Chapter VII New Slants
The boatman, after swinging well clear of Witherbee’s Island, hesitated as to his course. “There might be an answer to-night,” he muttered. “Still, it’s pretty quick, seeing I only wired this morning. I guess I’ll wait until to-morrow. I’ll be sure to hear then.”
Without further ado he headed the launch into the channel that runs between Wellesley and Hill islands, following a course so nearly midway between them that the wake of his craft would have served as a visible boundary-line between the United States and Canada. Several motor-boats passed him; one hailed sharply, warning him to show lights. He paid no attention, but steadily held his way.
Half an hour of running brought him opposite a small, dark spot on the water, around which he described a half-circle while he kept his eyes intently upon it. Then, apparently satisfied, he headed in toward what proved to be a rocky, wooded island.
There was a natural landing-place at the point he touched—a cove protected on three sides by bulwarks of the gneiss rock that rises stalwart, here as elsewhere, out of the great St. Lawrence.
Making fast his craft, he stepped ashore, and followed a narrow path that struggled over the stony surface, beset on either side by underbrush and small trees.
The path ended at a cabin. He pushed open a door, entered, searched about in the darkness for a moment, then struck a match and lighted the wick of a lantern that stood on a table in the center of the single room.
The cabin was clean, plain, and cheerless. There was a cot in one corner, a small iron stove, a shelf with a few cooking-utensils, and one chair.
“No place like home,” he commented with a grin. “And I suppose I’ll be kicked out of here if anybody gets wise.”
He helped himself to a few crackers from a tin box on the shelf, sat down, and began munching them in an absent-minded manner. Presently his wandering glance fixed itself upon a broken mirror that hung from a nail driven into one of the walls. He picked up the lantern, advanced across the cabin, and held the light so that he could survey himself in the glass.
“You’re a nice-looking object,” he assured his reflection as one hand stroked his beard. “I’ve got a mind—”
A lidless cigar-box nailed against the wall contained a razor, a lather-brush, and half a cake of soap. He picked up the razor and once more studied himself in the mirror.
“No,” he said, shaking his head slowly as he returned the razor to its place. “Don’t get foolish. You can’t be useful and beautiful at the same time.”
He replaced the lantern on the table and went to the cot, where he stretched himself on the gray blankets and lay staring up at the roof-boards for many minutes. The boatman’s thoughts were apparently amusing, for once he laughed aloud, while many times he chuckled.
“That was a close go last night,” he remarked, addressing himself to a knot-hole, through which, by a little maneuvering of his head, he could focus a brilliant star. “Just a little closer and they’d have had me. It was the master mechanic who did the trick.
“Some mechanic, too! A pal worth having, that lady—a sort of lucky strike, it looks to me. She’s not gentle exactly, with that tongue of hers; but she’s all there when it comes to getting action. Had a gun in her pocket, too.”
He laughed again.
“A gun—for poor Sam!” he added. “Guess I’ll have to be careful. And yet—
“No, sir! I’m not going to lose sight of this proposition. It looks too good to me. And right on the same island, by Jiminy! Couldn’t be planted better—for me. Why, she’s just got to be a pal!”
Presently he closed his eyes and made an effort to sleep, a task which he abandoned with suddenness after five minutes.
“No use; I’m too curious,” he muttered, rising. “I’m going up to Clayton. It might happen to have come in.”
He blew out the light and walked from the cabin, making his way back to where the launch was moored. A moment later he was backing out of the cove. Then he headed northward, through the narrowing waterway that led him past Swiftwater Point, and then along the channel that sweeps the shore of Wellesley Island.
Abreast of the lights of Grand View, he swung almost due south and laid a course for Clayton, making the briefest possible detours to avoid the islands that lay in his path.
At Clayton he sought a small, obscure wharf, to which he made fast the launch. His excursion into town carried him upon none of the principal thoroughfares, but wound an irregular course through back streets, until he found himself at a small, poorly lighted frame building that served the double purpose of hotel and saloon.
He entered by a side door, took a seat at a table in a dingy corner of a back room and rapped smartly with his knuckles on the pine top. There was a shuffling of feet in the bar-room and a man appeared through a swinging-door, wiping his hands on a dirty apron as he came.
“Hello, Sam!” he said.
“Anything come?” asked the boatman abruptly.
For answer the man in the apron began a search of his pockets, finally producing a folded yellow envelope. The boatman reached for it quickly and ran his finger under the flap of the envelope.
“Ginger ale,” he said briefly without looking up.
The bearer of the message went back to the bar-room to fill the order.
As Sam’s eyes read the telegram they widened perceptibly. He smiled faintly, then nodded, carefully placed the telegram and its envelope in the pocket of his shirt, and looked up at the returning bearer of his drink.
“Everything O.K., I hope,” observed the man in the apron, as he stood a glass and a bottle on the table.
“O.K.,” confirmed Sam. “I might have to have another message sent here. Will it be all right?”
“Sure; as many as you like. It ain’t costing me anything.”
The boatman drank his ginger ale hastily, threw a quarter on the table, and went out.
Now, whistling softly and complacently, he strolled through a more pretentious part of the town, halting occasionally to examine store windows. He entered one place, made some trivial purchases, and offered in payment therefor a five-dollar bill that had until recently reposed in the purse of the master mechanic.
“Yep; a mighty useful pal,” he murmured as he gathered up his change.
“How’s that?” asked the storekeeper.
“I was just telling myself that money is a man’s best friend,” said the boatman as he strolled out.
The storekeeper watched the departing customer, then turned to the cash-drawer and made a second examination of the five-dollar note.
Sam made his way directly to the wharf where he had moored his launch, stepped aboard and made ready to cast off. Then he bethought himself of his engine.
“Needs oil, I guess. The master mechanic would give me the dickens if she knew how long I’ve run without filling the cups,” he chuckled.
Forward under the half-deck he kept a gallon can. Now he got upon his hands and knees and crawled part way into the dark hole, groping ahead of him as he went.
There was nothing tidy or methodical in the arrangement of his ship’s stores, so he spent a full minute, feeling about, before his hand came in contact with the oil-can. Then as he was backing from his cramped quarters a scraping sound attracted his attention. Another launch had touched the wharf. Something impelled the boatman to remain quietly where he lay in the bottom of his craft. Perhaps it was the guarded note in the voice of a man who was talking.
“I knew it wouldn’t do any good to go out to-night,” said the voice.
“Well, it helped us to get the lay of the place a bit at any rate,” answered a second voice.
“But I don’t believe the stuff is coming out through Gananoque at all. And I’m not satisfied that it’s coming in here, either.”
“Where do you think it’s coming from?”
“Kingston.”
“That wasn’t the tip from Washington.”
“I know that. But Kingston’s a lot more likely. It’s bigger, and that’s some advantage when you don’t want folks to notice you too much.”
“And where do you think it’s coming in?”
“Oh, blazes! How can we tell yet? There’s a dozen places anywhere along here for twenty or thirty miles. And you can bet it doesn’t come across in the same place twice.”
The boatman breathed softly and lay clasping his oil-can. The men in the other launch were making their boat fast now.
“You’re dead sure Washington’s not just guessing about this?” observed the second speaker, a note of doubt in his voice. “Not that I mind sticking around a nice place like this for a while, but I’d like to show something for my time.”
“They’ve got to do a certain amount of guessing, of course,” said the other. “But it’s not all guess. They’re getting the thing fairly well located, and it’s ciphering down to this part of the river. We know mighty well that Canada isn’t beginning to use, not by half, the diamonds that have been shipped in from Antwerp. They’re getting across the line to a certainty. There was a bunch of stuff got into New York last week, and the man who brought it had a railroad ticket that read from Clayton. We’re still holding the stuff, but we can’t prove anything yet.”
“Maybe there’s a half-way joint out here?”
“You mean on one of the islands? I’ve had that in mind. That’s one reason I hired the boat. We’ll do a little sightseeing to-morrow and get some new bearings.”
The talkers were on the little wharf now. Sam pressed his body close against the flooring of the cock-pit.
“Well, I’m tired,” said one. “Let’s go on up to bed. It’s all right to leave the boat here, is it?”
“That’s what the man said. It’s his dock.”
Footsteps passed close to the boatman’s craft.
“There’s a boat come in since we were here,” commented a voice. “He didn’t mind hogging the best part of the dock either, did he?”
The second man laughed as the pair went on up the sloping gangway that led to the shore.
Sam lay motionless until they were gone from his hearing, then cautiously rose to his knees and made an observation. The men were out of sight.
He crawled aft, put down the oil-can and sat for several minutes, motionless, considering carefully the fruits of his eavesdropping.
“So they’ve got their eye on the islands, have they?” he thought. “Interesting, that. I wonder—”
He laughed softly.
“Why not?” he asked himself after another period of thought. “It may not be a bit of use to Uncle Sam, but it just might happen to make his humble namesake real happy.”
He stepped out on the wharf and went up the gangway, at the head of which he stood listening and watching for a moment until he was assured that the arrivals in the second launch were safely out of the way. Then he returned to his craft, lighted the lantern, and squatted beside it on the floor.
From a small locker at his hand he took Hamersly’s “Social Register” and tore out a fly-leaf. A stub of lead-pencil appeared from one of his pockets. Using the book as a desk, the boatman began to write.
He paused occasionally in this occupation, squinting his eyes and frowning as if puzzled over a thought or a phrase. When he had come nearly to the end of his sheet of paper he stopped writing, read his composition carefully by the dim light, and nodded an approval.
Now he climbed back to the float again and crossed to where the second launch lay. It was a trim, well-kept little craft, a fact that he noted with an involuntary sigh when he thought of his own. There was a canvas cover that fitted neatly over the engine; this had been put in place carefully. He stepped into the cock-pit, lifted one side of the canvas and thrust his note underneath it.
“They can’t miss that,” he remarked, as he retreated to his own craft.
Immediately following, he loosed his mooring, started his engine, and backed out into the river.
It was late when the dingy launch rested once more in the rock-bound cove and the boatman walked up to his cabin. He was whistling gently and cheerfully, a lantern swinging in his hand. Entering the cabin and closing the door behind him, he drew the chair up to the table, fished the Social Register out of his pocket, and began another absorbed study of the C’s.
“That’s some family, believe me,” he commented. “Strong on the Mayflower stuff, I notice. Been here ever since there was a New York. Pipe the old man’s club-list! Not so big, maybe, but class—whew! And the missus—oh, yes; she’s a Daughter, all right—three or four kinds of a Daughter. Fifth Avenue, Newport, Narragansett—uh-huh. That’s the stuff!
“Mentions the yacht, too. I wonder how many limousines. I suppose the master mechanic takes care of those.
“And—well, well, look who’s here! Brother C. Alfred. Fell down a bit on brother’s name, it strikes me. ‘Alfred’ doesn’t quite class up. Ought to be either very flossy or very plain; that’s the way most of ’em seem to run. But I notice Alfred is there with the Harvard thing. And all of papa’s clubs, too.
“And here’s grandfather, and great-grandfather, and the rest of ’em back of that. And mother—she’s a Van Arsdale. That’s nice; that’s bully! She kicks in with some considerable ancient lineage herself.”
He grinned at the Chalmers page.
“Ah! And now the Lady Rosalind! They don’t tell ages in this book, do they? Don’t put the price-tags on, either. Rosalind—well, she just can’t help it when you come to study the dope-sheet. On form, I’d back the Lady Rosalind to be a front runner in any company. Ow! Nothing like class—and nothing to it but class!”
The boatman bethought himself of the telegram stowed away in his pocket. Now he examined it again. He sat back in his chair and laughed until that article of furniture creaked.
“Time to go to bed,” he said, rising abruptly. “To-morrow may be a right busy day. Who knows?”
He was crawling under his blankets when another thought came to him. Returning to the table, he tore from the Social Register the sacred page devoted to the house of Chalmers. It was closely printed, with marginal notes and annotations.
“I’m going to start a picture-gallery, just to brighten up the shack,” he told himself.
After a careful study of the four walls of his cabin, he selected a spot directly opposite the door, and there he securely fastened the printed page into place with pins. Beneath it he affixed the telegram, which had come to him from New York, addressed only to “Sam,” and in care of the obscure little hotel where he had found it awaiting him. The telegram said:
Five million. Unattached. Bidding brisk.
There was no signature.
The boatman stepped back, surveyed his work, and grinned. Then he darted to a corner shelf, devoted to a motley collection of odds and ends, and returned with a piece of chalk. Underneath the page from Hamersly’s and its appended telegram he printed in bold letters: