Part 37

WHEN THE SHIP COMES IN

Back in his stateroom Warren was poring with renewed interest over the time-tables between Liverpool, London, Paris, and Madrid. Seguro was on the main line from the French capital to the principal one of Spain.

As he made various penciled memoranda upon a page of his leather notebook, the telephone bell tinkled.

He answered and heard the voice of the Princess.

"Can you see me at once,--on the promenade deck, by my door?"

"Yes. Good-by."

In a few moments he was talking to her in the dark; all the lights of her suite were out. The girl was very nervous.

"I have a paper which Nita found upon the floor--it was crumpled and must have fallen from the pocket of my cousin when he fell. I want to give you back that belt, Mr. Jarvis: for I have heard before of some of the wager-debts of Carlos. It is safer with you. Let me know what you think about this paper, and tell me to-morrow morning. We are due in port late in the evening, you know."

"I will. There may be something in which I wish your help, as well, your Highness. I have made up my mind to reach Seguro before the Duke--for many reasons."

The girl caught his hand impetuously.

"You don't fear for your life before you get there, do you?" she asked softly. "I want you to help me in my castle. That is our bargain--but I know you better than I did when we met in New York. I don't want you to run too big a risk for me until the great trial comes. Do be careful, now."

A thrill sent the Kentuckian's head reeling for an instant at the unexpected touch of those warm, electric fingers. Then he caught himself.

"Your vassal is still ambitious for promotion. But he will not fight the windmills of Spain on an old mule like Don Quixote. He prefers modern methods--such as dynamite, and other pleasant little novelties."

He pressed her hand with a returning warmth, slipped the belt about him, and started down the promenade deck again. Something prompted him to step into the black shadow of a companionway as a figure crossed beneath an electric overhead lamp far forward on the deck.

He waited.

The figure approached noiselessly.

It was the Duke! He was wearing slippers, with felt soles apparently, for his steps caused no sound. Jarvis watched him with a strange misgiving--a fear not for himself. Yet he deemed it wiser to wait for developments.

Up and down the deck paced the nervous, noiseless figure. At last the Duke returned and disappeared from view, through the door by which he had entered the Kentuckian's view.

"I wonder what that meant?" thought Jarvis. "Perhaps he is having a fight with his conscience--just as I have been doing."

And he watched the speeding waves, racing past the great vessel as it seemed--for so steady was the swift advance of the ship that it seemed they were on dry land, rather than the boundless expanse of the depths.

"Here I am--after all my education, all the work of years, to advance myself, running away from my own country--an escaped gun-man, just like an East Side thug."

In the comfortable calm of the shipboard life, with unfamiliar scenes, away from the reminders of his tragedy at Meadow Green, it did not now seem a fine thing that he had done.

Man is not normally a destroyer of his own kind--and his fine instincts were asserting themselves. Yet, after all, despite his vow to his father, this had been actual self-defense.

The other had fired the first shot: he had planned to trap him with a decoy, and in the end it was survival of the fittest.

These thoughts had been frequently in his mind, but he had resolutely driven them from him. Now they were nearing another port, a great commercial cross-ways of the travel world. Here again he was coming within the grasp of the law.

He was not too certain that all had been given up, in that questioning pursuit of the Princess and her party. That broken door lock might yet admit the hand of legal vengeance.

"And that Duke? He'll try to earn that five thousand dollars surely enough now. Well, I'd better be worrying over my own future instead of the dead past. They've said 'let the dead past bury itself, and don't climb the graveyard fence.' That's good logic. But I'd better be looking toward some of the fences ahead. I wonder what is on the paper?"

He returned to his stateroom, where Rusty was dozing in a chair, waiting for the good-night instructions.