Читать книгу The Traitors - E. Phillips Oppenheim - Страница 7

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The lift went rumbling up to the topmost storey of the great block of flats, and stopped at last with something of a groan. The gates were opened, and Reist stepped out. He looked about him at the bare walls, the stone floor, and shrugged his shoulders. Erlito was none too well lodged then—soldiering had brought him some brief fame, but little else. Then he suddenly smiled. The incongruity of the thing was ridiculous. His sense of humour, by no means a characteristic trait of the man, was touched. The smile lingered upon his lips. He had come to offer a kingdom to a pauper!

The lift-boy slammed his gates and prepared to descend.

“Captain Erlito’s rooms are at the end of the passage, sir,” he volunteered. “Last door on the left.”

The information was properly rewarded, and the boy’s tolerant contempt for the foreigner, who at his journey’s end seemed afflicted with a curious hesitation, became an extinct thing. He pulled the rope and descended in hot haste, a large silver coin locked in his fingers and a glorious tingling sensation of unbounded wealth in his bosom.

Reist knocked at the door which had been pointed out to him, and waited. There came no answer. He tried again, and became conscious of a confused volume of sounds within, altogether drowning his summons for admission. He listened, perplexed. Light and rapid footsteps, the swishing of a silken skirt, a clear, musical laugh and cry of triumph, a succession of sounds which were wholly meaningless to him. Surely it was some sort of pandemonium. A momentary silence was followed by a chorus of voices. Reist raised his stick and knocked more loudly. A man’s voice travelled out to him like mild thunder.

“Come in!”

Reist opened the door and crossed the threshold. Before him was an explanation of the sounds which he had heard. Only he was, if possible, a little more bewildered than ever.

He was in a high, bare apartment, carpetless, and almost without furniture. Across the middle of the floor was stretched an upright net, and on either side of it were chalk-marked squares. Facing him was a girl with her left foot poised slightly forward, her arm raised, in the act of striking a feathered cork with a small racquet. By her side was a man whom Reist recognized at once. Directly he saw his visitor he stopped the game.

“One moment, Miss Van Decht,” he cried. “I am wanted.”

He crossed the room, swinging his racquet in his hand, and addressed Reist with a pleasant smile.

“We have been making so much noise,” he said, “that I am afraid we did not hear your first knock. I am Captain Erlito. You wished to see me?”

Reist looked him steadily and full in the face. If physique went for anything this man was surely born to be a King. He was well over six feet, splendidly made, and of military appearance. His features were clean-cut in the unmistakable Tyrnaus mould—only his mouth, which, stern though it was, was full of humour, seemed unfamiliar. His eyes were a wonderful deep blue, and his skin bronzed and burned with the Egyptian sun. A momentary bitterness possessed Reist. The people of Theos would care little for the brains which this man might lack. The first glance of him would be sufficient. They would shout him King till they were hoarse.

“You do not remember me, then?” Reist asked, softly.

Erlito stood swinging his racquet lightly in his fingers, and looked into his visitor’s face with pleasant and deferential courtesy.

“Do you know,” he said, “I am very sorry, but I am afraid that I do not. I have a very bad memory for faces. There is something about yours which seems to me familiar, but it comes from a long way back.”

Reist smiled faintly.

“Yes,” he said, “it comes indeed from a long way back. It comes from our boyhood. I hope at least that you have not forgotten my name. I am Nicholas of Reist.”

A radiant smile broke across Erlito’s face. He dropped his racquet and held out both his hands.

“It is little Nick!” he cried. “By all that is wonderful it is little Nick! Remember you? Why, we played soldiers together when we were children. A thousand, thousand welcomes.”

He wrung his visitor’s hands. His eyes were very bright. He was undoubtedly affected.

“I am glad that you have not forgotten those days,” Reist murmured. “As children we were together day by day. Yet it is very long ago, and for you at least,” he continued, “there have been so many great happenings.”

“It is splendid of you to have found me out,” Erlito cried. “I imagined that no one knew even of my existence. And Marie?”

“My sister is quite well,” Reist answered. “I had forgotten for the moment that she too was once your playmate. It is so long ago.”

“She is with you in London? You are living here, perhaps?” Erlito asked. “It is the most hospitable city in the world.”

Reist shook his head.

“There is only one home for us,” he answered. “I do not love strange cities.”

“You mean——”

“Theos!”

Erlito’s face clouded suddenly over. He glanced uneasily behind him. His face became graver, his expression resolved itself into sterner lines. A sudden bitterness found its way into his tone. The mention of Theos had stung him.

“The Republic tolerates aristocrats, then,” he remarked. “You are fortunate.”

Reist drew himself up.

“The Republic,” he answered, proudly, “would never dare to interfere with us. While the people of Theos remain, we of Reist are safe.”

There was a momentary pause. Reist was conscious that his impetuous speech was scarcely a happy one. For it was this man indeed who was the outcast—whose name even had become strange to the people over whom his forefathers had ruled. Erlito showed no resentment, but his eyes were very sorrowful.

“Your family,” he said, slowly, “have always been patriots. You deserve well of your country people.”

Reist glanced once more around the room.

“My visit to you,” he said, “is not one of courtesy—nay, let me say affection, only. I have a weighty matter to discuss with you. Will you allow me to outstay your guests?”

“With all the pleasure in the world,” Erlito answered, heartily. “I should indeed insist upon it.”

“You will perhaps continue your—game,” Reist suggested, with another glance towards the net. “My time is yours.”

Erlito hesitated.

“You are very good, Nicholas,” he said. “We are, as you see, playing Badminton, and as a matter of fact we are very much in earnest about this game. Miss Van Decht and I are playing the deciding match with my friends there, Hassen and Brand. Let me find you a chair, and present you to these good people. Afterwards—it will not be long—I shall be wholly at your service; and, Nicholas, if you please, I am Erlito only here. You understand?”

Reist assented gravely, and Erlito turned round. The two players were talking to the girl across the net. An elderly man with grey imperial and smoking a long cigar was leaning back in a deck-chair.

“Miss Van Decht,” Erlito said, turning to her, “will you permit me to present to you my very old friend, the Duke Nicholas of Reist—Miss Van Decht, Mr. Van Decht, Mr. Hassen, Mr. Brand.”

Reist bowed low before the girl, who looked straight into his eyes with a frank and pleasant curiosity. She was largely made, but the long flowing lines of her figure were perfectly and symmetrically graceful. Her features were delicate, but her mouth was delightful—large, shapely and sensitive. Her light brown hair, which showed a disposition to wave, had escaped bounds a little during the violent exercise and had fallen into picturesque disorder. She smiled charmingly at Reist, but said nothing beyond the conventional words of greeting. Then she looked up at Erlito with twinkling eyes.

“Mr. Brand is getting insupportable,” she declared. “He is like all you obstinate Englishmen. He does not know when he is beaten.”

“We will endeavour,” Erlito said, taking up his racquet, “to impress it upon him. There are cigarettes by your side, Reist.”

The girl went to her place at the end of the court.

“This must be the deciding game,” she declared, “for the light is going, and dad is smoking his last cigar. Ready! Serve!”

The game recommenced. Reist sat upon an overturned box by the side of Mr. Van Decht smoking a cigarette and watching gravely the flying figures. It was the girl who absorbed most of his attention. To him she was an utterly new type. She was as beautiful in her way as his own sister, but her frank energy and the easy terms of intimacy which obviously existed between her male companions and herself was wholly inexplicable to him. He watched her with fascinated gaze. All the beautiful women whom he had ever known had numbered amongst their characteristics a certain restraint, almost an aloofness, which he had come to look upon as their inevitable attribute. Their smiles were rare and precious marks of favour, an undisturbed serenity of deportment was almost an inherent part of their education. Here was a woman of the new world, no less to be respected, he was sure, than her sisters of Theos, Vienna, and St. Petersburg, yet viewing life from a wholly different standpoint. From the first there was something curiously fascinating to Reist in the perfect naturalness and self-assurance of the girl whose every thought and energy seemed centred just then upon that flying cork. Her lips were slightly parted, her eyes were bright, her face was full of colour and vivacity. She sprang backwards and forwards, jumped and stooped with the delightful freedom of perfect health and strength. She even joined in the chaff which flashed backwards and forwards across the net, good-humoured always, and gay, but always personal and indicating a more than common intimacy between the little party. Reist would have been quite content to have sat and watched her until the game was over, but for a sudden, and to him amazing, incident. At a critical moment Erlito missed a difficult stroke—the younger and slighter of his two opponents threw his racquet into the air with a curious little cry of triumph.

“Ho-e-la! Ho-e-la!”

Reist started almost to his feet, and the blood surged hotly in his veins. Where had he heard that cry before? He looked the man over with a swift and eager scrutiny. Olive-cheeked, with black eyes and moustache, slightly-hooked nose and light, graceful bearing, he might have belonged to any of the southern nations. He was certainly no Englishman. “Ho-e-la! Ho-e-la!” How the fever of hate was kindled in Reist’s heart as the echoes of that cry rang through the room. His memory, too, was swift and vivid. No longer he sat in that bare attic watching the flying figures of the Badminton players and listening to their cheerful badinage. Walls enclosed him no more. He saw out over the sea and land, he saw things the memory of which still thrilled his pulses, tugged at his heart-strings. Over the snow-capped hills he rode, wrapped in military furs, his sabre clanking by his side and a storm of stinging sleet driven into his face. Below were lights flashing in a white wilderness—amongst the hills flared the red fire of the guns, the music of their thunders was even then upon his ears. Down the steep defile he rode at the head of his troop, the sound of their approach muffled by the deep snow—afterwards the roar of meeting, the breathless excitement of the charge, the deep battle-cry of the men of Theos and from those others—ah, he had it now.

“Ho-e-la! Ho-e-la! Allah! Allah!”

A cry of triumph. The game was over. Sara Van Decht threw herself into a chair between her father and him and fanned herself vigorously with a pocket-handkerchief. The others were laughing and talking amongst themselves. Erlito came over at once to her side.

“Miss Van Decht,” he cried, gaily, “we are invincible. You played magnificently. Reist, we are going to have some tea, and then I shall be at your service. Why, our tussle seems to have interested you.”

Reist withdrew his eyes reluctantly from watching Hassen. He smiled faintly.

“Yes,” he said. “New things are always interesting! New things—and old friends!”