Phantom Wires: A Novel

by Arthur Stringer

  CHAPTER VI

  THE WOMAN SPEAKS

  "Ssssh!" said the woman under her breath, as she clutched Durkin's arm.

  He shook her hand off, impatiently, although the act seemed atcross-purposes with his own will.

  "But you--here!" he still gasped.

  "Oh, Jim!" she half-moaned, inadequately. Yet an _aura_ of calmnessseemed to surround her. So great was his own excitement that the wordsburst from him of their own will, apparently, and sounded like theutterance of a voice not his own.

  "What's it mean! How'd you get here?"

  He could hear her shuddering, indrawn sigh.

  "What, in the name of heaven, do _you_ want in here? Why don't youspeak?"

  There was a moment of unbroken silence. For the first time it seemedto come home to him that this woman who confronted him was his ownwife, in the flesh and blood.

  "What are _you_ doing here?" she demanded at last.

  He responded, even in his mood of hot antagonism, to some note ofever-sustained appeal about her. Even through the black gloom thatblanketed and blinded him some phantasmal and sub-conscious medium,like the imaginary circuit of a multiplex telegraph system, seemed tocarry to his mind some secondary message, some thought that she herselfhad not uttered. She, too, was suffering, but she had not shown it,for such was her way, he remembered. A wave of sympathy obliteratedhis resentment. He caught her in his arms, hungrily, and kissed herabandonedly. He noticed that her skin was cold and moist.

  "Oh, Jim," she murmured again, weakly.

  "It's so long, isn't it?"

  Then she added, with a little catch of the breath, as though even thatmomentary embrace were a joy too costly to be countenanced, "Turn onthe lights, quick!"

  "I can't," he told her. "I've cut the wires."

  He felt at her blindly, through the muffling blackness. She wasshaking a little now, on his arm. It bewildered him to think how hishunger for her could still obliterate all consciousness of time andplace.

  "Why didn't you write?" she pleaded pitifully.

  "I did write--a dozen times. Then I telegraphed!"

  "Not a word came!" she cried.

  "Then I wrote twice to London!"

  "And _those_ never came. Oh, everything was against me!" she moaned.

  "But how did you get here?" he still demanded.

  She did not answer his question. Instead, she asked him: "Where didyou send the Paris letters?"

  "To 11 bis avenue Beaucourt."

  She groaned a little, impatiently.

  "That was foolish--I wrote you that I was leaving there--that I _had_to go!"

  "Not a line reached me!"

  He heard her little gasp of despair before she spoke.

  "I was put out of there," she went on, hurriedly and evenly, yet with a_vibrata_ of passion in her crowded utterance. "There wasn't a pennyleft--the pupils I had gave up their lessons. What they had heard orfound out I don't know. Then I got a tiny room in the rue de Sevres.I sold my last thing, then our wedding ring, even, to get it."

  "And then what?"

  "I still waited--I thought you would know, or find out, and that insome way or other I should still hear from you. I would have gone tothe police, or advertised, but I knew it wouldn't be safe."

  Once more the embittering consciousness of some dark coalition offorces against them swept over him. Fate, at every step, hadfrustrated them.

  "I advertised twice, in the Herald?"

  "Where would I see the Herald?"

  "But you must have known I was trying to find you--that I was doingeverything possible!"

  "I knew nothing," she answered, in her poignantly emotionless voice.And the thought swept through Durkin that something within her hadwithered and died during those last grim weeks of suffering.

  "But here--how did you get here--and what's this Lady Boxspurbusiness?" he still insisted.

  "Yes, yes," she almost moaned, "if you'll only wait I'll tell you. Butis it safe to stay here? Have you thought where we are?"

  "Yes; it's safe, quite safe, for an hour yet."

  "Why didn't you send me money, or help me?" she asked, in her dead andunhappy monotone.

  "I did, eighty francs, all I had. I hadn't a penny left. I didn'tknow the damned language. I prowled about like a cat in a strangegarret, but I tried everything, from the American consul at Nice to a_Herald_ correspondent at San Remo. Then I got word of a consumptiveyoung writer from New York, at Mentone--but he died the day I was tomeet him. Then I heard of the new Marconi station up the coast, andworked at wireless for two weeks, and made twenty dollars, before theysacked me for not being able to send a message out to a Messinafruit-steamer, in Italian. Then I chanced on the job of doctoring up agenerator on an American yacht down here in the bay."

  "Yes, yes--I know how hard it is!"

  "But listen! When I was on board at work I overheard a Supreme Courtjudge and a special agent from the Central Office in New York and twoEnglish detectives talking over the loss of certain securities. Andthose securities belong to Richard Penfield!"

  He knew that she had started, at the sound of that name.

  "Penfield!" she gasped. "What of him?"

  "When the district-attorney's men raided Penfield's New York gamblingclub, one of Penfield's new men got away with all his papers. They hadbeen withdrawn from the Fifth Avenue Safe Deposit Company, for theywere mostly cheques and negotiable securities, worth about two hundredand fifty thousand dollars. But beyond all their face value, theyconstituted _prima facie_ evidence against the gambler."

  "But what's all this to us, now?"

  "They were smuggled to New Jersey. There the Jersey City chief ofpolice took action, and this agent of Penfield's carried the documentsacross the North River and up to Stamford. From there he got back toNew York again, by night, where he met a second agent, who had securedpassage on the _Slavonia_ for Naples. The first man is MacNutt."

  "MacNutt!" ejaculated the listening woman.

  "Yes, MacNutt! He compromised with Penfield and swung in with him whenthe district-attorney started pounding at them both. The second man isa lawyer named Keenan, who was disbarred for conspiracy in the Braytondivorce case. Keenan and his papers are due at Genoa on Friday. Ifound some of this out on board the yacht. I thought it over--and itwas the only way open for me. I couldn't stand out against it all, anylonger. I thought I could make the plunge, without your ever knowingit--and perhaps get enough to keep you out of any more messes likethis!"

  "You had given me up?" she cried, reprovingly.

  "No--no--no--I'd only given up waiting for chances to _find you_. MyGod, don't you suppose I knew you needed me!"

  "It would have been too late!" she said, in her dead voice. "It's toolate, already!"

  "Then you don't care?" he demanded, almost brokenly.

  "I'll never complain, or whine, again!" she answered with drearylistlessness.

  "Then why _are_ you in this room?"

  "_I mean that I've given up myself_. I'm in it, now, as deep as you!I couldn't fight it back any longer--it _had_ to come!"

  "But why, and how! Why don't you explain?"

  He could feel her groping away from him in the darkness.

  "Wait," she whispered.

  "But why should I wait?" he demanded.

  "Listen! That second room door is still unlocked, and there's dangerenough here, without inviting it."

  He groped after her into the bedroom. He could hear the gentle scrapeof the key and the muffled sound of the lock as she turned it, followedby the cautious slide of the brass bolt, lower on the door. He waitedfor her, standing at the foot of the bed. He could hear her sigh ofweariness as she sat down on the edge of the disordered mattress.Then, remembering that he had cut the wires of only the larger room, hefelt his way to the button at the head of the bed. He snapped thecurrent open and instantly the blinding white light flooded the chamber.

  "_Is_ it safe here, any longer?" she asked restlessly,
pausing a momentto accustom her eyes to the light, and then gazing up at him with animpersonal studiousness of stare that seemed to wall and bar her offfrom him. Still again he was oppressed by some sense of alienation, oflooming tragedy between them. She, too, must have known some shadow ofthat feeling, for he saw the look of troubled concern, of unspokenpity, that crept over her face; and he turned away brusquely.

  She spoke his name, quietly; and his gaze coasted round to her again.She watched him with wide and hungry eyes.

  Her breast heaved, at his silence, but all she said was: "Is it safe,Jim?"

  "Yes, it's perfectly safe. So tell me what you have to say. Itdoesn't mean any greater risk. We would only have to come backagain--for I've work to do in this room yet!"

  The return of the light seemed to give a new cast of practicality tohis thoughts.

  "What sort of work?" his wife was asking him.

  "Seventeen hundred napoleons in gold to find," he answered grimly.

  "Oh, it's not that, not _that_!" she said, starting up. "It's thepapers, the Gibraltar papers!"

  "Papers?" he repeated wonderingly.

  "Yes, the imperial specifications. Pobloff's a paid agent in theFrench secret service. They say he was the man who secured Kitchener'sAfghanistan frontier plans, and in some way or other had a good deal todo with the Curzon resignation."

  "Ah, I _thought_ there was something behind our _boyard_!"

  "A year ago last March he was arrested in Jamaica, by the Britishauthorities, for securing secret photographs of the Port Royalfortifications. They court-martialed one of the non-commissionedofficers for helping him get an admission to the fortress, but theofficer shot himself, and Pobloff had the plates spirited away, so thecase fell through. Now he's got duplicates of every Upper Gallery andevery new fortification of the Rock at Gibraltar."

  "But why waste time over these things?"

  "Pobloff got them through an English officer's wife. She was weak--andworse--she lost her head over him. I can't tell you more now. Butthere is an order for five hundred pounds waiting for me at the BritishEmbassy, in Rome, from the Foreign Office, if I secure those papers!"

  "That's twenty-five hundred dollars?"

  "Yes, almost."

  "And I was on the point of crawling away with a few napoleons!" saidDurkin in a whisper. He began to succumb to the intoxication of thisrapidity of movement which life was once more taking on. He wasspeed-mad, like a motorist on a white and lonely road. Yet anever-recurring dismay and distrust of the end kept coming to him.

  "But how did you come to find all this out? What happened after therue de Sevres?"

  "Oh, it was all easy and natural enough, if I could only put it intowords. After a few days, when I was hungry and sick, I went to one ofthe English hotels. I would have taken anything, even a servant'swork, I believe."

  He cursed himself to think that it was through him that she had come tosuch things.

  "But I was lucky," she went on, hurriedly. "One afternoon I stumbledon a weeping lady's maid, on the verge of hysterics, who found enoughconfidence in me, in time, to tell me that her mistress had gone mad inher room and was clawing down the wallpaper and talking about killingherself. It was true enough, in a way, I soon found out, for it was anEnglish noblewoman who had fought with her husband two weeks before inLondon, and had run away to Paris. What she had dipped into, and gonethrough, and suffered, I could only guess; but I know this: that thatafternoon she had drunk half a pint of raw alcohol when the frightenedmaid had locked her in the bath-room. So I pushed in and took charge.First I wired to the woman's husband, Lord Boxspur, who sent me money,at once, and an order to bring her home as quietly as possible. He metus at Calais. It was a terrible ordeal for me, all through, for shetried to jump overboard, in the Channel, and was so insane, sohopelessly insane, that a week after we reached London she wascommitted to some sort of private asylum."

  "And then?" asked Durkin.

  "Then Boxspur thought that possibly I knew too much for his personalcomfort. I rather think he looked on me as dangerous. He put me offand put me off, until I was glad to snatch at a position in anext-of-kin agency. But in a fortnight or two I was even more glad toleave it. Then I went back to Lord Boxspur, who this time sent mehelter-skelter back to Paris, to bribe a blackmailing newspaper womanfrom giving the details of his wife's misfortunes to the Continentalcorrespondent of a London weekly. But even when that was done, and Ihad been duly paid for my work, I was only secure for a few weeks, atthe outside. All along I kept writing for you, frantically. So, whenthings began to get hopeless again, I went to the British Embassy. Ihad to lie, terribly, I'm afraid, before I could get an audience, firstwith an under secretary, and then with the ambassador himself. He saidthat he regretted he could do nothing for me, at least, officially. Helooked at my clothes, and laughed a little, and said that of course, incases of absolute destitution he sometimes felt compelled to come tothe help of his fellow-countrymen. I told him that I knew the world,and was willing to undertake work of any sort. He answered that suchcases were usually looked after at the consulate, and advised me to gothere. But I didn't give him up, at once. I told him I wasresourceful, and experienced, and might undertake even minor officialtasks for him, until I had heard from my husband. Then he hesitated alittle, and asked me if I knew the Continent well, and if I was averseto traveling alone. Then he called somebody up on his telephone, andin a few minutes came out and shook his head doubtfully, and advised meto apply at the consulate. Instead of that, I went not to the English,but to the American consul first. He told me that in five weeks asea-captain friend of his was sailing from Havre to New York, and thatit might not be impossible to have me carried along."

  "That's what they always say!"

  "It was the best he could do. Then I went to the British consul. Hespoke about references, which left me blank; and tried to pump me,which left me frightened. But he could do nothing, he told me, exceptin the way of a personal donation, and that, he assumed, was out of thequestion. So I went back to the Embassy once more. I don't know why,but this time, for some reason or other, the ambassador believed in me.He gave me a week's trial as a sort of second deputy private secretary,indexing three-year-old correspondence and copying Roumanianagricultural reports. Then he put me on ordinance-report work. Thensomething happened--I can't go into details now--to arouse mysuspicions. I rummaged through the storage closet in my temporaryoffice and looped his telephone wire with twenty feet of number twelvewire from a broken electric fan, and an unused transmitter. Then,scrap by scrap, I picked up my first inklings of what was at thatmoment worrying the Foreign Office and the people at the Embassy aswell. It was the capture of the Gibraltar specifications by PrinceSlevenski Pobloff. When a Foreign Office secret agent telephoned inthat Pobloff had been seen in Nice, I fought against the temptation forhalf a day, then I went straight to the ambassador and told him what Iknew, but not how I came to know it. He gave me two hundred francs anda ticket to Monte Carlo, with a letter to deliver in Rome, if by anychance I should succeed."

  "That would give us the show we want! _That_ would give us a chance!"

  She did not understand him. "A chance for what?"