Doubloons—and the Girl, Page 2

  CHAPTER II

  TYKE GRIMSHAW AND HIS AFFAIRS

  "I beg your pardon," Drew said, bowing low, "but can I be of anyfurther assistance?"

  The girl looked up at him a little doubtfully, but what she saw in hisfrank brown eyes must have reassured her, for she spoke withouthesitation.

  "You are very kind," she answered, "but I fear it is too late. I hadsome letters in my hand, and when I slipped they went into the water.I'm afraid you can't get them."

  Mentally resolving to dive for them if such a procedure becamenecessary, Drew stepped upon the stringpiece of the pier beside her andlooked down.

  She gave a joyous exclamation as she saw the package lying in thebottom of a small boat that floated at the stern of a steamer moored tothe pier.

  "Oh, there they are!" she cried delightedly. "How lucky!" Then herface changed. "But after all it is going to be hard to get them," sheadded. "The pier is high and there don't seem to be any cleats here toclimb down by."

  "Easiest thing in the world," returned Drew confidently. "I'll goaboard the steamer, haul the boat up to the stern, and drop into it."

  "But the stern is so very high," she said, measuring it with her eye.

  "That doesn't matter," he replied. "If you'll just wait here, I'll goaboard and be back with the letters before you know it." He glancedaround swiftly. "I don't think that fellow will trouble you again."

  "I am not at all afraid of that man. He only startled me for themoment. But I hate to put you to so much trouble," she added, lookingat him shyly.

  "It will be a pleasure," protested Drew, returning her look withanother from which he tried to exclude any undue warmth.

  It is to be feared that he was not altogether successful, judging fromthe faint flush that rose in her cheek as she dropped her gaze beforehis.

  His mind awhirl, the young man hurried up to the gangway of the steamerwhere he found one of the officers. He briefly explained that hewanted to secure a package that a young lady had dropped into the boatlying astern, and the officer, with an appreciative grin, readilygranted permission to him to go aboard.

  Drew hurried to the stern, which, as the steamer had discharged hercargo, rose fully twenty feet from the water. He hauled in the boatuntil it lay directly beneath. Then he gathered up the slack of thepainter and wound it about a cleat until it was taut. This done, hedropped over the rail and let himself down by the rope until his feettouched the thwart of the tender.

  He worked his way aft carefully, and picking up the package placed itin his breast pocket. Then he caught hold of the rope and climbed up,hand over hand.

  It was unaccustomed work for a landsman, but Drew was supple andathletic and he mounted rapidly. Not for a fortune would he havefaltered with those hazel eyes fixed upon him. With the girl watchinghim, he felt as though he could have climbed to the top of theWoolworth Building.

  It was his misfortune that he could not see the look of admiration inher eyes as they followed his movements--a look, however, which by theexercise of maidenly repression she had changed to one of meregratitude when at last, breathing a little quickly, he approached herwith the packet he had recovered in his hand.

  "Oh!" she exclaimed, taking it eagerly and clasping it tightly, "howvery good of you to take all that trouble! I don't know how to thankyou enough."

  "It was no trouble at all," Drew responded. "I count myself lucky tohave happened along just when you needed me."

  His speech won him a radiant smile, and he promptly decided that thedimple in her cheek was not merely distracting. It was divine!

  There was a moment of embarrassed silence. The young man was wild topursue the conversation. But he was too much of a gentleman to presumeon the service he had rendered, and he knew that he should lift his hatand depart.

  One feeble resource was left by which he might reconcile duty withdesire.

  "It's very hard getting about on this crowded pier," he ventured, "andyou see there are some rough characters around. You might perhaps liketo have me see you safely to the street when you are ready to go?"

  She hesitated for a moment, her own inclination evidently battling withconvention. But convention won.

  "I think not," she said, flashing him a smile that softened her refusaland at the same time completed his undoing. "You see it is broaddaylight and I am perfectly safe. Thank you for the offer though, andthank you again for what you have done for me."

  It was dismissal, none the less final because it was gracious, and Drewyielded to the inevitable.

  He glanced back once or twice, assuring himself that it was his plainduty to keep her in sight in order to see that nothing happened to her.He found himself wishing that she would drop the letters overboardagain--that the one-eyed man would reappear--that something wouldoccur, however slight, to call him to her side once more. It was witha thrill of exultation that he saw her approach the gangplank of the_Normandy_.

  Then, for a moment, at least, he was sure he was going to have hiswish. He spied the one-eyed man coming into view from behind a heap offreight and approach the boarding-plank. He spoke to the girl and shehalted.

  Drew was on the point of darting back to the girl's rescue. But theseaman's attitude was respectful, and it seemed that what he said wasnot offensive. At least, the girl listened attentively, nodded whenthe man had finished speaking, and as the latter fell back she trippedlightly aboard the _Normandy_, and so disappeared.

  Drew's curiosity was so great that he might have lingered until thegirl came ashore again, but the one-eyed man was coming up the dock andthe young fellow was cooler now and felt that it would not be the partof wisdom to have another altercation with the rough looking stranger.Perhaps, after all, the one-eyed man had merely spoken to the girl toask pardon for having previously startled her.

  "Well," Drew said to himself, "Peters knows her and can tell me allabout her. Anyhow I know her name and I'll find out where she lives ifI have to search New York from end to end."

  For on the envelope that had lain uppermost when he had picked up thepackage from the grating of the tender, he had seen the name, "RuthAdams." The address had escaped him in that momentary glance, andalthough he could have easily repaired the omission while he waspassing back along the steamer's deck, his instincts revolted atanything that looked like prying.

  But there was nothing in his code that forbade his using everylegitimate means of searching her out and securing an introduction inthe way dictated by the approved forms, and he promised himself thatthe episode should not end here.

  "Hope springs eternal in the human breast," especially when that breastis a youthful one, and Allen Drew's thoughts spun a dozen rainbowvisions as he made his way back to the shop whose insistent call he hadfor the last hour put aside. He walked automatically and only thatsixth sense peculiar to city dwellers prevented his being run down morethan once. But the objurgations of startled drivers as they brought uptheir vehicles with a jerk bothered him not a whit. His physicalpresence was on South Street but his real self was on the crowded pierwhere he had left Ruth Adams.

  Still moving on mechanically, he entered the door of the chandleryshop, over which a signboard, dingy with age, announced that "T.Grimshaw" was the proprietor. He nodded absently in response to thesalutations of Sam, the negro porter, and Winters, the junior clerk,and sat down at his desk.

  The building that housed the chandlery shop was a very old one, datingback to a time previous to the Revolution. When it was erected theBoston "Tea Party" was still in the future. If its old walls couldhave spoken they might have told of the time when almost all New Yorkwas housed below Chambers Street; when the "Bouwerie," free from itslater malodorous associations, was a winding country lane where ladsand lasses carried on their courtships in the long summer evenings;when Cherry Hill, now notorious for its fights and factions, was theabode of the city's wealth and fashion; when Collect Pond, on whosesite the Tombs now stands, was the skating center where New York'sbelles and be
aux disported themselves; when merry parties picnicked inthe woods and sylvan glades of Fourteenth Street.

  Those same walls, looking across the East River, had seen the prisonship _Jersey_, in whose foul and festering holds had died so manypatriots. And they had shaken to the salvos of artillery that greetedWashington, when, at the end of the Revolutionary War, he had landed atthe Battery and had gone in pomp to Fraunce's Tavern for a farewelldinner to his officers.

  In its day it had been a stout and notable building, and even now itmight be good for another hundred years. But the inexorable march ofprogress and the worth of the land on which it stood had sealed itsdoom. Grimshaw had occupied it for twenty years, but when he sought torenew his lease he had been told that no renewal would be granted. Hecould still occupy the building and pay the rent from month to month.But he now held possession only on sufferance, and it was distinctlyunderstood that he might be called upon to vacate at any time on a fewdays' notice.

  But "threatened men live long," and it was beginning to look as thoughthe same might be said of the old building. For two years the monthshad come and gone without any hint of change, and Tyke had settled downin the belief that the building would last as long as he did. Afterthat it did not matter. He had no kith or kin to whom to leave hisbusiness.

  He was a grim and grizzled old fellow, well on in his sixties. In hisearlier days he had been a master mariner, and had sailed all the SevenSeas. He had rounded the Horn a dozen times; had scudded with reefedtopsails in the "roaring forties"; had lost two fingers of his lefthand in a fight with Malay pirates; had battled with waterspouts,tornadoes and typhoons; had harpooned whales in the Arctic; had lost aship by fire, and been shipwrecked twice; and from these combats withmen and nature he had emerged as tough and hardy as a pine knot.

  The profits of a notable whaling expedition from which he had returnedwith the tanks filled to bursting, barrels crowded on the deck, and thevery scuppers running oil, together with a tidy little inheritance thatfell to him about the same time, had enabled him to buy the chandleryshop from its former proprietor and settle down to spend the rest ofhis life ashore and yet in sight and scent of salt water.

  How he had gained the name of "Tyke," by which everybody called him,nobody knew. He himself never volunteered to tell, and in all hisbills and accounts used only the initial "T." Some of his employeesfavored Tyrus, others Titus. One in a wild flight of fancy suggestedTiconderoga. But the mystery remained unsolved, and, after all, as thechecks that bore the scrawl, "T. Grimshaw," were promptly honored atthe bank, it did not matter.

  He was not what could be called an enterprising business man and therewere many houses in his line that made a more pretentious appearance,carried a larger stock, and had a much more extensive trade. But helived frugally, discounted his bills, and had such a broad acquaintanceamong seafaring men that each year's end showed a neat profit on hisbooks.

  His store force was modest, being only three in number. Allen Drew wasa sort of general manager, and Tyke was growing more and more into thehabit of leaving the conduct of the business to him. Winters was thejunior clerk. He had come direct from high school and was now in hissecond year of service. Then there was Sam, the colored porter and manof all work, whose last name was as much a mystery as Grimshaw's first.

  Drew took up some papers that had been laid on his desk during hisabsence, and tried to fix his mind upon them. He was dimly aware thatsomebody had entered the store door, had spoken to Winters, and thatthe junior clerk had shown the visitor into Grimshaw's private office.

  But Allen Drew's thoughts were too far afield to be caught by thisincident, or to become easily concentrated upon humdrum businessaffairs. He laid down the papers, and sighed.

  He began to day-dream again. In the whole category of feminine nameswas there ever one so pretty as Ruth? And surely never did a girl, inboth form and feature, so fit the name.

  Suddenly he realized that the door of the private office was open andthat Grimshaw's head was thrust out.

  "Hey! Come here a minute, Allen," he called.

  There was a note of trouble in the old man's voice, and Tyke's faceexpressed some strong emotion. Alert on the instant, Drew rose to obeyhis employer's summons.