The Obstacle Race - Ethel May Dell (mobi reader android TXT) 📗

I do."
"Oh, let us be honest at all costs!" he said. "Do you know what Lady Jo is doing now?"
Juliet hesitated an instant, as if the subject were distasteful to her. "I can guess," she said somewhat distantly.
"I'll bet you can't," said Saltash, with a twist of the eyebrows that was oddly characteristic of him. "So I'll tell you. She's running in an obstacle race, and--to be quite, quite honest--I don't think she's going to win."
There was a moment's pause. Then the man on Juliet's other side spoke, briefly and with decision. "Miss Moore is no longer interested in Lady Joanna Farringmore's doings. Their friendship is at an end."
Juliet made a slight gesture of remonstrance, but she spoke no word in contradiction.
A gleam of malice danced in Saltash's eyes; it was like the turn of a rapier in a practised hand. "Most wise and proper!" he said. "_Juliette_, I always admired your discretion."
"You were always very kind, Charles Rex," she made grave reply.


CHAPTER III
THE PRICE

They went back up the winding glen, and as they went Lord Saltash talked, superbly at his ease, of the doings of the past few weeks, "since you and that naughty Lady Jo dropped out," as he expressed it to Juliet. He had just recently been to Paris, had motored across France, had just returned by sea from Bordeaux in his yacht, the _Night Moth_.
"Landed to-day--forgot this unspeakable flower-show--had to put in to get her cleaned up for Cowes--though it's quite possible I shan't go near Cowes when all's said and done. She's quite seaworthy, warranted not to kick in a gale. If anyone wanted her for a cruise--she's about the best thing going."
They reached the shrubbery to be nearly deafened by the band.
"Come through the gardens!" said Saltash, with a shudder. "We must get out of this somehow."
"But my people!" objected Juliet.
"Oh, Mr. Green will go and find them, won't you, Mr. Green?" Saltash turned a disarming smile upon him.
But Green looked straight back without a smile. "Miss Moore is under my escort," he observed. "If she agrees, I think we had better go together."
"And do you agree, _Juliette_?" enquired Saltash with interest.
Juliet met the mocking eyes with a smile that was certainly unintentional. "They may be in the Castle," she said. "I know they meant to go."
"Good!" he ejaculated. "Then come to the Castle! I will get you tea in my own secret den if such a thing is to be had--tea or a cocktail, _ma Juliette_!"
"Will you lead the way?" said Juliet, and for a second--only a second--her hand pressed Dick's arm with a quick, confidential pressure that was not without its appeal. "We always follow Charles Rex!" she said.
Saltash chuckled. Plainly the adventure amused him.
They entered the trim gardens, escaping thankfully from the wandering crowd of sight-seers. Saltash led the way with a certain unconscious arrogance of bearing. Somehow, his ugliness notwithstanding, he fitted his surroundings perfectly, save that the white yachting-suit ought to have been fashioned of satin, and a sword should have dangled at his side. The old stone turrets that towered above the blazing parterres gleamed in the hot sunlight--a mediaeval castle of romance.
"What a glorious old place!" said Juliet.
He turned to her. "You have never seen it before?"
"Never," she answered.
He made her a bow that was slightly foreign. There was French blood in his veins. "I give you welcome, _maladi_," he said, "I and my poor castle are all yours to command."
He made a gallant figure there on his stone terrace. The girl's eyes shone a little, but they turned almost immediately to the other man at her side.
"Beautiful, isn't it, Dick?" she said.
He met her look, and she was conscious of a chill. She had never seen him look so aloof, so cynical. "A temple of delight!" he said.
His manner offended her. She turned deliberately away from him. And again Lord Saltash chuckled, as though at some secret joke.
They entered by a narrow door at the head of a flight of steps. "This at least is private," declared Saltash, as he took a key from an inner pocket.
"Does no one ever come in here when you are away?" Juliet asked.
"Not by this entrance," he said. "There is another into the Castle itself which is known to a few. It leads into the music room whence Mr. Green will be able to start upon his search."
He threw a mischievous glance at Green who met it with a look so direct, and so unswerving that the odd eyes blinked and turned away.
But curiously a spirit of perversity seemed to have entered into Juliet. She also looked at Dick. "I wish you would go and find them," she said. "I know they will be wondering where we are."
His brows went up. She thought he was going to refuse. And then quite suddenly he yielded. "Certainly if you wish it!" he said. "And when they are found?"
"Oh, dump them in the great hall!" said Saltash. "To be left till called for!"
"Charles!" protested Juliet.
He grinned at her--a wicked, monkeyish grin, and threw open the door, disclosing a steep and winding stone stair.
"Will you be pleased to enter!" he said, in the tone of one issuing a royal command.
But she hung for a moment, looking back with a strange wistfulness at the man she was leaving. The imprisoned air came out into the hot sunshine like a cold vapour. She shivered a little.
"Dick!" she said.
He stopped at the foot of the outside steps looking up at her. His eyes were extremely bright, and something within her shrank from their straight regard. It conveyed possession, dominance; almost it conveyed a menace.
"When you have found them, come and--tell me!" she said.
He lifted his hat to her with punctilious courtesy, and turned away. "I will," he said.
"That's a masterful sort of person," observed Saltash, as they mounted the dimly-lit turret stair. "What does he do for a living?"
Juliet hesitated, conscious of a strong repugnance to discuss her lover with this man from her old world whom, strangely, at that moment, she felt that she knew so infinitely better. But she could not withhold an answer to so ordinary a question. Moreover Saltash could be imperious when he chose, and she knew instinctively that it was not wise to cross him.
"By profession," she said slowly at length, "he is--a village schoolmaster."
Saltash's laugh stung, though it was exactly what she had expected. But he qualified it the next moment with careless generosity.
"Quite a presentable cavalier, _ma Juliette_! And a fixed occupation is something of an advantage at times, _n'est-ce-pas?--Je t'aime, tu l'aime_! And how soon do you ride away? Or is that question premature?"
Juliet's face burned in the dimness, but she was in front of him and thankfully aware that he could not see it. "I am not answering any more questions, Charles," she said. "Now that you have got me into your ogre's castle, you must be--kind."
"I will be kindness itself," he assured her. "You know I am the soul of hospitality. All I have is yours."
The narrow stair ended at a small stone landing on which was a door. Juliet stepped aside as she reached it, and waited for her host. "It's rather like a prison," she said.
"You won't think so when you get through that door," he said. "By Jove! To think that I've actually got you--you of all people!--here in my stronghold! Do you realize that without my permission you can't possibly get out again?"
Juliet's laugh was absolutely spontaneous. She faced him in that narrow space with the poise and confidence of a queen. The light from a window that pierced the wall above shone down upon her. In that moment she was endowed with an extraordinary beauty that was more of being, of personality, than of feature.
"It is exactly this that I have played for, Charles Rex," she said. "You hold all the cards, _mon ami_. But--the game is mine."
"How so?" He was looking at her curiously, a dancing demon in his eyes.
She put out her hand to him, and as he took it, sank to the stone floor in a superb curtsy. "Because I claim your gracious protection, my lord the king. I ask your royal favour."
He lifted her hand to his lips as she rose. "You are--as ever--quite irresistible, _ma Juliette_," he smiled. "But--do you really contemplate marrying this fortunate young man? Because there are limits--even to my generosity. I am not sure that I can permit that."
Her eyes looked straight into his. "You can do--anything you choose to do, Charles Rex," she said; "except one thing."
He made a grimace at her. "I am king in my own castle anyway," he observed, watching her. "And you are at my mercy."
"It is your mercy that I am waiting for," she said, a faint smile at the corners of her lips.
"Ah!" he said, stood a moment longer, contemplating her, then turned abruptly and flung open the door against which he stood.
It led into a winding passage of such a totally different character from the stone staircase they had just mounted that Juliet stood gazing down it for some seconds before she obeyed his mute gesture to pass through. It was thickly carpeted, deadening all sound, and the walls were hung with some heavy material, in the colour of old oak. It was lighted by three long perpendicular slits of windows, let into a twelve-foot thickness of wall. Juliet had a glimpse of many pine trees as she passed them.
The passage ended in heavy curtains of the same dark-brown material. She stopped and looked at her companion.
"What is it?" he said, with a laugh. "Are you afraid of my inner sanctuary?"
He parted the curtains, disclosing a tall oak door. She saw no latch upon it, but his hand went up behind the curtain, and she heard the click of a spring. In a moment the tall door opened before her.
"Go in!" he said easily.
She entered a strange room, oak-panelled, shaped like a cone, lighted only by a glass dome in the roof. It was the most curious chamber she had ever seen. She trod on a tiger-skin as she entered, and noted that the floor was covered with them. There was no chair anywhere, only a long, deep couch, also draped with tiger-skins. Tiger faces glared at her from all directions. She heard the door click behind her and turning realized that it had disappeared in the oak panelling against which her host was standing.
He laughed at her quizzically, "I believe you are frightened."
She looked around her, seeing no exit anywhere. "It is just the sort of freak apartment I should expect you to delight in," she said.
"You wouldn't have come if you had known, would you?" he said, a faint note of jeering in his voice.
"Of course I should!" said Juliet.
"Of course!" he mocked. "I am such a peculiarly safe person, am I not? Every member of your charming sex trusts me instinctively."
She turned and faced him. "Don't be ridiculous, Charles! You see, I happen to know you."
He looked at her with something of the air of a monkey that contemplates snatching some forbidden thing. "Why did you run away?" he said.
She hesitated. "That's a hard question, isn't it?"
"Oh, don't mind me!" he said. "I don't flatter myself I was the cause."
Her dark brows were slightly drawn. "No, you were not," she said. "It was just--it was Lady Jo herself, Charlie. No one else."
"Ah!" His goblin smile flashed out at her. "Poor erring Lady Jo! Don't be too hard on