Captivating Mary Carstairs

by Henry Sydnor Harrison

CHAPTER X

THE EDITOR OF THE GAZETTE PLAYS A CARD FROM HIS SLEEVE

Varney slept badly. The night was long, like art and the lanes that have no turning; and interludes punctuated it, now and again, when he lay wide-eyed in his bunk, staring into the darkness. At these times without exception, he thought how, early in the morning, he would climb the hill to the white house, blandly proffering letters to show that he was no cad, no cur, but Laurence Varney, whom ladies need not flee from as from the plague; suavely putting Uncle Elbert's daughter so utterly in the wrong that he himself would grow merciful towards her abashment, and sorry.

He fell asleep, woke again, rehearsed once more what he would say to her. At last he saw the dawn break along the horizon and the gray of a new day meet and mingle with the receding darkness. It was Wednesday. To-morrow would be Thursday, and he could go away, his business done. The prospect was rich recompense for everything. It came to him, suddenly and for the first time, that he hated his mission in Hunston with a disheartening and sickening hatred. And formulating this thought, polishing it to aphorism and sharpening it to epigram, he slumbered and slept for the last time that night.

But on the heels of the morning came Peter, bursting in half-dressed, a newspaper flaunting in his hand, an unfastened suspender flapping behind him like a pennant on a clubhouse.

"Oh, you're awake, are you?" said he, looking very keen and wide-awake himself. "Good! You'd hardly want to be dead to the world while this kind of thing is going on."

Varney, on an elbow, sleepily surprised at this vehemence, said: "What's up?"

"The jig!" cried Peter succinctly. "At least it looks that way. It's that rascal Smith."

He sat down on the edge of Varney's bunk, the folded newspaper in his hand, and continued: "I ran out before I was dressed to look at this contemptible Gazette, because I wanted to see how they handled the meeting last night. But the minute I picked it up, I saw this, and—well, by George! Look at it!"

He whipped open the Gazette with a movement which all but shredded it and thrust it into Varney's hand. Varney sat up in bed and smoothed it out upon the coverlet.

Coligny Smith was clever and his eye ranged wide. He saw all the chances that there were, and what he saw he made the most of. For his front-page "picture feature" that morning, he had selected a two-column half-tone of a good-looking, though not altogether pleasant-faced young man; and beneath it had indited in bold capitals which the most casual eye could not miss: "Mr. Ferris Stanhope, Author and Former Hunstonian, Who Has Just Arrived in Town."

"I see," said Varney, slowly. "Meaning me." Beside the portrait ran a "story," which said in part:

"It leaked out yesterday that the 'mysterious stranger' who suddenly appeared off Hunston in an elegant private yacht on Monday night, is none other than Ferris Stanhope, well-known author of novels of the pink-tea type….

"Mr. Stanhope is a native of Hunston, and is well remembered here. As the result of certain escapades which need not be detailed in a home paper like the Gazette, he left town, somewhat hurriedly, one night twelve years ago. Until Monday he has never been back since. The news of his arrival has not been received with general expressions of pleasure. Predictions were freely made about the streets yesterday that if certain old and respected citizens of Hunston should chance to meet the author, trouble is sure to arise.

"Why Mr. Stanhope should have elected to come back to Hunston has not yet been ascertained. Some say that it is the result of a bet, friends having wagered that he would not venture to return for a month's stay here. These declare that he is using the yacht as base of operations to reconnoiter and determine whether it is safe to land. Color is lent to this theory by the pains which the distinguished author is taking to conceal his identity. The name of the yacht has been carefully erased, and he is using, it is said, an assumed name.

"The secret of Mr. Stanhope's identity came out too late last night for the Gazette to obtain an interview. With him on the yacht is a 'Mr. Maginnis,' representing himself as a wealthy New Yorker and a 'student of government.' Both gentlemen, it is said, are claimed as allies by Hunston's new 'Reform party.'"

Peter broke out the moment Varney laid down the paper, but Varney, staring absently out of the porthole, did not listen. This, then, was the meaning of the pale young editor's enigmatical remark last night. Here was no idle malice. Diabolically resourceful and without shame, young Mr. Smith had circulated this lie to discredit reform and drive off its new champion. And this was the way that he, Varney, had kept the coming of the Cypriani quiet in Hunston!

"And think of the cursed bull luck of it!" cried Peter. "The most the rascal hoped to do was to ruin my plans for helping Hare by these dirty hints about both of us—at the best to scare us away from Hunston. He never dreamed that he was knocking the bottom out of any private plans of yours!"

Varney stretched and yawned. "Well, he isn't."

"Doubtless I am a stupid ass and all that," said Peter, staring, "but with the Gazette publishing it about the countryside that you are a yellow dog of the worst nature, I don't grasp how you expect Miss Carstairs to come on this yacht and lunch with you."

A knock sounded on the stateroom door, and McTosh entered, announcing two telegrams for Mr. Varney.

Varney, wondering a little who had known his whereabouts, took the yellow envelopes, nodded to the steward not to wait, broke them open, read the typewritten words within, read them again.

Then he looked up and found Peter gazing at him more or less expectantly.

Varney laughed. "Do you remember that night at the club my saying to you, as a great inducement: 'Suppose the New York papers get on to this'?"

Peter nodded.

Varney handed him the yellow slips; then he arose and pushed the service button.

"McTosh," he said, "send to town at once and get me copies of the Sun, the Times, the Daily and the Herald—all the New York papers. No, go yourself, and don't stay longer than is absolutely necessary."

Peter, meantime, with a heart beating as it had not beat the night before when he had overthrown Ryan and stolen his meeting, was reading the following:

Daily story has got us all guessing. If it's really
you, what the devil are you up to, anyway?
R. E. TOWNES.

The other was in a similar vein:

Alarming story in Daily to-day. Absolute secrecy a
prerequisite as explained. Reporters tried to reach me
to-night. Trust you fully, but implore you to proceed
with utmost caution.
ELBERT CARSTAIRS.

"The plot thickens," said Peter when Varney turned back, "till I, for one, can't see the drift. However—you've sent for the Daily?"

Varney nodded. "I told him to get three or four others, too, for a blind."

"Politics," said Peter, in his calmest fighting manner, "is all off. I'm not the least interested in it. We'll give the morning to studying yellow journalism. But about Miss Carstairs. How can you possibly—"

"By heaven," said Varney, with a sudden burst of anger, "I'll make her know who I am, if I have to drag in her own mother to introduce me."

He went off to his bath, dressed hurriedly, dawdled a moment at the breakfast-table, where he found Peter discussing a cereal not without a certain solemn pleasure, and went above grappling with the thought that all this would mean a postponement of his call at the Carstairs house, and maybe something more serious still. The morning was sunny and crisp. He walked to the bow, briskly, by way of a constitutional, turned and started down again. As he did this, his eye fell upon a strange figure which had at first escaped him. Toward the stern of the Cypriani, near the wheel, a little runt of a boy hung over the rail, and made the air noxious with the relicts of a low-born cigar. He was an aged, cynical boy, with a phlegmatic mien and a face of the complexion and general appearance of a hickory-nut.

A little surprised by the sudden apparition, Varney came down the deck and dropped into a chair near him.

"Well, my lad! I'm happy to see you and your cigar again. But to what do we owe the pleasure of this call from you two old friends?"

The boy turned his back to the rail and faced him impassively. In the brilliant sunshine, he looked singularly worn and wise.

"I brung dem wires," he said courageously plying the cigar. "Any answer?"

"I'll see, after a while," said Varney, hastily lighting a pipe as counter-irritant. "So you're the telegraph boy, are you?"

"Nawser. Odjobbin' I do. Anythink as comes handy. They don't deliver no wires down here. I handles 'em sometimes for wut dere is in it."

"Oh! Well, I won't fail to see that there is something in it for you this time. And do you make much money odd-jobbing?"

"I git along awright. Summertimes I do. Wintertimes there ain't no odjobbin' much."

"How old are you, my boy?"

"Twelve year old."

"Twelve! I thought you were sixteen, at least."

A faint look of gratification crossed the boy's face, but he only said stoically: "Twelve year's my age."

"What do you do in the wintertime when there isn't much odd-jobbing? How do you get along then?"

"I git along awright. Sometimes I git help. Off a lady here, a frien' o' mine."

"What lady? What's her name?"

"Name o' Miss Mary. Miss Carstair, some calls her. I git money and clo's off her. I'd 'a' had some bum winters, hadn't ben for her."

There was a pause, and then Varney said: "What's your name, my boy?"

Again the boy hesitated. "Tommy," he said presently.

"Tommy what?"

"Tommy—Orrick."

Varney started. Of all the sordid Hunston of the natives, that was the one name which meant anything to him. It was rather a curious coincidence.

"Then I suppose old Sam Orrick," he said kindly, "is your father's father."

"Nawser," he answered slowly. And he added presently, "He wuz me mudder's father."

After that, the silence lengthened. Varney looked off down the river. Tommy Orrick, whose father was named something else, clapped his hand suddenly to his lip, because his cigar just then scorched it unbearably.

"What is your father's name, Tommy?" asked Varney, in a low voice.

His back toward Varney, his fragment of a cigar poised, reluctantly ready to drop, the boy shook his head. "I don't rightly know," he said in his husky little voice.

But Varney knew that name: and he said it now slowly over to himself in a dull and futile anger.

From the shore a boat put out hurriedly and the faithful steward came flying over the water with meritorious speed. With him he was bringing the papers that might settle the Cypriani's mission, but Varney, for the moment, hardly gave him a thought. His own affairs were blotted from his mind just then by the tragedy of the little waif before him, luckless victim of another's sin, small flotsam which barely weathered the winters when odd-jobbing was scarce, and only one lady cared.

"Where do you live, Tommy?"

"Kerrigan's loft mostly—w'en Kerrigan ain't dere."

"This morning," said Varney rapidly, "I'm just as busy as a bee. But this afternoon, or to-morrow morning anyway, I want to come down to Kerrigan's and call on you."

"Wut about?" the boy demanded with an instant suspiciousness which was rather pathetic.

"About you, Tommy. I have got a little plan in my head, and there isn't any time to talk about it now. What would you say to having a home with some nice people I know in another city—in New York?"

A sudden dumbness seized Tommy. His head slowly lowered and he did not answer. Around the deck-house from the port-side hurried McTosh, his arm embracing a bundle of papers, his brow beady with the honest toil of speed wrung out of country paths.

"Ah, steward! You made good time. Ask Mr. Maginnis if he won't come on deck when he is at leisure. Thomas, you're for the shore, aren't you? Forward, there!"

He got up and stood by the side of grave little Tommy Orrick, who was staring silently down at the white deck.

"Down in New York, Tommy, I know a nice woman who has a home and no boys at all to put in it. A long time ago she used to be the nurse of a boy I knew, but he grew up; and now her husband's dead and she's all alone. And here in Hunston is a boy with no home to put himself in. That's you, Tommy, and I—but here's your boat. I'll come to see you to-morrow at Kerrigan's—sure, and we'll talk it all over. Good-bye. And remember that you and I are just the best friends going."

He held out his hand, to shake, but Tommy, in an excess of stage-fright at the unwonted ceremonial, nimbly turned his back; and the next instant he slipped over the rail like an acrobat and dropped into the waiting dinghy. Safely there, he glanced tentatively upward; but seeing that the tall man above was still standing at the rail and was smiling down upon him, looked tactfully away again. And Varney heard him say to the oarsman in a snappy, impatient voice: "Pull for all you know, dere! I got bizness dat won't keep."

Varney sat down with the bundle of papers. Within the minute, Peter appeared, replete but characteristically alert.

"Read it yet?"

"No, but I've found it. It wasn't hard."

He handed Peter the paper, his thumb crooked to indicate the place, which was superfluous; for near the middle of the front page, top of column and in the strong type of captions, the words leaped out to Peter's eye as though hand-illumined in many colors:

FERRIS STANHOPE OR LAURENCE VARNEY

Mystery Surrounding Young Man On Yacht Near Hunston.

He Says He's Varney—Natives say He's Stanhope
and Trouble Feared—Yacht is Elbert Carstairs's, with
Her Name Painted Out—Mr. Varney's Movements
Unknown to Friends Here.

Peter read the story aloud in a guarded undertone. In general, it closely followed the story in the Gazette; so closely indeed as to show at a glance that both productions came from one brain and pen. But toward the end, the new story took a different turn. It said:

"The above is a sample of the gossip which is agitating this usually quiet little town. Late to-night there are two distinct factions. One holds that the young 'stranger' is Ferris Stanhope, reconnoitring under an alias. The other contends that he is really Laurence Varney, or somebody else, up here on some secret mission. Unless the stranger leaves town before, the facts will doubtless be brought out to-morrow. The gossips promise that a sensation of no mean order is forthcoming."

Below this, some one in the Daily office had added:

"A certain air of mystery surrounds Laurence Varney's recent movements. At his bachelor apartments, in the Arvonia, it was learned last night that Mr. Varney was out of the city, but the man-servant there had no idea of his master's whereabouts. From other sources, however, it was learned that Mr. Varney left New York several days ago on the Cypriani, a handsome steam yacht belonging to Elbert Carstairs of No. 00 Fifth Avenue. An attempt was made to reach Mr. Carstairs at his home, but the hour was late, and he could not be interviewed. A telegram sent to Ferris Stanhope's last known address, Camp Skagway in the Adirondacks, was unanswered up to the hour of going to press."

Peter let the paper drop upon his knees, and whistled father shamefacedly. Here was a pretty kettle of fish indeed, and it was all of his brewing. If he had kept his fingers out of the affairs of Hunston, as both his enemy and his friend had warned him to do, the unscrupulous editor would have had no interest in attacking him, over his captain's shoulders, and this damaging story would never have been concocted and spread broadcast as a feast for gossips. He had been brought to Hunston to help Varney—and here was the front-page result.

If a similar thought flashed across Varney's mind in this disturbing moment, he instantly forgot it for others more practical. He sat curled up in a folding deck-chair, swiftly weighing what this new issue might mean, and a moment of rather heavy silence ensued.

The cat was all but out of the bag: this fatal hint at "some secret mission" made that plain. A little carelessness, some more shrewd probing into his affairs, and the jig would be up, indeed. This was the one way that their enemies in Hunston could interfere with him—insisting on knowing why he had come there; and Coligny Smith had had the bull luck, as Peter put it, to stumble on it.

Thus it fell out that he, Varney, who had needed to seek the dark and unobtrusive ways, found himself thrust suddenly into the full glare of the calcium. He who was guarding an errand which nobody should know about was now to be asked by everybody who read newspapers just what that errand was.

It was so absurd that all at once he laughed aloud. However, it was becoming quite serious, and he saw that, too.

"Damn him!" broke out Peter, compactly, and he added presently: "Think of his throwing a bomb in the air like that, and smoking out poor old Carstairs!"

Varney looked up, knocked out his pipe against his heel, and restored it thoughtfully to his pocket. "Yes. Did you notice the difference between those two stories? He doesn't want Hunston even to suspect that I may be myself. His game here is to know I'm Stanhope, whom the whole town is sore on. In New York, he tries both stories, not knowing which will hurt the most. However, theories will keep. The facts are plain. They've started out to run us down—that's all. The point is now to decide what we are going to do about it."

He stood up, tall and cool, his jaw shut tightly, his brow puckered into a long frown, thinking rapidly.

"As I see it," he said slowly, "it works about like this. Probably the Gazette is the local news bureau for this town. At any rate, it is evident that somebody on it is the correspondent of the Daily. The Gazette, we know, wants to run you out of town in order to have a free hand in slaughtering Hare. Last night they supposed that my looking like Stanhope was the best card they had. This morning they will guess that there may be a still better one lying around somewhere. The Daily tells them that I'm Varney, and, what is much more interesting, that I'm using Elbert Carstairs's yacht. Mrs. Elbert Carstairs lives in Hunston. Putting two and two together, and adding the painted-out name and a dash of seeming furtiveness on my part, you have all the materials for a nice, yellow mystery. I haven't the slightest doubt that when that telegraph editor in New York gets down to his office about one o'clock to-day, the very first thing he does, after hanging his coat on the nail, is to wire his correspondent to begin operating on me."

Peter nailed the alternative. "If he doesn't, the Gazette will attend to the job, anyway."

"Yes, the press is on our trail, in any case. The fact that this is the Carstairs yacht will mean more to the Gazette than it could to the Daily. It will be a kind of connecting link for them. Of course, they'll jump at it like wildfire. If they can make anything at all out of it, they'll play it up to-morrow so that nobody in this town can possibly miss seeing it."

"Pray heaven," said Peter, referring to Mary Carstairs, "that she won't see the Daily this morning!"

"Yes. Her father's name would naturally start her to thinking, which would make things awkward."

"Larry, the Gazette is going to print his name to-morrow morning as sure as Smith is a lying sneak."

"We've still got to-day, haven't we? By Jove, it's nearly eleven already. A reporter may be down on us at almost any minute. We can't stand being cross-examined. No searchlight of journalism playing about on the Cypriani just now, thank you. My own idea is—"

"To grab him, to batter the face off him—"

"No, to elude him. Not to be here. In short, to run away."

"What? You can't mean that you are going to let that dog drive you back to New York?"

"Well, hardly. But I do mean to make him think he has! I mean to run down the river a few miles and anchor where they can't find us, simply to get out of the way. Then we'll run back to-morrow in time for the luncheon. What do you think of that?"

Peter, his forehead rumpled like a corduroy road, stared at him fixedly and thought it over. "I think it's the best thing in sight," he said judicially. "An exceedingly neat little idea."

"If we're being watched, it may persuade them that we've gone. Anyway, it will give us time to decide what next," said Varney. And he hurried off to confer with the sailing-master.

Presently the engine-room bell rang out a signal. Orders were given and repeated above and below. Men began moving about swiftly. The noise of coal scraped hurriedly out of bunkers smote the air. The Cypriani's hold throbbed with sudden life.

Varney, running hastily through the two newspaper stories again to make sure that they had missed nothing that might be important to them, was presently joined by Peter, who was looking at his watch every third minute and swearing softly every time he looked. Something had been discovered amiss with the machinery, it seemed. The captain was sure he would have the plaguy thing all right in another half-hour, but you never could tell. For his part he'd swear that a yacht was worse than an old-style motor car: you could absolutely count on her to be out of order at any moment when you positively had to have her.

To be delayed until somebody appeared to challenge their going was to lose half the battle. Varney went off to the sailing-master and spoke with him again, concisely. The sailing-master, a sensitive man to criticism, once more apologized, very technically, and redoubled his energies. He went below himself to superintend the repairs and to prod the laggards to their utmost endeavors. In less than three quarters of an hour, by Peter's watch, he was up again, in a shower of falling perspiration, to announce that all was ready.

However, valuable moments had been lost. It was now nearly half-past twelve, or, in Peter's indignant summary, "just an hour and a half too late."

Varney glanced toward the bridge.

"All ready there?" he called.

"All ready, sir," said the sailing-master, and sprang for the indicator.

"Hold on," said Peter suddenly. "We're getting visitors. There's some one signaling us from the shore."

Varney's heart bounded. He turned with an exclamation; but in the next breath, he ordered: "Let her go, Ferguson."

Upon the shore, at the spot where the Cypriani's boat ordinarily landed, stood a tallish, stocky young man, looking at them cheerfully and swabbing his brow with a large blue handkerchief. Catching Varney's eye, he waved his hand with the handkerchief in it, and said, for the second time:

"Hello, aboard the Cypriani!"

Varney stepped to the rail, a faint smile on his lip. "Hello, there!
What can we do for you?"

"Hot as merry hell, isn't it?" said the young man pleasantly. "Send a boat over for me, will you? I'm Hammerton, of the Gazette and the New York Daily, and I want to come aboard for a little talk."

"Never in this world!" breathed Peter, sotto voce.

Varney smiled, grimly. "Sorry, Mr. Hammerton. You're just too late. We are starting away from Hunston this very minute."

The Cypriani shuddered like a live thing and slid slowly forward.