Chapter VI: A Wanderer From Araby (3)

As soon as the young Prince, my brother, returned from the West I attempted to persuade him to allow me to go with him to Europe. To this, however, he demurred. I must remain in the United States, he said, and retain the name of Paula Trevison.

“It is here that you must marry and make your home,” he told me. “Through Trevison I will make ample provision for you, but it is contrary to your interests and mine that you be known as Pauline Maranotti. The members of the nobility would not receive you, and your lot in Italy would be exceedingly unhappy.”

I would not have it so, however. The result was that we quarreled and parted in anger. The following day I received a visit from the Prince’s American lawyer, who told me my brother had deposited in a New York bank the sum of ten thousand dollars, in the name of Paula Trevison. This was to constitute my allowance for the year. The lawyer also informed me that on that morning the Prince had embarked on a vessel for Italy.

While the lawyer was with me, I succeeded in restraining my feelings, but as soon as he was gone a spirit of revolt asserted itself, and I determined that I would go to England, seek out my mother’s relatives and enlist their support in an attempt to assert my claim to recognition as a daughter of the house of Maranotti, and, as such, one who rightfully might claim a part of its vast estate.

Kind as he had been to me, the Prince had at last plainly given me to understand that my mother’s flight from his father’s cruelty was unwarranted, and that, in the interest of the family, he would be compelled to recognize me only privately as his half-sister. In short I was to be dependent on his benevolence for that financial aid to which I had an hereditary right. This, together with the light manner in which he had set off for Europe, without coming to bid me farewell, had thoroughly angered me, and from a sense of respect for my injured mother, as well as from a sense of my individual rights in the matter, I was determined that this masquerade as Paula Trevison should cease.

Having taken this resolution, I decided to act in accordance with it without delay.

Looking over the advertising columns of a newspaper, I saw that a large steam yacht had been chartered by a tourist company for an early Autumn cruise among the British Isles. I never had been aboard a steam yacht, and it occurred to me that perhaps on such a vessel I would be less likely to be seen by anyone who had known me before. It was not such a vessel as a friend of Glyncamp’s or Meschid’s would be likely to take, nor was it probable that the fugitive, Demain, would embark on such a trip. I saw that I could leave the yacht at any of its stopping places, and as these, for the most part, were not likely to be regular ports of entry, I might the more easily succeed in escaping detection.

The vessel was to sail on the morrow. Accordingly I drew from the bank the full amount that had been deposited there to my credit and took passage on the steam yacht, _Highland Lady_.

Except for one incident, this voyage was uneventful. Near the close of our fourth day out, we sighted a derelict that lay almost directly in our course. As our yacht drew near this ill-fated vessel it was seen that it had been ravaged by fire, but from the charred staff over the stern a white cloth was fluttering, and a closer inspection showed that a rope was trailing from one of the davits. Believing, therefore, that some living person still might be on the helpless vessel, our captain sent four men in one of the yacht’s boats to learn whether survivors were aboard.

On the derelict one man was found, and never shall I forget the spectacle he presented when, haggard and delirious, he was brought aboard the _Highland Lady_. He was taken to one of the staterooms, and, heartily pitying the poor fellow, I asked the yacht’s surgeon if I could do anything to aid him.

The offer was made impulsively, and I was a little startled when the doctor said:

“Why, yes, Miss Trevison, you can help me, if you will. He has a bad scratch on one of his arms--from a piece of metal, I suppose--and, if we don’t give it treatment at once, it is likely to cause considerable trouble.”

Then, asking all others, except a stewardess and myself to leave the room, the doctor prepared to dress the injured arm. After a careful examination, he said he would have to lance it. He, therefore, asked me to hold the arm while he performed the simple operation. While he was preparing for this, the physician’s attention was distracted by the sound of a concertina, which, played by a little son of one of the passengers, had annoyed many persons during the voyage. The doctor, stepping to the door, directed that the concertina be silenced. He then turned to his patient.

All was over in a few minutes, but, while I held the arm, the delirious man struggled desperately, and never will I forget the look of horror I saw on his haggard face. When the lancing was finished the doctor washed the arm and, after applying some sort of ointment, he bandaged it.

When all was done, I left the stateroom, just as a steward entered it with a bowl of steaming broth.

Later in the day, when I stopped at the stateroom door to learn the condition of the patient, he opened his eyes suddenly and, seeing me, he accused me of being a vampire. When I visited the stateroom on the following morning he repeated the strange charge. Then, learning that I was the only visitor whom he had addressed in this astonishing manner, I discontinued my visits.

The _Highland Lady_ was to make her first stop at the Scilly Islands and, as it was scarcely likely that the sufferer would find good hospital treatment there, he was transferred to a vessel bound for Liverpool.

Shortly after this, upon picking up an English newspaper that had been published only a day or two after we had taken the stranger from the _Hannibal_, I saw an account of how an American ship captain had sent a man aboard the _Hannibal_ in order that he might be able to report on the derelict’s condition. This man had found no one on the vessel. As his visit had been made more than a week after the burning _Hannibal_ had been abandoned by its crew, and before it had been sighted by the _Highland Lady_, the fact that the presence of the famished man we took off had not been discovered, struck me as extraordinary. It did, however, account for the unburned rope which we had seen trailing from the davit.

Upon my arrival in England, the few surviving relatives of my mother received me coldly, and were frank enough to tell me that the treatment I had received from the Prince was better than I had a right to expect. Then, reluctantly deciding to abandon my determination to insist that I should be formally acknowledged as the late Prince’s daughter, I returned to the United States.

In the vessel that brought me across the Atlantic I met a young woman, about my own age, who was the wife of Adolph Janot, an aviator and the inventor of an improved seaplane which then was being subjected to a series of tests by the government. Mrs. Janot and I became great friends, and, when we arrived in New York, it was at her suggestion that I took a small suite of rooms in the apartment hotel in which she made her home. Several times, in the course of the weeks that followed, Mr. Janot invited me to go up with him in his big seaplane, but, unable to conquer my strange fears, I always declined.

Correspondence between the Prince and myself soon completely effected a reconciliation, and when, a few months after our parting, he found it necessary to return to the United States, it was arranged that he should be my guest.

It was while the Prince still was on the Atlantic that I saw in a newspaper a report of the death of Rayon Demain. According to this, the young man, who then was passing under an assumed name, was slain in Arizona in singularly mysterious circumstances. Concerning his identity, however, there was not the slightest doubt.

The report was brief and I read the lines without emotion. My love for this misguided man was only an incident of a long midsummer night’s dream, after all. His physical perfections, his verses to me and the words I heard him speak while he guided the canoe across the moonlit lake had captivated me. Taking advantage of my superstitions, he had caused me to become his wife, then, in an hour of inexplicable madness, he had assumed the aspect of a fiend, and I had learned to loathe him. So lightly had I come to regard that midnight marriage that it was difficult for me to realize that in the eyes of the law I was a widow.

When my half-brother and I met again we became even better friends than we had been before. He told me something, however, that disquieted me. Lord Galonfield had been seeking me in Europe, and had caused the Prince to be informed that he had obtained possession of the Rajiid diamonds which, according to an arrangement with Meschid Pasha, were to constitute the price of my hand in marriage. The Prince gave the young nobleman no information concerning me.

Like me, the Prince was passionately fond of the better class of music, and, during the six months he remained in New York, we frequently went together to musicales and the opera. It was at the Metropolitan Opera House that I first saw Philip Wadsworth, a well-to-do young man, who was destined to play an important part in my life.

The circumstances incident to the manner in which Mr. Wadsworth wooed and wed me have been related by that gentleman himself.

Several times I had been puzzled by his occasional periods of abstraction, but on the day of our marriage I was wholly at a loss to account for his remarkable display of nervousness, and, during the ceremony, I observed that some of his responses were uttered almost as if he were speaking against his will. His increasing haggardness in the cab that took us to the pier startled me, and then, for the first time, I fancied that I saw in his face something that was suggestive of a face I had seen before. But it was not until he entered the stateroom, just before the vessel left the pier, that I recognized him.

The haggard face of my husband was that of the delirious man who had been taken from the derelict, and in his eyes was the same expression I had seen in them when he had called me a vampire!

Then, as if in confirmation of my discovery, there came to my ears from the pier the sound of a concertina. Several times, while the rescued man was on board the _Highland Lady_, passengers found it necessary to rebuke the irrepressible boy whose playing of a concertina near the sick man’s room was likely to disturb his rest.

Deserted by the man who, scarcely more than an hour before, had made me his wife, I continued on my way to Europe. There a cablegram from the Prince recalled me to the United States. Upon my return I was informed that Mr. Wadsworth had mysteriously disappeared, leaving no explanation of his desertion of me.

My brother’s anger and indignation knew no bounds, but, fearing that if the affair got to the attention of the public, his true name might be revealed, he decided to institute no legal proceedings against the man who had so cruelly deserted me.

When the time arrived for me to bid farewell to the Prince, I went down to the pier with Mrs. Janot to see him off. On my return to my room, I found among the letters the postman had brought during my absence an envelope addressed in a handwriting that drove the color from my face.

I quickly opened the envelope, and, as I drew out the sheet it contained I saw it contained more verses from the hand of Rayon Demain!

With a cry of anguish, I sank insensible to the floor.

When I recovered consciousness, Mrs. Janot was bending over me. As, in her sympathetic way, she asked me the cause of my trouble, I shrank from her in dismay.

What would this good woman have said if I had told her I was a bigamist?

The following day I received other verses, and a letter. Neither bore the hated name, however, for they were signed “Thy Gondolier.” The letter informed me that the writer was in New York, and he besought me to receive him when he called at three o’clock on the following afternoon.

I had rented my apartment furnished, and three trunks were sufficient to hold all my personal property. These trunks were quickly packed, and, four hours after I had received the verses and letter, I left the house.

I went first to a modest hotel, and then rented and furnished a flat in the northern part of the city. The only persons who knew my new address were the Janots and the Prince’s lawyer.

For several weeks I was undisturbed, then I was completely prostrated by the report of the assassination of Prince Maranotti, at Basselanto. The news came to me through his American lawyer, who informed me that two men were suspected of the crime. Of these, one was a man whose features were those of a “laughing devil,” and the other was a cousin of the man who was slain.

The description of the first man was so similar to that of the man known to me as the “Gargoyle,” that I could scarcely doubt that it was indeed this person who had committed the act. I had heard the Prince speak once of a cousin in America--“a helpless sort of a fellow,” he said--whom I might chance to meet one day. He advised me, however, not to take this man into my confidence.

Assured by my legal adviser that my claim to the Maranotti estates was indisputable, I placed the matter entirely in his hands. He then decided that, for the present, at least, it would be better for me to remain in the United States while he went to Italy to consult with legal authorities there. Two days after my lawyer sailed, a cablegram from Italy was received at his office. The cablegram yielded the information that the will of Prince Maranotti had been found and that he left all the Maranotti estates to me.

Five days have passed since my lawyer left New York. During the first three I remained in my apartments. Yesterday afternoon, however, Mrs. Janot invited me to take an automobile trip with her to Rockaway where, at the aviation station, her husband was going to try out one of his new seaplanes. Believing the trip would improve my spirits, which were somewhat depressed because of my long seclusion indoors, I accepted the invitation.

Arriving at Rockaway, we were welcomed by Mr. Janot, who, in a launch, took us out to the new seaplane. Not suspecting that any attempt would be made to take me on a flight against my will, I was easily persuaded to board the big machine and seat myself in the fusilage. For several minutes Mr. Janot explained to me the nature of the mechanism by means of which the seaplane was controlled. While I listened, a mechanician was oiling one of the great motors.

With a suddenness that completely bewildered me, the whole structure began to vibrate and I was almost deafened by the sound of the motors’ exhaust. I turned to protest, but in the roar my words were inaudible. Mr. Janot smiled grimly and avoided my gaze as he continued to manipulate the mechanical devices with which he was surrounded.

With ever-increasing speed, the plane now was moving over the surface of the water; then I saw we were rising. Slowly my resentment died away. As we sped onward and upward, I closed my eyes. Again I found myself under the spell of old Arabian tales. One moment I felt like Sinbad in the talons of a roc; another, and I was mounted on the back of a flying steed, and then I would fancy I was nestling on the crooked arm of a great, black, Sphinx-faced genie, who, with the speed of a comet, was traversing the star-strewn wilderness of the night. Nor did the mighty coughing of the motors’ exhaust find vulnerable the all-pervading ecstasy which filled my mind with visions of the wonders of Mohammed’s Paradise.

From time to time I looked down at the wonderful panorama that was moving under me. I caught my breath as I saw scores of clusters of toy-houses, and woods and fields, and the sea, wrinkled and gray, stretching out to the horizon.

But, suddenly, my fears overwhelmed me again. The coughing of the motors ceased and I was conscious of a faint sensation of sinking. Looking down, I saw there was land below us--a great expanse of greenish-yellow meadows, lined with many gray creeks of various sizes. Toward these meadows the seaplane was gliding, apparently heading for a big barge that was moored to a bank of one of the larger creeks.

It was near the mouth of one of the creeks that we came to water. Scarcely was the seaplane at rest when Mr. Janot and his mechanician began making a collapse boat ready for service. As I looked at them wonderingly, Mr. Janot said:

“Something serious has happened. The motors are overheated and the machine is unsafe. We must get you ashore at once.”

Two or three minutes later I was in the boat and Mr. Janot rowed me to the shore. He helped me to land. As he stepped back into the boat, he said:

“The condition of the plane is such that I dare not ask you to return to it. I think you will have little difficulty in getting to a railway station, with the assistance of someone you will find on the barge yonder.” He paused, then added: “When we meet again, you will understand, and will not blame me for leaving you in this unfortunate situation. Good-night.”

Speechless with astonishment, I watched him row back to the seaplane. Soon after he boarded it, its exhaust sounded again and it took the air.

The declining sun warned me that if I was to get to the railroad before nightfall, it would be necessary for me to act quickly. Not far from me was the barge I had seen in the course of the seaplane’s descent. I was about to go toward this when I heard the discharge of a gun, and saw the fall of several ducks that had been flying overhead. Thinking that the man who fired the gun was from the barge, I hurried toward the bank which concealed him from my view. Reaching this, I saw him in a little boat, and to him I appealed for aid in getting me to the railroad. This, he thought, could not be done at night. Thanks to his courtesy, however, I soon found myself on this barge where I was welcomed by Mr. Westfall. I was compelled to remain against my will, but already our host has partly convinced me that it was well I did so. Painful as have been the narratives of the three gentlemen who have proved that I have been responsible for the grievous misfortunes that have befallen them, I willingly await the stories to be told by the others, with the hope that what they have to tell will lift forever from my unhappy life the clouds of mystery and fear which now envelop it.

* * * * *

As the Veiled Aeronaut finished speaking, all eyes, flashing with disapproval and curiosity, were turned toward the Gargoyle, whose ever-smiling face was partly concealed by one of his long, white hands.

“Well, sir--well?” demanded the Nervous Physician, irritably. “We are now prepared to hear your explanation, I believe.”

The Gargoyle, drumming nervously on the table, glanced interrogatively toward Westfall. But before the millionaire had time to speak, the Fugitive Bridegroom, leaning across the table, addressed the Aeronaut.

“Then my--my doubts--my horrible suspicions--were only the results of delirium, after all,” he said, in a hoarse, broken voice.

“Of course, of course,” replied the Nervous Physician. “Isn’t it clear enough to you now? There is scarcely an hour in the day when some delirious man or woman in New York is not receiving such impressions. A man whose bare feet get below his bedclothes on a Winter’s night will dream that he is in the Arctic regions, and to a dreamer incidents which seem to occupy hours will pass through his mind in a few seconds. Science has shown that in a five-minute dream a man may read a three-volume novel. Most men know this, and, when delirium is passed, they have sense enough to put aside the fantastic impressions they have received. You, however, have hoarded yours, with the result that you have made a fool of yourself, and have withdrawn from this inestimable young woman the protection she had a natural right to expect from you. I have no sympathy for you, sir--none. Now let us hear what this miserable Gargoyle has to say. Why don’t you speak, sir?”

“Stop!” commanded Westfall sharply. “In no circumstances, Doctor, is any of my guests to be subjected to insult while on this barge. The Gargoyle awaits your apology, sir.”

The Homicidal Professor leaned forward.

“We are to understand, then, that the appearance of the Princess on this marsh, and so near this barge, is not to be regarded as a coincidence?” he asked, impressively.

Westfall shook his head gravely.

“No, it was not that,” he said. “Having learned that her highness was on friendly terms with the Janots, I persuaded the aviator to bring her here at the time and in the manner she appeared. Our plan had been carefully arranged. But, Doctor, I have reminded you that the Gargoyle is expecting an apology.”

“Well, let him have it, then,” snapped the nervous physician, as the Homicidal Professor again settled back in his chair. “I apologize now, sir, but, in time, I may withdraw my apology.”

“We will now hear the story of the Hypochondriacal Painter,” said Westfall.

The Hypochondriacal Painter stroked his white beard meditatively for a few moments, then, in a deep, mellow voice, he began: