What to do now! Tom could not, in common decency, go in to look on at the game of a man he wanted to choke. Yet Tom would have given all his chances for rank in the Academy to know what Greenhithe was talking about. Tom slowly withdrew.
As he withdrew, whom should he meet but one of his kindest friends, Commodore Benbow? When the boys made their “experimental cruise” the year before, they had found Commodore Benbow’s ship at Lisbon. The Commodore had taken a particular fancy to Tom, because he had known his mother when they were boy and girl. Tom had even been invited personally to the flag-ship, and was to have been presented at Court, but that they sailed too soon.
To tell the whole truth, the Commodore was not overpleased to see his protege hanging about the bar and billiard-room on Christmas Day. For himself, his whole family were living at Willard’s, but he knew Tom’s father was not living there, and he thought Tom might be better employed.
Perhaps Tom guessed this. Perhaps he was in despair. Anyway he knew “Old Benbow,” as the boys called him, would be a good counsellor. In point of statistics “Old Benbow” was just turned forty, had not a gray hair in his head, could have beaten any one of Tom’s class, whether in gunning or at billiards, could have demonstrated every problem in Euclid while they were fiddling over the forty-seventh proposition. He was at the very prime of well-preserved power, but young nineteen called him “Old Benbow,” as young nineteen will, in such cases.
Bold with despair, or with love for his father, Tom stopped “Old Benbow” and asked him if he would come into one of the sitting-rooms with him. Then he made this venerable man his confidant. The Commodore had seen the slurs in the “Scorpion” and the “Argus” and the “Evening Journal.” “A pity,” said he, “that Newspaper Row, that can do so much good, should do so much harm. What is Newspaper Row? Three or four men of honor, three or four dreamers, three or four schoolboys, three or four fools, and three or four scamps. And the public, Molyneux,—which is to say you and I,—accept the trumpet blast of one of these heralds precisely as we do that of another. Practically,” said he, pensively, “when we were detached to serve with the 33d Corps in Mobile Bay, I found I liked the talk of those light-infantry men who had been in every scrimmage of the war, quite as much as I did that of the bandmen who played the trumpets on parade. But this is neither here nor there. I thought of coming round to see your father, but I knew I should bother him. What can I do, my boy?”
Then Tom told him, rather doubtfully, that he had reason to fear that Mr. Greenhithe was at the bottom of the whole scandal. He said he wished he did not think that Mr. Greenhithe had himself stolen the papers. “If I am wrong, I want to know it,” said he; “if I am right, I want to know it. I do not want to be doing any man injustice. But I do not want to keep old Eben Ricketts down at the department hunting for a file of papers which Greenhithe has hidden in his trunk or put into the fire.”
“No!—no!—no, indeed,” said “old Benbow,” musing. “No!—No!—No!—”
Then after a pause, “Tom,” said he, “come round here in an hour. I know that young fellow your friend is playing with, and I wish he were in better company than he is. I think I know enough of the usages of modern society to ‘interview’ him and his companion, though times have changed since I was of your age in that regard. Come here in an hour, or give me rather more, come here at half-past two, and we will see what we will see.”
So Tom went round to the Navy Department, and here he found the faithful Eben—faithful to him, though utterly faithless as to any success in the special quest which was making the entertainment of the Christmas holiday. Vainly did Tom repeat to him his formula,—
“If the Navy did the work, the Navy has the vouchers.”