When he flung the door open, however, the red haired clerk was astride his high stool with a look of perfect innocence on his face; but Caleb was not reassured. He shook his huge fist at the fellow, and then shut the door again, turning the key in the lock and hanging his hat upon the door knob for further precaution.
CHAPTER XV
CALEB RECEIVES A STARTLING COMMUNICATION
“Some of these days,” said Caleb, with decision, when he had taken these precautions, “I shall wring that scoundrel’s neck, Adoniram. I wonder at your keeping him here.”
“Well, you see, nobody else would have him,” responded the merchant, as though that fact was reason enough for his keeping the objectionable Mr. Weeks.
“Ya-as—one o’ your blasted philanthropic notions,” declared Caleb, with a snort denoting disgust. “Well, he’ll rob and murder you some day and then you’ll wish you’d heard to me. If ‘jail bird’ ain’t written on his face, then I never saw it on no man’s.”
“But, Caleb, what do you mean by the astounding remark you just made about the Silver Swan?” asked the merchant, drawing the sailor’s mind away from the subject of Mr. Alfred Weeks and his frailties.
“I’ll tell you about it,” said Caleb, in a lower tone, seating himself by the desk again. “What I said is straight, Pepper. There is hidden inside that hulk of the Silver Swan, a lot o’ di’monds—how many, I don’t know—but enough, according to Cap’n Horace’s own words to make a man fabulously rich. They belong to his boy, Brandon, and we must get ’em for him.
“I never knew a word about the stones till we was on the raft. Cap’n Horace was pretty fur gone—any one with half an eye could see that—and when we’d been out several days an’ hadn’t sighted no ship, he wrote a long letter to Brandon an’ give it to me with a package of other papers.
“I’ve got them papers right here at this identical minute; but I ain’t opened ’em, ’cause it ain’t my place to do so. They tells all about the di’monds an’ how they come into Cap’n Horace’s han’s.
“It seems that just afore we left the Cape a man come aboard the Silver Swan and brought a package of wot he thought was papers, to Cap’n Horace, from his brother Anson.”