Red Masquerade - Louis Joseph Vance
A swift and searching survey of the living-room descried nothing that
seemed apt to hinder or detain her. A large room, unusually wide and deep,
it had two windows overlooking the street, with a curtained doorway at the
back that led (one surmised) to a bedchamber. It was furnished in such
excellent taste that one suspected Monsieur Lanyard must have brought in
his own belongings on taking possession. The handsome rug, the well-chosen
draperies, the several excellent pictures and bronzes, were little in
character with the furnished lodgings of the London average, even with
those of the better sort.
She had no time, however, to squander on appreciation of artistic
atmosphere, however pleasing, and needed to waste none searching for the
object of her desires. It faced her, distant not six paces from the
door--that shameless little "Corot"!--resting on the arms of a
straight-backed chair.
A low laugh of delight on her lips, she went swiftly to the chair and laid
hold of the picture by its frame. In that act she checked, startled,
transfixed, the laugh freezing into a gasp of alarm.
Brass rings slithered on a pole supporting the portieres at the back of the
room. These parted. Through them a man emerged.
Her grasp on the picture relaxed. It struck a corner against the chair and
clattered on the floor--the canvas on its stretcher simultaneously flying
out of the frame.
"Victor!"
"Sweet of you to remember me!"
He advanced slowly with that noiseless, cat-like tread of his which she had
always hated, perceiving in it a true index to his character: the prowl of
a beast of prey, furtive, cowardly, cruel. It was so: Victor was as feline
and as vicious as a jungle-cat. Watching him with this thought in mind, one
could almost credit old tales of beasts bewitched and walking in human
guise.
Near by he paused, alertly poised, prepared to spring. The slotted black
eyes glimmered malignantly. His lips drew back in mockery from his teeth.
His hands were hidden in the pockets of his dinner-coat; but she could
guess how they were held, like claws, in that concealment, claws itching
for her throat. She dared not stir lest she feel them there, digging deep
into her soft white flesh.
Witless, in the extremity of her terror, she stammered: "What do you want?"
A nod indicated the picture that lay between them, at their feet.
"My errand," the man said in a silken tone that gloved grimmest menace, "is
much the same as yours--quite naturally--but more fortunate; for I shall
get not only what I came for, but something more."
"What--?"
"The opportunity to plead with you, face to face. I think you will hardly
refuse to listen to me now."
"How--how did you get in?"
"Oh, secretly! By the window, if you must know; but quite unseen. You see,
_I_ had no invitation."
"I never thought you had--"
"Nor did I think you had--till now."
Puzzled, she faltered: "I don't understand--"
"Surely you don't wish me to believe my pretty Sofia has turned thief?"
That stung her pride. She drew upon an unsuspected store of spirit,
confronting him bravely.
"What is it to me, what you choose to think?"
"I refuse to think that of you. My reason will not let me believe it."
She saw that he was shaking with rage; so she shrugged and drawled: "Oh,
your _reason_--!"
"It tells me you for one did not come here to-night uninvited." He was
rapidly losing grip on his temper. "Oh, it's plain enough! I was a fool not
to understand, there in the auction room, when my face was slapped with
proof of your liaison with this Lanyard!"
She said in mild expostulation: "But you are quite mad."
"Perhaps--but not so as to be blind to the truth. You had him there this
afternoon to bid that picture in for you if your own means failed. Why else
should the man, who knows pictures as I know you, pay twenty thousand
guineas for a footling copy of a Corot that wouldn't deceive a--a Royal
Academician! Yes: he bid it in for you--the sorry fool!--bought with his
own money the evidence of your infatuation for his predecessor in your
affections--and expects you here to-night to receive it from him and--pay
him _his_ price! Ah, don't try to deny it!"
He growled like a very animal, beside himself. "Why else should you be
admitted to these rooms without question in his absence?"
Without visible resentment, the Princess Sofia nodded thoughtfully into
those distorted features.
"Yes," she commented: "quite, quite mad."
As if she had offered without warning to strike him, Victor recoiled and
for an instant stood gibbering. And she took advantage of this moment in
one lithe bound to put the table between them.
The manoeuvre sobered him. He did not move, but in two breaths forced
himself to cease to tremble, and subdued every symptom of his passion. Only
his face remained sinister.
"Graceful creature!" he observed, sardonic. "Such agility! But what good
will that do you, do you think? Eh? Tell me that!"
It was her turn to shiver, and inwardly she did, who was never quite able
to combat the fear which Victor could inspire in her by such demonstrations
of the power of his will. The self-control which he had always at his
command was something that passed her understanding; it seemed inhuman, it
terrified her.
Nevertheless, so exigent was this strait, she continued to confront him
with a face of unflinching defiance.
In a voice whose steadiness surprised her she declared: "The letters are
mine. You shan't have them."
"Undeceive yourself: I'll have them though you never leave this room
alive."
More to give herself time to think than in any hope of moving him, she
began to plead:
"Let me have them, Victor--let me go."
Smiling darkly, he shook his head.
"The letters mean nothing to you. What good--?"
He interrupted impatiently: "I shall publish them."
"Impossible--!"
"But I shall."
Aghast, she protested: "You can't mean that!"
"Why not? The world shall know your true reason for leaving me--that you
were the mistress of another man--and who that man was!"
Staring, she uttered in a low voice: "Never!"
"Or," he amended, deliberately, "you may keep them, burn them, do what you
will with them--on fair terms--_my_ terms."
She said nothing, but her dilate eyes held fixedly to his. He moved a pace
or two nearer, his voice dropped to a lower key, the light she had learned
to loathe flickered in the depths of his eyes.
"Come back to me, Sofia! I can't live without you ..."
Her lips moved to deny him, but made no sound. Now it was revealed to her,
the way.
"Come back to me, Sofia!"
His hand crept along the edge of the table and lifted, quivering, to
capture hers. She steeled herself to endure its touch, against sickening
repulsion she fought to achieve a smile that would carry a suggestion of at
least forgetfulness.
"And if I do--?" she murmured.
He gave a violent start, blood suffused his face darkly, his arms leapt out
to enfold her. She stepped back, evading him with a movement of coquetry
that served, as it was intended, to inflame him the more.
"Wait!" she insisted. "Answer me first: If I return to you--then what?"
"Everything shall be as you wish--everything forgotten--I will think of
nothing but how to make you happy--"
"And I may have my letters?"
He nodded, swallowing hard, as if the concession well-nigh choked him.
Under his gloating gaze her flesh crawled. Only by supreme effort did she
succeed in resisting a mad impulse to risk a rush for door or windows, and
whipped her will into maintaining what seemed to be frank response.
"Very well," she said; "I agree."
Again he offered to touch her, again she moved slightly, eluding him.
"No," she stipulated with an arch glance--"not yet! First prove you mean to
make good your word."
"How?"
"Let me go--with my letters--and call on me to-morrow."
His look clouded. "Can I trust you?" He was putting the question to himself
more than to her. "Dare I?" He added in a tone colourless and flat: "I've
half a mind to take you at your word. Only--forgive my doubts--appearances
are against you--you seem almost too keen for the bargain. How can I
know--?"
"What proof do you want?"
"Something definite.... You pledge yourself to me?" A movement of her head
assented. "You will give yourself back to me?" He came nearer, but she
contrived to repeat the sign of assent. "Wholly, without reserve?"
An invincible disgust shook her as the full sense of his insistence struck
home. Still she whipped herself to play out the scene--and win!
"As you say, Victor, as you will...."
He moved still nearer. She became conscious of his nearness as if a
palpable aura of vileness emanated from his person.
"Then give me proof--here and now."
"How?"
He laughed a throaty, evil laugh. "Need you ask? Not much, my Sofia ...
only a little ... something on account..." Suddenly she could no more:
memories unspeakable rose like disturbed dregs to the surface of her
consciousness. Involuntarily, not knowing what she did, she flung out an
arm and struck down his hands.
"You--leper!"
The epithet was like a knout cutting through the decayed fibre of the man
and raising a livid welt on his diseased soul. Galled beyond endurance, his
countenance convulsed with fury, he struck wickedly; and the vicious blow
of his open palm across her mouth brought flecks of blood to the lips as
her teeth cut into the tender flesh.
It did far more, it shattered at one stroke the brittle casing of
self-command with which centuries of civilization had sought to veneer the
Slav. In a trice a woman whose existence neither of them had suspected was
revealed, a fury incarnate flew at the dismayed prince, clawing, tearing,
raining blows upon his face and bosom. Overcome by surprise, blinded,
dazed, staggered, he gave ground, stumbled, caught at a chair to steady
himself.
As abruptly as it had begun, the assault ceased. Panting and frantic, the
girl fell back, paused, renewed her grasp upon herself, gazed momentarily
in contempt on that dashed and quaking figure, then swiftly swooped down to
retrieve the picture, and madly pelted toward the door.
In an instant, Victor was after her. His clutching fingers barely missed
her shoulder but caught a flying end of the veil that swathed her throat
and head. With finger-tips touching the door-knob Sofia was checked and
twitched back so violently that she was all but thrown off her feet.
She tried desperately to regain her balance, but the pressure round her
throat, tightening, bade fair to suffocate her; and reeling, while her
hands tore ineffectually at the folds of the veil, she was drawn back and
back, and tripped, falling half on, half off the table.
Already her vision was darkening, her lungs were labouring painfully, her
head throbbed with the revolt of strangulated arteries as if sledge hammers
were seeking to smash through her skull.
Through closing shadows she saw that savage mask which hovered over her,
moping and mowing, as Victor twisted and drew ever more tight the murderous
bindings round her throat.
A groping hand encountered something on the table, a lump of metal, cold
and heavy. She seized and dashed it brutally into that hateful face, saw
his head jerk back and heard him grunt with pain, and struck again,
blindly, with all her might.
Instantly the pressure upon her throat was eased. She heard a groan, a
fall ...
VIII
GREEK VS. GREEK
She found herself standing, partly resting upon the table. Great, tearing
sobs racked her slight young body--but at least she was breathing, there
was no more constriction of her windpipe; Her head still ached, however,
her neck felt stiff and sore, and she remained somewhat giddy and confused.
She eyed rather wildly her hands. One held torn and ragged folds of the
veil ripped from her throat, the other the weapon with which she had
cheated death: a bronze paperweight, probably a miniature copy of a Barye,
an elephant trumpeting. The up-flung trunk was darkly stained and
sticky....
With a shudder she dropped the bronze, and looked down. Victor lay at her
feet, supine, grotesquely asprawl. His face was bruised and livid; the
cheek laid open by the bronze was smeared with scarlet, accentuating the
leaden colour of his skin. His mouth was ajar; his eyes, half closed,
hideously revealed slender slits of white. More blood discoloured his right
temple, welling from under the matted, coarse black hair.
He was terribly motionless. If he breathed, Sofia could detect no sign of
it.
In panic she knelt beside the body, threw back Victor's dinner-coat, and
laid an ear above his heart.
At first, in her mad anxiety, she could hear nothing. But presently a
beating registered, slow and harsh but steady-paced.
With a sob of relief she sat back on her heels, and after a little while
got unsteadily to her feet.
The house door closed with a dull bang, and from the entrance hallway came
a sound of voices. She stood petrified in dread till the voices fell and
she heard stairs creak under an ascending tread.
Thus reminded that Lanyard's return might occur at any moment, she made all
haste to patch up the disarray of veil and coiffure. Fortunately her
costume, protected by the cloak of heavy and sturdy stuff, was quite
undamaged.
Not till on the point of leaving did she remember the painting. It lay
unharmed where it had fallen when Victor seized her veil. She was calm
enough now to consider herself fortunate in finding it so poorly secured in
its frame; without the latter it would be far easier to smuggle the canvas
away under her cloak.
In the final glance she bent upon Victor's beaten and insensible body there
was no pity, no regret, no trace of compunction. What he had suffered he
had ten times--no, a hundred, a thousand--earned. Long before she left him
Sofia had lost count of the blows she had taken at his hands, the insults
worse than blows, the lesser indignities innumerable.
But in those abolished days she had never once struck back, she had been
faint of heart, cowed and terrified, and had lacked what two years of
separation had given her, that spiritual independence which never before
had been able to realize itself, lift up its head, and grow strong in the
assurance of its own integrity.
Two years ago she would not have dared to lift a hand to Victor, no matter
how sore the provocation. To-night--if she had one regret it was that she
had struck so feebly: not that she desired his death, but that she knew it
was now her life or his. She knew the man too well to flatter herself that
he would rest before he had compassed such revenge as the baseness of his
degenerate soul would deem adequate. Half the world were not too much to
put between them if she were now to sleep of nights in comfortable
consciousness of security from his quenchless hatred.
Callously enough she switched off the lights and left him lying there, in
darkness but for the ash-dimmed glimmer of a dying fire.
In the entrance hallway she hesitated, coldly composed and alert. But
seemingly the noise of their struggle had not carried beyond the door.
There was no one about.
With neither haste nor faltering, without the least misadventure, she let
herself quietly out into the empty, silent, rain-swept street, and scurried
toward the lights of Piccadilly.
Before long a cruising four-wheeler overhauled her. In its obscure and
stuffy refuge she sat hugging her precious canvas and pondering her plight.
It was borne in upon her that she would do well to leave London, yes, and
England, too, before Victor recovered sufficiently to scheme and put a
watch upon her movements.
She had need henceforth to be swift and wary and shrewd....
A singular elation began to colour her temper, a quickening sense of
emancipation. Necessity at a stroke had set her free. Because she must fly
and hide to save her life, society had no more hold upon her, she need no
longer fight to keep up appearances in spite of her status as a woman
living apart from her husband, little better than a divorcee--an estate
anathema to the English of those days.
She experienced, through the play of her imagination upon this new and
startling conception of life, an intoxicating prelibation of freedom such
as she had never dreamed to savour.
That waywardness which was a legitimate inheritance from generations of
wilful forebears, impatient of all those restraints which a fixed
environment imposes upon the individual, an impatience which had always
been hers though it slumbered in unsuspected latency, asserted itself of a
sudden, possessed her wholly, and warmed, her being like forbidden wine.
In this humour she was set down at her door.
None saw her enter. In a moment of vaguely prophetic foresight she had
bidden Therese not to wait up for her and to tell the other servants there
was no necessity for their doing so. She might be detained, Heaven alone
knew how late she might be; but she had her latch-key and was quite
competent to undress and put herself to bed.
And Therese had taken her at her word.
She was glad of that. In event that anything should leak out and be printed
by the newspapers concerning the theft of Monsieur Lanyard's famous "Corot"
by a strange, closely veiled woman, it was just as well that none of the
servants was about to see her come in with the canvas clumsily hidden under
her cloak.
So she exercised much circumspection in shutting and bolting the door,
mounted the stairs without making any unnecessary stir, and at the door of
her boudoir waited, listening, for several moments, in the course of which
she heard, or fancied she heard, a slight noise on the far side of the door
which made her suspect Therese might after all still be up and about.
The sound was not repeated, but to make sure Sofia slipped out of her cloak
and wrapped it round the canvas before she went in; which last she did
sharply, with head up and eyes flashing ominously beneath scowling
brows--prepared to give Therese a rare taste of temper if she found she had
been disobeyed.
But though the maid had left the lights on, she was nowhere to be seen. Nor
did she answer from the bedchamber when the princess called her.
With a sigh of relief that ran into the chuckle of a child absorbed in
mischief, Sofia threw the cloak across a chaise-longue, and bore her prize
in triumph to the escritoire.
It was her intention to rip the canvas off with a knife, to get at the
letters; and a long, thin-bladed Spanish dagger that now did service as a
paper-knife was actually in her hand when she noticed how slightly the
painting was tacked to its stretcher, and for the first time was visited by
premonition.
Dropping the knife, she caught a loose edge of the canvas and with one
swift tug stripped it clear of the unpainted fabric beneath.
The cry that disappointment wrung from her was bitter with protest and
chagrin.
Fortune had failed her, then, the jade had tricked her heartlessly. With
success within her grasp, it had trickled like quicksilver through her
fingers. Victor had been beforehand with her, had purloined the letters and
restored the canvas to its frame. She might have suspected as much if she
had only had the wit to draw a natural inference from the way the painting
had parted company with its frame when she dropped it.
So the letters for which she had risked and suffered so much must be back
there, in Lanyard's lodgings, in Victor's possession--lost irretrievably,
since she would never find the courage to go back for them, even if she
dared assume that Victor had not yet recovered and escaped or that Lanyard
had not yet come home.
If only she had thought to rifle Victor's pockets ...
"Too late," she uttered in despair.
"Ah, madame, never say that!"
She swung round but, shocked as she was to the verge of stupefaction, made
no outcry.
The intruder stood within arm's-length, collected, amiable, debonair,
nothing threatening in his attitude, merely an easy and at the same time
quite respectful suggestion of interest.
"Monsieur Lanyard!"
His bow was humorous without mockery: "Madame la princesse does me much
honour."
She was silent another instant, in a wide stare comprehending the
incredible, the utterly impossible fact of his presence there. The one
conceivable explanation voiced itself without her volition:
"The Lone Wolf!"
"Oh, come now!" he remonstrated, indulgently--"that's downright flattery."
She moved aside, lifting a hand toward the bell-cord.
"Wait!"
Involuntarily she deferred, her arm dropped. Then, appreciating that she
had yielded where he had no right to command, she mutinied.
"Why?" she demanded, resentfully.
"Why ring?" he countered, smiling.
"To call my servants--to have them call in the police."
"But surely madame la princesse must appreciate the police might be at a
loss to know which housebreaker to arrest."
He cocked an eye of mocking significance toward the purloined "Corot," and
in sharp revulsion of feeling Sofia had need to bite her lip to keep from
laughing. She hesitated. He was right and reasonable enough, this impudent
and imperturbable young elegant. Yet she could not afford to concede so
much to him. She was quick to accept his gage.
"Who knows," she enquired, obliquely, "why Monsieur the Lone Wolf brought
with him this counterfeit Corot when he broke in to steal--"
"The counterfeit jewels of a titled adventuress!"
An interruption brusque enough to silence her; or else it was its innuendo
that struck the princess dumb with indignation. Lanyard's laugh offered
amends for the rudeness, as if he said: "Sorry--but you asked for it, you
know." He stepped aside, caught up a handful of her jewels that had been
left, a tempting heap, openly exposed on her dressing-table (as much her
own carelessness as anybody's, Sofia admitted) and tossed them lightly upon
the face of the fraudulent canvas.
"Birds of a feather," was his comment, whimsical; "coals to Newcastle!"
"My jewels!" The princess gathered them up tenderly and faced him, blazing
with resentment. He returned a twisted smile, an apologetic shrug.
"Madame la princesse didn't know? I'm so sorry."
"How dare you say they're paste?"
"I'm sorry," he repeated; "but somebody seems to have taken advantage of
madame's confidence. Excellent imitations, I grant you, but articles de
Paris none the less."
"It isn't true!" she stormed, near to tears.
"But really, you must believe me. A knowledge of jewels is one of my
hobbies: I _know!_"
She looked down in consternation at the exquisite trinkets he had condemned
so bluntly. Then in a fit of temper she flung them from her with all her
might, threw herself upon the chaise-longue, and wept passionately into its
cushions. Then the young man proved himself tolerably instructed in the
ways of womankind. He said nothing more, made no offer to comfort her by
those futile and empty pats on the shoulder which are instinctive with man
on such occasions, but simply sat him down and waited.
In time the tempest passed, Sofia sat up and dabbled her eyes with a web of
lace and linen. Then she looked round with a tentative smile that was
wholly captivating. She was one of those rare women who can afford to cry.
"It's so humiliating!" she protested with racial ingenuousness--one of her
most compelling charms. "But it's ridiculous, too. I was so sure no one
would ever know."
"No one but an expert ever would, madame."
"You see"--apparently she had forgotten that Lanyard was anything but a
lifelong friend--"I needed money so badly, I had them reproduced and sold
the originals."
"Madame la princesse--if she will permit--commands my profound sympathy."
"But," she remembered, drying her eyes, "you called me an adventuress,
too!"
"But," he contended, gravely, "you had already called me the Lone Wolf."
"But what do you expect, monsieur, when I find you in my rooms--?"
"But what does madame la princesse expect when I find she had been to
mine--and brought something valuable away with her, too!"
"I had a reason--"
"So had I."
"What was it?"
"Perhaps it was to see madame la princesse alone--secretly--without
exciting the jealousy, which I understand is supernormal, of monsieur le
prince."
"But why should you wish to see me alone?" she demanded, with widening
eyes.
"Perhaps to beg madame's permission to offer her what may possibly prove
some slight consolation."
She weighed his words in dark distrust. What was this consolation? What his
game? His attitude remained consistently too deferential and punctilious
for one to suspect that by consolation he meant love-making.
"But how did you get in?"
"By the front door, madame. I find it ajar--one assumes, through oversight
on the part of one of the servants--it opens to a touch, I walk in--et
voila!"
His levity was infectious. In spite of herself, she smiled in sympathy.
"And what, pray, is this wonderful consolation you would offer me?"
He produced from a pocket a packet of papers.
"I think madame la princesse is interested in these," he said. "If she will
be so amiable as to accept them from me, with my compliments and one little
word of advice...."