The Dark Star Part 44

Recollection of the absurd situation incited his reprehensible merriment to the point of unrestrained laughter; and he clasped his knees and rocked to and fro, where he sat on his suitcase, all alone under the stars.

The midnight express was usually from five to forty minutes late at Orangeville; but from there east it made up time on the down grade to Albany.

And now, as he sat watching, far away along the riverside a star came gliding into view around an unseen curve--the headlight of a distant locomotive.

A few moments later he was in his drawing-room, seated on the edge of the couch, his door locked, the shade over the window looking on the corridor drawn down as far as it would go; and the train rus.h.i.+ng through the starry night on the down grade toward Albany.

He could not screen the corridor window entirely; the shade seemed to be too short; but it was late, the corridor dark, all the curtains in the car closed tightly over the berths, and his privacy was not likely to be disturbed. And when the conductor had taken both tickets and the porter had brought him a bottle of mineral water and gone away, he settled down with great content.

Neeland was in excellent humour. He had not the slightest inclination to sleep. He sat on the side of his bed, smoking, the olive-wood box lying open beside him, and its curious contents revealed.

But now, as he carefully examined the papers, photographs, and drawings, he began to take the affair a little more seriously. And the possibility of further trouble raised his already high spirits and caused that little drop of Irish blood to sing agreeably in his veins.

Dipping into Herr Wilner's diary added a fillip to the increasing fascination that was possessing him.

"Well, I'm d.a.m.ned," he thought, "if it doesn't really look as though the plans of these Turkish forts might be important! I'm not very much astonished that the Kaiser and the Sultan desire to keep for themselves the secrets of these fortifications. They really belong to them, too. They were drawn and planned by a German." He shrugged. "A rotten alliance!" he muttered, and picked up the bronze Chinese figure to examine it.

"So you're the Yellow Devil I've heard about!" he said. "Well, you certainly are a pippin!"

Inspecting him with careless curiosity, he turned the bronze over and over between his hands, noticing a slight rattling sound that seemed to come from within but discovering no reason for it. And, as he curiously considered the scowling demon, he hummed an old song of his father's under his breath:

"Wan balmy day in May Th' ould Nick come to the dure; Sez I 'The divil's to pay, An' the debt comes harrd on the poor!'

His eyes they shone like fire An' he gave a horrid groan; Sez I to me sister Suke, 'Suke!!!!

Tell him I ain't at home!'

"He stood forninst the dure, His wings were wings of a bat, An' he raised his voice to a roar, An' the tail of him switched like a cat, 'O wirra the day!' sez I, 'Ochone I'll no more roam!'

Sez I to me brother Luke, 'Luke!!!!

Tell him I ain't at home!'"

As he laid the bronze figure away and closed, locked and strapped the olive-wood box, an odd sensation crept over him as though somebody were overlooking what he was doing. Of course it could not be true, but so sudden and so vivid was the impression that he rose, opened the door, and glanced into the private washroom--even poked under the bed and the opposite sofa; and of course discovered that only a living skeleton could lie concealed in such s.p.a.ces.

His courage, except moral courage, had never been particularly tested.

He was naturally quite fearless, even carelessly so, and whether it was the courage of ignorance or a const.i.tutional inability to be afraid never bothered his mind because he never thought about it.

Now, amused at his unusual fit of caution, he stretched himself out on his bed, still dressed, debating in his mind whether he should undress and try to sleep, or whether it were really worth while before he boarded the steamer.

And, as he lay there, a cigarette between his lips, wakeful, his restless gaze wandering, he suddenly caught a glimpse of something moving--a human face pressed to the dark gla.s.s of the corridor window between the partly lowered shade and the cherry-wood sill.

So amazed was he that the face had disappeared before he realised that it resembled the face of Ilse Dumont. The next instant he was on his feet and opening the door of the drawing-room; but the corridor between the curtained berths was empty and dark and still; not a curtain fluttered.

He did not care to leave his doorway, either, with the box lying there on his bed; he stood with one hand on the k.n.o.b, listening, peering into the dusk, still excited by the surprise of seeing her on the same train that he had taken.

However, on reflection, he quite understood that she could have had no difficulty in boarding the midnight train for New York without being noticed by him; because he was not expecting her to do such a thing and he had paid no attention to the group of pa.s.sengers emerging from the waiting room when the express rolled in.

"This is rather funny," he thought. "I wish I could find her. I wish she'd be friendly enough to pay me a visit. Scheherazade is certainly an entertaining girl. And it's several hours to New York."

He lingered a while longer, but seeing and hearing nothing except darkness and a.s.sorted snores, he stepped into his stateroom and locked the door again.

Sleep was now impossible; the idea of Scheherazade prowling in the dark corridor outside amused him intensely, and aroused every atom of his curiosity. Did the girl really expect an opportunity to steal the box? Or was she keeping a sinister eye on him with a view to summoning accomplices from vasty metropolitan deeps as soon as the train arrived? Or, having failed at Brookhollow, was she merely going back to town to report "progress backward"?

He finished his mineral water, and, still feeling thirsty, rang, on the chance that the porter might still be awake and obliging.

Something about the entire affair was beginning to strike him as intensely funny, and the idea of foreign spies slinking about Brookhollow; the seriousness with which this young girl took herself and her mission; her amateur attempts at murder; her solemn mention of the Turkish Emba.s.sy--all these excited his sense of the humorous. And again incredulity crept in; and presently he found himself humming Irwin's immortal Kaiser refrain:

"Hi-lee! Hi-lo!

Der vinds dey blow Joost like die wacht am Rhine!

Und vot iss mine belongs to me, Und vot iss yours iss mine!"

There came a knock at his door; he rose and opened it, supposing it to be the porter; and was seized in the powerful grasp of two men and jerked into the dark corridor.

One of them had closed his mouth with a gloved hand, crus.h.i.+ng him with an iron grip around the neck; the other caught his legs and lifted him bodily; and, as they slung him between them, his startled eyes caught sight of Ilse Dumont entering his drawing-room.

It was a silent, fierce struggle through the corridor to the front platform of the vestibule train; it took both men to hold, overpower, and completely master him; but they tried to do this and, at the same time, lift the trap that discloses the car steps. And could not manage it.

The instant Neeland realised what they were trying to do, he divined their shocking intention in regard to himself, and the struggle became terrible there in the swaying vestibule. Twice he nearly got at the automatic pistol in his breast pocket, but could not quite grasp it.

They slammed him and thrashed him around between them, apparently determined to open the trap, fling him from the train, and let him take his chances with the wheels.

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 a.s.sailant 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, b.l.o.o.d.y 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, pus.h.i.+ng 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 nave 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 a.s.sa.s.sinate 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 s.h.i.+rt, 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 la.s.s, but nix for the knife and gun."

"How--did you do it?"