HER FATHER
The flash light dropped out of Lang’s hand. The girl’s light shifted;
he heard a quick movement, the scrape of a match, and the yellow glow
of a lamp shone out. She set it on the kitchen table, and stood gazing
at him, still amazed, as if beyond speech.
“Is it possibly you, Doctor Lang?” she said unsteadily. “I found—I
thought—— Oh, what does this mean? Are you insane?”
“I came back for the keys,” Lang stammered. It was all he could think
of to say. He tried to pull himself together, and got upon his feet.
What was she doing here, for that matter, in Rockett’s house?
“It’s all a mistake,” he tried to explain. “Rockett himself told me to
come here—his last words. It wasn’t for myself. The creditors’
money——”
“I don’t know what you mean. Creditors? Why did you come here at all?”
“Well, if it comes to that, how do you come to be here yourself?”
returned Lang, driven to defense.
“Here? In my own father’s house?” she exclaimed in the most genuine
amazement.
Lang’s brain almost turned dizzy again. The wildest suppositions
flashed through it. Was Eva really Morrison, or was Rockett really
Rockett? Could she be the daughter of the Automotive Fuel defaulter
without knowing it?
“Oh, I want to know what it all means!” she cried pitifully. “I waited
in Mobile for my father. He never came. At last I came out here, to
our house. Thieves had been through it; it was turned upside down.
Father’s money box was in this room, burst open. I found the keys—with
your name. I couldn’t believe it. I thought they had been stolen from
you. I can’t believe yet. Why don’t you speak?” she cried
passionately. “Say it—it wasn’t you!
“You must know something,” she went on, after waiting in vain for Lang
to answer. “Father had been here; his things were here; his bed had
been slept in, and he’s gone. Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Lang groaned. He was so bewildered that he felt
incapable of clear thought. “It isn’t as bad as it looks. Don’t think
the worst of me. I didn’t ransack the house. I had authority to come
here, and I have the money safe.”
“I don’t care about any money. It’s my father!” she reiterated. “Have
they murdered him?”
“I don’t know!” exclaimed the surgeon in despair. “Wait—who was your
father? What was he like?”
“You don’t know?” She stared amazed. “Why, Edward Morrison, the
explorer. Don’t you know his books?”
She turned and ran into the next room, returning immediately with a
large volume, and showed a portrait frontispiece. It was a book of
South American travel and archæology. Lang remembered Edward
Morrison’s name very well now, though he had never read any of his
books. But he did not think of that at the moment; for the half length
of the portrait, though well clad, healthy, with open, frowning eyes
and resolute countenance was beyond any doubt the figure of the
haggard and unconscious patient of the _Cavite_.
“Oh, Lord!” Lang groaned, taking this in.
“You know him? You’ve seen him?”
“Yes—I’ve seen him.” Lang cast about for softening phrases. “I was
aboard a steamer with him, only the other day. Why,” he cried,
remembering, “it was the yacht, you know—that call that you urged me
to accept. He was the patient I was to treat, only they didn’t tell me
his right name.”
“My father?” said Eva, dazed. “How did he get on a yacht? But that man
was very ill—paralyzed.”
“Yes. Not seriously, though, as I think now. But—but the yacht was run
down two days later, in a fog. I helped get your father on deck; I
tried to save him. The ship went down under us. I never saw him again.
I don’t know whether anybody was saved but myself and one other.”
He felt the cool bluntness of his story, but he could think of no
other words. Eva Morrison searched his face with wide, imploring eyes
which he could not meet. She turned about slowly, and went back into
the darkness of the dining room, putting out her hands as if blinded.
She did not come back.
Left alone with his confusion and wretchedness, Lang waited for
several minutes. He thought he heard a suppressed noise, hesitated a
little longer, and then took the lamp and went after her. The
devastated room had been put into order again, and Eva was huddled on
a wide couch, her head buried in her arms, trembling with gasping
sobs.
He spoke gently to her. She did not move, perhaps did not hear him. He
stood over her uncertainly for some seconds, tortured.
“Don’t sorrow so—not yet,” he tried to comfort her. “We don’t know
that your father is lost at all. Most likely he has been picked up, as
I was. That ocean swarms with ships. I’d have plenty of hope. He may
be ashore by this time.”
Still she made no sign whatever of having heard, except that her
convulsive sobbing subsided a little. Unbearably wrung by her
suffering, Lang knelt down impulsively and put his arm over her
shoulders.
“Don’t grieve so, for God’s sake!” he said. “I’ll help you—everything
I can do. Have courage! Your father can’t be drowned.”
She did not move from him; in fact she seemed to nestle into his
protective arm. She grew quieter, presently turned her head, and sat
up.
“Do you think there’s any—any hope?” she stammered, looking at him
helplessly.
It was no time for truth. Lang lied boldly.
“Every chance. There were boats out at once. Your father is most
likely ashore now.”
He had a vivid mental picture of the semiparalyzed man on that dark
deck, as the _Cavite_ plunged bows down. He shuddered, but Eva seemed
encouraged, and spoke more collectedly.
“Oh, I hope it may be so!” she said. “I won’t give up, yet. Couldn’t I
telegraph to all the places where he might have come ashore?
“But—but,” she faltered, shaky again, “to think that I hadn’t seen him
at all for nearly a year! Father and I were always such friends and
comrades. My mother died years ago. We two were everything—just all
each other had. I let him keep me up North at college when I should
have been with him. But he was away on his expeditions so much. He
built this house for us to live in; we made plans for our life here,
and he was just beginning to get credit for the great work he’d
done—for all his exploration in South America—and now, to have it cut
off—it leaves all the world empty. But it can’t be; he can’t be
drowned!”
“Of course not!” Lang cried. “Nobody could have missed being picked up
on that sea. Why, it’s almost like a crowded street, with ships. We’ll
telegraph to all the ports, as you said. Good idea! I think you’d
better go back to Mobile with me. I’ve got a car down the road. You
can’t stay alone here.”
“I’m not afraid. I’ve been here alone before,” said Eva. “But,” she
went on, “I don’t understand yet how you came to be here. And then,
what was my father doing on board that yacht? It all seems a puzzle.”
“It’s more than a puzzle.”
Anything to distract her mind now, and he plunged into an account of
his adventures on board the _Cavite_. He had to tread warily. He
suppressed the fact that her father had been tortured, that he was
unconscious and paralyzed. He represented that Morrison had been
obstinately keeping silence. And when he came to the man’s last
incoherent instructions, Eva interrupted, anxiously.
“He wanted you to find something important. He must have meant you to
pass it to me. What did you find?”
“It was that steel dispatch box; it had some stock
certificates—nothing else but a bundle of drawings and photographs. We
sold the stock. I didn’t understand, of course. I thought it was for
the Rockett creditors. We were lucky enough to catch it just at its
high point and we—well, we speculated on it a little. Eventually we
got out with over twelve thousand dollars. It’s all in the bank at
Mobile. It’s all yours, of course. I’ll have it transferred to you
to-morrow.”
What luck, he thought, that he had neither split it with Carroll nor
turned it in to the courts.
Eva was reflecting gravely. “That was the money for his next
expedition. It’s more than he often had. His expeditions generally
cost far more than they brought in. He’s just come back from southern
Chile, you know. He was going again this season, and he was going to
take me with him, as far as Valparaiso, anyway.”
“Well, the money is here all waiting for him,” Lang returned.
“And the photographs and sketches you spoke of—have you them safely,
too?”
“No, I believe Carroll still has them,” he admitted. “I’ve not thought
of them since. But I’ll get them back for you. Do you suppose that
gang imagined that your father had large quantities of valuables
hidden? Surely they didn’t take all that trouble for his little block
of oil stock. Why should they have carried him off against his will?
Or, did they? What were they trying to get out of him? Have you any
idea?”
Eva seemed to reflect long, and then shook her head silently.
“Is it possible that they really thought he was Rockett?” Lang
surmised, thinking hard; and in the ensuing silence the little clock
on the mantel tinkled three times.
“Three o’clock!” he exclaimed. “Too late to talk of all this any
longer. You can’t stay here alone. I’ve a car waiting, and I’ll take
you back to town with me. Get your things together.”
“No, I’ll stay here, at least till to-morrow night. If father should
be found word will probably be sent here. I’m not in the least afraid,
and you were the only burglar, after all.”
Lang tried hard to persuade her, but she insisted. He gave up at last.
After all, the night was nearly over.
“You’ll be back at the Iberville in Mobile to-morrow without fail,
though,” he said. “If you’re not I’ll be out here to bring you.
To-morrow I’m sure we’ll have good news.”
He did not feel equal to any more argument or encouragement. Eva
jumped up and came after him as he turned to go, holding something in
her hand.
“I’m so glad you did come—even as a burglar,” she said, with a faint
smile. “You’ve been very kind and cheering, and—here are your keys.”
Lang groped down to the gate in the twilight, and looked back at the
lighted window blind. He could not quite make up his mind to leave the
girl alone with her grief, nor could he venture to go back. He
lingered about the gate, and finally sat down on the ground, with his
back against a tree.
The light in the house presently went out. Eva had gone to
bed—probably not to sleep. Lang felt an extraordinary tenderness and
pity for the girl. She was brave; she had come out boldly with her
flash light and revolver when she heard him in the house. Her father
was almost surely drowned. He would have to help her through the
coming bad days, as she had helped him through his own.
He half dozed, wondering why the _Cavite’s_ crew had wanted to make
her father talk. He would see Carroll and get the truth out of him—get
the photographs, too. He dozed again, awoke and dozed, till the pale
dawn caught him asleep.
He got up, cramped and very cold. Morrison’s house was dim and dead in
the dawn. He started down the road, shivering, sleepy, half starved
and irritable.
He found his taxi at Persia, the driver asleep on the cushions. The
long drive back to Mobile was too much to contemplate. He told the man
to drive to the nearest hotel, and dozed off in the car.
He awoke among streets, trees, houses. He did not know where he was,
nor care. A greasy all-night lunch counter met his eye, where he
swallowed rolls and hot milk. They told him that there was a hotel in
the next block. He never learned its name, but he woke up the night
clerk and secured a room. He felt incapable of thought; the
Morrison-Rockett imbroglio in its last development was too much for
him. He tore off his clothes in a sort of fury of perplexity and
fatigue and tumbled between the sheets, where he fell instantly into a
deathlike sleep.