He showed them the thin-bladed knife which the Greek had given him, holding it before them by the hilt. He let a dramatic moment elapse.
"Like that!" he said, and stabbed at the air. "Like that—see? Like that!"
They came upon bad weather gradually, drawing into a belt of half- gales, with squalls that roared up from the horizon and made them for the time, into whole gales. The Villingen, designed and built primarily for cargo capacity, was a wet ship, and upon any point of sailing had a way of scooping in water by the many tons. In nearly every watch came the roar, "Stand by yer to'gallant halliards!" Then the wait for ten seconds or ten minutes while the wind grew and the big four-masted barque lay over and bumped her bluff bows through racing seas, till the next order, shriller and more urgent, "Lower avay!" and the stiff canvas fought and slatted as the yards came down. Sea-boots and oilskins were the wear for every watch; wet decks and the crash of water coming inboard over the rail, dull cold and the rasp of heavy, sodden canvas on numb fingers, became again familiar to the men, and at last there arrived the evening, gravid with tempest, on which all hands reefed top-sails.
The mate had the middle watch, from midnight till four o'clock in the morning, and for the first two hours it was Conroy's turn on the lookout. The rest, in oilskins and sea-boots, were standing by under the break of the poop; save for the sleeping men in the shut forecastle, he had the fore part of the ship to himself. He leaned against the after rail of the fore-castle head, where a ventilator somewhat screened him from the bitter wind that blew out of the dark, and gazed ahead at the murk. Now and again the big barque slid forward with a curtseying motion, and dipped up a sea that flowed aft over the anchors and cascaded down the ladders to the main-deck; spray that spouted aloft' and drove across on the wind, sparkled red and green in the glare of the sidelights like brief fireworks.
The splash and drum of waters, the heavy drone of the wind in the sails, the clatter of gear aloft, were in his ears; he did not hear one bell strike from the poop, which he should have answered with a stroke on the big bell behind him and a shouted report on the lights.
"Hoy! You schleepin' up dere—hey?"
It was the mate, who had come forward in person to see why he had not answered. He was by the fore fife-rail, a mere black shape in the dark.
"Sleepin'—no, sir!"
"Don't you hear yon bell shtrike?" cried the mate, slithering on the wet deck toward the foot of the ladder.
"No, sir," said Conroy, and stooped to strike the bell.
The mate came up the ladder, hauling himself by the hand-rails, for he was swollen beyond the ordinary with extra clothes under his long oilskin coat. A plume of spray whipped him in the face as he got to the top, and he swore shortly, wiping his eyes with his hands. At the same moment, Conroy, still stooping to the bell-lanyard, felt the Villingen lower her nose and slide down in one of her disconcerting curtseys; he caught at the rail to steady himself. The dark water, marbled with white foam, rode in over the deck, slid across the anchors and about the capstan, and came aft toward the ladder and the mate. The ship rolled at the same moment.
Conroy saw what happened as a grotesque trick of circumstance. The mate, as the deck slanted, slipped and reached for the hand-rail with an ejaculation. The water flowed about his knees; he fell back against the hand-rail, which was just high enough for him to sit on. lit was what, for one ridiculous moment, he seemed to be doing. The next, his booted feet swayed up and he fell over backward, amid the confusion of splashing water that leaped down the main-deck. Conroy heard him strike something below with a queer, smacking noise.
"Pity he didn't go overboard while he was about it," he said to himself, acting out his role. Really, he was rather startled and dismayed.
He found the mate coiled in the scupper, very wet and still. He took hold of him to draw him under the forecastle head, where he would have shelter, and was alarmed at the inertness of the body under his hands.
"Sir!" he cried, "sir!-sir!"
He shook the great shoulders, bat quickly desisted; there was something horrible, something that touched his nerves, in its irresponsiveness. He remembered that he might probably find matches in the lamp-locker, and staggered there to search. He had to grope in gross darkness about the place, touching brass and the uncanny smoothness of glass, before his hand fell on what he sought. At last he was on one knee by the mate's side, and a match shed its little illumination. The mate's face was odd in its quietude, and the sou'- wester of oilskin was still on his head, held there by the string under the chin. From under its edge blood flowed steadily, thickly, appallingly.
"But——" cried Conroy. The match-flame stung his fingers and he dropped it. "Oh Lord!" he said. It occurred to him then, for the first time, that the mate was dead.
The men aft, bunched up under the break of the poop, were aware of him as a figure that came sliding and tottering toward them and fell sprawling at the foot of the poop ladder. He floundered up and clutched the nearest of them, the Greek.
"The mate's dead," he broke out, in a kind of breathless squeal."Somebody call the captain; the mate's dead."
There was a moment of silence; then a cackle of words from several of them together. The Greek's hands on his shoulders tightened. He heard the man's purring voice in his ear.
"How did you do it?"
Conroy thrust himself loose; the skies of his mind were split by a frightful lightning flash of understanding. He had been alone with the mate; he had seen him die; he was sworn to kill him. He could see the livid smile of the Greek bent upon him.
"I didn't do it," he choked passionately, and struck with a wild, feeble hand at the smile. "You liar—I didn't do it."
"Hush!" The Greek caught him again and held him.
Some of the men had started forward; others had slipped into the alleyway to rouse the second mate and captain. The Greek had him clutched to his bosom in a strong embrace and was hushing him as one might hush a scared child. Slade was at his side.
"He slipped, I tell you; he slipped at the top of the ladder. She'd shipped a dollop of water and then rolled, and over he went. I heard his head go smack and went down to him. I never touched him. I swear it—I never touched him."
"Hush!" It was Slade this time. "And yer sure he's dead. Well——" the old man exchanged nods with the Greek. "All right. Only—don't tell the captain that tale; it ain't good enough."
"But——" began Conroy. A hug that crushed his face against theGreek's oilskin breast silenced him.
"Vat is all dis?"
It was the captain, tall, august, come full-dressed from his cabin. At his back the second mate, with his oilskin coat over his pajamas, thrust forward his red, cheerful face.
Slade told the matter briefly. "And it's scared young Conroy all to bits, sir," he concluded.
"Come for'ard," bade the captain. "Get a lamp, some vun!"
They followed him along the wet, slippery deck slowly, letting him pass ahead out of earshot.
"It was a belayin'-pin, ye'es?" queried the Greek softly of Conroy.
"He might have hit his head against a pin," replied Conroy.
"Eh?" The Greek stopped. "Might 'ave—might 'ave 'it 'is 'ead? Ah, dat is fine! 'E might 'ave 'it 'is 'ead, Slade! You 'ear dat?"
"Yes, it ain't bad!" replied Slade, and Conroy, staring in a wild attempt to see their faces clearly, realized that they were laughing, laughing silently and heartily. With a gesture of despair he left them.
A globe-lamp under the forecastle head lighted the captain's investigations, gleaming on wet oilskins, shadow-pitted faces, and the curious, remote thing that had been the mate of the Villingen. Its ampler light revealed much that the match-flame had missed from its field—the manner in which the sou'wester and the head it covered were caved in at one side, the cut in the sou'wester through which clotted hair protruded, the whole ghastliness of death that comes by violence. With all that under his eyes, Conroy had to give his account of the affair, while the ring of silent, hard-breathing men watched him and marvelled at the clumsiness of his story.
"It is strange," said the captain. "Fell over backwards, you said. It is very strange! And vere did you find de body?"
The scupper and deck had been washed clean by successive seas; there was no trace there of blood, and none on the rail. Even while they searched, water spouted down on them. But what Conroy noted was that no pin stood in the rail where the mate had fallen, and the hole that might have held one was empty.
"Ah, veil!" said the captain at last. "De poor fellow is dead. I do not understand, quite, how he should fall like dat, but he is dead. Four of you get de body aft."
"Please, sir," accosted Conroy, and the tall captain turned.
"Veil, vat is it?"
"Can I go below, sir? It was me that found him, sir. I feel rather— rather bad."
"So!" The tall captain considered him inscrutably, he, the final arbiter of fates. "You feel bad—yes? Veil, you can go below!"
The little group that bore the mate's body shuffled aft, with the others following like a funeral procession. A man looked shivering out of the door of the starboard forecastle, and inquired in loud whispers.
"Was ist los? Sag mal—was ist denn los?" He put his inquiry to Conroy, who waved him off and passed to the port forecastle on the other side of the deckhouse.
The place was somehow strange, with its double row of empty bunks like vacant coffin-shelves in a vault, but solitude was what he desired. The slush-lamp swung and stank and made the shadows wander. From the other side of the bulkhead he could hear stirrings and a murmur of voices as the starboard watch grew aware that something had happened on deck. Conroy, with his oilskin coat half off, paused to listen for comprehensible words. The opening of the door behind him startled him, and he spun round to see Slade making a cautious entry. He recoiled.
"Leave me alone," he said, in a strangled voice, before the other could speak. "What are you following me for? You want to make me out a murderer. I tell you I never touched him."
The other stood just within the door, the upper half of his face shadowed by his sou'wester, his thin lips curved in a faint smile. "No!" he said mockingly. "You didn't touch him? An' I make no doubts you'd take yer oath of it. But you shouldn't have put the pin back in the rail when you was through with it, all the same."
"There wasn't any pin there," said Conroy quickly. He had backed as far from Slade as he could, and was staring at him with horrified eyes.
"But there would ha' been if I hadn't took a look round while you were spinnin' your yarn to the Old Man," said Slade. "I knew you was a fool."
With a manner as of mild glee he passed his hand into the bosom of his coat, still keeping his sardonic gaze fixed on Conroy.
"Good thing you've got me to look after you," he went on. "Thinks I, 'He might easy make a mistake that 'ud cost him dear;' so I took a look round. An' I found this." From within his coat he brought forth an iron belaying-pin, and held it out to Conroy.
"See?" His finger pointed to it. "That's blood, that is—and that's hair. Look for yourself. Now I suppose you'll tell me you never touched him!"
"He hit his head against it when he fell," protested the younger man."He did! Oh, God, I can't stand this!"
He sank to a seat on one of the chests and leaned his face against the steel plate of the wall.
"Hit his head," snorted old Slade. "Couldn't you ha' fixed up a better yarn than that? What are you snivellin' at? D'ye think yer the only man 'as ever stove in a mate's head—an' him a murderin' mandriver? Keep them tales for the Old Man; he believes 'em seemingly; but don't you come them on me."
Conroy was moaning. "I never touched him; I never touched him!"
"Never touched him! Here, take the pin; it's yours!"
He shrank from it. "No, no!"
Slade pitched it to his bunk, where it lay on the blanket. "It's yours," he repeated. "If yer don't want it, heave it overboard yerself or stick it back in the rail. Never touched him—you make me sick with yer never touched him!"
The door slammed on his scornful retreat; Conroy shuddered and sat up. The iron belaying-pin lay where it had fallen, on his bed, and even in that meager light it carried the traces of its part in the mate's death. It had the look of a weapon rather than of a humble ship-fitting. It rolled a couple of inches where it lay as the ship leaned to a gust, and he saw that it left a mark where it had been, a stain.
He seized it in a panic and started for the door to be rid of it at once.
As if a malicious fate made him its toy, he ran full into the Greek outside.
"Ah!" The man's smile flashed forth, wise and livid. "An' so you 'ad it in your pocket all de time, den!"
Conroy answered nothing. It was beyond striving against. He walked to the rail and flung the thing forth with hysterical violence to the sea.
The watch going below at four o'clock found him apparently asleep, with his face turned to the wall. They spoke in undertones, as though they feared to disturb him, but none of them mentioned the only matter which all had in mind. They climbed heavily to their bunks, there to smoke the brief pipe, and then to slumber. Only Slade, who slept little, would from time to time lean up on one elbow to look down and across to the still figure which hid its face throughout the night.
Conroy woke when the watch was called for breakfast by a man who thrust his head in and shouted. He had slept at last, and now as he sat up it needed an effort of mind to recall his trouble. He looked out at his mates, who stood about the place pulling on their clothes, with sleep still heavy on them. They seemed as usual. It was his turn to fetch the coffee from the galley, he remembered, and he slipped out of his bunk to dress and attend to it.
"I won't be a minute," he said to the others, as he dragged on his trousers.
A shaggy young Swede near the door was already dressed.
"I vill go," he said. "You don't bother," and forthwith slipped out.
The others were looking at him now, glancing with a queer, sharp interest and turning away when they met his eyes. It was as though he were a stranger.
"That was a queer thing last night," he said to the nearest.
"Yes," the other agreed, with a kind of haste.
They sat about at their meal, when the coffee had been brought by the volunteer, under the same constraint. He could not keep silent; he had to speak and make them answer.
"Where is he?" he asked abruptly.
"On de gratings," he was told. And the Swede who fetched the coffee added, "Sails is sowin' him up now already."
"We'll see the last of him to-day," said Slade. "He won't kick nobody again!"
There was a mutter of agreement, and eyes turned on Conroy again.Slade smiled slowly.
"Yes, he keeck once too many times," said the Greek.
The shaggy young Swede wagged his head. "He t'ink it was safe to kickConroy, but it aindt," he observed profoundly. "No, it aindt safe."
"He got vat he asked for. . . . Didn't know vat he go up againdst . . . No, it aindt—it aindt safe. . . Maybe vi'sh he aindt so handy mit his feet now."
They were all talking; their mixed words came to Conroy in broken sentences. He stared at them a little wildly, realizing the fact that they were admiring him, praising him, and afraid of him. The blood rose in his face hotly.
"You fellers talk," he began, and was disconcerted at the manner in which they all fell silent to hear him—"you talk as if I'd killed him."
"Well! . . . Ach was!"
He faced their smiles, their conciliatory gestures, with a frown.
"You better stop it," he said. "He fell—see? He fell an' stove his head in. An' any feller that says he didn't——"
His regard traveled from face to face, giving force to his challenge.
"Ve aindt goin' to say nodings!" they assured him mildly. "You don't need to be scared of us, Conroy."
"I'm not scared," he said, with meaning. "But look out, that's all."
When breakfast was over, it was his turn to sweep up. But there was almost a struggle for the broom and the privilege of saving him that trouble. It comforted him and restored him; it would have been even better but for the presence of Slade, sitting aloft in his bunk, smiling over his pipe with malicious understanding.
The Villingen was still under reefed upper topsails, walking into the seas on a taut bowline, with water coming aboard freely. There was little for the watch to do save those trivial jobs which never fail on a ship. Conroy and some of the others were set to scrubbing teak on the poop, and he had a view of the sail-maker at his work on the gratings under the break of the poop, stitching on his knees to make the mate presentable for his last passage. The sailmaker was a bearded Finn, with a heavy, darkling face and the secret eyes of a faun. He bent over his task, and in his attitude and the slow rhythm of his moving hand there was a suggestion of ceremonial, of an act mysterious and ritual.
Half-way through the morning, Conroy was sent for to the cabin, there to tell his tale anew, to see it taken down, and to sign it. The captain even asked him if he felt better.
"Thank you, sir," replied Conroy. "It was a shock, findin' him dead like that."
"Yes, yes," agreed the captain. "I can understand—a great shock.Yes!"
He was bending over his papers at the table; Conroy smiled over his bowed head. Returning on deck, he winked to the man at the wheel, who smiled uncomfortably in return. Later he borrowed a knife to scrape some spots of paint off the deck; he did not want to spoil the edge of his own.
They buried the mate at eight bells; the weather was thickening, and it might be well to have the thing done. The hands stood around, bareheaded, with the grating in the middle of them, one edge resting on the rail, the other supported by two men. There was a dark smudge on the sky up to windward, and several times the captain glanced up from his book towards it. He read in German slowly, with a dwelling upon the sonorous passages, and towards the end he closed the book and finished without its aid.
Conroy was at the foot of the ladder; the captain was above him, reading mournfully, solemnly, without looking at the men. They were rigid, only their eyes moving. Conroy collected their glances irresistibly. When the captain had finished his reading he sighed and made a sign, lifting his hand like a man who resigns himself. The men holding the grating tilted it; the mate of the Villingen, with a little jerk, went over the side.
"Shtand by der tobs'l halliards!" roared the second mate.
Conroy, in the flurry, found himself next to a man of his watch. He jerked a thumb in the direction of the second mate, who was still vociferating orders.
"Hark at him!" he said. "Before we're through I'll teach him manners too."
And he patted his knife.
Cobb was crossing the boulevard, and was actually evading a taxi-cab at the moment when he sighted the little comedy which he made haste to interrupt. Upon the further pavement, Savinien, whom he once believed in as a poet, had stopped in the shelter of a shop door, an unlighted cigarette between his lips, and was prospecting his vast person with gentle little slaps for a match. The current of the pavement rippled by him; the great expanse of his back was half turned to it, so that he and his search were in a kind of privacy, and the situation was favorable to the two inconspicuous men who approached him from either side. The one, with an air of hurry, ran against him at the instant, when he was exploring his upper waistcoat pocket, staggered and caught at him with mumbled apologies; the other, with the sure and suave movement of an expert, slid an arm between the two bodies, withdrew it, and was making off.
"Hi!" shouted Cobb, as the taxi shaved past him, and came across with a rush. People stopped to see what he was shouting at, and a group of them, momentarily blocking the pavement, made it easy for the lanky Cobb to bowl the fleeing pickpocket against the wall and lay secure hands on him.
"You come along with me," said Cobb, who always forgot his French when he was excited.
The thief, helpless under the grip on the nape of his neck, whined and stammered. He was a rat of a man, white-faced, pale-eyed, with a sagging, uncertain mouth.
"M'sieur!" he whimpered. "But I have got nothing! It is a mistake.The other man——"
Cobb thrust him at the end of a long arm to where Savinien stood, the cigarette still unlighted. The other man, of course, was gone.
"Hullo, Savinien," said Cobb. "You know you've been robbed, don't you? I just caught this fellow as he was bolting. See what you've lost, won't you?"
"Lost!" Savinien stared, a little stupidly, Cobb thought, and suddenly smiled. He was bulky to the point of grotesqueness, with a huge white torpid face and a hypochondriac stoop of the shoulders, and the hand that traveled over his waistcoat, from pocket to pocket, looked as if it had been shaped out of dough.
"Well!" said Cobb impatiently, stilling the thief's whimpering protests with a quick grip of the hand that held him.
"My watch," murmured Savinien, still smiling though he were pleased and relieved to be the victim of a theft. "But let him go."
"Let him go! Oh no," said Cobb. "I'll hand him over to the police and we'll get the watch out of him."
"The watch is nothing," said Savinien. "Let him go before there arrives an agent, or it will be too late."
He came a pace nearer as he spoke, and nodded at Cobb confidentially, as though there were reasons for his request which he could not explain before the on-lookers.
"But——" began Cobb.
"Let him go," urged Savinien. "It is necessary. Afterwards, I will explain to you." He put his shapeless soft hand on Cobb's arm which held the thief.
"Let him go."
"You are serious?" demanded Cobb. "He's to go, is he? With your watch? All right!"
He let go the scraggy neck which he held in the fork of his hand. They were, by this time, ringed about by spectators, but the thief was not less expert with crowds than with pockets. He was no sooner loose than he seemed to merge into the folk about, to pass through and beyond them like a vapor. Heads turned, feet shuffled. Savinien came about ponderously like a battleship in narrow waters, but the thief was gone.
"Tiens!" ejaculated someone, and there was laughter.
Savinien's arm insinuated itself through Cobb's elbow.
"Let us go where we can sit down," said the poet. "You are puzzled— not? But I will explain you all that."
"It wasn't a bet, was it?" asked Cobb.
The poet laughed gently. "That possibility alarms you?" he suggested. "But it was not a bet; it is more vital than that. I will tell you when we sit down."
At Savinien's slow pace they came at last to small marble-topped tables under a striped awning. Savinien, with loud gasps, let himself down upon an exiguous chair, rested both fat hands upon the head of his stick, and smiled ruefully across the table at Cobb. A tinge of blue had come out around his lips.
"Even to walk," he gasped, "that discomposes me, as you see. It is terrible."
"Take it easy," counseled Cobb.
An aproned waiter served them, Cobb with beer, Savinien with a treacly liqueur in a glass the size of a thimble. When he was a little restored from his exertions, he laid his arm on the table, with the little glass held between his thumb and forefinger, and remained in this attitude.
"Go ahead," said Cobb. "Tell me why you are distributing watches to the deserving poor in this manner."
"It is not benevolence," replied Savinien. "It is simply that I have a need of some misfortune to balance things."
There was a muffled quality in his voice, as though it were subdued by the bulk from which it had to emerge; but his enunciation was as clean and dexterous as in the days when he had made a vogue for his poems by reading them aloud. It was the voice of a poet issuing from the mouth of a glutton.
"To balance things," he repeated. "Fortune, my dear Cobb, is a pendulum; the higher it rises on the side of happiness, the further it returns on the side of disaster. And with me, who cannot take your arm for a promenade along the pavement without a tightness in the neck and a flutter of my heart, who may not go upstairs quicker than a step a minute, disaster has only one shape. It arrives and I am extinguished! It is for that reason that I fear a persistence of good luck. Of late, the luck that dogs me has been incredible.
"Listen, now, to this! Three days ago, being in a difficulty, I go in search of Rigobert. You know Rigobert, perhaps?"
"Yes," said Cobb. "That is, I have lent him money!"
"Precisely," agreed Savinien. "The sum which he owed me was no more than two hundred and fifty francs but I had not much hope of him. I went leisurely upon the way towards his studio, and at the corner by the Madeleine I entered the post office to obtain a stamp for a letter I had to send. The first thing which I perceived as I opened the door was the back of Rigobert, as he sprawled against the counter, signing his name upon a form while the clerk counted out money to him. Hundred franc notes, my friend—noble new notes, ten in number, a thousand francs in all, which Rigobert received for his untidy autograph upon a blue paper. As for me, I planted myself there at his back in an attitude of expectancy and determination to await his leisure. He was cramming the money into his trousers pocket as he turned round and beheld me. He was embarrassed. He, the universal debtor, the bottomless pit of loans and obligations, to be discovered thus.
"You!" he exclaimed.
"I!" I replied, and took him very firmly by the arm and mentioned my little affair to him. He was not pleased, Rigobert, but for the moment he was empty of excuses. When he suggested that we should go to a cafe, to change one of the notes, that he might pay me my two hundred and fifty, I agreed, for I had him by the arm, but I could see that he was gathering his faculties, and I was wary. A bon rat bon chat!
"I wasted till his note was changed. 'Now, my friend,' I said. 'The hour is come.'"
"He looked at me attentively; he is very naive, in reality. Then, very slowly, he put one hand in his pocket and drew out the whole bundle of money. It looked opulent, it looked fulsome.
"'Savinien,' he said. 'I will do even more than you ask. Two-fifty, is it not? See, now, here is five hundred, and I will toss you whether I pay you five hundred or nothing.'"
"He balanced a coin on his thumb-nail, and smiled at me sidelong. I drew myself up with dignity to repudiate his proposal, but at that instant there came to me—who can say what it was?—a whim, a nudge from the thumb of Providence, a momentary lunacy! I relaxed my attitude."
"'Very well,' I replied. 'But first permit me to examine the coin.'"
"With Rigobert, that is not an insult. He handed me the coin without a word—an honest cart-wheel, a five-franc piece."
"'Toss, then,' I said, returning it to him. 'Face!' I called, as he spun it up. It twinkled in the air like a humming-bird, a score of francs to each flick of its wings, and his palm intercepted it as it fell. I leaned across to see; behind Rigobert's shoulder the waiter leaned likewise. The poor fellow had really no chance to practice those little tricks in which he is eminent. I had won. I drew the money across to me."
"'Peste!' remarked Rigobert, in a tone of dejection, and looked with an appearance of horror at what remained to him of his thousand francs. The waiter beamed at me and rubbed his hands. I ordered him in a strong voice to bring two more consommations."
"'Look here,' said Rigobert. 'Lend me that five hundred, will you?Or, at any rate——'"
"He paused, and his eye lit again with hope."
"'Tell you what,' he said. 'I'll toss you once more—five hundred against five hundred. This'—he laid his hand on his remaining money —'is no use to me. I simply can't do with less than a thousand. Is it agreed?"
"I desired to refuse; I am not a gambler; I come of prudent people.But again it came, that inspired impulse, that courageous folly."
"'It is agreed,' I replied."
"He meant to win, that time. He sat back to it, he concentrated himself. He cast a look at me, the glance of a brigand. I was imperturbable. Again the waiter hurried to see the venture. Rigobert frowned."
"'You call "face," eh?' he asked, balancing the coin."
"'I call when the coin is in the air,' I replied."
"He grunted, and spun it up. 'Pile!' I called this time. Down it came to his hand. Once more the eyes of the waiter and myself rushed to it; the result was capable of no adjustment. I felt my heart bump painfully. The broad coin lay on his hand, pile uppermost. I drew the rest of the money to me."
"'A thousand thanks,' I croaked from a throat constricted with surprise. Rigobert swore."
Cobb laughed. "Is that all that is troubling you?" he asked.
"All!" Savinien shrugged his immense shoulders desolately. "All! That was merely the commencement," he said. "And even that did not finish there."
"I hope Rigobert didn't get any of it back," said Cobb.
"He did his best," replied Savinien. "In a minute or two he collected his wits and addressed himself to the situation. It was worth seeing. He shook his depression from him like a dog shaking water from its coat, and sat up. Enterprise, determination, ruthlessness were eloquent in his countenance; I felt like a child before such a combination of qualities. Then he began to talk. He has an air, that brigand; he can cock his head so as to deceive a bailiff; he can wear a certain nobility of countenance; and with it all he can importune like a beggar. He has a horrid and plausible fluency; he is deaf to denials; he drugs you with words and robs you before you recover consciousness. He had got the length of quoting my own verses to me, and I felt myself going, when deliverance arrived. A stout man paused on the pavement, surveying us both, then came towards us.
"'Monsieur Rigobert,' he said, with that fashion of politeness which one dreads, 'I am on my way to your address.'"
"'Do not let me detain you,' replied Rigobert unpleasantly.
"'But,' said the other, 'this was the day you appointed, M'sieur. You said, 'Bring your bill to me on the 13th, and I will pay it.' Here is the bill.'"
"He plunged his hand into his breast pocket and fumbled with papers. Rigobert examined me rapidly. But the spell was broken, and I was myself again master of my emotions, and of the thousand francs. He saw that it was hopeless—and rose.
"'Monsieur,' he said to the tradesman, 'this is not a time to talk to me of business. I have just suffered a painful bereavement.'"
"He made a gesture with his hand, mournful and resigned, and walked away, while the tradesman gazed after him. And there was I—rich and safe! I felt a warmth that pervaded me. I settled my hat on my head and reached for my cane. It was then that the truly significant thing occurred—the clue, as it were. My hand, as I took my cane, brushed against my liqueur glass upon the table; it fell, rolled to the edge, and disappeared. The waiter dived for it, while I waited to pay for the breakage. His foolish German face came up over the edge of the table, crumpled in a smile.
"'It is all right,' he said. 'The glass is not broken.'"
"It was then, my friend, that I began to perceive how things were with me. Dimly at first, but, as the day proceeded, with growing clearness. I became aware that I stood in the shadow of some strange fate. Small ills, chances of trifling misfortune, stood aloof, and let me pass unharmed; I was destined to be the prey of a mightier evil. When I light my cigarette, do my matches blow out in the wind? No, they burn with the constancy of an altar candle. If I leave my gloves in a cab, as happened yesterday, do I lose them? No, the cabman comes roaring down the street at my back to catch me and restore them. A thousand such providences make up my day. This morning, just before I encountered you, the chief and most signal of them all occurred."
"Go on," said Cobb.
"It was, in fact, impressive," said Savinien. "There is, not far from here, a shop where I am accustomed to buy my cigarettes. A small place, you know, a hole in the wall, with a young ugly woman behind the counter. One enters, one murmurs 'Maryland,' one receives one's yellow packet, one pays, one salutes, one departs. There is nothing in the place to invite one to linger; never in my life have I said more than those two words—'Maryland' on entering and 'Madame' on leaving—to the good creature of the shop. I do not know her name, nor she mine. Ordinarily she is reading when I enter; she puts down her book to serve me as one might put down a knife and fork; it must often happen that she interrupts herself in the middle of a word. She gets as far as:
"'Jean ki——' then I enter. 'Maryland,' I murmur, receive my packet, and pay. 'Madame!' I raise my hat and depart. Not till then does she know the continuation:—'ssed Marie,' or 'cked the Vicomte,' whichever it may be. Not a luxurious reader, that one, you see.
"Well, this morning I enter as usual. There she sits, book in hand. 'Maryland' I murmur. For the first time in my experience of her she does not at once lay the book, face downwards, on the counter, and turn to the shelf behind her to reach me my cigarettes. No, the good creature is absorbed. 'Pardon,' I say, rather louder. She looks up, and it is clear she is impatient at being disturbed. 'Maryland,' I request. She puts down the book and fumbles for a packet. But I am curious to know what book it is that holds her so strongly, what genius of a romancer has aimed so surely at her intelligence. I turn the book round with a finger. The shop, the shelves, the horse's face of Madame the proprietress swim before me. I could dance; I could weep; I could embrace the lady in the pure joy of an artist appreciated and requited. For of all the books ever printed upon paper, that book is mine. My verses! My songs of little lives, they grasp at her and will not let go, like importunate children; she is not easily nor willingly free of them when affairs claim her. Nunc dimittis!"
"What did you do?" inquired Cobb. "Give her a watch, or what?"
"My friend," said Savinien, "I was careful. To do a foolish or a graceless thing would have been to dethrone for her a poet. There was need of a spacious and becoming gesture. I opened her book at the fly-leaf, and reached across to the comptoir for a pen. She turned at that and stared, possibly fearful, poor creature, that it was the till that attracted me. I took the pen and splashed down on the fly- leaf of the book my name in full—a striking signature! Then without a further word that might make an anti-climax, I took my cigarettes and departed. I was so thrilled, so exalted, that it was five minutes before I remembered to be afraid."
"For my fortune was becoming bizarre, you know. It was making me ridiculous even to myself. I have told you but the salient incidents of it; I do not desire to weary you with the facts of the broken braces, the spurious two-franc piece, or the lost door-key. But it is becoming sinister; it needed a counter-poise before it became so pronounced that nothing but sudden death would suffice. The thief steals my watch and I am relieved; he is departing with my best wishes for his success; all promises well, till you arrive at the charge, with your comb erect, and seize him. It is all of a piece. Yes, I know it is funny, but it alarms me. I offer it, therefore, my watch—a sacrifice. Perhaps it likes watches. If so, I have got off cheaply, for, to tell the truth, it was not much of a watch."
He raised the minute glass and drank, setting it down again with a flourish.
"And now I must be going," he said. "It is a strange story—not? ButI don't like it; I don't like it at all."
"Adieu," said Cobb, rising also. "I don't think I'd worry, if I were you. And I won't interfere again."
"On no account," said Savinien, seriously.
Cobb watched him move away, plodding along the pavement heavily, huge and portentous. The back of his head bulged above the collar, with no show of neck between. He was comical and pathetic; he seemed too vast in mere flesh to be the sport of a thing so freakish as luck. To think that such a bulk had a weak heart in it—and that deeper still in its recesses there moved and suffered the soul of a poet!
"Queer yarn," mused Cobb.
It was on the following morning, while Cobb was dressing, that the messenger arrived—a little man in black, with a foot-rule sticking out of his coat-pocket. He looked like an elderly man-servant who had descended to trade. He had a letter for Cobb, addressed in Savinien's pyrotechnic hand, and handed it to him without speaking.
"My dear friend," it said, "I fear the worst. On my return to my rooms here, the first thing I saw was my watch, reposing on my bedside table. It appears that when I made my toilet in the morning I forgot to put it in my pocket. The thief, after all, got nothing. I am lost. In despair, Your Cesar Savinien."
"Yes?" said Cobb. "You want an answer?" For the little artisan in black was waiting.
"An answer!" The other stared. "But——then monsieur does not know?"
"What?"
"He must have been going down to post that note when he had written it," said the little man. "We found it in his hand."
"Eh?" Cobb almost recoiled in the shock of his surprise and horror."D'you mean to tell me that after all, he—he is——"
The little man in black uttered a professional sigh. "The concierge found him in the morning," he replied. "It is said that he suffered from his heart, that poor Monsieur."
"Good Lord!" said Cobb.
There was but the one hotel in that somber town of East Africa, and Miss Gregory, fronting the proprietor of it squarely, noted that he looked at her with something like amusement. She was a short woman of fifty, grey-haired and composed, and her pleasant face had a quiet and almost masculine strength and assurance. In her grey flannel jacket and short skirt and felt hat, with a sun-umbrella carried like a walking-stick, she looked adequate and worthy. Hers was a presence that earned respect and deference in the highways of travel; she had the air of a veteran voyager.
"I have managed to lose the boat," she said evenly; "and my luggage, of course, has been carried on to Zanzibar."
The hotel proprietor had not risen from his chair. He shrugged and smiled as he looked up at her.
"Vat you vant?" he asked.
Miss Gregory frowned. "I want a room for the night," she answered. "A room and dinner, please."
The man smiled again and bit his nails. He was a lean creature, unshaven and sidelong, and he had the furtive and self-conscious air of one who perpetrates a practical joke. Miss Gregory watched him with some impatience; she had yet to learn that a Portugee of the Coast will even lose money to inconvenience an English man or woman.
"You got money?" he asked.
Miss Gregory squared her shoulders. "I shall pay in the morning," she said. "You need have no fear; the Consul will be back to-morrow; I inquired at the Consulate." She paused; he wore still his narrow grin of malice. "Man!" she said contemptuously; "do you keep an hotel and not know a lady when you see one?"
"No money?" he suggested insinuatingly.
Miss Gregory sank a hand in her big pocket and brought forth her purse. There was a slight flush on her healthy broad face, but she governed her voice admirably.
"Here are three English shillings," she said, tilting them into her hand. "You can take these as a—as a deposit; and the rest will be paid in the morning. Now show me to my room."
The landlord uncoiled himself and rose from his chair to look at the money. He peered at it in her hand, then straightened up and faced her. Suddenly he had become hostile, lividly vicious; he laughed a shrill cackle in her face, his nose wrinkled like a dog's.
"No good to me," he said. "T'ree shillin'—poof! For free shillin' here you buy-a free drink. For room—an' dinner—you pay-a one pound. Take-a your t'ree shillin' away; I don't vant-a you an' your free shillin'. You get out—go walk-a in da street."
His eyes traveled swiftly about the place, as though to make sure that no one overheard; then he spat a foul epithet at her. His lean, unbuttoned body writhed as he babbled; his hands whirled in gestures; he seemed to be seeking courage to be violent. Miss Gregory, with a little frown of consideration, watched him. She buttoned the flannel jacket across her breast and restored her three shillings to her pocket. It was all done very deliberately, and through it all her formidable gaze held the Portugee at arm's length, till his gabbled insults died out and left him armed only with scowls. Miss Gregory waited, but he had no more to say.
"I will call on you to-morrow, my man," she said significantly, and walked at a leisurely rate through the door to the grave street without, where the quick evening was already giving place to night.
The sky overhead was deep blue and clear, powdered with a multitude of stars, and over the sea to the east a crescent of moon floated low. The night was fresh, but not cold. Miss Gregory, pacing tranquilly along the cobbled street, found it agreeable after the sterile heat of the afternoon. A faint breeze stirred the acacias which were planted along the middle of the way, and they murmured secretly. The prospect of a night without shelter did not greatly disturb her; she was already conscious that when she came to look back on it, it would take a high rank among her experiences.
A turning brought her to the Praca, the little square of the town, its heart and centre. Here there were lights, the signal that the place had waked up for the evening. Two or three low-browed cafes abutted on the pavement, each lively with folk who drank and talked; the open doors of a church showed an interior faintly luminous with candles; and men and a few women stood about in groups or moved here and there at their ease. With her deliberate step, Miss Gregory passed among them, looking about her with the ready interest of the old traveler who sees without criticizing. There was a flavor in the place and its people that struck her like something pungent; they had individuality; they belonged to each other. There was a sinister character in the faces and bearing of the men, a formidable directness in the women; not one but had the air of carrying a hidden weapon. It was the commonplace evening population of an East African town which has never lived down the traditions of its pirate- founders, and Miss Gregory marked its fine picturesqueness with appreciation. Every one turned to look at her as she passed; she, clean, sane, assured, with her little air of good-breeding, was no less novel to them than they to her. A thin dark woman, with arms and breasts bare, took a quick step forward to look into her face; Miss Gregory paused in her walk to return the scrutiny. The woman's wide lips curled in a sudden laughter; Miss Gregory smiled patronizingly, nodded to her and passed on.
She made a tour of the square, and even explored the mouth of a dark lane that led out of it. But it seemed to lead nowhere; it was a mere burrow between high silent houses, twisting abruptly among them with no purpose of direction, and she turned back to the lights. She was conscious by now that she had been on her feet since early in the afternoon, and she crossed to one of the cafes, where a tinkling band added its allurements to the yellow lights, and sat down at a small table. With one accord the customers at the place turned to look at her. A barefoot waiter received her order for coffee; she found herself a cigarette, lit it and looked about her. The cafe was a low whitewashed room, open to the pavement at one side; it was crowded with little tables, and at one end an orchestra of four sallow girls smoked and fiddled and strummed. All about her were the hard, keen men and women she had seen in the square, more men than women. They talked to each other earnestly, in guarded voices, with eyes alert for eavesdroppers; nearly every one had an air of secrecy and caution. They were of all the racial types she had ever seen. Teuton, Latin and Slav, and variants and mixtures of these, murmured and whispered among themselves; only one of them was unmistakably English.
Miss Gregory had noticed him as soon as she entered, and her table was next to the one at which he sat with three others, who watched him while he talked, and said little. He was a fair youth, with a bland, rather vacant face, and a weak, slack mouth. Miss Gregory knew such faces among footmen and hairdressers, creatures fitted by their deficiencies to serve their betters. He had evidently been drinking a good deal; the table before him was sloppy and foul, and there was the glaze of intoxication in his eyes. But what arrested her was a touch of exaltation in him, a manner as of triumph. For some reason or other he seemed radiant and glad. The cause soon became apparent, for he fixed his unsure gaze on her, smiled ingenuously and attempted a bow.
"Pardon me," he said, leaning carefully towards her. "Pardon me, but the sight of an English lady——"
Miss Gregory nodded. "All right," she said.
He hitched his chair closer to her; his three companions exchanged glances, and one of them made as though to nudge him, but hesitated and finally forbore.
"In. a general way," said the youth confidentially, "I wouldn't venture to speak to you. But "—and he broke into smiles—"I'm on me way home myself."
"I see," answered Miss Gregory.
He beamed at her, fatuous and full of pride. "On me way home," he repeated. "For good. No more Africa for me. I've 'ad just upon eight years of it—eight years of sun an' bugs an' fever, and now I'm going home." He paused and looked at her impressively. "I've made my pile," he said.
"That's good," said Miss Gregory. She saw the three others exchange another glance.
The English youth was rapt; for some moments his eyes were unseeing, and his lips moved without sound. It was not difficult to see what home meant for him, a goal achieved at hazard, something familiar and sympathetic, worth all the rest of the world. He came back to his surroundings with a long sigh.
"You don't happen to know Clapham Junction, ma'am?" he suggested. "Not the station, I don't mean, but the place? No? Well, that's where I'm off to. I 'aven't seen a tramcar for eight years; it'll be queer at first, I expect." He looked round him slowly at the low bare room and the men in white clothes and the whispering night without. "My mother takes lodgers," he added inconsequently.
"She will be glad to see you," said Miss Gregory.
"She will that," he agreed. He dropped his voice to the tones of confidence. "I got an idea," he said. "Give her a surprise. I'll go along to the house just about dark and say I'm lookin' for a room. Eh? And she'll begin about terms. Then I'll begin. 'Never you mind about terms,' I'll say. ''Ere's the price of eight years sweatin', and God bless you, old lady!'" He blinked rapidly, for his eyes were wet. "What do you think of that for a surprise?"
"Capital!" agreed Miss Gregory. "Are you going down the Coast by the boat to-morrow?"
"That's it," he cried. "I'm going second-class, like a gentleman.Home, by gosh!"
"Then," suggested Miss Gregory, eyeing his sullen companions, "don't you think it would be best if you went and got some sleep now? You wouldn't care to miss the boat, I suppose?"
He stared at her. "No," he said, as if the contingency had just occurred to him. He sat back; his mild, insignificant face wore a look of alarm. "No, I shouldn't. It wouldn't do." His voice dropped again. "It wouldn't do," he repeated. "I've got it on me, an' this ain't what you call a moral place."
Miss Gregory nodded comprehendingly. "I know," she said. "So wouldn't it be as well on all accounts to get to bed behind a locked door?"
"You've hit it," he said. "That's what I got to do—and lock the door. That's common sense, that is." He stared at her for an instant, then rose with care and deliberation to his feet. He had altogether forgotten his companions; he did not even see them.
"That is, if it'll lock," he added, and held out his hand to MissGregory.
"Good-bye," she said, taking it heartily. "I'm glad to hear of your good fortune."
He gulped and left her, walking forth through the little tables with the uncanny straightness of the man "in liquor." Miss Gregory drank up her coffee and sat where she was.
She could see the men at the next table out of the corner of her eye; their heads were together, and they were whispering excitedly. The whole affair was plain enough to a veteran of the world's byways like Miss Gregory; the plan had been to make the youth drunk, help him forth, and rob him easily in some convenient corner. He was the kind of man who lends himself to being robbed; the real wonder was that it had not been done already. But, mingled with her contempt for his helplessness, Miss Gregory felt a certain softening. His homing instinct, as blind as that of a domestic animal, his rejoicing in his return, his childish plan for taking his mother by surprise, even his loyalty to the tramcars and all the busy littleness of Clapham Junction—these touched something in her akin to the goodness of motherhood. It occurred to her that perhaps he had been better off under the lights of the cafe than alone on his way to his bed; and at that moment the three men at the next table, their conference over, rose and went out. She sat still till they were clear; then, on an impulse of officiousness, got up and went out after them.
Their white clothes shone in the darkness to guide her; they cut across the square and vanished in one of those dark alleys she had already remarked. Miss Gregory straightened her felt hat, took a fresh grip of the stout umbrella, and followed determinedly. The corner of the alley shut out the lights behind her; tall walls with scarce windows fast shuttered hemmed her in; the vast night of the tropics drooped its shadow over her. Through it all she plodded at the gait familiar to many varieties of men from Poughkeepsie to Pekin, a squat, resolute figure, reckless alike of risk and ridicule, an unheroic heroine. There reached her from time to time the noises that prevail in those places—noises filtering thinly through shutters, the pad of footsteps, and once—it seemed to come from some roof invisible above her—the sound of sobbing, abandoned, strangled, heart-shaking sobs. She frowned and went on.
A spot where the way forked made her hesitate; the men she was following were no longer in sight. But as she pondered there came to guide her a sudden cry, clear and poignant, the shout of a startled man. It was from the right-hand path, and promptly, as though on a summons, she bent her grey head and broke into a run in the direction of it. As she ran, pounding valiantly, she groped in her pocket for a dog-whistle she had with her; she took it in her lips, and, never ceasing to run, blew shrill call upon call. Her umbrella was poised for war, but, rounding a corner, she saw that her whistling had done its work; three white jackets were making off at top-speed. It takes little to alarm a thief; Miss Gregory had counted on that.
It was not till she fell over him that she was aware of the man on the ground, who rolled over and cried out at the movement. She put a steady hand on him.
"Are you hurt?" she asked eagerly.
He groaned; his face was a pale blur against the earth.
"They've got me," he said. "They stuck a knife in my back. I'm bleeding; I'm bleeding."
"Get up," bade Miss Gregory. "Bleeding or not, we must get away from here. Up you get."
She pulled him to a sitting position, and he screamed and resisted, but Miss Gregory was his master. By voice and force she brought him upright; he could stand alone, and seemed surprised to find it out.
"Take my arm," she ordered him. "Lean on it; don t be afraid. Now, where are your rooms?"
"On this way," he sobbed.
Evidently he had an ugly wound, for at each few steps he had to stop and rest, and sometimes he swayed, and Miss Gregory had to hold him up. His breath came hastily; he was soft with terror. "They'll come back! they'll come back!" he gabbled, tottering on his feet.
"They're coming now; I can hear them," replied Miss Gregory grimly. "Here, lean in this doorway behind me, man. Stop that whimpering, will you! Now, keep close."
She propped him against the nail-studded door, and placed herself before, him, and the three robbers, bunched together in a group, stealing along the middle of the way, might almost have gone past without seeing them. But it was not a chance to trust to. Miss Gregory let them come abreast of her; her whole honest body was tense to the occasion; on the due moment she flung herself forward and the brandished umbrella rained loud blows on aghast heads; and at the same time she summoned to her aid her one accomplishment—she shrieked. She was a strong woman, deep-chested, full-lunged; her raw yell shattered the stillness of the night like some crazy trumpet; it broke from her with the suddenness of a catastrophe, nerve-sapping, ear-scaring, heart-striking. Before it and the assault of the stout umbrella the robbers broke; a panic captured them; they squealed, clasped at each other, and ran in mere senseless amaze. The Latin blood, when diluted with Coast mixtures, is never remarkable for courage; but braver men might have scattered at the alarm of that mighty discordancy attacking from behind.
Fortunately the door they sought was not far off; through it they entered a big untidy room, stone-floored as the custom is, and littered with all the various trifles a man gathers about him on the Coast. Miss Gregory put her patient on the narrow bed and turned to the door; true to his fears, it would not lock. The youth was very pale and in much fear; blood stained the back of his clothes, and his eyes followed her about in appeal.
"You must wait a little," Miss Gregory told him. "I'll look at that wound of yours when I've seen to the door. No lock, of course." She pondered frowningly. "It's a childish thing at the best," she added thoughtfully; "but it may be a novelty in these parts. Have you ever arranged a booby trap, my boy?"
"No," he answered, wonderingly.
Miss Gregory shook her head. "The lower classes are getting worse and worse," she observed. She put a chair by the door, which stood a little ajar, and looked about her.
"As you are going away you won't want this china." It was his ewer and wash-hand basin. "I don't see anything better, and it'll make a smash, at any rate."
"What you goin' to do, ma'am?" asked the man on the bed.
"Watch," she bade him. It was not easy, but with care she managed to poise the basin and the ewer in it on top of the door, so that it leaned on the lintel and must fall as soon as the door was pushed wider.
"Now," she said, when it was done, "let's have a look at that cut."
It was an ugly gash high in the back, to the left of the spine—a bungler's or a coward's attempt at the terrible heart-stab. Miss Gregory, examining it carefully, was of opinion that she could have done it better; it had bled copiously, but she judged it not to be dangerous. She washed it and made a bandage for it out of a couple of the patient's shirts, and he found himself a good deal more comfortable. He lay back on his bed with some of the color restored to his face, and watched her as she moved here and there about the room with eyes that were trustful and slavish.
"Well," said Miss Gregory, when she had completed an examination of the apartment, "there doesn't seem to be much more one can do. They'll come back, I suppose? But of course they will. How much money have you got about you?"
"About two thousand pounds, ma'am," he said, meekly.
"H'm!" Miss Gregory thought a moment. "And they know it? Of course." She added her little sharp nod of certainty. "Well, when they come we'll attend to them."
There was a tiny mirror hanging from a nail, and she went to it, patted her grey hair to neatness, and re-established her felt hat on top of it. The place was as still as the grave; no noise reached it from without. The one candle at the bedside threw her shadow monstrously up the wall; while she fumbled with her hatpins it pictured a looming giantess brandishing weapons.
She was still at the mirror, with hatpins held in her mouth, when the steps of the robbers made themselves heard. The man on the bed started up on his elbow, with wide eyes and a sagging mouth. Miss Gregory quelled him with a glance, then crossed the floor and blew the candle out. In the darkness she laid her hat down that it might not come to harm, and put a reassuring hand on the youth's shoulder, it was quaking, and she murmured him a caution to keep quiet. Together, with breath withheld, they heard the men in the entry of the house, three of them, coming guardedly. Miss Gregory realized that this was the real onslaught; they would be nerved for shrieks this time. She took her hand from the youth's shoulder with another whispered word, and stepped to the middle of the room and stood motionless. The noise of breathing reached her, then a foot shuffled, and on the instant somebody sprang forward and shoved the door wide.
The jug and basin smashed splendidly; whoever it fell on uttered a little shrill yell and paused, confounded by the darkness. Miss Gregory, her eyes more tuned to it, could make out the blur of white clothes; with noiseless feet she moved towards them. She was all purpose and directness; no tremor disturbed her. As calmly as she would have shaken hands with the Consul she reached forward, felt her enemy, and delivered a cool and well-directed thrust. An appalling yell answered her, and she stepped back a space, the hatpin held ready for another attack. There was a tense instant of inaction, and then the three rushed, and one bowled her over on the floor and fell with her.
Miss Gregory fell on her side, and before she was well down the steel hatpin, eight inches long of good Paris metal, plunged and found its prey. The man roared and wallowed clear, and she rose. The big room was wild with stamping feet and throaty noises such as dogs make. The bedside chair, kicked aside struck her ankles; she picked it up and threw it at the sounds. It seemed to complicate matters. The place was as dark as a well, and she moved groping with her hands towards the bed. Some one backed into her—another yell and a jump, and, as she stepped back, the swish of a blow aimed towards her that barely missed her. Then she was by the bed, feeling over it; it was empty.
She had some moments of rest; every one was still, save for harsh breathing. But she dared not stand long, lest their eyes too should adapt themselves to the dark. It was evident that nobody had firearms; there was that much to be thankful for. She gathered herself for an attack, a rush at the enemy with an active hatpin, when something touched her foot. She bent, swiftly alert for war, but arrested the pin on its way. It was a hand from under the bed; her protege had taken refuge there. She took his wrist and pulled; he whimpered, and there was a grunt from the middle of the room at the sound, but he came crawling. She dared not whisper, for those others were moving already, but with her cool, firm hand on his wrist, she sank down on all-fours and drew him on towards the door. It was impossible to make no noise, but at any rate their noise was disconcerting; the robbers could not guess what it betokened. Each of them had his stab, a tingling, unaccountable wound, a hurt to daunt a man, and they were separately standing guard each over his own life.
They encountered one half way across the room. He felt them near him, and sent a smashing blow with a knife into the empty air. Miss Gregory, always with that considered and careful swiftness that was so like deliberation, reared to her knees, her left hand still holding the youth's wrist, and lunged. Another yell, and the man, leaping back, fouled a comrade, who stabbed and sprang away. They heard the man fall and move upon the floor like a dying fish, with sounds of choking. Then the door was before them, and, crawling still, with infinite pains to be noiseless, they passed through it. From within the room the choking noises followed them till they gained the open air.
The tortuous alley received them like a refuge; they fled along it with lightened hearts, taking all turnings that might baffle a chase, till at last Miss Gregory smelt acacias and they issued again into the little square. To Miss Gregory it was almost amazing that the cafes should still be lighted, their tables thronged, the music insistent. While history had paced for her the world had stood still. She stood and looked across at the lights thoughtfully.
The youth at her side coughed. "The least I can do," he suggested inanely, "is ask you to 'ave a cup of coffee, ma'am."
Miss Gregory turned on him sharply.
"And then?" she asked. "After the coffee, what then?"
He shuffled his feet uneasily. "Well, ma'am," he said; "this hole in my back is more'n a bit painful. So I thought I'd get along to the hotel an' have a lie down."
She looked at him thoughtfully. Her head was bare, and the night breeze from the sea whipped a strand of grey hair across her brow. She brushed it away a little wearily.
"Unless there's anything more I can do for you," suggested the young man smoothly.
Anything more he could do for her! She smiled, considering him. The events of the night had not ruffled him; his blonde face was still mild, insignificant, plebeian. Of such men slaves are made; their part is to obey orders, to be without responsibility, to be guided, governed, and protected by their betters. Miss Gregory, sister of a Major-General, friend of Colonial Governors, aunt of a Member of Parliament, author of "The Saharan Solitudes," and woman of the world, saw that she had served her purpose, her work was done.
"Thank you," she said; "there is nothing more. You had better go to bed at once."
There was a broken fountain in the middle of the square, overgrown with sickly lichen, and round it ran a stone bench. The acacias sheltered it, and a dribble of water from the conduit sounded always, fitting itself to one's thoughts in a murmuring cadence. Here Miss Gregory disposed herself, and here the dawn found her, a little disheveled, and looking rather old with the chill of that bleak hour before the sun rises. But her grey head was erect, her broad back straight, and the regard of her eyes serene and untroubled always. She was waiting for the hour when the Consul would be accessible; he was the son of her dearest friend.
"And I must not forget," she told herself—"I really must not forget to attend to that hotel man."