Red Masquerade Part 4

Long and dark, it disguised her figure as completely as it covered her toilette. She nodded her satisfaction, and accepted the veil which she had desired to complete her disguise, a thing of Spanish lace, black and ample, like a mantilla. But before donning it she delayed one minute more before the mirror.

"Therese! Am I still beautiful?"

"Madame la princesse is always beautiful."

"As beautiful as I used to be?"

"But madame la princesse grows more lovely every day."

"Beautiful enough to-night, to keep out of jail, do you think?"

To the mirth in the voice of her mistress the maid responded with a smile demure and discreet.

"Oh, madame!" was all she said; but the manner of her saying it was rarely eloquent.

Sofia laughed lightly, and affectionately pinched the cheek of the maid.

"And you, my little one," she said in liquid French--"you yourself are too ravishingly pretty to keep out of trouble. Do you know that?"

Her little one looked more than ever demure as she enquired after the hidden meaning of madame la princesse.

"Because you will marry too soon, Therese--too soon some worthless man will persuade you to dedicate all those charms to him alone."

"Oh, madame!"

"Is it not so?"

"Who knows, madame?" said Therese, as who should say: "What must be, must."

"Then there is a man! I suspected as much."

"But, madame la princesse, is there not always a man?"

"Then beware!"

"Madame la princesse need not fear for me," Therese replied. "Me, my head is not so easily turned. There is always some man, naturally--there are so many men!--but when I marry, rest a.s.sured, it will be for something more."

With the compressed lips of self-approbation she deftly a.s.sisted her mistress to swathe her head in the mantilla-like veil.

"Something more than a man?" Sofia enquired through its folds. "What then?"

"Independence, madame la princesse."

"What an idea! Marriage and independence: how do you reconcile that paradox?"

"Madame la princesse means love, I think, when she speaks of marriage. But love--that is all over and done with when one marries. One is then ready to settle down; one has put by one's dot, and marries a worthy, industrious man with a little fortune of his own. With such a husband one collaborates in the maintenance of the menage and the management of a small business, something substantial if small. And so one ends one's days in comfortable companionship. That, madame la princesse, is the marriage for Therese! It may not sound romantic, madame, but it has this rare virtue--it lasts!"

VII

FAMILY REUNION

The London night was normal: that is to say, wet. Darkness had transformed the streets into vast sheets of black satin shot with golden strands and studded with lamp-posts like st.u.r.dy stems for ethereal blooms of golden haze. Within their areas of glow the air teemed with atoms of liquid gold.

The ring of hoofs on wet pavements was at once disturbing and inspiriting.

Alone in her hired hansom the Princess Sofia sat with the window raised, drinking deep of the soft damp air, finding it as heady as strange wine.

Under cover of the veil her eyes were brilliant with awareness of her audacity, her lips were parted with the promise of a smile.

She loved it all, she adored this mood of London: its nights of rain were sheer enchantment, arabesque, nights of secrecy and stealth, mystery, and romance under the rose. On nights such as this lovers prospered, adventures were to the venturesome, brave rewards to the bold.

For herself she was unafraid, she foretasted entire success. How should it be otherwise? Consider how famously chance had prospered her designs, playing into her hands the information that this Monsieur Lanyard was not at home, might not return till very late, and was expecting a call from somebody whom he desired to await his return in his rooms!

With such an open occasion, how could one fail?

Sofia asked only three minutes alone with the painting....

And if by any mishap she were caught, still she would not be dismayed. The letters were hers, were they not? They had been stolen from her, he had no right t.i.tle to them who had purchased only the picture which had served as their hiding-place. By all means, let him keep that stupid canvas; he could hardly refuse to let her have her letters, not if she pleaded her prettiest. And even if he should prove obtuse, ungenerous....

Her smile was definite and confident. She was beautiful--and Monsieur Lanyard was aware of that. Had she not, that afternoon, in the auction room, without his knowledge detected admiration in his eyes, a look warm with something more than admiration only?

He was impressionable, then. And it would be no distasteful task to play upon his susceptibilities. He was not only personally attractive ("magnetic" was the catch-word of the period), but if half that Lady Diantha had hinted concerning him were true, to make a conquest of Michael Lanyard would be a feather in the cap of any woman, to attempt it a temptation all but irresistible to one--like Sofia--in whose veins ran the ichor of progenitors to whom the scent of danger had been as breath of life itself. It was hardly conceivable; even now Sofia must smile at her friend's amiable endeavours to identify this mysterious monsieur with a celebrated and preposterous criminal.

It might be true that, as Lady Diantha had declared, wherever Michael Lanyard showed himself in open pursuit of his avowed avocation as a collector of rare works of art--in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, or where-not--there in due sequence the Lone Wolf would consummate one of his fantastic coups.

And it was indisputable that Lanyard was at present living in London, where for some time past the Lone Wolf had been perniciously busy; or else his bad name had been taken in vain by a baffled and exasperated Scotland Yard.

Again: Diantha had insisted that the Lone Wolf was by every evidence completely woman-proof; and there might be something in her contention that such an elusive yet spectacularly successful thief could hardly have won the high place he held in the annals of criminology and in the esteem of the sensation-loving public, if he were one who maintained normal relations with his kind.

Sooner or later (so ran Diantha's borrowed reasoning) the criminal who has close friends, a wife, a mistress, children, family ties of any sort, or even body-servants, must w.i.l.l.y-nilly repose confidence in one of these, and then inevitably will be betrayed. Depend upon envy, jealousy, spite, or plain venal disloyalty, if accident or inadvertence fail, to lay the law-breaker by the heels.

Therefore (Diantha argued) the Lone Wolf must be a confirmed solitary and misogynist--very much like this Monsieur Lanyard, according to reports which declared the latter to be a man who kept to himself, had many acquaintances and not one intimate, and was positively insulated against wiles of woman.

But--granting all this--it was none the less true that the utmost diligence, spurred by the pique, ill-will, and ambition of the police of all Europe, had failed as yet to forge any link between the supercriminal of the age and the distinguished connoisseur of art. Other than Lady Diantha and the gossips whose arguments she was retailing, never a soul (so far as Sofia knew) had ventured to breathe a breath of suspicion upon the good repute of Monsieur Lanyard.

In short, Diantha's conjectures had been entirely second-hand, and not even meant to be taken seriously.

And yet the suggestion had fastened firm hold upon the imagination of the Princess Sofia.

If it were true ... what an adventure!

There was unaccustomed light of daring in the eyes of the princess, unwonted colour tinted her cheeks.

The hansom stopped, discharged the fairest fare it had ever carried, and rattled off, leaving Sofia just a trifle daunted and dubious, the animation of her antic.i.p.ations something dashed by the uncompromising respectability, the self-conscious worthiness of Halfmoon Street.

Enfolded in the very heart of Mayfair, its brief length bounded on the north by Curzon Street (its name alone sufficient voucher for its character), on the south by Piccadilly (hereabouts somewhat oppressive with its hedge of stately clubs, membership in any one of which is equivalent to two years' unchallenged credit) Halfmoon Street is largely given over to furnished lodgings. But it doesn't advertise the fact, its landlords are apt to be retired butlers to the n.o.bility and gentry, its lodgers English gentlemen who have brought home livers from India, or a.s.sorted disabilities from all known quarters of the globe, and who desire nothing better than to lead steady-paced lives within walking distance of their favourite clubs.

So Halfmoon Street remains quietly estimable, a desirable address, and knows it, and doggedly means to hold fast to that repute.