"FOREIGNERS ARE FOOLS"
Frances Durkin, as she turned back into the darkness of the room,
desperately schooled herself to calmness. She warned herself that,
above all, she must remain clear-headed and collected, and act coolly
and decisively, when the moment for action arrived.
But as the seconds slipped by, and the silence remained unbroken, a
shred of forlorn hope came back to her. Each moment meant more assured
safety to her husband--he, at least, was getting away unscathed and
unsuspected. And that left her almost satisfied.
She still waited and listened. Perhaps, after all, the Prince had
taken his departure. Perhaps he had gone back to the _portier's_
office, for explanations. Perhaps it had not even been Pobloff--merely
a drunken stranger, mistaken in his room number, or servants with a
message or with linen.
She groped softly across the room, until she came to the door. She
found it draped and covered with a heavy blanket. Holding this back,
she slipped under it, and peered through the keyhole into the
illuminated hallway. There seemed to be nobody outside.
"It is a rule of the game, I believe, never to shoot the rabbit until
it is on the run!"
The words, spoken in excellent English, and barbed with a touch of
angry cynicism, smote on her startled ears like an Alpine thunderclap.
She emerged from under the blanket, slowly, ignominiously, ashamed of
even her Peeping-Tom abandonment of dignity.
As she did so she saw herself being looked at with keen but placid
eyes. The owner of the eyes in one hand held a lighted bedroom lamp.
In his other hand he held a flat, short-barreled pocket revolver, of
burnished gun-metal, and she could see the lamplight glimmer along its
side as it menaced her.
She did not gasp--nor did she shrink away, for with her the situation
was not so novel as her antagonist might have imagined. Indeed, as she
gazed back at him, motionless, she saw the look of increasing wonder
which crept, almost involuntarily, over his white, lean, Slavic-looking
face.
Frances Durkin knew it was Pobloff. He was tall, exceptionally tall,
and she noticed that he carried off his faultlessness of attire with
that stiff but tranquil _hauteur_ which seems to come only with a
military training. The forehead was high and white and prominent, with
oddly marked depressions, now thrown into shadow by the lamp light,
above and behind the highly-arched eyebrows, on each extremity of the
frontal bone. The nose was long and narrow-bridged, and the face
itself was unusually long and narrow, and now quite colorless. This
gave a darker hue to the thin mustache and the trim imperial, through
which she caught a glint of white teeth, in what seemed half a smile
and half a snarl. The hair was parted almost in the centre, a little
to the right, and but for the pebbled shadows about the sunken, yet
still bright eyes, he would be called a youthful-looking man. She
understood why women would always speak of him as a handsome man.
"I am sorry, but I was compelled to force the bolt," he said, slowly,
with his enigmatic smile.
She still looked at him in silence, from under lowered brows. Her
fingers were locking and unlocking nervously.
"And to what do I owe this visit?" he demanded mockingly. He was quite
close to her by this time.
She took a step backward. She could even smell brandy on his breath.
"Your English is admirable!" she answered, as mockingly.
"As your energy!" he retorted, taking a step nearer the still open
door. Then he looked about the room, slowly and comprehensively. On
his face, in the strong sidelight, she could see mirrored each fresh
discovery, as step by step he covered the course of the completed
invasion. She followed his gaze, which now rested on the rifled safe.
A little oath, in Russian, suddenly escaped his lips.
Then he turned and strode into the anteroom, and she could hear him
making fast and locking the outer hall door. Then he withdrew the key,
and came back to her.
"I must still regard you, of course, as my guest," he said slowly, with
his easy menace.
"You Europeans always give us lessons in the older virtues!" she
retorted, as mockingly as before, in her soft contralto.
He looked at her, for a moment, in puzzled wonder. Then he held the
lamp closer to her face. He nursed no illusions about women. Frances
Durkin knew that for years now he had made them his tools and his
accomplices, never his dictators and masters. But as he looked into
the pale face, with the shadowy, almost luminous violet eyes, and the
soft droop of the full red lips, and the still girlish tenderness of
line about the brow and chin, and then at the betraying fulness of
throat and bosom, the mockery died out of his smile.
It was supplanted by a look more ominously purposeful, more grimly
determined.
"What, madam, did you come here for?" he demanded.
She shrugged an apparently careless shoulder.
"His Highness, the Prince Ignace Slevenski Pobloff, has always been the
recipient of much flattering attention!" She found it still safest to
mock him.
"We have had enough of this! What is it? Money? Or jewelry?"
She spurned the leather bag on the floor with the toe of her shoe. He
could hear the clink and rattle of the napoleons that followed the
movement. He started suddenly forward and bent over the broken
despatch box. His long white fingers were running dexterously through
the once orderly little packets.
"_Or something more important_?" he went on, as he came to the end of
his stock.
Then he gave a little half-cry, half-gasp; and from the look on his
face the woman saw that he realized what was missing. He peered at
her, with alert and narrow eyes, for a full minute of unbroken silence.
Then, with a little movement of finality, he turned away and put down
the lamp.
"I regret it, but I must ask you for this--this document, without
equivocation and without delay."
She opened her lips to speak, but he cut in before any sound fell from
them.
"Let there be no misunderstanding between us. I know precisely what
you have taken; and it will be in my hands _before you ever leave this
room_!"
She had a sense of destiny shaping itself before her, while she stood a
helpless and disinterested spectator of the vague but implacable
transformation which, in the end, must in one way or the other so
vitally concern her.
"I have nothing," she answered simply.
He waved her protest aside.
"Madam, have you thought, or do you now know, what the cost of this
will be to you?"
He was towering over her now. She was wondering whether or not there
was a ghost of a chance for her to snatch at his pistol.
"I can pay only what I owe," she maintained evasively.
He looked at her, and then at the locked door. His face took on a
sudden and crafty change. The rage and anger ebbed out of him. He
placed the lamp on the dressing-table of polished rosewood. Then his
lean, white fingers meditatively adjusted his tie, and even more
meditatively stroked at the narrow black imperial, before he spoke
again.
"What greater crown may one hope for, in any activity of life, than a
beautiful woman?" he asked quietly.
There was a moment of unbroken silence.
For the first time a touch of fear came to her shadowy eyes, and they
were veiled by a momentary look of furtiveness.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, madam, simply that you will now remain with me!"
"That is absurd!"
She noticed, for the first time, that he had put away his revolver.
"It is not absurd; it is essential. Permit me. In my native country
we have a secret order which I need not name. If the secrets of this
order came to be known by an individual not already a member, one of
two things happened. He either became a member of the order, or he
became a man who--who could impart no information!"
"And that means----?"
"It means, practically, that from this hour you are, either willing or
unwilling, a partner in my activities, as you now are in my possession
of certain papers. Pardon me. The penalty may seem heavy, but the
case, you will understand, is exceptional. Also, the nature of your
visit, and the thoroughness of your preparations"--he swept the
dismantled room with his grim but mocking glance--"have already
convinced me that the partnership will not be an impossible one."
"But I repeat, this is theatrical, and absurd. You cannot possibly
keep me a--a prisoner here, forever!"
He looked at her, and suddenly she shrank back from his glance, white
to the lips.
"You will not be a prisoner!"
"I am quite aware of that!"
"You will not be a prisoner, for then you would not be a partner. The
coalition between us must be as silent as it is essential. But first,
permit me!"
She still shrank back from his touch, consumed with a new and
unlooked-for fear of him. And all the while she was telling herself
that she must remain calm, and make no mistake.
The remembrance came to her, as she stood there, of how she had once
thought it possible to approach him in a more indirect and adroit
fashion, as the wayward and life-loving Lady Boxspur. She shuddered a
little, as she recalled that foolish mistake, and pictured the perils
into which it might have led her. She could detect more clearly now
the odor of brandy on his quickening breath. His face, death-like in
its pallor, flashed before and above her like a semaphoric sign of
imminent danger. Action of some sort, however obvious, was necessary.
"I want a drink," she gasped, with a movement toward the cabinet.
He turned and caught up the heavy glass brandy-decanter, emitting a
nervous and irresponsible laugh.
In one hand he held the decanter, in the other the half-filled tumbler.
That, at least, implied an appreciable space of time before those hands
could be freed. In that, she felt, lay her hope.
Quicker than thought she darted to the door over which still swung the
shrouding blanket. She knew the key had already been turned in the
lock, from the outside; the only thing between her and the freedom of
the open hall was one small bolt shaft.
But before she could open the door Pobloff, with a little grunt of
startled rage, was upon her. She fought and scratched like a cat. The
blanket tumbled down and curtained them, the plumed hat fell from the
woman's disheveled head, a chair was overturned. But he was too strong
and too quick for her. With one lithe arm he pinioned her two hands
close down to her sides, crushing the very breath out of her body.
With his other he beat off the muffling blanket, and dragged her away
from the door. Then he shook her, passionately, and held her off from
him, and glared at her.
One year earlier in her career she knew she would surely have fainted
from terror and exhaustion. Even as it was, she seemed about to school
herself for some relieving and final surrender to the inevitable, only,
her vacantly staring eyes, looking past him, by accident caught sight
of a little movement which brought her drooping courage into life again.
For she had seen the window-shutter slowly widen, and then a cautious
hand appear on the ledge. She watched the shutter swing in, further
and further, and then the stealthy figure, with its padded feet, emerge
out of the darkness into the half-lighted room. She could even see the
pallor of the intruder's face, and his quick movement of warning that
reminded her of the part she must play.
"I give up!" she gasped, in simulated surrender, falling and drooping
with all her weight in Pobloff's arms.
He caught her and held her, bewildered, triumphant.
"You mean it?" he cried, searching her face.
"Yes, I mean it!" she murmured. Then she shuddered a little,
involuntarily, for she had seen Durkin catch up one of his shoes,
hammer-like, where it protruded from the side pocket of his coat--and
she knew only too well how he would make use of it.
As Pobloff bent over her, unwarned, unsuspecting, almost wondering for
what she was waiting with such confidently closed eyes, Durkin crossed
the carpeted floor. It was then that the woman flung up her own arms
and encircled the stooping Russian in a fierce and passionate grasp.
He laughed a little, deep in his throat. She told herself that she was
at least imprisoning his hands.
Durkin's blow caught the bending figure just at the base of the skull,
behind the ear. The impact whipped the head back, and sent the
relaxing body forward and down. It struck the floor, and lay there,
huddled, face down. The woman scrambled to her feet, breathing hard.
"Close the shutters!" said Durkin quickly.
Then he turned the unconscious man over on his back. Then he caught up
a couple of towels and securely tied, first the inert wrists and then
the feet. Quickly knotting a third towel, he wedged and drilled a
sharp knuckle joint into the flesh of the colorless cheek, between the
upper and lower incisors. When the jaw had opened he thrust the knot
into the gaping mouth, securely tying the ends of the towel at the back
of the neck.
"Have you everything?" whispered Frank, who had once more pinned on the
plumed hat, and was already listening at the panel of the hall door.
There was no time to be lost in talk.
"Yes, I think so."
"Your baggage?"
"My baggage will have to be left, but, God knows, there's little enough
of it!"
He wiped his forehead, and looked down at the bound figure, already
showing signs of returning consciousness. They heard laughter, and the
sound of footsteps passing down the hall without.
Durkin stood beside his wife, and they listened together behind the
closed door.
"Not for a minute--not yet," he whispered. Then he looked at her
curiously.
"I wonder if you know just what a close call that was!"
"Yes, I know," she said, with her ear against the panel.
He peered back at the figure, and took a deep breath.
"And this is only an intermission--this is only an overture, to what we
may have to face! Now's our chance. For the love of heaven, let's get
out of here. We've got hard work ahead of us, at Genoa--and we've got
only till Friday to get there!"
He did not notice her look, her momentary look of mingled reproof and
weariness and disdain.
"Now, quick!" she merely said, as she flung the door open and stepped
out into the hall. Luckily, it was empty, from end to end.
Durkin, with assumed nonchalance, walked quietly away. She waited to
turn the key in the door, and withdrew it from the lock. Then she
followed her husband down the corridor, and a minute or two later
rejoined him in the fragrant and balmy midnight air of Monaco.