Captivating Mary Carstairs Part 18

Alarming story in _Daily_ to-day. Absolute secrecy a prerequisite as explained. Reporters tried to reach me to-night. Trust you fully, but implore you to proceed with utmost caution.

ELBERT CARSTAIRS.

"The plot thickens," said Peter when Varney turned back, "till I, for one, can't see the drift. However--you've sent for the _Daily_?"

Varney nodded. "I told him to get three or four others, too, for a blind."

"Politics," said Peter, in his calmest fighting manner, "is all off. I'm not the least interested in it. We'll give the morning to studying yellow journalism. But about Miss Carstairs. How can you possibly--"

"By heaven," said Varney, with a sudden burst of anger, "I'll make her know who I am, if I have to drag in her own mother to introduce me."

He went off to his bath, dressed hurriedly, dawdled a moment at the breakfast-table, where he found Peter discussing a cereal not without a certain solemn pleasure, and went above grappling with the thought that all this would mean a postponement of his call at the Carstairs house, and maybe something more serious still. The morning was sunny and crisp.

He walked to the bow, briskly, by way of a const.i.tutional, turned and started down again. As he did this, his eye fell upon a strange figure which had at first escaped him. Toward the stern of the _Cypriani_, near the wheel, a little runt of a boy hung over the rail, and made the air noxious with the relicts of a low-born cigar. He was an aged, cynical boy, with a phlegmatic mien and a face of the complexion and general appearance of a hickory-nut.

A little surprised by the sudden apparition, Varney came down the deck and dropped into a chair near him.

"Well, my lad! I'm happy to see you and your cigar again. But to what do we owe the pleasure of this call from you two old friends?"

The boy turned his back to the rail and faced him impa.s.sively. In the brilliant suns.h.i.+ne, he looked singularly worn and wise.

"I brung dem wires," he said courageously plying the cigar. "Any answer?"

"I'll see, after a while," said Varney, hastily lighting a pipe as counter-irritant. "So you're the telegraph boy, are you?"

"Nawser. Odjobbin' I do. Anythink as comes handy. They don't deliver no wires down here. I handles 'em sometimes for wut dere is in it."

"Oh! Well, I won't fail to see that there is something in it for you this time. And do you make much money odd-jobbing?"

"I git along awright. Summertimes I do. Wintertimes there ain't no odjobbin' much."

"How old are you, my boy?"

"Twelve year old."

"Twelve! I thought you were sixteen, at least."

A faint look of gratification crossed the boy's face, but he only said stoically: "Twelve year's my age."

"What do you do in the wintertime when there isn't much odd-jobbing? How do you get along then?"

"I git along awright. Sometimes I git help. Off a lady here, a frien' o'

mine."

"What lady? What's her name?"

"Name o' Miss Mary. Miss Carstair, some calls her. I git money and clo's off her. I'd 'a' had some b.u.m winters, hadn't ben for her."

There was a pause, and then Varney said: "What's your name, my boy?"

Again the boy hesitated. "Tommy," he said presently.

"Tommy what?"

"Tommy--Orrick."

Varney started. Of all the sordid Hunston of the natives, that was the one name which meant anything to him. It was rather a curious coincidence.

"Then I suppose old Sam Orrick," he said kindly, "is your father's father."

"Nawser," he answered slowly. And he added presently, "He wuz me mudder's father."

After that, the silence lengthened. Varney looked off down the river.

Tommy Orrick, whose father was named something else, clapped his hand suddenly to his lip, because his cigar just then scorched it unbearably.

"What is your father's name, Tommy?" asked Varney, in a low voice.

His back toward Varney, his fragment of a cigar poised, reluctantly ready to drop, the boy shook his head. "I don't rightly know," he said in his husky little voice.

But Varney knew that name: and he said it now slowly over to himself in a dull and futile anger.

From the sh.o.r.e a boat put out hurriedly and the faithful steward came flying over the water with meritorious speed. With him he was bringing the papers that might settle the _Cypriani's_ mission, but Varney, for the moment, hardly gave him a thought. His own affairs were blotted from his mind just then by the tragedy of the little waif before him, luckless victim of another's sin, small flotsam which barely weathered the winters when odd-jobbing was scarce, and only one lady cared.

"Where do you live, Tommy?"

"Kerrigan's loft mostly--w'en Kerrigan ain't dere."

"This morning," said Varney rapidly, "I'm just as busy as a bee. But this afternoon, or to-morrow morning anyway, I want to come down to Kerrigan's and call on you."

"Wut about?" the boy demanded with an instant suspiciousness which was rather pathetic.

"About you, Tommy. I have got a little plan in my head, and there isn't any time to talk about it now. What would you say to having a home with some nice people I know in another city--in New York?"

A sudden dumbness seized Tommy. His head slowly lowered and he did not answer. Around the deck-house from the port-side hurried McTosh, his arm embracing a bundle of papers, his brow beady with the honest toil of speed wrung out of country paths.

"Ah, steward! You made good time. Ask Mr. Maginnis if he won't come on deck when he is at leisure. Thomas, you're for the sh.o.r.e, aren't you?

Forward, there!"

He got up and stood by the side of grave little Tommy Orrick, who was staring silently down at the white deck.

"Down in New York, Tommy, I know a nice woman who has a home and no boys at all to put in it. A long time ago she used to be the nurse of a boy I knew, but he grew up; and now her husband's dead and she's all alone.

And here in Hunston is a boy with no home to put himself in. That's you, Tommy, and I--but here's your boat. I'll come to see you to-morrow at Kerrigan's--sure, and we'll talk it all over. Good-bye. And remember that you and I are just the best friends going."

He held out his hand, to shake, but Tommy, in an excess of stage-fright at the unwonted ceremonial, nimbly turned his back; and the next instant he slipped over the rail like an acrobat and dropped into the waiting dinghy. Safely there, he glanced tentatively upward; but seeing that the tall man above was still standing at the rail and was smiling down upon him, looked tactfully away again. And Varney heard him say to the oarsman in a snappy, impatient voice: "Pull for all you know, dere! I got bizness dat won't keep."

Varney sat down with the bundle of papers. Within the minute, Peter appeared, replete but characteristically alert.

"Read it yet?"

"No, but I've found it. It wasn't hard."