11 The Swoop

It was not for a moment that he noticed Clarence.

“Ah,” he said, “the interviewer, eh? You wish to—”

Clarence began to explain his mission. While he was doing so the Grand Duke strolled to the basin and began to remove his make-up. He favoured, when on the stage, a touch of the Raven Gipsy No. 3 grease-paint. It added a picturesque swarthiness to his appearance, and made him look more like what he felt to be the popular ideal of a Russian general.

The looking-glass hung just over the basin.

Clarence, watching him in the glass, saw him start as he read the first paragraph. A dark flush, almost rivalling the Raven Gipsy No. 3, spread over his face. He trembled with rage.

“Who put that paper there?” he roared, turning.

“With reference, then, to Mr. Hubert Wales’s novel,” said Clarence.

The Grand Duke cursed Mr. Hubert Wales, his novel, and Clarence in one sentence.

“You may possibly,” continued Clarence, sticking to his point like a good interviewer, “have read the trenchant, but some say justifiable remarks of the Rev. Canon Edgar Sheppard, D.D., Sub-Dean of His Majesty’s Chapels Royal, Deputy Clerk of the Closet, and Sub-Almoner to the King.”

The Grand Duke swiftly added that eminent cleric to the list.

“Did you put that paper on this looking-glass?” he shouted.

“I did not put that paper on that looking-glass,” replied Clarence precisely.

“Ah,” said the Grand Duke, “if you had, I’d have come and wrung your neck like a chicken, and scattered you to the four corners of this dressing-room.”

“I’m glad I didn’t,” said Clarence.

“Have you read this paper on the looking-glass?”

“I have not read that paper on the looking-glass,” replied Clarence, whose chief fault as a conversationalist was that he was perhaps a shade too Ollendorfian. “But I know its contents.”

“It’s a lie!” roared the Grand Duke. “An infamous lie! I’ve a good mind to have him up for libel. I know very well he got them to put those paragraphs in, if he didn’t write them himself.”

“Professional jealousy,” said Clarence, with a sigh, “is a very sad thing.”

“I’ll professional jealousy him!”

“I hear,” said Clarence casually, “that he has been going very well at the Lobelia. A friend of mine who was there last night told me he took eleven calls.”

For a moment the Russian General’s face swelled apoplectically. Then he recovered himself with a tremendous effort.

“Wait!” he said, with awful calm. “Wait till tomorrow night! I’ll show him! Went very well, did he? Ha! Took eleven calls, did he? Oh, ha, ha! And he’ll take them tomorrow night, too! Only”—and here his voice took on a note of fiendish purpose so terrible that, hardened scout as he was, Clarence felt his flesh creep—”only this time they’ll be catcalls!”

And, with a shout of almost maniac laughter, the jealous artiste flung himself into a chair, and began to pull off his boots.

Clarence silently withdrew. The hour was very near.

Chapter 7

THE BIRD

The Grand Duke Vodkakoff was not the man to let the grass grow under his feet. He was no lobster, no flat- fish. He did it now—swift, secret, deadly—a typical Muscovite. By midnight his staff had their orders.

Those orders were for the stalls at the Lobelia.

Price of entrance to the gallery and pit was served out at daybreak to the Eighth and Fifteenth Cossacks of the Don, those fierce, semi-civilised fighting-machines who know no fear.

Grand Duke Vodkakoff’s preparations were ready.

Few more fortunate events have occurred in the history of English literature than the quite accidental visit of Mr. Bart Kennedy to the Lobelia on that historic night. He happened to turn in there casually after dinner, and was thus enabled to see the whole thing from start to finish. At a quarter to eleven a wild-eyed man charged in at the main entrance of Carmelite House, and, too impatient to use the lift, dashed up the stairs, shouting for pens, ink and paper.

Next morning the Daily Mail was one riot of headlines. The whole of page five was given up to the topic. The headlines were not elusive. They flung the facts at the reader:—

SCENE AT THE LOBELIA PRINCE OTTO OF SAXE-PFENNIG GIVEN THE BIRD BY RUSSIAN SOLDIERS WHAT WILL BE THE OUTCOME?

There were about seventeen more, and then came Mr. Bart Kennedy’s special report.

He wrote as follows:—

“A night to remember. A marvellous night. A night such as few will see again. A night of fear and wonder. The night of September the eleventh. Last night.

“Nine-thirty. I had dined. I had eaten my dinner. My dinner! So inextricably are the prose and romance of life blended. My dinner! I had eaten my dinner on this night. This wonderful night. This night of September the eleventh. Last night!