223CHAPTER XXTHE DROP OF IRISH
The usual signs of land greeted Neeland when he rose early next morning and went out on deck for the first time without his olive-wood box—first a few gulls, then puffins, terns, and other sea fowl in increasing numbers, weed floating, fishing smacks, trawlers tossing on the rougher coast waters.
After breakfast he noticed two British torpedo boat destroyers, one to starboard, the other on the port bow, apparently keeping pace with theVolhynia. They were still there at noon, subjects of speculation among the passengers; and at tea-time their number was increased to five, the three new destroyers appearing suddenly out of nowhere, dead ahead, dashing forward through a lively sea under a swirling vortex of gulls.
The curiosity of the passengers, always easily aroused, became more thoroughly stirred up by the bulletins posted late that afternoon, indicating that the tension between the several European chancelleries was becoming acute, and that emperors and kings were exchanging personal telegrams.
There was all sorts of talk on deck and at the dinner table, wild talk, speculative talk, imaginative discussions, logical and illogical. But, boiled down to its basic ingredients, the wildest imagination on board theVolhyniaadmitted war to be an impossibility of modern times, and that, ultimately, diplomacy would224settle what certainly appeared to be the ugliest international situation in a hundred years.
At the bottom of his heart Neeland believed this, too; wished for it when his higher and more educated spiritual self was flatly interrogated; and yet, in the everyday, impulsive ego of James Neeland, the drop of Irish had begun to sing and seethe with the atavistic instinct for a row.
War? He didn’t know what it meant, of course. It made good poetry and interesting fiction; it rendered history amusing; made dry facts succulent.
Preparations for war in Europe, which had been going on for fifty years, were most valuable, too, in contributing the brilliant hues of uniforms to an otherwise sombre civilian world, and investing commonplace and sober cities with the omnipresent looming mystery of fortifications.
To a painter, war seemed to be a dramatic and gorgeous affair; to a young man it appealed as all excitement appeals. The sportsman in him desired to witness a scrap; his artist’s imagination was aroused; the gambler in him speculated as to the outcome of such a war. And the seething, surging drop of Irish fizzed and purred and coaxed for a chance to edge sideways into any fight which God in His mercy might provide for a decent gossoon who had never yet had the pleasure of a broken head.
“Not,” thought Neeland to himself, “that I’ll go trailing my coat tails. I’ll go about my own business, of course—but somebody may hit me a crack at that!”
He thought of Ilse Dumont and of the man with the golden beard, realising that he had had a wonderful time, after all; sorry in his heart that it was all over225and that theVolhyniawas due to let go her mudhooks in the Mersey about three o’clock the next morning.
As he leaned on the deck rail in the soft July darkness, he could see the lights of the destroyers to port and starboard, see strings of jewel-like signals flash, twinkle, fade, and flash again.
All around him along the deck passengers were promenading, girls in evening gowns or in summer white; men in evening dress or reefed in blue as nautically as possible; old ladies toddling, swathed in veils, old gentlemen in dinner coats and sporting headgear—every weird or conventional combination infested the decks of theVolhynia.
Now, for the first time during the voyage, Neeland felt free to lounge about where he listed, saunter wherever the whim of the moment directed his casual steps. The safety of the olive-wood box was no longer on his mind, the handle no longer in his physical clutch. He was at liberty to stroll as carelessly as any boulevardflâneur; and he did so, scanning the passing throng for a glimpse of Ilse Dumont or of the golden-bearded one, but not seeing either of them.
In fact, he had not laid eyes on them since he had supped not wisely but too well on the soup that Scheherazade had flavoured for him.
The stateroom door of the golden-bearded man had remained closed. His own little cockney steward, who also looked out for Golden Beard, reported that gentleman as requiring five meals a day, with beer in proportion, and the porcelain pipe steaming like Ætna all day long.
His little West Indian stewardess also reported the gossip from her friend on another corridor, which was, in effect, that Miss White, the trained nurse, took all226meals in her room and had not been observed to leave that somewhat monotonous sanctuary.
How many more of the band there might be Neeland did not know. He remembered vaguely, while lying rigid under the grip of the drug, that he had heard Ilse Dumont’s voice mention somebody called Karl. And he had an idea that this Karl might easily be the big, ham-fisted German who had tried so earnestly to stifle him and throw him from the vestibule of the midnight express.
However, it did not matter now. The box was safe in the captain’s care; theVolhyniawould be lying at anchor off Liverpool before daylight; the whole exciting and romantic business was ended.
With an unconscious sigh, not entirely of relief, Neeland opened his cigarette case, found it empty, turned and went slowly below with the idea of refilling it.
They were dancing somewhere on deck; the music of the ship’s orchestra came to his ears. He paused a moment on the next deck to lean on the rail in the darkness and listen.
Far beneath him, through a sea as black as onyx, swept the reflections of the lighted ports; and he could hear the faint hiss of foam from the curling flow below.
As he turned to resume his quest for cigarettes, he was startled to see directly in front of him the heavy figure of a man—so close to him, in fact, that Neeland instinctively threw up his arm, elbow out, to avoid contact.
But the man, halting, merely lifted his hat, saying that in the dim light he had mistaken Neeland for a friend; and they passed each other on the almost227deserted deck, saluting formally in the European fashion, with lifted hats.
His spirits a trifle subdued, but still tingling with the shock of discovering a stranger so close behind him where he had stood leaning over the ship’s rail, Neeland continued on his way below.
Probably the big man had made a mistake in good faith; but the man certainly had approached very silently; was almost at his very elbow when discovered. And Neeland remembered the light-shot depths over which, at that moment, he had been leaning; and he realised that it would have been very easy for a man as big as that to have flung him overboard before he had wit to realise what had been done to him.
Neither could he forget the curious gleam in the stranger’s eyes when a ray from a deck light fell across his shadowy face—unusually small eyes set a little too close together to inspire confidence. Nor had the man’s slight accent escaped him—not a Teutonic accent, he thought, but something fuller and softer—something that originated east of Scutari, suggesting the Eurasian, perhaps.
But Neeland’s soberness was of volatile quality; before he arrived at his stateroom he had recovered his gaiety of spirit. He glanced ironically at the closed door of Golden Beard as he fitted his key into his own door.
“A lively lot,” he thought to himself, “what with Scheherazade, Golden Beard, and now Ali Baba—by jinx!—he certainly did have an Oriental voice!—and he looked the part, too, with a beak for a nose and a black moustache à la Enver Pasha!”
Much diverted by his own waxing imagination, he228turned on the light in his stateroom, filled the cigarette case, turned to go out, and saw on the carpet just inside his door a bit of white paper folded cocked-hat fashion and addressed to him.
Picking it up and unfolding it, he read:
May I see you this evening at eleven? My stateroom is 623. If there is anybody in the corridor, knock; if not, come in without knocking.I mean no harm to you. I give my word of honour. Please accept it for as much as your personal courage makes it worth to you—its face value, or nothing.Knowing you, I may say without flattery that I expect you. If I am disappointed, I still must bear witness to your courage and to a generosity not characteristic of your sex.You have had both power and provocation to make my voyage on this ship embarrassing. You have not done so. And self-restraint in a man is a very deadly weapon to use on a woman.I hope you will come. I desire to be generous on my part. Ask yourself whether you are able to believe this. You don’t know women, Mr. Neeland. Your conclusion probably will be a wrong one.But I think you’ll come, all the same. And you will be right in coming, whatever you believe.Ilse Dumont.
May I see you this evening at eleven? My stateroom is 623. If there is anybody in the corridor, knock; if not, come in without knocking.
I mean no harm to you. I give my word of honour. Please accept it for as much as your personal courage makes it worth to you—its face value, or nothing.
Knowing you, I may say without flattery that I expect you. If I am disappointed, I still must bear witness to your courage and to a generosity not characteristic of your sex.
You have had both power and provocation to make my voyage on this ship embarrassing. You have not done so. And self-restraint in a man is a very deadly weapon to use on a woman.
I hope you will come. I desire to be generous on my part. Ask yourself whether you are able to believe this. You don’t know women, Mr. Neeland. Your conclusion probably will be a wrong one.
But I think you’ll come, all the same. And you will be right in coming, whatever you believe.
Ilse Dumont.
It was a foregone conclusion that he would go. He knew it before he had read half the note. And when he finished it he was certain.
Amused, his curiosity excited, grateful that the adventure had not yet entirely ended, he lighted a cigarette and looked impatiently at his watch.
It lacked half an hour of the appointed time and his exhilaration was steadily increasing.
He stuck the note into the frame of his mirror over the washstand with a vague idea that if anything229happened to him this would furnish a clue to his whereabouts.
Then he thought of the steward, but, although he had no reason to believe the girl who had written him, something within him made him ashamed to notify the steward as to where he was going. He ought to have done it; common prudence born of experience with Ilse Dumont suggested it. And yet he could not bring himself to do it; and exactly why, he did not understand.
One thing, however, he could do; and he did. He wrote a note to Captain West giving the Paris address of the Princess Mistchenka, and asked that the olive-wood box be delivered to her in case any accident befell him. This note he dropped into the mailbox at the end of the main corridor as he went out. A few minutes later he stood in an empty passageway outside a door numbered 623. He had a loaded automatic in his breast pocket, a cigarette between his fingers, and, on his agreeable features, a smile of anticipation—a smile in which amusement, incredulity, reckless humour, and a spice of malice were blended—the smile born of the drop of Irish sparkling like champagne in his singing veins.
And he turned the knob of door No. 623 and went in.
She was reading, curled up on her sofa under the electric bulb, a cigarette in one hand, a box of bonbons beside her.
She looked up leisurely as he entered, gave him a friendly nod, and, when he held out his hand, placed her own in it. With delighted gravity he bent and saluted her finger tips with lips that twitched to control a smile.
“Will you be seated, please?” she said gently.
The softness of her agreeable voice struck him as230he looked around for a seat, then directly at her; and saw that she meant him to find a seat on the lounge beside her.
“Now, indeed you are Scheherazade of the Thousand and One Nights,” he said gaily, “with your cigarette and your bonbons, and cross-legged on your divan––”
“Did Scheherazade smoke cigarettes, Mr. Neeland?”
“No,” he admitted; “that is an anachronism, I suppose. Tell me, how are you, dear lady?”
“Thank you, quite well.”
“And—busy?” His lips struggled again to maintain their gravity.
“Yes, I have been busy.”
“Cooking something up?—I mean soup, of course,” he added.
She forced a smile, but reddened as though it were difficult for her to accustom herself to his half jesting sarcasms.
“So you’ve been busy,” he resumed tormentingly, “but not with cooking lessons! Perhaps you’ve been practising with your pretty little pistol. You know you really need a bit of small arms practice, Scheherazade.”
“Because I once missed you?” she inquired serenely.
“Why so you did, didn’t you?” he exclaimed, delighted to goad her into replying.
“Yes,” she said, “I missed you. I needn’t have. I am really a dead shot, Mr. Neeland.”
“Oh, Scheherazade!” he protested.
She shrugged:
“I am not bragging; I could have killed you. I supposed it was necessary only to frighten you. It was my mistake and a bad one.”231
“My dear child,” he expostulated, “you meant murder and you know it. Do you suppose I believe that you know how to shoot?”
“But I do, Mr. Neeland,” she returned with good-humoured indifference. “My father was headjägerto Count Geier von Sturmspitz, and I was already a dead shot with a rifle when we emigrated to Canada. And when he became an Athabasca trader, and I was only twelve years old, I could set a moose-hide shoe-lace swinging and cut it in two with a revolver at thirty yards. And I can drive a shingle nail at that distance and drive the bullet that drove it, and the next and the next, until my revolver is empty. You don’t believe me, do you?”
“You know that the beautiful Scheherazade––”
“Was famous for her fantastic stories? Yes, I know that, Mr. Neeland. I’m sorry you don’t believe I fired only to frighten you.”
“I’m sorry I don’t,” he admitted, laughing, “but I’ll practise trying, and maybe I shall attain perfect credulity some day. Tell me,” he added, “whathaveyou been doing to amuse yourself?”
“I’ve been amusing myself by wondering whether you would come here to see me tonight.”
“But your note said you were sure I’d come.”
“Youhavecome, haven’t you?”
“Yes, Scheherazade, I’m here at your bidding, spirit and flesh. But I forgot to bring one thing.”
“What?”
“The box which—you have promised yourself.”
“Yes, the captain has it, I believe,” she returned serenely.
“Oh, Lord! Have you even found outthat? I don’t know whether I’m much flattered by this surveillance232you and your friends maintain over me. I suppose you even know what I had for dinner. Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Come, I’ll call that bluff, dear lady! What did I have?”
When she told him, carelessly, and without humour, mentioning accurately every detail of his dinner, he lost his gaiety of countenance a little.
“Oh, I say, you know,” he protested, “that’s going it a trifle too strong. Now, why the devil should your people keep tabs on me to that extent?”
She looked up directly into his eyes:
“Mr. Neeland, I want to tell you why. I asked you here so that I may tell you. The people associated with me are absolutely pledged that neither the French nor the British Government shall have access to the contents of your box. That is why nothing that you do escapes our scrutiny. We are determined to have the papers in that box, and we shall have them.”
“You have come to that determination too late,” he began; but she stopped him with a slight gesture of protest:
“Please don’t interrupt me, Mr. Neeland.”
“I won’t; go on, dear lady!”
“Then, I’m trying to tell you all I may. I am trying to tell you enough of the truth to make you reflect very seriously.
“This is no ordinary private matter, no vulgar attempt at robbery and crime as you think—or pretend to think—for you are very intelligent, Mr. Neeland, and you know that the contrary is true.
“This affair concerns the secret police, the embassies, the chancelleries, the rulers themselves of nations long233since grouped into two formidable alliances radically hostile to one another.
“I don’t think you have understood—perhaps even yet you do not understand why the papers you carry are so important to certain governments—why it is impossible that you be permitted to deliver them to the Princess Mistchenka––”
“Where didyouever hear ofher!” he demanded in astonishment.
The girl smiled:
“Dear Mr. Neeland, I know the Princess Mistchenka better, perhaps, than you do.”
“Do you?”
“Indeed I do. What do you know about her? Nothing at all except that she is handsome, attractive, cultivated, amusing, and apparently wealthy.
“You know her as a traveller, a patroness of music and the fine arts—as a devotee of literature, as a graceful hostess, and an amiable friend who gives promising young artists letters of introduction to publishers who are in a position to offer them employment.”
That this girl should know so much about the Princess Mistchenka and about his own relations with her amazed Neeland. He did not pretend to account for it; he did not try; he sat silent, serious, and surprised, looking into the pretty and almost smiling face of a girl who apparently had been responsible for three separate attempts to kill him—perhaps even a fourth attempt; and who now sat beside him talking in a soft and agreeable voice about matters concerning which he had never dreamed she had heard.
For a few moments she sat silent, observing in his changing expression the effects of what she had said to him. Then, with a smile:234
“Ask me whatever questions you desire to ask, Mr. Neeland. I shall do my best to answer them.”
“Very well,” he said bluntly; “how do you happen to know so much about me?”
“I know something about the friends of the Princess Mistchenka. I have to.”
“Did you know who I was there in the house at Brookhollow?”
“No.”
“When, then?”
“When you yourself told me your name, I recognised it.”
“I surprised you by interrupting you in Brookhollow?”
“Yes.”
“You expected no interruption?”
“None.”
“How did you happen to go there? Where did you ever hear of the olive-wood box?”
“I had advices by cable from abroad—directions to go to Brookhollow and secure the box.”
“Then somebody must be watching the Princess Mistchenka.”
“Of course,” she said simply.
“Why ‘of course’?”
“Mr. Neeland, the Princess Mistchenka and her youthfulprotégée, Miss Carew––”
“What!!!”
The girl smiled wearily:
“Really,” she said, “you are such a boy to be mixed in with matters of this colour. I think that’s the reason you have defeated us—the trained fencer dreads a left-handed novice more than any classic master of the foils.235
“And that is what you have done to us—blundered—if you’ll forgive me—into momentary victory.
“But such victories are only momentary, Mr. Neeland. Please believe it. Please try to understand, too, that this is no battle with masks and plastrons and nicely padded buttons. No; it is no comedy, but a grave and serious affair that must inevitably end in tragedy—for somebody.”
“For me?” he asked without smiling.
She turned on him abruptly and laid one hand lightly on his arm with a pretty gesture, at once warning, appealing, and protective.
“I asked you to come here,” she said, “because—because I want you to escape the tragedy.”
“You wantmeto escape?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I—am sorry for you.”
He said nothing.
“And—I like you, Mr. Neeland.”
The avowal in the soft, prettily modulated voice, lost none of its charm and surprise because the voice was a trifle tremulous, and the girl’s face was tinted with a delicate colour.
“I like to believe what you say, Scheherazade,” he said pleasantly. “Somehow or other I never did think you hated me personally—except once––”
She flushed, and he was silent, remembering her humiliation in the Brookhollow house.
“I don’t know,” she said in a colder tone, “why I should feel at all friendly toward you, Mr. Neeland, except that you are personally courageous, and you have shown yourself generous under a severe temptation to be otherwise.236
“As for—any personal humiliation—inflicted upon me––” She looked down thoughtfully and pretended to sort out a bonbon to her taste, while the hot colour cooled in her cheeks.
“I know,” he said, “I’ve also jeered at you, jested, nagged you, taunted you, kiss––” He checked himself and he smiled and ostentatiously lighted a cigarette.
“Well,” he said, blowing a cloud of aromatic smoke toward the ceiling, “I believe that this is as strange a week as any man ever lived. It’s like a story book—like one of your wonderful stories, Scheherazade. It doesn’t seem real, now that it is ended––”
“It is not ended,” she interrupted in a low voice.
He smiled.
“You know,” he said, “there’s no use trying to frighten such an idiot as I am.”
She lifted her troubled eyes:
“That is what frightensme,” she said. “I am afraid you don’t know enough to be afraid.”
He laughed.
“But I want you to be afraid. A really brave man knows what fear is. I wantyouto know.”
“What do you wish me to do, Scheherazade?”
“Keep away from that box.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can. You can leave it in charge of the captain of this ship and let him see that an attempt is made to deliver it to the Princess Mistchenka.”
She was in deadly earnest; he saw that. And, in spite of himself, a slight thrill that was almost a chill passed over him, checked instantly by the hot wave of sheer exhilaration at the hint of actual danger.
“Oho!” he said gaily. “Then you and your friends are not yet finished with me?”237
“Yes, if you will consider your mission accomplished.”
“And leave the rest to the captain of theVolhynia?”
“Yes.”
“Scheherazade,” he said, “did you suppose me to be a coward?”
“No. You have done all that you can. A reserve officer of the British Navy has the box in his charge. Let him, protected by his Government, send it toward its destination.”
In her even voice the implied menace was the more sinister for her calmness.
He looked at her, perplexed, and shook his head.
“I ask you,” she went on, “to keep out of this affair—to disassociate yourself from it. I ask it because you have been considerate and brave, and because I do not wish you harm.”
He turned toward her, leaning a little forward on the lounge:
“No use,” he said, smiling. “I’m in it until it ends––”
“Let it end then!” said a soft, thick voice directly behind him. And Neeland turned and found the man he had seen on deck standing beside him. One of his fat white hands held an automatic pistol, covering him; the other was carefully closing the door which he had noiselessly opened to admit him.
“Karl!” exclaimed Ilse Dumont.
“It is safaire that you do not stir, either, to interfere,” he said, squinting for a second at her out of his eyes set too near together.
“Karl!” she cried. “I asked him to come in order to persuade him! I gave him my word of honour!”
“Did you do so? Then all the bettaire. I think we238shall persuade him. Do not venture to move, young man; I shoot veree willingly.”
And Neeland, looking at him along the blunt barrel of the automatic pistol, was inclined to believe him.
His sensations were not agreeable; he managed to maintain a calm exterior; choke back the hot chagrin that reddened his face to the temples; and cast a half humorous, half contemptuous glance at Ilse Dumont.
“You prove true, don’t you?” he said coolly. “—True to your trade of story-telling, Scheherazade!”
“I knew—nothing—of this!” she stammered.
But Neeland only laughed disagreeably.
Then the door opened again softly, and Golden Beard came in without his crutches.
239CHAPTER XXIMETHOD AND FORESIGHT
Without a word—with merely a careless glance at Neeland, who remained seated under the level threat of Ali Baba’s pistol, the big, handsome German removed his overcoat. Under it was another coat. He threw this off in a brisk, businesslike manner, unbuckled a brace of pistols, laid them aside, unwound from his body a long silk rope ladder which dropped to the floor at Ilse Dumont’s feet.
The girl had turned very pale. She stooped, picked up the silk ladder, and, holding it in both hands, looked hard at Golden Beard.
“Johann,” she said, “I gave my word of honour to this young man that if he came here no harm would happen to him.”
“I read the note you have shoved under his door,” said Golden Beard. “That iss why we are here, Karl and I.”
Neeland remembered the wax in the keyhole then. He turned his eyes on Ilse Dumont, curiously, less certain of her treachery now.
Meanwhile, Golden Beard continued busily unwinding things from his apparently too stout person, and presently disengaged three life-belts.
One of these he adjusted to his own person, then, putting on his voluminous overcoat, took the pistol from Ali Baba, who, in turn, adjusted one of the remaining life-belts to his body.240
Neeland, deeply perplexed and uncomfortable, watched these operations in silence, trying to divine some reason for them.
“Now, then!” said Golden Beard to the girl; and his voice sounded cold and incisive in the silence.
“This is not the way to do it,” she said in a low tone. “I gave him my word of honour.”
“You will be good enough to buckle on that belt,” returned Golden Beard, staring at her.
Slowly she bent over, picked up the life-belt, and, looping the silk rope over her arm, began to put on the belt. Golden Beard, impatient, presently came to her assistance; then he unhooked from the wall a cloak and threw it over her shoulders.
“Now, Karl!” he said. “Shoot him dead if he stirs!” And he snatched a sheet from the bed, tore it into strips, walked over to Neeland, and deftly tied him hand and foot and gagged him.
Then Golden Beard and Ali Baba, between them, lifted the young man and seated him on the iron bed and tied him fast to it.
“Go out on deck!” said Golden Beard to Ilse Dumont.
“Let me stay––”
“No! You have acted like a fool. Go to the lower deck where is our accustomed rendezvous.”
“I wish to remain, Johann. I shall not interfere––”
“Go to the lower deck, I tell you, and be ready to tie that rope ladder!”
Ali Baba, down on his knees, had pulled out a steamer trunk from under the bed, opened it, and was lifting out three big steel cylinders.
These he laid on the bed in a row beside the tied man; and Golden Beard, still facing Ilse Dumont, turned his head to look.241
The instant his head was turned the girl snatched a pistol from the brace of weapons on the washstand and thrust it under her cloak. Neither Golden Beard nor Ali Baba noticed the incident; the latter was busy connecting the three cylinders with coils of wire; the former, deeply interested, followed the operation for a moment or two, then walking over to the trunk, he lifted from it a curious little clock with two dials and set it on the railed shelf of glass above the washstand.
“Karl, haf you ship’s time?”
Ali Baba paused to fish out his watch, and the two compared timepieces. Then Golden Beard wound the clock, set the hands of one dial at the time indicated by their watches; set the hands of the other dial at 2:13; and Ali Baba, carrying a reel of copper wire from the bed to the washstand, fastened one end of it to the mechanism of the clock.
Golden Beard turned sharply on Ilse Dumont:
“I said go on deck! Did you not understand?”
The girl replied steadily:
“I understood that we had abandoned this idea for a better one.”
“There iss no better one!”
“Thereis! Of what advantage would it be to blow up the captain’s cabin and the bridge when it is not certain that the papers will be destroyed?”
“Listen once!” returned Golden Beard, wagging his finger in her face:
“Cabin and bridge are directly above us and there remains not a splinter large like a pin! I know. I know my bombs! I know––”
The soft voice of Ali Baba interrupted, and his shallow, lightish eyes peered around at them:242
“Eet ees veree excellent plan, Johann. We do not require these papers; eet ees to destroy them we are mooch anxious”—he bent a deathly stare on Neeland—“and this yoong gentleman who may again annoy us.” He nodded confidently to himself and continued to connect the wires. “Yes, yes,” he murmured absently, “eet ees veree good plan—veree good plan to blow him into leetle pieces so beeg as a pin.”
“It is a clumsy plan!” said the girl, desperately. “There is no need for wanton killing like this, when we can––”
“Killing?” repeated Golden Beard. “That makes nothing. This English captain he iss of the naval reserve.Undthis young man”—nodding coolly toward Neeland—“knows too much already. That iss not wanton killing.Also!You talk too much. Do you hear? We are due to drop anchor about 2:30. God knows there will be enough rushing to and fro at 2:13.
“Go on deck, I say, and fasten that rope ladder! Weishelm’s fishing smack will be watching;undif we do not swim for it we are caught on board!Undthat iss the end of it all for us!”
“Johann,” she began tremulously, “listen to me––”
“Nein! Nein!What for aFrauenzimmerhaff we here!” retorted Golden Beard, losing his patience and catching her by the arm. “Go out und fix for us our ladder und keep it coiled on the rail und lean ofer it like you was looking at those stars once!”
He forced her toward the door; she turned, struggling, to confront him:
“Then for God’s sake, give this man a chance! Don’t leave him tied here to be blown to atoms! Give him a chance—anything except this! Throw him out of the port, there!” She pointed at the closed port, evaded243Golden Beard, sprang upon the sofa, unscrewed the glass cover, and swung it open.
The port was too small even to admit the passage of her own body; she realised it; Golden Beard laughed and turned to examine the result of Ali Baba’s wiring.
For a second the girl gazed wildly around her, as though seeking some help in her terrible dilemma, then she snatched up a bit of the torn sheeting, tied it to the screw of the porthole cover, and flung the end out where it fluttered in the darkness.
As she sprang to the floor Golden Beard swung round in renewed anger at her for still loitering.
“Sacreminton!” he exclaimed. “It is time you do your part! Go to your post then! We remain here until five minutes is left us. Then we join you.”
The girl nodded, turned to the door.
“Wait! You understand the plan?”
“Yes.”
“You understand that you do not go overboard until we arrive, no matter what happens?”
“Yes.”
He stood looking at her for a moment, then with a shrug he went over and patted her shoulder.
“That’s my brave girl! I also do not desire to kill anybody. But when the Fatherland is in danger, then killing signifies nothing—is of no consequence—pouf!—no lives are of importance then—not even our own!” He laughed in a fashion almost kindly and clapped her lightly once more on her shoulder: “Go, my child. The Fatherland is in danger!”
She went, not looking back. He closed and locked the door behind her and calmly turned to aid Ali Baba who was still fussing with the wires. Presently, however, he mounted the bed where Neeland sat tied and244gagged; pulled from his pockets an auger with its bit, a screw-eye, and block and tackle; and, standing on the bed, began to bore a hole in the ceiling.
In a few moments he had fastened the screw-eye, rigged his block, made a sling for his bombs out of a blanket, and had hoisted the three cylinders up flat against the ceiling from whence the connecting wires sagged over the foot of the bedstead to the alarm clock on the washstand.
To give the clock more room on the glass shelf, Ali Baba removed the toilet accessories and set them on the washstand; but he had no room for a large jug of water, and, casting about for a place to set it, noticed a railed bracket over the head of the bed, and placed it there.
Then, apparently satisfied with his labours, he sat down Turk fashion on the sofa, lighted a cigarette, selected a bonbon from the box beside him, and calmly regaled himself.
Presently Golden Beard tied the cord which held up the sling in which the bombs were slung against the ceiling. He fastened it tightly to the iron frame of the bed, stepped back to view the effect, then leisurely pulled out and filled his porcelain pipe, and seated himself on the sofa beside Ali Baba.
Neither spoke; twice Golden Beard drew his watch from his waistcoat pocket and compared it carefully with the dial of the alarm clock on the washstand shelf. The third time he did this he tapped Ali Baba on the shoulder, rose, knocked out his pipe and flung it out of the open port.
Together they walked over to Neeland, examined the gag and ligatures as impersonally as though the prisoner were not there, nodded their satisfaction,245turned off the electric light, and, letting themselves out, locked the door on the outside.
It lacked five minutes of the time indicated on the alarm dial.
246CHAPTER XXIITWO THIRTEEN
To Neeland, the entire affair had seemed as though it were some rather obvious screen-picture at which he was looking—some photo-play too crudely staged, and in which he himself was no more concerned than any casual spectator.
Until now, Neeland had not been scared; Ali Baba and his automatic pistol were only part of this unreality; his appearance on the scene had been fantastically classical; he entered when his cue was given by Scheherazade—this oily, hawk-nosed Eurasian with his pale eyes set too closely and his moustache hiding under his nose à la Enver Pasha—a faultless make-up, an entry properly timed and prepared. And then, always well-timed for dramatic effect, Golden Beard had appeared. Everything wasen règle, every unity nicely preserved. Scheherazade had protested; and her protest sounded genuine. Also entirely convincing was the binding and gagging of himself at the point of an automatic pistol; and, as for the rest of the business, it was practically all action and little dialogue—an achievement really in these days of dissertation.
All, as he looked on at it over the bandage which closed his mouth, had seemed unreal, impersonal, even when his forced attitude had caused him inconvenience and finally pain.
But now, with the light extinguished and the closing of the door behind Golden Beard and Ali Baba, he247experienced a shock which began to awaken him to the almost incredible and instant reality of things.
It actually began to look as though these story-book conspirators—these hirelings of a foreign government who had not been convincing because they were too obvious, too well done—actually intended to expose him to serious injury.
In spite of their sinister intentions in regard to him, in spite of their attempts to harm him, he had not, so far, been able to take them seriously or even to reconcile them and their behaviour with the commonplaces of the twentieth century in which he lived.
But now, in the darkness, with the clock on the washstand shelf ticking steadily, he began to take the matter very seriously. The gag in his mouth hurt him cruelly; the bands of linen that held it in began to stifle him so that his breath came in quick gasps through his nostrils; sweat started at the roots of his hair; his heart leaped, beat madly, stood still, and leaped again; and he threw himself against the strips that held him and twisted and writhed with all his strength.
Suddenly fear pierced him like a poignard; for a moment panic seized him and chaos reigned in his bursting brain. He swayed and strained convulsively; he strove to hurl all the inward and inert reserve of strength against the bonds that held him.
After what seemed an age of terrible effort he found himself breathing fast and heavily as though his lungs would burst through his straining, dilating nostrils, seated exactly as he had been without a band loosened, and the icy sweat pouring over his twitching face.
He heard himself trying to shout—heard the imprisoned groan shattered in his own throat, dying there within him.248
Suddenly a key rattled; the door was torn open; the light switched on. Golden Beard stood there, his blue eyes glaring furious inquiry. He gave one glance around the room, caught sight of the clock, recoiled, shut off the light again, and slammed and locked the door.
But in that instant Neeland’s starting eyes had seen the clock. The fixed hands on one of the dials still pointed to 2:13; the moving hands on the other lacked three minutes of that hour.
And, seated there in the pitch darkness, he suddenly realised that he had only three minutes more of life on earth.
All panic was gone; his mind was quite clear. He heard every tick of the clock and knew what each one meant.
Also he heard a sudden sound across the room, as though outside the port something was rustling against the ship’s side.
Suddenly there came a click and the room sprang into full light; an arm, entering the open port from the darkness outside, let go the electric button, was withdrawn, only to reappear immediately clutching an automatic pistol. And the next instant the arm and the head of Ilse Dumont were thrust through the port into the room.
Her face was pale as death as her eyes fell on the dial of the clock. With a gasp she stretched out her arm and fired straight at the clock, shattering both dials and knocking the timepiece into the washbasin below.
For a moment she struggled to force her other shoulder and her body through the port, but it was too narrow. Then she called across to the bound figure249seated on the bed and staring at her with eyes that fairly started from their sockets:
“Mr. Neeland, can’t you move? Try! Try to break loose––”
Her voice died away in a whisper as a flash of bluish flame broke out close to the ceiling overhead, where the three bombs were slung.
“Oh, God!” she faltered. “The fuses are afire!”
For an instant her brain reeled; she instinctively recoiled as though to fling herself out into the darkness. Then, in a second, her extended arm grew rigid, slanted upward; the pistol exploded once, twice, the third time; the lighted bombs in their sling, released by the severed rope, fell to the bed, the fuses sputtering and fizzling.
Instantly the girl fired again at the big jug of water on the bracket over the head of the bed; a deluge drenched the bed underneath; two fuses were out; one still snapped and glimmered and sent up little jets and rings of vapour; but as the water soaked into the match the cinder slowly died until the last spark fell from the charred wet end and went out on the drenched blanket.
She waited a little longer, then with an indescribable look at the helpless man below, she withdrew her head, pushed herself free, hung to the invisible rope ladder for a moment, swaying against the open port. His eyes were fastened on her where she dangled there against the darkness betwixt sky and sea, oscillating with the movement of the ship, her pendant figure now gilded by the light from the room, now phantom dim as she swung outward.
As the roll of the ship brought her head to the level of the port once more, she held up her pistol, shook it, and laughed at him:250
“Now do you believe that I can shoot?” she called out. “Answer me some time when that mocking tongue of yours is free!”
Then, climbing slowly upward into darkness, the light, falling now across her body, now athwart her skirt, gilded at last the heels of her shoes; suddenly she was gone; then stars glittered through the meshes of the shadowy, twitching ladder which still barred the open port. And finally the ladder was pulled upward out of sight.
He waited. After a little while—an interminable interval to him—he heard somebody stealthily trying the handle of the door; then came a pause, silence, followed by a metallic noise as though the lock were being explored or picked.
For a while the scraping, metallic sounds continued steadily, then abruptly ceased as though the unseen meddler had been interrupted.
A voice—evidently the voice of the lock-picker—pitched to a cautious key, was heard in protest as though objecting to some intentions evident in the new arrival. Whispered expostulations continued for a while, then the voices became quarrelsome and louder; and somebody suddenly rapped on the door.
Then a thick, soft voice that he recognised with a chill, grew angrily audible:
“I say to you, steward, that I forbid you to entaire that room. I forbid you to disturb thees yoong lady. Do you know who I am?”
“I don’t care who you are––”
“I have authority. I shall employ it. You shall lose your berth! Thees yoong lady within thees room ees my fiancée! I forbid you to enter forcibly––”
“Haven’t I knocked? Wot’s spilin’ you? I am251doing my duty. Back away from this ’ere door, I tell you!”
“You spik thees-a-way, so impolite––”
“Get out o’ my way! Blime d’you think I’ll stand ’ere jawin’ any longer?”
“I am membaire of Parliament––”
And the defiant voice of Jim’s own little cockney steward retorted, interrupting:
“Ahr, stow it! Don’t I tell you as how a lydy telephones me just now that my young gentleman is in there? Get away from that door, you blighter, or I’ll bash your beak in!”
The door trembled under a sudden and terrific kick; the wordy quarrel ceased; hurried steps retreated along the corridor; a pass key rattled in the lock, and the door was flung wide open:
“Mr. Neeland, sir—oh, my Gawd, wot ever ’ave they gone and done, sir, to find you ’ere in such a ’orrid state!”
But the little cockney lost no time; fingers and pen-knife flew; Neeland, his arms free, tore the bandage from his mouth and spat out the wad of cloth.
“I’ll do the rest,” he gasped, forcing the words from his bruised and distorted lips; “follow that man who was outside talking to you! Find him if you can. He had been planning to blow up this ship!”
“Thatman, sir!”
“Yes! Did you know him?”
“Yes, sir; but I darsn’t let on to him I knew him—what with ’earing that you was in here––”
“Youdidknow him?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Who is he?”
“Mr. Neeland, sir, that there cove is wot he says252he is, a member of Parliament, and his name is Wilson––”
“You’re mad! He’s an Eurasian, a spy; his name is Karl Breslau—I heard it from the others—and he tried to blow up the captain’s cabin and the bridge with those three bombs lying there on the bed!”
“My God, sir—what you tell me may be so, but what I say is true, sir; that gentleman you heard talking outside the door to me is Charles Wilson, member of Parliament, representing Glebe and Wotherness; and I knew it w’en I ’anded ’im the ’ot stuff!—’strewth I did, sir—and took my chance you’d ’elp me out if I got in too rotten with the company!”
Neeland said:
“Certainly you may count on me. You’re a brick!” He continued to rub and slap and pinch his arms and legs to restore the circulation, and finally ventured to rise to his shaky feet. The steward offered an arm; together they hobbled to the door, summoned another steward, placed him in charge of the room, and went on in quest of Captain West, to whom an immediate report was now imperative.