Читать книгу Unsought Adventure - Howard Angus Kennedy - Страница 13

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The smashing of Atlantic seas on the steamer’s iron skin was no soothing accompaniment to the fretful thinking of Jack Galt. His cabin was down below. Wave after wave swept savagely over his port-hole. He hardly feared the glass would burst, yet he nervously reached down and hauled his club bag up on the berth beside him. He was too sick to rise.

Half way across, he ventured out for a breath of air, but hurried down again after one turn around the promenade deck. Nothing singular about that! Passengers prematurely confident of their sea-legs and sea-stomachs do that every trip, on various pretexts but for one unvaried reason.

Jack had two imperative reasons,—one common to the crowd, one all his own. The breath of air revived his brain, from the torpor of two days’ sea-sickness. He suddenly remembered having left his bag unlocked. Staggering down to his cabin as fast as weak legs and tilting floors would let him, he pounced on the bag and opened it—shut it with a sigh of relief, and lay down beside it in his berth.

A horizontal half-hour restored his physical but not his mental comfort.

“Thieves infest all these boats like rats,” he considered. “The best of them”—meaning the cleverest—“only mark down staterooms where they know there’s something big. There’s not a millionaire’s suite in the ship with a bigger thing in it than I’ve got bumping against my knees. The Number One crook with his eye on the Van Kranks’ diamonds would switch off on to this old book in a jiffy—if only he knew. But the Number Two crook works a whole CLEVER JACK

ship on general principles, dropping into any cabin as chance offers and picking up anything he happens to find, from a fountain pen to a Gutenberg Bible.

“He’s the one I’ve to fear,—and now’s the time he’ll be getting busy, with everybody tumbling out of their rooms anyhow and nobody in a state to care a damn whether their jewels are in the bed-clothes or at the bottom of the sea.”

Jack had seen a notice posted up as he came on board: “Deposit your valuables with the purser, or the Company will not be responsible!” That might have been safer. He might do it now. Bah! That would be out of the frying pan into the fire—creating evidence against him if the worst should happen and the book were missed. He was not fool enough to leave a scent like that on the trail,—a record that on such a date such a passenger carried to Europe such a parcel, of exactly the size required. He must just take a chance.

Challenging fate, Jack sallied out again, but not till he had stowed the parcel in the bottom of his trunk. This he locked and pushed under the berth.

Snugly wrapped up in a deck chair, he closed his eyes on the mad and maddening waves, and chuckled over a much more pleasant scene that rose spontaneously to mind. Oh, very pleasant! He saw himself sitting at Samuel Johnson’s desk, with the big club bag at his feet. He took a parcel out of the bag, enchanted the bookseller with a glimpse of its unique contents, and put it back again. Then, saying he might as well leave the parcel with Sam after all, he reopened the bag and took out—another parcel instead, made up to look exactly like the first.

Such an easy conjuring trick it had proved,—so neatly done, though his first attempt at “ringing the changes!” Oh, a very pleasant picture to keep his mind off that maddening sea. He patted himself on the back. A bungler might so easily have foozled it,—forgotten which side of the bag the real thing was on and which side the counterfeit,—might in fact have taken the real thing out a second time and left it to the honest bookseller, while the bungler unconsciously carried off the parcel of rubbish as a treasure to Europe. Jack’s stock rose several points in his own estimation as he compared himself to the common run of knaves.

A more extreme contrast could hardly be imagined than that between Sam Johnson and Jack Galt. Neither of them had ever committed what the law would call a crime, till the fateful book threw its irresistible temptation in their way. But there the likeness ended.

Sam had lived fifty jog-trot years of passive virtue, steady in business, happy and considerate at home. If he had not actively built up his high reputation for honesty, fellow-citizens had built it up for him on the solid foundation he had laid, and he took all the credit for the structure.

Jack had crowded into half the time a hundred activities, taking little more credit for the innocent than blame for the shady. Distressing his parents while they lived, his sister more and more to the end, he had cared just enough for their opinion to hide his worst habits, and enough for his own skin to keep within the law.

Yet here they were, fallen into the same temptation, tormented by the same fears, haunted by the same threatening fate, chained to the same treadmill of a problem, and reaching at last the same solution.

Jack would have to wait for his cousin’s death, meanwhile trusting his wits and his luck—“assisted” luck, at a pinch—to keep him well fed, copiously irrigated, smartly clad, and continuously amused. Afterwards, the course CHICKEN-COUNTING

would be clear. He had no business experience beyond a few early tiresome years in a London office, and that he preferred to forget; but he had a childlike faith in his own natural ability.

In fact, if John was too unconscionable a time in dying, Jack would chance it and dispose of the book in England while its owner still breathed in America. There must be collectors, certainly dealers, ready to jump at such a prize. If they asked questions, he could invent a most plausible tale of picking it up in a German junk store. If they wanted something more picturesque, he would tell how he rushed in and saved it from a fanatical moslem executioner about to cast it on a ceremonial bonfire.

It was not as if this copy had been known and catalogued, so that its various owners and wanderings could be traced. And, after all, no buyer would be too critical of his story if he offered the book at much less than it would certainly fetch at auction,—say $100,000. Oh, yes, he could trust his wits to find a market for the spoil and cover up his tracks!

That telegram was a fine stroke, he chuckled, to keep honest Sam from opening the parcel and finding it differed slightly from the parcel, identical to all appearance, he had just opened on his desk! Again Jack flattered himself on the neatness of his first attempt at “ringing the changes.”

He would write, instructing the bookseller to send the package after him.... No, he must cable. In fact, he would send a wireless from the ship that very day. In spite of his telegram that he was leaving home, honest Sam might try to get in touch with him—with “John Galt”—and solemnly inform him of his fearful loss. The bookseller’s eloquent regrets must be diverted from Cousin John’s house in New York to a safe address in England. Thence, Jack would send a forgiving reply—by cable, of course; handwriting was always risky.

If by some miracle the treasure had been saved from the burning store, then Johnson’s letter would be congratulatory instead of apologetic, and the unopened parcel would come with it. Jack couldn’t remember what he had put in it,—old trash, no doubt,—he could destroy it without much loss. One bit of stolen goods was enough to risk selling,—when it was a big one. But why bother his head about a thing like that? The newspaper accounts of the fire had all reported a total loss.

Yes, by the way, and none of the papers had hinted at any origin but accident, for that fire. Defective wiring was suggested as the most likely cause. The firemen had not reported any suspicious discovery,—a rear window broken, for instance. Before their arrival, no doubt, all the windows had been broken by the heat. And who could possibly have any motive for starting such a fire? The store-keeper, for the insurance money? Sam’s high name for honesty would protect him, there,—or if not, Sam would just have to take his chance, as Jack was doing!

A feeble voice beside him broke in on Jack’s pleasant meditation. The voice came from a large bundle of wraps on the next deck chair.

“Edward, there’s the deck steward coming with tea and biscuits. I’m dying of hunger. I’ve left my teeth in a glass over the wash-stand.”

Edward, somewhere on the other side of the voice, only grunted.

“Do go and get them, Edward. And, come to think of it, I dropped my emerald earrings into a glass there too. I think it must be the same glass. I was too sick to notice. Do you think they’ll be safe?”

Edward struggled to his feet. “Not on your life, AN EMERALD WARNING

they’re not.” He staggered to the nearest door, and disappeared.

Jack’s fears had all returned. He swallowed a cup of tea and a biscuit, and waited almost as anxiously as the lady herself.

The husband came speedily back, and handed something to his wife. She slipped it into her mouth, and pushed a biscuit after it. Her tea-cup followed, but paused halfway to her lips. “Well?” she asked.

“They’re gone, sure enough,” he said.

“Oh! Oh!” she feebly cried, setting down her cup untasted. “It’s terrible. The company should be ashamed of itself, letting thieves prowl around first-class staterooms on a ship like this! Do you think it’s our own bedroom steward? No, it must be the stewardess. I didn’t like the look of her from the first, and I’m rarely mistaken. She’s got those absurdly little ears, and I’m sure her shoes are two sizes too small for her.”

“It’s just as likely to be a passenger,” said Edward, when his wife was out of breath. “There’s no saying what consummate rascal you may be rubbing shoulders with, on board ship.”

Jack had been on the point of getting up to visit his own cabin, but now thought better of it. Sudden departure, after Edward’s remark about consummate rascals, might be misinterpreted. Fuming inwardly, he took up a second biscuit and languidly nibbled at it. After a discreet ten minutes, listening to the wrath and lamentation of his neighbors, he rose, paced slowly to and fro within their sight, then dived in at a door and descended to his cabin. Unlocking the trunk, he found its contents safe,—locked the trunk again, and sat down upon it to recover.

A gentle swishing sound in the corridor! He pricked up his ears. The door softly opened, a few inches,—a few inches more, and he caught a glimpse of a small gloved hand. The owner of the hand at the same time caught a glimpse of Jack’s feet.

“So sorry!” a gentle voice said. “The wrong room!”

The door quickly closed. Jack sprang up and looked out, but the errant visitor had turned a corner and passed out of sight.

With shaky hand, the young man wrote out his wireless instruction to Johnson, giving the address of a backstreet tobacconist in London. He had often used that address before, for letters he preferred not to receive at home.

He rang for a steward to take the message, but immediately changed his mind. When the steward came Jack only wanted ice-water. He crumpled up and pocketed the telegraph form, waited till the steward had come and gone again, then drew a glove on his right hand and went off himself to the wireless room. “I’ve strained my wrist,” said he to the operator. “Would you kindly take down a message?”

Hurrying back to his cabin, he did not leave it again that day. At the sound of the bugle he lay down and made the steward bring his dinner. An evening in solitude was misery, but he would try to endure it. He got out a pack of cards and played “patience,” but that was too insipid. If only he had caught hold of that surreptitious little hand when it opened his door! A thief with a face to match that hand might be good company. He took a swig from his flask, lay down, and dozed off and on, still drowsy from his two days’ sea-sickness. Another swig, and he slept the all-night sleep of the irresponsible unjust.

After breakfast in bed, having quite recovered, he found it intolerable to stay down in that hole. Reading had always bored him, or he might have passed the time contented with a book, if he had had one.... “If! Haven’t I, just!” The recollection made him laugh. He kicked LUCK IN BROWN PAPER

the trunk. “And a Bible, of all things! A Latin Bible, at that!” He laughed again.

“Well, I’m not going to stick down here all the voyage,” he swore, growing more and more fretful, “and I’m not going to leave it here without me.”

He savagely dug out the parcel, hid it in the folds of an overcoat, and carried it up to the smoking room.

Though hidden, the parcel was so large that anyone with half an eye could see there was something in that overcoat. However, no one was interested in anything Jack might choose to conceal. Anything of that size, that is. If he had been suspected of a pack of cards up his sleeve, now, the whole smoking room would have been tense and taut with excited anticipation.

Up here Jack found himself in his element, the element of poker. His coat lay snugly on the seat beneath his elbow, and did not interfere in the least with his game.

“In fact,” he thought as he picked it up at the end of a profitable morning, “I guess the old book’s lucky. Good thing the boys don’t know it’s here. They might object.”

After this it would have looked absurd to order meals to his stateroom, and he couldn’t very well take his coat into the dining saloon and eat with it under his feet. Fretting at the necessity, he locked the parcel up in his trunk and left it under Lady Luck’s protection while he swallowed his uneasy meals. The rest of every day it spent comfortably under his elbow in the smoking room. His winnings grew.

Having no use for athletics except as something to watch and bet on, his amusement at the energetic passengers tramping round and round the deck for exercise was not even tinctured with envy. All the same, it was never long before he sank to his familiar state of fed-upness, and the boat steamed into the Mersey just in time to save him from the depths of boredom.

“You’re quite a mascot!” he said, patting the parcel affectionately as he slipped it into his club bag for the landing. “I’ll be sorry to part with you, old thing. But you’d take a couple of hundred voyages, at the top of your luck, to rake in the hundred thousand dollars I’m going to get by parting with you.”

Counting his chickens, in perfect confidence of a record hatch, he stepped off the boat into England.