[Top]CHAPTERIII.MR. BOLINGBROKE MILLWEED TELLS HIS STORY.The wind was blowing very fresh; and the Goldwing staggered wildly, as she went ahead nearly before it. Mr. Bolingbroke Millweed appeared to be a little nervous, for the schooner carried twice as much sail in proportion to her size as the sloop in which he had come from Burlington.“She acts just as though she was going to tip over,” said he, clinging to the wash-board.“Tip over! She don’t do that sort of thing. She has got over all her bad habits,” replied the skipper. “But I should like to have you spin your yarn before we get up to Field’s Bay, so that I may know what to do with you.”“I have been looking for a place in a store for a year, for I was graduated at the high-school last summer,” Mr. Millweed began. “I know a young man by the name of Hackett Tungwood, who is in a store in Burlington. He wanted a vacationof a week, and he engaged me to take his place while he was absent.”“Did his boss agree to it?” asked Dory.“His employer did agree to it, and treated me very kindly when I went to the store at seven o’clock this morning. About nine o’clock Mr. Lingerwell, who is Hack’s brother-in-law, and the head man in the store, sent me to the safe for the cash-book.”“I got the book, and gave it to him. Just then Mr. Longbrook, the proprietor, came in, and asked Mr. Lingerwell for the four hundred and fifty dollars which had been put in the safe the night before. I saw the head man go to the safe, and then both he and his employer seemed to be in great consternation.”“Short words, or you never will finish,” interposed Dory.“I did not know what the matter was, but Mr. Lingerwell used a great many exclamations.”“What did he do with them?”“He uttered them, of course: what else could he do with them? If you continue to interrupt with irrelevant questions, it will take me a long time to tell the story,” replied Mr. Millweed impatiently.“I was putting up goods near the desk, or I should not have noticed what was going on. In a little while I heard enough to satisfy me that the four hundred and fifty dollars was missing.“Mr. Longbrook called me to the desk, and asked if I had been to the safe. I told him I had taken the cash-book from the safe, as I had been told to do. He looked me sharply in the eye. Mr. Lingerwell said no one else had been to the safe since he opened it in the morning.“I was sent back to my work, and the two men kept on talking about the money. It was clear enough to me that I was suspected of taking it, and I felt as though I was already in the State prison. I heard Mr. Lingerwell say he was sure I had taken the money, for it was all right when he opened the safe. I never was so terrified before in my life. Hack Tungwell had told me he did not expect to keep his place much longer: he might not return at all. If I pleased his employer, I might get the situation.“What I heard seemed to be the knell of all my hopes. I had done my best to get a place, for my father sadly needs what little I could earn. Then the two men talked in low tones for a while.Presently Mr. Longbrook went out of the store. I was sure he had gone for an officer to arrest me.“The idea of being arrested and marched through the streets by a constable was about as bad to me as being shot through the head. When Mr. Lingerwell went to the back part of the store, I rushed out at the front door.”“You left!” exclaimed Dory with something like indignation in his tones.“I did: I was wholly unwilling to be dragged through the streets by an officer.”“That was worse than sinking the sloop in two hundred and fifty feet of water. Do I understand you to say that you did not take the money from the safe?” demanded Dory.“Do I look like a thief?” asked Mr. Millweed, rising from his seat in the standing-room in deep disgust; though he was immediately thrown back again by the motion of the yacht.“Never mind how you look: you acted just like a thief,” retorted Dory warmly. “You don’t say yet that you didn’t take the money when you went to the safe for the book.”“I do say now, most emphatically, that I didnot take the money when I went to the safe for the cash-book, or at any other time. I didn’t even know there was any money in the safe,” protested Mr. Millweed very earnestly.“That’s coming to the point; but you have done the best you could to convince your employer and his head man that you did take it. I advise you to go straight back to Burlington, and then straight to the store, and face the music. If anybody says I stole any money, I want to see the man that says so.”“That would all be very well under ordinary circumstances,” pleaded Mr. Millweed.“It’s all very well under any circumstances.”“I had a theory of my own.”“I don’t care any thing about your theory: I say the way is to face the music. If you had let them search you before you went out of the store, you would have been all right. They would not have found the money upon you, and you had had no chance to get rid of it. Now they will say you buried it somewhere on the shore of the lake.”“But I tell you I have a theory. I believe Tim Lingerwell took the money himself. How easy itwould have been for him to slip the wallet, or the package, whatever it was, into my pocket when I was not looking.”“That thing has been done in a hundred and fifty novels and stories, but it isn’t done every day in Burlington. If Tim Lingerwell wanted the money bad enough to steal it, he wouldn’t put it into your pocket.”“He isn’t any too good to do such a thing. He and Hack belong in Genverres; and people here wouldn’t trust either of them with a pewter quarter,” argued Mr. Millweed.“Perhaps you are right: I don’t know. You have given yourself away, and made it look bad for you. If Tim Lingerwell took the money, what did he do with it?”“That’s more than I know. He has the care of the safe, and he and I were the only persons who had been near it when Mr. Longbrook came in for the money. I know I did not take it; and if I didn’t, he did. That’s the whole of it.”Dory believed his passenger had been a fool to run away; but, without knowing why, he could not help believing that he was telling the truth.“Where did you get the sloop in which youcame up the lake?” he asked. “You said she did not belong to you.”“She belongs to Sim Green, a friend of mine, who lives next door to me. He was going down to Burlington to stay a few days with his uncle. Money is a scarce article in our family, and I had none to pay my fare by railroad. I was going to walk; but, at Sim’s invitation, I went down in his sloop. When I left the store, I went down to the boat, and got into it. Then I thought I would go home, and tell my father and mother what had happened.”“Then you took the boat without leave?”“I knew Sim would not care, and he won’t come home before Saturday. I meant to send it back before that time,” Mr. Millweed explained.“That may be all right; but Sim won’t thank you for taking it, when he learns that she has gone down in two hundred and fifty feet of water. Now, what is to be done?” asked Dory. “Will you go back to Burlington, and face the music?”“I don’t know what to do,” replied Mr. Millweed, evidently overwhelmed with perplexity.“I have told you what I would do if I were in your place,” added Dory.“Then I will go back; but I don’t want to be dragged into Burlington by Tim Lingerwell,” replied Mr. Millweed, as he glanced at the steam-launch.“All right, if you will only go back. What makes you think Tim Lingerwell took the money?” asked Dory.“The more I think of it, the more certain I feel that he took the money. Why should he call me from my work to get the cash-book out of the safe for him, when he was within six feet of it? Why should he send me to the safe at all, and leave it unlocked, when he knew there was so much money in it? Why didn’t he search me before Mr. Longbrook went out? He managed it all to suit himself,” replied the passenger with energy.Dory thought his passenger was right. If the head man in the store believed the substitute clerk had taken the money from the safe, he could not see why he had been permitted to leave the store.“Did they chase you in the street after you left the store?” asked Dory, who was rather inclined to do a little detective business on his own account,as he had had a taste of it during the summer.“No one chased me. I did not see any one from the store. I was off Split Rock when I first saw the launch, but I didn’t know Tim was in her till just before he ran into the sloop. The moment I heard his voice, I understood it all; but I did not know enough about a boat to get out of the way.”“I don’t believe you did, or you would not have sunk that sloop. The wonder is, that you got as far as you did without capsizing her.”“I hoisted the sail, and let her go. The wind was fair, and all I had to do was to keep her away from the shore. She frightened me out of my wits two or three times when the waves were high.”“With this breeze we can run away from that steam-launch. If you like, I will take you back to Burlington, after I have told my mother where I am going.”“I should like that very much,” replied Mr. Millweed.“But we can’t run away from the steamer beating down the lake, and we must dodge her in some way,” suggested Dory.“I will do just as you say, Dory; and I begin to see what an idiot I was to run away, though I still think Tim Lingerwell had some plan to trip me up,” added the passenger.Dory had already decided upon his plan of operations. The steamer was on the wrong side of him: he wished he was below instead of above her; for he wanted to run into Beaver River, which he could not do on the open lake without encountering his pursuer.His southerly course had by this time brought him near the east shore of the lake. The steam-launch was all of half a mile distant. From the mouth of the river a shoal extends a mile out into the lake, and over a mile to the southward. Dory struck this shallow water at its southern extremity.The deepest water is near the shore, and the skipper followed it. The launch continued on her former course for a while, and then stopped her screw. Tim Lingerwell at the wheel was perplexed; but Dory found his way across the shoal, and entered the river. Then the launch went around the shoal, and continued the chase.
[Top]
The wind was blowing very fresh; and the Goldwing staggered wildly, as she went ahead nearly before it. Mr. Bolingbroke Millweed appeared to be a little nervous, for the schooner carried twice as much sail in proportion to her size as the sloop in which he had come from Burlington.
“She acts just as though she was going to tip over,” said he, clinging to the wash-board.
“Tip over! She don’t do that sort of thing. She has got over all her bad habits,” replied the skipper. “But I should like to have you spin your yarn before we get up to Field’s Bay, so that I may know what to do with you.”
“I have been looking for a place in a store for a year, for I was graduated at the high-school last summer,” Mr. Millweed began. “I know a young man by the name of Hackett Tungwood, who is in a store in Burlington. He wanted a vacationof a week, and he engaged me to take his place while he was absent.”
“Did his boss agree to it?” asked Dory.
“His employer did agree to it, and treated me very kindly when I went to the store at seven o’clock this morning. About nine o’clock Mr. Lingerwell, who is Hack’s brother-in-law, and the head man in the store, sent me to the safe for the cash-book.”
“I got the book, and gave it to him. Just then Mr. Longbrook, the proprietor, came in, and asked Mr. Lingerwell for the four hundred and fifty dollars which had been put in the safe the night before. I saw the head man go to the safe, and then both he and his employer seemed to be in great consternation.”
“Short words, or you never will finish,” interposed Dory.
“I did not know what the matter was, but Mr. Lingerwell used a great many exclamations.”
“What did he do with them?”
“He uttered them, of course: what else could he do with them? If you continue to interrupt with irrelevant questions, it will take me a long time to tell the story,” replied Mr. Millweed impatiently.“I was putting up goods near the desk, or I should not have noticed what was going on. In a little while I heard enough to satisfy me that the four hundred and fifty dollars was missing.
“Mr. Longbrook called me to the desk, and asked if I had been to the safe. I told him I had taken the cash-book from the safe, as I had been told to do. He looked me sharply in the eye. Mr. Lingerwell said no one else had been to the safe since he opened it in the morning.
“I was sent back to my work, and the two men kept on talking about the money. It was clear enough to me that I was suspected of taking it, and I felt as though I was already in the State prison. I heard Mr. Lingerwell say he was sure I had taken the money, for it was all right when he opened the safe. I never was so terrified before in my life. Hack Tungwell had told me he did not expect to keep his place much longer: he might not return at all. If I pleased his employer, I might get the situation.
“What I heard seemed to be the knell of all my hopes. I had done my best to get a place, for my father sadly needs what little I could earn. Then the two men talked in low tones for a while.Presently Mr. Longbrook went out of the store. I was sure he had gone for an officer to arrest me.
“The idea of being arrested and marched through the streets by a constable was about as bad to me as being shot through the head. When Mr. Lingerwell went to the back part of the store, I rushed out at the front door.”
“You left!” exclaimed Dory with something like indignation in his tones.
“I did: I was wholly unwilling to be dragged through the streets by an officer.”
“That was worse than sinking the sloop in two hundred and fifty feet of water. Do I understand you to say that you did not take the money from the safe?” demanded Dory.
“Do I look like a thief?” asked Mr. Millweed, rising from his seat in the standing-room in deep disgust; though he was immediately thrown back again by the motion of the yacht.
“Never mind how you look: you acted just like a thief,” retorted Dory warmly. “You don’t say yet that you didn’t take the money when you went to the safe for the book.”
“I do say now, most emphatically, that I didnot take the money when I went to the safe for the cash-book, or at any other time. I didn’t even know there was any money in the safe,” protested Mr. Millweed very earnestly.
“That’s coming to the point; but you have done the best you could to convince your employer and his head man that you did take it. I advise you to go straight back to Burlington, and then straight to the store, and face the music. If anybody says I stole any money, I want to see the man that says so.”
“That would all be very well under ordinary circumstances,” pleaded Mr. Millweed.
“It’s all very well under any circumstances.”
“I had a theory of my own.”
“I don’t care any thing about your theory: I say the way is to face the music. If you had let them search you before you went out of the store, you would have been all right. They would not have found the money upon you, and you had had no chance to get rid of it. Now they will say you buried it somewhere on the shore of the lake.”
“But I tell you I have a theory. I believe Tim Lingerwell took the money himself. How easy itwould have been for him to slip the wallet, or the package, whatever it was, into my pocket when I was not looking.”
“That thing has been done in a hundred and fifty novels and stories, but it isn’t done every day in Burlington. If Tim Lingerwell wanted the money bad enough to steal it, he wouldn’t put it into your pocket.”
“He isn’t any too good to do such a thing. He and Hack belong in Genverres; and people here wouldn’t trust either of them with a pewter quarter,” argued Mr. Millweed.
“Perhaps you are right: I don’t know. You have given yourself away, and made it look bad for you. If Tim Lingerwell took the money, what did he do with it?”
“That’s more than I know. He has the care of the safe, and he and I were the only persons who had been near it when Mr. Longbrook came in for the money. I know I did not take it; and if I didn’t, he did. That’s the whole of it.”
Dory believed his passenger had been a fool to run away; but, without knowing why, he could not help believing that he was telling the truth.
“Where did you get the sloop in which youcame up the lake?” he asked. “You said she did not belong to you.”
“She belongs to Sim Green, a friend of mine, who lives next door to me. He was going down to Burlington to stay a few days with his uncle. Money is a scarce article in our family, and I had none to pay my fare by railroad. I was going to walk; but, at Sim’s invitation, I went down in his sloop. When I left the store, I went down to the boat, and got into it. Then I thought I would go home, and tell my father and mother what had happened.”
“Then you took the boat without leave?”
“I knew Sim would not care, and he won’t come home before Saturday. I meant to send it back before that time,” Mr. Millweed explained.
“That may be all right; but Sim won’t thank you for taking it, when he learns that she has gone down in two hundred and fifty feet of water. Now, what is to be done?” asked Dory. “Will you go back to Burlington, and face the music?”
“I don’t know what to do,” replied Mr. Millweed, evidently overwhelmed with perplexity.
“I have told you what I would do if I were in your place,” added Dory.
“Then I will go back; but I don’t want to be dragged into Burlington by Tim Lingerwell,” replied Mr. Millweed, as he glanced at the steam-launch.
“All right, if you will only go back. What makes you think Tim Lingerwell took the money?” asked Dory.
“The more I think of it, the more certain I feel that he took the money. Why should he call me from my work to get the cash-book out of the safe for him, when he was within six feet of it? Why should he send me to the safe at all, and leave it unlocked, when he knew there was so much money in it? Why didn’t he search me before Mr. Longbrook went out? He managed it all to suit himself,” replied the passenger with energy.
Dory thought his passenger was right. If the head man in the store believed the substitute clerk had taken the money from the safe, he could not see why he had been permitted to leave the store.
“Did they chase you in the street after you left the store?” asked Dory, who was rather inclined to do a little detective business on his own account,as he had had a taste of it during the summer.
“No one chased me. I did not see any one from the store. I was off Split Rock when I first saw the launch, but I didn’t know Tim was in her till just before he ran into the sloop. The moment I heard his voice, I understood it all; but I did not know enough about a boat to get out of the way.”
“I don’t believe you did, or you would not have sunk that sloop. The wonder is, that you got as far as you did without capsizing her.”
“I hoisted the sail, and let her go. The wind was fair, and all I had to do was to keep her away from the shore. She frightened me out of my wits two or three times when the waves were high.”
“With this breeze we can run away from that steam-launch. If you like, I will take you back to Burlington, after I have told my mother where I am going.”
“I should like that very much,” replied Mr. Millweed.
“But we can’t run away from the steamer beating down the lake, and we must dodge her in some way,” suggested Dory.
“I will do just as you say, Dory; and I begin to see what an idiot I was to run away, though I still think Tim Lingerwell had some plan to trip me up,” added the passenger.
Dory had already decided upon his plan of operations. The steamer was on the wrong side of him: he wished he was below instead of above her; for he wanted to run into Beaver River, which he could not do on the open lake without encountering his pursuer.
His southerly course had by this time brought him near the east shore of the lake. The steam-launch was all of half a mile distant. From the mouth of the river a shoal extends a mile out into the lake, and over a mile to the southward. Dory struck this shallow water at its southern extremity.
The deepest water is near the shore, and the skipper followed it. The launch continued on her former course for a while, and then stopped her screw. Tim Lingerwell at the wheel was perplexed; but Dory found his way across the shoal, and entered the river. Then the launch went around the shoal, and continued the chase.