The Dark Star by Robert W. Chambers (best fiction novels of all time TXT) 📖

quick! Undress and throw out every rag you wear!”

She drew a deep, quivering breath, turned, entered the pantry and closed the door. Presently the door opened a little and her clothing dropped outside in a heap.

There were papers in her stockings, papers stitched to her stays, basted inside her skirts. A roll of drawings traced on linen lay on the floor, still retaining the warmth of her body around which they had been wrapped. 170

He pulled the faded embroidered cover from the old piano and knocked at the pantry door.

“Put that on,” he said, “and come out.”

She emerged, swathed from ankle to chin, her flushed face shadowed by her fallen mass of dark hair. He turned his flash light on the cupboard, but discovered nothing more. Then he picked up her hat, clothes, and shoes, laid them on the pantry shelf, and curtly bade her go back and dress.

“May I have the lamp and that looking glass?”

“If you like,” he said, preoccupied with the papers.

While she was dressing, he repacked the olive-wood box. She emerged presently, carrying the lamp, and he took it from her hurriedly, not knowing whether she might elect to throw it at his head.

While she was putting on her jacket he stood watching her with perplexed and sombre gaze.

“I think,” he remarked, “that I’ll take you with me and drop you at the Orangeville jail on my way to town. Be kind enough to start toward the door.”

As she evinced no inclination to stir he passed one arm around her and lifted her along a few feet; and she turned on him, struggling, her face convulsed with fury.

“Keep your insolent hands off me,” she said. “Do you hear?”

“Oh, yes, I hear.” He nodded again toward the door. “Come,” he repeated impatiently; “move on!”

She hesitated; he picked up the olive-wood box, extinguished the lamp, opened his flash, and motioned with his head, significantly. She walked ahead of him, face lowered.

Outside he closed and locked the door of the house.

“This way,” he said coldly. “If you refuse, I’ll pick 171 you up and carry you under my arm. I think by this time you realise I can do it, too.”

Halfway across the dark pasture she stopped short in her tracks.

“Have I got to carry you?” he demanded sharply.

“Don’t have me locked up.”

“Why not?”

“I’m not a—a thief.”

“Oh! Excuse me. What are you?”

“You know. Don’t humiliate me.”

“Answer my question! What are you if you’re not a lady crook?”

“I’m employed—as you are! Play the game fairly.” She halted in the dark pasture, but he motioned her to go forward.

“If you don’t keep on walking,” he said, “I’ll pick you up as I would a pet cat and carry you. Now, then, once more, who are you working for? By whom are you employed, if you’re not a plain thief?”

“The—Turkish Embassy.”

“What!”

“You knew it,” she said in a low voice, walking through the darkness beside him.

“What is your name?” he insisted.

“Dumont.”

“What else?”

“Ilse Dumont.”

“That’s French.”

“It’s Alsatian German.”

“All right. Now, why did you break into that house?”

“To take what you took.”

“To steal these papers for the Turkish Embassy?”

“To take them.” 172

“For the Turkish Ambassador!” he repeated incredulously.

“No; for his military attaché.”

“What are you, a spy?”

“You knew it well enough. You are one, also. But you have treated me as though I were a thief. You’ll be killed for it, I hope.”

“You think I’m a spy?” he asked, astonished.

“What else are you?”

“A spy?” he repeated. “Is that what you are? And you suppose me to be one, too? That’s funny. That’s extremely––” He checked himself, looked around at her. “What are you about?” he demanded. “What’s that in your hand?”

“A cigarette.”

They had arrived at the road. He got over the wall with the box; she vaulted it lightly.

In the darkness he caught the low, steady throbbing of his engine, and presently distinguished the car standing where he had left it.

“Get in,” he said briefly.

“I am not a thief! Are you going to lay that charge against me?”

“I don’t know. Is it worse than charging you with three separate attempts to murder me?”

“Are you going to take me to jail?”

“I’ll see. You’ll go as far as Orangeville with me, anyhow.”

“I don’t care to go.”

“I don’t care whether you want to go or not. Get into the car!”

She climbed to the seat beside the wheel; he tossed in the olive-wood box, turned on his lamps, and took the wheel. 173

“May I have a match for my cigarette?” she asked meekly.

He found one, scratched it; she placed a very thick and long cigarette between her lips and he lighted it for her.

Just as he threw in the clutch and the car started, the girl blew a shower of sparks from the end of her cigarette, rose in her seat, and flung the lighted cigarette high into the air. Instantly it burst into a flare of crimson fire, hanging aloft as though it were a fire balloon, and lighting up road and creek and bushes and fields with a brilliant strontium glare.

Then, far in the night, he heard a motor horn screech three times.

“You young devil!” he said, increasing the speed. “I ought to have remembered that every snake has its mate.... If you offer to touch me—if you move—if you as much as lift a finger, I’ll throw you into the creek!”

The car was flying now, reeling over the dirt road like a drunken thing. He hung grimly to the wheel, his strained gaze fixed on the shaft of light ahead, through which the road streamed like a torrent.

A great wind roared in his ears; his cap was gone. The car hurled itself forward through an endless tunnel of darkness lined with silver. Presently he began to slow down; the furious wind died away; the streaking darkness sped by less swiftly.

“Have you gone mad?” she cried in his ear. “You’ll kill us both!”

“Wait,” he shouted back; “I’ll show you and your friends behind us what speed really is.”

The car was still slowing down as they passed over a wooden bridge where a narrow road, partly washed out, 174 turned to the left and ran along a hillside. Into this he steered.

“Who is it chasing us?” he asked curiously, still incredulous that any embassy whatever was involved in this amazing affair.

“Friends.”

“More Turks?”

She did not reply.

He sat still, listening for a few moments, then hastily started his car down the hill.

“Now,” he said, “I’ll show you what this car of mine really can do! Are you afraid?”

She said between her teeth:

“I’d be a fool if I were not. All I pray for is that you’ll kill yourself, too.”

“We’ll chance it together, my murderous little friend.”

The wind began to roar again as they rushed downward over a hill that seemed endless. She clung to her seat and he hung to his wheel like grim death; and, for one terrible instant, she almost lost consciousness.

Then the terrific pace slackened; the car, running swiftly, was now speeding over a macadam road; and Neeland laughed and cried in her ear:

“Better light another of your hell’s own cigarettes if you want your friends to follow us!”

Slowing, he drove with one hand on the wheel.

“Look up there!” he said, pointing high at a dark hillside. “See their lights? They’re on the worst road in the Gayfield hills. We cut off three miles this way.”

Still driving with one hand, he looked at his watch, laughed contentedly, and turned to her with the sudden and almost friendly toleration born of success and a danger shared in common. 175

“That was rather a reckless bit of driving,” he admitted. “Were you frightened?”

“Ask yourself how you’d feel with a fool at the wheel.”

“We’re all fools at times,” he retorted, laughing. “You were when you shot at me. Suppose I’d been seized with panic. I might have turned loose on you, too.”

For a while she remained silent, then she looked at him curiously:

“Were you armed?”

“I carry an automatic pistol in my portfolio pocket.”

She shrugged.

“You were a fool to come into that house without carrying it in your hand.”

“Where would you be now if I had done that?”

“Dead, I suppose,” she said carelessly.... “What are you going to do with me?”

He was in excellent humour with himself; exhilaration and excitement still possessed him, keyed him up.

“Fancy,” he said, “a foreign embassy being mixed up in a plain case of grand larceny!—robbing with attempt to murder! My dear but bloodthirsty young lady, I can hardly comprehend it.”

She remained silent, looking straight in front of her.

“You know,” he said, “I’m rather glad you’re not a common thief. You’ve lots of pluck—plenty. You’re as clever as a cobra. It isn’t every poisonous snake that is clever,” he added, laughing.

“What do you intend to do with me?” she repeated coolly.

“I don’t know. You are certainly an interesting companion. Maybe I’ll take you to New York with me. You see I’m beginning to like you.” 176

She was silent.

He said:

“I never before met a real spy. I scarcely believed they existed in time of peace, except in novels. Really, I never imagined there were any spies working for embassies, except in Europe. You are, to me, such a rare specimen,” he added gaily, “that I rather dread parting with you. Won’t you come to Paris with me?”

“Does what you say amuse you?”

“What you say does. Yes, I think I’ll take you to New York, anyway. And as we journey toward that great metropolis together you shall tell me all about your delightful profession. You shall be a Scheherazade to me! Is it a bargain?”

She said in a pleasant, even voice:

“I might as well tell you now that what you’ve been stupid enough to do tonight is going to cost you your life.”

“What!” he exclaimed laughingly. “More murder? Oh, Scheherazade! Shame on your naughty, naughty behaviour!”

“Do you expect to reach Paris with those papers?”

“I do, fair houri! I do, Rose of Stamboul!”

“You never will.”

“No?”

“No.” She sat staring ahead of her for a few moments, then turned on him with restrained impatience:

“Listen to me, now! I don’t know who you are. If you’re employed by any government you are a novice––”

“Or an artist!”

“Or a consummate artist,” she admitted, looking at him uncertainly.

“I am an artist,” he said. 177

“You have an excellent opinion of yourself.”

“No. I’m telling you the truth. My name is Neeland—James Neeland. I draw little pictures for a living—nice little pictures for newspapers and magazines.”

His frankness evidently perplexed her.

“If that is so,” she said, “what interests you in the papers you took from me?”

“Nothing at all, my dear young lady! I’m not interested in them. But friends of mine are.”

“Who?”

He merely laughed at her.

“Are you an agent for any government?”

“Not that I know of.”

She said very quietly:

“You make a terrible mistake to involve yourself in this affair. If you are not paid to do it—if you are not interested from patriotic motives—you had better keep aloof.”

“But it’s too late. I am mixed up in it—whatever it may mean. Why not tell me, Scheherazade?”

His humorous badinage seemed only to make her more serious.

“Mr. Neeland,” she said quietly, “if you really are what you say you are, it is a dangerous and silly thing that you have done tonight.”

“Don’t say that! Don’t consider it so tragically. I’m enjoying it all immensely.”

“Do you consider it a comedy when a woman tries to kill you?”

“Maybe you are fond of murder, gentle lady.”

“Your sense of humour seems a trifle perverted. I am more serious than I ever was in my life. And I tell you very solemnly that you’ll be killed if you try to 178 take those papers to Paris. Listen!”—she laid one hand lightly on his arm—“Why should you involve yourself—you, an American? This matter is no concern of yours––”

“What matter?”

“The matter concerning those papers. I tell you it does not concern you; it is none of your business. Let me be frank with you: the