“Crocker, old man, Crocker, what the devil does that mean?”
I turned with a start to perceive a bare head thrust above the cabin
roof, the scant hair flying, and two large, brown eyes staring into mine
full of alarm and reproach. A plump finger was pointing to where the
sandy reef lay far astern of us.
The Mackinaws were flecked far and wide over the lake, and a dirty
smudge on the blue showed where the Far Harbor and Beaverton boat had
gone over the horizon. But there, over the point and dangerously close
to the land, hung another smudge, gradually pushing its way like a
writhing, black serpent, lakewards. Thus I was rudely jerked back to
face the problem with which we had left the island that morning.
I snatched the neglected glasses from the deck and hurried aft to join
my client on the overhang, but a pipe was all they revealed above the
bleak hillocks of sand. My client turned to me with a face that was
white under the tan.
“Crocker,” he cried, in a tragic voice, “it's a blessed police boat, or
I never picked a winner.”
“Nonsense,” I said; “other boats smoke beside police boats. The lake is
full of tugs.”
I was a little nettled at having been scared for a molehill.
“But I know it, sure as hell,” he insisted.
“You know nothing about it, and won't for an hour. What's a pipe and a
trail of smoke?”
He laid a hand on my shoulder, and I felt it tremble.
“Why do you suppose I came out?” he demanded solemnly.
“You were probably losing,” I said.
“I was winning.”
“Then you got tired of winning.”
But he held up a thumb within a few inches of my face, and with it a
ring I had often noticed, a huge opal which he customarily wore on the
inside of his hand.
“She's dead,” said Mr. Cooke, sadly.
“Dead?” I repeated, perplexed.
“Yes, she's dead as the day I lost the two thousand at Sheepshead. She's
never gone back on me yet. And unless I can make some little arrangement
with those fellows,” he added, tossing his head at the smoke, “you and I
will put up to-night in some barn of a jail. I've never been in jail but
once,” said Mr. Cooke, “and it isn't so damned pleasant, I assure
you.” I saw that he believed every word of it; in fact, that it was
his religion. I might as well have tried to argue the Sultan out of
Mohammedanism.
The pipe belonged to a tug, that was certain. Farrar said so after a
look over his shoulder, disdaining glasses, and he knew the lake better
than many who made their living by it. It was then that I made note of a
curious anomaly in the betting character; for thus far Mr. Cooke, like a
great many of his friends, was a skeptic. He never ceased to hope until
the stake had found its way into the other man's pocket. And it was for
hope that he now applied to Farrar. But even Farrar did not attempt to
account for the tug's appearance that near the land.
“She's in some detestable hurry to get up this way, that's flat,” he
said; “where she is, the channel out of the harbor is not forty feet
wide.”
By this time the rest of the party were gathered behind us on the high
side of the boat, in different stages of excitement, scrutinizing the
smoke. Mr. Cooke had the glasses glued to his eyes again, his feet
braced apart, and every line of his body bespeaking the tension of
his mind. I imagined him standing thus, the stump of his cigar tightly
clutched between his teeth, following the fortunes of some favorite on
the far side of the Belmont track.
We waited without comment while the smoke crept by degrees towards the
little white spindle on the tip of the point, now and again catching
a gleam of the sun's rays from off the glass of the lantern. And
presently, against the white lather of the lake, I thought I caught
sight of a black nose pushed out beyond the land. Another moment, and
the tug itself was bobbing in the open. Barely had she reached the deep
water beyond the sands when her length began to shorten, and the dense
cloud of smoke that rose made it plain that she was firing. At the sight
I reflected that I had been a fool indeed. A scant few miles of water
lay between us and her, and if they really meant business back there,
and they gave every sign of it, we had about an hour and a half to get
rid of the Celebrity. The Maria was a good boat, but she had not been
built to try conclusions with a Far Harbor tug.
My client, in spite of the ominous condition of his opal, was not slow
to make his intentions exceedingly clear. For Mr. Cooke was first and
last, and always, a gentleman. After that you might call him anything
you pleased. Meditatively he screwed up his glasses and buckled
them into the case, and then he descended to the cockpit. It was the
Celebrity he singled out of the party.
“Allen,” said he, when he stood before him, “I want to impress on you
that my word's gold. I've stuck to you thus far, and I'll be damned now
if I throw you over, like they did Jonah.”
Mr. Cooke spoke with a fine dignity that in itself was impressive, and
when he had finished he looked about him until his eye rested on Mr.
Trevor, as though opposition were to come from that quarter. And the
senator gave every sign of another eruption. But the Celebrity, either
from lack of appreciation of my client's loyalty, or because of the
nervousness which was beginning to show itself in his demeanor, despite
an effort to hide it, returned no answer. He turned on his heel and
resumed his seat in the cabin. Mr. Cooke was visibly affected.
“I'd sooner lose my whip hand than go back on him now,” he declared.
Then Vesuvius began to rumble.
“Mr. Cooke,” said the senator, “may I suggest something which seems
pertinent to me, though it does not appear to have occurred to you?”
His tone was the calm one that the heroes used in the Celebrity's novels
when they were about to drop on and annihilate wicked men.
“Certainly, sir,” my client replied briskly, bringing himself up on his
way back to the overhang.
“You have announced your intention of 'standing by' Mr. Allen, as you
express it. Have you reflected that there are some others who deserve to
be consulted and considered beside Mr. Allen and yourself?”
Mr. Cooke was puzzled at this change of front, and unused, moreover, to
that veiled irony of parliamentary expression.
“Talk English, my friend,” said he.
“In plain words, sir, Mr. Allen is a criminal who ought to be locked
up; he is a menace to society. You, who have a reputation, I am given to
understand, for driving four horses, have nothing to lose by a scandal,
while I have worked all my life for the little I have achieved, and
have a daughter to think about. I will neither stand by Mr. Allen nor by
you.”
Mr. Cooke was ready with a retort when the true significance of this
struck him. Things were a trifle different now. The tables had turned
since leaving the island, and the senator held it in his power to ruin
our one remaining chance of escape. Strangely enough, he missed the
cause of Mr. Cooke's hesitation.
“Look here, old man,” said my client, biting off another cigar, “I'm a
first-rate fellow when you get to know me, and I'd do the same for you
as I'm doing for Allen.”
“I daresay, sir, I daresay,” said the other, a trifle mollified; “I
don't claim that you're not acting as you think right.”
“I see it,” said Mr. Cooke, with admirable humility; “I see it. I was
wrong to haul you into this, Trevor. And the only thing to consider now
is, how to get you out of it.”
Here he appeared for a moment to be wrapped in deep thought, and checked
with his cigar an attempt to interrupt him.
“However you put it, old man,” he said at last, “we're all in a pretty
bad hole.”
“All!” cried Mr. Trevor, indignantly.
“Yes, all,” asserted Mr. Cooke, with composure. “There are the police,
and here is Allen as good as run down. If they find him when they get
abroad, you don't suppose they'll swallow anything you have to say about
trying to deliver him over. No, sir, you'll be bagged and fined along
with the rest of us. And I'd be damned sorry to see it, if I do say it;
and I blame myself freely for it, old man. Now you take my advice and
keep your mouth shut, and I'll take care of you. I've got a place for
Allen.”
During this somewhat remarkable speech Mr. Trevor, as it were, blew hot
and cold by turns. Although its delivery was inconsiderate, its logic
was undeniable, and the senator sat down again on the locker, and was
silent. But I marked that off and on his fingers would open and shut
convulsively.
Time alone would disclose what was to happen to us; in the interval
there was nothing to do but wait. We had reached the stage where anxiety
begins to take the place of excitement, and we shifted restlessly from
spot to spot and looked at the tug. She was ploughing along after us,
and to such good purpose that presently I began to catch the white of
the seas along her bows, and the bright red with which her pipe was
tipped. Farrar alone seemed to take but slight interest in her. More
than once I glanced at him as he stood under me, but his eye was on the
shuddering leach of the sail. Then I leaned over.
“What do you think of it?” I asked.
“I told you this morning Drew would have handcuffs on him before night,”
he replied, without raising his head.
“Hang your joking, Farrar; I know more than you about it.”
“Then what's the use of asking me?”
“Don't you see that I'm ruined if we're caught?” I demanded, a little
warmly.
“No, I don't see it,” he replied. “You don't suppose I think you fool
enough to risk this comedy if the man were guilty, do you? I don't
believe all that rubbish about his being the criminal's double, either.
That's something the girls got up for your benefit.”
I ignored this piece of brutality.
“But I'm ruined anyway.”
“How?”
I explained shortly what I thought our friend, O'Meara, would do under
the circumstances. An inference sufficed Farrar.
“Why didn't you say something about this before?” he asked gravely. “I
would have put into Far Harbor.”
“Because I didn't think of it,” I confessed.
Farrar pulled down the corners of his mouth with trying not to smile.
“Miss Thorn is a woman of brains,” he remarked gently; “I respect her.”
I wondered by what mysterious train of reasoning he had arrived at this
conclusion. He said nothing for a while, but toyed with the spokes of
the wheel, keeping the wind in the sail with undue nicety.
“I can't make them out,” he said, all at once.
“Then you believe they're after us?”
“I changed the course a point or two, just to try them.”
“And--”
“And they changed theirs.”
“Who could have informed?”
“Drew, of course,” I said; “who else?”
He laughed.
“Drew doesn't know anything about Allen,” said he; “and, besides, he's
no more of a detective than I am.”
“But Drew was told there was a criminal on the island.”
“Who told him?”
I repeated the conversation between Drew and Mr. Trevor which I had
overheard. Farrar whistled.
“But you did not speak of that this morning,” said he.
“No,” I replied, feeling anything but comfortable. At times when he was
facetious as he had been this morning I was wont to lose sight of the
fact that with Farrar the manner was not the man, and to forget the
warmth of his friendship. I was again to be reminded of this.
“Well, Crocker,” he said briefly, “I would willingly give up this year's
state contract to have known it.”