The Mystery - Stewart Edward White and Samuel Hopkins Adams
III
THE TWELVE REPEATING RIFLES
After my watch below the next morning I met Percy Darrow. In many ways he
is, or was, the most extraordinary of my many acquaintances. During that
first half hour's chat with him I changed my mind at least a dozen times.
One moment I thought him clever, the next an utter ass; now I found him
frank, open, a good companion, eager to please,--and then a droop of his
blond eyelashes, a lazy, impertinent drawl of his voice, a hint of
half-bored condescension in his manner, convinced me that he was shy and
affected. In a breath I appraised him as intellectual, a fool, a shallow
mind, a deep schemer, an idler, and an enthusiast. One result of his
spasmodic confidences was to throw a doubt upon their accuracy. This
might be what he desired; or with equal probability it might be the
chance reflection of a childish and aimless amiability.
He was tall and slender and pale, languid of movement, languid of eye,
languid of speech. His eyes drooped, half-closed beneath blond brows; a
long wiry hand lazily twisted a rather affected blond moustache, his
voice drawled his speech in a manner either insufferably condescending
and impertinent, or ineffably tired,--who could tell which?
I found him leaning against the taffrail, his languid graceful figure
supported by his elbows, his chin propped against his hand. As I
approached the binnacle, he raised his eyes and motioned me to him. The
insolence of it was so superb that for a moment I was angry enough to
ignore him. Then I reflected that I was here, not to stand on my personal
dignity, but to get information. I joined him.
"You are the mate?" he drawled.
"Since I am on the quarter-deck," I snapped back at him.
He eyed me thoughtfully, while he rolled with one hand a corn-husk
Mexican cigarette.
"Do you know where you are going?" he inquired at length.
"Depends on the moral character of my future actions," I rejoined tartly.
He allowed a smile to break and fade, then lighted his cigarette.
"The first mate seems to have a remarkable command of language," said he.
I did not reply.
"Well, to tell you the truth I don't know where we are going," he
continued. "Thought you might be able to inform me. Where did this ship
and its precious gang of cutthroats come from, anyway?"
"Meaning me?"
"Oh, meaning you too, for all I know," he shrugged wearily. Suddenly he
turned to me and laid his hand on my shoulder with one of those sudden
bursts of confidence I came later to recognise and look for, but in which
I could never quite believe--nor disbelieve.
"I am eaten with curiosity," he stated in the least curious voice in the
world. "I suppose you know who his Nibs is?"
"Dr. Schermerhorn, do you mean?"
"Yes. Well, I've been with him ten years. I am his right-hand man. All
his business I transact down to the last penny. I even order his meals.
His discoveries have taken shape in my hands. Suddenly he gets a freak.
He will go on a voyage. Where? I shall know in good time. For how long? I
shall know in good time. For what purpose? Same answer. What
accommodations shall I engage? I experience the worst shock of my
life;--he will engage them himself. What scientific apparatus? Shock
number two;--he will attend to that. Is there anything I can do? What do
you suppose he says?"
"How should I know?" I asked.
"You should know in the course of intelligent conversation with me," he
drawled. "Well, he, good old staid Schermie with the vertebrated thoughts
gets kittenish. He says to me, 'Joost imachin, Percy, you are
all-alone-on-a-desert-island placed; and that you will sit on those sands
and wish within yourself all you would buy to be comfortable. Go out and
buy me those things--in abundance.' Those were my directions."
He puffed.
"What does he pay you?" he asked.
"Enough," I replied.
"More than enough, by a good deal, I'll bet," he rejoined. "The old fool!
He ought to have left it to me. What is this craft? Have you ever sailed
on her before?"
"No."
"Have any of the crew?"
I replied that I believed all of them were Selover's men. He threw the
cigarette butt into the sea and turned back.
"Well, I wish you joy of your double wages," he mocked.
So he knew that, after all! How much more of his ignorance was pretended
I had no means of guessing. His eye gleamed sarcastically as he sauntered
toward the companion-way. Handy Solomon was at the wheel, steering easily
with one foot and an elbow. His steel hook lay fully exposed, glittering
in the sunlight. Darrow glanced at it curiously, and at the man's
headgear.
"Well, my genial pirate," he drawled, "if you had a line to fit that
hook, you'd be equipped for fishing." The man's teeth bared like an
animal's, but Darrow went on easily as though unconscious of giving
offence. "If I were you, I'd have it arranged so the hook would turn
backward as well as forward. It would be handier for some
things,--fighting, for instance."
He passed on down the companion. Handy Solomon glared after him, then
down at his hook. He bent his arm this way and that, drawing the hook
toward him softly, as a cat does her claws. His eyes cleared and a look
of admiration crept into them.
"By God, he's right!" he muttered, and after a moment; "I've wore that
ten year and never thought of it. The little son of a gun!"
He remained staring for a moment at the hook. Then he looked up and
caught my eye. His own turned quizzical. He shifted his quid and began to
hum:
"The bos'n laid aloft, aloft laid he,
_Blow high, blow low! What care we?_
'There's a ship upon the wind'ard, a wreck upon the lee,'
_Down on the coast of the high Barbare-e-e."_
We had entered the trades and were making good time. I was content to
stay on deck, even in my watch below. The wind was strong, the waves
dashing, the sky very blue. From under our forefoot the flying fish sped,
the monsters pursued them. A tingle of spray was in the air. It was all
very pleasant. The red handkerchief around Solomon's head made a pretty
spot of colour against the blue of the sky and the darker blue of the
sea. Silhouetted over the flaw-less white of the deck house was the
sullen, polished profile of the Nigger. Beneath me the ship swerved
and leaped, yielded and recovered. I breathed deep, and saw cutlasses in
harmless shadows. It was two years ago. I was young--then----
At the mess hour I stood in doubt. However, I was informed by the
captain's falsetto that I was to eat in the cabin. As the only other
officer, I ate alone, after the others had finished, helping myself from
the dishes left on the table. It was a handsome cabin, well kept, with
white woodwork spotlessly clean, leather cushions--much better than one
would expect. I afterwards found that the neatness of this cabin and of
the three staterooms was maintained by the Nigger--at peril of his neck.
A rack held a dozen rifles, five revolvers, and,--at last--my cutlasses.
I examined the lot with interest. They were modern weapons,--the new high
power 30-40 box-magazine rifle, shooting government ammunition,--and had
been used. The revolvers were of course the old 45 Colt's. This was an
extraordinary armament for a peaceable schooner of one hundred and fifty
tons burden.
The rest of the cabin's fittings were not remarkable. By the
configuration of the ship I guessed that two of the staterooms must be
rather large. I could make out voices within.
On deck I talked with Captain Selover.
"She's a snug craft," I approached him.
He nodded.
"You have armed her well."
He muttered something of pirates and the China seas.
I laughed.
"You have arms enough to give your crew about two magazine rifles
apiece--unless you filled all your berths forward!"
Captain Selover looked me direct in the eye.
"Talk straight, Mr. Eagen," said he.
"What is this ship, and where is she bound?" I asked, with equal
simplicity.
He considered.
"As for the ship," he replied at length, "I don't mind saying. You're my
first officer, and on you I depend if it comes to--well, the small arms
below. If the ship's a little under the shade, why, so are you. She's by
way of being called a manner of hard names by some people. I do not see
it myself. It is a matter of conscience. If you would ask some
interested, they would call her a smuggler, a thief, a wrecker, and all
the other evil titles in the catalogue. She has taken in Chinks by way of
Santa Cruz Island--if that is smuggling. The country is free, and a Chink
is a man. Besides, it paid ten dollars a head for the landing. She has
carried in a cargo or so of junk; it was lying on the beach where a fool
master had piled it, and I took what I found. I couldn't keep track of
the underwriters' intentions."
"But the room forward----?" I broke in.
"Well, you see, last season we were pearl fishing."
"But you needed only your diver and your crew," I objected.
"There was the matter of a Japanese gunboat or so," he explained.
"Poaching!" I cried.
"So some call it. The shells are there. The islands are not inhabited. I
do not see how men claim property beyond the tide water. I have heard it
argued----"
"Hold on!" I cried. "There was a trouble last year in the Ishigaki Jima
Islands where a poacher beat off the _Oyama_. It was a desperate
fight."
Captain Selover's eye lit up.
"I've commanded a black brigantine, name of _The Petrel_," he
admitted simply. "She was a brigantine aloft, but _alow_ she had
much the same lines as the _Laughing Lass_." He whirled on his heel
to roll to one of the covered yacht's cannon. "Looks like a harmless
little toy to burn black powder, don't she?" he remarked. He stripped off
the tarpaulin and the false brass muzzle to display as pretty a little
Maxim as you would care to see. "Now you know all about it," he said.
"Look here, Captain Selover," I demanded, "don't you know that I could
blow your whole shooting-match higher than Gilderoy's kite. How do you
know I won't do it when I get back? How do you know I won't inform the
doctor at once what kind of an outfit he has tied to?"
He planted far apart his thick legs in their soiled blue trousers, pushed
back his greasy linen boating hat and stared at me with some amusement.
"How do you know I won't blow on Lieutenant or Ensign Ralph Slade,
U.S.N., when I get back?" he demanded. I blessed that illusion, anyway.
"Besides, I know my man. You won't do anything of the sort." He walked to
the rail and spat carefully over the side.
"As for the doctor," he went on, "he knows all about it. He told me all
about myself, and everything I had ever done from the time I'd licked
Buck Jones until last season's little diversion. Then he told me that was
why he wanted me to ship for this cruise." The captain eyed me
quizzically.
I threw out my hands in a comic gesture of surrender.
"Well, where are we bound, anyway?"
The dirty, unkempt, dishevelled figure stiffened.
"Mr. Eagen," its falsetto shrilled, "you are mate of this vessel. Your
duty is to see that my orders as to sailing are carried out. Beyond that
you do not go. As to navigation, and latitude and longitude and where the
hell we are, that is outside your line of duty. As to where we are bound,
you are getting double wages not to get too damn curious. Remember to
earn your wages, Mr. Eagen!"
He turned away to the binnacle. In spite of his personal filth, in spite
of the lawless, almost piratical, character of the man, in that moment I
could not but admire him. If Percy Darrow was ignorant of the purposes of
this expedition, how much more so Captain Selover. Yet he accepted his
trust blindly, and as far as I could then see, intended to fulfil it
faithfully. I liked him none the worse for snubbing me. It indicated a
streak in his moral nature akin to and quite as curious as his excessive
neatness regarding his immediate surroundings.
IV
THE STEEL CLAW
During the next few days the crew discussed our destination. Discipline,
while maintained strictly, was not conventional. During the dog watches,
often, every man aboard would be below, for at that period Captain
Selover loved to take the wheel in person, a thick cigar between his
lips, the dingy checked shirt wide open to expose his hairy chest to the
breeze. In the twilight of the forecastle we had some great sea-lawyer's
talks--I say "We," though I took little part in them. Generally I lay
across my bunk smoking my pipe while Handy Solomon held forth, his speech
punctuated by surly speculations from the Nigger, with hesitating
deep-sea wisdom from the hairy Thrackles, or with voluminous bursts of
fractured English from Perdosa. Pulz had nothing to offer, but watched
from his pale green eyes. The light shifted and wavered from one to the
other as the ship swayed: garments swung; the empty berths yawned
cavernous. I could imagine the forecastle filled with the desperate men
who had beaten off the _Oyama_. The story is told that they had
swept the gunboat's decks with her own rapid-fires, turned in.
No one knew where we were going, nor why. The doctor puzzled them, and
the quantity of his belongings.
"It ain't pearls," said Handy Solomon. "You can kiss the Book on that,
for we ain't a diver among us. It ain't Chinks, for we are cruising
sou'-sou'-west. Likely it's trade,--trade down in the Islands."
We were all below. The captain himself had the wheel. Discipline, while
strict, was not conventional.
"Contrabandista," muttered the Mexican, "for dat he geev us double pay."
"We don't get her for nothing," agreed Thrackles. "Double pay and duff on
Wednesday generally means get your head broke."
"No trade," said the Nigger gloomily.
They turned to him with one accord.
"Why not?" demanded Pulz, breaking his silence.
"No trade," repeated the Nigger.
"Ain't you got a reason, Doctor?" asked Handy Solomon.
"No trade," insisted the Nigger.
An uneasy silence fell. I could not but observe that the others held the
Nigger's statements in a respect not due them as mere opinions.
Subsequently I understood a little more of the reputation he possessed.
He was believed to see things hidden, as their phrase went.
Nobody said anything for some time; nobody stirred, except that Handy
Solomon, his steel claw removed from its socket, whittled and tested,
screwed and turned, trying to fix the hook so that, in accordance with
the advice of Percy Darrow, it would turn either way.
"What is it, then, Doctor?" he asked softly at last.
"Gold," said the Nigger shortly. "Gold--treasure."
"That's what I said at first!" cried Handy Solomon triumphantly. It was
extraordinary, the unquestioning and entire faith with which they
accepted as gospel fact the negro's dictum.
There followed much talk of the nature of this treasure, whether it was
to be sought or conveyed, bought, stolen, or ravished in fair fight. No
further soothsaying could they elicit from the Nigger. They followed
their own ideas, which led them nowhere. Someone lit the forecastle lamp.
They settled themselves. Pulz read aloud.
This was the programme every day during the dog watch. Sometimes the
watch on deck was absent, leaving only Handy Solomon, the Nigger and
Pulz, but the order of the day was not on that account varied. They
talked, they lit the lamp, they read. Always the talk was of the
treasure.
As to the reading, it was of the sort usual to seamen, cowboys,
lumbermen, and miners. Thrackles had a number of volumes of very cheap
love stories. Pulz had brought some extraordinary garish detective
stories. The others contributed sensational literature with paper covers
adorned lithographically. By the usual incongruity a fragment of _The
Marble Faun_ was included in the collection. The Nigger has his copy
of _Duvall on Alchemy_. I haven't the slightest idea where he could
have got it.
While Pulz read, Handy Solomon worked on the alteration of his claw. He
could never get it to hold, and I remember as an undertone to Pulz's
reading, the rumble of strange, exasperated oaths. Whatever the evening's
lecture, it always ended with the book on alchemy. These men had no
perspective by which to judge such things. They accepted its speculations
and theories at their face value. Extremely laughable were the
discussions that followed. I often wished the shade of old Duvall could
be permitted to see these, his last disciples, spelling out dimly his
teachings, mispronouncing his grave utterances, but believing utterly.
Dr. Schermerhorn appeared on deck seldom. When he did, often his fingers
held a pen which he had forgotten to lay aside. I imagined him
preoccupied by some calculation of his own, but the forecastle, more
picturesquely, saw him as guarding constantly the heavy casket he had
himself carried aboard. He breathed the air, walked briskly, turned with
the German military precision at the end of his score of strides, and
re-entered his cabin at the lapse of the half hour. After he had gone,
remained Percy Darrow leaning indolently against the taffrail, his
graceful figure swaying with the ship's motion, smoking always the
corn-husk Mexican cigarettes which he rolled with one hand. He seemed
from that farthest point aft to hold in review the appliances, the
fabric, the actions, yes, even the very thoughts, of the entire ship.
From them he selected that on which he should comment or with which he
should play, always with a sardonic, half-serious, quite wearied and
indifferent manner. His inner knowledge, viewed by the light of this
manner or mannerism, was sometimes uncanny, though perhaps the sources of
his information were commonplace enough, after all. Certainly he always
viewed with amusement his victim's wonder.
Thus one evening at the close of our day-watch on deck, he approached
Handy Solomon. It was at the end of ten days, on no one of which had the
seaman failed to tinker away at his steel claw. Darrow balanced in front
of him with a thin smile.
"Too bad it doesn't work, my amiable pirate," said he. "It would be so
handy for fighting--See here," he suddenly continued, pulling some object
from his pocket, "here's a pipe; present to me; I don't smoke 'em. Twist
her halfway, like that, she comes out. Twist her halfway, like this, she
goes in. That's your principle. Give her back to me when you get
through."
He thrust the briar pipe into the man's hand, and turned away without
waiting for a reply. The seaman looked after him in open amazement. That
evening he worked on the socket of the steel hook, and in two days he had
the job finished. Then he returned the pipe to Darrow with some growling
of thanks.
"That's all right," said the young man, smiling full at him. "Now what
are you going to fight?"
V
THE PHILOSOPHER'S STONE
Captain Selover received as his due the most absolute and implicit
obedience imaginable. When he condescended to give an order in his
own person, the men fairly jumped to execute it. The matter had evidently
been threshed out long ago. They did not love him, not they; but they
feared him with a mighty fear, and did not hesitate to say so,
vividly, and often, when in the privacy of the forecastle. The
prevailing spirit was that of the wild beast, cowed but snarling
still. Pulz and Thrackles in especial had a great deal to say of what
they were or were not going to do, but I noticed that their resolution
always began to run out of them when first foot was set to the
companion ladder.
One day we were loafing along, everything drawing well, and everybody
but the doctor on deck to enjoy the sun. I was in the crow's-nest for
my pleasure. Below me on the deck Captain Selover roamed here and
there, as was his custom, his eye cocked out like a housewife's for
disorder. He found it, again in the evidence of expectoration, and
as Perdosa happened to be handiest, fell on the unfortunate Mexican.
Perdosa protested that he had had nothing to do with it, but Captain
Selover, enraged as always when his precious deck was soiled, would
not listen. Finally the Mexican grew sulky and turned away as though
refusing to hear more. The captain thereupon felled him to the deck,
and began brutally to kick him in the face and head.
Perdosa writhed and begged, but without avail. The other members of
the crew gathered near. After a moment, they began to murmur. Finally
Thrackles ventured, most respectfully, to intervene.
"You'll kill him, sir," he interposed. "He's had enough."
"Had enough, has he?" screeched the captain. "Well, you take what's
left."
He marked Thrackles heavily over the eye. There was a breathless
pause; and then Thrackles, Pulz, the Nigger, and Perdosa attacked at
once.
They caught the master unawares, and bore him to the deck. I dropped
at once to the ratlines, and commenced my descent. Before I had
reached the deck, however, Selover was afoot again, the four hanging
to him like dogs. In a moment more he had shaken them off; and before
I could intervene, he had seized a belaying pin in either hand, and
was hazing them up and down the deck.
"Mutiny, would you?" he shrilled. "You poor swabs! Forgot who was your
captain, did ye? Well, it's Captain Ezra Selover, and you can lay to
that! It would need about eight fathom of _stuff_ like you to
tie me down."
He chased them forward, and he chased them aft, and every time the
pins fell, blood followed. Finally they dived like rabbits into the
forecastle hatch. Captain Selover leaned down after them.
"Now tie yourselves up," he advised, "and then come on deck and clean
up after yourselves!" He turned to me. "Mr. Eagen, turn out the crew
to clean decks."
I descended to the forecastle, followed immediately by Handy Solomon.
The latter had taken no part in the affair. We found the men in
horrible shape, what with the bruises and cuts, and bleeding freely.
"Now you're a nice-looking Sunday school!" observed Handy Soloman,
eyeing them sardonically. "Tackel Old Scrubs, will ye? Well, some
needs a bale of cotton to fall on 'em afore they learns anything.
Enjoyed your little diversions, mates? And w'at do you expect to gain?
I asks you that, now. You poor little infants! Ain't you never tackled
him afore? Don't remember a little brigatine, name of the
_Petrel!_ My eye, but you _are_ a pack of damn fools!"
To this he received no reply. The men sullenly assisted each other.
Then they went immediately on deck and to work.
After this taste of his quality, Captain Selover enjoyed a quiet ship.
We made good time, but for a long while nothing happened. Finally the
monotony was broken by an incident.
One evening before the night winds I sat in the shadow of the extra
dory on top of the deck house. The moon was but just beyond the full,
so I suppose I must have been practically invisible. Certainly the
Nigger did not know of my presence, for he came and stood within three
feet of me without giving any sign. The companion was open. In a
moment some door below was opened also, and a scrap of conversation
came up to us very clearly.
"You haf dem finished?" the doctor's voice inquired. "So, that iss
well,"--papers rustled for a few moments. "And the r-result--
ah--exactly--it iss that exactly. Percy, mein son, that maigs
the experiment exact. We haf the process----"
"I don't see, sir, quite," replied the voice of Percy Darrow, with
a tinge of excitement. "I can follow the logic of the experiment, of
course--so can I follow the logic of a trip to the moon. But when you
come to apply it--how do you get your re-agent? There's no known
method----"
Dr. Schermerhorn broke in: "Ach, it iss that I haf perfected. Pardon
me, my boy, it iss the first I haf worked from you apart. It iss for
a surprise. I haf made in small quantities the missing ingredient.
It will form a perfect interruption to the current. Now we go----"
"Do you mean to say," almost shouted Darrow, "that you have succeeded
in freeing it in the metal?"
"Yes," replied the doctor simply.
I could hear a chair overturned.
"Why, with that you can----"
"I can do everything," broke in the doctor. "The possibilities are
enormous."
"And you can really produce it in quantity?"
"I think so; it iss for us to discover."
A pause ensued.
"Why!" came the voice of Percy Darrow, awestricken. "With fifty
centigrammes only you could--you could transmute any substance--why,
you could make anything you pleased almost! You could make enough
diamonds to fill that chest! It is the philosopher's stone!"
"Diamonds--yes--it is possible," interrupted the doctor impatiently,
"if it was worth while. But you should see the real importance----"
The ship careened to a chance swell; a door slammed; the voices were
cut off. I looked up. The Nigger's head was thrust forward fairly into
the glow from the companionway. The mask of his sullenness had fallen.
His eyes fairly rolled in excitement, his thick lips were drawn back
to expose his teeth, his powerful figure was gathered with the tensity
of a bow. When the door slammed, he turned silently to glide away.
At that instant the watch was changed, and in a moment I found myself
in my bunk.
Ten seconds later the Nigger, detained by Captain Selover for some
trifling duty, burst into the forecastle. He was possessed by the
wildest excitement. This in itself was enough to gain the attention
of the men, but his first words were startling.