Phantom Wires Part 6

"We had better look through the safe at once," she went on apathetically. Something in her tone, if not her words themselves, as she had spoken, sent a wave of what was more than startled misery through her husband. He once more felt, although he felt it vaguely, the note of impending tragedy which she was so premonitarily sounding.

It brought to him a dim and hurried vision of that far-off but inevitable catastrophe which lay, somewhere, at the end of the road they were traveling. Their only hope and solace, it seemed to him, must thereafter lie in feverish and sustained activity. They must lose themselves in the dash and whirl of daring moments. And it was not from pleasure or from choice, now; it was to live. They must act or perish; they must plot and counterplot, or be submerged. Yet he would do what he could to save himself, as she, in turn, must do what she could for herself--if they came to the end of their rope.

A minute later they were bending together over the contents of the dismantled safe. He was striking matches. By this time they were both on their knees.

"You run through these papers, while I see what can be done with the despatch box," he whispered to her. Then he put the little package of vestas between them, so they might work by their own light. From time to time the soft spurt of the lighting match broke the silence, as Frank hurriedly ran her eye over the different packets, and as hurriedly flung them back into the safe.

It was a relief to Durkin to think that he at least had someone beside him who could read French. Busy as he was, he incongruously recalled to his mind how he once used to study the little printed announcements in his hotel rooms, wondering, ruefully, if the delphic text meant that lights and fires were extra, and if baths must be paid for, and vainly trying to discover what his last basket of wood might cost.

Yes, he told himself, he was a hunter out of his domain. He would always feel intimidated and insecure in this land of aliens and unknowns. He even sympathetically wondered who it was that had said: "Foreigners are fools!" Then a sudden, irrational, inconsequential sense of grat.i.tude took possession of him, as he felt and heard the woman at work so close beside him. There was a feeling of companionship about it that made the double risk worth while.

"There's nothing here!" Frank was saying, under her breath.

"Then it _must_ be the box!" he told her.

Durkin knew it was already too late to file and fit a skeleton key.

His first impulse was to bury the box under a m.u.f.fling pile of bedding and send a bullet or two through the lock. But his wandering eye caught sight of a Morocco sheath-knife above them on the wall, and a moment later he had the point of it under the steel-bound lid, and as he pried it flew open with a snap.

He waited, listening, and lighting matches, while Frank went through the papers, with nervous and agile fingers, mumbling the inscriptions as she hurriedly read and cast them away from her.

"I thought so!" she said at last, crisply.

The packet held half a dozen blueprints, together with some twelve or fourteen sheets of plans and specifications, on tinted "flimsy."

Durkin noticed they were drawn up in red and black ink, and that at the bottom of each doc.u.ment were paragraphs of finely-penned, scholarly-looking writing. One glance was enough for them both.

Frank refolded them and caught them together with a rubber band. Then she thrust them into the bosom of her dress. Both rose to their feet, for both were filled with the selfsame sudden pa.s.sion to get into the open once more.

"That must go back, now!" whispered Frank, for Durkin was stooping down again, over the leather bag that held the napoleons.

"Thank heaven," he answered gratefully, "it's not _that_!"

"Not _yet_!" she whispered back, bitterly, as she heard the c.h.i.n.k and rattle of metal in the darkness. But some day it might be.

Then she heard another sound, which caused her to catch quickly at Durkin's arm. It was the sound of a key turning in the lock, followed by an impatient little French oath, and the weight of a man's body against the resisting door. Then the oath was repeated, and a second key was turned, this time in the nearer door.

"It's Pobloff!" she whispered.

She had felt the almost galvanic, precautionary response of Durkin's body; now she could hear his whispered e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.i.o.n as he clutched at her and thrust her back.

"_You_ must get away, quick, whatever happens," he said hurriedly.

There was a second tremor and rattle of the door; it might come in at any moment.

"Don't think of me," she whispered. "It's _you_!"

"But, my G.o.d, how'll you get out of this?" he demanded, in a quick whisper. He was trying to force her back into the little anteroom.

"No, no; don't!" she answered him. "I can manage it--more easily than you!"

"But how?"

He was still crowding and elbowing her back, as though mere retreat meant more a.s.sured safety.

"No, _no_!" she expostulated, under her breath. "I can shift for myself. It's _you_--you must get away!"

She was forcing the packet from her bosom into his hands.

"Take care of these, quick! Now here's the window ready. Oh, Jim, get away while you've got the chance!"

"I can't do it!" he protested.

"You _must_, I tell you. I wouldn't lie to you! On my honor, I promise you I'll come out of this room, unharmed and free! But quick, or we'll both lose!"

Even in that moment of peril the thought that she was still ready to face this much for him filled his shaken body with a glow that was more keenly exhilarating than wine itself. There was no time for words or demonstration: the action carried its own eloquence.

He was already halfway through the opened window, but he turned back.

"Do you care, then?" he panted.

He could hear the quick catch of her breath.

"Good or bad, I love you, Jim! You know that! Now, hurry, oh, hurry!"

He caught her hand in his--that was all there was time for--while with his free hand Durkin thrust the packet down into his pocket.

"If it turns out wrong--I mean if anything should happen to me, go straight to the Emba.s.sy with them, in Rome. Good-bye!"

"Ah, then you _do_ expect danger!" he retorted, already back at the window again.

"No--no!" she whispered, resolutely, barring his ingress. "Hurry!

Good-bye!"

"Good-bye," he whispered, as he slipped down on his hands and knees and crawled along the balcony, like a cat, through the darkness.

Then the woman closed the window, and waited.

CHAPTER VIII

"FOREIGNERS ARE FOOLS"

Frances Durkin, as she turned back into the darkness of the room, desperately schooled herself to calmness. She warned herself that, above all, she must remain clear-headed and collected, and act coolly and decisively, when the moment for action arrived.

But as the seconds slipped by, and the silence remained unbroken, a shred of forlorn hope came back to her. Each moment meant more a.s.sured safety to her husband--he, at least, was getting away unscathed and unsuspected. And that left her almost satisfied.

She still waited and listened. Perhaps, after all, the Prince had taken his departure. Perhaps he had gone back to the _portier's_ office, for explanations. Perhaps it had not even been Pobloff--merely a drunken stranger, mistaken in his room number, or servants with a message or with linen.

She groped softly across the room, until she came to the door. She found it draped and covered with a heavy blanket. Holding this back, she slipped under it, and peered through the keyhole into the illuminated hallway. There seemed to be n.o.body outside.