Page:Weird Tales v01n04 (1923-06).djvu/100

Rh OW there was that in the ghostly voice that brought Richter's gin-swollen brain to the realization of the thing he had done in disposing of Gathright by bolting him in the spare boiler.

No good luck had followed that action; Hylda was still disconsolate; trade and smuggling was at a low ebb; there was talk, aboard and ashore, of reducing engineers' and skippers' wage to the bone.

Richter had a Teutonic stubbornness; Ezra Morgan had certainly turned against his chief engineer; the thing to do was to lay the ghostly voice, make what repairs were necessary in the boiler-room, and give the tanker's engines the steam they needed in order to make a quick return passage to San Francisco and please the Henningays.

An insane rage mastered Richter—the same red-vision he had experienced when he threw Gathright out of his daughter's house. He lowered his bullet head, brushed the curling vapors from his eyes, and plunged through the bulkhead door, bringing up in scalding steam before the after end of the midship, or spare boiler.

Grotesquely loomed all three boilers. They resembled humped-camels kneeling in a narrow shed by some misty river. Steam in quantity came hissing from the central camel; out of the furnace-doors, from a feed-pipe's packing, around a flange where the gauge-glass was riveted.

The Seriphus climbed a long Pacific roller, steadied, then rocked in the trough between seas; iron plates, gratings, flue-cleaners, scrapers, clattered around Richter who felt the flesh on neck and wrist rising into water blisters.

No one had thought to close the globe-valve in the oil supply line, or to extinguish the fires beneath the spare and leaking boiler. Richter groped through a steam cloud, searching for the hand-wheel on the pipe line. All the metal he touched was simmering hot.

A breath of sea air came down a ventilator; Richter gulped this air and tried to locate the globe-valve with the iron wheel. Vision cleared, he saw the red and open mouth of the central camel—the flannel-like flames and he heard. through toothed-bars a voice calling, "Hylda!"

Fergerson and a water tender dragged their chief from the boiler room by the heels; blistered, with the skin peeled from his features, Richter's eyes resembled hot coals in their madness. Blabbering nonsense, the engineer gave one understandable order:

"Put out th' fire, draw th' water, search inside th' spare boiler—there's something there, damit!"

Ezra Morgan came below, while the spare boiler was cooling, and entered Richter's temporary cabin—the "ditty-box" with the play actresses' pictures glued everywhere. Fergerson had applied rude doctoring—gauze bandages soaked in petroleum—on face and arms.

"What's th' matter, man?" asked Ezra Morgan. "Have you gone mad?"

"I heard some one calling my daughter, Hylda."

"Where do you keep your gin?"

"It's gone! Th' voice was there inside th' spare boiler. Did Fergerson look; did he find a skeleton, or—"

Ezra Morgan pinched Richter's left arm, jabbed home a hypodermic containing morphine, and left the chief engineer to sleep out his delusions. Fergerson came to the "ditty-box" some watches later. Richter sat up.

"What was in th' spare boiler?" asked the chief.

"Scale, soda, a soapy substance."

"Nothing else?"

"Why, mon, that's enough to make her foam."

Richter dropped back on the bunk and closed his lashless eyes.

"Suppose a man, a stowaway, had crawled through th' aft man-hole, an' died inside th' boiler? Would that make it foam—make th' soapy substance?"

"When could any stowaway do that?”

Richter framed his answer craftily: "Say it was done when th' Seriphus was at Oakland that time th' boilers were repaired in dry-dock."

Fergerson drew on his memory. "Th' time, mon, ye went aboard an' tested th' spare boiler? Th' occasion when ye took th' trouble to rig up a shore-hose in order to fill th' boiler wi' water?"

"Yes."

"Did ye ha' a man-hole plate off th' boiler?"

"I removed th' after-end plate, then went for th' hose. We had no steam up, you remember, and our feed-pumps are motor-driven."

"Ye think a mon might ha' crawled through to th' boiler during your absence?"

"Yes!"

"Ye may b' right—but if one did he could ha' escaped by th' fore man-hole plate. I had that off, an' wondered who put it back again so carelessly. Ye know th' boiler is a double-ender—wi' twa man-holes."

Richter was too numbed to show surprise. Fergerson left the "ditty-box" and pulled shut the door. The tanker, under reduced steam, made slow headway toward San Francisco.

One morning, a day out from soundings, the chief engineer awoke, felt around in the gloom, and attempted to switch on the electric light.

He got up and threw his legs over the edge of the bunk. A man sat leaning against the after plate. Richter blinked; the man, from the goggles on him and the crutch that lay across his knees, was the wireless operator who had been rescued from a sea grave.

"No need for light," said the visitor in a familiar voice. "You can guess who I am, Richter."

"A ghost!" said the chief. "Gathright's ghost! Come to haunt me!"

"Not exactly to haunt you. I assure you I am living flesh—somewhat twisted, but living. I got out of that midship boiler, while you were bolting me in so securely. I waited until you went on deck for a hose, and replaced the after man-hole cover. I was stunned and lay hidden aboard for two days. Then I looked for Hylda. She was gone. I shipped as electrician for a port in Japan. I knocked around a bit—at radio work for the Japanese. It was chance that the Seriphus should have picked me up from the Nippon Maru." "That voice calling for Hylda," cried Richter.

"Was a little reminder that I sent through the boiler-room ventilator; I knew you were down there, Richter."

The marine engineer switched on the electric light.

"What do you want?" he whined to Gathright.

"Hylda—your daughter!"

Paul Richter covered his eyes,

"If she will atone for the harm I have done you, Gathright, she is yours with her father's blessing."