Phantom Wires Part 20

"And do you understand what it would imply--what it would mean?" he asked slowly and with significant emphasis.

She could not repress her primal woman's instinct of revolt from the thoughts which his quiet interrogation sent at her, like an arrow. But she struggled to keep down the little shudder which woke and stirred within her. He had done nothing more than respond to her tacit challenge. But she feared him, more and more. Until then she had advanced discreetly and guardedly, and as she had advanced and taken her new position he had as guardedly fallen back and held his own. It had been a strange and silent campaign, and all along it had filled Frank with a sense of stalking and counter-stalking. Now they were plunging into the naked and primordial conflict of man against woman, without reservations and without indirections--and it left her with a vague fear of some impending helplessness and isolation. She had a sudden prompting to delay or evade that final step, to temporize and wait for some yet undefined reinforcements.

"And you realize what it means?" he repeated.

"Yes," she said in her soft contralto. A feeling of revulsion that was almost nausea was consuming her. This, then, she told herself, was the bitter and humiliating price she must pay for her tainted triumph.

"And would you accept and agree to the conditions--the only conditions?" he demanded, in a voice now hatefully tremulous with some rising and controlling emotion. She had the feeling, as she listened, that she was a naked slave girl, being jested over and bidden for on the auction block of some barbaric king. She felt that it was time to end the mockery; she no longer even pitied him.

"Listen!" she suddenly cried, "they are beginning to send the wireless!"

They listened side by side, to the brisk kick and spurt and crackle of the fluid spark leaping between the two bra.s.s k.n.o.bs in the little operating-room just above where they sat. They could hear it distinctly, above the drone of the wind and the throb of the engines and the quiet evening noises of the orderly s.h.i.+p--spitting and cluttering out into s.p.a.ce. To the impatient man it was nothing more than the ripple of unintelligent and unrelated sounds.

To the wide-eyed and listening woman it was a decorous and coherent march of dots and dashes, carrying with it thought and meaning and system. And as each word fluttered off on its restless Hertzian wings, like a flock of hurrying carrier-pigeons through the night, the woman listened and translated and read, word by word.

"Then we go it together--you and I--for all it's worth!" Keenan was saying, with his face near hers and his hand on her motionless arm.

"Listen," she said sharply. "It--it sounds like a bag of lightning getting loose, doesn't it?"

For the message which was leaping from the lonely and dipping s.h.i.+p to the receiving wires at the Highland Heights Station was one that she intended to read, word by word.

It was a simple enough message, but as it translated itself into intelligible coherence it sent a creeping thrill of conflicting fear and triumph through her. For the words which sped across s.p.a.ce from key to installation-pole read:

"Woman--named--Allen--will--bring--papers--to--P--Field's--downtown-- house--I--will--wait--word--from--you--at--Philadelphia--advise--me-- of--situation--there--and--wire--D--in--time--Kerrigan."

It was only then that she was conscious of the theatricalities from which she had emerged, of the man so close beside her, still waiting for her play-acting word of decision. It was only then, too, that she fully understood the adroitness, the smooth and supple alertness, of her ever-wary and watchful companion.

But she rose to the situation without a visible sign of flinching.

Taking one deep breath, as though it were a final and comprehensive gulp of unmenaced life, she turned to him, and gazed quietly and steadily into his questioning eyes.

"Yes, if you say it, I'm with you now, whether it's for good or bad!"

"And this is final!" he demanded. "If you begin, you'll stick to it!"

"To the bitter end!" she answered grimly. And there was something so unemotionally decisive in her tone that he no longer hesitated, no longer doubted her.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE SEVERED KNOT

It was in the gray of the early morning, as the _Slavonia_ steamed from the Upper Bay into the North River and the serrated skyline of Manhattan bit into the thin rind of sunrise to the east, that Durkin and Frank came suddenly together in a deserted companionway. She had been praying for one hour more, and then all would be set right.

"I want to see you!" he said sharply.

She looked about to make sure they were un.o.bserved.

"I know it--but I daren't run the risk--now!"

"Why not now? What has changed?" he demanded.

"I tell you we can't, Jim! We might be seen here, any minute!"

"What difference should that make?"

"It makes every difference!"

"By heaven, I've _got_ to see you!" For the first time she realized the force of the dull rage that burned within him. "I want to know what's before us, and how we're going to act!"

"I tell you, Jim, I can't talk to you here!"

"You mean you don't care to!" he flashed out.

"Can't you trust me?" she pleaded.

"Trust you? What has trust to do in a business like ours?"

"It is _your_ business--until you put an end to it!" And her voice shook with the repressed bitterness of her spirit. "I tried to see you quietly, last night, but you had gone to your cabin. I have a feeling that we're under the eye of every steward on this s.h.i.+p--I _know_ we are being watched, all the time. And if you were seen here with me, it would only drag you in, and make it harder to straighten out, in the end. Can't you see what's going on?"

"Yes, I _have_ been seeing what's going on--and I'm sick of it!"

"Oh, not _that_, Jim!" she cried, in a little m.u.f.fled wail. "You know it would never be that!"

His one dominating feeling was that which grew out of the stinging consciousness that she wanted to escape him, that the moment had come when she could make an effort to evade him. But he was only paying the penalty! He had sowed, he told himself, and it was only natural that in time he should reap! Already he was losing her! Already, it might be, he had lost her!

"Won't you be reasonable?" she was saying, and her voice sounded faint and far away. "I've got to see this through now, and one little false move would spoil everything! I must land by myself. I'll write you, at the Bartholdi, when and where to meet me!"

The noise of approaching footsteps sounded down the carpeted pa.s.sageway. He had caught her by the arm, but now he released his grip and turned away.

"Quick," she whispered, "here's somebody coming!"

She was struggling with the ends of her veil, and Durkin was aimlessly pacing away from her, when the hurrying steward brushed by them. A moment later he returned, followed by a second steward, but by this time Durkin had made his way to the upper deck, and was looking with quiescent rage at the quays and walls and skysc.r.a.pers of New York.

Before the steamer wore into the wharf Frank had seen Keenan and a last few words had pa.s.sed between them. She sternly schooled herself to calmness, for she felt her great moment had come.

At his request that her first mission be to deliver a sealed packet at the office of Richard Penfield, in the lower West Side, she evinced neither surprise nor displeasure. It was all in the day's work, she protested, as Keenan talked on, giving her more definite instructions and still again impressing on her the need for secrecy.

She took the sealed package without emotion--the little package for which she had worked so hard and lost so much and waited so long--and as apathetically secreted it. Equally without emotion she pa.s.sed Durkin, standing at the foot of the gangway. Something in his face, however, warned her of the grim mood that burned within him. She pitied him, not for his suffering, but for his blindness.

"Don't follow me!" she muttered, between her teeth, as she swept unbetrayingly by him, and hurriedly made her way out past the customs barrier. It was not until she had reached the closed carriage Keenan's steward had already ordered for her that she realized how apparently cursory and precipitate had been that hurried word of warning. But there was time for neither explanation nor display of emotion. It could all be made clear and put right, later.

She heard the nervous trample of hoofs on the wooden flooring, the battle of truck-wheels, the m.u.f.fled sound of calling voices, and she leaned back in the gloomy cab and closed her eyes with a great sense of escape, with a sense of relief tinged with triumph.

As she did so the door of her turning cab was opened, and the sudden square of light was blocked by a ma.s.sive form. She gave a startled little cry as the figure swung itself up into the seat beside her.

Then the curtained door swung shut, with a slam. It seemed like the snap of a steel trap.