Five minutes later, the two stood in the captain’s cabin, and Saxon noted that the officer treated Rodman with a manner of marked deference.
“Is Cartwright’s steam yacht still at Mollera?” demanded the soldier of fortune, incisively.
“It’s held there for emergencies,” replied the officer.
“It’s our one chance! Mr. Saxon and myself must get to Puerto Frio at once. When do we strike Mollera?” Rodman consulted his watch.
“In an hour.”
“Have us put off there. Send a wireless to the yacht to have steam up, and arrange for clearance. Put on all steam ahead for Mollera.”
It was something, reflected Saxon, to have such toys to play with as this thin ally of his could, for the moment at least, command.
“Now, I fully realize,” said Rodman, as they left the captain’s cabin together, “that I’m embarking on the silliest enterprise of a singularly silly career. But I’m no quitter. Cartwright,” he explained, “is one of the owners of the line. He’s letting his yacht be used for a few things where it comes in handy.”
There was time to discuss details on the way down the coast in the Phyllis. The yacht had outwardly all the idle ease of a craft designed merely for luxurious loafing over smooth seas, but Cartwright had built it with one or two other requisite qualities in mind. The Phyllis could show heels, if ever matters came to a chase, to anything less swift than a torpedo-boat destroyer. Her mastheads were strung with the parallel wires that gave her voice in the Marconi tongue, and Saxon had no sooner stepped over the side than he realized that the crew recognized in Mr. Rodman a person to be implicitly obeyed.
If Rodman had seemed to be won over with remarkable suddenness to Saxon’s request that he undertake a dangerous rescue, it was now evident to the painter that the appearance had been in part deceiving. Here, he was more at Rodman’s mercy than he had been on the steamer. If Rodman’s word had indeed been as he boasted, that of an admiral on the City of Rio, it was, on the Phyllis, that of an admiral on his own flagship. By a thousand little, artful snares thrown into their discussions of ways and means, Rodman sought to betray the other into any utterance or action that might show underlying treachery, and, before the yacht had eaten up the route back to the strip of coast where the frontier stretched its invisible line, he had corroborated his belief that the artist was telling the truth. Had he not been convinced, Rodman had only to speak, and every man from the skipper to the Japanese cabin boy would have been obedient to his orders.