Phantom Wires: A Novel

  CHAPTER IX

  THE LARK IN THE RUINS

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

  So as they sped toward the Italian frontier, in the white and mellowMediterranean moonlight, threading their way between the tranquilviolet sea bejeweled with guardian lights and the steep and silentslopes of the huddled mountains, they lounged back on their hiredtrain-pillows, self-immured, and unperturbed, and quietly contentedwith themselves and their surroundings. At least, so it seemed to theeyes of each scrutinizing guard and official, who, after one sharpglance at the flower-filled compartment and the crooning young Englishlovers, passed on with a laugh and a shrug or two.

  Yet, at heart, Durkin and Frank were anything but happy. As they spedon, and his wife pointed out to him that the selfsame road they weretaking between confining rock and sea was the same narrow passage, sotime-worn and war-scarred, once taken by Greeks and Ligurians, Romansand Saracens, it seemed to Durkin that his first fine estimate of thelife of war and adventure had been a false one. His old besettingdoubts and scruples began to awake. It was true that the life they hadplunged into would have its dash and whirl. But it would be the dashof a moment, and the whirl of a second. Then, as it always must be,there would come the long interval of flight and concealment, thewearying stretch of inactivity. He felt, as he gazed out the carwindow and saw town and village and hamlet left behind them, that thesame wave of excitement that cast him up would forever in turn drag himdown--and it all resulted, he told himself, in his passing distemper offatigue and anxiety, in a little further abrasion, in a little sternerdenudation of their tortured souls!

  It was at Ventimiglia that the _capostazione_ himself appeared at thedoor of their compartment, accompanied by a uniformed official. Thetwo fugitives, with their hearts in their mouths, leaned back on theircushions with assumed unconcern, cooing and chattering hand in handamong their flowers, while a volley of quick and angry questions, inItalian, was flung in at them from the opened compartment door. Tothis they paid not the slightest attention, for several moments. Frankturned to her interrogators, smiled at them gently and impersonally,and then shook her head impatiently, with an outthrust of the handswhich was meant to convey to them that each and every word they utteredwas quite incomprehensible to her.

  The _capostazione_, who, by this time, had pushed into theircompartment, was heatedly demanding either their passports or theirtickets.

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

  "We are English," she said blankly. "English! 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 expostulatedover 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 thestation platform. Then the shrill little thin-noted engine-whistlesounded, the wheels began to turn, and they were once more speedingthrough the white moonlight, deeper and deeper into Italy.

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

  "_Is_ it luck?" asked her husband. She was still leaning back on hisshoulder, with her hand clasping his. Accompanying her consciousnessof escape came a new lightness of spirit. There seemed to come overher, too, a new sense of gratitude for the nearness of this sentientand mysterious life, of this living and breathing man, that could bothcommand and satisfy some even more mysterious emotional hunger in herown heart.

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

  And although she laughed again Durkin knew how thinly that covering offacetiousness spread over her actual sobriety of character. It waslike a solitary drop of oil on quiet water--there was not much of it,but what there was must always be on the surface.

  In fact, her mood changed even as he looked down at her, troubled bythe shadow of utter weariness that rested on her colorless face.

  "What would we do, Jim," she asked, after a second long and unbrokensilence, "what would we do if this thing ever brought us face to facewith MacNutt again?"

  "But why should we cross that bridge before we come to it?" wasDurkin's answer.

  She seemed unable, however, to bar back from her mind some disturbingand unwelcome vision of that meeting. She felt, in a way, that shepossessed one faculty which the rapid and impetuous nature of herhusband could not claim. It was almost a weakness in him, she toldherself, the subsidiary indiscretion of a fecund and grimly resourcefulmind. Like a river in flood, it had its strange and incongruous backcurrents, born of its very oneness of too hurrying purpose. Itconsidered too deeply the imminent and not the remoter and seeminglymore trivial contingency.

  "But can't you see, Jim, that the further we follow this up the closerand closer it's bringing us to MacNutt?"

  "MacNutt is ancient history to us now! We're over and done with him,for all time!"

  "You are wrong there, Jim. You misjudge the situation, and youmisjudge the man. That is one fact we have to face, one hard fact;MacNutt is not over and done _with us_!"

  "But haven't you made a sort of myth of him? Isn't he only a fable tous now? And haven't we got real facts to face?"

  "Ah," she said protestingly, "there is just the trouble. You alwaysrefuse to look _this_ fact in the face!"

  "Well, what are the facts?" he asked conciliatingly, coercing hisattention, and demanding of himself what allowance he must make forthat morbid perversion of view which came of a too fatigued body andmind.

  "The facts are these," she began, with a solemnity of tone thatstartled him into keener attentiveness. "You found me in MacNutt'soffice when he was planning and plotting and preparing for the biggestwire-tapping _coup_ in all his career. You were dragged into that plotagainst your will, almost, just as I had been. But MacNutt gave us ourparts, and we worked together there. Then--then you made love tome--don't deny it, Jim, for, after all, it was the happiest part of allmy life!--and we both saw how wrong we were, and we both wanted tofight for our freedom. So I followed you when you revolted againstMacNutt and his leadership."

  "No, Frank, it was _you_ who led--if it hadn't been for you there wouldnever have been any revolt!" he broke in.

  "We fought together, then, tooth and nail, and in the end wesurrendered everything but our own liberty--just to start over withfree hands. But it wasn't our mere escape to freedom that maddenedMacNutt; it was the thought that we had beaten him at his own game,that we had stalked him while he was so busy stalking Penfield. Thenhe trapped us, for a moment, and it was sheer good luck that he didn'tkill me that afternoon in his dismantled operating-room, before Dooganand his men attacked the house. But, as you know, he kept after us,and he cornered you again, and you would have killed _him_, in turn, ifI hadn't saved you from the sin of it, and the disgrace of it. Then wethought we were safe, just because the world was big and wide; becausewe had made our escape to Europe we thought that we were out of hiscircuit, that we were beyond his key-call--but here we are being ledand dragged back to him, through Keenan. But now, just because thereis still
an ocean between us, you begin to believe that he has given upevery thought of getting even!"

  "Well, isn't it about time he did? We've beaten him twice, at his owngame, and I see no reason why we shouldn't do it again!"

  "But how often can we be the glass snake? I mean, how many times canwe afford to leave something behind, and break away, and hope to growwhole and sound again? And when will MacNutt get us where we can'tbreak away? I tell you, Jim, you don't know this man as I know him!You haven't understood yet what a cruelly designing and artful andvindictive and long-waiting enemy he can be. You haven't seen himbreak and crush people, as I once did. It's the memory of that makesme so afraid of him!"

  "There's just the trouble, Frank," cried Durkin. "The man hasterrified and intimidated you, until you think he is the only enemy youhave. I don't deny he isn't dangerous, but so is Pobloff, and so isDoogan, for that matter, and this man Keenan as well!"

  "But they would never crush and smash you, as MacNutt will, if thechance comes!" she persisted passionately. "You don't see andunderstand it, because you are so close to it and so deep in it. It'slike traveling along this little Riviera railway. It's so crooked andtunneled and close under the mountains that even though we went up anddown it, for a year, from Nice to Nervi, we could never say that we hadseen the Riviera!"

  Durkin looked out at the terraced hills, at the undulating fields andthe heaped masses of blue mountains under the white Italian moonlight,and did not speak for several seconds.

  He had always carried, while with her, the vague but sustained sense ofbeing shielded. Until then her hand had always seemed to guard him,impersonally, as the hand of a busy seeker guards and shelters acandle. Now, for some mysterious reason, he felt her broodingguardianship to be something less passive, to be something moreimmediate and personal. He knew--and he knew it with a fullappreciation of the irony that lurked in the situation--that her verytimorousness was now endowing him with a new and reckless courage. Sohe took her hand, gratefully, before he spoke again.

  "Well, whatever happens, we are now in this, not from choice, as yousaid before, but from necessity. If it has dangers, Frank, we mustface them."

  "It is nothing _but_ danger!"

  "Then we must grin and bear it. But as I said, I see no reason why weshould cross our bridges before we come to them. And we'll soon have abridge to cross, and a hard one."

  "What bridge?"

  "I mean Keenan, and everything that will happen in Genoa!"