckoned without this man of supreme wickedness. This man who already had profited to the extent of two thousand five hundred pounds, and was out now for a fortune of half a million dollars.
For a moment the impulse to throttle the reptile there and then, regardless of the confederate waiting outside in the canoe, seized Cyrus like an insanity. Then he conquered it.
He said to Yakoff:
“You stole that money and fixed up things so that it looked as if I had killed that guy for his coin.”
“That for a tale!” said Yakoff. “I'm telling you when I got there I found the safe bust, the man dead and you gone. I'm not a hard man and I've no grudge against you, see, but it's this way. I'm in the know of this thing, see? I'm, so to speak, an accomplice after the fact if I don't tell, see, and I'm a poor man. I'm clean putting myself in a hole if I keep my mouth shut, knowing what I do. See all that? Well, there you are—I'm not going to do you a service for nothing. You're a rich man; this boat of yours is your credentials. I'm not asking how you made your pile; it's there. I'm putting my services to you at half. I'm taking a big risk holding my tongue, knowing what I know. See here. I was talking of half. Well, now, see here, I'm no squeezer. This is a business deal and two hundred thousand dollars down will close it. You'll never hear another word of the matter. But that's my ultimatum.”
Cyrus, who had been standing all the time, took a seat.
“Two hundred thousand dollars,” said he, as if he were talking to himself.
“That's the amount,” said Yakoff, “and the pearls are thrown in.”
There was a tantalus case and a syphon on a table near the door, and Yakoff looked at them.
“If it's all the same to you,” said he, “it's thirsty weather.”
“Help yourself,” said Cyrus.
He sat with his finger tips together like a man engaged in figuring out something.
One of the worst positions in the world is stalemate. You are a prisoner yet not a prisoner. There is no move on the entire board open to you but surrender.
Cyrus was held not only by the bare facts we know, but by the extra fact that, leaving everything else aside, the raking up of his past would bring all sorts of minor things to light. He had been a free lance in a doubtful commercial world; he had told June about the gun running long ago, but he had no wish to tell the world. He knew quite well that if his affairs were raked into, there would be enough to make a scandal. He would fall socially and June would suffer.
That was the least that might eventuate from this business. The worst was hanging or life.
An extradition order, a trial and Yakoff's evidence. That was all that was wanted.
He awoke from his reverie.
“I've got to think on the whole of this matter,” said he. “You must come again in the morning; it's too big to decide on to-night.”
“As you please,” said Yakoff.
He saw that he had won, but he showed no sign of triumph. As a matter of fact, he was exhausted; the nerve tension of the business had been tremendous. There had been the chance of Cyrus going wild and killing him out of hand despite Chales being alongside in the canoe; there was the huge sum he was gambling for and there was the excitement of holding another man, so to speak, at the pistol point.
He had not taken the whisky out of bravado or from impudence but from necessity.
He put down the glass and prepared to go.
“At what time shall I come?” he asked.
“Make it eleven o'clock,” replied Cyrus.
Then, without another word, he accompanied him outside, saw him go down the companionway where the canoe was waiting, and push off.
The night was perfect and the moon ripple of the canoe showed broad in its track. Lights showed on the shore and the wind brought the far-off tanging of a guitar from the native houses. The sound of the sea on the reef came like the breathing of the ocean in its sleep.
Cyrus turned back to the smoking room.
An hour ago he had been a free man, careless, happy and with years of happiness before him. That was all gone.
Well he knew that if he paid Yakoff this money it would not be the end of the business. The leech would attack him again. He was hopelessly involved, tied up.
Ten dollars paid to Yakoff in hard money would be as bad as two hundred thousand. Even if Yakoff were to hold his hand, he would always be in fear. Never easy. There was only one way out.
Milligan & Harper of San Francisco held his will, leaving everything to June. That was all right. Yakoff would come on board in the morning at eleven o'clock. Yakoff would be paid.
No, that would not do. Nothing must take place on board the yacht on account of June. He would go ashore with Yakoff to his house to make the payment there.
He opened a drawer in the bureau near the door and took out a heavy navy revolver, opened the breech, took out the cartridges and replaced them. Then he put the thing back.
Then he rang for the steward and told him to ask June to come to the smoke room.