THE NEW CHUM
The extraordinary thing about Miss Coulthurst was the absence and yet
the presence of the feminine in her. Possessed of all the electrical
properties of a woman and the chummable properties of a man, this
dangerous individual presiding at the breakfast table of the _Wear
Jack_ and dispensing tea to her captors created an atmosphere in which
even the fried eggs seemed part of romantic adventure.
The sordid had dropped out of everything, fear of consequences
had vanished for the moment, the shifting sunlight on the Venesta
panelings, the glitter of the Tyrebuck tea things, the warm sea-scented
air blowing through the skylight,—everything bright and pleasant seemed
to the hypnotised ones part of Tommie.
There was no making conversation at that breakfast party. Shut up all
night with no one to talk to, she did the talking, explaining first of
all and staging for their consideration the people they had attacked
the night before. Althusen was the biggest producer in Los Angeles—that
is to say the world, and Moscovitch, the camera man, was on all fours
with him, Mrs. Raphael was Julia Raphael, the actress, and the play was
“The Chink and the Girl.” The hatchet men were real _kai-gingh_ and
Tommie was the girl they were making off with, and the scene on San
Nicolas was not the end of the play but somewhere in the middle, for
pictures are produced in sections labelled and numbered and sometimes
the end sections are produced first.
Tommie had been born on a ranch. She was quite free with her private
history. Her father was Ben Coulthurst—maybe they’d heard of him. Well,
anyway, he was well-known in Texas till he went broke and died and left
Tommie to the care of an aunt who lived in San Francisco where Tommie
was half smothered—she couldn’t stand cities—and maybe would have
died if the movie business hadn’t come along and saved her. Fresh air
stunts, as they knew, were her vocation, and she guessed she was made
of india rubber, seeing up to this she had only broken one collarbone.
Her last experience was dropping from an aëroplane on to the top of a
sixty-mile-an-hour express.
“I’ve seen you do that,” said Hank. “Made me sweat in the palms of my
hands.”
Well, that was nothing; plane and express moving at the same speed
it was as simple as stepping off the sidewalk; being thrown out of
a window was a lot worse. She thanked her Maker she was born so
small, but what got her goat was the nicknames her diminutive size had
evoked. Some smartie on a Los Angeles paper had called her the “Pocket
Artemis.” What was an Artemis anyway?
“Search me,” said Hank.
“It’s a goddess,” said George, “same thing as Diana.”
Well, she had made him apologise, anyhow.
Candon alone took little part in the conversation. This gentleman, so
ready in an emergency, seemed all abroad before the creature he had
captured and carried off. He sat absorbing her without neglecting his
food and later on when she was on deck he appeared with half an armful
of books.
She was a book worm in private life and had hinted at the fact, out of
which B. C. made profit.
“Here’s some books,” said he. “They aren’t much, but they’re all we’ve
got. That chair comfortable?”
Then they fell into talk, Candon taking his seat beside her on the deck
and close to the little heap of books.
They had scarcely spoken to one another at the breakfast table and
now, all of a sudden, they were chattering together like magpies. Hank
and George, smoking in the cabin down below, could hear their voices
through the skylight.
“Wonder what she’d say if she knew,” said Hank in a grumbling tone.
“Knew what?” asked George.
“’Bout B. C. being Vanderdecken.”
“Oh, she’d ten to one like him all the better,” said George. “It’s his
watch and I wish he’d quit fooling and look after the ship.”
“The ship’s all right,” said Hank.
“What do you mean?”
“You couldn’t hurt her or break her on a rock, not till she’s done with
us; you couldn’t rip the masts out of her or put her ashore, not till
she’s finished with us; she’s a mug trap and we’re the mugs. I believe
Jake put a spell on her. What’s to be the end of it? I tell you it
makes me crawl down the back when I think of that junk. What made that
blue-eyed squatteroo of a B. C. ram her like that for?”
“Well, if he hadn’t, she’d have boarded us.”
“Boarded us, be hanged! If he’d blame well stuck ashore at ’Frisco, we
wouldn’t have landed at San Nicolas.”
“Well, there’s no use whining,” said George. “We’re in the
soup—question is how to get out. We’ve got to collar that boodle first
so’s to have something to show.”
“Something to show—Lord! We’ll be shows enough.”
“Well, strikes me since we went into such a damn-fool business—”
Hank snorted. “Well, I didn’t pull you in, you would butt in—it’s none
of my fault.”
“Who said it was?”
“I’m not saying who said it was or who said it wasn’t—thing is, there’s
no use in complaining.”
“I said that a moment ago.”
“Oh, well, there you are—I’m going on deck.”
Almost a quarrel and all because the pocket Artemis was chatting to
another man who had blue eyes—a blue-eyed squatteroo who was only
yesterday good old B. C.