|WHEN he had finished his cigar he cast the stump overboard, watched it
until it disappeared astern, and then went around to state-room No.
34. As he stepped in, and closed the door a masculine voice said very
pleasantly:
“How do you do?”
Mr. Webster looked up and beheld a young man, arrayed in a very fancy
pair of light blue silk pyjamas, stretched at his ease in the upper
berth. In his right hand he held an open book; his left hand grasped his
bare right foot, which he was rubbing comfortably; in his mouth he held
an aromatic Turkish cigarette. He was very much at home, no doubt of
that, for he was smiling in the friendliest fashion imaginable.
John Stuart Webster stared at the stranger for several seconds and
concluded he was invading the sanctity of another's stateroom. “Excuse
me,” he said, “I guess I'm in the right church but the wrong pew,”
and he stepped out and looked for the number on the stateroom. To
his surprise it _was_ No. 34 after all, so he stepped back into the
stateroom and favoured the stranger with another scrutiny.
“It does appear to me, my friend,” he said presently, “that I detect
something strangely familiar about your pyjamas.”
“I wouldn't be the least bit surprised, Mr. Webster. I found them in
your suitcase.”
“Well, how do you do?” Webster declared. “Pretty well, all things
considered. May I offer you one of your own cigarettes? I found them in
the suitcase also, and can recommend them highly.”
“Thank you very much.” Webster helped himself to a cigarette and sat
down on the settee. Fell a silence of perhaps half a minute. Then:
“I dislike to appear inquisitive,” Webster began, “but the fact is,
neighbour, I'm curious to know where you got that book. I observe you
are reading Samuel Butler's 'Way of all Flesh,' and that the book is
slightly damaged. Recently I purchased such a book in----”
“Pray do not take the trouble to explain,” the other answered airily. “I
discovered this excellent book in your suitcase also. In fact, for me,
that suitcase has proved to be a repository of treasures.” John Stuart
Webster's neck came out of his collar with the suddenness of a turtle
snapping at a fly; he drew himself up beside the top berth until his
face was on a level with his unbidden guest's, upon whom he bent a look
of mingled emotions. On his part the stranger returned his gaze with
grave interest, and when the silence threatened to become embarrassing
he said:
“Will you have the goodness to press that button? I think we should
drink a bumper to our better acquaintance and I have no doubt but that
the barkeeper on this packet can manufacture a golden fizz. Do you care
for the famous New Orleans golden fizz?”
“It is a wonderful institution,” Webster replied, “and I'll have one.
I need it to sustain me, for I am faint with amazement.” He pressed the
button. “'While the golden fizz is fizzing,” he continued, “suppose you
let me have a look at your ticket.”
“Ticket?” echoed his visitor. “I haven't any ticket. A kind gentleman
bought one for me and has it in his possession. Do you, sir, by any
chance, happen to be that philanthropic individual?”
“Well, I'll be----”
“Hush!” the stranger warned, raising an admonitory finger. “No
profanity, please. I have been tenderly reared and cuss words will
only shock me and clog the atmosphere. I'm here to do you and do you
a delicate brown, so bear up, kind sir, and take your walloping like a
sport.”
“Who the devil are you?” John Stuart Webster demanded.
“I regret I have no card, but even if I had it would be no kindness to
inflict upon an American gentleman the cognomen my parents honoured me
with, for it is long and many-jointed, like a peanut, and embodies the
names of all the saints in the calendar. Moreover, just at present I am
travelling under an alias. I am known as Mr. Andrew Bowers.”
“And your occupation?” Webster managed to articulate.
“Valet de chambre to that prince of gentlemen, Mr. John S. Webster,” the
other replied with a mischievous gleam in his dark eyes.
Mr. Webster sat down limply on the settee. He was undecided whether
to roar with laughter or shriek with rage; while he struggled for a
decision Andrew Bowers blew smoke rings at the ceiling.
“Haven't I seen you before?” Webster queried presently.
“I wouldn't be surprised. I drove you down to the steamer in a taxi half
an hour ago. You will recall that the taxi driver carried your luggage
aboard.”
Webster gazed around the stateroom. “Where have you hidden your livery?”
he demanded.
“I wrapped it in a newspaper; then, seeking a moment when the deck
outside was deserted, I stepped forth in my--I beg your pardon,
your--pyjamas and tossed it overboard.”
“But apparently you did not bring aboard with you a suit of clothes to
take the place of your livery?”
“Quite true--lamentably so, Mr. Webster. Perhaps you will accept my
desperate need as an excuse for borrowing your pyjamas. I notice you
have another suit of them. Fortunate man!”
When confronted by something mysterious it was not John Stuart's habit
to ask innumerable questions, and for the space of two minutes he gave
himself up to deduction and a close scrutiny of his companion.
Andrew Bowers was a man of perhaps thirty years, five feet ten inches
tall, and apparently in excellent health. He might have weighed a
hundred and seventy pounds and he was undeniably handsome. His head
was nobly formed and covered with thick, wavy hair, shiny and black as
ebony; his eyes were dark blue; the eyebrows, thick but fine and silky,
almost met over the bridge of a thin, high nose that was just a trifle
too long for his face. Webster decided it was the nose of a thinker.
Andrew Bowers's forehead was broad and high and his head was thick
forward of the ears, infallible sign of brains; his mouth and chin
were full of determination, although capable of a smile of singular
sweetness; while the skin on his legs was milk-white, his hands and face
were tanned to the colour of a manzanita stick, seeming to indicate that
he had lived an outdoor life.
While Webster was wondering whether his companion was merely a
high-class tramp or an absconding bank cashier, a knock sounded on the
stateroom door. He opened it and the purser stood in the entrance.
“Tickets, please?” he announced.
Webster surrendered both tickets, receiving in turn two seat checks for
the dining saloon, and the purser passed on to the next cabin.
Andrew Bowers smiled a small, prescient smile, but said nothing and
presently John Stuart Webster broke the silence. “Well,” he ordered
“sing the song or tell the story.”
“I noticed you surrendered my ticket to the purser,” the young man
answered irrelevantly, “and I am glad of that. I take it as _prima
facie_ evidence that you have made up your mind to accept my company.”
“You're too infernally cool and cocksure, my friend,” Webster warned him
testily. “I pride myself on a sense of humour and I dearly love a joke
until it's carried too far, but be advised in time, young man, and don't
try to play horse with me. I haven't made up my mind to accept your
company, although, provided you do not rub my fur the wrong way, I may
decide to put up with you, for whether you are a decayed gentleman or
an engaging scoundrel, you are, at least, intelligent and impressive,
clean, white, resourceful, and pleasant. However, my acceptance or
non-acceptance of you is a subject for future discussion, since at
present we have some fiduciary matters before us. You owe me fifty
dollars for your ticket, Andrew Bowers, and in view of the fact that I
never saw you before to-day, suppose we start the voyage by squaring the
account.”
Andrew Bowers sat up in the berth and let his legs drape over the side.
“Mr. Webster,” he began seriously, “had I sung my song or told my story
before you surrendered that ticket to the purser I might have found
myself in a most embarrassing predicament. If, prior to the arrival
of the purser to collect the tickets, you had handed my ticket to me,
saying: 'Here is your ticket, Mr. Bowers. Be kind enough to reimburse me
to the extent of fifty dollars,' I should have been compelled to admit
then, as I do now, that I haven't fifty dollars. Fortunately for me,
however, you surrendered the ticket to the purser before acquainting
yourself with the state of my fortunes; the voyage has commenced and
whether you like it or not, my dear sir, I am your guest from now until
we reach San Buenaventura. Rather an interesting situation, don't you
think?”
John Stuart Webster was of Scotch ancestry. He had an hereditary regard
for his baubees. He was a business man. Prodigal spender though he was
and generous to a fault, the fact remained that he always made it a
point to get value received, and he was prodigal with his own money; he
preferred that the privilege of prodigality with the Websterian funds
should remain an inalienable prerogative of the sole surviving member
of the Webster family. He gazed contemplatively now upon his
devil-may-care, unbidden guest, torn between a desire to whisk him out
of the berth and shake him until his teeth fell out, and another to be
just and patient, in the hope that some great extenuating circumstance
might be adduced to account for this impudent daylight robbery. Mr.
Webster had been deluded, cheated, robbed, and pillaged many a time and
oft in the course of his rather eventful career, but he had yet to
meet the man who, having swindled him out of fifty dollars, had the
effrontery to add insult to injury by exhibiting a perfectly obvious
intention of making him like it. Indeed, John Stuart Webster was
obsessed with a secret fear that the smiling bandit in the upper berth
was going to succeed in his nefarious design, and, in the contemplation
of this unheard-of _contretemps_, the genial John was struck temporarily
speechless.
“The last cent I had in the world went to that taxi person whose taxi I
borrowed and whose old uniform I purchased,” Andrew Bowers supplemented
his confession.
“You asked me to ring for two golden fizzes,” Webster reproached him.
“Am I to be stuck for the drinks? Not satisfied with rooking me for a
first-class passage to San Buenaventura you plan to tack on extras, eh?”
“Oh, I'll pay for the drinks,” Andrew Bowers assured him.
“How can you, if you gave your last cent to that taxi driver?”
“You tipped me very liberally for carrying your baggage aboard,” Andrew
Bowers retorted slyly.
“Ouch!” cried Mr. Webster, and laughed. The very next instant he was
provoked at himself for having done so. That laugh gave the brigand
Andrew a decided advantage, for it placed Webster on defensive ground.
He was convinced of this when the brigand said:
“Thanks for that laugh, Mr. Webster. It arouses hope in my sad heart. I
have outraged your patience, your privacy, and your pocketbook--yet you
laughed. _Bueno_. I will be equally good-natured and forgive you for
questioning my sincerity in the matter of dispensing my hospitality;
even the little slur cast on my veracity in the matter of my finances
shall pass unnoticed.”
“I think you're too cool, young man,” Webster retorted. “Just a trifle
too cocksure. Up to the present moment you have proffered no evidence
why you should not be adjudged a cad, and I do not like cads and must
decline to permit one to occupy the same stateroom at my expense. You
are clever and amusing and I laughed at you, but at the same time
my sense of humour is not so great as to cause me to overlook your
impudence and laugh with you. Now, if you have anything to say, say it
quickly, because you're going to go away from here--in a hurry.”
“I plead guilty to the indictment, Mr. Webster, and submit as an excuse
the fact that desperate circumstances require desperate measures. I am
not begging my way, neither am I beating it, for the reason that both
forms of travel are repugnant to me. I am merely taking advantage of
certain fortuitous circumstances to force you, an entire stranger, to
extend to me a credit of fifty dollars until we reach San Buenaventura
when you will be promptly reimbursed. I had thought,” he added sadly,
“that my face might prove ample security for a fifty-dollar loan. There
has never been a crook in my family and I have never been charged with a
penal offence or been in jail.”
“It is not my habit,” Webster retorted stiffly, “to extend credit to
strangers who demand it.”
“I do not demand it, sir. I beg it of you, and because I cannot afford
to be refused I took care to arrange matters so that you would not be
likely to refuse my request. Really, I do not mean to be cocksure and
impudent, but before you throw me out I'd like to let you in on a secret
about yourself.”
“Well?”
“You're not going to throw me out.”
“Why not?”
“Because you can't.”
“That's fighting talk. Now, just to prove to you the depth of error
in which you flounder, young man, I am about to throw you out.” And he
grasped Andrew Bowers in the grip of a grizzly bear and whisked him out
of the top berth.
“Wait one second,” his helpless victim cried. “I have something to say
before you go any further.”
“Say it,” Webster ordered. “Your tongue is the only part of you that I
cannot control.”
“When you throw me out on deck,” Andrew Bowers queried, “do your pyjamas
go with me? Does the hair go with the hide?”
“They cost me sixteen dollars in Salt Lake City, but--good lord, yes.
I can't throw you out mother naked; damn it, I can't throw you out at
all.”
“Didn't I tell you so? Be a good fellow and turn me loose.”
“Certainly--for the time being. You'll stay locked in this stateroom
while I have a talk with the captain. He'll probably dig up a shirt, a
pair of dungarees, and some old shoes for you and set you ashore before
we get out of the river. If he doesn't do that he'll keep you aboard and
you'll shovel coal for your passage.”
“But I'm Andrew Bowers and the purser has collected my first-class
ticket!”
“What of it? I shall declare--and with truth--that you are not Andrew
Bowers, that you are not my valet, and that I did not buy the ticket for
you. I dare you to face the captain in my pyjamas and prove you aren't a
stowaway.”
“You would win on that point,” the baffling guest admitted, “but it is
a point you will not raise. Why? Because I have another trump up my
kimono.” He climbed back into the upper berth and from that vantage
point gazed down benevolently upon John Stuart Webster. “I'm
disappointed in you,” he continued sadly. “I thought you'd show a
little normal human curiosity about me--and you haven't. You do not
ask questions or I could explain, while I cannot volunteer information
without seeming to seek your pity, and that course would be repugnant
to me. I have never shovelled coal, although I daresay I could manage to
earn my passage as a stoker; indeed, I daresay I shall have to, if you
insist on being belligerent, and if you insist I shall not oppose you. I
am hoping, however, that you will not insist, but that you will, on
the contrary, accept my word of honour that you shall be reimbursed two
hours after you land in San Buenaventura.”
“New music to your song, my friend, but the same old words,” Webster
retorted, and stepped to the stateroom door. “You're doomed to shovel
coal or go ashore.”
“Listen. If I go ashore, your responsibility for my life ceases, Mr.
Webster, but if the chief engineer happens to be short one coal-passer
and the captain sends me down to the stokehole, your responsibility for
my death begins, for I'll be put ashore publicly at San Buenaventura
and two hours later I'll be facing a firing squad in the cemetery of the
Catedrâl de la Vera Cruz.”
“Gosh,” John Stuart Webster murmured dazedly, “I'm afraid I can't take a
chance like that for fifty dollars.”
A knock sounded on the door and Webster opened it. A waiter stood in the
entrance. “Did you ring, sir?” he queried.
“I did,” replied John Stuart Webster. “Bring up two glasses and a quart
of the best wine aboard the ship.”
The waiter hastened away and Webster turned to face the little, cryptic,
humorous smile that made his travelling companion so singularly boyish
and attractive.
“You win, son,” Webster declared. “I'm whipped to a frazzle. Any time
I'm sitting in back of a royal flush and the other fellow bluffs me out
of the pot, I always buy the wine. When it arrives we shall drink to our
better acquaintance. Pending its arrival, please be advised that you are
welcome to my pyjamas, my cigarettes, my book, and my stateroom. You
are my guest and you owe me nothing, except, perhaps, your confidence,
although I do not insist upon that point. Where I come from every man
kills his own snakes.”
And he held up his hand for Andrew Bowers to shake.
“Mr. Webster,” the latter declared feelingly, “I am not a lord of
language, so I cannot find words to thank you. I agree with you that you
are entitled to my confidence. My name is----”
“Tut, tut, my boy. Your name is Andrew Bowers, and that identifies
you sufficiently for the time being. Your face is a guaranty of your
character and entitles you to a nominal credit.”
“But----”
“Make me no buts. I care not who you are; perhaps what I do not know
will not distress me. When I suggested that I was entitled to a measure
of your confidence, I meant on a few minor points only--points on which
my curiosity has been abnormally aroused.”
“Very well, my friend. Fire away.”
“Are you an American citizen?”
“No, I am a citizen of Sobrante.”
“You have assured me that you are not a crook; consequently I know you
are not fleeing from the United States authorities. You had no money to
pay for your passage to San Buenaventura so you schemed to make me pay
your way. Hence I take it that your presence in the capital of your
native country is a matter of extreme importance and that the clerk in
the ticket office of the Caribbean Mail Line is a friend of yours.”
“Quite true. He knew my need.”
“You were under surveillance and could not leave New Orleans for San
Buenaventura unless you left secretly. When I purchased both berths in
this stateroom and the ticket clerk knew I held a firstclass ticket for
a valet that was not, he decided to saw off on me a valet that was. So
he gave you my name and the name of my hotel, you arranged matters
with the taxi starter and the taxi driver and drove me to the steamer.
Disguised in the livery of a chauffeur and carrying hand baggage you
hoped to get aboard without being detected by your enemies who watched
the gangplank.”
Andrew Bowers nodded.
“Do you think you succeeded?” Webster continued.
“I do not know, Mr. Webster. I hope so. If I did not--well, the instant
this steamer drops anchor in the roadstead at San Buenaventura, she will
be boarded and searched by the military police, I will be discovered
and----” He shrugged.
“Lawn party in the cemetery, eh?” Webster suggested.
Andrew Bowers reached under his pillow and produced two heavy automatic
pistols and a leathern box containing five clips of cartridges. These
he exhibited in silence and then thrust them back under the pillow.
“I see, Andrew. In case you're cornered, eh? Well, I think I would
prefer to die fighting myself. However, let us hope you will not have to
face any such unpleasant alternative.”
“I'm not worried, Mr. Webster. Somehow, I think I ran the gauntlet
safely.”
“But why did you throw your livery overboard?”
“It was of no further use to me. A chauffeur on shipboard would be most
incongruous, and the sight of the livery hanging on yonder peg would be
certain to arouse the curiosity of the room steward. And I'm not going
to appear on deck throughout the voyage, might meet somebody who knows
me.”
“But you'll have to have some clothes in which to go ashore, you amazing
man.”
“Not at all. The steamer will arrive in the harbour of San Buenaventura
late in the afternoon--too late to be given pratique that day. After
dark I shall drop overboard and endeavour to swim ashore, and in view of
that plan clothes would only prove an embarrassment. I shall land in my
own country naked and penniless, but once ashore I shall quickly find
shelter. I'll have to risk the sharks, of course.”
“Man-eaters?”
“The bay is swarming with them.”
“You're breaking my heart,” Webster declared sympathetically. “I suppose
you're going to feign illness throughout the voyage.”
“Not the land of illness that will interfere with my appetite. I have
prescribed for myself a mild attack of inflammatory rheumatism, as an
excuse for remaining in bed and having my meals brought to me. This
service, of course, will necessitate some slight expense in the way of
tips, but I am hoping you will see your way clear to taking care of that
for your guest.”
Silently Webster handed Andrew Bowers ten dollars in silver. “That ought
to hold you,” he declared. “For the rest, you're up to some political
skullduggery in Sobrante, and what it is and what's your real name are
two subjects in which I am not interested. I am on a vacation and intend
to amuse myself. If I find you as amusing as you appear at the outset
of our acquaintance I shall do my best to break the tedium of your
confinement in this stateroom and if I find you dull I shall leave you
to your own devices. Let us talk anything but business and personalities
and let it be understood that you are my valet, Andrew Bowers. That's
all I know about you and that's all I care to know about you. In fact,
the less I know about you the less will I have to explain in the event
of your sudden demise.”
“Fair enough,” quoth Andrew Bowers. “You're a man after my own heart. I
thank you.”