"Seldom?"
"I shouldn"t insist: any more than you yourself, captain."
"And what are you doing here?"
"I dropped in from Samarai, meaning to catch the Brisbane steamer yonder. I"ve been diving up there all season. I"m a very fair diver, really; only my luck is generally so poor."
To any pa.s.ser-by he must have seemed the usual loafer, with a string of woes on tap. But Wetherbee, one eye to the bulging pockets, appeared in no way bored.
"Strolling along the front, I chanced to recognize you. _That_ was luck, if you like. I"ve thought so. Especially since making inquiries. I"ve made rather exhaustive inquiries. In fact, I believe I have your rating fairly up to date." He coughed again. "Captain Wetherbee, do you remember when we last met?"
"No," said Wetherbee shortly.
Thereupon Mr. Selden recalled that meeting, and others, and his voice trailed like a snake in the dust, looping cryptic patterns. It was one of those counts of grievance and disaster such as almost any broken fugitive among far places has to tell. Thursday can offer them by the yard, and dear at the price of a drink. He spoke of shares and deals and swindling betrayal; of hope and fortune lost, and the false lead that puts a man on the chute and sets him off for a blackleg and a wanderer.
All in the clipped jargon of the markets, a common tale, but with this difference in the telling--it came away briefly, with the slow-biting venom that such a fugitive would be apt to reserve for only one out of all possible living listeners in the world. From over the hidden weapon he drove home his point; while Wetherbee stood there rooted on the jetty, like the Wedding Guest.
"... So you knifed the lot of us in the dark--everyone that trusted you--and bolted. That was your way. You sent me ash.o.r.e from that last yachting party all primed to go my last penny on a dead bird. I was flattered. I used to credit your honesty more or less myself--then."
"And now?" suggested Wetherbee.
Mr. Selden, late deacon, drew a husky breath.
"Why, now--I"ve caught up with you. I"m the flaw in the t.i.tle, at 50 per cent. I"m judgment out of the past! Verily, no man shall escape it: do you mark? No man comes so far or hides his track so cleverly, even at Thursday Island. I"ve got your record--as you"ve got mine, of course; but yours is rather worse, with a warrant pending--of which, by the way, I know the very date.... And, besides, I"ve nothing at all to lose. I"m only a broken diver. n.o.body ever called me "Honest" Selden or "Honest"
anything else!"
His wrists stiffened as Wetherbee took a step.
"You mean to blow, you wasp?"
"You won"t make me. Blow! That"s no good to me: I mean to get level.
Halvers, I said--captain.... I"m in!"
"On what?"
"On your new speculation, of course." He came very close to capering.
"Your latest deviltry. Don"t I know your little methods? D"you think I couldn"t smell it out? Public character, no suspicion, traces all removed--alibi all complete--_and_ a clear road to the back door.
"You sneaked your crew out of town to-night. Your lugger"s ready to slip cable. You"ve been hobn.o.bbing all evening with the pilot you camped along with on Friday Island for two weeks--that had the _Opalton_--by George, I believe it was you made him a sot on the sly! I wouldn"t put it past you. You used to gammon us the same way on your cursed week-end sprees. Don"t I _know_? Haven"t I _reason_ to know?
"But you needn"t have pumped him so close. I could have told you days ago what she takes aboard of her this trip."...
"The h.e.l.l you could!"
"Pearls: the season"s sweep. Twenty thousand pounds" worth of pearls!"
recited Selden. "Eh? Twenty thousand--and I"ve got you by the short hairs!" His eyes shone in the moonlight with a fanatic gleam. "_Thus saith the Lord G.o.d; An adversary there shall be, and he shall bring down thy strength from thee!_"
Then Captain Wetherbee relaxed and laughed in his chest to match the note of the reef. "Blackmail and piracy! My colonial oath, deacon, I never saw your beat. So you"ve dropped to me! I go bail you asked a blessing on the enterprise!"
Selden did not deny it.
"Let"s hear the rest," urged Wetherbee, while his chuckle echoed the lap of waves among dark pilings. "What"s your notion? Did you picture me sticking up the consignors as they walk aboard the plank and pa.s.sing you your share in a little hand bag?"
The deacon shuffled nervously.
"It can"t matter how you do it."
"Can"t it? Now, don"t you go disappointing me." He stole a step nearer.
"Those pearls have been locked in the strong room of the Brisbane steamer since early afternoon. Now then. How the devil am I--are we--to nab "em? Come! You"re the little personal Providence in this affair, at 50 per cent. Don"t tell me with all your knowing you didn"t know _that_!"
"It"s your deliver," said Selden, "anyhow."
"Well, let"s take counsel--I"m agreeable to have an adversary. Goodness knows I haven"t had much amus.e.m.e.nt so far--the thing"s been so rotten easy. By way of a text--Brother Seldom--and a point of departure: did you ever hear of the _Volga_? Ever hear of the _Quetta_ or the _Mecca_; or a dozen of other ships lost one time or another between here and Cape Flattery?
"Pity about them too--they fell a trifle off the track. Just a few fathom off the track among these millions of reefs that will rip the heart out of anything afloat. Suppose for the sake of argument our Brisbane steamer which we"re both so interested in--out there at the dock head--suppose she should happen to go wandering this trip--say, somewhere around Tribulation Pa.s.sage, two hours out. Suppose she should--as a slant of luck." His voice lowered with obscurely evil suggestion. "Would it occur to you we might have any chance of salvage on those pearls?"
"I--I don"t understand," stammered Selden. "The pa.s.sage is lighted.
There"s a light on Tribulation Shoal."
"So there is. What a helpful chap you are to work with! You keep it to port as you turn the Blackbird Reef. It"s a fourth order fixed dioptric--unattended. The keeper lives on Horn Island. But suppose, now--suppose that light were moved, either way?"
"Move the light!"
"In effect, merely; in effect. A man might very readily land there from the lee and blanket that light to the westward. And if that same man, with something like a discarded lightship lantern aboard his lugger, should then anchor half a mile away, and show his light at the masthead--hey? A fifty-foot elevation is visible at nearly fourteen miles twenty-five feet up. But a twenty-five-foot elevation gives a total of only eleven point four.... You begin to see the possibilities for error--particularly if the pilot of the oncoming steamer should happen to be, as you wisely suggest, a bit of a sot with a hazy eye--"
"My G.o.d! You"re going to wreck her!"
"Hush!" said Wetherbee very loudly.
Selden whirled around to find a black-skinned native standing impa.s.sive behind him. At the same instant a steel grip locked his wrists. "Not that!" he gasped, struggling. "My G.o.d, man, you wouldn"t! You daren"t!"
"No? And yet you said you knew my little methods." "Honest" Wetherbee shifted a thumb to his throat and smiled into his face. "I"ve a mind to show you, deacon--shall I--how far I _have_ come and how cleverly I _have_ covered my tracks?... Hya, you fella boy--that fella boat all ready? Then bear a hand her one time. We"ve got a pa.s.senger."
Now, it is a fact that no one knows or is ever likely to know the actual explanation for the wreck of the Brisbane steamer, which left Thursday Island that night and came to grief some two hours later on Tribulation Shoals. Other craft have gone the same way from natural causes, and Thursday has kept no suspect tradition of them. The only man who might have denied the yarn as afterward colored in local legend--and incidentally a libel on his own memory--was the pilot who had her in charge. And he never came back, drunk or sober. But the records declare that about four o"clock of a fair enough morning, wind and sea then running high, the 2,000-ton _Fernshawe_ went clear off her course among the graveyards where a coral ledge stripped her plates as neatly as a butcher"s knife lays open a carca.s.s. She sank inside of five minutes, and her survivors were hurried.
Neither has any one ever told the true adventures of the _Fancy Free_, the flash little lugger that happened somehow to be missing from week-end rendezvous at the same hour. Her crew were mostly inarticulate, and those who might have talked of strange comings and goings were "black fella boy know nothing." Her pa.s.senger spent the night praying in the bilge; and as for her commander, he left no report. But it is equally certain that when the next dawn spread the iridescence of a pigeon"s breast over those empty waters it struck out the hull and spars of Captain Wetherbee"s vessel, anch.o.r.ed fair between the tips of two sunken masts.
Captain Wetherbee himself straddled the deck in diving rig, and while a native helper held ready his great gleaming copper helm he mocked a limp, bedraggled, white-faced creature that clung by the rail.
"You"ll note for yourself, Brother Seldom," he was saying. "Not a trace of evidence. We"ve not been spied. The lantern is sunk. These poor cattle haven"t a glimmer. Here are we, and there are the pearls, twenty thousand pounds" worth--just overside. Within three hours I"ll be off on the pearling banks about my business, and I never heard of any lost steamer. Next week, or any time I choose, I"ll be walking the streets of Thursday to hear the news. And who so surprised as Captain Wetherbee, that hardworking man? "Honest" Wetherbee, with a fortune in his belt to dispose at leisure!"...
His pallid face took a diabolic glow in the first sun.
"Except yourself, of course," he added. "_You"re_ evidence. King"s evidence. I"m not forgetting you. I"ll even give you your chance. Are you coming, old 50 per cent? Yes--down there! With me! h.e.l.l--what kind of an adversary do you call yourself? Come on and share. Now"s your time to get level and change your luck once for all. Fight it out with me--what? No?... d.a.m.n it, deacon, I thought you were going to be amusing.... I"ll knock your silly head in when I come back."