Free Dangerous Cargo by Hulbert Footner

yours,
    “ROSIKA STOREY.”
    “A clumsy forgery,” she said.
    “How was I to know that?” growled Horace. “I have never seen your
handwriting!”
    “You could have found samples of it in my cabin to compare with this.”
    “Well…it sounded like you! It made me sore! I haven’t told anybody about
this note.”
    “You mean your conscience was bad. You know very well that you have not
kept the agreement we made before I came aboard.”
    He impatiently waved this aside. “What did happen?” he demanded.
    “Wait a minute,” she said. “Who gave you this note?”
    “It was brought off from the town in a motor-boat about seven-thirty. It
was handed me by a young fellow who said he had been instructed not to put it
in any hands but mine.”
    “A Chinaman?”
    “No. Mulatto. But there were Chinese in the boat that brought him. I
looked over the rail. Why do you ask?”
    She gave him a brief and graphic account of what had happened to us.
Horace was furious. He cursed and pounded the rail with his clenched
fist.
    “We’ll go right back!” he cried. “We’ll lodge that dirty Chink and his
gang behind the bars for this!”
    “Calm yourself,” said Mme. Storey. “Feng Lee is nothing in our lives. He’s
in Curaçao and we’re on the high seas. We have nothing further to fear from
him. What we’ve got to do is to find the man who hired him, and he’s right on
this ship!”
    Horace calmed down. “You suspect the Captain?” he asked.
    She shrugged. “I have no evidence, but I don’t see who else it could have
been.”
    “I’ll find out!” said Horace.
    “Better not show your hand until we have more to go on.”
    Just then Adele came along the deck with a highly self-conscious air. She
wanted to find out what Mme. Storey was telling Horace.
    “Hello, Horace,” she said with dulcet sweetness, “I’ve been looking for
you everywhere!” She slipped her arm through his.
    “Oh, hello,” he said with a careless fondness that was little better than
insulting. He freed his arm. “Run along like a good girl. Mme. Storey and I
have a little business to talk over. I’ll be with you directly.”
    “Must I be kept out of it?” she said, pouting.
    “It hasn’t anything to do with you,” said Horace.
    This satisfied her for the moment. “I’ll wait for you in the music-room,”
she said, leaving us.
    The music-room was alongside where we were standing. Mme. Storey, as if by
accident, led Horace a little farther away as they resumed their talk.
    “All these things going on under my nose and you ask me to do nothing
about it!” cried Horace.
    “Has the Captain informed you that two men deserted at Willemstad?”
    “No.”
    “Then here’s something you can do. When you see the Captain let it fall
casually, that I mentioned I had run into him looking for the deserters, and
see what he says. We may catch him napping.”
    “If he’s guilty his face will give him away when I tell him you are safe
aboard.”
    “We were seen coming up the ladder,” she said dryly. “You will find his
face prepared for the news.”
    “If he knows you got safe away he must know that you have told me the
whole story,” objected Horace. “Why should I make out I know nothing?”
    “The more you can keep him guessing the better chance we have of catching
him out,” she said.
    Horace moved his shoulders impatiently. He could never take kindly to a
suggestion from without.
    “And watch yourself!” added Mme. Storey seriously. “If they imagine that
we have them on the run they’ll become reckless.”
    “Sure,” he said, only half-listening.
    While Horace went in search of the Captain, Mme. Storey and I ascended to
the wireless cabin on the boat-deck to ask if any messages had come while we
were ashore. The operator was a young lad called Charlie, who, like many a
man before him, had fallen for my employer’s dark eyes. His face lighted up
like a turned-on lamp when we appeared in