“Through the scud and fog, and the flying spray
We drove all night till the break of the day.
Yo ho, my lads, yo ho.”
—An Improvisation of Garry Webster.
THE lines were let go and the boat shoved off; then the gasoline engine was started, and after a moment’s hesitancy in getting under way, the fleet craft buried its nose in the water and shot down the Harlem toward East River.
“Now,” said Garry Webster, in a low tone to Kenyon; “now that there seems to be a moment in which we can take breath, what in the name of the fire-eyed gods does all this mean?”
Kenyon laughed.
“If you will come down into the cabin,” said he, “I’ll try and tell you about it.”
Dallas sat there, still enveloped in her long coat; and Kenyon noticed, with a quick shock, that she was very pale.
“You should not have come,” said he, and Webster nodded significantly, aside, at the gentleness of the tone. “It has been too much for you.”
“Do I look bad?” she asked. “But perhaps it is the lantern light,” and she smiled bravely.
“I have calculated to catch the Wizard about North Brother Island,” said Kenyon. “You see the stretch of water from the Twenty-third Street anchorage to the mouth of the Harlem is one of the most congested on earth. A craft is forced to proceed at low speed at any time, and more especially upon a dark night like this. The cars brought us up like hurricanes, and we’ll get into the big stream in good time, if nothing goes wrong.”
“Good work!” applauded Webster. “I tell you what, Miss Gilbert, it takes Kenyon to do this sort of thing properly. At college now, he was especially excellent in planning things. Do you notice the blush?” with a chuckle at his friend’s secret and impatient gestures. “I think modesty is so becoming in a man, don’t you?”
“I do, indeed,” smiled the girl.
“Now, Garry, before you relapse into a state of hopeless idiocy,” remarked Kenyon, “pay attention, and I’ll tell you what has happened.”
So while Webster listened Kenyon told him what the reader already knows. When he had finished Webster arose.
“Miss Gilbert,” said he, bowing as well as the swaying of the flying boat would permit, “I bend the knee before courage. Now, that little scene of yours with an apparently desperate cracksman,” and his blue eyes snapped with admiration, “was one that required doing, and I tell you what, Ken,” with a wise nod toward his friend, “you should be mighty glad that it happened. It has set you right, somehow.”
After some further discussion Webster went upon deck.
“I suppose I shall only be able to approach our conspirators as an open enemy now,” said Kenyon to the girl.
She looked at him inquiringly.
“If Forrester has the packet, he has learned what you learned, that I am not the sort of person I seemed to be. Though,” and he looked puzzled, “Farbush must have known its contents all along, now that I think of it.”
“There is nothing in the packet that would cause them to suspect you of being an honest man,” she assured him. “That is, not unless,” and her voice sank a little as she realized what she was saying, “they are inclined to believe it of you.”
His heart bounded madly and his blood went tingling through his veins. But he only said:
“Thank you. That is kind of you.”
Webster put his head into the cabin. “I say, Kenyon,” called he, “the captain would like to speak with you for a moment. It looks important.”
“Pardon me,” said the adventurer to the girl.
He went upon deck. The owner of the craft, a round-bodied, good-natured looking man, was at the wheel.
“Excuse me, Mr. Kenyon,” spoke he, “but your friend here tells me that it is the steam yacht Wizard that you want to meet.”
“That’s her name.” Kenyon saw that the man had something to impart, and added: “Well?”
“It just happens, sir, that I lay alongside of the power-boat Piedmont this evening. And just before I got your message to have my boat ready, a party comes on board of her; and from what I heard the engineer say before they started out, they, too, were going to meet a steam yacht. And it just happens that it, also, is the Wizard.”
Kenyon leaned back against the cabin and lit a cigarette; Webster shrugged his shoulders. The group of hard-faced men upon the top of the cabin listened intently, nodded to each other, and muttered their opinions of the cruise upon which they had volunteered. A clear voice spoke from the little companionway which caused them all to start and turn. It was Dallas who stood there, her long coat and the curling ends of her dark hair blowing in the wind.
“What sort of people were they who engaged this other boat?” she asked.
“A queer looking lot, miss,” and Kenyon smiled as he saw the speaker shoot a quick glance at the group forward. “About ten all told, I should think. One of them appeared to be pretty far gone; they had to carry him aboard. It was a Chinaman.”
She looked at Kenyon and he saw her face go whiter than ever.
“Hong Yo,” she whispered. “Oh, if we only knew what that means.”
“It means, I should think, that Forrester has summoned his friends,” said Webster. “From what Kenyon has told me, Forrester and Hong Yo seem to be particularly intimate.”
There was a curious expression upon the face of Dallas. Kenyon wondered when he had seen it before, and then suddenly remembered that it had stolen across her countenance that night in Selden’s Square, when she gazed at Anna at the old man’s bedside. And he now recognized it as a species of doubt.
“But, surely,” cried Kenyon, “you do not think that this move of Forrester’s is upon his own hook—that he is playing the Chinaman false!”
“I do not know what to think,” she replied, slowly; and though he could not see, because her head was turned from him, he felt sure that there were tears in her eyes. “I have seen so much treachery of late that my reason refuses to accept appearances. I have cause to thank Griscom Forrester, as you know; but I also have cause to fear him. He may be my friend, he may be a friend to Hong Yo, or he may be seeking to further his own personal ends. I cannot tell.”
Shortly after this she went down into the cabin once more; and Kenyon and Webster talked in low tones.
“It would seem,” remarked the young man from Chicago, “that she is not any more sure about Forrester than you were some days, or nights, ago. The fellow seems to be a puzzle.”
“It will not take a great while now to solve him,” answered Kenyon, grimly. “We are coming into the East River, and once on the Wizard’s deck, I’ll not waste words.”
“Yes; I don’t think a little straight talk will do any harm; the time seems about ripe for it. But, I say, Ken, doesn’t she,” with a nod toward the cabin, “do any talking of an enlightening nature?”
Kenyon frowned and looked down into the ghost-like billows which the craft was throwing up upon either side. They frothed for a moment in the lantern light and then disappeared in the darkness.
“To speak the plain truth,” said he slowly, “I doubt if she knows a great deal more than I can guess.”
“But what little she might know,” persisted Webster, “she keeps pretty closely to herself.”
“Yes,” reluctantly.
“I wonder why. You are upon her side; you are helping her to win out.”
“Yes. But how can she be sure of that. You heard what she just said about Forrester? Yes? Well, consider and weigh it carefully. Do you suppose that she referred to him only?”
Webster opened his eyes widely, and whistled.
“You mean to say that she does not altogether trust you. Why, I thought you had become pals.”
“I’m inclined to think,” said Kenyon, “that she, personally, would place confidence in me. But she has not, I know, herself, only, to think of. She seems to fear for others.”
“But whom?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps the mysterious ‘he’ whom I have heard referred to now and then. But whatever it is, the girl fears treachery. And I suppose she has good cause to fear it. You heard her say that her reason refuses to accept appearances. I have only the appearance of aiding her, as yet. Another man has befriended her, but she has cause to suspect him, for all that. What assurance has she that it will be different in my case? She even doubts the faith of the conspirators to each other—as we have been inclined to do. How does she know but what I, too, in spite of all that she has lately learned, may be one of them, and willing, now, to throw them all overboard for a personal advantage. She told me once to-night that she was circumstanced strangely, and without a friend who could help her. So you can’t blame her for withholding her confidence; suspicion is her only defence.”
“But she trusts herself in your hands.”
“Did she not trust herself in the hands of the others? The girl has courage and is not afraid to venture anything that promises results.”
Webster bit the end off a cigar and stooped into the shelter of the cabin to light it. He drew at it steadily for a moment after he arose, then said:
“I think you’ve got the right idea, old chap. You’ve got to work for her good opinion. But in spite of all that you might say to the contrary, I rather fancy you’ve got a fair sort of a start. In other words, she’d rather see you win than not.”
Kenyon made no reply. However, her words of a very little while before came back to him, and his blood thrilled with the renewed realization of the fact that what Webster said was true. She had told him that she wished to believe in him. She had put it into words; and her manner spoke so plainly. The way to set every lingering doubt that she might have regarding him, at rest, was to win; and he set his teeth and narrowed his eyes as he looked into the darkness ahead.
“It’s somewhere out there,” he muttered. “We are coming nearer to it with every moment that goes by. I do not know whom I have to fight, or why. But I don’t care, either. It’s for her; and I’m going to do it.”