When Dulcie had entered the studio that evening, her white face
smeared with blood and a torn letter clutched in her hand, the
gramophone was playing a lively two-step, and Barres and Thessalie
Dunois were dancing there in the big, brilliantly lighted studio, all
by themselves.
Thessalie caught sight of Dulcie over Barres's shoulder, hastily
slipped out of his arms, and hurried across the polished floor.
"What is the matter?" she asked breathlessly, a fearful intuition
already enlightening her as her startled glance travelled from the
blood on Dulcie's face to the torn fragments of paper in her rigidly
doubled fingers.
Barres, coming up at the same moment, slipped a firm arm around
Dulcie's shoulders.
"Are you badly hurt, dear? What has happened?" he asked very quietly.
She looked up at him, mute, her bruised mouth quivering, and held out
the remains of the letter. And Thessalie Dunois caught her breath
sharply as her eyes fell on the bits of paper covered with her own
handwriting.
"There was a man hiding in the court," said Dulcie. "He wore a white
cloth over his face and he came up behind me and tried to snatch your
letter out of my hand; but I held fast and he only tore it in two."
Barres stared at the sheaf of torn paper, lying crumpled up in his
open hand, then his amazed gaze rested on Thessalie:
"Is this the letter you wrote to me?" he inquired.
"Yes. May I have the remains of my letter?" she asked calmly.
He handed over the bits of paper without a word, and she opened her
gold-mesh bag and dropped them in.
There was a moment's silence, then Barres said:
"Did he strike you, Dulcie?"
"Yes, when he thought he couldn't get away from me."
"You hung on to him?"
"I tried to."
Thessalie stepped closer, impulsively, and framed Dulcie's pallid,
blood-smeared face in both of her cool, white hands.
"He has cut your lower lip inside," she said. And, to Barres: "Could
you get something to bathe it?"
Barres went away to his own room. When he returned with a finger-bowl
full of warm water, some powdered boric acid, cotton, and a soft
towel, Dulcie was lying deep in an armchair, her lids closed; and
Thessalie sat beside her on one of the padded arms, smoothing the
ruddy, curly hair from her forehead.
She opened her eyes when Barres appeared, giving him a clear but
inscrutable look. Thessalie gently washed the traces of battle from
her face, then rinsed her lacerated mouth very tenderly.
"It is just a little cut," she said. "Your lip is a trifle swelled."
"It is nothing," murmured Dulcie.
"Do you feel all right?" inquired Barres anxiously.
"I feel sleepy." She sat erect, always with her grey eyes on Barres.
"I think I will go to bed." She stood up, conscious, now, of her
shabby clothes and slippers; and there was a painful flush on her face
as she thanked Thessalie and bade her a confused good-night.
But Thessalie took the girl's hand and retained it.
"Please don't say anything about what happened," she said. "May I ask
it of you as a very great favour?"
Dulcie turned her eyes on Barres in silent appeal for guidance.
"Do you mind not saying anything about this affair," he asked, "as
long as Miss Dunois wishes it?"
"Should I not tell my father?"
"Not even to him," replied Thessalie gently. "Because it won't ever
happen again. I am very certain of that. Will you trust my word?"
Again Dulcie looked at Barres, who nodded.
"I promise never to speak of it," she said in a low, serious voice.
Barres took her down stairs. At the desk she pointed out, at his
request, the scene of recent action. Little by little he discovered,
by questioning her, what a dogged battle she had fought there alone in
the whitewashed corridor.
"Why didn't you call for help?" he asked.
"I don't know.... I didn't think of it. And when he got away I was
dizzy from the blow."
At her bedroom door he took both her hands in his. The gas-jet was
still burning in her room. On the bed lay her pretty evening dress.
"I'm so glad," she remarked naively, "that I had on my old clothes."
He smiled, drew her to him, and lightly smoothed the thick, bright
hair from her brow.
"You know," he said, "I am becoming very fond of you, Dulcie. You're
such a splendid girl in every way.... We'll always remain firm
friends, won't we?"
"Yes."
"And in perplexity and trouble I want you to feel that you can always
come to me. Because--you do like me, don't you, Dulcie?"
For a moment or two she sustained his smiling, questioning gaze, then
laid her cheek lightly against his hands, which still held both of
hers imprisoned. And for one exquisite instant of spiritual surrender
her grey eyes closed. Then she straightened herself up; he released
her hands; she turned slowly and entered her room, closing the door
very gently behind her.
* * * * *
In the studio above, Thessalie, still wearing her rose-coloured cloak,
sat awaiting him by the window.
He crossed the studio, dropped onto the lounge beside her, and lighted
a cigarette. Neither spoke for a few moments. Then he said:
"Thessa, don't you think you had better tell me something about this
ugly business which seems to involve you?"
"I can't, Garry."
"Why not?"
"Because I shall not take the risk of dragging you in."
"Who are these people who seem to be hounding you?"
"I can't tell you."
"You trust me, don't you?"
She nodded, her face partly averted:
"It isn't that. And I had meant to tell you something concerning this
matter--tell you just enough so that I might ask your advice. In fact,
that is what I wrote you in that letter--being rather scared and
desperate.... But half my letter to you has been stolen. The people
who stole it are clever enough to piece it out and fill in what is
missing----"
She turned impulsively and took his hands between her own. Her face
had grown quite white.
"How much harm have I done to you, Garry? Have I already involved you
by writing as much as I did write? I have been wondering.... I
couldn't bear to bring anything like that into your life----"
"Anything like what?" he asked bluntly. "Why don't you tell me,
Thessa?"
"No. It's too complicated--too terrible. There are elements in it that
would shock and disgust you.... And perhaps you would not believe
me----"
"Nonsense!"
"The Government of a great European Power does not believe me to be
honest!" she said very quietly. "Why should you?"
"Because I know you."
She smiled faintly:
"You're such a dear," she murmured. "But you talk like a boy. What do
you really know about me? We have met just three times in our entire
lives. Do any of those encounters really enlighten you? If you were a
business man in a responsible position, could you honestly vouch for
me?"
"Don't you credit me with common sense?" he insisted warmly.
She laughed:
"No, Garry, dear, not with very much. Even I have more than you, and
that is saying very little. We are inclined to be irresponsible, you
and I--inclined to take the world lightly, inclined to laugh, inclined
to tread the moonlit way! No, Garry, neither you nor I possess very
much of that worldly caution born of hardened wisdom and sharpened
wits."
She smiled almost tenderly at him and pressed his hands between her
own.
"If I had been worldly wise," she said, "I should never have danced my
way to America through summer moonlight with you. If I had been wiser
still, I should not now be an exile, my political guilt established,
myself marked for destruction by a great European Power the instant I
dare set foot on its soil."
"I supposed your trouble to be political," he nodded.
"Yes, it is." She sighed, looked at him with a weary little smile.
"But, Garry, I am not guilty of being what that nation believes me to
be."
"I am very sure of it," he said gravely.
"Yes, you would be. You'd believe in me anyway, even with the terrible
evidence against me.... I don't suppose you'd think me guilty if I
tell you that I am not--in spite of what they might say about
me--might prove, apparently."
She withdrew her hands, clasped them, her gaze lost in retrospection
for a few moments. Then, coming to herself with a gesture of infinite
weariness:
"There is no use, Garry. I should never be believed. There are those
who, base enough to entrap me, now are preparing to destroy me because
they are cowardly enough to be afraid of me while I am alive. Yes,
trapped, exiled, utterly discredited as I am to-day, they are still
afraid of me."
"Who are you, Thessa?" he asked, deeply disturbed.
"I am what you first saw me--a dancer, Garry, and nothing worse."
"It seems strange that a European Government should desire your
destruction," he said.
"If I really were what this Government believes me to be, it would not
seem strange to you."
She sat thinking, worrying her under lip with delicate white teeth;
then:
"Garry, do you believe that your country is going to be drawn into
this war?"
"I don't know what to think," he said bitterly. "The _Lusitania_ ought
to have meant war between us and Germany. Every brutal Teutonic
disregard of decency since then ought to have meant war--every unarmed
ship sunk by their U-boats, every outrage in America perpetrated by
their spies and agents ought to have meant war. I don't know how much
more this Administration will force us to endure--what further
flagrant insult Germany means to offer. They've answered the
President's last note by canning Von Tirpitz and promising,
conditionally, to sink no more unarmed ships without warning. But they
all are liars, the Huns. So that's the way matters stand, Thessa, and
I haven't the slightest idea of what is going to happen to my
humiliated country."
"Why does not your country prepare?" she asked.
"God knows why. Washington doesn't believe in it, I suppose."
"You should build ships," she said. "You should prepare plans for
calling out your young men."
He nodded indifferently:
"There was a preparedness parade. I marched in it. But it only
irritated Washington. Now, finally, the latest Mexican insult is
penetrating official stupidity, and we are mobilising our State
Guardsmen for service on the border. And that's about all we are
doing. We are making neither guns nor rifles; we are building no
ships; the increase in our regular army is of little account; some of
the most vital of the great national departments are presided over by
rogues, clowns, and fools--pacifists all!--stupid, dull, grotesque and
impotent. And you ask me what my country is going to do. And I tell
you that I don't know. For real Americans, Thessa, these last two
years have been years of shame. For we should have armed and mobilised
when the first rifle-shot cracked across the Belgian frontier at
Longwy; and we should have declared war when the first Hun set his
filthy hoof on Belgian soil.
"In our hearts we real Americans know it. But we had no leader--nobody
of faith, conviction, vision, action, to do what was the only thing to
do. No; we had only talkers to face the supreme crisis of the
world--only the shallow noise of words was heard in answer to God's
own summons warning all mankind that hell's deluge was at hand."
The intense bitterness of what he said had made her very grave. She
listened silently, intent on his every expression. And when he ended
with a gesture of hopelessness and disgust, she sat gazing at him out
of her lovely dark eyes, deep in reflection.
"Garry," she said at length, "do you know anything about the European
systems of intelligence?"
"No--only what I read in novels."
"Do you know that America, to-day, is fairly crawling with German
spies?"
"I suppose there are some here."
"There are a hundred thousand paid German spies within an hour's
journey of this city."
He looked up incredulously.
"Let me tell you," she said, "how it is arranged here. The German
Ambassador is the master spy in America. Under his immediate
supervision are the so-called diplomatic agents--the personnel of the
embassy and members of the consular service. These people do not
class themselves as agents or as spies; they are the directors of
spies and agents.
"Agents gather information from spies who perform the direct work of
investigating. Spies usually work alone and report, through local
agents, to consular or diplomatic agents. And these, in turn, report
to the Ambassador, who reports to Berlin.
"It is all directed from Berlin. The personal source of all German
espionage is the Kaiser. He is the supreme master spy."
"Where have you learned these things, Thessa?" he asked in a troubled
voice.
"I have learned, Garry."
"Are you--a spy?"
"No."
"Have you been?"
"No, Garry."
"Then how----"
"Don't ask me; just listen. There are men here in your city who are
here for no good purpose. I do not mean to say that merely because
they seek also to injure me--destroy me, perhaps,--God knows what they
wish to do to me!--but I say it because I believe that your country
will declare war on Germany some day very soon. And that you ought to
watch these spies who move everywhere among you!
"Germany also believes that war is near. And this is why she strives
to embroil your country with Japan and Mexico. That is why she
discredits you with Holland, with Sweden. It is why she instructs her
spies here to set fires in factories and on ships, blow up powder
mills and great industrial plants which are manufacturing munitions
for the Allies of the Triple Entente.
"America may doubt that there is to be war between her and Germany,
but Germany does not doubt it.
"Let me tell you what else Germany is doing. She is spreading
insidious propaganda through a million disloyal Germans and pacifist
Americans, striving to poison the minds of your people against
England. She secretly buys, owns, controls newspapers which are used
as vehicles for that propaganda.
"She is debauching the Irish here who are discontented with England's
rule; she spends vast sums of money in teaching treachery in your
schools, in arousing suspicion among farmers, in subsidising
mercantile firms.
"Garry, I tell you that a Hun is always a Hun; a Boche is always a
Boche, call him what else you will.
"The Germans are the monkeys of the world; they have imitated the
human race. But, Garry, they are still what they always have been at
heart, barbarians who have no business in Europe.
"In their hearts--and for all their priests and clergymen and
cathedrals and churches--they still believe in their old gods which
they themselves created--fierce, bestial supermen, more cruel, more
powerful, more treacherous, more beastly than they themselves.
"That is the German. That is the Hun under all his disguises. No white
man can meet him on his own ground; no white man can understand him,
appeal to anything in common between himself and the Boche. He is
brutal and contemptuous to women; he is tyrannical to the weak,
cringing to the strong, fundamentally bestial, utterly selfish,
intolerant of any civilisation which is not his conception of
civilisation--his monkey-like conception of Christ--whom, in his pagan
soul, he secretly sneers at--not always secretly, now!"
She straightened up with a quick little gesture of contempt. Her face
was brightly flushed; her eyes brilliant with scorn.
"Garry, has not America heard enough of 'the good German,' the 'kindly
Teuton,' the harmless, sentimental and 'excellent citizen,' whose
morally edifying origin as a model emigrant came out of his own sly
mouth, and who has, by his own propaganda alone, become an accepted
type of good-natured thrift and erudition in your Republic?
"Let me say to you what a French girl thinks! A hundred years ago you
were a very small nation, but you were homogeneous and the average of
culture was far higher in America then than it is at present. For now,
your people's cultivation and civilisation is diluted by the ignorance
of millions of foreigners to whom you have given hospitality. And, of
these, the Germans have done you the most deadly injury, vulgarising
public taste in art and literature, affronting your clean, sane
intelligence by the new decadence and perversion in music, in
painting, in illustration, in fiction.
"Whatever the normal Hun touches he vulgarises; whatever the decadent
Boche touches he soils and degrades and transforms into a horrible
abomination. This he has done under your eyes in art, in literature,
in architecture, in modern German music.
"His filthy touch is even on your domestic life--this Barbarian who
feeds grossly, whose personal habits are a by-word among civilised and
cultured people, whose raw ferocity is being now revealed to the world
day by day in Europe, whose proverbial clumsiness and stupidity have
long furnished your stage with its oafs and clowns.
"This is the thing that is now also invading you with thousands of
spies, betraying you with millions of traitors, and which will one
day turn on you and tear you and trample you like an enraged hog,
unless you and your people awake to what is passing in the world you
live in!"
She was on her feet now, flushed, lovely, superb in her deep and
controlled excitement.
"I'll tell you this much," she said. "It is Germany that wishes my
destruction. Germany trapped me; Germany would have destroyed me in
the trap had I not escaped. Now, Germany is afraid of me, knowing what
I know. And her agents follow me, spy on me, thwart me, prevent me
from earning my living, until I--I can scarcely endure it--this
hounding and persecution----" Her voice broke; she waited to control
it:
"I am not a spy. I never was one. I never betrayed a human soul--no,
nor any living thing that ever trusted me! These people who hound me
know that I am not guilty of that for which another Government is
ready to try me--and condemn me. They fear that I shall prove to this
other Government my innocence. I can't. But they fear I can. And the
Hun is afraid of me. Because, if I ever proved my innocence, it would
involve the arrest and trial and certain execution of men high in rank
in the capital of this other country. So--the Hun dogs me everywhere I
go. I do not know why he does not try to kill me. Possibly he lacks
courage, so far. Possibly he has not had any good opportunity, because
I am very careful, Garry."
"But this--this is outrageous!" broke out Barres. "You can't stand
this sort of thing, Thessa! It's a matter for the police----"
"Don't interfere!"
"But----"
"Don't interfere! The last thing I want is publicity. The last thing I
wish for is that your city, state, or national government should
notice me at all or have any curiosity concerning me or any idea of
investigating my affairs."
"Why?"
"Because, although as soon as your country is at war with Germany, my
danger from Germany ceases, on the other hand another very deadly
danger begins at once to threaten me."
"What danger?"
"It will come from a country with which your country will be allied.
And I shall be arrested here as a _German_ spy, and I shall be sent
back to the country which I am supposed to have betrayed. And there
nothing in the world could save me."
"You mean--court-martial?"
"A brief one, Garry. And then the end."
"Death?"
She nodded.
After a few moments she moved toward the door. He went with her,
picking up his hat.
"I can't let you go with me," she said with a faint smile.
"Why not?"
"You are involved sufficiently already."
"What do I care for----"
"Hush, Garry. Do you wish to displease me?"
"No, but I----"
"Please! Call me a taxicab. I wish to go back alone."
In spite of argument she remained smilingly firm. Finally he rang up a
taxi for her. When it signalled he walked down stairs, through the dim
hall and out to the grilled gateway beside her.
"Good-bye," she said, giving her hand. He detained it:
"I can't bear to have you go alone----"
"I'm perfectly safe, mon ami. I've had a delightful time at your
party--really I have. This affair of the letter does not spoil it. I'm
accustomed to similar episodes. So now, good-night."
"Am I to see you again soon?"
"Soon? Ah, I can't tell you that, Garry."
"When it is convenient then?"
"Yes."
"And will you telephone me on your safe arrival home to-night?"
She laughed:
"If you wish. You're so sweet to me, Garry. You always have been.
Don't worry about me. I am not in the least apprehensive. You see I'm
rather a clever girl, and I know something about the Boche."
"You had your letter stolen."
"Only half of it!" she retorted gaily. "She is a gallant little thing,
your friend Dulcie. Please give her my love. As for your other
friends, they were amusing.... Mr. Mandel spoke to me about an
engagement."
"Why don't you consider it? Corot Mandel is the most important
producer in New York."
"Is he, really? Well, if I'm not interfered with perhaps I shall go to
call on Mr. Mandel." She began to laugh mischievously to herself:
"There was one man there who never gave me a moment's peace until I
promised to lunch with him at the Ritz."
"Who the devil----"
"Mr. Westmore," she said demurely.
"Oh, Jim Westmore! Well, Thessa, he's a corker. He's really a
splendid fellow, but look out for him! He's also a philanderer."
"Oh, dear. I thought he was just a sculptor and a rather strenuous
young man."
"I wasn't knocking him," said Barres, laughing, "but he falls in love
with every pretty woman he meets. I'm merely warning you."
"Thank you, Garry," she smiled. She gave him her hand again, pulled
the rose-coloured cloak around her bare shoulders, ran across the
sidewalk to the taxi, and whispered to the driver.
"You'll telephone me when you get home?" he reminded her, baffled but
smiling.
She laughed and nodded. The cab wheeled out into the street, backed,
turned, and sped away eastward.
* * * * *
Half an hour later his telephone rang:
"Garry, dear?"
"Is it you, Thessa?"
"Yes. I'm going to bed.... Tell Mr. Westmore that I'm not at all sure
I shall meet him at the Ritz on Monday."
"He'll go, anyway."
"Will he? What devotion. What faith in woman! What a lively capacity
for hope eternal! What vanity! Well, then, tell him he may take his
chances."
"I'll tell him. But I think you might make a date with me, too, you
little fraud!"
"Maybe I will. Maybe I'll drop in to see you unexpectedly some
morning. And don't let me catch _you_ philandering in your studio with
some pretty woman!"
"No fear, Thessa."
"I'm not at all sure. And your little model, Dulcie, is dangerously
attractive."
"Piffle! She's a kid!"
"Don't be too sure of that, either! And tell Mr. Westmore that I _may_
keep my engagement. And then again I may not! Good-night, Garry,
dear!"
"Good-night!"
* * * * *
Walking slowly back to extinguish the lights in the studio before
retiring to his own room for the night, Barres noticed a piece of
paper on the table under the lamp, evidently a fragment from the torn
letter.
The words "Ferez Bey" and "Murtagh" caught his eye before he realised
that it was not his business to decipher the fragment.
So he lighted a match, held the shred of letter paper to the flame,
and let it burn between his fingers until only a blackened cinder fell
to the floor.
But the two names were irrevocably impressed on his mind, and he found
himself wondering who these men might be, as he stood by his bed,
undressing.