The flash light dropped out of Lang’s hand. The girl’s light shifted; he heard a quick movement, the scrape of a match, and the yellow glow of a lamp shone out. She set it on the kitchen table, and stood gazing at him, still amazed, as if beyond speech.
“Is it possibly you, Doctor Lang?” she said unsteadily. “I found—I thought—— Oh, what does this mean? Are you insane?”
“I came back for the keys,” Lang stammered. It was all he could think of to say. He tried to pull himself together, and got upon his feet. What was she doing here, for that matter, in Rockett’s house?
“It’s all a mistake,” he tried to explain. “Rockett himself told me to come here—his last words. It wasn’t for myself. The creditors’ money——”
“I don’t know what you mean. Creditors? Why did you come here at all?”
“Well, if it comes to that, how do you come to be here yourself?” returned Lang, driven to defense.
“Here? In my own father’s house?” she exclaimed in the most genuine amazement.
Lang’s brain almost turned dizzy again. The wildest suppositions flashed through it. Was Eva really Morrison, or was Rockett really Rockett? Could she be the daughter of the Automotive Fuel defaulter without knowing it?
“Oh, I want to know what it all means!” she cried pitifully. “I waited in Mobile for my father. He never came. At last I came out here, to our house. Thieves had been through it; it was turned upside down. Father’s money box was in this room, burst open. I found the keys—with your name. I couldn’t believe it. I thought they had been stolen from you. I can’t believe yet. Why don’t you speak?” she cried passionately. “Say it—it wasn’t you!
“You must know something,” she went on, after waiting in vain for Lang to answer. “Father had been here; his things were here; his bed had been slept in, and he’s gone. Where is he?”
“I don’t know,” Lang groaned. He was so bewildered that he felt incapable of clear thought. “It isn’t as bad as it looks. Don’t think the worst of me. I didn’t ransack the house. I had authority to come here, and I have the money safe.”
“I don’t care about any money. It’s my father!” she reiterated. “Have they murdered him?”
“I don’t know!” exclaimed the surgeon in despair. “Wait—who was your father? What was he like?”
“You don’t know?” She stared amazed. “Why, Edward Morrison, the explorer. Don’t you know his books?”
She turned and ran into the next room, returning immediately with a large volume, and showed a portrait frontispiece. It was a book of South American travel and archæology. Lang remembered Edward Morrison’s name very well now, though he had never read any of his books. But he did not think of that at the moment; for the half length of the portrait, though well clad, healthy, with open, frowning eyes and resolute countenance was beyond any doubt the figure of the haggard and unconscious patient of the Cavite.
“Oh, Lord!” Lang groaned, taking this in.
“You know him? You’ve seen him?”
“Yes—I’ve seen him.” Lang cast about for softening phrases. “I was aboard a steamer with him, only the other day. Why,” he cried, remembering, “it was the yacht, you know—that call that you urged me to accept. He was the patient I was to treat, only they didn’t tell me his right name.”
“My father?” said Eva, dazed. “How did he get on a yacht? But that man was very ill—paralyzed.”
“Yes. Not seriously, though, as I think now. But—but the yacht was run down two days later, in a fog. I helped get your father on deck; I tried to save him. The ship went down under us. I never saw him again. I don’t know whether anybody was saved but myself and one other.”
He felt the cool bluntness of his story, but he could think of no other words. Eva Morrison searched his face with wide, imploring eyes which he could not meet. She turned about slowly, and went back into the darkness of the dining room, putting out her hands as if blinded. She did not come back.
Left alone with his confusion and wretchedness, Lang waited for several minutes. He thought he heard a suppressed noise, hesitated a little longer, and then took the lamp and went after her. The devastated room had been put into order again, and Eva was huddled on a wide couch, her head buried in her arms, trembling with gasping sobs.
He spoke gently to her. She did not move, perhaps did not hear him. He stood over her uncertainly for some seconds, tortured.
“Don’t sorrow so—not yet,” he tried to comfort her. “We don’t know that your father is lost at all. Most likely he has been picked up, as I was. That ocean swarms with ships. I’d have plenty of hope. He may be ashore by this time.”
Still she made no sign whatever of having heard, except that her convulsive sobbing subsided a little. Unbearably wrung by her suffering, Lang knelt down impulsively and put his arm over her shoulders.
“Don’t grieve so, for God’s sake!” he said. “I’ll help you—everything I can do. Have courage! Your father can’t be drowned.”
She did not move from him; in fact she seemed to nestle into his protective arm. She grew quieter, presently turned her head, and sat up.
“Do you think there’s any—any hope?” she stammered, looking at him helplessly.
It was no time for truth. Lang lied boldly.
“Every chance. There were boats out at once. Your father is most likely ashore now.”
He had a vivid mental picture of the semiparalyzed man on that dark deck, as the Cavite plunged bows down. He shuddered, but Eva seemed encouraged, and spoke more collectedly.
“Oh, I hope it may be so!” she said. “I won’t give up, yet. Couldn’t I telegraph to all the places where he might have come ashore?
“But—but,” she faltered, shaky again, “to think that I hadn’t seen him at all for nearly a year! Father and I were always such friends and comrades. My mother died years ago. We two were everything—just all each other had. I let him keep me up North at college when I should have been with him. But he was away on his expeditions so much. He built this house for us to live in; we made plans for our life here, and he was just beginning to get credit for the great work he’d done—for all his exploration in South America—and now, to have it cut off—it leaves all the world empty. But it can’t be; he can’t be drowned!”
“Of course not!” Lang cried. “Nobody could have missed being picked up on that sea. Why, it’s almost like a crowded street, with ships. We’ll telegraph to all the ports, as you said. Good idea! I think you’d better go back to Mobile with me. I’ve got a car down the road. You can’t stay alone here.”
“I’m not afraid. I’ve been here alone before,” said Eva. “But,” she went on, “I don’t understand yet how you came to be here. And then, what was my father doing on board that yacht? It all seems a puzzle.”
“It’s more than a puzzle.”
Anything to distract her mind now, and he plunged into an account of his adventures on board the Cavite. He had to tread warily. He suppressed the fact that her father had been tortured, that he was unconscious and paralyzed. He represented that Morrison had been obstinately keeping silence. And when he came to the man’s last incoherent instructions, Eva interrupted, anxiously.
“He wanted you to find something important. He must have meant you to pass it to me. What did you find?”
“It was that steel dispatch box; it had some stock certificates—nothing else but a bundle of drawings and photographs. We sold the stock. I didn’t understand, of course. I thought it was for the Rockett creditors. We were lucky enough to catch it just at its high point and we—well, we speculated on it a little. Eventually we got out with over twelve thousand dollars. It’s all in the bank at Mobile. It’s all yours, of course. I’ll have it transferred to you to-morrow.”
What luck, he thought, that he had neither split it with Carroll nor turned it in to the courts.
Eva was reflecting gravely. “That was the money for his next expedition. It’s more than he often had. His expeditions generally cost far more than they brought in. He’s just come back from southern Chile, you know. He was going again this season, and he was going to take me with him, as far as Valparaiso, anyway.”
“Well, the money is here all waiting for him,” Lang returned.
“And the photographs and sketches you spoke of—have you them safely, too?”
“No, I believe Carroll still has them,” he admitted. “I’ve not thought of them since. But I’ll get them back for you. Do you suppose that gang imagined that your father had large quantities of valuables hidden? Surely they didn’t take all that trouble for his little block of oil stock. Why should they have carried him off against his will? Or, did they? What were they trying to get out of him? Have you any idea?”
Eva seemed to reflect long, and then shook her head silently.
“Is it possible that they really thought he was Rockett?” Lang surmised, thinking hard; and in the ensuing silence the little clock on the mantel tinkled three times.
“Three o’clock!” he exclaimed. “Too late to talk of all this any longer. You can’t stay here alone. I’ve a car waiting, and I’ll take you back to town with me. Get your things together.”
“No, I’ll stay here, at least till to-morrow night. If father should be found word will probably be sent here. I’m not in the least afraid, and you were the only burglar, after all.”
Lang tried hard to persuade her, but she insisted. He gave up at last. After all, the night was nearly over.
“You’ll be back at the Iberville in Mobile to-morrow without fail, though,” he said. “If you’re not I’ll be out here to bring you. To-morrow I’m sure we’ll have good news.”
He did not feel equal to any more argument or encouragement. Eva jumped up and came after him as he turned to go, holding something in her hand.
“I’m so glad you did come—even as a burglar,” she said, with a faint smile. “You’ve been very kind and cheering, and—here are your keys.”
Lang groped down to the gate in the twilight, and looked back at the lighted window blind. He could not quite make up his mind to leave the girl alone with her grief, nor could he venture to go back. He lingered about the gate, and finally sat down on the ground, with his back against a tree.
The light in the house presently went out. Eva had gone to bed—probably not to sleep. Lang felt an extraordinary tenderness and pity for the girl. She was brave; she had come out boldly with her flash light and revolver when she heard him in the house. Her father was almost surely drowned. He would have to help her through the coming bad days, as she had helped him through his own.
He half dozed, wondering why the Cavite’s crew had wanted to make her father talk. He would see Carroll and get the truth out of him—get the photographs, too. He dozed again, awoke and dozed, till the pale dawn caught him asleep.
He got up, cramped and very cold. Morrison’s house was dim and dead in the dawn. He started down the road, shivering, sleepy, half starved and irritable.
He found his taxi at Persia, the driver asleep on the cushions. The long drive back to Mobile was too much to contemplate. He told the man to drive to the nearest hotel, and dozed off in the car.
He awoke among streets, trees, houses. He did not know where he was, nor care. A greasy all-night lunch counter met his eye, where he swallowed rolls and hot milk. They told him that there was a hotel in the next block. He never learned its name, but he woke up the night clerk and secured a room. He felt incapable of thought; the Morrison-Rockett imbroglio in its last development was too much for him. He tore off his clothes in a sort of fury of perplexity and fatigue and tumbled between the sheets, where he fell instantly into a deathlike sleep.