Peter the Brazen Part 25

"The wireless operator. Shall we consider ourselves properly introduced?"

"My name is Romola Borria. I presume you are an American--or British."

"American," informed Peter. "And you? Spanish _senorita_?"

"I have no nationality," she replied easily. "I am what we call in China, a 'B. I. C.'"

"Born in China!"

"Born in Canton, China. Father: Portuguese; mother: Australian.

Answer: What am I?" She laughed deliciously, and Peter was moved.

They lingered long enough to see the coolie drag himself up on the sh.o.r.e una.s.sisted, and then separated, the girl to make ready for lunch and to request the steward to a.s.sign them to adjoining seats at the same table, and Peter to take a look at the register, the crew, and what pa.s.sengers might be on deck.

The pa.s.sengers, lounging in steamer-chairs awaiting the call to tiffin, and the deck crew, strapping down the forward cargo booms and battening the forward hatch, Peter gave a careful inspection, retaining their images in an eye that was rapidly being trained along photographic lines.

It was a comparatively simple matter, Peter found, to remember peoples'

faces; the important point being to select some striking feature of the countenance, and then persistently drive this feature home in his memory. He knew that the human memory is a perverse organ, much preferring to forget and lose than to retain.

So he looked over the crew and found them to be quite Dutch and quite self-satisfied, with no more than a slight but polite interest in him and his presence. Wireless operators, as a rule, are self-effacing individuals who inhabit dark cabins and have very little to say.

He called at the purser's office and helped himself to the register, finding the name of Romola Borria in full, impulsive handwriting, giving her address as Hong Kong, Victoria; and a long list of Dutch names, representing quite likely nothing more harmful than sugar and coffee men, with perhaps a sprinkling of copra and pearl buyers.

Peter then investigated the wireless cabin, which was situated aft on the turn of the promenade deck, and commanding a not entirely inspiring view of the cargo well and the steerage.

a.s.suring himself that the wireless machine was in good working order, Peter hooked back the door, turned on the electric fan to air the place out, and with his elbows on the rail gave the steerage pa.s.sengers a looking over.

He did not look far before his gaze stopped its traveling.

Directly below him, sitting cross-legged on a hatch-cover, was a Chinese or Eurasian girl whose face was colorless, whose lips were red, and whose eyes, half-lidded, because of the dazzling sunlight, were of an unusual blue-green shade.

Had Peter wished to make inquiries regarding this maiden, he would have found that she was from the Chinese settlement in Maca.s.sar, and on her way to Canton, to pay a visit to a grandmother she had never seen. But it was Peter's nature to spin little dreams of his own whenever he contemplated exotic young women, to place them in settings of his own manufacture.

Her blue-black hair was parted in a white line that might have been centered by the tip of her tiny nose and an unseen point on the nape of her pretty neck.

Peter could not know, as he studied her, how this innocent maid from Maca.s.sar was destined to play an important and significant part in his life, entering and leaving it like a gentle and caressing afternoon monsoon. His guess, as he looked away, was that she was a woman of no caste, from her garb; probably a river girl; more than likely, worse.

Yet there was an undeniable air of innocence and youth in her narrow shoulders as she slowly rocked. Peter could see the tips of bright-red sandals peeping from under each knee, and he guessed her to be about eighteen.

She caught sight of Peter, who had folded his arms and was resting their elbows idly upon the teak rail, and their eyes met and lingered.

A light, indescribably sad and appealing, shone in the blue-green eyes, which seemed to open larger and larger, until they became round pools of darting, mysterious reflection. It was a moment in which Peter was suspended in s.p.a.ce.

"I am afraid that wireless operators are not always discreet," purred a low, sweet voice at his side.

Peter smiled his grave smile, and vouchsafed nothing. The girl in the steerage had returned to her sewing and was apparently quite oblivious of his presence. And still that look of demure, wistful appeal stood out in his memory.

Romola Borria was murmuring something, the context of which was not quite clear to him.

"Eh? I beg pardon?"

"It is quite dreadful, this traveling all alone," she remarked.

"Yes," he admitted. "Sometimes I bore myself into a state of agony."

"And it breeds such strange, such unexplainable desires and caprices,"

the girl went on in her cultivated, honeyed tones. "Strangers sometimes are so--so cold. For instance, yourself."

"I?" exclaimed Peter, supporting himself on the stanchion. "Why, I'm the friendliest man in the world!"

Romola Borria pursed her lips and studied him a.n.a.lytically.

"I wonder----" she began, and stopped, fretting her lip. "I should like to ask you a very blunt and a very bold question." Her expression was darkly puzzled.

"Go right ahead," urged Peter amiably, "don't mind me."

"Why I speak in this way," she explained, "is that since I ran away from Hong Kong----"

"Oh, you ran away from Hong Kong!"

"Of course!" She said it in a way that indicated a certain lack of understanding on his part. "Since I ran away from Hong Kong I have been looking, looking for such--for such a man as you appear to be, to--to confide in."

"Don't you suppose a woman would do almost as well?" spoke Peter, who, through experience, had grown to dislike the father-confessor role.

"If you don't _care_ to listen----" she began, as though he had hurt her.

"I am all ears," stated Peter, with his most convincing smile.

"And I have changed my mind," said Romola Borria with a disdainful toss of her pretty head. "Besides, I think the Herr Captain would have a word with you."

The fat and happy captain of the _Persian Gulf_ occupied the breadth if not the height of the doorway, wearing his boyish grin, and Peter hastened to his side with a murmured apology to the girl as he left her.

He merely desired to have transmitted an unimportant clearance message to the Batavia office, to state that all was well and that the thrust-bearing, repaired, was now performing "smoot'ly."

Dropping the hard rubber head-phones over his ears, Peter listened to the air, and in a moment the silver crash of the white spark came from the doorway.

Romola Borria stared long and venomously at the little Chinese maiden, who was sewing away industriously as she rocked to and fro on the hatch. Immersed in her own thoughts the girl, removing her quick eyes from the flying needle, glanced up at the deep-blue sky, and, smiling, s.h.i.+vered in a sort of ecstasy.

CHAPTER III

At dinner Peter met the notables. It seemed the fat and handsome captain had taken a fancy to him. And it was as Peter had deduced earlier. These pa.s.sengers were stodgy Dutchmen, each with a little world of his own, and forming the sole orbit of that little world. For the most part they were plantation owners escaping the seasonal heat for the cool breezes of a vacation in j.a.pan, boastful of their possessions, smug in their Dutch self-complacency, and somewhat gluttonous in their manner of eating.

The fat captain beamed. The fat plantation owners gorged themselves and jabbered. The three-piece orchestra played light opera that the world had forgotten. The company became light-hearted as more frosty bottles of that exotic drink, _arracka_, were disgorged by the _Persian Gulf's_ excellent ice-box. And all the while, speaking in light, soothing tones, Romola Borria gazed alluringly into the watchful eyes of Peter Moore.

At length the chairs were pushed back, and Peter, with this fairy-like creature in a dinner-gown of most fetching pink gossamer clinging to his arm, took to the deck for an after-dinner Abdullah.

They chatted in low, confiding tones of the people in the dining-room.