Phantom Wires: A Novel

by Arthur Stringer

  CHAPTER XI

  THE INTOXICATION OF WAR

  It was two days later,--and they had been days of blank suspense forhim,--that Durkin made his way to Frank's room, unobserved. His firstresolution had been to wait for a clearer coast, but his anxiety overcamehim, and he could hold off no longer.

  As he opened the door and stepped noiselessly inside he caught sight ofher by the window, her face ruminative and in repose. It looked, for themoment, unhappy and tired and hard. She seemed to stand before him witha mask off, a designing and disillusioned woman, no longer in love withthe game of life. Or it was, he imagined, as she would look ten yearslater, when her age had begun to tell on her, and her still buoyantfreshness was gone. It was the same feeling that had come to him on theAngiolina steps, at Abbazia. He even wondered if in the stress of thelife they were now following she would lose the last of her good looks,if even her ever-resilient temperament would deaden and harden, and nolonger rise supreme to the exacting moment. Or could it be that she wasacting a part for him? that all this fine _bravado_ was an attitude, arole, a pretense, taken on for his sake? Could it be--and the suddenthought stung him to the quick--that she was deliberately and consciouslydegrading herself to what she knew was a lower plane of thought and life,that the bond of their older companionship might still remain unsevered?

  But, as her startled eyes caught sight of him, a welcoming light cameinto her relaxed face. With her first spoken word some earlier touch ofmoroseness seemed to slip away from her. If it required an effort toshake herself together, she gave no outward sign of it. She had promisedthat there should be no complaining and no hesitations from her; andDurkin knew she would adhere to that promise, to the bitter end.

  She went to him, and clung to him, a little hungrily. There seemedsomething passionate in her very denial of passion. For when he liftedher drooping head, with all its wealth of chestnut shot through withpaler gold, and gazed at her upturned face between his two hands, with alittle cry of endearment, she shut her mouth hard, on a sob.

  "You're back--and safe?" he asked.

  She forced a smile.

  "Yes, back safe and sound!"

  "But tired, I know?"

  "Yes--a little. But--"

  She broke off, and he could see that she was rising from her momentaryluxury of relaxation as a fugitive rises after a minute's breathing-spell.

  "Well?" he asked anxiously.

  "_Pobloff has found us_!" she said, in her quiet contralto.

  "He's here, you mean?"

  "He's in Genoa. I caught sight of him in a cab, hurrying from the FrenchConsulate to the Cafe Jazelli. I slipped into a silversmith's shop, ashe raced past, and escaped him."

  "And then what?"

  "Then several things happened. But first, tell me this: did you get achance to look over Keenan's room?"

  "I was bolted inside twenty minutes after you and he had left the hotel.His trunk was even unlocked; I looked through everything!"

  "Which, of course, was charming work!" she interpolated, with notungentle scorn.

  He shrugged his shoulders deprecatively. "Not quite as charming asdining with your new friend!"

  "I almost like him!" admitted the woman frankly, femininely rejoicing atthe note of jealousy in the other's voice.

  "And no worse than some of the work we've done, or may soon have to do!"

  Then he went on, with rising passion: "And I'll tell you this, Frankwhatever we do, and whatever we have to go through, we've got to getthose securities out of Keenan! We've got to have them, now! We've gotto pound at it, and dog him, and fight him, and outwit him, until weeither win or lose and go under! It's a big game, and it has big risks,but we're in it too deep, now, to talk about drawing back, or to complainabout the dirty work it leads to!"

  "I wasn't complaining," she reproved, in her dead voice. "I only spoke abald truth. But you don't tell me what you've found."

  "I got nothing--absolutely nothing; not one shred of information even.There's nothing in the room. It stands to reason, then, as I told youfrom the first, that he is carrying the papers about with him!"

  "That will make it harder," she murmured monotonously. "And you're sureyour telegram has sent the Scotland Yard men to Como?"

  "It must have, or we'd be running into them. The New Yorker is aPinkerton man."

  He started pacing back and forth in front of her, frowning with mingledirritation and impatience.

  "Then what about Pobloff?" he suddenly asked.

  "Five minutes after we had stepped out of the hotel he met us, face toface. With Keenan, I had no chance of getting away. So I simply facedit out. Then Pobloff shadowed us to the Riggi, watched us all throughluncheon, and followed us down to the city again. And here's the strangepart of it all. Keenan saw that we were being shadowed, from the first,and I could see him fretting and chafing under it, for he imagines thatit's all because of what he's carrying with him. So, on the other hand,Pobloff has concluded Keenan and I are fellow-conspirators, for he let mego to the lift alone, just to keep his eye on Keenan, who told me he hadbusiness at the steamship agency."

  "But why should we be afraid of Pobloff, then?"

  "It's a choice of two evils, I should venture to say. But that's notall. As soon as I was free from each of them, and had left them there,carrying out that silent and ridiculous advance and retreat between them,I had to think both hard and fast. I decided that the best thing for meto do would be to slip down to Rome, at once, and make my visit to theEmbassy."

  "Yes, I found your note, telling me that."

  "When I saw that I was being followed at the station I bought a ticketfor Busalla, as a blind, and went in one door of my compartment and thenout the other. My _wagon lit_ was standing on the next track. I didn'tchange from the one train to the other until the train for Rome startedto move. Then I slipped out, and jumped for the moving platform, and wasbundled into my right carriage by a guard, who thought I was trying tocommit an Anna Karenina suicide--until I gave him ten francs. Whether Igot away unnoticed or not I can't say for sure. But Pobloff will haveresources here that we know nothing of. From now on, you may be sure, hewill have Keenan watched by one of his agents, night and day!"

  "Then, good heavens, we've got to step in and save Keenan from Pobloff!"

  "It amounts to that," admitted Frank. "Yet, in some way, if we couldonly manage it, the two of them ought to fight our battle out for us,between themselves!"

  "That's true--but _did_ you get to Rome?"

  "Yes, without trouble."

  "And you got the money?"

  "Only half of it. They hedged, and said the other half could not be paiduntil Pobloff's arrest. Jim, we must be on our guard against that man."

  "Pobloff doesn't count!" ejaculated Durkin impatiently. "It's Keenan wehave to have our fight with--_he's_ the man, the offender, wewant!--_that_ means only two hundred and fifty pounds!"

  "But that is money honestly made!"

  "And so will this be money honestly made. The one was legalized by thegovernment authority; the other, in the end, will be recognized as--well,as detectional and punitive expediency. That's why I say Pobloff doesn'tcount!"

  "But Pobloff _does_ count," persisted Frank. "He's a vindictive andresourceful man, and he has a score against us to wipe out. Besides allthat, he's a master of intrigue, and he has the entire secret service ofFrance behind him, and he knows underground Europe as well as any spy onthe Continent. He will keep at us, I tell you, until he thinks he iseven!"

  "Then let him--if he wants to," scoffed Durkin. "My work is with Keenan.If Pobloff tries interfering with us, the best thing we can do is to getthe British Foreign Office after him. _They_ ought to be big enough forhim!"

  "It's not a matter of bigness. _He_ won't fight that way. He wouldnever fight in the open. He knows his chances, and the country, and justwhere to turn, and just how far to go--and where to hide, if he has to!"

  "That's true enough, I suppose. B
ut oh, if I only had him in New York,I'd fight him to a finish, and never edge away from him and keep on therun this way!"

  "Of course; but, as you say, is it worth while? After all, he's only anaccident in the whole affair now, though a disagreeable one. And, what'smore, Pobloff will never follow us out of Europe. This is his stampingground. He had misfortune in America, and he's afraid of it. As I saidbefore, Pobloff and Keenan are the acid and the alkali that ought to makethe neutral salts. I mean, instead of trying to save them from eachother, we ought to fling them together, in some way. Let Pobloff do thehunting for us--then let us hunt Pobloff!"

  "But Keenan is wary, and shrewd, and far-seeing. How is he to be caught,even by a Pobloff?"

  "That only time and Pobloff can tell. It will never be bybrigandage--Keenan will never go far enough afield to give him a chancefor that. But I feel it in my bones--I feel that there is dangerimpending, for us all."

  Durkin turned and looked at her, wondering if her woman's intuition wasto penetrate deeper into the unknown than his own careful analysis.

  "What danger?" he asked.

  "Impending dangers cease to be dangers when they can be defined. It'snothing more than a feeling. But the strangest part of the wholesituation is the fact that not one of us, from any corner of thetriangle, dares turn to the police for one jot of protection. None of uscan run crying to the arms of constituted authority when we get hurt!"

  A consciousness of their lonely detachment from their kind, of theirisolation, crept through Durkin's mind. He felt momentarily depressed bya sense of friendlessness. It was like reverting to primordialconditions, wherein it was ordained that each life, alone and unassisted,should protect and save itself. He wondered if primitive man, or if evenwild animals, did not always walk with that vague consciousness ofcontinual menace, where lupine viciousness seemed eternally at war withvulpine wariness.

  "Then what would you suggest?" he asked the woman, who sat before himrapt in thought.

  "That we watch Keenan, continuously, night and day. He has been huntedand followed now for over two months, and he is only waiting for a clearfield to take to his heels. And when he goes he is going for America.That I know. If we lose sight of him, we lose our chance."

  Durkin walked to the window, and looked out at the tiled roofs and thesquat chimney-pots, above which he could catch a glimpse of burstingsky-rockets and the glow of Greek fire from the narrow canyons of thestreets below.

  "What are all the fireworks for?" he asked her casually.

  "It's a Saint's Day, of some sort, they told me at the office," sheexplained.

  He was about to turn and speak to her again, after a minute's silence,when a low knock sounded on the door. He remained both silent andmotionless, and the knock was repeated.

  "In a moment!" called the woman, as she motioned Durkin to the door ofher clothes-closet. He drew back, with a shake of the head. He revoltedmomentarily against the ignominy of the movement. But she caught him bythe arm and thrust him determinedly in, closing the door on him. Thenshe hurriedly let her wealth of chestnut hair tumble about her shoulders.Then she answered the knock, with the loosened strands of chestnut in oneabashed hand.

  It was Keenan himself who stood in the hall before her.