From the water-front, deserted and rain-swept, she called a passing street carriage, and drove to the Hotel Bristol. There she sent the driver to ask if any luggage had arrived from Venice for Miss Allen. None had arrived, and Miss Allen, naturally, appeared in great perturbation before the sympathetic but helpless hotel manager. She next inquired if it was possible to ascertain when the Cunard steamer sailed.
"The Slavonia, madam, leaves the harbor at daybreak!"
"At daybreak! Then I must go on board tonight, at once!"
"I fear it is impossible, madam. The bora is blowing, as you see, and the harbor is empty!"
"But I must get on board!" she cried, and this time her dismay and despair were not mere dissimulation.
The landlord shrugged his shoulders, while Frank, calling out a peremptory order, in Italian, to her driver, left him at the curb looking after her through the driving rain, in bewilderment.
She went first to the steamship offices. They were closed. Then she sought out the Cunard tender—it was lightless and deserted. Then she hurried to the water-front, driving up and down along that lonely stretch of deserted quays, back and forth, coaxing, wheedling, trying to bribe indifferent and placid-eyed boatmen to row her out to her steamer. It was useless. It could not be done. It was not worth while to risk either their boats or their lives, even in the face of the fifty, one hundred, two hundred lira which she flaunted in their unperturbed faces.
Grating and rocking against the quayside, above the heads of the group about her, she caught sight of a white-painted steam launch, with a high-standing bow, and on it a uniformed officer, smoking in the rain.
She approached him without hesitation. Could he, in any way, carry her out to her steamer? She pointed to where the lights of the Slavonia shone and glimmered through the gray darkness. They looked indescribably warm and homelike to her peering eyes.
The officer looked her up and down in stolid Austrian amazement, trying to catch a glimpse of her face through her wet and flattened traveling veil. Could he take her out to her steamer? No; he was afraid not. Yes, it was true he had steam up, and that his crew were aboard, but this was the official patrol of the Captain of the Port—it was not to carry passengers—it was solely for the imperial service of the Austrian Government.