Читать книгу The Day the World Ended - Arthur Henry Ward - Страница 5

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A waiter I had not seen before brought my breakfast. In the scented beauty and the sunshine it was hard to recapture that horror of the night. As he stepped out on the balcony, shouldering a laden tray:

“Good-morning, sir,” he greeted me cheerfully.

“Good-morning,” I returned, and watched him deftly arranging my light repast upon the white cloth.

During the restless hours which had intervened between the coming of that bodiless voice and sunrise, I had been thinking hard. I had bidden good-bye to the amused carelessness with which, thus far, I had regarded my Black Forest mission. Brazil had nearly put “paid” to my account, and I had stood fairly near the edge of beyond in the Sahara; but here, in a modern, fashionable town, I was up against something worse than fever, cataracts, and poisoned arrows; something harder to dodge than Arab bullets: something very insidious—its worst element being that I didn’t know my enemies.

“I’m hoping,” I went on casually, “for a glimpse of one of the giant bats which I hear have been seen in this neighbourhood.”

Those words had an electrical effect. The man perceptibly paused in his labours. But, quickly recovering himself, he set down the coffee pot, and resting his hands on the table looked into my eyes.

“If you took my advice, sir,” he said earnestly, “you would leave those things alone.”

“Why?” I challenged.

He stood upright, bowed, and:

“It is just my advice, sir,” he said, smiled, bowed again, and went out.

“Extraordinary fellow!” I muttered.

This constant evasion was getting on my nerves. Hitherto it had merely provoked me. But, after the inexplicable episode of the night, it began to assume a more sinister character.

I felt lonely. And it was a different kind of loneliness from any loneliness I had known before.

My plans for the day were vague. Where should I start? Whom could I question? One definite change I made, when I presently set out for Hohen-Baden; I had a well-tried Colt repeater on my hip. It seemed absurd, in that pleasure valley under smiling skies. I had roamed the byways of Fez at midnight, I had returned to my quarters in Timbuctoo under a setting moon—unarmed. Yet here I was, with merry German holiday makers about me, carrying a cargo of live shells!

However, I had no occasion to use them.

Feeling rather a fool, and asking myself again and again, “Could the ‘warning’ have been an unusually vivid dream?” I returned late in the afternoon to the Regal.

I had seen nothing, and I had learned nothing.

One lunches early but dines late in Baden-Baden. To-night I was one of the latest. But the head waiter had my table reserved.

Having fared well but sparingly, I found him at my elbow.

“Everything satisfactory, sir?” he asked.

I looked up; and his blue eyes met my inquiring stare unflinchingly. I had questioned Fritz—and had met with the usual evasions.

“Quite,” I replied.

The long, softly lighted dining room was nearly deserted. In a near-by lounge, the hotel orchestra played a Slovak dance. Fritz was of Prague—a great commercial centre to-day but of old the capital of the witch country. Bohemia still cherishes vampires. And I thought I knew why Fritz was reticent.

But I did not know why his gaze wandered so strangely.

I stared out of the window, as he was staring. Beautiful gardens, unreally lovely in the dusk, backed by magically shadowed woodlands, lay before me. I could hear the laughing song of that tiny stream, crossed by a floral bridge almost directly in front of the window in which my table was set, from which those famous blue trout are brought fresh to the diner.

Then, I saw the tall, sinuous figure.

Fritz was watching Mme. Yburg.

Certainly she was worthy of inspection. For my own part, I like a woman to be slender; but there is a point at which the slender becomes definitely the lean. My vision may lack those nuances which endow a Jacob Epstein, but I must confess that I looked upon Mme. Yburg as lean. She was svelte to a degree. And if good taste is beauty, she was beautiful. She was graceful, white-skinned, had thin but very red lips, and perfect teeth. Her eyes certainly were magnificent.

As she went along the path toward the bridge, trailing a flame-coloured scarf with incomparable indolence, she glanced aside, saw me, and waved her hand. We were slightly acquainted. Her raised arm, gleaming in the moonlight, seemed to possess separate volition, to be individual: I thought of an ivory serpent.

Turning, I trapped Fritz in the act of recomposing his expression.

“No,” I said, smiling up at him, “that is not the kind of vampire I mean!”

He started, then shrugged his shoulders and poured out what remained of a bottle of Liebfraumilch. The willowy, swaying figure had disappeared.

“You never know, sir,” he replied enigmatically.

“Who is she?”

“I cannot say. She often comes here. And she spends much money. She is very attractive.”

He sighed. I looked at the blond Bavarian, and I knew that Mme. Yburg’s dark, lithe womanhood represented his ideal.

“Yes,” I murmured reflectively, “I suppose she is.”

I lost myself for awhile in meditation. And when I returned to realities, Fritz had left me.