CHAPTER XXXI
THE SAFE
Though a freshening east wind was now beginning to add a raw salt tang to the air, troubled by a louder suspiration of surf, and though the fluttering of the poplar-leaves, which now had begun to show their silvery undersides, predicted rain, all was bright sunshine in the old man’s heart.
The drifting clouds in no wise lessened the light for Captain Briggs. Nodding flower and piping bird, grumbling bee and brisk, varnished cricket in the path all bore him messages of cheer. His blue eyes mirrored joy. For, after all that he had suffered and feared, lo! here was Hal come back to him again, repentant, dutiful and kind.
“God is being very good to me after all,” the old captain kept thinking. “‘His mercy endureth forever, and He is very, very good!’”
Dr. Filhiol, sitting at the window of his room, up-stairs, watched the captain and Hal with narrowed eyes that harbored suspicion. His lips drew tight, but he uttered no word. Hal, glancing up, met his look with instinctive defiance. Boldness and challenge leaped into his eyes. Filhiol understood his threat:
“Keep yourself out of this or take all consequences!”
And again the thought came to the doctor:
“What wouldn’t I give to have you for a patient of mine? Just for one hour!”
The captain and Hal disappeared ’round the ell, in which Filhiol had his room; but even after he had lost them to sight, he sensed the fatuous self-deception of the old man and the cruel baseness of the young one. Hal’s overstrained effort at good fellowship grated on the doctor’s nerves with a note as false as his forced smile. He longed to warn the captain – and yet! How could he make Briggs credit his suspicions? Impossible, he realized.
“Poor captain!” he murmured. “Poor old captain!” And so he sat there, troubled and very sad.
He heard their feet on the porch, then heard Hal coming up-stairs, alone. Along the passageway went Hal, muttering something unintelligible. Presently he returned down-stairs again and went into the yard. Filhiol swung his blinds shut. Much as he hated to play the spy, instinct told he must.
Hal now had his pipe, and carried books and paper. With these he sat down on the rustic seat that encircled one of the captain’s big elms – a seat before which a table had been built, for al fresco meals, or study. He opened one of the books and began writing busily, while smoke curled on the breeze now growing damp and raw. Even the doctor could not but admit Hal made an attractive figure in his white flannels.
“Pure camouflage, that study is,” pondered the doctor. “That smile augurs no good.” Down-stairs he heard Briggs moving about, and pity welled again. “This is bad, bad. There’s something in the wind, I know. Tss-tss-tss! What a wicked, cruel shame!”
Down in the cabin, Captain Briggs’s appearance quite belied the doctor’s pity. Every line of his venerable face showed deep content. In his eyes lay beatitude.
“Thank God, the boy’s true-blue, after all!” he murmured. “Just a little wild, perhaps, but he’s a Briggs – he’s sound metal at the core. Thank God for that!”
He opened the top drawer of his desk, took out a little slip of paper that helped refresh his memory, and approached the safe. Right, left, he turned the knob, as the combination on the paper bade him; then he swung open the doors, and pulled out a little drawer.
“Cap’n Briggs, sir!”
At sound of Ezra’s voice in the doorway, he started almost guiltily.
“Well, what is it?”
“Anythin’ you’re wantin’ down to Dudley’s store, sir?”
“No, Ezra.” The captain’s answer seemed uneasy. Under the sharp boring of Ezra’s steely eyes, he quailed. “No, there’s nothing.”
“All right, cap’n!” The old cook remained a moment, observing. Then with the familiarity of long years, he queried:
“Takin’ money again, be you? Whistlin’ whales, cap’n, that won’t do!”
“Ezra! What d’you mean, sir!”
“You know, cap’n, we’re gittin’ mighty nigh the bottom o’ the locker.”
“You’re sailing a bit wide, Ezra!”
“Mebbe, sir.” The honest old fellow’s voice expressed deep anxiety. “But you an’ me is cap’n an’ mate o’ this here clipper, an’ money’s money.”
The voices drifting out the open window brought Hal’s head up, listening. The doctor, peering through the blinds, saw him hesitate a moment, peer ’round, then cross the lawn to where, screened by the thick clump of lilac-bushes, he could peek into the room.
“Money’s money, cap’n,” repeated Ezra. “We hadn’t oughta let it go too fast.”
“There’s lots of better things in this world than money, Ezra,” said the captain, strangely ill at ease.
“Mebbe, sir, but it takes money to buy ’em,” the cook retorted. “I ain’t a two-dollar-worry man fer a one-dollar loss, but still I know a dollar’s a good little friend.”
“Happiness is better,” affirmed the captain. “What I’m going to spend this money for now will bring me happiness. Better than all the money in the world, is being contented with your lot.”
“Yes, sir, if it’s a lot of money, or a corner lot in a live town. I think there’s six things to make a man happy. One is a good cook an’ the other five is cash. However, fur be it from me to argy with you. I got to clear fer Dudley’s, or there wun’t be no dinner.”
Ezra withdrew.
“It’s that damn McLaughlin, I betcha,” he pondered. “I got an intuition the cap’n’s got to pay him heavy. Intuition’s a guess, when it comes out right; an’ I’ll bet a schooner to a saucepan I’m right this time. If I was half the man I used to be, it wouldn’t be money McLaughlin’d be gittin’, but this!” Menacingly, he doubled his fist.
Captain Briggs took from the safe a packet of bills and counted off four hundred dollars. This money he put into his wallet. Hal watched every move; while above, from behind the blinds, Dr. Filhiol observed him with profound attention.
“We are getting a bit low in the treasury,” admitted the captain, inspecting the remainder of the cash. “Only a matter of seven hundred and fifty left, to stand us till January. A bit low, but we’ll manage some way or other. Sail close to the wind, and make it. After all, what’s a little money when the boy’s whole life is at stake?”
He put the remaining bills back and closed the safe. To the desk he walked, dropped the combination into it and shut it, tight. Silently Hal slid back to his seat under the elm, and once more set himself to writing.
Filhiol peered down at him with animosity.
“A nice little treatment of strychnine or curaré might make a proper man of you, you brute,” he muttered, “but, by the living Lord, I don’t think anything else could!”
CHAPTER XXXII
THE READING OF THE CURSE
The kitchen door slammed. Ezra, turning the corner of the house, paused to gaze with admiration at Hal.
“Hello, Master Hal, sir,” said he. “Always studyin’, ain’t you?” Voice and expression alike showed intense pride. Above, Filhiol bent an ear of keenest attention. “Ain’t many young fellers in this town would be workin’ over books, when there’s petticoats in sight.”
“You don’t approve of the girls, eh?” asked Hal with a smile. A smile of the lips alone, not of the eyes.
“No, sir, I don’t,” answered Ezra with resentment – for once upon a time a woman had misused him, and the wound had never healed. “They ain’t what I call good reliable craft, sir. Contrary at the wheel, an’ their rig costs more ’n what their hull’s wu’th. No, sir, I ain’t overly fond of ’em.”
“Your judgment’s not valid,” said Hal. He seemed peculiarly expansive, as if for some reason of his own he wanted to win Ezra to still greater affection. “What do you know about women, an old bach like you?”
“I know!” affirmed Ezra, coming over the lawn to the table. “Men are like nails – when they’re drove crooked, they’re usually drove so by a woman. Women can make a fool of almost any man, ef nature don’t git a start on ’em.”
Hal laughed. A certain malevolent content seemed radiating from him. Lazily he leaned back, and drew at his pipe. “Right or wrong, you’ve certainly got definite opinions. You know your own mind. You believe in a man knowing himself, don’t you?”
“Ef some men knowed themselves they’d be ashamed o’ the acquaintance,” opined Ezra. “An’ most women would. No, sir, I don’t take no stock in ’em. There ain’t nothin’ certain about love but the uncertainty. Women ain’t satisfied with the milk o’ human kindness. They want all the cream. What they expect is a sealskin livin’ on a mushrat salary. Love’s a kind of paralysis – kind of a stroke, like. Sometimes it’s only on one side an’ there’s hope. But ef it gits on both sides, it’s hopeless.”
“Love makes the world go ’round, Ezra!”
“Like Tophet! It only makes folks’ heads spin, an’ they think the world’s goin’ ’round, that’s all. Nobody knows the value of a gold-mine or a woman, but millions o’ men has went busted, tryin’ to find out! Not fer me, this here lovin’, sir,” Ezra continued with eloquence. “I never yet see a matrimonial match struck but what somebody got burned. Marriage is the end o’ trouble, as the feller says – but which end? I ask you!”
“You needn’t ask me, Ezra; I’m no authority on women. There’s a nice little proverb in this book, though, that you ought to know.”
“What’s that, Master Hal?”
“Here, I’ll find it for you.” Hal turned a few pages, paused, and read: “‘Bounga sedap dipakey, layou dibouang.’”
“Sufferin’ snails! What is that stuff, anyhow? Heathen Chinee?”
“That’s Malay, Ezra,” Hal condescended. The doctor, listening, felt a strange little shiver, as of some reminiscent fear from the vague long-ago. Those words, last heard at Batu Kawan, fifty years before, now of a sudden rose to him like specters of great evil. His attention strained itself as Hal went on:
“That’s a favorite Malay proverb, and it means: ‘While the flower is pleasing to man, he wears it. When it fades, he throws it away.’”
“Meanin’ a woman, o’ course? Uhuh! I see. Well, them heathens has it pretty doggone nigh correct, at that, ain’t they? So that there is Malay, is it? All them twisty-wisty whirligigs? An’ you can read it same as if it was a real language?”
“It is a real language, Ezra, and a very beautiful one. I love it. You don’t know how much!” A tone of real sincerity crept into the false camaraderie of Hal’s voice. Filhiol shook his head. Vague, incomprehensible influences seemed reaching out from the vapors of the Orient, fingering their way into the very heart of this trim New England garden, in this year of grace, 1918. The doctor suddenly felt cold. He crouched a little closer toward the blinds.
“Holy halibut, Master Hal!” exclaimed Ezra in an awed tone, peering at the book. “What a head you got on you, sir! Fuller o’ brains than an old Bedford whaler is o’ rats!”
“You flatter me, Ezra. Think so, do you?”
“I know so! Ef I’d had your peak I wouldn’t of walloped pots in a galley all my natural. But I wan’t pervided good. My mind’s like a pint o’ rum in a hogshead – kind of broad, but not very deep. It’s sort of a phonograph mind – makes me talk a lot, but don’t make me say nothin’ original. So that’s Malay, is it? Well, it’s too numerous fer me. There’s only one kind o’ Malay I know about, an’ that’s my hens. They may lay, an’ then again they may not. That’s grammatical. But this here wiggly printin’ – no, no, it don’t look reasonable. My eye, what a head! Read some more, will you?”
“Certainly, if you like it,” said Hal, strangely obliging. “Here’s something I’ve been translating, in the line of cursing. They’re great people to curse you, the Malays are, if you cross them. Their whole lives are full of vengeance – that’s what makes them so interesting. Nothing weak, forgiving or mushy about them!” He picked up the paper he had been writing on, and cast his eyes over it, while Ezra looked down at him with fondly indulgent pride. “Here is part of the black curse of Vishnu.”
“Who’s he?”
“One of their gods. The most avenging one of the lot,” explained Hal. The doctor, crouching behind the blinds, shivered.
“Gods, eh? What’s this Vishnu feller like?” asked Ezra, with a touch of uneasiness. “Horns an’ a tail?”
“No. He’s got several forms, but the one they seem most afraid of is a kind of great, blind face up in the sky. A face that – even though it’s blind – can watch a guilty man all his life, wherever he goes, and ruin him, crucify him, bring him to destruction, and laugh at him as he’s dying.”
“Brrr!” said Ezra. He seemed to feel something of the same cold that had struck to the doctor’s heart – a greater cold than could be accounted for by the veiling of the sun behind the clouds now driving in from the sea, or by the kelp-rank mists gathering along the shore. “You make me feel all creepylike. You’re wastin’ your time on such stuff, Master Hal, same as a man is when he’s squeezing a bad lemon or an old maid. None o’ that cursin’ stuff fer me!”
“Yes, yes, you’ve got to listen to it!” insisted Hal maliciously. Ezra’s trepidation afforded him great enjoyment. “Here’s the way it goes:
“‘The curse of Vishnu, the great black curse, can never end unsatisfied when it has once been laid upon a human head. Beyond the land it carries, and beyond the sea, beyond the farthest sea unsailed. Beyond the day, the month, the year, it carries; and even though the accursèd one flee forever, in some far place and on some far day it will fall on him or his!’”
“Great grampus!” cried the old man, retreating a little with wide eyes. “That’s some cussin’, all right!”
The doctor sensed an insistent fear that would not be denied. What if old Captain Briggs should overhear this colloquy? What if Ezra should repeat to him these words that, now arising from the past, echoed with ominous purport? At realization of possible consequences, Filhiol’s heart contracted painfully.
“Damn you, Hal!” thought he, peering out through the blinds. “Damn you and your Malay books. If any harm comes to the captain, through you, look out!”
“Some awful cussin’,” Ezra repeated. “I wouldn’t want to have no sech cuss as that rove onta me! You b’lieve that stuff, do ye?”
“Who am I to disprove it?”
“Ain’t there no way to kedge off, ef you’re grounded on a cuss like that?”
“Only one, Ezra, according to this book.”
“What way’s that?”
“Well,” and Hal once more glanced at the paper, “well, this is what the book says:
“‘The curse must be fulfilled, to the last breath, for by Shiva and the Trimurthi, what is written is written. But if he through whom the curse descendeth on another is stricken to horror and to death, then the Almighty Vishnu, merciful, closes that page. And he who through another’s sin was cursed, is cleansed. Thus may the curse be fulfilled. But always one of two must die. Tuan Allah poonia krajah! It is the work of the Almighty One! One of two must die!’”
“Gosh!” ejaculated Ezra. “I reckon that’ll be about enough fer me, Master Hal. Awful, ain’t it?”
“Don’t like Malay, after all?” laughed Hal.
“Can’t say as I’m pinin’ fer it. But you got some head on you, to read it off like that. I s’pose it’s all right in its way, but I don’t relish it overly, as the feller said when he spilled sugar on his oysters. Well,” and he glanced at the lowering clouds and the indrifting sea-fog that with the characteristic suddenness of the north shore had already begun to throw its chilly blanket over the world, “well, this ain’t gittin’ to Dudley’s store, is it? Lord, sir, what a head you got on you!”
With admiring ejaculations the old man started down the path once more. The doctor, filled with stern thoughts, remained watching Hal, who had now gone back to his writing.
“What a fatality!” pondered the doctor, unable to suppress a certain superstitious dread. Not all his scientific training could quite overcome the deep-rooted superstition that lies in the bottom of every human heart. “The black curse of Vishnu again, with this new feature: ‘One of two must die!’ What the devil does all this mean now?”
A crawling sensation manifested itself along his spine. Silent shapes seemed standing behind him in the corners of the room darkened by the closing of the blinds. Trained thinker though he was, he could not shake off this feeling, but remained crouching at the window, a prey to inexplicable fear. The words Hal had spoken, echoing along dim corridors of the past, still seemed vibrating in his heart with unaccustomed pain.
“Nonsense!” he growled at last. “It’s all nonsense – nothing but a sheer coincidence!” He tried to put the words away, but still they sounded in his ears: “One of two must die! Always one of two must die!”
Another thought, piercing him, brought him up standing with clenched fists.
“If the captain ever gets hold of that idea, what then? If he ever does —what then?”
Brooding he paced up and down the room, limping painfully, for without his cane he could hardly walk even a few steps. And almost at once his fear curdled into hate against the sleek, white-flanneled fellow, sitting there under the elm, calmly translating words that might mean agony and death to the old grandsire.
Filhiol’s mind became confused. He knew not what to think, nor yet which way to turn. What events impended? He recalled the way Hal had peered stealthily into the cabin, and how he had then slid back to his seat under the elm. Was Hal plotting some new infamy? What could be done to warn the captain, to make that blindly loyal heart accept the truth and act upon it?
Tentacles of some terrible thing seemed enmeshing both Filhiol and the old captain – some catastrophe, looming black, impossible to thrust aside. But it was not of himself that Filhiol was thinking. Only the image of the captain, trusting, confident, arose before him.
Filhiol set his teeth in a grimace of hate against the figure at work out there under the big elm.
“I’ve probably done my share of evil in this world,” thought he, “but I could wipe it all out with one supremely good action. If I could put an end to you– ”
All unconscious, Hal continued at his work. As he wrote, he smiled a little. The smile was sinister and hard.
What thoughts did it reflect?
CHAPTER XXXIII
ROBBERY
Dinner brought the four men together: Filhiol glum and dour, Hal in his most charming mood, the captain expansive with new-found happiness, and old Ezra bubbling with aphorisms.
Silent and brooding, Filhiol turned the situation in his mind, asking himself a hundred times what he could do to avert catastrophe impending.
Decision, after dinner, crystallized into action. First of all the doctor interviewed Ezra in the galley, and from him extracted a binding promise to make no mention before Captain Briggs, of anything concerning Malay life, or books, or curses, or whatever.
“I can’t explain now, Ezra,” said he, “but it’s most important. As a physician, I prohibit your speaking of these matters here. You understand?”
“Yes, sir. I dunno’s I’m over an’ above keen to obey you, sir, but ef it’s fer the cap’n’s good, that’s enough fer me.”
“It is for the captain’s good, decidedly!” affirmed the doctor, and left old Ezra to think it over. One source of danger, he now felt confident, had been dammed up.
Ezra was still thinking it over when the captain told him to harness Sea Lawyer for a drive to Endicutt. In spite of the fine, drifting rain that had set in, Briggs was determined to go, for until McLaughlin’s claim and the college bill had been settled, the money he had taken from the safe for that purpose was burning in his pocket. He insisted on going quite alone, despite protests from Filhiol and Ezra. Even though all the sunlight had died from the darkening sky, it seemed still shining in the old man’s eyes as he drove off to pay the hard-saved money that now – so he believed – would put Hal on the upward road once more.
“Hal,” said the doctor, when the old captain had slowly jogged out of sight, “I’ve got a few words to say to you, out on the porch. Give me five minutes, please?”
“Why, surest thing you know! Just let me get my pipe, and I’ll be with you.”
He seemed all engaging candor – just a big, powerful fellow, open of face and manner, good-humored and without guile. As he rejoined the doctor, Filhiol wondered whether, after all, his analysis might not be wrong. But no, no. Something at the back of Hal’s blue-eyed look, something arrogant with power, something untamed, atavistic, looked out through even the most direct glance. Filhiol knew that he was dealing with no ordinary force. And, carefully choosing his words, he said:
“Listen, young man. I’m going to ask a favor of you.”
“My grandfather’s guest has only to ask, and it’s done,” smiled Hal, as he settled himself in one of the rockers, and hoisted his white-shod feet to the porch-rail.
“You know, Hal,” the doctor commenced, “your grandfather has been greatly distressed about your conduct.”
“Well, and what then?” asked Hal, his eyes clouding.
“He has a strange idea that some of the misdeeds of his youth, long since atoned for, are being visited upon you, and that he’s responsible for – h-m – certain irregularities of your conduct.”
“Yes?”
“In short, he half believes a curse is resting on you, because of him. It would be most deplorable to let that belief receive corroboration from any source, as for example, from any of your Oriental studies.”
Hal shot a keen glance at the old man. This was indeed getting under the hide, with a vengeance. The glance showed fear, too. Had Filhiol, then, been spying on him? Had he, by any chance, seen him peeking in at the window, through the lilac-bushes? Hal’s evil temper began to stir, and with it a very lively apprehension.
“What are you driving at, anyhow?” demanded he, sullenly.
“I want you to keep your Oriental stuff completely in the background for a while. Not to talk with him about it, and especially to avoid all those fantastic curses.”
“Oh, is that all?” asked Hal, relieved. “Well, that’s easy.”
The doctor sighed with relief.
“That makes me feel a bit better,” said he. “We’ve got to do our best to protect the captain against himself. I know you’ll coöperate with me to keep him out of any possible trouble.”
“Surest thing you know, doctor!” exclaimed Hal. “I’ve been a fool and worse, I know, but that’s all over. I’ve taken a fresh start that will help me travel far. You’ll see.”
He put out his hand.
“Let’s shake on it,” he smiled winningly.
A moment their eyes met. Then Filhiol said:
“I’m sorry if I’ve misjudged you. Let’s just forget it. You don’t know how much relieved I feel.”
“I feel better, too,” said Hal. “Things are going to take a decidedly new turn.”
“It’s fine to hear you say that!” exclaimed the doctor, almost convinced that at last he had struck a human stratum in the boy’s heart. “I can take my after-dinner nap with a great deal easier mind now. Good-by.”
He limped into the house, not perhaps fully confident of Hal, but at any rate more inclined to believe him amenable to reason. Hal, peering after him, whispered a terrific blasphemy under his breath.
“You damned buttinsky!” he growled, black with passion. “There’s something coming to you, too. Something you’ll get, by God, or I’m no man!”
He got up, and – silently in his rubber-soled shoes – walked around the porch to the end of it, then stepped down into the grass and crept along by the house. Under the doctor’s window he stood, listening acutely. Just what the doctor was doing he must by all means know. Ezra was safe enough. From the kitchen drifted song:
“Rolling Rio,
To my rolling Rio Grande!
Hooray, you rolling Rio!
So fare ye well, my bonny young girls,
For I’m bound to the Rio Grande!”
Hal nodded as he heard the springs of the doctor’s bed creak, and knew the old man had really laid down for his mid-afternoon nap.
“It’s working fine,” said he. “Gramp’s gone, Ezra’s good for half an hour on ‘Rio Grande,’ and the doc’s turned in. Looks like a curse was sticking to me, doesn’t it? Not much! Nothing like that can stick to me!”
At his feet two or three ants were busy with a grasshopper’s leg. Hal smeared them out with a dab of his sole.
“That’s the way to do with people that get in your way,” he muttered. “Just like that!”
He slouched back to the porch. The resemblance to what Captain Briggs had been in the old days seemed wonderfully striking at just this moment. Same hang of heavy shoulders, same set of jaw; scowl quite a simulacrum of the other, and even the dark glowering of the eyes almost what once had been.
As Hal Briggs lithely stepped on to the porch again he formed how wonderful an image of that other man who, half a century ago, had swung the poisoned kris upon the decks of the Silver Fleece, and, smeared with blood, had hewn his way against all opposition to his will!
“Afraid of an old Malay curse!” sneered Hal. “Poor, piffling fool! Why, Filhiol’s loose in the dome, and grandpop’s no better. They’re a couple of children – ought to be shoved into the nursery. And they think they’re going to dictate to me?”
He paused a moment at the front door to listen. No sound from within indicated any danger.
“Think they’re going to keep me in this graveyard burg!” he gibed. “And stop my having that girl! Well, they’ve got another think coming. She’s mine, that young porpoise. She’s mine!”
Into the cabin he made his way, noiselessly, closed the hall door and smiled with exultation.
He needed but a moment to reach the desk, take out the little slip of paper on which the captain had written the combination, and go to the safe.
A few turns of the knob, and the iron door swung wide. Open came the money-compartment. With exultant hands, filled with triumph and evil pride, Hal caught up the sheaf of bills there, quickly counted off five hundred dollars, took a couple more bills for good luck, crammed the money into his pocket, and replaced the pitifully small remnant in the compartment.
“Sorry I’ve got to leave any,” he reflected, “but it’ll be safer. It may keep him from noticing. The old man wouldn’t let me have a boat, eh? And Laura turned me down, did she? Well now, we’ll soon see about all that!”
“Master Hal, sir! What in the name o’ Tophet are you up to?”
The sound of Ezra’s voice swung Hal sharp around. So intent had he been that he had quite failed to notice the cessation of the old cook’s chantey. A moment, Hal’s eyes, staring, met those of the astonished servitor. Ominous silence filled the room.
“Why, Master Hal!” Ezra quavered. “You – ain’t – ”
“You sneaking spy!” Hal growled at him, even in his rage and panic careful to keep his voice low, lest he awake the doctor, abovestairs. Toward the old man he advanced, with rowdy oaths of the fo’cs’le.
Ezra stood his ground.
“I ain’t no spy, Master Hal,” he exclaimed, tremblingly. “But I come into the dinin’-saloon, here, an’ couldn’t help seein’. Tell me it ain’t so, Master Hal! Tell me you ain’t sunk so low as to be robbin’ your own grandpa, while he’s to town in all this rain, settlin’ up things fer you! Not that, Master Hal – not that!”
“Ezra, you damn son-of-a-sea-cook!” snarled Hal, his face the face of murder. “You call me a thief again, and so help me but I’ll wring your neck!” His hand caught Ezra by the throat and closed in a gorilla-grip, shutting off all breath. “You didn’t learn your lesson from the club last night, eh? Well, I’ll teach you one now, you old gray rat! I’ll shut your mouth, damn you!”
Viciously he shook the weak old man. Ezra clawed with impotent hands at the vise-clutch strangling him.
“It’s my money, my own money, understand?” Hal spat at him. “Every penny of it’s mine. He didn’t want me to have it just yet, but I’m going to, and you’re not going to blow on me! If you do– ”
He loosed his hold, snatched down from its supporting hooks the Malay kris, and with it gripped in hand confronted the trembling, half-fainting cook.
“See this, Ezra?” And Hal shook the envenomed blade before the poor old fellow’s horror-smitten eyes.
“Master – Master Hal!”
“If you breathe so much as one syllable to the captain, I’ll split you with this knife, as sure as I’m a foot high! What? Butting in on me, in my own house, are you? Like hell! Take a slant at this knife here, and see how you’d like it through your guts!”
He raised it as if to strike. Ezra cowered, shrinking with the imminent terror of death.
“Master Hal, oh, fer God’s sake, now – ”
“You’re going to keep your jaw-tackle quiet, are you, to the captain?”
“I – I – ”
Wickedly Hal slashed at him. Ezra opened his mouth, no doubt to cry aloud, but Hal clapped a sinewed hand over it, and slammed him back against the wall.
“Not a word more!” he commanded, and released the trembling old man. “I’ve got to turn you loose, Ezra, but if you double-cross me, so help me God – ”
“You callin’ on God, Master Hal?” quavered Ezra. “You, with your heathen curses an’ your Malay sword, an’ all the evil seed you’re sowin’ fer a terrible crop o’ misery?”
“Shut up, you!”
“Goin’ on this way, Master Hal, after you jest promised the cap’n you was goin’ to begin at the bottom o’ the ladder an’ climb ag’in? This here ain’t the bottom; this here is a deep ditch you’re diggin’, fur below that bottom. Oh, Master Hal,” and Ezra’s shaking hands went out in passionate appeal, “ef you got any love fer the memory o’ your dead mother; ef you got any fer your grandpa, what’s been so wonderful good to you; ef you got any little grain o’ gratitude to me, fer all these long years – ”
“Ezra, you bald-headed old pot-walloper, I’m going to count ten on you,” Hal interrupted, terrible with rage. “If, by the end of that time you haven’t sworn to keep your mouth shut about this, I’m going to kill you right here in this room! I mean that, Ezra!”
“But ef it’s y’r own money, Master Hal, why should you be afeared to let him know?”
Hal struck the old man a staggering blow in the face. “You keep your voice down,” he snarled. “If you wake the doctor, and he comes down here, God help the pair of you! Now, Ezra, I’m not going to trifle with you any longer. You’re going to swear secrecy, and do it quick, or take the consequences!”
He turned, caught up the captain’s well-thumbed Bible from the desk, and with the Bible in one hand, the poisoned kris in the other, confronted Ezra.
“Here! Lay your hand on this book, damn quick!” he ordered. “And repeat what I tell you. Quick, now; quick!”