Free The Complete Adventures of Hazard & Partridge by Robert J. Pearsall

hoped that he sensed that liking.
    I suppose he did, for within five minutes he had confessed to the possession on board the Antioch of seventy-five thousand dollars in Liberty Bonds, the total price of his ranch.
    He admitted, too, that it had been at his brother-in-law’s urging that he had brought the bonds with him. In fact, that he had gone with his brother-in-law from their hotel room to the safe-deposit vault late the night before the Antioch sailed to get the bonds. Damron had urged it on the ground of a newly discovered chance for a big-paying investment, which he would explain on the Antioch. I couldn’t help but feel, under Sanderson’s half-shamefaced manner while telling of the folly, a touch of utter mystification as to why he had perpetrated it.
    That interview with Sanderson had been two days ago. It is plain why it didn’t amaze me that, from being afraid he was going to deal with Damron, he had dealt with him—and in that dealing had lost everything he had. The “feelin’ of wildness” he described, with the accompanying imposition of Damron’s will, had evidently possessed him before. Moreover, in mulling around for an explanation, my mind chanced to revert to the tiny grains of wood I’d observed on the deck before Damron’s door.
    “Maybe it’s all right,” Sanderson tried to encourage himself. “But I wish I had it back, all the same. Maybe he’ll trade back.”
    We were standing well astern on the promenade-deck. It was a gloomy morning with a leaden sea. A stout wind heeled the ship to starboard, but on the lee side of the deck a dozen or more passengers lounged against the rail or lay in steamer chairs. Two young men, athletically inclined, paced each other at a racing stride around the cabins, but they stayed forward, and Sanderson and I were practically alone.
    I didn’t reply for a moment. Instead, I watched astern where the hungry gulls followed the ship, swooping down now and then on either side or behind the churning wake, where the long log-line dragged. Their wild, mournful cries seemed rather in tune with the morning and with Sanderson’s distress.
    “I suppose it was a legal enough transaction—papers signed and everything,” I hazarded.
    “And witnessed by a man Damron called in from the deck,” replied Sanderson rather bitterly.
    He turned to the rail and leaned upon it, looking down into the water and giving me a good chance to study him. His weather-worn old face had gone very haggard, and his eyes were bleary. He had evidently passed a bad night. Had it not been that he had described himself to me as a strict teetotaler and that there was absolutely no smell of liquor on his breath, I might have conceived a very commonplace explanation for both the cheat and his present condition.
    As it was, I must look for another explanation and another form of influence. Hypnotism suggested itself to me, but only as a passing thought; things occult have always failed to interest me. Wonders and problems enough there are in the natural world without going beyond it. And it was at that point I thought of the flakes of wood.
    Anyway, there was only one present course to pursue.
    “You haven’t told me yet just what this precious stock is that he sold you.”
    “Well, I ain’t supposed to. But you might know for sure. It’s Consolidated Air Power—five hundred shares of it.”
    That told me a lot—placed Damron exactly. I don’t dabble in stocks, but I read the papers, and I knew that a week before the Antioch had sailed a fraud order had been issued against Consolidated Air just too late to catch the promoter, who had disappeared. Doubtless it had been Damron under another name. Resuming his real name, he had attached himself leechlike to his brother-in-law and had succeeded in getting enough out of him to start life again in the Eastern Hemisphere.
    But I don’t think any of this was suggested in the start I gave at Sanderson’s information.
    “What?” I cried.