WIRELESS MESSAGES
"What are we to do?" asked Frances Durkin, turning from the masthead to
her husband's studious face.
"We've got to jump at our chance, and get on board the _Slavonia_ over
there!"
"In the face of those messages?"
"It's the messages that simplify things for us. All we now have to do
is to get on board in such a manner that the ship's officers will have
no suspicions. They mustn't dream of linking us with the runaway
couple who are being looked for. That means that we must not, in the
first place, appear together, and, in the second, of course, that we
must travel and appear as utter strangers!"
"But supposing Keenan himself is on board that steamer?" parried Frank.
"It is obvious that he isn't, for then it would be quite unnecessary to
send out any such messages by wireless."
"But supposing it's Pobloff?"
"Didn't you say that Pobloff would never follow us out of Europe?"
"But even if it's Keenan?" she persisted.
"Then you must remember that you are Miss Allen, at your old trade of
picking up little art relics for wealthy families in England and
America. You will have yourself rowed directly over to the
_Slavonia's_ landing ladder--you can see it there, not two hundred feet
away--and go on board and secure a stateroom from the purser. The
clearing papers can be attended to later. I'll have the _Laminian_
dingey take me ashore, somewhere down near Barcola, if it can possibly
be done in this wind. Then I'll come out to the _Slavonia_ later,
having, you see, just arrived on the train from Venice!"
She shook her head doubtfully. An inapposite and irrational dread of
seeing him return to the dangers of land took possession of her. She
knew it would be impossible for her to put this untimely feeling into
words, so that he would see and understand it; and, such being the
case, she argued with him stubbornly to alter his plan, and to allow
her to be the one to go ashore, while he went immediately to the liner.
He consented to this at last, a little reluctantly, but the thought
that he was safely installed in his cabin, as she made her way
shoreward through the dusk, in the pitching and dripping little dingey,
consoled her for the sense of loneliness and desertion which her
position brought to her. The wind had increased, by this time, and the
rain was coming down in slanting and stinging sheets. But her spirit
did not fail her.
From the water-front, deserted and rain-swept, she called a passing
street carriage, and drove to the Hotel Bristol. There she sent the
driver to ask if any luggage had arrived from Venice for Miss Allen.
None had arrived, and Miss Allen, naturally, appeared in great
perturbation before the sympathetic but helpless hotel manager. She
next inquired if it was possible to ascertain when the Cunard steamer
sailed.
"The _Slavonia_, madam, leaves the harbor at daybreak!"
"At daybreak! Then I must go on board tonight, at once!"
"I fear it is impossible, madam. The _bora_ is blowing, as you see,
and the harbor is empty!"
"But I _must_ get on board!" she cried, and this time her dismay and
despair were not mere dissimulation.
The landlord shrugged his shoulders, while Frank, calling out a
peremptory order, in Italian, to her driver, left him at the curb
looking after her through the driving rain, in bewilderment.
She went first to the steamship offices. They were closed. Then she
sought out the Cunard tender--it was lightless and deserted. Then she
hurried to the water-front, driving up and down along that lonely
stretch of deserted quays, back and forth, coaxing, wheedling, trying
to bribe indifferent and placid-eyed boatmen to row her out to her
steamer. It was useless. It could not be done. It was not worth
while to risk either their boats or their lives, even in the face of
the fifty, one hundred, two hundred _lira_ which she flaunted in their
unperturbed faces.
Grating and rocking against the quayside, above the heads of the group
about her, she caught sight of a white-painted steam launch, with a
high-standing bow, and on it a uniformed officer, smoking in the rain.
She approached him without hesitation. Could he, in any way, carry her
out to her steamer? She pointed to where the lights of the _Slavonia_
shone and glimmered through the gray darkness. They looked
indescribably warm and homelike to her peering eyes.
The officer looked her up and down in stolid Austrian amazement, trying
to catch a glimpse of her face through her wet and flattened traveling
veil. Could he take her out to her steamer? No; he was afraid not.
Yes, it was true he had steam up, and that his crew were aboard, but
this was the official patrol of the Captain of the Port--it was not to
carry passengers--it was solely for the imperial service of the
Austrian Government.
She pleaded with him, weeping. He was sorry, but the Captain of the
Port would permit no such irregularity.
"Where is the Captain of the Port, then?" she demanded.
The officer puffed his cigar slowly, and looked her up and down once
more. He was in his office in the Administration Building--but the
officer's shrug and smile told her that it was, in his eyes, no easy
thing to secure admission to the Captain of the Port. The very phrase,
"the Captain of the Port," that had been bandied back and forth for the
last few minutes, became odious to her; it seemed to designate the
title of some august and supernatural and tyrannous power who held her
life and death in his hands.
She turned on her heel and drove at once to the Administration
Building. Here, at the entrance, she was confronted by a uniformed
sentry, who, after questioning her, passed her on to still another
uniformed personage, who called an orderly, and sent that somewhat
bewildered messenger and his charge to the anteroom of the Captain of
the Port's private secretary. Frank had a sense of hurrying down long
and jail-like corridors, of ascending stairs and passing sentries, of
questionings and consultations, of at last being ushered into a
softly-lighted, softly-carpeted room, where a white-bearded,
benignant-browed official sat in a swivel-chair before a high walnut
desk.
He shook his head mournfully as he listened to her story. But she did
not give up. She even amazed him a little by the sheer impetuosity of
her speech.
"Is there much at stake, _signorina_?" he asked, at last, as she paused
for breath.
"_A man's soul is at stake_!" was the answering cry that rang through
the quiet room.
The Captain of the Port smiled a little cynically, scarcely
understanding.
Yet something almost fatherly about his sad and wistful face steeled
her to still further persistence, and she afterward remembered, always
a little shamefaced, that she had wept and clung to his arm and wept
still again, before she melted and bent him from his official
determination. She saw, through blurred and misty eyes, his hand go
out and touch an electric button at his side. She saw him write three
lines on a sheet of paper, an attendant appear, and heard an order
briefly and succinctly given. She had gained her end.
The Captain of the Port rose as she turned to go from the room.
"Good night, and also good-bye, _signorina_!" he said quietly, with his
stately, old-world bow.
She paused at the door, wordlessly demeaned, momentarily ashamed of
herself. She felt, in some way, how miserable and low and self-seeking
she stood beneath him, how high and firm he stood above her, with his
calm and disinterested kindliness.
She turned back to him once more.
"Good-bye," she said inadequately, in her tearful and tremulous
contralto. "Good-bye, and thank you, again and again!"
He bowed from where he stood in the center of his quiet and sheltered
office, seeming, to her, a strangely old-time and courtly figure, a
proud yet unpretentious student of life at peace with his own soul.
The years would come and go, the years that would so age and wear and
torture _her_, but he would reign on in that quiet office unchanged,
contented, still at peace with himself and all his world. "Good-bye,"
she said for the third time, from the doorway.
Then she hurried down to her waiting carriage and raced for the quay.
There she took an almost malicious delight in the bustle and
perturbation to which her return gave sudden rise. The sleepy and
sullen crew were stirred out, signals were clanged, ropes were cast
off; and down in her little narrow cabin, securely shut off from the
driving spray, she could feel and hear the boat lurch and pound through
the waves. Then came shrill calls of the whistle above, the sound of
gruff voices, the rasp and scrape of heaving woodwork against woodwork,
the grind of the ladder against the boat-fenders, the cry of the
officer telling her to hurry.
She walked up the _Slavonia's_ ladder steadily, demurely, for under the
lights of the promenade deck she could see the clustering, inquisitive
heads, where a dozen crowding passengers tried to ascertain just who
could be coming aboard with such ceremony.
Leaning over the rail, with a cigar in his mouth, she caught sight of
her husband. As she passed him, at the head of the ladder, he spoke
one short sentence to her, under his breath.
It was a commonplace enough little sentence, but as the purport of it
filtered through her tired mind it stung her into both a new wariness
of attitude and thought and a new gratefulness of heart.
For as she passed him, without one betraying emotion or one glance
aside, he had whispered to her, under his breath:
"_Keenan is here, on board. Be careful!_"