Tongues of Flame (MacFarlane)/Chapter 16
SAVAGELY Quackenbaugh drove the prow of his launch high upon the shore and both men leaped out to come rushing at Harrington almost as if they menaced him. It was a severe test of nerves that had already been tested severely; but Harrington straightened under it, eyes level, lips firm, voice steady.
"Yes, I was alone here with the gold resting on that stump, wondering why in thunder those fellows didn't show up with the launch. The Indian had to go to his nets and left me."
"We saw him from where we were dead, heading up the Basin," explained Scanlon with nervous rapidity of utterance—a thing unusual with the Chief Counsel. "We hailed him for a tow but he couldn't seem to hear us."
"I guess not," said Henry, "for I didn't hear you, and believe me, I was listening, anxious till I could get that accursed coin on its way back to the vaults."
At this juncture Lahleet came down the path into the picture just as she foresaw that she was about to come into Henry's explanation.
Although pale and frightened, the girl in her dark tailor-mades managed somehow to appear dainty and impressive as usual and both Scanlon and Quackenbaugh greeted her appearance with looks of admiration and amazed curiosity as if she were a part of the mystery which encompassed them.
"This is Miss Marceau, teacher of the Indian school at Shell Point, who was kind enough to try to help me with Adam John," said Henry in introducing her.
Both men lifted their hats, each threw the girl one grateful glance as for her codperation in a project of theirs, and again centered the fierceness of their gaze on Harrington. "Say!" Harrington interrupted himself. "Didn't you men see anybody skulking around the island in the last hour?"
"Couple of fellows in a skiff fishing," remembered Scanlon; "one was rowing, the other trolling."
"How long ago?"
"About half an hour ago they passed out of our sight, coasting the island. We never picked them up again because we went dead."
"Did you notice if either of them had a Vandyke beard?"
"One did," said Scanlon. "Fellow in a blue shirt."
"Then that's the explanation," said Henry. "The man with the Vandyke is dead out here in the timber a couple of hundred yards. The other fellow got away with the gold."
"Dead?" gasped the hoarse-voiced Scanlon, with a sudden increase of excitement—a very marked increase, Henry remembered long afterwards—his face was livid, spotted, ghastly for a moment. "Go on and tell us what happened. Confound it, Henry, you're mixin' me all up."
Quackenbaugh was more self-contained. White, intense, his keen black eyes boring into Harrington's as if he would pierce to the very marrow of his soul, he put together what he had heard and asked impatiently for more. "Yes, yes. Go on. Just how did it happen?"
"Miss Marceau had left me to take a path through the woods to a canoe she used in visiting the homes of some of her pupils whose parents live on these islands. I was still wondering why the devil the boat didn't turn up, when I heard her scream. Naturally, I rushed to the rescue."
"Naturally," agreed Scanlon, but his eyes were narrowing and he was regaining his self-control.
"Naturally!" snapped Quackenbaugh.
"This fellow with the Vandyke beard was after her," Henry was continuing.
"And you—you plugged him?" broke in Scanlon like a flash, yellow eyes lighting, but with something like relief. "And you—you plugged him?" demanded the Chief Counsel. "I thought I heard a pistol shot."
There came a quick new light to Henry Harrington's eyes. "Come and see," he said.
"But about the gold?" reminded Quackenbaugh.
"I was gone not more than seven or eight minutes," declared Henry. "When I came back it was gone. There was no one in sight—nothing but the mark of a prow in the sand as you see it there with the footsteps leading to and from it."
"You're right, it was the man in the skiff," decided Quackenbaugh in that abrupt manner of his. "Where the devil could the fellow have got to so quick? I'll jump in the launch and take a quick scout around; and if I don't see anything, get to the nearest telephone and start Cosby." Cosby was the Boland secret service chief. "You and Harrington hike back to the dead man and see what story he's got to tell. If we get that money back, we've got to get it quick. And we've got to get it back, you bet your life!"
The President of Boland Cedar, acting with his usual decision, gave his craft a push, leaped into it and was off. Harrington led the way down the forest path. Lahleet followed at a distance, as if reluctant to go but more reluctant to be left alone.
But when they reached that green bed among the ferns, it was mysteriously empty. Harrington ejaculated and stared.
"But you plunked him?" demanded Scanlon anxiously.
Harrington pointed to a crimson lacquer upon the ferns.
"There's more than one of them," he deduced. "This fellow was heavy. One man couldn't have carried him off."
"We'll get 'em, no matter how many there are," boasted Scanlon. "No bunch of crooks can get away with a thing like that on us. By the way, did you recognize the dead guy? Ever see him before?"
"It was Count Eckstrom!"
Scanlon's fat-imbedded eyes opened wide with amazement. "Eckstrom? The man you asked me about? One of this bunch of foreign nobility that's trailed Billie Boland home?"
"Fake nobility," corrected Harrington. "Lord, what a shock it will be to her to know!"
"Know?" queried the practical Scanlon, his hoarse, throaty voice throatier than ever as he lowered it to tones of cunning and mystery. "She don't never need to know. With the disappearance of the corpus delicti this killing's a myth. It never happened. Nothing's happened for that matter. You don't think we want it advertised that we sent twenty thousand dollars in gold out here to buy off a fool Siwash and got ourselves shell-gamed out of it, do you?"
"No, I suppose not," perceived Harrington, mind rather groping.
"And this young lady here? I guess she'd just as soon be relieved of any embarrassment." Scanlon had lowered his voice still more so that Lahleet, unhearing, remained staring at the empty bed amid the ferns.
Henry's heart leaped with gratitude at the perception of so much chivalry in coarse, ruthless old Scanlon, "That's fine of you, Scanlon—thinking of Miss Marceau that way," he whispered earnestly, and laid an appreciative hand upon the heavy shoulder of the man. "But"—his voice hardened—"if you think I'm going to let myself be jobbed out of the first twenty thousand dollars Boland General ever trusted me with, by a confidence man turned bandit, you're mistaken. Scanlon"—Harrington's tone was tense—"I'll get that twenty thousand and I'll get the thugs that got it!"
"Bully boy!" approved Scanlon heartily. "I like your spirit, Harrington. Yep! We'll get it; but it will be a still hunt. We'll run 'em down quick and fast but we'll pussy-foot to beat the devil. Quackenbaugh has got Cosby routed out by this time, and you can bet your bottom dollar that old Quack isn't doing any advertising and that he's got Cosby wised-up good and proper."
"It's just one o'clock now," he announced after looking at his watch. "By two o'clock there'll be twenty men on the island. We'll beat up every foot of it before dark. We better get back to the landing and meet Quackenbaugh. Everything I've said goes for both of us. I and Quack have hunted together before."
Just as the trio reached the landing, Quackenbaugh ran the prow of his speed boat once more upon the sandy beach.
"Not a sign of anybody around," he exclaimed as he leaped out. "How about the dead man?"
"He's gone."
"Gone?" cried Quackenbaugh, incredulously. Then his features grew tense with the sense of new mystery as he searched first the face of Scanlon and then of Harrington. "The devil!"
Scanlon told him what they had found and of their conjecture; also his decision to keep the matter secret unless publicity should become desirable.
"Right, of course!" approved Quackenbaugh, quick to grasp the salient points. "They're on the island and all we've got to do is to keep them here till Cosby and his men come: to make sure of that I'll continue my patrolling. You three keep together till reënforcements arrive. Then see Miss Marceau safely on her way. Take no chances. We are dealing with desperate characters."
But Cosby and his men found nothing after four hours' search. "They must have had a speeder concealed in some cove and shot away with the body and the gold while Quackenbaugh was on the north side telephoning." That was Cosby's theory. "But my net will pick 'em up before they get very far."
"I must insist on keeping nothing from Mr. Boland," Harrington said to Scanlon and Quackenbaugh, as about sunset they rode back down the channel in the speedboat, three baffled, wrathful men.
"Our strategy just went wrong," snapped Quackenbaugh angrily.
"You men have been big with me, awfully big," Henry gulped gratefully. "And about Miss Marceau too—poor girl."
Each man contrived a look of almost painful modesty.
"You're with a big crowd now, Henry." For the first time in an hour Scanlon loosed a smile. "Wait till you see how big the Old Man will be."
Such fine generosity and the assurance of more from Mr. Boland himself, quickened Henry's eagerness to redeem himself—and he was eager enough already.