His hands were clasped across his swelling stomach, and his double chin rested on his chest. Travers looked at him long and intently, for he had never seen the face before, and he could not tell after all the years whether the heavy shoulders were the same that he had seen in the saloon of the Wanderer that night of fever, death and of anger in Lorenço Marques, Delagoa Bay.
Travers savagely kicked the sleeping man’s shins, while the native girl moaned with terror. She expected the stranger to be annihilated for his presumption.
With a tremendous start the sleeping man awoke. He sucked in his breath sharply, brushed a fat hand across his eyes, and scrambled to his feet. Travers was an inch shorter than the German, and he seemed completely dwarfed. Steinberger glared.
“Who the blazes are you? Did you kick me?” he demanded wrathfully, half raising his hand. Travers gritted his teeth, and jammed the muzzle of the revolver he had been nursing into the German’s paunch.
“Keep your confounded mouth shut and sit down,” he grated harshly. “I want to talk with you. My name’s Travers—Captain James Travers, brother to William Travers.”
Steinberger collapsed back in his chair as though he had been shot. In his agitation he swore in German, and started suddenly to tremble.
“Gott in himmel! I … you … why, are you … What do you want?”
Travers lowered his revolver and stepped back a little. He drew up a chair and sat down, his eyes never leaving the German’s face. After a moment, during which nothing could be heard save the quick breathing of the men and the low moaning of the native girl, Travers laid down the revolver on the table at his side. Steinberger snarled and turned his head.
“Stop that whining! Gott! Get out of here!” The native girl shrank back against the wall, but did not speak. Steinberger turned to Travers again. His thick lips were working frightfully, and his fat hands gripped and let loose of the chair arms alternately, the cane squeaking as it was so kneaded. Travers laughed—not a pleasant sound to hear.
“I need not ask if you are Steinberger,” he commenced. “But the time I want to talk to you about is a time when you went by the name of Brietmann. Remember it?”
The other man controlled himself with an effort, and a crafty gleam appeared in his eyes. The chair arms squeaked under their kneading.
“What are you talking about? Are you mad? Brietmann? Who is he? I am Steinberger, and anyone in the islands will vouch for me.”
“So you deny you were once known as Brietmann—Brietmann who had a half share in and sailed the big Hamburg, the ship you now call the Atlantis?”
“Of course I am not Brietmann! I’m Steinberger, as you’ll find out when I have you arrested for pulling a gun on me in my own house.”
“Then perhaps you will explain this,” said, Travers softly, his eyes narrowing to slits. He motioned towards the nickel-steel revolver on the table. “You’ll find the initials ‘W. T.’ on the butt.… No, you needn’t try and look. You’re not getting your hands on that gun.… ‘W. T.,’ you understand? You gave that gun to Melita, boasting it had a history. It has. It’s going to have a further history. It’s going to kill you!”
“Donner und blitzen! You are mad!” In his excitement the man forgot his carefully cultivated English. “Vat for you want to kill me? Vat do I know of your brother?—did you not say he was your brother? I mean—Himmel! … Why you look so? Dis is a plot—vat you call a trap, eh? Melita send you to get her sister, an’ you make up this excuse. Vat do I know of Travers?”
“Sound like an innocent man, don’t you, Brietmann? That night you came aboard the Wanderer, thinking all hands were ashore except my brother, I was lying sick with fever in the next cabin. You didn’t know that, did you? If you had you’d have come and killed me.… You stole my brother’s wife, you swine, and then you had to come and try to get the little money Bill was saving for her. You have nerve all right, Brietmann; I’ll say that. To come and tell Bill you had ruined his wife and wanted her legacy from her father. You banked on Bill being a cripple, didn’t you? … Lucky for you I wasn’t on my feet that night—and you knew you were the stronger man.
“So you mocked him, and then you robbed him, and when he tried to fight for his honor’s sake you knocked him down and kicked his face. He would have shot you, but you were too quick. You shot him instead, with his own gun. There it is—on the table, Brietmann. Sure it has a history.… By God, I could kill you with my naked hands!”
Travers had half risen to his feet in his rage, quivering with passion, his hands opening and closing, his lips drawn clear back from his teeth.
The German rose too, quaking, and shivered back. But his voice blustered and pleaded.
“Ged oud of here! You’ll hang—you’ll hang for it if you kill me. Mein Gott! I call and twenty men run to kill you!”
The native girl crossed the room and laid a restraining hand on the German’s arm. Her big eyes were soft and appealing, and she spoke in a gentle tone, not understanding the forces at work within the two men. It was apparent she loved the shaking man; such is the strangeness of women.
Steinberger shook her off with a snarl, and caught her across the mouth with the back of his hand. Like a whipped dog she crept away, a dumb wistfulness in her eyes, her hands covering her bleeding lips.
The incident steadied Travers, and he straightened with a short laugh. He motioned to the German to sit down, and himself resumed his seat.
“I’m not ready to kill you yet, Brietmann,” he said. “I want to tell you first how I’ve trailed you, port to port, sea to sea, for seven years. I found Mary, my brother’s wife, deserted in Australia just two years after you’d stolen her. She was nursing your child then; you’d left them to starve. How many women you’ve wrecked since then I don’t know. But I wager the count’s long. As to hanging, there isn’t a jury in the world that would convict me. You know it, and I know it. You’ve got to face it, Brietmann, and try and go out like a man. Seven years I’ve followed you, and the trail ends right here. It started in Africa, and ends in the islands. I think that’s all. Say your prayers.”
The Germans’ hand crept nervously to his throat. He licked his lips and choked a little. The sweat poured from him in streams as the liquor he had gone to sleep with died within him.
“Mein prayers?” he whispered hoarsely, rising slowly to his feet again. He looked monstrous in his loose pyjamas. Travers rose with an air of finality. He stretched out a hand for the revolver, and then the German sprang.
With a cry like a wild beast he came forward, his great hands reaching for a throat hold and his knees driving for the stomach. Without any great haste Travers stepped to one side and sent the huge, flabby body across the room with a smashing right-hand blow. Steinberger crashed against the wall, and shook the hut to its foundations. He slowly picked himself up, bruised all over and panting with the fear of death. He glanced up wildly, and the oaths fell from his lips in a continuous stream.
Then Travers raised his revolver—the revolver that had shot William Travers seven years before—and prepared to do what he had come to do, what he had crossed the world for, without compunction and without haste. He took aim.… A cold muzzle pressed into the nape of his neck, and a harsh voice spoke:
“Easy, sonny, easy. Put ’em up!”
* * * *
Steinberger wiped his bloody lips and laughed as he scrambled to his feet.
“Keep him there, Walters, till I get him tied,” he wheezed breathlessly, and lumbered groggily off into a corner, where he cut a fathom or so of line from a coil of halliard standing there. Coming back