The Pagan Madonna

Cleigh was thirty years older than his son; he was a finished master of sentimental emotions; he could keep all his thoughts out of his countenance when he so willed. But powerful as his will was, in this instance it failed to reach down into his heart; and that thumped against his ribs rather painfully. The boy!

Dennison, aware that he stood close to the ridiculous, broke the spell and advanced.

“I have come for Miss Norman,” he said.

Cleigh scrutinized the cards and shifted one.

“I found your note to her. I’ve a launch. I don’t know what the game is, but I’m going to take Miss Norman back with me if I have to break in every door on board!”

Cleigh stood up. As he did so Dodge, the Texan appeared in the doorway to the dining salon. Dennison saw the blue barrel of a revolver.

“A gunman, eh? All right. Let’s see if he’ll shoot,” said the son, walking deliberately toward Dodge.

“No, Dodge!” Cleigh called out as the Texan, raised the revolver. “You may go.”

Dodge, a good deal astonished, backed out. Once more father and son stared at each other.

“Better call it off,” advised the son. “You can’t hold Miss Norman – and I can make a serious charge. Bring her at once, or I’ll go for her. And the Lord help the woodwork if I start!”

But even as he uttered the threat Dennison heard a sound behind. He turned, but not soon enough. In a second he was on the floor, three husky seamen mauling him. They had their hands full for a while, but in the end they conquered.

“What next, sir?” asked one of the sailors, breathing hard.

“Tie him up and lock him in Cabin Two.”

The first order was executed. After Dennison’s arms and ankles were bound the men stood him up.

“Are you really my father?”

Cleigh returned to his cards and shuffled them for a new deal.

“Don’t untie him. He might walk through the partition. He will have the freedom of the deck when we are out of the delta.”

Dennison was thereupon carried to Cabin Two, and deposited upon the stationary bed. He began to laugh. There was a sardonic note in this laughter, like that which greets you when you recount some incredible tale. His old cabin!

The men shook their heads, as if confronted by something so unusual that it wasn’t worth while to speculate upon it. The old man’s son! They went out, locking the door. By this time Dennison’s laughter had reached the level of shouting, but only he knew how near it was to tears – wrathful, murderous, miserable tears! He fought his bonds terrifically for a moment, then relaxed.

For seven years he had been hugging the hope that when he and his father met blood would tell, and that their differences would vanish in a strong handclasp; and here he lay, trussed hand and foot, in his old cabin, not a crack in that granite lump his father called a heart!

A childish thought! Some day to take that twenty thousand with accrued interest, ride up to the door, step inside, dump the silver on that old red Samarkand, and depart – forever.

Where was she? This side of the passage or the other?

“Miss Norman?” he called.

“Yes?” came almost instantly from the cabin aft.

“This is Captain Dennison. I’m tied up and lying on the bed. Can you hear me distinctly?”

“Yes. Your father has made a prisoner of you? Of all the inhuman acts! You came in search of me?”

“Naturally. Have you those infernal beads?”

“No.”

Dennison twisted about until he had his shoulders against the brass rail of the bed head.

“What happened?”

“It was a trick. It was not to talk about you – he wanted the beads, and that made me furious.”

“Were you hurt in the struggle?”

“There wasn’t any. I really don’t know what possessed me. Perhaps I was a bit hypnotized. Perhaps I was curious. Perhaps I wanted – some excitement. On my word, I don’t know just what happened. Anyhow, here I am – in a dinner gown, bound for Hong-Kong, so he says. He offered me ten thousand for the beads, and my freedom, if I would promise not to report his high-handedness; and I haven’t uttered a sound.”

“Heaven on earth, why didn’t you accept his offer?”

A moment of silence.

“In the first place, I haven’t the beads. In the second place, I want to make him all the trouble I possibly can. Now that he has me, he doesn’t know what to do with me. Hoist by his own petard. Do you want the truth? Well, I’m not worried in the least. I feel as if I’d been invited to some splendiferous picnic.”

“That’s foolish,” he remonstrated.

“Of course it is. But it’s the sort of foolishness I’ve been aching for all my life. I knew something was going to happen. I broke my hand mirror night before last. Two times seven years’ bad luck. Now he has me, I’ll wager he’s half frightened out of his wits. But what made you think of the yacht?”

“We forced the door of your room, and I found the note. Has he told you what makes those infernal beads so precious?”

“No. I can’t figure that out.”

“No more can I. Did he threaten you?”

“Yes. Would I enter the launch peacefully, or would he have to carry me? I didn’t want my gown spoiled – it’s the only decent one I have. I’m not afraid. It isn’t as though he were a stranger. Being your father, he would never stoop to any indignity. But he’ll find he has caught a tartar. I had an idea you’d find me.”

“Well, I have. But you won’t get to Hong-Kong. The minute he liberates me I’ll sneak into the wireless room and bring the destroyers. I didn’t notify the police from a bit of foolish sentiment. I didn’t quite want you mixed up in the story. I had your things conveyed to the consulate.”

“My story – which few men would believe. I’ve thought of that. Are you smoking?”

“Smoking, with my hands tied behind my back? Not so you’d notice it.”

“I smell tobacco smoke – a good cigar, too.”

“Then someone is in the passage listening.”

Silence. Anthony Cleigh eyed his perfecto rather ruefully and tiptoed back to the salon. Hoist by his own petard. He was beginning to wonder. Cleigh was a man who rarely regretted an act, but in the clear light of day he was beginning to have his doubts regarding this one. A mere feather on the wrong side of the scale, and the British destroyers would be atop of him like a flock of kites. Abduction! Cut down to bedrock, he had laid himself open to that. He ran his fingers through his cowlicks. But drat the woman! why had she accepted the situation so docilely? Since midnight not a sound out of her, not a wail, not a sob. Now he had her, he couldn’t let her go. She was right there.

There was one man in the crew Cleigh had begun to dislike intensely, and he had been manœuvring ever since Honolulu to find a legitimate excuse to give the man his papers. Something about the fellow suggested covert insolence; he had the air of a beachcomber who had unexpectedly fallen into a soft berth, and it had gone to his head. He had been standing watch at the ladder head, and against positive orders he had permitted a visitor to pass him. To Cleigh this was the handle he had been hunting for. He summoned the man.

“Get your duffle,” said Cleigh.

“What’s that, sir?”

“Get your stuff. You’re through. You had positive orders, and you let a man by.”

“But his uniform fussed me, sir. I didn’t know just how to act.”

“Get your stuff! Mr. Cleve will give you your pay. My orders are absolute. Off with you!”

The sailor sullenly obeyed. He found the first officer alone in the chart house.

“The boss has sent me for my pay, Mr. Cleve. I’m fired.” Flint grinned amiably.

“Fired? Well, well,” said Cleve, “that’s certainly tough luck – all this way from home. I’ll have to pay you in Federal Reserve bills. The old man has the gold.”

“Federal Reserve it is. Forty-six dollars in Uncle Samuels.”

The first officer solemnly counted out the sum and laid it on the palm of the discharged man.

“Tough world.”

“Oh, I’m not worrying! I’ll bet you this forty-six against ten that I’ve another job before midnight.”

Mr. Cleve grinned.

“Always looking for sure-thing bets! Better hail that bumboat with the vegetables to row you into town. The old man’ll dump you over by hand if he finds you here between now and sundown.”

“I’ll try the launch there. Tell the lad his fare ain’t goin’ back to Shanghai. Of course it makes it a bit inconvenient, packing and unpacking; but I guess I can live through it. But what about the woman?”

Cleve plucked at his chin.

“Messes up the show a bit. Pippin, though. I like ’em when they walk straight and look straight like this one. Notice her hair? You never tame that sort beyond parlour manners. But I don’t like her on board here, or the young fellow, either. Don’t know him, but he’s likely to bust the yacht wide open if he gets loose.”

“Well, so long, Mary! Know what my first move’ll be?”

“A bottle somewhere. But mind your step! Don’t monkey with the stuff beyond normal. You know what I mean.”

“Sure! Only a peg or two, after all this psalm-singing!”

“I know, Flint. But this game is no joke. You know what happened in town? Morrissy was near croaked.”

Flint’s face lost some of its gayety.

“Oh, I know how to handle the stuff! See you later.”

Cleigh decided to see what the girl’s temper was, so he entered the passage on the full soles of his shoes. He knocked on her door.

“Miss Norman?”

“Well?”

That was a good sign; she was ready to talk.

“I have come to repeat that offer.”

“Mr. Cleigh, I have nothing to say so long as the key is on the wrong side of the door.”

Cleigh heard a chuckle from Cabin Two.

“Very well,” he said. “Remember, I offered you liberty conditionally. If you suffer inconveniences after to-night you will have only yourself to thank.”

“Have you calculated that some day you will have to let me go?”

“Yes, I have calculated on that.”

“And that I shall go to the nearest authorities and report this action?”

“If you will think a moment,” said Cleigh, his tone monotonously level, “you will dismiss that plan for two reasons: First, that no one will believe you; second, that no one will want to believe you. That’s as near as I care to put it. Your imagination will grasp it.”

“Instantly!” cried the girl, hotly. “I knew you to be cold and hard, but I did not believe you were a scoundrel – having known your son!”

“I have no son.”

“Oh, yes, you have!”

“I disowned him. He is absolutely nothing to me.”

“I do not believe that,” came back through the cabin door.

“Nevertheless, it is the truth. The queer part is, I’ve tried to resurrect the father instinct, and can’t. I’ve tried to go round the wall – over it. I might just as well try to climb the Upper Himalayas.”

In Cabin Two the son stared at the white ceiling. It seemed to him that all his vitals had been wrenched out of him, leaving him hollow, empty. He knew his father’s voice; it rang with truth.

“I offer you ten thousand.”

“The key is still on the outside.”

“I’m afraid to trust you.”

“We understand each other perfectly,” said Jane, ironically.

The son smiled. The sense of emptiness vanished, and there came into his blood a warmth as sweet as it was strong. Jane Norman, angel of mercy. He heard his father speaking again:

“Since you will have it so, you will go to Hong-Kong?”

“To Patagonia if you wish! You cannot scare me by threatening me with travel on a private yacht. I had the beads, it is true; but at this moment I haven’t the slightest idea where they are; and if I had I should not tell you. I refuse to buy my liberty; you will have to give it to me without conditions.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t anything on board in shape of women’s clothes, but I’ll send for your stuff if you wish.”

“That is the single consideration you have shown me. My belongings are at the American consulate, and I should be glad to have them.”

“You will find paper and ink in the escritoire. Write me an order and I promise to attend to the matter personally.”

“And search through everything at your leisure!”

Cleigh blushed, and he heard his son chuckle again. He had certainly caught a tartar – possibly two. With a twisted smile he recalled the old yarn of the hunter who caught the bear by the tail. Willing to let go, and daring not!

“Still I agree,” continued the girl. “I want my own familiar things – if I must take this forced voyage. But mark me, Mr. Cleigh, you will pay some day! I’m not the clinging kind, and I shall fight you tooth and nail from the first hour of my freedom. I’m not without friends.”

“Never in this world!” came resonantly from Cabin Two.

Cleigh longed to get away. There was a rumbling and a threatening inside of him that needed space – Gargantuan laughter. Not the clinging kind, this girl! And the boy, walking straight at Dodge’s villainous revolver! Why, he would need the whole crew behind him when he liberated these two! But he knew that the laughter striving for articulation was not the kind heard in Elysian fields!

CHAPTER IX

“If you will write the order I will execute it at once. The consulate closes early.”

“I’ll write it, but how will I get it to you? The door closes below the sill.”

“When you are ready, call, and I will open the door a little.”

“It would be better if you opened it full wide. This is China – I understand that. But we are both Americans, and there’s a good sound law covering an act like this.”

“But it does not reach as far as China. Besides, I have an asset back in the States. It is my word. I have never broken it to any man or woman, and I expect I never shall. You have, or have had, what I consider my property. You have hedged the question; you haven’t been frank.”

The son listened intently.

“I bought that string of glass beads in good faith of a Chinaman – Ling Foo. I consider them mine – that is, if they are still in my possession. Between the hour I met you last night and the moment of Captain Dennison’s entrance to my room considerable time had elapsed.”

“Sufficient for a rogue like Cunningham to make good use of,” supplemented the prisoner in Cabin Two. “There’s a way of finding out the facts.”

“Indeed?”

“Yes. You used to carry a planchette that once belonged to the actress Rachel. Why not give it a whirl? Everybody’s doing it.”

Cleigh eyed Cabin Four, then Cabin Two, and shook his head slightly, dubiously. He was not getting on well. To come into contact with a strong will was always acceptable; and a strong will in a woman was a novelty. All at once it struck him forcibly that he stood on the edge of boredom; that the lure which had brought him fully sixteen thousand miles was losing its bite. Was he growing old, drying up?

“Will you tell me what it is about these beads that makes you offer ten thousand for them? Glass – anybody could see that. What makes them as valuable as pearls?”

“They are love beads,” answered Cleigh, mockingly. “They are far more potent than powdered pearls. You have worn them about your throat, Miss Norman, and the sequence is inevitable.”

“Nonsense!” cried Jane.

Dennison added his mite to the confusion:

“I thought that scoundrel Cunningham was lying. He said the string was a code key belonging to the British Intelligence Office.”

“Rot!” Cleigh exploded.

“So I thought.”

“But hurry, Miss Norman. The sooner I have that written order on the consulate the sooner you’ll have your belongings.”

“Very well.”

Five minutes later she announced that the order was completed, and Cleigh opened the door slightly.

“The key will be given you the moment we weigh anchor.”

“I say,” called the son, “you might drop into the Palace and get my truck, too. I’m particular about my toothbrushes.” A pause. “I’d like a drink, too – if you’ve got the time.”

Cleigh did not answer, but he presently entered Cabin Two, filled a glass with water, raised his son’s head to a proper angle, and gave him drink.

“Thanks. This business strikes me as the funniest thing I ever heard of! You would have done that for a dog.”

Cleigh replaced the water carafe in the rack above the wash bowl and went out, locking the door. In the salon he called for Dodge:

“I am going into town. I’ll be back round five. Don’t stir from this cabin.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You remember that fellow who was here night before last?”

“The good-looking chap that limped?”

“Yes.”

“And I’m to crease him if he pokes his noodle down the stairs?”

“Exactly! No talk, no palaver! If he starts talking he’ll talk you out of your boots. Shoot!”

“In the leg? All right.”

His employer having gone, Dodge sat in a corner from which he could see the companionway and all the passages. He lit a long black cigar, laid his formidable revolver on a knee, and began his vigil. A queer job for an old cow-punch, for a fact.

To guard an old carpet that didn’t have “welcome” on it anywhere – he couldn’t get that, none whatever. But there was a hundred a week, the best grub pile in the world, and the old man’s Havanas as often as he pleased. Pretty soft!

And he had learned a new trick – shooting target in a rolling sea. He had wasted a hundred rounds before getting the hang of it. Maybe these sailors hadn’t gone pop-eyed when they saw him pumping lead into the bull’s-eye six times running? Tin cans and raw potatoes in the water, too. Something to brag about if he ever got back home.

He broke the gun and inspected the cylinder. There wasn’t as much grease on the cartridges as he would have liked.

“Miss Norman?” called Dennison.

“What is it?”

“Are you comfortable?”

“Oh, I’m all right. I’m only furious with rage, that’s all. You are still tied?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“I really don’t understand your father.”

“I have never understood him. Yet he was very kind to me when I was little. I don’t suppose there is anything in heaven or on earth that he’s afraid of.”

“He is afraid of me.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I know it. He would give anything to be rid of me. But go on.”

“With what?”

“Your past.”

“Well, I’m something like him physically. We are both so strong that we generally burst through rather than take the trouble to go round. I’m honestly sorry for him. Not a human being to love or be loved by. He never had a dog. I don’t recollect my mother; she died when I was three; and that death had something to do with the iron in his soul. Our old butler used to tell me that Father cursed horribly, I mean blasphemously, when they took the mother out of the house. There are some men like that, who love terribly, away and beyond the average human ability. After the mother died he plunged into the money game. He was always making it, piling it up ruthlessly but honestly. Then that craving petered out, and he took a hand in the collecting game. What will come next I don’t know. As a boy I was always afraid of him. He was kind to me, but in the abstract. I was like an extra on the grocer’s bill. He put me into the hands of a tutor – a lovable old dreamer – and paid no more attention to me. He never put his arms round me and told me fairy stories.”

“Poor little boy! No fairy stories!”

“Nary a one until I began to have playmates.”

“Do the ropes hurt?”

“They might if I were alone.”

“What do you make of the beads?”

“Only that they have some strange value, or father wouldn’t be after them. Love beads! Doesn’t sound half so plausible as Cunningham’s version.”

“That handsome man who limped?”

“Yes.”

“A real adventurer – the sort one reads about!”

“And the queer thing about him, he keeps his word, too, for all his business is a shady one. I don’t suppose there is a painting or a jewel or a book of the priceless sort that he doesn’t know about, where it is and if it can be got at. Some of his deals are aboveboard, but many of them aren’t. I’ll wager these beads have a story of loot.”

“What he steals doesn’t hurt the poor.”

“So long as the tigers fight among themselves and leave the goats alone, it doesn’t stir you. Is that it?”

“Possibly.”

“And besides, he’s a handsome beggar, if there ever was one.”

“He has the face of an angel!”

“And the soul of a vandal!” – with a touch of irritability.

“Now you aren’t fair. A vandal destroys things; this man only transfers – ”

“For a handsome monetary consideration – ”

“Only transfers a picture from one gallery to another.”

“Well, we’ve seen the last of him for a while, anyhow.”

“I wonder.”

“Will you answer me a question?”

“Perhaps.”

“Do you know where those beads are?”

“A little while gone I smelt tobacco smoke,” she answered, dryly.

“I see. We’ll talk of something else then. Have you ever been in love?”

“Have you?”

“Violently – so I believed.”

“But you got over it?”

“Absolutely! And you?”

“Oh, I haven’t had the time. I’ve been too busy earning bread and butter. What was she like?”

“A beautiful mirage – the lie in the desert, you might say. Has it ever occurred to you that the mirage is the one lie Nature utters?”

“I hadn’t thought. She deceived you?”

“Yes.”

A short duration of silence.

“Doesn’t hurt to talk about her?”

“Lord, no! Because I wasn’t given fairy stories when I was little, I took them seriously when I was twenty-three.”

“Puppy love.”

“It went a little deeper than that.”

“But you don’t hate women?”

“No. I never hated the woman who deceived me. I was terribly sorry for her.”

“For having lost so nice a husband?” – with a bit of malice.

He greeted this with laughter.

“It is written,” she observed, “that we must play the fool sometime or other.”

“Have you ever played it?”

“Not yet, but you never can tell.”

“Jane, you’re a brick!”

“Jane!” she repeated. “Well, I don’t suppose there’s any harm in your calling me that, with partitions in between.”

“They used to call me Denny.”

“And you want me to call you that?”

“Will you?”

“I’ll think it over – Denny!”

They laughed. Both recognized the basic fact in this running patter. Each was trying to buck up the other. Jane was honestly worried. She could not say what it was that worried her, but there was a strong leaven in her of old-wives’ prescience. It wasn’t due to this high-handed adventure of Cleigh, senior; it was something leaning down darkly from the future that worried her. That hand mirror!

“Better not talk any more,” she advised. “You’ll be getting thirsty.”

“I’m already that.”

“You’re a brave man, captain,” she said, her tone altering from gayety to seriousness. “Don’t worry about me. I’ve always been able to take care of myself, though I’ve never been confronted with this kind of a situation before. Frankly, I don’t like it. But I suspect that your father will have more respect for us if we laugh at him. Has he a sense of humour?”

“My word for it, he has! What could be more humorous than tying me up in this fashion and putting me in the cabin that used to be mine? Ten thousand for a string of glass beads! I say, Jane!”

“What?”

“When he comes back tell him you might consider twenty thousand, just to get an idea what the thing is worth.”

“I’ll promise that.”

“All right. Then I’ll try to snooze a bit. Getting stuffy lying on my back.”

“The brute! If I could only help you!”

“You have – you are – you will!”

He turned on his side, his face toward the door. His arms and legs began to sting with the sensation known as sleep. He was glad his father had overheard the initial conversation. A wave of terror ran over him at the thought of being set ashore while Jane went on. Still he could have sent a British water terrier in hot pursuit.

Jane sat down and took inventory. She knew but little about antiques – rugs and furniture – but she was full of inherent love of the beautiful. The little secretary upon which she had written the order on the consulate was an exquisite lowboy of old mahogany of dull finish. On the floor were camel saddle-bays, Persian in pattern. On the panel over the lowboy was a small painting, a foot broad and a foot and a half long. It was old – she could tell that much. It was a portrait, tender and quaint. She would have gasped had she known that it was worth a cover of solid gold. It was a Holbein, The Younger, for which Cleigh some years gone had paid Cunningham sixteen thousand dollars. Where and how Cunningham had acquired it was not open history.