John Forbes - Doubloons—and the Girl

"Now you git out," snarled Peters in conclusion. "You'll git no information here. Make no mistake about that!"

Drew was startled by the change in Captain Peters' manner and look. The skipper glared at him as though Drew were a strange dog trying to get the other's bone. The young man's temper was instantly rasped; but Peters was a considerably older man than he, and he seemed to be laboring under some misapprehension.

"I assure you, Captain Peters," Drew said, "my reasons for asking were perfectly honorable."

"You needn't assure me of anything. Just git out!" roared the skipper of the Normandy ; and, seeing that there was nothing but a fight in prospect if he remained, the young man withdrew. On deck he saw the second officer, and that person winked at him knowingly and followed him to the plank.

"Old man on the rampage?" he asked.

"Seems to be," said the confused Drew.

"Chance was, that that Bug-eye you knocked out the other day is a pertic'lar friend of the skipper's. But gosh! you're some boy with your mits."

Drew might again have tried to find out from this fellow about the girl, but he shrank from making her the subject of any general inquiry or discussion. To him she was something to be kept sacred. His heart was a shrine with her as its image, and before that image he burned imaginary tapers with the fervor of a devotee.

One thought came to him with a suddenness that made him quake. Could it be that she was already married?

He tried to remember whether "Mrs." or "Miss" had preceded the name on the letter. For the life of him he could not recall. He had so utterly assumed that she was unmarried, on the occasion of their meeting, that any thought to the contrary had not even occurred to him then. He was somewhat comforted by the probability that, had she been married, her husband's name or initials would have followed the "Mrs." instead of her given name. Yet, this was a custom that was becoming as much honored in the breach as in the observance, and the use of her own given name would not be at all conclusive.

Then, with a great wave of relief, the memory came to him that he had placed the letters in her left hand and had noted that she had no rings on that hand at all. The thought had come to him at the time that no ornament could make those tapered fingers prettier than they were.

His heart leaped with elation. She was unmarried then! She wore no wedding ring!

There was still greater cause for jubilation. She wore no ring of any kind! She was not even engaged!

She probably was somewhere in this teeming city. Many times their paths might almost cross, perhaps had already almost crossed since that first meeting on the pier.

Fantastic musings took possession of him. Who was it that, in a burst of hyperbole, said that if one took up his station at Broadway and Thirty-fourth Street, he would, if he stayed there long enough, see everybody in the world go past? Or was it Kipling who said that of Port Said?

Where should he take his stand? What places should he frequent with the greatest likelihood of meeting her? Theatres, the opera, art galleries, railway stations, Central Park?

He recalled himself from these fantasies with a wrench. How foolish and fruitless they were! He was no man of leisure, to do as he pleased. He was bound as securely to his desk as the genie was to the lamp of Aladdin, and he must answer its call just as unfailingly.

So, alternately wretched and elated, tasting the torments as well as the joys of this experience that had revolutionized his life, he tore desperately into his work, but with the girl's face ever before him.

On the third day after Tyke had received notice to move, the preparations were far advanced. Delicate instruments had been carefully wrapped; heavier objects had been clothed with burlap; truckmen were notified to be ready on the following day. Tyke and Drew had made frequent pilgrimages to the new place and had arranged where the stock could be placed to the best advantage. New bills and letterheads had been ordered from the printers, and even the old sign over the door, which Tyke obstinately refused to leave behind, had been taken down to have the old number painted out and the new one substituted.

There was no elevator in the old building. Drew had often urged Grimshaw to have one installed, but the old man was dead set against any such "new-fangled contraptions." So, everything from the upper lofts, when it was called for, had to be carried or rolled down the rickety stairs, a proceeding which often roused rumbles of rebellion in the breast of Sam, upon whom fell the brunt of the heavy work.

He had spent most of that afternoon in getting down the boxes from the third floor so that they might be within easier reach of the truckmen when the moving should begin. He was on his way down with one of them, perspiring profusely and tired from the work that had gone before, when, as he neared the lowest step, he slipped and dropped his burden.

He was fortunate enough to scramble out of the way of the box and thus escape injury. But the box itself came to the floor with a crash, and split open.

Drew and Winters sprang to the help of the porter, and were relieved to find that he was not hurt. He rose to his feet, his black face a picture of consternation.

"Dat ole mis'ry in ma back done cotched me jes' when Ah got to de las' step," he explained. "Ah hope dey ain't much damage done to dat 'er box."

"Pretty badly done up, it seems to me," remarked Winters, as he surveyed the broken chest critically.

"Never mind, Sam," consoled Drew. "It wasn't your fault and the old box wasn't of much account anyway."

Just then Tyke thrust his head out of his office to learn the meaning of the crash. At the sight of the broken box he came into the shop.

"How did this happen?" he asked.

"Ah couldn't help it, Mistah Grimshaw," said Sam ruefully. "Ma back jes' nacherly give way, an' Ah had to let go. Ah'm pow'ful sorry, sah."

Sam was a favorite with the old man, who refrained from scolding him but stood a moment looking curiously at the box.

"Carry it into the office," he said at last to Sam. "And you, Allen, come along."

Sam lifted the big chest, and, very carefully this time to make amends for his previous dereliction, carried it into the private office. He placed it on two chairs that his employer indicated and then withdrew, closing the door softly behind him and rejoicing at having got off so easily.

"Well, Allen," remarked Tyke, wiping his glasses and replacing them on the bridge of his nose, "you're going to get your wish sooner than either one of us expected."

"What do you mean?" asked Drew wonderingly.

"Don't you see anything familiar about this box?" replied Tyke, answering a question in Yankee fashion by asking one.

"I don't know that I do," responded the other. Then, as he bent over to examine the broken chest more closely, he corrected himself.

"Why, yes I do!" he cried eagerly. "Isn't this the one you pointed out to me the other day as belonging to the man who fought with you against the Malays?"

"That's it," confirmed Tyke. "It's Manuel Gomez's box. Queer," he went on reflectively, "that of all the chests there were in that loft the only one we thought of looking in should burst open at our very feet. If I was superstitious" (here Drew smothered a smile, for he knew that Tyke was nothing if not superstitious), "I might think there was some meaning in it. But of course," he added hastily, "we know there isn't."

"Of course," acquiesced the younger man.

Tyke seemed rather disappointed at this ready assent.

"Well, anyway, now that it has opened right under our noses, so to speak, we'll look into it. I guess we've got far enough ahead with our moving to take the time."