Captain Gardiner of the ...

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 CAPTAIN GARDINER OF THE INTERNATIONAL POLICE
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CAPTAIN GARDINER OF THE INTERNATIONAL
POLICE
A Secret Service Novel of the Future
By Robert Allen (Allen Robert Dodd)
1916
 Chapter I
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Chapter I
Mrs. Thornton Gives A Dance
It was on one of the hottest nights of that unusually hot September that Mrs. Thornton gave a dance. The
moist, lifeless air enveloped the earth like a heavy cloak and even the carefully shaded lights failed to conceal
the lines of heat-weariness in the jaded faces of the guests. To Evelyn Thornton, in whose honour the affair
was ostensibly held, the feverish rooms presently became unbearable, and abandoning the arduous duties of
hostess to her mother and her younger and more energetic sister Mabel, she took refuge in the darkness of the
small easterly veranda overlooking the beach. Light mist wreaths dimmed the splendid moonlight and gave a
ghostly quality to the scene which transformed the indistinct line of the breakwater and its lighthouse into a
monster of gigantic dimensions, gazing seaward with a baleful blood-red eye, and made of the commonplace
tramp steamer labouring southward down the coast a veritable Flying Dutchman.
"Oh, bother!" exclaimed Evelyn crossly; "I do believe that it's hotter out here than it is inside."
"That's merely the illogicalness of overwrought sensibilities, my dear girl," replied a voice, seemingly at her
very elbow; "I think you'll find if you stay out here --"
"Of course that isn't what I meant exactly," the girl corrected herself hastily. "What I meant was-- now I know
you're laughing at me!" For the Captain's broad smile, which he had successfully managed to conceal in the
darkness, had given way to unmistakably mirthful symptoms.
"Please forgive me," he begged, as soon as he could regain his composure. "I've heard I don't know how many
girls try to describe Jim offhand and I must say that most of them didn't even get as far as you did."
"He is an awfully baffling sort of an individual to analyse," agreed Evelyn, mollified. "Please tell me what you
think he is."
"Isn't what you mean," said the Captain after a slight hesitation, "that although he's the kind of person you can
always depend upon you feel that under his ordinary manner there's a power and force of character that you're
conscious is there but have never seen because the proper circumstances have never arisen to call it forth?"
"Perhaps you're right," she returned thoughtfully. "But when all's said and done, I can't help thinking of
Jimmy as a man that very few girls would ever dream of falling in love with, but any girl would be fortunate
to have for a friend. Now don't run right off and tell him that," she added hastily. "I don't suppose I really
should have said it. But it's impossible for me to regard you as an absolute stranger after hearing Jimmy sing
your praises so often. I imagine it's poor diplomacy to admit it, but for a long time I've had the most
overpowering curiosity to find out what you were like and" -- with some hesitation-- "why you ever adopted
your present profession."
"You consider it such a strange one for a man to take up?" asked the Captain.
"For a man with the intellectual gifts that Jimmy says you have--yes."
"Then you believe I'd be of more use to humanity in the literary field or something of that kind than as an
officer of the International Police?"
"I've often wondered," said Evelyn, with apparent irrelevance, "just what use the International Police were to
the human race anyhow."
 Chapter I
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"I suppose you know what the men rather irreverently call the 'Police Creed,'" replied the Captain--"'To
preserve the integrity of the civilised world; to uphold International treaties and agreements; to protect trade
routes and lines of communication between the nations; to guard International peace and welfare.' Aren't those
matters of some importance to humanity?"
"I never heard that before," said the girl. "Yes, those things are all essential. But does it require such an
expensive army and navy to secure them? Since the War of the Nations there's hardly been a ripple on the
surface of the world's peace and I don't believe there ever will be in the future. Humanity learned its lesson
then and it isn't likely to forget it. At least, you won't find many thinking people who will admit the possibility
of any disturbance arising in years to come of sufficient magnitude to justify the maintenance of so large a
force as the International Police. The world is too well satisfied with the benefits of peace and progress to ever
want to interrupt them."
"That sounds like my old friend Doctor Everard," remarked the Captain with some amusement. "Did you
study under him at Vassar?"
"It is Doctor Everard," admitted Evelyn, flushing slightly. "But I thoroughly believe in what he says, and I
don't think I'm the only one."
"No," said the Captain, "you're not--unfortunately."
"Why 'unfortunately'? Do you believe there'll ever be another war?"
"Yes," he replied quietly, "I do."
"But the civilised nations--"
"I wasn't talking about the civilised nations necessarily."
"Well," said Evelyn meditatively, "you know what Doctor Everard says about the Eastern situation. 'By no
flight of the imagination whatsoever can we conclude that the Oriental nations can ever constitute a menace to
the civilised, Christian world. Even were they capable of threatening us by their power and organisation, the
rapid advances that civilisation and Christianity are making throughout the Far East, the recognition of the
substantial material benefits that peace and concord bring by the educated classes of the Oriental world, and
the enormous potential power of the western nations would check any tendency to disturb present conditions
even if the International Federation had no armed force whatever at its disposal.'"
The Captain made a gesture of humorous helplessness. "I never attempt to argue with a disciple of Everard,"
he said. "He's too plausible."
"Naturally," returned the girl in a satisfied tone, "because you can't. That's just the way with all you horrid old
pessimists. You hint at awful impending disasters of all kinds, but you haven't got a single sound argument to
back your statements up with."
"I sincerely trust you are right," said the Captain soberly. "But it's just because I'm not satisfied in my own
mind that you and Everard and the rest that think as you do are right, that I'm holding to my present job."
"Of course," agreed Evelyn a little stiffly. "Every one's entitled to his or her own opinion."
"Just so," assented the Captain, and catching the note of irritation in her voice, hastened to change the subject.
"And speaking of the East in general, isn't that moonlight the most glorious thing you ever saw?"
Chapter I
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A light breeze had sprung up while they were talking, and blown the thin haze aside and the round circle of
the moon now poured a path of splendour across the water to their very feet. The Captain arose and moved to
the low railing of the veranda, where he stood drinking in the grateful breeze in long breaths. Evelyn came to
his side and followed his gaze out over the gently heaving ocean.
"It isn't going to last long," she said, pointing to the horizon, where a narrow bank of black cloud glowed at
long intervals with the dull illumination of distant lightning.
"It reminds me a little of the subject of our talk," said the Captain thoughtfully. "This beautiful, peaceful
moonlight night with that storm cloud piling up slowly off there where only a few people notice it now. And
plenty of people won't see it until it's too late."
In spite of herself, Evelyn shivered slightly. She felt disturbed and uncomfortable and half angry with her
companion for the unaccountable manner in which his words had upset her composure. She was about to
suggest that they return to the ballroom, when a sudden burst of merriment stopped her, which was followed
an instant later by the precipitate entrance of Jimmy Merriam and her sister Mabel upon the veranda.
"Every one's busy having a good time in there," explained the younger girl, replacing a stray strand of her
dark hair with a gesture wholly feminine and correspondingly alluring, "so they don't need us any more and
Jimmy and I are going out in the motor boat for a little while. Better come along and be chaperon or Jimmy'll
be proposing to me again. He's done it five times already this evening."
"She said she'd never experienced the pleasure of rejecting any one," said Merriam with a good-natured smile,
"so I thought it would be a shame to have her miss any fun if I could give it to her."
Mabel Thornton laughed again and gave her escort a friendly pat on his plump shoulder. She possessed what
her sister lacked to a great extent--a keen sense of humour, which often made her both the despair and
admiration of the more serious Evelyn.
"Do you think it's safe with that storm coming up?" asked the Captain.
Merriam turned a weather eye on the distant cloud bank and studied it for a few seconds in silence.
"That won't arrive for a couple of hours yet," he said finally. "We'll just run around inside the breakwater for a
while and scoot for home when it gets close."
"I'll take your word for it," said the Captain. "You're the nautical member of the party. Shall I get your cloak,
Miss Thornton?"
"I think Mabs has it," returned Evelyn. "Thank you--" as the Captain adjusted the garment about her
shoulders.
It was only a step to the boathouse and the party were soon slipping easily over the long swells as the swift
little craft headed for the steady red glare on the end of the breakwater. Evelyn and the Captain sat silently in
the stern, drinking in the glory of the night, while at the steering wheel Mabel and Jimmy discussed affairs in
low tones. Intent on the pleasure of the moment, they scarcely noticed that the breakwater had been left astern
and it was not until the breeze suddenly died away that Merriam, looking up, noticed that the cloud bank had
enlarged until it now covered nearly half the sky. He rapidly spun the wheel and the obedient little
cockle-shell careened as she turned and headed back at full speed for the far-off shore line.
"We've plenty of time to make it," he observed reassuringly, as they shot past the red beacon on the
breakwater. "Is it all right to cut straight across, Mabs?"
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