Miranda of the Balcony Part 3

Made by this seemingly pa.s.sionless and apathetic man, the secret movement shocked Charnock. It seemed to him at that moment so cold-blooded as to be almost inhuman.

"Look out!" he shouted through the door and in broad English, forgetting that the man for whom his warning was intended was a Moor.

But the warning had its effect. There was a heavy blow upon the door, as though a man's shoulder lurched against it, and then the bolt grated into the socket. Ha.s.san Akbar walked on repeating his prayer for alms, as if his hand had never for an instant stolen up the panel and felt for the latch.

Charnock, to make his warning the more complete, rapped on the door for admission, once, twice, thrice. But he got no answer. He leaned his ear to the panel. He could detect not so much as a foot stirring.

Absolute silence reigned in that dark and shuttered room.

Charnock walked back to his hotel. On the way he pa.s.sed the end of the pier, where he saw the little Frenchman bargaining with the owner of a felucca. His excitement gradually died down. It occurred to him that there might have been no grounds at all for any excitement. Ha.s.san Akbar might have been following through the Sok by mere accident. He might have tried the door in pursuit of nothing more than alms; and in a little the whole incident ceased to trouble his speculations. He crossed the Straits to Gibraltar the next morning, and waited there for two days until the P. and O. came in. It was on the P. and O. that he first fell in with Major Wilbraham.

CHAPTER III

TREATS OF A GENTLEMAN WITH AN AGREEABLE COUNTENANCE, AND OF A WOMAN'S FACE IN A MIRROR

Major Ambrose Wilbraham had embarked at Ma.r.s.eilles, and before the boat reached Gibraltar he had made the acquaintance of everyone on board, and had managed to exchange cards with a good many. The steamer was still within sight of Gibraltar when he introduced himself to Charnock with a manner of effusive jocularity to which Charnock did not respond. The Major was tall and about forty years of age. A thin crop of black hair was plastered upon his head; he wore a moustache which was turning grey; his eyebrows were so faultlessly regular that they seemed to have been stencilled on his forehead, and underneath them a pair of cold beady eyes counterfeited friendliness. Charnock could not call to mind that he had ever met a man on whom geniality sat with so ill a grace, or one whose acquaintance he less desired to improve.

Major Wilbraham, however, was not easily rebuffed, and he walked the deck by Charnock's side, talkative and unabashed.

Off the coast of Portugal the boat made bad weather, and she laboured through the cross-seas of the Bay under a strong south-westerly wind.

Off Ushant she picked up a brigantine which Charnock watched from the hurricane deck without premonition, and indeed without more than a pa.s.sing curiosity.

"Fine lines, eh, Charnock old fellow!" said a voice at his elbow.

The brigantine dipped her head into a roller, lifted it, and shook the water off her decks in a cascade of snow.

"I have seen none finer," answered Charnock, "except on a racing-yacht or a destroyer."

"She's almost familiar to me," speculated the Major.

"She reminds me of some boats I saw once at the West Indies," returned Charnock, "built for the fruit-trade, and so built for speed. Only they were schooners--from Salcombe, I believe. The Salcombe clippers they were called."

"Indeed!" said the Major, with a sharp interest, and he leaned forward over the rail. "Now I wonder what her name is."

Charnock held a pair of binoculars in his hand. He gave them to the Major. Wilbraham raised them to his eyes while the P. and O. closed upon the sailing-boat. The brigantine slid down the slope of a wave and hoisted her stern.

"The 'Tarifa,'" said the Major, and he shut up the binoculars. "What is her tonnage, do you think?"

"About three hundred, I should say."

"My notion precisely. Would it be of any advantage to alter her rig, supposing that she was one of the Salcombe schooners?"

"I should hardly think so," replied Charnock. "I rather understood that the schooners were noted boats."

"Ah, that's interesting," said Wilbraham, and he returned the binoculars. The steamer was now abreast of the brigantine, and in a little it drew ahead.

"By the way, Charnock, I shall hope to see more of you," resumed Major Wilbraham. "I haven't given you a card, have I?"

He produced a well-worn card-case.

"It's very kind of you," said Charnock, as he twirled the card between his forefinger and his thumb. "Don't you," he added, "find cards rather a heavy item in your expenses?"

Major Wilbraham laughed noisily.

"I take you, dear friend," he exclaimed, "I take you. But a friend in this world, sir, is a golden thread in a very dusty cobweb."

"But the friends.h.i.+p is rather a one-sided arrangement," rejoined Charnock. "For instance, the cards you give, Major Wilbraham, bear no address, the cards you receive, do." And while showing the card to his companion, he inadvertently dropped it into the sea.

Major Wilbraham blamed the negligence of a rascally printer, and made his way to the smoking-room.

The P. and O. boat touched at Plymouth the next morning, and landed both Major Wilbraham and Charnock. The latter remained in Plymouth for two days, and on the morning of the third day hired a hansom cab, and so met with the last of those incidents which were to link him in such close, strange ties with the fortunes of men and women who even in name were then utterly unknown to him.

A yellow handbill had led Charnock across the Straits to Tangier, and now it was nothing more serious than a draft upon Lloyd's bank which took him in a hansom cab through the streets of Plymouth. Spring was in the air; Charnock felt exceedingly light-hearted and cheerful. On the way he unconsciously worked his little finger into the eye of the bra.s.s bracket which juts inwards on each side of the front window at the level of the shoulder; and when the cab stopped in front of the bank he discovered that his finger was securely jammed.

Across the road he noticed a chemist's shop, and descending the steps of the bank a fair-haired gentleman of an agreeable countenance, who, quite appropriately in that town of sailors, had something of a nautical aspect.

"Sir," began Charnock, politely, as he leaned out of the window, "I shall be much obliged--"

To Charnock's surprise the good-natured gentleman precipitately sprang down the steps and began to walk rapidly away. Charnock was sufficiently human and therefore sufficiently perverse to become at once convinced that although there were others pa.s.sing, this reluctant man was the only person in the world who could and must help him from his predicament.

So he leaned yet farther out of the cab.

"Hi, you sir!" he shouted, "you who are running away!"

The words had an electrical effect. The man of the agreeable countenance stopped suddenly, and so stood with his back towards Charnock while gently and thoughtfully he nodded his head. It seemed to Charnock that he might perhaps be counting over the voices with which he was familiar.

"Well," cried Charnock, who was becoming exasperated, "my dear sir, am I to wait for you all day?"

The street was populous with the morning traffic of a business quarter. Curious people stopped and attracted others. In a very few moments a small crowd would have formed. The stranger thereupon came slowly back to the hansom, showing a face which was no longer agreeable. He set a foot upon the step of the cab, and fixed a blue and watchful eye upon Charnock.

"I am afraid," said the latter, with severity, "that my first impression of you was wrong."

An indescribable relief was expressed by the other, but he spoke with surliness.

"You mistook me for someone else?"

"I mistook your disposition for something else," Charnock affably corrected. "I expected to find you a person of great good-nature."

"You hardly made such a point of summoning a perfect stranger," and here the blue eyes became very wary, "for no other reason than to tell him that."

"Certainly not," returned Charnock; "I would not trespa.s.s upon your time, which seems to be extremely valuable, without a better reason.

But my finger is fixed, as you can see, in this bra.s.s ring, and I cannot withdraw it. So if you would kindly cross over to the chemist and buy me a pennyworth of vaseline, I shall be more than obliged."

And with the hand which was free he felt in his pocket for a penny and held it out.

A look of utter incredulity showed upon the listener's face.