Doubloons—and the Girl. Forbes John Maxwell
very hard getting about on this crowded pier," he ventured, "and you see there are some rough characters around. You might perhaps like to have me see you safely to the street when you are ready to go?"
She hesitated for a moment, her own inclination evidently battling with convention. But convention won.
"I think not," she said, flashing him a smile that softened her refusal and at the same time completed his undoing. "You see it is broad daylight and I am perfectly safe. Thank you for the offer though, and thank you again for what you have done for me."
It was dismissal, none the less final because it was gracious, and Drew yielded to the inevitable.
He glanced back once or twice, assuring himself that it was his plain duty to keep her in sight in order to see that nothing happened to her. He found himself wishing that she would drop the letters overboard again – that the one-eyed man would reappear – that something would occur, however slight, to call him to her side once more. It was with a thrill of exultation that he saw her approach the gangplank of the Normandy.
Then, for a moment, at least, he was sure he was going to have his wish. He spied the one-eyed man coming into view from behind a heap of freight and approach the boarding-plank. He spoke to the girl and she halted.
Drew was on the point of darting back to the girl's rescue. But the seaman's attitude was respectful, and it seemed that what he said was not offensive. At least, the girl listened attentively, nodded when the man had finished speaking, and as the latter fell back she tripped lightly aboard the Normandy, and so disappeared.
Drew's curiosity was so great that he might have lingered until the girl came ashore again, but the one-eyed man was coming up the dock and the young fellow was cooler now and felt that it would not be the part of wisdom to have another altercation with the rough looking stranger. Perhaps, after all, the one-eyed man had merely spoken to the girl to ask pardon for having previously startled her.
"Well," Drew said to himself, "Peters knows her and can tell me all about her. Anyhow I know her name and I'll find out where she lives if I have to search New York from end to end."
For on the envelope that had lain uppermost when he had picked up the package from the grating of the tender, he had seen the name, "Ruth Adams." The address had escaped him in that momentary glance, and although he could have easily repaired the omission while he was passing back along the steamer's deck, his instincts revolted at anything that looked like prying.
But there was nothing in his code that forbade his using every legitimate means of searching her out and securing an introduction in the way dictated by the approved forms, and he promised himself that the episode should not end here.
"Hope springs eternal in the human breast," especially when that breast is a youthful one, and Allen Drew's thoughts spun a dozen rainbow visions as he made his way back to the shop whose insistent call he had for the last hour put aside. He walked automatically and only that sixth sense peculiar to city dwellers prevented his being run down more than once. But the objurgations of startled drivers as they brought up their vehicles with a jerk bothered him not a whit. His physical presence was on South Street but his real self was on the crowded pier where he had left Ruth Adams.
Still moving on mechanically, he entered the door of the chandlery shop, over which a signboard, dingy with age, announced that "T. Grimshaw" was the proprietor. He nodded absently in response to the salutations of Sam, the negro porter, and Winters, the junior clerk, and sat down at his desk.
The building that housed the chandlery shop was a very old one, dating back to a time previous to the Revolution. When it was erected the Boston "Tea Party" was still in the future. If its old walls could have spoken they might have told of the time when almost all New York was housed below Chambers Street; when the "Bouwerie," free from its later malodorous associations, was a winding country lane where lads and lasses carried on their courtships in the long summer evenings; when Cherry Hill, now notorious for its fights and factions, was the abode of the city's wealth and fashion; when Collect Pond, on whose site the Tombs now stands, was the skating center where New York's belles and beaux disported themselves; when merry parties picnicked in the woods and sylvan glades of Fourteenth Street.
Those same walls, looking across the East River, had seen the prison ship Jersey, in whose foul and festering holds had died so many patriots. And they had shaken to the salvos of artillery that greeted Washington, when, at the end of the Revolutionary War, he had landed at the Battery and had gone in pomp to Fraunce's Tavern for a farewell dinner to his officers.
In its day it had been a stout and notable building, and even now it might be good for another hundred years. But the inexorable march of progress and the worth of the land on which it stood had sealed its doom. Grimshaw had occupied it for twenty years, but when he sought to renew his lease he had been told that no renewal would be granted. He could still occupy the building and pay the rent from month to month. But he now held possession only on sufferance, and it was distinctly understood that he might be called upon to vacate at any time on a few days' notice.
But "threatened men live long," and it was beginning to look as though the same might be said of the old building. For two years the months had come and gone without any hint of change, and Tyke had settled down in the belief that the building would last as long as he did. After that it did not matter. He had no kith or kin to whom to leave his business.
He was a grim and grizzled old fellow, well on in his sixties. In his earlier days he had been a master mariner, and had sailed all the Seven Seas. He had rounded the Horn a dozen times; had scudded with reefed topsails in the "roaring forties"; had lost two fingers of his left hand in a fight with Malay pirates; had battled with waterspouts, tornadoes and typhoons; had harpooned whales in the Arctic; had lost a ship by fire, and been shipwrecked twice; and from these combats with men and nature he had emerged as tough and hardy as a pine knot.
The profits of a notable whaling expedition from which he had returned with the tanks filled to bursting, barrels crowded on the deck, and the very scuppers running oil, together with a tidy little inheritance that fell to him about the same time, had enabled him to buy the chandlery shop from its former proprietor and settle down to spend the rest of his life ashore and yet in sight and scent of salt water.
How he had gained the name of "Tyke," by which everybody called him, nobody knew. He himself never volunteered to tell, and in all his bills and accounts used only the initial "T." Some of his employees favored Tyrus, others Titus. One in a wild flight of fancy suggested Ticonderoga. But the mystery remained unsolved, and, after all, as the checks that bore the scrawl, "T. Grimshaw," were promptly honored at the bank, it did not matter.
He was not what could be called an enterprising business man and there were many houses in his line that made a more pretentious appearance, carried a larger stock, and had a much more extensive trade. But he lived frugally, discounted his bills, and had such a broad acquaintance among seafaring men that each year's end showed a neat profit on his books.
His store force was modest, being only three in number. Allen Drew was a sort of general manager, and Tyke was growing more and more into the habit of leaving the conduct of the business to him. Winters was the junior clerk. He had come direct from high school and was now in his second year of service. Then there was Sam, the colored porter and man of all work, whose last name was as much a mystery as Grimshaw's first.
Drew took up some papers that had been laid on his desk during his absence, and tried to fix his mind upon them. He was dimly aware that somebody had entered the store door, had spoken to Winters, and that the junior clerk had shown the visitor into Grimshaw's private office.
But Allen Drew's thoughts were too far afield to be caught by this incident, or to become easily concentrated upon humdrum business affairs. He laid down the papers, and sighed.
He began to day-dream again. In the whole category of feminine names was there ever one so pretty as Ruth? And surely never did a girl, in both form and feature, so fit the name.
Suddenly he realized that the door of the private office was open and that Grimshaw's head was thrust out.
"Hey! Come here a minute, Allen," he called.
There