The Indian Drum Part 28

"Was there an answer?" she inquired eagerly.

He took a yellow telegraph sheet from his pocket and held it for her to read.

"Watch presented Captain Caleb Stafford, master of propeller freighter _Marvin Halch_ for rescue of crew and pa.s.sengers of sinking steamer _Winnebago_ off Long Point, Lake Erie."

She was breathing quickly in her excitement. "Caleb Stafford!" she exclaimed. "Why, that was Captain Stafford of Stafford and Ramsdell!

They owned the _Miwaka_!"

"Yes," Alan said.

"You asked me about that s.h.i.+p--the _Miwaka_--that first morning at breakfast!"

"Yes."

A great change had come over him since last night; he was under emotion so strong that he seemed scarcely to dare to speak lest it master him--a leaping, exultant impulse it was, which he fought to keep down.

"What is it, Alan?" she asked. "What is it about the _Miwaka_? You said you'd found some reference to it in Uncle Benny's house. What was it? What did you find there?"

"The man--" Alan swallowed and steadied himself and repeated--"the man I met in the house that night mentioned it."

"The man who thought you were a ghost?"

"Yes."

"How--how did he mention it?"

"He seemed to think I was a ghost that had haunted Mr. Corvet--the ghost from the _Miwaka_; at least he shouted out to me that I couldn't save the _Miwaka_!"

"Save the _Miwaka_! What do you mean, Alan? The _Miwaka_ was lost with all her people--officers and crew--no one knows how or where!"

"All except the one for whom the Drum didn't beat!"

"What's that?" Blood p.r.i.c.ked in her cheeks. "What do you mean, Alan?"

"I don't know yet; but I think I'll soon find out!"

"No; you can tell me more now, Alan. Surely you can. I must know. I have the right to know. Yesterday, even before you found out about this, you knew things you weren't telling me--things about the people you'd been seeing. They'd all lost people on the lakes, you said; but you found out more than that."

"They'd all lost people on the _Miwaka_!" he said. "All who could tell me where their people were lost; a few were like Jo Papo we saw yesterday, who knew only the year his father was lost; but the time always was the time that the _Miwaka_ disappeared!"

"Disappeared!" she repeated. Her veins were p.r.i.c.king cold. What did he know, what could any one know of the _Miwaka_, the s.h.i.+p of which nothing ever was heard except the beating of the Indian Drum? She tried to make him say more; but he looked away now down to the lake.

"The _Chippewa_ must have come in early this morning," he said. "She's lying in the harbor; I saw her on my way to the telegraph office. If Mr. Spearman has come back with her, tell him I'm sorry I can't wait to see him."

"When are you going?"

"Now."

She offered to drive him to Petoskey, but he already had arranged for a man to take him to the train.

She went to her room after he was gone and spread out again on her bed the watch--now the watch of Captain Stafford of the _Miwaka_--with the knife and coins of more than twenty years ago which came with it. The meaning of them now was all changed; she felt that; but what the new meaning might be could not yet come to her. Something of it had come to Alan; that, undoubtedly, was what had so greatly stirred him; but she could not yet rea.s.semble her ideas. Yet a few facts had become plain.

A maid came to say that Mr. Spearman had come up from his boat for breakfast with her and was downstairs. She went down to find Henry lounging in one of the great wicker chairs in the living room. He arose and came toward her quickly; but she halted before he could seize her.

"I got back, Connie--"

"Yes; I heard you did."

"What's wrong, dear?"

"Alan Conrad has been here, Henry."

"He has? How was that?"

She told him while he watched her intently. "He wired to Buffalo about the watch. He got a reply which he brought to me half an hour ago."

"Yes?"

"The watch belonged to Captain Stafford who was lost with the _Miwaka_, Henry."

He made no reply; but waited.

"You may not have known that it was his; I mean, you may not have known that it was he who rescued the people of the _Winnebago_, but you must have known that Uncle Benny didn't."

"Yes; I knew that, Connie," he answered evenly.

"Then why did you let me think the watch was his and that he must be--dead?"

"That's all's the matter? You had thought he was dead. I believed it was better for you--for every one--to believe that."

She drew a little away from him, with hands clasped behind her back, gazing intently at him. "There was some writing found in Uncle Benny's house in Astor Street--a list of names of relatives of people who had lost their lives upon the lake. Wa.s.saquam knew where those things were. Alan says they were given to him in your presence."

She saw the blood rise darkly under his skin. "That is true, Connie."

"Why didn't you tell me about that?"

He straightened as if with anger. "Why should I? Because he thought that I should? What did he tell you about those lists?"

"I asked you, after you went back, if anything else had happened, Henry, and you said, 'nothing.' I should not have considered the finding of those lists 'nothing.'"

"Why not? What were they but names? What has he told you they were, Connie? What has he said to you?"

"Nothing--except that his father had kept them very secretly; but he's found out they were names of people who had relatives on the _Miwaka_!"

"What?"

Recalling how her blood had run when Alan had told her that, Henry's whiteness and the following suffusion of his face did not surprise her.