"I am obliged to go to town immediately," he continued. "Rumors of this ugly story have already been started, and I must do everything I can to nail them. I am going to trust the responsibility here to you. As soon as I leave the yacht, I want you to start her down the river. That is to get the gentleman and the yacht out of the way. Go straight ahead for two or three hours and then come back. Make your calculations so that you"ll get back here at--say ten o"clock to-night--here, mind you, not the old anchorage. I"ll be ready to come aboard by that time. Have two men guard that stateroom constantly every minute. Give the gentleman every possible attention, but don"t let him make any noise, and don"t let him get out. No matter what he says or does, _don"t let him get out_. Do you follow me?"
"I do, sir. To the menootest detail."
"If you carry the matter through, you may rely upon Mr. Carstairs"s grat.i.tude. If, on the other hand, you fail--"
"Oh, I"ll not fail, sir. Have no fear of that."
"I am speaking to you man to man, Ferguson, when I say, for G.o.d"s sake don"t."
He walked away to arrange himself a little for the town, seeing clearly that there was but one possible way out of all this for him now. The sailing-master stared after him with a very curious expression upon his weather-beaten face.
At about the same moment, in a tiny room four miles away, an elderly, melancholy man sat bowed over a telegraph board and drowsily plied his keys. He was the _Gazette"s_ special operator, and, having his orders from Mr. Parker, who looked after the news bureau when Hammerton was away, he was methodically going through his list like this:
_Tribune_, PITTSBURG:
Ferris Stanhope or Laurence Varney? Baffling mystery surrounding prominent men, one of whom now hiding here. Probable scandal, one thousand words.
_Press_, CINCINNATI:
Ferris Stanhope or Laurence Varney? Baffling mystery--
CHAPTER XIII
VARNEY MEETS HIS ENEMY AND IS DISARMED
Varney crossed the square in the gathering dusk and went slowly up Main Street, looking about him as he walked. He had wrenched his ankle slightly in one of his falls upon the _Cypriani"s_ deck, and the four-mile walk over the ruts of the River road to the town had done it no good. Worse yet, it had made the trip down from the yacht laboriously slow, and he was harried with the fear that the irreparable damage might already have been done.
If it had not, if no reporter had yet gone to the Carstairs house, his one possible hope of escape stood before him like a palm-tree in a plain. Stiffened and strengthened by all his difficulties, his resolve to win throbbed and mounted within him; but he faced the knowledge that the odds now were heavily against him. On the long chance, he had played a desperate game, had come within an ace of winning, and had lost. His great secret which, beyond any other purpose, he had meant to guard to the end, was glaringly out. Now it was the iron heart of his will that it should go no further. Talkative young Hammerton had given him the hint how that might be accomplished; and if the method was extreme, it would be sure. Whatever the cost, it would be a small price to pay for keeping his name, and Uncle Elbert"s, out of ruinous headlines in to-morrow"s papers.
Two blocks further on he came opposite a neat, three-story brick building, across the width of which was a black and gold signboard, lettered THE GAZETTE. Below it was the large plate-gla.s.s window of a counting-room, now dark. On the left was a lighted doorway, leading upstairs.
Varney crossed, climbed the stairs, found himself in a narrow upstairs hall, rapped upon a closed ground-gla.s.s door bearing the legend "Editorial." From within, a voice of unenthusiasm bade him enter, and he went in, closing the door behind him.
In a swivel-chair by an open roller-top desk, a young man sat, idly smoking a cigarette, his back to the door, his languorous feet hung out of the window. There were electric lights in the room, but they were not lit. All the illumination that there was came from a single dingy gas-fixture stuck in the wall near the desk, but that was enough.
Varney came closer. "Smith," said he.
"Well," said Smith.
"I have come to see you."
"Well--look away," said Smith.
There was not a trace of the "Hast thou found me?" in the editor"s voice or his manner. If he expected a.s.sa.s.sination, he did not appear to mind.
He sat on without turning, staring apathetically out of the window, just as he had done when he watched Varney cross and come in at his door.
"I have come," said Varney, "because I understand that you are the sole owner, as well as the editor, of this paper. Am I right?"
Smith lit a fresh cigarette, flipped the old one out of the window and paused to watch the boys outside fight for it. Half-smoked stubs came frequently out of that window when Mr. Smith sat there and many boys in Hunston knew it.
"a.s.suming that you are?" queried he.
"a.s.suming that," said Varney, "I"ll say that I have come to buy this paper. And to discharge you from the editorship."
Smith drew in his feet, and swung slowly around. The two men measured each other in an interval of intelligent silence. On the whole, upon this close view, Varney found it harder to think of Smith as a contemptible cur who circulated lying slanders for profit than as the young man who wrote the famous editorials.
"And still they come," said Smith, enigmatically. "Three of them in one day--well, well!" And he added musingly: "So I have stung you as hard as that, have I?"
"Let us say rather," said Varney, whose present tack was diplomacy, "that I have some loose money which I want to stow away in a paying little enterprise."
"I am the last man in the world to boast of a kindness," continued Smith, in his faintly mocking manner, "but I gave you fair warning to leave town."
"Instead I stayed. And an exceedingly interesting town I have found it.
Something doing every minute. But, as I just remarked, I have looked in to buy your paper."
"If I were like some I know," meditated Smith, "I"d be thinking: "The Lord has delivered him into my hand, aye, delivered dear old Beany." I"d embarra.s.s you with questions, make you blush with catechisms. But I am a merciful man, and observe that I ask you nothing. You want to buy the _Gazette_ for an investment. Let it stand at that. So you"re the money-grubbing sort that supposes that everything on G.o.d"s ha.s.sock has its price?"
"I believe it"s street knowledge that the _Gazette_ has its. But I called really not so much to discuss ethics, as to ascertain your figure."
Smith gave a sigh which was not without its trace of mockery.
""Fortunately, I am hardened to insults. Editors are expected to stand anything. Times are dull--nothing much to do--drop around and kick the editor. You"ve no idea what we have to put up with from spring poets alone. Rejoice, B----, that is, Mr.--er--Blank, that the _Gazette_ is never to be yours."
"You can"t mean that you decline to sell?"
"When I implied to you just now that I was sole owner of the _Gazette_, I was, of course, speaking rather reminiscently than in the strict light of present facts."
"What do you mean by that?"
"That I sold the _Gazette_ at four o"clock this afternoon."
For an instant the room whirled and Varney saw nothing in it but the odd eyes of Coligny Smith steadily fixing him. By the shock of that blow, he realized that, after all, he had wholly counted upon succeeding in this. From the moment when he had turned his stateroom key on unconscious Charlie Hammerton, he had recognized it as his one chance.
And now he was too late. Clever Ryan, who missed nothing, doubtless suspecting that the faithless editor who had sold out once to him might now be planning to do it again to a higher bidder, had outstripped him.
And the _Gazette_ to-morrow would d.a.m.n him utterly.
But Varney"s face, as these thoughts came to him, wore a faint, non-committal smile. "That is final, I suppose?"
"As death, so far as I am concerned. I leave Hunston permanently to-morrow morning."
"Who was the buyer?"
"There is really no reason why I should divulge his confidence that I know of; but, curses on me, I"ll do it if you"ll tell me this: Where is Charles Hammerton?"
Varney laid his hat and stick on the table, to rid his hands of them, and faced Mr. Smith, leaning lightly against it.
"I came here, Smith, to ask questions, not to answer them. On second thoughts, I withdraw my last one, for I can guess the answer. But before we proceed further, I want you to tell me this: what made you sell?"