Part 50 (2/2)

She looked at him with a vague smile.

”What can you prove?” said she.

”Perfectly true, dear child. Nothing. I don't want to prove anything, either.”

She smiled incredulously.

”It's quite true, Scheherazade. Otherwise, I shouldn't have ordered my steward to throw the remains of my dinner out of the corridor porthole. No, dear child. I should have had it a.n.a.lysed, had your stateroom searched for more of that elusive seasoning you used to flavour my dinner; had a further search made for a certain sort of handkerchief and perfume. Also, just imagine the delightful evidence which a thorough search of your papers might reveal!” He laughed. ”No, Scheherazade; I did not care to prove you anything resembling a menace to society. Because, in the first place, I am absurdly grateful to you.”

Her face became expressionless under the slow flush mounting.

”I'm not teasing you,” he insisted. ”What I say is true. I'm grateful to you for violently injecting romance into my perfectly commonplace existence. You have taken the book of my life and not only extra ill.u.s.trated it with vivid and chromatic pictures, but you have unbound it, sewed into its prosaic pages several chapters ripped bodily from a penny-dreadful, and you have then rebound the whole thing and pasted your own pretty picture on the cover! Come, now! Ought not a man to be grateful to any philanthropic girl who so gratuitously obliges him?”

Her face burned under his ridicule; her clasped hands in her lap were twisted tight as though to maintain her self-control.

”What do you want of me?” she asked between lips that scarcely moved.

He laughed, sat up, stretched out both arms with a sigh of satisfaction. The colour came back to his face; he dropped one leg over the bed's edge; and she stood erect and stepped aside for him to rise.

No dizziness remained; he tried both feet on the floor, straightened himself, cast a gaily malicious glance at her, and slowly rose to his feet.

”Scheherazade,” he said, ”_isn't_ it funny? I ask you, did you ever hear of a would-be murderess and her escaped victim being on such cordial terms? Did you?”

He was going through a few calisthenics, gingerly but with increasing abandon, while he spoke.

”I feel fine, thank you. I am enjoying the situation extremely, too.

It's a delightful paradox, this situation. It's absurd, it's enchanting, it's incredible! There is only one more thing that could make it perfectly impossible. And I'm going to do it!” And he deliberately encircled her waist and kissed her.

She turned white at that, and, as he released her, laughing, took a step or two blindly, toward the door; stood there with one hand against it as though supporting herself.

After a few moments, and very slowly, she turned and looked at him; and that young man was scared for the first time since their encounter in the locked house in Brookhollow.

Yet in her face there was no anger, no menace, nothing he had ever before seen in any woman's face, nothing that he now comprehended.

Only, for the moment, it seemed to him that something terrible was gazing at him out of this girl's fixed eyes--something that he did not recognise as part of her--another being hidden within her, staring out through her eyes at him.

”For heaven's sake, Scheherazade----” he faltered.

She opened the door, still watching him over her shoulder, shrank through it, and was gone.

He stood for a full five minutes as though stupefied, then walked to the door and flung it open. And met a s.h.i.+p's officer face to face, already lifting his hand to knock for admittance.

”Mr. Neeland?” he asked.

”Yes.”

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