Conspiracy (England)/Chapter 2

at the door told that Win-gate's summons had been heard. Unsteadily he leaned over and shot back the bolt. The door opened.

“You rang, sir?” asked Zanelli, the steward.

“Of course I rang!” snapped the millionaire, with raw nerves. “Who do you suppose rang? What an idiotic question! Where the devil are we, anyhow?”

Zanelli—tall, dark, saturnine—shrugged his slender shoulders. A rather handsome figure he made there, in his white duck uniform. Olive-skinned, a fine type of Italian blood, he formed a strong contrast to his master.

“Where, sir? I don't know.” He spoke quietly, with due deference. “Stopping at some island or other, off the coast. The captain hasn't told me just where.”

“You're a fool, Zanelli!”

“Yes, sir.”

“What the blue Tophet are we doing here?”

“I heard something about engine trouble, sir.”

“Engine trouble, eh?” A moment's pause, while Wingate held himself in leash. The steward's dark eyes searched him. “See here, Zanelli!”

“Well, sir?”

“Have you been rummaging around here in my cabin? No lies, now! The truth!”

“Rummaging, sir?” Zanelli flushed darkly. “Certainly not, sir! I make up the berth and keep the cabin in order—that is all.”

Wingate forced himself to eye the man narrowly. The steward's look was steadier than his master's, and it was Wingate's that fell.

“Send Captain Jaccard here at once!” he flung out.

“Yes, sir.”

Zanelli withdrew, carefully closing the door.

After some five minutes' waiting, which in that humid stifle of heat seemed an hour, the quivering and pain-racked financier heard Captain Jaccard's heavy step in the outer cabin, and another knock—a more firm-fisted one—on the door.

“Come!” he cried, and the captain entered. “Now, then, what the devil is the meaning of all this?”

“We've broken our crank shaft, sir,” Jaccard made answer. A tall, broad-chested fellow he, rising thirty-five, blue-eyed and phlegmatic. “I was driving her a little too hard, sir. Wanted to make Beaufort this morning, to pick up the first mate there. It's hard to be short-handed.”

“Crank shaft, eh? Damnation! I never heard anything break!”

“Well, it's broken, anyhow,” the captain calmly asserted. He seemed a shrewd, competent fellow. Wingate had hired him for this cruise on the best of references. “It happened about three bells of the morning watch, at sea.'

“And where are we lying now?” gritted Wingate.

“Tortugas Key, sir—uninhabited little island, about thirty miles off the coast. Lucky for us the weather was calm. I put down the tender, and it towed us here. We're anchored. I can make repairs—strap up the break, you know, sir. There's no other damage; though if we hadn't had that new Voorees governor—”

“Hang the details—and you, too, for driving her too hard! How far are we from Queensport?”

“Chart shows about seventy-five miles, sir.”

“That's good!” Wingate's pain-contracted face lighted for a moment. This anguish, at all events, could soon be ended—ended before utter collapse set in. The ghost of a smile wrinkled his dry, parchment-like skin. “Seventy-five miles, eh? The tender can make that in four hours.”

“Five, at the outside. A big speed boat like that—”

“Yes, yes, I know. Fill her up with gas, Jaccard! I've got to get back to Queensport at once. Just remembered some business with my bank there that I've got to attend to right away.”

“Our wireless is working first-rate, sir. Can't you do this business by wireless?”

“Damn it, no! Don't argue!” Decisively the financier shook his head; but his lean fingers, drumming on the desk, gave the lie to his feeble show of energy. “Get everything ready for a quick run back to town. I'm leaving at once.”

“After breakfast, of course, sir?” asked the captain, as if to temporize.

“Curse breakfast!” almost shouted Wingate. “What d'you mean, opposing me? Get things ready, I tell you! What the devil am I paying you for?” Wingate's raw nerves lashed savagely at Jaccard. “Go on now—do as you're told!”

“I'm sorry, sir,” answered the captain imperturbably, “but I can't, because—”

“You what? You can't? But you must!”

“How can I, sir, when the tender isn't here?”

“Not—here?” Wingate sank back in his chair, with eyes fishlike in blank dismay: “What d'you mean, not here?”

“It's gone, sir,” Jaccard explained. “I sent it back to Queensport for materials to mend the break—steel straps, bolts, and—”

Wingate's groan interrupted the skipper's explanation. An expression of intolerable anguish contorted the millionaire's face. Though he sought to control himself, an anguished twitch shuddered through his emaciated body.

“Well, by thunder!” exclaimed the captain. “Is it as important as all that?”

“Important? Good God, man, it may be a matter of life or death to—to my bank. There must be some—some way to get back to Queensport—must be! Can't you patch up the infernal crank shaft, or something?”

“Not without the proper materials, sir. We're as helpless as a cripple in a stevedores' fight.”

“No way to rig canvas?”

“No, sir. No wind, anyhow—dead calm.”

Wingate's fists clenched, twitching. He smote the desk a savage blow.

“You're a hell of a captain, I must say, getting me into a jam like this!” he snarled.

“Accidents will happen, sir,” Jaccard affirmed. Then, after a long pause in the stifling heat of the electric-lighted cabin: “Beg pardon, sir, but you don't look quite yourself this morning. Anything wrong, sir?”

“Curse it, no! No, I tell you—no! I'm just worried about that bank business—that's all. I'm all right—quite all right!” Wingate shot an oblique, evil glance at the captain. “What the devil should be the matter with me?”

“Oh, nothing, sir. I was just thinking you looked a bit off color—that's all.”

“Well, you thought wrong! And keep your infernal thoughts to yourself, till you're asked! I'm not paying you to volunteer your alleged thoughts! If you'd thought more about that shaft, it would have been a damned sight better!”

Wingate, savage and frightened and ugly, suffering and spent, reached for his cigarette case, snapped it open, and with a shaking hand lighted a cigarette. A pitiable figure he made, thin, wasted, as he sat wrapped in the bath robe that he had put on after Zanelli's departure. Gaunt and unshaven, he looked anything but a power in the world of finance.

Captain Jaccard, observing his employer, wrinkled his blond brows and smiled a bit oddly. Wingate inhaled a lungful of smoke, blew thin vapor, and twitchingly drummed on the desk top.

“If there's anything I can do for you, sir?” tentatively volunteered the captain. “Anything, say, in the way of medicine? Of course, I'm no doctor, you understand; but I have a little medical kit in my cabin, and—”

“Medical kit, eh?” ejaculated the magnate, straightening up as if with a galvanic shock. The unnaturally dilated pupils of his eyes held an almost feline quality. A poisoned soul in an envenomed body seemed peering through them. “What have you got in the way of—medicines?”

“Oh, just a small general line of essentials, sir. What might you be needing?”

“It's this damned tooth!” groaned Wingate, pressing a hand to his jaw. “Hardly slept a wink all night!”

“That's odd,” smiled Jaccard. “Just a minute ago you said you didn't hear the shaft break, or the—”

““Never mind what I said, curse you!” flared the sufferer. “Don't you stand there catechizing me! Got anything good for toothache, have you?”

“Well, sir, I don't rightly know,” the captain made answer. He was a calm figure of strength in his white uniform. “I haven't got much, but I might quiet you down a bit till you can get to a dentist.”

“That's the idea—to quiet the pain down temporarily!” Wingate grasped at the suggestion as a drowning man clutches at the proverbial straw. “But I must get back to Queensport—that bank business, and the tooth, and all. Must get this infernal molar out. Damn it, man, I'm suffering agonies!” He groaned with complete realism. His nerves, stretched to the ultimate breaking point, quivered as if to snap. “Come on, now—what have you got in your kit?”

“Well, sir, there's iodine, and arnica, and morphine, and—”

“Morphine!” The word escaped in an involuntary gasp. “You—you've got—”

“Why, yes, sir—I always carry a little. Perhaps a tablet or so, even an eighth of a grain, might help some.”

“Go get it!”

“Though of course, sir, you might perhaps prefer—”

“Damn you, go get the morphine! Why are you standing there, staring at me? Who's paying you, anyhow? When I order, obey! Go!”

Jaccard surveyed him appraisingly. Then he nodded and withdrew, carefully closing the door.

Alone, the millionaire clasped his hands, wringing them till the bony fingers went bloodless.

“Morphine!” he gasped, in a choking whisper. “Oh, my God, morphine!”