Moon at the Full

by Susan Barrie

“I will say that you have the headache, and do not wish to be disturbed,” she stated. “A tray of food can be taken to your room, and I will ‘square’ the maid to ensure that she does not reveal that there was no one there to receive it!”

  Steve stared at her dumbly, disliking her very much indeed, and not merely because of the awkward situation in which she herself was being thrust.

  She was suddenly dazzled by the lights from the big hotels, and the blocks of flats, and when they drove into the forecourt of a small hotel and pulled up before the entrance she realized that they had arrived. This was where she handed over her scented missive, and waited for one—presumably unscented—to be carried back to Gabrielle.

  She looked anxiously at the chauffeur as he held open the car door for her.

  “You will wait?” she inquired nervously.

  He bowed his head.

  “My instructions are to wait.”

  Steve looked at him with a moment’s curiosity, noting his thin dark features and inscrutable eyes. She wondered' how much Gabrielle had bribed him to keep a still tongue in his head about this outing.

  As she went up the steps into the brilliantly lighted vestibule Steve’s uneasiness was so great that, but for the fact that she could hardly do so now, she would have turned and fled back to the car. She had a sense of outrage, of enormity—of guilt!—and her whole being revolted against being used in this way. But the uniformed figure who stood just inside the door and indicated the reception desk left her with no opportunity to worry about guilt for long.

  “I would like to see a Monsieur Strangeways...” she was beginning, when the fair-haired young man materialized right beside her and took her elbow. He smiled at her quite radiantly, as if he had been living for the meeting, and led her towards a secluded corner of the ornately appointed lounge.

  “Come and have a drink,” he said. He signalled to a waiter. “What will you have?” he wanted to know. “Something short and stimulating, or some-ii thing long and cool? You look to me like the long and cool type,” with an insolently appraising—and approving—gleam in his eyes. “Orange juice, and soda and a lot of ice, with perhaps a little gin?”

  “No gin, thank you,” she answered immediately. And then, as the waiter departed, she spoke very stiffly indeed. “I presume you are Mr. Timothy Strangeways?”

  “Of course,” he replied, coolly. “Who else would I be? You saw me this morning ... or this afternoon, rather! Don’t tell me I’m the type to be forgotten so quickly?”

  She felt her back go rigid with disapproval.

  “Mr. Strangeways,” she told him, “the only reason I noticed you this afternoon was because you stared. You obviously recognized one of us, and there isn’t any doubt it was Mademoiselle Descarté. She has sent me here tonight with a letter for you...” She dived into her handbag, but he caught her arm.

  “Not so fast,” he warned quietly. “There isn’t all that hurry, and people are watching us.” For the first time she realized there were a great many people on all sides of them, coming and going. Some were attired for the evening, and the night life of Tangier, others had plainly been on excursions and were returning tired but elated after a day of novel experiences. The hotel was quite luxurious—although not in the same top flight as that patronized by the Comte de Courvalles—and there were a lot of American voices filling the pleasantly air-conditioned space around them, as well as French and Spanish and the occasional swift flow of Arabic. Couples who had arranged to meet and were sampling aperitifs had no time to spare for Steve and her companion, but the less engrossed had. Unattached male§ in particular, for Steve was looking very English in her cool, flowered frock, and her Anglo-Saxon coloring was most striking under the lights, and amidst the alien flowers and spraying fountains.

  “You see?” Strangeways said meaningly, as she lifted her eyes and colored faintly when she dis-B covered she was a focus of interest. “We mustn’t arouse curiosity, and you must be more relaxed in your manner. Lots of people have business to discuss, but they, do it in a way that suggests there is a certain amount of enjoyment in it as well. After all, business can be quite pleasant, you know.”

  “So far as I’m concerned there is only one reason why I am here,” Steve told him with the stiffness she could not conquer. “I have a car waiting for me, and I’m anxious to get back as quickly as possible.”

  “Thus depriving me of the pleasure of getting to know you a little better than I do now,” Strangeways murmured reproachfully. “However, if’ you’re all that anxious I’ll take a look at the letter. You can pass it over casually, as if it is of no importance whatsoever.”

  “And is it ... of tremendous importance?” Steve could not resist asking as the envelope changed hands, and he slit it open with his long, slim fingers.

  He glanced at her sideways with a faint glimmer of amusement in his eyes.

  “You know Gabrielle! Or rather, you’ve had an, opportunity to study her, and like everyone else you must admit that she’s quite an eyeful. There’s a lot to her!”

  “But she isn’t free to ... to be admired by other men!” she heard herself protesting rather childishly.

  “No?” He was reading swiftly, but the smile lingered in his eyes. “You mean she’s hoping to hook the Comte de Courvalles as a result of this trip you’re embarking on? Well, that’s all right! I wouldn’t wish to spoil her chances in that direction. In fact, it’s the very last thing I want to do.” His expression grew thoughtful, and he folded the letter. “This will require a certain amount of concentrated thought before it can receive an answer. I’m afraid, my dear, that you’ll have to act messenger again. I suggest that you have lunch with me tomorrow.”

  “But I can’t possibly do that!” she exclaimed at once. “For one thing, I’m not a free agent.”

  “Then what are you?” he inquired, looking at her with interest. “I only saw you on the stairs this afternoon, but you looked very much like all the other lovelies who keep trailing in the wake of our wealthy Comte. Gabrielle said something about a secretary who was joining this outfit, but I’ll confess I didn’t imagine she’d look like you., It was only when Gabrielle indicated you with her eyes that I realized you were not exactly as the others.”

  “Then you—you don’t mean to tell me that you arranged I should be a sort of go-between you when we reached Tangier?” she gasped in astonishment.

  He nodded coolly.

  “Oh, yes. As I’ve said, I don’t want to be the means of getting a spanner involved with the works of Gabrielle’s latest plan, and Post Restante addresses are not really satisfactory when a person’s on a cruise. Besides, they mean delay, and you were on the spot, as it were. It was very sensible to make use of you!”

  Her lips grew taut;

  “For what reason, I’d like to know? You don’t appear to be—”

  “Lovers?” She realized that he laughed at her silently. “But there are all kinds of lovers, my dear, and it’s just possible I’m the self-sacrificing type who can be induced to stand aside! However, that’s quite unimportant at the moment. The important thing is, will you lunch with me tomorrow?”

  “I can’t,” Steve repeated firmly,

  “Have coffee with me, then? Here, in this hotel. I’ll have the answer to Gabrielle’s letter ready for you.”

  “But you’ve absolutely no right to make use of me, as you’ve just said,” Steve protested indignantly. “I’m an employee, and my employer’s interests come first, and he may very well require me tomorrow morning. Or someone else may.”

  “You mean you’re at the beck and call of all of them?”

  “More or less,” she admitted.

  “Then don’t devote more time than you need to that nasty little piece, Raoul. He’s a menace to any young woman in your position! But all I want you to do is have coffee with me in a friendly atmosphere, and convey an answer to a letter.” He tapped the one in his hand. “Be co-operative, my dear. By the way,” he asked, “what is your name? I can�
��t go on thinking of you as an obliging blonde!”

  “I’m Stephanie Blair,” she answered, “and I’m not being in the least obliging. Mademoiselle Descarté threatened to lose me my job if I refused to meet you tonight!”

  She thought that his face grew rather cynically grim.

  “That’s Gabrielle,” he admitted. “Quite a tough girl, when she wants to be!” His hand went out and covered one of hers, and the feel of his fingers was surprisingly firm and strong, although as masculine hands went his were unusually fine and sensitive. “Look here, Stephanie, play along with us and I promise you it won’t do you any harm. I’m an artist, and I need money, and Gabrielle has promised to try and induce the Comte to buy some of my pictures. It’s as simple as that! And surely you wouldn’t want to deny me the means to live?”

  He had very blue eyes, and a method of smiling at times that was peculiarly attractive. He was also very sun-tanned, and his golden hair had been bleached by the sun in many countries, and looked even more striking than her own beneath the lights. Unwillingly she had to admit that he was a man of charm, and he sounded earnest.

  “The Comte only buys the very best,” she said quietly. “Are your pictures good?”

  “I think so,” he answered, without sounding as if he was bragging. “Gabrielle thinks so too.”

  “And Gabrielle knows when a thing is good, and when it is—not so good?”

  He nodded.

  “Like the gentleman you just mentioned, she is beginning to have little use for anything that is, as you phrased it, ‘not so good’!” with a certain dryness in his voice:

  Impulsively she agreed to meet him the following day.

  “But it’s the last time I’ll act as go-between,” she added decisively. “You’ll have to make some other arrangement if you wish to keep in touch with Mademoiselle Descarté after tomorrow!”

  He gave her hand a little squeeze.

  “Good for you, Stephanie,” he said.

  On the way back she wondered why she had bothered to correct him about her Christian name, and explain that she had always been known as Steve. It was not really any concern of his, and he had no right at all to call her anything but Miss Blair.

  But he was quite obviously the type who roamed about the Continent—and, quite possibly, farther afield—painting pictures and living on the occasional sale of one of them, and his manners had become free and easy; his attitude to members of the opposite sex possibly freer and easier. He had warned her about Raoul de Courvalles, but surely he was a much more dangerous type? Raoul wore his label quite blatantly, and his background of wealth added to his glamour. But Timothy Strangeways—and, before they parted, he had insisted that she call him Timothy—had no background of glamour, only a background of hard work and nothing that could possibly pass for security. He was glad to make use of a friendship with a self-centred young woman like Gabrielle Descarté in order to interest a new customer in his wares.

  Or was that really the truth? Wholly the truth? Why should Gabrielle run risks for his sake, and use threats for his sake?

  The chauffeur drove at great speed back to the villa, and Steve was glad. The palms of her hands felt moist every time she wondered what would happen to her if it came to light that she had not been in her room all the evening.

  Then she remembered something that she was astounded she hadn’t remembered before. Gabrielle had said that the whole party was dining that night with a Marchesa, a friend of the Comte de Courvalles. But—and she remembered it very distinctly now—the Comte had issued an invitation to the art dealer from Amsterdam to dine at the villa, and he was to bring a fabulous necklace of emeralds with him which he hoped the Comte might wish to acquire. Rosalie Trent had been eager to see them ... the whole party had been vaguely promised that they might be allowed to see them!

  In that case the story of the Marchesa had been a fabrication on Mademoiselle Descarté’s part, and the chances of Steve’s getting back into the villa without being seen were much more remote than they would have been. Gabrielle had known that, and had taken a chance that she would be discovered. But the courtyard of the villa was dark when Steve drove into it, and only a star-like lamp above the entrance, and another to indicate each angle of the building, permitted her to see the outlines of the building itself. The windows were all dark.

  Steve took note of the pale shape of the villa against the star-strewn night sky, the almost luminous quality of the blueness of the sky itself, the palms and the eucalyptus trees that etched themselves against it, and then lifted the latch of the front door. It opened easily, and she was in the sable darkness of the hall, with the almost overpowering perfume of the massed flowers in the great vase in the alcove coming at her like a solid thing.

  She heard, or thought she heard, a door close softly in the absolute silence of the house. Then there wasn’t a breath of movement, and she crept towards the stairs.

  For one moment, as she ascended them, she had a mental picture of emeralds blazing on a bed of velvet, and she wondered whether the Comte had bought them. And if he had bought them whether they would one day grace the milky throat and ears of the lovely French model, Gabrielle Descarté.

  Then she reached her own room, and with a sigh of relief switched on her light. She also locked her door. If Gabrielle was anxious to learn Strangeways was taking his time about sending a reply to the letter he had received she could wait until morning.

  CHAPTER SIX

  IN the morning, however—long before anyone save Steve was up and outside her room—a message was brought to Steve on the terrace, where she was enjoying the beauty of the morning undisturbed.

  The terrace ran the whole length of the house on one side, and overlooked the sea. In the clear, bright light of day the garden that sloped towards the sea was a riot of vivid color, with English-looking roses blooming in ordered beds as well as exotic unknown shrubs. There were palms outlining the paths, and hedges of brilliant flame-red hibiscus and purple bougainvillea; but although the feathery palm tops looked as if they would provide a measure of shade when the heat was great, already the shimmer of heat was lying all over the garden, and the efforts of half a dozen gardeners with hoses were plainly a daily necessity.

  But as the water left the hoses it sparkled in the sun, and the illusion was one of coolness and freshness at that hour. The sky was a serene, rather than a hard, blue, and the waters of the beautiful wide by were ruffled by a light breeze.

  Steve was trying to make out the Odette, where she lay at anchor, when a tarbushed servant brought her Gabrielle’s note. It was brief, and got to the point at once.

  “Come and see me immediately.”

  For one moment, Steve wondered what would happen if she ignored the note and went straight to her employer and explained that she was being made use of and that she strongly suspected that it was not entirely in his interests. Then she remembered Timothy Strangeways’ firm, persuasive pressure on her hand, and the urgency in his voice when he requested her to co-operate with him and Gabrielle, and she knew that she had to keep that morning’s appointment somehow. And as he didn’t merely wish to have coffee with her, but provide her with an answer to Gabrielle’s letter, she had to see Gabrielle in order to explain.

  Mademoiselle Descarté was sitting up in bed when Steve entered her room for the second time, and the transparency of her nightdress made Steve want to blush. She wasn’t normally prudish, but the French beauty was definitely blatant in the way she revealed her charms to all and sundry—even, almost certainly, the dreamy-eyed house-servant, Mohammed, who was responsible for the delivery of breakfast trays to the rooms of the guests.

  But there was no doubt about it. Gabrielle had charms that were infinitely well worth revealing, and against the plain satin headboard of her bed, and the frothy lace of her pillows, the splendor of her red-gold hair was at its best.

  “Well?” she demanded impatiently, and held out her hand for the expected envelope. “Why didn’t you let me have
it before? Surely it shouldn’t have been necessary for me to send for you!”

  Steve explained that not merely had there been no one in the house when she returned the night before, but she had no envelope to deliver. Mr. Strangeways was taking his time about sending a reply to the letter he had received.

  Gabrielle looked at first taken aback by this, and then she bit her lip.

  “That’s a nuisance, of course, but you’ll have to meet him this morning as you arranged. The Comte is taking us on some sort of expedition that involves a tour of the Medina—the souks, that is. You’ll have to get lost somehow, and we’ll find you again after you’ve slipped away and had your coffee with Tim. But you’d better make it a quick coffee, or the Comte will be suspicious.”

  Steve looked worried.

  “I don’t see how I can very well do that. Wouldn’t it be better to ask for the morning off? ... something like that?”

  But Gabrielle shook her head firmly.

  “No, that wouldn’t do at all. I had to do quite a lot of explaining away for you last night, and if you ask for time off this morning Léon will think you’re really ill and insist on calling for a doctor. He doesn’t like people for whom he feels responsible having headaches, and that sort of thing, in this climate, and instead of being allowed out you’d be confined to your room. You must be bright and full of normal, abounding health this morning, and get lost trying to find the British post office, or something of the sort.”

  When Steve left her room she was by no means satisfied with the arrangement, and as the first person she ran into when she returned to the terrace was the Comte she had no time to adjust her features, or banish the faint air of concern and preoccupation that hung over her before he was subjecting her to quite a scrutiny.

  “Ah!” he said. “So you are up and about quite early this morning, mademoiselle! I trust you have completely recovered from your indisposition of last night?”

  Steve looked up at him, feeling the guilty color throbbing on her cheekbones.