Here and Hereafter Part 33

"All right," said the doctor, unperturbed. "Keep your hair on. I've got some tobacco prepared with hasheesh upstairs. It is some that I had to confiscate. I'll give you a pipeful and you can try it after dinner.

Smoke it in your own room, though--not downstairs."

"Leave it alone," growled Brookes.

"Thanks very much," said Lake to the doctor. "I'll come up with you now and get it."

The three men rose. As they did so the pretty girl from Cincinnati stepped up to the doctor.

"Say, doctor--listen to me. Am I to give that man five dollars and a half for this?"

The doctor took the scarab in his hand and examined it.

"No, Miss Jocelyn," he said.

"Why not? I call that a dandy scarab. White amethyst. Genuine antique."

"It is not white amethyst and I know the man who made it--the day before yesterday. If you want it for a toy, ten piastres is an outside price.

The man will take that."

"My!" exclaimed Miss Jocelyn. "Thank you vurry much," and she returned to her negotiations.

The three men pa.s.sed through into the hall.

II

After dinner, Brookes and Dr Henson-Blake went off to see a friend at the Savoy. They left with grim half-chaffing injunctions to young Lake to take care of himself. Lake, a little sulky, settled himself in one corner of the hall to smoke a cigarette before his experiment.

And suddenly Miss Jocelyn, whom he did not know, came up to him.

She was a dark girl, pale-skinned and red-lipped. She had a little of that jaunty, almost slangy American air of being able to take care of herself. But she also carried the impression that this air was superficial, and underneath it there might be poetry of a rather volcanic order. She sat down quietly on the other side of the table, and said:

"Do you not know me, Mr Lake?"

Lake said that at any rate he was charmed to have the privilege of making her acquaintance.

"But," she went on, "I want you to behave just as if you had known me for some time. My Aunt Esmeralda is watching us from away back, and she's pretty 'cute. Don't smile too much. Offer me a cigarette or order some coffee for me, as if it were an ordinary thing that you had often done before for me. Don't look at me all the time--look away now and then. I'll tell you why I'm doing this directly."

Lake did his best to act the part, and to take things more simply. He was consumed with curiosity, and for that reason he said, as he lighted her cigarette, "It is so nice of you to do this--to take pity on my loneliness--that I feel the reason why does not matter at all. I am unquestioningly contented with things as they are."

"I just want to tell you. I know Dr Henson-Blake--we were on the tourist boat together. He's playing it low down on you. That tobacco he gave you is ordinary tobacco. He wants to make you say afterwards that you got a lot of funny sensations out of it, and then he'll say there was no hasheesh in it at all, and just laugh at you. You needn't ask me how I know, but it's the truth."

"I believe you. The possibility of it had occurred to me. Well, I have only to tell him that I got no sensations at all, and that's all over with this little joke."

"Yes," said Miss Jocelyn, "but you can get back on him. That's better."

"How?"

"Spin him a long story. Tell him you smoked it and it gave you visions.

Then when he's finished with his laugh, give him his tobacco back again to prove that you knew his game all the time."

"Excellent." He took from his pocket a little box in which the tobacco was placed, put it in one of the hotel envelopes and sealed it and dated it. "But the triumph must be yours," he said.

She leaned forward seriously. "Listen to me. You don't want to mention my name--you don't even know it, but I'm Irene Jocelyn. I've put confidence in you. See, he's not got to know that I've had anything to do with it. You promise me that?"

"Certainly. But I'm puzzled. Why do you come along to save me from making myself ridiculous? It's very kind of you. I'm very glad you've done it. But why?"

She hesitated and blushed slightly. "For myself, perhaps."

It seemed promising; he was emboldened. "What a pity I have wasted my time by not meeting you before? Have you been long in Cairo?"

"A few days," she said absent-mindedly. "My!" she exclaimed. "If I don't go back to my Aunt Esmeralda right now, there's going to be a deal of trouble. I'll say good-night to you, Mr Lake."

He was rather staggered. "Good-night," he said. "But I hope this is not the last time--"

"It depends. Mind that when he's about you don't know me."

He watched her as she went up the hall. Her bright smile came off very easily. She looked a little tired and hunted.

That night he could come to no satisfactory explanation. He could only decide to do exactly as he had been told, and await events. In the meantime the girl's face haunted him, and always as it had been when she did not know that he could see her--always with that tired and hunted look. What had been her story? What was inside her heart and mind? What cards was she playing? Why had she spoken to him? The questions were endless. His interest in her, strangely powerful, kept him for long awake.

III

The little farce was played out with great success next morning. Lake told a beautiful story, and did it the better because Irene Jocelyn, breakfasting alone at the next table, was listening intently. After smoking the hasheesh he had heard the Sphinx talking. Then a black and limitless ocean had broken over it, and out of the ocean a strange white woman had crept and cut herself with a gold-handled knife.

"Good," said the doctor, with dry triumph. "And the more interesting because you have never had any hasheesh at all."

"No?" asked Lake. "I thought that would be it." He tossed the envelope across to the doctor. "You'll find your tobacco inside--how do you give it that green colour? I think the score is with me."

The doctor was angry, the more so because Brookes was undisguisedly amused at the failure. But he made one shrewd guess. "If I had mentioned the thing to a solitary soul I should have been certain that it had been given away to you. As it is, I can't see how you came to think of it for yourself. It's quite unlike you."

IV

For the next two days Irene Jocelyn successfully avoided young Lake, and thereby drove him to the verge of madness. It even occurred to him to play a bold stroke and ask the doctor to introduce him. But he had the reasonable conviction that that introduction would do him more harm than good with this strange girl. He grew to hate Henson-Blake; it was evident that while he was there Irene would not speak. He invented excuses to get him out of the way.

On the third day she came up to him in the hall with hand outstretched.

"I just want to say good-bye to you, Mr Lake," she said. "We leave this afternoon."

"Won't you tell me anything before you go? I can find no reason why you should have interested yourself in my defence. Still less can I find any reason why you should have avoided me ever since?"

"But I wasn't interested in you. You're not--what do you say?--not on in this act. Didn't I tell you that I was doing it for myself?"

"Yes. You are clever--you found out the doctor's trick."

"I know him. I told you that I met him on the tourist boat. I knew what he would do."