Chapter 25

“I don't know how to talk to you. I haven't had any experience in talking with women. I simply say that I'm not going to your father in any such manner. Certainly not!”

“Don't you realize what I have offered you?” she pleaded. “You are throwing my sacrifice in my face. As the case stands now, I can hurry off to the home of some girl friend and make up a little story of a foolish lark, and my father will never know what has been happening. He expects me to do a lot of silly things.”

“That's your business--and his,” he returned, dryly.

“Captain Mayo, I have been trying to show you that I am fit to be considered something besides a silly girl. I wanted you to know that I have a sense of obligation. The plan may seem like a girl's romantic notion. But it isn't. It's bold, and your case heeds boldness. I was trying to show you that I'm not a coward. I was going to confess to my father what I have done and start on the level with him. You throw it all in my face--you insult my plan by calling it crazy.”

“It is,” he insisted, doggedly. “And I'm in bad enough as it is!”

“Oh, you're afraid, then?”

He frowned. Her sneer seemed gratuitous injury.

He did not understand that variety of feminine guile which seeks to goad to action one who refuses to be led.

“I admire boldness in a man when his case is desperate and he is trying to save himself. I have lived among men who are bold in going after what they want.”

“I have had a little experience with that kind of land pirates, and I don't like the system.”

“I shall not make any unnecessary sacrifices,” she de-clared, tartly, but there were tears in her eyes. “I did what I could to help you when you were trying to save me. Why are you so ungenerous as to refuse to help me now?”

“It's taking advantage of you--of your position.”

“But I offer it--I beg of you to do it.”

“I will not do it.”

“You absolutely refuse?”

“Yes, Miss Marston.”

“Then I shall leave you to your own fate, Captain Mayo. You don't expect me to go to my father with the story, do you?”

“Certainly not'.”

“I shall go ahead now and protect myself the best I can. I am sure that Captain Downs will keep my secret. I shall forget that I ever sailed on that schooner. I suppose you will black yourself up and run away again!”

“I am going to New York.”

“To be put in jail?”

“Probably.”

“You make me very angry. After you have shown that you can fight, just when you ought to fight the hardest you slink bade to be whipped.”

“Yes, Miss Marston, if you care to put it that way.”

“Then, good-by!”

“Good-by!”

Perhaps each expected that the other would break the wall of reserve at this moment of parting. He hesitated a moment--an awkward instant--then he bowed and left the room.

Captain Downs walked with Mayo for a distance across the sand-dunes when the latter started to make his way to the nearest railroad station. The captain intended to remain at the inlet tmtil a representative of the _Alden's_ owners arrived.

They left Bradish still huddled behind the stove in the kitchen.

“Unless my eyes have gone back on me, Captain Mayo, my notion is that the dude is wasting his time hanging around that girl any more,” suggested Captain Downs. “She has had him out on the marine railway of love, has made proper survey, and has decided that she would hate to sail the sea of matrimony with him. Don't you think that's so?”

“I think you're a good judge of what you see, Captain Downs.”

“I reckon that you and I as gents and master mariners are going to keep mum about her being aboard the _Alden?_”

“Certainly, sir.”

“The coast-guard crew don't know who she is, and they can't find out. So she can go home and mind her business from this time out. 'Most every woman does one infernal fool thing in her life--and then is all right ever after. But now a word on some subject that's sensible! What are you going to do?”

“Stick my head into the noose. It's about the only thing I can do.”

“But you'll talk up to 'em, of course?”

“I'll play what few cards I hold as best I know, sir. The most I can hope for is to make 'em drop that manslaughter case. Perhaps I can say enough so that they'll be afraid to bring me to trial. As to getting my papers back, I'm afraid that's out of the question. I'll have to start life over in something else.”

“Mayo, why don't you go to the captain's office?” He promptly answered the young man's glance of inquiry. “Julius Marston himself is the supreme boss of that steamship-consolidation business. Bradish gave all that part away, telling about those checks; though, of course, we all knew about Marston before. It is probably likely that Marston gives true courses to his understrappers. If they take fisherman's cuts between buoys in order to get there quick, I'll bet he doesn't know about it. Go to him and tell him, man to man, what has happened to you.”

“There are two reasons why I shall probably never see Mr. Marston,” returned Mayo, grimly. “First, I'll be arrested before I can get across New York to his office; second, I'll never get farther than the outer office. He's guarded like the Czar of Russia, so they tell me.”

“Does his girl know anything about your case?”

“I blabbed it to her--like a fool--when we were in the boat. Why is it that when a man is drunk or excited or in trouble, he'll blow the whole story of his life to a woman?” growled Mayo.

“I've thought that over some, myself,” admitted Captain Downs. “Especially on occasions when I've come to and realized what I've let out. I suppose it's this--more or less: A man don't tell his troubles to another man, for he knows that the other man is usually in'ardly glad of it because any friend is in trouble. But a woman's sympathy is like a flaxseed poultice--it soothes the ache and draws at the same time.”

Mayo trudged on in silence, kicking the sand.

“Seems to me the smallest thing that girl could have done was to offer to get you a hearing with her old man. It was some chore you did for her, mate!”

“I had to save myself. A few more in the party didn't matter.”

“These society girls think of themselves first, of course! I don't suppose you give a hoot for my advice, Captain Mayo, but I'm talking to you in the best spirit in the world.”

“I know you are, Captain Downs,” declared the young man, his sullenness departing. “I didn't mean to show bristles to you! I'll try to see Marston. It 'll be a hard stunt. But I'm in the mood to try anything. By gad! if they lug me to jail, I'll go kicking!”

“That's the spirit, boy. And if you can get in a few kicks where Julius Marston can see 'em they may count. He's the boss! I don't think I'll go any farther with you. This is too hard footing for an old waddler like me. Good luck!”

They shook hands and turned their backs on each other with sailor repression in the matter of the emotions.

The young man went on his way, wondering in numbed despair how he could have left Alma Marston with merely a curt word of farewell.

Mayo lurked that evening in the purlieus of Jersey City, and entered the metropolis after midnight on a ferryboat which had few passengers and afforded him a dark corner where he was alone. He found lodgings in humble quarters on the East Side.

In the morning he nerved himself to the ordeal of appearing in the streets. His belief in his own innocence made his suffering greater as he waited for the clap of a heavy hand on his shoulder and the summons of an officer's voice. He knew that the eyes of Uncle Sam are sharp and his reach a long one. He had firm belief in the almost uncanny vigilance of government officers. He was rather surprised to find himself at last in the outer office of Marston & Waller.

He sat down on a bench and waited for a time in order to regain his self-possession. He wanted to control features and voice before accosting one of the guardians of the magnate. But the espionage of the attendants did not permit loiterers to remain long in that place without explanation. A man tiptoed to him and asked his name and his business.

“My name doesn't matter,” said Mayo. “But I have important business with Mr. Marston. If you will tell him that the business is most important--that it is something he ought to know, and that--”

“You haven't any appointment, then?”

“No.”

“Do you think for one moment that you can get in to see Mr. Marston without giving your name and explaining beforehand the nature of your business?”

“I hoped so, for it is important.”

“What is it?”

“It's private--it's something for Mr. Marston.”

“Impossible!” was the man's curt rejoinder. He went back to his post. In a few moments he returned to Mayo. “You mustn't remain here. You cannot see Mr. Marston.”

“Won't you take in a message from me? I'll explain--”

“Explain to me. That's what I'm here for.”

Telling that cold-blooded person that this visitor was the broken master of the _Montana_ was out of the question. To mention the case of the _Montana_ to this watchdog was dangerous. But Mayo dreaded to go back to the street again.

“I'll stay here a little while and perhaps I can--” he began.

“If you stay here without explaining your business I'll have you escorted down to the street by an officer, my friend.”

Mayo rose and hurried out.

“An officer!” Even in his despairing and innocent quest of a hearing he was threatened with arrest! He sneaked back to his lodgings and hid himself in the squalid apartment and nursed the misery of his soul.

That night Mayo sat till late, toiling over a letter addressed to Julius Marston.

He despatched it by messenger at an early hour, and mustered his courage in the middle of the forenoon and followed in person. He assumed a boldness he did not feel in his quaking heart when he approached the guardian of the outer office.

“Will you ask Mr. Marston if he will see the man who sent him a letter by messenger this morning?” “What letter? Signed by what name?” “He will understand what letter I refer to.” “He will, will he?” The attendant gave this applicant sharp scrutiny. The coast-guard captain's liberty garments were not impressive, nor did they fit very well. Mayo displayed the embarrassment of the man who knew he was hunted. “Do you think Mr. Marston receives only one letter by messenger in a morning? Look here, my man, you were in here yesterday, and I look on you as a suspicious character. You cannot see Mr. Marston on any such excuse. Get out of that door inside of one minute or I'll send in a police call!”

And once more Mayo fled from the danger which threatened him. He bought a stock of newspapers at a sidewalk news-stand; his hours of loneliness in his little room the day before had tortured him mentally. He sat himself down and read them. The news that the Vose line had gone into the steamship combination was interesting and significant. Evidently the _Montana's_ lay-up had discouraged the mass of stockholders. He had time to kill and thoughts to stifle; he went on reading scrupulously, lingering over matters in which he had no interest, striving to occupy his mind and drive the bitter memories and his fears away from him. Never in his life before had he read the society tattle in the newspapers. However, dragging along the columns, he found a paragraph on which he dwelt for a long time. It stated that Miss Marston of Fifth Avenue had returned by motor from a house-party in the Catskills, accompanied by Miss Lana Vanadistine, who would be a house guest of Miss Marston's for a few days.

That bit of news was significant. She had established her alibi; she had reinstated herself and had turned a smooth front to the world.

Mayo was certain in his soul that he knew her kind. His illusions were departing. Now that her tragic experience was behind her, now that she was back among her own, now that the fervor of romance was cool, she was thanking God, so he told himself, that she had not sacrificed herself for anybody. He was honestly glad that she was at home, glad of the hint which the paragraph gave--that her secret was still her own, so far as family and the social world were concerned.

That night Mayo took further counsel with himself. In the morning his final decision was made. He would endeavor once more to see Julius Maxston. He determined that he would march into the outer office, boldly announce his name, assert that he was there to expose a crime, and tell them that if Mr. Marston refused to hear him he should tell what he knew to the public through the newspapers; then he would ask them to send for the police, if the door of Marston's office remained closed to him. He would call attention to himself and to his case by all the uproar he could make. When he went to jail he would go with plenty of folks looking on. Let Marston and his fellow-financiers see how they liked that!

It was a desperate and a crude plan, but Mayo was not a diplomat--he was a sailor.

He marched forth on his errand with his chin up and resolve flaming within him.

Other men, prosperous-looking and rotund men, rode up in the elevator with him and went into Marston & Waller's office ahead of him, for he had modestly stepped to one side to allow them to pass.

He heard some talk of a “board meeting.” It was plain that Mr. Marston was to be occupied for a time. This was not a favorable moment in which to project himself upon the attention of the financier; he needed a clear field. Therefore he tramped up and down the corridor of the office building, watching the elevator door, waiting to see the rotund gentlemen go on their way. And with attention thus focused he saw Miss Alma Marston arrive.

She waited until the elevator had passed on, and then she came directly to him. Her expression did not reveal her mood except to hint that she was self-possessed.

“I am not especially surprised to find you here,” she told him. “I believe you said to Captain Downs--so he informed me--that you were going to try to see my father. And men who try to see my father, without proper introduction, usually kick their heels outside his office for some days.”

There was a bit of hauteur in her voice. She preserved much of the acerbity which had marked her demeanor when they had said good-by to each other. He would not acknowledge to himself that he hoped she would meet him on another plane; he meekly accepted her attitude as the proper one. He was a sailor, and she was the daughter of Julius Marston.

“Do you blame me for being suspicious in regard to what you intend to say to my father?” she demanded. “I tell you frankly that I came here looking for you. We must settle our affair.”

“I am trying to get word with him about my own business--simply my own business, Miss Marston.”

“But as to me! What are you going to say to him about me? You remember I told you that I intended to protect myself,” she declared, with some insolence.

“I thought you had a better opinion of me,” he protested. “Miss Marston, as far as I am concerned, you never were on that schooner. I know nothing about you. I do not even know you. Do you understand?”

He started away hastily. “Don't stay here. Don't speak to me. Somebody may see you.”

“'Come back here!”

He stopped.

“I demand an explicit promise from you that if you are able to talk with my father you will never mention my name to him or try to take advantage of the dreadful mistake I made.”

“I promise, on my honor,” he said, straightening.

“Thank you, sir.”

“And now that I have promised,” he added, red in his tanned cheeks, “I want to say to you, Miss Marston, that you have insulted me gratuitously. I suppose I'm not much in the way of a gentleman as you meet them in society. I'm only a sailor. But I'm neither a tattler nor a blackmailer. I know the square thing to do where a woman is concerned, and I would have done it without being put under a pledge.” He bowed and walked away.

She gazed after him, a queer sparkle in her eyes. “We'll see about you, you big child!” she murmured.

She entered the waiting-room of the Marston & Waller suite, and was informed that her father was busy with a board meeting.

“But it's merely a bit of routine business. It will soon be over, Miss Marston--if you will be so good as to wait.”

After a time the gentlemen filed out, but she waited on.

“Tell my father that I'm here and will be in presently,” she commanded the guardian.

Before the messenger returned Mayo came in, rather apprehensively. He tried to avoid her, but she met him face to face and accosted him with spirit.

“Now that I have put you on your honor, I'm not afraid to have you talk your business over with my father. Come with me. I will take you to him. Then we will call accounts square between us.”

“Very well,” he consented. “After what I have been through here, I feel that one service matches the other.” Mayo followed her and came into The Presence.

Julius Marston was alone, intrenched behind his desk, on his throne of business; the dark back of the chair, towering over his head, set off in contrast his gray garb and his cold face; to Mayo, who halted respectfully just inside the door, he appeared a sort of bas-relief against that background--something insensate, without ears to listen or heart to bestow compassion.

The girl, hurrying to him, engaged his attention until she had seated herself on the arm of his chair. Then he saw Mayo, recognized him, and tried to rise, but she pushed him back, urging him with eager appeal.

“You must listen to me, father! It is serious! It is important!”

He groped for the row of desk buttons, but she held his hand from them.

Captain Mayo strode forward, determined to speak for himself, rendered bold by the courageous sacrifice the girl was making.

“Not a word! Not a word! The supreme impudence of it!” Marston repeated the last phrase several times with increasing violence. He pushed his daughter off the arm of the chair and struggled up. Only heroic measures could save that situation--and the girl knew her father! She forced herself between him and his desk.

“You'd better listen!” she warned him, hysterically. “A few days ago I ran away to be married!”

He stood there, stricken motionless, and she put her hands against his breast and pressed him back into his chair.

“But this is not the man, father!”

Marston had been gathering his voice for wild invective, but that last statement took away all his power of speech.

“I warned you that you'd better listen!”

In that moment she dominated the situation as completely as if she stood between the two men with a lighted bomb in her hand.

Mayo was overwhelmed even more completely than the financier. He realized that her extortion of a pledge from him had been subterfuge; her triumphant eyes flashed complete information on that point. Both anger and bewilderment made him incapable of any sane attempt to press his case with Marston at that time. He turned and started for the door.

“Stop that man, father. You'll be sorry if you do not! He must stay!”

“Come back here!” shouted Marston.

Mayo looked behind.

The magnate stood with finger on the push-button. “Come back, I say!”

“I protest. This is none of my business. I am here for something else than to listen to your daughter's private affairs.”

“You come back!” commanded the father in low tones of menace, “or I'll have you held for the United States marshals the minute you step foot outside that door.”

Raging within himself at the tactics of this incomprehensible girl, Captain Mayo walked slowly to the desk; it occurred to him that it was as hard to get out of Julius Marston's office as it was to get in.

“I would never have come in here if I had dreamed that your daughter would tell you what she has. I am in a false position. I insist that you allow me to leave.”

“You'll leave when I get to the bottom of this thing! Now, Alma, what new craziness is all this?”

“I am not resenting the word you apply to it,” she replied, facing him resolutely. “I did it--and I don't know why I did it!”

“Did what?”

“I ran away. I did it because the girls dared me to do it. I promised a man I would marry him.”

“This man, eh?”

“No. I have told you this is not the man.”

“Well, who, then?” Incredulity was mingled with her father's wrath.

“One of your trusted young gentlemen. Mr. Ralph Bradish.”

“Where did you meet him?”

“At the dances.”

“Not at our house?”

“I do not know how you are so sure of that, father,” she returned, a touch of rather wistful reproach in her tones. “You have left me alone in that house ever since mother went away. But it was not at our house--it was in the public ball-rooms.”

“Hell set to music!” he rasped. “I ought to have realized that you are still an infant!”

“No; I am a woman to-day. I lived a whole lifetime in one night on the ocean. I know you have reason to be ashamed of me. But I'll never give you cause for shame again. Now what are you going to say to this man who saved my life--who did more than that? He saved me from myself!”

Marston narrowed his eyes and scrutinized Mayo. “I don't understand this thing yet! The story doesn't ring right.” He turned on his daughter. “How did this man save your life? Be quick and be short!”

He interrupted her in the middle of her eager recital. He had been scowling while she talked, staring into vacancy in meditation.

“A story-book tale!” he declared, impatiently, and yet there was a shade of insincerity in that impatience. “I would be bitterly ashamed of you, Alma, if you had run away as you are trying to make me believe. But--”

“Don't you believe me?”

“Silence! But this trumped-up story is too transparent. You are still acting the fool in the matter of this person, here. Now see here, my man, you are here to-day on the _Montana_ affair. Isn't that so?”

“It is, sir.”

“I was sure of it. How did you dare to sneak into that job after I had discharged you from the _Olenia_?”

“There was no sneaking to it! I was hired by Mr. Fogg and I--”

“You may be sure that I did not know you were on board the _Montana_. But I cannot attend to all the details of my business. You realize, don't you, that you are a fugitive from justice?”

“I am a scapegoat for the dirty dogs who operate for you!”

“That's enough! I am investigating this matter now? Sit down in that chair!”

Mayo obeyed, lulled by the assurance.

“Alma, you go home!”

“I am going to stay here, father, until Captain Mayo--”

“I have listened to all the falsehoods I propose to hear!” This rejoinder astounded his two listeners. “I see into this matter clear to the bottom. I am amazed that you should think such a silly yarn would deceive me for a moment.” He had pressed one of the buttons. To the man who opened the door he said: “Tell Mr. Bradish that I want to see him here at once. He is in the office, isn't he?”

“Yes, sir! I will inform him.”

Mayo and the girl exchanged eloquent looks; they had been leaving Mr. Bradish out of their calculations; they had discarded him from their thoughts; that he had had the effrontery to reappear in the Marston & Waller offices was news indeed.

Marston took the girl by the arm and led her toward a door. “I tell you to go home!” he cried, angrily, stopping her protests. “No, you are going by this side door. I do not believe one word you have told me. It's all a transparent attempt to continue your folly. I'll know how to look after you from now on!” He closed the door behind her and locked it.

“I swear this is all true, sir,” pleaded Mayo. “I'm not trying to deceive you through your daughter. I did not understand what she intended to say. I want my rights as a man who has been tricked, abused--”

Mr. Bradish appeared, bowing respectfully. He was once more part of the smooth machinery of the Marston & Waller offices. He was pale, calm, cool, subdued master of his emotions as the employees of Julius Marston were trained to be.

“Did you ever see this man before? Of course you never did!” prompted the financier.

“I never saw him before, sir.”