XIX
As the car moved off, a man came running across the road, stepped lightly on to the footboard, and wriggled his way to a place beside the driver. The car was held up outside the Hippodrome, but only for a few seconds, and then, turning, it sped wheezily along Coventry Street. They had a good crossing of Piccadilly Circus, and a few seconds later they had struck the gloom of lower Piccadilly and had turned into Hyde Park.
Leslie had a glimpse now of the faces of her captors; yellow, with that Oriental slant of the eye which is common to the Chinese and Japanese. Here the likeness ended; their faces lacked the intelligence of the people of the island kingdoms.
Javanese, of course. How stupid she had been not to have realized that from the first! Anita Bellini had lived in Java for many years. And then she remembered Peter’s words. She understood the chained door because of the attack that had been made on her flat. Anita’s bodyguard had been engaged elsewhere; she had need of chains to protect her house in their absence.
Who was Diga Nagara? It sounded familiar. It was one of those colourable figures in history that even the skimming student retains as a fluttering rag of memory. Some Javanese god, perhaps.
“Who is Diga Nagara?” she asked suddenly.
She heard the men draw in their breath as though they were shocked.
“The Prince, the Great One,” said the man on her left after a while. He spoke in a low, awestricken voice. “He who is not dead, though the Dutchmen think he is.”
“Dutchmen?” Of course, Java was a Dutch possession. She wished now she had made a study of the Malaysian States, and knew just what was entailed by an inclusion in the harem of this prince who was dead and yet not dead.
The car slipped across Hammersmith Bridge, and, after a few minutes, she could identify the spot where the body of Druze had been found. They were going to Wimbledon, then—to Anita’s grisly house.
The machine came to a stop before the door of May Towers, and she hurried up the steps. She had not reached the top before the door was opened. No light showed in the hall, and she heard the door clang behind her and a chain rattle as it was fastened, and her courage almost deserted her. Somebody flashed the light of a hand-lamp; she saw the wide, heavily carpeted stairs.
“Go up,” said her conductor, his hand still on her arm, and she obeyed.
The stairs turned and they reached a wide landing. Somebody knocked at a door, and a voice which she recognized as Anita’s said:
“Come in.”
The man who had knocked pushed the door open wide. She had a glimpse of a lofty wall, hidden by a black curtain, which was covered with curious designs in gold threadwork. The room was filled with an unearthly greenish light; the hand of the gaoler fell from her arm; she walked into the room alone, and the door closed behind her.
It was a long and ill-proportioned salon. With the exception of a divan at the far end and a low table near by, it was bare of furniture. The carpet underfoot was either purple or black; in the queer light of two green lamps that burnt on either side of the settee, it was impossible to distinguish its colour.
Anita Bellini sat cross-legged on the divan, horribly suggestive of some repellent and grotesque idol, in her golden frock. Her massive arms were smothered from wrist to elbow with glittering bracelets. Three ropes of pearls hung about her strong neck, and every time her hands moved they sparkled and scintillated brilliantly. A long ebony cigarette-holder was between her lips; that immovable monocle of hers gleamed greenly.
“Come along, Maughan; sit here.” She pointed to the floor, and, black against black, invisible from where she had paused when she had entered the room, Leslie saw a heap of cushions.
She sat obediently, looking up into the coarse face. So they sat surveying one another for a space, and then, flicking the ash from her cigarette, Anita Bellini spoke.
“You have brains, I suppose?”
“I suppose so,” said Leslie coolly.
“Sufficient brains to know that I wouldn’t take the risk of bringing you here—abducting is the word, I think—unless my position were rather desperate. I’d have killed you last night, but that would have been a fatal mistake. You are much more useful to me alive.”
Leslie smiled faintly.
“Which sounds like a line from a melodrama,” she said.
To this Anita made no reply.
“Have you heard of Diga Nagara?” she asked. “I see you have. He was a great prince of Java, who died seventy years ago. He has become a legendary figure, and the natives believe he is immortal, that he enjoys, through his subjects, all the creature comforts of a living man. In his name they will go to any extreme.”
She stopped, took out her monocle with a characteristic gesture, polished it mechanically on the knee of her dress, and put it back.
“You were to have been killed last night because Diga Nagara designed your death. If I gave you to be the wife of one of these men, you would be Diga Nagara’s bride, whoever held your hand. Do you appreciate that?”
Leslie nodded. Her eyes did not leave the woman’s face.
“The Javanese are a gentle, kindly people,” Anita continued slowly; “but in some ways—they are not nice.”
“I understand all this is a threat as to what will happen to me if I do not do something you wish.”
“You’re a sensible girl,” said Anita Bellini, and leaned forward, her elbows on her knees. She was very much like a fishwife in that attitude; there was something inexpressibly common about her, in spite of her monocle and her Parisian gown, and the luxury of her surroundings. “This
