He obeyed, not altogether because it is always polite to accommodate a pretty lady who asks to be kissed. He wanted to kiss her. He would have done it without the invitation. He did it very expertly too. Sophie waved her hatchet-faced English maid out of the room. But that gesture was unnecessary. Rodrigo explained that he could only stay a minute. He had left the other male member of their contemplated foursome, sleeping. They laughed merrily over that. Sophie said she would be overjoyed to see Bill Terhune again. "I was afraid you were going to bring that sober-faced business partner of yours," she interjected. Rodrigo stiffened a little, but decided that this was neither the time nor the place to start an impassioned defence of John Dorning. The principal thing, he said, was to be sure Sophie and her companion were set for the festivities after the show. They were, she cried. She and Betty Brewster would meet them at the stage door fifteen minutes after the final curtain.
For an enormous bribe, the head waiter at the Quartier Latin removed the "Reserved" sign from a cozy table very near the dance floor and assisted the two ladies in draping their cloaks about their chairs. The "club" was crowded with the usual midnight-to-dawn merry-makers—brokers, theatrical celebrities, society juveniles of both sexes, sweet sugar daddies and other grades of daddies, bored girls, chattering girls, and plain flappers.
The Quartier Latin, Bill Terhune, awake, loudly proclaimed, was Broadway's latest night club rage. Well protected by the police.
Powdered white cheeks matched laundered white shirt-fronts as their owners "charlestoned" in each other's arms to the nervous, shuffling, muffled rhythm of the world's greatest jazz band. The air was full of talk, laughing, smoke, the discreet popping of corks and the resultant gurgle. The walls of the Quartier Latin were splashed with futurist paintings of stage and screen stars. The Frenchy waitresses wore short velvety black skirts, shiny silk stockings and artists' tams. They carried trays shaped like palettes. The tables were jammed so close together that one little false move would land one in one's neighbor's lap. Which would probably not have annoyed one's neighbor in the least, such was the spirit of the place. Everybody seemed to be working at top speed to have a good time as quickly as possible. It was rowdy, upsetting, exciting.
With the orchestra in action, one had to almost shout across the table to be heard above the din. Bill Terhune shouted at once to the waitress for glasses and the non-spiritous ingredients of highballs. They arrived, were flavored with libations from Bill's hip, and were consumed with approval. Then they danced, Rodrigo with Sophie and Bill with Betty Brewster. The latter was older than Sophie and much less vivacious and attractive. There were suggestions of hollows in her neck, her hair was that dead blond that comes from an excessive use of artificial coloring, and her eyes had a lack-lustre gleam. She was a typical show-girl who is nearing the declining period of her career. Next year one would find her on the variety stage, the following in a small-time burlesque production, then God knows where. To Rodrigo, there was, at first glance, something a little pathetic about her. He had expected that Sophie would invite a girl somewhat less radiant than herself. It is the habit with beauties to eliminate as much competition as possible of their own sex in their engagements with men.
But Rodrigo had little time to think about Betty. The highball, the disarmingly close presence of Sophie, and the general hilarious laxity of his surroundings were lulling his feelings. Sophie snuggled more closely to him. He breathed the faint, sweet perfume of her hair. The throbbing jungle music beat. The close atmosphere scented with cigarettes and cosmetics, the faces of dancing couples near him smothered thoughts of Dorning and Son. For the time being, he was the old Rodrigo.
"Boy, you can dance," breathed Sophie, slowly disengaging herself from his embrace as the music stopped.
He looked at her. "You're a witch, Sophie, a soft, white witch," he whispered.
They had another round of highballs. Bill Terhune, fast attaining a fighting edge, began abusing the waitress. In his growing quarrelsomeness, he noticed that Betty Brewster was not to be compared in pulchritude to Sophie. He breathed alcoholically upon the latter and demanded with unnecessary peremptoriness that she dance next with him. With a little grimace of annoyance at Rodrigo, she turned smilingly to Bill and acquiesced.
After the next dance, Terhune again produced his enormous flask, whose contents seemed capable of flowing endlessly, like Tennyson's brook. Rodrigo suggested mildly that they had all had enough. But the motion was overruled, three to one. Bill's watery and roving eye caught the equally itinerant optics of a sleek, dark girl two feet from him, at the next table. She smiled veiledly, and he elaborately offered her a drink. Rodrigo was not pleased with this by-play. He had been watching the girl's escort, a florid chubby stock-broker type who had also been drinking copiously and who now eyed Bill Terhune with a decidedly disapproving frown. With a defiant toss of her shiny bobbed head at her middle-aged table-mate, the dark girl accepted the glass and bent her ear to hear Bill's blurred invitation to dance that accompanied it. The tom-toms and saxophones commenced their lilting cadence, and Bill's new conquest and Bill arose simultaneously to dance. So did the fat man. He seized Bill's wrist, which was around the girl.
Rodrigo was to his feet in a flash. He knew Bill Terhune. He caught the Dakotan's wrist as, eluding the jealous sugar daddy's grip, it was whipped back and started on its swift devastating journey to the corpulent one's jaw. "No rough stuff, Bill," Rodrigo cautioned rapidly in a low voice. Bill turned angrily upon his friend, but the Italian held his wrist like a vise. The eyes of all three girls were popping with excitement. They were in the mood to enjoy the sight of embattled males.
"Come on outside and I'll show you how much of a sheik you are," snarled Bill's red-faced antagonist.
Bill was keen to comply, and Rodrigo, welcoming the chance at least to transfer the impending brawl to a less conspicuous battleground, loosed him. The two champions set off for the lobby, picking their way unsteadily through the staring dancers, Rodrigo by Bill's side, endeavoring to talk him into a less belligerent mood, hopeless as the task was. Once in the wide open spaces of the lobby, Bill suddenly eluded Rodrigo's arm upon his shoulder, leaped toward his adversary, and smote him cleanly upon the jaw. The fat man crashed against a fantastic wall painting of Gilda Grey and remained huddled quietly where he had landed. All the fight had been knocked out of him by this one sledge-hammer blow. Bill, his honor vindicated, was contented also. All that remained was for Rodrigo to soothe the feelings of the worried manager, who arrived on the run, and two husky bouncers, now standing by to toss the embroiled patrons out upon the sidewalk.
Rodrigo did his task of diplomacy very nicely. The manager cooperated, being anxious to avoid trouble. Cold water was administered to the fallen gladiator. The girl who had caused all the trouble was summoned. Contrite at the sight of her escort's damaged countenance, she readily agreed to take him home, and the two were bundled into a taxicab.
Then the manager turned to Rodrigo and insisted firmly that the other brawler should leave also. He could not afford further disturbances, which might involve the police, however loathe the bluecoats might be to interfere with the licensed Quartier Latin. Bill began to see red all over again at this edict. But there were two husky bouncers at his elbow, and Rodrigo supported the manager. Betty Brewster was paged, and Bill, muttering and defiant to the last, followed in another taxi in the wake of his enemy.
Having banished Bill Terhune to the cool night air, Rodrigo turned to hasten back to Sophie, who, he was afraid, would be furious at him for leaving her sitting alone for such a long time.
"Good evening, Count Torriani," said a melting feminine voice at his elbow. He stopped and turned to confront Mrs. Porter Palmer, who seemed gushingly delighted to see him. He bowed and saw that, accompanying Mrs. Palmer, was a young woman of such striking appearance as to arrest his eye at once and hold it. Jet black hair caught tight to the head set off the waxen pallor of her face. Her dark eyes were slightly almond-shaped and singularly bright. She was dressed in a shimmering black satin evening gown that displayed the graceful lines of her slim, svelte body and the creamy whiteness of her shoulders. She was American, but not in appearance. In Paris and Monte Carlo, Rodrigo had met beauties like this, but never in America. She looked exactly like the type of woman who, in the old days, had been irresistible to him. But that first swift impression, he told himself, was nonsense. She was probably the soul of modesty.
"I want you to meet my niece, Elise Van Zile," said Mrs. Palmer.
He bent and kissed the glamorous lady's hand and was aware of her languid eyes upon him. A moment later, he was introduced to Mr. Porter Palmer, the twittering bald-headed little man who had been disposing of his ladies' wraps.
"Elise has just come on from San Francisco for a few weeks, and we are showing her the sights," explained Mrs. Palmer, and then to her husband. "It seems terribly crowded and noisy in there, Edward. Do you think it's quite respectable?" Mr. Palmer waved his hands in the air, deprecating his wife's fastidiousness. She turned to Rodrigo, "Won't you join us at our table, Count Torriani?"
"Thanks, really, but the lady I am with and I are just leaving," he made haste to reply, immediately afterward wondering why he had invented this falsehood. He glanced at the coolly beautiful Miss Van Zile, on whom his refusal had apparently made no impression. Was he foolish in sensing, at his very first glimpse of this girl from the West, something that warned him?
"But you will come to the tea I am giving for Elise next Saturday afternoon at the Plaza, will you not, Count Torriani?" Mrs Palmer insisted.
He hesitated, then accepted. He again kissed the hand of Elise Van Zile, and he raised his eyes to find her looking enigmatically at him. Somehow he was reminded of the Mona Lisa, in whose dark eyes are painted all the wisdom and intrigues of the world.
Rodrigo returned to a petulant Sophie. Both her white elbows were on the table, and she was impatiently fingering the blazing diamond pendant at her throat. It was a magnificent bauble, set in clusters of sapphires and platinum. Her position revealed also her gorgeous diamond bracelets and the large dazzling assortment of rings upon her fingers. Sophie was an assiduous collector of jewelry, and, in the absence of something more interesting to do, she was offering an exhibition of her arsenal to the crowd about her.
"Where have you been, Rodrigo?" she fretted as he sat down. "At least you might have come back as soon as you made Betty leave me. I have felt a perfect fool—sitting here alone, with everybody in the place staring at me."
He apologized profusely. She was right. People were staring at her. He stared back so intently at the two young men with too-slicked hair and ill-fitting evening clothes who had taken the table vacated by Bill Terhune's antagonist, that they dropped their bold eyes.
"In that case," he answered her complaint, "let's leave. We can go to some other place."
"I've a very pretty little apartment on the Drive," she suggested demurely.
In the shadowy depths of the taxi tonneau a few moments later, she made herself comfortable against his shoulder. It was long after midnight. Save for machines bound on errands similar to theirs, the streets were deserted. The car sped westward toward the river. Sophie broke a long silence by murmuring, "You write the most wonderful letters, Rodrigo. I've saved them all. Though I don't suppose you mean a word you say in them."
Rodrigo laughed contentedly. Close to him thus, Sophie was again stirring his senses.
"Do you love me, Rodrigo—more than you ever did in London?" she asked suddenly.
"You are lovelier than you ever were in London, Sophie," he quibbled. "You are the loveliest girl I have ever known." But the image of Elise Van Zile obtruded itself and rather spoiled this bit of flattery.
The cab drew up to the curb in front of a huge marble vault of an apartment house. He paid the driver, helped her out of the taxi, and then held open the massive outer door of the apartment house, which was unlocked. Inside the ornate hall, with its fresco work and potted palms, he made a half-hearted movement to bid her good-night, but she insisted that he come up to her apartment. In a chair behind the private telephone switchboard a thin negro youth slept peacefully, his woolly head resting in his arms in the space in front of the plugs. Sophie explained that he was also the night elevator boy, and Rodrigo walked over and started to arouse him. At almost the same instant the front door swung gently open, and a voice said sharply, "Stick 'em up!"
Sophie choked a scream. Rodrigo whirled around to face a thin barrel of cold steel. He slowly raised his hands aloft and looked beyond the revolver into a pair of ratty eyes showing above a somewhat soiled white handkerchief concealing nose and mouth. The man with the gun wore a dinner jacket and a much crumpled gray fedora. Rodrigo thought he recognized him as one of the sinister-looking young men who had been eyeing Sophie's jewels in the night club. He heard faintly the purring of an automobile at the curb outside. No doubt the fellow's accomplice was waiting there. Rodrigo's eyes shifted rapidly around for a possible solution of his uncomfortable situation. He stealthily lowered his hands.
"Stick 'em up and keep 'em there!" snarled the intruder more sharply than before. Behind the telephone switchboard there was a sudden commotion. The burglar's words had aroused the sleeping negro. The latter took one horrified look, his face turned ashen, and he dropped abruptly and clumsily at full length on the floor out of range of the pistol. The stick-up man's head made the mistake of jerking for a flash toward this unexpected noise. Seizing his chance, Rodrigo leaped at the bandit with all his force, sent him reeling to the floor, and grabbed at the gun. The weapon bounded crazily to the marble-inlaid floor. Both men dived for the gun at once, Rodrigo ahead by the fraction of a second. He sprang to his feet, followed by his assailant. But before Rodrigo could get a commanding hold upon the trigger, the fellow had bounded out of the open door. A roaring motor, a sharp grinding of gears, and the car sped away. Rodrigo bare-headed, upon the sidewalk, deemed it wise to withhold his shot.
Sophie was white and trembling as if with a chill when he came back to her. The negro elevator boy was standing beside his switchboard like a man who has seen ghosts.
Rodrigo clasped an arm about Sophie's shoulder and asked, "Are you all right?"
"Yes," she answered, and he wondered if she were really as frightened as she pretended, "but you mustn't leave me. Take me up to my apartment."
He motioned the negro into the elevator and, after some hesitation, the latter slid the mahogany gate open and stood at the lever of the car. At the door of her apartment, Sophie had recovered sufficiently to rummage a key from her handbag. They stepped inside. She switched on the light.
He at once offered a tentative, "Well, my dear, I guess everything is all right now. And I'll say good-night."
She came closer to him and protested, "No—I am still frightened to death. You mustn't leave me here. Those awful men will come back, I know they will."
"Nonsense," he said promptly, "they're more frightened than you are. What we should do is to notify the police."
"Oh, no," she cried. "Christy detests that sort of publicity for anyone in his shows. And it would be bad for you too as a business man."
"Perhaps you're right," he agreed. Then after some hesitation, "I really am going now."
He had anticipated her next move. As she came to him and started to put her arms about him, he gently disengaged them. She stepped back, stared at him and cried, "Oh, you are impossible! You have treated me positively shamefully to-night—leaving me to fight and now refusing to protect me. I think you are contemptible." Flashes of the well-known Binnerian temper were showing themselves.
Rodrigo shrugged his shoulders and smiled, "That's nonsense, my dear. Go to bed and forget it."
And before she could either protest or berate him further, he opened the door, stepped swiftly out, and closed it behind him. He rang for the elevator. When, after five minutes of waiting, there was no sign of response, he walked down the stairs to the street. The negro elevator boy was not on duty at his post, and Rodrigo wondered idly if the Ethiopian had fled from the place in fear of a repetition of the hold-up.
Walking out to Broadway, Rodrigo hailed a taxi and was soon being whirled swiftly in the gray awakening dawn down-town toward his own apartment. His first adventure upon Broadway since his arrival in America had not been a success, he told himself. It had resulted in Bill Terhune making a fool of himself and in Sophie becoming enraged at him again. However, it was just as well another break had come with Sophie. The sort of thing she represented had no thrill for him any more, he was now quite sure. He was quite contented to be a staid partner in Dorning and Son. Already business problems, speculations as to the success of John in his Philadelphia negotiations and what it meant to the firm, were filling his drowsy head. There was a momentary flash into his brain of the exotic face of Elise Van Zile, and then he slumped in the tobacco-smelling taxi seat. His chin drooped, and he was quite asleep.
The driver had to shake him lustily in order to awaken him when the car drew up in front of the Park Avenue apartment house.
Elise Van Zile owed her dark beauty to her Spanish mother. Her olive skin, her smouldering black eyes, her slim, svelte body whose liquid grace made the fact that she was a little taller than the average woman an added charm rather than a defect, Elise had inherited from Elisa Alvarez.
Mrs. Porter Palmer was a Van Zile, and garrulously proud of the fact. Descended from the early Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam, her family had been for over three hundred years numbered among the social elite of the city. But there was also a Pacific Coast branch of the Van Ziles, as Mrs. Palmer, when she exhausted her account of the Manhattan constituency, was wont to relate. Derrick Van Zile had sailed in a clipper ship in 1849 to seek his fortune in the golden hills of California. Moreover, unlike thousands of his fellow argonauts, he had found it. The hoard of gold dust he had passed along to his son had been sufficient to enable the latter to abandon the valley of the Sacramento and journey to the town at its mouth, San Francisco. There Johann Van Zile had established a shipping business, running a fleet of swift American sailing vessels to the Orient and adding considerably to the family fortune. The grandson of Johann Van Zile had been eventually handed both the name and the business.
Though not distinguished by either the bold, adventure-seeking temperament of Derrick or the shrewd business sense of his grandfather, the present John Van Zile, father of Elise, was acute enough in his choice of subordinates and hence succeeded very nicely at managing an enterprise that by this time was extensive enough to manage itself. In one respect, John III had excelled both Derrick and Johann as well as the John who had been his own father. He had united himself in marriage to a fair daughter of the original Spanish aristocracy of California.
True, Elisa Alvarez had had very little to say in the matter. It had been an arrangement between her father and the awkward, loosely built young American, who, without perceptibly ever exerting himself, seemed to have an uncanny ability to get what he wanted. John Van Zile had met the pretty senorita and her aggressively protective father and his bristling moustachios during a voyage on one of his own ships to Mexico and return. The Alvarez' had been visiting relatives. They were Castillian-born, and proud and reserved, as is the habit of their caste. Becoming acquainted with the dark young lady, who had, almost at first glance, won his heart, had not been easy for Van Zile. In fact, not until Senor Alvarez had learned definitely that this was the rich shipping magnate, Van Zile, had the matter been arranged. After that the road had been smoothed. Senor Alvarez had lineage, but was in impecunious circumstances. Mr. Van Zile would make a settlement upon the consummation of the marriage. It was agreed.
Elise Van Zile seemed quite contented with her union. She had never been moved to any deep love for her husband. But he treated her well, and she rendered him wifely devotion. What deep thoughts lurked behind those dark, smouldering eyes and within that Spanish heart were locked with her in her grave when she quietly passed on at the birth of her only child, a daughter. The mother's name was French—Americanized into Elise, and the child was placed in the hands of a corps of nurses, housekeepers, and governesses.
Spanish girls mature early, and Elise Van Zile had from the first appeared to be compounded more of Spanish blood than of American. At fifteen she was a woman. At twenty she was a fully developed lady of the world, in whom the wisdom of two races seemed to have blended. She was a favorite in San Francisco society, a wonderfully attractive creature, as many a smitten gallant of the Bay City had eagerly told her, after at last venturing to brave the dignified Castilian reserve that formed a cool protective barrier around Elise's colorful personality. She had permitted not one of these swains to touch her heart, to arouse the capacity for love concealed within her. So far her emotional life had been confined to mild flirtations as uninteresting as the daily social round.
For months, in San Francisco, Elise had lately been assailed by a restlessness that had shaken her out of her usual calm. Her life had become a monotonous routine, stale and unprofitable. She longed for new surroundings. Her father had been irritating her, moreover, by his hints that it was time she married. In vain she had replied to him, "But none of these men appeal to me. They are mere boys." John Van Zile, growing steadily older, was anxious for an heir to whom he might hand over his business. Having been deprived by the death of his wife of the chance for a direct heir and having no inclination to marry again, he considered a grandson the next possibility.
Under the circumstances, the invitation of Mrs. Porter Palmer to her niece to spend the spring in New York with her had arrived at an opportune time. Elise was eager for the new scene. Her father had indicated that her aunt would introduce her to a horde of new rich, eligible men. It was quite possible that one of them would appeal to her as being this paragon whom her fastidious tastes had evidently set upon. Elise agreed. It was not beyond the realms of the imagination, she conceded, that she might return to San Francisco engaged.
To herself she had speculated as to whether or not she would ever return to San Francisco at all. She and her father had no deep love for each other, had never understood each other. She wanted to taste life in New York. Later, perhaps, she would find an excuse to go abroad, to Paris, to Spain, where among her mother's relatives she might lead a more romantic existence than with the stolid Van Ziles. She was quite willing to embark upon marriage, provided it was not at the sacrifice of the luxuries which she now enjoyed. In France or Spain perhaps she might encounter a man with the right combination of romantic attraction and money.
An hour before the tea which her aunt was giving in her honor, Elise sat in front of the dressing-table in the sunny, exquisitely furnished boudoir that formed part of the suite her aunt had placed at her disposal. She was polishing her nails, and thinking of Count Rodrigo Torriani.
She was asking herself if she had, indeed, met at last a man worthy of her steel. At that first unexpected meeting with him in the lobby of the Quartier Latin, she knew that she was gazing upon a personage of far more interesting potentialities than any other male of her acquaintance. His good looks, his aristocratic bearing, the bold manner in which he had swept her with his dark eyes, had struck a responsive chord within her. Here was a man whom she admitted that, under propitious circumstances, she could love. Here was the potential vis-a-vis of her sought-for emotional experience. If he were rich, and he had every appearance of being well-to-do, she might even marry him.
It never occurred to Elise Van Zile that she could not do with any man as she wished. And, indeed, there was little reason why it should have occurred to her, men being what they are.
And so she was looking forward with distinct pleasure to seeing Count Torriani again, and she was making certain that he would be even more thoroughly attracted by her striking appearance than he had been on the occasion of their only previous meeting.
Three-quarters of an hour later, Elise stood with her aunt in the reception hall below as the first of the guests arrived. They were for the most part fussy, inconsequential people, friends of her aunt's, older than Elise and uninteresting to her, though she bestowed upon them a calm, gracious greeting that served very satisfactorily.
By the time Rodrigo arrived, immaculate in afternoon attire, the room was comfortably filled by the chatterers.
Rodrigo gravely kissed the hand of his hostess and her guest of honor, making the ceremony of briefer duration in the case of the latter than with Mrs. Palmer. He speculated uneasily if there was something a little mocking in the smile with which Miss Van Zile swept him from under her long lashes.
"Haven't you brought John Dorning along with you?" chided Mrs. Palmer.
"John was detained momentarily," Rodrigo explained. "Do you, by any chance, recall Mark Rosner, a former associate of Dorning and Son?"
The elderly lady pursed her white lips. "He was the nervous one, was he not? Always excited about something?"
"Yes. As you probably read in the papers this morning, he's had the nervous shock of his life. Thieves broke in last night and stole a black and ruby Huin Ysin vase he was exhibiting for a customer in the window of his shop."
"Oh, really! A genuine Huin Ysin?"
"It was worth eight thousand dollars. Rosner was aware that we have what is undoubtedly the only duplicate of it in America. He is practically forced to buy it from us, and John was arranging the purchase. You can rest assured, of course, that good old John won't take advantage of the chap's hard luck. But you mustn't let me bore you with business." The apology was addressed to Elise Van Zile. He knew that, as far as Mrs. Porter Palmer was concerned, he could talk antiques and the prices of them the rest of the afternoon. It was her only enjoyable diversion.
He moved nearer to Elise, and, since it was evident that he would be the last to arrive at the tea, she moved over with him a few moments later to twin chairs out of the beaten path of the other guests.
"You take a very deep interest in your business?" she remarked languidly, and again there was that slightly mocking note.
"I really do," he answered promptly. "I have never been so happy in my life as I have since my arrival in America and my association with Dorning and Son."
"How interesting. Then you have not always been a business man?"
He suspected that Elise had learned the full details of his past from her aunt, who, being of an obviously inquiring nature, had doubtlessly by this time fully informed herself concerning him. He judged that she was merely feeling him out. It made him uneasy. But he answered, "In my own country, it is considered, for some reason, not quiteau faitfor a gentleman to engage in honest toil. Though my father was in trade, and no finer gentleman ever lived. Over here it is the reverse. One is not judged to have amounted to anything unless he is, or has been, a business man."
"More's the pity." She said it with more than necessary vehemence.
"Why do you say that?"
"Because I believe this perpetual preoccupation in business has ruined the American man for anything else. He does not have time to play until he has made his fortune, and then he is too old to learn. He knows nothing of art, literature, or the finer things of life, and he cares less. He takes his pleasure in short, mad doses, as the business men were taking it at that bedlam of a supper club at which we met you the other night. One should take pleasure slowly, as one drinks liqueurs. One should take time to live. Don't you think so?"
"Of course." He had hardly listened, so intent was he upon looking at her.
The lazy eyes of Elise were glowing now. The butler, arriving with the tea things, interrupted their conversation. Rodrigo found the pause rather welcome. It broke for the moment the spell which her personality was weaving around him. Facing her thus, alone, she seemed as out of place in this staid gathering of old women of both sexes as Cleopatra in a sewing-circle. For here was a woman, he recognized, who possessed magnetic appeal. She had no interest in art or literature, despite her profession of concern for them. She was supremely self-indulgent, he judged, thrill-seeking, eager for something that would wake her sated and very beautiful self to life. Instinctively his pulse quickened as he looked at her, felt the magnetic tug of her. For him, he knew, she would be profoundly disturbing, much more disturbing than Sophia Binner or Rosa. In her beat the blood of Madame Du Barry, Manon Lescaut, though she would never lose her head for love. She would always keep her head. She would reserve the losing of heads to her victims.
And yet she fascinated him. Already he was wishing that the other guests would miraculously disappear. Already he was planning when he could see her again.
"Your indictment of American business, coming from an American woman, surprises me. I understood that American women were their husbands' chief inspirations in the making of money," he endeavored to put discussion upon a lighter plane.
"American wives want money to spend. That is why they urge their husbands to make it. They drive the poor fellows like muleteers. And if the business man has no wife to drive him, it is some other woman not so respectable but none the less desirous of jewels and a limousine. American women dominate their men absolutely. The husbands haven't a chance. You see, I can speak freely because I am half Spanish, and in most ways a great deal more than half. I am a Latin, like you. That is why it seems strange to me that you should wish to attach yourself to the grindstone of American business."
It did not seem to be the right occasion on which to enlighten her by stating that he was in business in order to make a living.
"And what are we Latins fitted for, then?" he asked lightly.
Her dark eyes were fixed upon him and her voice softened, "For life, pleasure—love."
For a moment his shadowy eyes narrowed and seemed to grow even darker as he returned her look. Then he shook his long body, as if to throw off the disturbing influence, and he tried to say matter-of-factly, "But our business is not so sordid as you seem to think. It is as much art as it is commerce. I want you to meet my associate and dear friend, John Dorning, Miss Van Zile. The very sight of him would convince you that Dorning and Son is no money-factory. I tell you—come with your aunt to tea with us at our apartment. You will enjoy seeing our little private art collection, and you will meet one of the best chaps in the world." He arose and wondered uneasily if he were making a respectable adieu. This woman confused him so. He tried to persuade himself that the invitation he had just uttered was merely a device for smoothing over his intended abrupt departure. But his conscience whispered he was scheming to see her again.
"I should be delighted," she smiled, and rose also. Together they sought Mrs. Palmer, detached her from the group she was beguiling with gossip, and Elise said, "Count Torriani has invited us to tea at his apartment, Aunt Helen." She turned to Rodrigo. "What was the day you mentioned, Count Torriani?"
NO MAN HAD GUESSED WHAT FIRE LAY WITHIN ELISE'S COOL BODY.NO MAN HAD GUESSED WHAT FIRE LAY WITHIN ELISE'SCOOL BODY.
"Why—Thursday. Yes, Thursday will be excellent. John will be there, Mrs. Palmer, and he will make his excuses to you in person."
"You may tell him I shall expect a very abject apology," fussed Mrs. Palmer, and really meant it, for she disliked having people take her invitations lightly.
"I'm sure he would have been here this afternoon if he possibly could," Rodrigo insisted. He bade them both good-bye, adding, "At four on next Thursday then."
Outside the sun had been driven under cover by gray clouds. The bright May afternoon had turned raw and a brisk wind whipped up Fifth Avenue. Rodrigo greeted the penetrating cold with pleasure. He set off on foot down the sidewalk, alongside the tumultuous sea of home-going motors and omnibuses, at a rapid pace. He had the feeling of having escaped from a close, perfumed atmosphere fraught with peril. He tried to laugh at himself for styling Mrs. Porter Palmer's party thus. It was Elise Van Zile who had changed the atmosphere. He needed a refreshing in the late afternoon open air.
When he reached the austere entrance to Dorning and Son he paused and went in, though it was nearly six o'clock. He opened the door to John's office and found it empty. From the open door of Mary Drake's alcove came the sound of a typewriter, and he strode to her doorway. She greeted him in a friendly fashion. Indeed Rodrigo, if he had been looking for it, might have caught something more than friendship in her shy, pleased acknowledgment of his unexpected presence. He sank down with a sigh in the chair beside her desk, transferred his hat and stick to the clothes-tree, and lighted a cigarette.
It had suddenly occurred to him that it was very pleasant indeed sitting here alone resting with Mary Drake—Mary, who was just as beautiful as Elise, though in a far different way; wholesome, efficient, good pal Mary.
"Where's John?" he asked.
"He went away with Mr. Rosner. He said he probably wouldn't be back this afternoon."
"Did they come to terms about the vase?"
"Yes, John sold it to him for five thousand dollars which is three thousand dollars less than it is worth, as you know. But that's John for you. Poor Mr. Rosner was half-crazy with anxiety. It seems this man who owned the other vase is a Tartar to deal with. He insisted upon full restitution for the theft, and Mr. Rosner did not have a cent of insurance. In a way, Rodrigo, it would have been a Godsend if John hadn't sold him the vase."
"Mary, I didn't realize you were so hard-hearted," Rodrigo bantered.
"Well, if Mr. Rosner couldn't have replaced the stolen property, he would have had to go out of business, I guess. And that would have been the best thing in the world for him. I visited his shop the other noon, Rodrigo, and it is a mess. He will never succeed. The shop is too small, dark and unprepossessing. His choice of stock has been abominable—a lot of shoddy originals that nobody wants to buy, mixed in with palpable fakes that wouldn't deceive the most ignorant amateur collector. And Mr. Rosner is an irritating, stubborn person, the worst possible type of salesman in this business."
"But he must be making some money, if he can pay five thousand dollars cash on short notice."
"He didn't pay for it. John has taken him around to Mr. Bates, the lawyer, and is having a note drawn up for the amount. Probably he will never collect it."
A silence followed, broken as Mary resumed her typing. Rodrigo watched her deft fingers as they twinkled over the keys, and later as she signed the letter with Dorning's name, sealed it, and placed it in its envelope. Then, with a little tired sigh, she started clearing her desk of papers, preparatory to leaving. But he did not want her to leave him. There was such cool comfort in having Mary near him. He suddenly told himself quite calmly that this thing that he had been increasingly feeling for Mary was the real wholesome kind of love that a man feels for the woman he marries and wants for her soul rather than for her beauty, the kind of love that he had never had for any woman before. Since he knew that to tell her of it now would spoil everything, he merely said, "You work too hard, Mary. You ought to have more fun. Why don't you telephone your mother that you are stopping in town for dinner with me to-night? Then we will go to some quiet place to eat, and a show later, and I'll get you home before midnight."
He realized with surprise that he was trembling with anxiety like a schoolboy who has invited a girl to his first dance.
Mary, who had risen to get her hat, turned and peered at him with a look in which there was shy pleasure. He had never since that fatal mistake on his first day there, approached her socially before. "It would be fun," she said. "And it happens that mother wouldn't be left alone. My aunt is staying with us. I'll see."
She called a number in Brooklyn and spoke tenderly to her mother. She hung up the receiver slowly, turned and said to him, "Mother is willing. Go out for a few minutes while I give a few dabs to my hair."
They dined at a little French restaurant just off Madison Avenue. In this quiet atmosphere of good food, simple furnishings and honest citizens and their wives and sweethearts, with Mary pleased and very pretty opposite him, Elise Van Zile fled very far into the distance. Rodrigo had banned all talk of business for the evening. He wanted Mary to tell him about herself, he said. This violated a little the embargo against shop talk, for Mary's interests it developed, lay almost wholly in her mother's welfare and in schooling herself for an executive position with Dorning and Son. She expressed regret that she had never had the opportunity to travel abroad and visit the great art centers of Europe. She seemed to believe that Rodrigo's career, before joining Dorning and Son, had consisted of a rigid course of training and later of travel with art battling with occasional ladies in the foreground. He gently drew the conversation around to a more personal basis. Almost pathetically anxious to make a good impression upon her, he yet gently wished to disillusion her regarding his past. Any other course would not be honorable. For some day soon he hoped to tell her that he loved her.
They saw a very sprightly musical comedy together, a gay little show in which a brother-and-sister dancing pair, who were the ruling rage of the town, starred and gave an exhibition of spontaneous vivacity and grace such as one seldom sees behind the footlights. The whole entertainment was keyed to their joyous pitch, and, though the other performances fell somewhat short of the pace set for them, the impression left with the audience at the final curtain was such that a congenial warmth seemed to envelop the outgoing throngs.
Rodrigo wisely did not suggest further tarrying amid the Broadway lights, and, starting their long taxi ride back to Brooklyn, both Mary and he were very cheerful and feeling very kindly indeed toward each other and the world. And yet he did not make love to her, though she sat as close to him as had Sophie Binner in a similar taxi. There was a light in Mary's eye as she turned to him that he was almost awed to see. As they drew up to her door, he told himself, with thumping heart, that she would not resent it if he kissed her. Yet he helped her from the taxi with almost too much politeness and stood at the door of her rather antiquated brownstone house as she slipped in her key.
"I would invite you in to meet my mother, Rodrigo," she said, "but she is probably asleep. You will come some other time?"
"I would like to, Mary, very much," he replied.
He shook her hand and held it while she thanked him for a very nice time. Then he turned, the door closed, and she was gone.
During the next few days he made no effort to press the advantage he had won in establishing their relations upon a more personal basis. Mary would not like him to, he knew, and he was desperately anxious not to offend her. The affairs of Dorning and Son took him continually into her presence, and he sensed a change in her attitude toward him which she could not conceal. It made him very happy.
On Wednesday of that week, which was the first of June, a matter of vast importance to Rodrigo, a matter of genuine pleasure to both himself and the whole personnel of Dorning and Son, reached its consummation. Rodrigo was made a partner in the firm.
Henry Dorning broke his long confinement at Greenwich by making the trip into New York for the occasion. The papers had been drawn up by Emerson Bates, and the meeting was held in the lawyer's offices, a many-doored domain of thick carpets, glass-topped desks, soft-footed clerks, and vast arsenals of thick books. It was a dignified, congenial ceremony, having seemed to Rodrigo to have the effect of being received into an ancient and honorable order, of becoming a part of the Dorning family, as well as receiving stock in a very lucrative business.
Henry Dorning, looking thinner and whiter than Rodrigo had ever remembered him, but happy and keen-witted, signed the papers and shook hands with his new partner.
"I know you are going to be an even greater asset to Dorning and Son than ever now—in more ways than one," he said, and Rodrigo wondered if the significance of his remark lay in the promise made to broaden John Dorning. Well, there was the tea to Elise Van Zile and her aunt to-morrow. John had promised to be there. Rodrigo had been trying not to look forward to that occasion.
Later in the day, Henry Madison, gray-haired manager of Dorning and Son, whom Rodrigo had learned to respect for his vast knowledge of his job, sought out the new member of the firm, congratulated him, and said cordially, "I am mighty glad about this, Rodrigo. I confess now I was a bit dubious about you when you first came here. Damned narrow-mindedness, that's all. I've long since changed my mind, and I don't know of a man I'd rather be working for than you."
"And I don't know of anybody I'd rather have say those nice things to me than you, Mr. Madison," Rodrigo replied. This was not quite true, for a few minutes previously he had been congratulated by Mary Drake.
The next afternoon he reluctantly left an accumulation of work to fly up to the apartment and supervise for the last few minutes the efforts of Mrs. Brink, the housekeeper who worked part-time for John and him, to prepare the place and the collation for the tea to Elise Van Zile and her aunt. John had promised to come up within the next half hour. Mrs. Brink, having arranged things to his satisfaction, left, and Rodrigo had just completed a change in attire when the telephone rang.
Mrs. Palmer's voice came over the wire. "Dear Count Torriani," she almost quavered, "I have never felt so mortified and so sorry. I should never have accepted your engagement for tea this afternoon. It completely slipped my mind at the time that it was the date of the Wounded Soldiers' Bridge and Bazaar at the Plaza. And—will you ever forgive me?—I quite lost track of my engagement at your apartment until just this minute. I am chairman of one of the Bazaar committees, you see. And here I am at the Plaza, and, really, it would be impossible to get away. Will you have mercy, dear Count Torriani, and forgive me and invite me some other time?" The poor old lady seemed on the verge of bursting into tears.
A great load was lifting from Rodrigo's mind, and he had difficulty in restraining the relief in his voice. "Certainly, Mrs. Palmer. Don't worry in the least. I shall miss the pleasure of your company, and that of your niece, but we can easily make it some other time. Don't put yourself to any inconvenience by leaving your friends. I am not annoyed in the slightest."
He hung up the receiver and smiled into the mirror above the telephone. The smile departed as the apartment bell rang. But then he thought it must be John, who had doubtless mislaid his key. Rodrigo walked over to the door and opened it.
"Am I late?" smiled Elise Van Zile, very beautiful and calm on the threshold. "Has my aunt arrived yet?"
Rodrigo, concealing his feelings, bowed her in politely. "Please come in. Mrs. Palmer hasn't come yet." He was puzzled, and both happy and annoyed to see her.
When he had closed the door, she turned her dark face to him and gave a short laugh of defiant geniality. "What is the use of pretending? I have just come from the Plaza. I left my aunt as she was going to telephone you that she wasn't coming. But the Bazaar is a frightful bore, and I wasn't to be cheated out of my engagement with—your art treasures. If you are displeased or shocked, please send me away at once. But you aren't, are you?"
"Of course not," he replied almost too promptly. "Won't you sit down?" She sank into John's favorite chair, and Rodrigo took a seat away from her. Her quick eyes understood the precaution, and a small, mocking glint beamed for a moment in their cool depths.
"Oh, please don't be so terribly polite with me," she chaffed. "It doesn't become a man like you, and I don't especially fancy it." She turned idly to a painting over the mantelpiece. "I see you have the sign of your avocation continually before you."
His eyes followed hers. "You mean the prize fight? It is an original by George Bellows, one of your few real American artists. Poor chap, he died in his prime. But why my 'avocation'?"
"When I first met you—at the night club—you had just knocked some poor person sprawling, if I remember rightly."
Rodrigo blushed.
She added significantly. "That is what first interested me in you. I might otherwise consider you merely the usual effete foreign titled gentleman. I adore strong men. I especially adore prize fights and attend them whenever I have the chance." She leaned back challengingly. "Now tell me that I am bold and and unfeminine."
"I think you're quite wonderful," he said with sudden emphasis, and moved to a chair nearer to her. She leaned closer. Her mask-like face softened, and she laid her thin, graceful fingers upon his chair. She showed no signs of displeasure as he laid his hand upon hers.
She had succeeded in moving him again. She knew now that she could mold him to her wish, but she did not wish to do so quite yet. So she professed to ignore his pressure upon her hand, and commented, "This is an adorable place. You must be frightfully rich, if you will pardon my vulgarity in mentioning it."
"I'm not rich," he said. "The place is Dorning's."
"Really?" She shot a quick glance at him and, involuntarily, made a motion to withdraw her hand. "But the car outside is yours. I have seen you driving it."
"That is Dorning's too." Her evident interest in this question of money cooled his ardor somewhat, drew him back toward earth. He said plainly, "Dorning has a couple of millions in his own name, but I haven't a nickel, except what I earn by working hard every day."
She arose thoughtfully after a moment. As he rose to his feet also, she swept him with admiring eyes. But her attitude had subtly changed. She had ceased to wish him to make love to her.
"Your friend, Mr. Dorning—is he married?" she asked carelessly.
"No. He takes little interest in girls." She accepted a cigarette, and he held the match for her. Lighting his own, he wondered swiftly if such a glamorous lady would consider the quiet John Dorning worth trying her charms upon. "I am expecting Mr. Dorning here at any moment," he offered. It would be more amusing than anything else to see her focus her alluring artillery upon his friend, he decided. He had every confidence that she would find John impregnable.
"I shall be interested to meet a New York millionaire who is not interested in girls," she said. Was there a challenge in her remark? Rodrigo wondered. He was still considering the question when John Dorning turned the key and walked hurriedly into the room, stopping at the sight of the visitor.
Rodrigo introduced them.
"I had expected to meet my aunt, Mrs. Palmer, here, but she has not arrived," Elise explained. "Of course I am leaving at once. I was just saying good-bye to Count Torriani."
Astonishment and a tribute to her cleverness were written upon Rodrigo's face. Her whole voice and manner had changed suddenly from those of a virile sophisticated woman to a demure clinging vine, humbly asking John not to misunderstand her. And she was boldly counting upon Rodrigo for an ally. She was a superb actress. For the first time since their acquaintance, Rodrigo saw John Dorning's face light up with interest toward a woman other than his sister or Mary Drake.
"I've just been admiring your perfectly wonderful place," she said naïvely to John, flattering admiration in her eyes. "You have furnished it so exquisitely. I am such a novice in the arts. You must let me come to your galleries some day and have you enlighten me."
To Rodrigo there was something uncanny and alarming in the way John hung upon her words, stared at her. It was as if she had a different method for fascinating every man she met, as if she had instinctively sensed what no woman had hitherto discovered—a way to interest John Dorning.
"I'd be tickled to death to have you visit our shop," Dorning floundered.
"I've been fascinated by what Count Torriani has told me about it," she smiled gravely. "And I'm especially interested to meet the owner of it all. And now, really, I must go."
"My car is outside," Dorning offered eagerly. "I—that is, Rodrigo—will drive you home."
"Don't bother, please, either of you," she replied. "I'd be frightened to ride with Count Torriani. He flashed by me the other day so rapidly that he did not see me at all."
This, Rodrigo knew, was a prevarication. He had not driven a car in any park anywhere since Elise Van Zile's arrival in New York.
"I know," Dorning laughed. "He does drive like a comet. But—er—I'm a regular snail at the wheel. If Rodrigo doesn't mind——"
"He doesn't," Rodrigo cut in rather sullenly.
John turned eagerly toward her, and she said gayly, "Very well, Mr. Dorning, and you may drive just as slowly and carefully as you know how."
"Fine," returned John. "We'll take a turn in the park on the way. It's a wonderful afternoon." He hurried to open the door for her.
"Good afternoon, Count Torriani, the tea was delicious," she said suavely, dark, ironic eyes upon his grave face. He glanced at the undisturbed tea things upon the little taboret, shrugged his shoulders, and bent over her hand. Vexed as he was with her, he could not kiss her hand without feeling a little emotion within him.
He watched her disappear into the hall. To John Dorning, following her, he called suddenly, "John, you'll need your hat, won't you?" John shamefacedly returned for it. Rodrigo handed it to him with a smile.
Rodrigo sank down into a comfortable chair, lighted a cigarette, and thoughtfully poured himself a cup of the neglected tea.
It was an hour later that John returned, flushed by the wind and something that had nothing to do with the elements. Rodrigo was still in the chair, trying to read.
"You didn't mind my running off with Miss Van Zile?" John asked, with a strange indication in his voice that he didn't care whether his friend minded or not. He was excited, eager to confide.
"Not at all," returned Rodrigo, "but John——"
John had lighted a cigarette and was walking around the room. "She's wonderful, isn't she, Rodrigo?" he said suddenly. "A very remarkable and very beautiful girl. She's never been to New York before, she says. She's frightened with the city, but eager to see the sights. I've made several engagements with her to show them to her."
Rodrigo was silent.
John enthused on. "Rodrigo, if I fell in love, it would be with that kind of a girl—frank, unspoiled, sweet and lovely. She has something Eastern women utterly lack. They are all so sophisticated and blasé. You could never imagine such a woman marrying me for my money, for instance."
Rodrigo wondered if he was a coward. He ought to warn John that he was playing with dynamite, that this girl was everything that his friend thought she was not. But John was so utterly absorbed in her. And he, Rodrigo, had promised Henry Dorning to show his son something of worldly women. Here was John's opportunity to secure an education. Probably with no serious results. Elise must be playing with Dorning, and it couldn't last. She could have no serious intentions toward John. He was exactly the opposite of the type of man that interested her. Rodrigo, with no sense of self-flattery, even suspected shrewdly that she had played up to John with the object of making John's room-mate jealous.
And so, he decided, for the time being, that he would keep silent.
Rodrigo attended a private auction of Flemish art the next morning and did not reach the office until noon-time. Having glanced through his mail, he thrust his head into John's office to tell him of the purchases he had made. He was quite well pleased with himself and was looking forward to Dorning's commendation on his bargains. Mary Drake was alone in the office.
"Good-morning, Mary," called Rodrigo. "Has John gone to lunch already?"
He saw with a little uneasiness that something of the usual warmth with which she greeted him had fled from her eyes and voice. "Yes, he is lunching with a Miss Van Zile at the Plaza."
Rodrigo frowned. His high spirits were somewhat quenched. He entered and walked over toward Mary and sat down. He looked at her a moment, hesitated, then said abruptly, "Mary, if your best girl friend was attracted to a chap who you knew was no good, what would you do about it?"
She regarded him seriously and said rather pertly, "I would make very sure first that my opinion of the man's unworthiness was correct."
"And if you had made sure—then what?"
She gave a little helpless gesture. She was so serious that he was on the point of asking her what was troubling her. "How can you make sure?" she asked gravely. And went on, "I used to think that first impressions of people were instinctively the right ones. That everything after that just had the effect of clouding things, of leading to wrong judgments. Recently I changed my mind. I decided that what a person has been in the past has nothing to do with the present. I thought people could change, could find themselves, and become new men—or women. Now—I don't know."
He tried to take her delicate, white hand, but it eluded his. "Mary," he asked softly, "are you thinking of me when you say these things about—first opinions?"
He took her troubled silence for an affirmation.
"Has someone been talking to you since about me?" he queried intuitively.
Mary, who was never one for groping about in the dark, replied, "A girl by the name of Sophie Binner was in this morning. She asked for you. When she found you weren't here, she grew quite loud and troublesome, and Mr. Madison referred her to John. I couldn't help but hear some of the conversation between them, though I left when I discovered its private nature."
"Sophie Binner?" he repeated, screwing his forehead into a frown. "But I haven't seen her for several months. She is an actress I knew in England—and, for a short time, here. But she has been on the road with her company, and I haven't even written to her."
"You must have written to her some time or other."
"Why, what do you mean, Mary?" He had never seen the usually calm and capable Mary agitated so. It agitated him in turn. Sophie was not above making trouble, he knew, especially after the unfriendly manner of their last parting.
"I don't want you to question me any further, Rodrigo," said Mary nervously. "I have told you quite all I know. You will have to get the rest from John. Probably he won't mention it to you. He hates trouble of all kinds—particularly sordid troubles—and he will be anxious to shield you. And I think you shouldn't allow yourself to be shielded, in this case."
"Certainly not. I'll ask him what happened at once."
But Rodrigo did not have the opportunity to broach the subject of Sophie to his partner during the remainder of the day. John did not return from his luncheon engagement until after three, when he hurried in breezily, a carnation in his buttonhole and a flush upon his face that caused the employees out in the gallery to look significantly at each other and smile approvingly. The head of the concern had never looked so happy. John closeted himself at once with a couple of art buyers who acted in the capacity of scouts for Dorning and Son. By the time Rodrigo judged Dorning was free and went in search of him, John had again disappeared, this time, Mary said, to dress for dinner.
Rodrigo found John in their apartment, arrayed in his evening clothes, administering the final touches to his necktie. The Italian told himself a little ironically that Elise Van Zile had reversed the social order of the day in their lodgings—now it was John who was donning festive attire almost every evening and setting out upon social expeditions, and Rodrigo who was left home to settle in a chair with a book. Formerly it had been the reverse. Rodrigo remarked banteringly about this.
"But I have such a wonderful reason for deserting you," John cried. "How she ever happened to decide to like me, when you were available, Rodrigo, I don't know. She is such a beautiful creature—she could have the pick of all the men in the world. And she's just as sweet as she is beautiful. You don't think that I deliberately went out to oust you from her affections, do you, Rodrigo?" John spoke so earnestly that Rodrigo gave a short laugh of reassurance. But there was a note of anxious pity in it also. Poor old John.
"I understand that you saw another friend of mine to-day, also," Rodrigo said, lighting a cigarette and flicking the match into the open grate.
John dropped his thin fingers from his tie and replied quietly. "Did Mary tell you? I asked her not to."
"She evidently thought it better that I should know, and I think she is right, as usual. What did Sophie Binner want of me—and you?"
John walked over to his friend and put his hands upon Rodrigo's shoulders. He suggested, "Please don't ask me any more about her, Rodrigo. You'll never see or hear from her again. Why not let it go at that?"
Rodrigo replied impatiently, "I'm not a baby, John, I know more about women like Sophie than you do. What was she up to?"
John shrugged his shoulders and decided to make a clean breast. "She looked like the devil—thin and badly dressed. She said her show had failed, left the whole company stranded out in Pocatello, Idaho. Christy and the company manager skipped and went back to England. Sophie pawned her jewels and clothes and just scraped together enough money to get her to New York. So she came to you for help."
Rodrigo relaxed with relief. "Fair enough," he admitted. "I'll stake her to a trip home. Why didn't you tell her to go away and come back again when I was there?"
John hesitated. "She insisted upon some money at once. She had—some letters from you. I read a couple of them, and they were really pretty serious stuff, Rodrigo. You were never a calm letter-writer. And writing letters to a certain type of woman is very had business in this country. There are always shyster lawyers around ready to pounce upon them and turn them into money. And she said—well, that you were in her apartment the night her show opened. She mentioned a colored elevator man whom she could summon as a witness, if necessary. But, damn it, I don't believe you were, Rodrigo." John looked at his friend anxiously.
"I was just there for a minute, and it was perfectly harmless," Rodrigo said at once. "It didn't mean a thing and she probably played it up merely to give me a black eye with you. As a matter of fact, I recall that the elevator boy did ride us up and wasn't there when I came down the stairs later. I had a fearful row with her and she's probably out for revenge. But what's Sophie's game anyway—blackmail? She can't get away with it."
John replied, "She threatened to sue you for breach of promise to marry her, said you had jilted her in London once before. She wanted five thousand dollars to call it off. I knew she didn't have a case, but I thought it was just as well to keep her quiet. So I gave her two thousand dollars. Then I stopped in at the apartment house address she gave me and for a fifty dollar bill persuaded the colored elevator boy that you had never been there."
Rodrigo shook his head and smiled. Was there ever a friend like this innocent-wise John Dorning?
"You're a prince, John," Rodrigo said sincerely. "But you shouldn't have done it. You should have let me face the music." He turned almost fiercely and paced the floor a moment. Returning, he faced John and cried, "I don't know why you have such a sublime faith in me, John. God knows I've given you no reason for it. I was in trouble when you first met me. And that wasn't the first time, as you must have known. And yet you accepted me as a friend and you gave me a start that's resulted in the happiest time of my life. Now, damn it, I throw you down again. I guess I'm just bad."
John laid his hand on the Italian's shoulder. "No, I won't have you condemning yourself. You've been strictly business since you've been over here, I know. This Binner affair is a carry-over from the past. Your letters didn't mean anything, even though they sounded pretty intimate. And that episode in her apartment was just a peculiar combination of circumstances, I can see that."
"Oh, don't make me out a saint, John," Rodrigo cried impatiently. "If those crooks in the hall hadn't jolted it out of my head—oh, well, what's the use. Once a weakling, always a weakling."
"Not at all," John retorted. "I'll admit there's one kink in your character I don't understand. I don't see why a chap who is as unselfish, straightforward and worldly wise as you are, can—well, make a fool out of himself with a certain type of woman. It's uncanny."
"It's in my blood. I'll never be able to be absolutely sure of myself," Rodrigo flung out hopelessly. His hands were nervously fingering the table against which he was leaning. He was thinking neither of Sophie nor of Rodrigo. He was seeing the white, disappointed face of Mary Drake, and he knew now what had been troubling her. It did not occur to him to be thrilled that she should care enough about him to be troubled. He was afraid, afraid for his love and his happiness, because he was his own worst enemy. His nervous, groping fingers closed upon a marble figurine, an exquisite carving of a hooded cobra, head raised and ready to strike at a tiger. The tiger, about to spring, had paused and stood, eyes upon the snake, as if fascinated. It was among his art treasures that he had brought from Italy.
"You'll be sure of yourself," John was saying, "when the right girl comes along." He smiled, and Rodrigo realized with a pang that John was thinking of his right girl, Elise Van Zile.
"What chance will I ever have with the right sort of girl when the wrong sort may come along first?" And Rodrigo too was thinking of Elise. He suddenly realized that his fingers were digging into something hard until they hurt. He looked down at the figurine, and lifted it.
"Here I am!" he cried. "I'm this tiger! I never told you why I brought this figurine with me, why I've always cherished it, have I? Well, one reason is because my father gave it to me when I was a boy as the memento of a very exciting afternoon. It happened in India when I was about fourteen years old. We were riding on an elephant, and we could see over a high wall into a sort of a lane that led to an enclosure where a chap who used to make a business of capturing wild animals for museums and circuses kept his stock. He let the beasts roam around in there, and my father would take me to the other side of the wall to see them.
"Well, on this afternoon, a big, silky tiger came walking down the lane. Suddenly, when he was just about opposite us, he stopped short—like this statue—his head down. He stared at something. We followed his shining eyes. A cobra had slipped out of the box in which the chap kept his snakes. The tiger stared as if paralyzed, fascinated, a yard from the snake's head. A cobra! That's the wrong kind of a girl—a cobra. Mind you, this tiger could have killed the thing with one blow of his paw. He could have killed a lion, or scattered a regiment. Yet he stood there, his eyes held by the eyes of the cobra. All at once he tossed his head up and took a step backward—and the cobra struck."
"Struck! Did he kill the tiger?"
"I don't know. I felt sick. My father saw how white I was, and we left at once. Several months later he saw this figurine in a shop in Calcutta and bought it. He gave it to me."
John looked at him and said slowly, "Perhaps a cobra can't really kill anything as big and strong as a tiger."
"It can make it bad for him, though. I can remember Dad cursing that he didn't have a gun with him. A gun! That's you, John. When I've been walking lately, I've usually had you along, and I've been pretty safe from cobras."
"It's safer not to go walking at all."
"Well, even a tiger has to have some diversion," Rodrigo tried to lighten up the serious turn the conversation had taken. As John walked over to the mirror and resumed his adjusting of his cravat, Rodrigo said suddenly, "And guns too, John—sometimes guns don't act as they should, very good guns, too. And cobras raise the dickens with them too."
But John had hardly heard him, much less gotten the meaning of his friend's cryptic speech. And Rodrigo was instantly glad. John was so infatuated with Elise that mere words would never undeceive him. It must be something stronger than words. Likewise, Rodrigo must make very sure that Elise Van Zile was what he had described to John as the cobra type of woman.
After John left, Rodrigo sat down and tried to interest himself in a large, profusely illustrated volume on interior decoration. But he was in no mood to concentrate upon the hopelessly conventional illustrations and the dry, prosaic text. He flung the book down at length, and, lighting his pipe, walked nervously about the apartment. He was thinking of John and Elise Van Zile, and of himself. His feeling toward the sudden infatuation of his friend for Mrs. Palmer's niece and Elise's sudden interest in John contained not one atom of jealousy. Had she been the girl John thought she was, Rodrigo would have been delighted and would have rendered the match every assistance.
But Elise, Rodrigo kept telling himself, was the girlhethought she was. This business to-day of Sophie Binner, this tale of the cobra he had related to John, this whole raking up of his past had had a depressing effect upon him. The world looked awry that evening.
He confessed, after fifteen minutes of aimless walking about, that he was perhaps seeing things through a glass darkly. But of this much he was quite certain: Elise Van Zile was clever. Though John Dorning was not the type of man who appealed to her, she might decide to marry him for his money. Married or single, she would always be selfish, unscrupulous. She wanted a rich, safe husband.
If the husband were John Dorning, this would bring tragedy.
Having arrived at this conclusion, Rodrigo tried to denounce the whole thing as nonsense and, catching up his hat, departed from the apartment in search of something to eat, though he wasn't in the least hungry. He wanted to get out, get away from himself, get where there were people, noise, laughter.
He walked over to Broadway and deliberately chose a cheap restaurant where race-track touts, vaudeville and burlesque actors and actresses, theatrical agents and motion picture press agents absorb indigestible food. But the gum-chewing waitresses and clattery crockery failed to divert him. He hardly touched his food. Rising, he paid what the muscular waitress had punched on his ticket, and walked back to the apartment through the surging tide of the Broadway theatre traffic.
Back in his living-room, he settled down with his book again. But he could not read. He fell to brooding again. And out of his brooding came finally a mad plan to save John Dorning. As well have the game as the name, Rodrigo laughed ironically. He had done so many foolish things for his own pleasure. God might now forgive this last one if it were done unselfishly, to save a saint. For John Dorning was almost a saint to Rodrigo. Their friendship was a thing almost sacred. But it was better to kill even this sacred thing, Rodrigo reasoned solemnly, than to hurt John Dorning.
So the following afternoon he called Elise Van Zile on the telephone from his office and, putting into his voice all the mellow intimacy that he knew so well how to convey, he said, "I have missed you so much, Elise. John interrupted our last little chat just when it was becoming so interesting, and took you away. I'd so much more to tell you. We have such a great deal in common, as you were good enough to say. I'm wondering when I may see you again."