COUNTESS ALEXIA of Rohnburg had had a few of her intimate friends to luncheon at the house in Green Street, and the last of them, Mary Riverdale, was still sitting with her in cosy chat when a note was brought in. That her hostess did not like the look of the handwriting on the envelope, Miss Riverdale was sure. But she forbore the comment to which her intimacy might have entitled her, and contented herself with running through a picture book while Alexia read the note.
“Is—any one waiting?” the Countess had asked.
“No, madame,” answered the man, unsatisfyingly laconic, as became his position.
Alexia read the note, restored it to its envelope and put it, address downwards, on the table. Her visitor threw aside the Graphic, and for a few moments there was a constrained silence, a pause of mental self-consciousness, almost awkward, considering how intimate the two were. But both of them, young though they might be, were too experienced players in that everyday game of social diplomacy to let an embarrassment become manifest. Yet there will assert itself, in spite of tact and artifice, a certain instinct which tells us our companions are reading our thoughts and gauging our dilemmas.
“I wonder what the next development of the Vaux House mystery will be,” Miss Riverdale observed, quoting the headline of the Daily Comet.
The affair had, as was natural, been the subject of animated discussion at luncheon, and it seemed scarcely worth while to reopen it.
The Countess gave a shrug. “We must wait and see,” she answered mechanically. “The poor Duchess! One almost feels one ought to leave cards of enquiry.”
“The poor Duke,” laughed her friend. “They will get more fun out of him than ever. Not but what this is a serious matter.”
“You really think so?” The talk was being sustained by an effort on both sides, and Alexia’s question sounded suspiciously like covering a yawn.
“Don’t you?” the other returned, in languid surprise.
“Oh, yes, I suppose so. If it is all true.”
“Of course if it isn’t true we shall have a disclaimer from the Lancashires to-morrow.”
“I mean the connection between the broken ornament, the little sword, or whatever it is, and poor Captain Martindale’s death. You knew him, Mary?”
“Only by sight. You did, dear, didn’t you?”
“Casually. Meeting him about. As a matter of fact I was to have danced with him at the very time he was found dead.”
“Alix! You never told me that. How awful!”
“It might have been,” the Countess responded composedly. “But I did not see him. It was late; a good many people had gone. He did not come for his dance; then there was a fuss: we were told, at least I was, that Captain Martindale had had a fit, and people went off. I fancy most of the men knew the real state of the case.”
Miss Riverdale gave a little shudder. “Horrible! At a dance, too.”
“Yes. It was upsetting, even to us who did not know the truth. As we were going, a doctor bustled in, shivering in a great-coat buttoned up to hide the fact that he was only half dressed. I have often thought that great-coat in the ball-room brought home the idea of a tragedy more vividly than the sight of the dead man could have done. Ugh! Don’t let’s talk about it any more, or I shall get the blues.”
Her visitor rose. “You look, my dear Alix, as though you had them already. Come across the Park with me. I am going that way home; we are pretty sure to meet some one to enliven us.”
Alexia shook her head. “I was out all the morning and am rather tired. I feel too dull even to ask you to stay.”
Miss Riverdale scarcely needed a hint to see that she had suddenly become de trop. She wondered whether her hostess’s sudden preoccupation was not due to the letter just received; but to wonder was all that was permitted her.
Scarcely had the door closed upon her visitor when Alexia took up the note and read it through again, and this time there was no need for her to hide her disquietude. The words were few.
“DEAR COUNTESS,—
“I have something of great importance to say to you; if you read the papers you will doubtless guess to what I refer. Will you, in your own interest, be good enough to remove for once the embargo you have laid on my visits, and be at home when I call at four this afternoon?
“Yours sincerely,
“AUBREY PLAYFORD.”
She read it through twice, and as she did so, she seemed to be struggling to evade the grip of a strong will that lurked beneath the words. Then, mechanically, she put the note back into its envelope and turned to glance at the clock. It was nearly four. She hesitated for a few moments, as taking counsel with herself; then rang the bell.
“I am at home to Mr. Playford when he calls this afternoon,” she told the man, giving the order with a plain-spoken authority which disarmed all suspicion of an impropriety.
She had not long to wait before the expected visitor was announced.
Playford came in deferentially confident and inscrutable, and as Alexia rose to receive him her eyes met his boldly in a look of challenge.
“Bring tea,” she said casually to the man as he left the room. She was not going to indue this unwelcome visit with any mysterious importance.
“It was good of you, Countess, to grant my request,” Playford said, as he sat down, and let his eyes rest with covetous admiration on the beautiful woman before him. “I hope it has not been inconvenient; but the matter on which it was necessary to see you was urgent.”
“Not at all,” she answered coolly. “I have had some people to luncheon, and they have only just gone. What did you want to tell me?”
“I gave you a hint, Countess, in my note.”
“Please explain it.”
“You did not understand it?” The tone was incredulous; coupled with the sly look, almost offensively so.
“Not in the least,” Alexia returned simply, so directly as to blunt the point of the insinuation.
But Playford was not the man to show a repulse. “It is about this business at Vaux House,” he said, with quiet incisiveness.
“Oh? What of that? How does it concern me?”
If she was playing a part, her skill called forth his grudging admiration; grudging because he knew from her tone that, except under duress, she was not for him.
“You know, Countess,” he replied, speaking now with forced directness; “you have seen that the little jewelled sword, a hair ornament, with which Reggie Martindale was killed, has been found?”
“Yes,” she responded casually; “I saw that in the paper.”
He told himself, as he watched her, that she had gone a shade paler; that was all; and he could not be quite certain of that.
“Do you believe it?” she added, as he paused, so to speak, on the strike.
“It is true enough,” he said, in a tone that took the question out of the region of the debatable. “Reggie Martindale was done to death that night; why—only one person, probably, on this earth knows; but that he did not die a natural death has all along been almost an open secret.”
“Has it?” she observed simply, yet with the slightest touch of contradiction. “Yes; well, I have heard as much. Mr. Dormer Greetland was telling us a long story about it a day or two ago. Still, I don’t see how it concerns me.”
She was better entrenched against his attack, he was forced to admit, than he had thought to find her; still, the defence should not serve.
“I’m afraid it does concern you, Countess, very nearly,” he replied, in a tone dark with impending mischief.
“Tell me how, Mr. Playford.”
He gave a slight bow, as accepting the challenge. “I have seen this little weapon, the tiny sword; a dangerous ornament, Countess.”
“Yes?” There seemed little more than a half-amused curiosity in her tone.
“The Duchess showed it to me, and—I recognized it.”
Alexia laughed. “Ah, now I know. I think I have guessed this mysterious piece of news. I suppose you are going to say that you have recognized this formidable ornament as belonging to me.”
Manifestly he did not like the words being taken out of his mouth, but he could only respond, with a slight bow of assent, “You have guessed it, Countess.”
She laughed again. “My dear Mr. Playford, what an absurd idea!” Any one would have thought from her manner and his that she had him discomfited; but Aubrey Playford was not the man to be so easily beaten off.
“Hardly absurd, Countess.” That was all he could say, for the door opened and tea was brought in.
“Is the poor Duke very much upset?” Alexia enquired, giving the necessary turn to the conversation while the men were in the room.
Playford gave an appropriately humorous answer as to the ducal state of mind, all the while eyeing the girl searchingly, and in spite of himself, inclined to wonder whether, after all, he might not have made a mistake.
When they were alone once more, their talk did not for the moment revert to its former and more dangerous channel. Perhaps both were glad of an armistice after the first trial of strength, of a short breathing space now that the methods of attack and defence were declared. Alexia poured out the two cups of tea, and did not raise her eyes from the table until Playford had taken his cup. Then she leaned back in her chair and faced him boldly as ever.
“You come here to tell me that?”
His eyes were on her, alert as a fencer’s. “Could I do otherwise?”
“Surely,” she returned, with something like contempt. “Even if it were true.”
“I don’t think I have made a mistake, Countess.” He spoke slowly with a staccato enunciation of the words.
“You have, Mr. Playford.” The cool incisiveness of her tone stung him.
“How?” he asked, with an ugly look of fight in his malicious eyes.
She was ready with her answer. “To begin with, in coming here at all; to a house, I mean, where you might know you would not be welcome.”
“Obviously,” he retorted with a smile, “as the bearer of unwelcome news.”
“Which, if true, would be no news.”
The hit was palpable, but he gave no sign that he felt it. “I came to warn you,” he said, still watching her darkly.
“It was very kind of you,” she returned, with a touch of contemptuous irony, “and quite unnecessary.”
Manifestly the time for fencing was past. Playford rose, ostensibly to put down his cup, but he remained standing over her. “Countess,” he began, in a tone that had a deeper vibration in it, “Alexia——”
She raised her head imperiously. “Mr. Playford, I have forbidden you to address me in that manner.”
“I know,” he assented. “And you have forbidden me your house.”
She gave a little scornful nod of agreement.
“For no adequate reason,” he protested. “My presumption, as no doubt you would call it——”
“Persecution,” she corrected.
“Not persecution,” he argued. “That is a hard word to use towards a man whose love overmasters him and makes him unduly importunate.”
“A man,” she replied, and from her tone she might have been discussing the point merely from an academical point of view, “a man who cannot control his feelings, but allows them to get the better of him to the annoyance of others, deserves to be kept at a distance, even as you have been.”
The last touch perceptibly stung him. There was an unpleasant gleam in his eye as he returned, “But I am determined my state of banishment from you shall last no longer.”
Her dark eyes were raised in half-amused scorn. “Indeed? I think that rests with me rather than with you, Mr. Playford.”
“It did,” he retorted viciously; “but it does no longer.” He bent over her. “Alexia——”
She motioned him away, and rose. “No,” she said, for the first time showing anger; “I will not allow you to call me that.”
“I think you will,” he returned. “Let us understand one another.”
“If you think there is any misapprehension,” she said, now cold again; “there is none on my part.”
“I think there is,” he rejoined significantly.
“No,” she maintained scornfully. “I can reckon you up, Mr. Playford. I am sorry you should have thought proper to come here to threaten me.”
“Have I?” he broke in protestingly. “Have I threatened you?”
“If not,” she answered, “I confess I do not see the drift of what you have said.”
“In my own justification, let me tell you,” he urged. “Please.”
Alexia resumed her seat with a significant glance at the clock. “I hope it will not take you very long.”
How he hated her, this scornful, imperious beauty, who was meeting his attack so skilfully; hated her for her contempt and rejection of him, yet loved her with a fierceness and pervasiveness which he was, with all his self-control, unable to subdue; while he hated and cursed the bands of the passion that encompassed him.
“I certainly did not come here to threaten you, Countess,” he began, in a tone schooled almost to apology. “I should hardly have brought myself to repay your graciousness in receiving me by an action so ill as that. I have simply come here, led, driven by an impulse which you forbid me to name, to make a proposition to you, or, if you prefer the word, a bargain with you.”
Lying back in her low chair, her eyes fixed almost dreamily upon the little gold pencil-case which she lazily pushed in and out, she just lifted them for an instant to Playford’s face, then lowered them again. But from the light of that instant’s glance he saw no encouragement.
“It is easy,” he went on, for the pause had been but momentary, and Alexia showed no desire to interrupt him, “it is easy to moralize and to propound codes of so-called honour, but when a man is possessed by a love as desperate, as all-absorbing as mine, he is scarcely to be blamed if, while human nature remains as it is, he seizes any advantage which fate may give him.”
“Advantage?” she repeated thoughtfully. “You say Fate has given you an advantage—over me?”
There was an infinity of suggestion, of latent disdain, in the question.
“Don’t let us put it that way, Countess,” he protested.
“The word was yours, not mine,” she returned.
“True. But the application was yours. Let us look the situation squarely in the face,” he proceeded, anxious now to come to the point, lest the interview should be interrupted before he had declared himself. “Don’t you think that, as you and I are, presumably, the only people in the world who know your secret, we—we might share more than that?”
He paused for her answer, but none came. Her attitude suggested that she was waiting for him to go on to the end, if it were not already reached.
“Countess!”
Thus called upon, she looked up.
“With regard to your proposal,” she said, in quite a matter-of-fact tone, “it has the disadvantage of being based upon false premises.”
“How?”
“You talk of my secret—dangerous secret, I think you called it. I have no secret, dangerous or harmless, that can be shared by you—or anything else.”
He took a step nearer and lowered his tone as he replied, “This is absurd, Countess. You will not put me off so. The little weapon with which Martindale was killed belonged to you.”
“Indeed?” She gave a laugh. “I do not admit that for an instant; but, supposing it did, what then?”
He had scarcely expected this unwavering defence, this absence of any sign of fear in her. He was bound now to fight without compunction.
“It would, naturally, coupled with other circumstances, raise a very ugly suspicion against you.”
“What other circumstances?”
“Won’t you render it unnecessary for me to mention them?”
“How?”
“By letting me be no longer out of favour with you,” he pleaded.
“I prefer to hear the other circumstances.” She was hatefully cold and contemptuous, he told himself; wishing almost that he had not come on this errand which promised him as little satisfaction as honour.
“You were in that little room with Martindale,” he said, with an effort to save the situation. “You were seen to come out of it not long before his death was discovered.”
“Seen? By whom?”
“Ah!” There was infinite significance in the exclamation.
“He was known to be an admirer of yours.”
“Do I kill my admirers?” She rose. “You are giving me a terrible, a really mediæval character, Mr. Playford. I wonder you trusted yourself here alone. But perhaps you left word with the police before you ventured to knock at the door. Is there anything more you have to say to me? It is getting late.”
She had beaten him at every point, turned every lunge he had thought to make with deadly effect. The sting of her sarcasm made him furious; as furious as a man of his self-contained temperament could ever show himself to be.
He could hardly prolong the interview now, after her unmistakable hint; and if he did, it must be with little hope of gaining his point. She meant fighting, if it were forced upon her, and, so far, her defence had been perfect.
“Then do I understand you to deny, Countess, that the little dagger is yours?” he asked bluntly, with an expression of rankling defeat on his face.
“I know nothing of it,” she answered, with contemptuous indifference; “and if I did, I should scarcely be inclined, after your somewhat objectionable proposal, to discuss the matter with you.”
As she made a move towards the bell, he put forth a restraining hand. “Then you reject me and my suggestion, Countess,” he demanded sullenly. “It is your final answer?”
“My final answer,” she assured him. “I am only sorry that you should have been so ill-advised as to invite it.” And she rang the bell.
“Very well,” he returned darkly. “Time will show which of us has been the more ill-advised.”
She had turned her back upon him, and so, without any leave-taking, he went away.