280CHAPTER XXVCUP AND LIP
Through the crowded Paris terminal Neeland pushed his way, carrying the olive-wood box in his hand and keeping an eye on his porter, who preceded him carrying the remainder of his luggage and repeating:
“Place, s’il vous plaît, m’sieu’, dames!”
To Neeland it was like a homecoming after many years’ exile; the subtle but perfectly specific odour of Paris assailed his nostrils once again; the rapid, emphatic, lively language of France sounded once more delightfully in his eager ears; vivacity and intelligence sparkled in every eye that met his own. It was a throng of rapid movement, of animated speech, of gesticulation. And, as it was in the beginning when he first arrived there as a student, he fell in love with it at first sight and contact.
All around him moved porters, passengers, railroad officials; the redképisof soldiers dotted the crowd; a priest or two in shovel hat and buckled shoes, a Sister of Charity from the Rue de Bac lent graver accents to the throng; and everywhere were the pretty bourgeois women of the capital gathered to welcome relatives or friends, or themselves starting on some brief summer voyage so dear to those who seldom find it in their hearts to leave Paris for longer than a fortnight at a time.
As he pressed onward he witnessed characteristic reunions between voyagers and friends who awaited281them—animated, cordial, gay scenes complicated by many embraces on both cheeks.
And, of a sudden, he noticed the prettiest girl he had ever seen in his life. She was in white, with a black straw hat, and her face and figure were lovely beyond words. Evidently she was awaiting friends; there was a charming expectancy on her fresh young face, a slight forward inclination of her body, as though expectancy and happy impatience alone controlled her.
Her beauty almost took his breath away.
“Lord!” he thought to himself. “If such a girl as that ever stood waiting for me––”
At the same moment her golden-grey eyes, sweeping the passing crowd, met his; a sharp thrill of amazement passed through him as she held out both gloved hands with a soft exclamation of recognition:
“Jim! Jim Neeland!”
“Rue Carew!” He could scarcely credit his eyesight, where he stood, hat in hand, holding both her little hands in one of his.
No, there was no use in trying to disguise his astonishment. He looked into the face of this tall young girl, searched it for familiar features, recognised a lovely paraphrase of the freckled face and thin figure he remembered, and remained dumb before this radiant reincarnation of that other unhappy, shabby, and meagre child he had known two years ago.
Ruhannah, laughing and flushed, withdrew her hands.
“Have I changed? You haven’t. And I always thought you the most wonderful and ornamental young man on this planet. I knew you at once, Jim Neeland. Would you have passed without recognising me?”
“Perhaps I wouldn’t have passed after seeing you––”282
“Jim Neeland! What a remark!” She laughed. “Anyway, it’s nice to believe myself attractive enough to be noticed. And I’msoglad to see you. Naïa is here, somewhere, watching for you”—turning her pretty, eager head to search for the Princess Mistchenka. “Oh, there she is! She doesn’t see us––”
They made their way between the passing ranks of passengers and porters; the Princess caught sight of them, came hastily toward them.
“Jim! It’s nice to see you. Thank you for coming! Soyou, found him, Rue? How are you, Jim? And where is the olive-wood box?”
“I’m well, and there’s that devilish box!” he replied, laughing and lifting it in his hand to exhibit it. “Naïa, the next time you want it, send an escort of artillery and two battleships!”
“Did you have trouble?”
“Trouble? I had the time of my life. No moving picture can ever again excite me; no best seller. I’ve been both since I had your cable to get this box and bring it to you.”
He laughed as he spoke, but the Princess continued to regard him very seriously, and Rue Carew’s smile came and waned like sunlight in a wood, for she was not quite sure whether he had really encountered any dangers on this mission which he had fulfilled so well.
“Our car is waiting outside,” said the Princess. “Where is your porter, Jim?”
Neeland glanced about him, discovered the porter, made a sign for him to follow, and they moved together toward the entrance to the huge terminal.
“I haven’t decided where to stop yet,” began Neeland, but the Princess checked him with a pretty gesture:
“You stop with us, Jim.”283
“Thank you so much, but––”
“Please. Must I beg of you?”
“Do you really wish it?”
“Certainly,” she replied absently, glancing about her. She added: “I don’t see my car. I don’t see my footman. I told him to wait here. Rue, do you see him anywhere?”
“No, I don’t,” said the girl.
“How annoying!” said the Princess. “He’s a new man. My own footman was set upon and almost killed by Apaches a week ago. So I had to find a substitute. How stupid of him! Where on earth can he be waiting?”
They traversed the court of the terminal. Many automobiles were parked there or just leaving; liveried footmen stood awaiting masters and mistresses; but nowhere was the car of the Princess Mistchenka in sight.
They stood there, Neeland’s porter behind with his suitcase and luggage, not knowing whether to wait longer or summon a taxicab.
“I don’t understand,” repeated the Princess impatiently. “I explained very carefully what I desired. That new groom is stupid. Caron, my chauffeur, would never have made a mistake unless that idiot groom misunderstood his instructions.”
“Let me go and make some inquiries,” said Neeland. “Do you mind waiting here? I’ll not be long––”
He went off, carrying the olive-wood box, which his grasp never quitted now; and presently the Princess and Ruhannah saw him disappear among the ranks of automobiles and cabs.
“I don’t like it, Rue,” repeated the Princess in a low voice. “I neither understand nor relish this situation.”284
“Have you any idea––”
“Hush, child! I don’t know. That new groom, Verdier, was recommended by the Russian Embassy. I don’t know what to think of this.”
“Itcan’tbe anything—queer, can it, dear?” asked Rue.
“Anythingcanhave happened. Nothing is likely to have occurred, however—unless—unless those Apaches were––”
“Naïa!”
“It’s possible, I suppose. They may have attacked Picard as part of a conspiracy. The Russian Embassy may have been deceived in Verdier. All this may be part of a plan. But—I scarcely believe it.... All the same, I dislike to take a taxicab––”
She caught sight of Neeland returning; both women moved forward to meet him.
“I’ve solved the mystery,” he said. “Naïa, your car was run into outside the station a few minutes after you left it. And I’m sorry to say that your chauffeur was badly enough hurt to require an ambulance.”
“Where on earth did you learn that?”
“The official at the taxicab control told me. I went to him because that is where one is likely to receive information.”
“Caron hurt!” murmured the Princess. “What a shame! Where did they take him, Jim?”
“To the Charité.”
“I’ll go this afternoon. But where is that imbecile groom of mine?”
“It appears that he and a policeman went to a garage on the repair truck that took your car.”
“Was he arrested?”
“I believe so.”285
“What acontretemps!” exclaimed the Princess Mistchenka. “We shall have to take a taxicab after all!”
“I’ve ordered one from the control. There it comes now,” said Neeland, as a brand new taxicab, which looked like a private car, drew up at the curb, and a smiling and very spick and span chauffeur saluted.
Neeland’s porter hoisted trunk and suitcase on top; the Princess stepped into the limousine, followed by Rue and Neeland; the chauffeur took the order, started his car, wheeled out into the square, circled the traffic policeman, and whizzed away into the depths of the most beautiful city in the world.
Neeland, seated with his back to the driver, laid the olive-wood box on his knees, unlocked it, drew from his breast pocket the papers he carried; locked them in the box once more, and looked up laughingly at the Princess and Ruhannah as he placed it at his feet.
“There you are!” he said. “Thank heaven my task and your affair have been accomplished. All the papers are there—and,” to Ruhannah, “that pretty gentleman you call the Yellow Devil is inside, along with some assorted firearms, drawing instruments, and photographs. The whole business is here, intact—and so am I—if that irrelevant detail should interest you.”
Rue smiled her answer; the Princess scrutinised him keenly:
“Did you have trouble, Jim?”
“Yes, I did.”
“Serious trouble?”
“I tell you it was like a movie in five reels. Never before did I believe such things happened outside a Yonkers studio. But they do, Naïa. And I’ve learned that the world is full of more excitingly melodramatic286possibilities than any novel or scenario ever contained.”
“You’re not serious, of course,” began Rue Carew, watching the varying expressions on his animated features; but the Princess Mistchenka said, unsmiling:
“A film melodrama is a crude and tawdry thing compared to the real drama so many of us play in every moment of our lives.”
Neeland said to Rue, lightly:
“That is true as far as I have been concerned with that amazing box. It’s full of the very devil—of that Yellow Devil! When I pick it up now I seem to feel a premonitory tingling all over me—not entirely disagreeable,” he added to the Princess, “but the sort of half-scared exhilaration a man feels who takes a chance and is quite sure he’ll not have another chance if he loses. Do you understand what I mean?”
“Yes,” said the Princess unsmilingly, her clear, pleasant eyes fixed on him.
In her tranquil, indefinite expression there was something which made him wonder how many such chances this pretty woman had taken in her life of intellectual pleasure and bodily ease.
And now he remembered that Ilse Dumont apparently knew about her—about Ruhannah, too. And Ilse Dumont was the agent of a foreign government.
Was the Princess Mistchenka, patron and amateur of the arts, another such agent? If not, why had he taken this journey for her with this box of papers?
The passage of the Boulevard was slow; at every square traffic was halted; all Paris crowded the streets in the early afternoon sunshine, and the taxicab in which they sat made little speed until the Place de la Concorde opened out and the great Arc—a tiny phantom of lavender and pearl—spanned the vanishing287point of a fairy perspective between parallel and endless ramparts of tender green.
“There was a lot of war talk on theVolhynia,” said Neeland, “but I haven’t heard any since I landed, nor have I seen a paper. I suppose the Chancelleries have come to some agreement.”
“No,” said the Princess.
“You don’t expect trouble, do you? I mean a general European free-for-all fight?”
“I don’t know, Jim.”
“Haven’t you,” he asked blandly, “any means of acquiring inside information?”
She did not even pretend to evade the good-humoured malice of his smile and question:
“Yes; I have sources of private information. I have learned nothing, so far.”
He looked at Rue, but the smile had faded from her face and she returned his questioning gaze gravely.
“There is great anxiety in Europe,” she said in a low voice, “and the tension is increasing. When we arrive home we shall have a chance to converse more freely.” She made the slightest gesture with her head toward the chauffeur—a silent reminder and a caution.
The Princess nodded slightly:
“One never knows,” she remarked. “We shall have much to say to one another when we are safely home.”
But Neeland could not take it very seriously here in the sunshine, with two pretty women facing him—here speeding up the Champs Elysées between the endless green of chestnut trees and the exquisite silvery-grey façades of the wealthy—with motors flashing by on every side and the cool, leafy alleys thronged with children and nurse-maids, and Monsieur Guignol squeaking and drumming in his red-curtained box!288
How could a young man believe in a sequel to the almost incredible melodrama in which he had figured, with such a sane and delightful setting, here in the familiar company of two charming women he had known?
Besides, all Paris and her police were at his elbow; the olive-wood box stood between his knees; a smartly respectable taxi and its driver drove them with the quietéclatand precision of a privateemployé; the Arc de Triomphe already rose splendidly above them, and everything that had once been familiar and reassuring and delightful lay under his grateful eyes on every side.
And now the taxicab turned into the rue Soleil d’Or—a new street to Neeland, opened since his student days, and only one square long, with a fountain in the middle and young chestnut trees already thickly crowned with foliage lining both sides of the street.
But although the rue Soleil d’Or was a new street to him, Paris construction is also a rapid affair. The street was faced by charming private houses built of grey Caen stone; the fountain with its golden sun-dial, with the seated figure—a life-size replica of Manship’s original in the Metropolitan Museum—serenely and beautifully holding its place between the Renaissance façades and rows of slender trees.
Summer had not yet burned foliage or flowers; the freshness of spring itself seemed still to reign there.
Three blue-bloused street-sweepers with hose and broom were washing the asphalt as their cab slowed down, sounding its horn to warn them out of the way. And, the spouting hose still in their hands, the street-cleaners stepped out of the gutter before the pretty private hotel of Madame la Princesse.
Already a butler was opening thegrille; already the289chauffeur had swung Neeland’s steamer trunk and suitcase to the sidewalk; already the Princess and Rue were advancing to the house, while Neeland fumbled in his pocket for the fare.
The butler, bowing, relieved him of the olive-wood box. At the same instant the blue-bloused man with the hose turned the powerful stream of water directly into the butler’s face, knocking him flat on the sidewalk; and his two comrades tripped up Neeland, passed a red sash over his head, and hurled him aside, blinded, half strangled, staggering at random, tearing furiously at the wide band of woollen cloth which seemed to suffocate him.
Already the chauffeur had tossed the olive-wood box into the cab; the three blue-bloused men sprang in after it; the chauffeur slipped into his seat, threw in the clutch, and, driving with one hand, turned a pistol on the half drowned butler, who had reeled to his feet and was lurching forward to seize the steering wheel.
The taxicab, gathering speed, was already turning the corner of the rue de la Lune when Neeland managed to free throat and eyes from the swathe of woollen.
The butler, checked by the levelled pistol, stood dripping, still almost blinded by the force of the water from the hose; but he had plenty of pluck, and he followed Neeland on a run to the corner of the street.
The street was absolutely empty, except for the sparrows, and the big, fat, slate-coloured pigeons that strutted and coo-cooed under the shadow of the chestnut trees.
290CHAPTER XXVIRUE SOLEIL D’OR
Marotte, the butler, in dry clothes, had served luncheon—a silent, respectable, self-respecting man, calm in his fury at the incredible outrage perpetrated upon his person.
And now luncheon was over; the Princess at the telephone in her boudoir; Rue in the music-room with Neeland, still excited, anxious, confused.
Astonishment, mortification, anger, had left Neeland silent; and the convention known as luncheon had not appealed to him.
But very little was said during that formality; and in the silence the serious nature of the episode which so suddenly had deprived the Princess of the olive-wood box and the papers it contained impressed Neeland more and more deeply.
The utter unexpectedness of the outrage—the helpless figure he had cut—infuriated him. And the more he reflected the madder he grew when he realised that all he had gone through meant nothing now—that every effort had been sterile, every hour wasted, every step he had taken from Brookhollow to Paris—to the very doorstep where his duty ended—had been taken in vain.
It seemed to him in his anger and humiliation that never had any man been so derided, so heartlessly mocked by the gods.
And now, as he sat there behind lowered blinds in the291cool half-light of the music-room, he could feel the hot blood of resentment and chagrin in his cheeks.
“Nobody could have foreseen it,” repeated Rue Carew in a pretty, bewildered voice. “And if the Princess Naïa had no suspicions, how could I harbour any—or how could you?”
“I’ve been sufficiently tricked—or I thought I had been—to be on my guard. But it seems not. I ought never to have been caught in such a disgusting trap—such a simple, silly, idiotic cage! But—good Lord! How on earth was a man to suspect anything so—so naturally planned and executed—so simply done. It was an infernal masterpiece, Rue. But—that is no consolation to a man who has been made to appear like a monkey!”
The Princess, entering, overheard; and she seated herself and looked tranquilly at Neeland as he resumed his place on the sofa.
“You were not to blame, Jim,” she said. “It was my fault. I had warning enough at the railroad terminal when an accident to my car was reported to me by the control through you.” She added, calmly: “There was no accident.”
“No accident?” exclaimed Neeland, astonished.
“None at all. My new footman, who followed us to the waiting salon for incoming trains, returned to my chauffeur, Caron, saying that he was to go back to the garage and await orders. I have just called the garage and I had Caron on the wire. There was no accident; he has not been injured; and—the new footman has disappeared!”
“It was a clear case of treachery?” exclaimed Neeland.
“Absolutely a plot. The pretended official at the292terminal control was an accomplice of my footman, of the taxicab driver, of the pretended street-cleaners—and of whom else I can, perhaps, imagine.”
“Did you call the terminal control?”
“I did. The official in charge and the starter had seen no such accident; had given no such information. Some masquerader in uniform must have intercepted you, Jim.”
“I found him coming toward me on the sidewalk not far from the kiosque. He was in uniform; I never dreamed he was not the genuine thing.”
“There is no blame attached to you––”
“Naïa, it actually sickens me to discover how little sense I possess. I’ve been through enough to drive both suspicion and caution into this wooden head of mine––”
“What have you been through, Jim?” asked the Princess calmly.
“I’ll tell you. I didn’t play a brilliant rôle, I’m sorry to admit. Not common sense but sheer luck pulled me through as far as your own doorstep. And there,” he added disgustedly, “the gods no doubt grew tired of such an idiot, and they handed me what was coming to me.”
He was so thoroughly and so boyishly ashamed and angry with himself that a faint smile flitted over the Princess Naïa’s lips.
“Proceed, James,” she said.
“All right. Only first may I ask—who is Ilse Dumont?”
For a moment the Princess sat silent, expressionless, intent on the man whose clear, inquiring eyes still questioned her.
The Princess finally answered with a question:293
“Didshecause you any trouble, Jim?”
“Every bit I had was due to her. Also—and here’s a paradox—I shouldn’t be here now if Ilse Dumont had not played square with me. Who is she?”
The Princess Naïa did not reply immediately. Instead, she dropped one silken knee over the other, lighted a cigarette, and sat for a few moments gazing into space. Then:
“Ilse Dumont,” she said, “is a talented and exceedingly pretty young woman who was born in Alsace of one German and one thoroughly Germanised parent.
“She played two seasons in Chicago in light opera under another name. She had much talent, an acceptable voice and she became a local favourite.”
The Princess looked at her cigarette; continued speaking as though addressing it:
“She sang at the Opéra Comique here in Paris the year before last and last year. Her rôles were minor ones. Early this spring she abruptly broke her contract with the management and went to New York.”
Neeland said bluntly:
“Ilse Dumont is an agent in the service of the Turkish Government.”
The Princess nodded.
“Did you know it, Naïa?”
“I began to suspect it recently.”
“May I ask how?”
The Princess glanced at Rue and smiled:
“Ruhannah’s friend, Colonel Izzet Bey, was very devoted to Minna Minti––”
“Towhom!” exclaimed Neeland, astounded.
“To Ilse Dumont. Minna Minti is her stage name,” said the Princess.
Neeland turned and looked at Rue, who, conscious294of his excitement, flushed brightly, yet never suspecting what he was about to say.
The Princess said quietly:
“Yes, tell her, Jim. It is better she should know. Until now it has not been necessary to mention the matter, or I should have done so.”
Rue, surprised, still prettily flushed with expectancy, looked with new curiosity from one to the other.
Neeland said:
“Ilse Dumont, known on the stage as Minna Minti, is the divorced wife of Eddie Brandes.”
At the mention of a name so long hidden away, buried in her memory, and almost forgotten, the girl quivered and straightened up, as though an electric shock had passed through her body.
Then a burning colour flooded her face as at the swift stroke of a lash, and her grey eyes glimmered with the starting tears.
“You’ll have to know it, darling,” said the Princess in a low voice. “There is no reason why you should not; it no longer can touch you. Don’t you know that?”
“Y-yes––” Ruhannah’s slowly drooping head was lifted again; held high; and the wet brilliancy slowly dried in her steady eyes.
“Before I tell you,” continued Neeland, “what happened to me through Ilse Dumont, I must tell you what occurred in the train on my way to Paris.... May I have a cigarette, Princess Naïa?”
“At your elbow in that silver box.”
Rue Carew lighted it for him with a smile, but her hand still trembled.
“First,” he said, “tell me what particular significance those papers in the olive-wood box have. Then I can295tell you more intelligently what happened to me since I went to Brookhollow to find them.”
“They are the German plans for the fortification of the mainland commanding the Dardanelles, and for the forts dominating the Gallipoli peninsula.”
“Yes, I know that. But of what interest to England or France or Russia––”
“If there is to be war, can’t you understand the importance to us of those plans?” asked the Princess in a low, quiet voice.
“To—‘us’?” he repeated.
“Yes, tous. I am Russian, am I not?”
“Yes. I now understand how very Russian you are, Princess. But what has Turkey––”
“WhatisTurkey?”
“An empire––”
“No. A German province.”
“I did not know––”
“That is what the Ottoman Empire is today,” continued the Princess Mistchenka, “a Turkish province fortified by Berlin, governed from Berlin through a Germanised Turk, Enver Pasha; the army organised, drilled, equipped, officered, and paid by the Kaiser Wilhelm; every internal resource and revenue and development and projected development mortgaged to Germany and under German control; and the Sultan a nobody!”
“I did not know it,” repeated Neeland.
“It is the truth,mon ami. It is inevitable that Turkey fights if Germany goes to war. England, France, Russia know it. Ask yourself, then, how enormous to us the value of those plans—tentative, sketchy, perhaps, yet the inception and foundation of those German-made and German-armed fortifications which today296line the Dardanelles and the adjacent waters within the sphere of Ottoman influence!”
“Sothatis why you wanted them,” he said with an unhappy glance at Rue. “What idiotic impulse prompted me to put them back in the box I can’t imagine. You saw me do it, there in the taxicab.”
Ruhannah said:
“The chauffeur saw you, too. He was looking at you in his steering mirror; I saw his face. But it never entered my mind that anything except idle curiosity possessed him.”
“Perhaps,” said the Princess to Neeland, “what you did with the papers saved your life. Had that chauffeur not seen you place them in the box, he might have shot and robbed you as you left the cab, merely on the chance of your having them on your person.”
There was a silence; then Neeland said:
“This is a fine business! As far as I can see murder seems to be the essence of the contract.”
“It is often incidental to it,” said the Princess Mistchenka serenely. “But you and Ruhannah will soon be out of this affair.”
“I?” said the girl, surprised.
“I think so.”
“Why, dear?”
“I think there is going to be war. And if there is, France will be concerned. And that means that you and Ruhannah, too, will have to leave France.”
“But you?” asked the girl, anxiously.
“I expect to remain. How long can you stay here, Jim?”
Neeland cast an involuntary glance at Rue as he replied:297
“I intended to take the next steamer. Why? Can I be of any service to you, Princess Naïa?”
The Princess Mistchenka let her dark eyes rest on him for a second, then on Rue Carew.
“I was thinking,” she said, “that you might take Ruhannah back with you if war is declared.”
“Back to America!” exclaimed the girl. “But where am I to go in America? What am I to do there? I—I didn’t think I was quite ready to earn my own living”—looking anxiously at the Princess Naïa—“do you think so, dear?”
The Princess said:
“I wanted you to remain. And you must not worry, darling. Some day I shall want you back–– But if there is to be war in Europe you cannot remain here.”
“Why not?”
“In the first place, only useful people would be wanted in Paris––”
“But, Naïa, darling! Couldn’t I be useful to you?” The girl jumped up from the sofa and came and knelt down by the Princess Mistchenka, looking up into her face.
The Princess laid aside her cigarette and put both hands on Rue’s shoulders, looking her gravely, tenderly in the eyes.
“Dear,” she said, “I want James Neeland to hear this, too. For it is partly a confession.
“When I first saw you, Rue, I was merely sorry for you, and willing to oblige Jim Neeland by keeping an eye on you until you were settled somewhere here in Paris.
“Before we landed I liked you. And, because I saw wonderful possibilities in the little country girl who shared my stateroom, I deliberately made up my mind298to develop you, make use of your excellent mind, your quick intelligence, your amazing capacity for absorbing everything that is best, and your very unusual attractions for my own purposes. I meant—to train you—educate you—to aid me.”
There was a silence; the girl looked up at her, flushed, intent, perplexed; the Princess Mistchenka, her hands on the girl’s shoulders, looked back at her out of grave and beautiful dark eyes.
“That is the truth,” said the Princess. “My intention was to develop you along the lines which I follow as a—profession; teach you to extract desirable information through your wit, intelligence, and beauty—using your youth as a mask. But I—I can’t do it––” She shook her head slightly. “Because I’ve lost my heart to you.... And the business I follow is a—a rotten game.”
Again silence fell among those three; Rue, kneeling at the elder woman’s feet, looked up into her face in silence; Neeland, his elbows resting on his knees, leaned slightly forward from the sofa, watching them.
“I’ll help you, if you wish,” said Rue Carew.
“Thank you, dear. No.”
“Let me. I owe you everything since I have been here––”
“No, dear. What I said to you—and to James—is true. It’s a merciless, stealthy, treacherous business; it’s dangerous to a woman, body and soul. It is one long lifetime of experience with treachery, with greed, with baser passions, with all that is ignoble in mankind.
“There is no reason for you to enter such a circle; no excuse for it; no duty urges you; no patriotism incites you to such self-sacrifice; no memory of wrong done to your nearest and dearest inspires you to299dedicate your life to aiding—if only a little, in the downfall and destruction of the nation and the people who encompassed it!”
The Princess Mistchenka’s dark eyes began to gleam, and her beautiful face lost its colour; and she took Rue’s little hands in both of hers and held them tightly against her breast.
“Had I not lost my heart to you, perhaps I should not have hesitated to develop and make use of you.
“You are fitted for the rôle I might wish you to play. Men are fascinated by you; your intelligence charms; your youth and innocence, worn as a mask, might make you invaluable to the Chancellerie which is interested in the information I provide for it.
“But, Rue, I have come to understand that I cannot do this thing. No. Go back to your painting and your clever drawing and your music; any one of these is certain to give you a living in time. And in that direction alone your happiness lies.”
She leaned forward and kissed the girl’s hair where it was fine and blond, close to the snowy forehead.
“If war comes,” she said, “you and James will have to go home, like two good children when the curfew rings.”
She laughed, pushed Rue away, lighted another cigarette, and, casting a glance partly ironical, partly provocative, at the good-looking young man on the sofa, said:
“As for you, James, I don’t worry about you. Impudence will always carry you through where diplomacy fails you. Now, tell me all about these three unpleasant sporting characters who occupied the train with you.”
Neeland laughed.300
“It seems that a well-known gambler in New York, called Captain Quint, is backing them; and somebody higher up is backing Quint––”
“Probably the Turkish Embassy at Washington,” interposed the Princess, coolly. “I’m sorry, Jim; pray go on.”
“The Turkish Embassy?” he repeated, surprised that she should guess.
“Yes; and the German Embassy is backing that. There you are, Jim. That is the sequence as far as your friend, Captain Quint. Now, who comes next in the scale?”
“This man—Brandes—and the little chalk-faced creature, Stull; and the other one, with the fox face—Doc Curfoot.”
“I see. And then?”
“Then, as I gathered, there are several gentlemen wearing Teutonic names—who are to go into partnership with them—one named Kestner, one called Theodore Weishelm, and an exceedingly oily Eurasian gentleman with whom I became acquainted on theVolhynia—one Karl Breslau––”
“Breslau!” exclaimed the Princess. “NowI understand.”
“Who is he, Princess?”
“He is the most notorious international spy in the world—a protean individual with aliases, professions, and experiences sufficient for an entire jail full of criminals. His father was a German Jew; his mother a Circassian girl; he was educated in Germany, France, Italy, and England. He has been a member of the socialist group in the Reichstag under one name, a member of the British Parliament under another; he did dirty work for Abdul Hamid; dirtier for Enver Bey.
301
“He is here, there, everywhere; he turns up in Brazil one day, and is next in evidence in Moscow. What he is so eternally about God only knows: what Chancellery he serves, which he betrays, is a question that occupies many uneasy minds this very hour, I fancy.
“But of this I, personally, am now satisfied; Karl Breslau is responsible for the robbery of your papers today, and the entire affair was accomplished under his direction!”
“And yet I know,” said Neeland, “that after he and Kestner tried to blow up the captain’s cabin and the bridge aboard theVolhyniayesterday morning at a little after two o’clock, he and Kestner must have jumped overboard in the Mersey River off Liverpool.”
“Without doubt a boat was watching your ship.”
“Yes; Weishelm had a fishing smack to pick them up. Ilse Dumont must have gone with them, too.”
“All they had to do was to touch at some dock, go ashore, and telegraph to their men here,” said the Princess.
“That, evidently, is what they did,” admitted Neeland ruefully.
“Certainly. And bythistime they may be here, too. They could do it. I haven’t any doubt that Breslau, Kestner, and Ilse Dumont are here in Paris at this moment.”
“Then I’ll wager I know where they are!”
“Where?”
“In the Hôtel des Bulgars, rue Vilna. That’s where they are to operate a gaming house. That is where they expect to pluck and fleece the callow and the aged who may have anything of political importance about them worth stealing. That is their plan. Agents,302officials, employees of all consulates, legations, and embassies are what they’re really after. I heard them discussing it there in the train today.”
The Princess had fallen very silent, musing, watching Neeland’s animated face as he detailed his knowledge of what had occurred.
“Why not notify the police?” he added. “There might be a chance to recover the box and the papers.”
The Princess shook her pretty head.
“We have to be very careful how we use the police, James. It seems simple, but it is not. I can’t explain the reasons, but we usually pit spy against spy, and keep very clear of the police. Otherwise,” she added, smiling, “there would be the deuce to pay among the embassies and legations.” She added: “It’s a most depressing situation; I don’t exactly know what to do.... I have letters to write, anyway––”
She rose, turned to Rue and took both her hands:
“No; you must go back to New York and to your painting and music if there is to be war in Europe. But you have had a taste of what goes on in certain circles here; you have seen what a chain of consequences ensue from a chance remark of a young girl at a dinner table.”
“Yes.”
“It’s amusing, isn’t it? A careless and innocent word to that old busybody, Ahmed Mirka Pasha, at my table—that began it. Then another word to Izzet Bey. And I had scarcely time to realise what had happened—barely time to telegraph James in New York—before their entire underground machinery was set in motion to seize those wretched papers in Brookhollow!”
Neeland said:303
“You don’t know even yet, Princess, how amazingly fast that machinery worked.”
“Tell me now, James. I have time enough to write my warning since it is already too late.” And she seated herself on the sofa and drew Ruhannah down beside her.
“Listen, dear,” she said with pretty mockery, “here is a most worthy young man who is simply dying to let us know how picturesque a man can be when he tries to.”
Neeland laughed:
“The only trouble with me,” he retorted, “is that I’ve a rather hopeless habit of telling the truth. Otherwise there’d be some chance for me as a hero in what I’m going to tell you.”
And he began with his first encounter with Ilse Dumont in Rue Carew’s house at Brookhollow. After he had been speaking for less than a minute, Rue Carew’s hands tightened in the clasp of the Princess Naïa, who glanced at the girl and noticed that she had lost her colour.
And Neeland continued his partly playful, partly serious narrative of “moving accidents by flood and field,” aware of the girl’s deep, breathless interest, moved by it, and, conscious of it, the more inclined to avoid the picturesque and heroic, and almost ashamed to talk of himself at all under the serious beauty of the girl’s clear eyes.
But he could scarcely tell his tale and avoid mentioning himself; he was the centre of it all, the focus of the darts of Fate, and there was no getting away from what happened to himself.
So he made the melodrama a comedy, and the moments of deadly peril he treated lightly. And one thing304he avoided altogether, and that was how he had kissed Ilse Dumont.
When he finished his account of his dreadful situation in the stateroom of Ilse Dumont, and how at the last second her unerring shots had shattered the bomb clock, cut the guy-rope, and smashed the water-jug which deluged the burning fuses, he added with a very genuine laugh:
“If only some photographer had taken a few hundred feet of film for me I could retire on an income in a year and never do another stroke of honest work!”
The Princess smiled, mechanically, but Rue Carew dropped her white face on the Princess Naïa’s shoulder as though suddenly fatigued.
305CHAPTER XXVIIFROM FOUR TO FIVE
The Princess Mistchenka and Rue Carew had retired to their respective rooms for that hour between four and five in the afternoon, which the average woman devotes to cat-naps or to that aimless feminine fussing which must ever remain a mystery to man.
The afternoon had turned very warm; Neeland, in his room, lay on the lounge in his undershirt and trousers, having arrived so far toward bathing and changing his attire.
No breeze stirred the lattice blinds hanging over both open windows; the semi-dusk of the room was pierced here and there by slender shafts of sunlight which lay almost white across the carpet and striped the opposite wall; the rue Soleil d’Or was very silent in the July afternoon.
And Neeland lay there thinking about all that had happened to him and trying to bring it home to himself and make it seem plausible and real; and could not.
For even now the last ten days of his life seemed like a story he had read concerning someone else. Nor did it seem to him that he personally had known all those people concerned in this wild, exaggerated, grotesque story. They, too, took their places on the printed page, appearing, lingering, disappearing, reappearing, as chapter succeeded chapter in a romance too obvious, too palpably sensational to win the confidence and credulity of a young man of today.306
Fed to repletion on noisy contemporary fiction, his finer perception blunted by the daily and raucous yell of the New York press, his imagination too long over-strained by Broadway drama and now flaccid and incapable of further response to its leering or shrieking appeal, the din of twentieth-century art fell on nerveless ears and on a brain benumbed and sceptical.
And so when everything that he had found grotesque, illogical, laboured, obvious, and clamorously redundant in literature and the drama began to happen and continued to happen in real life to him—and went on happening and involving himself and others all around him in the pleasant July sunshine of 1914, this young man, made intellectuallyblasé, found himself without sufficient capacity to comprehend it.
There was another matter with which his mind was struggling as he lay there, his head cradled on one elbow, watching the thin blue spirals from his cigarette mount straight to the ceiling, and that was the metamorphosis of Rue Carew.
Where was the thin girl he remembered—with her untidy chestnut hair and freckles, and a rather sweet mouth—dressed in garments the only mission of which was to cover a flat chest and frail body and limbs whose too rapid growth had outstripped maturity?
To search for her he went back to the beginning, where a little girl in a pink print dress, bare-legged and hatless, loitered along an ancient rail fence and looked up shyly at him as he warned her to keep out of range of the fusillade from the bushes across the pasture.
He thought of her again at the noisy party in Gayfield on that white night in winter; visualised the tall, shy, overgrown girl who danced with him and made no307complaint when her slim foot was trodden on. And again he remembered the sleigh and the sleighbells clashing and tinkling under the moon; the light from her doorway, and how she stood looking back at him; and how, on the mischievous impulse of the moment, he had gone back and kissed her––
At the memory an odd sensation came over him, scaring him a little. How on earth had he ever had the temerity to do such a thing to her!
And, as he thought of this exquisite, slender, clear-eyed young girl who had greeted him at the Paris terminal—this charming embodiment of all that is fresh and sweet and fearless—in her perfect hat and gown ofmondaineyouth and fashion, the memory of his temerity appalled him.
Imagine his taking an unencouraged liberty now!
Nor could he dare imagine encouragement from the Rue Carew so amazingly revealed to him.
Out of what, in heaven’s name, had this lovely girl developed? Out of a shy, ragged, bare-legged child, haunting the wild blackberry tangles in Brookhollow?
Out of the frail, charmingly awkward, pathetic, freckled mill-hand in her home-made party clothes, the rather sweet expression of whose mouth once led him to impudent indiscretion?
Out of what had she been evolved—this young girl whom he had left just now standing beside her boudoir door with the Princess Naïa’s arm around her waist? Out of the frightened, white-lipped, shabby girl who had come dragging her trembling limbs and her suitcase up the dark stairway outside his studio? Out of the young thing with sagging hair, crouched in an armchair beside his desk, where her cheap hat lay with308two cheap hatpins sticking in the crown? Out of the fragile figure buried in the bedclothes of a stateroom berth, holding out to him a thin, bare arm in voiceless adieu?
And Neeland lay there thinking, his head on his elbow, the other arm extended—from the fingers of which the burnt-out cigarette presently fell to the floor.
He thought to himself:
“She is absolutely beautiful; there’s no denying that. It’s not her clothes or the way she does her hair, or her voice, or the way she moves, or how she looks at a man; it’s the whole business. And the whole bally business is a miracle, that’s all. Good Lord! And to think I ever had the nerve—thenerve!”
He swung himself to a sitting posture, sat gazing into space for a few moments, then continued to undress by pulling off one shoe, lighting a cigarette, and regarding his other foot fixedly.
That is the manner in which the vast majority of young men do their deepest thinking.
However, before five o’clock he had scrubbed himself and arrayed his well constructed person in fresh linen and outer clothing; and now he sauntered out through the hallway and down the stairs to the rear drawing-room, where a tea-table had been brought in and tea paraphernalia arranged. Although the lamp under the kettle had been lighted, nobody was in the room except a West Highland terrier curled up on a lounge, who, without lifting his snow-white head, regarded Neeland out of the wisest and most penetrating eyes the young man had ever encountered.
Here was a personality! Here was a dog not to be approached lightly or with flippant familiarity. No! That small, long, short-legged body with its thatch of309wiry white hair was fairly instinct with dignity, wisdom, and uncompromising self-respect.
“That dog,” thought Neeland, venturing to seat himself on a chair opposite, “is a Presbyterian if ever there was one. And I, for one, haven’t the courage to address him until he deigns to speak to me.”
He looked respectfully at the dog, glanced at the kettle which had begun to sizzle a little, then looked out of the long windows into the little walled garden where a few slender fruit trees grew along the walls in the rear of well-kept flower beds, now gay with phlox, larkspur, poppies, and heliotrope, and edged with the biggest and bluest pansies he had ever beheld.
On the wall a Peacock butterfly spread its brown velvet and gorgeously eyed wings to the sun’s warmth; a blackbird with brilliant yellow bill stood astride a peach twig and poured out a bubbling and incessant melody full of fluted grace notes. And on the grass oval a kitten frisked with the ghosts of last month’s dandelions, racing after the drifting fluff and occasionally keeling over to attack its own tail, after the enchanting manner of all kittens.
A step behind him and Neeland turned. It was Marotte, the butler, who presented a thick, sealed envelope to him on his salver, bent to turn down the flame under the singing silver kettle, and withdrew without a sound.
Neeland glanced at the letter in perplexity, opened the envelope and the twice-folded sheets of letter paper inside, and read this odd communication: