“Isn’t this a little melodramatic?” Nigel murmured.
“Melodrama is often nearer the truth than people think,” she said. “Shall I give you another instance? I know of several.”
“One more, then.”
“Prince Shan was in Paris two years ago, incognito,” she continued. “There was at the time a small but very fashionable restaurant in the Bois, close to the Pré Catelan. He presented himself one night there for dinner, accompanied, I believe, by La Belle Nita, the Chinese dancer who is in London to-day. As you know, there is little in Prince Shan’s appearance to denote the Oriental, but for some reason or other the proprietor refused him a table. Prince Shan made no scene. He left and went elsewhere. Three nights later, the café was burnt to the ground, and the proprietor was ruined.”
“Anything else?” Nigel asked.
“Only one thing more,” she replied. “I have known him slightly for years. In Asia he ranks to all men as little less than a god. His palaces are filled with priceless treasures. He has the finest collection of jewels in the world. His wealth is simply inexhaustible. His appearance you appreciate. Yet I have never seen him look at a woman as he looked at your cousin the first time he met her. I was at the Ritz with my father, and I watched. I know you think that I am being foolish. I am not. I am a person with a very great deal of common sense, and I tell you that Prince Shan has never desired a thing in life to which he has not helped himself. Maggie is a clever child, but she cannot toss knives with a conjuror.”
Nigel was impressed and a little worried.
“It seems absurd to think that anything could happen to Maggie here in London,” he said, “after—”
He paused abruptly. Naida smiled at him.
“After her escape from Germany, I suppose you were going to say? You see, I know all about it. There was no Prince Shan in Berlin.”
He shrugged his shoulders slightly.
“Well,” he admitted, “I don’t quite bring myself to believe in your terrible ogre, so I shall not worry. Tell me what news you have from Russia?”
“Political?”
“Any news.”
She smiled.
“I notice,” she said, “that English people are changing their attitude towards my country. A few years ago she seemed negligible to them. Now they are beginning to have—shall I call them fears? Even my kind host, I think, would like to know what is in Paul Matinsky’s heart as he hears the friends of Oscar Immelan plead their cause.”
“I admit it,” he told her frankly. “I will go farther. I would give a great deal to know what is in your own mind to-day concerning us and our destiny. But these things are not for the moment. It was not to discuss or even to think of them that I asked you here to-day.”
“Why did you invite me, then?” she asked, smiling.
“Because I wanted the pleasure of having you opposite me,” he replied,—“because I wanted to know you better.”
“And are you progressing?”
“Indifferently well,” he acknowledged. “I seem to gain a little and slide back again. You are not an easy person to know well.”
“Nothing that is worth having is easy,” she answered, “and I can assure you, when my friendship is once gained, it is a rare and steadfast thing.”
“And your affection?” he ventured.
Her eyes rested upon his for a moment and then suddenly drooped. A little tinge of colour stole into her cheeks. For a moment she seemed to have lost her admirable poise.
“That is not easily disturbed,” she told him quietly. “I think that I must have an unfortunate temperament, there are so few people for whom I really care.”
He took his courage into both hands.
“I have heard it rumoured,” he said, “that Matinsky is the only man who has ever touched your heart.”
She shook her head.
“That is not the truth. Paul Matinsky cares for me in his strange way, and he has a curiously exaggerated appreciation of my brain. There have been times,” she went on, after a moment’s hesitation, “when I myself have been disturbed by fancies concerning him, but those times have passed.”
“I am glad,” he said quietly.
His fingers, straying across the tablecloth, met hers. She did not withdraw them. He clasped her hand, and it remained for a moment passive in his. Then she withdrew it and leaned back in her chair.
“Is that meant to introduce a more intimate note into our conversation?” she asked, with a slight wrinkling of the forehead and the beginnings of a smile upon her lips.
“If I dared, I would answer ‘yes’,” he assured her.
“They tell me,” she continued pensively, “that Englishmen more than any other men in the world have the flair for saying convincingly the things which they do not mean.”
“In my case, that would not be true,” he answered. “My trouble is that I dare not say one half of what I feel.”
She looked across the table at him, and Nigel suddenly felt a great weight of depression lifted from his heart. He forgot all about his country’s peril. Life and its possibilities seemed somehow all different. He was carried away by a rare wave of emotion.
“Naida!” he whispered.
“Yes?”
Her eyes were soft and expectant. Something of the gravity had gone from her face. She was like a girl, suddenly young with new thoughts.
“You know what I am going to say to you?”
“Do not say it yet, please,” she begged. “Somehow it seems to me that the time has not come, though the thought of what may be in your heart is wonderful. I want to dream about it first,” she went on. “I want to think.”
He laughed, a strange sound almost to his own ears, for Nigel, since his uncle’s death, had tasted the very depths of depression.
“I obey,” he agreed. “It is well to dally with the great things. Meanwhile, they grow.”
She smiled across at him.
“I hope that they may,” she answered. “And you will ask me to lunch again?”
“Lunch or dine or walk or motor—whatever you will,” he promised.
She reflected for a moment and then laughed. She was drawing on her gloves now, and Nigel was paying the bill.
“There are some people who will not like this,” she said.
“And one,” he declared, “for whom it is going to make life a Paradise.”
They passed out into the street and strolled leisurely westwards. As they crossed Trafalgar Square, a stream of newsboys from the Strand were spreading in all directions. Nigel and his companion seemed suddenly surrounded by placards, all with the same headlines. They paused to read:
TRIUMPH OF THE CHANCELLOR HUGE REDUCTION OF THE NATIONAL DEBT TOTAL ABOLITION OF THE INCOME TAX
They walked on. Naida said nothing, although she shook her head a little sorrowfully. Nigel glanced across the Square and down towards Westminster.
“They will shout themselves hoarse there this afternoon,” he groaned.
For the first time she betrayed her knowledge of coming events.
“It is amazing,” she whispered, “for the writing on the wall is already there.”
CHAPTER XIX
Table of Contents
Seated in one of the first tier boxes at the Albert Hall, in the gorgeous but obsolete uniform of a staff officer in the Russian Imperial Forces, Prince Karschoff, with Nigel on one side and Maggie on the other, gazed with keen interest at the brilliant scene below and around. The greatest city the world has ever known seemed in those days to have entered upon an orgy of extravagance unprecedented in history. Every box and every yard of dancing space on the floor beneath was crowded with men and women in wonderful fancy costumes, the women bedecked with jewels which eager merchants had brought together from every market of the world; even the men, in their silks and velvets and ruffles, carrying out the dominant note of wealth. It was a ball given for charity and under royal patronage.
“All our friends seem to be here to-night,”
the Prince remarked, glancing around. “I saw Naida with her father and the eternal Oscar Immelan. Chalmers is here with an exceedingly gay party, and yonder sits his Imperial Highness, looking very much the barbaric prince.—By the by,” he added, glancing towards Maggie, “I thought that he was not coming?”
Maggie, who seemed a little tired, nodded quietly. It was a week or ten days later, and an early season was now in full swing.
“He told me that he was not coming,” she said. “I suppose the temptation to wear that gorgeous raiment was too much for him.”
“Apropos of that, there is one curious thing to be noted here with regard to clothes,” the Prince continued. “Amongst the men, you find Venetian Doges, Chancellors, gallants of every age, but scarcely a single uniform. In a way, this seems typical of the passing of the militarism of your country. You are beginning to remind me of Venice in the Middle Ages. There is a new type of brain dominant here, fat instead of muscle, a citizen aristocracy instead of the lean, clear-eyed, athletic type.”
Maggie moved in her place a little irritably.
“I am tired of warnings,” she declared. “I wish some one could do something.”
“It is impossible,” the Prince pronounced solemnly. “Napoleon earned for himself a greater claim to immortality when he christened the English a nation of shopkeepers than when he won the Battle of Austerlitz. If the Englishman of to-day saw his material prosperity slipping away from him, then indeed he would be nervous and restless, ready to lean towards every wind that blew, to listen to every disquieting rumour. To-day his bank balance is prodigious, and all’s well with the world.—How wonderfully Prince Shan lives up to his part to-night!”
They looked across towards the opposite box, whose single occupant, in the bright green robes of a mandarin, sat looking down upon the gay throng with an absolutely immovable expression. There was something almost regal about his air of detachment, his solitude amidst such a gay scene.
“There is one of the strangest and most consistent figures in history,” Karschoff, who was in a talkative frame of mind, went on reflectively. “I honestly believe that Prince Shan considers himself to be of celestial descent, to carry in his person the honour of countless generations of Manchus. He has no intimates. Even Immelan usually has to seek an audience. What his pleasures may be, who knows?—because everything that happens with him happens behind closed walls. To-night, the door of his box is guarded as though he were more than royalty. No one is allowed to enter unless he has special permission.”
“There is some one entering now,” Maggie pointed out, “for the first time. Watch!”
La Belle Nita stood for a moment in the front of the box. She was dressed in the gala costume of a Chinese lady, in a cherry-coloured robe with wide sleeves, her hair, with its many jewelled ornaments, like a black pool of night, her face ghastly white with a superabundance of powder. Prince Shan turned his head slightly towards her, and though no muscle of his face moved, it was obvious that her coming was unwelcome. She began to talk. He listened with the face of a sphinx. Presently she drew back into the shadows of the box. She had thrown herself into a chair, and her face was hidden.
“La Belle Nita has made a mistake,” Maggie observed. “His Serene Highness evidently had no wish to be disturbed.”
Karschoff’s eyes rested upon the figure in green silk, and they were filled with an unwilling admiration.
“That man is magnificent,” he declared. “Watch his face now that he is speaking. Not a muscle moves, not a flash in his eyes, yet one has the fancy that he is saying terrible things.”
It was obvious, a moment later, that La Belle Nita had left the box. Maggie sprang up. Her colour was a little heightened. There was a rare nervousness in her tone.
“Let us walk around and find some of the others,” she suggested, turning to Nigel. “I want to dance.”
They all three passed out and mingled with the dancers. Maggie put on her mask and deliberately glided into the crowd as though with the intention of losing herself. It was not until she was underneath Prince Shan’s box and out of sight of its occupant that she paused. Her thoughts were in a turmoil. His presence there, after his deliberate assurance to her that he had no intention of coming, his calm and unnoticing regard of her and every one else, seemed to confirm in every way the wave of pessimism which she as well as Nigel was experiencing. She had passed Immelan in the entrance, and there was something ominously disturbing in his cool, triumphant smile. She pictured to herself the agreement signed, some nameless terror already launched. She remembered that Nigel had complained of Naida’s inaccessibility during the last few days. She herself had been surprised at Prince Shan’s apparent withdrawal, temporary though it might be, from the peculiar but impressive position which he had taken up with regard to her.
She stood back against the wall, in a dark corner, striving to collect her thoughts, thankful for the brief respite from conversation. A man in the costume of a monk, who had followed her across the room, touched her on the shoulder. He spoke in a quiet, unfamiliar voice with a foreign accent,
“You are Lady Maggie Trent?”
“Yes!”
“Will you please go to box number fourteen, on the second tier? There is some one there who waits for you.”
“Who is it?” she asked.
The monk had glided away. Maggie, after a few minutes’ reflection, slipped out into the corridor, mounted one flight of stairs, and passed along the semicircular balcony. The door of box number fourteen was ajar. She pushed it gently open and glanced in. Seated so as to be out of sight of the whole house was La Belle Nita. For a moment the two looked at each other. Then the Chinese girl sprang to her feet, made a quaint little bow, and, gliding around, closed the door behind her visitor.
“Sit down, please,” she invited. “I will tell you things you may like to hear.”
A sudden thought flashed into Maggie’s mind. She began to see light. She obeyed at once. The two women sat well back and out of sight of the house. La Belle Nita held the handle of the door in her hand while she spoke, as though to prevent any one entering.
“I have an enemy who was once a friend,” she said, “and I wish to do him evil. He is not only my enemy, but he is yours. He is the enemy of all you English people, because it is a great disaster which he plans to bring upon you.”
“You speak of Prince Shan?” Maggie exclaimed.
Even at the mention of his name, the girl shook. She looked around as though fearing the shadows. She rattled the door to make sure that it was closed.
“For him whom you call Prince Shan I have worked many years, first of all in Paris, now here. I was content with small reward. That reward he now takes from me. It is my wish to betray him.”
“Why do you send for me?” Maggie asked.
“Because you have been an English spy,” was the quiet reply. “It may surprise you that I know that, but I do know. I have been a spy for Prince Shan in Paris. You were a spy for England in Berlin. You were a spy for your country’s sake; I was a spy for love. Now I betray for hate.”
“Please go on.”
“Prince Shan came this time to Europe with two schemes in his mind,” the girl continued. “One concerned France. That one he has discarded. Through me he learned of the military strength of France, her secret resources, of her tireless watch upon the Rhine. So he listens to Immelan, and Immelan and he together, oh, English lady, they have made a wonderful plan!”
“Are you going to tell me what it is?” Maggie asked, her eyes bright with excitement.
“I cannot tell you because I do not know,” was the unwilling admission, “but I will make it so that you can discover for yourself. A few hours ago, the plan was submitted to Prince Shan. It lies in the third drawer of an ebony cabinet, in the room on the left-hand side of the hall after you have entered his house in Curzon Street.”
“But no one can enter it!” Maggie exclaimed. “The place is like a fort. No stranger may pass the threshold
even. The Prince has told me himself that he receives no visitors.”
La Belle Nita smiled. From a pocket somewhere within the folds of her flowing gown, she produced two small keys.
“Listen,” she said. “The house in Curzon Street has been called the House of Silence. There are many servants there, but they come only from beneath and when they are summoned. There is what no other person has ever possessed—the key of the front door. There is also the key of the cabinet. Prince Shan has ordered his automobile for two o’clock. It is now barely midnight.”
The keys lay in the palm of Maggie’s hand. Her heart had begun to beat quickly. Somehow or other, she was conscious of a thrill of excitement which she had never before experienced, even when she had sat back in her corner of the railway carriage, watching for the frontier, knowing that the wires were busy with her name, and that men who knew no mercy were on her track.
“If the servants should hear me?” she faltered.
“You say only ‘I await the Prince’,” La Belle Nita murmured. “That key never leaves his own person save for one in great favour. They will believe that he gave it to you. You will be unmolested.”
A queer sensation suddenly assailed Maggie. She felt extraordinarily primitive, ridiculously feminine. She looked at the girl opposite to her, the girl whose body was draped in perfumed silks, whose face was thick with rice powder, whose eyes were sad. She felt no pity. What feeling she had, she did not care to analyse.
“Is this your key?” she asked.
“It was mine once, but its use has been forbidden to me,” the girl replied. “Prince Shan is a changed man. Something has come into his life of which I know nothing, but as it has come, so must I go. I give you your chance, lady, but already I weaken. Go quickly, if you go at all. Please leave me, for I am very unhappy.”
Maggie stole quietly out and made her way through the jostling throng back to her own box, which for the moment was empty. She slipped on her cloak, and from the hidden spaces where she stood she looked across the auditorium. The silent figure in green silk robes was still seated in his place, his eyes following the movements of the dancers, his head a little thrown back, a slight weariness in his face. He was still alone. He still had the air of being alone because it was his desire. Once he looked up towards the box in which she was, and Maggie, although she knew she was invisible, shrank back against the wall. She set her teeth hard and looked back through the slightly misty space. An unfamiliar feeling for a moment almost choked her. She waited until she had vanquished it, then adjusted her mask and left the box.
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