Phantom Wires: A Novel

by Arthur Stringer

  CHAPTER X

  THE TIGHTENING COIL

  Henry Keenan, of New York, had leisurely finished his cigar, and had asleisurely glanced through all the three-day-old London papers. He hadeven puzzled, for another half-hour, over the pages of a _Tribuna_.Then, after gazing in an idle and listless manner about the empty anduninviting hotel reading-room, he decided that it was time for him togo up to his room. He made his leisurely way to the lift, ascended tothe fourth floor, stepped out, and drew his room-key from his pocket,as he walked down the hall, in the same idle and listless manner.

  As he turned the corner the listlessness went from his face, and achange came in his languid yet ever-restless and covert eyes.

  For a young woman was standing before his door, trying to fit a key tothe lock. This, he decided as he paused three paces from her andstudied her back, she was doing quite openly, with no slightest senseof secrecy. She wore a plumed hat, and a dark cloth tailor-made suitthat was unmistakably English. She still struggled with the key,unconscious of his presence. His tread on the thick carpet had beenlight; he had intended to catch her, beyond equivocation, in the act.But now something about the lines of her stooping figure caused HenryKeenan to remove his hat, respectfully, before speaking to her.

  "Could I assist you, madam?" he asked, close to her side by this time.

  She turned, with a start, though her loss of self-possession lasted buta moment. But as she turned her startled eyes to him Keenan's lastdoubt as to whether or not it was a mere mistake withered away from hismind. He knew, from the hot flush that mounted to her cheeks and fromthe mellow contralto of her carefully modulated English voice, that shebelonged to that vaguely denominated yet rigidly delimited type thatwould always be called a woman of breeding.

  "If you please," she said shortly, stepping back from the door.

  He bent over the key which she had left still in the lock.

  As he did so he glanced at the number which the key, protruding fromthe lock, bore stamped on its flat brass bow. The number wasThirty-seven, while the number which stood before his eyes on the doorwas Forty-one.

  Under ordinary circumstances the apparent accident would never havegiven him a second thought. But all that day he had been oppressed bya sense of hidden yet continual espionage. This feeling had followedhim from the moment he had landed in Genoa. He had tried to argue itdown, inwardly protesting that such must be merely the obsession of allfugitives. And now, even to find an unknown and innocent-appearingyoung woman trying to force an entrance into his room aroused all hislatent cautiousness. Yet a moment later he felt ashamed of hissuspicions.

  "Why, this is room Forty-one," she cried, over his shoulder. Hewithdrew the key and looked at it with a show of surprise.

  "And your key, I see, is Thirty-seven," he explained.

  She was laughing now, a little, through her confusion. It was a verypleasant laugh, he thought. She looked a frank and companionablewoman, with her love for the merriment of life touched with a sort ofautumnal and wistful sobriety that in no way estranged it from a senseof youth. But, above all, she was a beautiful woman, thought thelistless and lonely man. He looked at her again. It was his suspicionof being spied upon, he felt, that had first blinded him to the charmof her appearance.

  "It was the second turn in the corridor that threw me out," sheexplained. He found himself walking with her to her door.

  She had thought to find some touch of the Boweryite about him, someoutcropping of the half-submerged bunco-steerer. Instead of that, bothhis look and his tone carried some tinge of quiet yet dominantgentility, reminding her, as she had so often been taught before, thatthe criminal is not a type in himself, that only fanciful andfar-stretched generalizations could detach him as a species, or immureand mark him off from the rest of his kind.

  She glanced at him still again, at the seemingly melancholic andcontemplative face, that strangely reminded her of Duerer's portrait ofhimself. As she did so there was carried to her memory, and imprintedon it, the picture of a wistful and lonely man, his countenancetouched, for all its open Irish smile, with some wordless sorrow, somepensive isolation of soul, lean and gaunt with some undefined hunger, alittle furtive and covert with some half-concealed restlessness.

  "Aren't you an American?" he was asking, almost hopefully, it seemed toher.

  "Oh, no," she answered, with her sober, slow smile. "I'm anEnglishwoman!"

  He shook his head, whimsically.

  "Indeed, I'm sorry for that!" said the Celt.

  She joined in his laugh.

  "But I've lived abroad so much!" she added.

  "Then you must know Italy pretty well, I suppose?"

  "Oh, yes; I've traveled here, winter after winter."

  She picked out a card from her pocket-book, on which was inscribed, inSpencerian definiteness of black and white, "Miss Barbara Allen." Ithad been the card of Lady Boxspur's eminently respectable maid--andFrances Durkin had saved it for just such a contingency.

  He read the name, slowly, and then placed the card in his vest pocket.If he noticed her smile, he gave no sign of it.

  "And you like Genoa? I mean, _is_ there anything to like in thisplace?" he asked companionably. "I'll be hanged if I've seen anythingbut a few million mementoes of Christopher Columbus!"

  "There's the Palazzo Bianco, and the Palazzo Rosso, and, of course,there's the Campo Santo!"

  "But who cares for graveyards?"

  "All Europe is a graveyard, of its past!" she answered lightly. "Thatwas what I thought you Americans always came to see!"

  He laughed a little, in turn, and she both liked him better for it andfound it easier to go on. She felt, from his silences, that no greatspan of his life had been spent in talking with women. And she wasglad of it.

  "I like the Riggi," she added pregnantly.

  "The Riggi--what's that, please?"

  "That's the restaurant up on the hill." She hesitated and turned back,before unlocking her door. "It's charming!"

  He was on the point, she knew, of making the plunge and asking if theymight not see the Riggi together, when something in her glance, someprecautionary chilliness of look, checked him. For she had seen thateven now things might advance too hurriedly. It would be wiser, and inthe long run it would pay, she warned herself, to draw in--for as shestill lingered and chatted with him she more and more felt that she wasface to face with a resourceful and strong-willed opponent. Shenoticed, through all the outward Celtic gentleness, the grim andpassionate mouth, the keenness of the shifty yet penetrating hazel-grayeyes, the touch of almost bull-dog tenaciousness about theloose-jointed, high-shouldered figure, and, above all, the audacity ofthe careless Irish-American smile. That smile, she felt, trailed likea flippant and fluttering tail to the kite of his racial solemnity andstubbornness of purpose, enabling it to rise higher even while seemingto weigh it down.

  "And you always travel alone?" he finally asked, shaking off the lastof his reserve.

  "Oh, I'm a bit of a globe-trotter--that's what you'd call me on yourside of the ocean, isn't it? You see, I go about Southern Europepicking up things for a London art firm!"

  "And where do you go next?"

  "Oh, perhaps to Milan, perhaps to Naples; it may even be to Rome, or itmight turn out to be Syracuse or Taormina. With me, everythingdepends, first on the weather, and, next, on what instructions are senton."

  She inwardly marveled at the glibness and spontaneity with which thewords fell from her tongue. She even took a sort of secret joy in thedramatic values which that scene of play-acting presented to her.

  "And do you ever go to New York?"

  "Yes, such a thing might happen, any time."

  It was as well, she told herself, to leave the way well paved.

  "_That's_ the city for you!" he declared, with a commending shake ofthe head.

  Of the truth of that fact Frances Durkin was only too well aware; butthis was a conviction to which she did not give utterance.

&nb
sp; As they stood chatting together in the deserted hallway, a man, turningthe corner, brushed by them. He merely gave them one casual glance ofinquiry, and then looked away, apparently at the room-numbers on thelintels.

  The young woman chanced to be tapping half-carelessly, half-nervously,with her key on the panel of her door. It meant nothing to hercomrade, but to the passing man it resolved itself into an intelligibleand coherent message. For it was in Morse, and to his trained andadept ear it read: "This--is--Keenan--keep--away!"