The Pirates' Treasure Chest (7 Gold Hunt Adventures & True Life Stories of Swashbucklers). Эдгар Аллан По

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СКАЧАТЬ down. Drawers had been emptied, searched, and their contents dumped down in one corner. Rugs had been torn up. Even the upholstery of chairs and the lounge had been ripped. The inner room was in the same condition. A thorough, systematic examination had been made of every square inch of the apartment. It had been carried so far that the linings of gowns had been cut away and the trimming of hats plucked off.

      "A burglar!" gasped Miss Berry.

      "Let's give him a name. Will Captain Boris Bothwell do?" I asked of Blythe.

      The Englishman nodded.

      "You've rung the bell at the first shot, Sedgwick."

      "Oh, I don't think it," Miss Berry protested. "Captain Bothwell is too much of a gentleman to destroy a lady's things wantonly. Just look at this hat!"

      Evelyn laughed at her wail. It happened not to be her hat.

      "It's dear Boris, all right. I wonder if he left his card?"

      "Shall we call in the police?" her aunt asked.

      Miss Wallace questioned me with her eyes.

      "Might as well," I assented. "Not that it will make a bit of difference, but it will satisfy the hotel people. Probably it would be as well not to mention our suspicions."

      So we had the police in. They talked and took notes and asked questions, and at last went away with the omniscient air peculiar to officers of the law the world over. They had decided it was the work of Nifty Jim, a notorious diamond thief at that time honoring San Francisco with his presence.

      Over a cigar in my rooms Blythe and I talked the matter out. Bothwell had made the first move. Soon he would make another, for of course he would search my place at the Graymount. The question was whether to keep the rooms guarded or to let him have a clear field. We decided on the latter.

      "How far will the man go? That's the question." My friend looked at his cigar tip speculatively. "Will he have you knocked on the head to see if you are carrying it?"

      "He will if he can," I told him promptly. "But I'm taking no chances. I carry a revolver."

      "Did you happen to notice that we were followed to-night?"

      "That's nothing new. They've been dogging me ever since I got the map. But I play a pretty careful game."

      "I would," Blythe agreed gravely. "I say. Let me stay with you here till we get off. Better be sure than sorry."

      "Glad to have you, though I don't think it's necessary."

      It may have been five minutes later that I suddenly sat bolt upright in my chair. An idea had popped into my head, one so bold that it might have been borrowed from Bothwell's lawless brain.

      "I say. Let's play this out with Captain Boris his own way. Let's just remind him we're on earth too."

      "Meaning——"

      My eyes danced.

      "I'm as good a burglar as he is, and so are you."

      Blythe waited.

      "He doesn't give a tinker's dam for the law," I continued. "Good enough! We'll take a leaf out of his book. To-morrow night you have an engagement—to ransack the captain's rooms."

      "What for?"

      "To get that corner of a map he stole from his cousin. Part of the directions for finding the treasure are on it."

      "But Miss Wallace has another copy."

      "An inaccurate one. Her father changed the directions on purpose in case some one found it."

      Blythe smoked for a minute without answering.

      "You're a devilish cool hand, Sedgwick. I'm a law-abiding citizen myself."

      "And so am I—when the other fellow will let me. But if a chap hits me on the head with a bit of scantling I'll not stop to look for a policeman."

      "Just so. I was about to say that since I'm a law-abiding citizen it's my duty to take from Bothwell the goods he has stolen. I'm with you to search his rooms for that paper."

      Underneath his British phlegm I could see that he was as keen on the thing as Jack Sedgwick. Looking back on it from this distance, it seems odd that two reputable citizens should have adventured into housebreaking so gaily as we did.

      But Bothwell had brought it on himself, and both of us were eager to show him he had some one more formidable than a young woman to deal with. Moreover, there is something about the very name of buried treasure that knocks the pins of respectability from under a man.

      Up to date I had led the normal life of a super-civilized city dweller, but within a fortnight I was to shoot a man down and count it just part of the day's work. None of us knows how strong the savage is in us until we are brought up against life in the raw.

      My trailers followed me about next day as usual, but I chuckled whenever I saw them. For we were doing a little sleuthing ourselves. I borrowed Jimmie from the firm and the little gamin kept tab on Bothwell.

      The captain did not leave his room until nearly midday, but as soon as he had turned the corner next to his hotel, the Argonaut, on the way to his breakfast-lunch, Jimmie dodged in at the side entrance, slipped up the stairs and along a corridor, up a second and a third flight by the back way, down another passage, and stopped at a room numbered 417.

      With him he had a great bunch of keys similar to those used in that hotel. One after another he tried these, stopping whenever he heard approaching footsteps to hide the keys under his coat. Several persons passed, but found nothing unusual in the sight of a boy knocking innocently on a door.

      At last Jimmie found a key which turned in the socket. That was all he wanted. Relocking the door he went down the stairs to the street, his fingers tightly clenched around the key that fitted. Nor did he take the little closed fist out of his coat pocket until he and I were alone together in my office, from whence he departed two dollars richer than he had entered.

      Jimmie having been retired from duty, Blythe took his place in watching Bothwell. He engaged a room on the fourth floor of the Argonaut, from which he was able to observe the coming and going of the enemy.

      My work at the office finished, I took a car for the Graymount, followed as usual by one of the detectives that for days had dogged me. My attendant on this occasion was a shrimp of a man with a very wrinkled face and a shock of red hair. Some imp of deviltry in me moved me to change my seat for one beside his.

      "A pleasant day," I suggested to open the conversation.

      He agreed that it was.

      "I suppose your kind of work is always more cheerful in good weather," I went on.

      "My kind of work!" Plainly he was disconcerted at my remark.

      "Yes. Must be devilish unpleasant shadowing a man in cold weather. Don't you have to wait outside houses sometimes for hours at a stretch?"

      The palm of his hand rasped a stubbly chin as he looked askance at me.

      "Why—er—I СКАЧАТЬ