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The Dark Star, a novel by Robert W. Chambers |
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Chapter 25. Cup And Lip |
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_ CHAPTER XXV. CUP AND LIP Through the crowded Paris terminal Neeland pushed his way, carrying the olive-wood box in his hand and keeping an eye on his porter, who preceded him carrying the remainder of his luggage and repeating: "_Place, s'il vous plait, m'sieu', dames!_" To Neeland it was like a homecoming after many years' exile; the subtle but perfectly specific odour of Paris assailed his nostrils once again; the rapid, emphatic, lively language of France sounded once more delightfully in his eager ears; vivacity and intelligence sparkled in every eye that met his own. It was a throng of rapid movement, of animated speech, of gesticulation. And, as it was in the beginning when he first arrived there as a student, he fell in love with it at first sight and contact. All around him moved porters, passengers, railroad officials; the red _kepis_ of soldiers dotted the crowd; a priest or two in shovel hat and buckled shoes, a Sister of Charity from the Rue de Bac lent graver accents to the throng; and everywhere were the pretty bourgeois women of the capital gathered to welcome relatives or friends, or themselves starting on some brief summer voyage so dear to those who seldom find it in their hearts to leave Paris for longer than a fortnight at a time. As he pressed onward he witnessed characteristic reunions between voyagers and friends who awaited them--animated, cordial, gay scenes complicated by many embraces on both cheeks. And, of a sudden, he noticed the prettiest girl he had ever seen in his life. She was in white, with a black straw hat, and her face and figure were lovely beyond words. Evidently she was awaiting friends; there was a charming expectancy on her fresh young face, a slight forward inclination of her body, as though expectancy and happy impatience alone controlled her. Her beauty almost took his breath away. "Lord!" he thought to himself. "If such a girl as that ever stood waiting for me----" At the same moment her golden-grey eyes, sweeping the passing crowd, met his; a sharp thrill of amazement passed through him as she held out both gloved hands with a soft exclamation of recognition: "Jim! Jim Neeland!" "Rue Carew!" He could scarcely credit his eyesight, where he stood, hat in hand, holding both her little hands in one of his. No, there was no use in trying to disguise his astonishment. He looked into the face of this tall young girl, searched it for familiar features, recognised a lovely paraphrase of the freckled face and thin figure he remembered, and remained dumb before this radiant reincarnation of that other unhappy, shabby, and meagre child he had known two years ago. Ruhannah, laughing and flushed, withdrew her hands. "Have I changed? You haven't. And I always thought you the most wonderful and ornamental young man on this planet. I knew you at once, Jim Neeland. Would you have passed without recognising me?" "Perhaps I wouldn't have passed after seeing you----" "Jim Neeland! What a remark!" She laughed. "Anyway, it's nice to believe myself attractive enough to be noticed. And I'm _so_ glad to see you. Naia is here, somewhere, watching for you"--turning her pretty, eager head to search for the Princess Mistchenka. "Oh, there she is! She doesn't see us----" They made their way between the passing ranks of passengers and porters; the Princess caught sight of them, came hastily toward them. "Jim! It's nice to see you. Thank you for coming! So _you_, found him, Rue? How are you, Jim? And where is the olive-wood box?" "I'm well, and there's that devilish box!" he replied, laughing and lifting it in his hand to exhibit it. "Naia, the next time you want it, send an escort of artillery and two battleships!" "Did you have trouble?" "Trouble? I had the time of my life. No moving picture can ever again excite me; no best seller. I've been both since I had your cable to get this box and bring it to you." He laughed as he spoke, but the Princess continued to regard him very seriously, and Rue Carew's smile came and waned like sunlight in a wood, for she was not quite sure whether he had really encountered any dangers on this mission which he had fulfilled so well. "Our car is waiting outside," said the Princess. "Where is your porter, Jim?" Neeland glanced about him, discovered the porter, made a sign for him to follow, and they moved together toward the entrance to the huge terminal. "I haven't decided where to stop yet," began Neeland, but the Princess checked him with a pretty gesture: "You stop with us, Jim." "Thank you so much, but----" "Please. Must I beg of you?" "Do you really wish it?" "Certainly," she replied absently, glancing about her. She added: "I don't see my car. I don't see my footman. I told him to wait here. Rue, do you see him anywhere?" "No, I don't," said the girl. "How annoying!" said the Princess. "He's a new man. My own footman was set upon and almost killed by Apaches a week ago. So I had to find a substitute. How stupid of him! Where on earth can he be waiting?" They traversed the court of the terminal. Many automobiles were parked there or just leaving; liveried footmen stood awaiting masters and mistresses; but nowhere was the car of the Princess Mistchenka in sight. They stood there, Neeland's porter behind with his suitcase and luggage, not knowing whether to wait longer or summon a taxicab. "I don't understand," repeated the Princess impatiently. "I explained very carefully what I desired. That new groom is stupid. Caron, my chauffeur, would never have made a mistake unless that idiot groom misunderstood his instructions." "Let me go and make some inquiries," said Neeland. "Do you mind waiting here? I'll not be long----" He went off, carrying the olive-wood box, which his grasp never quitted now; and presently the Princess and Ruhannah saw him disappear among the ranks of automobiles and cabs. "I don't like it, Rue," repeated the Princess in a low voice. "I neither understand nor relish this situation." "Have you any idea----" "Hush, child! I don't know. That new groom, Verdier, was recommended by the Russian Embassy. I don't know what to think of this." "It _can't_ be anything--queer, can it, dear?" asked Rue. "Anything _can_ have happened. Nothing is likely to have occurred, however--unless--unless those Apaches were----" "Naia!" "It's possible, I suppose. They may have attacked Picard as part of a conspiracy. The Russian Embassy may have been deceived in Verdier. All this may be part of a plan. But--I scarcely believe it.... All the same, I dislike to take a taxicab----" She caught sight of Neeland returning; both women moved forward to meet him. "I've solved the mystery," he said. "Naia, your car was run into outside the station a few minutes after you left it. And I'm sorry to say that your chauffeur was badly enough hurt to require an ambulance." "Where on earth did you learn that?" "The official at the taxicab control told me. I went to him because that is where one is likely to receive information." "Caron hurt!" murmured the Princess. "What a shame! Where did they take him, Jim?" "To the Charite." "I'll go this afternoon. But where is that imbecile groom of mine?" "It appears that he and a policeman went to a garage on the repair truck that took your car." "Was he arrested?" "I believe so." "What a _contretemps_!" exclaimed the Princess Mistchenka. "We shall have to take a taxicab after all!" "I've ordered one from the control. There it comes now," said Neeland, as a brand new taxicab, which looked like a private car, drew up at the curb, and a smiling and very spick and span chauffeur saluted. Neeland's porter hoisted trunk and suitcase on top; the Princess stepped into the limousine, followed by Rue and Neeland; the chauffeur took the order, started his car, wheeled out into the square, circled the traffic policeman, and whizzed away into the depths of the most beautiful city in the world. Neeland, seated with his back to the driver, laid the olive-wood box on his knees, unlocked it, drew from his breast pocket the papers he carried; locked them in the box once more, and looked up laughingly at the Princess and Ruhannah as he placed it at his feet. "There you are!" he said. "Thank heaven my task and your affair have been accomplished. All the papers are there--and," to Ruhannah, "that pretty gentleman you call the Yellow Devil is inside, along with some assorted firearms, drawing instruments, and photographs. The whole business is here, intact--and so am I--if that irrelevant detail should interest you." Rue smiled her answer; the Princess scrutinised him keenly: "Did you have trouble, Jim?" "Yes, I did." "Serious trouble?" "I tell you it was like a movie in five reels. Never before did I believe such things happened outside a Yonkers studio. But they do, Naia. And I've learned that the world is full of more excitingly melodramatic possibilities than any novel or scenario ever contained." "You're not serious, of course," began Rue Carew, watching the varying expressions on his animated features; but the Princess Mistchenka said, unsmiling: "A film melodrama is a crude and tawdry thing compared to the real drama so many of us play in every moment of our lives." Neeland said to Rue, lightly: "That is true as far as I have been concerned with that amazing box. It's full of the very devil--of that Yellow Devil! When I pick it up now I seem to feel a premonitory tingling all over me--not entirely disagreeable," he added to the Princess, "but the sort of half-scared exhilaration a man feels who takes a chance and is quite sure he'll not have another chance if he loses. Do you understand what I mean?" "Yes," said the Princess unsmilingly, her clear, pleasant eyes fixed on him. In her tranquil, indefinite expression there was something which made him wonder how many such chances this pretty woman had taken in her life of intellectual pleasure and bodily ease. And now he remembered that Ilse Dumont apparently knew about her--about Ruhannah, too. And Ilse Dumont was the agent of a foreign government. Was the Princess Mistchenka, patron and amateur of the arts, another such agent? If not, why had he taken this journey for her with this box of papers? The passage of the Boulevard was slow; at every square traffic was halted; all Paris crowded the streets in the early afternoon sunshine, and the taxicab in which they sat made little speed until the Place de la Concorde opened out and the great Arc--a tiny phantom of lavender and pearl--spanned the vanishing point of a fairy perspective between parallel and endless ramparts of tender green. "There was a lot of war talk on the _Volhynia_," said Neeland, "but I haven't heard any since I landed, nor have I seen a paper. I suppose the Chancelleries have come to some agreement." "No," said the Princess. "You don't expect trouble, do you? I mean a general European free-for-all fight?" "I don't know, Jim." "Haven't you," he asked blandly, "any means of acquiring inside information?" She did not even pretend to evade the good-humoured malice of his smile and question: "Yes; I have sources of private information. I have learned nothing, so far." He looked at Rue, but the smile had faded from her face and she returned his questioning gaze gravely. "There is great anxiety in Europe," she said in a low voice, "and the tension is increasing. When we arrive home we shall have a chance to converse more freely." She made the slightest gesture with her head toward the chauffeur--a silent reminder and a caution. The Princess nodded slightly: "One never knows," she remarked. "We shall have much to say to one another when we are safely home." But Neeland could not take it very seriously here in the sunshine, with two pretty women facing him--here speeding up the Champs Elysees between the endless green of chestnut trees and the exquisite silvery-grey facades of the wealthy--with motors flashing by on every side and the cool, leafy alleys thronged with children and nurse-maids, and Monsieur Guignol squeaking and drumming in his red-curtained box! How could a young man believe in a sequel to the almost incredible melodrama in which he had figured, with such a sane and delightful setting, here in the familiar company of two charming women he had known? Besides, all Paris and her police were at his elbow; the olive-wood box stood between his knees; a smartly respectable taxi and its driver drove them with the quiet _eclat_ and precision of a private _employe_; the Arc de Triomphe already rose splendidly above them, and everything that had once been familiar and reassuring and delightful lay under his grateful eyes on every side. And now the taxicab turned into the rue Soleil d'Or--a new street to Neeland, opened since his student days, and only one square long, with a fountain in the middle and young chestnut trees already thickly crowned with foliage lining both sides of the street. But although the rue Soleil d'Or was a new street to him, Paris construction is also a rapid affair. The street was faced by charming private houses built of grey Caen stone; the fountain with its golden sun-dial, with the seated figure--a life-size replica of Manship's original in the Metropolitan Museum--serenely and beautifully holding its place between the Renaissance facades and rows of slender trees. Summer had not yet burned foliage or flowers; the freshness of spring itself seemed still to reign there. Three blue-bloused street-sweepers with hose and broom were washing the asphalt as their cab slowed down, sounding its horn to warn them out of the way. And, the spouting hose still in their hands, the street-cleaners stepped out of the gutter before the pretty private hotel of Madame la Princesse. Already a butler was opening the _grille_; already the chauffeur had swung Neeland's steamer trunk and suitcase to the sidewalk; already the Princess and Rue were advancing to the house, while Neeland fumbled in his pocket for the fare. The butler, bowing, relieved him of the olive-wood box. At the same instant the blue-bloused man with the hose turned the powerful stream of water directly into the butler's face, knocking him flat on the sidewalk; and his two comrades tripped up Neeland, passed a red sash over his head, and hurled him aside, blinded, half strangled, staggering at random, tearing furiously at the wide band of woollen cloth which seemed to suffocate him. Already the chauffeur had tossed the olive-wood box into the cab; the three blue-bloused men sprang in after it; the chauffeur slipped into his seat, threw in the clutch, and, driving with one hand, turned a pistol on the half drowned butler, who had reeled to his feet and was lurching forward to seize the steering wheel. The taxicab, gathering speed, was already turning the corner of the rue de la Lune when Neeland managed to free throat and eyes from the swathe of woollen. The butler, checked by the levelled pistol, stood dripping, still almost blinded by the force of the water from the hose; but he had plenty of pluck, and he followed Neeland on a run to the corner of the street. The street was absolutely empty, except for the sparrows, and the big, fat, slate-coloured pigeons that strutted and coo-cooed under the shadow of the chestnut trees. _ |
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