Cargo of Coffins by L. Ron Hubbard Read Free Book Online

and had to take refuge among us and it is enough that he die unknown without burying him in that fashion. I . . .”
    “Have you looked this up in a peerage?” demanded Lars. “There’s some mistake! He’s Paco Corvino, a—”
    He stopped himself in time. To confess Paco’s complete identity would be to ruin himself.
    Terry was very cold to him. “It is not good taste to doubt the dead.”
    Aunt Agatha was wholly hostile on the instant. “The idea!” she sniffed, and tottered down the ladder to the main deck.
    Lars was left to his amazement. What was this all about? And with Paco dead . . . What good could it do anyone now?
    He moodily saw his watch through and at noon he finished his notes and went down to see if there were any further orders. He had already changed the course and speeded up for Pernambuco .
    In his commodious cabin, at one, he sat down to eat his luncheon in solitary gloom. His appetite was small, completely taken away by the knowledge that Paco, ex-convict, dope-smuggler and multi-murderer, would be buried as he had lived, in complete deceit.
    He could not dispel the lowering cloud of apprehension which closed gradually in upon him. Something was wrong with all this. The danger had not ceased. He felt it had just begun. A nameless premonition of disaster hung around him. Paco, certainly, was not through with this ship and Miss Norton. But there was no arguing the slowness of the wavering pulse and the death rattle he had heard in Paco’s throat.
    Bleakly, he hunched over his laden board and stared unseeing at the shining riot guns and rifles in locked racks on his walnut wall.
    Had Paco made some rendezvous with criminals at sea?
    Lars reproached himself for not acting in Rio. But how could he have done anything without bringing about his own return to the Penal Colony? Certainly a man owed himself some protection.
    Shock-haired Ralph knocked on the door and Lars bade him enter. Ralph Norton would have been handsome had he thought more about his personal appearance and less about his dreams. He was younger than Terry—Lars judged about eighteen.
    “This is a pretty awful thing,” said Ralph, lying back in the captain’s easy chair and shoving his long legs out before him. “I’ll bet you feel pretty bad about losing your pal, huh?”
    Lars thought it better not to answer that.
    “The whole ship is in an uproar,” said Ralph. “Nobody had the least idea Paco was a real prince. Aunt Agatha will never get over making him wait upon her. Think of it! A real prince all the time. The girls feel pretty silly and pretty sad over the way they talked about wanting to meet princes when they had one right there.”
    “Ever think that might be a fake?” said Lars.
    “A fake!” cried Ralph. “Why should it be a fake? Good God, the man wouldn’t own up to it until he was dying, would he? And a man on his deathbed wouldn’t tell a lie. There’d be no point in it.”
    “That is what is worrying me,” said Lars.
    “What?”
    “Nothing. I suppose Terry will radio the news this afternoon.”
    “She can’t,” said Ralph. “Those documents are a sacred trust. She isn’t supposed to let anybody know about it until those letters he wrote have been placed in the right hands. Terry keeps her word. You don’t seem very excited about it.”
    Lars speared a potato with his fork and ate it.
    “Wasn’t he your best friend?” persisted Ralph. “He said he was.”
    “Sure,” said Lars. “My very best friend.”
    Ralph missed the irony. “I get it. You’re taking it big. Sure you would. A fellow like you who’s been all around wouldn’t break down or get excited. Say, this ship is sure getting its share of dead men. First Simpson and then Paco. Wonder who’ll be next? These things run in threes, you know.”
    “Do they?” said Lars.
    “Sure. Everything I read says they do. Railroad wrecks and drownings and things. Of course there’ll be three.”
    Ralph found it very unsatisfactory to try