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Ghost Breaker, The

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VI OVER THE SEA AND FAR AWAY That journey to the Mauretania was never to be forgotten by Warren Jarvis; and yet so weird, bruising, jumbling, and altogether horrible was it, that he could never distinctly remember its details. With hands stretched tensely against the corners of the trunk, he warded off as best he could the shocks of the skilled baggage-breakers along the route. Again and again, an unexpected twist would bang his throbbing head against the adamantine sides, and with a wince, a sharp, in-drawn breath, he would hold himself "together" for one more bump! The air was stifling; yet the foresight of cutting the holes gave him enough oxygen to maintain his senses. At last, after æons of suffering which reminded him of nothing so much as his initiation into the college fraternity, he felt himself being dragged up the side of the great ocean greyhound. More jolts, more rolls and bangs, and at last, with muscles wrenched, a swollen forehead and nerves aquiver, there was rest. "I'm in her cabin at last—and now for a graceful exit!" he told himself, with an enforced jocularity. But this was no easy task. He spent a full half-hour, working and prying with the shears against the lock which imprisoned him with indomitable force from the outside of the iron-and-leathern prison. Upon the outer deck of the great turbiner, the Princess nervously fought her way through the great throng of voyagers and their friends. Nita was close by her side. It seemed impossible to capture a steward who was not busy with the bearing of bouquets and wine baskets. In other circumstances this young personage would have been furious at the lack of respect which she had been educated to expect from the throngs of her own country. But to-day her only anxiety was to find her elusive quarters for the strange cruise, to learn whether or not her new knight-errant were alive or dead from the rigors of his escape. At last, with the aid of an extravagant largesse, she was conducted to her staterooms. As she entered the parlor of her luxurious suite, the first sight which caught her eye was the trunk, inverted! The printed sign of direction, "This End up with Care," were upside down! She gasped, and looked nervously about to note the expression upon the face of Nita. That young woman was busy studying the handsome features of the ingratiating bedroom-steward. So engrossed was she that she stumbled over the elevated sill of the door from the promenade deck. "Oh, I'm so sorry, miss!" apologized the steward. "Did you hurt yourself? These doors are always troublesome until you get used to them. But they are necessary to keep out the water in rough weather." The Princess was thinking only of the opportunity to open the fateful trunk. "You don't anticipate a bad passage, steward?" "Rather uncertain, ma'am, at this time of the year," and he busied himself adjusting the hand luggage and arranging the chairs. "But your location is good. You'll find the Mauretania as steady as a parish church. Here is the clothes press, ma'am, and the other rooms are off there. It's quite the finest suite on the boat, ma'am." The steward looked about ingratiatingly, then he turned toward the door. "If you want anything, ma'am—there is the telephone.... I'll place your trunk, if you please, ma'am!" He started to drag the trunk to the side of the cabin, but the Princess intervened. "That's all right; you may place it later. But you might fix it right side up!" The steward turned it, as the girl breathed a sigh of relief. "I'm so sorry, ma'am. I hope the contents are not upset." "I hope not." "Anything else, ma'am?" "No, not now, steward? How soon do we sail?" "Very soon," and as he spoke there came the stentorian warning: "All ashore that's going ashore!" The call was repeated four times, and the voice died away in the distance of the long promenade deck. With a bow, and a significant glance at the attractive maid, the steward finally dragged himself out of the attractive cabin. The Princess sank nervously into a chair. "That is all, now, Nita. I have the key to the trunk. I will call you when I need you." "Yes, your Highness. But, will your Highness excuse me if I am mistaken in thinking that I recognized his Excellency the Duke, your exalted cousin, among the passengers as we came up the gangplank...?" Her Highness was distinctly startled, but she showed no trace of her emotion to the servant. "My cousin—it is impossible. He is at Madrid, where his Majesty the King is holding Court." "Yes, your Highness," and she went, but her inflection showed that she knew herself to be in the right. Nita was too good a servant to argue with her betters. "Carlos here? How could he be, I wonder?" and the Princess fumbled with her keys, until she found the right one. She opened the trunk with a trembling hand, and began to raise the cover, a quiver in her voice. "Are you all right ... Mr. Jarvis?" It was the voice of a nervous, frightened girl—not of a royal personage—this time. Just then she heard a knock on the cabin door. There was no time for a response. "Quiet! Be careful!" she cautioned, sotto voce. As she hurried to the door, she pulled her taut nerves together. There on the threshold was her kinsman: Nita had been right as usual, in her sharp way. Carlos, Duke of Alva, with smiling lips and sinister eyes, greeted her with the suave courtesy which is so characteristic of his race and class. He typified the worst of the Spanish folk, even as the young girl did the best. To a keen student of physiognomy the mental attitude of the Duke of Alva would have been an open book. To Maria Theresa, loyal to family and countrymen, he was the symbol of her own strata in Spain—yet, beneath her gracious forgiveness of and enforced indifference to many things, there lurked a latent mistrust, which she had never yet defined in practical, applicable terms. With white teeth, crisp-curling black hair, and eyes of sparkling coal-shade, the Duke of Alva bowed with that polished grace which had broken many a heart and carried him over many a stretch of thin ice, in the courtly adventuring on the Continent. "Carlos!" exclaimed the Princess. "Fair cousin—if I but knew you were as pleased, as you are surprised, at seeing me!" With the words he advanced and kissed her cold finger-tips with Old-World punctiliousness. "What are you doing on the Mauretania? Why did you leave Spain, Carlos?" As he shut the door he smiled, and now her intuition warned her of the cunning which lurked behind those pleasantly curving lips. "First tell me that you are glad to see me! I have come many leagues to hear those words, Maria!" "Why.... Why,... of course, I am always glad to see you, cousin." He simulated a pathetic irony. "You say you are always glad to see me—and yet, I fear it is not always since my unfortunate quarrel with your brother. Alas, and that has hardened your heart against me." The Duke was a suitor of the romantic school: each phrase was studied, each attitude as obviously planned as a military campaign. It was a method which had invariably succeeded, until his efforts with the Princess of Aragon. Yet, he was too satisfied with bygone results to abandon the time-tried artistries of former victories. The Princess dropped her eyes before the undeniable questioning of his burning glances. As she looked away, he assured himself that he had scored. "My brother ... what do you know of him, Carlos? When did you see him last? Have you been in Seguro?" Two long whistles, and the vibration of the great steamship evidenced the beginning of the long voyage. The answer to the questions was still more pathetic in cadence. "Ah, how I dread telling you!... I was there a few days before leaving for America. I learned, unfortunately, that despite my very friendly advice, he had been prowling about that ridiculous old castle again, in search of the mythical treasure your grandfather is supposed to have secreted there." He laughed, and the girl instinctively shuddered with a newborn distrust. There was no mirth in the sound. "You heard nothing more? Was he well and safe when you left the town?" "He was as well and safe as I would consider any man who was prowling about that castle in a foolhardy way." She wished to get rid of him: that ominous trunk might contain a dead man, for all she knew. "How did you find me? Why did you come to America?" "What could have brought me here but love and anxiety for you?" She turned away impatiently and walked toward the cabin porthole. "Oh, come, Carlos. The ship is almost in mid-stream. Let us go out on deck, for one last look at America." "Thank you; I can do very well without it!" he retorted, as he sat down upon the trunk. "My dear Maria, why do you not desist from this silly pursuit of an imaginary treasure? What is the value of money—we are Spaniards, not shirt-sleeved, mercenary pigs of Americans! We strive for it, only to obtain the happiness and luxury which it brings. Can it bring any greater happiness than that which I have so many times laid at your feet—the love and honored name of a man who would protect and worship you? You have wonderful beauty and family rank. I have power, influence at Court, and an unconquerable ambition. Mine is the intellect to conceive, the heart to dare, and the will to complete! Think what our alliance would mean to us both.... My dear girl—there is nothing which could halt me, nothing which I could not crush!" Had many a man made this speech he would have punctuated its termination with a clenched fist. But the scion of an intriguing aristocracy bared his teeth in a wolf-like smile as he unsheathed his sword-cane an inch or two, to snap it back into place, with a snarling smile in his drooping eyes. However, the speech and the theatrical delivery of the gifted courtier were wasted effort. Maria Theresa of Spain was impervious to the surface sheen: she had seen true metal within the past twenty-four hours! "Oh, Carlos—you should have been a novelist or a dramatist! I much prefer the romantic sky-line of New York harbor to your reminiscence of Don Quixote!" The great roar of the turbine vibrated through the ship. She advanced to the cabin door, and imperiously called to him to follow. "I insist. I need fresh air.... We'll be gone ten minutes!" And grudgingly the Duke of Alva followed her, with a vicious swish of his cane at the unoffending trunk. As the door slammed, the top of the trunk was slowly lifted, and the battered, bleeding face of Warren Jarvis might have been visible above the iron ridge of its lock bar. Stiffly he drew himself out of the trunk, to blink in the unaccustomed light. "O,... O.... O.... Oh! Lord!... If I only had that last baggageman by the neck!" He bent forward and back to limber an apparently paralyzed spinal column. "Well, I'm all here!" He stumbled across the cabin, where he helped himself to a welcome drink of water. He tenderly caressed the bruised elbows, and breathed hard. "I'm most all here!" He looked down at his twisted, cracked patent-leather shoes. "My feet are bent—they'll never get well!" He sat limply down on the top of the trunk, and fumbling in his hip pocket drew forth a bent and battered cigarette case. As he struck a light to inhale a few welcome, cheering puffs, he looked about his strange surroundings with the old, unconquerable Jarvis spirit. "A Princess—a Duke—a castle—a treasure! Well, well! But the problem is: Where the devil do I fit in?" <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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