THIRTY DAYS
Before many hours Scoland raged quietly when he found that his "wild man" had flown from the cage. But he was tongue-tied. He set cautious inquiry on foot to ascertain what had become of the refugee. He could do no more without publicity, which he did not court. His agents were able to tell him no more than did the broken door of Burleson's cabin on the Felix. Polaris was traceless.
Worried intensely at the first by the disappearance and still apprehensive of a blow at his fortunes from the hand of the snow wanderer, as days went by and nothing was heard from the missing one Scoland breathed more freely. Doubtless the man had gone overboard and drowned; or, if he had reached shore, he had wandered on his ways and would not be heard from again.
Concealing the anxiety she felt, Rose Emer also secretly endeavored to trace the lost Polaris. She met with no better success than had Scoland. Her great-hearted protector was gone.
Rumor had coupled her name with that of the hero of the hour, the discoverer of the pole,[1] and with the foreecho of wedding bells. Several times the subject was mentioned to her by the captain himself. He found the girl strangely silent on the matter that, before their trip to the south he had considered was almost settled. She did not speed his wooing, and he was too busy a man for the time to try and regain his lost advantage.
Dinners, receptions, fetes, and the lecture platform made continual demands on him, and then the summons came to go to Washington and lay the proofs of his polar discovery before the savants of the National Geographic Society.
Nearly a month had worn away since the Felix docked when Scoland journeyed to the Capital to place in the hands of the gray and critical members of the society the data of his explorations, that should fix him for all time in the firmament of famous discoverers—first man to stand at the southern pole.
More than two hours after he left the side of the Felix, Polaris propelled his little craft into an angle at the side of a long, low building that lay close to the harbor shore. He reached up, and his fingers hooked over a stone edge. Softly he drew himself up and over. He stood for the first time on the soil of his father's country.
With many a close escape from the wheels of ferries and the noses of propellers of other craft, of which a bewildering number were moving, even at that hour, but without being seen of any man, he had made the passage of the harbor. It was no mean accomplishment of itself. He was both weary and hungry after the toil. The second need must wait for a while. He saw near him the shrubbery of a little park. He crawled into the bushes and fell asleep.
Some three hours later, the dawn light shone revealingly on the soles of his bare feet, thrust from under the bush. They caught the eye of a policeman who was good-naturedly clearing the park of its "boarders." He investigated. The appearance of the man who owned the feet was so different from that of the ordinary "vag" habitués of the park, that the bluecoat decided he must "run him in."
Still sleepy and only half understanding, Polaris went meekly with the policeman. He knew that he was in the hands of a representative of the law of America, a law that his father had taught him must be reverenced and obeyed in all its manifestations.
With every instant unfolding to him a new wonder—from the startling height of a many-storied skyscraper to a belated messenger boy puffing at a cigarette—he was haled to a nearby station-house.
Because he could not, or would not, explain how he came to be in the park, and because his intense interest in the proceedings about him tended to make his answers casual, the judge dismissed him with a curt, "Ten or thirty." The son of the snows went to jail and knew no help for it.
He grew restive with the passing of the days in confinement. He had left but one object in life, and that was the delivery of his father's message. He had guessed for a long time that it had to do with a quest similar to that of Scoland. Now the name of the captain was on every lip. He had gone to Washington, to receive the official recognition of his discovery.
In Washington, Polaris would also liked to have been. And his message? He had given it into the keeping of Rose Emer. Where was she? Would she keep faith?
Then it struck him with the suddenness of a blow that his message might, even now, be in the keeping of the captain, the man who was to be her husband. When he was on the verge of delirium, he had put his most sacred trust into the hands of his enemy!
He laughed at the irony of it. Still, he would go to Washington. The rest was on the knees of the gods. She would keep faith, he knew, but did it rest with her?
Polaris learned much in those thirty days, for there is excellent wisdom even in the bowels of a jail. Came at last the day of his release, and found him in the middle of a puzzle. Not in all America was there a person to whom he could turn in his extremity. He was friendless and penniless. Under the circumstances, he could not bring himself to ask aid of Rose Emer, even if he knew where she was to be found.
Then it was that his dead friend Kalin raised up friends for him, friends and the power to carry out his project.
On the day of his release he was directed to the window of the property clerk's cage in the office of the prison. He found a small, dark-browned man talking with the clerk at the window, who eyed him curiously through thick, tortoise-rimmed spectacles of exaggerated size, that were perched on his high, curved nose.
"My necklace?" said Polaris, as he stood at the window of the cage.
For a moment the clerk hesitated, and he and the little man stared at Polaris. Up and down the little man's eyes roved, and finally a friendly gleam came into them.
"I have come down here to see you about that necklace," he said. "Mr. Atkins, here, he has seen nothing like that necklace of yours. So he has shown it to a friend of his who is one of my employees, and that friend has told to me so much about it that I have come all the way here once just to see it, and then again to see you."
He paused and looked steadily at Polaris, who returned the gaze with interest. What could the man want? Ah, he had it! Money! He would give money for the necklace of Kalin; and money in this land would do anything. It would take him to Washington. He could go as other men went. His face brightened.
"Your necklace," pursued the little man, "would you consider selling some of the stones? They are fine rubies, my friend, as no doubt you know. Now tell me, and I read it in your eyes that you cannot lie, are the stones yours? Would there be any legal question as to their ownership?"
"The necklace is mine," said Polaris gravely. "It was the gift of a friend of mine who died, in a foreign land. Do you wish to buy it? I will sell—"
The little man smiled and answered quickly:
"No, not even I wish to purchase the entire necklace. I should have to float a loan to pay its value. But I would like to purchase three or four of the stones."
The end of it was that Polaris parted with three of the smaller stones of the necklace at a price of seventeen thousand dollars—and glad enough the jeweler was, to get them at that figure. By a miracle Polaris had fallen into the hands of a man who could help him. He was one of the most noted experts in gems in the metropolis—and honest. Where another might have robbed him easily, this man gave him good value for the stones.
So it was that while the members of the geographic society were poring over the notes and records of Scoland, and plying the captain with many an admiring question, a young man broke in upon the deliberations.
"Never mind the name," he said to the clerk in the anteroom. "I came from the south with the Captain Scoland. They will wish to hear me."
That sufficed, and he entered the council room of the society. He was an exceedingly personable young man, he who thus strode into the den of the savants. He stood a good six feet from his soles, but he was so generously constructed as to shoulders and chest that he did not seem tall.
June had come, and he wore a handsome light textured suit. From the top of his flaxen poll to his shoes, he bore evidences of the best work of the metropolitan artists who had fitted him out in haste. A native dignity almost obscured the stiffness with which he wore the unaccustomed garments.
Scoland sat at the head of a long table. On either side of it were grouped the members of the society, the men of science who were weighing his claims to the title of discoverer of the south pole. As the young man entered the room the captain looked up quickly.
Their eyes met. For an instant the brow of the captain was wrinkled, as though he strove to recall a half-forgotten face. Then the interest in the eyes faded, and he turned them back toward the table. The metamorphosis was too complete for his recognition.
Testy old President Dean turned his leaping blue eyes on the stranger. At the foot of the table a little bowed old man with a puckered face and snapping bright black eyes leaned forward in sudden excitement and gripped the edge of the table until his gaunt knuckles whitened.
"Well, young man, who are you, and what do you want here?" rapped out the president.
"My name is Polaris, which, so far as I know, is all of it," replied the young man, and instantly the odd name he gave himself and the quaintness of his speech had drawn him the interest of every man at the table.
"That which I want here, it may be more difficult for me to tell you," he continued. "I came here from the far south in the ship of that man"—he pointed to Scoland—"bringing a message to the world from a man now dead, the man whom I believe first stood at the place of the southern pole. He—"
Polaris got no further. Scoland sprang to his feet in white rage.
"What's this?" he shouted. "Some crazy man has wandered in here. I never laid eyes on him before. Have him put out!"
For an instant there was silence in the room. At the foot of the table old Zenas Wright, who had put some marks on the maps in his own day, stared and stared.
"Steve, Steve, I thought you had come back to me," he murmured. "But you were a larger man, Steve, and that was years ago—years ago."
"Yes, you have laid eyes on me before," said Polaris, addressing Scoland. "A sick man came to your camp through the snows, bringing a member of your party who was lost. You took him to the ship, and your Dr. Clawson nursed him. You brought him to America. You thought him crazy and—But that matters not. I am that sick man, the man who disappeared. Any of your men will remember, or Dr. Clawson."
Scoland sank back into his chair with a troubled face. President Dean turned to him and said rather acidly: "You told us nothing of the finding of a strange man in the polar regions. Is the story of this man true?"
Quickly the captain thought. It was true what this man said. Any member of his crew would remember the "wild man." It would profit him not at all to lie.
"Why, yes," he assented. "There was such a man. But he could not, or pretended that he could not, speak English. He appeared to be a savage and an imbecile to boot. We brought him back with us. He disappeared the night we reached quarantine. Now that I look at this man, it seems that he may be the same, although he is changed greatly. He is undoubtedly crazy."
Scoland spoke confidently. Still, he felt in his heart a return of the forebodings that had warned him against this man since first he had set eyes upon him.
"Who are you, lad, and how did you come to be in the south?" old Zenas Wright spoke up from the foot of the table. His tone was kindly, and there was no suspicion, only deep interest, in the keen eyes he turned on the youth.
"As best I may, I will answer those questions," said Polaris. "I was born in the white south. My mother I never saw—only a grave with the name Anne above it. My father sleeps beside that grave, and above him is the name Stephen."
Zenas Wright started visibly and seemed about to interrupt the tale, but did not, and Polaris continued:
"Other names than those I know not that they had. My father reared me, and I never saw another human being until I met those of the party of Captain Scoland. My father died. He gave me a message to bring to the north—a message addressed to the National Geographic Society of the United States. In that message, he told me, was the story of a great discovery he had made—that would ring around the world—and in it also was the history of myself, which he never told me. We lived far to the south for many years, for my father hurt himself in a fall and could not travel.
"When he died and I came north, I passed and burned the ship in which he went to the south. Its name was the Yedda.
"This man has reached the pole. I do not wish to make his glory dim, but—he is not the first to stand at the pole. I have come here—"
He hesitated and glanced around the circuit of the big table. Every man there was leaning forward in strained attention.
"The message—the message your father sent?" queried President Dean, and held out a shaking hand. "Give us that message."
"I have lost that message," said Polaris quietly.
Scoland burst into a peal of derisive laughter. "A joke, gentlemen—a joke!" he cried. "I don't know who and what this young man is, but he has a rare sense of humor."
"Young man," continued the president severely, "this is a strange tale you have told—an almost unbelievable tale. Yet this society has listened to many strange tales. All that is lacking to make history of the strangest of tales is proof. You say you have lost your message. Without proof, no claim can stand before this society. I advise you most strongly to find that message, if such a message you have, and bring it before us. Until you do, the society cannot listen to you further."
He inclined his head and beckoned to the clerk at the door to show Polaris from the room. Polaris hesitated. There apparently was nothing more to be said. Still he hesitated. Then he heard two sounds behind him that caused him to turn like lightning. They were a quick little gasp and an astounded whine.
Framed in the doorway stood a girl and a great gray dog!