The Dark Star

With an unconscious sigh, not entirely of relief, Neeland opened his

cigarette case, found it empty, turned and went slowly below with the

idea of refilling it.

They were dancing somewhere on deck; the music of the ship's orchestra

came to his ears. He paused a moment on the next deck to lean on the

rail in the darkness and listen.

Far beneath him, through a sea as black as onyx, swept the reflections

of the lighted ports; and he could hear the faint hiss of foam from

the curling flow below.

As he turned to resume his quest for cigarettes, he was startled to

see directly in front of him the heavy figure of a man--so close to

him, in fact, that Neeland instinctively threw up his arm, elbow out,

to avoid contact.

But the man, halting, merely lifted his hat, saying that in the dim

light he had mistaken Neeland for a friend; and they passed each other

on the almost deserted deck, saluting formally in the European

fashion, with lifted hats.

His spirits a trifle subdued, but still tingling with the shock of

discovering a stranger so close behind him where he had stood leaning

over the ship's rail, Neeland continued on his way below.

Probably the big man had made a mistake in good faith; but the man

certainly had approached very silently; was almost at his very elbow

when discovered. And Neeland remembered the light-shot depths over

which, at that moment, he had been leaning; and he realised that it

would have been very easy for a man as big as that to have flung him

overboard before he had wit to realise what had been done to him.

Neither could he forget the curious gleam in the stranger's eyes when

a ray from a deck light fell across his shadowy face--unusually small

eyes set a little too close together to inspire confidence. Nor had

the man's slight accent escaped him--not a Teutonic accent, he

thought, but something fuller and softer--something that originated

east of Scutari, suggesting the Eurasian, perhaps.

But Neeland's soberness was of volatile quality; before he arrived at

his stateroom he had recovered his gaiety of spirit. He glanced

ironically at the closed door of Golden Beard as he fitted his key

into his own door.

"A lively lot," he thought to himself, "what with Scheherazade, Golden

Beard, and now Ali Baba--by jinx!--he certainly did have an Oriental

voice!--and he looked the part, too, with a beak for a nose and a

black moustache à la Enver Pasha!"

Much diverted by his own waxing imagination, he turned on the light

in his stateroom, filled the cigarette case, turned to go out, and saw

on the carpet just inside his door a bit of white paper folded

cocked-hat fashion and addressed to him.