MAXINE MEETS DIANA

Godensky was obliged to take his leave, which he did abruptly, but to all appearance with a good grace; and when he was gone Marianne ushered in a girl—a tall, beautiful girl in a grey tailor dress built by an artist.

For such time as it might have taken us to count twelve, we looked at each other; and as we looked, a little clock on the mantel softly chimed the quarter hour. In fifteen minutes I should be due upon the stage.

The girl was very lovely. Yes, lovely was the right word for her—lovely and lovable. She was like a fresh rose, with the morning dew of youth on its petals—a rose that had budded and was beginning to bloom in a fair garden, far out of reach of ugly weeds. I envied her, for I felt how different her sweet, girl's life had been from my stormy if sometimes brilliant career.

"Mr. Dundas sent you to me?" I asked. "When did you see him? Surely not—since—"

"This afternoon," she answered quietly, in a pretty, un-English sounding voice, with a soft little drawl of the South in it. "I went to see him. They gave us five minutes. A warder was there; but speaking quickly in Spanish, just a few words, he—Mr. Dundas—managed to tell me a thing he wished me to do. He said it meant more than his life, so I did it; for we have been friends, and just now he's helpless. The warder was angry, and stopped our conversation at once, though the five minutes weren't ended. But I understood. Mr. Dundas said there wasn't a moment to lose."

"Yet that was in the afternoon, and you only come to me at this hour!" I exclaimed.

"I had something else to do first," she said, in the same quiet voice. She was looking down now, not at me, and her eyelashes were so long that they made a shadow on her cheeks. But the blood streamed over her face.

"Even before I saw—Mr. Dundas," she went on, "I had the idea of calling on you—about a different matter. I think it would be more honest of me, if before I go on I tell you that—quite by accident, so far as I was concerned—I was with someone who saw Mr. Dundas go to your house last night, a little after twelve. I didn't dream of spying on—either of you. It just happened, it wouldn't interest you to know how. Yet—I beg of you to tell me one thing. Was he with you for long—so long that he couldn't have got to the other place in time to commit the murder?"

"He was in my house until after one," I said boldly. "But you, if you are his friend, ought to know him well enough to be certain without such an assurance from me, that he is no murderer."

"Oh, I am certain," she protested. "I asked the question, not for that reason, but to know if you could really prove his innocence, if you choose. Now, I find you can. When I read the papers this afternoon, at first I wanted to rush off to the police and tell them where he had been while the murder was being committed. But I didn't know how long he had stopped in your house, and, besides—"

"You would have dared to do that!" I broke in, the blood, angry blood, stinging my cheeks more hotly than it stung hers.

"It wasn't a question of daring," she answered. "I thought of him more than of you; but I thought of you, too. I knew that if I were in your place, no matter how much harm I might do to myself, I would confess that he had been in my house."

"There are reasons why I can't tell that he was there," I said, trying to awe her by speaking coldly and proudly. "His visit was entirely on business. But Mr. Dundas understands why I must keep silence, and he approves. You know he has remained silent himself."

"For your sake, because he is a gentleman—brave and chivalrous. Would you take advantage of that?"

"You take advantage of me," I flung back at the girl, looking her up and down. "You pretend that you came from Mr. Dundas with a pressing message for me. Do you want me to believe this his message? I think too well of him."

"I don't want you to believe that," she answered. "I haven't come to the message yet. I have earned a right to speak to you first, on my own account."

"In twelve minutes I must be on the stage," I said.

"The stage!" she echoed. "You can go on acting just the same, though he is in prison—for you!"

"I must go on acting. If I didn't, I should do him more harm than good."

"I won't keep you beyond your time. But I beg that you will do him good. If you care for him at all, you must want to save him."

"If I care for him?" I repeated, in surprise. "You think—oh, but I understand now. You are the girl he spoke of."

She blushed deeply, and then grew pale.

"I did not think he would speak of me," she said. "I wish he hadn't. But, if you know everything, the little there is to know, you must see that you have nothing to fear from any rivalry of mine, Mademoiselle de Renzie."

"Why," I exclaimed, "you speak as if you thought Ivor Dundas my lover."

"I don't know what you are to each other," she faltered, all her coolness deserting her. "That isn't my affair—"

"But I say it is. You shall not make such a mistake. Mr. Dundas cares nothing for me, except as a friend. He never did, though we flirted a little a year ago, to amuse ourselves. Now, I am engaged to marry a man whom I worship. I would gladly die for him. Ivor Dundas knows that, and is glad. But the other man is jealous. He wouldn't understand—he would want to kill me and himself and Ivor Dundas, if he knew that Ivor was in my house last night. He was there too, and I lied to him about Ivor. How could I expect him to believe the real truth now? He is a man. But you will believe, because you are a woman, like myself, and I think the woman Ivor Dundas loves."

Her beautiful eyes brightened. "He told you—that?"

"He told me he loved a girl, and was afraid that he would lose her because of the business which brought him to me. You seem to have been as unreasonable with him, as Ra—as the man I love could be with me. Poor Ivor! Last night was not the first time that he sacrificed himself for chivalry and honour. Yet you blame me! Look to yourself, Miss Forrest."

"I—I don't blame you," she stammered, a sob in her voice. "Only I beg you to save him, from gratitude, if not from love."

"It's true I owe him a debt of gratitude, deeper than you know," I answered. "He is worth trusting—worth saving, at the expense of almost any sacrifice. But I can't sacrifice the man I love for him."

She looked thoughtful. "You say the man you were engaged to was at your house while Ivor was there?"

"Yes. He came then. I hid Ivor, and I lied."

"He suspected that someone was with you? He stood watching, outside your gate?"

"He confessed that, when I'd made him repent his jealousy. Why do you ask? You saw him?"

"I think so. Tell me, Mademoiselle de Renzie, did he lose anything of value near your house?"

"Great heavens, yes!" I cried. "What do you know of that?"

"I know—something. Enough, maybe, to help you to find the thing for him—if you will promise to help Ivor."

"Oh, shame," I cried violently, sick of bargains and promises. "You are trying to bribe me!"

"Yes, but I am not ashamed," the girl answered, holding her head high. "I have not the thing which was lost; but I can get it for you—this very night or to-morrow morning, if you will do what I ask."

"I tell you I cannot," I said. "Not even to get back that thing whose loss was the beginning of all my misery. Ivor would not wish me to ruin myself and—another. Mr. Dundas must be saved without me. Please go. If we talked of this together all night, it could make no difference. And I'm in great trouble, great trouble of my own."

"Has your trouble anything to do with a document?" Miss Forrest slowly asked.

I started, and stared at her, breathless.

"It has!" she answered for me. "Your face tells me so."

"Has Ivor's message—to do with that?" I almost gasped.

"Perhaps. But he had no good news of it to give you. If you want news—if you want the document, it must be through me."

"Anything, anything on earth you like to ask for the document, if you can get it for me, I will do," I pleaded, all my pride and anger gone.

"I ask you to tell the police that Ivor Dundas was in your house from a little after midnight until after one. Will you do that?"

"I must," I said, "if you have the document to sell, and are determined to sell it at no other price. But if I do what you ask, it will spoil my life, for it will kill my lover's love, when he knows I have lied to him. Still, it will save him from—" I stopped, and bit my lip. "Will you give me the diamonds, too?" I asked, humbly enough now.

"The diamonds?" She looked bewildered.

"The diamonds in the brocade bag. Oh, surely they are still in the bag?"

"Yes, they are—they will be in the bag," the girl answered, her charming mouth suddenly resolute, though her eyes were troubled. "You shall have the diamonds, and the document, too, for that one promise."

"How is it possible that you can give me the document?" I asked, half suspicious, for that it should come to me after all I had endured because of it seemed too good to be true; that it should come through this girl seemed incredible.

"Ivor sent me to find it, and I found it," she said simply. "That was why I couldn't come to you before. I had to get the document. I didn't quite know how I was to do it at first, because I had no one to help or advise me; and Ivor said it was under some flower-pots in a box on the balcony of the room where the man was murdered. I was sure I wouldn't be allowed to get into the room itself, so it seemed difficult. But I thought it all out, and hired a room for the evening in a house next door, pretending I was a New York journalist. I had to wait until after dark, and then I climbed across from one balcony to the other. It wasn't as easy to do as it looked from the photograph I saw, because it was so high up, and the balconies were quite far apart, after all. But I couldn't fail Ivor; and I got across. The rest was nothing—except the climbing back. I don't know how the document came in the box, though I suppose Ivor put it there to hide it from the police. It was wrapped up in a towel; and it's quite clean."

"I think," I said slowly, when she had finished her story, "that you have a right to set a high price on that document. You are a brave girl."

"It's not much to be brave for a man you love, is it? And now I'm going to give the thing to you, because I trust you, Mademoiselle de Renzie. I know you'll pay. And I hope, oh, I feel, it won't hurt you as you think it will."

Then, as if it had been some ordinary paper, she whipped from a long pocket of a coat she wore, the treaty. She put it into my hand. I felt it, I clasped it. I could have kissed it. The very touch of it made me tremble.

"Do you know what this is, Miss Forrest?" I asked.

"No," she said. "It was yours, or Ivor's. Of course I didn't look."

And then there came the rap, rap, of the call-boy at the door. The fifteen minutes were over. But I had the treaty. And I had to pay its price.