Chapter VI: “lo! ’twas a Gala Night!” (3)

“Ah! We expected that. Now, let me point out that you are dangerous to us, that there is only one possible course open to you. You must join us.”

“Join you?” she exclaimed, and then laughed.

“Yes,” the man said. “I repeat there is no alternative--none whatever. You must take the oaths.”

“And if I refuse?”

The man shrugged his shoulders, and after a suggestive pause murmured:

“Well--think of Salti.”

“I do refuse,” she said.

A door opened at the other end of the room, and a third man entered.

“The Chief!” said the younger of the men at the table. “He will continue the examination.”

The new-comer was comparatively youthful--under thirty--and had the look of a well-born Italian. He gave a glance at Vesea, stood still, and then approached the table and sat down.

“This is Louise Vesea,” the first speaker said, and rapidly indicated how far he had gone. There was a long silence.

“Thanks, brothers,” the Chief said. “By a strange coincidence I know this lady--this woman, and I feel convinced that it will be better, in the interests of our cause, if--if I examine her alone.” He spoke with authority, and yet with a certain queer hesitation.

The two men silently, but with obvious reluctance, rose and left the room.

When they were alone, the great singer and the Chief fronted each other in silence.

“Well?” said Vesea.

“Madame,” the Chief began slowly and thoughtfully. “Do you remember singing in Milan ten years ago? You were at the beginning of your career then, but already famous.”

His voice was rich and curiously persuasive.

Without wishing to do so, Vesea nodded an affirmative.

“One night you were driving home from the opera, and there was a riot going on in the streets. The police were everywhere. People whispered of a secret revolutionary society among the students of the University. As for the students, after a pitched battle near the Cathedral, they were flying. Suddenly, looking from your carriage, you saw a very youthful student, who had been struck on the head, fall down in the gutter and then get up again and struggle on. You stopped your carriage. ‘Save me,’ the youth cried, ‘Save me, Signorina. If the police catch me I shall get ten years’ imprisonment!’ You opened the door of your carriage, and the youth jumped in. ‘Quick, under the rug,’ you said quietly. You did not ask me any questions. You didn’t stay to consider whether the youth might be a dangerous person. You merely said, ‘Quick, under the rug!’ The youth crept under the rug. The carriage moved on slowly, and the police, who shortly appeared, never thought of looking within it for a fugitive young anarchist. The youth was saved. For two days you had him in your lodging, and then he got safely away to the coast, and so by ship to another country. Do you remember that incident, Madame?”

“I remember it well,” she answered. “What happened to the youth?”

“I am he,” the Chief said.

“You?” she exclaimed. “I should scarcely have guessed but for your voice. You are changed.”

“In our profession one changes quickly.”

“Why do you remind me of that incident?” she asked.

“You saved my life then. I shall save yours now.”

“Is my life really in danger?”

“Unless you joined us--yes.”

She laughed incredulously.

“In London! Impossible!”

He made a gesture with his hands.

“Do not let us argue on that point,” he said gravely. “Go through that door,” he pointed to the door by which he himself had entered. “You will find yourself in a small garden. The garden gate leads to a narrow passage past some stables and so into the street. Go quickly, and take a cab. Don’t return to your own house. Go somewhere else--anywhere else. And leave London early to-morrow morning.”

He silently opened the door for her.

“Thank you,” she said. His seriousness had affected her. “How shall you explain my departure to your--your friends?”

“In my own way,” he replied calmly. “When a man has deliberately betrayed his cause, there is only one explanation.”

“Betrayed his cause!” She repeated the phrase wonderingly.

“Madame,” he said, “do you suppose they will call it anything else? Go at once. I will wait half an hour before summoning my comrades. By that time they will have become impatient. Then you will be safe, and I will give them my explanation.”

“And that will be----?”

He put her right hand to his lip and then stopped.

“Good-bye, Madame,” he said without replying to the question. “We are quits. I kiss your hand.”

Almost reluctantly Louise Vesea went forth. And as she reached the street she felt for the first time that it was indeed a fatal danger from which she had escaped. She reflected that the Chief had imposed no secrecy upon her, made no conditions; and she could not help but admire such a method of repaying a debt. She wondered what his explanation to his comrades would be.

Half an hour later, when Vesea was far away, there was the sound of a revolver shot. The other two plotters rushed into the room which the prima donna had left, and found all the explanation which the Chief had vouchsafed.

THE EPISODE IN ROOM 222.

The date was the fifth of November, a date easy to remember; not that I could ever fail to recall it, even without the aid of the associations which cluster round Guy Fawkes. It was a Friday--and yet there are people who affect to believe that Friday is not a day singled out from its six companions for mystery, strangeness, and disaster! The number of the room was 222, as easy to remember as the date; not that I could ever fail to recall the number also. Every circumstance in the affair is fixed in my mind immovably and for ever. The hotel I shall call by the name of the Grand Junction Terminus Hotel. If this tale were not a simple and undecorated record of fact, I might with impunity choose for its scene any one of the big London hotels in order by such a detail to give a semblance of veracity to my invention; but the story happens to be absolutely true, and I must therefore, for obvious reasons, disguise the identity of the place where it occurred. I would only say that the Grand Junction Railway is one of the largest and one of the best-managed systems in England, or in the world: and that these qualities of vastness and of good management extend also to its immense Terminus Hotel in the North of Central London. The caravanserai (I have observed that professional writers invariably refer to a hotel as a caravanserai) is full every night in the week except Friday, Saturday, and Sunday; and every commercial traveller knows that, except on these nights, if he wishes to secure a room at the Grand Junction he must write or telegraph for it in advance. And there are four hundred bedrooms.

It was somewhat late in the evening when I arrived in London. I had meant to sleep at a large new hotel in the Strand, but I felt tired, and I suddenly, on the spur of the moment, decided to stay at the Grand Junction, if there was space for me. It is thus that Fate works.

I walked into the hall, followed by a platform porter with my bag. The place seemed just as usual, the perfection of the commonplace, the business-like, and the unspiritual.

“Have you a room?” I asked the young lady in black, whose yellow hair shone gaily at the office window under the electric light.

She glanced at her ledgers in the impassive and detached manner which hotel young ladies with yellow hair invariably affect, and ejaculated:

“No. 221.”

“Pity you couldn’t make it all twos,” I ventured, with timid jocularity. (How could I guess the import of what I was saying?)

She smiled very slightly, with a distant condescension. It is astonishing the skill with which a feminine hotel clerk can make a masculine guest feel small and self-conscious.

“Name?” she demanded.

“Edge.”

“Fourth floor,” she said, writing out the room-ticket and handing it to me.

In another moment I was in the lift.

No. 221 was the last door but one at the end of the eastern corridor of the fourth floor. It proved to be a double-bedded room, large, exquisitely ugly, but perfectly appointed in all matters of comfort; in short, it was characteristic of the hotel. I knew that every bedroom in that corridor, and every bedroom in every corridor, presented exactly the same aspect. One instinctively felt the impossibility of anything weird, anything bizarre, anything terrible, entering the precincts of an abode so solid, cheerful, orderly, and middle-class. And yet--but I shall come to that presently.

It will be well for me to relate all that I did that evening. I washed, and then took some valuables out of my bag and put them in my pocket. Then I glanced round the chamber, and amongst other satisfactory details noticed that the electric lights were so fixed that I could read in bed without distressing my eyes. I then went downstairs, by the lift, and into the smoke-room. I had dined on board the express, and so I ordered nothing but a _café noir_ and a packet of Virginian cigarettes. After finishing the coffee I passed into the billiard-room, and played a hundred up with the marker. To show that my nerves were at least as steady as usual that night, I may mention that, although the marker gave me fifty and beat me, I made a break of twenty odd which won his generous approval. The game concluded, I went into the hall and asked the porter if there were any telegrams for me. There were not. I noticed that the porter--it was the night-porter, and he had just come on duty--seemed to have a peculiarly honest and attractive face. Wishing him good-night, I retired to bed. It was something after eleven. I read a chapter of Mr. Walter Crane’s “The Bases of Design,” and having turned off the light, sank into the righteous slumber of a man who has made a pretty break of 20 odd and drunk nothing but coffee. At three o’clock I awoke--not with a start, but rather gradually. I know it was exactly three o’clock because the striking of a notoriously noisy church clock in the neighbourhood was the first thing I heard. But the clock had not wakened me. I felt sure that something else, something far more sinister than a church clock, had been the origin of disturbance.

I listened. Then I heard it again--It. It was the sound of a groan in the next room.

“Someone indisposed, either in body or mind,” I thought lightly, and I tried to go to sleep again. But I could not sleep. The groans continued, and grew more poignant, more fearsome. At last I jumped out of bed and turned on the light--I felt easier when I had turned on the light.

“That man, whoever he is, is dying.” The idea, as it were, sprang at my throat. “He is dying. Only a dying man, only a man who saw Death by his side and trembled before the apparition, could groan like that.”

I put on some clothes, and went into the corridor. The corridor seemed to stretch away into illimitable distance; and far off, miles off, a solitary electric light glimmered. My end of the corridor was a haunt of gloomy shadows, except where the open door allowed the light from my bedroom to illuminate the long monotonous pattern of the carpet. I proceeded to the door next my own--the door of No. 222, and put my ear against the panel. The sound of groans was now much more distinct and more terrifying. Yes. I admit that I was frightened. I called. No answer. “What’s the matter?” I inquired. No answer. “Are you ill, or are you doing this for your own amusement?” It was with a sort of bravado that I threw this last query at the unknown occupant of the room. No answer. Then I tried to open the door, but it was fast.

“Yes,” I said to myself; “either he’s dying or he’s committed a murder and is feeling sorry for it. I must fetch the night-porter.”

Now, hotel lifts are not in the habit of working at three a.m., and so I was compelled to find my way along endless corridors and down flights of stairs apparently innumerable. Here and there an electric light sought with its yellow eye to pierce the gloom. At length I reached the hall, and I well recollect that the tiled floor struck cold into my slippered but sockless feet.

“There’s a man either dying or very ill in No. 222,” I said to the night-porter. He was reading _The Evening News_, and appeared to be very snug in his basket chair.

“Is that so, sir?” he replied.

“Yes,” I insisted. “I think he’s dying. Hadn’t you better do something?”

“I’ll come upstairs with you,” he answered readily, and without further parley we began the ascent. At the first floor landing the night-porter stopped and faced me. He was a man about forty-five--every hall-porter seems to be that age--and he looked like the father of a family.

“If you think he’s dying, sir, I’ll call up the manager, Mr. Thom.”

“Do,” I said.

The manager slept on the first floor, and he soon appeared--a youngish man in a terra-cotta Jaeger dressing-gown, his eyes full of sleep, yet alert and anxious to do his duty. I had seen him previously in the billiard-room. We all three continued our progress to the fourth floor. Arrived in front of No. 222 we listened intently, but we could only hear a faint occasional groan.

“He’s nearly dead,” I said. The manager called aloud, but there was no answer. Then he vainly tried to open the door. The night-porter departed, and returned with a stout pair of steel tongs. With these, and the natural ingenuity peculiar to hotel-porters, he forced open the door, and we entered No. 222.

A stout, middle-aged man lay on the bed fully dressed in black. On the floor near the bed was a silk hat. As we approached the great body seemed to flutter, and then it lay profoundly and terribly still. The manager put his hand on the man’s head, and held the glass of his watch to the man’s parted grey lips.

“He is dead,” said the manager.

“H’m!” I said.

“I’m sorry you’ve been put to any inconvenience,” said the manager, “and I’m much obliged to you.”

The cold but polite tone was a request to me to re-enter my own chamber, and leave the corpse to the manager and the night-porter. I obeyed.

* * * * *

“What about that man?” I asked the hall-porter early the next, or rather the same, morning. I had not slept a wink since three o’clock, nor had I heard a sound in the corridor.

“What man, sir?” the porter said.

“You know,” I returned, rather angrily. “The man who died in the night--No. 222.”

“I assure you, sir,” he said, “I haven’t the least notion what you mean.”

Yet his face seemed as honest and open as ever.

I inquired at the office for the manager, and after some difficulty saw him in his private room.

“I thought I’d just see about that man,” I began.

“What man?” the manager asked, exactly as the porter had asked.

“Look here,” I said, as I was now really annoyed, “it’s all very well giving instructions to the hall-porter, and I can quite understand you want the thing kept as quiet as possible. Of course I know that hotels have a violent objection to corpses. But as I saw the corpse, and was of some assistance to you----”

“Excuse me,” said the manager. “Either you or I must be completely mad. And,” he added, “I don’t think it is myself.”

“Do you mean to say,” I remarked with frosty sarcasm, “that you didn’t enter Room 222 with me this morning at three a.m. and find a dead man there?”

“I mean to say just that,” he answered.

“Well----.” I got no further. I paid my bill and left. But before leaving, I went and carefully examined the door of No. 222. The door plainly showed marks of some iron instrument.

“Here,” I said to the porter as I departed. “Accept this half-crown from me. I admire you.”

* * * * *

I had a serious illness extending over three months. I was frequently delirious, and nearly every day I saw the scene in Room No. 222. In the course of my subsequent travels, I once more found myself, late one night, at the Grand Junction Terminus Hotel.

“Mr. Edge,” said the night-porter, “I’ve been looking out for you for weeks and weeks. The manager’s compliments, and he would like to see you in his room.”

Again I saw the youngish, alert manager.

“Mr. Edge,” he began at once, “it is probable that I owe you an apology. At any rate, I think it right to inform you that on the night of the fifth of November, the year before last, exactly twelve months before your last visit here, a stout man died in Room No. 222, at three a.m. I forgot the circumstance when you last came to see me in this room.”

“It seems queer,” I said coldly, “that you should have forgotten such a circumstance.”

“The fact is,” he replied, “I was not the manager at that time. My predecessor died two days after the discovery of the corpse in Room 222.”

“And the night-porter--is he, too, a new man?”

“Yes,” said the manager. “The porter who, with the late manager, found the corpse in Room 222, is now in Hanwell Lunatic Asylum.”

I paused, perhaps in awe.

“Then you think,” I said, “that I was the victim of a hallucination on my previous visit here? You think I had a glimpse of the world of spirits?”

“On these matters,” said the manager, “I prefer to think nothing.”

SATURDAY TO MONDAY.

So at length I yielded to repeated invitations, and made up my mind to visit the Vernons again. And it was in June. I had not been for nearly two years. The last visit was in the month of August: I remembered it too well--that year, that month, that day!

Under the most favourable circumstances, it needs enterprise and energy for a Londoner to pay a week-end visit to a friend’s house in the country. No matter how intimate the friend--and the Vernons, though charming and full of good nature, were not really very intimate friends of mine--there is always an element of risk in the affair; I will go further and say an element of preliminary unpleasantness. It means the disarrangement of regular habits; it means packing one’s bag and lugging it into a hansom; it means a train-journey; it often means a drive at the other end; it means sleeping in a strange bed and finding a suitable hook for one’s razor strop the next morning; it means accommodating oneself to a new social atmosphere, and the expenditure of much formal politeness. And suppose some hitch occurs--some trifling contretemps to ruffle the smoothness of the hours--where are you then? You are bound to sit tight and smile till Monday, and at parting to enlarge on your sorrow that the visit is over, all the while feeling intensely relieved; and you have got nothing in exchange for your discomfort and inconvenience save the satisfaction of duty done--a poor return, I venture to add. You know you have wasted a week-end, an irrecoverable week-end of eternity.

However, I boarded the train at St. Pancras in a fairly cheerful mood, and I tried to look on the bright side of life. The afternoon was certainly beautiful, and the train not too crowded, and I derived some pleasure, too, from the contemplation of a new pair of American boots which I had recently purchased. I remembered that Mrs. Vernon used to accuse me of a slight foppishness in the matter of boots, at the same time wishing audibly (in his hearing) that Jack would give a little more attention to the lower portions of his toilet; Jack was a sportsman, and her husband. And I thought of their roomy and comfortable house on the side of the long slope to Bedbury, and of their orchard and the hammocks under the trees in the orchard, and of tea and cakes being brought out to those hammocks, and of the sunsets over the Delectable Mountains (we always called them the Delectable Mountains because they are the identical hills which Bunyan had in mind when he wrote “The Pilgrim’s Progress”), and of Jack’s easy drawl and Mrs. Vernon’s chatter, and the barking of the dogs, and the stamping of the horses in the stable. And I actually thought: This will be a pleasant change after London.

“I do hope they won’t be awkward and self-conscious,” I said to myself. “And I also must try not to be.”

You see I was thinking of that last visit and what occurred during it. I was engaged to be married then, to a girl named Lucy Wren. Just as I had arrived at the Vernons’ house in their dog-cart the highly rural postman came up in his cart, and after delivering some letters produced still another letter and asked if anyone of the name of Bostock was staying there. I took the letter: the address was in Lucy’s handwriting (I had seen her only on the previous night, and of course she knew of my visit). I read the letter, standing there in the garden near the front door, and having read it I laughed loudly and handed it to Mrs. Vernon, saying: “What do you think of that for a letter?” In the letter Lucy said that she had decided to jilt me (she didn’t use those words--oh no!), and that on the following day she was going to be married to another man. Yes, that was a cheerful visit I paid to the Vernons, that August! At first I didn’t know what I was doing. They soothed me, calmed me. They did their best. It wasn’t their fault after all. They suggested I should run back to town and see Lucy; Jack offered to go with me. (Jack!) I declined. I declined to do anything. I ate hearty meals. I insisted on our usual excursions. I talked a lot. I forced them to pretend that nothing had happened. And on Monday morning I went off with a cold smile. But it was awful. It stood between me and the Vernons for a long time, a terrible memory. And when next Mrs. Vernon encountered me, in London, there were tears in her eyes and she was speechless.

Now you will understand better why I said to myself, with much sincerity: “I do hope they won’t be awkward and self-conscious. And I also must try not to be.”

As the train approached Bedbury I had qualms. I had qualms about the advisability of this visit to the Vernons. How could it possibly succeed, with that memory stalking like a ghost in the garden near the front door of their delightful and hospitable house? How could----? Then we rumbled over the familiar bridge, and I saw the familiar station yard, and the familiar dog-cart, and the familiar Dalmatian dog, and the familiar white mare that was rather young and skittish when Lucy jilted me. “That mare must be rising seven now,” I thought, “and settled down in life.”

I descried Mrs. Vernon waiting on the platform to welcome me, with the twins. Alas! I had forgotten the twins, those charming and frail little girls always dressed alike. Invariably, on my previous visits, I had brought something for the twins--a toy, a box of sweets, a couple of bead necklaces. Never once had I omitted to lay my tribute on the altar of their adorable infancy. And now I had forgotten, and my forgetfulness saddened me, because I knew that it would sadden them; they would expect, and they would be disappointed; they would taste the bitterness of life. “My poor little dears!” I thought, as they smiled and shouted, to see my head out of the carriage window, “I feel for you deeply.”

This beginning was a bad one. Like all men who have suffered without having deserved to suffer, I was superstitious, and I felt that the beginning augured ill. I resigned myself, even before the train had quite stopped, to a constrained and bored week-end with the Vernons.

“Well?” I exclaimed, with an affectation of jollity, descending from the carriage.

“Well?” responded Mrs. Vernon, with the same affectation.

It was lamentable, simply lamentable, the way in which that tragic memory stood between us and prevented either of us from showing a true, natural, simple self to the other. Mrs. Vernon could say little; I could say little; and what we did say was said stiffly, clumsily. Perhaps it was fortunate, on the whole, that the twins were present. They at any rate were natural and self-possessed.

“And how old are you now?” I asked them.

“We are seven,” they answered politely in their high, thin voices.

“Then you are like the little girl’s family in Wordsworth’s poem,” I remarked.

It was astonishing how this really rather good joke fell flat. Of course the twins did not see it. But Mrs. Vernon herself did not see it, and I too thought it, at the moment, inexpressibly feeble. As for the twins they could not hide their disappointment. Always before, I had handed them a little parcel, immediately, either at the station if they came to meet me, or at the house-door, if they did not. And to-day I had no little parcel. I could perceive that they were hoping against hope, even yet. I could perceive that they were saying to each other with their large, expressive eyes: “Perhaps he has put it in his portmanteau this time. He can’t have forgotten us.”

I could have wept for them. (I was in that state.) But I could not for the life of me tell them outright that I had forgotten the customary gift, and that I should send it by post on my return. No, I could not do that. I was too constrained, too ill at ease. So we all climbed up into the dog-cart. Mrs. Vernon and I in front, and the twins behind with the portmanteau to make weight; and the white mare set off with a bound, and the Dalmatian barked joyously, and we all pretended to be as joyous as the dog.

“Where’s Jack?” I inquired.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Vernon, as though I had startled her. “He had to go to Bedbury Sands to look at a couple of greyhounds--it would have been too late on Monday. I’m afraid he won’t be back for tea.”

I guessed instantly that, with the average man’s cowardice, he had run away in order to escape meeting me as I entered the house. He had left that to his wife. No doubt he hoped that by the time he returned I should have settled down and the first awkwardness and constraint would be past.

We said scarcely anything else, Mrs. Vernon and I, during the three-mile drive. And it was in silence that we crossed the portal of the house. Instead of having tea in the orchard we had it in the drawing-room, the twins being present. And the tea might have been a funeral feast.

“Well,” I thought, “I anticipated a certain mutual diffidence, but nothing so bad as this. If they couldn’t be brighter than this, why in heaven’s name did they force me to come down?”

Mrs. Vernon was decidedly in a pitiable condition. She felt for me so much that I felt for her.

“Come along, dears,” she said to the twins, after tea was over, and the tea-things cleared away. And she took the children out of the room. But before leaving she handed me a note, in silence. I opened it and read: “Be as kind to her as you can; she has suffered a great deal.”

Then, ere I had time to think, the door, which Mrs. Vernon had softly closed, was softly opened, and a woman entered. It was Lucy, once Lucy Wren. She was as beautiful as ever, and no older. But her face was the face of one who had learnt the meaning of life. Till that moment I had sought everywhere for reasons to condemn her conduct towards me, to intensify its wickedness. Now, suddenly, I began to seek everywhere for reasons to excuse her. She had been so young, so guileless, so ignorant. I had been too stern for her. I had frightened her. How could she be expected to know that the man who had supplanted me was worthless? She had acted as she did partly from youthful foolishness and partly from timidity. She had been in a quandary. She had lost her head. And so it had occurred that one night, that night in August, she had kissed me falsely, with a lie on her lips, knowing that her jilting letter was already in the post. What pangs she must have experienced then! Yes, as she entered the room and gazed at me with her blue eyes, my heart overflowed with genuine sorrow for her.

“Lucy!” I murmured, “you are in mourning!”

“Yes,” she said. “Didn’t you know? Has Mrs. Vernon said nothing? He is dead.”

And she sank down by the side of my chair and hid her face, and I could only see her honey-coloured hair. I stroked it. I knew all her history, in that supreme moment, without a word of explanation. I knew that she had been self-deceived, that she had been through many an agony, that she had always loved me.... And she was so young, so young.

I kissed her hair.

* * * * *

“How thankful I am!” breathed Mrs. Vernon afterwards. “Suppose it had not turned out well!”

Jack Vernon had calculated with some skill. When he came back, the constraint, the diffidence, was at an end.

A DINNER AT THE LOUVRE.

The real name of this renowned West-End restaurant is not the Louvre. I have christened it so because the title seems to me to suit it very nicely, and because a certain disguise is essential. The proprietors of the Louvre--it belongs to an esteemed firm of caterers--would decidedly object to the coupling of the name of their principal establishment with an affair so curious and disconcerting as that which I am about to relate. And their objection would be perfectly justifiable. Nevertheless, the following story is a true one, and the details of it are familiar to at least half a dozen persons whose business it is, for one reason or another, to keep an eye upon that world of crime and pleasure, which is bounded on the east by Bow Street and on the left by Hyde Park Corner.

It was on an evening in the last week of May that I asked Rosie Mardon to dine with me at the Louvre. I selected the Louvre, well knowing that from some mysterious cause all popular actresses prefer the Louvre to other restaurants, although the quality of the food there is not always impeccable. I am not in the habit of inviting the favourites of the stage to dinner, especially favourites who enjoy a salary of seventy-five pounds a week, as Rosie Mardon did and does. But in the present case I had a particular object in view. Rosie Mardon was taking the chief feminine rôle in my new light comedy, then in active rehearsal at the Alcazar Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue. We had almost quarrelled over her interpretation of the big scene in the second act, which differed materially from my own idea of how the scene ought to go. Diplomacy was necessary. I prided myself on my powers as a diplomatist: I knew that if I could chat with Miss Rosie in the privacy of a table for two at a public restaurant (there is no privacy more discreet), I could convert her to my opinions on that second act.

“Have you engaged a table upstairs?” was her first inquiry, as with the assistance of a stout and gorgeous official I helped her to alight from her brougham at the portico of the house. (She looked lovely, and half the street was envying me; but unfortunately Rosie’s looks have nothing to do with the tale; let me therefore dismiss them as a dangerous topic.)

“No,” I said; “but I expect there’ll be plenty of room.”

“Plenty of room!” she exclaimed, with a charming scorn and a glance which said: “This young man really has a great deal to learn about the art of entertaining ladies at the Louvre.” I admit that I had.

“Oh, yes!” I insisted with bravado. “Plenty!”

“Ask the booking-clerk,” she commanded, and with all her inimitable grace she sank like a fatigued sylph into one of the easy-chairs that furnished the entrance-hall, and drew her cloak round her shoulders.

The booking-clerk, in faultless evening-dress, with a formidable silver chain encircling his neck, stood at the foot of the grand staircase, which was very grand. The booking-clerk politely but coldly informed me that he had not a table upstairs; he said that every table had been booked since a quarter to seven.

“Well, I suppose we must be content with downstairs, but I much prefer the balcony,” said Rosie when I told her. And Rosie was obviously cross. My dinner was beginning ominously.

I returned to the booking-clerk, who was then good enough to tell me that he had no table downstairs either. I felt rather an ass, but I never permit my asininity to go too far. I assumed an attitude of martial decision, and ordered one of the pages to get me a hansom.

“We will dine at the Savoy,” I said, very loud. Every official in the neighbourhood heard me. Rosie smiled, whether at the prospect of the Savoy or at my superb indignation I know not.

Just as we were emerging into the street the booking-clerk, his silver chain clinking, touched me on the shoulder.

“I can let you have a table upstairs now, sir,” said he. “A party that engaged one has not arrived.”

“I thought they wouldn’t let us run away to the Savoy,” I remarked to Rosie _sotto voce_ and with satisfaction. I had triumphed, and the pretty creature was a witness of my triumph.

“What name, sir?” asked the clerk.

“John Delf,” I replied.

His gesture showed that he recognised that name, and this pleased me too. Had not my first farcical comedy run a hundred and sixty nights at the Alcazar? It was only proper that my reputation should have reached even the clerks of restaurants. Another official recognised Miss Rosie’s much-photographed face, and we passed up the staircase with considerable éclat.

“You managed that rather well,” said Miss Rosie, dimpling with satisfaction, as we sat down in the balcony of the Grand Hall of the Louvre. The dinner was not beginning so ominously after all.

I narrate these preliminary incidents to show how large a part is played by pure chance in the gravest events of our lives.

I ordered the ten-and-sixpenny dinner. Who could offer to the unique Rosie Mardon a five-shilling or a seven-and-sixpenny repast when one at half-a-guinea was to be obtained? Not I! The meal started with anchovies, which Rosie said she adored. (She also adored nougat, _crême de menthe_, and other pagan gods.) As Rosie put the first bit of anchovy into her adorable mouth, the Yellow Hungarian Band at the other end of the crowded hall struck up the Rakocsy March, and the whole place was filled with clamour. Why people insist on deafening music as an accompaniment to the business of eating I cannot imagine. Personally, I like to eat in peace and quietude. But I fear I am an exception. Rosie’s eyes sparkled with pleasure at the sound of the band, and I judged the moment opportune to ascertain her wishes on the subject of wine. She stated them in her own imperious way, and I signalled to the waiter.

Now I had precisely noticed, or I fancied I noticed, an extraordinary obsequiousness in this waiter--an obsequiousness surpassing the usual obsequiousness of waiters. I object to it, and my attitude of antagonism naturally served to intensify it.

“What’s the matter with the fellow?” I said to Rosie after I had ordered the wine.

“He’s very good-looking, isn’t he?” was her only reply, as she gazed absently at the floor below us crowded with elegant diners.

And the waiter was indeed somewhat handsome. A light-haired man, and, like all the waiters at the Louvre, a foreigner with a deficient knowledge of English.

“I expect he’s lost on his bets to-day,” Rosie added. “They all bet, you know, and he’s after a rousing tip to make up.”

“Oh, is that it?” I said, wondering at the pretty creature’s knowledge of the world. And then I began to talk about my play in my best diplomatic manner, inwardly chafing at the interruption of that weird Yellow Hungarian orchestra, which with bitter irony had hung over the railings of its stand a placard bearing the words, “By desire.”

The meal proceeded brilliantly. My diplomacy was a success. The champagne was a success. We arrived at the sorbet, that icy and sweet product which in these days of enormous repasts is placed half-way through the meal in order to renew one’s appetite for the second half. Your modern chef is the cruel tyrant of the stomach, and shows no mercy.

The fair-haired waiter’s hand distinctly trembled as he served the sorbets. I looked at mine for some moments, hesitating whether or not to venture upon it. I am a martyr to indigestion.

“It’s delicious,” said Rosie. “More delicious than the second act of your ‘Partners.’”

“Then I must risk it,” I replied, and plunged the spoon into the half-frozen greenish mass. As I did so I caught sight of our waiter, who was leaning against the service table at the corner of the balcony. His face was as white as a sheet. I thought he must be ill, and I felt sorry for him. However, I began to swallow the sorbet, and the sorbet was in truth rather choice. Presently our waiter clutched at the sleeve of another waiter who was passing, and whispered a few words in his ear. The second waiter turned to look at me, and replied. Then our waiter almost ran towards our table.

“Excuse me, sirr,” he murmured indistinctly, rolling the “r.” “Are you not Count Vandernoff?”

“I am not,” I replied briefly.

He hesitated; his hand wavered towards the sorbet, but he withdrew it and departed.

“Mon Dieu!” I heard him exclaim weakly under his breath.

“Possibly he’s been taking me for an aristocratic compatriot of his own,” I said to Rosie, “and that explains the obsequiousness. You were wrong about the betting.”

I laughed, but I felt ill at ease, and to cover my self-consciousness I went on eating the sorbet very slowly.

I must have consumed nearly a third of it when I became conscious of a movement behind me; a mysterious hand shot out and snatched away the sorbet.

“Sir!” I protested, looking round. A tall, youngish man in evening dress, but wearing his hat, stood on my left. “Sir! what in the name of----?”

“Your pardon!” answered the man in a low hurried voice. I could not guess his nationality. “Let me beg you to leave here at once, and come with me.”

“I shall do no such thing,” I replied. “Waiter--call the manager.” But our waiter had disappeared.

“It is a matter of life and death,” said the man.

“To whom?”

“To you.”

The man removed his hat and looked appealingly at Miss Rosie.

“Don’t let’s have a scene in here,” said Rosie, with her worldly wisdom. And, impelled by the utter seriousness of the man, we went out. I forgot the bill, and no one presented it.

“I solemnly ask you to take a little drive with me,” said the man, when we had reached the foyer. “I have a carriage at the door.”

“Again, why?” I demanded.

He whispered: “You are poisoned. I am saving your life. I rely on your discretion.”

My spine turned chilly, and I glanced at Miss Rosie. “I will come with you,” she said.

In five minutes we had driven to a large house in Golden Square. We were ushered into a lavishly-furnished drawing-room, and we sat down. Rosie’s lips were set. I admired her demeanour during those moments.

The man who said he was saving my life poured some liquid from a phial into a glass, and handed it to me.

“Emetics are useless. Drink this. In an hour you will feel the first symptoms of illness. They may be severe, though that is improbable, since you ate only a portion of the stuff. In any event, they will not last. To-morrow you will be perfectly well. Let me advise you to go to bed at once. My carriage is at your service and the service of this lady.” He bowed.

I drank the antidote.

“Thanks for all these surprises,” I said coldly. “But does it not occur to you that some explanation is due to me?”

He pondered a minute.

“I will explain,” he replied. “It is your right. I will explain in two words. You have heard of Count Vandernoff, attached to the Russian Embassy in London? You may have seen in the papers that the Count has been appointed by the Tsar to be the new governor of Helsingfors, the Finnish capital?”

I nodded.

“You are aware,” he continued suavely, “of the widespread persecutions in Finland, the taking away of the Constitution, the Russianising of all offices, the censorship of the Press? This persecution has given rise to a secret society, which I will call the Friends of Finnish Freedom. Its methods are drastic. Count Vandernoff was known to be violently antagonistic to Finnish freedom. He dines often at the Louvre. He had engaged a table for to-night. The waiter in charge of that table was, like myself, a member of the society, but, unfortunately, rather a raw hand. The Count, quite unexpectedly, did not arrive at the Louvre to-night. The waiter, however, took you for the Count. The sorbet which I snatched out of your hand was---- Need I say more?”

“Poisoned?”

“Poisoned. The affair was carefully arranged, and only a pure accident could have upset it. That accident occurred.”

“What was it?”

“The Count’s coupé was knocked over by an omnibus in Piccadilly two hours ago, and the Count was killed.”

There was a pause.

“Then he will never be governor of Helsingfors,” I said.

“Heaven helps the right!” the man answered. “You English love freedom. You cannot guess what we in Finland have suffered. Let me repeat that I rely on your discretion.”

We left, Miss Rosie and I; and the kind-hearted girl delivered me safely into the hands of my housekeeper. I was ill, but I soon recovered.

A few days later I met Miss Rosie at rehearsal.

“Did you notice?” she said to me, with an awed air, “our table was No. 13 that night.”

THE END.

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