“What’s your opinion? Have you any suggestions?”
“I am a shipmaster by trade and me large friend here has been chief engineer of a good many steamers,” answered O’Shea. “We have knocked some holes in the laws of the high seas ourselves, but ye can set us down as amateurs alongside this rampageous chemical professor. ’Tis the biggest thing of the kind that was ever pulled off. This Vonderholtz has brains and nerve. And he is as cold-blooded as a fish. The man is bad clear through. And he is crammed full of conceit, which is his one weak point, the flaw in his system.”
“Call him all the names you please, but how does that help us?” snapped Jenkins P. Chase.
“Go easy, my dear man. ’Twill do no good to hop about like an agitated flea. What I am getting at is this. Vonderholtz is so well pleased with his plans that he thinks they cannot be upset. We may catch him off his guard.”
“But what if we do?” demanded Mr. Chase. “These villains have captured the whole crew of the steamer—officers, sailors, stewards.”
“’Twas not hard to take them by surprise in the night and lock them in their quarters under guard, sir,” explained O’Shea. “Half of them were off watch and asleep, ye must remember. Vonderholtz has near a hundred and fifty men, and no doubt every one of them came aboard with a gun in his clothes. There are enough of them to work the ship and to spare, and I suppose there are navigators and engineers amongst them.”
“I can believe all that,” irritably interrupted Jenkins P. Chase. “Now that the damnable piracy has succeeded, it is easy enough to see how a gang with a capable leader can take possession of any Atlantic liner. Do you think these scoundrels can be bribed?”
“’Tis not probable. Vonderholtz is a fanatic with his wild ideas about society, and he has recruited men of his own stamp. Besides, they have the two millions in gold in the strong-room to divide ‘for the good of humanity.’”
“How will they get away with the gold? The whole thing is preposterous,” snorted the millionaire.
“I have read in the newspapers that Mr. Jenkins P. Chase once stole a railroad,” pleasantly returned O’Shea. “Maybe you can figure it out better than us two sailormen how Vonderholtz stole a steamship.”