Instantly Kingsley was on his feet. His brilliant eyes flashed. But while he expressed his indignation Stratton remained in his lounging position, smiling, mocking, almost indifferent. "I would like to know, though," said Philip at last, with tempered heat, "just how you would settle the question of the purchase price at Victoria."
Then Stratton rose and came over to the helm. "Leave that with me, Captain," he said. "Understand, all you've got to do is to run the Phantom; nothing else concerns you. And I promise to hurry the business through, and see you out of the hole, with firm ground to stand on, in one grand coup."
Kingsley was silent. Presently he went forward into the bows, and stood looking off to where the silver smoke film met the shining sea. Finally his lips breathed a whistle. Stratton had taken his place at the tiller. He lighted a cigar and settled himself comfortably, but his eyes were fixed watchfully on the man forward. It was the look of a gambler who has staked high, and is sure, yet not sure of his antagonist.
At last a shadow cut the Sound far out, northward; the streak broadened, the mainsail flapped loosely, and the Phantom heeled to the sudden flaw. Kingsley sprang to the sheets. The gust passed but was followed by another, veering westerly, and another still, that steadied to a freshening breeze.
Philip came back to the helm. "Well," he said, "it looks like Seattle to-night, after all; dinner, perhaps, at the Arlington."
But Stratton, looking in his companion's face, started a little, and with his hand still on the tiller, swung the Phantom slowly around, shaping a course for Victoria.
They did not dine in Seattle that night, but the next evening found them at table d'hote in the English city. Later, in the long northern twilight, the little yacht crept out of the winding harbor and coasted the island northward to an obscure, forest-girt cove, where she came to anchor.
CHAPTER XXI
HIDE AND SEEK
An hour after the Phantom left her moorings in Victoria harbor, Bates, of the United States Customs, reported to his superior officer on board the cutter at anchor in the stream. When he had finished with the matter on which he had been detailed, he stopped to state that on his way through Chinatown he had noticed Stratton entering the house of a certain merchant and highbinder. "And," he continued, "returning, probably two hours later, my attention was attracted to a coolie who came out of the same place. He carried the baskets of a vegetable vender, suspended from the usual shoulder pole, but it was singular that, at the close of the day, and so far from the Chinese garden tracts in the suburbs, from which he must have been supplied,—those baskets should be full. I was walking in the same direction, and, at the end of the second block, a second fellow came up the cross street and fell in behind. His baskets also were heaped, apparently with produce, to the brim. They moved away in their swinging trot, more and more rapidly, and so bent on a direct course, that I felt justified in taking a hansom and following. On the edge of the town they turned out of the main thoroughfare, which would have led them to the gardens, and entered a little used trail; what seemed to be a short cut through the forest to some obscure harbor on the coast. I could go no farther in the cab, but, coming back by the park road, I saw from a height of Beacon Hill, which overlooks the channel, a small yacht with the lines and rigging of the Phantom, stealing up the shore."