The Place of Honeymoons Part 8

"What the devil makes _you_ so bitter?"

"Was I bitter? I thought I was philosophizing." Courtlandt consulted his watch. Half after four. "Come over to the Maurice and dine with me to-morrow night, that is, if you do not find your prima donna. I've an engagement at five-thirty, and must be off."

"I was about to ask you to dine with me to-night," disappointedly.

"Can't; awfully sorry, Abby. It was only luck that I met you in the Luxembourg. Be over about seven. I was very glad to see you again."

Abbott kicked a broken easel into a corner. "All right. If anything turns up I'll let you know. You're at the Grand?"

"Yes. By-by."

"I know what's the matter with him," mused the artist, alone. "Some woman has chucked him. Silly little fool, probably."

Courtlandt went down-stairs and out into the boulevard. Frankly, he was beginning to feel concerned. He still held to his original opinion that the diva had disappeared of her own free will; but if the machinery of the police had been started, he realized that his own safety would eventually become involved. By this time, he reasoned, there would not be a hotel in Paris free of surveillance. Naturally, blond strangers would be in demand.

The complications that would follow his own arrest were not to be ignored.

He agreed with his conscience that he had not acted with dignity in forcing his way into her apartment. But that night he had been at odds with convention; his spirit had been that of the marauding old Dutchman of the seventeenth century. He perfectly well knew that she was in the right as far as the pistol-shot was concerned. Further, he knew that he could quash any charge she might make in that direction by the simplest of declarations; and to avoid this simplest of declarations she would prefer silence above all things. They knew each other tolerably well.

It was extremely fortunate that he had not been to the hotel since Sat.u.r.day. He went directly to the war-office. The great and powerful man there was the only hope left. They had met some years before in Algiers, where Courtlandt had rendered him a very real service.

"I did not expect you to the minute," the great man said pleasantly. "You will not mind waiting for a few minutes."

"Not in the least. Only, I'm in a deuce of a mess," frankly and directly.

"Innocently enough, I've stuck my head into the police net."

"Is it possible that now I can pay my debt to you?"

"Such as it is. Have you read the article in the newspapers regarding the disappearance of Signorina da Toscana, the singer?"

"Yes."

"I am the unknown blond. To-morrow morning I want you to go with me to the prefecture and state that I was with you all of Sat.u.r.day and Sunday; that on Monday you and your wife dined with me, that yesterday we went to the aviation meet, and later to the Odeon."

"In brief, an alibi?" smiling now.

"Exactly. I shall need one."

"And a perfectly good alibi. But I have your word that you are in nowise concerned? Pardon the question, but between us it is really necessary if I am to be of service to you."

"On my word as a gentleman."

"That is sufficient."

"In fact, I do not believe that she has been abducted at all. Will you let me use your pad and pen for a minute?"

The other pushed over the required articles. Courtlandt scrawled a few words and pa.s.sed back the pad.

"For me to read?"

"Yes," moodily.

The Frenchman read. Courtlandt watched him anxiously. There was not even a flicker of surprise in the official eye. Calmly he ripped off the sheet and tore it into bits, distributing the pieces into the various waste-baskets yawning about his long flat desk. Next, still avoiding the younger man's eye, he arranged his papers neatly and locked them up in a huge safe which only the artillery of the German army could have forced.

He then called for his hat and stick. He beckoned to Courtlandt to follow.

Not a word was said until the car was humming on the road to Vincennes.

"Well?" said Courtlandt, finally. It was not possible for him to hold back the question any longer.

"My dear friend, I am taking you out to the villa for the night."

"But I have nothing...."

"And I have everything, even foresight. If you were arrested to-night it would cause you some inconvenience. I am fifty-six, some twenty years your senior. Under this hat of mine I carry a thousand secrets, and every one of these thousand must go to the grave with me, yours along with them. I have met you a dozen times since those Algerian days, and never have you failed to afford me some amus.e.m.e.nt or excitement. You are the most interesting and entertaining young man I know. Try one of these cigars."

Precisely at the time Courtlandt stepped into the automobile outside the war-office, a scene, peculiar in character, but inconspicuous in that it did not attract attention, was enacted in the Gare de l'Est. Two sober-visaged men stood respectfully aside to permit a tall young man in a Bavarian hat to enter a compartment of the second-cla.s.s. What could be seen of the young man's face was full of smothered wrath and disappointment. How he hated himself, for his weakness, for his cowardice!

He was not all bad. Knowing that he was being watched and followed, he could not go to Versailles and compromise her, uselessly. And devil take the sleek demon of a woman who had prompted him to commit so base an act!

"You will at least," he said, "deliver that message which I have intrusted to your care."

"It shall reach Versailles to-night, your Highness."

The young man reread the telegram which one of the two men had given him a moment since. It was a command which even he, wilful and disobedient as he was, dared not ignore. He ripped it into shreds and flung them out of the window. He did not apologize to the man into whose face the pieces flew.

That gentleman reddened perceptibly, but he held his tongue. The blare of a horn announced the time of departure. The train moved. The two men on the platform saluted, but the young man ignored the salutation. Not until the rear car disappeared in the hazy distance did the watchers stir. Then they left the station and got into the tonneau of a touring-car, which shot away and did not stop until it drew up before that imposing emba.s.sy upon which the French will always look with more or less suspicion.

CHAPTER VI

THE BIRD BEHIND BARS

The most beautiful blue Irish eyes in the world gazed out at the dawn which turned night-blue into day-blue and paled the stars. Rosal lay the undulating horizon, presently to burst into living flame, trans.m.u.ting the dull steel bars of the window into fairy gold, that trick of alchemy so futilely sought by man. There was a window at the north and another at the south, likewise barred; but the Irish eyes never sought these two. It was from the east window only that they could see the long white road that led to Paris.

The nightingale was truly caged. But the wild heart of the eagle beat in this nightingale's breast, and the eyes burned as fiercely toward the east as the east burned toward the west. Sunday and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, to-day; and that the five dawns were singular in beauty and that she had never in her life before witnessed the creation of five days, one after another, made no impression upon her sense of the beautiful, so delicate and receptive in ordinary times. She was conscious that within her the cup of wrath was overflowing. Of other things, such as eating and sleeping and moving about in her cage (more like an eagle indeed than a nightingale), recurrence had blunted her perception.

Her clothes were soiled and crumpled, sundrily torn; her hair was in disorder, and tendrils hung about her temples and forehead--thick black hair, full of purple tones in the sunlight--for she had not surrendered peacefully to this incarceration. Dignity, that phase of philosophy which accepts quietly the inevitable, she had thrown to the winds. She had fought desperately, primordially, when she had learned that her errand of mercy was nothing more than a cruel hoax.

"Oh, but he shall pay, he shall pay!" she murmured, striving to loosen the bars with her small, white, helpless hands. The cry seemed to be an arietta, for through all these four maddening days she had voiced it,--now low and deadly with hate, now full-toned in burning anger, now broken by sobs of despair. "Will you never come, so that I may tell you how base and vile you are?" she further addressed the east.

She had waited for his appearance on Sunday. Late in the day one of the jailers had informed her that it was impossible for the gentleman to come before Monday. So she marshaled her army of phrases, of accusations, of denunciations, ready to smother him with them the moment he came. But he came not Monday, nor Tuesday, nor Wednesday. The suspense was to her mind diabolical. She began to understand: he intended to keep her there till he was sure that her spirit was broken, then he would come. Break her spirit?

She laughed wildly. He could break her spirit no more easily than she could break these bars. To bring her to Versailles upon an errand of mercy! Well, he was capable of anything.

The room was large and fairly comfortable, but contained nothing breakable, having been tenanted at one time by a strenuous lunatic, who had considerately died after his immediate family and relations had worn themselves into their several graves, taking care of him. But Eleonora Harrigan knew nothing of the history of the room while she occupied it.

So, no ghost disturbed her restless slumberless nights, consumed in watching and listening.

She was not particularly distressed because she knew that it would not be possible for her to sing again until the following winter in New York. She had sobbed too much, with her face buried in the pillow. Had these sobs been born of weakness, all might have been well; but rage had mothered them, and thus her voice was in a very bad way. This morning she was noticeably hoa.r.s.e, and there was a break in the arietta. No, she did not fret over this side of the calamity. The sting of it all lay in the fact that she had been outraged in the matter of personal liberty, with no act of reprisal to ease her immediate longing to be avenged.

Nora, as she stood in the full morning sunlight, was like to gladden the eyes of all mankind. She was beautiful, and all adjectives applicable would but serve to confuse rather than to embellish her physical excellence. She was as beautiful as a garden rose is, needing no defense, no ramparts of cloying phrases. The day of poets is gone, otherwise she would have been sung in cantos. She was tall, shapely, deep-bosomed, fine-skinned. Critics, in praising her charms, delved into mythology and folk-lore for comparisons, until there wasn't a G.o.ddess left on Olympus or on Northland's icy capes; and when these images became a little shop-worn, referred to certain masterpieces of the old fellows who had left nothing more to be said in oils. Nora enjoyed it all.

She had not been happy in the selection of her stage name; but she had chosen Eleonora da Toscana because she believed there was good luck in it.