Geoffrey Hamstead Part 36

It did not take Detective Dearborn long to find out that Jack had engaged a cab early in the morning and had then removed some luggage from his rooms. This confirmed him in the idea that the crime had been a carefully planned one. But his trouble lay in not being able to find the driver of the cab. This man had driven off somewhere on a trip that took him apparently out of town, and Dearborn began to wonder whether Jack had been driven to some neighboring town, so as to proceed in a less conspicuous way by some railway.

Late at night, however, Jehu turned up at his own house very drunk. The horses had brought him home without being driven. He had been down at Leslieville all day, with some "sports," who were enjoying a pigeon-shooting match at that place, and who had retained cabby at regulation rates and all he could drink--a happy day for him. Dearborn found he could tell him nothing about the occurrence of the morning of the same day, or where he had gone with Jack's valises; so, perforce, he had to let him sleep it off till morning.

The first rational account the detective could get out of him was at ten o'clock on the morning following. He then found out why the valises had not been seen at the railway stations, or at any of the usual points of departure. The caretaker of the yacht club could only tell him, when he called, that Mr. Cresswell had been at the club somewhere about noon the day before, and had gone away in his boating-clothes, rowing east round the head of the wharf close by.

"I must tell you," said Dearborn to the caretaker, "that Mr. Cresswell's friends are alarmed at his absence and have sent me to look after him.

Would you know the boat he went in if you saw it?"

"Oh, yes. I handle it frequently, in one way and and another. I painted it for him last spring."

"Well, if you don't mind making a dollar, I'd be glad if you would walk along the docks and help me find it."

"Come along," said the caretaker. "There is nothing to do here, at this hour, but watch the club-house, and I certainly can't make an extra dollar doing that. We'll call it two dollars if I find the boat, seeing as how I'm dragged off from duty."

"All right," said Dearborn, who had _carte blanche_ for expenses from the bank.

They walked off together at a good pace.

"You say that none of the yachts left the harbor yesterday?"

"No. There they are, over there, every one of them."

"Well, what size was the skiff he went off in?"

"An ordinary fourteen-foot shooting-skiff. One of old Rennardson's. You mind old Rennardson? He built a handy boat, did the old man."

"Could it cross the lake?"

"Well it could, perhaps, on six days in the week, in summer. Perhaps on the seventh the best handling in the world wouldn't save her. But they are a fine little boat, for all that I've crossed the bay myself in them when there was an all-fired sea runnin'."

"Could it have crossed the lake yesterday?"

"I don't think Mr. Cresswell would be such a fool as to try. Perhaps he could have done it if anybody could. But risks for nothing ain't his style. Not but what he'll run his chances when the time comes. You should have seen him bring in that Ideal last fall, in the race I sailed with him. The wind sprung up heavy in the afternoon. Lord! it was a sight to see that boat come in to the winnin' buoy with the mast hanging over her bows like a Greek fruiter. You see, he had the wind dead after him, blowin' heavy, and he'd piled rags on to her, wings and all, till she was in a blind fury and goin' through it like a harpooned whale. The owner was a-standing by him a-watchin' for everythin' to carry out of her. 'Jack,' says he, 'she can't do it. The backstays won't do the work.' 'Slack them up, then, four inches, and let the mast do its own part of the work,' says Mr. Cresswell. And he kept on easin' backstays to give fair play all round, till the mast was hangin' forward like a cornstalk; but I'm dummed if he'd lift a rag on her till she pa.s.sed the gun. Perhaps you don't care for that sort of thing. I follered the sea myself formerly. Lord! it was immense, that little sail! And thirty seconds ain't a great deal to win on. Nothin' but bull-head grit would ha' done it."

Mr. Dearborn was not much comforted by all this talk. Cresswell might have crossed the lake in his skiff. Evidently he was a man who would do it if he wished. They continued their search on every wharf and through every boat-house, which occupied a good deal of time.

Suddenly, near Yonge Street wharf, the caretaker said: "Give us your two dollars, mister. There's the skiff on the deck of the stone-hooker."

Inquiries soon showed that Jack had gone off on the schooner North Star to Oswego, and then Mr. Dearborn began to look grave. The schooner had got a long start. He was well acquainted with all different routes to different places, and he finally decided to go on the Eleusinian by water to Oswego. Possibly he might be able to come across the schooner in the lake before she arrived at Oswego, and bribe the captain to land him and his prisoner on Canadian soil, where his warrant would be good.

He had still half an hour to spare, so he dashed off in a cab to the chief's office, and wired the Oswego police to arrest Jack, on the arrival of the North Star, on the charge of bringing stolen money into the States.

Of course, Dearborn knew he could not extradite Jack from Oswego for his offense, but he thought that after being locked up the money could be scared out of him, when he found that he could get a long sentence in the States on the above charge, which Dearborn knew could be proved if the stolen bills were found in his possession.

If Geoffrey had known what the able Mr. Dearborn had ferreted out, and what his plans were, he would have felt more uneasy.

As the afternoon wore on, it was interesting to watch two very unconcerned people at the bow of the upper deck of the Eleusinian. The steamer was making excellent time--plowing into the eye of the wind with all the power that had so nearly dragged the life out of the poor Ideal in the preceding summer. Nina was sitting in an arm-chair, cus.h.i.+oned into comfort by the a.s.siduous second officer, who found that his duties much required his presence in that portion of the boat where Nina happened, to be. She was sitting, looking through the spygla.s.ses from time to time at every sail that hove in sight, and seeming disinclined to leave the deck.

Mr. Dearborn was tempting providence by smoking a cigar close by. The steamer went almost too fast to pitch much, but there was a decided rise and fall at the bows. He noticed that the officer suggested to Nina that by sitting further aft she would escape some of the motion, and that she declined the change, saying she liked the breeze and was a good sailor.

Once they pa.s.sed close to a vessel with three masts. Dearborn had ascertained, before leaving, that the North Star had only two masts, so he was not anxious. Nina, however, knew nothing about the rig of the North Star, and she was up standing beside the bulwarks gazing intently through the binoculars at the crew. She seemed disappointed when she lowered the gla.s.ses, and Dearborn began to wonder whether this was "the woman in the case." He afterward watched her as she attempted to read a novel, and noticed that she continually stopped to scan the horizon.

Still, nearly every person does this, more or less, and his idea rather waned again as he thought that this was quite too fine a person to bother her head about a poor bank-clerk--such a man as he was hunting.

Mr. Dearborn, perhaps owing to the peculiar formation of his jaw, generally lost all idea of the respectability of a man as soon as he got on his trail. He might have the benefit of all doubts in his favor until the warrant for his arrest was placed in Mr. Dearborn's hands.

After that, as a rule, the individual, whether acquitted or not at his subsequent trial, took no high stand in Mr. Dearborn's mind. If acquitted, it was only the result of lawyers' trickery; not on account of innocence. Men who ought to know best say that if a prize-fighter wishes to win he must actually hate his antagonist--must fight to really kill him; and that only when he is entirely disabled is it time enough to hope that he will not die. Mr. Dearborn, similarly, had that tenacity of purpose that made every attempt at escape seem to double the culprit's guilt, and in a hard capture this supplied him with that "gall" which could meet and overcome the desperate courage of a man at bay.

Soon another schooner loomed up in the moist air of the east wind, and, when the hull was visible, Mr. Dearborn approached Nina and said:

"Would you oblige me, madame, by allowing me to look through your gla.s.ses?"

"Certainly," said Nina; "they belong to the s.h.i.+p--not to me."

Dearborn took a long look at the approaching vessel. The North Star had been described to him as having a peculiar cut-away bow, and the vessel coming across their track had a perpendicular bow.

Nina then looked through the gla.s.ses intently, and for a moment they stood beside each other.

"I wonder why all the vessels seem to be crossing our track, instead of going in our direction," she said to quiet-looking Mr. Dearborn.

"I don't know much about sailing, miss. But I know that vessels can't sail straight into the wind. They seesaw backward and forward, first one way and then the other. How they get up against the wind I could never understand. They are like lawyers, I think. They see a point ahead of them, and they just beat about the bush till they get there. Some of these things are hard to take in."

Nina smiled.

"A good many of these vessels," added Mr. Dearborn, while he watched his fair companion, "are going to Oswego."

"Oh, indeed!" said Nina, unconsciously brightening.

"And the wind is ahead for that trip," said Dearborn.

"Is it?"

Nina had been round Lake Ontario in a yacht, and she had had an English boarding-school finish. She could have told the general course of the Ganges or the Hoang-ho, but she had no idea in what direction she was going on her own lake to Oswego. In English schools Canada is a land not worth learning about, and where hardly any person would live voluntarily. People go about chiefly on snow-shoes, and it is easy in most places to kill enough game for dinner from your own doorstep.

"Yes, it would take a sailing vessel a long time, I should think, to get to Oswego."

"How long do you suppose?" asked Nina.

"I don't really know. It depends on the vessel. I suppose a smart yacht could do it in a pretty short time. That Toronto yacht, the Ideal, I suppose, could--"

"Oh, you know the Ideal?"

"No. She was pointed out to me once. They say she's a rare one to go, and no mistake. That young fellow, Treadwell, that sails her--they say he is one of the finest yachtsmen in Canada."

"Oh," said Nina, laughing and blus.h.i.+ng. It was funny to hear this quiet stranger praising Jack. She felt proud of his small glory.

"Yes," said Dearborn, rubbing his forehead, as if trying to recollect.

"That's his name--Treadwell. However, it does not matter."

"Not at all," said Nina. She was somewhat more on her guard now against strangers since her experience with the Rev. Matthew Simpson. But evidently this man did not even know Jack's name, and did not want to know it for any reason.

Dearborn was hanging "off and on," as sailors say, thinking that if she knew anything about this Cresswell she would perhaps give him a lead.

Not getting any lead, he muttered half aloud, by way of coming back to the point: