The Complete Novels of Robert Louis Stevenson - All 13 Novels in One Edition. Robert Louis Stevenson

time for him to rise. He dressed, made his breakfast on cold food that had been laid for him the night before; and went down to the room of his idol for the box. The door was open; a strange disorder reigned within; the furniture all pushed aside, and the centre of the room left bare of impediment, as though for the pacing of a creature with a tortured mind. There lay the box, however, and upon the lid a paper with these words: ‘Harry, I hope to be back before you go. Teresa.’

      He sat down to wait, laying his watch before him on the table. She had called him Harry: that should be enough, he thought, to fill the day with sunshine; and yet somehow the sight of that disordered room still poisoned his enjoyment. The door of the bed-chamber stood gaping open; and though he turned aside his eyes as from a sacrilege, he could not but observe the bed had not been slept in. He was still pondering what this should mean, still trying to convince himself that all was well, when the moving needle of his watch summoned him to set forth without delay. He was before all things a man of his word; ran round to Southampton Row to fetch a cab; and taking the box on the front seat, drove off towards the terminus.

      The streets were scarcely awake; there was little to amuse the eye; and the young man’s attention centred on the dumb companion of his drive. A card was nailed upon one side, bearing the superscription: ‘Miss Doolan, passenger to Dublin. Glass. With care.’ He thought with a sentimental shock that the fair idol of his heart was perhaps driven to adopt the name of Doolan; and as he still studied the card, he was aware of a deadly, black depression settling steadily upon his spirits. It was in vain for him to contend against the tide; in vain that he shook himself or tried to whistle: the sense of some impending blow was not to be averted. He looked out; in the long, empty streets, the cab pursued its way without a trace of any follower. He gave ear; and over and above the jolting of the wheels upon the road, he was conscious of a certain regular and quiet sound that seemed to issue from the box. He put his ear to the cover; at one moment, he seemed to perceive a delicate ticking: the next, the sound was gone, nor could his closest hearkening recapture it. He laughed at himself; but still the gloom continued; and it was with more than the common relief of an arrival, that he leaped from the cab before the station.

      Probably enough on purpose, Teresa had named an hour some thirty minutes earlier than needful; and when Harry had given the box into the charge of a porter, who sat it on a truck, he proceeded briskly to pace the platform. Presently the bookstall opened; and the young man was looking at the books when he was seized by the arm. He turned, and, though she was closely veiled, at once recognised the Fair Cuban.

      ‘Where is it?’ she asked; and the sound of her voice surprised him.

      ‘It?’ he said. ‘What?’

      ‘The box. Have it put on a cab instantly. I am in fearful haste.’

      He hurried to obey, marvelling at these changes, but not daring to trouble her with questions; and when the cab had been brought round, and the box mounted on the front, she passed a little way off upon the pavement and beckoned him to follow.

      ‘Now,’ said she, still in those mechanical and hushed tones that had at first affected him, ‘you must go on to Holyhead alone; go on board the steamer; and if you see a man in tartan trousers and a pink scarf, say to him that all has been put off: if not,’ she added, with a sobbing sigh, ‘it does not matter. So, good-bye.’

      ‘Teresa,’ said Harry, ‘get into your cab, and I will go along with you. You are in some distress, perhaps some danger; and till I know the whole, not even you can make me leave you.’

      ‘You will not?’ she asked. ‘O Harry, it were better!’

      ‘I will not,’ said Harry stoutly.

      She looked at him for a moment through her veil; took his hand suddenly and sharply, but more as if in fear than tenderness; and still holding him, walked to the cab-door.

      ‘Where are we to drive?’ asked Harry.

      ‘Home, quickly,’ she answered; ‘double fare!’ And as soon as they had both mounted to their places, the vehicle crazily trundled from the station.

      Teresa leaned back in a corner. The whole way Harry could perceive her tears to flow under her veil; but she vouchsafed no explanation. At the door of the house in Queen Square, both alighted; and the cabman lowered the box, which Harry, glad to display his strength, received upon his shoulders.

      ‘Let the man take it,’ she whispered. ‘Let the man take it.’

      ‘I will do no such thing,’ said Harry cheerfully; and having paid the fare, he followed Teresa through the door which she had opened with her key. The landlady and maid were gone upon their morning errands; the house was empty and still; and as the rattling of the cab died away down Gloucester Street, and Harry continued to ascend the stair with his burthen, he heard close against his shoulders the same faint and muffled ticking as before. The lady, still preceding him, opened the door of her room, and helped him to lower the box tenderly in the corner by the window.

      ‘And now,’ said Harry, ‘what is wrong?’

      ‘You will not go away?’ she cried, with a sudden break in her voice and beating her hands together in the very agony of impatience. ‘O Harry, Harry, go away! Oh, go, and leave me to the fate that I deserve!’

      ‘The fate?’ repeated Harry. ‘What is this?’

      ‘No fate,’ she resumed. ‘I do not know what I am saying. But I wish to be alone. You may come back this evening, Harry; come again when you like; but leave me now, only leave me now!’ And then suddenly, ‘I have an errand,’ she exclaimed; ‘you cannot refuse me that!’

      ‘No,’ replied Harry, ‘you have no errand. You are in grief or danger. Lift your veil and tell me what it is.’

      ‘Then,’ she said, with a sudden composure, ‘you leave but one course open to me.’ And raising the veil, she showed him a countenance from which every trace of colour had fled, eyes marred with weeping, and a brow on which resolve had conquered fear. ‘Harry,’ she began, ‘I am not what I seem.’

      ‘You have told me that before,’ said Harry, ‘several times.’

      ‘O Harry, Harry,’ she cried, ‘how you shame me! But this is the God’s truth. I am a dangerous and wicked girl. My name is Clara Luxmore. I was never nearer Cuba than Penzance. From first to last I have cheated and played with you. And what I am I dare not even name to you in words. Indeed, until to-day, until the sleepless watches of last night, I never grasped the depth and foulness of my guilt.’

      The young man looked upon her aghast. Then a generous current poured along his veins. ‘That is all one,’ he said. ‘If you be all you say, you have the greater need of me.’

      ‘Is it possible,’ she exclaimed, ‘that I have schemed in vain? And will nothing drive you from this house of death?’

      ‘Of death?’ he echoed.

      ‘Death!’ she cried: ‘death! In that box that you have dragged about London and carried on your defenceless shoulders, sleep, at the trigger’s mercy, the destroying energies of dynamite.’

      ‘My God!’ cried Harry.

      ‘Ah!’ she continued wildly, ‘will you flee now? At any moment you may hear the click that sounds the ruin of this building. I was sure M’Guire was wrong; this morning, before day, I flew to Zero; he confirmed my fears; I beheld you, my beloved Harry, fall a victim to my own contrivances. I knew then I loved you — Harry, will you go now? Will you not spare me this unwilling crime?’

      Harry remained speechless, his eyes fixed upon the box: at last he turned to her.

      ‘Is it,’ he asked hoarsely, ‘an infernal machine?’

      Her lips formed the word ‘Yes,’ which her voice refused to utter.

      With fearful curiosity, he drew near and bent above the box; in that still chamber, the ticking was distinctly audible; and at the measured sound, the blood flowed back