The Dark Star

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.

CHAPTER XVII

A WHITE SKIRT

It was in mid-ocean that Neeland finally came to the conclusion that nobody on board the Volhynia was likely to bother him or his box.

The July weather had been magnificent – blue skies, a gentle wind, and a sea scarcely silvered by a comber.

Assorted denizens of the Atlantic took part in the traditional vaudeville performance for the benefit of the Volhynia passengers; gulls followed the wake to mid-ocean; Mother Carey’s chickens skimmed the baby billows; dolphins turned watery flip-flaps under the bows; and even a distant whale consented to oblige.

Everybody pervaded the decks morning, noon, and evening; the most squeamish recovered confidence in twenty-four hours; and every constitutional lubber concluded he was a born sailor.

Neeland really was one; no nausea born from the bad adjustment of that anatomical auricular gyroscope recently discovered in man ever disturbed his abdominal nerves. Short of shipwreck, he enjoyed any entertainment the Atlantic offered him.

So he was always on deck, tranquilly happy and with nothing in the world to disturb him except his responsibility for the olive-wood box.

He dared not leave it in his locked cabin; he dared not entrust it to anybody; he lugged it about with him wherever he went. On deck it stood beside his steamer chair; it dangled from his hand when he promenaded, exciting the amazement and curiosity of others; it reposed on the floor under the table and beneath his attentive feet when he was at meals.

These elaborate precautions indicated his wholesome respect for the persistence of Scheherazade and her friends; he was forever scanning his fellow-voyagers at table, in the smoking room, and as they strolled to and fro in front of his steamer chair, trying to make up his mind concerning them.

But Neeland, a clever observer of externals, was no reader of character. The passenger list never seemed to confirm any conclusions he arrived at concerning any of the passengers on the Volhynia. A gentleman he mistook for an overfed broker turned out to be a popular clergyman with outdoor proclivities; a slim, poetic-looking youth who carried a copy of “Words and Wind” about the deck travelled for the Gold Leaf Lard Company.

Taking them all in all, Neeland concluded that they were as harmless a collection of reconcentrados as he had ever observed; and he was strongly tempted to leave the box in his locked stateroom.

He decided to do so one afternoon after luncheon, and, lugging his box, started to return to his stateroom with that intention, instead of going on deck, as usual, for a postprandial cigarette.

There was nobody in the main corridor as he passed, but in the short, carpeted passage leading to his stateroom he caught a glimpse of a white serge skirt vanishing into the stateroom opposite to his, and heard the door close and the noise of a key turned quickly.

His steward, being questioned on the first day out, had told him that this stateroom was occupied by an invalid gentleman travelling alone, who preferred to remain there instead of trusting to his crutches on a temperamental deck.

Neeland, passing the closed and curtained door, wondered whether the invalid had made a hit, or whether he had a relative aboard who wore a white serge skirt, white stockings and shoes, and was further endowed with agreeable ankles.

He fitted his key to his door, turned it, withdrew the key to pocket it; and immediately became aware that the end of the key was sticky.

He entered the stateroom, however, and bolted the door, then he sat down on his sofa and examined his fingers and his door key attentively. There was wax sticking to both.

When he had fully digested this fact he wiped and pocketed his key and cast a rather vacant look around the little stateroom. And immediately his eye was arrested by a white object lying on the carpet between the bed and the sofa – a woman’s handkerchief, without crest or initials, but faintly scented.

After he became tired of alternately examining it and sniffing it, he put it in his pocket and began an uneasy tour of his room.

If it had been entered and ransacked, everything had been replaced exactly as he had left it, as well as he could remember. Nothing excepting this handkerchief and the wax on the key indicated intrusion; nothing, apparently, had been disturbed; and yet there was the handkerchief; and there was the wax on the end of his door key.

“Here’s a fine business!” he muttered to himself; and rang for his steward.

The man came – a cockney, dense as his native fog – who maintained that nobody could have entered the stateroom without his knowledge or the knowledge of the stewardess.

“Do you think she’s been in my cabin?”

“No, sir.”

“Call her.”

The stewardess, an alert, intelligent little woman with a trace of West Indian blood in her, denied entering his stateroom. Shown the handkerchief and invited to sniff it, she professed utter ignorance concerning it, assured him that no lady in her section used that perfume, and offered to show it to the stewardesses of other sections on the chance of their identifying the perfume or the handkerchief.

“All right,” said Neeland; “take it. But bring it back. And here’s a sovereign. And – one thing more. If anybody pays you to deceive me, come to me and I’ll outbid them. Is that a bargain?”

“Yes, sir,” she said unblushingly.

When she had gone away with the handkerchief, Neeland closed the door again and said to the steward:

“Keep an eye on my door. I am positive that somebody has taken a wax impression of the keyhole. What I said to that stewardess also holds good with you. I’ll outbid anybody who bribes you.”

“Very good, sir.”

“Sure it’s good! It’s devilish good. Here’s a beautiful and newly minted gold sovereign. Isn’t it artistic? It’s yours, steward.”

“Thanky, sir.”

“Not at all. And, by the way, what’s that invalid gentleman’s name?”

“’Awks, sir.”

“Hawks?”

“Yes, sir; Mr. ’Erbert ’Awks.”

“American?”

“I don’t know, sir.”

“British?”

“Shall I inquire, sir?” starting to go.

“Not of him! Don’t be a lunatic, steward! Please try to understand that I want nothing said about this matter or about my inquiries.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well, then! Find out, if you can, who Mr. Herbert Hawks is. Find out all you can concerning him. It’s easy money, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, sir–”

“Wait a moment. Has he any friends or relatives on board?”

“Not that I know, sir.”

“Oh, no friends, eh? No ladies who wear white serge skirts and white shoes and stockings?”

“No, sir, not as I knows of.”

“Oh! Suppose you step across to his door, knock, and ask him if he rang. And, if the door is opened, take a quick slant at the room.”

“Very good, sir.”

Neeland, his door at the crack, watched the steward cross the corridor and knock at the door of Mr. Herbert Hawks.

“Well, what iss it?” came a heavy voice from within.

“Mr. ’Awks, sir, did you ring?”

“No, I did not.”

“Oh, beg pardon, sir–”

The steward was starting to return to Neeland, but that young man motioned him violently away from his door and closed it. Then, listening, his ear against the panel, he presently heard a door in the passage creak open a little way, then close again, stealthily.

He possessed his soul in patience, believing that Mr. Hawks or his fair friend in the white skirt had merely taken a preliminary survey of the passage and perhaps also of his closed door. But the vigil was vain; the door did not reopen; no sound came from the stateroom across the passageway.

To make certain that the owner of the white shoes and stockings did not leave that stateroom without his knowledge, he opened his door with many precautions and left it on the crack, stretching a rubber band from knob to bolt, so that the wind from the open port in the passage should not blow it shut. Then, drawing his curtain, he sat down to wait.

He had a book, one of those slobbering American novels which serve up falsehood thickly buttered with righteousness and are consumed by the morally sterilised.

And, as he smoked he read; and, as he read he listened. One eye always remained on duty; one ear was alert; he meant to see who was the owner of the white shoes if it took the remainder of the voyage to find out.

The book aided him as a commonplace accompaniment aids a soloist – alternately boring and exasperating him.

It was an “uplift” book, where the heroine receives whacks with patient smiles. Fate boots her from pillar to post and she blesses Fate and is much obliged. That most deadly reproach to degenerate human nature – the accidental fact of sex – had been so skilfully extirpated from those pages that, like chaste amœbæ, the characters merely multiplied by immaculate subdivision; and millions of lineal descendants of the American Dodo were made gleeful for $1.50 net.

It was hard work waiting, harder work reading, but between the two and a cigarette now and then Neeland managed to do his sentry go until dinner time approached and the corridors resounded with the trample of the hungry.

The stewardess reappeared a little later and returned to him his handkerchief and the following information:

Mr. Hawks, it appeared, travelled with a trained nurse, whose stateroom was on another deck. That nurse was not in her stateroom, but a similar handkerchief was, scented with similar perfume.

“You’re a wonder,” said Neeland, placing some more sovereigns in her palm and closing her fingers over them. “What is the nurse’s name?”

“Miss White.”

“Very suitable name. Has she ever before visited Herr – I mean Mr.– Hawks in his stateroom?”

“Her stewardess says she has been indisposed since we left New York.”

“Hasn’t been out of her cabin?”

“No.”

“I see. Did you inquire what she looked like?”

“Her stewardess couldn’t be certain. The stateroom was kept dark and the tray containing her meals was left at the bedside. Miss White smokes.”

“Yes,” said Neeland reflectively, “she smokes Red Light cigarettes, I believe. Thank you, very much. More sovereigns if you are discreet. And say to my steward that I’ll dine in my stateroom. Soup, fish, meat, any old thing you can think of. Do you understand?”

“Perfectly, sir.”

When she had withdrawn he kneeled down on his sofa and looked out through the port at the sunset sea.

There was a possibility that Scheherazade and her friends might be on board the Volhynia. Who else would be likely to take wax impressions of his keyhole and leave a scented scrap of a handkerchief on his stateroom floor?

That they had kept themselves not only out of sight but off the passenger list merely corroborated suspicion. That’s what they’d be likely to do.

And now there was no question in his mind of leaving the box in his cabin. He’d cling to it like a good woman to alimony. Death alone could separate his box from him.

As he knelt there, sniffing the salt perfume of the sea, his ears on duty detected the sound of a tray in the corridor.

“Leave it on the camp-table outside my door!” he said over his shoulder.

“Very good, sir.”

He was not hungry; he was thinking too hard.

“Confound it,” he thought to himself, “am I to squat here in ambush for the rest of the trip?”

The prospect was not agreeable for a man who loved the sea. All day and most of the starry night the hurricane deck called to him, and his whole anatomy responded. And now to sit hunched up here like a rat in the hold was not to his taste. Suppose he should continue to frequent the deck, carrying with him his box, of course. He might never discover who owned the white serge skirt or who owned the voice which pronounced is as “iss.”

Meanwhile, it occurred to him that for a quarter of an hour or more his dinner outside his door had been growing colder and colder. So he slid from the sofa, unstrapped the rubber band, opened the door, lifted table and tray into his stateroom with a sharp glance at the opposite door, and, readjusting the rubber band, composed himself to eat.

CHAPTER XVIII

BY RADIO

Perhaps it was because he did not feel particularly hungry that his dinner appeared unappetising; possibly because it had been standing in the corridor outside his door for twenty minutes, which did not add to its desirability.

The sun had set and the air in the room had grown cold. He felt chilly; and, when he uncovered the silver tureen and discovered that the soup was still piping hot, he drank some of it to warm himself.

He had swallowed about half a cupful before he discovered that the seasoning was not agreeable to his palate. In fact, the flavour of the hot broth was so decidedly unpleasant that he pushed aside the cup and sat down on the edge of his bunk without any further desire to eat anything.

A glass of water from the carafe did not seem to rid him of the subtle, disagreeable taste lingering in his mouth – in fact, the water itself seemed to be tainted with it.

He sat for a few moments fumbling for his cigarette case, feeling curiously uncomfortable, as though the slight motion of the ship were affecting his head.

As he sat there looking at the unlighted cigarette in his hand, it fell to the carpet at his feet. He started to stoop for it, caught himself in time, pulled himself erect with an effort.

Something was wrong with him – very wrong. Every uneven breath he drew seemed to fill his lungs with the odour of that strange and volatile flavour he had noticed. It was beginning to make him giddy; it seemed to affect his vision, too.

Suddenly a terrible comprehension flashed through his confused mind, clearing it for a moment.

He tried to stand up and reach the electric bell; his knees seem incapable of sustaining him. Sliding to the floor, he attempted to crawl toward the olive-wood box; managed to get one arm around it, grip the handle. Then, with a last desperate effort, he groped in his breast pocket for the automatic pistol, freed it, tried to fire it. But the weapon and the unnerved hand that held it fell on the carpet. A muscular paralysis set in like the terrible rigidity of death; he could still see and hear as in a thickening dream.

A moment later, from the corridor, a slim hand was inserted between the door and jamb; the supple fingers became busy with the rubber band for a moment, released it. The door opened very slowly.

For a few seconds two dark eyes were visible between door and curtain, regarding intently the figure lying prone upon the floor. Then the curtain was twitched noiselessly aside; a young woman in the garb of a trained nurse stepped swiftly into the stateroom on tip-toe, followed by a big, good-looking, blue-eyed man wearing a square golden beard.

The man, who carried with him a pair of crutches, but who did not appear to require their aid, hastily set the dinner-tray and camp-table outside in the corridor, then closed and bolted the door.

Already the nurse was down on her knees beside the fallen man, trying to loosen his grasp on the box. Then her face blanched.

“It’s like the rigor of death itself,” she whispered fearfully over her shoulder. “Could I have given him enough to kill him?”

“He took only half a cup and a swallow of water. No.”

“I can’t get his hand free–”

“Wait! I try!” He pulled a big, horn-handled clasp-knife from his pocket and deliberately opened the eight-inch blade.

“What are you doing?” she whispered, seizing his wrist. “Don’t do that!”

The man with the golden beard hesitated, then shrugged, pocketed his knife, and seized Neeland’s rigidly clenched hand.

“You are right. It makes too much muss!” tugging savagely at the clenched and unconscious hand. “Sacreminton! What for a death-grip is this Kerls? If I cut his hand off so iss there blood and gossip right away already. No – too much muss. Wait! I try another way–”

Neeland groaned.

“Oh, don’t! Don’t!” faltered the girl. “You’re breaking his wrist–”

“Ugh!” grunted her companion; “I try; I can it not accomplish. See once if the box opens!”

“It is locked.”

“Search this pig-dog for the key!”

She began a hurried search of Neeland’s clothing; presently discovered her own handkerchief; thrust it into her apron pocket, and continued rummaging while the bearded man turned his attention to the automatic pistol. This he finally succeeded in disengaging, and he laid it on the wash basin.