Mary, peering over Nina’s shoulders, saw that the door of the strong-room was open. Blood splotches were everywhere, and Purser Jessen was loudly calling for the ship’s surgeon. The doctor and the Captain arrived together.
“What’s happened here, Mr. Jessen?” demanded McNaughton, gazing dumbfounded at the bloody, unconscious passenger, the open door of the strong-room, the splintered woodwork.
“Blamed if I know, sir!” gasped his subordinate. “I was asleep when I heard a crash in the companion-way. There was a shot, then another crash. Then this man came through the door of my cabin, tearing away the hinges.”
The Captain turned to his first officer.
“Put a guard before every stateroom on the steamer,” he commanded. “Let no one leave a cabin until I give permission. Move this crowd back, each to his stateroom,”—motioning to the half-dressed passengers who were pouring out of a dozen doors. “Doctor, take the injured man into Mr. Jessen’s cabin and attend him, while I find out what’s happening on this ship.”
As the passageway was cleared, the Captain picked up from the floor the padlock that had hung on the treasure-room door. It had been opened without leaving even a mutilating scratch.
“The strong-room padlock unlocked!” he gasped.
“Look,” cried Jessen, pointing to an object that lay beneath a fragment of splintered wood. The Captain picked it up, turning it over and over in his hand. It was the exact duplicate of the strong-room lock. Near by lay a revolver with blood-stained handle.
“Follow me, Mr. Jessen,” McNaughton commanded.
Together they entered the strong-room, piled high with the treasure-chests, and studied it—walls, ceiling and floor. Nothing appeared amiss. One by one they examined the seals on the chests. All were intact.
“They must have been interrupted by Sir Arthur as they were entering,” suggested the purser.
“Not as they were entering, but after they had entered,” corrected the Captain, sniffing the air.
“Why, sir?” inquired Jessen.
“Cigarette smoke inside,” explained McNaughton, still sniffing. “They’ve broken into the Humboldt’s strong-room, though it can’t be done. And they even dared to keep their cigarettes going while they did it! Thank heavens, Cumberland heard them, for it is evident he must have interrupted the thieves or they would not have struck him down.”
McNaughton pushed his way into Jessen’s room, where the surgeon was dressing an ugly wound over Cumberland’s temple, with the secretary aiding him.
“Is he badly hurt, Doctor?” McNaughton demanded.
The surgeon shook his head doubtfully.
“I can’t say yet,” he replied. “He took a hard blow. He may come around all right shortly, and he may have a fractured skull—which, from a blow just there, might mean cerebral hemorrhage.”
“He may be unconscious for hours?”
“Or even days,” said the doctor.
“What do you know of this?” McNaughton asked, turning to McDonald.
“I was asleep,” the little Scotchman answered readily. “I heard nothing till a shot awakened me. When I got the lights on and the door open, Sir Arthur was in the purser’s arms, wounded. I didn’t hear him leave our cabin, and I don’t know who struck him, though it is plain he interrupted a robbery of your strong-room.”
One by one the Captain visited the nearby cabins, questioning the passengers. None gave information of real value. All had been awakened by the noise in the companionway or the subsequent shot. As they rushed from their staterooms, they had seen the purser raising the injured man within the wrecked cabin door. No one else was in sight except the injured man’s secretary, who appeared from his cabin after the trouble was over.
McNaughton came finally to the stateroom of Miss Francisco and Mary.
“What did you ladies see of this?” he inquired courteously. “You first, Miss Whitney.”
“I saw more than she did, Captain, for I was first at the door,” interrupted Miss Francisco quickly. “I was awake when I heard the crash in the passageway. Then there was a shot. I jumped from my berth and turned on our lights. I heard a stateroom door near ours bang shut as I threw open our door. I saw the purser with the injured man in his arms. I’m afraid that’s all I know. Is poor Sir Arthur badly hurt, Captain?” She spoke with such well-feigned solicitude that Mary, remembering the blow struck in the dark, wondered at the perfection of her duplicity.
“Was the door you heard close to the left or the right of yours?” asked the Captain, seizing the one important bit of information in the girl’s story.
“I don’t know. I only know it was very close—almost adjoining ours, I judge.”
“Can you add anything to what Miss Francisco has told?” asked McNaughton of Mary.
“I heard the shot and the noise; and I think, as Miss Francisco told you, that I heard a cabin door near by close immediately afterward,” Mary said, following the other’s story with exactness. “That’s all I can tell you.”
As she heard Nina Francisco’s glib invention, Mary, knowing that Blackie’s stateroom was far away and around the turn in the companionway, decided instantly to corroborate it. Wittingly or unwittingly, that untruth furnished an alibi for the man whose safety mattered to her. Why Nina Francisco had struck the blow that ended the battle, Mary could not guess. Why she now imperiled herself by a bold fabrication was an even deeper mystery.
“Thank you, ladies. I’ve work before me that can’t wait,” said the Captain, bowing himself out hurriedly.
As the door closed behind him, Nina and Mary looked at each other with silent lips but questioning eyes.
“Well, that’s over, thank goodness!” said Nina at last, sighing with relief.
She turned to the dressing-table and dabbed her powder-puff over her nose.
“You’re not a bad sport, after all, Miss Whitney,” she continued after a long silence. “I beg your pardon for what I’ve been thinking about you.”
“And you’re—I don’t know what,” said Mary.
“Just a woman, my dear,” said Nina with softened voice. “A woman willing to dare anything for the man for whom she can’t help caring.”
They smiled across the table at each other, and though neither asked a question or offered further explanation, the strange events of the night dissipated, for the first time, the hostility that had divided them.
Morning found Captain McNaughton sitting in his cabin, perplexed furrows wrinkling his brow. The steamer had been searched from hurricane-deck to keel, without result. Not the slightest additional wisp of evidence came to light to justify even suspicion. The duplicate padlock, the revolver with one empty chamber, and the injured passengers were the only bits of evidence left by those who had attempted the daring raid on the treasure.
Investigation showed the electric-alarm wires leading into the strong-room had been cut, and the wainscoting that hid them replaced without leaving even a betraying speck of sawdust. The lead offered by the closing cabin door heard by Miss Francisco proved absolutely barren, for the most minute search of all cabins on the treasure-room companion-way revealed absolutely nothing. The duplicate padlock was a duplicate in outward appearance only. It could be opened with the simplest of master-keys.
At daylight a seaman found a pocket flash-lamp rolling on the upper deck with the movement of the ship. It might have been tossed from any one of a dozen cabins. McNaughton locked it away with the padlock and the gun and ascended to the wireless room, where he dictated a message to his company managers telling all that had happened. Until Sir Arthur Cumberland recovered his senses—the injured man’s condition was unchanged—the Captain had done all that seemed possible. One thought comforted him. The treasure-room gold had not been disturbed, for in the search of the Humboldt which had included the personal baggage of
passengers, officers and members of the crew, no possible hiding-place for great yellow bars two feet long and weighing thirty or more pounds each had been overlooked. In addition, the chest seals were all intact.
The Humboldt was backing slowly from the dock at Victoria—a special stop necessitated by a shipment of British Columbian freight—and had begun the short run down the Sound to Seattle when Mary received a message that brought color back to her white face. A man passed behind her as she sat in the deck-chair and deftly dropped a slip of paper into her lap. Turning as she hid the note with her hand, she recognized Blackie’s pal, K. Y. Lewes. Concealing the note in her book, she read at a glance its five words—words that lifted the load that burdened her heart.
“Follow original instructions. Don’t worry,” was written; and the writing was Boston Blackie’s.
Somehow—inconceivably but surely—she knew he had solved the problem of escape at the Seattle wharf. She sprang to her feet, and unutterably content, tossed the now twisted bit of paper overboard and watched it float away on the waters of the Sound as she gayly joined the throng on the decks.
During that last day at sea Purser Dave Jessen watched in vain for an opportunity to speak alone with “Miss Marie Whitney,” to tell her he loved her, to ask her to be his wife. Though he admitted to himself his presumption in hoping that she might feel for him even a tithe of the great tenderness in his heart, he did hope, for he was a man and in love.
But never for an instant during the day was Miss Whitney alone. Among the score of vacation trippers who boarded the Humboldt at Victoria for the return trip to Seattle was a party of five—four modestly dressed girls chaperoned by an agreeable, white haired mother—one of whom proved to be a former schoolmate of Miss Whitney’s. All day the newfound friends monopolized her attention, and it was not until the nearing lights of Seattle threw their glare against the southern sky that Jessen found the opportunity he sought.
He was distributing the passengers’ baggage, which had been intrusted to the safety of the strong-room—baggage that was removed from the stronghold under the personal supervision of Captain McNaughton. Accompanied by subordinates carrying her trunk, he knocked at the girl’s door and found her alone. The men deposited the trunk and departed, but Jessen lingered in the open doorway. Mary looked up interrogatively.
“Marie,” he said, stepping to her side with a longing, half-fearful look into the face upturned to his. “I love you. Forgive me, only a poor sailor, for daring to tell you, for even daring to hope you would listen. But because I love you, and you are leaving the Humboldt tonight, I must speak now. Marie, can you—will you—be my wife?”
There was simple sincerity and great love in the words, the voice and the frank eyes that looked into hers as she slowly shook her head.
“Don’t, Mr. Jessen,” Mary said gently. “I like you; I admire you; but what you ask—it can’t be.”
The bronzed face paled under its tan, and the blue eyes contracted under the numbing pain of a precious hope suddenly uprooted.
“There is someone else?” he asked unsteadily.
“Yes,” said Mary, truly sorry she must so wound the love offered her. “Forgive me, Mr. Jessen,” she added, laying a small hand on the man’s arm.
Jessen caught and pressed it and hurried with averted face from the cabin as women’s voices sounded in the companionway.
CHAPTER XV
MISSING GOLD
With a final whining of taut hawsers and a gentle jolt against the long Seattle pier the Humboldt had reached the end of her voyage. The gangplank was raised to the deck, and the eager passengers thronged there shoulder to shoulder, pressed backward to let a stretcher precede them to the dock. By the stretcher walked McDonald, grave and silent. On it lay Sir Arthur Cumberland, his head swathed in bandages. He had neither spoken nor given a sign of returning consciousness since the night of the attempted robbery. On the wharf an ambulance summoned by wireless waited to hurry him to a hospital.
The injured man was carried down the gangplank and along the passageway to the Custom House shed. Just inside the entrance four men—two on each side of the doorway—were waiting, keen-eyed and vigilant. Mary, following the stretcher in the van of the crowding passengers, recognized them at once as police detectives. With an apprehensive glance she looked back over her shoulder. Near by, pushing forward, and chatting together as imperturbably as though danger were miles removed from them instead of at arm’s length, came Boston Blackie and Lewes.
Captain McNaughton, with President Clancy of the steamship company beside him, was in the Custom House shed. The stretcher was lowered to one of the long tables, and the passengers grouped themselves, silent and expectant about the locked shed as seamen carried in the Englishman’s baggage, to which the need of hurrying him to a hospital had given priority of inspection.
“That’s Cumberland, who saved our gold,” the Captain said in a low voice to the steamship official. “‘He has an ugly wound and is still unconscious.”
“Too bad, but the men who wounded him are enjoying their final moment of freedom,” Clancy growled. “The Chief has four men here who will know these crooks the moment they lay eyes on them. They must be bold fellows. The mythical detectives I invented for you by wireless didn’t appear even to make them nervous, did they?”
“Scarcely, as they broke into the strong-room notwithstanding the fact that I made it my business to let the news that we had been warned become common forecastle and saloon gossip,” the Captain replied sourly.
The inspector ran through the Cumberland trunks and grips rapidly as McDonald unlocked them. The chief inspector watched attentively. The detectives grouped themselves by the side of the litter. Inspection revealing nothing but the ordinary equipment of traveling gentlemen, McDonald was eager to be off to the hospital.
“Come on, my men,” he said to the stretcher bearers. “Where’s the ambulance? I’ll send down later for our baggage.”
“Wait,” said the chief inspector curtly.
Selecting two of the Cumberland trunks, he emptied them. Then he drew a measuring stick from his pocket and took the outside dimensions of the trunks.
As he comprehended what was being done, the secretary’s jaw sagged, and with a furtive glance over his shoulder he began to edge toward a window. At his first movement one of the detectives laid a hand on his arm.
“Don’t be in a hurry,” said the officer. “Anyway, that window’s locked.”
The inspector jotted down the outside measurements of the trunks, then applied his rule to the inner surfaces.
“Just as I thought,” he remarked. “These trunks have double bottoms with a secret compartment between. Give me that hand-ax.”
McDonald’s face grew ghastly.
A single blow shattered the false bottom, and the inspector dragged it from its place. In the compartment now revealed lay a tiny oxy-acetylene torch—nothing else.
“Queer baggage for a titled English gentleman,” said the chief inspector with a glance toward the detective chief.
“Titled English fiddlesticks,” cried that officer, stepping to the stretcher and raising the bandages that concealed the injured man’s face. Then he called to his comrades with a chuckle of satisfaction.
“Look, boys,” he called. “This man calls himself Sir Arthur Cumberland, does he? Well, I’ve another name for him. I call him ‘English Bill’ Tat-man, and here’s how he looks in the clothes he’s used to—stripes.”
He drew out the photograph of a convict and displayed it to the Captain. Except that it lacked the mustache, it was a perfect likeness of Sir Arthur.
“And you,” continued the detective with a grimace toward the secretary, “I’ve got your ‘mug’ here too, Mr. McTavish, alias Mac the Scot. A fine pair, you two, parading around the country wearing handles to your names in place of priso
n numbers.
“It ain’t true,” shouted the unmasked McDonald. “We’ll sue—”
“Stow it, Scotty. The blawsted bobbies ’ave us right as a bloomin’ whistle,” interrupted a voice from the stretcher as Sir Arthur Cumberland sat up and staggered weakly to his feet. “I’m fit for the ’ospital right enough, but I’d ’ave been missin’ with my buddy when the hambulance got there if you bobbies ’ad given me ’alf a chance,” he remarked ruefully but with perfect good humor.
“Let’s go,” he said, holding out his wrists for the handcuffs with the easy nonchalance of a man well used to such situations.
“My ’ead’s uncommon sore where that ship chappie sliced it with ’is gun. Cheer up, Scotty, we’ve less-than nothin’ to worry over, my lad,” he added comfortingly to his companion, and dropping naturally into the broadest of cockney accents. “The bobbies cawn’t put us under for bein’ willin’ to turn a neat trick—and they cawn’t say their bloomin’ gold ain’t just where they put it in the little iron tubs. We didn’t lay ’ands near it.”
“Cumberland and McDonald!” ejaculated Captain McNaughton. “I never would have guessed it.”
Then as a new thought came to him:
“But if they’re the crooks we have been looking for, where’s the man who stepped in and saved our treasure?”
“It’s all a Chinese puzzle,” declared the manager. “Just one thing interests me now; I want to see those chests safely into the bank and I want to see the gold that should be in them. Accompany us to the bank, officers, and bring your prisoners.”
While the customs men went through the baggage of the remaining passengers with unusual care, and the crowd in the shed gradually vanished in search of hotels and late suppers, bank messengers supported by armed guards loaded the treasure-chests into the waiting auto truck, and with Captain McNaughton, the steamship official, the detectives with their prisoners and a dozen newspaper men following in autos, the Humboldt’s gold was hauled to the bank vaults for which it was destined.
The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales Page 56