Elliott watched the arrival of the ambulance from a distance, for he felt certain that he looked a thorough tramp, with his rough dress and the clinging coal grime of the railroad. Yet he did not wish to leave the city without at least seeing Bennett again, and hearing the medical account of his condition; and he was surprised to find how much liking he felt for this light-hearted and resourceful vagabond whom he had known for less than twenty-four hours.
Though his money was running dangerously short, he lodged himself at a not wholly respectable hotel on Market Street, and next morning he made what improvement he could in his appearance, and went to the hospital. Visitors, it turned out, were not admitted that day, but he was told that his friend was in a very bad way indeed. The young doctor in white duck evidently did not consider his shabby-looking inquirer as capable of comprehending technical details, and seemed himself incapable of furnishing any other, but Elliott gathered that Bennett had been found to have two or three ribs broken and his shoulder dislocated, besides a broken arm and more or less severe lacerations of the lungs. He was quite conscious, however, and the doctor said that, if he grew no worse, it was likely that Elliott would be permitted to see him on the next visiting day, which would be the morrow.
At three o’clock the next afternoon, therefore, Elliott applied, and was admitted without objection. A wearied-looking nurse led him through the ward, where there seemed a visitor for every cot. Bennett, she said, appeared a little better. His temperature had gone down and he seemed to be recovering well from the shock, but Elliott was startled at the pallor of the face upon the pillow. The brown tan looked like yellow paint upon white paper, but Bennett greeted him cheerfully and seemed nervously anxious to talk.
“Sit down here. This is mighty good of you,” he said. “I never got ditched like that before. Did that conductor throw you off, too?”
“Oh, no. He stopped the train for me to get off. His conscience was hurting him, I think.”
“Well, it’s going to cost the road something, I think. But you’ve stayed by me like a brother,” Bennett went on, deliberatively, “and I’ll make it up to you if I can, and I think I can. There’s something I want to tell you about. It’s no small thing, and it’ll take an hour or two, so you’ll have to come to-morrow afternoon, and bring a note-book. We can’t talk with all these visitors swarming around. They’ll let you in; I’ve fixed it up with the doctor. They said that it was liable to kill me, but I told them that it was a matter of life and death, and they gave in. It is a life and death business, too, for a couple of dozen men have been killed in it already, and there’s a round million, at least, in solid gold. What do you think of that?”
Elliott thought that his comrade was becoming delirious again, but he did not say so. The nurse, who had been keeping an eye on him, came up.
“I really think you’ve talked long enough,” she said, with a sweetness that had the force of a command.
“All right,” said Elliott, getting up. “I’ll see you to-morrow, then. Good-bye.”
“Will it really be all right, nurse, for me to have a long talk with him to-morrow?” he inquired, as soon as he was out of Bennett’s hearing.
“No, it isn’t all right, but the house surgeon has given his consent. I think it’s decidedly dangerous, but your friend said it was an absolute matter of life and death, and it may do him good to get it off his mind. Come, since you’ve got permission; and if it seems to excite him too much, I’ll send you away.”
Elliott felt a good deal of curiosity as to the secret which was to be confided to him, for which a couple of dozen men had died already. Probably it had something to do with Bennett’s rapid journey across the continent, and Elliott felt some apprehension that he might be about to be made the involuntary accessory to some large and unlawful exploit.
His curiosity made him willing to take chances, however, and he waited impatiently for the next afternoon. When it came, he found Bennett propped up on three pillows and looking better. The nurse said that he really was better, that all would probably go well, but that it would be slow work, and this slowness seemed to irritate the patient most of all.
“First,” he said, when the nurse was out of earshot, “I’ll tell you what you must do for me. You’ll have to go out of your way to do it, but, unless I’m mistaken, you’ll find it worth your while. I want you to go to Nashville, Tennessee, and I want you to go at once. It’s a case for hurry. I can’t write now, and I daren’t telegraph. Maybe the men I want aren’t there, but you can find where they’re gone. Will you go?”
Elliott hesitated half a moment, wishing he knew what was coming next, but he promised—with a mental reservation.
“That’s all right, then,” said Bennett, “because I know you’re square,”—a remark which touched Elliott’s conscience. “It’s quite a tale that I want you to carry to them, and I’ll have to cut it as short as I can, and you’d better make notes as I go along, for every detail is important.
“I told you how I’d crossed the country from the Coast. I had come as straight as I could from South Africa. I wasn’t in any army there; that’s not in my line. It don’t matter what I was doing; I was just fishing around in the troubled waters.
“Anyway, I had a big deal on that was going to make or break me, and it broke me. I was in Lorenzo Marques then, and it was the most God-awful spot I ever struck. It was full of all the scum of the war, every sort of ruffians and beats, Portuguese and Dutch and Boers and British deserters, and gamblers and mule-drivers from America, all rowing and knifing each other, and it was blazing hot and they had fever there, too.
“I’ve seen a good many wicked places, but I never went against anything like that, and I wanted to get back to America. The American consul wouldn’t do anything for me at all, but I saw an American steamer out in the river,—the Clara McClay of Philadelphia,—loading for the East Coast and then Antwerp. She was the rottenest sort of tramp, but she caught my eye because she was the only American ship I ever saw in those waters. So I went aboard and asked the mate to sign me on as a deck-hand to Antwerp, and he just kicked me over the side.
“Anyway, I was determined to go on that ship, mate or no mate, for there wasn’t anything else going my way, and I expected to die of fever if I waited. So I went aboard again the night before she sailed, and they were getting in cargo by lantern light, and there was such a stir on the decks that nobody paid any attention to me. I got below, and dropped through the hatch into the forehold. They had pretty nearly finished loading by that time, and pretty soon they put the hatches on. It was as dark as Egypt then, and hotter than Henry, with an awful smell, but after awhile I went to sleep, and when I woke up she was at sea, and rolling heavily.
“When I thought she must be good and clear of land, I started to go up and report myself, but when I’d stumbled around in the dark for awhile, I found that the bales and crates were piled up so that I couldn’t get near the hatch. So I sat down and thought it over. I had a quart bottle of water with me, but nothing to eat, and I began to be horribly hungry.
“When I’d been there ten or twelve hours, I guess, I tried moving some of the crates to get to the hatchway, but they were too heavy. But while I was lighting matches to see where I was, I saw a lot of cases just alike, and all marked with the stencil of a Chicago brand of corned beef, and it looked like home. I thought it must be a providential interposition, for I was pretty near starving, and it struck me that I might rip one of the boards off, get out a can or two, and nail the case up again.
“The cases were big and heavy, and they were all screwed up and banded with sheet iron, but I had regularly got it into my head that I was going to get into one of them, and at last I did burst a hole. When I stuck my hand in, it nearly broke my heart. There wasn’t anything there at all, so far as I could make out, but a lot of dry grass.
“It occurred to me that this must be another commissary fraud, but when I tried to move the case it seemed heavy as lead. I poked my arm down into the grass and rummaged around. At last I struck something hard and square down near the middle, but it didn’t feel like a meat tin. I worked it out, and lit a match. It was a gold brick, and it must have weighed ten pounds.”
“Solid, real gold?” cried Elliott, with a sudden memory of Salt Lake.
“The real thing. It didn’t take me long to gut that box, and I dug out nineteen more bricks, nearly fifty thousand dollars’ worth, I reckoned. No wonder it was heavy. Then I looked over the rest of the cases, and they all looked just alike, and there were twenty-three of them, so I figured up that there must be considerably over a million in those boxes.”
“Stolen from the Pretoria treasury!” Elliott exclaimed.
“I believe it was, but what made you think of that?”
“Never mind; I’ll tell you later. Go on.”
“Well, I felt pretty certain that this gold came from the Rand, of course, but who it belonged to, or why he had shipped it on this old tramp steamer was what I couldn’t make out. Of course, if he was going to ship it on this boat, it was easy to understand that it might be safer to pass it as corned beef, but the whole thing looked queer and crooked to me.
“At first I was fairly off my head at the find, but when I came to think it over, it looked like there wasn’t anything in it for me, after all. I couldn’t walk off with those bricks. They might be government stuff, and I didn’t want any trouble with Secret Service men. So after awhile I packed up the box again as well as I could and fixed the lid.
“I thought I’d lie low for awhile, and I stayed in that black hole till I’d drunk all my bottle of water and was pretty near ready to eat my boots. When I couldn’t stand it any longer, I raised a devil of a racket, yelling, and hammering on the deck overhead with a piece of plank, and I kept this up, off and on, for half a day before they hauled the hatch off and took me out. It was dark night, with a fresh wind, and the ship rolling, and I never smelt anything so good as that open air.
“The first thing they did was to drag me before that same mate for judgment, and he cursed me till he was blue. He’d have murdered me if he’d recognized me, and he nearly did anyway, for he sent me down to the stoke-hold.
“I couldn’t stand that. I’d had a touch of fever in Durban, and I was weak with hunger anyway, and the first thing I knew I was tumbling in a heap on the coal. Somebody threw a bucket of water over me, but it was no use. I couldn’t stagger, and they took me up and made a deck-hand of me.
“This suited me all right, and the fresh air soon fixed me up. I wouldn’t have minded the job at all, but for the mate. The crew were afraid of him as death. His name was Burke, Jim Burke; he was a big Irishman, with a fist like a ham, and he made that ship a hell. He nearly killed a man the first night I was on deck, and I’ve got some of his marks on me yet. The captain wasn’t so bad, but I didn’t see so much of him. I was in the mate’s watch,—worse luck!
“But all this time I didn’t forget that gold below, and I was trying to see through the mystery. But I couldn’t make any sense of it till I saw the passengers we had.
“There were four of them that I saw. Three of them I spotted at once as from Pretoria. I’d seen the office-holding Boer often enough to recognize him, and they always talked among themselves in the Taal. Two of them were native Boers, I was sure, but the third looked like some sort of German. Besides these fellows, there was a middle-aged Englishman that looked like a missionary, and I heard something of another man who never showed himself, but I didn’t pay any attention to any one but the Boers.
“Because when I saw them, I saw through the whole thing. The war was going well for the Boers just then, but there were plenty of them wise enough to see that they couldn’t fight England to a finish, and crooked enough to try to feather their nests while they had a chance. Pretoria was all disorganized with the war-fever; half the government was at the front, and I’d heard of the careless ways they handled the treasury at the best of times.”
“You were right,” said Elliott. “I happen to know something about it.” And he imparted to Bennett the story of the official plundering which the mine superintendent in the Rand had written to him.
“Well, I thought that must have been it,” went on Bennett. “I wondered if the officers of the steamer knew the gold was there, but I didn’t think so. I was sure they didn’t,—not if the Boer was as ‘slim’ as he ought to be. I wouldn’t have trusted a box of cigars to that crowd.
“But all this detective work didn’t put me any forwarder, and the mate kept me from meditating too much. The boat was the worst old scow I ever saw. Twelve knots was about her best speed, and then we always expected the propeller to drop off, and she rolled like an empty barrel when there was the slightest sea. I’m no sailor, and that was the first time I’d ever bunked with the crew, but I could see easy enough that she was rotten.
“For the first few days the weather was pretty fair, but on the fourth after I came on deck it turned rougher. There wasn’t very much wind, but a heavy swell, as if there was a big gale somewhere out in the Indian Ocean. It was the sixth day from port, and I reckoned that we must be getting pretty well through the Mozambique Channel.
“It came on cloudy that evening, and when I came on deck it was dark as pitch and raining hard. There was a light, cool south wind with a tremendous black swell. The big oily rollers hoisted her so that the screw was racing half the time, and every little while she’d take it green, with an awful crash. Everybody was in oilskins but me, and I hadn’t any.
“The mate was on the bridge, and it wasn’t long before we found out that he was drunk, and he must have had a bottle up there with him, for he kept getting drunker. Once in awhile he’d come down and raise Cain, and then go back and curse us from up there till everybody was in a blue fright. We didn’t know what he might do with the ship, and the watch below came on deck without being called.
“Just a little before six bells struck, I heard a yell, and I found that he’d pitched the helmsman clear off the bridge, and taken the wheel himself. That part of the channel is full of reefs and islands, and we heard surf in about half an hour,—straight ahead the breakers sounded, and the mate appeared to be running her dead on them.
“Three or four of the men made a rush for the bridge to take the wheel away from him, and some one went down to call the captain. But before the mutineers were half-way up the iron ladder, the mate had his pistol out, and shot the top man through the head, and he knocked down the rest as he fell. By this time we could see the surf, spouting tall and white like geysers, but it was too dark to see the land. The captain came on deck, half-dressed and looking wild, but he was hardly up when the mate gave a whoop, rang for full speed ahead, and ran her square on the reef.
“She struck with a bang that seemed to smash everything on board. I was pitched half the length of the deck, it seemed to me, and next minute a big roller picked her up and lifted her over the reef and set her down hard, with another terrific bump.
“When we’d picked ourselves up we couldn’t see anything at all, and the spray was flying over us in bucketfuls. The steam was blowing off, all the lights had gone out, and the old boat was lying almost on her port rails, shaking like a leaf at every big sea. Still there didn’t seem to be much danger of her breaking up right away, and we settled down after awhile to wait for daylight.
“When the light came back we saw that we were up against a long, barren island, about half a mile across I should think, with one rocky hill, and no trees, no natives, nor anything. We were stuck on a bunch of reefs nearly a mile from shore, and we were half-full of water. When we looked her over, we found that she was cracking in two, so we got ready to launch the boats. Two of the men were missing, and we never saw any more of the captain; we supposed that they had been pitched overboard when she struck. The mate had been knocked off the bridge and appeared to be hurt. He was lying groaning against the deckhouse, but nobody paid any attention to him.
“We got one of the starboard boats into the water with six men in it, and it was smashed and swamped against the side before it was fairly afloat. We threw lines and things, but only fished out one of the crew. I got into the second boat myself, and we managed to fend off from the ship, and got on pretty well till we came close to the shore. It was a bad landing-place when there was any sea running, but we tried it, and piled her all up in the surf. I got tossed on shore somehow,—I don’t know how,—but presently I found myself half in the water and half out, with a bleeding crack in my head, and most of the skin scraped off my arms and legs. I looked for the rest of the boat’s crew, but none of them came ashore—alive, that is.
“In about half an hour I saw them put another boat overboard, but this one shared the fate of the first, and I don’t think anybody was saved. There was still too much sea running to launch boats.
“I lay around on the shingle in a sort of silly state from the crack on my head, waiting for some one to come and find me, but nobody came. About noon, I guess, I saw another boat skimming round the corner of the island with a sail set, and four or five men in her. I tried to signal her, but she went out of sight, and that was the last I saw of any of the people of the Clara McClay.
“Everybody seemed to be off the ship, and it looked like I was the only one to get to the island. That night the wind and sea got up tremendously; the spray flew clean over the island, and I got up on the hill to keep from being washed off. In the morning I saw that the ship had cracked right open and broken in two, with her stern sticking on the rocks and the bow part slipping forward into the lagoon. All sorts of things were cast ashore that day,—but, say, there isn’t anything in the Robinson Crusoe business. There was about fifty tons of wreckage and cargo scattered over the beach, but I couldn’t do anything with wood and hardware, and I had all I could do to find grub enough for a square meal. Later I found more.”
“Did any of the gold cases come ashore?” asked Elliott.
“Oh, no. They were too heavy. But in a day or so, when the weather had gone down, I rafted myself out to the wreck on some spars. But the forward half of the ship was sunk in about eight fathoms; it just showed above the surface, and I couldn’t get at the hold. The stern part was out of water and I rummaged around for something to eat, but everything was spoiled by the salt water.
“Well, I was on that blessed island for ten days, living mostly on salt pork and London gin, for that was about all I could find that wasn’t spoiled by the sun or the water. It was furiously hot, and the only fresh water I had was a big pool of rainwater, that was drying up every day. Twice I saw steamer smokes to the northwest, and I knew that I was away out of the track of navigation, so at last I went to work and built a raft out of driftwood, and loaded all my gin and pork and fresh water on board. I rigged up a sail, and even if I wasn’t picked up I felt pretty sure that I could fetch the Madagascar coast, anyway.
“But I drifted around for six days. There was a strong current and a breeze, sometimes both going the same way and sometimes not, and I don’t know exactly where they carried me, but eventually an English mail-steamer sighted me and picked me up. She was going to Sydney, so I must have floated away up to the northeast of Madagascar. I told them that the Clara McClay had foundered at sea, gone down in deep water, so as to put her completely beyond investigation, and I thought I felt my fingers on those gold bricks.
“When we got to Sydney, I shipped on a Pacific Mail boat for the United States, and, as I’ve told you, I struck out at once for Nashville to pick up the rest of my party, for I knew that they were there during the latter part of the winter, and should be there yet.
“You see we always acted together, and, besides, this was too big a game for me to play alone. It would take a regular naval expedition and a lot of capital to fish up all that yellow stuff, but if I could locate the three men I was after I knew we could rustle the expenses somehow. We’ve been through some big deals together, mostly in Mexico and Honduras, where there’s always devilment and disturbances. Well—that’s all. I can’t go to Nashville now, but this thing can’t wait. Some one will be back after that gold if there was any one else saved from the Clara McClay.”
“The question is, who does this gold belong to?” said Elliott.
“It doesn’t belong to anybody. It was stolen, in the first place, from the Transvaal Republic. Well, there isn’t any Transvaal Republic any more. Besides, it’s treasure-trove—sunk on the high seas. Don’t worry about that, but listen to me. I don’t know where that island is, but I think I know more than any one else alive, and you can surely locate it from what I’ve told you. You’ll go to Nashville, and tell the boys just the story I’ve told you. They’ll take you in on it, of course, and they’ll do the square thing by me, same as if I was with them.”
Bennett stopped, looking both exhausted and excited, and he fixed his unnaturally bright eyes upon Elliott with a penetrating gaze.
“I’ll go,” said Elliott, “certainly. Who are your men, and where’ll I find them?”
“Likely at the best hotel in Nashville. Inquire at the Arcadia saloon, or the Crackerjack. If they’re not in Nashville you can find out where they’re gone, and follow them up. Their names—better note them down: John Henninger (he’s an Englishman), C. W. Hawke, Will Sullivan. Hand me that writing-tablet.
“What’s your first name?” continued Bennett, and he scrawled painfully with his left hand:
“Introducing Mr. Wingate Elliott. He’s all right.
L. R. Bennett.”
“There’s a package of evidence under my pillow,” continued the wounded adventurer. “Pull it out.”
Elliott extracted a crumpled envelope, bulging with a small, hard lump. This proved to be something wrapped in many folds of soft tissue-paper, and when unrolled Elliott saw a bright, pyramid-shaped bit of yellow metal, about the size of a beechnut.
Elliott walked away from the hospital feeling a little giddy and light-headed at the sudden prospect of fortune. The enterprise was a legitimate one. The gold had belonged to the Transvaal Government, and that government was no longer in existence. Who was its owner? Was it Great Britain? But Elliott was a Democrat and a strong supporter of the independence of the South African Republics, and he could not acknowledge any claim of the Crown. At any rate, the finders of the treasure-ship would be entitled to a heavy salvage.
But at the memory of Margaret he stopped short on the street in perplexity. What would she say? This was the very sort of adventure that he had promised to avoid. If she were there; if she knew all, and if she told him to drop it, he felt a conviction that he would drop it without hesitation. But yet—he walked on again—this was a legitimate salving enterprise, and he had never met one which offered so fair rewards.
The gold was really no man’s. No one knew where it was; and with a chilling shock he recollected that he did not himself know where it was. But no matter; it could surely be located; and in default of any better method, they could visit every island in the Mozambique Channel till they found the bones of the unlucky Clara McClay.
So he wrote to Margaret that night, saying that he was going to Nashville, on the prospect of a legitimate—he underlined legitimate; the word pleased him—enterprise which promised money.
Naturally he said nothing about his finances; he promised to write again as soon as anything definite had happened, and hinted that he might meet her at the depot when she arrived in Baltimore. When the letter was posted he felt more at ease with himself. Almost penniless as he was, his imagination already rioted among millions, and with the yellow gleam flickering before his eyes he prepared to beat his way to Nashville.
Elliott reached Nashville in two days, being lucky enough to catch a fast freight-train which carried him half the distance in a single night. For the last twenty miles he travelled on a passenger-train, paying his fare, to preclude the danger of arrest as he came into the great railway yards, and the consciousness of safety in the face of the police seemed to him almost an odd and unfamiliar sensation.
It was early in the forenoon when he walked up the incline of the ill-paved street that reminded him of St. Joseph. He inquired for the Arcadia saloon; he found it on Cherry Street, and within the swing-doors it was cool and dusky, sparkling with glass and marble, and vibrating with electric fans. Two or three prosperous-looking Southerners were sipping through straws from glasses crowned with green leaves and crushed fruit, but Elliott contented himself with a glass of beer, and asked the bartender if he knew Mr. Henninger, or where he was to be found.
“Sure,” said the mixer of drinks. “He’s been stoppin’ at the Hotel Orleans, and I reckon you’ll find him there now. If he ain’t there no more, ask for Mr. Hawke, and he’ll likely know something about him.”
Hawke was one of the names Bennett had mentioned, and this small circumstance, or perhaps it was the beer, raised Elliott’s hopes. He finished his glass, and went straight to the Hotel Orleans, which was three blocks away.
The great lobby was full of leather-covered sofas and easy-chairs, and floored with handsome mosaic, and perhaps a score of men were smoking or reading newspapers. It was clearly a good hotel, and Bennett had said that his friends would be at the best hotel in town. Elliott looked over the register, and, not immediately finding the names he sought, he spoke to the clerk, who did not take the trouble to conceal his contempt of Elliott’s disreputable appearance.
“Yes,” he said, curtly. “That’s Mr. Henninger sitting by the window, in the gray suit.”
Elliott walked over to the man indicated. He was young, probably not over thirty-five, dark-faced, strong-featured, with a suspicion of military severity and exactitude. His costume of hard gray tweed had evidently come from the hands of a first-rate tailor, and he was smoking a cigar which he never removed from his teeth, and looking through the great window with an air of reserved boredom. Elliott, as he approached, felt himself suddenly covered with a glance that was like the muzzle of a revolver.
“Mr. Henninger?” he inquired, pausing.
The man in gray looked him over for another instant, and then replied, frigidly:
“Yes.”
Elliott, who did not particularly care for this reception, handed him Bennett’s note without another word. Henninger took it, and as he opened it leisurely Elliott was struck by the shape of the hand that held it. It was the hand of a pianist, a hand that had never worked, white, long-fingered, thin, but looking all nerves and muscles, as if strung with steel wires.
Henninger read the note, and examined it very closely. Then he glanced up at Elliott again with a slight smile, and held out his hand.
“I’m glad to meet you, Mr. Elliott,” he said. “Sit down. What’s the matter with Bennett, and where is he?”
“He’s in the hospital in St. Louis. He got rather badly hurt—by a train.” There were half a dozen men within earshot, and Elliott thought it best to avoid details. “He was coming here to see you when it happened. It seems there’s something doing.”
He looked at Henninger, who returned the glance impenetrably.
“I’ve a message from him, but it’ll take some time to tell it. He also wished Mr. Hawke and Mr. Sullivan to hear it.”
Henninger turned to a man sitting close to him, who had been listening with all his ears, much to Elliott’s annoyance.
“This is Mr. Hawke.”
Hawke was a younger man than the Englishman, shorter, lighter, with a pleasant face and a light boyish moustache, like Elliott’s own. But there were the same hard lines about the mouth and nostrils, and the same level, aggressive gaze that Henninger possessed, so that at moments the unlike faces took on a curious similarity.
“Sullivan isn’t in the city,” said Henninger, “but we know where he is. It’s all the same thing. But if we’re going to talk we’d better go up to my room.”
It was a good room, at the front on the second floor, and as Elliott surveyed its luxurious appointments he felt sure that the party must be in funds, after all. A bell-boy presently came in with a tray, a bottle, a siphon of seltzer, and a box of cigars.
In the midst of this unexpected luxury, and feeling conscious of his own shabbiness, Elliott told the story of the wreck of the Clara McClay, making reference to his notes, and at the end producing the little prism of gold that Bennett had cut from the brick. At the first mention of the treasure Elliott caught an involuntary glance flashed between Henninger and Hawke that was like the discharge of an electric spark, but neither made any comment till the tale was finished.
Then Henninger poured out a spoonful of whiskey, brimmed up the tumbler from the fizzing siphon, and sipped it slowly, meditatively.
“Confound it, what do you think?” burst out Hawke, who was wriggling with excitement.
“I think we’d better telegraph to Sullivan,” replied Henninger, putting down the glass. “And I’ll wire Bennett, too—without any reflection upon your veracity, Elliott. Now, look here,” he went on, with increasing animation, “as it looks now, there may be a good thing in this, but first of all we don’t know anything. We don’t know where that wreck is. Seems to me that Bennett might have taken some kind of bearings. Now some one who knows more than we do may get there first.”
“It looks to me as if that mate was up to something,” said Hawke.
“Very much so. The question is, whether he got away. Bennett said he was hurt. If he did escape, you can bet he’ll come back, and there’s been a lot of time lost already.”
“Well, now,” Elliott interrupted, “if you’ll excuse me, I’ll leave you. I’m afraid I’m embarrassing your councils, and I’ve got a long road to Baltimore.”
“But, hold on!” ejaculated Hawke. “You’re in this. Ain’t he, Henninger?”
Henninger looked at Elliott again, with the same acutely penetrative scrutiny as at first, a manner not unfriendly, but coldly analytical.
“Yes, he’s in it, if he cares to come in,” he answered, finally. “But you must understand, Elliott, what sort of a game this is. Everything may be all right, or not. It looks to me now as if those meat-cases didn’t belong much to anybody, but that much gold never goes unclaimed, and somebody is liable to turn up and want them. We may have to fight for it; they may bring in international law, though we’ve a right to salvage, anyway. There’s a risk of imprisonment; there’s risk of sudden death. We’re not men that deal in the crooked; straight work, with big profits and big chances, is our line, but we’re not men to stick at little things either, when there’s a heavy stake up.”
“It seems to me that you are trying to frighten me,” said Elliott.
“I am trying to frighten you. If I can do it, we don’t want you in this at all, or you’ll queer the whole thing. But if you’re game, if you understand what it is, and still want to come in—why, come along, and we’ll be glad to have you.”
“Thanks,” replied Elliott. “I was just waiting to be formally invited. I’ve figured up all the risks already, and in my present financial state I’d take bigger risks for less money. And that reminds me that I must tell you that I can’t put any capital in this scheme. I’m down to my last dollar, and I’ve broken that.”
Hawke began to laugh. “We’re all in the same boat, then. There’s my pile,” pulling out two or three bills, and a little silver. “I’ll bet it all that Henninger can’t match it.”
“But,” Elliott exclaimed, “this room!—and those cigars were perfectos! Do you find Southern hospitality go that length?”
“Not at all; it’s pure business. Universal credit is what has made the prosperity of this great country. We came; we looked respectable, and we stayed; and as long as we keep up appearances, and spend a little over the bar, they’re shy about presenting any bills too forcibly. It cuts both ways, though, for we’d have been glad to get away from here a long time ago, if we could. But we can’t take away our baggage, and without our trunks we couldn’t keep up appearances anywhere; without our appearances, we might as well be hoboes, or honest workmen. A man is no better than his coat. I’m not hitting at you,” he added, quickly.
“Oh, I don’t mind,” Elliott assured him. “I’ve got a trunk full of respectable raiment in Baltimore. I’ll send for it.” He laughed too, as the piquancy of the situation struck him. “I don’t know how I’ll get them out of the express office, though. What dazes me is how you fellows expect to chase this million with the capital we have. We need, goodness knows how many hundreds, or thousands. How will you raise it—borrow it? Work for it?”
“Hardly. Play for it,” replied Hawke, without hesitation.
It was consistent. As Elliott looked at him, he was struck by the fact that these men never did anything but gamble, staking their fortunes or their lives with equal alacrity, generally with the odds against them, and generally with the dice loaded against them also. He had done the same thing himself, and he had promised Margaret to do it no more. But—
“We’d been thinking of something of the sort before you came,” Hawke was saying, “so as to finish things one way or the other, and this decides it. We’ll need a lot of money—oh, a devil of a lot. We’ll have to fit out a regular expedition, hire a small ship of some sort, get diving apparatus, and all sorts of things. Five thousand dollars is the very minimum. Let’s see how much we can raise.”
He emptied his pockets on the table; there was a little more than fifteen dollars. Henninger, after much rummaging, produced eleven.
“I’ve got ninety-five cents,” said Elliott. “Let it go into the pot, too.”
“Good,” said Hawke. “Total, twenty-seven dollars. Now, that’s a sum that’s of no use to any man, much less to three men. Just on general principles we might as well get rid of it, and get the agony over. But see what we can do with it; we’ll just go over to Nolan’s place, at the Crackerjack, and put up our little twenty-seven on the wheel, till we make or break. Why, I knew a man in Louisville who started with a dollar and broke the game. I didn’t see it myself.”
“None of us ever saw those things done,” remarked Henninger, who was listening with a dry smile. “But you’re right, I believe. It’s the only chance I see, for Sullivan can’t possibly do anything for us in time. Who’s to do the playing? Who’s got the luck?”
“I haven’t,” said Elliott, with conviction. “I tried it in St. Joe.”
Henninger opened a small grip and took out an elaborate morocco case. There were rows of ivory poker chips in it, and a dainty, gilt-edged pack of playing-cards.
“A few poker hands will show who’s in the vein,” he remarked, and began to deal the cards.
From the first Hawke was by far the most fortunate, and when, upon the last deal, he held a spade flush without drawing it was apparent to all three that he was unconsciously in the enjoyment of a special vein of luck. With a pleasing degree of confidence in this act of divination, they handed over to him the entire capital of the syndicate. Hawke looked a little overwhelmed at the responsibility.
“We’ll go up with you, but we’ll leave you absolutely to yourself,” said Henninger. “Play just as the fancy takes you, but play high and fast. Hit the luck before it turns; that’s the only chance of making anything.”
The Crackerjack’s first floor was occupied by a marble and silver saloon, and above this was the gambling establishment,—an immense, cool, heavily curtained room, with shaded electric lamps above the tables that glittered with their devices in red and black and green and nickel. Overhead a dozen electric fans vibrated noiselessly.
Eight or ten players were standing in a semicircle at the big “crap” table. Each man, as he rolled the dice, snapped his fingers violently in the air and emitted an explosive “Hah!” which is supposed to aid in turning the winning number. Behind the table stood the suave employees of the game. They did not snap their fingers; they made no ejaculations—but they won.
The roulette-table was deserted; it is not a favourite game in the South, and the croupier was lazily spinning the ball to keep up an appearance of activity. Hawke bought twenty-seven dollars’ worth of white checks and settled himself on a stool, while Henninger and Elliott walked over to the crap-table and stood looking on, to leave him entirely open to the promptings of his “vein.”
They heard the sharp, diminuendo whirr of the ball begin, but they did not look around. “Whirr-rr! click!”
“That’s the four of hearts and the second twelve,” said the croupier.
Elliott was astonished to hear a card thus called instead of a number, but Henninger explained in an undertone that, to evade the laws of Tennessee, all the roulette-wheels in the State are marked with the spots of the four suits of cards, up to the nines, instead of the usual thirty-six numbers. This naïve accommodation is supposed to satisfy at once the demands of justice and of sport, though it does not always save a gaming-house from being raided by the police.
They did not know whether Hawke had lost or won, and they did not look, but they heard the rattle of checks, and the whirr recommence. For a time that seemed endless—perhaps it was half an hour—this went on. Henninger and Elliott tried to interest themselves in the fortunes of the crap game. They glanced over the newspapers. They walked restlessly about, smoked, peeped through the curtains at the street, tried to talk, and fell silent at every sound from the table where destiny was being spun out for them at the gay roulette.
Evidently Hawke was not yet wiped out. Was he winning? They did not know; they dared not look, listening to the whiz and click of the wheel, and dreading to see the player return suddenly empty-handed.
Finally the strain became unendurable, and Henninger turned and walked straight to the roulette-table. Elliott followed him, and bit off a half-uttered ejaculation as he caught sight of the board.
Hawke was sitting behind a rampart of stacked checks. He had trebled and quadrupled his capital already; his stakes were scattered all over the board, and just as they came up he won again with a heavy play on the second dozen numbers. There was a high flush on his cheeks; he had laid down his cigar and forgotten it, but his face was full of the bright certainty of the gambler who is playing in luck and knows it; and he placed his stakes about the layout as unhesitatingly as a system-player.
Henninger and Elliott carefully avoided meeting his eye, and watched the spinning wheel. Click.
“The five of spades,” announced the croupier.
The number had been “hit all round.” There were checks on it full, and more on its corners, and Hawke built another tier of his rampart with the proceeds of the coup.
The atmosphere of the gaming-room is telepathic. The “crap-shooters” becoming aware that a “killing” was in progress, abandoned their game and came to look on in silence, some of them following Hawke’s ventures with small stakes.
And still the player won. He cleared the rack of white checks and bought blue ones. With the change he was met by a reverse, and lost heavily for some minutes, but the luck returned, and he seemed in a fair way to empty the rack again.
Again and again the numbers were squarely hit. When he lost he boldly doubled his stake; he plunged recklessly on the most improbable combinations, and the ivory ball, as if he had magnetized it, spun unerringly to the chosen number. Round the table no one spoke but the croupier; no one looked at anything but the board and the gaudy wheel. Even those spectators who had no stake in the game were as breathless as the rest. It was the sort of luck by which games are broken, and presently the proprietor, Nolan himself, came up and watched the struggle, silent and grave, with a slightly worried expression.
There was another ten minutes of ill-fortune which sadly reduced Hawke’s store. Henninger, anxiously following the play, wondered if the run of luck were not exhausted—whether it would not be better to leave off. But as yet scarcely four hundred dollars had been won. Win or lose, the game must go on.
Whiz—whirr-r-r—click! “It’s the ace of diamonds,” said the croupier, leaning over the wheel. There was a dollar check upon the winning square, and the croupier paid out the due thirty-five upon it. These Hawke nonchalantly allowed to remain upon the number that had just come up.
Round spun the ball for endless seconds. Click!
“The ace of diamonds repeats,” declared the croupier. The big stake had won. The croupier was working for a salary, and the result made no difference to him, but even he was affected by the pervading excitement, and he showed it as he set himself to count out the stacks of red checks necessary to pay the heavy winning—a little less than thirteen hundred dollars.
With hands that trembled a little Hawke raked the checks together into a solid mass upon the same number once more, and the ball recommenced its swift circling. It was the highest play that the Crackerjack had ever seen. Nolan put out his hand as if to refuse the stake, and then withdrew it again, but his eyes puckered under his hat-brim. The spectators gathered closer round; a third appearance of the ace of diamonds would win almost fifty thousand dollars, and would undoubtedly break the bank, if not bankrupt the proprietor.
“Great heavens! he’s pyramiding on the ace of diamonds again!” gasped Elliott, in a fright, as soon as he understood; and Henninger turned a savage face upon him for silence. But Hawke had caught the whisper. He glanced up irresolutely, and, before the ball had slackened speed, he swept three-fourths of the checks across the table and upon the simple red. The rest, about three hundred dollars’ worth, remained upon the lucky ace of diamonds.
But he had changed his play, and every gambler at the table mentally predicted disaster from the ill-omened act. A man who had been about to follow his stake with a five-dollar bill, thrust it back into his pocket.
Round spun the ball, circling the slow-moving wheel. Every eye was fixed upon the little ivory sphere that rolled and rolled as if it would never stop—then gradually lost momentum, gravitated toward the bottom, and tripped on a barrier. The iron-nerved Henninger bit his cigar in two, and it dropped unnoticed from his lips. The ball jumped, rolled across an arc of the wheel, and dropped into a compartment with a click.
“By God, he hits it!” ejaculated a looker-on, irrepressibly.
“You win, sir. It’s the ace of diamonds for the third time!” said the croupier, with a nervous smile, glancing at Nolan. “I’m afraid you’ll have to cash in some of those checks. I haven’t enough left to pay the bet.”
Hawke nodded, but Henninger leaned forward.
“No more,” he said, in an undertone to Hawke. “We’re through. We’ve got what we needed, and more. We’re a syndicate, Charley,” he explained to the croupier, “and Mr. Hawke was playing for us all.”
“Shut up!” said Hawke, in a feverish whisper. “This is the chance of our lives. It’s the chance of our lives, I tell you. I’m going to wreck this game before I get up.”
“No, you’re not. You’re going to stop right now,” responded Henninger. “Pull yourself together, man; you’re drunk. Tell him you want to cash in.”
The two men glared at each other for a moment, the one flushed, the other deadly pale, and Hawke slowly came to himself.
“I guess you’re right, old man,” with a nervous giggle. “How much have I won? Charley, I reckon I’ll cash in.”
On this last and greatest coup a thousand dollars had been won on the colour, and a trifle over ten thousand on the number, and besides this, Hawke had several hundred dollars’ worth of checks from his previous winnings. Nolan himself counted the checks, stacking them back in place. The total amount was eleven thousand, seven hundred and thirty-eight dollars.
Nolan took the loss like a veteran book-maker. “I’ll have to send out to the bank, gentlemen,” he said. “While you’re waiting, give the boy your orders.”
“No, this is on us,” said Henninger. “Everybody take something on our luck. Nothing but Pommery’ll moisten it.”
Nolan submitted gracefully. “I won’t deny that you do owe me a drink. I’ve been in this business, here and on the turf, about all my life, but I never did see anything like that run. I was glad when Mr. Hawke cashed in—and that’s no lie.”
Hawke was growing as pale as he had been red, and the champagne glass trembled in his fingers. The two who had not played, suffering no reaction, were scarcely able to subdue their spirits to a sportsmanlike decorum. The money came, and Nolan counted it out in a thick green package—the weapon that was to win the drowned million as the twenty-seven dollars had won this. And yet, as Elliott looked at the hundred-dollar bills he felt a sudden shock of belated terror. It was only then that he realized what loss would have meant,—and it had been such a near thing!
Elliott awoke next morning with an uneasy head and a feverish taste in his mouth, and looked vaguely around the unfamiliar hotel chamber without being able to recall how he had come there. It was only yesterday that he had been riding surreptitiously in box cars. But as his brain cleared he remembered the splendid and joyous dinner that had closed the day before, a misty glitter of glass and silver and delicious wines and cigars. That recalled his new friends and his message to them, and then the whole transformation of his fortunes flashed back upon him—the miraculous winning at roulette, the treasure trail; and, wide awake instantly, he jumped out of bed in a flush of excitement.
He found a new suit of clothes on a chair, which he now recollected having bought ready-made on the previous afternoon. They were very good clothes and fitted well, and in the trousers pocket he found a thick wad of bills. Each of the partners had taken a hundred dollars, and the rest of the money was in a sealed package in the hotel safe.
In the dining-room he found Henninger and Hawke finishing breakfast, though it was nearly eleven o’clock. Hawke looked wearied and nervous, with the rags of yesterday’s excitement still clinging about him, but Henninger was as fresh, as neat, and as unmoved as ever. A few other late breakfasters at the other end of the room looked at the trio with curiosity, for the report of their coup, greatly magnified in the telling, had gone abroad; and the negro waiter served them with exaggerated respect.
In the lobby Elliott bought himself the best cigar he had ever smoked, luxuriating in the novel sense of riches, which was like a sudden relief from pain. He had never felt so wealthy in his life. The money had come with such incredible ease; the sum looked almost inexhaustible; and beyond it was the great treasure to be fished up from the African seas.
There were too many people in the lobby for private conversation, and they returned to Henninger’s room.
“First of all, I vote we send Bennett a hundred dollars. I kept it out for him when I sealed the money last night,” said Henninger. “I’ll wire him what we’ve done, and then I’ll wire Sullivan. I don’t know that we told you, Elliott, where Sullivan is. He’s in Washington, attending to a case for us. We were all in South America last winter, and we’ve got a claim against the Venezuelan government for damages and confiscation of property, and so forth, for two millions.”
“Two what?” exclaimed Elliott.
“Two millions. We thought we might get a few thousands out of it. Anyway, Sullivan has been trying to get our case taken up at Washington, but we’ll drop all that and tell him to meet us in New York.”
“I’d like very much to look up that Madagascar channel on the largest map there is,” Hawke broke in, “and see what we can make of it.”
He voiced a common desire. Every one wanted to look at it, and they went down to the Public Library and obtained a gigantic atlas. They propped it up on a table and put their heads together over the map of East Africa. The steamer route from Delagoa Bay to Zanzibar and Suez was marked in red, and at the northern end of the Mozambique Channel it passed through a tangle of little islands and reefs.
“Comoro, Mohilla, Mayotta, St. Lazarus Bank,” read Hawke, under his breath. “It must be one of these.”
They all gazed at the archipelago, two thumbs’ width on the paper that represented a hundred sea leagues. Somewhere among these islands lay the treasure that had cost the lives of a ship’s company already, and as he stared at the brown and yellow spots, Elliott saw in excited imagination the barren islands on the sunny tropical ocean, and the spray spouting high over the reefs where the sea-birds wheeled about the iron skeleton of the Clara McClay. There was the end of the rainbow; there was the golden magnet that had already stirred the passions of men on the other side of the world; and as he looked at the lettered surface of the map, he felt a sudden cold prescience of tragedy.
“Glorioso, Farquahar!” murmured Hawke. “They surely couldn’t have run so far out of their course as that. St. Lazarus is my choice, and, if I’m right, we’ll make it St. Dives.”
“We don’t know enough yet to make this any use,” said Henninger, suddenly. “Let’s get out.”
The sight of the map and its hundreds of miles of islands and seas did in fact bring the problem into concrete reality, and forcibly emphasized the difficulties. They all felt somewhat downcast and vaguely disappointed, but, as they were going down the steps, Elliott had an inspiration.
“It occurs to me,” he said, “that if anybody escaped in the boats, they must have been picked up somewhere at sea. In that case, the fact is likely to be reported in some newspaper, isn’t it?”
“What have we been thinking of?” exclaimed Henninger. “You’re right, of course. The New York Herald should have it, as she was an American ship. We’ll go back and look through the files of the Herald, if they have them, for the last few months.”
The papers were bound up by months, and each man took a volume and sat down to run through the shipping news. Elliott finished his without finding anything, and obtained another file. He was half through this when Hawke tiptoed over to him.
“Here’s where Bennett appears,” he whispered.
It was a four-line telegram from Sydney, stating that a seaman named Bennett had been picked up from a raft in the Indian Ocean, reporting that the American steamer Clara McClay had foundered with all hands in the Mozambique Channel.
There was nothing new in this, but it seemed somehow encouraging, and while Elliott was reading it, Henninger came over to them. His eyes were sparkling, and he looked as if holding some strong emotion in check. He laid down his file before them, and put his finger on a paragraph, dated more than a fortnight earlier than the despatch from Sydney.
“Bombay, March 19.“The Italian steamer Andrea Sforzia, arriving yesterday from Cape Town and Durban, reports having picked up on the 10th about one hundred miles N. E. of Cape Amber, a boat containing First Mate Burke, of the steamer Clara McClay, of Philadelphia. He stated that his ship foundered in deep water in the Mozambique Channel by reason of heavy weather and shifting of cargo, and believes himself to be the only survivor. He was almost unconscious, and nearly dead of thirst when rescued.
“The Clara McClay was an iron steamer of 2,500 tons, built at Greenock in 1869, and has been for some years engaged in the East and West African coast trade. She was owned by S. Jacobs and Son, of Philadelphia, and commanded by Captain Elihu Cox.”
The two men read this item, and Elliott, glancing up, saw his mystification reflected on Hawke’s face. What new development did it indicate that Bennett and the mate should have told the same falsehood about the sinking of the Clara McClay, and certainly without collusion? Henninger meanwhile was carefully copying the paragraph into a note-book, and when he had finished, he gathered up the papers, returned them to the librarian’s desk, and led the way out of the building.
“We’ve got a line on it at last,” he said, when they were in the open air, and there was a keen eagerness in his usually impassive voice.
“It’s clear that the mate was saved, but it don’t help us to find the island, so far as I can see,” Hawke objected.
“Oh, the island—confound it!” as they came into the crowds of Church Street. “Let’s go somewhere where we can talk.” And he shut his mouth and did not open it again till they were placed comfortably in a small German café, which happened to be almost empty.
“You don’t seem to understand,” he then resumed. “The mate lied,—said the ship sunk in deep water, didn’t he? He told the same story as Bennett. Why? For the same reason. He must have known the bullion was there, after all. He took chances on being the only survivor of the wreck, and he wanted to choke off any inquiry. There’s never any search for a wreck that goes down in a hundred fathoms.”
“But there were other survivors,” said Elliott. “There were others in that boat with him when Bennett saw them sailing away. That must have been the mate’s boat, and what became of the others?”
“Ah, yes,—what?” replied Henninger, grimly. “He was alone when he was picked up.”
There was a moment’s silence at this sudden apparition of the crimson thread in the tangle.
“This is the way I see the story,” said Henninger. “That mate—what’s his name—Burke?—knew the gold was on board. How he found out, I don’t know. Whether he accidentally ran the steamer out of her course that night, or whether he piled her up intentionally, I don’t know, either. He may have done it by reason of his jag, or he may have tanked up to give himself courage to carry it through. I suspect it was the latter. Anyhow, when she was smashed, he saw his chance, for he reckoned that his was the only boat to get away safe. He had several men with him, but they seem to pass out of the story. He was picked up, carried to Bombay; he lied about the wreck.
“What does he do next? Why, of course he gets ready to go back to Zanzibar or some such port and hire a craft to go to look for his wreck. If he thinks he’s safe, he may lie low for awhile; or, if he hasn’t the capital for the thing, he will have to hunt up some ruffians to finance him. But if he thinks that he’s in any danger of being forestalled, he’ll make haste. If by bad luck he reads of Bennett’s being picked up, it’ll galvanize him; and as like as not he’s sailing up the channel this minute, while we’re sitting here drinking lager, doing nothing—because we don’t know anything!”
“Yes, but how are we going to find out anything,—where the wreck is, for example?” demanded Elliott.
“Why, from this same mate, Burke, if we can catch him. He’s the source of knowledge. He knows very well where it is; if he didn’t, he wouldn’t have taken the trouble to lie about it. First of all, we’ve got to catch that mate, and when we’ve got him, we’ll induce him to tell us what he knows. Do you remember how Casal used to interrogate prisoners in Venezuela, Hawke? We’ve got to get on his trail right away, and meanwhile see that he doesn’t collar the cash before we know it.”
“It’ll be a long, wide trail,” Hawke remarked.
“No. There’s only one hemisphere for Burke, and only one spot in it, and that’s somewhere between Madagascar and the African coast. He won’t go far from that if he can help it, and wherever he goes he’s bound to come back. And he’ll have to come in his own ship, for there aren’t any steamers plying to his island. He’ll have to hire or buy a small craft on the East African coast, and there are only three ports that will serve.”
Henninger sipped his beer, and meditated in silence for a little.
“My idea would be something like this. Three of us will go to South Africa at once; we pick up Sullivan in New York, of course. One of us will post himself in each of those three ports,—Lorenzo Marques, Mozambique, and Zanzibar, watching every boat that comes in, every stranger that lands, and everything that goes on along the waterfront. If Burke turns up, our man will have to use his own judgment as to how to get hold of him,—bribe him or kidnap him, or anything, but keep him there at any cost till the rest of us can come. Meanwhile the fourth one of us will go to Bombay, and try to find out where Burke went and what he did. He might possibly be there yet; anyway, he must have left some trace at the consulate or the shipping-offices.”
“At any rate,” said Elliott, “it appears fairly certain that no one knows anything about this ton of yellow metal but ourselves and the mate, Burke. Then there’s no danger of outside interference.”
“It’s a fair race to Madagascar!” Hawke exclaimed.
“It’s a race,” said Henninger, shrugging his shoulders, “but I don’t know about its fairness. We’re heavily handicapped at the start. Why we’re wasting time here, I don’t know.” He stood up suddenly, frowning, impatient.
“Sit down and finish your cigar,” Hawke advised him. “There’s no train for New York till nine o’clock to-night.”
“Yes, and there’s no fast steamer for South African ports at all. We’ll do best to sail for England, I fancy. Then the man who is going to India can take the P. and O., and the rest of us will go by the Union Castle Line to the Cape.”
“But which of us is going to India?” Elliott inquired.
“I don’t know.” Henninger glanced calculatingly at his companions. “I’d like to go to Zanzibar myself, if you don’t mind, because I suspect that it’s the dangerous point; and Sullivan should take Lorenzo Marques, because he was there once, and he knows something of the place. The shadowing lies between you two, as far as I can see.”
“I’ll match you for it,” proposed Hawke.
Elliott pulled out a quarter and spun it on the table, turning up tail. Hawke followed, and lost.
“I’m to be the tracker, then,” said Elliott. “I’m afraid I’ll make a poor sleuth. I wish Bennett had given us a description of the mate, for he has probably changed his name.”
“So do I. I’d like to have time to run up to St. Louis and talk it over with Bennett. I’d like a lot of things that we haven’t time for. Bennett can’t write with a broken arm, so there’s no use in writing to him for more details. But, as a matter of fact, I don’t really expect that you’ll come up with this man Burke at all. What I do hope is that you’ll find out where he went when he left Bombay, and if by chance he hired any kind of vessel anywhere, and in general what he was doing. We’ve got to get our information from him, there’s no doubt of that.”
“And what about Bennett?” Elliott inquired, after a pause. “How is he to come into the game?”
“The chances are that the game will be played before his arm’s mended,” said Henninger. “We’ll send him a hundred, as I suggested,—or let’s make it three hundred,—and of course he’ll share and share alike with the rest of us. I think I’d better write him to go to San Francisco as soon as he’s able to travel, if he hasn’t heard from us in the meantime, and hold himself in readiness there to join us. Frisco’ll be the most convenient port, and he can cable us his address as soon as he gets there.”
“And I reckon we’d better telegraph to New York for staterooms,” Hawke suggested. “The east-bound steamers are always crowded at this time of year.”
They sent the despatch at once to Cook’s agency, asking simply to get to Liverpool or Southampton at the earliest date possible, expense being no consideration. At the same time Henninger both telegraphed and wrote to Bennett; and Elliott wired to the express company in Baltimore to have his trunk placed in storage for him till his return.
He had gone too far now upon the treasure trail to turn back, and indeed he would not have turned back if he could. It was really the romance of the adventure that fascinated him, though he did not think so. He told himself that it was a legitimate enterprise—he clung to the phrase—with a reasonable expectation of large profits. But in no manner could he see his way to write a complete explanation of his plans to Margaret; if he could have talked to her, he thought, it would be easy. He composed a letter to her that afternoon, however, in which he remarked negligently that he was going to India on a commission for other parties, with all expenses paid, and would probably not be back to America before autumn. At the end of the letter, forgetting his precaution, he hinted of a vast fortune which was scarcely out of reach,—an imprudence which he afterward regretted.
The party left Nashville that night, and, as the train rolled out of range of the last electric lights, Hawke drew a long breath.
“I did begin to think we were never going to get away from that town,” he sighed. “It looked like we were in pawn to the Hotel Orleans for the rest of our lives.”
Henninger smiled queerly. “Since we are fairly away, I don’t mind telling you,” he said, “that the manager and I discussed the matter last week. I explained that we were waiting for a large remittance that was overdue, but it would certainly be here in a day or two; we expected it by every mail. He gave it four days to arrive,—then we’d leave or be thrown out. Elliott turned up on the last day.”