Grey Face/Chapter 35

O," SAID Madame Sabinov, "I am really rather tired. It was nice of you to take me to the first night of so strange a play, but if you don't mind, I should like you to drop me at the Ritz."

"Certainly," Trepniak agreed. "Have I ever sought to coerce you?"

"No," she replied dreamily, staring out of the window; "at least, I am not conscious that you have ever done so."

Trepniak suppressed a start; his self-control was masterful; and, taking a cue from her previous words:

"The play amused you?" he asked.

"Yes, it was very strange, but I doubt if it will be successful."

"Commercially it will not," Trepniak returned promptly. "It shows that the ideal of the civilized world of to-day—self-government—is nothing but mob rule. It shows that emancipated woman breeds a race of slave men. In short, it seeks to prove that the days of any empire are numbered when the rulers of that empire cease to command and begin to obey. Therefore, it is doomed to fail, because, in a community of the blind, one blessed with sight must be lynched, trodden underfoot. It is a play, Poppæa, based upon the wisdom of a man whose name survives as that of a great charlatan; of a man who was a great charlatan, but who was also a genius. I refer to Cagliostro. He said 'the secret of governing mankind is never to tell mankind the truth.'"

"He was right," Madame Sabinov declared, slightly turning her head toward the speaker. "What a pity he is not here to-day."

"Ah!" Trepniak lay back upon the cushions. "The Holy Office ended his career—wisely, from the point of view of the Holy Office. To-day the police, who are to the plebeians what the Prætorian Guard were to the Cæsars, would deal with him just as mercilessly. But here we are."

The dazzling Farman pulled up at the side entrance of the hotel. Trepniak's Asiatic footman leapt to the pavement and opened the door as a porter came down the steps. Trepniak hesitated, then:

"I have no desire to intrude, Poppæa," he said, "but there is something I wished to say to you to-night. May I come in for a moment?"

"Why, certainly," she replied; "please don't think I want to send you away."

They entered the hotel and sought a deserted corner of the lounge.

"What I have to say is this," Trepniak began at once. "I wish you to accept, not as a gift, but as something that I owe you, the deeds which you recently returned to me. No! A moment. Allow me to go on. The house has been stripped from roof to cellar; the appointments of which you disapproved are no more; but the property is yours, to sell, to let, or to occupy, as you choose. The other provisions which I had made for you I wish you to retain—I will explain why. You have dismissed me, and I accept my dismissal, but I am leaving England almost immediately; we shall probably never meet again. You have meant more in my life than you will ever know. I am not a good man, but I am not ungenerous. I wish to be grateful. It is the last joy in your power to grant me. Can you refuse it?"

Not unmoved by his earnestness, Madame Sabinov turned her slow regard upon the speaker. She had foreseen this appeal and had dreaded it. Sir Provost Hope, whom she had consulted a second time, had given her guarded advice, the significance of which she could not misconstrue. If she would regain command of her soul she must definitely sever, in his own words, "the chief association" of her present life. This, down to the smallest trinket which linked her with it, she must put away. Sir Provost had refused to name the source of the influence which dominated her, but she had reasoned that it could only be that of Trepniak. Therefore:

"I am not ungrateful for your offer, Anton," she replied, "but already I am your debtor. No, please!" She stood up. "Truly, I am very tired. If on consideration I think I have done a wrong thing, I shall not hesitate to communicate with you. I don't mean by this that you are not to call upon me. Please come at any time you like. I have few engagements."

She held out her hand.

"Good-night. I have enjoyed the evening very much."

Trepniak stood looking at her, a curiously statuesque, forbidding figure, the dead pallor of his face lending it, in the subdued light, an appearance like that of marble. His hand, when she touched it with her own, was cold; his lips scarcely moved, but:

"Good-night," he said.

She turned and walked away, leaving him there in the shadowy corner.

Her own room gained, she switched on all the lights, threw her wrap upon the bed, and sat down wearily, staring across at her own reflection in the mirror. To-night, for the first time, she had experienced fear of Trepniak. Fear of his house, of the people who surrounded him, she had always felt vaguely, but of the man himself none hitherto.

In Park Lane she had often believed herself to be watched. She had rarely remained long in any one of the singular rooms without receiving an impression that hidden behind some fanciful screen, concealed by the draperies before a door, lurking in the shadow of this or that ornate piece of furniture, was watching, always watching, some thing, some one, and waiting.

It had been the same in Paris. Now, on two recent occasions, either her imagination had tricked her, or she had obtained glimpses of a strange, deformed, almost inhuman creature who had disappeared as she approached the spot upon which she had detected, or thought she had detected, his presence. It occurred to her that Trepniak had had her watched since the outset of their friendship; that some hideous member of his household dogged her footsteps jealously. It would not have surprised her, whose mother's life had begun in a harêm, yet it was distasteful, indeed insufferable.

More than once she had spoken of this to Trepniak, but he had denied any knowledge of the matter.

Her second interview with Sir Provost Hope had resulted in a definite change of outlook, however; annoyance had become fear, repulsion. She had followed his advice down to the smallest detail; and since thus punctiliously setting her affairs in order, she had ceased to experience those unaccountable lapses, those gaps in her memory, upon which no process of reasoning could throw any light.

She did not fear men. Early in life she had learned what the brute in man can be capable of at its worst. Upon this score she had no more to learn, but the shadow which twice she believed to have become visible was scarcely definable as a human being.

To-night her thoughts were ill company. She rang for coffee and sat sipping it and smoking a perfumed cigarette, boxes of which were regularly despatched to her, in whatever part of the world she might be, by a member of one of the few noble families of the Near East which had survived the universal revolution against ruling classes.

She walked across to the window, and, drawing the curtains aside, looked along Piccadilly in the direction of the Green Park.

There was a brilliant moon, and now, as the hour was after midnight and pedestrians were comparatively few, a desire for that sort of solitude which can only be known in the open air came to her insistently. She determined to put a long coat over her evening frock and to walk, in the hope that exercise would bring physical weariness and thus induce sleep. She regretted having drunk coffee. It was a habit due to a long familiarity with late hours; but the peace of sleep was all she asked of to-night.

Wearing a long dark coat and a tightly fitting black hat, she set out, turning into St. James's Street and walking down in the direction of the Palace. She had no more definite object in view than enjoyment of a perfect night and defeat of the fiend, insomnia, which threatened her.

She passed the Palace and came out on the Mall, its many lights competing with the moon, but whose guardian trees defied nature and art alike fashioning long aisles of shadows. She turned westward to where in the distance the Victoria Memorial beckoned whitely.

Here she found unexpected peace. A faint, cool breeze coming from the direction of the lake in St. James's Park was welcome after an evening spent in enclosed and crowded places. Few people were abroad, although an irregular procession of taxicabs followed the prescribed route from Victoria Station along the Mall and round through Marlborough Gate.

Her thoughts became retrospective and sadness threatened her. In an attempt physically to conquer this mental attitude, to run away, as it were, from old sorrows, she hastened her steps. She had chosen the shadow' path on the right of the trees, and, because her mind was elsewhere, had scarcely noticed the presence of a two-seater drawn up beside the pavement and apparently unoccupied.

Some little distance she had gone when she became aware of a growing uneasiness intruding, a present influence, on her reflections of the past. She noted it no more than subconsciously. It was a warning, not powerful enough to recall her from a dream-world of sweeter things into which she had slipped.

Then, suddenly, feverishly, but too late, she realized that some silent danger was following her—had overtaken her!

Hideously long arms, possessing a steely strength, locked themselves about her body. A large, soft pad, saturated with a sickly sweet anesthetic, was pressed over her mouth and nostrils. Stifled, breathless, unable to cry out, she was lifted from her feet, and, in the act of being lifted, unconsciousness began to claim her.

She bit savagely at the hand which held the pad, and felt a stinging moisture upon her lips. In her frenzy she inhaled deeply of the anesthetic and knew that she was lost.

The uplifting movement seemed to continue indefinitely. The steely clutch was forgotten: she seemed to be rising up and up and up to dizzy heights where murmurous voices were around her, where familiar faces appeared and vanished. Old, forgotten love phrases were whispered in her ears, then all merged into a sound of distant singing until silence came.