The Box with Broken Seals | Page 7

drive in the ambulance from there
to the dock. I shall ask very little of you in the way of duplicity. What
is necessary you will not, I think, refuse. You will be considered to
have had some former interest in Phillips, to account for your voyage,
and you will reconcile yourself to the fact that I shall not at any time
approach the sick man, or be known as an acquaintance of his on board

the ship."
His words disturbed her. She felt herself being drawn under the shadow
of some mystery.
"There is something in all this," she said, "which reminds me of the
time when Richard was your protégé, the time when we met before."
He leaned towards her, understanding very well what was in her mind.
"There is nothing criminal in this enterprise--even in my share of it," he
assured her. "What there is in it which necessitates secrecy is political,
and that need not concern you. You see," he went on, a little bitterly, "I
have changed my role. I am no longer the despair of the New York
police. I am the quarry of a race of men who, if they could catch me,
would not wait to arrest. That may happen even before we reach
Liverpool. If it does, it will not affect you. Your duty is to stay with a
dying man until he reaches the shelter of his home. You will leave him
there, and you will be free of him and of me."
"So far as regards our two selves," she enquired, "do we meet as
strangers upon the steamer?"
He considered the matter for a few moments before answering. She felt
another poignant thrill of recollection. He had looked at her like this
just before he had bent his back to the task of saving her brother's life
and liberty, looked at her like this the moment before the unsuspected
revolver had flashed from the pocket of his dress-coat and had covered
the man who had suddenly declared himself their foe. She felt her
cheeks burn for a moment. There was something magnetic, curiously
troublous about his eyes and his faint smile.
"I cannot deny myself so much," he said. "Even if our opportunities for
meeting upon the steamer are few, I shall still have the pleasure of a
New York acquaintance with Miss Beverley. You need not be afraid,"
he went on. "In this wonderful country of yours, the improbable
frequently happens. I have before now visited at the houses of some
whom you call your friends."

"Why not?" she asked him. "I should look upon it as the most natural
thing in the world that we were acquainted. But why do you say 'your
country'? Are you not an American?"
He looked at her with a very faint smile, a smile which had nothing in it
of pleasantness or mirth.
"I have so few secrets," he said. "The only one which I elect to keep is
the secret of my nationality."
She raised her eyebrows.
"Then you can no longer," she observed, "be considered what my
brother and I once thought you--a man of mysteries--for with your
voice and accent it is very certain that you are either English or
American."
"If it affords you any further clue, then," he replied, "let me confide in
you that if there is one country in this world which I detest, it is
England; one race of people whom I abominate, it is the English."
She showed her surprise frankly, but his manner encouraged no further
confidence. She touched the bell, and he bowed over her fingers.
"My friend Phillips," he said, in formal accents, as the butler stood
upon the threshold, "will never live, I fear, to offer you all the gratitude
he feels, but you are doing a very kind and a very wonderful action,
Miss Beverley, and one which I think will bring its own reward."
He passed out of the room, leaving Katharine a prey to a curious tangle
of emotions. She watched him almost feverishly until he had
disappeared, listened to his footsteps in the hall and the closing of the
front door. Then she hurried to the window, watched him descend the
row of steps, pass down the little drive and hail a taxicab. It was not
until he was out of sight that she became in any way like herself. Then
she broke into a little laugh.
"Heavens alive!" she exclaimed to herself. "Now I have to find Aunt

Molly and tell her that I am going to Europe to-morrow with a perfect
stranger!"
CHAPTER III
Mr. Jocelyn Thew descended presently from his taxicab outside one of
the largest and most cosmopolitan hotels in New York--or the world.
He made his way with the air of