I
It was late the next afternoon, as the Pannonia ploughed her way steadily westward over a smooth sea, that Wilsnach paced the white-boarded deck deep in thought. From below came the sound of guitars and mandolins, mingled with the chant of voices. On the sun-steeped hatch-coverings amidships Montenegrin mothers suckled their babies, top-booted men in sheep-skins played cards on the tar-stained canvas, children romped and chattered, while nearby a music-drunk band of Hungarians from Fiume danced their native Czardas.
Wilsnach, as he stopped and stared down over the rail at this blithe-spirited throng, found small reason for sharing in their merriment. A frown of trouble clouded his brow, and his step was heavy and listless as he turned back, and for the tenth time paused irresolutely before Kestner's cabin door.
Then he took a deep breath, knocked determinedly on the white-leaded panel, and stepped into the narrow stateroom.
He stood staring anxiously down at Kestner as the latter sat up in his berth, rubbing his eyes with his one free hand. For Kestner's left arm was in a sling, and the shoulder above it was ridged high with much bandaging. A narrow helmet of pink sticking-plaster along the top of his head stood up startlingly like a cock's comb. And the Secret Agent's face, Wilsnach noticed, was without its usual touch of colour.
"You've had a great sleep," began the dolorous-eyed Wilsnach, glancing down at his watch.
"I needed it," was Kestner's reply. "And that bull-headed ship's doctor made me take a bromide."
"How are you feeling?" Wilsnach was plainly evading some sterner issue which he found it hard to approach.
"Much better—but like the day after a big game!"
"That's good!" temporised the other.
"But where are we?" Kestner suddenly asked.
"Eleven hours out from Palermo."
Kestner settled back more comfortably on his pillow.
"And when do we get to Gib?"
"We don't stop at Gibraltar westward-bound," was Wilsnach's listless answer.
"You're sure?"
"Positive!"
Kestner emitted a sigh of relief.
"That makes it all the easier for us. That means our troubles are pretty well over."
Wilsnach moved uneasily about the cabin. Then he turned and met the mildly inquiring glance of his chief.
"Our troubles are not over," he solemnly amended.
Kestner sat up with a jerk that made him wince. Then, as though already apprehending the ill-news which had not yet been enunciated, he made an effort to pull himself together.
"What is it?" he quietly inquired.
"The Lamberts are not on this boat," was Wilsnach's answer.
Kestner made no movement and no word escaped his lips. He was inured to those disappointments which obtain in a calling where the unexpected must so often be accepted. But this, Wilsnach knew and had known all morning, was not an easy pill to swallow. It spelt confusion to all their plans, if not the end of all their hopes. It meant another escape and another slow and toilsome gathering up of ghostly clues. And Wilsnach knew, as Kestner sat deep in troubled thought, that it was taking no little effort of the will to readjust consciousness to the newer situation.
"But you saw them come aboard?" the Secret Agent finally asked.
"They came an hour after we did, at least Lambert landed and came back with a woman who wore a veil. That woman must have been Maura Lambert. In fact, I'm sure it was Maura Lambert, although, of course, I couldn't get a clear look at her face. Lambert went to his stateroom, and I watched his door until four o'clock in the morning. I was all in then, falling asleep without knowing it. I knew there was no use trying to stir you out, so I paid an English steward to keep guard until morning, on both doors, the old man's and the girl's."
"I'd like to see that steward," interrupted Kestner.
"It's no use," explained Wilsnach; "he's merely a blockhead, and was ordered below before I could get back. The stateroom doors were locked, but both the girl and the old man were gone."
"But when? And how?"
"There were boats going back and forth all the time—they could have slipped down the accommodation-ladder at any moment before daybreak. No, it wasn't that steward. Some one else must have given the tip. You know these Sicilians—they all have a wireless system of their own, a crook of the arm or the shift of an eye can always mean something we can't understand. And they got the tip—wherever it came from!"
"So we are not to sail together," meditated Kestner.
"And we can't go back," was Wilsnach's dolorous amendment.
Kestner sat up again, deep in thought. Through the intricacies of that thought Wilsnach was incapable of following him, for the man from the Paris Office had always been content to travel behind his trail-blazing leader.
"We don't want to go back!" Kestner announced with sudden energy. "We can't go back any more than Lambert can. He can't stay in Palermo, for he knows he's been dug out of his warren there. Paris is impossible. England is out of the question. He was headed for America, equipped for an American campaign. And to America he will go. Only, he'll go by a quicker route than this. This southern route will take us eleven days from Gibraltar to New York. Before we're two days out in the Atlantic Lambert can get through Paris and land at Dover, scoot across to Fishguard, and catch the Lusitania for the other side."
"Provided that is their plan," agreed Wilsnach.
"That will give them nearly a week's start of us again!"
Kestner countered Wilsnach's haggard eye with the ghost of a grin. "And what's a week, Wilsnach, with men like us?"
He was reminding himself of the consolatory axiom that the Law never forgets—and he was on the side of the Law. It was equally self-evident that offenders against that Law could not and did not forever conceal themselves, even with a whole continent to wander about in. No matter how well under cover they might place themselves, there were times when they had to emerge into the open, as whales come up to breathe.
"If we could only be sure they were headed that way!" suggested the still lugubrious Wilsnach.
"Well, we'll do what we can to make sure," contended the unshaken Kestner as he felt tenderly along the bandaging over his collar-bone. "And since we're not exactly clairvoyants, we'll work that wireless until its aërials wear out!"