The Savage Gentleman (5 page)

"But since we landed here I've known something that you have done but not mentioned."

"Yes?" Stone's voice was placid.

The Scotchman smoked in silence for a time.

"Just exactly how long will we stay here?"

"Why--you know as much about that as I do."

An inner fear sounded in McCobb's words. "There isn't any real reason for keeping me in suspense. You know the day. You planned everything so perfectly that certainly you've left in. New York or somewhere--even in several places--" McCobb laughed with a heartiness he did not quite feel-- "instructions to be opened in fifteen or twenty years. Instructions telling the opener how to rescue us, giving the position of the island and funds to send an expedition here." When the tall man did not speak, McCobb continued: "I know your type of man. You wouldn't throw yourself and your son away when there was such an easy and sure method of accomplishing this isolation for education and of making a return sure."

No answer.

"What about it, Stone?"

McCobb peered through the dark.

"Stone!"

He leaped to his feet. He went to Stone's side. Stone had fainted--and McCobb knew that there was one thing of which the great organizer had not thought. Even while he unbuttoned Stone's shirt and felt his faltering heart, the Scot looked over the sea and thought icily that it would some day ripple beside the grave of an old, old man who had been himself.

"Stone!" he shouted. "Jack!"

C
hapter Five:
THE QUESTIONS

NEW YORK was loud and hot. Horse cars rattled over the cross-town tracks. A steam engine pounded on the elevated railway and ground to a stop. The sound of hoofs beat on the cobblestones. Wagon wheels, iron-tired, set up a continuous rumble and among the wagons moved broughams and victorias.

In an office building on Park Row which was not a skyscraper but which was high enough to overlook Brooklyn Bridge, two men were greeting each other.

One was Elihu Whitney, the most famous corporation lawyer in Gotham.

The other was a Mr. Harriman.

The lawyer wore a Prince Albert--its black coat falling to his knees. His collar was high and his tie black and narrow, knotted crosswise on his starched bosom.

Mr. Harriman carried a bowler in his hand. His suit was light and very tight. In one of the two button-holes on his coat lapel was a rose. His vest also had lapels "'which were buttoned together two inches below his collar.

Mr. Whitney's voice was basso and meticulous:

"A fine day, indeed, my dear Harriman. I'm delighted to see you."

Harriman stroked his giant mustache.

"A pleasure. May I tender my congratulations on the return of your son and your charming daughter-in-law? A happy couple. One envies these youngsters their honeymoons, eh?"

Whitney chuckled. "Two birds in a bush could not be happier."

He bowed and waved his friend to a chair. He pulled a bell cord and an office boy brought a box of Cigars.

The men helped themselves. The lawyer struck a match on the sole of his shoe and held it for his guest.

"Your son is brilliant," Harriman continued. "Very brilliant. I wish you would convey Mrs. Harriman's salutations to them and tell them that we are both going to call as soon as they can bear to have their nest distl1rbed."

"They'll be delighted."

"I read so much about them in the
Record."

"Yes, yes," Whitney said. '

He patted the under side of his cheek whiskers with the back of his hand and wondered how soon Harriman would reach the point.

The other man drew on the floor with his cane.

"The
Record
has depreciated since--ah--Stone left, don't you think?" A glint came in Whitney's eye. Harriman had come to talk about Stone. The lawyer would have offered odds at his dub that Mrs. Harriman's curiosity was responsible for the visit of her banker husband.

Whitney shrugged. "Perhaps. Perhaps. But the profits are up. I have a balance sheet here--"

"Don't bother. Don't trouble yourself." Harriman's smile distorted his mustache.

"Funny thing for a man like Stone to do--lose himself at sea."

"Very strange. But he was shaken. Grievously shaken."

"Oh--true. A tense man. An idealist. A great loss to Journalism.

"To the country, Harriman."

"Yes, indeed. The whole country." He paused. "You don't believe, do you, that there's any chance--any remote chance--that he isn't lost--for life?"

It was the hundredth time Whitney had been asked that question--in public and in private, by dowagers at austere functions in Washington Square and by his office boy. He realized that Harriman expected to receive a true answer-and he was ready with the truth as he knew it, although he felt he was answering Mrs. Olive Harriman's curiosity rather than the banker's honest interest.

"I think the
Falcon
went down," he said gravely.

"No hint of anything else?"

"None;."

"How did he leave his properties?"

"In trust. In a holding company. For his son-for ninety-nine years. Then for the extant employees of the organization or organizations."

"I see. Don't you think that's a bit suggestive?"

The lawyer walked to the window. He rocked on his feet so that his Prince Albert touched the front and then the back of his knees. He watched the carriages and vans that poured back and forth across Brooklyn Bridge.

"Not at all. He expected to return. At least--he expected his son to come back."

"Ah."

"But I've had every possible investigation made. He sailed from Aden in October.

There were winds and storms. He went woefully undermanned--a crew of two, I believe.

The
Orkney,
bound from Cape Town to Batavia, sighted him, making south under a little sail. That was the last. There was nothing in the way of land south of his position except the Antarctic ice. I'm afraid he's gone, Harriman."

The banker seemed disappointed.

"I had hoped--as had my wife--that you might give a few friends--privately, of course-a vestige of optimism."

"I'm sorry."

Whitney was impassive at the mention of Harriman's wife---but his recognition of the source of the call was affirmed by it.

"Well--I must go along. Business, you know. Business. It's improving--although

'ninety-seven nearly dumped my cart."

"Please pay my respects to Mrs. Harriman."

"Indeed I shall. And mine to Mrs.Whitney."

They bowed twice.

Mr. Harriman went out on the street. A newsboy recognized him and tipped his hat. He signaled to his coachman and presently drove away toward Wall Street.

Some while later Elihu Whitney appeared on the sidewalk. He stepped into one of the carriages which lined the street. The driver took down the
For hire
sign.

"Mouquin's," the lawyer said.

Time began to mint the bright years. Man's dates turned the century. The tempo of life in America increased.

Stephen Stone began to be forgotten and the type on the masthead of the
Record
carried his name in less and less conspicuous sizes. The
Record
bought a paper in Cleveland and one in Chicago.

Elihu Whitney's sideburns produced their first streak of gray. Harriman shaved off his mustache.

Gas lights went out and electric lights took their place. Telephones spread everywhere. Phonographs played. Langley and Wright began to watch birds.

On the island there was one marked change. The baby that had been brought there in a basket had deserted it. Jack used it now for carrying coal from the pile on shore to McCobb's forge.

There was, in fact, no baby any longer--but a person. A very young person.

Henry Stone, at six, had blue eyes and hair the color of a new penny. His skin was dark, like his father's, and, despite a round muscularity, he showed signs of becoming at least as tall as the owner of the now disintegrated
Falcon.
He had an amazing vitality and a constant interest in all the phenomena of life, no matter how common or how inconsequential.

His first step had been a delight to the three men. His fiftieth step had inaugurated their worries.

They were entranced when he had started to talk. And at that time Stephen Stone had put in effect his policy for the child.

Henry was disciplined.

He was taught to read at the age of four, sitting on his father's knee, holding a book, scowling, and perspiring in an effort to do as he was told.

He was educated in the matter of independence. He dressed himself. He did his own errands. Duties were given to him. He fed the chickens and hung up his own clothes.

He was also tutored in the uses of an outdoor life. At five he could swim almost indefinitely in the wire enclosure which McCobb had made in the sea. His short legs could keep up tirelessly with his father's strides.

Possibly Stephen Stone was impatient to see his system in fleet, and perhaps the boy was precocious, for he had advanced in learning to read and write and spell well beyond the place designated for a child of six by common schools. He certainty had gained on all ordinary children of his own age in the matter of his knowledge of the outer world.

McCobb had supplemented his father's lessons in games and sports with all the knowledge of trees and flowers, insects and reptiles, fish and birds and animals which he had gained. McCobb had become a competent biologist in six years, with the aid of the books which Stone had brought from America.

Jack, who was devoted to him, contributed little to his wisdom and much to his soul. Jack had the power of consoling him when he had been hurt or frightened and of amusing him when time hung heavy on his small hands.

Time was seldom freighted for him, however. His progress was due largely to the fact that his life became the principal concern of the three men--their entertainment, their escape, their amusement, their pride--and, in different ways, the outlet for what might have been their love.

Stone permitted no great show of affection or friendship. He insisted on justice, prohibited pampering, and developed a code of relationships in which he was master, McCobb was a sort of uncle, and Jack was a privileged retainer.

Henry loved the life. He was born, in any case, to love life and he knew no other existence.

In the morning he would wake with the birds. He would go to the beach; accompanied by Jack who carried a rifle--in all those years vigilance had not relaxed and there had been occasions to justify it--and swim inside the net. Then he would feed the chickens. After that he would have breakfast with his father and "Mr. McCobb."

When breakfast was finished, lessons began. At six he was reading and using a dictionary for the words he did not know; he had commenced arithmetic; he was studying geography; he could write quite well; and McCobb was teaching him how to weave baskets and mats and hats and how to make maps out of clay and book-ends from boards cut with a scroll saw.

After lunch, for one hour, he rested. Then he was permitted to join in the life of his community. Sometimes he went fishing with Jack. Sometimes he walked along the beach with McCobb and learned about the things that lived there--or into the woods with his father. He volunteered for everything-from washing the clothes to butchering one of the tame zebus.

Often he gave cause for alarm.

There was the momentous day when his wail came horn the edge of the stockade on the inside. "Father! Father!" Stone ran through the door. His son was standing on something.

"Come here! I got one."

"One what?"

"Snake."

Stone ran.

Henry was standing on the end of a stick--the opposite end of which pinioned to, earth a venomous serpent.

White-faced, Stone dispatched the reptile. His fear made him angry.

"Don't you know any better than to meddle with a thing like that?"

Henry nodded his head.

"I know better. But it was coming after me so I picked up the stick and put it 'on it.

I couldn't hold it down with my hands so I stood on it. Then I couldn't reach it and there weren't any stones or sticks--so I had to get somebody."

"Good Lord."

"It was just starting to slip when you came."

Stone realized that his son's embarrassment and careful explanation was in apology for the fact that he had found it necessary to summon assistance. He did not, at that precise moment, take the trouble to admire the quality.

"After this, if you see a snake, you get out of its way as fast as you can and call someone immediately."

There was the day when Stone himself had carelessly left open the clear of the stockade. Henry had wandered out and McCobb had shut the portal. They had not missed the child for what they afterward assumed to be more than an hour.

Jack announced the first sign of the disappearance.

"I'm looking for Mr. Henry."

Stone, who was reading on the porch, glanced from his book at his watch.

"He's probably out with McCobb."

"No, sir. Mr. McCobb's in the shop making shoes."

"Then he's around the compound. Henry!" Stone called through the window in the tone parents use the world over to summon their offspring.

No answer.

"You'll find him."

Ten minutes later a grayish Jack returned.

"He's gone."

"Gone!"

Stone's book dropped.

In a second he was in the yard. He had picked up his rifle. Tack had summoned McCobb. They threw open the gate.

"That way, McCobb. I'll go this. You take it to the beach, Jack."

Jack nodded and flourished the butcher knife which he had snatched from the kitchen table. His expression would have chilled a gorilla.

McCobb paused long enough to call, "Don't worry, Stone. The boy will be all right." But Stone had already plunged out of sight on the trail to the zebus.

McCobb trotted toward the brook with an anxious face. Stone ran headlong to the corral and found nothing. It was Jack who located the child and set up a wild hallooing.

They converged on the beach. Jack was wreathed in smiles.