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Title: The Pursuit of the House-Boat
Author: Bangs, John Kendrick
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Pursuit of the House-Boat" ***
Transcribed from the 1919 Harper and Brothers edition by David Price,
email ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: The Stranger drew forth a bundle of business cards]
THE PURSUIT OF THE
HOUSE-BOAT
_BEING SOME FURTHER_
_ACCOUNT OF THE DOINGS_
_OF THE ASSOCIATED SHADES_,
_UNDER THE LEADERSHIP_
_OF SHERLOCK HOLMES ESQ._
BY
JOHN KENDRICK BANGS
AUTHOR OF “A HOUSE-BOAT ON THE STYX,” ETC.
ILLUSTRATED
[Picture: Decorative graphic]
LONDON AND NEW YORK
HARPER AND BROTHERS
45, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1919
* * * * *
FOURTEENTH IMPRESSION
* * * * *
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. The Associated Shades take Action 1
II. The Stranger Unravels a Mystery and Reveals 19
Himself
III. The Search-Party is Organized 42
IV. On Board the House-Boat 58
V. A Conference on Deck 73
VI. A Conference Below-Stairs 89
VII. The “Gehenna” is Chartered 105
VIII. On Board the “Gehenna” 121
IX. Captain Kidd Meets with an Obstacle 139
X. A Warning Accepted 157
XI. Marooned 172
XII. The Escape and the End 189
ILLUSTRATIONS
“The Stranger drew forth a bundle of business _Frontispiece_
cards”
“Dr. Johnson’s point is well taken” 8
“What has all this got to do with the question?” 10
“Poor old Boswell was pushed overboard” 22
“Three rousing cheers, led by Hamlet, had been 42
given”
“A black person by the name of Friday finds a 54
bottle”
Madame Récamier has a plan 66
The hard features of Captain Kidd were thrust 70
through
“Here’s a kettle of fish!” said Kidd 74
“Every bloomin’ million was represented by a 84
certified check, an’ payable in London”
Queen Elizabeth desires an axe and one hour of her 90
olden power
“The committee on treachery is ready to report” 102
“You are very much mistaken, Sir Walter” 108
“In the dead of night he had stolen quietly up the 118
gang-plank”
Shem in the lookout 128
Judge Blackstone refuses to climb to the mizzentop 126
Captain Kidd consents to be cross-examined by 148
Portia
Kidd’s companions endeavouring to restore 154
evaporating portions of his anatomy with a
steam-atomizer
“He told us we were going to Paris” 160
“You are a very clear-headed young woman, Lizzie,” 170
said Mrs. Noah
“That ought to be a lesson to you” 178
“The pirates made a mad dash down the rough, rocky 180
hill-side”
“Now, my child,” said Mrs. Noah, firmly, “I do not 192
wish any words”
“A great helpless hulk ten feet to the rear” 200
I
THE ASSOCIATED SHADES TAKE ACTION
THE House-boat of the Associated Shades, formerly located upon the River
Styx, as the reader may possibly remember, had been torn from its
moorings and navigated out into unknown seas by that vengeful pirate
Captain Kidd, aided and abetted by some of the most ruffianly inhabitants
of Hades. Like a thief in the night had they come, and for no better
reason than that the Captain had been unanimously voted a shade too shady
to associate with self-respecting spirits had they made off with the
happy floating club-house of their betters; and worst of all, with them,
by force of circumstances over which they had no control, had sailed also
the fair Queen Elizabeth, the spirited Xanthippe, and every other
strong-minded and beautiful woman of Erebean society, whereby the men
thereof were rendered desolate.
“I can’t stand it!” cried Raleigh, desperately, as with his accustomed
grace he presided over a special meeting of the club, called on the bank
of the inky Stygian stream, at the point where the missing boat had been
moored. “Think of it, gentlemen, Elizabeth of England, Calpurnia of
Rome, Ophelia of Denmark, and every precious jewel in our social diadem
gone, vanished completely; and with whom? Kidd, of all men in the
universe! Kidd, the pirate, the ruffian—”
“Don’t take on so, my dear Sir Walter,” said Socrates, cheerfully.
“What’s the use of going into hysterics? You are not a woman, and should
eschew that luxury. Xanthippe is with them, and I’ll warrant you that
when that cherished spouse of mine has recovered from the effects of the
sea, say the third day out, Kidd and his crew will be walking the plank,
and voluntarily at that.”
“But the House-boat itself,” murmured Noah, sadly. “That was my delight.
It reminded me in some respects of the Ark.”
“The law of compensation enters in there, my dear Commodore,” retorted
Socrates. “For me, with Xanthippe abroad I do not need a club to go to;
I can stay at home and take my hemlock in peace and straight. Xanthippe
always compelled me to dilute it at the rate of one quart of water to the
finger.”
“Well, we didn’t all marry Xanthippe,” put in Cæsar firmly, “therefore we
are not all satisfied with the situation. I, for one, quite agree with
Sir Walter that something must be done, and quickly. Are we to sit here
and do nothing, allowing that fiend to kidnap our wives with impunity?”
“Not at all,” interposed Bonaparte. “The time for action has arrived.
All things considered, he is welcome to Marie Louise, but the idea of
Josephine going off on a cruise of that kind breaks my heart.”
“No question about it,” observed Dr. Johnson. “We’ve got to do something
if it is only for the sake of appearances. The question really is, what
shall be done first?”
“I am in favor of taking a drink as the first step, and considering the
matter of further action afterwards,” suggested Shakespeare, and it was
this suggestion that made the members unanimous upon the necessity for
immediate action, for when the assembled spirits called for their various
favorite beverages it was found that there were none to be had, it being
Sunday, and all the establishments wherein liquid refreshments were
licensed to be sold being closed—for at the time of writing the local
government of Hades was in the hands of the reform party.
“What!” cried Socrates. “Nothing but Styx water and vitriol, Sundays?
Then the House-boat must be recovered whether Xanthippe comes with it or
not. Sir Walter, I am for immediate action, after all. This ruffian
should be captured at once and made an example of.”
“Excuse me, Socrates,” put in Lindley Murray, “but, ah—pray speak in
Greek hereafter, will you, please? When you attempt English you have a
beastly way of working up to climatic prepositions which are offensive to
the ear of a purist.”
“This is no time to discuss style, Murray,” interposed Sir Walter.
“Socrates may speak and spell like Chaucer if he pleases; he may even
part his infinitives in the middle, for all I care. We have affairs of
greater moment in hand.”
“We must ransack the earth,” cried Socrates, “until we find that boat.
I’m dry as a fish.”
“There he goes again!” growled Murray. “Dry as a fish! What fish, I’d
like to know, is dry?”
“Red herrings,” retorted Socrates; and there was a great laugh at the
expense of the purist, in which even Hamlet, who had grown more and more
melancholy and morbid since the abduction of Ophelia, joined.
“Then it is settled,” said Raleigh; “something must be done. And now the
point is, what?”
“Relief expeditions have a way of finding things,” suggested Dr.
Livingstone. “Or rather of being found by the things they go out to
relieve. I propose that we send out a number of them. I will take
Africa; Bonaparte can lead an expedition into Europe; General Washington
may have North America; and—”
“I beg pardon,” put in Dr. Johnson, “but have you any idea, Dr.
Livingstone, that Captain Kidd has put wheels on this House-boat of ours,
and is having it dragged across the Sahara by mules or camels?”
“No such absurd idea ever entered my head,” retorted the Doctor.
“Do you, then, believe that he has put runners on it, and is engaged in
the pleasurable pastime of taking the ladies tobogganing down the Alps?”
persisted the philosopher.
“Not at all. Why do you ask?” queried the African explorer, irritably.
“Because I wish to know,” said Johnson. “That is always my motive in
asking questions. You propose to go looking for a house-boat in Central
Africa; you suggest that Bonaparte lead an expedition in search of it
through Europe—all of which strikes me as nonsense. This search is the
work of sea-dogs, not of landlubbers. You might as well ask Confucius to
look for it in the heart of China. What earthly use there is in
ransacking the earth I fail to see. What we need is a navel expedition
to scour the sea, unless it is pretty well understood in advance that we
believe Kidd has hauled the boat out of the water, and is now using it
for a roller-skating rink or a bicycle academy in Ohio, or for some other
purpose for which neither he nor it was designed.”
[Picture: Dr. Johnson’s point is well taken]
“Dr. Johnson’s point is well taken,” said a stranger who had been sitting
upon the string-piece of the pier, quietly, but with very evident
interest, listening to the discussion. He was a tall and excessively
slender shade, “like a spirt of steam out of a teapot,” as Johnson put it
afterwards, so slight he seemed. “I have not the honor of being a member
of this association,” the stranger continued, “but, like all well-ordered
shades, I aspire to the distinction, and I hold myself and my talents at
the disposal of this club. I fancy it will not take us long to establish
our initial point, which is that the gross person who has so foully
appropriated your property to his own base uses does not contemplate
removing it from its keel and placing it somewhere inland. All the
evidence in hand points to a radically different conclusion, which is my
sole reason for doubting the value of that conclusion. Captain Kidd is a
seafarer by instinct, not a landsman. The House-boat is not a house, but
a boat; therefore the place to look for it is not, as Dr. Johnson so well
says, in the Sahara Desert, or on the Alps, or in the State of Ohio, but
upon the high sea, or upon the waterfront of some one of the world’s
great cities.”
“And what, then, would be your plan?” asked Sir Walter, impressed by the
stranger’s manner as well as by the very manifest reason in all that he
had said.
“The chartering of a suitable vessel, fully armed and equipped for the
purpose of pursuit. Ascertain whither the House-boat has sailed, for
what port, and start at once. Have you a model of the House-boat within
reach?” returned the stranger.
“I think not; we have the architect’s plans, however,” said the chairman.
“We had, Mr. Chairman,” said Demosthenes, who was secretary of the House
Committee, rising, “but they are gone with the House-boat itself. They
were kept in the safe in the hold.”
A look of annoyance came into the face of the stranger.
“That’s too bad,” he said. “It was a most important part of my plan that
we should know about how fast the House-boat was.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Socrates, with ill-concealed sarcasm. “If you’ll
take Xanthippe’s word for it, the House-boat was the fastest yacht
afloat.”
“I refer to the matter of speed in sailing,” returned the stranger,
quietly. “The question of its ethical speed has nothing to do with it.”
“The designer of the craft is here,” said Sir Walter, fixing his eyes
upon Sir Christopher Wren. “It is possible that he may be of assistance
in settling that point.”
[Picture: What has all this got to do with the question]
“What has all this got to do with the question, anyhow, Mr. Chairman?”
asked Solomon, rising impatiently and addressing Sir Walter. “We aren’t
preparing for a yacht-race, that I know of. Nobody’s after a cup, or a
championship of any kind. What we do want is to get our wives back. The
Captain hasn’t taken more than half of mine along with him, but I am
interested none the less. The Queen of Sheba is on board, and I am
somewhat interested in her fate. So I ask you what earthly or unearthly
use there is in discussing this question of speed in the House-boat. It
strikes me as a woful waste of time, and rather unprecedented too, that
we should suspend all rules and listen to the talk of an entire
stranger.”
“I do not venture to doubt the wisdom of Solomon,” said Johnson, dryly,
“but I must say that the gentleman’s remarks rather interest me.”
“Of course they do,” ejaculated Solomon. “He agreed with you. That
ought to make him interesting to everybody. Freaks usually are.”
“That is not the reason at all,” retorted Dr. Johnson. “Cold water
agrees with me, but it doesn’t interest me. What I do think, however, is
that our unknown friend seems to have a grasp on the situation by which
we are confronted, and he’s going at the matter in hand in a very
comprehensive fashion. I move, therefore, that Solomon be laid on the
table, and that the privileges of the—ah—of the wharf be extended
indefinitely to our friend on the string-piece.”
The motion, having been seconded, was duly carried, and the stranger
resumed.
“I will explain for the benefit of his Majesty King Solomon, whose wisdom
I have always admired, and whose endurance as the husband of three
hundred wives has filled me with wonder,” he said, “that before starting
in pursuit of the stolen vessel we must select a craft of some sort for
the purpose, and that in selecting the pursuer it is quite essential that
we should choose a vessel of greater speed than the one we desire to
overtake. It would hardly be proper, I think, if the House-boat can sail
four knots an hour to attempt to overhaul her with a launch, or other
nautical craft, with a maximum speed of two knots an hour.”
“Hear! hear!” ejaculated Cæsar.
“That is my reason, your Majesty, for inquiring as to the speed of your
late club-house,” said the stranger, bowing courteously to Solomon.
“Now, if Sir Christopher Wren can give me her measurements, we can very
soon determine at about what rate she is leaving us behind under
favorable circumstances.”
“’Tisn’t necessary for Sir Christopher to do anything of the sort,” said
Noah, rising and manifesting somewhat more heat than the occasion seemed
to require. “As long as we are discussing the question I will take the
liberty of stating what I have never mentioned before, that the designer
of the House-boat merely appropriated the lines of the Ark. Shem, Ham,
and Japhet will bear testimony to the truth of that statement.”
“There can be no quarrel on that score, Mr. Chairman,” assented Sir
Christopher, with cutting frigidity. “I am perfectly willing to admit
that practically the two vessels were built on the same lines, but with
modifications which would enable my boat to sail twenty miles to windward
and back in six days’ less time than it would have taken the Ark to cover
the same distance, and it could have taken all the wash of the excursion
steamers into the bargain.”
“Bosh!” ejaculated Noah, angrily. “Strip your old tub down to a flying
balloon-jib and a marline-spike, and ballast the Ark with elephants until
every inch of her reeked with ivory and peanuts, and she’d outfoot you on
every leg, in a cyclone or a zephyr. Give me the Ark and a breeze, and
your House-boat wouldn’t be within hailing distance of her five minutes
after the start if she had 40,000 square yards of canvas spread before a
gale.”
“This discussion is waxing very unprofitable,” observed Confucius. “If
these gentlemen cannot be made to confine themselves to the subject that
is agitating this body, I move we call in the authorities and have them
confined in the bottomless pit.”
“I did not precipitate the quarrel,” said Noah. “I was merely trying to
assist our friend on the string-piece. I was going to say that as the
Ark was probably a hundred times faster than Sir Christopher Wren’s—tub,
which he himself says can take care of all the wash of the excursion
boats, thereby becoming on his own admission a wash-tub—”
“Order! order!” cried Sir Christopher.
“I was going to say that this wash-tub could be overhauled by a launch or
any other craft with a speed of thirty knots a mouth,” continued Noah,
ignoring the interruption.
“Took him forty days to get to Mount Ararat!” sneered Sir Christopher.
“Well, your boat would have got there two weeks sooner, I’ll admit,”
retorted Noah, “if she’d sprung a leak at the right time.”
“Granting the truth of Noah’s statement,” said Sir Walter, motioning to
the angry architect to be quiet—“not that we take any side in the issue
between the two gentlemen, but merely for the sake of argument—I wish to
ask the stranger who has been good enough to interest himself in our
trouble what he proposes to do—how can you establish your course in case
a boat were provided?”
“Also vot vill be dher gost, if any?” put in Shylock.
A murmur of disapprobation greeted this remark.
“The cost need not trouble you, sir,” said Sir Walter, indignantly,
addressing the stranger; “you will have carte blanche.”
“Den ve are ruint!” cried Shylock, displaying his palms, and showing by
that act a select assortment of diamond rings.
“Oh,” laughed the stranger, “that is a simple matter. Captain Kidd has
gone to London.”
“To London!” cried several members at once. “How do you know that?”
“By this,” said the stranger, holding up the tiny stub end of a cigar.
“Tut-tut!” ejaculated Solomon. “What child’s play is this!”
“No, your Majesty,” observed the stranger, “it is not child’s play; it is
fact. That cigar end was thrown aside here on the wharf by Captain Kidd
just before he stepped on board the House-boat.”
“How do you know that?” demanded Raleigh. “And granting the truth of the
assertion, what does it prove?”
“I will tell you,” said the stranger. And he at once proceeded as
follows.
II
THE STRANGER UNRAVELS A MYSTERY AND REVEALS HIMSELF
“I HAVE made a hobby of the study of cigar ends,” said the stranger, as
the Associated Shades settled back to hear his account of himself. “From
my earliest youth, when I used surreptitiously to remove the unsmoked
ends of my father’s cigars and break them up, and, in hiding, smoke them
in an old clay pipe which I had presented to me by an ancient sea-captain
of my acquaintance, I have been interested in tobacco in all forms, even
including these self-same despised unsmoked ends; for they convey to my
mind messages, sentiments, farces, comedies, and tragedies which to your
minds would never become manifest through their agency.”
The company drew closer together and formed themselves in a more compact
mass about the speaker. It was evident that they were beginning to feel
an unusual interest in this extraordinary person, who had come among them
unheralded and unknown. Even Shylock stopped calculating percentages for
an instant to listen.
“Do you mean to tell us,” demanded Shakespeare, “that the unsmoked stub
of a cigar will suggest the story of him who smoked it to your mind?”
“I do,” replied the stranger, with a confident smile. “Take this one,
for instance, that I have picked up here upon the wharf; it tells me the
whole story of the intentions of Captain Kidd at the moment when, in
utter disregard of your rights, he stepped aboard your House-boat, and,
in his usual piratical fashion, made off with it into unknown seas.”
“But how do you know he smoked it?” asked Solomon, who deemed it the part
of wisdom to be suspicious of the stranger.
“There are two curious indentations in it which prove that. The marks of
two teeth, with a hiatus between, which you will see if you look
closely,” said the stranger, handing the small bit of tobacco to Sir
Walter, “make that point evident beyond peradventure. The Captain lost
an eye-tooth in one of his later raids; it was knocked out by a
marine-spike which had been hurled at him by one of the crew of the
treasure-ship he and his followers had attacked. The adjacent teeth were
broken, but not removed. The cigar end bears the marks of those two
jagged molars, with the hiatus, which, as I have indicated, is due to the
destruction of the eye-tooth between them. It is not likely that there
was another man in the pirate’s crew with teeth exactly like the
commander’s, therefore I say there can be no doubt that the cigar end was
that of the Captain himself.”
“Very interesting indeed,” observed Blackstone, removing his wig and
fanning himself with it; “but I must confess, Mr. Chairman, that in any
properly constituted law court this evidence would long since have been
ruled out as irrelevant and absurd. The idea of two or three hundred
dignified spirits like ourselves, gathered together to devise a means for
the recovery of our property and the rescue of our wives, yielding the
floor to the delivering of a lecture by an entire stranger on ‘Cigar Ends
He Has Met,’ strikes me as ridiculous in the extreme. Of what earthly
interest is it to us to know that this or that cigar was smoked by
Captain Kidd?”
“Merely that it will help us on, your honor, to discover the whereabouts
of the said Kidd,” interposed the stranger. “It is by trifles, seeming
trifles, that the greatest detective work is done. My friends Le Coq,
Hawkshaw, and Old Sleuth will bear me out in this, I think, however much
in other respects our methods may have differed. They left no stone
unturned in the pursuit of a criminal; no detail, however trifling,
uncared for. No more should we in the present instance overlook the
minutest bit of evidence, however irrelevant and absurd at first blush it
may appear to be. The truth of what I say was very effectually proven in
the strange case of the Brokedale tiara, in which I figured somewhat
conspicuously, but which have never made public, because it involves a
secret affecting the integrity of one of the noblest families in the
British Empire. I really believe that mystery was solved easily and at
once because I happened to remember that the number of my watch was
86507B. How trivial and yet how important it was, to what then
transpired, you will realize when I tell you the incident.”
[Picture: Poor old Boswell was pushed overboard]
The stranger’s manner was so impressive that there was a unanimous and
simultaneous movement upon the part of all present to get up closer, so
as the more readily to hear what he said, as a result of which poor old
Boswell was pushed overboard, and fell, with a loud splash into the Styx.
Fortunately, however, one of Charon’s pleasure-boats was close at hand,
and in a short while the dripping, sputtering spirit was drawn into it,
wrung out, and sent home to dry. The excitement attending this diversion
having subsided, Solomon asked:
“What was the incident of the lost tiara?”
“I am about to tell you,” returned the stranger; “and it must be
understood that you are told in the strictest confidence, for, as I say,
the incident involves a state secret of great magnitude. In life—in the
mortal life—gentlemen, I was a detective by profession, and, if I do say
it, who perhaps should not, I was one of the most interesting for purely
literary purposes that has ever been known. I did not find it necessary
to go about saying ‘Ha! ha!’ as M. Le Coq was accustomed to do to
advertise his cleverness; neither did I disguise myself as a drum-major
and hide under a kitchen-table for the purpose of solving a mystery
involving the abduction of a parlor stove, after the manner of the
talented Hawkshaw. By mental concentration alone, without fireworks or
orchestral accompaniment of any sort whatsoever, did I go about my
business, and for that very reason many of my fellow-sleuths were forced
to go out of real detective work into that line of the business with
which the stage has familiarized the most of us—a line in which nothing
but stupidity, luck, and a yellow wig is required of him who pursues it.”
“This man is an impostor,” whispered Le Coq to Hawkshaw.
“I’ve known that all along by the mole on his left wrist,” returned
Hawkshaw, contemptuously.
“I suspected it the minute I saw he was not disguised,” returned Le Coq,
knowingly. “I have observed that the greatest villains latterly have
discarded disguises, as being too easily penetrated, and therefore of no
avail, and merely a useless expense.”
“Silence!” cried Confucius, impatiently. “How can the gentleman proceed,
with all this conversation going on in the rear?”
Hawkshaw and Le Coq immediately subsided, and the stranger went on.
“It was in this way that I treated the strange case of the lost tiara,”
resumed the stranger. “Mental concentration upon seemingly insignificant
details alone enabled me to bring about the desired results in that
instance. A brief outline of the case is as follows: It was late one
evening in the early spring of 1894. The London season was at its
height. Dances, fêtes of all kinds, opera, and the theatres were in full
blast, when all of a sudden society was paralyzed by a most audacious
robbery. A diamond tiara valued at £50,000 sterling had been stolen from
the Duchess of Brokedale, and under circumstances which threw society
itself and every individual in it under suspicion—even his Royal Highness
the Prince himself, for he had danced frequently with the Duchess, and
was known to be a great admirer of her tiara. It was at half-past eleven
o’clock at night that the news of the robbery first came to my ears. I
had been spending the evening alone in my library making notes for a
second volume of my memoirs, and, feeling somewhat depressed, I was on
the point of going out for my usual midnight walk on Hampstead Heath,
when one of my servants, hastily entering, informed me of the robbery. I
changed my mind in respect to my midnight walk immediately upon receipt
of the news, for I knew that before one o’clock some one would call upon
me at my lodgings with reference to this robbery. It could not be
otherwise. Any mystery of such magnitude could no more be taken to
another bureau than elephants could fly—”
“They used to,” said Adam. “I once had a whole aviary full of winged
elephants. They flew from flower to flower, and thrusting their
probabilities deep into—”
“Their what?” queried Johnson, with a frown.
“Probabilities—isn’t that the word? Their trunks,” said Adam.
“Probosces, I imagine you mean,” suggested Johnson.
“Yes—that was it. Their probosces,” said Adam. “They were great
honey-gatherers, those elephants—far better than the bees, because they
could make so much more of it in a given time.”
Munchausen shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid I’m outclassed by these
antediluvians,” he said.
“Gentlemen! gentlemen!” cried Sir Walter. “These interruptions are
inexcusable!”
“That’s what I think,” said the stranger, with some asperity. “I’m
having about as hard a time getting this story out as I would if it were
a serial. Of course, if you gentlemen do not wish to hear it, I can
stop; but it must be understood that when I do stop I stop finally, once
and for all, because the tale has not a sufficiency of dramatic climaxes
to warrant its prolongation over the usual magazine period of twelve
months.”
“Go on! go on!” cried some.
“Shut up!” cried others—addressing the interrupting members, of course.
“As I was saying,” resumed the stranger, “I felt confident that within an
hour, in some way or other, that case would be placed in my hands. It
would be mine either positively or negatively—that is to say, either the
person robbed would employ me to ferret out the mystery and recover the
diamonds, or the robber himself, actuated by motives of
self-preservation, would endeavor to direct my energies into other
channels until he should have the time to dispose of his ill-gotten
booty. A mental discussion of the probabilities inclined me to believe
that the latter would be the case. I reasoned in this fashion: The
person robbed is of exalted rank. She cannot move rapidly because she is
so. Great bodies move slowly. It is probable that it will be a week
before, according to the etiquette by which she is hedged about, she can
communicate with me. In the first place, she must inform one of her
attendants that she has been robbed. He must communicate the news to the
functionary in charge of her residence, who will communicate with the
Home Secretary, and from him will issue the orders to the police, who,
baffled at every step, will finally address themselves to me. ‘I’ll give
that side two weeks,’ I said. On the other hand, the robber: will he
allow himself to be lulled into a false sense of security by counting on
this delay, or will he not, noting my habit of occasionally entering upon
detective enterprises of this nature of my own volition, come to me at
once and set me to work ferreting out some crime that has never been
committed? My feeling was that this would happen, and I pulled out my
watch to see if it were not nearly time for him to arrive. The robbery
had taken place at a state ball at the Buckingham Palace. ‘H’m!’ I
mused. ‘He has had an hour and forty minutes to get here. It is now
twelve-twenty. He should be here by twelve-forty-five. I will wait.’
And hastily swallowing a cocaine tablet to nerve myself up for the
meeting, I sat down and began to read my Schopenhauer. Hardly had I
perused a page when there came a tap upon my door. I rose with a smile,
for I thought I knew what was to happen, opened the door, and there
stood, much to my surprise, the husband of the lady whose tiara was
missing. It was the Duke of Brokedale himself. It is true he was
disguised. His beard was powdered until it looked like snow, and he wore
a wig and a pair of green goggles; but I recognized him at once by his
lack of manners, which is an unmistakable sign of nobility. As I opened
the door, he began:
“‘You are Mr. —’
“‘I am,’ I replied. ‘Come in. You have come to see me about your stolen
watch. It is a gold hunting-case watch with a Swiss movement; loses five
minutes a day; stem-winder; and the back cover, which does not bear any
inscription, has upon it the indentations made by the molars of your son
Willie when that interesting youth was cutting his teeth upon it.’”
“Wonderful!” cried Johnson.
“May I ask how you knew all that?” asked Solomon, deeply impressed.
“Such penetration strikes me as marvellous.”
“I didn’t know it,” replied the stranger, with a smile. “What I said was
intended to be jocular, and to put Brokedale at his ease. The Americans
present, with their usual astuteness, would term it bluff. It was. I
merely rattled on. I simply did not wish to offend the gentleman by
letting him know that I had penetrated his disguise. Imagine my
surprise, however, when his eye brightened as I spoke, and he entered my
room with such alacrity that half the powder which he thought disguised
his beard was shaken off on to the floor. Sitting down in the chair I
had just vacated, he quietly remarked:
“‘You are a wonderful man, sir. How did you know that I had lost my
watch?’
“For a moment I was nonplussed; more than that, I was completely
staggered. I had expected him to say at once that he had not lost his
watch, but had come to see me about the tiara; and to have him take my
words seriously was entirely unexpected and overwhelmingly surprising.
However, in view of his rank, I deemed it well to fall in with his
humour. ‘Oh, as for that,’ I replied, ‘that is a part of my business.
It is the detective’s place to know everything; and generally, if he
reveals the machinery by means of which he reaches his conclusions, he is
a fool, since his method is his secret, and his secret his
stock-in-trade. I do not mind telling you, however, that I knew your
watch was stolen by your anxious glance at my clock, which showed that
you wished to know the time. Now most rich Americans have watches for
that purpose, and have no hesitation about showing them. If you’d had a
watch, you’d have looked at it, not at my clock.’
“My visitor laughed, and repeated what he had said about my being a
wonderful man.
“‘And the dents which my son made cutting his teeth?’ he added.
“‘Invariably go with an American’s watch. Rubber or ivory rings aren’t
good enough for American babies to chew on,’ said I. ‘They must have
gold watches or nothing.’
“‘And finally, how did you know I was a rich American?’ he asked.
“‘Because no other can afford to stop at hotels like the Savoy in the
height of the season,’ I replied, thinking that the jest would end there,
and that he would now reveal his identity and speak of the tiara. To my
surprise, however, he did nothing of the sort.
“‘You have an almost supernatural gift,’ he said. ‘My name is Bunker. I
am stopping at the Savoy. I _am_ an American. I _was_ rich when I
arrived here, but I’m not quite so bloated with wealth as I was, now that
I have paid my first week’s bill. I _have_ lost my watch; such a watch,
too, as you describe, even to the dents. Your only mistake was that the
dents were made by my son John, and not Willie; but even there I cannot
but wonder at you, for John and Willie are twins, and so much alike that
it sometimes baffles even their mother to tell them apart. The watch has
no very great value intrinsically, but the associations are such that I
want it back, and I will pay £200 for its recovery. I have no clew as to
who took it. It was numbered—’
“Here a happy thought struck me. In all my description of the watch I
had merely described my own, a very cheap affair which I had won at a
raffle. My visitor was deceiving me, though for what purpose I did not
on the instant divine. No one would like to suspect him of having
purloined his wife’s tiara. Why should I not deceive him, and at the
same time get rid of my poor chronometer for a sum that exceeded its
value a hundredfold?”
“Good business!” cried Shylock.
The stranger smiled and bowed.
“Excellent,” he said. “I took the words right out of his mouth. ‘It was
numbered 86507B!’ I cried, giving, of course, the number of my own watch.
“He gazed at me narrowly for a moment, and then he smiled. ‘You grow
more marvellous at every step. That was indeed the number. Are you a
demon?’
“‘No,’ I replied. ‘Only something of a mind-reader.’
“Well, to be brief, the bargain was struck. I was to look for a watch
that I knew he hadn’t lost, and was to receive £200 if I found it. It
seemed to him to be a very good bargain, as, indeed, it was, from his
point of view, feeling, as he did, that there never having been any such
watch, it could not be recovered, and little suspecting that two could
play at his little game of deception, and that under any circumstances I
could foist a ten-shilling watch upon him for two hundred pounds. This
business concluded, he started to go.
“‘Won’t you have a little Scotch?’ I asked, as he started, feeling, with
all that prospective profit in view, I could well afford the expense.
‘It is a stormy night.’
“‘Thanks, I will,’ said he, returning and seating himself by my
table—still, to my surprise, keeping his hat on.
“‘Let me take your hat,’ I said, little thinking that my courtesy would
reveal the true state of affairs. The mere mention of the word hat
brought about a terrible change in my visitor; his knees trembled, his
face grew ghastly, and he clutched the brim of his beaver until it
cracked. He then nervously removed it, and I noticed a dull red mark
running about his forehead, just as there would be on the forehead of a
man whose hat fitted too tightly; and that mark, gentlemen, had the
undulating outline of nothing more nor less than a tiara, and on the apex
of the uttermost extremity was a deep indentation about the size of a
shilling, that could have been made only by some adamantine substance!
The mystery was solved! The robber of the Duchess of Brokedale stood
before me.”
A suppressed murmur of excitement went through the assembled spirits, and
even Messrs. Hawkshaw and Le Coq were silent in the presence of such
genius.
“My plan of action was immediately formulated. The man was completely at
my mercy. He had stolen the tiara, and had it concealed in the lining of
his hat. I rose and locked the door. My visitor sank with a groan into
my chair.
“‘Why did you do that?’ he stammered, as I turned the key in the lock.
“‘To keep my Scotch whiskey from evaporating,’ I said, dryly. ‘Now, my
lord,’ I added, ‘it will pay your Grace to let me have your hat. I know
who you are. You are the Duke of Brokedale. The Duchess of Brokedale
has lost a valuable tiara of diamonds, and you have not lost your watch.
Somebody has stolen the diamonds, and it may be that somewhere there is a
Bunker who has lost such a watch as I have described. The queer part of
it all is,’ I continued, handing him the decanter, and taking a couple of
loaded six-shooters out of my escritoire—‘the queer part of it all is
that I have the watch and you have the tiara. We’ll swap the swag. Hand
over the bauble, please.’
“‘But—’ he began.
“‘We won’t have any butting, your Grace,’ said I. ‘I’ll give you the
watch, and you needn’t mind the £200; and you must give me the tiara, or
I’ll accompany you forthwith to the police, and have a search made of
your hat. It won’t pay you to defy me. Give it up.’
“He gave up the hat at once, and, as I suspected, there lay the tiara,
snugly stowed away behind the head-band.
“‘You are a great fellow,’ said I, as I held the tiara up to the light
and watched with pleasure the flashing brilliance of its gems.
“‘I beg you’ll not expose me,’ he moaned. ‘I was driven to it by
necessity.’
“‘Not I,’ I replied. ‘As long as you play fair it will be all right.
I’m not going to keep this thing. I’m not married, and so have no use
for such a trifle; but what I do intend is simply to wait until your wife
retains me to find it, and then I’ll find it and get the reward. If you
keep perfectly still, I’ll have it found in such a fashion that you’ll
never be suspected. If, on the other hand, you say a word about
to-night’s events, I’ll hand you over to the police.’
“‘Humph!’ he said. ‘You couldn’t prove a case against me.’
“‘I can prove any case against anybody,’ I retorted. ‘If you don’t
believe it, read my book,’ I added, and I handed him a copy of my
memoirs.
“‘I’ve read it,’ he answered, ‘and I ought to have known better than to
come here. I thought you were only a literary success.’ And with a
deep-drawn sigh he took the watch and went out. Ten days later I was
retained by the Duchess, and after a pretended search of ten days more I
found the tiara, restored it to the noble lady, and received the £5000
reward. The Duke kept perfectly quiet about our little encounter, and
afterwards we became stanch friends; for he was a good fellow, and was
driven to his desperate deed only by the demands of his creditors, and
the following Christmas he sent me the watch I had given him, with the
best wishes of the season.
“So, you see, gentlemen, in a moment, by quick wit and a mental
concentration of no mean order, combined with strict observance of the
pettiest details, I ferreted out what bade fair to become a great diamond
mystery; and when I say that this cigar end proves certain things to my
mind, it does not become you to doubt the value of my conclusions.”
“Hear! hear!” cried Raleigh, growing tumultuous with enthusiasm.
“Your name? your name?” came from all parts of the wharf.
The stranger, putting his hand into the folds of his coat, drew forth a
bundle of business cards, which he tossed, as the prestidigitator tosses
playing-cards, out among the audience, and on each of them was found
printed the words:
SHERLOCK HOLMES,
DETECTIVE.
FERRETING DONE HERE.
_Plots for Sale_.
“I think he made a mistake in not taking the £200 for the watch. Such
carelessness destroys my confidence in him,” said Shylock, who was the
first to recover from the surprise of the revelation.
III
THE SEARCH-PARTY IS ORGANIZED
“WELL, Mr. Holmes,” said Sir Walter Raleigh, after three rousing cheers,
led by Hamlet, had been given with a will by the assembled spirits,
“after this demonstration in your honor I think it is hardly necessary
for me to assure you of our hearty co-operation in anything you may
venture to suggest. There is still manifest, however, some desire on the
part of the ever-wise King Solomon and my friend Confucius to know how
you deduce that Kidd has sailed for London, from the cigar end which you
hold in your hand.”
[Picture: Three rousing cheers, led by Hamlet, had been given]
“I can easily satisfy their curiosity,” said Sherlock Holmes, genially.
“I believe I have already proven that it is the end of Kidd’s cigar. The
marks of the teeth have shown that. Now observe how closely it is
smoked—there is barely enough of it left for one to insert between his
teeth. Now Captain Kidd would hardly have risked the edges of his
mustache and the comfort of his lips by smoking a cigar down to the very
light if he had had another; nor would he under any circumstances have
smoked it that far unless he were passionately addicted to this
particular brand of the weed. Therefore I say to you, first, this was
his cigar; second, it was the last one he had; third, he is a confirmed
smoker. The result, he has gone to the one place in the world where
these Connecticut hand-rolled Havana cigars—for I recognize this as one
of them—have a real popularity, and are therefore more certainly
obtainable, and that is at London. You cannot get so vile a cigar as
that outside of a London hotel. If I could have seen a quarter-inch more
of it, I should have been able definitely to locate the hotel itself.
The wrappers unroll to a degree that varies perceptibly as between the
different hotels. The Fortuna cigar can be smoked a quarter through
before its wrapper gives way; the Felix wrapper goes as soon as you light
the cigar; whereas the River, fronting on the Thames, is surrounded by a
moister atmosphere than the others, and, as a consequence, the wrapper
will hold really until most people are willing to throw the whole thing
away.”
“It is really a wonderful art!” said Solomon.
“The making of a Connecticut Havana cigar?” laughed Holmes. “Not at all.
Give me a head of lettuce and a straw, and I’ll make you a box.”
“I referred to your art—that of detection,” said Solomon. “Your logic is
perfect; step by step we have been led to the irresistible conclusion
that Kidd has made for London, and can be found at one of these hotels.”
“And only until next Tuesday, when he will take a house in the
neighborhood of Scotland Yard,” put in Holmes, quickly, observing a sneer
on Hawkshaw’s lips, and hastening to overwhelm him by further evidence of
his ingenuity. “When he gets his bill he will open his piratical eyes so
wide that he will be seized with jealousy to think of how much more
refined his profession has become since he left it, and out of mere pique
he will leave the hotel, and, to show himself still cleverer than his
modern prototypes, he will leave his account unpaid, with the result that
the affair will be put in the hands of the police, under which
circumstances a house in the immediate vicinity of the famous police
headquarters will be the safest hiding-place he can find, as was
instanced by the remarkable case of the famous Penstock bond robbery. A
certain churchwarden named Hinkley, having been appointed cashier
thereof, robbed the Penstock Imperial Bank of £1,000,000 in bonds, and,
fleeing to London, actually joined the detective force at Scotland Yard,
and was detailed to find himself, which of course he never did, nor would
he ever have been found had he not crossed my path.”
Hawkshaw gazed mournfully off into space, and Le Coq muttered profane
words under his breath.
“We’re not in the same class with this fellow, Hawkshaw,” said Le Coq.
“You could tap your forehead knowingly eight hours a day through all
eternity with a sledge-hammer without loosening an idea like that.”
“Nevertheless I’ll confound him yet,” growled the jealous detective. “I
shall myself go to London, and, disguised as Captain Kidd, will lead this
visionary on until he comes there to arrest me, and when these club
members discover that it is Hawkshaw and not Kidd he has run to earth,
we’ll have a great laugh on Sherlock Holmes.”
“I am anxious to hear how you solved the bond-robbery mystery,” said
Socrates, wrapping his toga closely about him and settling back against
one of the spiles of the wharf.
“So are we all,” said Sir Walter. “But meantime the House-boat is
getting farther away.”
“Not unless she’s sailing backwards,” sneered Noah, who was still nursing
his resentment against Sir Christopher Wren for his reflections upon the
speed of the Ark.
“What’s the hurry?” asked Socrates. “I believe in making haste slowly;
and on the admission of our two eminent naval architects, Sir Christopher
and Noah, neither of their vessels can travel more than a mile a week,
and if we charter the _Flying Dutchman_ to go in pursuit of her we can
catch her before she gets out of the Styx into the Atlantic.”
“Jonah might lend us his whale, if the beast is in commission,” suggested
Munchausen, dryly. “I for one would rather take a state-room in Jonah’s
whale than go aboard the _Flying Dutchman_ again. I made one trip on the
_Dutchman_, and she’s worse than a dory for comfort; further—I don’t see
what good it would do us to charter a boat that can’t land oftener than
once in seven years, and spends most of her time trying to double the
Cape of Good Hope.”
“My whale is in commission,” said Jonah, with dignity. “But Baron
Munchausen need not consider the question of taking a state-room aboard
of her. She doesn’t carry second-class passengers. And if I took any
stock in the idea of a trip on the _Flying Dutchman_ amounting to a seven
years’ exile, I would cheerfully pay the Baron’s expenses for a round
trip.”
“We are losing time, gentlemen,” suggested Sherlock Holmes. “This is a
moment, I think, when you should lay aside personal differences and
personal preferences for immediate action. I have examined the wake of
the House-boat, and I judge from the condition of what, for want of a
better term, I may call the suds, when she left us the House-boat was
making ten knots a day. Almost any craft we can find suitably manned
ought to be able to do better than that; and if you could summon Charon
and ascertain what boats he has at hand, it would be for the good of all
concerned.”
“That’s a good plan,” said Johnson. “Boswell, see if you can find
Charon.”
“I am here already, sir,” returned the ferryman, rising. “Most of my
boats have gone into winter quarters, your Honor. The _Mayflower_ went
into dry dock last week to be calked up; the _Pinta_ and the _Santa
Maria_ are slow and cranky; the _Monitor_ and the _Merrimac_ I haven’t
really had time to patch up; and the _Valkyrie_ is two months overdue. I
cannot make up my mind whether she is lost or kept back by excursion
steamers. Hence I really don’t know what I can lend you. Any of these
boat I have named you could have had for nothing; but my others are
actively employed, and I couldn’t let them go without a serious
interference with my business.”
The old man blinked sorrowfully across the waters at the opposite shore.
It was quite evident that he realized what a dreadful expense the club
was about to be put to, and while of course there would be profit in it
for him, he was sincerely sorry for them.
“I repeat,” he added, “those boats you could have had for nothing, but
the others I’d have to charge you for, though of course I’ll give you a
discount.”
And he blinked again, as he meditated upon whether that discount should
be an eighth or one-quarter of one per cent.
“The _Flying Dutchman_,” he pursued, “ain’t no good for your purposes.
She’s too fast. She’s built to fly by, not to stop. You’d catch up with
the House-boat in a minute with her, but you’d go right on and disappear
like a visionary; and as for the Ark, she’d never do—with all respect to
Mr. Noah. She’s just about as suitable as any other waterlogged
cattle-steamer’d be, and no more—first-rate for elephants and kangaroos,
but no good for cruiser-work, and so slow she wouldn’t make a ripple high
enough to drown a gnat going at the top of her speed. Furthermore, she’s
got a great big hole in her bottom, where she was stove in by running
afoul of—Mount Arrus-root, I believe it was called when Captain Noah went
cruising with that menagerie of his.”
“That’s an unmitigated falsehood!” cried Noah, angrily. “This man talks
like a professional amateur yachtsman. He has no regard for facts, but
simply goes ahead and makes statements with an utter disregard of the
truth. The Ark was not stove in. We beached her very successfully. I
say this in defence of my seamanship, which was top-notch for my day.”
“Couldn’t sail six weeks without fouling a mountain-peak!” sneered Wren,
perceiving a chance to get even.
“The hole’s there, just the same,” said Charon. “Maybe she was a
centreboard, sad that’s where you kept the board.”
“The hole is there because it was worn there by one of the elephants,”
retorted Noah. “You get a beast like the elephant shuffling one of his
fore-feet up and down, up and down, a plank for twenty-four hours a day
for forty days in one of your boats, and see where your boat would be.”
“Thanks,” said Charon, calmly. “But the elephants don’t patronize my
line. All the elephants I’ve ever seen in Hades waded over, except
Jumbo, and he reached his trunk across, fastened on to a tree limb with
it, and swung himself over. However, the Ark isn’t at all what you want,
unless you are going to man her with a lot of centaurs. If that’s your
intention, I’d charter her; the accommodations are just the thing for a
crew of that kind.”
“Well, what do you suggest?” asked Raleigh, somewhat impatiently.
“You’ve told us what we can’t do. Now tell us what we can do.”
“I’d stay right here,” said Charon, “and let the ladies rescue
themselves. That’s what I’d do. I’ve had the honor of bringing ’em over
here, and I think I know ’em pretty well. I’ve watched ’em close, and
it’s my private opinion that before many days you’ll see your club-house
sailing back here, with Queen Elizabeth at the hellum, and the other
ladies on the for’ard deck knittin’ and crochetin’, and tearin’ each
other to pieces in a conversational way, as happy as if there never had
been any Captain Kidd and his pirate crew.”
“That suggestion is impossible,” said Blackstone, rising. “Whether the
relief expedition amounts to anything or not, it’s good to be set going.
The ladies would never forgive us if we sat here inactive, even if they
were capable of rescuing themselves. It is an accepted principle of law
that this climate hath no fury like a woman left to herself, and we’ve
got enough professional furies hereabouts without our aiding in
augmenting the ranks. We must have a boat.”
“It’ll cost you a thousand dollars a week,” said Charon.
“I’ll subscribe fifty,” cried Hamlet.
“I’ll consult my secretary,” said Solomon, “and find out how many of my
wives have been abducted, and I’ll pay ten dollars apiece for their
recovery.”
“That’s liberal,” said Hawkshaw. “There are sixty-three of ’em on board,
together with eighty of his fiancées. What’s the quotation on fiancées,
King Solomon?”
“Nothing,” said Solomon. “They’re not mine yet, and it’s their father’s
business to get ’em back. Not mine.”
Other subscriptions came pouring in, and it was not long before everybody
save Shylock had put his name down for something. This some one of the
more quick-witted of the spirits soon observed, and, with reckless
disregard of the feelings of the Merchant of Venice, began to call,
“Shylock! Shylock! How much?”
The Merchant tried to leave the pier, but his path was blocked.
“Subscribe, subscribe!” was the cry. “How much?”
“Order, gentlemen, order!” said Sir Walter, rising and holding a bottle
aloft. “A black person by the name of Friday, a valet of our friend Mr.
Crusoe, has just handed me this bottle, which he picked up ten minutes
ago on the bank of the river a few miles distant. It contains a bit of
paper, and may perhaps give us a clew based upon something more
substantial than even the wonderful theories of our new brother Holmes.”
[Picture: A black person by the name of Friday finds a bottle]
A deathly silence followed the chairman’s words, as Sir Walter drew a
corkscrew from his pocket and opened the bottle. He extracted the paper,
and, as he had surmised, it proved to be a message from the missing
vessel. His face brightening with a smile of relief, Sir Walter read,
aloud:
“Have just emerged into the Atlantic Club in hands of Kidd and forty
ruffians. One hundred and eighty-three ladies on board. Headed for the
Azores. Send aid at once. All well except Xanthippe, who is seasick in
the billiard-room. (Signed) Portia.”
“Aha!” cried Hawkshaw. “That shows how valuable the Holmes theory is.”
“Precisely,” said Holmes. “No woman knows anything about seafaring, but
Portia is right. The ship is headed for the Azores, which is the first
tack needed in a windward sail for London under the present conditions.”
The reply was greeted with cheers, and when they subsided the cry for
Shylock’s subscription began again, but he declined.
“I had intended to put up a thousand ducats,” he said, defiantly, “but
with that woman Portia on board I won’t give a red obolus!” and with that
he wrapped his cloak about him and stalked off into the gathering shadows
of the wood.
And so the funds were raised without the aid of Shylock, and the shapely
twin-screw steamer the _Gehenna_ was chartered of Charon, and put under
the command of Mr. Sherlock Holmes, who, after he had thanked the company
for their confidence, walked abstractedly away, observing in strictest
confidence to himself that he had done well to prepare that bottle
beforehand and bribe Crusoe’s man to find it.
“For now,” he said, with a chuckle, “I can get back to earth again free
of cost on my own hook, whether my eminent inventor wants me there or
not. I never approved of his killing me off as he did at the very height
of my popularity.”
IV
ON BOARD THE HOUSE-BOAT
MEANWHILE the ladies were not having such a bad time, after all. Once
having gained possession of the House-boat, they were loath to think of
ever having to give it up again, and it is an open question in my mind if
they would not have made off with it themselves had Captain Kidd and his
men not done it for them.
“I’ll never forgive these men for their selfishness in monopolizing all
this,” said Elizabeth, with a vicious stroke of a billiard-cue, which
missed the cue-ball and tore a right angle in the cloth. “It is not
right.”
“No,” said Portia. “It is all wrong; and when we get back home I’m going
to give my beloved Bassanio a piece of my mind; and if he doesn’t give in
to me, _I’ll_ reverse my decision in the famous case of Shylock _versus_
Antonio.”
“Then I sincerely hope he doesn’t give in,” retorted Cleopatra, “for I
swear by all my auburn locks that that was the very worst bit of
injustice ever perpetrated. Mr. Shakespeare confided to me one night, at
one of Mrs. Cæsar’s card-parties, that he regarded that as the biggest
joke he ever wrote, and Judge Blackstone observed to Antony that the
decision wouldn’t have held in any court of equity outside of Venice. If
you owe a man a thousand ducats, and it costs you three thousand to get
them, that’s your affair, not his. If it cost Antonio every drop of his
bluest blood to pay the pound of flesh, it was Antonio’s affair, not
Shylock’s. However, the world applauds you as a great jurist, when you
have nothing more than a woman’s keen instinct for sentimental
technicalities.”
“It would have made a horrid play, though, if it had gone on,” shuddered
Elizabeth.
“That may be, but, carried out realistically, it would have done away
with a raft of bad actors,” said Cleopatra. “I’m half sorry it didn’t go
on, and I’m sure it wouldn’t have been any worse than compelling Brutus
to fall on his sword until he resembles a chicken liver _en brochette_,
as is done in that Julius Cæsar play.”
“Well, I’m very glad I did it,” snapped Portia.
“I should think you would be,” said Cleopatra. “If you hadn’t done it,
you’d never have been known. What was that?”
The boat had given a slight lurch.
“Didn’t you hear a shuffling noise up on deck, Portia?” asked the
Egyptian Queen.
“I thought I did, and it seemed as if the vessel had moved a bit,”
returned Portia, nervously; for, like most women in an advanced state of
development, she had become a martyr to her nerves.
“It was merely the wash from one of Charon’s new ferry-boats, I fancy,”
said Elizabeth, calmly. “It’s disgusting, the way that old fellow allows
these modern innovations to be brought in here! As if the old
paddle-boats he used to carry shades in weren’t good enough for the
immigrants of this age! Really this Styx River is losing a great deal of
its charm. Sir Walter and I were upset, while out rowing one day last
summer, by the waves kicked up by one of Charon’s excursion steamers
going up the river with a party of picnickers from the city—the Greater
Gehenna Chowder Club, I believe it was—on board of her. One might just
as well live in the midst of the turmoil of a great city as try to get
uninterrupted quiet here in the suburbs in these days. Charon isn’t
content to get rich slowly; he must make money by the barrelful, if he
has to sacrifice all the comfort of everybody living on this river.
Anybody’d think he was an American, the way he goes on; and everybody
else here is the same way. The Erebeans are getting to be a race of
shopkeepers.”
“I think myself,” sighed Cleopatra, “that Hades is being spoiled by the
introduction of American ideas—it is getting by far too democratic for my
tastes; and if it isn’t stopped, it’s my belief that the best people will
stop coming here. Take Madame Récamier’s salon as it is now and compare
it with what it used to be! In the early days, after her arrival here,
everybody went because it was the swell thing, and you’d be sure of
meeting the intellectually elect. On the one hand you’d find Sophocles;
on the other, Cicero; across the room would be Horace chatting gayly with
some such person as myself. Great warriors, from Alexander to Bonaparte,
were there, and glad of the opportunity to be there, too; statesmen like
Macchiavelli; artists like Cellini or Tintoretto. You couldn’t move
without stepping on the toes of genius. But now all is different. The
money-getting instinct has been aroused within them all, with the result
that when I invited Mozart to meet a few friends at dinner at my place
last autumn, he sent me a card stating his terms for dinners. Let me
see, I think I have it with me; I’ve kept it by me for fear of losing it,
it is such a complete revelation of the actual condition of affairs in
this locality. Ah! this is it,” she added, taking a small bit of
pasteboard from her card-case. “Read that.”
The card was passed about, and all the ladies were much astonished—and
naturally so, for it ran this wise:
NOTICE TO HOSTESSES.
Owing to the very great, constantly growing, and at times vexatious
demands upon his time socially,
HERR WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
takes this method of announcing to his friends that on and after
January 1, 1897, his terms for functions will be as follows:
Marks
Dinners with conversation on the Theory of Music 500
Dinners with conversation on the Theory of Music, 750
illustrated
Dinners without any conversation 300
Receptions, public, with music 1000
,, ,, private, ,, ,,, 750
Encores (single) 100
Three encores for 150
Autographs 10
Positively no Invitations for Five-o’Clock Teas or Morning Musicales
considered.
* * * * *
“Well, I declare!” tittered Elizabeth, as she read. “Isn’t that
extraordinary? He’s got the three-name craze, too!”
“It’s perfectly ridiculous,” said Cleopatra. “But it’s fairer than
Artemus Ward’s plan. Mozart gives notice of his intentions to charge
you; but with Ward it’s different. He comes, and afterwards sends a bill
for his fun. Why, only last week I got a ‘quarterly statement’ from him
showing a charge against me of thirty-eight dollars for humorous remarks
made to my guests at a little chafing-dish party I gave in honor of
Balzac, and, worst of all, he had marked it ‘Please remit.’ Even Antony,
when he wrote a sonnet to my eyebrow, wouldn’t let me have it until he
had heard whether or not Boswell wanted it for publication in the
_Gossip_. With Rubens giving chalk-talks for pay, Phidias doing
‘Five-minute Masterpieces in Putty’ for suburban lyceums, and all the
illustrious in other lines turning their genius to account through the
entertainment bureaus, it’s impossible to have a salon now.”
“You are indeed right,” said Madame Récamier, sadly. “Those were palmy
days when genius was satisfied with chicken salad and lemonade. I shall
never forget those nights when the wit and wisdom of all time
were—ah—were on tap at my house, if I may so speak, at a cost to me of
lights and supper. Now the only people who will come for nothing are
those we used to think of paying to stay away. Boswell is always ready,
but you can’t run a salon on Boswell.”
“Well,” said Portia, “I sincerely hope that you won’t give up the
functions altogether, because I have always found them most delightful.
It is still possible to have lights and supper.”
“I have a plan for next winter,” said Madame Récamier, “but I suppose I
shall be accused of going into the commercial side of it if I adopt it.
The plan is, briefly, to incorporate my salon. That’s an idea worthy of
an American, I admit; but if I don’t do it I’ll have to give it up
entirely, which, as you intimate, would be too bad. An incorporated
salon, however, would be a grand thing, if only because it would
perpetuate the salon. ‘The _Récamier_ Salon (Limited)’ would be a most
excellent title, and, suitably capitalized would enable us to pay our
lions sufficiently. Private enterprise is powerless under modern
conditions. It’s as much as I can afford to pay for a dinner, without
running up an expensive account for guests; and unless we get up a
salon-trust, as it were, the whole affair must go to the wall.”
“How would you make it pay?” asked Portia. “I can’t see where your
dividends would come from.”
“That is simple enough,” said Madame Récamier. “We could put up a large
reception-hall with a portion of our capital, and advertise a series of
nights—say one a week throughout the season. These would be Warriors’
Night, Story-tellers’ Night, Poets’ Night, Chafing-dish Night under the
charge of Brillat-Savarin, and so on. It would be understood that on
these particular evenings the most interesting people in certain lines
would be present, and would mix with outsiders, who should be admitted
only on payment of a certain sum of money. The commonplace inhabitants
of this country could thus meet the truly great; and if I know them well,
as I think I do, they’ll pay readily for the privilege. The obscure love
to rub up against the famous here as well as they do on earth.”
[Picture: Madame Récamier has a plan]
“You’d run a sort of Social Zoo?” suggested Elizabeth.
“Precisely; and provide entertainment for private residences too. An
advertisement in Boswell’s paper, which everybody buys—”
“And which nobody reads,” said Portia.
“They read the advertisements,” retorted Madame Récamier. “As I was
saying, an advertisement could be placed in Boswell’s paper as follows:
‘Are you giving a Function? Do you want Talent? Get your Genius at the
Récamier Salon (Limited).’ It would be simply magnificent as a business
enterprise. The common herd would be tickled to death if they could get
great people at their homes, even if they had to pay roundly for them.”
“It would look well in the society notes, wouldn’t it, if Mr. John Boggs
gave a reception, and at the close of the account it said, ‘The supper
was furnished by Calizetti, and the genius by the Récamier Salon
(Limited)’?” suggested Elizabeth, scornfully.
“I must admit,” replied the French lady, “that you call up an unpleasant
possibility, but I don’t really see what else we can do if we want to
preserve the salon idea. Somebody has told these talented people that
they have a commercial value, and they are availing themselves of the
demand.”
“It is a sad age!” sighed Elizabeth.
“Well, all I’ve got to say is just this,” put in Xanthippe: “You people
who get up functions have brought this condition of affairs on
yourselves. You were not satisfied to go ahead and indulge your passion
for lions in a moderate fashion. Take the case of Demosthenes last
winter, for instance. His wife told me that he dined at home three times
during the winter. The rest of the time he was out, here, there, and
everywhere, making after-dinner speeches. The saving on his dinner bills
didn’t pay his pebble account, much less remunerate him for his time, and
the fearful expense of nervous energy to which he was subjected. It was
as much as she could do, she said, to keep him from shaving one side of
his head, so that he couldn’t go out, the way he used to do in Athens
when he was afraid he would be invited out and couldn’t scare up a decent
excuse for refusing.”
“Did he do that?” cried Elizabeth, with a roar of laughter.
“So the cyclopædias say. It’s a good plan, too,” said Xanthippe.
“Though Socrates never had to do it. When I got the notion Socrates was
going out too much, I used to hide his dress clothes. Then there was the
case of Rubens. He gave a Carbon Talk at the Sforza’s Thursday Night
Club, merely to oblige Madame Sforza, and three weeks later discovered
that she had sold his pictures to pay for her gown! You people simply
run it into the ground. You kill the goose that when taken at the flood
leads on to fortune. It advertises you, does the lion no good, and he is
expected to be satisfied with confectionery, material and theoretical.
If they are getting tired of candy and compliments, it’s because you have
forced too much of it upon them.”
“They like it, just the same,” retorted Récamier. “A genius likes
nothing better than the sound of his own voice, when he feels that it is
falling on aristocratic ears. The social laurel rests pleasantly on many
a noble brow.”
“True,” said Xanthippe. “But when a man gets a pile of Christmas wreaths
a mile high on his head, he begins to wonder what they will bring on the
market. An occasional wreath is very nice, but by the ton they are apt
to weigh on his mind. Up to a certain point notoriety is like a woman,
and a man is apt to love it; but when it becomes exacting, demanding
instead of permitting itself to be courted, it loses its charm.”
“That is Socratic in its wisdom,” smiled Portia.
“But Xanthippic in its origin,” returned Xanthippe. “No man ever gave me
my ideas.”
As Xanthippe spoke, Lucretia Borgia burst into the room.
“Hurry and save yourselves!” she cried. “The boat has broken loose from
her moorings, and is floating down the stream. If we don’t hurry up and
do something, we’ll drift out to sea!”
“What!” cried Cleopatra, dropping her cue in terror, and rushing for the
stairs. “I was certain I felt a slight motion. You said it was the wash
from one of Charon’s barges, Elizabeth.”
“I thought it was,” said Elizabeth, following closely after.
“Well, it wasn’t,” moaned Lucretia Borgia. “Calpurnia just looked out of
the window and discovered that we were in mid-stream.”
The ladies crowded anxiously about the stair and attempted to ascend,
Cleopatra in the van; but as the Egyptian Queen reached the doorway to
the upper deck, the door opened, and the hard features of Captain Kidd
were thrust roughly through, and his strident voice rang out through the
gathering gloom. “Pipe my eye for a sardine if we haven’t captured a
female seminary!” he cried.
[Picture: The hard features of Captain Kidd were thrust through]
And one by one the ladies, in terror, shrank back into the billiard-room,
while Kidd, overcome by surprise, slammed the door to, and retreated into
the darkness of the forward deck to consult with his followers as to
“what next.”
V
A CONFERENCE ON DECK
“HERE’S a kettle of fish!” said Kidd, pulling his chin whisker in
perplexity as he and his fellow-pirates gathered about the captain to
discuss the situation. “I’m blessed if in all my experience I ever
sailed athwart anything like it afore! Pirating with a lot of low-down
ruffians like you gentlemen is bad enough, but on a craft loaded to the
water’s edge with advanced women—I’ve half a mind to turn back.”
[Picture: “Here’s a kettle of fish!” said Kidd]
“If you do, you swim—we’ll not turn back with you,” retorted Abeuchapeta,
whom, in honor of his prowess, Kidd had appointed executive officer of
the House-boat. “I have no desire to be mutinous, Captain Kidd, but I
have not embarked upon this enterprise for a pleasure sail down the Styx.
I am out for business. If you had thirty thousand women on board, still
should I not turn back.”
“But what shall we do with ’em?” pleaded Kidd. “Where can we go without
attracting attention? Who’s going to feed ’em? Who’s going to dress
’em? Who’s going to keep ’em in bonnets? You don’t know anything about
these creatures, my dear Abeuchapeta; and, by-the-way, can’t we arbitrate
that name of yours? It would be fearful to remember in the excitement of
a fight.”
“Call him Ab,” suggested Sir Henry Morgan, with an ill-concealed sneer,
for he was deeply jealous of Abeuchapeta’s preferral.
“If you do I’ll call you Morgue, and change your appearance to fit,”
retorted Abeuchapeta, angrily.
“By the beards of all my sainted Buccaneers,” began Morgan, springing
angrily to his feet, “I’ll have your life!”
“Gentlemen! Gentlemen—my noble ruffians!” expostulated Kidd. “Come,
come; this will never do! I must have no quarrelling among my aides.
This is no time for divisions in our councils. An entirely unexpected
element has entered into our affairs, and it behooveth us to act in
concert. It is no light matter—”
“Excuse me, captain,” said Abeuchapeta, “but that is where you and I do
not agree. We’ve got our ship and we’ve got our crew, and in addition we
find that the Fates have thrown in a hundred or more women to act as
ballast. Now I, for one, do not fear a woman. We can set them to work.
There is plenty for them to do keeping things tidy; and if we get into a
very hard fight, and come out of the mêlée somewhat the worse for wear,
it will be a blessing to have ’em along to mend our togas, sew buttons on
our uniforms, and darn our hosiery.”
Morgan laughed sarcastically. “When did you flourish, if ever, colonel?”
he asked.
“Do you refer to me?” queried Abeuchapeta, with a frown.
“You have guessed correctly,” replied Morgan, icily. “I have quite
forgotten your date; were you a success in the year one, or when?”
“Admiral Abeuchapeta, Sir Henry,” interposed Kidd, fearing a further
outbreak of hostilities—“Admiral Abeuchapeta was the terror of the seas
in the seventh century, and what he undertook to do he did, and his
piratical enterprises were carried on on a scale of magnificence which is
without parallel off the comic-opera stage. He never went forth without
at least seventy galleys and a hundred other vessels.”
Abeuchapeta drew himself up proudly. “Six-ninety-eight was my great
year,” he said.
“That’s what I thought,” said Morgan. “That is to say, you got your
ideas of women twelve hundred years ago, and the ladies have changed
somewhat since that time. I have great respect for you, sir, as a
ruffian. I have no doubt that as a ruffian you are a complete success,
but when it comes to ‘feminology’ you are sailing in unknown waters. The
study of women, my dear Abeuchadnezzar—”
“Peta,” retorted Abeuchapeta, irritably.
“I stand corrected. The study of women, my dear Peter,” said Morgan,
with a wink at Conrad, which fortunately the seventh-century pirate did
not see, else there would have been an open break—“the study of women is
more difficult than that of astronomy; there may be two stars alike, but
all women are unique. Because she was this, that, or the other thing in
your day does not prove that she is any one of those things in our day—in
fact, it proves the contrary. Why, I venture even to say that no
individual woman is alike.”
“That’s rather a hazy thought,” said Kidd, scratching his head in a
puzzled sort of way.
“I mean that she’s different from herself at different times,” said
Morgan. “What is it the poet called her?—‘an infinite variety show,’ or
something of that sort; a perpetual vaudeville—a continuous performance,
as it were, from twelve to twelve.”
“Morgan is right, admiral!” put in Conrad the corsair, acting temporarily
as bo’sun. “The times are sadly changed, and woman is no longer what she
was. She is hardly what she is, much less what she was. The Roman
Gynæceum would be an impossibility to-day. You might as well expect
Delilah to open a barber-shop on board this boat as ask any of these
advanced females below-stairs to sew buttons on a pirate’s uniform after
a fray, or to keep the fringe on his epaulets curled. They’re no longer
sewing-machines—they are Keeley motors for mystery and perpetual motion.
Women have views now they are no longer content to be looked at merely;
they must see for themselves; and the more they see, the more they wish
to domesticate man and emancipate woman. It’s my private opinion that if
we are to get along with them at all the best thing to do is to let ’em
alone. I have always found I was better off in the abstract, and if this
question is going to be settled in a purely democratic fashion by
submitting it to a vote, I’ll vote for any measure which involves leaving
them strictly to themselves. They’re nothing but a lot of ghosts anyhow,
like ourselves, and we can pretend we don’t see them.”
“If that could be, it would be excellent,” said Morgan; “but it is
impossible. For a pirate of the Byronic order, my dear Conrad, you are
strangely unversed in the ways of the sex which cheers but not
inebriates. We can no more ignore their presence upon this boat than we
can expect whales to spout kerosene. In the first place, it would be
excessively impolite of us to cut them—to decline to speak to them if
they should address us. We may be pirates, ruffians, cutthroats, but I
hope we shall never forget that we are gentlemen.”
“The whole situation is rather contrary to etiquette, don’t you think?”
suggested Conrad. “There’s nobody to introduce us, and I can’t really
see how we can do otherwise than ignore them. I certainly am not going
to stand on deck and make eyes at them, to try and pick up an
acquaintance with them, even if I am of a Byronic strain.”
“You forget,” said Kidd, “two essential features of the situation. These
women are at present—or shortly will be, when they realize their
situation—in distress, and a true gentleman may always fly to the rescue
of a distressed female; and, the second point, we shall soon be on the
seas, and I understand that on the fashionable transatlantic lines it is
now considered _de rigueur_ to speak to anybody you choose to. The
introduction business isn’t going to stand in my way.”
“Well, may I ask,” put in Abeuchapeta, “just what it is that is worrying
you? You said something about feeding them, and dressing them, and
keeping them in bonnets. I fancy there’s fish enough in the sea to feed
’em; and as for their gowns and hats, they can make ’em themselves.
Every woman is a milliner at heart.”
“Exactly, and we’ll have to pay the milliners. That is what bothers me.
I was going to lead this expedition to London, Paris, and New York,
admiral. That is where the money is, and to get it you’ve got to go
ashore, to headquarters. You cannot nowadays find it on the high seas.
Modern civilization,” said Kidd, “has ruined the pirate’s business. The
latest news from the other world has really opened my eyes to certain
facts that I never dreamed of. The conditions of the day of which I
speak are interestingly shown in the experience of our friend Hawkins
here. Captain Hawkins, would you have any objection to stating to these
gentlemen the condition of affairs which led you to give up piracy on the
high seas?”
“Not the slightest, Captain Kidd,” returned Captain Hawkins, who was a
recent arrival in Hades. “It is a sad little story, and it gives me a
pain for to think on it, but none the less I’ll tell it, since you ask
me. When I were a mere boy, fellow-pirates, I had but one ambition, due
to my readin’, which was confined to stories of a Sunday-school nater—to
become somethin’ different from the little Willies an’ the clever Tommies
what I read about therein. They was all good, an’ they went to their
reward too soon in life for me, who even in them days regarded death as a
stuffy an’ unpleasant diversion. Learnin’ at an early period that virtue
was its only reward, an’ a-wish-in’ others, I says to myself: ‘Jim,’ says
I, ‘if you wishes to become a magnet in this village, be sinful. If so
be as you are a good boy, an’ kind to your sister an’ all other animals,
you’ll end up as a prosperous father with fifteen hundred a year sure,
with never no hope for no public preferment beyond bein’ made the
super-intendent of the Sunday-school; but if so be as how you’re bad, you
may become famous, an’ go to Congress, an’ have your picture in the
Sunday noospapers.’ So I looks around for books tellin’ how to get
‘Famous in Fifty Ways,’ an’ after due reflection I settles in my mind
that to be a pirate’s just the thing for me, seein’ as how it’s both
profitable an’ healthy. Pass-in’ over details, let me tell you that I
became a pirate. I ran away to sea, an’ by dint of perseverance, as the
Sunday-school book useter say, in my badness I soon became the centre of
a evil lot; an’ when I says to ’em, ‘Boys, I wants to be a pirate chief,’
they hollers back, loud like, ‘Jim, we’re with you,’ an’ they was. For
years I was the terror of the Venezuelan Gulf, the Spanish Main, an’ the
Pacific seas, but there was precious little money into it. The best pay
I got was from a Sunday noospaper which paid me well to sign an article
on ‘Modern Piracy’ which I didn’t write. Finally business got so bad the
crew began to murmur, an’ I was at my wits’ ends to please ’em; when one
mornin’, havin’ passed a restless night, I picks up a noospaper and sees
in it that ‘Next Saturday’s steamer is a weritable treasure-ship, takin’
out twelve million dollars, and the jewels of a certain prima donna
valued at five hundred thousand.’ ‘Here’s my chance,’ says I, an’ I goes
to sea and lies in wait for the steamer. I captures her easy, my crew
bein’ hungry, an’ fightin according like. We steals the box a-hold-in’
the jewels an’ the bag containin’ the millions, hustles back to our own
ship, an’ makes for our rondyvoo, me with two bullets in my leg, four o’
my crew killed, and one engin’ of my ship disabled by a shot—but happy.
Twelve an’ a half millions at one break is enough to make anybody happy.”
“I should say so,” said Abeuchapeta, with an ecstatic shake of his head.
“I didn’t get that in all my career.”
“Nor I,” sighed Kidd. “But go on, Hawkins.”
“Well, as I says,” continued Captain Hawkins, “we goes to the rondyvoo to
look over our booty. ‘Captain ’Awkins,’ says my valet—for I was a swell
pirate, gents, an’ never travelled nowhere without a man to keep my
clothes brushed and the proper wrinkles in my trousers—‘this ’ere twelve
millions,’ says he, ‘is werry light,’ says he, carryin’ the bag ashore.
‘I don’t care how light it is, so long as it’s twelve millions,
Henderson,’ says I; but my heart sinks inside o’ me at his words, an’ the
minute we lands I sits down to investigate right there on the beach. I
opens the bag, an’ it’s the one I was after—but the twelve millions!”
“Weren’t there?” cried Conrad.
“Yes, they was there,” sighed Hawkins, “but every bloomin’ million was
represented by a certified check, an’ payable in London!”
[Picture: Every bloomin’ million was represented by a certified check,
an’ payable in London]
“By Jingo!” cried Morgan. “What fearful luck! But you had the prima
donna’s jewels.”
“Yes,” said Hawkins, with a moan. “But they was like all other prima
donna’s jewels—for advertisin’ purposes only, an’ made o’ gum-arabic!”
“Horrible!” said Abeuchapeta. “And the crew, what did they say?”
“They was a crew of a few words,” sighed Hawkins. “Werry few words, an’
not a civil word in the lot—mostly adjectives of a profane kind. When I
told ’em what had happened, they got mad at Fortune for a-jiltin’ of ’em,
an’—well, I came here. I was ’sas’inated that werry night!”
“They killed you?” cried Morgan.
“A dozen times,” nodded Hawkins. “They always was a lavish lot. I met
death in all its most horrid forms. First they stabbed me, then they
shot me, then they clubbed me, and so on, endin’ up with a lynchin’—but I
didn’t mind much after the first, which hurt a bit. But now that I’m
here I’m glad it happened. This life is sort of less responsible than
that other. You can’t hurt a ghost by shooting him, because there ain’t
nothing to hurt, an’ I must say I like bein’ a mere vision what everybody
can see through.”
“All of which interesting tale proves what?” queried Abeuchapeta.
“That piracy on the sea is not profitable in these days of the check
banking system,” said Kidd. “If you can get a chance at real gold it’s
all right, but it’s of no earthly use to steal checks that people can
stop payment on. Therefore it was my plan to visit the cities and do a
little freebooting there, where solid material wealth is to be found.”
“Well? Can’t we do it now?” asked Abeuchapeta.
“Not with these women tagging after us,” returned Kidd. “If we went to
London and lifted the whole Bank of England, these women would have it
spent on Regent Street inside of twenty-four hours.”
“Then leave them on board,” said Abeuchapeta.
“And have them steal the ship!” retorted Kidd. “No. There are but two
things to do. Take ’em back, or land them in Paris. Tell them to spend
a week on shore while we are provisioning. Tell ’em to shop to their
hearts’ content, and while they are doing it we can sneak off and leave
them stranded.”
“Splendid!” cried Morgan.
“But will they consent?” asked Abeuchapeta.
“Consent! To shop? In Paris? For a week?” cried Morgan.
“Ha, ha!” laughed Hawkins. “Will they consent! Will a duck swim?”
And so it was decided, which was the first incident in the career of the
House-boat upon which the astute Mr. Sherlock Holmes had failed to count.
VI
A CONFERENCE BELOW-STAIRS
WHEN, with a resounding slam, the door to the upper deck of the
House-boat was shut in the faces of queens Elizabeth and Cleopatra by the
unmannerly Kidd, these ladies turned and gazed at those who thronged the
stairs behind them in blank amazement, and the heart of Xanthippe, had
one chosen to gaze through that diaphanous person’s ribs, could have been
seen to beat angrily.
Queen Elizabeth was so excited at this wholly novel attitude towards her
regal self that, having turned, she sat down plump upon the floor in the
most unroyal fashion.
“Well!” she ejaculated. “If this does not surpass everything! The idea
of it! Oh for one hour of my olden power, one hour of the axe, one hour
of the block!”
[Picture: Queen Elizabeth desires an axe and one hour of her olden power]
“Get up,” retorted Cleopatra, “and let us all return to the billiard-room
and discuss this matter calmly. It is quite evident that something has
happened of which we wotted little when we came aboard this craft.”
“That is a good idea,” said Calpurnia, retreating below. “I can see
through the window that we are in motion. The vessel has left her
moorings, and is making considerable headway down the stream, and the
distinctly masculine voices we have heard are indications to my mind that
the ship is manned, and that this is the result of design rather than of
accident. Let us below.”
Elizabeth rose up and readjusted her ruff, which in the excitement of the
moment had been forced to assume a position about her forehead which gave
one the impression that its royal wearer had suddenly donned a sombrero.
“Very well,” she said. “Let us below; but oh, for the axe!”
“Bring the lady an axe,” cried Xanthippe, sarcastically. “She wants to
cut somebody.”
The sally was not greeted with applause. The situation was regarded as
being too serious to admit of humor, and in silence they filed back into
the billiard-room, and, arranging themselves in groups, stood about
anxiously discussing the situation.
“It’s getting rougher every minute,” sobbed Ophelia. “Look at those
pool-balls!” These were in very truth chasing each other about the table
in an extraordinary fashion. “And I wish I’d never followed you horrid
new creatures on board!” the poor girl added, in an agony of despair.
“I believe we’ve crossed the bar already!” said Cleopatra, gazing out of
the window at a nasty choppy sea that was adding somewhat to the
disquietude of the fair gathering. “If this is merely a joke on the part
of the Associated Shades, it is a mighty poor one, and I think it is time
it should cease.”
“Oh, for an axe!” moaned Elizabeth, again.
“Excuse me, your Majesty,” put in Xanthippe. “You said that before, and
I must say it is getting tiresome. You couldn’t do anything with an axe.
Suppose you had one. What earthly good would it do you, who were
accustomed to doing all your killing by proxy? I don’t believe, if you
had the unmannerly person who slammed the door in your face lying
prostrate upon the billiard-table here, you could hit him a square blow
in the neck if you had a hundred axes. Delilah might as well cry for her
scissors, for all the good it would do us in our predicament. If
Cleopatra had her asp with her it might be more to the purpose. One
deadly little snake like that let loose on the upper deck would doubtless
drive these boors into the sea, and even then our condition would not be
bettered, for there isn’t any of us that can sail a boat. There isn’t an
old salt among us.”
“Too bad Mrs. Lot isn’t along,” giggled Marguerite de Valois, whose
Gallic spirits were by no means overshadowed by the unhappy predicament
in which she found herself.
“I’m here,” piped up Mrs. Lot. “But I’m not that kind of a salt.”
“I am present,” said Mrs. Noah. “Though why I ever came I don’t know,
for I vowed the minute I set my foot on Ararat that dry land was good
enough for me, and that I’d never step aboard another boat as long as I
lived. If, however, now that I am here, I can give you the benefit of my
nautical experience, you are all perfectly welcome to it.”
“I’m sure we’re very much obliged for the offer,” said Portia, “but in
the emergency which has arisen we cannot say how much obliged we are
until we know what your experience amounted to. Before relying upon you
we ought to know how far that reliance can go—not that I lack confidence
in you, my dear madam, but that in an hour of peril one must take care,
to rely upon the oak, not upon the reed.”
“The point is properly taken,” said Elizabeth, “and I wish to say here
that I am easier in my mind when I realize that we have with us so
level-headed a person as the lady who has just spoken. She has spoken
truly and to the point. If I were to become queen again, I should make
her my attorney-general. We must not go ahead impulsively, but look at
all things in a calm, judicial manner.”
“Which is pretty hard work with a sea like this on,” remarked Ophelia,
faintly, for she was getting a trifle sallow, as indeed she might, for
the House-boat was beginning to roll tremendously with no alleviation
save an occasional pitch, which was an alleviation only in the sense that
it gave variety to their discomfort. “I don’t believe a chief-justice
could look at things calmly and in a judicial manner if he felt as I do.”
“Poor dear!” said the matronly Mrs. Noah, sympathetically. “I know
exactly how you feel. I have been there myself. The fourth day out I
and my whole family were in the same condition, except that Noah, my
husband, was so very far gone that I could not afford to yield. I nursed
him for six days before he got his sea-legs on, and then succumbed
myself.”
“But,” gasped Ophelia, “that doesn’t help me—
“It did my husband,” said Mrs. Noah.
“When he heard that the boys were seasick too, he actually laughed and
began to get better right away. There is really only one cure for the
_mal de mer_, and that is the fun of knowing that somebody else is
suffering too. If some of you ladies would kindly yield to the
seductions of the sea, I think we could get this poor girl on her feet in
an instant.”
Unfortunately for poor Ophelia, there was no immediate response to this
appeal, and the unhappy young woman was forced to suffer in solitude.
“We have no time for untimely diversions of this sort,” snapped
Xanthippe, with a scornful glance at the suffering Ophelia, who, having
retired to a comfortable lounge at an end of the room, was evidently
improving. “I have no sympathy with this habit some of my sex seem to
have acquired of succumbing to an immediate sensation of this nature.”
“I hope to be pardoned for interrupting,” said Mrs. Noah, with a great
deal of firmness, “but I wish Mrs. Socrates to understand that it is
rather early in the voyage for her to lay down any such broad principle
as that, and for her own sake to-morrow, I think it would be well if she
withdrew the sentiment. There are certain things about a sea-voyage that
are more or less beyond the control of man or woman, and any one who
chides that poor suffering child on yonder sofa ought to be more
confident than Mrs. Socrates can possibly be that within an hour she will
not be as badly off. People who live in glass houses should not throw
dice.”
“I shall never yield to anything so undignified as seasickness, let me
tell you that,” retorted Xanthippe. “Furthermore, the proverb is not as
the lady has quoted it. ‘People who live in glass houses should not
throw stones’ is the proper version.”
“I was not quoting,” returned Mrs. Noah, calmly. “When I said that
people who live in glass houses should not throw dice, I meant precisely
what I said. People who live in glass houses should not take chances.
In assuming with such vainglorious positiveness that she will not be
seasick, the lady who has just spoken is giving tremendous odds, as the
boys used to say on the Ark when we gathered about the table at night and
began to make small wagers on the day’s run.”
“I think we had better suspend this discussion,” suggested Cleopatra.
“It is of no immediate interest to any one but Ophelia, and I fancy she
does not care to dwell upon it at any great length. It is more important
that we should decide upon our future course of action. In the first
place, the question is who these people up on deck are. If they are the
members of the club, we are all right. They will give us our scare, and
land us safely again at the pier. In that event it is our womanly duty
to manifest no concern, and to seem to be aware of nothing unusual in the
proceeding. It would never do to let them think that their joke has been
a good one. If, on the other hand, as I fear, we are the victims of some
horde of ruffians, who have pounced upon us unawares, and are going into
the business of abduction on a wholesale basis, we must meet treachery
with treachery, strategy with strategy. I, for one, am perfectly willing
to make every man on board walk the plank; having confidence in the
seawomanship of Mrs. Noah and her ability to steer us into port.”
“I am quite in accord with these views,” put in Madame Récamier, “and I
move you, Mrs. President, that we organize a series of sub-committees—one
on treachery, with Lucretia Borgia and Delilah as members; one on
strategy, consisting of Portia and Queen Elizabeth; one on navigation,
headed by Mrs. Noah; with a final sub-committee on reconnoitre, with
Cassandra to look forward, and Mrs. Lot to look aft—all of these
subordinated to a central committee of safety headed by Cleopatra and
Calpurnia. The rest of us can then commit ourselves and our interests
unreservedly to these ladies, and proceed to enjoy ourselves without
thought of the morrow.”
“I second the motion,” said Ophelia, “with the amendment that Madame
Récamier be appointed chair-lady of another sub-committee, on
entertainment.”
The amendment was accepted, and the motion put. It was carried with an
enthusiastic aye, and the organization was complete.
The various committees retired to the several corners of the room to
discuss their individual lines of action, when a shadow was observed to
obscure the moonlight which had been streaming in through the window.
The faces of Calpurnia and Cleopatra blanched for an instant, as,
immediately following upon this apparition, a large bundle was hurled
through the open port into the middle of the room, and the shadow
vanished.
“Is it a bomb?” cried several of the ladies at once.
“Nonsense!” said Madame Récamier, jumping lightly forward. “A man
doesn’t mind blowing a woman up, but he’ll never blow himself up. We’re
safe enough in that respect. The thing looks to me like a bundle of
illustrated papers.”
“That’s what it is,” said Cleopatra who had been investigating. “It’s
rather a discourteous bit of courtesy, tossing them in through the window
that way, I think, but I presume they mean well. Dear me,” she added,
as, having untied the bundle, she held one of the open papers up before
her, “how interesting! All the latest Paris fashions. Humph! Look at
those sleeves, Elizabeth. What an impregnable fortress you would have
been with those sleeves added to your ruffs!”
“I should think they’d be very becoming,” put in Cassandra, standing on
her tip-toes and looking over Cleopatra’s shoulder. “That Watteau isn’t
bad, either, is it, now?”
“No,” remarked Calpurnia. “I wonder how a Watteau back like that would
go on my blue alpaca?”
“Very nicely,” said Elizabeth. “How many gores has it?”
“Five,” observed Calpurnia. “One more than Cæsar’s toga. We had to have
our costumes distinct in some way.”
“A remarkable hat, that,” nodded Mrs. Lot, her eye catching sight of a
Virot creation at the top of the page.
“Reminds me of Eve’s description of an autumn scene in the garden,”
smiled Mrs. Noah. “Gorgeous in its foliage, beautiful thing; though I
shouldn’t have dared wear one in the Ark, with all those hungry animals
browsing about the upper and lower decks.”
“I wonder,” remarked Cleopatra, as she cocked her head to one side to
take in the full effect of an attractive summer gown—“I wonder how that
waist would make up in blue crépon, with a yoke of lace and a stylishly
contrasting stock of satin ribbon?”
“It would depend upon how you finished the sleeves,” remarked Madame
Récamier. “If you had a few puffs of rich brocaded satin set in with
deeply folded pleats it wouldn’t be bad.”
“I think it would be very effective,” observed Mrs. Noah, “but a trifle
too light for general wear. I should want some kind of a wrap with it.”
“It does need that,” assented Elizabeth. “A wrap made of passementerie
and jet, with a mousseline de soie ruche about the neck held by a _chou_,
would make it fascinating.”
“The committee on treachery is ready to report,” said Delilah, rising
from her corner, where she and Lucretia Borgia had been having so
animated a discussion that they had failed to observe the others crowding
about Cleopatra and the papers.
[Picture: The committee on treachery is ready to report]
“A little sombre,” said Cleopatra. “The corsage is effective, but I
don’t like those basque terminations. I’ve never approved of those full
godets—”
“The committee on treachery,” remarked Delilah again, raising her voice,
“has a suggestion to make.”
“I can’t get over those sleeves, though,” laughed Helen of Troy. “What
is the use of them?”
“They might be used to get Greeks into Troy,” suggested Madame Récamier.
“The committee on treachery,” roared Delilah, thoroughly angered by the
absorption of the chairman and others, “has a suggestion to make. This
is the third and last call.”
“Oh, I beg pardon,” cried Cleopatra, rapping for order. “I had forgotten
all about our committees. Excuse me, Delilah. I—ah—was absorbed in
other matters. Will you kindly lay your pattern—I should say your
plan—before us?”
“It is briefly this,” said Delilah. “It has been suggested that we
invite the crew of this vessel to a chafing-dish party, under the
supervision of Lucretia Borgia, and that she—”
The balance of the plan was not outlined, for at this point the speaker
was interrupted by a loud knocking at the door, its instant opening, and
the appearance in the doorway of that ill-visaged ruffian Captain Kidd.
“Ladies,” he began, “I have come here to explain to you the situation in
which you find yourselves. Have I your permission to speak?”
The ladies started back, but the chairman was equal to the occasion.
“Go on,” said Cleopatra, with queenly dignity, turning to the interloper;
and the pirate proceeded to take the second step in the nefarious plan
upon which he and his brother ruffians had agreed, of which the tossing
in through the window of the bundle of fashion papers was the first.
VII
THE “GEHENNA” IS CHARTERED
IT was about twenty-four hours after the events narrated in the preceding
chapters that Mr. Sherlock Holmes assumed command of the _Gehenna_, which
was nothing more nor less than the shadow of the ill-starred ocean
steamship _City of Chicago_, which tried some years ago to reach
Liverpool by taking the overland route through Ireland, fortunately
without detriment to her passengers and crew, who had the pleasure of the
experience of shipwreck without any of the discomforts of drowning. As
will be remembered, the obstructionist nature of the Irish soil prevented
the _City of Chicago_ from proceeding farther inland than was necessary
to keep her well balanced amidships upon a convenient and not too stony
bed; and that after a brief sojourn on the rocks she was finally disposed
of to the Styx Navigation Company, under which title Charon had had
himself incorporated, is a matter of nautical history. The change of
name to the _Gehenna_ was the act of Charon himself, and was prompted, no
doubt, by a desire to soften the jealous prejudices of the residents of
the Stygian capital against the flourishing and ever-growing metropolis
of Illinois.
The Associated Shades had had some trouble in getting this craft.
Charon, through his constant association with life on both sides of the
dark river, had gained a knowledge, more or less intimate, of modern
business methods, and while as janitor of the club he was subject to the
will of the House-boat Committee, and sympathized deeply with the members
of the association in their trouble, as president of the Styx Navigation
Company he was bound up in certain newly attained commercial ideas which
were embarrassing to those members of the association to whose hands the
chartering of a vessel had been committed.
“See here, Charon,” Sir Walter Raleigh had said, after Charon had
expressed himself as deeply sympathetic, but unable to shave the terms
upon which the vessel could be had, “you are an infernal old hypocrite.
You go about wringing your hands over our misfortunes until they’ve got
as dry and flabby as a pair of kid gloves, and yet when we ask you for a
ship of suitable size and speed to go out after those pirates, you become
a sort of twin brother to Shylock, without his excuse. His instincts are
accidents of birth. Yours are cultivated, and you know it.”
“You are very much mistaken, Sir Walter,” Charon had answered to this.
“You don’t understand my position. It is a very hard one. As janitor of
your club I am really prostrated over the events of the past twenty-four
hours. My occupation is gone, and my despair over your loss is
correspondingly greater, for I have time on my hands to brood over it. I
was hysterical as a woman yesterday afternoon—so hysterical that I came
near upsetting one of the Furies who engaged me to row her down to Madame
Medusa’s villa last evening; and right at the sluice of the vitriol
reservoir at that.”
[Picture: You are very much mistaken, Sir Walter]
“Then why the deuce don’t you do something to help us?” pleaded Hamlet.
“How can I do any more than I have done? I’ve offered you the
_Gehenna_,” retorted Charon.
“But on what terms?” expostulated Raleigh. “If we had all the wealth of
the Indies we’d have difficulty in paying you the sums you demand.”
“But I am only president of the company,” explained Charon. “I’d like,
as president, to show you some courtesy, and I’m perfectly willing to do
so; but when it comes down to giving you a vessel like that, I’m bound by
my official oath to consider the interest of the stockholders. It isn’t
as it used to be when I had boats to hire in my own behalf alone. In
those days I had nobody’s interest but my own to look after. Now the
ships all belong to the Styx Navigation Company. Can’t you see the
difference?”
“You own all the stock, don’t you?” insisted Raleigh.
“I don’t know,” Charon answered, blandly. “I haven’t seen the
transfer-books lately.”
“But you know that you did own every share of it, and that you haven’t
sold any, don’t you?” put in Hamlet.
Charon was puzzled for a moment, but shortly his face cleared, and Sir
Walter’s heart sank, for it was evident that the old fellow could not be
cornered.
“Well, it’s this way, Sir Walter, and your Highness,” he said, “I—I can’t
say whether any of that stock has been transferred or not. The fact is,
I’ve been speculating a little on margin, and I’ve put up that stock as
security, and, for all I know, I may have been sold out by my brokers.
I’ve been so upset by this unfortunate occurrence that I haven’t seen the
market reports for two days. Really you’ll have to be content with my
offer or go without the _Gehenna_. There’s too much suspicion attached
to high corporate officials lately for me to yield a jot in the position
I have taken. It would never do to get you all ready to start, and then
have an injunction clapped on you by some unforeseen stockholder who was
not satisfied with the terms offered you; nor can I ever let it be said
of me that to retain my position as janitor of your organization I
sacrificed a trust committed to my charge. I’ll gladly lend you my
private launch, though I don’t think it will aid you much, because the
naphtha-tank has exploded, and the screw slipped off and went to the
bottom two weeks ago. Still, it is at your service, and I’ve no doubt
that either Phidias or Benvenuto Cellini will carve out a paddle for you
if you ask him to.”
“Bah!” retorted Raleigh. “You might as well offer us a pair of skates.”
“I would, if I thought the river’d freeze,” retorted Charon, blandly.
Raleigh and Hamlet turned away impatiently and left Charon to his own
devices, which for the time being consisted largely of winking his other
eye quietly and outwardly making a great show of grief.
“He’s too canny for us, I am afraid,” said Sir Walter. “We’ll have to
pay him his money.”
“Let us first consult Sherlock Holmes,” suggested Hamlet, and this they
proceeded at once to do.
“There is but one thing to be done,” observed the astute detective after
he had heard Sir Walter’s statement of the case. “It is an old saying
that one should fight fire with fire. We must meet modern business
methods with modern commercial ideas. Charter his vessel at his own
price.”
“But we’d never be able to pay,” said Hamlet.
“Ha-ha!” laughed Holmes. “It is evident that you know nothing of the
laws of trade nowadays. Don’t pay!”
“But how can we?” asked Raleigh.
“The method is simple. You haven’t anything to pay with,” returned
Holmes. “Let him sue. Suppose he gets a verdict. You haven’t anything
he can attach—if you have, make it over to your wives or your fiancées.”
“Is that honest?” asked Hamlet, shaking his head doubtfully.
“It’s business,” said Holmes.
“But suppose he wants an advance payment?” queried Hamlet.
“Give him a check drawn to his own order. He’ll have to endorse it when
he deposits it, and that will make him responsible,” laughed Holmes.
“What a simple thing when you understand it!” commented Raleigh.
“Very,” said Holmes. “Business is getting by slow degrees to be an exact
science. It reminds me of the Brighton mystery, in which I played a
modest part some ten years ago, when I first took up ferreting as a
profession. I was sitting one night in my room at one of the Brighton
hotels, which shall be nameless. I never give the name of any of the
hotels at which I stop, because it might give offence to the proprietors
of other hotels, with the result that my books would be excluded from
sale therein. Suffice it to say that I was spending an early summer
Sunday at Brighton with my friend Watson. We had dined well, and were
enjoying our evening smoke together upon a small balcony overlooking the
water, when there came a timid knock on the door of my room.
“‘Watson,’ said I, ‘here comes some one for advice. Do you wish to wager
a small bottle upon it?’
“‘Yes,’ he answered, with a smile. ‘I am thirsty and I’d like a small
bottle; and while I do not expect to win, I’ll take the bet. I should
like to know, though, how you know.’
“‘It is quite simple,’ said I. ‘The timidity of the knock shows that my
visitor is one of two classes of persons—an autograph-hunter or a client,
one of the two. You see I give you a chance to win. It may be an
autograph-hunter, but I think it is a client. If it were a creditor, he
would knock boldly, even ostentatiously; if it were the maid, she would
not knock at all; if it were the hall-boy, he would not come until I had
rung five times for him. None of these things has occurred; the knock is
the half-hearted knock which betokens either that the person who knocked
is in trouble, or is uncertain as to his reception. I am willing,
however, considering the heat and my desire to quench my thirst, to wager
that it is a client.’
“‘Done,’ said Watson; and I immediately remarked, ‘Come in.’
“The door opened, and a man of about thirty-five years of age, in a
bathing-suit, entered the room, and I saw at a glance what had happened.
“‘Your name is Burgess,’ I said. ‘You came here from London this
morning, expecting to return to-night. You brought no luggage with you.
After luncheon you went bathing. You had machine No. 35, and when you
came out of the water you found that No. 35 had disappeared, with your
clothes and the silver watch your uncle gave you on the day you succeeded
to his business.’
“Of course, gentlemen,” observed the detective, with a smile at Sir
Walter and Hamlet—“of course the man fairly gasped, and I continued: ‘You
have been lying face downward in the sand ever since, waiting for
nightfall, so that you could come to me for assistance, not considering
it good form to make an afternoon call upon a stranger at his hotel, clad
in a bathing-suit. Am I correct?’
“‘Sir,’ he replied, with a look of wonder, ‘you have narrated my story
exactly as it happened, and I find I have made no mistake in coming to
you. Would you mind telling me what is your course of reasoning?’
“‘It is plain as day,’ said I. ‘I am the person with the red beard with
whom you came down third class from London this morning, and you told me
your name was Burgess and that you were a butcher. When you looked to
see the time, I remarked upon the oddness of your watch, which led to
your telling me that it was the gift of your uncle.’
“‘True,’ said Burgess, ‘but I did not tell you I had no luggage.’
“‘No,’ said I, ‘but that you hadn’t is plain; for if you had brought any
other clothing besides that you had on with you, you would have put it on
to come here. That you have been robbed I deduce also from your
costume.’
“‘But the number of the machine?’ asked Watson.
“‘Is on the tag on the key hanging about his neck,’ said I.
“‘One more question,’ queried Burgess. ‘How do you know I have been
lying face downward on the beach ever since?’
“‘By the sand in your eyebrows,’ I replied; and Watson ordered up the
small bottle.”
“I fail to see what it was in our conversation, however,” observed
Hamlet, somewhat impatient over the delay caused by the narration of this
tale, “that suggested this train of thought to you.”
“The sequel will show,” returned Holmes.
“Oh, Lord!” put in Raleigh. “Can’t we put off the sequel until a later
issue? Remember, Mr. Holmes, that we are constantly losing time.”
“The sequel is brief, and I can narrate it on our way to the office of
the Navigation Company,” observed the detective. “When the bottle came I
invited Mr. Burgess to join us, which he did, and as the hour was late
when we came to separate, I offered him the use of my parlor overnight.
This he accepted, and we retired.
“The next morning when I arose to dress, the mystery was cleared.”
“You had dreamed its solution?” asked Raleigh.
“No,” replied Holmes. “Burgess had disappeared with all my clothing, my
false-beard, my suit-case, and my watch. The only thing he had left me
was the bathing-suit and a few empty small bottles.”
“And why, may I ask,” put in Hamlet, as they drew near to Charon’s
office—“why does that case remind you of business as it is conducted
to-day?”
“In this, that it is a good thing to stay out of unless you know it all,”
explained Holmes. “I omitted in the case of Burgess to observe one thing
about him. Had I observed that his nose was rectilinear, incurved, and
with a lifted base, and that his auricular temporal angle was between 96
and 97 degrees, I should have known at once that he was an impostor
_Vide_ Ottolenghui on ‘Ears and Noses I Have Met,’ pp. 631–640.”
“Do you mean to say that you can tell a criminal by his ears?” demanded
Hamlet.
“If he has any—yes; but I did not know that at the time of the Brighton
mystery. Therefore I should have stayed out of the case. But here we
are. Good-morning, Charon.”
By this time the trio had entered the private office of the president of
the Styx Navigation Company, and in a few moments the vessel was
chartered at a fabulous price.
On the return to the wharf, Sir Walter somewhat nervously asked Holmes if
he thought the plan they had settled upon would work.
“Charon is a very shrewd old fellow,” said he. “He may outwit us yet.”
“The chances are just two and one-eighth degrees in your favor,” observed
Holmes, quietly, with a glance at Raleigh’s ears. “The temporal angle of
your ears is 93.125 degrees, whereas Charon’s stand out at 91, by my
otometer. To that extent your criminal instincts are superior to his.
If criminology is an exact science, reasoning by your respective ears,
you ought to beat him out by a perceptible though possibly narrow
margin.”
With which assurance Raleigh went ahead with his preparations, and within
twelve hours the _Gehenna_ was under way, carrying a full complement of
crew and officers, with every state-room on board occupied by some spirit
of the more illustrious kind.
Even Shylock was on board, though no one knew it, for in the dead of
night he had stolen quietly up the gang-plank and had hidden himself in
an empty water-cask in the forecastle.
“’Tisn’t Venice,” he said, as he sat down and breathed heavily through
the bung of the barrel, “but it’s musty and damp enough, and, considering
the cost, I can’t complain. You can’t get something for nothing, even in
Hades.”
[Picture: In the dead of night he had stolen quietly up the gang-plank]
VIII
ON BOARD THE “GEHENNA”
WHEN the _Gehenna_ had passed down the Styx and out through the beautiful
Cimmerian Harbor into the broad waters of the ocean, and everything was
comparatively safe for a while at least, Sherlock Holmes came down from
the bridge, where he had taken his place as the commander of the
expedition at the moment of departure. His brow was furrowed with
anxiety, and through his massive forehead his brain could be seen to be
throbbing violently, and the corrugations of his gray matter were not
pleasant to witness as he tried vainly to squeeze an idea out of them.
“What is the matter?” asked Demosthenes, anxiously. “We are not in any
danger, are we?”
“No,” replied Holmes. “But I am somewhat puzzled at the bubbles on the
surface of the ocean, and the ripples which we passed over an hour or two
ago, barely perceptible through the most powerful microscope, indicate to
my mind that for some reason at present unknown to me the House-boat has
changed her course. Take that bubble floating by. It is the last
expiring bit of aerial agitation of the House-boat’s wake. Observe
whence it comes. Not from the Azores quarter, but as if instead of
steering a straight course thither the House-boat had taken a sharp turn
to the north-east, and was making for Havre; or, in other words, Paris
instead of London seems to have become their destination.”
Demosthenes looked at Holmes with blank amazement, and, to keep from
stammering out the exclamation of wonder that rose to his lips, he opened
his _bonbonnière_ and swallowed a pebble.
“You don’t happen to have a cocaine tablet in your box, do you?” queried
Holmes.
“No,” returned the Greek. “Cocaine makes me flighty and nervous, but
these pebbles sort of ballast me and hold me down. How on earth do you
know that that bubble comes from the wake of the House-boat?”
“By my chemical knowledge, merely,” replied Holmes. “A merely worldly
vessel leaves a phosphorescent bubble in its wake. That one we have just
discovered is not so, but sulphurescent, if I may coin a word which it
seems to me the English language is very much in need of. It proves,
then, that the bubble is a portion of the wake of a Stygian craft, and
the only Stygian craft that has cleared the Cimmerian Harbor for years is
the House-boat—Q. E. D.”
“We can go back until we find the ripple again, and follow that, I
presume,” sneered Le Coq, who did not take much stock in the theories of
his great rival, largely because he was a detective by intuition rather
than by study of the science.
“You can if you want to, but it is better not to,” rejoined Holmes,
simply, as though not observing the sneer, “because the ripple represents
the outer lines of the angle of disturbance in the water; and as any one
of the sides to an angle is greater than the perpendicular from the
hypothenuse to the apex, you’d merely be going the long way. This is
especially important when you consider the formation of the bow of the
House-boat, which is rounded like the stern of most vessels, and comes
near to making a pair of ripples at an angle of ninety degrees.”
“Then,” observed Sir Walter, with a sigh of disappointment, “we must
change our course and sail for Paris?”
“I am afraid so,” said Holmes; “but of course it’s by no means certain as
yet. I think if Columbus would go up into the mizzentop and look about
him, he might discover something either in confirmation or refutation of
the theory.”
“He couldn’t discover anything,” put in Pinzon. “He never did.”
“Well, I like that!” retorted Columbus. “I’d like to know who discovered
America.”
“So should I,” observed Leif Ericson, with a wink at Vespucci.
“Tut!” retorted Columbus. “I did it, and the world knows it, whether you
claim it or not.”
“Yes, just as Noah discovered Ararat,” replied Pinzon. “You sat upon the
deck until we ran plumb into an island, after floating about for three
months, and then you couldn’t tell it from a continent, even when you had
it right before your eyes. Noah might just as well have told his family
that he discovered a roof garden as for you to go back to Spain telling
’em all that San Salvador was the United States.”
“Well, I don’t care,” said Columbus, with a short laugh. “I’m the one
they celebrate, so what’s the odds? I’d rather stay down here in the
smoking-room enjoying a small game, anyhow, than climb up that mast and
strain my eyes for ten or a dozen hours looking for evidence to prove or
disprove the correctness of another man’s theory. I wouldn’t know
evidence when I saw it, anyhow. Send Judge Blackstone.”
“I draw the line at the mizzentop,” observed Blackstone. “The dignity of
the bench must and shall be preserved, and I’ll never consent to climb up
that rigging, getting pitch and paint on my ermine, no matter who asks me
to go.”
[Picture: Judge Blackstone refuses to climb to the mizzentop]
“Whomsoever I tell to go, shall go,” put in Holmes, firmly. “I am
commander of this ship. It will pay you to remember that, Judge
Blackstone.”
“And I am the Court of Appeals,” retorted Blackstone, hotly. “Bear that
in mind, captain, when you try to send me up. I’ll issue a writ of
_habeas corpus_ on my own body, and commit you for contempt.”
“There’s no use of sending the Judge, anyhow,” said Raleigh, fearing by
the glitter that came into the eye of the commander that trouble might
ensue unless pacificatory measures were resorted to. “He’s accustomed to
weighing everything carefully, and cannot be rushed into a decision. If
he saw any evidence, he’d have to sit on it a week before reaching a
conclusion. What we need here more than anything else is an expert
seaman, a lookout, and I nominate Shem. He has sailed under his father,
and I have it on good authority that he is a nautical expert.”
Holmes hesitated for an instant. He was considering the necessity of
disciplining the recalcitrant Blackstone, but he finally yielded.
“Very well,” he said. “Shem be it. Bo’sun, pipe Shem on deck, and tell
him that general order number one requires him to report at the mizzentop
right away, and that immediately he sees anything he shall come below and
make it known to me. As for the rest of us, having a very considerable
appetite, I do now decree that it is dinner-time. Shall we go below?”
“I don’t think I care for any, thank you,” said Raleigh. “Fact is—ah—I
dined last week, and am not hungry.”
Noah laughed. “Oh, come below and watch us eat, then,” he said. “It’ll
do you good.”
But there was no reply. Raleigh had plunged head first into his
state-room, which fortunately happened to be on the upper deck. The rest
of the spirits repaired below to the saloon, where they were soon engaged
in an animated discussion of such viands as the larder provided.
“This,” said Dr. Johnson, from the head of the table, “is what I call
comfort. I don’t know that I am so anxious to recover the House-boat,
after all.”
“Nor I,” said Socrates, “with a ship like this to go off cruising on, and
with such a larder. Look at the thickness of that puree, Doctor—”
“Excuse me,” said Boswell, faintly, “but I—I’ve left my note—bub—book
upstairs, Doctor, and I’d like to go up and get it.”
“Certainly,” said Dr. Johnson. “I judge from your color, which is highly
suggestive of a modern magazine poster, that it might be well too if you
stayed on deck for a little while and made a few entries in your
commonplace book.”
“Thank you,” said Boswell, gratefully. “Shall you say anything clever
during dinner, sir? If so, I might be putting it down while I’m up—”
“Get out!” roared the Doctor. “Get up as high as you can—get up with
Shem on the mizzentop—”
[Picture: Shem in the look-out]
“Very good, sir,” replied Boswell, and he was off.
“You ought to be more lenient with him, Doctor,” said Bonaparte; “he
means well.”
“I know it,” observed Johnson; “but he’s so very previous. Last winter,
at Chaucer’s dinner to Burns, I made a speech, which Boswell printed a
week before it was delivered, with the words ‘laughter’ and ‘uproarious
applause’ interspersed through it. It placed me in a false position.”
“How did he know what you were going to say?” queried Demosthenes.
“Don’t know,” replied Johnson. “Kind of mind-reader, I fancy,” he added,
blushing a trifle. “But, Captain Holmes, what do you deduce from your
observation of the wake of the House-boat? If she’s going to Paris, why
the change?”
“I have two theories,” replied the detective.
“Which is always safe,” said Le Coq.
“Always; it doubles your chances of success,” acquiesced Holmes.
“Anyhow, it gives you a choice, which makes it more interesting. The
change of her course from Londonward to Parisward proves to me either
that Kidd is not satisfied with the extent of the revenge he has already
taken, and wishes to ruin you gentlemen financially by turning your
wives, daughters, and sisters loose on the Parisian shops, or that the
pirates have themselves been overthrown by the ladies, who have decided
to prolong their cruise and get some fun out of their misfortune.”
“And where else than to Paris would any one in search of pleasure go?”
asked Bonaparte.
“I had more fun a few miles outside of Brussels,” said Wellington, with a
sly wink at Washington.
“Oh, let up on that!” retorted Bonaparte. “It wasn’t you beat me at
Waterloo. You couldn’t have beaten me at a plain ordinary game of
old-maid with a stacked pack of cards, much less in the game of war, if
you hadn’t had the elements with you.”
“Tut!” snapped Wellington. “It was clear science laid you out, Boney.”
“Taisey-voo!” shouted the irate Corsican. “Clear science be hanged! Wet
science was what did it. If it hadn’t been for the rain, my little Duke,
I should have been in London within a week, my grenadiers would have been
camping in your Rue Peekadeely, and the Old Guard all over everywhere
else.”
“You must have had a gay army, then,” laughed Cæsar. “What are French
soldiers made of, that they can’t stand the wet—unshrunk linen or
flannel?”
“Bah!” observed Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders and walking a few paces
away. “You do not understand the French. The Frenchman is not a
pell-mell soldier like you Romans; he is the poet of arms; he does not go
in for glory at the expense of his dignity; style, form, is dearer to him
than honor, and he has no use for fighting in the wet and coming out of
the fight conspicuous as a victor with the curl out of his feathers and
his epaulets rusted with the damp. There is no glory in water. But if
we had had umbrellas and mackintoshes, as every Englishman who comes to
the Continent always has, and a bath-tub for everybody, then would your
Waterloo have been different again, and the great democracy of Europe
with a Bonaparte for emperor would have been founded for what the
Americans call the keeps; and as for your little Great Britain, ha! she
would have become the Blackwell’s Island of the Greater France.”
“You’re almost as funny as Punch isn’t,” drawled Wellington, with an
angry gesture at Bonaparte. “You weren’t within telephoning distance of
victory all day. We simply played with you, my boy. It was a regular
game of golf for us. We let you keep up pretty close and win a few
holes, but on the home drive we had you beaten in one stroke. Go to, my
dear Bonaparte, and stop talking about the flood.”
“It’s a lucky thing for us that Noah wasn’t a Frenchman, eh?” said
Frederick the Great. “How that rain would have fazed him if he had been!
The human race would have been wiped out.”
“Oh, pshaw!” ejaculated Noah, deprecating the unseemliness of the
quarrel, and putting his arm affectionately about Bonaparte’s shoulder.
“When you come down to that, I was French—as French as one could be in
those days—and these Gallic subjects of my friend here were, every one of
’em, my lineal descendants, and their hatred of rain was inherited
directly from me, their ancestor.”
“Are not we English as much your descendants?” queried Wellington,
arching his eyebrows.
“You are,” said Noah, “but you take after Mrs. Noah more than after me.
Water never fazes a woman, and your delight in tubs is an essentially
feminine trait. The first thing Mrs. Noah carried aboard was a laundry
outfit, and then she went back for rugs and coats and all sorts of
hand-baggage. Gad, it makes me laugh to this day when I think of it!
She looked for all the world like an Englishman travelling on the
Continent as she walked up the gang-plank behind the elephants, each
elephant with a Gladstone bag in his trunk and a hat-box tied to his
tail.” Here the venerable old weather-prophet winked at Munchausen, and
the little quarrel which had been imminent passed off in a general laugh.
“Where’s Boswell? He ought to get that anecdote,” said Johnson.
“I’ve locked him up in the library,” said Holmes. “He’s in charge of the
log, and as I have a pretty good general idea as to what is about to
happen, I have mapped out a skeleton of the plot and set him to work
writing it up.” Here the detective gave a sudden start, placed his hand
to his ear, listened intently for an instant, and, taking out his watch
and glancing at it, added, quietly, “In three minutes Shem will be in
here to announce a discovery, and one of great importance, I judge, from
the squeak.”
The assemblage gazed earnestly at Holmes for a moment.
“The squeak?” queried Raleigh.
“Precisely,” said Holmes. “The squeak is what I said, and as I always
say what I mean, it follows logically that I meant what I said.”
“I heard no squeak,” observed Dr. Johnson; “and, furthermore, I fail to
see how a squeak, if I had heard it, would have portended a discovery of
importance.”
“It would not—to you,” said Holmes; “but with me it is different. My
hearing is unusually acute. I can hear the dropping of a pin through a
stone wall ten feet thick; any sound within a mile of my eardrum vibrates
thereon with an intensity which would surprise you, and it is by the use
of cocaine that I have acquired this wonderfully acute sense. A property
which dulls the senses of most people renders mine doubly apprehensive;
therefore, gentlemen, while to you there was no auricular disturbance, to
me there was. I heard Shem sliding down the mast a minute since. The
fact that he slid down the mast instead of climbing down the rigging
showed that he was in great haste, therefore he must have something to
communicate of great importance.”
“Why isn’t he here already, then? It wouldn’t take him two minutes to
get from the deck here,” asked the ever-auspicious Le Coq.
“It is simple,” returned Holmes, calmly. “If you will go yourself and
slide down that mast you will see. Shem has stopped for a little
witch-hazel to soothe his burns. It is no cool matter sliding down a
mast two hundred feet in height.”
As Sherlock Holmes spoke the door burst open and Shem rushed in.
“A signal of distress, captain!” he cried.
“From what quarter—to larboard?” asked Holmes.
“No,” returned Shem, breathless.
“Then it must be dead ahead,” said Holmes.
“Why not to starboard?” asked Le Coq, dryly.
“Because,” answered Holmes, confidently, “it never happens so. If you
had ever read a truly exciting sea-tale, my dear Le Coq, you would have
known that interesting things, and particularly signals of distress, are
never seen except to larboard or dead ahead.”
A murmur of applause greeted this retort, and Le Coq subsided.
“The nature of the signal?” demanded Holmes.
“A black flag, skull and cross-bones down, at half-mast!” cried Shem,
“and on a rock-bound coast!”
“They’re marooned, by heavens!” shouted Holmes, springing to his feet and
rushing to the deck, where he was joined immediately by Sir Walter, Dr.
Johnson, Bonaparte, and the others.
“Isn’t he a daisy?” whispered Demosthenes to Diogenes as they climbed the
stairs.
“He is more than that; he’s a blooming orchid,” said Diogenes, with
intense enthusiasm. “I think I’ll get my X-ray lantern and see if he’s
honest.”
IX
CAPTAIN KIDD MEETS WITH AN OBSTACLE
“EXCUSE me, your Majesty,” remarked Helen of Troy as Cleopatra accorded
permission to Captain Kidd to speak, “I have not been introduced to this
gentleman nor has he been presented to me, and I really cannot consent to
any proceeding so irregular as this. I do not speak to gentlemen I have
not met, nor do I permit them to address me.”
“Hear, hear!” cried Xanthippe. “I quite agree with the principle of my
young friend from Troy. It may be that when we claimed for ourselves all
the rights of men that the right to speak and be spoken to by other men
without an introduction will included in the list, but I for one have no
desire to avail myself of the privilege, especially when it’s a
horrid-looking man like this.”
Kidd bowed politely, and smiled so terribly that several of the ladies
fainted.
“I will withdraw,” he said, turning to Cleopatra; and it must be said
that his suggestion was prompted by his heartfelt wish, for now that he
found himself thus conspicuously brought before so many women, with
falsehood on his lips, his courage began to ooze.
“Not yet, please,” answered the chairlady. “I imagine we can get about
this difficulty without much trouble.”
“I think it a perfectly proper objection too,” observed Delilah, rising.
“If we ever needed etiquette we need it now. But I have a plan which
will obviate any further difficulty. If there is no one among us who is
sufficiently well acquainted with the gentleman to present him formally
to us, I will for the time being take upon myself the office of ship’s
barber and cut his hair. I understand that it is quite the proper thing
for barbers to talk, while cutting their hair, to persons to whom they
have not been introduced. And, besides, he really needs a hair-cut
badly. Thus I shall establish an acquaintance with the captain, after
which I can with propriety introduce him to the rest of you.”
“Perhaps the gentleman himself might object to that,” put in Queen
Elizabeth. “If I remember rightly, your last customer was very much
dissatisfied with the trim you gave him.”
“It will be unnecessary to do what Delilah proposes,” said Mrs. Noah,
with a kindly smile, as she rose up from the corner in which she had been
sitting, an interested listener. “I can introduce the gentleman to you
all with perfect propriety. He’s a member of my family. His grandfather
was the great-grandson a thousand and eight times removed of my son
Shem’s great-grandnephew on his father’s side. His relationship to me is
therefore obvious, though from what I know of his reputation I think he
takes more after my husband’s ancestors than my own. Willie, dear, these
ladies are friends of mine. Ladies, this young man is one of my most
famous descendants. He has been a man of many adventures, and he has
been hanged once, which, far from making him undesirable as an
acquaintance, has served merely to render him harmless, and therefore a
safe person to know. Now, my son, go ahead and speak your piece.”
The good old spirit sat down, and the scruples of the objectors having
thus been satisfied, Captain Kidd began.
“Now that I know you all,” he remarked, as pleasantly as he could under
the circumstances, “I feel that I can speak more freely, and certainly
with a great deal less embarrassment than if I were addressing a
gathering of entire strangers. I am not much of a hand at speaking, and
have always felt somewhat nonplussed at finding myself in a position of
this nature. In my whole career I never experienced but one irresistible
impulse to make a public address of any length, and that was upon that
unhappy occasion to which the greatest and grandest of my
great-grandmothers has alluded, and that only as the chain by which I was
suspended in mid-air tightened about my vocal chords. At that moment I
could have talked impromptu for a year, so fast and numerously did
thoughts of the uttermost import surge upward into my brain; but
circumstances over which I had no control prevented the utterance of
those thoughts, and that speech is therefore lost to the world.”
“He has the gift of continuity,” observed Madame Récamier.
“Ought to be in the United States Senate,” smiled Elizabeth.
“I wish I could make up my mind as to whether he is outrageously handsome
or desperately ugly,” remarked Helen of Troy. “He fascinates me, but
whether it is the fascination of liking or of horror I can’t tell, and
it’s quite important.”
“Ladies,” resumed the captain, his uneasiness increasing as he came to
the point, “I am but the agent of your respective husbands, _fiancés_,
and other masculine guardians. The gentlemen who were previously the
tenants of this club-house have delegated to me the important, and I may
add highly agreeable, task of showing you the world. They have noted of
late years the growth of that feeling of unrest which is becoming every
day more and more conspicuous in feminine circles in all parts of the
universe—on the earth, where women are clamoring to vote, and to be
allowed to go out late at night without an escort, in Hades, where, as
you are no doubt aware, the management of the government has fallen
almost wholly into the hands of the Furies; and even in the halls of
Jupiter himself, where, I am credibly informed, Juno has been taking
private lessons in the art of hurling thunderbolts—information which the
extraordinary quality of recent electrical storms on the earth would seem
to confirm. Thunderbolts of late years have been cast hither and yon in
a most erratic fashion, striking where they were least expected, as those
of you who keep in touch with the outer world must be fully aware. Now,
actuated by their usual broad and liberal motives, the men of Hades wish
to meet the views of you ladies to just that extent that your views are
based upon a wise selection, in turn based upon experience, and they have
come to me and in so many words have said, ‘Mr. Kidd, we wish the women
of Hades to see the world. We want them to be satisfied. We do not like
this constantly increasing spirit of unrest. We, who have seen all the
life that we care to see, do not ourselves feel equal to the task of
showing them about. We will pay you liberally if you will take our
House-boat, which they have always been anxious to enter, and personally
conduct our beloved ones to Paris, London, and elsewhere. Let them see
as much of life as they can stand. Accord them every privilege. Spare
no expense; only bring them back again to us safe and sound.’ These were
their words, ladies. I asked them why they didn’t come along themselves,
saying that even if they were tired of it all, they should make some
personal sacrifice to your comfort; and they answered, reasonably and
well, that they would be only too glad to do so, but that they feared
they might unconsciously seem to exert a repressing influence upon you.
‘We want them to feel absolutely free, Captain Kidd,’ said they, ‘and if
we are along they may not feel so.’ The answer was convincing, ladies,
and I accepted the commission.”
“But we knew nothing of all this,” interposed Elizabeth. “The subject
was not broached to us by our husbands, brothers, _fiancés_, or fathers.
My brother, Sir Walter Raleigh—”
Cleopatra chuckled. “Brother! Brother’s good,” she said.
“Well, that’s what he is,” retorted Elizabeth, quickly. “I promised to
be a sister to him, and I’m going to keep my word. That’s the kind of a
queen I am. I was about to remark,” Elizabeth added, turning to the
captain, “that my brother, Sir Walter Raleigh, never even hinted at any
such plan, and usually he asked my advice in matters of so great
importance.”
“That is easily accounted for, madame,” retorted Kidd. “Sir Walter
intended this as a little surprise for you, that is all. The
arrangements were all placed in his hands, and it was he who bound us all
to secrecy. None of the ladies were to be informed of it.”
“It does not sound altogether plausible,” interposed Portia. “If you
ladies do not object, I should like to cross-examine this—ah—gentleman.”
Kidd paled visibly. He was not prepared for any such trial; however, he
put as good a face on the matter as he could, and announced his
willingness to answer any questions that he might be asked.
[Picture: Captain Kidd consents to be cross-examined by Portia]
“Shall we put him under oath?” asked Cleopatra.
“As you please, ladies,” said the pirate. “A pirate’s word is as good as
his bond; but I’ll take an oath if you choose—a half-dozen of ’em, if
need be.”
“I fancy we can get along without that,” said Portia. “Now, Captain
Kidd, who first proposed this plan?”
“Socrates,” said Kidd, unblushingly with a sly glance at Xanthippe.
“What?” cried Xanthippe. “My husband propose anything that would
contribute to my pleasure or intellectual advancement? Bah! Your story
is transparently false at the outset.”
“Nevertheless,” said Kidd, “the scheme was proposed by Socrates. He said
a trip of that kind for Xanthippe would be very restful and
health-giving.”
“For me?” cried Xanthippe, sceptically.
“No, madame, for him,” retorted Kidd.
“Ah—ho-ho! That’s the way of it, eh?” said Xanthippe, flushing to the
roots of her hair. “Very likely. You—ah—you will excuse my doubting
your word, Captain Kidd, a moment since. I withdraw my remark, and in
order to make fullest reparation, I beg to assure these ladies that I am
now perfectly convinced that you are telling the truth. That last
observation is just like my husband, and when I get back home again, if I
ever do, well—ha, ha!—we’ll have a merry time, that’s all.”
“And what was—ah—Bassanio’s connection with this affair?” added Portia,
hesitatingly.
“He was not informed of it,” said Kidd, archly. “I am not acquainted
with Bassanio, my lady, but I overheard Sir Walter enjoining upon the
others the absolute necessity of keeping the whole affair from Bassanio,
because he was afraid he would not consent to it. ‘Bassanio has a most
beautiful wife, gentlemen,’ said Sir Walter, ‘and he wouldn’t think of
parting with her under any circumstances; therefore let us keep our
intentions a secret from him.’ I did not hear whom the gentleman
married, madame; but the others, Prince Hamlet, the Duke of Buckingham,
and Louis the Fourteenth, all agreed that Mrs. Bassanio was too beautiful
a person to be separated from, and that it was better, therefore, to keep
Bassanio in the dark as to their little enterprise until it was too late
for him to interfere.”
A pink glow of pleasure suffused the lovely countenance of the
cross-examiner, and it did not require a very sharp eye to see that the
wily Kidd had completely won her over to his side. On the other hand,
Elizabeth’s brow became as corrugated as her ruff, and the spirit of the
pirate shivered to the core as he turned and gazed upon that glowering
face.
“Sir Walter agreed to that, did he?” snapped Elizabeth. “And yet he was
willing to part with—ah—his sister.”
“Well, your Majesty,” began Kidd, hesitatingly, “you see it was this way:
Sir Walter—er—did say that, but—ah—he—ah—but he added that he of course
merely judged—er—this man Bassanio’s feelings by his own in parting from
his sister—”
“Did he say sister?” cried Elizabeth.
“Well—no—not in those words,” shuffled Kidd, perceiving quickly wherein
his error lay, “but—ah—I jumped at the conclusion, seeing his intense
enthusiasm for the lady’s beauty and—er—intellectual qualities, that he
referred to you, and it is from yourself that I have gained my knowledge
as to the fraternal, not to say sororal, relationship that exists between
you.”
“That man’s a diplomat from Diplomaville!” muttered Sir Henry Morgan,
who, with Abeuchapeta and Conrad, was listening at the port without.
“He is that,” said Abeuchapeta, “but he can’t last much longer. He’s
perspiring like a pitcher of ice-water on a hot day, and a spirit of his
size and volatile nature can’t stand much of that without evaporating.
If you will observe him closely you will see that his left arm already
has vanished into thin air.”
“By Jove!” whispered Conrad, “that’s a fact! If they don’t let up on him
he’ll vanish. He’s getting excessively tenuous about the top of his
head.”
All of which was only too true. Subjected to a scrutiny which he had
little expected, the deceitful ambassador of the thieving band was
rapidly dissipating, and, as those without had so fearsomely noted, was
in imminent danger of complete sublimation, which, in the case of one
possessed of so little elementary purity, meant nothing short of
annihilation. Fortunately for Kidd, however, his wonderful tact had
stemmed the tide of suspicion. Elizabeth was satisfied with his
explanation, and in the minds of at least three of the most influential
ladies on board, Portia, Xanthippe, and Elizabeth, he had become a
creature worthy of credence, which meant that he had nothing more to
fear.
“I am prepared, your Majesty,” said Elizabeth, addressing Cleopatra, “to
accept from this time on the gentleman’s word. The little that he has
already told us is hall-marked with truth. I should like to ask,
however, one more question, and that is how our gentleman friends
expected to embark us upon this voyage without letting us into the
secret?”
“Oh, as for that,” replied Kidd, with a deep-drawn sigh of relief, for he
too had noticed the gradual evaporation of his arm and the incipient
etherization of his cranium—“as for that, it was simple enough. There
was to have been a day set apart for ladies’ day at the club, and when
you were all on board we were quietly to weigh anchor and start. The
fact that you had anticipated the day, of your own volition, was
telephoned by my scouts to me at my headquarters, and that news was by me
transmitted by messenger to Sir Walter at Charon’s Glen Island, where the
long-talked-of fight between Samson and Goliath was taking place.
Raleigh immediately replied, ‘_Good_! _Start at once_. _Paris first_.
_Unlimited credit_. _Love to Elizabeth_.’ Wherefore, ladies,” he added,
rising from his chair and walking to the door—“wherefore you are here and
in my care. Make yourselves comfortable, and with the aid of the fashion
papers which you have already received prepare yourselves for the joys
that await you. With the aid of Madame Récamier and Baedeker’s _Paris_,
which you will find in the library, it will be your own fault if when you
arrive there you resemble a great many less fortunate women who don’t
know what they want.”
With these words Kidd disappeared through the door, and fainted in the
arms of Sir Henry Morgan. The strain upon him had been too great.
“A charming fellow,” said Portia, as the pirate disappeared.
“Most attractive,” said Elizabeth.
“Handsome, too, don’t you think?” asked Helen of Troy.
“And truthful beyond peradventure,” observed Xanthippe, as she reflected
upon the words the captain had attributed to Socrates. “I didn’t believe
him at first, but when he told me what my sweet-tempered philosopher had
said, I was convinced.”
“He’s a sweet child,” interposed Mrs. Noah, fondly. “One of my favorite
grandchildren.”
“Which makes it embarrassing for me to say,” cried Cassandra, starting up
angrily, “that he is a base caitiff!”
Had a bomb been dropped in the middle of the room, it could not have
created a greater sensation than the words of Cassandra.
“What?” cried several voices at once. “A caitiff?”
“A caitiff with a capital K,” retorted Cassandra. “I know that, because
while he was telling his story I was listening to it with one ear and
looking forward into the middle of next week with the other—I mean the
other eye—and I saw—”
“Yes, you saw?” cried Cleopatra.
“I saw that he was deceiving us. Mark my words, ladies, he is a base
caitiff,” replied Cassandra—“a base caitiff.”
“What did you see?” cried Elizabeth, excitedly.
“This,” said Cassandra, and she began a narration of future events which
I must defer to the next chapter. Meanwhile his associates were
endeavoring to restore the evaporated portions of the prostrated Kidd’s
spirit anatomy by the use of a steam-atomizer, but with indifferent
success. Kidd’s training had not fitted him for an intellectual combat
with superior women, and he suffered accordingly.
[Picture: Kidd’s companions endeavouring to restore evaporating portions
of his anatomy with a steam-atomizer]
X
A WARNING ACCEPTED
“IT is with no desire to interrupt my friend Cassandra unnecessarily,”
said Mrs. Noah, as the prophetess was about to narrate her story, “that I
rise to beg her to remember that, as an ancestress of Captain Kidd, I
hope she will spare a grandmother’s feelings, if anything in the story
she is about to tell is improper to be placed before the young. I have
been so shocked by the stories of perfidy and baseness generally that
have been published of late years, that I would interpose a protest while
there is yet time if there is a line in Cassandra’s story which ought to
be withheld from the public; a protest based upon my affection for
posterity, and in the interests of morality everywhere.”
“You may rest easy upon that score, my dear Mrs. Noah,” said the
prophetess. “What I have to say would commend itself, I am sure, even to
the ears of a British matron; and while it is as complete a demonstration
of man’s perfidy as ever was, it is none the less as harmless a little
tale as the Dottie Dimple books or any other more recent study of New
England character.”
“Thank you for the load your words have lifted from my mind,” said Mrs.
Noah, settling back in her chair, a satisfied expression upon her gentle
countenance. “I hope you will understand why I spoke, and withal why
modern literature generally has been so distressful to me. When you
reflect that the world is satisfied that most of man’s criminal instincts
are the result of heredity, and that Mr. Noah and I are unable to shift
the responsibility for posterity to other shoulders than our own, you
will understand my position. We were about the most domestic old couple
that ever lived, and when we see the long and varied assortment of crimes
that are cropping out everywhere in our descendants it is painful to us
to realize what a pair of unconsciously wicked old fogies we must have
been.”
“We all understand that,” said Cleopatra, kindly; “and we are all
prepared to acquit you of any responsibility for the advanced condition
of wickedness to-day. Man has progressed since your time, my dear
grandma, and the modern improvements in the science of crime are no more
attributable to you than the invention of the telephone or the oyster
cocktail is attributable to your husband.”
“Thank you kindly,” murmured the old lady, and she resumed her knitting
upon a phantom tam-o’-shanter, which she was making as a Christmas
surprise for her husband.
“When Captain Kidd began his story,” said Cassandra, “he made one very
bad mistake, and yet one which was prompted by that courtesy which all
men instinctively adopt when addressing women. When he entered the room
he removed his hat, and therein lay his fatal error, if he wished to
convince me of the truth of his story, for with his hat removed I could
see the workings of his mind. While you ladies were watching his lips or
his eyes, some of you taking in the gorgeous details of his dress, all of
you hanging upon his every word, I kept my eye fixed firmly upon his
imagination, and I saw, what you did not, _that he was drawing wholly
upon that_!”
“How extraordinary!” cried Elizabeth.
“Yes—and fortunate,” said Cassandra. “Had I not done so, a week hence we
should, every one of us, have been lost in the surging wickedness of the
city of Paris.”
“But, Cassandra,” said Trilby, who was anxious to return once more to the
beautiful city by the Seine, “he told us we were going to Paris.”
[Picture: He told us we were going to Paris]
“Of course he did,” said Madame Récamier, “and in so many words.
Certainly he was not drawing upon his imagination there.”
“And one might be lost in a very much worse place,” put in Marguerite de
Valois, “if, indeed, it were possible to lose us in Paris at all. I
fancy that I know enough about Paris to find my way about.”
“Humph!” ejaculated Cassandra. “What a foolish little thing you are!
You don’t imagine that the Paris of to-day is the Paris of your time, or
even the Paris of that sweet child Trilby’s time, do you? If you do you
are very much mistaken. I almost wish I had not warned you of your
danger and had let you go, just to see those eyes of yours open with
amazement at the change. You’d find your Louvre a very different sort of
a place from what it used to be, my dear lady. Those pleasing little
windows through which your relations were wont in olden times to indulge
in target practice at people who didn’t go to their church are now kept
closed; the galleries which used to swarm with people, many of whom ought
to have been hanged, now swarm with pictures, many of which ought not to
have been hung; the romance which clung about its walls is as much a part
of the dead past as yourselves, and were you to materialize suddenly
therein you would find yourselves jostled and hustled and trodden upon by
the curious from other lands, with Argus eyes taking in five hundred
pictures a minute, and traversing those halls at a rate of speed at which
Mercury himself would stand aghast.”
“But my beloved Tuileries?” cried Marie Antoinette.
“Has been swallowed up by a play-ground for the people, my dear,” said
Cassandra, gently. “Paris is no place for us, and it is the intention of
these men, in whose hands we are, to take us there and then desert us.
Can you imagine anything worse than ourselves, the phantoms of a glorious
romantic past, basely deserted in the streets of a wholly strange,
superficial, material city of to-day? What do you think, Elizabeth,
would be your fate if, faint and famished, you begged for sustenance at
an English door to-day, and when asked your name and profession were to
reply, ‘Elizabeth, Queen of England’?”
“Insane asylum,” said Elizabeth, shortly.
“Precisely. So in Paris with the rest of us,” said Cassandra.
“How do you know all this?” asked Trilby, still unconvinced.
“I know it just as you knew how to become a prima donna,” said Cassandra.
“I am, however, my own Svengali, which is rather preferable to the patent
detachable hypnotizer you had. I hypnotize myself, and direct my mind
into the future. I was a professional forecaster in the days of ancient
Troy, and if my revelations had been heeded the Priam family would, I
doubt not, still be doing business at the old stand, and Mr. Æneas would
not have grown round-shouldered giving his poor father a picky-back ride
on the opening night of the horse-show, so graphically depicted by
Virgil.”
“I never heard about that,” said Trilby. “It sounds like a very funny
story, though.”
“Well, it wasn’t so humorous for some as it was for others,” said
Cassandra, with a sly glance at Helen. “The fact is, until you mentioned
it yourself, it never occurred to me that there was much fun in any
portion of the Trojan incident, excepting perhaps the delirium tremens of
old Laocoon, who got no more than he deserved for stealing my thunder. I
had warned Troy against the Greeks, and they all laughed at me, and said
my eye to the future was strabismatic; that the Greeks couldn’t get into
Troy at all, even if they wanted to. And then the Greeks made a great
wooden horse as a gift for the Trojans, and when I turned my X-ray gaze
upon it I saw that it contained about six brigades of infantry, three
artillery regiments, and sharp-shooters by the score. It was a sort of
military Noah’s Ark; but I knew that the prejudice against me was so
strong that nobody would believe what I told them. So I said nothing.
My prophecies never came true, they said, failing to observe that my
warning as to what would be was in itself the cause of their
non-fulfilment. But desiring to save Troy, I sent for Laocoon and told
him all about it, and he went out and announced it as his own private
prophecy; and then, having tried to drown his conscience in strong
waters, he fell a victim to the usual serpentine hallucination, and
everybody said he wasn’t sober, and therefore unworthy of belief. The
horse was accepted, hauled into the city, and that night orders came from
hindquarters to the regiments concealed inside to march. They marched,
and next morning Troy had been removed from the map; ninety per cent of
the Trojans died suddenly, and Æneas, grabbing up his family in one hand
and his gods in the other, went yachting for several seasons, ultimately
settling down in Italy. All of this could have been avoided if the
Trojans would have taken the hint from my prophecies. They preferred,
however, not to do it, with the result that to-day no one but Helen and
myself knows even where Troy was, and we’ll never tell.”
“It is all true,” said Helen, proudly. “I was the woman who was at the
bottom of it all, and I can testify that Cassandra always told the truth,
which is why she was always so unpopular. When anything that was
unpleasant happened, after it was all over she would turn and say,
sweetly, ‘I told you so.’ She was the original ‘I told you so’ nuisance,
and of course she had the newspapyruses down on her, because she never
left them any sensation to spring upon the public. If she had only told
a fib once in a while, the public would have had more confidence in her.”
“Thank you for your endorsement,” said Cassandra, with a nod at Helen.
“With such testimony I cannot see how you can refrain from taking my
advice in this matter; and I tell you, ladies, that this man Kidd has
made his story up out of whole cloth; the men of Hades had no more to do
with our being here than we had; they were as much surprised as we are to
find us gone. Kidd himself was not aware of our presence, and his object
in taking us to Paris is to leave us stranded there, disembodied spirits,
vagrant souls with no familiar haunts to haunt, no place to rest, and
nothing before us save perpetual exile in a world that would have no
sympathy for us in our misfortune, and no belief in our continued
existence.”
“But what, then, shall we do?” cried Ophelia, wringing her hands in
despair.
“It is a terrible problem,” said Cleopatra, anxiously; “and yet it does
seem as if our woman’s instinct ought to show us some way out of our
trouble.”
“The Committee on Treachery,” said Delilah, “has already suggested a
chafing-dish party, with Lucretia Borgia in charge of the lobster
Newberg.”
“That is true,” said Lucretia; “but I find, in going through my reticule,
that my maid, for some reason unknown to me, has failed to renew my
supply of poisons. I shall discharge her on my return home, for she
knows that I never go anywhere without them; but that does not help
matters at this juncture. The sad fact remains that I could prepare a
thousand delicacies for these pirates without fatal results.”
“You mean immediately fatal, do you not?” suggested Xanthippe. “I could
myself prepare a cake which would in time reduce our captors to a state
of absolute dependence, but of course the effect is not immediate.”
“We might give a musicale, and let Trilby sing ‘Ben Bolt’ to them,”
suggested Marguerite de Valois, with a giggle.
“Don’t be flippant, please,” said Portia. “We haven’t time to waste on
flippant suggestions. Perhaps a court-martial of these pirates,
supplemented by a yard-arm, wouldn’t be a bad thing. I’ll prosecute the
case.”
“You forget that you are dealing with immortal spirits,” observed
Cleopatra. “If these creatures were mortals, hanging them would be all
right, and comparatively easy, considering that we outnumber them ten to
one, and have many resources for getting them, more or less, in our
power, but they are not. They have gone through the refining process of
dissolution once, and there’s an end to that. Our only resource is in
the line of deception, and if we cannot deceive them, then we have ceased
to be women.”
“That is truly said,” observed Elizabeth. “And inasmuch as we have
already provided ourselves with a suitable committee for the preparation
of our plans of a deceptive nature, I move, as the easiest possible
solution of the difficulty for the rest of us, that the Committee on
Treachery be requested to go at once into executive session, with orders
not to come out of it until they have suggested a plausible plan of
campaign against our abductors. We must be rid of them. Let the
Committee on Treachery say how.”
“Second the motion,” said Mrs. Noah. “You are a very clear-headed young
woman, Lizzie, and your grandmother is proud of you.”
[Picture: “You are a very clear-headed young woman, Lizzie,” said Mrs.
Noah]
The Committee on Treachery were about to protest, but the chair refused
to entertain any debate upon the question, which was put and carried with
a storm of approval.
Five minutes later a note was handed through the port, addressed to
Cleopatra, which read as follows:
“DEAR MADAME,—Six bells has just struck, and the officers and crew
are hungry. Will you and your fair companions co-operate with us in
our enterprise by having a hearty dinner ready within two hours? A
speck has appeared on the horizon which betokens a coming storm, else
we would prepare our supper ourselves. As it is, we feel that your
safety depends on our remaining on deck. If there is any beer on the
ice, we prefer it to tea. Two cases will suffice.
“Yours respectfully,
“HENRY MORGAN, Bart.; First Mate.”
“Hurrah!” cried Cleopatra, as she read this communication. “I have an
idea. Tell the Committee on Treachery to appear before the full meeting
at once.”
The committee was summoned, and Cleopatra announced her plan of
operation, and it was unanimously adopted; but what it was we shall have
to wait for another chapter to learn.
XI
MAROONED
WHEN Captain Holmes arrived upon deck he seized his glass, and, gazing
intently through it for a moment, perceived that the faithful Shem had
not deceived him. Flying at half-mast from a rude, roughly hewn pole set
upon a rocky height was the black flag, emblem of piracy, and, as Artemus
Ward put it, “with the second joints reversed.” It was in very truth a
signal of distress.
“I make it a point never to be surprised,” observed Holmes, as he peered
through the glass, “but this beats me. I didn’t know there was an island
of this nature in these latitudes. Blackstone, go below and pipe Captain
Cook on deck. Perhaps he knows what island that is.”
“You’ll have to excuse me, Captain Holmes,” replied the Judge. “I didn’t
ship on this voyage as a cabin-boy or a messenger-boy. Therefore I—”
“Bonaparte, put the Judge in irons,” interrupted Holmes, sternly. “I
expect to be obeyed, Judge Blackstone, whether you shipped as a Lord
Chief-Justice or a state-room steward. When I issue an order it must be
obeyed. Step lively there, Bonaparte. Get his honor ironed and summon
your marines. We may have work to do before night. Hamlet, pipe Captain
Cook on deck.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” replied Hamlet, with alacrity, as he made off.
“That’s the way to obey orders,” said Holmes, with a scornful glance at
Blackstone.
“I was only jesting, Captain,” said the latter, paling somewhat.
“That’s all right,” said Holmes, taking up his glass again. “So was I
when I ordered you in irons, and in order that you may appreciate the
full force of the joke I repeat it. Bonaparte, do your duty.”
In an instant the order was obeyed, and the unhappy Judge shortly found
himself manacled and alone in the forecastle. Meanwhile Captain Cook, in
response to the commander’s order, repaired to the deck and scanned the
distant coast.
“I can’t place it,” he said. “It can’t be Monte Cristo, can it?”
“No, it can’t,” said the Count, who stood hard by. “My island was in the
Mediterranean, and even if it dragged anchor it couldn’t have got out
through the Strait of Gibraltar.”
“Perhaps it’s Robinson Crusoe’s island,” suggested Doctor Johnson.
“Not it,” observed De Foe. “If it is, the rest of you will please keep
off. It’s mine, and I may want to use it again. I’ve been having a
number of interviews with Crusoe latterly, and he’s given me a lot of new
points, which I intend incorporating in a sequel for the Cimmerian
Magazine.”
“Well, in the name of Atlas, what island is it, then?” roared Holmes,
angrily. “What is the matter with all you learned lubbers that I have
brought along on this trip? Do you suppose I’ve brought you to whistle
up favorable winds? Not by the beard of the Prophet! I brought you to
give me information, and now when I ask for the name of a simple little
island like that in plain sight there’s not one of you able so much as to
guess at it reasonably. The next man I ask for information goes into
irons with Judge Blackstone if he doesn’t answer me instantly with the
information I want. Munchausen, what island is that?”
“Ahem! that?” replied Munchausen, trembling, as he reflected upon the
Captain’s threat. “What? Nobody knows what island that is? Why, you
surprise me—
“See here, Baron,” retorted Holmes, menacingly, “I ask you a plain
question, and I want a plain answer, with no evasions to gain time. Now
it’s irons or an answer. What island is that?”
“It’s an island that doesn’t appear on any chart, Captain,” Munchausen
responded instantly, pulling himself together for a mighty effort, “and
it has never been given a name; but as you insist upon having one, we’ll
call it Holmes Island, in your honor. It is not stationary. It is a
floating island of lava formation, and is a menace to every craft that
goes to sea. I spent a year of my life upon it once, and it is more
barren than the desert of Sahara, because you cannot raise even sand upon
it, and it is devoid of water of any sort, salt or fresh.”
“What did you live on during that year?” asked Holmes, eying him
narrowly.
“Canned food from wrecks,” replied the Baron, feeling much easier now
that he had got a fair start—“canned food from wrecks, commander. There
is a magnetic property in the upper stratum of this piece of derelict
real estate, sir, which attracts to it every bit of canned substance that
is lost overboard in all parts of the world. A ship is wrecked, say, in
the Pacific Ocean, and ultimately all the loose metal upon her will
succumb to the irresistible attraction of this magnetic upper stratum,
and will find its way to its shores. So in any other part of the earth.
Everything metallic turns up here sooner or later; and when you consider
that thousands of vessels go down every year, vessels which are
provisioned with tinned foods only, you will begin to comprehend how many
millions of pounds of preserved salmon, sardines, _pâté de foie gras_,
peaches, and so on, can be found strewn along its coast.”
“Munchausen,” said Holmes, smiling, “by the blush upon your cheek,
coupled with an occasional uneasy glance of the eye, I know that for once
you are standing upon the, to you, unfamiliar ground of truth, and I
admire you for it. There is nothing to be ashamed of in telling the
truth occasionally. You are a man after my own heart. Come below and
have a cocktail. Captain Cook, take command of the _Gehenna_ during my
absence; head her straight for Holmes Island, and when you discover
anything new let me know. Bonaparte, in honor of Munchausen’s remarkable
genius, I proclaim general amnesty to our prisoners, and you may release
Blackstone from his dilemma; and if you have any tin soldiers among your
marines, see that they are lashed to the rigging. I don’t want this
electric island of the Baron’s to get a grip upon my military force at
this juncture.”
With this Holmes, followed by Munchausen, went below, and the two
worthies were soon deep in the mysteries of a phantom cocktail, while
Doctor Johnson and De Foe gazed mournfully out over the ocean at the
floating island.
“De Foe,” said Johnson “that ought to be a lesson to you. This realism
that you tie up to is all right when you are alone with your conscience;
but when there are great things afoot, an imagination and a broad view as
to the limitations of truth aren’t at all bad. You or I might now be
drinking that cocktail with Holmes if we’d only risen to the opportunity
the way Munchausen did.”
[Picture: That ought to be a lesson to you]
“That is true,” said De Foe, sadly. “But I didn’t suppose he wanted that
kind of information. I could have spun a better yarn than that of
Munchausen’s with my eyes shut. I supposed he wanted truth, and I gave
it.”
“I’d like to know what has become of the House-boat,” said Raleigh,
anxiously gazing through the glass at the island. “I can see old Henry
Morgan sitting down there on the rocks with his elbows on his knees and
his chin in his hands, and Kidd and Abeuchapeta are standing back of him,
yelling like mad, but there isn’t a boat in sight.”
“Who is that man, off to the right, dancing a fandango?” asked Johnson.
“It looks like Conrad, but I can’t tell. He appears to have gone crazy.
He’s got that wild look on his face which betokens insanity. We’ll have
to be careful in our parleyings with these people,” said Raleigh.
“Anything new?” asked Holmes, returning to the deck, smacking his lips in
enjoyment of the cocktail.
“No—except that we are almost within hailing distance,” said Cook.
“Then give orders to cast anchor,” observed Holmes. “Bonaparte, take a
crew of picked men ashore and bring those pirates aboard. Take the three
musketeers with you, and don’t let Kidd or Morgan give you any back talk.
If they try any funny business, exorcise them.”
“Aye, aye, sir,” replied Bonaparte, and in a moment a boat had been
lowered and a sturdy crew of sailors were pulling for the shore. As they
came within ten feet of it the pirates made a mad dash down the rough,
rocky hillside and clamored to be saved.
[Picture: The pirates made a mad dash down the rough, rocky hill-side]
“What’s happened to you?” cried Bonaparte, ordering the sailors to back
water lest the pirates should too hastily board the boat and swamp her.
“We are marooned,” replied Kidd, “and on an island of a volcanic nature.
There isn’t a square inch of it that isn’t heated up to 125 degrees, and
seventeen of us have already evaporated. Conrad has lost his reason;
Abeuchapeta has become so tenuous that a child can see through him. As
for myself, I am growing iridescent with anxiety, and unless I get off
this infernal furnace I’ll disappear like a soap-bubble. For Heaven’s
sake, then, General, take us off, on your own terms. We’ll accept
anything.”
As if in confirmation of Kidd’s words, six of the pirate crew collapsed
and disappeared into thin air, and a glance at Abeuchapeta was proof
enough of his condition. He had become as clear as crystal, and had it
not been for his rugged outlines he would hardly have been visible even
to his fellow-spirits. As for Kidd, he had taken on the aspect of a
rainbow, and it was patent that his fears for himself were all too well
founded.
Bonaparte embarked the leaders of the band first, returning subsequently
for the others, and repaired with them at once to the _Gehenna_, where
they were ushered into the presence of Sherlock Holmes. The first
question he asked was as to the whereabouts of the House-boat.
“That we do not know,” replied Kidd, mournfully, gazing downward at the
wreck of his former self. “We came ashore, sir, early yesterday morning,
in search of food. It appears that when—acting in a wholly inexcusable
fashion, and influenced, I confess it, by motives of revenge—I made off
with your club-house, I neglected to ascertain if it were well stocked
with provisions, a fatal error; for when we endeavored to get supper we
discovered that the larder contained but half a bottle of farcie olives,
two salted almonds, and a soda cracker—not a luxurious feast for
sixty-nine pirates and a hundred and eighty-three women to sit down to.”
“That’s all nonsense,” said Demosthenes. “The House Committee had
provided enough supper for six hundred people, in anticipation of the
appetite of the members on their return from the fight.”
“Of course they did,” said Confucius; “and it was a good one, too—salads,
salmon glacé, lobsters—every blessed thing a man can’t get at home we
had; and what is more, they’d been delivered on board. I saw to that
before I went up the river.”
“Then,” moaned Kidd, “it is as I suspected. We were the victims of base
treachery on the part of those women.”
“Treachery? Well, I like that. Call it reciprocity,” said Hamlet,
dryly.
“We were informed by the ladies that there was nothing for supper save
the items I have already referred to,” said Kidd. “I see it all now. We
had tried to make them comfortable, and I put myself to some considerable
personal inconvenience to make them easy in their minds, but they were
ungrateful.”
“Whatever induced you to take ’em along with you?” asked Socrates.
“We didn’t want them,” said Kidd.
“We didn’t know they were on board until it was too late to turn back.
They’d broken in, and were having the club all to themselves in your
absence.”
“It served you good and right,” said Socrates, with a laugh. “Next time
you try to take things that don’t belong to you, maybe you’ll be a trifle
more careful as to whose property you confiscate.”
“But the House-boat—you haven’t told us how you lost her,” put in
Raleigh, impatiently.
“Well, it was this way,” said Kidd. “When, in response to our polite
request for supper, the ladies said there was nothing to eat on board,
something had to be done, for we were all as hungry as bears, and we
decided to go ashore at the first port and provision. Unfortunately the
crew got restive, and when this floating frying-pan loomed into view, to
keep them good-natured we decided to land and see if we could beg,
borrow, or steal some supplies. We had to. Observations taken with the
sextant showed that there was no port within five hundred miles; the
island looked as if it might be inhabited at least by goats, and ashore
we went, every man of us, leaving the House-boat safely anchored in the
harbor. At first we didn’t mind the heat, and we hunted and hunted and
hunted; but after three or four hours I began to notice that three of my
sailors were shrivelling up, and Conrad began to act as if he were daft.
Hawkins burst right before my eyes. Then Abeuchapeta got prismatic
around the eyes and began to fade, and I noticed a slight iridescence
about myself; and as for Morgan, he had the misfortune to lie down to
take a nap in the sun, and when he waked up, his whole right side had
evaporated. Then we saw what the trouble was. We’d struck this lava
island, and were gradually succumbing to its intense heat. We rushed
madly back to the harbor to embark; and our ship, gentlemen, and your
House-boat, was slowly but surely disappearing over the horizon, and
flying from the flag-staff at the fore were signals of farewell, with an
unfeeling P.S. below to this effect: ‘_Don’t wait up for us_. _We may
not be back until late_.’”
There was a pause, during which Socrates laughed quietly to himself,
while Abeuchapeta and the one-sided Morgan wept silently.
“That, gentlemen of the Associated Shades, is all I know of the
whereabouts of the House-boat,” continued Captain Kidd. “I have no doubt
that the ladies practised a deception, to our discomfiture, and I must
say that I think it was exceedingly clever—granting that it was desirable
to be rid of us, which I don’t, for we meant well by them, and they would
have enjoyed themselves.”
“But,” cried Hamlet, “may they not now be in peril? They cannot navigate
that ship.”
“They got her out of the harbor all right,” said Kidd. “And I judged
from the figure at the helm that Mrs. Noah had taken charge. What kind
of a seaman she is I don’t know.”
“Almighty bad,” ejaculated Shem, turning pale. “It was she who ran us
ashore on Ararat.”
“Well, wasn’t that what you wanted?” queried Munchausen.
“What we wanted!” cried Shem. “Well, I guess not. You don’t want your
yacht stranded on a mountain-top, do you? She was a dead loss there,
whereas if mother hadn’t been in such a hurry to get ashore, we could
have waited a month and landed on the seaboard.”
“You might have turned her into a summer hotel,” suggested Munchausen.
“Well, we must up anchor and away,” said Holmes. “Our pursuit has merely
begun, apparently. We must overtake this vessel, and the question to be
answered is—where?”
“That’s easy,” said Artemus Ward. “From what Shem says, I think we’d
better look for her in the Himalayas.”
“And, meanwhile, what shall be done with Kidd?” asked Holmes.
“He ought to be expelled from the club,” said Johnson.
“We can’t expel him, because he’s not a member,” replied Raleigh.
“Then elect him,” suggested Ward.
“What on earth for?” growled Johnson.
“So that we can expel him,” said Ward. And while Boswell’s hero was
trying to get the value of this notion through his head, the others
repaired to the deck, and the _Gehenna_ was soon under way once more.
Meanwhile Captain Kidd and his fellows were put in irons and stowed away
in the forecastle, alongside of the water-cask in which Shylock lay in
hiding.
XII
THE ESCAPE AND THE END
IF there was anxiety on board of the _Gehenna_ as to the condition and
whereabouts of the House-boat, there was by no means less uneasiness upon
that vessel itself. Cleopatra’s scheme for ridding herself and her
abducted sisters of the pirates had worked to a charm, but, having worked
thus, a new and hitherto undreamed-of problem, full of perplexities
bearing upon their immediate safety, now confronted them. The sole
representative of a seafaring family on board was Mrs. Noah, and it did
not require much time to see that her knowledge as to navigation was of
an extremely primitive order, limited indeed to the science of floating.
When the last pirate had disappeared behind the rocks of Holmes Island,
and all was in readiness for action, the good old lady, who had hitherto
been as calm and unruffled as a child, began to get red in the face and
to bustle about in a manner which betrayed considerable perturbation of
spirit.
“Now, Mrs. Noah,” said Cleopatra, as, peeping out from the billiard-room
window, she saw Morgan disappearing in the distance, “the coast is clear,
and I resign my position of chairman to you. We place the vessel in your
hands, and ourselves subject to your orders. You are in command. What
do you wish us to do?”
“Very well,” replied Mrs. Noah, putting down her knitting and starting
for the deck. “I’m not certain, but I think the first thing to do is to
get her moving. Do you know, I’ve never discovered whether this boat was
a steamboat or a sailing-vessel? Does anybody know?”
“I think it has a naphtha tank and a propeller,” said Elizabeth,
“although I don’t know. It seems to me my brother Raleigh told me they’d
had a naphtha engine put in last winter after the freshet, when the
House-boat was carried ten miles down the river, and had to be towed back
at enormous expense. They put it in so that if she were carried away
again she could get back of her own power.”
“That’s unfortunate,” said Mrs. Noah, “because I don’t know anything
about these new fangled notions. If there’s any one here who knows
anything about naphtha engines, I wish they’d speak.”
“I’m of the opinion,” said Portia, “that I can study out the theory of it
in a short while.”
“Very well, then,” said Mrs. Noah, “you can do it. I’ll appoint you
engineer, and give you all your orders now, right away, in advance. Set
her going and keep her going, and don’t stop without a written order
signed by me. We might as well be very careful, and have everything done
properly, and it might happen that in the excitement of our trip you
would misunderstand my spoken orders and make a fatal error. Therefore,
pay no attention to unwritten orders. That will do for you for the
present. Xanthippe, you may take Ophelia and Madame Récamier, and ten
other ladies, and, every morning before breakfast, swab the larboard
deck. Cassandra, Tuesdays you will devote to polishing the brasses in
the dining-room, and the balance of your time I wish you to expend in
dusting the bric-a-brac. Dido, you always were strong at building fires.
I’ll make you chief stoker. You will also assist Lucretia Borgia in the
kitchen. Inasmuch as the latter’s maid has neglected to supply her with
the usual line of poisons, I think we can safely entrust to Lucretia’s
hands the responsibilities of the culinary department.”
“I’m perfectly willing to do anything I can,” said Lucretia, “but I must
confess that I don’t approve of your methods of commanding a ship. A
ship’s captain isn’t a domestic martinet, as you are setting out to be.
We didn’t appoint you housekeeper.”
“Now, my child,” said Mrs. Noah, firmly, “I do not wish any words. If I
hear any more impudence from you, I’ll put you ashore without a
reference; and the rest of you I would warn in all kindness that I will
not tolerate insubordination. You may, all of you, have one night of the
week and alternate Sundays off, but your work must be done. The regimen
I am adopting is precisely that in vogue on the Ark, only I didn’t have
the help I have now, and things got into very bad shape. We were out
forty days, and, while the food was poor and the service execrable, we
never lost a life.”
[Picture: “Now, my child,” said Mrs. Noah, firmly, “I do not wish any
words”]
The boat gave a slight tremor.
“Hurrah!” cried Elizabeth, clapping her hands with glee, “we are off!”
“I will repair to the deck and get our bearings,” said Mrs. Noah, putting
her shawl over her shoulders. “Meantime, Cleopatra, I appoint you first
mate. See that things are tidied up a bit here before I return. Have
the windows washed, and to-morrow I want all the rugs and carpets taken
up and shaken.”
Portia meanwhile had discovered the naphtha engine, and, after
experimenting several times with the various levers and stop-cocks, had
finally managed to move one of them in such a way as to set the engine
going, and the wheel began to revolve.
“Are we going all right?” she cried, from below.
“I am afraid not,” said the gallant commander. “The wheel is roiling up
the water at a great rate, but we don’t seem to be going ahead very
fast—in fact, we’re simply moving round and round as though we were on a
pivot.”
“I’m afraid we’re aground amidships,” said Xanthippe, gazing over the
side of the House-boat anxiously. “She certainly acts that way—like a
merry-go-round.”
“Well, there’s something wrong,” said Mrs. Noah; “and we’ve got to hurry
and find out what it is, or those men will be back and we shall be as
badly off as ever.”
“Maybe this has something to do with it,” observed Mrs. Lot, pointing to
the anchor rope. “It looks to me as if those horrid men had tied us
fast.”
“That’s just what it is,” snapped Mrs. Noah. “They guessed our plan, and
have fastened us to a pole or something, but I imagine we can untie it.”
Portia, who had come on deck, gave a short little laugh.
“Why, of course we don’t move,” she said—“we are anchored!”
“What’s that?” queried Mrs. Noah. “We never had an experience like that
on the Ark.”
Portia explained the science of the anchor.
“What nonsense!” ejaculated Mrs. Noah. “How can we get away from it?”
“We’ve got to pull it up,” said Portia. “Order all hands on deck and
have it pulled up.”
“It can’t be done, and, if it could, I wouldn’t have it!” said Mrs. Noah,
indignantly. “The idea! Lifting heavy pieces of iron, my dear Portia,
is not a woman’s work. Send for Delilah, and let her cut the rope with
her scissors.”
“It would take her a week to cut a hawser like that,” said Elizabeth, who
had been investigating. “It would be more to the purpose, I think, to
chop it in two with an axe.”
“Very well,” replied Mrs. Noah, satisfied. “I don’t care how it is done
as long as it is done quickly. It would never do for us to be recaptured
now.”
The suggestion of Elizabeth was carried out, and the queen herself cut
the hawser with six well-directed strokes of the axe.
“You _are_ an expert with it, aren’t you?” smiled Cleopatra.
“I am, indeed,” replied Elizabeth, grimly. “I had it suspended over my
head for so long a time before I got to the throne that I couldn’t help
familiarizing myself with some of its possibilities.”
“Ah!” cried Mrs. Noah, as the vessel began to move. “I begin to feel
easier. It looks now as if we were really off.”
“It seems to me, though,” said Cleopatra, gazing forward, “that we are
going backward.”
“Oh, well, what if we are!” said Mrs. Noah. “We did that on the Ark half
the time. It doesn’t make any difference which way we are going as long
as we go, does it?”
“Why, of course it does!” cried Elizabeth. “What can you be thinking of?
People who walk backward are in great danger of running into other
people. Why not the same with ships? It seems to me, it’s a very
dangerous piece of business, sailing backward.”
“Oh, nonsense,” snapped Mrs. Noah. “You are as timid as a zebra. During
the Flood, we sailed days and days and days, going backward. It didn’t
make a particle of difference how we went—it was as safe one way as
another, and we got just as far away in the end. Our main object now is
to get away from the pirates, and that’s what we are doing. Don’t get
emotional, Lizzie, and remember, too, that I am in charge. If I think
the boat ought to go sideways, sideways she shall go. If you don’t like
it, it is still not too late to put you ashore.”
The threat calmed Elizabeth somewhat, and she was satisfied, and all went
well with them, even if Portia had started the propeller revolving
reverse fashion; so that the House-boat was, as Elizabeth had said,
backing her way through the ocean.
The day passed, and by slow degrees the island and the marooned pirates
faded from view, and the night came on, and with it a dense fog.
“We’re going to have a nasty night, I am afraid,” said Xanthippe, looking
anxiously out of the port.
“No doubt,” said Mrs. Noah, pleasantly. “I’m sorry for those who have to
be out in it.”
“That’s what I was thinking about,” observed Xanthippe. “It’s going to
be very hard on us keeping watch.”
“Watch for what?” demanded Mrs. Noah, looking over the tops of her
glasses at Xanthippe.
“Why, surely you are going to have lookouts stationed on deck?” said
Elizabeth.
“Not at all,” said Mrs. Noah. “Perfectly absurd. We never did it on the
Ark, and it isn’t necessary now. I want you all to go to bed at ten
o’clock. I don’t think the night air is good for you. Besides, it isn’t
proper for a woman to be out after dark, whether she’s new or not.”
“But, my dear Mrs. Noah,” expostulated Cleopatra, “what will become of
the ship?”
“I guess she’ll float through the night whether we are on deck or not,”
said the commander. “The Ark did, why not this? Now, girls, these
new-fangled yachting notions are all nonsense. It’s night, and there’s a
fog as thick as a stone-wall all about us. If there were a hundred of
you upon deck with ten eyes apiece, you couldn’t see anything. You might
much better be in bed. As your captain, chaperon, and grandmother, I
command you to stay below.”
“But—who is to steer?” queried Xanthippe.
“What’s the use of steering until we can see where to steer to?” demanded
Mrs. Noah. “I certainly don’t intend to bother with that tiller until
some reason for doing it arises. We haven’t any place to steer to yet;
we don’t know where we are going. Now, my dear children, be reasonable,
and don’t worry me. I’ve had a very hard day of it, and I feel my
responsibilities keenly. Just let me manage, and we’ll come out all
right. I’ve had more experience than any of you, and if—”
A terrible crash interrupted the old lady’s remarks. The House-boat
shivered and shook, careened way to one side, and as quickly righted and
stood still. A mad rush up the gangway followed, and in a moment a
hundred and eighty-three pale-faced, trembling women stood upon the deck,
gazing with horror at a great helpless hulk ten feet to the rear,
fastened by broken ropes and odd pieces of rigging to the stern-posts of
the House-boat, sinking slowly but surely into the sea.
It was the _Gehenna_!
[Picture: A great helpless hulk ten feet to the rear]
The House-boat had run her down and her last hour had come, but, thanks
to the stanchness of her build and wonderful beam, the floating
club-house had withstood the shock of the impact and now rode the waters
as gracefully as ever.
Portia was the first to realize the extent of the catastrophe, and in a
short while chairs and life-preservers and tables—everything that could
float—had been tossed into the sea to the struggling immortals therein.
On board the _Gehenna_, those who had not cast themselves into the
waters, under the cool direction of Holmes and Bonaparte, calmly lowered
the boats, and in a short while were not only able to felicitate
themselves upon their safety, but had likewise the good fortune to rescue
their more impetuous brethren who had preferred to swim for it.
Ultimately, all were brought aboard the House-boat in safety, and the men
in Hades were once more reunited to their wives, daughters, sisters, and
_fiancées_, and Elizabeth had the satisfaction of once more saving the
life of Raleigh by throwing him her ruff as she had done a year or so
previously, when she and her brother had been upset in the swift current
of the river Styx.
Order and happiness being restored, Holmes took command of the House-boat
and soon navigated her safely back into her old-time berth. The
_Gehenna_ went to the bottom and was never seen again, and when the roll
was called it was found that all who had set out upon her had returned in
safety save Shylock, Kidd, Sir Henry Morgan, and Abeuchapeta; but even
they were not lost, for, five weeks later, these four worthies were found
early one morning drifting slowly up the river Styx, gazing anxiously out
from the top of a water-cask and yelling lustily for help.
And here endeth the chronicle of the pursuit of the good old House-boat.
Back to her moorings, the even tenor of her ways was once more resumed,
but with one slight difference.
The ladies became eligible for membership, and, availing themselves of
the privilege, began to think less and less of the advantages of being
men and to rejoice that, after all, they were women; and even Xanthippe
and Socrates, after that night of peril, reconciled their differences,
and no longer quarrel as to which is the more entitled to wear the toga
of authority. It has become for them a divided skirt.
As for Kidd and his fellows, they have never recovered from the effects
of their fearful, though short, exile upon Holmes Island, and are but
shadows of their former shades; whereas Mr. Sherlock Holmes has so
endeared himself to his new-found friends that he is quite as popular
with them as he is with us, who have yet to cross the dark river and be
subjected to the scrutiny of the Committee on Membership at the
House-boat on the Styx.
Even Hawkshaw has been able to detect his genius.
* * * * *
THE END
* * * * *
* * * * *
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