"Since when have you been soaking Diogenes and the later Cynics?"
"Chortle if you want to," he returned. "Old Man Socrates had it about
right when he said that virtue is knowledge, and Antisthenes went him
one better when he said, 'Let men gain wisdom--or buy a rope.' Another
time he says, 'A horse I can see, but horsehood I can not see.' That
applies to humanity, as well."
"Meaning that things--and people--are not always what they seem?"
"Meaning that people are so seldom what they seem that you can ignore
the exceptions. Somebody has said that there are two distinct entities
in the ego; the man as he sees himself, and the man as God sees him.
That is only a fraction of a great truth. There are as many entities as
the man has human contacts; he is not precisely the same man to any two
of his acquaintances, and he is a hypocrite with most."
"Bosh!" said I, thinking I had the key to all this hard-bitted, and
lately acquired, philosophy. "You have too much money, Bonteck; that is
all that is the matter with you."
He put down his oyster fork and looked me squarely in the eye. He
was the same handsome, upstanding young Hercules that he had always
been, but there was something new and more or less provocative in the
contemptuous set of the mouth and the half belligerent emphasis of the
well-defined jaw.
"You've said it, Dick; I have too much money, and other people haven't
enough," was his rather enigmatical retort. Then: "You may call it
madman raving if you like, but I've lost my sense of perspective; I
can't tell an honest man--or woman--when I see one."
"All of which leads up to?----"
"To the thing which has brought me to New Orleans, and to my reason for
wiring you from Havana. My philosophy has led me to the jumping-off
place, Dick. Before I am two months older I am going to know at least
one small bunch of people for what they really are under their skins.
And you are going to help me to acquire this invaluable information.
How does that proposal strike you?"
"It strikes me a trifle remindfully, if you insist on knowing," I said.
"I haven't been altogether out of touch with the home people, and quite
a few of them have had something to say about this loss of perspective
that you've just confessed to. I've been writing most of the gossip off
to profit and loss, but----"
"You needn't," was his brusque interruption. "As I've said, this is a
pretty rotten world, if anybody should ask."
"Is it, indeed? How many millions does it take to give a man that point
of view?"
"That is the devil of it," he said, with a touch of bitterness. "Will
you believe me when I say that, apart from yourself and two or three
other honest money-despisers like you, I don't really know, as man to
man, or man to woman, half a dozen people on the face of the planet?"
"I'll believe that you think so. Still, that is all piffle, as you very
well know. So far as the women are concerned, it merely means that you
haven't met the one and only."
Van Dyck was silent while the waiter was placing the meat course.
During the plate-changing interval I became unpleasantly conscious
of the presence--the curiously obtrusive presence--of a dark-faced,
black-mustachioed little man sitting two tables away, and apparently
engrossed in his dinner. Why this one foreign-looking individual, out
of the many late diners comfortably filling the large room, should
disturb me, I could not determine; but the vague disquietude came--and
remained. Twice I thought I caught the small man watching my tablemate
furtively from beneath his heavy eyebrows; and when Van Dyck began
to speak again, I was almost certain I detected that half mechanical
cocking of an ear which betrays the intentional and eager eavesdropper.
"The one and only woman," said Van Dyck musingly, taking up the
thread of the table talk at the point where it had been broken by the
shifting of plates. "That is another exploded fallacy, Preble. There
are dozens of the 'one-and-onlys,' each with a scheming mamma, or a
grafting father, or an impecunious guardian who has been thriftlessly
making ducks and drakes of his ward's trust funds. And they are all
so immitigably decent and well-behaved and conventional that butter
wouldn't melt in the mouth of a single one of them. They never, by any
chance, let you see one-sixty-fourth of an inch below the surface."
"I grant you surfaces are more or less deceptive," I admitted. "But
your charge is too sweeping. You can't lump humanity any more than you
can the stars in heaven."
"Can't I? Wait and you shall see. And it isn't altogether what you are
thinking; that I have been 'touched' so often that it has soured me.
Heaven knows I've been a perfect Pool of Bethesda to a whole worldful
of financial cripples ever since I left the university; but I don't
especially mind the graft. What I do mind is the fact that it makes
smiling hypocrites out of the grafters, big and little. Not one of them
dares show me his real self, and there are times when I am fairly sick
at heart for one little refreshing glimpse of humanity in the raw."
"Which is more piffle," I commented. "You didn't cable me to come and
eat a New Orleans dinner with you on the bare chance that I'd let you
work off a batch of grouches on me, did you?"
His answer was delayed so long that I wondered if he were trying to
determine beforehand how much or how little he might be obliged to tell
me. But finally he broke ground, rather cautiously, I thought, in the
field of the explanations.
"No; I didn't ask you for the purpose of unloading my peculiar and
personal grievances upon you, tempting as that may have been. I have
a deep-laid plot, and I want you to help me carry it out. It is just
about the maddest thing you ever heard of, and I've got to have at
least one sane man along--as a sort of sea-anchor to tie to when the
hurricane begins ripping the masts out of us, and all that."
"In other words, you are out to pick up a bit of moral backing for the
plot. Is that it?"
"You have hit it precisely. You are to go along and hold me up to
the mark, Dick. If I show any signs of weakening, you are to jab a
knife into me and twist it around a few times. You are on salary, you
know--if you care to have it that way."
"If you say money to me again, I quit you cold, right here and now,"
was my answer to that. And then: "Pitch out and tell me: what is this
piratical scheme that you are afraid you may not have the nerve to
carry through?"
The plotter sat back in his chair, regarding me through half-closed
eyelids; and again I thought I caught the dark-faced foreigner two
tables distant stealthily watching him.
"On the face of it, it looks almost as thrilling as an old maids' tea
party--and not any less conventional," Van Dyck began. "You have been
around and about a good bit in the Caribbean, haven't you?"
"I suppose I might be able to pilot the _Andromeda_ into most of the
well-known harbors, if I had to," I boasted.
"Good. But you haven't been much out of the regular steamer lanes?--or
have you?"
"Now and then; yes. Once, when I was trying to blow around from
Carthagena to La Guaira in a coasting schooner, our old tub of a wind
jammer was caught in a hurricane and piled up on a coral reef. We were
Crusoes on the ghastly little island for nearly a month before a tramp
steamer happened along and saw our signals."
Van Dyck nodded as one who is hearing what has been heard before.
"You wrote home about that adventure, as you may, or may not, remember,
and the story got around to me. Afterward, I chanced to see in the
shipping news the report of the captain of the tramp 'tanker' which
had picked you up. Your island wasn't down on any of the charts,
and Captain Svenson gave the latitude and longitude as a matter of
information. Have you any idea what island it was--or is?"
"No. As you may imagine, I was only too glad to see the last of it when
we were taken off."
"It is said to be the Lost Island of the old English plateship
harriers--Sir Frankie Drake and the rest," Van Dyck went on. "There is
a story that Drake once ran a Spanish treasure ship into the lagoon
which encircles the island, shot it full of holes, and finally burned
it after a siege lasting a couple of days. The tale adds that during
the two-day fight the Spaniards had time to unload and bury some of the
gold bars in the galleon's cargo. Drake tried to make his prisoners
tell what they had done with the treasure--so the story goes--and when
they proved obstinate he sailed away and left them to starve. At a
somewhat later period the island appears in the legends as 'Pirates'
Hope'--place where the black-flag rovers used to put in to refit.
Nobody seems to know why it hasn't been put down on the modern charts."
I closed my eyes and a cold little chill ran up and down my back. Van
Dyck's yarn was probably only a figment of the story-tellers, but it
brought back most vividly the memory of that despairing month I had
spoken of; the dragging hours and days, the pinch of starvation, the
hope deferred as we stared our eyes out sweeping the meeting line
of sea and sky that never--until that last welcome day--gave back a
sign of the world out of which we had been blotted. Also, the story
resurrected another memory, one which had been almost forgotten with
the lapse of time. There had been relics on the island; a few bits
of the iron and woodwork of an ancient wreck, and a few bleached
bones--human bones. Still, I had all the incredulity of one who had
listened to many marvelous tales of the sea.
"You can hear dozens of yarns like that about every coral island and
cay in the Caribbean," I said.
"I know," he agreed. "And on a pleasure voyage it helps out wonderfully
if you have some one along who can tell them. How would the old
Spanish Main strike you as a winter cruising ground for the good ship
_Andromeda_?"
It was at this point that I began to see a few rays of daylight--or
thought I did.
"Show me the _Andromeda's_ passenger list and I can tell better," I
laughed.
"Your fellow voyagers will be people you know, or used to know--the
majority of them," he returned; then, with what seemed to be a curious
lack of enthusiasm, he enumerated them. "I've invited the newly married
Greys; the Ph.D. Sanfords; Major Terwilliger and his nephew, Jerry
Dupuyster; Conetta Kincaide and her dragoness aunt, Miss Mehitable;
Madeleine Barclay and her father; young Grisdale and his bull pup; and
Hobart Ingerson. And last, but by no means least, Mrs. Eager Van Tromp
and her three daughters."
"Heavens!" I interjected. "Why didn't you include all of New York,
while you were about it? Do you mean to tell me that you have all these
people with you in the _Andromeda_?"
"Not yet, but soon," he qualified. "They are on the way down here in my
private car. I'm here to meet them, and so, by the same token, are you."
"Good Lord! If you had hired a Hagenbeck to make your collection it
couldn't have been more zoo-like! What under the sun were you thinking
of, Teck?"
"They are all people I'd like to know better," he rejoined half
absently. "The 'collection,' as you so scoffingly call it, was quite
carefully chosen, if you did but know it."
"But Ingerson!" I protested.
"I know. Ingerson is a brute, you would say; and so would I, if I were
on the witness stand and obliged to testify. But in condemning him we
should be in the minority, Dick. He has the _entrée_ to the best houses
in New York, and half of the dowagers in that abandoned city would snap
at him for a son-in-law."
"That may well be. But to shut yourself up with him in a yacht party
for weeks on end----"
"Your point is well taken. But you will remember that I have admitted
the madnesses from start to finish. The vital thing, however, is this:
Will you consent to go along with us to add the saving touch of sanity?
Don't turn me down, Dick," he added, and the adjuration was almost a
pleading.
"I'm not turning you down," I hastened to say. "I am merely asking
'why?'"
Van Dyck's face was a study in moody perplexity, and he spoke slowly,
almost hesitantly, when he answered my query.
"I don't know that I can explain the exact 'why,' or give a logical
reason, even to so good a friend as you are, Dick. The winter-cruise
notion originated with Mrs. Van Tromp, I believe; and she is
responsible for the inclusion of the major and his nephew. Also, she
is the one who asked me to invite Ingerson. She has been playing in
hard luck lately, and for the sake of her three girls, who, in her
point of view, have simply _got_ to marry money, she is obliged to
keep the pace. I suppose the prospect of a winter in Florida--the
four of them at Palm Beach, with no chance to cut economical corners,
you know--appalled her. Besides, she knows the _Andromeda_, and the
_Andromeda's chef_. That goes a long way with as good a trencherwoman
as she is."
"That will do for a starter," I said. "Let us say that Mrs. Van Tromp
and her daughters are bread-and-butter guests. But how about the
others?"
Van Dyck did not reply until after the deft serving man had cleared the
table and brought the cigars.
"The others, with the possible exception of Billy Grisdale, who is
only an infant, are people with whom I should like to become better
acquainted, as I have said."
"Which is still purer piffle," I put in. "You've known all of them
practically all your life. But go on."
"I've known them, and I haven't known them," he asserted. "There are
the Sanfords--the professor and his wife: they typify the older
married set, and the casual onlooker would say that they try to give
the impression that they are still satisfied and happy. I should like
to find out if they really are satisfied and happy. Then there are the
Greys; they are still in the billing and cooing stage: I'd like to see
if it isn't possible for them to get too much of each other when the
doors are all shut and locked and neither of them can duck out for a
breath of the fresh air of solitude."
"Jehu!" I muttered. "The blue-bearded old gentleman of the Old-World
legend wasn't in it with you. Let's have the rest of it."
Van Dyck's smile barely missed being a saturnine grin, and there was
scarcely a suggestion of mirth in it.
"Major Terwilliger poses as a generous, large-hearted old rounder who
is eventually going to do something handsome for Jerry Dupuyster, his
sister's son. Privately, I have a notion that the major's liberal
fortune--which he promises to bestow upon Gerald--is largely, if not
wholly, a myth, and that he is selfish enough to keep Jerry dangling as
a bait to the scheming mammas--and aunts--for the social advantages and
'side' thereby accruing to Jerry's uncle."
"Conetta Kincaide's aunt, for example?" I interpolated.
"Yes, Aunt Mehitable, if you like. And, this being the case, I have a
perfectly normal curiosity to see what will happen when the dragoness
gets the major and Jerry in a clear field, with no possibility of a
breakaway for them, or of interference with her dragonizing for her."
"Having already used Bluebeard, I'm out of comparisons for you," I
said. "What about the Barclays, father and daughter?"
Van Dyck shook his head and the faintest possible shadow of a frown
came and sat between his eyes.
"We needn't be ill-natured on the wholesale plan," he evaded. "You
wouldn't suspect a man like Holly Barclay of offering his daughter to
the highest bidder, would you? Supposing we admit that he has gone
through the fortune that his wife's father got together, and let it
stand at that."
"You are not letting it stand at that," I countered shrewdly.
"No, perhaps I am not," he admitted, after a thoughtful pause. "I
thought I should like to prove or disprove a thing that I have heard,
about Holly Barclay--and Madeleine--and--well, you'll guess it if I
don't say it--about Ingerson."
"Again with the clear field and no favor, I suppose," I put in a bit
savagely. Then: "Van Dyck, you ought to be shot!"
He was glancing at his watch, and his smile was wry.
"I shall get my little drink of hemlock before the table is cleared,
never fear," he said soberly. "Any time you may think I am not getting
it, you have my permission to blow the gaff; to call the others
together and tell them what I've done to them. That is fair, isn't it?"
I nodded, and again he relapsed into thoughtful silence. Our dinner
appointment had been for a rather late hour in the evening, and
by now the great dining-room was all but empty, though the small
dark-faced man on our right was still dallying with the sweets and
the black coffee. A heavy, intoxicating fragrance drifted across
from the flowering cereus in the palm room, and the distance-mellowed
strains of an orchestra playing in an alcove on the opposite side
of the rotunda added another sensuous touch. The glamour of the
tropics, a far-reaching breath of the beckoning mystery of shimmering
seas, and coral reefs singing to the beat of the murmuring surf--the
mystery whose appeal is ever and most strongly to the senses and the
passions--was in the air when I said, gravely enough, I make no doubt:
"I'll go with you, Bonteck; and chiefly for the reason you have just
given--the reason and the permission. Let this be your fair warning: if
at any time your little farce threatens to grow into a tragedy, I shall
most certainly call you down."
"I was rather hoping you'd say something like that," he agreed, with
what appeared to be the utmost sincerity.
"At the same time," I went on, "it is only fair to add that your
expensive experiment will fail. Nothing will happen on the _Andromeda_
that couldn't, or wouldn't, happen in a house party at your country
place in the Berkshires. You will come back as wise--or as foolish--as
you are now."
"Oh, well," he said, pushing his chair back and casting the napkin
aside, "we needn't pull the bud in pieces to find out what kind of
a flower it's going to be. I can't promise you that you will be
greatly edified, and it is quite within the possibilities that you
may find yourself frightfully bored. But, in any event, it will help
out a little if we leave something to the imagination, don't you
think?--something to speculate about and to look forward to. I know it
does look rather cut-and-dried in the prospect; eight bells breakfast,
luncheon when you like to have it, dinner in the second dog-watch,
and cards--always cards when Mrs. Van Tromp can find a partner and a
table--in the evening."
He had got upon his feet and was standing before me, an acutely
attractive figure of a well-built, well-groomed man in faultless
evening dress. The identifying smile of other and less cynical days was
drawing at the corners of his eyes when he went on.
"We'll live in hopes. Perhaps we shall be able to smash the _Andromeda_
on some reef that isn't down on the charts. Failing that, there is
always the chance of a stray hurricane--with the other chance of
the engines breaking down at the inopportune moment. We shall find
excitement of some kind; I can feel it in my bones."
"Small chance on a baby Cunarder," I grumbled, rising in my turn.
"Oh, I don't know," he offered, in gentle deprecation. "At any rate we
can still be hopeful. Now if you are ready we'll go to the railroad
station and meet the players. I told you they were on the way down from
New York, but I omitted to add that they are due to arrive to-night;
within fifteen or twenty minutes, to be strictly accurate. Let's gather
up a few for-hire autos and go to the rescue."