CHAPTER XIV.
A NIGHT OF SUSPENSE.
Nick sprang from his covert the moment that the door closed. He realized in a flash that the bookkeeper had made his final visit to the vault, had put his books away for the night, secured the receptacle for the valuable papers of the broker’s office, and was probably now about to leave the place, all unconscious of the boy he had shut in a living tomb.
No ray of light penetrated the vault now. Its air was close. What if it had no outlet for ventilation? Would he be shut in to a slow and horrible death by suffocation?
The thought was terrible to Nick.
He sprang to the ponderous iron door and beat upon it. He shouted and screamed for help. Only the dull and hollow echoes of his own voice ringing through the confined, metal-bound vault replied.
Finally exhausted, he sank to the marble floor in despair. No sound from the outside reached him, and perhaps his own cries would have been inaudible even if any one was just outside the vault door. The bookkeeper probably had gone away now, and the office was locked and abandoned for the night. No one probably would visit it until the janitor came for his early morning rounds.
Nick strove bravely to be calm, and to reason to some definite purpose. He remembered that there was an electric light in the vault, and he began to feel around for the button by which to switch it on. He found it at last, and quickly the darkness was dispelled. The light illuminated the place brightly, and gave the captive new courage.
Next he looked around to see if there was not some means of ventilation, and he leaped with joy to find a small iron grating in a corner, which covered a flue that communicated with the outer air somehow, or, at least, with the large rooms that composed the broker’s offices.
With light and an assurance of air, Nick felt that he was in no immediate danger. It was only a matter of patience now. Twelve hours or more to morning! How should he pass the time? He tried to be cheerful, and drive away the haunting dread of discovery in the morning.
“There will be some way of escape,” he told himself. “When they open the vault in the morning I will say that I was accidentally shut in here, which is the truth. I certainly did not get shut in from choice.”
One thing was certain. He had plenty of time to form whatever plan he should adopt when the moment came to account for his presence in the vault. He thought of everything, but finished by deciding that there was only one thing for him to do when the door of the vault should be thrown open. That was to get out of the office as quickly as he could, and never come back again. He realized that the execution of this plan would be beset by difficulties, but it was the best he could hit upon, so he dismissed the subject from his mind, and turned his attention to what had brought him into his present predicament.
“The paper!”
The clue to the treasure was now as good as in his possession. He had only to look around a bit and find it. It must be in the broker’s box of private papers. More than once he had seen Loucks carry that box into the vault.
“I came here to get it. I need time to do so, and time--well,” he mused, with a grim smile, “I’ve got nothing but time on my hands.”
He began a close examination of the shelves, and at last brought his search down to the tin boxes only. There were several almost alike. At last he came across one bearing the initials “J. V.”
“This is it!” he exclaimed.
The lid was fastened by a small padlock. Nick placed the box on a shelf at a convenient height and examined the lock. He set to work trying to manipulate the lock so as to force it open. But it was rather a complicated affair, and baffled all his effort. While he was working at it the hook of the padlock snapped in two.
“Now I’ve done it!” murmured Nick. “If I’m caught here they’ll blame me for the broken lock. The paper will be missed, and it will go hard with me. This settles it. There’s nothing left for me but to make a break for it as soon as the door is opened.”
Then he lifted the lid of the box anxiously. Hooray! It was there. The all-important yellow package was in his hand. He opened it, and read the letter that his father had written so many years before.
He shut the box and put it back on the shelf from which he had taken it. Then he studied the timeworn document that had caused poor Admiral Semmes years and years of anxiety. What struck Nick was the clearness of the directions it contained. The writing was simplicity itself once the separate halves had been placed together. It was a plain direction as to the location of the treasure.
Nick read it again and again, learned it by heart, repeated it aloud, and at last put the paper in his pocket.
“What will Frank and Will think of my staying away all night?” he mused. “Well, no use worrying about that. Ten hours more to wait. I’ve done enough thinking and reading. What’s the matter with my having a sleep. It looks good to me.”
So he lay on the floor of the vault, and was soon in the land of dreams. When he awoke it seemed to him that it must be near morning. He waited an hour. It seemed an age. At last there came a sound that made him start. Somebody was at the door of the vault.
Nick turned out the light.
He did not think of concealing himself in the cabinet, as he had planned--and later attempting to escape--but he moved up close to the door with a sudden impulse.
The heavy bolts shot back. The door was opened gingerly, a little way. The room without was flooded with sunshine. Nick made out a form outlined against the light--the form of a man. He was holding the door, about to swing it wide.
The man was Loucks.
He was speaking to some clerk near the vault. Nick heard the clerk answer:
“No, the boy has not been here this morning.”
“They have missed me!” murmured Nick.
“Is your private box all you want, Mr. Vail?” called out Loucks toward the private office.
There seemed to be an affirmative response.
Then Loucks opened the door wide and entered the vault.
Every nerve was on edge as Nick shrank close to the corner nearest the door.
Loucks passed by him and reached for the tin box on the shelf.
Nick started to spring from the vault, but he was not quick enough. Loucks turned suddenly and grabbed him.
“Hello! What does this mean?” he exclaimed.
One hand holding the box, Loucks dragged the boy out into the light of the countingroom.
The clerks had heard Loucks’ startled cry, and stared wonderingly at Nick. Loucks looked blankly at his prisoner.
“Nick! Nick Collins!” he ejaculated.
“Yes, sir,” murmured Nick faintly.
“You were in that vault all night?”
“I was locked in accidentally, sir.”
A dark, distrustful look came into Loucks’ face. He fairly dragged Nick into the private office, scowled disapprovingly at the staring clerks, opened and closed the door, and pushed Nick to a chair.
“What is this?” cried Mr. Vail, who was seated at his desk.
“It’s the errand boy.”
“Ah, and late, too! That’s bad.”
“He is, on the contrary, very early,” said Loucks, in a peculiar tone.
“What!”
“He has been here since daylight, since midnight--in fact, all night, shut up in the vault, accidentally, he says.”
“Incredible, Loucks!”
The broker had started violently as his eye fell on the tin box.
“Loucks, look at that!”
“The box!”
“Yes. The lock is broken. Boy, what do you know of this?” demanded the broker sternly.
Nick did not answer. Vail opened the box.
“Gone!” he cried.
“What is gone?” asked Loucks.
“The yellow package.”
“Then the boy has it. Vail, we have been deceived. I feared the coincidence of his being a son of Captain Collins. No, you don’t!”
Loucks uttered the words as Nick, in sheer desperation, made a break for the door. Loucks seized him and dragged him back before the desk.
Just then there was an interruption. The office door opened. A clerk from the countingroom appeared.
“A gentleman to see you, Mr. Vail.”
“I am busy. Let him wait a minute or two.”
“Now, then,” said Loucks, scowling down at the pale and agitated Nick, and neither he nor the broker noticing that the clerk had not entirely closed the door, and that the visitor he had announced lingered impatiently at its threshold--“where’s that paper?”
Nick was silent.
“You took it.”
“Search him!” ordered Vail angrily.
“He’s in some plot to rob us,” cried Loucks. “Here it is!”
Sure enough, there it was. All Nick Collins’ bravery and patience had been of no avail. The yellow package was produced triumphantly by Loucks from an inner pocket of the boy’s coat and thrown upon the desk.
Loucks resumed his search and brought forth a second package.
“This is mine--not yours!” declared Nick. “Give it back to me!”
The second package was the five thousand dollars that belonged to Admiral Semmes.
“Ha! money!” exclaimed Vail. “Why, this boy is a systematic thief!”
“Three--four--why, Vail, there’s fully five thousand dollars in this package!”
“But it isn’t ours!”
“Not ours?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I didn’t leave a dollar in the vault last night.”
“No, it is not yours. Give it to me!” cried Nick.
But Loucks held him in a strong grasp.
“Boy,” he said fiercely, “how came you in that vault?”
Nick was desperate now.
“To prevent your wicked plans to rob Admiral Semmes,” he replied audaciously.
“He knows all!” cried Vail, in dismay.
“Where did you get that money?”
“It belongs to Admiral Semmes. Let me go. Give me that money or I will go to the police and expose you.”
“You will, eh?” sneered Loucks, giving him a vicious jerk. “The truth, boy! Who sent you here? What is your scheme? The truth, or we will send you to prison.”
“No, you won’t!”
A new voice had spoken. Vail and Loucks started. The man at the door, a witness to all that had transpired, had entered the room silently, cautiously. Now he revealed himself, and at sight of him Nick Collins uttered a cry of joy.
To the dismayed plotters the newcomer was only a bronzed, rough-looking sailor. To Nick he was his strange acquaintance of Parkdale--Captain Eccles!
He bore in his hand a heavy cane. His homely face fairly bristled with indignation as he strode boldly to the desk.
With one swift swoop he seized the two packages lying there.
The broker sprang to his feet. Loucks made a movement to tear the money and paper from his grasp.
Whack! The heavy cane came down on Loucks’ pate with a sounding blow.
“Stand back!” roared the captain. “I am not to be trifled with!”
“You murderous scoundrel! I’ll call the police!” cried Loucks.
The whirling cudgel again drove him back.
“Who are you?” gasped Vail, in amazement.
“This boy’s friend, you thieving lubbers, who are trying to rob him. Here, Nick, lad, take these parcels and run for it. I’ll cover your retreat. To the house where you wrote me to come. Go--no questions. I’ll deal with these pirates alone.”
And then, as Nick darted to the office door and out of the room, the captain guarded its threshold, cane in hand, and said, in a mocking tone:
“In two minutes hoist your anchors if you like, my coveys. Until then it’s an embargo or a broken head. Avast, there! both of ye. Don’t try to run the blockade or I’ll into you, as sure as my name is Captain Eccles!”