Complete Works of William Hope Hodgson

by Hodgson, William Hope

  She shook her head, obstinately. It’s a confoundedly pretty little head, and I don’t mind whether she shakes it or just nods. It looks nice any way.

  “I’m sure they don’t know!” she asserted. “I was far, far too careful. I was, now, Captain; and I bet my last dollar they don’t even dream I’ve bought anything much. Not for all their secret agents and things. Oh, I know more of their ways than you think, Captain Gault! I’ve heard some of my relations talk; and they’re in the Treasury, and I know I’m up against something; but I guess I’ll get the thing through all right, if you’ll help me. You see, I’ve got it all plotted out, as clever as you like. I’ve got a proper plan. Will you help me, Captain? Oh, I don’t mean that you’re to risk things for nothing. I wouldn’t have that! I’ll pay you a percentage if you will help me.... A percentage on what I paid for it, will you, now?”

  “Well,” I said, after pausing a moment to think, “I might; but I don’t like mixing business and friendship. I’m not set on having a percentage.”

  “That’s the only way I’ll deal with you, Captain,” she told me. “How would five or ten percent suit you?”

  “Oh,” I said, smiling a little at her casualness, “I guess two and a half percent will suit me very well indeed.”

  “That’s settled, then,” she replied. “Now, here’s my plan. When I ordered the necklace, I stipulated that they should make me another — and exact facsimile of it, in Carn glass — you know that new glass stuff that looks as good as the best paste?”

  “Carn Prism glass, you mean?” I suggested.

  She nodded.

  “Yes, that’s it,” she said. “Well, now, I’ve the two here in my bag, and I can’t tell the difference, and wouldn’t be able to, Captain, only I’ve tied a bit of silk round the real one. Now this is my plan, you are to take and hide the real one for me — oh, I know you’re a wonderful man at getting things past the Customs! And I shall have the false one in my bag. Then, if they’ve got scent that I’ve bought a necklace, and search me, they’ll find the false one; and they’ll reckon they’ve been misinformed. Then, after I’m searched, you can give me back the real one as soon as things are safe, and I’ll give you a cheque for the five percent.”

  “Two and a half,” I corrected her.

  “Take me somewhere where I can give you the thing,” she went on, unheeding my correction, and I took her into my chart-room. Here she lifted the two necklaces out of her bag. They were certainly wonderful; and, though I could tell one from the other, after an examination, they would easily have deceived lots of men who think they know diamonds “at sight”; and certainly, apart, I should have been puzzled to say which was which, without making a test.

  “Very well,” I said. “I’ll hide it for you in a safe place.”

  And with that she handed me the real necklace — a regular chain of light — a marvellous thing it was. And I put it away; but refused to let her know how I should hide it.

  March 6. Evening.

  Women are as much like little girls, as men are like little boys, when it comes to jewellery. Mrs. Ernley coaxes me at least twice a day to let her see and play with her gorgeous necklace. And while she plays with it, sitting on the settee in my chart-room, I sit across on the locker and look at her. She’s a remarkably pretty woman!

  “Why do you stare so at me, Captain Gault?” she asked, this afternoon, looking across at me, with a touch of mischief.

  “I guess it’s for the same reason you suppose it is, dear lady,” I said, smiling a little at her pretence. “You’re good to look at, and you’re generally an interesting study for a man of my temperment. I’m wondering what next trait will come top in you — weakness or virtue. Frankly, I suspect weakness.”

  “Don’t you make any error, Captain; there’s no weakness about me!” she assured me, in her quaint way. “You can sure take that for a conviction!”

  “A conviction, dear lady, should be that which is produced by the action of Reason upon Experience!” I told her. “Now my experience of you tells me that you are quite averagely human — a good average mixture of strengths and weaknesses. Up to the present, you’ve shown me your strong side. Now, Reason, acting upon Experience, bids me to expect the other side of the shield.”

  “Captain Gault!” she said, “you’re going too deep for me. Now be sensible, and look at my shining beauty. Did you ever see the like now? I just had to buy it. I couldn’t say no. I’d like to see the woman that could. You’ll call that a weakness, I suppose!”

  “A weakness that I’m not going to quarrel with, seeing that it’s going to put twenty-five thousand dollars into my pocket,” I told her.

  She looked so startled, that I had to explain.

  “That’s my share, you know. Two and a half percent on a million dollars is twenty-five thousand.”

  “Oh!” she said, in rather a queer tone. “Yes, of course. I never thought to work it out.”

  I said nothing; but I could not help wondering whether it was here that the little weakness was going to show out. It was obvious that she’d had a shock, when I explained to her just how much my commission was going to cost her; though, goodness knows, it’s cheap enough, when one remembers how much the Customs would have rooked her for. But you never know how women are going to look at things of this kind. Women are extraordinary mixtures of big extravagances and petty economics.

  She was pretty silent for the rest of the time she was in the chart-room; and I rallied her mildly on her sudden soberness.

  “Dear lady,” I said, “if the size of my fee troubleth thee (forgive the tutoiement), why I’ll e’en hoodwink our common enemy for no more than the joy of the game and good friendship!”

  She protested so hotly that this could not be thought of, and had so much good colour in her cheeks, that I had very little doubt but that I had shot true. However, she made it very clear indeed that my fee was mine, and that her word was more truly her bond than if it had been signed and stamped and sealed and lawyered. And all the time she fiddled with the great million-dollar chain-of-light, running it through and through her hands.

  Then she handed it back to me, and went away to dress for dinner. And see the nature of woman! She had changed necklaces. She had left with me the imitation, as I knew in a minute, by testing it. And, that it was no accident, I had easy proof; for she had shifted the mark (the piece of silk) from the real necklace to the false.

  Truly, it takes some twisting to follow a woman! But there is, in a matter of money, a simple rule to aid a man, with a woman, if he would get at the truth of her motive. For, either her action is prompted by insane generosity or an even more insane meanness. And here it was not difficult to see what had governed her action. She had been shocked to see that out of a million dollars she had pledged herself to pay twenty-five thousand; and she had palmed me the false necklace, meaning to try to run the real one through herself, after all, and so avoid paying me my fee. She had lacked the moral courage to tell me so, honestly; but I suppose, once she is safe through the Customs with the real necklace, she will write me a polite little note, telling me that she decided to run the thing through herself. She may even ask me to keep the glass one as a souvenir; and, being a woman, she will not mean to be cynical. She will really wish me to accept it, in memory of her! Little wonder the simple, straightforward logical male feels at sea; for a woman obeys her impulses, while, all the time, he supposes her to be using her reasoning powers, which, by the way, are generally atrophied.

  And now I’m interested to follow her further manoeuvres!

  March 9.

  “For the last couple of days you’ve not asked to see your necklace,” I told her this morning, after I had invited her up on to the lower bridge. “And you’re getting tired of keeping the old sea-dog company! Confess now, aren’t you?”

  “No,” she answered. “I’m just denying myself. I’m showing you I can be stronger than you think.”

  “All women are liars,” I whispered solemnly t
o myself. “I suppose they can’t help it, any more than a man can stop being logical at some oneelse’s expense.”

  But I said nothing out loud; and for a minute or two we walked the length of the bridge, without saying a word.

  “Being strong isn’t just being strong in the way you find easy to be strong,” I said at last.

  “That sounds rather difficult,” she answered. “Try now if you can’t do something better than that, Captain, or I’ll miss what you want to tell me.”

  “I mean,” I said, “that if I set out, say, not to tell lies, just to prove how much of a moral athlete I was, it would not prove anything; for the simple reason that lying is not my particular poison. Of course, if I’ve got to, I do it in a finished kind of fashion; but I’ve no particular Ananias leanings. Given two ways out of a difficulty, I’d not necessarily choose the lie. Sumga?”

  “Sure I do,” she said; “but I don’t see what that’s to do with my refraining from coming to see my nec — you and my necklace, I mean. I wanted badly to see both of you. No, don’t get conceited! But I have kept away. Doesn’t that show strength, to keep away from doing things you’re wanting bad to do?”

  “Dear lady,” I answered. “God made Adam, and the Two of Them helped to make Eve — I guess that’s why the result’s been spot uncertain.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Adam should never have been let in on the job,” I told her. “A human is sure some machine. I guess he was too much of an amateur, and left out the governor—”

  “That’s rude!” she cracked out at me.

  “The truth’s generally a bit that way,” I said. “I’m not one to shut my eyes, when it’s someone else’s sins I’m looking at. I’ve a strong fellow-feeling for old Sir Almoth. I consider he justified his name. He’s some marksman.”

  “What are you talking? Words or sense?” she asked, honestly bewildered.

  “Both,” I told her. “If that old amateur, Adam, had only added the governor, Logic, you could have found out all that by yourself. I’ll make you a bet, and the amount shall be the sum that you were to have paid me for running your necklace through the Customs — twenty-five thousand dollars.”

  “What — what do you mean?” she asked, stammering slightly, and turning rather white looking. “What do you want to bet?”

  She stared me right in the eyes, closely, and with an intense, expectant attention.

  “That you will not manage to run your necklace through by yourself,” I said slowly, looking at her steadily. “I did not ask you to pay me any commission; and I halved what you offered me; but had I arranged to do it for a full five percent, it would have been money well spent, from your side of the bargain.”

  She was as white as a sheet now, and had to catch at the forrard bridge-rail, to help steady herself; but I did not spare her; for if I could crush the meanness in her, with the Hammer of Shame, I meant to do so.

  “Why had you not the moral strength to tell me the truth, when I worked out for you how much two and a half percent on a million dollars would come to?” I said. “Why did you not just say, simply, that you had not thought to pay so much? I should have relieved you of the bargain in a moment. What is more, I should have respected you for having the moral strength to tell me the truth; though I should have regretted the trait of meanness it would have disclosed — for you are a very wealthy woman, and you could well afford to pay me twice what I agreed to run your necklace through for. I did not, as I have said, ask you to pay me anything. I would have done it for nothing — just for friendliness’ sake; but when you turned it into a business proposition, I met you on a business footing. It was to save your pocket some six hundred thousand dollars; and for the risk I took of losing personal liberty, and my situation as Captain of this ship, I consented to accept twenty-five thousand dollars as payment.

  “And now you have shown not only meanness, but, a thousand times worse, you have lied to me, lie after lie; and with every lie you hurt me badly; for you blackened not only yourself in my eyes; but, at the same time, you blackened all of your sex; for a man judges women through the goodness or badness of the women he gets to know personally. I tell you frankly, Mrs. Ernley, I wish your necklace had been at the bottom of the sea before you had let it be a lever to further lower my general opinion of all that you stand for!”

  “Stop, stop!” she said, quite hoarsely. She had flushed once or twice as I set out my indictment; but now she stood shivering and deadly pale.

  “Help — help me down the steps,” she said, and I helped her down to the deck.

  “Now leave me,” she said, almost in a whisper, “I can manage. No, I will not have you with me. I have done wrong. But I cannot bear you near me. You — you have shamed me so!”

  I watched her go along the deck, and pass down one of the stairways, then I went back to the bridge. I do not regret what I have done. I am getting a sick fear that every woman I meet is going to turn out mean or treacherous or deceitful or worse. If I have helped one to cure herself, I’m satisfied.

  March 19th. Night.

  We docked this morning, and Mrs. Ernley has never come near me once of her own free will. And there has been a deuce of a scene with the Customs.

  I did not know, at first, whether to say anything about the necklace or not; but finally decided that I had better show it, and say it had been left in my charge by a Mrs. Ernley, one of the First Class passengers. If it served to bluff the Customs into supposing that this was the necklace she had bought, and that she had been swindled into paying real money for a Carn Prism sham set of sparklers, it might serve to lull them from making a drastic search of her. And, goodness knows, I’m willing enough to do the little woman a good turn if I can.

  When the Chief of the searchers came along to the chart-house, he asked me a leading question, straight off, which made it sufficiently plain that he knew a good deal about Mrs. Ernley’s Paris transaction.

  “Captain,” he said, “I hear from one of our people, who’s been abroad, that you and Mrs. Ernley have got pretty friendly on the trip across, and I want you to be a real friend to her; and do your best to persuade her to show up her necklace, like a wise woman. We know a good deal about it, Captain; so, for the Lord’s sake, don’t try to do any bluffing, and don’t encourage her to, either. It’ll mean serious trouble if you do. We know it’s aboard this ship; and we mean to have it. It’s six hundred thousand dollars of duty we’re out for, and we’re going to have it; but she swears she has no necklace, and my women searchers haven’t been able to locate it yet. Now, will you, Captain, wise her up, that she can’t put a thing like this over us; and I guess we’ll let her down easy for false declaration.”

  “Mister,” I said, “perhaps this is what you are looking for;” and I went across and hauled out the sham necklace from a drawer. “She asked me to take care of this for her.”

  He gave out a little shout of relief; and snatched at the thing. He ran to the north window, and held it up to the light, then he pulled a magnificent-looking brilliant from his vest pocket, set in the end of a little steel bar, and he began to compare the “stones” with it.

  He let out a sudden exclamation; and whipped an eye-microscope from his pocket. He fitted this to his eye, then turned up the other end of the steel bar, and I saw that there was a “tester” set in it. He scratched carefully with this at one of the “stones” in the necklace. Then he gave a shout of disgust, and turned and hove the necklace on to my chart table.

  “Careful with the thing, man!” I said. “Anyone would suppose you were blasé!”

  “Careful!” he said. “My oath, Captain, drop it! I don’t know whether she’s put the blinkers on you too. She may have; though I’m doubting it. But that’s not worth more than the platinum setting that mounts the stuff. It’s one of those new ‘prism’ fakes. Though, I’ll own I never saw such a good one. Now, Captain, we’re going to get the real goods; so don’t get up against us. Help us, and we’ll make things as p
leasant as we can; but butt in on us, and you’ll get twisted; and the lady’ll get prison; for Judge H — gave it out in court last week that he’s going to teach some of these dollar-dames they can’t monkey with the U.S.A. laws, and get off the way some of them are doing.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, “to make things all right. The lady certainly handed me this necklace as the real thing.”

  I picked it up, and took it across to its drawer; as I did so, there was a knock on the chart-room door, and a Customs officer pushed his head in.

  “We’ve got it, Sir!” he said, in an excited voice. “Miss Synks found it in the ventilator of the lady’s cabin. Will you come, Sir? She’s making a rumpus down there. Perhaps the Captain had better come too. Some of the passengers seem inclined to make trouble for our people.”

  The head searcher was already half out through the doorway; but he beckoned to me to follow.

  When we got down into the main saloon, off which Mrs. Ernley’s cabin opened, I found there was certainly some riot going on!

  There was a crowd of First Class passengers round her cabin. The door was open, and over the heads of the passengers I could see Mrs. Ernley and a young, smartly-dressed woman. Mrs. Ernley looked to be dressed ready for going ashore. She was standing in the middle of her cabin, and appeared to be holding something frantically to her breast, which the other woman was trying to take from her.

  At this moment, one of the Customs officials entered the cabin, and went to assist the woman searcher in taking from Mrs. Ernley what she held so crazily to her. Mrs. Ernley gave out a scream, and at that there was an ugly growl of sound from the passengers round the doorway.

  “Manhandling a lady like that!” I heard one man expostulating, above the sudden murmur of voices.