Читать книгу The Maker of Opportunities - George Gibbs - Страница 4

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As the fog upon his memory still hung heavily he raised his head toward the man at the door of the cabin. That person was eyeing him rather pityingly and had come a step forward into the room.

“Shall I be getting you something, sir?” he was saying again.

Geltman sprang unsteadily to his feet.

“No,” he cried. “I’m going to get out of this.”

“In pajamas, sir?” said the man, reproachfully.

Geltman glanced down at the flimsy silk garment.

“Yes—in pajamas,” he cried, hotly. And with an imprecation he strode past the outraged servant and rushed through the saloon and up the companion. As he raised his head and shoulders above the deck he was immediately aware of a chill wind which was singing sharply through the rigging. A gentleman, in a double-breasted suit and yachting cap, was standing aft steadying a telescope toward a distant schooner. By his side was a short and very stocky man with a bushy red beard and brass buttons.

“What is the meaning of this outrage?” he cried, wildly addressing the man in the yachting cap. “Are you the owner of this yacht?”

The gentleman calmly lowered his telescope, passed it to the bearded man, turned mildly toward the tousled apparition and looked at him from top to toe while the sportive wind gleefully defined Geltman’s generous figure.

“I say, old man,” he said, smiling, “hadn’t you better get into some clothes?”

“C—clothes be——” chattered Geltman. “I’ve been drugged, kidnapped, and shanghaied! Somebody’s going to smart for this. Who are you? What does it mean?”

The enraged brewer, with his arms waving, his slender garment flapping, his inflamed countenance and ruffled hair, presented the wildest appearance imaginable. The man in the yachting cap wore an expression of commiseration and exchanged a significant glance with the red-bearded man.

“There now,” said he, raising a protesting hand, “we’re all your friends aboard here. You’re in no danger at all, except—” he smiled at the brewer’s costume—“except from a bad cold.”

“What does this outrage mean?” cried Geltman anew. “You’ll suffer for it. As long as I have a dollar left in the world——”

“You really don’t mean that,” said the gentleman. “Go below now, that’s a good fellow, get breakfast and some clothes.”

“No, I’ll n—not,” said the brewer in chilly syncopation. “I’m Carl Geltman, of Henry Geltman and Company, and I want an explanation of this outrage.”

The two men exchanged another look, and the red-bearded one tapped his forehead twice with a blunt forefinger.

“I haven’t the least idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Fehrenbach,” said the man in the yachting cap, calmly.

“Fehrenbach!” cried the brewer. “My name isn’t Fehrenbach!” he screamed. “Otto Fehrenbach is on the East Side. I’m on the West. My name is Geltman, I tell you!”

The man in blue looked gravely down at the astonished brewer and pushed a bell on the side of the cabin skylight.

“That was one of the symptoms, Weckerly,” he said aside to the man with the red beard.

“Yes, Doctor,” said the other quizzically. “The sea air ought to do him a lot of good.”

Geltman, now bewildered, limp and very much alarmed, suffered himself to be led shivering below by the two blue-shirted sailor-men. There he found the steward in the cabin with a drink, and the blue flannels, and a boy laying a warm breakfast in the saloon. He dressed. At table he discovered an appetite which even his troubled spirit had not abated. Hot coffee and a cigar completed his rehabilitation. His situation would have been an agreeable joke had it not been so tragic. He had learned enough to feel that he was powerless, that there had been some terrible mistake, and that the only way out of the difficulty was through the somewhat tortuous and sparsely buoyed channels of diplomacy.

But he walked out upon deck with renewed confidence. It was early yet. If he could persuade his host of his mistake there was still time to run in shore where the telegraph might set all things right. The man in the yachting cap was smoking a pipe in the lee of the after hatch.

“Will you please tell me your name?” began the brewer, constrainedly.

“With all the good will in the world,” said the other, rising. “I’m glad you’re feeling better. I’m Doctor Norman Woolf of New York, and this,” indicating the red-bearded man, “is Captain Weckerly of the Pinta. Captain Weckerly—Mr. Fehrenbach.”

Geltman started at the repetition of the name, but he gave no other sign.

“Would you mind,” said the brewer, “telling me how I came aboard your boat?”

“Not at all,” said Woolf, easily. “You see, when I cruise on the Pinta I make it a point to leave all thought of my cases behind. But sometimes I break my rule, and when they told me of yours I made up my mind I should like to study you under intimate and extraordinary conditions and so——”

“Really, I don’t quite follow——”

“And so I had to bring you out to the yacht on which I was just starting for a little run over to the Azores.”

“The Azores!”

Dr. Woolf was smiling benignly at the unhappy brewer.

“You know,” he continued, “these cases of aphasia have a peculiar interest for me. It seems such a little slipping of the cogs. What’s in a name, after all? Yours is an old and honored one. The Fehrenbachs have made beer for fifty years——”

“It’s a lie,” shouted Geltman springing to his feet, unable longer to contain himself. “It’s only thirty—and the stuff isn’t fit to drink.”

“Pray be calm. Don’t you know that if this was to get abroad, it would hurt your business?”

“My business—the business of Geltman and Company——”

“The business of Fehrenbach and Company,” interrupted Dr. Woolf sternly.

The unfortunate brewer with an effort contained himself. He knew that anger would avail him nothing. The only thing left was to listen patiently. He subsided again into his wicker chair and fastened his nervous gaze upon the distant horizon.

“It’s a pleasure to see you capable of self-control. If you can, I should like you to try and tell me how you happened to begin using the name of Geltman.”

How had he happened to use the name of Geltman!

“What would you say,” continued the Doctor, without awaiting the answer, “if I were to tell you that I was Christopher Columbus and that Captain Weckerly here was Francisco Pizarro or Hernandez Cortes? You’d say we were mistaken, wouldn’t you? Of course you would. When you say that you’re Geltman and we know you’re Fehrenbach——”

“Stop!” roared the unhappy brewer, springing to his feet. “Stop, for the love of Heaven, and let me off this floating madhouse!”

“Calm yourself!”

“Calm myself! Can you not see that the whole thing is a terrible mistake? You have taken me for some one else. Last evening, I tell you, I was knocked down and drugged. Then I was carried to a boat and brought here. Look in my clothes, my handkerchiefs, my linen, you will see the monogram or initials C. G. Will not that be enough to satisfy you?”

“My dear sir, I assure you you were brought aboard in the very clothes you now wear. Even that cap was on your head. Can’t you remember coming up the gangway with Captain Weckerly?” And then, half aloud, and with looks of misgivings toward the Captain, who was shaking his head, “He’s worse than I supposed.”

Geltman had taken off the yachting cap and there, perforated in the band, were the letters O. F. He searched his pockets and found a handkerchief with the same initials. As he did so he saw that the two men were looking at him with a expression of new interest and concern. His mind was still befogged. For the first time he really began to doubt himself, and the evidence of his belated memory. He had not heard that Otto Fehrenbach was mad. Was it possible that after all some dreadful misfortune had happened to him, Geltman? That a blow he had received in falling had turned his mind, and that his soul had migrated to the body of the hated Fehrenbach? And if so, did the soul of Fehrenbach occupy his body? Fehrenbach, sitting in his office, directing his business with the shoddy methods of the Fehrenbachs, driving his horses, and perhaps—could it be that he was at this moment marrying Juliet Hazard in his place? The thought of it made him sick. He was dimly conscious of some science which dealt with these things. He had once read a story of a happening of this kind at a German university. He looked at these strangers before him and found himself returning in kind their mysterious glances. Was he mad? Or were they? Or were they all mad together? He glanced aloft at the swaying masts. And the yacht, too? Was it real or was that, too, some fantasy of a diseased imagination? The Fliegende Holländer flitted playfully into his mind. Just forward of the cabin a group of sailors were standing looking at him and whispering. It was uncanny. Were they, too, in the same state as the others? It could not be. The vessel was real. Geltman or Fehrenbach—he, himself, was real. There must be some one aboard the accursed craft who would listen to him and understand. Bewildered, he walked forward. As he did so the group of sailor-men dissolved and each one hurried about some self-appointed task. He walked over to a man who was coiling a rope.

“I say, my man,” he said, “are you from New York?”

“Yes, sir,” said the man, but he looked over his shoulder to right and left as though seeking a mode of escape.

“Did you ever happen to drink any of Geltman’s beer?”

The man gave the brewer one fleeting look, then dropped his coil and disappeared down the fo’c’s’le hatch.

The brewer watched the retreating figure with some dismay. He walked toward another man who was shining some bright work around the galley stovepipe. But the man saw him coming and vanished as the other had done. An old man with a gray beard sat on a ditty box at the lee rail, sewing a pair of breeches. He was chewing tobacco and scowling, but did not move as the landsman approached.

“I say, my man,” began the brewer again, “did you ever drink any of Geltman’s beer?”

The old man eyed him from head to foot before he answered. But there was no fear in his face—only pity—naked and undisguised.

“Naw,” he replied, spitting to leeward. “There ain’t no beer in N’ York fer me but Otto Fehrenbach’s.”

Geltman looked at him a moment and then turned despairingly aft. The yacht was bewitched and they were all bewitched with her.