The Great Prince Shan - E. Phillips Oppenheim (top books of all time .txt) 📗

first meeting my idea of diplomacy. Truth! No beating about the bush—just the plain, unvarnished truth! I have conceived an affection for you."

"Goodness gracious!" Maggie exclaimed softly. "Are you going to propose?"

"Nothing," he assured her, "is farther from my thoughts. Lest I should be misunderstood, let me substitute the term 'affectionate interest' for 'affection.' I have felt uneasy ever since I saw Prince Shan watching you across the restaurant to-night."

"Did he really watch me?" Maggie asked complacently.

"He not only watched you," Chalmers assured her, "but he thought about you—and very little else."

"Congratulate me, then," she replied. "I am on the way to success."

Chalmers frowned.

"I'm not quite so sure," he said. "You'll think I'm an illogical sort of person, but I've changed my mind about your rôle in this little affair."

"Why?"

"Because I am afraid of Prince Shan," he answered deliberately.

She looked at him from behind her fan. Her eyes sparkled with interest. If there were any other feeling underneath, she showed no trace of it.

"What a queer word for you to use!"

He nodded.

"I know it. I would back you, Lady Maggie, to hold your own against any male creature breathing, of your own order and your own race, but Prince Shan plays the game differently. He possesses every gift which women and men both admire, but he hasn't our standards. Life for him means power. A wish for him entails its fulfilment."

"You are afraid," Maggie suggested, still with the laughter in her eyes, "that he will trifle with my affections?"

"Something like that," he admitted bluntly. "Prince Shan will be here for a week—perhaps a fortnight. When he goes, he goes a very long distance away."

"I may decide to marry him," Maggie said. "One gets rather tired here of the regular St. George's, Hanover Square, business, and all that comes afterwards."

"Dear Lady Maggie," Chalmers replied, "that is the trouble. Prince Shan would never marry you."

"Why not?" she asked simply.

"First of all," Chalmers went on, after a moment's hesitation, "because Prince Shan, broad-minded though he seems to be and is on all the great questions of the world, still preserves something of what we should call the superstition of his country and order. I believe, in his own mind, he looks upon himself as being one of the few elect of the earth. He travels, he is gracious everywhere, but though his manner is the perfection of form, in his heart he is still aloof. He rides through the clouds from Asia, and he leaves always something of himself over there on the other side. Let me tell you this, Lady Maggie. I have never forgotten it. He was at Harvard in my year, and so far as he unbent to any one, he sometimes unbent to me. I asked him once whether he were ever going to marry. He shook his head and sighed. 'I can never marry,' he replied. 'Why not?' I asked him. 'Because there are no women of the Shan line alive,' he answered. Later, he took pity on my bewilderment. He let me understand. For two thousand years, no Shan has married, save one of his own line. To ally himself with a princess of the royal house of England would be a mésalliance which would disturb his ancestors in their graves. Of course, this sounds to us very ridiculous, but to him it isn't. It is part of the religion of his life."

"You are not very encouraging, are you?" Maggie remarked. "Perhaps he has changed since those days."

Her companion shook his head.

"I should say not," he replied, "the Prince is not of the order of those who change."

"Is it matrimony alone," she asked, "which he denies himself?"

Chalmers glanced towards Mrs. Bollington Smith, whose eyes were closed. Then he nodded towards the stage.

"You see the woman who has just come upon the stage?"

Maggie glanced downwards. A very wonderful little figure in white satin, lithe and sinuous as a cat, Chinese in the subtlety of her looks, European in her almost sinister over-civilisation, stood smiling blandly at the applauding audience.

"La Belle Nita," Maggie murmured. "I thought she was in Paris. Well, what of her?"

"She is reputed to be a protégée of Prince Shan. You see how she looks up at his box."

Maggie was conscious of a queer and almost incomprehensible stab at the heart. She answered without hesitation or change of expression, however.

"The Prince must be kind to a fellow countrywoman," she declared indulgently. "You are talking terrible scandal."

La Belle Nita danced wonderfully, sang like a linnet, danced again and disappeared, notwithstanding the almost wild calls for an encore. With the end of her turn came a selection from the orchestra and a general emptying of the boxes. Presently Chalmers went in search of Nigel. A few moments later there was a knock at the door. Maggie gripped the sides of her chair tightly. She was moved almost to fury by the turmoil in which she found herself. Her invitation to enter was almost inaudible.

"I am deserted," Prince Shan explained, as he made his bow and took the chair to which Maggie pointed. "My friend Immelan has left me to visit acquaintances, and I chance to be unattended this evening. I trust that I do not intrude."

"You are very welcome here," Maggie replied. "Will you listen to the orchestra, or talk to me?"

"I will talk, if I may," he answered. "Lord Dorminster is not with you?"

"Nigel went to look up a friend whom he wants to bring to supper. He is one of those people who seem to discover friends and acquaintances in every quarter of the globe."

"And to that fortunate chance," her visitor continued, dropping his voice a little, "I owe the happiness of finding you alone."

Maggie glanced towards her aunt, who was leaning back in her seat.

"Aunt seems to be asleep, but she isn't," she declared. "She is really a very efficient chaperon. Talk to me about China, please, and tell me about your Dragon airship. Is it true that you have silver baths, and that Gauteron painted the walls of your dining salon?"

"One is in the air five days on the way over," he answered indifferently. "It is necessary that one's surroundings should be agreeable. Perhaps some day I may have the honour of showing it to you. In the darkness, and when she is docked, there is little to be seen."

She looked at him curiously.

"You knew that I was there, then?"

"Yours was the first face I saw when I descended from the car," he told her. "You stood apart, watching, and I wondered why. I knew, too, that you would be at the Ritz to-night. That is why I came there. As a rule, I do not dine in public."

"How could you possibly know that I was going to be there?" Maggie asked curiously.

"I sent a gentleman of my suite to look through the names of those who had booked tables," he answered. "It was very simple."

"It was only a chance that the table was reserved in my name," she reminded him.

"It was chance which brought us together," he rejoined. "It is chance under another name to which I trust in life."

For the first time in her life, in her relations with the other sex, Maggie felt a queer sensation which was almost fear. She felt herself losing poise, her will governed, her whole self dominated. Unconsciously she drew herself a little away. Her eyes travelled around the crowded house and suddenly rested on the box which her visitor had just vacated. Seated behind the curtains, but leaning slightly forward, her eyes fixed intently upon Prince Shan, was La Belle Nita, a green opera cloak thrown around her dancing costume, a curious, striking little figure in the semi-obscurity.

"You have some one waiting for you in your box," Maggie told him.

He glanced across the auditorium and rose to his feet. She gave him credit for the adroitness of mind which rejected the obvious explanation of her presence there.

"I must go," he said simply, "but I have many things which I desire to say to you. You will not forget to-morrow afternoon?"

"I shall not forget," she answered, in a low tone.

CHAPTER XV

There was a half reluctant admiration in Prince Shan's eyes as he sat back in the dim recesses of his box and scrutinised his visitor. La Belle Nita had learnt all that Paris and London could teach her.

"You are very beautiful, Nita," he said.

"Many men tell me so," she answered.

"Life has gone well with you since we met last?" he asked reflectively.

"The months have passed," she replied.

"You have been faithful?"

"Fidelity is of the soul."

He paused, as though pondering over her answer. A famous French comedian was holding the stage, and the house rocked with laughter.

"You have the same apartment?"

She pressed the clasp of a black velvet bag which rested on the edge of the box, opened it, and passed him a key.

"It is the same."

He held the key in his fingers for a moment, but he had the air of a man to whom the action had no significance.

"You have enough money?" he asked.

"I have saved a million francs," she told him. "I am waiting for my lord to speak of things that matter. The woman in the box over there—who is she?"

"An English spy," he answered calmly.

She lowered her eyes for a moment, as though to conceal the sudden soft flash.

"An English spy," she repeated. "My rival in espionage."

"You have no rival, Nita," he replied, "and she is in the opposite camp."

Her two red lips were distorted into a pout.

"Is it over, my task?" she asked. "I am weary of Paris. I love it over here better. I am weary of French officers, of these solemn officials who come to my room like guilty schoolboys, and who speak of themselves and their importance with bated breath, as though their whisper would rock the world. My master has enough information?"

"More than enough," he assured her. "You have done your work wonderfully."

"Shall I now deal with her?" she continued, with a slight, eager movement of her head towards the opposite box.

He smiled.

"She is harmless, she and her entourage," he replied. "Some stroke of good fortune brought them word of the meeting between myself and Immelan, and beyond that they guessed at its significance. They were at the shed to watch my arrival. Now, with their mouths open, they sit and wait for the information which they hope will drop in. They are very ingenuous, these Anglo-Saxons, but they are not diplomats."

She turned her head and looked across the auditorium. Maggie was talking to a man whom Nigel had just brought in, and who was bending over her in obvious admiration. Nita, with her wealth of cosmetics, her over-red lips, stared curiously at this possible rival, with her clear skin, her beautiful neck and shoulders, her hair dressed close to her head, her air of quiet, almost singular distinction.

"The young lady," she confessed, "wears her clothes well for an English woman. She is bien soignée, but she looks a little difficult."

His eyes followed the direction of hers, and her object was achieved. She read correctly the light that gleamed in them.

"I may come to-night?" she asked quietly.

He shook his head.

"Not again," he replied.

A violinist now held the stage, a Pole newly come to London. La Belle Nita closed her eyes. For a few minutes her sorrow seemed to throb to the minor music to which she was listening.

"For all my work, then," she said presently, "for the suffering and the risk, there is to be nothing?"

"Is it nothing for you to be invited to live in whatsoever manner you choose?" he remonstrated.

"It is little," she replied steadily. "There are a dozen who would do this for me, who pray every day that they may do so. What are all these things beside the love of my master?"

He looked at her a little sadly, yet without any sign of real feeling. To him she represented nothing more than a doll with brains, from whose intelligence he