there was--not much--on the port bow, rolled but slightly, and her
deliberate and graceful fore-and-aft motion, as she swung from crest to
crest of the endless head-on swells, caused the stars to stream above
her mast-heads, a boundless river of broken light. The pulsing of the
engines, unhasting, unresting, ran through her fabric in ceaseless
succession of gentle tremors, while the rumble of their revolutions
resembled the refrain of an old, quiet song. The mechanism of the
patent log hummed and clicked more obtrusively. Directly underfoot the
screw churned a softly clashing wake. From the saloon companionway
drifted intermittently a confusion of voices, Liane's light laughter,
muted clatter of chips, now and then the sound of a popping cork.
Forward the ship's bell sounded two double strokes, then a single,
followed by a wail in minor key: "Five bells and all's well!" ... And
of a sudden Lanyard suffered the melancholy oppression of knowing his
littleness of body and soul, the relative insignificance even of the
ship, that impertinent atom of human organization which traversed with
unabashed effrontery the waters of the ages, beneath the shining
constellations of eternity. In profound psychical enervation he
perceived with bitterness and despair the enormous futility of all
things mortal, the hopelessness of effort, the certain black defeat
that waits upon even what men term success.
He felt crushed, spiritually invertebrate, destitute of object in
existence, bereft of all hope. What mattered it whether he won or lost
in this stupid contest whose prize was possession of a few trinkets set
with bits of glittering stone? If he won, of what avail? What could it
profit his soul to make good a vain boast to Eve de Montalais? Would it
matter to her what success or failure meant to him? Lanyard doubted it,
he doubted her, himself, all things within the compass of his
understanding, and knew appalling glimpses of that everlasting truth,
too passionless to be cynical, that the hopes of man and his fears, his
loves and hates, his strivings and passivity, are all one in the
measured and immutable processes of Time....
The pressure of a hand upon his own roused him to discover the Liane
Delorme had seated herself beside him, in a chair that looked the other
way, so that her face was not far from his; and he could scarcely be
unaware of its hinted beauty, now wan and glimmering in starlight,
enigmatic with soft, close shadows.
"I must have been dreaming," he said, apologetic. "You startled me."
"One could see that, my friend."
The woman spoke in quiet accents and let her hand linger upon his with
its insistent reminder of the warm, living presence whose rich
colouring was disguised by the gloom that encompassed both.
Four strokes in duplicate on the ship's bell, then the call: "_Eight
bells and a-a-all's well_!"
Lanyard muttered: "No idea it was so late."
A slender white shape, Mr. Collison emerged from his quarters in the
deck-house beneath the bridge and ran up the ladder to relieve Mr.
Swain. At the same time a seaman came from forward and ascended by the
other ladder. Later Mr. Swain and the man whose trick at the wheel was
ended left the bridge, the latter to go forward to his rest, Mr. Swain
to turn into his room in the deck-house.
The hot glow of the saloon skylights became a dim refulgence, aside
from which, and its glimmer in the mouth of the companionway, no lights
were visible in the whole length of the ship except the shuttered
window of Mr. Swain's room, which presently was darkened, and odd
glimpses of the binnacle light to be had when the helmsman shifted his
stand.
A profound hush closed down upon the ship, whose progress across the
face of the waters seemed to acquire a new significance of stealth, so
that the two seated by the taffrail, above the throbbing screws and
rushing torrent of the wake, talked in lowered accents without thinking
why.
"It is that one grows bored, eh, cher ami?"
"Perhaps, Liane."
"Or perhaps that one's thought are constantly with one's heart,
elsewhere?"
"You think so?"
"At the Château de Montalais, conceivably."
"It amuses you, then, to shoot arrows into the air?"
"But naturally, I seek the reason, when I see you distrait and am
conscious of your neglect."
"I think it is for me to complain of that!"
"How can you say such things?"
"One has seen what one has seen, these last few days. I think you are
what that original Phinuit would call 'a fast worker,' Liane."
"What stupidity! If I seek to make myself liked, you know well it is
with a purpose."
"One hardly questions that."
"You judge harshly ... Michael."
Lanyard spent a look of astonishment on the darkness. He could not
remember that Liane had ever before called him by that name.
"Do I? Sorry...." His tone was listless. "But does it matter?"
"You know that to me nothing else matters."
Lanyard checked off on his fingers: "Swain, Collison, Mussey. Who next?
Why not I, as well as another?"
"Do you imagine for an instant that I class you with such riffraff?"
"Why, if you really want to know what I think, Liane: it seems to me
that all men in your sight are much the same, good for one thing only,
to be used to serve your ends. And who am I that you should hold me in
higher rating than any other man?"
"You should know I do," the woman breathed, so low he barely caught the
words and uttered an involuntary "Pardon?" before he knew he had
understood. So that she iterated in a clearer tone of protest: "You
should know I do--that I do esteem you as something more than other
men. Think what I owe to you, Michael; and then consider this, that of
all men whom I have known you alone have never asked for love."
He gave a quiet laugh. "There is too much humility in my heart."
"No," she said in a dull voice--"but you despise me. Do not deny it!"
She shifted impatiently in her chair. "I know what I know. I am no
fool, whatever you think of me.... No," she went on with emotion under
restraint: "I am a creature of fatality, me--I cannot hope to escape my
fate!"
He was silent a little in perplexed consideration of this. What did she
wish him to believe?
"But one imagines nobody can escape his fate."
"Men can, some of them; men such as you, rare as you are, know how to
cheat destiny; but women never. It is the fate of all women that each
shall some time love some man to desperation, and be despised. It is my
fate to have learned too late to love you, Michael----"
"Ah, Liane, Liane!"
"But you hold me in too much contempt to be willing to recognise the
truth."
"On the contrary, I admire you extremely, I think you are an
incomparable actress."
"You see!" She offered a despairing gesture to the stars. "It is not
true what I say? I lay bare my heart to him, and he tells me that I
act!"
"But my dear girl! surely you do not expect me to think otherwise?"
"I was a fool to expect anything from you," she returned bitterly--"you
know too much about me. I cannot find it in my heart to blame you,
since I am what I am, what the life you saved me to so long ago has
made me. Why should you believe in me? Why should you credit the
sincerity of this confession, which costs me so much humiliation? That
would be too good for me, too much to ask of life!"
"I think you cannot fairly complain of life, Liane. What have you asked
of it that you have failed to get? Success, money, power,
adulation----"
"Never love."
"The world would find it difficult to believe that."
"Ah, love of a sort, yes: the love that is the desire to possess and
that possession satisfies."
"Have you asked for any other sort?"
"I ask it now. I know what the love is that longs to give, to give and
give again, asking no return but kindness, understanding, even
toleration merely. It is such love as this I bear you, Michael. But you
do not believe...."
Divided between annoyance and distaste, he was silent. And all at once
she threw herself half across the joined arms of their chairs, catching
his shoulders with her hands, so that her half-clothed body rested on
his bosom, and its scented warmth assailed his senses with the
seduction whose power she knew so well.
"Ah, Michael, my Michael!" she cried--"if you but knew, if only you
could believe! It is so real to me, so true, so overwhelming, the
greatest thing of all! How can it be otherwise to you?... No: do not
think I complain, do not think I blame you or have room in my heart for
any resentment. But, oh my dear! were I only able to make you
understand, think what life could be to us, to you and me. What could
it withhold that we desired? You with your wit, your strength, your
skill, your poise--I with my great love to inspire and sustain
you--what a pair we should make! what happiness would be ours! Think,
Michael--think!"
"I have thought, Liane," he returned in accents as kind as the hands
that held her. "I have thought well..."
"Yes?" She lifted her face so near that their breaths mingled, and he
was conscious of the allure of tremulous and parted lips. "You have
thought and.... Tell me your thought, my Michael."
"Why, I think two things," said Lanyard: "First, that you deserve to be
soundly kissed." He kissed her, but with discretion, and firmly put her
from him. "Then"--his tone took on a note of earnestness--"that if what
you have said is true, it is a pity, and I am sorry, Liane, very sorry.
And, if it is not true, that the comedy was well played. Shall we let
it rest at that, my dear?"
Half lifting her, he helped her back into her chair, and as she turned
her face away, struggling for mastery of her emotion, true or feigned,
he sat back, found his cigarette case, and clipping a cigarette between
his lips, cast about for a match.
He had none in his pockets, but knew that there was a stand on one of
the wicker tables nearby. Rising, he found it, and as he struck the
light heard a sudden, soft swish of draperies as the woman rose.
Moving toward the saloon companionway, she passed him swiftly, without
a word, her head bended, a hand pressing a handkerchief to her lips.
Forgetful, he followed her swaying figure with puzzled gaze till
admonished by the flame that crept toward his fingertips. Then dropping
the match he struck another and put it to his cigarette. At the second
puff he heard a choking gasp, and looked up again.
The woman stood alone, en silhouette against the glow of the
companionway, her arms thrust out as if to ward off some threatened
danger. A second cry broke from her lips, shrill with terror, she
tottered and fell as, dropping his cigarette, Lanyard ran to her.
His vision dazzled by the flame of the match, he sought in vain for any
cause for her apparent fright. For all he could see, the deck was as
empty as he had presumed it to be all through their conversation.
He found her in a faint unmistakably unaffected. Footfalls sounded on
the deck as he knelt, making superficial examination. Collison had
heard her cries and witnessed her fall from the bridge and was coming
to investigate.
"What in blazes----!"
Lanyard replied with a gesture of bewilderment: "She was just going
below. I'd stopped to light a cigarette, saw nothing to account for
this. Wait: I'll fetch water."
He darted down the companionway, filled a glass from a silver thermos
carafe, and hurried back. As he arrived at the top of steps, Collison
announced: "It's all right. She's coming to."
Supported in the arms of the second mate, Liane was beginning to
breathe deeply and looking round with dazed eyes. Lanyard dropped on a
knee and set the glass to her lips. She gulped twice, mechanically, her
gaze fixed to his face. Then suddenly memory cleared, and she uttered a
bubbling gasp of returning dread.
"Popinot!" she cried, as Lanyard hastily took the glass away.
"Popinot--he was there--I saw him--standing there!"
A trembling arm indicated the starboard deck just forward of the
companion housing. But of course, when Lanyard looked, there was no one
there ... if there had ever been....
XXIII
THE CIGARETTE
Lanyard found himself exchanging looks of mystification with Collison,
and heard his own voice make the flat statement: "But there is
nobody...." Collison muttered words which he took to be: No, and never
was. "But you must have seen him from the bridge," Lanyard insisted
blankly, "if...."
"I looked around as soon as I heard her call out," Collison replied;
"but I didn't see anybody, only mademoiselle here--and you, of course,
with that match."
"Please help me up," Liane Delorme asked in a faint voice. Collison
lent a hand. In the support and shelter of Lanyard's arm the woman's
body quivered like that of a frightened child. "I must go to my
stateroom," she sighed uncertainly. "But I am afraid..."
"Do not be. Remember Mr. Collison and I... Besides, you know, there was
nobody..."
The assertion seemed to exasperate her; her voice discovered new
strength and violence.
"But I am telling you I saw ... that assassin!"--she shuddered
again--"standing there, in the shadow, glaring at me as if I had
surprised him and he did not know what next to do. I think he must have
been spying down through the skylight; it was the glow from it that
showed me his red, dirty face of a pig."
"You came aft on the port side, didn't you?" Lanyard enquired of the
second mate.
Collison nodded. "Running," he said--"couldn't imagine what was up."
"It is easy not to see what one is not looking for," Lanyard mused,
staring forward along the starboard side. "If a man had dropped flat
and squirmed along until in the shelter of the engine-room ventilators,
he could have run forward--bending low, you know--without your seeing
him."
"But you were standing here, to starboard!"
"I tell you, that match was blinding me," Lanyard affirmed irritably.
"Besides, I wasn't looking--except at my sister--wondering what was the
matter."
Collison started. "Excuse me," he said, reminded--"if mademoiselle's
all right, I ought to get back to the bridge."
"Take me below," Liane begged. "I must speak with Captain Monk."
Monk and Phinuit were taking their ease plus nightcaps in the captain's
sitting-room. A knock brought a prompt invitation to "Come in!" Lanyard
thrust the door open and curtly addressed Monk: "Mademoiselle Delorme
wishes to see you." The eloquent eyebrows indicated surprise and
resignation, and Monk got up and inserted himself into his white linen
tunic. Phinuit, more sensitive to the accent of something amiss,
hurried out in unceremonious shirt sleeves. "What's up?" he demanded,
looking from Lanyard's grave face to Liane's face of pallor and
distress. Lanyard informed him in a few words.
"Impossible!" Phinuit commented.
"Nonsense," Monk added, speaking directly to Liane. "You imagined it
all."
She had recovered much of her composure, enough to enable her to shrug
her disdain of such stupidity.
"I tell you only what my two eyes saw."
"To be sure," Monk agreed with a specious air of being wide open to
conviction. "What became of him, then?"
"You ask me that, knowing that in stress of terror I fainted!"
The eyebrows achieved an effect of studied weariness. "And you saw
nobody, monsieur? And Collison didn't, either?"
Lanyard shook his head to each question. "Still, it is possible----."
Monk cut him short impatiently. "All gammon--all in her eye! No man
bigger than a cockroach could have smuggled himself aboard this yacht
without my being told. I know my ship, I know my men, I know what I'm
talking about."
"Presently," Liane prophesied darkly, "you may be talking about
nothing."
At a loss, Monk muttered: "Don't get you...."
"When you find yourself, some fine morning, with your throat cut in
your sleep, like poor de Lorgnes--or garroted, as I might have been."
"I'm not going to lose any sleep....." Monk began.
"Lose none before you have the vessel searched," Liane pleaded, with a
change of tone. "You know, messieurs, I am not a woman given to
hallucinations. I _saw_ ... And I tell you, while that assassin is at
liberty aboard this yacht, not one of our lives is worth a sou--no, not
one!"
"Oh, you shall have your search." Monk gave in as one who indulges a
childish whim. "But I can tell you now what we'll find--or won't."
"Then Heaven help us all!" Liane went swiftly to the door of her room,
but there hesitated, looking back in appeal to Lanyard. "I am
afraid...."
"Let me have a look round first."
And when Lanyard had satisfied himself there was nobody concealed in
any part of Liane's suite, and had been rewarded with a glance of
gratitude--"I shall lock myself in, of course," the woman said from the
threshold--"and I have my pistol, too."
"But I assure you," Monk commented in heavy sarcasm, "our intentions
are those of honourable men."
The door slammed, and the sound of the key turning in the lock
followed. Monk trained the eyebrows into a look of long-suffering
patience.
"A glass too much... Seein' things!"
"No," Lanyard voiced shortly his belief; "you are wrong. Liane saw
something."
"Nobody questions that," Phinuit yawned. "What one does question is
whether she saw a man or a figment of her imagination--some effect of
the shadows that momentarily suggested a man."
"Shadows do play queer tricks at night, at sea," Monk agreed. "I
remember once--"
"Then let us look the ground over and see if we can make that
explanation acceptable to our own intelligences," Lanyard cut in.
"No harm in that."
Phinuit fetched a pocket flash-lamp, and the three reconnoitred
exhaustively the quarters of the deck in which the apparition had
manifested itself to the woman. By no strain of credulity could the
imagination be made to accept the effect of shadows at the designated
spot as the shape of somebody standing there. On the other hand, when
Phinuit obligingly posed himself between the mouth of the companionway
and the skylight, it had to be admitted that the glow from either side
provided fairly good cover for one who might wish to linger there,
observing and unobserved.
"Still, I don't believe she saw anything," Monk persisted--"a phantom
Popinot, if anything."
"But wait. What is it we have here?"
Lanyard, scrutinising the deck with the flashlamp, stooped, picked up
something, and offered it on an outspread palm upon which he trained
the clear electric beam.
"Cigarette stub?" Monk said, and sniffed. "That's a famous find!"
"A cigarette manufactured by the French Régie."
"And well stepped on, too," Phinuit observed. "Well, what about it?"
"Who that uses this part of the deck would be apt to insult his palate
with such a cigarette? No one of us--hardly any one of the officers or
stewards."
"Some deck-hand might have sneaked aft for a look-see, expecting to
find the quarterdeck deserted at this hour."
"Even ordinary seamen avoid, when they can, what the Régie sells under
the name of tobacco. Nor is it likely such a one would risk the
consequences of defying Captain Monk's celebrated discipline."
"Then you believe it was Popinot, too?"
"I believe you would do well to make the search you have promised
thorough and immediate."
"Plenty of time," Monk replied wearily. "I'll turn this old tub inside
out, if you insist, in the morning."
"But why, monsieur, do you remain so obstinately incredulous?"
"Well," Monk drawled, "I've known the pretty lady a number of years,
and if you ask me she's quite up to playing little games all her own."
"Pretending, you mean--for private ends?"
The eyebrows offered a gesture urbane and sceptical.
Whether or not sleep brought Monk better counsel, the morning's
ransacking of the vessel and the examination of her crew proved more
painstaking than Lanyard had expected. And the upshot was precisely as
Monk had foretold, precisely negative. He reported drily to this effect
at an informal conference in his quarters after luncheon. He himself
had supervised the entire search and had made a good part of it in
person, he said. No nook or cranny of the yacht had been overlooked.
"I trust mademoiselle is satisfied," he concluded with a mockingly
civil movement of eyebrows toward Liane.
His reply was the slightest of shrugs executed by perfect shoulders
beneath a gown of cynical transparency. Lanyard was aware that the
violet eyes, large with apprehension, flashed transiently his way, as
if in hope that he might submit some helpful suggestion. But he had
none to offer. If the manner in which the search had been conducted
were open to criticism, that would have to be made by a mind better
informed than his in respect of things maritime. And he avoided
acknowledging that glance by even so much as seeming aware of it. And
in point of fact, coldly reviewed in dispassionate daylight, the thing
seemed preposterous to him, to be asked to believe that Popinot had
contrived to secrete himself beyond finding on board the Sybarite.
Without his participation the discussion continued.
He heard Phinuit's voice utter in accents of malicious amusement:
"Barring, of course, the possibility of connivance on the part of
officers or crew."
"Don't be an ass!" Monk snapped.
"Don't be unreasonable: I am simply as God made me."
"Well, it was a nasty job of work."
"Now, listen." Phinuit rose to leave, as one considering the conference
at an end. "If you persist in picking on me, skipper, I'll ravish you
of those magnificent eyebrows with a safety razor, some time when
you're asleep, and leave you as dumb as a Wop peddler who's lost both
arms."
Liane followed him out in silence, but her carriage was that of a queen
of tragedy. Lanyard got up in turn, and to his amazement found the
eyebrows signalling confidentially to him.
"What the devil!" he exclaimed, in an open stare.
Immediately the eyebrows became conciliatory.
"Well, monsieur, and what is your opinion?"
"Why, to me it would seem there might be something in the suggestion of
Monsieur Phinuit."
"Ridiculous!" Monk dismissed it finally. "Do you know, I rather fancy
my own.... Liane's up to something," he added, explanatory; and then,
as Lanyard said nothing--"You haven't told me yet what she was talking
to you about last night just before her--alleged fright."
Lanyard contrived a successful offensive with his own eyebrows.
"Oh?" he said, "haven't I?" and walked out.
Here was a new angle to consider. Monk's attitude hinted at a possible
rift in the entente cordiale of the conspirators. Why else should he
mistrust Liane's sincerity in asserting that she had seen Popinot?
Aside from the question of what he imagined she could possibly gain by
making a scene out of nothing--a riddle unreadable--one wondered
consumedly what had happened to render Monk suspicious of her good
faith.
The explanation, when it was finally revealed to Lanyard by the most
trivial of incidents, made even his own blindness seem laughable.
For three more days the life of the ship followed in unruffled
tranquillity its ordered course. Liane Delorme was afflicted with no
more visions, as the captain would have called them; though by common
consent the subject had been dropped upon the failure of the search,
and to all seeming was rapidly fading from the minds of everybody but
Liane herself and Lanyard. This last continued to plague himself with
the mystery and, maintaining always an open mind, was prepared at any
time to be shockingly enlightened; that is, to discover that Liane had
not cried wolf without substantial reason. For he had learned this much
at least of life, that everything is always possible.
As for Liane, she made no secret of her unabated timidity, yet suffered
it with such fortitude as could not fail to win admiration. If she was
a bit more subdued, a trifle less high-spirited than was her habit, if
she refused positively to sit with her back to any door or to retire
for the night until her quarters had been examined, if (as Lanyard
suspected) she was never unarmed for a moment, day or night, she
permitted no signs of mental strain to mar the serenity of her
countenance or betray the studied graciousness of her gestures.
Toward Lanyard she bore herself precisely as though nothing had
happened to disturb the even adjustment of their personal relations;
or, perhaps, as if she considered everything had happened, so that
their rapport had become absolute; at all events, with a pleasing
absence of constraint. He really couldn't make her out. Sometimes he
thought she wished him to believe she was not as other women and could
make rational allowance for his poor response to her naïve overtures.
But that seemed so abnormal, he felt forced to fall back on the theory
that her declaration had been nothing more than a minor gambit in
whatever game she was playing, and that consequently she bore no malice
because of its failure. No matter which explanation was the true one,
no matter which keyed her temper toward him, Lanyard found himself
liking the woman better, not as a woman but as another human being,
than he had ever thought to. Say what you liked, in this humour she was
charming.
But he never for an instant imagined she was meekly accepting defeat at
his hands instead of biding her time to resume the attack from a new
quarter. So he wasn't at all surprised when, one evening, quite early
after dinner, she contrived another tête-à-tête, and with good
conversational generalship led their talk presently into a channel of
amiable personalities.
"And have you been thinking about what we said--or what I said, my
friend--that night--so long ago it seems!--three nights ago?"
"But inevitably, Liane."