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!"