The Powers and Maxine Part 14

"Then I haven't made myself clear enough."

"That's true. You haven't made yourself clear enough."

"In what detail have I failed? Because--".

"In the detail of the doc.u.ment. I've told you I know nothing about it.

You've told me you know everything. Yet--"

"So I do."

"Prove that by saying what it is--to satisfy my curiosity."

"I've explained why I can't do that--here."

"Then why should you stay here longer, since that is the point, to my mind. You understood before you came into my carriage that I had no intention of letting you go all the way home with me."

Count G.o.densky suddenly laughed. And the laugh frightened me--frightened me horribly, just as I had begun to have confidence in myself, and feel that I had got the best of the game.

CHAPTER XI

MAXINE OPENS THE GATE FOR A MAN

"You are afraid that du Laurier may find out," he said. "But he knows already."

"Knows what?"

"That I expected to have the privilege of going to your house with you."

All that I had gained seemed worthless. Those quiet, sneering words of his almost crushed me. On the load I had struggled to bear without falling they laid one feather too much.

My voice broke. "You--devil!" I cried at him. "You dared to tell Raoul that?"

Opposite, on her narrow little seat, Marianne stirred uneasily. Till now our tones had been quiet, and she could not understand one word we said.

She is the soul of discretion and a triumph of good training in her walk of life; but she loves me more than she loves any other creature on earth, and now she could see and hear that the man had driven me to the brink of hysterics. She would have liked to tear his face with her nails, or choke him, I think. If I had given her the word, I believe she would have tried with all her strength--which is not small--and a very good will, to kill him. I was dimly conscious of what her restlessness meant, and vaguely comforted too, by the thought of her supreme loyalty.

But I forgot Marianne when G.o.densky answered my question.

"Yes, I told him. It was the truth. And I've always understood that you made a great point of never doing anything which you considered in the least risque. So why should I suppose you would rather du Laurier didn't know? You might already have mentioned it to him."

"He wouldn't believe you!" I exclaimed, desperately. And my only hope was that I might be right.

"As a matter of fact, he didn't seem to at first, so I at once understood that you hadn't spoken of our appointment. But it was too late to atone for my carelessness, and I did the next best thing: justified my veracity. I suggested that, if he didn't take my word for it, he might stand where he could see us speaking together at the stage door, and--"

"Ah, I am glad of that!" I cut in. "Then he saw that we didn't drive away together."

"You jump at conclusions, just like less clever women. I hardly thought you'd receive me into your carriage at the theatre, so I took the precaution of warning du Laurier that he needn't expect to see that. You would suggest a place for me to meet you, I said. When I knew it, I would inform him if he chose to wait about somewhere for a few minutes."

"Raoul du Laurier would scorn to spy upon me!" I broke out.

"How hard you are on spies. And how little knowledge of human nature you have, after all, if you don't understand that a man suddenly out of his head with jealousy will do things of which he'd be incapable when he was sane."

The argument silenced me. I knew--I had known for a long time--that jealousy could rouse a demon in Raoul. And only to-night he had reminded me that he was a "jealous brute." I remembered what answer he had made when I asked him what he would do if I deceived him. He said that he would kill me, and kill himself after. As he spoke, the blood had streamed up to his forehead, and streamed back again, leaving him pale.

A flash like steel had shot out of his eyes--the dear eyes that are not cold. It was true, as this cruel wretch reminded me, Raoul would do things under the torture of jealousy that he would cut off his hand sooner than do when his own, sweet, poet-nature was in ascendancy.

"As a proof of what I say," G.o.densky went on, "du Laurier did wait, did hear from me the place where you were to stop and pick me up. And if it wouldn't be the worst of form to bet, I'd bet that he found some way of getting there in time to see that I had told the truth."

"You coward!" I stammered.

"On the contrary, a brave man. I've heard that du Laurier is a fine shot, and that very few men in Paris can touch him with the foils. So you see--"

"You want to frighten me!" I exclaimed.

"You misjudge me in every way."

My only answer was to tell Marianne to press the b.u.t.ton which gives the signal for my chauffeur to stop. Instantly the electric carriage slowed down, then came to a standstill. My man opened the door and Count G.o.densky submitted to my will. Nevertheless, he was far from being in a submissive mood, as I did not need to be reminded by the tone of his voice when he said "au revoir."

Nothing could have been more polite than the words or his way of speaking them, as he stood in the street with his hat in his hand. But to me they meant a threat, and as a threat they were intended.

My talk with G.o.densky at the stage door, my pause to pick him up, and my second pause to set him down, had all taken time, of which I had had little enough at the starting, if I were to meet Ivor Dundas when he arrived. It was two or three minutes after midnight, or so my watch said, when we drew up before the gate of my high-walled garden in the quiet Rue d'Hollande.

A little while ago I had been ready to seize upon almost any expedient for keeping Raoul away from my house to-night, but now, after what I had just heard from G.o.densky, I prayed to see him waiting for me.

n.o.body (except Ivor, concerning whom I'd given orders) would be let in so late at night, during my absence, not even Raoul himself; so if he had come to reproach me, or break with me, he would have to stand outside the locked gate till I appeared. I looked for him longingly, but he was not there. There was, to be sure, a motor brougham in the street, for a wonder (usually the Rue d'Hollande is as empty as a desert, after eleven o'clock), but a girl's face peered out at me from the window--an impish, curiously abnormal little face it was--extinguishing the spark of hope that sprang to life as I caught sight of the carriage.

It was standing before the closed gate of a house almost opposite mine, and the girl seemed somewhat interested in me; but I was not at all interested in her, and I hate being stared at as if I were something in a museum.

The gate is always kept locked at night, when I'm at the theatre; but Marianne has the key, and we let ourselves in when we come, for only old Henri sits up, and he is growing a little deaf. A moment, and we were inside, the chauffeur spinning away to the garage.

Usually I am newly delighted every night with my quaint old house and its small, but pretty garden, to which it seems delightful to come home after hours of hard work at the theatre. But to-night, though a cheerful light shone out from between the drawn curtains of the salon, the place looked inexpressibly dreary, even forbidding, to me. I felt that I hated the house, though I had chosen it after a long search for peacefulness and privacy. How gloomy, how dead, was the street beyond the high wall, with all its windows closed like the eyes of corpses. There was a moist, depressing smell of earth after long-continued rains, in the garden. No wonder the place had been to let at a bargain, for a long term! There had been a murder in it once, and it had stood empty for twelve or thirteen of the fifteen years since the almost forgotten tragedy. I had been the tenant for two years now--before I became a "star," with a theatre of my own in Paris. I had had no fear of the ghost said to haunt the house. Indeed, I remembered thinking, and saying, that the story only made the place more interesting. But now I said to myself that I wished I had never spoken so lightly. Perhaps the ghost had brought me bad luck. I felt as if the murder must have happened on just such a still, brooding, damp night as this. Maybe it was the anniversary, if I only knew.

I went indoors, Marianne following. Henri, very thin, very precise, withered like a winter apple, had fallen into a doze in the hall, where he had sat, hoping to hear the stopping of my carriage. He rose up, bowing and blinking, just as he had done often before, and would often again--if life were to go on for me in the old way. He regretted not having heard Mademoiselle. Would Mademoiselle take supper?

No, Mademoiselle would not take supper. She wanted nothing, and Henri might go to bed.

"I thank Mademoiselle. When I have closed the house."

"But I don't want the house closed," I said. "I shall sit up for awhile.

It's hot--close and stuffy. I may like to have the windows open."

"The visitor Mademoiselle expected did not arrive. Perhaps--"

"If he comes, Marianne or I will let him in. But he may not come, now it is so late."

When Henri had gone, I told Marianne that she might go, too. I did not want her to wait. If the person I had expected should call, it was a very old friend; in fact, Mr. Ivor Dundas, whom Marianne must remember in London. He was to call--if he did call--only on a matter of business, which would take but a few minutes to get through, and possibly he would not even come into the house. If the gate-bell rang, I would answer it myself, and speak with Mr. Dundas, perhaps in the garden. Then I would let him out and come straight upstairs. Marianne might go to bed if she wished.

"I do not wish, unless Mademoiselle particularly desires me to do so,"