Part 66 (1/2)

Neeland said to Rue, lightly:

”That is true as far as I have been concerned with that amazing box.

It's full of the very devil--of that Yellow Devil! When I pick it up now I seem to feel a premonitory tingling all over me--not entirely disagreeable,” he added to the Princess, ”but the sort of half-scared exhilaration a man feels who takes a chance and is quite sure he'll not have another chance if he loses. Do you understand what I mean?”

”Yes,” said the Princess unsmilingly, her clear, pleasant eyes fixed on him.

In her tranquil, indefinite expression there was something which made him wonder how many such chances this pretty woman had taken in her life of intellectual pleasure and bodily ease.

And now he remembered that Ilse Dumont apparently knew about her--about Ruhannah, too. And Ilse Dumont was the agent of a foreign government.

Was the Princess Mistchenka, patron and amateur of the arts, another such agent? If not, why had he taken this journey for her with this box of papers?

The pa.s.sage of the Boulevard was slow; at every square traffic was halted; all Paris crowded the streets in the early afternoon suns.h.i.+ne, and the taxicab in which they sat made little speed until the Place de la Concorde opened out and the great Arc--a tiny phantom of lavender and pearl--spanned the vanis.h.i.+ng point of a fairy perspective between parallel and endless ramparts of tender green.

”There was a lot of war talk on the _Volhynia_,” said Neeland, ”but I haven't heard any since I landed, nor have I seen a paper. I suppose the Chancelleries have come to some agreement.”

”No,” said the Princess.

”You don't expect trouble, do you? I mean a general European free-for-all fight?”

”I don't know, Jim.”

”Haven't you,” he asked blandly, ”any means of acquiring inside information?”

She did not even pretend to evade the good-humoured malice of his smile and question:

”Yes; I have sources of private information. I have learned nothing, so far.”

He looked at Rue, but the smile had faded from her face and she returned his questioning gaze gravely.

”There is great anxiety in Europe,” she said in a low voice, ”and the tension is increasing. When we arrive home we shall have a chance to converse more freely.” She made the slightest gesture with her head toward the chauffeur--a silent reminder and a caution.

The Princess nodded slightly:

”One never knows,” she remarked. ”We shall have much to say to one another when we are safely home.”

But Neeland could not take it very seriously here in the suns.h.i.+ne, with two pretty women facing him--here speeding up the Champs Elysees between the endless green of chestnut trees and the exquisite silvery-grey facades of the wealthy--with motors flas.h.i.+ng by on every side and the cool, leafy alleys thronged with children and nurse-maids, and Monsieur Guignol squeaking and drumming in his red-curtained box!

How could a young man believe in a sequel to the almost incredible melodrama in which he had figured, with such a sane and delightful setting, here in the familiar company of two charming women he had known?

Besides, all Paris and her police were at his elbow; the olive-wood box stood between his knees; a smartly respectable taxi and its driver drove them with the quiet _eclat_ and precision of a private _employe_; the Arc de Triomphe already rose splendidly above them, and everything that had once been familiar and rea.s.suring and delightful lay under his grateful eyes on every side.

And now the taxicab turned into the rue Soleil d'Or--a new street to Neeland, opened since his student days, and only one square long, with a fountain in the middle and young chestnut trees already thickly crowned with foliage lining both sides of the street.

But although the rue Soleil d'Or was a new street to him, Paris construction is also a rapid affair. The street was faced by charming private houses built of grey Caen stone; the fountain with its golden sun-dial, with the seated figure--a life-size replica of Mans.h.i.+p's original in the Metropolitan Museum--serenely and beautifully holding its place between the Renaissance facades and rows of slender trees.

Summer had not yet burned foliage or flowers; the freshness of spring itself seemed still to reign there.