“Afraid! Pooh! Why should you be afraid? It is true one doesn’t often see a woman with the eyes of a vampire-bat; but there is nothing to be frightened about. I have dissected the eyes of a vampire-bat—very interesting work, very. The Princess has them—only, of course, hers are larger and finer; but there is exactly the same expression in them. I am fond of study, you know; I am studying her. What! Are you determined to run away?”
“I am engaged for this dance to Mr. Courtney,” said Helen, nervously.
“Well, well! We’ll resume our conversation another time,” and Dr. Dean took her hand and patted it pleasantly. “Don’t fret yourself about Denzil; he’ll be all right. And take my advice: don’t marry a Bedouin chief; marry an honest, straightforward, tender-hearted Englishman who’ll take care of you, not a nondescript savage who’ll desert you!”
And with a humorous and kindly smile, Dr. Dean moved off to join the two motionless and picturesque figures that stood side by side looking at the moon, while Helen, like a frightened bird suddenly released, fled precipitately back to the ball-room, where Ross Courtney was already searching for her as his partner in the next waltz.
“Upon my word,” mused the Doctor, “this is a very pretty kettle of fish! The Gezireh Palace Hotel is not a hotel at all, it seems to me; it is a lunatic asylum. What with Lady Fulkeward getting herself up as twenty at the age of sixty; and Muriel and Dolly Chetwynd Lyle man-hunting with more ferocity than sportsmen hunt tigers; Helen in love, Denzil in love, Gervase in love—dear me! dear me! What a list of subjects for a student’s consideration! And the Princess Ziska …”
He broke off his meditations abruptly, vaguely impressed by the strange solemnity of the night. An equal solemnity seemed to surround the two figures to which he now drew nigh, and as the Princess Ziska turned her eyes upon him as he came, he was, to his own vexation, aware that something indefinable disturbed his usual equanimity and gave him an unpleasant thrill.
“You are enjoying a moonlight stroll, Doctor?” she inquired.
Her veil was now cast aside in a careless fold of soft drapery over her shoulders, and her face in its ethereal delicacy of feature and brilliant coloring looked almost too beautiful to be human. Dr. Dean did not reply for a moment; he was thinking what a singular resemblance there was between Armand Gervase and one of the figures on a certain Egyptian fresco in the British Museum.
“Enjoying—er—er—a what?—a moonlight stroll? Exactly—er—yes! Pardon me, Princess, my mind often wanders, and I am afraid I am getting a little deaf as well. Yes, I find the night singularly conducive to meditation; one cannot be in a land like this under a sky like this”—and he pointed to the shining heaven—“without recalling the great histories of the past.”
“I daresay they were very much like the histories of the present,” said Gervase smiling.
“I should doubt that. History is what man makes it; and the character of man in the early days of civilization was, I think, more forceful, more earnest, more strong of purpose, more bent on great achievements.”
“The principal achievement and glory being to kill as many of one’s fellow-creatures as possible!” laughed Gervase—“Like the famous warrior, Araxes, of whom the Princess has just been telling me!”
“Araxes was great, but now Araxes is a forgotten hero,” said the Princess slowly, each accent of her dulcet voice chiming on the ear like the stroke of a small silver bell. “None of the modern discoverers know anything about him yet. They have not even found his tomb; but he was buried in the Pyramids with all the honors of a king. No doubt your clever men will excavate him some day.”
“I think the Pyramids have been very thoroughly explored,” said Dr. Dean. “Nothing of any importance remains in them now.”
The Princess arched her lovely eyebrows.
“No? Ah! I daresay you know them better than I do!” and she laughed, a laugh which was not mirthful so much as scornful.
“I am very much interested in Araxes,” said Gervase then, “partly, I suppose, because he is as yet in the happy condition of being an interred mummy. Nobody has dug him up, unwound his cerements, or photographed him, and his ornaments have not been stolen. And in the second place I am interested in him because it appears he was in love with the famous dancer of his day whom the Princess represents to-night,—Charmazel. I wish I had heard the story before I came to Cairo; I would have got myself up as Araxes in person to-night.”
“In order to play the lover of Charmazel?” queried the Doctor.
“Exactly!” replied Gervase with flashing eyes; “I daresay I could have acted the part.”
“I should imagine you could act any part,” replied the Doctor, blandly. “The rôle of love-making comes easily to most men.”
The Princess looked at him as he spoke and smiled. The jewelled scarab, set as a brooch on her bosom, flashed luridly in the moon, and in her black eyes there was a similar lurid gleam.
“Come and talk to me,” she said, laying her hand on his arm; “I am tired, and the conversation of one’s ball-room partners is very banal. Monsieur Gervase would like me to dance all night, I imagine; but I am too lazy. I leave such energy to Lady Fulkeward and to all the English misses and madams. I love indolence.”
“Most Russian women do, I think,” observed the Doctor.
She laughed.
“But I am not Russian!”
“I know. I never thought you were,” he returned composedly; “but everyone in the hotel has come to the conclusion that you are!”
“They are all wrong! What can I do to put them right?” she inquired with a fascinating little upward movement of her eyebrows.
“Nothing! Leave them in their ignorance. I shall not enlighten them, though I know your nationality.”
“You do?” and a curious shadow darkened her features. “But perhaps you are wrong also!”
“I think not,” said the Doctor, with gentle obstinacy. “You are an Egyptian. Born in Egypt; born of Egypt. Pure Eastern! There is nothing Western about you. Is not it so?”
She looked at him enigmatically.
“You have made a near guess,” she replied; “but you are not absolutely correct. Originally, I am of Egypt.”
Dr. Dean nodded pleasantly.
“Originally,—yes. That is precisely what I mean—originally! Let me take you in to supper.”
He offered his arm, but Gervase made a hasty step forward.
“Princess,” he began—
She waved him off lightly.
“My dear Monsieur Gervase, we are not in the desert, where Bedouin chiefs do just as they like. We are in a modern hotel in Cairo, and all the good English mammas will be dreadfully shocked if I am seen too much with you. I have danced with you five times, remember! And I will dance with you once more before I leave. When our waltz begins, come and find me in the supper-room.”
She moved away on Dr. Dean’s arm, and Gervase moodily drew back and let her pass. When she had gone, he lit a cigarette and walked impatiently up and down the terrace, a heavy frown wrinkling his brows. The shadow of a man suddenly darkened the moonlight in front of him, and Denzil Murray’s hand fell on his shoulder.
“Gervase,” he said, huskily, “I must speak to you.”
Gervase glanced him up and down, taking note of his pale face and wild eyes with a certain good-humored regret and compassion.
“Say on, my friend.”
Denzil looked straight at him, biting his lips hard and clenching his hands in the effort to keep down some evidently violent emotion.
“The Princess Ziska,” he began,—
Gervase smiled, and flicked the ash off his cigarette.
“The Princess Ziska,” he echoed,—“Yes? What of her? She seems to be the only person talked about in Cairo. Everybody in this hotel, at any rate, begins conversation with precisely the same words as you do,—‘the Princess Ziska!’ Upon my life, it is very amusing!”
“It is not amusing to me,” said Denzil, bitterly. “To me it is a matter of life and death.” He paused, and Gervase looked at him curiously. “We’ve always been such good friends, Gervase,” he continued, “that I should be sorry if anything came between us now, so I think it is better to make a clean breast of it and speak out plainly.” Again he hesitated, his face growing still paler, then with a sudden ardent light glowing in his eyes he said—“Gervase, I love the Princess Ziska!”
Gervase threw away his cigarette and laughed aloud with a wild hilarity.
“My good boy, I am very sorry for you! Sorry, too, for myself! I deplore the position in which we are placed with all my heart and soul. It is unfortunate, but it seems inevitable. You love the Princess Ziska,—and by all the gods of Egypt and Christendom, so do I!”
CHAPTER IV.
Denzil recoiled a step backward, then with an impulsive movement strode close up to him, his face unnaturally flushed and his eyes glittering with an evil fire.
“You—you love her! What!—in one short hour, you—who have often boasted to me of having no heart, no eyes for women except as models for your canvas,—you say now that you love a woman whom you have never seen before to-night!”
“Stop!” returned Gervase somewhat moodily, “I am not so sure about that. I have seen her before, though where I cannot tell. But the fire that stirs my pulses now seems to spring from some old passion suddenly revived, and the eyes of the woman we are both mad for—well! they do not inspire holiness, my dear friend! No,—neither in you nor in me! Let us be honest with each other. There is something vile in the composition of Madame la Princesse, and it responds to something equally vile in ourselves. We shall be dragged down by the force of it,—tant pis pour nous! I am sorrier for you than for myself, for you are a good fellow, au fond; you have what the world is learning to despise—sentiment. I have none; for as I told you before, I have no heart, but I have passions—tigerish ones—which must be humored; in fact, I make it my business in life to humor them.”
“Do you intend to humor them in this instance?”
“Assuredly! If I can.”
“Then,—friend as you have been, you can be friend no more,” said Denzil fiercely. “My God! Do you not understand? My blood is as warm as yours,—I will not yield to you one smile, one look from Ziska! No!—I will kill you first!”
Gervase looked at him calmly.
“Will you? Pauvre garçon! You are such a boy still, Denzil,—by-the-bye, how old are you? Ah, I remember now,—twenty-two. Only twenty-two, and I am thirty-eight! So in the measure of time alone, your life is more valuable to you than mine is to me. If you choose, therefore, you can kill me,—now, if you like! I have a very convenient dagger in my belt—I think it has a point—which you are welcome to use for the purpose; but, for heaven’s sake, don’t rant about it—do it! You can kill me—of course you can; but you cannot—mark this well, Denzil!—you cannot prevent my loving the same woman whom you love. I think instead of raving about the matter here in the moonlight, which has the effect of making us look like two orthodox villains in a set stage-scene, we’d better make the best of it, and resolve to abide by the lady’s choice in the matter. What say you? You have known her for many days,—I have known her for two hours. You have had the first innings, so you cannot complain.”
Here he playfully unfastened the Bedouin knife which hung at his belt and offered it to Denzil, holding it delicately by the glittering blade.
“One thrust, my brave boy!” he said. “And you will stop the Ziska fever in my veins at once and forever. But, unless you deal the murderer’s blow, the fever will go on increasing till it reaches its extremest height, and then …”
“And then?” echoed Denzil.
“Then? Oh—God only knows what then!”
Denzil thrust away the offered weapon with a movement of aversion.
“You can jest,” he said. “You are always jesting. But you do not know—you cannot read the horrible thoughts in my mind. I cannot resolve their meaning even to myself. There is some truth in your light words; I feel, I know instinctively, that the woman I love has an attraction about her which is not good, but evil; yet what does that matter? Do not men sometimes love vile women?”
“Always!” replied Gervase briefly.
“Gervase, I have suffered tortures ever since I saw her face!” exclaimed the unhappy lad, his self-control suddenly giving way. “You cannot imagine what my life has been! Her eyes make me mad,—the merest touch of her hand seems to drag me away invisibly. …”
“To perdition!” finished Gervase. “That is the usual end of the journey we men take with beautiful women.”
“And now,” went on Denzil, hardly heeding him, “as if my own despair were not sufficient, you must needs add to it! What evil fate, I wonder, sent you to Cairo! Of course, I have no chance with her now; you are sure to win the day. And can you wonder then that I feel as if I could kill you?”
“Oh, I wonder at nothing,” said Gervase calmly, “except, perhaps, at myself. And I echo your words most feelingly,—What evil fate sent me to Cairo? I cannot tell! But here I purpose to remain. My dear Murray, don’t let us quarrel if we can help it; it is such a waste of time. I am not angry with you for loving la belle Ziska,—try, therefore, not to be angry with me. Let the fair one herself decide as to our merits. My own opinion is that she cares for neither of us, and, moreover, that she never will care for any one except her fascinating self. And certainly her charms are quite enough to engross her whole attention. By the way, let me ask you, Denzil, in this headstrong passion of yours,—for it is a headstrong passion, just as mine is,—do you actually intend to make the Ziska your wife if she will have you?”
“Of course,” replied Murray, with some haughtiness.
A fleeting expression of amusement flitted over Gervase’s features.
“It is very honorable of you,” he said, “very! My dear boy, you shall have your full chance. Because I—I would not make the Princess Madame Gervase for all the world! She is not formed for a life of domesticity—and pardon me—I cannot picture her as the contented châtelaine of your grand old Scotch castle in Ross-shire.”
“Why not?”
“From an artistic point of view the idea is incongruous,” said Gervase lazily. “Nevertheless, I will not interfere with your wooing.”
Denzil’s face brightened.
“You will not?”
“I will not—I promise! But”—and here Gervase paused, looking his young friend full in the eyes, “remember, if your chance falls to the ground—if Madame gives you your congé—if she does not consent to be a Scottish châtelaine and listen every day to the bagpipes at dinner,—you cannot expect me then to be indifferent to my own desires. She shall not be Madame Gervase,—oh, no! She shall not be asked to attend to the pot-au-feu; she shall act the rôle for which she has dressed to-night; she shall be another Charmazel to another Araxes, though the wild days of Egypt are no more!”
A sudden shiver ran through him as he spoke, and instinctively he drew the white folds of his picturesque garb closer about him.
“There is a chill wind sweeping in from the desert,” he said, “an evil, sandy breath tasting of mummy-dust blown through the crevices of the tombs of kings. Let us go in.”
Murray looked at him in a kind of dull despair.
“And what is to be done?” he asked. “I cannot answer for myself—and—from what you say, neither can you.”
“My dear friend—or foe—whichever you determine to be, I can answer for myself in one particular at any rate, namely, that as I told you, I shall not ask the Princess to marry me. You, on the contrary, will do so. Bonne chance! I shall do nothing to prevent Madame from accepting the honorable position you intend to offer her. And till the fiat has gone forth and the fair one has decided, we will not fly at each other’s throats like wolves disputing possession of a lamb; we will assume composure, even if we have it not.” He paused, and laid one hand kindly on the younger man’s shoulder, “Is it agreed?”
Denzil gave a mute sign of resigned acquiescence.
“Good! I like you, Denzil; you are a charming boy! Hot-tempered and a trifle melodramatic in your loves and hatreds,—yes!—for that you might have been a Provençal instead of a Scot. Before I knew you I had a vague idea that all Scotchmen were, or needs must be, ridiculous,—I don’t know why. I associated them with bagpipes, short petticoats and whisky. I had no idea of the type you so well represent,—the dark, fine eyes, the strong physique, and the impetuous disposition which suggests the South rather than the North; and to-night you look so unlike the accepted café chantant picture of the ever-dancing Highlander that you might in very truth be a Florentine in more points than the dress which so well becomes you. Yes,—I like you—and more than you, I like your sister. That is why I don’t want to quarrel with you; I wouldn’t grieve Mademoiselle Helen for the world.”
Murray gave him a quick, half-angry side-glance.
“You are a strange fellow, Gervase. Two summers ago you were almost in love with Helen.”
Gervase sighed.
“True. Almost. That’s just it. ‘Almost’ is a very uncomfortable word. I have been almost in love so many times. I have never been drawn by a woman’s eyes and dragged down, down,—in a mad whirlpool of sweetness and poison intermixed. I have never had my soul strangled by the coils of a woman’s hair—black hair, black as night,—in the perfumed meshes of which a jewelled serpent gleams … I have never felt the insidious horror of a love like strong drink mounting through the blood to the brain, and there making inextricable confusion of time, space, eternity, everything, except the passion itself; never, never have I felt all this, Denzil, till to-night! To-night! Bah! It is a wild night of dancing and folly, and the Princess Ziska is to blame for it all! Don’t look so tragic, my good Denzil,—what ails you now?”
“What ails me? Good Heavens! Can you ask it!” and Murray gave a gesture of mingled despair and impatience. “If you love her in this wild, uncontrolled way …”
“It is the only way I know of,” said Gervase. “Love must be wild and uncontrolled to save it from banalité. It must be a summer thunderstorm; the heavy brooding of the clouds of thought, the lightning of desire, then the crash, the downpour,—and the end, in which the bland sun smiles upon a bland world of dull but wholesome routine and tame conventionality, making believe that there never was such a thing known as the past storm! Be consoled, Denzil, and trust me,—you shall have time to make your honorable proposal, and Madame had better accept you,—for your love would last,—mine could not!”
He spoke with a strange fierceness and irritability, and his eyes were darkened by a sudden shadow of melancholy. Denzil, bewildered at his words and manner, stared at him in a kind of helpless indignation.
“Then you admit yourself to be cruel and unprincipled?” he said.
Gervase smiled, with a little shrug of impatience.
“Do I? I was not aware of it. Is inconstancy to women cruelty and want of principle? If so, all men must bear the brunt of the accusation with me. For men were originally barbarians, and always looked upon women as toys or slaves; the barbaric taint is not out of us yet, I assure you,—at any rate, it is not out of me. I am a pure savage; I consider the love of woman as my right; if I win it, I enjoy it as long as I please, but no longer,—and not all the forces of heaven and earth should bind me to any woman I had once grown weary of.”
“If that is your character,” said Murray stiffly, “it were well the Princess Ziska should know it.”
“True,” and Gervase laughed loudly. “Tell her, mon ami! Tell her that Armand Gervase is an unprincipled villain, not worth a glance from her dazzling eyes! It will be the way to make her adore me! My good boy, do you not know that there is something very marvellous in the attraction we call love? It is a pre-ordained destiny,—and if one soul is so constituted that it must meet and mix with another, nothing can hinder the operation. So that, believe me, I am quite indifferent as to what you say of me to Madame la Princesse or to anyone else. It will not be for either my looks or my character that she will love me if, indeed, she ever does love me; it will be for something indistinct, indefinable but resistless in us both, which no one on earth can explain. And now I must go, Denzil, and claim the fair one for this waltz. Try and look less miserable, my dear fellow,—I will not quarrel with you on the Princess’s account, nor on any other pretext if I can help it,—for I don’t want to kill you, and I am convinced your death and not mine would be the result of a fight between us!”
His eyes flashed under his straight, fierce brows with a sudden touch of imperiousness, and his commanding presence became magnetic, almost over-powering. Tormented with a dozen cross-currents of feeling, young Denzil Murray was mute;—only his breath came and went quickly, and there was a certain silently-declared antagonism in his very attitude. Gervase saw it and smiled; then turning away with his peculiarly noiseless step and grace of bearing, he disappeared.
CHAPTER V.
Ten minutes later the larger number of dancers in the ball-room came to a sudden pause in their gyrations and stood looking on in open-mouthed, reluctantly-admiring wonderment at the exquisite waltz movements of the Princess Ziska as she floated past them in the arms of Gervase, who, as a “Bedouin chief,” was perhaps only acting his part aright when he held her to him with so passionate and close a grip and gazed down upon her fair face with such a burning ardor in his eyes. Nothing in the dancing world was ever seen like the dancing of these two—nothing so languorously beautiful as the swaying grace of their well-matched figures gliding to the music in as perfectly harmonious a measure as a bird’s two wings beat to the pulsations of the air. People noticed that as the Princess danced a tiny tinkling sound accompanied her every step; and the more curious observers, peeping downwards as she flew by, saw that she had kept to the details of ancient Egyptian costume so exactly that she even wore sandals, and that her feet, perfectly shaped and lovely as perfectly shaped and lovely hands, were bare save for the sandal-ribbons which crossed them, and which were fastened with jewels. Round the slim ankles were light bands of gold, also glittering with gems, and furthermore adorned by little golden bells which produced the pretty tinkling music that attracted attention.
“What a delightful creature she is!” said Lady Fulkeward, settling her “Duchess of Gainsborough” hat on her powdered wig more becomingly and smiling up in the face of Ross Courtney, who happened to be standing close by. “So sweetly unconventional! Everybody here thinks her improper; she may be, but I like her. I’m not a bit of a prude.”
Courtney smiled irreverently at this. Prudery and “old” Lady Fulkeward were indeed wide apart. Aloud he said:
“I think whenever a woman is exceptionally beautiful she generally gets reported as ‘improper’ by her own sex; especially if she has a fascinating manner and dresses well.”
“So true,” and Lady Fulkeward simpered. “Exactly what I find wherever I go! Poor dear Ziska! She has to pay the penalty for captivating all you men in the way she does. I’m sure you have lost your heart to her quite as much as anybody else, haven’t you?”
Courtney reddened.
“I don’t think so,” he answered; “I admire her very much, but I haven’t lost my heart. …”
“Naughty boy! Don’t prevaricate!” and Lady Fulkeward smiled in the bewitching pearly manner her admirably-made artificial teeth allowed her to do. “Every man in the hotel is in love with the Princess, and I’m sure I don’t blame them. If I belonged to your sex I should be in love with her too. As it is, I am in love with the new arrival, that glorious creature, Gervase. He is superb! He looks like an untamed savage. I adore handsome barbarians!”
“He’s scarcely a barbarian, I think,” said Courtney, with some amusement; “he is the great French artist, the ‘lion’ of Paris just now,—only secondary to Sarah Bernhardt.”
“Artists are always barbarians,” declared Lady Fulkeward enthusiastically. “They paint naughty people without any clothes on; they never have any idea of time; they never keep their appointments; and they are always falling in love with the wrong person and getting into trouble, which is so nice of them! That’s why I worship them all. They are so refreshingly unlike our set!”
Courtney raised his eyebrows inquiringly.
“You know what I mean by our set,” went on the vivacious old “Gainsborough,” “the aristocrats whose conversation is limited to the weather and scandal, and who are so frightfully dull! Dull! My dear Ross, you know how dull they are!”
“Well, upon my word, they are,” admitted Courtney. “You are right there. I certainly agree with you.”
“I’m sure you do! They have no ideas. Now, artists have ideas,—they live on ideas and sentiment. Sentiment is such a beautiful thing—so charming! I believe that fierce-looking Gervase is a creature of sentiment—and how delightful that is! Of course, he’ll paint the Princess Ziska—he must paint her,—no one else could do it so well. By the way, have you been asked to her great party next week?”
“Yes.”
“And are you going?”
“Most assuredly.”
“So am I. That absurd Chetwynd Lyle woman came to me this evening and asked me if I really thought it would be proper to take her ‘girls’ there,” and Lady Fulkeward laughed shrilly. “Girls indeed! I should say those two long, ugly women could go anywhere with safety. ‘Do you consider the Princess a proper woman?’ she asked, and I said, ‘Certainly, as proper as you are.’”
Courtney laughed outright, and began to think there was some fun in Lady Fulkeward.
“By Jove! Did you tell her that?”
“I should think I did! Oh, I know a thing or two about the Chetwynd Lyles, but I keep my mouth shut till it suits me to open it. I said I was going, and then, of course, she said she would.”
“Naturally.”
And Courtney gave the answer vaguely, for the waltz was ended, and the Princess Ziska, on the arm of Gervase, was leaving the ball-room.
“She’s going,” exclaimed Lady Fulkeward. “Dear creature! Excuse me—I must speak to her for a moment.”
And with a swish of her full skirts and a toss of her huge hat and feathers, the lively flirt of sixty tripped off with all the agility of sixteen, leaving Courtney to follow her or remain where he was, just as he chose. He hesitated, and during that undecided pause was joined by Dr. Maxwell Dean.
“A very brilliant and interesting evening!” said that individual, smiling complacently. “I don’t remember any time when I have enjoyed myself so thoroughly.”
“Really! I shouldn’t have thought you a man to care for fancy-dress balls,” said Courtney.
“Shouldn’t you? Ha! Well, some fancy-dress balls I might not care for, but this one has been highly productive of entertainment in every way, and several incidents connected with it have opened up to me a new vista of research, the possibilities of which are—er—very interesting and remarkable.”
“Indeed!” murmured Courtney indifferently, his eyes fixed on the slim, supple figure of the Princess Ziska as she slowly moved amid her circle of admirers out of the ball-room, her golden skirts gleaming sun-like against the polished floor, and the jewels about her flashing in vivid points of light from the hem of her robe to the snake in her hair.
“Yes,” continued the Doctor, smiling and rubbing his hands, “I think I have got the clue to a very interesting problem. But I see you are absorbed—and no wonder! A charming woman, the Princess Ziska—charming! Do you believe in ghosts?”
This question was put with such unexpected abruptness that Courtney was quite taken aback.
“Ghosts?” he echoed. “No, I cannot say I do. I have never seen one, and I have never heard of one that did not turn out a bogus.”
“Oh! I don’t mean the usual sort of ghost,” said the Doctor, drawing his shelving brows together in a meditative knot of criss-cross lines over his small, speculative eyes. “The ghost that is common to Scotch castles and English manor-houses, and that appears in an orthodox night-gown, sighs, screams, rattles chains and bangs doors ad libitum. No, no! That kind of ghost is composed of indigestion, aided by rats and a gust of wind. No; when I say ghosts, I mean ghosts—ghosts that do not need the midnight hour to evolve themselves into being, and that by no means vanish at cock-crow. My ghosts are those that move about among us in social intercourse for days, months—sometimes years—according to their several missions; ghosts that talk to us, imitate our customs and ways, shake hands with us, laugh and dance with us, and altogether comport themselves like human beings. Those are my kind of ghosts—‘scientific’ ghosts. There are hundreds, aye, perhaps thousands of them in the world at this very moment.”
An uncomfortable shudder ran through Courtney’s veins; the Doctor’s manner seemed peculiar and uncanny.
“By Jove! I hope not!” he involuntarily exclaimed. “The orthodox ghost is an infinitely better arrangement. One at least knows what to expect. But a ‘scientific’ ghost that moves about in society, resembling ourselves in every respect, appearing to be actually human and yet having no humanity at all in its composition, is a terrific notion indeed! You don’t mean to say you believe in the possibility of such an appalling creature?”
“I not only believe it,” answered the Doctor composedly, “I know it!”
Here the band crashed out “God save the Queen,” which, as a witty Italian once remarked, is the De Profundis of every English festivity.
“But—God bless my soul!” began Courtney …
“No, don’t say that!” urged the Doctor. “Say ‘God save the Queen.’ It’s more British.”
“Bother ‘God save the Queen,’” exclaimed Courtney impatiently.—“Look here, you don’t mean it seriously, do you?”
“I always mean everything seriously,” said Dr. Dean,—“even my jokes.”
“Now come, no nonsense, Doctor,” and Courtney, taking his arm, led him towards one of the windows opening out to the moonlit garden,—“can you, as an honest man, assure me in sober earnest that there are ‘scientific ghosts’ of the nature you describe?”
The little Doctor surveyed the scenery, glanced up at the moon, and then at his companion’s pleasant but not very intelligent face.
“I would rather not discuss the matter,” he said at last, with some brusqueness. “There are certain subjects connected with psychic phenomena on which it is best to be silent; besides, what interest can such things have for you? You are a sportsman,—keep to your big game, and leave ghost-hunting to me.”
“That is not a fair answer to my question,” said Courtney, “I’m sure I don’t want to interfere with your researches in any way; I only want to know if it is a fact that ghosts exist, and that they are really of such a nature as to deserve the term ‘scientific.’”
Dr. Dean was silent a moment. Then, stretching out his small, thin hand, he pointed to the clear sky, where the stars were almost lost to sight in the brilliance of the moon.
“Look out there!” he said, his voice thrilling with sudden and solemn fervor. “There in the limitless ether move millions of universes—vast creations which our finite brains cannot estimate without reeling,—enormous forces always at work, in the mighty movements of which our earth is nothing more than a grain of sand. Yet far more marvellous than their size or number is the mathematical exactitude of their proportions,—the minute perfection of their balance,—the exquisite precision with which every one part is fitted to another part, not a pin’s point awry, not a hair’s breadth astray. Well, the same exactitude which rules the formation and working of Matter controls the formation and working of Spirit; and this is why I know that ghosts exist, and, moreover, that we are compelled by the laws of the phenomena surrounding us to meet them every day.”
“I confess I do not follow you at all,” said Courtney bewildered.
“No,” and Dr. Dean smiled curiously. “I have perhaps expressed myself obscurely. Yet I am generally considered a clear exponent. First of all, let me ask you, do you believe in the existence of Matter?”
“Why, of course!”
“You do. Then you will no doubt admit that there is Something—an Intelligent Principle or Spiritual Force—which creates and controls this Matter?”
Courtney hesitated.
“Well, I suppose there must be,” he said at last. “I’m not a church-goer, and I’m rather a free-thinker, but I certainly believe there is a Mind at work behind the Matter.”
“That being the case,” proceeded the Doctor, “I suppose you will not deny to this Invisible Mind the same exactitude of proportion and precise method of action already granted to Visible Matter?”
“Of course, I could not deny such a reasonable proposition,” said Courtney.
“Very good! Pursuing the argument logically, and allowing for an exactly-moving Mind behind exactly-working Matter, it follows that there can be no such thing as injustice anywhere in the universe?”
“My dear Socrates redivivus,” laughed Courtney, “I fail to see what all this has to do with ghosts.”
“It has everything to do with them,” declared the Doctor emphatically, “I repeat that if we grant these already stated premises concerning the composition of Mind and Matter, there can be no such thing as injustice. Yet seemingly unjust things are done every day, and seemingly go unpunished. I say ‘seemingly’ advisedly, because the punishment is always administered. And here the ‘scientific ghosts’ come in. ‘Vengeance is mine,’ saith the Lord,—and the ghosts I speak of are the Lord’s way of doing it.”
“You mean …” began Courtney.
“I mean,” continued the Doctor with some excitement, “that the sinner who imagines his sins are undiscovered is a fool who deceives himself. I mean that the murderer who has secretly torn the life out of his shrieking victim in some unfrequented spot, and has succeeded in hiding his crime from what we call ‘justice,’ cannot escape the Spiritual law of vengeance. What would you say,” and Dr. Dean laid his thin fingers on Courtney’s coat-sleeve with a light pressure,—“if I told you that the soul of a murdered creature is often sent back to earth in human shape to dog its murderer down? And that many a criminal undiscovered by the police is haunted by a seeming Person,—a man or a woman,—who is on terms of intimacy with him,—who eats at his table, drinks his wine, clasps his hand, smiles in his face, and yet is truly nothing but the ghost of his victim in human disguise, sent to drag him gradually to his well-deserved, miserable end; what would you say to such a thing?”
“Horrible!” exclaimed Courtney, recoiling. “Beyond everything monstrous and horrible!”
The Doctor smiled and withdrew his hand from his companion’s arm.
“There are a great many horrible things in the universe as well as pleasant ones,” he observed dryly. “Crime and its results are always of a disagreeable nature. But we cannot alter the psychic law of equity any more than we can alter the material law of gravitation. It is growing late; I think, if you will excuse me, I will go to bed.”
Courtney looked at him puzzled and baffled.
“Then your ‘scientific ghosts’ are positive realities?” he began; here he gave a violent start as a tall white figure suddenly moved out of the shadows in the garden and came slowly towards them. “Upon my life, Doctor, you have made me quite nervous!”
“No, no, surely not,” smiled the Doctor pleasantly—“not nervous! Not such a brave killer of game as you are! No, no! You don’t take Monsieur Armand Gervase for a ghost, do you? He is too substantial,—far too substantial! Ha! ha! ha!”
And he laughed quietly, the wrinkled smile still remaining on his face as Gervase approached.
“Everybody is going to bed,” said the great artist lazily. “With the departure of the Princess Ziska, the pleasures of the evening are ended.”
“She is certainly the belle of Cairo this season,” said Courtney, “but I tell you what,—I am rather sorry to see young Murray has lost his head about her.”
“Parbleu! So am I,” said Gervase imperturbably; “it seems a pity.”
“He will get over it,” interposed Dr. Dean placidly. “It’s an illness,—like typhoid,—we must do all we can to keep down the temperature of the patient, and we shall pull him through.”
“Keep him cool, in short!” laughed Gervase.
“Exactly!” The little Doctor smiled shrewdly. “You look feverish, Monsieur Gervase.”
Gervase flushed red under his dark skin.
“I daresay I am feverish,” he replied irritably,—“I find this place hot as an oven. I think I should go away to-morrow if I had not asked the Princess Ziska to sit to me.”
“You are going to paint her picture?” exclaimed Courtney. “By Jove! I congratulate you. It will be the masterpiece of the next salon.”
Gervase bowed.
“You flatter me! The Princess is undoubtedly an attractive subject. But, as I said before, this place stifles me. I think the hotel is too near the river,—there is an oozy smell from the Nile that I hate, and the heat is perfectly sulphureous. Don’t you find it so, Doctor?”
“N-n-o! I cannot say that I do. Let me feel your pulse; I am not a medical man—but I can easily recognize any premonitions of illness.”
Gervase held out his long, brown, well-shaped hand, and the savant’s small, cool fingers pressed lightly on his wrist.
“You are quite well, Monsieur Gervase,” he said after a pause,—“You have a little sur-excitation of the nerves, certainly,—but it is not curable by medicine.” He dropped the hand he held, and looked up—“Good-night!”
“Good-night!” responded Gervase.
“Good-night!” added Courtney.
And with an amiable salutation the Doctor went his way. The ball-room was now quite deserted, and the hotel servants were extinguishing the lights.
“A curious little man, that Doctor,” observed Gervase, addressing Courtney, to whom as yet he had not been formally introduced.
“Very curious!” was the reply. “I have known him for some years,—he is a very clever man, but I have never been able quite to make him out. I think he is a bit eccentric. He’s just been telling me he believes in ghosts.”
“Ah, poor fellow!” and Gervase yawned as, with his companion, he crossed the deserted ball-room. “Then he has what you call a screw loose. I suppose it is that which makes him interesting. Good-night!”
“Good-night!”
And separating, they went their several ways to the small, cell-like bedrooms, which are the prime discomfort of the Gezireh Palace Hotel, and soon a great silence reigned throughout the building. All Cairo slept,—save where at an open lattice window the moon shone full on a face up-turned to her silver radiance,—the white, watchful face, and dark, sleepless eyes of the Princess Ziska.
CHAPTER VI.
Next day the ordinary course of things was resumed at the Gezireh Palace Hotel, and the delights and flirtations of the fancy-ball began to vanish into what Hans Breitmann calls “the ewigkeit.” Men were lazier than usual and came down later to breakfast, and girls looked worn and haggard with over-much dancing, but otherwise there was no sign to indicate that the festivity of the past evening had left “tracks behind,” or made a lasting impression of importance on any human life. Lady Chetwynd Lyle, portly and pig-faced, sat on the terrace working at an elaborate piece of cross-stitch, talking scandal in the civilest tone imaginable, and damning all her “dear friends” with that peculiar air of entire politeness and good breeding which distinguishes certain ladies when they are saying nasty things about one another. Her daughters, Muriel and Dolly, sat dutifully near her, one reading the Daily Dial, as befitted the offspring of the editor and proprietor thereof, the other knitting. Lord Fulkeward lounged on the balustrade close by, and his lovely mother, attired in quite a charming and girlish costume of white foulard exquisitely cut and fitting into a waist not measuring more than twenty-two inches, reclined in a long deck-chair, looking the very pink of painted and powdered perfection.
“You are so very lenient,” Lady Chetwynd Lyle was saying, as she bent over her needlework. “So very lenient, my dear Lady Fulkeward, that I am afraid you do not read people’s characters as correctly as I do. I have had, owing to my husband’s position in journalism, a great deal of social experience, and I assure you I do not think the Princess Ziska a safe person. She may be perfectly proper—she may be—but she is not the style we are accustomed to in London.”
“I should rather think not!” interrupted Lord Fulkeward, hastily. “By Jove! She wouldn’t have a hair left on her head in London, don’cher know!”
“What do you mean?” inquired Muriel Chetwynd Lyle, simpering. “You really do say such funny things, Lord Fulkeward!”
“Do I?” and the young nobleman was so alarmed and embarrassed at the very idea of his ever saying funny things that he was rendered quite speechless for a moment. Anon he took heart and resumed: “Er—well—I mean that the society women would tear her to bits in no time. She’d get asked nowhere, but she’d get blackguarded everywhere; she couldn’t help herself with that face and those eyes.”
His mother laughed.
“Dear Fulke! You are such a naughty boy! You shouldn’t make such remarks before Lady Lyle. She never says anything against anyone!”
“Dear Fulke” stared. Had he given vent to his feelings he would have exclaimed: “Oh, Lord!—isn’t the old lady a deep one!” But as it was he attended to his young moustache anxiously and remained silent. Lady Chetwynd Lyle meanwhile flushed with annoyance; she felt that Lady Fulkeward’s remark was sarcastic, but she could not very well resent it, seeing that Lady Fulkeward was a peeress of the realm, and that she herself, by the strict laws of heraldry, was truly only “Dame” Chetwynd Lyle, as wife of an ordinary knight, and had no business to be called “her ladyship” at all.
“I should, indeed, be sorry,” she said, primly, “if I were mistaken in my private estimate of the Princess Ziska’s character, but I must believe my own eyes and the evidence of my own senses, and surely no one can condone the extremely fast way in which she behaved with that new man—that French artist, Armand Gervase—last night. Why, she danced six times with him! And she actually allowed him to walk home with her through the streets of Cairo! They went off together, in their fancy dresses, just as they were! I never heard of such a thing!”
“Oh, there was nothing remarkable at all in that,” said Lord Fulkeward. “Everybody went about the place in fancy costume last night. I went out in my Neapolitan dress with a girl, and I met Denzil Murray coming down a street just behind here—took him for a Florentine prince, upon my word! And I bet you Gervase never got beyond the door of the Princess’s palace; for that blessed old Nubian she keeps—the chap with a face like a mummy—bangs the gate in everybody’s face, and says in guttural French: ‘La Princesse ne voit per-r-r-sonne!’ I’ve tried it. I tell you it’s no go!”
“Well, we shall all get inside the mysterious palace next Wednesday evening,” said Lady Fulkeward, closing her eyes with a graceful air of languor. “It will be charming, I am sure, and I daresay we shall find that there is no mystery at all about it.”
“Two months ago,” suddenly said a smooth voice behind them, “the Ziska’s house or palace was uninhabited.”
Lady Fulkeward gave a little scream and looked round.
“Good gracious, Dr. Dean! How you frightened me!”
The Doctor made an apologetic bow.
“I am very sorry. I forgot you were so sensitive; pray pardon me! As I was saying, two months ago the palace of the Princess Ziska was a deserted barrack. Formerly, so I hear, it used to be the house of some great personage; but it had been allowed to fall into decay, and nobody would rent it, even for the rush of the Cairene season, till it was secured by the Nubian you were speaking of just now—the interesting Nubian with the face like a mummy; he took it and furnished it, and when it was ready Madame la Princesse appeared on the scene and has resided there ever since.”
“I wonder what that Nubian has to do with her?” said Lady Chetwynd Lyle, severely.
“Nothing at all,” replied the Doctor, calmly. “He is the merest servant—the kind of person who is ‘told off’ to attend on the women of a harem.”
“Ah, I see you have been making inquiries concerning the princess, Doctor,” said Lady Fulkeward, with a smile.
“I have.”
“And have you found out anything about her?”
“No; that is, nothing of social importance, except, perhaps, two items—first, that she is not a Russian; secondly, that she has never been married.”
“Never been married!” exclaimed Lady Chetwynd Lyle, then suddenly turning to her daughters she said blandly: “Muriel, Dolly, go into the house, my dears. It is getting rather warm for you on this terrace. I will join you in a few minutes.”
The “girls” rose obediently with a delightfully innocent and juvenile air, and fortunately for them did not notice the irreverent smile that played on young Lord Fulkeward’s face, which was immediately reflected on the artistically tinted countenance of his mother, at the manner of their dismissal.
“There is surely nothing improper in never having been married,” said Dr. Dean, with a mock serious air. “Consider, my dear Lady Lyle, is there not something very chaste and beautiful in the aspect of an old maid?”
Lady Lyle looked up sharply. She had an idea that both she and her daughters were being quizzed, and she had some difficulty to control her rising temper.
“Then do you call the Princess an old maid?” she demanded.
Lady Fulkeward looked amused; her son laughed outright. But the Doctor’s face was perfectly composed.
“I don’t know what else I can call her,” he said, with a thoughtful air. “She is no longer in her teens, and she has too much voluptuous charm for an ingénue. Still, I admit, you would scarcely call her ‘old’ except in the parlance of the modern matrimonial market. Our present-day roués, you know, prefer their victims young, and I fancy the Princess Ziska would be too old and perhaps too clever for most of them. Personally speaking, she does not impress me as being of any particular age, but as she is not married, and is, so to speak, a maid fully developed, I am perforce obliged to call her an old maid.”
“She wouldn’t thank you for the compliment,” said Lady Lyle with a spiteful grin.
“I daresay not,” responded the Doctor blandly, “but I imagine she has very little personal vanity. Her mind is too preoccupied with something more important than the consideration of her own good looks.”
“And what is that?” inquired Lady Fulkeward, with some curiosity.
“Ah! there is the difficulty! What is it that engrosses our fair friend more than the looking-glass? I should like to know—but I cannot find out. It is an enigma as profound as that of the Sphinx. Good-morning, Monsieur Gervase!”—and, turning round, he addressed the artist, who just then stepped out on the terrace carrying a paint-box and a large canvas strapped together in portable form. “Are you going to sketch some picturesque corner of the city?”
“No,” replied Gervase, listlessly raising his white sun-hat to the ladies present with a courteous, yet somewhat indifferent grace. “I’m going to the Princess Ziska’s. I shall probably get the whole outline of her features this morning.”
“A full-length portrait?” inquired the Doctor.
“I fancy not. Not the first attempt, at any rate—head and shoulders only.”
“Do you know where her house is?” asked Lord Fulkeward. “If you don’t, I’ll walk with you and show you the way.”
“Thanks—you are very good. I shall be obliged to you.”
And raising his hat again he sauntered slowly off, young Fulkeward walking with him and chatting to him with more animation than that exhausted and somewhat vacant-minded aristocrat usually showed to anyone.
“It is exceedingly warm,” said Lady Lyle, rising then and putting away her cross-stitch apparatus, “I thought of driving to the Pyramids this afternoon, but really …”
“There is shade all the way,” suggested the Doctor, “I said as much to a young woman this morning who has been in the hotel for nearly two months, and hasn’t seen the Pyramids yet.”
“What has she been doing with herself?” asked Lady Fulkeward, smiling.
“Dancing with officers,” said Dr. Dean. “How can Cheops compare with a moustached noodle in military uniform! Good-bye for the present; I’m going to hunt for scarabei.”
“I thought you had such a collection of them already,” said Lady Lyle.
“So I have. But the Princess had a remarkable one on last night, and I want to find another like it. It’s blue—very blue—almost like a rare turquoise, and it appears it is the sign-manual of the warrior Araxes, who was a kind of king in his way, or desert chief, which was about the same thing in those days. He fought for Amenhotep, and seemed from all accounts to be a greater man than Amenhotep himself. The Princess Ziska is a wonderful Egyptologist; I had a most interesting conversation with her last night in the supper-room.”
“Then she is really a woman of culture and intelligence?” queried Lady Lyle.
The Doctor smiled.
“I should say she would be a great deal too much for the University of Oxford, as far as Oriental learning goes,” he said. “She can read the Egyptian papyri, she tells me, and she can decipher anything on any of the monuments. I only wish I could persuade her to accompany me to Thebes and Karnak.”
Lady Fulkeward unfurled her fan and swayed it to and fro with an elegant languor.
“How delightful that would be!” she sighed. “So romantic and solemn—all those dear old cities with those marvellous figures of the Egyptians carved and painted on the stones! And Rameses—dear Rameses! He really has good legs everywhere! Haven’t you noticed that? So many of these ancient sculptures represent the Egyptians with such angular bodies and such frightfully thin legs, but Rameses always has good legs wherever you find him. It’s so refreshing! Do make up a party, Dr. Dean!—we’ll all go with you; and I’m sure the Princess Ziska will be the most charming companion possible. Let us have a dahabeah! I’m good for half the expenses, if you will only arrange everything.”
The Doctor stroked his chin and looked dubious, but he was evidently attracted by the idea.
“I’ll see about it,” he said at last. “Meanwhile I’ll go and have a hunt for some traces of Amenhotep and Araxes.”
He strolled down the terrace, and Lady Chetwynd Lyle, turning her back on “old” Lady Fulkeward, went after her “girls,” while the fascinating Fulkeward herself continued to recline comfortably in her chair, and presently smiled a welcome on a youngish-looking man with a fair moustache who came forward and sat down beside her, talking to her in low, tender and confidential tones. He was the very impecunious colonel of one of the regiments then stationed in Cairo, and as he never wasted time on sentiment, he had been lately thinking that a marriage with a widowed peeress who had twenty thousand pounds a year in her own right might not be a “half bad” arrangement for him. So he determined to do the agreeable, and as he was a perfect adept in the art of making love without feeling it, he got on very well, and his prospects brightened steadily hour by hour.
Meanwhile young Fulkeward was escorting Armand Gervase through several narrow by-streets, talking to him as well as he knew how and trying in his feeble way to “draw him out,” in which task he met with but indifferent success.
“It must be awfully jolly and—er—all that sort of thing to be so famous,” he observed, glancing up at the strong, dark, brooding face above him. “They had a picture of yours over in London once; I went to see it with my mother. It was called ‘Le Poignard,’ do you remember it?”
Gervase shrugged his shoulders carelessly.
“Yes, I remember. A poor thing at its best. It was a woman with a dagger in her hand.”
“Yes, awfully fine, don’cher know! She was a very dark woman—too dark for my taste,—and she’d got a poignard clasped in her right hand. Of course, she was going to murder somebody with it; that was plain enough. You meant it so, didn’t you?”
“I suppose I did.”
“She was in a sort of Eastern get-up,” pursued Fulkeward, “one of your former studies in Egypt, perhaps.”
Gervase started, and passed his hand across his forehead with a bewildered air.
“No, no! Not a former study, by any means. How could it be? This is my first visit to Egypt. I have never been here before.”
“Haven’t you? Really! Well, you’ll find it awfully interesting and all that sort of thing. I don’t see half as much of it as I should like. I’m a weak chap—got something wrong with my lungs,—awful bother, but can’t be helped. My mother won’t let me do too much. Here we are; this is the Princess Ziska’s.”
They were standing in a narrow street ending in a cul-de-sac, with tall houses on each side which cast long, black, melancholy shadows on the rough pavement below. A vague sense of gloom and oppression stole over Gervase as he surveyed the outside of the particular dwelling Fulkeward pointed out to him—a square, palatial building, which had no doubt once been magnificent in its exterior adornment, but which now, owing to long neglect, had fallen into somewhat melancholy decay. The sombre portal, fantastically ornamented with designs copied from some of the Egyptian monuments, rather resembled the gateway of a tomb than an entrance to the private residence of a beautiful living woman, and Fulkeward, noting his companion’s silence, added:
“Not a very cheerful corner, is it? Some of these places are regular holes, don’cher know; but I daresay it’s all right inside.”
“You have never been inside?”
“Never.” And Fulkeward lowered his voice: “Look up there; there’s the beast that keeps everybody out!”
Gervase followed his glance, and perceived behind the projecting carved lattice-work of one of the windows a dark, wrinkled face and two gleaming eyes which, even at that distance, had, or appeared to have, a somewhat sinister expression.
“He’s the nastiest type of Nubian I have ever seen,” pursued Fulkeward. “Looks just like a galvanized corpse.”
Gervase smiled, and perceiving a long bell-handle at the gateway, pulled it sharply. In another moment the Nubian appeared, his aspect fully justifying Lord Fulkeward’s description of him. The parchment-like skin on his face was yellowish-black, and wrinkled in a thousand places; his lips were of a livid blue, and were drawn up and down above and below the teeth in a kind of fixed grin, while the dense brilliance of his eyes was so fierce and fiery as to suggest those of some savage beast athirst for prey.
“Madame la Princesse Ziska,” began Gervase, addressing this unfascinating object with apparent indifference to his hideousness.
The Nubian’s grinning lips stretched themselves wider apart as, in a thick, snarling voice he demanded:
“Votre nom?”
“Armand Gervase.”
“Entrez!”
“Et moi?” queried Fulkeward, with a conciliatory smile.
“Non! Pas vous. Monsieur Armand Gervase, seul!”
Fulkeward gave a resigned shrug of his shoulders; Gervase looked round at him ere he crossed the threshold of the mysterious habitation.
“I’m sorry you have to walk back alone.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Fulkeward affably. “You see, you have come on business. You’re going to paint the Princess’s picture; and I daresay this blessed old rascal knows that I want nothing except to look at his mistress and wonder what she’s made of.”
“What she’s made of?” echoed Gervase in surprise. “Don’t you think she’s made like other women?”
“No; can’t say I do. She seems all fire and vapor and eyes in the middle, don’cher know. Oh, I’m an ass—always was—but that’s the feeling she gives me. Ta-ta! Wish you a pleasant morning!”
He nodded and strolled away, and Gervase hesitated yet another moment, looking full at the Nubian, who returned him stare for stare.
“Maintenant?” he began.
“Oui, maintenant,” echoed the Nubian.
“La Princesse, où est elle?”
“Là!” and the Nubian pointed down a long, dark passage beyond which there seemed to be the glimmer of green palms and other foliage. “Elle vous attend, Monsieur Armand Gervase! Entrez! Suivez!”
Slowly Gervase passed in, and the great tomb-like door closed upon him with a heavy clang. The whole long, bright day passed, and he did not reappear; not a human foot crossed the lonely street and nothing was seen there all through the warm sunshiny hours save the long, black shadows on the pavement, which grew longer and darker as the evening fell.