The Dark Star by Robert W. Chambers (best fiction novels of all time TXT) 📖

Their adieux to Fifi and Nini were elaborate and complicated by bursts of laughter. The Tziganes recommended Captain Sengoun to go home and seek further adventures on his pillow; and had it not been for the gay babble of the fountain and the persistent perfume of flowers, he might have followed their advice.

It was after the two young men had left the Jardin Russe that Captain Sengoun positively but affectionately refused to relinquish possession of Neeland’s arm.

“Dear friend,” he explained, “I am just waking up and I do not wish to go to bed for days and days.”

“But I do,” returned Neeland, laughing. “Where do you want to go now, Prince Erlik?”

The champagne was singing loudly in the Cossack’s handsome head; the distant brilliancy beyond the Place de la Concorde riveted his roving eyes.

“Over there,” he said joyously. “Listen, old fellow, I’ll teach you the skating step as we cross the Place! Then, in the first Bal, you shall try it on the fairest form since Helen fell and Troy burned—or Troy fell and Helen burned—it’s all the same, old fellow—what you call fifty-fifty, eh?”

Neeland tried to free his arm—to excuse himself; two policemen laughed; but Sengoun, linking his arm more firmly in Neeland’s, crossed the Place in a series of Dutch rolls and outer edges, in which Neeland was compelled to join. The Russian was as light and graceful 348 on his feet as one of the dancers of his own country; Neeland’s knowledge of skating aided his own less agile steps. There was sympathetic applause from passing taxis and fiacres; and they might, apparently, have had any number of fair partners for the asking, along the way, except for Sengoun’s headlong dive toward the brightest of the boulevard lights beyond.

In the rue Royal, however, Sengoun desisted with sudden access of dignity, remarking that such gambols were not worthy of the best traditions of his Embassy; and he attempted to bribe the drivers of a couple of hansom cabs to permit him and his comrade to take the reins and race to the Arc de Triomphe.

Failing in this, he became profusely autobiographical, informing Neeland of his birth, education, aims, aspirations.

“When I was twelve,” he said, “I had known already the happiness of the battle-shock against Kurd, Mongol, and Tartar. At eighteen my ambition was to slap the faces of three human monsters. I told everybody that I was making arrangements to do this, and I started for Brusa after my first monster—Fehim Effendi—but the Vali telegraphed to the Grand Vizier, and the Grand Vizier ran to Abdul the Damned, and Abdul yelled for Sir Nicholas O’Connor; and they caught me in the Pera Palace and handed me over to my Embassy.”

Neeland shouted with laughter:

“Who were the other monsters?” he asked.

“The other two whose countenances I desired to slap? Oh, one was Abdul Houda, the Sultan’s star-reader, who chattered about my Dark Star horoscope in the Yildiz. And the other was the Sultan.”

“Who?” 349

“Abdul Hamid.”

“What? You wished to slap his face?”

“Certainly. But Kutchuk Saïd and Kiamil Pasha requested me not to—accompanied by gendarmes.”

“You’d have lost your life,” remarked Neeland.

“Yes. But then war would surely have come, and today my Emperor would have held the Dardanelles where the Turkish flag is now flying over German guns and German gunners.”

He shook his head:

“Great mistake on my part,” he muttered. “Should have pulled Abdul’s lop ears. Now, everything in Turkey is ‘Yasak’ except what Germans do and say; and God knows we are farther than ever from St. Sophia.... I’m very thirsty with thinking so much, old fellow. Did you ever drink German champagne?”

“I believe not––”

“Come on, then. You shall drink several gallons and never feel it. It’s the only thing German I could ever swallow.”

“Prince Erlik, you have had considerable refreshment already.”

“Copain, t’en fais pas!”

The spectacle of two young fellows in evening dress, in a friendly tug-of-war under the lamp-posts of the Boulevard, amused the passing populace; and Sengoun, noticing this, was inclined to mount a boulevard bench and address the wayfarers, but Neeland pulled him down and persuaded him into a quieter street, the rue Vilna.

“There’s a German place, now!” exclaimed Sengoun, delighted.

And Neeland, turning to look, perceived the illuminated sign of the Café des Bulgars. 350

German champagne had now become Sengoun’s fixed idea; nothing could dissuade him from it, nothing persuade him into a homeward bound taxi. So Neeland, with a rather hazy idea that he ought not to do it, entered the café with Senguon; and they seated themselves on a leather wall-lounge before one of the numerous marble-topped tables.

“Listen,” he said in a low voice to his companion, “this is a German café, and we must be careful what we say. I’m not any too prudent and I may forget this; but don’t you!”

“Quite right, old fellow!” replied Sengoun, giving him an owlish look. “I must never forget I’m a diplomat among these sales Boches––”

“Be careful, Sengoun! That expression is not diplomatic.”

“Careful is the word, mon vieux,” returned the other loudly and cheerfully. “I’ll bet you a dollar, three kopeks, and two sous that I go over there and kiss the cashier––”

“No! Be a real diplomat, Sengoun!”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Neeland, because she’s unusually pretty. And we might establish a triple entente until you find some Argive Helen to quadruple it. Aha! Here is our German champagne! Positively the only thing German a Russian can––”

“Listen! This won’t do. People are looking at us––”

“Right, old fellow—always right! You know, Neeland, this friendship of ours is the most precious, most delightful, and most inspiring experience of my life. Here’s a full goblet to our friendship! Hurrah! As for Enver Pasha, may Erlik seize him!”

After they had honoured the toast, Sengoun looked 351 about him pleasantly, receptive, ready for any eventuality. And observing no symptoms of any eventuality whatever, he suggested creating one.

“Dear comrade,” he said, “I think I shall arise and make an incendiary address––”

“No!”

“Very well, if you feel that way about it. But there is another way to render the evening agreeable. You see that sideboard?” he continued, pointing to a huge carved buffet piled to the ceiling with porcelain and crystal. “What will you wager that I can not push it over with one hand?”

But Neeland declined the wager with an impatient gesture, and kept his eyes riveted on a man who had just entered the café. He could see only the stranger’s well-groomed back, but when, a moment later, the man turned to seat himself, Neeland was not surprised to find himself looking at Doc Curfoot.

“Sengoun,” he said under his breath, “that type who just came in is an American gambler named Doc Curfoot; and he is here with other gamblers for the purpose of obtaining political information for some government other than my own.”

Sengoun regarded the new arrival with amiable curiosity:

“That worm? Oh, well, every city in Europe swarms with such maggots, you know. It would be quite funny if he tries any blandishments on us, wouldn’t it?”

“He may. He’s a capper. He’s looking at us now. I believe he remembers having seen me in the train.”

“As for an hour or two at chemin-de-fer, baccarat, or roulette,” remarked Sengoun, “I am not averse to a––”

“Watch him! The waiter who is taking his order 352 may know who you are—may be telling that gambler.... I believe he did! Now, let us see what happens....”

Sengoun, delighted at the prospect of an eventuality, blandly emptied his goblet and smiled generally upon everybody.

“I hope he will make our acquaintance and ask us to play,” he said. “I’m very lucky at chemin-de-fer. And if I lose I shall conclude that there is trickery. Which would make it very lively for everybody,” he added with a boyish smile. But his dark eyes began to glitter and he showed his beautiful, even teeth when he laughed.

“Ha!” he said. “A little what you call a mix-up might not come amiss! That gives one an appetite; that permits one to perspire; that does good to everybody and makes one sleep soundly! Shall we, as you say in America, start something?”

Neeland, thinking of Ali-Baba and Golden Beard and of their undoubted instigation by telegraph of the morning’s robbery, wondered whether the rendezvous of the robbers might not possibly be here in the Café des Bulgars.

The gang of Americans in the train had named Kestner, Breslau, and Weishelm—the one man of the gang whom he had never seen—as prospective partners in this enterprise.

Here, somewhere in this building, were their gambling headquarters. Was there any possible chance that the stolen box and its contents might have been brought here for temporary safety?

Might it not now be hidden somewhere in this very building by men too cunning to risk leaving the city when every train and every road would be watched