Thrice Armed Part 41

Anyway, I'm not going to worry."

CHAPTER x.x.x

AN EYE FOR AN EYE

The _Shasta_ lay safely tied up to a buoy in Vancouver Inlet, and a quartermaster stood at her gangway with instructions to see that no stranger got on board, when Jimmy sat talking to his sister and Jordan in the room beneath her bridge. It was an hour since she had steamed in, and except for an occasional clinking in her engine-room, where Fleming was still busy, there was silence on board her, though the scream of saws and the rattle of freight-car wheels came off faintly across the still water. The two ports were open wide, but none of those who sat in the little room noticed that the light was fading. Jordan and Eleanor were listening with close attention while Jimmy concisely related how he had fallen in with and towed Merril's steamer. At last he broke off with an abrupt movement when a splash of oars grew louder.

"Another boat!" he said. "We'll have every curious loafer in the city pulling off by and by."

Then the voice of the quartermaster reached them as he answered somebody who called to him from the approaching boat.

"No," he said, "you can't see Captain Wheelock--he's busy. Keep her off that ladder."

There was evidently another question asked, and the man answered impatiently: "I can't tell you anything about the _Adelaide_ 'cept that she's coming along under easy steam. Should be here in a day or two."

Jordan glanced at Jimmy. "The men you brought down are talking already, and we haven't much time for fixing our program. When do you expect her?"

"I don't exactly know. We came away before she did when the breeze fell, but her second engineer seemed quite confident he could bring her along at seven or eight knots. He wasn't sure whether his high-pressure engine would stand anything more."

Then it was significant that both of them looked at Eleanor, who had insisted on coming with Jordan, and who was apparently waiting to take her part in the discussion. One could have fancied from their faces that they would have preferred to be alone just then and were a trifle uneasy concerning the course their companion might think fit to pursue. She leaned back in her chair watching them, with a little hard smile which seemed to suggest that she knew what they were thinking. Still, she said nothing, and Jordan spoke again.

"You are sure of the _Adelaide_'s skipper and that miner fellow?" he asked. "They wouldn't go back on you if Merril tried to buy them off?"

"I think I can be sure of them," said Jimmy reflectively. "The skipper is not the kind of man I would take to, but, in some respects, at least, he's straight; and, anyway, he's bitter enough against Merril to back us in anything we may decide to do. You see, the man who gets his boat ash.o.r.e is practically done for nowadays, whether it's his own fault or not; and I fancy we can count on the miner, too. After what those fellows had to go through to get the gold they were bringing home, they're not likely to have much sympathy with Merril. In fact, if the others understood how near they came to seeing it go down in the _Adelaide_, it would be a little difficult to keep them from laying hands on him. In any case, there's the engineer's statement--one can't get over that."

Eleanor stretched out her hand for the paper, and there was a vindictive sparkle in her eyes as she glanced at it.

"Charley," she said with portentous quietness, "it seems to me that the possession of this doc.u.ment places Merril absolutely in your hands. You are not afraid to make the utmost use of it?"

Jordan glanced at Jimmy in a fas.h.i.+on the latter understood. There was something deprecatory in it, and it appeared to suggest that he wished his comrade to realize that he was under compulsion and could not help himself. Then he turned to the girl with a certain air of resolution.

"No," he said, "I don't think I am afraid, but I want you to understand that I am manager of the _Shasta_ Company, and have first of all to consider the interests of my a.s.sociates, the men who put their money into the concern. There is Jimmy, too."

"Jimmy!" and Eleanor laughed a little, bitter laugh, which had a trace of contempt in it. "Pshaw! Jimmy's love affairs don't count now. I think he feels that, too. After all, there is a trace of our mother's temper in him if one can awaken it."

She turned and looked at her brother, who closed one hand tightly. "Oh, I know; the girl has graciously condescended to smile on you, and no doubt you are almost astonished, as well as grateful, that she should go so far. Still, where did the money that made her a dainty lady of station come from? Must I tell you that a second time, Jimmy?"

She stopped a moment, and gripped the paper hard in firm white fingers.

"This is mine. I bought it. You know what it cost me, Charley; and what has Jimmy done in comparison with that? Do you think anything would induce me to spare Merril now that I have this in my hands?"

Jimmy looked up sharply, and saw the flush of color in her cheek, and that the blood had crept into his comrade's face. His own grew suddenly hot.

"Ah!" he said, with a thrill of anger in his voice, "I begin to understand. She got the information you acted on out of that brute, Carnforth. You knew that, Charley, and you--you countenanced it."

He half rose from his seat with a brown hand stretched out as if to tear the paper from the girl, but while Jordan swung around toward him Eleanor laughed.

"Sit down," she said imperiously, "you simple-minded fool! Do you think I would let Charley's opinion influence me in an affair of this kind?"

Jordan made a gesture of resignation. "She would not," he said. "That's the simple fact. But go on, Eleanor--or shall I tell him? Anyway, it must be done."

The girl silenced him, and though the next two or three minutes were, perhaps, as unpleasant as any Jimmy had ever spent in his life, it was with a certain deep relief that he heard his sister out. Before she stopped she held up a white hand.

"Once," she said, "once only, he held my wrist. That was all, Jimmy; but I feel it left a mark. If it could be removed that way, I would burn it out. Now you know what the thing cost me--but I did it."

The men would not look at each other, and if Eleanor had left them then it would have been a relief to both. Her suppressed pa.s.sion had stirred and shaken them, and they realized that the efforts they had made were, after all, not to be counted in comparison with what the girl had done.

It was Jordan who spoke first. "Well," he said, with the air of one anxious to get away from a painful subject, "we have got to be practical. The question is, how are we to strike Merril? Seems to me, in the first case, we'll hand him a salvage claim. I'll fix it at half her value, anyway, and he'll never fight us when he hears of the engineer's statement. So far as I know, he can't recover under his policy, and we could head him off from going to the underwriters if he can. The next point is--are the miner fellow and the _Adelaide_'s skipper likely to take any independent action on their own account? I don't think that's very probable."

"Nor do I," said Jimmy. "It isn't wise of a skipper to turn around on a man like Merril, unless it's in a court where he has the law behind him, and the prospector would scarcely attempt to do anything alone. Besides, without the doc.u.ment to produce, they would have very little to go upon--and what is more to the purpose, both of them promised to let me handle the thing."

Jordan nodded as if satisfied. "That," he said, "makes it easier. We're going to collect our money on the salvage claim, and when Merril has raised it he'll have strained his resources, so he won't count very much as an opponent of the _Shasta_ Company. The man's crippled already."

The fact that his comrade was apparently not desirous of proceeding to extremities afforded Jimmy a vast relief, but it vanished suddenly when Eleanor broke in.

"Can't you understand that the affair must be looked at from another point of view as well as the commercial one?" she asked.

It was a difficult question, and when neither of them answered her the girl went on:

"It doesn't seem to occur to you that what you suggest amounts to covering up a conspiracy and allowing a scoundrel to escape his deserts," she said. "There is another point, too. You will have to inform the police about the Robertson affair, Jimmy, and his connection with Merril is bound to appear when they lay hands on him."

"That," said Jimmy, with a trace of dryness, "is hardly likely. The man will be heading for the diggings by this time if he isn't drowned, and there's very little probability of the police getting hold of him there."

Eleanor laughed, a very bitter laugh, as she fixed her eyes on him.

"So you are quite content with Charley's plan--to extort so many dollars from Merril?" she said. "It has one fatal defect; it does not satisfy me."

"Now----" commenced Jordan, but the girl checked him with a gesture.

"I want him crushed, disgraced, imprisoned, ruined altogether."

"Anyway, I owe it to my a.s.sociates to make sure of the money first."

"And after that you feel you have to stand by Jimmy?"

The man winced when she flung the question at him; but when he did not answer she appeared to rouse herself for an effort, leaning forward a trifle with a gleam in her eyes and the red flush plainer in her cheek.

"Still," she said, "if Jimmy is what I think him, he will not ask it of you. I want him to go back six years to the time he came home--from Portland, wasn't it, Jimmy?--and stayed a few weeks with us. Was there any shadow upon us then, though your father was getting old? I want you to remember him as he was when you went away, a simple, kindly, abstemious, and fearless man. It surely can't be very hard."

Jimmy face grew furrowed, and he set his lips tight; but he said nothing, and the girl went on:

"It was not so the next time you came back. Something had happened in the meanwhile. The bondholder had laid his grasp on him. He was weakening under it, and the l.u.s.t of drink was crus.h.i.+ng the courage out of him. Still, you must remember that it was his one consolation. Then came the awful climax of the closing scene. I had to face it with Charley--you were away--but you must realize the horror it brought me."

Jordan turned toward her abruptly. "Eleanor," he said, with a trace of hoa.r.s.eness in his voice, "let it drop. You can't bear the thing a second time."

She stopped him with a frown. "I want you to picture him deluding Prescott with one of the pitiful, cunning excuses that drunkards make.