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Celebrity, a novel by Winston Churchill |
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Volume 4 - Chapter 17 |
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_ VOLUME 4 CHAPTER XVII "Crocker, old man, Crocker, what the devil does that mean?" I turned with a start to perceive a bare head thrust above the cabin roof, the scant hair flying, and two large, brown eyes staring into mine full of alarm and reproach. A plump finger was pointing to where the sandy reef lay far astern of us. The Mackinaws were flecked far and wide over the lake, and a dirty smudge on the blue showed where the Far Harbor and Beaverton boat had gone over the horizon. But there, over the point and dangerously close to the land, hung another smudge, gradually pushing its way like a writhing, black serpent, lakewards. Thus I was rudely jerked back to face the problem with which we had left the island that morning. I snatched the neglected glasses from the deck and hurried aft to join my client on the overhang, but a pipe was all they revealed above the bleak hillocks of sand. My client turned to me with a face that was white under the tan. "Crocker," he cried, in a tragic voice, "it's a blessed police boat, or I never picked a winner." "Nonsense," I said; "other boats smoke beside police boats. The lake is full of tugs." I was a little nettled at having been scared for a molehill. "But I know it, sure as hell," he insisted. "You know nothing about it, and won't for an hour. What's a pipe and a trail of smoke?" He laid a hand on my shoulder, and I felt it tremble. "Why do you suppose I came out?" he demanded solemnly. "You were probably losing," I said. "I was winning." "Then you got tired of winning." But he held up a thumb within a few inches of my face, and with it a ring I had often noticed, a huge opal which he customarily wore on the inside of his hand. "She's dead," said Mr. Cooke, sadly. "Dead?" I repeated, perplexed. "Yes, she's dead as the day I lost the two thousand at Sheepshead. She's never gone back on me yet. And unless I can make some little arrangement with those fellows," he added, tossing his head at the smoke, "you and I will put up to-night in some barn of a jail. I've never been in jail but once," said Mr. Cooke, "and it isn't so damned pleasant, I assure you." I saw that he believed every word of it; in fact, that it was his religion. I might as well have tried to argue the Sultan out of Mohammedanism. The pipe belonged to a tug, that was certain. Farrar said so after a look over his shoulder, disdaining glasses, and he knew the lake better than many who made their living by it. It was then that I made note of a curious anomaly in the betting character; for thus far Mr. Cooke, like a great many of his friends, was a skeptic. He never ceased to hope until the stake had found its way into the other man's pocket. And it was for hope that he now applied to Farrar. But even Farrar did not attempt to account for the tug's appearance that near the land. "She's in some detestable hurry to get up this way, that's flat," he said; "where she is, the channel out of the harbor is not forty feet wide." By this time the rest of the party were gathered behind us on the high side of the boat, in different stages of excitement, scrutinizing the smoke. Mr. Cooke had the glasses glued to his eyes again, his feet braced apart, and every line of his body bespeaking the tension of his mind. I imagined him standing thus, the stump of his cigar tightly clutched between his teeth, following the fortunes of some favorite on the far side of the Belmont track. We waited without comment while the smoke crept by degrees towards the little white spindle on the tip of the point, now and again catching a gleam of the sun's rays from off the glass of the lantern. And presently, against the white lather of the lake, I thought I caught sight of a black nose pushed out beyond the land. Another moment, and the tug itself was bobbing in the open. Barely had she reached the deep water beyond the sands when her length began to shorten, and the dense cloud of smoke that rose made it plain that she was firing. At the sight I reflected that I had been a fool indeed. A scant flue miles of water lay between us and her, and if they really meant business back there, and they gave every sign of it, we had about an hour and a half to get rid of the Celebrity. The Maria was a good boat, but she had not been built to try conclusions with a Far Harbor tug. My client, in spite of the ominous condition of his opal, was not slow to make his intentions exceedingly clear. For Mr. Cooke was first and last, and always, a gentleman. After that you might call him anything you pleased. Meditatively he screwed up his glasses and buckled them into the case, and then he descended to the cockpit. It was the Celebrity he singled out of the party. "Allen," said he, when he stood before him, "I want to impress on you that my word's gold. I've stuck to you thus far, and I'll be damned now if I throw you over, like they did Jonah." Mr. Cooke spoke with a fine dignity that in itself was impressive, and when he had finished he looked about him until his eye rested on Mr. Trevor, as though opposition were to come from that quarter. And the senator gave every sign of another eruption. But the Celebrity, either from lack of appreciation of my client's loyalty, or because of the nervousness which was beginning to show itself in his demeanor, despite an effort to hide it, returned no answer. He turned on his heel and resumed his seat in the cabin. Mr. Cooke was visibly affected. "I'd sooner lose my whip hand than go back on him now," he declared. Then Vesuvius began to rumble. "Mr. Cooke," said the senator, "may I suggest something which seems pertinent to me, though it does not appear to have occurred to you?" His tone was the calm one that the heroes used in the Celebrity's novels when they were about to drop on and annihilate wicked men. "Certainly, sir," my client replied briskly, bringing himself up on his way back to the overhang. "You have announced your intention of 'standing by' Mr. Allen, as you express it. Have you reflected that there are some others who deserve to be consulted and considered beside Mr. Allen and yourself?" Mr. Cooke was puzzled at this change of front, and unused, moreover, to that veiled irony of parliamentary expression. "Talk English, my friend," said he. "In plain words, sir, Mr. Allen is a criminal who ought to be locked up; he is a menace to society. You, who have a reputation, I am given to understand, for driving four horses, have nothing to lose by a scandal, while I have worked all my life for the little I have achieved, and have a daughter to think about. I will neither stand by Mr. Allen nor by you." Mr. Cooke was ready with a retort when the true significance of this struck him. Things were a trifle different now. The tables had turned since leaving the island, and the senator held it in his power to ruin our one remaining chance of escape. Strangely enough, he missed the cause of Mr. Cooke's hesitation. "Look here, old man," said my client, biting off another cigar, "I'm a first-rate fellow when you get to know me, and I'd do the same for you as I'm doing for Allen." "I daresay, sir, I daresay," said the other, a trifle mollified; "I don't claim that you're not acting as you think right." "I see it," said Mr. Cooke, with admirable humility; "I see it. I was wrong to haul you into this, Trevor. And the only thing to consider now is, how to get you out of it." Here he appeared for a moment to be wrapped in deep thought, and checked with his cigar an attempt to interrupt him. "However you put it, old man," he said at last, "we're all in a pretty bad hole." "All!" cried Mr. Trevor, indignantly. "Yes, all," asserted Mr. Cooke, with composure. "There are the police, and here is Allen as good as run down. If they find him when they get abroad, you don't suppose they'll swallow anything you have to say about trying to deliver him over. No, sir, you'll be bagged and fined along with the rest of us. And I'd be damned sorry to see it, if I do say it; and I blame myself freely for it, old man. Now you take my advice and keep your mouth shut, and I'll take care of you. I've got a place for Allen." During this somewhat remarkable speech Mr. Trevor, as it were, blew hot and cold by turns. Although its delivery was inconsiderate, its logic was undeniable, and the senator sat down again on the locker, and was silent. But I marked that off and on his fingers would open and shut convulsively. Time alone would disclose what was to happen to us; in the interval there was nothing to do but wait. We had reached the stage where anxiety begins to take the place of excitement, and we shifted restlessly from spot to spot and looked at the tug. She was ploughing along after us, and to such good purpose that presently I began to catch the white of the seas along her bows, and the bright red with which her pipe was tipped. Farrar alone seemed to take but slight interest in her. More than once I glanced at him as he stood under me, but his eye was on the shuddering leach of the sail. Then I leaned over. "What do you think of it?" I asked. "I told you this morning Drew would have handcuffs on him before night," he replied, without raising his head. "Hang your joking, Farrar; I know more than you about it." "Then what's the use of asking me?" "Don't you see that I'm ruined if we're caught?" I demanded, a little warmly. "No, I don't see it," he replied. "You don't suppose I think you fool enough to risk this comedy if the man were guilty, do you? I don't believe all that rubbish about his being the criminal's double, either. That's something the girls got up for your benefit." I ignored this piece of brutality. "But I'm ruined anyway." "How?" I explained shortly what I thought our friend, O'Meara, would do under the circumstances. An inference sufficed Farrar. "Why didn't you say something about this before?" he asked gravely. "I would have put into Far Harbor." "Because I didn't think of it," I confessed. Farrar pulled down the corners of his mouth with trying not to smile. "Miss Thorn is a woman of brains," he remarked gently; "I respect her." I wondered by what mysterious train of reasoning he had arrived at this conclusion. He said nothing for a while, but toyed with the spokes of the wheel, keeping the wind in the sail with undue nicety. "I can't make them out," he said, all at once. "Then you believe they're after us?" "I changed the course a point or two, just to try them." "And--" "And they changed theirs." "Who could have informed?" "Drew, of course," I said; "who else?" He laughed. "Drew doesn't know anything about Allen," said he; "and, besides, he's no more of a detective than I am." "But Drew was told there was a criminal on the island." "Who told him?" I repeated the conversation between Drew and Mr. Trevor which I had overheard. Farrar whistled. "But you did not speak of that this morning," said he. "No," I replied, feeling anything but comfortable. At times when he was facetious as he had been this morning I was wont to lose sight of the fact that with Farrar the manner was not the man, and to forget the warmth of his friendship. I was again to be reminded of this. "Well, Crocker," he said briefly, "I would willingly give up this year's state contract to have known it." _ |
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