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II. — EL SLICO

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PENELOPE had gone to the railway station to make reservations for the following day’s boat train to Quebec. It was only a “boat train” in the sense that it connected with the C.P.R. steamer that left a few hours after the train’s arrival in the capital city, but to Penelope it enjoyed the dignity and importance of a special run for her alone and labelled from smoke stack to rear light “Penelope Pitt’s European Special.”

The New York express had just come in as she entered the booking-hall, and she watched with enjoyable awe the privileged folk who had travelled from that mysterious city and who now strode toward the exits with the utmost nonchalance, as though it was nothing very remarkable to have lived in and journeyed from that wonder-place.

At last the stream thinned, and with a sigh she turned to the business which had brought her to the depot. She had taken the tickets and was walking slowly toward the big exit when a man smiled at her. Before she realized her indiscretion, she had smiled back at him. He was tall and fair, and when he raised his hat she saw that he was slightly bald. Evidently he had just arrived by the express, for his grip and a light dust coat were at his feet, and he had the slightly soiled appearance of a careless traveller.

To do her justice she thought that she knew him—it might have been somebody she had met in Edmonton; her employer had many business associates and it was not unlikely that this was one.

“Good-afternoon! Met you somewhere, eh? Detroit. No? St. Paul, maybe. Met a lot of people in St. Paul.”

“I’m afraid we are both mistaken,” she said, and would have passed on, but with a quick glance round to see if he was under the scrutiny of an unsympathetic official he intercepted her.

“Don’t go, little girl. 'You can’t know how glad I am to meet a real Canadian. I’m British. Where’s the best place in this burg to get a good cup of tea? That’s English, eh?” he chuckled throatily.

“I am not well acquainted with Toronto,” she said. “One of the porters will tell you.”

“What’s the hurry?” he demanded truculently. “You talked to me first, didn’t you? Laughed at me, didn’t you?”

She walked quickly past him, but, grabbing his suitcase, he followed and overtook her before she was clear of the building.

“What’s the hurry, huh? Not offended, are you, little lady? I’d like to know you. My name’s Whiplow—”

She stopped, staring at him.

Whiplow? She remembered the name instantly. It was that which Mrs. Dorban had spoken in her sleep. A coincidence? It was not a very common name.

“Johnny Whiplow. What’s yours?”

“You had best ask Mrs. Dorban,” she said.

It was a shot at a venture, but the effect upon the man was amazing. The colour went from his cheeks, leaving his face the colour of putty, his prominent eyes seemed to start from their sockets.

“M-Mrs. Dorban?” he squeaked. “Here—she’s not here—”

But, making good use of his confusion, she escaped, and by the time Mr. Whiplow had reached the street the girl had disappeared.

She did not mention her meeting to Mrs. Dorban; in the twenty-four hours they were in Toronto she did not see her employer for longer than a quarter of an hour at a time, and only when they had boarded the train and were flying eastward to Quebec did she speak of her experience.

“Whiplow—you are sure? What was he like? Yes, that was he. The brute! That was always his weakness, a pretty face. He is the type of man who haunts the streets where shop girls pass on their way to work. But in Toronto?”

She bit her lip and frowned at the fields that were flying past. Then:

“I thought he was in South America. What can he be doing in Canada? Humph!”

Her delicate face grew hard, and her eyes narrowed.

“He said nothing after you had told him that you knew me? Was it necessary to tell him? I suppose it was. In fact, I am glad you did. Otherwise, I should not have been certain it was he.”

Then in her abrupt way she switched the talk to such mundane matters as what trunk Pen had put her writing-case in—Pen had assisted in her packing. As they were boarding the ship she thought she saw Whiplow standing on the upper deck, one of a group of passengers that were leaning over the rail. When she looked again the man had disappeared, and she was not to see him again throughout the voyage.

She felt more than a little homesick as the land fell away, but overcame this childish emotion (so she described it) with no great effort. The life on board ship was so delightfully novel: the ship had in itself the elements of romance, and the future gave her so much food for thought that within two days of sailing Canada and the life she had left seemed almost like a dream.

Cynthia spoke very little about her husband, and only then when the girl raised the subject. Pen did not think it remarkable that Mrs. Dorban should have gone all the way to Canada to secure a secretary, when thousands of capable women were available in England. She regarded her engagement as an act of freakish generosity on Cynthia’s part, and had a warm and grateful feeling toward her.

One day, tidying the woman’s cabin—and Cynthia, despite her precise and businesslike way, was an extremely untidy person—she came across a sheet of paper. Scribbled across its face in pencil was what was evidently the draft of a cable. It was addressed: “Dorban, Stone House, Borcombe, England,” and ran:

“Got the right kind of girl for secretary; insist on your discharging Willis. Probably she has been sent by Stamford Mills. This girl knows nothing of case, has no friends in England.”

Penelope was momentarily perturbed. She had not the slightest doubt that the cablegram referred to her. Who was Stamford Mills, and what was the case to which Mrs. Dorban referred? She felt uncomfortable, apprehensive. There were two or three sentences in the draft that had been struck out, and she attempted to decipher them. One undoubtedly was: “She is not the kind who would talk.”

Penelope folded the paper and put it away. For the first time since the adventure began she felt doubtful of her wisdom. And yet there might be, and probably was, a very simple explanation of this mysterious message.

At the earliest opportunity she turned the conversation in the direction of Mr. Dorban.

“My husband hates towns,” said Cynthia languidly. She was reclining in her chair on the upper deck, and appeared loath to discuss her partner or his business. “We are very quiet people; Arthur is a student and seldom goes anywhere. I hope you are prepared for a very dull time, Penelope?”

Penelope laughed.

“I feel that a dull time is just what I need,” she said.

“You will get all you want,” replied Cynthia a little grimly. “We have no visitors and no dances or dinner parties, and unless you are keen on fishing—” She hesitated. “Perhaps later you will have a much better time than you imagine,” she said. “The only thing I would impress upon you, Penelope—you don’t mind me calling you by your Christian name, do you? I told you to call me Cynthia if you wished; I hate ‘Mrs. Dorban.’ What was I saying? Oh yes, later you will have a much better time. No, it wasn’t that. There is one thing I want to impress upon you, Penelope, and that is that we shall rely upon you to maintain the strictest confidence as to my husband’s business. Not that he has any business, you understand?”

Penelope did not understand, but she nodded.

“But there is a whole lot of research work to be done, particulars of estates to be put in order—my husband has great expectations. We hope some day to inherit a very large fortune.” She looked round and lowered her voice, leaning slightly over the edge of her chair. “There is another point upon which I want to warn you. My husband has a very bitter enemy, a man who has tried over and over again to ruin him. I don’t know the reason,” said Mrs. Dorban with a calmness which, under the circumstances, seemed to Penelope a little unearthly, “but I fancy there is a woman in it. I don’t want to know the truth, but the cause is neither here nor there. Stamford Mills is always sending spies to pry into our affairs. Who is he? I don’t quite know. He is a man about town. A person who lives by his wits. Some say he is a swindler, but I don’t wish to slander the man. All that I do know is that he is an implacable enemy of ours, and it is only right that you should be warned against him.”

“But what does he expect to discover—I mean, when he sends people to investigate your affairs?” asked Penelope, troubled.

“God knows,” said Mrs. Dorban piously. “Hand me my book, Penelope. I wish this beastly ship didn’t roll so.”

The rolling of the ship in no way inconvenienced Penelope Pitt. She might have been born upon the ocean, so little did the motion affect her. She loved to sit upon the deck and watch the mile-wide trough of the green seas, to feel beneath her the shiver and shudder of the racing turbines, or to stand by the fore-rail and take the sting of the breeze to her cheeks.

The passengers did not greatly interest her. Her chief source of recreation was the deck steward, an apple-faced man, who took her under his charge from the day they left Quebec. In slack times, generally in the early part of the afternoon when the passengers were dozing in their bunks, and the deck, particularly on dull days, was deserted, he would stand by her chair and unburden himself of endless and fascinating reminiscences of the sea and ships and the people who travelled in ships. Once he had been a smoke-room steward, he told her with some pride, on a big Western ocean liner, and travelled between New York and Southampton, and it was on the subject of his experiences at this period of his life that he was most interesting.

Beddle (this was his name) had met with many bad men, and he could talk for hours upon the gangs that went backward and forward across the ocean all the year round, living by the dexterity of their delicate hands.

“I knew ’em all, Lew Marks, Billy Sanders, Jimmy the Hook, Long Charlie, Denver John Lord, I could go on for hours, and give you a list as long as your arm, miss!”

“Were they all card-sharpers?” she asked.

He nodded.

“But the worst of ’em was El Slico—some American girl gave him that name and it stuck. He was that slick and smart. I’ve never seen El Slico in the same suit twice. His kit must have cost him a fortune, and he always travelled in the best suite, not like some of the gangs that go four to a cabin. Quite a young fellow, too—at least he was in my days, and that’s only a few years ago —and according to what I heard very highly connected. But what a villain! He would take the gold filling out of your teeth, if there was nothing else to take. He was one of a gang that worked the high-class people. And what a brain! El Slico never depended on chance meetings aboard ship. There was a man from Colorado that he soaked for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, a hardware millionaire. Slico knew he was coming to Europe, and went to Colorado to meet him a fortnight before the ship sailed; got to know him at his club, was invited to his house to dinner, all the time pretending that he was a rich young Englishman, with nothing to do in life but to burn money. Naturally, when they met on board the ship they were big friends—it cost Mr. Gifford a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and even then he didn’t know that El Slico was the head of the gang that made the killing.”

Day after day Penelope heard stories of the redoubtable Mr. Slico, a favourite character of Mr. Beddle’s. Sometimes it was of a too confident passenger who had been induced to join a select bridge party, sometimes of a private exploit, sometimes of a vendetta pursued by the Slico gang against some other band of miscreants which had queered the other’s operations; and always the story redounded to the discredit of this prince of sharpers.

From the experienced traveller’s point of view, the voyage was wholly uninteresting. The ship steamed within view of three icebergs, sighted innumerable other ships; there was a dance, a fancy dress ball, a concert in the saloon, and the inevitable Sunday service, all of which were fascinating to the girl from Edmonton.

It was when they were one day out of Liverpool, and had passed the low-lying grey blur on the ocean which somebody told her was Ireland, that Penelope had her first revelation of one side of Mrs. Dorban’s character which she had never suspected.

Cynthia had a little toy Pomeranian. She had bought it in Winnipeg and was devoted to the fluffy little beast. It was seldom out of her arms in the daytime, and slept at the foot of her bed at night.

Pen was a dog lover, but she loved them big. These little morsels of life that women petted and combed and brushed and carried as they would carry a vanity case made no appeal to her. She was sorry for them.

The ship was swinging into the Mersey, and Pen was standing on the promenade deck watching with kindling eyes the unromantic shores of Lancashire looming through a sea mist, when Cynthia joined her, and the first thing that Pen noticed was that the dog was no longer in her arms.

“Where is Fluff, Mrs. Dorban?” she asked.

“Poor little beast,” said Cynthia regretfully. “And such a nice little dog, too.”

“What has happened?” asked the girl in surprise.

“They told me I shouldn’t be able to take it ashore, and it would have to go into quarantine. I really can’t be bothered with quarantine. Dogs catch all sorts of queer diseases, so I gave him to a sailor and told him to drown him. He wanted me to let him keep it and take a chance of smuggling it ashore, but I wasn’t going to pay a hundred and fifty dollars for a dog to give to a sailor,” said Cynthia; “so I made him swear he would tie something to the poor little beggar’s neck and throw him overboard.”

Penelope gasped.

“But,” she stammered, “I thought you were so fond of him.”

“I like him all right,” said Cynthia carelessly. “He’s a dear little fellow, but I don’t think he is as well bred as that person in Winnipeg told me. That tall Colonel Wilkins, who knows a great deal about dogs, said that he was not a thoroughbred, and that I had been imposed upon. Of course, my dear, I can’t be bothered with half-bred dogs. Are you packed?”

Penelope could say nothing. The calm callousness of the woman shocked her. It was not a very big thing; the life of one pet Pomeranian did not mean much to Penelope, but it almost hurt her to discover this trait in the character of one of whom she was not inordinately fond, but whom, in an abstract way, she admired. Those thin lips of hers! Penelope looked at them with a new interest and wonder.

A few privileged friends of the passengers came out on a tug, and Cynthia casually mentioned the possibility that her husband might be amongst them. She showed, however, no sign of pleasurable excitement at the prospect of the reunion, and did not even trouble to join the fringe of people that were looking over the side as the tug transferred its passengers.

Penelope had packed both her own and Cynthia’s belongings, and now went in search of her deck steward.

“Thank you, miss,” said Beddle, as he took the five-dollar note from the girl’s hand. “You needn’t have given me this—it has been a pleasure—thank you all the same, miss. I suppose we shall be seeing you again. Are you on a holiday visit, miss?

“I hope it will be a holiday,” smiled the girl, “but in reality I have come over to work.”

The apple-faced man rubbed his chin thoughtfully.

“It is not a bad country. Great Moses!”

She saw his eyes travel past her, and his jaw drop, and then he grinned slowly.

“Quick, miss,” he hissed. “That’s him!” “Him—who?”

Penelope turned her head in the direction he was looking. She saw a smart, clean-shaven man, immaculately attired from his polished silk hat to his lemon-coloured gloves. He seemed an incongruous figure on board ship, a tailor’s mannequin that had been lifted from Bond Street and transported without crease or injury to the atmosphere of the sea.

His face was sallow and dark, his black moustache was small and tidy. His jaw was a little long, and he was, at the moment, smiling, showing two regular rows of white teeth.

“El Slico!” whispered Beddle, and then, before the girl could take him in, Cynthia came hurrying toward her.

“Penelope dear,” she said, “I want to introduce you.” She took the girl’s arm and hurried her toward the sallow-faced exquisite. “I want you to meet my husband, Mr. Dorban,” said Cynthia.

“El Slico” lifted his hat from his glossy head, and extended a thin, long hand.

Penelope took it mechanically.

Penelope of the Polyantha

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