It was the evening after one of Kennedy’s busy days scouting about that he quietly summoned both Burke and Sydney to our cabin.
“There’s something queer going on,” announced Craig, when he was sure that we were all together without having been observed. “Frankly, I must confess that I don’t understand it—yet.”
“You needn’t worry about me,” interrupted Sydney, hastily. “I can take care of myself.”
Kennedy smiled quietly. We knew what Sydney meant. He seemed to resent Burke’s solicitude over his acquaintance with Leontine and was evidently warning us off. Kennedy, however, avoided the subject.
“I may as well tell you,” he resumed, “that I was quite as much influenced by a rumor that arms were somehow getting into Mexican ports as I was by your appeal, Burke, in coming down here. So far I’ve found nothing that proves my case. But, as I said, there is something under the surface which I don’t understand. We have all got to stick together, trust no one but ourselves, and, above all, keep our eyes open.”
It was all that was said, but I was relieved to note that Sydney seemed greatly impressed. Still, half an hour later, I saw him sitting in a steamer-chair beside Leontine again, watching the beautiful play of the moonlight on the now almost tropical ocean after we had emerged from the Gulf Stream. I felt that it was rather dangerous, but at least he had had his warning.
Seeking Kennedy, I found him at last in the smoking-room, to my surprise talking with Erickson. I joined them, wondering how I was to convey to Craig what I had just seen without exciting suspicion. They were discussing the commercial and agricultural future of the islands under the American flag, especially the sugar industry, which had fallen into a low estate.
“I suppose,” remarked Kennedy, casually, “that you are already modernizing your plant and that others are doing the same, getting ready for a revival.”
Erickson received the remark stolidly. “No,” he replied, slowly. “Some of us may be doing so, but as for me, I shall be quite content to sell if I can get my price.”
“The planters are not putting in modern machinery, then?” queried Kennedy, innocently, while there flashed over me what he had discovered about shipments of agricultural implements.
Erickson shook his head. “Some of them may be. But for one that is, I know twenty whose only thought is to sell out and take a profit.”
The conversation trailed off on other subjects and I knew that Kennedy had acquired the information which he sought. As neatly as I could I drew him apart from Erickson.
“Strange he should tell me that,” ruminated Kennedy as we gained a quiet corner of the deck. “I know that there is a lot of stuff consigned to planters in the island, some even to himself.”
“He must be lying, then,” I hastened. “Perhaps these promoters are really plotters. By the way, what I wanted to tell you was that I saw Sydney and Leontine together again.”
He was about to reply when the sound of some one approaching caused us to draw back farther into the shadow. It proved to be Whitson and Nanette.
“Then you do not like St. Thomas?” we heard Whitson remark, as if he were repeating something she had just said.
“There is nothing there,” she replied. “Why, there aren’t a hundred miles of good roads and not a dozen automobiles.”
Evidently the swiftness of life in New York of which she had tasted was having its effect.
“St. Croix, where we have the plantation, is just as bad. Part of the time we live there, part of the time at Charlotte Amalie in St. Thomas. But there is little difference. I hope Jorgen is able to sell. At least I should like to live a part of the year in the States.”
“Would he like that, too?”
“Many of us would,” she replied, quickly. “For many years things have been getting worse with us. Just now it seems a bit better because of the high price of sugar. But who knows how long that will last? Oh, I wish something would happen soon so that we might make enough money to live as I want to live. Think; here the best years of life are slipping away. Unless we do something soon, it will be too late! We must make our money soon.”
There was an air of impatience in her tone, of restless dissatisfaction. I felt also that there was an element of danger, too, in a woman just passing from youth making a confidant of another man.
It was a mixed situation with the quartet whom we were watching. One thing was sufficiently evident. They were all desperately engaged in the pursuit of wealth. That was a common bond. Nor had I seen anything to indicate that they were over-scrupulous in that pursuit. Within half an hour I had seen Leontine with Sydney and Nanette with Whitson. Both Sydney as consular agent and Whitson through his influence with the shipping trust possessed great influence. Had the party thought it out and were they now playing the game with the main chance in view?
I looked inquiringly at Kennedy as the voices died away while the couple walked slowly down the deck. He said nothing, but he was evidently pondering deeply on some problem, perhaps that which the trend of affairs had raised in my own mind.
Our delay had not been long, but it had been sufficient to cause us to miss finding Leontine and Sydney. We did, however, run across Burke, bent evidently on watching, also.
“I don’t like this business,” he confessed, as we paused to compare experiences. “I’ve been thinking of that Mexican business you hinted at, Kennedy. You know the islands would be an ideal out-of-the-way spot from which to start gun-running expeditions to Mexico. I don’t like this Leontine and Burleigh. They want to make money too bad.”
Kennedy smiled. “Burleigh doesn’t seem to approve of everything, though,” he remarked.
“Perhaps not. That’s one reason why I think it may be more dangerous for Sydney than he realizes. I know she’s a fascinating girl. All the more reason to watch out for her. But I can’t talk to Sydney,” he sighed.
It was an enigma and I had not solved it, though I felt much as Burke did. Kennedy seemed to have determined to allow events to take their course, perhaps in the hope that developments would be quicker that way than by interfering with something which we did not understand.
In the smoking-room, after we left Burke, Kennedy and I came upon Erickson and Burleigh. They had just finished a game of poker with some of the other passengers, in which Burleigh’s usual run of luck and skill had been with him.
“Lucky at cards, unlucky in love,” remarked Burleigh as we approached.
He said it with an air of banter, yet I could not help feeling that there was a note of seriousness at the bottom of it. Had he known that Leontine had been with Sydney on the deck? His very success at poker had its effect on me. I found myself eying him as if he had been one of the transatlantic card sharps, perhaps an international crook. Yet when I considered I was forced to admit that I had nothing on which to base such a judgment.
Erickson presented a different problem, to my mind, There was indeed something queer about him. Either he had not been perfectly frank with us in regard to the improvement of his properties or he was concealing something much more sinister. Again and again my mind reverted to the hints that had been dropped by Marlowe, and I recalled the close scrutiny Whitson had given the four that night. So far, I had felt that in any such attempt we might count on Whitson playing a lone hand and perhaps finding out something to our advantage.
It was the morning of the last day of the voyage that most of the passengers gathered on the deck for the first glimpse of the land to which we had been journeying.
Before us lay the beautiful and picturesque harbor and town of Charlotte Amalie, one of the finest harbors in the West Indies, deep enough to float the largest vessels, with shipyards, dry-docks, and repair shops. From the deck it was a strikingly beautiful picture, formed by three spurs of mountains covered with the greenest of tropical foliage. From the edge of the dancing blue waves the