“But, Miss Baldwin is, at least your guest, on board your yacht. The yacht is in the hands of Brack and the crew. Haven’t you thought that this situation might develop into one that may be unpleasant and even unsafe for Miss Baldwin?”
“I have,” he said, signaling for another peg. “And I wish I was back home in the big leather chair at the club, looking out on Fifth Avenue.” He waved his hand drunkenly toward me. “I entrust—entrust Miss Beatrice Baldwin—safety, pleasure, honor, rep’tation to you, Gardy. Ha! There’s a bright little idea. I hire you again, Gardy. New job. You—you see Betty safe and sound back to her folks.”
That hour marked the beginning of Chanler’s eclipse. At dinner-time Simmons reported him indisposed. During the next three days he left his room but seldom. He had but one desire now: to eliminate himself as a responsible factor in the storm of events about to break upon the Wanderer and its people.
XVIII
Captain Brack was sitting in Chanler’s chair when we went in to dinner that evening and Miss Baldwin’s place was beside him. Dr. Olson and myself—neither Riordan nor Wilson had appeared—sat opposite.
Brack was dressed with the care of a captain of a popular trans-Atlantic liner, and his attitude toward Miss Baldwin was solely that of a captain solicitous for his passenger’s comfort and pleasure. The yacht might have been the Mauretania, our little party the dinner crowd of the liner’s first saloon. Brack’s personality, polished and radiant for the time being, his flashing conversation, filled and illumined the room. It was difficult not to forget young Larson as one sat beneath his spell.
“An apology is necessary, Miss Baldwin, for my absence from luncheon,” he said. “It is not etiquette to fail to welcome a passenger to her first meal on board. It was necessary, however, that I stay on the bridge until I was sure that the Wanderer had reached her limit of speed and that we were holding true on our course. I have stolen thirty minutes from that duty this evening to fulfil my social obligation as captain.”
“Then we are in a hurry, Captain Brack?” she asked.
His eyes were upon her—those eyes with their compelling power—and her manner was subdued.
“The crew is in a desperate hurry, Miss Baldwin,” he said with one of his flashing smiles. “Men are always in a hurry when they hear of gold. And, really—” he bowed to her deferentially—“we have much to thank you for, Miss Baldwin, for relieving a tense situation this morning. I do not mean that there was the slightest danger of any trouble. No, no! But the situation was a trifle uncomfortable when you appeared and voted that we go hunting for gold instead of bones.” He laughed softly. “I have wondered why you did that, Miss Baldwin; is it presumptuous to ask?”