SUSPICION HOVERS
Betty Gallup, clothed as usual in her man's hat and worn pea-coat, but
likewise on this occasion with mystery, seized Louise by the hand the
instant she appeared and drew her into the kitchen, shutting the door
between that and the living-room.
"What is the matter?" the girl asked. "Have you broken something--or
is the canary dead?"
"Sh!" warned Betty, her little brown eyes blinking rapidly. "I heard
something last night."
"I didn't. I slept like a baby. The night before I heard that old
foghorn----"
"I mean," interrupted Betty, "something was told me."
"Well, go on." Louise made up her mind that she could not stem the
tide of talk.
"About your uncle, Cap'n Abe. He--he never was seen to take that train
to Boston. I got it straight, or pretty average straight. Mandy Baker
told me, and Peke Card's wife, Mary Lizbeth, told her, who got it right
from Lute Craven who works in the post-office uptown, and Lute got it
from Noah Coffin. You know, he't drives the ark you come over in from
Paulmouth. Well! Noah was at Paulmouth depot as he always is of
course when the clam train stops at five-thutty-five. He says he
didn't see Cap'n Abe nor nobody that looked like him board that train
yest'day mornin'."
"Why, Betty!" Louise could only gasp. This house-that-Jack-built
narrative quite took her breath away.
"Besides," went on Betty; "there's more to it. Cap'n Abe's chest was
took back to the depot by Perry Baker when he brought your trunks over,
sure 'nough. And Perry Baker says he shipped that chest to Boston for
your uncle, marked to be called for. It went by express."
"But--but what of it?" asked the puzzled girl.
"Humph! Stands to reason," declared Mrs. Gallup, "that Cap'n Abe
wouldn't have done no such foolish thing as that. It costs money to
ship a heavy sea chest by express. He could have took it on his ticket
as baggage, free gratis, for nothin'!"
"I really don't see," Louise now said rather severely, "that these
facts you state--if they are facts--are any of our business, Betty.
Uncle Abram might have taken the train at some other station. He was
not sure, perhaps, whether he would join the ship Cap'n Amazon
recommended, so why should he not send his chest by express?"
"Cap'n Am'zon! Humph!" sniffed Betty. "Nobody knows whether that's
his name or not. _He_ comes here without a smitch of clo'es, as near
as I can find out."
Louise was amused; yet she was somewhat vexed as well. The curiosity,
as well as the animosity, displayed by Betty and others of the
neighbors began to appall her. If Cape Cod folk were, as her
daddy-professor had declared, "the salt of the earth," some of the salt
seemed to have lost its savor.
"We were talking about Cap'n Abe," said Louise severely. "Just as he
had his own good reasons for going away when and how he did, he
probably had his reasons for taking nobody into his confidence. This
Perry Baker, the expressman, must know that Cap'n Abe sent the trunk
from the house, here."
"Humph! Yes! Nobody's denyin' that."
"Then Cap'n Abe must have known exactly what he wished to do. Cap'n
Amazon surely had nothing to do with the chest, with how his brother
took the train, or with _where_ he took it. Really, Betty, what do you
suspect Cap'n Amazon has done?"
"I don't know what he's done," snapped Betty. "But I wouldn't put
nothin' past him, from his looks. The old pirate!"
"You will make me feel very bad if you continue to talk this way about
my Uncle Amazon," said the girl, far from feeling amused now. "It is
not right. I hope you will not continue to repeat such things. If you
do you will some time be sorry for it, Betty."
"Humph!" sniffed the woman. "Mebbe I will. But I'm warnin' you, Miss
Grayling."
"Warning me of what?"
"Of that man. That old sinner! I never see a wickeder looking feller
in my life--and I've sailed with my father and my husband to 'most
ev'ry quarter of the globe. He may be twin brother to the Angel
Gabriel; but if he is, his looks belie it!"
There was nothing in all this of enough consequence to disturb the
girl, only in so far as she was vexed to find the neighbors so gossipy
and unkind. She gazed thoughtfully upon Cap'n Amazon as he sat across
from her at the breakfast table, and wondered how anybody could see in
his bronzed face anything sinister.
That he was rather ridiculously gotten up, it was true. Those gold
earrings! But then, she had seen several of the older men about the
store wearing rings in their ears. If he did not always have that
bright-colored kerchief on his head! But then, he might wear that
because he was susceptible to neuralgia and did not wish to wear a hat
all the time as seemed to have been Cap'n Abe's custom.
When he smiled at her and his eyes crinkled at the corners, he was as
kindly of expression, she thought, as Cap'n Abe himself. And he was a
much better looking man than the brother who had gone away.
"Cap'n Amazon," she said to him, "I believe you must be just full of
stories of adventure and wonderful happenings by sea and land. Uncle
Abram said you had been everywhere."
Cap'n Amazon seemed to take a long breath, then cleared his throat, and
said:
"I've been pretty nigh everywhere. Seen some funny corners of the
world, too, Louise."
"You must tell me about your adventures," she said. "Your brother told
me that you ran away to sea when you were only twelve years old and
sailed on a long whaling voyage."
"Yep. _South Sea Belle_. Some old hooker, she was," said Cap'n Amazon
briskly. "We was out three year and come home with our hold bustin'
with ile, plenty of baleen, some sperm, and a lump of ambergris as big
as a nail keg--or pretty nigh."
Right then and there he launched into relating how the wondrous find of
ambergris came to be made, neglecting his breakfast to do so. He told
it so vividly that Louise was enthralled. The picture of the whaling
bark beating up to the dead and festering leviathan lying on the
surface of the ocean to which the exploding gases of decomposition had
brought the hulk, lived in her mind for days. The mate of the _South
Sea Belle_, believing the creature had died of the disease supposedly
caused by the growth of the ambergris in its intestines, had insisted
upon boarding the carcass. Driving away the clamorous and ravenous sea
fowl, he had dug down with his blubber-spade into the vitals of the
whale and recovered the gray, spongy, ill-smelling mass which was worth
so great a sum to the perfumer.
"'Twas a big haul--one o' the biggest lumps o' ambergris ever brought
into the port of New Bedford," concluded Cap'n Amazon. "Helped make
the owners rich, and the Old Man, too. Course, I got my sheer; but a
boy's sheer on a whaler them days wouldn't buy him no house and lot.
So I went to sea again."
"You must have been at sea almost all your life, Cap'n Amazon."
"Pretty nigh. I ain't never lazed around on shore when there was a
berth in a seaworthy craft to be had for the askin'. I let Abe do
that," he added, in what Louise thought was a rather scornful tone.
"Why, I don't believe Uncle Abram has a lazy bone in his body! See the
nice business he has built up here. And he told me he owned shares in
several vessels and other property."
"That's true," Cap'n Amazon agreed promptly. "And a tidy sum in the
Paulmouth National Bank. I got a letter to the bank folks he left to
introduce me, if I needed cash. Yes, Abe's done well enough that way.
But he's the first Silt, I swanny! that ever stayed ashore."
"And now you are going to remain ashore yourself," she said, laughing.
"I'm going to try it, Louise. I've done my sheer of roaming about.
Mebbe I'll settle down here for good."
"With Cap'n Abe? Won't that be fine?"
"Yep. With Abe," he muttered and remained silent for the rest of the
meal.
On Saturday the store trade was expected to be larger than usual.
Louise told Cap'n Amazon she would gladly help wait on the customers;
but he would not listen to that for a moment.
"I'm not goin' to have you out there in that store for these folks to
look over and pick to pieces, my girl," he said decidedly. "You stay
aft and I'll 'tend to things for'ard and handle this crew. Besides,
there's that half-grown lout, Amiel Perdue. Abe said he sometimes
helped around. He knows the ship, alow and aloft, and how the stores
is stowed."
The morning was still young when Betty came downstairs in hot rage and
attacked Cap'n Amazon. It seemed she had gone up to give the chambers
their usual weekly cleaning, and had found the room in which the
captain slept locked against her. It was Cap'n Abe's room and it
seemed it was Cap'n Abe's custom--as it was Cap'n Amazon's--to make his
own bed and keep his room tidy during the week. But Betty had always
given it a thorough cleaning and changed the bed linen on Saturdays.
"What's that room locked for? I want to know what you mean?" the woman
demanded of Cap'n Amazon. "Think I'm goin' to work in a house where
doors is locked against me? I'm as honest as any Silt that ever
hobbled on two laigs. Nex' thing, I cal'late, you'll be lockin' the
coal shed and countin' the sticks in the woodpile."
She had much more to say--and said it. It seemed to make her feel
better to do so. Cap'n Amazon looked coolly at her, but did not offer
to take the key out of his trousers' pocket.
"What d'ye mean?" repeated Betty, breathless.
"I mean to keep my cabin locked," he told her in a perfectly passive
voice, but in a manner that halted her suddenly, angry as she was. "I
don't want no woman messin' with my berth nor with my duds. That
door's no more locked against you than it is against my niece. You do
the rest of your work and don't you worry your soul 'bout my cabin."
Louise, who was an observant spectator of this contest, expected at
first that Betty would not stand the indignity--that she would resign
from her situation on the spot.
But that hard, compelling stare of Cap'n Amazon seemed to tame her.
And Betty Gallup was a person not easily tamed. She spluttered a
little more, then returned to her work. Though she was sullen all day,
she did not offer to reopen the discussion.
"What a master he must have been on his own quarter-deck," Louise
thought. "And he must have seen rough times, as that Lawford Tapp
suggested. My! he's not much like Cap'n Abe, after all."
But with her, Cap'n Amazon was as gentle as her own father. He stood
on his dignity with the customers who came to the store, and with
Betty; but he was most kindly toward Louise in every look and word.
That under his self-contained and stern exterior dwelt a very tender
heart, the girl was sure. For the absent Cap'n Abe he appeared to feel
a strong man's good-natured scorn for a weak one; but Louise saw him
stand often before Jerry's cage, chirping to the bird and playing with
him. And at such times there was moisture in Cap'n Amazon's eye.
"Blind's a bat! Poor little critter!" he would murmur. "All the
sunshine does is to warm him; he can't see it no more. Out-o'-doors
ain't nothin' to him now."
Nor would he allow anybody but himself to attend to the needs of poor
little Jerry. He had promised Abe, he said. He kept that promise
faithfully.
Diddimus, the cat, was entirely another problem. At first, whenever he
saw Cap'n Amazon approach, he howled and fled. Then, gradually, an
unholy curiosity seemed to enthrall the big tortoise-shell. He would
peer around corners at Cap'n Amazon, stare at him with wide yellow eyes
through open doorways, leap upon the window sill and glower at the
substitute storekeeper--in every way showing his overweening interest
in the man. But he absolutely would not go within arm's reach of him.
"I always did say a cat's a plumb fool," declared Cap'n Amazon.
"They'll desert ship as soon as wink. Treacherous critters, the hull
tribe. Why, when I was up country in Cuba once, I stopped at a man's
hacienda and he had a tame wildcat--had had it from a kitten. Brought
it up on a bottle himself.
"He thought a heap of that critter, and when he laid in his hammock
under the trees--an' that was most of the time, for them Caribs are as
lazy as the feller under the tree that wished for the cherries to fall
in his mouth!--Yes, sir! when he laid in his hammock that yaller-eyed
demon would lay in it, too, and purr like an ordinary cat.
"But a day come when the man fell asleep and had a nightmare or
something, and kicked out, cracking that cat on the snout with his
heel. Next breath the cat had a chunk out o' his calf and if I hadn't
been there with a gun he'd pretty near have eat the feller!"
The personal touch always entered into Cap'n Amazon's stories. He had
always been on me spot when the thing in point happened--and usually he
was the heroic and central figure. No foolish modesty stayed his
tongue when it came to recounting adventures.
He had all his wits, as well as all his wit, about him, had Cap'n
Amazon. This was shown by an occurrence that very Saturday afternoon.
Milt Baker, like the other neighbors, was becoming familiar, if not
friendly, with the substitute storekeeper and, leaning on the showcase.
Milt said:
"Leave me have a piece of Brown Mule, Cap'n Am'zon. I'm all out o'
chewin'. Put it on the book and Mandy'll pay for it."
"Avast there!" Cap'n Amazon returned. "Seems to me I got something in
the bill o' ladin' 'bout that," and he drew forth the long memorandum
Cap'n Abe had made to guide his substitute's treatment of certain
customers. "No," the substitute storekeeper said, shaking his head
negatively. "Can't do it."
"Why not, I want to know?" blustered Milt. "I guess my credit's good."
He already had the Brown Mule in his hand.
"Your wife's credit seems to be good," Cap'n Amazon returned firmly.
"But here's what I find here: 'Don't trust Milt Baker for Brown Mule
'cause Mandy makes him pay cash for his tobacker and rum. We don't
sell no rum.' That's enough, young man."
Milt might have tried to argue the case with Cap'n Abe; but not with
Cap'n Amazon. There was something in the steady look of the latter
that caused the shiftless clam digger to dig down into his pocket for
the nickel, pay it over, and walk grumblingly out of the store.
"Does beat all what a fool a woman will be," commented Cap'n Amazon,
rather enigmatically; only Louise, who heard him, realized fully what
his thought was. Jealous and hard-working Mandy Baker had chosen for
herself a handicap in the marriage game.