CHAPTER XVI
TELLING HOW BRANDON BEARDED THE LION IN HIS LAIR
AS Brandon Tarr entered the apartment behind the bar room of the New England Hotel, the man at the table raised his head and surveyed him surlily. Evidently he had been drinking, and the liquor had changed his mood greatly from that of the affable sailor who had accosted the captain’s son in the Chopmist woods.
“Well, how came you here?” inquired the sailor, in no very friendly tone, gazing at Brandon, with bloodshot eyes.
“I came down on the train.”
“Ain’t you lost?”
“Guess not,” responded the boy.
The man shifted his position uneasily, keeping his eyes fixed upon his visitor.
“Can’t say as I expected to see you—just yet, any way.”
“No?” returned Brandon coolly.
“Say! wot the blazes do you want, any way?” demanded the sailor fiercely, after an instant’s silence. “It won’t pay you to be sassy here, my lad, now I can assure ye.”
“Think so? Seems to me you’re not as glad to see me as I reckoned you would be. It didn’t exactly pay you to come ’way up to Rhode Island to pump me, did it?”
The fellow hissed out an oath between his teeth and clinched his fist angrily.
“You’re too fresh, you are!” he declared.
“Maybe.”
“So I went up there to pump you, eh?”
“I reckon.”
“And what did you come down here for?”
“To pump you,” responded the captain’s son, laughing.
The sailor stared at him in utter amazement for a moment.
“Of all the swabs——” he began, but Brandon interrupted him.
“See here, Wetherbee, I’ve come here for a purpose. My father intrusted you with some papers for me (though why he ever did so I don’t see—I mistrusted your ugly face the first time I ever saw it), and now you are trying to play me false.”
“You know too much!” roared the sailor, rising and thumping the table with his clenched fist.
“Yes, I do know too much for your good—or for the success of your plot,” Brandon replied, with cool sarcasm. “See this?”
He took the bit of newspaper from his pocket and tossed it upon the table before the man.
“What is it?” demanded the sailor, clutching at the clipping.
“The newspaper item stating that the Silver Swan is a derelict, instead of being sunken, as you declared to me. Had I not found it in the woods after you left, I might have still believed your lying yarn, Wetherbee.”
The sailor crumpled the bit of paper in his fist and shook the clenched member in the boy’s face.
“Young man,” he said with emphasis, “ye think ye’re smart; but do ye know that ye’re likely ter git inter trouble ’fore ye get out o’ this place? I don’t ’low no boy ter sass me.”
“I’m sorry for that,” said Brandon, thinking the fellow’s threat but mere bombastic eloquence; “for I reckon you’ll have to stand it.”
His very fearlessness caused the man to hesitate ere he used violence, for it might be that the boy had friends within call. The sailor therefore bit his thick lip in fury, and poured a shower of vituperations upon his visitor’s head.
“Let me tell you something else, also,” continued Brandon. “I propose to have those papers that father gave you.”
“Oh, you do?” half screamed the man, stamping up and down the room in ungovernable rage.
“Yes, sir; and no amount of swearing will scare me. Those papers are mine and if you won’t give them up peaceably, the law will make you.”
Suddenly the man stopped storming and became more tranquil.
“So you’re goin’ ter law erbout it, be ye?”
“No, I don’t think I’ll have to; I think you’ll see plain enough that it will be best for you to give them up. By your own confession you don’t know where the treasure is hid; but I do. Somehow I’m going to find the wreck of the brig and get—whatever it was father hid. But first, I want those papers that I may know what the—the treasure consists of.”
“Oh, ye do? Well, how be ye goin’ ter prove that I’ve got the docyments?”
“Very easily indeed,” Brandon responded frankly. “I’m going to look up the sailor who was with you on the raft. If father gave you the papers he doubtless knows it, and I don’t believe that there are two men as dishonest as you, Wetherbee.”
“So you know where the old man has hid the stuff, hey? An’ yer goin’ ter see th’—th’ other sailor an’ git his evidence, be ye?”
The man’s ugly face turned a deep reddish hue and he reached out his hands and clutched the empty chair as though he were strangling somebody. The gesture was so terribly realistic and the man’s face so diabolical, that Brandon involuntarily shrank back.
“You little fool!” hissed the other slowly. “You’ve put yourself right inter my han’s an’ let me tell ye I’m a bad man ter monkey with. I’ve let ye hev it all your own way so fur, but now ’twill be my turn, an’ don’t you forgit it! Ye know where thet treasure is hidden aboard the brig, hey? Then, by the great jib boom, ye’ll tell me or ye’ll never git out o’ here alive!”
As he uttered the threat he sprang upon the boy so suddenly that Brandon was totally unprepared for the assault. His victim was no match for his great strength, and was borne to the floor at once.
The villain’s hand upon his throat deprived the boy of all power of utterance, and he felt himself being slowly choked into insensibility.
Suddenly the door between the apartment and the bar room was flung wide open as though a small hurricane had descended upon the establishment of the New England Hotel. Don’s villainous assailant—big and burly though he was—was seized in a grip of iron, pulled from his victim, and thrown bodily to the other side of the room.
“You scoundrel!” roared Caleb (for it was he) in a voice that made the chandelier tremble. “Would you kill the lad?”
But Brandon, now that the pressure was removed from his throat, was on his feet in a moment, staring curiously at the big, wooden legged sailor.
“Just saved you from adding murder to your other sins, did I?” continued the mate of the Silver Swan. “Did he hurt you, lad?”
“Guess I’m all right,” responded Brandon, feeling of his throat as his assailant arose to his feet, scowling ferociously at the newcomer.
“I’ll live to see you hung yet, Jim Leroyd!” Caleb declared, shaking his huge fist at the sailor.
“Great Scott!” exclaimed Brandon; “is that his name? Why, he told me he was Caleb Wetherbee!”
“He did, eh? Blast his impudence! Let me tell you, lad, if Cale Wetherbee looked like that scoundrel, he’d go drown himself for very shame. I’m Caleb Wetherbee, myself, and you, I reckon, are Brandon Tarr.”
Brandon was fairly stupefied by this announcement.
“But what about the—the papers father put into his hands for me?” he asked, breathlessly.
“Your father give him papers, lad? Well, I reckon not! He’s lied to ye.”
“Then he hasn’t them?”
“Not he. I’ve got ’em myself, safe and sound.”
“You have them?” repeated Brandon.
“That I have,” replied the mate confidently, “and what’s more, I’ve got ’em right here!”
At this juncture the door behind them opened and the red faced barkeeper came into the room.
“Look er-here, wot’s de meanin’ of all dis, hey?” he demanded, eying Caleb with disfavor.
“Oh, it’s you, is it?” said the wooden legged sailor, in disgust. “I know you, Jack Brady. Get out here, you walking beer keg! I’m having a private seance with this gentleman,” intimating the cowed Leroyd.
A quick look of intelligence passed between Leroyd and the bartender.
“Ye’re tryin’ ter kick up a shindy in dis place, dat’s wot ye’re at!” declared the latter, rolling up his sleeves, belligerently.
“Yes, and I’ll kick up a bigger row before I’m through,” Caleb replied threateningly. “Now you run out and play, sonny, while I talk to my friend, Mr. Leroyd, here.”
This so angered the pugilistic looking man that he made a dash at the big sailor; but the consequences were exceedingly unpleasant.
Caleb’s hammer-like fist swung round with the force of a pile driver, and an ox would have fallen before that blow. As Mr. Brady himself would have put it, he was “knocked out in one round.”
But the treacherous Leroyd, taking advantage of his friend’s attack on the mate, sprang upon Caleb from the other side. This flank movement was totally unexpected, and, weakened by his long confinement in the hospital, the mate of the Silver Swan could not hold his own with his former shipmate.
Both went to the floor with a crash, and as they fell Leroyd tore open his antagonist’s coat and seized a flat leather case from the mate’s inside pocket. Dealing one heavy blow on the other’s upturned face, the scoundrel sprang up and disappeared like a shot through the door at the opposite end of the apartment.
“Stop him!” roared Caleb, and Brandon, who had stood utterly bewildered and helpless throughout the scene, sprang forward to the door.
“The papers! He’s stolen the papers!” he gasped, seizing the knob and trying to pull open the door.
But the key had been turned in the lock and the stout door baffled all his attempts upon it.