Part 35 (1/2)

”What girl?”

”If she could only see you now. Why in thunder didn't you take those clothes on board? I wanted you to. Couldn't a captain wear a dress suit on special occasions?”

”Mac,” I said gravely, ”if you will think a moment, you will remember that the only special occasions on the Ella, after I took charge, were funerals. Have you sat through seven days of horrors without realizing that?”

Mac had once gone to Europe on a liner, and, having exhausted his funds, returned on a cattle-boat.

”All the captains I ever knew,” he said largely, ”were a fussy lot--dressed to kill, and navigating the boat from the head of a dinner-table. But I suppose you know. I was only regretting that she hadn't seen you the way you're looking now. That's all. I suppose I may regret, without hurting your feelings!”

He dropped all mention of Elsa after that, for a long time. But I saw him looking at me, at intervals, during the evening, and sighing. He was still regretting!

We enjoyed the theater, after all, with the pent-up enthusiasm of long months of work and strain. We laughed at the puerile fun, encored the prettiest of the girls, and swaggered in the lobby between acts, with cigarettes. There we ran across the one man I knew in Philadelphia, and had supper after the play with three or four fellows who, on hearing my story, persisted in believing that I had sailed on the Ella as a lark or to follow a girl. My simple statement that I had done it out of necessity met with roars of laughter and finally I let it go at that.

It was after one when we got back to the lodging-house, being escorted there in a racing car by a riotous crowd that stood outside the door, as I fumbled for my key, and screeched in unison: ”Leslie! Leslie!

Leslie! Sic 'em!” before they drove away.

The light in the dingy lodging-house parlor was burning full, but the hall was dark. I stopped inside and lighted a cigarette.

”Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Mac!” I said. ”I've got the first two, and the other can be had--for the pursuit.”

Mac did not reply: he was staring into the parlor. Elsa Lee was standing by a table, looking at me.

She was very nervous, and tried to explain her presence in a breath--with the result that she broke down utterly and had to stop.

Mac, his jovial face rather startled, was making for the stairs; but I sternly brought him back and presented him. Whereon, being utterly confounded, he made the tactful remark that he would have to go and put out the milk-bottles: it was almost morning!

She had been waiting since ten o'clock, she said. A taxicab, with her maid, was at the door. They were going back to New York in the morning, and things were terribly wrong.

”Wrong? You need not mind Mr. McWhirter. He is as anxious as I am to be helpful.”

”There are detectives watching Marshall; we saw one to-day at the hotel. If the jury disagrees--and the lawyers think they will--they will arrest him.”

I thought it probable. There was nothing I could say. McWhirter made an effort to rea.s.sure her.

”It wouldn't be a hanging matter, anyhow,” he said. ”There's a lot against him, but hardly a jury in the country would hang a man for something he did, if he could prove he was delirious the next day.” She paled at this dubious comfort, but it struck her sense of humor, too, for she threw me a fleeting smile.

”I was to ask you to do something,” she said. ”None of us can, for we are being watched. I was probably followed here. The Ella is still in the river, with only a watchman on board. We want you to go there to-night, if you can.”

”To the Ella?”

She was feeling in her pocketbook, and now she held out to me an envelope addressed in a sprawling hand to Mr. Turner at his hotel.

”Am I to open it?”

”Please.”

I unfolded a sheet of ruled note-paper of the most ordinary variety. It had been opened and laid flat, and on it, in black ink, was a crude drawing of the deck of the Ella, as one would look down on it from aloft. Here and there were small crosses in red ink, and, overlying it all from bow to stern, a red axe. Around the border, not written, but printed in childish letters, were the words: ”NOT YET. HA, HA.” In a corner was a drawing of a gallows, or what pa.s.ses in the everyday mind for a gallows, and in the opposite corner an open book.

”You see,” she said, ”it was mailed downtown late this afternoon. The hotel got it at seven o'clock. Marshall wanted to get a detective, but I thought of you. I knew--you knew the boat, and then--you had said--”