Picking it up and unfolding it, he read: * * * * * May I see you this evening at eleven? My stateroom is 623. If there is
anybody in the corridor, knock; if not, come in without knocking.
I mean no harm to you. I give my word of honour. Please accept it for
as much as your personal courage makes it worth to you--its face
value, or nothing.
Knowing you, I may say without flattery that I expect you. If I am
disappointed, I still must bear witness to your courage and to a
generosity not characteristic of your sex.
You have had both power and provocation to make my voyage on this ship
embarrassing. You have not done so. And self-restraint in a man is a
very deadly weapon to use on a woman.
I hope you will come. I desire to be generous on my part. Ask yourself
whether you are able to believe this. You don't know women, Mr.
Neeland. Your conclusion probably will be a wrong one.
But I think you'll come, all the same. And you will be right in
coming, whatever you believe.
Ilse Dumont.
* * * * *
It was a foregone conclusion that he would go. He knew it before he
had read half the note. And when he finished it he was certain.
Amused, his curiosity excited, grateful that the adventure had not yet
entirely ended, he lighted a cigarette and looked impatiently at his
watch.
It lacked half an hour of the appointed time and his exhilaration was
steadily increasing.
He stuck the note into the frame of his mirror over the washstand with
a vague idea that if anything happened to him this would furnish a
clue to his whereabouts.
Then he thought of the steward, but, although he had no reason to
believe the girl who had written him, something within him made him
ashamed to notify the steward as to where he was going. He ought to
have done it; common prudence born of experience with Ilse Dumont
suggested it. And yet he could not bring himself to do it; and exactly
why, he did not understand.
One thing, however, he could do; and he did. He wrote a note to
Captain West giving the Paris address of the Princess Mistchenka, and
asked that the olive-wood box be delivered to her in case any accident
befell him. This note he dropped into the mailbox at the end of the
main corridor as he went out. A few minutes later he stood in an empty
passageway outside a door numbered 623. He had a loaded automatic in
his breast pocket, a cigarette between his fingers, and, on his
agreeable features, a smile of anticipation--a smile in which
amusement, incredulity, reckless humour, and a spice of malice were
blended--the smile born of the drop of Irish sparkling like champagne
in his singing veins.