The Bandbox Part 34

"Tell him you were cut off and had trouble getting his number again. Say your motor broke down in Central Park and you lost your way trying to walk home. Say you're tired and don't want to be disturbed till noon; that you have the necklace safe and will give it to him if he will call tomorrow."

Eleanor took a deep breath, gave the number to the switchboard operator and before she had time to give another instant's consideration to what she was doing, found herself in conversation with Staff, reciting the communication outlined by her evil genius in response to his eager questioning.

The man was at her elbow all the while she talked--so close that he could easily overhear the other end of the dialogue. This was with a purpose made manifest when Staff asked Eleanor where she was stopping, when instantly the little man clapped his palm over the transmitter.

"Tell him the St. Regis," he said in a sharp whisper.

Her eyes demanded the reason why.

"Don't stop to argue--do as I say: it'll give us more time. The St.

Regis!"

He removed his hand. Blindly she obeyed, reiterating the name to Staff and presently saying good-bye.

"And now--not a second to spare--hurry!"

In the hallway, while they waited for the elevator, he had further instructions for her.

"Go to the desk and ask for your bill," he said, handing her the key to her room. "You've money, of course?... Say that you're called unexpectedly away and will send a written order for your trunks early in the morning. If the clerk wants an address, tell him the Auditorium, Chicago. Now ..."

They stepped from the dimly lighted hall into the brilliant cage of the elevator. It dropped, silently, swiftly, to the ground floor, somehow suggesting to the girl the workings of her implacable, irresistible destiny. So precisely, she felt, she was being whirled on to her fate, like a dry leaf in a gale, with no more volition, as impotent to direct her course....

Still under the obsession of this idea, she went to the desk, paid her bill and said what she had been told to say about her trunks. Beyond that point she did not go, chiefly because she had forgotten and was too numb with fatigue to care. The clerk's question as to her address failed to reach her understanding; she turned away without responding and went to join at the door the man who seemed able to sway her to his whim.

She found herself walking in the dusky streets, struggling to keep up with the rapid pace set by the man at her side.

After some time they paused before a building in a side street. By its low facade and huge sliding doors she dimly perceived it to be a private garage. In response to a signal of peculiar rhythm knuckled upon the wood by her companion, the doors rolled back. A heavy-eyed mechanic saluted them drowsily. On the edge of the threshold a high-powered car with a close-coupled body stood ready.

With the docility of that complete indifference which is bred of deadening weariness, she submitted to being helped to her seat, arranged her veil to protect her face and sat back with folded hands, submissive to endure whatsoever chance or mischance there might be in store for her.

The small man took the seat by her side; the mechanic cranked and jumped to his place. The motor snorted, trembling like a thoroughbred about to run a race, then subsiding with a sonorous purr swept sedately out into the deserted street, swung round a corner into Broadway, settled its tires into the grooves of the car-tracks and leaped northwards like an arrow.

The thoroughfare was all but bare of traffic. Now and again they had to swing away from the car-tracks to pa.s.s a surface-car; infrequently they pa.s.sed early milk wagons, crawling reluctantly over their routes.

Pedestrians were few and far between, and only once, when they dipped into the hollow at Manhattan Street, was it necessary to reduce speed in deference to the law as bodied forth in a balefully glaring, solitary policeman.

The silken song of six cylinders working in absolute harmony was as soothing as a lullaby, the sweep of the soft, fresh morning air past one's cheeks as soft and quieting as a mother's caress. Eleanor yielded to their influence as naturally as a tired child. Her eyes closed; she breathed regularly, barely conscious of the sensation of resistless flight.

Hot and level, the rays of the rising sun smote her face and roused her as the car crossed McComb's Dam Bridge; and for a little time thereafter she was drowsily sentient--aware of wheeling streets and endless, marching ranks of houses. Then again she dozed, recovering her senses only when, after a lapse of perhaps half an hour, the noise of the motor ceased and the big machine slowed down smoothly to a dead halt.

She opened her eyes, comprehending dully a complete change in the aspect of the land. They had stopped on the right of the road, in front of a low-roofed wooden building whose signboard creaking overhead in the breeze named the place an inn. To the left lay a stretch of woodland; and there were trees, too, behind the inn, but in less thick array, so that it was possible to catch through their trunks and foliage glimpses of blue water splashed with golden sunlight. A soft air fanned in off the water, sweet and clean. The sky was high and profoundly blue, unflecked by cloud.

With a feeling of grat.i.tude, she struggled to recollect her wits and realise her position; but still her weariness was heavy upon her. The man she called her father was coming down the path from the inn doorway.

He carried a tumbler br.i.m.m.i.n.g with a pale amber liquid. Walking round to her side of the car he offered it.

"Drink this," she heard him say in a pleasant voice; "it'll help you brace up."

Obediently she accepted the gla.s.s and drank. The soul of the stuff broke out in delicate, aromatic bubbles beneath her nostrils. There was a stinging but refres.h.i.+ng feeling in her mouth and throat. She said "champagne" sleepily to herself, and with a word of thanks returned an empty gla.s.s.

She heard the man laugh, and in confusion wondered why. If anything, she felt more sleepy than before.

He climbed back into his seat. A question crawled in her brain, tormenting. Finally she managed to enunciate a part of it:

"How much longer ...?"

"Oh, not a great ways now."

The response seemed to come from a far distance. She felt the car moving beneath her and ... no more. Sleep possessed her utterly, heavy and dreamless....

There followed several phases of semi-consciousness wherein she moved by instinct alone, seeing men as trees walking, the world as through a mist.

In one, she was being helped out of the motor-car. Then somebody was holding her arm and guiding her along a path of some sort. Planks rang hollowly beneath her feet, and the hand on her arm detained her. A voice said: "This way--just step right out; you're perfectly safe."

Mechanically she obeyed. She felt herself lurch as if to fall, and then hands caught and supported her as she stood on something that swayed.

The voice that had before spoken was advising her to sit down and take it easy. Accordingly, she sat down. Her seat was rocking like a swing, and she heard dimly the splash of waters; these merged unaccountably again into the purring of a motor....

And then somebody had an arm round her waist and she was walking, bearing heavily upon that support, partly because she sorely needed it but the more readily because she knew somehow--intuitively--that the arm was a woman's. A voice a.s.sured her from time to time: "Not much farther ..." And she was sure it was a woman's voice.... Then she was being helped to ascend a steep, long staircase....

She came to herself for a moment, probably not long after climbing the stairs. She was sitting on the edge of a bed in a small, low-ceiled room, cheaply and meagrely furnished. Staring wildly about her, she tried to realise these surroundings. There were two windows, both open, admitting floods of sea air and sunlight; beyond them she saw green boughs swaying slowly, and through the boughs patches of water, blue and gold. There was a door opposite the bed; it stood open, revealing a vista of long, bare hallway, regularly punctuated by doors.

The drumming in her temples pained and bewildered her. Her head felt dense and heavy. She tried to think and failed. But the knowledge persisted that something was very wrong with her world--something that might be remedied, set right, if only she could muster up strength to move and ... think.

Abruptly the doorway was filled by the figure of a woman, a strapping, brawny creature with the arms and shoulders of a man and a great, coa.r.s.e, good-natured face. She came directly to the bed, sat down beside the girl, pa.s.sed an arm behind her shoulders and offered her a gla.s.s.

"You've just woke up, ain't you?" she said soothingly. "Drink this and lay down and you'll feel better before long. You have had a turn, and no mistake; but you'll be all right now, never fear. Come now, drink it, and I'll help you loose your clothes a bit, so 's you can be comfortable...."

Somehow her tone inspired Eleanor with confidence. She drank, submitted to being partially undressed, and lay down. Sleep overcame her immediately: she suffered a sensation of dropping plummet-wise into a great pit of oblivion....

XIII

WRECK ISLAND

Suddenly, with a smothered cry of surprise, Eleanor sat up. She seemed to have recovered full consciousness and sensibility with an instantaneous effect comparable only to that of electric light abruptly flooding a room at night. A moment ago she had been an insentient atom sunk deep in impenetrable night; now she was herself--and it was broad daylight.

With an abrupt, automatic movement, she left the bed and stood up, staring incredulously at the substance of what still wore in her memory the guise of a dream.

But it had been no dream, after all. She was actually in the small room with the low ceiling and the door (now shut) and the windows that revealed the green of leaves and the blue and gold of a sun-spangled sea. And her coat and hat and veil had been removed and were hanging from nails in the wall behind the door, and her clothing had been unfastened--precisely as she dimly remembered everything that had happened with relation to the strange woman.

She wore a little wrist-watch. It told her that the hour was after four in the afternoon.

She began hurriedly to dress, or rather to repair the disorder of her garments, all the while struggling between surprise that she felt rested and well and strong, and a haunting suspicion that she had been tricked.

Of the truth of this suspicion, confirmatory evidence presently overwhelmed her.

Since that draught of champagne before the roadside inn shortly after sunrise, she had known nothing clearly. It was impossible that she could without knowing it have accomplished her purpose with relation to Alison Landis and the Cadogan collar. She saw now, she knew now beyond dispute, that she had been drugged--not necessarily heavily; a simple dose of harmless bromides would have served the purpose in her overtaxed condition--and brought to this place in a semi-stupor, neither knowing whither she went nor able to object had she known.

The discovery of her handbag was all that was required to trans.m.u.te fears and doubts into irrefragable knowledge.