At the sound of her name Athenais turned with a perfectly indicated start of surprise which she promptly translated into a little, joyful cry. The living pillar of ivory, satin and precious stones ran into her arms, embraced her ardently, and kissed both her cheeks, then releasing her half-turned to Lanyard.
Glints of trifling malice winked behind the open interest of troubling, rounded eyes of violet. Lanyard knew himself known.
So he had sacrificed for nothing his beautiful beard!
He uttered a private but heartfelt “Damn!” and bowed profoundly as the woman, tapping Athenais on the arm with a fan crusted with diamonds, demanded:
“Present instantly, my dear, this gentleman who tangoes as I have never seen the tango danced before!”
Forestalling Athenais, Lanyard replied with a whimsical grimace: “Is one, then, so unfortunate as to have been forgotten by Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes?”
With any other woman than Athenais Reneaux he would have hesitated to deal so bold an offensive stroke; but his confidence in her quickness of apprehension and her unshakable self-possession was both implicit and well-placed. For she received this overt notification of the success of his quest without one sign other than a look of dawning puzzlement.
“Madame la comtesse…?” she murmured with a rising inflection.
“But monsieur is mistaken,” the other stammered, biting her lip.
“Surely one cannot have been so stupid!” Lanyard apologised.
“But this is Mademoiselle Delorme,” Athenais said… “Monsieur Paul Martin.”
Liane Delorme! Those syllables were like a spoken spell to break the power of dark enchantment which had hampered Lanyard’s memory ever since first sight of this woman in the Café de l’Univers at Nant. A great light began to flood his understanding, but he was denied time to advantage himself immediately of its illumination: Liane Delorme was quick to parry and riposte.
“How strange monsieur should think he had ever known me by a name… What was it? But no matter! For now I look more closely, I myself cannot get over the impression that I have known Monsieur—Martin, did you say?—somewhere, sometime… But Paul Martin? Not unless monsieur has more than one name.”
“Then it would seem that mademoiselle and I are both in error. The loss is mine.”
That gun spiked, Lanyard began to breathe more freely. “It is not too late to make up that loss, monsieur.” Liane Delorme was actually chuckling in appreciation of his readiness, pleased with him even in the moment of her own discomfiture; her eyes twinkling merrily at him above the fan with which she hid a convulsed countenance. “Surely two people so possessed with regret at never having known each other should lose no time improving their acquaintance! Dear Athenais: do ask us to sit at your table.”
While the waiter fetched additional chairs, the woman made her escorts known: Messieurs Benouville et Le Brun, two extravagantly insignificant young men, exquisitely groomed and presumably wealthy, who were making the bravest efforts to seem unaware that to be seen with Liane Delorme conferred an unimpeachable cachet. Lanyard remarked, however, that neither ventured to assume proprietorial airs; while Liane’s attitude toward them was generally indulgent, if occasionally patronising and sometimes impatient.
Champagne frothed into fresh glasses. As soon as the band struck up another dance, Athenais drifted away in the arms of Monsieur Le Brun. Liane gazed round the room, acknowledged the salutations of several friends, signalled gaily to a pair of mercenaries on the far side of the dancing floor, and issued peremptory orders to Benouville.
“Go, Chu-chu, and ask Angele to dance with you. She is being left to bore herself while Victor dances with Constance. Moreover, I desire to afflict Monsieur Martin with my confidences.”
With the utmost docility Benouville effaced himself.
“Eh, bien, Monsieur Duchemin!”
“Eh, bien, madame la comtesse?” Liane sipped at her champagne, making impudent eyes at Lanyard over the brim of her glass.
“By what appears, you have at last torn yourself away from the charming society of the Château de Montalais.”
“As you see.”
“That was a long visit you made at the château, my old one?”
“Madame la comtesse is well informed,” Lanyard returned, phlegmatic.
“One hears what one hears.”
“One had the misfortune to fall foul of an assassin,” Lanyard took the trouble to explain.
“An assassin!”
“The same Apache who attacked—with others—the party from Montalais at Montpellier-le-Vieux.”
“And you were wounded?”
Lanyard assented. The lady made a shocked face and uttered appropriate noises. “As you know,” Lanyard added.
Liane Delorme pretended not to hear that last. “And the ladies of the château,” she enquired—“they were sympathetic, one feels sure?”
“They were most kind.”
“It was not serious, this wound—no?”
“Mademoiselle may judge when she knows I was unable to leave my bed for nearly three weeks.”
“But what atrocity! And this Apache—?”
“Remains at large.”
“Ah, these police!” And the lady described a sign of contempt that was wholly unladylike. “Still, you are well recovered, by the way you dance.”
“One cannot complain.”
“What an experience! Still—” Liane again buried her nose in her glass and regarded Lanyard with a look of mysterious understanding. Re-emerging, she resumed: “Still, not without its compensations, eh, mon ami?”
“That is as one regards it, mademoiselle.”
“Oh! oh!” There was any amount of deep significance in these exclamations. “One may regard that in more ways than one.”
“Indeed,” Lanyard agreed with his most winning manner: “One may for instance remember that I recovered speedily enough to be in Paris tonight and meet mademoiselle without losing time.”
“Monsieur wishes me to flatter myself into thinking he did me the honour of desiring to find me tonight?”
“Or any other. Do not depreciate the potency of your charms, mademoiselle. Who, having seen you once, could help hoping to see you again?”
“My friend,” said Liane, with a pursed, judgmatical mouth, “I think you are much too amiable.”
“But I assure you, never a day has passed, no, nor yet a night, that I have not dwelt upon the thought of you, since you made so effective an entrance to the château, a vision of radiant beauty, out of that night of tempest and fury.”
Liane drooped a coy head. “Monsieur compliments me too much.”
“Impossible!”
“Is one, then, to understand that monsieur is making love to me?”
Lanyard pronounced coolly: “No.”
That won another laugh of personal appreciation. “What then, mon ami?”
“Figure to yourself that one may often dream of the unattainable without aspiring to possess it.”
“Unattainable?” Liane repeated in a liquid voice: “What a dismal word, monsieur!”
“It means what it means, mademoiselle.”
“To the contrary, monsieur, it means what you wish it to mean. You should revise your lexicon.”
“Now it is mademoiselle who is too flattering. And where is that good Monsieur Monk tonight?”
The woman overlooked the innuendo; or, rather, buried it under a landslide of emotional acting.
“Ah, monsieur! but I am desolated, inconsolable. He has gone away!”
“Monsieur Monk?” Lanyard opened his eyes wide.
“Who else? He has left France, he has returned to his barbarous America, with his beautiful motor car, his kind heart, and all his millions!”
“And the excellent Phinuit?”
“That one as well.”
“How long ago?”
“A week tomorrow they did sail from Cherbourg. It is a week since anyone has heard me laugh.”
Lanyard compassionately fished a bottle out of the cooler and refilled her glass.
“Accept, mademoiselle, every assurance of my profound sympathy.”
“You have a heart, my friend,” she said, and drank with the feverish passion of the disconsolate.
“And one very truly at mademoiselle’s service.”
Liane sniffed mournfully and dabbed at her nose with a ridiculous travesty of a handkerchief. “Be so kind,” she said in a tearful voice, though her eyes were quite dry and, if one looked closely, calculating—“a cigarette.”
One inferred that the storm was over. Lanyard tendered his cigarette case, and then a match, wondering what next. What he had reason to anticipate was sure to come, the only question was when. Not that it mattered when; he was ready for it at any time. And there was no hurry: Athenais, finding herself paired with an un-commonly good dancer in Le Brun, was considerately making good use of this pretext for remaining on the floor—there were two bands to furnish practically continuous music—and leave Lanyard to finish uninterrupted what she perfectly understood to be a conversation of considerable moment.
As for Benouville, he was much too well trained to dream of returning without being bidden by Liane Delorme.
“But it is wonderful,” murmured that one, pensive.
And there was that in her tone to make Lanyard mentally prick forward his ears. He sketched a point of interrogation.
“To encounter so much understanding in one who is a complete stranger.”
(“‘Complete’?” Lanyard considered. “I think it’s coming…”)
“Monsieur must not think me unappreciative.”
“Ah, mademoiselle!” he protested sadly—“but you forget so easily.”
“That we have met before, when I term you a complete stranger?”
“Well…yes.”
“It is because I would not be in monsieur’s debt!”
“Pardon?”
“I will repay sympathy with sympathy. I have already forgotten that I ever visited the Château de Montalais. So how should I remember I met monsieur there under the name of…but I forget.”
“The name of Duchemin?”
“I never knew there was such a name—I swear!—before I saw it in type today.”
“In type?”
“Monsieur does not read the papers?”
“Not all of them, mademoiselle.”
“It appeared in Le Matin today, this quaint name Duchemin, in a despatch from Millau stating that a person of that name, a guest of the Château de Montalais, had disappeared without taking formal leave of his hosts.”
“One gathers that he took something else?”
“Nothing less than the world-known Anstruther collection of jewels, the property of Madame de Montalais née Anstruther.”
“But I am recently from the Château de Montalais, and in a position to assure mademoiselle that this poor fellow, Duchemin, is unjustly accused.”
“Oh, ho, ho!”
He heard again that laugh of broad derision which had seemed so out of character with a great lady when he had heard it first, that night now nearly a month old.
“Mademoiselle does not believe?”
“I think monsieur must be a good friend to this Monsieur Duchemin.”
“I confess I entertain a sneaking fondness for his memory.”
“You can hardly call yourself an impartial judge—”
“It is nevertheless true he did not steal the jewels.”
“Then tell me who did take them.”
“Unfortunately for Duchemin, that remains a mystery.”
“Rather, I should say, fortunately for him.”
“You would wrong him, then.”
“But why, if innocent, did he run away?”
“I imagine, because he knew he would surely be accused, in which case ancient history would be revived to prove him guilty beyond a question in the mind of any sane court.”
“Does one understand he had a history?”
“I have heard it intimated such was the case.”
“But I remain in the dark. The theft presumably was not discovered till after his disappearance. Yet, according to your contention, he must have known of it in advance. How do you account for that?”
“Mademoiselle would make a famous juge d’instruction.”
“That does not answer my argument.”
“How is one to answer it? Who knows how Duchemin discovered the theft before the ladies of the château did?”
“Do you know what you make me think? That he was not as innocent as you assert.”
“Mademoiselle will explain?”
“I have a suspicion that this Monsieur Duchemin was guilty in intention; but when it came to put his intention into execution, he found he had been anticipated.”
“Mademoiselle is too clever for me. Now I should never have thought of that.”
“He would have been wiser to stay and fight it out. The very fact of his flight confesses his guilt.”
“Perhaps he did not remember that until too late.”
“And now nothing can clear him. How sad for him! A chance meeting with one who is not his friend, a whispered word to the Préfecture, or the nearest agent de police, and within an hour he finds himself in the Santé.”
“Poor chap!” said Lanyard with a doleful shake of the head.
“I, too, pity him,” the woman declared. “Monsieur: against my prejudice, your faith in Duchemin has persuaded me. I am convinced that he is innocent.”
“How good you are!”
“It makes me glad I have so well forgotten ever meeting him. I do not believe I should know him if I found him here, in this very restaurant, even seated by my side.”
“It is mademoiselle now whose heart is great and kind.”
“You may believe it well.”
“And does mademoiselle’s forgetfulness, perhaps, extend even farther into the so dead past?”
“But, monsieur, I was a mere child when I first came to Paris, before the War. How could anyone reasonably expect my memory of those innocent girlish days to be exact? Regard that, even then, I met people by hundreds, as a young girl studying for the stage must. Is it likely one face would stand out in my memory more than another?”
“Quite, if you ask me,” said Lanyard dryly—“quite likely, if any circumstance connected with that face were at all memorable.”
“But I assure you I was in those days much too self-absorbed to pay much attention to others. It is that way, you know, in maiden days.”
“Mademoiselle does injustice to her memory,” Lanyard insisted in polite astonishment. “In some ways it is wonderful.”
The woman looked suddenly aside, so that he could not see her face; but he perceived, with an astonishment which he made no attempt to hide, that she was quaking bodily with some unconfessed emotion. And when she faced again his unbroken look of grave bewilderment, he discovered that she was really capable of tears.
“Monsieur,” she gasped, “believe it or not, never before have I met one with whom I was so completely en rapport. And instantaneously! It is priceless, this! We must see more of one another.”
“Much more,” Lanyard assented gravely. “A great deal more,” she supplemented with significance. “I am sure we shall get along together famously.”
“Mademoiselle offers me great honour—”
“Nothing less than my friendship.”
“I would be indeed an ingrate to refuse it. But a question:
Will not people talk?”
“What!” Amusement shook her again. “How talk? What more can they say about Liane Delorme?”
“Ah!” said Lanyard—“but about Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes…”
“My friend: that was a good joke once; but now you must forget that name as utterly as I have forgotten another.”
“Impossible.”
“What do you say?” She frowned a little. “Is it possible you misunderstood? De Lorgnes was nothing to me.”
“I never thought he was.”
“You had reason. Because we were thrown together, and our names were something alike in sound, it amused us—not the two of us alone, but all our party—to pretend I was madame la comtesse.”
“He was really a count?”
“Who knows? It was the style by which he had always passed with us.”
“Alas!” sighed Lanyard, and bent a sombre gaze upon his glass.
Without looking he was aware of a questioning gesture of the woman’s head. He said no more, but shook his own.
“What is this?” she asked sharply. “You know something about de Lorgnes?”
“Had you not heard?” he countered, looking up in surprise.
“Heard—?” He saw her eyes stabbed by fear, and knew himself justified of his surmises. All day she had been expecting de Lorgnes, or word from him, all day and all this night. One could imagine the hourly augmented strain of care and foreboding; indeed its evidence were only too clearly betrayed in her face and manner of that moment: she was on the rack.
But there was no pity in Lanyard’s heart. He knew her of old, what she was, what evil she had done; and in his hearing still sounded the echoes of those words with which, obliquely enough but without misunderstanding on the part of either, she had threatened to expose him to the police unless he consented to some sort of an alliance with her, a collaboration whose nature could not but be dishonourable if it were nothing more than a simple conspiracy of mutual silence.
And purposely he delayed his answer till her patience gave way and she was clutching his arm with frantic hands.
The Victorian Rogues MEGAPACK ™: 28 Classic Tales Page 125
