The Dock Rats of New York | Page 7

can give you information for which the government
would pay thousands! and even to-night in serving me you would also
serve yourself."
"Will you tell me how?"
"One of the bosses is to visit the shore to-night."
"Aha! there is where the whale blows."

"Yes."
"Who does he visit?"
"Tom Pearce."
"What is his purpose?"
"I only guess."
"What do you guess?"
"Am I to speak more plainly to you, or can you not discern?"
"Have you ever met the man?"
"Yes."
"You fear him?"
"I do not know yet; you may find out."
"What do you suspect?"
A moment the girl was silent, but at length she said:
"I suspect I am to be sent away!"
"You mistrust your reputed father?"
"I do."
"And this man comes to-night?"
"Yes."
"You would offer a suggestion?"
"Are you prepared to take advantage of my information?"

"I am."
"Watch them: learn their purpose!"
"Where do they meet?"
"In my father's cabin."
"Lead me there."
"I will."
The detective decided not to go off in the yacht that night. He preferred
to be "taken in tow" by beautiful little barefoot, and strange adventures
were the outcome of his change of plans.
The detective and the girl traversed a mile and a half of the beach and
then struck inland, and soon came in sight of the glimmer of lights
gleaming forth from a fisherman's shanty.
"They meet there. You know how to act, and I can give you no 'points'
when it comes to 'piping.' Good-bye for the present."
The girl glided away and the detective proceeded toward the cabin only
to encounter a series of thrilling, extraordinary, and startling
adventures.
CHAPTER V.
Spencer Vance had become greatly interested in the beautiful Renie
during the walk along the beach. He had become deeply impressed with
the purity, yet weirdness of her character. He had pressed the girl for
some reminiscence of her early childhood, but she had no recollections
beyond the sea and the fisherman's cabin where she had lived with old
Tom Pearce and his wife.
Her supposed father had for years rowed her every morning across the
bay to the mainland, where she had attended the village school, from

whence she had passed to the high school, at which her reputed father
had supported her for a couple of years.
Mrs. Pearce died suddenly one day after a few hours' illness. Just
before her death Renie was alone with her in the room. The woman had
been unconscious, but she momentarily recovered consciousness and
summoned the girl to her bedside and attempted to communicate some
parting intelligence, but alas! she only succeeded in uttering a few
disjointed exclamations, suggestive, but not directly and fully
intelligible. The half-uttered exclamations only served to confirm
certain suspicions that had long floated unsuggested through the girl's
mind, and her disappointment was bitter when the icy hand of death
strangled the communications which the dying woman was seeking to
make.
The girl had formed a sort of attachment for Tom Pearce. The man was
a good-natured, jolly sailor sort of a fellow, and, as intimated, had
always treated the girl with the utmost kindness and consideration.
It was thus matters stood up to the time of the detective's strange
meeting with the girl upon the beach.
As the girl pointed to the house and concluded the words which close
our preceding chapter, she glided away, and left the detective to "work
his own passage".
During the walk along the beach Renie had been a little more explicit
in explaining her immediate peril, and our hero was prepared to more
intelligently enact the role of the eavesdropper.
The cabin of Tom Pearce, the boatman, was an ordinary fisherman's hut,
built in the midst of white sand-hills, with a few willows planted on a
little patch of made earth, and serving as protectors against the fierce
summer blaze of the sun.
The detective crept up to the cabin, and climbing upon a rear shed
which served as a cover to several boats and a large quantity of nets, he
covered himself with a fragment of old sailcloth, and secured a position

from where, through a little opening which in the summer was left
unclosed, he could see into the main room of the cottage. He could not
only see, but could as readily overhear any conversation that might
occur.
Glancing into the room, he saw Tom Pearce, whom he had seen many
times before on board several of the boats that sail over the bay. The
fisherman, or rather smuggler, was seated before a table on which stood
a ship's lamp, reading what appeared to be an old time-stained letter,
and after an interval he muttered aloud:
"Well, well, I don't know what to do! That girl is dear to my old