Lang’s fury of wrath slowly cooled. He sat down on the berth, drank a glass of water, and eventually laughed. These fellows had taken so much trouble over him, had been so patient, and all to get the wrong man. Evidently they intended to keep him on board, still hoping that he could restore their friend to life, or at any rate to speech.
He removed his wet clothes and lay down, hardly expecting to sleep. He listened to the throb of the screw, the wash of water, the occasional trampling steps overhead. He dozed fitfully, waking with a start, listening to the sea sounds, and at last found his room suddenly flooded with light.
A brilliant reflection of sunshine from the sea came through the port. He had slept after all, and more soundly than he had done for weeks, and he had a half minute of stupid bewilderment before the full memory of his predicament came back.
He rolled out of the berth, washed, dressed hastily, and was just ending his hurried toilet when some one knocked gently, then the door opened. A tall negro, clad in soiled white, appeared in the entrance and addressed Lang with tremendous suavity.
“Good mo’nin’, doctah! De captain, he say yoh breakfus’ served any time dat yoh desires fo’ hit, doctah, suh!”
“All right!” Lang returned, and pushed past the steward into the cabin. No one was there; a white cloth was spread at one end of the table, but he made for the stairway and ran up to the deck.
A blaze of sunshine met him, and a glitter of sky and sea. The weather had cleared; the sun shone gloriously low in the east, and the ocean rippled and sparkled, frothing delicately in long, white-crowned lines. The air itself was warm, sparkling, exhilarating; it went through Lang’s system like a stimulant. No land was in sight anywhere, unless a faint cloud astern meant the coast, and at first he saw no one on the deck.
Then, walking forward, he espied the youthful gangster, in a white jersey and cloth cap, a cigarette butt in his mouth, slouching over the rail. He glanced aside at the doctor, nodded furtively, and seemed to sidle off. Close to the bow Lang now perceived a couple of negro deck hands busied over something, and two men on the bridge.
He found Carroll unexpectedly at his side, but it was no longer the dandy yachtsman of the day before. Carroll now wore a faded greenish sweater, “pin-check” trousers and soiled tennis shoes, but he greeted the physician with the same extreme amiability.
“Well, are you ready to put me ashore?” Lang demanded, with an implacable air.
“Oh, come on, now, doctor!” Carroll pleaded. “Don’t go back to that. Ain’t you comfortable here? You wouldn’t leave a sick man on our hands like that? He’s desperate sick—you said it yourself.”
“This is no yacht. Why did you say it was?” Lang pursued.
“Ain’t it? Say, Floyd, he says the Cavite ain’t a yacht,” said Carroll, addressing the spectacled member of the crew who just then sauntered up.
“Well, what’s a yacht?” Floyd returned. “The Cavite isn’t anything else in particular, and she’s got no business, and she isn’t going anywhere, and what’s that but a yacht?”
“No business? Nothing in wet goods?” inquired Lang.
“I don’t know what you mean,” returned Carroll blankly. “Had breakfast? We told the steward to call you. No? Come down and eat, then. A man shouldn’t talk on an empty stomach—apt to say things he don’t mean.”
Lang had had no supper the previous night, and he felt very empty. It was not a breakfast to be despised, he found, when the suave steward produced it.
When he had finished he stepped into the sick room to glance at his patient. There was no change, except that they had turned the man over for greater comfort. Lang stood looking down at that massive, powerful, oblivious countenance, and went back to the saloon with his resolution fixed.
“What do you think? Is there any chance?” demanded Carroll anxiously.
“I think that you know more about this case than I do,” said Lang. “I can’t find any physical cause for his condition. Before I go any further I’ll have to know the history of the case—just what happened to him; how he came into this state. I want to know who this man is, and”—he hesitated, and then went on firmly—“why you are so anxious for him to speak before he dies.”
Floyd blew a cloud of smoke, and glanced at the physician with a queerly mocking eye.
“I’m not surprised that you’re curious,” said Carroll directly. “It must look a queer mess, to an outsider. We talked it all over last night, and agreed that you’d have to be told sooner or later.”
He stopped and glanced at Floyd’s imperturbable face.
“You’ll pledge yourself to the strictest secrecy, now and afterward?” he said.
“A physician doesn’t make such pledges,” said Lang stiffly. “His patients trust him, or they don’t.”
“Oh, we trust you, all right, doctor,” Carroll hastened to say. “It’s a matter of professional honor; we’ll leave it at that. This man——” He hesitated again. “Did you ever hear of the Automotive Fuel Company of New Jersey?”
Lang barely repressed a startled movement.
“I have,” he said calmly.
“Arthur Rockett, its president, wrecked it, and disappeared with around a quarter of a million.”
“So I have heard. But what has that to do with this case?”
“Just this,” said Carroll, motioning toward the stateroom door. “That man in there—that’s Arthur Rockett.”
Lang’s brain suddenly seemed to swim slightly, yet he controlled his voice.
“Are you sure?” he said. “Rockett was supposed to have got away to South America.”
“Absolutely sure,” said Floyd, with his voice of cold certainty. “I’ve seen him often enough in New York to know him. I ought to—I had twenty thousand dollars in his cursed company.”
“And I lost all I had saved up,” put in Carroll eagerly. “It wasn’t so much—only about seven thousand dollars. Rockett broke us all, the captain, too. Jerry had to mortgage his ship.”
“And your young friend in the white sweater?” Lang inquired. “Has he lost his savings, too?”
Floyd smiled faintly.
“That’s Louie Bonelli—‘Louie the Lope,’ they call him in Harlem. No, I don’t think Louie ever had any savings, but he’s been very useful to us, as you’ll see, and he’s going to share with the rest of us.”
Lang leaned back, trying to look indifferent. He had never seen the fraudulent promoter, whose flight had taken all his own savings, but he had seen newspaper portraits, and he vaguely remembered an elderly man with a heavy, big-boned countenance, who might very well be this very man aboard the Cavite. This unconscious patient of his had a strong, audacious face, such as would have fitted the great wrecker.
“Dr. Long,” said Floyd impressively, “all we want is justice. We only want to get our own back. We never expected to get a dollar out of it. It came by chance. Carroll and I were in New York. Louie was down around New Orleans, for reasons best known to himself, and he happened to spot Rockett at Pass Christian.
“All the cops were sure he’d left the country, but he hadn’t. He’d grown a little beard, and browned his face and arms, and he had a bungalow and a fruit-and-truck ranch on the Gulf coast, and he dressed in overalls and really worked at his fig trees and orange grove. He must have had it all ready for months before, and it was the best sort of hide out, considering the sort of high roller he’d been up North—a spender, a prince, a man who couldn’t walk but had a new car every week.
“Louie wasn’t quite certain, but he sent for Carroll and me, and we came down. It was Rockett, right enough. Then we called in Jerry Harding, who was running his little freighter along the coast. We held a council. We knew Rockett had his plunder planted somewhere, and was lying low till the storm blew over a little. Well, what do you suppose we’d do? What would you’ve done yourself? Have him arrested, and take a chance of getting a dividend among the creditors—five cents on the dollar? We didn’t see it that way. We studied his movements, his way of life. We hauled the ship close inshore one night, went up to his shack, and held him up. He lived all alone, and it was a mile to the next house. We put it to him—what was he going to do about it? All we wanted was what we’d lost. He could keep the rest, for us.
“He was as stubborn as the devil. Can’t you see it in his face? He denied that he was Rockett, denied everything. Finally he turned silent, and wouldn’t speak at all. So we gave him the third degree.”
“You mean you tortured him?” cried Lang, remembering the burn upon Rockett’s arm.
“I wouldn’t call it torture, exactly. Louie did it. We worked over him nearly all night. Maybe Louie got a little too rough at the last. We were all rather on edge. Anyhow, all at once he heaved up out of the chair where he was tied, and went over sidewise on the floor.
“He seemed to be stunned, but he didn’t come to. We tried everything, but no use. It was getting daylight and we were afraid to wait any longer; so we searched the house without finding anything, and brought him on board here.”
“We expected him to wake up any minute,” Carroll went on, as Floyd stopped. “We watched him day and night. We knew he couldn’t really be hurt. We tried an electric battery—thought he might be shamming. Then we got scared that he was going to die on us. He seemed to be getting weaker; twice we thought he’d passed out. We couldn’t let him die till we found out where he’d planted the stuff. So it looked like a godsend when we heard that you were in Mobile, and read about the great work you’d done on just such cases.”
“Yes, we were at our wits’ end, doctor,” said Floyd. “You mustn’t hold a grudge against us for half kidnaping you. Really it’s a compliment. And you won’t lose anything. If you can help us, and get Rockett to talk, and we find out what he’s done with his loot—why, you can ask for what you like, and get it.”
They fixed intense eyes on the doctor. Lang shrugged his shoulders.
“I can’t revive him, not at this stage anyway,” he said. “I couldn’t if I would, and I wouldn’t try.”
“But we’ve got to make him talk!” cried Carroll. “What’s the chance that he’ll come round?”
“About an even chance, I should think, whether he gradually improves, or gradually sinks and dies without ever regaining consciousness. Of course a moment might come when he could be revived with stimulants—you can’t predict in these cases.”
“But you won’t desert us?” Floyd pleaded. “You’ll see us through?”
Lang puffed his cigar, as if thinking about it. But he was not in any doubt. It was the most stupendous piece of luck, and Eva Morrison had been more than right when she urged him to accept this call.
Not that he believed half the story. He did not believe that any of this ship’s company had ever owned Rockett’s stock. They did not look like an investing class. Somehow they must have discovered Rockett’s hiding place, and were trying to “hijack” him; or they might have been Rockett’s own confederates, now turned against him. But however this might be, Lang was determined not to let Arthur Rockett out of his sight.
“It’s an interesting sort of case,” he said, with admirable detachment. “Yes, I’ll stay with you till he speaks—or dies.”