Phinuit? The tongue of that plain-spoken man was hinged in the middle;
but one couldn't feel certain. Liane Delorme had made much of the chief
engineer; though she seemed less likely to talk too much than anyone of
the ship's company but Lanyard himself. But then (one remembered of a
sudden) Monk and Mussey were by reputation old cronies; it wasn't
inconceivable that Monk might have let something slip...
"And what, Mr. Mussey, if I should admit I am Michael Lanyard?"
"Then I'll have something to say to you, something I think'll interest
you."
"Why not run the risk of interesting me, whoever I may be?"
Mussey breathed heavily in the stillness: the breathing of a cautious
man loath to commit himself.
"No," he said at length, in the clearest enunciation he had thus far
used. "No. If you're not Lanyard, I'd rather say nothing more--I'll
just ask you to pardon me for intruding and clear out."
"But you say there is some gossip. And where there is smoke, there must
be fire. It would seem safe to assume I am the man gossip says I am."
"Michael Lanyard?" the mutter persisted--"the Lone Wolf?"
"Yes, yes! What then?"
"I suppose the best way's to put it to you straight..."
"I warn you, you'll gain nothing if you don't."
"Then... to begin at the beginning... I've known Whit Monk a good long
time. Years I've known him. We've sailed together off and on ever since
we took to the sea; we've gone through some nasty scrapes together, and
done things that don't bear telling, and always shared the thick and
the thin of everything. Before this, if anybody had ever told me Whit
Monk would do a pal dirt, I'd've punched his head and thought no more
about it. But now..."
The mutter faltered. Lanyard preserved a sympathetic silence--a
silence, at least, which he hoped would pass as sympathetic. In
reality, he was struggling to suppress any betrayal of the exultation
that was beginning to take hold of him. Premature this might prove to
be, but it seemed impossible to misunderstand the emotion under which
the chief engineer was labouring or to underestimate its potential
value to Lanyard. Surely it would seem that his faith in his star had
been well-placed: was it not now--or all signs failed--delivering into
his hand the forged tool he had so desperately needed, for which he had
so earnestly prayed?
A heavy sigh issued upon the stillness, freighted with a deep and
desolating melancholy. For, it appeared, like all cynics, Mr. Mussey
was a sentimentalist at heart. And in the darkness that disembodied
voice took up its tale anew.
"I don't have to tell you what's going on between Whit and that lot
he's so thick with nowadays. You know, or you wouldn't be here."
"Isn't that conclusion what you Americans would call a little
previous?"
"Previous?" The mutter took a moment to con the full significance of
that adjective. "No: I wouldn't call it that. You see, on a voyage like
this--well, talk goes on, things get about, things are said aloud that
shouldn't be and get overheard and passed along; and the man who sits
back and listens and sifts what he hears is pretty likely to get a
tolerably good line on what's what. Of course there's never been any
secret about what the owner means to do with all this wine he's
shipped. We all know we're playing a risky game, but we're for the
owner--he isn't a bad sort, when you get to know him--and we'll go
through with it and take what's coming to us win or lose. Partly, of
course, because it'll mean something handsome for every man if we make
it without getting caught. But if you want to know what I think... I'll
tell you something..."
"But truly I am all attention."
"I think Whit Monk and Phinuit and mam'selle have framed the owner
between them."
"Can't say I quite follow..."
"I think they cooked up this smuggling business and kidded him into it
just to get the use of his yacht for their own purposes and at the same
time get him where he can't put up a howl if he finds out the truth.
Suppose he does..." The mutter became momentarily a deep-throated
chuckle of malice. "He's in so deep on the booze smuggling side he
dassent say a word, and that puts him in worse yet, makes him accessory
before the fact of criminal practices that'd made his hair stand on
end. Then, suppose they want to go on with the game, looting in Europe
and sneaking the goods into America with the use of his yacht: what's
he going to say, how's he going to stop them?"
Accepting these questions as purely rhetorical, Lanyard offered no
comment. After a moment the mutter resumed:
"Well, what do you think? Am I right or am I wrong?"
"Who knows, Mr. Mussey? One can only say, you seem to know something."
"I'll say I know something! A sight more than Whit Monk dreams I
know--as he'll find out to his sorrow before he's finished with Tom
Mussey."
"But"--obliquely Lanyard struck again at the heart of the mystery which
he found so baffling--"you seem so well satisfied with the bona fides
of your informant?"
There was a sound of stertorous breathing as the intelligence behind
the mutter grappled with this utterance. Then, as if the hint had
proved too fine--"I'm playing my hand face up with you, Mr. Lanyard. I
guess you can tell I know what I'm talking about."
"But what I cannot see is why you should talk about it to me,
monsieur."
"Why, because I and you are both in the same boat, in a manner of
speaking. We're both on the outside--shut out--looking in."
In a sort of mental aside, Lanyard reflected that mixed bathing for
metaphors was apparently countenanced under the code of cynics.
"Does one gather that you feel aggrieved with Captain Monk for not
making you a partner in his new associations?"
"For trying to put one over on me, an old pal... stood by him through
thick and thin... would've gone through fire for Whit Monk, and in my
way I have, many's the time. And now he hooks up with Phinuit and this
Delorme woman, and leaves me to shuffle my feet on the doormat... and
thinks I'll let him get away with it."
The voice in the dark gave a grunt of infinite contempt: "Like hell..."
"I understand your feelings, monsieur; and I ask you to believe in my
sympathy. But you said--if I remember--that we were in the same boat,
you and I; whereas I assure you Captain Monk has not abused my
friendship, since he has never had it."
"I know that well enough," said the mutter. "I don't mean you've got my
reasons for feeling sore; but I do mean you've got reason enough of
your own--"
"On what grounds do you say that?"
Another deliberate pause prefaced the reply: "You said a while ago I
knew something. Well--you said it. I and you've both been frozen out of
this deal and we're both meaning to take a hand whether they like it or
not. If that don't put us in the same boat I don't know..."
Perceiving he would get no more satisfaction, Lanyard schooled himself
to be politic for the time being.
"Say it is so, then... But I think you have something to propose."
"It's simple enough: When two people find themselves in the same boat
they've got to pull together if they want to get anywhere."
"You propose, then, an alliance?"
"That's the answer. Without you I can't do anything but kick over the
applecart for Whit Monk; and that sort of revenge is mighty
unsatisfactory. Without me--well: what can you do? I know you can get
that tin safe of Whit's open, when you feel like it, get the jewels and
all; but what show do you stand to get away with them? That is, unless
you've got somebody working in with you on board the ship. See here..."
The mutter sank into a husky whisper, and in order to be heard the
speaker bent so low over Lanyard that fumes of whiskey almost
suffocated the poor man in his bed.
"You've got a head, you've had experience, you know how... Well, go to
it: make your plans, consult with me, get everything fixed, lift the
loot; I'll stand by, fix up everything so's your work will go through
slick, see that you don't get hurt, stow the jewels where they won't be
found; and when it's all over, we'll split fifty-fifty. What d'you say?"
"Extremely ingenious, monsieur, but unfortunately impracticable."
"That's the last thing," stated the disappointed whisper, "I ever
thought a man like you would say."
"But it is obvious. We do not know each other."
"You mean, you can't trust me?"
"For that matter: how can you be sure you can trust me?"
"Oh, I guess I can size up a square guy when I see him."
"Many thanks. But why should I trust you, when you will not even be
quite frank with me?"
"How's that? Haven't I----"
"One moment: you refuse to name the source of your astonishingly
detailed information concerning this affair--myself included. You wish
me to believe you simply assume I am at odds with Captain Monk and his
friends. I admit it is true. But how should you know it? Ah, no, my
friend! either you will tell me how you learned this secret, or I must
beg you to let me get my sleep."
"That's easy. I heard Whit and Phinuit talking about you the other
night, on deck, when they didn't think anybody was listening."
Lanyard smiled into the darkness: no need to fret about fair play
toward this one! The truth was not in him, and by the same token the
traditional honour that obtains among thieves could not be.
He said, as if content, in the manner of a practical man dismissing all
immaterial considerations:
"As you say, the time is brief..."
"It'll have to be pulled off to-morrow night or not at all," the mutter
urged with an eager accent.
"My thought, precisely. For then we come to land, do we not?"
"Yes, and it'll have to be not long after dark. We ought to drop the
hook at midnight. Then"--the mutter was broken with hopeful
anxiety--"then you've decided you'll stand in with me, Mr. Lanyard?"
"But of course! What else can one do? As you have so fairly pointed
out: what is either of us without the other?"
"And it's understood: you're to lift the stuff, I'm to take care of it
till we can slip ashore, we're to make our getaway together--and the
split's to be fifty-fifty, fair and square?"
"I ask nothing better."
"Where's your hand?"
Two hands found each other blindly and exchanged a firm and inspiring
clasp--while Lanyard gave thanks for the night that saved his face from
betraying his mind.
Another deep sigh sounded a note of apprehensions at an end. A gruff
chuckle followed.
"Whit Monk! He'll learn something about the way to treat old friends."
And all at once the mutter merged into a vindictive hiss: "Him with his
airs and graces, his fine clothes and greasy manners, putting on the
lah-de-dah over them that's stood by him when he hadn't a red and was
glad to cadge drinks off spiggoties in hells like the Colonel's at
Colon--him!"
But Lanyard had been listening only with his ears; he hadn't the
slightest interest in Mr. Mussey's resentment of the affectations of
Captain Monk. For now his mad scheme had suddenly assumed a complexion
of comparative simplicity; given the co-operation of the chief
engineer, all Lanyard would need to contribute would be a little
headwork, a little physical exertion, a little daring--and complete
indifference, which was both well warranted and already his, to abusing
the confidence of Mr. Mussey.
"But about this affair to-morrow night," he interrupted impatiently:
"attend to me a little, if you please, my friend. Can you give me any
idea where we are, or will, approximately, at midnight to-night?"
"What's that go to do----?"
"Perhaps I ask only for my own information. But it may be that I have a
plan. If we are to work together harmoniously, Mr. Mussey, you must
learn to have a little confidence in me."
"Beg your pardon," said an humble mutter. "We ought to be somewhere off
Nantucket Shoals Lightship."
"And the weather: have you sufficient acquaintance with these latitudes
to foretell it, even roughly?"
"Born and brought up in Edgartown, made my first voyage on a tramp out
of New Bedford: guess I know something about the weather in these
latitudes! The wind's been hauling round from sou'west to south all
day. If it goes on to sou'east, it'll likely be thick to-morrow, with
little wind, no sea to speak of, and either rain or fog."
"So! Now to do what I will have to do, I must have ten minutes of
absolute darkness. Can that be arranged?"
"Absolute darkness?" The mutter had a rising inflexion of dubiety. "How
d'you mean?"
"Complete extinguishing of every light on the ship."
"My God!" the mutter protested. "Do you know what that means? No lights
at night, under way, in main-travelled waters! Why, by nightfall we ought
to be off Block Island, in traffic as heavy as on Fifth Avenue! No: that's
too much."
"Too bad," Lanyard uttered, philosophic. "And the thing could have been
done."
"Isn't there some other way?"
"Not with lights to hamper my operations. But if some temporary
accident were to put the dynamoes out of commission--figure to yourself
what would happen."
"There'd be hell to pay."
"Ah! but what else?"
"The engines would have to be slowed down so as to give no more than
steerage-way until oil lamps could be substituted for the binnacle,
masthead, and side-lights, also for the engine room."
"And there would be excitement and confusion, eh? Everybody would make
for the deck, even the captain would leave his cabin unguarded long
enough..."
"I get you"--with a sigh. "It's wrong, all wrong, but--well, I suppose
it's got to be done."
Lanyard treated himself to a smile of triumph, there in the darkness.
XXVI
THE BINNACLE
It would have been ungrateful (Lanyard reflected over his breakfast) to
complain of a life so replete with experiences of piquant contrast.
It happened to one to lie for hours in a cubicle of blinding night,
hearkening to a voice like that of some nightmare weirdly become
articulate, a ghostly mutter that rose and fell and droned, broken by
sighs, grunts, stifled oaths, mean chuckles, with intervals of husky
whispering and lapses filled with a noise of wheezing respiration, all
wheedling and cajoling, lying, intimating and evading, complaining,
snarling, rambling, threatening, protesting, promising, and in the end
proposing an unholy compact for treachery and evil-doing--a voice that
might have issued out of some damned soul escaped for a little space of
time from the Pits of Torment, so utterly inhuman it sounded, so
completely discarnate and divorced from all relationship to any mortal
personality that even that reek of whiskey in the air, even that one
contact with a hard, hot hand, could not make it seem real.
And then it ceased and was no more but as a thing of dream that had
passed. And one came awake to a light and wholesome world furnished
with such solidly comforting facts as soaps and razors and hot and cold
saltwater taps; and subsequently one left one's stateroom to see, at
the breakfast table, leaden-eyed and flushed of countenance, an
amorphous lump of humid flesh in shapeless garments of soiled white
duck, the author of that mutter in the dark; who, lounging over a plate
of broken food and lifting a coffee cup in the tremulous hand of an
alcoholic, looked up with lacklustre gaze, gave a surly nod, and
mumbled the customary matutinal greeting:
"'Morning, Monseer Delorme."
It was all too weird....
To add to this, the chief engineer paid Lanyard no further heed at all,
though they were alone at table, and having noisily consumed his
coffee, rubbed his stubbled lips and chin with an egg-stained napkin,
rose, and without word or glance rolled heavily up the companionway.
The conduct of a careful man, accustomed to mind his eye. And
indisputably correct. One never knew who might be watching, what
slightest sign of secret understanding might not be seized upon and
read. Furthermore, Mr. Mussey had not stilled his mutter in the night
until their joint and individual lines of action had been elaborately
mapped out and agreed upon down to the smallest detail. It now remained
only for Lanyard to fill in somehow the waste time that lay between
breakfast and the hour appointed, then take due advantage of the
opportunity promised him.
He found the day making good Mr. Mussey's forecast. Under a dull, thick
sky the sea ran in heavy swells, greasy and grey. The wind was in the
south, and light and shifty. The horizon was vague. Captain Monk,
encountered on the quarterdeck, had an uneasy eye, and cursed the
weather roundly when Lanyard made civil enquiry as to the outlook. Ça
va bien!
Lanyard killed an hour or two in the chartroom, acquainting himself
with the coast they were approaching and tracing the Sybarite's
probable course toward the spot selected from the smuggling
transaction. His notion of the precise location of the owner's estate
was rather indefinite; he had gathered from gossip that it was on the
Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound, between New London and New
Haven, where a group of small islands--also the property of Mister
Whitaker Monk--provided fair anchorage between Sound and shore as well
as a good screen from offshore observation.
It was not vital to know more: Lanyard had neither hope nor fear of
ever seeing that harbour. It was the approach alone that interested
him; and when he had puzzled out that there were only two practicable
courses for the Sybarite to take--both bearing in a general
north-westerly direction from Nantucket Shoals Light Vessel, one
entering Block Island Sound from the east, between Point Judith and
Block Island, the other entering the same body of water from the south,
between Block Island and Montauk Point--and had satisfied himself that
manifold perils to navigation hedged about both courses, more
especially their prolongation into Long Island Sound by way of The
Race: Lanyard told himself it would be strange indeed if his plans
miscarried ... always providing that Mr. Mussey could be trusted to
hold to his overnight agreement.
But as to that, one entertained few fears. One felt quite sure that Mr.
Mussey would perform duly to the letter of his covenant. It had
required only an hour of weighing and analysing with a clear head his
overtures and utterances as a whole, to persuade Lanyard that he
himself, no less than the chief engineer, in the phrase of the latter's
boast, "knew something."
It seemed unbelievably stupid and childish, what he imagined was behind
the gratuitous intermeddling of Mr. Mussey; but then, he reminded
himself, if there is anything more stupid than to plot a criminal act,
it is to permit oneself to be influenced by that criminal stupidity
whose other name is jealousy.
Well, whether he were right or wrong, the night would declare it; and
in any event there was no excuse whatever for refusing to profit by the
stupidity of men whose minds are bent on vicious mischief....
The weather thickened as the day grew older. Towards noon the wind, as
if weary and discouraged with vain endeavour to make up its mind to
blow from this quarter or that, died away altogether. At the same time
the horizon appeared to close in perceptibly; what little definition it
had had in earlier hours was erased; and the Sybarite, shearing the
oily and lifeless waters of a dead calm, seemed less to make progress
than to struggle sullenly in a pool of quicksilver at the bottom of a
slowly revolving sphere of clouded glass, mutinously aware that all her
labouring wrought no sort of gain.
After an hour of this, Captain Monk, on the bridge with Mr. Swain,
arrived at a decision of exasperation. Through the engine-room
ventilators a long jingle of the telegraph was heard; and directly the
Sybarite's pulses began to beat in quicker tempo, while darker volutes
of smoke rolled in dense volume from her funnel and streamed away
astern, resting low and preserving their individuality as long as
visible, like a streak of oxidization on a field of frosted silver. For
the first time since she had left the harbour of Cherbourg the yacht
was doing herself something like justice in the matter of speed--and
this contrary to all ethics of seamanship, on such a day.
At the luncheon table, Phinuit ventured a light-headed comment on this
dangerous procedure; whereupon Monk turned on him in a cold fury.
"As long as I'm master of this vessel, sir, I'll sail her according to
the counsels of my own discretion--and thank you to keep your
animadversions to yourself!"
"Animadversions!" Phinuit echoed, and made round, shocked eyes. "Oh, I
never! At least, I didn't mean anything naughty, skipper dear."
Monk snorted, and grumbled over his food throughout the remainder of
the meal; but later, coming upon a group composed of Liane Delorme,
Lanyard and Phinuit, in the saloon, he paused, looked this way and that
to make sure none of the stewards was within eavesdropping distance,
and graciously unbent a little.
"I'm making the best time we can while we can see at all," he
volunteered. "No telling when this misbegotten fog will close in and
force us to slow down to half-speed or less--in crowded waters, too!"
"And very sensible, I'm sure," Phinuit agreed heartily. "Whatever
happens, we musn't be late for our date with Friend Boss, must we?"
"We'll keep it," Monk promised grimly, "if we have to feel every inch
of our way in with the lead. I don't mind telling you, this fog may
save our skins at that. Wireless has been picking up chatter all
morning between a regular school of revenue cutters patrolling this
coast on the lookout for just such idiots as we are. So we'll carry on
and trust to luck till we make Monk Harbour or break our fool necks."
Liane Delorme gave a start of dismay.
"There is danger, then?"
"Only if we run afoul of a cutter, Liane." Monk tried to speak
reassuringly. "And that's not likely in this weather. As for the fog,
it's a dirty nuisance to any navigator but, as I said, may quite
possibly prove our salvation. I know these waters like a book, I've
sailed them ever since I was old enough to tell a tiller from a
mainsheet. I can smell my way in, if it comes to that, through the
blindest fog the Atlantic ever brewed."
"Then you do things with your nostrils, too?" Phinuit enquired
innocently. "I've often wondered if all the intellect was located in
the eyebrows."
Monk glared, growled, and hastily sought the air of the deck. Liane
Delorme eyed Phinuit with amused reproach.
"Really, my young friend!"
"I can't help it, mademoiselle," Phinuit asserted sulkily. "Too much is
enough. I've watched him making faces with the top of his head so long
I dream of geometrical diagrams laid out in eyebrows--and wake up
screaming. And they call this a pleasure craft!"
With an aggrieved air he sucked at his pipe for a few minutes.
"Besides," he added suddenly, "somebody's got to be comic relief, and I
don't notice anybody else in a sweat to be the Life and Soul of the
ship."
He favoured Lanyard with a morose stare. "Why don't you ever put your
shoulder to the wheel, Lanyard? Why leave it all to me? Come on; be a
sport, cut a caper, crack a wheeze, do something to get a giggle!"
"But I am by no means sure you do not laugh at me too much, as it is."
"Rot!... Tell you what." Phinuit sat up with a gleaming eye of
inspiration. "You can entertain mademoiselle and me no end, if you
like. Spill the glad tidings."
"Glad tidings?"
"Now don't monkey with the eyebrows--_please!_ It gives me the
willies... I merely mean to point out, to-day's the day you promised to
come through with the awful decision. And there's no use waiting for
Monk to join us; he's too much worried about his nice little ship. Tell
mademoiselle and me now."
Lanyard shook his head, smiling. "But the time I set was when we made
our landfall."
"Well, what's the matter with Martha's Vineyard over there? You could
see if it was a clear day."
"But it is not a clear day."
"Suppose it gets thicker, a sure-enough fog? We may not see land before
midnight."
"Then till midnight we must wait. No, Monsieur Phinuit, I will not be
hurried. I have been thinking, I am still thinking, and there is still
much to be said before I can come to any decision that will be fair to
you, mademoiselle, the captain on the one hand, myself on the other."
"But at midnight, if the skipper's promise holds good, we'll be going
ashore."
"The objection is well taken. My answer will be communicated when we
see land or at eleven o'clock to-night, whichever is the earlier
event."
Some further effort at either persuasion or impudence--nobody but
Phinuit ever knew which--was drowned out by the first heart-broken
bellow of the whistle sounding the fog signal.