Moon at the Full

by Susan Barrie

  Rosalie pouted.

  “Business?” she said. “But this is a pleasure trip. It has nothing to do with business, surely?”

  He smiled down at her.

  “But certainly it is a pleasure trip! But business is not always unpleasant, and Van Arlen is a very charming fellow. You will like him, I promise you, and you will also like the things he deals in. Precious stones and pictures and every kind of objet d’art. He is a collector from Amsterdam, and occasionally he permits me to deprive him of something that he has only just acquired ... for a price, of course!” He smiled more softly into her wide eyes. “You did not know I collected beautiful things, mademoiselle? Some of the most beautiful in the world! You will see them when we arrive at my house.”

  “Oh!” she said, and she didn’t seem to know what else to say for the moment.

  He took her arm gently.

  “I have a weakness for that which is really rare, Miss Trent. Really rare!” he emphasized.

  And a soft flush spread beneath her clear skin.

  Behind them Steve attempted to make up her mind whether Miss Trent was a collector’s piece, but she didn’t think she was in the same class as Mademoiselle Descarté ... not so far as looks went, anyway. But it was possible the Comte was looking for something rarer than looks!

  When they arrived at the hotel—driving up in a couple of opulent, cream-colored cars that had been waiting for them at the quayside—Steve followed the others into the exquisite coolness of its welcome shade and wondered whether she was really awake or dreaming. The Comte had said that this was a new hotel, and in addition to being palatial it had an exotic eastern charm. There were fountains playing in cool courtyards, Moorish arches, an exquisitely restful decor.

  The air conditioning made the atmosphere delightful after the heat outside. The smooth whisper of ice against the sides of glasses, the incessant murmur of water falling into marble basins, the scent of the flowers that were massed in every corner of the unusual public rooms, were all part of a deliberate attempt to charm the visitor, and Steve wasn’t merely charmed; she had the feeling that she had wandered into a modern version of the Arabian Nights, and by some trick of fate she was being claimed by it.

  And it had all begun with the key of a flat in Paris handed over to her by Liane Daly!

  The Comte had gone straight to the reception desk upon entering the hotel and inquired after Mademoiselle Descarté, and upon being informed that she was there in the hotel the slight tension that had altered his expression when they drove up vanished like mist before the first kiss of the morning sun. All at once he was completely lighthearted, completely ready to entertain his guests and be the perfect host, and even Steve came in for one of, his brilliant, white-toothed smiles when he lifted his glass of aperitif to toast the success of the cruise.

  “May you never wish to return to London and model gowns, Miss Blair,” he said. “We must find you something more exciting to do than that!”

  Miss Trent and her mother both glanced at her coolly, as if they thought what she did with her future was entirely her own concern, and then Gabrielle appeared under one of the arched openings and stood smiling at them in her faint, aloof manner.

  She was wearing lime green and white, and was like a cool statue in a garden that smelled of orange blossom. Her radiant hair was still pinned high on the top of her head, and as she moved forward she already had the grace and assurance of a Comtesse.

  The Comte placed her in a chair with a tenderness that was quite noticeable, as if in his opinion she really was rare... and very well fitted to be added to his collection!

  Gabrielle was full of apologies, in soft, honey accents, for missing the Odette when it left Monte Carlo, and she explained that she had thought it a wise thing to do to fly ahead to Tangier and await the yacht there. The Comte agreed with her, patting one of her hands where it rested on the arm of her chair, and assured her that nothing mattered now that she had joined them. She smiled at him with her dark eyes that were quite unlike his own, for, whereas his were softly black and yet brilliant at the same time, hers had an almost fluid quality of darkness that was like the night closing down in a mystic place.

  Just before they went in to lunch they were joined by the collector of rare treasures from Amsterdam, and the entire party found him very pleasant; Rosalie Trent was quite thrilled when he talked of the quality of a set of emeralds he wished to show the Comte. He had them with him in the hotel—or rather, they were safely in the care of the management—but he would bring them with him to the Comte’s house that evening, when he dined with them.

  “And we will all see them?” Rosalie asked, her eyes enormous because the emeralds had, apparently, been once in the possession of an Empress. The Empress Marie-Thérèse of Austria.

  “I am not quite certain about that,” the Comte replied. “But it will be very pleasant indeed to have Monsieur Van Arlen dine with us.”

  The Dutchman bowed, his blond head catching a beam of light from the window.

  Rosalie’s eyes grew dreamy.

  “I adore emeralds,” she confessed. Then she turned and looked deliberately at Gabrielle Descarté, and the expression of her eyes hardened. “I really do adore them!” she repeated.

  Gabrielle merely sat with both white hands carelessly linked in her lap, a smile that was almost uninterested on her full lips. If anyone had a right to adore emeralds she had, for her coloring was simply created for them, but she was obviously quite unmoved, and without apparently the smallest desire to see the Empress’s fabulous necklace.

  The lunch was a wonderful meal, but it seemed to last for a very long time, and Steve was glad when it was over and the ladies withdrew to attend to their make-up. She was glad because Raoul de Courvalles had taken advantage of the fact that he was placed next to her to make constant attempts to squeeze her hand under the table—an enormous flower-decked table that was in the centre of the dining-room, where it attracted a great deal of notice—and when they were not discussing emeralds he had wanted to know all the details of her past life.

  He was an engagingly attractive young man, but she was determined not to embark with him on a flirtation that might compromise her position on this momentous cruise. The only one she was ever likely to make in the whole of her lifetime!

  Gabrielle looked at her curiously while she was flicking a powder-puff over her face in the retiring room.

  “We’ve met before, haven’t we?” she said. “You’re some sort of find of Léon’s, but I think there must be a mistake about your occupying his flat.” She outlined her already brilliantly reddened mouth with lipstick. “You don’t look the brazen sort!”

  Steve flushed vividly.

  “It was all a mistake,” she said, “and I had no idea the flat belonged to the Comte. I was given the key by someone whom I thought was the tenant.”

  Gabrielle’s eyebrows rose.

  “That sounds even more intriguing,” she observed. “But sometimes there is an explanation for the most compromising situations. However, I’d forget all about the Comte’s flat, and the woman who let you have the key—and it was a woman, wasn’t it?”—locking hard at Steve—“if I were you. I understand you’ve been brought along as a sort of secretary on this cruise, and you’d better concentrate on the job. You’re lucky to have found such an unusual one!”

  “Yes,” Steve agreed, rather stiffly. “I suppose I am.”

  The French girl snapped shut her handbag.

  “A word of warning about Raoul, in case you don’t recognize his type. He’s a born flirt. You’d be wise to leave him alone. And you’d be wise too if you looked for masculine diversion amongst members of the crew.”

  “I’m not looking for masculine diversion,” Steve assured her, even more stiffly.

  Gabrielle looked unconvinced, and bored.

  “Well, I’m merely warning you. There are several weeks ahead of us, and people fraternize easily on a cruise. There’s nothing very much else to do,” as if s
he was not particularly looking forward to the cruise herself.

  On their way back to the restaurant they passed a young man on the wide marble staircase. He wore a light suit, had light hair, rather like the Dutchman, Van Arlen, and brilliantly blue eyes. Those eyes stared so hard at Gabrielle that she glanced at him carelessly, and as if somewhat abashed he averted them quickly and stared at Steve.

  “That young man seems to know you,” Gabrielle remarked. She added in a light, mocking tone: “Take careful note of him. You’ll probably meet him again!”

  Outside the cars were waiting, and through the hot shimmer of the afternoon they were whirled at speed to a quarter of Tangier where there were many lush Victorian villas, and some much later specimens, overlooking the broad Atlantic. They were set amidst gardens running riot with bougainvillea and golden oranges and lemons, and it was between the entrance gates of one of these villas that the cars tunnelled, to come to rest before the white front of the Comte de Courvalles’. villa.

  It had nothing to do with the Victorian era, and in fact it was extremely up-to-date. It had a flat roof from which one could view the sunset, or the dawn—or the moonrise—according to inclination, and the central courtyard was paved with old Dutch tiles and lined with lemon trees. Inside, the black-and-white tiled hall was vast and severely impressive, and the rooms opening off it were all furnished in a severe modern manner, but there were some magnificent pictures hanging on the walls.

  Steve gasped as she recognized a Tintoretto flanked by a couple of Canalettos. There were silk Bokhara rugs on the floor of the hall, a great mosque lantern made entirely of beaten silver descending from the far-away roof, and a silver bowl full of flowers of every violent color on a pedestal in a kind of niche.

  Upstairs the rooms opened off a gallery, and every guest-room had its own bathroom and balcony. Steve found that even her towels matched the pale lavender of her bath, and when she went into Gabrielle’s room, after she had been sent for somewhat peremptorily, she found the beautiful model reclining against a background of restful jade, with some touches of rose and emerald in the cushions and the satin draperies.

  Gabrielle signalled to her to be seated. She herself was lying with her feet up on a black divan, and she was wearing a fine lace neglige.

  Outside the sunset flamed across the sky, and the plumy tops of the palms in the garden were quivering gently in the evening breeze. Through the wide flung windows came the salty breath of the sea, combined with the heady scent of flowers ... endless varieties of flowers, all of them exotic.

  “I want to ask you to do something for me,” Gabrielle said, without preamble. “Tonight we are all—except you, I imagine—dining with a local Marchesa. She is a great friend of the Comte, and he always visits her when he is here.”

  Steve waited.

  Gabrielle lit a cigarette, and flicked ash into an ashtray.

  “You remember the young man we met this afternoon, when we were leaving the hotel?”

  Steve looked surprised.

  “The young man with the fair hair? Who stared?”

  “He stared at you,” the French girl said, smiling in a strange, taut manner. “However, I want you to meet him, and to give him a note. The note is from me, but it is you who will hand it over. You will take a car ... one of the Comte’s chauffeurs will drive you, and the place of meeting is all arranged. All you have to do is to wait while the young man writes an answer.”

  “But I couldn’t possibly do anything of the kind!” Steve gasped, interrupting her. “What on earth would the Comte think if he heard that I...?”

  Gabrielle regarded her coldly.

  “You what? Set off to keep an assignation you had made with a young man who pleased you so much that you could not deny his pleas for a brief meeting?” She laughed softly. “Don’t be silly, my dear! That sort of thing is happening every day. Young women like yourself, violently attracted even in spite of themselves ... handsome young men unable to resist a pretty English face! Of course the Comte will not think it odd!”

  “He will think it extremely odd, and in any case, it isn’t true,” Steve answered bluntly. “Mademoiselle Descarté, you know it’s absolutely untrue, and I wouldn’t dream of making use of one of the Comte’s cars even if it was. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to get someone else to deliver your message,” she added coolly.

  “In that case I shall see to it that you don’t keep this job longer than another few hours,” Gabrielle Descarté said, with a great distinctness, in English which she spoke without a trace of accent. “I have already discussed you with Léon, and told him that I think he was very unwise to pick you up as he did, and that in any case you are too young and inexperienced to be of much use to anyone. If you don’t do what I ask of you tonight I shall tell him that in addition you are the type to become involved ... with impulsive young men like Raoul, his half-brother!”

  Steve gasped again.

  “But—”

  “Raoul was badly involved only recently with a very unsuitable young woman, and the Comte had the greatest difficulty in straightening matters out. He will not want to go through all that again so soon. So ... if you have any sense, and you are looking forward to this cruise, you will take my note!”

  Steve stood up and looked at her as if she was seeing her for the first time.

  “Why,” she exclaimed, “you’re a—a sort of blackmailer!”

  Gabrielle’s face remained like a beautiful pale mask.

  “Are you going to be sensible, Mademoiselle Blair?” she asked, as she rested-comfortably against her cushions. “Will you deliver my note? Personally, and bring back the answer to me?”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE car slipped through the byways of Tangier like a smoothly efficient long grey ghost. Steve had never realized before that a Near Eastern port could have so much of the Far East about it, a remote, bewildering, utter strangeness. And at night the strangeness crowded every other impression right out of the picture.

  There was still a little light left in the sky when she left the villa, but once down in the labyrinth that was old Tangier there was no light at all, save that which occasionally streamed from open doorways, or flared above a stall offering sticky sweets and fruit for sale. The native cafes appeared to be lit by oil lamps, and were well patronized at that hour. Steve could see men squatting against the walls and looking oddly dignified in their pale djellabahs, their shadows huge on the peeling stucco behind them.

  They crossed an open space that was a hive of industry during daylight hours, and even now was noisy with the cries of vendors and purchasers haggling over goods displayed on trestle tables. The flickering kerosene lamps that illuminated the wares were like stars in the surrounding darkness.

  Then, all at once, they were in the Tangier of the gleaming cars and the cocktail parties, the diplomatic dinners and the smart hotels. Steve recognized the hotel where they had had lunch that day, but she had no idea where they were going, and she longed to touch the impassive back of the chauffeur in front of her and inquire what his instructions were.

  But Gabrielle had warned her that there was to be no conversation between her and anyone save the man to whom she was to deliver a message. A message contained in a hastily written note securely sealed in a delicately perfumed envelope.

  It was like something out of an impossible piece of fiction, Steve thought, that she should have been inveigled into such a position as this. The bearer of information that could not be passed on in any other way.

  She felt herself grow hot with indignation, and the certainty that she had been taken the basest advantage of, as she recalled Mademoiselle Descarté’s threat to influence her employer against her. And why should he not listen to her, when out of the three women he toyed with the idea of marrying Gabrielle was the only one who actually seemed to affect him noticeably? He had been upset because she failed to put in an appearance at Monte Carlo, and his day had been made for him when she glided gracefully to their table in the
Arabian Nights-like interior of the place where they had lunched that day.

  After that he had been carefree and relieved, and even Rosalie Trent had sensed his relief. It had affected her outlook for the rest of the day ... hers and her mother’s.

  For the best laid plans of mice and men gang aft agley, and Gabrielle was an obvious favorite. She was several lengths ahead of the others already!

  And the fact that she had an urgent desire to establish secret and written contact with a fair-haired young man who had stared at her without concealment when they met by accident on a staircase—or was it, Steve wondered, altogether by accident?—might, or might not, affect the Comte’s enthusiasm if he knew about it.

  But Gabrielle had insisted that he should learn nothing at all about it.

  “You will say nothing,” she had said, “to anyone. To anyone, do you understand? If by chance it leaks out that you found it necessary to leave the villa for some purpose of your own you will invent some fictional explanation as the reason for your restlessness. A desire to do a little sightseeing, or something of the sort.”

  “In one of the Comte’s cars?” Steve had inquired dryly. “And at night?”

  Gabrielle had shrugged.

  “Then you must think up something more convincing. But one word of the truth and you will be dispatched back to England. That is certain!”

  Without a job, and without a character, Steve thought wryly. That was something that must not be allowed to happen if she could avoid it, and perhaps to make up for her previous crudeness Gabrielle promised to cover up for her as much as possible.