Part 44 (2/2)

He finished his mineral water, and, still feeling thirsty, rang, on the chance that the porter might still be awake and obliging.

Something about the entire affair was beginning to strike him as intensely funny, and the idea of foreign spies slinking about Brookhollow; the seriousness with which this young girl took herself and her mission; her amateur attempts at murder; her solemn mention of the Turkish Emba.s.sy--all these excited his sense of the humorous. And again incredulity crept in; and presently he found himself humming Irwin's immortal Kaiser refrain:

”Hi-lee! Hi-lo!

Der vinds dey blow Joost like die wacht am Rhine!

Und vot iss mine belongs to me, Und vot iss yours iss mine!”

There came a knock at his door; he rose and opened it, supposing it to be the porter; and was seized in the powerful grasp of two men and jerked into the dark corridor.

One of them had closed his mouth with a gloved hand, crus.h.i.+ng him with an iron grip around the neck; the other caught his legs and lifted him bodily; and, as they slung him between them, his startled eyes caught sight of Ilse Dumont entering his drawing-room.

It was a silent, fierce struggle through the corridor to the front platform of the vestibule train; it took both men to hold, overpower, and completely master him; but they tried to do this and, at the same time, lift the trap that discloses the car steps. And could not manage it.

The instant Neeland realised what they were trying to do, he divined their shocking intention in regard to himself, and the struggle became terrible there in the swaying vestibule. Twice he nearly got at the automatic pistol in his breast pocket, but could not quite grasp it.

They slammed him and thrashed him around between them, apparently determined to open the trap, fling him from the train, and let him take his chances with the wheels.

Then, of a sudden, came a change in the fortunes of war; they were trying to drag him over the chain sagging between the forward mail-car and the Pullman, when one of them caught his foot on it and stumbled backward, releasing Neeland's right arm. In the same instant he drove his fist into the face of his other a.s.sailant so hard that the man's head jerked backward as though his neck were broken, and he fell flat on his back.

Already the train was slowing down for the single stop between Albany and New York--Hudson. Neeland got out his pistol and pointed it shakily at the man who had fallen backward over the chain.

”Jump!” he panted. ”Jump quick!”

The man needed no other warning; he opened the trap, scrambled and wriggled down the mail-car steps, and was off the train like a snake from a sack.

The other man, b.l.o.o.d.y and ghastly white, crept under the chain after his companion. He was a well-built, good-looking man of forty, with blue eyes and a golden beard all over blood. He seemed sick from the terrific blow dealt him; but as the train had almost stopped, Neeland pushed him off with the flat of his foot.

Drenched in perspiration, dishevelled, bruised, he slammed both traps and ran back into the dark corridor, and met Ilse Dumont coming out of his stateroom carrying the olive-wood box.

His appearance appeared to stupefy her; he took the box from her without resistance, and, pus.h.i.+ng her back into the stateroom, locked the door.

Then, still savagely excited, and the hot blood of battle still seething in his veins, he stood staring wickedly into her dazed eyes, the automatic pistol hanging from his right fist.

But after a few moments something in her nave astonishment--her amazement to see him alive and standing there before her--appealed to him as intensely ludicrous; he dropped on the edge of the bed and burst into laughter uncontrolled.

”Scheherazade! Oh, Scheherazade!” he said, weak with laughter, ”if you could only see your face! If you could only _see_ it, my dear child!

It's too funny to be true! It's too funny to be a real face! Oh, dear, I'll die if I laugh any more. You'll a.s.sa.s.sinate me with your face!”

She seated herself on the lounge opposite, still gazing blankly at him in his uncontrollable mirth.

After a while he put back the automatic into his breast pocket, took off coat and waistcoat, without paying the slightest heed to her or to convention; opened his own suitcase, selected a fresh s.h.i.+rt, tie, and collar, and, taking with him his coat and the olive-wood box, went into the little washroom.

He scarcely expected to find her there when he emerged, cooled and refreshed; but she was still there, seated as he had left her on the lounge.

”I wanted to ask you,” she said in a low voice, ”did you _kill_ them?”

”Not at all, Scheherazade,” he replied gaily. ”The Irish don't kill; they beat up their friends; that's all. Fist and blackthorn, my pretty la.s.s, but nix for the knife and gun.”

”How--did you do it?”

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