Except for this last disturbing incident, it had been a pleasant
voyage--the most pleasant Philip Hindwood could remember. They had left
New York in the brilliant clearness of blue September skies. The clear
blueness had followed them. The slow-going, matronly _Ryndam_ had
steamed on an even keel through seas as tranquil and reflective as the
proverbial mill-pond. Her company had been dull, consisting mainly of
American drummers and Dutch Colonials returning from Java. But he had no
grounds for complaint; he had chosen her for her dullness. He had wanted
to lay up a store of rest before plunging into the strenuous excitements
which were the purpose of his journey.
He had gone aboard her in an unsociable frame of mind, determined to
talk to nobody; the success of his errand depended on his silence. He
believed that he was half a year ahead of the times. When his rivals had
caught up to where he was at present, he would have made himself a world
power and dictator.
But the dullness of the ship's company had exceeded expectations.
Because of this he had broken his compact and allowed his privacy to
be invaded by two vivid personalities. The first had been Prince
Rogovich--the second, Santa Gorlof.
Prince Rogovich had evidently boarded the ship with precisely the same
intentions as himself. All his meals had been served in his stateroom;
it had not been until the evening of the third day that he had appeared
on deck. He was a man of commanding height, lean of hip and contemptuous
of eye, with the disquieting, haughty reticence of an inscrutable
Pharaoh. There was something alluring and oriental about the man, at
once sinister and charming. Behind his silky black beard he hid a
face which was deathly white; its pallor was not of ill-health, but
of passion. It was easy to believe all the rumors about him, both as
regarded his diabolical cleverness and his sensual cruelty. His enemies
were legion. Even among his countrymen he could count few friends,
although he was reckoned their greatest patriot. In Poland he was
suspected as much as he was admired, and was accused of intriguing
in order that he might set up a throne for himself. The object of his
flying visit to America had been to consult financial magnates on the
advisability of floating an international loan in the interests of
Poland. There were men the world over and in Russia especially, who
would have paid a king's ransom for advance information as to what
answer the financiers had returned.
Though Hindwood would not have claimed as much, he and the Prince were
two of a kind, equally magnificent in their dreams, equally relentless
in their means of realization, and equally insatiable in their
instinct for conquest. Their difference lay in the fact that the Polish
aristocrat had already attained the goal toward which the self-made
American was no more than striving.
Their first meeting had happened in the early hours of the morning.
Hindwood, being unable to sleep, had partly dressed and gone on deck.
There, in the grayness of the dawn, he had espied a tall figure slowly
pacing, accompanied by a snow-white Russian wolfhound. It was the
remarkable grace of the man that had first held him, his faculty for
stillness, his spectral paleness, his padded tread. But the moment
he had approached him, the sense of his grace had been obscured by an
atmosphere of menace. So sinister was his beauty that it had required
an effort to pass him twice. Secretly Hindwood had observed him. He was
like his hound, treacherously languid, insolently fastidious, and bred
to the point of emaciation. But his languor was the disguise of a hidden
fierceness, which betrayed itself in his red, curved lips and the marble
coldness of his stare. It was at the third time of passing, when he had
all but gone by him, that he had heard his name spoken.
“Mr. Hindwood.” Then, as he had turned, “You're the famous railroad
expert. Am I right? It's fortunate we should have met. I missed you in
America. So you, too, are among the sleepless!”
Then and there had started the first of those amazing conversations,
which had held Hindwood fascinated for the remainder of the voyage.
It had made no difference that in his heart he had almost hated the
man--hated his ruthlessness, his subtlety, his polished immorality;
the moment he commenced to talk, he surrendered to his spell. Their
encounters had taken place for the most part between midnight and
sunrise. To be his companion was like eavesdropping on the intimate
counsels of all the cabinets of Europe or like reading your daily paper
a year before it was published for the rest of mankind. On matters
which did not concern him the Prince could be brilliantly confessional;
indiscretion was the bait with which he lured his victims to reveal
themselves. The secrets which were his own he kept. Never once did he
drop a hint that would indicate the success or failure of his recent
mission. The single time that, Santa Gorlof had asked him point-blank,
his dark eyes had become focusless as opals, and his white face, under
its silky covering of beard, unnoticing and sphinx-like. It was then
that Hindwood had recognized the resemblance to Pharaoh in his tyrannic
immobility and silence.
And Santa Gorlof! There was a woman--mysterious, exotic, well-nigh
mythical! Compared with her the Prince was an open book. From the start
she had made no attempt to explain herself, had referred neither to her
past nor her future, had offered no credentials. She had imposed herself
on Hind-wood like a goddess who expected to be worshiped. She had swept
him off his feet, beaten aside his caution, and reached his heart before
he was aware.
But was it his heart? How often, in the past few days, he had asked
himself that question! He didn't want to believe that it was his heart.
He was a man who rode alone; his aloneness was the reason for his
swiftness. He had been tricked once by a woman. That was when he was
a boy; now he was a man nearing forty. She had cheated him so cruelly
that, though she had been dead many years, the bitterness still rankled.
Behind the beauty of all women his skepticism detected the shallow
loveliness of the one false woman who had stolen his idealism, that she
might trample on it.
He did not love Santa. He had assured himself a thousand times that he
did not love her. She was too dangerous, too incalculable. He had spent
long hours of wakeful nights in completing the inventory of her bad
points. And yet, while he had been with her, his veins had run
fire; while he had been apart from her, all his pleasures had seemed
tasteless. Who was she? Whence had she come? Whither was she going?
What had been her business on the _Ryndam_, and what had Prince Rogovich
known about her? The Prince had known something--something which had
given him power over her. At a glance from him, her caprice had
vanished and she had become downcast as a child. He had muttered a few
unintelligible words, probably in Polish, and her pride had crumbled.
Hindwood was at a loss to account for these signs of a secret
understanding. It had been he who had introduced them. It had been Santa
who had confessed to curiosity about the Prince and had begged for the
introduction. The moment he had made them acquainted, they had seemed to
become delighted with each other's company--so delighted that there had
been times when he himself had felt excluded. A half-humorous rivalry
for Santa's favors had sprung up between the Prince and himself. This
atmosphere of jealousy had been accentuated by the behavior of the
wolfhound; Santa's mere approach had been sufficient to rouse him
into fury. He had become so dangerous that he had had to be sent below
whenever she was present.
And yet, despite her manifest efforts to hold the Prince enchanted,
behind his back she had expressed the most vigorous aversion. She had
spoken of his reputation for treachery and the whispers that went the
rounds of his heartlessness toward women. During the final days of the
voyage she had partly atoned for this inconsistency by appealing to
Hindwood to protect her against the Prince's far too pressing attention.
She had declared herself to be in some kind of danger--though what
kind, whether moral or physical, she had left him to conjecture. She
had rather flattered him by her appeal; nevertheless, he had been
considerably surprised to observe how little interest she had still
displayed in protecting herself. During the whole of that last day,
while they had been approaching the white line of Cornish coast, she had
scarcely devoted to him a glance or a word; every minute she had spent
with His Highness, whom she professed to regard with so much terror. She
had created the impression of employing every trick at her disposal in a
frantic attempt to secure him as her conquest.
If, as many of the passengers had asserted, the presence of Santa Gorlof
and the Prince on the same boat had been no accident, then what had been
the object of their elaborately planned deception? Were they lovers who
had chosen this secret method of traveling in order to avoid a scandal?
Or was she one of the many women whom he was reported to have abandoned,
who had seized the leisure of an Atlantic voyage as an opportunity for
reinstating herself in his affection?
As Hindwood listened in the darkness to the Prince's name being shouted
and waited for the tug to cast off, the surmise strengthened into
certainty that he had been the dupe of a piece of play-acting, the
purpose of which he could not fathom.