Part 14

At the Forrester Building the cablegram had been just translated from the secret code of the company and placed upon the desk of Mr. Forrester. It was signed by Von Amberg, and read: "To-day at meeting your party, unknown man fired three shots Vega; Young Forrester overpowered man; Vega unhurt; man escaped. Understand young Forrester not in our confidence. Please instruct."

Three times Mr. Forrester read the cablegram, and then, laying it upon his knee, sat staring out of the open window.

Before his physical eyes were deep cañons of office buildings like his own, towering crag above crag, white curling columns of smoke from busy tugboats, and the great loom of the Brooklyn Bridge with its shuttles of clattering cable-cars. But what he saw was his son, alone in a strange land, struggling with an unknown man, a man intent on murder. With a hand that moved unsteadily the Light-house King lifted the desk telephone and summoned the third vice-president, and when Mr. Sam Caldwell had entered, silently gave him the cablegram.

Sam Caldwell read it and exclaimed with annoyance:

"Looks to me," he commented briskly, "as though they know why Pino came back. Looks as though they had sent this fellow to do him up, before we can----"

In a strange, thin voice, Mr. Forrester stopped him sharply.

"If the boy'd been hurt--they'd have said so, wouldn't they?" he demanded.

Sam Caldwell recognized his error. Carefully he reread the cablegram.

"Why, of course," he assented heartily. "It says here he overpowered the other fellow: says 'Vega unhurt.'"

In the same unfamiliar, strained tone Mr. Forrester interrupted. "It doesn't say Roddy is unhurt," he objected.

The young man laughed reassuringly.

"But the very fact they don't say so shows--why, they'd know that's what you most want to hear. I wouldn't worry about Roddy. Not for a minute."

Embarrassed by his own feeling, annoyed that Sam Caldwell should have discovered it, Mr. Forrester answered, "You wouldn't. He isn't your son."

He reached for a cable form, and wrote rapidly:

"Von Amberg. Willemstad, Curaçao, W. I. Forrester most certainly not in our confidence. Return him Cabello. Is he"--the pen hesitated and then again moved swiftly--"unhurt?"

He drew another blank toward him and addressing it to McKildrick, wrote: "Why is Forrester in Curaçao? Cable him return. Keep him on job, or lose yours."

For a moment Mr. Forrester sat studying the two messages, then he raised his eyes.

"I have half a mind," he said, "to order him home. I would, if he weren't doing so well down there." With an effort to eliminate from his voice any accent of fatherly pride, Mr. Forrester asked coldly: "McKildrick reports that he is doing well, doesn't he?"

The third vice-president nodded affirmatively.

"If he comes back here," argued Mr. Forrester, "he'll do nothing but race his car, and he'll learn nothing of the business. And then, again," he added doubtfully, "while he's down there I don't want him to learn too much of the business, not this Pino Vega end of it, or he might want to take a hand, and that might embarrass us. Perhaps I had better cable him, too."

He looked inquiringly at the third vice-president, but that gentleman refused to be drawn.

"He isn't my son," he remarked.

"I am not speaking of him as my son," snapped Mr. Forrester warmly. "Speaking of him, not as my son, but as an employee of the company, what would you do with him?"

"I'd cable him to mind his own business," answered Sam Caldwell.

For the fraction of a second, under levelled eyebrows, Mr. Forrester stared at young Mr. Caldwell, and then, as a sign that the interview was at an end, swung in his swivel chair and picked up his letters. Over his shoulder he said, "Cable him that."

* * * * *

While Roddy in Willemstad was slumbering under his mosquito-net, and Sam Caldwell in New York was concocting a cablegram, which, he calculated, would put Roddy in his proper place, but which, instead, put him in a very bad temper, Captain Codman, at Casa Blanca, had just finished relating his marvelous tale.

It was the story of how young Forrester, without letters of introduction, without credentials, had that morning walked into the consulate and announced that, without asking advice, he intended to liberate the Lion of Valencia.