The Perils of Pauline

by Lawrence Fletcher

  CHAPTER VIII

  THE COURTELYOU RECEPTION

  Two weeks later Pauline and Harry were sitting in the library. Throughthe half-closed blinds a soft breeze bore to them the fragrance ofcarnations and roses.

  For the first few days after their return Pauline was so thankful theyhad not lost their lives that she was reconciled to not having foundthe treasure. But only for the first few days. She was alreadygrowing restless.

  "You're wasting time, Harry," she said impatiently. "I'd rather faceanything than be bored to death."

  "Polly, it's got to stop; it isn't safe, it isn't sensible, it isn'teven fun any more. Won't you drop the whole freakish thing and marryme?"

  Harry was holding Pauline by the hand as she drew her dainty way out ofthe library. In laughing rebellion she looked over her shoulder andjeered at him.

  "Oh, I thought it was I who was going to be afraid," she said.

  "Well, if you aren't, who is going to be?"

  "You," she tittered.

  He drew her back with a gentle but firm grasp.

  "Honestly, Polly, aren't you satisfied yet? Adventure is all right forbreakfast or for luncheon once a month, but as a regular unremittingdiet it gets on my nerves."

  "Still thinking of your own perils?" she volleyed.

  Harry's fine keen face took on a look of earnest appeal. He let go herhand, but as she started to run up the stairs he held her with hiseyes.

  "You dear, silly boy," she cried, returning a step and clasping him inan impetuous embrace. "You are the nicest brother in all the world--sometimes--but just now I think that adventure is nicer than brothers--or husbands. I'm having the time of my life, Harry boy, and I'mgoing on and on, and on with it until I've seen all the wild and wickedpeople and places in the world."

  Harry caught her hand and smiled down at her in surrender.

  A ring at the door bell and the entrance of the maid caused Pauline toflutter up the stairs. They were preparing to attend the Courtelyou'sreception that evening to the great Baskinelli, whose musicalachievements had been equaled only by his social successes during this,his first New York season.

  "Anyway," she twinkled from the top of the stairs, "you needn't befrightened for tonight. Nothing so meek and mild as a pianist can hurtyou."

  Harry tossed up his hands in mimic despair and started back to thelibrary.

  "Yes, I know she is always at home to you, Miss Hamlin," the maid wassaying at the door.

  "What a privileged person I am," laughed Lucille Hamlin.

  She was Pauline's chum-in-chief, a dark, still tempered girl, inperfect contrast to the adventurous Polly. She greeted Harry with theeasy grace of old acquaintanceship.

  "Still nursing the precious broken heart?" she queried.

  "For the love of Michael, me and humanity," he pleaded, "can't you dosomething? She won't listen to me. I'm honestly, deucedly worried,Lucille."

  "You know very well that nobody could ever do anything with Polly. Shealways had to have her own way--and that's why you love her, thoughyou don't know it, Harry. Shall I run upstairs, Margaret?" she added,turning to the maid.

  "No, you're going to stay here," commanded Harry, seizing her hands."You've got to do something with Pauline. You're the only one whocan. She wants a new adventure every day, and a more dangerous oneevery time. Talk to her, won't you? Tell her it isn't right for herto risk her life when her life is so precious to so many people. No,wait a minute; sit down here. I'm not half through yet."

  He drew her, under laughing protest, to a seat beside him on thestairs. She realized suddenly how serious he was. She let her handrest comradely in his pleading grasp.

  "Why, Harry, yes, if it is really dangerous, you know, I'll do anythingI can," she said gravely.

  They did not see the cold gray face of Raymond Owen appear at the topof the stairs. The face vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

  In her boudoir Polly was laying out her finery of the evening. Therecame a soft rap at the door.

  "Come in," she called, and looked up brightly in Owen's furtive eyes ashe opened the door and motioned to her.

  "Don't say anything, please, Miss Marvin," he whispered, "just comewith me for a moment."

  Bewildered by his manner, she followed to the top of the stairs. Hedirected her gaze to the two young people in earnest conversationbelow.

  It was a picture that might well have startled a less impetuous heartthan Pauline's. Harry's hand still clasped Lucille's, and he wasleaning toward her in the eagerness of his appeal.

  "You, will? You promise? Lucille, you've made me happy," Paulineheard him say.

  Through mist-dimmed eyes, dizzily, she saw the two arise. She saw theman she loved clasp Lucille's other hand. She saw the girl who hadbeen her friend and confidante since childhood draw herself away fromhim with a lingering withdrawal that could mean--ah, what could itnot mean? Polly fled to her room.

  In Owen's subtle secret battle to retain control of the Marvin millionsfate had never so befriended him. None of all the weapons or rusesthat he had used to prevent the faithful attachment of Harry andPauline was as potent as this little seed of jealousy.

  Pauline rang for her maid.

  "Tell Miss Hamlin that I am not at home," she said in a voice thatstarted haughtily but ended in a sob.

  "But, Miss Marvin--" Margaret tried to demur.

  "Tell Miss Hamlin that I am not at home," repeated Pauline.

  Lucille had just started up the stairs, leaving Harry with asympathetic pat on the shoulder.

  "Well, even if I caret do anything with that wild woman," she laughedback at him, "you know Pauline bears a charmed life. Nothing has everhappened to her yet. Guardian angels surround her--as well asheroes."

  Harry walked into the library. The agitated Margaret met Lucille onthe stairs.

  "Miss Marvin is--Miss Marvin is not at home," the girl said, flushingcrimson.

  Lucille paused, dumfounded.

  "But, Margaret, you know I thought--I really thought she was, athome, Miss Hamlin. I hope you won't be offended with me."

  "I insist upon seeing her," cried Lucille. "I don't believe you aretelling me the truth. I'm going right up to her room."

  Margaret burst into tears.

  Lucille quickly reconsidered. Indignation took the place ofastonishment. She hurried down the stairs and rushed through the doorwithout waiting for Margaret to open it.

  Pauline, back in her own room, vented her first rage in tears. Withher hot face pressed against the pillow, she sobbed out the agony ofwhat she thought her betrayal--her double betrayal, by courtier andcomrade at once. But the tears passed. Too vital was the spirit inher, too red flowing in her veins was the blood of fighting ancestors,too strong the fortress of self-command within the blossoming gardensof her youth and beauty for the word surrender ever to come to hermind.

  True, she had found an adventure that stirred her more deeply than theperil of land or sea or sky could have done. Here was a thrill thathad never been listed among her intended tremors. She sent for Owen.

  Masked as ever in his suave exterior and his manner of mingledobsequiousness and fatherliness, he came instantly.

  "Mr. Owen, have you known--have you known that this was going on?"

  "I feel that it is my duty to know what concerns you--even whatconcerns your happiness, Miss Marvin," he answered.

  "You mean?"

  "I mean that I have long had my suspicions."

  But again the very perfection of his deceit brought Pauline thatfeeling that she had had since childhood that sense of an insidiousinfluence always surrounding her, always menacing and yet neverrevealed. This influence, which Owen seemed to embody, was theantagonist of that other mysterious power, so real and yet soinexplicable, that warded and protected her--the spirit of the girlthat had stepped from the mummy.

  But Pauline had seen with her own eyes; she did not need any word ofOwen's to convince her of the falsity of her lover.
<
br />   She was quite calm now. She dressed with the utmost care. Margaret,who had seen her in such anger only a short time before, was surprisedat her sprightliness and graciousness. A slightly heightened colorthat only added to the luster of her loveliness, was the single sign ofher inward thoughts. She summoned her own car and left the housealone.

  The drawing room of the Clarence Courtelyou mansion was ablaze withlight. There was a little too much light. The Clarence Courtelyoualways had a little too much of everything.

  There was a little too much money; there was a little too much goldleaf decoration in the drawing room, a little too much diamonddecoration of Mrs. Courtelyou, and, if you were so fastidiouslyimpolite as to say so, a little too much of Mrs. Courtelyou herself.

  But Mrs. Courtelyou was struggling toward gentility in such an amiableway that better people liked her. The motherliness and sweet sincerityof her--the fact that she loved her frankly illiterate husband andworshipped, almost from afar, her cultured daughters was the thing thatbrought her down from the base height of the "climbers" and lifted herkindly, harmless personality to the high simplicities of the elite.

  She made the natural mistake that other wealthy mendicants at the outerportals of society have made the mistake of pounding at the gates.Instead of letting the splendor of her charitable gifts, thegracefulness of her simplicity, carry her through, she went in for thegorgeous and the costly.

  As a sort of crowning glory she began to "take up" artists and actorsand musicians. She gained the good graces of the best of them, and inher kindly innocence she won the worship of the worst.

  It was thus that she came to the point of holding a reception forBaskinelli.

  Not that any one had heard anything black, or even shadowy, againstBaskinelli. He had arrived recently from abroad, his foreign famepreceding him, his prospective conquests of America fulsomely foretold,his low brow decorated in advance with laurel.

  Mrs. Courtelyou added him to her collection with the swiftness anddirectness of the entomologist discovering a new bug. She herselfloved music--without understanding it very deeply--and Baskinelli,whatever might be his other gifts, could summon all the cadences oflove from the machines that people call a piano--engine of torture orinstrument of joy.

  For half an hour Harry paced at the foot of the stairs.

  "I wonder if she's ever coming," he fumed to himself. "It takes 'em solong to do it that they drive you crazy, and when it's done they're sowonderful that they drive you crazy."

  "Did you--did you wish anything, sir?" asked the butler, entering.

  "No--just waiting for Miss Pauline, Jenkins--just waiting," sighedHarry.

  "Why--if I may presume to tell you, sir--Miss, Marvin has gone tothe reception," said Jenkins.

  "Gone!" Harry cried abruptly, hotly, then remembered that he wasspeaking to a servant and swung into the reception room.

  He put on his hat and coat and rang for Jenkins again.

  "How long ago was it that Miss Pauline went out?"

  "Almost an hour ago, sir."

  Harry slammed his way out of the door. It was not until he was in thecar on his way to the Courtelyous that he began to think--began tothink with utterly wrong deductions, as lovers always do.

  "I must have said too much," he told himself. "She's crazy about thesewild pranks and she thinks I'm a stupid goody-goody. What a fool I wasto try to prevent her!"

  "You aren't very nice, Mr. Marvin, to snub my pet musician--my verynewest pet musician," Mrs. Courtelyou rebuked him, as he entered.

  "I didn't mean it. I was waiting for--why, my car went to pieces,"he explained. "Is Pauline here?"

  "Here? She is the only person present. Baskinelli hasn't spoken aword to any one else. He won't play anything unless she suggests thesubject. I am glad Mr. Owen is here to protect her."

  From the scintillant, filmy mist of women around the piano Lucilleemerged. She came swiftly to Harry's side.

  "What is the matter?" she asked.

  "What is? Tell me." he replied. "What did you say to her?"

  "I didn't see her, Harry. She sent word that she was not at home."

  "You don't mean--not after you started upstairs."

  "Yes--and she hasn't spoken to me all evening."

  "And she left me waiting at home for half an hour. It's outrageous."

  Harry strode across the floor just as the music ceased, and Baskinelliarose, bowing to the applause of his feminine admirers.

  "May I ask the honor to show to you Madame Courtelyou's portrait ofmyself? It is called 'The Glorification of Imbecility,'" he said as heproffered his arm to Pauline.

  He was a small man, with sharp features shadowed by a mass of flowing,curling hair--the kind of hair that has come to be called "musical"by the irreverent. The sweep of an abnormal brow gave emphasis to thesudden jut of deep eye sockets, and a dull, sallow skin gave emphasisto the subtle sinister light, of the eyes themselves.

  Pauline accepted the proffered arm of the artist, but daintily,laughingly, she turned him back to the piano.

  "You haven't yet escaped, Signor Baskinelli," she said. "We have notyet heard 'Tivoli,' you know."

  "Tivoli," he cried, with hands upraised in mock disdain. "Why, I wrotethe thing myself. Am I to violate even my own masterpieces?"

  There was a twitter of mocking protest from the women. Baskinellibegan to play again.

  "Pauline, may I speak to you--just a moment?" Harry's vexed voicereached her ear as she stood beside the piano. She turned slowly andlooked into his bewildered, angry eyes.

  "A little later--possibly," she answered, and instantly turned backto Baskinelli.

  From her no mask of music, no glamour of others' admiration could hidethe predatory obsequiousness of Baskinelli. She was not in the leastinterested in Baskinelli. She had loathed him from the moment when shehad looked down on his little oily curls. But if Baskinelli had beenBeelzebub he would have enjoyed the favor of Pauline that evening--atleast, after Harry had arrived.

  The glowing piquant beauty of Pauline enthralled Baskinelli. He hadnever before seen a woman like her--innocent but astute, daring butdemure, brilliant but opalescent. When at last they strolled awaytogether into the conservatory his drawing room obeisances becamedirect declarations of love.

  Pauline began to be frightened.

  She fluttered to the door of the conservatory. But there she paused.Voices sounded from the end of a little rose-rimmed alley. They werethe voices of Harry and Lucille.

  Baskinelli was at her side again.

  "If I have said anything--done anything to offend," he said, withaffected contrition, "you will let me make my lowliest apologies, won'tyou?"

  Pauline hardly heard him. She was intently listening to the lowpitched voices.

  "I--I think I will run back to the others," she cried suddenly.Baskinelli was left alone.

  "I congratulate you, Signor, on the success of the evening," said avoice at his shoulder. "There are few among the famous who can conquerdrawing rooms as well as auditoriums."

  The musician turned to face the ingratiating smile of Raymond Owen.

  "I thank you--I thank you, sir. But I do not believe you. My'conquest' has turned to catastrophe. I have lost everything."

  "You mean that you are dissatisfied with the applause?" asked Owen.

  "No! No! Applause is nothing from the many. There is always one inhis audience to whom he plays from his soul."

  "And that one--tonight?"

  "The lovely Miss--what, now, is her name--Marvin. She bewitches me--and she scorns me."

  "Signor Baskinelli, there are other places than drawing rooms, or evenconservatories, in which to capture those who captivate."

  "I--do I quite grasp your meaning, Mistaire Owen?" He tried todisguise the suspicion under an accentuated accent.

  "I think so, Monsieur Picquot."

  At the name Baskinelli turned livid. He made a movement as if he wouldlunge at the throat of Owen, but his f
ury withered under the glassysmile.

  "So--we met in Paris?"

  "Once upon a time--a little incident in the Rue St. Jeanne. A youngwoman was concerned in that incident--and was not heard ofafterward."

  "And you are trying to blackmail me for the death of Marie Disart!Ha! That is a jest," cried Baskinelli.

  "I am trying to do nothing of the kind. I simply reminded you of thelittle affair. I know as well as you that it was all beautifullycleared up, and a man is still in prison for it. I know you are assafe here as that man is in jail, Signor Baskinelli."

  "What are you talking about, then?"

  "The little woman that so charmed you here. I remarked merely thatthose who are captivated can capture."

  "Not in this country--not among the Puritans. One must be good--and unhappy."

  "You haven't forgotten your little friends, Mario, and Di Palma andVitrio? They are all respected residents of New York. We know, wherethey might be found."

  "At Cagliacci's?"

  "Precisely. Dining upon the best of spaghetti and the richest ofwines, and paying for it at the point of a stiletto."

  "But--ha! You are talking nonsense. We could not find them; theycould not find us."

  "We might telephone and try," suggested Owen. "Cagliacci, you know, isnow up-to-date. He has a telephone. He considers it a sign ofrespectability."

  "And then what do you propose?"

  "Picquot--I mean Signor Baskinelli, I propose nothing. Unlesspossibly there might be--after the reception--a little motor tripto Chinatown. It might amuse the ladies."

  "You are right. I will invite them all," said Baskinelli.

  "And how about calling up Marie at Cagliacci's just as an old friend?"

  "It might be best."

  They moved together down the corridor and Owen directed their way to alittle study secluded from all other apartments of the great house.

  "You seem to be familiar with the home of our gracious hostess,"remarked Baskinelli.

  "I make it a rule to be familiar with all homes in which Miss Marvin isentertained."

  "Miss Marvin? You are, then a relative?"

  "I am her guardian."

  "Ah-h! You have control--perhaps--of certain small sums bequeathedto her?"

  "Yes."

  "And you would like to have as few persons as possible in the Chinatownparty?"

  "As few as possible."

  In a place known only as Cagliacci's, in the dreg depths of Elizabethstreet, the ringing of the telephone bell was much more startling, muchmore unusual than the crash of a pistol shot or the blast of a bomb.

  The habitu's moved quietly to the door that leads to the roofs, whilePietro Cagliacci himself wiped the dust-covered receiver on his apronand put it to his ear.

  He spoke softly, tersely. The conversation was very brief. Within aminute after he had hung up the receiver three grimy-clad, grim-visagedmen left the place silently.

  Harry and Lucille came out of the conservatory.

  "I tell you there wasn't anything said between us that could havecaused it," he was saying. "I was fighting the whole thing hard, but Iwas fighting it like a beggar. I am always a beggar with Pauline."

  "But you told her it wasn't right that she was risking other people'slives?"

  "No, I told you to tell her that."

  In spite of her distress over Pauline's coldness, Lucille burst intolaughter.

  They were just emerging into the music room. Pauline, like the others,turned at the unexpected sound. She gave one glance at the two andturned haughtily away.

  Baskinelli was bustling about, making up an impromptu excursion party.

  "Ha! You people of New York--you do not know what is in New York.All Europe is here--and you never cross Fourteenth street--I meanto say Fifth avenue."

  "It is more dangerous to cross Fifth avenue than to cross the ocean--that's probably the reason," said Harry. "The traffic cops along theGulf Stream are so careful."

  Pauline stopped Baskinelli's intended reply. She wanted Harry to beignored utterly. Her anger had made him flippant. His flippancy hadput the seal of completeness upon her anger.