Mysterious Mr. Sabin - E. Phillips Oppenheim (best free ebook reader for android .TXT) 📗

when we reach Boston, even though your man-of-war be alongside the dock. They could not touch you—you could leave your—pardon me—not too honourable occupation once and for ever. America is not the country in which one would choose to live, but it has its resources—it can give you big game and charming women. I have lived there and I know. It is not Europe, but it is the next best thing. Come, you had better accept my terms!”

The man had listened without moving a muscle of his face. There was something almost pitiable in its white, sullen despair. Then his lips parted.

“Would to God I could!” he moaned. “Would to God I had the power to listen to you!”

Mr. Sabin flicked the ash off his cigarette and looked thoughtful. He stroked his grey imperial and kept his eyes on his companion.

“The extradition laws,” the other interrupted savagely.

Mr. Sabin shrugged his shoulders. “By all means,” he murmured. “Personally I have no interest in them; but if you would talk like a reasonable man and tell me where your difficulty lies I might be able to help you.”

The man who had called himself Watson raised his head slowly. His expression remained altogether hopeless. He had the appearance of a man given wholly over to despair.

“Have you ever heard of the Doomschen?” he asked slowly.

Mr. Sabin shuddered. He became suddenly very grave. “You are not one of them?” he exclaimed.

The man bowed his head.

“I am one of those devils,” he admitted.

Mr. Sabin rose to his feet and walked up and down the little room.

“Of course,” he remarked, “that complicates matters, but there ought to be a way out of it. Let me think for a moment.”

The man on the lounge sat still with unchanging face. In his heart he knew that there was no way out of it. The chains which bound him were such as the hand of man had no power to destroy. The arm of his master was long. It had reached him here—it would reach him to the farthermost corner of the world. Nor could Mr. Sabin for the moment see any light. The man was under perpetual sentence of death. There was no country in the world which would not give him up, if called upon to do so.

“What you have told me,” Mr. Sabin said, “explains, of course to a certain extent, your present indifference to my offers. But when I first approached you in this way you certainly led me to think——”

“That was before that cursed Kaiser Wilhelm came up,” Watson interrupted. “I had a plan—I might have made a rush for liberty at any rate!”

“But surely you would have been marked down at Boston,” Mr. Sabin said.

“The only friend I have in the world,” the other said slowly, “is the manager of the Government’s Secret Cable Office at Berlin. He was on my side. It would have given me a chance, but now”—he looked out of the window—“it is hopeless!”

Mr. Sabin resumed his chair and lit a fresh cigarette. He had thought the matter out and began to see light.

“It is rather an awkward fix,” he said, “but ‘hopeless’ is a word which I do not understand. As regards our present dilemma I think that I see an excellent way out of it.”

A momentary ray of hope flashed across the man’s face. Then he shook his head.

“It is not possible,” he murmured.

Mr. Sabin smiled quietly.

“My friend,” he said, “I perceive that you are a pessimist! You will find yourself in a very short time a free man with the best of your life before you. Take my advice. Whatever career you embark in do so in a more sanguine spirit. Difficulties to the man who faces them boldly lose half their strength. But to proceed. You are one of those who are called ‘Doomschen.’ That means, I believe, that you have committed a crime punishable by death,—that you are on parole only so long as you remain in the service of the Secret Police of your country. That is so, is it not?”

The man assented grimly. Mr. Sabin continued—

“If you were to abandon your present task and fail to offer satisfactory explanations—if you were to attempt to settle down in America, your extradition, I presume, would at once be applied for. You would be given no second chance.”

“I should be shot without a moment’s hesitation,” Watson admitted grimly.

“Exactly; and there is, I believe, another contingency. If you should succeed in your present enterprise, which, I presume, is my extermination, you would obtain your freedom.”

The man on the lounge nodded. A species of despair was upon him. This man was his master in all ways. He would be his master to the end.

“That brings us,” Mr. Sabin continued, “to my proposition. I must admit that the details I have not fully thought out yet, but that is a matter of only half an hour or so. I propose that you should kill me in Boston Harbour and escape to your man-of-war. They will, of course, refuse to give you up, and on your return to Germany you will receive your freedom.”

“But—but you,” Watson exclaimed, bewildered, “you don’t want to be killed, surely?”

“I do not intend to be—actually,” Mr. Sabin explained. “Exactly how I am going to manage it I can’t tell you just now, but it will be quite easy. I shall be dead to the belief of everybody on board here except the captain, and he will be our accomplice. I shall remain hidden until your Kaiser Wilhelm has left, and when I do land in America—it shall not be as Mr. Sabin.”

Watson rose to his feet He was a transformed man. A sudden hope had brightened his face. His eyes were on fire.

“It is a wonderful scheme!” he exclaimed. “But the captain—surely he will never consent to help?”

“On the contrary,” Mr. Sabin answered, “he will do it for the asking. There is not a single difficulty which we cannot easily surmount.”

“There is my companion,” Watson remarked; “she will have to be reckoned with.”

“Leave her,” Mr. Sabin said, “to me. I will undertake that she shall be on our side before many hours are passed. You had better go down to your room now. It is getting light and I want to rest.”

Watson paused upon the threshold. He pointed in some embarrassment to the table by the side of the bed.

“Is it any use,” he murmured in a low tone, “saying that I am sorry for this?”

“You only did—what—in a sense was your duty,” Mr. Sabin answered. “I bear no malice—especially since I escaped.”

Watson closed the door and Mr. Sabin glanced at the bed. For a moment or two he hesitated, although the desire for sleep had gone by. Then he stepped out on to the deck and leaned thoughtfully over the white railing. Far away eastwards there were signs already of the coming day. A soft grey twilight rested upon the sea; darker and blacker the waters seemed just then by contrast with the lightening skies. A fresh breeze was blowing. There was no living thing within sight save that faint green light where the rolling sea touched the clouds. Mr. Sabin’s eyes grew fixed. A curious depression came over him in that half hour before the dawn when all emotion is quickened by that intense brooding stillness. He was passing, he felt, into perpetual exile. He who had been so intimately in touch with the large things of the world had come to that point when after all he was bound to write his life down a failure. For its great desire was no nearer consummation. He had made his grand effort and he had failed. He had been very near success. He had seen closely into the Promised Land. Perhaps it was such thoughts as these which made his non-success the more bitter, and then, with the instincts of a philosopher, he asked himself now, surrounded in fancy by the fragments of his broken dreams, whether it had been worth while. That love of the beautiful and picturesque side of his country which had been his first inspiration, which had been at the root of his passionate patriotism, seemed just then in the grey moments of his despair so weak a thing. He had sacrificed so much to it—his whole life had been moulded and shaped to that one end. There had been other ways in which he might have found happiness. Was he growing morbid, he wondered, bitterly but unresistingly, that her face should suddenly float before his eyes. In fancy he could see her coming towards him there across the still waters, the old brilliant smile upon her lips, the lovelight in her eyes, that calm disdain of all other men written so plainly on the face which should surely have been a queen’s.

Mr. Sabin thought of those things which had passed, and he thought of what was to come, and a moment of bitterness crept into his life which he knew must leave its mark for ever. His head drooped into his hands and remained buried there. Thus he stood until the first ray of sunlight travelling across the water fell upon him, and he knew that morning had come. He crossed the deck, and entering his cabin closed the door.

CHAPTER XLIX MR. SABIN IS SENTIMENTAL

Mr. Sabin found it a harder matter than he had anticipated to induce the captain to consent to the scheme he had formulated. Nevertheless, he succeeded in the end, and by lunch time the following day the whole affair was settled. There was a certain amount of risk in the affair, but, on the other hand, if successfully carried out, it set free once and for ever the two men mainly concerned in it. Mr. Sabin, who was in rather a curious mood, came out of the captain’s room a little after one o’clock feeling altogether indisposed for conversation of any sort, ordered his luncheon from the deck steward, and moved his chair apart from the others into a sunny, secluded corner of the boat.

It was here that Mrs. Watson found him an hour later. He heard the rustle of silken draperies across the deck, a faint but familiar perfume suddenly floated into the salt, sunlit air. He looked around to find her bending over him, a miracle of white—cool, dainty, and elegant.

“And why this seclusion, Sir Misanthrope?”

He laughed and dragged her chair alongside of his.

“Come and sit down,” he said. “I want to talk to you. I want,” he added, lowering his voice, “to thank you for your warning.”

They were close together now and alone, cut off from the other chairs by one of the lifeboats. She looked up at him from amongst the cushions with which her chair was hung.

“You understood,” she murmured.

“Perfectly.”

“You are safe now,” she said. “From him at any rate. You have won him over.”

“I have found a way of safety,” Mr. Sabin said, “for both of us.”

She leaned her head upon her delicate white fingers, and looked at him curiously.

“Your plans,” she said, “are admirable; but what of me?”

Mr. Sabin regarded her with some faint indication of surprise. He was not sure what she meant. Did she expect a reward for her warning, he wondered. Her words would seem to indicate something of the sort, and yet he was not sure.

“I am afraid,” he said kindly, “we have not considered you very much yet. You will go on to Boston, of course. Then I suppose you will return to Germany.”

“Never,” she exclaimed, with suppressed passion. “I have broken my vows. I shall never set foot in Germany again. I broke them for your sake.”

Mr. Sabin looked at her thoughtfully.

“I am glad to hear you say that,” he declared. “Believe me, my dear young lady, I have