Alias the Lone Wolf Part 21

Strung by her words into a spirit of emulation, Lanyard achieved an adequate seeming of response to the pa.s.sion, feigned or real, with which the woman infused the patterned coquetry of their steps.

Between lips that stirred so little their movement must have been indiscernible, he asked: "Who?"

In the same manner, but in accents fraught with an emotion indecipherable but intense the reply came: "Don't talk! This is too divine ... Just dance!"

He obeyed, deliberately shut out of his thoughts the warning she had given him, and let himself go, body and mind, so that, a sway to the sensuous strains of that most sensuous of dances, the girl and the man for a s.p.a.ce seemed one with music that throbbed of love and longing, desire and denial, pursuit and retreat, surrender and conquest....

On a sonorous phrase it ceased. A flutter of applause ran round the tables. Lanyard mastered a sense of daze that he saw reflected in the opening eyes of the woman as she slipped from his arms. In an instant they were themselves once more, two completely self-contained children of sophistication, with superb insouciance making nothing of their public triumph in a rare and difficult performance.

On the way to their table they were intercepted by a woman who, with two cavaliers, had since the moment of her entrance been standing near the door of the restaurant, apparently spellbound with admiration.

Through a rising clatter of tongues her voice cut clearly but not at all unpleasantly.

"Athenais! It is I--Liane."

Inured as he was to the manners of an age which counts its women not dressed if they are not half undressed, and with his sensibilities further calloused by a night devoted to restaurants the entree to which, for women, seemed to be conditioned on at least semi-nudity, Lanyard was none the less inclined to think he had never seen, this side of footlights, a gown quite so daring as that which revealed the admirably turned person of the lady who named herself Liane. There was so little of it that, he reflected, its cost must have been something enormous. But in vain that scantiness of drapery: the white body rose splendidly out of its ineffective wrappings only to be overwhelmed by an incredible incrustation of jewellery: only here and there did bare hand's-breadths of flesh unadorned succeed in making themselves visible.

At the sound of her name Athenais turned with a perfectly indicated start of surprise which she promptly translated into a little, joyful cry. The living pillar of ivory, satin and precious stones ran into her arms, embraced her ardently, and kissed both her cheeks, then releasing her half-turned to Lanyard.

Glints of trifling malice winked behind the open interest of troubling, rounded eyes of violet. Lanyard knew himself known.

So he had sacrificed for nothing his beautiful beard!

He uttered a private but heartfelt "d.a.m.n!" and bowed profoundly as the woman, tapping Athenais on the arm with a fan crusted with diamonds, demanded:

"Present instantly, my dear, this gentleman who tangoes as I have never seen the tango danced before!"

Forestalling Athenais, Lanyard replied with a whimsical grimace: "Is one, then, so unfortunate as to have been forgotten by Madame la Comtesse de Lorgnes?"

With any other woman than Athenais Reneaux he would have hesitated to deal so bold an offensive stroke; but his confidence in her quickness of apprehension and her unshakable self-possession was both implicit and well-placed. For she received this overt notification of the success of his quest without one sign other than a look of dawning puzzlement.

"Madame la comtesse...?" she murmured with a rising inflection.

"But monsieur is mistaken," the other stammered, biting her lip.

"Surely one cannot have been so stupid!" Lanyard apologised.

"But this is Mademoiselle Delorme," Athenais said ... "Monsieur Paul Martin."

Liane Delorme! Those syllables were like a spoken spell to break the power of dark enchantment which had hampered Lanyard's memory ever since first sight of this woman in the Cafe de l'Univers at Nant. A great light began to flood his understanding, but he was denied time to advantage himself immediately of its illumination: Liane Delorme was quick to parry and riposte.

"How strange monsieur should think he had ever known me by a name ...

What was it? But no matter! For now I look more closely, I myself cannot get over the impression that I have known Monsieur--Martin, did you say?--somewhere, sometime ... But Paul Martin? Not unless monsieur has more than one name."

"Then it would seem that mademoiselle and I are both in error. The loss is mine."

That gun spiked, Lanyard began to breathe more freely. "It is not too late to make up that loss, monsieur." Liane Delorme was actually chuckling in appreciation of his readiness, pleased with him even in the moment of her own discomfiture; her eyes twinkling merrily at him above the fan with which she hid a convulsed countenance. "Surely two people so possessed with regret at never having known each other should lose no time improving their acquaintance! Dear Athenais: do ask us to sit at your table."

While the waiter fetched additional chairs, the woman made her escorts known: Messieurs Benouville et Le Brun, two extravagantly insignificant young men, exquisitely groomed and presumably wealthy, who were making the bravest efforts to seem unaware that to be seen with Liane Delorme conferred an unimpeachable cachet. Lanyard remarked, however, that neither ventured to a.s.sume proprietorial airs; while Liane's att.i.tude toward them was generally indulgent, if occasionally patronising and sometimes impatient.

Champagne frothed into fresh gla.s.ses. As soon as the band struck up another dance, Athenais drifted away in the arms of Monsieur Le Brun.

Liane gazed round the room, acknowledged the salutations of several friends, signalled gaily to a pair of mercenaries on the far side of the dancing floor, and issued peremptory orders to Benouville.

"Go, Chu-chu, and ask Angele to dance with you. She is being left to bore herself while Victor dances with Constance. Moreover, I desire to afflict Monsieur Martin with my confidences."

With the utmost docility Benouville effaced himself.

"Eh, bien, Monsieur d.u.c.h.emin!"

"Eh, bien, madame la comtesse?" Liane sipped at her champagne, making impudent eyes at Lanyard over the brim of her gla.s.s.

"By what appears, you have at last torn yourself away from the charming society of the Chateau de Montalais."

"As you see."

"That was a long visit you made at the chateau, my old one?"

"Madame la comtesse is well informed," Lanyard returned, phlegmatic.

"One hears what one hears."

"One had the misfortune to fall foul of an a.s.sa.s.sin," Lanyard took the trouble to explain.

"An a.s.sa.s.sin!"

"The same Apache who attacked--with others--the party from Montalais at Montpellier-le-Vieux."

"And you were wounded?"

Lanyard a.s.sented. The lady made a shocked face and uttered appropriate noises. "As you know," Lanyard added.

Liane Delorme pretended not to hear that last. "And the ladies of the chateau," she enquired--"they were sympathetic, one feels sure?"

"They were most kind."

"It was not serious, this wound--no?"

"Mademoiselle may judge when she knows I was unable to leave my bed for nearly three weeks."

"But what atrocity! And this Apache--?"

"Remains at large."

"Ah, these police!" And the lady described a sign of contempt that was wholly unladylike. "Still, you are well recovered, by the way you dance."

"One cannot complain."

"What an experience! Still--" Liane again buried her nose in her gla.s.s and regarded Lanyard with a look of mysterious understanding.

Re-emerging, she resumed: "Still, not without its compensations, eh, mon ami?"