HONOR OF THIEVES

HONOR OF THIEVES

A Novel

BY
C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE
AUTHOR OF
“THE NEW EDEN,” “THE RECIPE FOR DIAMONDS,” “ADVENTURES OF
CAPTAIN KETTLE,” “THROUGH ARCTIC LAPLAND,” ETC., ETC.

R. F. FENNO & COMPANY : 9 and 11 EAST
SIXTEENTH STREET : NEW YORK CITY
LONDON—CHATTO & WINDUS, PICCADILLY
1899

Copyright, 1895-1899
BY
C. J. CUTCLIFFE HYNE

Honor of Thieves.

TO
MY VARIOUS SHIPMATES
AND SHOREMATES
ON SEA AND AMERICAN LAND IN 1893
IN MEMORY OF
WHAT WE SAW TOGETHER AND WHAT WE DID.

C. J. C. H.

PREFACE.

“It seems to me,” said a philosopher once, “that there are no entirely good men in the world, and none completely bad. Single out your best man, and you will find that he lacks perfection in some part of him; and examine your worst, and you will see that he has at least one redeeming quality.”

In this book the men mostly verge towards bad: but some are better than others. Because they are merely human, they act according to their lights. You may meet others like them any day if you go out and about, and most of them give extremely good dinners. Till they are found out, you consider them amusing: afterwards, being better than they, you instantly set them down as most pernicious scoundrels, and shake hands with yourself, and write to your tailor to order more noticeable phylacteries on the next new suit. This is called “keeping up a healthy moral tone,” and does a great deal of good in the world.

Scalloway,
Shetland Islands,
1895.

CONTENTS.

HONOR OF THIEVES.

CHAPTER I.
THE ANTECEDENTS OF PATRICK ONSLOW.

Miss Rivers picked out the name of Patrick Onslow in the society paper which lay upon her knee, and drew idle circles round it with a pink ball-pencil. Fairfax tugged at his mustache, and returned to the subject which they had been discussing.

“The fellow has,” said Fairfax, “a genial insolence of manner which seems rather taking with some people. But I confess I shouldn’t have thought him the man you would have cared to see twice, Amy.”

“You’re prejudiced, obviously; and I’ve a good mind to say maliciously prejudiced. I don’t know how much you saw of him, because I can’t be invited to a Wanderers’ Club dinner; you don’t know how much I saw of him, because you missed some distant train and didn’t come here to the ball last night. But I’ll tell you: I saw all I could. He’s perfectly and entirely charming. He’s been everywhere, done everything, and he isn’t a bit blasé.”

“I heard,” said Fairfax, “that Mrs. Shelf was lionizing Onslow round last night as the great traveler. Does he belong to the advertising variety of globe-trotter? Did he sit in a side room and hold a small audience spellbound with a selection from his adventures?”

Miss Rivers shrugged her shoulders. “Not he. But you know what Mrs. Shelf is when she gets any show person at one of her functions. The poor man had to stand it for a while, because she held on to him as though he might have been her fan. But he escaped as soon as he decently could by saying he wanted to dance. He asked me to give him the fourth waltz. I did it out of sheer pity, because I saw Mrs. Shelf’s thumbscrews were making him writhe.”

“’Shows how little a man knows about the girl he’s engaged to. Now, I had always imagined that, having the pick of the men, you invariably wrote down the best dancers, and never saddled yourself with a stranger who was a very possible duffer.”

Amy Rivers laughed. “That’s generalizing. But it was different last night, because, so to speak, I’m a member of the household here. A ward counts as a sort of niece, doesn’t she? Or between that and an adopted daughter? But, anyway, it was out of sheer pity for Mr. Onslow in the first instance, and it was with distinct qualms that I let him take me down to dance. I quite intended, after half a round, to say the room was too crowded, and go and sit somewhere. That is to say, I made up my mind to do this when he asked me. However, when I dropped my fingers on his arm to go down-stairs, I had my doubts. You know after two seasons one gets instinctively to know by the first touch how a man will dance. And when he put his arm around me, and we moved to the music, I felt like going on forever. Waltzing is hard just now, because it’s in a transition state between two styles; but his dancing was something to dream about. We started off with the newest quick waltz. Hamilton, it was just lovely! He was so perfect that just for experiment I altered my step—by degrees, you know. Automatically, and without anything being seen, he changed too; and we were dancing the old slow glide before I knew. And his steering was perfect. In that whirling, teeming, tangled mob he never bumped me once. I gave him two more waltzes, and cut another couple in his favor.”

“Which makes five in all,” said Fairfax, rather stiffly.

Amy Rivers took his hand and patted it. “Don’t be cross, dear. You know how I love a good dance, and one doesn’t meet a partner like Mr. Onslow every day. I suppose he’s done his waltzing in Vienna and Paris, and Yorkshire, and New Orleans, as well as here in London; and by averaging them all up he can’t help but be good.”

“Is it from going to those places that Mrs. Shelf called him the Great Traveler?”

“Of course not! Hamilton, how stupid you are about him! Why, he’s rummaged about in every back corner of the world, so they say.”

“So they say, yes! Teheran to Timbuctoo. But what does he say himself about his wanderings beyond the tram-lines? Shuffles mostly, doesn’t he? And who’s met him anywhere? Not a soul will come forward to speak. I tell you, Amy, there’s something uncanny about this Patrick Onslow. He turns up here periodically in London after some vague exploring trip to a place that isn’t mapped, and you can never pin him to tell exactly where he’s been. He comes with money, spends it en prince, and then goes off again, nominally perhaps to the Gobi Desert, and returns with another cargo.”

“How romantic!” said Miss Rivers.

“Yes, isn’t it?” said her fiancé drily. “If he’d lived a century earlier, one would have said he’d got a sound business connection as a pirate somewhere West Indies way. As this year is eighteen ninety-three, and that explanation’s barred, one simply has to accept him as an uncomfortable mystery.”

“Hamilton, how absurd you are! Wherever did all this rigmarole come from?”

“From the club, and London gossiping places generally. I suppose we ought to be indebted to Onslow for providing us with something to talk about.”

“But tell me; if his antecedents are so queer, how is it he goes about so much here? He’s apparently asked everywhere—at least, so Mrs. Shelf says—and he knows everybody who’s worth knowing.”

Fairfax laughed. “Why does London society take up with an ex-bushranger from Australia, or a glorified advertising cowboy from the wild, wild West? Simply because London society is extremely parochial, and gets desperately bored with its own little self undiluted. Now, Onslow has undoubtedly wandered about outside the parish; and occasionally he lets drop hints which make one think he’s seen some queerish ups and downs in places where polite society doesn’t go; and, in fact, he preserves a good-humored reticence about most of his doings. This makes people thoughtful and speculative. If a Chinese extradition warrant was to turn up to-morrow to arrest him for sticking up a three-button mandarin beyond the Great Wall, nobody would be a bit surprised; or if he were to tell the City this afternoon that he’d a concession for a silver mine in an unexplored part of Venezuela which he wished to dispose of at reasonable rates, we’d take it with pleased equanimity. Now, you know, Amy, there’s a fearful joy in entertaining a man of that stamp.”

“Especially when he’s as fascinating as Mr. Onslow can be when he chooses. And such a waltzer! But you speak as if he was a savage from some back settlement, come into decent society for the first time. He isn’t that in the least. He’s a gentleman distinctly.”

“My dear Amy, I never meant to suggest that he was not. There’s no particular secret about his life. He comes of a good west-county family; was a Harrow boy, and played in their eleven; went through Cambridge; and afterwards found a berth in the Diplomatic Service. Then, by way of variety, he got engaged to be married to a girl who jilted him; on the strength of which he began to run wild. He started on six months’ leave for a trip into Tibet, but he stayed beyond the limits of the postal system for two years and a half, and when he got back to England the Diplomatic Corps found that they could get on very well without him. So he continued his rambles. He doesn’t seem able to settle down.”

“That’s because he can’t forget the girl who threw him over,” exclaimed Miss Rivers. “How awfully romantic! I wonder who she was? She couldn’t have been anybody nice, or she wouldn’t have done it, because he’s a regular dear. And fancy his remembering her all this time! I just love him for it.”

“Some fellows,” remarked Fairfax judiciously, “would get jealous if the girl they were going to marry talked about another man this way.”

Miss Rivers reassured him first practically, and then in words. “You goose!” said she; “if I cared for him in that way, don’t you see, I shouldn’t have spoken about him to you at all.”

Fairfax did not answer directly. He kissed her thoughtfully, and after a while he said: “I’m not superstitious, dear, as a general thing. Work in a shipping office tends to make one painfully matter of fact. But for all that, I wish this fellow Onslow would either marry or get crumpled up in a cab accident, or have himself safely fastened down out of harm’s way somewhere. I’ve got a foreboding, Amy, that he’s going to do a bad turn either to you or to me—which means both of us. I know it’s absurd, but I can’t get rid of it.”

“How creepy!” said Amy Rivers. “But what nonsense, Hamilton!”

CHAPTER II
A FORTUNE FOR THE PAIR OF US.

Mr. Theodore Shelf’s carriage and pair drew up at the smartest house in Park Lane, and Mr. Theodore Shelf went up the steps and entered the door which a man servant opened for him. He was a stout, middle-aged man, with a clean-shaven face, and a short frock-coat of black broadcloth. He allowed himself to be eased of his hat and umbrella, and then passed through the gorgeous hall to the rosewood billiard-room at the back. There he found his guest, Mr. Patrick Onslow, in shirt-sleeves, practising fancy shots by himself.

“What, alone, Mr. Onslow?”

“Why, yes. I did have a hundred up with your niece earlier, but some one came for her.”

“Niece? Oh, Amy, you mean—Miss Rivers? Ah, my dear sir! from the love we have for her in this household, and the way we treat her, you naturally fancy she is a blood relation. It is a graceful compliment for you to pay, Mr. Onslow; but it is my duty to correct you. Miss Rivers is legally only my ward.”

“Ward? Oh, see that? Red hard against the cushion, and white bang over the bottom pocket. Neat cannon, wasn’t it, considering the long time since I’ve handled a cue?”

“The only child of my late partner. You know, the firm still stands as Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf. We call ourselves on the billheads, ‘Agents to the Oceanic Steam Transport Co.,’ though, of course, we really own the whole line. You see our flag, sir, in every sea.”

“I know. Nagasaki to Buenos Ayres; gin and gunpowder on the West Coast; coals and cotton at New Orleans.”

“And we do not send our steamers for the business of trade alone, Mr. Onslow. We pick our captains and officers with an eye to a holier purpose. We trust that they spread a Christian influence in all their ports of call,” observed Mr. Shelf unctuously.

“Yes; I saw them at work once at Axim, on a tramp steamer you sent down there. They were taking Krooboys on board. The skipper received them on one of the bridge-deck ladders with a knuckleduster, and kicked ’em along. The chief stood by with a monkey-wrench and tickled them with that as they passed down to the lower deck aft. They mentioned at the time that this process had a fine Christianizing influence; prevented the boys from being uppish; showed ’em what the white man could do when he liked; taught ’em humility, in fact. I say, there’s a pull towards this bottom pocket. People have been sitting on the table.”

“Mr. Onslow—Mr. Onslow, you are making a very serious accusation against one of my ship’s companies.”

“Accusations? I? Never a bit of it. The fellows only acted according to their lights. That’s the only way sailormen know of getting Krooboys to work; and it was a case of squeezing the work out of them or having the natural sack from you. And so, as they didn’t know another method, they fell back on knuckleduster and monkey-wrench. I’ll play you fifty up.”

Mr. Shelf put up a large white hand. “No; I don’t play billiards myself. So many young men have been ruined by the pursuit, that I refrain from it by way of setting an example. But my friends who visit here are not so scrupulous, and I have the table for them.”

“Beautiful!” said Onslow. He might have been referring to his own play, or to Mr. Shelf’s improving sentiment.

“You see, Mr. Onslow, from my position, so many people look up to me that it is nothing short of my bounden duty to deprive myself of certain things, and be, so far as possible, a humble model for them to form themselves by. Long before a constituency sent me to Parliament, I devoted my best energies to Christianizing the lower classes, and I hope not without success. If appreciation is any criterion, I may say that I was elected president of no less than twelve improvement societies. It took me much time and thought to attend to them. Yet I wish I could have given more.”

“Yes—that pocket does pull; there’s a regular tram-line towards it. H’m, mighty good work of yours. But doesn’t it sour on you sometimes? Don’t you want a day off occasionally? A run down to Monte Carlo, for instance?”

“Monte Carlo! You horrify me, Mr. Onslow. You are my guest, and I cannot speak strongly; but this is a very poor jest of yours.”

“Well, perhaps you know best about that place. Monte Carlo is risky at the best of times for some folks, because you’re bound to meet crowds of people you know; and if they aren’t on the razzle-dazzle too, and pinned to decent silence through their own iniquities, some of them are apt to split when they get home again. But I don’t know why you should be horrified, seeing that we are entre quatre yeux here, and not on one of your pious example platforms. You know you’ve been in a far hotter shop than Monte Carlo.—See me pot that red? Ah, rouge perd—Barcelona, to wit. If you remember, you were staying at the Cuatro Naciones, and at nights you used to cross the Rhambla, and——”

“Mr. Onslow, how did you know all this?”

“Do you remember objecting to take a sheaf of obvious spurious notes, and there was a row, and somebody whipped out a knife, and somebody else floored the knife-man with a chair?”

“Yes—no.”

“After which you very sensibly bolted. Well, I had only just that moment come in, but I saw you were a fellow-islander, and that’s why I handled the chair. You don’t remember me, and I didn’t know your name, but I recognized you the moment your wife introduced us, because I never forget a face.”

“You’re mistaken. I never was in such a place in my life, sir. Think of the position I occupy. Why, the thing’s absurd!”

“Now, my good sir, why waste lies? I’m not going to show you up. No fear. Why should I? It would probably ruin you, and I should stand self-convicted of being in the lowest and most desperate gambling hell in Europe, without being made a sixpence richer by the transaction. Only you didn’t know me, and you thought I didn’t know you; and I thought it would be handier if we were open about one another’s little ways at once before we went any further. Who knows but what we might be partners in some profitable business together?” Onslow put his cue down and faced his host, with hands deep in his trousers pockets. “It’s worth thinking about,” he observed.

Mr. Theodore Shelf stood before the fireplace and drew a handkerchief across his forehead with trembling fingers. “What business do you refer to?” he asked at length.

“None whatever. I’m not a business man. I make discoveries and don’t know how to use them. You are a business man and may be able to see where the money profit comes in. If you can, why then we’ll share the plunder. If you can’t, we’re neither of us worse off than before.”

“But this is vague. What sort of discoveries? Have you found a mine?”

“No, sir; in the present instance a channel!”

“A channel?—I don’t understand you.”

“A deep-water channel leading in to a certain coast, where everybody else supposes there is nothing but shallow water. The Government charts put down the place as partly unsurveyed, but all impossible for navigation. The upgrowth of coral, they say, is turning part of the sea into dry land. In a large measure this is true; but at one point—which I have discovered—a river comes down from the interior, and the scour of this river has cut a deep narrow channel out through the reefs to the deep sea water beyond.”

“Well,” Shelf broke in, “I see no value in that.”

“Wait a minute! In confidence I’ll tell you it is on the West Coast of Florida—on the Mexican Gulf coast. The interior of southern Florida is called the Everglades. It’s partly lake, partly swamp; built up of mangroves, saw-grass, cypress trees, and water; tenanted by snakes, alligators, wild beasts, and a few Seminole Indians. Only one expedition of whites has been across it—or rather only one expedition known to history. But I’ve been there, right into the heart of the Everglades; in fact, I’ve just come from there; and I netted £1000 out of the trip.”

“How?” asked Shelf, eagerly.

“Never mind exactly how. That’s partly another man’s business. Shall we say the other man gave me a commission there, and I carried it out, and got duly paid? Anyway, that’s sufficient explanation. But now about this channel I’ve found. If one gives it to the chart people, they’ll simply say, ‘Thank you,’ and publish your name in one number of an official magazine which nobody reads. I don’t long for fame of that kind. I’ve the sordid taste to much prefer gold.”

“I think I understand you,” said Shelf. “Give me a minute to think it out.”

“A week if you like,” said the other; and, picking up his cue, again returned to the billiard-table.

The balls clicked lazily, and the rosewood clock marked off the seconds with firmness and precision. Shelf lay back in his chair, his finger-tips together beneath the square chin, his eyes watching the shadows which the lamps cast on the frescoed ceiling. He looked entirely placid. No one would have guessed the simmer of thoughts which were poppling and bubbling in his brain. A stream of projects came before him, flashed into detail, and were dismissed as impracticable. It was the great trait of this man’s genius that he could think with the speed of a hurricane, and clear his head of an unprofitable idea a moment after it was born.

Twenty schemes occurred to him, all to be dismissed: and then came the twenty-first; and that stayed. He ran a mental finger through all its leading details: he conned over a thousand minutiæ. It was the thing to suit his purpose.

A bare minute had passed, but he needed no more time for his deliberations. The scheme seemed perfect to him, without flaw, without chance of improvement. The hugeness of it thrilled him like a draught of spirit. He was betrayed away from his unctuous calm; his hands dropped on to the arms of the chair.

With a heavy start he clambered to his feet, strode forward, and seized Onslow by the arm. “If your channel and Everglades will answer a purpose I want, there’s half a million of English sovereigns to be made out of it.”

Onslow turned and faced him with a long, thin-drawn whistle. “£500,000! Phew!”

“Hush! there’s somebody coming. But it’s to be had if you’re not afraid of a little risk.”

“I fear nothing on this earth,” said Onslow, “when it’s to my interest not to fear. Moreover, though I’m not a saint, my standard of morality is probably a shade higher than yours. I don’t mind doing some sorts of dirty things; but there are shades in dirtiness, and at some tints I draw the line. It’s dangerous to—er—have the tips of these cues glued on so badly. They fly off and hit people.”

The billiard-room door had opened, and Amy Rivers had come in, with Fairfax at her heels. Hence Onslow’s digression. The matter had not been put in so many words; but he felt sure that the commission of a great robbery had been proposed to him, and he had more than half a mind to drive his knuckles into Theodore Shelf’s lying, hypocritical face on the spot.

CHAPTER III.
THE REQUIREMENTS OF MRS. SHELF.

Mr. Theodore Shelf wanted to drag Onslow off there and then to his own business-room, on the first floor, to discuss further this great project which he had in his head; but Onslow thought fit to remain where he was. Mr. Shelf nodded significantly towards the new-comers, as much as to hint that a third person with them would be distinctly an inconvenient third. Onslow turned to them, cue in hand, and proposed a game of snooker.

“That’s precisely what we came up for,” said Amy Rivers promptly. “Hamilton, get out the balls. Mr. Onslow, will you put the billiard-balls away, so that they don’t get mixed?”

They played and talked merrily. Their conversation turned on the wretched show at the recent Academy, which they agreed was a disgrace to a civilized country; and Onslow made himself interesting over the art of painting in Paris—mural, facial, and on canvas. When he chose he could be very interesting, this man London had nicknamed “The Great Traveler”; and he generally chose, not being ill-natured.

Mr. Theodore Shelf left the billiard-room with a feeling beneath his waistcoat much akin to sea-sickness. First of all, that plain-spoken Patrick Onslow had not over politely hinted that he was a canting hypocrite, and had showed cause for arriving at the conclusion. This was true, but that didn’t make it any the more digestive. And secondly, he himself, in a moment of excitement, had let drop to this same pernicious Onslow (who after all was a comparative stranger) a proposal to make the sum of £500,000 at one coup. True, he had not mentioned the means; but Onslow had at once concluded it was to be gained by robbery, and he (Theodore Shelf) had not denied the impeachment.

Consequently Mr. Shelf went direct to his own room, locked the door, and fortified his nerves with a liberal allowance of brandy. Then he munched a coffee-bean in deference to the blue ribbon on his coat-lapel, replaced the cognac bottle in the inner drawer of his safe, and sat down to think.

If only he understood Onslow, and, better still, knew whether he might trust him, there was a fortune to be had. Yes, a fortune! And it was wanted badly. The great firm of Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf, which called itself “Agents to the Oceanic Steam Transport Co.,” but which really ran the line of steamers which traded under that flag, might look prosperous to the outer eye, and might still rear its head haughtily amongst the first shipping firms of London port. But the man who bragged aloud that he owned it all, from offices to engine-oil, knew otherwise. He had mortgages out in every direction, mortgages so cunningly hidden that only he himself was aware of their vast total. He knew that the firm was rotten—lock, stock, and barrel. He knew that through any one of twenty channels a breakup might come any day; and, following on the heels of that, a smash, which would be none the pleasanter because, from its size and devastating effects, it would live down into history.

He, Theodore Shelf, would assuredly not be in England to face it. Since his commercial barometer had reached “stormy,” and still showed signs of steady descent, he had been transmitting carefully modulated doles to certain South American banks, and had even gone so far as to purchase (under a nom d’escroc) a picturesquely situated estançia on the upper waters of the Rio Paraguay.

There, in case the tempest of bankruptcy broke, the extradition treaties would cease from troubling, and the weary swindler would be at well-fed rest.

But Mr. Theodore Shelf had no lust for this tropical retirement. He liked the powers of his present pinnacle in the City. And that howl of execration from every class of society which would make up his pæan of defeat was an opera that he very naturally shrank from sitting through.

As he thought of these things, he hugged closer to him the wire-haired fox-terrier which sat upon his lap.

“George, old friend,” said Mr. Shelf, “if things do go wrong, I believe you are the only thing living in England which won’t turn against me.”

George slid out a red tongue and licked the angle of Mr. Shelf’s square chin. Then he retired within himself again, and looked sulky. The door had opened, and Mrs. Shelf stood on the mat. There was a profound mutual dislike between George and Mrs. Theodore Shelf.

“You alone, Theodore? I thought Mr. Onslow was here. However, so much the better. I have wanted to speak with you all the morning. Do turn that nasty dog away!”

George was not evicted, and Mr. Shelf inquired curtly what his wife was pleased to want. She seldom invaded this business-room of his, and, when she did, it was for a purpose which he was beginning to abhor. She came to the point at once by handing him a letter, which was mostly in copperplate. He read it through with brief, sour comment.

“H’m! Bank. Your private account overdrawn. That’s the third time this year, Laura. Warning seems to be no use. You are determined to know what ruin tastes like.”

“Ruin, pshaw! You don’t put me off with that silly tale. To begin with, I don’t believe it for an instant; and even if it were true, I’d rather be ruined than retrench. You and I can afford to be candid between ourselves, Theodore. You know perfectly well that we have gained our position in society purely and solely by purchase.”

“To my cost I do know it. But having paid your entrance fee at least eight times over, I think you might be content with an ordinary subscription. The ball last night, for instance——”

“Was necessary. And I couldn’t afford to do the thing otherwise than gorgeously.”

“Gorgeously! Do you think I’m a Crœsus, Laura, to pay for gearing one room with red roses, and another room with pink, and another room with Marshal Niels for fools to flit in during one short night? This morning’s paper informs me that those flowers came by special express from Nice, and cost five hundred pounds.”

“And yet you twit me with extravagance! All the papers have got in that paragraph, as I took care they should; and everybody will read it. Yet the flowers only cost a paltry three hundred pounds, so that in credit I am two hundred to the good, because I have clearly given the ball of the season. Theodore, you are short-sighted; you are a fool to your own profit. By myself I shall make you a baronet this year, and if you had only worked in your own interests half as hard as I have done, you could have entered the House of Lords.”

“Titles,” said Shelf grimly, “for people of our stamp, are only given for direct cash outlay in almshouses, or picture galleries, or political clubs. Before they are bestowed, a Crown censor satisfies himself that one’s financial position is broad and absolutely sound. There are reasons connected with those matters which block you further and further from being ‘milady’ every day.”

Mrs. Shelf shrugged her shoulders in utter unbelief. “Your preaching tendencies cover you like a second skin, Theodore. It seems as if you never drop the conventicle and the pleasure of pointing a moral at one. Believe me, is isn’t a paying speculation, this cant of yours. At the most they would only give you a trumpery knighthood for it. But go your own way, and I’ll go mine. You shall be made in spite of yourself.”

Mrs. Shelf noticed that at this point her husband’s eyes were beginning to glow with dull fury. She objected to scenes; and, dropping the subject, reverted once more to her present needs.

“However, let us stop this wrangle, and come to business. I wish you to see to that impertinent circular from the bank. I have several checks out, and unpresented; I am absolutely compelled to draw others to-day, for trifles which will add up to about a thousand. You will kindly see that they are honored. It is all your own fault, this trumpery worry about nothing. You should not try and screw me down to such a niggardly allowance.”

Shelf stood up, and the dog on his lap leaped hurriedly to the ground growling. “Woman!” he said passionately, “you won’t believe me; but if you will go on in this mad extravagance, you will soon learn for yourself that I am not lying—perhaps very soon. Perhaps to-morrow. When a shameful bankruptcy does come, then you can play your hand as you please. I shall not be here to hinder you any longer. Where shall I go, how I shall lead my new life, who will be my partner, are matters which you will be allowed no finger in. So long as things last here, I shall observe all the conventionalities; and, if you appreciate those, you will find it wise to reconsider your present ways. I tell you candidly that if the firm does go down, not only England, but half the world will ring with its transactions. Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf,” he went on with scowling fury, “were honest, prosperous tradesmen once, before their ways were fouled to find money for your cursed ambition.”

There was a new look on Theodore Shelf’s clean-shaven face which his wife had never seen before, and an evil glint in the eyes which scared her. Irresolutely she moved towards the door and put her fingers upon the handle. Then she drew herself up and stared him up and down with a look of forced contempt. “You will be good enough,” she said coldly, “to attend to the business which brought me here. I am going now to draw the checks I spoke about.”

Shelf looked at her very curiously. “Go,” he said, “and do as you please. You are a determined woman, and, because I am determined myself, I admire your strength of will; but for all that I think I shall murder you before I leave England.”

Mrs. Shelf laughed derisively, but with pale lips; and then she opened the door.

“What fine heroics,” she said. “But thanks for seeing after my balance. I must have that money.”

She passed through the door, closing it gently behind her, and Shelf returned to his armchair.

“George,” he said, as the fox-terrier stood up against his knee, “if that woman were only struck dead to-day, there are two thousand families in England who would rejoice madly if they only knew one-tenth part of what I know. Poor beggars, they have trusted me to the hilt, and she makes me behave to them like a fiend. D’you know, my small animal, I wish very much just now an earthquake or a revolution or something like that would occur, to shuffle matters up. Then if I got killed I should be spared a great deal of worry; and if I didn’t, why I’ve got large hands, and I believe could grab enough in the general scramble to suit even her. As it is, however, with neither earthquake nor revolution probable, I’m a desperate man, ready to take any desperate chance of commercial salvation. Eh, well!” he concluded, as he reached for a paper-block and rested it on George’s back, “worrying myself about the matter won’t improve it. The only thing is to try and keep things running in their present groove.” He broke off and scribbled a Biblical text. “Other men would have been suspected long before this. But my reputation has saved me.” He smiled to himself softly. “What a thing it is to be known as a thoroughly good man!”

He broke off at this point, and applied himself with gusto to writing his sermon for the ensuing Sunday.

CHAPTER IV.
BUSINESS AT A BALL.

When people are engaged, they usually contrive to meet with frequency, and so Amy Rivers showed no very great surprise at seeing Fairfax again later in the evening. She only said: “Why, I didn’t know you knew the Latchfords.” To which Hamilton Fairfax replied that he did not know them, but had met another man at the club who was coming to the party, and that the other man had brought him.

“An extra male never matters at a big dance,” said Fairfax. “Besides,” he went on, “I wanted particularly to see you this evening. Since we parted last, I’ve heard of an estate for sale in Kent which I fancy would just suit us. The present holder wants money, and therefore it’s going cheap; but there’s another fellow after it, and I’ve only got the refusal till to-morrow morning. So you see I want your views on the subject at once.”

“Very well,” said Miss Rivers; “you shall tell me about it in, say, three dances from now. There are no programs here to-night; but I have promised the next two waltzes and the square, and don’t particularly want to cut them. In the mean time, I wish you would go and talk to Mrs. Shelf. She said when we were driving here that she wanted to speak to you. I don’t know about what, but she’ll tell you that herself.”

“Right!” said Fairfax. “Ta-ta for the present!” And he went through the rooms till he saw the blaze of diamonds and rubies which decked the handsome person of Mrs. Theodore Shelf.

Mrs. Shelf had, as usual, a concourse of men round her. She was a woman who deliberately cultivated the art of fascination, because it was essential to her ambition; and men are always willing to be dazzled and fascinated. They were laughing when Fairfax came up. She saw him from the corner of her eyes, but for the moment took no notice of him. She leaned forward and delivered another sentence to the men before her through the top feathers of her fan, which sent through them another thrill of merriment; and then shut the fan with a click and turned to Fairfax.

The other men went away, still laughing, which was quite typical of Mrs. Shelf’s powers. She always concluded her audiences dramatically. No actress on the stage had more knowledge of how to bring about an artistic “curtain.”

She watched them go with a smile of mild triumph, but when she turned to Fairfax this had flitted away. There was distinct annoyance on her face.

“Why don’t you know these people here?” she asked.

“Well, I suppose I may say that technically I do know Lady Latchford now. The chap who brought me introduced me to her. But of course she’ll have forgotten me by this time.”

“Then why didn’t you stop and talk to her—amuse her—or, better still, be impertinent to her? You ought to have known the Latchfords before. Indeed, I thought you did; but to slip in like that, without a noise, was worse than a mistake—it was a crime. Don’t you know that the Latchfords are useful? Really, Hamilton, you make me angry. You never make the slightest effort to get on, and know people who will be useful to you, and all that.”

Fairfax felt half amused, half annoyed. He shrugged his shoulders.

“I don’t know what Amy will do with you when she marries,” Mrs. Shelf went on. “You’ve no dash about you, no smartness. If you are left to yourself, you may make money, but you will never make a name.”

“I’m not a man,” said Fairfax, with a half-angry laugh, “who would ever walk about in spurs and blow a trumpet.”

“No,” replied Mrs. Shelf; “you would, if you had your own way, work ten hours a day in the City, and then come home and sleep. Once a month you would give a dinner party to City friends, and talk shop the entire evening. In the end you would die, and have written on your gravestone, ‘This was a dull, honest man, who made a million of money and no enemies.’ Now I,” said Mrs. Shelf, “should feel lonely beyond belief if I didn’t know that there were people who hated and feared me. It gives one the sense of power, and that means confidence; and a woman with confidence gets on. It is only your harmless fool who is popular all round, and a person whom everybody in their innermost hearts despise, whatever they may say of him aloud. You must shake this mood off, Hamilton. Begin now. Go up to the Latchford woman, and be impertinent to her. Say the floor’s so bad you can’t dance on it, or the supper’s poisoned you, or that there’s a woman here who picks pockets. Put it nicely, you know, and make it cut, and then she’ll ask you to her next function, because she’ll think you too dangerous to make an enemy of.”

“I don’t feel equal to the job,” said Fairfax. “It would probably end in my being kicked there and then out of doors if I attempted such a thing.”

“Nonsense,” said Mrs. Shelf. “Polite impertinence is the best possible cachet nowadays. And you must cut out some style for yourself. Go and begin now.”

She dismissed him with a tap of her fan, and beckoned another man up.

Fairfax went off willingly enough, but he did not go and impress himself upon his hostess’s memory by the crude process of baiting her. Instead, he hung about the rooms and idled away his time till Amy Rivers was ready for him, and then, slipping her arm through his, led her to a niche on a secluded staircase.

“Now,” she said, “tell me all about this place in Kent.”

He told her soberly and quietly all the details, and waxed dry over leases and repairs of outbuildings.

“It sounds lovely,” she said when he had finished; “but you don’t seem very enthusiastic over it yourself.”

“That’s not my way, dear. Mrs. Shelf has been telling me what a very dull young man I am, and suggested that I should commence improving matters by going up and insulting my hostess. I’m afraid I haven’t done it. To begin with, I couldn’t; and to go on with, she’d squash me out of existence with a look, if I made the attempt. You see, Amy, I know my limitations; I’m a tolerably heavy person, with limited powers of speech, and a subdued sense of humor.”

“You might be brighter, that’s a fact,” Miss Rivers admitted candidly.

“If you are tired of me, dear——”

Miss Rivers craned her neck down the line of the banisters, to make sure that no one was looking, and then drew Fairfax to her, and gave him a kiss.

“Don’t be a great goose!” she said. “Only don’t think that I am going to agree with you in everything. That would be far too dull and copy-booky. And don’t think I imagine you perfect. I should hate you most cordially if you were.”

“What are my faults?”

“Do you think I could tell you the whole list in a single evening? No, sir. Some day, when I am more than usually annoyed with you, I will begin early and read out a chapter of them. Till then, I’ll bear with the lot. Tell me some more about this place in Kent.”

“I have told you all I know. If you like the idea, we might run down to-morrow and see it ourselves, before we finally decide on the purchase. The only thing is about the price. You know I’m a tolerably well-off man, dear, but there are limits to my capital, and most of it is well locked up. Of course this place has to be paid for in cash, which is the reason for its going so cheap.”

“Well?”

“Well, I am afraid that alone it would not be wise for me to purchase it. But then one cannot get over the fact that you are an heiress—excuse my being unromantic and practical—and we are presumably not going to live on my income only. And so, if the house and its grounds should suit us, I was wondering whether you would feel disposed——”

“Oh, my dear child, how you do beat about the bush! Of course I’ll help buy the place if we like it. Why shouldn’t I? There’s heaps of money, and there’s no earthly reason why we shouldn’t use it.”

“But will the trustees let you have it?”

“I’m not of age for another year, but the trustees have discretionary power. At least, Mr. Shelf has, and he never thwarts me in anything. I believe he’d do anything for me. He is really the kindest man. If you like, Hamilton, I’ll see him about it before he goes out to-morrow morning.”

“I think that will be best, dear. You see, in the present state of the offer, one has to rush things.”

“How much am I to ask him for?”

“Fifteen thousand pounds would do. I can manage the rest.”

“Oh, he’ll let me have that without any trouble at all. I’m sure of it. And if the other trustee was awkward, he’d advance it to me for the year out of his own pocket. Listen, there’s the music going again. Aren’t you going to dance with me to-night, Hamilton?”

“Ye-es, a waltz, or anything like that. But they’re playing that abominable barn-dance. I think it’s idiotic. Makes such a show of one’s self. Let’s sit it out here.”

“Not I. I love the barn-dance. I do it well, and I dress for it. Consequently, my dear boy, I’m not going to miss it. You needn’t kick up your heels unless you like, but I warn you I’m going to disport myself. Come along, and take me down-stairs. There now! you’ve ruffled my hair again.”

“Come along, then,” said Fairfax. “You can knock over my worst prejudices. I’ll dance two barn-dances with you if I get the opportunity.”

CHAPTER V.
BIMETALLISM.

It was late in the evening when Patrick Onslow again found himself en tête-à-tête with his host. There had been people in to dinner at the house in Park Lane, but these had gone, and Mrs. Shelf and Amy Rivers followed them to Lady Latchford’s dance. Mrs. Shelf had wished to carry Onslow also in her train, but that person stayed behind by a request which he could not very well refuse. “You will favor me very much by remaining here for the rest of the evening, Mr. Onslow,” Shelf had said in his pompous way. “I have matters of the greatest moment which I wish to discuss with you.”

“I hardly know how to begin,” Shelf confessed uneasily, when they were alone.

“Then let me make a suggestion,” said Onslow, with a laugh. “Come to the point at once. Let’s have the plot without any introductory chapters. You’ve told me you’ve got a scheme on hand for turning my discovery into currency, and you’ve rather hinted that it’s a dirty scheme. The only question is, how dirty? Thanks to pressure of circumstances, I’m not an over-particular person; but on points I’m very squeamish; or, in other words, I draw the line somewhere. Unless I’m very vastly mistaken, your plan will involve one in downright knavery, which is a thing all sensible men avoid if possible. Now, in my ignorance, I fancied the find might be turned to account without climbing down to that.”

“Oh,” said Shelf, eagerly, “then you had a scheme in your head before you came to me?”

The other shrugged his shoulders and lit a cigar. “Just a dim outline, nothing more. You see, the interior of the Everglades is absolutely untouched, by the white man’s weapons. It was vaguely supposed to be one vast lake, with oases of slime and mangroves. The lake was reported as too shallow for boats, and abounding with fevers, agues, and mosquitoes. Consequently it remained unexplored, and on the end of the Florida peninsula to-day no white man (barring myself and one or two others) has ever got further than five or eight miles in from the coast. Now, as I’ve told you, I was lucky enough to hit upon a fine deep ship-channel going in as far as the center line, and I don’t know how far beyond inside. There is good fertile country, a healthy climate and the best game-preserve on this earth. For the first comers, that interior will be just a sportsman’s paradise. My idea is two-wise. First sell the cream off the sport. Some men will give anything for shooting, and in this case there will also be the glamour of being pioneers. Each one will start determined to write a book of his opinions and doings when he gets back. By chartering a steamer and treating them well on board, they would have sporting de luxe, and one ought to get quite five-and-twenty chaps at five hundred guineas apiece. That gives the first crop. For the second, buy up an enormous tract of the land, which can be got for half nothing—say ten or fifteen cents an acre—boom it, and resell it in lots to Jugginses. They’ll fancy they’ll grow oranges, as all Englishmen do who try Florida. Perhaps they may grow them: who knows, if they keep off whisky and put in work? But that won’t be the promoters’ concern. They don’t advertise that the land will produce oranges; they only guarantee that it would if it was given a chance; and that’s all correct. Perhaps this is rough on the Jugginses; but as they crowd these British Islands in droves, and are always on the look-out for some one to shear them, I don’t see why an Everglades Company shouldn’t have their fleeces as well as anybody else. They’re mostly wasters, and wouldn’t do any mortal good anywhere; and it’s a patriotic deed to cart them over our boundary ditch away from local mischief. Besides, even if the worst comes to the worst, and the orange industry of Florida still refuses to make headway, the would-be growers needn’t starve; nor need they even do what they’ll probably hate more—and that’s work. There’s always sweet potatoes and mullet and tobacco to be got, and if that diet doesn’t cloy, a man can have it there for mighty little exertion. Come, now. That’s the pemmican of the plan. What do you think of it?”

“Much capital would be needed.”

Onslow shrugged his shoulders. “Some, naturally, or I shouldn’t have come to you. If I’d seen any way to pouching all the plunder single-handed you may bet your life, Mr. Theodore Shelf, I shouldn’t have invited you into partnership.”

“Returns, too, would be very slow.”

“Not necessarily. Float the company, and then turn it over to another company for cash down.”

“Moreover, when the—er—the young men you spoke about, found that the orange-groves did not produce at once in paying quantities, they would write home, and their parents would denounce me as a swindler in the newspapers.”

“No, not you; the other company—the one you sold it to. But then apologists would arise to show that the Jugginses—don’t shy at the word, sir—were lazy and ignorant, and also that they absorbed the corn whisky of the country in excessive quantities. And then that company could grin smugly, and pose as a misunderstood benefactor. So its profits wouldn’t be smirched in the least. Grasp that?”

“Yes, yes: I dare say you have worked it all out to yourself, and thought over the details so many times that the whole scheme seems entirely plausible. But looking at it from the view of a business man, I cannot say that it appears to be an enterprise I should care to embark in. You see it is so very much beyond the scope of my general operations that I—er—hesitate—er—you understand, I hesitate——”

“Yes,” said Patrick Onslow, quietly, “you hesitate because you’ve got something ten times more profitable up your sleeve.”

Shelf started, and shivered slightly.

“You may as well be candid and open with me,” Onslow continued, “and tell me what you are driving at. If it suits me, I’ll say so; and if it doesn’t, I’ll let you know with surprising promptness. And again, if we don’t trade, you may rely on me not to gossip about your suggestion. I’m not the stone-throwing variety of animal. You see I live in a sort of semi-greenhouse myself.”

There was a minute’s pause, during which Theodore Shelf shifted about as though his chair was uneven rock beneath him. Then he jerked out his tale sentence by sentence, squinting sideways at his companion between each period.

“You know I’m a shipowner in a large way of business?”

Onslow nodded.

“Ships are occasionally lost at sea: steamers, even new steamers straight out of a builder’s yard, and well found in every particular.”

“So I’ve read in the newspaper.”

“And every shipowner insures his vessels to the full of their value.”

“Except when he has a foreboding that they will come to grief on a voyage. Then, so rumor says, he usually has the forethought to over-insure.”

Mr. Theodore Shelf passed a handkerchief over his forehead, and started what was apparently a new topic.

“There is a silver crisis on just now in the United States, and by this morning’s paper the dollar is down at sixty cents. American gold is not to be had. English gold is always worth its face value. What more natural financial operation could there be than to ship out sovereigns, and profit by the discrepancy?”

“Ah,” said Onslow, “so the new and valuable steamer, which, though over-insured, is likely to be reported lost, is evidently to have a consignment of specie on board. £500,000 I fancy you mentioned as the figure in the billiard-room this morning. Well, if one is going in for robbery—or piracy, I suppose it would turn out to be in this instance—there’s nothing like a large coup. It’s your niggler who usually fails, and gets laid by the heels. Drive on, and be a little more explicit.”

“Couldn’t the steamer be lost somehow in the Gulf of Mexico, and a boat containing the boxes of specie find its way through this channel of yours into the interior of Florida?”

“How—lost?”

Mr. Shelf mopped his forehead again. “Don’t steamers,” he asked, “don’t they sometimes have sad accidents which—which cause them to blow up?”

“Such things have been known. But it’s rather rough on the crew, don’t you think?”

“Oh, poor fellows, yes. But a sailor’s life is always hazardous. Indeed, what can he expect with wages at their present ruinous rate? Shipowners must live.”

“Oh, you beauty!” said Patrick Onslow.

“I must ask you,” cried Shelf with a sudden burst of sourness, “to refrain from these comments, sir. But tell me, before I go any further in this confidence, am I to count upon your assistance?”

“That depends upon many things. To begin with, there’ll have to be modifications before I dabble. I’m not obtrusively squeamish about human life—my own, or other people’s. On occasion I bagged my man—because he had twice shot at me. Still, piracy, complicated with what practically amounts to murder, is an art which I haven’t trafficked in as yet; and, curious to relate, I don’t intend to begin. Your scheme is delicious in its cold-bloodedness; but it would look better if it were toned down a trifle. By the way, better help yourself to a drink. Your nerves are in such a joggle, that I fancy you’ll faint if you don’t. I notice there’s no blue ribbon on your evening dress. Humph! That’s a second mate’s nip—four fingers, if it’s a drop; apparently you are used to this. Tell me now, what honorarium do you propose I should take for engineering this piece of rascality in your favor?”

“I will give you five hundred pounds!”

“Now, would you, really? Not even guineas?”

“Mr. Onslow, I’ll make it a thousand. There!”

“Mr. Theodore Shelf, when a monkey wants a cat to pull chestnuts for him out of the fire, he first has to be stronger than the cat. You don’t occupy that enviable position. In fact, I have the whip-hand of you in every way. We need not particularize, but you can sum the items for yourself. Now I’ll make you an offer. Half of all the plunder, and entire control of everything.”

“Great heavens! do you want to ruin me?”

“I don’t care in the least if I do. Your welfare doesn’t interest me. But my services are on the market with a prix fixé, and you can take ’em or leave ’em. That’s final.”

Shelf burst into a torrent of expostulations; exciting himself more and more as he went on; till at last he stood before the other with gripped fists and the veins ridged out down his neck, inarticulate with fury.

Onslow heard him out with a contemptuous smile, but when the man had stormed himself into silence, then he spoke, coolly and coldly:

“When one trades in life and death, the brokerage is heavy. You have heard my offer. If you don’t like it, say so without further palaver, and I’ll leave you now—with your conscience, if you have a rag of such a commodity left.”

“You may sit where you are,” replied Shelf sullenly.

“Well and good. That means to say my terms are accepted. I’ll pin you to them later. But for the present let me observe to you something else, so that there may be no misunderstanding between us. I’ve been rambling up and down the world half my life, and I’ve met blackguards of most descriptions in every iniquitous place, from Callao to Port Saïd—forgers, thieves, murderers of nearly every grade of proficiency. But they say that the prime of everything gets to London, and I verily believe now that it does, for by Jove, you are the most pernicious scoundrel of all the collection!”

“Sir!” thundered Shelf, “am I to listen to these foul insults in my own house?”

“Oh, I quite understand the obligations of bread and salt; but you are beyond the pale of that. You are a noxious beast who ought to be stamped out. Still you can be useful to me; so I shall hire myself out to be useful to you. But I have brought these unpleasant facts under your notice, to let you thoroughly understand that I have summed you up from horns to hoofs, and to point out to you that I wouldn’t give a piastre for your most sacred word of honor. We shall be bound to one another in this precious scheme by community of interests alone; and if you can swindle me, you may. Only look out for the consequences if you do try it on. I never yet left a score unpaid. We’re Arcades ambo—rascals both; only we’re different varieties of rascal. I know you pretty thoroughly; and if you don’t know me as well, possibly you will before we’ve done with one another. And now, if it please you, we’ll go into the minuter details of this piece of villainy, and sketch out definitely how we are to steal this half a million in specie, and this valuable steamer, without committing more murder than is absolutely essential to success.”

CHAPTER VI.
THE TEMPTING OF CAPTAIN OWEN KETTLE.

“If one might judge from the lacquered majesty of your office appointments,” said Patrick Onslow, taking one of the big chairs in Shelf’s inner sanctum, “your firm is doing a roaring fine business.”

Mr. Theodore Shelf seated himself before his desk and began sorting out some papers. “The turnover,” he said evasively, “is enormous. Our operations are most extensive.”

“Extensive and peculiar,” commented Onslow.

“But I regret to say that during the last eighteen months the firm’s profits have seriously decreased, and the scope of its operations been much hampered. I take credit to myself that this diminution could have been prevented by no action on my part. It is entirely the outcome of the times, and the lazy greed of the working classes, fomented by the frothings of paid agitators. The series of strikes which we have had to contend against is unprecedented.”

“Is it? Well, I don’t know. There have been labor bothers all down through history, and I fancy they’ll continue to the end of time. If you’ll recollect, there was a certain Egyptian king who once had troubles with his bricklayers, and I fancy there have been similar difficulties trotting through the centuries in pretty quick succession ever since. Of course, each man thinks his own employés the most unreasonable and grasping that have ever uttered opinion since the record began; that’s only natural. But I might point out to you that in definite results you aren’t in the worst box yet. Your chariot hasn’t been upset in the Red Sea so far, and it may be that a certain operation in the Mexican Gulf will grease up the wheels and set it running on triumphantly. Grumble if you like, Mr. Shelf, but don’t make yourself out to be the worst-used man in history. Pharaoh hadn’t half your opportunities.”

“Yes, yes,” said Shelf, who didn’t relish this kind of conversation; “but we will come to business, if you please.”

“Right you are. Let’s finish floating the swindle.”

“Mr. Onslow!” exclaimed the other passionately, “will you never learn to moderate your language? There are a hundred clerks within a hundred feet of you through that door, and sometimes even walls can listen and repeat. Besides, I object altogether to your phraseology. We engage in no such things as swindles in the City. Our operations are all commercial enterprises.”

“Very well,” said Onslow, shrugging his shoulders; “don’t let’s squabble over it. You call your spade what you like, only I reserve a right to clap on a plainer brand. We’re built differently, Mr. Shelf. I prefer to be honest in my dishonesty. And now, as I’ve said, let’s get to business. You say the charter of this steamer of yours, the Port Edes, has expired, and she is back on your hands. She’s 2000 tons, built under Lloyds’ survey, and classed 100 A1. She’s well engined, and has just been dry-docked. She’ll insure for every sixpence of her value without comment, and there’s nothing more natural than to send out your specie in such a sound bottom. Remains to pick a suitable complement.”

“I’ve got a master waiting here now by appointment. His name is Kettle. I have him to a certain extent under my thumb, and I fancy he will prove a reliable man. He was once in our firm’s employment.”

“Owen Kettle, by any chance?”

Mr. Theodore Shelf referred to a paper on his writing-table. “Captain Owen Kettle, yes. He was the man who lost the Doge of Venice, and since then he’s never had another ship.”

“Poor devil! yes, I know. That Doge of Venice case was an awful scandal. Owners filled up the Board of Trade surveyor to the teeth with champagne, or she’d never have been passed to sea. As it was, she’d such an unholy reputation that two crews ran from her before they could get her manned. She was as rotten as rust and tumbled rivets could make her, and she was sent to sea as a coffin ship to earn her dividends out of Lloyds’. Kettle had been out of a job for some time. He was a desperate man, with a family depending on him, and he went as skipper, fully conscious of what was expected of him. He did it like a man. He let the Doge of Venice founder in a North Sea gale, and, by a marvelous chance, managed to save his ship’s company. At the inquiry, of course, he was made scapegoat, and he didn’t contrive to save his ticket. They suspended his master’s certificate for a year. On the strength of that he applied to owners for maintenance, putting it on the reasonable claim of services rendered. Owners, being upright merchants and sensible men, naturally repudiated all knowledge or liability; said he was a blackmailing scoundrel as well as an unskilful seaman; and threatened him with an action for libel. Kettle, not having a solitary proof to show, did the only thing left for him to do, and that was eat dirt or subside. But the incident and the subsequent starvation haven’t tended to sweeten his temper. Latterly he’s been serving as mate on a Pacific ship, and he was just a terror with his men. He simply kept alive by carrying his fist on a revolver-butt. There isn’t a man who’s served with Red Kettle three weeks that wouldn’t have cheerfully swung for the enjoyment of murdering him.”

“You appear to know a good deal about this man.”

“When it suits my purpose,” returned Onslow drily, “I mostly contrive to know something about anybody. However, it’s no use discussing the poor beggar any longer. What’s amiss with having him in now?”

Shelf touched one of the electric buttons which studded the edge of his table, and a clerk appeared, who went away again, and shortly returned. With him was a dried-up little man of about forty, with a red head and a peaked red beard, who made a stiff, nervous salaam to Mr. Theodore Shelf, and then turned to stare at Onslow with puckered amazement.

Onslow nodded and laughed. “Been carrying any more pilgrims from Port Saïd to the Morocco coast on iron decks?” he asked.

“I never did that,” snapped Captain Kettle.

“Ah, one’s memory fails at times. I dare say also you forget a water famine when the condenser broke down, and a trifling affray with knuckledusters and other toys; and a dash of cholera; and nine dead bodies of Hadjis which went overboard? Perhaps, too, you don’t remember fudging a clean bill of health, and baksheeshing certain officials of his Shereefian Majesty?”

“No,” said Captain Kettle sourly, “I don’t remember.”

“I’m going to forget it also, if you’ll prove yourself a sensible man, and deal amicably with Mr. Shelf and myself. I’m also going to forget that when you were shipping rice for Calcutta in ’82 you rented mats you called your own to the consignor, and made a tidy penny out of that; and I shall similarly let slip from my memory a trifling squeeze of eight hundred dollars which you made out of a stevedore in New Orleans, before you let him touch your ship, in the fall of ’82.”

“You can’t make anything out of those,” said Kettle. “They’re the ordinary customs of the trade.”

“Shipmasters’ perquisites for which owners pay? Exactly. I know some skippers consider these trifles to be their lawful right. But a court of law might be ignorant enough to set them down as robbery.”

“I should like to know where you’ve got all these things from,” Captain Kettle demanded, facing Onslow, with his lean scraggy neck thrust forth nearly a foot from its stepping. “I should like to know, too, how you’re here? I’d a fancy you were dead.”

“Other people have labored under that impression. But I’ve an awkward knack of keeping alive. You’ve the same. The faculty may prove useful to us both in the course of the next month, if you’re not ass enough to refuse £500.”

“Ho! That’s the game we’ve got bent, is it? What old wind-jammer do you want me to lose now?”

“Sir!” thundered Shelf, lifting his voice for the first time. “This is pretty language. I would have you remember that but a short time ago you were in my employ.”

“And a fat lot of good it did me,” retorted the sailor. “But,” he added, with the sudden recollection that it is never wise of a master mariner to irritate any shipowner, “but, sir, I wasn’t talking to you. I fancied it was Mr. Onslow here who was wanting to deal with me.”

“Then your fancy carried you astray, captain,” said Shelf. “Come, come, don’t let’s get angry with one another. As I repeatedly impress on all who come in contact with me, there is never any good born out of words voiced in anger. Mr. Onslow has seen fit to mention a few of your—shall I say—eccentricities, just to show—er—that we understand one another.”

“To show he’s got his knife in me, Mr. Shelf, and can wraggle it if he chooses.”

“What a fractious pepper-box it is!” said Onslow, with a laugh. “Man, dear, if I’ve got to be shipmate with you for a solid month, d’ye think I’d put your back up more than’s necessary? If you remember me at all, you must know I’m the deuce of a stickler for my own personal comfort and convenience. You can bet I haven’t been talking at you through gratuitous cruelty. But Mr. Shelf and I have got a yarn to bring out directly, which is a bit of a coarse, tough-fibered yarn, and we didn’t want you to give it a top-dressing of varnish. So, by way of safeguard, I pointed out to you that if we show ourselves to be sinners, you needn’t sing out that you find yourself in evil company for the first time.”

Mr. Theodore Shelf had been shuffling his feet uneasily for some time. Onslow’s method of speech jarred him to the verge of profanity. His own saintliness was a garb which he never threw entirely away at any moment. His voice had always the oily drone of the conventicle. His smug hypocrisy was a perennial source of pride and comfort to him, without which he would have felt very lonely and abandoned.

At this point he drew the conversation into his own hands. It had been said of him that he always addressed the House of Commons as though he were addressing a congregation from the pulpit of his own tin tabernacle, and he preached out his scheme of plunder, violence, and other moral uncleanness with similar fervent unction. Onslow was openly amused, and once broke out into a mocking laugh. He was never at any pains to conceal his contempt for Mr. Theodore Shelf; which was more honest than judicious on his part.

Kettle, on the other hand, wore the puckered face of a puzzled man. The combination of cant and criminality was not altogether new to him. Men of his profession are frequently apt to behave like fiends unbooted at sea, and then grovel in clamorous piety amongst the pews of some obscure meeting-house during all their stay ashore. It is a peculiar trait; but many a sea-scoundrel believes that he can lay up a stock of fire insurance of this sort, which will comfortably see him through future efforts. In Kettle’s mind, however, shipowners were a vastly different class of beings, and so it never occurred to him that the same might apply to them.

In this attitude Captain Kettle listened to the sermon which was reeled out to him, and rather gathered that the project he was exhorted to take part in was in some obscure manner a missionary enterprise promoted solely in the honor and glory of Mr. Theodore Shelf’s own particular narrow little sect; and had Mr. Shelf made any appreciable pause between his sonorous periods, Kettle would have felt it his respectful duty to slip in a humble “Amen.” But the dictator of the great shipping firm was too fearful of interruptions from his partner to give any opening for a syllable of comment.

But if Captain Owen Kettle was unversed in the finer niceties of the art of hypocrisy, he was a man of angular common-sense; and by degrees it dawned upon him that Mr. Shelf’s project, when removed of its top-dressing of religion, was in its naked self something very different from what he had at first been drawn to believe.

As this idea grew upon him, the devotional droop faded from the corners of his lips, and his mouth drew to a hard, straight line, scarcely to be distinguished amongst the curving bristles of hair which surrounded it. But he made no interruption, and drank in every word till the speaker had delivered the whole of his say. Then he uttered his decision.

“So, gentlemen, you are standing in as partners over this precious business? And because you know me to be a poor broke man, with a wife and family, you naturally think you can buy me to work for you off the straight. Well, perhaps that’s possible, but there are two ways of doing it, and of the two I like Mr. Onslow’s best. When a man’s a blackguard, it don’t make him swallow any the sweeter for setting up to be a little tin saint. And I don’t mind who I say that to.”

“My good man,” snarled Shelf, “do you mean to threaten me?”

“No, I don’t. I just gave you my own opinion, as from man to man, just because I respect myself. But I’m not going round to your place of worship to shout it out to them that sit under you. They wouldn’t believe me if I did. Not now at any rate. Besides, it wouldn’t do me any good, and I couldn’t afford it. I’m a needy man, Mr. Shelf, as you have guessed; and that’s why I’m going to accept your offer. But don’t let us have any misunderstanding between ourselves as to what it foots up to. What I’m going to sign on for directly, when you hand me the papers, is a spell of piracy on the high seas, neither more nor less. And I’m going to have my money all paid down in advance before I ring an engine-bell on your blasted tramp of a steamer. I guess that’s fair enough. My family’ll want something to go on with if I’m caught, because if one’s found out at this game it’s just a common ordinary hanging matter. Yes, sir, swing by the neck till I’m dead as an ax, and may Heaven have mercy on your miserable tag of a soul! That’s what this tea-party means, and for your dirty £500 you’re buying a live human man.”

CHAPTER VII.
£500,000—IN GOLD.

The little red-bearded man had gone, slamming the door noisily behind him. Shelf mopped his large white face with a scented pocket-handkerchief.

“Do you think,” he said nervously—“do you think we may trust him?”

“To begin with, we’ve got to now, whether we like it or not. He’s nothing to gain by playing traitor.”

“But would he betray us in case of success?”

“Perhaps,” said Onslow, “he won’t have the chance. Other hands on that steamer will have to share the secret in whole or in part. Perhaps they won’t all of them come through it alive. If you remember that we are plotting deliberate piracy on the high seas, you will recognize that there is precedent for a considerable percentage of casualties.”

The City man shuddered. Through the double windows came the sullen roar of a London street, and in imagination he seemed to distinguish the howl of the crowd joined in execration against him.

His eye fell upon a paper on the desk. It was the formal notice from her bankers that his wife’s account was heavily overdrawn. He lifted the paper, and tore it with his teeth; and then he smote the table with a shut fist, so that geysers flew from the inkwells. But his passion found no outlet in words. He spoke in his platform voice, and said nothing about the prime compelling force.

“We will not talk of these unpleasant details, if you please, Mr. Onslow. I—my heart is weak, I think, and they turn me sick. But at whatever cost, we must go through with the affair. It is necessary that I make a heavy coup within the next month, or the consequences may be disastrous.”

“Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf will go down? Quite so. I’m also at the end of my cash balance, so that money seems to be the impelling power for each of us. But come now, wake up, sir, and let’s get on with the business. I’m not so sweet on this City atmosphere of yours that I care to spend another morning down here if it can be avoided. How are you going to raise the specie?”

“I’ll proceed about it at once,” said Shelf, pressing another of the buttons on his desk. “You may as well witness every step of the process.”

In answer to the bell, Fairfax came into the room, nodded rather stiffly to Onslow, and turned to Shelf with an expectant: “Yes, Sir?”

In terse, business-like phrase his principal touched upon the silver crisis in America, and the gold famine in the Southern States. Then he explained the external view of his projected enterprise.

“The Port Edes,” he said, “is in the Herculaneum Dock, returned on our hands to-day. Wire Liverpool at once, asking for freights to Norfolk Virginia, Pensacola Florida, Mobile Alabama, or New Orleans, at lowest rates. New Orleans is her final port, and offer that at fifteen per cent. less. Captain Owen Kettle will be in command, and he sails in four days from this. When you have deputed your clerks to do this, go yourself to the bank and negotiate for half a million in gold, to be delivered on board the Port Edes in dock. The insurance policy on the money will be deposited with the bank to secure them in full for the loan itself, and for their other charges the credit of the house will easily suffice. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly,” said Fairfax; “but I should like to remind you of one thing: wharf thefts at New Orleans are notorious, and you’ll have to pay heavily to insure against them.”

“I know—more heavily than for risks across the ocean and the run up the river. Underwriters are justly nervous about those all-nation thieves. But in this instance I propose to save myself that fee, and insure in a different way. Mr. Onslow is going out on the Port Edes expressly as my representative, and I fancy that he and the captain together will be capable of seeing to safe delivery. The ship’s arrival will be reported by telegraph from the pass at Mississippi Mouth, and my New Orleans agent can calculate her appearance alongside the levee to a quarter of an hour. He will meet her with vehicles and a strong escort of deputy-sheriffs as she brings in to her berth, and will take the specie-boxes off by the first gangway which is put ashore, and carry them straight to a bank. Does this strike you as a sound course?”

“Yes,” said Fairfax thoughtfully; “I see no undue risks. By the way, as the Port Edes is merely a cargo tramp, and doesn’t hold a certificate for passengers, I’m afraid the Board of Trade would not let Mr. Onslow travel by her simply as the firm’s representative. But that could be easily overcome.”

“Oh,” said Onslow, “I’ll sign on articles in the usual way as one of the ship’s company—as fourth mate, say, or doctor, with salary of one shilling for the run. ’Tisn’t the first time that pleasing fiction has been palmed upon a shipping-master. It doesn’t deceive any one you know, because the rate of wages gives one away at the outset. But the country’s paternal, mutton-headed shipping laws are obeyed, and so everybody’s pleased.”

Fairfax laughed and went into the outer offices, and Patrick Onslow turned to the shipowner with a couple of questions.

“To begin with,” he said, “why did you offer freights to Norfolk, and Pensacola, and Mobile, and those places? If you call in there, the natural thing would be to get the specie ashore and express it by railroad direct to New Orleans. If you miss that chance, and start carrying it round by sea, the thing looks fishy at once. Now, fishiness is an aspect which we can’t afford in the very least degree. The swindle will call up enough sensation in its most honest and straightforward dress.”

“My dear Mr. Onslow, please give me credit for a little more finesse. I see the objection to intermediate ports as much as you do, but I merely mentioned them to Fairfax as a blind. To begin with, it is a hundred to one chance against our getting any cargo at all consigned to them at this season of the year, even if we offered to carry it gratis. In the second place, if it was offered, I could easily get out of it in fifty ways. Afterwards, when the deplorable accident takes place, an inquiry into this will help to draw off attention from your Floridan Peninsula. Any one inclined to carp will instantly be told that we were equally ready to put the specie ashore on the Virginian coast if our other cargo had led us there. What do you think of that now?”

“Beg your pardon. That’s clear-sighted enough, and should work correctly. But I fancy my other objection is better founded. What in the name of plague did you go and economize over insurance for? Why didn’t you get the stuff underwritten slap up to the strong-room of the bank?”

“To save £500. If you aren’t going past the middle of the Mexican Gulf, what is the use of wasting money by insuring further?”

“£500 in a deal of £500,000! A mere straw in a cartload!”

“That, my dear Mr. Onslow, is business. As I often assure my young friends commencing life, if one takes care of the pennies, the pounds will take care of themselves. It is by looking after what you are pleased to consider trivial sums like these that the firm of Marmaduke Rivers and Shelf has risen to its present eminence.”