Chapter IV: The Great Secret

Darville stood on the bridge with the yacht’s captain as the vessel quickly approached. A second flare of distress went up from the yacht’s deck, and as the steamer came on the two men chuckled to themselves at their success.

The captain had carried out the orders of his owner, while the latter’s guest had been successful in his desire to be put on board the mail-steamer.

Few words were spoken between them. The captain’s eyes were strained into the darkness for some minutes.

“We’ll have to make some good excuse for our distress signals,” he remarked to Darville, who stood at his elbow. “We seafaring men don’t like pranks being played.”

“Tell him there’s something wrong in the engine-room,” said the novelist, never at a loss for an excuse. “You can order the engineer to put something out of gear, can’t you?”

“There’s no time,” replied the other, still peering into the darkness where the steamer’s lights were coming closer. Suddenly he cried: “By Gad, sir! We’re mistaken! She isn’t the _Prinz Luitpold_! She’s the Venice boat to Pola and Fiume! We’ve made an infernal blunder!”

Next second he yelled to the mate:

“Signal all well! Quick! It’s the wrong boat!”

And, placing his hand upon the engine-room signal, he pulled it over to “Full speed ahead.”

Then, taking up his megaphone, the captain shouted:

“Ahoy, there! Ahoy! We’re very much obliged, but we’ve put the damage right. Lots of thanks for coming back! Do the same for you one day!”

This was answered by some rather uncourtly remarks in Italian from the other vessel, the captain of which, angered at his loss of salvage, put over his helm, and the ship turned away as though in disgust.

“By Jove, sir! We nearly made fools of ourselves--eh?” exclaimed the breezy yacht’s captain to Darville. “It don’t do to play monkey-tricks at sea. I certainly believed her to be the _Prinz Luitpold_.” They both went along to the wireless-cabin, where the young operator, having spoken to the mail-boat and told her that there was no longer any danger, inquired where she was.

The reply came in Morse, and the operator read it aloud. “We turned back for you eight miles off Trieste. Now resuming our course.”

“Eight miles from Trieste! Why the passengers will land before midnight, and we shan’t be there till to-morrow.”

“They’ll have twelve hours’ start of us!” remarked Darville, in keen disappointment, and then he turned and paced the deck alone. He had been badly checkmated by Joan. A strong man, of iron constitution, a man who had never known a day’s illness for thirty years, yet who had played ducks and drakes with his life, keeping late hours and leading the gayest existence in all the most reckless circles in the various Continental cities, he who knew not love, had pretended to make love to Caborn’s wife! The whole affair was silly and unreal--a scene out of one of his own books. He had pretended to love her seriously, and she had acted with both tact and honor. He had a hidden purpose in playing at love. But to escape him surreptitiously, as she had done, was an offence against his nature.

In that she had shown her enmity. Enemies he never forgave. Many men were living who had cause to rue the day when they were at enmity with Seton Darville. His almost child-like, sympathetic nature, ever full of good-humor and genuine _bonhomie_, attracted women, and perhaps more so because of his whole-hearted cosmopolitanism. Most smart women of to-day love a cosmopolitan; the man who laughs at stay-at-homes, domesticity, at marriage ties, and hum-drum application to sordid money-making in business. Some men are born wanderers, and, as hotel gypsies, lead their erratic lives traveling to and fro across Europe, acquiring an unerring knowledge of hotels, cafés and hairdressers. Of such, Seton Darville was one.

On entering the great busy harbor of Trieste the captain steered for the Molo Giuseppina, and landed his eager passenger near the fine offices of the Austrian Lloyd Steamship Company, the owners of the _Prinz Luitpold_. It was early afternoon and the clerks were just returning from their luncheon. At a pigeon-hole in the big public office, with its fine tessellated pavement, he requested the inspection of the passenger list of the mail-boat from Corfu. After brief delay it was brought, and under the initial “C” was “Signora J. Caborn--Londra.”

“You have no idea where this lady is staying, I suppose,” he asked of the young Italian clerk.

“Well, signore, yes--I do,” was his reply. “I went on board before the vessel landed her passengers, and she came up to me to inquire for apartments. She seemed greatly agitated and traveling alone, so I took her to a friend of mine, a Madame Pastore, who lives in the Via Farneto, No. 168.”

“And she is there?” cried the novelist, instantly interested.

“I presume so. She went there in a taxi with all her belongings,” the young fellow said.

Ten minutes later Darville was in the taxi speeding up the narrow streets which surround the old castle, and across the Piazza Carlo Goldoni. He first went to the railway station to leave his small baggage, and then, reëntering the vehicle, soon reached the broad, modern street of high houses which had been indicated.

On the third floor of No. 168 he found a small brass plate upon which the name “Pastore” was inscribed.

Madame Pastore, a pleasant-faced woman of about forty, appeared, and in response to the novelist’s questions, said:

“The signora came here very late last night, slept a few hours, and went out again about eleven o’clock. She received a telegram at the _poste restante_, I think. On her return she apologized to me and said she was suddenly called to London.”

Darville’s brows contracted.

“To London!” he muttered to himself, and a few minutes later he was on his way back to the South Station, where he found that the Trieste-Vienna-Paris train-de-luxe had left just an hour after Joan had gone from Madame Pastore’s. She had, no doubt, caught that train, and was now well on her way to the Austrian capital.

For a few moments he hesitated. Should he wire to her, and address the message care of the station-master at Vienna, where it would be handed to her in the _wagon-lit_. He, however, decided against that course. Joan Caborn had a long start, but he intended to run her to earth at whatever might be her destination, either in Paris or in London.

She had not played the straight game, hence his suspicions were more than ever confirmed.

He went to the office of the Wagon-Lit Company on the platform, and there ascertained that Madame Caborn had, at the last moment, booked a berth in the Paris train-de-luxe.

The next train to Paris left at midnight, therefore he went to the Hotel Excelsior, on the Riva del Maddracchio, dined, and subsequently followed the route that Joan had taken. Before he left, however, he dispatched a telegram to an address in Paris--a commercial message which, no doubt, conveyed some hidden meaning.

Through the night, as the train roared on its way north to the Austrian capital, he lay in his narrow sleeping-berth wakeful and restless. The berth above him was occupied by a bearded plethoric old man, who snored so loudly that he could be heard above the racket of the train. Then in the morning, after they left Vienna, he went along to the restaurant-car, and had his _déjeuner_ as the train rushed towards Passau. The day was long and dreary as it always is in the cross-Europe trains. At Wels the sleeping-car was joined to another train, and then the journey towards Paris began.

On arrival there he was met by a smartly dressed, middle-aged Frenchman who, gesticulating in his excitement, said:

“I had your telegram, but I’ve been absent in Lille. She left before I received it! She’s gone to London.”

Darville paused. Then he smiled:

“No,” he said. “Not by any direct route. I know Joan Caborn too well for that.” He glanced at his watch, and added: “A wire to Dover will arrive too late. If I’m not mistaken she’ll leave the boat there, and go to London by some roundabout route. Little Vera did it once, you’ll remember.”

“I know, Mr. Darville,” said the mysterious man who had met him on the platform. “The lady is very elusive. Have you any fear of her, or her friends?”

Darville laughed aloud.

“Fear!” he echoed. “Have you ever known me to fear? Why, my dear fellow, I don’t think I know what fear means!”

The stranger shrugged his shoulders, and in French said with a smile:

“The lady may prove troublesome.”

“That is my own affair,” responded Darville in the same language. “In any case, she has been very clever in escaping. I have no doubt she’ll leave the boat at Dover and cover up her tracks. She’s done so before, you recollect.”

The Frenchman smiled, and together they went out to a café across the road, where they sat for half an hour. By the next service from Paris to London, Seton Darville, the constant traveler, who was known by name to the chief of the _wagon-restaurant_, left the Gare du Nord and took a seat for luncheon.

On arrival at Dover, in consequence of a telegram, a short, thick-set man in a blue serge suit, who looked like a nautical man, met him on the platform at the Marine Station. Few words were exchanged, but it was plain that Darville was absolutely disgusted. Therefore the novelist made some very outspoken and caustic remarks, and then entered the Pullman for Victoria.

He drove at once to his rooms in Duke Street, St. James’s, where he was met by his faithful man Drew, and, having washed and changed, he went to the telephone, and, after a short conversation, invited the person at the other end to come round and see him.

About a quarter of an hour later Drew, a middle-aged servant who had been in Darville’s employ for ten years or so, ushered in a tall, lean, fair-haired man in a dark gray overcoat. The visitor wore round, horn-rimmed glasses, and was clean-shaven and alert.

“Hulloa, Sandy?” exclaimed the novelist, greeting him warmly. “Sit down and have a drink. As you know, I’m just off a rather long trip--home from Corfu.”

“Yes, sir,” replied Mr. Alexander Paton seating himself, while Drew got out cigars and cigarettes. “We had that wire of yours from Corfu and the second one from Paris.”

“Then why the devil didn’t you act on my instructions?”

“Because we couldn’t. The lady hasn’t arrived in England.”

“Bosh! She left Paris for Calais. I know that.”

“She never came to either Boulogne or Calais. We had both places watched.”

“And the other ports?” asked Darville with hard, set face.

“Surveillance was placed upon them all. We have the lady’s photograph, you know. The passport officers were all on the look-out, but up to the present she hasn’t landed.”

“I don’t believe it,” replied Darville bluntly. “I know Joan Caborn by reputation too well. If she intended to come to London, she’s here. She might have gone from St. Malo to Jersey, and over from there to Southampton. She would know that you people seldom put a close watch on the Jersey boat.”

“That may be,” Paton admitted rather sullenly, “but my own view is that she suspected that she was being tracked, and just slipped off and is lying low somewhere or other.”

“Your Special Branch people at Scotland Yard have amusing theories sometimes, Sandy,” the novelist laughed. “I disagree entirely. The man got away from me, and no doubt is here. Then his wife slips through my fingers and has joined him. But where? That’s the question.”

“We must find them at all costs,” said the great Scotch detective-inspector, for such he was; one of the most alert and astute men of the Special or Political Branch at Scotland Yard.

“Yes. I agree, Sandy. But London is a big place to look for two people who are purposely lying low,” said Darville. “You know that as well as I do.”

“Quite so, sir. But we’ve been faced with a similar problem before, and have never once failed to discover the person we want, however closely she or he may live in hiding. They always come out sooner or later,” laughed the tall, fair-haired man, puffing at his cigarette. “So we’ve only to wait.”

“But we can’t wait. It is a matter of greatest importance. They may act, and then it will be too late.”

“Is the affair really very serious, Mr. Darville?” asked the well-known police-officer, whose duties lay in the detection of political conspiracies in Great Britain.

“Most serious,” was the other’s reply. “Unfortunately I can’t tell you the whole facts. They are secret.”

“Secret?” exclaimed Paton in great surprise.

“Yes,” Darville replied. “Secret--even from you Sandy!”