By the World Forgot: A Double Romance of the East and West

"I intend to."

Maynard reached for the telephone. He called up the house, got his daughter on the wire, and asked her to take her car and come to the office immediately. He brushed away questions and objections by assuring her that it was a matter of life and death. Having thus aroused her curiosity and greatly alarmed her, he disconnected.

"Now," he said, turning to Harnash, who had waited, "what have you to suggest?"

"Cable our agent at Honolulu to send the survivors to San Francisco by the first steamer."

"Good so far."

"I'll go out there in time to meet them and ascertain the facts. If Beekman is there I'll tell him the truth and bring him home, if he doesn't kill me."

"If he is not?"

"I'll turn everything I have into money and on the chance that he may be somewhere in the South Seas I'll charter a ship and go and hunt for him."

"I wouldn't like to be in your shoes when you meet him, if you do."

"I don't much fancy the situation myself," admitted Harnash, "but that's neither here nor there. I've got to do it."

"You must have been desperately in love with Stephanie to have done this thing."

"I was. I am. I don't want to plead anything in justification," answered the other, "but if Stephanie had loved Beekman I don't think I should have interfered, although she probably would have found out that I loved her because I couldn't help letting her see it. You have seen it yourself, haven't you?"

"Now that you say it, I recall things that looked that way and, yes, I had begun to suspect it."

"But when I found out that she didn't love him and that she did love me and that she was only going through with it to please you and the elder Beekman-well, it seemed horrible. I swore to her that I would prevent it if I had to snatch her away from him at the foot of the altar."

"Instead of which you snatched him from her the day before."

"It was the same day."

"I wonder why none of us ever thought of the Susquehanna."

"She is on record as having sailed the evening before. Her clearance papers were so made out and as she probably got away without tug or pilot in the early dawn nobody connected him with her."

"You didn't have this end of the voyage in mind, of course?"

"As God is my judge I did not," answered Harnash, earnestly.

"The Susquehanna was overdue at Vladivostok by about three weeks, I believe," continued the old man. "That's why you've been so distrait and worried and generally knocked up during the last month?"

"Yes. I expected to get word from Beekman."

"How?"

"He would naturally cable me, his business partner."

"Oh, then he doesn't know anything about your part, if he is alive."

"Certainly not, unless Woywod told him, which would be most unlikely."

"I see. Well, go and cable Smithfield and find out when the next steamer sails for the United States from Hawaii, and arrange to leave here four days before her scheduled arrival so you can get this third officer and his men before they scatter. You know what sailors are. By the way, who is the third officer?"

"I don't know."

"Well, find that out in the shipping department. And keep within call. When Stephanie gets here I shall want you to tell her," said the old man, still painfully undecided as to his course.

"Very good, sir," said Harnash, turning away, glad for the relief of the temporary duties devolved upon him.

By the time he had completed them Stephanie had reached the office building and had gone to her father's private room, where Harnash presently followed her.

"I hurried down here, of course," she began, "on receipt of your surprising message. What has happened since you left this morning? Oh, good morning, Mr. Harnash," she continued, her face brightening as she held out her hand to that unhappy man as he entered the office.

"This," said her father in answer to her question, meanwhile keenly observing the other two.

He handed her the cable. She read it over and looked up with a little bewilderment.

"The Susquehanna!" she said. "I remember it was the last sailing ship. It's too bad that she is lost, but you were insured. Of course, it's terrible about the brave captain and the poor men."

Old Maynard nodded. He looked at Harnash. That young man's hour had come.

"Beekman was on the Susquehanna," he said quietly.

CHAPTER XIII

THE SEARCH DETERMINED UPON

For a moment Stephanie Maynard did not take in the tremendous import of the declaration that had just fallen from her lover's lips. For one thing, he had spoken so quietly that she had not at first sensed the meaning. She stared from Harnash to her father in no little bewilderment. Both men watched her keenly; the older curious to know what she would do and say, the younger as one might wait the death sentence of a court.

"I don't understand," she faltered at last. "Did you say that Derrick Beekman- It's impossible. How could that be?"

"I had him shanghaied by a friend of mine."

"Shanghaied?"

"Yes. After the dinner broke up we stopped at an uptown place and" – Harnash hesitated. It was bad enough to compass the main fact, but the necessary admission of the sordid, unlovely details seemed to make his turpitude much greater.

"Yes, go on. What then?"

"Yes. I'm curious to know how you did it, too," put in Maynard.

"I persuaded him to take a drink. He was utterly unsuspicious. It was easy-"

"Oh, you doctored it," said Maynard.

"Yes-but- Good God, this is the hardest thing I ever did," cried poor Harnash, looking at the girl. "Knock-out drops, you know, and then he was shanghaied."

"I don't understand," she said again.