Phantom Wires: A Novel

  CHAPTER XII

  THE DOORWAY OF SURPRISE

  "May I speak to you a moment?" asked Keenan, taking a step nearer to heras he spoke. She seemed able, even under his quiet composure, to detectsome note of alarm.

  "Will you come in?" she asked, holding the door wide for him.

  "If you don't mind the intrusion."

  She had closed the door, and stood facing him, interrogatively.

  "What I am going to ask you, Miss Allen, is something unusual. But thispast week has shown me that you are an unusual woman." He hesitated, indoubt as to how to proceed.

  "In America," she said, laughing a little, to widen his avenue ofapproach, "you would call me emancipated, wouldn't you?"

  He bowed and laughed a little in return.

  "But let me explain," he went on. "I am in what you might call adilemma. For some reason or other certain persons here are watching andfollowing me, night and day. In America--which, thank God, is a land oflaw and order--this sort of thing wouldn't disturb me. But here"--hegave a little shrug--"well, you know what they say about Italy!"

  "Then I wasn't mistaken!" she cried, with a well-rung note of alarm.

  He looked at her, narrowly.

  "Ah, I suspected you'd have an inkling! But what I have here makes thecase exceptional--and, perhaps, a little dangerous!"

  He drew from his pocket a yellow-tinted manila envelope, of "legal" size.Frank's quick glance told her that it was by no means empty.

  "It may sound theatrical, and you may laugh at me, but will you takepossession of these papers for me, for a few days? No, let me explainfirst. They are important, I confess, for, although valuelesscommercially, they contain personal and private letters that are worth agood deal to me!"

  "But this means a great responsibility," demurred Frank.

  "Yes; but no danger--at least to you, since you are in no way undersuspicion. You said that in five days you would probably be in Naples.Supposing that I arrange to meet you at, say, the Hotel de Londres there,and then repay you for your trouble."

  "But it's so unusual; so almost absurd," still demurred the acting woman.The eavesdropper from the closet felt that it was an instance of diamondcutting diamond. How hard and polished and finished, he thought, actorand actress confronted each other.

  "Will you take the risk?" the man was asking.

  She looked from him to the packet and then back to him again.

  "Yes, if you insist--if it is really helping you out!" she replied, withstill simulated bewilderment.

  He thanked her with something more than his professional, placidcrispness, and put the packet in her outstretched hand.

  "Is that all?"

  "Yes, everything."

  "In Naples, in five days?"

  "Yes; the Hotel de Londres. And now I must leave you."

  He startled her by taking her hand and wringing it. She was stilllooking down at the packet as he withdrew, and the door closed behind him.

  She listened for a moment, and then turned the key in the lock. Durkin,stepping from his place of concealment, confronted her. They stoodgazing at each other in blank astonishment.

  Frank's first impulse was to tear open the envelope. But on secondthoughts she flew to her alcohol tea-lamp and lighted the flame. It wasonly a minute or two before a jet of steam came from the tiny kettlespout. Over this she shifted and held the gummed envelope-flap, untilthe mucilage softened and dissolved. Then, holding her breath, shepeeled back the flap, and from the envelope drew three soiled butcarefully folded copies of the London _Daily Chronicle_. The envelopeheld nothing more.

  A little cry of disappointment escaped Durkin, while Frank turned thepapers over in her fingers, in speechless amazement. The very audacityof the man swept her off her feet.

  It was both a warning and a challenge, grim with its suggestiveness,eloquent with careless defiance. That was her first thought.

  "The fool--he's making fun of you!" said Durkin, with a second passionateoath.

  Frank was slowly refolding the papers, and replacing them in the envelope.

  "I don't believe that's it," she said, meditatively. "I believe he istrying me--making this a test!"

  She carefully moistened the gum and resealed the envelope, so that itbore no trace of having revealed its contents. She stood gazing at herhusband with studious and unseeing eyes.

  "If he comes back I'll know that I am right," she cried, with suddenconviction. "If he finds that I am still here, and that his packet isstill intact and safe, he'll do what he wants to do. And that is, he'lltrust me with the whole of his securities!"

  She quenched the alcohol flame and replaced the lamp in its case.

  "If he comes back," mocked Durkin. "Do you know what you and I ought tobe doing, at this moment? We ought to be following that man every stephe takes."

  "But where?" She shook her head, slowly, in dissent.

  "That's for us to find out. But can't you feel that he's left us in thelurch, that we're shut up here, while he's giving us the laugh andgetting away?"

  "Jim, listen to me. During this past week I've seen more of Keenan thanyou have."

  "Yes, a vast sight more!" he interjected, heatedly.

  "And I feel sure," she went on evenly, "that he is more frightened andworried than he pretends to be. He is, after all, only a tricky andferrety Irish lawyer, who is afraid of every power outside his own littlecircuit of experience. He's afraid of Italy. I suppose he hasnightmares about _brigantaggio_, even! He's afraid of foreigners--afraidof this sort of conspiracy of silence that seems surrounding him. He'seven afraid to take his precious documents and put them in a safe-depositvault in any one of the regularly established institutions here in Genoa.There are plenty of them, but he isn't big and bold enough to do hisbusiness that way. He's been a fugitive so long his only way of warfarenow is flight. And besides, he can never forget that his work isunderground and illicit. That is why he carries his documents about withhim, on him, in his pockets, like a sneak thief with a pocketful ofstolen goods. I don't mean to say that he isn't smooth and crafty, andthat he won't fight like a rat when he's cornered! But I do believe thatif he and Penfield could get in touch today, here in Genoa, he would handover every dollar of those securities, and give up the job, and get backto his familiar old lairs among the New York poolrooms and wardheelersand petty criminals where he knows his enemies and his friends!"

  Durkin strode toward the door impatiently. He hesitated for a moment,but had already stretched out his hand to turn the key when he drew back,silently, step by step.

  For a second time, on the panel, without, the low knock was sounding.

  Frank watched the closet door draw to and close on Durkin; then shecalled out, with assumed and cheery unconcern, "Come in."

  She did not look up for a moment, for she was still busy with her hair.

  The door opened and closed.

  "I trust I do not intrude?"

  Frank's brush fell from her hand, before she even slowly wheeled andlooked, for it was the suave and well-modulated baritone of Pobloff.

  "What does this mean?" she demanded vacantly, retreating before hissteady and scornful gaze.

  "Simply, madam, that you and I seem seldom able to anticipate eachother's calls!"

  She made a pretense of going to the electric signal.

  "It is quite useless," explained the Russian quietly. "The wires aredisconnected."

  He took out his watch and glanced at it. "Indeed, as a demonstrationthat others enjoy privileges which you sometimes exert, in two minutesevery light in this room will be cut off!"

  The woman was panting a little by this time, for her thoughts were ofDurkin and his danger, as much as of herself. She struggled desperatelyto regain her self-possession, for there was no mistaking the quiet butgrim determination written on the Russian's pallid face. And she knew hewas not alone in whatever plot he had laid.

  She would have spoken, only the sudden flood of blackness that su
bmergedher startled her into silence. The lights had gone out.

  She demanded of herself quickly, what should be her first move.

  While she stood in momentary suspense, a knock sounded still once more onher door.

  "Come in," she called out quickly, loudly, now alert and alive to everymovement.

  It was Keenan who stepped in from the half-lighted hall. He would havepaused, in involuntary amazement, at the utter darkness that greeted him,only footsteps approaching and passing compelled him to act quickly.

  He stepped inside and closed and locked the door.

  She had not been mistaken. He _had_ come back.