CHAPTER XIII

*

*THE SEARCH DETERMINED UPON*

For a moment Stephanie Maynard did not take in the tremendous import of the declaration that had just fallen from her lover's lips. For one thing, he had spoken so quietly that she had not at first sensed the meaning. She stared from Harnash to her father in no little bewilderment. Both men watched her keenly; the older curious to know what she would do and say, the younger as one might wait the death sentence of a court.

"I don't understand," she faltered at last. "Did you say that Derrick Beekman-- It's impossible. How could that be?"

"I had him shanghaied by a friend of mine."

"Shanghaied?"

"Yes. After the dinner broke up we stopped at an uptown place and"--Harnash hesitated. It was bad enough to compass the main fact, but the necessary admission of the sordid, unlovely details seemed to make his turpitude much greater.

"Yes, go on. What then?"

"Yes. I'm curious to know how you did it, too," put in Maynard.

"I persuaded him to take a drink. He was utterly unsuspicious. It was easy--"

"Oh, you doctored it," said Maynard.

"Yes--but-- Good God, this is the hardest thing I ever did," cried poor Harnash, looking at the girl. "Knock-out drops, you know, and then he was shanghaied."

"I don't understand," she said again.

"He was delivered to a friend of mine down on Water Street who was waiting for him with a gang. I had arranged it all beforehand and they put him on the ship."

"But his watch, his money, jewelry?"

"I have those," admitted Harnash. "They're in my safe deposit box. I put them there, you understand, for safe keeping."

"Of course," said Maynard. "I don't think you're a thief as well as an abductor."

"Thank you," said Harnash.

"Well, even if he were on that ship," began Stephanie, at last comprehending, "it doesn't follow that he was lost."

"No. It doesn't follow. He may have been one of those picked up in the third mate's boat."

"By the way, who is the third mate?" interposed Maynard.

"She didn't carry one, sir. Her officers were Captain Peleg Fish, Woywod, and Salver. She had a boatswain, carpenter, sail-maker, and a crew of forty."

"Strange. Who could that officer be? But go on."

"Yes, and the other boat," said Stephanie, looking at the telegram again. "She may be found. He may be in her."

"It is possible," said Harnash hopelessly, "but I am convinced that he has been lost and I alone am responsible for his death."

The girl stared at the man, a strange look in her eyes. Harnash met her gaze bravely, although it took superhuman courage to do so. He loved her. There was no doubt about that. He had proved it in his perverted way. And she had loved him. There was no doubt of that, or there had not been. He even dared to hope that she would still love him, even in the face of his present confession; but whether she loved him or not he would rather have faced any judge on earth than Stephanie Maynard. The situation forced him to speak.

"It is no excuse that I did it for you," he began. "I said I'd be willing to kill him rather than he should have you; but while I want you just as much as ever, more, if possible, that doesn't prevent me from feeling like a murderer now. And it is all so useless, too. Your father never could give his consent now and you--with this hideous possibility before us, I've lost you, too."

He turned away. He could not control himself. He clenched his jaws together and walked toward the window, out of which he looked without seeing anything whatsoever. For a few moments nobody broke the silence. Old Maynard sat down quietly at his desk, leaned his face in his hands, and scrutinized his daughter. The air was surcharged with dramatic possibilities. He was too keen an observer not to recognize them. He had made up his own mind at last, but he wanted to see what his daughter would do before he disclosed his wishes or intentions. It seemed to Harnash, in whose breast a faint hope was still struggling as he also waited for the girl's decision, that Stephanie's silence lasted a long time. Really it was a very few moments. Singularly enough, her first word was not to her lover.

"Father," she began, facing the old man, "do you think it is likely that Derrick is lost?"

"Highly probable."

"Why?"

"If he were one of the survivors he would have cabled at once."

"He might be ill or--"

Maynard shook his head.

"I think we can discount that suggestion."

"Then his only chance would be the other boat?"

"Yes."

"And you think that chance--"

"A faint one. It was probably the bigger and better boat. It should have turned up before the other. It has not."

Every word carried conviction to the girl. The flicker of hope in Harnash's heart died away. It revived again when Stephanie, after pondering her father's words--and he allowed her to reflect upon them at her pleasure, volunteering nothing, suggesting nothing--began with another question.

"No one knew of Derrick's presence on the ship except those who were aboard her?"

"Obviously not, since all the detectives in New York, for the past six months, have been endeavoring to find out where he went, stimulated by a reward big enough to arouse them all to the most frantic endeavors."

"But the people on the ship would know?"

"I haven't any doubt that Beekman disclosed his name to the officers so soon as he came to his senses, but I imagine it wouldn't make much of an impression upon them. They wouldn't believe him. Sailors are proverbially happy-go-lucky people. Our agents at San Francisco will pay off these survivors, they will scatter, and that will be the end of them."

"And if he is lost the mystery of his disappearance would never have been solved," whispered the young woman, "unless Mr. Harnash himself had told."

The old man nodded. George Harnash, his back turned to them, listened as if his life hung upon the word.

"But if he had kept the secret," said the girl, illogically but with obvious meaning, "I could never have forgiven him, much as I loved him and still do love him. That doesn't seem to be news to you, father."

"It isn't. Go on."

"In that case I never could have married him, even though he did it for me, but now--"

She walked over toward Harnash and laid her hand on his shoulder. No knight ever received an accolade, no petitioner a benison, no penitent an absolution so precious as that. Harnash turned, coincident with the touch, transfigured.

"Stephanie," he burst out, "you don't mean--"

"A part of the blame is mine," said the girl, facing her father, her hand still on her lover's shoulder. "I was weak where I should have been strong. It was my duty to break with Derrick absolutely since I did not, could not, love him; but because I love you, Father, and because my word had been given, I proposed to go through with the marriage, knowing that I loved this man, letting him see that I did, and allowing myself to hope that he would effect what I refused to attempt; so that for this awful situation I am in a large part to blame."

"I cannot let that statement go unchallenged, Mr. Maynard," protested Harnash, passionately. "She is no more to blame than a baby. She couldn't help being beautiful. She couldn't help my loving her. As God is my judge, she has never done a thing to encourage me. She told me all along that she was going to marry Beekman, that she was in honor bound to do so, that duty and everything made it necessary. It was my own mad passion, for which she is not to blame, that made me do it. Not a vestige of reproach attaches to her. God knows, I wouldn't have had real harm come to him for anything on earth. I never dreamed of this. I never suspected it. I never anticipated it. It's an awful shock to me, but a man must fight for the woman he loves. Beekman didn't care. With him it was a matter of agreement, convenience, and I--" He turned and looked at the girl. "I think I'd do it again. I'll be honest. Now I'd cheerfully give my own life for Beekman's. If I am not to have you life isn't worth very much to me, and I'm terribly sorry for him; yet when I look at you, Stephanie, and think that in spite of everything I have lost you--"

"You haven't lost me," said the girl, quietly.

"What! You mean?"

"Where do I come in?" asked the elder Maynard with a calmness that matched his daughter's.

"Father," said the girl, "I'm not your daughter for nothing. I suppose I couldn't help loving George Harnash. I have the same fixity of purpose that you have. I showed it when I intended to carry out my agreement to marry Derrick, although it broke my heart. I know I will go on loving him to the end, no matter what he did, or what he is, but I wouldn't have married him if he hadn't of his own free will spoken out and told what he might as easily have concealed without anyone ever finding it out, if Derrick is really dead. And I feel here, somehow," said the girl, laying her hand on her heart, "that you hold the same views exactly."

"His prompt and open acknowledgment, his frank confession, makes all the difference," admitted Maynard. "It does seem to give the affair a different complexion."

"Seem, father?"

"Well, it does, then. Go on."

"It was horribly wrong of George to do what he did, but he did it for me. It was my fault as much as his, and I take part of the blame."

"I swear I will not allow you."

"Let her finish," interposed Maynard. "She has more sense than you have, and I'll be hanged if I don't think she has more than I have."

Stephanie smiled faintly.

"If Derrick is dead none of us here is ever going to forget it. Neither Mr. Harnash, nor I, not even you."

"I fail to see any responsibility attaching to me."

"No, but there will be some."

"Oh, will there?"

"So far as intent goes we can absolve ourselves, but so far as consequences are concerned we shall have to expiate our wickedness."

"Oh, Stephanie, for God's sake don't say that of yourself," Harnash burst forth.

"I must. And we can expiate it together. We can help each other."

"Do you mean that you will actually marry me?"

"Of course," said the girl. "How could you for a moment think otherwise? I mean what I say when I assume part of the blame."

"And so you have settled it without me, have you?" asked her father.

"No. We are going to settle it this way with your approval and consent."

"And I am to give my daughter to a man who would administer knock-out drops to a friend and shanghai him on the eve of his wedding and appropriate that friend's promised wife?"

"It is just, sir," said Harnash bitterly. "Think what you do," he continued, turning to the girl with a gesture of renunciation.

"No," answered Stephanie to her father. "You are giving your daughter to a man who, however he sinned, and your daughter doesn't presume to pass condemnation upon him as she might were she not a party to it, has frankly and openly acknowledged his transgression and expressed himself willing to take the consequences."

"Humph," said the old man, a flicker of a smile appearing on his iron face.

"Remember, he might have kept silent."

"Well," said Maynard, "I believe you are right. There is good stuff in you, Harnash, and your unforced, voluntary confession shows it. I don't think you'll administer knock-out drops to anybody again, and eventually I suppose you'll get Stephanie, but there are conditions."

"You couldn't impose any conditions that I would not gladly meet."

"I was coming to those myself," said the girl.

"Oh, you had thought of this, too, had you?"

"Certainly."

"What are they?"

"First of all there must be no public mention by any of us of the possible fate of Derrick until we are satisfied that he is dead."

"Certainly not," said old Maynard.

The assent of Harnash was obviously not necessary to that.

"That's where you come in, father--what is the legal term?--as an accessory after the fact to what we have done."

The old man laughed a little.

"Clever, clever," he murmured, "my own daughter."

"The next condition is that we must satisfy ourselves beyond peradventure that Derrick is dead before any marriage."

"That is a harder proposition," said the old man.

"Because," went on the girl, "I told George when I supposed Mr. Beekman was alive and would turn up some time that I would never marry him until I had got a release from Derrick's own lips, and as long as there is a chance that he is alive that condition holds."

"I'm so glad that I can look forward to getting you at any time under any circumstances," said Harnash fervently, "that I accede gladly to any conditions that you may lay down."

"And how will you settle the affair if by any good fortune we succeed in finding Beekman and he refuses to consent and wishes to hold you to your terms?" asked Maynard thoughtfully. "You don't seem to have counted on that."

Harnash and Stephanie looked at each other with dismay.

"And how if he wants to kill Harnash, as he would have a perfect right to do, for his part in the--er--deplorable transaction?" continued the old man relentlessly.

"I'll take whatever he wishes to give me," said Harnash. "I'll tell him myself, if we are fortunate enough to see him, and I don't believe when he learns everything that he will want to claim as his wife a woman who loves some one else."

"I am sure he will not," said Stephanie.

The girl's father nodded.

"I guess you have it right, but we needn't worry about that now. The first thing is to find out whether he is really dead."

"We must set about that at once," said Stephanie.

"We have already taken steps to that end," said Harnash. "I have cabled Smithfield to ship the men from Honolulu to 'Frisco at our expense, and to say to them that I will meet them on the arrival of the steamer. I find that a steamer sails from Honolulu on Thursday of next week. She is due to arrive on Friday of the week after. My personal affairs are in such a state that I can safely leave them. I have a substantial balance available in the bank. I am going to California to interview the men and then I shall charter a vessel and hunt for the other boat or prosecute whatever search is necessary."

"That's fine," said Stephanie. Then she turned to her father, stretching out her hand. "Father--"

The old man understood perfectly well what she wanted.

"I can amplify that plan a little," he said. "I have been wanting to get away from active business for a long time and my affairs are fortunately in such a shape that I can trust them to others. I should have trusted them to you, Harnash, if you weren't obliged to go along."

"Do you mean--?" cried the girl.

"Yes, I'll send the _Stephanie_ around through the Panama canal immediately"--the _Stephanie_ was a magnificent steam yacht, the greatest, most splendid, and most seaworthy of any of the floating palaces of the millionaires of the seaboard--"and we'll go on that hunt together."

"You mean that I--"

"Of course you can go along. Who has more interest in establishing the fact than you?"

*