“Ardon, I’m going to own up that I have had a lot of bitter thoughts
about the folks in Levant since I left home. But if I had known that
I had only one friend there like you have been in this matter, I would
have put all the bad things out of my mind.”
“I only told the truth, Ross.”
“But that’s the hardest job a man undertakes to do in a lot of cases.”
I was thinking just then how hard _I_ would find it to own up about
myself, and how I had secured that money from the clutches of the rogues
in Dawlin’s joint. And there I was, making a lot of capital out of that
deceit!
But after what I had just heard I was resolved to go ahead and make more
capital out of my pretensions to greatness.
“You’re going to let us say that you have made good, aren’t you?” asked
Dave.
“I’d like to get back into the good opinion of the old town, boys.
If you feel like saying something nice about me when you get back to
Levant, I’ll be grateful.”
“Say, if we don’t blow your horn!” they cried in concert.
“But not too loud, boys! I don’t want to have too big a reputation to
live up to when I come back home.”
They stood up and clapped me on the back.
“By gorry! you will come, won’t you, and show ’em?” pleaded Dave.
“Come and show ’em!”
“But there’s one thing to be thought of first,” I said, with a grin.
“Has my uncle Deck stopped threatening to kill me on sight?”
That stirred their memories and fetched a laugh.
“He wouldn’t dare to give you as much as one yip if you walked up to him
looking like you do now,” said Dave.
The thought which he suggested was comforting; so much in this world
does depend on outside appearances. The hankering in me to go back was
whetted; just to make a show in the face and eyes of Levant, to stop
their tongues for good and all! But I was conscious that deep under
those cheaper motives was something more compelling. I had felt the
thrust of it after Ardon Sortwell had told me of his confession to
Celene. She, at least, knew that I had not been a renegade, and she had
taken enough interest in me to make sure on that point.
“When are you coming back, Ross?” demanded Dave.
“Don’t tell anybody I am coming back, boys. Promise me that.”
They did.
“But you may say that you saw me in the city, and that I am doing well,
and sent my best regards to all my friends.”
“We’ll make their cussed old ears sing,” declared Ardon. “Don’t you
worry about us!”
“If I can arrange my business so as to leave it, I may run up later.”
I showed them some of the city sights that afternoon and they started
for home that night--and I saw to it that they were safely aboard their
train.
That I should dream of Levant that night was entirely natural. They were
enticing dreams and they made me homesick and I found out that I was not
such a bold man, after all, in spite of the shell I had grown; I felt
very much like a boy when I woke next morning. I was hungry for my own
folks.
In my haste to be gone I forgot all my caution. I went down to the
water-front just as if there were no such person as a vengeful Anson C.
Doughty.
I had cached, temporarily, my diving equipment. I went to the
storage-man and arranged for its care, paying in advance.
Then I was bold enough to go hunting up Jodrey Vose because I wanted to
carry some fresh and direct message to his brother in order to secure
continued favor in the case of the tavern-keeper; he certainly had been
my best friend in Levant. I intended to lodge with him and I dreaded his
keen questioning in case I went to him with lies about when I had seen
his brother last.
I found the captain on his lighter and we had a good talk during his
rest-spell.
“I’m sorry it has turned out for you as it has, young Sidney. But it’s a
good idea for you to run up to the old town and hang round with Dod for
a while and sort of get your feet placed all over again. Maybe something
will turn up down this way later!”
“Anson C. Doughty’s toes, perhaps.”
He wagged his head, soberly.
“I’m glad you came down to take leave, son, but you’re running chances.
Anson C. Doughty is mighty ugly. He was beaten up in front of his
crew--and folks haven’t got done talking and he knows they are talking.
You’d better be hipering, I reckon.”
He sent one of the helpers to his cabin for a parcel and he put it into
my hands.
“It’ll be handier than sending it by express to Dod,” he said. “It’s a
skull I found in the dock. Tell him to make up a pirate yarn to go with
it.”
Being thus equipped with full credentials as to my continued comfortable
standing with Jodrey Vose, for the purposes of my further intimacy with
Dodovah Vose, I started up the wharf in excellent spirits, my thoughts
on my home-going.
And half-way to the street I fairly bumped into Anson C. Doughty. It was
no coincidence--I ought to have reckoned on that meeting--the manager
was regularly up and down the wharf at all hours of the day. But, as I
have said, I had lost my caution. I had met him once face to face, and
had not been recognized. But I was no longer wearing that mustache.
He swore a blue streak and danced back and forth in front of me, waving
his hairy hands to shoo me back. He looked just as much like a cockroach
as ever.
“You belong in State prison and you’re going there,” he snarled.
There were two wharf loafers near by, the only men in sight. He called
to them, and they came to us, a couple of husky stevedores.
“You know _me!_” shouted Doughty. “You two men hold this sucker till I
can fetch a cop. Hold him! Don’t let him get away!”
He ran off toward the street.
I had not a chance to get away from those big chaps on that narrow
wharf--and it was plain that they knew Anson C. Doughty and recognized
his authority in those quarters.
So here were all my fresh plans, my hankering for home, my new-laid
reputation for Levant consumption about to be kicked into the black
depths of tophet by the grudge of Anson C. Doughty!
I could see that the stevedores despised my size because I was wearing
a plug-hat; they glowered at me with the natural enmity the man in
overalls feels for the dandy. It was perfectly damnable--that situation!
To be arrested--to be shown up for what I was--the thought screwed my
desperation to the breaking-point.