Plundered Cargo/Chapter 3

HE four individuals whose fortunes thus brought them to a bleak house in the cabbage fields would have to be considerably less than human if what occurred there did not leave them with their reasoning faculties decidedly scrambled. The four found themselves bound with ropes, dumped in a pitch dark and unfurnished chamber within the house, dumped unceremoniously like so many potato sacks. They heard a door close and the sound of a key in the lock. Then absolute silence. For a long minute each prisoner was busy with his own menial machinery, adjusting himself to the results of overwhelming surprise.

“Well,” in a growl from Spike Horn, “I'll say this takes the cake!”

“A much more serious matter than a cake appears to be involved here, my young friend,” spoke the measured thought of the doctor. “I for one feel that I have a rising somewhere on my head, though I can't get my hands up to feel it. People do not produce risings on other people's heads with blows of some blunt instrument without reason. Now if we only knew the reason”

“Aw, you make me tired, whoever you are,” came brusque interruption of a soft tenor voice somewhere near. “Don't you know a hold-up when you see it—or feel it? Cripes, I guess my arm's broke from the way it feels!”

A chuckle from the irrepressible Spike. “The Iron Man! Walla-Walla, who lets you hit him in the pants with a ball bat, gets a wallop out of bounds an' yells about it! Oh, Mama!”

“You crazy drunk!” the disembodied tenor retorted. “Wait'll I get my hands untied and we'll see who's an Iron Man! 'F I hadn't met up with you and fallen for your dizzy talk I'd be settin' in a peaceful game of pinochle in the back room of Barney Moore's right now, 'stead of”

A footfall sounded outside the door of their prison chamber. A thin ray of light shone under the bottom of the door. The key grated in the lock. Back swung the door and a man entered the room. He carried a ship's lantern: a squat, black affair with light streaming through a corded round of glass Jens. By a curious trick the spray of light revealed no more than the boot toes of him who carried it; not even the hand holding the bale of the lantern was visible. The light danced. like some illuminated feather duster over the figures of the four propped against the wall: the flute player, Spike Horn, the Iron Man and finally in a far corner, Old Doctor Chitterly.

“Well, well!” It was again that soft voice the prisoners had heard at the conclusion of the brief battle outside the house.

“Well, well, gentlemen, here we are! I've been expecting this visit and so was ready to receive you.”

“You received us all right,” was the doughty Spike's rejoinder given with light truculence. “My watch is in my right vest pocket an' you'll find a handful of gold down my pants pocket, you cheap lead pipe artist!”

A quiet laugh sounded behind the lantern. “Pretty bluff! The people who hire you, young man, know very well I'm not in the footpad business.”

Once more the whiskbroom of light slowly brushed the faces of the four prisoners, ranged backs against the wall. It crossed the patriarchal beard of the doctor and then returned to linger upon his features.

“Aren't you rather an elderly man to be mixed up in this sort of game?” asked the voice.

“Not too old to thrash you thoroughly if you'll give me the use of my hands,” the valiant Chitterly replied. “I don't know what business you have in mind. I don't know who you are nor what may be your wretched reason for assault upon my person, I am a physician and known from Vancouver to Ensenada as Old”

“An' I playa da flute—me,” came the hurried interjection from an unlighted space along the wall. Instantly the round eye of light bored the features of the unfortunate musician: the tight curled, high-glossed mustache, the staring eyes in olive slits.

“A-ha! A physician and a flute player, eh? I see that the Lonney Lee won't lack for talent. Now gentlemen—your pardon!”

The invisible speaker knelt before the doctor and, keeping the lantern light dazzlingly on his face, searched his pockets with careful thoroughness. What he found therein—a memorandum book, an old-fashioned wallet of vast proportions, some printed dodgers extolling the merits of Squaw Root Tonic—he carefully perused under the lantern ray, then returned everything intact. The others, watching these proceedings intently, could see the play of heavy hands wherein strength was proclaimed by the stubbed fingers and breadth of back; but of the rest of their inquisitor not a vestige showed.

Each of the other three was subjected to this search, The man behind the lantern chuckled when the Iron Man's intimate possessions showed several pawn tickets and a Chinese lottery chance stamped in red and black lozenges like our present day crossword puzzle. He bunched the pledges and the lottery ticket significantly.

“Cause and effect,” he laughed.

Spike kept up a running fire of provocatory comment when the big hands were pawing over his treasures—a gold and purple garter, a cigarette picture of Jimmy Britt, pugilist. The hands opened the pages of a new bank book which showed a deposit of $100,000 dated but two days back.

“Ah, yes!” came the satisfied exclamation, “But a hundred thousand! They were not at all stingy in providing funds, now were they?”

“Why, you big Swede, my interest was worth twice that,” was Spike's bullying rejoinder. He had the feel of unseen eyes boring him.

“Your interest, eh? So you're the mysterious third party in this business? Well, let me tell you, young fellow, now that you're where you are and I'm where I am, your interest isn't worth a plugged Mexican peso. I had thought a minute ago maybe I'd made a mistake—thought perhaps you four men blundered onto us here by mistake. But this little item of a hundred thousand, and what you say about 'your interest'—well, I don't need to know more.”

“My dear sir!” Doctor Chitterly's agitated voice came booming from the dark flank. “We came here just to find a telephone. Our car—our pleasure car suffered an accident. This young man, Mr. Horn, whom I scarcely know, told me he'd sold”

“Aw, shut up, Doc!” Spike muttered. “More you talk to this gazabo the nuttier he gets.”

The voice behind the lantern purled on as if no interruption had come: “Of course, you know, gentlemen, I could do away with you. But I only consider murder when there's no other course. Out-of-hand murder never pays. Luckily for you, it will serve my purpose just as well to take you along with me on the Lonney Lee; we're short handed anyway. I think we'll get along very well together provided you discover at the start I am master,”

The light lifted from the floor and began to back toward the door.

“And I would advise you, gentlemen, to make that discovery as to who's master without any prompting from me. I can be a hard man, and lay to that!”

“Meester!” came the despairing wail from the musician; “Meester, I swear I on'y playa da flute—me!”

“So much the better,” purled the voice, and the door shut behind it.

Before the prisoners had a chance to collect their wits men came in to lift them, bound as they still were, and carry them like so much cordwood to be loaded into a farm wagon outside the house. On their backs on the hard wagon bed, with the fog pressing down on their faces, they were jolted and tortured by the ruts of a country road for three endless hours. Where the fringe of truck gardens tributary to the city markets ceased wilderness commenced—a wilderness of crags overhanging the sea, of bald mountains and marshes where inlets of salt water backed into the land.

It must have been at Abalone Cove just north of the broad swing of Halfmoon Bay that the wagon stopped. Those on the floor saw the driver above them light a lantern and, standing on the seat, wave it up and down in slow arcs. The sound of the sea on a beach was very nigh.

After what seemed an interminable time, Chinamen appeared at the wagon tail and cut the ropes which bound the prisoners' feet. They were dragged out to the ground and, each with a guard, were bidden to hoof it. A short cut through furze, the feel of yielding sand, and at the end of a brief journey unceremonious booting over the gunnel of a yawl pulled half way out of the reach of waves. The boat was shoved off.

Before many minutes the loom of a hull suddenly cut out of the thinning fog. A rancid smell of fish oil and opium—typical Chinatown smell—stung their nostrils. The yawl drew alongside, and bare yellow arms stretched down to receive the prisoners, half lifted over-side by the rowers. A Chinaman directed they stand over against a mast.

Sound of a second boat approaching. The shanghaied ones saw a heavy shouldered man in blue sea-jacket and vizored cap come over-side. Instantly he turned to a group of slattern, yellow men showing in the light of a lantern fixed to the mainmast and called with a voice of authority: “Hoist those boats aboard! Be spry about it!”

There was a creaking of fall-blocks.

The nian in the sea-jacket called back into the darkness of the after-deck: “Turn over your engine, Mr. Hansen.” Then once more to the Chinamen: “Man the windlass! On the jump!”

From the darkness forward came the mutter of anchor chain crawling through the hawse-holes. Aft a gasoline engine was put-putting fretfully.

“Quarter speed ahead, Mr. Hansen. For'ard there, heave in!”

All this with not so much as a look from the skipper toward the group of bound wretches under the mainmast lantern. But for their arms triced at their backs, the luckless four might have been willing passengers for all they seemed to count.

They heard the anchor come dripping up to the cathead. They felt the throb of the gasoline kicker under the stern. With creak of tackle and swish of canvas the sails were set. The schooner slowly began to nose her way seaward where a streaky dawn had commenced to show behind floating rags of fog.

Suddenly, bound as he was, Spike Horn made a dash for the side. He had mounted the gunnel of the yawl lately dropped in its chocks there and was poised for a desperate leap overboard when the skipper intervened. A cat-like bound brought him below Spike's vantage. One hand caught the tail of his jacket and jerked him backward. Even as he toppled a stinging blow from the skipper's right smashed under his ear. Spike spun around in midair and fell on his face along the deck.

His miserable companions saw the fingers of the boy's bound hands twitch convulsively as if in a signal.