Phantom Wires: A Novel

by Arthur Stringer

  CHAPTER XVI

  BROKEN INSULATION

  The _Slavonia_ was well down the Adriatic before Keenan was seen ondeck. Both Frank and Durkin, by that time, had met in secret more thanonce, and had talked over their predicament and decided on a plan ofaction.

  "Whatever you do," Durkin warned her, "don't let Keenan suspect who Iam! Don't let him get a glimpse of you with me. My part now has gotto be what you'd call 'armed neutrality.' If anything unforeseen turnsup--and that can only be at Palermo or Gibraltar--I'll be watching nearby to come to your help in some way--but, whatever you do, don't letKeenan suspect this!"

  "You mean that we mustn't even look at each other?" she cried, in mockdismay.

  "Precisely," he continued.

  "What if an officer should introduce you to me?" She laughed a little.

  The untimeliness of her laughter disturbed him. More and more often,during the last few weeks, he had beheld the signs of some callousingand hardening process going on within her.

  "Oh, in that case," he answered, "you'll find me very glum anduncongenial. You'll probably be only too glad to leave me alone!"

  She nodded her head in meditative assent. Her problem was a difficultone.

  "Jim," she said suddenly, "why should we play this waiting andretreating game during the next two weeks? Here we have Keenan onboard, with nothing to interfere with our operations. Why can't wework a little harder to win his confidence?"

  "We?" asked the other.

  "Well, why couldn't _I_? All along, during those days in Genoa, I hadthe feeling that he would have believed in me, if some little outsideaccident had only confirmed his faith in me. We can't tell, of course,just what he found out after that Pobloff affair, or just how heinterpreted it, or whether he is as much in the dark as ever. If thatis the case, we may stand just where we were before with Keenan!"

  "But I thought you wanted to get away from this sort of thing?"

  "I do--when the time comes," she evaded, tortured by the thought thatshe had withheld anything from him. "I do--but are we to let Keenango, when we have him so close to us?"

  "Then go ahead and both capture and captivate him!" said Durkin, with avoice that was gruff only because it was indifferent. Still again hewas oppressed by the feeling that she was passing beyond his power.

  "But see, Jim--I'm getting so old and ugly!" And again she laughed,with her own show of indifference, though her husband knew, by thewistfulness of her face, that she was struggling to hold back somedeeper and stronger current of feeling. So he thrust his hands deep inhis pockets, and refused to meet her eyes for a second time.

  "I don't see why we should be afraid of either Palermo or Gibraltar,"Durkin went on at last, with a half-impatient business-is-businessglance about him. "Keenan is alone in this. He has no agents overhere, that we know of, and he daren't put anything in the hands of theauthorities. He's a runaway, a fugitive with the district-attorney'soffice after him, and he has to move just as quietly as we do. Mark mywords, where he will make his first move, and do anything he's going todo, will be in New York!"

  "Then why can't I prepare the ground for the New York situation,whatever it may be?" she demanded.

  "You mean by standing pat with Keenan?"

  "Precisely."

  "Then how will you begin?"

  "By sending him a note at once, telling him how I slipped away fromGenoa to Venice, and asking him the meaning of the Pobloff attack--inother words, by appearing so actively suspicious of _him_ that he'llforget to be suspicious of _me_."

  "And what do you imagine he will answer?"

  "I think he will send me back word to say absolutely nothing about theGenoa episode--he may even claim that it's quite beyond hiscomprehension. That will give us a chance to meet more naturally, andthen we can talk things over more minutely, at our leisure."

  Durkin wheeled on her, half-angrily. Through all their career, he hadremained strangely unschooled to any such concession as this. It wasan affront to his dormant and masculine spirit of guardianship; itseemed a blow in the teeth of his nurturing instinct, an overriding ofhis prerogatives of a man and a husband.

  "While you're making love to him on the bridge-deck, on moonlightnights!" he flung back at her, bitterly.

  "Do you think I could?" she murmured, with a ghost of a sigh.

  Durkin emitted a little impatient oath.

  "Don't swear, Jim!" she reproved him.

  The vague prescience that some day he should lose her, that in sometime yet to be she should pass beyond his reach and control, stillagain filtered through his consciousness, like a dark and corrodingseepage. He caught her by the arm roughly, and looked into her face,for one silent and scrutinizing minute.

  "Do you care?" she asked, and it seemed to him there was a tremor ofhappiness in her tone.

  "I _hate_ this part of the business!" he cried, with still another oath.

  "Oh, do you care?" she reiterated, as her arms crept about himvaliantly, yet a little timidly.

  He surrendered, against his will, to the gentle artillery of her tears.They startled and unmanned him for a little, they came so unexpectedly,for as he crushed her in his sudden responding embrace, the impulse, atthat time and in that place, seemed the incongruous outcropping of somedeeply submerged stratum of feeling.

  "If you _do_ care, Jim, why do you never tell me so?" she demanded ofhim, in gentle reproof. He then noticed, for the first time, thehungry and unsatisfied look that brooded over her face. He confessedto himself unhappily that something about him was altered.

  "This cursed business knocks that sort of thing out of you," heexpiated, discomforted at the thought that a feeling so longdisregarded could grip him so keenly. And all the while he was torn bythe misery of two contending impressions; one, the dim, subliminalforeboding that she was ordained for worthier and cleaner hands thanhis, the other, that this upheaval of the emotions still had the powerto shake and bewilder and leave him so wordlessly unhappy. It was theever-recurring incongruity, the repeated syncretism, which made himvaguely afraid of himself and of the future. Then, as he looked downinto her face once more, and studied the shadowy violet eyes, and thelow brow, and the short-lipped mobile mouth so laden with impulse, andthe soft line of the chin and throat so eloquent of weakness andyielding, a second and stronger wave of feeling surged through him.

  "I love you, Frank; I tell you I do love you!" he cried, with a voicethat did not seem his own. And as she lay back in his arms, weak andsurrendering, with the heavy lashes closed over the shadowy eyes, hestooped and kissed her on her red, melancholy mouth.

  Yet as he did so the act seemed to take on the touch of somethingsolemn and valedictory, though he fought back the impression with hisstill reiterated cry of "I love you!"

  "Then why are you unkind to me?" she asked, more calmly now.

  "Oh, can't you see I want you--all of you?" he cried.

  "Then why do you leave me where so much must be given to other things,to hateful things?" she asked, with her mild and melancholy eyes stillon his face.

  "God knows, I've wanted you out of it, often enough!" he avowed,desolately. And she made no effort to alleviate his suffering.

  "Then why not take me out of it, and keep me out of it?" she demanded,with a cold directness that brought him wheeling about on her.

  He suddenly caught her by the shoulders, and held her away from him, atarms' length. She thought, at first, that it was a gesture ofrepudiation; but she soon saw her mistake. "I swear to God," he wassaying to her, with a grim tremor of determination in his voice as hespoke, "I swear to God, once we are out of this affair, _it will be thelast_!"

  "It will be the last!" repeated the woman, broodingly, but her wordswere not so much a declaration as a prayer.