ARRANGEMENTS quite extensive had been made for the celebration of
Christmas on the yacht Samoset. Not having been in any civilized port
for months, the stock of provisions boasted few delicacies; yet Minnie
Duncan had managed to devise real feasts for cabin and forecastle.
“Listen, Boyd,” she told her husband. “Here are the menus. For the cabin,
raw bonita native style, turtle soup, omelette a la Samoset--”
“What the dickens?” Boyd Duncan interrupted.
“Well, if you must know, I found a tin of mushrooms and a package of
egg-powder which had fallen down behind the locker, and there are other
things as well that will go into it. But don't interrupt. Boiled yam,
fried taro, alligator pear salad--there, you've got me all mixed, Then
I found a last delectable half-pound of dried squid. There will be baked
beans Mexican, if I can hammer it into Toyama's head; also, baked papaia
with Marquesan honey, and, lastly, a wonderful pie the secret of which
Toyama refuses to divulge.”
“I wonder if it is possible to concoct a punch or a cocktail out of
trade rum?” Duncan muttered gloomily.
“Oh! I forgot! Come with me.”
His wife caught his hand and led him through the small connecting door
to her tiny stateroom. Still holding his hand, she fished in the depths
of a hat-locker and brought forth a pint bottle of champagne.
“The dinner is complete!” he cried.
“Wait.”
She fished again, and was rewarded with a silver-mounted whisky flask.
She held it to the light of a port-hole, and the liquor showed a quarter
of the distance from the bottom.
“I've been saving it for weeks,” she explained. “And there's enough for
you and Captain Dettmar.”
“Two mighty small drinks,” Duncan complained.
“There would have been more, but I gave a drink to Lorenzo when he was
sick.”
Duncan growled, “Might have given him rum,” facetiously.
“The nasty stuff! For a sick man? Don't be greedy, Boyd. And I'm glad
there isn't any more, for Captain Dettmar's sake. Drinking always makes
him irritable. And now for the men's dinner. Soda crackers, sweet cakes,
candy--”
“Substantial, I must say.”
“Do hush. Rice, and curry, yam, taro, bonita, of course, a big cake
Toyama is making, young pig--”
“Oh, I say,” he protested.
“It is all right, Boyd. We'll be in Attu-Attu in three days. Besides,
it's my pig. That old chief what-ever-his-name distinctly presented it
to me. You saw him yourself. And then two tins of bullamacow. That's
their dinner. And now about the presents. Shall we wait until tomorrow,
or give them this evening?”
“Christmas Eve, by all means,” was the man's judgment. “We'll call all
hands at eight bells; I'll give them a tot of rum all around, and then
you give the presents. Come on up on deck. It's stifling down here. I
hope Lorenzo has better luck with the dynamo; without the fans there
won't be much sleeping to-night if we're driven below.”
They passed through the small main-cabin, climbed a steep companion
ladder, and emerged on deck. The sun was setting, and the promise was
for a clear tropic night. The Samoset, with fore- and main-sail winged
out on either side, was slipping a lazy four-knots through the smooth
sea. Through the engine-room skylight came a sound of hammering. They
strolled aft to where Captain Dettmar, one foot on the rail, was
oiling the gear of the patent log. At the wheel stood a tall South Sea
Islander, clad in white undershirt and scarlet hip-cloth.
Boyd Duncan was an original. At least that was the belief of his
friends. Of comfortable fortune, with no need to do anything but take
his comfort, he elected to travel about the world in outlandish and
most uncomfortable ways. Incidentally, he had ideas about coral-reefs,
disagreed profoundly with Darwin on that subject, had voiced his opinion
in several monographs and one book, and was now back at his hobby,
cruising the South Seas in a tiny, thirty-ton yacht and studying
reef-formations.
His wife, Minnie Duncan, was also declared an original, inasmuch as she
joyfully shared his vagabond wanderings. Among other things, in the six
exciting years of their marriage she had climbed Chimborazo with him,
made a three-thousand-mile winter journey with dogs and sleds in Alaska,
ridden a horse from Canada to Mexico, cruised the Mediterranean in a
ten-ton yawl, and canoed from Germany to the Black Sea across the
heart of Europe. They were a royal pair of wanderlusters, he, big and
broad-shouldered, she a small, brunette, and happy woman, whose one
hundred and fifteen pounds were all grit and endurance, and withal,
pleasing to look upon.
The Samoset had been a trading schooner, when Duncan bought her in San
Francisco and made alterations. Her interior was wholly rebuilt, so that
the hold became main-cabin and staterooms, while abaft amidships were
installed engines, a dynamo, an ice machine, storage batteries, and,
far in the stern, gasoline tanks. Necessarily, she carried a small crew.
Boyd, Minnie, and Captain Dettmar were the only whites on board, though
Lorenzo, the small and greasy engineer, laid a part claim to white,
being a Portuguese half-caste. A Japanese served as cook, and a Chinese
as cabin boy. Four white sailors had constituted the original crew
for'ard, but one by one they had yielded to the charms of palm-waving
South Sea isles and been replaced by islanders. Thus, one of the dusky
sailors hailed from Easter Island, a second from the Carolines, a third
from the Paumotus, while the fourth was a gigantic Samoan. At sea, Boyd
Duncan, himself a navigator, stood a mate's watch with Captain Dettmar,
and both of them took a wheel or lookout occasionally. On a pinch,
Minnie herself could take a wheel, and it was on pinches that she proved
herself more dependable at steering than did the native sailors.
At eight bells, all hands assembled at the wheel, and Boyd Duncan
appeared with a black bottle and a mug. The rum he served out himself,
half a mug of it to each man. They gulped the stuff down with many
facial expressions of delight, followed by loud lip-smackings of
approval, though the liquor was raw enough and corrosive enough to burn
their mucous membranes. All drank except Lee Goom, the abstemious
cabin boy. This rite accomplished, they waited for the next, the
present-giving. Generously molded on Polynesian lines, huge-bodied and
heavy-muscled, they were nevertheless like so many children, laughing
merrily at little things, their eager black eyes flashing in the lantern
light as their big bodies swayed to the heave and roll of the ship.
Calling each by name, Minnie gave the presents out, accompanying each
presentation with some happy remark that added to the glee. There
were trade watches, clasp knives, amazing assortments of fish-hooks
in packages, plug tobacco, matches, and gorgeous strips of cotton for
loincloths all around. That Boyd Duncan was liked by them was evidenced
by the roars of laughter with which they greeted his slightest joking
allusion.
Captain Dettmar, white-faced, smiling only when his employer chanced to
glance at him, leaned against the wheel-box, looking on. Twice, he left
the group and went below, remaining there but a minute each time. Later,
in the main cabin, when Lorenzo, Lee Goom and Toyama received their
presents, he disappeared into his stateroom twice again. For of all
times, the devil that slumbered in Captain Dettmar's soul chose this
particular time of good cheer to awaken. Perhaps it was not entirely the
devil's fault, for Captain Dettmar, privily cherishing a quart of whisky
for many weeks, had selected Christmas Eve for broaching it.
It was still early in the evening--two bells had just gone--when Duncan
and his wife stood by the cabin companionway, gazing to windward and
canvassing the possibility of spreading their beds on deck. A small,
dark blot of cloud, slowly forming on the horizon, carried the threat
of a rain-squall, and it was this they were discussing when Captain
Dettmar, coming from aft and about to go below, glanced at them with
sudden suspicion. He paused, his face working spasmodically. Then he
spoke:
“You are talking about me.”
His voice was hoarse, and there was an excited vibration in it. Minnie
Duncan started, then glanced at her husband's immobile face, took the
cue, and remained silent.
“I say you were talking about me,” Captain Dettmar repeated, this time
with almost a snarl.
He did not lurch nor betray the liquor on him in any way save by the
convulsive working of his face.
“Minnie, you'd better go down,” Duncan said gently. “Tell Lee Goom we'll
sleep below. It won't be long before that squall is drenching things.”
She took the hint and left, delaying just long enough to give one
anxious glance at the dim faces of the two men.
Duncan puffed at his cigar and waited till his wife's voice, in talk
with the cabin-boy, came up through the open skylight.
“Well?” Duncan demanded in a low voice, but sharply.
“I said you were talking about me. I say it again. Oh, I haven't been
blind. Day after day I've seen the two of you talking about me. Why
don't you come out and say it to my face! I know you know. And I know
your mind's made up to discharge me at Attu-Attu.”
“I am sorry you are making such a mess of everything,” was Duncan's
quiet reply.
But Captain Dettmar's mind was set on trouble.
“You know you are going to discharge me. You think you are too good to
associate with the likes of me--you and your wife.”
“Kindly keep her out of this,” Duncan warned. “What do you want?”
“I want to know what you are going to do!”
“Discharge you, after this, at Attu-Attu.”
“You intended to, all along.”
“On the contrary. It is your present conduct that compels me.”
“You can't give me that sort of talk.”
“I can't retain a captain who calls me a liar.”
Captain Dettmar for the moment was taken aback. His face and lips
worked, but he could say nothing. Duncan coolly pulled at his cigar and
glanced aft at the rising cloud of squall.
“Lee Goom brought the mail aboard at Tahiti,” Captain Dettmar began.
“We were hove short then and leaving. You didn't look at your letters
until we were outside, and then it was too late. That's why you didn't
discharge me at Tahiti. Oh, I know. I saw the long envelope when Lee
Goom came over the side. It was from the Governor of California, printed
on the corner for any one to see. You'd been working behind my back.
Some beachcomber in Honolulu had whispered to you, and you'd written to
the Governor to find out. And that was his answer Lee Goom carried
out to you. Why didn't you come to me like a man! No, you must play
underhand with me, knowing that this billet was the one chance for me to
get on my feet again. And as soon as you read the Governor's letter your
mind was made up to get rid of me. I've seen it on your face ever since
for all these months.. I've seen the two of you, polite as hell to me
all the time, and getting away in corners and talking about me and that
affair in 'Frisco.”
“Are you done?” Duncan asked, his voice low, and tense. “Quite done?”
Captain Dettmar made no answer.
“Then I'll tell you a few things. It was precisely because of that
affair in 'Frisco that I did not discharge you in Tahiti. God knows you
gave me sufficient provocation. I thought that if ever a man needed a
chance to rehabilitate himself, you were that man. Had there been no
black mark against you, I would have discharged you when I learned how
you were robbing me.”
Captain Dettmar showed surprise, started to interrupt, then changed his
mind.
“There was that matter of the deck-calking, the bronze rudder-irons, the
overhauling of the engine, the new spinnaker boom, the new davits, and
the repairs to the whale-boat. You OKd the shipyard bill. It was four
thousand one hundred and twenty-two francs. By the regular shipyard
charges it ought not to have been a centime over twenty-five hundred
francs-”
“If you take the word of those alongshore sharks against mine--' the
other began thickly.
“Save yourself the trouble of further lying,” Duncan went on coldly.
“I looked it up. I got Flaubin before the Governor himself, and the old
rascal confessed to sixteen hundred overcharge. Said you'd stuck him up
for it. Twelve hundred went to you, and his share was four hundred and
the job. Don't interrupt. I've got his affidavit below. Then was when I
would have put you ashore, except for the cloud you were under. You had
to have this one chance or go clean to hell. I gave you the chance. And
what have you got to say about it?”
“What did the Governor say?” Captain Dettmar demanded truculently.
“Which governor?”
“Of California. Did he lie to you like all the rest?”
“I'll tell you what he said. He said that you had been convicted on
circumstantial evidence; that was why you had got life imprisonment
instead of hanging; that you had always stoutly maintained your
innocence; that you were the black sheep of the Maryland Dettmars; that
they moved heaven and earth for your pardon; that your prison conduct
was most exemplary; that he was prosecuting attorney at the time you
were convicted; that after you had served seven years he yielded to your
family's plea and pardoned you; and that in his own mind existed a doubt
that you had killed McSweeny.”
There was a pause, during which Duncan went on studying the rising
squall, while Captain Dettmar's face worked terribly.
“Well, the Governor was wrong,” he announced, with a short laugh. “I did
kill McSweeny. I did get the watchman drunk that night. I beat McSweeny
to death in his bunk. I used the iron belaying pin that appeared in the
evidence. He never had a chance. I beat him to a jelly. Do you want the
details?”
Duncan looked at him in the curious way one looks at any monstrosity,
but made no reply.
“Oh, I'm not afraid to tell you,” Captain Dettmar blustered on. “There
are no witnesses. Besides, I am a free man now. I am pardoned, and by
God they can never put me back in that hole again. I broke McSweeny's
jaw with the first blow. He was lying on his back asleep. He said, 'My
God, Jim! My God!' It was funny to see his broken jaw wabble as he said
it. Then I smashed him... I say, do you want the rest of the details?”
“Is that all you have to say?” was the answer.
“Isn't it enough?” Captain Dettmar retorted.
“It is enough.”
“What are you going to do about it?”
“Put you ashore at Attu-Attu.”
“And in the meantime?”
“In the meantime...” Duncan paused. An increase of weight in the wind
rippled his hair. The stars overhead vanished, and the Samoset swung
four points off her course in the careless steersman's hands. “In the
meantime throw your halyards down on deck and look to your wheel. I'll
call the men.”
The next moment the squall burst upon them. Captain Dettmar, springing
aft, lifted the coiled mainsail halyards from their pins and threw them,
ready to run, on the deck. The three islanders swarmed from the tiny
forecastle, two of them leaping to the halyards and holding by a single
turn, while the third fastened down the engineroom, companion and
swung the ventilators around. Below, Lee Goom and Toyama were lowering
skylight covers and screwing up deadeyes. Duncan pulled shut the cover
of the companion scuttle, and held on, waiting, the first drops of rain
pelting his face, while the Samoset leaped violently ahead, at the same
time heeling first to starboard then to port as the gusty pressures
caught her winged-out sails.
All waited. But there was no need to lower away on the run. The
power went out of the wind, and the tropic rain poured a deluge over
everything. Then it was, the danger past, and as the Kanakas began to
coil the halyards back on the pins, that Boyd Duncan went below.
“All right,” he called in cheerily to his wife. “Only a puff.”
“And Captain Dettmar?” she queried.
“Has been drinking, that is all. I shall get rid of him at Attu-Attu.”
But before Duncan climbed into his bunk, he strapped around himself,
against the skin and under his pajama coat, a heavy automatic pistol.
He fell asleep almost immediately, for his was the gift of perfect
relaxation. He did things tensely, in the way savages do, but the
instant the need passed he relaxed, mind and body. So it was that he
slept, while the rain still poured on deck and the yacht plunged and
rolled in the brief, sharp sea caused by the squall.
He awoke with a feeling of suffocation and heaviness. The electric fans
had stopped, and the air was thick and stifling. Mentally cursing
all Lorenzos and storage batteries, he heard his wife moving in the
adjoining stateroom and pass out into the main cabin. Evidently heading
for the fresher air on deck, he thought, and decided it was a good
example to imitate. Putting on his slippers and tucking a pillow and a
blanket under his arm, he followed her. As he was about to emerge from
the companionway, the ship's clock in the cabin began to strike and he
stopped to listen. Four bells sounded. It was two in the morning. From
without came the creaking of the gaff-jaw against the mast. The Samoset
rolled and righted on a sea, and in the light breeze her canvas gave
forth a hollow thrum.
He was just putting his foot out on the damp deck when he heard his
wife scream. It was a startled frightened scream that ended in a splash
overside. He leaped out and ran aft. In the dim starlight he could make
out her head and shoulders disappearing astern in the lazy wake.
“What was it?” Captain Dettmar, who was at the wheel, asked.
“Mrs. Duncan,” was Duncan's reply, as he tore the life-buoy from its
hook and flung it aft. “Jibe over to starboard and come up on the wind!”
he commanded.
And then Boyd Duncan made a mistake. He dived overboard.
When he came up, he glimpsed the blue-light on the buoy, which had
ignited automatically when it struck the water. He swam for it, and
found Minnie had reached it first.
“Hello,” he said. “Just trying to keep cool?”
“Oh, Boyd!” was her answer, and one wet hand reached out and touched
his.
The blue light, through deterioration or damage, flickered out. As they
lifted on the smooth crest of a wave, Duncan turned to look where the
Samoset made a vague blur in the darkness. No lights showed, but there
was noise of confusion. He could hear Captain Dettmar's shouting above
the cries of the others.
“I must say he's taking his time,” Duncan grumbled. “Why doesn't he
jibe? There she goes now.”
They could hear the rattle of the boom tackle blocks as the sail was
eased across.
“That was the mainsail,” he muttered. “Jibed to port when I told him
starboard.”
Again they lifted on a wave, and again and again, ere they could make
out the distant green of the Samoset's starboard light. But instead of
remaining stationary, in token that the yacht was coming toward them, it
began moving across their field of vision. Duncan swore.
“What's the lubber holding over there for!” he demanded. “He's got his
compass. He knows our bearing.”
But the green light, which was all they could see, and which they could
see only when they were on top of a wave, moved steadily away from them,
withal it was working up to windward, and grew dim and dimmer. Duncan
called out loudly and repeatedly, and each time, in the intervals, they
could hear, very faintly, the voice of Captain Dettmar shouting orders.
“How can he hear me with such a racket?” Duncan complained.
“He's doing it so the crew won't hear you,” was Minnie's answer.
There was something in the quiet way she said it that caught her
husband's attention.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that he is not trying to pick us up,” she went on in the same
composed voice. “He threw me overboard.”
“You are not making a mistake?”
“How could I? I was at the main rigging, looking to see if any more
rain threatened. He must have left the wheel and crept behind me. I was
holding on to a stay with one hand. He gripped my hand free from behind
and threw me over. It's too bad you didn't know, or else you would have
staid aboard.”
Duncan groaned, but said nothing for several minutes. The green light
changed the direction of its course.
“She's gone about,” he announced. “You are right. He's deliberately
working around us and to windward. Up wind they can never hear me. But
here goes.”
He called at minute intervals for a long time. The green light
disappeared, being replaced by the red, showing that the yacht had gone
about again.
“Minnie,” he said finally, “it pains me to tell you, but you married a
fool. Only a fool would have gone overboard as I did.”
“What chance have we of being picked up... by some other vessel, I
mean?” she asked.
“About one in ten thousand, or ten thousand million. Not a steamer route
nor trade route crosses this stretch of ocean. And there aren't any
whalers knocking about the South Seas. There might be a stray trading
schooner running across from Tutuwanga. But I happen to know that island
is visited only once a year. A chance in a million is ours.”
“And we'll play that chance,” she rejoined stoutly.
“You ARE a joy!” His hand lifted hers to his lips. “And Aunt Elizabeth
always wondered what I saw in you. Of course we'll play that chance. And
we'll win it, too. To happen otherwise would be unthinkable. Here goes.”
He slipped the heavy pistol from his belt and let it sink into the sea.
The belt, however, he retained.
“Now you get inside the buoy and get some sleep. Duck under.”
She ducked obediently, and came up inside the floating circle. He
fastened the straps for her, then, with the pistol belt, buckled himself
across one shoulder to the outside of the buoy.
“We're good for all day to-morrow,” he said. “Thank God the water's
warm. It won't be a hardship for the first twenty-hour hours, anyway.
And if we're not picked up by nightfall, we've just got to hang on for
another day, that's all.”
For half an hour they maintained silence, Duncan, his head resting on
the arm that was on the buoy, seemed asleep.
“Boyd?” Minnie said softly.
“Thought you were asleep,” he growled.
“Boyd, if we don't come through this--”
“Stow that!” he broke in ungallantly. “Of course we're coming through.
There is isn't a doubt of it. Somewhere on this ocean is a ship that's
heading right for us. You wait and see. Just the same I wish my brain
were equipped with wireless. Now I'm going to sleep, if you don't.”
But for once, sleep baffled him. An hour later he heard Minnie stir and
knew she was awake.
“Say, do you know what I've been thinking!” she asked.
“No; what?”
“That I'll wish you a Merry Christmas.”
“By George, I never thought of it. Of course it's Christmas Day. We'll
have many more of them, too. And do you know what I've been thinking?
What a confounded shame we're done out of our Christmas dinner. Wait
till I lay hands on Dettmar. I'll take it out of him. And it won't be
with an iron belaying pin either, Just two bunches of naked knuckles,
that's all.”
Despite his facetiousness, Boyd Duncan had little hope. He knew well
enough the meaning of one chance in a million, and was calmly certain
that his wife and he had entered upon their last few living hours--hours
that were inevitably bound to be black and terrible with tragedy.
The tropic sun rose in a cloudless sky. Nothing was to be seen. The
Samoset was beyond the sea-rim. As the sun rose higher, Duncan ripped
his pajama trousers in halves and fashioned them into two rude turbans.
Soaked in sea-water they offset the heat-rays.
“When I think of that dinner, I'm really angry,” he complained, as he
noted an anxious expression threatening to set on his wife's face. “And
I want you to be with me when I settle with Dettmar. I've always been
opposed to women witnessing scenes of blood, but this is different. It
will be a beating.”
“I hope I don't break my knuckles on him,” he added, after a pause.
Midday came and went, and they floated on, the center of a narrow
sea-circle. A gentle breath of the dying trade-wind fanned them, and
they rose and fell monotonously on the smooth swells of a perfect summer
sea. Once, a gunie spied them, and for half an hour circled about them
with majestic sweeps. And, once, a huge rayfish, measuring a score of
feet across the tips, passed within a few yards.
By sunset, Minnie began to rave, softly, babblingly, like a child.
Duncan's face grew haggard as he watched and listened, while in his
mind he revolved plans of how best to end the hours of agony that were
coming. And, so planning, as they rose on a larger swell than usual,
he swept the circle of the sea with his eyes, and saw, what made him cry
out.
“Minnie!” She did not answer, and he shouted her name again in her ear,
with all the voice he could command. Her eyes opened, in them fluttered
commingled consciousness and delirium. He slapped her hands and wrists
till the sting of the blows roused her.
“There she is, the chance in a million!” he cried.
“A steamer at that, heading straight for us! By George, it's a cruiser!
I have it!--the Annapolis, returning with those astronomers from
Tutuwanga.”
*****
United States Consul Lingford was a fussy, elderly gentleman, and in
the two years of his service at Attu-Attu had never encountered so
unprecedented a case as that laid before him by Boyd Duncan. The
latter, with his wife, had been landed there by the Annapolis, which had
promptly gone on with its cargo of astronomers to Fiji.
“It was cold-blooded, deliberate attempt to murder,” said Consul
Lingford. “The law shall take its course. I don't know how precisely
to deal with this Captain Dettmar, but if he comes to Attu-Attu, depend
upon it he shall be dealt with, he--ah--shall be dealt with. In the
meantime, I shall read up the law. And now, won't you and your good lady
stop for lunch!”
As Duncan accepted the invitation, Minnie, who had been glancing out
of the window at the harbor, suddenly leaned forward and touched her
husband's arm. He followed her gaze, and saw the Samoset, flag at half
mast, rounding up and dropping anchor scarcely a hundred yards away.
“There's my boat now,” Duncan said to the Consul. “And there's the
launch over the side, and Captain Dettmar dropping into it. If I don't
miss my guess, he's coming to report our deaths to you.”
The launch landed on the white beach, and leaving Lorenzo tinkering with
the engine, Captain Dettmar strode across the beach and up the path to
the Consulate.
“Let him make his report,” Duncan said. “We'll just step into this next
room and listen.”
And through the partly open door, he and his wife heard Captain Dettmar,
with tears in his voice, describe the loss of his owners.
“I jibed over and went back across the very spot,” he concluded. “There
was not a sign of them. I called and called, but there was never an
answer. I tacked back and forth and wore for two solid hours, then hove
to till daybreak, and cruised back and forth all day, two men at the
mastheads. It is terrible. I am heartbroken. Mr. Duncan was a splendid
man, and I shall never...”
But he never completed the sentence, for at that moment his splendid
employer strode out upon him, leaving Minnie standing in the doorway.
Captain Dettmar's white face blanched even whiter.
“I did my best to pick you up, sir,” he began.
Boyd Duncan's answer was couched in terms of bunched knuckles, two
bunches of them, that landed right and left on Captain Dettmar's face.
Captain Dettmar staggered backward, recovered, and rushed with swinging
arms at his employer, only to be met with a blow squarely between the
eyes. This time the Captain went down, bearing the typewriter under him
as he crashed to the floor.
“This is not permissible,” Consul Lingford spluttered. “I beg of you, I
beg of you, to desist.”
“I'll pay the damages to office furniture,” Duncan answered, and at the
same time landing more bunched knuckles on the eyes and nose of Dettmar.
Consul Lingford bobbed around in the turmoil like a wet hen, while his
office furniture went to ruin. Once, he caught Duncan by the arm, but
was flung back, gasping, half-across the room. Another time he appealed
to Minnie.
“Mrs. Duncan, won't you, please, please, restrain your husband?”
But she, white-faced and trembling, resolutely shook her head and
watched the fray with all her eyes.
“It is outrageous,” Consul Lingford cried, dodging the hurtling bodies
of the two men. “It is an affront to the Government, to the United
States Government. Nor will it be overlooked, I warn you. Oh, do pray
desist, Mr. Duncan. You will kill the man. I beg of you. I beg, I
beg...”
But the crash of a tall vase filled with crimson hibiscus blossoms left
him speechless.
The time came when Captain Dettmar could no longer get up. He got as far
as hands and knees, struggled vainly to rise further, then collapsed.
Duncan stirred the groaning wreck with his foot.
“He's all right,” he announced. “I've only given him what he has given
many a sailor and worse.”
“Great heavens, sir!” Consul Lingford exploded, staring horror-stricken
at the man whom he had invited to lunch.
Duncan giggled involuntarily, then controlled himself.
“I apologize, Mr. Lingford, I most heartily apologize. I fear I was
slightly carried away by my feelings.”
Consul Lingford gulped and sawed the air speechlessly with his arms.
“Slightly, sir? Slightly?” he managed to articulate.
“Boyd,” Minnie called softly from the doorway.
He turned and looked.
“You ARE a joy,” she said.
“And now, Mr. Lingford, I am done with him,” Duncan said. “I turn over
what is left to you and the law.”
“That?” Consul Lingford queried, in accent of horror.
“That,” Boyd Duncan replied, looking ruefully at his battered knuckles.