“Coffee ice. So much nicer than strawberry!”
The man nodded back.
“Ices after supper are an abomination,” he said. “They spoil the flavour of your wine, and many other things. But after all, I suppose it is waste of time to tell you so! A woman never understands how to eat until she is fifty.”
She laughed, and deliberately finished the ice. Just as she laid down the spoon, she raised her eyes quietly and encountered Wolfenden’s. He looked away at once with an indifference which he felt to be badly assumed. Did she know, he wondered, that he had been watching her like an owl all the time? He felt hot and uncomfortable—a veritable schoolboy at the thought. He plunged into the conversation between Harcutt and Densham—a conversation which they had been sustaining with an effort. They too were still as interested in their neighbours, although their positions at the table made it difficult for either to observe them closely.
When three men are each thinking intently of something else, it is not easy to maintain an intelligent discussion. Wolfenden, to create a diversion, called for the bill. When he had paid it, and they were ready to depart, Densham looked up with a little burst of candour—
“She’s wonderful!” he exclaimed softly.
“Marvellous!” Wolfenden echoed.
“I wonder who on earth they can possibly be,” Harcutt said almost peevishly. Already he was being robbed of some part of his contemplated satisfaction. It was true that he would probably find the man’s name on the table-list at the door, but he had a sort of presentiment that the girl’s personality would elude him. The question of relationship between the man and the girl puzzled him. He propounded the problem and they discussed it with bated breath. There was no likeness at all! Was there any relationship? It was significant that although Harcutt was a scandalmonger and Wolfenden somewhat of a cynic, they discussed it with the most profound respect. Relationship after all of some sort there must be. What was it? It was Harcutt who alone suggested what to Wolfenden seemed an abominable possibility.
“Scarcely husband and wife, I should think,” he said thoughtfully, “yet one never can tell!”
Involuntarily they all three glanced towards the man. He was well preserved and his little imperial and short grey moustache were trimmed with military precision, yet his hair was almost white, and his age could scarcely be less than sixty. In his way he was quite as interesting as the girl. His eyes, underneath his thick brows, were dark and clear, and his features were strong and delicately shaped. His hands were white and very shapely, the fingers were rather long, and he wore two singularly handsome rings, both set with strange stones. By the side of the table rested the stick upon which he had been leaning during his passage through the room. It was of smooth, dark wood polished like a malacca cane, and set at the top with a curious, green, opalescent stone, as large as a sparrow’s egg. The eyes of the three men had each in turn been arrested by it. In the electric light which fell softly upon the upper part of it, the stone seemed to burn and glow with a peculiar, iridescent radiance. Evidently it was a precious possession, for once when a waiter had offered to remove it to a stand at the other end of the room, the man had stopped him sharply and drawn it a little closer towards him.
Wolfenden lit a fresh cigarette, and gazed thoughtfully into the little cloud of blue smoke.
“Husband and wife,” he repeated slowly. “What an absurd idea! More likely father and daughter!”
“How about the roses?” Harcutt remarked. “A father does not as a rule show such excellent taste in flowers!”
They had finished supper. Suddenly the girl stretched out her left hand and took a glove from the table. Wolfenden smiled triumphantly.
“She has no wedding-ring,” he exclaimed softly.
Then Harcutt, for the first time, made a remark for which he was never altogether forgiven—a remark which both the other men received in chilling silence.
“That may or may not be a matter for congratulation,” he said, twirling his moustache. “One never knows!”
Wolfenden stood up, turning his back upon Harcutt and pointedly ignoring him.
“Let us go, Densham,” he said. “We are almost the last.”
As a matter of fact his movement was made at exactly the right time. They could scarcely have left the room at the same moment as these two people, in whom manifestly they had been taking so great an interest. But by the time they had sent for their coats and hats from the cloak-room, and Harcutt had coolly scrutinised the table-list, they found themselves all together in a little group at the head of the stairs.
Wolfenden, who was a few steps in front, drew back to allow them to pass. The man, leaning upon his stick, laid his hand upon the girl’s sleeve. Then he looked up at the man, and addressed Wolfenden directly.
“You had better precede us, sir,” he said; “my progress is unfortunately somewhat slow.”
Wolfenden drew back courteously.
“We are in no hurry,” he said. “Please go on.”
The man thanked him, and with one hand upon the girl’s shoulder and with the other on his stick commenced to descend. The girl had passed on without even glancing towards them. She had twisted a white lace mantilla around her head, and her features were scarcely visible—only as she passed, Wolfenden received a general impression of rustling white silk and lace and foaming tulle as she gathered her skirts together at the head of the stairs. It seemed to him, too, that the somewhat close atmosphere of the vestibule had become faintly sweet with the delicate fragrance of the white roses which hung by a loop of satin from her wrist.
The three men waited until they had reached the bend of the stairs before they began to descend. Harcutt then leaned forward.
“His name,” he whispered, “is disenchanting. It is Mr. Sabin! Whoever heard of a Mr. Sabin? Yet he looks like a personage!”
At the doors there was some delay. It was raining fast and the departures were a little congested. The three young men still kept in the background. Densham affected to be busy lighting a cigarette, Wolfenden was slowly drawing on his gloves. His place was almost in a line with the girl’s. He could see the diamonds flashing in her fair hair through the dainty tracery of the drooping white lace, and in a moment, through some slight change in her position, he could get a better view of her face than he had been able to obtain even in the supper-room. She was beautiful! There was no doubt about that! But there were many beautiful women in London, whom Wolfenden scarcely pretended to admire. This girl had something better even than supreme beauty. She was anything but a reproduction. She was a new type. She had originality. Her hair was dazzlingly fair; her eyebrows, delicately arched, were high and distinctly dark in colour. Her head was perfectly shaped—the features seemed to combine a delightful piquancy with a somewhat statuesque regularity. Wolfenden, wondering of what she in some manner reminded him, suddenly thought of some old French miniatures, which he had stopped to admire only a day or two before, in a little curio shop near Bond Street. There was a distinct dash of something foreign in her features and carriage. It might have been French, or Austrian—it was most certainly not Anglo-Saxon!
The crush became a little less, they all moved a step or two forward—and Wolfenden, glancing carelessly outside, found his attention immediately arrested. Just as he had been watching the girl, so was a man, who stood on the pavement side by side with the commissionaire, watching her companion. He was tall and thin; apparently dressed in evening clothes, for though his coat was buttoned up to his chin, he wore an opera hat. His hands were thrust into the loose pockets of his overcoat, and his face was mostly in the shadows. Once, however, he followed some motion of Mr. Sabin’s and moved his head a little forward. Wolfenden started and looked at him fixedly. Was it fancy, or was there indeed something clenched in his right hand there, which gleamed like silver—or was it steel—in the momentary flash of a passing carriage-light? Wolfenden was puzzled. There was something, too, which seemed to him vaguely familiar in the man’s figure an
d person. He was certainly waiting for somebody, and to judge from his expression his mission was no pleasant one. Wolfenden who, through the latter part of the evening, had felt a curious and unwonted sense of excitement stirring his blood, now felt it go tingling through all his veins. He had some subtle prescience that he was on the brink of an adventure. He glanced hurriedly at his two companions; neither of them had noticed this fresh development.
Just then the commissionaire, who knew Wolfenden by sight, turned round and saw him standing there. Stepping back on to the pavement, he called up the brougham, which was waiting a little way down the street.
“Your carriage, my lord,” he said to Wolfenden, touching his cap.
Wolfenden, with ready presence of mind, shook his head.
“I am waiting for a friend,” he said. “Tell my man to pass on a yard or two.”
The man bowed, and the danger of leaving before these two people, in whom his interest now was becoming positively feverish, was averted. As if to enhance it, a singular thing now happened. The interest suddenly became reciprocal. At the sound of Wolfenden’s voice the man with the club foot had distinctly started. He changed his position and, leaning forward, looked eagerly at him. His eyes remained for a moment or two fixed steadily upon him. There was no doubt about the fact, singular in itself though it was. Wolfenden noticed it himself, so did both Densham and Harcutt. But before any remark could pass between them a little coupé brougham had drawn up, and the man and the girl started forward.
Wolfenden followed close behind. The feeling which prompted him to do so was a curious one, but it seemed to him afterwards that he had even at that time a conviction that something unusual was about to happen. The girl stepped lightly across the carpeted way and entered the carriage. Her companion paused in the doorway to hand some silver to the commissionaire, then he too, leaning upon his stick, stepped across the pavement. His foot was already upon the carriage step, when suddenly what Wolfenden had been vaguely anticipating happened. A dark figure sprang from out of the shadows and seized him by the throat; something that glittered like a streak of silver in the electric light flashed upwards. The blow would certainly have fallen but for Wolfenden. He was the only person not wholly unprepared for something of the sort, and he was consequently not paralysed into inaction as were the others. He was so near, too, that a single step forward enabled him to seize the uplifted arm in a grasp of iron. The man who had been attacked was the next to recover himself. Raising his stick he struck at his assailant violently. The blow missed his head, but grazed his temple and fell upon his shoulder. The man, released from Wolfenden’s grasp by his convulsive start, went staggering back into the roadway.
There was a rush then to secure him, but it was too late. Wolfenden, half expecting another attack, had not moved from the carriage door, and the commissionaire, although a powerful man, was not swift. Like a cat the man who had made the attack sprang across the roadway, and into the gardens which fringed the Embankment. The commissionaire and a loiterer followed him. Just then Wolfenden felt a soft touch on his shoulder. The girl had opened the carriage door, and was standing at his side.
“Is any one hurt?” she asked quickly.
“No one,” he answered. “It is all over. The man has run away.”
Mr. Sabin stooped down and brushed away some grey ash from the front of his coat. Then he took a match-box from his ticket-pocket, and re-lit the cigarette which had been crumpled in his fingers. His hand was perfectly steady. The whole affair had scarcely taken thirty seconds.
“It was probably some lunatic,” he remarked, motioning to the girl to resume her place in the carriage. “I am exceedingly obliged to you, sir. Lord Wolfenden, I believe?” he added, raising his hat. “But for your intervention the matter might really have been serious. Permit me to offer you my card. I trust that some day I may have a better opportunity of expressing my thanks. At present you will excuse me if I hurry. I am not of your nation, but I share an antipathy with them—I hate a row!”
He stepped into the carriage with a farewell bow, and it drove off at once. Wolfenden remained looking after it, with his hat in his hand. From the Embankment below came the faint sound of hurrying footsteps.
CHAPTER III
THE WARNING OF FELIX
Table of Contents
The three friends stood upon the pavement watching the little brougham until it disappeared round the corner in a flickering glitter of light. It would have been in accordance with precedent if after leaving the restaurant they had gone to some one of their clubs to smoke a cigar and drink whisky and apollinaris, while Harcutt retailed the latest society gossip, and Densham descanted on art, and Wolfenden contributed genial remarks upon things in general. But to-night all three were inclined to depart from precedent. Perhaps the surprising incident which they had just witnessed made anything like normal routine seem unattractive; whatever the reason may have been, the young men were of a sudden not in sympathy with one another. Harcutt murmured some conventional lie about having an engagement, supplemented it with some quite unconvincing statement about pressure of work, and concluded with an obviously disingenuous protest against the tyranny of the profession of journalism, then he sprang with alacrity into a hansom and said goodbye with a good deal less than his usual cordiality. Densham, too, hailed a cab, and leaning over the apron delivered himself of a farewell speech which sounded rather malignant. “You are a lucky beast, Wolfenden,” he growled enviously, adding, with a note of venom in his voice, “but don’t forget it takes more than the first game to win the rubber,” and then he was whirled away, nodding his head and wearing an expression of wisdom deeply tinged with gloom.
Wolfenden was surprised, but not exactly sorry that the first vague expression of hostility had been made by the others.
“Both of them must be confoundedly hard hit,” he murmured to himself; “I never knew Densham turn nasty before.” And to his coachman he said aloud, “You may go home, Dawson. I am going to walk.”
He turned on to the embankment, conscious of a curious sense of exhilaration. He was no blasé cynic; but the uniformly easy life tends to become just a trifle monotonous, and Lord Wolfenden’s somewhat epicurean mind derived actual pleasure from the subtle luxury of a new sensation. What he had said of his friends he could have said with equal truth of himself: he was confoundedly hard hit. For the first time in his life he found the mere memory of a woman thrilling; his whole nature vibrated in response to the appeal she made to him, and he walked along buoyantly under the stars, revelling in the delight of being alive.
Suddenly he stopped abruptly. Huddled up in the corner of a seat was a man with a cloth cap pulled forward screening his face: at that moment Lord Wolfenden was in a mood to be extravagantly generous to any poor applicant for alms, lavishly sympathetic to any tale of distress. But it was not ordinary curiosity that arrested his progress now. He knew almost at the first glance who it was that sat in this dejected attitude, although the opera hat was replaced by the soft cloth cap, and in other details the man’s appearance was altered. It was indeed the Mr. Felix who had supped with him at the “Milan” and subsequently behaved in so astonishing a fashion.
He knew that he was recognised, and sat up, looking steadfastly at Wolfenden, although his lips trembled and his eyes gleamed wildly. Across his temples a bright red mark was scored.
Lord Wolfenden broke the silence.
“You’re a nice sort of fellow to ask out to supper! What in the name of all that’s wonderful were you trying to do?”
“I should have thought it was sufficiently obvious,” the man replied bitterly. “I tried to kill him, and I failed. Well, why don’t you call the police? I am quite ready. I shall not run again.”
Wolfenden hesitated, and then sat down by the side of this surprising individual.
“The man you went for didn’t seem to care, so I don’t see why I should. But why do you want to kill him?”
“To keep a vow,” the other answered; �
�how and why made I will not tell you.”
“How did you escape?” Wolfenden asked abruptly.
“Probably because I didn’t care whether I escaped or not,” Felix replied, with a short, bitter laugh. “I stood behind some shrubs just inside the garden, and watched the hunt go by. Then I came out here and sat down.”
“It all sounds very simple,” said Wolfenden, a trifle sarcastically. “May I ask what you are going to do next?”
Felix’s face so clearly intimated that he might not ask anything of the kind, or that if he did his curiosity would not be satisfied, that Wolfenden felt compelled to make some apology.
“Forgive me if I seem inquisitive, but I find the situation a little unusual. You were my guest, you see, and had it not been for my chance invitation you might not have met that man at all. Then again, had it not been for my interference he would have been dead now and you would have been in a fair way to be hanged.”
Felix evinced no sign of gratitude for Wolfenden’s intervention. Instead he said intensely,
“Oh, you fool! you fool!”
“Well, really,” Wolfenden protested, “I don’t see why——” But Felix interrupted him.
“Yes, you are a fool,” he repeated, “because you saved his life. He is an old man now. I wonder how many there have been in the course of his long life who desired to kill him? But no one—not one solitary human being—has ever befriended him or come to his rescue in time of danger without living to be sorry for it. And so it will be with you. You will live to be sorry for what you have done to-night; you will live to think it would have been far better for him to fall by my hand than for yourself to suffer at his. And you will wish passionately that you had let him die. Before heaven, Wolfenden, I swear that that is true.”
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