The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne Part 38

I turned the corner at Whitehall Place and looked down the desolate gardens. The benches were empty, the trees were bare, "and no birds sang." I crossed the road.

The Hotel Metropole. The great doors stood invitingly open, and from the pavement one could see the warmth and colour of the vestibule. Here was staying the Arch-Devil who had robbed me of my life. I stood for a moment under the portico shaking with rage. I must have lost consciousness for a few seconds for I do not remember entering or mounting the stairs.

I found myself at the bureau asking for Hamdi Effendi. No, he had not left. They thought he was in the hotel. A page despatched in search of him departed with my card, bawling a number. I hate these big caravanserais where one is a mere number, as in a gaol. "Would to heaven it were a gaol," I muttered to myself, "and this were the number of Hamdi Effendi!"

A lean man rose from a chair and, holding out his hand, effusively saluted me by name. I stared at him. He recalled our acquaintance at Etretat. I fished him up from the deeps of a previous incarnation and vaguely remembered him as a young American floral decorator who used to preach to me the eternal doctrine of hustle. I shook hands with him and hoped that he was well.

"Going very strong. Never stronger. Never so well as when I'm full up with work. But you don't hurry around enough in this dear, sleepy old country. Men lunch. In New York all the lunch one has time for is to swallow a plasmon lozenge in a street-car."

His high pitched voice shrieked bombastic plat.i.tude into my ears for an illimitable time. I answered occasionally with the fringe of my mind.

Could my agonised state of being have remained unperceived by any human creature save this young, hustling, dollar-centred New York floral decorator?

"Since we met, guess how many times I've crossed the Atlantic. Four times!"

Long-suffering Atlantic!

"And about yourself. Still going _piano, piano_ with books and things?"

"Yes, books and things," I echud.

The page came up and announced Hamdi's intention of immediate appearance.

"And how is that charming young lady, your ward, Miss Carlotta?"

continued my tormentor.

"Yes," I answered hurriedly. "A charming young lady. You used to give her sweets. Have you noticed that a fondness for sugar plums induces an equanimity of character? It also spoils the teeth. That is why the front teeth of all American women are so bad."

I must be endowed with the low cunning of the fox, who, I am told, by a swift turn puts his pursuers off the scent. The learned term the rhetorical device an _ignoratio elenchi_. My young friend's patriotism rose in furious defence of his countrywomen's beauty. I looked round the luxuriously furnished vestibule, wondering from which of the many doors the object of my hatred would emerge, and my young friend's talk continued to ruffle the fringe of my mind.

"I'm afraid you're expecting some one rather badly," he remarked with piercing perceptiveness.

"A dull acquaintance," said I. "I shall be sorry when his arrival puts an end to our engaging conversation."

Then the lift door opened and Hamdi stepped out like the Devil in an Alhambra ballet.

He looked at my card and looked at me. He bowed politely.

"I did not know whom I should have the pleasure of seeing," said he in his execrable French. "In what way can I be of service to Sir Marcus Ordeyne?"

"What have you done with Carlotta?" I asked, glaring at him.

His ign.o.ble small-pox pitted face a.s.sumed an expression of bland inquiry.

"Carlotta?"

"Yes," said I. "Where have you taken her to?"

"Explain yourself, Monsieur," said Hamdi. "Do I understand that Lady Ordeyne has disappeared?"

"Tell me what you have done with her."

His crafty features grew satanic; his long fleshy nose squirmed like the proboscis of one of Orcagna's fiends.

"Really, Monsieur," said he, with a hideous leer--oh, words are impotent to express the ugliness of that face! "Really, Monsieur, supposing I had stolen Miladi, you would be the last person I should inform of her whereabouts. You are simple, Monsieur. I had always heard that England was a country of arcadian innocence, so unlike my own black, wicked country, and now--" he shrugged his shoulders blandly, "_j'en suis convaincu_."

"You may jeer, Hamdi Effendi," said I in a white pa.s.sion of anger. "But the English police you will not find so arcadian."

"Ah, so you have been to the police?" said the suave villain. "You have gone to Scotland--Scotland Place Scotland--n'importe. They are investigating the affair? I thank you for the friendly warning."

"Warning!" I cried, choked with indignation. He held up a soft, fat palm.

"Ah--it is not a warning? Then, Monsieur, I am afraid you have committed an indiscretion which your friends in Scotland Place will not pardon you. You would not make a good police agent. I am of the profession, so I know."

I advanced a step. He recoiled, casting a quick look backward at the lift just then standing idle with open doors.

"Hamdi Effendi," I cried, "by the living G.o.d, if you do not restore me my wife--"

But then I stopped short. Hamdi had stepped quickly backward into the lift, and given a sign to the attendant. The door slammed and all I could do was to shake my fist at Hamdi's boots as they disappeared upwards.

I remember once in Italy seeing a cat playing with a partially stunned bat which, flying low, she had brought to the ground. She crouched, patted it, made it move a little, patted it again and retired on her haunches preparing for a spring. Suddenly the bat shot vertically into the air.

I stared at the ascending lift with the cat's expression of impotent dismay and stupefaction. It was inconceivably grotesque. It brought into my tragedy an element of infernal farce. I became conscious of peals of laughter, and looking round beheld the American doubled up in a saddlebag chair. I fled from the vestibule of the hotel clothed from head to foot in derision.

I am at home, sitting at my work-table, walking restlessly about the room, stepping out into the raw air on the balcony and looking for a sign down the dark and silent road. I curse myself for my folly in entering the Hotel Metropole. The d.a.m.ned Turk held me in the palm of his hand. He made mock of me to his heart's content.... And Carlotta is in his power. I grow white with terror when I think of _her_ terror. She is somewhere, locked up in a room, in this great city. My G.o.d! Where can she be?

The police must find her. London is not mediaeval Italy for women to be gagged and carried off to inaccessible strongholds in defiance of laws and government. I repeat to myself that she must come back, that the sober working of English inst.i.tutions will restore her to my arms, that my agony is a matter of a day or two at most, that the special license obtained this morning and now lying before me is not the doc.u.ment of irony it seems, and that in a week's time we shall look back on this nightmare of a day with a smile, and look forward to the future with laughter in our hearts.

But to-night I am very lonely. "Loneliness," says Epictetus, "is a certain condition of the helpless man." And I am helpless. All my aid lies in the learning in those books; and all the learning in all those books on all sides from floor to ceiling cannot render me one infinitesimal grain of practical a.s.sistance. If only Pasquale, man of action, swift intelligence, were here! I can only trust to the trained methods of the unimaginative machine who has set out to trace Carlotta by means of the scar on her forehead and the mole behind her ear. And meanwhile I am very lonely. My sole friend, to whom I could have turned, Mrs. McMurray, is still at Bude. She is to have a child, I understand, in the near future, and will stay in Cornwall till the confinement is over. Her husband, even were he not amid the midnight stress of his newspaper office, I should shrink from seeking. He is a Niagara of a man. Judith--I can go to her no more. And though Antoinette has wept her heart out all day long, poor soul, and Stenson has conveyed by his manner his respectful sympathy, I cannot take counsel of my own servants. I have gathered into my arms the one-eyed cat, and buried my face in his fur--where Carlotta's face has been buried. "That's the way I should like to be kissed!" Oh, my dear, my dear, were you here now, that is the way I should kiss you!

I have gone upstairs and wandered about her room. Antoinette has prepared it for her reception to-night, as usual. The corner of the bedclothes is turned down, and her night-dress, a gossamer thing with cherry ribbons, laid out across the bed. At the foot lie the familiar red slippers with the audacious heels; her dressing-gown is thrown in readiness over the back of a chair; even the bra.s.s hot water can stands in the basin--and it is still hot. And I know that the foolish woman is wide-awake overhead waiting for her darling. I kissed the pillow still fragrant of her where her head rested last night, and I went downstairs with a lump in my throat.

Again I sit at my work-table and, to save myself from going mad with suspense, jot down in my diary* the things that have happened. Put in bald words they scarcely seem credible.

* It will be borne in mind that I am writing these actual pages, afterwards, at Verona, amplifying the rough notes in my diary. M. O.

A sudden clattering, nerve-shaking, strident peal at the front-door bell.

I flew down the stairs. It was news of Carlotta. It was Carlotta herself brought back to me. My heart swelled with joy as if it would burst. I knew that as I opened the door Carlotta would fall laughing, weeping, sobbing into my arms.

I opened the door. It was only a police officer in plain clothes.

"Sir Marcus Ordeyne?"

"Yes."

"We have traced the young lady all right. She left London by the two-twenty Continental express from Victoria with Mr. Sebastian Pasquale."