Part 7

"I can assure you," I told her, "I am not out for that sort of thing at all."

"But it will come," she persisted.

"It will not," I contradicted her firmly. "I have done all the killing I want to, in fair fighting. I have a weakness for adventures, but nothing would induce me to become an assassin."

She looked at me contemplatively, leaning across from her chair with her chin balanced upon her hands. Then she got up and brought me a queer round wooden box of fragrant Russian cigarettes. She herself lit one, and I followed her example.

"Are you afraid, dear earnest Englishman," she asked, "that I should hate you? Let me tell you the truth. For this man I have no love any more. And he must die."

"He may live or he may die," I answered, "but I am no man's executioner."

"We shall see," she remarked indifferently. "You are a just man, beyond a doubt, but I like you. You are different from all others."

"In what respect?" I enquired.

"I admit you here," she replied, "to the intimacy of a private visit, yet you have not yet suggested that you should become my lover. It intrigues me, this diffidence."

I felt a sudden desire to get out of the room. She laughed at me, laughed with simple, unaffected mirth, laughed till she came over and laid her hands upon my shoulders.

"Go away, dear man," she begged, "before I make myself foolish about you. You shall sit at my side to-night, and perhaps then, when you see what others think of me, you may whisper different things."

"And where do I sit by your side to-night?" I asked.

"You and your two friends," she said, "sup with me in the restaurant downstairs at midnight. Convey my compliments and this invitation to your charming lady companion. I shall see her at the theatre and will confirm it."

She gave me her fingers and held them for a moment against my lips. Then I went out, a little dazed.

I began to fear that Naida was going to make trouble for me. At the theatre that evening she demanded my constant attendance. Twice she sent notes to my dressing room, and in the midst of the tumultuous applause which followed her wonderful dancing, when she stood in the wings with us after her seventh recall, she tore one of the red roses which had been thrown on to the stage from its cluster, and thrust it in my buttonhole.

"So!" she whispered. "They will know from whom that rose comes. Your fingers will caress it when you sing. They will applaud you the more for my sake."

This was all very pretty and soothing to my vanity, and, I frankly admit, in its way pleasant, but I had all the time the feeling that it was likely to bring trouble upon me. When, in her most charming manner, Naida had issued her invitation to Rose, her enthusiastic acceptance was entirely marred for me by the manner of it.

"A supper party will be perfectly delightful," Rose declared, smiling with dangerous sweetness. "I have a little headache to-night but that will pass. In any case you will not mind if Leonard--if Mr. Cotton should bring me away early."

"So long as you do not rob me of my dear cavalier," Naida replied, to my dismay, squeezing my arm.

I marched Leonard on one side, taking advantage of the insistent roars of recall which drew Naida back on to the stage.

"Look here, Len," I said, "I don't know what this game is, but I'm playing it for the three of us. I am obeying orders so far as Mademoiselle Naida is concerned. If Rose won't see it, I shall rely upon you."

"I'll do my best, old chap," he promised, with a gloom which I fancied was not altogether natural. "It's a jolly hard situation, though. Rose had asked me to take her out to supper to-night, and to dinner on Sunday night."

"You can count that dinner off," I said firmly. "We three have dined together every Sunday night since we started out. Sometimes it's been a scrag of mutton and a glass of beer; once or twice--that week at Cromer, Len--not even that. On Sunday night it's going to be caviare and a Maryland chicken, and I'm in it."

"That's all right," Leonard assured me. "Of course, Rose thought that you'd be in attendance on Naida."

"You and I won't have any misunderstanding, at any rate, Len," I insisted. "Naida means just as much to me as that bit of fluff on your coat. When our year is up, I shall ask Rose to marry me, and though you're the dearest fellow in the world, I hope she'll have me and not you."

"I sha'n't take advantage, old chap," Leonard promised, with a sigh, "but it's getting filthily difficult. She pretended she wanted me to kiss her last night."

"I'll punch your head if you do," I answered savagely. "Our call."

The supper party did not improve matters. We found quite a distinguished little gathering in the foyer of the Milan, including the managing director of the Parthenon, some of the best known dramatic critics, a famous actor and his wife, another and a lady who might have been, a foreign ambassador, and two other well-known and distinguished men about town. Naida did her duty by placing a very distinguished nobleman with cosmopolitan tastes upon her right, but, to my secret dismay and the wonder of the rest of the company, she insisted upon my occupying the seat on the other side of her.

"Now," she whispered, looking at me from under her eyelashes with that slow, curious smile upon her lips, "I have made the little lady jealous, is it not so? And also the great managing director who pays me my salary, and perhaps others. But what does it matter? You are content?"

The lie came uneasily from my lips. Naida, however, seemed satisfied. It was borne in upon me now that it was her deliberate purpose, part of the game, in fact, not only to exploit me as a victim of her charms but to practically advertise her simulated infatuation. I watched Rose flirting desperately with a very attractive man who was seated upon her left, and for a moment I felt that the situation was impossible--that I should do best to mutter a few plain words to my hostess and deliberately dissociate myself from the rôle into which I had drifted. Then I remembered our chief's confidence--Naida spoke to me with unexpected kindness. I caught the echo of Rose's unnecessarily joyous laughter, and I changed my mind. Thenceforth I played my part. I lent myself to the gaiety of the moment. We were all young together. The wine was good, life was good, the very music seemed playing us down the avenues of pleasure. From a gay party we became almost an uproarious one. We moved outside into the lounge for our coffee, Naida never letting me for an instant leave her side, relegating to me the duties of host, thrusting her pocketbook into my hand, insisting that I should order the cigars and liqueurs, fee the waiters, and even sign the bill on her behalf. There were many smiles amongst the little company, shrugs of the shoulders, and whispered enquiries as to my identity. My fictitious position seemed to make me an object of envy, but I never altogether lost my head. I waited for my opportunity, and when it came I rose quickly to my feet and walked over to Rose's side. Her companion of the moment had been summoned away to speak to some acquaintances in another part of the lounge.

"Rose," I began sternly----

She looked at me with a bright but artificial smile. I leaned down and continued under my breath.

"I play the buffoon to order," I reminded her. "You, too, have your part in this."

"Indeed?" she murmured.

"Yes! Your part is not to make mine more difficult. Your part is to remember----"

Then I stopped short. It was a difficult position. There was my contract with Leonard to be borne in mind.

"To remember what?" she asked, looking at me more naturally.

"The things of which your heart assures you," I answered. "I am only human. If I fail to-night, the fault will not be wholly mine."

After that there was a change in Rose's demeanour, and once, when our eyes met, she smiled. Naida, however, still played her part of sorceress. She seemed impatient of every word she was forced to speak to others. She whispered often in my ear. Even her fingers sought mine. It was just at this stage that for the first time I noticed the somewhat singular appearance of a man who was watching us from the few seats upstairs reserved for guests of the hotel who were not in evening dress. As though he sought concealment, he had found a chair in the most remote corner and was half hidden by a slight projection of the wall. He had a mass of black hair, a heavy, sallow face, from which one formed the idea that he had recently removed a beard, and dark staring eyes. He was untidily dressed for his surroundings, amongst which he seemed curiously out of place. An impulse prompted me to point him out to Naida. She glanced in the direction I indicated but merely shrugged her shoulders.

"Dear friend," she whispered, "you forget that I am a famous person, more so abroad than in your little island. There are many who watch me with thoughts in their heart which they will never dare to utter. There are many who would give a share of their possessions to be seated where you are seated, to be treated as I am treating you."

"The man is a foreigner, without a doubt," I remarked.

"And foreigners," she answered, with a stabbing little glance, "are quicker to feel and understand than Englishmen."

We kept the party going until long past closing time, and then an adjournment of our diminished numbers was made to Naida's suite. Here she distributed signed photographs to her remaining guests, accompanied by a wave of the hand which meant dismissal. Rose and Leonard were amongst the first to leave, Rose with a look in her eyes which might have meant anything. I stepped quickly forward. Naida looked at me warningly. Now that we had left the lounge, it seemed to me that her demeanour had to some extent changed.

"For your impatience, Monsieur Maurice," she said, "you will be the last. Offer the cigarettes, if you please. And your friend Mr. Cotton, will he not take a whisky and soda before he goes?"

One by one they drifted away. Rose and Leonard were driven home by one of the former's new admirers. The time came when we were alone. Naida listened to the closing of the door and to the clanging of the lift gate. Then with her back to the table against which she was leaning, she looked across at me with an odd little smile upon her lips.

"So we are alone, my friend."

"It has that appearance," I admitted, taking one of her cigarettes and lighting it. "I await your further instructions."

She nodded her head slowly. She seemed to be considering my attitude.

"My further instructions," she mimicked. "Oh, Monsieur Maurice, what a strange person! Ring the bell on your left, please."

I obeyed. A maid presented herself at once from the inner room. Naida spoke to her for a moment in some weird language. Then she turned towards me, yawned and stretched herself.

"Prepare for a shock," she said. "For ten minutes I leave you. You seat yourself in that easy chair, you take a whisky and soda and the evening paper, you make yourself at home. You understand?"

"Perfectly," I answered, not at all sorry for a few minutes' solitude.

"Then au revoir! But have no fear," she added, looking back with a mocking smile, "I shall return."

A quarter of an hour or so passed. I heard Naida telephoning from her bedroom and heard her voice in conversation with her maid. Then she reappeared. She was wearing a yellow creation tied around her with a girdle, Chinese sandals tied with broad yellow ribbon; and her unloosed hair was gathered together with ribbon of the same colour. She displayed herself for my admiration.

"You admire, Monsieur Maurice? You like the colour?"

"You look charming," I replied. "And now?"

She held up her finger.

"You are not to stir," she directed, waving her finger at me.

She moved towards the door which led into the corridor, opened it softly and peered outside. Then, as though not satisfied, she disappeared altogether. When she returned, she closed the door with a little slam and threw herself into a chair opposite to me.

"And now?" I repeated patiently.

"It is the hardest part of your task, this, Monsieur Maurice," she said, with a demure little droop of the eyes. "You see the time? It is exactly two o'clock. For one hour you remain where you are. At the end of that hour you are free. You may then leave, and, if you wish it so, your courtship of Naida is over."

"And for that hour?" I asked, a little unsteadily.

She came and sat on the arm of my chair. Her face was upturned to mine.

"Shall I keep you company?" she whispered.

I leaned down and took the kiss she offered me. I held her for a moment in my arms. Then I gripped her wrists.

"Naida," I said, and my own voice sounded to me unfamiliar, "of course I know this is a game, but I don't understand the rules."

"We make them," she murmured.

"I am in love with Rose Mindel," I continued. "I should be married to her at the present moment but for a stupid agreement between Leonard Cotton and myself, made when we three started out together. I am in love with her, but I'm no Joseph. You know what you are, and your power. I'm not any different from other men."

"But you do not care, then?" she asked quickly.

"There isn't any ordinary young man of my type," I answered, "who has drunk your wine and sat by your side all the evening, and received your kindness, and finds himself here alone with you, who wouldn't care--in a way--the wrong way. I care like that, if it's any good. And now you understand."

She slipped from her place, kissed me on both eyes, and ran across to the door of the inner room. She looked back at me only for a moment, opened her lips, said nothing, and disappeared, closing the door softly behind her. I mixed myself the stiffest whisky and soda I had ever concocted in my life, lit a cigar from a box I found on the sideboard, and sat down to watch the clock.

At five minutes to three, I was walking up and down the room with my overcoat on. At a minute to the hour, as I stood with my eyes glued to the clock, the inner door softly opened. Naida stood framed upon the threshold. There was a look of distress upon her face.

"Monsieur Maurice," she said, "I had made up my mind to say nothing, but that was wrong. You are a very honourable young man and I have not met many. It has been promised to me that no harm shall come to you, but yet--go warily to the lift."

She disappeared and closed the door. For the first time she locked it. Somehow, I felt, as I stepped out into the corridor, that the dangers which might be waiting for me were small things. I stood for several seconds, looking up and down. To reach the lift I had to traverse the whole of the corridor, turn to the left and pass along another shorter one. I stepped out carelessly enough, and then--the scantily lit passage seemed suddenly filled with whispering voices, with eyes peering at me from mysterious corners; the soft carpets behind me were reverberant with muffled and stealthy footsteps. I was acutely conscious of the presence of danger. As I neared the corner of the corridor every nerve of my body was bristling with apprehension. Before I turned, I paused for a moment and looked behind. There was only a single electric lamp burning, but I could see dimly along the empty space to the end. There was no sign of any moving figure, nor any sound. Then I turned the corner to find myself suddenly seized in a pair of giant arms, the dull flicker of upraised steel before my eyes, the sallow, brutelike face, the black, flaming eyes of the man who had watched me from the lounge, within an inch or two of me.

I had no chance to call out. My assailant's left hand was upon my throat. I could see him gathering strength to drive that knife down into my heart. My brain was perfectly active. I waited with tense muscles for the terrible moment, meaning to fling myself on one side in the hope that I might escape mortal injury from that first blow, at any rate. And then I saw something loom up behind. I saw an arm raised even higher than my captor's, and I heard the wickedest sound in life--the crash of dull metal into a man's skull. The grasp upon my throat was instantly relaxed, doors were thrown open along the corridor, and I sank back into a momentary fit of unconsciousness.

* * * * *

If our customary supper party with Mr. Thomson lacked some of those qualities which in the earlier days of our adventures had made it so wonderful a thing, the change of venue, and our host's curious genius in devising new dishes, still contrived to make the occasion a memorable one. We met this time in a private room at the Hotel Albion at Brighton, whither a telephone message had summoned us earlier in the day. Mr. Thomson, spick and span as ever, looking in the pink of condition, commended to us the best oysters in the world and sipped almost reverently the contents of a dust-covered bottle of Chablis.

"I am not sure," he told us, with the air of one imparting grave knowledge, "that in these days it is not possible to find better vintages out of London than one comes across even in the restaurants de luxe. This wine, for instance."

"The wine is wonderful," Rose agreed. "These oysters are wonderful, too, and I never saw such a lobster mayonnaise as that upon the sideboard. But, dear Mr. Thomson, if you expect us to enjoy our supper, do be merciful. There will be no waiter in the room for at least five minutes. Give us some idea as to the meaning of this last adventure."

Mr. Thomson smiled benevolently.

"Why not?" he said. "Here is the story in a very few words. There was in London, ten days ago, the most dangerous anarchist and political disturber of the peace in Europe. His name is a household word to all of you. He passed here as Paul Kansky."

"Naida's lover," I ventured.

"As a matter of fact, her husband," Mr. Thomson explained. "His removal was absolutely necessary for the internal peace of this country. There were a hundred charges on which he could have been arrested, but not one for which he could have been safely put out of the way. Being at times open to accept a contract of this nature, I undertook to dispose of him."

I shivered a little as I listened. Mr. Thomson continued very much as though he were referring to some ordinary commercial undertaking.

"Kansky's one weakness was Naida Modeschka, his one passion jealousy. With the aid of our young friend here, I succeeded in fanning that passion into a red-hot flame. I succeeded, too, in engineering such an attempt at wilful murder on the part of Kansky that his own demise, owing to the apparently accidental intervention of a casual rescuer, seemed to occur quite naturally. You behold the result of an exceedingly well-laid scheme. This mischievous person is dead and buried under the name he bore at the Milan Hotel, and which the great world of his followers does not recognise."

"Then my rescuer," I exclaimed, "John P. Martin, the American Oil Trust man----"

"Precisely," Mr. Thomson interrupted. "Mr. Martin was my agent, a man of iron and a professional fighter, planted in room number eighty-four, with instructions to intervene on your behalf in such a way that Kansky could give no more trouble."

"And those other two men who gave evidence--the witnesses?"

"Also arranged for," Mr. Thomson acknowledged. "It was really a very well-planned affair. The man Kansky's passion for Naida was proved by the letters produced in court. His attack upon our young friend here provided ample excuse for Mr. Martin's vigorous action. The witnesses, of course, were able to declare that Kansky was in the act of committing a probable murder, and that Martin's contra attack, with its unfortunate results, saved your life."

"And Naida?" Rose enquired.

Mr. Thomson smiled.

"How should we be able to deal with these little affairs," he observed, "but for the vagaries, my dear Miss Mindel, of your wonderful sex? Naida was a very willing accomplice in our little scheme. For seven years in a brutalised Russia she had lived under that man's dominance. When she was fortunate enough to escape over here, it was certainly not with the idea of again submitting to it. I hear the waiter. Any more questions?"

"For whom were you acting?" I asked eagerly. "How did this affair come into your hands?"

Mr. Thomson seemed to be listening to the roar of the sea, which came to us pleasantly through the open window.

"Ah!" he murmured. "That again is a question the answer to which I fear must be postponed. Shall we call it Conundrum Number Four?"

CONUNDRUM NUMBER FIVE

THE TRAGEDY AT GREYMARSHES

"Spring," Leonard declared, fanning himself with his straw hat and breathing in the ozone from the waves which rippled up to within a few yards of our chairs, "is upon us."

"I must get some new frocks," Rose murmured absently.

"To-morrow," I reflected, "I must go through my tennis flannels."

"Jolly good-looking girl that was with the party from the Grange at the show last night," Leonard continued reminiscently. "I liked the way her eyelashes curled. Jolly fine figure, too."

"The tutor man is quite handsome," Rose ruminated. "He ties his black evening bow just the way I like."

"Handsome!" I scoffed. "Why, he's got a cast in his eye! He reminds me, more than anything, of the plaster villains in the Chamber of Horrors at Madame Tussaud's."

"I didn't notice any cast," Rose sighed, her eyes turned dreamily seawards. "He looked at me hard enough, too, when I was dancing."

"They're a strange crew at the Grange," I observed, lighting a cigarette from the case which Leonard had thrown me. "I can't altogether size them up."

Rose turned towards me reproachfully.

"You are becoming obsessed, Maurice, with your love of adventures," she complained gently. "You think of nothing else. Surely, in this dear, old-world place we can have a little rest; we can drop the tenseness of the last few months and become just simple, natural human beings again."

"The chief didn't send us down here for nothing," I ventured.

"Don't forget," she reminded me, "that at our last supper at Brighton I begged for a little rest. Only a few weeks afterwards, he sent us here. I am quite certain that nothing ever happened at Greymarshes. If we get into any trouble here, it will simply be because the spring is so disturbing."

She looked at me lazily, almost affectionately. Then she looked at Leonard. His hat was tilted over his eyes and his hands were clasped around his knees. There was very little of his good-natured, pudgy face to be seen.

"I wonder," she continued, with a little sigh, "why neither of you ever make love to me. I'm very attractive."

"The situation," Leonard began, taking his hat off and sitting up----

"Oh, hang the situation!" Rose interrupted irritably. "If you can't make up your minds which of you it is to be, you might toss up or something. Here's spring coming on. I'm twenty-two years old, and I haven't got a young man. You will drive me to answer some of the desperate notes which are showered upon me by lovesick youths from the front row. I had another last night from Arthur. I believe that he really loves me."

"I'm afraid Arthur will have to be spanked," I said.

Rose made a little grimace.

"There is such a thing, Mr. Maurice Lister," she declared, "as playing the watchdog just a little too zealously--especially in the springtime. See who's coming. I think I shall turn round and smile."