Part 5 (1/2)

”How rea.s.suring!” she exclaimed, with a brilliant smile. ”Lord Wolfenden is going to be at the 'Milan' to-night,” she added, turning to Mr. Sabin. ”Why don't you ask him to join us? I shall feel so much more comfortable.”

There was a faint but distinct frown on Mr. Sabin's face--a distinct hesitation before he spoke. But Wolfenden would notice neither. He was looking over Mr. Sabin's shoulder, and his instructions were very clear.

”If you will have supper with us we shall be very pleased,” Mr. Sabin said stiffly; ”but no doubt you have already made your party. Supper is an inst.i.tution which one seldom contemplates alone.”

”I am quite free, and I shall be delighted,” Wolfenden said without hesitation. ”About eleven, I suppose?”

”A quarter past,” Mr. Sabin said, stepping into the cab. ”We may go to the theatre.”

The hansom drove off, and Wolfenden stood on the pavement, hat in hand. What fortune! He could scarcely believe in it. Then, just as he turned to move on, something lying at his feet almost at the edge of the kerbstone attracted his attention. He looked at it more closely. It was a ribbon--a little delicate strip of deep blue ribbon. He knew quite well whence it must have come. It had fallen from her gown as she had stepped into the hansom. He looked up and down the street. It was full, but he saw no one whom he knew. The thing could be done in a minute. He stooped quickly down and picked it up crus.h.i.+ng it in his gloved hand, and walking on at once with heightened colour and a general sense of having made a fool of himself. For a moment or two he was especially careful to look neither to the right or to the left; then a sense that some one from the other side of the road was watching him drew his eyes in that direction. A young man was standing upon the edge of the pavement, a peculiar smile parting his lips and a cigarette between his fingers. For a moment Wolfenden was furiously angry; then the eyes of the two men met across the street, and Wolfenden forgot his anger. He recognised him at once, notwithstanding his appearance in an afternoon toilette as carefully chosen as his own. It was Felix, Mr. Sabin's a.s.sailant.

CHAPTER IX.

THE SHADOWS THAT GO BEFORE.

Wolfenden forgot his anger at once. He hesitated for a moment, then he crossed the street and stood side by side with Felix upon the pavement.

”I am glad to see that you are looking a sane man again,” Wolfenden said, after they had exchanged the usual greetings. ”You might have been in a much more uncomfortable place, after your last night's escapade.”

Felix shrugged his shoulders.

”I think,” he said, ”that if I had succeeded a little discomfort would only have amused me. It is not pleasant to fail.”

Wolfenden stood squarely upon his feet, and laid his hand lightly upon the other's shoulder.

”Look here,” he said, ”it won't do for you to go following a man about London like this, watching for an opportunity to murder him. I don't like interfering in other people's business, but willingly or unwillingly I seem to have got mixed up in this, and I have a word or two to say about it. Unless you give me your promise, upon your honour, to make no further attempt upon that man's life, I shall go to the police, tell them what I know, and have you watched.”

”You shall have,” Felix said quietly, ”my promise. A greater power than the threat of your English police has tied my hands; for the present I have abandoned my purpose.”

”I am bound to believe you,” Wolfenden said, ”and you look as though you were speaking the truth; yet you must forgive my asking why, in that case, you are following the man about? You must have a motive.”

Felix shook his head.

”As it happened,” he said, ”I am here by the merest accident. It may seem strange to you, but it is perfectly true. I have just come out of Waldorf's, above there, and I saw you all three upon the pavement.”

”I am glad to hear it,” Wolfenden said.

”More glad,” Felix said, ”than I was to see you with them. Can you not believe what I tell you? shall I give you proof? will you be convinced then? Every moment you spend with that man is an evil one for you. You may have thought me inclined to be melodramatic last night. Perhaps I was! All the same the man is a fiend. Will you not be warned? I tell you that he is a fiend.”

”Perhaps he is,” Wolfenden said indifferently. ”I am not interested in him.”

”But you are interested--in his companion.”

Wolfenden frowned.

”I think,” he said, ”that we will leave the lady out of the conversation.”

Felix sighed.

”You are a good fellow,” he said; ”but, forgive me, like all your countrymen, you carry chivalry just a thought too far--even to simplicity. You do not understand such people and their ways.”

Wolfenden was getting angry, but he held himself in check.

”You know nothing against her,” he said slowly.

”It is true,” Felix answered. ”I know nothing against her. It is not necessary. She is his creature. That is apparent. The shadow of his wickedness is enough.”

Wolfenden checked himself in the middle of a hot reply. He was suddenly conscious of the absurdity of losing his temper in the open street with a man so obviously ill-balanced--possessed, too, of such strange and wild impulses.

”Let us talk,” he said, ”of something else, or say good-morning. Which way were you going?”

”To the Russian Emba.s.sy,” Felix said, ”I have some work to do this afternoon.”

Wolfenden looked at him curiously.

”Our ways, then, are the same for a short distance,” he said. ”Let us walk together. Forgive me, but you are really, then, attached to the Emba.s.sy?”

Felix nodded, and glanced at his companion with a smile.

”I am not what you call a fraud altogether,” he said. ”I am junior secretary to Prince Lobenski. You, I think, are not a politician, are you?”

Wolfenden shook his head.

”I take no interest in politics,” he said. ”I shall probably have to sit in the House of Lords some day, but I shall be sorry indeed when the time comes.”

Felix sighed, and was silent for a moment.

”You are perhaps fortunate,” he said. ”The ways of the politician are not exactly rose-strewn. You represent a cla.s.s which in my country does not exist. There we are all either in the army, or interested in statecraft. Perhaps the secure position of your country does not require such ardent service?”

”You are--of what nationality, may I ask?” Wolfenden inquired.

Felix hesitated.

”Perhaps,” he said, ”you had better not know. The less you know of me the better. The time may come when it will be to your benefit to be ignorant.”

Wolfenden took no pains to hide his incredulity.

”It is easy to see that you are a stranger in this country,” he remarked. ”We are not in Russia or in South America. I can a.s.sure you that we scarcely know the meaning of the word 'intrigue' here. We are the most matter-of-fact and perhaps the most commonplace nation in the world. You will find it out for yourself in time. Whilst you are with us you must perforce fall to our level.”

”I, too, must become commonplace,” Felix said, smiling. ”Is that what you mean?”

”In a certain sense, yes,” Wolfenden answered. ”You will not be able to help it. It will be the natural result of your environment. In your own country, wherever that may be, I can imagine that you might be a person jealously watched by the police; your comings and goings made a note of; your intrigues--I take it for granted that you are concerned in some--the object of the most jealous and unceasing suspicion. Here there is nothing of that. You could not intrigue if you wanted to. There is nothing to intrigue about.”