SCHEHERAZADE
At the Orangeville garage Neeland stopped his car, put on his straw
hat, got out carrying suitcase and box, entered the office, and turned
over the care of the machine to an employee with orders to drive it
back to Neeland's Mills the next morning.
Then he leisurely returned to his prisoner who had given him her name
as Ilse Dumont and who was standing on the sidewalk beside the car.
"Well, Scheherazade," he said, smiling, "teller of marvellous tales, I
don't quite believe your stories, but they were extremely
entertaining. So I won't bowstring you or cut off your unusually
attractive head! No! On the contrary, I thank you for your
wonder-tales, and for not murdering me. And, furthermore, I bestow
upon you your liberty. Have you sufficient cash to take you where you
desire to waft yourself?"
All the time her dark, unsmiling eyes remained fixed on him, calmly
unresponsive to his badinage.
"I'm sorry I had to be rough with you, Scheherazade," he continued,
"but when a young lady sews her clothes full of papers which don't
belong to her, what, I ask you, is a modest young man to do?"
She said nothing.
"It becomes necessary for that modest young man to can his
modesty--and the young lady's. Is there anything else he could do?" he
repeated gaily.
"He had better return those papers," she replied in a low voice.
"I'm sorry, Scheherazade, but it isn't done in ultra-crooked circles.
Are you sure you have enough money to go where destiny and booty call
you?"
"I have what I require," she answered dryly.
"Then good-bye, Pearl of the Harem! Without rancour, I offer you the
hand that reluctantly chastened you."
They remained facing each other in silence for a moment; his
expression was mischievously amused; hers inscrutable. Then, as he
patiently and good-humouredly continued to offer her his hand, very
slowly she laid her own in it, still looking him directly in the
eyes.
"I'm sorry," she said in a low voice.
"For what? For not shooting me?"
"I'm sorry for _you_, Mr. Neeland.... You're only a boy, after all.
You know nothing. And you refuse to learn.... I'm sorry....
Good-bye."
"Could I take you anywhere? To the Hotel Orange? I've time. The
station is across the street."
"No," she said.
She walked leisurely along the poorly lighted street and turned the
first corner as though at hazard. The next moment her trim and
graceful figure had disappeared.
With his heart still gay from the night's excitement, and the drop of
Irish blood in him lively as champagne, he crossed the square briskly,
entered the stuffy station, bought a ticket, and went out to the
wooden platform beside the rails.
Placing box and suitcase side by side, he seated himself upon them and
lighted a cigarette.
Here was an adventure! Whether or not he understood it, here
certainly was a real, story-book adventure at last. And he began to
entertain a little more respect for those writers of romance who have
so persistently attempted to convince an incredulous world that
adventures are to be had anywhere and at any time for the mere effort
entailed in seeking them.
In his case, however, he had not sought adventure. It had been thrust
upon him by cable.
And now the drop of Irish in him gratefully responded. He was much
obliged to Fate for his evening's entertainment; he modestly ventured
to hope for favours to come. And, considering the coolly veiled
threats of this young woman whom he had treated with scant ceremony,
he had some reason to expect a sequel to the night's adventure.
"She," he thought to himself, "had nothing on Godiva--except a piano
cover!"
Recollection of the absurd situation incited his reprehensible
merriment to the point of unrestrained laughter; and he clasped his
knees and rocked to and fro, where he sat on his suitcase, all alone
under the stars.
The midnight express was usually from five to forty minutes late at
Orangeville; but from there east it made up time on the down grade to
Albany.
And now, as he sat watching, far away along the riverside a star came
gliding into view around an unseen curve--the headlight of a distant
locomotive.
A few moments later he was in his drawing-room, seated on the edge of
the couch, his door locked, the shade over the window looking on the
corridor drawn down as far as it would go; and the train rushing
through the starry night on the down grade toward Albany.
He could not screen the corridor window entirely; the shade seemed to
be too short; but it was late, the corridor dark, all the curtains in
the car closed tightly over the berths, and his privacy was not likely
to be disturbed. And when the conductor had taken both tickets and the
porter had brought him a bottle of mineral water and gone away, he
settled down with great content.
Neeland was in excellent humour. He had not the slightest inclination
to sleep. He sat on the side of his bed, smoking, the olive-wood box
lying open beside him, and its curious contents revealed.
But now, as he carefully examined the papers, photographs, and
drawings, he began to take the affair a little more seriously. And the
possibility of further trouble raised his already high spirits and
caused that little drop of Irish blood to sing agreeably in his
veins.
Dipping into Herr Wilner's diary added a fillip to the increasing
fascination that was possessing him.
"Well, I'm damned," he thought, "if it doesn't really look as though
the plans of these Turkish forts might be important! I'm not very much
astonished that the Kaiser and the Sultan desire to keep for
themselves the secrets of these fortifications. They really belong to
them, too. They were drawn and planned by a German." He shrugged. "A
rotten alliance!" he muttered, and picked up the bronze Chinese figure
to examine it.
"So you're the Yellow Devil I've heard about!" he said. "Well, you
certainly are a pippin!"
Inspecting him with careless curiosity, he turned the bronze over and
over between his hands, noticing a slight rattling sound that seemed
to come from within but discovering no reason for it. And, as he
curiously considered the scowling demon, he hummed an old song of his
father's under his breath:
"Wan balmy day in May
Th' ould Nick come to the dure;
Sez I 'The divil's to pay,
An' the debt comes harrd on the poor!'
His eyes they shone like fire
An' he gave a horrid groan;
Sez I to me sister Suke,
'Suke!!!!
Tell him I ain't at home!'
"He stood forninst the dure,
His wings were wings of a bat,
An' he raised his voice to a roar,
An' the tail of him switched like a cat,
'O wirra the day!' sez I,
'Ochone I'll no more roam!'
Sez I to me brother Luke,
'Luke!!!!
Tell him I ain't at home!'"
As he laid the bronze figure away and closed, locked and strapped the
olive-wood box, an odd sensation crept over him as though somebody
were overlooking what he was doing. Of course it could not be true,
but so sudden and so vivid was the impression that he rose, opened the
door, and glanced into the private washroom--even poked under the bed
and the opposite sofa; and of course discovered that only a living
skeleton could lie concealed in such spaces.
His courage, except moral courage, had never been particularly tested.
He was naturally quite fearless, even carelessly so, and whether it
was the courage of ignorance or a constitutional inability to be
afraid never bothered his mind because he never thought about it.
Now, amused at his unusual fit of caution, he stretched himself out on
his bed, still dressed, debating in his mind whether he should undress
and try to sleep, or whether it were really worth while before he
boarded the steamer.
And, as he lay there, a cigarette between his lips, wakeful, his
restless gaze wandering, he suddenly caught a glimpse of something
moving--a human face pressed to the dark glass of the corridor window
between the partly lowered shade and the cherry-wood sill.
So amazed was he that the face had disappeared before he realised that
it resembled the face of Ilse Dumont. The next instant he was on his
feet and opening the door of the drawing-room; but the corridor
between the curtained berths was empty and dark and still; not a
curtain fluttered.
He did not care to leave his doorway, either, with the box lying there
on his bed; he stood with one hand on the knob, listening, peering
into the dusk, still excited by the surprise of seeing her on the same
train that he had taken.
However, on reflection, he quite understood that she could have had no
difficulty in boarding the midnight train for New York without being
noticed by him; because he was not expecting her to do such a thing
and he had paid no attention to the group of passengers emerging from
the waiting room when the express rolled in.
"This is rather funny," he thought. "I wish I could find her. I wish
she'd be friendly enough to pay me a visit. Scheherazade is certainly
an entertaining girl. And it's several hours to New York."
He lingered a while longer, but seeing and hearing nothing except
darkness and assorted snores, he stepped into his stateroom and locked
the door again.
Sleep was now impossible; the idea of Scheherazade prowling in the
dark corridor outside amused him intensely, and aroused every atom of
his curiosity. Did the girl really expect an opportunity to steal the
box? Or was she keeping a sinister eye on him with a view to summoning
accomplices from vasty metropolitan deeps as soon as the train
arrived? Or, having failed at Brookhollow, was she merely going back
to town to report "progress backward"?
He finished his mineral water, and, still feeling thirsty, rang, on
the chance that the porter might still be awake and obliging.
Something about the entire affair was beginning to strike him as
intensely funny, and the idea of foreign spies slinking about
Brookhollow; the seriousness with which this young girl took herself
and her mission; her amateur attempts at murder; her solemn mention of
the Turkish Embassy--all these excited his sense of the humorous. And
again incredulity crept in; and presently he found himself humming
Irwin's immortal Kaiser refrain:
"Hi-lee! Hi-lo!
Der vinds dey blow
Joost like die wacht am Rhine!
Und vot iss mine belongs to me,
Und vot iss yours iss mine!"
There came a knock at his door; he rose and opened it, supposing it to
be the porter; and was seized in the powerful grasp of two men and
jerked into the dark corridor.
One of them had closed his mouth with a gloved hand, crushing him
with an iron grip around the neck; the other caught his legs and
lifted him bodily; and, as they slung him between them, his startled
eyes caught sight of Ilse Dumont entering his drawing-room.
It was a silent, fierce struggle through the corridor to the front
platform of the vestibule train; it took both men to hold, overpower,
and completely master him; but they tried to do this and, at the same
time, lift the trap that discloses the car steps. And could not manage
it.
The instant Neeland realised what they were trying to do, he divined
their shocking intention in regard to himself, and the struggle became
terrible there in the swaying vestibule. Twice he nearly got at the
automatic pistol in his breast pocket, but could not quite grasp it.
They slammed him and thrashed him around between them, apparently
determined to open the trap, fling him from the train, and let him
take his chances with the wheels.
Then, of a sudden, came a change in the fortunes of war; they were
trying to drag him over the chain sagging between the forward mail-car
and the Pullman, when one of them caught his foot on it and stumbled
backward, releasing Neeland's right arm. In the same instant he drove
his fist into the face of his other assailant so hard that the man's
head jerked backward as though his neck were broken, and he fell flat
on his back.
Already the train was slowing down for the single stop between Albany
and New York--Hudson. Neeland got out his pistol and pointed it
shakily at the man who had fallen backward over the chain.
"Jump!" he panted. "Jump quick!"
The man needed no other warning; he opened the trap, scrambled and
wriggled down the mail-car steps, and was off the train like a snake
from a sack.
The other man, bloody and ghastly white, crept under the chain after
his companion. He was a well-built, good-looking man of forty, with
blue eyes and a golden beard all over blood. He seemed sick from the
terrific blow dealt him; but as the train had almost stopped, Neeland
pushed him off with the flat of his foot.
Drenched in perspiration, dishevelled, bruised, he slammed both traps
and ran back into the dark corridor, and met Ilse Dumont coming out of
his stateroom carrying the olive-wood box.
His appearance appeared to stupefy her; he took the box from her
without resistance, and, pushing her back into the stateroom, locked
the door.
Then, still savagely excited, and the hot blood of battle still
seething in his veins, he stood staring wickedly into her dazed eyes,
the automatic pistol hanging from his right fist.
But after a few moments something in her naïve astonishment--her
amazement to see him alive and standing there before her--appealed to
him as intensely ludicrous; he dropped on the edge of the bed and
burst into laughter uncontrolled.
"Scheherazade! Oh, Scheherazade!" he said, weak with laughter, "if you
could only see your face! If you could only _see_ it, my dear child!
It's too funny to be true! It's too funny to be a real face! Oh, dear,
I'll die if I laugh any more. You'll assassinate me with your face!"
She seated herself on the lounge opposite, still gazing blankly at him
in his uncontrollable mirth.
After a while he put back the automatic into his breast pocket, took
off coat and waistcoat, without paying the slightest heed to her or to
convention; opened his own suitcase, selected a fresh shirt, tie, and
collar, and, taking with him his coat and the olive-wood box, went
into the little washroom.
He scarcely expected to find her there when he emerged, cooled and
refreshed; but she was still there, seated as he had left her on the
lounge.
"I wanted to ask you," she said in a low voice, "did you _kill_
them?"
"Not at all, Scheherazade," he replied gaily. "The Irish don't kill;
they beat up their friends; that's all. Fist and blackthorn, my pretty
lass, but nix for the knife and gun."
"How--did you do it?"
"Well, I got tired having a ham-fisted Dutchman pawing me and closing
my mouth with his big splay fingers. So I asked him to slide overboard
and shoved his friend after him."
"Did you shoot them?"
"No, I tell you!" he said disgustedly. "I hadn't a chance in hot
blood, and I couldn't do it in cold. No, Scheherazade, I didn't shoot.
I pulled a gun for dramatic effect, that's all."
After a silence she asked him in a low voice what he intended to do
with her.
"Do? Nothing! Chat affably with you until we reach town, if you don't
mind. Nothing more violent than that, Scheherazade."
The girl, sitting sideways on the sofa, leaned her head against the
velvet corner as though very tired. Her small hands lay in her lap
listlessly, palms up-turned.
"Are you really tired?" he asked.
"Yes, a little."
He took the two pillows from his bed and placed them on the sofa.
"You may lie down if you like, Scheherazade."
"Won't you need them?"
"Sunburst of my soul, if I pillow my head on anything while you are in
the vicinity, it will be on that olive-wood box!"
For the first time the faintest trace of a smile touched her lips. She
turned, settled the pillows to her liking, and stretched out her
supple figure on the sofa with a slight sigh.
"Shall I talk to you, Scheherazade, or let you snuggle into the chaste
arms of Morpheus?"
"I can't sleep."
"Is it a talk-fest, then?"
"I am listening."
"Then, were the two recent gentlemen who so rudely pounced upon me the
same gentlemen who so cheerfully chased me in an automobile when you
made red fire?"
"Yes."
"I was betting on it. Nice-looking man--the one with the classical map
and the golden Frick."
She said nothing.
"Scheherazade," he continued with smiling malice, "do you realise that
you are both ornamental and young? Why so young and murderous, fair
houri? Why delight in manslaughter in any degree? Why cultivate
assault and battery? Why swipe the property of others?"
She closed her eyes on the pillow, but, as he remained silent,
presently opened them again.
"I asked them not to hurt you," she said irrelevantly.
"Who? Oh, your strenuous friends with the footpad technique? Well,
they obeyed you unwillingly."
"Did they hurt you?"
"Oh, no. But the car-wheels might have."
"The car-wheels?"
"Yes. They were all for dumping me down the steps of the vestibule.
But I've got a nasty disposition, Scheherazade, and I kicked and bit
and screamed so lustily that I disgusted them and they simply left the
train and concluded to cut my acquaintance."
It was evident that his good-humoured mockery perplexed her. Once or
twice the shadow of a smile passed over her dark eyes, but they
remained uncertain and watchful.
"You really were astonished to see me alive again, weren't you?" he
asked.
"I was surprised to see you, of course."
"Alive?"
"I told you that I asked them not to really hurt you."
"Do you suppose I believe _that_, after your pistol practice on me?"
"It is true," she replied, her eyes resting on him.
"You wished to reserve me for more pistol practice?"
"I have no--enmity--for you."
"Oh, Scheherazade!" he protested, laughing.
"You are wrong, Mr. Neeland."
"After all I did to you?"
To his surprise a bright blush spread over her face where it lay
framed by the pillows; she turned her head abruptly and lay without
speaking.
He sat thinking for a few minutes, then leaning forward from where he
sat on the bed's edge:
"After a man's been shot at and further intimidated with a large,
unpleasantly rusty Kurdish dagger, he is likely to proceed without
ceremony. All the same, I am sorry I had to humiliate you,
Scheherazade."
She lay silent, unstirring.
"A girl would never forgive that, I know," he said. "So I shall look
for a short shrift from you if your opportunity ever comes."
The girl appeared to be asleep. He stood up and looked down at her.
The colour had faded from the one cheek visible. For a while he
listened to her quiet breathing, then, the imp of perversity seizing
him, and intensely diverted by the situation, he bent over her,
touched her cheek with his lips, put on his hat, took box and
suitcase, and went out to spend the remaining hour or two in the
smoking room, leaving her to sleep in peace.
But no sooner had he closed the door on her than the girl sat straight
up on the sofa, her face surging in colour, and her eyes brilliant
with starting tears.
When the train arrived at the Grand Central Station, in the grey of a
July morning, Neeland, finding the stateroom empty, lingered to watch
for her among the departing passengers.
But he lingered in vain; and presently a taxicab took him and his box
to the Cunard docks, and deposited him there. And an hour later he was
in his cabin on board that vast ensemble of machinery and luxury, the
Cunarder _Volhynia_, outward bound, and headed straight at the
dazzling disc of the rising sun.
And thought of Scheherazade faded from his mind as a tale that is
told.