The Pagan Madonna Part 30

Half an hour pa.s.sed. Jane honestly tried to be thrilled by the splendour of the names she heard, but her eye was always travelling back toward the slippers and the buckle. The Empress Josephine! Romance and gallantry in the old, old days!

"The painting in your cabin is by Holbein. It cost me sixteen thousand.

Now let us go out and look at the rug. That is the apple of my eye. It is the second finest example of the animal rug in the world. A sheet of pure gold, half an inch thick, covering the rug from end to end, would not equal its worth."

Jane admired the rug, but she would have preferred the gold. Her sense of the beautiful was alive, but there was always in her mind the genteel poverty of the past. She was beginning to understand. To go in quest of the beautiful required an unlimited purse and an endless leisure; and she would have never the one nor the other.

"How much gold would that be?" she inquired, navely.

"Nearly eighty thousand. Have you kept in mind the sums I have given you?"

"Yes. Let me see--good heavens, a quarter of a million! But why do you carry them about like this?"

"Because I'm something of a rogue myself. I could not enjoy the rug and the paintings except on board. The French, the Italian, and the Spanish governments could confiscate every solitary painting except the Meissonier and the Detaille, for the simple reason that they were stolen. Oh, I did not steal them myself; I merely purchased them with one eye shut. If I hadn't bought them they would have gone to some other collector. Do you get a glimmer of the truth now?"

"The truth?"--perplexedly.

"Yes--where Cunningham will get his pearls?"--bitterly.

"Oh!"

"And I could not touch him. A quarter of a million! And with his knowledge of the secret marts he could easily dispose of them. Worth a bold stroke, eh?"

"But how will he get them off the yacht--transs.h.i.+p them?"

Her faith in Cunningham began to waver. A quarter of a million! The thought was as bells in her ears.

"Of the outside issues I have no inkling. But I have shown you his pearls."

"But the crew! Certainly they will not return to any port with us. And why should he lie to me? There is no reason in the world why he shouldn't have told me, if he had committed piracy to obtain your paintings. And he was poring over maps."

"Some tramp is probably going to pick him up. He's ordered us away from the wireless. Cunningham must have his joke, so he is beguiling you with twaddle about hunting pearls. He is robbing me of my treasures, and I can't strike back on that count. But I can land him in prison on the count of piracy; and by the Lord Harry, I'll do it if it takes my last dollar!

He'll rue this adventure, or they call me Tungsten for nothing!"

"I wanted so to believe in him!"

"Not difficult to understand why. He has a silver tongue and a face like John the Baptist--del Sarto's--and you are romantic. The picture of him has enlisted your sympathies. You are filled with pity that he should be so richly endowed, facially and mentally, and to be a cripple such as children laugh over."

"Have you never considered what mental anguish must be the portion of a man whose body is twisted as his is? I know. So I pity him profoundly, even if he is a rogue. That's all I was born for--to pity and to bind up.

And I pity you, Mr. Cleigh, you who have walled your heart in granite."

"You're plain-spoken, young lady."

"Yes, certain sick minds need plain speaking."

"Then my mind is sick?"

"Yes."

"And only a little while gone it was romantic!"

"Two hundred million hands begging for bread, and you crossing the world for a string of gla.s.s beads whose value is only sentimental!"

"I can't let that pa.s.s, Miss Norman. I have trusted lieutenants who attend to my charities. I'm not a miser."

"You are, with the greatest thing in the world--human love."

"Shall a man give it where it is not wanted? But enough of this talk. I have shown you Cunningham's pearls."

"Perhaps."

Night and wheeling stars. It was stuffy in the crew's quarters. Half naked, the men lolled about, some in their bunks, some on the floor. The orders were that none should sleep on deck during the voyage to the Catwick.

"All because the old man brings a skirt on board, we have to sweat blood in the forepeak!" growled Flint. "We've got a right to a little sport."

"Sure we have!"

The speaker was sitting on the edge of his bunk. He was a fine specimen of young manhood, with a pleasant, rollicking Irish countenance. He looked as if he had been brought up clean and had carried his cleanliness into the world. The blue anchor and love birds on his formidable forearms proclaimed him a deep-sea man. It was he who had given Dennison the s.h.i.+rt and the ducks.

"Sure, we have a right to a little sport! But why call in the undertaker to help us out? You poor fish, all the way from San Francisco you've been grousing because sh.o.r.e leaves weren't long enough for you to get prime soused in. What's two months in our young lives?"

"I've always been free to do as I liked."

"You look it! I'll say so! The chief laid down the rules of this game, and we all took oath to follow those rules. The trouble with you is, you've been reading dime novels. Where do you think you are--raiding the Spanish Main? There's every chance of our coming out top hole, as those lime-juicers say, with oodles of dough and a whole skin."

"Say, don't I know this Sulu game? I tell you, if he does find his atoll there won't be any sh.e.l.l. Not a chance in a hundred! Somebody's been giving him a song and dance. As I get the dope, some pearl-hunting friend of his croaks and leaves him this chart. Old stuff! I bet a million b.o.o.bs have croaked trying to locate the red cross on a chart."

"Why the devil did you sign on, then?"

"I wanted a little fun, and I'm going to have it. There's champagne and Napoleon brandy in the dry-stores. Wouldn't hurt us to have a little of it. If we've got to go to jail we might as well go lit up."

"Flint, you talk too much," said a voice from the doorway. It was Cunningham's. He leaned carelessly against the jamb. The crew fell silent and motionless. "Boys, you've heard Hennessy. Play it my way and you'll wear diamonds; mess it up and you'll all wear hemp. The world will forgive us when it finds out we've only made it laugh." Cunningham strolled over to Flint, who rose to his feet. "Flint, I want that crimp-house whisky you've been swigging on the sly. No back talk! Hand it over!"

"And if I don't?" said Flint, his jaw jutting.

CHAPTER XVII

Cunningham did not answer immediately. From Flint his glance went roving from man to man, as if trying to read what they expected of him.

"Flint, you were recommended to me for your knowledge of the Sulu lingo.

We'll need a crew of divers, and we'll have to pick them up secretly.

That's your job. It's your only job outside doing your watch with the shovel below. Somehow you've got the wrong idea. You think this is a junket of the oil-lamp period. All wrong! You don't know me, and that's a pity; because if you did know something about me you'd walk carefully.

When we're off this yacht, I don't say. If you want what old-timers used to call their pannikin of rum, you'll be welcome to it. But on board the _Wanderer_, nothing doing. Get your duffel out. I'll have a look at it."