said Edwards, “if it hadn’t been a gift from the men in the store.” Impulsively, he turned to Harvey and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Say, Harvey,” he exclaimed, “when you and I get ashore again – if we ever do – we’ll go and hunt up this young Mr. Jenkins.”
“All right,” replied Harvey; “but it may not be quite so bad as you think. We’ll get through some way, I guess.”
Oddly enough, either by reason of the lack of responsibility that weighed on the spirits of the man, or because of a lingering eagerness for adventure, in spite of the dubious prospects, the boy, Harvey, seemed the more resolute of the two.
“Well,” responded Edwards, “I’m sorry you’re in a scrape; but so long as you’re here, why, I’m glad you’re the kind of a chap you are. We’ll help each other. We’ll stand together.”
And they shook hands upon it again.
“Now,” said Edwards, “here’s how I came here. I’m a travelling man, for a jewelry house – Burton & Brooks, of Boston. I was on the road, got into Washington the other night, and sold a lot of goods there. But one of my trunks hadn’t come on time, and I was hung up for a day with nothing to do. Never had been in Baltimore, and thought I’d run down for a few hours.
“I got dinner at a restaurant and went out to look around. I went along, hit or miss, and brought up down by the water-front. This chap, Jenkins, bumped into me and apologized like a gentleman; we got to talking, and he invited me into one of those saloons along the front. Beastly place, and I knew it; but I was off my guard. He certainly was slick, talked about his family and Johns Hopkins, and pumped me all the time – I can see it now – till he found I wasn’t stopping at any hotel, but had just run in to town for the day.
“That was all he wanted. Saw the game was safe, and then he and the fellow that ran the place must have fixed it up together. I’ll bet he stands in with most of these places on the water-front. He apologized for the place, I remember; said it was rough but clean, and the oysters the best in Baltimore. Well, I don’t remember much after that, until I woke up in that hole on the schooner that brought us down here. I know we had something to drink – and that, so help me, is the last that anyone ever gets Tom Edwards to take. Shake on that, too.”
He had a hearty, bluff way of talking, and a frankness in declaring himself to be the biggest simpleton that was ever caught with chaff, that compelled friendship.
Harvey again accepted the proffered hand, smiling a little to himself, and wondering if it were a habit of the other’s profession to seal all compacts on the spot in that fashion.
“So here I am,” concluded Mr. Edwards, “in the vilest hole I ever was in; sick from the nasty pitching of this infernal boat; the worst head-ache I ever woke up with – thanks to Mr. Jenkins’s drug – robbed of $150 in money, that I had in a wallet, a diamond that I wouldn’t have sold at any price – and, worst of all, my house won’t know what’s become of me. You see, I’m registered up in Washington at a hotel there. I disappear, they find my trunk and goods all right, and my accounts are straight. Nobody knows I came to Baltimore. I’m not registered at any hotel there. There’s a mystery for ’em. Isn’t it a fix?”
Harvey whistled expressively.
“You’re worse off than I am, a million times,” he said. “Besides, I’ve got a little money, if it will help us out any. It’s twenty-five dollars I had for fare back to Benton, and pocket-money.”
“Where’s that – where’d you say you were going?” asked Mr. Edwards, quickly.
“Benton.”
“Benton, eh? Well, that’s funny. I’ve been there; sold goods in Benton lots of times. You don’t happen to know a man by the name of Warren there, do you? He’s got three boys about your age, or a little younger – nice man, too.”
Harvey gave an exclamation of surprise and delight.
“Know him? I guess I do,” he cried. “And the Warren fellows, well rather. Hooray!”
It was Harvey’s turn to offer the hand of fellowship this time; and he gave Mr. Edwards a squeeze that made that gentleman wince.
“You’ve got a pretty good grip,” said he, rubbing his right hand with the other. “I guess you can stand some hard work.” Then they reverted to the subject of Benton, once more, and it brought them closer together. There was Bob White’s father, whom Mr. Edwards knew, and several others; and Jack Harvey knew their sons; and so they might have shaken hands at least a half dozen times more, if Mr. Edwards had been willing to risk the experiment again.
“Now, to get back to the money,” said he, finally; “you’ve got to hide that twenty-five dollars, or you’ll lose it. Here, I can help you out.”
He drew forth from a pocket a rubber tobacco pouch, and emptied the contents into an envelope in one of his inside coat pockets.
“I don’t see how they happened to leave me this,” he said, “but they did, and it’s lucky, too. It’s just what you need. We’ll tuck the bills in this, fold it over and over, wrap a handkerchief about it, and you can fasten it inside your shirt with this big safety-pin. Trust a travelling man on the road to have what’s needed in the dressing line. It may save you from being robbed. What are you going to do with that other five? Don’t you want to save that, too?”
Harvey had taken from a wallet in his pocket twenty dollars in bills, letting one five dollar bill remain.
“I’m going to use that to save the rest with,” replied Harvey. “Supposing this brute of a captain asks me if I’ve got any money, to buy what I’ll need aboard here, or suppose I’m robbed; well, perhaps they’ll think this is all I’ve got, and leave me the twenty.”
“You’re kind of sharp, too,” responded Mr. Edwards, smiling. “You’d make a good travelling man. We’ll stow this secure, I hope.”
He enfolded the bills handed to him by Harvey in the rubber tobacco pouch, wrapped the boy’s handkerchief about that, and passed it, with the pin thrust through, to Harvey. Harvey, loosening his clothing, pinned the parcel of bills securely, next to his body.
“That’s the thing,” said Mr. Edwards, approvingly. “That’s better than the captain’s strong-box, I reckon. I’m afraid we’ve struck a pirate. Whew, but I’d give five hundred – oh, hang it! What’s the use of wishing? We’re in for it. We’ll get out, I suppose some way. I’ll tackle this captain in the morning. I’ve sold goods to pretty hard customers before now. If I can’t sell him a line of talk that will make him set me ashore, why, then my name isn’t Tom Edwards. Guess we may as well turn in, though I reckon I’ll not sleep much in that confounded packing-box they call a berth. Good night, Harvey, my boy. Here’s good luck for to-morrow.”
Mr. Edwards put forth his hand, then drew it back quickly.
“I guess that last hand-shake will do for to-night,” he said. “Pretty good grip you’ve got.”
Harvey watched him, curiously, as he prepared to turn in for the night. Surely, an extraordinary looking figure for the forecastle of a dingy bug-eye was Mr. Tom Edwards. He removed his crumpled collar and his necktie, gazed at them regretfully, and tucked them beneath the edge of the bunk. He removed his black cut-away coat, folded it carefully, and stowed it away in one end of the same. He likewise removed a pair of patent leather shoes.
It was hardly the toggery for a seaman of an oyster-dredger; and Harvey, eying the incongruous picture, would have laughed, in spite of his own feeling of dismay and apprehension, but for the expression of utter anguish and misery on the face of Tom Edwards, as he rolled in on to his bunk.
“Cheer up,” said the latter, with an attempt at assurance, which the tone of his voice did not fully endorse, “I’ll fix that pirate of a captain in the morning, or I’ll never sell another bill of goods as long as I live.”
“I hope so,” replied Harvey.
But he had his doubts.
They