The Place of Honeymoons
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Courtlandt continued toward the exit, his head forward, his gaze bent on the path. He had the air of a man deep in thought, philosophic thought, which leaves the brows unmarred by those corrugations known as frowns. Yet his thoughts were far from philosophic. Indeed, his soul was in mad turmoil. He could have thrown his arms toward the blue sky and cursed aloud the fates that had set this new tangle at his feet. He longed for the jungles and some mad beast to vent his wrath upon. But he gave no sign. He had returned with a purpose as hard and grim as iron; and no obstacle, less powerful than death, should divert or control him. Abduction? Let the public believe what it might; he held the key to the mystery. She was afraid, and had taken flight. So be it.
“I say, Ted,” called out the artist, “what did you mean by saying that you were a Dutchman?”
Courtlandt paused so that Abbott might catch up to him. “I said that I was a Dutchman?”
“Yes. And it has just occurred to me that you meant something.”
“Oh, yes. You were talking of Da Toscana? Let’s call her Harrigan. It will save time, and no one will know to whom we refer. You said she was Irish, and that when she said a thing she meant it. My boy, the Irish are notorious for claiming that. They often say it before they see clearly. Now, we Dutchmen, – it takes a long time for us to make up our minds, but when we do, something has got to bend or break.”
“You don’t mean to say that you are going to settle down and get married?”
“I’m not going to settle down and get married, if that will ease your mind any.”
“Man, I was hoping!”
“Three meals a day in the same house, with the same woman, never appealed to me.”
“What do you want, one for each meal?”
“There’s the dusky princess peeking out again. The truth is, Abby, if I could hide myself for three or four years, long enough for people to forget me, I might reconsider. But it should be under another name. They envy us millionaires. Why, we are the lonesomest duffers going. We distrust every one; we fly when a woman approaches; we become monomaniacs; one thing obsesses us, everybody is after our money. We want friends, we want wives, but we want them to be attracted to us and not to our money-bags. Oh, pshaw! What plans have you made in regard to the search?”
Gloom settled upon the artist’s face. “I’ve got to find out what’s happened to her, Ted. This isn’t any play. Why, she loves the part of Marguerite as she loves nothing else. She’s been kidnaped, and only God knows for what reason. It has knocked me silly. I just came up from Como, where she spends the summers now. I was going to take her and Fournier out to dinner.”
“Who’s Fournier?”
“Mademoiselle Fournier, the composer. She goes with Nora on the yearly concert tours.”
“Pretty?”
“Charming.”
“I see,” thoughtfully. “What part of the lake; the Villa d’Este, Cadenabbia?”
“Bellaggio. Oh, it was ripping last summer. She’s always singing when she’s happy. When she sings out on the terrace, suddenly, without giving any one warning, her voice is wonderful. No audience ever heard anything like it.”
“I heard her Friday night. I dropped in at the Opera without knowing what they were singing. I admit all you say in regard to her voice and looks; but I stick to the whim.”
“But you can’t fake that chap with the blond mustache,” retorted Abbott grimly. “Lord, I wish I had run into you any day but to-day. I’m all in. I can telephone to the Opera from the studio, and then we shall know for a certainty whether or not she will return for the performance to-night. If not, then I’m going in for a little detective work.”
“Abby, it will turn out to be the sheep of Little Bo-Peep.”
“Have your own way about it.”
When they arrived at the studio Abbott telephoned promptly. Nothing had been heard. They were substituting another singer.
“Call up the Herald,” suggested Courtlandt.
Abbott did so. And he had to answer innumerable questions, questions which worked him into a fine rage: who was he, where did he live, what did he know, how long had he been in Paris, and could he prove that he had arrived that morning? Abbott wanted to fling the receiver into the mouth of the transmitter, but his patience was presently rewarded. The singer had not yet been found, but the chauffeur of the mysterious car had turned up … in a hospital, and perhaps by night they would know everything. The chauffeur had had a bad accident; the car itself was a total wreck, in a ditch, not far from Versailles.
“There!” cried Abbott, slamming the receiver on the hook. “What do you say to that?”
“The chauffeur may have left her somewhere, got drunk afterward, and plunged into the ditch. Things have happened like that. Abby, don’t make a camel’s-hair shirt out of your paint-brushes. What a pother about a singer! If it had been a great inventor, a poet, an artist, there would have been nothing more than a two-line paragraph. But an opera-singer, one who entertains us during our idle evenings – ha! that’s a different matter. Set instantly that great municipal machinery called the police in action; sell extra editions on the streets. What ado!”
“What the devil makes you so bitter?”
“Was I bitter? I thought I was philosophizing.” Courtlandt consulted his watch. Half after four. “Come over to the Maurice and dine with me to-morrow night, that is, if you do not find your prima donna. I’ve an engagement at five-thirty, and must be off.”
“I was about to ask you to dine with me to-night,” disappointedly.
“Can’t; awfully sorry, Abby. It was only luck that I met you in the Luxembourg. Be over about seven. I was very glad to see you again.”
Abbott kicked a broken easel into a corner. “All right. If anything turns up I’ll let you know. You’re at the Grand?”
“Yes. By-by.”
“I know what’s the matter with him,” mused the artist, alone. “Some woman has chucked him. Silly little fool, probably.”
Courtlandt went down-stairs and out into the boulevard. Frankly, he was beginning to feel concerned. He still held to his original opinion that the diva had disappeared of her own free will; but if the machinery of the police had been started, he realized that his own safety would eventually become involved. By this time, he reasoned, there would not be a hotel in Paris free of surveillance. Naturally, blond strangers would be in demand. The complications that would follow his own arrest were not to be ignored. He agreed with his conscience that he had not acted with dignity in forcing his way into her apartment. But that night he had been at odds with convention; his spirit had been that of the marauding old Dutchman of the seventeenth century. He perfectly well knew that she was in the right as far as the pistol-shot was concerned. Further, he knew that he could quash any charge she might make in that direction by the simplest of declarations; and to avoid this simplest of declarations she would prefer silence above all things. They knew each other tolerably well.
It was extremely fortunate that he had not been to the hotel since Saturday. He went directly to the war-office. The great and powerful man there was the only hope left. They had met some years before in Algiers, where Courtlandt had rendered him a very real service.
“I did not expect you to the minute,” the great man said pleasantly. “You will not mind waiting for a few minutes.”
“Not in the least. Only, I’m in a deuce of a mess,” frankly and directly. “Innocently enough, I’ve stuck my head into the police net.”
“Is it possible that now I can pay my debt to you?”
“Such as it is. Have you read the article in the newspapers regarding the disappearance of Signorina da Toscana, the singer?”
“Yes.”
“I am the unknown blond. To-morrow morning I want you to go with me to the prefecture and state that I was with you all of Saturday and Sunday; that on Monday you and your wife dined with me, that yesterday we went to the aviation meet, and later to the Odéon.”
“In brief, an alibi?” smiling now.
“Exactly. I shall need one.”
“And a perfectly good alibi. But I have your word that you are in nowise concerned? Pardon the question, but between us it is really necessary if I am to be of service to you.”
“On my word as a gentleman.”
“That is sufficient.”
“In fact, I do not believe that she has been abducted at all. Will you let me use your pad and pen for a minute?”
The other pushed over the required articles. Courtlandt scrawled a few words and passed back the pad.
“For me to read?”
“Yes,” moodily.
The Frenchman read. Courtlandt watched him anxiously. There was not even a flicker of surprise in the official eye. Calmly he ripped off the sheet and tore it into bits, distributing the pieces into the various waste-baskets yawning about his long flat desk. Next, still avoiding the younger man’s eye, he arranged his papers neatly and locked them up in a huge safe which only the artillery of the German army could have forced. He then called for his hat and stick. He beckoned to Courtlandt to follow. Not a word was said until the car was humming on the road to Vincennes.
“Well?” said Courtlandt, finally. It was not possible for him to hold back the question any longer.
“My dear friend, I am taking you out to the villa for the night.”
“But I have nothing…”
“And I have everything, even foresight. If you were arrested to-night it would cause you some inconvenience. I am fifty-six, some twenty years your senior. Under this hat of mine I carry a thousand secrets, and every one of these thousand must go to the grave with me, yours along with them. I have met you a dozen times since those Algerian days, and never have you failed to afford me some amusement or excitement. You are the most interesting and entertaining young man I know. Try one of these cigars.”
Precisely at the time Courtlandt stepped into the automobile outside the war-office, a scene, peculiar in character, but inconspicuous in that it did not attract attention, was enacted in the Gare de l’Est. Two sober-visaged men stood respectfully aside to permit a tall young man in a Bavarian hat to enter a compartment of the second-class. What could be seen of the young man’s face was full of smothered wrath and disappointment. How he hated himself, for his weakness, for his cowardice! He was not all bad. Knowing that he was being watched and followed, he could not go to Versailles and compromise her, uselessly. And devil take the sleek demon of a woman who had prompted him to commit so base an act!
“You will at least,” he said, “deliver that message which I have intrusted to your care.”
“It shall reach Versailles to-night, your Highness.”
The young man reread the telegram which one of the two men had given him a moment since. It was a command which even he, wilful and disobedient as he was, dared not ignore. He ripped it into shreds and flung them out of the window. He did not apologize to the man into whose face the pieces flew. That gentleman reddened perceptibly, but he held his tongue. The blare of a horn announced the time of departure. The train moved. The two men on the platform saluted, but the young man ignored the salutation. Not until the rear car disappeared in the hazy distance did the watchers stir. Then they left the station and got into the tonneau of a touring-car, which shot away and did not stop until it drew up before that imposing embassy upon which the French will always look with more or less suspicion.
CHAPTER VI
THE BIRD BEHIND BARS
The most beautiful blue Irish eyes in the world gazed out at the dawn which turned night-blue into day-blue and paled the stars. Rosal lay the undulating horizon, presently to burst into living flame, transmuting the dull steel bars of the window into fairy gold, that trick of alchemy so futilely sought by man. There was a window at the north and another at the south, likewise barred; but the Irish eyes never sought these two. It was from the east window only that they could see the long white road that led to Paris.
The nightingale was truly caged. But the wild heart of the eagle beat in this nightingale’s breast, and the eyes burned as fiercely toward the east as the east burned toward the west. Sunday and Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday and Thursday, to-day; and that the five dawns were singular in beauty and that she had never in her life before witnessed the creation of five days, one after another, made no impression upon her sense of the beautiful, so delicate and receptive in ordinary times. She was conscious that within her the cup of wrath was overflowing. Of other things, such as eating and sleeping and moving about in her cage (more like an eagle indeed than a nightingale), recurrence had blunted her perception.
Her clothes were soiled and crumpled, sundrily torn; her hair was in disorder, and tendrils hung about her temples and forehead – thick black hair, full of purple tones in the sunlight – for she had not surrendered peacefully to this incarceration. Dignity, that phase of philosophy which accepts quietly the inevitable, she had thrown to the winds. She had fought desperately, primordially, when she had learned that her errand of mercy was nothing more than a cruel hoax.
“Oh, but he shall pay, he shall pay!” she murmured, striving to loosen the bars with her small, white, helpless hands. The cry seemed to be an arietta, for through all these four maddening days she had voiced it, – now low and deadly with hate, now full-toned in burning anger, now broken by sobs of despair. “Will you never come, so that I may tell you how base and vile you are?” she further addressed the east.
She had waited for his appearance on Sunday. Late in the day one of the jailers had informed her that it was impossible for the gentleman to come before Monday. So she marshaled her army of phrases, of accusations, of denunciations, ready to smother him with them the moment he came. But he came not Monday, nor Tuesday, nor Wednesday. The suspense was to her mind diabolical. She began to understand: he intended to keep her there till he was sure that her spirit was broken, then he would come. Break her spirit? She laughed wildly. He could break her spirit no more easily than she could break these bars. To bring her to Versailles upon an errand of mercy! Well, he was capable of anything.
The room was large and fairly comfortable, but contained nothing breakable, having been tenanted at one time by a strenuous lunatic, who had considerately died after his immediate family and relations had worn themselves into their several graves, taking care of him. But Eleonora Harrigan knew nothing of the history of the room while she occupied it. So, no ghost disturbed her restless slumberless nights, consumed in watching and listening.
She was not particularly distressed because she knew that it would not be possible for her to sing again until the following winter in New York. She had sobbed too much, with her face buried in the pillow. Had these sobs been born of weakness, all might have been well; but rage had mothered them, and thus her voice was in a very bad way. This morning she was noticeably hoarse, and there was a break in the arietta. No, she did not fret over this side of the calamity. The sting of it all lay in the fact that she had been outraged in the matter of personal liberty, with no act of reprisal to ease her immediate longing to be avenged.
Nora, as she stood in the full morning sunlight, was like to gladden the eyes of all mankind. She was beautiful, and all adjectives applicable would but serve to confuse rather than to embellish her physical excellence. She was as beautiful as a garden rose is, needing no defense, no ramparts of cloying phrases. The day of poets is gone, otherwise she would have been sung in cantos. She was tall, shapely, deep-bosomed, fine-skinned. Critics, in praising her charms, delved into mythology and folk-lore for comparisons, until there wasn’t a goddess left on Olympus or on Northland’s icy capes; and when these images became a little shop-worn, referred to certain masterpieces of the old fellows who had left nothing more to be said in oils. Nora enjoyed it all.
She had not been happy in the selection of her stage name; but she had chosen Eleonora da Toscana because she believed there was good luck in it. Once, long before the world knew of her, she had returned home from Italy unexpectedly. “Molly, here’s Nora, from Tuscany!” her delighted father had cried: who at that time had a nebulous idea that Tuscany was somewhere in Ireland because it had a Celtic ring to it. Being filled with love of Italy, its tongue, its history, its physical beauty, she naïvely translated “Nora from Tuscany” into Italian, and declared that when she went upon the stage she would be known by that name. There had been some smiling over the pseudonym; but Nora was Irish enough to cling to it. By and by the great music-loving public ceased to concern itself about her name; it was her fresh beauty and her wonderful voice they craved to see and hear. Kings and queens, emperors and empresses, princes and princesses, – what is called royalty and nobility in the newspapers freely gave her homage. Quite a rise in the world for a little girl who had once lived in a shabby apartment in New York and run barefooted on the wet asphalts, summer nights!
But Nora was not recalling the happy scenes of her childhood; indeed, no; she was still threatening Paris. Once there, she would not lack for reprisals. To have played on her pity! To have made a lure of her tender concern for the unfortunate! Never would she forgive such baseness. And only a little while ago she had been as happy as the nightingale to which they compared her. Never had she wronged any one; she had been kindness and thoughtfulness to all with whom she had come in contact. But from now on!.. Her fingers tightened round the bars. She might have posed as Dido when she learned that the noble Æneas was dead. War, war; woe to the moths who fluttered about her head hereafter!
Ah, but had she been happy? Her hands slid down the bars. Her expression changed. The mouth drooped, the eagle-light in her eyes dimmed. From out the bright morning, somewhere, had come weariness, and with this came weakness, and finally, tears.
She heard the key turn in the lock. They had never come so early before. She was astonished to see that her jailer did not close the door as usual. He put down the breakfast tray on the table. There was tea and toast and fruit.
“Mademoiselle, there has been a terrible mistake,” said the man humbly.
“Ah! So you have found that out?” she cried.
“Yes. You are not the person for whom this room was intended.” Which was half a truth and perfectly true, paradoxical as it may seem. “Eat your breakfast in peace. You are free, Mademoiselle.”
“Free? You will not hinder me if I walk through that door?”
“No, Mademoiselle. On the contrary, I shall be very glad, and so will my brother, who guards you at night. I repeat, there has been a frightful mistake. Monsieur Champeaux …”
“Monsieur Champeaux!” Nora was bewildered. She had never heard this name before.
“He calls himself that,” was the diplomatic answer.
All Nora’s suspicions took firm ground again. “Will you describe this Monsieur Champeaux to me?” asked the actress coming into life.
“He is short, dark, and old, Mademoiselle.”
“Rather is he not tall, blond, and young?” ironically.
The jailer concealed what annoyance he felt. In his way he was just as capable an actor as she was. The accuracy of her description startled him; for the affair had been carried out so adroitly that he had been positive that until her real captor appeared she would be totally in the dark regarding his identity. And here she had hit it off in less than a dozen words. Oh, well; it did not matter now. She might try to make it unpleasant for his employer, but he doubted the ultimate success of her attempts. However, the matter was at an end as far as he was concerned.
“Have you thought what this means? It is abduction. It is a crime you have committed, punishable by long imprisonment.”
“I have been Mademoiselle’s jailer, not her abductor. And when one is poor and in need of money!” He shrugged.
“I will give you a thousand francs for the name and address of the man who instigated this outrage.”
Ah, he thought: then she wasn’t so sure? “I told you the name, Mademoiselle. As for his address, I dare not give it, not for ten thousand francs. Besides, I have said that there has been a mistake.”
“For whom have I been mistaken?”
“Who but Monsieur Champeaux’s wife, Mademoiselle, who is not in her right mind?” with inimitable sadness.
“Very well,” said Nora. “You say that I am free. That is all I want, freedom.”
“In twenty minutes the electric tram leaves for Paris. You will recall, Mademoiselle,” humbly, “that we have taken nothing belonging to you. You have your purse and hat and cloak. The struggle was most unfortunate. But, think, Mademoiselle, think; we thought you to be insane!”
“Permit me to doubt that! And you are not afraid to let me go?”
“Not in the least, Mademoiselle. A mistake has been made, and in telling you to go at once, we do our best to rectify this mistake. It is only five minutes to the tram. A carriage is at the door. Will Mademoiselle be pleased to remember that we have treated her with the utmost courtesy?”
“I shall remember everything,” ominously.
“Very good, Mademoiselle. You will be in Paris before nine.” With this he bowed and backed out of the room as though Nora had suddenly made a distinct ascension in the scale of importance.
“Wait!” she called.
His face appeared in the doorway again.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Since this morning, Mademoiselle.”
“That is all.”
Free! Her veins tingled with strange exultation. He had lost his courage and had become afraid of the consequences. Free! Monsieur Champeaux indeed! Cowardice was a new development in his character. He had been afraid to come. She drank the tea, but did not touch the toast or fruit. There would be time enough for breakfast when she arrived in Paris. Her hands trembled violently as she pinned on her hat, and she was not greatly concerned as to the angle. She snatched up her purse and cloak, and sped out into the street. A phaeton awaited her.
“The tram,” she said.
“Yes, Mademoiselle.”
“And go quickly.” She would not feel safe until she was in the tram.
A face appeared at one of the windows. As the vehicle turned the corner, the face vanished; and perhaps that particular visage disappeared forever. A gray wig came off, the little gray side-whiskers, the bushy grey eyebrows, revealing a clever face, not more than thirty, cunning, but humorously cunning and anything but scoundrelly. The painted scar aslant the nose was also obliterated. With haste the man thrust the evidences of disguise into a traveling-bag, ran here and there through the rooms, all bare and unfurnished save the one with the bars and the kitchen, which contained two cots and some cooking utensils. Nothing of importance had been left behind. He locked the door and ran all the way to the Place d’Armes, catching the tram to Paris by a fraction of a minute.
All very well done. She would be in Paris before the police made any definite move. The one thing that disturbed him was the thought of the blockhead of a chauffeur, who had got drunk before his return from Versailles. If he talked; well, he could say nothing beyond the fact that he had deposited the singer at the house as directed. He knew positively nothing.
The man laughed softly. A thousand francs apiece for him and Antoine, and no possible chance of being discovered. Let the police find the house in Versailles; let them trace whatever paths they found; the agent would tell them, and honestly, that an aged man had rented the house for a month and had paid him in advance. What more could the agent say? Only one bit of puzzlement: why hadn’t the blond stranger appeared? Who was he, in truth, and what had been his game? All this waiting and wondering, and then a curt telegram of the night before, saying, “Release her.” So much the better. What his employer’s motives were did not interest him half so much as the fact that he had a thousand francs in his pocket, and that all element of danger had been done away with. True, the singer herself would move heaven and earth to find out who had been back of the abduction. Let her make her accusations. He was out of it.