THE FLIGHT OF LOUISE
The Baroness was looking her best, and knew it. She had slept well the
night before, and her eyes were soft and clear. Her maid had been
unusually successful with her hair, and her hat, which had arrived
only that morning from Paris, was quite the smartest in the room. She
was at her favourite restaurant, and her solitary companion was a
good-looking man, added to which the caviar was delightfully fresh,
and the toast crisp and thin. Consequently the Baroness was in a
particularly good temper.
"I really do wish, my dear friend," she said, smiling across at him,
"that I could do what you ask. But it is not so simple, not so simple as
you think. You say, 'Give me the address of your friend,' You ask me
nicely, and I like you well enough to be glad to do it. But Louise she
say to me, 'Give no one my address! Let no one know where I am gone.'"
"I'm sure she didn't mean that to apply to me," Wrayson pleaded.
"Ah! but she even mentioned your name," the Baroness declared. "I say to
her, 'Not even Mr. Wrayson?' and she answered, 'No! No! No!'"
"And you promised?" he asked.
"Why, yes! What else could I do?" she replied. "I say to her, 'You are a
very foolish girl, Louise. After you have gone you will be sorry. Mr.
Wrayson will be angry with you, and I shall make myself very, very
agreeable to him, and who knows but he will forget all about you?' But
Louise she only shake her head. She knows her own countrymen too well.
They are so terribly insularly constant."
"Is that such a very bad quality, Baroness?"
"Ah! I find it so," she admitted. "I do not like the man who can think of
only one thing, only one woman at a time. He is so dull, he has no
imagination. If he has only one sweetheart, how can he know anything
about us? for in a hundred different women there are no two alike."
"That is all very well," Wrayson answered, smiling; "but, you see, if a
man cares very much for one particular woman, he hasn't the least
curiosity about the rest of her sex."
She sighed gently, and her eyes flashed her regrets. Very blue eyes they
were to-day, almost as blue as the turquoises about her throat.
"They say," she murmured, "that some Englishmen are like that. It is so
much a pity--when they are nice!"
"I suppose," he suggested, "that yours is the Continental point of view."
She was silent until the waiter, who was filling her glass with white
wine, had departed. Then she leaned over towards him. Her forehead was a
little wrinkled, her eyebrows raised. She had the half-plaintive air of a
child who is complaining of being unjustly whipped.
"Yes! I think it is," she answered. "The lover, as I know him, is one who
could not be unkind to a woman. In his heart he is faithful, perhaps, to
one, but for her sake the whole world of beautiful women are objects of
interest to him. He will flirt with them when they will. He is always
their admirer. In the background there may always be what you call the
preference, but that is his secret."
Wrayson smiled across the table.
"This is a very dangerous doctrine, Baroness!" he declared.
"Dangerous?" she murmured.
"For us! Remember that we are a susceptible race."
She flung out her hands and shook her head. Susceptible! She denied it
vehemently.
"It is on the contrary," she declared. "You do not lose your heads or
your hearts very easily, you Englishmen."
"You do not know us," he protested.
"I know _you_," she answered. "For myself, I admit it. When I am with a
man who is nice, I try that I may make him, just a little, no more, but
just a little in love with me. It makes things more amusing. It is better
for him, and we are not bored. But with you, _mon ami, I_ know very well
that I waste my time. And so, I ask you instead this question. Tell me
why you have invited me to take luncheon with you."
She flashed her question across at him carelessly enough, but he felt
that she expected an answer, and that she was not to be deceived.
"I wanted Miss Fitzmaurice's address," he said.
"Naturally. But what else?"
He sighed.
"I want to know more than you will tell me, I am afraid," he said. "I
want to know why you and Miss Fitzmaurice are living together in London
and leading such an unusual life, and how in Heaven's name you became
concerned in the affairs of Morris Barnes."
"Ah!" she said. "You want to know that? So!"
"I do," he admitted.
"And yet," she remarked, "even for that it was not worth while to make
love to me! You ask so much, my friend, and you give so little."
"If you--" he began, a little awkwardly.
Her light laugh stopped him.
"Ah, no! my friend, you must not be foolish," she said. "I will tell you
what I can for nothing, and that, I am afraid, is very little more than
nothing. But as for offering me a bribe, you must not think of that. It
would not be _comme-il-faut;_ not at all _gentil_."
"Tell me what you can, then," he begged.
She shrugged her shoulders.
"It is so little," she declared; "only this. We are not adventuresses,
Louise and I. We are living together because we were schoolfellows, and
because we are both anxious to succeed in a certain undertaking to which,
for different reasons, we have pledged ourselves. To succeed we needed
some papers which had come into the hands of Mr. Morris Barnes. That is
why I am civil to that little--what you call bounder, his brother."
"It sounds reasonable enough, this," Wrayson said; "but what about
the murder of Morris Barnes, on the very night, you know, when Louise
was there?"
"It is all a very simple matter," the Baroness answered, quietly, "but
yet it is a matter where the death of a few such men would count for
nothing. A few ages ago it would not have been a matter of a dozen Morris
Barnes, no, nor a thousand! Diplomacy is just as cruel, and just as
ruthless, as the battlefield, only it works, down there--underground!"
"It is a political matter, then?" Wrayson asked swiftly.
The Baroness smiled. She took a cigarette from her little gold case
and lit it.
"Ah!" she exclaimed, "you must not try to, what you say, pump me! You can
call it what you will. Only to Louise, as to me, it is very much a
personal affair. Shall we talk now, for a little, of other things?"
Wrayson sighed.
"I may not know, then," he begged, "where Louise has gone, or why?"
"It would not be her wish," the Baroness answered, "that I should
tell you."
"Very well," Wrayson said, "I will ask you no more questions. Only this.
I have told you of this man Bentham."
The Baroness inclined her head. He had told her nothing that was
news to her.
"Was he on your side, or opposed to you?"
"You are puzzling me," the Baroness confessed.
"Already," Wrayson explained, "I know as much of the affair as this.
Morris Barnes was in possession of something, I do not know whether it
was documents, or what possible material shape it had, but it brought him
in a considerable income, and both you and some others were endeavouring
to obtain possession of it. So far, I believe that neither of you have
succeeded. Morris Barnes has been murdered in vain; Bentham the lawyer,
who telephoned to me on the night of his death, has shared his fate. To
whose account do these two murders go, yours or the others'?"
"I cannot answer that question, Mr. Wrayson," the Baroness said.
"Do you know," Wrayson demanded, dropping his voice a little, "that, but
for my moral, if not actual perjury, Louise herself would have been
charged with the murder of Morris Barnes?"
"She had a narrow escape," the Baroness admitted.
"She had a narrow escape," Wrayson declared, "but the unfortunate part of
the affair is, that she is not even now safe!"
The Baroness looked at him curiously. She was in the act of drawing on
her gloves, but her fingers suddenly became rigid.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"I mean," Wrayson said, "that another person saw her come out of the
flats that night. It was a friend of mine, who kept silence at first
because he believed that it was a private assignation of my own. Since
then events have occurred to make him think differently. He has gone
over to the other side. He is spending his time with young Sydney
Barnes, and he has set himself to discover the mystery of Morris Barnes'
murder. He has even gone so far as to give me warning that I should be
better out of England."
"Who is this person?" the Baroness asked calmly.
"His name is Stephen Heneage, and he is a member of my club, the club to
which Louise's father also belongs," Wrayson replied.
The Baroness suddenly dropped her veil, but not before Wrayson had seen
a sudden change in her face. He remembered suddenly that Heneage was no
stranger to her, he remembered the embarrassment of their meeting at
the Alhambra.
"You know him, of course," he repeated. "Heneage is not a man to be
trifled with. He has had experience in affairs of this sort, he is no
ordinary amateur detective."
"Yes! I know Mr. Stephen Heneage," the Baroness said. "Tell me, does
Louise know?"
Wrayson shook his head.
"I have had no opportunity of telling her," he answered. "I might not
have thought so seriously of it, but this morning I received a note
from Heneage."
"Yes! What did he say?"
"It was only a line or two," Wrayson answered. "He reminded me of his
previous warning to me to leave England for a time, and he underlined it.
Louise ought to know. I want to tell her!"
"I am glad you did not tell me this before," the Baroness said, as they
left the room together, "or it would have spoiled my luncheon. I do not
like your friend, Mr. Heneage!"
"You will give me Louise's address?" he asked. "Some one must see her."
"I will send it you," the Baroness promised, "before the day is out."