Following this abrupt introduction to his interesting neighbour, Lanyard
went back to his deck-chair and, bundling himself up against the cold,
settled down to ponder the affair and await developments in a spirit of
chastened resignation. That a dénouement would duly unfold he was quite
satisfied; that he himself must willy-nilly play some part therein he was
too well persuaded.
Not that he wished to meddle. If this Miss Cecelia Brooke (as she named
herself) fostered any sort of intrigue, he wanted nothing so fervently
as to be left altogether out of it. But already he had been dragged in,
without wish or consent of his; whoever coveted her secret--whatever that
was, more precious to her than jewels--harboured designs upon his own as
well. It was his duty henceforth to go warily, overlooking no circumstance,
however trifling and inconsiderable it might appear. The slenderest thread
may lead to the heart of the most intricate maze--and the heart of this was
become Lanyard's immediate goal, for there his enemy lay perdu.
It was never this man's fault to underrate an enemy, least of all
an unknown; and he entertained wholesome respect for Secret Service
operators--picked men, as a rule, the meanest no mean antagonist. And this
business, he fancied, had all the flavour of Secret Service work--one
of those blind duels, desperate and grim affairs of masked combatants
feinting, thrusting, guarding in the dark, each with the other's sword ever
feeling for his throat, fighting for life itself and making his own rules
as the contest swayed.
But what was this Brooke girl doing in that galley? What conceivable motive
induced her to dabble those slender hands in the muck and blood of Secret
Service work?
Lanyard was fain to let that question rest. After all, it was no concern of
his. There she was, up to her pretty eyebrows in some dark, bad business;
and it was not for him to play the gratuitous ass, rush in unasked, and
seek to extricate her....
Through endless hours he sat brooding, vision blindly focussed upon the
misty, shimmering mystery of that night.
Ekstrom!... Slowly in his understanding intuition shaped the conviction
that it was Ekstrom whom he was fighting now, Ekstrom in the guise of one
of his creatures, some agent of the Prussian spy system who had contrived
to smuggle himself aboard this British steamship.
Out of those nine in the smoking room the previous night, then, he must
beware of one primarily, perhaps of more.
Four he was disposed, with reservations, to reckon negligible: Baron von
Harden, head of a Netherlands banking house, a silent body whose acute
mental processes went on behind a pallid screen of flabby features; Julius
Becker, a theatrical manager of New York, whose right name ended in ski;
Bartlett Putnam, late chargé d'affaires of the American embassy in Madrid;
Edmund O'Reilly, naturalized citizen of the United States, interested in
the manufacture of motor tractors somewhere in Michigan.
Of the other five, two were English: Lieutenant Thackeray, a civilly
reticent gentleman whose right arm rested in a black silk sling, making
a flying trip to visit a married sister in New York; Archer Bartholomew,
Esq., solicitor, a red-cheeked, bright-eyed, white-haired, brisk little
Cockney, beyond the military age.
There remained Dressier, the stout, self-satisfied Swiss, whose fawning
manner was possibly accounted for by his statement that he journeyed to
New York to engage in the trade of restaurateur in partnership with his
brother; Crane, long and awkward and homely, of saturnine cast, slow of
gesture and negligent as to dress, his humorous sense clouding a power
of shrewd intelligence; and Señor Arturo Velasco, of Buenos Aires,
middle-aged, apparently extremely well-to-do, a thoughtful type, more
self-contained than most of his countrymen.
One of these probably ... But which?...
Nor must he permit himself to forget that the _Assyrian_ carried fifty-nine
other male passengers, in addition to her complement of officers, crew, and
stewards, that any one of these might prove to be Potsdam's cat's-paw.
Awesome pallor tinged the eastern horizon, gaining strength, spread in
imperceptible yet rapid gradations toward the zenith. Stars faded, winked
out, vanished. Silver and purple in the sea gave place to livid gray.
Almost visibly the routed night rolled back over the western rim of the
world. Shafts of supernal radiance lanced the formless void between sky
and sea. Swollen and angry, the sun lifted up its enormous, ensanguined
portent. And the discountenanced moon withdrew hastily into the
immeasurable fastnessness of a cloudless firmament, yet failed therein to
find complete concealment. Keen, sweet airs of dawn raked the decks, now
to port, now to starboard, as the _Assyrian_ twisted and writhed on her
corkscrew way.
Passengers whose fears had become sufficiently numb to permit them to
drowse, stirred in their chairs, roused blinking and blear-eyed, arose
and stretched cramped, cold bodies. Others lay listless, enervated by the
sleepless misery of that night. Crane found Lanyard awake and marched him
off for coffee and cigarettes in the smoking room.
Later, starting out for a turn around the decks, they passed a deck-chair
sheltered in a jog where the engine-room ventilating shaft joined the
forward deck-house, in which Miss Brooke lay cocooned in wraps and furs,
her profile, turned aside from the sea, exquisitely etched against the rich
blackness of a fox stole. She slept as quietly as the most carefree, a
shadowy smile touching her lips.
Crane's stride faltered. He whistled low.
"In the name of all things wonderful! how did that get on board?"
Lanyard mentioned the girl's name. "She has the stateroom next to
mine--came off that tender, night before last."
"And me sore on that darn' li'l boat because it brought aboard all the
nosey Johnnies! Ain't it the truth, you never know your luck?"
The American ruminated in silence till another lap of their walk took them
past the girl again.
"Funny," he mused, "if that's why they held us up...."
"Comment, monsieur?"
"Oh, I was just wondering if it was on that young lady's account they kept
us kicking our heels back there so long."
"I am still stupid," Lanyard confessed.
"Why, she might be a special messenger, you know--something like that--the
British Government wanted to smuggle out of the country without anybody
suspecting."
"Monsieur is a romantic."
"You can't trust me," Crane averred unblushingly.
When they passed the chair again it was empty.
At breakfast Lanyard saw the girl from a distance: their places were
separated by the width of the saloon. She had no neighbours at her table,
did not look up when Lanyard entered, finished her meal some time before
he did, and retired immediately to her stateroom, in whose seclusion she
remained for the rest of the day.
That second day was altogether innocent of untoward incident. At least
superficially the life of the ship settled into the groove of "business
as usual." Only the company of the _Assyrian's_ faithful convoys was an
ever-present reminder of peril.
And in the middle of the afternoon she passed close by a derelict, a
torpedoed tramp, deep down by the stern, her bows helplessly high in air
and crimson with rust, the melancholy haunt of a great multitude of gulls.
More than slightly to Lanyard's surprise he received no quiet invitation
to the captain's quarters to be interrogated concerning the burglary in
Stateroom 27. Apparently, the young woman had contented herself with
reporting merely that the communicating door had carelessly been left
unfastened.
For his own part, neither seeking nor avoiding individual members of the
smoking-room group, Lanyard permitted himself to be drawn into their
company, and sat among them amiably receptive. But this profited him
scantily; there was no further talk of the Lone Wolf; he was not again
aware of that covert surveillance.
But when--the evening chill driving him below to don a fur-lined
topcoat--the Brooke girl, coming up the companionway, acknowledged his look
of recognition with the most distant of nods, he accepted the apparent
rebuff without resentment. He understood. She was playing the game. The
enemy was watching, listening. After that he was studious to refrain from
seeming either to avoid or to seek her neighbourhood; and if he did keep a
sharp eye on her, it was so circumspectly as to mock detection. To the
best of his observation she found no friends on board, contracted no new
acquaintances, kept herself to herself within walls of inexorable reserve.
Dawn, ending the second night at sea, found the _Assyrian_ pursuing a
course still devious, and now alone; the destroyers had turned back during
the night. The western boundary of the barred zone lay astern. Ahead, at
the end of a brief interval of time, the ivory towers of New York loomed,
a-shimmer with endless sunlight, glorious in golden promise. Accordingly,
the spirits of the passengers were exalted. The very ship seemed to grin in
self-complacence; she had won safely through.
Unremitting vigilance was none the less maintained. No hour of the
twenty-four found either gun, forward or aft, wanting a full working crew
on the keen qui vive. The life boats remained on outswung davits; boat
drills for passengers as well as crew were features of the daily programme.
Regulations concerning light and smoking on deck after dark were rigidly
enforced. Fuel was never spared in the effort to widen the blue gulf
between the steamship and those waters wherein she had so nearly met her
end. By day a hunted thing, racing frantically toward a port of refuge in
the West, all her stout fabric labouring with titanic pulsations, shying in
panic from the faintest suspicion of smoke upon the horizon, the _Assyrian_
slipped into the grateful obscurity of night like a snake into a thicket,
made herself akin to its densest shadows, strained hopelessly not to be
outdistanced by its fugitive mantle.
And the benison of unseasonably clement weather was hers; day after shining
day, night after placid night, the Atlantic revealed a singularly gracious
humour, mirrored the changeful panorama of the heavens in a surface little
flawed. So that the most squeamish voyagers, as well as those most beset
with fears, slept sweetly in the comfort of their berths.
Lanyard, however, never went to bed without first securing his door so that
it might be opened by force alone; and never slept without a pistol beneath
his pillow.
But the truth is, he slept little. For the first time in his history he
learned what it meant to will sleep to come and have his will defied. He
lay for hours staring wide-eyed into darkness, hearkening to the steady
throbbing of the engines, unable to dismiss the thought that their every
revolution brought him so much nearer to America, so much the nearer to
his hour with Ekstrom. In vain he sought to fatigue his senses by
over-indulgence in his weakness for gambling. Day-long sessions at poker
and auction in the smoking room--where he found formidable antagonists,
principally in the persons of Crane, Bartlett Putnam, Velasco, Bartholomew,
Julius Becker and Baron von Harden--served only to forward his financial
fortunes; his luck was phenomenal; he multiplied many times that slender
store of English banknotes with which he had embarked upon this adventure.
But he left each exhausting sitting only to toss upon a wakeful pillow or
to roam uneasily the dark and desolate decks, a man haunted by ghosts of
his own raising, hagridden by passions of his own nurturing....
About two o'clock on the third night (the first outside the danger zone,
when every other passenger might reasonably be expected to be in his berth)
Lanyard lay in a deck-chair deep in shadows, wondering if it was worthwhile
to go below and woo sleep in his stateroom. By way of experiment he shut
his eyes. When after a moment he opened them again he was no longer alone.
Some distance away, at the rail, the woman of Stateroom 27 was standing
with her back to Lanyard, looking intently forward, unquestionably ignorant
of his presence.
Without moving, he watched in listless incuriosity till he saw her
straighten and stand away from the rail as if bracing herself against some
crisis.
A man was coming aft from the entrance to the main companionway, impatience
in his stride--a tall man, of good carriage, muffled almost to the heels in
a heavy ulster, a steamer-cap well forward over his eyes. But the light was
poor, the pale shine of the aged moon blending trickily with the swaying
shadows; Lanyard was unable to place him among the passengers. There was
a suggestion of Lieutenant Thackeray--but that one was handicapped by one
shell-shattered arm, whereas this man had the use of both.
He demonstrated that promptly, taking the girl into them. She yielded
herself gladly, with a hushed little cry, hiding her face in the bosom of
his ulster, clinging to him.
This, then, was an assignation prearranged! Miss Cecelia Brooke had a lover
aboard the _Assyrian_, a lover whom she denied by day but met in stealth by
night!
And yet, after that first, swift embrace, their conduct became oddly
unloverlike. The man released her of his own initiative, held her by the
shoulders at arm's length. There was irritation in his manner. He seemed
tempted to shake the young woman.
"Celia! what madness!"
So much, at least, Lanyard overheard; the rest was a mumble into the hand
which the girl placed over the man's lips. She cried breathlessly: "Hush!
not so loud!"
And then she remembered to guard her own voice. In an undertone she spoke
passionately for a moment. The man interrupted in a tone of profound
vexation. She drew away, as if hurt, caught him up as he hesitated for a
word, returned, clung to the lapels of his coat, her accents rapid and
pitiful, eloquent of explanation, entreaty, determination. The man lifted
his hands to her wrists, broke her grasp, cut her brusquely short, put her
forcibly from him. She sobbed softly....
Thus swiftly the scene suffered disillusioning transition. The pretty
fiction of lovers meeting in secret was no more. Remained a man annoyed to
the verge of anger, a woman desperately importunate.
The wind, sweeping aft, carried broken snatches of their communications:
"... _all I have ... could not let you go_...."
"_Insanity_!"
"_I was desperate_...."
"... _drive me mad with your nonsense_...."
Lanyard sat up, scraping his chair harshly on the deck. Stricken mute,
the pair at the rail moved only to turn his way the pallid ovals of their
faces.
Heedless of the prohibition, he struck a vesta, cupped its flame in his
hands, bending his face close and deliberately lighting a cigarette.
Appreciably longer than necessary he permitted the flare to reveal his
features. Then he blew it out, rose, sauntered to the rail, cast the
cigarette into the sea, went aft and so below, satisfied that the girl must
have recognised him and so knew that her secret was safe.
But it was in an oddly disgruntled humour that he turned in--he who had
been so ready to twit Crane with his fantastic speculations concerning
the English girl, who had himself been the readiest to endue her with the
romantic attributes becoming a heroine of her country's Secret Service!
What if he must now esteem her in the merciless light of to-night's
exposure, as the most pitiable of all human spectacles, a poor lovesick
thing sans dignity, sans pride, sans heed for the world's respect, a woman
pursuing a man weary of her?
He resented unreasonably the unreasonable resentment which the affair
inspired in him.
What was it to him? He who had struck off all fettering bonds of common
human interests, who had renounced all common human emotions, who had set
his hand against all mankind that stood between him and that vengeful
purpose to which he had dedicated his life! He, the Lone Wolf, the
heartless, soulless, pitiless beast of prey!
God in Heaven! what was any woman to him?
V