A Traitor's Wooing Part 11

"My dear sir, I congratulate you on your discretion," rejoined Nugent affably. "I don't mind telling you that if you had let me on without orders you wouldn't have enjoyed your billet another hour. As it is, you will be like the nice little boy in the Sunday school who had a good mark put against his name."

The bullet-headed mate spat thoughtfully over the bulwarks, and then, as he realized the position, broke into an evil grin.

"I see," he chuckled. "You're the power behind the throne, eh? I guess if I'd known that I'd have given you a bit of stronger lip. What the blooming game is I don't want to know, but I can see it's going to be a funny sort of cruise."

The bluejacket, whose brutal features, Nugent observed with cynical satisfaction, were at curious variance with his trim, yacht-like attire, returned, and said that Captain Brant would receive the visitor at once. Nugent followed his conductor to a cabin under the bridge, the occupant of which, a little wisp of a man with an elongated, pear-shaped cranium, prominent teeth, and a yellow complexion, advanced with a strange, hopping gait to greet his guest.

"Ah!" he said with an uncanny hissing intake of breath, "I am charmed to see you, Mr. Nugent. The honour of your visit means that we are to get a move on us at last, I hope?"

"It points that way," replied Nugent guardedly as he took the seat offered him. "Your anxiety to be off means that you are having trouble with the crew, I am afraid, Brant?"

The repulsive captain twisted his features into a grimace that would have curdled milk, at the same time emitting a sound like the snarl of a wolf. "The maintenance of discipline among a lot of toughs like those I selected isn't child's play," he said. "It only wants a rule of three sum to find out how soon I shall have no crew at all if we are to lay idle here much longer. I've had to shoot one as dead as Queen Anne and crack the heads of four others for kicking over the traces."

The answer, delivered coolly and as a matter of course, seemed ludicrous coming from the undersized, deformed creature with the top-heavy head.

But Nugent evidently knew his man, for he merely nodded comprehension and approval. "It is because you are such a holy terror, Brant, that I selected you for the job," he said. "There was bound to be trouble, at the start of a cruise for which the hands were induced to join by the promise of a rich reward, if any hitch occurred."

"It is entirely the delay that caused the ructions," the captain a.s.sented. "You see, they don't know whether they're on a treasure hunt or what, and they're in a hurry to finger the pieces. To keep 'em from letting their jaw tackle run in the pubs I didn't allow much sh.o.r.e liberty--none at all since I had to pump Black Jake, a fireman, full of lead for inciting to mutiny."

"But how about the--er--necessary formalities?" asked Nugent, genuinely interested in the drastic methods of his instrument.

Captain Brant uttered the unpleasant combination of croak and wheeze that did duty with him for a laugh. "You mean the inquest and funeral?

We have no use for little extras like them on the _Cobra_. I'm the law on this s.h.i.+p. I took a kind of a trial trip out to sea for a couple of hours, and cremated Black Jake in his own furnace. That put the fear of the devil into the rest, and we're a happy family now. I wouldn't guarantee to hold 'em for more than a fortnight, though, tied up to this cursed quay. The officers are right enough. Bully Cheeseman, the chap who was at the gangway when you boarded us, is a fair scorcher. Twenty years ago he was suspected of being Jack the Ripper; and Wiley the second mate, as you know, has done time for manslaughter."

Travers Nugent gazed thoughtfully through the circular window of the deck-cabin at the teeming quay-side, and the array of public-houses across the road. He was not at all dissatisfied with the state of things prevailing on the _Cobra_. It had justified his choice of a skipper. If this frail little atomy with the body of an imp and the soul of a Thug, could isolate and hold in check a crew of cut-throats recruited from the slums of Limehouse, within sight of the drink-shops over the way, he was not likely to fail at the crucial moment.

And it was to expedite that crucial moment that Nugent had paid his surprise visit to the _Cobra_.

"I'm not finding fault, Brant," he said. "At least, not with you and your management of affairs. The blame rests on the mean-spirited cur who has kept the s.h.i.+p dallying here in port while he was going back on his bargain and playing a double game with me. However, you'll have him on board in a few days, I hope, and among your final instructions will be one to let him have a particularly warm time of it."

"I'll keel-haul the swine morning and evening if you like," growled Brant, "or give him a taste of the cat."

"Well, I don't want you to be tender with him," laughed Nugent, "so long as you leave enough of him for delivery to the consignee. But here is what I ran over to tell you. On receipt of a wire containing the one word 'Advance,' you will leave port and steam to the westward at such a speed as will take you abreast of Ottermouth after sundown. Don't bring the s.h.i.+p nearer insh.o.r.e than three miles, but lay to till you see a blue light, and then a green, shown about half a mile to the west of the town."

"Just a moment. Let's fix it up accurate," interrupted the captain. "We mustn't have any such words as 'about' in a job of this kind. Point out the exact place on this ordnance map, please."

"There, at the foot of that cleft in the cliff marked Coldbrook Chine,"

said Nugent, placing his finger on the map section which Captain Brant spread before him on the cabin table. "I have chosen the spot because it is hidden from the coast-guard station by this jutting angle in the wall of cliff."

"The signal wouldn't be visible from the station?" croaked Brant.

"Quite impossible. When you see the blue and green lights, all you have to do is to send the electric launch, manned by three trustworthy and well-armed men, to the beach at the foot of the chine. The launch will pick up a pa.s.senger, and as soon as he has been put aboard the steamer, will return to the same spot and pick up another. On the second occasion I myself shall be there, and will hand your officer a sealed packet containing your final instructions. It is even possible that I may come aboard and hand them to you in person."

The weird little deformity laughed his horrible laugh. "Pleased to see you, I'm sure," he responded, when the convulsions in his throat had ceased. "You might be making the voyage with us, I reckon?"

"G.o.d forbid!" exclaimed Travers Nugent fervently.

CHAPTER XIII

FOOL'S PARADISE LOST

Leslie Chermside walked out of his lodgings in the Ottermouth main street and struck downwards towards the parade. He had promised to take Violet Maynard and Aunt Sarah Dymmock out for a sail in a boat he had hired, and, lover-like, he was nearly an hour ahead of the appointment he had made with the two ladies to meet him on the beach.

Three days had pa.s.sed since the unpremeditated avowal of his love for the millionaire manufacturer's daughter. They slipped by like a happy dream, no care for the future, or the deadlock to which the future must inevitably bring him, disturbing the sweet dalliance of the present till the previous evening. He had dined at the Manor House alone with the family and, as they sat over their wine after the departure of Violet and Aunt Sarah, Montague Maynard had, quite kindly, put to him some pertinent questions, the drift of which there was no mistaking. Mr.

Maynard would not have attained to his position in the commercial world had he not been a student of men and things, and, without definitely stating as much, he let it be clearly understood that he was not blind to what was going on. His manner implied that he was not unfriendly, but, at the same time, in asking about the young ex-Lancer's resources, he spoke as if he had a right to the information.

He opened the battle in his usual blunt, jovial fas.h.i.+on, without any beating about the bush--

"So, my young friend, you're a warm man, Travers Nugent tells me. Lucky chap, to possess inherited wealth, though I'm not sure that I wouldn't have preferred you to have made a pile by hard work, as I have."

Leslie suddenly finding himself on the edge of a precipice, clutched for the only available support--a deprecating and rather shamefaced laugh.

"Mr. Nugent must be given to exaggeration, sir," he said. "I have never represented myself as a rich man. As a matter of fact I am--not by any means what you would consider rich."

He thought grimly of the few 5 notes left to him out of the sum advanced by Nugent for current expenses during the bogus courts.h.i.+p of the girl now dearer to him than life. Something of the rueful irony in his mind must have been reflected in his face, for Mr. Maynard, after a sidelong glance at him and a sip of port, continued--

"Now, my lad, I've been and set your back up by hinting that you didn't earn your money. At any rate, you must be pretty well lined to be able to chuck the army at your age, and to possess such a steam yacht as Nugent has described to me."

"I am afraid, sir, that Nugent's imagination has run away with him,"

Leslie replied, flus.h.i.+ng hotly. "The yacht at Weymouth, in which I had been going to travel, is not my own property."

"You have abandoned your intention?"

"Entirely."

A constrained silence fell upon the two men. The blue smoke of their cigars floated over the array of decanters, the luscious fruits and glittering plate. On one the demon of distrust had been unchained; on the other, a cloud of apprehension, threatening the short-lived bliss of the last few days, had swooped from an azure sky. It was Montague Maynard who broke the spell, going, as was his way, direct to the point.

"Look here, Chermside," he blurted out. "I like you, and so does old Sally Dymmock--'cute observers, both of us. But there's something not quite above-board--I don't say about you, but about your circ.u.mstances.

I'm the last man to judge anybody hastily, and you may have the best of reasons for reticence; but I just want to warn you that if you come to me with a proposal which I need not define I shall expect perfect frankness."

Leslie's heart sank within him, for perfect frankness was what he would never be able to accord. How was he to explain the fact that he was a penniless man without prospects, in face of the impression which, if not actually inspired by him, he allowed to remain, that he was rolling in money? Still less could he explain the motive which had prompted him to acquiescence in Nugent's description of him. And the only alternative to explanation was once for all to abandon hopes of Violet, and to bear his loss as manfully as he could, accepting it as a punishment for his contemplated evil-doing.

"When I come to you with a definite proposal, sir, I shall naturally endeavour to satisfy you," was his long-delayed reply.

It was lame enough, but it served its immediate purpose of staving off the day of reckoning. For Montague Maynard rose abruptly from the table, flinging down his napkin with a gesture of impatience, and obviously restraining an impulse to press his guest for a declaration of his intentions.

"Come and join the ladies," he said curtly.

An uncomfortable half-hour had followed in the drawing-room, the air vibrant with an electric tension which all were conscious of, and, as is customary on such occasions, increased by their fatuous efforts to relieve it. Violet talked brilliantly--more brilliantly than usual, perhaps--of things that did not matter, watching her father and lover with a pained surprise which her brave efforts could not wholly conceal.

Aunt Sarah seized such opportunities as were offered to her of being openly rude to every one in turn, nodding her priceless lace cap to emphasize her points, stabbing her lean fingers at the successive victims of her caustic tongue, and galvanizing her mummy-like face into grimaces that would have terrified strangers.

But, so far as Leslie was concerned, it was reserved for the old lady to save the situation. When she got up to go she followed Mr. Maynard and Violet into the hall to speed the parting guest, winding up a stilted evening with the request that Mr. Chermside would take her and her great-niece on what she called "the water" the next day. She and Violet would motor out to the Ottermouth beach, and meet him there at 11.30 if "the elements were propitious."

Leslie had, of course, consented, though he had to conceal a certain amount of reluctance in doing so. After Mr. Maynard's plain speech he was not sure if it was not his duty to refrain from seeing Violet again.

At any rate the time had come when he must quit the fool's paradise in which he had been living since the scene in the rose-garden, and seriously consider his position. But Miss Dymmock's request was a command, and it had this merit--that whatever course he decided on he would have one more hour in the company of his beloved.