The Dark Star

"Scheherazade," he said, "you'll be a good little girl, now, won't

you? Because it would be a shocking thing for you and your friend

across the way to land in England wearing funny bangles on your wrists

and keeping step with each other, wouldn't it?"

She continued to hold the slip of paper and stare at it long after she

had finished reading it and the words became a series of parallel

blurs.

"Scheherazade," he said lightly, "what on earth am I going to do with

you?"

"I suppose you will lodge a charge with the captain against me," she

replied in even tones.

"Why not? You deserve it, don't you? You and your humorous friend with

the yellow beard?"

She looked at him with a vague smile.

"What can you prove?" said she.

"Perfectly true, dear child. Nothing. I don't want to prove anything,

either."

She smiled incredulously.

"It's quite true, Scheherazade. Otherwise, I shouldn't have ordered my

steward to throw the remains of my dinner out of the corridor

porthole. No, dear child. I should have had it analysed, had your

stateroom searched for more of that elusive seasoning you used to

flavour my dinner; had a further search made for a certain sort of

handkerchief and perfume. Also, just imagine the delightful evidence

which a thorough search of your papers might reveal!" He laughed. "No,

Scheherazade; I did not care to prove you anything resembling a menace

to society. Because, in the first place, I am absurdly grateful to

you."

Her face became expressionless under the slow flush mounting.

"I'm not teasing you," he insisted. "What I say is true. I'm grateful

to you for violently injecting romance into my perfectly commonplace

existence. You have taken the book of my life and not only extra

illustrated it with vivid and chromatic pictures, but you have unbound

it, sewed into its prosaic pages several chapters ripped bodily from a

penny-dreadful, and you have then rebound the whole thing and pasted

your own pretty picture on the cover! Come, now! Ought not a man to

be grateful to any philanthropic girl who so gratuitously obliges

him?"

Her face burned under his ridicule; her clasped hands in her lap were

twisted tight as though to maintain her self-control.

"What do you want of me?" she asked between lips that scarcely moved.

He laughed, sat up, stretched out both arms with a sigh of

satisfaction. The colour came back to his face; he dropped one leg

over the bed's edge; and she stood erect and stepped aside for him to

rise.

No dizziness remained; he tried both feet on the floor, straightened

himself, cast a gaily malicious glance at her, and slowly rose to his

feet.

"Scheherazade," he said, "isn't it funny? I ask you, did you ever

hear of a would-be murderess and her escaped victim being on such

cordial terms? Did you?"