[Illustration]

For surely she was in exile there, an exile from all the fun and frolic

and, fury of life, marooned in weary isolation, on a high stool, in a

frowsty table d’hôte, in the living heart of London.

II

MASKS AND FACES

Quite naturally she became acquainted with Faces....

She grew adept at a game which consisted mostly in keeping close watch

upon those who for this reason or that engaged her attention, without

giving them the slightest reason to suspect she was doing anything of

the sort.

One could not always be staring in abstraction at nothing in particular

as it passed to and fro on the sidewalk in front of the Café des

Exiles; one could not often or for long at a time succeed in reading a

book held open in one’s lap, below the level of the cashier’s desk,

Mama Thérèse was too brisk for that; one had to do something with one’s

mind; and it was sometimes diverting to watch and speculate about

people who looked interesting.

There were so many Faces, they came and went so constantly, like

bubbles in a tideway, that to Sofia most of them seemed

indistinguishable one from another, mere blurs of flesh colour studded

with staring eyes and slitted by apertures which automatically and

alternately gaped to receive gobbets of food and goblets of drink and

closed to gulp them down. A man needed to be remarkable for something

in his looks, not necessarily pulchritude, or for uncommon

individuality, for Sofia to favour him with more than one of her

seemingly casual glances or to remember him if he visited the café a

second time.

But those there were who stood out from the rank and file, for whom she

watched, whom she missed if they failed to put in appearance at their

accustomed hours, about whom her idle but able imagination wove

wonderful fantasies, enduing them with histories and environments as

far removed from fact as the drab dreams of the realists are from the

picturesque commonplaces of everyday.

And there were others who came once and never again, but whom she never

forgot. But for some of these last, indeed, she would never have

remembered some of the former. The brown-eyed youngster with the

sentimental expression and the funny little moustache, for example,

lurked in the ruck a long time before the one and only visit of a bird

of passage dignified him in the sight of the girl on the high stool.

On the occasion of his first appearance (but that was long ago, Sofia

couldn’t remember how long) the slender young man with the soulful eyes

and the insignificant moustache had commended himself to her somewhat

derisive attention by seeming uncommonly exquisite for that atmosphere.

The Café des Exiles was little haunted by the world of fashion; its

diner á prix fixe (2/6), although excellent, surprisingly well done for

the money, did not much seduce the clientèle of the Carlton and the

Ritz. Now and again its remoteness, promising freedom from embarrassing

encounters save through unlikely mischance, would bring it the custom

of a clandestine couple from the West End, who would for a time make it

an almost daily rendezvous, meeting nervously, sitting if possible in

the most shadowy corner, the farthest from the door, and holding hands

when they mistakenly assumed that nobody was looking—until the affair

languished or some contretemps frightened them away.

Aside from such visitations, however, the great world coldly passed the

café by; although it couldn’t complain for lack of patronage, and in

fact prospered exceedingly if without ostentation on the half-crowns of

loyal Soho and more fickle suburbia.

The Sohobohemian on its native heath and the City clerk on the loose,

however, were not prone to such vestments as young Mr. Karslake

affected. It wasn’t that he overdressed; even the ribald would have

hesitated to libel him with the name of a “nut”—which is Cockney for

what the United States knows as a “fancy (or swell) dresser”; it was

simply that he was always irreproachably turned out, whatever the form

of dress he thought appropriate to the time of day; and that his

wardrobe was so complete and varied that he seldom appeared twice in

the same suit of clothes—except, of course, after nightfall; though his

visits to the Café des Exiles for dinner or afterward were so

infrequent that each attained (after Sofia began to notice him at all)

the importance of an occasion. Luncheon was his time, and those empty

hours at the end of the afternoon which London fills in with tea and

Soho with drinks.

He seemed to have a very wide and catholic acquaintance among people of

all ranks and stations in life; one could hardly call them friendships,

for he lunched or sipped an aperti not often with the same person twice

in a blue moon. And whether his companion were a curate or some ragged

wastrel of the quarter; painted young person from the chorus of the

newest revue or proper matron from Bayswater; keen adventurer from

Fleet Street or solid merchant from the City, his attitude was much the

same: easy, impersonal, unaffected, courteous, detached. He was as apt

as not (going on his facial expression) to be mooning about Sofia when

his guest was gesticulating wildly and uttering three hundred words a

minute. When he spoke it was modestly, in a voice of agreeable cadences

but pitched so low that Sofia never but twice heard anything he said;

and his manner was not characterized by brisk decision. All the same,

one noticed that he had, as a rule, the last word, that what he said

left his hearer either satisfied or pensive.

He was unmistakably silly about Sofia; though that didn’t impress her,

too many of the regulars were just as hard hit, one more or less didn’t

count. But he never stared to the point of rudeness, and it always

seemed to make him hugely uncomfortable if she appeared in the least

aware of his adoration; and Mama Thérèse and Papa Dupont never even

noticed him, so circumspect was he. Still, Sofia saw, and sometimes

wondered, just as she wondered now and then about most of the possible

men who seemed disposed to be sentimental about her.

For there were times when she felt she could do with a little more

first-hand experience and a little less second-hand knowledge.

Love (she supposed) must be a very agreeable frame of mind to be in, it

was so generally vogue....

What first led her to think that Mr. Karslake might be an interesting

person to know, entirely aside from his admiration, happened on an

afternoon in June, a warm day for England, when a temperature of some

81 degrees was responsible for “heat-wave” broadsides issued by the

evening papers.

At about tea time, Mr. Karslake, faultlessly arrayed, ambled in,

selected a table diagonally across the room from the caisse, exchanged

pleasantries with the waiter who served him a picon, and used a copy of

The Evening Standard & St. James’s Gazette as a cover for his wistful

admiration of Sofia.

Presently he was joined by a gentleman twice his age, if not older,

whose conservative smartness was such that one wondered if he hadn’t

strayed out of bounds through inadvertence. One would have thought his

place was in the clubs of Piccadilly if not (at that particular hour)

at a tea table on the river terrace of the Houses of Parliament. On the

other hand, there wasn’t a trace of self-importance in his habit, it

achieved distinction solely through the unpretending dignity of a

decent self-esteem.

Sofia tried to fix what it was that made her think him the handsomest

man she had ever seen. She failed. He wasn’t at all handsome in the

smug fashion associated with the popular interpretation of that term;

his features were engagingly irregular of conformation, but the

impression they conveyed was of a singular strength together with as

rare a fineness of spirit. A mobile and expressive face, stamped with a

history of strange ordeals; but this must not be interpreted as meaning

that it was haggard or prematurely aged; on the contrary, it had

youthful colour and was but lightly scored with wrinkles, its sole

confession of advancing years was in the gray at either temple. The

eyes, perhaps, told more than anything else of trials endured and

memories that would never rest.

Once they had looked into hers (but that came later) Sofia was sure she

would never forget those eyes. And as she saw them then, she never did

forget them. But the next time she saw them she did not know them at

all.

The newcomer hailed Mr. Karslake by his name (which was the first time

Sofia had heard it), sat down on the wall-seat beside him and, when the

waiter came, desired an absinthe.

He had used two languages already, English to Karslake, French to the

waiter; Sofia understood both and spoke them to perfection. So it was

rather exasperating when, his absinthe having been served and the

customary platitudes passed on the weather and their respective states

of health, the conversation was continued in a tongue with which Sofia

was not only unacquainted but which sounded like none she had ever

heard spoken. This seemed the more annoying because there were few

people in the restaurant to drown with chatter the sound of those two

voices and because, in spite of their guarded tones, their table was

one so situated that some freak of acoustics carried every syllable

uttered at it, even though whispered, to the quick ears at the

cashier’s desk. A circumstance which had treated Sofia to many a moment

of covert entertainment and not a few that threatened to shatter what

slender illusions had survived eighteen years of Mama Thérèse. But

nobody else (with the possible exception of the last) was acquainted

with this secret of the restaurant, and Sofia was careful never to

mention it.

Now it so happened that Mr. Karslake had never before sat at that

particular table.

The language spoken at it to-day intrigued Sofia extravagantly. It was

rich in labials, gutturals, and odd sibilances. She was positive it was

not a European tongue, though she thought it might possibly be Russian,

because it sounded rather like Russian print looks; it might just as

well have been Arabic or Choctaw, for all Sofia could say to the

contrary. But his fluent ease in it impressed her with the notion that

young Mr. Karslake might not, after all, be as negligible a person as

he looked and as she indifferently had assumed.

She determined to study him more attentively.

It was rather a long confabulation, too, and one that both men seemed

to take very seriously—though its upshot was apparently quite

acceptable to both—and terminated abruptly with Mr. Karslake

announcing, in English, with every evidence of satisfaction:

“Good! Then that’s settled.”

To this the older man dissented tolerantly.

“Pardon: nothing is settled; it is proposed, merely.”

“Well,” said Karslake with a little laugh that to Sofia sounded empty,

“at all events it ought to be amusing.”

The other lifted one eyebrow and smiled remotely.

“You think so?”

“To be ordering you about, sir? I should say so!” But his companion

wasn’t listening or chose purposely to ignore that accent of respect.

“You are right, my friend,” he said, abstractedly: “it will be amusing.

But what in life is not? I fancy that is why most of us go on, because

we find the play entertaining in spite of ourselves. And even when we

think of Death ... there’s the possibility that on the other side of

the curtain, where the unseen audience sits, whose hisses and applause

we never hear ... over there it may be more entertaining still!”

Karslake was inquisitively watching his face.

“You would say that,” he commented, deference and admiration in his

voice. “By all accounts you’ve had a most amusing life.”

“I have found it so.” The other nodded with glimmering eyes. “Not

always at the time, of course. But when I look back, especially at my

beginnings, at the times that seemed hardest and most intolerable ...”

He was thoughtful for a moment, glancing interestedly round the room.

“It takes one back.”

“What does?”

“This café, my friend.”

“To your beginnings, you mean?”

“Yes. It is very like the café at Troyon’s, at this hour especially,

when there are so few English about.”

“Troyon’s?”

“A restaurant in Paris. Famous in its day. Several years ago—before the

war—it burned down one night, cremating many memories. While it stood I

hated it, now I miss it; Paris without it is no more the Paris that I

knew.”

“Why did you hate it, sir?”

“Because I suffered there.”

He indicated a weedy young Alsatian across the room, a depressed and

pimply creature in a waiter’s jacket and apron, who was shambling from

table to table and collecting used glasses and saucers.

“You see that omnibus yonder? What he is to-day, that was I in

mine—omnibus, scullion, valet-de-chambre, butt and scapegoat-in-general

to the establishment, scavenger of food that no one else would eat....

I suffered there, at Troyon’s.”

“You, sir?” Karslake exclaimed in astonishment. “Whoever would have

thought that you ... How did you escape?”

“It occurred to me, one day, I was less than half alive and never would

be better while I stayed on in that servitude. So I walked out—into

life.”

“I wish you’d tell me, sir,” Karslake ventured, eagerly.

“Some day, perhaps, when I get back. But now”—he looked at his

watch—“I’ve got just time enough to taxi to my hotel, pack, and catch

the boat train.”

“Don’t wait for me,” Karslake suggested, signalling the waiter.

“Perhaps it would be as well if I didn’t.”

They shook hands, and the older man got up, secured his hat and stick,

and started out toward the door, moving leisurely, still looking about

him with the narrowed eyes and smile of reminiscence.

Of a sudden that look was abolished utterly. He had caught sight of

Sofia.

Her interest had been so excited by the singular confidences she had

overheard that the girl had quite forgotten herself and her

professional pose of blank neutrality. She was bending forward a

little, forearms resting on the desk, frankly staring.

The man’s stride checked, his smile faded, his eyes grew wide and

cloudy with bewilderment. For a moment Sofia thought him on the point

of bowing, as one might on unexpectedly encountering an acquaintance

after many years: there was that hint of impulse hindered by

uncertainty. And in that moment the girl was conscious of a singular

sensation of breathlessness, as if something impended whose issue might

change all the courses of her life. A feeling quite insane and

unaccountable, to be sure; and nothing came of it whatever. With a

readiness so instant that the break in his walk must have been

imperceptible to anybody but Sofia, the man recollected himself,

composed his face, and proceeded to the door.

Confounded with inexplicable disappointment, Sofia sat unstirring.

In the open doorway the man turned and looked back, not at her, but at

Karslake, as if of half a mind to return and say something more to the

younger man. But he didn’t.

He never came back.

III

THE AGONY COLUMN

Sofia dated from that afternoon the first stirrings of a discontent

which grew in her throughout the summer till everything related to her

lot seemed abominable in her sight.

Even without this subjective inquietude it would have been an

unpleasant summer. All the world was at sixes and sevens, the social

unrest stirred up by the war showed no signs of subsiding, but indeed,

quite the contrary, there was trouble in the very air—ominous portents

of a storm whose dull, grim growling down the horizon could be heard

only too clearly by those who did not wilfully close their ears, grin

fatuous complacence, and bleat like brainless sheep: “All’s well!”

High-spirited youth and witless wealth a-lust for strange new pleasures

turned from the long strain of conflict to indulgence in endless orgies

of extravagance like nothing ever witnessed by a world long since

surfeited with contemplation of weird excesses: daily that wild dance

of death attained wilder stages of saturnalia, the bands blaring ever

louder to drown the mutter of savage elemental forces working

underneath the crust.

And ever and anon a lull would fall and the world would shudder to the

iteration of a word that spelled calamity to all things fair and sweet

and lovable in life, the word _Bolshevism_....

In the Café des Exiles there was endless discord and strife.

For several reasons trade was not what it had been, even for the slack

season of summer it was poor. The cost of everything had gone up,

waiters were insubordinate and unreasonable in their demands, Mama

Thérèse had been constrained to increase the fixed price of the dinner,

old customers took umbrage at this and their patronage elsewhere.

Mama Thérèse cultivated a temper that grew day by day more vile, Papa

Dupont displayed new artfulness in the matter of sneaking his daily

toll of drink and showed it; the two squabbled incessantly.

One of the chefs, surmising the irregularity of their relations and

foreseeing an imminent break, sought to turn it to his own profit by

making amorous overtures to Mama Thérèse, who for reasons of her own,

probably hoping to make Papa Dupont jealous, encouraged the idiot. And,

as if this were not sickening enough, Papa Dupont, far from resenting

this menace to the pseudo-peace of the ménage, ignored if he did not

welcome it, and daily displayed new tenderness for Sofia. He kept near

her as constantly as he could, he would even interrupt a wrangle with

Mama Thérèse to favour the girl with a languishing glance or a term of

endearment; he was forever caressing her disgustingly with his eyes.

The swing door between the café and the pantry had warped on its hinges

and would not stay quite shut. Normally it stuck in a position which

permitted whoever was at the zinc an uninterrupted view of the desk of

la dame du comptoir. Instead of having it fixed, Papa Dupont put off

that duty from day to day and developed a fond attachment for the place

at the zinc. For hours on end Sofia, on her high stool, would be

conscious of his gloating regard, his glances that lingered on the

sweet lines of her throat, the roundness of her pretty arms.

She dared make no sign to show that she knew and resented, to do so

would be merely to draw upon herself the spite of Mama Thérèse.

But she simmered with indignation, and contemplated futile

plans—especially in the long, empty hours of the afternoon, between

luncheon and the hour of the apertifs—countless vain plans for

abolishing these intolerable conditions.

She thought a great deal of the strange man who had talked with young

Mr. Karslake, and wondered about him. Somehow she seemed unable to

forget him; never before had any one she didn’t know made such a

lasting impression upon her imagination.

Sometimes she wasted time trying to explain to herself why the man had

seemed, for that brief instant, to think he knew her, only to dismiss

such speculations eventually with the assurance that she probably

resembled in moderate degree somebody whom he had once known.

But mostly she was preoccupied with pondering the strangeness of it,

that he who seemed so brilliant and brave a figure of the great world

should, according to his own confession, have risen from beginnings as

lowly as her own. All that he had suffered in the days of his youth, in

that place in Paris which he called Troyon’s, Sofia had suffered here

and in large part continued to suffer without prospect of alleviation

or hope of escape. And remembering what he had said, that his own

trials had come to an end only when he awakened to the fact that he

was, as he had put it, “less than half alive” there at Troyon’s, and

had simply “walked out into life,” she was persuaded that the cure for

her own discomfort and discontent would never be found in any other

way. But she lacked courage to adventure it.

To say “walk out and make an end of it” was all very well; but assuming

that she ever should muster up spirit enough to do it—what then? Which

way should she turn, once she had passed out through the doors? What

could she do? She had neither means nor friends, and she was much too

thoroughly conversant with the common way of the world with a woman

alone to imagine that, by taking her life in her own hands, she would

accomplish much more than exchange the irk of the frying pan for the

fury of the fire.

All the same, she knew that she must one day do it and chance the

consequences. Things couldn’t go on as they were.

And even granting that the outcome of any effort at self-assertion must

be unhappy, she grew impatient.

Meanwhile, she did nothing, she sat quietly on her perch, looked with

stony composure over the heads of the multitude, indifferent alike to

admiration and the uncharitable esteem of her own sex, and waited with

a burning heart.

Mr. Karslake ran true to form. He drifted in and out casually, always

idle and dégagé and elegant, he continued his irregular conferences

with ill-assorted companions, he worshipped discreetly and evidently

without the faintest hope, he seemed more than ever a trifling and

immaterial creature. Chance did not again lead him to the table where

he had sat with the man whom Sofia could not forget, and only the

memory of that conversation held any place for Karslake in the

consideration of the girl.

Even at that she didn’t consider him seriously, she looked for him and

missed him when he didn’t appear solely because of a secret hope that

some day that other one would come back to meet him in the café.

Why she held fast to that hope Sofia could not have said.

Toward the middle of summer Mr. Karslake absented himself for several

weeks, and when he showed up again his visits were fewer and more

widely spaced.

On an afternoon late in August, a hot and weary day, he sauntered in

with his habitual air of having in particular nothing to do and all the

time there was to do it in, and found a man waiting for him.

This was a person whom Sofia had quite overlooked after one glance had

classified and pigeon-holed him. A single glance had been enough. They

do some things better in England; a man cast for any particular rôle in

life, for example, is apt to conform himself, mentally, physically, and

even as to his outer habiliments, so nicely to the mould that he is

forever unmistakably what he is even to the most casual observer. So

this man was a butler, he had been born and bred a butler, he lived by

buttling, a butler he would die; not a pompous, turkeycock butler, such

as the American stage will offer you when it takes up English

fashionable life in a serious way, but a mild-mannered, decent body,

with plain side-whiskers, chopped short on a line with the lobes of his

ears, otherwise clean-shaven, his hair pathetically dyed, a colourless

cast of countenance, eyes meek and mild.

He was soberly dressed in black coat and waistcoat, the latter showing

a white triangle of hard-polished shirt and a black bow tie, with

indefinite gray trousers and square-toed boots by no means new. His

middle was crossed by a thick silver watch-chain, and curious,

old-fashioned buttons of agate set in square frames of gold fastened

his round stiff cuffs of yesterday. He carried a well-brushed bowler as

unfashionable as unseasonable.

When Mr. Karslake entered, the polished pattern of a young gentleman of

means, slenderly well set-up in an exquisitely tailored brown lounge

suit, wearing a boater and carrying a slender malacca stick in one

chamois-gloved hand, the butler stood up at his table, quietly

acknowledged his greeting—“Ah, Nogam! you here already?”—and waited for

the younger man to be seated before resuming his own chair: a

stoop-shouldered symbol of self-respecting respectability, not too

intelligent, subdued by definite and unresentful acceptance of “his

place.”

Their table was the one immediately beyond the buffet; and the café was

very quiet, with only three other patrons, two of whom were playing

chess while the third was reading an old issue of the Echo de Paris. So

Sofia could, if she had cared to eavesdrop, have overheard everything

that passed between Mr. Karslake and the man Nogam. But she didn’t;

their first few speeches failed to excite her curiosity in the least.

She heard Mr. Karslake, who was becomingly affable to one of inferior

station, express the perfunctory hope that he hadn’t kept Nogam waiting

long, and Nogam reply to the simple effect of “Oh, not at all, sir.” To

this he added that he ’oped there had been no ’itch, he was most heager

to be installed in his new situation, and would do his best to give

satisfaction. Karslake replied airily that he was sure Nogam would do

famously, and Nogam said “Thank you, sir.” Then Karslake announced they

must bustle along, because they were expected by some person unnamed,

but just the same he meant to have a drink before he budged a foot. And

he called a waiter and requested a whiskey and soda for himself and

some beer for Nogam.... And Sofia turned her attention to other things.

The murmur of their talk meant nothing to her after that, and she

forgot them entirely till they got up to leave, and then wasted only a

moment in wondering why Mr. Karslake, if he were, as he seemed to be,

engaging a butler for some friend or employer, should have arranged to

meet the man in a café of Soho. But it didn’t matter, and she dismissed

the incident from her mind.

What did matter was that she was to-day more than ever galled by the

deadly circumstances of her existence. If they were to continue to

obtain, she felt, life would grow simply unendurable, and she would to

do something reckless to get a little relief from the tedium and the

ugliness of it all.

She was fed up with everything, the shrewishness of Mama Thérèse, the

drunkenness of Papa Dupont, the hideous dullness of the café, the smell

of food, the fumes of tobacco, the reek of wines.

She was fed up with the leers of Papa Dupont, the scowls of Mama

Thérèse, the grimaces of waiters, the stares of customers, the very

sight of herself in the mirror across the room.

She was fed up with being fed up, she wanted to do something lunatic,

she wanted to kick and scream and drum on the floor with her heels.

And all the while, beyond the threshold, life in the street was flowing

by, a restless stream, and the voice of it was a siren call to her

hungry heart, whispering of freedom, laughing low of love, roaring

robustly of brave adventures.

And she sat there with folded hands, mutinous yet impotent, afraid, a

useless thing with sullen eyes ... wasted ...

As was her custom, between six and seven, before the busy hours of the

evening, she had her dinner fetched to a table near by.

Somebody had left a copy of a morning paper on the wall-seat. Sofia

glanced through it without much interest. None the less, when she had

finished, she took the sheet back to the caisse with her and

intermittently, as occasion offered, read snatches of it quite openly,

so bored that she didn’t care if Mama Thérèse did catch her at this

forbidden practice; a good row would be almost welcome ... anything to

break the monotony....

When she had digested without edification every item of news, she

devoured the advertisements of the shops, then turned to the Agony

Column, which she had saved up for a savoury.

She read the appeal of the widow of the English army officer who wanted

some kind-hearted and soft-headed person to finance her in setting up

an establishment for “paying guests.”

She read the card of the young gentleman of good family but

impoverished means who admitted that he had every grace and talent

heart could desire and who, in frantic effort to escape going to work

for his living, threw himself bodily upon the generosity of an unknown,

and as yet non-existent, benefactor, hinting darkly at suicide if

nothing came of this last attempt to get himself luxuriously maintained

in indolence.

She read the advertisements of money-lenders who yearned to advance

fabulous sums to the nobility and gentry on their simple notes of hand.

She read the thinly disguised professional cards of lonely ladies whose

unhappy lot could be mitigated only by congenial male companionship.

She read the ingenuous matrimonial bids.

She read the announcement of the lady of (deleted) title who was

willing, for a substantial consideration, to introduce gentlefolk of

means and their daughters to the most exclusive social circles.

She read the naïve solicitation of the alleged ex-officer of the

B.E.F., who had won through the war with every known decoration except

the Double Cross of the Order of St. Gall and with nothing of his

anatomy left whole except his cheek, begging some great-hearted soul to

buy him a barrel organ to play in the streets.

And then her eye was arrested by the appearance of her own name in the

text of a brief advertisement, which she read naturally, with

heightened interest:

IF MICHAEL LANYARD will communicate privately he will hear news of

Sofia his daughter. Address Secretan & Sypher, Solicitors, Lincoln’s

Inn Fields, W.C. 3

IV

MUTINY

Sofia had never heard the name of Michael Lanyard. Neither did the firm

style of Messrs. Secretan & Sypher, Solicitors, mean anything to her.

Notwithstanding, she wasted more time than she knew trying to picture

to herself a man who looked like Michael Lanyard sounded, and wishing

(no matter what his looks might be) that she were his long-lost

daughter Sofia, and that he would see the advertisement, and

communicate privately as requested, and hear news of her, and come

speeding in a Rolls-Royce to the Café des Exiles, and walk in and

humble Papa Dupont with a look of hauteur and confound Mama Thérèse

with a peremptory word, and take Sofia by the hand and lead her out and

induct her into such an environment as suited her rightful station:

said environment necessarily comprising a town house if not on Park

Lane at least nearly adjacent to it, and a country house sitting, in

the mellowed beauty of its Seventeenth Century architecture, amid

lordly acres of velvet lawn and private park.

She hoped the country house would be within sight of the sea, and that

the family garage would run to a comfortable little town-car for her

personal use when she went shopping in Bond Street, or to pay calls or

leave cards, or to concerts and matinees....

At about this stage her châteaux en Espagne began to rock upon their

foundations; a seismic phenomenon due to the appearance of Mama Thérèse

and Papa Dupont, coming from zinc and kitchen for their dinner, which

meal they habitually consumed in the café when the evening rush was

over, the tables undressed, and the establishment had settled down to

drowse away the dull hours till closing time.

Thus reminded that it was nine o’clock or thereabouts of a stuffy

evening in a stodgy world where nothing ever happened that hadn’t

wearily happened the day before and the day before that and so back to

the beginning of Time, and wasn’t scheduled tediously to continue

happening to-morrow and the day after and so on to the end of Eternity,

Sofia sighed and shook herself and put away the vanity of dreams.

But her beauty, as she sat brooding, was as sultry as the night.

In the rear of the room Mama Thérèse and Papa Dupont wrangled sourly

over their food; not with impassioned rancour but in the natural order

of things—as others might discuss the book of the moment or the play of

the year or scandal or Charlie Chaplin or the thundering fiasco of

Versailles—these two discussed each other’s failings with utmost

candour and freedom of expression: handling their subjects without

gloves; never hesitating to touch upon topics not commonly mentioned in

civil intercourse or to use the apt, unprintable word; never dreaming

of politely terming a damned old hoe a spade; tossing the ball of

recrimination to and fro with masterly ease.

Their preoccupation with this pastime was so thoroughgoing that Mama

Thérèse even failed to notice the passage of the postman on his last

round of the day. Ordinarily, for reasons best known to herself and

which Sofia had never thought to question, Mama Thérèse preferred

personally to receive all letters and contrived to be on hand at the

postman’s customary hours of call. But to-night she only realized that

he had come and gone when, happening to glance toward the caisse, she

saw Sofia shuffling the half-dozen envelopes which had been left with

her.

Immediately Mama Thérèse pushed back the table and got up, wiping chin

and moustache with her napkin as she rolled toward the desk.

But she was too late. Already Sofia had sorted out and was staring in

blank wonder at an envelope addressed to Mama Thérèse and bearing in

its upper left-hand corner the imprint of its origin:

_Secretan & Sypher

Solicitors

Lincoln’s Inn Fields

London, W.C. 3._

As yet she was simply startled by the coincidence, her brain had not

had time to absorb its full significance—that Mama Thérèse should

receive a communication from these distinctively named solicitors on

the evening of the very day on which they advertised concerning a young

woman named Sofia!—when the letter was snatched out of her hand, a

torrent of objurgation was loosed upon her devoted head, and she looked

into the black scowl of the Frenchwoman.

“Sneak! Spying little cat! How dare you pry into my letters?”

“But, Mama Thérèse—!”

“Be still, you! Has one asked you to speak? Give me those others”—Mama

Thérèse with a vast show of violence appropriated them from Sofia’s

unresisting grasp—“and after this keep your nose of a mouchard out of

what doesn’t concern you!”

“But, Mama Thérèse!—”

“Hold your tongue. I wish to hear nothing from you, I hear too

much—yes, and see too much, too! Oh, don’t flatter yourself I am like

that fat dolt of a Dupont, to be taken in by a pair of round eyes and

innocent ways. I know your sort, I know _you_, mam’selle, too well! Me,

I am nobody’s fool, least of all yours, young woman. What goes on under

my nose, I see; and if you imagine otherwise you are a bigger simpleton

that you take me for.”

She snapped her fingers viciously in Sofia’s crimsoned face, uttered a

contemptuous “_Zut!_” and waddled off, shaking her head and growling to

herself.

Sofia felt stunned. The offensive had been launched so swiftly, she was

conscious of having done so little to invite it, she had been taken

unprepared, thrown into confusion, her feeble objections silenced and

overwhelmed by that deluge of abuse, publicly disgraced....

Her face was burning, and tears started in her eyes; but she winked

them back, she would not let them fall. Conscious of the grins of the

handful of patrons, and the leers of the waiters, she steeled herself

to suppress every betrayal of the mortification in which her soul was

writhing, she made no sign but stared on stonily at the blackness of

the night that peered in at the open doors.

Then indignation came to her rescue, the flaming colour ebbed from her

face and left it unnaturally white, the mists before her eyes

dissipated and their look grew fixed and hard, even her lips took on a

grim, unyielding set. Beneath the desk her hands clenched into small

fists. But she did not move.

The sensation stirred up by the outbreak of Mama Thérèse subsided, the

domino players resumed their game, the old gentleman reading Le Rire

turned a page and read on with a knowing smile, lovers returned to

their low-voiced love-making, waiters yawned behind their hands, all

was as it had been save that, at their table (Sofia could see by the

mirror, without looking directly) Mama Thérèse and Papa Dupont seemed

to have declared an armistice and were gobbling down the rest of their

meal in silence and indecorous haste.

Presently they got up and sought their living quarters. To do this they

had to pass the caisse and through the green baize door. Mama Thérèse

marched ahead with forbidding frown and quivering chins, with the

militant carriage of misprized and affronted rectitude. To her, it was

obvious, Sofia for the time being did not exist. At her heels Papa

Dupont shambled uneasily, hanging the head of deep thoughtfulness,

avoiding Sofia’s gaze. It was his part to pretend that all was well and

always would be; only he lacked the effrontery, just then, for his

usual smirk.

When they had disappeared Sofia began to think.

There was something more in this affair than mere coincidence, there

was mystery, a sinister question.

Her countenance grew as dark as the complexion of her reverie. Athwart

the field of her abstracted vision drifted the figure of young Mr.

Karslake. She was barely conscious of it.

He seated himself with plain premeditation directly opposite the

caisse, staring openly. But Sofia did not heed him at all. An odd smile

shadowed his lips, an expression half eager, half apprehensive; there

was a hint of puzzlement in his scrutiny. It was rather as if he had

unexpectedly found some new reason for thinking the girl an

exceptionally interesting personality. But she continued all unaware.

Shortly after being served with a drink which he ordered but made no

offer to taste, he moved as if minded to rise and cross to Sofia, sat

up and edged forward on the wall-seat with a singular air of timidity

and embarrassment. But whatever his intention, he reconsidered and sat

back, glancing round the room to see if anybody were watching him. He

could not see that anybody was. Not even Sofia. Relieved, he settled

back, found a handsome gold case in the waistcoat of his dinner jacket,

extracted a cigarette, nipped it between his lips—and forgot to light

it.

Of a sudden Sofia had arrived at a decision; and with every expression

of it in her manner she slipped down from the high stool and left the

caisse to take care of itself. Turning to the swing door she barged

through with a high head and fire of determination illuminating her

face. She had had enough of riddles.

Behind the zinc an elderly and trusted waiter was nodding. The kitchen

was cold and dark for the night. Papa Dupont, then, would be upstairs,

closeted with the genius of the establishment.

From the pantry a narrow staircase led up to the apartment above the

restaurant. Sofia mounted rapidly, with a firm tread that was

nevertheless practically noiseless, thanks to the paper-thin soles of

well-worn slippers. She could hear voices bickering above.

At the top there was a short, dark corridor, with three doors. Two of

these were closed on sleeping-rooms; the third door, to a sort of

combination office and living-room, stood open, letting out a stream of

light.

Sofia approached on tiptoe, though the altercation going on within had

reached a stage so acute that it was doubtful whether either of the

disputants would have heard had she stumped like a navvy.

The point of dissension was not at first apparent, because Mama Thérèse

was speaking, and what she said had exclusively to do with her estimate

of Dupont’s character, the mettle of his spirit, the stuff of his

mentality, the authenticity of his pedigree (with especial reference to

the virtue of his maternal ancestry) and the circumstances of his

upbringing; which estimate in sum was low but by no means so low as the

terms in which Mama Thérèse was inspired to couch it.

Papa Dupont did not seem to be greatly interested. He had heard all

this before, many a time, with insignificant phraseological variations.

Sofia, pausing unseen and unsuspected in the darkness just outside the

doorway, could see him slouching deep in his chair, to one side of the

table, his soft fat hands deep in the pockets of his trousers, his chin

sunken on his chest, something dogged in the louring frown which he was

bending upon nothing, something of genuine indifference in his passive

attitude toward the blowsy virago who was leaning across the table the

better to spit vituperation at him.

And he waited with singular patience until she had to stop for want of

breath. Then he shrugged and said heavily:

“Still, I don’t see what else you propose to do, my old one.”

Apparently his old one was as poor in expedient as he. “It is for

nothing,” she said, acidly, “that one looks to you!”

“I have said my say. If you have anything better to suggest....” He

made a rhetorical pause for reply, but Mama Thérèse was well blown and

sulky for the moment. “I am not old, not so old as you, and I have

reason to believe the girl is not indifferent to my person.”

“Drooling old pig,” Mama Thérèse observed with reason: “if you dream

she would trouble to look twice at you—!”

“That remains to be seen. And I, for one, fail to see how else we are

to hold her. All this money that has been coming in, paid on the dot

every quarter—that means there is more, much more to come to her. Are

you ready to give it up?”

“Never!” Mama Thérèse thumped the table vehemently. “It is mine by

rights, I have earned it. Look at the way I have slaved for her, the

tender care I have lavished upon her, ever since she was a little one

in my arms.”

“By all means,” Papa Dupont agreed, “look at it, but don’t talk about

it to her. She might not understand you. Also, do not depend upon her

to endorse any claim you might set up based upon such assertions.”

“She is an ungrateful baggage!”

“Possibly; but she is human, she has a memory—”

“Are you going to be sentimental about her again?” Mama Thérèse

demanded. “Pitiful old goat!”

“But I am not in the least sentimental,” Papa Dupont disclaimed. “It is

rather I who am practical, you who are sentimental. I ask you: Is there

any way we can hold on to that money unless I marry Sofia? You do not

answer. Why? Because there _is_ no other way. Then I am practical. But

you will not admit that. And why? Because we have lived together for a

number of years through force of habit, because once, very long ago, we

were lovers, you and I—so long ago that you have forgotten you ever had

a softer name for me than pig or goat. Who is the sentimentalist

now—eh?”

“Shut your face!” Mama Thérèse growled. “You annoy me. I have a

presentiment I shall one day murder you.”

“You would have done that long ago,” Papa Dupont pointed out, “if you

had had the courage. Enough! I am silent. But when you are tired trying

to think out another way, reflect on my solution. Meantime, let me have

another look at that accursed letter.”

Mama Thérèse did not respond, she offered no objection when Dupont took

up the sheet of paper that lay between them, but ground the heels of

her hands into her fat cheeks and sat glowering vindictively while he

read aloud, slowly, with the labour of one to whom reading is

unaccustomed dissipation:

DEAR MADAM:

Herewith we beg to enclose our cheque to your order in the sum of two

hundred and fifty pounds, being the quarterly payment in advance due

you from the estate of our deceased client, the Princess Sofia

Vassilyevski, for your care of her daughter. We further beg to advise

that, pursuant to the provisions of her will, we begin to-day, on the

eighteenth birthday of the young Princess Sofia, a search for her

father with the object of apprising him of his daughter’s existence.

Therefore we would request you to make arrangements to have the young

Princess Sofia brought to England forthwith from the convent in France

where we understand she is finishing her education. We take leave,

however, to advise that, pending the outcome of our enquiries, the

question of her father’s existence be not discussed with the young

princess. In event of his death being established or of failure to find

him within six months, the Princess Sofia is to enter without more

delay or formality into possession of her mother’s estate.

Papa Dupont put down the letter. “It is plain enough,” he expounded:

“if this father is found, we can whistle for our money; whereas if I

were married to Sofia, as her husband I would control—”

He broke off sharply, and added in consternation: “One million

thunders!”

Sofia stood between them.

And yet she wasn’t the Sofia they knew, but another person altogether,

a transfigured and exalted Sofia, aflame with righteous wrath and

contemptuous with the pride of birth which had leaped into full being a

moment since.

A princess, born the daughter of a princess, now she knew and looked

it.

All thought of fear or deference was gone, she had nothing left but

scorn for these two despicable creatures, the fat harpy and her

crapulent consort who had battened so long upon her misery, who had

held her in bondage to the most menial tasks of their wretched

restaurant while they filched and hoarded the money paid them for

giving her the care and the advantages that were her due.

And something of this new-found dignity, to which her title was so

unquestionable, which set her upon a level from which she could not but

look down on these two paltry frauds, so abashed the Frenchwoman that

the phrases of invective and vilification which gushed instinctively

from the foul springs of her temper stuck in her throat, she couldn’t

utter them, and she well-nigh choked with impotent fury and fear as the

girl spoke.

“You swindlers!” Sofia said, deliberately. “You poor cheats! To pocket

a thousand pounds a year of my mother’s money—and make me slave for you

in your wretched café! And for eighteen years! For eighteen years you

have been robbing me of every right I had in the world, robbing me of

everything I’ve needed and longed and prayed for, everything you were

paid to give me—while I drudged for you and endured your ill-temper and

your abuse and the contamination of association with you!... Give me

that letter.”

She possessed herself of it unopposed. But now Mama Thérèse found her

tongue.

“What—what do you mean?” she gasped, livid with fright. Was not a

fortune slipping through her avaricious fingers? “What are you going to

do?”

“Do?” Sofia cried. “I don’t know, more than this: I’m not going to stay

another hour under this roof, I’m going to leave to-night—now—

immediately! That’s what I’m going to do!”

“Where are you going?”

The question halted Sofia in the doorway.

“To find my father—wherever he is!”

She left the two staring at each other, dumbfounded and aghast.

At the far end of the passage she flung open her bedchamber door,

entered, turned up the light, and snatched her cloak and hat from pegs

beneath the curtained shelf that held her scanty wardrobe.

Adjusting these before the mirror she could hear Thérèse bawling at

Dupont to follow and stop her. Sofia had little fear he would find

heart to attempt that, none the less she hurried. Once her hat was

adjusted there was nothing to detain her; the best she had she stood

in; no sentimental associations invested that room, the tomb of her

defrauded childhood, the prison of her maltreated youth, to make her

linger there, but only hateful ones to speed her going.

She turned and fled.

Stumbling on the stairs, she heard Thérèse still screaming imprecations

and commands at Dupont, then the clumping of the man’s feet as,

yielding at length, he started in pursuit.

Through the green baize door she burst into the café like a young

tornado. Every head turned her way with gaping mouths and protruding

eyes of astonishment as she stopped at the caisse and brazenly, in the

face of them all, plundered the till.

This was a matter of necessity. Sofia had not one shilling of her own.

But those two had robbed her, what she took was not so much as a

thousandth part of the money of which they had despoiled her. Moreover,

she dared not go out penniless to face London.

Snatching a handful of loose coin, she made for the door. But the delay

had been fatal. Dupont was now at her heels, and displaying

extraordinary agility in a man of his years of dissipation and

sedentary habits. And Thérèse was not far behind.

Seeing coins trickling through the fingers of the fugitive and falling

to ring and spin upon the floor, the Frenchwoman raised an anguished

shriek of “_Thief! Stop thief!_”—and such part of the audience as had

remained in its seats rose up as one man.

In the same instant Dupont’s fingers clamped down on Sofia’s shoulder.

She screamed, and he chuckled and dragged her back. Then his arm was

struck up by a deft hand, the girl slipped from his hold and darted out

through the doors.

Roaring with rage (now that his blood was up, his heart in the chase)

Dupont turned upon the meddler. This was young Mr. Karslake. Dupont did

not know him except by sight, but that slender, boyish figure and the

semi-apologetic smile on Karslake’s lips did not inspire respect.

Blindly and with all his might Dupont swung his right to the other’s

head, only to find it wasn’t there.

The weight of the unexpended blow carried Dupont off his feet. He fell

in a heap, and Mama Thérèse, charging wildly after Sofia, tripped on

his body and deposited fourteen stone of solid flesh squarely in the

small of Dupont’s back with a force that drove the breath out of him in

one agonized blast.

Karslake laughed aloud: it was all as good as a cinema. Then he

followed Sofia.

It was a dark and silent street by night, little used, a mere link

between two main thoroughfares. Sofia, running for dear life, was still

far from the nearest corner. Karslake doubled nimbly across the street

to the only vehicle in sight, an impressive Rolls-Royce town-car.

Jumping on the running-board he pointed out the fleeing shadow to the

chauffeur.

“Lay alongside that young woman before she makes the corner, Albert!”

Without delay the car began to move.

Meanwhile, the Café des Exiles was erupting antic shapes, waiters,

customers, Dupont, Thérèse. The quiet hour was made hideous by their

yells.

“_Stop thief!” “À la voleuse!” “L’arrêtez!” “À la voleuse!” “Stop

thief!_”

An entirely superfluous bobby weathered the corner, discovered Sofia in

flight across the street, came about, and shaped a diagonal course to

cut across her bows. She saw him coming and stopped short with a gasp

of dismay. Simultaneously the Rolls-Royce slid smoothly in between them

and Karslake hopped down. Sofia uttered a small cry, more of surprise

than fright, and hung back, trying to free the arm by which he was

trying to guide her to the open door.

“It’s our only chance,” he warned her, coolly. “We’re between two

fires. Better not delay!”

She yielded and tumbled in. Karslake followed and slammed the door. The

car shot away and rounded into the cross street before the bobby could

collect himself enough to look at its license plate. He made after it,

but when he had reached the corner it had turned another and was lost.

At the second turning Karslake looked round from the window with a

reassuring laugh, and settled back beside Sofia.

“So that ends that!”

She stared wide-eyed through the shadows. She knew him now, she was not

in the least afraid, but she was confused beyond measure.

“Why—why—” she faltered—“what—who are you and where are you taking me?”

“Oh, I beg your pardon!” said the young man, contritely. “I forgot. One

ought to introduce one’s self before rescuing ladies in distress—but

there really wasn’t time, you know. If you’ll overlook the informality,

my name’s Karslake, Roger Karslake, Princess Sofia, and I’m taking you

to your father.”

V

HOUSE OF THE WOLF

This startling announcement Sofia received without comment and with a

composure quite as surprising. The life which had made her what she

was, a young woman singularly unillusioned, well-poised, and

well-informed, had brought out in her nature a strong vein of

scepticism. She was not easily to be impressed. The more remarkable the

circumstance in question, the less inclined was she to exclaim about

it, the stronger was her propensity to look shrewdly into the matter

and find out for herself just what it was that made it seem so odd.

She didn’t repose much faith in those striking synchronizations which

apparently unrelated influences sometimes effect with related events,

and which we are accustomed to term coincidences. She distrusted their

specious seeming of spontaneity, she suspected a deep design behind

them all.

For example: Up to the moment of her flight from the Café des Exiles

there had been, as Sofia saw it, nothing extraordinary or inexplicable

in the chapter of happenings which had made her acquainted, as abruptly

as tardily, with certain facts concerning her parentage.

You might, if you felt like it, call it a strange coincidence that she

should have read the advertisement of Messrs. Secretan & Sypher just

before their letter was delivered and Mama Thérèse by her intemperate

conduct warmed Sofia’s simmering suspicions to the boiling point. But

then Sofia read the Agony Column every time it came into her hands: she

would have been more surprised had she missed noticing her given name

in print, and downright ashamed of herself if she had failed to

associate the letter with the advertisement.

If you asked her, she called it Fate, the foreordained workings of

occult forces charged with dominion over human affairs. Sooner or later

she must somehow have learned the truth about her right place in the

world; and to her way of thinking it was no more astonishing that she

should have learned it through accident supplemented by the acute

inferences of a sharply stimulated imagination, rather than through

being waited upon by a delegation of legal gentlemen commissioned with

the duty of enlightening her. And the colossal set-piece of the evening

having been duly exploded, no sequel whatever could expect anything

better than relegation to the cheerless limbo of anticlimax.

Thus when young Mr. Karslake explained his uninvited if timely

intervention by stating that he was conducting her to the parent of

whose existence she had so recently been informed, he succeeded—not to

put too fine a point upon it—only in making it all seem a bit thick.

So for the time being Sofia contented herself with silent study of his

face as fitfully revealed by the passing lights of Shaftesbury Avenue.

A nice face (she thought) open and naïve, perhaps a trace too much so;

but, viewed at close quarters, by no means so child-like as she had

thought it, and by no means wanting in evidences of quiet strength if

one forgave the funny little moustache which (now one came to, observe

it seriously) was precisely what lent that possibly deceptive look of

innocence and inconsequence, positively weakening the character of what

might otherwise have been a countenance to foster confidence.

As for Mr. Karslake, he endured this candid scrutiny with a faintly

apprehensive smile, but volunteered nothing more; so that, when the

silence in time acquired an accent of constraint, it was Sofia who had

to break it, not Mr. Karslake.

“I’m wondering about you,” she explained quite gravely.

“One fancied as much, Princess Sofia.”

She liked his way of saying that; the title seemed to fall naturally

from his lips, without a trace of irony. None the less, it wouldn’t do

to be too readily influenced in his favour.

“Do you really know my father?”

“Rather!” said Mr. Karslake. “You see, I’m his secretary.”

“How long—”

“Upward of eighteen months now.”

“And how long have you known I was his daughter?”

Mr. Karslake, consulting a wrist-watch, permitted himself a quiet

smile.

“Thirty-eight minutes,” he announced—“say, thirty-nine.”

“But how did you find out—?”

“Your father called me up—can’t say from where—said he’d just learned

you were acting as cashier at the Café des Exiles, and would I be good

enough to take you firmly by the hand and lead you home.”

“And how did he learn—?”

“That he didn’t say. ’Fraid you’ll have to ask him, Princess Sofia.”

Genuinely diverted by the cross-examination, he awaited with unruffled

good humour the next question to be put by this amazingly collected and

direct young person. But Sofia hesitated. She didn’t want to be rude,

and Karslake seemed to be telling a tolerably straight story; still,

she couldn’t altogether believe in him as yet. She couldn’t help it if

his visit to the restaurant had been a shade too opportune, his account

of himself too confoundedly pat.

No: she wasn’t in the least afraid. Even if she were being kidnapped,

she wasn’t afraid. She was so young, so absurdly confident in her

ability to take care of herself. On the other hand, intuition kept

admonishing her that in real life things simply didn’t happen like

this, so smoothly, so fortunately; somehow, somewhere, in this curious

affair, something must be wrong.

“Please: what is my father’s name?”

“Prince Victor Vassilyevski.”

“You’re sure it isn’t Michael Lanyard?”

Now Mr. Karslake was genuinely startled and showed it. Sofia remarked

that he eyed her uneasily.

“My sainted aunt! Where did you get hold of that name?”

“Isn’t it my father’s?”

“Ye-es,” the young man admitted, reluctantly; at least with something

strongly resembling reluctance. “But he doesn’t use it any more.”

“Why not?”

Mr. Karslake was silent, thoughtful. Sofia felt that she had scored and

with determination pressed her point.

“Do you mind telling me why he doesn’t use that name, if it’s his?”

“See here, Princess Sofia”—Karslake slewed round to face her squarely

with his most earnest and persuasive manner—“I am merely Prince

Victor’s secretary, I’m not supposed to know all his secrets, and those

I do know I’m supposed not to talk about. I’d much rather you put that

question to Prince Victor yourself.”

“I shall,” Sofia announced with decision. “When am I to see him?

To-night?”

“Of course. That is, I presume you will. I mean to say, Prince Victor

wasn’t at home when I left, but if I know him he’s sure to be when we

arrive. And I’m taking you there as directly as a motor can travel in

this blessed town.”

Sofia looked out of the window. The car, having turned down Regent

Street from Piccadilly Circus, was now traversing sedate Pall Mall; and

in another moment it swung into the passage between St. James’s Palace

and Marlborough House Chapel; and then they were in The Mall, with the

Victoria Memorial ahead, glowing against the dingy backing of

Buckingham Palace.

Now, since all Sofia’s reading had inculcated the belief that the

enterprising kidnapper always made off with his victim by way of dark

bystreets and unsavoury neighbourhoods, she felt somewhat reassured.

“Have we very far to go?”

“We’re almost there now—Queen Anne’s Gate.”

A good enough address. Though that proved nothing. There was still

plenty of time, anything might happen....

Sofia shrugged, and settled back to await developments.

But there was nothing to warrant misgivings in the aspect of the

dwelling before which the car presently drew up. If it wasn’t the

palace Sofia had unconsciously been looking forward to, it owned a

solid, dull-faced dignity that suited well the town-house of a person

of quality, it measured up quite acceptably to Sofia’s notion of what

was becoming to the condition of a prince in exile—who naturally would

live quietly, in view of the recent revolution in Russia.

Without augmented fears, then, though still on the alert for anything

that might seem questionable, and more agitated with excitement than

she let him suspect, Sofia permitted Mr. Karslake to conduct her to the

door.

He had barely touched the bell-button when this door opened, revealing

a vista of spacious entrance-hall.

To one side stood a manservant to whom Sofia paid no attention till the

sound of his name on Karslake’s tongue struck an echo from her memory.

“Thanks, Nogam. Prince Victor home yet?”

“Not yet, sir.”

“Tell him, please, when he comes in, we’re waiting in the study.”

“’Nk-you, sir.”

The servant was the man whom Karslake had met in the Café des Exiles

only a few hours before. Catching Sofia’s quick, questioning glance,

Nogam paused at respectful attention. And, even then, she was struck

again with his fidelity to the rôle in the social system for which Life

had cast him. In the café, that afternoon, he had cut a mildly

incongruous figure, unpretending but alien to that atmosphere; here, in

the plain evening-dress livery of his station, he blended perfectly

into the picture.

Karslake gave his hat and stick to the man, then opened one wing of a

great double doorway, and with a bow invited Sofia to precede him. She

faltered, hazily conceiving that threshold in the guise of an

inglorious Rubicon. But she had already gone too far into this

adventure to draw back now without forfeiting her self-respect. With a

deceptively firm step she entered a room to wonder at.

Sombre shadows masked much of its magnificent proportions, but what

Sofia could see suggested less the study of a man of everyday interests

than the private museum of an Orientalist whose wealth knew no limits.

The air was warm and close, aromatic with the ghosts of ten thousand

perished perfumes. The quiet, when Karslake had closed the door, was

oppressive, as if some dark enchantment here had power to tame and

silence the growl of London that was never elsewhere in all the city

for an instant still.

On a great table of black teakwood inlaid with mother of pearl burned a

solitary lamp, a curious affair in filigree of brass, furnishing what

illumination there was. Its closely shaded rays made vaguely visible

walls dark with books, tier upon tier climbing to the ceiling; chairs

of odd shape, screens of glowing lacquer; tables and stands supporting

caskets of burning cinnabar, of ivory, of gold, of kaleidoscopic

cloisonné; trays heaped high with unset jewels; cabinets crowded with

rare objects of Eastern art; squat shapes of neglected gods brandishing

weird weapons; grotesque devil masks ferociously a-grin; chests of

strange woods strangely fashioned, strangely carved, and decorated with

inlays of precious metals, banded with huge straps of black iron, from

which gushed in rainbow profusion silks and brocades stiff with

barbaric embroideries in gold- and silver-thread and precious stones.

Confused by the impact upon her perceptions of so much that was

unexpected and bizarre, the girl looked round with an uncertain smile,

and found Karslake watching her with a manner of peculiar gravity and

concern.

“Prince Victor is an extraordinary man,” Karslake replied to her

unspoken comment; “probably the most learned Orientalist alive.

Sometimes I think the East has never had a secret he doesn’t know.”

He paused and drew nearer, with added earnestness in his regard.

“Princess Sofia,” said he, diffidently, “if I may say something without

meaning to seem disrespectful—”

Perplexed, she encouraged him with one word: “Please.”

“I’m afraid,” Karslake ventured, “you will have many strange

experiences in this new life. Some of them, I fancy, you won’t

immediately understand, some things may seem wrong to you, you may find

yourself confronted with conditions hard to accept ...”

He rested as if in doubt, and she fancied that he was listening

intently, almost apprehensively, for some signal of warning. But on her

part Sofia heard no sound.

Impressed and puzzled, she uttered a prompting “Yes?”

“I only want to say”—he employed a tone so low that she could barely

hear him—“if you don’t mind—whatever happens—I’d be awf’ly glad if

you’d think of me as one who sincerely wants to be your friend.”

“Why,” she said in wonder—“thank you. I shall be glad—”

She checked in astonishment: a man was approaching from the general

direction of the door by which they had entered.

The effect was uncanny, as if the figure had materialized before her

very eyes, out of clear air, as if one of those many shadows had taken

on shape and substance while she looked.

The man himself was nothing unusual in general aspect, of no remarkable

stature, neither tall nor small, neither robust nor slender. His

evening clothes were without fault, but as much might be said of ten

thousand men who might be seen any night in the public rendezvous of

leisured London. His carriage had special distinction only in that he

moved with a sort of feline grace. Still, something elusive made him

unlike any other man Sofia had ever met, something arresting and not

altogether prepossessing.

As he drew nearer and his features became more clearly defined by the

light, she was sensible of gazing into a face of unique cast. Of an odd

grayish pallor accentuated by hair so black that it might have been

painted on his skull with india-ink, the skin seemed to be as soft and

smooth as a child’s, beardless and wholly without lustre. The mouth was

sensuous yet firm, with hard, full lips. Leaden pouches hung beneath

heavy-lidded eyes set at a noticeable angle. The eyes themselves were

as black as night and as lightless; the rays of the lamp struck no

gleam from them; in spite of this they were compelling, masterful, and

disconcerting.

Karslake at once fell back, with a bow so low it was little less than

an obeisance.

“Prince Victor!”

The man nodded acknowledgment of this greeting without detaching

attention from the girl. His voice, slightly tremulous with emotion,

uttered her name: “Sofia?”

She collected herself with an effort. “I am Sofia,” she replied almost

mechanically.

“And I, your father...”

Prince Victor lifted hands of singular delicacy, slender and tapering,

whose long fingers were dressed with many curious rings.

A reluctance she could not understand hindered Sofia from going gladly

into those arms. She had to make herself yield. They tightened hungrily

about her. She closed her eyes and experienced a slight, invincible

shudder.

“My child!”

The lips that touched her forehead astonished her with their warmth.

Instinctively she had expected them to be cool, as frigid as the effect

of that strange mask of which they formed a part.

Then, held at arm’s-length, she submitted to an inspection whose sum

was enunciated with a strange smile of gratification:

“You are beautiful.”

In embarrassment she murmured: “I am glad you think so—father.”

“As beautiful as your mother—in her time the most beautiful creature in

the world—her image, a flawless reproduction, even to her colouring,

the shade of the hair, the eyes—so like the sea!”

“I am glad,” the girl repeated, nervously.

“And until to-night I did not know you lived!”

She mustered up courage enough to ask: “How—?”

The heavy lids drooped lower over the illegible eyes. “My attention was

called to a newspaper advertisement signed by a firm of solicitors. I

got in touch with them—a matter of some difficulty, since it was after

business hours—and found out where to look for you. Then, prevented

from acting as quickly as I wished, myself, I sent Karslake here to

bring you to me.”

“But, according to their letter, the solicitors thought I was in

France, in a convent!”

“When they advertised for me—yes. But by the time I enquired they were

better informed.”

“But the advertisement was addressed to Michael Lanyard!”

The thin lips formed a faint smile. “That was once my name. I no longer

use it.”

Against a feeling that she was adopting an attitude both undutiful and

unbecoming, Sofia persisted.

“Why?”

Prince Victor Vassilyevski gave a gesture of pain and reluctance.

“Must I tell you? Why not? You must know some day, as well now as

later, perhaps. Twenty years ago the name of Michael Lanyard was famous

throughout Europe—or shall I say infamous?—the name of the greatest

thief of modern times, otherwise known as ‘The Lone Wolf’.”

Involuntarily, Sofia stepped back, as if some shape of horror had been

suddenly thrust before her face.

“The Lone Wolf!” she echoed in a voice of dismay. “A thief! You!”

The man who called himself her father replied with a series of slow,

affirmative nods.

“That startles you?” he said in an indulgent voice. “Naturally. But you

will soon grow accustomed to the thought, you will condone that chapter

in my history, remembering I am no longer that man, no longer a thief,

that for many years now my record has been without reproach. You will

remember that there is more joy in Heaven over the one sinner who

repents ... You will forgive the father, if only for your mother’s

sake.”

“For my mother’s sake—?”

“What the Lone Wolf was in his day, your mother was in hers—the most

brilliant adventuress Europe ever knew.”

“Oh!” cried the girl in semi-hysterical protest. “Oh, no, no!

Impossible!”

“I assure you, it is quite true. Some day I may tell you her

history—and mine. For the present, you will do well to think no more

about what I have confessed. Repining can never mend the past. It is

to-day and to-morrow you must think of: that you are restored to me,

and that I have not only the means but a great hunger to make you

happy, to gratify your slightest whim.”

“I want nothing!” Sofia insisted, wildly.

“You want sleep,” Prince Victor corrected, fondly—“you want it badly.

You are nervous, overstrung, in no condition to understand the great

good fortune that has befallen you. But to-morrow you will see things

in a rosier light.”

Apparently he had manipulated some signal unremarked by Sofia. The door

opened, framing the figure of the man Nogam. Without looking round, but

with an inscrutable smile, Prince Victor took the girl in his arms

again and held her close.

“You rang, sir?”

“Oh, are you there, Nogam? Is the apartment ready for the Princess

Sofia?”

“Quite ready, sir.”

“Be good enough to conduct her to it.” Again Prince Victor kissed

Sofia’s forehead, then let her go. “Good-night, my child.”

Moving slowly toward the door, drooping, Sofia made inarticulate

response. She felt suddenly stupefied with fatigue. To think meant an

effort that mocked her flagging powers. A vast lassitude was weighing

upon her, body and spirit were faint in the enervation of an inexorable

disconsolation.

VI

THE MUMMER

Alone with his secretary, Prince Victor Vassilyevski dropped

indifferently the guise of manner with which he had clothed himself for

the benefit of the woman whom he claimed as his own child. That

semblance of shy affection coloured by regrets for the past and

modified by the native nobility of a prince in exile—so becoming in a

parent to whose bosom a daughter whom he had never seen was suddenly

restored—being of no more service for the present, was incontinently

discarded. In its stead Victor favoured Karslake with a slow smile of

understanding that broadened into an insuppressible grin of successful

malice, a grimace of crude exultation through which peered out the

impish savage mutinously imprisoned within a flimsy husk of modern

manner.

Suspecting this self-betrayal, he erased the grin swiftly, but not so

swiftly that Karslake failed to note it. And the young man, smiling

amiably and respectfully in return, was sensible of a thrill: yet

another glimpse had been given him into the mystery that slept behind

that countenance normally so impenetrable.

But he was studious to show nothing of his own emotion. It was his part

to be merely a mirror, to reflect rather than to feel, to be an

instrument infinitely supple and unfailing, never an independent

intelligence. Not otherwise could he count on holding his place in

Victor’s favour.

“You were quicker than I hoped.”

“I had no trouble, sir,” Karslake returned, cheerfully. “Things rather

played into my hands.”

Victor dropped into a chair beside the table and lifted the lid of a

small golden casket. Helping himself to one of its store of cigarettes,

he made Karslake free of the remainder with a gracious hand. The

secretary demurred, producing his pocket case.

“If you don’t mind, sir ...”

Victor moved a supercilious eyebrow. “Woodbines again?”

“Sorry, sir; I know they’re pretty awful and all that, but they were

all I could get in France, and I contracted a taste for them I can’t

seem to cure. I remember, while I lay in a hospital, hardly a whole

bone in my body, thanks to the Boche and his flying circus—it was that

lot sent me crashing, you know—the nurses used to tempt me with the

finest Turkish; but somehow I couldn’t go them; I’d beg for Woodbines.”

Prince Victor dismissed the subject curtly. “I am waiting to hear about

Sofia.”

“Not much to tell, sir. There seemed to be a storm of sorts brewing

when I got there. The young woman was at her desk with a face like a

thundercloud. While I was trying to make up my mind what would be my

best approach, she jumped down, flew upstairs and, I gathered, kicked

up a holy row. You see, she’d seen that advertisement of Secretan &

Sypher’s, and smelt a rat.”

“What did she say?”

“Nothing definite, sir: seemed to understand she was the daughter of

Princess Sofia Vassilyevski, only she objected to her father being

anybody but Michael Lanyard.”

“Go on.”

“After a bit she stampeded downstairs again, with the old girl and that

swine of a Dupont at her heels. I blocked him and gave Sofia a chance

to get outside. The whole establishment boiled out into the street

after us, yelling like fun, but I got the girl into the car ... and

here we are.”

But Prince Victor seemed to have lost interest. The glow ebbing from

his face, his lips tightening, the thick lids drooping low over his

eyes, he sat in apparent abstraction, aping the impassivity of the

graven idols that graced his study.

“I don’t mind owning, sir,” the younger man resumed, nervously, “she

had me sparring for wind when she put it to me point-blank her father’s

name was Michael Lanyard.”

Without moving Victor enquired in a dull voice: “What did you tell

her?”

“That it was a name you had once used, sir, but.... Well, what you told

her, all except the Lone Wolf business. Don’t mind telling you I was in

a rare funk till you capped my story so neatly.”

He laughed and ventured with a hesitation quite boyish: “I say, Prince

Victor—if it’s not an impertinent question—was there any truth in that?

I mean about your having been the Lone Wolf twenty years ago.”

“Not a syllable,” said Victor, dryly.

“Then your name never was Michael Lanyard?”

“Never, but ...”

During a long pause the secretary fidgeted inwardly but had the wisdom

to refrain from showing further inquisitiveness. He could see that

strong passions were working in Victor: a hand, extended upon the

table, unclosed and closed with a peculiar clutching action; the

muscles contracted round mouth and eyes, moulding the face into a cast

of disquieting malevolence. The voice, when at length it resumed, was

bitter.

“But Michael Lanyard was my enemy ... and is to-day.... He became a

lover of Sofia’s mother, he had a hand in overturning plans I had made,

he humiliated, mocked me.... And to-day he is interfering again.... But

...”

Victor sank back in his chair. Suddenly that unholy grin of his flashed

and faded.

“But now his impertinence fails, his insolence over-reaches itself. Now

I have the whip-hand and ... I shall use it!”

Vindictiveness that could find relief only in action mastered the man.

“Be good enough to take this dictation.”

Karslake turned to the table and opened a portfolio of illuminated

Spanish leather.

“Ready, sir,” he said, with pencil poised.

_“To Michael Lanyard, Intelligence Division, the War Office, Whitehall.

Sir: Your daughter Sofia is now with me. Permit me to suggest that, in

consideration of this situation, you cease to meddle with my affairs.

Your own intelligence must tell you nothing could be more fatal than an

attempt to communicate with her.”_

“Sign on the typewriter with the initial _V_.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Type it on plain paper, use a plain envelope, be sure that neither has

a watermark, and get it off to-night without fail. Take a taxi to St.

Pancras station and post it there. If you make haste you can get it in

a pillar-box before the last collection.”

“I shan’t lose a minute, sir.”

Karslake straightened up, folding the paper, and made for the door.

“One moment, Karslake.... This man, Nogam: where did you pick him up?”

“He used to buttle for my father, sir, but got into trouble—some

domestic unpleasantness, I believe—needed money, and raised a cheque.

The old boy let him off easy; but I’ve got the cheque, and Nogam knows

it. The fellow’s perfectly trained and absolutely dependable, knows his

place and his duties and not another blessed thing. I’ll send him in if

you like.”

Prince Victor uttered with dry accent: “Why?”

“Thought you might care to have a talk with him, sir.”

“I have.”

“Oh!” Mr. Karslake exclaimed—“I didn’t know.”

“Quite so,” commented Prince Victor. “I shan’t need you again to-night,

Karslake.”

“Good-night, sir.”

When the secretary had gone, Victor sat motionless, so still that his

breathing scarcely stirred his body, with a face absolutely

imperturbable, steadfastly gazing into that darkness which shrouded the

workings of his mind.

On the doorstep a shrill whistle sounded: Nogam calling Karslake’s

taxi. Victor heard the vehicle roll in and stand panting at the curb,

then the slam of its door, the diminishing rumble of its departure.

The house door closed, and after a little the study door opened, and

Nogam halted on the threshold.

Unstirring Victor enquired: “What is it, Nogam?”

“I wished to enquire would there be anything more to-night, sir.”

“Nothing.”

“’Nk you, sir.”

“But Nogam: in this house, regardless of the custom which may have

obtained in other establishments where you have served, you will always

knock before entering a room, and never enter until you obtain

permission.”

“But if I’m sure the room is empty, sir, and get no answer—?”

“Then you may enter any room but this. Never this, unless I am here—or

Mr. Karslake is—and you get leave.”

“’Nk you, sir.”

“Good-night.”

As the door closed Victor extended a thin, effeminate hand to a casket

of ivory, searched with sensitive finger-tips its exquisite tracery

until a cunningly hidden spring responded and the lid, splitting in

two, sank down into its walls. In the pocket thus revealed were many

pills, apparently hand-moulded, of a grayish-brown substance,

putty-soft.

Slowly Victor selected three, placed one after another upon his tongue,

and swallowed them.

He shut the casket and sat waiting.

Slowly the keenness of his countenance became blurred, as if the hand

of an unseen sculptor were rubbing down its features, doing away the

veneer with which Europe had overlaid the primitive Asiatic, which now

showed on the surface, in every detail of coarsely modelled nose,

oblique eyes of animal cunning, pendulous lips cruel and sensual.

By degrees a faint trace of colour began to flush Victor’s cheeks, a

smile modified the set of his mouth, the heavy-lidded eyes lost their

lustreless opacity and glimmered with uncanny light.

He breathed deeply, evenly, with an evident relish. The action of the

opium was visibly renewing his powers. His expression, softening,

became terrible with brute tenderness and longing. Gazing into shadows

in which he saw that which he wished ardently to see, he stretched

forth his arms, and his lips moved, shaping a name:

“Sofia!”

As those syllables, freighted with that undying passion which consumed

the man, sounded upon the stillness, Victor turned sharply, with a

gesture of irritation, looking aside, listening.

Instantaneously the Asiatic disappeared, thrust back into its habitual

latency within the prison of European: Prince Victor was as he had

been, as always to the world, cool, composed, and crafty, master, never

creature, of his emotions.

A faint buzzing was audible, broken by muffled clicks.

Rising, Victor approached a table in a corner and with a key from his

pocket ring unlocked a heavy casket of bronze. As he raised its cover a

small electric bulb illuminated the interior, focussing on the

paper-covered face of a mechanical writing device, upon which a pencil

with a broad flat lead operated by a metal arm was tracing characters

resembling the hieroglyphics of the Chinese.

When the clicking ceased and the pencil was at rest, Victor caught an

end of the paper and pulled it forward until a blank surface again

occupied the writing-bed. Upon this with another pencil he inscribed a

reply, then closed and relocked the casket.

Back at the table with the lamp, the message just received became crisp

black ash on a brazen tray.

From a locked chest Victor produced an inverness and a soft hat of

black felt. Wearing these he moved quietly out of the lamp’s radius of

light, and made himself one with the shadows that crowded one another

round the walls. He did not leave by the hall door; but of a sudden the

room was untenanted.

VII

THE FANTASTICS

Downstream from The Pool, a little way below Shadwell, an uncouth row

of dilapidated dwellings in those days stood—or, better, squatted, like

a mute company of draggletail crones—atop a river-wall whose ancient

blocks, all ropy with the slime of centuries, peered dimly out through

groups of crazy spiles at the restless pageant of Thames-life.

Viewed by day, say from the deck of a river steamer, the spectacle they

offered was, according to bias of mood and disposition, unlovely and

drear or colourful and romantic: Whistler might have etched these

houses, Dickens have staged therein a lowly tragedy, Thomas Burke have

made of one a frame for some vignette unforgettable of Limehouse life.

Builded of stone or brick or both as to their landward faces, without

exception they presented to the river false backs of wooden framework

which overhung the water. Ordinarily, their windows were tight-shut,

the panes opaque with accumulated grime—many were broken and boarded.

Their look was dismal, their squalor desperate.

Below, by day, heavy wherries swung moored to the ooze-clad spiles or,

when the tide was out, sprawled upon stinking mud-flats with a gesture

of pathetic helplessness peculiar to stranded watercraft. Seldom was

one observed in use: to all seeming they existed for purposes of

atmosphere alone.

More seldom still did any dwelling betray evidence of inhabitation

beyond faint wisps of smoke, like ghosts of famine, drifting from the

chimneypots, or—perhaps—some unabashed exhibit of red flannel hung out

to dry with wrist or ankle-bands nipped between a window-sash and sill.

By night, however, a stir of furtive life was to be surmised from

cryptic lights that flared and faded behind the crusted window-glass or

fell through opened floor-traps to the thick black element that swirled

about the spiles, and from guarded calls as well, inarticulate cries of

hate and love and pain, rumours of close and crude carousal.

And ever and again the belated riverfarer would encounter one of the

wherries, its long oars swung by brawny arms and backs, stealing

secretly across the inky waters on some errand no less dark.

On land the buildings lined a cobbled street, from dawn to dark a

thoroughfare for thundering lorries and, twice daily, in murk of early

morning and gloom of early night, scoured by a nondescript rabble

employed in the vast dockyards whose man-made forests of masts and

cordage, funnels and cranes, on either hand lifted angular black

silhouettes against the misty silver of the sky.

Black and white and yellow and brown, men of every race and skin, they

came and went, their brief hours loud with babel of strange tongues and

a scuffling of countless feet like the sound of surf; and their goings

left the street strangely hushed, a way of sinister reticences, its

winding length ill-lighted by infrequent corner-lamps, its mephitic

glooms enlivened by windows of public houses all saffron with specious

promise of purchasable good-fellowship.

One of these, the Red Moon, faced the row of waterfront houses,

standing at the intersection of a street which struck inland to the

pulsing heart of Limehouse. A retired bully of the prize-ring ruled

with a high hand over its several bars and many patrons, yellow men and

white girls, deck-hands and dock-workers, pugilistic and criminal

celebrities of the quarter, and their sycophants. Its revels rendered

the nights cacophonous, its portals sucked in streams of sweethearts

and more impersonal lovers of life and laughter, and spewed out sots

close-locked in embraces of maudlin affection or brutal combat. Bobbies

kept an eye on the Red Moon, a respectful one: interference with the

time-hallowed customs and prerogatives of its clientèle was something

to be adventured with extreme discretion.

Out of the hinterland of Limehouse, a tall man came to the Red Moon

that night, walking with long, loose-jointed strides, holding his head

high and looking over the heads of all he passed with a fixed, far

gaze. He had a hatchet-face, sallow, with lantern jaws, a petulant

mouth, hot eyes that showed too much white above their pupils. A lank

black mane greased his collar. His garments, shoddy but whole, were

stained and bleached in spots, apparently the work of acids, and so

wrinkled and shapeless as to suggest that their owner slept without

undressing as a matter of habit. The pockets of his coat bulged

noticeably.

Shouldering heedlessly into the saloon-bar, he found it deserted except

for a chinless potman: the liveliest evening trade was always plied in

the cheaper bars adjacent.

One glance sufficed to identify him: with a surly nod the potman ducked

behind a partition to call the proprietor. Drinks were in order when

this last appeared; and a brief conference in undertones ended when,

having made careful reconnaissance, the publican nodded shortly to the

patron, a jerk of his thumb designating a small door let into the wall

to one side of the bar proper.

Through this the tall man passed to find himself upon a dark stairway,

at the foot of which another door admitted to an underground chamber

where an apparently exclusive social gathering was in session of

Saturnalia.

In one corner a long-suffering piano was taking cruel punishment at the

hands of a flashily dressed, sharp-faced man of horsey type. Flanking

him, two young women of the world, with that insouciance which

appertains—in Limehouse—to sweet sixteen, were chanting shrilly to his

accompaniment: both more than comfortably drunk. In the middle of the

room assorted lawbreakers gathered round a table were playing fan-tan

at the top of their lungs. At smaller tables men and women sat

consuming poisons of which they were obviously in no crying need; while

in bunks builded against one wall devotees of the pipe reclined in

various stages of beatitude. The air was hot, and foul with cigarette

smoke, sickening fumes of sizzling opium, effluvia of beer and spirits,

sour reek of sweating flesh.

Incurious glances greeted the newcomer: none paid him more heed than an

indifferent nod. On his part, brief but comprehensive survey having

deepened the stamp of scorn upon his features, he ignored them all and,

proceeding directly to a bunk of the lowermost tier, aroused its

occupant with a smart tap on the shoulder.

The ostensible drug-addict looked up dreamily, then opened his eyes

wide, with surprising docility rolled out and, uttering no word,

lurched to the fan-tan table. The tall man took his place, lay down,

and drew together the unclean curtains of sleazy stuff provided to

afford privacy to shrinking souls. This done, he turned on his side and

knuckled in peculiar rhythm the back of the bunk, a solid panel which

slipped smoothly to one side, permitting the man to tumble out into

still another room, a cheerless place, with floor of stone and the

smell of a vault.

When the panel had slipped back into place, closing out the bunk, the

man stood in night absolute. But after a minute a slender beam of

golden light struck suddenly athwart the darkness and found his face.

This he endured impassively, only lifting a hand to describe an obscure

sign. Immediately the light was shut off, a door opened in the wall

opposite, dull light from behind disclosed the silhouette of a man in

Chinese robes, his head inclined in a bow of courteous dignity.

In good English but with musical Eastern inflection a voice gave

greeting:

“Good evening, Thirteen. You are awaited—and welcome!”

“Good evening, Shaik Tsin,” the European replied in heavy un-English

accents. “Number One is here, yes?”

“Not yet. But we have just received a telautographic message saying he

is on his way.”

Nodding impatiently, Thirteen passed through the door, which the

Chinaman quickly closed and barred.

The chamber to which one gained admittance by ways so devious and

fantastic was large—exactly how large it was difficult to guess, since

all its walls were screened by black silk panels upon which golden

dragons writhed and crawled. A thick carpet of black covered every inch

of visible floor space, a black silk canopy hid the ceiling, and all

the room was in deep shadow save the space immediately beneath a great

lamp of opalescent glass, likewise draped in black.

Here stood an octagonal table of black teakwood, on seven sides of

which seven chairs were placed. When Thirteen had taken his seat all

these were occupied. On the eighth side an eighth chair stood empty on

a low dais, the heavy carving of its high back, its massive arms and

legs, picked out with gold.

The six who had anticipated Thirteen at this bizarre rendezvous hailed

him as a familiar, according to their several idiosyncrasies,

brusquely, indifferently, or with some semblance of cordiality. They

made a motley crew.

Two were Englishman in appearance, though the figure of languid

elegance in evening dress that might have graced the lounge of a West

End club had a voice soft with Celtic brogue. The other owned a gross

body clothed in loud checks and, with his mean blue eyes, his mottled

complexion, and cunning leer, would not have seemed out of place in a

betting-ring.

Aside from these there were a moon-faced Bengali babu, a dark Italian

with flashing eyes and teeth, and a stout person of bovine Teutonic

cast—the type that is sage, shrewd, easy-going when unopposed, but

capable under provocation of exhibiting the most conscienceless

brutality.

From this last Thirteen got his warmest welcome.

“You are late, mine friend.”

“In good time, however,” Thirteen responded with a nod toward the

vacant chair. “More than that, the summons was handed me only twenty

minutes ago.”

“How was that?” the babu asked. “It was sent at six o’clock.”

“I was at work in the laboratory and had left orders I was not to be

disturbed. But for one thing”—the petulance of Thirteen’s habitual

expression was lightened by a flash of self-gratulation, and his voice

shook a little with excitement—“I might not have received the summons

before morning.”

“And that one thing?”

“Success, comrades! At last—after months of experimentation—I have been

successful!”

“’Ow?” dryly demanded the man in the checked suit.

“I have discovered a great secret—discovered, perfected, adapted it to

common means at our command. Comrades, I tell you, to-night we hold all

England in the hollow of our hands!”

With an incoherent exclamation and eyes afire the Russian sat forward.

Unconsciously the others imitated his action. Only the man in evening

dress made a show of remaining unimpressed.

“It’s fine, fat words you’re after using,” he commented. “‘All England

in the hollow of our hands!’ If they mean anything at all, comrade,

they mean—”

“Everything!” Thirteen cut in with arrogant assertiveness; “all we’ve

been waiting for, hoping for, praying for—the end of the ruling

classes, extinction of the accursed aristocrats, subjugation of the

thrice-damned bourgeois, the triumph of the proletariat, all at a

single stroke, swift, subtle, and sure! Freedom for Ireland, freedom

for India, freedom for England, the speedy spreading of that red dawn

which lights the Russian skies to-day, till all the wide world basks in

its warm radiance and acclaims us, comrades, its redeemers!”

“Lieber Gott!” the German breathed. “Colossal!”

“’Ear, ’ear!” the Englishman applauded, perfunctory and skeptical.

“Bli’me if you didn’t mike me forget where I was—’ad me thinking I was

in ’Yde Park, you did, listening to a bloody horator on a box.”

“You may laugh,” Thirteen replied with a sour glance; “but when you

have heard, you will not laugh. I am not boasting—I am telling you.”

“Not a great deal,” the Irishman suggested. “Your mouth is full of

sounds and fury, but till you tell us more you’ll have told us

nothing.”

The face of Thirteen grew darker still, and for a moment he seemed to

meditate an angry retort; but he thought better of it, contenting

himself with an impatient movement and a mutter: “All in good time;

Number One is not here yet.”

“W’y wyste time w’itin’ for ’im?” demanded the Englishman. “’E’s no

good, ’e’s done.”

Thirteen’s eyes narrowed. “How so?”

“’E’s done, Number One is—finished, counted out, napoo! ’E’s ’ad ’is

d’y, and a pretty mess ’e’s mide of it—and it’s ’igh time, I say, for

’im to step down and let a better man tike ’old.”

Growls in chorus endorsed this declaration of mutiny; but suddenly were

stilled by a voice, sonorous and calm, from outside the circle:

“You think so, Seven? Well—who knows?—perhaps you are right.”

VIII

COUNCIL OF THE GODLESS

Someone exclaimed in an accent of alarm: “Number One!”

With a concerted turning of startled heads, a hasty thrusting back of

chairs, the gathering rose in involuntary deference. That is, five rose

as one; and, after a moment during which his spirit of insubordination

faltered and failed, the Englishman got awkwardly to his feet and stood

abashed and sullen.

The one to remain seated was the Irishman so well turned out by Conduit

Street; who made no move more than slightly to elevate supercilious

brows and slouch a little lower in his chair, glancing from face to

face of the circle, then back to the cold countenance presented by the

author of the abrupt interruption.

This last stood quietly beside the eighth chair, a hand on its carved

arm, one foot on the edge of the dais. A long robe of black silk

enveloped him; on its bosom a Chinese unicorn was embroidered. His

girdle clasp was of Imperial jade set with rubies. The girdle itself

was yellow. A great ruby button, nearly an inch in diameter, set in a

mounting of worked gold, crowned a hat like an inverted round bowl. His

black silk shoes were heavy with golden embroidery, and had white soles

an inch thick. Authority lent inches to his stature, so that he seemed

to dominate his company physically as well as spiritually.

A pace or two in the rear Shaik Tsin, with impassive face and arms

folded in voluminous sleeves, waited as might a bodyguard.

A sardonic glimmer in eyes half visible under heavy lids alone betrayed

relish of the situation, the homage commanded and the sensation created

by this inopportune and unheralded arrival: deliberately Number One

mounted the dais and posed himself in the throne-like chair. Then, as

his look read face after face, he smiled with twitching and disdainful

nostrils.

“Gentlemen of the Council,” he said, slowly, “I bow to you all. Pray be

seated.”

In confounded silence the six resumed their seats, while the

seventh—who had not moved—lighted a cigarette, inhaled deeply, and

through a veil of smoke continued to regard Number One with insolent

eyes.

“I fear my arrival was ill-timed, gentlemen. Seven had the floor, and I

confess to finding what I happened to overhear extremely interesting.

If he will be good enough to continue ...”

The Irishman gave a light, derisive laugh. Shifting uneasily in his

chair, the man in the checked suit flushed darkly, then stiffened his

spine, hardened his eyes, set his jaw, and faced Number One defiantly.

“You ’eard ... I ’olds by w’at I said.”

“I am to understand, then, you think it time for me to abdicate and let

another lead you in my stead?”

The Englishman assented with an inarticulate monosyllable and a surly

nod.

“And may one ask why?”

“Blue’s plice in Pekin Street was r’ided this afternoon,” Seven

announced truculently. “But per’aps you didn’t know—”

“Not until some time before the news reached you,” One replied,

pleasantly. “And what of it?”

“Three fycers in a week, Gov’ner—anybody’ll tell you that’s comin’ it a

bit thick.”

“Granted. What then?”

“That’s only part of it. Tike last week: Eighteen pinched, the queer

plant in ’Igh Street pulled by the coppers—”

“I know, I know. To your point!”

Seven hesitated under that steely stare. “I leave it to you, Gov’ner,”

he continued to stammer at length. “S’y you was me and I was Number

One—w’at would you think?”

“Why, quite naturally, that some superior intelligence has latterly

been collaborating with Scotland Yard.”

“Aren’t you a bit behindhand in arriving at that conclusion?” the

Irishman suggested with an ill-dissembled sneer.

“No, Eleven,” Number One replied, mildly, “since I arrived at it some

time since.”

“But took no measures—”

“You are in a position to state that as a fact?”

Eleven shrugged lightly. “Need I be? Does not our situation speak for

itself?”

“Since you cannot be as thoroughly acquainted as I am with the

situation, and since it seems I am required to account for my

leadership or surrender it to you, Eleven ... I believe you have

selected yourself to replace me as Number One, have you not?—that is to

say, in the improbable event of my abdication.”

“Improbable?” repeated the Irishman. “I wouldn’t call it that.”

“You are right,” Number One assented, gravely: “unthinkable is the

word. But you haven’t answered my question.”

“Oh, as for that, if the Council should see fit to appoint me Number

One, I’d naturally do my best.”

“And most noble of you, I’m sure. But rather than bring down any such

disaster upon this organization, I will say now that measures have

already been taken, and I am to-night in a position to promise you that

the new spirit in Scotland Yard will no longer be a factor in our

calculations.”

“That wants proving,” Eleven contended.

A spasm of anger shook the figure in the throne-like chair, but only

for an instant; immediately the iron will of the man imposed rigid

self-control; almost without pause he proceeded in level and civil

accents:

“I think I can satisfy you and—this once—I consent to do so. But first,

a question: Have you yourself formed any theory as to the identity of

this hostile intelligence which has so hindered us of late?”

“I’d be a raw fool if I hadn’t,” the Irishman retorted. “We know the

Lone Wolf has been hand-in-glove with the authorities ever since the

British Secret Service used him during the war.”

“You think, then, it is Lanyard—?”

“It’s a wise saying: ‘Set a thief to catch a thief.’ I believe there’s

no man in England but Lanyard who has the wit and vision and audacity

to fight us on our ground and win.”

“I agree entirely. Therefore, I have this day tied the hands of the

Lone Wolf; he will not again dare to contend against us.”

Eleven sat up with a startled gesture.

“Are you meaning you’ve got the girl?”

Number One indulged a remote and chilly smile.

“Then you, too, noticed the advertisement? Accept my compliments,

Eleven. Decidedly you might prove a dangerous rival—were I in a temper

to countenance competition.... But it is true: I have the girl

Sofia—the Lone Wolf’s daughter.”

“Where?”

The smile faded; the man on the dais looked down loftily.