Phantom Wires Part 8

"You will not be a prisoner, for then you would not be a partner. The coalition between us must be as silent as it is essential. But first, permit me!"

She still shrank back from his touch, consumed with a new and unlooked-for fear of him. And all the while she was telling herself that she must remain calm, and make no mistake.

The remembrance came to her, as she stood there, of how she had once thought it possible to approach him in a more indirect and adroit fas.h.i.+on, as the wayward and life-loving Lady Boxspur. She shuddered a little, as she recalled that foolish mistake, and pictured the perils into which it might have led her. She could detect more clearly now the odor of brandy on his quickening breath. His face, death-like in its pallor, flashed before and above her like a semaphoric sign of imminent danger. Action of some sort, however obvious, was necessary.

"I want a drink," she gasped, with a movement toward the cabinet.

He turned and caught up the heavy gla.s.s brandy-decanter, emitting a nervous and irresponsible laugh.

In one hand he held the decanter, in the other the half-filled tumbler.

That, at least, implied an appreciable s.p.a.ce of time before those hands could be freed. In that, she felt, lay her hope.

Quicker than thought she darted to the door over which still swung the shrouding blanket. She knew the key had already been turned in the lock, from the outside; the only thing between her and the freedom of the open hall was one small bolt shaft.

But before she could open the door Pobloff, with a little grunt of startled rage, was upon her. She fought and scratched like a cat. The blanket tumbled down and curtained them, the plumed hat fell from the woman's disheveled head, a chair was overturned. But he was too strong and too quick for her. With one lithe arm he pinioned her two hands close down to her sides, crus.h.i.+ng the very breath out of her body.

With his other he beat off the m.u.f.fling blanket, and dragged her away from the door. Then he shook her, pa.s.sionately, and held her off from him, and glared at her.

One year earlier in her career she knew she would surely have fainted from terror and exhaustion. Even as it was, she seemed about to school herself for some relieving and final surrender to the inevitable, only, her vacantly staring eyes, looking past him, by accident caught sight of a little movement which brought her drooping courage into life again.

For she had seen the window-shutter slowly widen, and then a cautious hand appear on the ledge. She watched the shutter swing in, further and further, and then the stealthy figure, with its padded feet, emerge out of the darkness into the half-lighted room. She could even see the pallor of the intruder's face, and his quick movement of warning that reminded her of the part she must play.

"I give up!" she gasped, in simulated surrender, falling and drooping with all her weight in Pobloff's arms.

He caught her and held her, bewildered, triumphant.

"You mean it?" he cried, searching her face.

"Yes, I mean it!" she murmured. Then she shuddered a little, involuntarily, for she had seen Durkin catch up one of his shoes, hammer-like, where it protruded from the side pocket of his coat--and she knew only too well how he would make use of it.

As Pobloff bent over her, unwarned, unsuspecting, almost wondering for what she was waiting with such confidently closed eyes, Durkin crossed the carpeted floor. It was then that the woman flung up her own arms and encircled the stooping Russian in a fierce and pa.s.sionate grasp.

He laughed a little, deep in his throat. She told herself that she was at least imprisoning his hands.

Durkin's blow caught the bending figure just at the base of the skull, behind the ear. The impact whipped the head back, and sent the relaxing body forward and down. It struck the floor, and lay there, huddled, face down. The woman scrambled to her feet, breathing hard.

"Close the shutters!" said Durkin quickly.

Then he turned the unconscious man over on his back. Then he caught up a couple of towels and securely tied, first the inert wrists and then the feet. Quickly knotting a third towel, he wedged and drilled a sharp knuckle joint into the flesh of the colorless cheek, between the upper and lower incisors. When the jaw had opened he thrust the knot into the gaping mouth, securely tying the ends of the towel at the back of the neck.

"Have you everything?" whispered Frank, who had once more pinned on the plumed hat, and was already listening at the panel of the hall door.

There was no time to be lost in talk.

"Yes, I think so."

"Your baggage?"

"My baggage will have to be left, but, G.o.d knows, there's little enough of it!"

He wiped his forehead, and looked down at the bound figure, already showing signs of returning consciousness. They heard laughter, and the sound of footsteps pa.s.sing down the hall without.

Durkin stood beside his wife, and they listened together behind the closed door.

"Not for a minute--not yet," he whispered. Then he looked at her curiously.

"I wonder if you know just what a close call that was!"

"Yes, I know," she said, with her ear against the panel.

He peered back at the figure, and took a deep breath.

"And this is only an intermission--this is only an overture, to what we may have to face! Now's our chance. For the love of heaven, let's get out of here. We've got hard work ahead of us, at Genoa--and we've got only till Friday to get there!"

He did not notice her look, her momentary look of mingled reproof and weariness and disdain.

"Now, quick!" she merely said, as she flung the door open and stepped out into the hall. Luckily, it was empty, from end to end.

Durkin, with a.s.sumed nonchalance, walked quietly away. She waited to turn the key in the door, and withdrew it from the lock. Then she followed her husband down the corridor, and a minute or two later rejoined him in the fragrant and balmy midnight air of Monaco.

CHAPTER IX

THE LARK IN THE RUINS

It was not until Frances Durkin and her husband were installed in an empty first-cla.s.s compartment, twining and curling and speeding on their way to Genoa, that even a comparative sense of safety came to them. It was Durkin's suggestion that it might not be amiss for them to give the impression of being a newly-married couple, on their honeymoon journey; and, to this end, he had half-filled the compartment with daffodils and jonquils, with carnations and violets and roses, purchased with one turn of the hand from a midnight flower-vender, on his way down from the hills for any early morning traffic that might offer.

So as they sped toward the Italian frontier, in the white and mellow Mediterranean moonlight, threading their way between the tranquil violet sea bejeweled with guardian lights and the steep and silent slopes of the huddled mountains, they lounged back on their hired train-pillows, self-immured, and unperturbed, and quietly contented with themselves and their surroundings. At least, so it seemed to the eyes of each scrutinizing guard and official, who, after one sharp glance at the flower-filled compartment and the crooning young English lovers, pa.s.sed on with a laugh and a shrug or two.

Yet, at heart, Durkin and Frank were anything but happy. As they sped on, and his wife pointed out to him that the selfsame road they were taking between confining rock and sea was the same narrow pa.s.sage, so time-worn and war-scarred, once taken by Greeks and Ligurians, Romans and Saracens, it seemed to Durkin that his first fine estimate of the life of war and adventure had been a false one. His old besetting doubts and scruples began to awake. It was true that the life they had plunged into would have its dash and whirl. But it would be the dash of a moment, and the whirl of a second. Then, as it always must be, there would come the long interval of flight and concealment, the wearying stretch of inactivity. He felt, as he gazed out the car window and saw town and village and hamlet left behind them, that the same wave of excitement that cast him up would forever in turn drag him down--and it all resulted, he told himself, in his pa.s.sing distemper of fatigue and anxiety, in a little further abrasion, in a little sterner denudation of their tortured souls!

It was at Ventimiglia that the _capostazione_ himself appeared at the door of their compartment, accompanied by a uniformed official. The two fugitives, with their hearts in their mouths, leaned back on their cus.h.i.+ons with a.s.sumed unconcern, cooing and chattering hand in hand among their flowers, while a volley of quick and angry questions, in Italian, was flung in at them from the opened compartment door. To this they paid not the slightest attention, for several moments. Frank turned to her interrogators, smiled at them gently and impersonally, and then shook her head impatiently, with an outthrust of the hands which was meant to convey to them that each and every word they uttered was quite incomprehensible to her.

The _capostazione_, who, by this time, had pushed into their compartment, was heatedly demanding either their pa.s.sports or their tickets.

Frank, who had buried her face raptly in her armful of jonquils, looked up at him with gentle exasperation.

"We are English," she said blankly. "Englis.h.!.+ We can't understand!"

And she returned to her flowers and her husband once more.

The two uniformed intruders conferred for a moment, while the _conduttore_, on the platform outside, naturally enough expostulated over the delay of the train.

"These fools--these aren't the two!" Frank heard the _capostazione_ declare, in Italian, under his breath, as they swung down on the station platform. Then the shrill little thin-noted engine-whistle sounded, the wheels began to turn, and they were once more speeding through the white moonlight, deeper and deeper into Italy.

"I wonder," said Frank, after a long silence, "how often we shall be able to do this sort of thing? I wonder how long luck--mere luck, will be with us?"

"_Is_ it luck?" asked her husband. She was still leaning back on his shoulder, with her hand clasping his. Accompanying her consciousness of escape came a new lightness of spirit. There seemed to come over her, too, a new sense of grat.i.tude for the nearness of this sentient and mysterious life, of this living and breathing man, that could both command and satisfy some even more mysterious emotional hunger in her own heart.

"Yes," she answered, as she laughed a little, almost contentedly; "we're like the gla.s.s snake. We seem to break off at the point where we're caught, and escape, and go on again as before. I was only wondering how many times a gla.s.s snake can leave its tail in its enemy's teeth, and still grow another one!"