Chapter 50
"Yes," he repeated, "as a cook you're a failure, Scheherazade. That broth which you seasoned for me has done funny things to my eyes, too.
But they're recovering. I see much better already. My vision is becoming sufficiently clear to observe how pretty you are in your nurse's cap and ap.r.o.n."
A slow colour came into her face and he saw her eyebrows bend inward as though she were annoyed.
"You _are_ pretty, Scheherazade," he repeated. "You know you are, don't you? But you're a poor cook and a rotten shot. You can't be perfection, you know. Cheer up!"
She ignored the suggestion, her dark eyes brooding and remote again; and he lay watching her with placid interest in which no rancour remained. He was feeling decidedly better every minute now. He lifted the automatic pistol and shoved it under his pillow, then cautiously flexed his fingers, his arms, and finally his knees, with increasing pleasure and content.
"Such dreadful soup," he said. "But I'm a lot better, thank you. Was it to have been murder this time, too, Scheherazade? Would the entire cupful have made a pretty angel of me? Oh, fie! Naughty Scheherazade!"
She remained mute.
"Didn't you mean manslaughter with intent to exterminate?" he insisted, watching her.
Perhaps she was thinking of her blond and bearded companion, and the open port, for she made no reply.
"Why didn't you let him heave me out?" inquired Neeland. "Why did you object?"
At that she reddened to the roots of her hair, understanding that what she feared had been true--that Neeland, while physically helpless, had retained sufficient consciousness to be aware of what was happening to him and to understand at least a part of the conversation.
"What was the stuff with which you flavoured that soup, Scheherazade?"
He was merely baiting her; he did not expect any reply; but, to his surprise, she answered him:
"Threlanium--Speyer's solution is what I used," she said with a sort of listless effrontery.
"Don't know it. Don't like it, either. Prefer other condiments."
He lifted himself on one elbow, remained propped so, tore open his wireless telegram, and, after a while, contrived to read it:
"James Neeland, "S. S. Volhynia.
"Spies aboard. Be careful. If trouble threatens captain has instructions British Government to protect you and order arrests on your complaint.
"Naa."
With a smile that was almost a grin, Neeland handed the telegram to Ilse Dumont.
"Scheherazade," he said, "you'll be a good little girl, now, won't you? Because it would be a shocking thing for you and your friend across the way to land in England
She continued to hold the slip of paper and stare at it long after she had finished reading it and the words became a series of parallel blurs.
"Scheherazade," he said lightly, "what on earth am I going to do with you?"
"I suppose you will lodge a charge with the captain against me," she replied in even tones.
"Why not? You deserve it, don't you? You and your humorous friend with the yellow beard?"
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."