The Steel Box

by Max Brand

  “And what’s that, Bud?”

  “What did you leave down in the pawnshop?” asked Bud.

  Lang stared at Sherry.

  “You’re a pair of ’em, are you?” he asked.

  “From the Princess Marie? Sure we are,” said Bud.

  “This gets richer and richer,” said Sherry. “You’re off the Princess Marie, then?”

  “We are.”

  “You sailed under Captain Wilton.”

  “Yes, he was the skipper.”

  “And no one sent you here?”

  “Nobody. Who would? Lord knows we hunted far enough before we spotted the place where Wilton lived, and we come along too late to find him alive . . . the sneakin’ low hound. That’s what he was, a deadbeat and a hound.”

  That speech was from the heart; there was no doubt of that. And the face of Jerry, as he listened, wrinkled in savage disgust and sympathy.

  “You sent yourselves here?” asked Lang, beginning to take charge of the conversation.

  “We done just that. It took time. We was clean broke. Working a short job, here and there, picking up what coin we could, we’ve had a long beat to windward, but just when we’d weathered the point . . . here comes the big boy with his pair of gats and sticks us up on a reef again. It’s tough, I say.”

  “It’s tough,” agreed Lang sadly. “You came for what’s your own?”

  “I came for that.”

  “And what goes to each of you?”

  “Five of the big boys, like you pawned . . . eleven of the middle-size ones, and a bunch of the little fellers,” said Bud with instant readiness.

  Sherry glanced at Lang, and Lang returned the look with interest.

  “What would that come to in cash?”

  “About seven thousand iron men,” said Bud. He sighed and rolled up his eyes at the thought of such a fortune.

  “How many were aboard the Princess Marie?” asked Lang.

  “Outside of the chief engineer and Capper . . . he was actin’ first . . . and the skipper, there was seventeen of us.”

  “Seventeen times seven makes about a hundred and twenty thousand dollars.”

  “Or more, according to how good a market we could find,” insisted Bud. “Look here, you and big boy. We got no grudge ag’in’ you. You got the stuff. All right. Let it go at that. All we ask for is our right share. We done our work, didn’t we? Look at me. It was me that was the last man aboard the boats. By rights, I’d ought to have somethin’ extra. Well, I ain’t yellin’ for that. Only, we want our square cut. Nothin’ more. Is that fair?”

  “What made you think that we had the pearls?” asked Sherry.

  “Would a pair of ‘punchers off of the range be sporting pearls like that?” asked Bud bluntly.

  “Sit down, old son,” invited Lang. “We want to hear your yarn about the Princess Marie.”

  “Sure,” said Bud willingly. “I’ll tell you. Not as if you didn’t know.”

  XXV

  The account of Bud was straightforward enough, though filled with a good many inconsequential details such as a sailor cannot free his tongue of. He told how he and his companion, Jerry, had shipped on board the Princess Marie in San Francisco harbor.

  “She was a fine-lookin’ hooker,” said Bud. “I never ask no better. A good fo’c’s’le . . . roomy enough, and airy enough to keep your duds dry in wet weather, buckin’ head winds. We never had no kick, to speak of. The skipper was a gent that kept aft and let the men keep forward. We wasn’t undermanned. Overmanned, if anything. The chuck was prime. The watches was regular. Only Capper was a brute. He sailed second, but the first was sick most of the way and he died before the voyage was over. Then Capper, he got the run of the ship, pretty much.”

  At Hong Kong they discharged their cargo and ran down to Singapore looking for another. A week was wasted, sweltering at Singapore, before they went on to Colombo. Here and at Madras, they picked up a cargo and started for Kuching in Sarawak, Borneo, where they discharged part of it and took on some more.

  And here it was, apparently, that the captain received his grand idea. Manila was given out as the next port of call, and they bucked up the north Borneo coast into the teeth of a heavy gale. Instead of holding on their course north of Palawan, and straight for Manila harbor, the Princess Marie now was turned through Balabac Strait and went humming south for the Sulu Islands.

  That same day, a number of boxes, small but heavy, which had been taken aboard at Kuching, were brought up on the deck and opened. They proved to contain fine new rifles and two machine-guns.

  Then Capper went forward and exposed the boxes and their contents to the whole assembled crew. He made a speech in which he pointed out that he had been for years about the Sulu Islands; he knew the people and he knew the pearl fisheries, and of one in particular he had heard that it was ripe for investigation. Great stacks of oysters were now in the sheds; the place was manned by not more than three or four whites, and the natives would never stand up to gunfire. For that matter, it was doubtful if there were more than half a dozen rifles at that station.

  The proposal of Capper was simple and to the point. He suggested that they come up toward the fishery, anchor behind a masking point of land, and, under cover of the dark, go in with two of the boats and raid the place. They could capture it at the first rush, shooting into the air. After that, twenty-four hours of brisk work would place in their hands the cream of the spoils of the fishery.

  The crew agreed readily. It was Capper himself who had selected the men in San Francisco, and he had taken aboard a choice gang of hardy fellows, who would stop at nothing. They were offered, now, one half of the total haul; the other half was to be split up among the officers, the share of Wilton, as skipper, being a quarter of the whole—not too large a portion, taking into account the fact that he was handling the ship and assuming the responsibility.

  The first mate, still very ill, now gathered strength enough to come on deck, and there before the men he made a hot appeal to them all to pay no more attention to the captain and the second, so far as this raid was concerned, but to remember that these waters were alive with revenue cutters, and that there was a very small chance that they could ever get away with their loot in the face of wireless and telegraphs, which would soon give out the alarm.

  However, the captain ordered the mate into his cabin, and none of the crew was shaken in their resolve. They looked upon this expedition more or less as the buccaneers looked in the old days upon an incursion into the Spanish Main. It was partly piracy, of course, but chiefly it was a grand old lark.

  A note of seriousness was struck the very next morning, when it was discovered that the mate was no longer aboard. Capper stirred about among the men and pointed out that the mate had been sick for a long time, that his mind had been upset by the plan to raid the pearl fishery, and that he must have stepped to the rail and dived over during the night.

  However, there was a dark feeling among the men that Capper must have taken the affair in hand and tapped the mate upon the head, and then passed him over the rail. There was no suspicion attached to the skipper on this occasion.

  However, it was noticeable that Capper, from this day forward, had almost as much control over the ship as the skipper himself. He gave orders. He even argued with Wilton before the men, and the captain put up with it, as though perforce.

  In the meantime, they were logging south in the most leisurely fashion, the engines barely turning over enough to give steerage way, and the ship rolling heavily and sluggishly while the crew hastily worked a coat of paint over her. Her color was completely altered, the bands upon the smokestack were changed, and the big letters of the name on the stern were painted out and replaced by The Dove, of Bristol.

  This name, for a ship that was about to make such a predatory swoop, amused the men highly. At length, the painting was completed, and very late in the afternoon of the next day they ducked inside a coral reef and came to anchor in smooth water to the south
of a jutting point of land.

  With the darkness, the two boats put off. Only three men were left on board, under command of the boatswain. The rest, sixteen in number, with the captain in the sheets of the larger boat, rowed in around the point, with muffled oars. In the bow of each boat there was a machine-gun. Capper was handling one. Bud himself had the other. In case the station developed unexpected strength, the machine-guns were to cover a retreat.

  The landing was perfectly simple. That night the sea was almost totally quiet, and with silent oars they pushed on until the prows quenched their speed in the white sand that gleamed faintly under the tropic stars.

  They made straight to the station, unchallenged, and then charged in with devilish yells, shooting into the air, as Capper had suggested. Not a hand was raised to oppose them.

  By midday of the following day, they had finished their work and were lugging at the oars on the way back to the ship that, having been flagged in the meantime, had worked up steam. And yet they made no great haste away from the island.

  As they were tuning to come out through the gap between the reefs, a few riflemen came down to the shore and, hiding behind rocks, opened a desultory fire—not as though hoping to delay the ship, but simply in blind anger, to inflict some loss upon her. However, a few bursts of fire from the machine-guns quieted the marksmen ashore, and The Dove, of Bristol drew slowly away.

  However, they had barely made offing from the island when smoke appeared on the horizon and came up toward them, hand over hand. At full speed, The Dove, of Bristol rushed north. The other vessel instantly changed course. There was no doubt that she was pursuing.

  Full speed for the Princess Marie made little difference. The look-out presently descried a long, low hull beneath the smoke cloud of the other ship; it was a government cutter slicing the water like a knife and literally walking over them.

  Capper, pale, and stern, and despairing, stood on the bridge and cursed with helpless rage. The captain retired to the chart house; everyone thought that he had funked the issue.

  But presently he altered the course due east.

  The pursuer was hull up, by this time. It was late afternoon. The sun hung not twice its own breadth above the horizon; and then a mutter ran through the crew that they were heading straight for a nest of reefs through which no ship in the world could possibly find a passage.

  This murmur grew. The boatswain was made spokesman to go aft and complain to the skipper about the madness of the present course. At which Wilton came out and made a quiet speech. He pointed out that they were totally lost. They could not escape from the government boat by holding straight on their course. Darkness was about to drop over them, but shortly after, the searchlight of the pursuer would pick them out, and soon a shell would whistle over their heads and thus force them to heave to.

  He proposed to head the ship straight on toward the reefs, and, as soon as the darkness came, he would open the cocks of the ship, and as she sank, steaming ahead, the boats would be manned. True, the reefs could not be passed by a large ship, but it would be child’s play to get through them with the boats.

  The crew, astonished by this bold suggestion, cheered their skipper. And all was done as he had conceived the scheme. Darkness dropped. The searchlight of the cutter began to fumble vaguely at the blackness, the Princess Marie settled low in the water, and when her decks were almost awash, the boats were shoved off and the oars swept them away. They had not gone a hundred yards, when the Princess Marie put her stern in the air and dived from view.

  That same night a tremendous storm blew up; they landed to escape the force of a hurricane out of the north. When it had blown over the next morning, they pursued their way and finally made a port, with a sad story of how the hurricane had overwhelmed the Princess Marie on a sunken reef, on which she had broken up as the boats were taken off in the falling of the wind.

  But now, while they waited for the coming of the ship that would take them back to civilization, the captain, with the brown satchel in which the pearls were stowed by him, suddenly disappeared from the town.

  It was suggested that he might have headed for the far side of the island. A searching party failed to bring him in, and so the fruit of the pearl raid was gathered into his own hands.

  The lips of the sailors were sealed. They could not very well confess that they had been robbers before they were robbed, but the prize that had been stolen from them was sufficiently large to make every one of them desire to take vengeance into his own hands. Others, no doubt, would follow the trail of Bud, and Jerry, and Capper, to Clayrock, and trouble was bound to continue until the men had got their dues.

  Such was the strange story of the sinking of the Princess Marie.

  “Wilton’s gone,” said Bud in conclusion. “He had a brain, but he was a crook. And finally he got his. And now, big boy, we want to know where we come in?”

  XXVI

  It was necessary for the two confederates to stare at one another again, as in consultation, after which Sherry said: “This fellow is square, Lang.”

  “He’s square,” admitted Pete Lang, “but I don’t see what difference that makes.”

  “I’m going to come clean to him,” said Sherry. He said suddenly to the sailors: “You fellows can hear what I have to say. I don’t think you’ll believe me, but here goes. When Lang, here, found that Wilton lay dead in the grass, he discovered a handful of pearls in Wilton’s pocket. There were five big pearls, and eleven of a middle size, and a number . . . seventeen, I think . . . of little ones. He took those pearls and didn’t turn them in to the sheriff. For a good many reasons.”

  “You fool!” barked Lang at his friend. “Do you realize what you’re saying?”

  “I know what I’m saying,” said Sherry. “But what’s the use? Are we going to murder these fellows? I think not. And as long as they’re alive they’ll keep on troubling us . . . they and the rest of the crew behind them. Let me talk straight out.”

  “You see what you’ve got to say?” muttered Lang.

  “I see, and I’ll say it,” retorted Sherry.

  He continued to the two sailors, who now were as keen as lynxes.

  “I’m not going into the thing any more in detail. I’m simply going to ask you to believe that we weren’t stealing for ourselves. We were . . .”

  “Hold on,” said Lang. “I dunno that I shouldn’t have my say about that. Why haven’t we as good a right to the stuff as any other man?”

  “Hey!” put in Jerry, his voice ringing with indignation. “Did you go to all the trouble of swipin’ ’em? Did you have a ship sink under you? Did you have a typhoon blow up over your heads? Did you go wanderin’ around broke for months, tryin’ to locate the snake that had double-crossed you? And here you come up sayin’ that you got an equal right to them pearls. Is that logic, partners?” He spread out his lank hands. Jerry was wounded to the heart.

  “You swiped ’em,” said Lang brutally. “I swipe ’em back. What you gotta say about that? Nobody owns ’em but the fishery. That’s the straight of it. Where do you come in? If you steal a horse, does that make you have any claim to the horse . . . or to a rope to stretch your neck with? How’s that for logic?”

  It was such convincing logic that Jerry sat back and bit his lips nervously. His eyes worked this way and that, but, troubled though his soul might be, he could not find for it any relief in words.

  Both the sailors sat bolt upright and stared at the pair—silenced but deeply hostile.

  “Logic’s not what we want here,” said Sherry. “We want friendliness. And here’s where I bid for it.”

  “If you didn’t swipe the stuff,” asked Bud angrily, “how come that you sold one of the pearls and shoved the money in your wallet?”

  “Because we had to have something to live on while we’re working on this case.”

  “And what call have you got to work on this here case?”

  “To prove that Beatrice Wilton is not guilty,” said Sherry
with much earnestness.

  “Say, Bud,” said Jerry in some disgust, “ain’t you heard nothin’? Don’t you know nothin’?”

  With this, he nodded at Sherry in a good deal of friendly sympathy, and the big man flushed darkly. His secret was known, then. Well, for that matter he had seen a thousand hints in the newspapers. He was “the knight of Beatrice Wilton,” among other titles showered upon him.

  “But we couldn’t draw down pay for sitting still, could we?” asked Sherry. “You understand, boys, that we had to live if we were to help. So we soaked one of the pearls. I’ll do more. I’ll show you the rest of the ones that we have.”

  “Sure,” said lean-and-lank Jerry.

  “It ain’t necessary,” put in Bud with dignity. “I can tell when a gent is comin’ clean with me. I’ll take your word, big boy.”

  “I don’t see where all of this rigmarole is heading for!” exclaimed Lang. “It beats me what you got in your head, Tiny.”

  “Of course it does,” said Sherry with a superior air. “I’ll let you in on it now. Do you believe that these fellows were a part of the crew of the Princess Marie?”

  “Aw, I believe that, well enough.”

  “Then they’d know the rest of the crew?”

  “I suppose so.”

  “Then they can tell us . . . and the sheriff . . . something about Fennel, can’t they?”

  “Ah, now I foller your drift. But I aim to say that Fennel never was a sailor at all.”

  “You’re wrong, and you have to be wrong,” insisted Sherry. “Fennel was one of the crew . . . he wanted his split of the pearls . . . he hated Wilton so badly that, when he was close to him, he didn’t wait for the split, but murdered him.”

  “That would be nacheral enough,” declared Bud. “But tell me about this Fennel. I’ve read something about him. Was there any Fennel in the crew, Jerry?”

  “There was not, that I knowed of. But we went by front monikers, not the family names. How did he look?”

  “Long and thin. A good, big head covered with ratty, ragged-looking hair. Unshaved most of the time. Very fond of his liquor. Clever, too. A sneaking sort of cleverness, I’d say.”