He broke off. Just as the lights went down for the second number Rags had given a long sigh, and leaned forward tensely in her chair. Her eyes were rigid like the eyes of a pointer dog, and John saw that they were fixed on a party that had come through a side entrance, and were arranging themselves around a table in the half-darkness.
The table was shielded with palms, and Rags at first made out only three dim forms. Then she distinguished a fourth who seemed to be placed well behind the other three—a pale oval of a face topped with a glimmer of dark-yellow hair.
“Hello!” ejaculated John. “There’s his majesty now.”
Her breath seemed to die murmurously in her throat. She was dimly aware that the comedian was now standing in a glow of white light on the dancing floor, that he had been talking for some moments, and that there was a constant ripple of laughter in the air. But her eyes remained motionless, enchanted. She saw one of the party bend and whisper to another, and after the low glitter of a match the bright button of a cigarette end gleamed in the background. How long it was before she moved she did not know. Then something seemed to happen to her eyes, something white, something terribly urgent, and she wrenched about sharply to find herself full in the centre of a baby spotlight from above. She became aware that words were being said to her from somewhere, and that a quick trail of laughter was circling the roof, but the light blinded her, and instinctively she made a half-movement from her chair.
“Sit still!” John was whispering across the table. “He picks somebody out for this every night.”
Then she realized—it was the comedian, Sheik B. Smith. He was talking to her, arguing with her—about something that seemed incredibly funny to everyone else, but came to her ears only as a blur of muddled sound. Instinctively she had composed her face at the first shock of the light and now she smiled. It was a gesture of rare self-possession. Into this smile she insinuated a vast impersonality, as if she were unconscious of the light, unconscious of his attempt to play upon her loveliness—but amused at an infinitely removed him, whose darts might have been thrown just as successfully at the moon. She was no longer a “lady”—a lady would have been harsh or pitiful or absurd; Rags stripped her attitude to a sheer consciousness of her own impervious beauty, sat there glittering until the comedian began to feel alone as he had never felt alone before. At a signal from him the spotlight was switched suddenly out. The moment was over.
The moment was over, the comedian left the floor, and the faraway music began. John leaned toward her.
“I’m sorry. There really wasn’t anything to do. You were wonderful.”
She dismissed the incident with a casual laugh—then she started, there were now only two men sitting at the table across the floor.
“He’s gone!” she exclaimed in quick distress.
“Don’t worry—he’ll be back. He’s got to be awfully careful, you see, so he’s probably waiting outside with one of his aides until it gets dark again.”
“Why has he got to be careful?”
“Because he’s not supposed to be in New York. He’s even under one of his second-string names.”
The lights dimmed again, and almost immediately a tall man appeared out of the darkness and approached their table.
“May I introduce myself?” he said rapidly to John in a supercilious British voice. “Lord Charles Este, of Baron Marchbanks’ party.” He glanced at John closely as if to be sure that he appreciated the significance of the name.
John nodded.
“That is between ourselves, you understand.”
“Of course.”
Rags groped on the table for her untouched champagne, and tipped the glassful down her throat.
“Baron Marchbanks requests that your companion will join his party during this number.”
Both men looked at Rags. There was a moment’s pause.
“Very well,” she said, and glanced back again interrogatively at John. Again he nodded. She rose and with her heart beating wildly threaded the tables, making the half-circuit of the room; then melted, a slim figure in shimmering gold, into the table set in half-darkness.
IV
The number drew to a close, and John Chestnut sat alone at his table, stirring auxiliary bubbles in his glass of champagne. Just before the lights went on, there was a soft rasp of gold cloth, and Rags, flushed and breathing quickly, sank into her chair. Her eyes were shining with tears.
John looked at her moodily.
“Well, what did he say?”
“He was very quiet.”
“Didn’t he say a word?”
Her hand trembled as she took up her glass of champagne.
“He just looked at me while it was dark. And he said a few conventional things. He was like his pictures, only he looks very bored and tired. He didn’t even ask my name.”
“Is he leaving New York tonight?”
“In half an hour. He and his aides have a car outside, and they expect to be over the border before dawn.”
“Did you find him—fascinating?”
She hesitated and then slowly nodded her head.
“That’s what everybody says,” admitted John glumly. “Do they expect you back there?”
“I don’t know.” She looked uncertainly across the floor but the celebrated personage had again withdrawn from his table to some retreat outside. As she turned back an utterly strange young man who had been standing for a moment in the main entrance came toward them hurriedly. He was a deathly pale person in a dishevelled and inappropriate business suit, and he had laid a trembling hand on John Chestnut’s shoulder.
“Monte!” exclaimed John, starting up so suddenly that he upset his champagne. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
“They’ve picked up the trail!” said the young man in a shaken whisper. He looked around. “I’ve got to speak to you alone.”
John Chestnut jumped to his feet, and Rags noticed that his face too had become white as the napkin in his
