The Essential Winston Churchill Collection. Winston Churchill
all," asserted Mr. Cooke, with composure. "There are the police, and here is Allen as good as run down. If they find him when they get abroad, you don't suppose they'll swallow anything you have to say about trying to deliver him over. No, sir, you'll be bagged and fined along with the rest of us. And I'd be damned sorry to see it, if I do say it; and I blame myself freely for it, old man. Now you take my advice and keep your mouth shut, and I'll take care of you. I've got a place for Allen."
During this somewhat remarkable speech Mr. Trevor, as it were, blew hot and cold by turns. Although its delivery was inconsiderate, its logic was undeniable, and the senator sat down again on the locker, and was silent. But I marked that off and on his fingers would open and shut convulsively.
Time alone would disclose what was to happen to us; in the interval there was nothing to do but wait. We had reached the stage where anxiety begins to take the place of excitement, and we shifted restlessly from spot to spot and looked at the tug. She was ploughing along after us, and to such good purpose that presently I began to catch the white of the seas along her bows, and the bright red with which her pipe was tipped. Farrar alone seemed to take but slight interest in her. More than once I glanced at him as he stood under me, but his eye was on the shuddering leach of the sail. Then I leaned over.
"What do you think of it?" I asked.
"I told you this morning Drew would have handcuffs on him before night," he replied, without raising his head.
"Hang your joking, Farrar; I know more than you about it."
"Then what's the use of asking me?"
"Don't you see that I'm ruined if we're caught?" I demanded, a little warmly.
"No, I don't see it," he replied. "You don't suppose I think you fool enough to risk this comedy if the man were guilty, do you? I don't believe all that rubbish about his being the criminal's double, either. That's something the girls got up for your benefit."
I ignored this piece of brutality.
"But I'm ruined anyway."
"How?"
I explained shortly what I thought our friend, O'Meara, would do under the circumstances. An inference sufficed Farrar.
"Why didn't you say something about this before?" he asked gravely. "I would have put into Far Harbor."
"Because I didn't think of it," I confessed.
Farrar pulled down the corners of his mouth with trying not to smile.
"Miss Thorn is a woman of brains," he remarked gently; "I respect her."
I wondered by what mysterious train of reasoning he had arrived at this conclusion. He said nothing for a while, but toyed with the spokes of the wheel, keeping the wind in the sail with undue nicety.
"I can't make them out," he said, all at once.
"Then you believe they're after us?"
"I changed the course a point or two, just to try them."
"And--"
"And they changed theirs."
"Who could have informed?"
"Drew, of course," I said; "who else?"
He laughed.
"Drew doesn't know anything about Allen," said he; "and, besides, he's no more of a detective than I am."
"But Drew was told there was a criminal on the island."
"Who told him?"
I repeated the conversation between Drew and Mr. Trevor which I had overheard. Farrar whistled.
"But you did not speak of that this morning," said he.
"No," I replied, feeling anything but comfortable. At times when he was facetious as he had been this morning I was wont to lose sight of the fact that with Farrar the manner was not the man, and to forget the warmth of his friendship. I was again to be reminded of this.
"Well, Crocker," he said briefly, "I would willingly give up this year's state contract to have known it."
CHAPTER XVIII
It was, accurately as I can remember, half after noon when Mr. Cooke first caught the smoke over the point, for the sun was very high: at two our fate had been decided. I have already tried to describe a part of what took place in that hour and a half, although even now I cannot get it all straight in my mind. Races, when a great deal is at stake, are more or less chaotic: a close four miles in a college eight is a succession of blurs with lucid but irrelevant intervals. The weary months of hard work are forgotten, and you are quite as apt to think of your first velocipede, or of the pie that is awaiting you in the boathouse, as of victory and defeat. And a yacht race, with a pair of rivals on your beam, is very much the same.
As I sat with my feet dangling over the washboard, I reflected, once or twice, that we were engaged in a race. All I had to do was to twist my head in order to make sure of it. I also reflected, I believe, that I was in the position of a man who has bet all he owns, with large odds on losing either way. But on the whole I was occupied with more trivial matters a letter I had forgotten to write about a month's rent, a client whose summer address I had mislaid. The sun was burning my neck behind when a whistle aroused me to the realization that the tug was no longer a toy boat dancing in the distance, but a stern fact but two miles away. There could be no mistake now, for I saw the white steam of the signal against the smoke.
I slid down and went into the cabin. The Celebrity was in the corner by the companionway, with his head on the cushions and a book in his hand. And forward, under the low deck beams beyond the skylight, I beheld the crouching figure of my client. He had stripped off his coat and was busy at some task on the floor.
"They're whistling for us to stop," I said to him.
"How near are they, old man?" he asked, without looking up. The perspiration was streaming down his face, and he held a brace and bit in his hand. Under him was the trap-door which gave access to the ballast below, and through this he had bored a neat hole. The yellow chips were still on his clothes.
"They're not two miles away," I answered. "But what in mystery are you doing there?"
But he only laid a finger beside his nose and bestowed a wink in my direction. Then he took some ashes from his cigar, wetted his finger, and thus ingeniously removed all appearance of newness from the hole he had made, carefully cleaning up the chips and putting them in his pocket. Finally he concealed the brace and bit and opened the trap, disclosing the rough stones of the ballast. I watched him in amazement as he tore a mattress from an adjoining bunk and forced it through the opening, spreading it fore and aft over the stones.
"Now," he said, regaining his feet and surveying the whole with undisguised satisfaction, "he'll be as safe there as in my new family vault."
"But," I began, a light dawning upon me.
"Allen, old man," said Mr. Cooke, "come here."
The Celebrity laid down his book and looked up: my client was putting on his coat.
"Come here, old man," he repeated.
And he actually came. But he stopped when he caught sight of the open trap and of the mattress beneath it.
"How will that suit you?" asked Mr. Cooke, smiling broadly as he wiped