“_How, let me ask, will it end?_”
When the girl in black turned into the winter garden, Lebrassa was
conscious of only one thing--a desire to follow and find out who she
was. Then the approach of a page took his attention to other matters.
On the salver the boy held was a telegram. Lebrassa opened and read
the message. It was from Cooper, saying he had married Molly Seaton by
special license in Liverpool that morning.
Putting it into his pocket, Lebrassa turned towards the page.
“Have there been any inquiries for Miss Seaton?” he asked.
“Not that I know of, sir.”
Lebrassa glanced at his wrist watch.
It was quite possible the London train was late. Leslie Graham might
not have arrived yet.
“If any one inquires for Miss Seaton, send him to 19 on the first
floor,” he said.
“I’ll tell the porter, sir,” the boy replied.
Lebrassa left the hall and went upstairs to his own private
sitting-room. It was as silent as the tomb except for the ticking of a
clock and the occasional rattle of a cinder on the hearth. The solid
door, with its rubber beading and heavy curtain, prevented any noise
from entering. And, equally, any noise in the room would not reach the
world’s ears.
This last fact must have been in his mind, for the lines of cruelty
about his mouth deepened to absolute savagery as he stood waiting for
the coming of Leslie Graham.
Suddenly the door swung open.
For a second time that night Lebrassa forgot the business on hand.
Standing on the threshold was the girl who had been his champion
barely twenty minutes before.
On seeing him, she came to an abrupt halt, staring at him in blank
amazement. Then she made a backward movement.
The action roused him.
He crossed the room hastily.
“Is there anything I can do for you?” he asked quickly.
“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I must have got to the wrong room. I’m
afraid I startled you, bursting in like that.”
“You didn’t startle me in the least,” he replied, smiling at her. “And
if you tell me what room you want, perhaps I can put you right.”
“In the bureau they said I was to go to 19 on the first floor. But
they must have given me the wrong number.”
She had recognized Lebrassa as the man who had been the butt of
Fletcher’s rudeness. This second meeting left her wondering at his
cultured voice and well-bred ease of manner. And it also brought a
desire to show him that all English people were not so rude and
offensive as the man who had attacked him in the hall.
Lebrassa’s next remark put a means of compensation into her hands.
“You look very tired,” he said. “Let me go down to the bureau and see
if I can solve the mystery for you.”
“It’s most kind of you,” she said gratefully.
“I’m glad to be of any assistance. Won’t you sit down in the
meantime?”
Crossing to the fireplace, he drew one of the big, comfortable chairs
closer. In a way that was vaguely familiar she smiled at him. Then,
with an air of suppressed weariness, she seated herself.
He leant against the chimney-piece, toying with a little metal vase
there. At that moment only one fact had any place in his mind. By some
lucky chance the girl who so interested him had strayed into his room,
and he wanted to keep her as long as possible.
“Whom shall I ask for?” he inquired.
“I’m trying to find Miss Seaton.”
The name brought his thoughts back to the man he was expecting.
He scanned his visitor more closely. She was a gentlewoman, Molly
Seaton a very ordinary type of lower middle-class girl clerk. He
wondered what the two had in common and how they came to be friends.
“Who shall I say is inquiring?” he asked.
“Leslie Graham.”
A tense, quivering pause greeted her statement. The little brass vase
he was toying with crumpled up like an eggshell as his hand clenched
round it. He stood as though pressing backwards, with his whole
strength, against some wild flood that would have swept him on towards
the girl.
“Leslie Graham,” he repeated, in a thick, strained voice.
“You seem surprised,” she said.
“I always thought it was a man’s name,” he said in the same husky way.
“It can be a girl’s too,” she explained. “In fact I’m called after my
father.”
“I’ve never heard it as a girl’s name,” he said hoarsely. “Years ago I
knew a boy of the name. He would be about grown up, twenty or
twenty-one now. I wonder if he was a relative of yours?”
“I had a brother called Leslie, but he died before my day. So he
couldn’t have been the boy you mean. Though he would have been about
twenty-one now,” she added reflectively.
Lebrassa changed the conversation.
“This is hardly finding your friend for you,” he remarked.
With a quick, fierce movement he turned from her, and went downstairs
to make inquiries he knew would be useless.
When he came back, a few minutes later, all trace of his surprise had
vanished.
“They tell me, Miss Graham, that your friend left here early this
morning for Liverpool and hasn’t returned yet.”
“That’s what they told me. And I can’t make it out at all. It’s so
strange she should have gone the very day she knew I’d be coming.”
“Probably she intended to return much earlier, and somehow missed her
train,” he suggested.
A look of relief greeted this idea.
“How stupid of me not to think of that! When is the next train due?”
Going to his desk, Lebrassa picked up a railway guide.
“There’s one at half-past eight,” he said a moment or so later. “As
you’ve quite half an hour to wait, a very sensible way of passing the
time would be by having some dinner. You must be both tired and hungry
after your long journey.”
With some surprise Leslie looked at him.
“How do you know I’ve had a long journey?”
Lebrassa was conscious of having made a slip. However, he covered it
up very quickly.
“The porter said a lady from Paris was inquiring for Miss Seaton.
Naturally I assumed it was you.”
“But why was I sent here?”
In spite of himself a wish to stand well with his visitor seized
Lebrassa--a desire to keep her from learning he had taken the scarlet
letter.
“I rather expected a friend this evening. Probably the porter mixed up
the names,” he said suavely.
In a friendly way Leslie smiled at him.
“It’s very good of you to have taken so much trouble on my account,”
she said.
She got to her feet.
“It’s been a pleasure, not a trouble,” he assured her. “And I’m hoping
you’ll let me have that pleasure a little longer. I’m a solitary
animal with no defined social status--a sort of rogue elephant usually
left to my own devices. Will you relieve my solitude to-night, and
dine with me?”
His request filled her with dismay. All she had heard earlier in the
evening concerning his sort and color flashed back to her mind. It was
one thing to stand up for a despised race on an impulse, but quite
another to dine tête-à-tête with a “nigger” under the gaze of
nearly two hundred people.
This Leslie realized when Lebrassa issued his invitation.
He saw the dismay on her face, and the bitter, cruel lines about his
mouth deepened.
Then her innate sense of justice brought other thoughts to her head.
It wasn’t fair to condemn him for a cause no fault of his own. His
manners and style were perfect. No prince could be better behaved. He
couldn’t help his color. He had been very hard hit once that evening.
If she refused his invitation, he would guess why.
She cast a quick glance at him as he loomed, big, over her, his bored
face showing nothing of what was passing in his mind.
To the girl he seemed vaguely familiar; as if behind him lurked the
shadow of some one she knew. She had the queer feeling, too, that she
must be kind to him, for a reason quite apart from the insults heaped
on him by that man in the hall; as if there was something between them
that demanded her pity and understanding.
The feeling made her decide in his favor.
Just when Lebrassa was expecting a refusal she looked up at him.
“I’m quite grateful to you for asking me,” she said. “I don’t know a
soul here, and I hate going into a strange dining-room alone.”
It was a gracious and cordial acceptance.
It appeared to leave him a trifle nonplussed, almost as if he would
rather she had said “no” and so given him some grievance against her.
When Leslie entered the dining-room she was well aware that her
unusual companion caused more than the average number of curious eyes
to be turned in her direction. As she went up the room, Lebrassa in
her wake, she knew two men, both slightly familiar, were scanning her
closely.
Whilst Lebrassa gave his order to the waiter, Leslie studied the
couple. All at once it dawned on her they were the two whose
conversation she had overheard in the winter garden.
“Mr. Lebrassa, can you tell me who those men are?” she asked, glancing
at the watching couple.
At her question his eyes narrowed. With veiled suspicion he watched
her, wondering how she knew his name and why she should ask him to
identify that special pair.
“All I know about them is that the taller one is the man who tried to
pick a quarrel with me just before dinner,” he said cautiously.
“I’d recognize _him_, but I was wondering who and what they were.”
“I’ll do my best to find out for you.”
Beckoning the head waiter, Lebrassa made inquiries.
“The taller one, sir, is a Captain Fletcher. The other a Mr. Mellors.
They came here this afternoon, from Liverpool. Just home from Northern
Nigeria.”
Lebrassa gave Leslie time to digest this information.
Then, watching her closely, he said:
“I’m curious to know who told you my name.”
The underlying tone of command in his voice surprised Leslie. She
wondered why he should take so seriously a subject she had broached
out of sheer nervousness.
Considering the happenings of the evening, and that she was in a way
indebted to him for the trouble he had taken over Molly’s absence, she
had no wish that he should learn how very much she would rather _not_
have accepted his invitation. This, combined with nervousness, made
her treat him in the friendly way she would have treated a man of her
own class and color.
Her face assumed a gravity equalling his. But in spite of all efforts
a dimple twitched into her left cheek.
“They told me. In fact, they told me quite a lot of dreadful things
about you, but I was so worried that I’d forgotten all about it.
Seeing them reminded me.”
The suspicious, thoughtful look in Lebrassa’s eyes deepened.
“If you’re on such friendly terms with them as to discuss me
wholesale, why did you put me to the trouble of finding out their
names?”
“I don’t know them any more than you do. Quite accidentally I
overheard them talking about you.”
His dark, compelling eyes were fixed on her tired face as if all the
power of his will were behind them.
“What were they saying about me?” he asked in a casual manner.
Leslie was too tired and worried to realize she was being “pumped.”
“They were connecting you with some one called the Hyena, whoever he
may be. But I’ve forgotten most of what they said,” she replied.
With a little grating noise the mulatto’s teeth set.
“They flattered me,” he said a moment later.
“In what way?”
“The Hyena, Miss Graham, is the nom-de-guerre of the most
blood-thirsty villain in West Africa, so-called from his tribal cry--a
man three Governments have been after for years. He’s the ruler of a
band of miscreants whose headquarters haven’t yet been discovered. A
savage African sultan with a price on his head, who is always ready to
take a hand in any and every rising against the whites, to raid and
burn and do murder, for no reason that can be discovered, unless a
sheer hatred of their color.”
“He sounds a very terrible person. How absurd of them to think you
might be the man. Whatever made them do that?”
“I really don’t know. However, if they persist in their opinion, I
shall have no difficulty in convincing them otherwise.”
He turned the conversation.
As the meal went on he sat listening to Leslie’s voice, watching her
small, white hands. A wild desire to laugh aloud seized him as he
realized she was his enemy, whom he had sworn to kill, the daughter of
a man who had injured him irreparably. This scrap of a girl who had
spoken in defence of _him_ and his color; who rather than hurt his
feelings had swallowed her pride and accepted his invitation to
dinner.
He studied her closely. In no way did she resemble her dead father.
The girl Cooper had married was more like that thief and murderer.
Then a surge of wild negro hatred went coursing through Lebrassa at
the thought of who and what Leslie was. With it came the desire to
take her by the throat and wring the life out of her.
And through the surge of savage anger her voice reached him, talking
in a frank, friendly manner, and gradually the wild flood subsided,
leaving him chill and thoughtful.
Presently he was watching her in a strained, anxious way, thankful
that only he knew the alias Lionel de Tourville had adopted, of the
fact of the son’s death, and of the existence of this daughter.
Then he remembered that Cooper had married her friend. The negro might
gather enough to connect the man whose visit to the hotel he,
Lebrassa, had spoken of, and this girl.
The idea made the lines of thought on his powerful face deepen.
A further remark of Leslie’s penetrated the maze in which his mind was
moving.
“It’s nearly half past eight,” she was saying with an air of
suppressed relief. “If you’ll excuse me, I’d like to be in the hall
when Miss Seaton comes in.”
Getting to her feet, with a friendly nod she left the table.
As she went down the room, Lebrassa stood with his eyes on her.
For a brief half hour a girl of a type as far beyond his reach as the
stars, had sat and talked to him just as if he were as other men.
Lionel de Tourville’s daughter!
Loath to leave the table that seemed still sweet with her presence, he
seated himself again.
A violet, that must have dropped from the bunch on her shoulder, lay
half hidden in a dish of fruit.
Picking it out he held it almost caressingly. The faint perfume
reached him. For a time he looked at the little flower thoughtfully.
Then he crushed it fiercely, rubbing it up and down between his thumb
and finger until only a purple stain remained. Yet the scent was
sweeter and stronger than ever.