Once upon a time there were four men—all bad. That is, they were each bad, but none was entirely bad. Nobody is.
The four were closely associated in their interests and were of varying types and varying degrees of badness.
One was the Cat’s-paw; one was the Brutal Ruffian; one was the Arch Villain behind it all; and one was the Judas Iscariot, who carried the bag, and who betrayed the whole bunch.
The good in each was more or less discernible. One was awfully kind to his mother, who never had heard of his badness, and wouldn’t believe it if she had. One was generous minded and lavish of gifts. No one ever appealed to him for material help in vain. One was champion of the downtrodden, and always sided with and assisted the under dog in any fight. And one—well, he made it a point of honor always to return a borrowed book. Perhaps his good trait was the most unusual of all.
One was an engaging-looking chap, with deep-set eyes and an irradiating smile. One was plain, but of a strong-featured, though immobile countenance that betokened an indomitable will. One was of fine, ascetic features, which belied his real nature and served as a mask. And one was of nondescript appearance, as most men are.
One had been a fairly well known football player. One had been a Civil Engineer, and was still civil. One was secretly superstitious. And one was addicted to Cross Word Puzzles, Bridge, Chess and Detective Stories, which addictions usually flock together.
The four men figure in this story, also some other men and a few women, who will appear in due course.
Many years ago Kipling wrote:
“The Liner she’s a Lady, an’ she never looks nor ’eeds.” |
and perhaps the most patrician Lady that ever rode the waves was the liner Pinnacle as she left her New York wharf, one summer afternoon, bound for Liverpool.
Without looking nor ’eeding, she steamed majestically down the lane of the Hudson, and out to sea.
Many of her passengers, after screeching themselves hoarse with their goodby to friends on the pier, stayed on deck to watch the fading away of the skyscrapers along the Manhattan skyline.
The Pinnacle, as befitted her name, was the last word in steamships. She was, in truth, the very lap of luxury, and the First Cabin passengers, as they crossed her gangplank, represented, perhaps, enough gold to sink the ship.
As was also fitting, Nature had provided a perfect day for the sailing.
Although it was the first day of July, June seemed still to linger, and the blue of sea and sky was gilded by a summer sun, which obligingly tempered its rays by disappearing now and then, behind puffy white clouds.
A delicious breeze added itself to the weather record, and, as an old poet has it,
“All things were teeming with life and with light.” |
After the Liberty Statue was passed, the Deck Steward was made suddenly busy explaining why he had assigned to insistent passengers chairs that had been long ago engaged by others.
But the Deck Steward was a pleasant sort, who had a beaming smile and a placating way with him that let him get by with most of his concessions to bribery and corruption.
By tea time, everybody’s chair was labelled and most of the recipient sex had gone to their cabins to examine their flowers and gifts, while the men looked up acquaintances and proffered cigars.
But the call of the tea brought many out to their deck chairs and travelling companions gossiped and compared notes.
“Cox is on board,” said Amy Camper to her husband, as she balanced a tray on her knees and poured tea into two cups.
“Yes, I saw him. Oily Oscar is in fine fettle.”
“Always is. He seems to be alone.”
“I believe he has a secretary or satellite of some sort. I shan’t trouble him, anyway. I say, Amy, Lily Gibbs is with us.”
“Oh, Lord! Can I never escape that woman? Well, she’ll attach herself to Oscar Cox’s train as soon as may be.”
“She’ll do that. Has, in fact—or, at least, her deck chair is directly in front of his. Look.”
Amy Camper dutifully looked, and saw Oscar Cox, the Oil magnate, in a chair in the back row of all, while the sprightly Miss Gibbs was in the next row ahead.
It was Saturday afternoon, and after their tea, all felt relaxed and affable, and the seated ones watched the walkers as they strode by, and in return the walkers discussed their indolent neighbors.
Two young men paced round and round the deck.
They were Pollard Nash and Harold Mallory, and they had known one another just twenty minutes.
Somebody had told one of them to look up the other, and the result was an immediate and mutual liking.
“I wonder who that girl is,” said Nash, as they passed a quiet figure in quiet, smart garb, who was looking dreamily out to sea.
“That’s the fourth girl you’ve wondered about,” remarked Mallory. “You’re a bit of a wonderer, Nash.”
“Yes, I’m always at it. Born wondering, I think. But that girl puts it over all the rest. Princess in disguise, I take it.”
“Not very well disguised, then, for she has all the aloofness and disdain commonly ascribed to royalty.”
“Well, we can’t find out until we can manage to get a proper introduction. That’s the worst of these smashing big boats. Everybody is noli me tangere. I like the old-fashioned little tubs, where you can scrape acquaintance if you want to.”
“They’re more sociable. But I like better the reserve and exclusiveness of these. Who wants all sorts of people bumping into one, with rowdy greetings and all that?”
“Hello, there’s Cox, the oil man. Know him?”
“No, do you?”
“I don’t. But I shall before long. He’s a chap I’d like to talk to.”
“Why don’t you just tell him so? He’s looking bored and probably lonely.”
“He’d pitch me overboard.”
“Maybe not. I dare you to try it. I’ll stand by, to catch you as you go over the rail.”
Egged on by Mallory’s chaff, Nash paused near the chair of the millionaire.
“Mr. Cox, isn’t it?” he said, in careless, affable tone.
“Yes,” said Oscar Cox. “Are we acquainted?”
“Will be, in a minute,” said the imperturbable Nash. “I’m Pollard Nash, and this is my new-found friend, Mallory. You see, Mr. Cox, I could get dozens of people on board to introduce us—but what’s the use?”
Nash was the sort of blue-eyed person whom it is almost impossible to treat coolly. His manner radiated cordiality of a pleasant, disinterested kind and nine out of ten would have been amiably disposed toward him.
Moreover, Oscar Cox was in the best of humors. He had recently achieved something he inordinately desired, he was off for a long holiday, and he had left behind all his business cares and anxieties. His last few weeks had been strenuous, even dangerous, but they were past, and now, at sea, with every dispute settled, every quandary straightened out, and every danger passed, the great man was at peace with himself mentally, morally and physically.
This explained why he chuckled amusedly at Nash’s boldness, instead of swearing at him to get out.
“That’s so,” he returned, smiling at the two men in front of him. “Let’s go to the smoking room, and see what we can do in the way of cementing an acquaintance—perhaps, a friendship.”
As he rose from his chair, he proved to be younger than they had thought him, for his white hair was misleading. As a matter of fact, Oscar Cox was just fifty, and his whole physique denoted that age, but his white hair, though abundant and crisply curly, made him seem older.
He was enormously wealthy, and though there were those who whispered “Profiteer,” yet his friends, and he had many, rated him as merely a shrewd and clever business promoter.
His manners were charming, except when it suited his purpose to turn ugly, and in that rôle, too, he was well versed.
His clothes were irreproachable and his whole air that of a man who was at home in any situation.
The short conversation among the three had been avidly listened to by the lady who sat in front of Cox, the quick-witted and busy-minded Miss Gibbs.
“Come back soon, Mr. Cox,” she called out, and he returned to her merely a smiling nod.
“Damned nuisance,” he remarked, as they stepped into the companion way. “Some women ought to be thrown overboard.”
“She seems objectionable,” said Mallory, who had noted the eager face of the spinster. “But there are delightful looking people on board, quite a few I’d like to know.”
“Easily managed,” Cox assured him. “What I can’t arrange for you, the Captain will. But I’ll put you in with a few. The Campers are good sports—young married people, and they’ll know everybody inside of twenty-four hours. Be at the dance in the lounge tonight, and they’ll do the rest.”
“We’ll surely be there,” Nash declared. “Travelling alone, Mr. Cox?”
“Yes; except for my Guardian Angel, a misbegotten freak who looks after my belongings. Name of Hudder, and stupider than his name. You chaps alone?”
“Yep,” responded Mallory. “I’m on a short but well-earned vacation, and my new-found friend here, is on a longer one, but not so well earned.”
“A lot you know about it,” Nash smiled. “But as half an hour ago you didn’t know me at all, I’ll admit that you read me fairly well.”
“I do. I’ll bet your intimates call you Polly.”
“That, of course,” Cox put in. “How could they help it? A man named Pollard invites that nickname. What’s yours, Mr. Mallory?”
“Hal Mall, as naturally as Polly’s. And I know yours, sir. You’re Oily Oscar.”
“Yes, but thank goodness the adjective refers to material oil, and not to any traits of my character.”
“I can well believe that,” and Mallory smiled quickly. For whatever were Cox’s faults or virtues, he was far removed from the type of man known as oily.
Straightforward, almost blunt in his speech, abrupt in his statements, and positive in his decisions, Oscar Cox was never guilty of soft soap or palaver.
And he was a good story teller. Not a raconteur, that word connotes a long-winded, self-conceited bore, but a quick, graphic talker whose tales had point, pith and brevity.
As the talk drifted to far-off countries, he told of the brave exploits of his nephew and namesake.
“Young Oscar Cox,” he said, “is fearless and often foolishly daring. He’s hunting big game now, in South America somewhere. That is, if the Big Game hasn’t hunted him. He’s on a pretty stiff expedition, and I hope to goodness he’ll get home alive.”
Further details of the youth’s intrepidity were related, and all were amazed when the first bugle call warned of the approaching dinner hour.
Polly Nash and Hal Mall secured a table to themselves in the elaborate Restaurant, and were not surprised to see Cox alone at a table across the room.
And as they gazed with interest at the incoming stream of passengers, they observed some few they already knew, and many others they would like to know.
“Good dancer, are you, Hal?” Nash inquired.
“Best in the world.”
“Except myself. Bridge shark?”
“Not in the first rank, but a sound, reliable game.”
“Good. I see us the life and soul of the party after a day or two. Lots of pretty girls about, but not so very many captivating young men.”
“I’m keen for the outdoors. Deck sports mean more to me than saloon Jazz. I say, there’s the google-eyed spinster. Rather more odious in evening togs, isn’t she?”
“Well, yes,” and Nash looked critically at the complacent Miss Gibbs, resplendent in a black chiffon wisp, precariously held up by a string of jet beads over one shoulder. “But, I think, Mall, I don’t disdain the lady. She looks to me brainy, perceptive and responsive.”
“Some diagnosis at a first glance! All right, you can have her. Me for the mysterious princess. She’s a dream tonight.”
Nash turned quickly to see the girl he had noticed on deck coming into the room alone.
Though very young, not more than twenty-one, he judged, she had poise and savoir faire that a real princess might have envied. But it was the self-respect and self-reliance of an American girl, a girl brought up in the best of American ways and means.
She wore a frock of pale, flowered chiffon, daintily short, and with pleasantly rounded neck, a string of beautiful pearls her only ornament.
It was a contrast to the jingling beads and multiple bracelets of most of the women present, but the gown bespoke Paris and the pearls announced themselves as real, while the face of the girl herself was so naively pleased and so frankly entertained by the scene before her, that she easily held all eyes.
With no trace of self-consciousness she walked part way across the room, and pausing at a small table, spoke a few words to the hovering head waiter.
Obsequiously he placed her chair, and flourished about his necessary duties.
Polly Nash gazed in silent admiration.
Then, for he was a devotee of the Gilbert and Sullivan operas, he quoted:
“The maid was Beauty’s fairest Queen, With golden tresses, Like a real Princess’s,” |
“They’re not golden,” Mallory corrected him.
“Well, they’re a goldy-brown, a sort of burnished gold—tarnished gold, old gold, if you like. Any way they look gold to me.”
“You’re infatuated, adoration at first sight.”
“Yes, as the moth for the star. You’re infatuated, too. Only you think it’s wiser not to show it.”
“What I like best about her, is her air of enjoyment. She seems not to feel her loneliness, she’s all wrapped up in interest in her surroundings. Why do you suppose she’s alone?”
“Duenna seasick, probably. I wonder who she is.”
“We’ll find out this evening. I shall dance with her first. The Captain will smooth the way for me.”
“All right,” Nash’s gaze had wandered and his attention, too. “By Jove, Mallory, there’s Trent—Max Trent!”
“Who’s he? A celebrity?”
“Not ostensibly. But he’s one of the finest writers in the world. He writes detective stories, but he writes literature, too.”
“You mean his stories are literature? That’s gilding refined gold and painting the lily. A good detective yarn doesn’t need to be literature. In fact, fine writing detracts from its strength.”
“Who’s talking about fine writing? His books are top of the heap—.”
“The detective story heap? Not much of an eminence.”
“Oh, all right. That’s the way everybody talks who doesn’t care for sleuth stories. I’d rather meet that man than all your dancing princesses or oily eminence.”
“Well, you’ll probably be able to manage it. The Captain can surely compass that.”
“Maybe and maybe not. Authors are an exclusive bunch.”
Dinner over, nearly everybody sauntered across to the spacious and spectacular Saloon, where a fine orchestra was already gladdening the ears of music lovers.
The middle of the great room was a dancing floor, while round the borders were tables and chairs for those who wanted them.
Soon it was like an informal At Home Dance. Introductions, if deserved were readily obtained. Acquaintances were made and the correctly-garbed men and beautifully-gowned women filled the dance floor with a brilliant, swaying, smiling crowd that made a fascinating picture for the onlookers.
Pollard Nash achieved his heart’s desire with no trouble at all. For when the Captain presented him to the author, Max Trent, that genius received the stranger most affably and seemed all for a chat.
Mallory, though, was not so successful. With all the good will in the world, Captain Van Winkle was not able to bring about an introduction to the Princess-like girl.
“She is a Miss Forman,” the Captain said. “She is travelling alone, and desires to make no acquaintances, except such as she may choose for herself.”
“Who is she?” asked the disappointed Mallory. “Why is she alone?”
“Mercy on us, I don’t know! She confided to me nothing, except her passport information. But she is, I should say, quite able to take care of herself. If not, she’ll have me to look after her. Though, I’ve seen no necessity as yet.”
“Oh, all right. Well, introduce me to the siren in black over there will you? Perhaps she’ll dance with me.”
The Captain stared at him.
“You go in for extremes, don’t you?” he said, smiling. “Miss Forman is easily the ship’s beauty, while Miss Gibbs—.”
“Yes, she looks like a cook,” said Mallory, pleasantly, “but she’s my choice.”
He didn’t elucidate further that he had a notion Miss Gibbs was the sort to know everybody on board in the shortest possible time. And that with her as a friend at court, he might reach the princess later on.
Lily Gibbs smiled with pleasure at the advent of this most presentable young man, and in a flutter of flattered delight she danced with him.
They circled the dance floor, and en route, he gained much gossipy information concerning the passengers.
Miss Gibbs had industriously made hay during the few hours of sunshine already elapsed, and she was more than willing to retail her knowledge.
And later, as they discussed some light refreshment, they indulged in a veritable orgy of tattle and speculation about everybody on board.
“The Campers are a good sort,” the oracle revealed. “Owen is athletic and all that, but he has brains, too. Amy is a dear, but she bosses him terribly. She’s five years older than he is—but they’re happy enough, as things go. The man who just passed is Sherman Mason, a New York clubman.”
“That his wife with him?”
“Oh, my, no! He’s a bachelor, and scorns women, except to flirt with now and then. He loves dancing.”
Impatient of these descriptions of people who didn’t interest him, Mallory took a plunge.
“Who’s the quiet little girl sitting over by the blue-curtained alcove?”
Miss Gibbs gave him a quick glance.
“Got around to it, have you? I knew you were dying to ask that.”
“Why not? She’s one of the prettiest girls on board.”
“Oh, do you think so? Why, these two coming toward us now can beat her all to pieces for looks!”
The girls mentioned were of a dashing type, and wore stunning dance frocks of ultra fashion and bizarre design.
“Of course,” he returned smiling, “if you admire that style, you wouldn’t care for the demure little piece.”
“She isn’t so terribly demure. That’s Maisie Forman, and she’s as independent as they come. She won’t meet anybody except those she picks out herself.” Miss Gibbs looked a little chagrined. “She hasn’t picked me out.”
“Nor me,” and Mallory smiled in sympathy. “Let’s make a bargain. If either of us should get to know her, agree to present the other. How’s that?”
“A little one-sided—” but Miss Gibbs didn’t say which side she meant. “However, I’ll agree to that,” and she gave her hand on it.
“Good hunting?” Hal Mallory asked of Pollard Nash, as they ran across each other in the smoking room just before turning in.
“Fine,” Nash replied. “Had a long hobnob with Trent. He’s great! Then Oily Cox joined us, and he told stories and Trent did, too, and soon there was a whole peanut gallery listening in. What’s your report?”
“Failure. That is, so far. I may meet her later on, but it’s a bit doubtful.”
“Who? Meet whom?”
“Why, the Princess we saw in the dining room. By the way, her name is Forman—Maisie Forman.”
“Well, why didn’t you get to know her?”
“She’s too exclusive. But I learned about her from the Gibbs charmer.”
“Oh, yes, the woman with her eye on Cox. By the way, Mallory, Cox told some yarns about his nephew, the one named after him, you know. And, he made him out a financier in Chicago!”
“Well?”
“Well, don’t you remember, this afternoon, he said the chap was a big game hunter and was now in South America.”
“But a business man can hunt game in his off hours.”
“I know, but Oily Cox made it out tonight that his namesake nephew is even now on his job in Chicago. Devotes his whole life and energy to it, and is rapidly becoming a power in the stock market out West.”
“Cox is nutty, I expect—.”
“No, anything but that. What did Miss Gibbs say about him?”
“Nothing. We scarcely mentioned him. But I tell you, that little dame has the low-down on everybody on this tub. She dances as if she had her rubbers on, but she’s nobody’s fool!”
“No?”
“No.”
Sunday morning is Sunday morning the world over.
Whatever the situation, wherever the locality, whoever the people, Sunday morning has an atmosphere all its own, inevitable and unmistakable.
Entirely unsectarian, it is no respecter of persons, and everyone must feel its influence to a greater or less degree.
But it is not unpleasant. It is rather like a benediction, with its calm, peaceful outward effects and its undercurrents of cleanliness and Godliness.
And Sunday morning on the Pinnacle was rather like that Lotus land some poet wrote about, where it is always Saturday afternoon. The sunshine was gently golden, the air downy soft and the blue waves were mountains that skipped like little lambs.
The imminence of bouillon and sandwiches, like a magnet, drew to the deck hungry passengers who had eaten nothing since breakfast.
They came, not single spies, but in battalions, well-dressed, well-groomed, well-mannered, and in more or less audibly happy frame of mind.
Lily Gibbs was early in her chair, alive and alert to catch any sidelights on her neighbors.
The neighbors, mostly wrapped up in their own affairs and their own companions, bustled about her, unseeing, as the far flung line of rugs and pillows settled into place.
Mallory and Nash were doing their daily hundred rounds of the deck, pausing often to pass the time of Sunday morning.
Earlier, they had gone into conference with Garson, the Deck Steward, with the result that they now boasted chairs right in the heart of things. That is, in the immediate vicinity of the chairs of Oscar Cox and several other men of financial importance, the Campers and several other citizens of social importance, and a sprinkling of the sublimely important Younger Generation.
Two of these latter pounced on the young men, as they came toward their chairs, and claimed them for their own.
“You can be Gladys’ sheik, Mr. Mallory,” Sally Barnes twinkled at him, “and Mr. Nash shall be mine. Now, be nice and possessive, won’t you?”
The two men spoke this language fluently, and responded in kind, as they took the chairs the girls ordained.
The quartette had met before, and failing to make any headway in getting acquainted with the exclusive Miss Forman, Mallory had advised attaching themselves to these pretty little flappers.
The flappers’ mothers sat near by, smiling indulgently at the foolishness of their adored offspring.
Then Oscar Cox appeared on deck.
The audience didn’t rise, but they paid him the homage of turning sidewise in their chairs and craning their necks and staring hard as he made his triumphal entry.
Arrayed in white and looking more like a yachtsman on his own craft than a mere passenger, he was followed by a queer looking little man, who had factotum written large all over him.
Unheeding all else, he bore down on Cox’s chair, spread a rug, propelled his master into it, folded it over his legs with the deft speed of an envelope machine, and then, from a bag he carried, whisked out a leather pillow, some magazines, a pair of blue spectacles and a field glass.
He hung the bag on the chair arm and after a few whispered words and a nod from Cox, he folded his wings like an Arab and silently disappeared.
“How thrilling!” exclaimed Sally Barnes, “Mr. Cox has a minion, a henchman, a—.”
“A vassal, a serf at his side,” supplemented Mallory. “Well, he’s a big man, you know—a man of affairs.
“Love affairs?” asked Gladys, hopefully.
“I don’t know about that. I only know him superficially as yet. But I’ll find out for you—.”
“I’ll tell her,” broke in Cox himself, who was well within earshot. “Yes, Little Girl, I’m keen on love affairs. Any takers?”
Cox had a way with him, and his speech brought only beaming smiles from the watchful mothers of the girls.
“Don’t believe my white hair,” Cox went on, gayly. “It turned white in a single night, once when I was frightened ’most to death. Why, I have a nephew, my namesake, by the way, who is years younger than I am, and looks older. But then, he’s a parson—a clergyman in Boston.”
“I thought he was in South America,” Nash said, suddenly.
“My nephew, Oscar Cox? I tell you he’s a Unitarian minister, in Boston. Been there, in the same church, five or six years. His people love him. I’m not crazy about the lad myself. He’s too mild for my liking. But he found Hudder for me—so I owe him a debt of gratitude. Notice Hudder? My all-round caretaker? Queer looking, but capable—oh, one hundred per cent. capable.”
“Fascinating devil,” commented Sally Barnes, casually. “Is he a foreigner?”
“Well, he had some Spanish and Italian forebears. But I’m often uncertain whether he’s a devil or a dummkopf. He has traits of both. I never budge without him, he’s as necessary as a toothbrush. Well, who’s for shuffleboard or quoits, or what have you on the Sport Deck.”
Kicking away Hudder’s careful foldings, Cox jumped to his feet. In a moment, the watchful satellite was at his side, moving an empty chair or two, easing his master out into the open, and gathering up the fallen magazines.
Impatiently shaking off the hovering helper, Cox picked up a crowd of young people with his eyes, and strode off along the deck.
Pausing to look back for the others, he stood, with his back against the rail, his big, well-cut face complacent and proud; his sharp gray eyes darting here and there in general anticipation.
About two rows back, Maisie Forman was lying back in her chair, while beside her Max Trent sat upright, eagerly talking on some all-engrossing subject.
The all-seeing eyes of Oily Oscar took them in and then darted on to their neighbors, much as a jerky searchlight pursues its course.
“Isn’t he astonishing!” murmured Maisie, as the magnate passed on, and his merry train came trooping after.
“Yes,” and Trent smiled. “He looks like an event all ready to transpire. Or,” he added, “like a spider with a lot of flies.”
“Why, you don’t know anything bad about him, do you?” the girl asked.
“No, I don’t know him at all, do you?”
“Mercy, no. And I don’t want to.”
“Of course you don’t. I daresay he’s all right, as such men go. But he’s very much of the earth, earthy. When I say I don’t know him at all, I mean—er—personally. I met him with a crowd last night, and he’s a good mixer. He made friends right and left.”
“Never mind him,” and the girl turned her amber eyes on him. They were amber in this light, but sometimes they turned to beryl and topaz and all those shades that old-fashioned people used to call hazel.
Anyway, they were enchanting eyes, and Trent looked into them soberly as he resumed their broken off talk.
The Princess, as Nash had dubbed her, was not so upstage with people if she liked them. But travelling alone, as she was, she must needs watch her step and though the Captain would put her in touch with anyone she wanted, so far she had deigned to smile only on Max Trent, the story writer.
She found him interesting and entertaining, and though she purposed soon to make some pleasant woman acquaintances, she had so far, delayed it.
“Yes,” Trent picked up his interrupted tale, “I thought it would be of use to me in my detective stories, and so I took it up. Oh, I know it is quite the thing to guy a correspondence course in anything. But I guy the guys that guy it. I master it, it doesn’t master me. And, you’d be surprised, not only have I learned enough from it to write my yarns more convincingly and correctly, but I’ve become really interested in detection as a game.”
“What! You want to be a detective?”
“I don’t want to be one—I am one. I didn’t go for to do it. It was greatness thrust upon me. I just couldn’t help it. You see, with the bits I picked out of that correspondence course, and my natural bent for all that sort of thing, I just am a detective.”
“And are you going to take—what do you call ’em?—cases?”
“Oh, Lord no! I’m not going to practise. But it’s fine for my books. Don’t you see, I can write better detective stories if I am a detective.”
“Yes, I suppose so!” She lowered her voice. “Who is this bearing down upon us? He looks as if he meant to speak to us.”
She judged correctly, and in another moment the passer-by had paused.
“Good morning, Mr. Trent,” he said, in a quiet, pleasant way. “Sunday is a day when everybody ought to feel generous-minded and charitable and love their neighbors as themselves. So may I flock with you people a little bit?”
His manner and speech disarmed Miss Forman’s suddenly-roused antagonism and she smiled such a welcome, that Trent introduced the stranger at once.
“Mr. Mason,” he said, “Mr. Sherman Mason, of New York.”
Trent’s inflections gave Mr. Mason a standing at once, and Maisie extracted a hand from the fluttering scarf ends she was holding, and gave it to him in greeting.
He sat on the extended front of Trent’s chair, and the talk naturally drifted to books.
“Along came Ruth,” called out a gay and cheery voice, and Miss Gibbs, all uninvited, joined the group.
“I’ve been looking for you, Mr. Mason,” she chided, “you promised to take me to walk the deck this morning.”
Had Sherman Mason voiced his thoughts, he would have said he’d rather take her to walk the plank, but he merely bowed and smiled and observed that the morning was not over yet.
“No,” agreed Lily Gibbs, “and I’m glad of your defection since it gives me opportunity to meet the charming Miss Forman. May I introduce myself? I’m Lily Gibbs—Silly Lily—some folks call me!” she giggled appropriately. “Oh, I foresee we shall be such friends!”
She hunted out the girl’s hand from the enveloping chiffon folds of the futile scarf, and enthusiastically clasped it in both her own. “Dear Miss Forman, how glad I am to call you friend!”
“Thank you,” said Maisie, and though her voice was sweet, something about it made Miss Gibbs drop the hand she held, and sit up straighter.
Sherman Mason, seeing it all, smilingly threw himself into the breach and rose, saying, “Come Miss Gibbs, or we shan’t have any sort of tramp before lunch time.”
The two went off, and Trent looked whimsically at the frowning girl before him.
“I couldn’t help it,” he said, defensively. “Detectives spot criminals, but they can’t prevent crime.”
Maisie rippled a little laugh.
“Of course you couldn’t help it. I can’t expect to be shielded from the great army of the Sociably Inclined. And don’t think me a stuck-up, please. I’m not, really, only—alone as I am—.”
“How do you happen to be alone?” said Trent, quietly, with an earnest interest that robbed his query of rudeness.
“Why, it—it just happened—that I have to cross alone. When I arrive on the Liverpool dock, I shall be properly and correctly cared for.”
She looked out to sea as she spoke, and her reply seemed to be more to herself than to her companion.
“Please don’t think I meant to be intrusive,” he begged, and she said, quickly:
“Oh, no, I didn’t. It’s all right. It doesn’t matter. I ought to have brought a maid, you see—but I didn’t. I’ll attach myself to some dear old lady, or a nice young matron, and then I’ll be all right.”
“You’re all right, anyway,” Trent told her; “as right as rain! Captain Van Winkle will find a chaperon for you, if you really want one. But why not live up to your privileges as a free young American girl, and shift for yourself?”
“Perhaps I shall.” Miss Forman still showed that preoccupied air, and Trent was not surprised when she picked up her books and things and left him with a smiling but dignified “Good morning.”
The rollicking crowd came back from their deck games, and Trent quickly immersed himself in a book and drew his cap down over his eyes.
From beneath its brim, he could see Oscar Cox pass, surrounded by laughing girls and their attendant swains.
He heard Cox saying: “—and before I leave this ship, I’ll tell you all something that will knock you silly with astonishment! By Gad, I will!”
He laughed his big, booming chuckle that was infectious if unconventional.
Oily Cox made friends right and left. And though for the moment he was the midst of a crowd of shrieking, giggling youngsters, he was quite as much at home with their dancing mothers, or with their wise, shrewd, business-like fathers.
The man had one Life Motto: Get what you want
And now, after furious struggles, he had got what he wanted, and until a time should come when he wanted something else, he was contentedly happy.
By some strange freak of Nature, Sunday morning always flies by on the wings of the wind, but Sunday afternoon, except for lovers, invariably drags.
There were no lovers, that anyone knew of, on board the Pinnacle, and Sunday afternoon was a week long.
Maisie Forman stuck to her cabin, because she didn’t want to be bothered with intrusive strangers.
Max Trent stuck to his, because he feared if he went to his deck chair, Miss Forman would think him a nuisance.
The flapper girls huddled in one or other of their cabins, comparing notes of conquest, and their adoring swains forgathered in the smoking room and pretended they were men.
Miss Gibbs wandered about to no purpose, and the big financial magnates got together and listened to one another talk business.
Oscar Cox, being the biggest and wisest, said the least.
Sherman Mason and Owen Camper, only a shade less influential in the busy marts, were nearly as silent.
Hal Mallory and Pollard Nash, scorning the younger crowd, heard with only a half interest the guarded opinions and canny advices of the Powers of Finance, and tried to urge Cox into a mood for telling funny stories.
But he was disinclined, and even made no reference to his somewhat versatile namesake nephew.
Yet, a little later, as the talk somehow drifted to superstition and the power of a curse and all that, Cox suddenly waked up.
“Nobody but a fool believes in the supernatural,” he said, dogmatically, “and only a half-wit believes in curses or charms against evil. But I will say that nearly everybody has just one little pet foolishness of that sort. Why, I know a man who goes back home if he sees a black cat on his way to business!”
“Didn’t know black cats went to business,” put in the irrepressible Mallory.
“That will be about all from you Hal Mall,” and Cox scowled in mock severity. “And my wife—dead these many years—” his voice softened, “if she put on any garment wrong side out, by chance, she wouldn’t turn it, because that meant bad luck. Nor would she let me. On two occasions I went to my office with one sock wrong side out!”
“And yet you say you’re not superstitious!” Mason exclaimed.
“That isn’t superstition—that’s marital devotion,” Cox returned. “But as I said, everybody has one little pet foible of his own, and I have mine, though it isn’t a fear to set right a shirt put on wrong side out.”
“What is it?” asked one or two, interestedly.
“Hudder,” Cox said, and though he scarcely raised his voice a note, it was a summons, and the queer little valet crept into the room.
“Get the Hand from my box, and bring it here.”
Noiselessly, the creature crept away, his soundless, slow shuffle being describable by no word other than crept.
“Ugh!” Nash said, involuntarily, “that fellow gives me the creeps! How can you stand him around?”
“Habit,” and Cox smiled. Nothing ever seemed to annoy him. “Hudder isn’t much to look at, I’ll admit, but he’s a wonder at taking care of me. And of my things. He’s valet, secretary, nurse and orderly, all in one.”
The fellow returned then, and handing something to Cox, silently departed.
“This,” and Cox laid the object on the table, “is my Hoodoo and my Mascot. If I have a small, pet bit of superstition, there it is.”
They all looked at it, and saw a bronze hand. A man’s hand, nearly life size, and of wonderful workmanship. It was a strong—diabolically strong hand, its fingers spread apart, yet partly clenched as if to clutch an enemy in a death grip. The hand was lean and sinewy; muscular, not bony, and imbued with the effect of strength and power seldom seen even in a living hand.
Yet withal, there was beauty in the design, genius in the workmanship.
And with a quick appreciation of this, Pollard Nash said, impulsively, “I bet that’s a Rodin!”
Cox flashed him a glance of approval.
“Right, my boy,” he said; “but it’s only a copy. However, it’s a faithful copy, and few could distinguish it from the original. Yes, a copy of one of Rodin’s finest studies. Look at the marvellous detail. This bronze thing has real muscle, real veins—by golly, I’ll bet it has a nervous system!”
Cox’s face was lighted up with enthusiasm, and Nash was only second in admiration. To most of the others it was merely a good-looking bronze hand, few understood its great art.
“Well,” Cox went on, “That hand is my Luck. But whether good or bad luck, I don’t know. I always keep it by me, so far it hasn’t gone back on me. I’ve snatched all I’ve wanted, along life’s pathway, and if the grip of those bronze fingers portend anything, they mean that what I’ve got I’ll keep.”
Cox’s voice was somber, now, deep as with strong emotion, yet ringing and vibrant as he brought out the last words.