The day after he returned from Formosa, Elliott received a reply to his cablegram, which said, simply:
“Find it. Buck up!
“HENNINGER.”
It was easy to give the order, Elliott thought. But during the next few days the heat was terrible, even for Hongkong. On the Peak, men sweltered; in the lower city, they died. It rained, without cease, a rain that seemed to steam up from the hot earth as fast as it fell, and, to add terror to discomfort, half a dozen cases of cholera were discovered in the Chinese city, and an epidemic was feared. Most of the offices employing white clerks closed daily at noon, and there was a great exodus of the foreign population to Yokohama.
On Sunday it cooled slightly, however, and the rain ceased. To gain what advantage they could of the respite, Margaret and Elliott walked out to the edge of the mountain-top, a quarter of a mile away, and spent the forenoon there. The missionary dozed at home; he slept a great deal during the hot weather.
They were returning for lunch, which Margaret persistently refused to call “tiffin,” and had almost reached the bungalow, when a man stepped down from the veranda and came toward them along the deeply shaded street. At the first glance Elliott thought he recognized the graceful, alert figure, and he was right. It was Sevier, who had just left the house.
The Alabaman stopped short when he met them, and lifted his hat, without, however, betraying any particular surprise.
“Good mo’nin’, Elliott. So you’re in Hongkong?”
“As you see,” replied Elliott, a trifle stiffly. “Were you looking for me?”
“Not particularly. I was looking for another man.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Oh, about a couple of weeks.”
There was a pause, which Elliott felt to be a nervous one.
“How are the bereaved relatives of your wreck’s crew?” Sevier went on.
“I don’t know. Have you found the man you were looking for?”
“Not exactly. Have you?”
“No.”
There was another pause. Margaret was looking puzzled and impatient.
“I beg your pardon, I’m delaying you,” said Sevier, with a slight bow toward the girl. “I wish you’d dine with me at the Club to-night at seven o’clock. Can you? I have an idea that I can tell you something that you’d be glad to know.”
Elliott reflected for a moment, with some suspicion. “Thank you, I shall be delighted,” he accepted, formally, at last.
“At seven o’clock,” repeated Sevier, bowing once more, and passing on.
“Who was that man? I never saw him before. What were you talking about?” demanded Margaret, when they were out of earshot.
“To tell you the truth, I don’t exactly know,” Elliott replied, in a sort of abstracted excitement.
Margaret went to her own room to take off her hat, and Elliott turned into the big, darkened sitting-room, where he was confronted with the spectacle of the missionary seated beside the table with his head buried in his arms.
“What did that man want here?” Elliott demanded, hastily. “Why, what’s the matter with you?”
Laurie raised a face that was covered with perspiration, and haggard with some emotion. His mouth trembled, and he looked half-dazed.
“That man!” he moaned, vaguely. “Oh, that man!”
“Yes. What did he want?”
“What did he want?” repeated Laurie, clearly incapable of coherent thought. “Oh, heavens! what did he not want?”
Elliott mixed an iced glass of water and lime juice, for the missionary would never touch spirits.
“Here, drink this, and try to brace up,” he said.
Laurie drank it like a docile child, and looked up with frightened eyes.
“I have done wrong,” he said, pathetically. “I have sinned often. I have fallen times past counting.”
“I know it,” said Elliott. “What have you been doing now?”
“The question is, what am I going to do?” replied the old man, with a flash of animation. “It has all been for her—whatever errors I have made. No one can say that I have ever profited by a dollar that was not honestly my own.”
“Well—all right. But for goodness’ sake try to tell me what Sevier was asking about.”
Laurie hesitated for a long time.
“It was about the ship—the Clara McClay” he produced, at last.
Elliott stared, speechless for a moment, shocked into utter bewilderment.
“The Clara McClay?” he babbled. “The—” he was going to say the “gold-ship.”
“What do you know about her? Where did you hear of her?”
“I was on her. I was wrecked with her.”
“The devil you were!”
“Yes, wrecked, and saved only by the Lord’s wonderful mercy. I floated about for days in an open boat.”
“Look here,” said Elliott. “I rather fancy that you’re running more risk now than you were in that open boat. You don’t know what deep waters you’re sailing. Sevier’s a dangerous man. If you want me to help you, you’ll have to tell me the whole story.”
The missionary acquiesced with the alacrity which he always showed in casting his mundane responsibilities upon stronger shoulders.
“I am ashamed to tell you the story,” he said. “And yet it was not my fault. At least, I had no intention of doing any wrong whatever. I was in the work at Durban under the British Mission Board. I had been there for two years, and I may say that my efforts had been abundantly blessed,” he added, with humble pride.
“But I was tempted, and I was weak. I had a large sum of money in my hands—nearly five hundred dollars—which the Board had supplied for the building of a new chapel. I did not covet it for myself, but my salary was long overdue, and it was past my time to send a remittance to my daughter. The fund would not be needed for months, and I would have paid back every cent of it.”
“So you took it,” Elliott interrupted.
“I sent the remittance. About two weeks later an officer of the Mission Society came through South Africa, and I was called upon for an account of the fund. I was disgraced. I could have escaped, but I would not do that. I started to England in charge of the officer to be tried for embezzlement. There was an American steamer sailing from Durban, and we embarked on her. The name of the steamer was the Clara McClay.
“I stayed in my cabin all the time, so I do not know anything of the voyage. I believe we called at Delagoa Bay for cargo and passengers. We had been out over a week when the ship struck. It was very dark, with a high sea running, and she seemed to be breaking up. They launched several boats, but all were sunk before they left the ship’s side.
“The Society’s officer went in one of them and tried to induce me to go with him, but I have been many years at sea, and I knew the risk of trying to launch boats in that position. He was drowned, with most of the ship’s company. At daylight there were only five of us left,—the mate, three Boers who had been passengers, and myself. The sea was quieter then, and we managed to get the last of the boats overboard and to get clear.
“The mate had been severely injured about the head by falling from the bridge when she struck, and I felt sure that he could not live unless we were picked up soon. There was no use in landing on the desert reef where we had struck, so we sailed north with a fair wind, for there was fortunately a sail in the boat. We hoped to get into the track of India-bound vessels,—or at least I hoped for it, for the Boers knew nothing of navigation, and the mate was growing to be either delirious or unconscious most of the time.
“It was a week before we were picked up. I won’t tell you of its horrors. The water ran out, under the sun of the equator. The Boers drank sea-water, in spite of everything I could say, and all three went mad and threw themselves overboard. I just managed to keep alive and to keep the mate alive by dipping myself frequently in the sea and drenching his clothes with the bailer. But he died about the fourth day. He was conscious for a few hours before he died, and I did what I could to prepare his mind.
“I had to throw his body overboard. I could not have kept it in the boat—in that heat. But I kept his oilskin clothes and his uniform cap, thinking they might be needful. He had nearly a hundred pounds in sovereigns in a belt, also, which he told me to take, as he had no relatives, and I took them.
“It rained the night after he died, and that saved me. Two days later I was picked up by an Italian steamer, called the Andrea Sforzia.”
Elliott emitted an ejaculation.
“Yes, it was providential,” went on the missionary, patiently. “And then I saw an opportunity of burying my past. I trust it was not dishonourable. The Italian officers of the steamer could speak very little English, and as I was wearing the mate’s uniform cap they took me to be an officer of the wrecked ship. I would not have told them a falsehood, but I did not undeceive them. They took me to Bombay, and they made me go to the American consul, but I escaped as soon as I could, and concealed myself in the city for a couple of weeks. Then I came on to Hongkong, where I hoped—”
“Do you know just where the Clara McClay was wrecked?” Elliott demanded, trying to keep cool in the face of this revelation.
“That is what that man asked me. It must have been off the northwest coast of Madagascar.”
“But don’t you know the exact spot?”
“How could I? I was never out of my cabin till the night she struck.”
Elliott burst into a bitter and uncontrollable roar of laughter. This, then, was the end of the trail he had followed from the centre of the United States at such expense and with such hopes. It ended in a man with whom he had unsuspectingly lived for a month, an aged ex-missionary of infirm moral habits.
“That man who was here asked me the same thing,” repeated Laurie, plaintively. “Why did he want to know where she struck—or why do you want to know? My God! I had almost forgotten it!” he cried, shuddering. “What shall I do? How can I save myself?”
“What on earth do you mean?” cried Elliott.
“He threatened me with disgrace—and arrest, unless I would tell him where the ship went down. He said he would expose me to the British Mission Board—and he would put all the proofs of—of more than that, of other things, in the hands of my daughter. I deserve to be punished. I can face even disgrace for myself—but not for her—not for my little girl.”
“No, she mustn’t hear of anything of the sort,” said Elliott. He considered the situation for several minutes, walking to and fro. “Why did you tell everybody that the ship went down in deep water?” he asked.
The missionary started. “How did you know that I did? It was a sudden temptation. The consul in Bombay asked me if she foundered at sea, and I said she did. It made no difference to any one, and it seemed safer. You must remember the state I was in, after a week in an open boat without water.”
“Well, don’t worry,” said Elliott. “I dare say you didn’t mean any harm, but that little remark of yours has cost a good deal of trouble and a good many thousand dollars. But I’ll see that Sevier doesn’t trouble you. I know him pretty well. I’m going to dine with him to-night, in fact, and I’ll explain things to him.”
Laurie brightened wonderfully at this assurance. During the past month he had come to have an almost childlike trust in Elliott’s powers of saving him from troubles, and at lunch he had almost recovered his customary serene benignity. But Elliott was far from that placid state of mind. The whole campaign would have to be altered. There was now no hope of learning the location of the wreck from any of her survivors. So far as he could see, there was only the chance of searching all that portion of the channel till her bones were discovered, and it was ten to one that the Arab coasters would have been before them. But at any rate he could now meet Sevier without fear; he had no longer any plan to conceal.
He spent that afternoon in anxious thought, and finally wrote a long letter to Henninger, detailing his adventures on the man-hunt that had ended in a mare’s nest. As the letter might take over a month to reach Zanzibar, he stopped at the cable office on his way to the Club, and sent the following message:
“Mate dead, taking secret with him. Shall I join you? Letter follows.”
Sevier was waiting for him when he arrived at the Club’s massive façade, and a table was already reserved in the farthest corner of the dining-room. The air was heavy under the swinging punkahs, for it had come on to rain again, and the drip and splash of the streets came through the open windows.
They discussed the soup in silence, and with the introduction of a violently flavoured entrée they talked of the rain.
“The weather’s no fit subject for conversation in this country,” Sevier broke off all at once. “Look here, Elliott, you’re up against it, aren’t you?”
“I don’t know that I am, particularly,” answered the treasure-hunter, coolly. “You’re in something of a blind alley yourself, I fancy.”
“I don’t mind admitting that I am, for the moment. What do you know about the Clara McClay?”
“Nothing—except that she was wrecked.”
“But you know what her cargo was?”
“Yes, I do. Do you know where that cargo is now?”
“No, I don’t. But she never sunk in deep water—I know that. She’s ashore somewhere in the Mozambique Channel. Now I propose to you, Elliott, that we join forces. You’re playing a lone hand, I reckon, and it takes money to play a game like this. I have a partner with me, and we’ve got $25,000 to spend. What do you say?”
“I’d like to hear a little more,” said Elliott.
“Well, I’ll play my cards face up. Look here. That gold was stolen from the treasury at Pretoria by a gang of crooked Dutchmen. You may know that. My partner, Carlton, was in Pretoria at the time, and he got wind of it, and found out what ship it was going to be sent on. Do you know what we did? We squared the ship’s mate, Burke, to pile the old hooker up on the Afu Bata reef, off Mozambique. It cost us five thousand cash to make the deal with him, and we had to promise him a share of the plunder. Now do you see why we’re interested?”
Elliott saw, and he saw furthermore that the affair was revealing mazes of complexity that he had not suspected.
“Yes,” he said, trying not to look surprised. “Then you must know where she was wrecked, after all.”
“No, because the mate threw us down—the thief! He took our money and did us dirt. We hung around the Afu Bata reef in a dhow for three weeks, off and on, and the Clara McClay never showed up. At last we put into Zanzibar, and found that she hadn’t been sighted anywhere since she left Lorenzo Marques. A little later we heard that she had been wrecked, and that the mate had been picked up, and that he had said that she was sunk in deep water.”
“But that wasn’t the mate at all,” Elliott remarked.
“Yes, I know. I heard the story from that sanctimonious old hypocrite on the Peak. But it was the mate that sunk her. It was Burke that ran her ashore somewhere and figured to have all the plunder himself. It wasn’t his fault that he got drowned or whatever happened to him. The question now is—where is that wreck?”
Elliott laughed. “Good Lord, that’s the question I’ve been trying to solve for three months.”
“There is one man that knows.”
“Who is it?”
“Your old sky-pilot”
“You’re all wrong,” said Elliott. “Old Laurie, or Eaton, knows nothing at all about the thing. And I should like to know how in the world you came to take up his trail.”
“The same as you did, I expect,” replied Sevier, winking. “We went from Zanzibar up to Port Said, and waited there till we heard about the mate being picked up and going to Bombay. I went there too, as you know, having the honour to be your fellow passenger, but I never suspected you of being interested in the wreck—not at first.
“In Bombay I lost the trail, same as you did. But when I heard the American consul describe his man I made sure it couldn’t be the real mate. It was some fakir, and why should anybody fake the thing unless he was up to some game. It made me keener than ever. Lord! I worked like a slave in that accursed city. I searched every consulate, and the hotels and the boarding-houses. I found that a man answering my description had come to the Planters’ Hotel about the time the counterfeit mate turned up. I found that he had gone—sailed for Hongkong under a different name. I cabled Carlton, my partner, and we came here.
“It was you who helped us here. I spotted you on the street a week ago, had you followed to the Peak, and there you were, living hand in glove with my fakir. I went up there this morning, after learning that you had gone out, and I put the question straight to the white-headed old hypocrite. He went all to pieces, just as I expected, but he wouldn’t tell me anything. However, we have a way to force him.”
“Lost labour,” remarked Elliott, coolly. “He didn’t know even that the Clara McClay was loaded with gold.”
“Don’t you believe it!” said Sevier, leaning impressively across the table. “Elliott, that old parson is the slipperiest beggar between Africa and Oregon. I know all about his doings in the past. As like as not he murdered the mate himself—”
Elliott gave an exclamation of derision.
“Anyhow, I’m sure that he made up a plant with Burke to turn the trick on us. He knows where that gold is now; you can bank on that! And if you’ve been living with him for a month and don’t know too, you’re not the clever man I take you to be.”
“I think you’re just a little too clever yourself,” Elliott replied. “I’ll play my cards face up, too. I know just as much as you do about the location of that wreck, and that old missionary doesn’t know half as much. You’ve sized up his character wrong. He’s merely a simple, kind-hearted, unworldly old gentleman with no moral backbone. If he knew where all that gold was, I don’t believe he’d go after it. He might steal a hundred dollars if he saw it lying handy and happened to need it, but he wouldn’t take any interest in a million that he couldn’t see. As for his conspiring with Burke, much less killing him, that’s sheer bosh. He doesn’t know where the Clara McClay is, and I don’t either.”
“You’re too secretive for me,” said Sevier, looking downcast. “You won’t mind if I say candidly that I think you’re bluffing. Don’t tell me that you haven’t found out anything from that fellow Laurie, or Eaton, as he calls himself. Something is preventing you from sailing back to Africa and fishing up that million. I think we can supply what is lacking to you. We need you; you need us. Then join us, and we’ll work together.”
“You are right,” Elliott agreed. “There is something that prevents me from going there, and that is the fact that I don’t know where to go. But I don’t mind admitting that I’m going to try to find out. I have partners with me, too, and we have a little money to throw away.”
“How many partners have you?” Sevier inquired.
“Three.”
“Well, bring them all in. We’ll share and share alike.”
Elliott seriously considered this proposition for a couple of minutes. But he knew that Henninger would accept no such arrangement.
“I couldn’t make such a deal without consulting the other men,” he said. “And I know that the chief of our gang would never stand for it. He’s rather a whole hog or nothing man, and I’m a little that way myself. No, I’m afraid we’ll have to work separately.”
“Is that your final word?”
“Absolutely.”
“Well, I’m sorry. Excuse me a moment,” said Sevier, getting up hastily. He went out of the dining-room, but returned almost immediately. “I just then caught sight of a man I wanted to speak to,” he explained. “Then I can’t induce you to go shares with us?”
“I’m afraid not, thank you,” replied Elliott
“It’s a fair race for a million, then, and let the best man win! But it seems a fool business for us to cut one another’s throats. We’ve made you the best proposals we can, but we feel that we have prior rights on that cargo, and we’ll fight for it if necessary.”
“We’ll try to meet you half-way,” said Elliott carelessly. “And isn’t it absurd to talk of prior rights when the whole thing is little better than a steal?”
“A steal? Not a bit of it. The ship is sunk outside the three-mile limit in neutral seas. It’s treasure-trove.”
“I’ve been trying to look at it that way myself,” replied Elliott. “But I fancy some government or other would claim it if they heard of it It’s war, then, is it?”
“That’ll come soon enough. Let’s have peace while we can,” Sevier responded, poking at the roast beef, which lay a tepid and soggy mass on his plate. “I must apologize to my guest. I’ve spoiled your dinner for you. It’s stone cold—or as near it as anything ever gets in this country. Let me order some more.”
“No—don’t!” said Elliott, sickening at the thought of food in that reeking atmosphere. “It’s too hot and wet to eat. This climate is getting too much for me.”
“Thinking of trying Africa? Look here, you come around to my place, and I’ll mix you a cold drink, anyway. I found a plant the other day that tastes like mint, and I’ll give you as close an imitation of a Baltimore julep as can be had in China.”
There were half a dozen palanquins waiting about the front of the Club as usual, and Sevier gave the coolies an address which Elliott did not catch. The bearers left Queen’s Road and turned up a street leading to the mountain, which they ascended for several minutes, and finally they stopped in the rain, which was now falling heavily. It was one of the beautiful and shaded streets half-way up the slope, and they were opposite a small bungalow that showed a glimmer of light through drawn rattan shutters.
“This is where Carlton and I have lived for the last fortnight,” said Sevier, getting out. “We can’t afford residences on the Peak, like you—and, Lord! how we have sizzled here!”
He led the way to the door, which he opened with a latch-key, and turned into a large sitting-room, lighted with an oil-lamp. The floor was bare; the room was almost devoid of furniture, containing only a couple of long chairs, a camp-chair, and a plain wooden table. On the table was the remnants of a meal, with a couple of empty ale-bottles. The windows were shut and closely covered with the blinds, and the air of the room was intolerably hot and close.
“Carlton’s been dining by himself to-night,” said Sevier, without appearing to observe the heat. “He’ll be back in a few minutes, and meanwhile we’ll have our drink.”
He produced a bottle from an ice-box, and was crushing some ice, when the door clicked open and shut again. A heavily built man appeared, his white duck clothing hanging limply upon him.
“How are you, old man!” said Sevier, glancing up. “Elliott, this is my friend, Mr. Carlton. He knows all about you.”
Carlton acknowledged the introduction by a nod and a searching glance. He was a dark and heavy-faced man of perhaps forty, with a thick brown moustache over lips that were small and close, and a small cold gray eye.
“Glad to meet you, Mr. Elliott. Yes, I’ve heard of you,” he remarked, briefly. He sat down in the vacant cane chair and began to fill a curved briar pipe, which he smoked with much apparent satisfaction.
Sevier presently handed around three glasses crowned with the Chinese herb that tasted like mint. The whole concoction did not taste much like a Southern julep, but it was cooling. “Here’s luck for all of us!” said Sevier, and they drank.
There was a silence for a time, while the heat grew more and more unbearable.
“Why not have a window open?” Elliott inquired, at last. “Don’t you find it hot here?”
“No. Leave them closed,” said Carlton, brusquely.
There was another long silence, while Carlton smoked imperturbably. Elliott began to feel slightly nervous; he scarcely knew why. Every one in the room seemed to be waiting for something.
“Damn the rain!” Sevier suddenly ejaculated with irritation, and Carlton rolled an admonishing eye upon him without speaking. Elliott set down his empty glass and arose.
“Have another drink,” urged Sevier. “Sit down.”
“No, thank you. I must go,” Elliott began.
“No. Sit down!” Carlton gruffly interrupted.
Taken by surprise, Elliott sat down. The rain splashed on the veranda in the silence.
“But I really must go. I have to get to the Peak,” he said again, once more getting up; but Sevier held up a warning hand. Outside was heard the rhythmical grunt of sedan-coolies. There were steps on the veranda. Sevier hurried to the door and opened it, and, to Elliott’s amazement, the missionary appeared in the lamplight, his face streaming with rain and perspiration, while he surveyed the group with an air of apprehension which he endeavoured to cover with dignity.