HONOR OF THIEVES
HONOR OF THIEVES
A Novel
BY
C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE
AUTHOR OF
“THE NEW EDEN,” “THE RECIPE FOR DIAMONDS,” “ADVENTURES OF
CAPTAIN KETTLE,” “THROUGH ARCTIC LAPLAND,” ETC., ETC.
[Illustration]
R. F. FENNO & COMPANY : 9 AND 11 EAST
SIXTEENTH STREET : NEW YORK CITY
LONDON—CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1899
Copyright, 1895-1899
BY
C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE
_Honor of Thieves._
TO
MY VARIOUS SHIPMATES
AND SHOREMATES
ON SEA AND AMERICAN LAND IN 1893
IN MEMORY OF
WHAT WE SAW TOGETHER AND WHAT WE DID.
C. J. C. H.
PREFACE.
“It seems to me,” said a philosopher once, “that there are no entirely
good men in the world, and none completely bad. Single out your best
man, and you will find that he lacks perfection in some part of him; and
examine your worst, and you will see that he has at least one redeeming
quality.”
In this book the men mostly verge towards bad: but some are better than
others. Because they are merely human, they act according to their
lights. You may meet others like them any day if you go out and about,
and most of them give extremely good dinners. Till they are found
out, you consider them amusing: afterwards, being better than they,
you instantly set them down as most pernicious scoundrels, and shake
hands with yourself, and write to your tailor to order more noticeable
phylacteries on the next new suit. This is called “keeping up a healthy
moral tone,” and does a great deal of good in the world.
SCALLOWAY,
SHETLAND ISLANDS,
1895.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. The Antecedents of Patrick Onslow 11
II. A Fortune for the Pair of us 18
III. The Requirements of Mrs. Shelf 27
IV. Business at a Ball 36
V. Bimetallism 44
VI. The Tempting of Captain Owen Kettle 55
VII. £500,000—in Gold 66
VIII. The Send-off 75
IX. Ground-Bait 88
X. Mutiny 100
XI. To-Night 111
XII. A Dereliction 124
XIII. Three for Twenty-seven 137
XIV. A Pirates’ Harbor 147
XV. Results in London 162
XVI. For the Birthday List 170
XVII. In the Matter of a Trust 184
XVIII. The Plume-Hunters’ Dinner-Party 198
XIX. Subjects for Matrimony 213
XX. At Point Sebastian 224
XXI. The Cyclone 235
XXII. Mr. Shelf’s Little Surprise 250
XXIII. Decisions 263
XXIV. A Flight and a Resting-place 277
XXV. Closing Strands 288
XXVI. The Lucky Man 295
HONOR OF THIEVES.
CHAPTER I.
THE ANTECEDENTS OF PATRICK ONSLOW.
Miss Rivers picked out the name of Patrick Onslow in the society paper
which lay upon her knee, and drew idle circles round it with a pink
ball-pencil. Fairfax tugged at his mustache, and returned to the subject
which they had been discussing.
“The fellow has,” said Fairfax, “a genial insolence of manner which seems
rather taking with some people. But I confess I shouldn’t have thought
him the man you would have cared to see twice, Amy.”
“You’re prejudiced, obviously; and I’ve a good mind to say maliciously
prejudiced. I don’t know how much you saw of him, because I can’t be
invited to a Wanderers’ Club dinner; you don’t know how much I saw of
him, because you missed some distant train and didn’t come here to the
ball last night. But I’ll tell you: I saw all I could. He’s perfectly
and entirely charming. He’s been everywhere, done everything, and he
isn’t a bit _blasé_.”
“I heard,” said Fairfax, “that Mrs. Shelf was lionizing Onslow round last
night as the great traveler. Does he belong to the advertising variety
of globe-trotter? Did he sit in a side room and hold a small audience
spellbound with a selection from his adventures?”
Miss Rivers shrugged her shoulders. “Not he. But you know what Mrs. Shelf
is when she gets any show person at one of her functions. The poor man
had to stand it for a while, because she held on to him as though he
might have been her fan. But he escaped as soon as he decently could by
saying he wanted to dance. He asked me to give him the fourth waltz. I
did it out of sheer pity, because I saw Mrs. Shelf’s thumbscrews were
making him writhe.”
“’Shows how little a man knows about the girl he’s engaged to. Now, I had
always imagined that, having the pick of the men, you invariably wrote
down the best dancers, and never saddled yourself with a stranger who was
a very possible duffer.”
Amy Rivers laughed. “That’s generalizing. But it was different last
night, because, so to speak, I’m a member of the household here. A ward
counts as a sort of niece, doesn’t she? Or between that and an adopted
daughter? But, anyway, it was out of sheer pity for Mr. Onslow in the
first instance, and it was with distinct qualms that I let him take me
down to dance. I quite intended, after half a round, to say the room was
too crowded, and go and sit somewhere. That is to say, I made up my mind
to do this when he asked me. However, when I dropped my fingers on his
arm to go down-stairs, I had my doubts. You know after two seasons one
gets instinctively to know by the first touch how a man will dance. And
when he put his arm around me, and we moved to the music, I felt like
going on forever. Waltzing is hard just now, because it’s in a transition
state between two styles; but his dancing was something to dream about.
We started off with the newest quick waltz. Hamilton, it was just lovely!
He was so perfect that just for experiment I altered my step—by degrees,
you know. Automatically, and without anything being seen, he changed too;
and we were dancing the old slow glide before I knew. And his steering
was perfect. In that whirling, teeming, tangled mob he never bumped me
once. I gave him two more waltzes, and cut another couple in his favor.”
“Which makes five in all,” said Fairfax, rather stiffly.
Amy Rivers took his hand and patted it. “Don’t be cross, dear. You know
how I love a good dance, and one doesn’t meet a partner like Mr. Onslow
every day. I suppose he’s done his waltzing in Vienna and Paris, and
Yorkshire, and New Orleans, as well as here in London; and by averaging
them all up he can’t help but be good.”
“Is it from going to those places that Mrs. Shelf called him the Great
Traveler?”
“Of course not! Hamilton, how stupid you are about him! Why, he’s
rummaged about in every back corner of the world, so they say.”
“So they say, yes! Teheran to Timbuctoo. But what does he say himself
about his wanderings beyond the tram-lines? Shuffles mostly, doesn’t he?
And who’s met him anywhere? Not a soul will come forward to speak. I
tell you, Amy, there’s something uncanny about this Patrick Onslow. He
turns up here periodically in London after some vague exploring trip to a
place that isn’t mapped, and you can never pin him to tell exactly where
he’s been. He comes with money, spends it _en prince_, and then goes off
again, nominally perhaps to the Gobi Desert, and returns with another
cargo.”
“How romantic!” said Miss Rivers.
“Yes, isn’t it?” said her _fiancé_ drily. “If he’d lived a century
earlier, one would have said he’d got a sound business connection as a
pirate somewhere West Indies way. As this year is eighteen ninety-three,
and that explanation’s barred, one simply has to accept him as an
uncomfortable mystery.”
“Hamilton, how absurd you are! Wherever did all this rigmarole come from?”
“From the club, and London gossiping places generally. I suppose we ought
to be indebted to Onslow for providing us with something to talk about.”
“But tell me; if his antecedents are so queer, how is it he goes about
so much here? He’s apparently asked everywhere—at least, so Mrs. Shelf
says—and he knows everybody who’s worth knowing.”
Fairfax laughed. “Why does London society take up with an ex-bushranger
from Australia, or a glorified advertising cowboy from the wild, wild
West? Simply because London society is extremely parochial, and gets
desperately bored with its own little self undiluted. Now, Onslow has
undoubtedly wandered about outside the parish; and occasionally he lets
drop hints which make one think he’s seen some queerish ups and downs
in places where polite society doesn’t go; and, in fact, he preserves
a good-humored reticence about most of his doings. This makes people
thoughtful and speculative. If a Chinese extradition warrant was to turn
up to-morrow to arrest him for sticking up a three-button mandarin
beyond the Great Wall, nobody would be a bit surprised; or if he were to
tell the City this afternoon that he’d a concession for a silver mine
in an unexplored part of Venezuela which he wished to dispose of at
reasonable rates, we’d take it with pleased equanimity. Now, you know,
Amy, there’s a fearful joy in entertaining a man of that stamp.”
“Especially when he’s as fascinating as Mr. Onslow can be when he
chooses. And such a waltzer! But you speak as if he was a savage from
some back settlement, come into decent society for the first time. He
isn’t that in the least. He’s a gentleman distinctly.”
“My dear Amy, I never meant to suggest that he was not. There’s no
particular secret about his life. He comes of a good west-county family;
was a Harrow boy, and played in their eleven; went through Cambridge;
and afterwards found a berth in the Diplomatic Service. Then, by way of
variety, he got engaged to be married to a girl who jilted him; on the
strength of which he began to run wild. He started on six months’ leave
for a trip into Tibet, but he stayed beyond the limits of the postal
system for two years and a half, and when he got back to England the
Diplomatic Corps found that they could get on very well without him. So
he continued his rambles. He doesn’t seem able to settle down.”
“That’s because he can’t forget the girl who threw him over,” exclaimed
Miss Rivers. “How awfully romantic! I wonder who she was? She couldn’t
have been anybody nice, or she wouldn’t have done it, because he’s a
regular dear. And fancy his remembering her all this time! I just love
him for it.”
“Some fellows,” remarked Fairfax judiciously, “would get jealous if the
girl they were going to marry talked about another man this way.”
Miss Rivers reassured him first practically, and then in words. “You
goose!” said she; “if I cared for him in that way, don’t you see, I
shouldn’t have spoken about him to you at all.”
Fairfax did not answer directly. He kissed her thoughtfully, and after a
while he said: “I’m not superstitious, dear, as a general thing. Work in
a shipping office tends to make one painfully matter of fact. But for all
that, I wish this fellow Onslow would either marry or get crumpled up in
a cab accident, or have himself safely fastened down out of harm’s way
somewhere. I’ve got a foreboding, Amy, that he’s going to do a bad turn
either to you or to me—which means both of us. I know it’s absurd, but I
can’t get rid of it.”
“How creepy!” said Amy Rivers. “But what nonsense, Hamilton!”