"Can't go? Why?" the financier asked in tones of genuine distress.
"I'll make good all the damages, if you'll let me."
"If I ask it as a special favour?" he pleaded.
"There's no use in my going, Cal," Stuart said persuasively, "I can tell you exactly where to go, the guides to get, and the kind of boats you'll need. You'll get along better without than with me."
"I won't go without you," the financier said peevishly.
"Dozens of reasons. You know the place, you know all about the birds, you can teach me the ins and outs of the business and I can trust you. I know that you won't try to worm out of me any information my enemies would like to know. Besides, Jim, you're a friend. It would rest and help me to be with you on such a trip. I can't offer you money, you won't let me. All right. I appeal to the boy I used to know at college, the fellow who fought for me one day. I need you worse now, old man."
Stuart hesitated and looked at Nan who had stood motionless while Bivens spoke.
"Well, if that's the way you put it, I'll take a vacation and go with you for a month."
Bivens seized his hand and pressed it gratefully.
Nan walked slowly across the room, looked into his eyes and said, with emotion:
And the devil who was standing in the shadows smiled in anticipation of interesting events on board that yacht.
In five days the party had completed all preparations and Bivens's big steamer, the _Buccaneer_, slipped quietly through the Narrows and headed for the Virginia coast, towing a trim little schooner built for cruising in the shoal waters of the South.
They had scarcely put to sea when Stuart began to curse himself for being led into such a situation.
Bivens had insisted with amateurish enthusiasm that they begin the cruise on the little schooner--with her limited crew and close quarters--at once, and use the _Buccaneer_ as her tender. The moment they struck the swell outside Sandy Hook the financier went to bed and the doctor never left his side until the trip ended.
Nan was in magnificent spirits, her cheeks flushed and her eyes sparkling with the joy of a child. Stuart watched her with growing wonder at her eternal youth. She was more beautiful in her stylish yachting costume than the day she landed in New York, at nineteen. There was not a line in the smooth surface of her rounded neck and shoulders.