The Island Mystery Part 19

Phillips, on the other hand, was friendly from the start. He and Gorman spent many hours together on the bridge or in the cabin. The weather was fine and warm. The _Ida_ slipped quietly across the Bay, found calm days and velvety nights off the coast of Portugal, carried her good luck with her through the Straits of Gibraltar.

A much duller man than Gorman would not have failed to discover that Phillips was deeply in love with the young Queen of Salissa. All talk worked back to her sooner or later. And Phillips became eloquent about her. With nave enthusiasm he praised her beauty. He raved about the sweetness of her disposition. He struggled hard for words which would describe her incomparable charm.

Gorman says he liked listening to the boy. He himself has never married, so far as I know has never been in love. I suppose there was a certain freshness about Phillips' raptures. He must have been an attentive listener and he must have shown some sort of sympathy, for in the end Phillips became very confidential. I daresay, too, that Gorman found the whole thing highly amusing when he recollected the Emperor's plan of marrying Miss Donovan to King Konrad Karl. Phillips was just the sort of obstacle which would wreck the plan, and the Emperor would never condescend to consider that a subordinate officer in the British Merchant Service could be of any importance. There was a flavour about the situation which delighted Gorman.

"When do you mean to marry her?" he asked, one evening.

"Marry her!" said Phillips. "I never thought--I mean I never dared to hope----It would be such beastly cheek, wouldn't it? to expect----"

He looked at Gorman, pathetically anxious for some crumb of encouragement.

"She's a queen, you know," said Phillips, "and an heiress, and all that. I'm only----I haven't a penny in the world except what I earn."

The boy sighed.

"I don't see why that should stop you," said Gorman.

"Do you really think--I mean wouldn't it be frightful cheek? It's not only her being a queen and all that; but other things. She's far too good for me in every way. I'm not clever or anything of that kind. And then there's her father."

"I shouldn't worry about him, if I were you," said Gorman. "What you've got to consider is not the father but the girl. If she's as much in love with you as you are with her----"

"She couldn't possibly be," said Phillips.

"I don't suppose she could," said Gorman. "Let's say half. If she's half as much in love as you are she'll manage the old man."

"I think----" said Phillips, "I really think she does like me a little."

Then he told Gorman something, not very much, about the scene in the cave. He spoke in broken sentences. He never quite completed any confidence, but Gorman got at something like the facts.

"If you've gone as far as that," he said. "If, as I understand, you've kissed her, then----I don't profess to give an expert opinion in matters of this kind, but I think you ought to ask her to marry you.

In fact, it will be rather insulting if you don't."

"And you really think I have a chance? But you don't know. She might marry any one in the world. She's the most beautiful girl that any one has ever seen. Her eyes----"

Gorman knew that Miss Daisy Donovan was a nice, fresh-looking, plump young woman with no particular claim to be called beautiful. He stopped listening. His mind had suddenly fixed on a curious point in Phillips' story of the scene in the cave. He waited until the boy, like Rosalind's "very good lover," was "gravelled for lack of matter."

Then he said:

"Where did you say that you were when that happened--the kissing, I mean?"

"In a cave," said Phillips. "In a huge cave. I had helped her to climb up on to the cisterns, and----"

"Cisterns!" said Gorman. "What the devil did you put cisterns into a cave for?"

"We didn't put them. They were there. Galvanized iron cisterns. Huge things. Oh, I promised I wouldn't tell any one about those cisterns.

They're part of the secret of the island. The Queen made me promise.

I wish I hadn't told you."

"You've broken your promise now," said Gorman. "You may just as well go on."

It took some time to persuade Phillips to go on; and all Gorman's sophistries would not induce the boy to say another word about the cisterns in the cave. They were the Queen's part of the mystery of the island and he would not speak of them. But he did at last confide in Gorman to some extent.

"I think," he said, "I may tell you about this. I found this out myself."

He took a letter-case from his pocket and produced from it a corner torn off an envelope.

"Look at that," he said. "Look at it carefully."

Gorman stared at the sc.r.a.p of paper.

"Bit of an envelope," he said. "Penny stamp, London postmark."

"Now look at this," said Phillips.

He handed Gorman part of another envelope, torn in exactly the same way. Gorman looked at it.

"Same sort of envelope," he said. "Same postmark, different dates."

"That last one," said Phillips, "is a corner of an envelope which I got through the post ten days ago. It came from the office, Mr.

Steinwitz' office. The first one I found in the hall of the Queen's palace the day we landed on Salissa."

"Well," said Gorman, "that's not much to go on. Lots of firms use envelopes like that, and I suppose there are thousands of letters every day with that postmark. Still it's possible that Steinwitz wrote a letter to some one who was on the island last September. Were there any other bits of paper on that floor?"

"There were," said Phillips, "but I didn't pick them up. I intended to next day. But they were gone. The floor had been swept."

"Oh! Who swept the floor?"

"Smith. I saw him doing it."

"Now who," said Gorman, "is Smith?"

"Smith! He was steward on the _Ida_. Mr. Steinwitz sent him on board just before we sailed. He stayed on the island as servant to the Donovans. Oh, by the way, talking of Smith, perhaps I ought to tell you----"

He told Gorman the story of Smith's early morning visit to the cave in company with Stephanos the Elder.

"Does Smith ever write letters?" asked Gorman.

"I don't know. Oh, yes. I remember. The day we docked at Tilbury, after our return voyage, Captain Wilson sent me up to the office with some letters of Mr. Donovan's. Just as I was starting he called me back and said I might as well take Smith's letters too. There were three of them, all addressed to Mr. Steinwitz."

"I think," said Gorman, "that when I get to the island I'll have a look at those cisterns of yours."

"I'll ask the Queen if I may take you," said Phillips.

"You and the Queen," said Gorman, "seem to have formed yourselves into a kind of detective brotherhood for the discovery of the mystery of the island."

"We thought it would be rather fun."

"You don't appear to have found out very much. Suppose you take me into partners.h.i.+p. We could all three work together, except when it is necessary to climb cisterns. Then I'd stay round the nearest corner.

What do you think?"