CHAPTER IIICONCERNING DOUBLOON SPIT
Robert Wallace, the father of Evelyn, was not one of the forty-niners, but he had come to California by way of the Isthmus not very many years later. Always of an adventurous turn, it was on his fourteenth birthday that he ran away from his home in Baltimore to become a stowaway on board a south-bound vessel.
It was a day of privations, and the boy endured more than his share of them without complaint. Somehow he got along, knocking about from one point to another, now at the gold diggings, now on the San Francisco wharfs, and again as a deck hand on the coasters that plied from port to port.
When he was eighteen, but well grown for his age, he fell in with an old salt named Nat Quinn. Quinn was an old man, close to seventy, a survival of a type of sailor which even then had all but passed away.
The sea and the wind had given Quinn a faceof wrinkled leather. It was his custom to wear rings in his ears, to carry a murderous dirk, and to wrap around his bald head a red bandanna after the fashion of the buccaneers of old.
He was a surly old ruffian, quick to take offense, and absolutely fearless. When the old fellow was in drink it was as much as one's life was worth to cross his whim.
Nat Quinn was second mate of thePorto Ricowhen young Wallace shipped before the mast at San Francisco for a cruise to Lima. The crew were probably rough specimens, but there can be no doubt that Quinn hazed them mercilessly.
Soon the whole forecastle was simmering with talk about revenge. Off Guayaquil one night three of the crew found him alone on the deck and rushed him overboard. The old man was no swimmer. No doubt this would have been the end of him if young Wallace, hearing his cry for help, had not dived from the rail and kept him afloat until a boat reached them.
From that night Nat Quinn took a great fancy to the young man and often hinted that he was going to make his fortune. He told of hidden treasure, but never definitely; spoke of a great fortune to be had for the lifting, and promised Wallace that he should go halves.
No doubt he trusted the boy, but the habit of secrecy had grown too strong easily to be broken. Several times he approached the subject, but usually sheered off before he had gone far. Of shrugs and winks he offered plenty, enough to keep the youngster tantalized almost beyond endurance. Nor was it possible to force his confidence, for he was of a surly, taciturn disposition, given to brooding suspicions.
But at last the story came out. Quinn had been in his early days a seaman on board the shipMary Annof Bristol, which in the year 1817 was wrecked off the coast of Peru and cast upon the rocks. Most of the crew were saved, including the captain, one Thomas Rogers, the first mate, "Bully" Evans, and the boatswain, Pablo Lobardi, a quarrelsome fellow with whom Quinn had had a difficulty.
The rescued seamen were treated with the greatest kindness by the simple-hearted natives. To Cerro Blanco, the nearest town, they were taken and given work. Most of them found employment in the rich mines of the neighborhood, pending the arrival of some ship to take them back to Europe.
Lobardi was the only one of the crew who could talk Spanish, so that in his capacity of interpreter he acquired much influence with the men.It was he that hatched the vile plot to rob the mines, loot the rich churches and the banks of Cerro Blanco, and make their escape on the ship which put in twice a year to carry the gold to Lima.
It looked a desperate enough adventure, this plan to seize an armed transport and escape with a great treasure, but these ruffians were the very men to carry through such an attempt. In its apparent hopelessness lay one prime factor of success, for none could expect a score of unarmed men to try so forlorn a hope. The transport carried twice as many soldiers, and these could call upon the town for aid in case of need.
Everything went as well for the rascally buccaneers as they could desire. As the treasure wagons from the mines filed through a narrow gorge the sailors fell upon them. By means of three stolen rifles they drove away the guard. In their wild flight for safety the men who composed this body flung away their weapons in panic.
Bully Evans, captain in fact though not in name, now had eleven rifles and three pistols to distribute among his men. Leaving an escort with the gold, he pushed to Cerro Blanco with the main body of robbers. At the outskirts of the town he again divided his forces. One party hastened to thebanks and another looted the cathedral. Within an hour the town had been stripped clean of its gold and jewels and the scoundrels had again joined forces at the wharves. Only the need of absolute silence saved the town from a carnival of fire and murder.
It was by this time in the small hours of a dark, moonless night. The pirates loaded the treasure into boats and pulled quietly for theSanta Theresa, a transport which lay like a black hulk in the harbor.
The first boat was challenged by a sentinel on board, but Lobardi gave the countersign which they had forced from the leader of the treasure convoy.
"Muy bien," answered the sentry, and he at once moved away to call the captain of the marines.
As that officer came sleepily to the deck a half dozen figures swarmed over the side of the ship. He gave a cry, the last he ever uttered. A knife hurtling through the dark was buried to the hilt in his throat. Simultaneously one of the men on guard let out his death shriek and the other fled down the hatchway to the quarters of the men.
The first rush of the troopers to the deck was met by a volley that mowed them down. Beforethey could recover, the pirates were upon them with cutlases. Taken by surprise, hemmed in by the narrow hatchway, the soldiers made a poor defense. Some were pursued and cut down, others escaped by swimming to the wharves. Those who surrendered were flung into a boat and ordered ashore.
Captain Rogers worked the brig out of the harbor and set her nose to the north. There was need of haste, for the ship's consort was expected in a day or two. That there would be a pursuit nobody doubted.
Now occurred a state of affairs to be accounted the most strange were it not the most natural in the world. While the plot had been fomenting, and during its execution, these scurvy fellows had been of one mind, amenable to discipline, and entirely loyal to each other.
The thing had been in the wind a month, yet not one of them had breathed a word in betrayal. But no sooner had they won success than dissensions broke out. They were jealous of their officers, suspicious of each other.
Men whispered together in corners, and others scowled at them in distrust. They grew unruly, were soon ripe for mutiny.
To make matters worse, the wines and liquorsaboard were made too free. It was not long before the cutthroats were in a debauch that threatened to last as long as the rum. Fights grew frequent. Within a week one man was buried and another lay in his bunk cut to ribbons.
At this juncture Rogers, Evans, and Lobardi put their heads together and quietly dumped overboard the liquor supply. Captain Rogers was the ablest seaman among the officers, and he it was that worked the brig. But Bully Evans was the real leader of the pirates. He was a big man, of tremendous vitality and strength, and he ruled like a czar, hazing his men into submission by sheer brutality.
One specimen of his methods must serve to illustrate a week of battle, every hour filled with disorder. The brigTruxillo, consort of theSanta Theresa, had appeared in the offing one morning and hung on in chase with all sail set. All day and night the two ships raced, the one to escape, the other to capture the pirates.
Next morning there came up a heavy fog. Orders were given to about ship. Nothing could have amazed the crew more, and mutiny was instantly in the air. The malcontents whispered together and sent forward a committee of three to voice their refusal to comply with the order.
Before a dozen words had been spoken Evans stepped forward and flung the spokesman from the quarterdeck. While the other two hesitated he was upon them, had cracked their heads together, and hammered them down the steps to the waist.
From his belt he whipped two pistols and leveled them at the grumblers.
"Avast, you lubbers!" he bellowed. "By the powers, I'll learn you to play horse with Bully Evans! Pipe up your complaint or foot it, you flabby seacocks what call yourselves gentlemen of fortune! Stow my quid, but I'll send some of you to feed the fishes if you try to make the f'c'sle rule the quarterdeck. Come, pipe up!"
They did not say much of what was in their minds, for he took the words out of their mouths, berating them for meddlesome fools and explaining how their sole chance of escaping was to slip past theTruxilloin the fog and shake off the pursuit. All this he roared with the foulest of accompanying oaths, treating the crew like dogs so effectively that they turned tail and gave up without a blow.
On the morning of the third day after this theSanta Theresapoked her nose into San Miguel Gulf on the southern coast of Panama. The captain took her across the gulf into Darien Harbor,then followed the southern branch practically to the head of the bay, at which point he anchored.
Tired of being confined aboard the ship, the crew were eager to get ashore. This suited the plans of Evans. As soon as the long boat had gone with the shore party he packed the treasure in boxes and lowered them into a boat. Late in the afternoon the tired sailors returned to the ship.
Evans ordered the boatswain to pipe all hands on deck. To the assembled crew he made a speech, pointing out the need of getting the treasure to some safer place than aboard a ship which might any day fall into the hands of the enemy. He intended, he said, to take three men with him and bury the chests on the sand spit within sight of them all.
But at this proposal the men broke into flat rebellion. Not one of them was willing to trust the gold out of his reach. Things in fact had come to such a pass that, though there was plenty for all, each was plotting how he might increase his share by robbing his neighbor.
Evans had made his preparations. The officers, Lobardi, Quinn, and two other sailors who sided with the chief villains were grouped together, all of them heavily armed. In the struggle that followedthe victory lay with the organized party. The mutineers were defeated and disarmed.
Evans selected Quinn, Lobardi, and a sailor named Wall to go with him ashore to bury the gold. Those on board watched the boat pull away with the gold that had cost so many lives. To the fury and amazement of all of them the boat rounded a point of land and disappeared from sight.
Evans had broken his agreement to bury the treasure in the sight of all. Even Captain Rogers joined in the imprecations of the men. He ordered the long boat lowered for a pursuit, but hardly had this started when a shot plumped into the water in front of it.
Unobserved in the excitement, theTruxillohad slipped into the bay. Its second shot fell short, its third wide, but the fourth caught the boat amidship and crumpled it as the tap of a spoon does an empty eggshell. Of the eight men aboard two were killed outright and the rest thrown into the sea. One of them—a man named Bucks, as we were to learn in a most surprising way—clung to the wreckage and succeeded in reaching shore. The rest were drowned or fell a prey to sharks.
The long boat disposed of, theTruxilloturned her guns upon theSanta Theresa. Those left on board made a desperate defense, but the captain,seeing that escape was impossible, chose to blow up the ship rather than be hanged as a pirate from the yardarm.
Meanwhile, the boat with the treasure, which had rounded the point before theTruxillohad appeared, had been beached on the spit and the chests dragged ashore. Evans was burying the boxes when the first shot of theTruxillofell upon his ears. Naturally he concluded that it was from theSanta Theresaas a warning of what he might expect.
Bully Evans showed his yellow teeth in a grin.
"Compliments of the old man," he said, no whit disturbed at his double treachery.
But at the sound of the final explosion the desperadoes looked at each other.
They ran to the nearest hill and saw the destruction of their companions.
The Portuguese boatswain was the first to recover.
"There ees now fewer to share," he said with a shrug of his shoulders.
Evans looked at Quinn and gave a signal. The double murder was done with knives. Where there had been four, now only two remained.
Evans and Quinn finished burying the treasure and removed all trace of their work. A map wasdrawn by Quinn, showing the exact location of the cache. The murderers slipped back to their boat and, under cover of darkness, crept up the harbor till they came to the mouth of a large river. Up this they pulled and disappeared into the interior. Neither of them was aware that Bucks had seen the treacherous killing and the disposal of the treasure.
Six weeks later a living skeleton crawled out of the fever-laden swamps of Panama and staggered down to a little village on the Gulf of Uraba. The man was Nat Quinn. He had followed the Rio Tuyra, zigzagged across the Isthmus, and reached the northern coast.
Somewhere in the dark tangle of forest behind him, where daylight never penetrates the thick tropical growth, lay the body of Bully Evans. It was lying face down in the underbrush, a little round hole in the back of the head. Quinn's treachery had anticipated that of the mate.
As the survivor lurched down to the settlement his voice rose in a high cackle of delirious song. These were the words of his chant:
It's bully boys, ho! and a deck splashed red—The devil is paid, quo' he, quo' he,A knife in the back and a mate swift sped!Heave yo ho! and away with me.
CHAPTER IVTHE MAN WITH THE SECRET
This was the terrible story old Cap Nat, as he was commonly called, told to Robert Wallace one night in a grog shop at San Francisco nearly forty years after the events had taken place. Only one point he omitted—the fact that Bucks had escaped from the long boat and witnessed the caching of the plunder—and this only because he was not aware of it.
During all those forty years Quinn had kept it as a fixed purpose to return to the scene of his crime and possess himself of the wealth he had lost his soul to gain.
But to outfit an expedition of the necessary proportions took much money. On this rock the man's purpose had always split. Periodically he was a hard drinker. He would live hard and close for a year, saving every cent he could, and then spend the whole amount in one grand debauch.
Had he been willing to confide his story to some capitalist of California it is likely he might haveraised the needed funds, but the nature of the man was both suspicious and secretive and he had guarded his knowledge all these years with jealousy.
Wallace was acquainted with the owner and master of a tramp schooner which had a doubtful reputation along the water front. Jim Slack had been an opium smuggler and was watched so closely by the revenue officers that he jumped at the chance of a trip to parts where no government officials could reach him.
Cautiously Wallace broached the subject to him, hinting at treasure but leaving the details dark. He drew a map which was a facsimile of the one made by Quinn, except that the latitude and longitude were omitted, and one or two details altered.
The result was that two weeks later the three men, together with a crew of five, were beating their way along the coast of Lower California in the notoriousJennie Slack. A bargain had been struck by which the owner of the vessel was to get one-third of the gold, out of which share he was to pay all the expenses of the cruise.
Each of the three leaders of the expedition was pledged to secrecy, but before they had been a week out of the Golden Gate Wallace discovered by accident not only that the crew knew the story, but that they were implicated with the master of theboat in a plot to obtain the whole treasure for themselves.
He told what he had learned to Quinn under cover of an evening smoke on deck. The old pirate took it without winking an eyelash, for he could see Slack and one of his men watching them.
"Six to two. Long odds, boy," he said, knocking the ashes from his pipe.
To keep up appearances Bob Wallace laughed.
"I'm to be got rid of just before we land. It is to be made to look like an accident. You're safe until you have uncovered the treasure. Then it's good-by Cap Nat, too."
Quinn's laugh rang loudly, for the old man could play the game with any of them.
"We can't go back. If we suggested that the row would begin at once. No, we must choose our time instead of letting them choose theirs. And we can't wait too long, because they would see we were taking precautions against being surprised. We'll strike to-night—and hard."
No doubt Cap Nat was right in his strategy, but the scruples of the boy's conscience lost them the advantage of a sudden attack. He would fight to save his life, but he would not take advantage of his enemies.
Perhaps it would be nearer the truth to say thathe could not. Something stuck in his throat at the thought of falling upon men unexpectedly and dealing murder broadcast. Nor could the arguments of the old man shake him.
Dreadfully frightened though he was, the boy stuck doggedly to his position. He would die before he would do such a thing. And indeed he counted himself as no better than dead.
The two shared the same cabin, so that they were able to see each other alone several times during the day. Neither of them went out without being armed with a brace of pistols and a dirk, though these they kept hidden under their rough coats.
During Slack's watch that evening Quinn and his friend made their final preparation for defense. The captain's cabin was larger than theirs, and offered better points of defense. Furthermore, here were kept the arms and the ammunition of the ship. Quinn volunteered to get food and water into it while Wallace held the cabin.
Three trips were made by the old salt to the cook's gallery. The first time he brought back a keg of water, the second time a large tin into which he had crammed a varied assortment of food. It was while he was away on the third journey that a scream rang out in the stillness.
The boy heard a rush of feet, followed by a shot. Bob ran out of the cabin toward the galley. Up the steps from the lower deck came Quinn, blood streaming from his head. In one hand he carried a knife, in the other a copper kettle full of beans still steaming.
"Back, lad, back! Hell's broke loose," the old man cried.
"What happened? Are you badly hurt?"
"I killed cookie. Caught me in the galley and I knifed him," panted the old man.
A bullet whistled past. Wallace turned, caught sight of Slack's head above the hatchway, and fired. The head disappeared. A few moments and they were safe in the cabin.
"You are wounded," Bob cried.
Quinn shrugged.
"A bullet grazed my head. Get ready for them. Never mind me."
He tied a bandanna over the wound while the young man arranged on the bunk cutlases, their spare pistol, and the musket.
Slack was the first of the enemy to appear. He carried with him a white napkin for a flag. Ostensibly he had come to find out the cause of this outbreak, really to learn how well prepared the defenders were.
Cap Nat sent him to the right about briskly. "Get out, traitor! Step lively now, or I'll pepper you!"
From his breast Slack whipped a pistol and fired at the bald head of the old buccaneer. A shot from Wallace rang-out in answer. Slack ran for cover, but at the stairs waved a derisive gesture.
For half an hour everything was quiet. Then came the sound of stealthy whispers and softly padding feet.
Quinn swung his cutlas to test it.
"Stand by for a rush. They're coming," he said.
Almost before he had finished speaking feet pattered swiftly along the deck. The night was suddenly broken with shouts and curses. The stars that had been shining through the window were blotted out with smoke.
The door crashed in and men poured pell-mell through the opening. The details of what followed were always blurred into a medley of carnage in the mind of Wallace. He knew that both he and Quinn fired, and that the cabin filled with smoke.
Fierce arms gripped him. He hacked into the smoke with his knife. Twice bodies thudded to the floor. A cutlas slashed his left arm. He wasdragged from the cabin to the open deck and found himself struggling with a red-bearded giant who tossed him about as if he had been a child.
The fellow had a knife in his belt which he was trying to draw. Robert fought to the last ounce of strength in him to prevent this. But the sailor was too strong for him. Inch by inch he went down. The other's knee drove into his chest, his sinewy hand closed on the lad's throat. Wallace saw the knife flash and for the moment lost his senses.
When his eyes opened again the vise at his throat had withdrawn, the knee on his chest was relaxing. The giant was dropping like a log. Above him stood Quinn, a ghastly sight, in his hand a streaming cutlas.
Wallace rose and looked about him. Two men lay huddled in the cabin, a third was staggering away with both hands clapped to his head. The giant made four, the cook five. This left only Captain Slack against them.
"By Heaven, we've beat them," the boy cried.
"Yes, lad, we've beat them," grinned Quinn, leaning heavily against the door. "But it's Nat's last fight. I've got a bellyful—more than I can carry. The old man is bound for Davy Jones's locker."
Slowly he slid to the deck.
Robert carried him into the cabin, bleeding from a dozen wounds. He was badly hacked, and from a gunshot wound in the vitals he was bleeding to death.
His comrade forced liquor between his teeth and offered to examine his wounds. Old Nat waved him aside.
"No use. I'm for hell." He smiled and began to sing in a quavering voice the chorus of the grim old buccaneers' song.
It's bully boys, ho! and a deck splashed red—The devil is paid, quo' he, quo' he,A knife in the back and a mate swift sped!Heave yo ho! and away with me.
It must have been weird to hear the man, after so wicked and turbulent a life, troll from ashen lips the godless song of the old seadogs with whom he had broken all the commandments.
Only once after this did his mind come back to the present. A few minutes before the end the old pirate's eyes opened. He tried to whisper something, but could not. Feebly his hand tapped at something hard above his heart. Robert took from next the skin a package wrapped in oilcloth. Quinn's eyes lit.
In this was the map of Doubloon Spit.
Imagine now the situation on this ship of death. Three men only were left alive, and one of these so badly wounded that he leaped overboard in madness before morning. Of the remaining two, neither could sleep without the fear of murder in his heart.
Two days wore away, one holding the upper and the other the lower deck. Meanwhile the ship drifted, a derelict on the face of the Pacific.
At length an agreement was patched up. Slack and Wallace sailed the ship together, each with one eye on the other. It is certain that neither slept without locked and bolted doors.
On the fourth day after truce had been declared, land was sighted. While it was the boy's watch and the captain was asleep Wallace managed to lower a boat and paddle to the shore. He had scarcely reached the beach when a tropical storm swept across the waters. At daybreak theJennie Slackwas no longer in sight. Neither schooner nor owner was ever seen again.
Robert Wallace was picked up several days later by a Mexican sheepherder. In time he worked his way back to San Francisco. At the completion of the Union Pacific Railroad he left California for the South.
Here he engaged in business, forsook his vagabond habits, and in course of time married. No doubt it was always in his mind to have another try at the treasure, but time slipped away without his doing so. His happy marriage fettered him. Before he realized it, he was an old man. The most he could do was to leave the secret for his daughter.
The package was found by his executor sealed in a safety deposit box. He left instruction that it was to be opened by his daughter upon her twenty-first birthday.
A week before the events told in the first chapter she had reached her majority. In the presence of Boris Bothwell, whom she had lately met for the first time, the oilcloth package had been opened.
He had agreed to finance the expedition to Doubloon Spit and she had come to San Francisco with her aunt to make the voyage with him. Meanwhile, letters had reached her from Scotland which made clear the true character of Bothwell.
He had attempted twice to get possession of the map. His personal attention displeased her. They had quarreled, finally, on the morning of the episode of the second-story window.
CHAPTER VWE FIND A SHIP
Partly from the diary of Robert Wallace and partly from the lips of his daughter I gathered the story set down in the two preceding chapters.
If I have given it with some detail, believe me, it is not because I care to linger over the shadow of tragedy that from the first hung about the ill-gathered treasure, but rather that you may understand clearly the issue facing us.
Some men would have turned their back upon the adventure and voted the gold well lost. I wanted to see the thing out to a finish.
I shall never deny that the personality of her who was to be my partner in the enterprise had something to do with the decision to which I came. The low, sweet voice of the Southland, the gay, friendly eyes, the piquant face, all young, all irresistibly eager and buoyant, would have won a less emotional man than Jack Sedgwick.
But why make apologies? After all, every man that lives has his great adventure, whether it comegarbed in drab or radiant with the glow of the sunrise. A prosaic, money-grubbing age we call this, but by the gods! romance hammers once in a lifetime at the door of every mother's son of us. There be those too niggardly to let her in, there be those to whom the knock comes faintly; and there be a happy few who fling wide the door and embrace her like a lover.
For me, I am Irish, as I have said. I cried "Aye!" and shook hands on the bargain. We would show Captain Boris Bothwell a thing or two. It would be odds but we would beat him to those chests hidden in the sand.
This was all very well, but one cannot charter and outfit a ship for a long cruise upon day-dreams. The moneyed men that I approached smiled and shook their wise gray heads. To them the whole story was no more than a castle in Spain. For two days I tramped the streets of San Francisco and haunted the offices of capitalists without profit to our enterprise.
On the afternoon of the third I retired, temporarily defeated, to my club, the Golden Gate. On my salary I had no business belonging to so expensive a club, but I had inherited from my college days a taste for good society and I gratified it at the expense of other desires.
In the billiard-room I ran across an acquaintance I had met for the first time on the Valdez trail some years earlier. His name was Samuel Blythe. By birth he was English, by choice cosmopolitan. Possessed of more money than he knew what to do with, he spent a great deal of time exploring unknown corners of the earth. He was as well known at Hong-Kong and Simla as in Paris and Vienna. Within the week he had returned to San Francisco, from an attempt to reach the summit of Mount McKinley.
He was knocking balls about aimlessly.
"Shoot you a game of pool, Sedgwick," he proposed.
Then I had an inspiration.
"I can give you more fun for your money another way. Come into the library, Blythe."
There I told him the whole story. He heard me out without a smile. For that alone I could have thanked him. When I had finished he looked for a minute out of the window with a far-away expression in his eyes.
"It's a queer yarn," he said at last.
"And of course you don't believe a word of it?" I challenged.
"Don't I? Let me tell you this, old man. There are a number of rum things in this old world. I'vebucked up against two or three of them. Let me see your map."
I had made another copy of it, with the latitude and longitude omitted. This I handed to him.
While he examined it his eyes shone.
"By Jove, thisisa lark. You can have the old tub if you want it."
He was referring to his splendid steam yacht theArgos, in which he had made the trip to Alaska.
"I haven't the price to outfit her and pay your crew," I explained.
"I have. You'll have to let me be your bank. But I say, Sedgwick, you'll need a sailing master. You're not a seaman."
Our eyes met.
"Could Sam Blythe be persuaded to take the place?"
"Could I?" He got up and wrung my hand. "That's what I wanted you to say. Of course I'll go—jump at the chance."
"There's the chance of a nasty row. We're likely to meet Bothwell in that vicinity. If we do, there will be trouble."
"So I gather from your description of the gentleman."
I was delighted. Blythe was not only a goodnavigator; he was a tried companion, true as steel, an interesting fellow who had passed through strange experiences but never used them to impress upon others a sense of his importance.
He had served through the Boer and the Spanish-American wars with distinction. As I looked at him—a spare tall man with a bronzed face of power, well-shouldered, clear-eyed, and light-footed—I felt he was the one out of ten thousand for my purpose.
"Too bad I didn't know a week ago. I've let my crew go. But we can pick up another. My sailing master Mott is a thoroughly reliable man. He'll look after the details. My opinion is that we ought to get under way as soon as possible. That fellow Bothwell is going to crowd on all sail in his preparations. I take it as a sure thing that he means to have a try for the treasure."
"My notion too. He struck me as a man of resource and determination."
"So much the better. He'll give us a run for our money. My dear fellow, you've saved my life. I was beginning to get bored to extinction. This will be a bully picnic."
"How long will it take you to get the yacht ready?"
"Give me a week to pick a crew and get suppliesaboard. I'll offer a bonus to get things pushed."
To see the enthusiasm he put into the adventure did me good after the three days of disappointment I had endured. I was eager to have him and Miss Wallace meet, and I got her at once on the telephone and made arrangements to bring him up after dinner to the private hotel where she and her aunt were stopping.
They took to each other at once. Inside of ten minutes we were all talking about our equipment for the trip.
"If we have a good run and the proper luck we'll be back to you with the treasure inside of a month, Miss Wallace," Blythe promised as he rose to leave.
"Back to me!" She looked first at him and then at me. "You don't think that I'm not going, too, do you?"
It is odd that the point had not come up before, but I had taken it for granted she would wait in 'Frisco for us.
"It's hardly a lady's job, I should say," was my smiling answer.
"Nonsense! Of course I am going." Sharp decision rang in her voice.
"It may be dangerous."
"Fiddlesticks! Panama is a tourist point of travel these days. Half of my schoolgirl chums have been there. It's as safe as—Atlantic City."
"Atlantic City isn't safe if one ventures too far out in the surf," I reminded her.
"I'll stick close to the life line," she promised.
Both Blythe and I were embarrassed. It was of course her right to go if she insisted. I appealed to her aunt, a plump, amiable lady nearer fifty than forty.
"Don't you think, Miss Berry, that it would be better to wait here for us? There would be discomforts to which you are not used."
"That is just what Boris told us," Evelyn put in mischievously.
Miss Berry gave a little shrug of her shoulders.
"Oh, I'd as soon stay here, but Evie will have her way." Her pleasant smile took from the words any sting they might otherwise have held.
"Of course I shall. This is a matter of business," Miss Wallace triumphantly insisted.
Excitement danced in her eyes. She might put it on commercial grounds if she liked, but the truth is that the romance of the quest had taken hold of her even as it had of us. One could not blame her for wanting to go.
I consulted Sam with my eyes.
"I suppose there is no absolute bar to letting the ladies go. There is room enough on theArgos."
"There's plenty of room," he admitted.
After all it was fanciful to suppose that we should run across Bothwell on the face of the broad Pacific. Why shouldn't they have the pleasure of a month's yachting? Certainly their presence would make the voyage a more pleasant one for us.
"All right. Go if you must, but don't blame me if it turns out to be no picnic."
"Thank you, Mr. Sedgwick. That's just what it is going to be—a nice long picnic," the girl beamed.
"Wish I had your beautiful confidence. Have you forgotten Captain Bothwell? Shall we take him along, too?" I asked with a laugh.
"I'm afraid he would want all the cake. No, we'll not ask him to our picnic. He may stay at home."
"Let's hope he will," Miss Berry contributed cheerfully.
I don't think she gave the least weight to our fears of Bothwell. In fact he was rather a favorite of hers.
"If he comes he'll have to take what is left.He understands he's not invited," Miss Wallace nodded gaily.
Blythe was fortunately able to secure his sailing master, Mott, and one of the crew that had sailed with him before, a man named Williams. The Englishman's valet, Morgan, went as steward. For the rest, we had to be content with such men as we could get hurriedly together.
Two brothers named Fleming were secured as engineers, a little cockney as fat as a prize pig for cook. He answered to the cognomen of 'Arry 'Iggins, though on the ship's register the letter H was the first initial of both his names. Caine, the boatswain, was a sinister-looking fellow, but he knew his business. Taken as a whole, the crew appeared to average well enough.
From long practice Blythe was an adept at outfitting a yacht for a cruise. Without going into details I'll only say that we carried very little that was superfluous and lacked nothing that would tend to increase our comfort.
I am no sailor, but it did not take a professional eye to see that theArgoswas a jewel of a boat. Of her seagoing qualities I knew nothing except by repute, but her equipment throughout was of the best. She was a three-masted schooner with two funnels, fitted with turbines and Yarrowboilers. To get eighteen knots out of her was easy, and I have seen her do twenty in a brisk wind.
In addition to her main deck theArgoscarried a topgallant forecastle and a bridge, the latter extended on stanchions from the main deck to the sides of the ship so as to give plenty of space for games or promenades. The bridge contained a reception and a tea room, which were connected by a carved stairway with the deck below.
The rooms of the commander, the cook, and other servants lay well forward under the bridge. Abaft of these were the kitchen and the pantry, the dining room, the saloon, and the rooms of the owner and his guests.
The conventional phrase "a floating palace" will do well enough to describe the interior of this turbine yacht. No reasonable man could have asked more of luxury than was to be found in the well-designed bath rooms, in the padded library with its shelves of books, its piano and music rack, and in the smoking room arranged to satisfy the demands of the most fastidious.
I had resigned my place with Kester & Wilcox to help push the preparation for our departure, but I was still spending a good deal of my time in the office cleaning up some matters upon which Ihad been working. Much of the time I was down at the docks, and when I could not be there my thoughts were full of theArgosand her voyage.
Since I was giving my time to the firm without pay I took the liberty of using the boy Jimmie to run errands for me. Journeying back and forth to the wharf with messages and packages, he naturally worked up a feverish interest in our cruise, even though he did not know the object of it. When he came out point-blank one morning with a request to go with us as cabin boy I was not surprised. I sympathized with Master Jimmie's desire, but I very promptly put the lid on his hopes.
"Nothing doing, Mr. James A. Garfield Welch."
"You've gotter have a kid to run errands for youse, Mr. Sedgwick," he pleaded.
"No use talking, Jimmie. You're not going."
"All right," he acquiesced meekly.
Too meekly, it occurred to me later.
CHAPTER VITHE MISSING CORNER
Blythe and I had agreed that Bothwell would not let us get away without first making an effort to get hold of the original map of Doubloon Spit. He was nobody's fool, and there was no doubt but he had very soon detected the trick his cousin had played upon him.
Since the chart was in a safety-deposit vault we felt pretty sure of ourselves, for he would have to secure it between the time we took it out and our arrival on theArgos, at best a spare half hour in the middle of the day. But since the captain did not know what we had done with the document, it was a good guess that he would have a try at searching for it.
On the evening of the third day before we were due to sail, Blythe and I took Miss Berry and her niece to the opera and afterward to a little supper at a cozy French restaurant just round the corner from the Chronicle Building.
It was well past midnight when we reached thehotel where the ladies had their rooms. Miss Wallace had no sooner flung open the door than she gave an exclamation of amazement.
The room had been fairly turned upside down. Drawers had been emptied, searched, and their contents dumped down in one corner. Rugs had been torn up. Even the upholstery of chairs and the lounge had been ripped. The inner room was in the same condition. A thorough, systematic examination had been made of every square inch of the apartment. It had been carried so far that the linings of gowns had been cut away and the trimming of hats plucked off.
"A burglar!" gasped Miss Berry.
"Let's give him a name. Will Captain Boris Bothwell do?" I asked of Blythe.
The Englishman nodded.
"You've rung the bell at the first shot, Sedgwick."
"Oh, I don't think it," Miss Berry protested. "Captain Bothwell is too much of a gentleman to destroy a lady's things wantonly. Just look at this hat!"
Evelyn laughed at her wail. It happened not to be her hat.
"It's dear Boris, all right. I wonder if he left his card?"
"Shall we call in the police?" her aunt asked.
Miss Wallace questioned me with her eyes.
"Might as well," I assented. "Not that it will make a bit of difference, but it will satisfy the hotel people. Probably it would be as well not to mention our suspicions."
So we had the police in. They talked and took notes and asked questions, and at last went away with the omniscient air peculiar to officers of the law the world over. They had decided it was the work of Nifty Jim, a notorious diamond thief at that time honoring San Francisco with his presence.
Over a cigar in my rooms Blythe and I talked the matter out. Bothwell had made the first move. Soon he would make another, for of course he would search my place at the Graymount. The question was whether to keep the rooms guarded or to let him have a clear field. We decided on the latter.
"How far will the man go? That's the question." My friend looked at his cigar tip speculatively. "Will he have you knocked on the head to see if you are carrying it?"
"He will if he can," I told him promptly. "But I'm taking no chances. I carry a revolver."
"Did you happen to notice that we were followed to-night?"
"That's nothing new. They've been dogging me ever since I got the map. But I play a pretty careful game."
"I would," Blythe agreed gravely. "I say. Let me stay with you here till we get off. Better be sure than sorry."
"Glad to have you, though I don't think it's necessary."
It may have been five minutes later that I suddenly sat bolt upright in my chair. An idea had popped into my head, one so bold that it might have been borrowed from Bothwell's lawless brain.
"I say. Let's play this out with Captain Boris his own way. Let's just remind him we're on earth too."
"Meaning——"
My eyes danced.
"I'm as good a burglar as he is, and so are you."
Blythe waited.
"He doesn't give a tinker's dam for the law," I continued. "Good enough! We'll take a leaf out of his book. To-morrow night you have an engagement—to ransack the captain's rooms."
"What for?"
"To get that corner of a map he stole fromhis cousin. Part of the directions for finding the treasure are on it."
"But Miss Wallace has another copy."
"An inaccurate one. Her father changed the directions on purpose in case some one found it."
Blythe smoked for a minute without answering.
"You're a devilish cool hand, Sedgwick. I'm a law-abiding citizen myself."
"And so am I—when the other fellow will let me. But if a chap hits me on the head with a bit of scantling I'll not stop to look for a policeman."
"Just so. I was about to say that since I'm a law-abiding citizen it's my duty to take from Bothwell the goods he has stolen. I'm with you to search his rooms for that paper."
Underneath his British phlegm I could see that he was as keen on the thing as Jack Sedgwick. Looking back on it from this distance, it seems odd that two reputable citizens should have adventured into housebreaking so gaily as we did.
But Bothwell had brought it on himself, and both of us were eager to show him he had some one more formidable than a young woman to deal with. Moreover, there is something about the very name of buried treasure that knocks the pins of respectability from under a man.
Up to date I had led the normal life of a super-civilized city dweller, but within a fortnight I was to shoot a man down and count it just part of the day's work. None of us knows how strong the savage is in us until we are brought up against life in the raw.
My trailers followed me about next day as usual, but I chuckled whenever I saw them. For we were doing a little sleuthing ourselves. I borrowed Jimmie from the firm and the little gamin kept tab on Bothwell.
The captain did not leave his room until nearly midday, but as soon as he had turned the corner next to his hotel, the Argonaut, on the way to his breakfast-lunch, Jimmie dodged in at the side entrance, slipped up the stairs and along a corridor, up a second and a third flight by the back way, down another passage, and stopped at a room numbered 417.
With him he had a great bunch of keys similar to those used in that hotel. One after another he tried these, stopping whenever he heard approaching footsteps to hide the keys under his coat. Several persons passed, but found nothing unusual in the sight of a boy knocking innocently on a door.
At last Jimmie found a key which turned inthe socket. That was all he wanted. Relocking the door he went down the stairs to the street, his fingers tightly clenched around the key that fitted. Nor did he take the little closed fist out of his coat pocket until he and I were alone together in my office, from whence he departed two dollars richer than he had entered.
Jimmie having been retired from duty, Blythe took his place in watching Bothwell. He engaged a room on the fourth floor of the Argonaut, from which he was able to observe the coming and going of the enemy.
My work at the office finished, I took a car for the Graymount, followed as usual by one of the detectives that for days had dogged me. My attendant on this occasion was a shrimp of a man with a very wrinkled face and a shock of red hair. Some imp of deviltry in me moved me to change my seat for one beside his.
"A pleasant day," I suggested to open the conversation.
He agreed that it was.
"I suppose your kind of work is always more cheerful in good weather," I went on.
"My kind of work!" Plainly he was disconcerted at my remark.
"Yes. Must be devilish unpleasant shadowinga man in cold weather. Don't you have to wait outside houses sometimes for hours at a stretch?"
The palm of his hand rasped a stubbly chin as he looked askance at me.
"Why—er—I don't know what you mean."
"Don't you?" I laughed in his face. "Come now, let's put aside the little fiction that I'm not wise to your game. I'm not at all annoyed at the attentions you pay me. It's entirely a matter of business with you. I suppose I'm good for about five dollars a day to you. Faith, that's more than I've ever been able to earn for myself. Sorry I'm leaving these parts soon—on your account."
He did not at all know how to take me, but he earnestly assured me that I was quite mistaken. He was a carpenter by trade.
"Why not make it as easy for you as we can?" I chuckled. "Come in to the Graymount and have dinner with me. Our cafe isn't what it should be, but it will pass at a pinch. What do you say?"
He said that I was making game of him.
"Not at all," I assured him. "I'm merely trying to lighten the load of honest labor. Well, if you won't, you won't. After dinner I'm going to my rooms to smoke a cigar. About nine—or somewhere near that time—I'll be going out for an hour. Are your instructions to follow me?"
"You're all wrong about me, sir. I don't know any more than a rabbit what you are talking about."
"I was only going to say that if you care to go I'll try to arrange for another place at our little party."
He was, I judged, glad to get rid of me at my corner. It had been his instruction to leave the car there too, no doubt, but my discovery of him drove the little man one block farther. I waited till he got off and waved a hand at him before I walked to the Graymount. For me it had been a very entertaining little adventure, but I am inclined to think he found it embarrassing.
The program of my movements which I had given him was accurate enough. Dinner finished. I went to my room for a cigar, after which I called up a taxi.
I selected an ulster with a deep collar, and in the right hand pocket I dropped a revolver, but not before I had carefully examined the weapon.
As I stepped into the taxi the vest-pocket edition of Nick Carter with whom I had ridden up from the city a few hours earlier darted out from the alley where he had been lurking. Again I waved a hand derisively toward him. The chauffeur threw in the clutch and we moved swiftlydown the hill. The little sleuth wheeled off in the direction of the nearest drug store.
"He's going to call up Bothwell to tell him I've gone," was my guess.
For perhaps a quarter of an hour I had the chauffeur drive me about the city, now fast, now slow, crossing and recrossing our track half a dozen times. When I was finally convinced that no other car was following mine I paid the driver and dismissed him.
Catching the nearest street car I rode down to Market Street. It was a cool night, so that I was justified in turning up my coat collar in such a way as to conceal partially my face.
Inconspicuously I stepped into the Argonaut and up the stairs to Blythe's room.
Sam met me at the door and nodded in the direction of No. 417.
"He went out half an hour ago."
"I'll bet he got a telephone message from little Nick Carter first," I grinned.
Three minutes later we were in Bothwell's room. Since it was probable that he was making himself at home in mine it seemed only fair that we should do as much in his.
We did. If there was a nook or corner within those four walls we did not examine I do notknow where it could have been. Every drawer was opened and searched for secret places. Bedposts, legs of chairs and tables, all the woodwork, had to undergo a microscopic scrutiny. The walls were sounded for cavities. We probed the cushions with long fine needles and tore the spreads from the beds. The carpet and the floor underneath were gone over thoroughly. Blythe even took the frame of the mirror to pieces to make sure that the shred of paper we wanted did not lie between the glass and the boards behind.
At last I found our precious document. It was in the waste-paper basket among some old bills, a torn letter, some half smoked cigarettes, and a twisted copy of that afternoon'sCall. Bothwell had thrust it down among this junk because he shrewdly guessed a waste-paper basket the last place one would likely look for a valuable chart.
To deprive him of it seemed a pity, so we merely made a copy of what we wanted and left him the original buried again in the junk where he had hidden it.
My watch showed that it was now between one and two o'clock. Since Bothwell might now be back at any time we retired to Blythe's room andlearned by heartthe torn fragment of directions.
This did not take us long for there was nothingon the faded corner but these letters and words:
wh12TakeForkedtill Tong ofwest to Big Rock
In the milkman hours we slipped from the hotel and took a car for the Graymount. My rooms were a sight. Some one—and I could put a name to him—had devastated them as a cyclone does a town in the middle West. The wreckage lay everywhere, tossed hither and thither as the searchers had flung away the articles after an examination. Blythe laughed.
"The middle name of our friend Bothwell must be thorough. He hasn't overlooked anything, by Jove."
"Oh, well, it's our inning anyhow," I grinned. "He didn't get what he wanted, and we know it. We did get what we wanted, and he doesn't know it." The Englishman flung himself down into a Morris chair and reached for my cigarettes.
"On the whole I rather fancy our new profession, Jack. I wonder if Captain Bothwell will send our photographs to the chief of police for his rogues' gallery."