Red Masquerade Part 36

"I 'umbly 'ope so, sir, and do my best to be, accordin' to my lights."

"Glad to hear it. Now cut along, or you'll miss the up train."

Long after Nogam had left the memory of their talk continued to afford Victor an infinite amount of private entertainment.

"A religious man!" he would jeer to himself. "Then--may your G.o.d help you, Nogam!"

Some thought of the same sort may well have troubled Nogam's mind as he sat in an otherwise untenanted third-cla.s.s compartment blinking owlishly over the example of Victor's command of the intricacies of Chinese writing.

He was happily free of surveillance for the first time in his waking hours of many days. The Chinese chauffeur had driven him to the station, and had furthermore lingered to see that Nogam did not fail to board it. And Nogam felt reasonably safe in a.s.suming that he would not approach the house near Queen Anne's Gate without seeing (for the mere trouble of looking) a second and an entirely gratuitous shadow attach itself to him with the intention of sticking as tenaciously as that which G.o.d had given him. But the next hour was all his own.

His study of the Chinese phonograms at length resulted in the transformation of his careworn face by a slowly dawning smile, the gleeful smile of a mischief-loving child. And when he had worked for a while on the message, touching up the skillfully drawn characters with a pencil the mate to that which Victor had used, he sat back and laughed aloud over the result of his labours, with some appreciation of the glow that warms the c.o.c.kles of the artist's heart when his deft pen has raised a cheque from tens to thousands, and he reviews a good job well done.

The torn envelope which had held the message to Shaik Tsin lay at his feet.

Nogam had not bothered to worry it open so carefully that it might be resealed without inviting comment; though that need not have been a difficult matter, thanks to the dampness of the night air.

Of the envelope addressed to Sturm, however, he was more considerate; to violate its integrity and seal it up again was an undertaking that required the nicest handling. Nor was it accomplished much before the train drew into Charing Cross.

Outside the station taxis were few and drivers arrogant; and all the 'buses were packed to the guards with law-abiding Londoners homeward bound from theatres and halls. So Nogam dived into the Underground, to come to the surface again at St. James's Park station, whence he trotted all the way to Queen Anne's Gate, arriving at his destination in a phase of semi-prostration which a person of advancing years and doddering habits might have antic.i.p.ated.

Such fidelity in characterization deserved good reward, and had in it a rare stroke of fortune; for as he drew up to it, the door opened, and Sturm came out, saw Nogam, and stopped short.

"Thank 'Eaven, sir, I got 'ere in time," the butler panted. "If I'd missed you, Prince Victor wouldn't 'ave been in 'arf a wax. 'E told me I must find you to-night if I 'ad to turn all Lunnon inside out."

Pressing the message into Sturm's hand, he rested wearily against the casing of the door, his body shaken by laboured breathing, and--while Sturm, with an exclamation of excitement, ripped open the envelope--surveyed the dark and rain-wet street out of the corners of his eyes.

Across the way a slinking shadow left the sidewalk and blended indistinguishably with the crowded shadows of an areaway.

In a voice more than commonly rich with accent, Sturm demanded sharply:

"What is this? I do not understand!"

He shook in Nogam's face the half-sheet of notepaper on which the Chinese phonograms were drawn.

"Sorry, sir, but I 'aven't any hidea. Prince Victor didn't tell me anything except there would be no answer, and I was to 'urry right back to Frampton Court." Nogam peered myopically at the paper. "It might be 'Ebrew, sir," he hazarded, helpfully--"by the looks of it, I mean. I suppose some private message, 'e thought you'd understand."

"Hebrew, you fool! d.a.m.n your impudence! Do you take me for a Jew?"

"Beg pardon, sir--no 'arm meant."

"No," Sturm declared, "it's Chinese."

"Then likely Prince Victor meant you to ask Shaik Tsin to translate it for you, sir."

"Probably," Sturm muttered. "I'll see."

"Yes, sir. Good-night, sir."

Without acknowledging this civility, Sturm turned back into the house and slammed the door. Nogam lingered another moment, then shuffled wearily down the steps and toward the nearest corner.

Across the street the voluntary shadow detached itself from cover in the areaway, and skulked after him. He paid no heed. But when the shadow rounded the corner, it saw only a dark and empty street, and pulled up with a grunt of doubt. Simultaneously something not unlike a thunderbolt for force and fury was launched, from the dark shelter of a doorway near by, at its devoted head. And as if by magic the shadow took on form and substance to receive the onslaught. A fist, that carried twelve stone of bone and sinew jubilant with realization of the hour for action so long deferred, found shrewdly the heel of a jawbone, just beneath the ear. Its victim dropped without a cry, but the impact of the blow was loud in the nocturnal stillness of that bystreet, and was echoed in magnified volume by the crack of a skull in collision with a convenient lamppost.

Followed a swift patter of fugitive feet.

Tempered by veils of mist, the lamplight fell upon a face upturned from a murmurous gutter, a yellow face, wide and flat, with lips grinning back from locked teeth and eyes frozen in a staring question to which no living man has ever known the answer.

The pattering footsteps grew faint in distance and died away, the street was still once more, as still as Death....

In the study of Prince Victor Va.s.silyevski the man Sturm put an impatient question:

"Well? What you make of it--hein?"

Shaik Tsin looked up from a paper which he had been silently examining by the light of the brazen lamp.

"Number One says," he reported, smiling sweetly, while his yellow forefinger moved from symbol to symbol of the picturesque writing: _'"The blow falls to-night. Proceed at once to the gas works and do that which you know is to be done.'"_

"At last!" The voice of the Prussian was full and vibrant with exultancy.

He threw back his head with a loud laugh, and his arm described a wild, dramatic gesture.

"At last--der Tag! To-night the Fatherland shall be avenged!"

Shaik Tsin beamed with friendliest sympathy Sturm turned to go, took three hurried steps toward the door, and felt himself jerked back by a silken cord which, descending from nowhere, looped his lean neck between chin and Adam's apple. His cry of protest was the last articulate sound he uttered.

And the last sounds he heard, as he lay with face hideously congested and empurpled, eyeb.a.l.l.s starting from their deep sockets, and swollen tongue protruding, were words spoken by Shaik Tsin as that one knelt over him, one hand holding fast the ends of the bowstring that had cut off forever the blessed breath of life, the other flourishing a half-sheet of notepaper.

"Fool! Look, fool, and read what vengeance visits a fool who is fool enough to play the spy!"

He brandished the papers before those glazing eyeb.a.l.l.s.

In an eldritch cackle he translated:

_"'He who bears this message is a Prussian dog, police trained, a spy. Let his death be a dog's, cruel and swift.--Number One.'"_

XVIII

ORDEAL

Reviewing the day, as she undressed and prepared for bed, Sofia told herself she had never yet lived through one so wearing, and thought the history of its irksome hours all too legible in the lack-l.u.s.tre face that looked back from the mirror when Chou Nu uncoifed her hair and brushed its burnished tresses.

Though she had slept late, in fact till noon and something after, her sleep had been queerly haunted and unhappy, she could not remember how or why, and she had awakened already ennuye, with a mind incoherently oppressed, without relish for the promise of the day--in a mood altogether as drear as the daylight that waited upon her unclosing eyes.

Main strength of will had not availed to dispel these vapours, neither did their melancholy yield to the distraction provided by first acquaintance with ways of a world unique alike in Sofia's esteem and her experience.

She who had theretofore known only in day-dreams the life of light frivolity and fashion which found feverish and trumpery reflection at Frampton Court, was neither equipped nor disposed to be hypercritical in the first hours of her debut there; and at any other time, in any other temper, she knew, she must have been swept off her feet by its exciting appeal to her innate love of luxury and sensation. But the sad truth was, it all seemed to her unillusioned vision an elaborate sham built up of tinsel, paste, and paint; and the warmth of her welcome at the hands, indeed in the very arms, of Lady Randolph West, and the success her youth and beauty scored for her--commanding in all envy, admiration, cupidity, or jealousy, according to age, s.e.x, and temporal state of servitude--did nothing to mitigate the harshness of those first impressions.

If anything her depression grew more perversely morbid the more she was catered to, courted, flattered, and cajoled. Something had happened, she could never guess what, perhaps some mysterious reaction effected through the chemistry of last night's slumber, to turn her vivid zest in life to ashes in her mouth, so that nothing seemed to matter any more.