The Merry Anne

Afterward, for a day or two, all three, Beveridge, Dick, and Henry, were very quiet. They sat yawning in deck chairs, or dozed in their berths. But during this time, thanks to the sunny skies and the peaceful lake, and thanks to Beveridge’s elation and good-nature, to Henry’s surprising cheerfulness, and to the difficulty Dick found in showing the depth of his feelings, the relations of the three were growing more and more pleasant. By common consent they avoided discussing the chase or its cause.

On the afternoon of the last day out, Dick and Beveridge sat smoking on the after deck. The Foote was rumbling slowly down the coast somewhere below Milwaukee, and should make Chicago before midnight if nothing broke in the engine room. They were discussing the Michigan peach crop when Henry drew up a chair and joined them.

“Would you mind telling me,” said Henry to Beveridge, filling his pipe as he spoke, “what you are going to do with Dick, here?” So Henry was the one to open the subject. Dick’s lips drew together and his hand trembled, but his eyes were steady.

Beveridge was evasive. “What am I going to do with him?” he repeated.

“Yes. You will have a good deal of say about that, won’t you?”

“Why – yes, and no.”

“Now that you know he had nothing to do with it, you ‘ll be able to get him right off, won’t you?”

“Why – yes, so far as I know. I should expect it to turn out that way.”

Henry saw that a definite answer was not to be expected, so he puffed a moment, looking off to the green shore-line. Finally he said, “Your man, – what’s his name?”

“Wilson?”

“Yes, he’s in pretty bad shape, isn’t he?”

“There’s no doubt about that.”

“Do you think he ‘ll pull through?”

“I couldn’t say.”

“What would be the penalty if he didn’t?”

“That is for a judge and jury to decide.”

“I suppose.”

Henry paused again. Dick was gazing out at the water with fixed eyes. This cool talk made him shudder.

“I’ve been thinking this over,” Henry went on. “Of course, you caught me red handed; and that, along with what I’m going to tell you, any time when you’re ready, gives you a pretty clear case against me. My outlook isn’t what you would call cheerful. I’ve never made a will, but I guess now is about as good a time as any to get about it. I’ve got my schooner, and I’ve got a little money put away, – some of it drawing interest and some in the bank, – and what there is of it is to go to Dick. He’s the nearest approach to a relation I have, you know. And if I were you, Dick, I should take some of it the first thing and pay up for the Anne. That ‘ll make you more or less independent. Do you fellows mind coming down into the cabin and fixing it up now?”

“Certainly not,” said Beveridge, rising.

Dick found it difficult to reply, but he followed them below, and sat with them at the dining-table. Beveridge got pen, ink, and paper.

“Now, I ‘ll tell you,” said Henry. “I ‘ll just make out sort of a schedule of what I’m worth. It won’t take long. I know just what it is. There, now, I guess it ‘ll be enough to say that I devise and bequeath it all, without any conditions or exceptions, to Dick, he to take everything of mine for his own, to hold and to use in any way that he may choose. Will you witness this, Beveridge?”

“Certainly.”

“We ought to have some others.”

“I ‘ll get them.” Beveridge stepped out, and returned shortly with Captain Sullivan and his second officer. These put their signatures under that of the special agent and with the exchange of only a word or two returned to their posts. Nothing could have been more matter-of-fact, could have savored more strongly of humdrum, everyday life.

The three men sat there looking at the paper. Finally Henry, with a smile, blotted it, folded it, and handed it to his cousin. “I’m going to hand this over to you, Dick,” he said. “That’s the easiest way of disposing of it.”

Dick accepted it and turned it slowly over and over in his hands. “I – of course, Henry – I appreciate this, but – ” and then his face surged with color, and he broke out in a round voice: “What’s the use of talking of this sort of thing now! Wilson isn’t gone yet. I don’t believe he will go either. You make my blood run cold! You’d better just – ”

“No,” Henry interrupted. “No, I’d rather leave it like this.”

“But, look here, Henry, – why, great guns! You aren’t even convicted of illicit distilling yet, let alone – why, even if you should be, don’t you see, you might lose a few years, but – ”

“Oh, there wouldn’t be any doubt about the conviction, Dick. The game is up, so far as I am concerned. Supposing I should escape, what good would it do me? I should be a fugitive. I should have to leave the country, and go to a new place and begin all over again, just as I began here on the Lakes twenty odd years ago. I have amounted to something here, – I have held first place. I have kept these fellows,” – he indicated Beveridge, with a slight upward turn at the corners of his mouth – “I have kept these fellows guessing from the start. Anywhere else I should be nobody, and at my age that doesn’t appeal very strongly to a man. Supposing, even, I could buy an acquittal and stay right on here, would it be any better? You see, my boy, I have been ambitious in a way. I have built up a machine – a new kind of a machine. If I could have been let alone a year or so longer, I should have had everything running as smooth and safe as the Republican County Committee. That was the one thing I set out to do. But it’s busted now. With these fellows once on to the whole thing, it could never be carried on again. Oh, in a cheap, shyster way, maybe; but that’s not my way. It was my work and now it’s over. And when a man has come as near success as I have, and spent the best part of his life working up toward it, he doesn’t care about beginning at the little end of something else. His mainspring is broken.”

They were silent. Henry was easily the most self-possessed of the three. Finally Beveridge said: —

“You have spoken once or twice, Mr. Smiley, about telling us how you worked this business.”

“Yes, certainly, any time, – now, if you like.”

“You won’t mind if I take down the main points and then ask you to put your name to it?”

“Not at all. I supposed of course you would want to do that.”

This cold-blooded courtesy brought Dick near to shuddering again. But he straightened up in his chair and prepared to listen.

“You say you are the man known as Whiskey Jim?”

“Yes. That is the name the papers have given to the whole organization, and the organization, of course, is me.”

“Would you mind talking rather slowly? I know shorthand, but I’m decidedly out of practice at it.”

“Certainly not. Suppose I explain the organization in a few words.”

“That ‘ll do first-rate.”

“If I forget and get to going too fast, just stop me. You see, as master of the Schmidt, doing a tramp lumber business all around Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, I was able to run the whole thing at both ends and still keep about my business. I didn’t have to use the mails – I didn’t have to do a thing that didn’t look as solemn and proper as the Methodist minister and his parish calls.”

“I see. It was ingenious – no doubt about it.”

“To be on the safe side, I located my stills over in Canada.”

“I know, – at Burnt Cove.”

“Yes; it was about as inaccessible there as any place on the Lakes. And as we didn’t try to sell the stuff over there, but shipped it all across to the States, we were really safe enough. I don’t know what either country could have done about it, so far as the stills are concerned.”

“Suppose I take it up here, Mr. Smiley, do you mind?”

“No, go ahead.”

“Well, when you had got it put up and ready to ship, you brought it across Lake Huron in Spencer’s schooner.”

“Yes – yes.”

“And at Spencer’s it was repacked in the timber.”

Henry smiled a little at this. “Some of it was. Of course you know better than to think that what I could bring down in a load of timber once in a month, or two, or three, was my only way of getting the goods to market.”

“Oh, yes, of course.”

“I have done things on a fairly large scale, you know. But you are right in the main. Spencer’s was the distributing point for all our goods. The old man himself was what you might call the shipping clerk of the organization. But we ‘ll go ahead with the timber scheme. That one line, if you follow it up, will be enough to base your case on, won’t it?”

“Yes, for the present. Though you were concerned in the attempt to run a pipe line under the Detroit River.”

“No, not very deep. I put a little money into it, but when I saw who was running it, I got out. I knew they would get nipped sooner or later. They went at it wrong.”

“Well, you brought your loaded timbers to the pier at Lakeville. From there they were hauled by wagons to Captain Stenzenberger’s yards. Stenzenberger, working through Mc-Glory, distributed the stuff in Chicago.” Henry shook his head with a touch of impatience. “You’re getting off the track there. Stenzenberger had nothing to do with it. I fooled him through some of his men.”

Beveridge looked incredulous. “So that’s the way you want it to go down, is it?”

“That’s the way it was.”

“Excuse me, Smiley, but that’s absurd. I already have a case against Stenzenberger. Even if I hadn’t, it would outrage common-sense to state that this man, a lumber merchant, could handle quantities of hollow timbers, could have them right there under his nose all this time, without knowing it.” But Henry was stubborn.

“Very well,” added Beveridge, “this is your statement. I will take down just what you choose to say.”

“You’ve got about enough there, I should imagine. Oh, about Wilson! I was in the bushes just below the bridge, when he started to run around the house, and I shot him. There, now, with the confession of the smuggling and the shooting, you ought to have a case. Copy it out, put it in the right legal shape, and I ‘ll sign it. All but the Stenzen-berger part. I admit nothing about him.”

“All right. I ‘ll put it down as you want. It makes no difference to me, for you can never save him.”

“One thing, Henry,” said Dick, “that I don’t understand. What was McGlory after when he ran the Anne up to Burnt Cove that time?”

“McGlory,” Henry replied, “was a fool. When you first told me about it, I didn’t know what to think myself, but after thinking it over, and from the way he has talked since when he was a little drunk, I think I have made it out. He has been planning for some time to skip with this Estelle – desert his wife. He arranged it with her that time he came up with you. And as what ready money he had was down in Chicago, where he couldn’t very well get at it without his wife knowing it, he took the chance of getting to Burnt Cove while you were sleeping off – ” Henry smiled. “I guess old Spencer served you some pretty strong fluids up there that day. Well, anyway, McGlory thought he could take quite a lot of the stuff aboard, sell it through one of our regular trade channels, and get off with the money without going home. He couldn’t get it into his head that you really knew nothing about the business. It was a crazy thing to do.”

“I should think so.”

“McGlory and Roche are pretty good examples of the sort of thing I have had to contend with. I’ve never been able to get good reliable men to work for me.”

Beveridge wanted to smile over the incongruity in this speech, but he controlled himself and listened soberly. Henry went on: —

“If I could have handled it alone, or with only Spencer to help, you would never have got me. But with such a big business, I had to employ a good many men. That was my weak spot. I’ve known it all along and dreaded it, but I had to run the risk. There’s a risk in every business, and that was the risk in mine. No, sir, if I could have had competent men, I should be laughing to-day at the whole revenue system.”

“I should take exception to that, Smiley,” said Beveridge. “Your men weren’t the only thing that gave you away, not by any means.”

“Oh, weren’t they?”

“No, the most important clew was the label you used. But say, Smiley, here is what puzzles me. Why is it that you, a man of unusual ability, haven’t put in your time at something respectable? The brains and work you have wasted on smuggling would have made you a comfortable fortune in some other line.”

“What do you mean by ‘respectable,’ Beveridge, – politics, trading, preaching?”

“I guess you recognize the distinction.”

“On the contrary, I don’t recognize it at all. I asked for information.”

“Oh, well, there is no use opening up that question. We all know the difference between right and wrong, honesty and dishonesty.”

“Do we? Do you?”

“I have always supposed I did.”

“You’re an unusual man. I congratulate you.”

“See here, Smiley, this is interesting. You don’t mean to say that you consider smuggling an honorable business?”

“Why not?”

“Why not! Why – why – ”

“It might clear your ideas, Beveridge, to go into this question a little. Smuggling means, I suppose, the bringing of merchandise from, say, Canada to this country.”

“Dutiable merchandise, yes.”

“What makes it dutiable?”

“The law.”

“What makes the law?”

“The law is made by the people.”

“What people?”

“Oh, see here, Smiley, this – ”

“No, wait a minute. The trouble with you is you don’t do your own thinking; I ‘ll do a little for you. Take an imaginary case: There is a little group of men in this country who manufacture, say, tacks. As every man should, they are looking out for their own interests. They are out to make money. The tacks mean nothing to them, except as they can be turned into money. That is right and proper, isn’t it?”

“Certainly.”

“Now suppose, among them all, they employ a good many thousand men in their tack factories, all of them voters. Suppose they’re rich, and ready to contribute a neat little sum to the campaign fund. Now then, if any other group of men start up, just over the Canadian line, where labor is cheaper, making tacks, and underselling our tack market, the natural thing for our tack men to do is to go to their representatives in Congress and say, ‘Here, if you want our votes and our money, you must pass a law putting a duty on tacks.’ Why do they say this? Because with such a law they can make more money. The people aren’t helped by it, mind you; the people have to pay all the more. The only men to profit by it are the little group of tack manufacturers who want to get rich and fat at the expense of this public you talk about. Now do the Congressmen fall into line and pass the law? Certainly. Why? Because they are helped by it. They get the votes and the money contributions – and probably a neat bribe besides. All this while, mind you, the people are out of the game. They are being robbed by a law that was made entirely to enrich a little group of men. These bribe givers and takers put up a job on us, the most dishonest kind of a job, and yet you seem to think I’m dishonest, too, because I follow their example and look out for number one.”

“Hold on, Smiley, there’s a fallacy there – ”

“Where? Point it out. I’m doing an honest business. The stuff I sell is well made. Do you suppose I care what your government people think? Why, the whole government system is a network of bribes and rake-offs and private snaps.”

“Of course, if you’re an anarchist – ”

“Look here, Beveridge, this talk seems to be rather personal – suppose we make it more so. Let’s see if we can’t find out what your motives are in this business. Are they Christian, or patriotic, or are you, like myself and the tack men, and the law-makers, looking out for number one? The man that was out here before you came I bought off. But it didn’t take me long to see that you couldn’t be bought. Now why? That’s the question.

“Was it because you have principles against it? Not at all. Don’t get mad. I don’t doubt a minute that you have some principles that you learned in Sunday-school; but Lord, when a man’s grown up and has his living to fight for, do you think the Sunday-school has any chance. So, you see, I thought it over, and reasoned it out about like this: You and the other man were both ambitious, but where he wanted money, you want position. It’s to your interest to keep the confidence of your superiors. That’s why I couldn’t buy you; it’s all right, you’ve done a good job, but don’t try to persuade yourself that your integrity is armor plate, that you’ve been doing right for the good of the Sunday-school or from patriotic motives. Just because you happen to be on the winning side, because your gang happens to be on top, don’t make the mistake of thinking you’re better than the rest of us. For you aren’t.”

Dick saw that Beveridge’s tongue was trembling with a keen retort, and he broke in, “But you haven’t told how I was worked into this, Henry.”

“Oh, that’s simple. I wanted to boost you along in the world, but you were young and had notions. So I thought if I could once make you bring down a load of the stuff without knowing it, you would find yourself in for it, and then I could make you see things in the right proportions. I wanted you, bad. With one such man as you, I could have fooled them forever.” He paused and added meditatively: “And I would have made you a rich man, Dick. But just when I had it arranged, you came and told me that you had gone daffy over Cap’n Fargo’s little girl, and I saw I had as good as lost you. Yes, sir, I could have made your fortune. Well, anyhow, you ‘ll get something out of it, after – ”

Beveridge rose to go to his room, gathering up the papers. “I’m going to write this out now, boys. I ‘ll see you later.”

Late in the evening the statement was ready. Henry read it through, suggested a few emendations, and signed it. Then the three went on deck.

Far down on the southwestern horizon was a row of twinkling lights. Above them, in the sky, was spread a warm glow.

“We’re getting along,” said Henry. “There’s Chicago.”

“Oh, is it?” exclaimed Beveridge with interest.

“Yes. We ‘ll soon be in. Isn’t it about time to put the handcuffs on me?”

Beveridge smiled. “That will hardly be necessary.”

“But Chicago’s a bad town. I might get away from you.”

“We won’t worry about that.”

“Do you carry the things on you? I never saw any.”

Beveridge drew a pair from his hip pocket, and handed them to Henry.

“How do they work?”

“Easily. Slip them on – this way.”

There was a click and Henry’s hands were chained together.

“That’s easy enough, isn’t it?” said he, walking a few steps up and down the deck, surveying himself. Then he went to the rail and leaned on it, looking silently off toward the lights.

Just what came next, Dick never could remember. He had turned away to gaze at the alternating red-and-white lights that marked Grosse Pointe and home, so that he saw little more than Henry’s swift movement and Beveridge’s start. An instant more and he was standing at the rail with Beveridge, in the place where Henry had been standing a moment before – gazing down at the foam that fell away from the bows. He heard the special agent sing out: “Stop her, stop her, Cap’n! Man overboard!” He was conscious that the engines had stopped; and he heard the Captain’s voice from the bridge: “No use! He went under the wheel!” Then came the order to lower a boat, and the rush of feet across the deck.

CHAPTER XIV – IN WHICH BEVERIDGE SURPRISES HIMSELF

DICK and Beveridge stood on the wharf at Chicago. The lights that wavered over their faces from the lanterns of the Foote and from the arc lamp overhead showed them sober, silent. The camaraderie of the chase and of the voyage that followed had ceased to be. Beveridge’s elation had been subdued by the distressing event of the evening, but still the mind behind his decorously quiet face was teeming with plans and schemes. Dick was gloomy, bewildered. Both seemed to be waiting for something. They stood watching the bustle aboard the revenue cutter as the crew made her snug for the night, until finally Dick spoke: —

“You haven’t told me yet what I’m to do next, Bill.”

“What you’re to do next?”

“Why – yes. You see – ”

“Go on. I’m listening.”

But Dick found it hard to go on. “I didn’t know but what – ”

Beveridge turned abruptly at a noise up the street, placed two fingers in his mouth, and whistled. And after a moment Dick saw what had kept him waiting. It was no sense of delicacy. Beveridge had been looking for a carriage. “Get in, Smiley,” he said, when the driver pulled up.

“Get in?”

“Yes – after you.”

“You mean, then – ”

“Well, what?”

“I didn’t suppose after what has happened that you’d need me any longer.”

“Not need you, Smiley?” They were seated within the vehicle now, the door was shut, and the driver, the special agent’s whispered word in his ear, was whipping up his horses. “I’m afraid you don’t understand. I have no authority to let you off.”

It was his manner more than his words that suddenly swept away Dick’s delicacy and aroused his anger. “The hell you haven’t!” was his reply.

“Certainly not.”

“You don’t expect me to believe that. You have no case against me now.”

“I grant you that. And I can promise you that you won’t be detained more than a few days at the outside. But this business has passed up out of my hands now. All I can do is to deliver you up, make my report, and set the machinery in motion for your release.”

Dick sat motionless, gazing into the shadows before him. “What right had you to let Pink go, then?”

“That was different.”

“How? – How?”

“Nobody ever looked on Harper as of any importance in the business.”

“That is no answer. You’re holding me on a technicality. The importance of the man makes no difference when you are dealing in red tape.”

“See here, Smiley, don’t you think you had better stop abusing me, and take a sensible view of it?”

As he spoke, they were crossing State Street, and the brighter light illuminated the interior of the carriage. For reply, Dick turned and looked at his custodian, looked him through and through with a gaze of profound contempt. Words were not necessary; Beveridge saw that Dick had fathomed his motives, Dick saw that he was understood. At the moment neither was thinking of the gloomy city that was closing in around them; for both saw the wide, free beach, the gleaming lake, the two long piers, the quaint little house on stilts, the upper balcony with its burden of forget-me-nots and geraniums and all the blossoms that Annie loved. And both had in their nostrils the refreshing smell of the east wind – made up of all the faint mingled odors of Lake Michigan – a little pine in it, a little fish in it, but, more than all, the health and strength and wholesome sweetness of the Lakes. And both were silent while the carriage rattled along, while they stepped out, crossed the walk, and entered a stone building with barred windows, while, with Beveridge on one side and a guard on the other, Dick walked to his cell.

Beveridge caught the half-past eight train for Lakeville the next morning, and walked straight down to the house on stilts. Annie was out on the lake, her mother said, looking at him, while she said it, and after, with doubtful, questioning eyes. So he sat down on the steps and looked out over the beach and the water. It was a fine warm day, with just breeze enough to ripple, the lake from shore to horizon, and set it sparkling in the sun. The sky was blue and white; and the cloud shadows here and there on the water took varied and varying colors – deep blue, yellow, sea-green. The shore-line dwindled off to the northward in long scallops, every line of the yellow beach cut out cleanly, every oak on the bluff outlined sharply. In truth, it was a glorious day – just the day Beveridge would have chosen had the choice been his – the day of days, on which he was to make the last arrangements in clinching his success, in assuring his future. Annie had gone out to the nets with her father. She was, at the moment, rowing him in. On other days Beveridge had sat here and watched her coming in from the nets, with a great box of whitefish aboard.

The boat grounded on the sand. Captain Fargo stepped out and drew it up. Beveridge rose and smiled lazily while he waited for Annie to come up to the steps. The sun had been in her eyes, and at first she did not see him distinctly.