By Shore and Sedge - Bret Harte (recommended ebook reader .txt) 📗

not he’s just the kind o’ snipe to write ‘em hisself, and sorter advertise hisself, don’t yer see—she’s allus stuck up for him. They’ve had clandesent interviews, and when I taxed him with it he ez much ez allowed it was so, and reckoned he must leave, so ez he could run her off, you know—kinder stampede her with ‘honor.’ Them’s his very words.”

“But that is all past; he is gone, and Miss Nott does not even know where he is!” said Renshaw, with a laugh, which, however, concealed a vague uneasiness.

Mr. Nott rose and opened the door carefully. When he had satisfied himself that no one was listening, he came back and said in a whisper, “That’s a lie. Not ez Rosey means to lie, but it’s a trick he’s put upon that poor child. That man, Mr. Renshaw, hez been hangin’ round the Pontiac ever since. I’ve seed him twice with my own eyes pass the cabin windys. More than that, I’ve heard strange noises at night, and seen strange faces in the alley over yer. And only jist now ez I kem in I ketched sight of a furrin lookin’ Chinee nigger slinking round the back door of what useter be Ferrers’s loft.”

“Did he look like a sailor?” asked Renshaw quickly, with a return of his former suspicion.

“Not more than I do,” said Nott, glancing complacently at his pea-jacket. “He had rings on his yeers like a wench.”

Mr. Renshaw started. But seeing Nott’s eyes fixed on him, he said lightly, “But what have these strange faces and this strange man— probably only a Lascar sailor out of a job—to do with Ferrieres?”

“Friends o’ his—feller furrin citizens—spies on Rosey, don’t you see? But they can’t play the old man, Mr. Renshaw. I’ve told Rosey she must make a visit to the old Ranch. Once I’ve got her ther safe, I reckon I kin manage Mr. Ferrers and any number of Chinee niggers he kin bring along.”

Renshaw remained for a few moments lost in thought. Then rising suddenly he grasped Mr. Nott’s hand with a frank smile but determined eyes. “I haven’t got the hang of this, Mr. Nott—the whole thing gets me! I only know that I’ve changed my mind. I’m NOT going to Sacramento. I shall stay HERE, old man, until I see you safe through the business, or my name’s not Dick Renshaw. There’s my hand on it! Don’t say a word. Maybe it is no more than I ought to do—perhaps not half enough. Only remember, not a word of this to your daughter. She must believe that I leave to-night. And the sooner you get her out of this cursed ship the better.”

“Deacon Flint’s girls are goin’ up in to-night’s boat. I’ll send Rosey with them,” said Nott with a cunning twinkle. Renshaw nodded. Nott seized his hand with a wink of unutterable significance.

Left to himself Renshaw tried to review more calmly the circumstances in these strange revelations that had impelled him to change his resolution so suddenly. That the ship was under the surveillance of unknown parties, and that the description of them tallied with his own knowledge of a certain Lascar sailor, who was one of Sleight’s informants—seemed to be more than probable. That this seemed to point to Sleight’s disloyalty to himself while he was acting as his agent, or a double treachery on the part of Sleight’s informants was in either case a reason and an excuse for his own interference. But the connection of the absurd Frenchman with the case, which at first seemed a characteristic imbecility of his landlord, bewildered him the more he thought of it. Rejecting any hypothesis of the girl’s affection for the antiquated figure whose sanity was a question of public criticism, he was forced to the equally alarming theory that Ferrieres was cognizant of the treasure, and that his attentions to Rosey were to gain possession of it by marrying her. Might she not be dazzled by a picture of this wealth? Was it not possible that she was already in part possession of the secret, and her strange attraction to the ship, and what he had deemed her innocent craving for information concerning it, a consequence? Why had he not thought of this before? Perhaps she had detected his purpose from the first, and had deliberately checkmated him. The thought did not increase his complacency as Nott softly returned.

“It’s all right,” he began with a certain satisfaction in this rare opportunity for Machiavellian diplomacy, “it’s all fixed now. Rosey tumbled to it at once, partiklerly when I said you was bound to go. ‘But wot makes Mr. Renshaw go, father,’ sez she; ‘wot makes everybody run away from the ship?’ sez she, rather peart like and sassy for her. ‘Mr. Renshaw hez contractin’ business,’ sez I; ‘got a big thing up in Sacramento that’ll make his fortun’,’ sez I—for I wasn’t goin’ to give yer away, don’t ye see. ‘He had some business to talk to you about the ship,’ sez she, lookin’ at me under the corner of her pocket handkerchief. ‘Lots o’ business,’ sez I. ‘Then I reckon he don’t care to hev me write to him,’ sez she. ‘Not a bit,’ sez I, ‘he wouldn’t answer ye if ye did. Ye’ll never hear from that chap agin.’”

“But what the devil—” interrupted the young man impetuously.

“Keep yer hair on!” remonstrated the old man with dark intelligence. “Ef you’d seen the way she flounced into her stateroom!—she, Rosey, ez allus moves ez softly ez a spirit—you’d hev wished I’d hev unloaded a little more. No sir, gals is gals in some things all the time.”

Renshaw rose and paced the room rapidly. “Perhaps I’d better speak to her again before she goes,” he said, impulsively.

“P’r’aps you’d better not,” replied the imperturbable Nott.

Irritated as he was, Renshaw could not avoid the reflection that the old man was right. What, indeed, could he say to her with his present imperfect knowledge? How could she write to him if that knowledge was correct?

“Ef,” said Nott, kindly, with a laying on of large benedictory and paternal hands, “ef yer are willin’ to see Rosey agin, without SPEAKIN’ to her, I reckon I ken fix it for yer. I’m goin’ to take her down to the boat in half an hour. Ef yer should happen—mind, ef yer should HAPPEN to be down there, seein’ some friends off and sorter promenadin’ up and down the wharf like them high-toned chaps on Montgomery Street—ye might ketch her eye unconscious like. Or, ye might do this!” He rose after a moment’s cogitation and with a face of profound mystery opened the door and beckoned Renshaw to follow him. Leading the way cautiously, he brought the young man into an open unpartitioned recess beside her stateroom. It seemed to be used as a storeroom, and Renshaw’s eye was caught by a trunk the size and shape of the one that had provided Rosey with the materials of her masquerade. Pointing to it Mr. Nott said in a grave whisper: “This yer trunk is the companion trunk to Rosey’s. SHE’S got the things them opery women wears; this yer contains the HE things, the duds and fixin’s o’ the men o’ the same stripe.” Throwing it open he continued: “Now, Mr. Renshaw, gals is gals; it’s nat’ral they should be took by fancy dress and store clothes on young chaps as on theirselves. That man Ferrers hez got the dead wood on all of ye in this sort of thing, and hez been playing, so to speak, a lone hand all along. And ef thar’s anythin’ in thar,” he added, lifting part of a theatrical wardrobe, “that you think you’d fancy—anythin’ you’d like to put on when ye promenade the wharf down yonder—it’s yours. Don’t ye be bashful, but help yourself.”

It was fully a minute before Renshaw fairly grasped the old man’s meaning. But when he did—when the suggested spectacle of himself arrayed a la Ferrieres, gravely promenading the wharf as a last gorgeous appeal to the affections of Rosey, rose before his fancy, he gave way to a fit of genuine laughter. The nervous tension of the past few hours relaxed; he laughed until the tears came into his eyes; he was still laughing when the door of the cabin was suddenly opened and Rosey appeared cold and distant on the threshold.

“I—beg your pardon,” stammered Renshaw hastily. “I didn’t mean— to disturb you—I—”

Without looking at him Rosey turned to her father. “I am ready,” she said coldly, and closed the door again.

A glance of artful intelligence came into Nott’s eyes, which had remained blankly staring at Renshaw’s apparently causeless hilarity. Turning to him he winked solemnly. “That keerless kind o’ hoss-laff jist fetched her,” he whispered, and vanished before his chagrined companion could reply.

When Mr. Nott and his daughter departed Renshaw was not in the ship, neither did he make a spectacular appearance on the wharf as Mr. Nott had fondly expected, nor did he turn up again until after nine o’clock, when he found the old man in the cabin awaiting his return with some agitation.

“A minit ago,” he said, mysteriously closing the door behind Renshaw, “I heard a voice in the passage, and goin’ out who should I see agin but that darned furrin nigger ez I told yer ‘bout, kinder hidin’ in the dark, his eyes shinin like a catamount, I was jist reachin’ for my weppins when he riz up with a grin and handed me this yer letter. I told him I reckoned you’d gone to Sacramento, but he said he wez sure you was in your room, and to prove it I went thar. But when I kem back the d–-d skunk had vamoosed—got frightened I reckon—and wasn’t nowhar to be seen.”

Reashaw took the letter hastily. It contained only a line in Sleight’s hand. “If you change your mind, the bearer may be of service to you.”

He turned abruptly to Nott. “You say it was the same Lascar you saw before.”

“It was.”

“Then all I can say is he is no agent of de Ferrieres’s,” said Renshaw, turning away with a disappointed air. Mr. Nott would have asked another question, but with an abrupt “Good-night” the young man entered his room, locked the door, and threw himself on his bed to reflect without interruption.

But if he was in no mood to stand Nott’s fatuous conjectures, he was less inclined to be satisfied with his own. Had he been again carried away through his impulses evoked by the caprices of a pretty coquette and the absurd theories of her half imbecile father? Had he broken faith with Sleight and remained in the ship for nothing, and would not his change of resolution appear to be the result of Sleight’s note? But why had the Lascar been haunting the ship before? In the midst of these conjectures he fell asleep.

VII

Between three and four in the morning the clouds broke over the Pontiac, and the moon, riding high, picked out in black and silver the long hulk that lay cradled between the iron shells of warehouses and the wooden frames of tenements on either side. The galley and covered gangway presented a mass of undefined shadow, against which the white deck shone brightly, stretching to the forecastle and bows, where the tiny glass roof of the photographer glistened like a gem in the Pontiac’s crest. So peaceful and motionless she lay that she might have been some petrifaction of a past age now first exhumed and laid bare to the cold light of the stars.

Nevertheless this calm security was presently invaded by a sense of stealthy life and motion. What had seemed a fixed shadow suddenly detached itself from the deck, and began to slip stanchion by stanchion