Chambers Robert William
The Dark Star

“Well, Ben, put it any way you like, but we’re just plain political spies. And what the hell do they hand us over here if we’re pinched?”

“I don’t know. What of it?”

“Nothing. If there’s good money in it, I’ll take a chance.”

“There is. Quint backs us. When we get ’em coming–”

“Ah,” said Doc with a wry face, “that’s all right for the cards or the wheel. But this pocket picking–”

“Say; that ain’t what I mean. It’s like this: Young Fitznoodle of the Embassy staff gets soused and starts out lookin’ for a quiet game. We furnish the game. We don’t go through his pockets; we just pick up whatever falls out and take shorthand copies. Then back go the letters into Fitznoodle’s pocket–”

“Yes. Who reads ’em first?”

“Breslau. Or some skirt, maybe.”

“What’s Breslau?”

“Search me. He’s a Dutchman or a Rooshian or some sort of Dodo. What do you care?”

“I don’t. All right, Ben. You’ve got to show me; that’s all.”

“Show you what?”

“Spot cash!”

“You’re in when you handle it?”

“If you show me real money – yes.”

“You’re on. I’ll cash a cheque of Quint’s for you at Monroe’s soon as we hit the asphalt! And when you finish counting out your gold nickels put ’em in your pants and play the game! Is that right?”

“Yes.”

They exchanged a wary handshake; then, one after another, they leaned back in their seats with the air of honest men who had done their day’s work.

Curfoot blinked at Brandes, at his excessively groomed person, at his rings.

“You look prosperous, Eddie.”

“It’s his business to,” remarked Stull.

Brandes yawned:

“It would be a raw deal if there’s a war over here,” he said listlessly.

“Ah,” said Curfoot, “there won’t be none.”

“Why?”

“The Jews and bankers won’t let these kinks mix it.”

“That’s right, too,” nodded Brandes.

But Stull said nothing and his sour, pasty visage turned sourer. It was the one possibility that disturbed him – the only fly in the amber – the only mote that troubled his clairvoyance. Also, he was the only man among the three who didn’t think a thing was certain to happen merely because he wanted it to happen.

There was another matter, too, which troubled him. Brandes was unreliable. And who but little Stull should know how unreliable?

For Brandes had always been that. And now Stull knew him to be more than that – knew him to be treacherous.

Whatever in Brandes had been decent, or had, blindly perhaps, aspired toward decency, was now in abeyance. Something within him had gone to smash since Minna Minti had struck him that night in the frightened presence of Rue Carew.

And from that night, when he had lost the only woman who had ever stirred in him the faintest aspiration to better things, the man had gradually changed. Whatever in his nature had been unreliable became treacherous; his stolidity became sullenness. A slow ferocity burned within him; embers of a rage which no brooding ever quenched slumbered red in his brain until his endless meditation became a monomania. And his monomania was the ruin of this woman who had taken from him in the very moment of consummation all that he had ever really loved in the world – a thin, awkward, freckled, red-haired country girl, in whom, for the first and only time in all his life, he saw the vague and phantom promise of that trinity which he had never known – a wife, a child, and a home.

He sat there by the car window glaring out of his dull green eyes at the pleasant countryside, his thin lips tightening and relaxing on his cigar.

Curfoot, still pondering over the “new stuff” offered him, brooded silently in his corner, watching the others out of his tiny, bright eyes.

“Do anything in London?” inquired Stull.

“No.”

“Who was you working for?”

“A jock and a swell skirt. But Scotland Yard got next and chased the main guy over the water.”

“What was your lay?”

“Same thing. I dealt for the jock and the skirt trimmed the squabs.”

“Anybody holler?”

“Aw – the kind we squeezed was too high up to holler. Them young lords take their medicine like they wanted it. They ain’t like the home bunch that is named after swell hotels.”

After a silence he looked up at Brandes:

“What ever become of Minna Minti?” he asked.

Brandes’ heavy features remained stolid.

“She got her divorce, didn’t she?” insisted Curfoot.

“Yes.”

“Alimony?”

“No. She didn’t ask any.”

“How about Venem?”

Brandes remained silent, but Stull said:

“I guess she chucked him. She wouldn’t stand for that snake. I got to hand it to her; she ain’t that kind.”

“What kind is she?”

“I tell you I got to hand it to her. I can’t complain of her. She acted white all right until Venem stirred her up. Eddie’s got himself to blame; he got in wrong and Venem had him followed and showed him up to Minna.”

“You got tired of her, didn’t you?” said Curfoot to Brandes. But Stull answered for him again:

“Like any man, Eddie needed a vacation now and then. But no skirt understands.”

Brandes said slowly:

“I’ll live to fix Minna yet.”

“What fixed you,” snapped Stull, “was that there Brookhollow stuff–”

“Can it!” retorted Brandes, turning a deep red.

“Aw – don’t hand me the true-love stuff, Eddie! If you’d meant it with that little haymaker you’d have respected her–”

Brandes’ large face became crimson with rage:

“You say another word about her and I’ll push your block off – you little dough-faced kike!”

Stull shrugged and presently whispered to Curfoot:

“That’s the play he always makes. I’ve waited two years, but he won’t ring down on the love stuff. I guess he was hit hard that trip. It took a little red-headed, freckled country girl to stop him. But it was comin’ to Eddie Brandes, and it certainly looks like it was there to stay a while.”

“He’s still stuck on her?”

“I guess she’s still the fly paper,” nodded Stull.

Suddenly Brandes turned on Stull such a look of concentrated hatred that the little gambler’s pallid features stiffened with surprise:

“Ben,” said Brandes in a low voice, which was too indistinct for Neeland to catch, “I’ll tell you something now that you don’t know. I saw Quint alone; I talked with him. Do you know who is handling the big stuff in this deal?”

“Who?” asked Stull, amazed.

“The Turkish Embassy in Paris. And do you know who plays the fine Italian hand for that bunch of Turks?”

“No.”

“Minna!”

“You’re crazy!”

Brandes took no notice, but went on with a sort of hushed ferocity that silenced both Stull and Curfoot:

“That’s why I went in. To get Minna. And I’ll get her if it costs every cent I’ve got or ever hope to get. That’s why I’m in this deal; that’s why I came; that’s why I’m here telling you this. I’m in it to get Minna, not for the money, not for anything in all God’s world except to get the woman who has done what Minna did to me.”

Neeland listened in vain to the murmuring voice; he could not catch a word.

Stull whispered:

“Aw, f’r God’s sake, Eddie, that ain’t the game. Do you want to double-cross Quint?”

“I have double-crossed him.”

“What! Do you mean to sell him out?”

“I have sold him out.”

“Jesus! Who to?”

“To the British Secret Service. And there’s to be one hundred thousand dollars in it, Doc, for you and me to divide. And fifty thousand more when we put the French bulls on to Minna and Breslau. Now, how does one hundred and fifty thousand dollars against five thousand apiece strike you two poor, cheap guys?”

But the magnitude of Brandes’ treachery and the splendour of the deal left the two gamblers stunned.

Only by their expressions could Neeland judge that they were discussing matters of vital importance to themselves and probably to him. He listened; he could not hear what they were whispering. And only at intervals he dared glance over his book in their direction.

“Well,” said Brandes under his breath, “go on. Spit it out. What’s the squeal?”

“My God!” whispered Stull. “Quint will kill you.”

Brandes laughed unpleasantly:

“Not me, Ben. I’ve got that geezer where I want him on a dirty deal he pulled off with the police.”

Curfoot turned his pointed muzzle toward the window and sneered at the sunny landscape.

A few minutes later, far across the rolling plain set with villas and farms, and green with hedgerows, gardens, bouquets of trees and cultivated fields, he caught sight of a fairy structure outlined against the sky. Turning to Brandes:

“There’s the Eiffel Tower,” remarked Curfoot. “Where are we stopping, Eddie?”

“Caffy des Bulgars.”

“Where’s that?”

“It’s where we go to work – Roo Vilna.”

Stull’s smile was ghastly, but Curfoot winked at Brandes.

Neeland listened, his eyes following the printed pages of his book.

CHAPTER XXV
CUP AND LIP

Through the crowded Paris terminal Neeland pushed his way, carrying the olive-wood box in his hand and keeping an eye on his porter, who preceded him carrying the remainder of his luggage and repeating:

“Place, s’il vous plaît, m’sieu’, dames!”

To Neeland it was like a homecoming after many years’ exile; the subtle but perfectly specific odour of Paris assailed his nostrils once again; the rapid, emphatic, lively language of France sounded once more delightfully in his eager ears; vivacity and intelligence sparkled in every eye that met his own. It was a throng of rapid movement, of animated speech, of gesticulation. And, as it was in the beginning when he first arrived there as a student, he fell in love with it at first sight and contact.

All around him moved porters, passengers, railroad officials; the red képis of soldiers dotted the crowd; a priest or two in shovel hat and buckled shoes, a Sister of Charity from the Rue de Bac lent graver accents to the throng; and everywhere were the pretty bourgeois women of the capital gathered to welcome relatives or friends, or themselves starting on some brief summer voyage so dear to those who seldom find it in their hearts to leave Paris for longer than a fortnight at a time.

As he pressed onward he witnessed characteristic reunions between voyagers and friends who awaited them – animated, cordial, gay scenes complicated by many embraces on both cheeks.

And, of a sudden, he noticed the prettiest girl he had ever seen in his life. She was in white, with a black straw hat, and her face and figure were lovely beyond words. Evidently she was awaiting friends; there was a charming expectancy on her fresh young face, a slight forward inclination of her body, as though expectancy and happy impatience alone controlled her.

Her beauty almost took his breath away.

“Lord!” he thought to himself. “If such a girl as that ever stood waiting for me–”

At the same moment her golden-grey eyes, sweeping the passing crowd, met his; a sharp thrill of amazement passed through him as she held out both gloved hands with a soft exclamation of recognition:

“Jim! Jim Neeland!”

“Rue Carew!” He could scarcely credit his eyesight, where he stood, hat in hand, holding both her little hands in one of his.

No, there was no use in trying to disguise his astonishment. He looked into the face of this tall young girl, searched it for familiar features, recognised a lovely paraphrase of the freckled face and thin figure he remembered, and remained dumb before this radiant reincarnation of that other unhappy, shabby, and meagre child he had known two years ago.

Ruhannah, laughing and flushed, withdrew her hands.

“Have I changed? You haven’t. And I always thought you the most wonderful and ornamental young man on this planet. I knew you at once, Jim Neeland. Would you have passed without recognising me?”

“Perhaps I wouldn’t have passed after seeing you–”

“Jim Neeland! What a remark!” She laughed. “Anyway, it’s nice to believe myself attractive enough to be noticed. And I’m so glad to see you. Naïa is here, somewhere, watching for you” – turning her pretty, eager head to search for the Princess Mistchenka. “Oh, there she is! She doesn’t see us–”

They made their way between the passing ranks of passengers and porters; the Princess caught sight of them, came hastily toward them.

“Jim! It’s nice to see you. Thank you for coming! So you, found him, Rue? How are you, Jim? And where is the olive-wood box?”

“I’m well, and there’s that devilish box!” he replied, laughing and lifting it in his hand to exhibit it. “Naïa, the next time you want it, send an escort of artillery and two battleships!”

“Did you have trouble?”

“Trouble? I had the time of my life. No moving picture can ever again excite me; no best seller. I’ve been both since I had your cable to get this box and bring it to you.”

He laughed as he spoke, but the Princess continued to regard him very seriously, and Rue Carew’s smile came and waned like sunlight in a wood, for she was not quite sure whether he had really encountered any dangers on this mission which he had fulfilled so well.

“Our car is waiting outside,” said the Princess. “Where is your porter, Jim?”

Neeland glanced about him, discovered the porter, made a sign for him to follow, and they moved together toward the entrance to the huge terminal.

“I haven’t decided where to stop yet,” began Neeland, but the Princess checked him with a pretty gesture:

“You stop with us, Jim.”

“Thank you so much, but–”

“Please. Must I beg of you?”

“Do you really wish it?”

“Certainly,” she replied absently, glancing about her. She added: “I don’t see my car. I don’t see my footman. I told him to wait here. Rue, do you see him anywhere?”

“No, I don’t,” said the girl.

“How annoying!” said the Princess. “He’s a new man. My own footman was set upon and almost killed by Apaches a week ago. So I had to find a substitute. How stupid of him! Where on earth can he be waiting?”

They traversed the court of the terminal. Many automobiles were parked there or just leaving; liveried footmen stood awaiting masters and mistresses; but nowhere was the car of the Princess Mistchenka in sight.

They stood there, Neeland’s porter behind with his suitcase and luggage, not knowing whether to wait longer or summon a taxicab.

“I don’t understand,” repeated the Princess impatiently. “I explained very carefully what I desired. That new groom is stupid. Caron, my chauffeur, would never have made a mistake unless that idiot groom misunderstood his instructions.”

“Let me go and make some inquiries,” said Neeland. “Do you mind waiting here? I’ll not be long–”

He went off, carrying the olive-wood box, which his grasp never quitted now; and presently the Princess and Ruhannah saw him disappear among the ranks of automobiles and cabs.

“I don’t like it, Rue,” repeated the Princess in a low voice. “I neither understand nor relish this situation.”

“Have you any idea–”

“Hush, child! I don’t know. That new groom, Verdier, was recommended by the Russian Embassy. I don’t know what to think of this.”

“It can’t be anything – queer, can it, dear?” asked Rue.

“Anything can have happened. Nothing is likely to have occurred, however – unless – unless those Apaches were–”

“Naïa!”

“It’s possible, I suppose. They may have attacked Picard as part of a conspiracy. The Russian Embassy may have been deceived in Verdier. All this may be part of a plan. But – I scarcely believe it… All the same, I dislike to take a taxicab–”

She caught sight of Neeland returning; both women moved forward to meet him.

“I’ve solved the mystery,” he said. “Naïa, your car was run into outside the station a few minutes after you left it. And I’m sorry to say that your chauffeur was badly enough hurt to require an ambulance.”

“Where on earth did you learn that?”

“The official at the taxicab control told me. I went to him because that is where one is likely to receive information.”

“Caron hurt!” murmured the Princess. “What a shame! Where did they take him, Jim?”

“To the Charité.”

“I’ll go this afternoon. But where is that imbecile groom of mine?”

“It appears that he and a policeman went to a garage on the repair truck that took your car.”

“Was he arrested?”

“I believe so.”

“What a contretemps!” exclaimed the Princess Mistchenka. “We shall have to take a taxicab after all!”

“I’ve ordered one from the control. There it comes now,” said Neeland, as a brand new taxicab, which looked like a private car, drew up at the curb, and a smiling and very spick and span chauffeur saluted.

Neeland’s porter hoisted trunk and suitcase on top; the Princess stepped into the limousine, followed by Rue and Neeland; the chauffeur took the order, started his car, wheeled out into the square, circled the traffic policeman, and whizzed away into the depths of the most beautiful city in the world.

Neeland, seated with his back to the driver, laid the olive-wood box on his knees, unlocked it, drew from his breast pocket the papers he carried; locked them in the box once more, and looked up laughingly at the Princess and Ruhannah as he placed it at his feet.

“There you are!” he said. “Thank heaven my task and your affair have been accomplished. All the papers are there – and,” to Ruhannah, “that pretty gentleman you call the Yellow Devil is inside, along with some assorted firearms, drawing instruments, and photographs. The whole business is here, intact – and so am I – if that irrelevant detail should interest you.”

Rue smiled her answer; the Princess scrutinised him keenly:

“Did you have trouble, Jim?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Serious trouble?”

“I tell you it was like a movie in five reels. Never before did I believe such things happened outside a Yonkers studio. But they do, Naïa. And I’ve learned that the world is full of more excitingly melodramatic possibilities than any novel or scenario ever contained.”

“You’re not serious, of course,” began Rue Carew, watching the varying expressions on his animated features; but the Princess Mistchenka said, unsmiling:

“A film melodrama is a crude and tawdry thing compared to the real drama so many of us play in every moment of our lives.”

Neeland said to Rue, lightly:

“That is true as far as I have been concerned with that amazing box. It’s full of the very devil – of that Yellow Devil! When I pick it up now I seem to feel a premonitory tingling all over me – not entirely disagreeable,” he added to the Princess, “but the sort of half-scared exhilaration a man feels who takes a chance and is quite sure he’ll not have another chance if he loses. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Yes,” said the Princess unsmilingly, her clear, pleasant eyes fixed on him.

In her tranquil, indefinite expression there was something which made him wonder how many such chances this pretty woman had taken in her life of intellectual pleasure and bodily ease.

And now he remembered that Ilse Dumont apparently knew about her – about Ruhannah, too. And Ilse Dumont was the agent of a foreign government.

Was the Princess Mistchenka, patron and amateur of the arts, another such agent? If not, why had he taken this journey for her with this box of papers?

The passage of the Boulevard was slow; at every square traffic was halted; all Paris crowded the streets in the early afternoon sunshine, and the taxicab in which they sat made little speed until the Place de la Concorde opened out and the great Arc – a tiny phantom of lavender and pearl – spanned the vanishing point of a fairy perspective between parallel and endless ramparts of tender green.

“There was a lot of war talk on the Volhynia,” said Neeland, “but I haven’t heard any since I landed, nor have I seen a paper. I suppose the Chancelleries have come to some agreement.”

“No,” said the Princess.

“You don’t expect trouble, do you? I mean a general European free-for-all fight?”

“I don’t know, Jim.”

“Haven’t you,” he asked blandly, “any means of acquiring inside information?”

She did not even pretend to evade the good-humoured malice of his smile and question:

“Yes; I have sources of private information. I have learned nothing, so far.”

He looked at Rue, but the smile had faded from her face and she returned his questioning gaze gravely.

“There is great anxiety in Europe,” she said in a low voice, “and the tension is increasing. When we arrive home we shall have a chance to converse more freely.” She made the slightest gesture with her head toward the chauffeur – a silent reminder and a caution.

The Princess nodded slightly:

“One never knows,” she remarked. “We shall have much to say to one another when we are safely home.”

But Neeland could not take it very seriously here in the sunshine, with two pretty women facing him – here speeding up the Champs Elysées between the endless green of chestnut trees and the exquisite silvery-grey façades of the wealthy – with motors flashing by on every side and the cool, leafy alleys thronged with children and nurse-maids, and Monsieur Guignol squeaking and drumming in his red-curtained box!

How could a young man believe in a sequel to the almost incredible melodrama in which he had figured, with such a sane and delightful setting, here in the familiar company of two charming women he had known?

Besides, all Paris and her police were at his elbow; the olive-wood box stood between his knees; a smartly respectable taxi and its driver drove them with the quiet éclat and precision of a private employé; the Arc de Triomphe already rose splendidly above them, and everything that had once been familiar and reassuring and delightful lay under his grateful eyes on every side.

And now the taxicab turned into the rue Soleil d’Or – a new street to Neeland, opened since his student days, and only one square long, with a fountain in the middle and young chestnut trees already thickly crowned with foliage lining both sides of the street.

But although the rue Soleil d’Or was a new street to him, Paris construction is also a rapid affair. The street was faced by charming private houses built of grey Caen stone; the fountain with its golden sun-dial, with the seated figure – a life-size replica of Manship’s original in the Metropolitan Museum – serenely and beautifully holding its place between the Renaissance façades and rows of slender trees.

Summer had not yet burned foliage or flowers; the freshness of spring itself seemed still to reign there.

Three blue-bloused street-sweepers with hose and broom were washing the asphalt as their cab slowed down, sounding its horn to warn them out of the way. And, the spouting hose still in their hands, the street-cleaners stepped out of the gutter before the pretty private hotel of Madame la Princesse.

Already a butler was opening the grille; already the chauffeur had swung Neeland’s steamer trunk and suitcase to the sidewalk; already the Princess and Rue were advancing to the house, while Neeland fumbled in his pocket for the fare.

The butler, bowing, relieved him of the olive-wood box. At the same instant the blue-bloused man with the hose turned the powerful stream of water directly into the butler’s face, knocking him flat on the sidewalk; and his two comrades tripped up Neeland, passed a red sash over his head, and hurled him aside, blinded, half strangled, staggering at random, tearing furiously at the wide band of woollen cloth which seemed to suffocate him.

Already the chauffeur had tossed the olive-wood box into the cab; the three blue-bloused men sprang in after it; the chauffeur slipped into his seat, threw in the clutch, and, driving with one hand, turned a pistol on the half drowned butler, who had reeled to his feet and was lurching forward to seize the steering wheel.

The taxicab, gathering speed, was already turning the corner of the rue de la Lune when Neeland managed to free throat and eyes from the swathe of woollen.

The butler, checked by the levelled pistol, stood dripping, still almost blinded by the force of the water from the hose; but he had plenty of pluck, and he followed Neeland on a run to the corner of the street.

The street was absolutely empty, except for the sparrows, and the big, fat, slate-coloured pigeons that strutted and coo-cooed under the shadow of the chestnut trees.