Who Goes There!

"What is it?"

"Kervyn – I don't know what it is. I must not know. It is a matter of honour."

"If you don't know what it is you carry in that satchel you evidently suspect what it might prove to be."

"Yes."

"You have very strong suspicions?"

"Yes, I have."

"Why did you take such a thing?"

"I promised."

"Whom?"

"I can't tell you. It is a matter of honour. I – I didn't want to involve you if things turned badly. I asked you to leave me… Even at the last moment I tried to give you a chance to go ashore and escape. Kervyn, I've tried to be honourable and to be loyal to you at the same time. I've tried – I've tried – " Her childish voice faltered, almost broke, and she turned her head sharply away from him.

He dropped onto the lounge beside her, sick with anxiety, and laid his hand over hers where it lay in her lap.

"I'm afraid that you have papers in that satchel which might mean the end of the world for you," he said under his breath. "God alone knows why you carry them if you suspect their contents… Well, I won't ask you anything more at present… If your conscience acquits you, I do. I do anyway. You have given me plenty of chances to escape. You have been very plucky, very generous to me, Karen."

"I have tried to be," she said unsteadily. "You have been far too kind to me, Kervyn… I – I don't mean to tremble so. I think I am, feeling the – the reaction."

"Lie down. I am afraid I'll have to stay here – "

"Yes; don't go out on deck. Don't take any more risks… I'll lie down if I may." She rose, looked around with eyes still darkly dilated by fear:

"Oh!" she breathed – "if we were only out of British waters!"

He looked at his watch, and at the same moment a deep blast from the steamer vibrated through the cabin.

"They've cast off," he said calmly.

The girl had flung herself on the bed and buried her face in the pillow. Her brown velvet hat had fallen to the floor, her thick brown hair clustered in glossy disorder over neck and cheek. One slim hand clutched convulsively a tiny handkerchief crushed into a ball.

"We have every chance now," he said very gently, bending over the pillow – "barring a wireless to some British guard-ship. Don't give way yet, Karen." He laid a cool, firm hand over hers and tried to speak jestingly. "Wait until there's no danger at all before you go all to pieces," he whispered.

As he bent above her, he became conscious of the warm fragrance of tears. But no sound came, not a quiver. And after a while he went over to the sofa and sat down, staring at the locked satchel on the floor, vaguely aware that the boat was in steady motion.

"Karen," he said after a moment.

"Yes – dear."

"You know," he said, forcing a laugh, "you needn't say it when we're alone – except for practice."

"Yes, dear, I know."

"May I ask you something?"

"Yes, please."

"Did you know that official named Mitchell?"

"Yes."

"Who was he?"

"Mr. Grätz."

CHAPTER VIII

AT SEA

The funnel smoke blew low, burying the afterdecks, and a hurricane of scud and spindrift swept everything forward, drenching the plunging steamer to the bridge. Stanchions, davits, hatches were all a-dip, decks a-wash, and the Dutch ensign whipping aloft in a thick grey sky that seemed to speed astern as though in chase of the heaving grey waste of waters that fled away beneath.

Here and there a trawler tossed and rocked; lean, melancholy wanderers on the face of the waters; twice the raking stacks of destroyers, smothered in foam, dashed eastward running full speed on some occult trail twixt sky and sea.

The grey world grew duller, duller; one by one the blinding searchlights on coast-guard ships broke out, sweeping sky and ocean as though in desperate appeal to the God above and in menacing warning to the devils that lurked below.

For they said the North Sea was full of them; legions of them tossed broadcast from the black hell of some human mind. And beneath them, deeper, lying as still as death on the Channel's floor, waited the human submarines in unseen watery depths – motionless, patient, awaiting the moment to strike.

Night came; the white level glare of searchlights flooded the steamer, lingered, shifted, tossed their dazzling arms heavenward as though imploring the Most High, then swept unseen horizons where the outermost waters curve with the curving globe.

Only one light burned in the stateroom, but the port was not covered.

Karen lay on the bed, unstirring save for a slight tremor of her shoulders now and then. Her brown hair, half loosened, had fallen in thick burnished curls on the pillow; one hand covered her eyes, palm outward. Under it the vivid lips, scarcely parted, rested on each other in a troubled curve.

Guild brooded silently on the lounge under the port. Sometimes his sombre gaze rested on her, sometimes on the locked satchel which had rolled to the side of the bed.

Every time the arrowy beam of light from a warship flooded the cabin with swift white splendour his heart seemed to stop, for the menace of the wireless was always a living dread; and the stopping of a neutral ship and the taking from it of suspects had become a practice too common even to excite comment, let alone protest.

Twice they were stopped; twice Ardoise signals twinkled; but no cutter came alongside, and no officer boarded them. It was an eternity of suspense to Guild, and he stood by the open port, listening, the satchel in his hand ready to fling it out into the turmoil of heaving waters.

The steward came, and Guild ordered something served for them both in the stateroom. Karen had not awakened, but her hand had slipped from her eyes and it lay across the edge of the bed.

On the bridal finger glimmered the plain gold band – his credentials to her from her father.

He went over and looked down into the white, childish face. Faultless, serene, wonderful as a flower it seemed to him. Where the black lashes rested the curve of the cheek was faintly tinted with colour. All else was snowy save for the vivid rose of the scarcely parted lips.

Nineteen! – and all those accomplishments which her dim living-room at Westheath had partly revealed – where books in many languages had silently exposed the mind that required them – where pictures, music – all the unstudied and charming disorder of this young girl's intimate habitation had delicately revealed its tenant.

And what her living-room had foreshadowed was only, after all, but a tinted phantom of the girl he had come to know in the flesh – the real mistress of that dim room quickened to life – a warm, living, breathing reality, low-voiced, blue-eyed, winsome and sweet with the vague fragrance of youth incarnate clinging to her, to every gesture, every movement, every turn of her head – to her very skirts it seemed – youth, freshness, purity unblemished.

As he stood there he tried to realize that she was German – this young girl with her low and charming English voice and her accentless English speech.

He had listened in vain for any flaw, any indication of alien birth. Nothing betrayed her as a foreigner, except, possibly, a delightfully quaint formality in accepting any service offered. For when he asked her whether she desired this or that, or if he might do this or that for her, always her answer in the affirmative was, "Yes, please," like a little girl who had been carefully taught to respect age. It amused him; for modern English young women are less punctilious with modern youth.