Katharine came on deck that morning in a somewhat disturbed frame of
mind. It was beginning to dawn upon her that her position as sick
nurse to Mr. Phillips was meant to be a sinecure. She was allowed to
sit by the sick man's side sometimes whilst the doctor took a
promenade or ate a meal in the saloon, but apart from that, the usual
exercise of her duties was not required from her. She was forced to
admit that there was something mysterious about the little stateroom,
the suffering man, and the doctor who watched him speechlessly
night and day.
She was conscious presently that Crawshay, who had been walking up and
down the deck, had stopped before the chair on which she lay extended.
She greeted him without enthusiasm.
"Are you taking one of your health constitutionals, Mr. Crawshay?" she
enquired.
"Not altogether," he replied. "May I sit down for a moment?"
"Of course! I don't think any one sits in that chair."
He took his place by her side, deliberately removed his muffler and
unfastened his overcoat. It struck her, from the first moment she
heard his voice, that his manner was somehow altered. She was
altogether unprepared, however, for the almost stern directness of his
first question. "Miss Beverley," he began, "will you allow me to ask
you how long you have known Mr. Jocelyn Thew?"
She turned her head towards him and remained speechless for a moment.
It seemed to her that she was looking into the face of a stranger. The
little droop of the mouth had gone. The half-vacuous, half-bored
expression had given place to something altogether new. The lines of
his face had all tightened up, his eyes were hard and bright. She
found herself quite unable to answer him in the manner she
had intended.
"Are you asking me that question seriously, Mr. Crawshay?"
"I am," he assured her. "I have grave reasons for asking it."
"I am afraid that I do not understand you," she replied stiffly.
"You must change your attitude, if you please, Miss Beverley,"
Crawshay persisted. "Believe me, I am not trying to be impertinent. I
am asking a question the necessity for which I am in a position
to justify."
"You bewilder me!" she exclaimed.
"That is simply because you looked upon me as a different sort of
person. To tell you the truth, I should very much have preferred that
you continued to look upon me as a different sort of person during
this voyage, but I cannot see my way clear to keep silence on this one
point. I wish to inform you, if you do not know it already, that Mr.
Jocelyn Thew is a dangerous person for you to know, or for you to be
associated with in any shape or form." She would have risen to her
feet but he stopped her.
"Please look at me," he begged.
She obeyed, half against her will.
"I want you to ask yourself," he went on, "whether you do not believe
that I am your well-wisher. What I am saying to you, I am saying to
save you from a position which later on you might bitterly regret."
She was conscious of a quality in his tone and manner entirely strange
to her, and she found any form of answer exceedingly difficult. The
anger which she would have preferred to have affected seemed, in the
face of his earnestness, out of place.
"It seems to me," she said, "that you are assuming something which
does not exist. I am not on specially intimate terms with Mr. Jocelyn
Thew. I have not talked to him any more than to any other casual
passenger."
"Is that quite honest?" he asked quietly. "Isn't it true that
Jocelyn Thew is interested in your mysterious patient?"
She started.
"What do you mean?"
"Just what I say," he replied. "I happen also to have very grave
suspicions concerning the presence on this ship of Mr. Phillips and
his doctor."
Her fingers gripped the side of her deck chair. She leaned a little
towards him.
"What concern is all this of yours?" she demanded.
"Never mind," he answered. "I am risking more than I should like to
say in telling you as much as I have told you. I cannot believe that
you would consciously associate yourself with a disgraceful and
unpatriotic conspiracy. That is why I have chosen to risk a great deal
in speaking to you in this way. Tell me what possible consideration
was brought to bear upon you to induce you to accept your present
situation?"
Katharine sat quite still. The thoughts were chasing one another
through her brain. Then she was conscious of a strange thing. Her
companion's whole expression seemed suddenly to have changed. Without
her noticing any movement, his monocle was in his left eye, his lip
had fallen a little. He was looking querulously out seaward.
"I don't believe," he declared, "that the captain has any idea about
the weather prospects. Look at those clouds coming up. I don't know
how you are feeling, Miss Beverley, but I am conscious of a
distinct chill."
Jocelyn Thew had come to a standstill before them. He was wearing no
overcoat and was bare-headed.
"I guess that chill is somewhere in your imagination, Mr. Crawshay,"
he observed. "You are pretty strong in that line, aren't you?"
Crawshay struggled to his feet.
"I have some ideas," he confessed modestly. "I spend my idle moments,
even here, weaving a little fiction."
"And recounting it, I dare say," Jocelyn ventured.
"I am like all artists," Crawshay sighed. "I love an audience. I must
express myself to something. I will wish you good evening, Miss
Beverley. I feel inclined to take a little walk, in case it becomes
too rough later on."
He shuffled away, once more the perfect prototype of the _malade
imaginaire_. Jocelyn Thew watched him in silence until he had
disappeared. Then he turned and seated himself by the girl's side.
"I find myself," he remarked ruminatively, "still a little troubled as
to the precise amount of intelligence which our friend Mr. Crawshay
might be said to possess. I wonder if I might ask; without your
considering it a liberty, what he was talking to you about?"
"About you," she answered.
"Ah!"
"Warning me against you."
"Dear me! Aren't you terrified?"
"I am not terrified," she replied, "but I think it best to tell you
that he also has suspicions, absurd though it may seem, of Phillips
and the doctor."
"Why not the purser and captain, while he's about it?" Jocelyn said
coolly. "Every one on this boat seems to have got the nerves. They
searched my stateroom this morning."
"Searched your stateroom?" she repeated. "Do you mean while you were
out?"
"Not a bit of it," he replied. "They dragged me up at half-past eight
this morning--the captain, purser and a steward--fetched up my trunk
and searched all my possessions."
"What for?" she asked, with a sudden chill.
He smiled at her reassuringly. "Something they didn't find!
Something," he added, after a slight pause, "which they never
will find!"
Towards midday, Jocelyn Thew abandoned a game of shuffleboard, and,
leaning against the side of the vessel, gazed steadily up at the
wireless operating room. The lightnings had been playing around the
mast for the last ten minutes without effect. He turned towards one of
the ship's officers who was passing.
"Anything gone wrong with the wireless?" he enquired.
"The operator's ill, sir," was the prompt reply. "We've only one on
board, as it happens, so we are rather in a mess."
Jocelyn strolled away aft, considering the situation. He found
Crawshay seated in an elaborate deck chair and immersed in a novel.
"I hear the wireless has gone wrong," he remarked, stopping in front
of him.
Crawshay glanced up blandly.
"What's that?" he demanded. "Wireless? Why, it's been going all the
morning."
"There has been no one there to take the messages, though. If anything
happens to us, we shall be in a nice pickle."
Crawshay shivered.
"I wish you people wouldn't suggest such things," he said, a little
testily. "I was just trying to get all thought of this most perilous
voyage out of my mind, with the help of a novel here. From which do
you seriously consider we have most to fear," he went on, "mines,
submarines, or predatory vessels of the type of the _Blucher_?"
"The latter, I should think," Jocelyn replied. "They say that
submarines are scarcely venturing so far out just now."
There was a brief silence. Jocelyn Thew was apparently engaged in
trying to fit a cigarette into his holder.
"Specially hard luck on you," he remarked presently, "if anything
happened when you've taken so much trouble to get on board."
"It would be exceedingly annoying," Crawshay declared, with vigour,
"added to which I am not in a state of health to endure a voyage in a
small boat. I have been this morning to look at our places, in case of
accident. I find that I am expected to wield an oar long enough to
break my back."
Jocelyn Thew smiled. The other man's peevishness seemed too natural to
be assumed.
"I expect you'll be glad enough to do your bit, if anything does
happen to us," he observed.
"By-the-by," Crawshay asked, "I wonder what will become of that poor
fellow downstairs--the man who is supposed to be dying, I mean--if
trouble comes?"
"I heard them discussing it at breakfast time," Jocelyn Thew replied.
"I understand that he has asked specially to be allowed to remain
where he is. There would of course be not the slightest chance of
saving his life. The doctor who is with him--Gant, I think his name
is--told us that anything in the shape of a rough sea, even, would
mean the end of him. He quite understands this himself." Crawshay
assented gravely.
"It seems a little brutal but it is common sense," he declared. "In
times of great stress, too, one becomes primitive, and the primitive
instinct is for the strong to save himself. I am not ashamed to
confess," he concluded, "that I have secured an extra lifebelt."
Jocelyn glanced, for a moment scornfully down at the man who had now
picked up his novel again and was busy reading. Crawshay represented
so much the things that he despised in life. It was impossible to
treat or consider him in any way as a rival to be feared. He passed
down the deck and made his way below to the doctor's room. He found
the latter in the act of starting off to see a patient.
"I came around to ask after Robins, the young Marconi man," Jocelyn
explained. "I hear that he was taken ill last night."
The doctor looked at his questioner keenly.
"That is so," he admitted.
"What's wrong with him?"
"I have not thoroughly diagnosed his complaint as yet," was the
careful reply. "I can tell you for a certainty, though, that he will
not be able to work for two or three days."
"It seems very sudden," Jocelyn Thew persisted.
"As a matter of fact, I had some slight acquaintance with him, and I
always thought that he was a remarkably strong young fellow."
The doctor, who had completed his preparations for departure, picked
up his cap and politely showed his visitor out. "You wouldn't care,"
the latter suggested, "to let me go down and have a look at him? I
can't call myself a medical man, but I know something about sickness
and I am quite interested in young Robins."
"I don't think that I shall need a second opinion at present, thank
you," the doctor rejoined, a little drily. "If you wish to see him
later on, you must get permission from the captain. Good morning,
Mr. Thew."
Jocelyn Thew strolled thoughtfully away, found a retired spot upon the
promenade deck behind a boat, lit a very black cigar, and, drawing his
field-glasses from his pocket, searched the horizon carefully. There
was no sign of any passing steamer, not even the faintest wisp of
black smoke anywhere upon the horizon. It was Wednesday to-day, and
they had left New York on Saturday. He drew a sheet of paper from his
pocket and made a few calculations. It was the day and past the time
upon which things were due to happen....
The day wore on very much as most days do on an Atlantic voyage in
early summer. The little handful of passengers, who seemed for the
moment to have cast all anxieties to the winds, played shuffleboard
and quoits, lunched with vigorous appetites, drank tea out on deck,
and indulged in strenuous before-dinner promenades. The sun shone all
day, the sea remained wonderfully calm. Not a trace of any other
steamer was visible from morning until early nightfall, and Jocelyn
Thew walked restlessly about with a grim look upon his face. At dinner
time the captain hinted at fog, and looked doubtfully out of the
open porthole at the oily-looking waste of waters.
"Another night on the bridge for me, I think," he remarked.
Jocelyn Thew leaned forward in his place.
"By-the-by, Captain," he asked, "now that the shipping is so reduced,
do you alter speed for fog?"
The captain filled his glass from the jug of lemonade which, was
always before him.
"Do we alter our speed, eh?" he repeated. "You must remember," he went
on, "that we have Miss Beverley on board. We couldn't afford to give
Miss Beverley a fright."
Jocelyn accepted the evasion with a slight bow. Katharine, who had
come in to dine a little late and seemed graver than usual, smiled at
the captain.
"Am I the most precious thing on this steamer?" she asked.
"Gallantry," the captain replied, "compels me to say yes!"
"Only gallantry? Have we such a wonderful cargo, then?"
"There are times," was the cautious reply, "when not even the captain
knows exactly what he is carrying."
"You remind me," Jocelyn Thew observed, "of a voyage I once made from
Port Elizabeth to New York, with half-a-dozen I.D.B's on board, and as
many detectives, watching them day and night."
The captain nodded.
"What happened?" he enquired.
"Oh, the detectives arrested the lot of them, I think, got hold of
them on the last day." The captain rose from his place.
"Queer thing," he remarked, "but the law generally does come out on
top."
Jocelyn followed his example a few minutes later, and Katharine
purposely joined him on the way out. She led her companion to the
corner where her steamer chair had been placed, and motioned him to
sit by her side. They were on the weather side of the ship, with a
slight breeze in their faces and a canopy over their heads which
deadened sound. She leaned a little forward.
"Smoke, please." she begged. "I mean it--see."
She lit a cigarette and he followed suit.
"Not a cigar?"
He shook his head.
"I keep them for my hard thinking times."
"Then you were thinking very hard this morning?"
"I was," he admitted.
"And gazing very earnestly out of those field-glasses of yours."
"Quite true."
"Mr. Thew," she said abruptly, "it is my impression, although for some
reason or other I am scarcely allowed to go near him, that Mr.
Phillips is dying."
"One knew, of course, that there was that risk," Jocelyn Thew reminded
her.
"I do not think that he can possibly live for twenty-four hours," she
continued. "I was allowed to sit with him for a short time early this
morning. He is beginning to wander in his mind, to speak of his wife
and a sum of money." Jocelyn's fine eyebrows came a little
closer together.
"Well?"
"Nothing in his appearance or speech indicate the man of wealth or
even of birth. I begin to wonder whether I know the whole truth about
this frantic desire of his to reach England before he dies?"
"I think," Jocelyn Thew said thoughtfully, "that you have been talking
again to Mr. Crawshay."
"Yes," she admitted, "and he has been warning me against you."
"I suppose," Jocelyn ruminated, "the man has a certain amount of
puppy-dog intelligence."
"I do not understand Mr. Crawshay at all," she confessed. "My
acquaintance with him before we met on this steamer was of the
slightest, but his manner of coming certainly led one to believe that
he was a man of courage and determination. Since then he has crawled
about in an overcoat and rubber shoes, and groaned about his ailments
until one feels inclined to laugh at him. Last night he was different
again. He was entirely serious, and he spoke to me about you."
"Do you need to be warned against me?" he asked grimly. "Have I ever
sailed under false colours?"
"Don't," she begged, looking at him with a little quiver of the lips
and a wonderfully soft light in her eyes. "You have never deceived me
in any way except, if at all, as regards this voyage. I made up my
mind this evening that I would ask you, if you cared to tell me, to
take me into your confidence about this man who is dying down below,
and his strange journey. I need scarcely add that I should respect
that confidence."
"I am sorry," he answered. "You ask an impossibility."
"Then there is some sort of conspiracy going on?" she persisted. "Let
me ask you a straightforward question. Is it not true that you have
made me an unknowing participator in an illegal act?"
"It is," he admitted. "I was very sorry to have to do so but it was
necessary. Without your assistance, I should never have been allowed
to bring Phillips across the Atlantic."
"What difference do I make?" she asked.
"You lend an air of respectability and credibility to the whole
thing," he told her. "You are a person of repute, of distinguished
social position, and the object of a good deal of admiration in your
own country. The doctor who accompanies you comes from your own
hospital. No one would believe it possible that either of you could be
concerned in any sort of conspiracy. If that ass Crawshay had not got
on board, I am convinced that there would never have been a breath of
suspicion."
She shivered a little.
"Is it quite kind to bring me into an affair of this sort?" she asked.
"It is a world," he declared cruelly, "in which we fight always for
our own hand or go under. I am fighting for mine, and if I have
occasionally to sacrifice a friend as well as an enemy, I do not
hesitate."
"What has the world done to you," she demanded, "that you should speak
so bitterly?" "Better not ask me that."
"How will the man Phillips' death affect your plans?"
"It will make very little difference either way," he assured her. "We
rather expected him to die."
"And you won't take me any further into your confidence?"
"No further. Your task will be completed at Liverpool. So long as you
leave this steamer in company with the doctor and the ambulance, if
Phillips is still alive, you will be free to return home whenever
you please."
"Very well," she said. "You see, I accept my position. I shall go
through with what I have promised, whatever Mr. Crawshay may say.
Won't you in return treat me, if not as a confederate, as a friend?"
He turned and looked at her, met the appealing glance of her soft eyes
for a moment and looked suddenly away.
"I do not belong to the ranks of those, Miss Beverley, from whom it is
well for you to choose your friends."
"But why should I not make my own choice?" she insisted. "I have
always been my own mistress. I have lived with my own ideas, I have
declined to be subject to any one's authority. I am an independent
person. Can't you treat me as such?"
"There are facts," he said, "which can never be ignored. You belong to
the world of wealthy, gently born men and women who comprise what is
called Society. I belong, and have belonged all my life, to a race of
outcasts." "Don't!" she begged.
"It is true," he repeated doggedly.
"But what do you mean by outcasts?"
"Criminals, if you like it better. I have broken the law more than
once. There is an unexecuted warrant out against me at the present
moment. You may even see me marched off this steamer at Liverpool
between two policemen."
"But why?" she asked passionately. "Why? What is the motive of it all?
Is it money?"
"I am not in need of money," he told her, "but I have a great and
sacred use for all I can lay my fingers on. If I succeed in my present
enterprise, I shall receive a hundred thousand pounds."
"I value Jerry's life and future at more than that," she declared.
"Will you make a fresh start, Mr. Jocelyn Thew, with twice that sum of
money to your credit?"
He shook his head, but there was a curious change creeping into his
face. For the first time she saw how soft a man's dark-blue eyes may
sometimes become. The slight trembling of his parted lips, too, seemed
to unlock all the cruel, hard lines of his face. He had suddenly the
appearance of a person of temperament--a poet, even a dreamer.
"I could not take money from you, Miss Beverley," he said, "or from
any other woman in the world."
"Upon no conditions?" she whispered softly.
"Upon no conditions," he repeated.
The breeze had dropped, and twilight had followed swiftly upon the
misty sunset. There was something a little ghostly about the light in
which they sat. "I am stifled," she declared abruptly. "Come
and walk."
They paced up and down the deck once or twice in silence. Then he
paused as they drew near their chairs.
"Miss Beverley," he said, "in case this should be the last time that
we talk confidentially--so that we may put a seal, in fact, upon the
subject of which we have spoken to-night--I would like to tell you
that you have made me feel, during this last half-hour, an emotion
which I have not felt for many years. And I want to tell you this. I
am a lawbreaker. When I told you that there was a warrant out against
me at the present moment, I told you the truth. The charge against me
is a true one, and the penalty is one I shall never pay. I must go on
to the end, and I shall do so because I have a driving impulse behind,
a hate which only action can soothe. But all my sins have been against
men and the doings of men. You will understand me, will you not, when
I say that I can neither take your money, nor accept your friendship
after this voyage is over? You, on your side, can remember that you
have paid a debt."
She sank a little wearily into her chair and looked out through the
gathering mists. It seemed part of her fancy that they gathered him
in, for she heard no sound of retreating footsteps. Yet when she spoke
his name, a few moments later, she found that she was alone.