Toward nine o’clock to my relief it became obvious that theRe d’Italiawas really going to sail at last. The first and second whistles, sounding raucously, sent the company officials and the family of the young officer of reserves ashore. The plank was lowered; between the ship and the looming pier a thread of black water appeared and grew; a flash and an explosion indicated that the possibly doomed liner had been filmed according to schedule. “Evviva l’Italia!” yelled the returning braves in the steerage—a very decent set of fellows, it struck me, to leave so cheerfully their vocations of teamster, waiter, fruit vender, and the like, and go, unforced, to wear the gray-green coats of Italy, the short feathers of the mountain climbers, the bersagliere’s bunch of plumes, and to stand against their hereditary foes the Austrians, up in the snowy Alps.
The details of departure were an old tale to me. As we swung farther and farther out, I turned to a newspaper, a twentieth extra probably, which I had heard a newsboy crying along the dock a little earlier, and had bribed a steward to secure. Moon and stars were lacking to-night, but the deck lights were good reading-lamps. Moving up the rail to one of them, I investigated the world’s affairs.
From the first sheet the usual staring headlines leaped at me. There were the inevitable peace rumor, the double denial, the eternal bulletin of a trench taken here, a hill recaptured there. A sensational rumor was exploited to the effect that Franz von Blenheim, one of the star secret agents of the German Empire, was at present incognito at Washington, having spent the past month in putting his finger in the Mexican pie much to our disadvantage. On the last column of the page was the photograph of a distinguished-looking young man in uniform, with an announcement that promised some interest, I thought.
“War Scandal Bursts in France,” “Scion of Oldest Noblesse Implicated,” “Duke Mysteriously Missing,” I read in the diminishing degrees of the scare-head type. Then came the picture, with a mien attractively debonair, a pleasantly smiling mouth, and a sympathetic pair of eyes, and in due course, the tale. I clutched at the flapping ends of the paper and read on:
Of all the scandals to which the present war has given birth, none has stirred France more profoundly than that implicating Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier, Count of Druyes, Marquis of Beuil and Santenay, and Duke of Raincy-la-Tour. This young nobleman, head of a family that has played its part in French history since the days of the Northmen and the crusaders, bears in his veins the bluest blood of the old regime, and numbers among his ancestors no fewer than seven marshals and five constables of France.
A noted figure not only by his birth, his wealth, and his various historic chateaux, but also by his sporting proclivities, his daring automobile racing, his marvelous fencing, and his spectacular hunting trips, the Duke of Raincy-la-Tour has long been in addition an amateur aviator of considerable fame, and it was to the French Flying Corps that he was attached when hostilities began. Here he distinguished himself from the first by his coolness, his extraordinary resource, and his utter contempt for danger, and became one of the idols of the French army and a proverb for success and audacity, besides attaining to the rank of lieutenant, gaining, after his famous night flight across Mulhausen for bomb-dropping purposes, the affectionate sobriquet of the Firefly of France, and winning in rapid succession the military Medal, the ribbon of the Legion of Honor, and the Cross of War with palms.
According to rumor, the duke was lately intrusted with a mission of exceptional peril, involving a flight into hostile territory and the capture of certain photographs of defenses much needed for the plans of the supreme command. With his wonted brilliancy, he is said to have accomplished the errand and to have returned in safety as far as the French lines. Here, however, we enter the realm of conjecture. The duke has disappeared; the plans he bore have never reached the generalissimo; and rumor persistently declares that at some point upon his return journey he was intercepted by German agents and induced by bribes or coercion to deliver up his spoils. By one version he was later captured and summarily executed by the French; while his friends, denying this, pin their hopes to his death at the hands of the enemy, as offering the best outcome of the unsavory event.
The family of the Duke of Raincy-la-Tour has been noted in the past for its pronouncedly Royalist tendencies, the attitude of his father and grandfather toward the republic having been hostile in the extreme. It is believed that this fact may have its significance in the present episode. The occurrence is of special interest to the United States in view of the recent (Continued on Page Three)
Before proceeding, I glanced at the pictured face. The Duke of Raincy-la-tour looked back at me with cool, clear eyes, smiling half aloofly, a little scornfully, as in the presence of danger the true Frenchman is apt to smile.
“I don’t think, Jean-Herve-Marie-Olivier,” I reflected, “that you ever talked to the Germans except with bombs. They probably got you, poor chap, and you’re lying buried somewhere while the gossips make a holiday of the fact that you don’t come home. Confound ‘current rumors’ anyhow, and yellow papers too!”
“I beg your pardon,” said a low contralto voice.
The girl in the fur coat was standing at my shoulder. I turned, lifting my cap, wondering what under heaven she could want. I was not much pleased to tell the truth; a goddess shouldn’t step from her pedestal to chat with strangers. Then suddenly I recognized a distinct oddness in her air.
“Would you lend me your paper,” she was asking, “for just a moment? I haven’t seen one since morning; the evening editions were not out when I came on board.”
Her manner was proud, spirited, gracious; she even smiled; but she was frightened. I could read it in her slight pallor, in the quickening of her breath.
My extra! What was there in the day’s news that could upset her? I was nonplussed, but of course I at once extended the sheet.
“Certainly!” I replied politely. “Pray keep it.” Lifting my cap a second time, I turned to go.
Her fingers touched my arm.
“Wait! Please wait!” she was urging. There was a half-imperious, half-appealing note in her hushed voice.
I stared.
“I’m afraid,” I said blankly, “that I don’t quite—”
“Some one may suspect. Some one may come,” urged this most astonishing young woman. “Don’t you see that—that I’m trusting you to help me? Won’t you stay?”
Wondering if I by any chance looked as stunned as I felt, I bowed formally, faced about, and waited, both arms on the rail. My ideas as to my companion had been revolutionized in sixty seconds. I had believed her a girl with whom I might have grown up, a girl whose brother and cousins I had probably known at college, a girl that I might have met at a friend’s dinner or at the opera or on a country-club porch if I had had my luck with me. Now what was I to think her—an escaped lunatic or something more accountable and therefore worse? If I detest anything, it is the unconventional, the stagy, the mysterious. Setting my teeth, I resolved to wait until she concluded her researches; after that, politely but firmly, I would depart.
And then, beside me, the paper rustled. I heard a little gasp, a tiny low-drawn sigh. Stealing a glance down, I saw the girl’s face shining whitely in the deck light. Her black lashes fringed her cheeks as her head bent backward; her eyes were as dark as the water we were slipping through. I had no idea of speaking, and yet I did speak.
“I am afraid,” I heard myself saying, “that you have had bad news.”
She was struggling for self-control, but her voice wavered.
“Yes,” she agreed; “I am afraid I have.”
“If there is anything I can do—” I was correct, but reluctant. How I would bless her if she would go away!
But obviously she did not intend to. Quite the contrary!
“There is something,” she was murmuring, “that would help me very much.”
There, I had done it! I was an ass of the common or garden variety, who first resolved to keep out of a queer business and then, because a girl looked bothered, plunged into it up to my ears. I succeeded in hiding my feelings, in looking wooden.
“Please tell me,” I responded, “what it is.”
“But—I can’t explain it.” Her gloved hands tightened on the railing. “And if I ask without explaining, it will seem so—so strange.”
“Doubtless,” I reflected grimly. But I had to see the thing through now. “That doesn’t matter at all,” I assured her civilly through clenched teeth.
She came closer—so close that her fur coat brushed me, and her breath touched my cheek; her eyes, like gray stars now that they were less anxious, went to my head a little, I suppose. Oh, yes, she was lovely. Of course that was a factor. If she had been past her first youth and skimpy as to hair, and dowdy, I don’t pretend that I should ever have mixed myself up in the preposterous coil.
“This paper,” she whispered, holding out the sheet, “has something in it. It is not about me; it is not even true. But if it stays aboard the ship,—if some one sees it, it may make trouble. Oh, you see how it sounds; I knew you would think me mad!”
“Not in the least.” What an absurd rigmarole she was uttering! Yet such was the spell of her eyes, her voice, her nearness that I merely felt like saying, “Tell me some more.”
“I can’t destroy it myself,” she went on anxiously. “He—they—mustn’t see me do anything that might lead them to—to guess. But no one will think of you, nobody will be watching you; so by and by will you weight the paper with something heavy and drop it across the rail?”
My head was whirling, but a graven image might have envied me my impassivity. I bowed. “I shall be delighted,” I announced banally, “to do as you say.”
Her face flushed to a warm wild-rose tint as she heard me promise it, and her red lips, parting, took on a tremulous smile.
“Thank you,” she murmured in frank gratitude. “I thought—I knew you would help me!” Then she was gone.
My trance broken I woke to hear myself softly swearing. I consigned myself to my proper home, an asylum; I wished the girl at Timbuktu, Kamchatka, Land’s End—anywhere except on this ship. As I had told the agent of the Phillipson Rifles, I am no boy. One can scarcely knock about the world for thirty years without gaining some of its wisdom; and of all the appropriate truisms I spared myself not one.
Resentfully I reminded myself that mysteries were suspicious, that honest people seldom had need of secrecy, that idiots who, like me, consented to act blindfold would probably repent their blindness in sackcloth and ashes before long. But what use were these sage reflections? I had given my word to her. I was in for the consequences, however unpleasant they proved.
Without further mental parley I went down to my cabin, where I routed out from among my traps a bronze paper-weight as heavy as lead. Wrapping the mysterious sheet about it, I brought the package back on deck. There was not a soul in sight; it was a propitious hour.
To right and to left the coast lights were slipping past, making golden paths on the black water as our tug pulled us out to sea. The reservists down below were singing “Va fuori, o stranier!” I dropped my package overboard, watched it vanish, and turned to behold the sphinx-like Van Blarcom, sprung up as if by magic, regarding me placidly from the shelter of the smoking-room door.
For a trip that had begun with such rich promise of the unusual, my voyage on theRe d’Italiaproved a gratifying anticlimax during its first few days. The weather was bad. We plowed forward monotonously, flagless, running between dark-gray water and a lowering, leaden sky. Screws throbbed, timbers creaked, and dishes crashed as the Gulf Stream took us, and great waves reared themselves round us like myriads of threatening Alps.
After that first night the girl kept discreetly to her stateroom. I was relieved; but I thought of her a good deal. I had little else to do. Pacing a drunken deck and smoking, I wove unsatisfactory theories, asking myself what was her need of secrecy, what the item she wanted hidden, what the errand that had made her sail on the vessel a week after the spectacular torpedoing of a sister-ship? Did she know this Van Blarcom or did she merely dread any notice? And above all, who was the man and had he been watching when I tossed that wretched extra across the rail?
I saw something of him, of course, as time went on. Naturally we four bold spirits, the ubiquitous McGuntrie, Van Blarcom, the young reservist Pietro Ricci,—a very good sort of fellow,—and I were herded together beyond escape. Also, a foursome at bridge seemed divinely indicated by our number, and to avert a sheer paralysis of ennui we formed the habit of winning each other’s money at that game.
As we played I studied Van Blarcom, but without results. It was ruffling; I should have absorbed in so much intercourse a fairly definite impression of his personality, profession, and social grade. But he was baffling; reticent, but self-assured, authoritative even, and, in a quiet way, watchful. He smoked a good cigar, mixed a good drink, seemed used to travel, but produced a coarse-grained effect, made grammatical errors, and on the whole was a person from whom, once ashore, I should flee.
At six o’clock on the seventh night out our voyage entered its second lap; all the electric lights were simultaneously extinguished as we entered the danger zone. We made a sketchy toilet by means of tapers, groped like wandering ghosts down a dim corridor, and dined by the faint rays of candles thrust into bottles and placed at intervals along the festive board. I went on deck afterward to find the ship plunging through blackness on forced draft, with port-holes shrouded and with not even a riding-light. If not in Davy Jones’s locker by that time, we should reach Gibraltar the next evening; afterward we should head for Naples, a two days’ trip.
The following morning found our stormy weather over. The sea through which we were speeding had a magic color, the dark, rich, Mediterranean blue. Ascending late, I saw gulls flying round us and seaweed drifting by, and Mr. McGuntrie in a state of nerves, with a life belt about him, walking wildly to and fro.
“Well, Mr. Bayne,” he greeted me, “never again for mine! If I ever see the end of this trip,—if you call it a trip; I call it merry hades,—believe me, I’ll sell something hereafter that I can sell on land. I’m a crackerjack of a salesman, if I do say it myself. Once I got started talking I could get a man down below to buy a hot toddy and a set of flannels—and I wish I’d gone down there and done it before I ever saw this boat.”
Unmoved, I leaned on the railing and watched the blue swells break. McGuntrie took a turn or two. In the ship’s library he had discovered a manual entitled “How to Swim,” and he was now attempting between laments to memorize its salient points.
“The first essay is best made in water of not less than fifty degrees Fahrenheit, and not more than four feet in depth,” he gabbled, and then broke off to gaze at the sea about us, chilly in temperature, and countless fathoms deep. “Oh, what’s the use? What the blue blazes does it matter?” he cried hysterically. “I tell you that U-boat that sank theSan Pietrois laying for us. In about an hour you’ll see a periscope bob up out there. Then we’ll send out an S.O.S., and the next thing you know we’ll sink with all on board.”
We had as yet escaped this doom when toward six o’clock we approached Gibraltar, running beneath a crimson sunset and between misty purple shores. On one hand lay Africa, on the other the Moorish country, both shrouded in a soft haze and edged with snowy foam. Down below the soldiers of Italy were singing. A merchantman of belligerent nationality, our ship proudly flew its flag again. Indeed, had it failed to do so, the British patrol-boats would long since have known the reason why.
It was growing dark when I turned to find Van Blarcom at my elbow.
“I didn’t see you,” I commented rather shortly. I don’t like people to creep up beside me like cats.
“No,” he responded. “I’ve been waiting quite a while. I didn’t want to disturb you, but the fact is I’d like a word with you, Mr. Bayne.”
I eyed him with curiosity. He was inscrutable, this quiet, alert, efficient-looking man. Take, for instance, his present manner, half self-assured, half respectfully apologetic—what grade in life did it fit?
“Well, here I am,” I said briefly as I struck a match.
“I’ve thought it over a good bit,” he went on, apparently in self-justification. “I don’t know how you will take it, but I’ll chance it just the same. If I don’t give you a hint, you don’t get a square deal. That’s my attitude. Did you ever hear of Franz von Blenheim, Mr. Bayne?”
“Eh?” The question seemed distinctly irrelevant—and yet where had I heard that name, not very long ago?
“The German secret-service agent. The best in the world, they say.” A sort of reluctant admiration showed in Van Blarcom’s face. “There isn’t any one that can get him; he does what he wants, goes where he likes—the United States, England, France, Russia—and always gets away safe. You’d think he was a conjurer to read what he does sometimes. A whole country will be looking for him, and he takes some one else’s passport, puts on a disguise, and good-by—he’s gone! That’s Franz von Blenheim. No; that’s just an outline of him. And on pretty good authority, he’s in Washington now.”
Mr. Van Blarcom, I reflected, was surely coming out of his shell; this was quite a monologue with which he was favoring me. It was dark now; our lights were flaring. Being in a friendly port’s shelter, we burned electricity to-night.
“You seem to know a whole lot about this fellow,” I remarked idly in the pause.
“Yes, I do.” He smiled a trifle grimly. “In fact, I once came near getting him; it would have made my fortune, too. But he slipped through my fingers at the last minute, and if I ever—You see, I’m in the secret-service myself, Mr. Bayne.”
I turned to stare at him.
“The United States service?” I asked.
“Yes.”
I nodded. All that had puzzled me was fairly clear in this new light. Not at all the type of the star agents, those marvelous beings who figure so romantically in fiction and on the boards, he was yet, I fancied, a good example of the ruck of his profession, those who did the every-day detective work which in such a business must be done. But—Franz von Blenheim? What was my association with the name? Then I recalled that in the extra I had read as we left harbor there had been some account of the man’s activities in Mexico.
“What I wanted to say was this,” Van Blarcom continued in his usual manner—the manner that I now recognized to be a subtler form of the policeman’s, respectful to those he held for law-abiding, alert and watchful to detect gentry of any other kind. “This line we’re traveling on now is one the spies use quite a bit. They used to go to London straight or else to Bordeaux and Paris; but the English and French got a pretty strict watch going, and now it’s easier for them to slip into France through Italy, by Modane. They sail for Naples mostly, do you see? And—you won’t repeat this?—it’s fairly sure that when Franz von Blenheim sends his government a report of what he’s done in Mexico against us, he’ll send it by an agent who travels on this line and lands in Italy and then slips into Germany by way of Switzerland.”
We were drifting slowly into the harbor of Gibraltar, the rock looming over us through the blackness, a gigantic mountain, a mass of tiered and serried lights. Search-lights, too, shot out like swords, focused on us, and swept us as we crept forward between dimly visible, anchored craft. The throbbing of our engines ceased. A launch chugged toward us, bringing the officers of the port. I watched, pleased with the scene, and rather taken with my companion’s discourse. It was not unlike a dime novel of my youth.
“Do you mean you’ve been sent on this line to watch for one of Blenheim’s agents?” I inquired.
“No. I’m sent for some work on the other side—and I’m not telling you what it is, either,” he rejoined. “What I meant was that a man has to be careful, traveling on these ships. They watch close. They have to. Haven’t you noticed that whenever two or three of us get to talking, a steward comes snooping round? Well, I suppose you wouldn’t, it not being your business; but I have. We’re watched all the time; and if we’re wise, we’ll mind our step. Take you, for instance. You’re a good American, eh? And yet some spy might fool you with a cute story and get your help and maybe play you for a sucker on the other side. I saw that happen once. It was a nice young chap, and a pretty girl fooled him—got him into a peck of trouble. What you want to remember is that good spies never seem like spies.”
If I looked as I felt just then, the search-light that swept me must have startled him. I could feel my face flushing, my hands clenching as I caught his drift. I swung round.
“What’s this about?” I demanded sharply. But I knew.
“Well,” said the secret-service man discreetly, “I saw something pretty funny the first night out, Mr. Bayne. It was safe enough with me; I can tell a gentleman from a spy; but if an officer had seen it, the thing wouldn’t have been a joke. Suppose we put it this way. There’s a person on board I think I know. I haven’t got the goods, I’ll own, but I don’t often make mistakes. My advice to you, sir, is to steer clear of strangers. And if I were you, I—”
“That’ll do, thanks!” I cut him short. “I can take care of myself. I don’t say your motives are bad,—you may think this is a favor,—but I call it a confounded piece of meddling, and I’ll trouble you to let it end.”
He looked hurt and indignant.
“Now, look here,” he remonstrated, “what have I done but give you a friendly hint not to get in bad? But maybe I was too vague about it; you just listen to a few facts. I’ll tell you who that young lady is and who her people are and what she wants on the other side—”
“No, you won’t!” I declared. My voice sounded savage. I was recalling how she had begged the extra of me, and how it had contained a full account of Franz von Blenheim, the kaiser’s man. “The young lady’s name and affairs are no concern of mine. If you know anything you can keep it to yourself.”
As we glared at each other like two hostile catamounts, a steward relieved the tension by running toward us down the deck.
“Signori, un momento, per piacere!” he called as he came. The British officers were on board, he forthwith informed us, and were demanding, in accordance with the martial law now reigning at Gibraltar, a sight of each passenger and his passport before the ship should proceed.
The salon of conversation, as the mirrored, gilded, and highly varnished apartment was grandiloquently termed, had been the very spot chosen for our presumably not very terrible ordeal. Things were well under way. At the desk in the corner one officer was jotting down notes as to the clearance papers and the cargo; while at a table in the foreground sat his comrade, in a lieutenant’s uniform, with the captain of theRe d’Italiaat his right, swart-faced and silent, and the list of the passengers lying before the pair.
As I entered a few moments behind Van Blarcom, I perceived that the interrogation had already run a partial course. Pietro Ricci, the reservist, had, no doubt, emerged with flying colors and now stood against the wall beside the doughty agent of the Phillipson Rifles, who had apparently satisfied his inquisitor, too. Near the door a group of stewards had clustered to watch with interest; and as I stood waiting, the girl in furs came in.
I put myself a hypothetical query.
“If a girl,” I thought, “materializes from the void, asks an incriminating favor, and vanishes, does that put one on bowing terms with her when one meets her again?” Evidently it did, for she smiled brightly and graciously and bent her ruddy head. But she was pale, I noticed critically; there was apprehension in her eyes. Wasn’t it odd that the prospect of a few simple questions from an officer should disconcert her when she had possessed the courage, or the foolhardiness, to sail on this line at this time?
Really I could not deny that all I had seen of her was most suspicious. For aught I knew, the secret-service man might be absolutely right. I had treated him outrageously. I owed him an apology, doubtless. But I still felt furious with him, and when she looked anxiously at those officers, I felt furious with them too.
Van Blarcom, his brief questioning ended, was turning from the table. As he passed, I made a point of smiling companionably at the girl.
“Now for the rack, the cord, and the thumbscrews,” I murmured to her, making way.
The lieutenant was a tall, lean, muscular young man with a shrewd tanned face in which his eyes showed oddly blue, and he half rose, civilly enough, as the girl advanced.
“Please sit down,” he said with a strong English accent. “I’ll have to see your passport if you will be so good.” She took it from the bag she carried, and he glanced at it perfunctorily.
“Your name is Esme Falconer?”
“Yes,” she replied.
It was the name of the little Stuart princess, the daughter of Charles the First, whose quaint, coiffed, blue-gowned portrait hangs in a dark, gloomy gallery at Rome. I was subconsciously aware that I liked it despite its strangeness, the while I wondered more actively if that Paul Pry of a Van Blarcom had imparted to the ship’s authorities the suspicions he had shared with me.
“You are an American, Miss Falconer? You were born in the States? You are going to Italy—and then home again?” The questions came in a reassuringly mechanical fashion; the man was doing his duty, nothing more.
“I may go also to France.” Her voice was steady, but I saw that she had clenched her hands beneath the table.
I glanced at Van Blarcom, to find him listening intently, his neck thrust forward, his eyes almost protruding in his eagerness not to miss a word. But there was to be nothing more.
“That is satisfactory, Miss Falconer,” announced the Englishman; with a little sigh of relief, she stood back against the wall.
“If you please,” said the officer to me in another tone.
As I came forward, his eyes ran over me from head to foot. So did Captain Cecchi’s; but I hardly noticed; these uniforms, these formalities, these war precautions, were like a dash of comic opera. I was not taking them seriously in the least. The Britisher gestured me toward a seat, but it seemed superfluous for so brief an interview, and I remained standing with my hands resting on a chair.
“I’ll have your passport!” There was something curt in his manner. “Ah! And your name is—?”
“My name is Devereux Bayne.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty.”
“Where do you live?”
“In New York and Washington.” If he could be laconic, so could I.
“You were born in America?”
“No. I was born in Paris.” By this time questions and answers were like the pop of rifle-shots.
“That was a long way from home. Lucky you chose the country of one of our Allies.” Was this sarcasm or would-be humor? It had an unpleasant ring.
“Glad you like it,” I responded, with a cold stare, “but I didn’t pick it.”
“Well, if you weren’t born in the States, are you an American citizen?” he imperturbably pursued.
“If you’ll consult my passport, you’ll see that I am.”
“Did either your father or your mother have any German blood?”
I could hear a slight rustle back of me among the passengers, none of whom, it was plain, had been subjected to such cross-questioning. I was growing restive, but I couldn’t tell him it was not his business; of course it was.
“No; they didn’t,” I briefly replied.
“About your destination now.” He was making notes of all my answers. “You are going to Italy, and then—”
“To France.”
“Roundabout trip, rather. The Bordeaux route is safer just now and quicker, too. Why not have gone that way? And how long are you planning to stop over on this side?”
“It depends upon circumstances.” What on earth ailed the fellow? He was as annoying as a mosquito or a gnat.
“I beg your pardon, but your plans seem rather at loose ends, don’t they? What are you crossing for?”
“To drive an ambulance!” I answered as curtly as the words could be said.
I saw his face soften and humanize at the information. For once I had made a satisfactory response, it seemed. But on the heels of my answer there rose the voice of Mr. McGuntrie, sensational, accusing, pitched almost at a shriek.
“Look here, lieutenant,” he was crying, “don’t you let that fellow fool you. I asked him the first night out if he was an ambulance boy, and he denied it to me, up and down. I thought all along he was too smart, hooting like he did at submarines. Guess he knew one would pick him up all right if the rest of us did sink.”
“How about that, Mr. Bayne?” asked the Englishman, his uncordial self once more.
It was maddening. One would have thought them all in league to prove me an atrocious criminal.
“Simply this,” I replied with the iciness of restrained fury, “that this gentleman has been the steamer’s pest ever since the night we sailed. If I had answered his questions, every one, down to the ship’s cat, would have shared his knowledge within the hour. I did not deny anything; I simply did not assent. You are an officer in authority; I am answering you, though I protest strongly at your manner; but I don’t tell my affairs to prying strangers because we are cooped up on the same boat.”
“H’m. If I were you I would keep my temper.” He regarded me thoughtfully, and then with rapier-like rapidity shot two questions at my head. “I say, Mr. Bayne, you’re positive about your parents not having German blood, are you? And you are quite sure you were born in Paris, not in—well, Prussia, suppose we say?”
“What the—” I opportunely remembered the presence of Miss Esme Falconer. “What do you mean?” I substituted less sulphurously, but with a glare.
He bent forward, tapping his forefinger against the desk, and his eyes were like gimlets boring into mine.
“I mean,” he enlightened me, his voice very hard of a sudden, “that a German agent is due to sail on this line, about this time, with certain papers, and that from one or two indications I’m not at all sure you are not the man.”
With sudden perspicacity, I realized that he took me for an emissary of the great Blenheim. Exasperation overwhelmed me; would these farcical complications never cease?
“Good heavens, man,” I exclaimed with conviction, “you are crazy! Look at me! Use your common-sense! What on earth is there about me to suggest a spy?”
“In a good spy there never is anything suggestive.”
By Jove, that was the very thing the secret-service man had said!
“You admit you were born abroad. You claim to be bound for France, but you sail for Italy. And you are rather a soldier’s type, tall, well set-up, good military carriage. You’d make quite a showing in a field uniform, I should say.”
“In a fiddlestick!” I snapped, weary of the situation. “So would you—so would our friend the Italian reservist there. I’m an average American, free, white, and twenty-one, with strong pro-Ally sympathies and a passport in perfect shape. This is all nonsense, but of course there is something back of it. What has been your real reason for deviling me ever since I entered this room?”
The lieutenant was studying my face.
“Mr. Bayne,” he said slowly, “do you care to tell me the nature of the package you threw across the rail the first night out?”
I heard a gasp from the group behind me, a squeal of joy from McGuntrie, a quick, low-drawn breath that surely came from the girl. Preternaturally cool, I thought rapidly.
“What’s that you say? Package?” I repeated, trying to gain time.
“Yes, package!” said the Englishman, sharply. “And we’ll dispense with pretense, please. These are war-times, and from common prudence the Allies keep an eye on all passengers who choose to sail instead of staying at home as we prefer they should. Captain Cecchi here reports to me that one of his stewards saw you drop a small weighted object overboard. He has asked me to interrogate you, instead of doing it himself, so that you may have the chance to defend yourself in English, which he doesn’t speak.”
“E vero. It ees the truth,” confirmed the captain of theRe d’Italia—the one remark, by the way, that he ever addressed to me.
“Well?” It was the Englishman’s cold voice. “We are waiting, Mr. Bayne! What was this object you were so anxious to dispose of? A message from some confederate, too compromising to keep?”
Heretofore I had carefully avoided looking at Miss Falconer, but at this point, turning my head a trifle, I gave her a casual glance. Her eyes had blackened as they had done that night on the deck; her face had paled, and her breath was coming fast. But as I looked, her gaze fell, and her lashes wavered; and I knew that whatever came she did not mean to speak.
I did not, of course, want her to. I was no “Injun giver,” and having once pledged my word to help her, I was prepared to keep it till all was blue or any other final shade. Still, it was not to be denied that my position looked incriminating. She might be as honest as the daylight,—I believed she was; I had to or else abandon her,—but she had managed to plunge me into a confounded mess.
Naturally I was exasperated at the net results of my piece of gallantry. I didn’t care to be suspected; I wasn’t anxious to have to lie. All the same, a plausible explanation, offered without delay, appeared essential. I should have wanted as much myself had I been guarding Gibraltar port.
“Well, Mr. Bayne?”
“Well!” I retorted coolly. “I was just wondering if I should answer. This is an infernal outrage, you know. You don’t really think I’m a spy. What you are doing is to give me a third degree on general principles. If you’ll excuse my saying so I think you ought to have more sense!”
“Oh, of course we ought to take you on trust,” he agreed sardonically. “But we can’t I’m afraid. The fact is, we have had an experience or two to shake our faith. The last time this steamer stopped here we caught a pair of spies who didn’t look the part any more than you do; and since then we have rather stopped taking appearances as guarantees.”
“All right, then,” I responded. “I’ll stretch a point since it is war-time. I give you my word that I threw overboard a small bronze paper-weight that was cluttering up my traps. There was nothing surreptitious about it; the whole steamer might have seen me. Do you care to take the responsibility of having me shot for that?”
“And I want to say, sir, that the gentleman is giving it to you straight.” An unexpected voice addressed the lieutenant at my back. “I was standing at the door behind him that night, though he didn’t know it, and I can take my oath that what he says is gospel truth.”
My unlooked-for champion was Mr. John Van Blarcom. I stared at him, at a loss to know why, on the heels of our row on deck and my rejection of his friendly warning, he should perjure himself for me in so obliging a fashion. He had, I was aware, been too far off that night to know whether I had thrown away a paper-weight or a sand-bag. Moreover, the object had been swathed beyond recognition in the extra that was primarily responsible for all this fuss. “He is sorry for me,” I decided. “He thinks the girl has made a fool of me.” Instead of experiencing gratitude, I felt more galled and wrathful than before.
“Is that so? How close were you?” the lieutenant asked alertly. “About ten feet? You are quite sure? Well—it’s all right, I suppose, then,” he admitted in a very grudging tone.
“No, it isn’t,” I declared tartly. I was by no means satisfied with so half-hearted a vindication; nor did I care to owe my immunity to a patronizing lie on Mr. Van Blarcom’s part. “You have accused me of spying. Do you think I’ll let it go at that? I insist that you have my baggage brought up here and that you search it and search me.”
The face of the Englishman really relaxed for once.
“That’s a good idea. And it’s what any honest man would want, Mr. Bayne,” he approved. “Since you demand it—certainly, we’ll do it,” and he glanced at the captain, who promptly ordered two stewards to fetch my traps from below.
Things move rapidly on shipboard. My traveling impedimenta appeared in the salon almost before I could have uttered the potent name of Jack Robinson, had I cared to try. With cold aloofness I offered my keys, and the head steward knelt to officiate, while the crowd gaped and the second English officer abandoned his corner and his papers, standing forth to watch with the lieutenant and the captain, thus forming an intent and highly interested committee of three.
The investigation began, very thorough, slightly harrowing. I had not realized the embarrassing detail of such a search. An extended store of collars suitable for different occasions; neat and glossy piles of shirts, both dress and plain; black silk hose mountain high, and neckties as numerous as the sea sands. Noting the rapt attention that McGuntrie in particular gave to these disclosures, I felt that to deserve so inhuman a punishment my crime must have been black indeed. Shoes on their trees; articles of silk underwear; brushes, combs, gloves, cards, boxes of cigarettes, an extra flask; some light literature. And so on and so on, ad nauseam, till I grew dully apathetic, and roused only to praise Allah when we left the boxes for the trunk.
Hardened by this time, I brazenly endured the exhibition of my pajamas, not turning a hair when they were held up and shaken out before the attentive crowd. In a similar spirit I bore the examination of my coats and trousers, the rummaging of my vests, the investigation of my hats. “Courage!” I told myself. “Nothing in the world is endless.” Indeed, the last garment was now being lifted, revealing nothing beneath it save a leather wallet carefully tied.
“Just look through that, will you?” I requested with chilling sarcasm. “Otherwise you may get to thinking later that I had a note for the kaiser there. In point of fact, those are simply some letters of introduction that I am taking to—” I broke off abruptly. “Good Lord deliver us!” I blankly exclaimed. “What’s that?”
The lieutenant, complying with my request, had unbound the wallet and was flirting out its contents in fan-like fashion like a hand of cards. I saw the imposing army of letters presented me by Dunny, who knows everybody, headed by one to his old friend, the American ambassador to France. So far, so good. But beneath them, with a sickening sense of being in a bad dream, I beheld a thin sheaf of papers, neatly folded, bound with red tape and sealed with bright red wax,—an object which, to my certain knowledge, had no more business among my belongings than the knives and plates that the conjurer snatches from the surrounding atmosphere, or the hen which he evolves, clucking, from an erstwhile empty sleeve.
Standing there with the impersonal calm of utter helplessness, I watched the Britisher break the seal and unfold the sheets. They were thin and they were many and they were covered with closely jotted hieroglyphics, row upon row. But the sphinx-like quality of the contents afforded me no gleam of hope. If they had proclaimed as much in the plainest English printing, I could have been no surer that they were the papers of Franz von Blenheim; nor, as I learned a good while afterward, was I mistaken in the belief.
I was vaguely aware that the spectators were being ordered from the salon. Captain Cecchi’s eyes were dark stilettos; the gaze of the Englishman was like a narrow flash of blue steel. He was going to say something. I waited apathetically. Then the words came, falling like icicles in the deadness of the hush.
“If you wish, sir,” he stated, “to explain why you are traveling with cipher papers, Captain Cecchi and I will hear what you have to say.”