“To-morrow,” he replied, “I sail for London.”
She seemed for a moment absolutely speechless, consumed by a sort of silent passion that found no outlet in words. She gripped a fancy mat which covered an ornate table by her side, and dragged a begilded vase on to the floor without even noticing it. She leaned towards him. The little lines at the sides of her eyes were suddenly deep-riven like scars. Her eyes themselves were smouldering with fire.
“You are going to England!”
“That is what I propose,” he assented. “I am sailing on the City of Boston to-morrow afternoon.”
“But the risk!” she faltered. “I thought that you dared not set foot in England.”
“There is risk,” he admitted. “It is not easy to amuse oneself anywhere without it. I have been offered a hundred thousand pounds to superintend the conveyance of certain documents and a certain letter to Berlin. The adventure appeals to me, and I have undertaken it. Until I found this man following me this afternoon, I really believed that we had put every one off the track. I know for a fact that most of the American officials believe that the papers for which they have searched so long and anxiously are in that trunk with the broken seals which they found at Halifax.”
“What about the Englishman, Crawshay, and Sam Hobson?” the girl asked.
“They are not quite so credulous,” he replied, “but at the present moment they are in Chicago, and if we get off at four o’clock punctually to-morrow afternoon, I scarcely think I shall be troubled with their presence on the City of Boston.” “I have been reading about the trunk,” the girl said. “Is it really a fake?”
“Entirely,” he assured her. “There is not a single document in it which concerns either us or our friends. Everything that is of vital importance will be on the City of Boston to-morrow and under my charge.”
She looked at him wonderingly.
“But, Mr. Thew,” she exclaimed, “you are clever, I know—even wonderful—but what possible chance have you of getting those things through—on an American steamer, too!”
“I have to take my risks, of course,” he admitted coolly, “but the game is worth it. I can’t live without excitement, as you know, and it’s getting harder and harder to find on this side of the ocean. Besides, there is the money. I can think of several uses for a hundred thousand pounds.”
She caught his wrist suddenly and leaned across the table.
“Can I come with you?” she asked breathlessly.
He shook his head.
“I shouldn’t advise a sea voyage just now, Nora,” he said. “It isn’t exactly a picnic, nowadays. Besides, if you come on the City of Boston there will be more than one danger to be faced.”
“Danger!” she exclaimed contemptuously. “Have I ever shown myself afraid? Have we any of us—my brother or father or I—hesitated to run any possible risk when it was worth while? This house has been yours, and we in it, to do what you will with. It isn’t a matter of danger—you know that. I come or go as you bid me.” He met the fierce enquiry of her eyes without flinching. Only his tone was a little kinder as he answered her.
“I think, Nora,” he said, “that you had better stay.”
There was a timid but persistent knocking at the door, and, in response to Nora’s invitation, a fat and bloated man entered the room hurriedly. He sank into a chair and mopped the perspiration from his forehead. Jocelyn Thew watched him with an air of contemptuous amusement.
“You seem distressed, Rentoul,” he remarked. “Has anything gone wrong?”
“But it is terrible, this!” the newcomer declared. “Anything gone wrong, indeed! Listen. The police have made themselves free of my house. My beautiful wireless—it was only a hobby—it has gone! They open my letters. They will ruin me. Never did I think that this would arrive! There has been some terrible bungling!”
“And you,” Jocelyn Thew retorted, “seem to have been the arch bungler.”
“I? But what have I done?” Rentoul demanded, wringing his hands. “I have always obeyed orders. Even a hint has been enough. I have spent a great deal of money—much more than I could afford. What have I done wrong?”
“You have talked too much, for one thing,” was the cold reply, “but we haven’t time for recriminations now. How did you get here?”
“I came in my car. You will perhaps say that it was not wise, but I could not have stood the subway. My nerves are all rotten.” Jocelyn Thew’s tone and gesture were smoothly disdainful.
“You are quite right,” he agreed. “You have lost what you call your nerve. You had better send for the newspaper men, give them plenty of champagne, and explain what a loyal American citizen you are. Have you burnt everything?”
“Every scrap of paper in the house which concerns a certain matter is burnt,” Rentoul declared.
“It would be!”
“But I am in the right,” the agitated man protested vigorously. “For five years we have worked and with good result. It is finished with us now for the present. There is no one who would dare to continue. Five long years, mind you, Mr. Jocelyn Thew. That is worth something, eh?”
“Whatever it may be worth,” was the somewhat grim reply, “will be decided within the next fortnight. That doesn’t concern you, though.”
“You are not staying over here now that the war has come?”
“Not I! But listen. There is no need for you to know where I am going, and I am not going to tell you. There is no need for you to remember that you ever knew me in your life. There is no need for you to remember any of the work in which you have been engaged. Your propaganda has developed a few strong men in this country and discovered a good deal of pulp. You are part of the pulp. There is only one other thing. If you should be heard of, Rentoul, shall we say telephoning, or calling upon the police here, offering to sell—No, by God, you don’t!” The man’s furtive tug at his hip pocket was almost pathetic in its futility. Jocelyn Thew had him by the throat, holding him with one hand well away from him, a quivering mass of discoloured, terrified flesh.
“Now you know,” he continued coolly, “why I sent for you, Rentoul. Now you know why I rather preferred to see you here to coming to your Fifth Avenue mansion. I don’t like traps—I don’t like traitors.”
“I give you my word,” the breathless man began, “my word of honour—”
“Neither would interest me,” the other interrupted grimly. “You are to be trusted just as far as you can be seen, just as far as your own safety and welfare depend upon your fidelity. You needn’t be so terrified,” he went on as, leaning over, he took the revolver from Rentoul’s pocket, drew out the cartridges and threw it upon the table. “You’ve earned any ugly thing that might be coming to you, but I should think it very probable that you will be able to go on over-feeding your filthy carcass for a few more years. First of all, though, perhaps you had better tell me exactly why you have an appointment with Mr. Harrison, from Police Headquarters, at eleven o’clock to-morrow morning?”
Rentoul was white to the lips.
“I wanted to explain about the wireless,” he faltered.
“That sounds very probable,” was the contemptuous reply. “What else?”
“Nothing!”
Jocelyn Thew shrugged his shoulders. His victim cowered before him. For the first time the girl moved. She came a little nearer, and there was fury in her eyes as she looked down upon the terrified man.
“We could keep him here,” she whispered. “Ned Grimes and some of the others will be in soon. There are plenty of ways of getting rid of him for a time.”
“It wouldn’t be worth while,” Thew said simply. “One doesn’t commit crimes for such carrion.”
Rentoul had struggled into a sitting posture. He was dabbing feebly at his forehead with an overperfumed handkerchief.
“I wanted to make peace at Headquarters,” he whined. “I want to be left alone. I should not have told them anything.”
“That may or may not be,” Jocelyn The
w replied. “All that I am fairly sure of is that you will keep your mouth shut now. You know,” he went on, his voice growing a shade more menacing, “that I never threaten where I do not perform. I may not be over here myself, but there will be a few men left in New York, and one word from your lips—even a hint—and your life will pay the forfeit within twenty-four hours. You will be watched for a time—you and a few others of your kidney—watched until the time has gone by when anything you could say or do would be of account.”
“Have you anything more to say to me?” the man stammered. “I feel faint.”
His persecutor threw open the door.
“Nothing! Get into your car and drive home. Keep out of sight and hearing for a time. You are no particular ornament nor any use to any country, but remember that everything you have done, you have done when the country of your birth was in trouble and the country of your adoption was at peace. The situation is altered. The country of which you are a naturalised citizen is now at war. You had better remember it, and decide for yourself where your duty lies.”
They listened to his heavy footsteps as he descended the stairs. Then the girl turned to her companion.
“Mr. Thew,” she began, “you are not a German or an Austrian, yet you are doing their work, risking your life every day. Is it for money?”
“No,” he replied, “in a general way it is not for money.”
“What is it, then?” she asked curiously.
He stood looking out across the roofs and at the distant skyscrapers. She watched him without speaking. She knew very well that his eyes saw nothing of the landscape. He was looking back into some world of his own fancy, back, perhaps, into the shadows of his own life, concerning which no word that she or any one else in the city had ever heard had passed his lips.
CHAPTER IV
Table of Contents
The two men—Crawshay and Sam Hobson—still a little breathless, stood at the end of the dock, gazing out towards the river. Around them was a slowly dispersing crowd of sightseers, friends and relations of the passengers on board the great American liner, ploughing her way down the river amidst the shrieks and hoots of her attendant tugs. Out on the horizon, beyond the Statue of Liberty, two long, grey, sinister shapes were waiting. Hobson glanced at them gloomily.
“Guess those are our destroyers going to take the City of Boston some of the way across,” he observed. “To think, with all this fuss about, that she must go and start an hour before her time!”
“It’s filthy luck,” the Englishman muttered.
The crowd grew thinner and thinner, yet the two men made no movement towards departure. It seemed to Crawshay impossible that after all they had gone through they should have failed. The journey in the fast motor car, after a breakdown of the Chicago Limited, rushing through the night like some live monster, tearing now through a plain of level lights, as they passed through some great city, vomiting fire and flame into the black darkness of the country places. It was like the ride of madmen, and more than once they had both hung on to their seats in something which was almost terror. “How are we going?” Crawshay had asked perpetually.
“Still that infernal half-hour,” was the continual reply. “We are doing seventy, but we don’t seem to be able to work it down.”
A powerful automobile had taken them through the streets of New York, and lay now a wreck in one of the streets a mile from the dock. They had finished the journey in a taxicab, and the finish had been this—half an hour late! Yet they lingered, with their eyes fixed upon the disappearing ship.
“I guess there’s nothing more we can do,” Hobson said at last grudgingly. “We can lay it up for them on the other side, and we can talk to her all the way to Liverpool on the wireless, but if there is any scoop to be made the others’ll get it—not us.”
“If only we could have got on board!” Crawshay muttered. “It’s no use thinking of a tug, I suppose?”
The American shook his head.
“She’s too far out,” he replied gloomily. “There’s nothing to be hired that could catch her.”
Crawshay’s hand had suddenly stolen to his chin. There was a queer light in his eyes. He clutched at his companion’s arm.
“You’re wrong, Hobson,” he exclaimed. “There is! Come right along with me. We can talk as we go.”
“Are you crazy?” the American demanded.
“Not quite,” the other answered. “Hurry up, man.”
“Where to?” “To New Jersey. I’ve got Government orders, endorsed by your own Secretary of War. It’s a hundred to one they won’t listen to me, but we’ve got to try it.”
He was already dragging his companion down the wooden way. His whole expression had changed. His face was alight with the joy of an idea. Already Hobson, upon whom the germ of that idea had dawned, began to be infected with his enthusiasm.
“It’s a gorgeous stunt,” he acknowledged, as he followed his companion into a taxicab. “If we bring it off, it’s going to knock the movies silly.”
Katharine, weary at last of waving her hand to the indistinct blur of faces upon the dock, picked up the great clusters of roses which late arrivals had thrust into her arms at the last moment, and descended to her stateroom upon the saloon deck. She spent only a few minutes looking at the arrangement of her things, and then knocked at the door of the stateroom exactly opposite. A thick-browed, heavy-looking man, sombrely and professionally dressed, opened the door.
“Are you wanting me, Doctor Gant?” she asked.
The doctor shook his head.
“The patient is asleep,” he announced in a whisper.
Katharine stepped inside and stood looking down upon the pale, almost ghastly face of the man stretched at full length upon the bed.
“Why, I remember him perfectly,” she exclaimed. “He was in Number Three Ward for some time. Surely he was a clerk at one of the drygoods stores down-town?”
The doctor nodded.
“Very likely.”
“I remember the case,” Katharine continued,—“appendicitis, followed by pneumonia, and complicated by angina pectoris.”
“You have it precisely.”
Katharine’s eyes were full of perplexity.
“But the man is in very poor circumstances,” she remarked. “How on earth can he afford a trip like this? He was on the free list at the hospital.”
The doctor frowned.
“That is not my business,” he said. “My fees are paid, and the steamer tickets appear to be in order. He probably has wealthy friends.”
Katharine looked down once more at the sleeping man. His face was insignificant, his expression peevish, his features without the animation of any high purpose.
“I really cannot understand,” she murmured, “how he became a friend—a friend—”
“A friend of whom?” the doctor enquired.
Katharine reflected and shook her head.
“Perhaps I was indiscreet,” she confessed. “I dare say you know as much about him as I do. At what time would you like me to come and help you change the bandages?”
“I shall change them alone,” the doctor replied.
“I prefer to.”
Katharine glanced up in surprise.
“Surely you are not in earnest?” she asked. “What else am I here for? I suppose you realise that I am fully qualified?”
The doctor unbent a little.
“I am perfectly well aware of that. Miss Beverley,” he said, “and it may be that there are times when I shall be glad of your help, and in any case,” he went on, “I shall have to ask you to take a share in the night watching. But the surgical part of the case has been a great responsibility, and I couldn’t afford to have the slightest thing in the world happen to one of my bandages.”
Katharine nodded.
“You are thinking of Nurse Lynn,” she observed. “But really I am very careful.”
“I am sure of it,” the doctor acknowledged, “but so long as I am here, with nothi
ng else to do and a very heavy fee if by any chance I bring my man through, I may just as well see to these things myself. At any moment I might need your help, and I am very happy, Miss Beverley, to think that I shall have some one like you to fall back upon. My great hope,” he went on, “is that we may get him across without a touch of the angina.”
“Will he ever get well?” she asked.
The doctor shook his head doubtfully.
“One can never tell,” he said. “It is just one of these cases which are very close to the borderland. With luck he may pull through, may even become a fairly strong man again, but he doesn’t look as though he had much of a physique. Sometime or other the day will come when life or death for him will depend entirely upon his will.”
She nodded and moved away. “My stateroom is just opposite, if you want me at any time, doctor,” she said.
He bowed and closed the door after her. Katharine made her way into her cabin, sat on her steamer trunk and looked around a little helplessly. The confusion of thought in which she had come on board was only increased by this introduction to doctor and patient. A presentiment of strange and imminent happenings kept her seated there long after the dressing bugle had sounded.
The City of Boston was four hours out of harbour, with her course set direct for Liverpool. The passengers, of whom there were only a very moderate number, had taken possession of their staterooms, examined their lifebelts, eaten their first meal, and were now, at eight o’clock on a fine June evening, mostly strolling about the deck or reclining in steamer chairs. There was none of the old-time feeling that a six-days’ holiday was before them, a six-days’ freedom from all anxiety and care. Even in these first few hours of their enterprise a certain strain of suppressed excitement was almost universally noticeable. There was no escaping from grim facts, and the facts were brought home to them all the time by those two businesslike destroyers flying the Stars and Stripes, and whose decks were swept continually by a deluge of green salt water. Amongst the few people who conversed there was but one subject of conversation, a subject which every one affected to treat lightly, and yet which no one managed to discuss without signs of anxiety.
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