Part 20 (2/2)

To my disgust, the three of them refused to enlighten me further as to the history, ident.i.ty or character of either Mr. or Mrs. Pless, but of course I knew that I was entertaining under my roof, by the most extraordinary coincidence, the Count and Countess of Something-or-other, who were at war, and the child they were fighting for with motives of an entirely opposite nature.

Right or wrong, my sympathies were with the refugee in the lonely east wing. I was all the more determined now to s.h.i.+eld her as far as it lay in my power to do so, and to defend her if the worst were to happen.

Mr. Pless tossed his cigarette over the railing and sauntered over to join us.

”I suppose you've been discussing the view,” he said as he came up.

There was a mean smile on his--yes, it was a rather handsome face--and the two ladies started guiltily. The attack on his part was particularly direct when one stops to consider that there wasn't any view to be had from where we were sitting, unless one could call a three-decked plasterer's scaffolding a view.

”We've been discussing the recent improvements about the castle, Mr.

Pless,” said I with so much directness that I felt Mrs. Billy Smith's arm stiffen and suspected a general tension of nerves from head to foot.

”You shouldn't spoil the place, Mr. Smart,” said he, with a careless glance about him.

”Don't ruin the ruins,” added Billy Smith, of the diplomatic corps.

”What time do we dine?” asked Mr. Pless, with a suppressed yawn.

”At eight,” said Elsie promptly.

We were in the habit of dining at seven-thirty, but I was growing accustomed to the over-riding process, so allowed my dinner hour to be changed without a word.

”I think I'll take a nap,” said he. With a languid smile and a little flaunt of his hand as if dismissing us, he moved languidly off, but stopped after a few steps to say to me: ”We'll explore the castle to-morrow, Mr. Smart, if it's just the same to you.” He spoke with a very slight accent and in a peculiarly attractive manner. There was charm to the man, I was bound to admit. ”I know Schloss Rothhoefen very well. It is an old stamping ground of mine.”

”Indeed,” said I, affecting surprise.

”I spent a very joyous season here not so many years ago. Hohendahl is a bosom friend.”

When he was quite out of hearing, Billy Smith leaned over and said to me: ”He spent his honeymoon here, old man. It was the girls' idea to bring him here to a.s.suage the present with memories of the past. Quite a pretty sentiment, eh?”

”It depends on how he spent it,” I said significantly. Smith grinned approvingly. Being a diplomat he sensed my meaning at once.

”It was a lot of money,” he said.

At dinner the Russian baron, who examined every particle of food he ate with great care and discrimination, evidently looking for poison, embarra.s.sed me in the usual fas.h.i.+on by asking how I write my books, where I get my plots, and all the rest of the questions that have become so hatefully unanswerable, ending up by blandly enquiring _what_ I had written. This was made especially humiliating by the prefatory remark that he had lived in Was.h.i.+ngton for five years and had read everything that was worth reading.

If Elsie had been a man I should have kicked her for further confounding me by mentioning the t.i.tles of all my books and saying that he surely must have read them, as everybody did, thereby supplying him with the chance to triumphantly say that he'd be hanged if he'd ever heard of any one of them. I shall always console myself with the joyful thought that I couldn't remember his infernal name and would now make it a point never to do so.

Mr. Pless openly made love to Elsie and the Baron openly made love to Betty Billy. Being a sort of noncommittal bachelor, I ranged myself with the two abandoned husbands and we had quite a reckless time of it, talking with uninterrupted devilishness about the growth of American dentistry in European capitals, the way one has his nails manicured in Germany, the upset price of hot-house strawberries, the relative merit of French and English bulls, the continued progress of the weather and sundry other topics of similar piquancy. Elsie invited all of us to a welsh rarebit party she was giving at eleven-thirty, and then they got to work at the bridge table, poor George Hazzard cutting in occasionally. This left Billy Smith and me free to make up a somewhat somnolent two-some.

I was eager to steal away to the east wing with the news, but how to dispose of Billy without appearing rude was more than I could work out. It was absolutely necessary for the Countess to know that her ex-husband was in the castle. I would have to manage in some way to see her before the evening was over. The least carelessness, the smallest slip might prove the undoing of both of us.

I wondered how she would take the dismal news. Would she become hysterical and go all to pieces? Would the prospect of a week of propinquity be too much for her, even though thick walls intervened to put them into separate worlds? Or, worst of all, would she reveal an uncomfortable spirit of bravado, rashly casting discretion to the winds in order to show him that she was not the timid, beaten coward he might suspect her of being? She had once said to me that she loathed a coward. I have always wondered how it felt to be in a ”pretty kettle of fish,” or a ”pickle,” or any of the synonymous predicaments. Now I knew. Nothing could have been more synchronous than the plural howdy-do that confronted me.

My nervousness must have been outrageously p.r.o.nounced. Pacing the floor, looking at one's watch, sighing profoundly, putting one's hands in the pockets and taking them out again almost immediately, letting questions go by unanswered, and all such, are actions or conditions that usually produce the impression that one is nervous. A discerning observer seldom fails to note the symptoms.

Mr. Smith said to me at nine-sixteen (I know it was exactly nine-sixteen to the second) with polite conviction in his smile: ”You seem to have something on your mind, old chap.”

Now no one but a true diplomat recognises the psychological moment for calling an almost total stranger ”old chap.”

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