Charbonde found himself facing a rather undersized youth of about
the age of the two who had just left him. The newcomer had furtive,
rat-like eyes, and a sharp face filled with a general expression of low
cunning.
“Who are you?” demanded Charbonde. “I don’t know you.”
“I know you don’t,” responded the other easily, “and yet, I may be able
to help you.”
“Bah!” began the foreign agent, trying to shake off the hand laid on
his arm.
“Wait till you hear what I have to say,” resumed the other eagerly. “I
hate those two blue-jackets who have just left you.”
A new light suddenly shone in Senor Charbonde’s eyes. He began to
regard the furtive-looking youth with more interest.
“Who are you?” he demanded cautiously.
“My name won’t mean much to you. It’s Harkins--Henry Harkins. I was
formerly in the navy, but I was dishonorably discharged, owing to those
two fellows. I hate them.”
The tone in which this communication was made left no doubt of the
speaker’s sincerity. His mean face grew positively wolfish as he
spoke. Not even in his days aboard the _Illinois_, when he had joined
Kennell, the ship’s bully of the _Manhattan_, and the other miscreants
in abducting Ned and Mr. Varian, had Hank Harkins ever looked more
despicable. For his part in the conspiracy, as our former readers know,
Harkins, who hailed from the same village as the Dreadnought Boys, had
been dishonorably discharged from the service. That the world had not
gone well with him since then was manifest. His clothes were old and
worn, and lines, which did not look well on a youthful countenance,
marked his features. As Charbonde gazed at the figure before him, a
sudden thought came to him. Here, ready-made to his hand, was a tool
that he might find useful.
“So you would like to have an opportunity to avenge yourself on those
two lads, is it not so?” he said slowly.
“I’d do almost anything to get even with them,” muttered Hank. “They
are the cause of all my misfortunes. I’ve been broke for weeks, and
have hardly known what it was to have a square meal.”
Hank did not think it necessary to add that his misfortunes, like
his dishonorable discharge, were all of his own making. His father,
sorely tried though he had been by the boy’s unsavory escapades, had
written him to come home to the farm, but this Hank had refused to do
permanently. Life in and about New York suited his vagabond disposition
too well for that.
“Ah, you need money,” exclaimed Senor Charbonde.
“Yes, yes,” ejaculated Hank in a voice that came dangerously near to
being a beggar’s whine. But if he thought Senor Charbonde was going
to be so prodigal with his funds as to hand him a crisp bill, he was
mistaken. Instead, the South American revolutionary agent tore a sheet
out of a notebook he fished from his pocket and handed it to Hank, who
gazed at it eagerly. It bore an address on West Fourteenth Street, New
York,--that of a hotel famous as a rendezvous for foreign secret agents.
“Be there at three o’clock this afternoon, and perhaps I can put you in
the way of making a little money.”
With these words Senor Charbonde swung on his carefully polished boot
heel, and, twirling his stick gayly, started at his best pace to leave
behind what was, to his fastidious taste, a very unsavory portion of
the town. Hank, however, after a moment’s interval, had appraised the
other’s prosperous appearance and pattered rapidly after him on his
thin-worn shoe soles.
“Suppose you give me a little in advance?” he asked impudently.
The South American hesitated.
“Ah, well, perhaps it will bind him more closely to me,” he thought
the next instant. Once more his jeweled hand dived into his pocket, and
this time it produced a roll of bills--the same which was responsible
for the pinkish mark on his yellow skin. Hank’s eyes glistened as they
fell upon the dimensions of the roll. Eagerly he watched the other peel
off a five-dollar bill.
“Thank you, thank you!” he exclaimed in a servile, fawning way, as
Charbonde handed it to him.
“There is a fellow who would do anything for money,” thought the South
American, as he resumed his way. “I have gained a valuable emissary.”
“That fellow’s a gold mine if he’s worked right. I’m in luck, and I’ll
have a chance to get even with those two pious, psalm-singing lunk
heads,” was Hank’s thought, as he shuffled off. An alliance had just
been formed which boded ill for the Dreadnought Boys.
Hank made his way down the street past the gray walls fencing off
the navy yard, and after walking two or three blocks turned into a
drinking resort frequented by sailors and dock denizens. Hank flung
down the bill he had just received in front of the proprietor.
“Take what I owe you out of that,” he said grandiloquently. The other
lifted his eyebrows in some surprise, and then, abstracting from it the
small amount for which he had allowed Hank to become indebted to him,
returned the change. As the money and bills were shoved across to Hank,
a heavy-set man, who had been seated at a table in one corner of the
place, arose and came over to him.
“Hello! messmate,” he exclaimed, “in luck, eh?”
“Why, hello, Jim Prentice!” exclaimed Hank, recognizing in the other a
former fireman of the _Illinois_, “how goes it?”
“Pretty well, shipmate, but low water here,” said the other, tapping
his pocket suggestively. “Can you loan a fellow a few dimes?”
“Loan!” exclaimed Hank, not best pleased at this encounter, “why, it
may be months before I see you again. You’re going to sea soon, aren’t
you?”
He glanced toward where the other had been sitting and noted a battered
telescope grip reposing beside his vacant chair.
“Yes, and a fine old tea-kettle of a stoke hole I’m assigned to. Aboard
the _Beale_, that destroyer, you know. To make matters worse, we’re for
South America, I hear. It’ll fairly roast a man to work under forced
draught in that climate.”
“The _Beale_, eh?” mused Hank. “That’s the craft those two fellows are
assigned to.”
He said this in a low voice, and it escaped the other’s hearing
altogether. Presently he added aloud:
“When do you sail?”
“Some time to-morrow. Why?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Just curious, that’s all. So you need money, Jim?”
“Need it!” burst out the other, “why, boy, if shoes were five cents a
pair, I couldn’t buy a heel. There’s my sister, too, Hank,” he went on
in a serious voice, “she’s sick, and the doc says that she’s got to get
away to the country or he won’t answer for her life. Oh, I’m up against
it, all right, I tell you.”
A dim plan had begun to form itself in Hank’s mind as the other spoke,
but as yet it had not assumed definite form. Instead, he remarked
lightly:
“Oh, I guess it’ll come out all right, Jim. Here, take this”--he handed
the other half a dollar--“and be here to-night at eight o’clock. I may
have something to talk over with you.”
“All right, Hank, I’ll be here, don’t you worry.”
“So long, then,” exclaimed the other. “I’m off.”
With more energy than he had displayed for some time past Hank shot
out of the door and off up the street. He spent his money to such good
advantage that at the end of an hour he emerged from his small room in
a rickety tenement,--which he preferred to an airy room and wholesome
work on the farm,--with a clean collar and neatly slicked-down hair.
His battered, broken boots, too, bore a glossy polish. But all Hank’s
efforts to improve his appearance could not erase from his face that
expression which instinctively made people loath and distrust him.
At the appointed time he was at the hotel mentioned by Senor Charbonde,
and was closeted in deep consultation with that astute gentleman for an
hour or more. When he came out his face bore a broad smile--or grin,
rather, the former word hardly applying to Hank’s peculiar expression
of satisfaction.
“So that’s the game, is it?” he muttered to himself, as he found his
way to the crowded street. “Well, I’ll get the man you want and right
on board the _Beale_, too, but you’ll have to pay for it, and pay
heavy. Too bad, though, that the dago had to go and tell those boys
about his plans. No use worrying about that, however. I guess I’m slick
enough to fix them, or else----”
A cross-town car going in his direction passed before Hank had time to
finish his train of thought. He swung himself on the back platform,
but had hardly done so before he almost fell off again.
Facing him were the two last persons in the world he wished to see just
then--Ned Strong and Herc Taylor. For their part, the Dreadnought Boys
were almost as much astonished, though, of course, their feelings had a
very different tinge.
The situation would have been embarrassing but for the fact that Hank,
without a sign of recognition, dived rapidly forward into the crowd and
soon was swallowed in a perfect sea of heads and shoulders.
“The last person I’d have thought of meeting,” gasped Ned.
“The last person I’d want to meet,” growled Herc, clutching an armful
of bundles he held as vindictively as if he had Hank in his grip.
The Dreadnought Boys had been spending their last day ashore in getting
a few necessities for the voyage.
“I noticed him in the crowd on the sidewalk before he boarded the car,
and was going to draw your attention to him,” said Herc, “but I thought
I must be mistaken.”
“What was he doing?”
“Why, he had just come down the steps of the Hotel Espanola.”
“The Hotel Espanola,” exclaimed Ned in an astonished voice. “Why,
that’s the hotel that Charbonde mentioned this morning.”
“That’s right. By grandpa’s prize shoat, you don’t think Hank can be
mixed up in that crooked South American thing?”
“I don’t know,” mused Ned slowly, as the car rattled along. “I’d be
half inclined to believe anything of a chap who’d been dishonorably
discharged from the United States navy.”