A Soul of Steel (20 page)

“And the amusing Miss Uxleigh!” A nod (mine) and a playful, admonishing finger-wagging (hers). “But where is your vanished gentleman?”

“On canvas,” I replied.

She turned immediately to Irene with a shocked expression. “He is one of these brutal pugilists?”

Irene smiled. “Nell means that she has only a painted portrait to remember him by.”

The Divan One turned to me with a conspiratory look. “Sometimes I think that this is the ideal place for men—in oils, preferably burning.” She examined my attire with mercurial speed. “But you look ravishing, my dear Miss Uxleigh, in green. Nile green like a queen. You require an asp for the evening. If I can find Oscar you may carry him for the night—”

She began uprooting brocaded pillows, and I am sorry to say that something long and sinuous stirred amid the patterned cloths. I felt a sudden panic.

“Let sleeping snakes lie,” Irene urged. “Our poor Nell had a rather upsetting encounter with a reptile today.”

“Upsetting? Snakes are the soul of tact. Where is the naughty serpent that has upset my adorable Miss Uxleigh? I shall tie it in a knot until it promises to be good.”

“I am afraid that I cannot produce it,” Irene admitted. “I was forced to shoot it.”

“So sad,” Sarah hissed sympathetically. (Lest any suppose me so prejudiced against the actress that I exaggerate, I must stress that the French word for “sad” is
triste,
and Sarah lisped it, thusly:
trisssste.)
The actress made sure that all eyes in the salon were fixed on her before speaking further. “I also was forced to shoot a snake. Otto was eating my sofa cushions. He went quite berserk.”

“This snake did not have a name that we know of,” Irene said, “other than cobra.”

The Divine Sarah sat up amid her cushions.

“A
cobra?
You shot a venomous snake? Otto was merely a boa constrictor; like most men, he was not dangerous unless one wished to embrace him. But a cobra—again you amaze me, my enterprising Irene. I salute your marksmanship. A cobra is a much smaller target than a boa.”

She pointed to a lengthy pair of loudly patterned serpents as thick as top hats that coiled decoratively around an ironwork
torchère
and a potted tree.

“The room was dark,” I added.

Sarah fanned herself in agitation. “And in the dark! Even more astounding.”

“Not really,” commented a new voice in impeccable French. “I imagine the lady aimed for the hood, which would be fully fanned if the snake were raised to strike. The head is the only place to shoot a snake.”

We turned to face a gentleman in evening dress. For all his refined garb and perfect French, I should not have judged him a gentleman in the oldest sense of the word. I have never regarded a pair of blue eyes that seemed colder. Despite his fifty or more years, his features were energetic, with a jaw so powerful I was immediately reminded of the bear at our feet.

His white hair had receded from his brow, but baldness did not make him a figure of fun. Rather, it stripped away all softening influences from those pugnacious features, and seemed an affront rather than an accident of nature. His baldness resembled the tonsured sleekness of a fanatical monk.

I’m not often aware of men as men, but this one struck me as wielding an innate power over his fellow creatures, as if he were a law unto himself. His effect on the others was as potent. Irene had not changed outwardly, but I saw that she had gathered her most incisive instincts about her like a cloak. She radiated an air of instantly rising to the occasion, like a hunter who, stalking dangerous prey, suddenly finds it before her eyes.

Godfrey was no less wary, although one who did not know him would not see that fact. His expression grew noncommittal, guarded. He, too, was concentrating all his faculties on this stranger.

“My dear Captain Morgan!” Sarah actually rose, her gown coiling around her in folds of taffeta and velvet, and advanced—rustling in a way that set my teeth on edge—down the dais steps to offer her hand.

Captain Morgan bowed over it like a Bohemian princeling, which breed I have observed, in a stiff salute, though the kiss was perfunctorily proper. Certain recent events had made me newly aware of the nuances that may be hidden in a kiss.

“What have you brought me?” the Shameless Sarah purred deep in her throat.

“If Madame wishes me to present it in the presence of her guests...” He clapped his hands.

Two turbaned servants, their faces the color of
cafe au lait,
came bearing a great furry bundle over the prone bearskin on the floor.

“This is... magnificent!” Sarah exclaimed when the men knelt to unfurl the bundle at her feet, a mammoth pelt. The three of us edged back to avoid the tide of white fur lapping at our shoe tips. “Extraordinary!”

“No more than the mistress of the world stage deserves,” Captain Morgan said grandly.

As the bearskin foamed over his feet I noticed that he wore black boots with his evening dress—polished to obsidian sheen, but boots, not shoes! I was beginning to revise my notions on the unimportance of men’s dress. Certainly this man’s boots spoke of a disregard for civilized niceties.

The huge white pelt ended in a head larger than that of the brown bear, with even sharper teeth. We all gazed speechlessly at this incredible hide.

“I shot it once,” the captain boasted idly. “Through the eye, so the skin should bear no mark. Of course a glass eye now covers the bullet hole.”

“How clever of you,” Sarah said. “But where—?”

Captain Morgan altered his face in a way that might have suggested a smile to the undiscriminating, revealing teeth as yellow and prominent as his massive prey’s more pointed armament.

“As you know, I hunt the brown bears in Russia. In the northern reaches of that land, where the glaciers creep south toward the tents of man’s farthest-flung outposts, the great polar bear rules, virtually invisible against an endless carpet of ice and snow. They call the place Siberia. I donned the hide of a seal, skin-side out, so I wore the bone color of that icy wasteland to stalk these great white bears.”

“You took more than one?” Irene asked quickly.

Captain Morgan bowed his bald head in mock-humble pride. “The Czar permits my Russian hunting expeditions; I am privileged to reward my host.” He turned to Madame Sarah. “This is the only polar bear pelt I have brought further than St. Petersburg.”

“You will be outrageously rewarded,” she promised with a happy pout, “much to the displeasure of my manager, Herr Heine. This is too wonderful to resist. Lay it upon my divan.” The turbaned servants understood French, for they instantly bent to lift the heavy bearskin into place. There it lay in barbaric splendor. Sarah reclined upon it in calculated inches, finally pushing her hands into the thick fur to the wrists.

“To think that I will be honored in the same night with the presence of the Empress of Russia and the emperor of polar bears. You are a peerless hunter, Captain. I quite quiver for your prey.”

He laughed, a harsh, humorless sound. “And so you should, Madame.”

He withdrew to our side as Sarah’s other guests came to examine her prize, then turned to Irene. “I would be interested in your cobra skin—Madame, is it?”

“It is,” Godfrey answered in French so blandly that the man whirled as if confronted by an enemy from ambush. He was a good judge of character, that hunter, for I have never known Godfrey to be so dangerous as when he is quiet.

“Monsieur—?” the captain began, seeking his identity.

“Godfrey Norton,” Godfrey said sharply in English.

The captain’s strong jaws snapped shut, as if he had been struck an invisible blow. Then the fierce blue eyes narrowed and focused on me. “And Mrs. Norton—?” he asked in a perfectly proper British voice.

“Mrs. Norton is the lady behind you,” Irene said in her impeccable French, “who shot the snake. This is Miss Huxleigh, our friend.”

“American!” He turned, unfooled by her perfect French, and his blue eyes drilled into Irene like bullets. “You are merely visiting the Continent, then?”

“I am a bird of passage, Captain,” she said airily, “as are we all.”

“But your home is in America.”

“One of them. Once.”

“I am serious about the cobra. I have a large collection of cobra skins.”

Irene considered, casting her eyes down to her fan and biting her lip in mock-girlish fashion. “I cannot swear that I shot it precisely through the eye, sir. It might not be suitable for your collection.”

“I do not require snakeskins to be whole. I rather enjoy shooting cobras. I like to see the evidence of it.”

“It would have killed me,” Irene answered. “That is why I shot it. And the Paris police are as interested in the skin as yourself. Perhaps you should inquire there.”

“Perhaps.” His icy gaze regarded us all. “I did not mean to interrupt your discussion. Pray continue.”

With another bow so smart it seemed an insult rather than a courtesy, he left the dais.

Sarah looked up from caressing her new pet to address us.

“I must confess—” her large, blue-green eyes drooped into Lucifer-size slits “—that few Englishmen impress me. That one does. He has passion. Unfortunately, the game that obsesses him is not human.”

“Who is he?” Godfrey asked.

“Captain Sylvester Morgan, late of Her Majesty’s forces in India. He has brought me all these lovely bears. I will not have heads of the big cats mounted about me; those I can import to my salon alive, like Minette.” She nodded at the tiger cub clumsily cavorting in one comer of the salon. “But bears—they are too big for domestic pets.”

“How did you meet him?” Irene wondered.

“He is not a man to trust to chance. He introduced himself as an admirer.”

“How long ago?”

“Does any truly intelligent woman keep count of such things? As well ask me to number my lovers, dear Irene. It is impossible! One must live life so that it cannot be caged behind mere dates. But for some years I have known him. He comes and goes. I hear that no tiger in India is safe from his marksmanship, but of course he knows better than to confront me with his tigerskins.” She absently stroked the bear pelt.

“I imagine,” Irene said after a slight pause, “that specific times are equally tiresome to the truly intelligent woman, but can you venture to say when the Empress will arrive?”

“Oh, that, yes! Her equerry was most officious about it. She will arrive at nine and depart within half an hour. You must sing in that interval. I trust that you have selected something brief. The instrument is there.”

Her furled fan indicated something huddled in a comer of the room. It could have been a draped tiger cage. It could have been a piano. Irene glided over to it, Godfrey and I following.

She lifted the thread-encrusted throw, which was emblazoned with the actress’s ubiquitous motto:
“Quand même.”
Despite Everything.

“Here, I think, is Oscar, Nell. Sarah is right; you should carry him as an accessory.”

Irene lifted the coiling Indian green snake from the dusty key cover with one hand. He responded by winding himself several times around her forearm. Her flesh-colored gloves too artfully mimicked bare skin. I repressed a shudder at the picture the pair presented, reminding me of a foolish Eve in a lethal Eden.

Godfrey peeled Oscar from Irene and draped him over a twittering, thick-leaved plant. In fact, the twittering came from the contents of a birdcage concealed by the foliage.

Irene lifted the key cover and struck a note. “I doubt it is in tune. Music is not Sarah’s forte. This will be a poor excuse of a concert.”

“It
is
an excuse, Irene,” I reminded her, managing not to sound at all sympathetic.

She smiled. “Quite right, Nell. What does Madame Norton’s musical reputation matter, if she satisfies her curiosity?”

“There is more to it than that.” Godfrey withdrew a pair of dusky cigarettes from his gold case and offered one to Irene.

A moment later a lit lucifer twinkled in our shadowed corner of the salon, and then two scarlet embers burned as bright as animal eyes in the dark. The charred lucifer made a burnt offering for the shallow porcelain dish atop the piano.

“Yes,” Irene agreed at length, gazing toward the guests through a contemplative curtain of smoke.

I followed her example, recognizing no one but the noxious bear-killer, and then only by his bald head. The salon had become as mysterious as any Montmartre bistro, so fogged was it with smoke. I am sorry to say that cigarette smoking, even by women, had become the fashion at artistic assemblages such as this.

Few objected to the petite cigarette as strenuously as they might to a cigar; certainly the odor was milder. And more than the occasional woman carried a bejeweled cigarette holder in her reticule, as Irene did. It occurred to me to wonder if the Empress of All the Russias would smoke.

“Godfrey,” Irene said of a sudden, “you pore over the political columns in the newspapers. What do they say of Russia and its royal family?”

“A large subject for a summary.”

“You summarize divinely,” she said, smiling. “Pray do it.”

“Alexander the Third is said to be an utter autocrat.”

Irene nodded. “And his wife?”

“The mother of his six children. Much loved. Her only flaw is a fondness for Paris fashion.”

“An utter paragon, then.”

“So it seems. But czars’ heads rest uneasily on their shoulders. The Romanovs have a history of internal treachery and outside assassination for possession of the throne. Germany is nibbling at the Russian bear’s borders. England bristles over Russia’s intentions toward India, past and present.”

“So France is Russia’s most obvious ally.”

“For now.”

Irene straightened suddenly and extinguished her cigarette in the small dish. “Politics is so dull, Godfrey! But, look, here come royalty and fashion to rescue the evening. I predict that the reception is about to become far more interesting.”

Indeed, a flurry at the doorway resolved itself into an ornately bemedaled Russian officer, who announced: “Her Imperial Majesty, the Czarina Maria Feodorovna, Empress of All the Russias.”