A Master of Fortune Part 34

"I'm going to see you hanged shortly, you drunken beast," he said, "but in the mean while you may as well get sober for a change, and explain things up a bit."

Cranze swung his legs out of the bunk and sat up. He was feeling very tottery, and the painfulness of his head did not improve his temper.

"Look here," he said, "I've had enough of your airs and graces. I've paid for my pa.s.sage on this rubbishy old water-pusher of yours, and I'll trouble you to keep a civil tongue in your head, or I'll report you to your owners. You are like a railway guard, my man. After you have seen that your pa.s.sengers have got their proper tickets, it's your duty to--"

Mr. Cranze's connective remarks broke off here for the time being. He found himself suddenly plucked away from the bunk by a pair of iron hands, and hustled out through the state-room door. He was a tall man, and the hands thrust him from below, upward, and, though he struggled wildly and madly, all his efforts to have his own way were futile.

Captain Owen Kettle had handled far too many really strong men in this fas.h.i.+on to even lose breath over a dram-drinking pa.s.senger. So Cranze found himself hurtled out on to the lower fore-deck, where somebody handcuffed him neatly to an iron stanchion, and presently a mariner, by Captain Kettle's orders, rigged a hose, and mounted on the iron bulwark above him, and let a three-inch stream of chilly brine slop steadily on to his head.

The situation, from an onlooker's point of view, was probably ludicrous enough, but what daunted the patient was that n.o.body seemed to take it as a joke. There were a dozen men of the crew who had drawn near to watch, and yesterday all these would have laughed contemptuously at each of his contortions. But now they are all stricken to a sudden solemnity.

"Spell-o," ordered Kettle. "Let's see if he's sober yet."

The man on the bulwarks let the stream from the hose flop overboard, where it ran out into a stream of bubbles which joined the wake.

Cranze gasped back his breath, and used it in a torrent of curses.

"Play on him again," said Kettle, and selected a good black before-breakfast cigar from his pocket. He lit it with care. The man on the bulwark s.h.i.+fted his shoulder for a better hold against the derrick-guy, and swung the limp hose in-board again. The water splashed down heavily on Cranze's head and shoulders, and the onlookers took stock of him without a trace of emotion. They had most of them seen the remedy applied to inebriates before, and so they watched Cranze make his gradual recovery with the eyes of experts.

"Spell-o," ordered Kettle some five minutes later, and once more the hose vomited sea water ungracefully into the sea. This time Cranze had the sense to hold his tongue till he was spoken to. He was very white about the face, except for his nose, which was red, and his eye had brightened up considerably. He was quite sober, and quite able to weigh any words that were dealt out to him.

"Now," said Kettle judicially, "what have you done with Mr. Hamilton?"

"Nothing."

"You deny all knowledge of how he got overboard?"

Cranze was visibly startled. "Of course I do. Is he overboard?"

"He can't be found on this s.h.i.+p. Therefore he is over the side.

Therefore you put him there."

Cranze was still more startled. But he kept himself in hand. "Look here," he said, "what rot! What should I know about the fellow? I haven't seen him since last night."

"So you say. But I don't see why I should believe you. In fact, I don't."

"Well, you can suit yourself about that, but it's true enough. Why in the name of mischief should I want to meddle with the poor beggar? If you're thinking of the bit of a sc.r.a.p we had yesterday, I'll own I was full at the time. And so must he have been. At least I don't know why else he should have set upon me like he did. At any rate that's not a thing a man would want to murder him for."

"No, I should say 20,000 is more in your line."

"What are you driving at?"

"You know quite well. You got that poor fellow insured just before this trip, you got him to make a will in your favor, and now you've committed a dirty, clumsy murder just to finger the dollars."

Cranze broke into uncanny hysterical laughter. "That chap insured; that chap make a will in my favor? Why, he hadn't a penny. It was me that paid for his pa.s.sage. I'd been on the tear a bit, and the Jew fellow I went to about raising the wind did say something about insuring, I know, and made me sign a lot of law papers. They made out I was in such a chippy state of health that they'd not let me have any more money unless I came on some beastly dull sea voyage to recruit a bit, and one of the conditions was that one of the boys was to come along too and look after me."

"You'll look pretty foolish when you tell that thin tale to a jury."

"Then let me put something else on to the back of it. I'm not Cranze at all. I'm Hamilton. I've been in the papers a good deal just recently, because I'd been flinging my money around, and I didn't want to get stared at on board here. So Cranze and I swapped names, just to confuse people. It seems to have worked very well."

"Yes," said Kettle, "it's worked so well that I don't think you'll get a jury to believe that either. As you don't seem inclined to make a clean breast of it, you can now retire to your room, and be restored to your personal comforts. I can't hand you over to the police without inconvenience to myself till we get to New Orleans, so I shall keep you in irons till we reach there. Steward--where's a steward? Ah, here you are. See this man is kept in his room, and see he has no more liquor. I make you responsible for him."

"Yes, sir," said the steward.

Continuously the dividends of Bird, Bird and Co. outweighed every other consideration, and the _Flamingo_ dodged on with her halting voyage. At the first place he put in at, Kettle sent off an extravagant cablegram of recent happenings to the representative of the Insurance Company in England. It was not the cotton season, and the Texan ports yielded the steamer little, but she had a ton or so of cargo for almost every one of them, and she delivered it with neatness, and clamored for cargo in return. She was "working up a connection." She swung round the Gulf till she came to where logs borne by the Mississippi stick out from the white sand, and she wasted a little time, and steamed past the nearest outlet of the delta, because Captain Kettle did not personally know its pilotage. He was getting a very safe and cautious navigator in these latter days of his prosperity.

So she made for the Port Eads pa.s.s, picked up a pilot from the station by the lighthouse, and steamed cautiously up to the quarantine station, dodging the sandbars. Her one remaining pa.s.senger had pa.s.sed from an active nuisance to a close and unheard prisoner, and his presence was almost forgotten by every one on board, except Kettle and the steward who looked after him. The merchant seaman of these latter days has to pay such a strict attention to business, that he has no time whatever for extraneous musings.

The _Flamingo_ got a clean bill from the doctor at the quarantine station, and emerged triumphantly from the cl.u.s.ter of craft doing penance, and, with a fresh pilot, steamed on up the yellow river, past the white sugar-mills, and the heavy cypresses behind the banks. And in due time the pilot brought her up to New Orleans, and, with his gla.s.ses on the bridge, Kettle saw his acquaintance, Mr. Lupton, waiting for him on the levee.

He got his steamer berthed in the crowded tier, and Mr. Lupton pushed on board over the first gang-plank. But Kettle waved the man aside till he saw his vessel finally moored. And then he took him into the chart-house and shut the door.

"You seem to have got my cable," he said. "It was a very expensive one, but I thought the occasion needed it."

His visitor tapped Kettle confidentially on the knee. "You'll find my office will deal most liberally with you, Captain. But I can tell you I'm pretty excited to hear your full yarn."

"I'm afraid you won't like it," said Kettle. "The man's obviously dead, and, fancy it or not, I don't see how your office can avoid paying the full amount. However, here's the way I've logged it down"--and he went off into detailed narration.

The New Orleans heat smote upon the chart-house roof, and the air outside clattered with the talk of negroes. Already hatches were off, and the winch chains sang as they struck out cargo, and from the levee alongside, and from New Orleans below and beyond, came tangles of smells which are peculiarly their own. A steward brought in tea, and it stood on the chart-table untasted, and at last Kettle finished, and Lupton put a question.

"It's easy to tell," he said, "if they did swap names. What was the man that went overboard like?"

"Little dark fellow, short sighted. He was a poet, too."

"That's not Hamilton, anyway, but it might be Cranze. Is your prisoner tall?"

"Tall and puffy. Red-haired and a spotty face."

"That's Hamilton, all the way. By Jove! Skipper, we've saved our bacon.

His yarn's quite true. They did change names. Hamilton's a rich young a.s.s that's been painting England red these last three years."

"But, tell me, what did the little chap go overboard for?"

"Got there himself. Uneasy conscience, I suppose. He seems to have been a poor sort of a.s.sa.s.sin anyway. Why, when that drunken fool tumbled overboard amongst the sharks, he didn't leave him to be eaten or drowned, is more than I can understand. He'd have got his money as easy as picking it up off the floor, if he'd only had the sense to keep quiet."

"If you ask me," said Kettle, "it was sheer n.o.bility of character. I had a good deal of talk with that young gentleman, sir. He was a splendid fellow. He had a true poetical soul."

Mr. Lupton winked sceptically. "He managed to play the part of a thorough-paced young blackguard at home pretty successfully. He was warned off the turf. He was kicked out of his club for card-sharping. He was--well, he's dead now, anyway, and we won't say any more about him, except that he's been stone-broke these last three years, and has been living on his wits and helping to fleece other flats. But he was only the tool, anyway. There is a bigger and more capable scoundrel at the back of it all, and, thanks to the scare you seem to have rubbed into that spotty-faced young mug you've got locked up down below, I think we can get the princ.i.p.al by the heels very nicely this journey. If you don't mind, I'll go and see this latest victim now, before he's had time to get rid of his fright."

Captain Kettle showed his visitor courteously down to the temporary jail, and then returned to the chart-house and sipped his tea.

"His name may really have been Cranze, but he was a poet, poor lad," he mused, thinking of the dead. "That's why he couldn't do the dirty work.

But I sha'n't tell Lupton that reason. He'd only laugh--and--that poetry ought to be a bit of a secret between the lad and me. Poor, poor fellow!

I think I'll be able to write a few lines about him myself after I've been ash.o.r.e to see the agent, just as a bit of an epitaph. As to this spotty-faced waster who swapped names with him, I almost have it in me to wish we'd left him to be chopped by those sharks. He'd his money to his credit anyway--and what's money compared with poetry?"

CHAPTER XII

THE FIRE AND THE FARM