Part 116

“The best of us get rattled,” said the host, consolingly. “I'm not a policeman, sheriff, or detective, mate. I'll report this case as Captain Downs and so many souls saved from the schooner Alden. You'd better trot along up to the city and face 'em as a man should. I'll rig you out in some of my clothes. Your old friend, Wass, meant well by rushing you away, but I've always found that in a man's fight you can't do much unless you're close enough to t'other fellow to hit him when he reaches for you.”

A half-hour later, made presentable in the coast-guard captain's liberty suit, Mayo walked through the kitchen. Bradish and the cook were still in front of the stove.

The captain's wife, standing in a door which admitted to an inner room, put up a finger to signal the young man and then nodded her head in invitation. “The young lady wants to see you, sir,” she informed him in a whisper, when he stepped to her side. “Go in!” She closed the door behind him and remained in the kitchen.

He stood in the middle of the room and gazed at the girl for some time, and neither of them spoke. She was swathed in blankets and was huddled in a big chair; her face was wan and her eyes showed her weariness. But her voice was firm and earnest when she addressed him.

“Captain Mayo, what I am going to say to you will sound very strange. Tell me that you'll listen to me as you would listen to a man.”

“I'm afraid--” he stammered.

“It's too bad that man and woman can seldom meet on the plane where man and man meet. But I don't want to be considered a girl just now. I'm one human being, and you're another, and I owe something to you which must be paid, or I shall be disgraced by a debt which will worry me all my life.” She put out her hands and knotted the fingers together in appeal. “Understand me--help me!”

He was ill at ease. He feared with all his soul to meet the one great subject.

“When we thought we were going to die I told you it seemed as if I had lived a life in a few hours--that I did not seem like the same person as I looked into my thoughts. Captain Mayo, that is true. It is more apparent to me now when I have had time to search my soul. Oh, I am not the Alma Marston who has been spoiled and indulged--a fool leaping here and there with every impulse--watching a girl in my set do a silly thing and then doing a sillier thing in order to astonish her. That has been our life in the city. I never knew what it meant to be a mere human being, near death. You know you saved me from that death!”

“I only did what a man ought to do, Miss Marston.”

“Perhaps. But you did it, that's the point. There are other men--” She hesitated. “I have had a talk with Mr. Bradish,” she told him. “It was a mistake. You saved me from that mistake. You did it in the cabin of the schooner. He has told me. It was better for me than saving my life.”

“But because a man isn't a sailor--isn't used to danger--” he expostulated.

“That is not it. I say I have just had a talk with Mr. Bradish! I have found out exactly what he is. I did not find it out when I danced with him. But now that I have come near to dying with him I have found him out.” The red banners in her cheeks signaled both shame and indignation. “A coward will show all his nature before he gets himself in hand again, and Mr. Bradish has shown me that he is willing to ruin and disgrace me in order to make profit for himself. And there is no more to be said about him!” She paused.

“Captain Mayo, I know what idea you must have of me--of a girl who would do what I have done! But you don't have half the scorn for me I have for myself--for the girl I was. But I have my self-respect now! I respect the woman that I am at this moment after that experience! Perhaps you don't understand. I do! I'm glad I have that self-respect. I shall face what is ahead of me. I shall do right from now on.” She spoke quickly and passionately, and he wanted to say something, but his sailor tongue halted. “I am not going to bring up a certain matter--not now! It's too sacred. I am too miserably ashamed! Again, Captain Mayo, I say that I want to stand with you as man to man! I want to render service for what you have done for me. You have lost everything out of your life that you value. I want you to have it back. Will you listen to me now?”

“Yes, Miss Marston.”

“You go to my father with a letter from me. I do not believe he knows what kind of methods have been practised by his understrappers, but he can find out. You tell him that he must find out--that he must make them confess. You tell him that this is a man's fight, and that you are fighting back with all the strength that you can command. You tell him that you have me hidden, and that I cannot get away--as my own letter will tell him. You tell him that he must make a fair exchange with you--give you back what is yours before he can have what is his.”

Mayo walked backward limply, feeling for the wall with his hands behind him, and leaned against it.

“You are single-handed--it's a big game they play up in the city when they are after money--and you must take what cards are offered,” she insisted, displaying the shrewdness of the Marston nature.

“You mean to say that I'm going to your father as if I were holding you for ransom?” he gasped.

“Something like that,” she returned, eagerly. “The only way you'll get what you want--and get it quickly--is by a good bluff. I have had some good samples of your courage, Captain Mayo. You can do it beautifully.”

“But I'm not going to do it!”

“I say you are!”

“Not by a--” His feelings were carrying him away. He was forgetting that these dealings were with an impulsive girl. His anger was mounting. She was putting him on the plane of a blackleg.

“Go ahead and talk as strongly as you like, Captain Mayo. It will make it seem like man's business between us.”

“Those tricks may be all right in Wall Street, but they don't do for me. And you've got a pretty poor opinion of me if you think I'll do it.”

“Don't be quixotic,” she protested, impatiently. “We are living in up-to-date times, Captain Mayo. Some of those underlings have played a nasty trick on you. They must be exposed.”

“This is a girl's crazy notion!”

“Captain Mayo, is this the way you help me pay my debt?”