Adventure, November 1915 — page 182: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

FO om, wit Ee Pale ge See se ee he mn -» Oe Oe ngs se ee eh ee ee Ee ae Oe ea, tae <a e -- : 2 tia = — _ 180 — Wasp. 1 made myself known to the officer in charge of the landing party, and we hus- tled you and Miss Morrison on board, and started you for the hospital here. Then we started a search for Dacy. Would you be- lieve it, he had vanished! With daylight, there wasn’t a place on that sand waste where a chicken could have hidden, but we never got a trace of him.” “T hope he got safe away,’’ I blurted. ‘““Huh—sticking up for the family, ain’t you?” Dooin retorted. “Well, he is safe away, or dead. He never showed up at the village or lighthouse, and there was no- where but the sea for him to go to. That strip of sand is only two miles wide, sepa- rating the ocean from the sound, and Dacy must have gone into the water on one side. “T guess, Mac, there is some truth in what the little lady told us about Dacy be- ing born without any morals. I’ve been looking him up. “His name, of course, is Morrison—Roger Dacy Morrison. He was an officer in the navy, and was cashiered a couple of years ago for beating up his commanding officer and dickering for the sale of war secrets to a foreign government. He disappeared, leaving a devil’s own record behind him. It was supposed he had killed himself, but in- stead he was freebooting around the Far East under various names. “The Flusher rushed you up here to Nor- folk, together with two of her own men who were wounded by one of the Was?’s shells. ‘After giving up the search, I followed on the Rhodes. The Rhodes was the other ship. you spotted. She had the yacht and the gold in tow. “Well, when I reached Norfolk I found out how things stood. The Mauresubia was sighted by one of our cruisers the same night of the robbery. The news was wirelessed to shore, and of course the newspapers had it that the Germans had turned the trick. “Meanwhile, the Department was wor- ried over my failure to report, as I knew they would be. They put a couple of the boys on my trail. Your friend, Haffner, was grabbed just as he was leaving town. They held him incommunicado, on general principles. But Oates, it was discovered, had left on his yacht for a sea trip. ‘Then came a packet load of wild Eng- lishmen into New York. An Italian liner had taken them off a disabled tramp—the Ormsby, of course. They didn’t get into the pe SS eS ee EN ee as By >: 3 Adventure harbor—a British cruiser met them outside and transshipped them—but nevertheless the papers got an inkling of the situation. There were ructions between the British Embassy and our State Department. The boys started to sweat Haffner. ~ “Then came our wireless. It was picked up at Arlington, and by ships in Hampton Roads. There was a whole flotilla of tor- pedo boats combing the coast for us within an hour. “Well, you know what happened. It was not until you were here in the hospital and I had gone to New York that I discovered the ins and outs of the business. For Haff- ner squealed. It was a tough job, but at last we made him spill. “As I thought, Wilbur Oates originated the scheme. Oates was in a bad financial hole—he had to have slathers of money. Being a banker, he knew of the shipment on the Mauresubia, and he conceived the idea of looting her. He won over Haffner, and they elaborated the plot. He sent for Dacy —Farley was an afterthought of Hafiner’s. “The swag was to be divided this way— half to Oates, a million apiece to Hafiner, Dacy and Farley. The balance was to be divided among the crew. Oates was to han- die it all through his bank, and thus avert any suspicion. “But this didn’t suit Haffner. He and Farley wanted the whole pie, and they plan- ned a double-cross. About half the men were Farley’s men. Both Henderson and . Ralder were picked by Haffner, and pledged to Farley. They planned to overwhelm Dacy and the men who were loyal to him, escape with the boodle on Oates’ yacht, pick up Haffner off Key West and beat it for the Mexican coast. ‘They depended upon Hafiner’s connection with the Mexi- can insurgents to see them through. “They darn near succeeded. Only Far- ley didn’t make allowance for the weakness of his own men—the weakness of vice slaves. Ralder spoiled it. “T have patched it all out pretty well, and here is where that booze racket that puzzled us comes in. When Farley smug- gled the rum into the forecastle, only the men who were loyal to Dacy were supposed to get it. The idea was to get them drunk, and then they couldn’t resist the mutiny. Most of them did get drunk. But Farley’s men tackled the stuff, too. Ralder got drunk and insulted the girl. (e@) ,OOkK ON gtk ee a 7 $2 gel ee TO Se Oe fe ee “ , . r,' * = ee —_ €on