“I think I said he was not a big artist; and as for you, you looked as if you backed up what Miss Lanny said. Altogether, poor old da Vinci had a lot of hard things said against him. And all the time his masterpiece, plus a pair of eyebrows, and some surface polish, was looking down at us from the bulkhead. I offered her to the Customs officer for fifty dollars, but I couldn’t get him to bid.
“Yes, Mr. Black, I’ve some enjoyed myself this trip. That’s what I call doing the thing in style.
“Thanks; yes, twenty-five thousand dollars is the figure. I guess we’ve got to celebrate this—what?”
The Adventure of the Garter
S.S. Edric,
January 17.
I’m back passenger carrying, and I suppose I’m a bit
of a fool; but there’s a certain young lady aboard, who’s managed to twist me round her finger more than I should have imagined possible a few days ago, when we left Southampton.
She’s next to me at the head of my table, and we’ve rather cottoned on to each other. Indeed, I’ll admit I like her that well, that I’ve broken my general rule, never to allow a passenger up on the lower bridge; for she’s been up there with me several times lately, and I feel a bit of an ass; for I guess my officers are sure to be poking fun at my expense, among themselves. A ship’s Captain should keep his lady friendships ashore, if he hopes to have things run smooth aboard.
She’s a dainty little woman, with pretty hands and feet, and heaps of brown hair. Looks about twenty-two; but I’m old enough to know she’s probably about thirty. She’s too wise for twenty-two. Knows when to keep quiet; and that’s a thing; twenty-two is generally too bubbly, or too much of a know-all, as the case may be, to have learnt.
“Captain Gault,” she said to me this morning, after we had walked the lower bridge for the better part of two hours, “what’s in this little house here, you’re always going into?”
“That’s my chart-room, Miss Malbrey,” I said. “It’s where I do most of my nautical work.”
“Won’t you take me in and show me?” she asked, in a pretty way she has. She hesitated a moment; then she said, a little awkwardly: “There’s something I want to talk to you about, Captain Gault. I simply must go somewhere where I can talk to you.”
“Well,” I replied, “if I can be of any service, I shall be downright pleased. Come along in and look at my working den; and talk as much as you like.”
I guess that shows she can wrap me round her finger, more than is good for me; for I’ve made it a rule for years, to keep my chart-room strictly private and strictly for ships’ work. At least, I mean I’ve tried to!
But there you are! That’s what happenes to the best of us, when a lass takes our fancy. They get us on our soft side, and we’re like tabbies round a milk saucer. As MacGelt, an old Engineer of mine, used to say: “It’s pairfec’ly reediclous; but I canna say nay to a wumman, once she’s set me wantin’ to gi’e her a bit hug.” And there you have the Philosophy of the Ages in a nutshell! At least some of it.
Now see how things came about. We’d no more than got inside the chart-room, than Miss Malbrey asked me to close the door.
“Please turn your back a moment, Captain, will you? I sha’n’t be a minute,” she said.
The next thing I knew, she called out to me that I could look round. And when I did so, she was shaking her skirt down straight with her right hand, and holding out to me something in her left which I saw at once was a garter, of surprisingly substantial make.
“Take it, Captain,” she said, looking up at me, and blushing a little. “I’m going to beg you to do me a very great favour indeed. See! Feel it. Do you feel those cut-out places inside, and the hard things in them?… Surely, Captain, you know what it is.”
“Yes,” I said, rather soberly. “I know what it is, Miss Malbrey. It’s simply a jewel-runner’s garter. I’m sorry. I don’t like to think of a woman like you doing this sort of thing—”
She waved her hand to me to stop.
“Listen a moment!” she said. “Do listen, Captain Gault. This is to be my very last trip with the sparklers. I’ve made up my mind to drop it, for good. And I should never have troubled you about it, only there’s one of the Treasury spies aboard, and they’ve spotted me; and I shall simply be caught; and oh, I don’t know what to do, if you won’t help me, Captain Gault. You’re so clever at running the stuff through. You’ve never been caught. I’ve heard lots of times about you, and the way the Customs never can catch you with the goods. Won’t—won’t you just this once, to save me from being caught, run this through for me? I promise you it will be for the last time. I shall never try to run stuff in again. I’ve made enough to live on quietly; and now I guess I want to end it all. Will you help me, Captain Gault? Promise me you will?”
What else could I do? I promised, and now I’m booked to run this pretty lady’s stuff through, willy-nilly; and never a thought does she seem to have that I may get caught, and suffer fine and maybe imprisonment. But I certainly don’t mean to get “catched,” if you know anything about it!
“Where are you going to hide it, Captain? Do trust me,” she said.
“I never show my pet hiding-places to anyone,” I told her. “You see, my dear young lady, if ever you have to keep a secret, keep it to yourself; that’s my rule. If I told first one person and then another, where I hide some of the trifles I sometimes take ashore duty-free in New York, why I guess I should be in bad trouble pretty soon.”
“But I’m a trustable sort of person, aren’t I, Captain Gault?” she assured me. “And I can keep secrets. Why, if I couldn’t, I’d never have put anything over on the U.S.A. Treasury. I’ve never once been caught and it’s only through an accident that I’ve become suspected. But I don’t care. I’m tired of it; and I’m going to stop, really and truly, and be good and settle down. Now do be a dear man, and let me be the privileged one person in the world, and let me see your famous hiding-place that all the Customs officers are sure exists; but which they can never find. Now do, Captain.”
“Miss Malbrey,” I said, “a man’s but a poor, weak thing, in the hands of a pretty woman; if you will forgive an honest compliment—”
“Gee!” she interrupted, laughing right away down in the back of her eyes. “I’ll forgive you anything, Captain, pretty near, that is, if you’ll make me the only other person in the world who knows the truth of the great mystery.”
“Well,” I said, “you’ll have to give me your solemn word you’ll keep it a secret till the end of your life.”
“Sure, Captain Gault. I’ll die on the rack first,” she told me, twinkling at my seriousness. “Now be a good man and show me. I declare I’m all on the quiver with wondering where it is. Is it down in the hold, or where?”
“Miss Malbrey,” I said slowly, “you’re standing within six feet of a human miracle of a hiding-place.”
“What? Where, now?” she asked, staring round and round in a way that she surely knew was disturbingly taking to a plain sailor-man.
“See,” I answered. “You shall open it yourself. You see that the thin, steel beams over your head are not cased with wood, as they are in the cabins and saloons. They’re just plain, small, solid steel T-girders, with no size about them, you would say, to hide anything—eh?
“Well, now,” I continued, “look at the ‘beam’ just above your head, and count the square-headed bolts that go through the flange on the forrard side of the beam, up into the deck that makes the roof of the house. Stand on this chair. I will steady you. Now! The seventh bolt-head. Take it between your finger and thumb and see if you can turn it to your left… Can you?”
“Yes,” she said, with a little gasp of effort. “Just a teeny, weeny bit…. But nothing’s happened!” she added in a disappointed voice.
“Ah, believe me, dear lady, that’s just the beauty of this hiding-place,” I said. “If a Customs searcher happened on that bolt-head and twisted it a little, as you have done, he would merely suppose tha
t it was a loose bolt, because nothing would happen to make him think otherwise. But let me help you off the chair. Now come along to the other end of the beam. See, I twist the second bolt-head here, close to the side, and now I can lift out a bit of the steel flange here, right in the center of the beam, with a row of false bolt-heads attached. Look! Do you see the hollow in the deck planks which the flange covers? There’s room there to hide a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of pearls or stones.
“Now do you realise the cunning of it all? Before this bit of removable steel flange can be shifted, even a hundredth part of an inch, the seventh bolt on the starboard side has to be turned to the left; then one has to go across to port, and turn the second, from the side of the house, to the right. Then one has to come here to the center of the beam, and catch hold of the twenty-fourth bolt from the starboard side, and pull outwards, evenly, and there you are. When it’s closed, it is almost microscopically invisible. I tell you, Miss Malbrey, the man who thought out that dodge, and had the old beam taken away, and that doctored one fitted in place of it, was a smart chap, and no mistake!”
“And that man was you, sure enough, Captain Gault,” she said, laughing, with her pert little head turned on one side, and clapping her two small hands.
“You flatter me, my dear lady!” I answered her; and refused to tell her whether I was the one who’d had the beams altered, or not. All the same, the notion is a smart one; and I pride myself on it; which is certainly one way of letting the cat out of the bag!
“Ah! Well, Captain Gault, you’re sure one smart man!” she told me, when she had helped me hide the “smuggler’s garter” in the recess above the beam flange. “I’d never have thought of a notion like that. I guess I’d better run away now, and take Toby for a run, before you get tired of me. Isn’t he a darling dearum, now. Kiss me, pet!”
This, perhaps, it may be as well to explain, was not a direct invitation to me; but was addressed to her pet dog, Toby; a toy pom, which had become quite friendly with me; but I’ve no use for it. I abominate lap-dogs; but I’ve not said so to the young woman!
“Miss Malbrey,” I said, “I’m getting quite jealous of that dog!”
And by this speech you may gather that I had slightly lost my head. I can’t say I’ve quite got it back, even at this present writing. She’s a confoundedly taking young woman!
January 18.
Mr. Allan Jarvis, the Chief Steward, came up to see me this morning. He’s a man I trust; which is more than I do most people. We both hail from the same town, and when we’re alone together we drop the Mr. Jarvis and the Captain Gault. It’s just plain Jarvis and Gault, as it should be, between men who are friends and who have helped one another put through more than one odd deal that had money at the bottom of it.
“Look here, Gault,” he said, as he lit one of my cigars, “you’re going pretty strong with the young lady in Number 4 cabin.”
“You don’t say, old man,” I replied. “Well?”
“It’s just this,” he told me. “Don’t trust her too much. I’ve a notion she’s playing a game with you, that’s got more than an odd kiss or so at the bottom of it. Look at this, before you start to cuss me for butting in!”
He handed me across a folded newspaper clipping, headed—
“America Opens a New Profession for Women.
“The Treasury Recruits Twelve Pretty Women to Play I-spy-I on the Trans-Atlantic Jewel-Runners.”
“Well!” I said, “what of it? You’re not going to suggest to me that Miss Malbrey’s one of them—”
“Open the thing, man!” he interrupted. “Unfold it!”
I was doing so, as he spoke, and now I saw what he meant. There, on the cutting, was a photo of a pretty girl, looking at me, and the girl was most extraordinarily like Miss Malbrey (Alicia Malbrey, she’s told me is her name).
“It’s not her, Jarvis, man,” I said. “I’ll not believe it. I just won’t believe that sort of thing of her. Why, man, look at the face; the eyes are too close for her, and this is a younger woman altogether. And, besides, it’s impossible. Why, she’s just the opposite to anything of this kind. Why, she’s a—”
I pulled up short, for I had nearly told Jarvis that she was as much a smuggler, in a small way, as either he or I.
I pondered a moment, whether I might not tell him; but before I could decide, he chipped in again—
“Poor old chap!” he said. “You sure got it bad!” And that shut me up.
“Have it your own way,” I told him. “But I happen to have a special reason for knowing that the little lady’s all right.”
“Ah!” he said, getting up, “I know the special reason well enough, Gault. We all feel that way, when we’re a bit gone on some woman. The worst of it is, they’ve generally too much brutal sense, not to use our little feelings to their own advantage! Ha! Ha! old man! I love to quote your own vinegar sayings against yourself!”
And with that, he left me, taking his beastly cutting with him. All the same, I’ve had some pretty fierce thinks; but I’ve decided the evidence is quite insufficent to condemn my dainty lady of the laughing eyes. Oh, Lord, haven’t I gone and got it properly!
January 19.
“Don’t you just love my doggie, Captain Gault?” said Miss Alicia Malbrey, to me this afternoon.
“Well,” I answered, “I suppose, Miss Malbrey, there’s all sorts of ways of looking at things.”
“Now you’re just dodging me, Captain, and I won’t have it!” she told me. “You do love my Toby boykins, don’t you? Tell me honest true.”
“No, Miss Malbrey,” I replied. “If you want an honest answer, I do not like Toby or any other kind of lap-dog. To my mind, a dog is an unsuitable object for a woman’s arms; and a woman who kisses and nurses a dog, cannot, it seems to me, prize herself as highly as she should, or she would shrink from such physical intimacies with what is, after all, simply a stunted little animal, less useful than a cow, and less courageous than a common rat!”
“Captain Gault,” she rapped back at me, “you’re sure forgetting yourself. Let me tell you, a dog’s as good as a man, any day!”
“There’s no accounting for tastes, Miss Malbrey,” I said, smiling a bit. “We men do not hug and kiss our dogs. We consider a woman pleasanter and more suitable.”
“I should think so!” she interrupted. “Do you mean to say you’d compare a woman with a dog, Captain Gault?”
“That’s just what I refused to do,” I said. “You see, dear lady, you began by asking me, did I like lap-dogs—or something to that effect; and now, because I like to think they are inferior to women, you’re belabouring me and pretending that I’ve been saying just the opposite! Oh, woman! Woman! In our hours of ease—! Now, if, instead of asking me what I thought of your lap-dog, you’d asked me what I thought of you—why, then, lady of the winsome face, methinks I would have never ended the nice things I could have said. Why, of all the dainty-faced—”
I paused, to hunt round for words to describe further.
“Yes, Captain Gault?” she prompted.
I looked at her. There was not a sign of anger now in her face; only a sort of waiting—I could almost have thought it was a kind of triumphant expectancy.
“Yes?” she said again, scarcely breathing the word.
I looked at her in the eyes, and suddenly I realised that I was being allowed to look right down into them; and a woman only does that when she is either luring or loving.
Was she flirting with me, or did she really care? I put it to the test, so I caught her up in my arms and kissed her full on the lips.
“Oh!” she said, with a gasp.
A minute later, she laughed, breathlessly.
“I knew you’d not be able to hold out against me much longer!” she said.
She laughed again, in her quaint, pretty way.
“Now, shut your eyes a moment, Captain, dear, and see what love will bring you!” she said; and brushed my eyes gently shut with her small hands.
There was a rustle of skirts; the rattle of the bells on Toby’s collar; a faint creaking, and than a dainty, mocking laugh—
“That’s as much as is good for you for one day, Captain Gault,” came her voice; and I opened my eyes just in time to see her closing the door.
New York,
January 20.
My Chief Officer came along to my cabin this morning, after I had interviewed the officer of the Customs. My cabin had just been searched; and I had declared all that I meant to declare!
“I don’t know if this concerns you, Sir,” he said; “but it seems as if it might. The breeze blew it out of one of the Customs men’s hands, and I put my foot on it before they saw where it had got to. I thought you’d better see it at once.”
“It does concern me, very much indeed, Mr. Graham,” I said grimly, as I read the crumpled note he had handed me.
“Treacherous little devil!” I heard him mutter under his breath; and I knew that he also guessed who had written the note. It was fairly brief and brutal, and quite comprehensive—
“Look in the Captain’s chart-room. Middle beam. Turn seventh bolt, from starboard side, to left; and second bolt from port side, to right. Then catch hold of the twenty-forth bolt, from starboard side, and twenty-ninth, from port side, near the middle of the beam, and pull out sideways. A part of the flange will slide out; and there is a recess cut in the deck flanks above. The diamonds are there in a ‘garter.’ Remember, I am not to be mentioned in the case at all. He’s a slippery customer; but I guess I’ve got him nailed down solid this time.—No. 7. F.”
“Perhaps there’s time yet, Sir, to go one better than her,” said my Chief Officer aloud. “They’ll have to go back to her for fresh instructions, now they’ve lost this paper. Can’t you get up to the chart-room and nobble the stuff, before they get there? You may be in time, yet. Heave the blessed stuff over the side, rather than let them do you in, Sir. That’s what I’d do!”
Boats of the Glen Carrig and Other Nautical Adventures Page 43
