ROBBERY

Dinner brought the four men together: Filhiol glum and dour, Hal in his most charming mood, the captain expansive with new-found happiness, and old Ezra bubbling with aphorisms.

Silent and brooding, Filhiol turned the situation in his mind, asking himself a hundred times what he could do to avert catastrophe impending.

Decision, after dinner, crystallized into action. First of all the doctor interviewed Ezra in the galley, and from him extracted a binding promise to make no mention before Captain Briggs, of anything concerning Malay life, or books, or curses, or whatever.

“I can’t explain now, Ezra,” said he, “but it’s most important. As a physician, I prohibit your speaking of these matters here. You understand?”

“Yes, sir. I dunno’s I’m over an’ above keen to obey you, sir, but ef it’s fer the cap’n’s good, that’s enough fer me.”

“It is for the captain’s good, decidedly!” affirmed the doctor, and left old Ezra to think it over. One source of danger, he now felt confident, had been dammed up.

Ezra was still thinking it over when the captain told him to harness Sea Lawyer for a drive to Endicutt. In spite of the fine, drifting rain that had set in, Briggs was determined to go, for until McLaughlin’s claim and the college bill had been settled, the money he had taken from the safe for that purpose was burning in his pocket. He insisted on going quite alone, despite protests from Filhiol and Ezra. Even though all the sunlight had died from the darkening sky, it seemed still shining in the old man’s eyes as he drove off to pay the hard-saved money that now—so he believed—would put Hal on the upward road once more.

“Hal,” said the doctor, when the old captain had slowly jogged out of sight, “I’ve got a few words to say to you, out on the porch. Give me five minutes, please?”

“Why, surest thing you know! Just let me get my pipe, and I’ll be with you.”

He seemed all engaging candor—just a big, powerful fellow, open of face and manner, good-humored and without guile. As he rejoined the doctor, Filhiol wondered whether, after all, his analysis might not be wrong. But no, no. Something at the back of Hal’s blue-eyed look, something arrogant with power, something untamed, atavistic, looked out through even the most direct glance. Filhiol knew that he was dealing with no ordinary force. And, carefully choosing his words, he said:

“Listen, young man. I’m going to ask a favor of you.”

“My grandfather’s guest has only to ask, and it’s done,” smiled Hal, as he settled himself in one of the rockers, and hoisted his white-shod feet to the porch-rail.

“You know, Hal,” the doctor commenced, “your grandfather has been greatly distressed about your conduct.”

“Well, and what then?” asked Hal, his eyes clouding.

“He has a strange idea that some of the misdeeds of his youth, long since atoned for, are being visited upon you, and that he’s responsible for—h-m—certain irregularities of your conduct.”

“Yes?”

“In short, he half believes a curse is resting on you, because of him. It would be most deplorable to let that belief receive corroboration from any source, as for example, from any of your Oriental studies.”

Hal shot a keen glance at the old man. This was indeed getting under the hide, with a vengeance. The glance showed fear, too. Had Filhiol, then, been spying on him? Had he, by any chance, seen him peeking in at the window, through the lilac-bushes? Hal’s evil temper began to stir, and with it a very lively apprehension.

“What are you driving at, anyhow?” demanded he, sullenly.

“I want you to keep your Oriental stuff completely in the background for a while. Not to talk with him about it, and especially to avoid all those fantastic curses.”

“Oh, is that all?” asked Hal, relieved. “Well, that’s easy.”

The doctor sighed with relief.

“That makes me feel a bit better,” said he. “We’ve got to do our best to protect the captain against himself. I know you’ll coÖperate with me to keep him out of any possible trouble.”

“Surest thing you know, doctor!” exclaimed Hal. “I’ve been a fool and worse, I know, but that’s all over. I’ve taken a fresh start that will help me travel far. You’ll see.”

He put out his hand.

“Let’s shake on it,” he smiled winningly.

A moment their eyes met. Then Filhiol said:

“I’m sorry if I’ve misjudged you. Let’s just forget it. You don’t know how much relieved I feel.”

“I feel better, too,” said Hal. “Things are going to take a decidedly new turn.”

“It’s fine to hear you say that!” exclaimed the doctor, almost convinced that at last he had struck a human stratum in the boy’s heart. “I can take my after-dinner nap with a great deal easier mind now. Good-by.”

He limped into the house, not perhaps fully confident of Hal, but at any rate more inclined to believe him amenable to reason. Hal, peering after him, whispered a terrific blasphemy under his breath.

“You damned buttinsky!” he growled, black with passion. “There’s something coming to you, too. Something you’ll get, by God, or I’m no man!”

He got up, and—silently in his rubber-soled shoes—walked around the porch to the end of it, then stepped down into the grass and crept along by the house. Under the doctor’s window he stood, listening acutely. Just what the doctor was doing he must by all means know. Ezra was safe enough. From the kitchen drifted song:

“Rolling Rio,
To my rolling Rio Grande!
Hooray, you rolling Rio!
So fare ye well, my bonny young girls,
For I’m bound to the Rio Grande!”

Hal nodded as he heard the springs of the doctor’s bed creak, and knew the old man had really laid down for his mid-afternoon nap.

“It’s working fine,” said he. “Gramp’s gone, Ezra’s good for half an hour on ‘Rio Grande,’ and the doc’s turned in. Looks like a curse was sticking to me, doesn’t it? Not much! Nothing like that can stick to me!”

At his feet two or three ants were busy with a grasshopper’s leg. Hal smeared them out with a dab of his sole.

“That’s the way to do with people that get in your way,” he muttered. “Just like that!”

He slouched back to the porch. The resemblance to what Captain Briggs had been in the old days seemed wonderfully striking at just this moment. Same hang of heavy shoulders, same set of jaw; scowl quite a simulacrum of the other, and even the dark glowering of the eyes almost what once had been.

As Hal Briggs lithely stepped on to the porch again he formed how wonderful an image of that other man who, half a century ago, had swung the poisoned kris upon the decks of the Silver Fleece, and, smeared with blood, had hewn his way against all opposition to his will!

“Afraid of an old Malay curse!” sneered Hal. “Poor, piffling fool! Why, Filhiol’s loose in the dome, and grandpop’s no better. They’re a couple of children—ought to be shoved into the nursery. And they think they’re going to dictate to me?”

He paused a moment at the front door to listen. No sound from within indicated any danger.

“Think they’re going to keep me in this graveyard burg!” he gibed. “And stop my having that girl! Well, they’ve got another think coming. She’s mine, that young porpoise. She’s mine!”

Into the cabin he made his way, noiselessly, closed the hall door and smiled with exultation.

He needed but a moment to reach the desk, take out the little slip of paper on which the captain had written the combination, and go to the safe.

A few turns of the knob, and the iron door swung wide. Open came the money-compartment. With exultant hands, filled with triumph and evil pride, Hal caught up the sheaf of bills there, quickly counted off five hundred dollars, took a couple more bills for good luck, crammed the money into his pocket, and replaced the pitifully small remnant in the compartment.

“Sorry I’ve got to leave any,” he reflected, “but it’ll be safer. It may keep him from noticing. The old man wouldn’t let me have a boat, eh? And Laura turned me down, did she? Well now, we’ll soon see about all that!”

“Master Hal, sir! What in the name o’ Tophet are you up to?”

The sound of Ezra’s voice swung Hal sharp around. So intent had he been that he had quite failed to notice the cessation of the old cook’s chantey. A moment, Hal’s eyes, staring, met those of the astonished servitor. Ominous silence filled the room.

“Why, Master Hal!” Ezra quavered. “You—ain’t—”

“You sneaking spy!” Hal growled at him, even in his rage and panic careful to keep his voice low, lest he awake the doctor, abovestairs. Toward the old man he advanced, with rowdy oaths of the fo’cs’le.

Ezra stood his ground.

“I ain’t no spy, Master Hal,” he exclaimed, tremblingly. “But I come into the dinin’-saloon, here, an’ couldn’t help seein’. Tell me it ain’t so, Master Hal! Tell me you ain’t sunk so low as to be robbin’ your own grandpa, while he’s to town in all this rain, settlin’ up things fer you! Not that, Master Hal—not that!”

“Ezra, you damn son-of-a-sea-cook!” snarled Hal, his face the face of murder. “You call me a thief again, and so help me but I’ll wring your neck!” His hand caught Ezra by the throat and closed in a gorilla-grip, shutting off all breath. “You didn’t learn your lesson from the club last night, eh? Well, I’ll teach you one now, you old gray rat! I’ll shut your mouth, damn you!”

Viciously he shook the weak old man. Ezra clawed with impotent hands at the vise-clutch strangling him.

“It’s my money, my own money, understand?” Hal spat at him. “Every penny of it’s mine. He didn’t want me to have it just yet, but I’m going to, and you’re not going to blow on me! If you do—”

He loosed his hold, snatched down from its supporting hooks the Malay kris, and with it gripped in hand confronted the trembling, half-fainting cook.

“See this, Ezra?” And Hal shook the envenomed blade before the poor old fellow’s horror-smitten eyes.

“Master—Master Hal!”

“If you breathe so much as one syllable to the captain, I’ll split you with this knife, as sure as I’m a foot high! What? Butting in on me, in my own house, are you? Like hell! Take a slant at this knife here, and see how you’d like it through your guts!”

He raised it as if to strike. Ezra cowered, shrinking with the imminent terror of death.

“Master Hal, oh, fer God’s sake, now—”

“You’re going to keep your jaw-tackle quiet, are you, to the captain?”

“I—I—”

Wickedly Hal slashed at him. Ezra opened his mouth, no doubt to cry aloud, but Hal clapped a sinewed hand over it, and slammed him back against the wall.

“Not a word more!” he commanded, and released the trembling old man. “I’ve got to turn you loose, Ezra, but if you double-cross me, so help me God—”

“You callin’ on God, Master Hal?” quavered Ezra. “You, with your heathen curses an’ your Malay sword, an’ all the evil seed you’re sowin’ fer a terrible crop o’ misery?”

“Shut up, you!”

“Goin’ on this way, Master Hal, after you jest promised the cap’n you was goin’ to begin at the bottom o’ the ladder an’ climb ag’in? This here ain’t the bottom; this here is a deep ditch you’re diggin’, fur below that bottom. Oh, Master Hal,” and Ezra’s shaking hands went out in passionate appeal, “ef you got any love fer the memory o’ your dead mother; ef you got any fer your grandpa, what’s been so wonderful good to you; ef you got any little grain o’ gratitude to me, fer all these long years—”

“Ezra, you bald-headed old pot-walloper, I’m going to count ten on you,” Hal interrupted, terrible with rage. “If, by the end of that time you haven’t sworn to keep your mouth shut about this, I’m going to kill you right here in this room! I mean that, Ezra!”

“But ef it’s y’r own money, Master Hal, why should you be afeared to let him know?”

Hal struck the old man a staggering blow in the face. “You keep your voice down,” he snarled. “If you wake the doctor, and he comes down here, God help the pair of you! Now, Ezra, I’m not going to trifle with you any longer. You’re going to swear secrecy, and do it quick, or take the consequences!”

He turned, caught up the captain’s well-thumbed Bible from the desk, and with the Bible in one hand, the poisoned kris in the other, confronted Ezra.

“Here! Lay your hand on this book, damn quick!” he ordered. “And repeat what I tell you. Quick, now; quick!”

The argument of the raised kris overbore Ezra’s resistance. With a look of heart-breaking anguish he laid a trembling, veinous hand on the Bible.

“What is it, Master Hal?” quavered he. “What d’ye want me to say?”

“Say this: ‘If I betray this secret—’”

“‘If I—if I betray this secret—’”

“‘May the black curse of Vishnu fall on me!’”

“‘May the’—listen, Master Hal! Please now, jest one minute!”

“Ezra, say it, damn your stiff, obstinate neck! Say it, or you get the knife!”

“‘May the black curse o’—o’ Vishnoo fall on me!”

“‘And may his poisoned kris strike through my heart!’”

“No, no, sir, I can’t say that!” pleaded the simple old fellow, ashen to the lips, his forehead lined with deep wrinkles of terror.

“You will say it, Ezra, and you’ll mean it, or by the powers of darkness I’ll butcher you where you stand!” menaced Hal. “And you’ll say it quick, too!” Hal was nerving his hand to do cold murder. “One, two, three, four! Say it now before I cut you down! There’s blood on this knife, Ezra. See the dark stains? Blood, that my grandfather put on there, fifty years ago—that’s what I’ve heard among old sailors—put on there, because some of his men wouldn’t obey him. Well, I can play the same game. What he did, I can do, and will! There’ll be more blood on it, fresh blood, your blood, if you don’t mind me. Five, six, seven! Say it, you obstinate cur!”

Up rose the kris again, ready to strike. Hal’s eyes were glowing. His lips had drawn back, showing the gleam of white teeth.

“Keep your hand on that Bible, Ezra! Take that oath. Say it! Eight, nine, t—”

“I’ll say it, Master Hal! I’ll say it!” gasped the old man. “Don’t kill me—don’t!”

“Say it, then: ‘May this poisoned kris strike through my heart!’”

“‘M-m-may this poisoned kris—strike through—my—heart!’ There now! Oh! Now I’ve said it. Let me go—let me go!”

“Go, and be damned to you! Get out o’ here, you spying surka-batcha—you son-of-a-pig!”

Hal dropped the Bible back on to the desk, swung Ezra ’round, and pitched him, staggering, into the dining-saloon. Ezra dragged himself away, quaking, ghastly, to his own room, there to lock himself in. Spent, terrified, he threw himself upon his bunk, and lay there, half dead.

Well satisfied, Hal reviewed the situation.

“I guess I’ve kept him quiet for a while,” he muttered. “Long enough, anyhow. I won’t need much more time now.”

Back to the fireplace he turned, hung up the kris again on its hooks, glanced around to assure himself he had left no traces of his robbery. He closed the door of the safe, spun the knob, and in the desk-drawer replaced the slip of paper bearing the combination.

“I guess I’ve fixed things so they’ll hold a while now,” judged he. “God, what a place—what people! Spies, all spies! They’re all spying on me here. And Laura’s giving me the laugh, too. Maybe I won’t show them all a thing or two!”

He listened a moment, and, satisfied, opened the door into the front hall. To all appearances the coast was free. He snatched a cap, jammed it upon his head, and, hunching into an old raincoat, quietly left the house.

The Airedale would have followed him, but with the menace of an upraised fist he sent it back. Through the gate he went, and turned toward the right, in the direction of Hadlock’s Cove, where dwelt Jim Gordon, owner of the Kittiwink.

In his ears the wind, ever-rising, and the shouting of the quick-lashed surf along the rocks joined with the slash of the rain to make a chorus glad and mighty, to which his heart expanded. On and on he strode, exultant, filled with evil devisings of a mind half mad in the lusts of strength and passion. And as he went he held communion with himself:

“I’ll beat ’em to it—and devil take anything that stands in my way! To hell with them—to hell with everything that goes against me!”