THE GREAT DIVIDE
Durkin waited until, muffled and far away, the throb and drone of an
orchestra floated up to him. This was followed, scatteringly, by the
bells of the different _tables d'hôte_. They, too, sounded thin and
remote, drifting up through the soft, warm air that had always seemed
so exotic to him, so redolent of foreign-odored flowers, so burdened
with alien-smelling tobacco smoke, of unfamiliar sea scents
incongruously shot through with even the fumes of an unknown and
indescribable cookery.
While that genial shrill and tinkle of many bells meant refreshment and
most gregarious frivolity for the chattering, loitering, laughing and
ever-spectacular groups so far below him--and how he hated their
outlandish gibberish and their arrogant European aloofness!--it meant
for him hard work, and hard work of a somewhat perilous and stimulating
nature.
For, as the last of the demurely noisy groups made their way through
the deepening twilight to the different hotels and cafés that already
spangled the hillsides with scattering clusters of light, Durkin coolly
removed his shoes, twisted and knotted his two bath towels into a stout
rope, securely tied back his heavy French window-shutter of wood with
one of his sheets, and having attached his improvised rope to the base
of the shutters, swung himself deftly out. On the return swing he
caught the cast-iron water-pipe that scaled the wall from window tier
to window tier. Down this jointed pipe he went, gorilla-like, segment
by segment, until he reached what he knew to be the hotel's third
floor. Here he rested for a moment or two against the wall, feeling
inwardly grateful that a Mediterranean climate still made possible
Monaco's primitive outside plumbing--to the initiated, he inwardly
remarked, such things had always their unlooked-for advantages. He
also felt both relieved and grateful to see that the two windows
between him and his destination had been left shuttered against the
heat of the afternoon sun. The third window he could see, was not thus
barricaded, although, as he had expected, the sash itself was securely
locked.
Once convinced of this, he dropped down, stealthily, and lay full
length on the balcony flooring, with his ear close against the casement
woodwork, listening. Reasonably satisfied, he rose to his knees, and
took from his vest pocket a small diamond ring. Holding this firmly
between his thumb and forefinger, he described a semi-circle on the
heavy window-glass. He listened again, intently. Then he took a small
cold-chisel from still another pocket, and having cut away the putty at
the base of the semicircle, smote the face of the glass one sharp
little tap.
It cracked neatly, along the line of the circling diamond-scratch, so
that, with the help of a suction cap made from the back of a kid glove,
he was able to draw out the loosened segment of glass. Then he waited
and listened still again. As he thrust in through the little opening a
cautiously exploring hand the casual act seemed to take on the dignity
of a long-considered ritual. It was a ceremonial moment to him, he
felt, for it marked his transit, across some narrow moral divide, from
lonely ascent to lonely decline.
The impression stayed with him only a second. He turned back to his
work, with a reckless little up-thrust of each resolute shoulder. His
searching fingers found the old-fashioned window lever, of hammered
brass, and on this he pressed down and back, quietly. A moment later
the sash swung slowly out, and he was inside the room, closing the
shutters and then the window after him.
He stood there, in the dark quietness, for what must have been a full
minute. Then he took from his pocket a box of wax matches. He had
purchased them for the purpose, from the frugal old woman who month by
month and season by season carried on her quiet trade at the foot of
the Casino steps, catching, as it were, the tiny drippings from the
flaring tapers in that Temple of Gold. And day after day, one turn of
the roulette wheel took and gave more money than all her years of
frugal trade might amass!
Taking one of the vestas, he struck a light, and holding it above his
head, carefully examined the room, from side to side. Then he tiptoed
to a door, which stood ajar. This, he saw by a second match, was a
sleeping-room; and the two rooms, obviously, made up the suite. A
door, securely locked, opened from the sleeping-room into the outer
hallway. The door which opened from the larger room was likewise
locked, but to make assurance doubly sure Durkin slid a second inside
bolt, for already his quick eye had caught the gleam of its polished
brass, just below the door-knob of the ordinary mortised lock. Then,
groping his way to the little switchboard, he touched a button, and the
room was flooded with light. He first looked about, carefully but
quickly, and then glanced at his watch. He had at least two hours in
which to do his work. Any time after that Pobloff might return. And
by midnight at least the Prince's valet would be back from Nice, to
begin packing his master's boxes.
He slipped into the bedroom, and took from the bed a blanket and
comforter. These he draped above the hall door, to muffle any chance
sound. Then he turned to the northeast corner of the room, where stood
what seemed to be a dressing cabinet, with little shelves and a
plate-glass mirror above it. The lower part of it was covered by a
polished rosewood door.
One sharp twist and pry with his cold-chisel forced this flimsy outer
door away from its lock. Beneath it, thus lightly masked, stood the
more formidable safe door itself. Durkin drew in a sharp breath of
relief as he looked at it with critical eyes. It was not quite the
sort of thing he had expected. If it had been a combination lock he
had intended to tear away the woodwork covering it, pad the floor with
the bed mattress, and then pry it over on its face, to chisel away the
cement that he knew would lie under its vulnerable sheet-iron bottom.
But it was an ordinary, old-fashioned lock and key "Mennlicher," Durkin
at the first glance had seen--the sort of strong box which a Third
avenue cigar seller, at home, would scarcely care to keep on his
premises. Yet this was the deposit vault for which hotel guests, such
as Prince Ignace Slevenski Pobloff, paid ten francs a day extra.
The sound of footsteps passing down the hallway caused the intruder to
draw back and listen. He turned quickly, waited, and came to a quick,
new decision. Before doing so, however, he re-examined the room more
critically.
This Prince Ignace Slevenski Pobloff was, obviously, a man of taste.
He was also a man of means--and Durkin wondered if in that fact alone
lay the reason why a certain young Belgian adventuress had followed him
from Tangier to Algeciras, and from Algeciras to Gibraltar, and from
Gibraltar still on to the Riviera. She had, at any rate, not followed
a scentless quarry. He was not the mere curled and perfumed impostor
so common to that little principality of shams. Even the garrulous
young Chicagoan, from whom Durkin had secured his first Casino tickets,
was able to vouch for the fact that Pobloff was a true _boyard_. He
was also something or other in the imperial diplomatic service--just
what it was Durkin could not at the moment remember.
But he nursed his own personal convictions as to the moral stability of
this true _boyard_. He had quietly witnessed, at Algeciras, the
Prince's adroit card "riffling" in the sun-parlors of The Reina
Cristina, when the gouty ex-ambassador to Persia had parted company
with many cumbersome dollars. Durkin's only course, in that time of
adversity and humility, had been one of silence. But he had inwardly
and adventurously resolved, if ever Fate should bring him and the
Prince together under circumstances more untrammelled, he would not let
pass a chance to balance up that ledger of princely venality. For here
indeed was an adversary, Durkin very well knew, who was worthy of any
man's steel.
So the intruder, opening and closing drawers as he went, glanced
quickly but appreciatively at the highly emblazoned cards lying on the
little red-leather-covered writing-table, at the litter of papers
bearing the red and blue and gold of the triple-crowned double eagle,
at the solid gold seal, at the row of splendid and regal-looking women
in silver photograph holders, above the reading-desk, and a decanter or
two of cut-glass. In one of the drawers of this desk he found an
ivory-handled revolver, a toy-like thirty-two caliber hammerless, of
English make. Durkin glanced at it curiously, noticed that each
chamber held its cartridge, turned it over in his hand, replaced it in
the drawer, and after a moment's thought, took it out once more and
slipped it into his hip pocket. Then his rapidly roving eye took in
the sable top-coat flung carelessly across the foot of the bed, the
neat little heelless Tunisian slippers beneath it, the glistening,
military-looking boots, each carefully nursing its English shoe-tree, a
highly embroidered smoking-cap, an ivory-handled shaving-set in its
stamped morocco case, one razor for each day of the week, and the
silver-mounted toilet bottles, so heavily chased.
Having, apparently, made careful mental note of the rooms, Durkin once
more turned back to the switchboard, and prying loose the fluted
molding that concealed the lighting-wires, he scraped away the
insulating tissue and severed the thread of copper with a sweep or two
of his narrow file. He felt safer, in that enforced darkness, for the
work which lay before him.
The black gloom was punctuated by the occasional flare of a match, and
the silence broken now and then, as he worked before the safe, by the
metallic click and scrape of steel against steel, and by the muffled
rasp and whine of his file against the wax-covered key which from time
to time he fitted into the unyielding safe lock. As he filed and
tested and refiled, with infinite care and patience, his preoccupied
mind ranged vaguely along the channel of thought which the events of
the last half-hour had opened up before him. He wondered why it was
that Fortune should so favor those who stood the least in need of her
smile. For four nights during the last seven, he knew, the Prince had
won, and won heavily, both in the Casino and in the Club Privé. Yet,
on the other hand, there was the little Bulgarian princess with rooms
just across the corridor from his own, and the rightful possessor of
the plain little diamond with which he had just cut his way into this
more sumptuous chamber. For a week past now, down at the Casino, she
had been losing steadily, as of course the vast and undirected majority
always must lose. Even her solitaire earrings had been taken to Nice
and pawned, Durkin knew. Three days before that, too, her maid--and
who is ever anybody on the Riviera without a maid?--had been
reluctantly and woefully discharged. At the Trente et Quarante table,
as well, Durkin had watched the last thousand-franc note of the
Princess wither away. "And this, my dear, will mean another three
months with my sweet old palsied Duc de la Houspignolle," she had
laughingly yet bitterly exclaimed, in excellent English, to the
impassive young Oxford man who was then dogging her heels. She was a
wit, and she had a beautiful hand, even though she was no better than
the rest of Monte Carlo, ruminated the safe-breaker easily, as he
squinted, under the flare of a match, at the ward indentations in his
wax-covered key-flange.
His thoughts went back, as he worked, to the timely yet unexpected
scene at the stair-head, two hours before. There he had helped a slim
young _femme de chambre_ support the Princess to her room, that royal
lady having done her best to drown her ill fortune in absinthe and
American high-balls--which, he knew, was ever an impossible
combination. She had collapsed at the head of the stairs, and as he
had helped lift her he had first caught sight of the solitaire diamond
on the limp and slender finger. This reactionary mood, in the face of
the earlier more tragical hours of that day of wearing anxieties, was
almost one of facetiousness. He seemed to revel in the memory of what,
in time, he knew, would be humiliating to him. It was a puny little
diamond ring, of but three or four carats' weight, he mused, and yet
with it had come the actual, if not the moral, turn in the tide of all
his restless activities. It marked the moment when life seemed to fall
back to its older and darker areas; it was the first diminutive
milestone on his new road of adventure. But he would return the ring,
of that he stoutly reassured himself, for he still nursed his ironic
sense of justice in the smaller things. Yes, he would return the ring,
he repeated, with his ever-recurring inapposite scrupulosity, for the
young Princess was a lady of fortune under an unlucky star, like
himself.
Durkin smiled a little, over his wax-covered key, as he still filed and
fitted and listened. Then he gave vent to an almost inaudible "Ah!"
for the bit of the key made the complete circuit, at last, and the
wards of the lock clicked back into place.
He swung open the heavy iron door, cautiously, listened for a moment,
and then struck another match.
That Pobloff might have the bank-notes with him was a contingency; that
he would carry about with him two thousand napoleons was an absurdity.
And Durkin knew the money had not been deposited--to ascertain that had
been part of his day's work. The Prince, of course, was a prodigal and
free-handed gentleman--how much of his winnings had already leaked
through his careless fingers it was impossible to surmise. Durkin even
resented the thought of that extravagance--as though it were a personal
and obvious injustice to himself. If it was all the fruit of blind
chance, if it came thus unearned and accidental, why should he not have
his share of it? Already Monte Carlo had taught him the mad necessity
for money. But now, of all times, it was necessary for him. One-half,
one-quarter, of the sum which this careless-eyed Slavic aristocrat had
carried so jauntily away from the Trente et Quarante table would endow
him with the means to come into his own once more. It was essential
that he secure his sinews of war, even before he could continue his
search for Frank, or rescue her from the dangers that beset her, if she
still wished for rescue. If he regretted the underground and underhand
steps through which that money could alone come into his possession, he
consoled his still protesting conscience with the claim that it was,
after all, only a battle of wit against disinterested wit. For,
self-delusively, he was beginning once more to regard all organized
society and its ways as a mere inquisitorial process which the
adventurous could ignore and the keen-witted could circumvent.
Warfare, such as his, must be a law unto itself!
Then he gave all his attention to the work before him, as he lifted
from the safe, first a small steel despatch box, neatly initialed in
gold, "I. S. P.," and then a packet of blue-tinted envelopes, held
together by two rubber bands, and written on, here and there, in a
language which the intruder assumed to be Russian. Next came a
japanned-tin box, which proved to hold nothing but a file of quite
unintelligible, Seidlitz-powder-colored papers, and then what seemed,
to Durkin's exploring fingers, to be a few small morocco cases. The
question flashed through his mind: What if, after all, the money he was
looking for was not to be found! He struck still another match, with
impatient hands. His first fever of audacity had burned itself out,
and some indefinite cold reaction of disdain and disgust was setting
in. Stooping low, he peered into the safe once more.
Then he gave a little sigh of relief. For there, behind a row of books
that looked like small ledgers or journals, he caught sight of a stout
leather bag, tied with a corded silk rope. He dropped the burned-out
end of the match, and, thrusting in an arm, lifted out the bag. As he
placed it on the floor the muffled click of metal smote on his ear. He
wiped the sweat from his forehead, with a sense of relief. He had
risked too much to go away empty-handed.
He tore at the carefully knotted cord, first with his fingers and then
with his teeth. It was not so heavy as he had hoped it might be. On
more collected second thoughts, indeed, it was woefully light. But the
knot defied his efforts. He took out a second match, and was on the
point of striking it.
Instead of doing so, he stood suddenly erect, and then backed
noiselessly into the remotest corner of the room. For a key had been
thrust into the lock of the anteroom door, and already the handle was
being slowly turned back.
Durkin's breath quickened and shortened, and his hand swung back to his
hip pocket. Then he waited, with his revolver in his hand.
He counted and weighed his chances, quickly, one by one, as he stood
there, in the black silence. He caught the diffused glimmer of the
reflected light from the outer room as the door opened and closed,
sharply. But the momentary half-light did not give him a glimpse of
who or what was before him, for in a second all was blackness again.
His first uneasy thought was that it was a very artful move. He and
that Other were alone there, in the utter darkness. Neither, now,
would have the advantage. He had been a fool to leave one of the doors
without its double lock, of some sort. He had once been told that it
was always through the more trivial contingency that the criminal was
ultimately trapped.
He strained his ears, and listened. He could hear nothing. Yet he was
positive that he could feel some approaching presence. It may have
been a minute vibration of flooring; it may have been through the
operation of some occult sixth sense. But he was sure of that
mysterious Other, coming closer and closer to him.
Suddenly something seemed to stir and move in the darkness. He
crouched, with every nerve and muscle ready, and a moment later he
would have relieved the tension with some sort of cry, had he not
realized that it was the wooden Swiss clock above the cabinet,
beginning to strike the hour.
The sound came to an end, and Durkin was assuring himself that it could
now be neither Pobloff nor the valet, when a second sound sent a tingle
of apprehension through his frame.
It was the blue spurt of a match that suddenly cut the blackness before
him. The fool--he was striking a light!
Durkin crouched lower, and watched the flame as it grew on the
darkness. The direct glare of it made him blink a little, but he swung
his revolver barrel just above it, and a little to the right. He was
more confident now, and quite collected. However it all turned out, it
could not be much worse than starving to death, unknown and alone in
some public square of Monaco.
As the tiny luminous circle flowered into wider flame the match was
held higher. Durkin could see the rose-like glow between the phalanges
of the fingers shielding the light. Then, of a sudden, a face grew out
of the blackness, a white face shadowed by a plumed hat. It was a
woman's face. Durkin lowered his revolver, slowly, inch by inch.
It was his wife who stood there in the darkness, not six paces away
from him.
"_You_!" he gasped involuntarily, incredibly. Sheer wonder survived
his instinctive recoil. It was the bolt, striking twice in the same
spot.
The two white faces looked at each other, gaped at each other,
insanely. He could see her breath come and go, shortly, and the
deathly pallor of her face, and the relaxed lower jaw that had fallen a
little away from the drooping upper lip. But she neither moved nor
spoke. The match burned to her finger-ends, and fell to the floor.
Darkness enveloped them again.
"You!" he repeatedly vacuously. The blackness and the silence seemed
to blanket and smother him, like something tangible to the touch. He
took three steps toward where she still stood motionless, and in an
agonized whisper cried out to her:
"_My God, Frank, what is it_?"