The Glacier Gate

An Adventure Story

By

FRANK LILLIE POLLOCK

NEW YORK

CHELSEA HOUSE

PUBLISHERS

The Glacier Gate

Copyright, 1926, by CHELSEA HOUSE

Printed in the U. S. A.

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign

languages, including the Scandinavian.

CONTENTS

THE GLACIER GATE
CHAPTER I
DETERMINED DESTINY

Destiny knocked at his door, but Doctor Rupert Lang was not at home. At that very moment he was talking of his destiny to Miss Eva Morrison in the glassed gallery of the Bayview Hotel, four miles out of Mobile, where they had motored for tea.

It was not the first time they had drunk tea in this spot, and they had usually come to talk of Lang’s dubious future, of what he might do with what a series of catastrophes had left him. Nervous and ill, his plans wavered. He had lately come to think of starting life afresh in a country medical practice far back up State, in the “piney woods.”

“I’m not much good at general practice,” he said. “Surgery is all I ever shone at. But up there they need doctors badly, men who can handle a big, rough practice, rough-and-ready surgery of all kinds——”

“You mean to bury yourself alive!” Eva interrupted indignantly.

He looked at her with sudden, nervous irritation. She had said the same thing before. Bury himself alive? As if he didn’t know it! But what else was left to him?

Nothing else seemed to be left. He would not have believed that a career could have been snuffed out so quickly. It was only a few weeks ago that his future had been all golden; a great, growing Boston reputation, even extending toward New York. He was one of the rising stars of surgery, a coming man, a magician of the knife, one of these modern gods who take men apart and reconstruct them with improvements. Still well under thirty, he enjoyed the respect, the admiration, the jealousy of men twice his age. His reputation increased; the big checks came in.

And then—a little carelessness or ill luck, an unregarded scratch on a finger that left it poisoned after an operation, and all at once he was confronted with the danger of losing his right hand. Good work had averted that; he recovered, but the poisoning left a slight stiffness of the fingers and thumb, a nervous cramp that would have meant nothing to a carpenter, but was ruin to the delicate craft of a surgeon.

The bandages were not yet off his hand when the Automotive Fuel Company collapsed, following the disappearance of Arthur Rockett, its promotor, with all the liquid assets. Lang had spent the big checks freely as they came, and his sole investment, amounting to twelve thousand dollars, was in Automotive Fuel. The company had been touted as a good thing by people who should have known better, and wiser men than Lang were bitten.

For Lang the immediate result was a bad nervous breakdown. Winter was coming on. He was ordered to seek a mild climate, a moist, relaxing atmosphere, freedom from work and worry. Eva Morrison was acquainted with all this story, except the fact of his financial collapse, and she had no idea that all he possessed in the world was some fifteen hundred dollars in the Mobile bank.

“You mustn’t give up. You mustn’t bury yourself,” she persisted.

“Why not? It’s as good a life as any, maybe. I was born here in Alabama, you know—took my first diploma in Montgomery. I know the piney-woods country, the big swamps, the bayous and the great rivers, and the queer, good, primitive people. I’ll drive a flivver over the sand roads, and hunt wild turkeys and never get my fees.”

She saw through his affected lightness, and looked at him gravely, her chin on her hands.

“Your hand will get better. Your surgery will come back.”

“Never, or perhaps in years, and what good then? A surgeon has to keep in constant practice, like a pianist.”

Failing to find him at his hotel, persistent Destiny tried again, and a page summoned Lang to the telephone. He was away only a minute, and came back with an odd smile.

“A call. A patient—the owner of a yacht out in the harbor somewhere.”

Eva made a delighted gesture, beaming suddenly.

“I declined, of course,” he added. “I referred them to another physician. I’m not practicing in Mobile.”

“But you might—you could—you’re qualified!” Eva exclaimed, bitterly disappointed. “You must be mad! A yachtsman—likely a millionaire! They’ve heard of your reputation even here.”

“But I tell you I don’t want to practice in Mobile, or in any of these towns!” Lang exclaimed, again in sudden irritation. “I dare say they have heard of me. The doctors here know my name, and I don’t want to face their sympathy for my comedown. I had enough of that in Boston—the men who had always hated me, been jealous of me, coming with their crocodile sympathy, hoping that I’d soon be fit again, and praying that they’d seen the last of me. I’d sooner bury myself, as you say.”

He checked himself, quivering, angry and ashamed at his lack of control. Sick nerves know no reason. He looked at Eva Morrison again, wondering once more how she had come so deeply into his confidence, this girl of twenty, pretty as a picture, indeed, looking at him now with grieved brown eyes. But he had known her less than a month, and what could she understand, after all?

She had been a passenger on the steamer that he boarded at Boston for Mobile. He had not remembered her at first; he did not want to know anybody; but in the inevitable companionship of shipboard she reminded him of past acquaintance. She had been a patient of his; he had treated her for some slight injury received in playing basket ball at the girls’ college she attended, and he had met her afterward at somebody’s house.

She had made no impression upon him, but somehow they drifted together in that six-day voyage, more and more together as the steamer rounded Florida and the air grew warmer and they came into the Gulf seas. She had heard of his breakdown, as he gathered; but it was not spoken of between them until afterward, in Mobile.

He had a dim impression that she was to wait in Mobile for relatives from the North who were to join her there; and Lang stopped there because he did not know where else to go. He had no plans, but it was imperative to make some at once. He thought at times of becoming a ship’s surgeon, then of retreating into the upriver woods and he came by degrees to talk over these plans with Eva, and so by degrees they arrived at this extraordinary pitch of intimacy.

A week passed, and her relatives did not arrive. She had established herself at the quiet Iberville Hotel, and Lang saw her almost daily, and often twice a day. They motored, boated together, went to the movies, dined out. Lang was by no means in love. Standing in the wreck of all his life he was far from even thinking of love, but Eva was restful and comforting and she soothed his tortured nerves and his tormented spirit.

More than once he had been suddenly angry and rude to her, as just now, and had had to apologize.

“Sorry!” he said repentantly.

She smiled with complete comprehension.

“I only wish I could influence you a little,” she said. “See, we must go. It’s past five, and look at the bay.”

The mellow, springlike Alabama autumn of the early afternoon had turned suddenly foul. Fine rain drove against the windows, and the broad surface of the bay beyond was blurred with squalls of wind and mist. They lingered, waiting for it to clear, and the small black page who had called Lang to the telephone came again behind his chair.

“Gentleman to see you, suh,” he whispered confidentially. “Same gentleman what telephoned. Mighty important, he says, suh!”

He had evidently been scientifically tipped, for, before Lang could deny himself he perceived the persistent caller at the heels of the page. He turned with some annoyance.

“I’m sure I hope you’ll excuse me, doctor, breaking in on you after what you said on the phone,” said the caller hastily. “But if I could speak to you just half a minute—— My name’s Carroll. I’m from the yacht, you know.”

He was a good-looking young fellow, considerably less than Lang’s age, brown-faced, black-haired, dressed in immaculate blue serge and fresh linen like a yachtsman; and he had a most plausible and ingratiating manner. Afterward Lang came to find the brown eyes rather hard, the lips uncertain. But their smile was winning, and it was difficult to resist Carroll’s address when he chose to please.

“Say what you like,” said Lang. “But you know I’m not practicing here. There are plenty of good physicians in Mobile.”

“Sure. Not in your class, though. We know you’re not located here—just passing through—saw it in the paper, and we simply couldn’t lose the chance of getting you. It looked providential. As for fee, you know—why we don’t mind a hundred dollars, or anything you like to name.”

“There’s no question of that,” said Lang stiffly. “What’s the matter with your patient? I couldn’t possibly operate.”

“Oh, I hope it won’t come to an operation. We don’t know what’s the matter with him. He’s kind of paralyzed—some sort of stroke, I reckon. He hasn’t moved or spoken for days, and don’t know anything. He’s on his yacht, right out in the harbor.”

Lang glanced furtively at Eva. Her eyes beamed, and she made a little surreptitious, imperative gesture: “Go—go!”

“Very well,” he decided. “How do I get aboard your yacht? I must take this lady home first, of course.”

“I can go alone,” Eva said, eagerly; but Carroll broke in with still greater alacrity.

“My taxi is waiting down below, and I’ll drive you and the lady wherever you want to go. I’ve got a motor launch near the foot of Government Street, and we’ll be aboard the yacht in no time.”

Plainly he was determined not to lose sight of his prize. Accepting his offer, they drove rapidly into town and put Eva down at her hotel, where Lang promised to come next day and report. Thence they went to Lang’s own hotel, where he secured his black medical bag and a raincoat, and then to the wharf.

Carroll’s boat was a small but speedy-looking craft, a trifle battered for a yacht’s tender, but they got aboard, Carroll started the engine, and they nosed out past a couple of moored freighters into the muddy bay. The weather had become worse, and driving sheets of mist and fine rain swept the water.

“I hope your yacht isn’t far,” said Lang uneasily.

“We’ll be there before you have time to get wet,” Carroll genially assured him.

Lang looked all about the harbor to espy the trim, white-painted craft he expected to board. The launch’s engines hummed and she gathered speed, tearing down the harbor with a sheering wave thrown from her bow. It was very wet. Lang could feel the rain dripping from his hat brim, and he humped his shoulders and stared through the gathering twilight and the mist.

They were well clear of the harbor proper. A black anchored steamer loomed up, slipped past; a couple of bare-masted schooners lay still without a sign of life aboard. Nothing was in sight ahead but another big three-master lying close to the western shore. Dimly he made out the lighted windows of the Bayview Hotel, where he had often sat with Eva.

He leaned over and spoke to his pilot with some irritation. Carroll muttered something cheerful about “There in a jiffy,” and let her out another notch.

Lang huddled in his seat, wet, uncomfortable, growing more and more uncomfortable and indignant. He was sorry he had come. The bay widened; the shores were growing invisible, and the whole waterscape was darkening rapidly.

“Look here, where are you taking me?” he broke out at last. “You said it would be only a few minutes. I’d never have come——”

“For God’s sake, shut up!” Carroll snapped back at him.

Lang subsided indignantly, unwilling to risk his dignity in altercation. Carroll suddenly sounded a siren that quavered and wailed piercingly.

Nothing answered it. Again and again the horn screamed over the turbid heave of the darkening water, and then the boat swerved in a wide curve westward.

It kept this course for more than a mile, and then began to sweep an equal curve the other way. At regular intervals Carroll blew the horn, but half an hour passed, and they had made several more great curves before a vast, hoarse roar sounded through the gloom, perhaps a mile away.

With a relieved exclamation Carroll headed the boat toward it. Nothing yet was visible, but the deep steam blast sounded again and again, always louder; and finally a spark began to show through the misty gloom ahead. It was not a ship’s side light, but it developed into a lantern swinging close to the water, and suddenly there was a loom of something huge and black moving slowly through the darkness, and he saw a spot of great rusty steel hull in the glimmer of the lantern.

Some one shouted from high above. Carroll answered, slowing down, approaching a side ladder now visible by the lantern. The big ship was barely moving, and Carroll hooked on with a practiced hand. He indicated the ladder to his passenger, and Lang, though much tempted to refuse, managed to catch it as the trailing launch heaved and fell alongside.

Dripping wet, and in a state of the most extreme irritation and disgust, he scrambled up the ladder, felt himself gripped by the arm and helped over the rail, where he almost tumbled upon the deck.

A group of men in wet, shining waterproof coats surrounded him. Carroll had scrambled up at his heels. A light was turned on somewhere.

“Here we are!” Carroll cried triumphantly. “Got him. Gentlemen—Doctor Robert Long of Chicago!”

CHAPTER II
FALSE COLORS

Lang caught this amazing introduction, and if he had been less wet, less ruffled, less indignant, he would probably have instantly denied it. As it was, he shut his mouth, and limply shook hands with the three or four men who greeted him warmly.

He knew well the name of Doctor Robert Long, of course, and was thoroughly acquainted with that eminent Chicago specialist’s success in nervous diseases. The resemblance of the name to his own had caused confusion before, and now he recollected that Doctor Long was said to be spending a vacation in the South, and might really be in Mobile.

The humor of the thing suddenly quenched his wrath. He had been half kidnaped, but he had turned the joke on his captors. Let them take what they had got, he thought. He would look at their patient, charge them nothing, and go ashore again, recommending a good Mobile physician. He knew well that Doctor Long would never dream of accepting any such casual call.

He glanced sharply at the men before him, and up and down the steamer’s dim-lit deck. Scarred planking, dirty paint, rusty metal confirmed his suspicions. Whatever this ship was, she surely was no yacht. The man they called “Captain” stood at his elbow, tall, rough-featured, mustached, dripping in his wet oilskins; and another, dimly seen, showed a smooth face, owlish with large tortoise-shell glasses. Carroll stood in front, looking anxiously on. They were all waiting for him.

“Well, where’s the patient?” he said sharply.

At once they were all alert to serve him. They guided him down the stairs to the saloon—a long, dingy, shabby cabin, with grimy white paint, and the usual fixed table, chairs, and a number of stateroom doors opening from either side. There was a strong odor of cigar smoke and spirits.

“The doctor’s wet, Jerry. Give him a touch of something, can’t you?” exclaimed Carroll, bustling to take Lang’s dripping raincoat. Before Lang could decline, the captain had produced a couple of bottles from a cupboard, and was pouring strong doses into a rack of glasses on the table; and, in spite of the doctor’s abstinence, the rest of the company swallowed their drinks with alacrity.

“Better have some, doctor. It’s the good stuff. We called at Havana last week,” Carroll advised.

Lang again declined, and looked over the company as they drank standing by the table. Jerry, the captain, was tall and lean, with a long mouth, bad teeth, a truculent eye, and a seaman’s heavy, horny hands. He with the big spectacles, Lloyd or Floyd, was a smooth-faced, neatly dressed man of over thirty, cool and contemptuous looking. Carroll looked more of a gentleman than the rest of them. It was an odd company, this “yachting” crew, and Lang thought ironically of Eva’s hope that this might be the beginning of a wealthy practice.

One of the doors opened just then, and another man came out, whom he had not seen before. He came with silent swiftness like a cat, glancing furtively at the newcomer. He was not over twenty, lean and slouching, with a nervous hatchet face and a bad-colored skin. Lang recognized that skin tint that comes of cocaine and heroin. He had seen that type of youth occasionally in his hospital work, generally in connection with bullet wounds. It was not a type likely to be found at sea, he thought, the youthful dope-addicted gunman and gangster; and his presence threw a point of light, perhaps, on the whole unusual company.

Nobody introduced the young man, who slipped behind the table and poured himself a drink, then lighted a cigarette. Carroll put down his glass.

“This way, doctor,” he said, and reopened the door from which the young gunman had just emerged. Lang followed him in, and the others trooped after.

It was a rather large stateroom, painted white, with one berth, a rattan chair, and the usual basin, taps and stand. The port was open, letting in a cool, moist freshness; and Lang’s eyes instantly fixed on the berth’s occupant.

It was a big man, a man of perhaps sixty, with a great, rugged face and short, grizzled hair. His eyes were shut and sunken; he was considerably emaciated; he seemed to be asleep. A gray blanket covered him to the chin, and one huge, inanimate arm lay outside.

The physician’s instinct awoke in Lang as he bent over the cot. He touched the wrist a moment, pushed back an eyelid to look at the pupil, sniffed at the man’s lips, and took out his clinical thermometer. While it rested under the patient’s armpit he felt carefully over the skull in search of a possible wound.

“How long has he been like this?” he asked.

“Nearly a week now,” Carroll returned.

“How did it start? What brought it on? Did he have any injury—any great shock?”

“No injury. You might call it a shock, perhaps,” said Carroll. “It was ashore. He dropped like dead; we thought he was dead, at first. We brought him aboard, and now we’ve been expecting him to come to for days.”

“Can you bring him to, doctor? We’ve got to have him brought to,” put in the captain, anxiously.

“No, I can’t,” said Lang, crisply.

“He isn’t likely to die, is he?” asked Carroll.

“Extremely so.”

“Hell!” the captain exclaimed in disgust. “Can’t you do something to revive him—electricity or some kind of stimulant? We’ll send ashore for anything you need. We’ve got to wake him up, enough to talk a little anyway, before he dies. That’s what we got you here for.”

“You want me to rouse him violently, if I can. What if it cost him his life?” Lang asked quietly.

“Even at the risk of his life,” said Floyd with a sort of energetic coldness.

Lang looked curiously at the speaker, who looked back unblinking.

“No physician would attempt such a thing,” he said. “I want to give this man a thorough examination. The room’s too full. Clear it out.”

They went out obediently, and Lang sat down behind the closed door and studied the unconscious figure afresh. It was not at all his special sort of case; Long of Chicago would really have been the man, but he knew well enough how to make his diagnosis.

He tested carefully the knee jerk, the ankle clonus, all the reflexes, finding nothing out of the way; he took the pulse more carefully, listened to the breathing, and then bared the body and went over the whole surface of the skin. Several ribs had been broken within a few months, he noted, and knitted rather badly; and he discovered a large, fresh burn on the left arm, which he dressed. But these injuries could not account for this prolonged coma, and he could find no trace of others.

A tiny clot of blood on the brain surface might produce these symptoms, but only the X-ray could discover it. It might be a purely nervous case; a neurasthenia, a brain shock, such as is called shell shock in war. He felt doubtful for he had made no special study of these puzzling maladies.

And he wondered all at once why these men wished the patient to be brought to speech, even at the risk of his life.

He was aroused from his deep thought by a gust of cold wind and mist driving through the porthole. He went to close it, and saw at once that the wind must have changed—or the steamer moved. With his hand on the steel-ringed glass he paused, startled, for he could hear the thrash and beat of the propeller astern, throbbing swiftly, and he felt the vibration of the engines under his feet.

Perhaps they were heading landward, to put him ashore; but he felt a deadly certainty that it was not so. He tried the door. It was locked on the outside. He beat on the panels—louder—kicked the door and shouted. But it was fully five minutes before the door was unfastened and Carroll appeared.

“Where are we going? Are you going to land me? Let me pass!” Lang exclaimed, furiously.

“Hold on, doctor. We can’t land you right now, but—— Hold on!”

Blindly angry, and half scared as well, Lang forced past him, crossed the cabin, and rushed up to the deck.

It was dark. Spray and mist drove in the air and he could see nothing overside, but from the force and freshness of the wind, and the salty smell, and the sense of space, and the great heave and fall of the ship, he knew instantly that they were no longer in Mobile Bay, but well out to sea.

He found Carroll and the captain at his elbow, and Floyd came hurrying from forward.

“You were to put me ashore at Mobile. You’re heading out into the Gulf. Turn round at once and put me ashore!” Lang stormed.

“Don’t get excited, doctor. You’ll get ashore all right.”

“You wouldn’t leave a patient like this?”

“You’re all right here, and we’ll pay you well.”

These soothing remarks only infuriated Lang the more.

“You damned kidnapers!” he spluttered, and, his excitement getting out of control, he drove a right-hand lunge at the man nearest him.

It was the captain, who dodged it neatly, laughing. Lang smashed out at Carroll, who ducked. Three pairs of hands gripped the unfortunate physician, and urged him toward the stairway again, in spite of his kicks and struggles.

“Easy, doctor. You mustn’t beat up your officers,” they adjured him.

They were extraordinarily patient with him, though he kicked their shins and struggled in an almost foaming rage. They piloted him down the stair, through the saloon and into a stateroom, still directing upon him a stream of the most mollifying speeches.

“We had your room all ready for you, doctor,” said Carroll, as they held him pinioned in the middle of the floor. “Here’s your bag. There’s pajamas laid out on the berth, and there’s ice water and rum and soda water, and if you need anything more in the night, just shout for it. You’ll be called for breakfast. Be calm.”

They left him with a chorus of cheerful “Good nights,” and he heard the door bolt click on the outside.

CHAPTER III
ROCKETT

Lang’s fury of wrath slowly cooled. He sat down on the berth, drank a glass of water, and eventually laughed. These fellows had taken so much trouble over him, had been so patient, and all to get the wrong man. Evidently they intended to keep him on board, still hoping that he could restore their friend to life, or at any rate to speech.

He removed his wet clothes and lay down, hardly expecting to sleep. He listened to the throb of the screw, the wash of water, the occasional trampling steps overhead. He dozed fitfully, waking with a start, listening to the sea sounds, and at last found his room suddenly flooded with light.

A brilliant reflection of sunshine from the sea came through the port. He had slept after all, and more soundly than he had done for weeks, and he had a half minute of stupid bewilderment before the full memory of his predicament came back.

He rolled out of the berth, washed, dressed hastily, and was just ending his hurried toilet when some one knocked gently, then the door opened. A tall negro, clad in soiled white, appeared in the entrance and addressed Lang with tremendous suavity.

“Good mo’nin’, doctah! De captain, he say yoh breakfus’ served any time dat yoh desires fo’ hit, doctah, suh!”

“All right!” Lang returned, and pushed past the steward into the cabin. No one was there; a white cloth was spread at one end of the table, but he made for the stairway and ran up to the deck.

A blaze of sunshine met him, and a glitter of sky and sea. The weather had cleared; the sun shone gloriously low in the east, and the ocean rippled and sparkled, frothing delicately in long, white-crowned lines. The air itself was warm, sparkling, exhilarating; it went through Lang’s system like a stimulant. No land was in sight anywhere, unless a faint cloud astern meant the coast, and at first he saw no one on the deck.

Then, walking forward, he espied the youthful gangster, in a white jersey and cloth cap, a cigarette butt in his mouth, slouching over the rail. He glanced aside at the doctor, nodded furtively, and seemed to sidle off. Close to the bow Lang now perceived a couple of negro deck hands busied over something, and two men on the bridge.

He found Carroll unexpectedly at his side, but it was no longer the dandy yachtsman of the day before. Carroll now wore a faded greenish sweater, “pin-check” trousers and soiled tennis shoes, but he greeted the physician with the same extreme amiability.

“Well, are you ready to put me ashore?” Lang demanded, with an implacable air.

“Oh, come on, now, doctor!” Carroll pleaded. “Don’t go back to that. Ain’t you comfortable here? You wouldn’t leave a sick man on our hands like that? He’s desperate sick—you said it yourself.”

“This is no yacht. Why did you say it was?” Lang pursued.

“Ain’t it? Say, Floyd, he says the Cavite ain’t a yacht,” said Carroll, addressing the spectacled member of the crew who just then sauntered up.

“Well, what’s a yacht?” Floyd returned. “The Cavite isn’t anything else in particular, and she’s got no business, and she isn’t going anywhere, and what’s that but a yacht?”

“No business? Nothing in wet goods?” inquired Lang.

“I don’t know what you mean,” returned Carroll blankly. “Had breakfast? We told the steward to call you. No? Come down and eat, then. A man shouldn’t talk on an empty stomach—apt to say things he don’t mean.”

Lang had had no supper the previous night, and he felt very empty. It was not a breakfast to be despised, he found, when the suave steward produced it.

When he had finished he stepped into the sick room to glance at his patient. There was no change, except that they had turned the man over for greater comfort. Lang stood looking down at that massive, powerful, oblivious countenance, and went back to the saloon with his resolution fixed.

“What do you think? Is there any chance?” demanded Carroll anxiously.

“I think that you know more about this case than I do,” said Lang. “I can’t find any physical cause for his condition. Before I go any further I’ll have to know the history of the case—just what happened to him; how he came into this state. I want to know who this man is, and”—he hesitated, and then went on firmly—“why you are so anxious for him to speak before he dies.”

Floyd blew a cloud of smoke, and glanced at the physician with a queerly mocking eye.

“I’m not surprised that you’re curious,” said Carroll directly. “It must look a queer mess, to an outsider. We talked it all over last night, and agreed that you’d have to be told sooner or later.”

He stopped and glanced at Floyd’s imperturbable face.

“You’ll pledge yourself to the strictest secrecy, now and afterward?” he said.

“A physician doesn’t make such pledges,” said Lang stiffly. “His patients trust him, or they don’t.”

“Oh, we trust you, all right, doctor,” Carroll hastened to say. “It’s a matter of professional honor; we’ll leave it at that. This man——” He hesitated again. “Did you ever hear of the Automotive Fuel Company of New Jersey?”

Lang barely repressed a startled movement.

“I have,” he said calmly.

“Arthur Rockett, its president, wrecked it, and disappeared with around a quarter of a million.”

“So I have heard. But what has that to do with this case?”

“Just this,” said Carroll, motioning toward the stateroom door. “That man in there—that’s Arthur Rockett.”

Lang’s brain suddenly seemed to swim slightly, yet he controlled his voice.

“Are you sure?” he said. “Rockett was supposed to have got away to South America.”

“Absolutely sure,” said Floyd, with his voice of cold certainty. “I’ve seen him often enough in New York to know him. I ought to—I had twenty thousand dollars in his cursed company.”

“And I lost all I had saved up,” put in Carroll eagerly. “It wasn’t so much—only about seven thousand dollars. Rockett broke us all, the captain, too. Jerry had to mortgage his ship.”

“And your young friend in the white sweater?” Lang inquired. “Has he lost his savings, too?”

Floyd smiled faintly.

“That’s Louie Bonelli—‘Louie the Lope,’ they call him in Harlem. No, I don’t think Louie ever had any savings, but he’s been very useful to us, as you’ll see, and he’s going to share with the rest of us.”

Lang leaned back, trying to look indifferent. He had never seen the fraudulent promoter, whose flight had taken all his own savings, but he had seen newspaper portraits, and he vaguely remembered an elderly man with a heavy, big-boned countenance, who might very well be this very man aboard the Cavite. This unconscious patient of his had a strong, audacious face, such as would have fitted the great wrecker.

“Dr. Long,” said Floyd impressively, “all we want is justice. We only want to get our own back. We never expected to get a dollar out of it. It came by chance. Carroll and I were in New York. Louie was down around New Orleans, for reasons best known to himself, and he happened to spot Rockett at Pass Christian.

“All the cops were sure he’d left the country, but he hadn’t. He’d grown a little beard, and browned his face and arms, and he had a bungalow and a fruit-and-truck ranch on the Gulf coast, and he dressed in overalls and really worked at his fig trees and orange grove. He must have had it all ready for months before, and it was the best sort of hide out, considering the sort of high roller he’d been up North—a spender, a prince, a man who couldn’t walk but had a new car every week.

“Louie wasn’t quite certain, but he sent for Carroll and me, and we came down. It was Rockett, right enough. Then we called in Jerry Harding, who was running his little freighter along the coast. We held a council. We knew Rockett had his plunder planted somewhere, and was lying low till the storm blew over a little. Well, what do you suppose we’d do? What would you’ve done yourself? Have him arrested, and take a chance of getting a dividend among the creditors—five cents on the dollar? We didn’t see it that way. We studied his movements, his way of life. We hauled the ship close inshore one night, went up to his shack, and held him up. He lived all alone, and it was a mile to the next house. We put it to him—what was he going to do about it? All we wanted was what we’d lost. He could keep the rest, for us.

“He was as stubborn as the devil. Can’t you see it in his face? He denied that he was Rockett, denied everything. Finally he turned silent, and wouldn’t speak at all. So we gave him the third degree.”

“You mean you tortured him?” cried Lang, remembering the burn upon Rockett’s arm.

“I wouldn’t call it torture, exactly. Louie did it. We worked over him nearly all night. Maybe Louie got a little too rough at the last. We were all rather on edge. Anyhow, all at once he heaved up out of the chair where he was tied, and went over sidewise on the floor.

“He seemed to be stunned, but he didn’t come to. We tried everything, but no use. It was getting daylight and we were afraid to wait any longer; so we searched the house without finding anything, and brought him on board here.”

“We expected him to wake up any minute,” Carroll went on, as Floyd stopped. “We watched him day and night. We knew he couldn’t really be hurt. We tried an electric battery—thought he might be shamming. Then we got scared that he was going to die on us. He seemed to be getting weaker; twice we thought he’d passed out. We couldn’t let him die till we found out where he’d planted the stuff. So it looked like a godsend when we heard that you were in Mobile, and read about the great work you’d done on just such cases.”

“Yes, we were at our wits’ end, doctor,” said Floyd. “You mustn’t hold a grudge against us for half kidnaping you. Really it’s a compliment. And you won’t lose anything. If you can help us, and get Rockett to talk, and we find out what he’s done with his loot—why, you can ask for what you like, and get it.”

They fixed intense eyes on the doctor. Lang shrugged his shoulders.

“I can’t revive him, not at this stage anyway,” he said. “I couldn’t if I would, and I wouldn’t try.”

“But we’ve got to make him talk!” cried Carroll. “What’s the chance that he’ll come round?”

“About an even chance, I should think, whether he gradually improves, or gradually sinks and dies without ever regaining consciousness. Of course a moment might come when he could be revived with stimulants—you can’t predict in these cases.”

“But you won’t desert us?” Floyd pleaded. “You’ll see us through?”

Lang puffed his cigar, as if thinking about it. But he was not in any doubt. It was the most stupendous piece of luck, and Eva Morrison had been more than right when she urged him to accept this call.

Not that he believed half the story. He did not believe that any of this ship’s company had ever owned Rockett’s stock. They did not look like an investing class. Somehow they must have discovered Rockett’s hiding place, and were trying to “hijack” him; or they might have been Rockett’s own confederates, now turned against him. But however this might be, Lang was determined not to let Arthur Rockett out of his sight.

“It’s an interesting sort of case,” he said, with admirable detachment. “Yes, I’ll stay with you till he speaks—or dies.”

CHAPTER IV
WRECKED

So began Lang’s strangest professional experience. He got rid of his companions as soon as he could, returned to the hospital room, and studied the unconscious man with a doubled and most passionate interest. He could see no change in his condition; but he set himself to make a fresh and even more careful examination, recording temperature, blood pressure, pulse, reflex action on a sort of chart which he pinned to the wall for continual reference. When he had finished he pondered a long time, unable to make up his mind whether the state of coma was the result of some injury he had not discovered, or whether it was pure shock, neurasthenic paralysis, brought about by the strain of the “third degree.” Neither theory was quite justified by the symptoms, and Lang even considered the possibility that the unconsciousness was shammed, but this was incredible. To feign a week of complete paralysis would require a nerve control simply superhuman.

He went on deck afterward, still turning over the problem in his mind. He encountered Carroll, who took him up to the bridge, where Captain Harding kept a negligent watch, with a negro quartermaster at the wheel. Louie presently crept up the iron ladder also, looking silent and furtive as usual, and then Floyd came with a bottle of rum and a pitcher of fresh orange juice. It appeared that the bridge was the accustomed lounging place, for within half an hour the engineer off duty appeared also. He was a sallow man in grimy overalls, whom Lang had not previously seen. He stayed only a few minutes, however.

The rest drank their rum and chatted openly, since it was understood that Lang had thrown in his lot with them. They were all deeply disappointed that by some medical miracle Rockett could not be suddenly jerked back into consciousness. In fact, they still hoped for some such performance, and seemed to take it for granted that Rockett could be induced to part with the desired information as soon as his speech was restored. But Lang was doubtful. The face of the old wrecker was not that of a man easy to coerce.

“That bird’s got two hundred grand planted somewheres,” Louie muttered. “Leave me alone wit’ him, and I’ll make him talk.”

And suppose Rockett talked—suppose the plunderer recovered—what would become of Rockett then? Lang had already judged his shipmates to the point of believing that a dark night at sea and a man overboard might solve the difficulty.

And his own position, for that matter, might prove difficult, in spite of all the lavish promises of the gang, when the time came for Rockett to speak or die.

But for the present he was safe enough, and the ship’s company cherished him like gold. He felt in better health and spirits than for a long time. A new thrill of adventure entered into him. He had been violently wrenched away from the consideration of his own misfortunes, into a dangerous game whose stake might be anything, and his spirit had reacted to it. He thought with vivid anticipation of the tale he would have to tell Eva Morrison when he should at last present his promised report.

He lounged about the Cavite’s decks, trying to kill time, and his mind reverted much to Miss Morrison. He missed her extraordinarily. It was wonderful how, within but a few days, she had come to be a comrade whom it was hard to lose even temporarily. Of course he was not in love with her. In the desperate condition of his affairs it was no time to think of love, much less of marriage. Hard work and hard struggle must be his program for the coming years. And then it crossed his mind that if he recovered his twelve thousand dollars he could really think of love and marriage, too. It would be a very respectable starting capital for a country doctor.

But it was not a middle-aged wreck that Eva Morrison was destined to marry. He was startled at his own chain of thought, and went again to look at Rockett. The defaulter lay motionless, breathing slowly, unchanged in anything. Lang touched the grizzled head that must hold the secret of so much rascality and so much money.

“If you die, you’re dead. If you wake up and talk you’ll be murdered,” he murmured. “Better stay just as you are, my friend.”

He went back to the deck and basked in the fresh, warm sea air and the sun. It was hard to kill time on the Cavite. There seemed to be no books of any sort on board, but finally he discovered a pile of tattered old magazines in the cabin, and languidly turned them over in his deck chair. Every hour or so he visited his patient, without ever discovering any change. He dozed a little in the sun. Carroll and Harding seemed to spend most of the day on the bridge. Floyd disappeared into his cabin; and from time to time he caught sight of Louie prowling about the ship on affairs of his own, silent, secret, venomous.

There was a game of poker in the cabin that night, in which they all took part but Lang, leaving the steamer apparently in charge of the negro crew. Lang watched the game for some time, and went to bed late, but throughout the night he heard fitfully the mutter of voices, the rustle and click of cards and chips, the ring of glasses, and once the sound of a sudden, sharp altercation, which was immediately stilled.

They were a rather weary and heavy-eyed crew at breakfast. Carroll told him afterward that Floyd had won heavily; that he almost always won; that Louie was a bad-tempered loser, and that they always had to take his gun away from him when they played cards.

After breakfast Lang again visited his patient, and methodically took pulse and temperature, recording them on the chart. He looked again into the blind eyes, tested the reflexes, and found no change. He had been turned over, and that was all. Some one visited him periodically, every hour or two, Carroll had said, in hopes of a change, and this had been kept up day and night ever since he came on board.

That day was very much a duplicate of the one before it. The ship’s company left him to himself. Carroll invited him to the bridge, but he did not care for these rum gatherings, and declined, lounging in his deck chair, smoking, meditating. The company gathered for dinner and scattered again; and the Cavite continued to plow forward, at half speed, through ever-bluer seas where porpoises plunged looping, and flights of flying fish glittered past. They were heading nowhere. It was a real yachting cruise after all, Lang thought, complicated with medicine and something like piracy.

It turned hazy toward sunset and they ran into fog. All the same there was poker in the cabin that evening, though to Lang it seemed monstrous that the navigation of the ship should be abandoned to an ordinary sailor in such weather. It was hot and damp; the cabin reeked with whisky and tobacco smoke, and when Lang went on deck about nine o’clock he found the air close and muggy, and so dense with fog that each of the ship’s lights glowed in a cottony ball of vapor.

He looked on at the card players for an hour, tried to read, went on deck again, took a last look at Rockett, and finally went to his berth, trying to believe that Jerry Harding knew his business.

The noise of the gamblers beyond the door kept him awake for some time, but he slept soundly at last. A frightful roar awakened him that seemed to shake the whole earth. It was their own siren, blowing appallingly up above, and he heard startled exclamations in the saloon, a crash of glasses upset, and a rush of feet to the deck.

The next moment another steam whistle mixed with the bellowing uproar of their own—right overhead, too, it seemed—and as Lang jumped from his berth he was pitched across the stateroom by a terrific shock.

The floor tilted under him, heeling over, over, till it seemed as if the ship were capsizing. He heard a tumult of yelling that seemed over him, under, he knew not where. And then, with a terrible grinding and rending, the Cavite reeled back to an even keel, and he heard a great splashing of water.

Lang righted himself, too, pulled on trousers and coat and rushed out and up, barefooted, to the deck. The ship’s electric lights went suddenly out, flickered, and then shone again. He could still hear an uncertain throbbing of the engines.

A dark scrimmage of men surged over the deck, apparently to no purpose. The fog hung blindingly close, but perhaps a quarter of a mile away loomed and shone a vast glare of white light. It was the vessel that had run into them, her outlines invisible in the fog. He could hear her steam blowing off with a roar, and even the sound of furious shouting aboard her; but she showed nothing but the diffused glow of all her lights.

The Cavite was still moving ahead slowly, under her momentum now, for her engines had stopped. Lang could hear water cascading into her. It sounded as if she had been cut half in two. She was lower in the water already; and Lang suddenly remembered his patient below, who was likely to be drowned like a rat in his berth.

He rushed down to the cabin again. The lights were out, and he slipped on spilled liquor and scattered cards, and groped into the hospital stateroom. At the door he stopped short, as if he saw a resurrection from the dead.

Rockett was sitting up, on the edge of the berth. There was a dim glow in the room from the porthole. He was moving; he seemed to be trying to get to his feet.

The next instant it flashed upon Lang that the shock of the collision had worked a miracle; had startled the stunned nerves out of their paralysis. He rushed to the berth and seized the man around his big chest.

“Are we—going down?” he heard a thick, lifeless whisper.

“I think so,” said Lang, too flurried to realize the queerness of the colloquy. “You must get on deck. Here, lean on me. Can you stand?”

“Hold on,” said Rockett, in his thick mutter. “Got to—beat these pirates. Listen—you know—north of Persia——”

“Do you want to tell me where you’ve hidden the money? Be quick!” said Lang sharply.

“Wait. Six to—nine. Twelve o’clock. Remember—noon——”

A rush of feet outside, and Carroll plunged into the room. He stopped short with an astounded cry, as Lang had done.

“By God, he’s alive! He spoke. I heard him. What did he say?”

“Delirious. Raving,” Lang snapped. “Here, help me get him on deck.”

A sudden wild stampede of yelling men thundered across the deck overhead. There was no time for talk. Between them they gripped the big man around the body, and half dragged, half carried him across the cabin. He was enormously heavy, and seemed to sag back into paralysis again, so that it was with the utmost breathless straining that they got him up the stairs to the deck, where all hell seemed to have broken loose.

The other steamer, more distant now, had turned a searchlight on her victim, dimly illumining the Cavite’s decks, and began to sound her roaring siren again, as in desperate signaling. Lang’s first glance saw the black water. It seemed almost up to the level of his feet.

A dark scrimmage of men was surging about the motor launch that was hoisted in amidships. They hacked savagely at the tackle, with curses and shrieks, black faces and white, a shifting, squirming medley. Lang caught a glimpse of Harding hitting out. Knives flashed. A figure in a white sweater was shot out of the mob, falling on the deck. Louie raised his arm and projected two tiny red flashes, the reports drowned by the uproar.

Then the motor boat went over with a great splash, and the wave of its launching surged over the Cavite’s deck.

“Keep out of that. This way!” Carroll was saying, dragging him toward the other side.

Here hung the other boat, seldom used, and forgotten at the moment. Letting go Rockett, Carroll strove to loosen the tackle, which seemed jammed. The Cavite lurched heavily forward. A surge seemed to wash clear over her.

Lang snatched a life belt and slipped it over Rockett’s shoulders. He could see no other. Carroll was still wrenching desperately and swearing at the boat. Leaning heavily on his shoulder, Rockett muttered hoarsely in Lang’s ear.

“I’m going under. Remember—I trust you. Go to—my house north of Persia. See six and nine—the digger—twelve o’clock. Noon. Remember—the negro digger——”

The whole deck suddenly tilted forward as the ship plunged bow first, till Rockett and Lang tumbled together down the slope into black water. Lang went under, came up, but Rockett had gone. Everything was black, and in terror of being drawn down with the sinking ship he struck out desperately, blindly.

He was no great swimmer, but he made headway with sheer energy. He found himself suddenly clear of the ship. A long way behind him she towered up, standing on end, her stern rising yards into the fog, towering like a skyscraper, as she hung balanced before finally sinking. He saw the rusty hull, the screw, the rudder hanging high overhead. He took it all in with one terrified glance, and the same glance showed him a floating object a yard away, a big deck chair which he gripped.

The next minute the nightmare figure of the steamer plunged down, in a vast flood that seemed to carry him with it. He clung like death to the wooden chair frame, almost beaten out of consciousness, holding his breath, hardly realizing it at last when he found himself afloat again. A heavy swell went over him; another heaved him and dropped him; and his misted eyes saw again the great blurred glow of the strange steamer, much more distant now, and all around him a frothing welter.

He still held the chair, but he was almost too weak to cling to it. Boats would be coming, he knew; he had only to keep afloat a few minutes more. The swell of the Cavite’s sinking was subsiding, but his hands slipped from the chair frame; he almost went under, recovered himself with a wild clutch, almost gave up hope. Dimly he heard a shout. Something was floating within a few feet. It was an overturned boat, with a man dimly outlined astride the keel. Lang could never have reached it unaided, but somehow, he knew not how, he found himself supported, assisted, half dragged upon the rounded boat keel.

“Where’s Rockett?” his rescuer shouted in his ear. It was only then that he recognized Carroll, but Lang was too exhausted to do more than shake his head feebly.

CHAPTER V
THE DIGGER

Late the next afternoon they were taken into Gulfport on board a Grand Cayman schooner laden with Jamaica timber.

What had become of Rockett, or of any of the rest of the Cavite’s crew they had not the slightest idea. From the upturned boat the sea was a blur of fog. They must have been drifting with some current, for the far-away steamer seemed continually to grow more distant. Expecting her boats, they shouted with what faint voice they could muster; but nothing came of it. If she had sent boats they were invisible; and after nearly an hour they heard the starting of the steamer’s engines, and her pale glow melted into distance.

Tropical though the latitude was, it seemed bitterly cold that night. Lang wore only a coat and trousers over his sleeping suit, and he felt numbed and stiff to the bone. He might have perished, but Carroll, who was fully dressed, had a pocket flask of rum, and pulled him periodically back to life with fiery sips. The bottom of the boat was a most awkward refuge, for they were in constant danger of slipping off; and once Lang, faint and dozing, did go into the sea, to be hauled out again by his companion.

That night seemed longer to Lang than all the rest of his life. The shore seemed a remote impossibility, but he did not know that much-frequented part of the Gulf. When the sun rose there were no less than three ships in sight, all miles away, indeed, but the sight of them was enough to put heart into him, together with the warming effect of the strong sunshine. Carroll, who had expected rescue, was not surprised; and seemed only impatient at the delay before the Grand Cayman schooner came alongside, and her crew with the kindliest solicitude took them aboard, and appropriated the Cavite’s boat as salvage.

During that endless, freezing, hopeless night the two castaways had scarcely exchanged a dozen phrases, yet Lang’s mind had continually reverted in a numb way to Rockett’s last incomprehensible words. “Twelve o’clock—nine and six—the negro digger——” There was no sense in it, and yet the defaulter had evidently been trying to convey some meaning. His house—to the north of Persia—what could that have to do with Automotive Fuel? No meaning could be tortured out of it, and yet Lang’s dazed mind circled round and round the insoluble problem.

But on the schooner, warmed and fed and smoking a Jamaica cigar, he conceived more hope. Rockett had said he trusted him—Heaven knew why! He had said to go “to his house,” and Lang determined to go, if he could find out where that house was. Yes, and he would be there at noon, at nine and at six, and see what these mystic hours might bring.

He turned this over in his mind while, with his surface faculties, he idly discussed with Carroll the probable fate of their shipmates. They had no idea whether the motor boat had been successfully launched, or whether any one had escaped in it. As for Rockett, his fate was hardly even doubtful. Unless picked up at once he could never have survived the plunge and exposure.

“He did speak, you know,” said Carroll suddenly. “I heard him say something to you. What was it?”

Lang felt no call to share his knowledge, such as it was, nor his shadowy theories.

“Clean out of his head, apparently,” he replied. “He muttered about the time of day—said it was nine o’clock and six and noon at his house in the north of Persia. And something about a negro. Has he ever been in Persia?”

Carroll seemed to reflect, and observed Lang’s face with a sidelong glance.

“Persia was Rockett’s post office,” he said at last. “It’s a country store west of Gulfport and about a mile north of the coast road. He lived about two miles north of Persia. We went up the bayou in the launch on our visit; it took us within a hundred yards of his house.”

“A shack and a truck farm, you said?” remarked Lang, trying to look indifferent to this priceless information.

“A little bungalow, rather neat, painted brown with green trimmings. It had an iron fence in front and two magnolia trees at the gate, and a grove of small orange trees at one side. There was a little garage with a Ford in it, too. We left it there.”

“I suppose all that will be sold for the benefit of the creditors,” said Lang.

“I suppose so, if they ever discover that Rockett was the truck farmer. It may be a long time before it’s noticed that the house is deserted. Few people come that way, and the next house is a mile or more away.”

Lang was afraid to fish for more information lest he rouse Carroll’s suspicion. They continued to chat at random, of the Cavite, of her crew, of the failure of their whole scheme, to which Carroll now seemed entirely resigned. They sighted land about the middle of the afternoon, and it was toward sunset when the good sea Samaritans put them ashore on the lumber wharves at Gulfport, refusing any suggestion of reward.

In fact, Lang had only fifteen dollars, which happened by luck to be in his trousers pocket, and he urgently needed to buy a shirt, collar, hat and footwear, though the sailors had given him a worn-out pair of tennis shoes. He walked with Carroll from the water front up to the main street, and there they halted.

“Well, it’s all over,” said Carroll. “I’m going to New Orleans. What do you do? I suppose you’ve lots of friends who’ll be worrying about your disappearance, and medical societies and meetings waiting for you to give them speeches, Doctor Long.”

Lang softened a little to that parting smile. After all, they had been through peril together, and Carroll had almost, if not quite, saved his life after the shipwreck.

“I’m not Doctor Long,” he said with unpremeditated frankness.

Carroll’s expression hardened. He fixed Lang with a sudden, intense stare.

“Then who the devil are you?”

Lang explained briefly, almost apologetically.

“The most curious thing,” he finished, “is that I’m really one of Rockett’s creditors myself. I’ve got twelve thousand dollars of Automotive Fuel certificates in my trunk. You can imagine how interested I was, then, when you——”

Carroll listened, and then exploded into the most uncontrollable laughter.

“Double crossed, by gad!” he ejaculated, choking. “What a—a stroke of luck! You one of Rockett’s suckers? But say, it’s a good thing you didn’t let it out on board that I’d brought the wrong man. Louie’d have put a bullet into me.”

“It made no difference, after all.”

“Not a bit. Lang or Long, it’s all the same, and it’s all over now, and no harm done to anybody, except that we’re all out the money we might have got. But mind, not a word, now! Professional secrecy, you know.”

“Trust me,” said Lang. “I’m not proud of the affair.”

Carroll shook hands with him and went off, still laughing. Lang proceeded to make his few purchases, secured a room at a cheap hotel, where he made himself as presentable as he could, and had himself shaved. He thought of wiring to Eva Morrison, but reflected that he would surely see her the next day. He dined at the hotel, a much worse meal than he had been accustomed to aboard the Cavite, strolled about the street for an hour, and found himself dead weary.

He went to bed before nine o’clock, unstrung and exhausted. He would have to get up long before daylight, he knew, for he was determined to be at Rockett’s bungalow, “north of Persia,” from six to nine.

He needed sleep, but sleep would not come. By fits and starts he dozed, waking from nightmares of the wreck and horrible suggestions of incomprehensible peril, hearing again Rockett’s thick mutter in the darkness, feeling the heave of the drifting boat. Toward morning he did sleep soundly for an hour or two, awakening in terror that he had overslept, but a struck match showed him that it was hardly four o’clock by the dollar watch he had bought the evening before.

He got up wearily, feeling now that he could sleep forever. He dressed and went downstairs, and out upon the dead and deserted streets. An all-night lunch room provided him with breakfast, and, feeling a trifle refreshed, he boarded the west-bound inter-urban electric car that skirts the coast between Biloxi and New Orleans.

He was the only passenger, and he dozed again in his seat, until the conductor told him where to get off for Persia. The east was turning pale as he started up the road leading inland, a sandy road in the twilight, plunging apparently into a dense forest. It turned out merely a belt of swamp bordering a deep, narrow bayou, very likely the one which Carroll’s crew had ascended to reach Rockett’s dwelling. Beyond it the road ascended a little, and the air grew momentarily more transparent. The wayside objects came out ghostly, then solidly, trees, scattered shacks, trim bungalows at far intervals; then in the gray light Lang perceived a wayside store, shuttered and sleeping, with two or three small houses close by.

This must be Persia, and beyond it the dwellings grew more rare. There were strips of pine woods, stretches of peach orchard, fields of last fall’s cornstalks or cotton shrubs, silent and dewy in the pallid daybreak. Lang’s blood quickened and his spirits rose as he tramped on through the intense freshness of the air. Incredible possibilities rose in his mind; things that he might unearth at “six, nine and twelve o’clock,” and he glanced every few minutes at his watch to make sure that he was going to be in time.

He passed a belt of tall, long-leaf pines, stately as palms, a quarter of a mile of desolate, picked cotton bushes, and then he halted, with a sudden catch of his breath.

It must be the place. There was the iron fence, the two magnolia trees at the gate, the plantation of small orange trees, and, fifty feet back from the road, a trim brown bungalow with green doors and window casings as it had been described to him. All the blinds were drawn; it looked empty and dead. But, for that matter, so had all the houses he had passed.

Lang glanced furtively up and down the road, and stepped inside the gate. He felt uncommonly like a criminal as he skulked up the walk, and stepped on the veranda, shooting scared glances in every direction. It took all his nerve to lay hold of the door-knob. It gave; he drew a hard breath, opened the door, whipped inside, and closed it quickly after him.

He was in a small square hall, almost entirely dark, with a door dimly visible on each side. He listened; the house was dead silent. He cautiously pushed open the door at his right.

The air was heavy and rank with stale cigar smoke. All the blinds were close drawn, and the room was dim, but he knew at once that he had come to the right place.

Apparently this was the dining room, square, well furnished, but in great disorder. The round table was shoved back against a wall, and smeared with cigar ash. The rug was kicked into a heap; the sideboard’s drawers stood wide open, half their contents on the floor. A paper rack, a shelf of books, had been thrown pell-mell; and the brick open hearth held a pile of wood ashes and was littered with innumerable cigar stubs.

“This must be where they questioned him—tortured him,” Lang reflected, picturing that scene of ten days ago; and then beyond he saw the open door of the bedroom where they must have awakened him.

The bed was tumbled back, as Rockett must have been dragged out, with a flash light and a pistol in his face. A lamp stood on the small table, with a pipe, a pouch, a turned-down book—a work on geology, as he noticed with surprise. This room also had been ransacked, the bureau drawers emptied on the floor, the clothes closet turned out, with the contents of a trunk and a couple of suit cases in a huge, mixed heap of clothing and all sorts of miscellanies.

Beyond the dining room was the kitchen, into which he merely glanced. Returning to the hall, he opened the other door, which let him into a room containing little furniture beyond a tripod easel and a palette lying beside it, smeared with caked colors, a chair or two and a table littered with paint tubes, brushes and all the apparatus of an artist. On the walls were pinned a score or so of sketches, not clearly visible in the curtained room, but each of them bore a numbered paper label, as if in reference to a catalogue.

Lang was astonished to find that Rockett had dabbled in art, but the room contained nothing of significance. Beyond it was another bedroom, torn pell-mell like the first.

The crew of the Cavite had found nothing, nor did Lang, and he did not clearly know what he had expected to find. He went back through the other side of the house, into the kitchen, and let himself out the back door to have a look at the exterior.

The air was wonderfully sweet after the foulness of the close rooms. The yard was of smooth, hard sand, running over to a row of peach trees, with a long strawberry plot beyond it, and the orange grove lay beyond. A bed of brilliant cannas grew by the house, and a driveway led toward the rear, to a small garage, empty now, with wide-open doors.

There was a shed with a quantity of gardening tools. Farther back stood an unusually large wild-orange tree, with dozens of the glowing golden globes still hanging in the glossy foliage. Beyond it stood two cement posts, perhaps intended for a future gateway, each overgrown with a climbing rose vine; but the earth between them had been made into a bed of winter lettuce, just sprouting aboveground.

Lang glanced at his watch, and saw that it was five minutes to six. He darted back into the house, sat down in the dining room and waited, almost holding his breath, watch in hand.

The pointer crept slowly past the XII on the dial. Five minutes past—ten. The silence hung dead. Nothing happened. He did not see how anything could happen in this deserted house, but he sat, still waiting, though he put the watch away, till suddenly he had a revelation.

He saw the negro digger!

It hung on the wall in front of him, over the mantel, in a brown frame. It was a vigorous, if somewhat crudely painted sketch in oils of a negro laborer, barearmed and barenecked, up to his waist in a hole in the earth. An orange tree full of fruit was over his head; on either side was a pillar thick with climbing roses. He was looking upward at the sun with a pleased grin, and the title was painted on the picture frame: “Twelve o’clock.”

Time for dinner; that point was plain enough. Plain enough, too, was the scene—the cement gateposts Lang had seen behind the house. With a glimpse of the reality, he rushed into the studio room again, pulled up the curtains, and looked at the sketches numbered from six to nine. They all represented the same spot in the garden, from different angles, but without the digger.

Lang caught the hint, unmistakable now. He ran back for another look at the digger, then burst out through the kitchen into the garden. He seized a spade and pick in the tool shed, hurried to the rose-crowned posts, and began to dig between them.

The earth was soft and sandy, easy digging. He threw it out furiously, going down a couple of feet without striking anything but stones. Then he lengthened the excavation like a trench and got into it, using the pick now. He went another foot deeper, sweating and excited, and then the tool struck something hard, and slipped. He had it uncovered in another moment; it seemed black and square, and, getting the spade under it, he heaved it out.

It was a metal box, about a foot square and six inches deep, one of those sheet-steel boxes used for valuables. He heard something rattle inside it, but it was not very heavy; and it was disappointingly evident at once that it could never hold all the plunder Rockett was said to have carried away. It was locked, of course. He fumbled with it for a moment, and then, becoming conscious that he was in full view of the road, he hastened into the house to examine it.

He put it on the kitchen table, and brushed off the clinging earth. The lock did not look very elaborate, and he took out his own bunch of keys that had luckily stayed safe in his trousers pocket all through the wreck, and began to try one after another.

One of them almost fitted. He could feel the lock give, but it stuck. He was twisting it to and fro, wholly absorbed in the effort, when the front door of the house suddenly, sharply opened and shut again.

Every atom of breath seemed to leave his body. He sat benumbed with fright, as paralyzed as Rockett himself had been, unable to get up, or escape or try to conceal the box. A quick step crossed the dining room; the door opened, and Carroll stepped into the kitchen, surveying Lang smilingly and without surprise.

CHAPTER VI
YUMA OIL

The blood rushed through Lang’s veins again. His face, which had been cold, felt suddenly flaming.

“Just as I expected,” said Carroll. “I see you’ve found his cache. Don’t look like much, does it?”

“So you trailed me out here?” Lang found voice to say.

“Not at all. I didn’t trail you. I was sure you’d be here early this morning. Of course I knew the old man passed some kind of tip to you. That was why I was so careful to tell you just how to find the house. Didn’t have any trouble, did you?”

Lang had a humiliating consciousness that he had been played with, and he kept angrily silent.

“Let’s have a look at it,” Carroll continued, coming to the table. “Keys won’t open it? Let me try.”

He fumbled with the lock for half a minute and gave it up. Searching about the kitchen he found a heavy steel screw driver, and by inserting the blade at the back he was able to break a hinge. The other followed, and the lid swung open, still held by the lock.