Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  The young man’s fingers fumbled it, closed over the handle; and a ghost of a smile touched his ashen face.

  “Do you feel better, sir?”

  “I’m tired.... Yes, I feel — better.”

  “Can I do anything for you, Mr. Neeland?”

  “Stay outside — my door.”

  “Do you wish the doctor, sir?”

  “No.... No!... Don’t call him; do you hear?”

  “I won’t call him, sir.”

  “No, don’t call him.”

  “No, sir.... Mr. Neeland, there is a — a trained nurse here. You will not want her, will you, sir?”

  Again the shadow of a smile crept over Neeland’s face.

  “Did she come for — her handkerchief?”

  There was a silence; the steward looked steadily at the nurse; the nurse’s dark eyes were fixed on the man lying there before her.

  “You shan’t be wanting her any more, shall you, sir?” repeated the steward, not shifting his gaze.

  “Yes; I think I shall want her — for a little while.”... Neeland slowly opened his eyes, smiled up at the motionless nurse: “How are you, Scheherazade?” he said weakly. And, to the steward, with an effort: “Miss White and I are — old friends.... However — kindly remain outside — my door.... And throw what remains of my dinner — out of — the port.... And be ready — at all times — to look after the — gentleman on crutches.... I’m — fond of him.... Thank you, steward.”

  * * * * *

  Long after the steward had closed the stateroom door, Ilse Dumont stood beside Neeland’s bed without stirring. Once or twice he opened his eyes and looked at her humorously. After a while he said:

  “Please be seated, Scheherazade.”

  She calmly seated herself on the edge of his couch.

  “Horrid soup,” he murmured. “You should attend a cooking school, my dear.”

  She regarded him absently, as though other matters absorbed her.

  “Yes,” he repeated, “as a cook you’re a failure, Scheherazade. That broth which you seasoned for me has done funny things to my eyes, too. But they’re recovering. I see much better already. My vision is becoming sufficiently clear to observe how pretty you are in your nurse’s cap and apron.”

  A slow colour came into her face and he saw her eyebrows bend inward as though she were annoyed.

  “You are pretty, Scheherazade,” he repeated. “You know you are, don’t you? But you’re a poor cook and a rotten shot. You can’t be perfection, you know. Cheer up!”

  She ignored the suggestion, her dark eyes brooding and remote again; and he lay watching her with placid interest in which no rancour remained. He was feeling decidedly better every minute now. He lifted the automatic pistol and shoved it under his pillow, then cautiously flexed his fingers, his arms, and finally his knees, with increasing pleasure and content.

  “Such dreadful soup,” he said. “But I’m a lot better, thank you. Was it to have been murder this time, too, Scheherazade? Would the entire cupful have made a pretty angel of me? Oh, fie! Naughty Scheherazade!”

  She remained mute.

  “Didn’t you mean manslaughter with intent to exterminate?” he insisted, watching her.

  Perhaps she was thinking of her blond and bearded companion, and the open port, for she made no reply.

  “Why didn’t you let him heave me out?” inquired Neeland. “Why did you object?”

  At that she reddened to the roots of her hair, understanding that what she feared had been true — that Neeland, while physically helpless, had retained sufficient consciousness to be aware of what was happening to him and to understand at least a part of the conversation.

  “What was the stuff with which you flavoured that soup, Scheherazade?”

  He was merely baiting her; he did not expect any reply; but, to his surprise, she answered him:

  “Threlanium — Speyer’s solution is what I used,” she said with a sort of listless effrontery.

  “Don’t know it. Don’t like it, either. Prefer other condiments.”

  He lifted himself on one elbow, remained propped so, tore open his wireless telegram, and, after a while, contrived to read it:

  * * * * *

  “James Neeland, “S. S. Volhynia.

  “Spies aboard. Be careful. If trouble threatens captain has instructions British Government to protect you and order arrests on your complaint.

  “Naïa.”

  * * * * *

  With a smile that was almost a grin, Neeland handed the telegram to Ilse Dumont.

  “Scheherazade,” he said, “you’ll be a good little girl, now, won’t you? Because it would be a shocking thing for you and your friend across the way to land in England wearing funny bangles on your wrists and keeping step with each other, wouldn’t it?”

  She continued to hold the slip of paper and stare at it long after she had finished reading it and the words became a series of parallel blurs.

  “Scheherazade,” he said lightly, “what on earth am I going to do with you?”

  “I suppose you will lodge a charge with the captain against me,” she replied in even tones.

  “Why not? You deserve it, don’t you? You and your humorous friend with the yellow beard?”

  She looked at him with a vague smile.

  “What can you prove?” said she.

  “Perfectly true, dear child. Nothing. I don’t want to prove anything, either.”

  She smiled incredulously.

  “It’s quite true, Scheherazade. Otherwise, I shouldn’t have ordered my steward to throw the remains of my dinner out of the corridor porthole. No, dear child. I should have had it analysed, had your stateroom searched for more of that elusive seasoning you used to flavour my dinner; had a further search made for a certain sort of handkerchief and perfume. Also, just imagine the delightful evidence which a thorough search of your papers might reveal!” He laughed. “No, Scheherazade; I did not care to prove you anything resembling a menace to society. Because, in the first place, I am absurdly grateful to you.”

  Her face became expressionless under the slow flush mounting.

  “I’m not teasing you,” he insisted. “What I say is true. I’m grateful to you for violently injecting romance into my perfectly commonplace existence. You have taken the book of my life and not only extra illustrated it with vivid and chromatic pictures, but you have unbound it, sewed into its prosaic pages several chapters ripped bodily from a penny-dreadful, and you have then rebound the whole thing and pasted your own pretty picture on the cover! Come, now! Ought not a man to be grateful to any philanthropic girl who so gratuitously obliges him?”

  Her face burned under his ridicule; her clasped hands in her lap were twisted tight as though to maintain her self-control.

  “What do you want of me?” she asked between lips that scarcely moved.

  He laughed, sat up, stretched out both arms with a sigh of satisfaction. The colour came back to his face; he dropped one leg over the bed’s edge; and she stood erect and stepped aside for him to rise.

  No dizziness remained; he tried both feet on the floor, straightened himself, cast a gaily malicious glance at her, and slowly rose to his feet.

  “Scheherazade,” he said, “isn’t it funny? I ask you, did you ever hear of a would-be murderess and her escaped victim being on such cordial terms? Did you?”

  He was going through a few calisthenics, gingerly but with increasing abandon, while he spoke.

  “I feel fine, thank you. I am enjoying the situation extremely, too. It’s a delightful paradox, this situation. It’s absurd, it’s enchanting, it’s incredible! There is only one more thing that could make it perfectly impossible. And I’m going to do it!” And he deliberately encircled her waist and kissed her.

  She turned white at that, and, as he released her, laughing, took a step or two blindly, toward the door; stood there with one hand against it as though supporting herself.

  After a few moments, and very slowly, she turne
d and looked at him; and that young man was scared for the first time since their encounter in the locked house in Brookhollow.

  Yet in her face there was no anger, no menace, nothing he had ever before seen in any woman’s face, nothing that he now comprehended. Only, for the moment, it seemed to him that something terrible was gazing at him out of this girl’s fixed eyes — something that he did not recognise as part of her — another being hidden within her, staring out through her eyes at him.

  “For heaven’s sake, Scheherazade — —” he faltered.

  She opened the door, still watching him over her shoulder, shrank through it, and was gone.

  He stood for a full five minutes as though stupefied, then walked to the door and flung it open. And met a ship’s officer face to face, already lifting his hand to knock for admittance.

  “Mr. Neeland?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Captain West’s compliments, and he would be glad to see you in his cabin.”

  “Thank you. My compliments and thanks to Captain West, and I shall call on him immediately.”

  They exchanged bows; the officer turned, hesitated, glanced at the steward who stood by the port.

  “Did you bring a radio message to Mr. Neeland?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Yes, I received the message,” said Neeland.

  “The captain requests you to bring the message with you.”

  “With pleasure,” said Neeland.

  So the officer went away down the corridor, and Neeland sat down on his bed, opened the box, went over carefully every item of its contents, relocked it with a grin of satisfaction, and, taking it with him, went off to pay a visit to the captain of the Volhynia.

  The bearded gentleman in the stateroom across the passage had been listening intently to the conversation, with his ear flat against his keyhole.

  And now, without hesitating, he went to a satchel which stood on the sofa in his stateroom, opened it, took from it a large bundle of papers and a ten-pound iron scale-weight.

  Attaching the weight to the papers by means of a heavy strand of copper wire, he mounted the sofa and hurled the weighted package into the Atlantic Ocean.

  “Pig-dogs of British,” he muttered in his golden beard, “you may go and dive for them when The Day dawns.”

  Then he filled and lighted a handsome porcelain pipe, and puffed it with stolid satisfaction, leaving the pepper-box silver cover open.

  “Der Tag,” he muttered in his golden beard; and his clear eyes swept the starlit ocean with the pensive and terrifying scrutiny of a waiting eagle.

  CHAPTER XIX

  THE CAPTAIN OF THE VOLHYNIA

  The captain of the Volhynia had just come from the bridge and was taking a bite of late supper in his cabin when the orderly announced Neeland. He rose at once, offering a friendly hand:

  “Mr. Neeland, I am very glad to see you. I know you by name and reputation already. There were some excellent pictures by you in the latest number of the Midweek Magazine.”

  “I’m so glad you liked them, Captain West.”

  “Yes, I did. There was a breeze in them — a gaiety. And such a fetching girl you drew for your heroine!”

  “You think so! It’s rather interesting. I met a young girl once — she comes from up-state where I come from. There was a peculiar and rather subtle attraction about her face. So I altered the features of the study I was making from my model, and put in hers as I remembered them.”

  “She must be beautiful, Mr. Neeland.”

  “It hadn’t struck me so until I drew her from memory. And there’s more to the story. I never met her but twice in my life — the second time under exceedingly dramatic circumstances. And now I’m crossing the Atlantic at a day’s notice to oblige her. It’s an amusing story, isn’t it?”

  “Mr. Neeland, I think it is going to be what you call a ‘continued’ story.”

  “No. Oh, no. It ought to be, considering its elements. But it isn’t. There’s no further romance in it, Captain West.”

  The captain’s smile was pleasant but sceptical.

  They seated themselves, Neeland declining an invitation to supper, and the captain asking his indulgence if he talked while eating.

  “Mr. Neeland,” he said, “I’m about to talk rather frankly with you. I have had several messages by wireless today from British sources, concerning you.”

  Neeland, surprised, said nothing. Captain West finished his bite of supper; the steward removed the dishes and went out, closing the door. The captain glanced at the box which Neeland had set on the floor by his chair.

  “May I ask,” he said, “why you brought your suitcase with you?”

  “It’s valuable.”

  The captain’s keen eyes were on his.

  “Why are you followed by spies?” he asked.

  Neeland reddened.

  “Yes,” continued the captain of the Volhynia, “my Government instructs me, by wireless, to offer you any aid and protection you may desire. I am informed that you carry papers of military importance to a certain foreign nation with which neither England nor France are on what might be called cordial terms. I am told it is likely that agents of this foreign country have followed you aboard my ship for the purpose of robbing you of these papers. Now, Mr. Neeland, what do you know about this business?”

  “Very little,” said Neeland.

  “Have you had any trouble?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  The captain smiled:

  “Evidently you have wriggled out of it,” he said.

  “Yes, wriggled is the literal word.”

  “Then you do not think that you require any protection from me?”

  “Perhaps I do. I’ve been a singularly innocent and lucky ass. It’s merely chance that my papers have not been stolen, even before I started in quest of them.”

  “Have you been troubled aboard my ship?”

  Neeland waved his hand carelessly:

  “Nothing to speak of, thank you.”

  “If you have any charge to make — —”

  “Oh, no.”

  The captain regarded him intently:

  “Let me tell you something,” he said. “Since we sailed, have you noticed the bulletins posted containing our wireless news?”

  “Yes, I’ve read them.”

  “Did they interest you?”

  “Yes. You mean that row between Austria and Servia over the Archduke’s murder?”

  “I mean exactly that, Mr. Neeland. And now I am going to tell you something else. Tonight I had a radio message which I shall not post on the bulletins for various reasons. But I shall tell you under the seal of confidence.”

  “I give you my word of honour,” said Neeland quietly.

  “I accept it, Mr. Neeland. And this is what has happened: Austria has decided on an ultimatum to Servia. And probably will send it.”

  They remained silent for a moment, then the captain continued:

  “Why should we deceive ourselves? This is the most serious thing that has happened since the Hohenzollern incident which brought on the Franco-Prussian War.”

  Neeland nodded.

  “You see?” insisted the captain. “Suppose the humiliation is too severe for Servia to endure? Suppose she refuses the Austrian terms? Suppose Austria mobilises against her? What remains for Russia to do except to mobilise? And, if Russia does that, what is going to happen in Germany? And then, instantly and automatically, what will follow in France?” His mouth tightened grimly. “England,” he said, “is the ally of France. Ask yourself, Mr. Neeland, what are the prospects of this deadly combination and deadlier situation.”

  After a few moments the young man looked up from his brown study:

  “I’d like to ask you a question — perhaps not germane to the subject. May I?”

  “Ask it.”

  “Then, of what interest are Turkish forts to any of the various allied nations — to the Triple Entente or the Triple Alliance?”

 
“Turkish fortifications?”

  “Yes — plans for them.”

  The captain glanced instinctively at the box beside Neeland’s chair, but his features remained incurious.

  “Turkey is supposed to be the ally of Germany,” he said.

  “I’ve heard so. I know that the Turkish army is under German officers. But — if war should happen, is it likely that this ramshackle nation which was fought to a standstill by the Balkan Alliance only a few months ago would be likely to take active sides?”

  “Mr. Neeland, it is not only likely, it is absolutely certain.”

  “You believe Germany would count on her?”

  “There is not a doubt of it. Enver Pasha holds the country in his right hand; Enver Pasha is the Kaiser’s jackal.”

  “But Turkey is a beaten, discredited nation. She has no modern guns. Her fleet is rusting in the Bosporus.”

  “The Dardanelles bristle with Krupp cannon, Mr. Neeland, manned by German gunners. Von der Goltz Pasha has made of a brave people a splendid army. As for ships, the ironclads and gunboats off Seraglio Point are rusting at anchor, as you say; but there are today enough German and Austrian armored ships within running distance of the Dardanelles to make for Turkey a powerful defensive squadron. Didn’t you know any of these facts?”

  “No.”

  “Well, they are facts.... You see, Mr. Neeland, we English sailors of the merchant marine are also part of the naval reserve. And we are supposed to know these things.”

  Neeland was silent.

  “Mr. Neeland,” he said, “in case of war between the various powers of Europe as aligned today, where do you imagine your sympathy would lie — and the sympathies of America?”

  “Both with France and England,” said Neeland bluntly.

  “You think so?”

  “Yes, I do — unless they are the aggressors.”

  The captain nodded:

  “I feel rather that way myself. I feel very sure of the friendliness of your country. Because of course we — France and England — never would dream of attacking the Central Powers unless first assailed.” He smiled, nodded toward the box on the floor: “Don’t you think, Mr. Neeland, that it might be safer to entrust those — that box, I mean — to the captain of the Royal Mail steamer, Volhynia?”