A Bid for Fortune - Guy Boothby (ready player one ebook TXT) 📗

One morning, just as the faint outline of the coast of Aneityom was peering up over the horizon ahead, Wetherell and I chanced to be sitting in the bows. The sea was as smooth as glass, and the tinkling of the water round the little vessel’s nose as she turned it off in snowy lines from either bow, was the only sound to be heard. As usual the conversation, after wandering into other topics, came back to the subject nearest our hearts. This led us to make a few remarks about Nikola and his character. There was one thing I had always noticed when the man came under discussion, and that was the dread Wetherell had of him. My curiosity had been long excited as to its meaning, and, having an opportunity now, I could not help asking him for an explanation.

“You want to know how it is that I am so frightened of Nikola?” he asked, knocking the ash off his cigar on the upturned fluke of the anchor alongside him. “Well, to give you my reason will necessitate my telling you a story. I don’t mind doing that at all, but what I am afraid of is that you may be inclined to doubt its probability. I must confess it is certainly more like the plot of a Wilkie Collins novel than a bit of sober reality. However, if you want to hear it you shall.”

“I should like to above all things,” I replied, making myself comfortable and taking another cigar from my pocket. “I have been longing to ask you about it for some time past, but could not quite screw up my courage.”

“Well, in the first place,” Mr. Wetherell said, “you must understand that before I became a Minister of the Crown, or indeed a Member of Parliament at all, I was a barrister with a fairly remunerative practice. That was before my wife’s death and when Phyllis was at school. Up to the time I am going to tell you about I had taken part in no very sensational case. But my opportunity for earning notoriety was, though I did not know it, near at hand. One day I was briefed to defend a man accused of the murder of a Chinaman aboard a Sydney vessel on a voyage from Shanghai. At first there seemed to be no doubt at all as to his guilt, but by a singular chance, with the details of which I will not bore you, I hit upon a scheme which got him off. I remember the man perfectly, and a queer fellow he was, half-witted, I thought, and at the time of the trial within an ace of dying of consumption. His gratitude was the more pathetic because he had not the wherewithal to pay me. However, he made it up to me in another way, and that’s where my real story commences.

“One wet night, a couple of months or so after the trial, I was sitting in my drawing-room listening to my wife’s music, when a servant entered to tell me that a woman wanted to see me. I went out into the passage to find waiting there a tall buxom lass of about five-and-twenty years of age. She was poorly dressed, but in a great state of excitement.

“ ‘Are you Mr. Wetherell?’ she said; ‘the gentleman as defended China Pete in the trial the other day?’

“ ‘I am,’ I answered. ‘What can I do for you? I hope China Pete is not in trouble again?’

“ ‘He’s in a worse trouble this time, sir,’ said the woman. ‘He’s dyin’, and he sent me to fetch you to ’im before he goes.’

“ ‘But what does he want me for?’ I asked rather suspiciously.

“ ‘I’m sure I dunno,’ was the girl’s reply. ‘But he’s been callin’ for you all this blessed day: “Send for Mr. Wetherell! send for Mr. Wetherell!” So off I came, when I got back from work, to fetch you. If you’re comin’, sir, you’d best be quick, for he won’t last till mornin’.’

“ ‘Very well, I’ll come with you at once,’ I said, taking a mackintosh down from a peg as I spoke. Then, having told my wife not to sit up for me, I followed my strange messenger out of the house and down into the city.

“For nearly an hour we walked on and on, plunging deeper into the lower quarter of the town. All through the march my guide maintained a rigid silence, walking a few paces ahead, and only recognising the fact that I was following her by nodding in a certain direction whenever we arrived at cross thoroughfares or interlacing lanes.

“At last we arrived at the street she wanted. At the corner she came suddenly to a standstill, and putting her two first fingers into her mouth blew a shrill whistle, after the fashion of street boys. A moment later a shock-headed urchin about ten years old made his appearance from a dark alley and came towards us. The woman said something to him, which I did not catch, and then turning sharply to her left hand beckoned to me to follow her. This I did, but not without a feeling of wonderment as to what the upshot of it all would be.

“From the street itself we passed, by way of a villainous alley, into a large courtyard, where brooded a silence like that of death. Indeed, a more weird and desolate place I don’t remember ever to have met with. Not a soul was to be seen, and though it was surrounded by houses, only two feeble lights showed themselves. Towards one of these my guide made her way, stopping on the threshold. Upon a panel she rapped with her fingers, and as she did so a window on the first floor opened, and the same boy we had met in the street looked out.

“ ‘How many?’ enquired the woman, who had brought me, in a loud whisper.

“ ‘None now,’ replied the boy; ‘but there’s been a power