Chapter I: Introduces a Red-Faced Man

“And if the truth were ever exposed—what then?”

“Bah! You never need fear that, my dear fellow. The people we are dealing with are discreet—silent in their own interests. This isn’t the first little piece of confidential business I’ve had with them.”

“Well, I don’t like it.”

“But you want money!”

“Not if I’m compelled to commit a crime to obtain it.”

“Ah, my dear Jorgen, you’re becoming really too scrupulous in your old age,” laughed the fat, pimply-faced man in a well-cut yachting suit, as he drew heavily at his cigar and lolled back in a long cane-chair on deck. “You should recollect that in these modern days of ours honesty spells poverty.”

“Not always, Peter, not always,” protested the other, a broad-shouldered, burly, grey-bearded man in a well-worn suit of blue serge. “One can be honest and prosper, even now.”

“Seldom, my dear fellow, seldom. Men to become millionaires must be unscrupulous,” replied Peter Sundt, the owner of that fine steam yacht, the blustering, red-faced man who had once been a fisherman, but who now practically controlled the great cod-fishing industry of Finmarken. For him hundreds of men toiled upon the deep, reaping the harvest of the Arctic Ocean, while he, wealthy and luxurious, lived in summer at his beautiful home near Christiania, and in winter at his splendid white villa among the palms at Ragusa, on the blue Adriatic.

The man seated at his side, gazing thoughtfully across at the broken coast of the French Riviera lying purple in the spring sunset, was of an altogether different stamp. Big, broad-shouldered, with a kind, merry, furrowed face and a deep-toned voice, he was a typical sailor of the bluff, hail-fellow-well-met type. Indeed, for forty years he had sailed the Polar Sea in search of the whale, and in the days before Sven Foyn invented his deadly cannon-harpoon, he had had many thrilling adventures in the frozen North—adventures which, if written, would assuredly make a most fascinating book.

Nowadays, however, he had given up whaling and had settled down in a snug appointment as harbour-master at Vardo, that far-off little town on the most northernly point east of the North Cape, a place beyond the pale of civilisation and where for many months each year the inhabitants lived in the perpetual Arctic night.

He had known Peter Sundt, the millionaire of stock-fish, all his life, and had now sailed to the South with him on his magnificent yacht in order to keep a certain appointment at an obscure hotel—the Palmiers—at Monte Carlo.

The cruise around the North Cape, past Hammerfest, down the long, broken coast-line of Norway, through the Straits of Dover, across the stormy bay and through Gibraltar, had been a most pleasant one. It was years since Berentsen had sailed a summer sea, nearly his whole life having been spent on the edge of the ice-pack, therefore he had greatly enjoyed his old friend’s hospitality.

Yet now they were off Villefranche, with Beaulieu lying in its picturesque bay, and the Tete de Chien rising against the clear sky, with the brown rock of Monaco beyond, the old harbour-master had become suddenly thoughtful and apprehensive.

Besides the crew—a hardy set of Norwegians and Danes—they were the only persons on board. Peter Sundt was a widower, and in no way a lady’s man. From small beginnings he had risen to become one of the wealthiest and most influential men in Norway, while his friend, Jorgen Berentsen, bluff old sailor that he was, had continued his life of the sea until his friend had been able to obtain for him the post of harbour-master of that far-away, dismal town, which was the outpost of civilisation.

Jorgen had been appointed to Vardo at his own request. Born and bred within the Arctic Circle, he cared little for the South, and the pleasures of Christiania or Trondhjem had never held any attraction for him.

Like most Norwegians, both men knew English, and, indeed, had been conversing in that language.

“The meeting is at ten to-night, isn’t it?” asked the old harbour-master slowly, with a sigh, his deeply-furrowed face bearing a thoughtful, apprehensive expression.

“Yes. Our friend said so in the wire I received at Marseilles,” replied his red-faced host.

“I’m half inclined to withdraw, even now. I confess, Peter, I don’t like the affair.”

“And after all the trouble you’ve taken!” exclaimed Sundt. “Why, you’ve planned every detail.”

“I know; but I’m ready to sacrifice it all in order to preserve my innocence, my own honour.”

“Honour, be hanged!” laughed his wealthy friend. “Who cares a jot for your honour except yourself? If I’d prided myself upon my honour I’d to-day still have been a fisherman. My advice to you, my dear Jorgen, is to get money wherever you can. Never refuse a good thing. You’ve taken my advice before, and you’ve profited, haven’t you?”

“Yes,” replied the other, with a deep pull at his cigar. “I owe everything to you, Peter—everything. I’d still have been at sea now had it not been for your kind offices.”

“Well, we’ve struck a bargain, you and I; and we’ve kept it. You’ve placed in your pocket a good many thousand kroners which you otherwise would not have had.”

“And you also,” laughed Berentsen uneasily.

“Certainly; and I hope we shall both make a good many more thousands. We shall, providing you don’t continue to suffer from these absurd fits of groundless apprehension. Self-exposure would mean exposure of myself—and I couldn’t afford that—as you well know!”

“But to thus betray—”

“Oh, rubbish!” laughed Sundt, interrupting him. “Let’s talk of something else. You’ve never been to Monte Carlo. You’ll be amused there, I can assure you.”

“I’m thinking of Thyra. How would she judge me if she knew the truth?” he remarked in a low, intense voice, his bearded chin sunk upon his breast and a far-away look in his deep-set eyes.

“Thyra will marry one day, I suppose, and you’ll want money to give her. Look at the practical side of life, man! Get the money now it’s within your grasp.”

“Thyra would disown me as her father,” said the thick-set, old sea-captain in a strained tone.

“As many another daughter would disown her father if she knew all his business secrets,” remarked Sundt, with a smile. “Ignorance is always bliss.”

“Well, Peter, I don’t like it!” exclaimed old Jorgen, jumping from his long cane-chair, and taking three paces up the deck and three paces back again—his old habit of the bridge. His face had grown pale and rigid.

Peter Sundt cast a curiously crafty glance at him while his back was turned. But the unusual expression only rested upon his countenance for a moment. Next second it had vanished, and with a smile full of forced bonhomie the millionaire said:

“My dear fellow, put all worry behind you, as I do. Little Thyra believes you to be the most honest man in all Norway, as every daughter believes her father to be. Why should she ever be undeceived? All of us have one skeleton in our cupboard. Why should we go out of our way to exhibit it?”

“But this mysterious person we are here to meet? What guarantee have we of his good faith? He might blackmail us!”

“He will not do so. I’ll guarantee that.”

“How can you stand guarantee for him?”

“Well—I have had previous experience,” replied Pete, rather slowly. “The reason why the appointment for meeting is made here in Monte Carlo is to avoid suspicion. The place is so cosmopolitan that even though we might be watched, there would be nothing extraordinary in us meeting a stranger here. Besides, I always come here for a fortnight or so each Carnival, before going round to Ragusa.”

“I somehow scent danger,” declared the Captain, halting and leaning with his back to the rail. “I don’t think I shall meet the mysterious person, whoever he may be or however much I may gain by the commission of the crime!”

“What!” cried the owner of the yacht, starting in surprise and staring straight at his friend. “You surely don’t wish to back out of the bargain now? This isn’t like you, Jorgen.”

“I see signs of a gathering storm,” he replied, heartily wishing he had never accepted his host’s invitation.

“Where?”

But the old harbour-master only shrugged his broad shoulders and, as he did so, cast his cigar-end into the water.

A smart French steward appeared with a tray upon which was tea, and setting it near his master, retired.

The two men did not speak. The silence of the sunset hour was unbroken save for the jar of the engines and the low swish of the calm, blue waters, as they steamed straight to the long, low Cap d’Ail.

They were close enough to the rocky shore to distinguish the Corniche road, running like a white ribbon over the olive-clad Monte Bastis, while in the centre of the picturesque scene rose the ancient village of Eze, perched high-up upon its conical hill, with the white flower-embowered villas of the wealthy dotted everywhere over the sloping mountain-sides.

To old Captain Berentsen the scene was an unfamiliar one. He knew the ice-bound coasts of Kolguev, Franz Josef Land, Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla. He lived far beyond the tree zone, in a dismal land of grey mists and snow blizzards, where nothing grew save the Arctic mosses. Therefore, the fairy-like scene before him was entrancing.

Yet he gazed upon it all as a man gazes at his own open grave.

His hands were clenched upon the iron rail, and as he looked seaward his teeth were set, his deep-lined brow clouded. His face was turned away from that man who, though his host, held him so irresistibly in his power. He was poor, and his poverty had compelled him to become, as he now was, the helpless puppet in that fat man’s hands.

He was thinking of Thyra—his sweet-faced, neat-waisted little daughter, whom he had left at home in that far-away town, now plunged in the darkness of the long Arctic night. He had sacrificed his own honour in order that she should not want. What, however, would she, devoted child that she was, say if she knew the real reason of his present pleasure cruise with this coarse-handed, red-faced millionaire—the object of the secret meeting which Sundt had arranged for ten o’clock that night?

“You’re a fool, Jorgen!” declared Peter Sundt, bluntly at last, “and ungrateful, too! I point out to you a mode by which money can be secured for Thyra and yourself, and you’re disinclined to take advantage of it!”

“If the truth were exposed,” declared the unhappy man in a faltering voice, “I would never dare to look my daughter in the face again!”

Peter Sundt laughed.

“And have your hands been so very clean in the past, eh?”

“That is just why I fear—why I fear always.”

“You’re a coward, as well as a fool. You will never become a rich man.”

“I’d rather remain poor and honest.”

Sundt laughed again.

“Honest!” he sneered. “Isn’t it rather late in the day, Jorgen, to talk of honesty? Rest assured that Thyra will never know. So just calm yourself, and make hay while the sun shines—as the English say.”

But bluff old Jorgen Berentsen only buttoned his pilot-jacket tightly and paced backward and forward on the deck, his heart full of regret and poignant bitterness, yet held fettered and bound by the great crime he was being forced, against his will, to commit.