Here! And in this menial service! Was there ever such a contrast? he asked himself. He whipped round in his chair.
“Who is that man?” he asked in a quiet and commanding voice. “Quick! Tell me!”
And he saw the little ferret’s eyes open wide and stark, unutterable fear gather in the depths of them and shine out as from behind a glass.
“Tell me!” Strickland whispered.
The little man took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped his face.
“He is my friend, my comrade,” he babbled. “One, two, three times more—” and his face changed. His terror was aggravated into a spasm of malignity. His lips were drawn back in a grin and his yellow teeth showed like the fangs of an animal.
“He nothing to do with you,” he snarled viciously. “You take care! You leave my friend alone!”
Strickland smiled contemptuously at the threat. He turned slowly back. The whispered dialogue had taken no longer than a second or two to begin and end. The waiter was still standing over Battchilena the cigar-box was still poised at its precarious angle. So for the second time Strickland saw the formidable man who had so disturbed the current of his life. Once in the very heart and mystery of a moonlit jungle. Now amidst the lights and music and laughter of a fashionable company at a public dinner in the midst of the London season.
And as he watched fear came in its turn to Strickland. The man here — no longer three thousand miles away — actually at hand! Was he here to strike, secretly, swiftly, with absolute accuracy and success, as he had already struck those thousands of miles away? Surely Strickland had been right on that first night when he had sat under the bright stars on the veranda of the dâk-bungalow at Mogok. His premonition had been the one premonition out of a hundred which works out true.
For the cause of the waiter’s inattention was evident. His eyes were fixed upon the card on the table in front of Battchilena. He was not the waiter who had served that part of the room during the dinner. He ‘sad come to this corner for the first time with the cigars. And he had now read Battchilena’s name, saw Battchilena himself, would know him for ever afterwards, and was held rooted to the spot. He stood without a movement, a grim smile upon his lips, his eyes bright and very quiet, and his aquiline and furrowed face wearing not so much a look of triumph as a grandeur. He appeared to Strickland as one who, having suffered all the sufferings possible in the world, was now at last saying: “Have I found you, O my enemy?”
The ferret behind Strickland’s chair no longer dared to hiss his warning, but he used his handkerchief to signal with, and now at last the stranger noticed it. He bent down to Battchilena.
“Cigars, sir?”
Battchilena, who was smoking a cigarette, waved him impatiently away, and the waiter carried the box back to a side table by the door. But that intimate conversation was interrupted. Ariadne looked up. Her eyes met Strickland’s and greeted him. She nodded her head with a friendly lift of her eyebrows, and with a smile which set the dimples dancing in her cheeks she raised her glass to him.
“No,” Strickland said to himself with a sudden fire. “If that man strikes again, the blow must not glance off to her”; and the look upon his face surprised and troubled Ariadne, so that her smile died away and her eyes grew serious with compassion.
An inspiration came to John Strickland — he thought it nothing less than that. If someone was to strike, let himself strike first — now — a blow which would warn rather than wound. He leaned forward towards Battchilena and spoke across Mr. Ricardo and Ariadne.
“Did you notice the waiter who offered you a cigar?”
“No.”
“He is there — standing against the wall close to the door. The big man with the thick reddish hair.”
Battchilena looked carelessly over the tables to the spot. The waiter was standing up very straight, gazing into the air in front of him. Even in the shabby graceless livery which he wore a grace was evident, and still more evident than his grace was his physical strength. He stood erect like a great column which it would need an earthquake to overthrow.
“He’s not the sort of man to meet on a dark night,” Battchilena observed negligently.
Strickland corrected him.
“Not the sort of man for you to meet,” he said quietly.
Battchilena sat up in his chair. He stared at Strickland. A look of insolence appeared upon his face. Certainly there was no hint of alarm.
“Why me more than anyone else?” he asked, with a note of challenge.
“Because he was very interested in you.”
Battchilena looked again towards the door. He was puzzled, but no more than puzzled. He frowned in an effort of memory and shook his head.
“No, I have never seen the man before.”
“You are quite sure?”
“Quite!”
“Yet he was very interested in you,” Strickland repeated. “For my part I have seen him before. In Burma.”
And now the Spaniard’s face did lose its air of negligence.
“In Burma? And he was watching me?” he whispered with a little catch of his breath, and he leaned forward. “But, Colonel Strickland, I have never been in Burma in my life.”
“No?”
“No.”
An unaccountable hush had fallen upon that little group of people at the end of the table. A jest had surely turned imperceptibly into some momentous incident, a bout with the foils into a duel with swords. The two men leaning forward towards each other, the one apparently challenging, the other parrying, had made their friends just spectators in an auditorium and held them silent and breathless in a queer suspense. All of them, that is to say except Mr. Ricardo, who by means of little ejaculations and restless movements evinced an intention once more to take the floor. But Madame Chrestoff, the Czecho-Slovakian prima donna from Illinois, shook a peremptory finger at him, and for the moment he subsided.
“I had better tell you how I came to see that man,” said Strickland.
“If you please,” replied Battchilena.
“It was in the jungle — close to Mogok.”
The name of the little town clearly had no message for the Spaniard.
“Mogok, of course, means the ruby mines.”
It might. Without doubt it did. But equally without doubt it meant nothing at all to Battchilena.
“That man over there came to Mogok in search of a native, whose name, I think, was Maung H’la,” said Strickland; and thus to the third of Ariadne’s party fear came at the Semiramis Hotel that night.
The blood drained out of Battchilena’s face and left it green. His lips so shook that he could not control them, became so dry that the words he meant to speak would not issue from him. He spoke them at last. There was no pretence of ignorance, or indifference any longer. He shot a secret glance towards the still figure against the wall as he asked his question.
“Did he find Maung H’la?” There was a look of anguish in his eyes.
“I can’t answer you. I think he did. For Maung was found two days later with his neck broken, in the jungle.”
Battchilena shot back in his chair. He sat as though he had been turned to stone. Then, slowly and gropingly, whilst all watched him in suspense, his hands, trembling like the hands of a paralytic, travelled forward over the table-cloth. They touched the card on which his name was written, fumbled with it, dropped it and picked it up.
“Leon Battchilena.”
Written in thick black ink on the white shiny strip of pasteboard the name stood out like relief work. Battchilena tore the card across once, and then a frenzy of destruction seized him He tore it again and again and again, his long, thin fingers flickering like a machine, and little whimpering noises breaking from his mouth. Strickland watched him without a movement. Never had he seen a spectacle so degrading as this man’s surrender to panic. It hurt him actually. It was the revelation of a flaw in the nature common to them all, a flaw which ought not to be, a flaw which vilified. But he never mov
ed until the card lay shredded into tiny shining fragments on the table-cloth. Then he said remorselessly:
“But that’s of no use, Señor Battchilena.”
“Why?”
Strickland felt himself a brute. He was hitting with a cudgel a man without defence — as that other had hit in the moonlit jungle. All the more reason, therefore, to leave Battchilena no opportunity of cradling himself in a fool’s paradise.
“Because that waiter read your name. He stood behind you with the cigar-box in his hand and you took no notice. You were so busy talking.” Strickland was not in the mood to be generous at that moment. “He stood behind you for a full minute. His eyes were fixed upon your card—” and with a curious jerk Battchilena pitched forward, so that it seemed his face must strike the table. But he caught his head in his hands. Ransome poured out a glass of water from a water-bottle in front of him.
“He will faint,” said Madame. Chrestoff.
Battchilena replied with a shake of his head.
“No, no! I am dizzy, that’s all. It’s the heat.”
He looked furtively behind him. In the corner of the room, upon his left hand, there was a closed door. He stole a secret glance towards the waiter who still stood against the wall, immobile as a statue, staring into space.
“It’s the heat,” he repeated. “I think I’ll get into the fresh air,” and with his body bent he whipped out of his chair. In a second he was gone.
Outside the little group, in so quiet an undertone and with such few gestures, except for the space of time during which the Spaniard was tearing up his card, had this incident been conducted, no particular interest had been aroused. Madame Chrestoff was for making light of it.
“Yes, it’s the heat. We shall see no more of Leon Battchilena to-night.”
“On the contrary,” returned Strickland, “we shall not see him here, but I think that we shall see him.”
“I hope we shall,” cried Ariadne gallantly. “Leon is a friend of mine.”
Strickland threw up his hands in mock despair.
“My dear,” he retorted, “it will take the whole Day of Judgment to sort out your friends, and I doubt if the work will be done then.”
“Be quiet, Strickland,” said Ariadne.
He was quiet and his quietude was Mr. Ricardo’s opportunity. But for once in a way he had something to relate and something which Strickland, above all, was anxious to hear.
“I, too, have seen that waiter,” he said with the air of a man who would solve this difficult mystery for them all in a second. “Years ago! Let me see now! Ten years ago I saw him.”
“Where?” said Strickland in a flash.
“In France,” began Mr. Ricardo; but before he could say another word the little Frenchman was at his elbow, obsequious but insistent.
“You take a liqueur, gentleman? Some fine champagne? Very good brandy. Yes? No? Then you take a cigar. I send my friend with the cigars to you. No? Please to say one word only, and I send to you my friend with the cigars.”
Was there just the slightest touch of menace in the tone of that little ferret of a Frenchman. The words? You might take them how you pleased. But there was no doubt how Mr. Ricardo took them. His face shut like a box. A lid had been slammed down upon his experiences.
“No, no, it is a mistake,” he exclaimed. “I see it now — a mere resemblance. No, I have not seen that man before.”
And so to a fourth man fear had come at that dinner at the Semiramis Hotel.
Strickland leaned back in his chair, disappointed. He could not in any case, however, pursue his inquiries. For the stentorian voice rang out again, calling upon Mr. Julian Ransome, M.P., to propose the toast of “Your Chairman.”
Ransome made a short speech and made his mark with it. When he sat down the applause was louder in volume and more generous in tone than any which had been heard that evening. Strickland, with many vigorous nods, conveyed his congratulations to Ariadne. With Lord Culalla’s no less brief reply, the dinner broke up. But as they were leaving the banqueting-room Ransome drew Strickland aside.
“I can’t go on with you,” he said. “I must go back to the House. I have promised the Whips. There will be four or five Divisions after twelve. Will you look after Ariadne?”
“Of course,” said Strickland. “Will you see her and Madame Chrestoff into my car? I’ll be down in a moment.”
Strickland lingered behind to speak to the maitre d’hôtel. He slipped a five-pound note into his hand.
“There was a big waiter here to-night. He carried the cigars round. Can you tell me anything about him?”
The maitre d’hôtel spread out his hands.
“But, monsieur, I know nothing about him, not even his name, not even his face. He is not upon our regular staff. Consider a little! We are in the middle of the season. We have three public dinners at the Semiramis Hotel every night. So we go to an agency for waiters. See, I give you the address. It is in Shaftesbury Avenue. We ring up the agency in the morning and we say, ‘We want so many waiters for to-night, and see that their hands are clean and that they are not drunk!’” He gazed round the empty room, in which a few men of the permanent staff were already clearing the tables. “See, they are all gone. I cannot help you. But at the address I give you they will know.”
Strickland fetched his hat and coat and ran down the stairs to the entrance. Ariadne and Madame Chrestoff were already seated in his car. He gave the address of the club to the chauffeur and took his place opposite to them. For a few moments they drove in silence through the street. Then Ariadne leaned forward.
“John, I think you were a brute to-night to my friend Leon,” she said reproachfully.
“I don’t think so,” he replied gently. “Battchilena was of your party. Therefore he was safe from me. What I did I think I had to do. I think, too, that you’ll agree with me before this night’s out.”
For of one thing he was certain — Battchilena must at once take counsel with Corinne.
XI. CORINNE
THE LIGHTS IN the side-lamps upon the walls and in the great crystal chandelier overhead waned and went out, and with their extinction the clamour of voices died away. Then from an upper gallery a beam, mellow and warm and thick as a column, struck down into the dark cavern of the room and lit up a small square arena enclosed by the supper-tables, turning it into a box of gold. A single chord, violent and imperative like a summons to surrender, burst from the orchestra, and in that glowing space, now stood Corinne and her dancing partner.
“Well?” said Ariadne, with a smile of pride to John Strickland. They were sitting in the darkness at a table by the door.
“Yes,” he answered. “She is lovely.”
Corinne stood slenderly erect in her shining wisp of frock, her small face uplifted like a flower, her feet together, her slim arms outstretched, as though she hung upon a cross. She was a couple of years older than Ariadne, and in the very perfection of her delicate beauty; her fair head shingled and sleek, her fine nose just a trifle uplifted, her mouth made for kisses. In that radiant light her throat and shoulders were like snow at the rising of the sun and gleamed with the sheen of satin. She was tall and long-limbed, with ankles and feet and hands seemingly as fragile as glass. For her dress she wore an orange-coloured frock of shining tissue, with a narrow girdle of silver below her waist. It outlined her small, firm breasts, and fell in straight lines to the knees, where it was fringed with a double row of ostrich feathers. Her slim legs and feet were sheathed in white stockings and satin slippers, on the toes of which diamond buckles sparkled and danced. Otherwise she wore no jewels, not a ring, not a bracelet, not a pendant. As she stood there in that flood of radiance, soignée, polished from head to foot, joyous, at her ease, she seemed to combine the luxury of an orchid with the health of a rose.
“My!” exclaimed young Madame Chrestoff in a low voice of admiration. “She’s just a lovely gleaming plaything in a golden box.”
“Yes,” Strickland replied dryly. �
�It is quite difficult to believe that it is she who plays and we who do the dancing.”
“Be quiet, Strickland!” said Ariadne.
With one liquid movement, Corinne sank in a curtsy and rose again erect. Then the orchestra struck into a tango, and with her partner she began to dance, pacing delicately, the slippers pointed, the insteps arched, the body lithe so that each movement and gesture melted into the next; as though she rippled rather than danced. The time quickened, the measure of the music changed. Now Corinne walked sedately in a one-step, now she spun like a Bacchante crowned with grapes in a divine abandonment of passion — round and round till it seemed she must be flung against the tables to fall bruised and broken upon the floor. But she did not fall. In a moment she was waltzing with her partner languorously, swooning in his arms, her fair head drooped, her eyes full of sleep between half-closed lids. With a laugh she escaped from him, then returned to him, giving all and keeping all.
Madame Chrestoff clapped her hands.
“That Jane may kick my Sealyham puppy dawg with her little satin slippers if she wants to,” she whispered fervently; and admiration found thus at last its supreme expression.
But there were others in that club, of course. It is the artist, looking back upon that drudgery which is the prelude to achievement, who most generously appreciates perfect execution in one of beauty’s other forms. So while Madame Chrestoff applauded, others, and especially those who had never attempted anything more difficult than a criticism, were at pains to attenuate Corinne’s success. Comments reached the party at the table by the door.
“My dear, it’s wonderful what Gran has done for her! A couple of years ago she was a stick.”
“Yes, wasn’t she? Pretty, of course, but as stiff as a jointed doll. Oh, Gran has taught her everything.”
Gran, certainly, though he appeared to efface himself, was always at her shoulder. He set the step, he caught and supported her, he lifted her above his head and whirled her in flashing circles as though she was of no more weight than one of the ostrich feathers at the hem of her dress. No doubt he had taught her everything, but the best of masters must have the best of pupils if supreme success is to be achieved; and the glory of the one is the glory of the other. As if to confound the detractors, Gran now stepped aside in a corner of the arena and left Corinne to dance alone.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 66