Works of Sax Rohmer

by Sax Rohmer

  “My dear Flamby, it is next to impossible to find a flawless model among the professionals. Hammett or anybody will tell you the same. They lack that ideal delicacy, what Crozier calls ‘the texture of nobility,’ which one finds in a woman of good family. Half the success of my big subjects has been due to my models. This will be recognised when the history of modern art comes to be written. I am held up at the moment, and that is the reason why I am anxious to start on Keats.”

  “What is holding you up?”

  “My model for The Circassian has jibbed. Otherwise it would be finished.”

  “There are disadvantages attaching to your method after all?”

  “Yes. I shall avoid married models in future. Husbands are so inartistic.”

  “You don’t want me to believe that some misguided married woman has been posing for The Circassian?”

  “Why misguided? It will be a wonderful picture.”

  “It is that Eastern thing is it not? — the marble pool and a half veiled figure lying beside it with one hand in the water?”

  “Yes, but I’ve had to shelve it. Did I show you that last sketch for the Keats picture?”

  “You did, Orlando; but dismiss the idea that I am going to play Phryne to your Apelles. It won’t come off. It may work successfully with daft society women who have got bored with pretending to be nurses and ambulance drivers but you really cannot expect Flamby Duveen to begin competing with the professional models. I could quote something from Ovid that would be quite to the point but you wouldn’t understand and I should have to laugh all by myself.”

  “You are a tantalising little devil,” said James, his dull brain seeking vainly a clue to the cause of Flamby’s obduracy.

  Flamby, meanwhile maturing her plan, made the next move. “Is the Keats picture to be more important than The Circassian?” she asked naively.

  “Of course,” James replied, believing that at last a clue was his. “I have told you that it will be my masterpiece.” He had offered an identical assurance to many a hesitant amateur.

  “Is your model for The Circassian really very pretty?”

  “She is; but of a more ordinary type than you, kid. You are simply a nymph in human shape. You will send the critics crazy.”

  He watched her with scarcely veiled eagerness, and Flamby, placing the end of her cigarette in a silver ash-tray, seemed to be thinking.

  “Is she — well-known?”

  James recognised familiar symptoms and his hopes leapt high. “If I show you the canvas and you recognise the model will you promise not to tell anybody? I am painting it by a new process. I got the idea from Wiertz. The violet gauze of the veil is only indicated yet.”

  Flamby nodded, watching him wide-eyed. Her expression was inscrutable. He crossed the big studio and wheeled an easel out from the recess in which it had been concealed. The canvas was draped and having set it in a good light he turned, taking a step forward. “No telling,” he said.

  “No,” replied Flamby, rising from her extemporised diwân.

  James towered over her slight figure vastly. “Give me a kiss and I will believe you,” he said.

  Flamby felt a tingling sensation and knew that a flush was rising from her neck to her brow, but with success in view she was loth to abandon her scheme. “Show me first,” she said.

  “Oh, no. Be a sport, kid. You might do me no end of harm if you blabbed. Give me a kiss and I shall know we are pals.” He placed his hand on Flamby’s shoulder and she tried not to shrink. The rich colour fled from her cheeks and her oval face assumed that even, dusky hue which was a danger signal, but which Orlando James failed to recognise for one.

  “I don’t want to kiss you; I want to see the picture.”

  “And I don’t want you to see the picture until you have kissed me,” replied James, smiling confidently and clasping his arm around Flamby’s shoulders. “Only one tiny kiss and I shall know I can trust you.”

  He drew her close, and Flamby experienced a thrill of terror because of the strength of his arm and her own helplessness. But she averted her face and thrust one hand against James’s breast, fighting hard to retain composure. He bent over her and thereupon Flamby knew that the truce must end. Her heart began to throb wildly.

  “I won’t kiss you!” she cried. “Let me go!”

  Orlando James looked into her face, now flushed again and found the lure of Flamby’s lips to be one beyond his powers of rejection. “Don’t get wild, kiddie,” he said softly. “You need not be cruel.”

  “Let me go,” repeated Flamby in a low voice.

  He held her closer and his face almost touched hers. Whereupon the storm burst. “Are you going to let me go?” said Flamby breathlessly; and even as she spoke James sought to touch her lips. Flamby raised her open hand and struck him hard upon the cheek. “Now will you let me go!”

  Orlando James laughed loudly. “You lovely little devil,” he cried. “I shall kiss you a hundred times for that.”

  Backward swung Flamby’s foot and James received a shrewd kick upon his shin. But the little suede shoes which Flamby wore were incapable of inflicting such punishment as those heavy boots which once had wrought the discomfiture of Fawkes. James threw both arms around her and lifted her bodily, as one lifts a child, smiling into her face. She battled against him, hand and foot, but could strike with slight force because of her helpless position. He crushed her to him and kissed her on the lips. As he did so she remembered the form of her French shoes and raising her right foot she battered madly at his knee with the high wooden heel. One of the blows got home, and uttering a smothered curse James dropped her, but did not release her.

  “You low dirty swine!” she cried at him.

  He held her by her arms and now she suddenly twisted violently, writhed and wrenched herself free, leaving a velvet sleeve in James’s grasp and leaping back from him, one creamy shoulder bared by the tattered gown and her wonderful hair loosened and foaming about her head to lend her the aspect of a beautiful Bisharîn girl, wild as the desert gazelle. James saw that she wore an antique gold locket upon a thin chain about her neck. He clutched at her, but she bounded back again, her eyes blazing dangerously and snatched up the Japanese cabinet. With all her strength she hurled it at his head.

  “Take that,” she screamed, flushing scarlet— “blast you!”

  He ducked, inhaling sibilantly, but a corner of the little cabinet struck his forehead, and he stumbled, caught his foot against a cushion and fell across the table amid a litter of china and silver ware. He clutched at the draped picture, and canvas and easel fell crashing to the floor, revealing the nearly completed Circassian. Flamby sprang across the studio, wrenched open the door and ran out banging it behind her. As it closed she fell back against it, panting — and saw Paul Mario approaching from the direction of Chauvin’s.

  VIII

  In the glance which Paul gave Flamby there was something odic and strange. He experienced a consciousness of giving and a consciousness of loss. Flamby was aware of intense shame and mad joy. She threw her arm over her bare shoulder to hide it and shrank back against the door not daring to raise her eyes again. She was trembling violently. Beneath her downcast lashes she could see the door of Chauvin’s studio, and suddenly she determined to fly there for shelter, as had been her original intention. She started — but Paul held her fast. Flamby hid her face against his coat.

  “Flamby — who has done this?” Paul’s voice was very low and very steady.

  Flamby swallowed emotionally, but already her quick wit was at work again and she realised that Paul must be prevented from entering James’s studio, must be spared a sight of the picture which lay upon the floor. “We were — just ragging,” she said tremulously, “and it got too rough. So I — ran out My dress is torn, you see.” She did not look up. Paul’s Harris tweed coat had a faint odour of peat and tobacco. She realised that she was clutching him for support.

  He was carrying a light Burberry on his arm, and he held it ope
n for her. “Slip this on, Flamby,” he said, in the same low, steady voice, “and sit there on the ledge for a moment.” He helped her to put on the coat, which enveloped her grotesquely, led her to the low parapet which surrounded the figure of the dancing faun and stepped toward the door of James’s studio.

  Flamby leapt up and clutched his arm with both hands. “No, no!” she cried. “You must not go in there! Oh, please listen to me! I don’t want you to go in.”

  Paul half turned, looking down at her. “Don’t excite yourself, Flamby. I shall not be a moment.”

  But she clutched him persistently until, looking swiftly up at him, she saw the pallor of his olive skin and the expression in his eyes. She allowed him to unlock her fingers from his arm and she dropped down weakly on to the narrow stone ledge as he crossed to the studio door. It was very still in the courtyard. Some sparrows were chirping up on a roof, but the sounds of the highroad were muted and dim. Paul grasped the brass handle and sought to turn it. As he did so Flamby realised that James had bolted the door. Paul stood for a moment looking at the massive oak and then turned away, rejoining Flamby. “Come along to Chauvin’s,” he said. “I will get a cab for you.”

  The only occupant of Chauvin’s studio was a romantic-looking man wearing a very dirty smock, a man who looked like an illustration for La Vie de Bohème, so that a stranger must have mistaken him for a celebrated artist although he actually combined the duties of a concierge with those of a charwoman. He displayed no surprise when Flamby came in, wild-haired, arrayed in Paul’s Burberry.

  “See if you can get a taxi, Martin,” said Flamby, dropping into a huge Jacobean arm-chair over which a purple cloak was draped. A King Charles spaniel who had been asleep on a cushion awoke immediately and jumped on to her knees. Flamby caressed the little animal, looking down at his snub-nosed face intently. Paul walked up and down the studio. He began speaking in a low voice.

  “I had hoped, Flamby, that you had done as I once asked you to do and dropped — Orlando James.”

  “I did,” said Flamby quickly and continuing to caress the spaniel. “I wrote to Don the very night you told me to.”

  “And I am sure that Don agreed with me.”

  “He did, yes. But — Don knows I still pretend to be friends with — James.”

  Paul stood still, facing her, but she did not look up. “Don knows this?”

  Flamby nodded her head. She did not seem to care that her hair was in disorder. “He knows that I hate James, though,” she added.

  “I don’t understand at all. Whatever can have induced you to trust yourself in that ruffian’s studio?”

  “I’ve been before. It was my fault. I made him think he was doing fine.”

  “Doing fine?”

  “He is so infernally conceited. I wanted to let him down. But he got desperate. He is not a man; he’s a pig. But I threw a cabinet at him.”

  “Did you hit him?” asked Paul grimly.

  “Yes; but I wish it had been a brick.”

  “So do I,” replied Paul. “I shall not ask you for particulars, Flamby, but I shall take certain steps which will make London too hot to hold Mr. Orlando James.” His restrained passion was electric and it acted upon Flamby in a curious way and seemed to set her heart singing.

  When Martin returned to report that a cab waited, Paul walked out under the arch to the street and having placed Flamby in the cab, he held her hand for a moment and their glances met. “Dear little wild-haired Flamby,” he said, and his voice had the same note of tenderness which she had heard in it once before and of which she had dreamed ever since. “Take care of yourself, little girl. You belong to the clean hills and the sweet green woods which I almost wish you had never left.”

  * * * * * *

  For long after the cab had passed around the corner Paul stood by the archway staring in that direction, but presently he aroused himself and returned to the courtyard. He tried the handle of James’s door but learned that the bolt remained fastened, whereupon he determined to proceed to Thessaly’s flat.

  A definite change had taken place in the relations existing between himself and Flamby. For all her wildness and her reckless behaviour, that day she had appealed to him as something fragrantly innocent and bewilderingly sweet. The memory of the Charleswood photographs had assumed a different form, too, and he suddenly perceived possibilities of an explanation which should exculpate the girl from a graver sin than that of bravado. He had seen something in her eyes which had rendered such an explanation necessary, had found there something stainless as the heart of a wild rose. Devil-may-care was in her blood and he doubted if she knew the meaning of fear, but for evil he now sought in vain and wondered greatly because he had so misjudged her. He experienced a passionate desire to protect her, to enfold her in careful guardianship. He knew that he had not wanted to leave her at the gate of the studios, but he had only recognised this to be the case at the very moment of parting. He had never entertained an interest quite identical in anyone and he sought to assure himself that it was thus that a father thought of his child. He wondered if it had been her hair or her lips which had maddened Orlando James; he wondered why she had been in the studio; and a cold hatred of James took up a permanent place in his heart.

  In the narrow thoroughfare connecting Victoria Street with that in which Thessaly’s flat was situated were a number of curious shops devoted to the sale of church ornaments, altar candlesticks, lecterns, silk banners, cassocks and birettas, statuettes of the Virgin, crucifixes and rosaries. Paul stood before the window of one, reading the titles of the books which were also displayed there, Garden of the Soul, The Little Flowers of St. Francis of Assisi. A phrase arose before him; he did not seem to hear it but to see it dancing in smoky characters which partially obscured a large ivory crucifix: “To shatter at a blow the structure of the ages.” He recalled that Cardinal Pescara had used those words. His mood was unrestful and his brain was haunted by unaccountable memories, so that when he found himself in the shadow of the lofty campanile of Westminster Cathedral his spirit became translated to an obscure lane in Cairo. Faint organ notes reached his ears.

  Thessaly received him in a little room having a balcony which overhung the street. Delicate ivory plaques decorated the walls and the fanciful curtains of Indian muslin hung like smoke of incense in the still air. There were some extraordinary pastels by Degas forming a kind of frieze. The evening was warm and the campanile upstood against a sky blue as a sapphire dome. The Cairo illusion persisted.

  “Do you know, Thessaly,” said Paul, “to-night I cannot help thinking of a scene I once witnessed in El Wasr. I formed one of a party of three and we were wandering aimlessly through those indescribable lanes. Pipes wailed in the darkness to an accompaniment of throbbing — throbbing of the eternal darâbukeh which is like the pulsing of evil life through the arteries of the secret city. Harsh woman-voices cried out in the night and bizarre figures flitted like bats from the lighted dance halls into the shadows of nameless houses. We came to a long, narrow street entirely devoted to those dungeon-like chambers with barred windows whose occupants represent all the classified races of the East and all the unclassified sins of the Marquis de Sade. Another street crossed it at right angles and at the cross roads was a mosque. The minaret stood up blackly against the midnight sky and as we turned the corner we perceived what appeared to be another of the ‘cages’ immediately facing the door of the mosque. Out of the turmoil of the one street we came into this other and leaving discord and evil behind us entered into silence and peace. We looked in at the barred window. Woman voices reached us faintly from the street we had left and the muted pulse of the darâbukeh pursued us. Upon a raised dais having candles set at his head and feet reposed a venerable sheikh, dead. His white beard flowed over his breast. He reclined in majestic sleep where the pipes were wailing the call of El Wasr, and the shadow of the minaret lay upon life and upon death. Is it not strange that this scene should recur to me to-night?”

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p; “Strange and uncomplimentary,” replied Thessaly. “Whilst I have no objection to your finding an analogy between my perfectly respectable neighbours and the women of the Wasr, the rôle of a defunct and saintly Arab does not appeal to me.” Some reflection of the setting sun touched him where he stood and bathed him as in fire. The small tight curls of hair and beard became each a tongue of flame and his eyes glittered like molten gold. “Pardon my apparent rudeness, but I don’t think you are listening.”

  “I am not,” murmured Paul. “Your words reach me from a great distance. My spirit is uneasy to-night, and whilst myself I remain in your ivory room and hear you speak another self stands in a vast temple of black gleaming granite before the shrine of a golden bull.”

  “You are possibly thinking of Apis. From Cairo you have proceeded to Sakkâra. Or are the gaudy hue of my hair and the yeoman proportions of my shape responsible for the idea?”

  “I cannot say, nor was I actually thinking of the Serapeum.”

  “You are not yourself. You have been studying the war news or else you have passed a piebald horse without spitting twice and crossing your fingers.”

  Paul laughed, but not in the frank boyish way that was so good to hear. “I am not myself, Thessaly, or if I am I do not recognise myself.”

  “You have committed some indiscretion such as presenting your siren-haired protégée, Flamby Duveen, to your wife.”

  “I have not,” said Paul sharply.

  “I am glad. He who presents one pretty woman to another makes two lifelong enemies.”

  “I did not know that you had met Flamby.”

  “She has been described to me and she sounds dangerous. I distrust curly-haired girls. They are full of electricity, and electricity is a force of which we know so little. Does the idea of a cocktail appeal to you? I have a man who has invented a new cocktail which he calls ‘Fra Diavolo.’ Viewed through the eyes of Fra Diavolo you will find the world a more cheery globe.”