Читать книгу Gordon of the Lost Lagoon - Robert Watson - Страница 8

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One afternoon, as I was sauntering home from school, Cooney, who had got home ahead of me, stopped me on the sidewalk.

"Say, Doug!" he cried, "you never told me you was movin'."

"Who's moving?" I retorted. "You're crazy!"

"'Course you's movin'. There's a big dray at the door an' a lot of people an' everythin' comin' out. Gee—you're lucky!"

I sprinted away from the nigger-boy, round the corner for home.

My eyes bulged in amazement. A crowd of curious youngsters, white, yellow and black, cluttered about our front gate. A heavy dray was drawn up at the sidewalk while burly men were moving the furniture from the house.

I rushed up and intercepted two of them as they were carrying out the bureau.

"Here!" I cried, "what are you doing? That's our stuff you're taking."

The men laughed and brushed me aside.

I continued on headlong up the veranda steps and into the house.

Beds had been taken apart. Mattresses were rolled up. The stove-pipes were down and the stove disconnected; furniture was piled in a heap and carpets and rugs were off the floors. The whole arrangement was upside down.

I went up to a fat man who seemed to be directing operations.

"What are you doing to our house?" I asked, excitedly. "Wait till our Sam sees this."

"Better ask Sam, kid," answered the man, spitting tobacco juice on to the floor.

"Where is he? I bet you wouldn't do that if he was about."

The man grinned. "He's drunk somewhere, I guess. That's about all he's good for."

"But we stay here," I persisted. "This is our house and our furniture. I've to get the supper ready. We've to sleep here."

The fat man looked at me a little sorrowfully and replied in more kindly tones.

"Listen, kid!—this isn't your place any more. Sam Berry hasn't paid the rent on it for months, not since his old woman died.

"The landlord's been hounding him and he made a dicker with him yesterday. The landlord's to get all the stuff to cover the overdue rent. Sam's keepin' the kitchen things and a bed. He's sending them down to a shack foot of Dunlevy Avenue on the waterfront."

"But he never told me anything about it," I returned, still suspicious. "I could easily have made the rent selling newspapers or something—but he never said anything about it."

"Now, kid,—we're busy, so you just run away and find Sam and have it out with him, for I can't do anything. Like as ever you'll find him in the Western Hotel bar."

Two men came back to move more goods.

"Mean skunk," remarked the fat man. "Berry might 'a' told the poor kid. Decent kid too! Anybody with a blind eye can see he isn't any relation to that waster."

I never could stand sympathy and, further, I resented the allusion to Sam. I ran outside, away from the strangers, loosed my dog, Bones, from the rope that held him to the barrel kennel in the back-yard, and went off to battle the thing out by myself.

Six months had gone since my mother's death. Sam and I had kept house throughout the winter. Sam had stayed sober for two months, but after that had fallen back into his old ways. And now I seldom saw him otherwise than helplessly intoxicated.

We had had hardly enough to keep us in food, but we had managed to get along somehow. I had not worried very much about the ultimate outcome. Like most boys of my age, I was considerable of a fatalist.

I turned down toward the Inlet, intent on finding out our new place of abode. I knew all the shacks on the waterfront, and a tumble-down lot they were, even the best of them.

Suddenly I remembered my mother's envelope in the tin box in the trunk. I had left it there, feeling it was safe enough until such time as I might have to move away. I doubled back, running hard, with Bones barking at my heels enjoying the chase as if it had been got up for his particular amusement.

But I met the dray, fully loaded, making cityward. The trunk with a rope round it, was on the back of the wagon. I followed up behind the dray. It went slowly along Powell Street and down on to Railway Street, where the storage warehouses were situated. The dray turned in under the covered way leading into one of these. It was a large warehouse, which fronted on the street and backed right to the network of railway tracks. It was built on a steep incline, which made the ground floor in front one story high in the rear, with a basement in the rear that emptied onto the tracks.

I saw our humble furniture unloaded on to the warehouse platform. It looked as if the landlord intended storing it until it should be convenient for him to make a sale of it.

When the dray pulled out again, I walked boldly into the office of the warehousing people.

A little grizzled man, with dark, keen, snappy eyes and a kindly, wrinkled face, was standing at the counter writing in a record-book of some kind.

"That's our furniture that was unloaded just now," I said, as he looked over at me.

"It is, eh! And what about it?"

"Well, mister,—there's a trunk there that I want to get a letter out of."

The man looked curiously at me, seemed in a way reassured but still remained chary. No doubt he had been bitten before, for one does not have to be long in the storage business before he gets his fingers burned in the matter of warehouse receipts, fire insurance, breakage, pilferage and general misrepresentation.

"What's your name, son?"

"Douglas Gordon! My mother was Mrs. Berry, and it is her husband's furniture."

The man looked up the most recent entry in his book.

"This stuff is stored in the name of William Linton, and I am responsible to him for all of it.

"Now, you go and get him to give you an order, then I'll let you rummage through the trunk or anything else to your heart's content?"

"But can't I do it without an order?"

The man smiled. "No,—you can't do it."

"But, mister, my name's on the envelope, and besides, the furniture was ours."

"Maybe it is all as you say, but I can't do it. You go to Mr. Linton. His office is at 23 Hastings, west. Get your order and come back to me to-morrow. We are just closing for the night."

I became convinced of the hopelessness of my endeavors. I felt too that it would be worse than useless entering into any explanations with Landlord Linton, even if I were able to obtain an interview with that gentleman.

I ordered my dog, Bones, to go home. The faithful animal ran off a bit, stopped, looked round, then ventured slowly back. Time and again this performance was gone through, but the dog's persistence failed to overcome my determination to be rid of him, so finally he made off for the old place.

I remained within watching distance of the warehouse entrance, keeping well out of sight. When the two warehousemen were elevating the furniture to the top floor, I crouched low and slipped inside by the large driving entrance. I scrambled over some cases and succeeded in getting behind a huge wall of canned milk where a pile of it had been broken down.

It was near to closing time. The man in the office had told me that. So I kept in hiding, silent and unnoticed.

The warehousemen made their returns to the office, removed their overalls, bolted and barred the huge doors, front and back, and departed for the night. The man and the girl in the office soon followed, locking the office door behind them, and I was alone, inside.

Everything was dreadfully still in there. Soon the shadows grew darker. I had never been afraid of darkness. It meant no more to me than it really was—a negative, an absence of companionable light.

I came out from my hiding place and made for the wooden stairway, intent on discovering the whereabouts of the trunk before it got too dark. I knew the furniture had been put on the top floor, for the men had discussed it when quite close to my hiding place.

As I climbed cautiously upward, strange little noises set my heart throbbing and caused me to scurry for the shadows on the second floor, which held orderly piles of sacks containing rice and flour. Gradually I became accustomed to the noises. I continued upward. The third floor was like a barred prison with padlocked doors. Behind the wooden bars were barrels and cases. Above the door were the words, "Inland Revenue Bond."

I climbed on. The next floor was the one I sought. Along its entire length were piled to the ceiling, furniture, trunks and grips, all labelled and orderly. I went slowly from one end of the building to the other in my search, but it was only on my second attempt that I was successful. In a corner I discovered the furniture from the old home, each article now labelled with the hateful name, "William Linton." The trunk was lying in a convenient position. It took me a long time to get the ropes undone, and it got so dark that I was compelled to switch on an electric bulb that hung handy on a wire, although I knew that in so doing I was taking the risk of being discovered by someone from the outside.

I found the tin box at last, and, better still, I found the envelope bearing my name, intact. I slipped this into my inner pocket, closed the lid of the trunk and tied the ropes about it again.

Only then, when I thought of getting outside, did it occur to me that I was securely locked in and might have to remain there in the warehouse till morning. I switched off the light and found myself in pitch-darkness. I felt my way along to the rear windows. With my coat sleeve I rubbed the dusty, cob-webby pane of one of them until it was fairly transparent, for the windows of storage warehouses have a habit of accumulating the dust of the ages.

The warehouse overlooked Burrard Inlet. What a glorious sight presented itself! I was higher up than I had ever been before. Railway engines were shunting on the tracks far below. Great arc lamps shed their radiance in circles of almost daylight. A ferry was slowly crossing the dark three-mile span of water which separated the city from North Vancouver. The ferry was a blaze of light, which cast a warm glow on the water around it. Away across on the north shore, the regular lines of twinkling fairy lights traced the streets as they ran from the shore-front right to the base of the great looming mountains behind. At the harbor entrance, an oriental liner was pushing its blaze of radiance through The Narrows, while away, far out, the blue-black sky was punctured every few seconds by the flash of the revolving beacon-light of Point Atkinson.

At that moment, I was no longer the waterfront waif; I was the combination of all that had gone before I was born—a dreamer, a rover, a poet maybe, an adventurer surely.

That is one picture of beauty that can never be totally obliterated from my consciousness.

I stood absorbing some of the wonders of that living night into my being, yet in a way I was unconscious of my surroundings and almost oblivious of the material side of the picture. Boy as I was, I was for the moment caught up by the dreamy hypnotizing of the restful and contrasting shadows and lights.

I saw myself a grown man with a man's strength, a man's mind, a man's ability to do things, and I felt too that I could never separate myself from the ships and the sea, the busy wharves and the bustle of men, for they and I seemed necessary parts of the whole.

I gazed wistfully and I longed, but as I longed an engine shrieked and brushed an obliterating smear over my dream-picture. I roused myself, turned away from the window and made for the stairway.

When I reached the ground floor, I tried the front door. But it was barred on the inside and securely locked from the outside. I made for the rear and found the back portion still a long way from the ground. A stairway led to the basement. I followed it. There was a great door at the rear, but it also was barred and locked. The windows looked on to the railway tracks. I tried one of these. It was not fastened. I raised it cautiously, then tried to push my way through the iron bars which protected it on the outside. With a squeeze I succeeded. I jumped on to the platform in the dark and ran along the tracks, but when I had gone a block I suddenly remembered that I had left the warehouse window open. I retraced my steps, intent on leaving everything as I had found it, for I had only desired to get what really belonged to me. I climbed on to the window sill, put my arm through the bars and commenced to pull the window down. It took me a little time, because of the awkwardness of my position.

Without noise or warning, great hands grasped me tightly by the knees and pulled me roughly back on to the warehouse platform, then clutched me firmly by the collar.

My heart stood still. I almost collapsed with fear. I was in the hands of a policeman. A light flashed in my face and caused me to blink. Then a gruff but kindly voice exclaimed in disappointment.

"Well now!—young Doug Gordon a thief!"

Sergeant Alick Grier was looking steadily into my eyes and I was looking honestly back into his.

"I am not a thief, Sergeant Grier. Don't you call me a thief!" I cried indignantly, for I had been taught to loath the word and to abstain from any act that would call for the name.

"And what are ye, then? Folks have fancy names for everything now-a-days; names that do fine to satisfy themselves on their own goodness."

"I never stole anything in my life. I'm not a thief, I tell you."

"Then, in the name of Pete, what were you trying to get in there for?"

"I was shutting the window."

The sergeant gave an exclamation of impatience.

"And why were you shutting the window?"

"Because I left it open," I answered doggedly, "and I knew it should be shut."

Alick Grier was non-plussed, as well he might be.

He was big and he was kindly; his sympathies were even on the side of the poor devils who comprised the lower stratum of Vancouver's population. Many a one he had helped over a stile; many a time had he given some poor beggar another chance when his own conscience told him he should lock him up.

"Doug," he said, "this looks like quibbling; sit down here till I get it right. Let me know everything, and don't dare to tell me a lie or it will be the reformatory for ye. And you know what that means."

Grier squatted on the edge of the warehouse platform, with his legs dangling over. He pulled me down beside him; and there the big fellow got my halting but straightforward story; and what was all to his credit, he believed every word of it. Grier, although a policeman, was not hunting for wrong-doing; he was on the lookout for the possible good. He was not the kind that condemned first and tried afterwards.

"Man, Doug, but I'm glad you weren't thieving, because I didn't think you were that kind of a boy. But it's a God's blessing that it was not some other policeman that got hold of you, or it would have been short shrift.

"Now, I'm going to take care of this envelope to-night. You meet me at the Commercial Bank corner, Granville Street, to-morrow at dinner-time, half-past-twelve, and we'll see Mr. Adamson, the manager, and get him to take care of this till you're twenty-two, if ever you reach that age, which is not too probable judging by the rotten start you've had.

"And don't ever try this way to get your property back again, or you'll land in the lock-up. If you had come to me in the first place, I could have got it for you as easy as winking. There are more ways than taking it to get what's coming to you. Away you go now to your home, if they call that miserable shack a home for a laddie with fair hair and clear blue eyes like what you have.

"I'm watching you, Dougie, and don't you forget it.

"Good-night!" Grier held out his huge hand and smiled.

I took hold of it and felt reassured in the warm glow of confidence that seemed to run from the big man.

"Good-night!" I returned, and ran along the tracks.