Danger Calling

by Patricia Wentworth

  This time she certainly tossed her head.

  “I’m sure I’m very pleased to hear it. Has that Drayton got himself fired yet?”

  “Mr Drayton is still librarian.”

  She made a sound which could only be described as a snort. It disposed of Drayton as far as she was concerned.

  “I didn’t have you back to waste time on him. I’d like to have you tell me about my snakes.”

  “Your snakes?”

  “Didn’t I say it loud enough? How is Typhoon?”

  Lindsay looked blank.

  “Young man, aren’t there any works in your brain-box?” Then, her voice breaking angrily, “You’re not going to tell me he’s dead!”

  Lindsay remembered suddenly that Typhoon was the python of the portrait.

  “I’m sorry, but I don’t know anything—”

  “That’s a mouthful anyway!” said the lady. “I’d be tickled to death if you’d start in and tell me something you do know. Typhoon’s dead for all you can say—and mind you, if he is, then Algy’s going to be sorry he didn’t hand in his checks at the same time. What about Romeo and Juliet?”

  Lindsay smiled affably.

  “I’m doing my best,” he said, “but—”

  “But it don’t amount to much! They’re my cobras, and Romeo is a real smart snake and one I wouldn’t lose for the world. Juliet’s kind of bad-tempered-bites first and asks who you are afterwards; but Romeo is real smart—fond of me too, and I’d got him so that he’d travel in my pocket and never move an inch. I wish I’d taken him away when I quit, but I was afraid Juliet would fret. She’d a real tender heart, but a mighty uncertain temper.”

  “I don’t know anything about the snakes, I’m afraid,” said Lindsay.

  A look of passionate anger crossed Madame Paravicini’s face.

  “Then you can git!” she said. She strode after him to the door. Her voice echoed down the corridor. “You can tell Algy he’d better be dead if those snakes have come to any harm!”

  CHAPTER XXIII

  LINDSAY WONDERED HOW RESTOW was going to take his account of the interview. He might be quiet, or he might blow up, or he might be devastated. He began by being quiet, and passed rapidly through various stages of angry emotion. Upon the legal point, he reverted to an ominous calm. He had been striding up and down the room, but stopped now in the middle, his arms folded across his enormous chest, his jaw jutting out, his little pig eyes brightly aware.

  “Aha! We have it! What a woman! By Jing, what a woman! She is to be free, and I am not to be free! I am a good, quiet, tame, faithful husband, and she is not to be a wife at all—she is to be a blushing demoiselle—she is to marry whom she chooses—some whipper-snapper, some riff-raff, some … Bah! I spit at him! Aha! She is to be divorced, and I am not to be divorced! She is to marry, and I am not to marry!” He flung out his arms like the sails of a windmill. “We shall see—we shall see!”

  He swung round on Lindsay.

  “And there is a thing she has not thought of. She and her legal advisers! I spit at them! She has not thought that just as soon as she marries another man— Why do I talk of marriage? She is my wife—just so soon as she goes to another man I can file my divorce petition, and there is no one who can stop me. Aha!” He burst into a roar of schoolboy laughter, caught Lindsay a buffet on the shoulder and, still laughing, made for the telephone.

  “Shall I go?” asked Lindsay.

  Restow shook his head.—

  “Why should you go? Listen, and you will see—Ah!” He broke off and began to talk into the mouthpiece. “Ah, Gustave, mon vieux! Is that you? Aha! Yes! Algerius.” He slipped into French as easy and slipshod as his English.

  Lindsay reminded himself that Froth would have understood no more than a word here and there, and kept a wooden face.

  “Now, mon vieux, there is something you can do for me. … On the instant—yes. It is at this moment—” He glanced at his wrist-watch. “Yes, it is a quarter to seven. I dine in this hotel. … Yes, yes, the Luxe! I dine at the Luxe at a quarter past eight, and I require urgently two ladies to dine with me. … Mock then, imbecile! I require two ladies, and if you do not wish me to hire an assassin to put an end to your atrociously ill-spent life, you will now give me your attention. … Juste del! Serious? Have I not said that I am serious? And when my assassin has his knife in your heart it will also be serious for you—yes, an apache of the most ferocious. Attention now! As I said, I require two ladies—one middle-aged, respectable, comme il faut, a little impoverished and démodée—that would not hurt. She must appear to be the mother who has made all possible sacrifices for a single much loved child. The other—the other is to be a young girl—blonde, bien élevée, modestly conscious of my respectful adoration. … Yes, yes—they will dine with me—and afterwards I have a box for the Opera. For the fee, I give you carte blanche., and since you have wasted the little time there is, you had better hurry yourself.”

  He rang off and turned a grinning face on Lindsay.

  “Pas si bête? Hein? No, by Jing!”

  “I’m afraid I couldn’t follow—er—er—”

  Restow raised his hands above his head.

  “The English public school!” he jeered, It teaches you to win the battle of Waterloo, but not to talk ten words of Napoleon’s language! Aha! I have my thoughts of that! The battle of Waterloo is won on the playing-fields of Eton? What a magnificent camouflage! We are a school, but we do not educate, we do not teach anything at all—but when anything happens in the world we can say superbly, ‘Alone we did it. This we learned upon our cricket field!’ Eton! Harrow! Bah! All your schools are the same!”

  He snatched up the receiver again and became immersed in an effort to get on to Madame Paravicini’s suite. After saying to three people running, “No—Madame Paravicini! No, I will not give a message!” his voice suddenly altered and became so smooth and agreeable that Lindsay would hardly have known it. He dropped at the same time into English.

  “That Gloria? … Why, this is great! My secretary tells me I’m to congratulate you. … What’s that? … Oh, no, no, no, no! I am not the dog in the manger. Why, I have hopes myself. … Ah yes, I hope. She is dining with me to-night. … Yes, she and her mother. … Ah, yes, yes, yes—a young girl-quite young—the violet on the mossy stone. … No, that is not Shakespeare—that is Wordsworth… Yes—very blonde, very timid—a violet—yes, a white violet. … Ah, yes, yes—another time. I know I have all your sympathy and good wishes.”

  He hung up the receiver and shouted with laughter. “Aha! She boils with rage! A woman scorned has hell beat to a frazzle! Isn’t that Shakespeare all right? Why don’t I have a secretary who can put my quotations right?”

  “‘Hell—er—has no fury like a woman scorned,’” said Lindsay with modest pride.

  “Aha! Good! Good! Good! Pearl of a Fothering! When you have learnt French I will quote Racine too.”

  They descended to the lounge at precisely ten minutes past eight. Restow took up a commanding position with his back to a pillar inlaid with gold and blue mosaic. Lindsay thought to himself that his appearance certainly gave the expected damsel a good deal of excuse for timidity. He himself was looking about with amused interest and wondering at what stage of the proceedings Madame Gloria would put in an appearance, and what would happen when she did. The lounge was full of people. Lindsay watched them idly, his glance passing from an immense Jewess hung with pearls to a group of English people who had just come in. In a moment his heart was thumping. In the next he was telling himself savagely that if he was going to see Marian Rayne in every black-haired girl, he had better book a room in the nearest lunatic asylum and have done with it.

  The girl had her back to him. She wore a black dress. She had Marian’s height and Marian’s carriage of the head—the little air that marked her out from other girls, the something that drew his heart. Hi
s heart beat harder. She turned and met his eyes. And it was Marian—as pale as when he had seen her last—a sad, pale ghost of the Marian who had worn his ring. The shadows under her eyes were like bruises. She took a single forward step and stood still, looking at Lindsay.

  He looked back at her in shocked consternation. The girl was Marian, and there was no doubt of the recognition in her eyes. For perhaps half a minute the look of recognition persisted. Then with a piteous groping gesture she put out her hand and slipped down on to the floor.

  Lindsay was half way across the space between them before he remembered that, whoever went to Marian’s help, it must not be he. He forced himself to stand still. A stout elderly man of obviously British nationality had her head propped up against his knee. A bun-faced woman with pale blue eyes and sandy hair was fanning her. Her head drooped. Her eyes were closed. The black lashes lay upon cheeks as colourless as milk. Her hands were open palm upwards as if they had let go of everything.

  And then she stirred—stirred and opened her eyes. A long, deep look went past him.

  With a very great effort he turned and went back to Restow. Nothing felt quite real. Restow, the blue and gold pillar behind him, the two women who had joined him, were pictures with hard clear edges. They had no relation to each other, or to him, or to reality. He did not feel real himself. But Marian—there behind him, struggling out of her faint—Marian was real.

  He approached the picture of Restow. His pulses were still thudding. He heard Restow say:

  “Mr Fothering—Madame Grandier—Mademoiselle Ursule Grandier.”

  He was being presented to the perfect picture of a depressed French gentlewoman, and to that young girl bien élevée whom he had heard Restow demanding of his friend Gustave.

  Madame Grandier was dressed in an out-of-date black silk. She wore a scarf of carefully mended lace about her drooping shoulders, and a piece of black velvet round her neck. She had the anxious, beady eyes of a hen. Mademoiselle Ursule was in white. Her frock was neither new nor well cut, but she wore it with a certain modest grace. As they crossed the lounge and made their way to the restaurant, Lindsay found himself noticing these things mechanically.

  Madame Grandier addressed him, and he had sufficient composure to produce a stumbling excuse for having no French.

  “But you speak very well,” said Madame as they took their seats.

  “Tray poo,” said Lindsay firmly. He was coming back to himself.

  Madame Grandier, with a valour which he admired, addressed him in a series of painstakingly simple remarks, to which he replied at intervals with “Wee” “Nong,” or “Je ne comprong.”

  Mademoiselle Ursule, on his other side, sat silent and discreet, her pale blonde hair demurely neat, her pale blue eyes occasionally lifted in grateful admiration to Restow’s face. She ate very little. A small pleased smile came and went upon her pale rose-coloured lips.

  Restow was in great form. He toasted Mademoiselle Ursule. He toasted Madame Grandier. He demanded special wines, special dishes. The head waiter himself was called into consultation. If it was Restow’s desire to focus public attention upon his party, he achieved it. His orders given, he began to tell tales of vivid adventure, illustrating them with a good deal of expressive gesture.

  Mademoiselle Ursule hung modestly upon his words. Madame Grandier ceased her efforts at conversation ,and listened spell-bound.

  Lindsay constrained himself to look round the big dazzling room in search of Marian Rayne. She would not be there. He told himself that. She certainly would not be there. A girl does not faint at one moment, and the next come in to dinner as if nothing has happened. She certainly would not be there.

  And then he saw her. She was with a party of six. There was the stout elderly man, the bun-faced woman, another middle-aged couple, an indeterminate young man—and Marian. They had a table by one of the windows at the end of the room. He saw her profile relieved against the deep bright blue of the curtains. It was as colourless as if she were fainting still. She sat back in her chair with her head high. The young man was talking, but he could not see any movement of Marian’s still, pale lips.

  Lindsay brought himself back with a jerk. Restow was speaking.

  “My good Fothering, if you stare like that, you will be in a duel before I know what is arriving. Ladies do not like being looked at—hein, Mademoiselle Ursule?” He repeated his remark in French. “They shrink from the bold admiring eye—is it not so? It is their study to be unobserved, to pass in the crowd, to live in a modest seclusion, in a kind of cloister of all the virtues. C’est vrai—hein?”

  “Ah, monsieur, I do not know,” said Mademoiselle Ursule.

  “Like that beautiful lady just coming in, par exemple. Would she wish to be looked at, to be noticed, so that everyone might say,’ There is the most beautiful woman in the world?’ Never! Jamais de la vie! She blushes unseen. And the reason for that is that it is not possible to see a blush when there is no blush to see—no, by Jing!” His voice had dropped; its soft huskiness became almost harsh.

  Lindsay looked over his shoulder and saw Madame Gloria Paravicini come slowly up the room. He thought at first that she was alone, but presently discerned behind her a small, fair gentleman with a neat imperial and an air of considerable self-importance. It appeared unlikely that Madame’s aim was to avoid attention. She wore a sheathlike garment glittering with emerald and sapphire sequins and billowing out below the knee into a foam of peacock-coloured frills. The frills swept into a train. Her shoulders and arms were magnificently bare. Her two enormous plaits were caught behind her with a jewelled clasp. She frowned upon the crowded room and advanced with a measured, hesitant grace. “Like a cat on a strange roof,” was Lindsay’s impertinent comment.

  Restow leaned sideways in his chair and watched her, his wide mouth smiling, his eyes narrowed. When she was quite near, he sprang up and bowed.

  “But what a pleasure!” he said in French.

  From his great height he looked down over her shoulder at her escort. What he saw appeared to amuse him. He made the sort of face that he might have made at a Pom or a Pekinese, transferred his attention to Madame Gloria’s lowering face, and dropped back into crude English:

  “Say, Gloria, couldn’t you do better than that?”

  The furious blood ran up into her cheeks. For a moment Lindsay thought that she was going to strike him. Then she looked past him at Mademoiselle Ursule, who was leaning back in her chair in wide-eyed alarm. Gloria Paravicini did not speak. She lifted her eyebrows and passed on. The little man with the imperial followed her. It was obvious that he had understood Restow’s remark; he controlled a pale fury. Lindsay rather admired the way he took the encounter. He breathed more freely as the two passed to a distant table.

  Restow sat down.

  “That is the most beautiful woman in the world,” he said complacently.

  “And who is she?” asked Madame Grandier.

  “She is my wife,” said Restow, and threw a magnificent chest.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  LINDSAY COULD NEVER HAVE said what opera they heard that night. He sat in a box with Algerius Restow and the Grandiers. Algerius talked the whole way through the opera. It must have been obvious to any onlooker that he was paying his respectful attentions to Mademoiselle Ursule. At intervals Madame Grandier remarked, “Ah, que c’est beau!” Whereupon Lindsay said, “Wee.”

  It was a nightmare of an evening. He saw, not the stage or the opera singers, but Marian’s profile as he had seen it across the crowded dining-room of the Luxe. He heard, not the prima donna’s high C, but the clamour of his questioning thoughts. What was Marian doing in Paris? Who were these people she was with? Was it a coincidence that she should be here, and at the Luxe, just when Restow was here? Why had she fainted?

  The answer to this was, unfortunately, easy enough. She had fainted because she recognized him. She had s
een Lindsay Trevor, and not Trevor Fothering. She had seen Lindsay Trevor, and Lindsay Trevor was dead. It was bound to be a shock. That’s what it was a shock. It didn’t mean anything in the way of affection; it was just a shock; because of course she had been thinking of him as dead. He felt sorry that she should have had such a shock as to make her faint.

  He went back to that pale profile against the deep blue of the curtain. Its pallor touched some hidden spring of compunction. He had not been able to keep his eyes from it for long. He had looked, and then immediately looked away, not once but many times. And once, looking, he had caught, not her profile, but a fleeting startled glance that showed him how thin she had grown. After that he did not dare to look at her again.

  All things come to an end. The ladies were put into a taxi. Restow, in great spirits, insisted on walking back to the Luxe. He narrated apocryphal stories of famous opera singers. Did his dear Fothering know that Maria Celeste sang entirely on winkles and sliced cucumber?

  “But I give you my word for it.” This with much gesture. “I myself have sliced the cucumber. But you shall not get any wrong ideas into your head about my relations with this lady. They were of an absolutely outstanding propriety—yes, by Jing! I sliced cucumber for her at midnight, and no one can cast an aspersion—for at that time, my Fothering, I was a waiter. I called myself Jules Dubois. Aha! I tell you I saw some life! And in six months I made three hundred pounds in tips. I do not say that every waiter can do this. Every waiter is not an Algerius Restow under a nom-de-guerre any more than every woman who opens her mouth and squalls is a Maria Celeste.

  “Once—” he grasped Lindsay by the arm, hurrying him along and talking all the while in his soft husky voice—“Once I was at the opera in Majorca. … Was it Majorca? I do not know. Yes, I think-but if not, it does not matter. I was selling programmes, and there was a girl singing Marguerite—a pretty girl—fair hair, fine eyes, fine figure—just a little fat for Marguerite, but no matter, she is well enough, and her voice is well enough—plenty of it, and high to lift the roof. And all goes on well enough until she comes to the King in Thule, and there she sings just a quarter of a hair’s-breadth flat. In Paris in London, no one would take any notice. No, by Jing! in London I have heard the great Antonella sing flat—oh, flat enough to turn the milk sour—from one end of Boheme to the other. Aha! Yes! She kissed flat, she coughed flat, she died as flat as a piece of blotting-paper—and I went deaf on both sides with the applause. But in Majorca—no. There one is a purist—one has an ear. If anyone sings flat, they come to bury that person, not to praise him. That girl was very nearly buried. The first flat note she sings, a gentleman in a’ box takes out a revolver, and when she does it a second time he fires three shots and she falls to the ground with a bullet in her shoulder. Fortunately, he is too excited to be a good shot. I have heard many singers whom I would gladly send to Majorca. Either you sing in tune there, or you are soon dead.”