The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

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СКАЧАТЬ The girl stood up with shining eyes. “Mr. Lyman, I am going to make you an offer for those figures.”

      “Why, they’re yours Miss, of course, without the asking.” She checked him.

      “Wait. I am positive my father is alive. We were closer than most fathers and daughters. I have sailed with him and been his constant companion up to the trip of the Golden Dolphin. There were special reasons why he would not take me on that voyage. But if he had died I should have known it. I am sure of it—here.”

      She put her hand over her heart, speaking with a ring to her voice that carried the assurance of an ancient sybil. Jim supposed many people had felt that way about their loved ones, desire fanning the flame of hope. Again he felt the force of her conviction against his own force of logic.

      “And now you have come here, a special messenger, coming as you thought by chance or coincidence. I do not believe in such things. It was not by chance you forced your way through that jungle; God brought you to me. I am a sailor’s daughter. I am going to that island and I know that there I shall find the clew that will help me find my father, alive.”

      Jim sat dumbfounded. He looked appeal at the spinster cousin and managed to convey a meaning in his glance that he had something to tell her in private. That the girl did not realize the magnitude, the expense, the forlorn chances of the quest she so proudly announced, he was certain.

      “I shall find my father,” she said again. “You are a sailor; you have been a mate; you have a master’s certificate and you have been looking in vain for a berth. I offer it to you in exchange for the position of the island. More than that, I offer you a share in a fortune that is hidden safely aboard the Golden Dolphin.” She paused for a moment with her forehead wrinkled. “I am not alone in the matter,” she went on, “but I have a third interest in the affair, my father another third. I offer you a sixteenth of all that we recover, in addition, of course, to your pay as master. Your share should be in the neighborhood of sixty thousand dollars.”

      Jim wondered if the girl was insane; if grief for her father had unsettled her mind. But the eminently practical face of Miss Warner showed no such apprehension.

      “It would cost a lot of money,” he said. “And the chances of finding your father are—”

      “I shall find him. I can find the money for outfitting. I have had good offers for this business. This old furniture is valuable. I have collected it personally and sold much at a good profit already.”

      “But I do not want pay for giving you your clue. I should despise myself if I did. Common humanity—”

      “It is common justice that you should share if you bring the means of restoration. The money means nothing to me compared to the finding of dad. You are the only person in the world who could have furnished me with this clue. You have been brought halfway across the world to me. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to you. You found the ship; I ask you to go back to it with me. I cannot take your information unless you agree to my terms. You would not rob me of my chance to find my father?”

      This was placing him in the small end of the horn with a vengeance, Jim reflected. Common justice, she called it. He supposed it was the working of the New England conscience. But it was a fool’s errand.

      “You’ll have to tell me more about it,” he temporized.

      “I will. But that should come with a full consultation. The Golden Dolphin was outfitted for a special purpose. There are others, two others, who have a third share between them. My uncle—the husband of my aunt, and his son. I can get in touch with them by telephone. We will hold a meeting tonight. I think it can be arranged. I’ll see.”

      She went toward the front of the shop where the telephone stood upon a wall table. If she was insane, there was method in her madness, Jim told himself. He could imagine her capable in business. But this wild undertaking? He seized his opportunity and leaned toward the spinster, whispering:

      “Did Captain Whiting have a gold bridge in his lower jaw?”

      Lynda Warner’s own jaw sagged momentarily, but she rallied to the occasion. Here was a keen-witted woman. Jim realized. And she did not answer one question with another.

      “No. Every tooth in his head sound,” she answered in the same tone. “Why?”

      Katherine Whiting had got her connection and was talking over the wire.

      “Found a skeleton beside the ship,” said Jim. “Skull had gold teeth. I was afraid it was her father. Afraid to tell her.”

      “You needn’t have been,” retorted the spinster. “Though I appreciate your idea. Any signs of foul play?”

      Jim nodded. The girl had hung up and was coming back. But how did Lynda Warner come to suspect that there should have been murder committed?

      “They’ll be over by eight o’clock,” the girl announced, excitement glowing in her face. “You’ll stay for supper, Mr. Lyman. We—we can’t lose sight of you.”

      “But—” Jim wanted to spruce up a little. Here was an atmosphere of refinement, of elegance to which he was not accustomed. He felt suddenly self-conscious, unkempt. “I should get that diary,” he suggested.

      “That will keep for a little while. I have a thousand questions to ask you, lots to tell you. Will you wait for a few minutes here, alone? Lynda, will you come with me?” She vanished.

      Her cousin, lingering at the door, said softly, “I will tell her.”

      Meaning the skeleton, Jim told himself. His head buzzed a bit. Here were adventure and opportunity hand in hand, bowing to him, like a pair of friendly djinns. Things had happened too swiftly for him to properly adjust them. He was like a player given a hand by a swift dealer. He had picked up the cards, glanced at them, but he had yet to arrange them in sequence, separate them into suits, appraise their true value. At first glance he saw he had some heart cards, but he was doubtful about them. Jim had not considered himself the type to fall headlong into love. On the other hand, he had never met a girl like this before. Jim was well enough born and bred. But he had a fair education and had taken postgraduate work in the greatest of all universities—the world at large. Long ago, in the little village of Maine, he had seen and known such things as surrounded Katherine—the diminutive of that would be Kitty, he supposed, if a chap ever got familiar enough with her to use it—and her cousin. There had been antiques and old silver and fine linen with all the niceties that go with them in his mother’s house. But of late years those things had gone by the board. He had roughened and toughened. He had lost his finer manners, perhaps his sensibilities.

      He looked at his suit of serge. It had been cheap, because he could not afford any more than he paid. Cheap clothes in this day and time are shoddy and it had worn quickly and badly. It looked like a suit from the slop chest. The same way with his shoes, his tie, his hat, everything. A chap like he was would constantly offend the girl’s ideas of life, he imagined. Then took himself to task for a fool for thinking about such things.

      The chance to go away in a ship of his own—she had hinted he would be master—down to the South Seas, with her! She crept in again to the foreground of his dreams, tugged at him with a hundred warps of interest. To find a missing man and a missing treasure, here was romance, or folly, and Jim was not old or world-worn enough to entertain the suggestion that the two are twins.

      It was Lynda Warner who reappeared and escorted him up a white, thin-spindled, СКАЧАТЬ