Part 9

“The Collector of the Port!” shouted Finn from the rocks.

Lee bent over the cliff’s brink. Far down into the clear water he followed the outline of the cliff. Under it a shadowy shape floated, a monstrous shark, rubbing the rock softly as if in greeting for old acquaintance’ sake.

The Collector of the Port had returned from the south.

II.

The Collector of the Port and the company were rivals; both killed their men, one at sea, the other in the quarry. The company objected to pelagic slaughter and sent some men with harpoons, bombs, and shark-hooks to the Port; but the Collector sheered off to sea and waited for them to go away.

The company could not keep the quarrymen from bathing; Lee could not keep the Collector from Port-of-Waves. Every year two or three quarrymen fell to his share; the company killed the even half-dozen. Years before, the quarrymen had named the shark; the name fascinated everybody with its sinister conventionality. In truth he was Collector of the Port,—an official who took toll of all who ventured from this Port where nothing entered from the sea save the sea itself, wave on wave, wave after wave.

In the superintendent’s office there were two rolls of victims,—victims of the quarry and victims of the Collector of the Port. Pensions were not allowed to families of the latter class, so, as Dyce said to Dyce’s dying brother: “Thank God you was blowed up, an’ say no more about it, Hank.”

There was, curiously enough, little animosity against the Collector of the Port among the quarrymen. When June brought the great shark back to the Port they welcomed him with sticks of dynamite, but nevertheless a sense of proprietorship, of exclusive right to the biggest shark on the coast, aroused in the quarrymen a sentiment akin to pride. Between the shark and the men existed an uncanny comradeship, curiously in evidence when the company’s imported shark-destroyers appeared at the Port.

“G’wan now,” observed Farrely, “an’ divil a shark ye’ll get in the wather, me bucks! Is it sharks ye’ll harpoon? Sure th’ company’s full o’ thim.”

The shark-catchers, harpoons, bombs, and hooks, retired after a month’s useless worrying, and the men jeered them as they embarked on the gravel train.

“Drhop a dynamite shtick on the nob av his nibs!” shouted Farrely after them—meaning the president of the company. The next day, little Cæsar l’Hommedieu, indulging in his semi-annual bath, was appreciated and accepted by the Collector of the Port, and his name was added to the unpensioned roll in the office of the company’s superintendent, Francis Lee.

Helen Pine, sitting alone in her room, copied the roll, erased little Cæsar’s name from the pay-roll, computed the total back pay due him, and made out an order on the company for $20.39. Then she rose, stepped quietly into Lee’s office which adjoined her own room, and silently handed him the order.

Lee was busy and motioned her to be seated. Dyce and Finn, hats in hand, looked obliquely at her as she leaned on the window-ledge, face turned toward the sea. She heard Lee say, “Go on, Finn;” and Finn began again in his smooth plausible voice:

“I opened the safe on a flat-car, an’ God knows who uncoupled the flat. Then Dyce signalled go ahead, but Henderson he sez Dyce signalled to back her up, an’ the first I see was that flat hangin’ over the dump-dock. Then she tipped up like a see-saw an’ slid the safe into the water—fifty-eight feet sheer at low tide.”

Lee said quietly: “Rig a derrick on the dump-dock, and tell Kinny to get his diving kit ready by three o’clock.”

Finn and Dyce exchanged glances.

“Kinny he went to Bangor last night to see about them new drills,” said Finn defiantly.

“Who sent him?” asked Lee angrily. “Oh, you did, eh?”

“I thought you wanted them drills,” repeated Finn.

Lee’s eyes turned from Finn to Dyce. There was, in the sullen faces before him, something that he had never before seen, something worse than sinister. The next moment he said pleasantly: “Well then, tell Lefty Sawyer to take his diving kit and be ready by three. If you need a new ladder at the dump-dock send one there by noon. That is all, men.”

When Finn and Dyce had gone, Lee sprang to his feet and began to pace the office. Once he stopped to light his pipe; once he jerked open the top drawer of his table and glanced at a pair of heavy Colt’s revolvers lying there, cocked and loaded. He sat down at his desk after a while and spoke, perhaps half unconsciously, to Helen, as though he had been speaking to her since Finn and Dyce left:

“They’re a hard crowd—a tough lot—and I knew it would come to a crisis sooner or later. Last year they drove the other superintendent to resign, and I was warned to look out for myself. Now they see that they can’t use me, and they mean to get rid of me.”

She turned from the window as he finished; he looked at her without seeing the oval face, the dark questioning eyes, the young rounded figure involuntarily bending toward him.

“They tipped that safe off the dock on purpose,” he said; “they sent Kinny to Bangor on a fool’s errand. Now Sawyer’s got to go down and see what can be done. I know what he’ll say!— He’ll report the safe broken and one or two cash-boxes missing, and he’ll bring up the rest and wait for a chance to divide with his gang.”

He started to his feet and began to pace the floor again, talking all the while:

“It’s come to a crisis now, and _I’m_ not going under! I’ll face them down; I’ll break that gang as they break stone! If I only knew how to use a diving kit—and if I dared—with Dyce at the life-line—”

Half an hour later Lee, seated at his desk, raised his pale face from his hands and, for the first time, became conscious that Helen sat watching him beside the window.

“Can I do anything for you?” he asked pleasantly.

She held the order out to him; he took it, examined it, and, picking up a pen, signed his name.

“Forward it to the company,” he said; “Cæsar’s family will collect it quicker than the shark collected Cæsar.”

He did not mean to shock the girl with cynicism; indeed it was only such artificial indifference that enabled him to endure the misery of the Port-of-Waves,—misery that came under his eyes from sea and land,—interminable hopeless human woe.

What could he do for the lacerated creatures at the quarry? He had only his salary. What could he do for families made destitute? The mica crushed and cut and blinded; the Collector of the Port exacted bloody toll in spite of him. He could not drive the dust-choked, half-maddened quarrymen from their one solace and balm, the cool, healing ocean; he could not drive the Collector from the Port-of-Waves.

“I didn’t mean to speak unfeelingly,” he said. “I feel such things very deeply.”

To his surprise and displeasure she replied: “I did not know you felt anything.”

She grew red after she said it; he stared at her.

“Do you regard me as brutal?” he asked sarcastically.

“No,” she said, steadying her voice: “you are not brutal; one must be human to be brutal.”

He looked at her half angrily, half inclined to laugh.

“You mean I am devoid of human feeling?”

“I am not here to criticise my employer,” she answered faintly.

“Oh—but you have.”

She was silent.

“You said you were not aware that I felt anything.”

She did not reply.

He thought to himself: “I took her from the quarry, and this is what I get.” She divined his thought. She could have answered: “And you sent me to the quarry—for the memory of a kiss.” But she did not speak.

Watching her curiously, he noticed the gray woollen gown, the spotless collar and cuffs, the light on her hair, like light on watered silk. Her young face was turned toward the window. For the first time it occurred to him that she might be lonely. He wondered where she came from, why she had sought Port-of-Waves among all places on earth, what tragedy could have driven her from kin and kind to the haunts of men. She seemed so utterly alone, so hopelessly dependent, so young that his conscience smote him, and he resolved to be a little companionable toward her, as far as his position of superintendent permitted. True, he could not do much; and whatever he might do would perhaps be misinterpreted by her, certainly by the quarrymen.

“A safe fell off the dock, to-day,” he said pleasantly, forgetting she had been present at the announcement of the disaster by Finn and Dyce. “Would you like to see the diver go down?”

She turned toward him and smiled.

“It might interest you,” he went on, surprised at the beauty of her eyes; “we’re going to try to hoist the safe out of fifty odd feet of water—unless it is smashed on the rocks. Come down when I go at three o’clock.”

As he spoke his face grew grave, and he glanced at the open drawer by his elbow, where two blue revolver barrels lay shining in the morning light.

At noon she went into her little room, locked the door, and sat down on the bed. She cried steadily till two o’clock; from two until three she spent the time in obliterating all traces of tears; at three he knocked at her door, and she opened the door, fresh, dainty, smiling, and joined him, tying the strings of a pink sun-bonnet under her oval chin.

III.

The afternoon sun beat down on the dump-dock where the derrick swung like a stumpy gallows against the sky. A dozen hard-faced, silent quarrymen sat around in groups on the string-pieces; Farrely raked out the fire in the rusty little engine; Finn and Dyce whispered together, glowering at Lefty Sawyer, who stood dripping in his diving suit while Lee unscrewed the helmet and disentangled the lines.

Behind Lee, Helen Pine sat on a pile of condemned sleepers, nervously twisting and untwisting the strings of her sun-bonnet.

When Sawyer was able to hear and be heard, Lee listened, tight-lipped and hard eyed, to a report that brought a malicious sneer to Finn’s face and a twinkle of triumph into Dyce’s dissipated eyes.

“The safe is smashed an’ the door open. Them there eight cash-boxes is all that I see.” He pointed to the pile of steel boxes, still glistening with salt water, and already streaked and blotched with orange colored rust.

“There are ten boxes,” said Lee coldly; “go down again.”

Unwillingly, sullenly, Lefty Sawyer suffered himself to be invested with the heavy helmet; the lines and tubes were adjusted, Dyce superintended the descent and Finn seized the signal cord. After a minute it twitched; Lee grew white with anger; Dyce turned away to conceal a grin.

When again Sawyer stood on the dock and reported that the two cash-boxes were hopelessly engulfed in the mud, Lee sternly bade him divest himself of the diving suit.

“What you goin’ to do?” said Finn, coming up.

“Is it your place to ask questions?” said Lee sharply. “Obey orders or you’ll regret it!”

“He’s going down himself,” whispered Dyce to Sawyer. The diver cast a savage glance at Lee and hesitated.

“Take off that suit,” repeated Lee.

Finn, scowling with anger, attempted to speak, but Lee turned on him and bade him be silent.

Slowly Sawyer divested himself of the clumsy diving suit; one after the other he pushed the leaden soled shoes from him.

Lee watched him with mixed emotions. He had gone too far to go back now—he understood that. Flinching at such a moment meant chaos in the quarry, and he knew that the last shred of his authority and control would go if he hesitated. Yet, with all his heart and soul he shrank from going down into the sea. What might not such men do? Dyce held the life-line. A moment or two suffocation—would such men hesitate? Accidents are so easy to prove and signals may be easily misunderstood. He laid a brace of heavy revolvers on the dock.

As Dyce lifted the helmet upon his shoulders, he caught a last glimpse of sunlight and blue sky and green leaves—a brief vision of dark, brutal faces—of Helen Pine’s frightened eyes. Then he felt himself on the dock ladder, then a thousand tons seemed to fall from his feet and the dusky ocean enveloped him.

On the dump-dock silence reigned. After a moment or two Finn whispered to Sawyer; Dyce joined the group; Farrely whitened a bit under his brick-red sunburn and pretended to fuss at his engine.

Helen Pine, heart beating furiously, watched them. She did not know what they were going to do—what they were doing now with the air tubes. She did not understand such things, but she saw a line suddenly twitch in Dyce’s fingers, and she saw murder in Finn’s eyes.

Before she knew what she was doing she found herself clutching both of Lee’s revolvers.

Finn saw her and stood petrified; Dyce gaped at the level muzzles. Nobody moved.

After a little while Dyce’s right hand twitched violently. Finn started and swore; Sawyer said distinctly; “Cut that line!”

The next instant she fired at him point-blank, and he dropped to the bleached boards with a howl of dismay. The crack of the revolver echoed and echoed among the rocks. Presently, behind his engine, Farrely began to laugh; two quarrymen near him got up and shambled hastily away.

“Draw him up!” gasped the girl with a desperate glance at the water.

Finn, the foreman, cursed and flung down his lines and walked away, cursing.

“Take the lines, Noonan,” she cried breathlessly; “Dyce, pull him up!”

The great blank-eyed helmet appeared; she watched it as though hypnotised. When, dragging his leaden feet, Lee stumbled to the dock and flung one of the two missing cash-boxes at Dyce’s feet, she grew dizzy and her little hands ached with their grip on the heavy weapons.

Sawyer, stupid, clutching his shattered fore-arm, never removed his eyes from her face; Dyce unscrewed the helmet, shaking with fright.

“There, you lying blackguard!” panted Lee, pointing to the recovered cash-box, “take them all to my office where I’ll settle with you once and for all!”

Nobody replied. Lee, flushed with excitement and triumph, stripped off his diving-dress before he became aware that something beside his own episode had occurred. Then he saw Lefty Sawyer, bedabbled with blood, staring with sick, surprised eyes at somebody—a woman,—who sat huddled on a heap of sun-dried sleepers, sun-bonnet fallen back, cocked revolver in either hand, and, in her dark eyes, tears that flowed silently over colourless cheeks.

Lee glared at Dyce.

“Ask _her_,” muttered Dyce doggedly.

He turned toward Helen, but Farrely, behind his engine, shouted: “Faith, she stood off th’ gang or the breathin’ below wud ha’ choked ye! Thank the lass, lad, an’ mind she’s a gun whin ye go worritin’ the fishes for the coompany’s cash-box!”

* * * * *

That night Lee made a speech at the quarry. The men listened placidly. Dyce, amazed that he was not discharged, went back to nurse Sawyer, a thoroughly cowed man. Noonan, Farrely, and Phelan, retired to their shanty and got fighting drunk to the health of the “colleen wid the gun;” the rest of the men went away with wholesome convictions concerning their superintendent that promised better things.

“Didn’t shanghai Dyce,—no he didn’t,” was the whispered comment.

Lee’s policy had done its work.

As for the murderous mover of the plot, the plausible foreman, Finn, he had shown the white feather under fire and he knew the men might kill him on sight. It’s an Irish characteristic under such circumstances.

Lee walked back from the quarry, realising his triumph, recognising that he owed it neither to his foolhardy impulse, nor yet to his mercy to Dyce and Sawyer. He went to the house and knocked at Helen’s door. She was not there. He sat alone in his office, absently playing with pen and ruler until the June moon rose over the ocean and yellow sparkles flashed among the waves. An hour later he went to the dock and found her sitting there alone in the moonlight.

She did not repulse him. Her hour had come and she knew it, for she had read such things in romances. It came. But she was too much in love, too sincere to use a setting so dramatic. She told him she loved him; she told him why she had come to the Port-of-Waves, why she had remembered the kiss and the promise. She rested her head on his shoulder and looked out at the moon, smaller and more silvery now. She was contented.

Under the dock the dark waves lapped musically. Under the dock Finn, stripped to the skin, plunged silently downward for the one missing cash-box, trusting to his sense of touch to find the safe.

But what he found was too horrible for words.

“Hark,” whispered Helen; “did you hear something splash?”

Lee looked out into the moonlight; a shadow, a black triangular point cut the silvery surface, steered hither and thither,—circled, sheered seaward, and was lost. Then came another splash, far out among the waves.

“The Collector of the Port,” said Lee; “is making merry in the moonlight.”

THE WHISPER.

_I’ bruinait.... L’temps était gris,_ _On n’voyait pas l’ciel.... L’atmosphère_ _Semblant suer au-d’ssus d’la ville,_ _Tombait en bué su’ la terre._

“FANTAISIE TRISTE.”

THE WHISPER.

As I entered the alley the bells of the dim city tolled for the passing night. Far in the black maze of filthy lanes and mist-choked streets a policeman whistled; I heard the distant din of an Elevated train, rushing through the fog, nearer, nearer, duller now, now smothered in the vapour which rolled from river to river, thick, heavy, stifling.

In the gloom of the alley a shadowy form loomed up and passed, leaving no sound of footsteps in my ears, but all around me the vapour became faintly tainted with opium and a flare of yellow light streamed out across the fog from an opening door. There was a momentary murmur of voices, the soft shuffle of felt-shod feet, the rustle of silken sleeves. A painted paper lantern swung from the doorway, dipped, and disappeared. I heard the deadened slam of the door and the black night veiled my eyes again.

An empty truck, with broken shafts buried in the mud of the gutter, blocked the sidewalk, and I crossed the greasy pavement to avoid it.

Around the pale flame of a gas lamp the fog spun an iridescent oval; the wet sidewalk glimmered underneath. Far down the reeking throat of the alley an arc-light shone like a grey star.

I raised my eyes to the dark house before me where from a rusting balcony a sign hung low above the doorway.

“This was her house,” I said aloud to myself; but I passed on to the next house. Here I paused a moment, looking back at the bamboo sign dripping with fog, then turned and descended some wooden steps to an iron door. Before I could find the handle, wrought in bronze like a dragon’s claw, the door flew open and I heard McManus’ angry bellow; “Git t’ hell outer here, yer dope suckin’ yap!” and a Chinaman was hustled into the area beside me.

“Chin chin thlough hattee!” snarled the Chinaman, “walkee where dlam please!”

“I’ll walkee you on yer neck!” growled McManus, and kicked the Chinaman half way up the steps.

“Dlam! Dlam! Dlam!” screamed the Chinaman, dancing with rage, but Charley, the bouncer, burst out of the door, and the Chinaman fled chattering like an infuriated ape.

I stepped into the low-ceilinged room and took a chair at a cherry-wood table beside the wall. Two young men sitting there said, “Hello, Jim!”

“Good evenin’,” said McManus, leaning over the bar, “did you see me givin’ de bounce to Wah-Wo?”

“Yes,” I said, “when did he come back?”

“He jest come in. I told him to git an’ he give me de ha-ha, so Charley trun him down. What t’hell, sez I, an’ he gives me back talk! Say, I won’t do a t’ing to him!”

One of the young men at the table beside me looked up from the Welsh-rabbit he was eating and called for ale. McManus brought it himself, a brimming pewter mug, and wiped his hands on his blue apron. Then he bawled for Charley to take my order.

“Sure,” said Charley coming in from the street where he had been patiently waiting for a scrap, and he leaned with both fists on the table and winked pleasantly at the company. Lynde, of the “Herald,” advised me to try a rabbit, and Penlow, of the “Tribune,” spoke well of the chops, so I left it to Charley and he retired to the grill, whistling, “Oh I don’t know!”

“It’s a wonder to me,” I said, hanging my wet mackintosh on a peg and kicking off my overshoes, “it’s a wonder to me that Wah-Wo was discharged.”

“There was no evidence to hold him,” observed Lynde after a moment’s silence.

Penlow lighted his pipe and rattled his mug on the table.

“No evidence,” I repeated; “do you fellows doubt that Wah-Wo did it?”

“I suppose he did,” said Penlow, “it was my scoop too.”

“We may scoop yet,” said Lynde, “the man’s bound to be caught. What did they do with that young tough from Hell’s Kitchen?”

“Sheehan? Oh, his alibi is good,” said Penlow. “Mac, fill her up will you?”

McManus replenished the pewter and stood for a moment beside us as if undecided.

“Gents,” began McManus, “youse is dead off—excuse me.” He shifted his toothpick and rubbed his thumb on the polished bar.

“Wah-Wo ain’t in it,” he said contemptuously: “I give him de t’row-down,—fur why?—fur because I don’t give de glad hand to no dope suckin’ come-on—an’ he’s dopy. But he didn’t do no dirt to the gal whut youse gents was stuck on—he ain’t that kind! He give me the laugh an’ I t’rowed him down, see? An’ I won’t do a t’ing but push his face in. See?”

“But,” said Penlow, “her dog flew at him when he went to the house. Kerrigan, you know—‘Happy Days Mike’—said that Wah-Wo tried to cut a girl in Doyers Street.”

“Nit! I don’t think,” said McManus scornfully: “Kerrigan’s a stuff—”

“Well, Mac,” said Lynde, “what’s your theory? You know as much about it as anybody. The girl came in here every night, didn’t she? People say that she lived alone, but of course she had company when she wanted it. What’s your idea, Mac?”

McManus looked out of the window and drummed on the bar with the blade of his oyster knife. Charley, clad in a blue checked jumper, arrived with some chops and ale. I unfolded my napkin and began my supper.

For a while I ate in silence, thinking of Wah-Wo and the dead girl.

Caithness of the Consolidated Press came in looking cold and ill, and we hastily made room for him at our table.

“You’re sick,” said Lynde sharply, “you ought to be in bed.”

“I’m all right,” said Caithness, glancing at us with his large dark eyes: “Mac, get me something hot.”

I swallowed my ale and turned again to the chops, scarcely listening to the hum of voices beside me, for I was thinking again of the dead girl.

I had no doubt that Wah-Wo had killed her. Again and again I had seen his eyes fastened upon her as she sat chatting with us, here at this very table. The motive was clear to me. I had spoken of this to the others but they laughed at me. The District Attorney took no stock in it, either; the result was the discharge of Wah-Wo.

How could anybody but a Chinaman, crazed with jealousy and opium, harm the child? For she was a mere child, this pallid victim whose soul had mounted to the Judgment seat from the filth of Chinatown.

Pale, slim, childish, depraved, she had never haunted Chinese resorts nor, to my knowledge, had she ever touched needle to flame. She had shunned the women of the quarter. I seldom saw her speak to any man except the reporters and newspaper artists who came to McManus’s for a midnight chop or rarebit.

Her acquaintance with us had been open and guileless. She chatted with us about our business, discussed the latest police shake-up or the newest Tammany scandal, gave us her views on politics and the City Hall, and glided away into the street again followed by her dog. Her dog! A great hulking brute, black as night, with sombre eyes and low hanging jowl,—a creature silent, unmoved except when she bent her pale face to his ear and whispered. Then and then only he would rise, shuffling from the sawdust floor under the bar, and stalk after her into the night.

He never paid the slightest attention to us. Calls, caresses, threats, left him unmoved.