Elusive Isabel, by Jacques Futrelle (12 page)

And then the prince’s entire manner underwent a change.

“Mr. Grimm,” he said earnestly, “it is absolutely necessary that I remain in Washington for another week—remain here even if I am locked up again—lock me up again if you like. I can’t sign compacts in prison.”

“Twenty-five minutes,” replied Mr. Grimm quietly.

“But here,” exclaimed the prince explosively, “I have credentials which will insure my protection in spite of your laws.”

“I know that,” said Mr. Grimm placidly. “Credentials of that nature can not be presented at midnight, and you will not be here to-morrow to present them. The fact that you have those credentials, your Highness, is one reason why you must leave Washington now, to-night.”

They paused in the office, the three of them, and while Miss Thorne was giving some instructions as to her baggage the prince went over to the telegraph booth and began to write a message on a blank. Mr. Grimm appeared at his elbow.

“No,” he said.

“Can’t I send a telegram if I like?” demanded the prince sharply.

“No, nor a note, nor a letter, nor may you speak to any one,” Mr. Grimm informed him quietly.

“Why, it’s an outrage!” flamed the prince.

“It depends altogether on the view-point, your Highness,” said Mr. Grimm courteously. “If you will pardon me I might suggest that it is needless to attract attention by your present attitude. You may—I say you
may
—compel me to humiliate you.” The prince glared at him angrily. “I mean handcuff you,” Mr. Grimm added gratuitously.

“Handcuff
me
?”

“I shouldn’t hesitate, your Highness, if it was necessary.”

After a moment Miss Thorne signified her readiness, and they started out. At the door Mr. Grimm stopped and turned back to the desk, as if struck by some sudden thought, leaving them together.

“Oh, Miss Thorne left a message for some one,” Mr. Grimm was saying to the clerk. “She’s decided it is unnecessary.” He turned and glanced toward her, and the clerk’s eyes followed his. “Please give it to me.”

It was passed over without comment. It was a sealed envelope addressed to Mr. Charles Winthrop Rankin. Mr. Grimm glanced at the superscription, tore the envelope into bits and dropped it into a basket. A minute later he was assisting Miss Thorne and the prince into an automobile that was waiting in front. As the car moved away two other automobiles appeared from corners near-by and trailed along behind to the station. There a private compartment-car was in readiness for them.

It was a long, dreary ride—a ride of utter silence save for the roar and clatter of the moving train. Mr. Grimm, vigilant, implacable, sat at ease; Miss Thorne, resigned to the inevitable, whatever it might be, studied the calm, quiet face from beneath drooping lids; and the prince, sullen, scowling, nervously wriggled in his seat. Philadelphia was passed, and Trenton, and then the dawn began to break through the night. It was quite light when they rolled into Jersey City.

“I’m sorry for all the inconvenience I have caused,” Mr. Grimm apologized to Miss Thorne as he assisted her to alight. “You must be exhausted.”

“If it were only that!” she replied, with a slight smile. “And is it too early to ask where we are going?”

The prince turned quickly at the question.

“We take the
Lusitania
for Liverpool at ten o’clock,” said Mr. Grimm obligingly. “Meanwhile let’s get some coffee and a bite to eat.”

“Are you going to make the trip with us?” asked the prince.

Mr. Grimm shrugged his shoulders.

Weary and spiritless they went aboard the boat, and a little while later they steamed out into the stream and threaded their way down the bay. Miss Thorne stood at the rail gazing back upon the city they were leaving. Mr. Grimm stood beside her; the prince, still sullen, still scowling, sat a dozen feet away.

“This is a wonderful thing you have done, Mr. Grimm,” said Miss Thorne at last.

“Thank you,” he said simply. “It was a destructive thing that you intended to do. Did you ever see a more marvelous thing than that?” and he indicated the sky-line of New York. “It’s the most marvelous bit of mechanism in the world; the dynamo of the western hemisphere. You would have destroyed it, because in the world-war that would have been the first point of attack.”

She raised her eyebrows, but was silent.

“Somehow,” he went on after a moment, “I could never associate a woman with destructiveness, with wars and with violence.”

“That is an unjust way of saying it,” she interposed. And then, musingly: “Isn’t it odd that you and I—standing here by the rail—have, in a way, held the destinies of the whole great earth in our hands? And now your remark makes me feel that you alone have stood for peace and the general good, and I for destruction and evil.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Mr. Grimm said quickly. “You have done your duty as you saw it, and—”

“Failed!” she interrupted.

“And I have done my duty as I saw it.”

“And won!” she added. She smiled a little sadly. “I think, perhaps you and I might have been excellent friends if it had not been for all this.”

“I know we should have,” said Mr. Grimm, almost eagerly. “I wonder if you will ever forgive me for—for—?”

“Forgive you?” she repeated. “There is nothing to forgive. One must do one’s duty. But I wish it could have been otherwise.”

The Statue of Liberty slid by, and Governor’s Island and Fort Hamilton; then, in the distance, Sandy Hook light came into view.

“I’m going to leave you here,” said Mr. Grimm, and for the first time there was a tense, strained note in his voice.

Miss Thorne’s blue-gray eyes had grown mistily thoughtful; the words startled her a little and she turned to face him.

“It may be that you and I shall never meet again,” Mr. Grimm went on.

“We
will
meet again,” she said gravely. “When and where I don’t know, but it will come.”

“And perhaps then we may be friends?” He was pleading now.

“Why, we are friends now, aren’t we?” she asked, and again the smile curled her scarlet lips. “Surely we are friends, aren’t we?”

“We are,” he declared positively.

As they started forward a revenue cutter which had been hovering about Sandy Hook put toward them, flying some signal at her masthead. Slowly the great boat on which they stood crept along, then the clang of a bell in the engine-room brought her to a standstill, and the revenue cutter came alongside.

“I leave you here,” Mr. Grimm said again. “It’s good-by.”

“Good-by,” she said softly. “Good-by, till we meet once more.”

She extended both hands impulsively and he stood for an instant staring into the limpid gray eyes, then, turning, went below. From the revenue cutter he waved a hand at her as the great
Lusitania
, moving again, sped on her way. The prince joined Miss Thorne at the rail. The scowl was still on his face.

“And now what?” he demanded abruptly. “This man has treated us as if we were a pair of children.”

“He’s a wonderful man,” she replied.

“That may be—but we have been fools to allow him to do all this.”

Miss Thorne turned flatly and faced him.

“We are not beaten yet,” she said slowly. “If all things go well we—we are not beaten yet.”

The
Lusitania
was rounding Montauk Point when the wireless brought her to half-speed with a curt message:

“Isabel Thorne and Pietro Petrozinni aboard
Lusitania
wanted on warrants charging conspiracy. Tug-boat will take them off, intercepting you beyond Montauk Point.

“CAMPBELL, Secret Service.”

“What does
that
mean?” asked the prince, bewildered.

“It means that the compact will be signed in Washington in spite of Mr. Grimm,” and there was the glitter of triumph in her eyes. “With the aid of one of the maids in the depot at Jersey City I managed to get a telegram of explanation and instruction to De Foe in New York, and this is the result. He signed Mr. Campbell’s name, I suppose, to give weight to the message.”

An hour later a tug-boat came alongside, and they went aboard.

From where he sat, in a tiny alcove which jutted out and encroached upon the line of the sidewalk, Mr. Grimm looked down on Pennsylvania Avenue, the central thread of Washington, ever changing, always brilliant, splashed at regular intervals with light from high-flung electric arcs. The early theater crowd was in the street, well dressed, well fed, careless for the moment of all things save physical comfort and amusement; automobiles, carriages, cabs, cars flowed past endlessly; and yet Mr. Grimm saw naught of it. In the distance, at one end of the avenue the dome of the capitol cleft the shadows of night, and a single light sparkled at its apex; in the other direction, at the left of the treasury building which abruptly blocks the wide thoroughfare, were the shimmering windows of the White House.

Motionless, moody, thoughtful, Mr. Grimm sat staring, staring straight ahead, comprehending none of these things which lay before him as in a panorama. Instead, his memory was conjuring up a pair of subtle, blue-gray eyes, now pleading, now coquettish, now frankly defiant; two slim, white, wonderful hands; the echo of a pleasant, throaty laugh; a splendid, elusive, radiant-haired phantom. Truly, a woman of mystery! Who was this Isabel Thorne who, for months past, had been the storm-center and directing mind of a vast international intrigue which threatened the world with war? Who, this remarkable young woman who with ease and assurance commanded ambassadors and played nations as pawns?

Now that she was safely out of the country Mr. Grimm had leisure to speculate. Upon him had devolved the duty of blocking her plans, and he had done so—merciless alike of his own feeling and of hers. Hesitation or evasion had never occurred to him. It was a thing to be done, and he did it. He wondered if she had understood, there at the last beside the rail? He wondered if she knew the struggle it had cost him deliberately to send her out of his life? Or had even surmised that her expulsion from the country, by his direct act, was wholly lacking in the exaltation of triumph to him; that it struck deeper than that, below the listless, official exterior, into his personal happiness? And wondering, he knew that she
did
understand.

A silent shod waiter came and placed the coffee things at his elbow. He didn’t heed. The waiter poured a demi-tasse, and inquiringly lifted a lump of sugar in the silver tongs. Still Mr. Grimm didn’t heed. At last the waiter deposited the sugar on the edge of the fragile saucer, and moved away as silently as he had come. A newspaper which Mr. Grimm had placed on the end of the table when he sat down, rattled a little as a breeze from the open window caught it, then the top sheet slid off and fell to the floor. Mr. Grimm was still staring out the window.

Slowly the room behind him was thinning of its crowd as the theater-bound diners went out in twos and threes. The last of these disappeared finally, and save for Mr. Grimm there were not more than a dozen persons left in the place. Thus for a few minutes, and then the swinging doors leading from the street clicked, and a gentleman entered. He glanced around, as if seeking a seat near a window, then moved along in Mr. Grimm’s direction, between the rows of tables. His gaze lingered on Mr. Grimm for an instant, and when he came opposite he stooped and picked up the fallen newspaper sheet.

“Your paper?” he inquired courteously.

Mr. Grimm was still gazing dreamily out of the window.

“I beg pardon,” insisted the new-comer pleasantly. He folded the paper once and replaced it on the table. One hand lingered for just the fraction of a moment above Mr. Grimm’s coffee-cup.

Aroused by the remark, Mr. Grimm glanced around.

“Oh, thank you,” he apologized hastily. “I didn’t hear you at first. Thank you.”

The new-comer nodded, smiled and passed on, taking a seat two or three tables down.

Apparently this trifling courtesy had broken the spell of reverie, for Mr. Grimm squared around to the table again, drew his coffee-cup toward him, and dropped in the single lump of sugar. He idly stirred it for a moment, as his eyes turned again toward the open window, then he lifted the tiny cup and emptied it.

Again he sat motionless for a long time, and thrice the new-comer, only a few feet away, glanced at him narrowly. And now, it seemed, a peculiar drowsiness was overtaking Mr. Grimm. Once he caught himself nodding and raised his head with a jerk. Then he noticed that the arc lights in the street were wobbling curiously, and he fell to wondering why that single flame sparkled at the apex of the capitol dome. Things around him grew hazy, vague, unreal, and then, as if realizing that something was the matter with him, he came to his feet.

He took one step forward into the space between the tables, reeled, attempted to steady himself by holding on to a chair, then everything grew black about him, and he pitched forward on the floor. His face was dead white; his fingers moved a little, nervously, weakly, then they were still.

Several people rose at the sound of the falling body, and the new-comer hurried forward. His coat sleeve caught the empty demi-tasse, as he stooped, and swept it to the floor, where it was shattered. The head waiter and another came, pell-mell, and those diners who had risen came more slowly.

“What’s the matter?” asked the head waiter anxiously.

Already the new-comer was supporting Mr. Grimm on his knee, and flicking water in his face.

“Nothing serious, I fancy,” he answered shortly. “He’s subject to these little attacks.”

“What are they? Who is he?”

The stranger tore at Mr. Grimm’s collar until it came loose, then he fell to chafing the still hands.

“He is a Mr. Grimm, a government employee—I know him,” he answered again. “I imagine it’s nothing more serious than indigestion.”

A little knot had gathered about them, with offers of assistance.

“Waiter, hadn’t you better send for a physician?” some one suggested.

“I’m a physician,” the stranger put in impatiently. “Have some one call a cab, and I’ll see that he’s taken home. It happens that we live in the same apartment house, just a few blocks from here.”