Part 10

"Adopt a _girl_? Oh, Lord, no! I can't do anything like that. Yet--I hate to think of her future, too ... unless somebody looks out for her. But it isn't possible for _me_ to do anything for her except to give her a good job with a decent man----"

"Meaning yourself," commented Mandel, acidly.

"Well, I _am_ decent," retorted Barres warmly, amid general laughter. "You fellows know what chances she might take with some men," he added, laughing at his own warm retort.

Esme and Corot Mandel nodded piously, each perfectly aware of what chance any attractive girl would run with his predatory neighbour.

"To shift the subject of discourse--that girl, Thessalie Dunois," began Westmore, in his energetic way, "is about the cleverest and prettiest woman I've seen in New York outside the theatre district."

"I met her in France," said Barres, carelessly. "She really is wonderfully clever."

"I shall let her talk to me," drawled Esme, flicking at his cigarette. "It will be a liberal education for her."

Mandel's slow, oriental eyes blinked contempt; he caressed his waxed moustache with nicotine-stained fingers:

"I am going to direct an out-of-door spectacle--a sort of play--not named yet--up your way, Barres--at Northbrook. It's for the Belgians.... If Miss Dunois--unless," he added sardonically, "you have her reserved, also----"

"Nonsense! You cast Thessalie Dunois and she'll make your show for you, Mandel!" exclaimed Barres. "I know and I'm telling you. Don't make any mistake: there's a girl who can make good!"

"Oh. Is she a professional?"

It was on the tip of Barres's tongue to say "Rather!" But he checked himself, not knowing Thessalie's wishes concerning details of her incognito.

"Talk to her about it," he said, rising.

The others laid aside cigars and followed him into the studio, where already the gramophone was going and Aristocrates and Selinda were rolling up the rugs.

* * * * *

Barres and Dulcie danced until the music, twice revived, expired in husky dissonance, and a new disc was substituted by Westmore.

"By heaven!" he said, "I'll dance this with my godchild or I'll murder you, Garry. Back up, there!--you soulless monopolist!" And Dulcie, half laughing, half vexed, was swept away in Westmore's vigorous arms, with a last, long, appealing look at Barres.

The latter danced in turn with his feminine guests, as in duty bound--in pleasure bound, as far as concerned Thessalie.

"And to think, to _think_," he repeated, "that you and I, who once trod the moonlit way, June-mad, moon-mad, should be dancing here together once more!"

"Alas," she said, "though this is June again, moon and madness are lacking. So is the enchanted river and your canoe. And so is that gay heart of mine--that funny, careless little heart which was once my comrade, sending me into a happy gale of laughter every time it counselled me to folly."

"What is the matter, Thessa?"

"Garry, there is so much the matter that I don't know how to tell you.... And yet, I have nobody else to tell.... Is that maid of yours German?"

"No, Finnish."

"You can't be certain," she murmured. "Your guests are all American, are they not?"

"Yes."

"And the little Soane girl? Are her sympathies with Germany?"

"Why, certainly not! What gave you that idea, Thessa?"

The music ran down; Westmore, the indefatigable, still keeping possession of Dulcie, went over to wind up the gramophone.

"Isn't there some place where I could be alone with you for a few minutes?" whispered Thessalie.

"There's a balcony under the middle window. It overlooks the court."

She nodded and laid her hand on his arm, and they walked to the long window, opened it, and stepped out.

Moonlight fell into the courtyard, silvering everything. Down there on the grass the Prophet sat, motionless as a black sphynx in the lustre of the moon.

Thessalie looked down into the shadowy court, then turned and glanced up at the tiled roof just above them, where a chimney rose in silhouette against the pale radiance of the sky.

Behind the chimney, flat on their stomachs, lay two men who had been watching, through an upper ventilating pane of glass, the scene in the brilliantly lighted studio below them.

The men were Soane and his crony, the one-eyed pedlar. But neither Thessalie nor Barres could see them up there behind the chimney.

Yet the girl, as though some unquiet instinct warned her, glanced up at the eaves above her head once more, and Barres looked up, too.

"What do you see up there?" he inquired.

"Nothing.... There could be nobody up there to listen, could there?"

He laughed:

"Who would want to climb up on the roof to spy on you or me----"

"Don't speak so loud, Garry----"

"What on earth is the trouble?"

"The same trouble that drove me out of France," she said in a low voice. "Don't ask me what it was. All I can tell you is this: I am followed everywhere I go. I cannot make a living. Whenever I secure an engagement and return at the appointed time to fill it, something happens."

"What happens?" he asked bluntly.

"They repudiate the agreement," she said in a quiet voice. "They give no reasons; they simply tell me that they don't want me. Do you remember that evening when I left the Palace of Mirrors?"

"Indeed, I do----"

"That was only one example. I left with an excellent contract, signed. The next day, when I returned, the management took my contract out of my hands and tore it up."

"What! Why, that's outrageous----"

"Hush! That is only one instance. Everywhere it is the same. I am accepted after a try-out; then, without apparent reason, I am told not to return."

"You mean there is some conspiracy----" he began incredulously, but she interrupted him with a white hand over his, nervously committing him to silence:

"Listen, Garry! Men have followed me here from Europe. I am constantly watched in New York. I cannot shake off this surveillance for very long at a time. Sooner or later I become conscious again of curious eyes regarding me; of features that all at once become unpleasantly familiar in the throng. After several encounters in street or car or restaurant, I recognise these. Often and often instinct alone warns me that I am followed; sometimes I am so certain of it that I take pains to prove it."

"Do you prove it?"

"Usually."

"Well, what the devil----"

"Hush! I seem to be getting into deeper trouble than that, Garry. I have changed my residence so many, many times!--but every time people get into my room when I am away and ransack my effects.... And now I never enter my room unless the landlady is with me, or the janitor--especially after dark."

"Good Lord!----"

"Listen! I am not really frightened. It isn't fear, Garry. That word isn't in my creed, you know. But it bewilders me."

"In the name of common sense," he demanded, "what reason has anybody to annoy you----"

Her hand tightened on his:

"If I only knew who these people are--whether they are agents of the Count d'Eblis or of the--the French Government! But I can't determine. They steal letters directed to me; they steal letters which I write and mail with my own hands. I wrote to you yesterday, because I--I felt I couldn't stand this persecution--any--longer----"

Her voice became unsteady; she waited, gripping his hand, until self-control returned. When she was mistress of herself again, she forced a smile and her tense hand relaxed.

"You know," she said, "it is most annoying to have my little love-letter to you intercepted."

But his features remained very serious:

"When did you mail that letter to me?"

"Yesterday evening."

"From where?"

"From a hotel."

He considered.

"I ought to have had it this morning, Thessa. But the mails, lately, have been very irregular. There have been other delays. This is probably an example."

"At latest," she said, "you should have my letter this evening."

"Y-yes. But the evening is young yet."

After a moment she drew a light sigh of relief, or perhaps of apprehension, he was not quite sure which.

"But about this other matter--men following and annoying you," he began.

"Not now, Garry. I can't talk about it now. Wait until we are sure about my letter----"

"But, Thessa----"

"Please! If you don't receive it before I leave, I shall come to you again and ask your aid and advice----"

"Will you come _here_?"

"Yes. Now take me in.... Because I am not quite certain about your maid--and perhaps one other person----"

His expression of astonishment checked her for a moment, then the old irresistible laughter rang out sweetly in the moonlight.

"Oh, Garry! It is funny, isn't it!--to be dogged and hunted day and night by a pack of shadows? If I only knew who casts them!"

She took his arm gaily, with that little, courageous lifting of the head:

"Allons! We shall dance again and defy the devil! And you may send your servant down to see whether my letter has arrived--not that maid with slanting eyes!--I have no confidence in her--but your marvellous major-domo, Garry----"

Her smile was bright and untroubled as she stepped back into the studio, leaning on his arm.

"You dear boy," she whispered, with the irresponsible undertone of laughter ringing in her voice, "thank you for bothering with my woes. I'll be rid of them soon, I hope, and then--perhaps--I'll lead you another dance along the moonlit way!"

* * * * *

On the roof, close to the chimney, the one-eyed man and Soane peered down into the studio through the smeared ventilator.

In the studio Dulcie's first party was drawing to an early but jolly end.

She had danced a dozen times with Barres, and her heart was full of sheerest happiness--the unreasoning bliss which asks no questions, is endowed with neither reason nor vision--the matchless delight which fills the candid, unquestioning heart of Youth.

Nothing had marred her party for her, not even the importunity of Esme Trenor, which she had calmly disregarded as of no interest to her.

True, for a few moments, while Barres and Thessalie were on the balcony outside, Dulcie had become a trifle subdued. But the wistful glances she kept casting toward the long window were free from meaner taint; neither jealousy nor envy had ever found lodging in the girl's mind or heart. There was no room to let them in now.

Also, she was kept busy enough, one man after another claiming her for a dance. And she adored it--even with Trenor, who danced extremely well when he took the trouble. And he was taking it now with Dulcie; taking a different tone with her, too. For if it _were_ true, as some said, that Esme Trenor was three-quarters charlatan, he was no fool. And Dulcie began to find him entertaining to the point of a smile or two, as her spontaneous tribute to Esme's efforts.

That languid apostle said afterward to Mandel, where they were lounging over the piano:

"Little devil! She's got a mind of her own, and she knows it. I've had to make efforts, Corot!--efforts, if you please, to attract her mere attention. I'm exhausted!--never before had to make any efforts--never in my life!"

Mandel's heavy-lidded eyes of a big bird rested on Dulcie, where she was seated. Her gaze was lifted to Barres, who bent over her in jesting conversation.

Mandel, watching her, said to Esme:

"I'm always ready to _train_--that sort of girl; always on the lookout for them. One discovers a specimen once or twice in a decade.... Two or three in a lifetime: that's all."

"Train them?" repeated Esme, with an indolent smile. "Break them, you mean, don't you?"

"Yes. The breaking, however, is usually mutual. However, that girl could go far under my direction."

"Yes, she could go as far as hell."

"I mean artistically," remarked Mandel, undisturbed.

"As what, for example?"

"As anything. After all, I _have_ flaire, even if it failed me this time. But _now_ I see. It's there, in her--what I'm always searching for."

"What may that be, dear friend?"

"What Westmore calls 'the goods.'"

"And just what are they in her case?" inquired Esme, persistent as a stinging gnat around a pachyderm.

"I don't know--a voice, maybe; maybe the dramatic instinct--genius as a dancer--who knows? All that is necessary is to discover it--whatever it may be--and then direct it."

"Too late, O philanthropic Pasha!" remarked Esme with a slight sneer. "I'd be very glad to paint her, too, and become good friends with her--so would many an honest man, now that she's been discovered--but our friend Barres, yonder, isn't likely to encourage either you or me. So"--he shrugged, but his languid gaze remained on Dulcie--"so you and I had better kiss all hope good-bye and toddle home."

* * * * *

Westmore and Thessalie still danced together; Mrs. Helmund and Damaris were trying new steps in new dances, much interested, indulging in much merriment. Barres watched them casually, as he conversed with Dulcie, who, deep in an armchair, never took her eyes from his smiling face.

"Now, Sweetness," he was saying, "it's early yet, I know, but your party ought to end, because you are coming to sit for me in the morning, and you and I ought to get plenty of sleep. If we don't, I shall have an unsteady hand, and you a pair of sleepy eyes. Come on, ducky!" He glanced across at the clock:

"It's very early yet, I know," he repeated, "but you and I have had rather a long day of it. And it's been a very happy one, hasn't it, Dulcie?"

As she smiled, the youthful soul of her itself seemed to be gazing up at him out of her enraptured eyes.

"Fine!" he said, with deepest satisfaction. "Now, you'll put your hand on my arm and we'll go around and say good-night to everybody, and then I'll take you down stairs."

So she rose and placed her hand lightly on his arm, and together they made her adieux to everybody, and everybody was cordially demonstrative in thanking her for her party.

So he took her down stairs to her apartment, off the hall, noticing that neither Soane nor Miss Kurtz was on duty at the desk, as they passed, and that a pile of undistributed mail lay on the desk.

"That's rotten," he said curtly. "Will you have to change your clothes, sort this mail, and sit here until the last mail is delivered?"

"I don't mind," she said.

"But I wanted you to go to sleep. Where is Miss Kurtz?"

"It is her evening off."

"Then your father ought to be here," he said, irritated, looking around the big, empty hallway.

But Dulcie only smiled and held out her slim hand:

"I couldn't sleep, anyway. I had really much rather sit here for a while and dream it all over again. Good-night.... Thank you--I can't say what I feel--but m-my heart is very faithful to you, Mr. Barres--will always be--while I am alive ... because you are my first friend."

He stooped impulsively and touched her hair with his lips:

"You dear child," he said, "I _am_ your friend."

Halfway up the western staircase he called back:

"Ring me up, Dulcie, when the last mail comes!"

"I will," she nodded, almost blindly.

Out of her lovely, abashed eyes she watched him mount the stairs, her cheeks a riot of surging colour. It was some few minutes after he was gone that she recollected herself, turned, and, slowly traversing the east corridor, entered her bedroom.

Standing there in darkness, vaguely silvered by reflected moonlight, she heard through her door ajar the guests of the evening descending the western staircase; heard their gay adieux exchanged, distinguished Esme's impudent drawl, Westmore's lively accents, Mandel's voice, the easy laughter of Damaris, the smooth, affected tones of Mrs. Helmund.

But Dulcie listened in vain for the voice which had haunted her ears since she had left the studio--the lovely voice of Thessalie Dunois.

If this radiant young creature also had departed with the other guests, she had gone away in silence.... _Had_ she departed? Or was she still lingering upstairs in the studio for a little chat with the most wonderful man in the world?... A very, very beautiful girl.... And the most wonderful man in the world. Why should they not linger for a little chat together after the others had departed?

Dulcie sighed lightly, pensively, as one whose happiness lies in the happiness of others. To be a witness seemed enough for her.

For a little while longer she remained standing there in the silvery dusk, quite motionless, thinking of Barres.

The Prophet lay asleep, curled up on her bed; her alarm clock ticked noisily in the darkness, as though to mimic the loud, fast rhythm of her heart.

At last, and as in a dream, she groped for a match, lighted the gas jet, and began to disrobe. Slowly, dreamily, she put from her slender body the magic garments of light--_his_ gift to her.

But under these magic garments, clothing her newborn soul, remained the radiant rainbow robe of that new dawn into which this man had led her spirit. Did it matter, then, what dingy, outworn clothing covered her, outside?

* * * * *

Clad once more in her shabby, familiar clothes, and bedroom slippers, Dulcie opened the door of her dim room, and crept out into the whitewashed hall, moving as in a trance. And at her heels stalked the Prophet, softly, like a lithe shape that glides through dreams.

Awaiting the last mail, seated behind the desk on the worn leather chair, she dropped her linked fingers into her lap, and gazed straight into an invisible world peopled with enchanting phantoms. And, little by little, they began to crowd her vision, throng all about her, laughing, rosy wraiths floating, drifting, whirling in an endless dance. Everywhere they were invading the big, silent hall, where the candle's grotesque shadows wavered across whitewashed wall and ceiling. Drowsily, now, she watched them play and sway around her. Her head drooped; she opened her eyes.

The Prophet sat there, staring back at her out of depthless orbs of jade, in which all the wisdom and mysteries of the centuries seemed condensed and concentrated into a pair of living sparks.

XII

THE LAST MAIL

The last mail had not yet arrived at Dragon Court.

Five people awaited it--Dulcie Soane, behind the desk in the entrance hall, already wandering drowsily with Barres along the fairy borderland of sleep; Thessalie Dunois in Barres' studio, her rose-coloured evening cloak over her shoulders, her slippered foot tapping the dance-scarred parquet; Barres opposite, deep in his favourite armchair, chatting with her; Soane on the roof, half stupid with drink, watching them through the ventilator; and, lurking in the moonlit court, outside the office window, the dimly sinister figure of the one-eyed man. He wore a white handkerchief over his face, with a single hole cut in it. Through this hole his solitary optic was now fixed upon the back of Dulcie's drowsy head.

As for the Prophet, perched on the desk top, he continued to gaze upon shapes invisible to all things mortal save only such as he.

* * * * *

The postman's lively whistle aroused Dulcie. The Prophet, knowing him, observed his advent with indifference.

"Hello, girlie," he said;--he was a fresh-faced and flippant young man. "Where's Pop?" he added, depositing a loose sheaf of letters on the desk before her and sketching in a few jig steps with his feet.

"I don't know," she murmured, patting with one slim hand her pink and yawning lips, and watching him unlock the post-box and collect the outgoing mail. He lingered a moment to caress the Prophet, who endured it without gratitude.

"You better go to bed if you want to grow up to be a big, sassy girl some day," he advised Dulcie. "And hurry up about it, too, because I'm going to marry you if you behave." And, with a last affable caress for the Prophet, the young man went his way, singing to himself, and slamming the iron grille smartly behind him.

Dulcie, rising from her chair, sorted the mail, sleepily tucking each letter and parcel into its proper pigeon-hole. There was a thick letter for Barres. This she held in her left hand, remembering his request that she call him up when the last mail arrived.

This she now prepared to do--had already reseated herself, her right hand extended toward the telephone, when a shadow fell across the desk, and the Prophet turned, snarled, struck, and fled.

At the same instant grimy fingers snatched at the letter which she still held in her left hand, twisted it almost free of her desperate clutch, tore it clean in two at one violent jerk, leaving her with half the letter still gripped in her clenched fist.

She had not uttered a sound during the second's struggle. But instantly an ungovernable rage blazed up in her at the outrage, and she leaped clean over the desk and sprang at the throat of the one-eyed man.

His neck was bony and muscular; she could not compass it with her slender hands, but she struck at it furiously, driving a sound out of his throat, half roar, half cough.

"Give me my letter!" she breathed. "I'll kill you if you don't!" Her furious little hands caught his clenched fist, where the torn letter protruded, and she tore at it and beat upon it, her teeth set and her grey Irish eyes afire.

Twice the one-eyed man flung her to her knees on the pavement, but she was up again and clinging to him before he could tear free of her.

"My letter!" she gasped. "I shall kill you, I tell you--unless you return it!"

His solitary yellow eye began to glare and glitter as he wrenched and dragged at her wrists and arms about him.

"Schweinstueck!" he panted. "Let los, mioche de malheur! Eh! Los!--or I strike! No? Also! Attrape!--sale gallopin!----"

His blow knocked her reeling across the hall. Against the whitewashed wall she collapsed to her knees, got up half stunned, the clang of the outer grille ringing in her very brain.

With dazed eyes she gazed at the remnants of the torn letter, still crushed in her rigid fingers. Bright drops of blood from her mouth dripped slowly to the tessellated pavement.

Reeling still from the shock of the blow, she managed to reach the outer door, and stood swaying there, striving to pierce with confused eyes the lamplit darkness of the street. There was no sign of the one-eyed man. Then she turned and made her way back to the desk, supporting herself with a hand along the wall.

Waiting a few moments to control her breathing and her shaky limbs, she contrived finally to detach the receiver and call Barres. Over the wire she could hear the gramophone playing again in the studio.

"Please may I come up?" she whispered.

"Has the last mail come? Is there a letter for me?" he asked.

"Yes ... I'll bring you w-what there is--if you'll let me?"

"Thanks, Sweetness! Come right up!" And she heard him say: "It's probably your letter, Thessa. Dulcie is bringing it up."

Her limbs and body were still quivering, and she felt very weak and tearful as she climbed the stairway to the corridor above.

The nearer door of his apartment was open. Through it the music of the gramophone came gaily; and she went toward it and entered the brilliantly illuminated studio.

Soane, who still lay flat on the roof overhead, peeping through the ventilator, saw her enter, all dishevelled, grasping in one hand the fragments of a letter. And the sight instantly sobered him. He tucked his shoes under one arm, got to his stockinged feet, made nimbly for the scuttle, and from there, descending by the service stair, ran through the courtyard into the empty hall.

"Be gorry," he muttered, "thot dommed Dootchman has done it now!" And he pulled on his shoes, crammed his hat over his ears, and started east, on a run, for Grogan's.

Grogan's was still the name of the Third Avenue saloon, though Grogan had been dead some years, and one Franz Lehr now presided within that palace of cherrywood, brass and pretzels.

Into the family entrance fled Soane, down a dim hallway past several doors, from behind which sounded voices joining in guttural song; and came into a rear room.