Mrs. Macalisterturned with sudden eagerness and alarm towards Cecil Thorold—the crowd on the lawn in front of the railings was so dense that only heads could be moved—and she said excitedly—
“I’m sure I can see my ghost across there!”
She indicated with her agreeable snub nose the opposite side of the course.
“Your ghost?” Cecil questioned, puzzled for a moment by this extraordinary remark.
Then the Arab horsemen swept by in a cloud of dust and of thunder, and monopolised the attention of the lawn and the grand stand, and theéliteof Biskra crammed thereon and therein. They had one more lap to accomplish for the Prix de la Ville.
Biskra is an oasis in the desert, and the capital of the Algerian Sahara. Two days’ journey by train from Algiers, over the Djujura Ranges, it is the last outpost of the Algerian State Railways. It has a hundred and sixty thousand palm trees;but the first symptom of Biskra to be observed from the approaching first-class carriage is the chimney of the electric light plant. Besides the hundred and sixty thousand palm trees, it possesses half a dozen large hotels, five native villages, a fort, a huge barracks, a very ornamental town hall, shops for photographic materials, a whole street of dancing-girls, the finest winter climate in all Africa, and a gambling Casino. It is a unique thing in oases. It completely upsets the conventional idea of an oasis as a pool of water bordered with a few date palms, and the limitless desert all round! Nevertheless, though Biskra as much resembles Paris as it resembles the conventional idea of an oasis, it is genuine enough, and the limitless desert is, in fact, all around. You may walk out into the desert—and meet a motor-car manœuvring in the sand; but the sand remains the sand, and the desert remains the desert, and the Sahara, more majestic than the sea itself, refuses to be cheapened by the pneumatic tyres of a Mercedes, or the blue rays of the electric light, or the feet of English, French, and Germans wandering in search of novelty—it persists in being august.
Once a year, in February, Biskra becomes really and excessively excited, and the occasion is its annual two-day race-meeting. Then the tribes and their chieftains and their horses andtheir camels arrive magically out of the four corners of the desert and fill the oasis. And the English, French, and Germans arrive from the Mediterranean coast, with their trunks and their civilisation, and crowd the hotels till beds in Biskra are precious beyond rubies. And under the tropical sun, East and West meet magnificently in the afternoon on the racecourse to the north of the European reserve. And the tribesmen, their scraggy steeds trailing superb horsecloths, are arranged in hundreds behind the motor-cars and landaus, with thepari-mutuelin full swing twenty yards away. And the dancing-girls, the renowned Ouled-Nails, covered with gold coins and with muslin in high, crude, violent purples, greens, vermilions, shriek and whinny on their benches just opposite the grand stand, where the Western women, arrayed in the toilettes of Worth, Doucet, and Redfern, quiz them through their glasses. And, fringing all, is a crowd of the adventurers and rascals of two continents, the dark and the light. And in the background the palms wave eternally in the breeze. And to the east the Aurès mountains, snow-capped, rise in hues of saffron and pale rose, like stage mountains, against the sapphire sky. And to the south a line of telegraph poles lessens and disappears over the verge into the inmost heart of the mysterious and unchangeable Sahara.
It was amid this singular scene that Mrs. Macalister made to Cecil Thorold her bizarre remark about a ghost.
“What ghost?” the millionaire repeated, when the horsemen had passed.
Then he remembered that on the famous night, now nearly a month ago, when the Hôtel St. James at Algiers was literally sacked by an organised band of depredators, and valuables to the tune of forty thousand pounds disappeared, Mrs. Macalister had given the first alarm by crying out that there was a ghost in her room.
“Ah!” He smiled easily, condescendingly, to this pertinacious widow, who had been pursuing him, so fruitlessly, for four mortal weeks, from Algiers to Tunis, from Tunis back to Constantine, and from Constantine here to Biskra. “All Arabs look more or less alike, you know.”
“But——”
“Yes,” he said again. “They all look alike, to us, like Chinamen.”
Considering that he himself, from his own yacht, had witnessed the total loss in the Mediterranean of the vessel which contained the plunder and the fleeing band of thieves; considering that his own yacht had rescued the only three survivors of that shipwreck, and that these survivors had made a full confession, and had, only two days since, been duly sentenced by thecriminal court at Algiers—he did not feel inclined to minister to Mrs. Macalister’s feminine fancies.
“Did you ever see an Arab with a mole on his chin?” asked Mrs. Macalister.
“No, I never did.”
“Well, my Arab had a mole on his chin, and that is why I am sure it was he that I saw a minute ago—over there. No, he’s gone now!”
The competing horsemen appeared round the bend for the last time, the dancing-girls whinnied in their high treble, the crowd roared, and the Prix de la Ville was won and lost. It was the final race on the card, and in themêléewhich followed, Cecil became separated from his adorer. She was to depart on the morrow by the six a.m. train. “Urgent business,” she said. She had given up the chase of the millionaire. “Perhaps she’s out of funds, poor thing!” he reflected. “Anyhow, I hope I may never see her again.” As a matter of fact he never did see her again. She passed out of his life as casually as she had come into it.
He strolled slowly towards the hotel through the perturbed crowd of Arabs, Europeans, carriages, camels, horses and motor-cars. The mounted tribesmen were in a state of intense excitement, and were continually burning powder in that mad fashion which seems to afford a peculiar joy to the Arab soul. From time to timea tribesman would break out of the ranks of his clan, and, spurring his horse and dropping the reins on the animal’s neck, would fire revolvers from both hands as he flew over the rough ground. It was unrivalled horsemanship, and Cecil admired immensely the manner in which, at the end of the frenzied performance, these men, drunk with powder, would wheel their horses sharply while at full gallop, and stop dead.
And then, as one man, who had passed him like a hurricane, turned, paused, and jogged back to his tribe, Cecil saw that he had a mole on his chin. He stood still to watch the splendid fellow, and he noticed something far more important than the mole—he perceived that the revolver in the man’s right hand had a chased butt.
“I can’t swear to it,” Cecil mused. “But if that isn’t my revolver, stolen from under my pillow at the Hôtel St. James, Algiers, on the tenth of January last, my name is Norval, and not Thorold.”
And the whole edifice of his ideas concerning the robbery at the Hôtel de Paris began to shake.
“That revolver ought to be at the bottom of the Mediterranean,” he said to himself; “and so ought Mrs. Macalister’s man with the mole, according to the accepted theory of the crime and the story of the survivors of the shipwreck of thePerroquet Vert.”
He walked on, keeping the man in sight.
“Suppose,” he murmured—“suppose all that stuff isn’t at the bottom of the Mediterranean after all?”
A hundred yards further on, he happened to meet one of the white-clad native guides attached to the Royal Hotel where he had lunched. The guide saluted and offered service, as all the Biskra guides do on all occasions. Cecil’s reply was to point out the man with the mole.
“You see him, Mahomet,” said Cecil. “Make no mistake. Find out what tribe he belongs to, where he comes from, and where he sleeps in Biskra, and I will give you a sovereign. Meet me at the Casino to-night at ten.”
Mahomet grinned an honest grin and promised to earn the sovereign.
Cecil stopped an empty landau and drove hurriedly to the station to meet the afternoon train from civilisation. He had arrived in Biskra that morning by road from El Kantara, and Lecky was coming by the afternoon train with the luggage. On seeing him, he gave that invaluable factotum some surprising orders.
In addition to Lecky, the millionaire observed among the passengers descending from the train two other people who were known to him; but he carefully hid himself from these ladies. In three minutes he had disappeared into the nocturnalwhirl and uproar of Biskra, solely bent on proving or disproving the truth of a brand-new theory concerning the historic sack of the Hôtel St. James.
But that night he waited in vain for Mahomet at the packed Casino, where the Arab chieftains and the English gentlemen, alike in their tremendous calm, were losing money atpetits chevauxwith all the imperturbability of stone statues.
Nor did Cecil see anything of Mahomet during the next day, and he had reasons for not making inquiries about him at the Royal Hotel. But at night, as he was crossing the deserted market, Mahomet came up to him suddenly out of nowhere, and, grinning the eternal, honest, foolish grin, said in his odd English—
“I have found—him.”
“Where?”
“Come,” said Mahomet, mysteriously. The Eastern guide loves to be mysterious.
Cecil followed him far down the carnivalesque street of the Ouled-Nails, where tom-toms and nameless instruments of music sounded from every other house, and thepremières danseusesof the Sahara showed themselves gorgeously behind grilles, like beautiful animals in cages. ThenMahomet entered a crowdedcafé, passed through it, and pushing aside a suspended mat at the other end, bade Cecil proceed further. Cecil touched his revolver (his new revolver), to make sure of its company, and proceeded further. He found himself in a low Oriental room, lighted by an odorous English lamp with a circular wick, and furnished with a fine carpet and two bedroom chairs certainly made in Curtain Road, Shoreditch—a room characteristic of Biskra. On one chair sat a man. But this person was not Mrs. Macalister’s man with a mole. He was obviously a Frenchman, by his dress, gestures, and speech. He greeted the millionaire in French and then dropped into English—excellently grammatical and often idiomatic English, spoken with a strong French accent. He was rather a little man, thin, grey, and vivacious.
“Give yourself the pain of sitting down,” said the Frenchman. “I am glad to see you. You may be able to help us.”
“You have the advantage of me,” Cecil replied, smiling.
“Perhaps,” said the Frenchman. “You came to Biskra yesterday, Mr. Thorold, with the intention of staying at the Royal Hotel, where rooms were engaged for you. But yesterday afternoon you went to the station to meet your servant, and you ordered him to return to Constantine withyour luggage and to await your instructions there. You then took a handbag and went to the Casino Hotel, and you managed, by means of diplomacy and of money, to get a bed in thesalle à manger. It was all they could do for you. You gave the name of Collins. Biskra, therefore, is not officially aware of the presence of Mr. Cecil Thorold, the millionaire; while Mr. Collins is free to carry on his researches, to appear and to disappear as it pleases him.”
“Yes,” Cecil remarked. “You have got that fairly right. But may I ask——”
“Let us come to business at once,” said the Frenchman, politely interrupting him. “Is this your watch?”
He dramatically pulled a watch and chain from his pocket.
“It is,” said Cecil quietly. He refrained from embroidering the affirmative with exclamations. “It was stolen from my bedroom at the Hôtel St. James, with my revolver, some fur, and a quantity of money, on the tenth of January.”
“You are surprised to find it is not sunk in the Mediterranean?”
“Thirty hours ago I should have been surprised,” said Cecil. “Now I am not.”
“And why not now?”
“Because I have formed a new theory. But have the goodness to give me the watch.”
“I cannot,” said the Frenchman, graciously. “Not at present.”
There was a pause. The sound of music was heard from thecafé.
“But, my dear sir, I insist.” Cecil spoke positively.
The Frenchman laughed. “I will be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Thorold. Your cleverness in forming a new theory of the great robbery merits all my candour. My name is Sylvain, and I am head of the detective force of Algiers,chef de la sureté. You will perceive that I cannot part with the watch without proper formalities. Mr. Thorold, the robbery at the Hôtel St. James was a work of the highest criminal art. Possibly I had better tell you the nature of our recent discoveries.”
“I always thought well of the robbery,” Cecil observed, “and my opinion of it is rising. Pray continue.”
“According to your new theory, Mr. Thorold, how many persons were on board thePerroquet Vertwhen she began to sink?”
“Three,” said Cecil promptly, as though answering a conundrum.
The Frenchman beamed. “You are admirable,” he exclaimed. “Yes, instead of eighteen, there were three. The wreck of thePerroquet Vertcarefully pre-arranged; the visit of theboat to thePerroquet Vertoff Mustapha Inférieure was what you call, I believe, a ‘plant.’ The stolen goods never left dry land. There were three Arabs only on thePerroquet Vert—one to steer her, and the other two in the engine-room. And these three were very careful to get themselves saved. They scuttled their ship in sight of your yacht and of another vessel. There is no doubt, Mr. Thorold,” the Frenchman smiled with a hint of irony, “that the thieves were fullyau courantof your doings on theClaribel. The shipwreck was done deliberately, with you and your yacht for an audience. It was a masterly stroke,” he proceeded, almost enthusiastically, “for it had the effect, not merely of drawing away suspicion from the true direction, but of putting an end to all further inquiries. Were not the goods at the bottom of the sea, and the thieves drowned? What motive could the police have for further activity? In six months—nay, three months—all the notes and securities could be safely negotiated, because no measures would have to be taken to stop them. Why take measures to stop notes that are at the bottom of the sea?”
“But the three survivors who are now in prison,” Cecil said. “Their behaviour, their lying, needs some accounting for.”
“Quite simple,” the Frenchman went on. “They are in prison for three years. What isthat to an Arab? He will suffer it with stoicism. Say that ten thousand francs are deposited with each of their families. When they come out, they are rich for life. At a cost of thirty thousand francs and the price of the ship—say another thirty thousand—the thieves reasonably expected to obtain absolute security.”
“It was a heroic idea!” said Cecil.
“It was,” said the Frenchman. “But it has failed.”
“Evidently. But why?”
“Can you ask? You know as well as I do! It has failed, partly because there were too many persons in the secret, partly because of the Arab love of display on great occasions, and partly because of a mole on a man’s chin.”
“By the way, that was the man I came here to see,” Cecil remarked.
“He is arrested,” said the Frenchman curtly, and then he sighed. “The booty was not guarded with sufficient restrictions. It was not kept in bulk. One thief probably said: ‘I cannot do without this lovely watch.’ And another said: ‘What a revolver! I must have it.’ Ah! The Arab, the Arab! The Europeans ought to have provided for that. That is where they were foolish—the idiots! The idiots!” he repeated angrily.
“You seem annoyed.”
“Mr. Thorold, I am a poet in these things.It annoys me to see a fine composition ruined by bad construction in the fifth act.... However, as chief of the surety, I rejoice.”
“You have located the thieves and the plunder?”
“I think I have. Certainly I have captured two of the thieves and several articles. The bulk lies at——” He stopped and looked round. “Mr. Thorold, may I rely on you? I know, perhaps more than you think, of your powers. May I rely on you?”
“You may,” said Cecil.
“You will hold yourself at my disposition during to-morrow, to assist me?”
“With pleasure.”
“Then let us take coffee. In the morning, I shall have acquired certain precise information which at the moment I lack. Let us take coffee.”
On the following morning, somewhat early, while walking near Mecid, one of the tiny outlying villages of the oasis, Cecil met Eve Fincastle and Kitty Sartorius, whom he had not spoken with since the affair of the bracelet at Bruges, though he had heard from them and had, indeed, seen them at the station two days before. Eve Fincastle had fallen rather seriously ill at Mentone,and the holiday of the two girls, which should have finished before the end of the year, was prolonged. Financially, the enforced leisure was a matter of trifling importance to Kitty Sartorius, who had insisted on remaining with her friend, much to the disgust of her London manager. But the journalist’s resources were less royal, and Eve considered herself fortunate that she had obtained from her newspaper some special descriptive correspondence in Algeria. It was this commission which had brought her, and Kitty with her, in the natural course of an Algerian tour, to Biskra.
Cecil was charmed to see his acquaintances; for Eve interested him, and Kitty’s beauty (it goes without saying) dazzled him. Nevertheless, he had been, as it were, hiding himself, and, in his character as an amateur of the loot of cities, he would have preferred to have met them on some morning other than that particular morning.
“You will go with us to Sidi Okba, won’t you, to-day?” said Kitty, after they had talked a while. “We’ve secured a carriage, and I’m dying for a drive in the real, true desert.”
“Sorry I can’t,” said Cecil.
“Oh, but——” Eve Fincastle began, and stopped.
“Of course you can,” said Kitty imperiously. “You must. We leave to-morrow—we’re onlyhere for two days—for Algiers and France. Another two days in Paris, and then London, my darling London, and work! So it’s understood?”
“It desolates me,” said Cecil. “But I can’t go with you to Sidi Okba to-day.”
They both saw that he meant to refuse them.
“That settles it, then,” Eve agreed quietly.
“You’re horrid, Mr. Thorold,” said the bewitching actress. “And if you imagine for a single moment we haven’t seen that you’ve been keeping out of our way, you’re mistaken. You must have noticed us at the station. Eve thinks you’ve got another of your——”
“No, I don’t, Kitty,” said Eve quickly.
“If Miss Fincastle suspects that I’ve got another of my——” he paused humorously, “Miss Fincastle is right. Ihavegot another of my—— I throw myself on your magnanimity. I am staying in Biskra under the name of Collins, and my time, like my name, is not my own.”
“In that case,” Eve remarked, “we will pass on.”
And they shook hands, with a certain frigidity on the part of the two girls.
During the morning, M. Sylvain made no sign, and Cecil lunched in solitude at the Dar Eef, adjoining the Casino. The races being over, streams of natives, with their tents and theirquadrupeds, were leaving Biskra for the desert; they made an interminable procession which could be seen from the window of the Dar Eef coffee room. Cecil was idly watching this procession, when a hand touched his shoulder. He turned and saw a gendarme.
“Monsieur Collang?” questioned the gendarme.
Cecil assented.
“Voulez-vous avoir l’obligeance de me suivre, monsieur?”
Cecil obediently followed, and found in the street M. Sylvain well wrapped up, and seated in an open carriage.
“I have need of you,” said M. Sylvain. “Can you come at once?”
“Certainly.”
In two minutes they were driving away together into the desert.
“Our destination is Sidi Okba,” said M. Sylvain. “A curious place.”
The road (so called) led across the Biskra River (so called), and then in a straight line eastwards. The river had about the depth of a dinner plate. As for the road, in some parts it not only merely failed to be a road—it was nothing but virgin desert, intact; at its best it was a heaving and treacherous mixture of sand and pebbles, through which, and not over which, the two unhappyhorses had to drag M. Sylvain’s unfortunate open carriage.
M. Sylvain himself drove.
“I am well acquainted with this part of the desert,” he said. “We have strange cases sometimes. And when I am on important business, I never trust an Arab. By the way, you have a revolver? I do not anticipate danger, but——”
“I have one,” said Cecil.
“And it is loaded?”
Cecil took the weapon from his hip pocket and examined it.
“It is loaded,” he said.
“Good!” exclaimed the Frenchman, and then he turned to the gendarme, who was sitting as impassively as the leaps and bounds of the carriage would allow, on a small seat immediately behind the other two, and demanded of him in French whether his revolver also was loaded. The man gave a respectful affirmative. “Good!” exclaimed M. Sylvain again, and launched into a description of the wondrous gardens of the Comte Landon, whose walls, on the confines of the oasis, they were just passing.
Straight in front could be seen a short line of palm trees, waving in the desert breeze under the desert sun, and Cecil asked what they were.
“Sidi Okba,” replied M. Sylvain. “The hundred and eighty thousand palms of the desertcity of Sidi Okba. They seem near to you, no doubt, but we shall travel twenty kilometres before we reach them. The effect of nearness is due to the singular quality of the atmosphere. It is a two hours’ journey.”
“Then do we return in the dark?” Cecil inquired.
“If we are lucky, we may return at once, and arrive in Biskra at dusk. If not—well, we shall spend the night in Sidi Okba. You object?”
“Not at all.”
“A curious place,” observed M. Sylvain.
Soon they had left behind all trace of the oasis, and were in the “real, true desert.” They met and passed native equipages and strings of camels, and from time to time on either hand at short distances from the road could be seen the encampments of wandering tribes. And after interminable joltings, in which M. Sylvain, his guest, and his gendarme were frequently hurled at each other’s heads with excessive violence, the short line of palm trees began to seem a little nearer and to occupy a little more of the horizon. And then they could descry the wall of the city. And at last they reached its gate and the beggars squatting within its gate.
“Descend!” M. Sylvain ordered his subordinate.
The man disappeared, and M. Sylvain andCecil drove into the city; they met several carriages of Biskra visitors just setting forth on their return journey.
In insisting that Sidi Okba was a curious place, M. Sylvain did not exaggerate. It is an Eastern town of the most antique sort, built solely of mud, with the simplicity, the foulness, the smells, and the avowed and the secret horrors which might be expected in a community which has not altered its habits in any particular for a thousand years. During several months of each year it is visited daily by Europeans (its mosque is the oldest Mohammedan building in Africa, therefore no respectable tourist dares to miss it), and yet it remains absolutely uninfluenced by European notions. The European person must take his food with him; he is allowed to eat it in the garden of acaféwhich is European as far as its sign and its counter, but no further; he could not eat it in thecaféitself. Thiscaféis the mark which civilisation has succeeded in making on Sidi Okba in ten centuries.
As Cecil drove with M. Sylvain through the narrow, winding street, he acutely felt the East closing in upon him; and, since the sun was getting low over the palm trees, he was glad to have the detective by his side.
They arrived at the wretchedcafé. A pair-horse vehicle, with the horses’ heads towardsBiskra, was waiting at the door. Unspeakable lanes, fetid, winding, sinister, and strangely peopled, led away in several directions.
M. Sylvain glanced about him.
“We shall succeed,” he murmured cheerfully. “Follow me.”
And they went into the mark of civilisation, and saw the counter, and a female creature behind the bar, and, through another door, a glimpse of the garden beyond.
“Follow me,” murmured M. Sylvain again, opening another door to the left into a dark passage. “Straight on. There is a room at the other end.”
They vanished.
In a few seconds M. Sylvain returned into thecafé.
Now, in the garden were Eve Fincastle and Kitty Sartorius, tying up some wraps preparatory to their departure for Biskra. They caught sight of Cecil Thorold and his companion entering thecafé, and they were surprised to find the millionaire in Sidi Okba after his refusal to accompany them.
Through the back door of thecaféthey saw Cecil’s companion reappear out of the passage. They saw the creature behind the counter stoop and produce a revolver and then offer it to theFrenchman with a furtive movement. They saw that the Frenchman declined it, and drew another revolver from his own pocket and winked. And the character of the wink given by the Frenchman to the woman made them turn pale under the sudden, knife-like thrust of an awful suspicion.
The Frenchman looked up and perceived the girls in the garden, and one glance at Kitty’s beauty was not enough for him.
“Can you keep him here a minute while I warn Mr. Thorold?” said Eve quickly.
Kitty Sartorius nodded and began to smile on the Frenchman; she then lifted her finger beckoningly. If millions had depended on his refusal, it is doubtful whether he would have resisted that charming gesture. (Not for nothing did Kitty Sartorius receive a hundred a week at the Regency Theatre.) In a moment the Frenchman was talking to her, and she had enveloped him in a golden mist of enchantment.
Guided by a profound instinct, Eve ran up the passage and into the room where Cecil was awaiting the return of his M. Sylvain.
“Come out,” she whispered passionately, as if between violent anger and dreadful alarm. “You are trapped—you—with your schemes!”
“Trapped!” he exclaimed, smiling. “Not at all. I have my revolver!” His hand touched his pocket. “By Jove! I haven’t! It’s gone!”
The miraculous change in his face was of the highest interest.
“Come out!” she cried. “Our carriage is waiting!”
In thecafé, Kitty Sartorius was talking to the Frenchman. She stroked his sleeve with her gloved hand, and he, the Frenchman, still held the revolver which he had displayed to the woman of the counter.
Inspired by the consummate and swiftly aroused emotion of that moment, Cecil snatched at the revolver. The three friends walked hastily to the street, jumped into the carriage, and drove away. Already as they approached the city gate, they could see the white tower of the Royal Hotel at Biskra shining across the desert like a promise of security....
The whole episode had lasted perhaps two minutes, but they were minutes of such intense and blinding revelation as Cecil had never before experienced. He sighed with relief as he lay back in the carriage.
“And that’s the man,” he meditated, astounded, “who must have planned the robbery of the Hôtel St. James! And I never suspected it! I never suspected that his gendarme was a sham! I wonder whether his murder of me would have been as leisurely and artistic as his method of trapping me! I wonder!...Well, this time I have certainly enjoyed myself.”
Then he gazed at Eve Fincastle.
The women said nothing for a long time, and even then the talk was of trifles.
Eve Fincastle had gone up on to the vast, flat roof of the Royal Hotel, and Cecil, knowing that she was there, followed. The sun had just set, and Biskra lay spread out below them in the rich evening light which already, eastwards, had turned to sapphire. They could still see the line of the palm trees of Sidi Okba, and in another direction, the long, lonely road to Figuig, stretching across the desert like a rope which had been flung from heaven on the waste of sand. The Aurès mountains were black and jagged. Nearer, immediately under them, was the various life of the great oasis, and the sounds of that life—human speech, the rattle of carriages, the grunts of camels in the camel enclosure, the whistling of an engine at the station, the melancholy wails of hawkers—ascended softly in the twilight of the Sahara.
Cecil approached her, but she did not turn towards him.
“I want to thank you,” he started.
She made no movement, and then suddenlyshe burst out. “Why do you continue with these shameful plots and schemes?” she demanded, looking always steadily away from him. “Why do you disgrace yourself? Was this another theft, another blackmailing, another affair like that at Ostend? Why——” She stopped, deeply disturbed, unable to control herself.
“My dear journalist,” he said quietly, “you don’t understand. Let me tell you.”
He gave her his history from the night summons by Mrs. Macalister to that same afternoon.
She faced him.
“I’m so glad,” she murmured. “You can’t imagine——”
“I want to thank you for saving my life,” he said again.
She began to cry; her body shook; she hid her face.
“But——” he stammered awkwardly.
“It wasn’t I who saved your life,” she said, sobbing passionately. “I wasn’t beautiful enough. Only Kitty could have done it. Only a beautiful woman could have kept that man——”
“I know all about it, my dear girl,” Cecil silenced her disavowal. Something moved him to take her hand. She smiled sadly, not resisting. “You must excuse me,” she murmured. “I’m not myself to-night.... It’s because of theexcitement.... Anyhow, I’m glad you haven’t taken any ‘loot’ this time.”
“But I have,” he protested. (He was surprised to find his voice trembling.)
“What?”
“This.” He pressed her hand tenderly.
“That?” She looked at her hand, lying in his, as though she had never seen it before.
“Eve,” he whispered.
About two-thirds of the loot of the Hôtel St. James was ultimately recovered; not at Sidi Okba, but in the cellars of the Hôtel St. James itself. From first to last that robbery was a masterpiece of audacity. Its originator, thesoi-disantM. Sylvain, head of the Algiers detective force, is still at large.
Paris. And not merely Paris, but Parisen fête, Paris decorated, Paris idle, Paris determined to enjoy itself, and succeeding brilliantly. Venetian masts of red and gold lined the gay pavements of thegrand boulevardand the Avenue de l’Opéra; and suspended from these in every direction, transverse and lateral, hung garlands of flowers whose petals were of coloured paper, and whose hearts were electric globes that in the evening would burst into flame. The effect of the city’s toilette reached the extreme of opulence, for no expense had been spared. Paris was welcoming monarchs, and had spent two million francs in obedience to the maxim that what is worth doing at all is worth doing well.
The Grand Hotel, with its eight hundred rooms full of English and Americans, at the upper end of the Avenue de l’Opéra, looked down at the Grand Hôtel du Louvre, with its four hundred rooms full of English and Americans, at the lowerend of the Avenue de l’Opéra. These two establishments had the best views in the whole city; and perhaps the finest view of all was that obtainable from a certain second floor window of the Grand Hotel, precisely at the corner of the Boulevard des Capucines and the Rue Auber. From this window one could see the boulevards in both directions, the Opéra, the Place de l’Opéra, the Avenue de l’Opéra, the Rue du Quatre Septembre, and the multitudinous life of the vivid thoroughfares—the glitteringcafés, the dazzling shops, the painted kiosks, the lumbering omnibuses, the gliding trams, the hooting automobiles, the swift and careless cabs, the private carriages, the suicidal bicycles, the newsmen, the toy sellers, the touts, the beggars, and all the holiday crowd, sombre men and radiant women, chattering, laughing, bustling, staring, drinking, under the innumerable tricolours and garlands of paper flowers.
That particular view was a millionaire’s view, and it happened to be the temporary property of Cecil Thorold, who was enjoying it and the afternoon sun at the open window, with three companions. Eve Fincastle looked at it with the analytic eye of the journalist, while Kitty Sartorius, as was quite proper for an actress, deemed it a sort of frame for herself, as she leaned over the balcony like a Juliet on the stage. The third guest in Cecil’s sitting-room was Lionel Belmont, theNapoleonic Anglo-American theatrical manager, in whose crown Kitty herself was the chief star. Mr. Belmont, a big, burly, good-humoured, shrewd man of something over forty, said he had come to Paris on business. But for two days the business had been solely to look after Kitty Sartorius and minister to her caprices. At the present moment his share of the view consisted mainly of Kitty; in the same way Cecil’s share of the view consisted mainly of Eve Fincastle; but this at least was right and decorous, for the betrothal of the millionaire and the journalist had been definitely announced. Otherwise Eve would have been back at work in Fleet Street a week ago.
“The gala performance is to-night, isn’t it?” said Eve, gazing at the vast and superbly ornamented Opera House.
“Yes,” said Cecil.
“What a pity we can’t be there! I should so have liked to see the young Queen in evening dress. And they say the interior decorations——”
“Nothing simpler,” said Cecil. “If you want to go, dear, let us go.”
Kitty Sartorius looked round quickly. “Mr. Belmont has tried to get seats, and can’t. Haven’t you, Bel? You know the whole audience is invited. The invitations are issued by the Minister of Fine Arts.”
“Still, in Paris, anything can be got by paying for it,” Cecil insisted.
“My dear young friend,” said Lionel Belmont, “I guess if seats were to be had, I should have struck one or two yesterday. I put no limit on the price, and I reckon I ought to know what theatre prices run to. Over at the Metropolitan in New York I’ve seen a box change hands at two thousand dollars, for one night.”
“Nevertheless——” Cecil began again.
“And the performance starting in six hours from now!” Lionel Belmont exclaimed. “Not much!”
But Cecil persisted.
“Seen theHeraldto-day?” Belmont questioned. “No? Well, listen. This will interest you.” He drew a paper from his pocket and read: “Seats for the Opéra Gala. The traffic in seats for the gala performance at the Opéra during the last Royal Visit to Paris aroused considerable comment and not a little dissatisfaction. Nothing, however, was done, and the traffic in seats for to-night’s spectacle, at which the President and their Imperial Majesties will be present, has, it is said, amounted to a scandal. Of course, the offer so suddenly made, five days ago, by Madame Félise and Mademoiselle Malva, the two greatest living dramatic sopranos, to take part in the performance, immediately and enormously intensifiedinterest in the affair, for never yet have these two supreme artists appeared in the same theatre on the same night. No theatre could afford the luxury. Our readers may remember that in our columns and in the columns of theFigarothere appeared four days ago an advertisement to the following effect: ‘A box, also two orchestra stalls, for the Opéra Gala, to be disposed of, owing to illness. Apply, 155, Rue de la Paix.’ We sent four several reporters to answer that advertisement. The first was offered a stage-box for seven thousand five hundred francs, and two orchestra stalls in the second row for twelve hundred and fifty francs. The second was offered a box opposite the stage on the second tier, and two stalls in the seventh row. The third had the chance of four stalls in the back row and a small box just behind them; the fourth was offered something else. The thing was obviously, therefore, a regular agency. Everybody is asking: ‘How were these seats obtained? From the Ministry of Fine Arts, or from theinvités?’ Echo answers ‘How?’ The authorities, however, are stated to have interfered at last, and to have put an end to this buying and selling of what should be an honourable distinction.”
“Bravo!” said Cecil.
“And that’s so!” Belmont remarked, dropping the paper. “I went to 155, Rue de la Paixmyself yesterday, and was told that nothing whatever was to be had, not at any price.”
“Perhaps you didn’t offer enough,” said Cecil.
“Moreover, I notice the advertisement does not appear to-day. I guess the authorities have crumpled it up.”
“Still——” Cecil went on monotonously.
“Look here,” said Belmont, grim and a little nettled. “Just to cut it short, I’ll bet you a two-hundred-dollar dinner at Paillard’s that you can’t get seats for to-night—not even two, let alone four.”
“You really want to bet?”
“Well,” drawled Belmont, with a certain irony, slightly imitating Cecil’s manner, “it means something to eat for these ladies.”
“I accept,” said Cecil. And he rang the bell.
“Lecky,” Cecil said to his valet, who had entered the room, “I want you to go to No. 155, Rue de la Paix, and find out on which floor they are disposing of seats for the Opéra to-night. When you have found out, I want you to get me four seats—preferably a box. Understand?”
The servant stared at his master, squinting violently for a few seconds. Then he replied suddenly, as though light had just dawned on him.“Exactly, sir. You intend to be present at the gala performance?”
“You have successfully grasped my intention,” said Cecil. “Present my card.” He scribbled a word or two on a card and gave it to the man.
“And the price, sir?”
“You still have that blank cheque on the Crédit Lyonnais that I gave you yesterday morning. Use that.”
“Yes, sir. Then there is the question of my French, sir, my feeble French—a delicate plant.”
“My friend,” Belmont put in. “I will accompany you as interpreter. I should like to see this thing through.”
Lecky bowed and gave up squinting.
In three minutes (for they had only to go round the corner), Lionel Belmont and Lecky were in a room on the fourth floor of 155, Rue de la Paix. It had the appearance of an ordinary drawing-room, save that it contained an office table; at this table sat a young man, French.
“You wish, messieurs?” said the young man.
“Have the goodness to interpret for me,” said Lecky to the Napoleon of Anglo-Saxon theatres. “Mr. Cecil Thorold, of the Devonshire Mansion, London, the Grand Hotel, Paris, the Hôtel Continental, Rome, and the Ghezireh Palace Hotel, Cairo, presents his compliments, and wishes a box for the gala performance at the Opéra to-night.”
Belmont translated, while Lecky handed the card.
“Owing to the unfortunate indisposition of a Minister and his wife,” replied the young man gravely, having perused the card, “it happens that I have a stage-box on the second tier.”
“You told me yesterday——” Belmont began.
“I will take it,” said Lecky in a sort of French, interrupting his interpreter. “The price? And a pen.”
“The price is twenty-five thousand francs.”
“Gemini!” Belmont exclaimed in American. “This is Paris, and no mistake!”
“Yes,” said Lecky, as he filled up the blank cheque, “Paris still succeeds in being Paris. I have noticed it before, Mr. Belmont, if you will pardon the liberty.”
The young man opened a drawer and handed to Lecky a magnificent gilt card, signed by the Minister of Fine Arts, which Lecky hid within his breast.
“That signature of the Minister is genuine, eh?” Belmont asked the young man.
“I answer for it,” said the young man, smiling imperturbably.
“The deuce you do!” Belmont murmured.
So the four friends dined at Paillard’s at the rate of about a dollar and a-half a mouthful, and the mystified Belmont, who was not in the habitof being mystified, and so felt it, had the ecstasy of paying the bill.
It was nine o’clock when they entered the magnificent precincts of the Opéra House. Like everybody else, they went very early—the performance was not to commence until nine-thirty—in order to see and be seen to the fullest possible extent. A week had elapsed since the two girls had arrived from Algiers in Paris, under the escort of Cecil Thorold, and in that time they had not been idle. Kitty Sartorius had spent tolerable sums at the bestmodistes, in the Rue de la Paix and the establishments in the Rue de la Chaussée d’Antin, while Eve had bought one frock (a dream, needless to say), and had also been nearly covered with jewellery by her betrothed. That afternoon, between the bet and the dinner, Cecil had made more than one mysterious disappearance. He finally came back with a diamond tiara for his dear journalist. “You ridiculous thing!” exclaimed the dear journalist, kissing him. It thus occurred that Eve, usually so severe of aspect, had more jewels than she could wear, while Kitty, accustomed to display, had practically nothing but her famous bracelet. Eve insisted on pooling the lot, and dividing equally, for the gala.
Consequently, the party presented a very prettyappearance as it ascended the celebrated grand staircase of the Opéra, wreathed to-night in flowers. Lionel Belmont, with Kitty on his arm, was in high spirits, uplifted, joyous; but Cecil himself seemed to be a little nervous, and this nervousness communicated itself to Eve Fincastle—or perhaps Eve was rather overpowered by her tiara. At the head of the staircase was a notice requesting everyone to be seated at nine-twenty-five, previous to the arrival of the President and the Imperial guests of the Republic.
The row of officials at thecontroletook the expensive gilt card from Cecil, examined it, returned it, and bowed low with an intimation that he should turn to the right and climb two floors; and the party proceeded further into the interior of the great building. The immense corridors andfoyersand stairs were crowded with a collection of the best-known people in Paris. It was a gathering of all the renowns. The garish, gorgeous Opéra seemed to be changed that night into something new and strange. Even those shabby old harridans, the box-openers, theouvreuses, wore bows of red, white and blue, and smiled effusively in expectation of tips inconceivably large.
“Tiens!” exclaimed the box-opener who had taken charge of Cecil’s party, as she unlocked the door of the box.
And well might she exclaim, for the box (No. 74—nopossible error) was already occupied by a lady and two gentlemen, who were talking rather loudly in French! Cecil undoubtedly turned pale, while Lionel Belmont laughed within his moustache.
“These people have made a mistake,” Cecil was saying to theouvreuse, when a male official in evening dress approached him with an air of importance.
“Pardon, monsieur. You are Monsieur Cecil Thorold?”
“I am,” said Cecil.
“Will you kindly follow me? Monsieur the Directeur wishes to see you.”
“You are expected, evidently,” said Lionel Belmont. The girls kept apart, as girls should in these crises between men.
“I have a ticket for this box,” Cecil remarked to the official. “And I wish first to take possession of it.”
“It is precisely that point which Monsieur the Directeur wishes to discuss with Monsieur,” rejoined the official, ineffably suave. He turned with a wonderful bow to the girls, and added with that politeness of which the French alone have the secret: “Perhaps, in the meantime, these ladies would like to see the view of the Avenue de l’Opéra from the balcony? The illuminations have begun, and the effect is certainly charming.”
Cecil bit his lip.
“Yes,” he said. “Belmont, take them.”
So, while Lionel Belmont escorted the girls to the balcony, there to discuss the startling situation and to watch the Imperial party drive up the resplendent, fairy-like, and unique avenue, Cecil followed the official.
He was guided along various passages and round unnumbered corners to the rear part of the colossal building. There, in a sumptuous bureau, the official introduced him to a still higher official, the Directeur, who had a decoration and a long, white moustache.
“Monsieur,” said this latter, “I am desolated to have to inform you that the Minister of Fine Arts has withdrawn his original invitation for Box No. 74 to-night.”
“I have received no intimation of the withdrawal,” Cecil replied.
“No. Because the original invitation was not issued to you,” said the Directeur, excited and nervous. “The Minister of Fine Arts instructs me to inform you that his invitation to meet the President and their Imperial Majesties cannot be bought and sold.”
“But is it not notorious that many such invitations have been bought and sold?”
“It is, unfortunately, too notorious.”
Here the Directeur looked at his watch and rang a bell impatiently.
“Then why am I singled out?”
The Directeur gazed blandly at Cecil. “The reason, perhaps, is best known to yourself,” said he, and he rang the bell again.
“I appear to incommode you,” Cecil remarked. “Permit me to retire.”
“Not at all, I assure you,” said the Directeur. “On the contrary. I am a little agitated on account of the non-arrival of Mademoiselle Malva.”
A minor functionary entered.
“She has come?”
“No, Monsieur the Directeur.”
“And it is nine-fifteen.Sapristi!”
The functionary departed.
“The invitation to Box No. 74,” proceeded the Directeur, commanding himself, “was sold for two thousand francs. Allow me to hand you notes for the amount, dear monsieur.”
“But I paid twenty-five thousand,” said Cecil, smiling.
“It is conceivable. But the Minister can only concern himself with the original figure. You refuse the notes?”
“By no means,” said Cecil, accepting them. “But I have brought here to-night three guests, including two ladies. Imagine my position.”
“I imagine it,” the Directeur responded. “But you will not deny that the Minister has always the right to cancel an invitation. Seatsought to be sold subject to the contingency of that right being exercised.”
At that moment still another official plunged into the room.
“She is not here yet!” he sighed, as if in extremity.
“It is unfortunate,” Cecil sympathetically put in.
“It is more than unfortunate, dear monsieur,” said the Directeur, gesticulating. “It is unthinkable. The performancemustbegin at nine-thirty, and itmustbegin with the garden scene from ‘Faust,’ in which Mademoiselle Malva takesMarguerite.”
“Why not change the order?” Cecil suggested.
“Impossible. There are only two other items. The first act of ‘Lohengrin,’ with Madame Félise, and the ballet ‘Sylvia.’ We cannot commence with the ballet. No one ever heard of such a thing. And do you suppose that Félise will sing before Malva? Not for millions. Not for a throne. The etiquette of sopranos is stricter than that of Courts. Besides, to-night we cannot have a German opera preceding a French one.”
“Then the President and their Majesties will have to wait a little, till Malva arrives,” Cecil said.
“Their Majesties wait! Impossible!”
“Impossible!” echoed the other official, aghast.
Two more officials entered. And the atmosphere of alarm, of being scotched, of being up a tree of incredible height, the atmosphere which at that moment permeated the whole of the vast region behind the scenes of the Paris Opéra, seemed to rush with them into the bureau of the Directeur and to concentrate itself there.
“Nine-twenty! And she couldn’t dress in less than fifteen minutes.”
“You have sent to the Hôtel du Louvre?” the Directeur questioned despairingly.
“Yes, Monsieur the Directeur. She left there two hours ago.”
Cecil coughed.
“I could have told you as much,” he remarked, very distinctly.
“What!” cried the Directeur. “You know Mademoiselle Malva?”
“She is among my intimate friends,” said Cecil smoothly.
“Perhaps you know where she is?”
“I have a most accurate idea,” said Cecil.
“Where?”
“I will tell you when I am seated in my box with my friends,” Cecil answered.
“Dear monsieur,” panted the Directeur, “tell us at once! I give you my word of honour that you shall have your box.”
Cecil bowed.
“Certainly,” he said. “I may remark that I had gathered information which led me to anticipate this difficulty with the Minister of Fine Arts——”
“But Malva, Malva—where is she?”
“Be at ease. It is only nine-twenty-three, and Mademoiselle Malva is less than three minutes away, and ready dressed. I was observing that I had gathered information which led me to anticipate this difficulty with the Minister of Fine Arts, and accordingly I took measures to protect myself. There is no such thing as absolute arbitrary power, dear Directeur, even in a Republic, and I have proved it. Mademoiselle Malva is in room No. 429 at the Grand Hotel, across the road.... Stay, she will not come without this note.”
He handed out a small, folded letter from his waistcoat pocket.
Then he added: “Adieu, Monsieur the Directeur. You have just time to reach the State entrance in order to welcome the Presidential and Imperial party.”
At nine-thirty, Cecil and his friends were ushered by a trinity of subservient officials into their box, which had been mysteriously emptied of its previous occupants. And at the same moment the monarchs, with monarchical punctuality, accompanied by the President, entered the Presidential box in the middle of the grandtier of the superb auditorium. The distinguished and dazzling audience rose to its feet, and the band played the National Anthem.
“You fixed it up then?” Belmont whispered under cover of the National Anthem. He was beaten, after all.
“Oh, yes!” said Cecil lightly. “A trivial misconception, nothing more. And I have made a little out of it, too.”
“Indeed! Much?”
“No, not much! Two thousand francs. But you must remember that I have been less than half an hour in making them.”
The curtain rose on the garden scene from “Faust.”
“My dear,” said Eve.
When a woman has been definitely linked with a man, either by betrothal or by marriage, there are moments, especially at the commencement, when she assumes an air and a tone of absolute exclusive possession of him. It is a wonderful trick, which no male can successfully imitate, try how he will. One of these moments had arrived in the history of Eve Fincastle and her millionaire lover. They sat in a large, deserted public room, all gold, of the Grand Hotel. It was midnight less a quarter, and they had just returned, somewhatexcited and flushed, from the glories of the gala performances. During the latter part of the evening, Eve had been absent from Cecil’s box for nearly half an hour.
Kitty Sartorius and Lionel Belmont were conversing in an adjoiningsalon.
“Yes,” said Cecil.
“Are you quite, quite sure that you love me?”
Only one answer is possible to such a question. Cecil gave it.
“That is all very well,” Eve pursued with equal gravity and charm. “But it was really tremendously sudden, wasn’t it? I can’t think what you see in me, dearest.”
“My dear Eve,” Cecil observed, holding her hand, “the best things, the most enduring things, very often occur suddenly.”
“Say you love me,” she persisted.
So he said it, this time. Then her gravity deepened, though she smiled.
“You’ve given up all those—those schemes and things of yours, haven’t you?” she questioned.
“Absolutely,” he replied.
“My dear, I’m so glad. I never could understand why——”
“Listen,” he said. “What was I to do? I was rich. I was bored. I had no great attainments. I was interested in life and in the arts,but not desperately, not vitally. You may, perhaps, say I should have taken up philanthropy. Well, I’m not built that way. I can’t help it, but I’m not a born philanthropist, and the philanthropist without a gift for philanthropy usually does vastly more harm than good. I might have gone into business. Well, I should only have doubled my millions, while boring myself all the time. Yet the instinct which I inherited from my father, the great American instinct to be a little cleverer and smarter than someone else, drove me to action. It was part of my character, and one can’t get away from one’s character. So finally I took to these rather original ‘schemes,’ as you call them. They had the advantage of being exciting and sometimes dangerous, and though they were often profitable, they were not too profitable. In short, they amused me and gave me joy. They also gave meyou.”
Eve smiled again, but without committing herself.
“But you have abandoned them now completely?” she said.
“Oh, yes,” he answered.
“Then what about this Opéra affair to-night?” She sprang the question on him sharply. She did her best to look severe, but the endeavour ended with a laugh.
“I meant to tell you,” he said. “Buthow—how did you know? How did you guess?”
“You forget that I am still a journalist,” she replied, “and still on the staff of my paper. I wished to interview Malva to-night for theJournal, and I did so. It was she who let out things. She thought I knew all about it; and when she saw that I didn’t she stopped and advised me mysteriously to consult you for details.”
“It was the scandal at the gala performance last autumn that gave me an action for making a corner in seats at the very next gala performance that should ever occur at the Paris Opéra,” Cecil began his confession. “I knew that seats could be got direct from more or less minor officials at the Ministry of Fine Arts, and also that a large proportion of the people invited to these performances were prepared to sell their seats. You can’t imagine how venal certain circles are in Paris. It just happened that the details and date of to-night’s performance were announced on the day we arrived here. I could not resist the chance. Now you comprehend sundry strange absences of mine during the week. I went to a reporter on theEcho de Pariswhom I knew, and who knows everybody. And we got out a list of the people likely to be invited and likely to be willing to sell their seats. We also opened negotiations at the Ministry.”
“How on earth do these ideas occur to you?” asked Eve.
“How can I tell?” Cecil answered. “It is because they occur to me that I am I—you see. Well, in twenty-four hours my reporter and two of his friends had interviewed half the interviewable people in Paris, and the Minister of Fine Arts had sent out his invitations, and I had obtained the refusal of over three hundred seats, at a total cost of about seventy-five thousand francs. Then I saw that my friend the incomparable Malva was staying at the Ritz, and the keystone idea of the entire affair presented itself to me. I got her to offer to sing. Of course, her rival Félise could not be behind her in a patriotic desire to cement the friendliness of two great nations. The gala performance blossomed into a terrific boom. We took a kind of office in the Rue de la Paix. We advertised very discreetly. Every evening, after bidding you ‘Good-night,’ I saw my reporter and Lecky, and arranged the development of the campaign. In three days we had sold all our seats, except one box, which I kept, for something like two hundred thousand francs.”
“Then this afternoon you merely bought the box from yourself?”
“Exactly, my love. I had meant the surprise of getting a box to come a little later than it did—sayat dinner; but you and Belmont, between you, forced it on.”
“And that is all?”
“Not quite. The minions of the Minister of Fine Arts were extremely cross. And they meant to revenge themselves on me by depriving me of my box at the last moment. However, I got wind of that, and by the simplest possible arrangement with Malva I protected myself. The scheme—my last bachelor fling, Eve—has been a great success, and the official world of Paris has been taught a lesson which may lead to excellent results.”
“And you have cleared a hundred and twenty-five thousand francs?”
“By no means. The profits of these undertakings are the least part of them. The expenses are heavy. I reckon the expenses will be nearly forty thousand francs. Then I must give Malva a necklace, and that necklace must cost twenty-five thousand francs.”
“That leaves sixty thousand clear?” said Eve.
“Say sixty-two thousand.”
“Why?”
“I was forgetting an extra two thousand made this evening.”
“And your other ‘schemes’?” Eve continued her cross-examination. “How much have they yielded?”
“The Devonshire House scheme was a dead loss. My dear, why did you lead me to destroy that fifty thousand pounds? Waste not, want not. There may come a day when we shall need that fifty thousand pounds, and then——”
“Don’t be funny,” said Eve. “I am serious—very serious.”
“Well, Ostend and Mr. Rainshore yielded twenty-one thousand pounds net. Bruges and the bracelet yielded nine thousand five hundred francs. Algiers and Biskra resulted in a loss of——”
“Never mind the losses,” Eve interrupted. “Are there any more gains?”
“Yes, a few. At Rome last year I somehow managed to clear fifty thousand francs. Then there was an episode at the Chancellory at Berlin. And——”
“Tell me the total gains, my love,” said Eve—“the gross gains.”
Cecil consulted a pocket-book.
“A trifle,” he answered. “Between thirty-eight and forty thousand pounds.”
“My dear Cecil,” the girl said, “call it forty thousand—a million francs—and give me a cheque. Do you mind?”
“I shall be charmed, my darling.”
“And when we get to London,” Eve finished, “I will hand it over to the hospitals anonymously.”
He paused, gazed at her, and kissed her.
Then Kitty Sartorius entered, a marvellous vision, with Belmont in her wake. Kitty glanced hesitatingly at the massive and good-humoured Lionel.
“The fact is——” said Kitty, and paused.
“We are engaged,” said Lionel. “You aren’t surprised?”
“Our warmest congratulations!” Cecil observed. “No. We can’t truthfully say that we are staggered. It is in the secret nature of things that a leading lady must marry her manager—a universal law that may not be transgressed.”
“Moreover,” said Eve later, in Cecil’s private ear, as they were separating for the night, “we might have guessed much earlier. Theatrical managers don’t go scattering five-hundred-pound bracelets all over the place merely for business reasons.”
“But he only scattered one, my dear,” Cecil murmured.
“Yes, well. That’s what I mean.”