“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.”
“You have not forgotten my stupidity, then.”
“I have forgotten nothing.”
She made a pretty mouth of doubt. “Would it not have been more kind to forget?”
“Such compliments are not easily forgotten.”
“You are sure, quite sure it was a compliment?”
“No-o; by no means sure. Still, I am a man, and I am giving you the full benefit of every doubt.”
She laughed, not ill-pleased. “But what a man! how blessed of the gods to be able to laugh at yourself as well as at me.”
“Undeceive yourself: I could never laugh at you, Liane. Even if one did not believe you to be a great natural comedienne at will, one would always wonder what your purpose was—oh yes! with deep respect one would wonder about that.”
“And you have been wondering these last three days? Well, tell me what you think my purpose was in abandoning all maidenly reserve and throwing myself at your head.”
“Why,” said Lanyard with a look of childlike candour, “you might, you know, have been uncontrollably swayed by some passionate impulses of the heart.”
“But otherwise—?” she prompted, hugely amused.
“Oh, if you had a low motive in trying to make a fool of me, you know too well how to hide your motive from such a fool.”
In a fugitive seizure of thoughtfulness the violet eyes lost all their impishness. She sighed, the bright head drooped a little toward the gleaming bosom, a hand stole out to rest lightly upon his once again.
“It was not acting, Michael—I tell you that frankly—at least, not all acting.”
“Meaning, I take it, you know love too well to make it artlessly.”
“I’m afraid so, my dear,” said Liane Delorme with another sigh. “You know: I am afraid of you. You see everything so clearly…”
“It’s a vast pity. I wish I could outgrow it. One misses so many amusing emotions when one sees too clearly.”
During another brief pause, Lanyard saw Monk come on deck, pause, and search them out, in the chairs they occupied near the taffrail, much as on that other historic night. Not that he experienced any difficulty in locating them; for this time the decklights were burning clearly. Nevertheless, Captain Monk confessed emotion at sight of those two in a quite perceptible start; and Lanyard saw the eyebrows tremendously agitated as their manipulator moved aft.
Unconscious of all this, Liane ended her pensive moment by leaning toward Lanyard and making demoralizing eyes, while the hand left his and stole with a caressing gesture up his forearm.
“Is love, then, distasteful to you unless it be truly artless, Michael?”
“There’s so much to be said about that, Liane,” he evaded.
Monk was standing over them, a towering figure in white with the most forbidding eyebrows Lanyard had ever seen.
“Might one suggest,” he did suggest in iced accents, “that the quarter-deck is a fairly conspicuous place for this exhibition of family affection?”
Liane Delorme turned up an enquiring look, tinged slightly with an impatience which all at once proved too much for her.
“Oh, go to the devil!” she snapped in that harsh voice of the sidewalks which she was able to use and discard at will.
For a moment Monk made no reply; and Lanyard remarked a curious quivering of that excessively tall, excessively attenuated body, a real trembling, and suddenly understood that the absurd creature was being shaken by jealousy, by an enormous passion of jealousy, quite beyond his control, that shook him very much as a cat might shake a mouse.
It was too funny to be laughable, it was comic in a way to make one want to weep. So that Lanyard, who refused to weep in public, could merely gape in speechless and transfixed rapture. And perhaps this was fortunate; otherwise Monk must have seen that his idiotic secret was out, the sport of ribald mirth, and the situation must have been precipitated with a vengeance and an outcome impossible to predict. As it was, absorbed in his inner torment, Monk was insensible to the peril that threatened his stilted but precious dignity, which he proceeded to parade, as it were underlining it with the eyebrows, to lend emphasis to his words.
“So long as this entertaining fiction of brother-and-sister is thought worth while,” he said with infuriated condescension, “it might be judicious not to indulge in inconsistent and unseemly demonstrations of affection within view of my officers and crew. Suppose we…” He choked a little. “In short, I came to invite you to a little conference in my rooms, with Mr. Phinuit.”
“Conference?” Liane enquired coolly, without stirring. “I know nothing of this conference.”
“Mr. Phinuit and I are agreed that Monsieur Lanyard is entitled to know more about our intentions while he has time to weigh them carefully. We have only four more days at sea…”
Unable longer to contain himself, Lanyard left his chair with alacrity. “But this is so delightful! You’ve no idea, really, monsieur, how I have looked forward to this moment.” And to Liane: “Do come, and see how I take it, this revelation of my preordained fate. It will be, I trust sincerely, like a man.”
With momentary hesitation, and in a temper precluding any sympathy, with his humour, the woman rose and silently followed with him that long-legged figure whose stalk held so much dramatic significance as he led to the companionway.
After that it was refreshing to find unromantic Mr. Phinuit lounging beside the captain’s desk with crossed feet overhanging one corner of it and mind intent on the prosaic business of paring his fingernails. Lanyard nodded to him with great good temper and—while Phinuit lowered his feet and put away his penknife—considerately placed a chair for Liane in the position in which she preferred to sit, with her face turned a little from the light. Nor would his appreciation of the formality which seemed demanded by Monk’s solemn manner, permit him to sit before the captain had taken his own chair behind the desk.
Then, however, he discovered the engaging spontaneity of a schoolboy at a pantomime, and drawing up a chair sat on the edge of it and addressed himself with unaffected eagerness to the most portentous eyebrows in captivity.
“Now,” he announced with a
little bow, “for what, one imagines, Mr. Phinuit would term the Elaborate Idea!”
CHAPTER XXIV
HISTORIC REPETITION
Phinuit grinned, then smothered a little yawn. Liane Delorme gave a small, disdainful movement of shoulders, and posed herself becomingly, resting an elbow on the arm of her chair and inclining her cheek upon two fingers of a jewelled hand. Thus she sat somewhat turned from Monk and Phinuit, but facing Lanyard, to whom her grave but friendly eyes gave undivided heed, for all the world as if there were no others present: she seemed to wait to hear him speak again rather than to care in the least what Monk would find to say.
Captain Monk filled in that pause with an impressive arrangement of eyebrows. Then, fixing his gaze, not upon Lanyard, but upon the point of a pencil with which his incredibly thin fingers traced elaborate but empty designs upon the blotter, he opened his lips, hemmed in warning that he was about to speak, and seemed tremendously upset to find that Liane was inconsiderately forestalling him.
Her voice was at its most musical pitch, rather low for her, fluting, infinitely disarming and seductive.
“Let me say to you, mon ami, that—naturally I know what is coming—I disapprove absolutely of this method of treating with you.”
“But it is such an honour to be considered important enough to be treated with at all!”
“You have the true gift for sarcasm: a pity to waste it on an audience two-thirds incapable of appreciation.”
“Oh, you’re wrong!” Phinuit declared earnestly. “I’m appreciative, I think the dear man’s immense.”
“Might I suggest”—the unctuous tones of Captain Monk issued from under mildly wounded eyebrows—“if any one of us were unappreciative of Monsieur Lanyard’s undoubted talents, he would not be with us tonight.”
“You might suggest it,” Phinuit assented, “but that wouldn’t make it so, it is to mademoiselle’s appreciation that you and I owe this treat, and you know it. Now quit cocking those automatic eyebrows at me; you’ve been doing that ever since we met, and they haven’t gone off yet, not once.”
The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales Page 137
