Читать книгу: «The Quest: A Romance», страница 8
"Entirely fruitless," said Ste. Marie. He went on to tell the elder man of his investigation, and of his certainty that no one resembling Arthur Benham had been at either of the two places.
"It's no affair of mine, to be sure," he said; "but I rather suspect that your agent was deceiving you – pretending to have accomplished something by way of making you think he was busy." Ste. Marie was so sure the other would immediately disclaim this that he waited for the word, and gave a little smothered laugh when Captain Stewart said promptly —
"Oh no! No! That is impossible. I have every confidence in that man. He is one of my best. No, you are mistaken there. I am more disappointed than you could possibly be over the failure of your efforts, but I am quite sure my man thought he had something worth working upon.
"By the way, I have received another rather curious communication – from Ostend this time. I will show you the letter, and you may try your luck there if you would care to." He felt in his pockets and then rose. "I've left the thing in another coat," said he; "if you will allow me, I'll fetch it." But before he had turned away the doorbell rang, and he paused.
"Ah well," he said, "another time. Here are some of my guests. They have come earlier than I had expected."
The new arrivals were three very perfectly dressed ladies, one of them an operatic light who chanced not to be singing that evening, and whom Ste. Marie had met before. The two others were rather difficult of classification, but probably, he thought, ornaments of that mysterious borderland between the two worlds which seems to give shelter to so many people against whose characters nothing definite is known, but whose antecedents and connexions are not made topics of conversation. The three ladies seemed to be on very friendly terms with Captain Stewart, and greeted him with much noisy delight. One of the unclassified two, when her host, with a glance towards Ste. Marie, addressed her formally, seemed inordinately amused, and laughed for a long time.
Within the next hour ten or a dozen other guests had arrived, and they all seemed to know each other very well, and proceeded to make themselves quite at home. Ste. Marie regarded them with a reflective and not over-enthusiastic eye, and he wondered a good deal why he had been asked here to meet them. He was as far from a prig or a snob as any man could very well be, and he often went to very Bohemian parties which were given by his painter or musician friends, but these people seemed to him quite different. The men, with the exception of two eminent opera singers, who quite obviously had been asked because of their voices, were the sort of men who abound at such places as Ostend and Monte Carlo, and Baden Baden in the race week. That is not to say that they were ordinary racing touts or the cheaper kind of adventurers: there was a count among them, and a marquis who had recently been divorced by his American wife; but adventurers of a sort they undoubtedly were. There was not one of them, so far as Ste. Marie was aware, who was received anywhere in good society, and he resented very much being compelled to meet them.
Naturally enough he felt much less concern on the score of the ladies. It is an undoubted and wellnigh universal truth that men who would refuse outright to meet certain classes of their own sex show no reluctance whatever over meeting the women of a corresponding circle – that is, if the women are attractive. It is a depressing fact, and inclines one to sighs and head-shakes and some moral indignation, until the reverse truth is brought to light: namely, that women have identically the same point of view; that while they cast looks of loathing and horror upon certain of their sisters, they will meet with pleasure any presentable man whatever his crimes or vices.
Ste. Marie was very much puzzled over all this. It seemed to him so unnecessary that a man who really had some footing in the newer society of Paris should choose to surround himself with people of this type; but, as he looked on and wondered, he became aware of a curious and, in the light of a past conversation, significant fact. All of the people in the room were young, all of them in their varying fashions and degrees very attractive to look upon, all full to overflowing of life and spirits and the determination to have a good time. He saw Captain Stewart moving among them, playing very gracefully his role of host, and the man seemed to have dropped twenty years from his shoulders. A miracle of rejuvenation seemed to have come upon him; his eyes were bright and eager, the colour was high in his cheeks, and the dry pedantic tone had gone from his voice. Ste. Marie watched him, and at last he thought he understood. It was half revolting, half pathetic, he thought, but it certainly was interesting to see.
Duval, the great basso of the Opéra, accompanied at the piano by one of the unclassified ladies, was just finishing Mefistofele's drinking song out of Faust when the door-bell rang.
CHAPTER XI
A GOLDEN LADY ENTERS: THE EYES AGAIN
The music of voice and piano was very loud just then, so that the little soft whirring sound of the electric bell reached only one or two pairs of ears in the big room. It did not reach the host certainly, and neither he nor most of the others observed the servant make his way among the groups of seated or standing people and go to the outer door, which opened upon a tiny hallway. The song came to an end, and everybody was cheering and applauding and crying bravo or bis, or one of the other things that people shout at such times, when, as if in unexpected answer to the outburst, a lady appeared between the yellow portières, and came forward a little way into the room. She was a tall lady of an extraordinary and immediately noticeable grace of movement, a lady with rather fair hair, but her eyebrows and lashes had been stained darker than it was their nature to be. She had the classic Greek type of face – and figure too – all but the eyes, which were long and narrow, narrow perhaps from a habit of going half closed; and when they were a little more than half closed, they made a straight black line that turned up very slightly at the outer end with an Oriental effect, which went oddly in that classic face. There is a very popular piece of sculpture now in the Luxembourg Gallery for which this lady "sat" as model to a great artist. Sculptors from all over the world go there to dream over its perfect line and contour, and little schoolgirls pretend not to see it, and middle-aged maiden tourists with red Baedeckersin their hands regard it furtively, and pass on, and after awhile come back to look again.
The lady was dressed in some close clinging material, which was not cloth-of-gold but something very like it, only much duller – something which gleamed when she stirred but did not glitter; and over her splendid shoulders was hung an Oriental scarf heavily worked with metallic gold. She made an amazing and dramatic picture in that golden room. It was as if she had known just what her surroundings would be and had dressed expressly for them.
The applause ceased as suddenly as if it had been trained to break off at a signal, and the lady came forward a little way, smiling a quiet assured smile. At each step her knee threw out the golden stuff of her gown an inch or two, and it flashed suddenly a dull subdued flash in the overhead light, and died and flashed again. A few of the people in the room knew who the lady was, and they looked at one another with raised eyebrows and startled faces; but the others stared at her with an eager admiration, thinking that they had seldom seen anything so beautiful or so effective. Ste. Marie sat forward on the edge of his chair. His eyes sparkled, and he gave a little quick sigh of pleasurable excitement. This was drama and very good drama too, and he suspected that it might at any moment turn into a tragedy.
He saw Captain Stewart, who had been among a group of people halfway across the room, turn his head to look, when the cries and the applause ceased so suddenly, and he saw the man's face stiffen by swift degrees, all the joyous buoyant life gone out of it, until it was yellow and rigid like a dead man's face; and Ste. Marie, out of his knowledge of the relations between these two people, nodded, en connaisseur, for he knew that the man was very badly frightened.
So the host of the evening hung back staring for what must have seemed to him a long and terrible time, though in reality it was but an instant; then he came forward quickly to greet the newcomer; and if his face was still yellow-white, there was nothing in his manner but the courtesy habitual with him. He took the lady's hand and she smiled at him; but her eyes did not smile: they were hard. Ste. Marie, who was the nearest of the others, heard Captain Stewart say —
"This is an unexpected pleasure, my dearest Olga!" And to that the lady replied more loudly —
"Yes, I returned to Paris only to-day. You didn't know, of course. I heard you were entertaining this evening and so I came, knowing that I should be welcome."
"Always!" said Captain Stewart. "Always more than welcome!" He nodded to one or two of the men who stood near, and, when they had approached, presented them. Ste. Marie observed that he used the lady's true name – she had, at times, found occasion to employ others – and that he politely called her "Madame Nilssen" instead of "Mademoiselle." But at that moment the lady caught sight of Ste. Marie, and, crying out his name in a tone of delighted astonishment, turned away from the other men, brushing past them as if they had been furniture, and advanced, holding out both her hands in greeting.
"Dear Ste. Marie!" she exclaimed. "Fancy finding you here! I'm so glad! Oh, I'm so very glad! Take me away from these people! Find a corner where we can talk. Ah! there is one with a big seat. Allons-y!" She addressed him for the most part in English, which she spoke perfectly – as perfectly as she spoke French and German and, presumably, her native tongue, which must have been Swedish.
They went to the broad low seat, a sort of hard-cushioned bench, which stood against one of the walls, and made themselves comfortable there by the only possible means, which, owing to the width of the thing, was to sit far back with their feet stuck straight out before them. Captain Stewart had followed them across the room, and showed a strong tendency to remain. Ste. Marie observed that his eyes were hard and bright and very alert, and that there were two bright spots of colour in his yellow cheeks. It occurred to Ste. Marie that the man was afraid to leave him alone with Olga Nilssen, and he smiled to himself, reflecting that the lady, even if indiscreetly inclined, could tell him nothing – save in details – that he did not already know.
But, after a few rather awkward moments, Mlle. Nilssen waved an irritated hand.
"Go away!" she said to her host. "Go away to your other guests! I want to talk to Ste. Marie. We have old times to talk over." And after hesitating awhile uneasily, Captain Stewart turned back into the room; but for some time thereafter Ste. Marie was aware that a vigilant eye was being kept upon them, and that their host was by no means at his ease.
When they were left alone together, the girl turned to him and patted his arm affectionately. She said —
"Ah, but it is very good to see you again, mon cher ami! It has been so long!" She gave an abrupt frown.
"What are you doing here?" she demanded. And she said an unkind thing about her fellow-guests. She called them canaille. She said —
"Why are you wasting your time among these canaille? This is not a place for you. Why did you come?"
"I don't know," said Ste. Marie. He was still a little resentful and he said so. He said —
"I didn't know it was going to be like this. I came because Stewart went rather out of his way to ask me. I'd known him in a very different milieu."
"Ah yes!" she said reflectively. "Yes, he does go into the world also, doesn't he! But this is what he likes, you know." Her lips drew back for an instant and she said —
"He is a pig-dog."
Ste. Marie looked at her gravely. She had used that offensive name with a little too much fierceness. Her face had turned for an instant quite white, and her eyes had flashed out over the room a look that meant a great deal to any one who knew her as well as Ste. Marie did. He sat forward and lowered his voice. He said —
"Look here, Olga! I'm going to be very frank for a moment. May I?"
For just an instant the girl drew away from him with suspicion in her eyes, and something else, alertly defiant. Then she put out her hands to his arm.
"You may be what you like, dear Ste. Marie," she said. "And say what you like. I will take it all – and swallow it alive – good as gold. What are you going to do to me?"
"I've always been fair with you, haven't I?" he urged. "I've had disagreeable things to say or do but – you knew always that I liked you and – where my sympathies were."
"Always! Always, mon cher!" she cried. "I trusted you always in everything. And there is no one else I trust. No one! No one!
"Ste. Marie!"
"What then?" he asked.
"Ste. Marie," she said, "why did you never fall in love with me, as the other men did?"
"I wonder," said he. "I don't know. Upon my word, I really don't know." He was so serious about it that the girl burst into a shriek of laughter. And in the end he laughed too.
"I expect it was because I liked you too well," he said at last. "But come! We're forgetting my lecture. Listen to your grandpère Ste. Marie! I have heard – certain things – rumours – what you will. Perhaps they are foolish lies, and I hope they are. But if not, if the fear I saw in Stewart's face when you came here to-night was – not without cause, let me beg you to have a care. You're much too savage, my dear child. Don't be so foolish as to – well, turn comedy into the other thing. In the first place it's not worth while, and in the second place it recoils, always. Revenge may be sweet. I don't know. But nowadays, with police courts and all that, it entails much more subsequent annoyance that it is worth. Be wise, Olga!"
"Some things, Ste. Marie," said the golden lady, "are worth all the consequences that may follow them." She watched Captain Stewart across the room where he stood chatting with a little group of people, and her beautiful face was as hard as marble, and her eyes were as dark as a stormy night, and her mouth, for an instant, was almost like an animal's mouth, cruel and relentless.
Ste. Marie saw, and he began to be a bit alarmed in good earnest. In his warning he had spoken rather more seriously than he felt the occasion demanded, but he began at last to wonder if the occasion was not in reality very serious indeed. He was sure, of course, that Olga Nilssen had come here on this evening to annoy Captain Stewart in some fashion. As he put it to himself, she probably meant to "make a row," and he would not have been in the least surprised if she had made it in the beginning upon her very dramatic entrance. Nothing more calamitous than that had occurred to him. But when he saw the woman's face, turned a little away and gazing fixedly at Captain Stewart, he began to be aware that there was tragedy very near him, or all the makings of it.
Mlle. Nilssen turned back to him. Her face was still hard, and her eyes dark and narrowed, with their oddly Oriental look. She bent her shoulders together for an instant, and her hands moved slowly in her lap, stretching out before her, in a gesture very like a cat's when it wakens from sleep and yawns and extends its claws, as if to make sure that they are still there and ready for use.
"I feel a little like Samson to-night," she said. "I am tired of almost everything, and I should like very much to pull the world down on top of me and kill everybody in it – except you, Ste. Marie, dear! Except you! – and be crushed under the ruins."
"I think," said Ste. Marie practically – and the speech sounded rather like one of Hartley's speeches – "I think it was not quite the world that Samson pulled down, but a temple – or a palace – something of that kind."
"Well," said the golden lady, "this place is rather like a temple – a Chinese temple, with the pig-dog for high priest."
Ste. Marie frowned at her.
"What are you going to do?" he demanded sharply. "What did you come here to do? Mischief of some kind —bien entendu– but what?"
"Do?" she said, looking at him with her narrowed eyes. "I? Why, what should I do? Nothing, of course! I merely said I should like to pull the place down. Of course I couldn't do that quite literally, now, could I? No. It is merely a mood. I'm not going to do anything."
"You're not being honest with me," he said. And at that her expression changed, and she patted his arm again with a gesture that seemed to beg forgiveness.
"Well then," she said, "if you must know, maybe I did come here for a purpose. I want to have it out with our friend Captain Stewart about something.
"And Ste. Marie, dear," she pleaded, "please, I think you'd better go home first. I don't care about these other animals, but I don't want you dragged into any row of any sort. Please, be a sweet Ste. Marie and go home. Yes?"
"Absolutely, no!" said Ste. Marie. "I shall stay, and I shall try my utmost to prevent you from doing anything foolish. Understand that! If you want to have rows with people, Olga, for Heaven's sake don't pick an occasion like this for the purpose. Have your rows in private!"
"I rather think I enjoy an audience," she said with a reflective air, and Ste. Marie laughed aloud because he knew that the naïve speech was so very true. This lady, with her many good qualities and her bad ones – not a few, alas! – had an undeniable passion for red fire that had amused him very much on more than one past occasion.
"Please, go home!" she said once more. But when the man only shook his head, she raised her hands a little way and dropped them again in her lap in an odd gesture, which seemed to say that she had done all she could do, and that if anything disagreeable should happen now, and he should be involved in it, it would be entirely his fault because she had warned him.
Then quite abruptly a mood of irresponsible gaiety seemed to come upon her. She refused to have anything more to do with serious topics, and when Ste Marie attempted to introduce them she laughed in his face. As she had said in the beginning she wished to do, she harked back to old days – the earlier stages of what might be termed the Morrison régime, and it seemed to afford her great delight to recall the happenings of that epoch. The conversation became a dialogue of reminiscence which would have been entirely unintelligible to a third person, and was indeed so to Captain Stewart, who once came across the room, made a feeble effort to attach himself, and presently wandered away again.
They unearthed from the past an exceedingly foolish song all about one "Little Willie" and a purple monkey climbing up a yellow stick. It was set to a well-known air from Don Giovanni, and when Duval, the basso heard them singing it, he came up and insisted upon knowing what it was about. He laughed immoderately over the English words when he was told what they meant, and made Ste. Marie write them down for him on two visiting cards. So they made a trio out of "Little Willie," the great Duval inventing a bass part quite marvellous in its ingenuity, and they were compelled to sing it over, and over again, until Ste. Marie's falsetto imitation of a tenor voice cracked and gave out altogether, since he was by nature baritone, if anything at all.
The other guests had crowded round to hear the extraordinary song, and when the song was at last finished several of them remained, so that Ste. Marie saw he was to be allowed an uninterrupted tête-à-tête with Olga Nilssen no longer. He therefore drifted away, after a few moments, and went with Duval and one of the other men across the room to look at some small jade objects – snuff-bottles, bracelets, buckles and the like – which were displayed in a cabinet cleverly reconstructed out of a Japanese shrine. It was perhaps ten minutes later when he looked round the place and discovered that neither Mlle. Nilssen nor Captain Stewart were to be seen.
His first thought was of relief, for he said to himself that the two had sensibly gone into one of the other rooms to "have it out" in peace and quiet. But following that came the recollection of the woman's face when she had watched her host across the room. Her words came back to him: "I feel a little like Samson to-night… I should very much like to pull the world down on top of me and kill everybody in it." Ste. Marie thought of these things and he began to be uncomfortable. He found himself watching the yellow-hung doorway beyond, with its intricate Chinese carving of trees and rocks and little groups of immortals, and he found that unconsciously he was listening for something – he did not know what – above the chatter and laughter of the people in the room. He endured this for possibly five minutes, and all at once found that he could endure it no longer. He began to make his way quietly through the group of people towards the curtained doorway.
As he went one of the women near by complained in a loud tone that the servant had disappeared. She wanted, it seemed, a glass of water having already had many glasses of more interesting things. Ste. Marie said he would get it for her and went on his way. He had an excuse now.
He found himself in a square dimly lighted room, much smaller than the other. There was a round table in the centre so he thought it must be Stewart's dining-room. At the left a doorway opened into a place where there were lights, and at the other side was another door closed. From the room at the left there came a sound of voices, and though they were not loud, one of them, Mlle. Olga Nilssen's voice, was hard and angry and not altogether under control. The man would seem to have been attempting to pacify her, and he would seem not to have been very successful.
The first words that Ste. Marie was able to distinguish were from the woman. She said in a low fierce tone —
"That is a lie, my friend! That is a lie. I know all about the road to Clamart, so you needn't lie to me any longer. It's no good." She paused for just an instant there, and, in the pause, Ste. Marie heard Stewart give a sort of inarticulate exclamation. It seemed to express anger and it seemed also to express fear. But the woman swept on and her voice began to be louder. She said —
"I've given you your chance. You didn't deserve it, but I've given it you – and you've told me nothing but lies. Well, you'll lie no more. This ends it."
Upon that Ste. Marie heard a sudden stumbling shuffle of feet and a low hoarse cry of utter terror – a cry more animal-like than human. He heard the cry break off abruptly in something that was like a cough and a whine together, and he heard the sound of a heavy body falling with a loose rattle upon the floor.
With the sound of that falling body he had already reached the doorway and torn aside the heavy portière. It was a sleeping-room he looked into, a room of medium size, with two windows and an ornate bed of the Empire style set sidewise against the farther wall. There were electric lights upon imitation candles which were grouped in sconces against the walls and these were turned on so that the room was brightly illuminated. Midway between the door and the ornate Empire bed Captain Stewart lay huddled and writhing upon the floor, and Olga Nilssen stood upright beside him, gazing down upon him quite calmly. In her right hand, which hung at her side, she held a little flat black automatic pistol of the type known as Brownings, and they look toys but they are not.
Ste. Marie sprang at her silently and caught her by the arm, twisting the automatic pistol from her grasp, and the woman made no effort whatever to resist him. She looked into his face quite frankly and unmoved, and she shook her head.
"I haven't harmed him," she said. "I was going to, yes. And then myself, but he didn't give me a chance. He fell down in a fit." She nodded down towards the man, who lay writhing at their feet.
"I frightened him," she said, "and he fell in a fit. He's an epileptic, you know. Didn't you know that? Oh yes."
Abruptly she turned away shivering, and put up her hands over her face. And she gave an exclamation of uncontrollable repulsion.
"Ugh!" she cried, "it's horrible. Horrible! I can't bear to look. I saw him in a fit once before – long ago – and I couldn't bear even to speak to him for a month. I thought he had been cured. He said – Ah, it's horrible!"
Ste. Marie had dropped upon his knees beside the fallen man, and Mlle. Nilssen said over her shoulder —
"Hold his head up from the floor, if you can bear to. He might hurt it." It was not an easy thing to do, for Ste. Marie had the natural sense of repulsion in such matters that most people have, and this man's appearance, as Olga Nilssen had said, was horrible. The face was drawn hideously, and, in the strong clear light of the electrics, it was a deathly yellow. The eyes were half closed, and the eyeballs turned up so that only the whites of them showed between the lids. There was froth upon the distorted mouth, and it clung to the cat-like moustache and to the shallow sunken chin beneath. But Ste. Marie exerted all his will power, and took the jerking trembling head in his hands, holding it clear of the floor.
"You'd better call the servant," he said. "There may be something that can be done." But the woman answered, without looking —
"No, there's nothing that can be done, I believe, except to keep him from bruising himself. Stimulants – that sort of thing, do more harm than good. Could you get him on the bed here?"
"Together we might manage it," said Ste. Marie. "Come and help!"
"I can't!" she cried nervously. "I can't – touch him. Please, I can't do it."
"Come!" said the man in a sharp tone. "It's no time for nerves. I don't like it either, but it's got to be done." The woman began a half-hysterical sobbing, but after a moment she turned and came with slow feet to where Stewart lay.
Ste. Marie slipped his arms under the man's body and began to raise him from the floor.
"You needn't help after all," he said. "He's not heavy." And indeed, under his skilfully shaped and padded clothes, the man was a mere waif of a man – as unbelievably slight as if he were the victim of a wasting disease. Ste. Marie held the body in his arms as if it had been a child, and carried it across and laid it on the bed; but it was many months before he forgot the horror of that awful thing, shaking and twitching in his hold, the head thumping hideously upon his shoulder, the arms and legs beating against him. It was the most difficult task he had ever had to perform.
He laid Captain Stewart upon the bed and straightened the helpless limbs as best he could.
"I suppose," he said, rising again, "I suppose when the man comes out of this he'll be frightfully exhausted and drop off to sleep, won't he? We'll have to – " He halted abruptly there and, for a single swift instant, he felt the black and rushing sensation of one who is going to faint away. The wall behind the ornate Empire bed was covered with photographs, some in frames, others left as they had been received upon the large squares of weird cardboard which are termed "art mounts."
"Come here a moment, quickly!" said Ste. Marie in a sharp voice. Mlle. Nilssen's sobs had died down to a silent spasmodic catching of the breath, but she was still much unnerved, and she approached the bed with obvious unwillingness, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. Ste. Marie pointed to an unframed photograph which was fastened to the wall by thumb tacks, and his outstretched hand shook as he pointed. Beneath them the other man still writhed and tumbled in his epileptic fit.
"Do you know who that woman is?" demanded Ste. Marie, and his tone was such that Olga Nilssen turned slowly and stared at him.
"That woman," said she, "is the reason why I wished to pull the world down upon Charlie Stewart and me to-night. That's who she is."
Ste. Marie gave a sort of cry.
"Who is she?" he insisted. "What is her name? I – have a particularly important reason for wanting to know. I've got to know." Mlle. Nilssen shook her head, still staring at him.
"I can't tell you that," said she. "I don't know the name. I only know that – when he met her, he – I don't know her name, but I know where she lives and where he goes every day to see her – a house with a big garden and walled park on the road to Clamart. It's on the edge of the wood, not far from Fort d'Issy. The Clamart-Vanves-Issy tram runs past the wall of one side of the park. That's all I know."
Ste. Marie clasped his head with his hands.
"So near to it!" he groaned, "and yet – Ah!" He bent forward suddenly over the bed and spelled out the name of the photographer, which was pencilled upon the brown cardboard mount.
"There's still a chance," he said. "There's still one chance." He became aware that the woman was watching him curiously, and nodded to her.
"It's something you don't know about," he explained. "I've got to find out who this – girl is. Perhaps the photographer can help me. I used to know him." All at once his eyes sharpened.
"Tell me the simple truth about something!" said he. "If ever we have been friends, if you owe me any good office, tell me this! Do you know anything about young Arthur Benham's disappearance two months ago, or about what has become of him?" Again the woman shook her head.
"No," said she. "Nothing at all. I haven't even heard of it. Young Arthur Benham! I've met him once or twice. I wonder – I wonder Stewart never spoke to me about his disappearance. That's very odd."
