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A CRIME OF THE UNDER-SEAS
By GUY BOOTHBY
_Author of "A Bid for Fortune" "Doctor Nikola" "The Beautiful
White Devil" "Pharos, the Egyptian" etc. etc._
ILLUSTRATIONS BY STANLEY L. WOOD
LONDON
WARD LOCK & CO LIMITED
1905
[Illustration: "Dropped him again with a cry that echoed in my helmet."]
CONTENTS
A CRIME OF THE UNDER-SEAS
THE PHANTOM STOCKMAN
THE TREASURE OF SACRAMENTO NICK
INTO THE OUTER DARKNESS
THE STORY OF TOMMY DODD AND "THE ROOSTER"
QUOD ERAT DEMONSTRANDUM
CUPID AND PSYCHE
MISPLACED AFFECTIONS
IN GREAT WATERS
MR. ARISTOCRAT
THIS MAN AND THIS WOMAN
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
"DROPPED HIM AGAIN WITH A CRY THAT ECHOED IN MY HELMET."
"I SPRANG TO MY FEET ON HEARING THIS. 'NOT THE FIRST!' I CRIED."
"A NATIVE FRUIT-HAWKER CAME ROUND THE CORNER."
"THEN, JUST AS HER NOSE GROUNDED, MY EYES CAUGHT SIGHT OF A BIG
CREEPER-COVERED MASS."
"ONE MOONLIGHT NIGHT ... SOMEBODY STEPPED UP BESIDE HIM."
A Crime of the Under-Seas
CHAPTER I
There is an old saying that "one half of the world does not know how the
other half lives," but how true this is very few of us really
understand. In the East, indeed, it amounts almost to the marvellous.
There are men engaged in trades there, some of them highly lucrative, of
which the world in general has never heard, and which the ordinary
stay-at-home Englishman would in all probability refuse to believe, even
if the most trustworthy evidence were placed before him. For instance,
on the evening from which I date the story I am now about to tell you,
three of us were seated chatting together in the verandah of the Grand
Oriental Hotel at Colombo. We were all old friends, and we had each of
us arrived but recently in Ceylon. McDougall, the big red-haired
Scotchman, who was sitting on my right, had put in an appearance from
Tuticorin by a British India boat only that morning, and was due to
leave again for Burmah the following night. As far as I could gather he
earned his living mainly by smuggling dutiable articles into other
countries, where the penalty, if one is caught, is a fine of at least
one thousand pounds, or the chance of receiving upwards of five years'
imprisonment. The man in the big chair next to him was Callingway, a
Londoner, who had hailed the day before from South America, travelling
in a P. and O. steamer from Australia. He was tracking an absconding
Argentine Bank Manager, and, as it afterwards transpired, was, when we
came in contact with him, on the point of getting possession of the
money with which the other had left the country. Needless to say he was
not a Government servant, nor were the Banking Company in question aware
of his endeavours. Lastly there was myself, Christopher Collon, aged
thirty-six, whose walk in life was even stranger, if such a thing were
possible, than those of the two men I have just described. One thing at
any rate is certain, and that is that if I had been called upon to give
an accurate description of myself and my profession at that time, I
should have found it extremely difficult to do so. Had I been the
possessor of a smart London office, a private secretary, and half a
dozen corresponding clerks, I should probably have called myself a
private detective on a large scale, or, as they put it in the
advertisement columns of our daily papers, a Private Enquiry Agent. Yet
that description would scarcely have suited me; I was that and something
more. At any rate it was a pretty hard life, and by the same token a
fairly hazardous one. This will be the better understood when I say that
one day I might receive a commission by cablegram from some London firm,
who, we will suppose, had advanced goods to an Indian Rajah, and were
unable to obtain payment for them. It was my business to make my way to
his headquarters as soon as possible, and to get the money out of him by
the best means in my power, eating nothing but what was cooked for me by
my own servant meanwhile. As soon as I had done with him I might be sent
on very much the same sort of errand to a Chinese Mandarin in Hankow or
Canton, or possibly to worry a gold mining concession, or something of
the sort, out of one of the innumerable Sultans of the protected Malayan
States, those charming places where the head of the State asks you to
dinner at six and you are found at midnight with six inches of cold
_krise_ in your abdomen. On one occasion I remember being sent from
Singapore to Kimberley at three hours' notice to meet and escort a
Parsee diamond merchant from that town to Calcutta. And what was funnier
still, though we travelled to Cape Town together, and even shared the
same cabin on board the steamer afterwards, he never for an instant
suspected that I was spying upon him. Oftentimes I used to wonder what
he would have thought, had he only guessed that I knew he was carrying
upwards of a million pounds worth of diamonds in the simple leather belt
he wore next to his skin, and that every night I used, when he was
asleep, to convince myself that everything was right and that the stones
were still there. His was a precious life that voyage, at least so his
friends in Calcutta thought, and if I could only tell you all that
happened during our intercourse, you would not wonder that I was glad
when we reached India, and I had handed him over to the chief partners
of his firm. But there, if I were to go on telling you my adventures, I
should be talking from now to Christmas. Rather let me get to the matter
in hand, beside which everything I had ever attempted hitherto ranks as
nothing. When I have done I think you will admit that the familiar
saying, embodied in my first sentence, should be altered from "one half
the world does not know how the other half lives" to "one half the world
does not know how the other half _gets its living_." There is a
distinction with a good deal of difference.
I have often thought that there is no pleasanter spot in this strange
old world of ours than the Grand Oriental Hotel, Colombo. Certainly
there is not a more interesting place. There the student of character
will have sufficient examples before him to keep him continually at
work. Day and night vessels of all sorts and descriptions are entering
the harbour, hailing from at least three of the four known quarters of
the globe. At all hours men and women from Europe, from India, from
Malaysia, from the further East, from Australia, and also from the
Southern Seas and America _via_ Australia, troop in and out of that
hospitable caravanserai.
On this particular occasion, having talked of many things and half a
hundred times as many places, we had come back to the consideration of
our lives and the lack of home comforts they contained.
"If I could only see my way clear I'd throw it up, marry, and settle
down," said Callingway; "not in England, or Scotland, or America, for
that matter; but, to my thinking, in the loveliest island in the world."
"And where may that be?" I inquired, for I had my own ideas on the
subject.
"Tasmania," he answered promptly. "The land of the red-faced apple. I
know a little place on the Derwent that would suit me down to the
ground."
"I'd na gae ye a pinch of snuff for it," said McDougall, with
conviction. "What's life worth to a man in them hole-and-corner places?
When I've done wi' roamin' it's in my mind that I'll set myself down at
a little place I ken the name of, fifty miles north of the Clyde, where
there's a bit of fishing, and shootin', and, if ye want it, well, just a
drappie of the finest whuskey that was ever brewed in old Scotie. It's
ma thinkin' I've ruined ma digestion wi' all these outlandish liquors
that I've been swallowin' these twenty years gone. Don't talk o' your
Tasmanias to me. I'm nae fond o' them. What have you to say, Mr.
Collon?"
"You needn't be afraid. I'll not settle down as long as I can get
about," I answered. "If you fellows are tired of your lives I'm not, and
I'm certain of this much, Callingway, by the time you've been installed
in your Tasmanian home twelve months, and you, McDougall, have been on
your Scotch estate the same length of time, you'll both be heartily sick
of them and wishing yourselves back once more in the old life out here."
"Try me, that's all," replied Callingway fervently. "Think what our
present life is. We are here to-day and gone to-morrow. We've not a foot
of earth in the whole wide world that we can call our own. The only home
we know is a numbered room in a hotel or a cabin aboard a ship. We never
know when we get up in the morning whether by nightfall we shall not be
lying stark and cold shot through the heart, or with six inches of cold
steel through our lungs. Our nerves from year's end to year's end are
strained to breaking pitch, and there's not a single decent woman to be
found amongst the whole circle of our acquaintances. After all, a
wife's----"
"The lasses, the lasses, I agree with ye," interrupted McDougall without
ceremony. "After all 'tis the lasses who make the joy o' livin'. Hear
what Robbie says:--
"'Health to the sex! ilk guid chiel says,
Wi' merry dance in winter days,
An' we to share in common:
The gust o' joy, the balm o' woe,
The soul o' life, the Heav'n below,
Is rapture-giving woman.'"
"If you're going to get on that strain you're hopeless," I said. "When
Callingway begins to think it is time for him to settle down, and you,
McDougall, start quoting Burns, then I come to the conclusion that I'd
better bid you good-night."
As I spoke a "ricksha" drew up at the steps, and, when the coolie had
set down his shafts, an elderly gentleman alighted. Having paid the man
his fare he entered the verandah, and so made his way into the house. I
had got so accustomed to new arrivals by this time that, beyond thinking
what a good picture of the substantial old English merchant this one
would have made, I did not pay much attention to him.
"Well," said Callingway, after the few minutes' pause which followed up
my last remark, "I think I will ask you gentlemen to drink another
whiskey and soda to my success, and then I will leave you and retire to
my virtuous couch. My confounded boat sails at six o'clock to-morrow
morning, and if I don't sail in her I shall lose the society of a most
estimable gentleman whom I am accompanying as far as Hong Kong. As it
looks like being a profitable transaction I've no desire he should give
me the slip."
He touched the bell on the table at his side, and when the boy arrived
to answer it, ordered the refreshment in question. We drank to his
success in the business he was about to undertake, and then both he and
McDougall bade me good-night and retired, leaving me alone in the
verandah. It was a lovely evening, and as I was not at all in the humour
for sleep I lit another cheroot and remained on where I was, watching
the glimmering lights in the harbour beyond, and listening to the
jabbering of the "ricksha" boys on the stand across the road.
As I sat there I could not help thinking of the curious life I was
leading, of the many strange adventures I had had, and also of my
miraculous escapes from what had seemed at the time to be almost certain
death. Only that very day I had received an offer by telegram from a
well-known and highly respected firm in Bombay inviting me to undertake
a somewhat delicate piece of business in the Philippine Islands. The
price offered me was, in every sense of the word, a good one; but I
detested Spanish countries so much that if anything better turned up I
was prepared to let the other fall through without a second thought. But
one has to live, even in the East, and for this reason I did not feel
justified in throwing dirty water away before I had got clean.
As these thoughts were passing through my mind I distinctly heard some
one step into the verandah from the door on my right, and a moment
later, to my surprise, the stout old gentleman who, half an hour or so
before, I had thought so typical of an English merchant, came round the
chairs towards me. Having reached the place where I was sitting he
stopped, and, taking a cheroot from his pocket, proceeded to light it.
During the operation I noticed that he took careful stock of me, and,
when he had finished, said quietly,--
"Mr. Collon, I believe?"
"That is my name," I answered, looking up at him through the cloud of
smoke. "Pray how do you come to be acquainted with it?"
"I have heard of you repeatedly," he replied.
"Indeed," I said. "And pray is there any way in which I can be of
service to you?"
"I think so," he replied, with a smile. "As a matter of fact, I have
just arrived from Madras, where, hearing in an indirect way that you
were supposed to be in Ceylon, I undertook this journey on purpose to
see you."
"Indeed!" I answered, with considerable surprise. "And pray what is it
you desire me to do for you?"
"I want you to take charge of what I think promises to be one of the
most extraordinary and complicated cases even in your extensive
repertoire," he said.
"If it is as you say, it must indeed be a singular one," I answered.
"Perhaps it would not give you too much trouble to furnish me with the
details."
"I will do so with the greatest pleasure," he replied. "If you will
permit me to take my seat beside you, you shall hear the story from
beginning to end. I think, then, that you will agree with me that,
provided you undertake it, it will, as I insinuated just now, in all
probability prove the most sensational, as well as the most lucrative,
case in which even you have hitherto been engaged."
Thereupon he seated himself beside me, and told the following remarkable
story.