The Sword and the Net полностью

“Don’t worry, Clare,” he said. “I don’t think he’ll let that happen. I think his grand, crazy scheme is going to work. I think he’s going to make it work, although it seems impossible.”

He dropped his hand from Otto’s shoulder and suddenly moved away. He paused behind his daughter’s chair and bent down and lightly kissed the gleaming dark hair. He said:

“I’ll be in the library. Have some letters to write,” and was gone.

Otto looked after him and was about to speak but did not. He looked at Clare, and saw that she was huddled in the big chair, her feet drawn up beneath her and her head averted from him. She was very still, and very small. He checked an instinctive movement towards her and stumped across to the other chair and picked up his stick and as softly as he could began to make his slow way through the shadows to the door.

He had almost reached it when there came a swift, murmuring rush of feet and she was beside him and a hand was laid upon his arm. She said:

“Nils!” and her voice was hushed and uneven, and she caught him by the shoulders and suddenly all of her body was pressed against his body and she slid an arm behind his head and pulled it down toward hers and he felt her mouth against his and there was the salt of tears upon his lips and she was gone.

Upon the twenty-second day after he had announced that he could make himself strong within three weeks, Otto was in San Francisco. He was driven there in the Ingolls’ car by John, the Ingolls’ jet-black man-of-all-work. He made John set him down at the small apartment house where he had retained his quarters. He gave John ten dollars and shook hands with him and then stood and watched the car until it turned the corner and had gone, taking with it the last link with Clare and Waldemar that he would know—ever or until he should have wrought the miracle needed to bring success to his solitary, incredible campaign.

He stood for a while after the car had vanished. His head was turned still as it had been while he watched, but now his eyes were seeing nothing within the range of his vision. He was seeing and thinking of Clare.

He wrenched his mind back to fact and the present and the need for instant and welcome and important action. The drawn, gaunt lines of his face were smoothed away and he even smiled, as he went quickly across the pavement and into the doorway of the house; a taut, hard little smile which had in it resolve and the happiness brought by the imminence of action; the delight of certainty of mind and a purely physical joy in once more having the free and strong and unhampered use of his body.

As he ran up the stairs he limped a little, for now his left leg was slightly shorter than his right: but both legs were strong and sure and quick once more—not to the full of their strength perhaps, but strong enough.

He was busy, very busy, for two hours. He saw his landlord and behaved as if he were back to stay. He went to his bank and drew out all his money, which was three hundred and seventy-two dollars, with the exception of fifty which he left as a lull to possible suspicion. He purchased twenty yards of white blind-cord at a hardware store and some broad adhesive tape from a druggist. He also pondered the advisability of buying a gun—but decided against it. There was a better way of procuring one, and he seemed to remember talk of new regulations which made a permit necessary before firearms could be sold. He went to the garage where he kept his car and ordered it checked and ready for service—and then visited another garage, on the far side of the city, and paid a handsome deposit upon a U-Drive-U’rself roadster which he rented in another name and ordered ready for this evening when he would pick it up. He found a huge dilapidated store near the waterfront and purchased, as accessory to ‘a joke upon some friends,’ an outfit of clean but well-worn clothing which had belonged to and would suit a longshoreman out of work. He ate a large meal of some luxury and sat over it until it was three o’clock.

And then he telephoned and found that Altinger was not at the office and discovered him at the third outside number he called and was responsive to Allinger’s raucously cheerful welcomes and told Altinger that he was fit and ready for work. He also made use of a phrase that was in their private code for telephonic use and meant that he had something of vital importance to discuss and after that had no difficulty in making an appointment for them to meet, as was essential to his plans, in Altinger’s office.

“After five would be best,” Otto said.

“Five-forty-five,” said Altinger. . . .

Otto was there fifteen minutes earlier than this. Every one in the building had gone, as he knew they would have, but he still had his keys.