Red Masquerade Part 9

"And what shall one say of madame la princesse?"

She could but laugh; and laughter rings the death-knell of constraint.

But Lanyard remembered uneasily that somebody--Solomon or some other who must have led an interesting life--had remarked that the lips of a strange woman are smoother than oil.

"None the less, monsieur, I am deeply in your debt."

His smile of impersonal courtesy failed. He was becoming more sensitive than he liked to her charm and the warm sentiment she was giving out to him. This strange access in her of haunting loveliness, the gentle shadows that lay beneath her wide--yet languorous eyes, the almost imperceptible tremor of her sweetly fashioned lips, all troubled him profoundly. He exerted himself to break the spell upon his senses which this woman, wittingly or not, was weaving. But the effort was at best half-hearted.

"I am well repaid," he said a bit stiffly, "by the knowledge that the honour of madame la princesse is safe."

Sofia laughed breathlessly. Somehow her hands had found the way to his. Her glance wavered and fell.

"But is it?" she asked in a tone so intimate that it was barely audible.

And she laughed once more. "I am not so sure ... as long as monsieur is here."

Lanyard's mouth twitched, slow colour mounted in his face, the light in his eyes was lambent. He found himself looking deep into other eyes that were like pools of violet shadow troubled by a deep surge and resurge of feeling for which there was no name. Aware that they revealed more than he ought to know, he sought to escape them by bending his lips to Sofia's hands.

Sighing softly, she resigned them to his kisses.

IX

PAID IN FULL

It was late when Lanyard got home, but not too late: when he entered his living-room enough life lingered in the embers in the grate to betray to him a feline shape on all-fours creeping toward his bedchamber door. As he switched up the lights it bounded to its feet and dived through the portieres with such celerity that he saw little more of it than coat-tails level on the wind.

Dropping hat and canvas, Lanyard gave chase and overhauled the marauder as he was clambering out through the open window, where a firm hand on his collar checked his preparations to drop half a dozen feet to the flagged court.

Victor swore fretfully and lashed out a random fist, which struck Lanyard's cheek a glancing blow that carried just enough sting to kindle resentment.

So the virtuous householder was rather more than unceremonious about yanking the princely housebreaker inside and lending him a foot to accelerate his return to the living-room; where Victor brought up, on all-fours again, in almost precisely the spot from which he had risen.

He bounced up, however, with a surprising amount of animation and ambition, and flew back to the offensive with flailing fists. In this his judgment was grievously in fault. Lanyard sidestepped, nipped a wrist, twitched it smartly up between the man's shoulder-blades (with a wrench that won a grunt of agony), caught the other arm from behind by the hollow of its elbow, and held his victim helpless--though ill-advised enough to continue to hiss and spit and squirm and kick.

A heel that struck Lanyard's shin earned Victor a shaking so thoroughgoing that he felt the teeth rattle in his jaws. When it was suspended, he was breathless but thoughtful, and offered no objection to being searched.

Lanyard relieved him of a revolver and a dirk, then with a push sent Victor reeling to the table, where he stood panting, quivering, and glaring murder, while his captor put the dagger away and examined the firearm.

"Wicked thing," he commented--"loaded, too. Really, monsieur le prince should be more careful. One of these fine days, if you don't stop playing with such weapons, one of these will go off right in your hand--and the next high-light in your history will be when the judge says: 'And may the Lord have mercy on your soul!'"

Victor confided his sentiments to a handkerchief with which he was mopping his face. Lanyard sat down and wagged a reproving head.

"Didn't catch," he said; "perhaps it's just as well, though; sounded like bad words. Hope I'm mistaken, of course: princes ought to set impressionable plebeians a better pattern."

He c.o.c.ked a critical eye. "You're a sight, if you don't mind my saying so--look as if the sky had caved in on you. May one ask what happened? Did it stub its toe and fall?"

Victor suspended operations with the handkerchief to bend upon his tormentor a louring, distrustful stare. His head was still heavy, hot, and painful, his mental processes thick with lees of coma; but now he began to appreciate, what naturally seemed apparent, that Lanyard must be unacquainted with the cause of his injuries.

A searching look round the room confirmed him in this error. The canvas lay where Lanyard had dropped it on entering, not in the spot where Victor remembered seeing it last, but where conceivably an unheeded kick might have sent it in the course of his struggle with Sofia. She must have forgotten it, then, when she fled from what she probably thought was murder, and what might well have been.

He was much too sore and shaken to be subtle; and the general trend of his conjectures was perfectly legible to Lanyard, who without delay set himself to conjure away any lingering suspicion of his guilelessness.

"Not squiffy, are you, by any chance?" he enquired with the kindliest interest. "You look as if you'd wound up a spree by picking a fight with a bobby. Your cheek's cut and all (shall we say, in deference to the well-known prejudices of the dear B.P.?) ensanguined. Sit down and pull yourself together before you try to explain to what I owe this honour--and so forth."

He got up, clapped a hand on Prince Victor's shoulder, and steered him into an easy chair.

"Anything more I can do to put you at your ease? Would a brandy and soda help, do you think?"

The suggestion was acceptable: Victor signified as much with an ungracious mumble. Lanyard fetched gla.s.ses, a decanter, a siphon-bottle, and supplied his guest with a liberal hand before helping himself.

Victor took the drink without a word of thanks and gulped it down noisily.

Lanyard drank sparingly, then crossed the room to a bell-push. Seeing his finger on it Prince Victor started from his chair, but Lanyard hospitably waved him back.

"Don't go yet," he pleaded. "You've only just dropped in, we haven't had half a chance to chat. Besides, you mustn't forget I've got your pistol and your dirk and the upper hand and a sustaining sense of moral superiority and no end of other advantages over you."

"Why," the prince demanded, nervously--"why did you ring?"

"To call a cab for you, of course. I don't imagine you want to walk home--do you?--in your present state of shocking disrepair. Of course, if you'd rather ... But do sit down: compose yourself."

"Let me be," the other snapped as Lanyard offered good-naturedly to thrust him back into the chair. "I am--quite composed."

"That's good! Excellent! Hand steady enough to write me a cheque, do you think?"

"What the devil!"

"Oh, come now! Don't go off your bat so easily. I'm only going to do you a service--"

"d.a.m.n your impudence! I want no services of you!"

"Oh, yes you do!" Lanyard insisted, unabashed--"or you will when you learn what a kind heart I've got. Now do be nice and stop protesting! You see, you've touched my heart. I'd no idea you were so pa.s.sionate about that painting. If I had for one instant imagined you cared enough about it to burglarize my rooms ... But now that I do understand, my dear fellow, I wouldn't deny you for worlds; I make you a free present of it, at the price I paid--twenty thousand and one hundred guineas--exacting no bonus or commission whatever. You'll find blank cheques in the upper right-hand drawer of my desk there; fill in one to my order, and the Corot's yours."

For a moment longer the prince stared, hate and perplexity in equal measure tincturing his regard. Then slowly the look of doubt gave way to the ghost of a crafty smile.

What a blazing fool the fellow was (he thought) to accept a cheque on which payment could be stopped before banking hours in the morning--!

Such fatuity seemed incredible. Yet there it was, egregious, indisputable.

Why not profit by it, turn it to his own advantage? To secure what he had sought, the letters concealed between the canvases, and turn them against Sofia, and to play this Lanyard for a fool, all at one stroke--the opportunity was too rich to be slighted.

He dissembled his exultation--or plumed himself on doing so.

"Very well," he mumbled, sulkily. "I'll draw the cheque."

"That's the right spirit!" Lanyard declared, and escorted him to the desk.

A knock sounded. Lanyard called: "Come in!" A sleepy manservant, half-dressed and warm from his bed, entered.

"You rang, sir?"