ROCKETT
Lang’s fury of wrath slowly cooled. He sat down on the berth, drank a
glass of water, and eventually laughed. These fellows had taken so
much trouble over him, had been so patient, and all to get the wrong
man. Evidently they intended to keep him on board, still hoping that
he could restore their friend to life, or at any rate to speech.
He removed his wet clothes and lay down, hardly expecting to sleep. He
listened to the throb of the screw, the wash of water, the occasional
trampling steps overhead. He dozed fitfully, waking with a start,
listening to the sea sounds, and at last found his room suddenly
flooded with light.
A brilliant reflection of sunshine from the sea came through the port.
He had slept after all, and more soundly than he had done for weeks,
and he had a half minute of stupid bewilderment before the full memory
of his predicament came back.
He rolled out of the berth, washed, dressed hastily, and was just
ending his hurried toilet when some one knocked gently, then the door
opened. A tall negro, clad in soiled white, appeared in the entrance
and addressed Lang with tremendous suavity.
“Good mo’nin’, doctah! De captain, he say yoh breakfus’ served any
time dat yoh desires fo’ hit, doctah, suh!”
“All right!” Lang returned, and pushed past the steward into the
cabin. No one was there; a white cloth was spread at one end of the
table, but he made for the stairway and ran up to the deck.
A blaze of sunshine met him, and a glitter of sky and sea. The weather
had cleared; the sun shone gloriously low in the east, and the ocean
rippled and sparkled, frothing delicately in long, white-crowned
lines. The air itself was warm, sparkling, exhilarating; it went
through Lang’s system like a stimulant. No land was in sight anywhere,
unless a faint cloud astern meant the coast, and at first he saw no
one on the deck.
Then, walking forward, he espied the youthful gangster, in a white
jersey and cloth cap, a cigarette butt in his mouth, slouching over
the rail. He glanced aside at the doctor, nodded furtively, and seemed
to sidle off. Close to the bow Lang now perceived a couple of negro
deck hands busied over something, and two men on the bridge.
He found Carroll unexpectedly at his side, but it was no longer the
dandy yachtsman of the day before. Carroll now wore a faded greenish
sweater, “pin-check” trousers and soiled tennis shoes, but he greeted
the physician with the same extreme amiability.
“Well, are you ready to put me ashore?” Lang demanded, with an
implacable air.
“Oh, come on, now, doctor!” Carroll pleaded. “Don’t go back to that.
Ain’t you comfortable here? You wouldn’t leave a sick man on our hands
like that? He’s desperate sick—you said it yourself.”
“This is no yacht. Why did you say it was?” Lang pursued.
“Ain’t it? Say, Floyd, he says the _Cavite_ ain’t a yacht,” said
Carroll, addressing the spectacled member of the crew who just then
sauntered up.
“Well, what’s a yacht?” Floyd returned. “The _Cavite_ isn’t anything
else in particular, and she’s got no business, and she isn’t going
anywhere, and what’s that but a yacht?”
“No business? Nothing in wet goods?” inquired Lang.
“I don’t know what you mean,” returned Carroll blankly. “Had
breakfast? We told the steward to call you. No? Come down and eat,
then. A man shouldn’t talk on an empty stomach—apt to say things he
don’t mean.”
Lang had had no supper the previous night, and he felt very empty. It
was not a breakfast to be despised, he found, when the suave steward
produced it.
When he had finished he stepped into the sick room to glance at his
patient. There was no change, except that they had turned the man over
for greater comfort. Lang stood looking down at that massive,
powerful, oblivious countenance, and went back to the saloon with his
resolution fixed.
“What do you think? Is there any chance?” demanded Carroll anxiously.
“I think that you know more about this case than I do,” said Lang. “I
can’t find any physical cause for his condition. Before I go any
further I’ll have to know the history of the case—just what happened
to him; how he came into this state. I want to know who this man is,
and”—he hesitated, and then went on firmly—“why you are so anxious for
him to speak before he dies.”
Floyd blew a cloud of smoke, and glanced at the physician with a
queerly mocking eye.
“I’m not surprised that you’re curious,” said Carroll directly. “It
must look a queer mess, to an outsider. We talked it all over last
night, and agreed that you’d have to be told sooner or later.”
He stopped and glanced at Floyd’s imperturbable face.
“You’ll pledge yourself to the strictest secrecy, now and afterward?”
he said.
“A physician doesn’t make such pledges,” said Lang stiffly. “His
patients trust him, or they don’t.”
“Oh, we trust you, all right, doctor,” Carroll hastened to say. “It’s
a matter of professional honor; we’ll leave it at that. This man——” He
hesitated again. “Did you ever hear of the Automotive Fuel Company of
New Jersey?”
Lang barely repressed a startled movement.
“I have,” he said calmly.
“Arthur Rockett, its president, wrecked it, and disappeared with
around a quarter of a million.”
“So I have heard. But what has that to do with this case?”
“Just this,” said Carroll, motioning toward the stateroom door. “That
man in there—that’s Arthur Rockett.”
Lang’s brain suddenly seemed to swim slightly, yet he controlled his
voice.
“Are you sure?” he said. “Rockett was supposed to have got away to
South America.”
“Absolutely sure,” said Floyd, with his voice of cold certainty. “I’ve
seen him often enough in New York to know him. I ought to—I had twenty
thousand dollars in his cursed company.”
“And I lost all I had saved up,” put in Carroll eagerly. “It wasn’t so
much—only about seven thousand dollars. Rockett broke us all, the
captain, too. Jerry had to mortgage his ship.”
“And your young friend in the white sweater?” Lang inquired. “Has he
lost his savings, too?”
Floyd smiled faintly.
“That’s Louie Bonelli—‘Louie the Lope,’ they call him in Harlem. No, I
don’t think Louie ever had any savings, but he’s been very useful to
us, as you’ll see, and he’s going to share with the rest of us.”
Lang leaned back, trying to look indifferent. He had never seen the
fraudulent promoter, whose flight had taken all his own savings, but
he had seen newspaper portraits, and he vaguely remembered an elderly
man with a heavy, big-boned countenance, who might very well be this
very man aboard the _Cavite_. This unconscious patient of his had a
strong, audacious face, such as would have fitted the great wrecker.
“Dr. Long,” said Floyd impressively, “all we want is justice. We only
want to get our own back. We never expected to get a dollar out of it.
It came by chance. Carroll and I were in New York. Louie was down
around New Orleans, for reasons best known to himself, and he happened
to spot Rockett at Pass Christian.
“All the cops were sure he’d left the country, but he hadn’t. He’d
grown a little beard, and browned his face and arms, and he had a
bungalow and a fruit-and-truck ranch on the Gulf coast, and he dressed
in overalls and really worked at his fig trees and orange grove. He
must have had it all ready for months before, and it was the best sort
of hide out, considering the sort of high roller he’d been up North—a
spender, a prince, a man who couldn’t walk but had a new car every
week.
“Louie wasn’t quite certain, but he sent for Carroll and me, and we
came down. It was Rockett, right enough. Then we called in Jerry
Harding, who was running his little freighter along the coast. We held
a council. We knew Rockett had his plunder planted somewhere, and was
lying low till the storm blew over a little. Well, what do you suppose
we’d do? What would you’ve done yourself? Have him arrested, and take
a chance of getting a dividend among the creditors—five cents on the
dollar? We didn’t see it that way. We studied his movements, his way
of life. We hauled the ship close inshore one night, went up to his
shack, and held him up. He lived all alone, and it was a mile to the
next house. We put it to him—what was he going to do about it? All we
wanted was what we’d lost. He could keep the rest, for us.
“He was as stubborn as the devil. Can’t you see it in his face? He
denied that he was Rockett, denied everything. Finally he turned
silent, and wouldn’t speak at all. So we gave him the third degree.”
“You mean you tortured him?” cried Lang, remembering the burn upon
Rockett’s arm.
“I wouldn’t call it torture, exactly. Louie did it. We worked over him
nearly all night. Maybe Louie got a little too rough at the last. We
were all rather on edge. Anyhow, all at once he heaved up out of the
chair where he was tied, and went over sidewise on the floor.
“He seemed to be stunned, but he didn’t come to. We tried everything,
but no use. It was getting daylight and we were afraid to wait any
longer; so we searched the house without finding anything, and brought
him on board here.”
“We expected him to wake up any minute,” Carroll went on, as Floyd
stopped. “We watched him day and night. We knew he couldn’t really be
hurt. We tried an electric battery—thought he might be shamming. Then
we got scared that he was going to die on us. He seemed to be getting
weaker; twice we thought he’d passed out. We couldn’t let him die till
we found out where he’d planted the stuff. So it looked like a godsend
when we heard that you were in Mobile, and read about the great work
you’d done on just such cases.”
“Yes, we were at our wits’ end, doctor,” said Floyd. “You mustn’t hold
a grudge against us for half kidnaping you. Really it’s a compliment.
And you won’t lose anything. If you can help us, and get Rockett to
talk, and we find out what he’s done with his loot—why, you can ask
for what you like, and get it.”
They fixed intense eyes on the doctor. Lang shrugged his shoulders.
“I can’t revive him, not at this stage anyway,” he said. “I couldn’t
if I would, and I wouldn’t try.”
“But we’ve _got_ to make him talk!” cried Carroll. “What’s the chance
that he’ll come round?”
“About an even chance, I should think, whether he gradually improves,
or gradually sinks and dies without ever regaining consciousness. Of
course a moment might come when he could be revived with
stimulants—you can’t predict in these cases.”
“But you won’t desert us?” Floyd pleaded. “You’ll see us through?”
Lang puffed his cigar, as if thinking about it. But he was not in any
doubt. It was the most stupendous piece of luck, and Eva Morrison had
been more than right when she urged him to accept this call.
Not that he believed half the story. He did not believe that any of
this ship’s company had ever owned Rockett’s stock. They did not look
like an investing class. Somehow they must have discovered Rockett’s
hiding place, and were trying to “hijack” him; or they might have been
Rockett’s own confederates, now turned against him. But however this
might be, Lang was determined not to let Arthur Rockett out of his
sight.
“It’s an interesting sort of case,” he said, with admirable
detachment. “Yes, I’ll stay with you till he speaks—or dies.”