Part 3

"Answer me," he said, the menacing roar rising in his voice. "Where did you go last night when you left the house?"

"I--I went out--on the lawn."

"And then?"

"I had had enough of your party: I came back to Paris."

"And _then_?"

"I came here, of course."

"Who was with you?"

Then, for the first time, she began to comprehend. She swallowed desperately.

"Who was your companion?" he repeated.

"A--man."

"You brought him here?"

"He--came in--for a moment."

"Who was he?"

"I--never before saw him."

"You picked up a man in the street and brought him here with you?"

"N-not on the street----"

"Where?"

"On the lawn--while your guests were dancing----"

"And you came to Paris with him?"

"Y-yes."

"Who was he?"

"I don't know----"

"If you don't name him, I'll kill you!" he yelled, losing the last vestige of self-control. "What kind of story are you trying to tell me, you lying drab! You've got a lover! Confess it!"

"I have not!"

"Liar! So this is how you've laughed at me, mocked me, betrayed me, made a fool of me! You!--with your fierce little snappish ways of a virgin! You with your dangerous airs of a tiger-cat if a man so much as laid a finger on your vicious body! So Mademoiselle-Don't-touch-me had a lover all the while. Max Freund warned me to keep an eye on you!" He lost control of himself again; his voice became a hoarse shout: "Max Freund begged me not to trust you! You filthy little beast! Good God! Was I crazy to believe in you--to talk without reserve in your presence! What kind of imbecile was I to offer you marriage because I was crazy enough to believe that there was no other way to possess you! You--a Levantine dancing girl--a common painted thing of the public footlights--a creature of brasserie and cabaret! And you posed as Mademoiselle Nitouche! A novice! A devotee of chastity! And, by God, your devilish ingenuity at last persuaded me that you actually were what you said you were. And all Paris knew you were fooling me--all Paris was laughing in its dirty sleeve--mocking me--spitting on me----"

"All Paris," she said, in an unsteady voice, "gave you credit for being my lover. And I endured it. And you knew it was not true. Yet you never denied it.... But as for me, I never had a lover. When I told you that I told you the truth. And it is true to-day as it was yesterday. Nobody believes it of a dancing girl. Now, _you_ no longer believe it. Very well, there is no occasion for melodrama. I tried to fall in love with you: I couldn't. I did not desire to marry you. You insisted. Very well; you can go."

"Not before I learn the name of your lover of last night!" he retorted, now almost beside himself with fury, and once more menacing her with his pistol. "I'll get that much change out of all the money I've lavished on you!" he yelled. "Tell me his name or I'll kill you!"

She reached under her pillow, clutched a jewelled watch and purse, and hurled them at him. She twisted from her arm a gemmed bracelet, tore every flashing ring from her fingers, and flung them in a handful straight at his head.

"There's some more change for you!" she panted. "Now, leave my bedroom!"

"I'll have that man's name first!"

The girl laughed in his distorted face. He was within an ace of shooting her--of firing point-blank into the lovely, flushed features, merely to shatter them, destroy, annihilate. He had the desire to do it. But her breathless, contemptuous laugh broke that impulse--relaxed it, leaving it flaccid. And after an interval something else intervened to stay his hand at the trigger--something that crept into his mind; something he had begun to suspect that she knew. Suddenly he became convinced that she _did_ know it--that she believed that he dared not kill her and stand the investigation of a public trial before a _juge d'instruction_--that he could not afford to have his own personal affairs scrutinised too closely.

He still wanted to kill her--shoot her there where she sat in bed, watching him out of scornful young eyes. So intense was his need to slay--to disfigure, brutalise this girl who had mocked him, that the raging desire hurt him physically. He leaned back, resting against the silken wall, momentarily weakened by the violence of passion. But his pistol still threatened her.

No; he dared not. There was a better, surer way to utterly destroy her,--a way he had long ago prepared,--not expecting any such contingency as this, but merely as a matter of self-insurance.

His levelled weapon wavered, dropped, held loosely now. He still glared at her out of pallid and blood-shot eyes in silence. After a while:

"You hell-cat," he said slowly and distinctly. "Who is your English lover? Tell me his name or I'll beat your face to a pulp!"

"I have no English lover."

"Do you think," he went on heavily, disregarding her reply, "that I don't know why you chose an Englishman? You thought you could blackmail me, didn't you?"

"How?" she demanded wearily.

Again he ignored her reply:

"Is he one of the Embassy?" he demanded. "Is he some emissary of Grey's? Does he come from their intelligence department? Or is he only a police jackal? Or some lesser rat?"

She shrugged; her night-robe slipped and she drew it over her shoulder with a quick movement. And the man saw the deep blush spreading over face and throat.

"By God!" he said, "you _are_ an actress! I admit it. But now you are going to learn something about real life. You think you've got me, don't you?--you and your Englishman? Because I have been fool enough to trust you--hide nothing from you--act frankly and openly in your presence. You thought you'd get a hold on me, so that if I ever caught you at your treacherous game you could defy me and extort from me the last penny! You thought all that out--very thriftily and cleverly--you and your Englishman between you--didn't you?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"Don't you? Then why did you ask me the other day whether it was not German money which was paying for the newspaper which I bought?"

"The _Mot d'Ordre_?"

"Certainly."

"I asked you that because Ferez Bey is notoriously in Germany's pay. And Ferez Bey financed the affair. You said so. Besides, you and he discussed it before me in my own salon."

"And you suspected that I bought the _Mot d'Ordre_ with German money for the purpose of carrying out German propaganda in a Paris daily paper?"

"I don't know why Ferez Bey gave you the money to buy it."

"He did not give me the money."

"You said so. Who did?"

"_You!_" he fairly yelled.

"W-what!" stammered the girl, confounded.

"Listen to me, you rat!" he said fiercely. "I was not such a fool as you believed me to be. I lavished money on you; you made a fortune for yourself out of your popularity, too. Do you remember endorsing a cheque drawn to your order by Ferez Bey?"

"Yes. You had borrowed every penny I possessed. You said that Ferez Bey owed you as much. So I accepted his cheque----"

"That cheque paid for the _Mot d'Ordre_. It is drawn to your order; it bears your endorsement; the _Mot d'Ordre_ was purchased in your name. And it was Max Freund who insisted that I take that precaution. Now, try to blackmail me!--you and your English spy!" he cried triumphantly, his voice breaking into a squeak.

Not yet understanding, merely conscious of some vague and monstrous danger, the girl sat motionless, regarding him intently out of beautiful, intelligent eyes.

He burst into laughter, made falsetto by the hysteria of sheer hatred:

"That's where you are now!" he said, leering down at her. "Every paper I ever made you sign incriminates you; your cancelled cheque is in the same packet; your _dossier_ is damning and complete. You didn't know that Ferez Bey was sent across the frontier yesterday, did you? Your English spy didn't inform you last night, did he?"

"N-no."

"You lie! You _did_ know it! That was why you stole away last night and met your jackal--to sell him something besides yourself, this time! You knew they had arrested Ferez! I don't know how you knew it, but you did. And you told your lover. And both of you thought you had me at last, didn't you?"

"I--what are you trying to say to me--do to me?" she stammered, losing colour for the first time.

"Put you where you belong--you dirty spy!" he said with grinning ferocity. "If there is to be trouble, I've prepared for it. When they try you for espionage, they'll try you as a foreigner--a dancing girl in the pay of Germany--as my mistress whom Max Freund and I discover in treachery to France, and whom I instantly denounce to the proper authorities!"

He shoved his pistol into his breast pocket and put on his marred silk hat.

"Which do you think they will believe--you or the Count d'Eblis?" he demanded, the nervous leer twitching at his heavy lips. "Which do you think they will believe--your denials and counter-accusations against me, or Max Freund's corroboration, and the evidence of the packet I shall now deliver to the authorities--the packet containing every cursed document necessary to convict you!--you filthy little----"

The girl bounded from her bed to the floor, her dark eyes blazing:

"Damn you!" she said. "Get out of my bedroom!"

Taken aback, he retreated a pace or two, and, at the furious menace of the little clenched fist, stepped another pace out into the corridor. The door crashed in his face; the bolt shot home.

* * * * *

In twenty minutes Nihla Quellen, the celebrated and adored of European capitals, crept out of the street door. She wore the dress of a Finistere peasant; her hair was grey, her step infirm.

The _commissaire_, two _agents de police_, and a Government detective, one Souchez, already on their way to identify and arrest her, never even glanced at the shabby, infirm figure which hobbled past them on the sidewalk and feebly mounted an omnibus marked Gare du Nord.

* * * * *

For a long time Paris was carefully combed for the dancer, Nihla Quellen, until more serious affairs occupied the authorities, and presently the world at large. For, in a few weeks, war burst like a clap of thunder over Europe, leaving the whole world stunned and reeling. The dossier of Nihla Quellen, the dancing girl, was tossed into secret archives, together with the dossier of one Ferez Bey, an Eurasian, now far beyond French jurisdiction, and already very industrious in the United States about God knows what, in company with one Max Freund.

As for Monsieur the Count d'Eblis, he remained a senator, an owner of many third-rate decorations, and of the _Mot d'Ordre_.

And he remained on excellent terms with everybody at the Swedish, Greek, and Bulgarian legations, and the Turkish Embassy, too. And continued in cipher communication with Max Freund and Ferez Bey in America.

Otherwise, he was still president of the Numismatic Society of Spain, and he continued to add to his wonderful collection of coins, and to keep up his voluminous numismatic correspondence.

He was growing stouter, too, which increased his spinal waddle when he walked; and he became very prosperous financially, through fortunate "operations," as he explained, with one Bolo Pasha.

He had only one regret to interfere with his sleep and his digestion; he was sorry he had not fired his pistol into the youthful face of Nihla Quellen. He should have avenged himself, taken his chances, and above everything else he should have destroyed her beauty. His timidity and caution still caused him deep and bitter chagrin.

For nearly a year he heard absolutely nothing concerning her. Then one day a letter arrived from Ferez Bey through Max Freund, both being in New York. And when, using his key to the cipher, he extracted the message it contained, he had learned, among other things, that Nihla Quellen was in New York, employed as a teacher in a school for dancing.

The gist of his reply to Ferez Bey was that Nihla Quellen had already outlived her usefulness on earth, and that Max Freund should attend to the matter at the first favourable opportunity.

III

SUNSET

On the edge of evening she came out of the Palace of Mirrors and crossed the wet asphalt, which already reflected primrose lights from a clearing western sky.

A few moments before, he had been thinking of her, never dreaming that she was in America. But he knew her instantly, there amid the rush and clatter of the street, recognised her even in the twilight of the passing storm--perhaps not alone from the half-caught glimpse of her shadowy, averted face, nor even from that young, lissome figure so celebrated in Europe. There is a sixth sense--the sense of nearness to what is familiar. When it awakes we call it premonition.

The shock of seeing her, the moment's exciting incredulity, passed before he became aware that he was already following her through swarming metropolitan throngs released from the toil of a long, wet day in early spring.

Through every twilit avenue poured the crowds; through every cross-street a rosy glory from the west was streaming; and in its magic he saw her immortally transfigured, where the pink light suffused the crossings, only to put on again her lovely mortality in the shadowy avenue.

At Times Square she turned west, straight into the dazzling fire of sunset, and he at her slender heels, not knowing why, not even asking it of himself, not thinking, not caring.

A third figure followed them both.

The bronze giants south of them stirred, swung their great hammers against the iron bell; strokes of the hour rang out above the din of Herald Square, inaudible in the traffic roar another square away, lost, drowned out long before the pleasant bell-notes penetrated to Forty-second Street, into which they both had turned.

Yet, as though occultly conscious that some hour had struck on earth, significant to her, she stopped, turned, and looked back--looked quite through him, seeing neither him nor the one-eyed man who followed them both--as though her line of vision were the East itself, where, across the grey sea's peril, a thousand miles of cannon were sounding the hour from the North Sea to the Alps.

He passed her at her very elbow--aware of her nearness, as though suddenly close to a young orchard in April. The girl, too, resumed her way, unconscious of him, of his youthful face set hard with controlled emotion.

The one-eyed man followed them both.

A few steps further and she turned into the entrance to one of those sprawling, pretentious restaurants, the sham magnificence of which becomes grimy overnight. He halted, swung around, retraced his steps and followed her. And at his heels two shapes followed them very silently--her shadow and his own--so close together now, against the stucco wall that they seemed like Destiny and Fate linked arm in arm.

The one-eyed man halted at the door for a few moments. Then he, too, went in, dogged by his sinister shadow.

The red sunset's rays penetrated to the rotunda and were quenched there in a flood of artificial light; and there their sun-born shadows vanished, and three strange new shadows, twisted and grotesque, took their places.

She continued on into the almost empty restaurant, looming dimly beyond. He followed; the one-eyed man followed both.

The place into which they stepped was circular, centred by a waterfall splashing over concrete rocks. In the ruffled pool goldfish glimmered, nearly motionless, and mandarin ducks floated, preening exotic plumage.

A wilderness of tables surrounded the pool, set for the expected patronage of the coming evening. The girl seated herself at one of these.

At the next table he found a place for himself, entirely unnoticed by her. The one-eyed man took the table behind them. A waiter presented himself to take her order; another waiter came up leisurely to attend to him. A third served the one-eyed man. There were only a few inches between the three tables. Yet the girl, deeply preoccupied, paid no attention to either man, although both kept their eyes on her.

But already, under the younger man's spellbound eyes, an odd and unforeseen thing was occurring: he gradually became aware that, almost imperceptibly, the girl and the table where she sat, and the sleepy waiter who was taking her orders, were slowly moving nearer to him on a floor which was moving, too.

He had never before been in that particular restaurant, and it took him a moment or two to realise that the floor was one of those trick floors, the central part of which slowly revolves.

Her table stood on the revolving part of the floor, his upon fixed terrain; and he now beheld her moving toward him, as the circle of tables rotated on its axis, which was the waterfall and pool in the middle of the restaurant.

A few people began to arrive--theatrical people, who are obliged to dine early. Some took seats at tables placed upon the revolving section of the floor, others preferred the outer circles, where he sat in a fixed position.

Her table was already abreast of his, with only the circular crack in the floor between them; he could easily have touched her.

As the distance began to widen between them, the girl, her gloved hands clasped in her lap, and studying the table-cloth with unseeing gaze, lifted her dark eyes--looked at him without seeing, and once more gazed through him at something invisible upon which her thoughts remained fixed--something absorbing, vital, perhaps tragic--for her face had become as colourless, now, as one of those translucent marbles, vaguely warmed by some buried vein of rose beneath the snowy surface.

Slowly she was being swept away from him--his gaze following--hers lost in concentrated abstraction.

He saw her slipping away, disappearing behind the noisy waterfall. Around him the restaurant continued to fill, slowly at first, then more rapidly after the orchestra had entered its marble gallery.

The music began with something Russian, plaintive at first, then beguiling, then noisy, savage in its brutal precision--something sinister--a trampling melody that was turning into thunder with the throb of doom all through it. And out of the vicious, Asiatic clangour, from behind the dash of too obvious waterfalls, glided the girl he had followed, now on her way toward him again, still seated at her table, still gazing at nothing out of dark, unseeing eyes.

It seemed to him an hour before her table approached his own again. Already she had been served by a waiter--was eating.

He became aware, then, that somebody had also served him. But he could not even pretend to eat, so preoccupied was he by her approach.

Scarcely seeming to move at all, the revolving floor was steadily drawing her table closer and closer to his. She was not looking at the strawberries which she was leisurely eating--did not lift her eyes as her table swept smoothly abreast of his.

Scarcely aware that he spoke aloud, he said:

"Nihla--Nihla Quellen!..."

Like a flash the girl wheeled in her chair to face him. She had lost all her colour. Her fork had dropped and a blood-red berry rolled over the table-cloth toward him.

"I'm sorry," he said, flushing. "I did not mean to startle you----"

The girl did not utter a word, nor did she move; but in her dark eyes he seemed to see her every sense concentrated upon him to identify his features, made shadowy by the lighted candles behind his head.

By degrees, smoothly, silently, her table swept nearer, nearer, bringing with it her chair, her slender person, her dark, intelligent eyes, so unsmilingly and steadily intent on him.

He began to stammer:

"--Two years ago--at--the Villa Tresse d'Or--on the Seine.... And we promised to see each other--in the morning----"

She said coolly:

"My name is Thessalie Dunois. You mistake me for another."

"No," he said, in a low voice, "I am not mistaken."

Her brown eyes seemed to plunge their clear regard into the depths of his very soul--not in recognition, but in watchful, dangerous defiance.

He began again, still stammering a trifle:

"--In the morning, we were to--to meet--at eleven--near the fountain of Marie de Medicis--unless you do not care to remember----"

At that her gaze altered swiftly, melted into the exquisite relief of recognition. Suspended breath, released, parted her blanched lips; her little guardian heart, relieved of fear, beat more freely.

"Are you Garry?"

"Yes."

"I know you now," she murmured. "You are Garret Barres, of the rue d'Eryx.... You _are_ Garry!" A smile already haunted her dark young eyes; colour was returning to lip and cheek. She drew a deep, noiseless breath.

The table where she sat continued to slip past him; the distance between them was widening. She had to turn her head a little to face him.

"You do remember me then, Nihla?"

The girl inclined her head a trifle. A smile curved her lips--lips now vivid but still a little tremulous from the shock of the encounter.

"May I join you at your table?"

She smiled, drew a deeper breath, looked down at the strawberry on the cloth, looked over her shoulder at him.

"You owe me an explanation," he insisted, leaning forward to span the increasing distance between them.

"Do I?"

"Ask yourself."

After a moment, still studying him, she nodded as though the nod answered some silent question of her own:

"Yes, I owe you one."

"Then may I join you?"

"My table is more prudent than I. It is running away from an explanation." She fixed her eyes on her tightly clasped hands, as though to concentrate thought. He could see only the back of her head, white neck and lovely dark hair.

Her table was quite a distance away when she turned, leisurely, and looked back at him.

"May I come?" he asked.

She lifted her delicate brows in demure surprise.

"I've been waiting for you," she said, amiably.

The one-eyed man had never taken his eyes off them.

IV

DUSK

She had offered him her hand; he had bent over it, seated himself, and they smilingly exchanged the formal banalities of a pleasantly renewed acquaintance.

A waiter laid a cover for him. She continued to concern herself, leisurely, with her strawberries.

"When did you leave Paris?" she enquired.

"Nearly two years ago."

"Before war was declared?"

"Yes, in June of that year."

She looked up at him very seriously; but they both smiled as she said:

"It was a momentous month for you then--the month of June, 1914?"

"Very. A charming young girl broke my heart in 1914; and so I came home, a wreck--to recuperate."

At that she laughed outright, glancing at his youthful, sunburnt face and lean, vigorous figure.

"When did _you_ come over?" he asked curiously.

"I have been here longer than you have. In fact, I left France the day I last saw you."

"The same day?"

"I started that very same day--shortly after sunrise. I crossed the Belgian frontier that night, and I sailed for New York the morning after. I landed here a week later, and I've been here ever since. That, monsieur, is my history."

"You've been here in New York for two years!" he repeated in astonishment. "Have you really left the stage then? I supposed you had just arrived to fill an engagement here."

"They gave me a try-out this afternoon."

"_You?_ A try-out!" he exclaimed, amazed.

She carelessly transfixed a berry with her fork:

"If I secure an engagement I shall be very glad to fill it ... and my stomach, also. If I don't secure one--well--charity or starvation confronts me."

He smiled at her with easy incredulity.

"I had not heard that you were here!" he repeated. "I've read nothing at all about you in the papers----"

"No ... I am here incognito.... I have taken my sister's name. After all, your American public does not know me."

"But----"

"Wait! I don't wish it to know me!"

"But if you----"

The girl's slight gesture checked him, although her smile became humorous and friendly: