were ostentatious as they welcomed the guests. The luggage was removed; they had a good deal of luggage with them. Stafford Nye had wondered to begin with why he had been told to bring so much, but he was beginning to understand now that from time to time there was need for it. There would, he thought, be need for it this evening. A few questioning remarks and his companion told him that this was so.
They met before dinner, summoned by the sound of a great resounding gong. As he paused in the hall, he waited for her to join him coming down the stairs. She was in full elaborate evening dress tonight, wearing a dark red velvet gown, rubies round her neck, and a ruby-tiara on her head. A manservant stepped forward and conducted them. Flinging open the door, he announced: 'The Grдfin Zerkowski, Sir Stafford Nye.'
'Here we come, and I hope we look the part,' said Sir Stafford Nye to himself.
He looked down in a satisfied manner at the sapphire and diamond studs in the front of his shirt. A moment later he had drawn his breath in an astonished gasp. Whatever he had expected to see, it had not been this. It was an enormous room, rococo in style, chairs and sofas and hangings of the finest brocades and velvets. On the walls there were pictures that he could not recognize all at once, but where he noted almost immediately — for he was fond of pictures — what was certainly a Cézanne, a Matisse, possibly a Renoir. Pictures of inestimable value.
Sitting on a vast chair, thronelike in its suggestion, was an enormous woman. A whale of a woman, Stafford Nye thought, there really was no other word to describe her. A great, big, cheesy-looking woman, wallowing in fat. Double, treble, almost quadruple chins. She wore a dress of stiff orange satin. On her head was an elaborate crownlike tiara of precious stones. Her hands, which rested on the brocaded arms of her chair, were also enormous. Great, big, fat hands with great, big, fat, shapeless fingers. On each finger, he noticed, was a solitaire ring. And in each ring, he thought, was a genuine solitaire stone. A ruby, an emerald, a sapphire, a pale green stone which he did not know, a chrysoprase, perhaps, a yellow stone which, if not a topaz, was a yellow diamond. She was horrible, he thought. She wallowed in her fat. A great, white, creased slobbering mass of fat was her face. And set in it, rather like currants in a vast currant bun, were two small black eyes. Very shrewd eyes, looking on the world, appraising it, appraising him, not appraising Renata, he thought. Renata she knew. Renata was here by command, by appointment. However you liked to put it. Renata had been told to bring him here. He wondered why. He couldn't really think why, but he was quite sure of it. It was at him she was looking. She was appraising him, summing him up. Was he what she wanted? Was it, yes, he'd rather put it this way, was he what the custom had ordered?
I'll have to make quite sure that I know what it is she does want, he thought. I'll have to do my best, otherwise… Otherwise he could quite imagine that she might raise a fat ringed hand and say to one of the tall, muscular footmen: 'Take him and throw him over the battlements.'
It's ridiculous, thought Stafford Nye. Such things can't happen nowadays. Where am I? What kind of a parade, a masquerade or a theatrical performance am I taking part in?
'You have come very punctual to time, child.'
It was a hoarse, asthmatic voice which had once had an undertone, he thought, of strength, possibly even of beauty. That was over now, Renata came forward, made a slight curtsy. She picked up the fat hand and dropped a courtesy kiss upon it.
'Let me present to you Sir Stafford Nye. The Grдfin Charlotte von Waldsausen.'
The fat hand was extended towards him. He bent over it in the foreign style. Then she said something that surprised him.
'I know your great-aunt,' she said,
He looked astounded, and he saw immediately that she was amused by that, but he saw too, that she had expected him to be surprised by it. She laughed, a rather queer, grating laugh. Not attractive.
'Shall we say, I used to know her. It is many, many years since I have seen her. We were in Switzerland together, at Lausanne , as girls. Matilda. Lady Matilda Baldwen-White.'
'What a wonderful piece of news to take home with me,' said Stafford Nye.
'She is older than I am. She is in good health?'
'For her age, in very good health. She lives in the country quietly. She has arthritis, rheumatism.'
'Ah yes, all the ills of old age. She should have injections of procaine. That is what the doctors do here in this altitude. It is very satisfactory. Does she know that you are visiting me?'
'I imagine that she has not the least idea of it,' said Sir Stafford Nye. 'She knew only that I was going to this festival of modern music.'
'Which you enjoyed, I hope?'
'Oh enormously. It is a fine Festival Opera Hall, is it not?'
'One of the finest. Pah! It makes the old Bayreuth Festival Hall look like a comprehensive school! Do you know what it cost to build, that Opera House?'
She mentioned a sum in millions of marks. It quite took Stafford Nye's breath away, but he was under no necessity to conceal that. She was pleased with the effect it made upon him.
'With money,' she said, 'if one knows, if one has the ability, if one has the discrimination, what is there that money cannot do? It can give one the best.'
She said the last two words with a rich enjoyment, a kind of smacking of the lips which he found both unpleasant and at the same time slightly sinister.
'I see that here,' he said, as he looked round the walls.
'You are fond of art? Yes, I see you are. There, on the east wall is the finest Cezanne in the world today. Some say that the — ah, I forget the name of it at the moment, the one in the Metropolitan in New York — is finer. That is not true. The best Matisse, the best Cezanne, the best of all that great school of art are here. Here in my mountain eyrie.'
'It is wonderful,' said Sir Stafford. 'Quite wonderful.'
Drinks were being handed round. The Old Woman of the Mountain, Sir Stafford Nye noticed, did not drink anything. It was possible, he thought, that she feared to take any risks over her blood pressure with that vast weight.
'And where did you meet this child?' asked the mountainous Dragon.
Was it a trap? He did not know, but he made his decision.
'At the American Embassy, in London .'
'Ah yes, so I heard. And how is — ah, I forget her name now — ah yes, Milly Jean, our southern heiress? Attractive, did you think?'
'Most charming. She has a great success in London .'
'And poor dull Sam Cortman, the United States Ambassador?'
'A very sound man, I'm sure,' said Stafford Nye politely.
She chuckled.
'Aha, you're tactful, are you not? Ah well, he does well and he does what he is told as a good politician should. It is enjoyable to be Ambassador in London . She could do that for him, Milly Jean. Ah, she could get him an Embassy anywhere in the world, with that well-stuffed purse of hers. Her father owns half the oil in Texas , he owns land goldfields, everything. A coarse, singularly ugly man. But what does she look like? A gentle little aristocrat. Not blatant, not rich. That is very clever of her, is it not?'
'Sometimes it presents no difficulties,' said Sir Stafford Nye.
'And you? You are not rich?' 'I wish I was.'
'The Foreign Office nowadays, it is not, shall we say, very rewarding?'
'Oh well, I would not put it like that… After all, one goes places, one meets amusing people, one sees the world, one sees something of what goes on.'
'Something, yes. But not everything.'
'That would be very difficult.'
'Have you ever wished to see what — how shall I put it — what goes on behind the scenes in life?'
'One has an idea sometimes.' He made his voice noncommittal.
'I have heard it said that that is true of you, that you have sometimes ideas about things. Not perhaps the conventional ideas?'
There have been times when I've been made to feel the bad boy of the family,' said Stafford Nye and laughed.
Old Charlotte chuckled.
