The Dark Star by Robert W. Chambers (ink ebook reader txt) 📕

vot iss yours iss mine!”

There came a knock at his door; he rose and opened it, supposing it to be the porter; and was seized in the powerful grasp of two men and jerked into the dark corridor.

One of them had closed his mouth with a gloved hand, 187 crushing him with an iron grip around the neck; the other caught his legs and lifted him bodily; and, as they slung him between them, his startled eyes caught sight of Ilse Dumont entering his drawing-room.

It was a silent, fierce struggle through the corridor to the front platform of the vestibule train; it took both men to hold, overpower, and completely master him; but they tried to do this and, at the same time, lift the trap that discloses the car steps. And could not manage it.

The instant Neeland realised what they were trying to do, he divined their shocking intention in regard to himself, and the struggle became terrible there in the swaying vestibule. Twice he nearly got at the automatic pistol in his breast pocket, but could not quite grasp it. They slammed him and thrashed him around between them, apparently determined to open the trap, fling him from the train, and let him take his chances with the wheels.

Then, of a sudden, came a change in the fortunes of war; they were trying to drag him over the chain sagging between the forward mail-car and the Pullman, when one of them caught his foot on it and stumbled backward, releasing Neeland’s right arm. In the same instant he drove his fist into the face of his other assailant so hard that the man’s head jerked backward as though his neck were broken, and he fell flat on his back.

Already the train was slowing down for the single stop between Albany and New York—Hudson. Neeland got out his pistol and pointed it shakily at the man who had fallen backward over the chain.

“Jump!” he panted. “Jump quick!”

The man needed no other warning; he opened the 188 trap, scrambled and wriggled down the mail-car steps, and was off the train like a snake from a sack.

The other man, bloody and ghastly white, crept under the chain after his companion. He was a well-built, good-looking man of forty, with blue eyes and a golden beard all over blood. He seemed sick from the terrific blow dealt him; but as the train had almost stopped, Neeland pushed him off with the flat of his foot.

Drenched in perspiration, dishevelled, bruised, he slammed both traps and ran back into the dark corridor, and met Ilse Dumont coming out of his stateroom carrying the olive-wood box.

His appearance appeared to stupefy her; he took the box from her without resistance, and, pushing her back into the stateroom, locked the door.

Then, still savagely excited, and the hot blood of battle still seething in his veins, he stood staring wickedly into her dazed eyes, the automatic pistol hanging from his right fist.

But after a few moments something in her naïve astonishment—her amazement to see him alive and standing there before her—appealed to him as intensely ludicrous; he dropped on the edge of the bed and burst into laughter uncontrolled.

“Scheherazade! Oh, Scheherazade!” he said, weak with laughter, “if you could only see your face! If you could only see it, my dear child! It’s too funny to be true! It’s too funny to be a real face! Oh, dear, I’ll die if I laugh any more. You’ll assassinate me with your face!”

She seated herself on the lounge opposite, still gazing blankly at him in his uncontrollable mirth.

After a while he put back the automatic into his 189 breast pocket, took off coat and waistcoat, without paying the slightest heed to her or to convention; opened his own suitcase, selected a fresh shirt, tie, and collar, and, taking with him his coat and the olive-wood box, went into the little washroom.

He scarcely expected to find her there when he emerged, cooled and refreshed; but she was still there, seated as he had left her on the lounge.

“I wanted to ask you,” she said in a low voice, “did you kill them?”

“Not at all, Scheherazade,” he replied gaily. “The Irish don’t kill; they beat up their friends; that’s all. Fist and blackthorn, my pretty lass, but nix for the knife and gun.”

“How—did you do it?”

“Well, I got tired having a ham-fisted Dutchman pawing me and closing my mouth with his big splay fingers. So I asked him to slide overboard and shoved his friend after him.”

“Did you shoot them?”

“No, I tell you!” he said disgustedly. “I hadn’t a chance in hot blood, and I couldn’t do it in cold. No, Scheherazade, I didn’t shoot. I pulled a gun for dramatic effect, that’s all.”

After a silence she asked him in a low voice what he intended to do with her.

“Do? Nothing! Chat affably with you until we reach town, if you don’t mind. Nothing more violent than that, Scheherazade.”

The girl, sitting sideways on the sofa, leaned her head against the velvet corner as though very tired. Her small hands lay in her lap listlessly, palms up-turned.

“Are you really tired?” he asked. 190

“Yes, a little.”

He took the two pillows from his bed and placed them on the sofa.

“You may lie down if you like, Scheherazade.”

“Won’t you need them?”

“Sunburst of my soul, if I pillow my head on anything while you are in the vicinity, it will be on that olive-wood box!”

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. 191

“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 192 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.