The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  The Chief came and found the Red Un in agony, holding his jaw. Owing to the fact that he lay far back in an upper bunk, it took time to drag him into the light. It took more time to get his mouth open; once open, the Red Un pointed to a snag that should have given him trouble if it didn't, and set up a fresh outcry.

  Not until long after could the Red Un recall without shame his share in that night's work—recall the Chief, stubby hair erect, kind blue eyes searching anxiously for the offending tooth. Recall it? Would he ever forget the arm the Chief put about him, and him: "Ou-ay! laddie; it's a weeked snag!"

  The Chief, to whom God had denied a son of his flesh, had taken Red Un to his heart, you see—fatherless wharf-rat and childless engineer; the man acting on the dour Scot principle of chastening whomsoever he loveth, and the boy cherishing a hate that was really only hurt love.

  And as the Chief, who had dragged the Red Un out of eternity and was not minded to see him die of a toothache, took him back to his cabin the pain grew better, ceased, turned to fright. The ten minutes or so were over and what would they find? The Chief opened the door; he had in mind a drop of whisky out of the flask he never touched on a trip—whisky might help the tooth.

  On the threshold he seemed to scent something amiss. He glanced at the ceiling over his bunk, where the airtrunk lay, and then—he looked at the boy. He stooped down and put a hand on the boy's head, turning it to the light.

  "Tell me now, lad," he said quietly, "did ye or did ye no ha' the toothache?"

  "It's better now," sullenly.

  "Did ye or did ye no?"

  "No."

  The Chief turned the boy about and pushed him through the doorway into outer darkness. He said nothing. Down to his very depths he was hurt. To have lost the game was something; but it was more than that. Had he been a man of words he might have said that once again a creature he loved had turned on him to his injury. Being a Scot and a man of few words he merely said he was damned, and crawled back into bed.

  The game? Well, that was simple enough. Directly over his pillow, in the white-painted airtrunk, was a brass plate, fastened with four screws. In case of anything wrong with the ventilator the plate could be taken off for purposes of investigation.

  The Chief's scheme had been simplicity itself—so easy that the Seconds, searching for concealed wires and hidden alarm bells, had never thought of it. On nights when the air must be pumped, and officious Seconds were only waiting the Chief's first sleep to shut off steam and turn it back to the main engines, the Chief unlocked the bolted drawer in his desk. First he took out the woman's picture and gazed at it; quite frequently he read the words on the back—written out of a sore heart, be sure. And then he took out the cigar-box lid.

  When he had unscrewed the brass plate over his head he replaced it with the lid of the cigar-box. So long as the pumps in the engine room kept the air moving, the lid stayed up by suction.

  When the air stopped the lid fell down on his head; he roused enough to press a signal button and, as the air started viciously, to replace the lid. Then, off to the sleep of the just and the crafty again. And so on ad infinitum.

  Of course the game was not over because it was discovered and the lid gone. There would be other lids. But the snap, the joy, was gone out of it. It would never again be the same, and the worst of all was the manner of the betrayal.

  He slept but little the remainder of the night; and, because unrest travels best from soul to soul at night, when the crowding emotions of the day give it place, the woman slept little also. She was thinking of the entrance to the stokehole, where one crouched under the bellies of furnaces, and where the engineer on duty stood on a pile of hot cinders. Toward morning her room grew very close: the air from the ventilator seemed to have ceased.

  Far down in the ship, in a breathless little cabin far aft, the Red Un kicked the Purser's boy and cried himself to sleep.

  V

  The old ship made a record the next night that lifted the day's run to four hundred and twenty. She was not a greyhound, you see. Generally speaking, she was a nine-day boat. She averaged well under four hundred miles. The fast boats went by her and slid over the edge of the sea, throwing her bits of news by wireless over a shoulder, so to speak.

  The little girl's mother was not a good sailor. She sat almost all day in a steamer chair, reading or looking out over the rail. Each day she tore off the postal from the top of her menu and sent it to the girl's father. She missed him more than she had expected. He had become a habit; he was solid, dependable, loyal. He had never heard of the Chief.

  "Dear Daddy," she would write: "Having a splendid voyage so far, but wish you were here. The baby is having such a good time—so popular; and won two prizes to-day at the sports! With love, Lily."

  They were all rather like that. She would drop them in the mailbox, with a tug of tenderness for the man who worked at home. Then she would go back to her chair and watch the sea, and recall the heat of the engine room below, and wonder, wonder——

  It had turned warm again; the edges of the horizon were grey and at night a low mist lay over the water. Rooms were stifling, humid. The Red Un discarded pajamas and slept in his skin. The engine-room watch came up white round the lips and sprawled over the boat deck without speech. Things were going wrong in the Red Un's small world. The Chief hardly spoke to him—was grave and quiet, and ate almost nothing. The Red Un hated himself unspeakably and gave his share of the sovereign to the Purser's boy.

  The Chief was suffering from lack of exercise in the air as well as other things. The girl's mother was not sleeping—what with heat and the memories the sea had revived. On the fifth night out, while the ship slept, these two met on the deck in the darkness—two shadows out of the past. The deck was dark, but a ray from a window touched his face and she knew him. He had not needed light to know her; every line of her was written on his heart, and for him there was no one at home to hold in tenderness.

  "I think I knew you were here all the time," she said, and held out both hands.

  The Chief took one and dropped it. She belonged to the person at home. He had no thought of forgetting that!

  "I saw your name on the passenger list, but I have been very busy." He never lapsed into Scotch with her; she had not liked it. "Is your husband with you?"

  "He could not come just now. I have my daughter."

  Her voice fell rather flat. The Chief could not think of anything to say. Her child, and not his! He was a one-woman man, you see—and this was the woman.

  "I have seen her," he said presently. "She's like you, Lily."

  That was a wrong move—the Lily; for it gave her courage to put her hand on his arm.

  "It is so long since we have met," she said wistfully. "Yesterday, after I saw the—the place where you lived and—and work——" She choked; she was emotional, rather weak. Having made the situation she should have let it alone; but, after all, it is not what the woman is, but what the man thinks she is.

  The Chief stroked her fingers on his sleeve.

  "It's not bad, Lily," he said. "It's a man's job. I like it."

  "I believe you had forgotten me entirely!"

  The Chief winced. "Isn't that the best thing you could wish me?" he said.

  "Are you happy?"

  "'I ha' lived and I ha' worked!'" he quoted sturdily.

  Very shortly after that he left her; he made an excuse of being needed below and swung off, his head high.

  VI

  They struck the derelict when the mist was thickest, about two that morning. The Red Un was thrown out of his berth and landed, stark naked, on the floor. The Purser's boy was on the floor, too, in a tangle of bedding. There was a sickening silence for a moment, followed by the sound of opening doors and feet in the passage. There was very little speech. People ran for the decks. The Purser's boy ran with them.

  The Red Un never thought of the deck. One of the axioms of the engine room is that of every man to his post in danger. The Red Un's pos
t was with his Chief. His bare feet scorched on the steel ladders and the hot floor plates; he had on only his trousers, held up with a belt.

  The trouble was in the forward stokehole. Water was pouring in from the starboard side—was welling up through the floor plates. The wound was ghastly, fatal! The smouldering in the bunker had weakened resistance there and her necrosed ribs had given away. The Red Un, scurrying through the tunnel, was met by a maddened rush of trimmers and stokers. He went down under them and came up bruised, bleeding, battling for place.

  "You skunks!" he blubbered. "You crazy cowards! Come back and help!"

  A big stoker stopped and caught the boy's arm.

  "You come on!" he gasped. "The whole thing'll go in a minute. She'll go down by the head!"

  He tried to catch the boy up in his arms, but the Red Un struck him on the nose.

  "Let me go, you big stiff!" he cried, and kicked himself free.

  Not all the men had gone. They were working like fiends. It was up to the bulkhead now. If it held—if it only held long enough to get the passengers off!

  Not an engineer thought of leaving his place, though they knew, better even than the deck officers, how mortally the ship was hurt. They called to their aid every resource of a business that is nothing but emergencies. Engines plus wit, plus the grace of God—and the engines were useless. Wits, then, plus Providence. The pumps made no impression on the roaring flood; they lifted floor plates to strengthen the bulkheads and worked until it was death to work longer. Then, fighting for every foot, the little band retreated to the after stokehole. Lights were out forward. The Chief was the last to escape. He carried an oil lantern, and squeezed through the bulkhead door with a wall of water behind him.

  The Red Un cried out, but too late. The Chief, blinded by his lantern, had stumbled into the pit where a floor plate had been lifted. When he found his leg was broken he cried to them to go on and leave him, but they got him out somehow and carried him with them as they fought and retreated—fought and retreated. He was still the Chief; he lay on the floor propped up against something and directed the fight. The something he leaned against was the strained body of the Red Un, who held him up and sniffled shamefaced tears. She was down by the head already and rolling like a dying thing. When the water came into the after stokehole they carried the Chief into the engine room—the lights were going there.

  There had been no panic on deck. There were boats enough and the lights gave every one confidence. It was impossible to see the lights going and believe the ship doomed. Those who knew felt the list of the decks and hurried with the lowering of the boats; the ones who saw only the lights wished to go back to their cabins for clothing and money.

  The woman sat in the Quartermaster's boat, with her daughter in her arms, and stared at the ship. The Quartermaster said the engineers were still below and took off his cap. In her feeble way the woman tried to pray, and found only childish, futile things to say; but in her mind there was a great wonder—that they, who had once been life each to the other, should part thus, and that now, as ever, the good part was hers! The girl looked up into her mother's face.

  "The redhaired little boy, mother—do you think he is safe?"

  "First off, likely," mumbled the Quartermaster grimly.

  All the passengers were off. Under the mist the sea rose and fell quietly; the boats and rafts had drawn off to a safe distance. The Greek, who had humour as well as imagination, kept up the spirits of those about him while he held a child in his arms.

  "Shall we," he inquired gravely, "think you—shall we pay extra to the company for this excursion?"

  The battle below had been fought and lost. It was of minutes now. The Chief had given the order: "Every one for himself!" Some of the men had gone, climbing to outer safety. The two Seconds had refused to leave the Chief. All lights were off by that time. The after stokehole was flooded and water rolled sickeningly in the engine-pits. Each second it seemed the ship must take its fearful dive into the quiet sea that so insistently reached up for her. With infinite labour the Seconds got the Chief up to the fiddley, twenty feet or less out of a hundred, and straight ladders instead of a steel staircase. Ten men could not have lifted him without gear, and there was not time!

  Then, because the rest was hopeless, they left him there, propped against the wall, with the lantern beside him. He shook hands with them; the Junior was crying; the Senior went last, and after he had gone up a little way he turned and came back.

  "I can't do it, Chief!" he said. "I'll stick it out with you." But the Chief drove him up, with the name of his wife and child. Far up the shaft he turned and looked down. The lantern glowed faintly below.

  The Chief sat alone on his grating. He was faint with pain. The blistering cylinders were growing cold; the steel floor beneath was awash. More ominous still, as the ship's head sank, came crackings and groanings from the engines below. They would fall through at the last, ripping out the bulkheads and carrying her down bow first.

  Pain had made the Chief rather dull. "'I ha' lived and I ha' worked!'" he said several times—and waited for the end. Into his stupor came the thought of the woman—and another thought of the Red Un. Both of them had sold him out, so to speak; but the woman had grown up with his heart and the boy was his by right of salvage—only he thought of the woman as he dreamed of her, not as he had seen her on the deck. He grew rather confused, after a time, and said: "I ha' loved and I ha' worked!"

  Just between life and death there comes a time when the fight seems a draw, or as if each side, exhausted, had called a truce. There is no more struggle, but it is not yet death. The ship lay so. The upreaching sea had not conquered. The result was inevitable, but not yet. And in the pause the Red Un came back, came crawling down the ladder, his indomitable spirit driving his craven little body.

  He had got as far as the boat and safety. The gripping devils of fear that had followed him up from the engine room still hung to his throat; but once on deck, with the silent men who were working against time and eternity, he found he could not do it. He was the Chief's boy—and the Chief was below and hurt!

  The truce still held. As the ship rolled, water washed about the foot of the ladder and lapped against the cylinders. The Chief tried desperately to drive him up to the deck and failed.

  "It's no place for you alone," said the Red Un. His voice had lost its occasional soprano note; the Red Un was a grown man. "I'm staying!" And after a hesitating moment he put his small, frightened paw on the Chief's arm.

  It was that, perhaps, that roused the Chief—not love of life, but love of the boy. To be drowned like a rat in a hole—that was not so bad when one had lived and worked. A man may not die better than where he has laboured; but this child, who would die with him rather than live alone! The Chief got up on his usable knee.

  "I'm thinking, laddie," he said, "we'll go fighting anyhow."

  The boy went first, with the lantern. And, painful rung by painful rung, the Chief did the impossible, suffering hells as he moved. For each foot he gained the Red Un gained a foot—no more. What he would not have endured for himself, the Chief suffered for the boy. Halfway up, he clung, exhausted.

  The boy leaned down and held out his hand.

  "I'll pull," he said. "Just hang on to me."

  Only once again did he speak during that endless climb in the silence of the dying ship, and what he said came in gasps. He was pulling indeed.

  "About—that airtrunk," he managed to say—"I'm—sorry, sir!"

  The dawn came up out of the sea, like resurrection. In the Quartermaster's boat the woman slept heavily, with tears on her cheeks. The Quartermaster looked infinitely old and very tired with living.

  It was the girl, after all, who spied them—two figures—one inert and almost lifeless; one very like a bobbing tomato, but revealing a blue face and two desperate eyes above a ship's lifebelt.

  The Chief came to an hour or so later and found the woman near, pale and tragic, and not so young as he ha
d kept her in his heart. His eyes rested on hers a moment; the bitterness was gone, and the ache. He had died and lived again, and what was past was past.

  "I thought," said the woman tremulously—"all night I thought that you——"

  The Chief, coming to full consciousness, gave a little cry. His eyes, travelling past hers, had happened on a small and languid youngster curled up at his feet, asleep. The woman drew back—as from an intrusion.

  As she watched, the Red Un yawned, stretched and sat up. His eyes met the Chief's, and between them passed such a look of understanding as made for the two one world, one victory!

  * * *

  CONTENTS

  SIGHT UNSEEN

  By Mary Roberts Rinehart

  I

  The rather extraordinary story revealed by the experiments of the Neighborhood Club have been until now a matter only of private record. But it seems to me, as an active participant in the investigations, that they should be given to the public; not so much for what they will add to the existing data on psychical research, for from that angle they were not unusual, but as yet another exploration into that still uncharted territory, the human mind.

  The psycho-analysts have taught us something about the individual mind. They have their own patter, of complexes and primal instincts, of the unconscious, which is a sort of bonded warehouse from which we clandestinely withdraw our stored thoughts and impressions. They lay to this unconscious mind of ours all phenomena that cannot otherwise be labeled, and ascribe such demonstrations of power as cannot thus be explained to trickery, to black silk threads and folding rods, to slates with false sides and a medium with chalk on his finger nail.

  In other words, they give us subjective mind but never objective mind. They take the mind and its reactions on itself and on the body. But what about objective mind? Does it make its only outward manifestations through speech and action? Can we ignore the effect of mind on mind, when there are present none of the ordinary media of communication? I think not.