CHAPTER XVIII
Carlotastood on the threshold. Her face was white in the semi-darkness. In the east a faint quiver of radiance showed in the sky like the reflection of moonlight on dark waters. Dmitri stared at the girl in wonderment.
“I want Griffeth,” she said eagerly. “I went to his house and he has not been there. Oh, I must see him, Dmitri! Tell me he is here with you!”
The underlying note of intense repression in her voice struck him, and yet he hesitated, fearful of Steccho’s safety.
“He is not here. He left after midnight. Are you alone, my dear?”
“Surely I am alone; what do you suppose I came for? Would you rather I went first to the police? I came to you because you are his friend and I need him.”
She brushed past him into the narrow hallway. He almost smiled at this twist to Griffeth’s romance. With all the ardor and recklessness of her temperament and race, Carlota had flung discretion to the winds and had come to seek the man she loved at all hazards. Once inside his door, she let her cloak slipfrom her shoulders and stood in the center of the room, a slender, isolated figure.
“You are all afraid for yourselves,” she said slowly, scornfully. “Even you, Dmitri, with all the brotherliness you profess, think only of yourself. Griffeth will not be like that. He will understand that I never can go back there.”
“You are excited and nervous.” Dmitri took her cold hands in his with the whimsical, cheery way that never failed to soothe. “Why should you go to the police? Tell me what has happened. It is surely a night of witchcraft when foul fiends prowl. So, now sit down and be very calm. I can always make you smile, with my nonsense, you see?”
She tried to meet his eyes, but her own filled with tears and she bit her lip to keep control of herself.
“Oh, Dmitri, I am frightened, after all. Did Griffeth tell you about the fête at Mrs. Nevins’s and—and how I had deceived you both, when you were so good to me? I only sang for his sake, so his opera would surely be a success. I never dreamt that any one would be there who would recognize me; you believe me, don’t you?”
Dmitri lit a fresh cigarette with musing eyes, tossed away the match, and hummed Fiametta’s motif softly under his breath.
“So you yourself have scaled the castle wall to seek your love,” he said. “Did they try to hold you from him?”
“It is worse than you can think, Dmitri. To-night when I returned there was no one in the apartment. I called up Ogden Ward; do you know him?”
Dmitri’s level eyebrows contracted at the name. He eyed her oddly, remembering Griffeth’s words that the banker had been her patron.
“I know him; what then?”
“He was stabbed in my apartment a little while ago,” she whispered. “I sent for him to come so that I might pay him back the money he had advanced for three years. I offered him some jewels that belonged to my grandmother. He laughed at me when we were alone, and said I had ruined my career by singing in the opera and had broken my word to him by meeting Griffeth and caring for him. I offered him the rubies—”
Dmitri bent over her suddenly.
“Rubies?” he repeated quickly. “What were they?”
“They belonged to Margherita Paoli, my grandmother. He had seen me wear them at the fête, and told me on the way home he wanted to buy them. But when I offered themto him, he—he refused. We were alone and I tried to fight him off. The lamp crashed to the floor and I felt his arms close about me; then I fainted.”
Dmitri watched the long green curtains at the bedroom door. They were motionless, yet he crossed over and parted them casually to glance within.
“So,” he said in relief. “And then? Do not hurry.”
“I was unconscious for a while, and when I recovered the room was still in darkness. I found the push-button in the wall and turned on the lights. Mr. Ward lay on the floor by the couch. He made a sound of moaning and it frightened me. Oh, Dmitri, it was horrible to be alone with him there. I gave him water to drink and saw that he was wounded in the back. He told me to go quietly down and tell Ishigaki who was waiting for him in his car. I must be very careful and give no alarm, he said. He had been stabbed and the jewels were gone. After I had sent the Japanese up to help him, I was afraid to go myself. I wanted Griffeth. I knew they would try to keep me from him.”
“Why did you not call him at the house on the Square?”
“I did,” she protested. “He had not comein yet, they told me. I left word for him that I must see him.”
Dmitri gazed at her glowing, expressive face with half-closed, retrospective eyes. Surely Fate had sent her to his door at the one hour of opportunity. He would save the boy Steccho from folly and crime, and give Griffeth back his love.
“Then he must have received your message after he left here,” he said cheerily. “And he will surely seek you at your own home. You must go back there.”
“I never will go back to them. I will wait for him here,” she insisted. “They will blame me for everything, for sending to Mr. Ward, for the loss of the jewels, everything, and I will not listen to them. I do not care for anything in the whole world but Griffeth.”
“Then you must safeguard him,” Dmitri urged. “They may suspect him since he knew of the jewels, and we who live and think as nomads are ever under suspicion. Have you not heard it said that all genius is insanity? It is enough that he lives in the temperamental zone of the village. Now, my dear child, you are cold and nervous. You will see how well I can take care of you. You shall sit here and drink coffee for a few moments while I go and telephone to Griffeth. And then”—he kneltbefore the brazier, stirring and blowing the embers to a blaze—“then we will have the surprise. When you were very little, did you not always love the surprise, eh? Sometimes Life is still indulgent to us; even in our greatest extremity, she grants us the surprise, and it is this that keeps up our faith, that somehow, somewhere, our own shall come to us, see?”
“If he is there when you call up, will you tell him to come here to me?” She looked at him with longing eyes, and Dmitri smiled back at her.
“Surely I will. Fate shuffles the cards, remember; man only deals them. I have ever found that we move in circles of coincidence drawn together like the particles in the spectrum by some immutable unseen force of attraction to form a cosmic harmony. You like that, do you? For, see, you go forth in the night to seek your well-beloved, like the Shulamite of old. Do you know her, my dear, among the immortal lovers?” He measured level spoonfuls of pulverized coffee into the little copper pot carefully. “Yet you remind me of her. So. When this boils up the third time, then you shall drink it while I go for your surprise.”
Out in the street a car drew up beforethe house next door. Count Jurka alighted, scanned the small brass numbers on the door carefully, and ascended the narrow steps. He wore a cloak over his evening suit, the cape thrown back over one shoulder, and as he waited he hummed a waltz air from the last opera he had heard in Bucharest. Surely the road of fortune lay free to the intrepid traveler. They had thought, with the sop of peace thrown to her, that Bulgaria would lie still like a whipped cur. The royalist cause was denied recognition save as the latest king licked the hand that fed him. Only in the old queen, rebellious and restless in her exile, was the spirit of dominion. He smiled as he recalled her favors.
“A straight line—a goal!”
The line from Nietzsche swam through his head. He felt supremely satisfied with life. The message from Steccho had reached him at the hotel and he had come himself. As he was directed by the sleepy houseman to the room at the top of the first flight of stairs, he balanced the boy’s destiny for him. Was it wiser to silence him now or on the voyage back? He would leave it to Georges. Yet not even to him would he give the pleasure of receiving the royal rubies. He lit a cigarette at the head of the stairs and tapped on the door.
There was dead silence within. He tried the knob, and found the key turned on the inner side.
“Open,” he said curtly. “It is I.”
Steccho obeyed slowly. He had been sitting on the narrow cot, his head buried in his hands. His shirt was open at the throat as if it had choked him. In the dim light from the one gas-jet his face looked haggard and yellow under his long, straight, disheveled hair.
“You have kept me waiting.” Jurka closed the door behind him, standing with his back to it. “Where are the jewels?”
The blood rushed to Steccho’s head. He threw back his hair with a quick movement of his head, and smiled in the old servile way.
“I have them all, excellenza. One moment only. You can swear to me by your own life that I shall find all well at Rigl, that they will be there to greet me, my mother and little Maryna?”
Around the lips of the Count there curved an amused smile.
“I swear to you I will send you where they are,” he said slowly.
As the meaning of his words flashed upon the boy, he flung himself forward, his fingers seizing his throat.
“Go thou before me!” he gasped. “Liarand murderer, see who it is that kills you! Look deep in my eyes! I, Ferad Steccho, send you out of life! Think on my mother!” His fingers choked the thin, white neck of Jurka relentlessly, but the Count fought back with all the advantage of a trained body and mind. They fell on the couch together, locked in a death-grapple. Almost without sound, save for the stifled breathing, they fought until Jurka wrenched himself free, and staggered back.
“Excellenza!” Steccho breathed, his face the very mask of hate, “I have heard the truth. They are dead these five months, my mother cut down by famine, my sister—Oh, God, hear me!—Maryna is dead, a woman thing thrown to your soldiers to be done to death at their pleasure; you hear me! You swore to me by the cross you would protect them, and you knew this all the time you lied to me. You knew when you sent me last night to rob and kill for you.”
“If I call for help, what then?” sneered Jurka. “I will swear you robbed me.”
“Call! Call on your queen to save you.” The boy leaped upon him like a panther and bore him to the floor, his bare hands gripping remorselessly at the white, slim throat. He bent over the mottled, horror-stricken face, forcing the glazing eyes to stare into his, andlaughed softly. “See, I could kill you with the knife, but I will have you look at me, so, straight to the door of death. Excellenza, the rubies are red. Think on the blood of the innocents you have killed, thousands and thousands. They wait for you—”
He felt the figure beneath him twist and strain with one last tremendous effort to force him off. The Count’s hands fumbled blindly, searchingly, and there came a dull report. Hardly had Steccho felt the touch of the automatic as it was pressed to his side. The pain was deadened by the joy of watching the light die out of the staring, maddened eyes. His fingers loosened their grasp unwittingly. The form of Jurka crumpled to the floor, and Steccho pressed his hands against his side, looking at them curiously. Sinking into the chair by the low table, he pulled the jewels from his pockets. They were moist and dulled. What was it Dmitri had warned him?
“They are accursed. Red for the blood of your people, pearls for the tears they have shed.”
He picked up the heavy tiara and dashed it down into the dead face upon the floor.
“Excellenza,” he whispered, “think on them, they wait for you—” His head fell forward on his breast. The lines of the wall-paperseemed to dance and entwine as life slipped from his reach. “The sun shines on the yellow castle,” he murmured huskily. “Maryna’s hair, yellow in the sun, yellow like gold, excellenza, and wet with blood.” He sighed heavily, groping for something with the seeking touch of the blind, something he had let fall when he had seized the white throat of Jurka. And suddenly there was utter silence in the room, the curious silence where there is no breath of life stirring.
Next door Dmitri paused on the steps as he closed the door behind him. In the east a glow of deepest rose flushed the mother-of-pearl clouds into shells of trembling, lambient radiance. He eyed it happily. It was a symbol, that promise of the daybreak. So in the earth-lands overseas the dawn of humanity was coming despite the upheavals of class struggles. He would come back and pack after he had returned Carlota safely to Griffeth, together with the jewels. Then he and Steccho would take the homeward way together. He glanced down the shadowy street. There was no one in sight. He entered the house by the basement door. The houseman smiled and nodded to him as he set out empty milk bottles. He mounted the stairs with a light, buoyant step and knocked at Steccho’s door. There was noresponse, and he pushed the door open. Something there was inside that lay close against it, impeding his entrance, and he peered around, thinking the boy had slept there in heavy exhaustion.
“Ferad!” he called cheerily. “It is daybreak. You sleep late.”
But the boy did not stir. He slept well in the last bivouac, and, turning, Dmitri beheld the other stark form beside him, he who had been the court chamberlain, the debonair Jurka, the queen’s messenger. Crushed in the hand of Steccho was the letter from Sofia. He unclenched the stiffened fingers gently and read it with half-closed eyes and contracted muscles. Placing it in his own inner pocket, he searched both bodies. On Jurka he found a leather wallet filled with bank-notes and documents. There was no time to examine them. He noticed only the Count’s personal card and the address, the Hotel Dupont. In another pocket was a bunch of keys which he took. Not a sign was there in the room of the jewels. Only in Steccho’s raincoat pocket he discovered a large unset opal, one of those toys Ward had played with, kept by the boy to please Maryna. He went out as he had come, nodding again to the houseman.
There was no time to waste. There would bethe hue and cry of the police and newspapers. He would be brought into it inevitably. Outside the house he paused and lighted a cigarette deliberately, then sauntered to the corner where a light burned all night in the little Bulgarian café of Barouki. It was part of the creed of life to Barouki not to ask questions of any one, which attribute rendered his place popular among those who came from Sofia. Dmitri greeted the sleepy-eyed old man, and entered the dusty booth at the end of the café. His voice was pleasant and comradely as he called the apartment of Ogden Ward.
“But you will be kind enough to disturb him, nevertheless,” he urged upon Ishigaki. “Tell him I have an opal to return to him.”
Dmitri came from the café with a little smile on his lips. He hailed a becalmed taxi in front of a chop-house near the elevated station, and drove back for Carlota.
“I should never have come to you, should I?” she asked, tiredly, as she leaned her head back on the cushions. “What was the surprise?”
“My very dear child,” he said tenderly, “you must trust me. I believe in fate and opportunity, in what we call in my land the hour appointed, and never in my life have I been permitted to watch the gods at work so muchas now. Sleep awhile as we drive uptown. I will waken you at Fifty-Ninth Street, where I leave you. And you must not be afraid. Love is eternal. Nothing can kill it. Remember that. Only keep faith with yourself.”
He watched her lips relax and her lashes droop. As the car hurried uptown through silent streets the hum of the city gradually began, the far-off call of the ferry-boats sounded in the gray sea mist, a fire engine clanged down Fourth Avenue. Dmitri folded his arms, looking straight ahead of him, and seeing two set faces under the flickering gaslight. They had passed out of the play, Jurka and the boy Ferad. Who had profited by their death? The queen’s rubies still lured with their unholy splendor another’s feet along the trail of death.