The False Faces | Page 8

eyes searched the masked face of
his destiny. There was great fear in his heart, not of death, but lest death
overtake him before that scarlet hour when he should encounter the
man whom he must always think of as "Ekstrom."
After that, nothing would matter: let Death come then as swiftly as it
willed....
He was not even middle-aged, on the hither side of thirty; yet his
attitude was that of one who had already crossed the great divide of the
average mortal span: he looked backward upon a life, never forward to
one. To him his history seemed a thing written, lacking the one word
Finis: he had lived and loved and lost--had arrayed himself insolently
against God and Man, had been lifted toward the light a little way by a
woman's love, had been thrust relentlessly back into the black pit of his
damnation. He made no pretense that it was otherwise with him:
remained now merely the thing he had been in the beginning, minus
that divine spark which love had once kindled into consuming
aspiration toward the right; the Lone Wolf prowled again to-day and
would henceforth forevermore, the beast of prey callous to every
human emotion, animated by one deadly purpose, existing but to
destroy and be in turn destroyed....
Two decks below, about amidships, a cargo port was thrust open to the
night. A thick, broad beam of light leaped out, buffeting the murk,
striking evanescent glimmers from the rocking facets of the waters.
Deckhands busied themselves rigging out an accommodation ladder. A
tender of little tonnage panted nervously up out of nowhere and was
made fast alongside. The light raked its upper deck, picking out in
passing a group of men in uniforms. Fugitively something resembling a
petticoat snapped in the wind. Then several persons moved toward the
accommodation ladder, climbed it, disappeared through the cargo port.
The wearer of the petticoat did not accompany them.
Lanyard noted these matters subconsciously, for the time altogether
preoccupied, casting forward his thoughts along those dim trails his
feet must tread who followed his dark star....

Ten minutes later a deck-steward found him, and paused, touching his
cap.
"Beg pardon, sir, but all passingers is requested to report immedately in
the music room."
Indifferently Lanyard thanked the man and went below, to find the
music room tenanted by a full muster of his fellow passengers, all more
or less indignantly waiting to be cross-examined by the party of port
officials from the tender--the ship's purser standing by together with the
second and third officers and a number of stewards.
Resentment was not unwarranted: already, before being suffered to take
up quarters on board the _Assyrian_, each passenger had submitted to a
most comprehensive survey of his credentials, his mental, moral, and
social status, his past record, present affairs, and future purposes. A
formality to be expected by all such as travel in war time, it had been
rigid but mild in contrast with this eleventh-hour inquisition--a
proceeding so drastic and exhaustive that the only plausible inference
was official determination to find excuse for ordering somebody ashore
in irons. Nothing was overlooked: once passports and other proofs of
identity had been scrutinized, each passenger was conducted to his
stateroom and his person and luggage subjected to painstaking search.
None escaped; on the other hand, not one was found guilty of flagitious
peculiarity. In the upshot the inquisitors, baffled and betraying every
symptom of disappointment, were fain to give over and return to their
tender.
By this time Lanyard, one of the last to be grilled and passed, found
himself as little inclined for sleep as the most timorous soul on board.
Selecting an American novel from the ship's library, he repaired to the
smoking room, where, established in a corner apart, he became an
involuntary and, at first, a largely inattentive, eavesdropper upon an
animated debate involving some eight or ten gentlemen at a table in the
middle of the saloon--its subject, the recent visitation.
Measures so extraordinary were generally held to indicate an incentive
more extraordinary still.
"You can't get away from it," he heard Crane declare: "there's some sort
of funny business going on, or liable to go on, aboard this ship. She
wasn't held up for a solid week out of pure cussedness. Neither did they
come aboard to-night to give us another once-over through sheer

voluptuousness. There's a reason."
"And what," a satiric English voice enquired, "do you assume that
reason to be?"
"Search me. 'Sfar's I'm concerned the processes of the British
Intelligence Office are a long sight past finding out."
"It is simple enough," one of Crane's compatriots suggested: "the
Assyrian is suspected of entertaining a devil unawares."
"Monsieur means--?" the Swiss enquired.
"I mean, the authorities may have been led to