Part 13

She inspected me steadily for a full minute, then that almost imperceptible smile edged her lips again and she gave me my conge with a gentle nod.

*XVII*

*MORE MYSTERY*

I discovered Smith sitting on the rim of the fountain all alone in the dusk.

"Good heavens!" I blurted out, "was any man ever so completely entangled in the web of intrigue as I am? Plot, counterplot, camouflage, mystery--I'm in the very middle of the whole mess!

"I don't know who anybody is or what they're up to! Who is Thusis? Who is Clelia? Who is Josephine Vannis? Raoul? The Countess Manntrapp? And who are you, for that matter? I don't know! I don't pretend to guess."

"What's the trouble?" he asked, amused.

"Trouble! I don't know. There's all kinds of trouble lying around. I'm in several varieties of it. Where is the traveling circus?"

"In Tsar Ferdie's apartments."

"Probably conspiring," I added.

"Probably."

"What are you doing out here?"

"Oh, I'm not conspiring," he said, laughing, "I'm no saint to converse with the fishes in your fountain."

"Where is Clelia?"

He said he didn't know but somehow I gathered the impression that she was somewhere behind the lighted kitchen windows and that Smith was hanging around in hopes she might come out to take the air by starlight.

"Have you seen Thusis?" I asked guiltily. And felt my ears burning in the dark.

"Why, yes," he said. "She walked down the road a few moments ago."

"Alone?"

"Yes."

"Probably she went to take a look at the snow blockade," said I.

He nodded.

"Perhaps," I added carelessly, "I had better saunter down that way."

"No," he said, "you'd better not."

"Why?" I asked sharply.

"Starlight and Thusis might go to a young man's head."

"I'm no longer in love," said I in the most solemn tones I had ever used. "I am now able to contemplate Thusis without the stormy emotions which once assailed me, Smith. All that is over. To me she is merely an interesting and rather pathetic woman. I feel kindly toward Thusis. I wish her well. I would willingly do anything I could to----"

"Piffle."

"What the devil do you mean by that?" I demanded.

"What the devil do you mean by kidding yourself?"

"Haven't I just explained?"

"You've given yourself away. A man doesn't utter pious sentiments about a girl he no longer cares for. He doesn't bother to explain his regenerated attitude toward her. He doesn't trouble himself to talk about her at all. Nor does he go roaming after her by starlight. If you really care for her no longer, let her alone. If you do care you'll get mad at what I say--as you're doing--and start off to find her in the starlight--as you're doing----"

But I was too exasperated to listen to such stuff.

I discovered her, finally, in the starlight just ahead of me,--a slim shadow on the high-road, outlined against a stupendous mass of snow which choked the valley like a glacier.

She heard my steps on the hard stone road, looked over her shoulder, then turned sharply, paying me no further attention, even when I came up beside her.

"Gracious!" said I, attempting an easy tone and manner; "what a tremendous fall was here!"

"I have known greater falls," she said very quietly.

"Really?"

"Yes; I once had a friend whose fall was greater."

"Poor fellow! He fell off a precipice, I presume."

"He fell from his high estate, Mr. O'Ryan."

"Oh. Did he also have an estate in the Alps?"

She said scornfully: "He fell in my esteem--deep, Mr. O'Ryan--into depths so terrible that, even if I leaned over to look, I could never again perceive him."

"Poor fellow," I muttered, chilled to the bone again.

"Yes." she said calmly, "it was tragic."

"D-did you care for him, Thusis?" I ventured, scared half to death.

"I trusted him."

"D-don't you trust him any more?"

"He is dead--to me," she said coldly.

There ensued a silence which presently I became unable to endure.

"You know, Thusis, that man isn't dead----"

"He might better be!"

"You don't understand him!"

"I no longer wish to."

"He loves you!"

"He does _not_!" she cried in tones so fierce that I almost jumped.

"Thusis," said I in a miserable voice, "you hurt and wounded that man until he was almost out of his senses----"

"And he lost no time in consoling himself with another woman!"

"He didn't know what he was doing----"

"He seemed to! ... So did _she_!"

"Thusis--"

"_Did_ you kiss her?"

"I----"

"Did you?"

"Yes."

I was so scared that my teeth chattered when Thusis turned on me in the starlight.

Her gray eyes were aflame; her little hands were tightly clenched. I hoped she would upper-cut me and mercifully put me to sleep, for this scene was like a nightmare to me.

Then, of a sudden, the slender figure seemed to wilt before my eyes,--shrink, bend, stand swaying with desperate hands covering the face.

"Michael," she whispered. "Michael!"--and her voice ended in a sigh.

Scared as I was I took her in my arms. She rested her face against my shoulder.

"You--you don't really care," I stammered, "do you, Thusis? _Do_ you, my darling----"

"Oh, I don't know--I don't know. You've hurt me, Michael; I'm all hurt and--and quivering with your wound. I don't know!--I don't understand myself. My heart is sore--all raw and sore. So is my mind--the blow you dealt hurts me there, too----"

"But, Thusis dear! _You_ wounded me, too----"

"Oh, I know.... I scarcely knew what I said. I don't know now what I'm saying--what I'm doing--here in your arms----" She tried to release herself, and, failing, buried her face against my shoulder with a convulsive little shudder.

"You _must_ love me," I whispered unsteadily. "I can't live without you, Thusis."

"But I can't love you, Michael."

"Can't you find it in your heart to care for me?"

"In my heart, perhaps.... But not in my mind."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean exactly that.... I can't consult my--my heart alone.... I must not. I dare not. I am obliged to consult my senses, too. And--dear Michael--my senses tell me that I may not care for you--must not fall in love--with you----"

"Why?"

After a silence she lifted her lovely head and looked up at me out of beautiful, distressed eyes that dumbly asked indulgence.

"Well, then, you need not tell me, Thusis."

"You'll know, some day."

"I'll know, some day, why I won you in spite of everything."

She gently shook her head.

"Yes," said I, "I shall win you, Thusis."

"My heart--perhaps."

"Your mind, too."

We remained so, for a while, not speaking lest the spell be broken. And at last she slowly disengaged herself from my arms, then, confronting me, placed both her hands in mine with a sudden impulse that thrilled me.

"Let it remain this way, then," she said. "Win my heart, if you care to. I don't mind going through life with my heart in your kind keeping, Michael. I had rather it were so. I should be less unhappy."

"Unhappy?"

"Yes--because I am going to be unhappy anyway. And if I knew that you once cared, it would be easier for me--in after years.... Michael----"

"Yes?"

"Would you care for that much of me?"

I drew her nearer.

"You must not kiss me," she whispered.

"I----"

"Please.... It is a sign of troth plighted.... And is desecration else.... Troth plighted is a holy thing. And that cannot be between us, Michael. That cannot happen.... And so, you must not touch my lips with yours--dear Michael.... Only my hand--if you do care for me----"

I kissed her hand--then, slowly, each finger and the fragrant palm, until it seemed to disconcert her and she withdrew it.

"Now take me back," she said in an uncertain voice that trembled slightly, "and remain my dear, frank, boyish friend.... And let me plague you a little, Michael. Won't you? And not be angry?" She asked so sweetly that I began to laugh--covered her hand with kisses--and laughed again.

"You little girl," I exclaimed--"oddly mature in some ways--a child in others--you may torment me and laugh at me now to your heart's content. Isn't laughter, after all, your heaven born privilege?"

"Why do you say that?"

"Oh, Thusis! Thusis! I am more convinced than ever of what I have half believed. Before I ever set eyes on you I had begun to care for you. Before I ever heard your voice I had begun to fall in love with you. Thusis--my Thusis--loveliest--most wonderful of God's miracles since Eden bloomed--_you_ are The Laughing Girl!"

"Michael----"

"You _are_!"

Suddenly, as she walked lightly beside me, resting on my arm, she flung up her head with a reckless, delicious little laugh: "I am The Laughing Girl!"

A slight yet exquisite shock went clean through me as I realized that even to the instant of her avowal I had not been absolutely convinced of her identity with the picture.

"And I wish to tell you," she went on, her smile changing, "that when the photograph--which unhappily has become so notorious--was taken, I never dreamed that it would be stolen, reproduced in thousands, and sold in every city of Europe!"

"Stolen!"

"Certainly! Do you imagine that I would have permitted its publicity and sale? Never has such an exasperating incident occurred in my life! And I am helpless. I can't prevent it."

"Who stole it?"

"I haven't the slightest idea. It was this way, Michael; it happened in my own home on the island of Naxos, and my sister Clelia and I were amusing ourselves with our cameras, dressing each other up and posing each other.

"And she dressed me--or rather almost _un_-dressed me--that way--isn't it enough to make a saint swear--for when I had developed the plate and had started to print, somebody stole the plate from the sill of the open window. And the next thing we knew about it was when all Europe was flooded with my picture under which was printed that dubious caption--'The Laughing Girl.' Can you imagine my astonishment and rage? Could anything more utterly horrid happen to a girl? Had I at least been fully dressed--but no: there I was in every shop window among actresses, queens, demi-mondaines, and dissipated dukes just as Clelia had posed me in the intimacy of our own rooms, all over jewels, some of me mercifully veiled in a silk scarf, audaciously at ease in my apparent effrontery--oh, Michael, it nearly killed me!"

"Didn't you do anything about it?"

"Indeed I did! But where these photographs were being printed we never could find out. All we were able to do was to forbid their importation into Italy."

"How did you manage that?" I asked curiously.

She hesitated, then carelessly: "We had some slight influence at court----"

"_Influence?_"

"Possibly it amounted to that," she said indifferently.

"You are known at court, Thusis?"

She shrugged: "We are not, I believe, completely unknown." She walked on beside me in silence for a few moments, then:

"I do not wish to convey to you that I am _persona grata_ in Italian court circles."

"But if you are known at court, dear Thusis, how can you be otherwise than welcome there?"

"I am _not_ welcome there."

"That is impossible."

"You adorable boy," she laughed, "I must beg of you to occupy yourself with your own affairs and not continue to occupy yourself with mine."

"That's a heartless snub, Thusis."

"I don't mean it so," she said, her hand tightening impulsively on my arm. "But, Michael dear, I don't wish you to speculate about my affairs. It does no good. Besides, the situation in which I find myself is fearfully complex, and you couldn't help me out of it."

"Perhaps I can, Thusis."

She laughed: "You are delightfully romantic. You almost resemble one of the old time cloak-and-sword lovers of that dear Romance which died so long ago on the printed page as well as in human hearts."

"It is not dead in my breast, Thusis."

"It is dead in every breast. Only its frail ghost haunts our hearts at moments."

"When I offered you my heart, Thusis, did you suppose it empty save for a trace of selfish passion?"

"Men are men.... I do not understand their hearts."

"Take mine; tear it apart, look into it,--even if I die of it. Will you?"

Her laugh became less genuine and there was no gaiety in it.

"Tell me what I should find in your heart if I dissected it?"

"Love--and a sword!"

"You--you offer me your life, Michael?"

"This life--and the next."

She made no answer, walking slowly on beside me, her arm linked in mine, the starlight glimmering on her bent head. Down the road beyond us the illuminated windows of my house glimmered. As we moved toward them along the stony highroad, I said:

"Thusis dear, I know nothing about you or about your affairs. I do not even guess your identity. But that you and your sister are here for the purpose of taking these miserable kings across the frontier into France, by violence, I do know.

"And this, also, I have learned, that, if you attempt to execute this _coup-de-main_, my friend Shandon Smith will do all he can to prevent it."

The girl stopped as though I had struck her and stared at me in the silvery lustre of the stars.

"What?" she said slowly.

"I have told you what Smith told me. He said that he didn't care whether or not I informed you. He added that, in case I chose to inform you, I should also repeat to you the following couplet:

'Grecian gift and Spanish fig Help the Fool his grave to dig.'"

A bright flush stained her face yet she seemed to be more astounded than angry.

"Is it possible," she said, "that your friend Mr. Smith--this Norwegian promoter--repeated that couplet to you?"

"He certainly did repeat it to me, Thusis."

"Did he--did he tell you what it meant? Did he tell you anything more?"

"He mentioned a secret society called the AEgean League."

"This is amazing," she murmured, looking up the road at the lights of the house.

"Of all people," she added, "that man Smith, the last person on earth we could suspect." She passed her hand across her eyes--a gesture of perplexity and consternation:

"I wish to find Mr. Smith, Michael. I desire to see him immediately. Please let us walk faster."

We fell into a quick pace and she released my arm as the light from the windows fell on us.

"He was sitting by the fountain," I began.

"He is there now, with Clelia," she exclaimed, and walked directly toward him where he was seated near Clelia on the stone rim of the pool.

They looked up as we approached, and Smith rose.

"Mr. Smith," said Thusis with a trace of excitement in her voice, "have you any knowledge concerning my identity?"

If the blunt question were a shock to him he did not show it. He answered in his pleasant, even voice:

"I don't know who you are, Thusis."

"Have you any idea?"

"None."

"How can that be," she asked, flushing, "when you send me such a couplet?"

"I've told you the truth," he said simply; "I don't know who you are, Thusis. I don't even suspect." He turned and looked at Clelia who had risen from her seat on the fountain's edge.

"You do not like me, Clelia, and now you are going to like me less. You resented it when I preached at you concerning proper behavior for a young girl. And now that you learn I am going to interfere in your political and military maneuvers, I suppose you hate me."

Nobody moved or spoke for a moment. Then Clelia took a step toward Smith, and I saw her face had become deadly pale.

"No," she said, "I don't hate you. On the contrary I am beginning to like you. Because it takes a real man to tell the woman he loves that he means to ruin her."

"Clelia, you and Thusis are ruined only if I hold my hand."

"We are done for _unless_ you hold your hand!" she said. She stepped nearer.

"Mr. Smith?" she said sweetly, "you think you are on your honor. You are not. He who has sent you here to thwart us is deceiving you."

"He who sent _you_ here, Clelia,--and _you_, Thusis, is deceiving you," he rejoined very quietly.

Thusis said: "You know who sent us, and yet you don't know who we are! How can this be, Monsieur?"

"It's true. I _do_ know who sent you here. But you _don't_!"

Clelia, still very pale, bent her gaze on him.

"Mr. Smith?"

"Yes, I hear you, Clelia."

"Suppose--suppose--I prove kinder to you."

"No," he said, grim and flushed.

Thusis turned sharply on her sister: "Have you given him your heart?"

Clelia answered, her eyes still fixed on Smith:

"I gave it to him from the first--even when I thought him a pious dolt. And was ashamed. And now that I know him for a man I'm not ashamed. Let him know it. I do care for him."

Smith stood rigid. Thusis, looking intently at Clelia, went to her and passed one arm around her waist.

"This can't be," she said. Clelia laughed. "But it _is_, sister. It isn't orthodox, it isn't credible, it is quite unthinkable that I should care for him. But I do; and I've told him so. Now he can ruin us if he wishes." And she flung a sweet, fearless glance at Smith which made him tremble very slightly.

Thusis turned to me an almost frightened face as though in appeal, then she caught her sister's hands.

"Listen!" she cried, "I also gave my heart as you gave yours, sister! I couldn't help it. I found myself in love--" She looked at me--"I was doomed to love him.

"But for God's sake listen, sister. It is my _heart_ I give. My mind and my destiny remain my own."

"My destiny is in God's hands," said Clelia simply. "My mind and heart I give--" She looked at Smith--"and all else that is myself ... if you want me, Shan."

"You cannot do it!" exclaimed Thusis in a voice strangled with emotion. "You can do it no more than can I! You have no more right than have I to give yourself merely because you care! Your heart--yes! There is no choice when love comes; you can not avoid it. But you can proudly choose what to do about it!"

"I have chosen," said Clelia, "if he wants me."

Thusis clenched her hands and stood there twisting them, dumb, excited, laboring evidently under the most intense emotion.

And what all this business was about I had not the remotest notion.

Suddenly Thusis turned fiercely on her sister with a gesture that left her outflung arm rigid.

"Do you wish to find the irresponsible political level of those two Bolsheviki in there?" she said with breathless passion. "Are you really the iconoclast you say you are? I did not believe it! I can't. The world moves only through decent procedure, or it disintegrates. Where is your reason, your logic, your pride?"

"Pride?" Clelia smiled and looked at Smith: "In him, I think.... Since he has become my master."

"He is not our master!" retorted Thusis. "If what we came here to do is now impossible--thanks to a meddling and misled gentleman in Rome--is there not a sharper blow to strike at this treacherous Greek King and his Prussian wife and that vile, Imperial Hun who pulls the strings that move them?"

Clelia looked at Smith: "Do you know what my sister means?"

"Yes."

"Will you stop us even there?"

"I must."

Thusis, white with passion, confronted him:

"It is not you who are bound in honor to check and thwart us," she said unsteadily, "but your duped block-head of a master who exasperates me! Does he know from whom I take my orders?"

"Yes."

"I take them from the greatest, wisest, most fearless, most generous patriot in the world. I take my orders from Monsieur Venizelos!"

I started, but Smith said coolly: "Is that what you suppose, Thusis?"

"Suppose? What do you mean?" she demanded haughtily.

"I mean that you are mistaken if you and Clelia believe that your orders come from Monsieur Venizelos."

"From whom, then, do you imagine they come?" retorted Thusis.

"From Tino!"

"You dare----"

"Yes, I dare tell you, Thusis, how you have been deceived. Tino himself plotted this. Your orders are forgeries. Monsieur Venizelos never dreamed of inciting you to the activities in which you are now concerned----"

"That is incredible," said Thusis hotly. "I know who sent you here to check us and spoil it all--as though we were two silly, headstrong children! Tell me honestly, now; did not that--that gentleman in Rome give you some such impression of us?--that we were two turbulent and mischievous children?"

"I was not told who you were."

"But you were told that we are irresponsible and headstrong? Is it not true?"

"Yes."

"And you were sent here to see that we didn't get into mischief. Is it true?"

"Yes."

Thusis made a gesture of anger and despair:

"For lack of courage," she said tremulously, "a timid King refuses the service we try to render! We offer to stake our lives cheerfully; it frightens him. We escape his well meant authority and supervision and make our way into Switzerland to do him and Italy a service in spite of his timorous fears and objections. He has us followed by--_who_ are you anyway, Mr. Smith?"

"I happen to be," he said pleasantly, "an officer in a certain branch of the Italian Army."

"Military Intelligence!" exclaimed Clelia. "And we were warned by Monsieur Venizelos!"

Thusis flung out her arms in a passionate gesture: "We offer the King of Italy two royal scoundrels! And he refuses. We offer the King of Italy two islands? And you tell us he refuses. When we were in Rome he laughed at us, teased us as though we had been two school-girls bringing him some crazy plan to end the war. And now when we are practically ready to prove our plan possible--ready to consummate the affair and give him the two most dangerous royal rascals in Europe--restore to Italy two islands stolen from her centuries ago--the King of Italy turns timid and sends a gentleman to ruin everything!"

"Because," said Smith pleasantly, "although King Constantine and Queen Sophia have been deposed, yet, were you to seize them and carry them across this frontier into France, Greece would resent it. So also would Switzerland. And the Allies would merely make two enemies out of an Allied country and a neutral one for the sake of a few odd kings and queens.

"And, moreover, if you should proceed, as you had planned, to the Cyclades; and if you succeed in fomenting a revolution in Naxos and Tenedos, and induce these two islands to declare themselves part of Italy, because seven hundred years ago a Venetian conquered them, then you turn Greece into a bitter enemy of Italy and of the Allies. And that is what you accomplish in exchange for a couple of little islands in the AEgean which Italy does not want."

"Then," retorted Thusis violently, "why did Monsieur Venizelos suggest that we attempt these things? Is the greatest patriot on earth a traitor or a fool?"

"No, but Constantine of Greece is. And the boche is his tutor. Oh, Thusis--Thusis! Can't you see you have been tricked? Can't you understand that Venizelos had no knowledge of these things you are attempting in all sincerity?--that you have been deluded by the treachery of the hun--that those who counseled you to this came secretly from Tino and the Kaiser, not from Venizelos?"

Thusis gazed at him bewildered. Clelia, too, seemed almost stunned.

"Do--do you mean to tell me," stammered Thusis, "that these kings know that Clelia and I are here to try to kidnap them?"

"No," said Smith coolly, "because I censored their mail in Berne. Their agents in Rome had warned them, in detail, by letter."

"Had those agents penetrated our identity?"

"They seemed to have no notion of it. But they described you both minutely."

Clelia seemed to come out of her trance. She turned to Thusis and said in a naive, bewildered way:

"It's rather extraordinary, Thusis, that nobody seems to have found out who we really are.... It's almost as though we are not of as much importance as we have been brought up to suppose."

Thusis blushed hotly: "Because," she said, "nobody has discovered our incognito, is no reason for us to underrate our positions in Europe."

"Still--it is extraordinary that nobody recognizes us. And we use our own names, too. I can't account for it," she added honestly, "unless we are of much less importance than we have been accustomed to consider ourselves----"