The idea in this new aspect was so ludicrous that she simply laughed at him.
“My dear Mr. Jocelyn Thew!” she exclaimed. “You can’t possibly be in earnest! You mean that you expect me to leave New York with less than twenty-four hours’ notice, and go all the way to London in attendance upon a stranger, especially in these awful times? Why, the thing isn’t reasonable — or possible! I have just consented to take the chairmanship of a committee to form field hospitals throughout the country, and—”
“May I interrupt for one moment?” her visitor begged.
The stream of words seemed to fall away from her lips. There was a touch of Jocelyn Thew’s other manner — perhaps more than a touch. She looked at him and she shivered. She had seen him look like that once before.
“Your attitude is perfectly reasonable,” he continued, “but on the other hand I must ask you to carry your thoughts back some little time. I shall beg you to remember that I have a certain right to ask this or any other service from you.” “I admit it,” she confessed hastily, “but — there is something so outlandish in the whole suggestion. There are a score of nurses in the hospital to any one of whom you are welcome, who are all much cleverer than I. What possible advantage to the man can it be, especially if he is seriously ill, to have a partially-trained nurse with him when he might have the best in the world?”
“I think,” he said, “I mentioned that this is not a matter for reasoning or argument. It is you who are required, and no one else. I may remind you,” he went on, “that this service is a very much smaller one than I might have asked you, and, so far as you and I are concerned, it clears our debt.”
“Clears our debt,” she repeated.
“For ever!”
She closed her eyes for several moments. For some reason or other, this last reflection seemed to bring her no particular relief. When she opened them again, her decision was written in her face.
“I consent, of course,” she acquiesced quietly. “Is there anything more to tell me?”
“Very little,” he replied, “only this. You should send your baggage on board the City of Boston as early as possible to-morrow morning. Every arrangement has been made for transporting Phillips in his bed, as he lies, from the hospital to the boat. The doctor who has been in attendance will accompany him to England, but it is important that you should be at the hospital and should drive in the ambulance from there to the dock. I shall ask very little of you in the way of duplicity. What is necessary you will not, I think, refuse. You will be considered to have had some former interest in Phillips, to account for your voyage, and you will reconcile yourself to the fact that I shall not at any time approach the sick man, or be known as an acquaintance of his on board the ship.”
His words disturbed her. She felt herself being drawn under the shadow of some mystery.
“There is something in all this,” she said, “which reminds me of the time when Richard was your protégé, the time when we met before.”
He leaned towards her, understanding very well what was in her mind.
“There is nothing criminal in this enterprise — even in my share of it,” he assured her. “What there is in it which necessitates secrecy is political, and that need not concern you. You see,” he went on, a little bitterly, “I have changed my role. I am no longer the despair of the New York police. I am the quarry of a race of men who, if they could catch me, would not wait to arrest. That may happen even before we reach Liverpool. If it does, it will not affect you. Your duty is to stay with a dying man until he reaches the shelter of his home. You will leave him there, and you will be free of him and of me.”
“So far as regards our two selves,” she enquired, “do we meet as strangers upon the steamer?”
He considered the matter for a few moments before answering. She felt another poignant thrill of recollection. He had looked at her like this just before he had bent his back to the task of saving her brother’s life and liberty, looked at her like this the moment before the unsuspected revolver had flashed from the pocket of his dress-coat and had covered the man who had suddenly declared himself their foe. She felt her cheeks burn for a moment. There was something magnetic, curiously troublous about his eyes and his faint smile.
“I cannot deny myself so much,” he said. “Even if our opportunities for meeting upon the steamer are few, I shall still have the pleasure of a New York acquaintance with Miss Beverley. You need not be afraid,” he went on. “In this wonderful country of yours, the improbable frequently happens. I have before now visited at the houses of some whom you call your friends.”
“Why not?” she asked him. “I should look upon it as the most natural thing in the world that we were acquainted. But why do you say ‘your country’? Are you not an American?”
He looked at her with a very faint smile, a smile which had nothing in it of pleasantness or mirth.
“I have so few secrets,” he said. “The only one which I elect to keep is the secret of my nationality.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“Then you can no longer,” she observed, “be considered what my brother and I once thought you — a man of mysteries — for with your voice and accent it is very certain that you are either English or American.”
“If it affords you any further clue, then,” he replied, “let me confide in you that if there is one country in this world which I detest, it is England; one race of people whom I abominate, it is the English.”
She showed her surprise frankly, but his manner encouraged no further confidence. She touched the bell, and he bowed over her fingers.
“My friend Phillips,” he said, in formal accents, as the butler stood upon the threshold, “will never live, I fear, to offer you all the gratitude he feels, but you are doing a very kind and a very wonderful action, Miss Beverley, and one which I think will bring its own reward.”
He passed out of the room, leaving Katharine a prey to a curious tangle of emotions. She watched him almost feverishly until he had disappeared, listened to his footsteps in the hall and the closing of the front door. Then she hurried to the window, watched him descend the row of steps, pass down the little drive and hail a taxicab. It was not until he was out of sight that she became in any way like herself. Then she broke into a little laugh.
“Heavens alive!” she exclaimed to herself. “Now I have to find Aunt Molly and tell her that I am going to Europe to-morrow with a perfect stranger!”
.
CHAPTER III
Mr. Jocelyn Thew descended presently from his taxicab outside one of the largest and most cosmopolitan hotels in New York — or the world. He made his way with the air of an habitué to the bar, the precincts of which, at that time in the late afternoon, were crowded by a motley gathering. He ordered a Scotch highball, and gently insinuated himself into the proximity of a group of newspaper men with whom he seemed to have some slight acquaintance. It was curious how, since his arrival in this democratic meeting-place, his manners and deportment seemed to have slipped to a lower grade. He seemed as though by an effort of will to have lost something of his natural air of distinction, to be treading the earth upon a lower plane. He saluted the barkeeper by his Christian name, listened with apparent interest to an exceedingly commonplace story from one of his neighbours, and upon its conclusion drew a little nearer to the group.
“Say,” he exclaimed confidentially, “if I felt in the humour for it I could hand you boys out a great scoop.”