The Vanishing Point

Ii

Except for this last disturbing incident, it had been a pleasant voyage--the most pleasant Philip Hindwood could remember. They had left New York in the brilliant clearness of blue September skies. The clear blueness had followed them. The slow-going, matronly Ryndam had steamed on an even keel through seas as tranquil and reflective as the proverbial mill-pond. Her company had been dull, consisting mainly of American drummers and Dutch Colonials returning from Java. But he had no grounds for complaint; he had chosen her for her dullness. He had wanted to lay up a store of rest before plunging into the strenuous excitements which were the purpose of his journey.

He had gone aboard her in an unsociable frame of mind, determined to talk to nobody; the success of his errand depended on his silence. He believed that he was half a year ahead of the times. When his rivals had caught up to where he was at present, he would have made himself a world power and dictator.

But the dullness of the ship's company had exceeded expectations. Because of this he had broken his compact and allowed his privacy to be invaded by two vivid personalities. The first had been Prince Rogovich--the second, Santa Gorlof.

Prince Rogovich had evidently boarded the ship with precisely the same intentions as himself. All his meals had been served in his stateroom; it had not been until the evening of the third day that he had appeared on deck. He was a man of commanding height, lean of hip and contemptuous of eye, with the disquieting, haughty reticence of an inscrutable Pharaoh. There was something alluring and oriental about the man, at once sinister and charming. Behind his silky black beard he hid a face which was deathly white; its pallor was not of ill-health, but of passion. It was easy to believe all the rumors about him, both as regarded his diabolical cleverness and his sensual cruelty. His enemies were legion. Even among his countrymen he could count few friends, although he was reckoned their greatest patriot. In Poland he was suspected as much as he was admired, and was accused of intriguing in order that he might set up a throne for himself. The object of his flying visit to America had been to consult financial magnates on the advisability of floating an international loan in the interests of Poland. There were men the world over and in Russia especially, who would have paid a king's ransom for advance information as to what answer the financiers had returned.

Though Hindwood would not have claimed as much, he and the Prince were two of a kind, equally magnificent in their dreams, equally relentless in their means of realization, and equally insatiable in their instinct for conquest. Their difference lay in the fact that the Polish aristocrat had already attained the goal toward which the self-made American was no more than striving.

Their first meeting had happened in the early hours of the morning. Hindwood, being unable to sleep, had partly dressed and gone on deck. There, in the grayness of the dawn, he had espied a tall figure slowly pacing, accompanied by a snow-white Russian wolfhound. It was the remarkable grace of the man that had first held him, his faculty for stillness, his spectral paleness, his padded tread. But the moment he had approached him, the sense of his grace had been obscured by an atmosphere of menace. So sinister was his beauty that it had required an effort to pass him twice. Secretly Hindwood had observed him. He was like his hound, treacherously languid, insolently fastidious, and bred to the point of emaciation. But his languor was the disguise of a hidden fierceness, which betrayed itself in his red, curved lips and the marble coldness of his stare. It was at the third time of passing, when he had all but gone by him, that he had heard his name spoken.

“Mr. Hindwood.” Then, as he had turned, “You're the famous railroad expert. Am I right? It's fortunate we should have met. I missed you in America. So you, too, are among the sleepless!”

Then and there had started the first of those amazing conversations, which had held Hindwood fascinated for the remainder of the voyage. It had made no difference that in his heart he had almost hated the man--hated his ruthlessness, his subtlety, his polished immorality; the moment he commenced to talk, he surrendered to his spell. Their encounters had taken place for the most part between midnight and sunrise. To be his companion was like eavesdropping on the intimate counsels of all the cabinets of Europe or like reading your daily paper a year before it was published for the rest of mankind. On matters which did not concern him the Prince could be brilliantly confessional; indiscretion was the bait with which he lured his victims to reveal themselves. The secrets which were his own he kept. Never once did he drop a hint that would indicate the success or failure of his recent mission. The single time that, Santa Gorlof had asked him point-blank, his dark eyes had become focusless as opals, and his white face, under its silky covering of beard, unnoticing and sphinx-like. It was then that Hindwood had recognized the resemblance to Pharaoh in his tyrannic immobility and silence.

And Santa Gorlof! There was a woman--mysterious, exotic, well-nigh mythical! Compared with her the Prince was an open book. From the start she had made no attempt to explain herself, had referred neither to her past nor her future, had offered no credentials. She had imposed herself on Hind-wood like a goddess who expected to be worshiped. She had swept him off his feet, beaten aside his caution, and reached his heart before he was aware.

But was it his heart? How often, in the past few days, he had asked himself that question! He didn't want to believe that it was his heart. He was a man who rode alone; his aloneness was the reason for his swiftness. He had been tricked once by a woman. That was when he was a boy; now he was a man nearing forty. She had cheated him so cruelly that, though she had been dead many years, the bitterness still rankled. Behind the beauty of all women his skepticism detected the shallow loveliness of the one false woman who had stolen his idealism, that she might trample on it.

He did not love Santa. He had assured himself a thousand times that he did not love her. She was too dangerous, too incalculable. He had spent long hours of wakeful nights in completing the inventory of her bad points. And yet, while he had been with her, his veins had run fire; while he had been apart from her, all his pleasures had seemed tasteless. Who was she? Whence had she come? Whither was she going? What had been her business on the Ryndam, and what had Prince Rogovich known about her? The Prince had known something--something which had given him power over her. At a glance from him, her caprice had vanished and she had become downcast as a child. He had muttered a few unintelligible words, probably in Polish, and her pride had crumbled.

Hindwood was at a loss to account for these signs of a secret understanding. It had been he who had introduced them. It had been Santa who had confessed to curiosity about the Prince and had begged for the introduction. The moment he had made them acquainted, they had seemed to become delighted with each other's company--so delighted that there had been times when he himself had felt excluded. A half-humorous rivalry for Santa's favors had sprung up between the Prince and himself. This atmosphere of jealousy had been accentuated by the behavior of the wolfhound; Santa's mere approach had been sufficient to rouse him into fury. He had become so dangerous that he had had to be sent below whenever she was present.

And yet, despite her manifest efforts to hold the Prince enchanted, behind his back she had expressed the most vigorous aversion. She had spoken of his reputation for treachery and the whispers that went the rounds of his heartlessness toward women. During the final days of the voyage she had partly atoned for this inconsistency by appealing to Hindwood to protect her against the Prince's far too pressing attention. She had declared herself to be in some kind of danger--though what kind, whether moral or physical, she had left him to conjecture. She had rather flattered him by her appeal; nevertheless, he had been considerably surprised to observe how little interest she had still displayed in protecting herself. During the whole of that last day, while they had been approaching the white line of Cornish coast, she had scarcely devoted to him a glance or a word; every minute she had spent with His Highness, whom she professed to regard with so much terror. She had created the impression of employing every trick at her disposal in a frantic attempt to secure him as her conquest.

If, as many of the passengers had asserted, the presence of Santa Gorlof and the Prince on the same boat had been no accident, then what had been the object of their elaborately planned deception? Were they lovers who had chosen this secret method of traveling in order to avoid a scandal? Or was she one of the many women whom he was reported to have abandoned, who had seized the leisure of an Atlantic voyage as an opportunity for reinstating herself in his affection?

As Hindwood listened in the darkness to the Prince's name being shouted and waited for the tug to cast off, the surmise strengthened into certainty that he had been the dupe of a piece of play-acting, the purpose of which he could not fathom.