“Your hands!” retorted Philip, astonished.
“Yes, mine! I mean to have him, henceforth and forever, if I can! Hear that, please. I’m aboard this steamer on purpose to get him, as you will find out. I shall, inside of precious few hours, let me tell you. He belongs to me.”
Philip was confounded. His notions had been correct. The second of his doubts was answered. Gerald—little Gerald—was the end of some villainous conspiracy! What could it be for, and how long had it been closing about him?
“That is false, you know,” he replied, facing Belmont in the moonlight. “Gerald Saxton yours? What are you talking of? He is the son of a New York gentleman. You pretended to know his father. He is on his way with me to meet him. You cannot lay a finger on him! Captain Widgins—”
“Captain Widgins!” interrupted Belmont. “Captain Widgins knows all the whole affair just as I have given it to him. So do some other people on board this ship. Captain Widgins has promised to help me whenever it’s necessary. You needn’t expect to cheat him!”
Touchtone’s heart sank. Belmont had been before him. The captain’s conduct at supper was suspicion, not kindness! Yet this man was equal to any lie that might terrify his victim. He remembered that. It gave him comfort.
“To cheat the captain? I don’t believe you have dared to!” he answered. “You can no more prove any thing of the sort than you can prove that you own this boat. I challenge you or any one else! Say what you like, do what you like, you have no business with Gerald Saxton! Do you mean to claim that he is some relation to you? that he isn’t traveling on this steamer with me, by his father’s direction? that I can’t show how it comes to be so, and where we are going? Why,” concluded Touchtone, in rising wrath, “you will accuse me next of kidnapping him.”
“Exactly,” replied Belmont; “and that, you know, is just what you are about. Now don’t fly out so quickly again, Touchtone. It really won’t clear your ideas, and you will want them clear. Come, didn’t I tell you that I wished to take you into my confidence? I’ll be as good as my word, if you’ll only keep cool. I’ll start again, with a piece of advice—give up to me like a sensible fellow. The game you’ve tried to play is in my hands. You can’t carry it on.”
“Game! I don’t know of any game, unless you’re playing it.”
“Ah, yes; that’s what you ought to say, certainly, until I make you see that it will be worth your while to change your tune. You’re keen. But you know this is a bad business you’ve undertaken, a very bad business.”