Red Masquerade Part 15

Stumbling on the stairs, she heard Therese still screaming imprecations and commands at Dupont, then the clumping of the man's feet as, yielding at length, he started in pursuit.

Through the green baize door she burst into the cafe like a young tornado.

Every head turned her way with gaping mouths and protruding eyes of astonishment as she stopped at the caisse and brazenly, in the face of them all, plundered the till.

This was a matter of necessity. Sofia had not one s.h.i.+lling of her own. But those two had robbed her, what she took was not so much as a thousandth part of the money of which they had despoiled her. Moreover, she dared not go out penniless to face London.

s.n.a.t.c.hing a handful of loose coin, she made for the door. But the delay had been fatal. Dupont was now at her heels, and displaying extraordinary agility in a man of his years of dissipation and sedentary habits. And Therese was not far behind.

Seeing coins trickling through the fingers of the fugitive and falling to ring and spin upon the floor, the Frenchwoman raised an anguished shriek of "_Thief! Stop thief!_"--and such part of the audience as had remained in its seats rose up as one man.

In the same instant Dupont's fingers clamped down on Sofia's shoulder. She screamed, and he chuckled and dragged her back. Then his arm was struck up by a deft hand, the girl slipped from his hold and darted out through the doors.

Roaring with rage (now that his blood was up, his heart in the chase) Dupont turned upon the meddler. This was young Mr. Karslake. Dupont did not know him except by sight, but that slender, boyish figure and the semi-apologetic smile on Karslake's lips did not inspire respect. Blindly and with all his might Dupont swung his right to the other's head, only to find it wasn't there.

The weight of the unexpended blow carried Dupont off his feet. He fell in a heap, and Mama Therese, charging wildly after Sofia, tripped on his body and deposited fourteen stone of solid flesh squarely in the small of Dupont's back with a force that drove the breath out of him in one agonized blast.

Karslake laughed aloud: it was all as good as a cinema. Then he followed Sofia.

It was a dark and silent street by night, little used, a mere link between two main thoroughfares. Sofia, running for dear life, was still far from the nearest corner. Karslake doubled nimbly across the street to the only vehicle in sight, an impressive Rolls-Royce town-car. Jumping on the running-board he pointed out the fleeing shadow to the chauffeur.

"Lay alongside that young woman before she makes the corner, Albert!"

Without delay the car began to move.

Meanwhile, the Cafe des Exiles was erupting antic shapes, waiters, customers, Dupont, Therese. The quiet hour was made hideous by their yells.

"_Stop thief!" "a la voleuse!" "L'arretez!" "a la voleuse!" "Stop thief!_"

An entirely superfluous bobby weathered the corner, discovered Sofia in flight across the street, came about, and shaped a diagonal course to cut across her bows. She saw him coming and stopped short with a gasp of dismay. Simultaneously the Rolls-Royce slid smoothly in between them and Karslake hopped down. Sofia uttered a small cry, more of surprise than fright, and hung back, trying to free the arm by which he was trying to guide her to the open door.

"It's our only chance," he warned her, coolly. "We're between two fires.

Better not delay!"

She yielded and tumbled in. Karslake followed and slammed the door. The car shot away and rounded into the cross street before the bobby could collect himself enough to look at its license plate. He made after it, but when he had reached the corner it had turned another and was lost.

At the second turning Karslake looked round from the window with a rea.s.suring laugh, and settled back beside Sofia.

"So that ends that!"

She stared wide-eyed through the shadows. She knew him now, she was not in the least afraid, but she was confused beyond measure.

"Why--why--" she faltered--"what--who are you and where are you taking me?"

"Oh, I beg your pardon!" said the young man, contritely. "I forgot. One ought to introduce one's self before rescuing ladies in distress--but there really wasn't time, you know. If you'll overlook the informality, my name's Karslake, Roger Karslake, Princess Sofia, and I'm taking you to your father."

V

HOUSE OF THE WOLF

This startling announcement Sofia received without comment and with a composure quite as surprising. The life which had made her what she was, a young woman singularly unillusioned, well-poised, and well-informed, had brought out in her nature a strong vein of scepticism. She was not easily to be impressed. The more remarkable the circ.u.mstance in question, the less inclined was she to exclaim about it, the stronger was her propensity to look shrewdly into the matter and find out for herself just what it was that made it seem so odd.

She didn't repose much faith in those striking synchronizations which apparently unrelated influences sometimes effect with related events, and which we are accustomed to term coincidences. She distrusted their specious seeming of spontaneity, she suspected a deep design behind them all.

For example: Up to the moment of her flight from the Cafe des Exiles there had been, as Sofia saw it, nothing extraordinary or inexplicable in the chapter of happenings which had made her acquainted, as abruptly as tardily, with certain facts concerning her parentage.

You might, if you felt like it, call it a strange coincidence that she should have read the advertis.e.m.e.nt of Messrs. Secretan & Sypher just before their letter was delivered and Mama Therese by her intemperate conduct warmed Sofia's simmering suspicions to the boiling point. But then Sofia read the Agony Column every time it came into her hands: she would have been more surprised had she missed noticing her given name in print, and downright ashamed of herself if she had failed to a.s.sociate the letter with the advertis.e.m.e.nt.

If you asked her, she called it Fate, the foreordained workings of occult forces charged with dominion over human affairs. Sooner or later she must somehow have learned the truth about her right place in the world; and to her way of thinking it was no more astonis.h.i.+ng that she should have learned it through accident supplemented by the acute inferences of a sharply stimulated imagination, rather than through being waited upon by a delegation of legal gentlemen commissioned with the duty of enlightening her. And the colossal set-piece of the evening having been duly exploded, no sequel whatever could expect anything better than relegation to the cheerless limbo of anticlimax.

Thus when young Mr. Karslake explained his uninvited if timely intervention by stating that he was conducting her to the parent of whose existence she had so recently been informed, he succeeded--not to put too fine a point upon it--only in making it all seem a bit thick.

So for the time being Sofia contented herself with silent study of his face as fitfully revealed by the pa.s.sing lights of Shaftesbury Avenue.

A nice face (she thought) open and nave, perhaps a trace too much so; but, viewed at close quarters, by no means so child-like as she had thought it, and by no means wanting in evidences of quiet strength if one forgave the funny little moustache which (now one came to, observe it seriously) was precisely what lent that possibly deceptive look of innocence and inconsequence, positively weakening the character of what might otherwise have been a countenance to foster confidence.

As for Mr. Karslake, he endured this candid scrutiny with a faintly apprehensive smile, but volunteered nothing more; so that, when the silence in time acquired an accent of constraint, it was Sofia who had to break it, not Mr. Karslake.

"I'm wondering about you," she explained quite gravely.

"One fancied as much, Princess Sofia."

She liked his way of saying that; the t.i.tle seemed to fall naturally from his lips, without a trace of irony. None the less, it wouldn't do to be too readily influenced in his favour.

"Do you really know my father?"

"Rather!" said Mr. Karslake. "You see, I'm his secretary."

"How long--"

"Upward of eighteen months now."

"And how long have you known I was his daughter?"

Mr. Karslake, consulting a wrist-watch, permitted himself a quiet smile.

"Thirty-eight minutes," he announced--"say, thirty-nine."

"But how did you find out--?"

"Your father called me up--can't say from where--said he'd just learned you were acting as cas.h.i.+er at the Cafe des Exiles, and would I be good enough to take you firmly by the hand and lead you home."

"And how did he learn--?"

"That he didn't say. 'Fraid you'll have to ask him, Princess Sofia."

Genuinely diverted by the cross-examination, he awaited with unruffled good humour the next question to be put by this amazingly collected and direct young person. But Sofia hesitated. She didn't want to be rude, and Karslake seemed to be telling a tolerably straight story; still, she couldn't altogether believe in him as yet. She couldn't help it if his visit to the restaurant had been a shade too opportune, his account of himself too confoundedly pat.