December Love Part 23

"I don't know. Well, what is it?"

"I wanted to tell you something about Lady Sellingworth which has puzzled me and a friend of mine. It is a sort of social mystery."

"Social! Oh, Lord!"

"Now, d.i.c.k, don't be a sn.o.b. You are a sn.o.b in your pretended hatred of all decent people."

"D'you call your society dames decent?"

"Be quiet if you can! You're worse than a woman."

He did not say anything. His horsey profile looked hard and expressionless in the night. As she glanced at it she could not help thinking of Newmarket. He ought surely to have been a jockey with that face and figure.

"You are listening?"

He said nothing. But he turned his face and she saw the two pin-points of light. That was enough. She told him about the theft of Lady Sellingworth's jewels, her neglect of all endeavour to recover them, her immediate plunge into middle-age after the theft, and her avoidance of general society ever since.

"What do you make of it?" she asked, when she had finished.

"Make of it?"

"Yes."

"Does your little mind find it mysterious?"

"Well, isn't it rather odd for a woman who loses fifty thousand pounds'

worth of jewels never to try to get them back?"

"Not if they were stolen by a lover."

"You think--"

"It's as obvious as that Martin, R.A., can't paint and I can."

"But I believe they were stolen at the _Gare du Nord_. Now does that look like a lover?"

"I didn't say the _Gare du Nord_ looked like a lover."

"Don't be utterly ridiculous."

"I don't care where they were stolen--your old dowager's Gew-gaws.

Depend upon it they were stolen by some man she'd been mixed up with, and she knew it, and didn't dare to prosecute. I can't see any mystery in the matter."

"Perhaps you are right."

"Of course I am right."

Miss Van Tuyn said nothing for two or three minutes. Her mind had gone from Lady Sellingworth to Craven, and then flitted on--she did not know why--to the man who had gazed at her so strangely in the Cafe Royal. She had been feeling rather neglected, badly treated almost, and his look had restored her to her normal supreme self-confidence. That fact would always be to the stranger's credit. She wondered very much who he was.

His good looks had almost startled her. She began also to wonder what Garstin had thought of him. Garstin seldom painted men. But he did so now and then. Two of his finest portraits were of men: one a Breton fisherman who looked like an apache of the sea, the other a Spanish bullfighter dressed in his Sunday clothes with the book of the Ma.s.s in his hand. Miss Van Tuyn had seen them both. She now found herself wis.h.i.+ng that Garstin would paint a portrait of the man who had looked at her. But was he a Cafe Royal type? At present Garstin painted nothing which did not come out of the Cafe Royal.

"That man--" she said abruptly.

"I was just wondering when we should get to him!" interjected Garstin.

"I thought your old dowager wouldn't keep us away from him for long."

"I suppose you know by this time, d.i.c.k, that I don't care in the least what you think of me."

"The only reason I bother about you is because you are a thoroughly independent cuss and have a d.a.m.ned fine head."

"Why don't you paint me?"

"I may come to it. But if I do I'm mortally afraid they'll make an academician of me. Go on about your man."

"Didn't you think him a wonderful type?"

"Yes."

"Tell me! If you want to paint someone, what do you do?"

"Do? Go up and tell him or her to come along to the studio."

"Whether you know them or not?"

"Of course."

"You ought to paint that man."

"Just because you want me to pick hum up and then introduce him to you.

I don't paint for reasons of that kind."

"Have you ever seen him before to-night?"

"Yes. I saw him last night."

"For the first time?"

"Yes."

"At the Cafe Royal?"

"Yes."

"What do you think he is?"

"Probably a successful blackmailer."

For some obscure reason Miss Van Tuyn felt outraged by this opinion of Garstin.