The Motor Boat Club off Long Island: or, A Daring Marine Game at Racing Speed

CHAPTER XIV
THE MELTING OF MILLIONS

IT would have been worse than useless to have tried to jump into the breach just before the car started. At the least, Tom Halstead would have been made a prisoner by these desperate plotters.

Free, though he could not immediately aid Mr. Delavan, the young skipper could at least carry word of what he had seen. He could rouse Eben Moddridge to action, or, anyway, to the putting up of money that would put other and more capable men in action.

Yet the boy felt like grinding his teeth in chagrin and bitter disappointment as he saw that swift touring car glide swiftly off the grounds to the road.

He had started to run after the car, hoping to overtake it before it got fully under speed, and to catch on in some way behind. But almost at once he saw that there was nothing to catch hold of at the rear, and immediately afterwards the car shot ahead at a speed of forty miles an hour.

“Whee! I hope the officers stop them, somewhere, for speeding,” thought Halstead, with a half hopeful grin as he slowed down to a walk. It would hardly do, however, to expect the car to be stopped for going only forty miles an hour on Long Island.

As the young skipper stepped out, panting, through the gate, he remembered the necessity of proceeding cautiously, lest he run afoul of Justin Bolton, who could not be far away, and was on foot. That scheming financier carried a revolver, and had shown himself not slow to use it. After half an hour Halstead felt that the danger of meeting Bolton was slight, and hurried on faster.

It was late in the evening when Tom Halstead entered the hotel grounds at East Hampton. A short distance away he had halted long enough to remove all excessive amounts of dust from clothing and shoes. In order to appear neither excited nor in haste, he sauntered slowly enough through the grounds, approached the veranda, stood there two or three minutes, walked about a bit in the lobby – long enough to see that two of the New York reporters were still on the scene – and at last escaped, without attracting special notice, up the stairs. Now he hastened to the door of Mr. Moddridge’s rooms, and knocked briskly.

“It’s Halstead, Mr. Moddridge,” he replied, in answer to a shaking query from within. The door flew open like magic.

“Halstead? Where have you been all these hours?” came the peevish question, as Eben Moddridge, in negligee attire and looking like a more than ill man, faced the young skipper. “You – ”

Tom went inside, closed the door, and led the nervous one to an inner room. Here the motor boat boy poured out the whole story of what he had been through.

“Why, your new boy, Butts, hasn’t been near me with a word of this,” gasped Moddridge, presently.

“That must have been because he didn’t know you, of course,” evaded Halstead, easily. “But now, Mr. Moddridge, it will be necessary to pull all your wits together if you’re to save your friend and yourself. What should be the first move?”

“Oh, dear,” cried the nervous one, pacing the floor, “I honestly don’t know. I don’t see my way. Why did Delavan ever allow himself to get into such a dreadful mess? If he had followed my advice – ”

“If your advice is any good, sir,” put in Tom, crisply, “it ought to be useful, just now, in finding out the way to extricate Mr. Delavan from his present troubles. Now, what ought to be the first step?”

With most men Halstead would have thought himself presuming to go so far. But the case was tremendously pressing, and it took more than a little to get Eben Moddridge started.

By slow degrees Moddridge pulled himself together. He wouldn’t hear to calling in the reporters and making the whole story public as far as it was known.

“The public would regard it all as a cock-and-bull invention, gotten up to hide Delavan’s supposed flight,” the nervous one rather sensibly declared. “And, if we were to drag Bolton’s name in, Bolton would be very likely to give us the trouble of proving the whole story, mostly on your unsupported word, Halstead, with a little corroboration, of course, from your very eccentric new steward – Butts, did you call him? Besides, if Frank Delavan were here, I think he would prefer to scheme secretly to punish Justin Bolton, instead of going after him openly.”

“Who is this Bolton?” asked Tom Halstead.

“A man whom Delavan helped to make the start of his fortune. But Bolton is unscrupulous and dangerous; Frank had to drop him years ago.”

The idea of sending for detectives Eben Moddridge also declined to entertain.

“No matter how secretly we may think we hire detectives,” he objected, “it is pretty sure to leak out. The Wall Street public would take that as a sensational feature, and P. & Y. would drop lower than ever in the market. No, no, Halstead; we won’t think of hiring detectives until we have tried other means. Now, what remains to be done!”

Tom Halstead pondered before he answered:

“Bolton’s intention seems to be to take Mr. Delavan off Long Island on that racing launch. It will probably be at some point within twenty or thirty miles of here, either east or west. If we could put enough men on watch, we could find out when that launch attempts to put out to sea. But you object to using detectives. I wonder if there are any other men we could trust, instead of using detectives? Say,” proposed the young skipper, suddenly, “you both trust your broker, Coggswell, don’t you?”

“Very thoroughly,” admitted Moddridge, pausing in his nervous walk to stare hard at the young skipper.

“Then why not get hold of Coggswell, at his home to-night, over the telephone? Ask him to send out some of his clerks whom he knows to be reliable. He might even send out a few other young men that he could vouch for?”

“But what good would they be?” asked Eben Moddridge.

“I can take the map of this coast, sir, and lay out stations for these young men, so that there’ll be one or two of ’em every few miles east and west of here. I can give them perfect descriptions of the racing launch. They can be provided with marine glasses. Just the instant that any one of them spots the racing launch he can telephone me. Then, whether the launch has Mr. Delavan aboard, and is putting out to sea, or is going after him, I can do my best to follow in the ‘Rocket.’ Since you are opposed to hiring detectives, Mr. Moddridge, that’s the best thing I can see that is left to do.”

After some further talk the nervous financier agreed to this. He called up Broker Coggswell by ’phone, at the latter’s home in New York. Mr. Coggswell agreed to send down twenty capable and honest young men by the earliest train in the morning.

That being all that could be done for the present, Captain Tom Halstead returned to the “Rocket.” Joe Dawson and Hank Butts were both up, waiting for him. For the next hour, sitting on the deck house of the boat, in the dark, still watches of the night, talking in whispers, the boys discussed all the latest phases of the puzzling affair. Then Tom turned in below, Joe doing likewise, leaving Butts on deck for the first watch.

“He can be wholly depended upon, can’t he, Tom?” Dawson asked.

“Who? Hank Butts? Joe, even though Hank has struggled into one of Jed’s uniforms, he may still look like a Simple Simon, but don’t lose any sleep worrying about Hank!”

Early in the morning the young skipper was astir again. Hiring a bicycle he wheeled rapidly to the next railway station above East Hampton. There the young men sent by Broker Coggswell left the train. Their leader reported to Halstead with the whispered watchword provided by the New York broker. Tom led them off in private, unfolded the map he had brought with him, and assigned to each young man the station he was to watch day and night. For this purpose the young men were sent away in pairs. When the instructions had been given and fully understood, Halstead leisurely pedaled back to East Hampton.

“Those young fellows all look bright,” he thought. “If they serve faithfully, they may be able to give us the very warning that we shall need.”

Eben Moddridge, who rarely slept more than two or three hours at a time, was awake when the young skipper called on him. Moddridge had arranged for a direct wire from his room to Coggswell’s office in New York, and was feverishly awaiting the hour of nine, when the great Stock Exchange would open for the day’s dealings in money.

“I feel as though my death sentence must come through this instrument,” groaned the nervous financier, tapping the telephone.

At last the call came. Now Moddridge had abundant excuse for being nervous. The day in New York opened with P. & Y. at 87.

“Two points lower,” sighed the nervous one, “and the bankers will begin to call in the loans with which Frank and I have been buying Steel.”

Half an hour later P. & Y. touched 85.

“We’ve got to put up some money to the banks now,” stated Coggswell. “But Steel has been doing a little. If you authorize me, I can sell out some Steel and allied securities, and meet the first demand from the banks on your account.”

“What shall I do?” shivered Moddridge, turning appealingly to the “Rocket’s” skipper.

“Why, I don’t know a blessed thing about the game,” Tom admitted, promptly. “But I should take Coggswell’s advice. He seems to have a clear head.”

Eben Moddridge acted on the suggestion. But the New York newspapers were printing columns about the disappearance of Delavan, and more about the shakiness of P. & Y. stock. By noon the P. & Y. stock had dropped to 81. Coggswell had closed out more of the Delavan-Moddridge buyings in Steel, and thus had averted a crash for those interests.

“If Steel will only go up as P. & Y. goes down,” smiled Halstead cheerily, “you will be able to keep even.”

“That is, one debt will wipe out the other, and leave Frank and myself penniless,” replied Eben Moddridge, with a ghastly face.

The Stock Exchange closed for the day with P. & Y. at 76, that is, at a selling price of seventy-six dollars per share, instead of a hundred and two dollars per share as it had been forty-eight hours earlier. So far, by sales of Steel and its allied securities, Broker Coggswell had been able to keep the Delavan-Moddridge interests from going wholly to smash.

“But there’s to-morrow to face,” almost shrieked the nervous financier. “To-day millions of our money have literally melted away. If to-morrow brings no change in our luck, we shall both be ruined!”

The only change of the next day was to carry P. & Y. as low as 71, where it remained for the time being. Having between three and four millions of dollars left in private funds, Moddridge, shaking like a leaf, had ordered Coggswell to turn this last remnant of his fortune into the joint Delavan-Moddridge interests. Thus again the banks had been staved off for a little while.

“But the next drop in P. & Y. will eat up all our Steel investments, and Frank and I won’t have another penny to turn in,” sobbed the nervous one. “Then the banks will have to close us out to save themselves. Frank Delavan and I will be beggars!”

Tottering to the bed in the adjoining room, Eben Moddridge threw himself across it, sobbing hysterically.

Tom Halstead, however, gazed after the nervous financier with a new, deeper feeling of respect.

“I don’t understand very much about this Wall Street game, and my head is lined with a maze of figures,” the young skipper muttered to himself. “But there’s a heap of the man in you, Moddridge. When you might have saved a very decent fortune to yourself, you threw it into the whirlpool to try to protect your absent friend. Yon may be a nervous wreck, but hang me if you aren’t a whole lot of a man at bottom!”

CHAPTER XV
THE MASTHEAD GAME

WHILE the game that frenzied men were playing in Wall Street had been hurrying Mr. Delavan and Mr. Moddridge into a ruin that would drag scores of others into the crash, Engineer Joe Dawson had been going ahead very methodically under his young captain’s orders.

The “Rocket’s” gasoline tank had been filled. In addition, as many extra cases of the oil had been taken aboard and stored as the boat’s space below could provide for.

“But be mighty careful what you do, Hank, with the galley fire,” urged the young skipper, seriously. “Any blaze that starts aboard this boat when we’re out on the water is pretty sure to blow us a thousand miles past Kingdom Come.”

Just after dark, on the night of that day when Eben Moddridge threw his last dollars into the frantic game of speculation, Tom was summoned in haste from the boat to the cigar store near the pier. There was a telephone booth there, and the young skipper was wanted at the ’phone.

“This is Theodore Dyer,” announced the speaker at the other end.

“Oh, yes; you’re one of the watchers,” Halstead remembered, swiftly.

“That launch you set us to watching for has just gone into Henderson’s Cove, a mile north of here.”

“Oh, bully for you, Dyer!” throbbed the motor boat boy. “Has she had time to leave yet?”

“Not yet.”

“One thing more. Was the launch showing all her lights?”

“Every one of them.”

“You’re absolutely certain it’s the launch?”

“Top-sure. My side-partner, Drew, first sighted her coming down the coast just before dark fell. It’s the launch, all right, or her exact twin.”

Captain Tom had only time to thank the watcher up the coast, then bolted back to the boat.

“Get everything ready, Joe,” he called. “We ought to be under way in five minutes. I’m off to speak to Mr. Moddridge.”

“I’m going with you,” cried the nervous one, leaping up as soon as he heard the news in his room at the hotel.

“We may be out a long while, sir,” suggested the young skipper. “How about your broker?”

“I gave Coggswell final orders, two hours ago, to do the best he could and not to communicate with me until he has better news – or everything has gone to smash. Hurry, lad!”

By the time they reached the hotel entrance Moddridge was trembling so that Tom bundled him into a waiting cab. Two minutes later they were at the pier.

“Cast off, Hank,” Halstead called, at once. Then, as he reached the deck:

“Joe, be ready at the speed-ahead.”

In a jiffy the “Rocket” was moving out from the pier.

“Hank,” called the young skipper, at the wheel, “down with that masthead light.”

“Why, it’s against the law to sail at night without a masthead light,” gasped Butts. “And look at the weather out yonder.”

“We can sail with a bow light when we have no mast,” Tom retorted, doggedly. “And in twenty minutes we won’t have a mast. Down with the masthead light.”

Wondering, Hank Butts obeyed.

“Trim the side-lights down to just as little as the law will stand for,” was Tom’s next order. “Just at present they’re too bright – for our purpose.”

This, too, Hank obeyed, though he was plainly enough of a seaman to be disturbed.

“Shall I turn the searchlight on, to pick up the inlet?” Butts next inquired.

“Blazes, no!” the young skipper ejaculated. “I don’t want to show the glimmer of a glow that I don’t have to.”

“How are you going to pick up the inlet in this dark, nasty weather?” Hank inquired.

“Feel for it,” Captain Tom retorted, dryly. “Get up forward, Hank, and pass the word back.”

A native of this section, Hank was a competent pilot. Thus they got out through the inlet from Shinnecock Bay, heading southwest for Henderson’s Cove, ten miles away. As soon as they were safely in deep water Halstead summoned Joe and Hank, sending them forward to unstep the mast. Moddridge looked on in silent wonder at these unusual proceedings. They were going at slow speed after a little, as it was no part of the young skipper’s purpose to show his own boat to those whom he intended to watch and follow.

“You can take the wheel now, Hank,” called the young skipper, and stepped forward, carrying a pair of the most powerful marine glasses, which he had persuaded his employer’s friend to order from New York. Moddridge followed, keeping close to the young skipper.

“Stop the engine!” Tom Halstead soon called back, his eyes at the glasses. “Do you see that searchlight ray against the sky, Mr. Moddridge? That’s over by Henderson’s Cove. The racing launch is coming out. And, by Jove, she’s carrying her masthead light. Bully for her!”

For some little time the young skipper watched the searchlight and moving masthead light of the distant craft with keen interest. Then, out of the dark weather a squall struck the “Rocket,” rolling her over considerably. Sheets of rain began to drive down. Captain Tom made a dive below for his oilskins, bringing up another outfit for Hank Butts. Mr. Moddridge, too, disappeared briefly below, coming up clad for the weather.

“See that masthead light, sir?” called Halstead, jubilantly. “It ought to be easy to follow. That boat is headed due south – putting straight out for the high seas.”

“And do you imagine Frank Delavan is a prisoner on that craft?” demanded Moddridge.

“From what I heard Bolton say I’m sure of it. Bolton has been making his arrangements, and now he’s going to put it beyond Mr. Delavan to escape until P. & Y. has gone clean to the bottom.”

The wind was increasing so that the “Rocket” rolled and pitched in the troubled sea.

“Good heavens!” gasped Eben Moddridge. “This boat can’t live long in such a gale.”

“The ‘Rocket’ ought to be fit to cross the ocean, in any weather, if her fuel lasted,” Captain Tom replied, coolly.

“But this is going to be a regular gale.”

“It looks that way, sir.”

“Then, by all that’s certain, that launch can’t weather it,” cried Moddridge, his pallor increasing. “Poor Frank! To be sent to the bottom in that fashion!”

“Why, the launch isn’t a large craft, it’s true, sir,” Captain Tom responded. “But she’s built for a sea-going craft. With decent handling she’ll go through any weather like this.”

“You’re not getting any nearer. You’re not overtaking them,” was Moddridge’s next complaint. The “Rocket” was moving, now, at about eighteen miles an hour.

“I don’t want to overtake that boat,” Captain Halstead replied, with vigor. “I don’t want to get near enough to let them see our lights. We can’t see anything but their masthead light, since they’ve stopped using the searchlight.”

Even had it been daylight, the two boats were now so far apart that from the deck of either, one could not have seen the other’s hull. In the chase that must follow the young motor boat skipper intended to preserve that distance in order to avoid having his pursuit detected. In the thick weather it was not possible to see the launch’s masthead light from the “Rocket’s” deck with the naked eye. An ordinary marine glass might not have shown the light, either, but the one that Captain Tom held in his hand kept the light in sight.

“If Frank is really aboard that launch,” inquired Mr. Moddridge, “where on earth can they be taking him?”

“One guess is as good as another when you don’t know,” smiled Halstead. “It may be that they have picked out some lonely little island in the sea for their purpose. I hope they don’t increase their speed to-night. That other craft could get away from us if our pursuit were suspected.”

All through the night the gale continued. The “Rocket” rolled a good deal, and strained at her propeller, but she was a sea boat and held her own well. When morning dawned the motor craft was getting out toward the edge of the storm. Hours before the course of the quarry ahead had changed to the east, and both boats were now south of regular ocean routes and far east of coast-going vessels.

Daylight brought the racer’s masthead in sight.

“We’ll keep just about the upper two feet of that masthead in sight all day,” proposed the young skipper. Soon afterward he called Hank, who had had three or four hours’ sleep, to the wheel. Joe, when there was nothing to do, slept on a locker beside his engine. Eben Moddridge dozed in a deck chair.

At noon, when Halstead again took the wheel, the relative positions of the two boats were the same. Through the glass only about two feet of the racer’s mast could be made out above the horizon. There was no reason to suppose that those aboard the racer had caught the least glimpse of the “Rocket.”

By sun-down this sea-quarry’s masthead was still in sight, each boat going at about nineteen miles an hour.

“We can carry gasoline to go as far as they can,” laughed Tom Halstead, confidently.

At dark the launch’s masthead light again glowed out, so that the chase continued to be a simple matter of vigilance. The young navigators caught their sleep well enough, only the helm requiring constant attention.

Soon after the second morning out had dawned clear and bright, Captain Tom, who was at the wheel, caught sight of something so interesting that he yelled to Hank Butts, asleep on a mattress on deck:

“Wake up, steward! Hustle Mr. Moddridge on deck. Tell him there’s something ahead of huge interest!”

Joe, just rousing from a nap on an engine room locker, heard and was hastily on deck. He and Halstead were using the glass and their own eyes when Hank appeared with Eben Moddridge in tow.

“What is it?” demanded the nervous one.

“See the tops of a schooner’s masts ahead?” challenged Halstead. “You can make ’em out with your own eyes. And the glass will show you the tip of the launch’s masthead. The power-boat is making for the schooner.”

“For what purpose?” trembled the nervous financier.

“For what purpose?” chuckled Tom, gleefully. “Why, sir, undoubtedly so that those aboard the launch can transfer Mr. Delavan to the sailing craft. The two vessels must have met here for that very trick, and by previous arrangement of Justin Bolton!”

“How is that going to help us any?” queried Eben Moddridge, wonderingly.

“How is that going to help us?” repeated the young skipper of the “Rocket,” staring hard at his questioner. “Why, if the guess is correct, it’s going to be the greatest piece of good luck that could come to us!”