Wingate

“ The blood leaped in his arteries. He felt himself a man, able to fight a man's battle. Drenched, sweating, he labored—and laughed.
Presently the cockpit was fairly empty, and Wingate swung on his course again. His distance at sea was now so great that, in order to make a run for the place where he thought the Voyageur was lying, he could take the waves on his port quarter. The tender shipped little water on this cut, and quickened speed. Before long the northern end of the island glimmered vaguely in sight, and Wingate began spying as best he could for the cove itself. ”

“ That morning Wingate had used the last of his drug, and once more he was on the edge of the painful gulf.
“Well, so you're here, eh?” he growled, as Jaccard entered his little cabin. “It's about time, I should think!”
“Yes, I'm here,” the captain smilingly replied, handing over a bulky package. “Here's what you sent me for—cash, bonds. quite a bundle of stuff. It's all there. I haven't touched a penny of it. Honesty, strict honesty—that's my motto!”
Wingate snarled at him:
“Like hell! If you're an honest man, I'm a wise one! ”

“ I tell you I had nothing at all to do with any trouble between you and the captain, sir!”
“No argument, now!” snapped Wingate. “Get that other hawser over, and look sharp! Then go below!” He gestured eloquently with the revolver in his hand. “It's no use for either of you to try to help Jaccard, or to untie him. I'll shoot the first man that sticks a nose out of that companionway! Get a move on, there! Jump!”
When the engineer, grumbling vain pleas of innocence, had vanished below, Wingate turned to the seaman. ”

“ Wingate made no answer, but lay panting, with the smolder of an immense hatred in his feverish eyes. Like tiny sentinels of fate the tablets lay there on the table.
“As if you could cure yourself of the habit, you poor, broken wreck of a man!” Jaccard mocked. “Why, the best sanitariums have failed, and the most skillful doctors. You're all gone. Your will power's gone—there's nothing left. Will power—pooh! You're a joke, Wingate—nothing but a joke, to reat men! ”

“ This collapsible bucket was now all that his jailers would allow him. The metal pitcher had been taken away, like all metal. There was not even a tin cup to drink from.
Wingate had to tilt the canvas bucket and drink from its edge, slopping water down his chest. He laughed savagely, drank deep, and laughed again. More scores to settle!
Like a trapped animal, he fell to pacing the floor, back and forth across the fiber tug. Hobbling, racked with pain, he took his exercise—a tortured soul in a hell of his own making. ”

“ He was a strange figure, staring-eyed, with ragged beard, and with clothes glued to his panting body—a wild, unreal figure, more like some shipwrecked pirate of romance than a New York financier. Life sometimes plays odd jests like these.
Now, on the beach, he could make out the yacht at anchor. She had swung around, her bow toward the west, her stern toward the shore, and was riding easily with no lights aboard. Wingate plowed along the sands and came to the little cedar dinghy drawn up almost to the edge of the dunes. ”

“ Now, for all his money, Martin Wingate stood like a fretful, miserable child, pawing in his little medicine cabinet for the phial that alone spelled surcease from misery intolerable—the phial that alone could give him strength to live even a single other day. ”

“ The little phial of tablets that meant more than life to him was gone.
For a moment, his mind blurred with confusion and suffering, Wingate stood there on the cabin rug. Barefooted, disheveled, and unlovely, he looked anything but a powerful financier, one of the biggest copper men in the world.
Is not morphine the great democratizer? Before its sovereign power do not plutocrat and slum rat, gently bred woman and slattern of the streets, all bow with equally servile adoration? In the realm of King Morphine there are—at a pinch—no gradations of pride, only degrees of suffering and abasement. ”

“ Once under the bungalow, he lay still for a few minutes, listening. Save for the steady drumming of rain on the house and on the palmetto fronds, and the roar of the surf as the west wind drove it up the beach, he heard nothing. An occasional dart of lightning revealed no sign of a guard.
“The captain and Zanelli would be bigger fools than I think them,” Wingate pondered, “if they stirred out of their own bungalow on a night like this!” ”

“ He entered, closed the door, and found himself within three feet of the redoubtable Jaccard.
Just where the electric light was, Wingate well knew. When the yacht's dynamo was idle, storage batteries fed all the lights. There was sure to be current. He reached for the little chain, twitched it, and flooded the cabin with a brilliant glare.
Right in front of him the captain lay, in rather absurdly striped pyjamas. It seemed ridiculous that a man of his immense strength should wear striped pyjamas—unheroic, somehow, and out of keeping. ”

“ Impotently the millionaire's weak fists battered that solid bulk. They did no more than dash the phial from Jaccard's hand. It fell to the cabin floor, rolled against one of the lockers, and stopped there. With an insensate, wild rage, Wingate tried to land some telling blow. Tortured nerves and outraged mind drove him on to make of himself a degrading, pitiful spectacle—how different from what he had been in those other, far-away days of splendid athletic achievement! ”

“ Wingate was fain to admit the force of the argument.
“One can never be sure of any man, even if you have known him all your life,” he added, as they shook hands. “Nobody knows that better than our profession. But I would stake my existence that there were no skeletons in Monkton’s cupboard. The man was as straight as a die, and he was passionately attached to his beautiful wife. Well, Mr Wingate, give my best regards to dear Miss Sheila. ”

“ Please don't misunderstand me— Wingate almost barked an oath. Dark with rage, he ripped the letter into shreds and shot them into the basket. He sat there gnawing his nails, cursing.
“Money, always money!” he wheezed. “Three letters—two of 'em begging, and one about losing money. Damn money! Damn everything!”
He sprang up and fell to pacing the floor like a madman; but his heart would not stand the strain. He grew faint and dizzy, and felt himself about to collapse. Morphine! He must have another tablet. In every strain or crisis, the addict invariably turns to his drug, his panacea. ”

“ A pair of binoculars at the end of a leather strap makes a very pretty slung shot. Wingate put every ounce of his hate and of his rage into that whirling blow. The binoculars crashed down on Jaccard's skull, just above the right eye; and the captain, for all his bulk and strength, lunged forward, yammering, on both knees. ”

“ The worst known of him in the neighbourhood is his game and fish trespassing, though there is worse suspected. He whose suspicions are strongest being the waterman Wingate.
But Jack may be wronging him, for a certain reason—the most powerful that ever swayed the passion or warped the judgment of man—rivalry for the affections of a woman.
No heart, however hardened, is proof against the shafts of Cupid; and one has penetrated the heart of Coracle Dick, as deeply as has another that of Jack Wingate. ”

“ Wingate hesitated for a moment, deep in thought. The two exhausted men chuckled hideously.
"Some playing cards," Wingate directed, suddenly breaking into speech.
"Open that sideboard, Grant. Bring out the sandwiches and biscuits and
fruit. That's right. And some glasses. Open the champagne quickly.
Cigars, too. Here—shut the door. We must have a moment or two at this.
You understand, Grant—-a debauch!" ”

“ Reflex action! Something stronger even than the lust of death possessed him. He found it impossible to stand, to meet that drive of annihilation. Few men can let a snake strike at them, even behind plate glass, and not jerk back their hands—few, if any. Now forces stronger than Wingate's own desire dominated him. He retreated; but on the instant he checked that retreat.
“You damned cowardly whelp!” he snarled at himself.
He rallied his forces. Shouting, he plunged toward the reptile.
As the moccasin reared for the fatal blow, the staccato bark of a pistol cracked among the palmettos. ”

“ When Wingate would have resisted, Jaccard held him as if he had been a child, and took the tablets by force. Not much force was needed, at that. Wingate felt himself helpless in those iron hands.
“Here, now—here's the money that doesn't belong to me—not yet,” said Jaccard. “Everything is honest and above-board. ”

“ Jack Wingate needs neither command to act nor word to stimulate him. As a man he remembers the late indignity to himself; as a gallant fellow he now sees others submitted to the like. No matter about their being ladies; enough that they are women suffering insult; and more than enough at seeing who are the insulters.
In ten seconds' time he is on his thwart, oars in hand, the officer at the tiller; and in five more, the Mary, brought stem up stream, is surging against the current, going swiftly as if with it. She is set for the big boat pursuing—not now to shun a collision, but seek it. ”

“ Wingate thrust in his struggling burden and locked the door.
"Strong panels?" he enquired, pausing for a moment to listen to the blows directed upon them.
The head waiter smiled.
"They're more than one man can break through, sir," he assured him.
Wingate made his way back to the supper party. Half of the guests were on their feet. He met Sir Frederick near the door. ”

“ Wingate's luncheon party had been arranged for some days, and was being given, in fact, at the suggestion of Lady Amesbury herself.
"I am a perfectly shameless person," she declared, as she took her seat by Wingate's side at the round table in the middle of the restaurant. "I invited myself to this party. I always do. The last three times our dear host has been over to England, as soon as I have enquired after his health and his business, and whether the right woman has turned up yet, I ask him when he's going to take me to lunch at the Milan. ”

“ Jaccard laughed easily.
“Just a little fiction of mine,” he explained, “like the shaft being broken. I handed you that story to get the game started in some kind of way that wouldn't give you apoplexy. You're too valuable a man to take chances with, you see. When you get the note written to the bank, I'll connect with the tender, all right enough.”
Wingate stared with growing rage. The veins on his thin temples began to knot, to protrude. A gleam as of madness inflamed his eyes, which once more were narrowed by the contracting power of the drug. ”

“ Wingate.
"Yes, just getting home," answered Amy, cheerily.
"Growing pretty dark, isn't it? Hmm, yes. Heard you lost your donkey, Hallam."
"For the time, I have, sir," responded the lad, rather stiffly. He hated this man "on sight," or out of it, and it was difficult for him to conquer his aversion. All the kindness he had felt toward him, on the night of Mr. Wingate's first unwelcome visit to Fairacres, had been forgotten since; because in his heart he believed that his mother's death was due to her removal from her home. ”

“ Wingate's face, as he watched the speedy craft melt into the semitropical haze and fade away over the long swell, was a mask of such agony as Doré never drew in his pictures of the inferno.
“Oh, God, if it would only catch fire, burn, sink!” he groaned. Then, after a pause: “Prison—and I've turned the key on myself!”
He cursed himself. Then, with bent head, dejected and abased to the depths, he dragged back to the bungalow. He flung himself down on the wicker couch and abandoned himself to loathing and self-hate.
Another day of torment dragged to its infernal close. ”

“ In the main cabin it was almost pitch dark, for hardly the ghostliest glimmer seeped through the skylight. A cadenced snoring told him that somebody was there—but who? If one of the engineers, or both, no matter. It could not be the third seaman or the cook, for both of them bunked forward. The only real peril lurked in Zanelli or the captain. Were they ashore, or, by ill chance, had one of them passed the night aboard the yacht?
“Well, the only way to find out is to go and see!” Wingate realized. ”

“ No one noticed the two men at the little table near the wall.
“You are a magician,” the princess whispered to Wingate. “Never could I have believed that my dear Josephine would become young again. They speak of her already as the most beautiful woman on the Riviera, and with reason. I am proud of my godchild. And they tell me that you,” she went on, “have done great things in the world of finance.”
“Is it true, Wingate,” the Cabinet minister asked, “that it was you who broke the British & Imperial Granaries?” ”

“ You can't? But you must!”
“How can I, sir, when the tender isn't here?”
“Not—here?” Wingate sank back in his chair, with eyes fishlike in blank dismay: “What d'you mean, not here?”
“It's gone, sir,” Jaccard explained. “I sent it back to Queensport for materials to mend the break—steel straps, bolts, and—”
Wingate's groan interrupted the skipper's explanation. An expression of intolerable anguish contorted the millionaire's face. Though he sought to control himself, an anguished twitch shuddered through his emaciated body. ”

“ The ink-stained, drenched, bewhiskered figure that confronted them with blazing eyes of rage, covering them with a revolver, was enough to have put the fear of God into any man. A maniac Wingate looked—no less. His words were rational enough, however.
“Listen, you two!” he flung at them. “You've got your choice of just two things. Obey me, and get paid as men never were paid before. Disobey me, and get killed. This yacht's changed hands. I'm master now. Weigh anchor! Get that engine going! Put the seaman at the wheel! ”