The Dark Star

"I've ordered one from the control. There it comes now," said Neeland,

as a brand new taxicab, which looked like a private car, drew up at

the curb, and a smiling and very spick and span chauffeur saluted.

Neeland's porter hoisted trunk and suitcase on top; the Princess

stepped into the limousine, followed by Rue and Neeland; the chauffeur

took the order, started his car, wheeled out into the square, circled

the traffic policeman, and whizzed away into the depths of the most

beautiful city in the world.

Neeland, seated with his back to the driver, laid the olive-wood box

on his knees, unlocked it, drew from his breast pocket the papers he

carried; locked them in the box once more, and looked up laughingly at

the Princess and Ruhannah as he placed it at his feet.

"There you are!" he said. "Thank heaven my task and your affair have

been accomplished. All the papers are there--and," to Ruhannah, "that

pretty gentleman you call the Yellow Devil is inside, along with some

assorted firearms, drawing instruments, and photographs. The whole

business is here, intact--and so am I--if that irrelevant detail

should interest you."

Rue smiled her answer; the Princess scrutinised him keenly: "Did you have trouble, Jim?"

"Yes, I did."

"Serious trouble?"

"I tell you it was like a movie in five reels. Never before did I

believe such things happened outside a Yonkers studio. But they do,

Naïa. And I've learned that the world is full of more excitingly

melodramatic possibilities than any novel or scenario ever

contained."

"You're not serious, of course," began Rue Carew, watching the varying

expressions on his animated features; but the Princess Mistchenka

said, unsmiling: "A film melodrama is a crude and tawdry thing compared to the real

drama so many of us play in every moment of our lives."

Neeland said to Rue, lightly: "That is true as far as I have been concerned with that amazing box.

It's full of the very devil--of that Yellow Devil! When I pick it up

now I seem to feel a premonitory tingling all over me--not entirely

disagreeable," he added to the Princess, "but the sort of half-scared

exhilaration a man feels who takes a chance and is quite sure he'll

not have another chance if he loses. Do you understand what I mean?"

"Yes," said the Princess unsmilingly, her clear, pleasant eyes fixed

on him.

In her tranquil, indefinite expression there was something which made

him wonder how many such chances this pretty woman had taken in her

life of intellectual pleasure and bodily ease.