ADVENTURE TALES #5

by John Gregory Betancourt

  “Crown, however, recognized her. She had been a frequent voyager on the Atlantic, and many men knew her. She had been pointed out to Crown, a year ago, on another ship. He knew only that she was a police character, and probably up to no good. When I sent her to him, to test her story, she was obliged to carry the thing through, and tell him the same story she had told me. She trusted Crown’s office, as she had every right to do, and actually deposited the jewels there, and re­ceived the usual receipt.

  “But the temptation was too great for Crown. He was desperately hard up — deeply in debt — back home in England. It looked to him like a sure thing. He would keep the jewels himself, steal the receipt which had been issued to Kitty Desmond, and defy her to say anything. He was, of course, in a position to fix the records in his own office, and being a matter of routine no one else likely to remember the issu­ing of that particular receipt. There could be no ap­peal for the woman; her story would be laughed at, if she re­ported it, for her reputation was against her. Probably she would accept the inevitable and make no outcry.

  “Crown’s slip occurred when, on the second night, he stole the receipt which had been given her. She woke up, and to keep her from screaming, he choked her. His reputation de­pended upon his silencing her, at least until he could talk to her. If he had not killed her, he would have offered her — when she caught him in the act of theft — a share of the pro­fits. Unfortunately, she died under his hands; he is stronger than he suspects. He got the receipt, however, and fled. No one saw him; he had timed everything very well.

  “As it happened, in giving young Rus­sell a false address, the night be­fore, the Baroness — so to call her — had torn off a fragment of the receipt, the only piece of paper that came to hand in the darkness. Whether she knew what it was, or not, we shall never know. Perhaps she did, for she tore off only a small piece; not enough to spoil the receipt. But there was enough of the print on the reverse of the written address, for me to guess what the entire paper must have been. If then, she had deposited something with the purser’s office, the purser had lied when he told me she had not. In the circumstances, the logical conclusion was that she had deposited the jewels.

  “Crown is a bold man, and he played his part well, once he was forced to it. But in the end, I let him know, through Rittenhouse, the im­portance I attached to a certain fragment of paper. As he had the rest of the paper himself, he knew very well what it was that I had, and what I probably suspected. He tried to bluff it through, even tonight, for he wasn’t positive that I knew, and he had destroyed the rest of the receipt. Nevertheless, he was badly frightened, and he had already resolved to get rid of the jewels, and try to clear his skirts.

  “As for me, my case was purely circumstantial, and would have been difficult to prove in law; I had to force Crown to incriminate himself. I told him point-blank, just before he sprang upon me, that he would be arrested, told him where the jewels were, and asked him what he intended to do about it. You know the rest.”

  “And a wonderful beginning of your vacation it has been!” I said bitterly, look­ing at his lacerated hands.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Lavender. “I never enjoyed myself more in my life. This has been just what I needed. And I’m sure the sea air, as a background, has been very beneficial to my nerves.”

  “But where are the jewels?” asked the captain suddenly.

  “I asked Gilruth to bring them with him,” replied Lavender with a smile. “As a last resort, Crown tried to get rid of them, as I said, and so he palmed them off on Gilly. The birth­day gave him his chance. The jewels are at the bottom of the box of candy, which was the purser’s gift to my friend.”

  Whereupon, I emptied the box onto the table; and the chorus of ex­clamations that followed were La­v­en­der’s re­ward for his efforts, and the final proof of the truth of his deductions, even though later the suicide of Albert Crown made legal proof unneces­sary, and made unnecessary the pro­secution of that un­fortunate man.

  THE REMITTANCE-WOMAN

  by Achmed Abdullah

  “I SAY, old bean!” Marie Campbell addressed a long, rather limp youth with a pleasantly innocuous face.

  “Wha-at, old thing?” he asked languidly.

  “Feel energetic?”

  “Quite.”

  “Good! I’ll shoot you a game of cow­boy pool before lunch.”

  “Stakes?”

  “You bet,” said Marie Campbell. “The drinks and a fifty-spot.”

  As Tom Van Zandt rose to follow her into the billiard-room of the coun­try club at the Maine resort, a cough she knew well came from the farther door and caused her to turn

  “Yes, father dear?” — with a sligh­tly martyred air.

  “I want a few words with you, Marie.”

  “Now?”

  “Immediately!”

  She walked up to him.

  “What is the trouble?” she asked.

  “I was in the next room. I heard what you’ve been saying to that young jackanapes of a Tom Van Zandt.”

  “And what did I say you could pos­sibly take exception to?” Marie’s voice rose.

  “Oh, calling Tom ‘old bean!’ ” He pronounced the words as if they hurt him. “And him calling you ‘old thing.’ ”

  “Dad, that sort of talk happens to be the fad just now in our gang —”

  “Gang?”

  “Set — if you prefer. Why, Muriel Brewster always calls her father ‘darling old turnip.’ ”

  “I don’t care what she calls him! I don’t care what anybody calls — oh — anybody,” he finished weakly.

  “What’s all the fuss about, then?”

  “Your lolling around here with Tom —”

  “Nothing much wrong with him except his brain and the color of his socks, dad —”

  “And,” her father interrupted, “ask­ing him to shoot you a game of cowboy pool — and betting him — what was it?”

  “Oh — the drinks and a fifty-spot.”

  “The drinks and a fifty-spot!” echoed Anthony Campbell, with a groan of almost physical pain. “The drinks and a — it’s your language I’m kicking about, and your whole darned conduct. ‘Cowboy pool!’ ” he quoted, with an accent of personal injury. “ ‘Fifty-spot! Old bean!’ It isn’t be­com­ing a girl. And,” — crescendo — “that isn’t all!”

  “No?”

  Her voice was as cold as ice. She was fond of her father, and he of her, in a curiously impersonal manner. But both were impatient and headstrong. Never at odds in vital questions, they clashed frequently on small, negligible side issues. For a number of years — Mrs. Anthony Campbell had died in giving birth to Marie, and there was a challenging silence whenever the girl mentioned her mother — father and daughter had lived in the uncomfortable relations existing between two in­timately connected persons who re­a­lize that the atmosphere about them is surcharged with innumerable little ex­plosive atoms.

  “Darn it all!” her father exclaimed. “You’ve lost all your feminine sweetness and restraint. You talk like a man, behave like a man, smoke like a man, and,” — he wound up accusingly, furiously, yet somehow triumphantly — “you make debts like a man! Here!” And he produced a thick sheaf of vari­colored papers.

  “Bills?” she inquired, bored.

  “Yes.” He tossed them on the table.

  “Must I look at them all? Now?”

  “No. I’ve made a little compilation of them for your benefit, young lady.” He took a typewritten sheet from his pocket. “Here!”

  She picked it up and glanced at the items, which totaled up to a respectable sum.

  “Surely you can afford to pay it, can’t you, dad?”

  “Of course. That isn’t the question.”

  “What is?”

  “The sort of stuff you spend my money on. For instance, I don’t mind this seven hundred dollars for frocks and frills and all that. Nor this — Ma­dame — oh — Hickama-doodle’s bill for a dozen hats. But — look at this
— and this — and that!”

  She did.

  “Polo-mallets, one hundred and seventy-five dollars. English hunting-saddle, ninety-five. Yes?” She looked up questioningly.

  “Go on. There!” He pointed at an­other detailed row of items. “Walking sticks! Sporting-rifle! Hunting-crop! Cig­arettes! Poker chips! And — bree­ches! By God — breeches!”

  “But,” she rejoined mildly, “you told me only the other day that I could buy myself a new outfit —”

  “A woman’s! Not a man’s! Bree­ches! Cigarettes! Poker chips!”

  “What are you going to do about it, dad?”

  “I’m going to give you your choice. Do you want to be a girl, and behave like one, or be treated like a man?”

  “You mean that, dad?”

  “Absolutely!”

  “All right,” she said. “In the future you may treat me as if I were a man.”

  “In everything?”

  “Rather.”

  He looked at her, slightly incredulous.

  “You realize what you are choos­ing?”

  “Quite, dad.”

  “You are willing to take the same chance I took when I was a young chap?”

  “Yes.”

  “Marie,” he said, “I accept your choice. You will start your new career at once. Tomorrow we go back to town. I’ll give you a check there. I’ll make it a thou­sand —”

  “Why a thousand?” she drawled.

  “To start you in life.”

  “Did you say you’d give me the same chance you had when you went out into the world?”

  “Yes. Well?” — as he saw her smile,

  “Dad,” she said slowly, “last year I went to Scotland — and saw grandfather. He told me things about you — when you were a young man.”

  “Oh!” Mr. Anthony Campbell was getting embarrassed.

  “He told me something about how agreeably surprised he had been when you finally made good.”

  “What has all that to do with —”

  “Wait! He told me how ir­re­spon­sible you had been for years after leaving college — how at last, in de­speration, he asked you to leave Scotland for Scotland’s good. In fact, you came over to America as a remittance-man, didn’t you?”

  “I did. But — I did make good.”

  “Never mind that. I’m speaking about your chance in life — your first start. Grandfather gave you a thousand dollars every three months on condition that you’d keep away from the Old Country. True, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” he admitted in a low voice.

  *****

  HIS THOUGHTS roamed back down the vista of the gray, dead years — his impetuous youth, two terms at Ox­­ford, expulsion on a number of charges of which drinking was the mild­est. Scrapes, right and left. His father had sent him to America, and he had be­come a remittance-man. A thousand dollars every quarter, and it had never lasted more than a month — whisky, cards, dice, women, horses.

  And step by step, he had drifted down the lad­der until one day, sud­denly, something like a colored ball of glass had shivered to pieces in his brain, had shown himself to himself in the naked, pitiless light of self-understanding.

  That was in the Northwest, not far from the Washington–British Colum­bia boundary-line. He was completely broke. But that day the little red wilderness gods had piped to him, and he had followed their call, across the boundary-line into British Columbia, north, up along the Michel Creek — to find what he might. He had trekked on foot, finding occasional work in mines and lumber camps. Then one day, clear­ing the snow from the ground to make a fire, he had found a little crumbly, black powder — coal!

  He had been too poor to buy ­dy­namite. And so Jack Henderson, the Crow’s Nest Pass storekeeper, who was nearly as poor as himself, grub-staked him for all he could. He had worked with pick and shovel all that winter into the summer. But he had found his first true vein, and today Camp­bell & Henderson — the same Jack Henderson of the Crow’s Nest Pass store — were the biggest coal op­er­ators in the Northwest, solidly rich, with offices and town houses in New York and country places in Maine and on Long Island.

  Since then his life had been a steady routine of work and success. He had interrupted it only once, a little over twenty-two years ago, when he had gone on a trip round the world, and had spent over a year in China, whence he had returned, white-haired, rather bitter, with a little baby girl in his arms. Yes — he had curtly told Jack Henderson and his other friends — he had married in China. And — yes — his wife had died in childbirth.

  Today the beginnings of his fortune seemed very far away; very far away, almost unreal, seemed the days when he had been a remittance-man.

  But he was an honest man.

  “YES,” HE SAID to his daughter; “once I was a remittance-man, and my father sent me a thousand dollars every three months.”

  “Very well,” she went on coolly. “You promised me the same chance you had. Only — make it fifteen hundred a quarter instead of a thousand.”

  “Fifteen hundred? Why —”

  “Higher cost of living,” she ex­plained.

  “All right,” he gave in finally. “Fifteen hundred a quarter.” He looked at her narrowly, to see if she were bluff­ing. “Of course on the same conditions which my father —”

  “Yes,” she interrupted. “I’ll get my remittances just as long as I stay away from America —”

  “Any time you want to come back — and behave like a girl —”

  “I know. But I’m really tickled to get away. Always been crazy to go to China.”

  “China?” He looked up, startled.

  “Yes, dad. I was born there, wasn’t I? What other reason could there be — except perhaps inherited Wanderlust?”

  “Yes — yes.” An expression of suspicion left his face.

  “Well — there you are! I shall start this week. About my remittances, where to send them and all that, I suppose you’ll want me to talk to your secretary.”

  “Marie!” came his half-choked ap­peal, his pride giving way a little to his love.

  He held out a nervous hand and she took it in both hers. But her voice was one of finality.

  “It’s quite settled, dad.”

  “Very well.” He lit a cigar. “By the way — remember that little Chinese vase you had ever since you were a baby?”

  “You mean that brittle thing with the two funny, wriggly gold dragons?”

  “That’s the one. Take it along. And,” — he coughed, evidently search­ing for words — “don’t show it to peo­ple — and don’t talk about it — un­less,” — he hesitated — “unless you absolutely have to.”

  “But — what —”

  “I am a Scot.” He gave a forced laugh. “And so you must forgive my Scottish superstitions. But — is it a promise?”

  “About the vase?”

  “Yes.”

  “All right, dad. I promise.”

  *****

  ALL THIS had happened over six months before, and now Marie Campbell was in her hotel at ­Can­ton, at the edge of the Shameen, the Foreign Con­cession, with a view, in the distance, of White Cloud Mountain. She wondered what she should do. Of course she could cable to her father, and the reply would be immediate and generous.

  But it was not alone her inherited pride which prevented her from doing so. It was also that, somehow, even in these few months, China had got be­neath her skin in a strange way.

  For, in her non-thinking mo­ments, there was always about her a curious impression that she be­longed here. Yet — what was there for her to do?

  Two weeks before, her quarterly check had come. She had spent every cent of it in the gorgeous silk and jade shops near the Gate of Eternal Purity. And here was Liu Po-Yat, the Manchu chambermaid, with a note from Monsieur Paul Pailloux, the hotel manager, asking Miss Campbell to settle her bill before ten o’clock the next morning, or —

  “Or?”

  She turned to Liu Po-Yat, who l
ooked down at her from her great height, her handsome face inscrutable beneath the glory of her raven-black hair.

  Then, suddenly, the Manchu wo­man smiled.

  “Miss Campbell,” she said in perfect English, “I see no necessity for the ‘or.’ ”

  “Don’t you?”

  Marie Campbell was surprised that Liu Po-Yat, who, ever since she had come to the Great Eastern Hotel to live, had not opened her mouth except to answer in gliding Mongol ­mono­syllables to the few Chinese words — enough to ask for fresh towels and ice-water — Marie had managed to pick up, was able to speak English — fluent, careful English, not the pidgin of the river coolies.

  “No,” Liu Po-Yat replied to her ques­tion. “You see — there is Mr. Moses d’Acosta —”

  “Look here —”

  “Mr. d’Acosta is waiting for you downstairs in the salon,” Liu Po-Yat finished imperturbably.

  *****

  MR. MOSES d’Acosta had seen the light of day fifty years earlier in Constantinople in a crooked, dim street a stone’s throw from the Yedi Koulé Ka­poussi, the Gate of the Seven Tow­ers. He spoke Turkish as fluently as he spoke Arabic and French and English and German and the Le­vantine lingua franca. But his native tongue was an archaic Span­ish, which he used, even in preference to Hebrew, when he chanted his prayers to Jahveh, the God of Abraham and of Jacob. For he was a “Spaniol,” a descendant of one of those noble Spanish-Jewish families who were driven from their native land when the last of the Moorish cal­iphs went down under the straight swords of Castile and Leon, and who migrated, some to Morocco and Tunis, others to Turkey.

  Today he was one of the richest men in the Levant, with interests that reached from Peking to London. He was a typical Jew in so far as he was both a doer and a dreamer: the rarest, most irresistible of combinations, and that — this according to Mademoi­selle Claire Droz, a Parisian chanteuse whose light feet for years had trod the rickety boards of occasional theatres catering to European exiles in Oriental lands — he swayed habitually emotional incoherencies into intellectual coherences.

  *****

  MARIE HAD met him first a week before in a mazed bazaar near the Temple of the Five Hundred Lohans and, the same night, in the hotel lobby. She had noticed him immediately. No­body could help noticing him — very tall, broad, dark, with black, in­scrutable eyes, the nose an enormous, ­pre­datory beak, the chin flagging and combative. He had bowed to her deeply, and she had inclined her head curtly in return.