MR. MACKWAYTE MEETS AN OLD FRIEND
That night Nur-el-Din kept the stage waiting for five minutes. It was a
climax of a long series of similar unpardonable crimes in the
music-hall code. The result was that Mr. Mackwayte, after taking four
enthusiastic “curtains,” stepped off the stage into a perfect
pandemonium.
He found Fletcher, the stage manager, livid with rage, surrounded by
the greater part of the large suite with which the dancer traveled.
There was Madame’s maid, a trim Frenchwoman, Madame’s business manager,
a fat, voluble Italian, Madame’s secretary, an olive-skinned South
American youth in an evening coat with velvet collar, and Madame’s
principal male dancer in a scanty Egyptian dress with grotesquely
painted face. They were all talking at the same time, and at intervals
Fletcher muttered hotly: “This time she leaves the bill or I walk out
of the theatre!”
Then a clear voice cried:
“_Me voila!_” and a dainty apparition in an ermine wrap tripped into
the centre of the group, tapped the manager lightly on the shoulder and
said:
“_Allons!_ I am ready!”
Mr. Mackwayte’s face creased its mask of paint into a thousand
wrinkles. For, on seeing him, the dancer’s face lighted up, and,
running to him with hands outstretched, she cried:
“_Tiens!_ Monsieur Arthur!” while he ejaculated:
“Why, it’s little Marcelle!”
But now the stage manager interposed. He whisked Madame’s wrap off her
with one hand and with the other, firmly propelled her on to the stage.
She let him have his way with a merry smile, dark eyes and white teeth
flashing, but as she went she said to Mr. Mackwayte:
“My friend, wait for me! _Et puis nous causerons!_ We will ’ave a talk,
_n’est-ce pas?_”
“A very old friend of mine, my dear,” Mr. Mackwayte said to Barbara
when, dressed in his street clothes, he rejoined her in the wings where
she stood watching Nur-el-Din dancing. “She was an acrobat in the Seven
Duponts, a turn that earned big money in the old days. It must be...
let’s see... getting on for twenty years since I last set eyes on her.
She was a pretty kid in those days! God bless my soul! Little Marcelle
a big star! It’s really most amazing!”
Directly she was off the stage, Nur-el-Din came straight to Mr.
Mackwayte, pushing aside her maid who was waiting with her wrap.
“My friend,” she cooed in her pretty broken English, “I am so glad, so
glad to see you. And this is your girl... ah! she ’as your eyes,
Monsieur Arthur, your nice English gray eyes! Such a big girl... ah!
but she make me feel old!”
She laughed, a pretty gurgling laugh, throwing back her head so that
the diamond collar she was wearing heaved and flashed.
“But you will come to my room, _hein?_” she went on. “Marie, my wrap!”
and she led the way to the lift.
Nur-el-Din’s spacious dressing-room seemed to be full of people and
flowers. All her little court was assembled amid a perfect bower of
hot-house blooms and plants. Head and shoulders above everybody else in
the room towered the figure of an officer in uniform, with him another
palpable Englishman in evening dress.
Desmond Okewood thought he had never seen anything in his life more
charming than the picture the dancer made as she came into the room.
Her wrap had fallen open and beneath the broad bars of her
cloth-of-silver dress her bosom yet rose and fell after the exertions
of her dance. A jet black curl had strayed out from beneath her lofty
silver head-dress, and she thrust it back in its place with one little
brown bejeweled hand whilst she extended the other to Strangwise.
“_Tiens, mon capitaine!_” she said. Desmond was watching her closely,
fascinated by her beauty, but noticed an unwilling, almost a hostile
tone, in her voice.
Strangwise was speaking in his deep voice.
“Marcelle,” he said, “I’ve brought a friend who is anxious to meet you.
Major Desmond Okewood! He and I soldiered together in France!” The
dancer turned her big black eyes full on Desmond as she held out her
hand to him.
“Old friends, new friends,” she cried, clapping, her hands like a
child, “I love friends. Captaine, here is a very old friend,” she said
to Strangwise as Mr. Mackwayte and Barbara came into the rooms,
“Monsieur Arthur Mackwayte and ’is daughter. I ’ave know Monsieur
Arthur almos’ all my life. And, Mademoiselle, permit me? I introduce le
Captaine Strangwise and ’is friend... what is the name? Ah, Major
Okewood!”
Nur-el-Din sank into a _bergère_ chair beside her great mirror.
“There are too many in this room,” she cried, “there is no air!
Lazarro, Ramiro, all of you, go outside, my friends!”
As Madame’s entourage surged out, Strangwise said:
“I hear you are leaving the Palaceum, Marcelle!”
He spoke so low that Mr. Mackwayte and Barbara, who were talking to
Desmond, did not hear. Marcelle, taking off her heavy head-dress,
answered quickly:
“Who told you that?”
“Never mind,” replied Strangwise. “But you never told me you were
going. Why didn’t you?”
His voice was stern and hard now, very different from his usual quiet
and mellow tones. But he was smiling.
Marcelle cast a glance over her shoulder. Barbara was looking round the
room and caught the reflection of the dancer’s face in a mirror hanging
on the wall. To her intense astonishment, she saw a look of despair,
almost of terror, in Nur-el-Din’s dark eyes. It was like the frightened
stare of some hunted beast. Barbara was so much taken aback that she
instinctively glanced over her shoulder at the door, thinking that the
dancer had seen something there to frighten her. But the door was shut.
When Barbara looked into the mirror again, she saw only the reflection
of Nur-el-Din’s pretty neck and shoulders. The dancer was talking again
in low tones to Strangwise.
But Barbara swiftly forgot that glimpse of the dancer’s face in the
glass. For she was very happy. Happiness, like high spirits, is
eminently contagious, and the two men at her side were supremely
content.
Her father’s eyes were shining with his little success of the evening:
on the way upstairs Fletcher had held out hopes to him of a long
engagement at the Palaceum while as for the other, he was radiant with
the excitement of his first night in town after long months of
campaigning.
He was thinking that his leave had started most propitiously. After a
man has been isolated for months amongst muddy masculinity, the
homeliest woman will find favor in his eyes. And to neither of these
women, in whose presence he so unexpectedly found himself within a few
hours of landing in England, could the epithet “homely” be applied.
Each represented a distinct type of beauty in herself, and Desmond, as
he chatted with Barbara, was mentally contrasting the two women.
Barbara, tall and slim and very healthy, with her braided brown hair,
creamy complexion and gray eyes, was essentially English. She was the
typical woman of England, of England of the broad green valleys and
rolling downs and snuggling hamlets, of England of the white cliffs
gnawed by the restless ocean. The other was equally essentially a woman
of the South. Her dark eyes, her upper lip just baring her firm white
teeth, spoke of hot Latin or gypsy blood surging in her veins. Hers was
the beauty of the East, sensuous, arresting, conjuring up pictures of
warm, perfumed nights, the thrumming of guitars, a great yellow moon
hanging low behind the palms.
“Barbara!” called Nur-el-Din from the dressing table. Mr. Mackwayte had
joined her there and was chatting to Strangwise.
“You will stay and talk to me while I change _n’est-ce pas?_ Your papa
and these gentlemen are going to drink a whiskey-soda with that animal
Fletcher... _quel homme terrible_... and you shall join them
presently.”
The men went out, leaving Barbara alone with the dancer. Barbara
noticed how tired Nur-el-Din was looking. Her pretty, childish ways
seemed to have evaporated with her high spirits. Her face was heavy and
listless. There were lines round her eyes, and her mouth had a hard,
drawn look.
“Child,” she said, “give me, please, my _peignoir_... it is behind the
door,... and, I will get this paint off my face!”
Barbara fetched the wrapper and sat down beside the dancer. But
Nur-el-Din did not move. She seemed to be thinking. Barbara saw the
hunted look she had already observed in her that evening creeping over
her face again.
“It is a hard life; this life of ours, a life of change, _ma petite!_ A
great artiste has no country, no home, no fireside! For the past five
years I have been roaming about the world! Often I think I will settle
down, but the life holds me!”
She took up from her dressing-table a little oblong plain silver box.
“I want to ask you a favor, _ma petite_ Barbara!” she said. “This
little box is a family possession of mine: I have had it for many
years. The world is so disturbed to-day that life is not safe for
anybody who travels as much as I do! You have a home, a safe home with
your dear father! He was telling me about it! Will you take this little
box and keep it safely for me until... until... the war is over...
until I ask you for it?”
“Yes, of course,” said Barbara, “if you wish it, though, what with
these air raids, I don’t know that London is particularly safe,
either.”
“Ah! that is good of you,” cried Nur-el-Din, “anyhow, the little box is
safer with you than with me. See, I will wrap it up and seal it, and
then you will take it home with you, _n’est-ce pas?_”
She opened a drawer and swiftly hunting among its contents produced a
sheet of white paper, and some sealing-wax. She wrapped the box in the
paper and sealed it up, stamping the seals with a camel signet ring she
drew off her finger. Then she handed the package to Barbara.
There was a knock at the door. The maid, noiselessly arranging Madame’s
dresses in the corner opened it.
“You will take care of it well for me,” the dancer said to Barbara, and
her voice vibrated with a surprising eagerness, “you will guard it
preciously until I come for it...” She laughed and added carelessly:
“Because it is a family treasure, a life _mascotte_ of mine, _hein?_”
Then they heard Strangwise’s deep voice outside.
Nur-el-Din started.
“Le Captaine is there, Madame,” said the French maid, “’e say Monsieur
Mackwayte ask for Mademoiselle!”
The dancer thrust a little hand from the folds of her silken kimono.
“_Au revoir, ma petite_,” she said, “we shall meet again. You will come
and see me, _n’est-ce pas?_ And say nothing to anybody about...” she
pointed to Barbara’s bag where the little package was reposing, “it
shall be a secret between us, _hein?_ Promise me this, _mon enfant!_”
“Of course, I promise, if you like!” said Barbara, wonderingly.
At half-past eight the next morning Desmond Okewood found himself in
the ante-room of the Chief of the Secret Service in a cross and puzzled
mood. The telephone at his bedside had roused him at 8 a.m. from the
first sleep he had had in a real bed for two months. In a drowsy voice
he had protested that he had an appointment at the War Office at 10
o’clock, but a curt voice had bidden him dress himself and come to the
Chief forthwith. Here he was, accordingly, breakfastless, his chin
smarting from a hasty shave. What the devil did the Chief want with him
anyhow? _He_ wasn’t in the Secret Service, though his brother, Francis,
was.
A voice broke in upon his angry musing.
“Come in, Okewood!” it said.
The Chief stood at the door of his room, a broad-shouldered figure in a
plain jacket suit. Desmond had met him before. He knew him for a man of
many questions but of few confidences, yet his recollection of him was
of a suave, imperturbable personality. To-day, however, the Chief
seemed strangely preoccupied. There was a deep line between his bushy
eyebrows as he bent them at Desmond, motioning him to a chair. When he
spoke, his manner was very curt.
“What time did you part from the Mackwaytes at the theatre last night?”
Desmond was dumbfounded. How on earth did the Chief know about his
visit to the Palaceum? Still, he was used to the omniscience of the
British Intelligence, so he answered promptly:
“It was latish, sir; about midnight, I think!”
“They went home to Seven Kings alone!”
“Yes, sir, in a taxi!” Desmond replied.
The Chief contemplated his blotting-pad gloomily. Desmond knew it for a
trick of his when worried.
“Did you have a good night?” he said to Desmond, suddenly.
“Yes,” he said, not in the least understanding the drift of the
question. “... though I didn’t mean to get up quite so early!”
The Chief ignored this sally.
“Nothing out of the ordinary happened during the night, I suppose?” he
asked again.
Desmond shook his head.
“Nothing that I know of, sir,” he said.
“Seen Strangwise this morning?”
Desmond gasped for breath. So the Chief knew about him meeting
Strangwise, too!
“No, sir!”
A clerk put his head in at the door.
“Well, Matthews!”
“Captain Strangwise will be along very shortly, sir,” he said.
The Chief looked up quickly.
“Ah, he’s all right then! Good.”
“And, sir,” Matthews added, “Scotland Yard telephoned to say that the
doctor is with Miss Mackwayte now.”
Desmond started up.
“Is Miss Mackwayte ill?” he exclaimed.
The Chief answered slowly, as Matthews withdrew: “Mr. Mackwayte was
found murdered at his house early this morning!”