HE TURNS UP AGAIN
At the Orowoc House the largest and best furnished of the private
suites was occupied by Carolyn's stern looking friend and his wife.
The latter's maid, who was a French-woman, slept in the room next to
her mistress. The valet and George, the coloured man, were otherwise
bestowed.
For two hours each morning--from eight to ten--and after a plain and
ample breakfast, the master of the wealth which this style of living
revealed, sat in the room he used personally, at a table on which was a
telephone. The hotel help discussed with much gusto what it must have
cost to have a private wire to his New York office opened for those two
hours. With certain memoranda and a notebook before him, this master
of men and gold called his secretaries and managers, one by one, and
gave them instructions for the day. Each made his report, too, of the
previous twenty-four hour's activities. The master jotted down his
notes and finally conversed at some length with his chief secretary.
After that he was free to spend the remainder of the day with his wife.
He refused to answer any telephone call save during those two hours,
and mail and telegraph messages piled up on his table as they pleased.
He gave them not even a glance until the next morning. This was the
busy man's vacation time. He had spent several summer weeks in this
fashion for three years--ever since that time when the haughty lady had
become such a burden to him and to herself.
The day following his conversation with Carolyn May wherein she had
spoken of his automobile being at the Corners, this master of men sent
a special message to one of his employ s in his New York office:
"Come here with René and the _White Streak_, tomorrow."
There was no explanatory phrase attached to the message. This man was
not in the habit of explaining in any case.
Therefore a little before noon the next day a forty foot turbine launch
was sighted off the neck, heading islandwards with a bone in her teeth.
She was painted white, she was as narrow as a shark, and her speed was
something to marvel at as she approached the narrow waterway that the
islanders called "the breach."
Beating up for the same point was the _Snatch It_, Barzilla Ball's
double-ender. She had been out to the banks since the previous morning,
and Barzilla proposed to put his catch aboard the New London steam
smack that left the port that afternoon. It was this handling of his
catch by a middleman that rasped the young fisherman on the raw. It was
too far for the _Snatch It_ to make market herself.
"Look at that thing coming, Mr. Bassett," said Barzilla, "She throws up
a wave two feet high, if it's an inch."
"Turbine," returned Baby Laird's father. "I used to--Well, they are
fast craft. If your boat had a quarter of her speed, Barzilla, you'd be
fixed good."
"Ain't it so? Le's see which of us will make the breach first."
He shifted his helm a little. Bassett went forward, in readiness to
drop the jib when the _Snatch It_ shot into the narrow waterway. He
had been used to sailing boats and small yachts since boyhood, and his
previous summers at Block Island had added to his sea-knowledge until,
as Barzilla said, he was as good as any "blooded banker." Barzilla had
let his crew go and insisted on paying Joe Bassett instead.
The latter kept a curious gaze upon the _White Streak_, which indeed
did leave a white streak in her wake as well as push a foaming wave
before her. The city man was not long puzzled as to the turbine's
identity; but he was amazed by seeing her in these waters.
"I've seen that thing before," drawled Barzilla. "Her owner's some big
bug. Looks like she was sent for an' was trying to git there, eh?"
"She can travel. But surely her owner isn't on Block Island?"
"Dunno. Ain't heard. Mebbe he's aboard her now."
Bassett turned his back on the swiftly sailing launch, which shot
across the bows of the double-ender and took the strait in advance.
The _Snatch It_ had to tack and beat across the pond to the steam
trawler, the skipper of which was buying fish and lobsters for the New
London market. The turbine had already docked.
The moment the _White Streak_ was tied up, the saturnine man whom
Carolyn May had twice had occasion to observe, landed and set his feet
toward the Orowoc House. René, who acted as engineer of the turbine as
he did chauffeur of the large car, was left aboard with two Japanese
boys who made up the crew.
The black-browed man addressed himself to the clerk of the hotel with
an assurance that made that functionary give him his best attention. He
asked for the man so well known in the financial world, and mentioned
his own name.
"He expects me. Shall I go right up?" he asked.
"I am sorry, sir. The gentleman and his lady have just gone to
drive--not ten minutes ago. They'll remain all day. I am instructed to
tell you that they will lunch at the South Light and that you are to
come across the island and meet him there. First they drive to the West
Side, I understand. You can hire a rig, sir."
"I know the island," said the dark man, briefly. "I'll walk."
The hotel carriage had appeared according to promise at the lower
end of the Ball lane on this forenoon. Carolyn and Edna, with Prince
barking madly before them, raced down from the cottage in the dooryard
of which Mrs. Cameron, the baby's mother, and Molly Ball stood to
watch the departure of the picnic party.
"I presume it is perfectly safe to let the children go with those
people," Carolyn's mother said. "They seem very nice--and somehow I
pity that woman. She looks so unhappy and discontented, except when she
is talking to Carolyn or playing with your baby," she added, smiling at
the pale lady.
"Land sake! you needn't fret 'bout them," declared the confident Molly
I. "If they've taken a shine to the baby, Miz Bassett, mebbe they'll
do something harnsome for him. You read 'bout rich folks doing such
things."
"But," murmured the baby's mother, hugging him more closely at the
thought, "we do not want people to patronize us, Laird and I. Even for
the baby's sake. We will not always be poor. I am sure if Laird once
gets into some business for which he is really fitted our hard times
will be over. We do not wish to be objects of charity."
"Wal, I dunno," said the practical island girl. "Wouldn't call it
charity. What you get is so much gained, 'cording to my notion. I'm as
independent as the next one; but these folks that have got too much
money ought to be let to spend it. And if they wanted to spend it on me
or mine, I sh'd let 'em!"
"Here come the Block Island Indians!" exclaimed the man in the
carriage. "Think you can stand such a wild crew for all day, Mother?"
"Let them climb right in here by me," said his wife, moving over on
the rear seat of the carriage to make room for the little girls, and
smiling more warmly upon them than Carolyn remembered having seen her
smile before. "I only wish Baby Laird were coming too."
"Oh, I _know_ he'd be glad to come," said Carolyn, getting into the
carriage after Edna. "But, you see, he wouldn't have his bottle. And
it's awfully important that he should have his bottle on time, you
know."
"It's awfully important that we _all_ have our meals on time," said
their host, laughing. "That is why I had the hotel people pack that
hamper for us that is strapped on behind."
That was a wonderfully interesting drive for the little girls. The
man seemed to know quite as much about Block Island as Captain Ozias
Littlefield.
The road took them within sight of the West Side life-saving station;
but they did not stop there on this occasion. They drove on past the
stone cottage and the strip of stone wall built by the last Indian who
lived on the island. His forefathers had owned Block Island in the
beginning and called it Manisses. This last Indian had built stone
fences all his life and built them so well that they would never fall
unless the island suffered an earthquake shock.
There were a good many gates to open and shut during the drive, for
the party passed through private property most of the way to the
lighthouse. They viewed all that was visible of the ancient wreck of
the _Killies_, and the black reefs and dashing waves along the south
shore of the island looked dangerous even to the little girls.
"What an awful thing it would be if a ship sailed right in here and
bumped its nose on these rocks!" Edna exclaimed. "I wouldn't want to
see _that_."
"I guess the folks couldn't jump ashore from, the ship, could they?"
queried Carolyn.
"Not very well," their friend and host agreed. "That is why they have
life savers all around the island. The life savers help to get people
off the wrecks--when there are any wrecks."
"My goodness!" Edna gasped. "I shall be scared to go home. Suppose the
steamboat is wrecked? Why don't they have railroads running to this
island? Then there would be no ships wrecked here."
"Why, how you talk, Edna Price!" said Carolyn. "They can't build
railroads on _water_!"
"One of these ox teams would be safe to ride over here on, wouldn't
it?" chuckled their host.
"But there isn't any _street_," cried Carolyn again with emphasis.
"Why, that's just as ridiculous as Edna wanting a railroad built!"
"Perhaps it is," admitted her friend meekly.
They came at length to the wind-blown downs and the lighthouse. The
face of the bluff here was very steep and rocky. The Atlantic billows
rolled in ponderously from the open sea and dashed their spray in
places half way to the brink of the bank. Out at sea many great sailing
ships as well as steam-propelled craft went past--coastwise ships and
those European-bound and returning from distant ports.
There were naval vessels in sight, too--several submarine chasers and a
destroyer or two; while in the distance a smudge of smoke against the
sky, the children were told, marked the swift passage of a dreadnaught.
Then their friend took them to the lighthouse, the keeper of which
treated them very nicely indeed. He allowed them to climb to the lamp
room and showed them all about the working of the great lantern. They
went out on the gallery, too, and the keeper let them look through his
glasses at a triangular white spot which he said was the riding sail of
the lightship on Nantucket Shoals, thirty miles from the island.
Beside the lighthouse itself was another building in which was housed
the fog siren--that solemn-toned horn the voice of which Edna had at
first believed was the "mewing" of a cow. And when she had seen the
mechanism that governed it, Edna declared that it "ought to sound as
loud as an elephant, let alone a cow."
"But you never heard an elephant, Edna Price!" cried Carolyn. "How do
you know an elephant's voice is any louder than a cow's?"
"My goodness! Isn't an elephant bigger?"
"Why, voices don't go according to size. Baby Laird, when he wants to,
can scream louder than _I_ can--and he isn't half as big," said the
philosophical Carolyn. "And that old bullfrog in Uncle Smith Dodge's
tughole can make more noise when he barks than Prince."
They might have had to argue the case before their host had there not
been a welcome call to dinner by the shining-faced George, who had
spread a cloth upon a flat rock in the shade of another rock, and under
his mistress' direction set forth such a repast that the little girls'
eyes sparkled when they saw it.
"Isn't it nice to be rich?" Edna whispered to Carolyn. "Oh, how I love
that salad! And lady fingers! Dear me, Car'lyn May, don't you wish you
could eat every day like this?"
"No," responded Carolyn, promptly. "For I know I should make myself
sick if I did. This is a party, and parties would be no fun if we had
'em ev'ry day."
This practical statement brought no rejoinder from Carolyn's friend,
for she was staring at a stranger who was approaching. Carolyn turned
her head to look, too. It was the saturnine man who had unpleasantly
impressed Carolyn on two previous occasions--once at the Corners and
once in the poor tenement house in New York where Baby Laird had lived.
"Ah! Here he is now!" their host said quickly, and rose to meet the
newcomer. Although he seemed to have expected the saturnine man,
Carolyn did not think his employer was glad to see him. His brow bent
sternly.
What they at first said the little girls did not hear, for they met
some yards from the flat rock at which the party was lunching. The lady
gave the person who had interrupted their repast no attention whatever.
But suddenly Carolyn heard her name called. She looked over her
shoulder and saw her friend beckoning to her.
"My husband wishes to speak to you, child," said the lady.
Carolyn May got up, excused herself politely, and ran to join her host
and the dark-browed fellow. The latter stared at the little girl with
surprise as well as chagrin, when she drew near.
"I recognize your informant," he said harshly, turning from the child
to his employer. "Heaven--and René--only know where we were. Up in some
backwoods settlement. We were actually lost, sir. Otherwise we would
not have got so far off the right trail to Boston."
"Boston! You were no more on the road to Boston where you were due,
than you were to the moon," said the gentleman sharply. "You knew
better--both you and René. Go back to the dock and wait till I return
tonight. I'll have something to say to you then."
He turned his back on the dark complexioned man, whose brow was more
deeply corrugated than usual. The latter's angry gaze was fixed upon
Carolyn and it seemed to threaten the unconscious child. Had she
observed this malevolent glance the little girl might have recalled the
dream she had had regarding this man and the chauffeur the night the
Truefelt House caught fire.