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When the equipment was finally hoisted to the deck of the Narcissus, Michael J, Murphy boarded the launch and was whisked ashore for the avowed purpose of sending to his aged parents the fruits of his elastic conscience. Herr August Carl von Staden stood at the head of the accommodation ladder and smiled as the launch disappeared into the tropic twilight. Then he said something in German to Mr.
At the time von Staden had handed him the two cablegrams from the Blue Star Navigation Company, no suspicion that they were forgeries had entered the captain's mind; indeed, Matt Peasley's cablegram to him appeared at first blush to be an answer to the telegram which Murphy had sent his owners from Norfolk.
"I must confess your attitude completely deceived me." "Thanks for the compliment. And now, if you don't mind, suppose you tell me something: Was it a German agent who put the bug in my ear about hiring the crew of that interned German liner in San Francisco?" "I greatly fear it was," von Staden answered smilingly.
"I'm accepting this money to be a fool, well knowing it is foolish to do it, for still I am taking a risk. I am thirty-eight years old, Mr. von Staden, and a skipper as young as that has his future all before him. Set him down on the beach, however, with his ticket revoked for all time and his future is behind him."
Suppose you take off your shoe, sit at the foot of my bed, put your foot under my right armpit and press, and at the same time pull on my right arm." "Delighted, I'm sure," declared Herr von Staden in his charming Oxford accent, and forthwith snapped Michael J. Murphy's shoulder into place with great dexterity. "Thank you," the skipper answered, and wiped the beads of agony from his white face.
He had proceeded but a few blocks from the cable office, however, before a disturbing thought struck him with such force as to bring him to an abrupt pause. His owners had cabled him in care of von Staden & Ulrich, when in the telegram sent just before sailing from Norfolk he had instructed them to cable him in care of the American consul.
And as the launch bore him shoreward, he looked back and grinned at the dim, duck-clad figure of von Staden. "Your agents looked me up, my hearty," he soliloquized, "and if they did their work half well, they told you I was an honest man. Only a crook comes with a bag of gold to talk illegitimate business with an honest man.
Mr. von Staden nodded sagely. "Perhaps I'd better wait and get acquainted with him," he suggested, and closed his bag.
He expressed his regret that he should have to leave Flanders without completing all his plans, but was glad that Passchendaele had been captured before his going. In front of him was the map of the great range from Wytschaete to Staden, and he laid his hand upon it and smiled and said: "I often used to think how much of that range we should get this year. Now it is nearly all ours."
We paid cash for this cargo before you cleared from Norfolk, for our go-between would take no risks whatsoever." "I see. Well, I suppose I'll have to grin and bear it. By the way, don't forget to take back your blood money. It's in my trousers pocket." Von Staden was genuinely distressed. "Are you quite certain you want me to do that?" he queried.
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