The Lure of the Mask, Harold MacGrath [best beach reads of all time .txt] 📗

and what they saw in nowise relieved the tenseness of the situation. Two carabinieri and an inspector of seals, dusty but stern of countenance, came up the path. O'Mally, recollecting the vast prison at Naples, saw all sorts of dungeons, ankle-deep in sea-water, and iron bars, shackles and balls. Every one stood up and waited for this new development to unfold itself. La Signorina alone seemed indifferent to this official cortège. The inspector signed to the carabinieri, who stopped. He came on. Without touching his cap-a bad sign-he laid upon the tea-table a card and a newspaper, familiar now to them all.

"Signora," he said politely but coldly to the whilom prima donna, "will you do me the honor to explain this? We have some doubts as to the authority upon which this invitation was issued." He spoke fluent English, for the benefit of all concerned.

Hillard waited for her answer, dreading he knew not what.

She spoke evenly, almost insolently. "The invitation is perfectly regular."

Everybody experienced a chill.

This time the inspector bowed. "Then her Highness will occupy her villa?"

"She is already in possession. I am the Principessa di Monte Bianca," calmly.

Had an earthquake shattered the surrounding hills, and gulfs opened at their feet, it could not have spread terror more quickly among the transient guests at the Villa Ariadne than this declaration. They were appalled; they stood like images, without the power to take their eyes off this woman. This transcendental folly simply paralyzed them. They knew that she was not the princess; and here, calmly and negligently, she was jeoparding their liberty as well as her own. Mad, mad! For imposture of this caliber was a crime, punishable by long imprisonment; and Italy always contrived to rake in a dozen or so accomplices. They were all lost indeed, unless they could escape and leave La Signorina alone to bear the brunt of her folly.

The keen-eyed inspector took mental note of these variant expressions.

"Your Highness," he said, his cap setting the dust on the stones flying, "a thousand pardons for this disagreeable intrusion. It was not officially known that your Highness was here."

"It is nothing," replied the pseudo princess. "Only I desired to remain incognito for the present."

"And the seals?" purred the official.

"We shall go through that formality the morning after the ball. At present I do not wish to be disturbed with the turning of the villa upside down, as would be the case were the seals removed."

"That will require the permission of the crown, your Highness."

"Then you will set about at once to secure this permission."

The air with which she delivered this command was noble enough for any one. The inspector was overcome. "But as your Highness has never before occupied the villa, some definite assurance-"

"You will telegraph to Cranford and Baring, in the Corso Umberto Primo, Rome. They will supply you with the necessary details and information."

The inspector inscribed the address in his notebook, bowed, backed away and bowed again. The crunch of the gravel under his feet was as a sinister thunder, and it was the only sound. He spoke to the carabinieri. They saluted, and the trio marched toward the gates.

There remained a tableau, picturesque but tense. Then Kitty began to cry softly.

"Are you mad?" cried Hillard, his voice harsh and dry.

La Signorina laughed recklessly. "If you call this madness."

"Smith, my boy," said O'Mally, moistening his lips, "you and I this night will pack up our little suit-cases and-movimento, moto, viaggio, or whatever the Dago word is for move on. I'm out of the game; the stakes are too high. I pass, signorina."

"How could you do it?" sobbed Kitty.

Merrihew patted her hand and scowled.

"What an ado!" said La Signorina, shrugging. "So you all desert me?"

"Desert you?" O'Mally resumed his seat and carefully loosened the topmost buttons of his coat. "Of course we shall desert you. We are sane individuals, at any rate. I have no desire to see the inside of an Italian jail, not knowing how to get out. What under the sun possessed you? What excuse have you to offer for pushing us all into the lion's mouth? You could have easily denied all knowledge of the invitation, referred them to your princess, wherever she may be, and we could have cleared out in the morning, poor but honest. And now you've gone and done it!"

Hillard leaned against a cypress, staring at the stones.

"In Venice," said she, her voice gentle, "you accepted the chance readily enough. What has changed you?"

O'Mally flushed. What she said was true. "I was a fool in Venice," frankly.

"And you, Mr. Smith?" continued La Signorina, as with a lash.

But it was ineffectual. "I was a fool, too," admitted Smith. "In Venice it sounded like a good joke, but it looks different now." He sat down beside O'Mally.

"So much for gallantry! And you, Kitty?"

"I made a promise, and I'll keep it. But I think you are cruel and wicked."

"No nonsense, Kitty," interposed Merrihew. "I've some rights now. You will have this villa to-night."

"I refuse," replied Kitty simply.

Hillard slipped into the pause.

"Did you issue those invitations yourself?" he asked this strange, incomprehensible woman.

"Do you believe that?" La Signorina demanded, with narrowing eyes.

"I don't know what to believe. But I repeat the question."

"On my word of honor, I know no more about this mystery than you do." And there was truth in her voice and eyes.

"But are you not over-sure of your princess? Being a woman, may she not have changed her plans?"

"Not without consulting me. I am not only sure," she added with a positiveness which brooked no further question, "but to-morrow I shall prove to you that her Highness has not changed her plans. I shall send her a telegram at once, and you shall see the reply. But you, Mr. Hillard, will you, too, desert me?"

"Oh, as for that, I am mad likewise," he said, with a smile on his lips but none in his eyes. "I'll see the farce to the end, even if that end is jail."

"If!" cried O'Mally. "You speak as though you had some doubt regarding that possibility!"

"So I have." Hillard went to the table, selected a rose, and drew it through the lapel of his coat.

"I say, Jack!" Merrihew interposed, greatly perturbed.

"And you will stay also, Dan."

"Are you really in earnest?" dubiously. Why hadn't this impossible woman sung under somebody else's window?

"Earnest as I possibly can be. Listen a moment. La Signorina is not a person recklessly to endanger us. She has, apparently, put her head into the lion's mouth. But perhaps this lion is particularly well trained. I am sure that she knows many things of which we are all ignorant. Trust her to carry out this imposture which now seems so wild. Besides, to tell the truth, I do not wish it said that I was outdone by Miss Killigrew in courage and the spirit of adventure."

"Oh, give me no credit for that," broke in Kitty.

La Signorina, however, rewarded Hillard with a look which set his pulses humming. Into what folly would he not have gone at a sign from this lovely being? In his mind there was not the shadow of a doubt: this comedy would ultimately end at some magistrate's desk. So be it.

Merrihew cast about helplessly, but none held out a hand. He must decide for himself.

"Do you mean it, Kitty?"

"Yes."

O'Mally's face wore several new wrinkles; and both he and Smith were looking at the green mold on the flag-stones as interestedly as if China was but on the other side. Kitty saw nothing, not even the hills she was staring at.

"Since you have made up your mind, Jack," said Merrihew doggedly, "why, there's nothing for me to do but fall in. But it's kings against two-spots."

"Mental reservation?" said the temptress. "Mr. Hillard has none."

"I am not quite certain I have none," replied Hillard, renewing his interest in the rose.

A moment later, when he looked up, her glance plunged into his, but found nothing. Hillard could fence with the eyes as well as with the foils.

"Well," she said, finding that Hillard's mental reservations were not to be voiced, "here are three who will not desert me."

"That's all very well," rejoined O'Mally; "but it is different with those two. Mr. Hillard's a millionaire, or near it, and he could buy his way through all the jails in Italy. Smith here, Worth and Miss Killigrew and myself, we have nothing. More than that, we're jotted down in the police books, even to the mole on the side of my nose. There's no way out for us. We are accomplices."

"You will leave in the morning, then?" asked La Signorina contemptuously.

"I hope to."

"Want of courage?"

"No. Against physical danger I am willing to offer myself at any time to your Highness," with a touch of bitter irony. "But to walk straight into jail, with my eyes open, that's a horse of a different color."

"I like you none the less for your frankness, Mr. O'Mally. And I apologize for doubting your courage. But if to-morrow I should produce a telegram from her Highness that would do away with all your doubts?"

"I'll answer that when I see the telegram." O'Mally made an unsuccessful attempt to roll a cigarette. This honeyed blarney, to his susceptible Irish blood, was far more dangerous than any taunts; but he remembered in time the fable of the fox and the crow. "We have all been together now for many weeks. Yet, who you are none of us knows."

"I am the princess," laughing.

"Oh, yes; of course; I forgot. But I mean your real name."

"My real name? Have you ever before asked me what it is?"

"Perhaps we have been a little afraid of you," put in Smith.

The shadow of a smile lay upon her lips and vanished. "My name is Sonia Hilda Grosvenor." And her voice was music.

"Pardon me," said O'Mally drolly, "but were any of your ancestors-er-troubled with insanity?"

This query provoked a laughter which gave them all a sense of relief.

"My father had one attack of insanity, since you ask." La Signorina's face sobered. She stepped over to the wall, rested upon it, and searched the deepening eastern horizon. Yes, her father had been insane, and all her present wretchedness was due to this insanity of a rational mind. For a moment she forgot those about her, and her thought journeyed swiftly back to the old happy days. "Yes, there is a species of insanity in my veins." She turned to them again. "But it is the insanity of a sane person, the insanity of impulse and folly, of wilfulness and lack of foresight. As Mr. O'Mally said, I have gone and done it. What possessed me to say that I am the princess is as inexplicable to me as to you, though you may not believe it. But for me there is no withdrawing now; flight would do us no good. We, or I, I should say, have created a suspicion, and if we ran away we should be pursued from one end of Italy to the other, till this suspicion was dissipated. We should become suspects, and in Italy a suspect is liable to