Once more mademoiselle sat beneath a canopy of pink roses, surrounded by obsequious waiters, with the murmur of music in her ears, opposite the man she adored. Yet without a doubt mademoiselle was disturbed. Her fixed eyes were riveted upon the newspaper which Herr Freudenberg had passed into her hand. She was suddenly very pale.
"Send some of these people away," she begged. "I am frightened."
Herr Freudenberg smiled. With a wave of his hand they were alone.
"Dear Marguerite," he said quietly, "compose yourself. All those who stand in my way and the way of my country must be swept aside, but remember this. They have all received their warning. I lift my hand against no one who has not first received a chance of escape."
"He was a man so gallant," she faltered, "socomme il faut.Listen to me, please."
She laid the newspaper upon the table and kept the flat of her hand still upon it. Then she leaned towards him.
"You will not be angry with me?" she implored. "Indeed I did it to please you, to win, if I could, a little more of your love. I knew that this man Sir Julien stood in your path and that you found it difficult to remove him. An impulse came to me. We had talked together gayly as a man of gallantry may talk to a woman like myself. It might easily pass for flirting, those things that he has said. Although you, dear one," she added, looking across the table, "know how it is with me when such words are spoken. Well, I bought cartridges for my little pistol that you gave me, I thrust it into the bosom of my gown, I wore my prettiest clothes, and yesterday I went to his rooms."
Herr Freudenberg's cold eyes were suddenly fixed upon her face. His fingers stopped their drumming upon the tablecloth.
"Proceed!"
"I meant to shoot him," she confessed. "I thought that if I could not escape afterwards it was so easy for people to believe that he was my lover, that it was a crime of jealousy, a moment's passion. I said to myself, too, that you would help so that after all my punishment would be a very small affair. In no other way it seemed to me could he have been disposed of so easily."
"Sweet little fool!" Herr Freudenberg murmured. "Did it never enter into your little brain that you are known as my companion?"
She shook her head.
"That would have counted for nothing. People would not have believed that I had any other motive. I should have declared that it was a love affair."
"What happened?"
"He was too quick for me," mademoiselle admitted. "He saw me feel the spot where the pistol lay concealed. He—he snatched it away."
"And afterwards?" Herr Freudenberg inquired, with the ghost of a smile upon his lips.
She raised her eyes.
"He let me go," she replied. "He threw open the door and he laughed at me. Forgive me, please, if I am sad, if indeed I weep. He was a gallant gentleman."
Herr Freudenberg sighed. Slowly he raised his glass to his lips and drank.
"It is an amiable epitaph," he declared. "Many a man has gone up to Heaven with a worse. Cheer up, my little Marguerite. A year or two more or less in a man's life is no great matter, and after all it was not one warning which this rash man received. You have not yet read the account of the affair."
Mademoiselle slowly withdrew the palm of her hand from the paper. The paragraph was headed:
She looked up.
"I cannot read it," she murmured. "Tell me."
"It is simple," he replied. "This afternoon an unfortunate explosion occurred in the house in the Rue de Montpelier where Sir Julien had his apartments. The whole of the front of the premises was blown away. It is regrettable," he added, with a little shrug of the shoulders, "that in all seven people perished, including the concierge. Mr. Kendricks, an English journalist, was taken away alive, but terribly injured, to the hospital. His companion, who seems to have been within a few feet of him when the explosion occurred, was unfortunately blown to pieces. The details as to his fate might perhaps interfere with your appetite, but let me at least assure you, my dear Marguerite," Herr Freudenberg continued, "that such a death is entirely painless. I regret the necessity for such means, but the man had his chance. I regret, also, the fate of the other poor people who lost their lives. Unfortunately, it was necessary to remove Sir Julien in such a way that no suspicion should be cast upon any one person. The death of the concierge, for instance, was absolutely essential. He was suspicious about some of my men who had been making inquiries."
"But it is horrible!" she gasped.
"Little one," he went on, "life is like that. To succeed one has to cultivate indifference. Sir Julien Portel had many warnings. He knew very well that if he persisted in writing those articles, he was braving my defiance. Already he has done mischief enough. The whole series would have undone the work of the last two years. To-night," Herr Freudenberg continued, with a sigh of relief, "we may open the Journal without apprehensions. There are no more secrets disclosed, no more of these marvelously written appeals to—"
Herr Freudenberg stopped short. His eyebrows had drawn closer together. He was gazing at the sheet which he held in his hand with more expression in his face than mademoiselle had ever seen there before.
"My God!" he muttered.
She, too, bent forward. She, too, saw the article with its heading: "AMaker of Toys!"
Herr Freudenberg waved her back. Line by line he read the article. When he had finished, his face was almost ghastly. He drained his glass and called for thesommelier.
"Serve more wine," he ordered briefly.
"What is it that you have seen?" she asked.
"I was a fool not to have been prepared," he answered. "There is another article in to-night's paper, but of course he would have sent it off before—before the explosion happened. It is worse than the others!" he went on hoarsely. "Thank Heaven, that man is out of the way! I would give a million marks to be able to destroy every copy of this paper that was ever issued. It is not fair fighting!… It is barbarous! No longer can I hope for any privacy in this country. You see—you see, Marguerite? He has written of me openly. 'The Toymaker from Leipzig!'—that is what he has called me! These two, Kendricks and he, they saw through me from the first. They knew what it was that I desired. Damn them!"
Mademoiselle crossed herself instinctively. Once she had been religious.
"Poor Sir Julien!"
Herr Freudenberg sighed.
"To-morrow night, at any rate," he said, "there will be no article. We have made sure of that. I pray to Heaven that it may not be too late!"
She shuddered. The service of dinner was resumed.
"Put the paper away," she begged. "Don't let us think of it any more. After all, as you say, he was warned. Nothing that one feels now can do any good. Give me some wine. Talk to me of other things."
Estermen came in to them presently. Herr Freudenberg insisted upon his taking a chair. Once more he dismissed the waiters.
"All goes well," Estermen announced. "There is not an idea at headquarters as to the source of the explosion. I have been round with the newspaper men."
"How is Kendricks?" Herr Freudenberg asked.
"Alive, but barely conscious."
"It is a pity," Herr Freudenberg said coldly. "Kendricks is responsible for a good deal of the trouble. Did you see that to-night's article is here?"
Estermen nodded.
"He must have been a day ahead," he explained. "It was probably a later one of the series upon which he was engaged when the thing occurred."
"This one will do sufficient harm," Herr Freudenberg remarked grimly.
Estermen shrugged his shoulders.
"It is true, and yet we have a great start. Public opinion is thoroughly unsettled. Even those who accepted theententeas the most brilliant piece of diplomacy of the generation, are beginning to wonder what really has been gained by it. If I were at Berlin," Estermen continued, with a covert glance up at his master, "now is the time I should choose. To-morrowLe Grand Journalwill be silent. To-morrow I should send a polite notification to the English Government that owing to the unsettled condition of the country, and the nervousness of certain German residents, His Imperial Majesty has thought it wise to send a warship to Agdar."
"The German subjects are a trifle hypothetical," Herr Freudenberg muttered. "We had the utmost difficulty in persuading an ex-convict to go out there."
"What does it matter?" Estermen asked. "He is there. He represents the glorious liberties of the Fatherland. Millions have been spent before now for the blood of one man."
Marguerite sighed. She was leaning back in her place, watching the boughs of the lime trees swinging gently back and forth in the night breeze, the cool moonlight outside, refreshing in its contrast to the over-lit and overheated auditorium of the music-hall. On the stage a Revue was in full swing. Mademoiselle Ixe glanced at it but seldom. Her eyes seemed to be always outside.
"Tell me," she demanded almost passionately, "why cannot one leave the world alone? It is great enough and beautiful enough. Will Germany be really the happier, do you think, if she triumphs against England? It doesn't seem worth while. Life is so short, the joy of living is so hard to grasp. Don't you think," she added, leaning towards her companion, her beautiful eyes full of entreaty, "that for one night at least, all thoughts of your country and of her destinies might pass away? Let us live in the world that amuses itself, that takes the pleasures that grow ready to its hand, whose arms are not rapacious, and whose sword lies idle. Forget for a little time, dear friend. Let us both forget!"
Herr Freudenberg smiled as he finished his wine.
"Ah! dear Marguerite," he said, "you preach the great philosophy. We will try humbly to follow in your footsteps. Lead on and we will follow—up to the Montmartre, if you will, or down to the Rue Royale. What does it matter, sweetheart, so long as we are together?"
She shivered a little as his fingers touched hers, although her eyes still besought him. Thevestiairewas standing by with her lace coat. She rose slowly to her feet.
"To the Rue Royale," she decided. "To-night I have no fancy for theMontmartre."
Mrs. Carraby advanced into the library of the great house in Grosvenor Square. Her husband had risen from his desk and was standing with his hands in his pockets upon the hearth-rug. His dress was as neat and correct as ever, his hair as accurately parted, his small moustache as effectually twirled. Yet there was a frown upon his face, an expression of gloomy peevishness about his expression. His wife stood and looked at him, looked at him and thought.
"You are back early," he said. "What is the matter? You don't look radiantly happy. I thought you were looking forward so much to this bazaar."
"I was," she replied. "I am disappointed."
He saw then that her silence was not a matter of indifference but of anger.
"What's wrong?" he asked quickly.
Her lips parted for a moment. One saw that her teeth were firmly clenched. There was a wicked light in her strange-colored eyes.
"It was that woman again," she muttered,—"the Duchess!"
"What about her?" Carraby demanded. "She's bound to be civil to you now, anyway."
"Is she?" Mrs. Carraby replied. "Is she, indeed! Well, her civility this afternoon has been such that I shall have to give up my stall. I can't stay there."
"What do you mean?" he demanded.
"Nothing except that before everybody she once more cut me dead, cut me wickedly," Mrs. Carraby declared. "You don't understand the tragedy of this to a woman. You are not likely to. She did it in such a way this time that there isn't a person worth knowing in London who isn't laughing about it at the present moment."
"Beast of a woman!" he muttered.
Mrs. Carraby came a little further into the room. She sank into an easy-chair and sat there. Her hands were tightly clenched, her face was hard and cold, her tone icy. Yet one felt that underneath a tempest was raging.
"You know, Algernon," she went on, "we had some hard times when you first began to make your way a little. When we first took this house, even, things weren't altogether easy. Americans can come from nowhere, do the most outrageous things in the world, and take London by storm. London, on the other hand, is cruel to English people who have only their money. She was cruel to us, Algernon, but with all the snubs and all the difficulties I ever had, nothing has ever happened to me like to-day."
"You'll get over it."
"Get over it!" she repeated. "Yes, but I thought that that sort of thing was at an end. I thought that when you were a Cabinet Minister no one would dare to treat me as though I were a social nobody."
"You must remember that the Duchess has a special reason," he reminded her. "I suppose it's that Portel affair."
"Yes," Mrs. Carraby agreed, "it is the Portel affair."
They were both silent. There wasn't much to be said, for the moment.
"Have you heard," he inquired presently, "whether Lady Anne is with him in Paris?"
"No," she replied. "Somehow or other, people don't seem to talk scandal about Lady Anne. They say that she is staying for a time with an old friend there. Algernon!"
"Yes?"
"Is it true that you are doing so badly at the Foreign Office?" she asked bluntly.
A little flush mounted almost to his forehead.
"I have had the devil's own luck," he muttered.
"I can't take up a newspaper," she continued bitterly, "without finding it full of abuse of you. They say that during six weeks theentente cordialehas vanished. They say that you have lost the friendship of France, that she trusts us no longer, and that Germany's tone becomes more threatening and more bullying every day, solely on account of your weakness."
"We can't afford to risk a war," Carraby explained. "I am a Radical Minister. I have represented a Radical constituency ever since I came into Parliament. What the devil should I have to say to my people if within a couple of months of taking office we were plunged into war?"
"I do not pretend," Mrs. Carraby remarked, "to be an active politician, but I have heard it said that the best way to avoid war is to show that you are not afraid of it. They say that that is where Sir Julien Portel was so splendid. Do you know that the leading article of one of your own papers this morning declares that Germany would never have dared to have said so much to us if she had not known that she had only a puppet to deal with in the Cabinet? You know what all the other papers are hinting at? Is it true, Algernon, that you gave two hundred thousand pounds to the party?"
"Whether it is true or not," Carraby retorted, "it makes no difference. I wanted this post, wanted it for your sake as much as my own, and I wish to Heaven that it was at the bottom of the sea! I'd resign to-morrow if I could do so with dignity. I can't now, of course. Every one would say I was chucked. To make things worse," he went on savagely, "there come these infernal letters of Portel's!"
Mrs. Carraby raised her eyebrows.
"Why, I've heard it said that those letters are the one hope this country has! I have heard it said that but for those letters France and England would be as far apart to-day as they ever were. I heard it said only this afternoon that those letters were our only hope of peace. They were compared with the letters of Junius, whoever he was. Lord Cardington told me himself that they were the most splendid political prose he had ever read in his life."
"That may be true enough," Carraby growled, "but they make it all the harder for me. No doubt Portel was a good Minister. No doubt he was doing very well in his post. Now he writes these letters every one remembers it, every one is asking for him back again. It's hell, Mabel! I wish to God we'd let the man alone!" Mrs. Carraby looked at her husband steadfastly. She was a little taller than he. She looked at him, from his well-brushed hair to the trim patent boots which adorned his small feet. She looked at him and in those strange-colored eyes of hers were unmentionable things. She turned away and walked to the window. In imagination she was back again in Julien's rooms. She lived again through those few minutes. If he had answered differently!
Outside in the square the newsboys were shouting. She had stood before the window for some time when a familiar name fell upon her ears. She turned around and touched the bell.
"What is it that you want?" her husband asked.
"A paper," she replied.
A very correct butler brought her thePall Mall Gazettea moment or two later. She scanned it eagerly. Then it slipped from her shuddering fingers. She turned upon her husband.
"He is dead!" she cried. "Can't you read it? 'Death of an Englishman in an explosion in Paris. Mr. Kendricks, a journalist, seriously injured; Sir Julien Portel, the ex-Cabinet Minister,—dead!'"
She stood as though turned to stone. Then something in her husband's face seemed to bring her back to the present. She turned upon him. Her face was suddenly lit with some strange, quivering fire. It was one of the moments of her life.
"You miserable worm!" she shrieked. "You dare to stand there and smile because a man is dead! You!"
He tried to draw himself up, tried to rebuke her. He might as well have tried to stem a torrent.
"I've done my best to share your rotten, scheming life," she cried, "to help you in your dirty ways, and to crawl up into the places we coveted! Once I saw the truth. Once a real man was kind to me and I saw the difference. I've felt it in my heart ever since. For your sake and my own, for the sake of our rotten, miserable ambitions, I ruined him and sent him to his death. He is dead, do you hear? You and I did it! We are murderers! And to think that I did it for you! That you—such a creature as you—might take his place!"
She threw up her hands high above her head. There had been people who had doubted her good looks. No one at that instant would have denied her beauty. Carraby's eyes were fixed upon her and he was afraid. Even when she had cast herself face downward upon the couch, and lay with her head buried in her hands, he dared not go near. He stood there gazing at her across the room. Perhaps he, too, though his understanding was less, tasted a little of the poison!
In the splendid library of his palace in Berlin, the maker of toys leaned back in his chair after a long and successful day's work. There lingered upon his lips still the remnants of a grim smile, which the dictation of a dispatch to London had just evoked. His secretary gathered up his papers. His master was disposed to be genial.
"My young friend," he remarked, "those letters from Paris—they were stopped just in time, eh?"
"Just in time, indeed, Highness," the young man replied. "I have friends who write me from there. They assure me that their effect was tremendous. The cessation of them was indeed an act of Providence."
Prince Falkenberg's lips relaxed. There were hard lines at the corners of his mouth. Yet if this were indeed a smile, it was no pleasant thing to look upon!
"An act of Providence, without a doubt!" he exclaimed,—"Providence which watches always over the destinies of our dear Fatherland!"
"I shall bring you now, Highness, the foreign papers?" the young man suggested.
"If you please," his master replied. "I read them now, thank Heaven, with an easier feeling."
The young man retreated and reappeared in a few minutes with a pile of newspapers. Prince Falkenberg rose and stretched himself, lit a long black cigar and threw himself into a comfortable chair before the high window.
"Your Highness will take some coffee, perhaps?" the young man asked.
"Presently."
The great Minister unfolded his newspapers. A reference in the EnglishTimesperplexed him. He turned to the journal which only a few days ago he had opened with almost a shudder. He undid the wrapper, shook it open and looked at it. Then suddenly he sat like a man turned to stone. The cigar burnt out between his teeth, his eyes were riveted upon that page, the black letters seemed to have become lurid. The sentences stabbed, he was face to face with the impossible. The paper which he read was dated on the preceding day. Before him was a fourth article, dated from Paris, dated less than forty-eight hours ago, signed "Julien Portel." The title of the article was "The World's Great Mischief-Maker!" He read on, read from that first sentence to the last, read the naked truth about himself, saw his motives exposed, his secret visits to Paris derided, his foibles photographed. He saw himself the laughing stock of Europe. Then he leaned over and rang the bell.
"Neudheim," he said, "let it be given out that I leave to-night forFalkenberg as usual. Let the automobile be prepared for a long journey.I leave in half an hour."
The young man stared. He had fancied that those flying visits of his master's for a time were to be discontinued.
"Your Highness goes south?" he asked.
"I drive all night," Prince Falkenberg replied. "See that the CountRudolf is prepared to accompany me. Quick! Give the orders."
In the untidy salon of his bachelor apartments in the Boulevard Maupassant Estermen awaited the coming of his master in veritable fear and trembling. In all his experience he had never been compelled to face a crisis such as this. There had been small failures, punished, perhaps, by a sarcastic word or biting sentence. There had been no failure to compare with this one! Herr Freudenberg deliberately, and of his own free choice, was accustomed to take huge risks. When they came he accepted them, but when they were not inevitable he as sedulously avoided them. The wrecking of Julien's apartments in the Rue de Montpelier was by far the most hazardous enterprise which had been attempted since the days of the toymaker's first secret visits to Paris. Half a dozen human beings had been done to death in a manner which invited and even challenged the attentions of the French police. A terrible risk had been run and run in vain. The blow had been struck at the very moment when its object was unattainable! Estermen shivered as he tried to imagine for himself the coming interview. Gone, he feared, was his life of pleasant luxury among the flesh-pots and easy ways of Paris; his bachelor apartments, occupied in name by him but of which the real tenant was his dreaded master. And behind all this apprehension lurked another grisly and terrible fear! For the twentieth time during the last few minutes he peered through the closely drawn Venetian-blind, and his blood ran cold. On the pavement opposite, before the small table of a café, a man was sitting—the same man! For two days he had been there—a gaunt and silent person with a wonderful trick of gazing away into space from the columns of his newspaper. But Estermen knew all about that! He knew, even, the man's name! He knew that he was one of the most persistent and successful of French detectives. His name was Jean Charles and he had never known failure. Estermen looked at him through the blind and his pale face was ugly with fear.
The moment arrived. The long, gray traveling car, covered with dust, swung around the corner and stopped below. Herr Freudenberg was travel-stained and almost unrecognizable in his motor clothes as he stepped out and passed into the block of apartments. Contrary to his usual custom, he did not at once present himself before the man who awaited him in fear and trembling. Estermen heard him enter his own suite of rooms on the other side of the stairway and give a few brief orders. Then there was a peremptory knock at the door. Herr Freudenberg was announced and entered.
To the man who had been waiting for his sentence there was something terrible in the grim impassivity of Prince Falkenberg's features. His face was set and white and sphinx-like. Only his eyes shone with a fierce, unusual fire.
"What have you to say, Estermen?" he demanded.
"It was a miracle," Estermen faltered. "Sir Julien descended the stairs with the copy in his hand to speak to a caller. For seventeen hours he had been in his rooms, for the following seventeen hours he would probably have been there, too. For the intervening thirty seconds he happened to be upon the pavement. It was a miracle!"
This was the end of all the specious story which Estermen had gone over so often to himself! Yet he had done his cause no harm, for the few sentences he spoke were the truth.
"You have discovered his present whereabouts?" his master demanded.
Estermen hesitated. He feared that this was another blow which he was about to deal.
"He is at the house of Madame Christophor in the Rue de St. Paul," he faltered.
His news, however, did not discompose Prince Falkenberg. On the contrary, he seemed, if anything, to find the intelligence agreeable.
"Have you made any inquiries as to his condition?"
Estermen shrugged his shoulders.
"The household of Madame Christophor," he replied, "is, as you know, outside my sphere of influence. It is, besides, incorruptible. I myself am personally obnoxious to Madame. I could do nothing but wait for your coming."
Prince Falkenberg stood with his hands behind him, thinking. He had relapsed into his former grim and impenetrable silence. And while he waited the sweat stood out in beads upon Estermen's forehead. Greatly he feared that the worst was to come!
"Have you anything else to say to me?" his master asked.
"Nothing!" Estermen replied, with faltering lips.
Prince Falkenberg's eyes were fierce orbs of light and his servant quailed before him.
"Have you any reason to believe that the origin of the crime is suspected?"
It was the question which above all others he had dreaded! Estermen was a coward and a fluent liar. The latter gift, however, availed him nothing. He felt as though the nerves of his tongue were being controlled by some other agency. Against his will he told the truth.
"Jean Charles is watching these apartments!"
"Ah!"
Prince Falkenberg's single exclamation was the death sentence of his agent. Estermen knew it and his knees knocked one against the other.
"For six years," Prince Falkenberg said, after a moment's pause, "you have lived an easy and a comfortable life, Estermen,—a life, I dare say, spent among the gutter vices which would naturally appeal to a person of your temperament; a life, apart from the small services which I have required of you, directed altogether by your own inclinations. Be thankful for those six years. As you well know, but for me they would have been spent either in prison or in the problematical future world—a matter entirely at the discretion of the judge who tried you. It pleased me to rescue you for my own purpose. You were possessed of a certain amount of low cunning and a complete absence of all ordinary human qualities, a combination which made you a useful servant of my will. My one condition has been always before you. The present case demands your fulfillment of it."
Estermen began to tremble.
"The man may be there by accident," he faltered. "There is no certainty as yet that I am even suspected. I'm—I'm horribly afraid to die!" he added, with an ugly little laugh.
"So are most men of your kidney," Prince Falkenberg replied composedly. "Nevertheless, die you must, and to-night. Write your confession. Make it clear that one of the victims was your personal enemy. I'll dictate it, if you like."
"I can do it myself," Estermen muttered. "Let me—let me write the confession first and then make an attempt to escape," he pleaded. "If I am taken, the confession shall be found upon me. It will make no difference. Let me have a chance! I know the secret places of the city. I have friends who might help me to escape."
Prince Falkenberg watched his agent for a moment in contemptuous curiosity. Estermen was walking restlessly up and down the few feet of carpet, his fingers and the muscles of his face twitching. His words had come with difficulty, as though he had suddenly developed an impediment in his speech. His sallow complexion had become yellow. His carefully waxed moustache was drooping, a speck of saliva was issuing from his lips.
"The request which you make to me," Prince Falkenberg replied, "I absolutely refuse. I know you and your cowardly temperament too well to allow you to come alive into the hands of the French police."
"You value your own life highly enough!" Estermen snarled.
"It is not so," Prince Falkenberg asserted. "If I had ever valued my own life highly, there would have been no Herr Freudenberg; and if the whole history of Herr Freudenberg is discovered, I follow you, my friend, post haste. If I seem to be taking any pains to hold my own, remember that mine is a life which is valuable to the Fatherland. You have been and you are only a feeder at the troughs. One more or less such as you in the world makes just the difference of a speck of dust—that is all."
Estermen shrank cowering into his seat.
"I'd rather live—in torture—in prison or in chains—anywhere!" he gasped. "I can't think of death!"
Prince Falkenberg was becoming impatient.
"My dear Estermen," he exclaimed, "what prison do you suppose remains open for the murderer of seven men! You shrink from death. Yet let me assure you that the guillotine, with the certain prospect of it before you day after day through a long trial, is no pleasant outlet from the world for a sybarite. Be a philosopher. Go and die as you have lived. Write your confession, summon your dearest friend by telephone, give a little supper—you'll have plenty of time—but see that the affair is over before midnight! This is my advice to you, Estermen; these are also my orders, my final orders. If I find you alive when I return, or the confession unwritten, I will show you how death may be made more horrible than anything you have yet conceived."
Prince Falkenberg turned on his heel and left the apartment. Estermen remained for several moments shrinking back in the chair upon which he had collapsed. Then he rose and with trembling footsteps stole to the window, peering out from behind the blind. The man at the café opposite was still there!
"This afternoon," Madame Christophor declared, looking thoughtfully atJulien, "I am going to send you a new secretary."
He turned a little eagerly in his easy-chair.
"Lady Anne!" he exclaimed.
"Are you glad?" she asked.
Julien hesitated. His eyes sought his companion's face. She was seated at the small writing-table drawn up close to his side, her head resting upon her left hand, the pen in her right fingers sketching idle figures at the bottom of the sheet which she had just written. She was wearing a dress of strange-colored muslin, a shade between gray and silver, but from underneath came a shimmer of blue, and there were turquoises about her neck. Her large, soft eyes were fixed steadfastly upon his. There was a sort of question in them which he seemed to have surprised there more than once during the last few days. A sudden uneasiness seized him. His brain was crowded with unwilling fancies. There were, without doubt, symptoms of coquetry in her appearance. He had spoken of blue as the one sublime color. As she leaned a little back in her chair, resting from her labors, he could scarcely help noticing the blue silk stockings and suède shoes which matched the hidden color of her skirt, the ribbon which gleamed from the dusky masses of her hair. Madame Christophor was always a very beautiful and a very elegant woman, and it seemed to have pleased her during these last few days to appear at her best. Julien gripped for a moment at his bandaged arm.
"You are in pain? You would like me to change the bandage?" she suggested almost eagerly.
"Not yet," he replied. "It is still quite comfortable."
She looked at him thoughtfully.
"You have the air of wanting something," she remarked. "Is there anything that displeases you?"
"Displeases me! If you knew how strange that sounded!" he exclaimed. "I do not think that any one ever lived with such luxury, or was treated with so much kindness, as I during the last few days. You make every second perfect."
Madame Christophor sighed. Almost as Julien finished his speech he regretted its conclusion. Madame Christophor, on the other hand, although she sighed, seemed vaguely content.
"You see, the fates against whom you have so great a grievance have done something to atone," she declared. "No doubt you hated to leave your work to come and speak to me in the street that afternoon. No doubt your red-headed journalist friend hated me also. Yet if you had not come, if my automobile had been detained a few minutes on the way—ah! it is terrible indeed to think what might not have happened!"
She shivered. A moment later she raised her eyes and continued.
"I think," she said, "you must abandon a little of your hostility against my sex. It was a woman who worked this mischief in your life and a woman who was fortunate enough to save it. I think you can almost cry quits with us, Sir Julien."
He smiled. He was struggling to lead back their conversation to a lighter level. A certain change in this woman's tone and manner, a change which was reflected even in her appearance, disturbed him painfully.
"The balance is already on my side, dear hostess," he assured her. "You have left me an eternal debtor to your sex. I shall never again indulge in generalities or wholesale condemnation. It is, after all, foolish. But tell me why you are sending Lady Anne to help me to-day?"
She watched for any trace of disappointment in his tone. There was none. On the contrary, his mention of Lady Anne was accompanied by a slight eagerness which puzzled her.
"I have a few social duties to attend to," she explained a little vaguely. "Lady Anne is quite efficient. I like her handwriting, too. It is like herself—clean-cut, legible. There are no hidden pools about Lady Anne."
"Yet," he said, "a woman always keeps some part of herself concealed."
"You think that Lady Anne, too, has her secret?" Madame Christophor asked, raising her eyes.
"I think that if she has, she is quite capable of keeping it," he replied.
There was a knock at the door. Lady Anne entered. She came a few yards into the room with a slight smile upon her lips, and nodded pleasantly to Julien. In her slim stateliness, the untroubled serenity of youth reflected in her smiling face, she represented perfectly the other type of womanhood. Madame Christophor rose deliberately to her feet. For one swift moment she measured the things between them. She herself was conscious of a greater intellectual maturity, a more subtle quality in her looks, a beauty less describable, more exotic, perhaps, but also more provocative. The arts of her sex were at her finger-tips, the small arts disdained by this well-looking and perfectly healthy young woman. She turned her head quickly towards Sir Julien. It was the idle impulse of the man or woman who plucks the petals from a flower. Julien was gazing steadfastly at Lady Anne…. Madame Christophor picked up her belongings and moved towards the door.
"Be merciless today, my friend!" she exclaimed, pausing upon the threshold,—"virulent, if you will!Le Jourwas screaming at you last night. Jesen has lost his head a little; or is it the lash of his master which he feels? How can one tell?"
"After tonight," Julien remarked, with a smile, "who will readLeJour? I shall tell the story of the purchase of that paper by HerrFreudenberg. French people will not love to think that the pen of Jesenhas been guided by the hand of Germany."
Madame Christophor made a little grimace.
"My friend," she declared, "my house is, I believe, the safest spot in Paris, yet there are limits. Remember that you have become a celebrity. There is an agitation in England to have you back at the Foreign Office. All Paris is divided upon the subject of your life or death. And there are men here in the city who seek for you night and day with death in their hands. My house is sanctuary, but no one can write such things as you are writing and deem himself secure against any risk."
He smiled at her confidently.
"Yet you would not have me leave out one single line, you would not have me lower the torch for one second! You suggest caution!—you, who haven't the word 'fear' in your vocabulary! It is your house, not mine. There are more bombs to be bought in Paris. Yet tell me, would you have me spare a single word of the truth?"
She flashed back her answer across the room. For the moment she forgotLady Anne. They two were on another plane.
"Not one word," she assured him, with soft yet vibrant earnestness. "I would have you write the truth in letters of fire upon the clouds, for all Paris to see. You have a message. See that it goes out."
Madame Christophor closed the door softly behind her. Julien remained looking at the spot from which she had disappeared. Then he drew a little breath.
"She is wonderful!" he muttered.
Lady Anne took up her pen. She avoided looking at him.
"Let us begin," she said….
They wrote for hours. Julien was in the mood for this final and fierce attack uponLe Jourand all the powers that stood behind it. He held up Falkenberg to derision—the charlatan of modern politics, the Puck of Berlin, whose one sincerity was his hatred for England, and one capacity, the giant capacity for mischief! He wound up his article with a scathing and personal denunciation of Falkenberg, and a splendidly worded appeal to the French nation not for one moment to be deceived as to the character of this tireless and ambitious schemer after his country's welfare. All the time Anne took down his words in fluent and flowing writing. When at last he had finished, he looked at the sheets which surrounded her with something like amazement.
"Why, what a pig I've been, Anne!" he exclaimed, glancing from the table to the clock. "You must have been writing for nearly three hours!"
She was busy picking up the sheets.
"Quite, I should say," she answered, "but I loved it. Now I am going to ring for tea, and afterwards you must read it through. We might get the manuscript down to the office to-night."
"I shall need you when I read it through," he reminded her. "There will be corrections."
"Either Madame Christophor or I will be here," she replied. "MadameChristophor may have some other work for me."
He looked at her curiously.
"Even you are different," he murmured.
"Tell me at once what you mean?" she begged.
"I wish I knew," he confessed. "To tell you the truth, Anne, a curious feeling of detachment seems to have come over me—during the last few days especially. It is such a short time since I was living the ordinary sort of mechanical life in London, engaged to be married to you, and my doings day by day all mapped out—a life interesting, of course, but without any real variation. And now here I am, hanging on to life by the thin edge of nothing, writing such things as I should never have dared to have said from my seat in the House, practically an adventurer. Do you wonder that sometimes I am not quite sure that it isn't all a nightmare? I am actually hiding here in Paris from assassins—in Paris, the most civilized city in the world—the guest of a woman whose acquaintance I made only because a little manicurist in Soho insisted upon it. And you, Anne, are here by my side, a professional secretary, the friend of a milliner, more intimate and on better terms with me than you were in the days when we were engaged to be married! What has happened to us, Anne? How did we get here?"
She laughed at him tolerantly.
"We've come a little into our own, I suppose," she remarked. "As for me, I feel a different woman since I stepped out of the made-to-order world. And you—well, don't be angry, but you're not nearly so much of a prig, are you, Julien? You're less starched and more human. Of course we are more companionable. We are both more human."
He nodded.
"I suppose that so far as I am concerned Kendricks had something to do with it—he was always trying to make me look at things differently. But it seems such a short time for such an absolute change."
She was balancing her pen upon the inkpot—keeping her eyes turned from him.
"It isn't always a matter of time, you know, Julien," she said thoughtfully. "You were never really a prig—I was never really a machine for wearing a ready-made smile and a few smart frocks. It took a shock to make us see things, but neither of us remained wilfully blind. You'll be back in your world before long and a better man than ever."
"And you?"
"I have hopes some day of becoming a perfect secretary," she confessed."If I fail, I will at least make more bows than any one else in a day."
He leaned towards her, showing a sudden and dangerous forgetfulness of his bandaged arm.
"Anne," he said firmly, "if I go back, you go back. Sometimes I think that I shall never regret anything that has happened if—"
The door was softly opened. It was Madame Christophor who entered with a little pile of letters in her hand. Lady Anne, with slightly heightened color, rose to her feet. There was something in Madame Christophor's eyes which was almost fiercely questioning.
"I am not disturbing you, I trust?" she asked slowly. "I bring SirJulien some letters."
He caught up the sheets which lay by his side.
"I will not even look at them until I have corrected my article," he declared.
Madame Christophor settled herself composedly in an easy-chair.
"Lady Anne shall read it aloud," she proposed calmly, "and I will assist in the corrections. For the French edition I may be able to suggest. The papers today are most amusing," she continued. "The German press is almost unreadable. No wonder that there is a price upon your head, my friend!"
Julien moved restlessly in his place.
"I have had the most extraordinary luck," he remarked. "No other man, naturally, knew so much of Anglo-German and Anglo-French relations. And instead of being at home in Downing Street, and muzzled, I happened to be here on the spot, to run up against Falkenberg, discover his little schemes, and with my own special knowledge to see through them at once. No one else ever had such an opportunity."
Madame Christophor smiled enigmatically. She was looking thoughtfully across at her guest.
"It is not every opportunity in life," she murmured, "which a man knows how to embrace!"
That night, for the first time since his arrival in the house as a guest, Julien dined downstairs. To his surprise, when he presented himself in the smaller salon to which he had been directed, he found the table laid for two only. Madame Christophor, who was standing on the threshold of the winter-garden opening out from the apartment, read his expression and frowned.
"You expected Lady Anne to dine?" she asked bluntly.
Julien was taken a little aback.
"It seemed natural to expect her," he admitted.
Madame Christophor moved towards the bell, but Julien intercepted her. He remembered all that he owed to this woman. He was ashamed of his lack of tact.
"Dear Madame Christophor," he pleaded, "forgive me if for a moment I forgot how altered things are. Indeed, it was not a matter of choice with me. Of course, it will give me the greatest pleasure to dine tête-à-tête with you!"
He was, perhaps, a shade too impressive, but Madame Christophor, as all women who greatly desire to read in a man's words what they choose to find there, hesitated. Finally, with a shrug of the shoulders, she turned away from the bell.
"Three is such an impossible number," she declared, with well-assumed carelessness. "Lady Anne has her own salon adjoining her apartment. She dines there always. If I am without company, I enjoy the rest of being alone. She is very delightful in her own way, your dear Lady Anne, but she and I have not much in common. Come and see my roses."
She led the way into the conservatory, a dome-shaped building with colored glass at the top, fragrant, almost faint with the perfume of roses and drooping exotics. A little fountain was playing in the middle. When the butler announced the service of dinner and they returned to take their places, she left the door open.
"Tonight," she announced, as they sat side by side at the small round table, "I am going to take advantage of the situation. I am your hostess and you are an invalid. It is my opportunity to talk. Are you a good listener, Sir Julien?"
She had dropped her voice almost to a whisper. Those beautiful deep-set eyes were challenging his. She seemed to have made up her mind that for that night, at any rate, her beauty should be unquestioned. She wore a dress of black net, fitting very closely, a wonderful background for her white skin and the ropes of pearls which were twined about her neck. He had never seen herdécolletée, but he remembered reading in a ladies' fashion paper that a famous sculptor had once declared her neck and bust to be the most beautiful in Paris. She had even added the slightest touch of color to her cheeks. There was no longer any sign of the wrinkles at the sides of her eyes. She read the half ingenuous, half unwilling admiration in his face, and she laughed at him.
"Ah, my friend," she murmured, "I can see that you object to the rôle of listener! Very well, then, you shall talk. You shall tell me of your life in England. You shall tell me what dreams have come to you for the days when once more you shall help to shape the destinies of your nation. Tell me how you mean to live! Shall you be again—what was it Lady Anne thought you?—a prig?"
"I am like many other and more famous men," he remarked. "I have learned much in adversity."
"I read the English papers," she continued presently. "I have also a large correspondence. Do you know that there is nearly a rebellion in your party? Questions have been asked about you in the House. Both sides want you back. There is a feeling that you were allowed to go much too easily, that the indiscretion of which you were guilty was a trifle. This man Carraby is what you call—a cad! That does not do in the high places. Nationality cannot conceal a lack of breeding."
"I have thought over many things," Julien admitted. "If the way is made clear for me, I shall go back. Why not? I believe that I can serve my country, and it is the life for which I am best fitted. Carraby may have his good points, but his ambitions have been a little too extensive. He would have made a better mayor of the town where he was born."
"You are right," she declared. "There is no place for such men in the great world. You will go back. It is written. See—I drink to England's future Prime Minister!"
She raised her glass, which the butler had just filled with champagne. She looked into his eyes as she drank and Julien was conscious of a passing uneasiness. She set the glass down, empty. Her hand lay for a moment near his.
"You will go back," she murmured. "You will forget. The people whom you have met in your brief period of adversity will seem to you like shadows. Is it not so?"
He took her hand and raised it boldly to his lips.
"It will never be like that with you, dear hostess," he assured her."There are things which one does not forget."
She did not withdraw her hand. Its pressure upon his fingers was faint but insistent.
"Do you remember when we first met," she said softly, "how bitter we were against the others—even at first against one another? You had been betrayed by that unimportant woman and the whole sex was hateful to you. I had just come from seeing the tragedy caused by a man's crass selfishness. I, too, was wearing the fetters. To me the whole of your sex seemed abominable…. You see," she went on, "my marriage was a terrible disappointment. I fancied that I was marrying a great man, a genius, an inspired statesman, and I found myself allied to a political machine. My wealth—have I told you, I wonder, that I am very wealthy?—helped him. For the rest, I was a puppet by his side. I lived in Berlin for one year. Official life in Berlin for an American woman, even though she be Princess von Falkenberg, is still intolerable. The men were bad enough, the women worse. I could not breathe. I was no part of my husband's life. I was no part of any one's life. The German women did not understand me. My husband—oh, he is very German in his heart!—only laughed at my complaints. He would have been perfectly willing to see me become as those others—hausfrauen, bearers of children, a domestic article. So we separated—divorce at that moment was impossible. I came back to Paris."
"You had no children?" Julien asked.
"One boy," she answered, her eyes becoming very soft. "Do not let us speak of him for a moment."
The service of dinner continued. Outside, the water from the fountain fell into the basin with a gentle, monotonous sound. The perfume of the roses stole through the open doorway. One softly-shaded lamp had been lit, but the rest of the lofty room remained in shadowy obscurity. The light from that one lamp seemed to fall full upon Madame Christophor's beautiful face.
"I loved my boy," she went on. "It was part of my husband's cruelty to detach him from me. He has the law on his side. I may not even see Rudolf. Very well, I do my best to steel my heart. I come here to live. I have many friends, but Falkenberg is the only man to whom I have ever belonged, and he has treated me as he would have treated one of those others—his companions for the moment. I have occupied myself here in work of different sorts. I have tried in my way to do good among women less happy, even, than I. Wherever I went I saw that every woman who has sinned, every woman who is miserable, every woman who has become a blot upon the earth, is what she is by reason of man's selfishness. Can you wonder that I have grown a little bitter?"
"I wonder at nothing in the woman who has been Falkenberg's wife," Julien replied. "He seems to me the most unscrupulous person who ever breathed. Yet in his way he is marvelously attractive."
"He is," she admitted. "I fell in love with him against my will. Directly my reason intervened, the madness was over. How old do you think I am, Sir Julien?"
Julien was a little startled.
"How old?" he repeated.
"A foolish question, of course," she continued. "How could you be honest! I am twenty-nine years old. I believe that I am the richest woman in Paris. I am tired of being called brilliant and cynical, of showing fortune-hunters to the door, of living my life in loneliness. Falkenberg has sworn that if I take any steps to make a divorce possible, I shall never see my boy again. I have not seen him, as it is, for nearly two years. The threat is losing its terrors…. You are listening, my friend?"
"Of course!"
She turned to the butler. The other servants had already left the room.
"Bring coffee into the winter-garden," she ordered. "Come, Sir Julien."
She lit a cigarette and threw it away almost immediately. Her eyes were gleaming like stars. She laid her fingers upon his arm as they passed out into the perfumed air of the conservatory, and he seemed to feel some touch of the fire that was burning in her veins. She swayed a little towards him. The color in her cheeks was brilliant. Her bosom was rising and falling quickly. She was splendidly handsome, nerved up to great things, a woman inspired by a purpose. Julien was afraid. He, too, felt something of the excitement of the moment, but his brain seemed numbed. There was nothing he could say. She threw herself back into a low chair and drew him down to her side. With her other hand she caught hold of a cluster of pink roses and pressed their cool blossoms to her cheek.
"Sir Julien," she murmured, "I have looked so steadfastly into life, I have striven so hard to find a place there. I have something to give. I do not come empty-handed. I can place offerings upon the altar of the great god. I have myself, my brains such as they are, and the golden key which unlocks the wonderful doors. Can you wonder that I ask for something in return? I have stood in the marketplace of life, I have passed down between the stalls, and I am humiliated. There is no life, there is no career upon this world for a woman. It is a strange doctrine, perhaps, to preach in these days, but I have searched and I know it to be the truth. Nature meant woman for man, and if she rebels there is no seat for her alone among the mighty places. Alone I can win none of the things I desire. You see, I talk to you like this, nakedly, because we are of the order of those who understand. You very nearly married a duke's daughter and became a middle-class politician. Don't do it. Don't think of it any more, Julien. You were meant for the great places, and I think—I think—that I was meant to hold the torch to light you there!"
"Madame Christophor!"
She started at his tone. In the splendid arrogance of her assured position, her brilliant gifts, her almost inspired individuality, failure had never occurred to her. Even now she refused to read the message in his set face.
"You feel, perhaps," she went on, leaning towards him, "that you are pledged to Lady Anne. Dear Sir Julien, rub your eyes! I want you to see—all the way to the skies. Lady Anne is a sweet girl who will look nice at the head of any one's table. She will read the papers and take an intelligent interest in her husband's work, and ask him trite and obvious questions to prove that she understands all about it. She will give you phenacetin when you have a headache, she will fill your house with the right sort of people. She will be very amiable and very satisfied. She'll always read the debates and she'll sit up for you at night in a pretty dressing-gown. And all the time the wall will grow, brick by brick, and you will look up to the skies and find them empty, and listen for the music and hear none, and a web will be spun about your heart, and your brain will be clogged, and the fine thoughts will go, and you'll never be anything but a successful politician. You know very well that all the paths to the great pit of unhappiness are crowded with men who have been successful in their profession."
She swayed even closer towards him, her head a little thrown back, her eyes inviting him. He scrambled to his feet. Still she held out her hands.
"Won't you trust me?" she begged. "Believe me that I know the way into the great places, Julien."
"Listen!" he cried hoarsely. "You have offered me everything except your love. Thank Heaven you did not offer me that! I love Lady Anne."
"Everythingexceptmy love!" she exclaimed, with the first note of trouble in her tone. "Everythingexceptmy love! Are you mad?"
"I love Lady Anne!" he repeated, setting his teeth.
They stood facing one another. She tore a handful of the blossoms from a syringa tree and commenced crushing them in her fingers. The sound of footsteps scarcely disturbed her. The butler appeared, followed by Lady Anne. The former excused himself with a grave face.
"Madame," he announced, "the Prince von Falkenberg is here."
Madame Christophor turned slowly around.
"The Prince von Falkenberg! Where?"
"In the waiting-room, madame."
She moved away. She did not glance towards Julien.
"I come," she announced.
Lady Anne had some letters in her hand, which she handed to Julien. He threw them hastily aside and drew her suddenly into his arms and into the shadow of the giant palm.
"Anne," he pleaded, "not because of your mother, not because you would make me a suitable wife, but because I love you, will you marry me?"
He felt her relax in his arms.
"Julien!" she murmured.
"I didn't finish the sentence," he went on,—"to-morrow at theEmbassy?"
"Absurd!"
"It's the only way," he insisted confidently. "We couldn't be married in London. All the tribe of Harbord would come and boo, and it would save no end of gossip and bother when we got back. Anne—I love you very much and I want you just as soon as I can get you!"
"Of course, if you put it like that," she said softly,—
"Well?"
"This is the only frock I have."
"The Rue de la Paix is at our gates," he reminded her.
"Be sensible," she begged. "You can't show your-self about Paris.Something terrible will happen."
"Not it!" he replied confidently. "It's too late."
His arm crept a little further around her waist, he drew her even further back among the drooping palms.
"I think that I like this better than the last time you asked me!" she whispered.