The passing of the fugitiveinsurrectos; their mad turning at bay for one savage rally; their wavering and breaking; their disorganized stampede spurred on by a decimating fire and the bayonet’s point: these were all incidents of a sudden squall that swept violently through the narrow street, to leave it again empty and quiet. It was empty except for the grotesque shapes that stretched in all the undignified awkwardness of violent death and helplessness, feeding thin lines of red that trickled between the cobblestones. It was silent except for echoes of the stubborn fighting coming from the freer spaces of the plazas andalamedas, where the remnants of the invading force clung to their positions behind improvised barricades with the doggedness of men for whom surrender holds no element of hope or mercy.
Into the canyon-like street where the frenzy of combat had blazed up with such a sudden spurt and burned itself out so quickly, Saxonhad walked around the angle of a wall, just in time to find himself precipitated into one of the fiercest incidents of the bloody forenoon.
Vegas and Miraflores had not surrendered. Everywhere, the insistent noise told that the opposing forces were still debating every block of the street, but in many outlying places, as in thiscalle, the revolutionists were already giving back. The attacking army had counted on launching a blow, paralyzing in its surprise, and had itself encountered surprise and partial preparedness. It had set its hope upon a hill, and the hill had failed. A prophet might already read thatVegas y Libertadwas the watchword of a lost cause, and that its place in history belonged on a page to be turned down.
But the narrow street in which Saxon lay remained quiet. An occasional balcony window would open cautiously, and an occasional head would be thrust out to look up and down its length. An occasional shape on the cobbles would moan painfully, and shift its position with the return of consciousness, or grow more grotesque in the stiffness of death as the hours wore into late afternoon, but the great iron-studdedstreet-doors of the houses remained barred, and no one ventured along the sidewalks.
Late in the day, when the city still echoed to the snapping of musketry, and deeper notes rumbled through the din, as small field-pieces were brought to bear upon opposing barricades, the thing that Saxon had undertaken to bring about occurred of its own initiative. Word reached the two leaders that the representatives of the foreign powers requested an armistice for the removal of the wounded and a conference at the American Legation, looking toward possible adjustment. Both the government and theinsurrectocommanders grasped at the opportunity to let their men, exhausted with close-fighting, catch a breathing space, and to remove from the zone of fire those who lay disabled in the streets.
Then, as the firing subsided, some of the bolder civilians ventured forth in search for such acquaintances as had been caught in the streets between the impact of forces in the unwarned battle. For this hour, at least, all men were safe, and there were some with matters to arrange, who might not long enjoy immunity.
Among them was Howard Rodman, who followed up the path he fancied Saxon must have taken. Rodman was haggard and distrait. His plans were all in ruins, and, unless an amnesty were declared, he must be once more the refugee. His belief that Saxon was really Carter led him into two false conclusions. First, he inferred from this premise that Saxon’s life would be as greatly imperiled as his own, and it followed that he, being in his own words “no quitter,” must see Saxon out of the city, if the man were alive. He presumed that in the effort to reach the legation Saxon had taken, as would anyone familiar with the streets, a circuitous course which would bring him to the “Club Nacional,” from which point he could reach the house he sought over the roofs. He had no doubt that the American had failed in his mission, because, by any route, he must make his way through streets where he would encounter fighting.
Rodman’s search became feverish. There was little time to lose. The conference might be brief—and, after that, chaos! But fortune favored him. Chance led him into the rightstreet, and he found the body. Being alone, he stood for a moment indecisive. He was too light a man to carry bodily the wounded friend who lay at his feet. He could certainly not leave the man, for his ear at the chest, his finger on the pulse, assured him that Saxon was alive. He had been struck by a falling timber from a balcony above, and the skull seemed badly hurt, probably fractured.
As Rodman stood debating the dilemma, a shadow fell across the pavement. He turned with a nervous start to recognize at his back a newcomer, palpably a foreigner and presumably a Frenchman, though his excellent English, when he spoke, was only slightly touched with accent. The stranger dropped to his knee, and made a rapid examination, as Rodman had done. It did not occur to him at the moment that the man standing near him was an acquaintance of the other who lay unconscious at their feet.
“The gentleman is evidently a non-combatant—and he is badly hurt, monsieur,” he volunteered. “We most assuredly cannot leave him here to die.”
Rodman answered with some eagerness:
“Will you help me to carry him to a place where he’ll be safe?”
“Gladly.” The Frenchman looked about. “Surely, he can be cared for near here.”
But Rodman laid a persuasive hand on the other’s arm.
“He must be taken to the water front,” he declared, earnestly. “After the conference, he would not be safe here.”
The stranger drew back, and stood for a moment twisting his dark mustache, while his eyes frowned inquiringly. He was disinclined to take part in proceedings that might have political after-effects. He had volunteered to assist an injured civilian, not a participant, or refugee. There were many such in the streets.
“This is a matter of life and death,” urged Rodman, rapidly. “This man is Mr. Robert Saxon. He had left this coast with a clean bill of health. I explain all this because I need your help. When he had made a part of his return journey, he learned by chance that the city was threatened, and that a lady who was very important to him was in danger. He hastened back. In order to reach her, he becameinvolved, and used theinsurrectocountersign. Mr. Saxon is a famous artist.” Rodman was giving the version of the story he knew the wounded man would wish to have told. He said nothing of Carter.
At the last words, the stranger started forward.
“A famous painter!” His voice was full of incredulous interest. “Monsieur, you can not by any possibility mean that this is Robert A. Saxon, the first disciple of Frederick Marston!” The man’s manner became enthused and eager. “You must know, monsieur,” he went on, “that I am Louis Hervé, myself a poor copyist of the great Marston. At one time, I had the honor to be his pupil. To me, it is a pleasure to be of any service to Mr. Saxon. What are we to do?”
“There is a small sailors’ tavern near the mole,” directed Rodman; “we must take him there. I shall find a way to have him cared for on a vessel going seaward. I have a yacht five miles away, but we can hardly reach it in time.”
“But medical attention!” demurred Monsieur Hervé. “He must have that.”
Rodman was goaded into impatience by the necessity for haste. He was in no mood for debate.
“Yes, and a trained nurse!” he retorted, hotly. “We must do the best we can. If we don’t hurry, he will need an undertaker and a coroner. Medical attention isn’t very good in Puerto Frio prisons!”
The two men lifted Saxon between them, and carried the unconscious man toward the mole.
Their task was like that of many others. They passed a sorry procession of litters, stretchers, and bodies hanging limply in the arms of bearers. No one paid the slightest attention to them, except an occasional sentry who gazed on in stolid indifference.
At the tavern kept by the Chinaman, Juan, and frequented by the roughest elements that drift against a coast such as this, Rodman exchanged greetings with many acquaintances. There were several wounded officers of the Vegas contingent, taking advantage of the armistice to have their wounds dressed and discuss affairs over a bottle of wine. Evidently, they had come here instead of to more centraland less squalid places, with the same idea that had driven Rodman. They were the rats about to leave the sinking ship—if they could find a way to leave.
The tavern was an adobe building with a corrugated-iron roof and a large openpatio, where a dismal fountain tinkled feebly, and one or two frayed palms stood dusty and disconsolate in the tightly trodden earth. About the walls were flamboyant portraits of saints. From a small perch in one corner, a yellow and green parrot squawked incessantly.
But it was the life about the rough tables of the area that gave the picture its color and variety. Some had been pressed into service to support the wounded. About others gathered men in tattered uniforms; men with bandaged heads and arms in slings. Occasionally, one saw an alien, a sailor whose clothes declared him to have no place in the drama of the scene. These latter were usually bolstering up their bravado withaguardienteagainst the sense of impending uncertainty that freighted the atmosphere.
The Frenchman, sharing with Rodman the burden of the unconscious painter, instinctivelyhalted as the place with its wavering shadows and flickering lights met his gaze at the door. It was a picture of color and dramatic intensity. He seemed to see these varied faces, upon which sat defeat and suffering, sketched on a broad canvas, as Marston or Saxon might have sketched them.
Then, he laid Saxon down on a corner table, and stood watching his chance companion who recognized brother intriguers. Suddenly, Rodman’s eyes brightened, and he beckoned his lean hand toward two men who stood apart. Both of them had faces that were in strong contrast to the swarthy Latin-American countenances about them. One was thin and blond, the other dark and heavy. The two came across thepatiotogether, and after a hasty glance the slender man bent at once over the prostrate figure on the table. His deft fingers and manner proclaimed him the surgeon. His uniform was nondescript; hardly more a uniform than the riding clothes worn by Saxon himself, but on his shoulders he had pinned a major’s straps. This was Dr. Cornish, of the Foreign Legion, but for the moment he was absorbed in his workand forgetful of his disastrously adopted profession of arms.
He called for water and bandages, and, while he worked, Rodman was talking with the other man. Hervé stood silently looking on. He recognized that the dark man was a ship-captain—probably commanding a tramp freighter.
“When did you come?” inquired Rodman.
“Called at this port for coal,” responded the other. “I’ve been down to Rio with flour, and I have to call at La Guayra. I sail in two hours.”
“Where do you go from Venezuela?”
“I sailed out of Havre, and I’m going back with fruit. The Doc’s had about enough. I’m goin’ to take him with me.”
For a moment, Rodman stood speculating, then he bent eagerly forward.
“Paul,” he whispered, “you know me. I’ve done you a turn or two in the past.”
The sailor nodded.
“Now, I want you to do me a turn. I want you to take this man with you. He must get out of here, and he can’t care for himself. He’ll be all right—either all right or dead—beforeyou land on the other side. The Doc here will look after him. He’s got money. Whatever you do for him, he’ll pay handsomely. He’s a rich man.” The filibuster was talking rapidly and earnestly.
“Where do I take him?” asked the captain, with evident reluctance.
“Wherever you’re going; anywhere away from here. He’ll make it all right with you.”
The captain caught the surgeon’s eyes, and the surgeon nodded.
Rodman suddenly remembered Saxon’s story, the story of the old past that was nothing more to him than another life, and the other man upon whom he had turned his back. Possibly, there might even be efforts at locating the conspirators. He leaned over, and, though he sunk his voice low, Hervé heard him say:
“This gentleman doesn’t want to be found just now. If people ask about him, you don’t know who he is,comprende?”
“That’s no lie, either,” growled the ship-master. “I ain’t got an idea who he is. I ain’t sure I want him on my hands.”
A sudden quiet came on the place. An officerhad entered the door, his face pale, and, as though with an instantaneous prescience that he bore bad tidings, the noises dropped away. The officer raised his hand, and his words fell on absolute silence as he said in Spanish:
“The conference is ended. Vegas surrenders—without terms.”
“You see!” exclaimed Rodman, excitedly. “You see, it’s the last chance! Paul, you’ve got to take him! In a half-hour, the armistice will be over. For God’s sake, man!” He ended with a gesture of appeal.
The place began to empty.
“Get him to my boat, then,” acceded the captain. “Here, you fellows, lend a hand. Come on, Doc.” The man who had a ship at anchor was in a hurry. “Don’t whisper that I’m sailing; I can’t carry all the people that want to leave this town to-night. I’ve got to slip away. Hurry up.”
A quarter of an hour later, Hervé stood at the mole with Rodman, watching the row-boat that took the other trio out to the tramp steamer, bound ultimately for France. Rodman seized his watch, and studied its face under astreet-lamp with something akin to frantic anxiety.
“Where do you go, monsieur?” inquired the Frenchman.
“Go? God knows!” replied Rodman, as he gazed about in perplexity. “But I’ve got to beat it, and beat it quick.”
A moment later, he was lost in the shadows.
When Duska Filson had gone out into the woods that day to read Saxon’s runaway letter, she had at once decided to follow, with regal disdain of half-way methods. To her own straight-thinking mind, unhampered with petty conventional intricacies, it was all perfectly clear. The ordinary woman would have waited, perhaps in deep distress and tearful anxiety, for some news of the man she loved, because he had gone away, and it is not customary for the woman to follow her wandering lover over a quadrant of the earth’s circumference. Duska Filson was not of the type that sheds tears or remains inactive. To one man in the world, she had said, “I love you,” and to her that settled everything. He had gone to the place where his life was imperiled in the effort to bring back to her a clear record. If he were fortunate, her congratulation, direct from her own heart and lips, should be the first he heard. If he were to be plunged into misery, then aboveall other times she should be there. Otherwise, what was the use of loving him?
But, when the steamer was under way, crawling slowly down the world by the same route he had taken, the days between quick sunrise and sudden sunset seemed interminable.
Outwardly, she was the blithest passenger on the steamer, and daily she held a sort ofsalonfor the few other passengers who were doomed to the heat and the weariness of such a voyage.
But, when she was alone with Steele in the evening, looking off at the moonlit sea, or in her own cabin, her brow would furrow, and her hands would clench with the tensity of her anxiety. And, when at last Puerto Frio showed across the purple water with a glow of brief sunset behind the brown shoulder of San Francisco, she stood by the rail, almost holding her breath in suspense, while the anchor chains ran out.
As soon as Steele had ensconced Mrs. Horton and Duska at theFrances y Ingles, he hurried to the American Legation for news of Saxon. When he left Duska in the hotelpatio, he knew, from the anxious little smile she threwafter him, that for her the jury deciding the supreme question was going out, leaving her as a defendant is left when the panel files into the room where they ballot on his fate. He rushed over to the legation with sickening fear that, when he came back, it might have to be like the juryman whose verdict is adverse.
As it happened, he caught Mr. Pendleton without delay, and before he had finished his question the envoy was looking about for his Panama hat. Mr. Pendleton wanted to do several things at once. He wanted to tell the story of Saxon’s coming and going, and he wanted to go in person, and have the party moved over to the legation, where they must be his guests while they remained in Puerto Frio. It would be several days before another steamer sailed north. They had missed by a day the vessel on which Saxon had gone. Meanwhile, there were sights in the town that might beguile the intervening time. Saxon had interested the envoy, and Saxon’s friends were welcome. Hospitality is simplified in places where faces from God’s country are things to greet with the fervor of delight.
At dinner that evening, sitting at the right of the minister, Duska heard the full narrative of Saxon’s brief stay and return home. Mr. Pendleton was at his best. There was no diplomatic formality, and the girl, under the reaction and relief of her dispelled anxiety, though still disappointed at the hapless coincidence of missing Saxon, was as gay and childlike as though she had not just emerged from an overshadowing uncertainty.
“I’m sorry that he couldn’t accept my hospitality here at the legation,” said the minister at the end of his story, with much mock solemnity, “but etiquette in diplomatic circles is quite rigid, and he had an appointment to sleep at the palace.”
“So, they jugged him!” chuckled Steele, with a grin that threatened his ears. “I always suspected he’d wind up in the Bastile.”
“He was,” corrected the girl, her chin high, though her eyes sparkled, “a guest of the President, and, as became his dignity, was supplied with a military escort.”
“He needn’t permit himself any vaunting pride about that,” Steele assured her. “It’sjust difference of method. In our country, a similar honor would have been accorded with a patrol wagon and a couple of policemen.”
After dinner, Duska insisted on dispatching a cablegram which should intercept theCity of Rioat some point below the Isthmus. It was not an original telegram, but, had Saxon received it, it would have delighted him immoderately. She said:
“I told you so. Sail byOrinoco.”
The following morning, there were tours of discovery, personally conducted by the young Mr. Partridge. Duska had wanted to leave the carriage at the old cathedral, and stand flat against the blank wall, but she refrained, and satisfied herself with marching up very close and regarding it with hostility. As the carriage turned into the main plaza, a regiment of infantry went by, the band marching ahead playing, with the usual blare, the national anthem. Then, as the coachman drew up his horses at the legation door, there was sudden confusion, followed by the noise of popping guns. It was the hour just preceding the noonsiesta. The plaza was indolent with loungingfigures, and droning in the sleeping sing-song chorus of lazy voices. At the sound, which for the moment impressed the girl like the exploding of a pack of giant crackers, a sudden stillness fell on the place, closely followed by a startled outcry of voices as the figures in the plaza broke wildly for cover, futilely attempting to shield their faces with their arms against possible bullets. Then, there came a deeper detonation, and somewhere the crumbling of an adobe wall. The first sound came just as Mrs. Horton was stepping to the sidewalk. Duska had already leaped lightly out, and stood looking on in surprise. But Mr. Partridge knew his Puerto Frio. He led them hastily through the huge street-doors, and they had no sooner passed than the porter, with many mumbled prayers to the Holy Mother, slammed the great barriers against the outside world. The final assault forVegas y Libertadhad at last begun.
Mr. Pendleton had insisted that the ladies remain at the rear of the house, but Duska, with her adventurous passion for seeing all there was to see, threatened insubordination. To her,the idea of leaving several perfectly good balconies vacant, and staying at the back of a house, when the only battle one would probably ever see was occurring in the street just outside, seemed far from sensible. But, after she had looked out for a few moments, had seen a belated fruit-vender crumple to the street, and had smelled the acrid stench of the burnt powder, she was willing to turn away.
Inasmuch as the stay of Duska and her aunt involved several days of waiting for the sailing of the next ship, Duska was somewhat surprised at hearing nothing from Saxon in the meanwhile. He had had time to reach the point to which the cablegram was addressed. She had told him she would sail by theOrinoco, since that was the first available steamer. At such a time, Saxon would certainly answer that message. She fancied he would even manage to join her steamer, either by coming down to meet it, or waiting to intercept it at the place where he had received her message. Consequently, when she reached that port and sailed again without either seeing Saxon or receiving a message from him, she was decidedlysurprised, and, though she did not admit it even to herself, she was likewise alarmed.
It happened that one of her fellow passengers on the steamerOrinocowas a tall, grave gentleman, who wore his beard trimmed in the French fashion, and who in his bearing had a certain air of distinction.
On a coast vessel, it was unusual for a passenger to hold himself apart and reserved against the chance companionships of a voyage. Yet, this gentleman did so. He had been introduced by the captain as M. Hervé, had bowed and smiled, but since that he had not sought to further the acquaintanceship, or to recognize it except by a polite bow or smile when he passed one of the party on his solitary deck promenades.
Possibly, this perfunctory greeting would have been the limit and confine of their associations, had he not chanced to be standing one day near enough to Duska and Steele to overhear their conversation. The voyage was almost ended, and New York was not far off. Long ago, the lush rankness of the tropics had given way to the more temperate beauty of thehigher zones, and this beauty was the beauty of early autumn.
Steele was talking of Frederick Marston, and the girl was listening with interest. As long as Saxon insisted on remaining the first disciple, she must of course be interested in his demi-god. Just now, however, Saxon’s name was not mentioned. Finally, the stranger turned, and came over with a smile.
“When I hear the name of Frederick Marston,” he said, “I am challenged to interest. Would I be asking too much if I sought to join you in your talk of him?”
The girl looked up and welcomed him with her accustomed graciousness, while Steele drew up a camp-stool, and the Frenchman seated himself.
For a while, he listened sitting there, his fingers clasped about his somewhat stout knee, and his face gravely speculative, contributing to the conversation nothing except his attention.
“You see, I am interested in Marston,” he at length began.
The girl hesitated. She had just been expressing the opinion, possibly absorbed fromSaxon, that the personality of the artist was extremely disagreeable. As she glanced at M. Hervé, the thought flashed through her mind that this might possibly be Marston himself. She knew that master’s fondness for the incognito. But she dismissed the idea as highly fanciful, and even ventured frankly to repeat her criticism.
At last, Hervé replied, with great gravity:
“Mademoiselle, I had the honor to know the great Frederick Marston once. It was some years ago. He keeps himself much as a hermit might in these days, but I am sure that the portion of the story I know is not that of the vain man or of the poseur. Possibly,” he hesitated modestly, “it might interest mademoiselle?”
“I’m sure of it,” declared the girl.
“Marston,” he began, “drifted into the Parisateliersfrom your country, callow, morbid, painfully young and totally inexperienced. He was a tall, gaunt boy with a beard that grew hardly as fast as his career, though finally it covered his face. Books and pictures he knew with passionate love. With life, he wasunacquainted; at men, he looked distantly over the deep chasm of his bashfulness. Women he feared, and of them he knew no more than he knew of dragons.
“He was eighteen then. He was in theSalonat twenty-two, and at the height of fame at twenty-six. He is now only thirty-three. What he will be at forty, one can not surmise.”
The Frenchman gazed for a moment at the spiraling smoke from his cigarette, and halted with the uncertainty of a bard who doubts his ability to do justice to his lay.
“I find the story difficult.” He smiled with some diffidence, then continued: “Had I the art to tell it, it would be pathos. Marston was a generous fellow, beloved by those who knew him, but quarantined by his morbid reserve from wide acquaintanceship. Temperament—ah, that is a wonderful thing! It is to a man what clouds and mists are to a land! Without them, there is only arid desert—with too many, there are storm and endless rain and dreary winds. He had the storms and rain and winds in his life—but over all he had the genius! The masters knew that before they had criticizedhim six months. In a year, they stood abashed before him.”
“Go on, please!” prompted Duska, in a soft voice of sympathetic interest.
“He dreaded notoriety, he feared fame. He never had a photograph taken, and, when it was his turn to pose in the sketch classes, where the students alternate as models for their fellows, his nervousness was actual suffering. To be looked at meant, for him, to drop his eyes and find his hands in his way—the hands that could paint the finest pictures in Europe!”
“To understand his half-mad conduct, one must understand his half-mad genius. To most men who can command fame, the plaudits of clapping hands are as the incense of triumph. To him, there was but the art itself—the praise meant only embarrassment. His ideal was that of the English poet—a land where
‘—only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame:And no one shall work for money and no one shall work for fame.’
‘—only the Master shall praise us, and only the Master shall blame:And no one shall work for money and no one shall work for fame.’
That was what he wished, and could not have in Paris.
“It was in painting only that he forgot himself, and became a disembodied magic behind a brush. When a picture called down unusual comment from critics and press, he would disappear—remain out of sight for months. No one knew where he went. Once, I remember, in my time, he stayed away almost a year.
“He knew one woman in Paris, besides the models, who were to him impersonal things. Of that one woman alone, he was not afraid. She was a pathetic sort of a girl. Her large eyes followed him with adoring hero-worship. She was the daughter of an English painter who could not paint, one Alfred St. John, who lodged in the rear of the floor above. She herself was a poet who could not write verse. To her, he talked without bashfulness, and for her he felt vast sorrow. Love!Mon dieu, no! If he had loved her, he would have fled from her in terror!
“But she loved him. Then, he fell ill. Typhoid it was, and for weeks he was in his bed, with the papers crying out each day what a disaster threatened France and the world, if he should die. And she nursed him, denyingherself rest. Typhoid may be helped by a physician, but the patient owes his life to the nurse. When he recovered, his one obsessing thought was that his life really belonged to her rather than to himself. I have already said he was morbid half to the point of madness. Genius is sometimes so!
“By no means a constantabsintheur, in his moods he liked to watch the opalescent gleams that flash in a glass ofPernod. One night, when he had taken more perhaps than was his custom, he returned to his lodgings, resolved to pay the debt, with an offer of marriage.
“I do not know how much was the morbidness of his own temperament, and how much was the absinthe. I know that after that it was all wormwood for them both.
“She was proud. She soon divined that he had asked her solely out of sympathy, and perhaps it was at her urging that he left Paris alone. Perhaps, it was because his fame was becoming too great to allow his remaining there longer a recluse. At all events, he went away without warning—fled precipitantly. No onewas astonished. His friends only laughed. For a year they laughed, then they became a trifle uneasy. Finally, however, these fears abated. St. John, his father-in-law, admitted that he was in constant correspondence with the master, and knew where he was in hiding. He refused to divulge his secret of place. He said that Marston exacted this promise—that he wanted to hide. Then came new pictures, which St. John handled as his son-in-law’s agent. Paris delighted in them. Marston travels about now, and paints. Whether he is mildly mad, or only as mad as his exaggerated genius makes him, I have often wondered.”
“What became of the poor girl?” Duska’s voice put the question, very tenderly.
“She, also, left Paris. Whether she let her love conquer her pride and joined him, or whether she went elsewhere—also alone, no one knows but St. John, and he does not encourage questions.”
“I hope,” said the girl slowly, “she went back, and made him love her.”
Hervé caught the melting sympathy in Duska’s eyes, and his own were responsive.
“If she did,” he said with conviction, “it must have made the master happy. He gave her what he could. He did not withhold his heart from stint, but because it was so written.” He paused, then in a lighter voice went on:
“And, speaking of Marston, one finds it impossible to refrain from reciting an extraordinary adventure that has just befallen his first disciple, Mr. Saxon, who is a countryman of yours.”
The girl’s eyes came suddenly away from the sea to the face of the speaker, as he continued:
“I happened to be on the streets, when wiser folk were in their homes, just after the battle in Puerto Frio. I found Mr. Robert Saxon—perhaps the second landscape painter in the world—lying wounded on a pavement among dead revolutionists, and I helped to carry him to aninsurrectohaunt. He was smuggled unconscious on a ship sailing for some point in my own land—Havre, I think.Allons!Life plays pranks with men that make the fairy tales seem feeble!”
Steele had been so astounded that he had found no opportunity to stop the Frenchman.Now, as he made a sign, M. Hervé looked at the girl. She was sitting quite rigid in her steamer chair, and her lips were white. Her eyes were on his own, and were entirely steady.
“Will you tell us the whole story, M. Hervé?” she asked.
“Mon dieu!I have been indiscreet. I have made afaux pas!”
The Frenchman’s distress was genuinely deep.
“No,” answered the girl. “I must know all the story. I thank you for telling me.”
As Hervé told his story, he realized that the woman whom Saxon had turned back to warn, according to Rodman’s sketching, was the woman sitting before him on the deck of theOrinoco.
Captain Harris had been, like Rodman, one of the men who make up the world’s flotsam and jetsam. He, too, had meddled in the affairs of that unstable belt which lies just above and below the “line.” South and Central American politics and methods were familiar to him. He had not attained the command of the tramp freighterAlbatrosswithout learning one decisive lesson, that of eliminating curiosity from his plan of living. He argued that his passenger was aninsurrecto, and, once seized in Puerto Frio, could hardly hope to shield himself behind American citizenship. There had been many men in Puerto Frio when the captain sailed who would have paid well for passage to any port beyond the frontier, but to have taken them might have brought complications. He had been able at some risk to slip two men at most to his vessel under the curtain of night, and to clear without interference. He had chosen the man who was his friend, Dr.Cornish, and the man who was his countryman and helpless. Of course, all the premises upon which both Rodman and this sea-going man acted were false premises. Had he been left, Saxon would have been in no danger. He had none the less been shanghaied for a voyage of great length, and he had been shanghaied out of sincere kindness.
It had not occurred to either the captain or the physician that the situation could outlast the voyage. The man had a fractured skull, and he might die, or he might recover; but one or the other he must do, and that presumably before the completion of the trip across the Atlantic. That he should remain in a comatose state for days proved mildly surprising and interesting to the physician, but that at the end of this time he should suffer a long attack of brain fever was an unexpected development. Saxon knew nothing of his journeying, and his only conversation was that of delirium. He owed his life to the skill and vigilance of the doctor, who had seen and treated human ills under many crude conditions, and who devoted himself with absorption to the case.Neither the physician nor the captain knew that the man had once been called Robert Saxon. There was nothing to identify him. He had come aboard in the riding clothes borrowed from the lockers of thePhyllis, and his pockets held only a rusty key, some American gold and a little South American silver. Without name or consciousness or baggage, he was slowly crossing the Atlantic.
Other clothing was provided, and into the newer pockets Captain Harris and Dr. Cornish scrupulously transferred these articles. That Carter, if he recovered, could reimburse the skipper was never questioned. If he died, the care given him would be charged to the account of humanity, together with other services this rough man had rendered in his diversified career.
Meanwhile, on the steamerOrinoco, the girl was finding her clear, unflinching courage subjected to the longest, fiercest siege of suspense, and Steele tried in every possible manner to comfort the afflicted girl in this time of her trial and to alleviate matters with optimistic suggestions. M. Hervé was in great distress over havingbeen the unwitting cause of fears which he hoped the future would clear away. His aloofness had ended, and, like Steele, he attached himself to her personal following, and sought with a hundred polite attentions to mitigate what he regarded as suffering of his authorship. Duska’s impulse had been to leave the vessel at the first American port, but Steele had dissuaded her. His plan was to wire to Kentucky at the earliest possible moment, and learn whether there had been any message from Saxon. Failing in that, he advocated going on to New York. If by any chance Saxon had come back to the States; if, for example, he had recovereden voyageand been transferred, as was not impossible, to a west-bound vessel, his agent in New York might have some tidings.
Hervé cursed himself for his failure to learn, in the confused half-hour at the Puerto Frio tavern, the name of the vessel that had taken Saxon on board, or at least the name of the fellow refugee who had befriended him.
When the ship came abreast of the fanglike skyline of Manhattan Island, and was shouldered against its pier at Brooklyn by swarmingtugs, the girl, although outwardly calm, was not far from inward despair.
Steele’s first step was the effort to learn what steamer it might have been that left Puerto Frio for Venezuela and thence for France. But, in the promiscuous fleets of rusty-hulled tramps that beat their way about the world, following a system hardly more fixed than the course of a night-hawk cab about a city’s streets, the effort met only failure.
The girl would not consent to an interval of rest after her sea-voyage, but insisted on accompanying Steele at once to the establishment of the art dealer who had the handling of Saxon’s pictures.
The dealer had seen Mr. Saxon some time before as the artist passed through New York, but since that time had received no word. He had held a successful exhibition, and had written several letters to the Kentucky address furnished him, but to none of them had there been a reply. The dealer was enthusiastic over the art of the painter, and showed the visitors a number of clippings and reviews that were rather adulation than criticism.
The girl glanced at them impatiently. The work was great, and she was proud of its praise, but just now she was feeling that it really meant nothing at all to her in comparison with the painter himself. To her, he would have been quite as important, she realized, had no critic praised him; had his brush never forced a compliment from the world. Her brow gathered in perplexity over one paragraph that met her eye.
“The most notable piece of work that has yet come from this remarkable palette,” said the critic, “is a canvas entitled, ‘Portrait of a lady.’ In this, Mr. Saxon has done something more than approximate the genius of Frederick Marston. He has seemed to carry it a point forward, and one is led to believe that such an effort may be the door through which the artist shall issue from the distinction of being ‘Marston’s first disciple’ into a larger distinction more absolutely his own.” There was more, but the feature which caught her eye was the fact stated that, “A gentleman bought this picture for his private collection, refusing to give his name.”
“What does it mean?” demanded Duska, handing the clipping to Steele. “That picture and the landscape from the Knob were not for sale.”
The dealer was puzzled.
“Mr. Saxon,” he explained, “directed that from this assignment two pictures were to be reserved. They were designated by marks on the back of the cases and the canvases. Neither the portrait nor the landscape was so marked.”
“He must have made a mistake, in the hurry of packing,” exclaimed the girl, in deep distress. “He must have marked them wrong!”
“Who bought them?” demanded Steele.
The dealer shook his head.
“It was a gentleman, evidently an Englishman, though he said he lived in Paris. He declined to give his name, and paid cash. He took the pictures with him in a cab to his hotel. He did not even state where he was stopping.” The dealer paused, then added: “He explained to me that he collected for the love of pictures, and that he found the notoriety attaching to the purchase of famous paintings extremely distasteful.”
“Have you ever seen this gentleman before?” urged Steele.
“Yes,” the art agent answered reflectively, “he has from time to time picked up several of Mr. Saxon’s pictures, and his conversation indicated that he was equally familiar with the work of Marston himself. He said he knew the Paris agent of Mr. Saxon quite well, and it is possible that through that source you might be able to locate him. I am very sorry the mistake occurred, and, while I am positive that you will find the letters ‘N. F. S.’ (not for sale) on the two pictures I have held, I shall do all in my power to trace the lost ones.”
In one of the packing rooms, the suspicions of Duska were corroborated. Two canvases were found about the same shape and size as the two that had been bought by the foreign art-lover. Palpably, Saxon, in his hurry of boxing, had wrongly labeled them.
In the flood of her despair, the girl found room for a new pang. It was not only because these pictures were the fulfillment of Saxon’s most mature genius that their loss became a little tragedy; not even merely because in themshe felt that she had in a measure triumphed over Marston’s hold on the man she loved, but because by every association that was important to her and to him they were canonized.
That evening, Steele made his announcement. He was going to Havre and Paris. If anything could be learned at that end, he would find it out, and while there he would trace the pictures.
“You see,” he assured her, with a cheery confidence he by no means felt, “it’s really much simpler than it looks. He was hurt, and he did not recover at once. By the time he reaches France, the sea-voyage will have restored him, and he will cable. Those tramp steamers are slow, and he hasn’t yet had time. If he takes a little longer to get well, I’ll be there to look after him, and bring him home.”
The girl shook her head.
“You haven’t thought about the main thing,” she said quickly, leaning forward and resting her fingers lightly on his arm, “or perhaps you thought of it, George dear, and were too kind to speak of it. After this, he may wake up—he may wake up the other man. I must go tohim myself. I must be with him.” Her voice became eager and vibrant: “I want to be the first living being he will greet.”
Steele found a thousand objections rising up for utterance, but, as he looked at the steady blue of her eyes, he left them all unsaid. She had gone to South America, of course she would go to France.
It would be imaginative flattery to call the lodgings of Alfred St. John and his daughter commodious, even with the added comforts that the late years had brought to the alleviation of their barrenness. The windows still looked out over the dismal roofs of theQuartier Latinand the frowning gray chimney pots where the sparrows quarreled.
St. John might have moved to more commodious quarters, for the days were no longer as pinched as had been those of the past, yet he remained in the house where he had lived before his own ambition died.
His stock-in-trade was his agency in handling the paintings of Frederick Marston, the half-mad painter who, since he had left Paris shortlyafter his marriage, had not returned to his ancient haunts, or had any parcel in the life of the art world that idolized him, except as he was represented by this ambassador.
St. John sold the pictures that the painter, traveling about, presumably concealing himself under assumed names, sent back to the waiting market and the eager critics.
And St. John knew that, inasmuch as he had been poor, in the half-starved, hungry way of being poor, now his commissions clothed him and paid for his claret, and, above all, made it possible for him to indulge the one soul he loved with the simple comforts that softened her suffering.
The daughter of St. John required some small luxuries which it delighted the Englishman to give her. He had been proud when she married Frederick Marston, he had been distressed when the marriage proved a thing of bitterness, and during the past years he had watched her grow thin, and had feared at first, and known later, that she had fallen prey to the tubercular troubles which had caused her mother’s death.
St. John had been a petty sort, and had not withstood the whisperings of dishonest motives. Paradoxically his admiration for Frederick Marston was, seemingly at least, wholly sincere.
In this hero-worship for the painter, who had failed as a husband to make his daughter happy, there was no disloyalty for the daughter. He knew that Marston had given all but the love he had not been able to give and that he had simulated this until her own insight pierced the deception, refusing compassion where she demanded love.
The men who rendered unto Marston their enthusiastic admiration were men of a cult, and tinged with a sort of cult fanaticism. St. John, as father-in-law, agent and correspondent, was enabled to pose along the Boulevard St. Michel as something of a high priest, and in this small vanity he gloried. So, when the questioners of the cafés bombarded him with inquiries as to when Marston would tire of his pose of hermit and return to Paris, the British father-in-law would throw out his shallow chest, and allow an enigmatical smile to play in his pale eyes,and a faint uplift to come to the corners of his thin lips, but he never told.
“I have a letter here,” he would say, tapping the pocket of his coat. “The master is well, and says that he feels his art to be broadening.”
Between the man and his daughter, the subject of the painter was never mentioned. After her return from England, where she had spent the first year after Marston dropped out of her life, she had exacted from her father a promise that his name should not be spoken between them, and the one law St. John never transgressed was that of devotion to her.
Her life was spent in the lodgings, to which St. John clung because they were in the building where Marston had painted. She never suggested a removal to more commodious quarters. Possibly, into her pallid life had crept a sentimental fondness for the place for the same reason. Her weakness was growing into feebleness. Less, each day, she felt like going down the steep flights of stairs for a walk in the Boulevard of St. Michael, and climbingthem again on her return. More heavily each day, she leaned on his supporting arm. All these things St. John noted, and day by day the traces of sandy red in his mustache and beard faded more and more into gray, and the furrow between his pale blue eyes deepened more perceptibly.
St. John had gone one afternoon to a neighboringatelier, and the girl, wandering into his room, saw a portrait standing on the easel which St. John had formerly used for his own canvases. Most of the pictures that came here were Marston’s. This one, like the rest, was unsigned. She sank into the deeply cushioned chair that St. John kept for her in his own apartment, and gazed fixedly at the portrait.
It was a picture of a woman, and the woman in the chair smiled at the woman on the canvas.
“You are very beautiful—my successor!” she murmured. For a time, she studied the warm, vivid tones of the painted features, then, with the same smile, devoid of bitterness, she went on talking to the other face.
“I know you are my successor,” she said,“because the enthusiasm painted into your face is not the enthusiasm of art alone—nor,” she added slowly, “is it pity!”
Then, she noticed that one corner of the canvas caught the light with the shimmer of wet paint. It was the corner where ordinarily an artist affixes his name. She rose and went to the heavy studio-easel, and looked again with her eyes close to the stretchers. The paint was evidently freshly applied to that corner of the canvas. To her peering gaze, it almost seemed that through the new coating of the background she could catch a faint underlying line of red, as though it had been a stroke in the letter of a name. Then, she noticed her father’s palette lying on a chair near the easel, and the brushes were damp. The lake and Van Dyke brown and neutral-tint that had been squeezed from their tubes were mixed into a rich tone on the palette, which matched the background of the portrait. Sinking back in the chair, fatigued even by such a slight exertion, she heard her father’s returning tread on the stairs.
From the door, he saw her eyes on the picture, but true to his promise he remained silent,though, as he caught her gaze on the palette, his own eyes took on something of anxiety and foreboding.
“Does he sign his pictures now?” she asked abruptly.
“No. Why?”
“It looked—almost,” she said wearily, “as though the signature had been painted out there at the corner.”
For an instant, St. John eyed his daughter with keen intentness.
“The canvas was scraped in shipping,” he said, at last. “I touched up the spot where the paint was rubbed.”
For a time, both were silent. The father saw that two hectic spots glowed on the girl’s bloodless cheeks, and that her eyes, fixed on the picture, wore a deeply wistful longing.
He, too, knew that this picture was a declaration of love, that in her silence she was torturing herself with the thought that these other eyes had stirred the heart that had remained closed to her. He did not want to admit to her that this was not a genuine Marston; yet, he faltered a moment, and resolved that he couldnot, even for so necessary a deception, let her suffer.
“That portrait, my child,” he confessed slowly, “was not painted by—by him. It’s by another artist, a lesser man, named Saxon.”
Into the deep-set eyes surged a look of incredulous, but vast, relief. The frail shoulders drew back from their shallow-chested sag, and the thin lips smiled.
“Doesn’t he sign his pictures, either?” she demanded, finally.
For an instant, St. John hesitated awkwardly for an explanation.
“Yes,” he said at last, a little lamely. “This canvas was cut down for framing, and the signature was thrown so close to the edge that the frame conceals the name.” He paused, then added, quietly: “I have kept my promise of silence, but now—do you want to hear ofhim?”
She looked up—then shook her head, resolutely.
“No,” she said.
Late one evening in the café beneath the Elysée Palace Hôtel, a tall man of something like thirty-five, though aged to the seeming of a bit more, sat over his brandy and soda and the perusal of a packet of letters. He wore traveling dress, and, though the weather had hardly the bitterness to warrant it, a fur-trimmed great-coat fell across the empty chair at his side. It was not yet late enough for the gayety that begins with midnight, and the place was consequently uncrowded. The stranger had left a taxicab at the door a few minutes before, and, without following his luggage into the office, he had gone directly to the café, to glance over his mail before being assigned to a room.
The man was tall and almost lean. Had Steele entered the café at that moment, he would have rushed over to the seated figure, and grasped a hand with a feeling that his quest had ended, then, on second sight, he would have drawn back, incredulous and mystified. Thisguest lacked no feature that Robert Saxon possessed. His eyes held the same trace of the dreamer, though a close scrutiny showed also a hard glitter—his dreams were different. The hand that held the letter was marked front and back, though a narrow inspection would have shown the scar to be a bit more aggravated, more marked with streaked wrinkles about the palm. He and the American painter were as identical as models struck from one die in the lines and angles that make face and figure. Yet, in this man, there was something foreign and alien to Saxon, a difference of soul-texture. Saxon was a being of flesh, this man a statue of chilled steel.
The envelope he had just cast upon the table fell face upward, and the waitinggarçoncould hardly help observing that it was addressed to Señor George Carter, care of a steamship agency in theRue Scribe.
As Carter read the letter it had contained, his brows gathered first in great interest, then in surprise, then in greater interest and greater surprise.
“There has been a most strange occurrencehere,” said the writer, who dated his communication from Puerto Frio, and wrote in Spanish. “Just before the revolution broke, a man arrived who was called Robert A. Saxon. He was obviously mistaken for you by the government and was taken into custody, but released on the interference of his minister. The likeness was so remarkable that I was myself deceived and consequently astounded you should make so bold as to return. He, however, established a clean bill of health and that very fact has suggested to me an idea which I think will likewise commend itself to you,amigo mio. That I am speaking only from my sincere interest in you, you need not question when you consider that I have kept you advised through these years of matters here and have divulged to no soul your whereabouts. This man left at once, but the talk spread rapidly in confidential circles than anAmericanohad come who was the double of yourself. Some men even contended that it was really you, and that it was you also who betrayed the plans of Vegas to the government, but that scandal is not credited. Most of those who are well informedknow that the traitor was one whom we trusted, a man who in your day was on the side of the established government. That man is now in high influence by reason of playing the Judas, and it may be that he will make an effort to secure your extradition. Embezzlement, you know, is not a political offense, and he still holds a score against you. You know to whom I refer. That is why I warn you. You have a double and your double has a clean record. For a time if there is no danger of crossing tracks with him, I should advise that you be Señor Saxon instead of Señor Carter. This should be safe enough since Señor Saxon sailed on the day after his arrival for North America. I have the felicity to inscribe myself,” etc., etc. —— A dash served as a signature, but Carter knew the writing, and was satisfied. For a time, he sat in deep reverie, then, rising, took up his coat, and went to the door. His stride was precisely the stride of Robert Saxon.
At the desk above, he discussed apartments. Having found one that suited his taste, he signed the guest-card with the name of Robert Saxon, and inquired as to the hour of departure oftrains for Calais on the following morning. He volunteered the information that he was leaving then for London. True to his word, on the next day he left the hotel in a taximeter cab which turned down theChamps Elysées.
When it was definitely settled that Duska and her aunt were to go to Europe, Steele conceived a modification of the plans, to which only after much argument and persuasion and even a touch of deception he won the girl’s consent. The object of his amendment was secretly to give him a chance to arrive first on the scene, accomplish what he could of search, and be prepared with fore-knowledge to stand as a buffer between Duska and the first shock of any ill tidings. Despite his persistent optimism of argument, the man was far from confident. The plan was that the two ladies should embark for Genoa, and go from there to Paris by rail, while he should economize days by hurrying over the northern ocean track. Duska chafed at the delay involved, but Steele found ingenious arguments. The tramp steamer, he declared, with its roundabout course, would be slow, and itwould be better for him to be armed against their coming with such facts as he could gather, in order that he might be a more effective guide.
Possibly, he argued, the tramp ship had gone by way of the Madeiras, and might soon be in the harbor of Funchal. If she took the southerly track, she could go at once by a steamer that would give her a day there, and, armed with letters he would send to the consulate, this contingency could be probed, leaving him free to work at the other end. If he learned anything first, she would learn of it at once by wireless.
So, at last, he stood on a North River pier, and saw the girl waving her good-by across the rail, until the gap of churning water had widened and blurred the faces on the deck. Then, he turned and hastened to make his own final arrangements for sailing by theMauretaniaon the following day.
In Havre, he found himself utterly baffled. He haunted the water-front, and browbeat the agents, all to no successful end.
In Paris, matters seemed to bode no better results. He first exhausted the more probablepoints. Saxon’s agent, thecommissaire de police, the consulate, the hospitals—he even made a melancholy visit to the grewsome building where the morgue squats behindNôtre Dame. Then he began the almost endless round of hotels. His “taxi” sped about through the swift, seemingly fluid currents of traffic, as a man in a hurry can go only in Paris, the frictionless. The town was familiar to him in most of its aspects, and he was able to work with the readiness and certainty of one operating in accustomed haunts, commanding the tongue and the methods. At last, he learned of the registry at the Elysée Palace Hôtel. He questioned the clerk, and that functionary readily enough gave him the description of the gentleman who had so inscribed himself. It was a description of the man he sought. Steele fell into one grave error. He did not ask to see the signature itself. “Where had Monsieur Saxon gone? To London.Certainment, he had taken all his luggage with him. No, he had not spoken of returning to Paris. Yes, monsieur seemed in excellent health.”
So, Steele turned his search to London, and inLondon found himself even more hopelessly mixed in baffling perplexity. He had learned only one thing, and that one thing filled him with vague alarm. Saxon had apparently been here. He had been to all seeming sane and well, and had given his own name. His conduct was inexplicable. It was inconceivable that he should have failed to communicate with Duska. Steele cabled to America, thinking Saxon might have done so since their departure. Nothing had been heard at home.
Late in the afternoon on the day of his arrival in London, Steele went for a walk, hoping that before he returned some clew would occur to him, upon which he could concentrate his efforts. His steps wandered aimlessly along Pall Mall, and, after the usage of former habit, carried him to a club, where past experience told him he would meet old friends. But, at the club door, he halted, realizing that he did not want to meet men. He could think better alone. So, with his foot on the stone stairs, he wheeled abruptly, and went on to Trafalgar Square, where once more he halted, under the lions of the Nelson Column, and racked hisbrain for any thought or hint that might be followed to a definite end.
He stood with the perplexed air of a man without definite objective. The square was well-nigh empty except for a few loiterers about the basins, and the view was clear to the elevation on the side where, at the cab-stand, waited a row of motor “taxis” and hansoms. The afternoon was bleak, and the solemn monotone of London was graver and more forbidding than usual.
Suddenly, his heart pounded with a violence that made his chest feel like a drum. With a sudden start, he called loudly, “Saxon! Hold on, Saxon!” then went at a run toward the cab-stand.
He had caught a fleeting and astounding vision. A man, with the poise and face that he sought, had just stepped into one of the waiting vehicles, and given an order to the driver. Even in his haste, Steele was too late to do anything more than take a second cab, and shout to the man on the box to follow the vehicle that had just left the curb. As his “taxi” turned into the Strand, and slurred through the mudpast the Cecil and the Savoy, he kept his eyes strained on the cab ahead, threading its way through the congested traffic, disappearing, dodging, reappearing, and taxing his gaze to the utmost. For a moment after they had both crowded into Fleet Street, he lost it, and, as he leaned forward, searching the jumble of traffic, his own vehicle came to a halt just opposite the Law Courts. He looked hastily out, to see the familiar shoulders of the man he followed disappearing beyond a street-door, under the swinging “Sign of the Cock.”
Tossing a half-crown to the cabman, he followed up the stairs, and entered the room, where the tables were almost deserted. A group of men was sitting in one of the stalls, deep in converse, and, though two were hidden by the dividing partitions, Steele saw the one figure he sought at the head of the table. The figure bent forward in conversation, and, while his voice was low and his words inaudible, the Kentuckian saw that the eyes were glittering with a hard, almost malevolent keenness. As he came hastily forward, he caught the voice: it was Saxon’s voice, yet infinitely harder. The twocompanions were strangers of foreign aspect, and they were listening attentively, though one face wore a sullen scowl.
Steele came over, and dropped his hand on the shoulder of the man he had pursued.
“Bob!” he exclaimed, then halted.
The three faces looked up simultaneously, and in all was displeasure for the abrupt interruption of a conversation evidently intended for no outside ears. Each expression was blank and devoid of recognition, and, as the tall man rose to his feet, his face was blanker than the others.
Then, with the greater leisure for scrutiny, Steele realized his mistake. For a time, he stood dumfounded at the marvelous resemblance. He knew without asking that this man was the double who had brought such a tangle into his friend’s life. He bowed coldly.
“I apologize,” he explained, shortly. “I mistook this gentleman for someone else.”
The three men inclined their heads stiffly, and the Kentuckian, dejected by his sudden reverse from apparent success to failure, turned on his heel, and left the place. It had not, of course,occurred to him to connect the appearance of his snarler of Saxon’s affairs with the name on the Paris hotel-list, and he was left more baffled than if he had known only the truth, in that he had been thrown upon a false trail.
The Kentuckian joined Mrs. Horton and her niece in Genoa on their arrival. As he met the hunger in the girl’s questioning eyes, his heart sickened at the meagerness of his news. He could only say that Paris had divulged nothing, and that a trip to London had been equally fruitless of result. He did not mention the fact that Saxon had registered at the hotel. That detail he wished to spare her.
She listened to his report, and at its end said only, “Thank you,” but he knew that something must be done. A woman who could let herself be storm-tossed by grief might ride safely out of such an affair when the tempest had beaten itself out, but she, who merely smiled more sadly, would not have even the relief that comes of surrender to tears.
At Milan, there was a wait of several hours. Steele insisted on the girl’s going with him for a drive. At a picture-exhibition, they stopped.
“Somehow,” said Steele, “I feel that where there are paintings there may be clews. Shall we go in?”
The girl listlessly assented, and they entered a gallery, which they found already well filled. Steele was the artist, and, once in the presence of great pictures, he must gnaw his way along a gallery wall as a rat gnaws its way through cheese, devouring as he went, seeing only that which was directly before him. The girl’s eyes ranged more restlessly.
Suddenly, Steele felt her clutch his arm.