CHAPTER XXVII.

IN THE NET OF A SIREN.

Nick Carter paused just inside the doorway.

The scene before him was a resplendent one, and not to be duplicated in the city of Washington, so rumor had said; certainly, the hostess who presided over it all was not to be duplicated anywhere else in the world.

For the scene upon which the detective looked was that of a formal function at the home of Countess Juno Narnine and the countess herself defied vocabularies, when an adequate description of her was sought.

The detective had thought it best to wear no disguise at all; to appear there in his own proper person; to come upon the hostess suddenly and without announcement, and so to surprise her, if that were possible, although he had not a doubt that she had been informed of his presence in the city.

He had managed purposely to arrive at the house rather late, and already the parlors were thronged with guests, for hers was one of the most popular houses in the capital—not alone because of the beauty of the hostess, but because of the entertainment one found there, and the people one met there.

As Nick halted he drew backward a little, screening himself for a moment behind other persons who were only too eager to crowd ahead of him, for he wished to study the scene for a time before he thrust himself directly into it.

He saw her at the far end of the room, the centre of a throng that had gathered around her chair; for she sat like an enthroned queen, upon a raised dais, the better to receive her guests—and the moment had not yet come for her to leave it and to mingle with them.

The admiration that was given to her was not stinted; and it was due, moreover, for the detective confessed to himself then and there that never had he seen a more beautiful human creature.

Brightness, vivacity, wit—every attribute that goes to adorn beauty and make it a compelling factor were hers.

Statesmen, professional men, persons of prominence in every walk of life were grouped around her, each vying with all the others to do homage to her charms.

Such was the scene upon which Nick Carter gazed as he paused just inside the doorway and studied the environment.

“A wonderful woman, truly,” he told himself, with just the suggestion of a shrug, and he withdrew still farther into the background, waiting for a better opportunity to present himself.

The moment came at last.

He saw that she was about to leave her raised chair and to mingle with her guests. He discerned an uneasy movement around her which told him that; and just at the instant when he believed that he would be in time, he moved forward and stood before her.

She had been talking with a man who stood beside her, and did not notice his approach; did not realize that another guest had approached until he stood directly before her. Then she raised her eyes and saw him.

A person standing near them and watching her would not have noticed that her expression changed at all; but Nick Carter saw that it did.

There was just the slightest narrowing of the eyes; just an added depth to them; just the suggestion of a slight start in her attitude, unobservable to others, but plainly noted by the detective, although it endured not more than the fraction of an instant.

Then, her face beamed. A bright smile, which was also glad in its expression, illumined her eyes and her features. You would have said that she was unqualifiedly delighted to discover him there.

She did what she had not done to another guest that evening. She started from her chair and extended her hand in cordial greeting; and she followed that hand with the other one, thus signally honoring him by giving him both. He took them both, and for a moment held them, looking down into her eyes as he did so, with an expression which the spectators took to be one of intense admiration, if not more; with an expression which she must have seen, and noted, and wondered about, too, in her inmost heart.

The murmurs about them became hushed for the instant.

It seemed as if all eyes in the room were fixed upon those two; and yet no one stood quite near enough to them to hear her low-toned greeting, or his reply to it.

“You have not forgotten?” she murmured, with that bewitching smile which could not have been counterfeited by another.

“I am here; that should be your answer,” he returned, and he smiled back at her.

She did another thing then that was not in accordance with her usual custom. She took his arm deliberately when she knew that a dozen others were waiting near, to have that very honor bestowed upon them—and among them it may be said that Colonel Alexis Turnieff was one—and she said:

“It is my habit to rest for a few moments in the conservatory, after the fatigue of the reception. Take me there, please.”

The others drew backward, away from them. A lane was formed through the throng, and Nick walked through it with Juno clinging to his arm, the envied of every man in the room.

No one could surmise why she had signaled him out for this especial honor. Nick Carter would have found it difficult to have told the reason himself; perhaps she had none, and it was only a whim and impulse.

But nevertheless Nick asked himself if she had in mind the last scene between them, in the parlor of her suite of rooms in Paris, when she had believed that she hypnotized him. The detective caught himself wondering if she had discovered since then the fraud that he had practiced upon her.

“She must have discovered it,” he told himself. “She knows that the orders she gave me when she supposed me to be under the hypnotic spell were not carried out. She knows that Bare-Faced Jimmy was brought back to this country, and tried, and convicted. She must know all of that.”

But these thoughts found no outward expression on the part of the detective. He walked along beside her, with her arm clinging to his, and so they passed among the guests, and at last went through a draped doorway and entered upon a spacious conservatory.

Others were there, to be sure; but there was one seat which was sacred to the hostess, and it was an unwritten law of the house that when she occupied it with another she was not to be disturbed, save by her expressed wish.

She guided the detective toward it, seated herself, and motioned Nick to a place beside her.

“Now,” she said to him, “we are as isolated here as if we were behind closed doors with a substantial guard at every outlet. No one approaches me when I am here, unless I request it, so we can converse for a time undisturbed.”

“Isn’t it an unusual honor that you do me, countess?” the detective asked, replying to her.

“No; not particularly. I always bring a companion here with me, after the fatigue of receiving for two hours on that raised dais. Now—why are you here?”

“Can you ask that, countess?”

“I do ask it,” she smiled back at him.

“I am here because I had the impulse to come. I have not forgotten our last interview.”

“No? I had hoped that you might forget it—at least, a part of it.”

“Perhaps it is the part you would have me forget that I best remember,” he replied softly.

“I beg, Mr. Carter, that you will not be like all the others, and begin by making love to me offhand, as if I expected it as my due. Be original at least, for I know that you are not in the least in that condition.”

“What does not exist, may be made to exist, countess. Love commands most people, but it seems to me that you have transposed the rule, and that you command love.”

She shrugged her white shoulders and laughed softly; she also flushed, and turned her matchless eyes full upon him for a moment, remaining silent while she did so. Then she replied with studied deliberation:

“No; I do not command love. If I could, I would do so now. Do you regard that as rather a bald statement, my friend? Perhaps it is so; but nevertheless it is true. Have you ever walked past beautiful grounds that surrounded a mansion which attracted you, and have you said to yourself, in passing it, ‘If I could enter and claim it as mine, I would throw open the gate and enter’?”

“Perhaps. I have not thought of it in exactly that way.”

“No? I will draw the simile a bit farther. You see in that place a haven where you might, if you would, enter and be happy and content forevermore; but you look a second time and discover that the gate is locked against you—so you pass on your way. You remember the garden of flowers, and the mansion only vaguely, yet knowing that you could have been content had you entered there. Do you understand me?”

“I am afraid not, countess.”

“You do, but you will not admit it. Well, I will be more explicit. The atmosphere around you, Mr. Carter, is the garden of flowers; you are the mansion; but the gate is locked against me, and I may not enter. Sometimes, my friend, we pass such scenes too late in life to know where to search for the key.”

She was still looking into his eyes.

She had bent nearer to him. There was a deeper flush upon her cheeks and brow, and her eyes were glowing with a light which must, in her early life, have given her the name of Siren.

She reached out one hand tentatively, and permitted it to fall upon the back of one of his hands. Her fingers tightened upon it, almost imperceptibly, yet they tightened, and they clung there.

The detective felt the thrill of her; realized the magnetism of the woman; knew the danger he courted; understood that she was openly making a bid for his admiration—perhaps for something more.

He found himself returning her gaze; he saw her lips, dimly, as through a haze, and he knew that they were protected from the view of others by the screen of leaves that shaded them—and then he saw one of her white arms steal softly upward toward him, and he knew that in another instant it would wind itself around his neck.

Still he did not move.

He caught the wrist of that white arm just in time, and gently but firmly he forced it back again upon her lap, although he did not attempt to remove her other hand, where it was resting on the back of one of his.

“You refuse me the key?” she murmured, so low that it was almost a whisper. “You keep the gate locked against me? You shut me out, leave me in the cold? Are you wise to do that, my friend?”

“Who shall tell what wisdom is, Juno?” he replied to her. “When we deem ourselves the wisest, we are often the most stupid. But you are right, nevertheless. The gate is locked—only there are two gates instead of one, and that one behind which you are sheltered is an impregnable one. I would not dare to open it if I could do so, and I doubt if I could.”

“You charge me with insincerity, my friend?”

“Ah, that term is also ambiguous, countess. You are sincere enough so far as your purpose is concerned; but that purpose is not what you would have me think it is.”

She drew her hand away from his. For a time she was silent, and Nick, watching her, saw that she was thinking deeply. He waited, wondering what would be the fruit of that thought.

At last she turned to him, and looked into his eyes again; but now her expression had changed greatly; there was a depth to it which he had not seen there before.

“Will you believe me if I speak to you with entire frankness?” she asked him.

“Yes, countess. At least I will try to do so.”

“I will be, for once at least, entirely sincere.”

“I believe that you mean what you say.”

“Then listen. This scene between us outrages all precedent, does it not?”

“In a way it does; yes.”

“I invited you to come here with me to this secluded corner of my conservatory. I drew you down upon the seat beside me. I have deliberately made love to you, and I have as deliberately, by my actions, given you permission to take me into your arms—I, who have the power to command the love of almost any man in those rooms yonder. That is true, isn’t it, my friend?”

“Quite true.”

“I did not begin, as I would have done if I were playing at love, did I, by inviting you to make love to me, by using coy glances, and all the little arts that a woman is master of—I did not do any of that.”

“No.”

“Well, I will tell you why I have outraged precedent. It is because, when I drew that comparison between you and the mansion with its garden of flowers, I spoke the truth. You have attracted me strangely, Nick Carter; not as other men might do, but as only you could do, and have done it. I can see in you the possibilities of supreme content—and Heaven knows that I long for content, as we all long for the unattainable. I do not love you—but I could love you. You are not necessary to me—but you could be so. One does not fall into love blindly—at least not one like I am, or like you are, possessed of brain and of judgment. I wonder if you understand me now?”

“I think so.”

“You know who I am. I know that you do know; and yet you have kept the secret. You are aware that I was born to better things; that no woman in the world is better connected than I am. Yet in my youth I threw that all away from me and went out into the world, driven there by one foolish act, and I have been in that world ever since buffeted by it; maligned by it. In that outer world there is no content anywhere.

“I am like other women in that I long for content. I am like other women in that I have a heart for love. I am like other women in that I am loyal to one thing at least, and that is to myself. I am like other women after all, and it is only those who do not know my real self who think me different. Can you understand that?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“You have the key to content, if you will give it to me. I hate this life of mine, in which there is nothing that is true and real. I crave the real things of life—and, my friend, all the real things of life depend upon just one quality—love.

“Wait, my friend, bear with me just a moment longer. Now that I have begun—and I have never talked frankly to any person before now—I have the wish to complete what I began to say.”

“Yes, countess.”

“When the sinner, moved by the exhortations of the revivalist, goes down in front and falls upon his knees and is converted, that sinner becomes a changed being. All the black past is forgotten. Redemption has been found. Do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I am that sinner. All that has gone before in my checkered life could be forever forgotten, and my soul might be saved—with that key to the gate of content which you could hold out to me—if you would.”

“Countess, I——”

“And you and I together—ah, what could we not accomplish? You in your profession, and I helping you, assisting you, working for you and with you! Think of it! Think of the perfection of it! The beauty of it! But—the gate is closed and locked.”

“The gate is closed and locked,” he replied soberly.

“And yet, Nick Carter, I am a good woman. You doubt it, but it is true. I have not been good perhaps in the little things of life, but in the great ones I have been so. No man lives who can point his finger at me in scorn; no man who is dead might have ever done so. I have never committed a crime in my life, or abetted one, although I have been accused of many crimes.”

“And yet, countess——”

“Ah!” she interrupted him. “I know what you would say. You would charge me with things that the chief of police in Paris told you about. You would say that I had lured men to their death. It is not true. You would say that men have killed themselves because of me. It is not true in so far as it was a studied fault of mine, or that I led them to it, or was willfully responsible for it.

“My life has been a strange one, my friend. One may cleave closely to the awful precipices, and yet avoid them. That is true, is it not?”

“Yes; it is quite true.”

“Nicholas Carter, I would at least have you judge me fairly—and the day will come when you will do so.”

She stopped suddenly, laughed in a low tone, and half turned away.

“And now,” she said, with an entire change of tone, “let us return to present things and to the life we really live, not the one which we would like to live. The life we do live is false, hollow, filled with deceits, subterfuges, lies! The life I long to live in is true, sound, upright, filled with fairness and frankness and honesty. Now again—why are you here to-night?”

“I came here to this house, countess, expressly to see you and to talk with you.”

“Then you have accomplished your desire. Why are you in Washington?”

“I am here in pursuit of my profession.”

“Ah; that is frankness, at least—and we were not to be frank with each other any more, were we?”

“You must follow your own bent in that particular, countess, and permit me to follow mine.”

She arose from the seat she had been occupying, and he rose also and stood near her.

“I will return frankness with frankness—for this once,” she said, with one of her inscrutable smiles. “I know why you are here. I will tell you enough to assure you that I do know it; enough to assure you that I am aware of your own shrewdness, and therefore am perfectly assured of what you suspect me.”

“Well?”

“You came to Washington at the invitation of the ambassador for Russia. That invitation was taken to you in person by colonel, the Prince Alexis Turnieff—who believes that I murdered his father, or at least was the cause of his death. You have become convinced that I am in the service of a country which, at this time, believes it has reason to keep a sharp watch upon the things that Russia is doing, or is attempting to do, and you have taken it upon yourself to watch me. Isn’t that true?”

“Since you believe it, countess, it seems a waste of words to say that it is, or that it is not true. Have it so, if you wish.”

“Ah; you will not be quite frank with me.”

“Perhaps it is best, countess, that we meet on the common ground of distrust.”

She started away from him. The remark stung her, and he could see that it had done so, although he had not intended to hurt her by what he said.

For a moment she stared at him, hard-eyed, suddenly cold, and he caught a glimpse of the other side of this woman’s character.

“We meet on the common ground of distrust,” she repeated after him. “So be it. I was not minded to have it so; but so be it. The common ground of distrust, say you! So be it. Mr. Carter, I must become willfully guilty of a grave breach of courtesy. I must tell you to your face that your presence here in my home is not congenial. I must ask you to leave it. I must inform you that your presence will not be tolerated here again.”

The detective stared at her in amazement.

He had not expected this; had not anticipated anything of the kind. Truly hers was a many-sided character.

While he stared, she smiled ironically upon him. Then she raised her two hands and clapped them together loudly.

Instantly in response to the signal, many who were in the conservatory came toward them, and two servants hastened forward also, as if the clapping of her hands were a well-known signal to them.

Juno did not speak again until many of her guests and the servants were quite near.

Then she turned and spoke again, directly to the detective.

“Mr. Carter,” she said, and there was no mistaking tone and air of offense which she managed to introduce into her voice and manner, “my servants will show you the way out. I believe that is all.”

With a gesture that was worthy of an offended queen, she turned away from him, while the guests who had been observers of the scene stood and stared. One of the two servants moved forward.

“This way if you please, sir,” he said. He had received his orders and he meant to execute them.

Alexis Turnieff strode forward to the centre of the group. His face was white and drawn with concentrated passion.

“One moment——” he began; but by a gesture Juno stopped him.

“Not another word, Alexis,” she said sharply. “Your arm, if you please.” And then: “My servants will show this man the way out. Come.”