Читать книгу Dangerous Cargo - Footner Hulbert - Страница 6

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When we descended from the taxicab at the yacht-landing, foot of East Twenty-sixth Street, the Buccaneer lying out in midstream burst on us in full glory. It was a cold bright day and the sparkling river made a fit setting for her. A great white ship with an insolent squat funnel and long strings of fluttering flags.

As the latest sensation of the marine world, a crowd had gathered on the pier to have a look at her. Ultra modern design, the yachtsmen were saying, with her high sides and oblique cutwater; ugly but very smart. As for myself, the thought that all those millions had been spent to carry six people to sea for an idle cruise, filled me with a vague fear of retribution.

Only second in interest for the crowd was the launch which was waiting for us, a dazzling affair of mahogany and brass. It was such a launch as might have been used to carry kings and queens. When we stepped aboard everybody gaped at us in awe and envy. Some of the rougher types muttered insolently.

In five minutes we were at the ship’s ladder, which was not a ladder at all but a teakwood stairway carpeted with rope to keep your feet from slipping. A handsome young sailor handed us off, and a smart officer saluted on deck. There was a steward in a white coat to show us to our cabins.

All very grand, but it did not make us feel we were being welcomed on board. Sailor, officer and steward all had cagy, expressionless faces. Not one of them looked us in the eye.

It appeared that we were the last arrivals. The launch was immediately hooked to the davits and drawn up. A bosun’s whistle blew, and I heard the clank of the anchor chain up forward. Fancy keeping all that waiting!

Below, our suite was more like that of a luxury hotel than anything afloat. A sitting-room twenty feet long, with a bedroom almost as big at either side; a marble bathroom for each of us, with gold-plated fittings. The whole was lighted with a row of big round portholes rimmed with brass, and it was all so beautifully furnished and decorated that nothing obtruded itself; it just received you.

The steward told us that cocktails were being served in the winter garden. When we had taken off our coats he led us up to the sun deck, where there was a green-and-white room with a glass roof and big windows all around. It was filled with tropical plants and orchids. Here the party was gathered.

When you are introduced to a lot of new people at the same time you only get your bearings by degrees. I found myself beside a lovely young girl with a modest, timid air that was almost unbelievable in this day and generation. She told me that she had lately graduated from a convent in France. This was Celia Dare, Horace Laghet’s fiancée. It seemed rather a shame.

Her mother was a beautiful woman still on the sunny side of forty. Everybody called her Sophie. In contradistinction to her daughter she was very much in the know. Her bright touched-up eyes darted this way and that, full of calculation. I suppose she thought she had done very well by the girl.

The third woman was Mrs. Holder, or Adele. She was a beauty of what used to be called the Dresden-china type, with that exquisite fragility that appeals so strongly to men, particularly of Horace Laghet’s sort. It often goes with a hearty appetite.

Among the men I should have recognized Adrian Laghet anywhere as Horace’s brother. He was tall and had the same cast of features, though an entirely different character was suggested. Adrian was soft. Already at thirty-two his waist measure was approaching that of his chest. He was the social light of the family.

Emil Herbert, the pianist, was an attractive young fellow, blond, quiet in manner, but with the fine resolute eye that bespeaks a master of his trade, which Emil was. Apart from music, however, he was nothing but a shy boy. I caught him glancing sideways at the girl beside me.

Under the influence of the masterly cocktails there was a lot of talk and laughter. Superficially it had the look of a good party, but it was not so, really. I had not been among them two minutes before I could feel the strain. The eyes in those smiling faces were guarded and uneasy. All those smart people seemed to be incased in glass armor.

Tall, slender, and casual, Mme. Storey among the other women looked like a cardinal bird in a cage of tame canaries. Her smile was perfectly good-humored and inscrutable. I felt enmity in the room, but among those glassy smiles I could not locate it.

Horace Laghet seemed to get his pleasure out of insulting everybody. That was his idea of humor. When he brought his brother up to introduce him to Mme. Storey he said: “This is little Adrian who will kiss your hand and do a little song and dance or paint a little picture or what you will!”

A loud laugh greeted this. Horace’s cracks naturally were sure of a big hand. I could see by Adrian’s eyes that it flicked him on the raw, but he swallowed it.

Horace, indifferent to what anybody might think, bore himself in a loverly fashion towards the beautiful Adele—a contemptuous lover. This made me feel more than ever sorry for the girl he was supposed to be engaged to. Celia didn’t seem to mind. Perhaps she was too inexperienced to realize what it meant. I wondered what her mother was about. Willing, I suppose, to overlook anything if she could only take the rich Horace into camp.

The yacht was under way and I went to one of the windows to watch the panorama of the city moving by. It was hard to believe that we had already cut loose from all we knew. The East Side waterfront is far from beautiful, but I felt a sudden love for the old town and heartily wished myself ashore. Moment by moment I liked our situation less.

Adele joined me at the window. She said, lightly, “I wonder if it will show any change when we come back.”

“Who can tell?” I said. And to myself I added: “Will we show any change when we come back? And will we all come back?”

“Just the same I’m glad to get away for a while,” Adele went on, with her meaningless professional-beauty smile. “Life in New York is so wearing!”

She was very beautiful. I wondered if there were any real feelings under that perfect mask. I presently found out.

A sailor came walking along the deck outside. I saw him before Adele did. I was struck by his appearance because he didn’t look like a common sailor, but like a member of the younger country-club set who had been hitting it up; a clean-cut young man who was getting a little blurry. He didn’t know anyone was watching him. There was a possessed look in his eyes, such as you see in one who goes along the street muttering to himself.

When he saw me, he dropped his head and assumed the slouch of a common fellow. He went by us with his head down. I heard Adele gasp, and her slender fingers closed around my wrist like a vise.

“Please! please,” she stammered, “come downstairs with me.”

I followed her wonderingly through the door into the stair hall. She was careful to keep her back turned to the others in the room. Her knees were giving under her. Yet when Horace called out, “Where are you going, Adele?” she sang out, gaily, “Back in half a moment.”

She went stumbling down the stairs. I heard her murmuring to herself: “O my God! What am I going to do?” She clung to the post at the bottom, white-faced and shaking. In a moment she opened her eyes and said, with a ghastly attempt to laugh it off:

“What must you think of me?”

“You are not well,” I said.

“Yes ... yes,” she said, eagerly. “It was so hot upstairs I thought I was going to faint.”

I said nothing. Feeling, perhaps, that her excuse was rather lame, she went on: “I have a bad heart, you see, and naturally one doesn’t want a man to know it. If you had not come with me Horace would have followed and ... and his eyes are so sharp!” A terrible shudder went through her thin body.

“Come to my cabin and get a spot of brandy,” I said.

When she had swallowed the brandy she began to chatter. “I feel all right now. It was nothing at all. Nothing. So silly of me! Dear me! I hope I’m not going to be a bad sailor!” And so on. But her eyes were still sick with fear.

She went to the mirror and rubbed a little rouge into her cheeks, then turned her head this way and that, gazing into her face with the most penetrating anxiety. I suppose that face meant everything in the world to her. It was all she had.

She entered the winter garden with a gay rattle of talk. “Horace, when are you going to show us over the vessel? I can’t wait until I see the swimming pool. It’s all perfectly marvelous! Like Aladdin’s cave afloat!”

In my mind I could still hear that desperate voice murmuring: “O my God! What am I going to do?”