Phantom Wires: A Novel

by Arthur Stringer

  CHAPTER IV

  THE WIDENING ROAD

  Under the softly-waving palms of that midnight garden, Durkin relivedtheir feverish past, month by remembered month, until they found theneed of money staring them in the face. He reviewed each increasingdilemma, until, eventually, he had left her in her squalid Parispension with her music pupils and the last eighty francs, while heclutched at the passing straw of an exporting house clerkship inMarseilles. The exporting house, which was under American guidance,had flickered and gone out ignominiously, and week by desperate weekeach new promise of honest work seemed to wither into a chimera at hisfeverish touch. He had been told of a demand for electrical experts atTangier, and had promptly worked his passage to that outlandishsea-port on a Belgian coasting-steamer, only to find a week'semployment installing a burglar-alarm system in the ware-house of aLiverpool shipping company. In Gibraltar, a week or two longer, he hadbeen able to supply his immediate wants through assisting in thereconstruction of a moving-picture machine, untimely wrecked on theoutskirts of Fez by Moorish fanatics who had believed it to be theinvention of the Evil One.

  It was at Gibraltar, too, that his first mocking hopes for some renewalof life had come to him, along with the vague hint that histransmitting camera had at last been recognized, and perhaps evenmarketed. But escape from that little seaport had been as difficult asescape from gaol. He had finally effected a hazardous andever-memorable migration from Algeciras to Cimiez, but only by actingas chauffeur for a help-abandoned, gout-ridden, and irritable-mindedex-ambassador to Persia, together with a scrupulously inattentivetrained nurse, who, apparently, preferred diamonds to a uniform, andsmuggled incredible quantities of hand-made lace under the tonneauseat-cushions. And then he had found himself at Monte Carlo, stillwaiting for word from Paris, fighting against a grim new temptationwhich, vampire-like, had grown stronger and stronger as its victimdaily had grown weaker and weaker.

  For along the sea-front, one indolent and golden afternoon, he hadlearned that an American yacht in the harbor was sending ashore for apractical electrician, since a defective generator had left its cabinsof glimmering white and gold in sudden darkness. Durkin, after a brieftalk with the second officer, had been taken aboard the tender andhurried out to where the lightless steamer rocked and swung at heranchor chain in the intense turquoise bay. He had hoped, at first,that he was approaching his ship of deliverance, that luck was favoringthe luckless and at last the means of his escape were at hand. So heasked, with outward unconcern, just what the yacht's course was. Theywere bound for Messina, the second officer had replied, and from therethey went on to Corfu for a couple of weeks, and then on to Ragusa.

  He went on board and looked over the armature core. It was of theslotted drum type, he at once perceived, built up of laminations ofsoft steel painted to break up eddy currents, and as he tested the softamber mica insulation about the commutators of hard-rolled copper, heknew that the defective generator could be repaired in three-quartersof an hour. But certain scraps of talk that came to his ears amid theclink of glasses, from one of the shadowy saloons, had stung into vagueactivity his old, irrepressible hunger for the companionship of his ownkind, his own race.

  It was uncommonly pleasant, he had told himself as he had caught thefirst drone of the lowered, confidential voices, to hear the old hometalk, and even broken snatches of old home interests. As he exploredthe ship and minutely examined automatic circuit-breaker andswitchboard and fuse, he even made it a point to see that hisexplorations took him into the pantry-like cabin next to the saloonfrom which these droning voices drifted. As he gave apparentlystudious and unbroken attention to a stretch of defective wiring, hewas in fact making casual mental note of the familiar tones of thedistant voices, listening impersonally and dreamily to each questionand answer and suggestion that passed between that quietly talkinggroup. One of the talkers, he soon found, was a Supreme Court judge onhis vacation, equable and deliberative in his occasional query or viewor criticism; another was apparently a secret agent from the office ofthe New York district-attorney, still another two were either ScotlandYard men or members of some continental detective bureau--this Durkinassumed from their broad-voweled English voices and their seeminglyintimate knowledge of European criminal procedure. The fifth man hecould in no way place. But it was this man who interrupted the others,and, apparently taking a slip of paper from some inside pocket or somewell-closed wallet, read aloud a list which, he first explained, hadbeen secured from some undesignated safe on the night of a certain raid.

  "Three hundred and twenty shares of National Bank of Commerce," readthe voice methodically, the reader checking off each item, obviously,as he went along. "One certificate of forty-seven shares of UnitedStates Steel Preferred; two certificates of one hundred shares each ofErie Railroad First Preferred; eighteen personal cheques, with namesand amounts and banks attached; seven I. O. U.'s, with amounts anddates and initials."

  "Probably worthless, from our point of view!" interposed a voice.

  The dreaminess suddenly went out of Durkin's eyes, as he listened.

  "Postal-Union Telegraph bonds, valued at $102,345," went on the readingvoice, and again the interrupting critic remarked: "Which, you see, wemay regard as very significant, since it both obviously and inferablydemonstrates that the telegraph company and the poolrooms are compelledto stand together!"

  Durkin followed the list, with inclined head and uplifted hands,forgetting even his simulation of work, until the end was reached.

  "In all, you see, one quarter of a million dollars in negotiablesecurities, if we are to rely on this memorandum, which, as I statedbefore, ought to be authentic, for it was taken from the Penfield safethe night of the first raid."

  Durkin started, as though the circuit with which his fingers absentlytoyed had suddenly become a live wire.

  "Penfield!" The word sent a little thrill through his body.Penfield--the very name was a challenging trumpet to him. But again hebent and listened to the drone of the nearby voices.

  "And Keenan, you say, is in Genoa?" asked one of the Englishmen.

  "If he's not there now he will be during the week," answered theAmerican.

  "You're sure of that?"

  "All I know is that our Milan man secured duplicates of his cables.Three of them were in cipher, but he was able to make reasonably sureof the Genoa trip!"

  "It would be rather hard to get at him, _there_!"

  "But if he strikes north, as you say, and goes first to Liverpool, andgets home by the back door, as it were, by taking a steamer to Quebecor Montreal----"

  "That's a mere blind!"

  "But why say that?"

  "Because he's too wise to stride British territory, before he unloads.It's not a mere matter of stopping the transfer of this stock, orwhether or not all of it is negotiable. What we want is tangible andincriminating evidence. The signatures of those cheques are----"

  That was the last word that came to Durkin's ears, for at that moment asteward, with a tray of glasses, hurried into the pantry. Hissuspicious eye saw nothing beyond a busy electrician replacing aswitchboard. But before the intruding steward had departed the secondofficer was at Durkin's elbow, overlooking his labors, and no furtherword or hint came to the ears of the listener.

  But he had heard enough. The flame had been applied to the dry acreageof his too arid and idle existence. He had remained passive too long.It was change that brought chance. And even though that change meantdescent, it would, after all, be only the momentary dip that precededthe upward flight again. And as he gazed thoughtfully landward, whereMonte Carlo lay vivid and glowing under the sheltering Alpes-Maritimes,like a golden lizard sunning itself on a shelf of gray rock, he feltwithin him a more kindly and comprehensive feeling for thatflower-strewn arena of vast hazards. It was, after all, the greatchances of life that made existence endurable. Its only anodyne lay ineffort and feverish struggle. And his chance for work had come!

  Half an hour later he wa
s rowed ashore, with a good Havana cigarbetween his teeth and three good English sovereigns in his pocket. Ashe made his way up to his hotel he could feel some inner part of himstill struggling and shrinking back from the enticing avenue ofactivity which his new knowledge was opening up before him.

  He smiled, now, a little grimly, as he sat under the rustling palms andthought of those old, unnecessary scruples. He had been holdinghimself to a compact which no longer existed. And, all along, he hadbeen regarding himself as the weakling, the vacillator, when it was hewho had held out the longest! He had even, in those earlier hesitatingmoments, consolingly recalled to his mind how Monsieur Blanc's modestlydenominated Societe Anonyme des Bains de Mer et Cercle des Etrangersmade it a point to proffer a railway ticket to any impending wreck,such as himself, who might drift like a stain across its roads ofmerriment, or leave a telltale blot upon one of its perenniallybeautiful and ever-odorous flower-beds. But now, as he reviewed thosepast weeks of hesitation and inward struggle, a sense of relapse creptover him. As he recalled the picture of the clear-cut profile betweenthe floating purple curtains, a vague indifference as to the finaloutcome of things took possession of him.

  He almost exulted in the meaning of the strange meeting, which, onehour before, had seemed to bring the universe crashing down about hishead. Then, as his plans and thoughts took more definite shape, hisearlier recklessness merged into an almost pleasurable sense of reliefand release, of freedom after confinement. He felt incongruouslygrateful for the lash that had awakened him to even illicit activity;life, under the passion for accomplishment, under the zest for risk andresponsibility, seemed to take on its older and deeper meaning oncemore. It was, he told himself, as if the foreign tongue which he hadso wearily heard on every side of him, for so long, had suddenlytranslated itself into intelligibility, or as if the text beneath thepictures in those ubiquitous illustrated papers from Paris, which hehad studied so blankly and so blindly, had suddenly become as plain ashis own English to him.

  But his moment of exaltation, his mood of careless emancipation, was abrief one. He was no longer alone in life. His bitterness of hearthad blinded him to obligations. He had not yet fathomed the mystery ofFrank's appearance. He had not yet even made sure of her relapse.Above all, he had not put forth a hand to help her in what might be aninexplicable extremity. The morning could still bring some word fromher. He himself would spend the day in search of her. He would haveto proceed guardedly, but he would leave no stone unturned. It wasnot, he told himself, that he was giving fate one last chance to treatmore kindly with him. It was, rather, that all his natural beingwanted and reached out for this woman who had first taught him themeaning and purpose of life. . . . His mind went back, suddenly, toone afternoon, months before, at Abbazia, when they had come up fromsea-bathing in the Adriatic. He had leaned down over her, to help herup the Angiolina bath steps, wet and slippery with sea-water. Themingled gold and chestnut of her thick hair was dank and sodden withbrine, the wistful face that she turned up to him was pinched andcolorless and blue about the lips. She seemed, of a sudden, as sheleaned heavily on his arm, a presaging apparition out of the dimfuture, an adumbration of her own body grown frail and old, looking upto him for help, calling forlornly to him for solace. And in thatimpressionable moment his heart had gone out to her, in a burst of pitythat seemed deeper and stronger than love itself.