The Port of Missing Men. Meredith Nicholson
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a very mysterious and puzzling affair."
"It's horrible to think such a thing possible—he was a wonderful old man. But very likely they will find the murderer."
"Yes; undoubtedly."
Then, seeing her brother beating his hands together impatiently behind Armitage's back—a back whose ample shoulders were splendidly silhouetted in the carriage door—Shirley smiled in her joy of the situation, and would have prolonged it for her brother's benefit even to the point of missing the train, if the matter had been left wholly in her hands. It amused her to keep the conversation pitched in the most impersonal key.
"The secret police will scour Europe in pursuit of the assassin," she observed.
"Yes," replied Armitage gravely.
He thought her brown traveling gown, with hat and gloves to match, exceedingly becoming, and he liked the full, deep tones of her voice, and the changing light of her eyes; and a certain dimple in her left cheek—he had assured himself that it had no counterpart on the right—made the fate of principalities and powers seem, at the moment, an idle thing.
"The truth will be known before we sail, no doubt," said Shirley. "The assassin may be here in Geneva by this time."
"That is quite likely," said John Armitage, with unbroken gravity. "In fact, I rather expect him here, or I should be leaving to-day myself."
He bowed and made way for the vexed and chafing Claiborne, who gave his hand to Armitage hastily and jumped into the carriage.
"Your imitation cut-glass drummer has nearly caused us to miss our train.
Thank the Lord, we've seen the last of that fellow."
Shirley said nothing, but gazed out of the window with a wondering look in her eyes. And on the way to Liverpool she thought often of Armitage's last words. "I rather expect him here, or I should be leaving to-day myself," he had said.
She was not sure whether, if it had not been for those words, she would have thought of him again at all. She remembered him as he stood framed in the carriage door—his gravity, his fine ease, the impression he gave of great physical strength, and of resources of character and courage.
And so Shirley Claiborne left Geneva, not knowing the curious web that fate had woven for her, nor how those last words spoken by Armitage at the carriage door were to link her to strange adventures at the very threshold of her American home.
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