I have not!
Liar! So this is how youve 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-Dont-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 32 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 couldnt. 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. Ill get that much change out of all the money Ive lavished on you! he yelled. Tell me his name or Ill 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.
Theres some more change for you! she panted. Now, leave my bedroom!
Ill have that mans 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 dinstruction 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 Ill beat your face to a pulp!
I have no English lover.
Do you think, he went on heavily, disregarding her reply, that I dont know why you chose an Englishman? 34 You thought you could blackmail me, didnt you?
How? she demanded wearily.
Again he ignored her reply:
Is he one of the Embassy? he demanded. Is he some emissary of Greys? 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 youve got me, dont 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 youd 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 didnt you?
I dont know what you mean.
Dont 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 dOrdre?
Certainly.
I asked you that because Ferez Bey is notoriously in Germanys 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 dOrdre with German money for the purpose of carrying out German propaganda in a Paris daily paper?
I dont 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 dOrdre. It is drawn to your order; it bears your endorsement; the Mot dOrdre 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:
Thats 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 didnt know that Ferez Bey was sent across the frontier yesterday, did you? Your English spy didnt inform you last night, did he?
N-no.
You lie! You did know it! That was why you 36 stole away last night and met your jackal to sell him something besides yourself, this time! You knew they had arrested Ferez! I dont know how you knew it, but you did. And you told your lover. And both of you thought you had me at last, didnt you?
I what are you trying to say to me do to me? she stammered, losing colour for the first time.
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, Ive prepared for it. When they try you for espionage, theyll 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 dEblis? 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 Freunds 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 37 door. She wore the dress of a Finistère 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 dEblis, he remained a senator, an owner of many third-rate decorations, and of the Mot dOrdre.
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 38 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 moments 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 seas 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 sunsets rays penetrated to the rotunda and were quenched there in a flood of artificial light; and 41 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.