The Pursuit Part 39

MILLER IS STILL IMPERTURBABLE

As the imperturbable Mr. Miller reached the deck of the _Santa Margarita_, he took stock, for the second time within a few minutes, of his immediate surroundings.

He saw an exceedingly dirty deck on which the s.m.u.ts from the galley chimney appeared to have become embedded through long years of neglect.

He smelt the very rich, nouris.h.i.+ng odor of spaghetti fried with garlic, and sniffed unappreciatively, in spite of his hunger. He heard a couple of nasal voices chanting cheerfully, but with an exceedingly labored accent, the Bersaglieri quickstep, and made a tiny grimace of protest.

Around him the panorama of sea was empty of all s.h.i.+pping. Land was out of sight.

Muhammed leaned lazily against the tiller and eyed his late employer with the stolid apathy which an Oriental alone can make convincing.

Lounging against the panel of the companion hatch, from which Landon and his companion had just emerged, sat the skipper, Signor Luigi, idly whittling a stick, and looking up at his pa.s.senger with an amiable indifference.

Miller, it must be remembered, had just pa.s.sed a night of great discomfort and mental agitation following a most unantic.i.p.ated shock.

His nerves--is it wonderful?--were at tension. In spite of his own imperturbability, on which he set some store, the _insouciant_ aspect of his surroundings jarred on him. Was kidnapping, then, such an everyday affair that men cooked, and sang, and whittled under his very nose while the pirate's gallows very possibly stood awaiting them? He had probably never approached petulance more nearly in the course of his well-ordered existence.

He turned to Landon with a little shrug.

The other was holding out the half of a yard-long roll of bread, with a lump of doubtful-looking cheese.

"I would have suggested a plateful of that spaghetti, my dear Miller,"

he smiled, "but my watchful eye understood the curl of your nostril.

This is at least clean."

Miller drew an edge of tarpaulin over a heaped rope, and, after a regretful glance at his no longer immaculately gray trousers, sat down.

He took the bread and cheese and began to eat slowly.

There was something bovine in the manner in which he carefully champed each mouthful, something ruminative about the way in which he looked around him. But behind this stolid mask of indifference his brain was working rapidly. He was putting facts as they appeared to him to the test of logic and experience. His mental summing up was rapid. A felucca, of Italian register: crew, three men and a boy. Engaged in the contraband trade more or less continuously, for the ingeniously contrived lazaret between the cabin and the galley showed an attention to detail made necessary by continual service. The real mast pa.s.sed through the centre of his prison of the previous night. Yet the half of a mast, a sham half, of course, pa.s.sed through the part.i.tion and showed in the cabin. Doubtless another half was to be seen likewise in the galley. It was a neat idea; there was nothing to indicate to the casual glance of a custom's officer that the part.i.tion between the two was not what it appeared to be. Nothing but actual measurements would discover the s.p.a.ce which hid the intervening lazaret.

With the tonic of food, his self-reliance was entirely his again. He turned to confront Landon after half a dozen mouthfuls, alert to probe for the limits of his position. Landon had greatly dared. Did he understand how greatly? Miller felt himself restored to a state of energy and resolution which would very quickly find out.

"This," he enunciated slowly, "is of the nature of piracy. Do you and your underlings realize it?"

Landon was lighting a cigarette. He sucked in a full mouthful of smoke and shot it out again before he replied. The act was artificial--far too artificial, Miller told himself--in its indifference.

"My underlings," he answered, "realize that they are well on the way to--what shall we say--a modest competency. Beyond that, their very finite understandings have not advanced. _Domani_ or _manana_ are words frequent in their vocabularies, but not in relation to results.

Comfortable procrastination--that is the whole sense which they appreciate in them."

"Your own outlook is sufficiently intelligent to pierce beyond to-morrow," said the other, drily.

"Certainly!" agreed Landon. "I dwell upon to-morrow, and the day after to-morrow, and the day after that! I engage in prescient revels in their rosy-tinted hours!"

Miller made a little inarticulate sound which expressed a restrained but unequivocal irritation.

"Shall we be business-like?" he proposed. "You have entrapped on board this boat three people, including myself. What advantage do you expect to get out of the situation and, bluntly, how?"

"You are such a rigid man of affairs," complained Landon. "You refuse even to eat your breakfast without distractions."

"I find myself in an extraordinary and unfamiliar situation," said Miller. "It is obvious that I wish to disentangle myself from it as soon as possible. Let me hear and accept or reject your terms. Is there any need to be mysterious?"

"None," said Landon, amiably. "But I have not been a man of successful _coups_, so far, my dear friend, and you must not grudge me the unaccustomed zests I draw from this one. To clear the situation, I purpose holding you all three to ransom."

"Where?"

Landon laughed.

"That you must allow me to consider a trade secret. I intend to retain your company and that of my cousin and my sister-in-law till I am richer by some forty thousand pounds. There you have the situation in a nutsh.e.l.l. I am willing to take the advice of such a finished man of the world as yourself on business methods. The end in view I cannot consent to vary."

The gray man shrugged his shoulders.

"You are of opinion that money will be paid for me? By whom?"

"I can conceive two sources of supply. The German Government--pray don't allow yourself to be startled--or, in the last resort, yourself. You are not a poor man, unless you have grossly misused your opportunities."

"The German Government has no interests of any kind in my well-being or otherwise."

"I must take your word for it," said Landon, politely. "The alternative remains by us, literally."

"Meanwhile, what about the laws of--whatever country you purpose using the sh.o.r.e of? We do not, I take it, remain afloat--a sort of modern Vanderdecken?"

"Let me a.s.sure you that no laws or lawgivers will be of the slightest a.s.sistance. My friend Luigi and I propose being a law unto ourselves and you."

"Ah."

Miller's tone was reflective and impa.s.sive. He had found out one of the things he wanted to know. As he suspected, they were being taken to some remoteness, probably an island. He digested the information silently.

"You must pardon the want of--of finish in our arrangements," said Landon. "Your capture was entirely unpremeditated; you were a gift from the hand of fate. Your suggestion about my child undid you. The boy has become the pivot of Muhammed's existence. Queer, don't you think? I have never professed to plumb the depths of the Oriental mind."

"And Miss Van Arlen and Aylmer?" questioned Miller. "That was a matter of premeditation?"

"Nothing less than an inspiration, a stroke of genius conceived in a moment in Muhammed's brain. Premeditate? How could we premeditate? We expected you and you only, or your messenger, by the next day's boat."

Miller nodded.

"Miss Van Arlen and her companion are officially drowned," he said. "My own disappearance--how is that accounted for?"

"The matter is now probably engaging the interest of the Melilla police. They need distraction; theirs is a gray life," said Landon, pleasantly.

Again Miller nodded, perhaps unconsciously, and in a.s.sent to some deduction of his own mind. He kept his meditative air for a second or two, shrugged his shoulders again pessimistically, and then made a brisk gesture of acquiescence.

"And your terms--to myself--are what?" he asked.

"Ten thousand golden sovereigns," said Landon. "Do I hurt your self-esteem by my moderation?"

Miller smiled again sombrely.

"That is, of course, preposterous," he said. "I do not possess half the sum. I should not pay it, if I did. If the alternative is that you support me for the remaining number of my days, I must accept it."

"That would not be the alternative," answered Landon. "In fact, I hope to be able to prove to you that an alternative is lacking. But, at the same time, I am willing to hear proposals."

"My proposal remains what it was yesterday. Make your peace with your wife's family, give up the child. I shall then be able, I have little doubt, to put you in the way of earning more than the sum you suggest.