A Splendid Hazard by Harold MacGrath (important books to read txt) 📖

Cathewe as yet did not know the manner of the man with whom he was matched.

The dinner came to an end, or, rather, the diners rose, the dinner having this hour or more been cleared from the table; and each went to his or her state-room mastered by various degrees of astonishment. Fitzgerald moved in a kind of waking sleep. Napoleon IV! That there was a bar sinister did not matter. The dazzle radiated from a single point: a dream of empire! M. Ferraud had not jested; Breitmann was mad, obsessed, a monomaniac. It was grotesque; it troubled the senses as a Harlequin's dance troubles the eyes. A great-grandson of Napoleon, and plotting to enter France! And, good Lord! with what? Two million francs and half a dozen spendthrifts. Never had there been a wilder, more hopeless dreamer than this! Whatever antagonism or anger he had harbored against Breitmann evaporated. Poor devil, indeed!

He understood M. Ferraud now. Breitmann was mad; but till he made a decisive stroke no man could stay him. So many things were clear now. He was after the treasure, and he meant to lay his hands upon it, peacefully if he could, violently if no other way opened. That day in the Invalides, the old days in the field, his unaccountable appearance on the Jersey coast; each of these things squared themselves in what had been a puzzle. But, like the admiral, he wished that there were no women on board. There would be a contest of some order, going forward, where only men would be needed. Pirates! He rolled into his bunk with a dry laugh.

Meantime M. Ferraud walked the deck alone, and finally when Breitmann approached him, it was no more than he had been expecting.

"Among other things," began the secretary, with ominous calm, "I should like to see the impression of your thumb."

"That lock was an ingenious contrivance. It was only by the merest accident I discovered it."

"It must be a vile business."

"Serving one's country? I do not agree with you. Wait a moment, Mr. Breitmann; let us not misunderstand each other. I do not know what fear is; but I do know that I am one of the few living who put above all other things in the world, France: France with her wide and beautiful valleys, her splendid mountains, her present peace and prosperity. And my life is nothing if in giving it I may confer a benefit."

"Why did you not tell the whole story? A Frenchman, and to deny oneself a climax like this?"

M. Ferraud remained silent.

"If you had not meddled! Well, you have, and these others must bear the brunt with you, should anything serious happen."

"Without my permission you will not remain in Ajaccio a single hour. But that would not satisfy me. I wish to prove to you your blindness. I will make you a proposition. Tear up those papers, erase the memory from your mind, and I will place in your hands every franc of those two millions."

Breitmann laughed harshly. "You have said that I am mad; very well, I am. But I know what I know, and I shall go on to the end. You are clever. I do not know who you are nor why you are here with your warnings; but this will I say to you: to-morrow we land, and every hour you are there, death shall lurk at your elbow. Do you understand me?"

"Perfectly. So well, that I shall let you go freely."

"A warning for each, then; only mine has death in it."

"And mine, nothing but good-will and peace."


CHAPTER XXI

CAPTAIN FLANAGAN MEETS A DUKE

The isle of Corsica, for all its fame in romance and history, is yet singularly isolated and unknown. It is an island whose people have stood still for a century, indolent, unobserving, thriftless. No smoke, that ensign of progress, hangs over her towns, which are squalid and unpicturesque, save they lie back among the mountains. But the country itself is wildly and magnificently beautiful: great mountains of granite as varied in colors as the palette of a painter, emerald streams that plunge over porphyry and marble, splendid forests of pine and birch and chestnut.

The password was, is, and ever will be, Napoleon. Speak that name and the native's eye will fire and his patois will rattle forth and tingle the ear like a snare-drum. Though he pays his tithe to France, he is Italian; but unlike the Italian of Italy, his predilection is neither for gardening, nor agriculture, nor horticulture. Nature gave him a few chestnuts, and he considers that sufficient. For the most part he subsists upon chestnut-bread, stringy mutton, sinister cheeses, and a horrid sour wine. As a variety he will shoot small birds and in the winter a wild pig or two; his toil extends no further, for his wife is the day-laborer. Viewing him as he is to-day, it does not seem possible that his ancestors came from Genoa la Superba.

Napoleon was born in Ajaccio, but the blood in his veins was Tuscan, and his mind Florentine.

These days the world takes little or no interest in the island, save for its wool, lumber and an inferior cork. Great ships pass it on the north and south, on the east and west, but only cranky packets and dismal freighters drop anchor in her ports.

The Gulf of Ajaccio lies at the southwest of the island and is half-moon in shape, with reaches of white sands, red crags, and brush covered dunes, and immediately back of these, an embracing range of bald mountains.

A little before sunrise the yacht Laura swam into the gulf. The mountains, their bulks in shadowy gray, their undulating crests threaded with yellow fire, cast their images upon the smooth tideless silver-dulled waters. Forward a blur of white and red marked the town.

"Isn't it glorious?" said Laura, rubbing the dew from the teak rail. "And oh! what a time we people waste in not getting up in the mornings with the sun."

"I don't know," replied Fitzgerald. "Scenery and sleep; of the two I prefer the latter. I have always been routed out at dawn and never allowed to turn in till midnight. You can always find scenery, but sleep is a coy thing."

"There's a drop of commercial blood in your veins somewhere, the blood of the unromantic. But this morning?"

"Oh, sleep doesn't count at all this morning. The scenery is everything."

And as he looked into her clear bright eyes he knew that before this quest came to its end he was going to tell this enchanting girl that he loved her "better than all the world"; and moreover, he intended to tell it to her with the daring hope of winning her, money or no money. Had not some poet written-some worldly wise poet who rather had the hang of things-

"He either fears his fate too much,
Or his deserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch
To win or lose it all."

Money wasn't everything; she herself had made that statement the first night out. He had been afraid of Breitmann, but somehow that fear was all gone now. Did she care, if ever so little?

He veered his gaze round and wondered where Breitmann was. Could the man be asleep on a morn so vital as this? No, there he was, on the very bowsprit itself. The crew was busy about him, some getting the motor-boat in trim, others yanking away at pulleys, all the preparations of landing. A sharp order rose now and then; a servant passed, carrying Captain Flanagan's breakfast to the pilot-house. To all this subdued turmoil Breitmann seemed apparently oblivious. What mad dream was working in that brain? Did the poor devil believe in himself; or did he have some ulterior purpose, unknown to any but himself? Fitzgerald determined, once they touched land, never to let him go beyond sight. It would not be human for him to surrender any part of the treasure without making some kind of a fight for it, cunning or desperate. If only the women-folk remained on board!

Breitmann gazed toward the town motionless. It was difficult for Fitzgerald not to tell the great secret then and there; but his caution whispered warningly. There was no knowing what effect it would have upon the impulsive girl at his side. And besides, there might have been a grain of selfishness in the repression. All is fair in love or war; and it would not have been politic to make a hero out of Breitmann.

"You haven't said a word for five minutes," she declared. How boyish he looked for a man of his experience!

"Silence is sometimes good for the soul," sententiously.

"Of what were you thinking?"

His heart struck hard against his breast. What an opening, what a moment in which to declare himself! But he said: "Perhaps I was thinking of breakfast. This getting up early always makes me ravenous. The smell of the captain's coffee may have had something to do with it."

"You were thinking of nothing of the sort," she cried. "I know. It was the treasure and this great-grandson of Napoleon. Sometimes I feel I only dreamed these things. Why? Because, whoever started out on a treasure quest without having thrilling adventures, shots in the dark, footsteps outside the room, villains, and all the rest of the paraphernalia? I never read nor heard of such a thing."

"Nor I. But there's land yonder," he said, without an answering smile.

"Then," in an awed whisper, "you believe something is going to happen there?"

"One thing I am certain of, but I can not tell you just at this moment."

A bit of color came to her cheeks. As if, reading his eyes, she did not know this thing he was so certain of! Should she let him tell her? Not a real eddy in the current, unless it was his fear of money. If only she could lose her money, temporarily! If only she had an ogre for a parent, now! But she hadn't. He was so dear and so kind and so proud of her that if she told him she was going to be married that morning, his only questions would have been: At what time? Why, this sort of romance was against all accepted rules. She was inordinately happy.

"There is only one thing lacking; this great-grandson himself. He will be yonder somewhere. For the man in the chimney was he or his agent."

"And aren't you afraid?"

"Of what?" proudly.

"It will not be a comedy. It is in the blood of these Napoleons that nothing shall stand in the path of their desires, neither men's lives nor woman's honor."

"I am not afraid. There is the sun at last What a picture! And the shame of it! I am hungry!"

At half after six the yacht let go her anchor a few hundred