Читать книгу King of The Rocks - Ambrose Pratt - Страница 4

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CAPTAIN STANDISH, early on Christmas morning, lay dozing in his cabin on the stately Alemene, while the floating city he was tyrant of ploughed its way at sixteen knots an hour through the Indian Ocean, Londonwards. While dreaming placidly of a delightful dish that had charmed his palate the night before, there came to his ears the sound of a muffled pistol shot, followed quickly by a perfect babel of noise—shouts, oaths, and yells of pain or rage. Springing up, he rushed in his pyjamas to the lower deck, where a strange scene greeted his wondering eyes. Lying handcuffed on the boards were five men, two of whom he recognised as saloon passengers; over them stood the chief steward, two assistant cooks, and two cabin stewards, all heavily armed; while a crowd of sailors and half-dressed passengers gaped around in dazed astonishment.

"What the deuce is this?" demanded Captain Standish.

The chief steward took a silver badge from the lining of his coat and handed it gravely to the captain.

"It means, sir," he said, "that I and these cooks and stewards are detectives. We have arrested those gentry lying there, who are wanted for a dozen crimes. If you will come with me I shall explain."

Signing to his men to guard the prisoners, the steward took the captain to a certain state-room, where he showed him spread out upon the bunk a complete collection of cracksman's tools—braces, drills, sound destroyers, jemmies, lanterns, diamond-cutters, etc., all of the most perfect workmanship and finish. He showed him also how two of the floor planks of the cabin had been cut through so cleverly as to defy detection, and an opening made through the lower iron flooring into the vessel's hold.

"Good God, Manville," said Captain Standish, "they were after the gold!"

"Yes," said the chief cook; "their object was to bore their way into the strong-room, get the gold, and leave at the first port of call. Those drills there would go through steel bulkheads or anything."

"I can well believe it. Really, Manville, you are a born detective; you have worked this business most cleverly. If my recommendation is of any service to you, I shall give it most freely in the proper quarter. I never saw anything so clever in my life, by Gad!"

"Thank you, Captain Standish; I really think I deserve some credit."

"Credit is not the word, Manville. I am sure that my Company will reward you."

"Do you think so? Well, I suppose I'd better look after my prisoners now. You'll give me room for them, I hope?"

"Certainly. But how about yourself—are we to lose our chief steward?"

"Well," replied Manville, "just as you think best. If I have given you satisfaction hitherto I'll look after things till we get to Aden, and my men can stay on as they are, too. You'll pay our salaries, of course?"

Captain Standish smiled at this evidence of close-fistedness.

"Up to the time you leave, of course."

Manville resented the captain's smile.

"It's all very well for you to laugh, Captain," he said; "it may seem mean on my part, when I'm going to get a big reward for this job, to haggle over a few pounds, but when a man marries he's got to look after himself."

"Oh, certainly!" said the captain, thoroughly delighted at the other's annoyance; "but you'll open a bottle of champagne to celebrate the occasion, won't you? Christmas Day and all."

Manville appeared to be extremely put out.

"I don't see why I should," he answered, and retired to attend to his prisoners.

Just after breakfast, however, the chief steward again presented himself before Captain Standish. His face was flushed and his eyes were very bright; he had evidently been drinking.

"I want you, Cap'n," he said, in rather a thick voice, "to allow me to shout for all hands. It's Christmas Day, and I've just had the biggest stroke of luck that ever came my way."

The captain was both surprised and amused at Manville's proposition.

"Think of the cost," he suggested, with a wicked smile.

"Oh, damn the odds," replied Manville; "Christmas only comes once a year. I've fixed up with the purser. Champagne for the first saloon, whisky for the second, and rum—" he stopped on seeing the captain's face expand with a meaning smile. "Well, damn it then, champagne for everyone—women, sailors, and every man-jack on board—if it breaks me."

"It'll cost you £60 at least. Remember you're going to be married," said the captain.

"What the devil has that got to do with you?" asked the chief steward testily; but Captain Standish roared with laughter, and clapped the other on the back.

"Nothing at all, old chap; nothing at all. I'll drink your health with all the pleasure in life; and as you said just now, damn the odds!"

Manville retired to the store-room of the ship, where with the two under-stewards, or rather detectives, he had brought with him on board the Alemene, he busied himself for a couple of hours, sending out at intervals basket after basket of champagne to the main deck, until a tempting row of nearly twenty dozen bottles stood in crates before a great array of sandwiches and fruit. Before, however, the chief steward himself proceeded to the deck he retired to his cabin to lock away in his trunk a case containing a large-sized hypodermic syringe and some dozen or so damaged hollow steel tube needles.

Ten minutes afterwards could have been heard a hundred yards from the ship a perfect battle of corks, followed by the captain's voice proposing the toast, "Detective Manville!"

The champagne was drunk in relays, the first saloon partaking first, the second cabin next, and afterwards in their proper order the ship's company, cooks, stewards, and seamen. The last were very enthusiastic, and they drank their host's health with three times three, withdrawing thence to their duties, singing noisily the chorus, "For he's a jolly good fellow," a sentiment which was speedily caught up by both saloons in a rousing echo, "And so say all of us!"

Half an hour later the ship's doctor was hastily summoned to attend Captain Standish, who had been seized with a sudden weakness of his muscles, being able to move neither hand nor foot. From the door of the captain's cabin a dozen men presently implored the physician to visit others, their friends or relatives, who had been stricken in the same extraordinary manner. At one o'clock one half the ship's company, passengers and sailors alike, were lying in their cabins, on the deck, and everywhere, inanimate and paralysed in every limb; the other half, shivering with terror, vainly ministered to the unfortunates, but every moment one by one these attendants themselves would fall victims to the mysterious disease which had so suddenly attacked the ship.

At half-past four, Doctor Campbell collected a few of the still healthy passengers together.

"We have been poisoned," he said briefly. "The symptoms point to Wourali, a South American drug, of which but little is known.''

"Is there no antidote?" demanded a portly giant, whose usually plethoric face was now pasty with fear.

"Nothing certain; artificial respiration, stimulants, and hypodermic doses of strychnine are used, but——" he paused impressively.

"Then, for God's sake, let us try and save some of these poor people; half of them are women." The speaker choked back a sob.

The doctor sighed. "I have used all my strychnine," he said; "these people, for all their flaccid muscles, are dead as herrings. You fellows had better fill yourselves with whisky; it's the only thing left now."

He set the example by knocking the head off a bottle, and pouring the liquid down his throat. The pasty-faced giant reached out his hand for a decanter, then suddenly fell with a groan, a helpless mass of humanity, to the ground. The doctor started up, and forced some spirit down his throat, then set two of the others to work at the patient's arms and shoulders to induce artificial respiration. Suddenly one of the bystanders broke in——

"Who has poisoned us?" he demanded.

"The man whose champagne we drank a while ago."

"Detective Manville?" gasped an incredulous chorus.

"Why, certainly," said the doctor, who was working like a maniac on the giant.

"Let us go and find Manville," suggested a little man who had just drunk a tumbler of raw spirit.

"Go armed, then!"

The little man flourished a revolver in response, and strode to the door followed by the crowd. There he pitched headlong to the ground, for his legs had failed quite suddenly, and he was helpless as a child; but the others, drunk with the fear of death and liquor, rushed, a pack of raving lunatics, over the body of their stricken leader in search of the chief steward.

But Detective Manville was not to be found.

By two o'clock three hundred and sixty three men and seventy women, out of the whole ship's company, had died by poison. Of the others, three women and two men, confined to their beds by illness since the vessel left port, had been strangled during the afternoon as they slept. Sixty women and eleven men, who, being teetotalers, had not availed themselves of Detective Manville's kind invitation to drink champagne, had retired in a panic to the first saloon, where they barricaded themselves behind the locked doors.

Detective Manville, with his four attendants and five prisoners (now free as air), assumed command of the Alemene.

His first act was to place an armed guard over the saloon stairs, then he stopped the vessel's engines, which were by this, however, scarcely moving, since engineers, stokers, and firemen had long been dead. Next he signalled a strange steamer which had risen like a mushroom on the horizon. Detective Manville then searched the captain's cabin, and in John Standish's private trunk he found a key.

With this he proceeded to the strong room of the Alemene, and found to his joy that it fitted the lock. The door opened, only however to disclose a second locked door more solid than the first, and the same key was of no service here. With a curse on his memory he darted away, and among the dead lying on the deck selected the body of the chief officer, on whose watch-chain swung a single key. This fitted the lock of the second door of the Alemene's strong room just as easily as the captain's key had fitted the first; and as he applied it, Detective Manville mused in cynical admiration on the precautions which the owners of the vessel had lavished upon the care of the treasures which they carried.

"Excellent men," he said aloud, "they trusted neither the captain nor his mate, and they were right; the captain is dead, the mate is dead. The makers of proverbs were sometimes wrong; 'Trust not, and you shall not be disappointed,' the old saw should have run."

By five o'clock one million sovereigns' worth of gold specie had been removed from the strong room of the Alemene to the cabin of the Swallow—the strange black steamer which Detective Manville had signalled earlier that evening. By seven o'clock the dead bodies, of whom that morning had been near four hundred living human souls, were secured behind bar and bolt in the Alemene's after-hold. By ten o'clock the sixty women and eleven men who had taken refuge in the first saloon could not have escaped therefrom had they chosen, for the cabin doors were strongly blocked with barricades of heavy merchandise which filled up the cabin staircase to a level with the deck.

At midnight a dull but terrible explosion thundered out across the ocean. The Alemene's bows were lifted clear of the water some seconds preceding the sound; but instantly they settled down again, and in a few short moments the hulk of what had been the finest ship afloat sank steadily head foremost into the bowels of the sea, and presently disappeared in a swirling whirlpool of water. But the Swallow was already miles away, and steaming south at thirteen knots an hour.