Part 16 (2/2)
”The Countess de Santiago?” Connie echoed. ”No. What about her? She sounds interesting.”
”She _is_ interesting. And beautiful.” Everybody had stopped talking by this time, to listen; and in the pause Knight appealed to his wife.
”That's not an exaggeration, is it, Anita?”
Annesley, wondering and somewhat startled, answered that the Countess de Santiago was one of the most beautiful women she had seen.
This riveted the attention which Knight had caught. He had his audience, and went on in a leisurely way.
”Come to think of it, she can't have been heard of in your part of the world until you'd left for England,” he told Constance. ”She's the most extraordinary clairvoyante I ever heard of. That's what made me speak of her. Unfortunately she's not a professional, and won't do anything unless she happens to feel like it. But I wonder if I could persuade her to look in her crystal for you, Lady Annesley-Seton?
”She's an old acquaintance of mine,” he went on, casually. ”I met her in Buenos Aires before her rich elderly husband died, about seven or eight years ago. She was very young then. I came across her again in California, when she was seeing the world as a free woman, after the old fellow's death. Then I introduced her by letter to one or two people in New York, and I believe she has been admired there, and at Newport.
”But I've only _heard_ all that,” Knight hastened to explain. ”I've been too busy till lately to know at first hand what goes on in the 'smart' or the artistic set. _My_ world doesn't take much interest in crystal-gazers and palmists, amateur or professional, even when they happen to be handsome women, like the Countess. But I ran against her again on board the _Monarchic_ about a month ago, crossing to this side, and we picked up threads of old acquaintance. She was staying at the Savoy when I left London.”
He paused a moment, and added:
”As a favour to me, she might set her accomplishments to work on this business. Only she'd have to meet you both and see this house, for I've heard her say she couldn't do anything without knowing the people concerned, and 'getting the atmosphere.'”
”Oh, we _must_ have her!” cried Constance, and all the other women except Annesley chimed in, begging their hostess to invite them if the Countess came.
No one thought it odd that Mrs. Nelson Smith should be silent, for her remark about the Countess de Santiago's beauty showed that she had met the lady; but to any one who had turned a critical stare upon her then, her expression must have seemed strange. She had an unseeing look, the look of one who has become deaf and blind to everything outside some scene conjured up by the brain.
What Annesley saw was a copy of the _Morning Post_. Knight's mention of the Countess de Santiago's power of clairvoyance at the same time with the liner _Monarchic_ printed before her eyes a paragraph which her subconscious self had never forgotten.
For the moment only her body sat between a young hunting baronet and a distinguished elderly general at her cousins' dinner table. Her soul had gone back to London, to the ugly dining room at 22-A, Torrington Square, and was reading aloud from a newspaper to a stout old woman in a tea gown.
She was even able to recall what she had been thinking, as her lips mechanically conveyed the news to Mrs. Ellsworth. She had been wondering how much longer she could go on enduring the monotony, and what Mrs.
Ellsworth would do if her slave should stop reading, shriek, and throw the _Morning Post_ in her face.
As she pictured to herself the old woman's amazement, followed by rage, she had p.r.o.nounced the words:
SENSATIONAL OCCURRENCE ON BOARD THE S.S. _MONARCHIC_
Even that exciting preface had not recalled her interest from her own affairs. She could remember now the hollow, mechanical sound of her voice in her own ears as she had half-heartedly gone on, tempted to turn the picture of her wild revolt into reality.
The paragraph, seemingly forgotten but merely buried under other memories, had told of the disappearance on board the _Monarchic_ of certain pearls and diamonds which were being secretly brought from New York to London by an agent of a great jewellery firm. He had been blamed by the chief officer for not handing the valuables over to the purser.
The unfortunate man (who had not advertised the fact that he was an agent for Van Vreck & Co. until he had had to complain of the theft) excused this seeming carelessness by the statement that he had hoped his ident.i.ty might pa.s.s unsuspected. His theory was that safety lay in insignificance.
He had engaged a small, cheap cabin for himself alone, taking an a.s.sumed name; had pretended to be a schoolmaster on holiday, and had worn the pearls and other things always on his person in a money belt. Even at night he had kept the belt on his body, a revolver under his pillow, and the door of his cabin locked, with an extra patent adjustable lock of his own, invented by a member of the firm he served. It had not seemed probable that he would be recognized, or possible that he could be robbed.
Yet one morning he had waked late, with a dull headache and sensation of sickness, to find that his door, though closed, was unfastened, and that all his most valuable possessions were missing from the belt.
Some were left, as though the thief had fastidiously made his selection, scorning to trouble himself with anything but the best. The mystery of the affair was increased by the fact that, though the man (Annesley vaguely recalled some odd name, like Jekyll or Jedkill) felt certain he had fastened the door, there was no sign that it had been forced open.
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