Black Caesar's Clan Part 25

"Grieve for him?" repeated Standish, raising his haggard face.

"Grieve for him? I thank G.o.d he's dead. I hated him as I never hated any one else or thought I could hate any one! I hated him as we hate the man in whose power we are and who uses us as helpless p.a.w.ns in his dirty game. I'd have killed him long ago, if I had had the nerve, and if he hadn't made me believe he had a charmed life. His death means freedom to me--glorious freedom! It's for my own foul cowardice that I'm grieving. The cowardice that held me here while a man's life might have been saved by me. That's going to haunt me as long as I live."

"Bos.h.!.+" scoffed Gavin. "You'll get over it. Self-forgiveness is the easiest blessing to acquire. You're better of it, already, or you couldn't talk so glibly about it. Now, about this treasure-business: You know, of course, that you'll have to drop it,--that you'll have to give up every cent of it to the Government? If you can't find the cache, up North, where Hade used to send it when he lugged it away from here, it is likely to go a bit hard with you. I'm going to do all I can to get you clear. Not for your own sake, but for your sister's. But you'll have to 'come through, clean,' if I'm to help you. Now, if you've got anything to say--"

He paused, invitingly. Milo gaped at him, the big bearded face working convulsively. Nerves wrenched, easily dominated by a stronger nature, the giant was struggling in vain to resume his pose of not understanding Brice's allusions.

Presently, with a sigh, that was more like a grunt of hopelessness, he thrust his fingers into an inner pocket of his waistcoat, and drew forth a somewhat tarnished silver dollar. This he held toward Gavin, in his wide palm.

Brice took the coin from him and inspected it with considerable interest. In spite of the tarnish and the ancient die and date, its edges were as sharp and its surface as unworn as though it had been minted that very year.

Clearly, this dollar had jingled in no casual pockets, along with other coins, nor had it been sweated or marred by any sort of use.

"Do you know what that is?" asked Milo.

"Yes," said Brice. "It is a United States silver dollar, dated '1804.'"

"Do you know its value?" pursued Milo. "But of course you don't. You probably think it is worth its weight in silver and nothing more."

"It is, and it isn't," returned Gavin. "If I were to take this dollar, to-night, to the right groups of numismatists, they would pay me anywhere from $3,000 to $7,000 for it."

"Oh!" exclaimed Standish, in visible surprise. "You know something about numismatics, then?"

"Just a little," modestly admitted Brice. "In my work, one has to have a smattering of it. For instance--if I remember rightly--there are only three of these 1804 silver dollars generally known to be in existence. That is why collectors are ready to pay a fortune for authentic specimens of them, in good condition. Yes, a smattering of numismatics may come in handy, at times. So does sailor lore. It did, for instance, with a chap I used to know. He had read up, on this special dollar. He was dead-broke. He was pa.s.sing the Gloucester waterfront, one day, and saw a dockful of rotting old schooners that were being sold at auction for firewood and for such bits of their metal as weren't rusted to pieces. He read the catalog.

Then he telegraphed to me to wire him a loan of one hundred dollars. For the catalog gave the date of one schooner's building as 1804. He knew it used to be a hard-and-fast custom of s.h.i.+p-builders to put a silver dollar under the mainmast of every vessel they built, a dollar of that particular year. He bought the schooner for $70. He spent ten dollars in hiring men to rip out her mast. Under it was an 1804 dollar. He sold it for $3,600."

"Since you know so much about the 1804 dollar," went on Milo, catechizingly, "perhaps you know why it is so rare? Or perhaps you didn't add a study of American history to your numismatics?"

"The commonly accepted story goes," said Brice, taking no heed of the sneer, "that practically the whole issue of 1804 dollars went toward the payment of the Louisiana Purchase money, when Uncle Sam paid Napoleon Bonaparte's government a trifle less than $15,000,000 (or under four cents an acre) for the richest part of the whole United States. Payment was made in half a dozen different forms,--in settlement of anti-French claims and in installment notes, and so forth. But something between a million and two million dollars of it is said to have been paid in silver."

"Are you a schoolmaster, Mr. Brice?" queried Milo, who seemed unable to avoid sneering in futile fas.h.i.+on at the man who was dominating his wavering willpower.

"No, Mr. Standish," coolly replied the other. "I am Gavin Brice, of the United States Secret Service."

Standish's bearded jaw dropped. He glanced furtively about him, like a trapped rat. Gavin continued, authoritatively:

"You've nothing to fear from me, as long as you play straight.

And I'm here to see that you shall. Two hours ago, I was for renouncing my life-work and throwing over my job. Never mind why. I've changed my mind, now. I'm in this thing to the finish. With Hade out of the game, I can see my way through."

"But--"

"Now I'll finish the yarn you were so gradually leading up to with those schoolboy questions of yours. French statesmen claimed, last year, that something over a million dollars of the Louisiana purchase money was never paid to France. That was money, in the form of silver dollars, which went by sea.

In skirting the Florida coast--probably on the way from some mint or treasury in the South--one or more of the treasure s.h.i.+ps parted from their man-o'-war escorts in a hurricane, and went aground on the southeastern Florida reefs. The black pirate, Caesar, and his cutthroats did the rest.

"This was no petty haul, such as Caesar was accustomed to, and it seems to have taken his breath away. He and his crew carried it into Caesar's Estuary--not Caesar's Creek--an inlet, among the mangrove swamps. They took it there by night, and sank it in shallow water, under the bank. There they planned to have it until it might be safe to divide it and to scatter to Europe or to some place where they could live in safety and in splendor. Only a small picked crew of Caesar's knew the hiding place. And, by some odd coincidence, every man of them died of prussic acid poisoning, at a booze-feast that Caesar invited them to, at his shack down on Caesar's creek, a month later. Then, almost at once afterward, as you've probably heard, Caesar himself had the bad luck to die with extreme suddenness.

"The secret was lost. Dozens of pirates and of wreckers--ancestors of the conchs--knew about the treasure. But none of them could find it.

"There was a rumor that Caesar had written instructions about it, on the flyleaf of a jeweled prayer book that was part of some s.h.i.+p's loot. But his heirs sold or hocked the prayer-book, at St. Augustine or Kingston or Havana, before this story reached them. None of them could have read it, anyhow. Then, last year, Rodney Hade happened upon that book, (with the jewels all pried out of the cover, long ago), in a negro cabin on s.h.i.+rley Street, at Na.s.sau, after hunting for it, off and on, for years. The Government had been hunting for it, too, but he got to it a week ahead of us. That was how we found who had it. And that is why we decided to watch him .... Do you want me to keep on prattling about these things, to convince you I'm what I say I am? Or have you had enough?

"For instance, do you want me to tell you how Hade wound his web around a blundering fool whose help and whose hidden path and tunnel and caches he needed, in order to make sure of the treasure? Or is it enough for me to say the dollars belong to the United States Government, and that Uncle Sam means to have them back?"

Standish still gaped at him, with fallen jaw and bulging eyes.

Gavin went on:

"Knowing Hade's record and his cleverness as I do, I can guess how he was going to swing the h.o.a.rd when he finished transporting all of it to safety. Probably, he'd clear up a good many thousand dollars by selling the coins, one at a time, secretly, to collectors who would think he was selling them the only 1804 dollar outside the three already known to be in existence. When that market was glutted, he was due to melt down the rest of the dollars into bar silver. Silver is high just now, you know. Worth almost double what once it was. The loot ought to have been much the biggest thing in his speckled career. How much of it he was intending to pa.s.s along to you, is another question. By the way--the three canvas bags he left out by the kiosk ought to do much toward whetting the Caesars' appet.i.te for the rest. It may even key them up to rus.h.i.+ng the house before morning."

"We'll be ready for them!" spoke up Standish, harshly, as though glad to have a prospect of restoring his broken self-respect by such a clash.

"Quite so," agreed Gavin, smiling at the man's new ardor for battle. "It would be a pleasant little brush--if it weren't for your sister. Miss Standish has seen about enough of that sort of thing for one night. If she weren't a thoroughbred, with the nerves of a thoroughbred and the pluck as well, she'd be a wreck, from what has happened already. More of it might be seriously bad for her."

Standish glowered. Then he lifted his bulky body from the low chair and crossed the hall to the telephone. Taking the receiver from the hook, he said sulkily to Brice:

"Maybe you're right. I have a couple of night watchmen patrolling the road, above and below. I'll phone to the agency to send me half a dozen more, to clear the grounds.

I'd phone the police about it, but I don't like--"

"Don't like to lock the stable door after the horse is stolen?" suggested Brice. "Man, get it into that thick skull of yours that the time for secrecy is past! Your game is up.

Hade is dead. Your one chance is to play out the rest of this hand with your cards on the table. The Government knows you are only the dupe. It will let you off, if the money is--"

"What in blue blazes is the matter with Central?" growled Milo, whanging the receiver-hook up and down in vexation. "Is she dead?"

Gavin went over to him and took the receiver out of his hand.

Listening for a moment, he made answer:

"I don't believe Central is dead. But I know this phone is.

Our Caesar friends seem to be more sophisticated than I thought. They've cut the wires, from outside."

"H'm!" grunted Milo. "That means we've got to play a lone hand. Well, I'm not sorry. I--"

"Not necessarily," contradicted Gavin. "I'd rather have relied on the local watchmen, of course. But their absence needn't bother us, overmuch."

"What do you mean?"

Before Gavin could answer, a stifled cry from the hallway above brought both men to attention. It was followed by a sound of lightly running feet. And Claire Standish appeared at the stair-top. She was deathly pale, and her dark eyes were dilated with terror.

Gavin ran up the steps to meet her. For she swayed perilously as she made her way down toward the men.

"What is it?" demanded Milo, excitedly. "What's happened?"

Claire struggled visibly to regain her composure. Then, speaking with forced calmness, she said:

"I've just seen a ghost! Rodney Hade's ghost!"

The two looked at her in dumb incomprehension. Then, without a word, Milo wheeled and strode to the window from which they had watched the tragedy. Opening the shutter, he peered out into the moonlight.

"Hade's still lying where he fell," he reported, tersely.

"They haven't even bothered to move him. You were dreaming.

If--"

"I wasn't asleep," she denied, a trace of color beginning to creep back into her blanched cheeks. "I had just lain down.

I heard--or thought I heard--a sound on the veranda roof. I peeped out through the grill of the shutter. There, on the roof, not ten feet away from me, stood Rodney Hade. He was dressed in rags. But I recognized him. I saw his face, as clearly as I see yours. He--"