ROBBERY
Dinner brought the four men together: Filhiol glum and dour, Hal in his
most charming mood, the captain expansive with new-found happiness, and
old Ezra bubbling with aphorisms.
Silent and brooding, Filhiol turned the situation in his mind, asking
himself a hundred times what he could do to avert catastrophe impending.
Decision, after dinner, crystallized into action. First of all the
doctor interviewed Ezra in the galley, and from him extracted a
binding promise to make no mention before Captain Briggs, of anything
concerning Malay life, or books, or curses, or whatever.
“I can’t explain now, Ezra,” said he, “but it’s most important. As
a physician, I prohibit your speaking of these matters here. You
understand?”
“Yes, sir. I dunno’s I’m over an’ above keen to obey you, sir, but ef
it’s fer the cap’n’s good, that’s enough fer me.”
“It _is_ for the captain’s good, decidedly!” affirmed the doctor, and
left old Ezra to think it over. One source of danger, he now felt
confident, had been dammed up.
Ezra was still thinking it over when the captain told him to harness
Sea Lawyer for a drive to Endicutt. In spite of the fine, drifting rain
that had set in, Briggs was determined to go, for until McLaughlin’s
claim and the college bill had been settled, the money he had taken
from the safe for that purpose was burning in his pocket. He insisted
on going quite alone, despite protests from Filhiol and Ezra. Even
though all the sunlight had died from the darkening sky, it seemed
still shining in the old man’s eyes as he drove off to pay the
hard-saved money that now—so he believed—would put Hal on the upward
road once more.
“Hal,” said the doctor, when the old captain had slowly jogged out of
sight, “I’ve got a few words to say to you, out on the porch. Give me
five minutes, please?”
“Why, surest thing you know! Just let me get my pipe, and I’ll be with
you.”
He seemed all engaging candor—just a big, powerful fellow, open of
face and manner, good-humored and without guile. As he rejoined the
doctor, Filhiol wondered whether, after all, his analysis might not
be wrong. But no, no. Something at the back of Hal’s blue-eyed look,
something arrogant with power, something untamed, atavistic, looked out
through even the most direct glance. Filhiol knew that he was dealing
with no ordinary force. And, carefully choosing his words, he said:
“Listen, young man. I’m going to ask a favor of you.”
“My grandfather’s guest has only to ask, and it’s done,” smiled Hal, as
he settled himself in one of the rockers, and hoisted his white-shod
feet to the porch-rail.
“You know, Hal,” the doctor commenced, “your grandfather has been
greatly distressed about your conduct.”
“Well, and what then?” asked Hal, his eyes clouding.
“He has a strange idea that some of the misdeeds of his youth,
long since atoned for, are being visited upon you, and that he’s
responsible for—h-m—certain irregularities of your conduct.”
“Yes?”
“In short, he half believes a curse is resting on you, because of him.
It would be most deplorable to let that belief receive corroboration
from any source, as for example, from any of your Oriental studies.”
Hal shot a keen glance at the old man. This was indeed getting under
the hide, with a vengeance. The glance showed fear, too. Had Filhiol,
then, been spying on him? Had he, by any chance, seen him peeking in at
the window, through the lilac-bushes? Hal’s evil temper began to stir,
and with it a very lively apprehension.
“What are you driving at, anyhow?” demanded he, sullenly.
“I want you to keep your Oriental stuff completely in the background
for a while. Not to talk with him about it, and especially to avoid all
those fantastic curses.”
“Oh, is that all?” asked Hal, relieved. “Well, that’s easy.”
The doctor sighed with relief.
“That makes me feel a bit better,” said he. “We’ve got to do our best
to protect the captain against himself. I know you’ll coöperate with me
to keep him out of any possible trouble.”
“Surest thing you know, doctor!” exclaimed Hal. “I’ve been a fool and
worse, I know, but that’s all over. I’ve taken a fresh start that will
help me travel far. You’ll see.”
He put out his hand.
“Let’s shake on it,” he smiled winningly.
A moment their eyes met. Then Filhiol said:
“I’m sorry if I’ve misjudged you. Let’s just forget it. You don’t know
how much relieved I feel.”
“I feel better, too,” said Hal. “Things are going to take a decidedly
new turn.”
“It’s fine to hear you say that!” exclaimed the doctor, almost
convinced that at last he had struck a human stratum in the boy’s
heart. “I can take my after-dinner nap with a great deal easier mind
now. Good-by.”
He limped into the house, not perhaps fully confident of Hal, but at
any rate more inclined to believe him amenable to reason. Hal, peering
after him, whispered a terrific blasphemy under his breath.
“You damned buttinsky!” he growled, black with passion. “There’s
something coming to you, too. Something you’ll get, by God, or I’m no
man!”
He got up, and—silently in his rubber-soled shoes—walked around the
porch to the end of it, then stepped down into the grass and crept
along by the house. Under the doctor’s window he stood, listening
acutely. Just what the doctor was doing he must by all means know. Ezra
was safe enough. From the kitchen drifted song:
“Rolling Rio,
To my rolling Rio Grande!
Hooray, you rolling Rio!
So fare ye well, my bonny young girls,
For I’m bound to the Rio Grande!”
Hal nodded as he heard the springs of the doctor’s bed creak, and knew
the old man had really laid down for his mid-afternoon nap.
“It’s working fine,” said he. “Gramp’s gone, Ezra’s good for half an
hour on ‘Rio Grande,’ and the doc’s turned in. Looks like a curse was
sticking to me, doesn’t it? Not much! Nothing like that can stick to
_me_!”
At his feet two or three ants were busy with a grasshopper’s leg. Hal
smeared them out with a dab of his sole.
“That’s the way to do with people that get in your way,” he muttered.
“Just like that!”
He slouched back to the porch. The resemblance to what Captain Briggs
had been in the old days seemed wonderfully striking at just this
moment. Same hang of heavy shoulders, same set of jaw; scowl quite a
simulacrum of the other, and even the dark glowering of the eyes almost
what once had been.
As Hal Briggs lithely stepped on to the porch again he formed how
wonderful an image of that other man who, half a century ago, had swung
the poisoned kris upon the decks of the _Silver Fleece_, and, smeared
with blood, had hewn his way against all opposition to his will!
“Afraid of an old Malay curse!” sneered Hal. “Poor, piffling fool!
Why, Filhiol’s loose in the dome, and grandpop’s no better. They’re a
couple of children—ought to be shoved into the nursery. And they think
they’re going to dictate to _me_?”
He paused a moment at the front door to listen. No sound from within
indicated any danger.
“Think they’re going to keep me in this graveyard burg!” he gibed. “And
stop my having that girl! Well, they’ve got another think coming. She’s
mine, that young porpoise. She’s mine!”
Into the cabin he made his way, noiselessly, closed the hall door and
smiled with exultation.
He needed but a moment to reach the desk, take out the little slip of
paper on which the captain had written the combination, and go to the
safe.
A few turns of the knob, and the iron door swung wide. Open came the
money-compartment. With exultant hands, filled with triumph and evil
pride, Hal caught up the sheaf of bills there, quickly counted off
five hundred dollars, took a couple more bills for good luck, crammed
the money into his pocket, and replaced the pitifully small remnant in
the compartment.
“Sorry I’ve got to leave any,” he reflected, “but it’ll be safer. It
may keep him from noticing. The old man wouldn’t let me have a boat,
eh? And Laura turned me down, did she? Well now, we’ll soon see about
all that!”
“Master Hal, sir! What _in_ the name o’ Tophet are you up to?”
The sound of Ezra’s voice swung Hal sharp around. So intent had he been
that he had quite failed to notice the cessation of the old cook’s
chantey. A moment, Hal’s eyes, staring, met those of the astonished
servitor. Ominous silence filled the room.
“Why, Master Hal!” Ezra quavered. “You—ain’t—”
“You sneaking spy!” Hal growled at him, even in his rage and panic
careful to keep his voice low, lest he awake the doctor, abovestairs.
Toward the old man he advanced, with rowdy oaths of the fo’cs’le.
Ezra stood his ground.
“_I_ ain’t no spy, Master Hal,” he exclaimed, tremblingly. “But I come
into the dinin’-saloon, here, an’ couldn’t help seein’. Tell me it
ain’t so, Master Hal! Tell me you ain’t sunk so low as to be robbin’
your own grandpa, while he’s to town in all this rain, settlin’ up
things fer you! Not that, Master Hal—not that!”
“Ezra, you damn son-of-a-sea-cook!” snarled Hal, his face the face of
murder. “You call me a thief again, and so help me but I’ll wring your
neck!” His hand caught Ezra by the throat and closed in a gorilla-grip,
shutting off all breath. “You didn’t learn your lesson from the club
last night, eh? Well, I’ll teach you one now, you old gray rat! I’ll
shut _your_ mouth, damn you!”
Viciously he shook the weak old man. Ezra clawed with impotent hands at
the vise-clutch strangling him.
“It’s my money, my own money, understand?” Hal spat at him. “Every
penny of it’s mine. He didn’t want me to have it just yet, but I’m
going to, and you’re not going to blow on me! If you _do_—”
He loosed his hold, snatched down from its supporting hooks the
Malay kris, and with it gripped in hand confronted the trembling,
half-fainting cook.
“See this, Ezra?” And Hal shook the envenomed blade before the poor old
fellow’s horror-smitten eyes.
“Master—Master Hal!”
“If you breathe so much as one syllable to the captain, I’ll split you
with this knife, as sure as I’m a foot high! What? Butting in on me, in
my own house, are you? Like hell! Take a slant at this knife here, and
see how you’d like it through your guts!”
He raised it as if to strike. Ezra cowered, shrinking with the imminent
terror of death.
“Master Hal, oh, fer God’s sake, now—”
“You’re going to keep your jaw-tackle quiet, are you, to the captain?”
“I—I—”
Wickedly Hal slashed at him. Ezra opened his mouth, no doubt to cry
aloud, but Hal clapped a sinewed hand over it, and slammed him back
against the wall.
“Not a word more!” he commanded, and released the trembling old man.
“I’ve got to turn you loose, Ezra, but if you double-cross me, so help
me God—”
“You callin’ on God, Master Hal?” quavered Ezra. “You, with your
heathen curses an’ your Malay sword, an’ all the evil seed you’re
sowin’ fer a terrible crop o’ misery?”
“Shut up, you!”
“Goin’ on this way, Master Hal, after you jest promised the cap’n you
was goin’ to begin at the bottom o’ the ladder an’ climb ag’in? This
here ain’t the bottom; this here is a deep ditch you’re diggin’, fur
below that bottom. Oh, Master Hal,” and Ezra’s shaking hands went out
in passionate appeal, “ef you got any love fer the memory o’ your dead
mother; ef you got any fer your grandpa, what’s been so wonderful good
to you; ef you got any little grain o’ gratitude to me, fer all these
long years—”
“Ezra, you bald-headed old pot-walloper, I’m going to count ten on
you,” Hal interrupted, terrible with rage. “If, by the end of that time
you haven’t sworn to keep your mouth shut about this, I’m going to kill
you right here in this room! I mean that, Ezra!”
“But ef it’s y’r own money, Master Hal, why should you be afeared to
let him know?”
Hal struck the old man a staggering blow in the face. “You keep your
voice down,” he snarled. “If you wake the doctor, and he comes down
here, God help the pair of you! Now, Ezra, I’m not going to trifle with
you any longer. You’re going to swear secrecy, and do it quick, or take
the consequences!”
He turned, caught up the captain’s well-thumbed Bible from the desk,
and with the Bible in one hand, the poisoned kris in the other,
confronted Ezra.
“Here! Lay your hand on this book, damn quick!” he ordered. “And repeat
what I tell you. Quick, now; _quick!_”
The argument of the raised kris overbore Ezra’s resistance. With a look
of heart-breaking anguish he laid a trembling, veinous hand on the
Bible.
“What is it, Master Hal?” quavered he. “What d’ye want me to say?”
“Say this: ‘If I betray this secret—’”
“‘If I—if I betray this secret—’”
“‘May the black curse of Vishnu fall on me!’”
“‘May the’—listen, Master Hal! Please now, jest one minute!”
“Ezra, say it, damn your stiff, obstinate neck! Say it, or you get the
knife!”
“‘May the black curse o’—o’ Vishnoo fall on me!”
“‘And may his poisoned kris strike through my heart!’”
“No, no, sir, I can’t say that!” pleaded the simple old fellow, ashen
to the lips, his forehead lined with deep wrinkles of terror.
“You _will_ say it, Ezra, and you’ll mean it, or by the powers of
darkness I’ll butcher you where you stand!” menaced Hal. “And you’ll
say it quick, too!” Hal was nerving his hand to do cold murder. “One,
two, three, four! Say it now before I cut you down! There’s blood on
this knife, Ezra. See the dark stains? Blood, that my grandfather
put on there, fifty years ago—that’s what I’ve heard among old
sailors—put on there, because some of his men wouldn’t obey him. Well,
I can play the same game. What he did, I can do, and will! There’ll be
more blood on it, fresh blood, your blood, if you don’t mind me. Five,
six, seven! Say it, you obstinate cur!”
Up rose the kris again, ready to strike. Hal’s eyes were glowing. His
lips had drawn back, showing the gleam of white teeth.
“Keep your hand on that Bible, Ezra! Take that oath. Say it! Eight,
nine, t—”
“I’ll say it, Master Hal! I’ll say it!” gasped the old man. “Don’t kill
me—_don’t_!”
“Say it, then: ‘May this poisoned kris strike through my heart!’”
“‘M-m-may this poisoned kris—strike through—my—heart!’ There now!
Oh! Now I’ve said it. Let me go—let me go!”
“Go, and be damned to you! Get out o’ here, you spying
_surka-batcha_—you son-of-a-pig!”
Hal dropped the Bible back on to the desk, swung Ezra ’round, and
pitched him, staggering, into the dining-saloon. Ezra dragged himself
away, quaking, ghastly, to his own room, there to lock himself in.
Spent, terrified, he threw himself upon his bunk, and lay there, half
dead.
Well satisfied, Hal reviewed the situation.
“I guess I’ve kept _him_ quiet for a while,” he muttered. “Long enough,
anyhow. I won’t need much more time now.”
Back to the fireplace he turned, hung up the kris again on its hooks,
glanced around to assure himself he had left no traces of his robbery.
He closed the door of the safe, spun the knob, and in the desk-drawer
replaced the slip of paper bearing the combination.
“I guess I’ve fixed things so they’ll hold a while now,” judged he.
“God, what a place—what people! Spies, all spies! They’re all spying
on me here. And Laura’s giving me the laugh, too. Maybe I won’t show
them all a thing or two!”
He listened a moment, and, satisfied, opened the door into the front
hall. To all appearances the coast was free. He snatched a cap, jammed
it upon his head, and, hunching into an old raincoat, quietly left the
house.
The Airedale would have followed him, but with the menace of an
upraised fist he sent it back. Through the gate he went, and turned
toward the right, in the direction of Hadlock’s Cove, where dwelt Jim
Gordon, owner of the _Kittiwink_.
In his ears the wind, ever-rising, and the shouting of the quick-lashed
surf along the rocks joined with the slash of the rain to make a
chorus glad and mighty, to which his heart expanded. On and on he
strode, exultant, filled with evil devisings of a mind half mad in the
lusts of strength and passion. And as he went he held communion with
himself:
“I’ll beat ’em to it—and devil take anything that stands in my way! To
hell with them—to hell with everything that goes against me!”