CHAPTER XXVII
WHEREIN BRANDON TARR CONCEALS HIMSELF
THE doughty deputy sheriff was on his feet in an instant, and with a wrathy glance at Caleb, dashed out of the office after the fleeing Brandon. If he did not make the arrest he would fail to get his money, and he did not propose to lose that.
But Uncle Arad could not get to the door without passing Caleb and he hardly dared do that. Just then the big seaman looked in no mood to be tampered with. The farmer, however, did sputter out something about having the law on everybody in general.
“Bring on all the law you want to, you old scarecrow,” responded Caleb, vigorously mopping his face. “I reckon we kin take care of it. What ye got there, Adoniram?”
Mr. Pepper had picked up the letter which had fallen from old Arad’s pocket, and was looking at the superscription in a puzzled manner.
Arad caught sight of the epistle as quickly as did Caleb.
“That’s mine! give it here!” he cried, making a snatch at the paper.
But Adoniram held it out of his reach.
“I don’t see how you make that out, Mr. Tarr,” he said quietly. “This letter is not addressed to you. It is in your handwriting, Caleb, and is addressed to ‘Master Brandon Tarr, Chopmist, Rhode Island.’”
“Oh, you swab!” exclaimed the old tar, with a withering glance of contempt at old Arad, as he seized the letter. “This ’ere’s what I wrote the boy w’en I was in the hospital—w’ich same he never got. Now, how came you by it? You old land shark!”
Arad was undeniably frightened. Although he might explain the fact of his opening Don’s letter as eminently proper, to himself, he well knew that he could not make these friends of his nephew see it in the same light.
“I—I—it came arter Brandon went away,” he gasped in excuse.
“It did, hey?” exclaimed Caleb suspiciously.
Mr. Pepper took the envelope again and examined the postmark critically.
“Hum—um,” he said slowly, “postmarked in New York on the third; received on the afternoon of the fourth at the Chopmist post office. I’m afraid, my dear sir, that that yarn won’t wash.”
Uncle Arad was speechless, and looked from one to the other of the stern faced men in doubt.
“He—he was my nevvy; didn’t I hev a right ter see what he had written ter him?”
“You can bet ye didn’t,” Caleb declared with confidence, and with a slight wink at Adoniram. “Let me tell ye, Mr. Tarr, that openin’ other folks’ correspondence is actionable, as the lawyers say. I reckon that you’ve laid yourself li’ble to gettin’ arrested yourself, old man.”
“Ye—ye can’t do it,” sputtered Arad.
“If that monkey of a sheriff finds Brandon (w’ich same I reckon he won’t), we’ll see if we can’t give you a taste of the same medicine.”
The old man was undeniably frightened and edged towards the door.
“I guess I better go,” he remarked hesitatingly. “I dunno as that officer’ll be able ter ketch thet reskil.”
“No, I don’t b’lieve he will myself,” Caleb declared. “And if you want to keep your own skin whole, you’d best see that he doesn’t touch the lad.”
Old Arad slunk out without another word, and the two friends allowed him to depart in contemptuous silence.
When he had disappeared Adoniram turned to the sailor at once.
“Where has Don gone, Caleb?” he asked anxiously.
“You’ve got me. He told me he was goin’ to skip, and for us to go ahead with the preparations for getting off next week, just the same. He’d lay low till the old scamp had given it up, and then slip aboard the steamer. Oh, the boy’s all right.”
“He is, if that sheriff doesn’t find him,” said the merchant doubtfully.
“I’ll risk that,” responded Caleb, who had vast confidence in Brandon’s ability to take care of himself.
But Adoniram shook his head.
“New York is a bad place for a boy to be alone in. Where will he go?”
“Down to the pier, I reckon, and hide aboard the steamer. I’ll agree to put him away there so that no measly faced sheriff like that fellow can find him.”
“It’s a bad business,” declared Mr. Pepper, shaking his head slowly. “If he hadn’t run off there might have been some way of fixing it up so that he wouldn’t have had to go back to Rhode Island, and thus delay the sailing of the steamer. We might have scared the uncle out of prosecuting him. He was badly frightened as it was.”
Caleb gazed at his friend for several moments with a quizzical smile upon his face.
“Do you know, Adoniram,” he said at length, “I b’lieve you’re too innocent for this wicked world.”
“How do you mean?” asked the merchant, flushing a little, yet smiling.
“Well, you don’t seem to see anything fishy in all this.”
“Fishy?”
“Yes, fishy,” returned Caleb, sitting down and speaking confidentially. “Several things make me believe that you (and me, too) haven’t been half awake in this business.”
“I certainly do not understand you,” declared Adoniram.
“Well, give me a chance to explain, will you?” said the sailor impatiently. “You seem to think that this old land shark of an uncle of the boy’s is just trying to get him back on the farm, and has hatched up this robbery business for that purpose? I don’t suppose you think Don stole any money from him, do you?” he added.
“Not for an instant!” the merchant replied emphatically.
“That’s what I thought. Well, as I say, you suppose he wants Brandon back on the farm—wants his work, in fact?”
“Ye—es.”
“Well, did it ever strike you, ’Doniram,” Caleb pursued, with a smile of superiority on his face—“did it ever strike you that if he was successful in proving Brandon guilty, the boy would be locked up and then nobody would get his valuable services—nobody except the State?”
“Why, that’s so.”
“Of course it’s so.”
“Then, what is his object in persecuting the poor lad? Is he doing it just out of spite?”
“Now, see here; does that look reasonable? Do you think for a moment that an old codger like him—stingy as they make ’em—d’ye think he’d go ter the expense o’ comin ’way down here to New York out of revenge simply? Well, I guess not!”
“Then, what is he up to?” demanded Adoniram, in bewilderment.
“Well, of that I’m not sure, of course; but,” said Caleb, with vehemence, “I’m willing to risk my hull advance that he’s onter this di’mond business.
“Why, Pepper, how could he help being? Didn’t he get that letter of mine, an’ didn’t I give the hull thing away in it, like the blamed idiot I was? Man alive, a sharper like that feller would sell his immortal soul for a silver dollar. What wouldn’t he for a big stake like this?”
“But—” began Adoniram.
“Hold on a minute and let me finish,” urged Caleb. “That scoundrel Leroyd was up to Chopmist, mind ye. Who knows but what he an’ old Arad Tarr have hitched hosses and gone inter this together? I haven’t told either you or Brandon, for I didn’t want to worry you, but I learned yesterday that Jim is tryin’ ter charter a craft of some kind—you an’ I know what for.
“He’s got no money; what rascal of a sailor ever has? He must have backing, then. And who is more likely to be the backer than the old sharper who’s just gone out of here! I tell ye, ’Doniram, they’re after them di’monds, and it behooves us ter git up an’ dust if we want ter beat ’em.”
The ship owner shook his head unconvinced.
“You may be right, of course, Caleb; I don’t say it is an impossibility. But it strikes me that your conclusions are rather far fetched. They are not reasonable.”
“Well, we’ll see,” responded the old seaman, pursing up his lips. “I shall miss Brandon’s help—a handier lad I never see—but he will have to lay low till after the whaleback sails.”
He went back to the work of getting the steamer ready for departure, expecting every hour that Brandon would appear. But the captain’s son did not show up that day, nor the next.
Monday came and Number Three was all ready for sailing. Her crew of twenty men, beside the officers, were aboard.
The first and third mates were likewise present, the former, Mr. Coffin, being a tall, shrewd looking, pleasant faced man, who eternally chewed on the end of a cigar (except when eating or sleeping) although he was never seen to light one; and Mr. Bolin, the third, a keen, alert little man who looked hardly older than Brandon himself.
But Brandon did not come. The new captain of the whaleback, and the owner himself, were greatly worried by the boy’s continued absence.
They had already set on foot inquiry for the youth’s whereabouts, but nothing had come of it.
They did discover that Uncle Arad had gone back to Rhode Island, and gone back alone. The “scaly” ward politician who held the onerous position of deputy sheriff, and who had sought to arrest the boy, had not been successful, Brandon’s friends knew, for the man haunted the pier at which the whaleback lay, day and night.
“If he don’t come tonight, Adoniram,” Caleb declared, “we shall sail in the morning, just the same—and that by the first streak of light, too. You will be here, and I can trust you to look out for the lad. I must be away after those di’monds. Don’ll turn up all right, I know right well; and we mustn’t let them swabs get ahead of us, and reach the brig first.”
He had taken the precaution ere this to have his own and Brandon’s effects brought down to the boat. He was ready, in fact, to cast off and steam away from the dock at a moment’s notice.
As the evening approached Caleb ordered the fires built under the boilers, and everything to be made ready for instant departure. Adoniram Pepper came down after dinner and remained in the whaleback’s cabin, hoping to see Brandon once again before the steamer sailed.
Caleb was too anxious to keep still at all, but tramped back and forth, occasionally making trips to the wheelman’s turret in which he had stationed Mr. Coffin and one of the sailors, so as to have no delay in starting, no matter what should happen.
“By Jove, this beats blockade running at Savannah in the sixties,” muttered the first mate, after one of his commander’s anxious trips to the forward turret to see that all was right. “This youngster they’re taking all this trouble for must be a most remarkable boy.”
“There’s two fellows watching the steamer from the wharf,” Caleb declared, entering the cabin again.
Just then there was a sound outside, and a heavy knock sounded at the cabin door. Caleb pulled it open in an instant.
Without stood three burly police officers.
“Well, well!” exclaimed Mr. Pepper, in wonder.
“What do you want?” Caleb demanded, inclined to be a little combative.
“Beg pardon, sir,” said the spokesman of the two, nodding respectfully to Mr. Pepper, “but we’ve been sent to search the steamer for a boy against whom this man holds a warrant,” and the officer motioned to a third individual who stood without. It was the deputy sheriff.
“Very well,” said Mr. Pepper quietly.
“Search and be hanged,” growled Caleb, glowering at the man with the warrant. “If you can find him you’ll have better luck than we.”
He refused to assist them in any way, however, and Mr. Bolin politely showed the party over the whole steamer. But of course, they found not a sign of Brandon.
After nearly an hour’s search the officers gave it up and departed, Caleb hurling after them several sarcastic remarks about their supposed intellectual accomplishments—or rather, their lack of such accomplishments.
The deputy sheriff, whose name was Snaggs, by the way, would not give it up, however, but still remained on the wharf.
Mr. Coffin, who had begun to take a lively interest in the proceedings, was pacing the inclined deck of the whaleback on the side furtherest from the pier, a few minutes past midnight (everybody on board was still awake at even this late hour) when his ear caught the sound of a gentle splash in the black waters just below him.
He stopped instantly and leaned over the rail.
“Hist!” whispered a voice out of the darkness. “Toss me a rope. I want to come aboard.”
Mr. Coffin was not a man to show his emotions, and therefore, without a word, he dropped the end of a bit of cable into the water, just where he could see the faint outlines of the owner of the voice.
Hidden by the wheelhouse from the view of anybody who might be on the wharf, he assisted the person aboard, and in a minute the mysterious visitor stood upon the iron plates at Mr. Coffin’s side.