Part 8 (2/2)
”For an actress there's no such word as 'cannot,'” she said bitterly. ”I could play a part to the finish, and crawl off the stage to die the next instant; yet no one would have guessed that I was dying. I have no understudy. What use to have one? What audience would stop in the theatre after an announcement that their Maxine's understudy would take her place? Every man and woman would walk out and get his money back.
No; for the sake of the man I love better than my life, or twenty lives--the man I've either saved or ruined--I'll play tonight, if I go mad or kill myself to-morrow. Don't 'think quietly,' Ivor. Think out aloud, and let me follow the workings of your mind. We may help each other, so. Let us go over together everything that happened to you from the minute you took the letter-case from the Foreign Secretary up to the minute I came into this room.”
I obeyed, beginning at the very beginning and telling her all, except the part that had to do with Diana Forrest. She had no concern in that.
I told her how I had slept with the green letter-case under my pillow, and had waked to feel and look for it once or twice an hour. How when morning came I had been late in getting to the train: how I had struggled with the two men who tried to keep me out of the reserved compartment into which they were intruding. How the man who had a right to it, after wis.h.i.+ng to prevent my entering, helped me in the end, rather than be alone with the pair who had forced themselves upon him.
How he had stumbled almost into my arms in a panic, during the confusion after the false alarm on the boat's gangway. How he had walked beside me and seemed on the point of speaking, later, in the Gare du Nord. How I had avoided and lost sight of him; but how I had many times covertly touched my pocket to be sure that, through all, the letter-case was still safe there.
Maxine grew calmer, though not, I think, more hopeful as I talked; and at last she folded up the diamonds neatly in the red case, which she gave to me. ”Put that into the same pocket,” she said, ”and then pa.s.s your hand over your coat, as you did often before. Now, does it feel exactly as if it were the green letter-case with which you started out?”
”Yes, I think it does,” I answered, doubtfully. ”I'm afraid I shouldn't know the difference. This _may_ be a little thicker than the other, but--I can't be sure. And, you see, I never once had a chance to unb.u.t.ton my coat and look at the thing I had in this inner pocket. It would have attracted too much attention to risk that; and as a matter of fact, I was especially warned not to do it. I could trust only to the touch. But even granting that, by a skill almost clever enough for sleight of hand--a skill which only the smartest pickpocket in Europe could possess--why should a thief who had stolen my letter-case give me instead a string of diamonds worth many thousands of pounds? If he wanted to put something into my pocket of much the same size and shape as the thing he stole, so that I shouldn't suspect my loss, why didn't he slip in the red case _empty_, instead of containing the necklace?”
”_This_ necklace, too, of all things in the world!” murmured Maxine, lost in the mystery. ”It's like a dream. Yet here--by some miracle--it is, in our hands. And the treaty is gone.”
”The treaty is gone,” I repeated, miserably.
It was Maxine herself who had spoken the words which I merely echoed, yet it almost killed her to hear them from me. No doubt it gave the dreadful fact a kind of inevitability. She flung herself down on the sofa with a groan, her face buried in her hands.
”My G.o.d, what a punishment!” she stammered. ”I've ruined the man I risked everything to save. I will go to the theatre, and I will act to-night, my friend, but unless you can give me back what is lost, when to-morrow morning comes, I shall be out of the world.”
”Don't say that,” I implored, sick with pity for her and shame at my failure. ”All hope isn't over yet; it can't be. I'll think this out.
There must be a solution. There must be a way of laying hold of what _seems_ to be gone. If by giving my life I could get it, I a.s.sure you I wouldn't hesitate for an instant, now: so you see, there's nothing I won't do to help you. Only, I wish the path could be made a little plainer for me--unless for some reason it's necessary for you to keep me in the dark. The word 'treaty' I heard for the first time from you. I didn't know what I was bringing you, except that it was a doc.u.ment of international importance, and that you'd been helping the British Foreign Secretary--perhaps Great Britain as a Power--in some ticklish manoeuvre of high politics. He said that, so far as he was concerned, you might tell me more if you liked. He left it to you. That was his message.”
”Then I will tell you more!” Maxine exclaimed. ”It will be better to do so. I know that it will make it easier for you to help me. The doc.u.ment you were bringing me was a treaty--a quite new treaty between j.a.pan, Russia and France: not a copy, but the original. England had been warned that there was a secret understanding between the three countries, unknown to her. There was no time to make a copy. And I stole the real treaty from Raoul du Laurier, to whom I am engaged--whom I adore, Ivor, as I didn't know it was in me to adore any man. You know his name, perhaps--that he's Under Secretary in the Foreign Office, here in Paris.
Oh, I can read in your eyes what you're thinking of me, now. You can't think worse of me than I think of myself. Yet I did the thing for Raoul's sake. There's that in my defence--only that.”
”I don't understand,” I said, trying not to show the horror of Maxine's treachery to a man who loved and trusted her, which I could not help feeling.
”How could you?--except that I've betrayed him! But I'll tell you everything--I'll go back a long way. Then you'll pity me, even if you scorn me, too. You'll work for me--to save me, and him. For years I've helped the British Government. Oh, I won't spare myself. I've been a spy, sometimes against one Power, sometimes against another. When there was anything to do against Russia, I was always glad, because my dear father was a Pole, and you know how Poles feel towards Russia. Russia ruined his life, and stripped it of everything worth having, not only money, but--oh, well, that's not in this story of mine! I won't trouble you or waste time in the telling. Only, when I was a very young girl, I was already the enemy of all that's Russian, with a big debt of revenge to pay. And I've been paying it, slowly. Don't think that the money I've had for my work--hateful work often--has been used for myself. It's been for my father's country--poor, sad country--every s.h.i.+lling of English coin. As an actress I've supported myself, and, as an actress, it has been easier for me to do the other secret work than it would have been for a woman leading a more sheltered life, mingling less with distinguished persons of different countries, or unable to be eccentric without causing scandal. As for France, she's the friend of Russia, and I haven't a drop of French blood in my veins, so, at least, I've never been treacherous to my own people. Oh, I have made some great _coups_ in the last eight or nine years, Ivor!... for I began before I was sixteen, and now I'm twenty-six. Once or twice England has had to thank me for giving her news of the most vital importance. You're shocked to hear what my inner life has been?”
”If I were shocked, no doubt the feeling would be more than half conventional. One hardly knows how conventional one's opinions are until one stops to think,” said I.
”Once, I gloried in the work,” Maxine went on. ”But that was before I fell in love. You and I have played a little at being in love, but that was to pa.s.s the time. Both of us were flirting. I'd never met Raoul then, and I've never really loved any man except him. It came at first sight, for me: and when he told me that he cared, he said it had begun when he first saw me on the stage; so you see it is as if we were meant for each other. From the moment I gave him my promise, I promised myself that the old work should be given up for ever: Raoul's _fiancee_, Raoul's wife, should not be the tool of diplomatists. Besides, as he's a Frenchman, his wife would owe loyalty to France, which Maxine de Renzie never owed. I wanted--oh, how much I wanted--to be only what Raoul believed me, just a simple, true-hearted woman, with nothing to hide. It made me sick to think that there was one thing I must always conceal from him, but I did the best I could. I vowed to myself that I'd break with the past, and I wrote a letter to the British Foreign Secretary, who has always been a good friend of mine. I said I was engaged, and hoped to begin my life all over again in a different way, though he might be sure that I'd know how to keep his secrets as well as my own.
Oh, Ivor, to think that was hardly more than a week ago! I was happy then. I feel twenty years older now.”
”A week ago. You've been engaged only a week?” I broke in.
”Not many days more. I guessed, I hoped, long ago that Raoul cared, but he wouldn't have told me, even the day he did tell, if he hadn't lost his head a little. He hadn't meant to speak, it seems, for he's poor, and he thought he had no right. But what's a man worth who doesn't lose his head when he loves a woman? I adored him for it. We decided not to let anyone know until a few weeks before we could marry, as I didn't care to have my engagement gossipped about, for months on end. There were reasons why--more than one: but the man of all others whom I didn't want to know the truth found out, or, rather, suspected what had happened, the very day when Raoul and I came to an understanding--Count G.o.densky of the Russian Emba.s.sy. He called, and was let in by mistake while Raoul was with me, and, just as he must have seen by our faces that there was something to suspect, so I saw by his that he did suspect. Oh, a hateful person! I've refused him three times. There are some men so vain that they can never believe a woman really means to say 'no' to them. Count G.o.densky is one of those, and he's dangerous, too.
I'm afraid of him, since I've cared for Raoul, though I used to be afraid of no one, when I'd only myself to think of. Raoul was going away that very night. He had an errand to do for a woman who was a dear and intimate friend of his dead mother. You must know of the d.u.c.h.esse de Montpellier? Well, it was for her: and Raoul is like her son. She has no children of her own.”
”I don't know her,” I said, ”but I've seen her; a charming looking woman, about forty-five, with a gloomy-faced husband--a fellow who might be rather a Tartar to live with. They were pointed out to me at Monte Carlo one year, in the Casino, where the d.u.c.h.ess seemed to be enjoying herself hugely, though the Duke had the air of being dragged in against his will.”
”No doubt he had been--or else he was there to fetch her out. Poor dear, she's a dreadful gambler. It's in her blood! I She lost, I don't know how much, at Monte Carlo on an 'infallible system' she had. She's afraid of her husband, though she loves him immensely; and lately a craze she's had for Bridge has cost her so much that she daren't tell the Duke, who hates her gambling. She confessed to Raoul, and begged him to help her--not with money, for he has none, but by taking a famous and wonderful diamond necklace of hers to Amsterdam, selling the stones for her there, and having them replaced with paste. It was all to be done very secretly, of course, so that the Duke shouldn't know, and Raoul hated it, but he couldn't refuse. He had no idea of telling me this story, that day when he 'lost his head,' while we were bidding each other good-bye before his journey. He didn't mention the name of the d.u.c.h.ess, but said only that he had leave, and was going to Holland on business. But while he was away a _dreadful_ thing happened--the most ghastly misfortune--and as we were engaged to be married, he felt obliged when he came back to let me know the worst.”
”What was the dreadful thing that happened?” I asked, as she paused, pressing her hands against her temples.
<script>