Читать книгу The Clue at Skeleton Rocks - Percy Keese Fitzhugh - Страница 9

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They set out for the wreck of the Sister Ann in one of the Cactus’ life-boats. A glaring sunrise had faded quickly in the early morning sky and left but a few streaks of pale, yellow light on the gray horizon. The water was calm, ominously so, for as far as the eye could see its green swaying surface was as smooth as glass.

“One has the feeling,” said Denis Keen as he scanned the water, “that there’s some sort of secret conference going on down in Davey Jones’ locker. Perhaps that’s where the bobbing whitecaps go to talk things over when we don’t see them around, eh, Captain Dell?”

“I wouldn’ be s’prised, Mr. Keen, sir,” the captain smiled. “They go somewhar, that’s a sure thing. Trouble is, it only means mischief, fer when they git outa conference, they go on a rampage an’ make things hum. That’s what’s a-goin’ ter happen ’tween now an’ ternight. Sun come up a-roarin’ an’ that spells trouble ’fore long.”

Hal laughed and shook his head with careless grace.

“Who cares about a storm! Not I, anyway. I’ll be as safe and as snug as a bug over there at Skeleton Rocks while Unk and you are tossing homeward on the briny deep.”

“Don’t be too sure that Captain Dell and myself will be tossing on the briny deep,” Denis argued with a sly glance at the captain. “We may have escaped the worst of it by tonight. Don’t forget that we’ll be many miles from Skeleton Rocks by that time, Hal. You may be the one to be worried by the storm, even though you’ll be safe inside.”

“Better inside looking out, Unk,” Hal rejoined. “I won’t mind the storm for a starter—not a bit. It’ll be better than not having anything to look forward to. I was a little doubtful when I got thinking of spending my whole Easter vacation there; I was afraid of being bored to death. But now that the question of storms has come up—well, I realize that there’ll have to be at least a few storms while I’m there, so it cheers me up. I’ll have something in the way of excitement.”

“Sh!” his uncle said smiling. “Don’t talk of excitement, Hal. You may be inviting disaster.”

“What—out in that peaceful looking place!” Hal exclaimed, nodding toward the lighthouse. “Why, nothing exciting’s happened there in forty years, I bet. Anyhow, I bet there’s nothing thrilling happened since Barrowe’s been there.”

“What about Hollins?” his uncle queried.

“Suicide isn’t exciting,” Hal maintained. “It would have been more exciting to me if Hollins had died of indigestion or fell down the tower stairs and broken his neck.”

Denis Keen spread his capable looking hands deprecatingly.

“Now you can understand, Captain,” he said to the seaman, “that what I’ve told you about my nephew is true. He invites trouble and when it doesn’t come, he just goes looking for it. Usually he gets what he goes after.”

Captain Dell emitted a hearty guffaw.

“He’s jes’ an adventurous young man, Mr. Keen, sir. Reckon we was all that way when we was his age, eh? But he needn’t go lookin’ fer trouble nor excitement at Skeleton Rocks ’cause he won’t find it—no sirree! Barrowe ain’t changed a whit since he was twenty-five. That’s when fust he come ter the Rocks—he’s been thar twenty year all told now an’ I reckon one day’s same’s ’nother ter him. Like I told yer, he ain’t much fer talkin’, so if anythin’s happened ever, he’s kept it ter hisself.”

“Then it’s all settled that I don’t get any excitement at Skeleton Rocks!” Hal said with a mock sadness in his eyes. “Good thing I didn’t look for any. You better tell Mom to send me a few good books when you get back to Ramapo, New Jersey, Unk. I’ll need something to make me sleep.”

“I dare say you’ll be able to get to sleep without the aid of a book tonight, Hal,” said Denis. “There was little sleep for any of us last night and even less for you. No doubt the excitement of rescuing Sears kept you awake.”

The mention of Sears’ name brought their attention at once to the reef now lying very close to them. Just beyond was the wrecked schooner, Sister Ann, partly broken and mute in the gray morning light. Yet with all her wounds and her apparent helplessness, Hal was at once struck with her lack of appeal. He, for one, did not feel at all moved by her sad plight. Rather did he experience a sort of contempt for the ill-fated schooner, which he could liken only to that loathing that wholesome, refined human beings have for sordid things.

And the Sister Ann did look sordid. One could not visualize her as ever having carried savory cargoes out of sunlit ports of the East and discharged them at the cool, sun-bright wharves of the West ’midst the hum and bustle of daylight activities. Rather did one feel in looking at the shabby, unpainted hull of the schooner, that her whole existence had been spent in transporting unsavory and illegal cargoes under cover of night, from the ports of the Orient to the underworld docks of the Occident. Stealth had been her watchword; stealth would be her death knell, for even then the great sea was silently and relentlessly drawing her down amongst the rocks which had wounded her.

A rope ladder dangled crazily from the starboard bow, swinging at intervals as the port side of the vessel settled farther and farther under water. Limited as his knowledge was of nautical matters, Hal realized that it was but a question of hours before the shabby Sister Ann would be gone to her final port.

Captain Dell confirmed this thought the next moment.

“She won’t be here longer ’n sunset,” he said, wagging his head and sucking furiously on his corncob pipe. “Her keel’s grindin’ a-plenty between them rocks; I kin tell by the way she’s a-shiftin’. Wa’al, the quicker she gits it over with, the better.”

The man at the bow of the life-boat was now within reach of the rope ladder. They had made fast in a second, and while the sailors waited, Denis Keen, Hal and Captain Dell ascended the ladder in silence. A flock of gulls, startled by the trespassers, flew out of the tattered rigging, screaming and scolding.

The deck was littered with débris and the captain sniffed his displeasure.

“Proof enough what she was,” he said contemptuously. “No up-an’-comin’ schooner could git this way jes’ ’cause she hit the rocks—no up-an’-comin’ master’d leave her to bust up with her decks a-lookin’ like this either! She’s jes’ a miserable ole hull, fit fer a rotten dock whar she could rot with it. No sirree! This reef’s even too good fer her ter bust up on.”

Denis Keen nodded thoughtfully and smiled, but his attention was obviously on a cabin aft whose door stood ajar. Instinctively he sauntered toward it, with Dell in his wake, while Hal loitered curiously at the starboard rail.

He gazed abstractedly at the two life-boats which the Sister Ann boasted and wondered why it was that they hadn’t been used on the night the schooner struck the reef. How, he asked himself, was it possible for a whole crew and captain to have been lost on a clear, calm night, particularly so close to a lighthouse? And to add to the mystery, he noticed several life-preservers lying in both boats. Surely, there was one at least among that ship’s company who had had time to avail himself of this safeguard against death in the open seas! But no, there had not been any such report. More than forty-eight hours had elapsed since the wreck and still there had not been one survivor reported.

Hal shrugged his shoulders and proceeded to procure one of the life-preservers. Holding it out, he noted that the cover was shiny and new, and the letters spelling out Sister Ann were bold and outstanding from their recent printing.

He wasted no time in pondering over that, but quickly divested the preserver of its cover. He hadn’t any real motive in doing so, but his curiosity was presently rewarded for he noticed immediately that the canvas-covered device bore the faded but still legible printing of another ship’s name—that of the Isle of Tortuga.

Denis Keen and the captain emerged from the cabin aft just at that moment and Hal hailed them with a sonorous shout.

“Unk!” he called exultantly and held out the preserver. “You were right—and how! This thing proves that the Sister Ann was that old hag, Isle of Tortuga, huh?”

“Right you are, Hal,” Denis answered. He took the proffered device, gave it a perfunctory glance and handed it on to Captain Dell. Suddenly he looked up at his nephew. “Singular business this, Hal. Too bad you decided to stay on at the Rocks for you’d have followed an exciting trail on your Easter vacation if you had decided to come along with me. We looked in the crew’s cabins—those that weren’t under water, and we found that their belongings were all there undisturbed. In the captain’s locker we found the door unlocked and open, just as the door of his cabin was. His clothes were just as he left them, but on the shelf there were marks in the dust as if a box had been standing there for some time and just lately had been removed. We found no evidences of such a box in his cabin, however.”

“What kind of a box, Unk?” Hal asked, interested.

“A square one, I fancy it must have been. Certainly not a very large one. That, of course, would not indicate anything extraordinary—I merely mentioned the box as missing, for it might be a clue if we knew what was in it.”

“What do you mean?”

Denis chuckled but there was no mirth in his eyes. They were deadly serious as they always were when he was baffled by some inexplicable happening such as this.

“I mean that Captain Dell and I also discovered that the log was missing,” he said quietly. “I remind myself of you when I say this, Hal, but it’s true nevertheless; I just have a hunch that that box has something to do with the missing log.”

Captain Dell, who was nothing if not a true seaman, had little sympathy with the ways of a secret service man at a time like this. He cared naught for clues nor mysteries—his sea dignity was outraged that a fellow seaman should not have kept his log where it was available in case of accident. And he said so in no mean terms.

“’Sides,” he said in conclusion, “I s’pose the master of a hull like this can’t be expected ter act reg’lar. Jes’ a slip-slop like his schooner.” He stopped his harangue suddenly and glanced from one to the other of his listeners, thoughtfully. “Even a slip-slop master’s got some notion of what his log means, eh? Mebbe he wa’n’t careless. Mebbe . . .”

Denis Keen nodded with understanding.

“Just what I think, Captain Dell,” he interposed. “I don’t think there’s been any case of negligence with the log at all. Whatever has become of it, it was done purposely, I feel certain. And whether the master of this schooner was that scoundrelly Doak or not, makes not one bit of difference. He was enough of a seaman to be faithful to his log whether he was faithful to anything else, I’m certain of that also. Wouldn’t he have jotted down all that happened concerning the wreck if he had had the time?”

Captain Dell affirmed this with a vehement nod.

“Jes’ from habit he’d a done it, Mr. Keen, sir. An’ I reckon he’d have hed time a-plenty ’fore this schooner lurched agin the rocks.”

“Then I dare say he jotted something down,” said Denis, more to himself than to his listeners. Suddenly he brought down his right fist against the palm of his left hand. “I know that that log could tell us much, particularly since we are sure that the Sister Ann is the old Isle of Tortuga. And that it is missing when the captain’s belongings are undisturbed . . .”

“Unk, I can’t see anything so mysterious in that—honestly, I can’t. Just a log . . .”

Denis Keen’s eyes were deep wells of purposed activity.

“Just a log!” he repeated patiently. “You don’t know the sea or you wouldn’t say that, Hal. And you don’t know the kind of a crew that usually ships with Captain Doak. For that matter, you don’t know Captain Bill Doak as my reports have permitted me to know of him. Bloodshed he’s known to have been guilty of, but the men whom he’s victimized fear him too much to bring him to justice. And so I don’t hesitate to say that a man like that would be hated by his crew, particularly the murderous lot that sail with him.”

“Murderous?” Hal asked. “Do you think . . .?”

“It all comes back to the missing log, Hal. Hate, suspicion, everything, Captain Doak would have recorded there. Then it’s quite likely, isn’t it, that the murderer would not leave such a record against himself if he tried to escape? It’s all theory, of course, and I wouldn’t have been able to build up this much of a case if it hadn’t been for one discovery.”

“What’s that, Unk?”

“One of the lockers was empty save for two things: a man’s scarf pin with the initials D.S. and a letter addressed to Mr. Daniel Sears in care of the Seaman’s Institute in New York City. We’ve heard of Sears before, I think, haven’t we, Hal?”

“I’ll tell the world we have, Unk!”