Hotel Stardust

by Susan Barrie

  Eve and her aunt took their coffee in the small inn parlor, and then Aunt Kate began to nod a little over an ancient copy of Punch, and at last it was as much as she could do to keep awake at all. The combined effects of a long journey and a dinner which included roast goose were beginning to tell, and at last Eve suggested to her that she went to bed.

  Aunt Kate looked relieved.

  “I will, if you don’t mind,” she said. “It must be the Cornish air.” But it was a long time since she had tasted such a succulent portion of goose as that which had accompanied the apple-sauce on her plate in the dining room, or topped it off with such an out-size icecream on which the real cream had floated in great puffs.

  Eve went up with her to get her coat, having determined to take a short stroll before retiring to bed. During dinner she had seen through the window that the moon had risen and was bathing the sea in a silver flood, and the murmur of the incoming tide had affected her pulses in a curious way. She wanted to get down to the water’s edge and watch it curling gently on the smooth, soft sand, and look up at the starry width of the sky and the giant cliffs which shut in the cove.

  Although it was only March, the night air was soft. She could feel it caressing her face, and the salt smell of the sea was pleasant and, somehow, vaguely exciting.

  There seemed to be no one about but herself, although from the windows of the inn yellow light streamed, and a wireless set was playing dance music. It was a little too lively to fit in with the placid beauty of the night, but it prevented her from feeling too lonely down there on the edge of the shore.

  She saw one or two people leave the inn and one or two others arrived. And then a large and glistening car drew up before the porch. It was so large, and the moonlight made of it such a sumptuous spectacle, that Eve was a little surprised. Were these already holiday-makers, or was it some local resident bringing a party of friends to The Smuggler, as it was called?

  At least half a dozen smartly dressed people descended from the car. Eve could see the women’s dresses gleaming softly in the moonlight, and there were short fur capes and at least one full-length- fur coat. The men appeared to be less formally attired, in blazers and flannel trousers, and one had a noticeable white choker about his neck.

  When they had gone inside, Eve realized that the night wind was rather cool after all. She started to move about more briskly for another quarter of an hour, and then returned to the inn also.

  As she put out her hand to thrust open the door someone whose object seemed to be departure wrenched it from her grasp, and, temporarily thrown off her balance, she stumbled forward right

  into the arms of the man with the white choker wound about his throat.

  “I’m so sorry!” she gasped, apologizing instinctively. But the next moment she drew back and almost recoiled from him, for his eyes were blazing with unconcealed irritation and impatience.

  “It's always a good thing to refrain from being precipitate,” he said coldly, as he steadied her. “And coming inout of the darkness you ought to make allowance for the sudden brightness of the lights.”

  “But you pulled the door out of my hand!” she accused him, feeling a rising spurt of anger on her own account. “And it’s you who should make allowance for the fact that anyone coming in here is not to know that a tornado is approaching from the other side of the door!”

  “Really?” His dark eyebrows elevated themselves as he looked directly down at her — for the first time with a certain amount of interest in what he saw. He was, or seemed to her to be, immensely tall; his shoulders were arrogantly well-set, and he was lean and narrow-hipped. He had an almost swarthy face, and something like a scar which travelled from one corner of his mouth to a corner of a thick black eyebrow. His eyes were almost piercingly and challengingly blue. “Really?” he repeated. “It’s the first time in my life that I’ve been likened to a tornado, but in the course of a not uneventful career I have several times encountered them in various corners of the globe.”

  His voice held a mocking, jibing note, and Eve glanced at him with a feeling of acute and positive dislike. She decided he was not worth wasting any more words on, and swept past him into the hall and upstairs to her room. But before she had set foot on the first two stairs a girl came quickly from the bar on her right, and stood gazing up at her in mild astonishment. She was quite definitely below medium height and as slender as an elf; she wore a dress of drifting white tulle which was almost as simple as a school-girl’s party frock, and her hair hung in a pale golden bob to her shoulders. The eyes with which she surveyed Eve, ascending the stairs in a kind of cold fury, were huge and deep like violets.

  “It is some kind of contretemps?' she inquired in a husky, amused voice of the man who had shaken Eve's calm. “Rogaire, what is it that you have been doing ?”

  Eve was moving too fast to catch Rogaire's answer, but she heard the girl laugh as she reached the first landing, and venturing to look down quickly she saw her link her hand in his arm. He appeared to

  tower above her.

  A gentle, tinkling laugh was borne upwards.

  “Oh, Rogaire, sometimes you are quite impossible, and even I find it hard to forgive you when you — what is it you English say? — tread upon my corns so hard that I wish to bite! But I do not bite!” in the honeyed accent which always recalled for him Paris when the leaves were just appearing on the trees after a particularly hard winter and the sun was shining in the Champs-Elysees, and the Seine flowed sleepily. . . . “Of course I do not bite!”

  The tinkling laugh came again, and she drew him towards the entrance.

  “You have not yet recovered my handbag from the seat of the car, so we will go together to look for it, n'est-ce pas? And the others they are all so occupied in the bar and the night it is full of moonlight, and so I think. . . .” What she thought she whispered to him, putting her head very close to his arm so that the long golden hair fell against his sleeve, and her great, shadowy eyes gazed up at him with something that was a mixture of provocation and temptation and innocent expectation in their depths.

  But the provocation was the most noticeable of all three ingredients.

  Upstairs in her room, which happened to be in the front of the house, Eve heard the car start up, and saw it glide away from the shadow of The Smuggler, and she realized that it was a very expensive car indeed, but the man who was driving it was probably the most unpleasant she had ever met.

  In the morning she asked the landlord, whose name happened to be Geake, where the large party came from who very neatly filled his small bar the previous evening, and he answered:

  “Oh, you mean Commander Merlin and his friends? They came over from the Stark Point Hotel. Commander Merlin owns the Stark Point — biggest hotel around here, and what you might call fashionable. But the Commander’s very fond of the old Smuggler, and he likes to pay it a visit sometimes. He’s not stuck up like some of them — particularly some of those he brings with him! — even although he owns at least half a dozen hotels, including one or two on the Continent.”

  Eve gazed at him with her cool, quiet eyes. Aunt Kate was still finishing her breakfast.

  “Is he a local man?” she asked.

  “Why, bless yer soul, yes, miss, born and bred in this part of the world. The Stark Point was once his home, only in those days it was called Stark Place. His parents were pretty comfortably off when he was a lad, but by the time he came out of the Navy after the war, they was finding it pretty much of a job to make ends meet. And he decided to go in for hotel-keeping. He’s a wonderful record of wartime service — submarines, you know, and a D.S.O. and Bar, and I don’t know what else. We were all very proud of him around here, and wished him the best of luck when he turned the old place into the Stark Point. And now he can’t go wrong. He just keeps adding them to his list like beads to a necklace, as you might say.”

  “Well, at least he won’t add Treloan to his necklace!” Eve assured herself almost fiercely. “Whatever happ
ens, I’ll see he never does that!”

  CHAPTER THREE

  AS a concession to Aunt Kate, who was not very anxious to try cliff climbing so soon after their arrival, she allowed Mr. Geake to drive them to Treloan for their first inspection of the place. The road, as he had explained to her, made quite a wide detour before it brought them within sight of a pair of curly, wrought-iron gates, beyond which was a dignified avenue leading to the house itself. The avenue was bordered by trees, still somewhat bare of leaf, but in the grass beneath them daffodils danced in a stiff March breeze. Looking rather eagerly to right and left as they proceeded in Mr. Geake’s rather antiquated vehicle between the well-grown trunks, Eve thought the gardens, which extended on either hand and which appeared to be composed chiefly of lawns and shrubberies, were a little overgrown, as if they had not had much care expended on them in recent weeks. And even the daffodils were not the fine specimens so rich a man as her uncle might have been expected to allow to adorn the approach to his residence.

  But a sudden bend brought them within sight of the house itself, fronted by a terrace decorated with stone vases. Eve’s heart leaped within her as she noted that it was white and gracious and Georgian, its entrance flanked by graceful Corinthian pillars, and its windows all beautifully spaced and dignified.

  Whatever the present condition of the grounds the house was something to charm the eye immediately, and was a monument to the excellent taste of its designer. It had the tranquillity of an age when tranquillity was much more easily come by, combined with the spacious elegance of the same period.

  With the remembrance of her dream pressing closely upon her, Eve felt anxious to view it from its opposite front — from the sea side. The atmosphere was as clear as a bell today, with pale sky and sunshine, and despite the swirling mists in her dream she felt that she might be able to recognize — something at least!

  And if she did, what, precisely, would that mean? What kind of an interpretation would one whose business was the unravelling of the mysterious significance of dreams place upon it? Would he or she tell her that it was because her mother and father had spent their honeymoon in the house? Because she had often, and in secret, thought about Treloan but believed she would never see it? Because it was so soon to be in her possession?

  And now that it was in her possession, how was she to keep it? How could she endure to give Mr. Grimshaw the word to go ahead and sell it?

  She stood looking up at the front of the house and biting her lip, while behind her Aunt Kate sought to extricate Sarah from the back of Mr. Geake’s car and a savory smell of shot rabbit which seemed to cling to it. And Mr. Geake coughed once or twice before he asked her at what time she wished him to come and collect her.

  “I’ll ring the inn and let you know,” she told him, smiling, for she was determined not to have her inspection cut short by any impatience on his part, and he went away thinking that it was a good thing he had had the idea of tipping the wink to Commander Merlin, for there was now no doubt about it — she was old Petherick’s niece all right! She was the new owner of Treloan!

  “Is there anyone at all living in the house now?’' Aunt Kate inquired, in a kind of awed whisper, as she followed her niece into the wide, white-panelled hall with its beautiful fan-shaped staircase. The whisper seemed to come back at her uncannily from the silent, dust-sheeted rooms on either side of them, and she picked up Sarah and tucked her firmly under her arm because she had been about to conduct an investigation for rats amongst the pieces of obviously choice furniture.

  “No one,” Eve answered her, her clear voice echoing even more loudly and decisively beneath the slightly vaulted ceiling. “But there’s a couple who live in the lodge, and the man once acted as gardener, and the woman comes in once or twice a week to clean.”

  “If you ask me,” Aunt Kate gave it as her opinion as she stared around, “you’ll require a whole regiment of women to come in and clean if you ever think of keeping on this place!”

  Eve did not answer her this time. She went forward and led the way through what had once been used as the drawing room. It reminded Aunt Kate of a State Apartment, because of the wide white Adam fireplace, the huge windows, and the carved and gilded ceiling. The walls of the library were lined with books, some of which were probably valuable, and the dining-room was truly noble. Aunt Kate knew she could never possibly eat in comfort off the tremendous area of polished rosewood table which matched the perfect Regency sideboard and the upright Regency chairs.

  But Eve, absorbing so many impressions all at once, knew exactly why it was that Roger Merlin was so bent upon possessing himself of Treloan and turning it into an hotel. It was the one house in a million, set in exactly the right spot, and equipped in an almost perfect fashion, to make a large income for a clever hotelier.

  A clever hotelier. But other people, without the benefit of so much experience, had been known to run hotels successfully!

  They were in the kitchen now, large, modern, and convenient, with every type of labor-saving device, and she turned to her aunt like one who was not merely inspired by what she had just seen, but had received confirmation of a previous, half-born idea.

  “Aunt Kate!” she exclaimed. “We’ll do it! We’ll run it as an hotel!” Aunt Kate sat down at the kitchen table and allowed Sarah to go wherever she wanted to.

  “My dear,” she said rather feebly, “it’s a bit large, isn’t it? And who will you get to run it?”

  “We’ll run it between us,” Eve told her, her eyes glistening. “With the help of one or two others, of course,” she added.

  “Darling,” Aunt Kate said gently, “it must be close upon lunchtime, and you're probably feeling hungry. I know I am. Do you think there’s any food in the larder?”

  But Eve was not to be side-tracked.

  “I’ve made up my mind,” she asserted firmly. “Somehow — somehow — I’ll do it! I won’t sell! I absolutely refuse to sell, and wild horses wouldn’t make me hand over this property to that detestable Commander Merlin. He tried to get Uncle Hilary to sell to him, but Uncle Hilary had more sense, and now I know why he left it to me! ’llmake a success of it!”

  “Yes, my love, so you said before,” Aunt Kate agreed placidly; “but not until we’ve had some lunch. . . . And who, by the way, is Commander Merlin?” with sudden curiosity.

  “Some wretched local man, with an enlarged sense of his own importance, who thinks he knows all about the running of hotels,” Eve informed her scathingly.

  A sudden summons at the front-door bell caused them both to jump quite violently, and Sarah came tearing from the larder and set up a noisy barking. Eve and her aunt exchanged glances, and Eve stooped and picked up the overfed dachshund and tucked her under her arm, even as her aunt had done.

  “I’ll go and see who it is,” she said quietly.

  Somehow the summons was eerie in that vast empty house, and the feel of Sarah, despite her complete ineffectualness, was comforting. But no sooner was the front door opened, and it was revealed that a tall man stood there, dressed in a grey suit and a Cambridge-blue silk shirt and darker blue flowing tie, with an air of cool condescension and almost fiercely blue eyes, than Sarah wriggled herself free from the restriction imposed by Eve’s arm and began to fawn upon him.

  Disgusted, Eve called her back.

  “Sarah!”

  But Commander Merlin had already picked Sarah up in his arms and was making a great fuss of her, and Sarah responded by almost frantically licking every available inch of his face.

  “Good dogs, these,” the black-haired, arrogant male commented. “Quite a safe breed. I had a couple myself once, but I go in nowadays for bulldogs. Unfortunately they’re getting rather rare, which happens when a strain achieves perfection. And as a sideline I’m rather fond of Siamese cats “

  “Really?” Eve said coldly, interrupting him. “And do I take it that you came all the way up here to discuss your favorite pets with me? Or was there, perhaps, some other reason?”<
br />
  “As a matter of fact, there was,” he told her at once, quite bluntly, although there was something rather like a twinkle in his sea-blue eyes, particularly as they roved over her, taking in all the slender defiance of her attitude.

  “In that case, I’d better ask you to come in,” she said.

  “It would be more convenient,” he agreed, and strode without more ado into the very centre of the hall.

  There he put back his head and stood looking up at, and obviously admiring, the beauties of the ceiling. She thought that his expression became one of reverence as he gazed.

  “What craftsmanship!” he exclaimed. “What exquisite . workmanship! Look at that cornice!” He indicated it with his hand, lean, brown, and virile. “That is the work of the younger Adam brother himself, not one of his pupils. And you can recognize the master’s touch in those twisted vine leaves, and that perfect archway. And as for the staircase.

  . . . But perhaps I’m boring you?” turning to follow her as she started to lead the way towards the drawing-room, where she stripped the dust-covers from two Louis Quinze chairs and offered one to him to sit down.

  “Not at all,” she answered coolly. “I have some slight knowledge myself of the Adam period.”

  He looked at her, she thought, sceptically. His fingers were caressing the back of the Louis Quinze chair, and it was quite plain to her that he had a great passion for antiquity.

  “I don’t know whether you realize,” he said without further preamble, “that the offer I made to you through your solicitors did not include all this furniture? But I will add to the offer here and now if you will agree to let the house go as it stands.”

  She shook her head, an inscrutable little smile on her lips.

  “I’m sorry, but I’m not interested in your offer.”

  He regarded her with an expression of carefully summoned-up patience. She was wearing a dress of primrose linen beneath a light grey coat, and her hair hung curling almost to her shoulders and had the color of chestnut buds about to burst. Her eyes were serene and grey and baffling behind their fringes of abnormally long eyelashes, and she was incredibly slight and dainty, almost fragile — and yet the curve of her lips betokened unshakable firmness once her mind was made up!