The Million Dollar Mystery Part 28

"Now what, my child?" asked the sailor.

She shook her head. Her aversion was inexplicable.

"Come, my dear; can't you see that it is your father?" Braine turned to the captain. "She has been like this for a year. Heaven knows if she'll ever be in her right mind again," sadly. "I was giving her an ocean voyage, with the kindest nurses possible, and yet she jumped overboard. Come, Florence."

The girl wrapped her arms all the tighter around Barnes' neck.

An idea came into the old sailor's head. "Of course, sir, ye've got proof thet she's your daughter?"

"Proof?" Braine was taken aback.

"Yes; somethin' t' prove that you're her father. I got skinned out of a sloop once because I took a man's word at its face value. Black an'

white, an' on paper, says I, hereafter."

"But I never thought of such a thing," protested Braine, beginning to lose his patience. "I can't risk sending to New York for doc.u.ments.

She is my daughter, and you will find it will not pay to take this peculiar stand."

"In black an' white, 'r y' can't have her."

Braine thereupon rushed forward to seize Florence. Barnes swung Florence behind him.

"I guess she'll stay here a leetle longer, sir."

Time was vital, and this obstinacy made Braine furious.

He reached again for Florence.

"Clear out o' here, 'r show your authority," growled Barnes.

"She goes with me, or you'll regret it."

"All right. But I guess th' law won't hurt me none. I'm in my rights.

There's the door, mister."

"I refuse to go without her!"

Barnes sighed. He was on land a man of peace, but there was a limit to his patience. He seized Braine by the shoulders and hustled him out of the house.

"Bring your proofs, mister, an' nothin' more'll be said; but till y'

bring 'em, keep away from this cottage."

And, simple-minded sailor that he was, he thought this settled the matter.

That night he kept his ears open for unusual sounds, but he merely wasted his night's rest. Quite naturally, he reckoned that the stranger would make his attempt at night. Indeed, he made it in broad daylight, with Barnes not a hundred yards away, calking a dory whose seams had sprung a leak. Braine had Florence upon the chartered yacht before the old man realized what had happened. He never saw Florence again; but one day, months later, he read all about her in a newspaper.

Florence fought; but she was weak, and so the conquest was easy.

Braine was kind enough, now that he had her safe. He talked to her, but she merely stared at the receding coast.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FLORENCE FOUGHT BUT SHE WAS WEAK AND SO THE CONQUEST WAS EASY]

"All right; don't talk if you don't want to. Here," to one of the men, "take her to the cabin and keep her there. But don't you touch her.

I'll break you if you do. Put her in the cabin and guard the door; at least keep an eye on it. She may take it into her head to jump overboard."

Even the temporarily demented are not without a species of cunning.

Florence had never seen Braine till he appeared at the Barnes cottage.

Yet she revolted at the touch of his hand. On the second day out toward New York she found a box of matches and blithely set fire to her cabin, walked out into the corridor and thence to the deck. When the fire was discovered it had gained too much headway to be stopped. The yacht was doomed. They put off in the boats and for half a day drifted helplessly.

Fate has everything mapped out like a game of chess. You move a p.a.w.n, and bang goes your bishop, or your knight, or your king; or she lets you almost win a game, and then checkmates you. But there is one thing to be said in her favor--rail at her how we will, she is always giving odds to the innocent.

Mike Bannock was in the pilothouse, looking over his charts, when the lookout in the crow's nest sang out: "Two boats adrift off the port bow, sir!" And Bannock, who was a first-cla.s.s sailor, although a rough one, shouted down the tube to the engine room. The freighter came to a halt in about ten minutes. The castaways saw that they had been noted, and pulled gallantly at the oars.

There are some things which science, well advanced as it is, can not explain. Among them is the shock which cuts off the past and the countershock which reawakens memory. They may write treatise after treatise and expound, but they never succeed in truly getting beyond that dark wall of mystery.

At the sound of Jim Norton's voice and at the sight of his face--for subconsciously she must have been thinking of him all the while--a great blinding heat-wave seemed to burn across her eyes, and when the effect pa.s.sed away she was herself again. A wild glance at her surroundings convinced her that both she and her lover were in danger.

"Keep back," whispered Jim. "Don't recognize me."

"They believe that I've lost my mind, and I'll keep that idea in their heads. Sometime to-night I'll find a chance to talk to you."

It took a good deal of cautious maneuvering to bring about the meeting.

"They shanghaied me. And I thought you dead! It was all wrong. It was a trick of that Perigoff woman, and it succeeded. Girl, girl, I love you better than life!"

"I know it now," she said, and she kissed him. "Has my father appeared yet?"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "I KNOW IT NOW," SHE SAID, AND SHE KISSED HIM]

"No."

"Do you know anything at all about him?" sadly.

"I thought I did. It's all a jumble to me. But beware of the man who brought you here. He is the head of all our troubles; and if he knew I was on board he'd kill me out of hand. He'd have to."

Braine offered Bannock $1,000 to turn back as far as Boston; and as Bannock had all the time in the world, carrying no perishable goods, he consented. But he never could quite understand what followed. He had put Florence and Braine in the boat and landed them; but when he went down to see if Braine had left anything behind, he found that individual bound and gagged in his bunk.

CHAPTER XI

When Jones received the telegram that Florence was safe, the iron nerve of the man broke down. The suspense had been so keenly terrible that the sudden reaction left him almost hysterically weak. Three weeks of waiting, waiting. Not even the scoundrel and his wife who had been the princ.i.p.al actors in the abduction had been found. From a great s.h.i.+p in midocean they had disappeared. Doubtless they had hidden among the immigrants, who, for little money, would have fooled all the officers on board. There was no doubt in Jones' mind that the pair had landed safely at Madrid.

As for Susan, she did have hysterics. She went about the room, wailing and laughing and wringing her hands. You would have thought by her actions that Florence had just died. The sight of her stirred the saturnine lips of the butler into a smile. But he did not remonstrate with her. In fact, he rather envied her freedom in emotion. Man can not let go in that fas.h.i.+on; it is a sign of weakness; and he dared not let even Susan see any sign of weakness in him.

So the reporter had found her, and she was safe and sound on her way to New York? Knowing by this time something of the reporter's courage, he was eager to learn how the event had come about. When he had not had a telephone message from Norton in forty-eight hours, he had decided that the Black Hundred had finally succeeded in getting hold of him. It had been something of a blow; for while he looked with disfavor upon the reporter's frank regard for his charge, he appreciated the fact that Norton was a staff to lean on, and had behind him all the power of the press, which included the privilege of going everywhere even if one could not always get back.

As he folded the telegram and put it into his pocket, he observed the man with the opera gla.s.ses over the way. He shrugged. Well, let him watch till his eyes dropped out of his head; he would only see that which was intended for his eyes. Still, it was irksome to feel that no matter when or where you moved, watching eyes observed and chronicled these movements.

Suddenly, not being devoid of a sense of dry humor, Jones stepped over to the telephone and called up her highness the Countess Perigoff.