Part 13 (1/2)

”Coffee, Giovanna, please; and will you tell Mr. Strefford that I should like to see him presently.”

If Nick really kept to his intention of staying away for a few days she must trump up some explanation of his absence; but her mind refused to work, and the only thing she could think of was to take Strefford into her confidence. She knew that he could be trusted in a real difficulty; his impish malice transformed itself into a resourceful ingenuity when his friends required it.

The maid stood looking at her with a puzzled gaze, and Susy somewhat sharply repeated her order. ”But don't wake him on purpose,” she added, foreseeing the probable effect on Strefford's temper.

”But, signora, the gentleman is already out.”

”Already out?” Strefford, who could hardly be routed from his bed before luncheon-time! ”Is it so late?” Susy cried, incredulous.

”After nine. And the gentleman took the eight o'clock train for England.

Gervaso said he had received a telegram. He left word that he would write to the signora.”

The door closed upon the maid, and Susy continued to gaze at her painted image in the gla.s.s, as if she had been trying to outstare an importunate stranger. There was no one left for her to take counsel of, then--no one but poor Fred Gillow! She made a grimace at the idea.

But what on earth could have summoned Strefford back to England?

XII

NICK LANSING, in the Milan express, was roused by the same bar of suns.h.i.+ne lying across his knees. He yawned, looked with disgust at his stolidly sleeping neighbours, and wondered why he had decided to go to Milan, and what on earth he should do when he got there. The difficulty about trenchant decisions was that the next morning they generally left one facing a void....

When the train drew into the station at Milan, he scrambled out, got some coffee, and having drunk it decided to continue his journey to Genoa. The state of being carried pa.s.sively onward postponed action and dulled thought; and after twelve hours of furious mental activity that was exactly what he wanted.

He fell into a doze again, waking now and then to haggard intervals of more thinking, and then dropping off to the clank and rattle of the train. Inside his head, in his waking intervals, the same clanking and grinding of wheels and chains went on unremittingly. He had done all his lucid thinking within an hour of leaving the Palazzo Vanderlyn the night before; since then, his brain had simply continued to revolve indefatigably about the same old problem. His cup of coffee, instead of clearing his thoughts, had merely accelerated their pace.

At Genoa he wandered about in the hot streets, bought a cheap suit-case and some underclothes, and then went down to the port in search of a little hotel he remembered there. An hour later he was sitting in the coffee-room, smoking and glancing vacantly over the papers while he waited for dinner, when he became aware of being timidly but intently examined by a small round-faced gentleman with eyegla.s.ses who sat alone at the adjoining table.

”Hullo--b.u.t.tles!” Lansing exclaimed, recognising with surprise the recalcitrant secretary who had resisted Miss Hicks's endeavour to convert him to Tiepolo.

Mr. b.u.t.tles, blus.h.i.+ng to the roots of his scant hair, half rose and bowed ceremoniously.

Nick Lansing's first feeling was of annoyance at being disturbed in his solitary broodings; his next, of relief at having to postpone them even to converse with Mr. b.u.t.tles.

”No idea you were here: is the yacht in harbour?” he asked, remembering that the Ibis must be just about to spread her wings.

Mr. b.u.t.tles, at salute behind his chair, signed a mute negation: for the moment he seemed too embarra.s.sed to speak.

”Ah--you're here as an advance guard? I remember now--I saw Miss Hicks in Venice the day before yesterday,” Lansing continued, dazed at the thought that hardly forty-eight hours had pa.s.sed since his encounter with Coral in the Scalzi.

Mr. b.u.t.tles, instead of speaking, had tentatively approached his table.

”May I take this seat for a moment, Mr. Lansing? Thank you. No, I am not here as an advance guard--though I believe the Ibis is due some time to-morrow.” He cleared his throat, wiped his eyegla.s.ses on a silk handkerchief, replaced them on his nose, and went on solemnly: ”Perhaps, to clear up any possible misunderstanding, I ought to say that I am no longer in the employ of Mr. Hicks.”

Lansing glanced at him sympathetically. It was clear that he suffered horribly in imparting this information, though his compact face did not lend itself to any dramatic display of emotion.

”Really,” Nick smiled, and then ventured: ”I hope it's not owing to conscientious objections to Tiepolo?”

Mr. b.u.t.tles's blush became a smouldering agony. ”Ah, Miss Hicks mentioned to you... told you...? No, Mr. Lansing. I am principled against the effete art of Tiepolo, and of all his contemporaries, I confess; but if Miss Hicks chooses to surrender herself momentarily to the unwholesome spell of the Italian decadence it is not for me to protest or to criticize. Her intellectual and aesthetic range so far exceeds my humble capacity that it would be ridiculous, unbecoming....”

He broke off, and once more wiped a faint moisture from his eyegla.s.ses.

It was evident that he was suffering from a distress which he longed and yet dreaded to communicate. But Nick made no farther effort to bridge the gulf of his own preoccupations; and Mr. b.u.t.tles, after an expectant pause, went on: ”If you see me here to-day it is only because, after a somewhat abrupt departure, I find myself unable to take leave of our friends without a last look at the Ibis--the scene of so many stimulating hours. But I must beg you,” he added earnestly, ”should you see Miss Hicks--or any other member of the party--to make no allusion to my presence in Genoa. I wish,” said Mr. b.u.t.tles with simplicity, ”to preserve the strictest incognito.”