Red Masquerade Part 26

"Yes--about that."

"Then you do care--?"

She was panicky with knowledge that somehow her emotions had managed to slip their moorings and get beyond her handling. It didn't help or mend matters much to hear her own voice stammering:

"Yes, of course, I--I don't want you to--to have to go away--"

Oh, the vanity of trying to hoodwink him who knew so well what she was now for the first time realizing!

"Because you like me a little, Princess Sofia?"

"Why--yes--of course I do--"

"Because you know I love you, dear."

And then she found herself clinging to Karslake; and his lips were warm upon her hands ...

So suddenly and at long last it came to Sofia, that Love for which all her days had been one long weariness of waiting, Love that brimmed with raptures what had been only aching emptiness and made the desert places to blossom as the rose. And the joy of it proved overmastering, sweeping her off her feet and dazing her, leaving her breathless and thoughtless but for the all-obscuring thought--at length she loved, and the one whom she loved loved her!

And for a s.p.a.ce she existed in an iridescent dream of happiness, without sense of relation to a material world, forgetful of the flight of time, lost to everything but her lover's arms and voice and lips.

It might have been five minutes, it might have been sixty, before she became aware that Karslake was gently disengaging her hands. "Dearest, dearest!" she heard him say. "We must be sensible. That was the front door, I'm afraid."

The meaning in his insistence presently began to penetrate, if vaguely, and she suffered him to go from her a pace or two. But, still a little blind with the beauty of the revelation that had been granted unto her, nothing that met her gaze seemed to be in true focus except her lover's face: even the countenance of Victor swam into her ken as if blurred by veils of mist, its dour, forbidding look had no significance to her intelligence. Victor himself, for that matter, was a figure without real consequence other than as a symbol of the old order, the tedious old ways of the world from which she had magically escaped.

A ring of sarcastic apology provided the only clue she got to the import of Victor's words. Sobered a trifle, her mental processes somewhat less incoherent, still she knew she would hardly regain her poise until she was alone. And breathing an excuse, she left the room with such dignity as she could muster.

In the hall, with the closed door behind her, she paused to collect herself. Then she missed furs and gloves and handbag and, remembering that she had left them in the study, for some obscure reason imagined she must have them before proceeding to her room.

Much more mistress of herself by now, it never occurred to Sofia that there could be any reason why she should hesitate about returning or feel embarra.s.sed before Victor. True, he had surprised them, Sofia was not at all sure he hadn't actually seen her in Karslake's arms. But what of that?

Love like hers was nothing to be ashamed of; and that Victor could reasonably object to her giving her heart to one of his secretaries was something far from her thought just then.

She put a hand to the k.n.o.b, turned it, and swung the door open--all on impulse--then faltered, transfixed by the tableau before the fireplace.

The door was silent on its hinges, and Karslake's back was to her. Victor, on the other hand, facing both Karslake and the door, unquestionably saw Sofia, but pretended not to, and had his say out with Karslake in a manner bitterly cynical.

"... sadly in error if you flatter yourself I pay you a wage to make love to Sofia behind my back."

"Sorry, sir." Karslake's tone was level, respectful but firm. "Your instructions were, I believe, to win her confidence. Well--I have always found love the one sure key to a woman's confidence. Of course, if I had understood you cared one way or the other--"

Sofia heard no more: unconsciously she had closed the door, at one and the same time shutting from her sight Victor's exultant sneer and from her hearing the words with which the man whom she loved had d.a.m.ned himself irretrievably and dashed her spirit from radiant pinnacles of ecstasy into the profoundest black abyss of shame and despair.

Primitive instinct bade the stricken girl seek her room and hide her suffering there; but the shock had stunned her to the point of physical weakness. Already a hand was pressed above her heart, that ached cruelly; and as she moved to cross to the foot of the staircase her knees gave under her. She clutched the newel-post for support, waiting to find strength for the ascent.

From the shadowed back part of the hall the man Nogam moved hastily into view, his features twisted in a grimace of concern as he recognized the bleak misery of Sofia's face. His voice sounded strangely thin and remote.

"Is there anything the matter, miss?--anything I can do?"

She contrived to shake her head slightly and utter an inarticulate sound of negation, then began slowly to mount the stairs.

Below, Nogam stood watching, in a pose of indecision, as if tempted to follow and offer the support of an arm lest she fall, restrained only by fear of a rebuff. But Sofia's leaden limbs carried her safely to the upper landing, then on to the blessed shelter of her room, where she collapsed upon a chaise-longue and there lay in a stirless huddle, dry of eye but deaf to the plaintive entreaties of Chou Nu and numb to all sensation but the anguish of her humiliated heart.

XII

SUSPECT

Toward mid-evening the man Victor Va.s.silyevski and his creature Sturm sat where the lamp of hand-wrought bra.s.s made the top of the teakwood table an oasis of light amid a waste of shadows, their heads together over a vast glut of books and papers--maps printed and sketched, curious diagrams, works of reference, doc.u.ments all dark with columns of figures and cabalistic writings intelligible only to initiated eyes.

They had the study all to themselves. Nevertheless, when they spoke it was in the discreet pitch of those who deal in fatal secrets. At a distance of two paces only a lip-reader could have caught the substance of their communications, and even such a one must have failed unless equally at home in German and in English.

Aside from these occasional and circ.u.mspect voices, and the busy rustle of a steel pen in the hand of Sturm, the quiet of the room had a tolerably constant background of sound in a subdued whisper punctuated by m.u.f.fled clicks, emanating from the bronze casket that housed the telautographic apparatus.

From time to time, as this noise temporarily suspended, Victor would get up, read what the mechanical stylus had inscribed, tear off the paper, and return to his chair.

Some of the messages thus received he made known to Sturm, who invariably acknowledged this courtesy with effusive grat.i.tude, sometimes adding a few words of contented comment. Other messages Victor chose to keep to himself, silently setting fire to them and adding their brittle ashes to those of their predecessors on the brazen tray provided for the purpose. At such times Sturm would bend lower over his work. But Victor was well able to guess what resentment glimmered in the eyes so studiously averted; and his cold, sardonic smile more than once commented, unknown to Sturm, upon the accuracy with which he read the mean workings of his "secretary's" mind.

The buzz of a muted bell presently interrupted the even tenor of their industry, causing Sturm to start sharply, drop his pen, and slue round in his chair, turning to Victor a livid face in which his dark eyes of a fanatic were live embers of excitement.

Without a sign to show he shared or even was aware of Sturm's emotion, Victor deliberately fished from beneath the table a telephone instrument, unhooked the receiver, and p.r.o.nounced a conventional phrase of greeting. To this he added a short "Yes," and after listening quietly for some seconds, "Very good--in twenty minutes, then." Wasting no more time on the author of the call, he hung up, returned the telephone to its place of concealment, and helped himself to a cigarette before deigning to acknowledge Sturm's persistent stare.

Then, elevating his eyebrows in mild impatience, he made the laconic announcement:

"Eleven."

Sturm's mouth twitched nervously, his eyes burned with a keener fire.

"Coming here? To-night?"

"Yes."

"Then"--a gaunt hand described a gesture of agitation--"the hour strikes!"

Victor looked bored.

"Who knows?" he replied, as who should say: "Does it matter?"

"But--Gott in Himmel--!"

"Sturm," Victor interposed, critically, "if you Bolsheviki were a trifle more consistent, one might repose greater faith in your sincerity. But when one hears you deny the Deity in one breath and call on him by name in the next--!"

"A mere mode of speech," Sturm muttered.

"If you must invoke a spiritual patron, why not Satan? Or don't you believe in the Powers of Darkness, either?"

"I believe in you."