Chapter VI: Book II: The Lone Wolf’s Daughter (4)

“Sorry, sir.” Karslake’s tone was level, respectful but firm. “Your instructions were, I believe, to win her confidence. Well—I have always found love the one sure key to a woman’s confidence. Of course, if I had understood you cared one way or the other—”

Sofia heard no more: unconsciously she had closed the door, at one and the same time shutting from her sight Victor’s exultant sneer and from her hearing the words with which the man whom she loved had damned himself irretrievably and dashed her spirit from radiant pinnacles of ecstasy into the profoundest black abyss of shame and despair.

Primitive instinct bade the stricken girl seek her room and hide her suffering there; but the shock had stunned her to the point of physical weakness. Already a hand was pressed above her heart, that ached cruelly; and as she moved to cross to the foot of the staircase her knees gave under her. She clutched the newel-post for support, waiting to find strength for the ascent.

From the shadowed back part of the hall the man Nogam moved hastily into view, his features twisted in a grimace of concern as he recognized the bleak misery of Sofia’s face. His voice sounded strangely thin and remote.

“Is there anything the matter, miss?—anything I can do?”

She contrived to shake her head slightly and utter an inarticulate sound of negation, then began slowly to mount the stairs.

Below, Nogam stood watching, in a pose of indecision, as if tempted to follow and offer the support of an arm lest she fall, restrained only by fear of a rebuff. But Sofia’s leaden limbs carried her safely to the upper landing, then on to the blessed shelter of her room, where she collapsed upon a chaise-longue and there lay in a stirless huddle, dry of eye but deaf to the plaintive entreaties of Chou Nu and numb to all sensation but the anguish of her humiliated heart.

XII SUSPECT

Toward mid-evening the man Victor Vassilyevski and his creature Sturm sat where the lamp of hand-wrought brass made the top of the teakwood table an oasis of light amid a waste of shadows, their heads together over a vast glut of books and papers—maps printed and sketched, curious diagrams, works of reference, documents all dark with columns of figures and cabalistic writings intelligible only to initiated eyes.

They had the study all to themselves. Nevertheless, when they spoke it was in the discreet pitch of those who deal in fatal secrets. At a distance of two paces only a lip-reader could have caught the substance of their communications, and even such a one must have failed unless equally at home in German and in English.

Aside from these occasional and circumspect voices, and the busy rustle of a steel pen in the hand of Sturm, the quiet of the room had a tolerably constant background of sound in a subdued whisper punctuated by muffled clicks, emanating from the bronze casket that housed the telautographic apparatus.

From time to time, as this noise temporarily suspended, Victor would get up, read what the mechanical stylus had inscribed, tear off the paper, and return to his chair.

Some of the messages thus received he made known to Sturm, who invariably acknowledged this courtesy with effusive gratitude, sometimes adding a few words of contented comment. Other messages Victor chose to keep to himself, silently setting fire to them and adding their brittle ashes to those of their predecessors on the brazen tray provided for the purpose. At such times Sturm would bend lower over his work. But Victor was well able to guess what resentment glimmered in the eyes so studiously averted; and his cold, sardonic smile more than once commented, unknown to Sturm, upon the accuracy with which he read the mean workings of his “secretary’s” mind.

The buzz of a muted bell presently interrupted the even tenor of their industry, causing Sturm to start sharply, drop his pen, and slue round in his chair, turning to Victor a livid face in which his dark eyes of a fanatic were live embers of excitement.

Without a sign to show he shared or even was aware of Sturm’s emotion, Victor deliberately fished from beneath the table a telephone instrument, unhooked the receiver, and pronounced a conventional phrase of greeting. To this he added a short “Yes,” and after listening quietly for some seconds, “Very good—in twenty minutes, then.” Wasting no more time on the author of the call, he hung up, returned the telephone to its place of concealment, and helped himself to a cigarette before deigning to acknowledge Sturm’s persistent stare.

Then, elevating his eyebrows in mild impatience, he made the laconic announcement:

“Eleven.”

Sturm’s mouth twitched nervously, his eyes burned with a keener fire.

“Coming here? To-night?”

“Yes.”

“Then”—a gaunt hand described a gesture of agitation—“the hour strikes!”

Victor looked bored.

“Who knows?” he replied, as who should say: “Does it matter?”

“But—Gott in Himmel—!”

“Sturm,” Victor interposed, critically, “if you Bolsheviki were a trifle more consistent, one might repose greater faith in your sincerity. But when one hears you deny the Deity in one breath and call on him by name in the next—!”

“A mere mode of speech,” Sturm muttered.

“If you must invoke a spiritual patron, why not Satan? Or don’t you believe in the Powers of Darkness, either?”

“I believe in you.”

“As temporal viceroy of Lucifer? Many thanks! But you were about to say—?”

“Nothing. That is—I was envying your poise, Excellency. You take things so coolly.”

“Why not?”

“With Eleven coming here to tell us when we are to strike?”

“Why not?” Victor repeated. “We are prepared to strike at any hour. What matters whether to-night or a week from to-night—since we cannot fail?”

“If that were only certain!”

“It rests with you.”

“That’s just it,” Sturm doubted moodily. “Suppose _I_ fail?”

“Why, then—I suppose—you will die.”

“I know. And so will all of us, Excellency.”

“Oh, no. Undeceive yourself, my friend. I shall survive. You will surely die, and perhaps many others with you; but I would not be Number One if I had turned my hand to this scheme without discounting failure first of all. My way of escape is sure.”

“I believe you,” Sturm grumbled.

With a languid hand Victor found and pressed a button embedded in the table near the edge.

“You have reason. Whatever my shortcomings, my good Sturm, they do not include hypocrisy; I do not pretend, like your noble Bolsheviki, I am in this business for the sake of humanity or anything but my own selfish ends—power, plunder”—a slight wait prefaced one final word, spoken in a key of sombre passion—“revenge.”

“Revenge?” Sturm echoed, staring.

“I have more than one score to pay out before I can cry even with life ... one above all!”

Studying intently that darkened face, and misled by its look of abstraction, Sturm was guilty of the indiscretion of his malicious smile.

“The Lone Wolf?”

Victor turned weary eyes his way, and under their black and lustreless regard the smile merged swiftly into a grin of nervous apology.

“You are shrewd,” Victor observed, thoughtfully. “Be careful: it is a dangerous gift.”

The man Nogam gently opened the door and approached the table, stopping just outside the area of illumination shed by the shaded lamp. But since Victor continued to smoke absently, paying no attention, Nogam resigned himself to wait with entire patience: the perfect pattern of a servant tempered by long servitude to the erratic winds of employers’ whims; efficient, assiduous, mute unless required to speak, long-suffering.

Victor addressed him suddenly, in a sharp voice that drew from Sturm a glitter of eager spite.

“Nogam!”

“Yes, sir?”

“Where is the Princess Sofia?”

“In ’er apartment, sir.”

“And Mr. Karslake?”

“In ’is.”

“Then be good enough to send Shaik Tsin to me.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And, Nogam!”—the servant checked in the act of turning—“I shan’t need you again to-night.”

“’Nk you, sir.”

When Nogam had left the room, Sturm, remarking the slight frown that knitted Victor’s brows, ventured an impertinence couched in a form of respectful enquiry:

“Excellency, perhaps you trust that fellow too much, hein?”

“You think so?”

“He is too perfect, if you ask me—never makes a false move.”

“Either he is what he seems, in which event a false move would be against nature; or he is not, and knows one slip would mean his death.”

“Still, I maintain you trust him too much.”

“With what?”

“The freedom of your house, the opportunity to spy, to get to know who comes to see you and when, to listen at doors.”

“You have caught him listening at doors?”

“Not yet. But in time—”

“I think not. I don’t think he has to.”

“You mean,” Sturm stammered, perturbed, “you think he knows—suspects?”

“I think he is one thing or the other: merely Nogam, or one of the greatest of living actors. In either case he is flawless—thus far. But if not merely Nogam, he will have a subtler means of eavesdropping than by listening at doors.”

“The dictograph?”

“Make your mind easy about that. This room is searched regularly by Shaik Tsin. So is Nogam’s. It is certain there is neither a dictograph installed here nor any means at Nogam’s disposal for connecting with a dictograph installation. Indeed, so closely is Nogam watched, and by more cunning eyes than mine—sometimes I begin to be afraid he is simply what he seems.”

“Then you do suspect him!”

“My good Sturm, I suspect everybody.”

Sturm pondered this before pressing his point again.

“Karslake found the fellow for you,” he suggested at length.

“True.”

“And Karslake—”

“Has been guilty of nothing more treacherous than falling in love with Sofia.”

“Your daughter, Excellency!”

“The young woman seems content to call herself that.... Can’t say I blame Karslake.”

“But do you forgive him?”

“Ah, that is another matter. Mine is not a forgiving nature, Sturm—not even toward excessive shrewdness.”

Victor took up a docket of papers, and Sturm, mumbling an apology, gave himself up to jealous brooding till he forgot the broad hint he had received.

“If I can satisfy you that Nogam is untrustworthy—” he began, meaning to continue: _Karslake will stand his proved accomplice_.

But Victor would not let him finish. “Nothing could please me more,” he interrupted. “Do so, by all means—if you can—and earn my everlasting gratitude.”

Sturm questioned him with puzzled eyes.

“I ask no greater service of any man,” Victor elucidated with a smile that made Sturm shiver, “than proof that Nogam is what I suspect him of being.” A hand extended upon the table unclosed and closed slowly, with fingers tensed, like a murderous claw. “I want no greater favour of Heaven or Hell—!”

He broke off abruptly. Having entered noiselessly in his padded shoes, Shaik Tsin now stood before Victor, offering a low obeisance.

“You took your time,” Victor grumbled. And Shaik Tsin smiled serenely. “I want you to tend the door to-night,” Victor pursued. “Eleven is expected at any moment. You need not announce him, simply show him in.”

“Hearing is obedience.”

“Wait”—as the Chinaman began to bow himself out—“Karslake is still in his room, I suppose?”

“Yes, master.”

“And Nogam?”

“Has just gone to his.”

“When did you last search their quarters?”

“During dinner.”

“And of course found nothing?” Shaik Tsin bowed. “Make sure neither leaves his room to-night. Set a watch outside each door.”

“I have done so.”

Victor gave a sign of dismissal.

XIII THE TURNIP

In a spacious chamber beneath the eaves, hideously papered and furnished with cheerless, massive relics of the early Victorian era, the man Nogam pursued methodical preparations for bed.

Spying eyes, had there been any—and for all Nogam knew, there were—would have seen him follow step by step a programme from whose order he had departed by scarcely as much as a single gesture on any night since his first installation in the house near Queen Anne’s Gate.

Loosening the waistcoat of his evening livery, he freed the heavy silver watchchain from its buttonhole, drew from its pocket an old-fashioned silver watch of that obese style which first earned the portable timepiece its nickname of “turnip,” and opening its back inserted a key attached to the other end of the chain. Its winding was a laborious process, prodigiously noisy. Once finished, Nogam shut the back with a loud click, and reverently deposited the watch on the marble slab of the black walnut bureau.

Then he hung coat and waistcoat over the back of a chair which stood between the foot of his bed and the door. Sheer chance may have decreed selection of this chair for the purpose on Nogam’s first night in the room; whether or no, it was not in character that, having established this precedent, Nogam should depart from it. And in any event, the coat-draped chair effectually eclipsed a possible keyhole view of the room.

Notwithstanding, Nogam pursued his bedtime rites with precisely the same deliberation and absence of perceptible self-consciousness as before. One never knew: there might be other peepholes in the walls.

His trousers, neatly folded, he laid out on the seat of the chair. Then he pulled off square-toed boots with elastic inserts in their uppers, put on a pair of worn slippers, carried the boots to the door and set them outside, closed the door, and turned the key in its lock.

If aware that, by so doing, he made his privacy just as secure as if he had fastened the door with a bent hair-pin, he gave evidence of no uneasiness in the knowledge. A clear conscience is the best of nerve tonics.

Throughout, his features preserved their mild, subdued, dull habit with which the household was familiar. Nogam off duty was in no way different from the unthinking creature of habit who performed belowstairs the prescribed functions of his office.

Having donned a nightshirt of coarse cotton, he knelt for several minutes in a devout attitude by the side of his bed, then rising opened the window, took the turnip from the bureau, and snuggled it beneath his pillow, inserted his bare shanks between the sheets, and opened at a marked place a Bible bound in black cloth.

On the table by his shoulder a battered electric standard with a frayed cord and a dingy shade remained alight long enough to permit Nogam to spell out a short chapter. Then he put the Bible aside, yawned wearily, and switched out the lamp.

Profound darkness now possessed the room, immaterially modified by the light-struck sky beyond the windows. And in this grateful obscurity Nogam permitted himself the luxury of ceasing to be Nogam. A light suddenly flashed upon his face would have discovered a keen and alert intelligence transfiguring the apathetic mask of every day. Also, it would have rendered Nogam’s probable duration of life an interesting speculation.

Under cover of the darkness, furthermore, he did a number of things which Nogam, qua Nogam, would never have dreamed of doing.

His first act was to withdraw from under his pillow the turnip, his next to re-open the back of its silver case and then the inner lid—something which a deft thumbnail accomplished without a sound.

From the roomy interior of the case—whose bulky ancient works had been replaced by a wafer-thin modern movement, leaving much useful space back of the dial—sensitive fingers extracted a metal disk about the size and thickness of a silver dollar. One face of this disk was generously perforated, the other, solid, boasted a short blunt post round which several feet of extremely fine wire had been coiled.

Unwinding the wire and bending the free end into the form of a rude hook, the man attached this last to the cord of his bedside lamp at a point, located by sense of touch, where a minute section of electric light wire had been left naked by defective insulation.

Direct connection now being established with a microphone secreted in the base of the brass lamp on the study table, three floors below, and the perforated side of the microphone detector serving as an earpiece, one could hear every word uttered by the conspirators.

The man in bed contributed a broad smile to the kind darkness—sheer luxury to facial muscles cramped and constrained to the cast of Nogam for eighteen hours a day. He was now at last to reap the reward of three months of preparation and three weeks of ingenious, but necessarily spasmodic, and at all times desperately dangerous, tampering with the house wiring system.

He lay very still for a long time, listening ...

XIV CONFERENCE OF THE DAMNED

An Irish voice was making the hush of the study musical with mellow cadences.

“This week-end sure, your Excellency—within the next three nights—the little Welshman will be after summoning the Cabinet to sit in secret in Downing Street, with His Most Gracious Majesty attending in person; the emergency extraordinary being thoughtfully provided by this shindig me amiable but spirited fellow-countrymen are kicking up across the Channel—God bless the work!”

The speaker laughed lightly, flashing white teeth at Prince Victor across the width of the paper-strewn table.

“In more Parliamentary language, by the Irish Question. But we’ll hear no more of that, I’m thinking, once we’ve proclaimed the Soviet Government of England.”

Victor bowed in grave assent.

“You have my word as to that,” he said; and after a moment of thoughtful consideration: “You speak, no doubt, from the facts?”

“I do that. It’s straight I’ve come from the House of Commons to bring you the news without an hour’s delay. There’s more than one advantage in being an Irish Member these days.”

“On the other hand, Eleven”—Victor stressed the numeral as if to remind the Irishman that even a Member of Parliament for Ireland held no higher standing in his esteem than any other underling in his association of anonymous conspirators—“even so, it appears you are uncertain as to the night.”

“I’m after telling you it’ll be to-morrow night or more likely Saturday—Sunday at the latest.” A mildly impatient accent alone betrayed resentment of the snub. “I’ll know in good time, long before the hour appointed; and that ought to do, providing you on your part are prepared.”

“An hour’s notice will be ample,” Victor agreed. “We have been ready for days, needing only the knowledge you bring us—or will, when you have it definitely.”

The Irishman chuckled.

“It’s hard to believe. Not that I’d dream of doubting your statement, sir—but yourself won’t be denying you must have worked fast to organize England for revolution in less than three weeks.”

“I have been busy,” Victor admitted. “But the work was not so difficult ... Seeds of revolution are easily sown in land thoroughly tilled by forces of discontent. And what land has been better tilled? To vary the figure: England is all seething beneath a thin crust of custom and established habit whose integrity a conservative and reactionary government has ever since the war been struggling desperately to preserve. The blow we shall strike within three days will shatter that crust in a hundred places.”

“And let Hell loose!” the Irishman added with a nervous laugh.

In a dry voice Victor commented: “Precisely.”

“Omelettes,” Sturm interjected, assertively, “are not made without breaking eggs.”

“And all rivers, no doubt, flow to the sea? What a lot you know, Herr Sturm! Is it the Portfolio of the Minister of Education you’ve picked out for your very own, after the explosion comes off—if it’s a fair question?”

“You Irish are all mad,” the German complained, sourly—“mad about laughing. Even me you will laugh at, while you trust your very life to me, while you trust to my genius to make Soviet England possible and Ireland free.”

“Faith! you’re away off there, me friend. If it was you and your genius I had to trust, it’s meself would turn violent reactionary and advise Ireland to be a good dog and come to England’s heel and lick England’s hand and live off England’s leavings. I’ll trust nobody in this black business but himself—Number One.”

“You have changed your tune since that night at the Red Moon,” Sturm reminded him, angrily.

“I had me lesson then and there,” Eleven agreed, cheerfully. “And I don’t mind telling you, the next time I’m taken with a fancy to call me soul me own, I’ll be after asking himself first for a license.”

Victor put a period to the passage with a dispassionate “By your leave, gentlemen—that will do.” To the Irishman he added: “You understand the danger, I believe, of remaining within the condemned area—that is to say, except in the open air?”

“Can’t say I do, altogether.”

“It is simple: no person in any house supplied by the mains of the Westminster gas works will be safe for hours after the formula of Thirteen has begun its work. My advice to you is to keep out of the district entirely.”

“Faith, and I’ll do that! But how about yourself in this house?”

“I shall spend the week-end outside of London,” Victor replied, “not too far away, of course, and”—the shadow of his satiric smile was briefly visible—“prepared at any moment to answer the call of my stricken country.... The few who remain here will be provided with the essentials for their protection. Furthermore, a general warning will be sent out to all who can be trusted.”

“And the others—?”

“With them it must be as Fate wills.”

“Women and children, potential sympathizers and supporters of all classes?” the Irishman persisted in incredulous horror—“all?”

“All,” Victor affirmed, coldly. “We who deal in the elemental passions that make revolutions, that is to say, in Life and Death, cannot afford qualms and scruples. What are a few lives more or less in London? These British breed like rabbits.”

“I see,” said Eleven, indistinctly. He stared a moment and swallowed hard, then glanced hastily at his watch. “I’ll be after bidding you good-night,” he said, “and pleasant dreams. For meself, I’m a fool if I go to bed this night sober enough to dream at all, at all!”

Victor rang for Shaik Tsin to show him out.

“One question more, if you won’t take it amiss,” Eleven suggested, lingering. And Victor inclined a gracious head. “Have you thought of failure?”

“I have thought of everything.”

“Well, and if we do fail—?”

“How, for example?”

“How do I know what hellish accident may kick our plans into a cocked hat? Anything might happen. There’s your friend, the Lone Wolf, for instance ...”

“Have you not forgotten him yet?” Victor enquired in simulated surprise. “Have you neglected to remark that since the blunderer failed to find the Council Chamber that night, when his raid at the Red Moon netted him only a handful of coolie gamblers and drug-addicts, he has left us to our own devices?”

“That’s what makes me wonder what the divvle’s up to. His sort are never so dangerous as when apparently discouraged.” “Be reassured. I promised you three weeks ago his interference would not continue beyond that night. It has not. Lanyard knows I have his daughter, that any blow aimed at me must first strike her.”

“Doubtless yourself knows best....”

With the Irishman gone, Prince Victor turned to Sturm.

“You will want a good night’s sleep,” he suggested with pointed solicitude. “Who knows but that to-morrow will bring your night of nights, my friend?”

He lapsed immediately into remote abstraction, sitting with chin bent to the tips of his joined fingers, his eyes downcast, motionless.

Disgruntled, but afraid to show it, the German cleared away the litter of papers, assorting them into huge portfolios, and took himself off. Shaik Tsin replaced him, moving noiselessly about the room, restoring the reference books to the shelves and stowing the portfolios away in a massive safe hidden behind a lacquered screen. This done, he stationed himself before his master, awaiting his attention, a shape of affable placidity, intelligent, at ease; his attitude not entirely lacking a suggestion of familiarity.

Without changing his pose by so much as the lifting of an eyelash, Victor spoke in Chinese:

“To-morrow afternoon, late, I shall motor down into the country with the girl Sofia. I shall be gone three days—perhaps. I will leave a telephone number with you, to be used only in emergency. As soon as I have left, you will dismiss all the English servants, with a quarter’s wage in advance in lieu of notice. Karslake will provide the money.”

“He does not accompany you?”

“No.”

“And the man Nogam?”

Victor appeared to hesitate. “What do you think?” he enquired at length.

“What I have always thought.”

“That he is a spy?”

“Yes.”

“But with no tangible support for your suspicions?”

“None.”

“You have not failed to watch him closely?”

“As a cat watches a mouse.”

“But—nothing?”

“Nothing.”

“Yet I agree with you entirely, Shaik Tsin. I smell treachery.”

“And I.”

“Nogam shall go with me as my bodyservant. Thus I shall be able to keep an eye on him. Let Chou Nu be prepared to accompany us as maid to the girl Sofia. In my absence you will be guided by such further instructions as I may leave with you. These failing, consider the man Sturm, my personal representative. In the contingency you know of, Sturm will warn you in time to clear the house.”

“Of everybody?”

“Of all servants except those whom you may need to guard the man Karslake. These and yourself will be provided with means of self-protection by Sturm.”

“And Karslake?”

“I have not yet made up my mind.”

“Hearing is obedience.”

Victor relapsed into another reverie which lasted so long that even the patience of Shaik Tsin bade fair to fail. In the end the silence was broken by two words:

“The crystal.”

From a cabinet at the end of the room Shaik Tsin brought a crystal ball supported on the backs of three golden dragons standing tail to tail, superbly wrought examples of Chinese goldsmithing. This he placed carefully on the black teakwood surface at Victor’s elbow.

“And now, inform the girl Sofia I wish to see her.”

“And if she again sends her excuses?”

“Say, in that event, I shall be obliged to come to her room.”

XV INTUITION

She had not thought, of course, of going down to dinner; she had, instead, sent Victor word simply that she begged to be excused from joining him for that meal. Then, unable longer to endure Chou Nu’s efforts to comfort or distract her, Sofia had stepped out of her street frock and into a négligée and, dismissing the maid, returned to the chaise-longue upon which, in vain hope of being able to cry out the wretchedness of her heart, she had thrown herself on first gaining the sanctuary of her room.

For hours, she did not guess how many, she scarcely stirred. Neither was the blessed boon of tears granted unto her. Alone with her immense and immitigable misery, she lay in darkness tempered only by the dim skyshine that filtered through the window draperies; hating life, that had no mercy; hating the duplicity that had led Karslake into making untrue love to her, but inexplicably not hating Karslake himself, or the enshrined image that wore his name; hating herself for her facile readiness to give love where all but the guise of love was lacking, and for knowing this deep hurt where she should have felt only scorn and anger; but hating, most of all, or rather for the first time discovering how well she hated, him to whom unerring intuition told her she owed this brimming measure of heartbreak and humiliation, the man who called himself her father.

For if Karslake had done her a cruel wrong in winning her avowal of the love that had been growing in her heart these many weeks, while he was merely amusing himself or serving a secret purpose—whose was the initial blame for that?

Who had egged Karslake on, as he had asserted, “to win her confidence,” leaving to him the choice of means to that end?

And—_why_?

The formulation of this question marked the turning point in Sofia’s descent toward the nadir of shame and anguish; from the moment its significance was clearly apprehended (but it took her long to reach this stage) the complexion of her thoughts took on another colour, and the smart of chagrin was soothed even as the irritation excited by critical examination of Victor’s conduct grew more acute.

Why should the self-styled author of her being have thought it necessary, or even wise or kind, to commission a paid employee to win his daughter’s confidence?

What had rendered the conquest of her confidence so needful in his sight?

What had made him think Sofia would prove loath to resign it to him, or more likely to give it to another?

Why had Victor hesitated to bid for her confidence with his own tongue, on his own merits?

One would think that, if he were her father—

If!

_Was_ he?

Sofia sat up sharply, her young body as taut as her temper. Pulses and breathing quickened, intent eyes probed the shadows as if she thought to wrest from them a clue to the mystery of her status in the household of Victor Vassilyevski.

What proof had she that he was her father?

None but his word.... Well, and Karslake’s.... None that would stand the test of skepticism, none that either sentiment or reason could offer and support. Certainly she resembled Prince Victor in no respect that she could think of, not in person, not in mould of character, not in ways of thought. From the very first she had been perplexed, and indeed saddened, by her failure, her sheer inability, to react emotionally to their alleged relationship. And surely there must exist between parent and child some sort of spiritual bond or affinity, something to draw them together—even if neither had never known the other. Whereas she on her part had never been conscious of any sense of sympathy with Victor, but only of timidity and reluctance which had latterly manifested in unquestionable aversion. And then there was his attitude toward her, raising a question so repugnant to her understanding that never before to-night had Sofia admitted its existence and given it the freedom of her thoughts.

She had seen men, in the Café des Exiles, toast their mistresses with such looks as Victor Vassilyevski reserved for the girl whom he claimed as his child.

What, then, if he were not her father?

What if he had only pretended to paternal rights in furtherance of some deep scheme of his?—perhaps thinking to use her as a pawn in that dark plot which he was forever brewing in his study (with canaille like Sturm for collaborators!) that mysterious “research work” that flavoured the atmosphere of the house with a miasmatic reek of intrigue, stealth, and fear—perhaps (more simply and terribly) designing in his own time and way to avenge himself upon the daughter for the admitted slights he had suffered at the hands of the mother, that poor dead woman whose fame he never ceased to blacken while still her memory was potent to kindle fires in those eyes otherwise so opaque, impenetrable, and lightless!

Now Sofia found herself unable to sit still; only through action of some sort could she hope to win any measure of ease for brain and nerves. A thought was shaping, claiming precedence over all others, the thought of flight; bred of the feeling that, as long as she remained in ignorance of the exact truth concerning their relationship, it was impossible for her to remain longer under Victor’s roof, eating his bread and salt, schooling herself to suffer his endearments whose good faith she could not help challenging, who inspired in her only antipathy, fear, and distrust.

It seemed clear beyond dispute that she must leave his protection, this very night, before he could guess her mind and move to check her.

Sofia swung her feet down to the floor. One of her silken mules had fallen off. Semi-consciously she groped for it with stockinged toes. As the inanimate will, the mule eluded recapture with impish ease. But beneath her foot something rustled and crackled lightly. She bent over and picked it up: a square white envelope, sealed.

Switching on a lamp near by, she examined her find. It carried no address. How it could have got there she could not imagine ... unless Chou Nu had dropped it by inadvertence, which seemed as far-fetched as to suppose she had left it there by design; for that would mean Chou Nu had been bribed to convey a surreptitious note to her mistress; and Sofia knew that the Chinese girl was at once too loyal to her “second-uncle,” and too much in awe of “Number One,” to be corruptible.

None the less, there the envelope was; and nobody but Chou Nu had entered the room since Sofia had come straight from the study to it, late in the afternoon.

It was just possible, however—Sofia’s eyes measured the distance—that a deft hand and a strong wrist might have slipped the envelope under the door and sent it skimming across the floor to the foot of the chaise-longue.

But nobody would have dared do that without a powerful motive for wishing to communicate secretly with Sofia.

She tore the flap and withdrew a single sheet of notepaper penned in a hand she knew too well. Her heart leapt....

I implore you, of your charity, do not condemn me without a hearing because of anything you may have overheard me say. After you left us in the study I saw his eyes watching the door while we talked, and knew from his look that something to please him had happened behind my back. And in the temper he was in only one thing could possibly have pleased him.

I said what I said to him, dear, because I had to—or lose the right, dearer to me than life, to be near you, to serve and protect you. I lied to him because I loved you. But I have never lied to you about my love—and only once, through necessity, about anything else. Perhaps you can guess what that lie was, somehow I rather think you do; at least, I am sure, you are beginning to wonder if I told the truth—or knew it, then.

If this sound cryptic, I can only beg you to be patient and charitable until I find opportunity to clear away this one lie which stands between us—and which is, by comparison, almost immaterial, since all that matters is the one great truth in my life, that I love you beyond all telling.

R.K.

If questions trouble your mind, I beg you do not let him know it. Your only safety now lies in his continuing to believe that you are unsuspicious. Above all, do your best to seem to fall in with his wishes, however strange or unreasonable they may seem. It will be only a few days more before I can claim you for my own, and laugh at his pretensions.

A curious love-letter; yet it was Sofia’s first. If it made her thoughtful, it made her illogically happy as well. If it put the issue to her squarely, of loyalty to Prince Victor or loyalty to Karslake, she was unaware that she had any choice of courses. When Shaik Tsin thumped the panels of her door, she crushed the note into the bosom of her négligée before answering.

When one is of an age to love, it is never the parent who gets the benefit of a doubt.

XVI THE CRYSTAL

Like some shy, sad shade summoned up by the malign genius of a haunted chamber, a slender shape of pallor in softly flowing draperies slipped through the silent door and, advancing a few reluctant steps into the soundless gloom, paused and in apprehensive diffidence awaited the welcome that was for a time withheld.

For minutes Victor gave no sign or stir; and in all the room nothing moved but ghostly whorls of smoke writhing slowly upward from a pungent censer of beaten gold.

The great lamp of brass was dark, and there was no other light than a solitary bulb, whose hooded rays were concentrated upon the crystal ball, so that the latter shone with a dead-white glare, somehow baleful, like an elfin moon deeply lost in a sea of sombre enchantment.

Bending forward in his chair, an elbow planted on the table, his forehead resting upon the tips of long, white fingers, Victor’s gaze was steadfast to the crystal. Refracted light sculptured with curious shadows that saturnine face intent to immobility.

Too young, too inexperienced and sensitive to be insusceptible to the spell of the theatrical, the girl was conscious of a steady ebb of her new-found store of fortitude, skepticism, and defiance, together with an equally steady inflow of timidity and uneasiness. That sinister figure at the table, absorbed in study of the inscrutable sphere—what did he see there, to hold his faculties in such deep eclipse? Adept in black arts of the Orient as he was said to be, what wizardry was he brewing with the aid of that traditional tool of the necromancer? What spectacle of divination was in those pellucid depths unfolding to his rapt vision? And what had this consultation of the occult to do with the man’s mind concerning herself?

Sofia was shaken by a tremor of dread....

And as if her emotion were somehow communicated, arousing him to knowledge of her presence, Victor started, sat back, and with a sigh passed a hand across his eyes. When the hand fell, his face wore its habitual look for Sofia, modified by a slightly apologetic and weary smile.

“My child!” he exclaimed in accents of contrite surprise, “have I kept you waiting long?”

“Only a few minutes. It doesn’t matter.”

But her voice seemed sadly small and thin in comparison with Victor’s rotund and measured intonations.

“Forgive me.” Victor rose, nodding to indicate the shining crystal. “I have been consulting my familiar,” he said with a light laugh. “You have heard of crystal-gazing? A fascinating art that languishes in undeserved neglect. The ancients were more wise, they knew there was more in Heaven and Earth.... You are incredulous? But I assure you, I myself, though far from proficient, have caught strange glimpses of unborn events in the heart of that transparent enigma.”

He took her hands and cuddled them in his own.

She quivered irrepressibly to his touch.

“But you are trembling!” he protested, solicitous, looking down into her face—“you are wan and sad, my dear. Tell me you are not ill.”

“It is nothing,” Sofia replied—again in that faint, stifled voice. She added in determined effort to subdue her trembling and turn their talk to essentials: “You sent for me—I am here.”

“I am so sorry. If I had guessed ...” Enlightenment seemed to dawn all at once. “But surely it isn’t because of that stupid business with Karslake? Surely you didn’t take him seriously?”

“How should I—?”

“It is too absurd. The poor fool misconstrued my instructions to make himself agreeable—I am so taken up with the gravest matters at present, I didn’t want you to feel lonely or neglected—and, it appears, felt it incumbent upon him to flirt with you as a matter of duty. I am out of temper with him, but not unreasonable; I shan’t dispense with his services altogether, without more provocation, but will find other work to keep him busy and out of your way. You need fear no more annoyance from that quarter.”

“I was not annoyed,” Sofia found heart to contend. “I—like him.”

“Nonsense!” Victor’s laugh was rich with derision. “Don’t ask me to believe you were actually touched by the fellow’s play-acting. You—my daughter—wasting emotion on a mere commoner! The thing is too ridiculous. Oblige me by thinking no more about it. I have better things in store for you.”

“Better than—love?” the girl questioned with grave eyes.

“When the time comes for that, you shall find a worthier parti than poor Karslake, well-meaning though he may be. Moreover, you heard—forgive me for reminding you—there was not an ounce of sincerity in all his philandering for you to hold in sentimental recollection. So—forget Karslake, please. It is a duty you owe your own pride and my dignity; it is, furthermore, my wish.”

She bowed her head, that he might not see the reflection in her face of the glow that warmed her bosom, where Karslake’s letter nestled. But Victor took the nod for the word of submission, and patted her shoulder with an indulgent hand, guiding her to a chair close by his.

“Sit down, my dear. I want to explain why I asked you to come to me at this late hour—never dreaming my message would find you so overwrought.... You quite see how needless it was to permit yourself to be upset by such a trifling matter, don’t you?”

“Oh, quite,” Sofia murmured, with gaze fixed on the interlacing fingers in her lap.

“That is sensible.” Offering her shoulder one last accolade of approbation, Victor moved toward his own chair. “And now that you are here, we may as well have our little talk out,” he continued, but broke off to stipulate: “If, that is, you are sure you feel up to it?”

“Yes,” Sofia assented, but without moving.

“I am not so sure. Perhaps a glass of wine might do you good.”

“Oh, no!” the girl protested—“I don’t need it, really.”

But Victor wouldn’t listen; and disappearing into shadowed distances, returned presently with a brimming goblet.

“Drink this, dear. It will make you feel quite fit again.”

Obediently, Sofia raised the goblet to her lips.

“You have never tasted a wine like that,” Victor insisted, smiling down at her.

It was true enough, what he claimed; though it had something of character of a sound old Madeira, this wine had more, a surpassing richness, a fruitiness in no way cloying, a peculiarly aromatic taste and fragrance, elusive and provoking, with a hint of bitterness never to be analyzed by the most experienced palate.

“What is it?” Sofia asked after her first sip.

“You like it, eh? An old wine of China, unknown to Western Europe.” Victor gave it a musical name in what Sofia took to be Chinese. “Outside my cellars, I’ll wager there’s not another bottle of it this side of Constantinople. Drink it all. It will do you good.”

He seated himself. “And now my reason for wishing to talk with you to-night.... A note came by the last delivery from Lady Randolph West. You met her, I understand, through Sybil Waring, a few days ago. She was apparently much taken with you.”

“She is very kind.”

Victor had found a sheet of notepaper and, bending to the light, was searching its scrawled lines with narrowed eyes.

“‘Too lovely,’ she calls you—and quite justly, my dear. Yes; here it is: ‘Too lovely for words.’ And she wants me to bring my ‘charming daughter’ down to Frampton Court for this week-end.”

Sofia said nothing, but put her half-empty glass aside. The wine had done her good, she thought. She felt better, stronger, mentally more alert, and at the same time curiously soothed.

Victor refolded the note and tapped the table with it, holding Sofia with speculative eyes.

“It should be amusing,” he said, thoughtfully, “a new experience for you. Elaine—I mean Lady Randolph West, of course—is a charming hostess, and never fails to fill Frampton Court with delightful people.”

“I’m sure I should love it.”

“I am sure you would. And yet ... I may have been a little premature, since I have already written accepting the invitation.” He indicated an addressed envelope face up on the table. “But on second thoughts, it seemed perhaps wiser to consult you first.”

“But if it is your wish, I must go,” Sofia replied, mindful of Karslake’s injunction not to oppose Victor. “What have I to say—?”

“Everything about whether we accept or do not—or if not everything, at least the final word. I must abide by your decision.”

“But I shall be only too glad—”

“Think a moment. It might be wiser not to go. You alone can say.”

“I don’t quite understand ...”

Victor sighed. “It is a painful subject,” he said, slowly—“one I hesitate to reopen. But we can never profit by closing our minds to facts; I mean, to the reality of the danger which is always with us, since it is within us.”

“What danger?” Sofia enquired, sullenly, knowing the answer too well before it was spoken.

“The danger of sudden temptation to indulge the lawless appetites with which heredity has endued us—me from the nameless forebears whom I never knew, you directly from parents both of whom boasted criminal records.”

“I don’t believe it!” Sofia declared, passionately—“I can’t believe it, I won’t! Even if you are—”

She was going on to say “if you are my father,” but caught herself in time. Had not Karslake warned her in his note: “_Your only safety now lies in his continuing to believe that you are unsuspicious._” She continued in a tempest of expostulation whose fury covered her break:

“Even if you were once a thief and my mother—my mother!—everything vile, as you persist in trying to make me believe—God knows why!—it is possible I may still have failed to inherit your criminal tendencies; and not only possible, but true, if I know myself at all. For I have never felt the temptation to steal that you insist I must have inherited from you—nor any other inclination toward things as mean, contemptible, and dishonourable as they are dishonest!”

With only his slow, forbearing smile by way of comment, Victor heard her out, but when she paused to reassort her thoughts, lifted a temporizing hand.

“Not yet, perhaps,” he said, gently. “There is always the first time with every rebel against man-made laws. But, where the predisposition so indubitably exists, it is inevitable, soon or late it must come to you, my dear—the time when the will is too weak, temptation too strong. Against it we must be forever on our guard.”

“I am not afraid,” Sofia contended.

“Naturally; you will not be before the hour of ordeal which shall prove your strength or your weakness, your confidence in yourself, or my loving fears for you.”

Sofia gave a gesture of weariness and confusion. What did it matter? If he would have it so, let him: it couldn’t affect the issue in any way, what he believed, or for his own purposes pretended to believe. Had not Karslake promised ...

She tried to recall precisely what it was that Karslake had promised, but found her memory of a sudden singularly sluggish. In fact, her mind seemed to have lost its marvellous clarity of those first moments after tasting the wine of China. Small wonder, when one remembered the emotional strain she had experienced since early evening!

“Still,” she argued, stubbornly, “I don’t see what all this has to do with Lady Randolph West’s invitation.”

“Only that to accept means to expose you to the greatest temptation one can well imagine.”

Sofia stared blankly. Her wits were working even more slowly and heavily than before. And the glare in her eyes from the luminous sphere of crystal was irritating. Almost without thinking, she lifted her glass again; when she put it down it was empty.

“The jewels of Lady Randolph West,” Victor went on to explain without her prompting, “are considered the most wonderful in England; always excepting, of course, the Crown jewels.”

“What is that to me?”

Resentment sounded in her tone. She was thinking more readily once more, thanks to that second magical draught, but was nevertheless conscious of a general failing of powers drained by her great fatigue. She wished devoutly that Victor would have done and let her go....

“Elaine is very careless, leaves her jewels scattered about, hardly troubles to put them away securely at night. If you should be tempted to appropriate anything, she might not discover her loss for days; and then, again, she might. And if you were caught—consider what shame and disgrace!”

“I think I see,” the girl said, slowly, after some difficult thinking. “You don’t want me to go.”

“To the contrary, I do—but I want more than anything else in the world that my daughter should be sure of herself and fall into no irreparable error.”

“But I am sure of myself—I have told you that.”

“Then let us fret no more about it, but accept, and go prepared to enjoy ourselves. I will send the letter.”

Victor rang, and Shaik Tsin presented himself so quickly that Sofia wondered dully where he could have been waiting. In the room with them, perhaps? It wasn’t impossible. The Chinaman’s thick soles of felt enabled him to move about without making the least noise.

“Have this posted immediately.”

Shaik Tsin bowed deeply, and backed away with the letter. Unless she turned to watch him, Sofia could not say whether he left the room or not.

She offered to rise.

“If that is all ...”

“Not quite. There are certain details to be arranged; and I may not see you again before we leave to-morrow afternoon. We will motor down to Frampton Court—it’s not far, little more than an hour by train—starting about half after four, if you can be ready.”

“Oh, yes.”

“Sybil Waring will tell you what to take, and Chou Nu will see to your packing. Both, by the way, will accompany us. Sybil’s maid will follow by train. For myself, I am taking Nogam—having found that English servants do not take kindly to my Chinese valet.”

“Yes ...” Sofia uttered, listlessly, wondering why this information should be considered of interest to her.

“And one thing more: I am forgiven? You are not cross with me?”

“Why should I be?”

“Because of what happened this afternoon—when I scolded Karslake for making love to you.”

“Oh,” said Sofia with a good show of indifference—she was so tired—“that!”

“Believe me, little Sofia”—Victor put out a hand to hers, and held her eyes with a compelling gaze—“boy-and-girl romance is all very well, but there is a greater destiny reserved for you than marriage to a hired secretary, however amiable, personable, and well-meaning. You must prepare yourself to move in a world beyond and above the common hearthstone of bourgeois domesticity.”

The girl shook a bewildered head.

“It is a riddle?” she asked, wearily.

“A riddle?” Victor echoed. “Why, one may safely term it that. Is not the Future always a riddle? Nature knows the Future as the Past, but Nature holds it secret, lest man go mad with too much knowledge. Only to the few, the favoured, does she grant rare glimpses through media which she has provided for the use of the initiate—such as this crystal here, in which I was studying your future, when you came in, the high future I plan for you.”

“And—you won’t tell me?”

“I may not. It is forbidden. Nature deals unkindly with those who violate her confidence. But—who knows?”

He checked himself as if struck by a new turn of thought, and studied the girl’s face intently.

“Who knows?” he repeated, as if to himself.

“What—?”

“It is quite within the bounds of possibility,” Victor mused, “that you should have inherited some of the psychic power which was born in me. Perhaps—who knows?—to you as well Nature will be supple and disclose her secrets.... If you care to seek her favour?”

“But—how?”

“By consulting the crystal.”

Sofia’s eyes sought that coldly burning stone. Her head was so heavy, she hesitated, oppressed by misgivings without shape that she could name, phases of formless timidity having rise in some source which she was too tired to search out.

But she lingered and continued to stare at the crystal.

“Why not?” Victor’s accents were gently persuasive. “At worst, you can only fail. And if you do not fail, it will make me happy to think that you have been given a little insight into my dreams for you.”

“Yes,” Sofia assented in a whisper—“why not?”

Victor drew her forward by the hand.

“Look,” he said “look deep! Divest your mind as nearly as you can of all thought—let the crystal give up its message to a mind devoid of prejudice, its receptiveness unimpaired. Think of nothing, if you can manage it—simply look and see.”

Automatically to a degree the girl obeyed, already in a phase of crepuscular hypnosis, her surface senses dulled by the potent “wine of China.” And watching her closely, Victor permitted himself a smile of satisfaction as he noted the rapidity with which she yielded to the hypnogenic spell of the translucent quartz; how her breathing quickened, then took on a measured tempo like that of a sleeper; how a faint flush warmed the unnatural pallor of her cheeks, how her dilate eyes grew fixed in an unwinking stare, and slightly glassed....