Pink Gods and Blue Demons Part 6

"I have never noticed it," was the stony answer.

"Of course you haven't." Valeria became grave. "And of course Mrs Solano is making a mistake--"

"I am not making a mistake. I am certain that the necklace is mine, and I insist upon examining it." Mrs Solano spoke with the firmness of a woman who is accustomed to know what she means to do, and to do it.

Valeria, speaking very gravely, said:

"I think you are acting in a very strange manner, Mrs Solano, and later you will probably regret it very much." She was standing in the doorway, and she now turned her head and looked into the ballroom.

Immediately she added: "But as you have gone so far, I, as a friend of Mrs Temple's, must insist that the matter be put right. Some responsible person must be called in to see the necklace with you, and relieve my poor little friend of any further unpleasantness. Mr Quelch is just the man to do this, and I see him over there in the ballroom.

Please all remain here while I fetch him."

She was only two or three seconds away, and during her absence the three women stood still as though turned to stone. Quelch and Mrs Cork made their way across the ballroom, their heads bent in conversation.

Presently they emerged through the door by which the three awaited.

"I have explained everything to Mr Quelch," said Mrs Cork quietly.

"Mrs Temple, will you please hand him the necklace and he and Mrs Solano can go and look at it quietly in his sitting-room."

"This is all very mysterious," said Quelch in his charming voice. "But I've no doubt we can clear it up immediately."

Valeria Cork had lifted the necklace quietly over Loree's head.

"It will be perfectly safe with Mr Quelch," she said in a low voice. A minute after she put her arm through Loree's. "I hear the 'cup' is delicious and I am so thirsty," she said. "Let's go and have some."

She drew Loree away in one direction and Quelch and Mrs Solano went in another. Mrs Solano's friend, who throughout the proceedings had never spoken a word, remained standing like a pillar of salt, in the verandah.

Loree plunged once more into the gay pool of melody and movement. With a little champagne in her head, and her heels as light as air, she managed to throw off the memory of the disagreeable incident that had ruffled the pleasant surface of the evening... but at the back of her mind fright was lurking still, and every now and then it would clutch at her heart with an icy hand that almost stilled its beating. Then, shivering, she would wonder what was taking place in Quelch's sitting-room and why he and Mrs Solano did not reappear.

Time went on. It had been somewhere about half past midnight when they went away, and at two o'clock there was still no sign of them. Mrs Temple was thankful for the distraction offered by the company of a delightful man of about forty-five whom young Dalkeith had introduced.

He was a late-comer having arrived only in time for the ball, and at once with unerring instinct made a bee line for the prettiest woman in the room. His tongue had a witty twist and his eye under a black-ribboned eye-gla.s.s was blue and merry as a boy's. He seemed not to have a care in the world and kept Loree so amused that she almost forgot all cares of her own. Moreover his step suited hers to perfection and while she was dancing with him she thought of nothing.

Her mind was a blank except for the delicious feeling of bliss in rhythmical movement.

She was resting after a dance with this man whose name she did not know when one of the hotel servants came up and addressed him in a low voice.

"Mr Quelch would like to speak to you, Sir, in his private sitting-room."

A shade of annoyance crossed the face of Mrs Temple's companion.

"Very well," he answered brusquely, then turned to her, "I wish people would not want to talk business out of business hours!" he remarked with a tinge of impatience. "However, I shall be back in ten minutes or so, Mrs Temple. You won't give the ninth waltz to any one else, will you?

And please don't forget that I am to have that 'third extra,' if there is one. It's a promise, isn't it?"

"Very well, we'll look upon it as a promise," she smiled. But when the ninth waltz started he had not returned to claim it, and she did not know with whom to be most vexed--Quelch, or her missing partner.

Beautiful Loree was not accustomed to bloom unsought in the _role_ of wall-flower, and even though she was soon descried and besieged for the remainder of the waltz her vanity was hurt by the incident. She put a small rod in pickle for the defaulting partner when he _should_ turn up, and the promise of the 'third extra' was promptly bestowed elsewhere.

But the dance went gaily on and the recalcitrant one did not return to receive his punishment. She thought it very strange of him. Also her vexation with Heseltine Quelch increased. Surely if the latter had finished his interview with Mrs Solano he ought at least to come back to report and return the necklace, instead of sending for a business acquaintance and launching into some other affair... incidentally robbing her of the best dancing partner she had ever had! It really was too tiresome of him. She resolved to treat him pretty coolly for his sins.

But up to the last note of the last "extra" there was no sign of him, and unease began, once more, to creep into her mind. What had happened?

She was standing near the verandah door when the final bar of G.o.d Save the King crashed out. In the second of silence that followed a sharp report was heard from the garden--a strange, unusual sound that made women jump and men run hurriedly through the doors. The garden was dimly luminant with the promise of was that men discovered out there among dawn, yet not light enough to show what it the roses. One or two women devoured by curiosity began to push forward, but returning men barred the way. There were murmurs of an accident. People with good eyesight imagined they saw a slow procession moving through the grounds.

Suddenly Quelch appearing from the gloom of trees and shrubs walked into the brightly-lit verandah. Loree forgot her grievances against him and ran to meet him.

"What has happened? Do tell me, Mr Quelch. I feel so frightened."

"Nothing," he murmured rea.s.suringly--"at least nothing you can help. An unfortunate accident. A fellow fooling with a revolver, out there, has wounded himself rather badly."

"Oh, poor fellow--"

"Who is it?--"

"What a strange thing to be playing with a revolver at this hour!"

"Where is he hurt?--"

The women were all speaking at once, in great excitement and curiosity, but Quelch's calm manner began to rea.s.sure them. Though not able to tell them much, he disclosed the belief that the wound was not fatal, and gently advised every one to go to bed. Loree was one of the first to follow his good counsel. As she moved away he stepped beside her for an instant.

"Oh! Mrs Temple, it was quite all right about the necklace of course.

Mrs Solano is immensely sorry to have made such a mistake, and is writing to you in the morning."

"Oh... thank you," stammered Loree, turning very pink.

"Mrs Cork has it, and will return it to you," added Quelch, then turned back to the few still questioning women who lingered, and Loree hastened to her room.

Valeria Cork was not awaiting her as she had hoped. The last seen of that lady--who did not dance--was at a bridge table in the lounge, brooding (to judge by her looks) over a bad hand and a bad partner.

Well, no doubt she would arrive presently. In the meantime Loree stood waiting in a state of almost painful relief. It had been a glorious evening. As a woman she had achieved _un succes fou_ by her beauty and her clothes. She had lit many little fires in the eyes of men--hungry little fires of longing and desire and admiration such as most women think it no shame to light and leave burning. But through it all she had felt a consuming fear about the diamonds. That horrible incident had shaken her through and through, and come near to spoiling her pleasure in the rest of life. And now since Quelch had spoken the words that put an end to her suspense she allowed herself for a moment to realise the terror of what might have been if Mrs Solano had been able to make good her claim. What a frightful scandal might have ensued! ...

a scandal that would surely have reached Pat's ears--her Pat so dear and trusting! He seemed to grow suddenly very dear as she sat there waiting and wondering: dear as things departed for ever out of reach are dear: dear as the dead!

A soft tap came on the door and a softer whisper.

"Are you asleep, Mrs Temple?"

She rushed to open it. Mrs Cork stood there.

"I thought you were in bed and asleep!"

"No," stammered Loree. "I was just going to undress."

"I only wanted to bring you this," said Mrs Cork lightly, and handed something to her in a glittering heap. "Of course it was all a mistake of that silly Mrs Solano's. Mr Quelch was very angry with her, but she is extremely penitent, I believe, and going to write you a letter of abject apology in the morning."

Loree took the necklace without a word. Mrs Cork gave her a strange look, then she said "Good-night" abruptly and went swiftly down the corridor.

Loree locked the door and returned to her dressing-table. Very slowly she let the necklace ripple out of her hands through her slim fingers on to the white cloth. It lay a heap of glory, winking at her. At first she hated it. It had given her some terrible moments. She had a mind to fling it through the windows into the garden below and let who would find it and keep it. But she looked at it too long, and once more it wove its magic round her heart, round her mind, round her senses and her conscience. At last she took it up and kissed it.

"Oh, my darling!" she cried. "If I had lost you!"

Suddenly it occurred to her to look at the clasp.

Then her face grew very pale, for strange to say there _were_ two blue diamonds on either side of it... two stones of a livid brilliance sending out piercing rays of azure light and seeming to guard that little gate of platinum which held the chain together. It seemed an extraordinary coincidence! What was it that Mrs Solano had said about "defects" and a "Death's head"? She raised the chain high to the light and gazed intently into the heart of each. And then her own heart gave a beat and seemed to wait a little. For in one of those blue diamonds there were three tiny dots that gave back the curious illusion of a squinting, grinning Death's head.