| OCR Text |
' I THE IMPOSTOR j! 1 1 By FRANK L. PACKARD 1 1 1 1 -M'. v"- M'vV'.. Otit',. -M'-M'.. -M- -SV.. vMtvM, .M, vV''''''.''-;' I K (Copyright.) His face was set. now, his jaws hard-rlatnped. His plan was simple to choke (his human devil into submission submis-sion before the other could make a sound, to get bis fingers first of all upon the ruffian's throat. He was stealing into the room, feeling feel-ing before him. He touched the foot of the bed and guided himself along the side of it. Stealthily, inch by inch, he crept toward to-ward the head of the bed, reached it, his hands shot forward, lunging swiftly swift-ly with the body weight behind them, closed on the man's throat and the next instant he was staggering backward, back-ward, a low cry of horror on his lips. His hands were wet wet with warm blood ! lie could not see, but he knew it was blood. Unnerved, shaken to the soul, a panic upon him, he stood there for a moment, his mind in riot. Then, fighting fight-ing desperately for self-control, he took a match from his pocket and lighted it. He closed bis eyes on the sight. Some one had done the horrible work only too well the man's throat was only a gaping wound. The match in Wallon's fingers still burned on, forgotten. He must get out of here. Drink-House Sam's mouth was closed focever. He could have laughed aloud, hysterically, hys-terically, at the ghastly irony of that. He must get away unseen before what was that? There was some one else In the room. Some one moved. The match, in its dying flame, spurted up. A tall, gaunt form loomed before him. That face! Where had he seen that face? The match dropped from his fingers. That face! It seemed to be associated with dreams of long ago. And then a voice spoke: "Sahib, come quickly." And then he knew. It was Gunga. CHAPTER VI. The Vendetta. "You, Gunga !" Wallen whispered hoarsely. "You you did this. For God's sake, what does it mean? How did you come here? Where did you come from?" "Sahib, there is no time to talk," the other answered gravely. "There ENTER GUNGA. Synopsis Stacey Wallen, first mate of the bark "Upolo, in the Java sea, is the sole survivor of " the crew, all victims of yellow fever. Ting Wah, Chinese sailor, last man to die, tells Wallen he and five other Chinamen were sent aboard by "Drink-House Sam," notorious no-torious character of Singapore, to kill him. This recalls to Wallen an incident rf his childhood which seems connected with the confession. confes-sion. While delirious, Wallen en- lers in the ship's log the fact of his death and abandons the vessel Scottish trader there, MacKnight, in a small boat. Wallen's boat drifts to the island of Arru and a cares for him. Learning that a ship is in port on the other side of the island, twenty miles away, Wallen, though unfit for the task, starts to reach it, but falls exhausted on the trail. There he is found by a man and woman who are from the ship he was trying to reach, Mott first mate, and Helen MacKay, a passenger. They convey him to the vessel. The ship proves to be a small tramp steamer, the Monleigh, Captain Laynton. Laynton tells Wallen the vessel had been chartered char-tered by Wallen's father to find him, the father kjiowing his son to be in grave danger because of a long-standing feud between the elder Wallen and a notorious pirate. Ram Gulab Singh. Laynton also informs him of the death of his father, explaining that the fatality was believed to be an accident. Wallen instantly associates his father's fa-ther's death with the Chinaman's confession on the Upolo. He takes over the charter of the vessel and sails for Singapore. Helen MacKaj' explains that she is on a visit to an aunt in Sumatra. Wallen agrees to take her there, just touching at Singapore, where he is determined to fathom' the mystery of "Drink-House "Drink-House Sam's" enmity. While looking look-ing over his father's papers, which Laynton had turned over to him, Wallen is startled by the thrusting of a piece of paper beneath his cabin door. On the paper is traced a hum""7- hand from wheh all but " t.,e forefinger had been hacked away. He recognized it as of plnis-ter plnis-ter import, connected with the death of his father. At Singapore Wallen leaves the ship, alone, and visits Drink-House Sam's bar-room, determined to force from him an elucidation of the mystery. Announcing An-nouncing himself as Stacey Wallen, Sam denounces him as a liar and the crowd in the bar-room attacks him. Wallen escapes, but waits outside the place, having made up his mind to have an interview alone ' with Sam. i CHAPTER V 'Continued. But at the expiration of that time he was stealing along the opposite side of the street in front of Drink-House Sam's again ; and, grateful now for the dinginess of the surroundings and the absence of lights, slipped into a narrow nar-row areaway, or more properly a :space some three feet wide between "two buiMings facing Drink-House Sam's, and lay down upon the ground. By and by Drink-House Sam would gtr-o bed, by and by that light in the barroom would go out, by and by the hangers-on would be dispersed, and by iand by somewhere in that house he iwould get Drink-House Sam alone. Wallen lay there, his eyes on the 'barroom door across the street. Occasionally Occa-sionally someone straggled in, occasionally occa-sionally someone straggled out; but it was many hours, while he grew stiff and tramped, before the place began to empty out before Drink-House Sam himself at the doorway was ejecting, eject-ing, with some force and more profanity, profan-ity, what appenred to be the last of his guests. And then the light in the barroom was extinguished. It was very late ; hut precisely what time it was Wallen did not know, only Hiat he had lain there for an interminable intermi-nable space. Well, he had waited so long he could afford to wait still another an-other hour until Drink-House Sam and whoever else was in the place had got to bed and got to sleep. This time he would leave nothing to chance. A light appeared suddenly in the end room on the veranda over the barroom bar-room and Wallen's lips parted In a twisted smile. Luck again ! That was 1 Drink-HouKe Sam's room ! The man, silhouetted against the light, was opening open-ing the veranda door, for air probably. The room obviously then had two doors, for Marie bad entered it from the interior of the house. Wallen smiled again. He would enter from the veranda, l.uck was coming now In greater measure than be had dared to hope. The light in the room went out. The minutes passed, a quarter of an hour, a half, three-quarters and then AVallen sat up, unlaced his boots and. tying them together with their strings, slung them around his nock. Like a shadow, a little blacker than the surrounding blackness, he was across the street, and quickly, agilely, silently, was swarming up one of the veranda posts. He paused as he reached the rail to listen the rail was old and it had creaked a little, not loudly, but who knew ! It might have been heard. There was not a sound. He swung over onto ihe veranda and moved cautiously . forward. In a moment mo-ment he was at Marie's door. Again he listened. Nothing not a sound ! Only darkness within, pitch blackness nd be could nn nothinc "They say aboard thai" it was an accident; acci-dent; that father accidentally shot himself while be was cleaning an automatic auto-matic pistol." (iunga's face was in the moonlight, and Wallen stared at it now and could not lake his eyes away. A whiteness came upon 1he swarthy features, the lips quiwred tremulously like a child's; and then it seemed to be another face., distorted, an "inhuman passion in the twitching muscles, the lips parted and tight-drawn across the gums, showing the Te'ith as a beast might show them as t crouches to spring. And then this, too, was gone, for the head was bowed over the oars, and Wallen could no longer see. Presently Gunga looked up, but now his face was impassive. "It is fate, sahib," he said in a low, strange way. "Allah is reat. I have loved the master many years, and now I am the servant of his son. Sahib, will you pay blood with blood?" "You mean," said Wallen, his own voice low. "that you, too. know it was not an accident that It was murder? And that Drink-House Sam, though he was miles away, had a hand in it, and that was why you killed him?" "Sahib," said Gunga softly, "I did not kill the man ; I was too late!" "You didn't kill him!" Wallen cried. "Then who " He leaned forward and gripped the other's wrist fiercely. "Gunga, the time has come for me to know. Why was my father murdered, and by whom? Why did he live that strange life in that old gray, stone house? Why did Drink-House Sam set a crew of Chinese murderers loose upon me? And this" he held out the diagram of the human hand with its missing fingers "what does this signify, sig-nify, and why was it slipped under the door of my cabin last night?" In the moonlight Gunga's face was working again, and his eyes, narrowed, seemed to be searching intently the surface of the water around him. "Among the crew, sahib," he asked, "there is a Kanaka, a tall man with great shoulders, and whose lip is scarred as though it had been cut across?" "Yes!" The word was a sharp intake in-take of Wallen's breath. "Then it is true," said Gunga. "Tonight he slipped away from the ship and swam ashore; and It may be, for Allah Is all powerful, that he will swim back again. I lay hidden, sahib, where I have lain hidden for many nights, and he came and told the story; and I, Gunga, listened unknown to him, and the light was gone from my life, as he told how he had shot the master through the porthole and thrown the pistol and those things to clean it with in upon the floor. "And he told of you, sahib, and the strange way you came aboard the ship, and how twice he had tried to kill you, but fate bad not willed it so. And at last, thinking that your death was sure, either by is hand or by one in Singapore, and thinking to torture you with fear he put the paper' with the hand upon it under your cabin door. "And other things he told as well, sahib. "Of how the captain and the crew thought strangely of the voyage, of how, through him, they came to whisper whis-per among themselves that it was a treasure-hunt; and how, the day after you came aboard, before he knew the ship was going to Singapore, that you might: not escape by going ashore at some port where they would not be waiting for you as they would at Singapore, that you might even be forced by the captain to skiy on board, he pretended to have found a slip of paper with a certain latitude and longitude longi-tude upon it which he made pretense you had dropped from jour pocket. "This he carried to the captain, thinking that the captain would believe the treasure within his reach and search for it on his own account in spite of you, sahib, and so keep you aboard, for the paper was the position Ram Gulab Singh had given the Kanaka, Kan-aka, as he had also given the drawing of the hand; but the ciptaln only took the paper and bade him bold his tongue and " "Wait," said A'allen quickly. "It is certain, then, that Captain Laynton and the crew had nothing to do with my father's murder with Drink-House Sam?" "It is certain, sahib," Gunga answered. an-swered. "Though, too, (here are strange things about that ship but the tale is for another time." "And this Ram Gulab Singh?" Wallen Wal-len questioned througn thin lips. Gunga's eyes were still searching the water around him in the same intent, in-tent, curious way. "Have patience, sahib," he said. "Time does not press now. It Is well that you should know all before you go aboard. The ship is to sail at once, then?" "Yes," said Wallen. Gunga tells of Ram Gulab Singh. (TO BE CONTINUED.) "Sahib, There Is No Time for Talk." is much danger. Come quickly. We will go back to your ship." "You know about that the ship?" mumbled Wallen. "How " "Sahib," almost plteously, "come." There followed for Wallen a space of time that he could neither estimate in duration nor of whose events in the Interval he could form any concrete whole. There were dark streets anil darker byways, and always before him, wraitlilike in his loose white garb, the turbaned figure of the East Indian; and then a boat from some dark corner cor-ner of a jetty and they were in it, and Gunga was rowing. His mind had been ;n chaos; picturing pictur-ing again and again the fearsome sight in the glow of that burning match ; trying try-ing to span the ten years since lie had last seen this man; striving futiiely but with a sort of maddening, irresponsible irre-sponsible Insistence, to grapple with this and that question that came and went in lightning succession; and always al-ways reverting to that black room, i lie sputtering match, and Drink-House Sam upon the bed again. And now they were far out in the harbor and the water was very still, and under the moonlight It was very black, and a little ahead he could see the Monleigh; and then Gunga lay upon his oars and spoke. "Sahib, Is it true what they say that the master Is dead?" The question in its abruptness, its significance, came like a physical shock to Wallen ; but, too, It roTlsed him, cleared his brain of its chaotic obsession, obses-sion, nnd brought him back, alert and tense, to actualities and his immediate surroundings. "It is true." he answered slowly. |
