Роберт Чамберс - The Dark Star

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.

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.