"Scheherazade," he said, "you'll be a good little girl, now, won't
you? Because it would be a shocking thing for you and your friend
across the way to land in England wearing funny bangles on your wrists
and keeping step with each other, wouldn't it?"
She continued to hold the slip of paper and stare at it long after she
had finished reading it and the words became a series of parallel
blurs.
"Scheherazade," he said lightly, "what on earth am I going to do with
you?"
"I suppose you will lodge a charge with the captain against me," she
replied in even tones.
"Why not? You deserve it, don't you? You and your humorous friend with
the yellow beard?"
She looked at him with a vague smile.
"What can you prove?" said she.
"Perfectly true, dear child. Nothing. I don't want to prove anything,
either."
She smiled incredulously.
"It's quite true, Scheherazade. Otherwise, I shouldn't have ordered my
steward to throw the remains of my dinner out of the corridor
porthole. No, dear child. I should have had it analysed, had your
stateroom searched for more of that elusive seasoning you used to
flavour my dinner; had a further search made for a certain sort of
handkerchief and perfume. Also, just imagine the delightful evidence
which a thorough search of your papers might reveal!" He laughed. "No,
Scheherazade; I did not care to prove you anything resembling a menace
to society. Because, in the first place, I am absurdly grateful to
you."
Her face became expressionless under the slow flush mounting.
"I'm not teasing you," he insisted. "What I say is true. I'm grateful
to you for violently injecting romance into my perfectly commonplace
existence. You have taken the book of my life and not only extra
illustrated it with vivid and chromatic pictures, but you have unbound
it, sewed into its prosaic pages several chapters ripped bodily from a
penny-dreadful, and you have then rebound the whole thing and pasted
your own pretty picture on the cover! Come, now! Ought not a man to
be grateful to any philanthropic girl who so gratuitously obliges
him?"
Her face burned under his ridicule; her clasped hands in her lap were
twisted tight as though to maintain her self-control.
"What do you want of me?" she asked between lips that scarcely moved.
He laughed, sat up, stretched out both arms with a sigh of
satisfaction. The colour came back to his face; he dropped one leg
over the bed's edge; and she stood erect and stepped aside for him to
rise.
No dizziness remained; he tried both feet on the floor, straightened
himself, cast a gaily malicious glance at her, and slowly rose to his
feet.
"Scheherazade," he said, "isn't it funny? I ask you, did you ever
hear of a would-be murderess and her escaped victim being on such
cordial terms? Did you?"