“And that a right guy—you know what I mean: a guy who was right all
the way through—couldn’t get any fun out of watching it?”
I nodded again. Pierce placed both hands on the railing, running his
fingers up and down as if on a keyboard, whistling softly through his
teeth.
“Did you notice how the boss ate it up?” he said abruptly.
“Mr. Chanler?”
“Yep. He eyed it like—like it was a pretty little thing to him.”
I said nothing. Pierce resumed his whistling and finger-practise on
the rail. Suddenly he turned and faced me squarely, his countenance
uncomfortably serious, as it had been on the dock that morning.
“I suppose you’re thinking what an awful dub I am to be making a crack
about the boss to one of his friends, ain’t you, Mr. Pitt?”
“Well, to be frank,” I replied, “I have been wondering at your doing
so. How do you know that I won’t go straight to Mr. Chanler with your
words? I won’t do it, of course, but I would prefer that you do not
discuss Mr. Chanler with me. One doesn’t do such things, you know.”
“No,” he said, “I didn’t know; I was raised back o’ the Yards. But if
you say, ‘nix on it,’ nix it is. What—what do you think of the boat,
Mr. Pitt? We can discuss that, can’t we?”
“Freely,” I laughed. “From what I’ve seen the _Wanderer_ is a
remarkable yacht.”
“And you haven’t seen anything but the gingerbread work. I’m off
watch. Come on; let’s walk around and pipe her off. It’ll take the
taste of that bum battle out of your mouth.”
I accepted willingly, and for an hour Pierce piloted me about the
yacht.
The _Wanderer_ is a craft of wonders. I have Pierce’s word that the
yacht is 152 feet long on the water line with her present load, and
that the load is the maximum which we could carry with safety. Her
size below the cabin deck is amazing. In her engine room are some of
the largest gasoline engines ever placed in a yacht, if Pierce’s
information is correct. There are two great gleaming batteries of
them, each battery capable of driving us at a speed of ten knots an
hour, the two combined able to hurry us along at fourteen knots, if
necessary. Besides this we have a small auxiliary engine and
propeller, a novelty installed by the former owner, Harrison. We could
smash both of our major engines and the auxiliary still would move us.
Built into the bows are the reserve gasoline tanks. There is enough
fuel in them, says Pierce, to drive the _Wanderer_ twice around the
world. Aft of these vast tanks are the storerooms. They are locked.
Captain Brack has the key, but Freddy assures me that enough
provisions have been loaded into them to keep our company of fifteen
men well fed for two years.
“Which certainly is playing safe, seeing as we’re not supposed to get
frozen in,” said he, as we completed our tour below decks. “Now, come
on and I’ll show you my private office.”
He led the way up a ladder to the little wireless house on the aft of
the main cabin. This was Pierce’s room. His bunk was beside the table
on which were his instruments, and he had covered the
walls—“decorated,” he called it—with newspaper cuts of celebrated
baseball players, pugilists, motor-racers, and women of the musical
comedy stage. Lajoie’s picture was next to Terry McGovern’s, and
Chevrolet’s beside Miss Anna Held’s. I smiled as I seated myself.
“Something of a connoisseur, I see, Pierce.”
“Whatever that means,” he responded. He had become serious again. He
took a cigaret paper from his pocket, absently tore it to pieces and
sat glancing out over the waters of the Sound.
“So you don’t know a Jane—a girl named Miss Beatrice Baldwin, Mr.
Pitt?” he said, as if he had been thinking of saying it for a long
time.
“You asked me that this morning,” said I. “Why do you think I might
know her?”
“You’n’ the Boss is close friends, ain’t you?”
“I wouldn’t say ‘close friends’.”
“I know. But you know him back East, and train with him, and know the
bunch he trains with back there, don’t you?”
“Oh, yes, to a certain extent.”
“That’s why I thought you might have heard of this Jane—Miss Baldwin,
I mean.”
“I assure you, Pierce,” I said, smiling, “that one would have to
possess a much larger circle of acquaintances than I have to know all
the young ladies of Mr. Chanler’s acquaintance.”
He looked up.
“Is he that kind of a guy?” he asked.
“What kind do you mean?”
“A charmer, a Jane-chaser, lady-killer?”
The perfect naiveté with which he uttered this outrageous slang
brought me to hearty laughter, the first of long time.
“Mr. Chanler,” I said, suppressing my amusement, “is a much sought
after man.”
“Sure; he’s got the dough. But does he chase ’em back? Eh? Is he—Here,
I’ll put it up to you straight: would you let your own sister go
walking with him alone in the park after dark?”
I rose. But for the life of me I could not hold offense in the face of
his honest, worried expression.
“Pierce,” I said, “that is another thing one does not do—ask such
questions. And I have told you that you are not to discuss Mr. Chanler
with me.”
“Aw, the devil!” he blurted. “Why can’t you be human? You’re a reg’lar
fellow; I can see it in the back of your eyes. I’m a reg’lar fellow.
Why can’t we get together?”
“Not on a discussion of Mr. Chanler behind his back,” I chuckled. “It
isn’t done.”
Pierce doubled himself up on the stool which he was sitting on and
grasped his thin ankles in his hands.
“All right, then,” he said moodily. “But I want to tell you I’ve been
handling messages between the boss and a Miss Beatrice Baldwin; and he
sent her one this morning and got a reply; and—I wished I’d never
learned wireless, that’s all.”
“Mr. Chanler is a gentleman,” I said severely.
“A gentleman?” said Pierce gloomily. “I suppose that makes it all
right, then, eh? But nevertheless and notwithstanding, I wish I hadn’t
learned wireless, just the same. And you don’t even ask me what the
message was about,” he continued as I remained silent. “That’s the
difference: I’d have asked first crack; you’re a gent. You don’t ask
at all.”
“Naturally not,” I replied. “That’s another thing one doesn’t do. I
won’t even permit you to tell me what it was.”
“You won’t?”
“Decidedly not.”
“Not even if I tell you——”
“No.”
“All right then,” he said with a comical air of resignation and
relief. “I’ve done me jooty. It’s something out of my class; I wanted
to pass it up to somebody with a better nut than I’ve got; but if I
can’t—all right. I suppose after you ’n’ me ’ve known each other five
or six years we’ll be well enough acquainted to talk together like a
couple o’ human beings, eh? I know I hadn’t ought to be talking to you
like this, Mr. Pitt; you’re a New York highbrow and I’m from back o’
the Yards; but I’ll make you a nice little bet right now, that before
this trip is over—if you’re the guy I think you are, Brains—you ’n’
me’ll tear off more’n one little confab behind the boss’s back, and
you’ll be darn glad to do it.”