Victoria City on Hongkong Island was almost invisible in hot mist and rain as the steamer crawled up the roads and anchored off the sea-wall. The gray harbour water appeared to steam, slopping sluggishly against her iron sides, and the rain steamed as it fell, so that the heavy air was a sort of stew of wet and heat and strange smells of the sea and land. The Lascar and coolie deck-hands were hurrying out the side-ladder, the water streaming from their faces and their coarse black hair; but, above the rattle and bustle of disembarkation, Elliott was aware of the movement of a mighty life clustered invisibly around him. The hum and roar of an immense city pierced the fog to landward; on the other side he was conscious of the presence of innumerable shipping. The noises came hollowly through the hot air, echoed from the sides of giant vessels; he caught hazy glimpses of towering forests of yards, and of wet, black funnels. The air was acrid with the smoke of coal, and the water splashed incessantly upon the sea-wall from the swift passage of throbbing steam launches. Away in the mist there was a rapid fusilade of fire-crackers, and somewhere, apparently from the clouds above the city, a gun was fired, reverberating through the mist. A ship’s bell was struck near by, and, before the strokes had ceased, it was taken up by another vessel, and another, and the sound spread through the haze, near and far, tinkling in every key:
“Ting, ting; ting, ting; ting!” It was half-past five o’clock in the afternoon.
The rain slackened, and a fresh breeze split the mist. To landward Elliott beheld a wet, white city climbing irregularly up the sides of a long serrated mountain. The waterfront along the sea-wall swarmed with traffic, with rickshaws, sedan-chairs, carts, trucks, gay umbrellas, coolies, Lascars, Chinese, Indians, Japanese. The port was crowded with shipping, from war-steamers to high-sterned junks, as motley as the throng ashore, and it was shot through incessantly with darting tugs and launches, so that in its activity it reminded him more of New York bay than of any other roadstead he had ever seen.
During the voyage from Bombay he had perforce picked up a smattering of that queer “pidgin-English” so apparently loose and so really organized a language, and when he stepped upon the Praya he beckoned authoritatively to a passing palanquin.
“Boy! You savvy number one good hotel?”
“Yes, master. Gleat Eastel’ Hotel b’long number one good.”
“Great Eastern Hotel, then—chop-chop,” Elliott acquiesced, getting into the chair, and the coolies set off as he had directed, chop-chop, that is, with speed. They scurried across the Praya, up a narrow cross street, and came out upon Queen’s Road. They passed the Club and the post-office and finally set him down at the hotel, which, in spite of its great size and elaborate cooling devices, he found intolerably hot and damp. It rained all that evening, till his clothing hung limply upon him even in the billiard-room of the hotel, and when he went to his chamber he found the sheets apparently sodden, and damp stood shining on the walls. Even in the steamy passage through the Malay Archipelago Elliott had spent no such uncomfortable night as that first one in Victoria at the commencement of the rainy season.
A torrential rain was pouring down when he awoke, after having spent most of the night in listening to the scampering of the cockroaches about his room. It was a hot rain, and there was no morning freshness in the air. The room was as damp as if the roof had been leaking, but he began to realize that this was to be expected and endured in Victoria for the next three months, and, shuddering damply, he resolved that he would hunt down his man within a week, if “Baker” were still upon the island.
By the time he had finished a very English breakfast, for which he had no appetite, the rain had ceased, leaving the air even hotter than before. The sun shone dimly from a watery sky. Elliott felt oppressed with an aching languor, but he was deeply anxious to finish his work and get away, so he went out upon the hot streets.
This time he would not repeat the mistakes of Bombay, and he wasted no time in adventures about the harbour. He called a sedan-chair and, having ascertained the names of the leading hotels of the city, he proceeded to investigate them one by one.
This search resulted in nothing but disappointment. There was no record of the man he sought at any hotel, neither at the expensive ones nor at the second and third class houses to which he presently descended. The mate might indeed have changed his name again on landing, though Elliott could think of no reason why he should do so. At the Eastern Navigation Company’s offices he ascertained that “Baker” had indeed landed at Victoria from thePrince of Burmah, but nothing was known of his present whereabouts.
Finally Elliott called upon the American consul, who could give him no help. He had never heard of theClara McClayor her mate, but he turned out to be a Marylander, and he took Elliott to dinner with him, and made him free of the magnificent Hongkong Club, which is the envy of all the foreign settlements on the Eastern seas.
Under the sweeping punkahs in the vast, dusky rooms of the Club a temperature was maintained more approaching to coolness than Elliott had yet found in Victoria, and he lounged there for most of the evening, observing that a great part of the male white population of the city seemed to do likewise. It had come on to rain again, and the shuffle of bare feet in the streets mingled with the dismal swish of the downpour. He had been in Victoria for twenty-four hours, but he found himself bitterly weary already and oppressed with a certainty of failure.
Failure was indeed his lot during the next two weeks, though by an examination of the shipping-lists he assured himself that Baker had not sailed from Hongkong in the last two months, at least, not by any of the regular passenger steamers. It was out of all probability that he should have gone into the interior of China, and beyond possibility that he should have organized his wrecking expedition at so distant a port. Yet it was almost equally beyond the limits of likelihood that he should have come to Hongkong at all; and it was so beyond the bounds of sanity that he should voluntarily stay there during the rains that Elliott was forced to recognize that reason afforded no clue to the man’s movements.
To search for a stray straw in a haystack is trying to the temper, especially when the search must be conducted under the conditions of a vapour bath. But Elliott sweltered and toiled with a determination that certainly deserved more success than he attained. He acquired much knowledge that was new to him in that fortnight. He learned the names and flavours of many strange and cooling drinks; he learned to call a chair or a rickshaw when he had to go twenty yards; to hang his clothes in an airtight safe overnight to save them from the cockroaches; to scrape the nocturnal accumulation of mould from his shoes in the morning, and to look inside them for centipedes before he put them on. He learned to keep matches and writing-paper in glass jars, to forget that there was such a thing as stiff linen, and to call it a dry day if the rain occasionally slackened. But he learned nothing of what he was most anxious to discover. He could find no trace of either Baker or Burke at the hotels, at the consulates, at the Club, or along the waterfront, and no man in Victoria admitted to having ever heard of theClara McClay.
From time to time he went up to the Peak, behind the city, to gain refreshment in that social and physical altitude. A house there cost fifty guineas a month, but every one had it who pretended to comfort or distinction. It was damp even on the Peak, but it was cool; Hongkong Bay and Victoria lay almost perpendicularly below, veiled by a steamy haze, but on the summit fresh breezes played among the China pines, and Elliott always took the tramcar down the zigzag road again with fresh courage for an adventure that was daily growing more intolerably unadventurous.
The same desire for coolness at any cost led him to take the coasting-boat for Macao on the second Saturday of his stay. He had heard much already of the dead Portuguese colony, the Monte Carlo of the China coast, maintaining its wretched life by the lottery, the fan-tan houses, and the perpetual issue of new series of postage stamps for the beguilement of collectors. But Macao is cooler than Hongkong, and those who cannot afford to live on the Peak find it a convenient place for the weekend, much to the benefit of the gaming-tables.
This being a Saturday, the boat was crowded with Victoria business men, who looked forward to a relief from the heat and the strain of the week in the groves and the fan-tan saloons of Macao. The relief began almost as soon as the roadstead was cleared, and a fresher breeze blew from a clearer sky, a cool east wind that came from green Japan. Elliott inhaled it with delight; it was almost as good as the Peak.
The verdant crescent of Macao Bay came in sight after a couple of hours’ steaming. At either tip of the curve stood a tiny and dilapidated block-house flying the Portuguese banner, and between them, along the water’s edge, ran a magnificent boulevard shaded by stately banyan-trees. The whole town appeared embowered in foliage; the white houses glimmered from among green boughs, and behind the town rose deeply wooded hills. Scarcely an idler sauntered on the Praya; a couple of junks slept at the decaying wharves, and deep silence brooded over the whole shore.
“Beautiful!” ejaculated Elliott, unconsciously, overjoyed at the sight of a place that looked as if it knew neither business nor rain nor heat.
“Beautiful enough—but dead and accursed,” replied a man who had been reading in a deck-chair beside him.
“It looks dead, I must say,” Elliott admitted, glancing again at the deserted wharves.
The other man stood up, slipping a magazine into his pocket. He was gray-haired, tall, and very thin, with a face of reposeful benignity. The magazine, Elliott observed, was theReligious Outlook, of San Francisco.
“An American missionary,” he thought; and his heart warmed at the sight of a fellow countryman.
“I suppose it is pretty bad,” he said, aloud. “The more reason for men of your cloth to come over here.”
The old man looked puzzled for a moment, and then gently shook his head with a smile.
“I’m not a missionary, as you seem to think. At least, I ain’t any more of a missionary than I reckon every man ought to be who tries to live as he should. I’m just a tired-out Hongkong bookkeeper.”
“You’re an American, anyway.”
“You are too, ain’t you?”
“Certainly I am,” Elliott proclaimed. “And you—”
The little steamer rammed the wharf with a thump that set everything jingling on board. The gangplank was run out; the old man dived into the cabin in evident search for something or some one, and Elliott lost sight of him, and went ashore.
Macao slumbered in profound serenity. As soon as the excursionists had scattered, the Praya Grande was deserted. The great white houses seemed asleep or dead behind their close green shutters and wrought iron lattices that reminded Elliott of the Mexican southwest. But the air was clear and fresh, and it was possible to walk about without being drenched with perspiration. Elliott strolled, lounged on the benches in the deserted park, visited the monument to Camoens above the bay, and finally ate a supper at the only decent hotel in the place, and enjoyed it thoroughly because it contained neither English nor Chinese dishes.
In the evening there was a little more animation. There were strollers about the streets like himself; the band played in the park, and through the iron-barred windows he caught occasional mysterious glimpses of dark and seductive eyes under shadowy lashes. As he sauntered past the blank front of a great stone house that in the days of Macao’s greatness had possibly been the home of a prince, he was stopped by a silk-clad coolie who lounged beside the wide, arched entrance.
“Chin-chin master. You wantchee makee one piecey fan-tan pidgin?”
Elliott had no idea of playing, but he had no objection to watching a little “fan-tan pidgin,” and he allowed the Celestial “capper” to introduce him through the iron gate that barred the archway. The arch was as long as a tunnel, leading to the squarepatioat the heart of the house, and here the scene was sufficiently curious.
Here the fan-tan tables were set, completely hidden from Elliott’s view by the packed mass of men that stood above them. Over each table burned a ring of gas-jets; far above them the stars shone clear in the blue sky beyond the roofless court. Round thepatioran a wide balcony, dimly lighted, where men were drinking at little tables or leaning over to look down at the game, and there was a scurrying to and fro of deft, white-robed Chinese waiters. Round the games there was absolute silence, except for the click of the counters, the rattle of the coin, and the impassive voice of the dealer as he announced, “Number one side!”
Elliott pushed into the nearest group till he could see the table. Opposite to him sat the dealer, a yellow Portuguese half-caste, his hands full of small gilded counters; and beside him the croupier leaned over shallow boxes of gold, silver, and bills. The centre of the table was covered with a large square piece of sheet lead, with each side numbered, and coins scattered about the sides and corners. The dealer filled both his slim, dirty hands with the gilded counters and counted them out in little piles of four each. There were two counters left over.
“Number two side!” he announced, wearily.
Those who had staked their money upon the second side of the leaden square were at once paid three times their stake by the croupier; those who had placed their bets at the corner of the first and second, or the second and third were paid even money. The dealer again plunged his hands into the great heap of shining counters.
Round the table men of all conditions, nationalities, and colours hung upon the dropping of the bits of gilded metal. There were coolies staking their small silver coins, Hongkong merchants, white and Chinese, putting down sovereigns and Bank of England notes, half a dozen English men-of-war’s men gambling away their pay, and a few tourists playing nothing at all. There were Japanese there, Sikhs from Hongkong, and a couple of wild Malays. The desertion of the streets was explained. The whole moribund life of the colony throbbed in these fierce ulcers.
Elliott had seen the game often enough already to understand it, and he was determined not to play. The money Henninger had given him was going fast enough as it was. He watched the game, however, with considerable interest, and began to predict the numbers mentally. There was a run on the even numbers. Four came up three times in succession, then two, then four again, then three, one, and again back to the even numbers. Elliott watched the handful of gilded discs that the dealer was counting out, and long before the end was reached he felt certain of what the remainder would be, and usually he was right. If he had only played his predictions, he calculated that he would then have won three or four hundred dollars. He might as well have had it as not; he remembered the wonderful winning at roulette in Nashville, and the money in his pocket almost stirred of itself. He had a couple of sovereigns in his hand before he knew how they came there, but it was too late to play them on that deal.
He waited, therefore, and elbowed himself through the crowd to be nearer the table. This change in position brought him close behind the shoulder of a tall man with gray hair, who was leaning anxiously across the table as the gilded counters slipped through the dealer’s delicate fingers. Elliott glanced abstractedly aside at the man’s face, and the shock of surprise made him forget the game.
It was certainly his clerical-looking friend of the steamer, though his face no longer wore its expression of sweetness and repose. He was desperately intent on the game, that was evident. As the counters were cast out his lips moved counting “one, two, three, four!” He had his hand full of gold coins, and three sovereigns lay before him on number two.
“Number four side!” the dealer proclaimed.
The old man groaned audibly. The croupier swept in the losing stakes and paid out the winning ones with incredible celerity. There was a pause, while fresh bets were made. The old man looked from one side of the square to another with agonized perplexity, fingering his coin. Finally he put down three sovereigns on the fourth side, and almost immediately changed his mind and shoved them across to the third.
Elliott did not play. The surprise of this encounter had brought him to himself, and he watched the man, wondering. It was plain that the old man was no gambler; he did not even make a pretence at assuming the imperturbable air of the sporting man. He was childishly agitated; he looked as if he might cry if his bad luck continued. Elliott called him a fool, and yet he was sorry for him.
“Joss-pidgin man,” he heard a coolie whisper to another, indicating the inexpert player with contempt.
Number four side won, and the old man lost again upon the next deal. His handful of gold was diminishing, but he staked six sovereigns upon the second side of the square. “Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord, help me!” Elliott caught the murmur from his moving lips. Elliott was disgusted, sick and sorry at the pitiful sight, and yet it was none of his business. The man turned once and looked him full in the face with absent eyes that saw nothing, faded blue eyes that were full of weak tears.
“Number one side!” called the dealer, and the six sovereigns were raked in by the bank. The old man now had six coins left, and he staked three of them without hesitation on the second side as before. Squeezed against his side, Elliott could feel his thin old arms trembling with painful excitement.
“Number one side!”
A kind of explosive sob burst from the player’s lips. He followed his money with hungry eyes as it was gathered up, and then his glance wandered about the circle of white and brown faces with a pitiful appeal. His eye met Elliott’s; it was full of a hurt, bewildered disappointment. The old man put out his hand to stake his last pieces.
Elliott grasped his arm, on a sudden impulse.
“Don’t play any more,” he said, in a low tone. “You’ve got no luck to-night.”
The player looked blankly at him, and tried to pull away his arm.
“Stop it, I say,” reiterated Elliott. “You’d better come away with me. You don’t know anything about this game.”
“Who are you? I don’t know you. You’re trying to rob me, but I’ll get my money back in spite of you.”
“You old fool, I’m the best friend you’ve got in this house. You come right along with me,” said Elliott, energetically, trying to drag the gambler away from the table.
He resisted with a sort of limp determination, but Elliott hauled him through the circle of players that immediately closed up behind them. No one troubled to look around; the game went on, and the dealer announced, “Number four side!”
“Now put your money in your pocket. We’ll go out,” Elliott ordered, wondering at himself for taking so much trouble. For aught he knew, the man might have been able to afford a loss of thousands. The unlucky player fumbled tremulously with his sovereigns, and Elliott was finally obliged to tuck them away for him.
The guard at the gate let them out, and Elliott resolved to take precautions against his protégé’s returning to the game.
“You see this Sahib?” he said to the coolie. “Him have lost allee cash. You no pay him go inside no more, savvy? No more cash, him makee plenty bobbery. You savvy?”
“Savvy plenty, master,” replied the coolie, with a knowing grin.
“You’ll thank me for this to-morrow, if you don’t now,” said Elliott. “Where do you intend to go?”
The old man made no immediate answer, but he leaned limply on Elliott’s arm, apparently in a state of nervous collapse. Unexpectedly he turned away, hid his face in his hands against the white wall of the house, and began to sob.
“Oh, here! This won’t do. Confound it, man, brace up! Don’t break down before a Chinaman,” cried Elliott, irritated and sorry.
“I have fallen again!” moaned the gambler, hysterically. “I am vile—yes, steeped in sin. Forty-seven pounds gone in an hour! And my one hope was to live a life that would tell for the Cross in this pagan land. I am weak, weak as water, and I have taken my child’s bread and cast it unto the dogs. They robbed me. My God, why hast thou forsaken me? I hoped to win ten times my money—I needed it so!”
Elliott seized him by the arm and dragged him down the street in the ivory moonlight. The old man’s face was ivory-white, and great tears trickled from the faded blue eyes.
“Don’t touch me,—I am not fit for you to touch me! I never gambled before. If I only had it back again—forty-seven pounds—two months’ savings. I will get it back. Let me go. I will win this time!”
“You’ll get a knife in your back if you go there again. I’ve left word to keep you out. For heaven’s sake, keep cool!” implored Elliott, in great distress. He had never seen an old man break down before. It wrung his heart, and he made a clumsy attempt at consolation.
“Cheer up, now. You’re not broke, are you? I can lend you a pound or so, if you need it. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
They reached a little park at the angle of two streets, and the gamester threw himself upon a bench. He had ceased to weep, but he looked at Elliott with a tragic face.
“You know little,” he said, sombrely. “You are young and strong, but Satan stands at your back as surely as he does at mine. Pray, therefore, lest you also fall into temptation.”
Elliott could think of nothing to say in reply to this.
“As for me, it is too late. And yet,” throwing his hands up despairingly, “thou knowest, O Lord, if I have not served thee—laboured for thee in pagan lands with all my strength. Wasted, wasted! What was I to strive against the Adversary? I thought that I had begun a new life where all my errors would be forgotten, and now it is crushed—gone—and my child will starve among strangers.”
“Tell me all about it. It’ll make you feel better, and maybe I can help you,” Elliott adjured him, afraid that he would grow hysterical again. “First of all, what’s your name? You said you were a bookkeeper, or something, didn’t you?”
The victim of chance seemed to cast about in his memory. “My name is Eaton,” he announced at last, and stopped.
“Well, and what about your new life and your child? You haven’t gambled them away, have you? Is your family in Hongkong?”
Eaton transferred his gaze blankly to Elliott’s face, and allowed it to remain there for some seconds.
“You seem to be a good man,” he said, finally.
“Not particularly, but I’d like to help you if I can,” replied the adventurer.
“My little girl is coming to Hongkong. I sent for her—from the States. She will arrive to-morrow, and I have no money.”
“You sent for her? You sent for an American child to come to Hongkong in the rainy season? You ought to be shot!” Elliott ejaculated.
“She was all I had, and I am an old man. I was going to begin a new life, with her help, and now I have lost the money I had saved for her coming.”
“What in the world made you go up against that cursed game, then?” cried Elliott, wrathfully.
“I wanted money—more money. I had a chance to make a fortune. I dare say you have never known what it is to feel ready to turn to anything to make a little money—anything, even to evil. And yet this was for a good purpose. But now I have nothing. Tell me what to do.”
“I can lend you twenty pounds,” said Elliott, after cogitating for a little. “That ought to tide you over your present difficulty, and you’ve still got your job, I suppose. Yes, I’ll put twenty pounds in your daughter’s hands when she arrives, on the condition that she doesn’t give you a cent of it.”
“You will lend me twenty pounds—you—a stranger?” cried Eaton, with a stare. “You—I can’t thank you, but I will pray—no, I can’t even pray!” He put his head on the back of the bench and sobbed. “You must forgive me,” he said, raising his head again. “I have never found so much kindness in the world. You are right; do not trust me with a cent. I am not fit to be trusted.”
“Oh, yes, you are. I shouldn’t have said that,” encouraged Elliott, feeling horribly embarrassed. “And now, when is your daughter coming?”
“On the Southern Mail steamer. It touched at Yokohama eight days ago, and it’s due to arrive here to-morrow afternoon.”
“Very good. We’ll go back to Victoria in the morning, and we’ll both meet the steamer. But what possessed you to send for her at this time of year? Hongkong is bad enough for strong men.”
“My girl is all I have in the world, and I haven’t seen her for so long,” replied Eaton, visibly brightening. “Maybe it was a father’s selfishness, but I reckon she needs my care.”
“Your care!” said Elliott, brutally. “Where are you going to sleep to-night? Come with me to my hotel.”
“I had planned such a happy home,” Eaton went on, as they walked through the moonlit streets. “I have had a hard life, but I had hoped to settle here in comfort with my little girl. We can do it, can’t we?”
“I suppose so,” replied Elliott. “Though it seems to me that Hongkong is a mighty poor place for a happy home.”
“It isn’t the place; it’s the love and peace,” the gambler prattled on, cheerfully. He appeared quite happy and restored in having thrown his cares upon Elliott’s shoulders. “I have fallen into sin more than once already, but the Lord knows how sorely I have repented, and His grace is abounding. Don’t you think they must have cheated me in that place?”
“Oh, no. You were just out of luck. You should never play when you are out of luck,” said Elliott, sagely.
“It seems to me that I ought to have won. I suppose you have gambled sometimes. Did you ever win?”
“Occasionally.”
“Well, luck or not, I shall never stake money again. I have been treated with more mercy than I deserve. I just begin to realize the horrible pit that I barely escaped. What would have become of me? I hardly dare to think of it. You have saved me, perhaps soul as well as body.”
“Oh, stop it!” Elliott exclaimed.
“I don’t think of myself so much as of my little girl. I shall tell her the whole story, and she will know how to thank you better than I can.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” cried Elliott, angrily. “She’ll have troubles enough in this pestilential place without that.”
During the night Elliott more than once repented of his bargain, which seemed likely to involve his having the Eaton family slung round his neck to the end of his stay in the East. The old man was well-intentioned enough; he bristled with high resolutions; but he was clearly as unfit for responsibility as a child. Elliott deeply pitied the unfortunate daughter, but he could not feel himself bound to assume the position of guardian to the pair. He determined to meet the steamer as he had promised, hand over the promised twenty pounds, and henceforward avoid the neighbourhood of both father and daughter.
The returning boat left Macao at ten o’clock the next morning, and they reëntered the steam and rain of Hongkong harbour. At three o’clock the big Southern Mail steamer loomed slowly in sight through the haze, surrounded by a fleet of small junks and shore boats. Eaton and Elliott boarded her before any one had landed. Her decks were crowded with passengers, hurrying aimlessly about, staring over the rail or standing guard upon piles of luggage.
Elliott was making his way through the throng when some one touched his arm.
“Mr. Elliott! Is it possible you are here? What are you doing? I thought you were in India. I was so frightened—oh!”
“Margaret—Miss Laurie! Don’t faint!” gasped Elliott, shocked into utter bewilderment, and scarcely believing his eyes or ears.
“I’m not going to faint. I never faint,” said Margaret, weakly. “But I was so startled and frightened. Did you know my father was here?”
“Maggie!” cried Eaton, pushing past him, and in a moment the old man, whose face beamed like the sun, had his daughter in his arms.
The life of the Reverend Titus E. Laurie contained two active principles. The first of these was a tireless enthusiasm for the propagation of the principles of Methodist Christianity, and this had moved him ever since he could remember. The second was solicitude for his daughter Margaret, which, necessarily, had been operative for only the last twenty years. During these twenty years he had been absent from America almost all the time; the total number of weeks he had spent with Margaret would scarcely have aggregated a year; so that his affection was obliged to take the form of voluminous letters from out-of-the-way places in Asia and Polynesia, and of remittances of more money than he could afford.
But his religious work took always first place in his mind. There never was, one might suppose, a man more clearly “called to the work” than Titus E. Laurie. He cared little for theology. He had never had any doubts of anything; if he had had them, they would not have troubled him. His temper was purely practical, and the ideal which filled his soul was the redemption of the world from its state of sin and death by the forces of the gospel as systematized by John Wesley. He was tolerant of other Protestant churches, but not of Roman Catholicism. He had preached when he was fifteen; at eighteen he was a “local preacher,” and at twenty he was in full charge of a church of his own in South Rock, New York.
He was shifted about on that “circuit” according to the will of the Conference till the opening of the war, when he went to the front as an army nurse. In three months, however, he came back, vaguely in disgrace. It appeared that he had been unable to resist the entreaties of his patients, and had supplied them surreptitiously with tabooed chewing tobacco and liquor. But this was an error of kindness and inexperience; it was easily condoned by his supporters, and he resumed his more regular pastoral work. In 1866 he was much in demand as a revivalist.
Mr. Laurie had charge of the funds of his church as well as of its souls. It was hard for a non-producer to live in the period of high prices succeeding the war. Just what he did with the money in his custody was never definitely ascertained; probably he could not have said himself; but he was unable to restore it when the time came. He did not face his parishioners; he left in the night for Mexico, leaving behind a letter of agonized remorse and promises of amendment.
In Mexico he worked for two years in the mines and on a coffee plantation, and sent home the whole amount of his embezzlement in monthly instalments. At the same time he undertook to conduct Methodist prayer-meetings among the mine labourers, who were chiefly Indians and half-castes. This brought him into collision with his employer, the local priest, and his prospective converts. He was threatened, stoned, ducked, and menaced with murder, but he persisted and actually succeeded in establishing a tiny Methodist community, which survived for six months after he left it.
Laurie was forgiven by his church, and returned to the North, but not to resume pastoral work. He became a bookkeeper in New York; but the evangelist’s instinct was too strong for him, and he took to mission work on the lower East Side. After a year of this, he succeeded in getting himself sent to the Sandwich Islands as a missionary, from which post he returned in five years, in disgrace once more. There were rumours of a shady transaction in smuggled opium, in which he had been involved, though not to his own pecuniary benefit.
He remained in America this time for three or four years, and married a lady much older than himself. These domestic arrangements were broken up, however, by his leaving once more for the South Seas, having been able to secure another appointment for the mission field. He never saw his wife again. She died a year later in giving birth to a daughter, who was taken in charge by an aunt living in the West.
Since that time his labours had extended over much of Polynesia, with digressions into Africa and China. He had sailed the first missionary schooner, theOlive Branch, among the Islands, and he had preached on the beach to brown warriors armed to the teeth, who had never before seen a white man. But the Reverend Titus E. Laurie escaped with his life. He thrived on danger, from the Fiji spears to the typhoons that came near to swamping his wretchedly found vessel on every voyage.
And yet he did not escape scathless. It was rumoured that the fascinations of certain of his female converts in Tahiti had proved too much for him; a scandal was averted by his leaving the station. He was accused of pearling in forbidden waters; and in the end he had to resign his command of theOlive Branch, as it was conclusively proved that the missionary schooner had run opium in her hold with the connivance of her chief. The Rev. Titus E. Laurie, in fact, was granite against hostility when in the regular line of his work. He was made of the stuff of martyrs, but responsibilities found him weak, and he could no more make head against a sudden strong temptation than he could deliberately plan a crime.
Elliott gleaned these details of Mr. Laurie’s career by scraps in the course of the next three weeks, but just how the missionary had come to change his name and settle in Victoria was a mystery to him. At any rate, Laurie, or Eaton, as he persisted in calling himself, had secured a position as accountant in the godown of one of the largest English importing firms, and seemed to propose to spend the remainder of his life in that station. He had now been there for over two months, and Elliott presently discovered that he was already in the habit of visiting the mission settlement at Kowloon and taking part in the meetings held there. The missionaries on duty found him a valuable assistant, and, as Elliott discovered, had made proposals to him to join them; but these Eaton had refused.
Accustomed to the tropics, the heat did not affect him much, but Elliott at once insisted that a house must be rented upon the Peak for Miss Margaret. Coming directly from the sparkling air of the American plains, the girl could never have lived in the hot steam of the lower town. Laurie demurred a little on the score of expense,—not that he grudged the money, but because he did not have it. Elliott said nothing, but began to look about, and was lucky enough to obtain the lease of a cottage upon the mountain-top at a nominal figure, considering the locality. It had been taken by a retired naval officer who was unexpectedly obliged to return to England and was glad to dispose of the lease, so that Elliott bound himself to pay only eighty dollars a month for the remainder of the summer.
He had the lease transferred to Laurie’s new name. “If you say a word to your daughter about this,” he warned him when he handed over the document, “I’ll tell her about your sporting life in Macao.”
The missionary smiled uneasily, and then looked grave. “I can never begin to thank you, much less repay you. I am not much good now,—nothing but a weak old man, but my prayers—”
“Oh, cut it out!” said Elliott, impatiently.
Laurie flushed.
“I beg your pardon; I didn’t mean that, of course. Only, you know, your daughter and I are old friends, and you mustn’t talk of gratitude for any little thing I do.”
“But there is one thing I wish,” replied the old man, after an embarrassed moment. “I insist that you share the cottage with us.”
Elliott hesitated, wondering whether it would be judicious, and yielded.
“Certainly I will,” he said, “and glad to have the chance.”
Margaret was delighted at the appearance of the cottage, a tiny bungalow, deep-verandahed, standing amid a grove of China pines that rustled perpetually with a cooling murmur. The highway leading to it was more like a conservatory than a street.
“You dear old papa!” she exclaimed, sitting down rapturously upon the steps, after having rushed through the building from front to rear, startling the dignified and spotless Chinese cook which they had inherited from the former tenants.
“How good you are to get all this for me! It must have cost such a lot, too. Mr. Elliott says that houses up here cost two hundred dollars a month. You didn’t pay all that, did you? Now we must be very economical, and we’ll all work. I’m going to discharge that Chinaman.”
“You can’t work. You’d scandalize the Peak,” said Elliott.
“I don’t care anything for the Peak. I’m going to fire that Chinee first of all. I’m afraid of him, he looks so mysteriously solemn, as if he knew all sorts of Oriental poisons, and I never can learn pidgin-English. No, I’m going to cook, and I’ll make you doughnuts and fried chicken and mashed potatoes and real American coffee and all the good old United States things that you haven’t tasted for so long.”
“But you can’t do anything like that. No white woman works in this country,” Elliott expostulated.
“But I shall,” she retorted, firmly.
And she did,—or, rather, she tried hard to do it. But it turned out to be difficult, and often impossible, to procure the ingredients for the preparation of the promised American dishes, and she was by increasing degrees forced back upon the fare of the country, which she did not quite know how to deal with. It did not matter,—not even when it came to living chiefly upon canned goods, which usually were American enough to satisfy the most ardent patriot. The three had come to regard the affair in the light of a prolonged picnic, and they agreed that it was too hot to eat doughnuts and fried chicken, anyway.
Laurie still went down the mountain to the sweltering lower city every morning and did not return till sunset. Elliott and Margaret usually spent the day together, for he had temporarily abandoned the search for the mate. An unconquerable horror of the town had filled him, and he silenced an uneasy conscience by telling himself that he would learn nothing new if he did go there.
Sometimes he helped Margaret to wash the breakfast things, and then he sat lazily in a long chair on the wide veranda, smoking an excellent Manila cheroot and reading theChina Daily Mail. He could hear Margaret softly moving about inside the house; she dropped casual remarks to him through the open window, and usually she ended by coming out and sitting with him, reading or sewing with an industry that even the climate could not tame. Below them the steamy rain-clouds drifted and wavered over the city; Hongkong Roads ran like a zigzag strip of gray steel out to the ocean, but it was cool, if damp, upon the Peak, and the two had reached such a degree of intimacy that sometimes for an hour they did not say a word.
To Elliott this period bore an inexpressible charm. For many years his associates had been almost altogether men, the rough and strong men of action of the West; and the graceful domesticity that a womanly woman instinctively gathers about her was new to him, or so old that it was almost forgotten. They were alone together, for the ex-missionary scarcely counted, and they knew no one else on the Island. It was almost as if the Island had been a desert one, and they wrecked upon it. They were isolated in the midst of this great, torrid, bustling half-Chinese colony, and in that most improbable spot he found a little corner of perfume with such quiet and peace as he had scarcely imagined. He did not quite understand its charm, and he was not much given to analyzing his sensations. It was enough for him that he was happy as he had never been before in his life, and he thanked the treasure trail for leading him to this, and tried to forget that the trail was not yet ended.
But he was astonished to find that Margaret made no reference to her father’s change of name, and seemed to accept it with as little surprise as if she supposed an alias to be a regular Anglo-Chinese custom. Elliott was afraid to speak of the matter, but his amazement grew till he could no longer restrain his curiosity, and he asked her one morning, pointblank.
“Miss Margaret, do you know why your father has changed his name?”
“Yes, I know,” she replied, looking slightly troubled. “I can’t tell you the reason, though. But it was for nothing disgraceful,—though I don’t need to tell you that. He had to do it; I can’t say any more.”
“I beg your pardon—I merely wondered—of course I knew there was some good reason. It was none of my business, anyway,” Elliott blundered, privately wondering what fiction Laurie had dished up for his daughter’s consumption.
“There is the best of reasons. My father is one of the noblest men in the world. You don’t know him yet, but he knows you. He is very keen, and he has been studying you; he told me so.”
“Oh!” said Elliott.
“Yes. And he has the very highest opinion of you, I may tell you, if your modesty will stand it. He says you have helped him a great deal. Have you?”
“Not so far as I know.”
“Well, he thinks you have, which comes to the same thing. Some day he may be able to do something for you—something really great.”
“He has done it already in bringing you out here,” said Elliott, and was sorry directly he had said it.
“I don’t like speeches like that,” said Miss Margaret. “Now, you’ve never told me why you are here yourself.”
“Didn’t I tell you that I came on business?”
“Yes, but what sort of business? Another hunt for easy fortunes, I suppose, such as you promised to give up. How much do you stand to win this time?”
“What would you say if I said millions?”
“I’d say that you didn’t appear to be looking for them very hard.”
Elliott squirmed in the long chair and moaned plaintively.
“I haven’t seen you looking for them at all, in fact. Since we moved to the Peak, you’ve done nothing but sit in that long chair.”
“Yes, hang it, you’re right,” Elliott exclaimed, sitting up. “It’s true. I’ve been wasting my time for two weeks, spending my partners’ money and not doing the work I’m paid to do.”
“You must do it, then. Tell me, what is it?”
“No, I can’t tell it, not even to you. It’s not my own secret. I’ve got three partners in it, and my particular task is to hunt down a man whom I never set eyes on. I’ve chased him a matter of ten thousand miles, and he’s supposed to be somewhere in this city,” looking down at the wet smoke that hung over the bustling port.
Somewhere under that haze was the clue to the drowned million, and he felt the shame of his idleness. He had been philandering away his time, and at this juncture when every day was priceless. He turned back to the girl.
“Thank you for waking me up. Your advice always comes at the psychological moment,” he said. “My holiday’s over. To-morrow I start work again.”
He went down to the city that afternoon, in fact, but the old perplexity returned upon him when he tried to think how and where he was to begin his search. He went the rounds of the steamer offices and scrutinized the outgoing passenger-lists for the past three weeks. There was no name that he recognized. He tried the consulates again without any result. He could think of no new move, and he was irritated at his own lack of resource.
Yet the Hongkong Club was the centre of all the foreign life of the colony; it was visited daily by almost every white man on the island, and if Burke, or Baker, were in the city, he would be certain to gravitate there sooner or later. So Elliott took to spending days in that institution, eagerly scrutinizing every big-boned elderly man of seafaring appearance who entered. But, as he often reflected, he might rub elbows with his man daily and not know it; and he regretted more than ever that he had not obtained a full description of the mate.
After a week of this sedentary sort of man-hunting, he became imbued with a deep sense of the futility of the thing. It was only by the merest chance that he could hope to learn anything. It was chance that had assisted the affair up to the present; the whole scheme was one gigantic gamble, discovered, financed, and operated by sheer good luck, and the run seemed exhausted. Anyhow, he thought fatalistically, good fortune was as likely to strike him on the Peak as in the city, and he took to spending his days on the veranda once more. He cabled again to Henninger:
“Track totally lost. What shall do?”
Still, he did not totally abandon the search, but rather he made it a pretext for little exploring expeditions round the city and suburbs with Margaret, accompanied by her father when he could get away from business. They prowled about Kowloon, and they all visited Macao together, where Laurie exhibited the blandest oblivion of his recent lapse, and lectured his companions most edifyingly upon the curse of gambling, the degeneracy of the Portuguese race, and the corruption of the Church of Rome.
They visited the shipyards opposite Hongkong, saw the naval headquarters and the missionary station, and, a week later, all three of them crossed to Formosa on Saturday and returned on Sunday, merely for the refreshing effect of the open sea breezes.
The heavy Chinese smell came off the coast as they returned into Hongkong Roads late on Sunday night. Elliott sickened at the thought of resuming the search that had become hateful to him, in a city that, but for one thing, had become intolerable.
Margaret was leaning over the bows with him, watching the prow rise and fall in splashes of orange and gold phosphorescence. The missionary was dozing in a chair somewhere astern. A score of coolies were gambling and talking loudly between decks.
“This is all so wonderful to me!” said Margaret, suddenly. “Only a month or two ago I was in Nebraska, but it seems years. I had never seen anything; I had no idea what a great and wonderful place the world was. I think of it all, and I sometimes wonder if I am the same girl. But do you know what it makes me think most?
“It makes me feel,” she went on, as Elliott did not reply, “how great and noble my father must be to have given his life to help this great, swarming heathen world. I never knew there were so many heathens; I thought they were mostly Methodists and Episcopalians. Don’t you think he really is the best man in the world?”
“I never saw a man so full of high ideals,” Elliott answered.
He had answered at random, scarcely listening to what she said. But the sound of her voice through the darkness had brought illumination to him, and he realized why he had shrunk from returning to the gold-hunt. He had found a higher ideal himself, and as he thought of his years and years of ineffectual, topsyturvy scrambling after a fortune which he would not have known how to keep if he had found, they seemed to him inexpressibly futile and childish. He had missed what was most worth while in life—but it was not too late. He hoped, and doubted, and his heart beat suddenly with an almost painful thrilling.
Her white muslin sleeve almost touched his shoulder, but her face was turned from him, looking wide-eyed toward the dark China coast. He knew that she was meditating upon the virtues of her evangelistic father. He did not speak, but she turned her head quickly and looked at him, with a puzzled, almost frightened glance.
“What’s the matter?” he said, almost in a whisper.
“I don’t know,” Margaret murmured, and her eyes dropped. For a moment she stood silent; she seemed to palpitate; then she roused herself with a little shrug.
“I am nervous to-night. For a moment I had a shudder—I felt as if something had happened, or was happening—I don’t know what. Come, let’s go back and find father. We’re nearly in.” She thrust her arm under his with a return to her usual frank confidence.
“I’m so glad you’re here, too,” she said, impulsively.
This was not what Elliott wanted, not what he had seen revealed suddenly between the blaze of the stars and the flame of the sea. But he would not tell her so—not yet. Not for anything would he shatter their open comradeship.
The day after he returned from Formosa, Elliott received a reply to his cablegram, which said, simply:
“Find it. Buck up!“Henninger.”
“Find it. Buck up!
“Henninger.”
It was easy to give the order, Elliott thought. But during the next few days the heat was terrible, even for Hongkong. On the Peak, men sweltered; in the lower city, they died. It rained, without cease, a rain that seemed to steam up from the hot earth as fast as it fell, and, to add terror to discomfort, half a dozen cases of cholera were discovered in the Chinese city, and an epidemic was feared. Most of the offices employing white clerks closed daily at noon, and there was a great exodus of the foreign population to Yokohama.
On Sunday it cooled slightly, however, and the rain ceased. To gain what advantage they could of the respite, Margaret and Elliott walked out to the edge of the mountain-top, a quarter of a mile away, and spent the forenoon there. The missionary dozed at home; he slept a great deal during the hot weather.
They were returning for lunch, which Margaret persistently refused to call “tiffin,” and had almost reached the bungalow, when a man stepped down from the veranda and came toward them along the deeply shaded street. At the first glance Elliott thought he recognized the graceful, alert figure, and he was right. It was Sevier, who had just left the house.
The Alabaman stopped short when he met them, and lifted his hat, without, however, betraying any particular surprise.
“Good mo’nin’, Elliott. So you’re in Hongkong?”
“As you see,” replied Elliott, a trifle stiffly. “Were you looking for me?”
“Not particularly. I was looking for another man.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Oh, about a couple of weeks.”
There was a pause, which Elliott felt to be a nervous one.
“How are the bereaved relatives of your wreck’s crew?” Sevier went on.
“I don’t know. Have you found the man you were looking for?”
“Not exactly. Have you?”
“No.”
There was another pause. Margaret was looking puzzled and impatient.
“I beg your pardon, I’m delaying you,” said Sevier, with a slight bow toward the girl. “I wish you’d dine with me at the Club to-night at seven o’clock. Can you? I have an idea that I can tell you something that you’d be glad to know.”
Elliott reflected for a moment, with some suspicion. “Thank you, I shall be delighted,” he accepted, formally, at last.
“At seven o’clock,” repeated Sevier, bowing once more, and passing on.
“Who was that man? I never saw him before. What were you talking about?” demanded Margaret, when they were out of earshot.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t exactly know,” Elliott replied, in a sort of abstracted excitement.
Margaret went to her own room to take off her hat, and Elliott turned into the big, darkened sitting-room, where he was confronted with the spectacle of the missionary seated beside the table with his head buried in his arms.
“What did that man want here?” Elliott demanded, hastily. “Why, what’s the matter with you?”
Laurie raised a face that was covered with perspiration, and haggard with some emotion. His mouth trembled, and he looked half-dazed.
“That man!” he moaned, vaguely. “Oh, that man!”
“Yes. What did he want?”
“What did he want?” repeated Laurie, clearly incapable of coherent thought. “Oh, heavens! what did he not want?”
Elliott mixed an iced glass of water and lime juice, for the missionary would never touch spirits.
“Here, drink this, and try to brace up,” he said.
Laurie drank it like a docile child, and looked up with frightened eyes.
“I have done wrong,” he said, pathetically. “I have sinned often. I have fallen times past counting.”
“I know it,” said Elliott. “What have you been doing now?”
“The question is, what am I going to do?” replied the old man, with a flash of animation. “It has all been for her—whatever errors I have made. No one can say that I have ever profited by a dollar that was not honestly my own.”
“Well—all right. But for goodness’ sake try to tell me what Sevier was asking about.”
Laurie hesitated for a long time.
“It was about the ship—theClara McClay” he produced, at last.
Elliott stared, speechless for a moment, shocked into utter bewilderment.
“TheClara McClay?” he babbled. “The—” he was going to say the “gold-ship.”
“What do you know about her? Where did you hear of her?”
“I was on her. I was wrecked with her.”
“The devil you were!”
“Yes, wrecked, and saved only by the Lord’s wonderful mercy. I floated about for days in an open boat.”
“Look here,” said Elliott. “I rather fancy that you’re running more risk now than you were in that open boat. You don’t know what deep waters you’re sailing. Sevier’s a dangerous man. If you want me to help you, you’ll have to tell me the whole story.”
The missionary acquiesced with the alacrity which he always showed in casting his mundane responsibilities upon stronger shoulders.
“I am ashamed to tell you the story,” he said. “And yet it was not my fault. At least, I had no intention of doing any wrong whatever. I was in the work at Durban under the British Mission Board. I had been there for two years, and I may say that my efforts had been abundantly blessed,” he added, with humble pride.
“But I was tempted, and I was weak. I had a large sum of money in my hands—nearly five hundred dollars—which the Board had supplied for the building of a new chapel. I did not covet it for myself, but my salary was long overdue, and it was past my time to send a remittance to my daughter. The fund would not be needed for months, and I would have paid back every cent of it.”
“So you took it,” Elliott interrupted.
“I sent the remittance. About two weeks later an officer of the Mission Society came through South Africa, and I was called upon for an account of the fund. I was disgraced. I could have escaped, but I would not do that. I started to England in charge of the officer to be tried for embezzlement. There was an American steamer sailing from Durban, and we embarked on her. The name of the steamer was theClara McClay.
“I stayed in my cabin all the time, so I do not know anything of the voyage. I believe we called at Delagoa Bay for cargo and passengers. We had been out over a week when the ship struck. It was very dark, with a high sea running, and she seemed to be breaking up. They launched several boats, but all were sunk before they left the ship’s side.
“The Society’s officer went in one of them and tried to induce me to go with him, but I have been many years at sea, and I knew the risk of trying to launch boats in that position. He was drowned, with most of the ship’s company. At daylight there were only five of us left,—the mate, three Boers who had been passengers, and myself. The sea was quieter then, and we managed to get the last of the boats overboard and to get clear.
“The mate had been severely injured about the head by falling from the bridge when she struck, and I felt sure that he could not live unless we were picked up soon. There was no use in landing on the desert reef where we had struck, so we sailed north with a fair wind, for there was fortunately a sail in the boat. We hoped to get into the track of India-bound vessels,—or at least I hoped for it, for the Boers knew nothing of navigation, and the mate was growing to be either delirious or unconscious most of the time.
“It was a week before we were picked up. I won’t tell you of its horrors. The water ran out, under the sun of the equator. The Boers drank sea-water, in spite of everything I could say, and all three went mad and threw themselves overboard. I just managed to keep alive and to keep the mate alive by dipping myself frequently in the sea and drenching his clothes with the bailer. But he died about the fourth day. He was conscious for a few hours before he died, and I did what I could to prepare his mind.
“I had to throw his body overboard. I could not have kept it in the boat—in that heat. But I kept his oilskin clothes and his uniform cap, thinking they might be needful. He had nearly a hundred pounds in sovereigns in a belt, also, which he told me to take, as he had no relatives, and I took them.
“It rained the night after he died, and that saved me. Two days later I was picked up by an Italian steamer, called theAndrea Sforzia.”
Elliott emitted an ejaculation.
“Yes, it was providential,” went on the missionary, patiently. “And then I saw an opportunity of burying my past. I trust it was not dishonourable. The Italian officers of the steamer could speak very little English, and as I was wearing the mate’s uniform cap they took me to be an officer of the wrecked ship. I would not have told them a falsehood, but I did not undeceive them. They took me to Bombay, and they made me go to the American consul, but I escaped as soon as I could, and concealed myself in the city for a couple of weeks. Then I came on to Hongkong, where I hoped—”
“Do you know just where theClara McClaywas wrecked?” Elliott demanded, trying to keep cool in the face of this revelation.
“That is what that man asked me. It must have been off the northwest coast of Madagascar.”
“But don’t you know the exact spot?”
“How could I? I was never out of my cabin till the night she struck.”
Elliott burst into a bitter and uncontrollable roar of laughter. This, then, was the end of the trail he had followed from the centre of the United States at such expense and with such hopes. It ended in a man with whom he had unsuspectingly lived for a month, an aged ex-missionary of infirm moral habits.
“That man who was here asked me the same thing,” repeated Laurie, plaintively. “Why did he want to know where she struck—or why do you want to know? My God! I had almost forgotten it!” he cried, shuddering. “What shall I do? How can I save myself?”
“What on earth do you mean?” cried Elliott.
“He threatened me with disgrace—and arrest, unless I would tell him where the ship went down. He said he would expose me to the British Mission Board—and he would put all the proofs of—of more than that, of other things, in the hands of my daughter. I deserve to be punished. I can face even disgrace for myself—but not for her—not for my little girl.”
“No, she mustn’t hear of anything of the sort,” said Elliott. He considered the situation for several minutes, walking to and fro. “Why did you tell everybody that the ship went down in deep water?” he asked.
The missionary started. “How did you know that I did? It was a sudden temptation. The consul in Bombay asked me if she foundered at sea, and I said she did. It made no difference to any one, and it seemed safer. You must remember the state I was in, after a week in an open boat without water.”
“Well, don’t worry,” said Elliott. “I dare say you didn’t mean any harm, but that little remark of yours has cost a good deal of trouble and a good many thousand dollars. But I’ll see that Sevier doesn’t trouble you. I know him pretty well. I’m going to dine with him to-night, in fact, and I’ll explain things to him.”
Laurie brightened wonderfully at this assurance. During the past month he had come to have an almost childlike trust in Elliott’s powers of saving him from troubles, and at lunch he had almost recovered his customary serene benignity. But Elliott was far from that placid state of mind. The whole campaign would have to be altered. There was now no hope of learning the location of the wreck from any of her survivors. So far as he could see, there was only the chance of searching all that portion of the channel till her bones were discovered, and it was ten to one that the Arab coasters would have been before them. But at any rate he could now meet Sevier without fear; he had no longer any plan to conceal.
He spent that afternoon in anxious thought, and finally wrote a long letter to Henninger, detailing his adventures on the man-hunt that had ended in a mare’s nest. As the letter might take over a month to reach Zanzibar, he stopped at the cable office on his way to the Club, and sent the following message:
“Mate dead, taking secret with him. Shall I join you? Letter follows.”
Sevier was waiting for him when he arrived at the Club’s massive façade, and a table was already reserved in the farthest corner of the dining-room. The air was heavy under the swinging punkahs, for it had come on to rain again, and the drip and splash of the streets came through the open windows.
They discussed the soup in silence, and with the introduction of a violently flavoured entrée they talked of the rain.
“The weather’s no fit subject for conversation in this country,” Sevier broke off all at once. “Look here, Elliott, you’re up against it, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know that I am, particularly,” answered the treasure-hunter, coolly. “You’re in something of a blind alley yourself, I fancy.”
“I don’t mind admitting that I am, for the moment. What do you know about theClara McClay?”
“Nothing—except that she was wrecked.”
“But you know what her cargo was?”
“Yes, I do. Do you know where that cargo is now?”
“No, I don’t. But she never sunk in deep water—I know that. She’s ashore somewhere in the Mozambique Channel. Now I propose to you, Elliott, that we join forces. You’re playing a lone hand, I reckon, and it takes money to play a game like this. I have a partner with me, and we’ve got $25,000 to spend. What do you say?”
“I’d like to hear a little more,” said Elliott.
“Well, I’ll play my cards face up. Look here. That gold was stolen from the treasury at Pretoria by a gang of crooked Dutchmen. You may know that. My partner, Carlton, was in Pretoria at the time, and he got wind of it, and found out what ship it was going to be sent on. Do you know what we did? We squared the ship’s mate, Burke, to pile the old hooker up on the Afu Bata reef, off Mozambique. It cost us five thousand cash to make the deal with him, and we had to promise him a share of the plunder. Now do you see why we’re interested?”
Elliott saw, and he saw furthermore that the affair was revealing mazes of complexity that he had not suspected.
“Yes,” he said, trying not to look surprised. “Then you must know where she was wrecked, after all.”
“No, because the mate threw us down—the thief! He took our money and did us dirt. We hung around the Afu Bata reef in a dhow for three weeks, off and on, and theClara McClaynever showed up. At last we put into Zanzibar, and found that she hadn’t been sighted anywhere since she left Lorenzo Marques. A little later we heard that she had been wrecked, and that the mate had been picked up, and that he had said that she was sunk in deep water.”
“But that wasn’t the mate at all,” Elliott remarked.
“Yes, I know. I heard the story from that sanctimonious old hypocrite on the Peak. But it was the mate that sunk her. It was Burke that ran her ashore somewhere and figured to have all the plunder himself. It wasn’t his fault that he got drowned or whatever happened to him. The question now is—where is that wreck?”
Elliott laughed. “Good Lord, that’s the question I’ve been trying to solve for three months.”
“There is one man that knows.”
“Who is it?”
“Your old sky-pilot”
“You’re all wrong,” said Elliott. “Old Laurie, or Eaton, knows nothing at all about the thing. And I should like to know how in the world you came to take up his trail.”
“The same as you did, I expect,” replied Sevier, winking. “We went from Zanzibar up to Port Said, and waited there till we heard about the mate being picked up and going to Bombay. I went there too, as you know, having the honour to be your fellow passenger, but I never suspected you of being interested in the wreck—not at first.
“In Bombay I lost the trail, same as you did. But when I heard the American consul describe his man I made sure it couldn’t be the real mate. It was some fakir, and why should anybody fake the thing unless he was up to some game. It made me keener than ever. Lord! I worked like a slave in that accursed city. I searched every consulate, and the hotels and the boarding-houses. I found that a man answering my description had come to the Planters’ Hotel about the time the counterfeit mate turned up. I found that he had gone—sailed for Hongkong under a different name. I cabled Carlton, my partner, and we came here.
“It was you who helped us here. I spotted you on the street a week ago, had you followed to the Peak, and there you were, living hand in glove with my fakir. I went up there this morning, after learning that you had gone out, and I put the question straight to the white-headed old hypocrite. He went all to pieces, just as I expected, but he wouldn’t tell me anything. However, we have a way to force him.”
“Lost labour,” remarked Elliott, coolly. “He didn’t know even that theClara McClaywas loaded with gold.”
“Don’t you believe it!” said Sevier, leaning impressively across the table. “Elliott, that old parson is the slipperiest beggar between Africa and Oregon. I know all about his doings in the past. As like as not he murdered the mate himself—”
Elliott gave an exclamation of derision.
“Anyhow, I’m sure that he made up a plant with Burke to turn the trick on us. He knows where that gold is now; you can bank on that! And if you’ve been living with him for a month and don’t know too, you’re not the clever man I take you to be.”
“I think you’re just a little too clever yourself,” Elliott replied. “I’ll play my cards face up, too. I know just as much as you do about the location of that wreck, and that old missionary doesn’t know half as much. You’ve sized up his character wrong. He’s merely a simple, kind-hearted, unworldly old gentleman with no moral backbone. If he knew where all that gold was, I don’t believe he’d go after it. He might steal a hundred dollars if he saw it lying handy and happened to need it, but he wouldn’t take any interest in a million that he couldn’t see. As for his conspiring with Burke, much less killing him, that’s sheer bosh. He doesn’t know where theClara McClayis, and I don’t either.”
“You’re too secretive for me,” said Sevier, looking downcast. “You won’t mind if I say candidly that I think you’re bluffing. Don’t tell me that you haven’t found out anything from that fellow Laurie, or Eaton, as he calls himself. Something is preventing you from sailing back to Africa and fishing up that million. I think we can supply what is lacking to you. We need you; you need us. Then join us, and we’ll work together.”
“You are right,” Elliott agreed. “There is something that prevents me from going there, and that is the fact that I don’t know where to go. But I don’t mind admitting that I’m going to try to find out. I have partners with me, too, and we have a little money to throw away.”
“How many partners have you?” Sevier inquired.
“Three.”
“Well, bring them all in. We’ll share and share alike.”
Elliott seriously considered this proposition for a couple of minutes. But he knew that Henninger would accept no such arrangement.
“I couldn’t make such a deal without consulting the other men,” he said. “And I know that the chief of our gang would never stand for it. He’s rather a whole hog or nothing man, and I’m a little that way myself. No, I’m afraid we’ll have to work separately.”