Ziska: The Problem of a Wicked Soul Part 9

"I wonder what that Nubian has to do with her?" said Lady Chetwynd Lyle, severely.

"Nothing at all," replied the Doctor, calmly. "He is the merest servant--the kind of person who is 'told off' to attend on the women of a harem."

"Ah, I see you have been making inquiries concerning the princess, Doctor," said Lady Fulkeward, with a smile.

"I have."

"And have you found out anything about her?"

"No; that is, nothing of social importance, except, perhaps, two items--first, that she is not a Russian; secondly, that she has never been married."

"Never been married!" exclaimed Lady Chetwynd Lyle, then suddenly turning to her daughters she said blandly: "Muriel, Dolly, go into the house, my dears. It is getting rather warm for you on this terrace. I will join you in a few minutes."

The "girls" rose obediently with a delightfully innocent and juvenile air, and fortunately for them did not notice the irreverent smile that played on young Lord Fulkeward's face, which was immediately reflected on the artistically tinted countenance of his mother, at the manner of their dismissal.

"There is surely nothing improper in never having been married," said Dr. Dean, with a mock serious air. "Consider, my dear Lady Lyle, is there not something very chaste and beautiful in the aspect of an old maid?"

Lady Lyle looked up sharply. She had an idea that both she and her daughters were being quizzed, and she had some difficulty to control her rising temper.

"Then do you call the Princess an old maid?" she demanded.

Lady Fulkeward looked amused; her son laughed outright. But the Doctor's face was perfectly composed.

"I don't know what else I can call her," he said, with a thoughtful air. "She is no longer in her teens, and she has too much voluptuous charm for an ingenue. Still, I admit, you would scarcely call her 'old'

except in the parlance of the modern matrimonial market. Our present-day roues, you know, prefer their victims young, and I fancy the Princess Ziska would be too old and perhaps too clever for most of them. Personally speaking, she does not impress me as being of any particular age, but as she is not married, and is, so to speak, a maid fully developed, I am perforce obliged to call her an old maid."

"She wouldn't thank you for the compliment," said Lady Lyle with a spiteful grin.

"I daresay not," responded the Doctor blandly, "but I imagine she has very little personal vanity. Her mind is too preoccupied with something more important than the consideration of her own good looks."

"And what is that?" inquired Lady Fulkeward, with some curiosity.

"Ah! there is the difficulty! What is it that engrosses our fair friend more than the looking-gla.s.s? I should like to know--but I cannot find out. It is an enigma as profound as that of the sphinx. Good-morning, Monsieur Gervase!"--and, turning round, he addressed the artist, who just then stepped out on the terrace carrying a paintbox and a large canvas strapped together in portable form. "Are you going to sketch some picturesque corner of the city?"

"No," replied Gervase, listlessly raising his white sun-hat to the ladies present with a courteous, yet somewhat indifferent grace. "I'm going to the Princess Ziska's. I shall probably get the whole outline of her features this morning."

"A full-length portrait?" inquired the Doctor.

"I fancy not. Not the first attempt, at any rate--head and shoulders only."

"Do you know where her house is?" asked Lord Fulkeward. "If you don't, I'll walk with you and show you the way."

"Thanks--you are very good. I shall be obliged to you."

And raising his hat again he sauntered slowly off, young Fulkeward walking with him and chatting to him with more animation than that exhausted and somewhat vacant-minded aristocrat usually showed to anyone.

"It is exceedingly warm," said Lady Lyle, rising then and putting away her cross-st.i.tch apparatus, "I thought of driving to the Pyramids this afternoon, but really ..."

"There is shade all the way," suggested the Doctor, "I said as much to a young woman this morning who has been in the hotel for nearly two months, and hasn't seen the Pyramids yet."

"What has she been doing with herself?" asked Lady Fulkeward, smiling.

"Dancing with officers," said Dr. Dean. "How can Cheops compare with a moustached noodle in military uniform! Good-bye for the present; I'm going to hunt for scarabei."

"I thought you had such a collection of them already," said Lady Lyle.

"So I have. But the Princess had a remarkable one on last night, and I want to find another like it. It's blue--very blue--almost like a rare turquoise, and it appears it is the sign-manual of the warrior Araxes, who was a kind of king in his way, or desert chief, which was about the same thing in those days. He fought for Amenhotep, and seemed from all accounts to be a greater man than Amenhotep himself. The Princess Ziska is a wonderful Egyptologist; I had a most interesting conversation with her last night in the supper-room."

"Then she is really a woman of culture and intelligence?" queried Lady Lyle.

The Doctor smiled.

"I should say she would be a great deal too much for the University of Oxford, as far as Oriental learning goes," he said. "She can read the Egyptian papyri, she tells me, and she can decipher anything on any of the monuments. I only wish I could persuade her to accompany me to Thebes and Karnak."

Lady Fulkeward unfurled her fan and swayed it to and fro with an elegant languor.

"How delightful that would be!" she sighed. "So romantic and solemn--all those dear old cities with those marvellous figures of the Egyptians carved and painted on the stones! And Rameses--dear Rameses!

He really has good legs everywhere! Haven't you noticed that? So many of these ancient sculptures represent the Egyptians with such angular bodies and such frightfully thin legs, but Rameses always has good legs wherever you find him. It's so refreshing! DO make up a party, Dr.

Dean!--we'll all go with you; and I'm sure the Princess Ziska will be the most charming companion possible. Let us have a dahabeah! I'm good for half the expenses, if you will only arrange everything."

The Doctor stroked his chin and looked dubious, but he was evidently attracted by the idea.

"I'll see about it," he said at last. "Meanwhile I'll go and have a hunt for some traces of Amenhotep and Araxes."

He strolled down the terrace, and Lady Chetwynd Lyle, turning her back on "old" Lady Fulkeward, went after her "girls," while the fascinating Fulkeward herself continued to recline comfortably in her chair, and presently smiled a welcome on a youngish-looking man with a fair moustache who came forward and sat down beside her, talking to her in low, tender and confidential tones. He was the very impecunious colonel of one of the regiments then stationed in Cairo, and as he never wasted time on sentiment, he had been lately thinking that a marriage with a widowed peeress who had twenty thousand pounds a year in her own right might not be a "half bad" arrangement for him. So he determined to do the agreeable, and as he was a perfect adept in the art of making love without feeling it, he got on very well, and his prospects brightened steadily hour by hour.

Meanwhile young Fulkeward was escorting Armand Gervase through several narrow by-streets, talking to him as well as he knew how and trying in his feeble way to "draw him out," in which task he met with but indifferent success.

"It must be awfully jolly and--er--all that sort of thing to be so famous," he observed, glancing up at the strong, dark, brooding face above him. "They had a picture of yours over in London once; I went to see it with my mother. It was called 'Le Poignard,' do you remember it?"

Gervase shrugged his shoulders carelessly.

"Yes, I remember. A poor thing at its best. It was a woman with a dagger in her hand."

"Yes, awfully fine, don'cher know! She was a very dark woman--too dark for my taste,--and she'd got a poignard clasped in in her right hand.

Of course, she was going to murder somebody with it; that was plain enough. You meant it so, didn't you?"

"I suppose I did."

"She was in a sort of Eastern get-up," pursued Fulkeward, "one of your former studies in Egypt, perhaps."

Gervase started, and pa.s.sed his hand across his forehead with a bewildered air.

"No, no! Not a former study, by any means. How could it be? This is my first visit to Egypt. I have never been here before."

"Haven't you? Really! Well, you'll find it awfully interesting and all that sort of thing. I don't see half as much of it as I should like.

I'm a weak chap--got something wrong with my lungs,--awful bother, but can't be helped. My mother won't let me do too much. Here we are; this is the Princess Ziska's."

They were standing in a narrow street ending in a cul-de-sac, with tall houses on each side which cast long, black, melancholy shadows on the rough pavement below. A vague sense of gloom and oppression stole over Gervase as he surveyed the outside of the particular dwelling Fulkeward pointed out to him--a square, palatial building, which had no doubt once been magnificent in its exterior adornment, but which now, owing to long neglect, had fallen into somewhat melancholy decay. The sombre portal, fantastically ornamented with designs copied from some of the Egyptian monuments, rather resembled the gateway of a tomb than an entrance to the private residence of a beautiful living woman, and Fulkeward, noting his companion's silence, added: