Part 49 (1/2)

While the company scattered and searched the studio for materials with which to create for him a costume for the mask, the ghost came limping up to the young man who had seated himself again wearily on the throne, and spoke to him quietly.

”The tide's turned, Kater; wake up to it. You're clear of the breakers. The two pictures you were going to destroy are sold. I brought those Americans here while you were away and showed them. I told you they'd take something as soon as you were admitted. Here's the money.”

Robert Kater raised himself, looking in the eyes of his friend, and took the bank notes as if he were not aware what they really might be.

”I say! You've enough to keep you for a year if you don't throw it away. Count it. I doubled your price and they took them at the price I made. Look at these.”

Then Robert Kater looked at them with glittering eyes, and his shaking hand shut upon them, crus.h.i.+ng the bank notes in a tight grip. ”We'll halve it, share and share alike,” he whispered, staring at the ghost without counting it. ”As for this,” his finger touched the decoration on his breast--”it is given to a--You won't take half? Then I'll throw them away.”

”I'll take them all until you're sane enough to know what you're doing. Give them to me.” He took them back and crept quietly, ghostlike, about the room until he found a receptacle in which he knew they would be safe; then, removing one hundred francs from the amount, he brought it back and thrust it in his friend's pocket.

”There--that's enough for you to throw away on us to-night. Why are you taking off your decoration? Leave it where it is. It's yours.”

”Yes, I suppose it is.” Robert Kater brushed his hand across his eyes and stepped down from the throne. Then lifting his head and shoulders as if he threw off a burden, he leaped from the dais, and with one long howl, began an Indian war dance. He was the center and life of the hilarious crowd from that moment. The selection of materials had been made. A curtain of royal purple hung behind the throne, and this they threw around him as a toga, then crowned him as Mark Antony. They found for him also a tunic of soft wool, and with a strip of gold braid they converted a pair of sheepskin bedroom slippers into sandals, bound on his feet over his short socks.

”I say! Mark Antony never wore things like these,” he shouted. ”Give me a mask. I'll not wear these things without a mask.” He s.n.a.t.c.hed at the head of the owl, who ducked under his arm and escaped. ”Go then.

This is better. Mark, the ill.u.s.trious, was an a.s.s.” He made a dive for the head of his braying friend and barely missed him.

”Come. We waste time. Cleopatra awaits him at 'la Fourchette d'or'; all our Cleopatras await us there.”

”Surely?”

”Surely. Madame la Charne is there and the sisters Lucie and Bertha,--all are there,--and with them one very beautiful blonde whom you have never seen.”

”She is for you--you cold Scotchman! That stone within you, which you call heart, to-night it will melt.”

”You have everything planned then?”

”Everything is made ready.”

”Look here! Wait, my friends! I haven't expressed myself yet.” They were preparing to lift him above their heads. ”I wish to say that you are all to share my good fortune and allow--”

”Wait for the champagne. You can say it then with more force.”

”I say! Hold on! I ask you to--”

”So we do. We hold on. Now, up--so.” He was borne in triumph down the stairs and out on the street and away to the sign of the Golden Fork, and seated at the head of the table in a small banquet room opening off from the balcony at one side where the feast which had been ordered and prepared was awaiting them.

A group of masked young women, gathered on the balcony, pelted them with flowers as they pa.s.sed beneath it, and when the men were all seated, they trooped out, and each slid into her appointed place, still masked.

Then came a confusion of tongues, badinage, repartee, wit undiluted by discretion--and rippling laughter as one mask after another was torn off.

”Ah, how glad I am to be rid of it! I was suffocating,” said a soft voice at Robert Kater's side.

He looked down quickly into a pair of clear, red-brown eyes--eyes into which he had never looked before.

”Then we are both content that it is off.” He smiled as he spoke. She glanced up at him, then down and away. When she lifted her eyes an instant later again to his face, he was no longer regarding her. She was piqued, and quickly began conversing with the man on her left, the one who had removed her mask.

”It is no use, your smile, mademoiselle. He is impervious, that man.

He has no sense or he could not turn his eyes away.”