Moon of madness
“They told me you had sent for me,” she said, “because Major
O’Shea--was ill.”
“What happened?”
“Poor Tommy Clayton sat in front, and the man with me, who said he was
a doctor, reached over and hit him with something. I screamed.”
“Did he put his hand over your mouth to stop you?”
She nodded.
“Have they been unkind to you?”
She shook her head.
O’Shea waited until we gained the crest, then he got into his car and
drove off. I followed, with an unusually dumb Nanette.
She sneaked into Reid’s by the side entrance and went straight to her
room. O’Shea was waiting for me in the cocktail bar. I entered very
gloomily and he ordered me a double whisky and soda.
“They will have some little difficulty in opening the portfolio,
Decies,” he said, watching the bartender preparing our drinks.
I stared at him. He was smiling!
“What do you mean?” I demanded.
“I mean that I took the precaution of filing one of the wards before I
gave the key to you.”
But, even then, I didn’t understand, and:
“What for?” I asked.
“Unnecessarily, as it fell out,” he replied. “But my idea was to gain
time.”
“To gain time!”
“Yes. To enable us to get a good start before they forced the lock.”
He slid a full glass along the counter in my direction, and:
“Do you play poker?” he asked.
“What the devil are you talking about?”
“I was merely wondering if you did. That portfolio which you have been
treasuring, Decies, contains several pages torn from an old copy of
the _Sporting Times_. Yet neither you nor I have told a lie about it
from start to finish! Chin-chin!”
CHAPTER XVII.
NANETTE IS CONFIDENTIAL
“Did you ever hear of Adolf Zara?” said O’Shea.
I shook my head blankly.
“That’s the devil of it,” he murmured. “He works in the dark.”
“Who is he?”
He hesitated for a moment, then:
“He is the immediate chief of those Communist gentlemen,” he replied,
“whose activities have detained me so long in Madeira. One good thing
I owe to him. I shall be returning to England with you in the
morning.”
“What!” I exclaimed gladly. “By the _Union Castle_?”
“Yes.” He turned, staring at me in that coldly penetrating way which
was so disconcerting and so misleading. “By a sheer coincidence, Mr.
Zara is on board and I am instructed to look out for him.”
“But the ship is full, O’Shea.”
“There is always room for three more passengers in any British liner,”
he replied: “a diplomatic agent, a King’s Messenger, and a pretty
woman.”
“What are you expected to do?” I asked.
“I am expected to prevent him landing!”
“But”--doubtless my expression became more blank than ever--“surely
the authorities at Southampton----”
“The authorities at Southampton don’t know in what name he is
travelling. Neither does Capetown, apparently. They merely know that
he’s on board--with a false passport. He made South Africa too hot to
hold him. Moscow’s idea seems to be that another Boer war would add to
the gaiety of nations. The Boers don’t seem to think so.”
He stirred languidly in the cane lounge chair and, raising his
monocle, surveyed a number of ants performing mysterious evolutions on
his white drill suit. It was very still and peaceful in the little
palm grove. A faint breeze carried perfume from the gardens, a sound
of distant voices and soft laughter. Outside the cool oasis in which
we sat, shaded, Madeira sunlight blazed on a million gay flowers, and
the low mossy walls were alive with lizards.
“Have you ever seen this man?” I asked.
“No,” O’Shea turned his head lazily. “I haven’t the slightest idea
what he looks like. Unless I get some further news by radio, my chance
of identifying this Red sportsman is a bad hundred to one.”
“But you say he has a false passport?”
“So I understand. Probably issued in Paris or Milan or even New York,
and in perfect order. Thousands of undesirables travel about the world
annually with other people’s passports, Decies. The appended
photograph is the only snag, and you might be surprised to learn how
easy it is to replace it and duplicate the official stamp.”
Presently I went hunting for Nanette. My guardianship of this dainty,
wayward ward was soon to cease; and whilst I lacked the courage to
think about saying good-bye at Southampton, I had learned that for a
man of my age and temperament the rôle of official uncle to a
beautiful girl was no sort of job.
Tea was in full swing on the terrace, but Nanette was not there. I
thought she might be on the tennis courts, and I strolled down the
steps and along the sloping, flower-gay path sacred to basking
lizards.
Halfway down there is a sort of abutment, overhanging the lower
gardens and possessing a stone seat. Here, in a lounge chair, her
parasol propped against the low wall, I saw Nanette.
Her little feet tucked up on the chair, to protect her bare legs from
the ants, she sat manicuring her finger nails.
She neither saw nor heard my approach. And I stood still watching her.
Quite mechanically she was polishing away with a chamois burnisher,
but her blue eyes were staring, unseeingly, out over the bay.
As I studied the charming, pensive profile, I wondered, as I had
wondered too often, what fate had in store for little Nanette. My more
immediate wonder was concerned with the problem of how she had
contrived to be alone.
Suddenly she turned and saw me.
“Coo-ooh!” she called. “Have you come to take me to tea?”
“Yes,” I replied, walking down to her. “What has become of everybody?”
“I don’t know,” said Nanette. “I wanted to be alone.”
“To think?”
“I suppose so.”
I dropped on to the stone seat beside her.
“Whom did you want to think about, Nanette?”
She lowered her lashes, and polished busily.
“Oh--Pop and Mum--and folks.”
I lighted a cigarette, and presently she looked up. Her clear eyes
regarded me wistfully for a moment, and:
“You know,” she said. “Don’t you?”
“I am afraid I do, Nanette,” I confessed.
“Isn’t it strange,” she went on, staring away over the sea, “that I
should be so crazy about someone who avoids me?”
“Very strange,” I answered dully.
When a girl thus makes a confidant of a man she has never kissed, if
he knows the rules of the game he retires hurt. Then:
“I suppose I shall get over it,” she said, and smilingly packed up the
manicure implements. “We have to be on board at a fiendishly early
hour to-morrow. I don’t know whether to go to bed at nine o’clock or
sit up all night. Let’s have tea.”
As I helped her out of the cushioned chair:
“I have some news for you, Nanette,” I said. “Major O’Shea is coming
with us.”
Her eyes opened very widely; and she stared at me in a frightened way
that I always associated with any sudden reference to O’Shea. Then she
turned swiftly, taking up her parasol.
“Really,” she said. “How often he changes his mind.”
But as we walked up the long path to the terrace she talked
animatedly. And glancing aside at her flushed face, I realized with
almost a shock of surprise how very young she was--and how sweetly
incapable of hiding the excitement that my news had created.
CHAPTER XVIII.
SUSPECTS
That run home to Southampton did not begin auspiciously for Nanette.
Her happiness at being on the same ship with O’Shea was distinctly
blunted by the presence of an official chaperone.
Her father had some sort of pull with the line, and by dint of
industrious cabling, he had contrived to get in touch with a lady he
knew who was returning from South Africa: One Mrs. Porter, a really
formidable matron, deep-chested, heavy-jowled, and contemplating a
sinful world through spectacles of an unnecessarily unpleasant
pattern.
“Pop is mad!” said Nanette. “This woman must die.”
Excluding O’Shea and myself, Nanette had come on board with a male
escort of three devoted dancing partners. Lacking the society of
Nanette, these were three very lonely young men, divided by a mutual
distrust but united in their dislike of O’Shea.
Unreciprocated passion renders its victims clairvoyant; and each one
of these three knew what the rest of the crowd at Reid’s Hotel had
never suspected: that Nanette only emerged from a land of dreams when
O’Shea was with her. Now, to crown a troublous situation, Mrs. Porter
presented a protégé--Captain Slattery. She made it pointedly clear
that no other follower would be tolerated.
I resigned my staff of office with a sigh, and settled down to be
sorry for Nanette--and Slattery.
O’Shea and I stood at the door of the smoke-room watching the coast of
Madeira melt into a blue distance. Nanette, in a short, sleeveless
frock, came along the deck, linked between two men, one of whom was
Slattery. She pretended not to see us. But right in front of the door
she pulled up insistently, leaning on the rail and pointing out
something to her companions. Nanette knew she had very beautiful arms.
But she wanted O’Shea to know.
He smiled at me, sadly, and turning, went into the smoke-room. The
girl’s dainty naïveté was hopelessly disarming. We sat down facing
one another across a table, and:
“There is something I want you to do for me,” said O’Shea.
“About--Nanette?”
“No.” He shook his head, and that tragically hungry look came into his
eyes that I had seen there before. “Don’t let us talk about her,
Decies. I have a valuable portfolio in my stateroom.”
“Surely you will hand it over to the purser?”
“Impossible. Contrary to the rules of the game. The ship might sink.
But a certain Adolf Zara is on board. Therefore----”
He paused, staring at me significantly.
“You want _me_ to take charge of it?”
“Yes. Lock it in your trunk. I don’t expect any move on this
gentleman’s part. He is stalking bigger game and therefore anxious to
avoid publicity. But he _might_ take it into his head to pay me an
unofficial visit. I have a room to myself. You are sharing a cabin
with a representative of the _Cape Times_ whom, luckily, you chance to
have met before.”
“Very well,” said I. “Of course, this man, Zara, will know you are on
board?”
“Naturally,” O’Shea returned. “His associates in Madeira will have
advised him--although absolutely nothing to afford a clue to his
assumed identity happened at Funchal. He is a dangerously clever man.”
“Have you taken a look around?”
“Yes. Have you?”
“I have. But no likely candidate for the honour of being Adolf Zara
has presented himself.”
“I agree,” said O’Shea quietly. “But I have an appointment with the
purser in an hour’s time. I am going carefully through the declaration
sheets.”
When O’Shea left me, I was joined by the journalist, my
stable-companion; a substantial Scot whom I had met in London two
years before. He proposed a promenade. And just as we started the
faithful three came into the smoke-room, together, and ordered drinks.
Their aspects were mournful.
Then, in a shady corner outside, we discovered the explanation.
Nanette was coiled up in a deck chair, her charming head turned in the
direction of her neighbour on the right--Slattery. In a chair on her
left, enveloped in an unnecessary rug, Mrs. Porter slumbered
soundly--and almost noiselessly.
Nanette beckoned to me. As I paused, she threw a venom-laden glance at
the unconscious chaperone, and:
“I do not like you, Mrs. P.,” she murmured. “The reason why is plain
to see--and hear.”
Slattery, his gaze fixed upon her, smiled admiringly. He had very even
white teeth. Then he looked up at me.
“I hear that your friend is the famous O’Shea,” he said. “I thought he
was a movie actor.”
The words told me plainly that this was another victim of the
distracting Nanette. Therefore I forgave him.
“His appearance is certainly deceptive,” I admitted.
“We were on their right at the time he was recommended for the V.C.,”