The Pirate Story Megapack. R.M. Ballantyne

on the floor. Where you goin’ to stow him?” The prospect of food sounded good to Jim. They might untie his hands. If he were left alone he might clear his bonds himself. He was resolved to wait for the first chance for freedom and then to make a desperate bid for it. He lay quiet while the pair prospected. But he put up a desperate protest when they came back and picked up the sack that had gone over his head.

      “No sense in smothering me,” he said. The pair did not seem unnecessarily brutal. They had not actually mistreated him since that first smash on the base of his skull. Bill was the harder customer of the two. “I’ll not yell if you give me a chance to breathe,” said Jim.

      “You yell and I’ll tap you over the head. It won’t be a love tap, either,” said Bill. “We’ll give you a tryout. Come on, Bud.”

      They carried him down an alley between two rows of empty cow stanchions. Overhead he could see gaps in the roof shingles. He imagined the place to be the outweathered barn of an abandoned farm. Bill opened a door and he was thrust into a dark place smelling of mouldy grain. It was less than six feet square, too small for him to lie extended. The door closed on a bare glimpse of walls close sealed with tongue and groove, a chute leading upward, and two big bins against the far side. There was a click of latch or staple and he was left alone.

      As a rule Jim was even tempered. He had bursts of dynamic fury that he could muster on occasions when rage was needed as lash and spur to urge others to vital effort. Now he had hard work to control his wrath. It steadily mounted until he saw red in the black grain closet, flashes and whirls of red. To get loose, to pin this outrage upon somebody and take it out of their hide was his one wish. That this capture was in some way connected with the Golden Dolphin and the proposed trip he did not doubt. Casting about, he wondered whether the maid of Kitty Whiting’s, with her insatiable curiosity, had anything to do with it. He remembered the skeleton with the cleft skull, the suggestion from Lynda Warner that she was not surprised at foul play. Though he had not looked at it before from this standpoint, he realized that if there were pearls hidden in a secret place aboard the ship, then his information was indeed valuable.

      Foster had told him to bring his figures. Perhaps they had searched him for his diary while he was unconscious. He dismissed the idea. If they were agents of Foster, and Foster wanted to get at the figures, the simplest way would have been the best. As an acknowledged partner Jim could hardly have refused to give Foster the position. Now it was different. Wild horses should not drag the information from him, if that was what they were after. And it was the only valuable, enviable thing he possessed.

      But Foster would ultimately get the figures from the girl when they met as agreed the day after tomorrow—tomorrow now. It was a tangle. But Foster did not know that Lyman had already mailed the diary. Did he plan to get hold of the figures beforehand for his own purposes, and then denounce Lyman as the type he had already suggested, a charlatan who had been scared away by the discovery that he had a man of Stephen Foster’s caliber to deal with? What would be Foster’s purposes with the figures? Merely to dissuade his niece, make her project impossible? Or did he believe that the pearls might be on the wreck and mean to claim the whole for himself by outfitting an expedition in secret while demolishing Kitty Whiting’s plans and hopes?

      There was the secret place aboard the Golden Dolphin that the girl had said only she and her father knew of. But who had devised it? How impossible was it of being discovered? A man of Foster’s type would take the wreck apart, crumble it and sift it if necessary, Jim fancied.

      One fact seemed to Jim to stand out. He did not reason that he was in no position to argue soundly or logically, that he was biased by his capture and humiliation; but it appeared very clear to him that Kitty Whiting should not give out the precious figures to any one until—if she went—she were well on her way to the island. He had turned one little trick unconsciously in sending her the diary. To warn her further was impossible.

      Thus revolving things, like a squirrel in its cage treadmill, Jim got little further than the squirrel progresses. Through some crevice the smell of tobacco came to him. Bill of the beard was outside watching that no one came accidentally to the abandoned farm, ready with an excuse if they did. Bud had supposedly taken the automobile. Jim began to cool down a little, the compression of his thoughts had carried them through heat to cold, to far more effective and energetic anger, once it got an outlet. He was able to shut off the roundabout process of his mind. Appetite for tobacco aided this, another physical need, hunger, assisting. It was with gladness that he dimly heard the arrival of a machine, then the voice of Bud. His door was opened and he was once more packed out like a bale, and deposited, seated, on an empty box. Bud produced a thermos bottle full of hot coffee, some rolls, butter, and crisp doughnuts. They untied the cords at Jim’s wrists, giving him his share of the food and a rusty tin cup for his coffee. By pressing his chin into his chest and lifting his restrained hands he could just make connection with his mouth, though Bud had to tilt the cup for him to finish his coffee. Bud did not eat. He smoked. Bill growled.

      “Suppose you had ‘ham and’ in town there?”

      “Prunes, cereal, ham and, hot cakes an’ maple syrup, coffee, and a cigar,” said Bud. “What you kickin’ at? You can’t drive the car.” Bill grunted and Bud gave him a cigar. He stuck a third in Jim’s mouth and lit it.

      “I’ll remember that,” said Jim with gratitude. Bud nodded.

      “So do, brother, if you figure that’ll do you any good. I don’t believe you and me is likely to meet again in a hurry, though. Take your time. We’ve got to tuck you up again soon.”

      “If I give you fellows the figures now will you turn me loose?”

      Both looked as blankly committal as men wearing goggle masks might be expected to.

      “I don’t know a damn thing about your figures, nor Bill either,” said Bud. “We’re expressmen in this game. Deliverin’ you, brother, as per directions, charges collect, eh, Bill?”

      “You talk too much,” was Bill’s contribution.

      The cigars finished, Jim’s wrists were once more tied. He begged for a chance to walk about the barn, but they would not grant it. After he was trussed they re-sacked him, despite his protests. He gleaned one scrap of information.

      Bud, in response to Bill, answered.

      “’Bout thirty miles. Boss expects us round noon. We drive right into the garage, deliver and collect. That lets us out.”

      Who was the boss?

      Jim had hoped to get a look at the license plates on the car but Bud, Bill & Company, illicit expressmen, were too smart for that. This time he was not only deposited on the floor of the tonneau in his sacking, but a rug was flung over all. It was quite a while before they started. Once they stopped and Jim knew they were getting gasoline and oil, for Bill came into the tonneau and sat with his heavy-booted foot close to Lyman’s head, mutely promising what would happen if Jim tried to attract attention. The day was warm and he sweated profusely, and an infernal itching started, from which there was no relief. After a time they rolled over smoother roads and finally made a sharp right turn and came to a stop, the engine shut off. They had reached the garage of the boss. One of them went off to report and Jim still sweated in his sacks. Then the upper one was removed and he blinked up into the face of a red-faced man with a squash nose, little blue eyes and a bald head save for a tonsure of reddish hair; a big man with enormous chest and protruding paunch, with hair on his wrists and fingers, spider-wise. He surveyed Jim callously.

      “That him?” he asked.

      “No,” said Bill. “It ain’t him. We let him go. This is a pal of ours we rigged up this way because that’s the way he likes to ride. You got the wire, didn’t you? You know he was identified at the other end. What’s eatin’ you? Come through with that two hundred berries and take your package and we’ll call it a day.”

      The consignee’s red face turned crimson, then purple. His pig eyes glittered and he closed his great fists. Then he laughed.

      “Comedian, eh? All right. Take him upstairs and put him on the bunk.