The Everlasting Arms Part 24

"Why are you interested as to whether I will do Faversham harm?"

"I am--that's all."

The Count was silent for a few seconds. Evidently his mind was working rapidly. "Look at me!" he cried suddenly, and, as if by some power she could not resist, she raised her eyes to his.

The Count laughed like one amused.

"You have fallen in love with him, eh?"

The girl was silent, but a flush mounted her cheeks.

"This is interesting," he sneered. "I did not think that Olga Petrovic, who has regarded men as so many dogs of the fetch-and-carry order, and who has scorned the thought of love, should have fallen a victim to the malady. And to a thick-headed Englishman, too! Surely it is very sudden."

"You sneer," she cried, "but if I want to be a good woman; what then?"

The Count waved his hand airily. "Set's the wind in that quarter, eh? Well, well. But it is very interesting. I see; you love him--you, Olga Petrovic."

"And if I do," she cried defiantly, "what then?"

"Only that you will obey me the more implicitly."

"I will not obey you," she cried pa.s.sionately. "And remember this, I am not a woman to be played with. There have been many who have tried to get the better of Olga Petrovic, and--and you know the result."

"La, la!" laughed the Count, "and so my lady threatens, does she? And do you know, if I were susceptible to a woman's beauty, I should rejoice to see you angry. Anger makes you even more beautiful than ever. For you are beautiful, Olga."

"Leave my beauty alone," she said sullenly. "It is not for you anyhow."

"I see, I see. Now listen to me. If you do not obey me in everything, I go to Richard Faversham, and I tell him who and what you are. I give him your history for the last ten years. Yes, for the last ten years. You began your career at eighteen and now you are twenty-eight. Yes, you look a young girl of twenty-two, and pride yourself upon it. Now then, Countess, which is it to be? Am I to help you to win the love of Faversham--yes and I can promise you that you shall win his love if you obey my bidding--or am I to go to him and tell him who Olga Petrovic really is?"

The girl looked at him angrily, yet piteously. For the first time she seemed afraid of him. Her eyes burnt with fury, and yet were full of pleading at the same time. Haughty defiance was on her face, while her lips trembled.

"But if you tell him, you destroy my plans. You cannot do that, Count!" It was Mr. John Brown who spoke, and there was a note of terror in his voice.

"Your plans! What do I care for your plans?" cried the Count. "It is of my own plans I am thinking."

"But I thought, and as you know we agreed----"

"It is not for you to think, or to question my thoughts," interrupted the Count. "I allow no man to interpret my plans, or to criticise the way in which I work them out. But rest contented, my dear friend, John Brown," he added banteringly, "the success of your plans rests upon the success of my own."

While they were speaking Olga Petrovic gazed towards the window with unseeing eyes. She looked quite her age now: all suggestion of the young girl had gone, she was a stern, hard-featured woman. Beautiful she was, it is true, but with a beauty marked by bitter experience, and not the beauty of blushing girlhood.

"Well, Countess Olga, which is it to be?" asked Romanoff, who had been watching her while he had been speaking to Mr. Brown.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Do! Keep him in London. Enlist his sympathies. Make him your slave as you have made other men your slaves. Bind him to you hand and foot. Make him love you."

A strange light burned in the girl's eyes, for at the Count's last words she had seemingly thrown off years of her life. She had become young and eager again.

"Swear to me that you mean him no harm, and I will do it," was her reply. "If I can," she added, as an afterthought.

"Do you doubt it?" asked Romanoff. "Have you ever failed when you have made up your mind?"

"No, but I do not feel certain of him. He is not like those others. Besides, I failed last night. In his heart he has refused me already. He said he was leaving London almost immediately, which means that he does not intend to see me again."

"And you want to see him again?"

"Yes," she replied defiantly; "I do."

"Good." He seized a telephone receiver as he spoke and asked for a certain number. Shortly after he was connected with d.i.c.k's hotel.

"Mr. Richard Faversham of Eastroyd is staying with you, isn't he?"

"Mr. Richard Faversham? Yes, sir."

"Is he in?"

"No, sir, he went out a few minutes ago."

"Did he say when he was likely to return?"

"No, sir, he said nothing."

"But you expect him back to-night?"

"As far as I know, sir."

"Thank you. Either I, or a lady friend, will call to see him to-morrow morning at ten o'clock on a very important matter. Tell him that, will you?"

"Certainly, sir. What name?"

But the Count did not reply. He hung up the telephone receiver instead.

"Why did you say that?" asked Olga. "How dare I go to his hotel in broad daylight?"

"You dare do anything, Countess," replied the Count. "Besides, you need not fear. Although you are wanted by the British authorities, you are so clever at disguise that no detective in Scotland Yard would be able to see through it." He hesitated a moment, and then went on: "If we were in Paris I would insist on your going to see him to-night, but Mrs. Grundy is so much in evidence in England that we must not risk it."

"But if they fail to give him your message?" she asked. "Suppose he leaves to-morrow morning before I can get there?" Evidently she was eager to carry out this part of his plans.

"He will not leave," replied Romanoff; "still, we must be on the safe side. You must write and tell him you are coming. There is ink and paper on yonder desk."

"What shall I write?" she asked.

"Fancy Olga Petrovic asking such a question," laughed the Count. "Word your letter as only you can word it, and he will spend a sleepless night in antic.i.p.ation of the joy of seeing you."

She hesitated for a few seconds, and then rushing to the desk began to write rapidly.

"And now," said Romanoff, when she had finished, "to avoid all danger we must send this by a special messenger."

Thus it was, when d.i.c.k Faversham returned from Chainley Alley that night that he found the letter signed "Olga" awaiting him.

It was no ordinary letter that he read. A stranger on perusing it would have said that it was simply a request for an interview, but to d.i.c.k it was couched in such a fashion that it was impossible for him to leave London before seeing her. For this is what he had intended to do. When he had sent the telegram a few hours earlier his mind was fully made up never to see her again. Why he could not tell, but the effect of his strange experience in Staple Inn was to make him believe that it would be best for him to wipe this fascinating woman from the book of his life. Her influence over him was so great that he felt afraid. While in her presence, even while she fascinated him, he could not help thinking of the fateful hours in Wendover Park, when Romanoff stood by his side, and paralysed his manhood.

But as he read her letter, he felt he could do no other than remain. Indeed he found himself antic.i.p.ating the hour of her arrival, and wondering why she wished to see him.

He had come to London ostensibly on business connected with his probable candidature in Eastroyd, and as he had to see many people, he had engaged a private sitting-room in the hotel. To this room he hurried eagerly after breakfast the following morning, and although he made pretensions of reading the morning newspaper, scarcely a line of news fixed itself on his memory. On every page he saw the glorious face of this woman, and as he saw, he almost forgot what he had determined as he left Chainley Alley.

Precisely at ten o'clock she was shown into the room, and d.i.c.k almost gave a gasp as he saw her. She was like no woman he had ever seen before. If he had thought her beautiful amidst the sordid surroundings of the warehouse in the East End of London, she seemed ten-fold more so now, as slightly flushed with exercise, and arrayed in such a fashion that her glorious figure was set off to perfection, she appeared before him. She was different too. Then she was, in spite of her pleading tones, somewhat masterful, and a.s.sertive. Now she seemed timid and shrinking, as though she would throw herself on his protection.

"Are you sure you are safe in coming here?" he asked awkwardly. "You remember what you told me?"

"You care then?" she flashed back. Then she added quickly, "Yes, I do not think anyone here will recognise me. Besides, I had to take the risk."

"Why?" he questioned.

"Because your telegram frightened me."

"Frightened you? How?"

"Because--oh, you will not fail me, will you? I have been building on you--and you said you were leaving London. Surely that does not mean that all my hopes are dashed to the ground? Tell me they are not."

Her great dark eyes flashed dangerously into his as she spoke, while her presence almost intoxicated him. But he mastered himself. What he had heard the previous night came surging back to his memory.

"If your hopes in any way depend on me, I am afraid you had better forget them," he said.

"No, no, I can never forget them. Did you not inspire them? When I saw you did I not feel that you were the leader we needed? Ah no, you cannot fail me."

"I cannot do what you ask."

"But why? Only the night before last you were convinced. You saw the vision, and you had made up your mind to be faithful to it. And oh, you could become so great, so glorious!"

He felt the woman's magnetic power over him; but he shook his head stubbornly.

"But why?" she pleaded.

"Because I have learned what your proposal really means," he replied, steeling himself against her. "I was carried away by your pleading, but I have since seen that by doing what you ask I should be playing into the hands of the enemies of my country, the enemies of everything worth living for."

"You mean the Germans; but I hate Germany. I want to destroy all militarism, all force. I want the world to live in peace, in prosperity, and love."

"I cannot argue with you," replied d.i.c.k; "but my determination is fixed. I have learnt that Mr. John Brown is a German, and that he wants to do in England what has been done in Russia, so that Germany may rule the world."

"Mr. John Brown a German!" she cried like one horror-stricken. "You cannot mean that?"

"Did you not know it?"

"I? Oh no, no, no! you cannot mean it! It would be terrible!"

She spoke with such pa.s.sion that he could not doubt her, but he still persisted in his refusal.

"I have seen that what you dream of doing would turn Europe, the world, into a h.e.l.l. If I were to try to persuade the people of this country to follow in the lines of Russia, I should be acting the part of a criminal madman. Not that I could have a t.i.the of the influence you suggested, but even to use what influence I have towards such a purpose would be to sell my soul, and to curse thousands of people."

She protested against his statement, declaring that her purposes were only beneficent. She was shocked at the idea that Mr. John Brown was a German, but if it were true, then it only showed how evil men would pervert the n.o.blest things to the basest uses. She pleaded for poor humanity; she begged him to reconsider his position, and to remember what he could do for the betterment of the life of the world. But although she fascinated him by the magic of her words, and the witchery of her presence, d.i.c.k was obdurate. What she advocated he declared meant the destruction of law and order, and the destruction of law and order meant the end of everything sacred and holy.

Then she changed her ground. She was no longer a reformer, pleading for the good of humanity, but a weak woman seeking his strength and guidance, yet glorious in her matchless beauty.

"If I am wrong," she pleaded, "stay with me, and teach me. I am lonely too, so lonely in this strange land, and I do so need a friend like you, strong, and brave, and wise. And oh, I will be such an obedient pupil! Ah, you will not leave London, will you? Say you will not--not yet."

Again she almost mastered him, but still he remained obdurate.

"I must return to my work, Miss----You did not tell me your name." And she thought she detected weakness in his tones.

"My name is Olga Petrovic," she replied. "In my own country, when I had a country, I was Countess Olga Petrovic, and I suppose that I have still large estates there; but please do not call me by your cold English term 'Miss.' Let me be Olga to you, and you will be d.i.c.k to me, won't you?"

"I--I don't understand," he stammered.

"But you do, surely you do. Can you look into my eyes, and say you do not? There, look at me. Yes, let me tell you I believe in the sacredness of love, the sacredness of marriage. Now you understand, don't you? You will stay in London, won't you, and will teach a poor, ignorant girl wherein she is in error."

He understood her now. Understood that she was making love to him, asking him to marry her, but still he shook his head. "I must return to my work," he said.

"But not yet--tell me not yet. Forgive me if I do not understand English ways and customs. When I love, and I never loved before, I cannot help declaring it. Now promise me."

A knock came to the door, and a servant came bearing cards on a tray.

"Mr. Hugh Edgeware," "Miss Beatrice Edgeware," he read. He held the cards in his hands for a second, then turned to the woman, "I must ask you to excuse me," he said. "I have friends who have come to see me."

Olga Petrovic gave him a look which he could not understand, then without a word left the room, while he stood still like a man bewildered.

"Show them up," he said to the servant.

PART III.--THE THIRD TEMPTATION.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE COUNT'S CONFEDERATE.

Count Romanoff sat alone in his room. On one side the window of his room faced Piccadilly with its great seething tide of human traffic, from another St. James's Park was visible. But the Count was not looking at either; he was evidently deep in his own thoughts, and it would appear that those thoughts were not agreeable.

He was not a pleasant-looking man as he sat there that day. He was carefully dressed, and had the appearance of a polished man of the world. No stranger would have pa.s.sed him by without being impressed by his personality--a dark and sinister personality possibly, but still striking, and distinguished. No one doubted his claim to the t.i.tle of Count, no one imagined him to be other than a great personage. But he was not pleasant to look at. His eyes burnt with a savage glare, his mouth, his whole expression, was cruel. It might seem as though he had been balked in his desire, as though some cruel disappointment had made him angry.