He shoved his pistol into his breast pocket and put on his marred silk hat.
“Which do you think they will believe – you or the Count d’Eblis?” he demanded, the nervous leer twitching at his heavy lips. “Which do you think they will believe – your denials and counter-accusations against me, or Max Freund’s corroboration, and the evidence of the packet I shall now deliver to the authorities – the packet containing every cursed document necessary to convict you! – you filthy little – ”
The girl bounded from her bed to the floor, her dark eyes blazing:
“Damn you!” she said. “Get out of my bedroom!”
Taken aback, he retreated a pace or two, and, at the furious menace of the little clenched fist, stepped another pace out into the corridor. The door crashed in his face; the bolt shot home.
In twenty minutes Nihla Quellen, the celebrated and adored of European capitals, crept out of the street 37 door. She wore the dress of a Finistère peasant; her hair was grey, her step infirm.
The commissaire, two agents de police, and a Government detective, one Souchez, already on their way to identify and arrest her, never even glanced at the shabby, infirm figure which hobbled past them on the sidewalk and feebly mounted an omnibus marked Gare du Nord.
For a long time Paris was carefully combed for the dancer, Nihla Quellen, until more serious affairs occupied the authorities, and presently the world at large. For, in a few weeks, war burst like a clap of thunder over Europe, leaving the whole world stunned and reeling. The dossier of Nihla Quellen, the dancing girl, was tossed into secret archives, together with the dossier of one Ferez Bey, an Eurasian, now far beyond French jurisdiction, and already very industrious in the United States about God knows what, in company with one Max Freund.
As for Monsieur the Count d’Eblis, he remained a senator, an owner of many third-rate decorations, and of the Mot d’Ordre.
And he remained on excellent terms with everybody at the Swedish, Greek, and Bulgarian legations, and the Turkish Embassy, too. And continued in cipher communication with Max Freund and Ferez Bey in America.
Otherwise, he was still president of the Numismatic Society of Spain, and he continued to add to his wonderful collection of coins, and to keep up his voluminous numismatic correspondence.
He was growing stouter, too, which increased his spinal waddle when he walked; and he became very 38 prosperous financially, through fortunate “operations,” as he explained, with one Bolo Pasha.
He had only one regret to interfere with his sleep and his digestion; he was sorry he had not fired his pistol into the youthful face of Nihla Quellen. He should have avenged himself, taken his chances, and above everything else he should have destroyed her beauty. His timidity and caution still caused him deep and bitter chagrin.
For nearly a year he heard absolutely nothing concerning her. Then one day a letter arrived from Ferez Bey through Max Freund, both being in New York. And when, using his key to the cipher, he extracted the message it contained, he had learned, among other things, that Nihla Quellen was in New York, employed as a teacher in a school for dancing.
The gist of his reply to Ferez Bey was that Nihla Quellen had already outlived her usefulness on earth, and that Max Freund should attend to the matter at the first favourable opportunity.
III
SUNSET
On the edge of evening she came out of the Palace of Mirrors and crossed the wet asphalt, which already reflected primrose lights from a clearing western sky.
A few moments before, he had been thinking of her, never dreaming that she was in America. But he knew her instantly, there amid the rush and clatter of the street, recognised her even in the twilight of the passing storm – perhaps not alone from the half-caught glimpse of her shadowy, averted face, nor even from that young, lissome figure so celebrated in Europe. There is a sixth sense – the sense of nearness to what is familiar. When it awakes we call it premonition.
The shock of seeing her, the moment’s exciting incredulity, passed before he became aware that he was already following her through swarming metropolitan throngs released from the toil of a long, wet day in early spring.
Through every twilit avenue poured the crowds; through every cross-street a rosy glory from the west was streaming; and in its magic he saw her immortally transfigured, where the pink light suffused the crossings, only to put on again her lovely mortality in the shadowy avenue.
At Times Square she turned west, straight into the dazzling fire of sunset, and he at her slender heels, not knowing why, not even asking it of himself, not thinking, not caring.
A third figure followed them both.
The bronze giants south of them stirred, swung their great hammers against the iron bell; strokes of the hour rang out above the din of Herald Square, inaudible in the traffic roar another square away, lost, drowned out long before the pleasant bell-notes penetrated to Forty-second Street, into which they both had turned.
Yet, as though occultly conscious that some hour had struck on earth, significant to her, she stopped, turned, and looked back – looked quite through him, seeing neither him nor the one-eyed man who followed them both – as though her line of vision were the East itself, where, across the grey sea’s peril, a thousand miles of cannon were sounding the hour from the North Sea to the Alps.
He passed her at her very elbow – aware of her nearness, as though suddenly close to a young orchard in April. The girl, too, resumed her way, unconscious of him, of his youthful face set hard with controlled emotion.
The one-eyed man followed them both.
A few steps further and she turned into the entrance to one of those sprawling, pretentious restaurants, the sham magnificence of which becomes grimy overnight. He halted, swung around, retraced his steps and followed her. And at his heels two shapes followed them very silently – her shadow and his own – so close together now, against the stucco wall that they seemed like Destiny and Fate linked arm in arm.
The one-eyed man halted at the door for a few moments. Then he, too, went in, dogged by his sinister shadow.
The red sunset’s rays penetrated to the rotunda and were quenched there in a flood of artificial light; and 41 there their sun-born shadows vanished, and three strange new shadows, twisted and grotesque, took their places.
She continued on into the almost empty restaurant, looming dimly beyond. He followed; the one-eyed man followed both.
The place into which they stepped was circular, centred by a waterfall splashing over concrete rocks. In the ruffled pool goldfish glimmered, nearly motionless, and mandarin ducks floated, preening exotic plumage.
A wilderness of tables surrounded the pool, set for the expected patronage of the coming evening. The girl seated herself at one of these.
At the next table he found a place for himself, entirely unnoticed by her. The one-eyed man took the table behind them. A waiter presented himself to take her order; another waiter came up leisurely to attend to him. A third served the one-eyed man. There were only a few inches between the three tables. Yet the girl, deeply preoccupied, paid no attention to either man, although both kept their eyes on her.
But already, under the younger man’s spellbound eyes, an odd and unforeseen thing was occurring: he gradually became aware that, almost imperceptibly, the girl and the table where she sat, and the sleepy waiter who was taking her orders, were slowly moving nearer to him on a floor which was moving, too.
He had never before been in that particular restaurant, and it took him a moment or two to realise that the floor was one of those trick floors, the central part of which slowly revolves.
Her table stood on the revolving part of the floor, his upon fixed terrain; and he now beheld her moving toward him, as the circle of tables rotated