CHAPTER XXV
THE END OF A DREAM
I don't think I was ever so glad in my life before to see anyone. There he was in the flesh, dear old John, tall and grave and courteous, like any Spanish don, in a clean tussore suit and the inevitable cigar stuck in a corner of his mouth.
"John!" I exclaimed. "How on earth did you ever get here?"
He stared at me in astonishment. It was obvious that, for the moment, he did not recognise me. Well might he wonder who this begrimed tramp might be who greeted him so familiarly. But then he cried out and clapped me on the back.
"Desmond, by all that's holy! Man, you've given us an anxious time! What have you been up to to get yourself in that condition?"
"It's a long story now ended," I answered soberly, "and it'll keep! At present I can't get over your turning up here!...."
"From inquiries I made about El Cojo and his gang after you left I got seriously alarmed about you," said this most faithful friend. "But when I heard that the Government coastal defence motor-boat, the fastest craft in these waters, was missing, I decided it was time I came to look for you. One of my fruit-ships, the Cristobal, happened to be in harbour, so I came along in her. She's lying outside now. Before we do any more talking I suggest you come aboard with me and have a clean-up. And you look as though you could do with a drink as well!...."
I explained the difficulty I was in regarding the disposal of Grundt.
"El Cojo, eh?" commented Bard and whistled. "That's some capture you've got there, Desmond. We'll take him back with us to Rodriguez. He's hand in glove with the President, I believe, and I should like to give his Excellency a lesson."
So we settled it. Bard arranged to send a boat ashore to fetch Clubfoot to the Cristobal. He promised to see to it that my enemy was safely bestowed.
So I turned my back on Cock Island and left it brooding sadly beneath the stars with the terraced rock and the image and the little bowl-shaped clearing where Von Hagel slept. I went on board the Cristobal and for a good half-hour, with a long "peg" within easy reach of my hand, lay and soaked the stiffness out of my bones in a boiling hot bath. John had volunteered, in the meantime, to send a boat over to the Naomi to fetch my luggage; for I had told him how things stood between me and Garth, and he assumed that I would remain on the Cristobal. I had hesitated an instant before replying; for I desperately wanted to see Marjorie again. But, I reflected, a millionaire's daughter was not for me—and it was better we should part thus. So I scribbled a note for the coloured steward to take to her: just a line to say good-bye and to thank her for her action that had saved my life.
They brought me some food in my cabin and while, attired in a voluminous dressing-gown of my friend's, I ate, John Bard told me what he had learnt regarding the connection of El Cojo's gang with Cock Island.
"During the war," he said, "the island was the depôt for certain important gun-running operations carried out by Black Pablo and his friends for the Mexican insurgents. The idea of the scheme, which was directed by the German espionage heads in the United States, was to keep things humming on the American border and to detain United States troops there.
"In those days Black Pablo had a ship of his own. He used to call periodically and collect arms and ammunition deposited on the island by some German commerce-raiders or other—there is talk of a mysterious vessel under the Swedish flag that used to stand off here—and take this contraband to Rodriguez. Here in port, under cover of night, it was transferred to a Mexican steamer which ultimately ran it ashore somewhere on the Mexican coast. On the outward trip to Cock Island, Black Pablo used to carry large stocks of gasoline for German craft operating in these waters...."
"There's a group of sheds on the other side of the island which Clubfoot's men called 'The Petrol Store,'" I put in.
"Precisely," said Bard. "There was a regular traffic here. The island is, after all, conveniently enough situated for the work they had in hand; not too far from the Central American coast yet well off the trade routes. It was naturally, as you might say, selected as the rendezvous in connection with what was intended to be Germany's biggest coup against the Americans in the war.... the destruction of the Panama Canal!"
"By George!" I commented.
"If it hadn't been for the Armistice," Bard continued, "I believe they would have pulled it off. They spent months on the preparations; everything was worked out to the last detail. The most vulnerable points were to be dynamited; the Gatun Lock and the Culebra Cut, I know, were mentioned. The big bang was planned for November, '18...."
"I see! And the Armistice spoilt it?"
"Exactly. The H.E. had been passed by Black Pablo and Co. to the parties appointed to carry out the explosion, and it was agreed that, as soon as the coup had come off, Black Pablo should make for the island rendezvous to receive his pay from a trusted German emissary who would await him there. The sum was one hundred thousand pounds in American gold dollars and German gold marks. But the Armistice, as you say, knocked the whole thing on the head. The entire German fabric collapsed, its plots and intrigues with it, including the canal coup. The Allies took a very firm hand with the Rodriguez Government and forced them to expel Black Pablo and confiscate his ship. Pablo went to San Salvador and did his best to charter a vessel there. But there was a heavy slump in German stock and everybody had the wind up. So nothing was done...."
"And Grundt—El Cojo?"
"I did not succeed in finding out a great deal about his movements; for the people from whom I inquired either did not or would not know anything about him. But apparently he turned up from Havana some months ago. The rest of the story—how they got on to Dutchey and his tale of the message taken by the Englishman from the grave—you know...."
There was a tap at the cabin-door. The dark-skinned steward of the Cristobal was there with my kit from the Naomi. "El Cojo," he told us, had just come on board. Bard threw a questioning glance at me.
"I leave him to you, John," I said. "I don't want to see him again...."
My friend grinned understandingly and left the cabin. In silence the steward laid out some clean clothes for me. He said nothing about my note to Marjorie. Had she had it? Surely she would have answered....
"You left my letter for the Señorita?" I asked at last.
"Si, si, Señor Commandante," the man replied. "The Señorita was on the deck with the rich Inglez, her father, and I gave the Señor Commandante's note into her own hands!"
"And she read it?"
"Si, Señor!"
"And there was.... no reply?"
"No, Señor!"
Well, that settled it. I had my congé. Cock Island and those wonder days with Marjorie must go into the store-house of past memories.... Yet there was a tug at my heart as for a moment I thought of her as I had held her in my arms in the burial-chamber and she had raised her face to mine. "Money doesn't count down here!" she had whispered; but now we were back in the work-a-day world where money could prove an insuperable barrier between true lovers....
In moody silence I dressed and went above. A crescent moon hung low down on the horizon and the deck was eerie with fantastic shadows. No one was about. On our starboard bow the rugged mass of Cock Island was a black blur against the stars.
It is one of the failings of the Celtic temperament that its moments of the highest elation are apt to be followed by phases of the deepest depression. Reaction had come upon me after our days of high adventure and floored me utterly. All the spice, so it seemed to me in that dark hour beneath the moon on the Cristobal's deserted deck, had gone out of the romance of my profession and left me with an ill taste in my mouth. As I paced up and down I revisualised the scenes through which I had passed in my quest; Adams gasping for breath in his hovel, Garth and I scrambling through the steaming jungle, that storm-tossed figure by the grave, Marjorie pillowing her gold-brown head on my chest in the darkness of the cave.
From every one of the pictures which passed across my mind her face seemed to look out, the narrow pencilled eyebrows above the clear grey eyes, the great tenderness of her mouth.... Within a few hours, I pondered sadly, I had found my love and lost her just as I had found and lost the treasure....
A voice was hailing us out of the gloom that hung over the opalescent sea.
"Cristobal ahoy!"
The sound of oars came to me and presently a ship's boat emerged from the night, a white figure in the stern. A few minutes later Marjorie Garth, wrapped in a white blanket coat, stepped out of the boat that rocked in the swell at the foot of the Cristobal's companion and mounted to the deck.
"You would have left me like this?" she said, and stood close by my side.
I shrugged my shoulders.
"It was not a friendly thing to do.... partner," she added in a breathless sort of way.
"Your father...." I began.
"Oh!" she cried in a low voice, "I was ashamed of him. After what you risked to save me. But you must make allowances. I am all he has, you know. He'll be all right in a day or two. We're going back to Panama and home by way of America. And I've come to fetch you back to the Naomi!...."
I shook my head.
"No!" I said.
"If I ask you to come. And I'll make Daddy apologise, if you like...."
She laid her hand on my arm.
"No!" I said again.
Hurt, she withdrew her hand.
"Your stupid pride...." she began.
"Don't let us quarrel," I pleaded. "Let me keep a wonderful dream unspoiled, Marjorie. But dreams can't last for ever, my dear. One has to wake up some time, you know!"
Questioningly her eyes sought mine.
"Even if Sir Alexander had not told me I was not wanted on the Naomi," I continued, "I think I should yet have parted from you here. My dear, my dear, don't you see it's hopeless? I care far too much for you to be able to know you merely as a friend. I must make an end of it. The barrier between us is insurmountable...."
"Barrier?" she repeated. "What barrier?"
"Money! You're too rich, Marjorie, for me to ask you the question which, almost from the moment I first saw you in the smoke-room of the Naomi, I have wanted to put to you. I make enough out of this odd trade of mine to keep a wife. But as long as I'm in the Secret Service I'd ask no woman to marry me. It wouldn't be playing the game by her—or by the service, either!...."
She listened to me in silence. Then she said quite simply:
"Desmond, if you'll ask me, I'll be your wife. I've never met a man I'd marry before; but I'd marry you. Why should you let money stand between us? I shall have enough for both...."
I loved her for her words. But I shook my head again.
"It won't do, my dear," said I. "And you know it won't do. If I'd found that cursed treasure, things might have been different. But now I've only to tell you I shall never forget that you paid me the greatest compliment a woman can pay a man.... and to say good-bye...."
With a sob, she turned from me and, ignoring my arm, ran down the ladder and stepped into the boat.
Before morning Clubfoot had escaped. Loud shouts from Cock Island where, by Garth's permission, some of the crew of the Naomi had spent the night ashore, discovered the news to us. The Naomi's launch, which they had drawn up on the beach, was missing, and at the companion of the Cristobal a severed length of rope showed that the painter of one of the ship's boats which had been tied up there had been cut.
Bard held an inquiry. But his crew came from Rodriguez, "and," he told me, "they have a holy fear of El Cojo. He simply blustered his way out of the lamp-room where I had him imprisoned! I'm not sure," he added with a grin, "that old Clubfoot has not himself presented us with the simplest solution of a very difficult problem!"
CHAPTER XXVI
IN WHICH A BLACK BOX PLAYS A DECISIVE PART
A smear of smoke on the horizon was all that was left to denote the presence of the Naomi when John Bard came to me as I sat in the shade of the after-deck of the Cristobal, going through the mail he had brought me from Rodriguez. He dropped into a chair at my side.
"Captain Lawless and that Scots engineer of his," he said, "spent the greater part of the night ashore grubbing for gold round the image. But they didn't find as much as a dollar. And then to discover they had lost their launch. Gee! they were as sick as mud!"
"Bah!" I answered. "I'm fed up with the whole place. The sooner we're at sea again the better I shall be pleased. I want to get back to work, John...."
"We're sailing at four o'clock," my friend replied. "But before we up anchor, Desmond, old man, I should like to have a look at that burial-chamber and the passage by which you escaped. What do you say to taking me ashore now and showing me round?"
"Anything to pass the time," I said wearily. "When do we start?"
"Right now. And I'll bring a pick and spade. If there's time we might have another grub for gold in the lava round the idol...."
"You bet the canny Scot hasn't left an inch of soil unturned," I laughed as old John went off.
Half an hour later we were pushing our way across the rocky valley at the end of which, against the mountainside, the great idol was set. We skirted the smoking volcano and at length stood before the narrow fissure, half-hidden by a gigantic boulder, through which I had emerged from the burial-chamber.
We had borrowed a couple of lanterns from the ship and Bard carried a pick-axe while I shouldered a spade. We left our tools at the entrance and lit our lamps. Then I led the way into the passage. At the end I found the solid masonry of the table hanging down into the passage. A steady heave swung it round and there, above our heads, was the black square opening of the death-chamber.
And now I struck. The place had too poignant memories for me. I hoisted Bard up into the hole, but I declined to accompany him. Swinging my lamp in my hand, I wandered back along the passage towards the cleft by which we had entered.
I had gone perhaps a hundred yards from the cave when the light of my lantern, striking low, revealed a square flag set in the floor of the passage. It sounded hollow to the foot. Setting down my lamp I stooped to examine it and then I saw that the stone was roughly carved. The carving was worn and filled in with dust. I scraped it clear as best I could with my hands and then saw that the stone was carved with the likeness of a turtle, the counterpart of the turtle carved on the table in the cave. I could see the head and tail and the four flippers roughly hewn.
"John!" I shouted. "Here, John!"
My voice reverberated weirdly in the low-roofed passage. I dropped to my knees and tried to heave the stone up. But it was firmly set and resisted all my efforts. Then I heard Bard's footsteps echoing along the passage.
"Will you look at that?" I said as he came up.
"By George!" he exclaimed. "Captain Roberts, his mark! Can you heave it up? Wait! I'll get the tools!"
And he darted off along the passage.
With the aid of the pick we prised the stone up. A slot had obviously been cut for it in the rock. A shallow opening was revealed and at the bottom stood a black box.
It was of black leather, discoloured but apparently in good condition, the corners bound with some dull metal which I took to be brass. It was about four foot long, with a rounded lid studded with nails. Bard lifted up one of the lanterns whilst I, lying on my face, dropped an arm into the hole. My fingers closed on a handle at the side of the box. I heaved. The box was immensely heavy and I found that I could barely lift it. I managed, however, to push it to one side, thus making room for my feet. Then I dropped into the hole, up-ended the casket and by dint of our combined exertions we landed it on the floor of the passage.
I looked at Bard and he looked at me.
"You—open it!" I said hoarsely.
The box seemed to be of Spanish manufacture for the leather was handsomely tooled in the Cordova fashion. It was fitted with an elaborately chased iron or steel lock with a hasp that rattled to Bard's touch. Without further ceremony he inserted the point of the pick under the hasp, wrenched, and the nails giving way in the rotten leather, the whole lock came off. Then he threw up the lid and we saw a layer of discoloured brown canvas. This I pulled aside and we fell back in amazement.
For the box was filled to the brim with magnificent gold and silver vessels, interspersed with them richly chased pistols and a couple of daggers with hilts studded with gems. There were, amongst other things, a superbly wrought ewer and basin, both of which seemed to be of solid gold, a flat gold dish set with diamonds and rubies, a gem-laden crucifix, the Christ in pure gold, and an enormous variety of gold and silver forks and spoons. We laid all these treasures out on the floor of the passage and then, beneath some folded lengths of rich crimson brocade, came upon a long ebony box in which, wrapped loosely in a cambric scarf yellowed with age, was a superb collection of gems. There were no less than three magnificent parures of pearls, such as great ladies in the days of the Merry Monarch wore upon their neck and bosom, a number of diamond and pearl drops such as were worn on the forehead, diamond ear-rings, a huge emerald set as a brooch, several heavy gold chains, and some diamond buckles. Beside the ebony box, enveloped in a flowered silk wrap, was a curiously fashioned silver globe richly set with different precious stones to represent the various capitals of the world.
Bard heaved a deep sigh and looked at me.
"My word, old boy!" he exclaimed, "you've done it at last!"
"What—what do you suppose it's worth?" I asked rather unsteadily.
"A hundred thousand, two hundred thousand pounds," answered Bard. "Who can say? The antiquarian value, altogether apart from the intrinsic, of some of these things—that crucifix and that globe, for example must be very considerable.
"That emerald and those brilliants, for instance.... but you aren't listening."
I wasn't. A sudden vision had come to me of clear grey eyes trustfully raised to mine, of a tangle of copper-coloured hair that rested against my coat, of a slim warm body that clung confidingly to me. The discoloured leather trunk which lay at our feet was destined to change the whole course of my life. Hope, to which, with Marjorie, I had said good-bye, came surging back into my heart. Our island dream was not at an end.... unless good fortune had come to me too late.
"When will the Naomi reach Panama?" I suddenly asked.
"In about a week or ten days," John replied. "Why?"
"Because," I said, "I must reach her by cable!...."
It was ultimately from Rodriguez that my message was sent. Akawa, Bard's Japanese butler, took it down the hill to the cable office. I was prostrate with a bad bout of malaria, which I must have contracted in the steamy woods of Cock Island. My cable was to Marjorie, and this is what it said:
"The barriers are down. When will you marry me? DESMOND."
But no reply came. All through the feverish days of my illness, a shadowy cable addressed to me flitted through my tortured mind. Sometimes, when I was light-headed, as Bard told me afterwards, I would fancy that Marjorie had replied, that Akawa was handing me the message.... But when consciousness returned, I awoke to a dark world which even the leather trunk locked away in Bard's strong-room could not illumine....
It was weeks before I could travel to New York, where I placed the treasure in the hands of a firm of antiquaries. They advised that it should only come on the market gradually, piece by piece, in order not to depreciate its value. I do not, therefore, know even now exactly how much it will realise; but from what they tell me I am quite justified in regarding myself as a comparatively wealthy man. Bard will not touch a cent of the treasure. He does not need it, he says, and it belongs to me....
A cable from the Chief, to whom I had communicated my New York address, awaited me on my arrival from Panama. It directed me to go to Washington for instructions. The treasure disposed of, I accordingly boarded the train and proceeded to the capital.
From my hotel at Washington I telephoned to my old friend, Vincent Pargett, at the Embassy, and invited myself to dinner. Vincent made me welcome in his very comfortable bachelor apartment, and over the cocktails produced a batch of cables.
"You'd better read this one first, Desmond," he said. "It came only this morning. The rest have been here a week," and he tossed over the envelope.
It was from Marjorie. My heart seemed to stop beating as my eyes fell on her name printed at the foot of the message. It was from London, and I realised that my cable must have missed her at Panama and followed her home. This was her reply:
"Whenever you like.—Your MARJORIE."
There are moments which justify even the Secret Service agent in abandoning his wonted habit of reticence. With Marjorie's dear message in my hand I told old Vincent, whom I had known all my life, the news which it contained.
"Three cheers!" exclaimed my friend, then raised his glass.
"I drink," said he with mock solemnity, "to the passing of England's premier sleuth!"
*****
I wonder! Shall I, in the stay-at-home Government billet which the Chief procured for me and happy in the possession of Marjorie as my wife, always be able to resist the beckoning finger of romance luring towards high adventure and spirited endeavour? Shall I, to the end of the chapter, remain deaf to the call of the blood, aloof from the thrill of the man-hunt? Quien sabe? Who knows?
Of Clubfoot I never heard again, and to this day I do not know whether, weak as he was and single-handed in that little launch, he ever made the land. Garth, inclined to be difficult at first, resigned himself at the last with a good grace to our matrimonial projects. I think the argument that my share of Captain Roberts' treasure would remain in the family made a distinct appeal to his Lancashire horse-sense. Carstairs is with us still and is developing into an excellent butler.
For the Vice-Consul at Rodriguez, whose friendly services I had not forgotten, the Chief procured the C.B.E. I am told that he wears it very impressively, dangling from its purple ribbon on his shirt front, when, in evening dress, according to the protocol, he attends the President of Rodriguez at the opening of the Legislature....
THE END
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