Роберт Чамберс - The Dark Star

"You spik thees–a–way, so impolite―"

"Get out o' my way! Blime d'you think I'll stand 'ere jawin' any longer?"

"I am membaire of Parliament―"

And the defiant voice of Jim's own little cockney steward retorted, interrupting:

"Ahr, stow it! Don't I tell you as how a lydy telephones me just now that my young gentleman is in there? Get away from that door, you blighter, or I'll bash your beak in!"

The door trembled under a sudden and terrific kick; the wordy quarrel ceased; hurried steps retreated along the corridor; a pass key rattled in the lock, and the door was flung wide open:

"Mr. Neeland, sir—oh, my Gawd, wot ever 'ave they gone and done, sir, to find you 'ere in such a 'orrid state!"

But the little cockney lost no time; fingers and pen–knife flew; Neeland, his arms free, tore the bandage from his mouth and spat out the wad of cloth.

"I'll do the rest," he gasped, forcing the words from his bruised and distorted lips; "follow that man who was outside talking to you! Find him if you can. He had been planning to blow up this ship!"

" That man, sir!"

"Yes! Did you know him?"

"Yes, sir; but I darsn't let on to him I knew him—what with 'earing that you was in here―"

"You did know him?"

"Yes, sir."

"Who is he?"

"Mr. Neeland, sir, that there cove is wot he says he is, a member of Parliament, and his name is Wilson―"

"You're mad! He's an Eurasian, a spy; his name is Karl Breslau—I heard it from the others—and he tried to blow up the captain's cabin and the bridge with those three bombs lying there on the bed!"

"My God, sir—what you tell me may be so, but what I say is true, sir; that gentleman you heard talking outside the door to me is Charles Wilson, member of Parliament, representing Glebe and Wotherness; and I knew it w'en I 'anded 'im the 'ot stuff!—'strewth I did, sir—and took my chance you'd 'elp me out if I got in too rotten with the company!"

Neeland said:

"Certainly you may count on me. You're a brick!" He continued to rub and slap and pinch his arms and legs to restore the circulation, and finally ventured to rise to his shaky feet. The steward offered an arm; together they hobbled to the door, summoned another steward, placed him in charge of the room, and went on in quest of Captain West, to whom an immediate report was now imperative.

The sun hung well above the river mists and threw long, cherry–red beams across the choppy channel where clotted jets of steam and smoke from tug and steamer drifted with the fog; and still the captain of the Volhynia and young Neeland sat together in low–voiced conference in the captain's cabin; and a sailor, armed with cutlass and pistol, stood outside the locked and bolted door.

Off the port bow, Liverpool spread as far as the eye could see through the shredded fog; to starboard, off Birkenhead, through a haze of pearl and lavender, the tall phantom of an old–time battleship loomed. She was probably one of Nelson's ships, now only an apparition; but to Neeland, as he caught sight of her dimly revealed, still dominating the water, the old ship seemed like a menacing ghost, never to be laid until the sceptre of sea power fell from an enervated empire and the glory of Great Britain departed for all time. And in his Yankee heart he hoped devoutly that such disaster to the world might never come upon it.

Few passengers were yet astir; the tender had not yet come alongside; the monstrous city beyond had not awakened.

But a boat manned by Liverpool police lay off the Volhynia's port; Neeland's steamer trunk was already in it; and now the captain accompanied him to the ladder, where a sailor took his suitcase and the olive–wood box and ran down the landing stairs like a monkey.

"Good luck," said the captain of the Volhynia . "And keep it in your mind every minute that those two men and that woman probably are at this moment aboard some German fishing craft, and headed for France.

"Remember, too, that they are merely units in a vast system; that they are certain to communicate with other units; that between you and Paris are people who will be notified to watch for you, follow you, rob you."

Neeland nodded thoughtfully.

The captain said again:

"Good luck! I wish you were free to turn over that box to us. But if you've given your word to deliver it in person, the whole matter involves, naturally, a point of honour."

"Yes. I have no discretion in the matter, you see." He laughed. "You're thinking, Captain West, that I haven't much discretion anyway."

"I don't think you have very much," admitted the captain, smiling and shaking the hand which Neeland offered. "Well, this is merely one symptom of a very serious business, Mr. Neeland. That an attempt should actually have been made to murder you and to blow me to pieces in my cabin is a slight indication of what a cataclysmic explosion may shatter the peace of the entire world at any moment now…. Good–bye. And I warn you very solemnly to take this affair as a deadly serious one and not as a lark."

They exchanged a firm clasp; then Neeland descended and entered the boat; the Inspector of Police took the tiller; the policemen bent to the oars, and the boat shot away through a mist which was turning to a golden vapour.

It was within a few boat–lengths of the landing stairs that Neeland, turning for a last look into the steaming golden glory behind him, saw the most splendid sight of his life. And that sight was the British Empire assuming sovereignty.

For there, before his eyes, militant, magnificent, the British fleet was taking the sea, gliding out to accept its fealty, moving majestically in mass after mass of steel under flowing torrents of smoke, with the phantom battle flags whipping aloft in the blinding smother of mist and sun and the fawning cut–water hurrying too, as though even every littlest wave were mobilised and hastening seaward in the service of its mistress, Ruler of all Waters, untroubled by a man–made Kiel.

And now there was no more time to be lost; no more stops until he arrived in Paris. A taxicab rushed him and his luggage across the almost empty city; a train, hours earlier than the regular steamer train, carried him to London where, as he drove through the crowded, sunlit streets, in a hansom cab, he could see news–venders holding up strips of paper on which was printed in great, black letters:

THE BRITISH FLEET SAILS

SPY IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS

CHARLES WILSON, M. P., ACCUSED

MISSING MEMBER SUPPOSED TO BE KARL BRESLAU,

INTERNATIONAL SPY

And he noticed knots of people pausing to buy the latest editions of the papers offered.

But Neeland had no time to see much more of London than that—glimpses of stately grey buildings and green trees; of monuments and palaces where soldiers in red tunics stood guard; the crush of traffic in the city; trim, efficient police, their helmets strapped to their heads, disentangling the streams of vehicles, halting, directing everything with calm and undisturbed precision; a squadron of cavalry in brilliant uniforms leisurely emerging from some park between iron railings under stately trees; then the crowded confusion of a railroad station, but not the usual incidents of booking and departure, because he was to travel by a fast goods train under telegraphed authority of the British Government.

And that is about all that Neeland saw of the mightiest city in the world on the eve of the greatest conflict among the human races that the earth has ever witnessed, or ever shall, D. V.

The flying goods train that took him to the Channel port whence a freight packet was departing, offered him the luxury of a leather padded armchair in a sealed and grated mail van.