Part 4

There was something very clear in the voice; it was the crisp utterance of a man who knew his own mind, and had complete confidence in what he said. Anthony, as he looked at him, saw that he had a slim, elegant figure, that his face was of classic regularity; but there was a cold assurance in the eyes and a sneer about the lips.

"Once more," said Anthony, "what are you doing here?" He took a step forward, and his right hand closed about the handle of the stick. "Jocular reflections upon my temper, and impertinent advice, are not answers. Come, now!"

The intruder smiled, easily.

"I suppose," said he, "you are one who prides himself upon sticking to a point. It's a good quality, enough; but one should never permit such a thing to blind one to matters of more interest." He looked at Anthony with the same easy smile, and through it were the sneer and the cold confidence of the eyes. "This port is no place for you," he said. "Be advised. There is a ship sailing to-morrow for Havana; from there to New Orleans is no distance at all."

Anthony waited for no more. Like a wolf he was upon the other and had hauled him to his feet; then the iron-shod stick lashed out, showering blows upon the man's head and shoulders. Overwhelmed by the suddenness of the attack, the intruder fell back against the wall; Anthony threw open the door, seized him by the scruff of the neck, much as one might an offending cur, and, without a word, pitched him into the hall, and his hat after him and slammed the door. Then he stood his weapon in a corner, put out the candle, got back into bed and fell instantly asleep.

Quite early in the morning he arose; he descended the stairs briskly, his mind fully made up as to what he should do. He ate his breakfast of hot eggs, and cold sliced ham, and breast of fowl; and he drank his tea. Then he took up the knotted stick and went stumping determinedly through the bar on his way to the street.

"Mr. Stevens!"

It was the landlord who hailed him, a man with a paunch of fine proportions, and the face of a serious cherub. Anthony stopped.

"Last night," said the host solemnly, "you engaged in an altercation. I do not know the merits of the case, sir, but Mr. Tarrant will, I think, send some one during the day to meet you."

"Is Mr. Tarrant the gentleman whom I was compelled to pitch out of my room?"

"He claims that you mishandled him; but just how or why he did not say. Should he," and the landlord's cherubic countenance was filled with interest, "send a friend to converse with you, and you should chance to be out, what report am I to give of you?"

"None," said Anthony curtly. "I am not at the beck and call of Mr. Tarrant, or any of his friends."

"He has a rare eye at forty paces," said the host, with a nod. "A very rare eye. They say there was no better shot in the navy than he, at that distance."

But Anthony did not pause to make reply; out he went and down Chestnut Street at a clipping pace. There was to be no more vague talk; he'd had enough of that the day before; there were to be no more hintings, no more warnings without body enough behind them for a man to grasp. He would have plain speech, now; and short speech, or he'd know the reason why!

The hour was rather earlier than the hour he had started out on the morning before. There was no such hurrying of drays and porters as then; Water Street was stirring slightly, but the river front was still sluggish with sleep, and the deep sea ships in the docks and the stream were as silent as though deserted. He had no idea that Magruder would be in his place of business at this hour, but impatience would not permit him to wait; if he found the place closed, he could tramp about the docks, and return at an hour that promised better.

The shutters were still up at the windows that faced the wharves, and the heavy door was fast. Anthony, however, recalled that the trader had his counting-room at the back, with its windows opening upon an alley; and he made his way around the building on the chance that it was by a door on this side that Magruder usually entered. Here, too, the shutters were up; there was the door, as he expected, and it was standing slightly ajar.

Evidently Magruder, or a clerk, had just arrived, and had not yet time to let daylight into the place. Anthony shoved the door farther open and went in. He found himself in a sort of anteroom, cluttered with nail kegs, bits of plank and cordage, and all the rubbish and refuse of shipping; there was a dark passage that he felt led to the wareroom through which he had passed on the previous day; almost at his hand was a door leading into the counting-room. He lifted the latch of this, and it opened readily; the place was dark save for here and there a gray dart of day that came in at the chinks in the shutters.

"Hello!" Anthony spoke loudly, so that his voice might also carry down through the passage into the other parts of the building. "Magruder! Are you here?"

But there was no reply. He then rapped with his stick upon the floor, but no one came in answer. Making his way through the passage, he came to the wareroom, dark, heavy smelling, and with rats scuttling about; again he called, but still received no reply. Back at the counting-room door, he looked in; by this time his eyes had grown more used to the dimness, and he began to make things out. There was the cupboard bulging with papers; there was the high desk where Magruder had stood when he first saw him. There must be a pewter candle-stick upon one end of this; Anthony had noted it the day before because the candle end had guttered so, and trailing down the metal holder was the "ghost's shrowd" held by believers in omens to be a sign of peculiar portent.

Anthony felt for this and found it; with his fusee he struck a light, and in a moment had the candle stump burning with a long flame. His shadow danced hugely upon the wall as he turned to look about; and it was then that he saw Magruder, sitting in a chair, hunched in a horridly crooked way, his mouth open in a frozen cry, great clots of blood darkening his neck-cloth, and dead!

VI

Death by violence was no new thing to Anthony Stevens; no man could sail the seas he'd sailed, or penetrate the regions he had gone through, and not have seen sudden and bloody ends a-plenty. But there was an unexpected terror in this one; death had flipped its hand here with a grotesquery that was horrible, and the young man felt himself grow sick.

His eyes went about the counting-room: there was none of the litter that shows a place hastily ransacked; the drawers of the desk were closed; the cupboard was as it had been the day before; a strong box set against the wall was securely locked and unmolested. The thing had not been done for robbery, then. Revenge, perhaps? A man who dealt as closely as Magruder would be likely to anger many; no niggard, in Anthony's experience, had ever gone scot-free. Your clutching, greedy trader always, at some place or other, over-stepped the line, and was it to be wondered at if--

But Anthony, with a sharp gesture and a tightening of the mouth, put this whole train of thought from him. It was like the drugs some shipmen brought with them from the East; it lulled and gave false ease. In this very room, the previous morning, Magruder had said:

"Outside there, in the docks, there are a score or more of fine, deep-water ships; on the wharves and in the warehouses there is much rich stuff. But if they, to the last block and spar, to the last bale and barrel, were offered me as the price of making it known that I'd brought you north, as I have, I'd refuse."

Anthony shivered a little. The place seemed cold; his flesh was damp; his huge shadow, cast upon the wall by the flare of the candle, seemed bent with the same fear that had filled the man now dead. As he stood there Anthony tried to sense the shape of this dread; and each time a sort of blankness came upon him. The house of Rufus Stevens' Sons, as his mind drew it toward him, was plain, solid, normal; he could not imagine fear trailing through its doors. But there could be no doubt about Magruder; he had sensed the thing, and because he had spoken of it he had paid with his life.

As Anthony looked at the dead man, his breath caught sharply, and he frowned down at him. Then, taking the candle, he held it closer; the blood upon the neck-cloth was hard and dark, not fluid and red as it would have been had the crime been newly done. He touched the body; it was rigid.

The young man put down the candle. The crime, then, was not of that morning. It was some hours old. It had been done during the night. Because of some urgency of business, probably the arrival of his brig _Bristol Pride_, Magruder had remained in his counting-room until late, with his bills of lading, and what not; and death had walked in on him out of the night.

Walked in on him! What had occurred to himself in the night came back to Anthony; and his mind tightened about it. Again he saw the two men in the moonlight; again he saw the one point to his window, and directly afterward come tramping into his room with his orders to leave the city. And the other! He had gone toward the river; he had gone in the direction of this very place!

Facing a tangible possibility, Anthony no longer felt that the room was cold; his skin grew normal; his pulse beat calmly; the shadow on the wall no longer had the cringe of infectious fear.

There came a sound from the depths of the building. Once more Anthony went into the passage and along its length; at the far end of the wareroom a door stood open; a porter was taking down the shutters. Anthony was about to call to him; but his lips closed upon the sound, and he turned and made his way quietly to the door by which he had come in. He looked out; he saw no one in the alley; and in a moment he was walking away, with all the unconcern he could call into his manner.

In trudging from the Half Moon to Magruder's, Anthony had worked himself up to a high pitch of exasperation; more than once he made the stout stick whistle as he slashed it through the air. He had formulated certain questions that must be answered. To the devil with all this tongue-wagging, and nothing coming of it.

But now he knew all he desired; and he had not asked a question. Also he knew what he had to face. It was men! And it was blows! Good! They were things he understood. When he came face to face with the men he'd know what to say; and when the time came for the blows--Anthony smiled here--rather grimly, to be sure; but it was the first smile of the morning.

At Water Street and Mulberry, Christopher Dent's apothecary shop was open, and Anthony went in. The little man was eating broiled fish in his laboratory and had a big book in the Latin tongue propped up before him. He shoved his spectacles up on his forehead and greeted his visitor.

"Sit down," said he. "And take some of the halibut. I'll get you a plate. It came fresh into the market this morning."

He began bustling about; but Anthony stopped him.

"I've had breakfast," said the young man. "An hour ago."

Christopher settled into his place at the table once more.

"You are an early riser," said he. "But, then, you always were. Many and many a time we'd cross the river before sun-up in the spring, when the dandelions were beginning."

Many of the tricks of boyhood persist in later life; and one of Anthony's had been, when he was perplexed, to go to Christopher Dent. The little apothecary had earned a great name among the youth of the old city district by his wisdom as to stone-bruises and warts, stubbed toes and lacerated shins; and because of this it was taken for granted that he also spoke with authority on other things. And now the old instinct became active in Anthony, and he told the apothecary of how he found Magruder. Christopher shoved his spectacles still farther up on his head, closed the book, and forgot about the fish.

"Dead!" said he.

"As a stone," said Anthony.

"And no one was about--the shutters were up, and the door was standing open?"

"Yes."

The little old apothecary stared with round eyes.

"I knew Mr. Magruder," said he. "At odd times he'd come here for a pennyworth of dragon-root, which he used for an asthma. A close man; he spent little and said less. He so seldom mixed with people that I'd have ventured he'd not a friend, nor an enemy, anywhere. What manner of blow killed him?"

"I did not look narrowly," said the young man, "but it seemed in the nature of a stab."

"There are some desperate rogues going about," said Christopher, shaking his head. "Desperate, and cunning, too. Did you speak with the watch after you gave the alarm?"

"I gave no alarm," said Anthony. Then he told of how Magruder had written him at New Orleans, of his interview with him on the day before, of his talk with Dr. King, and of his visitor at the Half Moon in the small hours of the morning.

"God bless us!" said Christopher Dent, his eyes wider than before. "What can it all mean?"

"I thought," said Anthony, "it would be best to come away quietly from Magruder's and say nothing. As it is, the porters or clerks will find the body in good time; then my name will be in no way connected with the matter, and that, I think, will be of service to me."

The little apothecary considered a moment, and then gravely nodded.

"Yes," said he, "you are right. You are quite right. The city will be in a state over this; the officers will be much exercised. If you'd made the thing known, they'd have asked questions of you. To keep yourself from any touch with this villainy you would have given guarded answers. The officers are not without perception; they would have noted your hesitancy and would, like as not, have insisted upon a clearer statement. And that," with a look of great knowingness, "you'd probably not be inclined to give just now. Yes, you are quite right to say nothing; the body will be found in due course, as you say, and so no harm will be done."

A man came into the outer shop, and the apothecary went out to him.

"I want," said the man, in a voice that Anthony seemed to recognize, "a few pennyworth of Spanish flies, and pitch enough to make a plaster of some size."

"For man or beast," asked Christopher dubiously.

"For a horse--a gelding with a hurt shoulder."

"I would not advise the pitch," said the apothecary; "when cold, it grows hard, and will dull the virtue of even cantharides."

"But it will stick," maintained the other, "and no kicking or rubbing will get it off. And this horse is the very devil for kicking and stumbling and knocking against things."

"A small quantity of Venice turpentine," said Christopher, "and a little yellow wax--"

"I will have pitch," interrupted the man. "You may be able to doctor humans, Mr. Dent, but you don't understand horses. They need strong medicines and strong words, else they'll get entirely out of hand. There'd have been no accident last night if I'd been able to speak properly to the beast; but having a lady passenger I had to mind my tongue."

Anthony changed his position so that he could see the man. Yes, it was the coachman with whom he had talked at the Half Moon; and the young man went hastily into the shop. The man gave him a nod of recognition and a thick-shouldered salute.

"An accident, did you say?" questioned Anthony. "It wasn't serious, I hope."

"Only for the horse," said the man. "He's young and not much used to being driven at night; and the way along the river as you turn the end of the fish-market is not very light. 'Twas there he stumbled, and I could go no further."

Anthony cocked a questioning eye at the man.

"The way along the river?" said he. "And turning the end of the fish-market? What were you doing there?"

"It came of my passengers changing their minds," said the man. "We were in Chestnut Street near to Fourth when they suddenly bethought them that they'd do well to drop in on some one else before going home. Down among the wharves is no usual place to go visiting of a night; but, as that was their orders, there I went--or as far as I could; for after the horse fell they got out and I saw no more of them, for I was well occupied in getting back to the stable with a crippled beast on my hands." Here he turned to the apothecary and added confidently: "Yes, let it be pitch. I know that to work well. Don't be afraid that I'll mix the fly into it; I'm too old a horse-leech for that. Get your pitch just hot enough to run, do you see? Spread it upon a common cloth, sprinkle the blister upon the face of it, and clap it on the shoulder. Let him clump about as he will, there it is fixed; and in a day it will have drawn all the humors of the fall away."

"He will have fever from the shock," said Christopher. "His pulse will be heavy and his tongue rough. In that event I would advise pond-dogwood. A plain infusion of the bark makes a draft, bitter, but agreeable and efficacious."

What the man with the injured horse said in way of reply, Anthony did not hear; for his attention was being given to little groups of people who were hastily gathering and dissolving, gathering and dissolving, on the street; other people were hurrying along talking excitedly with each other. Christopher Dent, following Anthony's gaze, also saw them; he opened the door and spoke to a victualer who was passing, wiping his hands on his apron.

"What is it? What has happened?"

"They say a man has been killed," said the victualer. "Some merchant or other; killed in his own counting-room, below here on the river front, near to the fish-market--some time during the night."

VII

It was a day or two later, and Anthony went to the counting-house of Rufus Stevens' Sons and again inquired for his uncle. The same affable man who had spoken with him on his previous visit came forward, and once more regretted Mr. Stevens's absence.

"But," said he, "he is on his way. The vessel he named to sail in should be in the bay by this time, as the weather has been good, and she is a good sailer. Is there anything we can serve you in?"

"Nothing, thank you." Anthony was turning away.

"What name shall I say?" asked the affable man.

"Stevens."

The affable manner was instantly reinforced by one of much respect.

"It may be that you are related to Mr. Charles," ventured the man.

"His nephew," said Anthony.

The man at once produced a chair.

"I shall call Mr. Whitaker," he said.

Anthony would have asked him not to do so; but just then he caught sight of a woman's figure in another room, the door of which was open, and before he had taken his gaze away Whitaker came up.

"This is a pleasure," said Whitaker, shaking his hand. "Mr. Stevens has not returned, but we're glad to see you, anyhow."

"I'm told he's expected back shortly."

"Yes, but then you never can tell what the wind will do off the capes. Devil of an excitement going on in the city, isn't there? what with this fellow up the street being taken off as he was, and all that. I don't think I've seen anything but gossiping knots of people, coroners' juries, and city officials for the past two days."

Anthony nodded toward the open door.

"I thought," said he, "I recognized some one inside there."

"Oh, Mr. Weir?"

"No, the lady. Isn't it Mademoiselle Lafargue, daughter of your Monsieur Lafargue, of Brest?"

"Daughter of Lafargue!" Whitaker glanced, surprised, into the adjoining room. "Is that who it is?" He pulled at his neck-cloth to give it a better set and asked with interest: "How long have you known her?"

"Why, I can't say that I know her at all," said Anthony. "It just chanced a few days ago that I exchanged some words with her father."

"So he has a daughter," mused Whitaker in an injured tone. "And he never so much as mentioned the fact while I was at Brest; and I was there upwards of a month! I'd never have taken him for that kind. He seemed much more of the gentleman." As Anthony made no reply to this, Whitaker went on. "On the whole, I don't know what to make of Lafargue. He seems peculiar. Yesterday I happened to mention to Captain Weir--that's him talking to mademoiselle--that I'd seen Lafargue at the coffee-house, and I really think he didn't like it. I believe, in my soul," said Whitaker, "old Lafargue is here unexpectedly; and what he means by it I can't say."

The girl, as Anthony watched her, was standing with one hand resting upon the back of a chair; her head was held well up, and she was talking spiritedly.

"Who is Mr. Weir?" said Anthony, his gaze going toward the man to whom she was speaking.

He was above the average size, of angular, powerful frame, and his hair was sprinkled with gray. His face was well looking, but singularly mask-like; his eyes were deep-set and steady; they had the quality of cold, green stone. But it was his movements that attracted Anthony's attention. While the girl talked he paced backward and forward; each move had a peculiar deftness; each foot was put down much as a hand might be--a combination of sureness and power which reminded Anthony of some of the huge cat-like beasts of the wilderness. There was a fine dignity about Mr. Weir; his air was one of authority; across his left jaw was a red seam.

"Have you never heard of him?" asked Whitaker. "He's been with the house since your grandfather's day; and, between ourselves, I don't see how your uncle could do without him. A fine, upstanding man, very fair, and with a great mind for detail. It's strange you haven't heard of him. It was Mr. Weir who commanded your grandfather's ship _Argus_, when she outran and outfought two English corvettes and a sloop-of-war. His name is written into the histories. A very capable person; it's a pleasure to work under him."

Just then the girl turned and came, agitated, toward the door of the room. There she paused.

"I shall repeat your words to my father," she said. "He is old and not in good health, and what you have said will be a shock to him."

"He is a man, and will understand the advisability of what I say," said Mr. Weir, his eyes cold, green, and unemotional. "Assure him of my consideration, and say that I hope to see him soon."

Without a word the girl came out into the counting-room. As she passed Anthony on her way to the street, her head was bent, her eyes upon the floor; for an instant the young man fancied that she raised them ever so little and saw him. He took off his hat, but she never paused. Mr. Weir opened the street door for her; Anthony heard her low voiced "Good-by," and she was gone.

"Mr. Weir," said Whitaker, "may I present Mr. Anthony Stevens?"

The cold, steady eyes of the man seemed to take in Anthony at a single glance; and he held out his hand.

"I had heard you were in the city," said he. "Dr. King mentioned it. In the absence of your uncle, permit me to welcome you."

Later Whitaker was called away, and Weir said:

"After your father's death I had all but forgotten that he had a son; then one day I received a report from our correspondent at New Orleans that brought you back to me in a way that insured your not slipping me in the future."

"What was that?" asked Anthony.

"It was an account of your affair with Alvaro," said Weir, and again his steady eyes took in the young man from head to foot.

Anthony smiled.

"There was a great deal of talk about that at the time," said he, "but it was, after all, a matter of no large consequence. Montufars had suffered greatly from the toll-takers who occupy the reefs and islands below New Orleans, and was hard put to it at the time to meet his business obligations. He feared to let a vessel go out, knowing the pirates would loot it; and in the end his spirit broke completely. I saw that something must be quickly done if he was to be rescued from his embarrassments, and the quickest method was to visit Alvaro.