by Otto Penzler
She stopped to eat chocolates, and for some time there was a silence.
“Poor, poor girl!” said Johnnie Luck at last.
“You are good, kind,” she said softly. “Advise me.”
“What to do with your life? I couldn’t.”
“No, no!” said she. “What to do with my jewels. They represent my capital, you see. I have no money. I must sell them, yet very privately, because I could not bear anyone to hear this story—except you, of course, my good friend. The English are so prejudiced. I want to start a new life among them fairly. Besides, there is another reason why I must keep my secret.” She looked reserved.
“Your story is, of course, perfectly safe with me.”
“I know it. To return to the jewels, there must be at least ten thousand pounds’ worth in the mat.”
Luck looked respectfully at the soft black roll lying at their feet.
“Would you confide in the Princes?” he asked. “Napoleon Prince knows a great deal about—er—the—the curio markets of the world, and he might be able to assist you.”
Reluctantly she consented to confide in Mr. Napoleon Prince at the earliest opportunity—on the morrow, if possible.
After she had gone, leaving a faint aroma of some Eastern perfume clinging to his cushions, Luck descended to No. 20. He found Napoleon up, smoking before a gorgeous fire, but Mary had retired early to bed.
“News, Johnnie?” said the little man, smiling slightly.
Luck related Mrs. Muswell’s story. “Preposterous, eh?” he asked.
Napoleon had listened through it, merely nodding and commenting, with very little amazement. “Preposterous enough to be true,” he replied oracularly. “You will learn not to discredit melodrama, Johnnie, presently. All the melodramas ever written are nothing to the melodramas that are lived every day.”
“She’s going to ask your advice on my recommendation, Nap.”
“She couldn’t come to a better quarter,” replied Napoleon, looking into the fire.
“You will help her, then, in some way, like a good chap?”
“I shall help—Gerda’s eyes!” said Napoleon, smiling.
“Good-night, Nap.”
“Night-night, Johnnie.”
And he was left looking at the eyes in the fire.
The tenant of No. 24 came, according to arrangement, the next afternoon to the Princes’ flat. She carried with her a rolled-up black bundle—the mat woven, according to her story, in the harem of Prince Mustapha. Luck was there. Mary was charmingly kind. Napoleon pressed her hand in his left one, and said that he hoped she would not be vexed to know that Mr. Luck had already told them the story. Mr. Luck thought she might be glad to be saved the very painful recital.
No, she was not vexed. Yes, she was glad—thank you, kind people. She unrolled the black mat.
“Feel!” she said to Napoleon.
He felt, among the softness of the silk and wool, chains and layers here and there of hard, lumpy substances.
“Necklaces?” he queried.
She answered eagerly, frankly: “Two necklaces, nearly a dozen brooches, a girdle, a chain, many pairs of earrings, ruby, emerald and topaz. The necklaces are diamonds and pearls. How can I sell these things so as not to excite suspicion and call attention to myself? Mustapha may be looking for me, and I dare not attract his notice.”
“He could not touch you in England, dear child,” said the little man, with a fatherly air.
“But the story!” she said passionately. “The story! That would come out! And it must never be known—because I—I have so much at stake—I——”
Suddenly she put her handkerchief to her face and sobbed, her shoulders rocking. Napoleon watched her thoughtfully. Luck was really distressed. Mary administered what comfort she could give to a stranger and rang for tea.
During the dispensing of it the visitor recovered somewhat, and looked up with a quivering smile through tears that made her black eyes shine like jewels.
“What must you all think of me?” she gasped. “I am sorry. I am very sorry. But, as I said, I have so much at stake. I—I am going to be married.”
She sipped her tea, while Mary and Luck looked at her with exclamations of mutual sympathy and interest.
“You see,” she said in a low voice, “I am not really Mustapha’s wife. The marriage in Paris was not valid. In spite of my—my degradation, I am free. Let me tell you.” She caught Mary’s hand, looking with great understanding from her to Johnnie Luck. “You, dear girl, you will feel with me. On my way home to England I met, in Austria, a young officer of the Austrian army, on leave. We—we”—her eyes drooped—“we loved each other from the first moment,” she said in a strangled voice, “and I promised to marry him. I tried to forget my story. Then I saw everything in what seemed its hideous impossibility, and I went on, without a word of good-bye to him. I dared not trust myself to say good-bye. But he followed me here.”
“Delicious!” cried Mary warmly to Luck. He looked back at her as if to say: “Exactly as I should do!”
Their visitor went on: “And he found me yesterday. I renewed my promises to him, and we shall be married as soon as I have sold these and provided myself with a little money, and bought a trousseau, and so on. You see, ostensibly I am a young widow in comfortable circumstances. I am so afraid of the least hitch—of any inquiry leading to knowledge of what constitutes my capital”—she indicated the mat—“and then as to how I came by these Eastern-looking jewels—even if Mustapha does not trace me as I dispose of them. You understand—it’s not a wicked deception? It is the happiness of two lives—mine and Friedrich’s—that——”
“We understand perfectly,” said the Joséphine girl sweetly. Napoleon was looking at the black roll.
“May we see some of the things?” he asked.
The visitor assented, and cutting the strands of the mat, they brought some of the ornaments to light. They were much as she had described them—rather roughly cut gems, some in heavy Eastern settings. Napoleon examined them one by one with the air of a connoisseur. He took little implements out of his waistcoat pocket, and tapped the stones, looking at them closely, their owner meanwhile looking closely at him. She grew a little pale during the examination, and spoke of the devotion of Mustapha, who would lavish ornaments to any value upon her.
“I think,” Napoleon said at last, “that I might get you three thousand pounds for these in various markets that I know of. I am a bit of a traveller, as you may know, and through buying art curios I have been in touch with many dealers in Europe and Asia.”
Her face fell. “You think they are not worth more?”
“They may be,” he replied, “but that could be ascertained when they have been examined by experts. Sleep on the matter, my dear lady, and then let me know if you will put it into my hands.”
“You are good,” she said gratefully. “Good and kind, all of you. We may be able to talk further of it tomorrow. Friedrich is coming to dine with me tonight. Would you——” She looked from one to the other.
“Would you,” Mary responded, “bring him down to us for coffee? We should be charmed.”
The invitation being accepted with thanks and beaming smiles, Mrs. Muswell withdrew, Johnnie Luck accompanying her to carry the black roll to the flat above. She extolled the kindness of his friends and himself.
“Is he rich?” she asked plaintively, “your Mr. Prince?”
Receiving a cautious reply, she said childishly: “If he is, perhaps he would like to buy my jewels himself, and dispose of them at his leisure, at a big profit. It will be so hard for me to wait. So very, very hard. And I will not go to Friedrich without what they call a dot.”
Accepting with a smile the compliments obviously to be turned on this, she vanished into her flat, and they saw her no more until nine thirty, when, charming and excited, she brought down Friedrich for a few minutes to be introduced to them. He was a dark, spruce, military-looking man, extremely smart. After coffee she took
him back to her own flat again.
“Darling things!” said Mary. “Be kind to them, Nap.”
“Yes,” said Luck, “be kind to them, Nap.”
“Children,” said the little man, drinking a third cup of coffee in unwonted absence of mind, “I am already devising extensive plans of benevolence and philanthropy. All the world loves a lover. Here is to our pretty friend and her gallant Friedrich!” He drank the toast in coffee. “I anticipate that we may see her quite early in the morning.”
—
It was comparatively early in the morning when Mrs. Muswell called at No. 20. Mary had gone out betimes to buy some articles of which her brother professed himself in instant need, for which she had to go half across London, and so would not be back before lunch. Johnnie Luck had, in response to a message from the paralytic, descended to No. 20. When he came, Napoleon had little to say, however, beyond desultory chat. He seemed to be listening. When a ring was heard, his face cleared and he smiled.
“I would lay you a hundred to one, Johnnie, that is the heroine of the Harem Melodrama.”
“Do you mean to imply that you do not believe——”
“My dear Johnnie, I discredit nothing and credit nothing. I tell you she has Gerda’s eyes, which is ample reason for my doing what I am about to do.”
She was ushered in.
“Ah, my dear lady! We were speaking of angels. A very good morning to you!”
But she looked as though the morning were far from very good. She was distraite, worried. Under her arm she carried the black mat in a roll. When, seemingly too abstracted to give any formal greeting to either man, she had sat down, she said impulsively:
“Mr. Prince, I come to ask your immediate help in my trouble. Friedrich”—her eyes looked wet—“is ordered to rejoin his regiment. He is leaving England tonight.”
They were all attention, making little murmurs of sympathy. She went on:
“He implored me yesterday evening—it was after we left you—to marry him before he left, to return to Austria with him. But first I want to get rid of these. I will not go to Friedrich’s family—his cold, proud family—without a penny. Mr. Prince, what shall I do? Who will buy at a moment’s notice?”
“Very few people, I am afraid, dear lady,” said Napoleon.
She bit her lip and trembled. Her eyes were magnificent.
“I told you yesterday,” he said, taking her unresisting hand, “that you could probably get three thousand for the lot without much haggling. Probably—not certainly. I do not trust my judgment to say certainly. You might get more, as I also told you, if you were content to wait and submit them to the really best experts——”
“No, no!” she exclaimed hurriedly. “I could not wait—now. Who would give me three thousand for them?”
“That,” he replied, “I could not say at such short notice. I should have to find out. But I will give you two five for them down now, here, if you are willing to take it.”
“Two thousand five hundred?”
“Yes. I do not offer you the full three thousand I suggested as their value, because, dear lady, I am a hard business man underneath my soft side, and you must give discount for cash, and for the trouble in store for me in disposing of the jewels. Also I may get barely more than my own money back, or even not as much. There might be a great deal more, I own, but the chances are as much for one as t’other. You see all this?”
“I see—I see.” She began breathing lovely gratitude, but he stopped her.
“Don’t thank me. I mentioned just now that soft side of mine, and my softness is for your eyes.”
She looked at him, beautifully. He looked back full at her, appreciatively.
“You have the eyes,” he said softly, “of someone I once loved. Luck, an errand, please.”
Luck came forward.
“My bedroom is next door, and there’s a little dispatch case on the table by my bed. If you don’t mind—my wretched helplessness,” he explained to her, as Johnnie Luck left the room. When the door closed, he added: “I want to claim a tremendous boon of you, dear lady, because you have the eyes of the girl I once loved.”
“Ask it,” said she, all softness.
“A kiss,” said the little man.
In a moment Johnnie Luck would be back. She gave herself time for a little murmur of hesitation, surprise; then she rose from her chair, came close, and bent and kissed him. Her lips were very soft, and she kissed Napoleon on the lips. She sat down again. A flush swept up all over his pale face, passed, and was gone. The face was serene again when Luck came in with the dispatch case.
Napoleon unlocked it with his left hand, and found three crackling notes.
“I don’t often keep this amount of money out of my bank,” he explained. “It is pure coincidence, accident, what you will, that I have it to hand this morning. Later in the day it would have been paid to my account. They are three thousand-pound notes. Could you oblige me, somehow, with the change, dear lady?”
“Five hundred pounds,” she considered.
“If you will hand over that, I will hand over this,” he said with such charming apology that there could be no insult in the caution. “I am, as I said, a business man, and I do things in a business-like way.”
“I can give you the notes, I believe,” she answered. “I have about that amount, and I will go to get it. It is absolutely my all, of course, and it would not have been a dot fit for an Austrian officer’s wife.”
Luck sprang to open the door. She passed out smiling—not to her own flat, though, but hastily down to the street. Near the Army and Navy Stores her Friedrich waited.
Napoleon sat waiting her return, the fingers of his left hand drumming on the notes on the table, his eyes fixed rather absently on space. The black mat lay on the floor.
“Nap,” said Luck, “ain’t it risky, old man?”
“Her eyes, Johnnie!” said Napoleon. “Her eyes!”
He would say no more. In perhaps ten minutes the beautiful visitor hurried back. She was flushed and a little breathless, which condition she explained by the fact of the search she had had for the notes. She had put them securely away, under lock and key, forgotten where, and been terrified—so terrified—in consequence. But here they were, all safe and sound. Would Mr. Prince count them?
Mr. Prince counted them, thrust them into his breast pocket, and handed over three thousand-pound notes, enclosing them first in an envelope out of the dispatch box. He stretched out his left hand, and she put hers into it. He looked up at her, standing tall, vibrant, glowing, victorious.
“My congratulations to Friedrich,” said he. “My felicitations to yourself. A very pleasant journey. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, kind, good friends.” She shook hands with both. “I am going out now. Guess for what?”
“To be married?” Luck hazarded.
She nodded. “To be married. We leave for Austria to-day.”
“Happy Friedrich!” said Luck.
“Happy Friedrich!” cried Napoleon.
The graceful creature went out, making an emotional leave-taking. The two men were left together, and the black mat lay on the floor. Napoleon’s face had grown deathly.
“Mary will be amazed,” began Luck.
“Oh! Ah!” He looked down at the mat. “Cart that truck away, there’s a good fellow.”
“Truck? I suppose you’ll see your money back again all right?”
Napoleon looked—laughed noiselessly.
“Stuff’s simply ‘fake’ all through, Johnnie, my dear good fool.”
“What, Nap? And you knew it? Well, Nap, who’s the fool?”
“Not I, Luck. ‘Friedrich,’ perhaps, and she. My notes were ‘fake,’ too.”
Johnnie sat down.
“Ah! I can do notes. One of the things I’ve learned. Those were three of the kind the Cosmopolitans use, though, and were ready to hand.”
“Her five hundred?”
“Real. Screaming humour? Rattling far
ce, eh?”
“So, after all—you cheated Gerda’s eyes?”
“I cheated Gerda’s wits.”
Light began to show through for Luck. He gazed at the little man, now beginning to tremble in his invalid chair.
“We’ve been dealing with Gerda, you see, John Luck. And with her ‘friend.’ Who do you think, Johnnie, was the man she brought in to drink my coffee and liqueurs? The chap of the Florence Opera House! And what do you think is written inside the flap of that envelope I put her notes in?”
Luck shook his head.
“ ‘To Gerda, from her very sane Englishman.’ Funny, eh? Any questions, Johnnie?”
“Yes, Nap. Did you take these flats because you knew she was here?”
Napoleon nodded.
“Did you mean all through to get back at her, as soon as you had the chance?”
Napoleon nodded.
“Did you know what kind of story she’d come out with this time?”
Napoleon shook his head. “Know? Who does know, John Luck, what a woman plots and plans? Women lick men—they lick the rest of creation—at tricking. They don’t work by logical sequence, but by accident. You can’t insure against that kind of accident, either. There’s no policy obtainable. Women—they haven’t human science, but they’re given monkey minds. Their mischief is more nimble than ours. They lay a plot like a three-volume novel about princes, and harems, and troubles and anxieties and love, and start creation playing their absurd melodramas and believing they’re real. They feel your pulse, and they know all about you. And nature aids a woman—saturates her in the part she’s taking. She can laugh and cry and quiver—her brain plays on her body like a bow on fiddle strings—and she’s given lips that are so cursed soft, Johnnie—and eyes! And I’ve got my own back, Johnnie. There’s no laugh any more, except for me. But do what I will, I’ll never get the feel of her lips off mine—nor her eyes out of my heart—never exorcise her away.”
