Chapter XXVI: The Lucky Man

No one ever accused Mr. Reginald Lossing of having brains; no one ever denied that he had a luck which was monumental. He had a name for luck which was looked up to and marveled at, even in the society papers.

Mr. Lossing had no settled trade or profession; he was like unto a lily in the matter of toil and dress, and he made a very comfortable income at it. He dabbled in outsiders on the turf, in shares of uncharted gold mines, in the fascinating game of unlimited loo; and was able to look complacently on the results. He went into all these and other operations with a genial, childish simplicity; and, like the banker at roulette, there always seemed a steady pull in his favor. How it was done no one knew; he did not know himself; and he and all his world marveled, and prophesied that his luck would some day turn with a rush and a sweeping tide.

When he got mixed up with the Shelf affair it seemed as if this would be the case.

There was something very near akin to a panic in Lloyds’ when the total loss of the _Port Edes_ was reported, and those unfortunates who had underwritten her were anxious to dispose of their risks at remarkable prices to any credulous man who believed that this first report was a _canard_. Consequently there was some pretty steep gambling gone through in the space of minutes, and more than one small man got broke with surprising rapidity.

Now, Master Lossing happened to be in the room as an idle spectator, and was hit with the excitement, and asked a friend who was a member to act for him. “I’m going to play a hand in this,” quoth Master Lossing.

“At what price?” asked his friend.

“When they get to ninety-eight guineas.”

“I suppose you know that makes you liable for about £10,800. There’s £540,000 underwritten.”

“I’m good for that,” said Lossing; and an hour afterwards proved himself so, as he had to pay. To this day many Lloyds’ men, who were interested in that scene, congratulate themselves on having made £10,800 salvage by a fluke out of a ship that was totally lost.

It began to dawn on Lossing after the event that he had made a fool of himself, and that his luck was through; but he had the sense not to whine aloud, and so his friends forgot the matter in the excitement of other interests. Lossing did not forget, because the bank had written to him that his account was overdrawn, and he had several bills which much wanted paying. Unostentatiously he began to look about him for a means of making a more regular and steady livelihood.

As after several months of search this last did not seem any appreciably nearer, he was able to give full attention to a letter he received concerning the _Port Edes_ and her cargo. It was unsigned, and bore an American postmark. It ran as follows:—

“Sir. I hear that you are now legitimate owner of the _Port Edes_ and her cargo. She was picked up at sea, and is now in the Everglades of Florida in (here followed the exact latitude and longitude). The specie is taken out of her, and you will find it by digging (here came elaborate cross-bearings and directions). If you are a wise man, and wish to enjoy what is now legally your own, you will say as little about the matter to any one as possible.”

The communication was, to say the least of it, mysterious; but, because Lossing was a fool, he did not see so many possibilities in it as a man of more imagination might have done. Moreover, having failed to discover the suitable occupation, the before-mentioned, he was feeling that the end of his tether approached, and appreciated the loneliness of the void which lay beyond. So, with all before him, and nothing behind, he determined to find out how the matter lay with his own eyes, and with that purpose journeyed to the hotel at Point Sebastian, now rebuilt with new magnificence.

It was the Floridan winter season, and the place was crowded, and amongst the crowd was Lossing’s old friend, Kent-Williams, again at the end of a new quarter’s allowance. Mr. Reginald Lossing stayed a week at Point Sebastian, and, by the kindly offices of Kent-Williams (who remained on as his guest), he learnt much about the manners and customs of Floridan society.

Knowing Patrick Onslow, he heard with interest about his marriage to Miss Elsie Kildare, and with amusement the details of the send-off.

“There wasn’t much money throwing about,” Kent-Williams explained, “but we did the thing in style for all that. She was married from here, and old Van Liew did the heavy father to perfection. I was best man in a two-dollar alpaca coat (I’ll trouble you) by way of purple and fine linen; and a singer-fellow, who was down here for D. T., howled ‘The voice that breathed o’er Eden’ as good as you could have got it done in Milan. There was a regular A1 feed to follow, and then the pair of them went off to the depôt behind the best trotting team in this section. They’re going to settle out west, but where exactly I don’t know, though I suppose we shall hear one of these days. We’d high jinks after they’d gone. Some of the boys got a bit full, and there was a trifle of a row, and a Balliol man and a Cracker from round here got laid out; but they were both regular toughs, and nobody missed them; and, besides, a thing like that lent local color to the wedding.”

“Yes,” said Lossing, “but touching this other matter I’ve been speaking about,” and went on to discourse about a certain steamer and some specie, which was a topic he had very much at heart just then. Kent-Williams picked up the subject with interest. There seemed to be money in it, and money was a commodity which he most ardently desired.

That was not the first conference they had had by any means, nor was it the last, for some projects take much pre-arranging, especially if the projectors are not gentlemen of any marked ability or experience. But, at the end of a week from Mr. Lossing’s first appearance at Point Sebastian, a definite plan had grown in their heads, and with a small equipment they set out in a 10-ton schooner for a down-coast river said to lead into the Everglades—they and five others, whereof two were disrated nautical men, and one an engineer.

The saga of their doings for the next six months does not appear, but it is known that the schooner returned twice, and took back with her provisions and digging implements (which were paid for in yellow English gold), and each time gathered two or three more recruits of varied tints. There must have been quite a colony of them out there, and legends floated out from the ’Glades of strife amongst themselves and of a fracas with Seminole Indians. But nothing definite transpired, and, in fact, the exact location of the colony itself was quite unknown. That part of Florida does not attract the explorer for many reasons.

It was not, I may say, till some seven months later that Messrs. Kent-Williams and Lossing deigned to reappear before the eyes of polite society, and then (for some reason which may not be very comfortably explained) it was on one of the Royal Mail Company’s steamboats bound homewards from a port of Eastern South America. It might have been remarked that Lossing carried a newly healed scar above his right eyebrow.

The pair of them sat in cool cane chairs under the shade of the awning, watching in silence the low shores dip under the sea, and smoking Brazilian cigars with massive contentment.

It was Kent-Williams who, when the last palm-tree had disappeared beneath the waters, first made speech. “So that’s done with,” he said. “I feel ten years older, but it’s done with, and we’ve got what we wanted.”

“Done with it is, thank my precious luck,” said Lossing. “I’m glad as a man can be; but I tell you I’m bubbling with surprise still that the thing should ever have come in my way. It’s a bigger puzzle than I shall ever make out in this life. Think of it! First a steamer—my steamer, that I draw out of a gamble, which is supposed to be sunk—gets up, and goes overland, and plants herself firmly in the middle of a solid forest, as though she wanted to grow there like a tree. We have it on the most reliable accounts that the crew deserted her out in the Mexican Gulf; but some unknown somebody comes up and paints a different color on one of her smoke-stacks, and leaves the other as it was, and screws new cast-brass name-plates on all her engines and fittings, and leaves the lifebuoys labeled ‘_Port Edes_ of Liverpool.’ But then the gold in her flies two miles further up-country, and dives twenty feet under the ground, without disturbing the mangrove roots. And you will please to remember that that same network of wood cost us two days of hard cutting with an ax before we got through it. Now, if a man can ravel all that out, I swear he ought to be burnt for sorcery.”

“It was the fishiness of the whole thing that impressed me most,” said Kent-Williams, thoughtfully. “I think, dear boy, we’ve been very wise chaps in selling your blessed steamer with a brand-new set of names on her to a Spanish man who gave a low price and asked no questions. It was quite honest on our part, seeing that the steamer and her cargo were legally yours; but I shouldn’t be surprised if, by keeping dark, we’ve saved a lot of trouble for somebody else.”

“It’s very probable,” said Lossing. “But I wonder who? D’you know, old man, I’d give a couple of thousand, out of sheer curiosity, just to know how all this racket has been fixed up. It seems to me some way that Pat Onslow must have had a finger in it.”

“Do you think,” retorted Kent-Williams, “that if Patrick Onslow had his finger on half a million, which no one else knew about, it wouldn’t have been his half-million? No, sir. That cock won’t fight. Besides, Onslow was spooning the Kildare girl, and that took up all his time, I guess. Heigh-ho!” said Kent-Williams.

“What’s that for?”

“Which?”

“The sigh.”

“Did I sigh? Well, I was thinking about Mrs. Duvernay, the Kildare girl’s sister, that Onslow was spoons on himself one time. She’s a deuced nice-looking woman.”

“So you’ve said before.”

“I know. Between ourselves, Lossing, dear boy, I went up to her place one evening and proposed to her; and—this is in confidence, mind—d’you know, by Jove! she actually refused me. She’s got that fellow Onslow still in her head, I suppose. But I shall go out and have a look at her again. Honestly, I was after her £500 a year at first; but now that (thanks to you) I’m better off, it won’t look so bad; and, really, I like her better than I thought. She’s a most awfully charming woman.”

“Whatever did she marry that brute Duvernay for?” asked Lossing.

“Ah, that,” replied Kent-Williams, “is more than I can tell you.”

THE END.