She was in the car before his outstretched hand could touch her. He followed, letting Courtley precede him because he wished to sit opposite, and the great Rolls-Royce purred out of the jam beneath the illuminated glass archway, and in a moment was out of the Place Vendome and moving with the stream of vehicles down the Avenue of the Champs Elysees. In the mingling of moonlight and electric light the tawdry paste jewels of Patrine's preposterous diadem rivalled the costly splendours of the jewelled fillets adorning Lady Beauvayse's coiffure, her _panache_ of white osprey flared above her broad, dark brows as insolently as though they crowned a Nitocris or a Cleopatra. But--and here was a titillating discovery--the strange face with its broad brows, wide, generously-curving cheeks, and little rounded chin, did not belong to a woman of thirty, or even twenty-five. She was much younger than the German, who plumed himself upon his _flair_ for the accurate dating of women, had at first credited. It would be amusing--he told himself again--hellishly amusing, to cultivate this curious hybrid, half hoyden, half _femme-du-monde_.
Sarajevo--still Sarajevo. You caught echoes of the crime of that morning in the tongues of twenty nationalities upon the Paris boulevards that night. People in automobiles and open carriages, people in the little red and blue flagged taxis, people crowding the auto-buses and Cook's big open brakes, the army of people on foot, endlessly streaming east and west along the great splendid thoroughfares, tossed the name of the Bosnian capital backwards and forwards, as though it had been a blood-stained ball.
A gay masculine voice called from a knot of chatterers standing near the wide illuminated archway of electric stars and crowns and flowers under which streamed a variegated crowd of pleasure-seekers as the big Rolls-Royce deposited its load:
"_Nom d'un chien_! What a pack of assassins these Serbians! ... And yet--what if the whole show were got up by Rataplan at Berlin? ... His bosom friend, you say--the big Franz Ferdinand? _Zut!_ what of that? ... Sometimes one finds inconvenient the continued existence of even a bosom friend."
*CHAPTER XIV*
*A PARIS DANCE-GARDEN*
By "Rataplan" was meant the Kaiser, Patrine comprehended, as her companion glanced over his shoulder at the candid speaker, muttering something that sounded like a German oath. But Lady Beauvayse was twittering through a filmy screen of verd-blue chiffon, now discreetly enveloping her lovely Romney head:
"We're going to hunt up Lady Wathe and Sir Thomas. Take care of Miss Saxham, Count von Herrnung, in case we get separated in the crush.... Don't forget our programme, Pat. A whiff of Cafe Concert ... Colette Colin is billed to sing some of her old songs and the very newest of the new ones.... Then we're coming to the Pavilion de la Danse to see the Sao Paulo sensation.... La Rivadavia and Herculano, and all the rest of the crowd.... Meet you there.... So long! Mind, you're not to get lost!"
"In London you often hear La Colette," said von Herrnung, as he paid the lean-jawed functionary in the gold-laced light-blue uniform--the usual notice of free entry having vanished from the entrance--and passed with his companion into the gravelled promenade of the open-air concert-hall. "But to-night you will hear no songs of old France, no Chansons Pompadour nor Chansons Crinoline. She comes to this place from her own theatre to oblige an old comrade. There is Nou-Nou in that box with some smart women and the Turk who wears our Prussian Order of the Red Eagle with the Star and Crescent of the Medjidie. He is Youssouf Pasha, the Sultan's Envoy-Extraordinary. Nou-Nou has brought him to hear La Colette. Shall we not sit here?"
"Who is Nou-Nou?" Patrine asked, as she settled her tall, luxuriant person on one of the little green-painted iron chairs.
"Who is Nou-Nou?" her companion echoed. "You saw her to-day at Longchamps in her black confection. Everybody was looking.... She is wonderfully _chic_--Nou-Nou! May I be permitted to light a _zigarre_? ..."
"Do! ... But--why is she so much the rage? She isn't even pretty, your Mademoiselle Nou-Nou." Patrine said it with her bright gaze fastened on the famous Impropriety who had paraded under the chestnuts of Longchamps in the sheath of black gauze unlined, save with her own notorious attractions--both irresistible and fatal, judging by their recorded effects upon excitable Parisian _viveurs_ and _gommeux_. She saw a triangular and oddly-crumpled face, rouged high upon the cheek-bones in circular patches, a pair of almost extinguished eyes, indicated by streaks of blue pencil, and caught a sentence screamed at the stout Turk in a voice like a hoarse cockatoo's. Boldly erect upon the skull adorned by a scanty thatch of lemon-yellow balanced a black feather, long and attenuated as the wearer. Nou-Nou's stick-like, fleshless arms, the cadaverous and meagre torso unblushingly revealed by the transparent casing of her upper person, might have enthralled a keen student of anatomy. But of feminine charms, in the accepted sense of the word, she possessed not one, it seemed to Patrine.
"Do not look at her too hard, or she may send round and invite you to supper," warned the laughing voice of von Herrnung speaking close to her ear. "She has all the vices--the good Nou-Nou!"
"Including the vice of indiscriminate hospitality," Patrine laughed; but a little uncontrollable shudder rippled over her as she withdrew her eyes from the painted, crumpled visage, leering with half-extinguished eyes from under the canary-coloured wig.
"That is so. Tell me--you and Lady Beauvayse seem great friends--quite inseparable...." He leaned nearer, his bold eyes closely scrutinising her face. "How comes it that she leaves you alone in a Paris dance-garden: with me, whom you have met to-night--for the first time?"
"She knows I can take jolly good care of myself, wherever and with whomsoever I may happen to be!" Her black brows frowned; it was evident she resented his criticism. "And--what are you getting at? What's the matter with poor old Paris? You know--perhaps it sounds odd!--but I've never been in Paris before.... And I love it! Down to the ground--it suits me! It's so gay and brightly-coloured and pagan. The public buildings and parks are dreams; the shops--too entrancing for anything! And this place, with its jabber and music and stagy illuminations, trellises where real roses mix up with artificial ones--ornamental beds of geraniums and calceolarias and thingumbobs bordered with smelly little oil lamps, gilt band-stands, concerts, and lovely trees in blossom.... Is it so luridly awful? To me, it's rather sweet! Of course the dancing--everybody knows the dancing is pretty well the limit. But one has seen such a lot of Tango in London--the bloom will be pretty well rubbed off!"
"Yet some lingers. You have still something to learn from Herculano and La Rivadavia! ..."
"Do I strike you as such a perfect daisy of inexperience?" Something in his tone stung, for the full white cheeks coloured faintly. "You didn't talk to me at dinner as though I were one!"
"How could I help that?" he asked, with the roughness that had previously intrigued her. "Am I to blame that you look like Phryne or Aspasia when you are only Mademoiselle de Maupin--before she set out upon her travels? For you have only got as far as Paris with your friend Lady Beauvayse. Why does she bring you? I am curious to know."
"Because I am her paid secretary and amanuensis." Patrine brought the words out with a rush; it was clear that she thought the candour a necessity, but hated it. "She can't get on without one, and her husband, Lord Beauvayse--awful little bounder!--won't stand her having a man. Don't great ladies have secretaries in Germany? Can't you see me doing Lady Beau's correspondence in my fearful fist--enclosing cheques to people who solicit donations for charities with a committee and Hon. Treasurer--tearing up the begging letters full of howlers in the spelling-line--smelling of bad tobacco and beer or gin? Then I have to keep her posted in her engagements, go to shows, and functions, and kettledrums with her when she hasn't a pal handy--that's where my share of the fun comes in. Just as I'm visiting Paris, as I dare say I shall visit other centres of lively iniquity--in the character of the sheep-dog that doesn't bow-wow at the wrong man!"
"You should bow-wow at me." His teeth were hidden, but his eyes were crinkled up with soundless laughter. "For I am a very wrong--a very wicked man!"
"How sad!" Her brows were still frowning, but her wide red mouth was beginning to curl up at the corners. "Couldn't you reform? Is it too late?"
"I hope so!" he answered her. "For if I were good I should possess no attraction for a woman of your type. And to charm you I would give my soul--if I had a soul!"
"Great Scott! You're candid.... Modest too.... And complimentary!"