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The Pawns Count, a fiction by E. Phillips Oppenheim |
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CHAPTER VIII |
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_ It was one evening towards the end of the voyage, and about an hour after dinner. A huge form loomed out of the darkness, continuing its steady promenade along the unlit portion of the deck. Pamela, moved by some caprice, abandoned her caution of the last few days and called out. "Mr. Fischer!" He stopped short. The sparks flew from the red end of his cigar, which he tossed into the sea. He hastened towards her. "Miss Van Teyl?" he replied, a little hesitatingly. "How clever of you to know my voice!" she observed. "I am in the humour to talk. Will you sit down, please?" Mr. Fischer humbly drew a chair to her side. "I had an idea," he said, "that you had been avoiding me the last two or three days." "I have," she admitted. "Have I offended you, then?" "Scarcely that," she replied, "only, you see, it seemed waste of time to talk to you with the foils on, and a little dangerous, perhaps, to talk to you with them off." His face reflected his admiration. "Miss Van Teyl," he declared, "you are quite a wonderful person. I have never believed very much in women before. Perhaps that is the reason why I have never married." "Dear me, are you a woman-hater?" she asked. He looked at her steadfastly. "I have made use of women as playthings," he confessed. "Until I met you I never thought of them as companions, as partners." She laughed at him through the darkness, and at the sound of her laugh his eyes glowed. "Really, I am very much flattered," she said. "You give me credit for intelligence, then?" "I give you credit for every gift a woman should have," he answered enthusiastically. "I recognise in you the woman I have sometimes dreamed of." Again she laughed. "Don't tell me, Mr. Fischer," she protested, "that ever in your practical life you have spent a single moment in dreams?" "I have spent many," he assured her, "but they have all been since I knew you." Pamela sighed. "I have never been through a voyage," she observed, "without a love affair. Still, I never suspected you, Mr. Fischer." "You suspected me, perhaps, of other things." She nodded. "I am full of suspicions about you," she admitted. "I am not going to tell you what they are, of course." "There is one thing of which I am guilty," he confessed. "I should like to tell you about it right now." "Could I guess it?" "You're clever enough." "You like me, don't you, Mr. Fischer?" "Better than any woman in the world," he answered promptly. "And my confession is--well, just that. Will you marry me?" Pamela shook her head. "Quite early in life," she confided, "I made up my mind that I would never give a definite answer to any one who proposed to me on a steamer. I suppose it's the wind, or is it the stars, or the silence, or what? I have known the sanest of men, even like you, Mr. Fischer, become quite maudlin." "I am brimful of common sense at the present moment," he declared earnestly. "You and I could do great things together, if only I could get you to look at one certain matter from my point of view; to see it as I see it." "A political matter?" she inquired naively. "I want to try and persuade you," he confessed, "that America has everything in the world to gain from Germany's success, and everything to lose if the Allies should triumph in this war and Great Britain should continue her tyranny of the seas." "It's an extraordinarily interesting subject," Pamela admitted. "It is almost as absorbing," he declared, "as the other matter which just now lies even nearer to my heart." She withdrew her fingers from his sudden clutch. "Mr. Fischer," she told him, "what I said just now was quite final. I will not be made love to on a steamer." "When we land," he continued eagerly, "you will be coming to see your brother, won't you?" She nodded. "Of course! I am coming to the Plaza Hotel. That, I suppose, is good news for you, Mr. Fischer." "Of course it is," he answered, "but why do you say so?" "It will give you so many opportunities," she murmured. "Of seeing you?" She shook her head. "Of searching my belongings." There was a moment's silence. She heard his quick breath through the darkness. His voice assumed its harsher tone. "You believe that it was I who searched your stateroom?" "I am sure that it was you, or some one acting for you." "What is it, then, of which I am in search?" he demanded. "Captain Graham's formula," she replied. "I think you want that a good deal more than you want me." "You have it then?" he asked fiercely. She sighed. "You jump so to conclusions. I didn't say so." "You went up the stairs ... you were the only person who went up just at that one psychological moment! He had his pocketbook with him when he came in--he told Holderness so." "And when you searched him it was gone," she remarked calmly. "Dear me!" "How do you know that I searched him?" Fischer demanded. "How dare you ask me to give away my secrets?" she replied. "Listen," he began, striving with an almost painful effort to keep his voice down to the level of a whisper, "you and I together, we could do the most marvellous things. I could let you into all my schemes. They are great. They will be successful. After the war is over--" He held his breath for a moment. The tramp of approaching footsteps warned him of the coming of an intruder. The Captain came to a standstill before their chairs and saluted. "Miss Van Teyl," he said, "there will be a mutiny in the saloon if you don't come down and sing." She almost sprang to her feet. The ship was rolling a little, and she laid her fingers upon his arm. "I meant to come long ago," she declared, "but Mr. Fischer has been so interesting. You will finish telling me your experiences another time, won't you?" she called out over her shoulder. "There is so much that I still want to hear." Fischer's reply was almost ungracious. He watched their departure in silence, and afterwards leaned further back in his chair. With long, nervous fingers he drew a black cigar from his case and lit it. Then he folded his arms. For more than half an hour he sat there motionless, smoking furiously. He looked out into the chaos of the windy darkness, he heard voices riding upon the seas, shrieking and calling to him, voices to which he had been deaf too long. The burden of these later years of turbulent, brazen, selfish struggling, rolled back. He had been a sentimentalist once, a willing seeker after things which seemed to have passed him by. At his age, he told himself, a man should still find more than one place in the world. _ |
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