The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales

by Maurice Leblanc

  “Yes, yes! What then?”

  “I suppose the best way’s to put it to you straight…”

  “I warn you, you’ll gain nothing if you don’t.”

  “Then…to begin at the beginning… I’ve known Whit Monk a good long time. Years I’ve known him. We’ve sailed together off and on ever since we took to the sea; we’ve gone through some nasty scrapes together, and done things that don’t bear telling, and always shared the thick and the thin of everything. Before this, if anybody had ever told me Whit Monk would do a pal dirt, I’d’ve punched his head and thought no more about it. But now…”

  The mutter faltered. Lanyard preserved a sympathetic silence—a silence, at least, which he hoped would pass as sympathetic. In reality, he was struggling to suppress any betrayal of the exultation that was beginning to take hold of him. Premature this might prove to be, but it seemed impossible to misunderstand the emotion under which the chief engineer was labouring or to underestimate its potential value to Lanyard. Surely it would seem that his faith in his star had been well-placed: was it not now—or all signs failed—delivering into his hand the forged tool he had so desperately needed, for which he had so earnestly prayed?

  A heavy sigh issued upon the stillness, freighted with a deep and desolating melancholy. For, it appeared, like all cynics, Mr. Mussey was a sentimentalist at heart. And in the darkness that disembodied voice took up its tale anew.

  “I don’t have to tell you what’s going on between Whit and that lot he’s so thick with nowadays. You know, or you wouldn’t be here.”

  “Isn’t that conclusion what you Americans would call a little previous?”

  “Previous?” The mutter took a moment to con the full significance of that adjective. “No: I wouldn’t call it that. You see, on a voyage like this—well, talk goes on, things get about, things are said aloud that shouldn’t be and get overheard and passed along; and the man who sits back and listens and sifts what he hears is pretty likely to get a tolerably good line on what’s what. Of course there’s never been any secret about what the owner means to do with all this wine he’s shipped. We all know we’re playing a risky game, but we’re for the owner—he isn’t a bad sort, when you get to know him—and we’ll go through with it and take what’s coming to us win or lose. Partly, of course, because it’ll mean something handsome for every man if we make it without getting caught. But if you want to know what I think… I’ll tell you something…”

  “But truly I am all attention.”

  “I think Whit Monk and Phinuit and mam’selle have framed the owner between them.”

  “Can’t say I quite follow…”

  “I think they cooked up this smuggling business and kidded him into it just to get the use of his yacht for their own purposes and at the same time get him where he can’t put up a howl if he finds out the truth. Suppose he does…” The mutter became momentarily a deep-throated chuckle of malice. “He’s in so deep on the booze smuggling side he dassent say a word, and that puts him in worse yet, makes him accessory before the fact of criminal practices that’d made his hair stand on end. Then, suppose they want to go on with the game, looting in Europe and sneaking the goods into America with the use of his yacht: what’s he going to say, how’s he going to stop them?”

  Accepting these questions as purely rhetorical, Lanyard offered no comment. After a moment the mutter resumed:

  “Well, what do you think? Am I right or am I wrong?”

  “Who knows, Mr. Mussey? One can only say, you seem to know something.”

  “I’ll say I know something! A sight more than Whit Monk dreams I know—as he’ll find out to his sorrow before he’s finished with Tom Mussey.”

  “But”—obliquely Lanyard struck again at the heart of the mystery which he found so baffling—“you seem so well satisfied with the bona fides of your informant?”

  There was a sound of stertorous breathing as the intelligence behind the mutter grappled with this utterance. Then, as if the hint had proved too fine—“I’m playing my hand face up with you, Mr. Lanyard. I guess you can tell I know what I’m talking about.”

  “But what I cannot see is why you should talk about it to me, monsieur.”

  “Why, because I and you are both in the same boat, in a manner of speaking. We’re both on the outside—shut out—looking in.”

  In a sort of mental aside, Lanyard reflected that mixed bathing for metaphors was apparently countenanced under the code of cynics.

  “Does one gather that you feel aggrieved with Captain Monk for not making you a partner in his new associations?”

  “For trying to put one over on me, an old pal…stood by him through thick and thin…would’ve gone through fire for Whit Monk, and in my way I have, many’s the time. And now he hooks up with Phinuit and this Delorme woman, and leaves me to shuffle my feet on the doormat…and thinks I’ll let him get away with it.”

  The voice in the dark gave a grunt of infinite contempt: “Like hell…”

  “I understand your feelings, monsieur; and I ask you to believe in my sympathy. But you said—if I remember—that we were in the same boat, you and I; whereas I assure you Captain Monk has not abused my friendship, since he has never had it.”

  “I know that well enough,” said the mutter. “I don’t mean you’ve got my reasons for feeling sore; but I do mean you’ve got reason enough of your own—”

  “On what grounds do you say that?”

  Another deliberate pause prefaced the reply: “You said a while ago I knew something. Well—you said it. I and you’ve both been frozen out of this deal and we’re both meaning to take a hand whether they like it or not. If that don’t put us in the same boat I don’t know…”

  Perceiving he would get no more satisfaction, Lanyard schooled himself to be politic for the time being.

  “Say it is so, then… But I think you have something to propose.”

  “It’s simple enough: When two people find themselves in the same boat they’ve got to pull together if they want to get anywhere.”

  “You propose, then, an alliance?”

  “That’s the answer. Without you I can’t do anything but kick over the applecart for Whit Monk; and that sort of revenge is mighty unsatisfactory. Without me—well: what can you do? I know you can get that tin safe of Whit’s open, when you feel like it, get the jewels and all; but what show do you stand to get away with them? That is, unless you’ve got somebody working in with you on board the ship. See here…”

  The mutter sank into a husky whisper, and in order to be heard the speaker bent so low over Lanyard that fumes of whiskey almost suffocated the poor man in his bed.

  “You’ve got a head, you’ve had experience, you know how… Well, go to it: make your plans, consult with me, get everything fixed, lift the loot; I’ll stand by, fix up everything so’s your work will go through slick, see that you don’t get hurt, stow the jewels where they won’t be found; and when it’s all over, we’ll split fifty-fifty. What d’you say?”

  “Extremely ingenious, monsieur, but unfortunately impracticable.”

  “That’s the last thing,” stated the disappointed whisper, “I ever thought a man like you would say.”

  “But it is obvious. We do not know each other.”

  “You mean, you can’t trust me?”

  “For that matter: how can you be sure you can trust me?”

  “Oh, I guess I can size up a square guy when I see him.”

  “Many thanks. But why should I trust you, when you will not even be quite frank with me?”

  “How’s that? Haven’t I—”

  “One moment: you refuse to name the source of your astonishingly detailed information concerning this affair—myself included. You wish me to believe you simply assume I am at odds with Captain Monk and his friends. I a
dmit it is true. But how should you know it? Ah, no, my friend! either you will tell me how you learned this secret, or I must beg you to let me get my sleep.”

  “That’s easy. I heard Whit and Phinuit talking about you the other night, on deck, when they didn’t think anybody was listening.”

  Lanyard smiled into the darkness: no need to fret about fair play toward this one! The truth was not in him, and by the same token the traditional honour that obtains among thieves could not be.

  He said, as if content, in the manner of a practical man dismissing all immaterial considerations:

  “As you say, the time is brief…”

  “It’ll have to be pulled off tomorrow night or not at all,” the mutter urged with an eager accent.

  “My thought, precisely. For then we come to land, do we not?”

  “Yes, and it’ll have to be not long after dark. We ought to drop the hook at midnight. Then”—the mutter was broken with hopeful anxiety—“then you’ve decided you’ll stand in with me, Mr. Lanyard?”

  “But of course! What else can one do? As you have so fairly pointed out: what is either of us without the other?”

  “And it’s understood: you’re to lift the stuff, I’m to take care of it till we can slip ashore, we’re to make our getaway together—and the split’s to be fifty-fifty, fair and square?”

  “I ask nothing better.”

  “Where’s your hand?”

  Two hands found each other blindly and exchanged a firm and inspiring clasp—while Lanyard gave thanks for the night that saved his face from betraying his mind.

  Another deep sigh sounded a note of apprehensions at an end. A gruff chuckle followed.

  “Whit Monk! He’ll learn something about the way to treat old friends.” And all at once the mutter merged into a vindictive hiss: “Him with his airs and graces, his fine clothes and greasy manners, putting on the lah-de-dah over them that’s stood by him when he hadn’t a red and was glad to cadge drinks off spiggoties in hells like the Colonel’s at Colon—him!”

  But Lanyard had been listening only with his ears; he hadn’t the slightest interest in Mr. Mussey’s resentment of the affectations of Captain Monk. For now his mad scheme had suddenly assumed a complexion of comparative simplicity; given the co-operation of the chief engineer, all Lanyard would need to contribute would be a little headwork, a little physical exertion, a little daring—and complete indifference, which was both well warranted and already his, to abusing the confidence of Mr. Mussey.

  “But about this affair tomorrow night,” he interrupted impatiently: “attend to me a little, if you please, my friend. Can you give me any idea where we are, or will, approximately, at midnight tonight?”

  “What’s that go to do—?”

  “Perhaps I ask only for my own information. But it may be that I have a plan. If we are to work together harmoniously, Mr. Mussey, you must learn to have a little confidence in me.”

  “Beg your pardon,” said an humble mutter. “We ought to be somewhere off Nantucket Shoals Lightship.”

  “And the weather: have you sufficient acquaintance with these latitudes to foretell it, even roughly?”

  “Born and brought up in Edgartown, made my first voyage on a tramp out of New Bedford: guess I know something about the weather in these latitudes! The wind’s been hauling round from sou’west to south all day. If it goes on to sou’east, it’ll likely be thick tomorrow, with little wind, no sea to speak of, and either rain or fog.”

  “So! Now to do what I will have to do, I must have ten minutes of absolute darkness. Can that be arranged?”

  “Absolute darkness?” The mutter had a rising inflexion of dubiety. “How d’you mean?”

  “Complete extinguishing of every light on the ship.”

  “My God!” the mutter protested. “Do you know what that means? No lights at night, under way, in main-travelled waters! Why, by nightfall we ought to be off Block Island, in traffic as heavy as on Fifth Avenue! No: that’s too much.”

  “Too bad,” Lanyard uttered, philosophic. “And the thing could have been done.”

  “Isn’t there some other way?”

  “Not with lights to hamper my operations. But if some temporary accident were to put the dynamoes out of commission—figure to yourself what would happen.”

  “There’d be hell to pay.”

  “Ah! but what else?”

  “The engines would have to be slowed down so as to give no more than steerage-way until oil lamps could be substituted for the binnacle, masthead, and side-lights, also for the engine room.”

  “And there would be excitement and confusion, eh? Everybody would make for the deck, even the captain would leave his cabin unguarded long enough…”

  “I get you”—with a sigh. “It’s wrong, all wrong, but—well, I suppose it’s got to be done.”

  Lanyard treated himself to a smile of triumph, there in the darkness.

  CHAPTER XXVI

  THE BINNACLE

  It would have been ungrateful (Lanyard reflected over his breakfast) to complain of a life so replete with experiences of piquant contrast.

  It happened to one to lie for hours in a cubicle of blinding night, hearkening to a voice like that of some nightmare weirdly become articulate, a ghostly mutter that rose and fell and droned, broken by sighs, grunts, stifled oaths, mean chuckles, with intervals of husky whispering and lapses filled with a noise of wheezing respiration, all wheedling and cajoling, lying, intimating and evading, complaining, snarling, rambling, threatening, protesting, promising, and in the end proposing an unholy compact for treachery and evil-doing—a voice that might have issued out of some damned soul escaped for a little space of time from the Pits of Torment, so utterly inhuman it sounded, so completely discarnate and divorced from all relationship to any mortal personality that even that reek of whiskey in the air, even that one contact with a hard, hot hand, could not make it seem real.

  And then it ceased and was no more but as a thing of dream that had passed. And one came awake to a light and wholesome world furnished with such solidly comforting facts as soaps and razors and hot and cold saltwater taps; and subsequently one left one’s stateroom to see, at the breakfast table, leaden-eyed and flushed of countenance, an amorphous lump of humid flesh in shapeless garments of soiled white duck, the author of that mutter in the dark; who, lounging over a plate of broken food and lifting a coffee cup in the tremulous hand of an alcoholic, looked up with lacklustre gaze, gave a surly nod, and mumbled the customary matutinal greeting:

  “’Morning, Monseer Delorme.”

  It was all too weird.…

  To add to this, the chief engineer paid Lanyard no further heed at all, though they were alone at table, and having noisily consumed his coffee, rubbed his stubbled lips and chin with an egg-stained napkin, rose, and without word or glance rolled heavily up the companionway.

  The conduct of a careful man, accustomed to mind his eye. And indisputably correct. One never knew who might be watching, what slightest sign of secret understanding might not be seized upon and read. Furthermore, Mr. Mussey had not stilled his mutter in the night until their joint and individual lines of action had been elaborately mapped out and agreed upon down to the smallest detail. It now remained only for Lanyard to fill in somehow the waste time that lay between breakfast and the hour appointed, then take due advantage of the opportunity promised him.

  He found the day making good Mr. Mussey’s forecast. Under a dull, thick sky the sea ran in heavy swells, greasy and grey. The wind was in the south, and light and shifty. The horizon was vague. Captain Monk, encountered on the quarterdeck, had an uneasy eye, and cursed the weather roundly when Lanyard made civil enquiry as to the outlook. Ça va bien!

  Lanyard killed an hour or two in the chartroom, acquainting himself with the coast they were
approaching and tracing the Sybarite’s probable course toward the spot selected from the smuggling transaction. His notion of the precise location of the owner’s estate was rather indefinite; he had gathered from gossip that it was on the Connecticut shore of Long Island Sound, between New London and New Haven, where a group of small islands—also the property of Mister Whitaker Monk—provided fair anchorage between Sound and shore as well as a good screen from offshore observation.

  It was not vital to know more: Lanyard had neither hope nor fear of ever seeing that harbour. It was the approach alone that interested him; and when he had puzzled out that there were only two practicable courses for the Sybarite to take—both bearing in a general north-westerly direction from Nantucket Shoals Light Vessel, one entering Block Island Sound from the east, between Point Judith and Block Island, the other entering the same body of water from the south, between Block Island and Montauk Point—and had satisfied himself that manifold perils to navigation hedged about both courses, more especially their prolongation into Long Island Sound by way of The Race: Lanyard told himself it would be strange indeed if his plans miscarried…always providing that Mr. Mussey could be trusted to hold to his overnight agreement.

  But as to that, one entertained few fears. One felt quite sure that Mr. Mussey would perform duly to the letter of his covenant. It had required only an hour of weighing and analysing with a clear head his overtures and utterances as a whole, to persuade Lanyard that he himself, no less than the chief engineer, in the phrase of the latter’s boast, “knew something.”

  It seemed unbelievably stupid and childish, what he imagined was behind the gratuitous intermeddling of Mr. Mussey; but then, he reminded himself, if there is anything more stupid than to plot a criminal act, it is to permit oneself to be influenced by that criminal stupidity whose other name is jealousy.

  Well, whether he were right or wrong, the night would declare it; and in any event there was no excuse whatever for refusing to profit by the stupidity of men whose minds are bent on vicious mischief.…