Works of Robert W Chambers

by Robert W. Chambers

  And he seized the young girl whom he was to escort to her home — wherever that hazy locality might be — and carried her in his arms to the taxicab, amid encouraging shouts of laughter from the line of cavalrymen who had been watching the proceedings from the corner of the rue Vilna.

  That shout of Gallic appreciation inflamed Sengoun: he reached for his hat, to lift and wave it, but found no hat on his head. So he waved his tattered sleeve instead:

  “Hurrah for France!” he shouted. “Hurrah for Russia! I’m Sengoun, of the Terek! — And I am to have a thousand lances with which to explain to the Germans my opinion of them and of their Emperor!”

  The troopers cheered him from their stirrups, in spite of their officers, who pretended to check their men.

  “Vive la France! Vive la Russie!” they roared. “Forward the Terek Cossacks!”

  Sengoun turned to Ilse Dumont:

  “Madame,” he said, “in gratitude and admiration!” — and he gracefully saluted her hand. Then, to his comrade: “Neeland!” — seizing both the American’s hands. “Such a night and such a comrade I shall never forget! I adore our night together; I love you as a brother. I shall see you before I go?”

  “Surely, Sengoun, my dear comrade!”

  “Alors — au revoir!” He sprang into the taxicab. “To the Russian Embassy!” he called out; and turned to the half fainting girl on the seat beside him.

  “Where do you live, my dear?” he asked very gently, taking her icy hand in his.

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  SUNRISE

  When the taxicab carrying Captain Sengoun and the unknown Russian girl had finally disappeared far away down the Boulevard in the thin grey haze of early morning, Neeland looked around him; and it was a scene unfamiliar, unreal, that met his anxious eyes.

  The sun had not yet gilded the chimney tops; east and west, as far as he could see, the Boulevard stretched away under its double line of trees between ranks of closed and silent houses, lying still and mysterious in the misty, bluish-grey light.

  Except for police and municipal guards, and two ambulances moving slowly away from the ruined café, across the street, the vast Boulevard was deserted; no taxicabs remained; no omnibuses moved; no early workmen passed, no slow-moving farm wagons and milk wains from the suburbs; no chiffoniers with scrap-filled sacks on their curved backs, and steel-hooked staves, furtively sorting and picking among the night’s débris on sidewalk and in gutter.

  Here and there in front of half a dozen wrecked cafés little knots of policemen stood on the glass-littered sidewalk, in low-voiced consultation; far down the Boulevard, helmets gleamed dully through the haze where municipal cavalry were quietly riding off the mobs and gradually pushing them back toward the Montmartre and Villette quarters, whence they had arrived.

  Mounted Municipals still sat their beautiful horses in double line across the corner of the rue Vilna and parallel streets, closing that entire quarter where, to judge from a few fitful and far-away pistol shots, the methodical apache hunt was still in progress.

  And it was a strange and sinister phase of Paris that Neeland now gazed upon through the misty stillness of early morning. For there was something terrible in the sudden quiet, where the swift and shadowy fury of earliest dawn had passed: and the wrecked buildings sagged like corpses, stark and disembowelled, spilling out their dead intestines indecently under the whitening sky.

  Save for the echoes of distant shots, no louder than the breaking of a splinter — save for the deadened stamp and stir of horses, a low-voiced order, the fainter clash of spurs and scabbards — an intense stillness brooded now over the city, ominously prophetic of what fateful awakening the coming sunrise threatened for the sleeping capital.

  Neeland turned and looked at Ilse Dumont. She stood motionless on the sidewalk, in the clear, colourless light, staring fixedly across the street at the débris of the gaping, shattered Café des Bulgars. Her evening gown hung in filmy tinted shreds; her thick, dark hair in lustrous disorder shadowed her white shoulders; a streak of dry blood striped one delicate bare arm.

  To see her standing there on the sidewalk in the full, unshadowed morning light, silent, dishevelled, scarcely clothed, seemed to him part of the ghastly unreality of this sombre and menacing vision, from which he ought to rouse himself.

  She turned her head slowly; her haggard eyes met his without expression; and he found his tongue with the effort of a man who strives for utterance through a threatening dream:

  “We can’t stay here,” he said. The sound of his own voice steadied and cleared his senses. He glanced down at his own attire, blood-stained, and ragged; felt for the loose end of his collar, rebuttoned it, and knotted the draggled white tie with the unconscious indifference of habit.

  “What a nightmare!” he muttered to himself. “The world has been turned upside down over night.” He looked up at her: “We can’t stay here,” he repeated. “Where do you live?”

  She did not appear to hear him. She had already started to move toward the rue Vilna, where the troopers barring that street still sat their restive horses. They were watching her and her dishevelled companion with the sophisticated amusement of men who, by clean daylight, encounter fagged-out revellers of a riotous night.

  Neeland spoke to her again, then followed her and took her arm.

  “Where are you going?” he repeated, uneasily.

  “I shall give myself up,” she replied in a dull voice.

  “To whom?”

  “To the Municipals over there.”

  “Give yourself up!” he repeated. “Why?”

  She passed a slender hand over her eyes as though unutterably weary:

  “Neeland,” she said, “I am lost already.... And I am very tired.”

  “What do you mean?” he demanded, drawing her back under a porte-cochère. “You live somewhere, don’t you? If it’s safe for you to go back to your lodgings, I’ll take you there. Is it?”

  “No.”

  “Well, then, I’ll take you somewhere else. I’ll find somewhere to take you — —”

  She shook her head:

  “It is useless, Neeland. There is no chance of my leaving the city now — no chance left — no hope. It is simpler for me to end the matter this way — —”

  “Can’t you go to the Turkish Embassy!”

  She looked up at him in a surprised, hopeless way:

  “Do you suppose that any Embassy ever receives a spy in trouble? Do you really imagine that any government ever admits employing secret agents, or stirs a finger to aid them when they are in need?”

  “I told you I’d stand by you,” he reminded her bluntly.

  “You have been — kind — Neeland.”

  “And you have been very loyal to me, Scheherazade. I shall not abandon you.”

  “How can you help me? I can’t get out of this city. Wherever I go, now, it will be only a matter of a few hours before I am arrested.”

  “The American Embassy. There is a man there,” he reminded her.

  She shrugged her naked shoulders:

  “I cannot get within sight of the Trocadero before the secret police arrest me. Where shall I go? I have no passport, no papers, not even false ones. If I go to the lodgings where I expected to find shelter it means my arrest, court martial, and execution in a caserne within twenty-four hours. And it would involve others who trust me — condemn them instantly to a firing squad — if I am found by the police in their company!... No, Neeland. There’s no hope for me. Too many know me in Paris. I took a risk in coming here when war was almost certain. I took my chances, and lost. It’s too late to whimper now.”

  As he stared at her something suddenly brightened above them; and he looked up and saw the first sunbeam painting a chimney top with palest gold.

  “Come,” he said, “we’ve got to get out of this! We’ve got to go somewhere — find a taxicab and get under shelter — —”

  She yielded to the pressure of his arm and moved forward beside him. He
halted for a moment on the curb, looking up and down the empty streets for a cab of any sort, then, with the instinct of a man for whom the Latin Quarter had once been a refuge and a home, he started across the Boulevard, his arm clasping hers.

  All the housetops were glittering with the sun as they passed the ranks of the Municipal cavalry.

  A young officer looked down mischievously as they traversed the Boulevard — the only moving objects in that vast and still perspective.

  “Mon Dieu!” he murmured. “A night like that is something to remember in the winter of old age!”

  Neeland heard him. The gay, bantering, irresponsible Gallic wit awoke him to himself; the rising sun, tipping the city’s spires with fire, seemed to relight a little, long-forgotten flame within him. His sombre features cleared; he said confidently to the girl beside him:

  “Don’t worry; we’ll get you out of it somehow or other. It’s been a rather frightful dream, Scheherazade, nothing worse — —”

  Her arm suddenly tightened against his and he turned to look at the shattered Café des Bulgars which they were passing, where two policemen stood looking at a cat which was picking its way over the mass of débris, mewing dismally.

  One of the policemen, noticing them, smiled sympathetically at their battered appearance.

  “Would you like to have a cat for your lively ménage?” he said, pointing to the melancholy animal which Neeland recognised as the dignified property of the Cercle Extranationale.

  The other policeman, more suspicious, eyed Ilse Dumont closely as she knelt impulsively and picked up the homeless cat.

  “Where are you going in such a state?” he asked, moving over the heaps of splintered glass toward her.

  “Back to the Latin Quarter,” said Neeland, so cheerfully that suspicion vanished and a faint grin replaced the official frown.

  “Allons, mes enfants,” he muttered. “Faut pas s’attrouper dans la rue. Also you both are a scandal. Allons! Filez! Houp! The sun is up already!”

  They went out across the rue Royale toward the Place de la Concorde, which spread away before them in deserted immensity and beauty.

  There were no taxicabs in sight. Ilse, carrying the cat in her arms, moved beside Neeland through the deathly stillness of the city, as though she were walking in a dream. Everywhere in the pale blue sky above them steeple and dome glittered with the sun; there were no sounds from quai or river; no breeze stirred the trees; nothing moved on esplanade or bridge; the pale blue August sky grew bluer; the gilded tip of the obelisk glittered like a living flame.

  Neeland turned and looked up the Champs Elysées.

  Far away on the surface of the immense avenue a tiny dark speck was speeding — increasing in size, coming nearer.

  “A taxi,” he said with a quick breath of relief. “We’ll be all right now.”

  Nearer and nearer came the speeding vehicle, rushing toward them between the motionless green ranks of trees. Neeland walked forward across the square to signal it, waited, watching its approach with a slight uneasiness.

  Now it sped between the rearing stone horses, and now, swerving, swung to the left toward the rue Royale. And to his disgust and disappointment he saw it was a private automobile.

  “The devil!” he muttered, turning on his heel.

  At the same moment, as though the chauffeur had suddenly caught an order from within the limousine, the car swung directly toward him once more.

  As he rejoined Ilse, who stood clasping the homeless cat to her breast, listlessly regarding the approaching automobile, the car swept in a swift circle around the fountain where they stood, stopped short beside them; and a woman flung open the door and sprang out to the pavement.

  And Ilse Dumont, standing there in the rags of her frail gown, cuddling to her breast the purring cat, looked up to meet her doom in the steady gaze of the Princess Naïa Mistchenka.

  Every atom of colour left her face, and her ashy lips parted. Otherwise, she made no sign of fear, no movement.

  There was a second’s absolute silence; then the dark eyes of the Princess turned on Neeland.

  “Good heavens, James!” she said. “What has happened to you?”

  “Nothing,” he said gaily, “thanks to Miss Dumont — —”

  “To whom?” interrupted the Princess sharply.

  “To Miss Dumont. We got into a silly place where it began to look as though we’d get our heads knocked off, Sengoun and I. I’m really quite serious, Princess. If it hadn’t been for Miss Dumont—” he shrugged; “ — and that is twice she has saved my idiotic head for me,” he added cheerfully.

  The Princess Naïa’s dark eyes reverted to Ilse Dumont, and the pallid girl met them steadily enough. There was no supplication in her own eyes, no shrinking, only the hopeless tranquillity that looks Destiny in the face — the gaze riveted unflinchingly upon the descending blow.

  “What are you doing in Paris at such a time as this?” said the Princess.

  The girl’s white lips parted stiffly:

  “Do you need to ask?”

  For a full minute the Princess bent a menacing gaze on her in silence; then:

  “What do you expect from me?” she demanded in a low voice. And, stepping nearer: “What have you to expect from anyone in France on such a day as this?”

  Ilse Dumont did not answer. After a moment she dropped her head and fumbled with the rags of her bodice, as though trying to cover the delicately rounded shoulders. A shaft of sunlight, reflected from the obelisk to the fountain, played in golden ripples across her hair.

  Neeland looked at the Princess Naïa:

  “What you do is none of my business,” he said pleasantly, “but—” he smiled at her and stepped back beside Ilse Dumont, and passed his arm through hers: “I’m a grateful beast,” he added lightly, “and if I’ve nine lives to lose, perhaps Miss Dumont will save seven more of them before I’m entirely done for.”

  The girl gently disengaged his arm.

  “You’ll only get yourself into serious trouble,” she murmured, “and you can’t help me, dear Neeland.”

  The Princess Naïa, flushed and exasperated, bit her lip.

  “James,” she said, “you are behaving absurdly. That woman has nothing to fear from me now, and she ought to know it!” And, as Ilse lifted her head and stared at her: “Yes, you ought to know it!” she repeated. “Your work is ended. It ended today at sunrise. And so did mine. War is here. There is nothing further for you to do; nothing for me. The end of everything is beginning. What would your death or mine signify now, when the dawn of such a day as this is the death warrant for millions? What do we count for now, Mademoiselle Minna Minti?”

  “Do you not mean to give me up, madame?”

  “Give you up? No. I mean to get you out of Paris if I can. Give me your cat, mademoiselle. Please help her, James — —”

  “You — offer me your limousine?” stammered Ilse.

  “Give that cat to me. Of course I do! Do you suppose I mean to leave you in rags with your cat on the pavement here?” And, to Neeland: “Where is Alak?”

  “Gone home as fit as a fiddle. Am I to receive the hospitality of your limousine also, dear lady? Look at the state I’m in to travel with two ladies!”

  The Princess Naïa’s dark eyes glimmered; she tucked the cat comfortably against her shoulder and motioned Ilse into the car.

  “I’m afraid I’ll have to take you, James. What on earth has happened to you?” she added, as he put her into the car, nodded to the chauffeur, and, springing in beside her, slammed the door.

  “I’ll tell you in two words,” he explained gaily. “Prince Erlik and I started for a stroll and landed, ultimately, in the Café des Bulgars. And presently a number of gentlemen began to shoot up the place, and Miss Dumont stood by us like a brick.”

  The Princess Mistchenka lifted the cat from her lap and placed it in the arms of Ilse Dumont.

  “That ought to win our gratitude, I’m sure,” she said politely to the girl. “We
Russians never forget such pleasant obligations. There is a Cossack jingle:

  “To those who befriend our friends Our duty never ends.”

  Ilse Dumont bent low over the purring cat in her lap; the Princess watched her askance from moment to moment, and Neeland furtively noted the contrast between these women — one in rags and haggard disorder; the other so trim, pretty, and fresh in her morning walking suit.

  “James,” she said abruptly, “we’ve had a most horrid night, Ruhannah and I. The child waited up for you, it seems — I thought she’d gone to bed — and she came to my room about two in the morning — the little goose — as though men didn’t stay out all night!”

  “I’m terribly sorry,” he said contritely.

  “You ought to be.... And Ruhannah was so disturbed that I put on something and got out of bed. And after a while” — the Princess glanced sardonically at Ilse Dumont— “I telephoned to various sources of information and was informed concerning the rather lively episodes of your nocturnal career with Sengoun. And when I learned that you and he had been seen to enter the Café des Bulgars, I became sufficiently alarmed to notify several people who might be interested in the matter.”

  “One of those people,” said Neeland, smiling, “was escorted to her home by Captain Sengoun, I think.”

  The Princess glanced out of the window where the early morning sun glimmered on the trees as the car flew swiftly through the Champs Elysées.

  “I heard that there were some men killed there last night,” she said without turning.

  “Several, I believe,” admitted Neeland.

  “Were you there, then?”

  “Yes,” he replied, uncomfortably.

  “Did you know anybody who was killed, James?”

  “Yes, by sight.”

  She turned to him:

  “Who?”

  “There was a man named Kestner; another named Weishelm. Three American gamblers were killed also.”