The Second Victorian Mystery Megapack, page 70
Emily’s eyes closed as though they shied at some mental picture. But when she opened them they were bright, and her smile was kind and eager.
“No, I’m not,” she protested; “only I want a husband with a career, and one who’ll tell me to keep quiet when I try to run it for him.”
“I’ve often wished you would,” said David.
“Would what? Run your career for you?”
“No, keep quiet. Only it didn’t seem polite to tell you so.”
“Maybe I’d like you better,” said Emily, “if you weren’t so darned polite.”
A week later, early in the spring of 1897, the unexpected happened, and David was promoted into the flying squadron. He now was a travelling salesman, with a rise in salary and a commission on orders. It was a step forward, but as going on the road meant absence from Emily, David was not elated. Nor did it satisfy Emily. It was not money she wanted. Her ambition for David could not be silenced with a raise in wages. She did not say this, but David knew that in him she still found something lacking, and when they said good-by they both were ill at ease and completely unhappy. Formerly, each day when Emily in passing David in the office said good-morning, she used to add the number of the days that still separated them from the vacation which also was to be their honeymoon. But, for the last month she had stopped counting the days—at least she did not count them aloud.
David did not ask her why this was so. He did not dare. And, sooner than learn the truth that she had decided not to marry him, or that she was even considering not marrying him, he asked no questions, but in ignorance of her present feelings set forth on his travels. Absence from Emily hurt just as much as he had feared it would. He missed her, needed her, longed for her. In numerous letters he told her so. But, owing to the frequency with which he moved, her letters never caught up with him. It was almost a relief. He did not care to think of what they might tell him.
The route assigned David took him through the South and kept him close to the Atlantic seaboard. In obtaining orders he was not unsuccessful, and at the end of the first month received from the firm a telegram of congratulation. This was of importance chiefly because it might please Emily. But he knew that in her eyes the great-great-grandson of Hiram Greene could not rest content with a telegram from Burdett and Sons. A year before she would have considered it a high honor, a cause for celebration. Now, he could see her press her pretty lips together and shake her pretty head. It was not enough. But how could he accomplish more. He began to hate his great-great-grandfather. He began to wish Hiram Greene had lived and died a bachelor.
And then Dame Fortune took David in hand and toyed with him and spanked him, and pelted and petted him, until finally she made him her favorite son. Dame Fortune went about this work in an abrupt and arbitrary manner.
On the night of the 1st of March, 1897, two trains were scheduled to leave the Union Station at Jacksonville at exactly the same minute, and they left exactly on time. As never before in the history of any Southern railroad has this miracle occurred, it shows that when Dame Fortune gets on the job she is omnipotent. She placed David on the train to Miami as the train he wanted drew out for Tampa, and an hour later, when the conductor looked at David’s ticket, he pulled the bell-cord and dumped David over the side into the heart of a pine forest. If he walked back along the track for one mile, the conductor reassured him, he would find a flag station where at midnight he could flag a train going north. In an hour it would deliver him safely in Jacksonville.
There was a moon, but for the greater part of the time it was hidden by fitful, hurrying clouds, and, as David stumbled forward, at one moment he would see the rails like streaks of silver, and the next would be encompassed in a complete and bewildering darkness. He made his way from tie to tie only by feeling with his foot. After an hour he came to a shed. Whether it was or was not the flag station the conductor had in mind, he did not know, and he never did know. He was too tired, too hot, and too disgusted to proceed, and dropping his suit case he sat down under the open roof of the shed prepared to wait either for the train or daylight. So far as he could see, on every side of him stretched a swamp, silent, dismal, interminable. From its black water rose dead trees, naked of bark and hung with streamers of funereal moss. There was not a sound or sign of human habitation. The silence was the silence of the ocean at night David remembered the berth reserved for him on the train to Tampa and of the loathing with which he had considered placing himself between its sheets. But now how gladly would he welcome it! For, in the sleeping-car, ill-smelling, close, and stuffy, he at least would have been surrounded by fellow-sufferers of his own species. Here his companions were owls, water-snakes, and sleeping buzzards.
“I am alone,” he told himself, “on a railroad embankment, entirely surrounded by alligators.”
And then he found he was not alone.
In the darkness, illuminated by a match, not a hundred yards from him there flashed suddenly the face of a man. Then the match went out and the face with it. David noted that it had appeared at some height above the level of the swamp, at an elevation higher even than that of the embankment. It was as though the man had been sitting on the limb of a tree. David crossed the tracks and found that on the side of the embankment opposite the shed there was solid ground and what once had been a wharf. He advanced over this cautiously, and as he did so the clouds disappeared, and in the full light of the moon he saw a bayou broadening into a river, and made fast to the decayed and rotting wharf an ocean-going tug. It was from her deck that the man, in lighting his pipe, had shown his face. At the thought of a warm engine-room and the company of his fellow creatures, David’s heart leaped with pleasure. He advanced quickly. And then something in the appearance of the tug, something mysterious, secretive, threatening, caused him to halt. No lights showed from her engine-room, cabin, or pilot-house. Her decks were empty. But, as was evidenced by the black smoke that rose from her funnel, she was awake and awake to some purpose. David stood uncertainly, questioning whether to make his presence known or return to the loneliness of the shed. The question was decided for him. He had not considered that standing in the moonlight he was a conspicuous figure. The planks of the wharf creaked and a man came toward him. As one who means to attack, or who fears attack, he approached warily. He wore high boots, riding breeches, and a sombrero. He was a little man, but his movements were alert and active. To David he seemed unnecessarily excited. He thrust himself close against David.
“Who the devil are you?” demanded the man from the tug. “How’d you get here?”
“I walked,” said David.
“Walked?” the man snorted incredulously.
“I took the wrong train,” explained David pleasantly. “They put me off about a mile below here. I walked back to this flag station. I’m going to wait here for the next train north.”
The little man laughed mockingly.
“Oh, no you’re not,” he said. “If you walked here, you can just walk away again!” With a sweep of his arm, he made a vigorous and peremptory gesture.
“You walk!” he commanded.
“I’ll do just as I please about that,” said David.
As though to bring assistance, the little man started hastily toward the tug.
“I’ll find some one who’ll make you walk!” he called. “You wait, that’s all, you wait!”
David decided not to wait. It was possible the wharf was private property and he had been trespassing. In any case, at the flag station the rights of all men were equal, and if he were in for a fight he judged it best to choose his own battle-ground. He recrossed the tracks and sat down on his suit case in a dark corner of the shed. Himself hidden in the shadows he could see in the moonlight the approach of any other person.
“They’re river pirates,” said David to himself, “or smugglers. They’re certainly up to some mischief, or why should they object to the presence of a perfectly harmless stranger?”
Partly with cold, partly with nervousness, David shivered.
“I wish that train would come,” he sighed. And instantly? As though in answer to his wish, from only a short distance down the track he heard the rumble and creak of approaching cars. In a flash David planned his course of action.
The thought of spending the night in a swamp infested by alligators and smugglers had become intolerable. He must escape, and he must escape by the train now approaching. To that end the train must be stopped. His plan was simple. The train was moving very, very slowly, and though he had no lantern to wave, in order to bring it to a halt he need only stand on the track exposed to the glare of the headlight and wave his arms. David sprang between the rails and gesticulated wildly. But in amazement his arms fell to his sides. For the train, now only a hundred yards distant and creeping toward him at a snail’s pace, carried no head-light, and though in the moonlight David was plainly visible, it blew no whistle, tolled no bell. Even the passenger coaches in the rear of the sightless engine were wrapped in darkness. It was a ghost of a train, a Flying Dutchman of a train, a nightmare of a train. It was as unreal as the black swamp, as the moss on the dead trees, as the ghostly tug-boat tied to the rotting wharf.
“Is the place haunted!” exclaimed David.
He was answered by the grinding of brakes and by the train coming to a sharp halt. And instantly from every side men fell from it to the ground, and the silence of the night was broken by a confusion of calls and eager greeting and questions and sharp words of command.
So fascinated was David in the stealthy arrival of the train and in her mysterious passengers that, until they confronted him, he did not note the equally stealthy approach of three men. Of these one was the little man from the tug. With him was a fat, red-faced Irish-American He wore no coat and his shirt-sleeves were drawn away from his hands by garters of pink elastic, his derby hat was balanced behind his ears, upon his right hand flashed an enormous diamond. He looked as though but at that moment he had stopped sliding glasses across a Bowery bar. The third man carried the outward marks of a sailor. David believed he was the tallest man he had ever beheld, but equally remarkable with his height was his beard and hair, which were of a fierce brick-dust red. Even in the mild moonlight it flamed like a torch.
“What’s your business?” demanded the man with the flamboyant hair.
“I came here,” began David, “to wait for a train—”
The tall man bellowed with indignant rage.
“Yes,” he shouted; “this is the sort of place any one would pick out to wait for a train!”
In front of David’s nose he shook a fist as large as a catcher’s glove. “Don’t you lie to me!” he bullied. “Do you know who I am? Do you know who you’re up against? I’m—”
The barkeeper person interrupted.
“Never mind who you are,” he said. “We know that. Find out who he is.”
David turned appealingly to the barkeeper.
“Do you suppose I’d come here on purpose?” he protested. “I’m a travelling man—”
“You won’t travel any tonight,” mocked the red-haired one. “You’ve seen what you came to see, and all you want now is to get to a Western Union wire. Well, you don’t do it. You don’t leave here tonight!”
As though he thought he had been neglected, the little man in riding-boots pushed forward importantly.
“Tie him to a tree!” he suggested.
“Better take him on board,” said the barkeeper, “and send him back by the pilot. When we’re once at sea, he can’t hurt us any.”
“What makes you think I want to hurt you?” demanded David. “Who do you think I am?”
“We know who you are,” shouted the fiery-headed one. “You’re a blanketty-blank spy! You’re a government spy or a Spanish spy, and whichever you are you don’t get away tonight!”
David had not the faintest idea what the man meant, but he knew his self-respect was being ill-treated, and his self-respect rebelled.
“You have made a very serious mistake,” he said, “and whether you like it or not, I am leaving here tonight, and you can go to the devil!”
Turning his back David started with great dignity to walk away. It was a short walk. Something hit him below the ear and he found himself curling up comfortably on the ties. He had a strong desire to sleep, but was conscious that a bed on a railroad track, on account of trains wanting to pass, was unsafe. This doubt did not long disturb him. His head rolled against the steel rail, his limbs relaxed. From a great distance, and in a strange sing-song he heard the voice of the barkeeper saying, “Nine—ten—and out!”
When David came to his senses his head was resting on a coil of rope. In his ears was the steady throb of an engine, and in his eyes the glare of a lantern. The lantern was held by a pleasant-faced youth in a golf cap who was smiling sympathetically. David rose on his elbow and gazed wildly about him. He was in the bow of the ocean-going tug, and he saw that from where he lay in the bow to her stern her decks were packed with men. She was steaming swiftly down a broad river. On either side the gray light that comes before the dawn showed low banks studded with stunted palmettos. Close ahead David heard the roar of the surf.
“Sorry to disturb you,” said the youth in the golf cap, “but we drop the pilot in a few minutes and you’re going with him.”
David moved his aching head gingerly, and was conscious of a bump as large as a tennis ball behind his right ear.
“What happened to me?” he demanded.
“You were sort of kidnapped, I guess,” laughed the young man. “It was a raw deal, but they couldn’t take any chances. The pilot will land you at Okra Point. You can hire a rig there to take you to the railroad.”
“But why?” demanded David indignantly. “Why was I kidnapped? What had I done? Who were those men who—”
From the pilot-house there was a sharp jangle of bells to the engine-room, and the speed of the tug slackened.
“Come on,” commanded the young man briskly. “The pilot’s going ashore. Here’s your grip, here’s your hat. The ladder’s on the port side. Look where you’re stepping. We can’t show any lights, and it’s dark as—”
But, even as he spoke, like a flash of powder, as swiftly as one throws an electric switch, as blindingly as a train leaps from the tunnel into the glaring sun, the darkness vanished and the tug was swept by the fierce, blatant radiance of a search-light.
It was met by shrieks from two hundred throats, by screams, oaths, prayers, by the sharp jangling of bells, by the blind rush of many men scurrying like rats for a hole to hide in, by the ringing orders of one man. Above the tumult this one voice rose like the warning strokes of a fire-gong, and looking up to the pilot-house from whence the voice came, David saw the barkeeper still in his shirt-sleeves and with his derby hat pushed back behind his ears, with one hand clutching the telegraph to the engine-room, with the other holding the spoke of the wheel.
David felt the tug, like a hunter taking a fence, rise in a great leap. Her bow sank and rose, tossing the water from her in black, oily waves, the smoke poured from her funnel, from below her engines sobbed and quivered, and like a hound freed from a leash she raced for the open sea. But swiftly as she fled, as a thief is held in the circle of a policeman’s bull’s-eye, the shaft of light followed and exposed her and held her in its grip. The youth in the golf cap was clutching David by the arm. With his free hand he pointed down the shaft of light. So great was the tumult that to be heard he brought his lips close to David’s ear.
“That’s the revenue cutter!” he shouted. “She’s been laying for us for three weeks, and now,” he shrieked exultingly, “the old man’s going to give her a race for it.”
From excitement, from cold, from alarm, David’s nerves were getting beyond his control.
“But how,” he demanded, “how do I get ashore?”
“You don’t!”
“When he drops the pilot, don’t I—”
“How can he drop the pilot?” yelled the youth. “The pilot’s got to stick by the boat. So have you.”
David clutched the young man and swung him so that they stood face to face.
“Stick by what boat?” yelled David. “Who are these men? Who are you? What boat is this?”
In the glare of the search-light David saw the eyes of the youth staring at him as though he feared he were in the clutch of a madman. Wrenching himself free, the youth pointed at the pilot-house. Above it on a blue board in letters of gold-leaf a foot high was the name of the tug. As David read it his breath left him, a finger of ice passed slowly down his spine. The name he read was The Three Friends.
“The Three Friends!” shrieked David. “She’s a filibuster! She’s a pirate! Where’re we going?
“To Cuba!”
David emitted a howl of anguish, rage, and protest.
“What for?” he shrieked.
The young man regarded him coldly.
“To pick bananas,” he said.
“I won’t go to Cuba,” shouted David. “I’ve got to work! I’m paid to sell machinery. I demand to be put ashore. I’ll lose my job if I’m not put ashore. I’ll sue you! I’ll have the law—”
David found himself suddenly upon his knees. His first thought was that the ship had struck a rock, and then that she was bumping herself over a succession of coral reefs. She dipped, dived, reared, and plunged. Like a hooked fish, she flung herself in the air, quivering from bow to stern. No longer was David of a mind to sue the filibusters if they did not put him ashore. If only they had put him ashore, in gratitude he would have crawled on his knees. What followed was of no interest to David, nor to many of the filibusters, nor to any of the Cuban patriots. Their groans of self-pity, their prayers and curses in eloquent Spanish, rose high above the crash of broken crockery and the pounding of the waves. Even when the search-light gave way to a brilliant sunlight the circumstance was unobserved by David. Nor was he concerned in the tidings brought forward by the youth in the golf cap, who raced the slippery decks and vaulted the prostrate forms as sure-footedly as a hurdler on a cinder track. To David, in whom he seemed to think he had found a congenial spirit, he shouted Joyfully, “She’s fired two blanks at us!” he cried; “now she’s firing cannon-balls!”
