"You know that story he"s always telling you--that you"re a reincarnated tigress. Well, this is the cage of a tigress."
"I think you are all very silly," she declared. "Fancy connecting the two facts! He"s probably doing it on a wager--or been doing it." But she was disturbed, nevertheless.
"The tigress is a very handsome beast," continued the duke, "and--you may as well have the worst of it--he talks to her. He mumbles under his breath. Sometimes it"s a tone that is most adoring, and again he berates her scandalously. And, Nina, you"d never imagine it, but it"s quite true--the creature seems to understand."
Then she laughed nervously. "No," she said. "I won"t believe that. It"s too silly for words. I"m surprised at you, Pucketts, taking such a thing seriously. Nibbetts has been playing a joke on you. And your imagination has done the rest. I never heard such ridiculous folderol in all my life."
She stood up and started to move away, but the duke was by her side.
"There"s one thing he says that is quite plain," he continued. "I heard it and Bellingdown heard it. We were there beside him, and he didn"t so much as see us. He was blind to everything except that great, lithe, purring she-cat."
Nina turned to him. In spite of her little speech of repudiation she was all a-quiver from head to feet. "What was it?" she asked.
"He was calling the beast Nina."
CHAPTER XXVII
Reason Tottering on Its Throne
After three nervously anxious days Nina Darling journeyed back to London and reopened her flat at Mayfair--a very different Nina indeed from the frolicsome Nina who went to Puddlewood to display her restored beauty.
The duke"s story concerning Kneedrock had distressed her woefully. As a girl, in spite of her high-spirited independence and honey-bee proclivity of sipping sweets where she found them, she had loved him deeply, and since his return from self-banishment--since the one great tragedy of her life at Umballa--she had found in him her sole rock of dependence. Stubborn--cruel often at times as he was--she nevertheless felt and knew that while he reprobated and deplored her seeming lightness of character, yet deep in his soul he still held her very dear.
From what she had learned--but which she still hoped to prove grossly exaggerated--she was now more than ever convinced that this was true.
How profoundly he had been stirred and hurt by her wilful follies this awful climax--oh, it couldn"t, it must not be true--demonstrated as nothing else, either word or action, could possibly have done.
Selfishly, for her own pa.s.sing pleasure, she had driven men to intemperance, to exile, to self-destruction even; and now, as a fitting culmination in _lex talionis_--the one strong man of all, the king, the G.o.d she worshiped, had succ.u.mbed, they told her, in more awful plight than any of the others.
In her extremity Nina wired to Bath, bidding Gerald Andrews come to her at once. Then she sat down and waited.
He came by the first train, yet the intervening time seemed endless. And he found her pale and haggard, with purple crescents beneath dull, tired eyes; for in twenty-four hours she had neither eaten nor slept. It was nine o"clock at night, and the rain, driven by an east wind, was beating against the windows like an avalanche.
"Gerald," she greeted, giving him the tips of cold fingers, "you are so good. I need you terribly."
"You are ill," he said at once. "What have you been doing?"
She told him briefly what she had heard.
"It is the uncertainty," she added. "It"s killing me. If I could only be sure--one way or the other--I--" Her voice quavered.
"Have you dined?" he interrupted.
"No; I"m not hungry. I haven"t thought of eating."
"But you must," he urged. "You must keep up your strength. Unless you do I shall refuse to help you."
"I"ve no appet.i.te," she said. "I hunger only for facts--for the truth."
"Then you must prepare for it. It may be too strong for an empty stomach."
But this only alarmed her. "You know?" she cried hysterically. "You know something already?"
"Nothing," he answered--"nothing at all. Only--well, the fact is, I haven"t dined, either. I came straight here from the station. Could you--"
"You poor boy!" she broke in. "Of course. Please touch the bell. There; behind you."
"Won"t you come out with me?"
"No; I couldn"t; besides, listen to the rain, and--and I"m not dressed, you see."
"You don"t want me to go alone?"
"Oh, no, no, no," she protested. "I have so much to say--"
"Very well. I"ll stop, and I"ll eat; but on one condition. You must eat, too."
"I can"t," she insisted. "I can"t, really. I"d choke."
"Try it," he insisted, in turn. "If you choke I"ll let you off."
There was consomme, and there were chops--done to a turn--and a cobwebbed bottle of Pommard. Of the wine Andrews forced her to sip the better part of a gla.s.s, and was rewarded by a faint show of color in her lips and cheeks.
It stimulated her appet.i.te, too, and she managed to swallow a few spoonfuls of the soup and a little lean, red meat of a chop. After which he called her a brave girl and a.s.sured her that there was nothing he wouldn"t do for her in return.
"I want you, the very first thing in the morning, to go to Regent"s Park," she said. "I want you to go where the tigers are, and to ask questions of the guards. They can can tell you whether it is true that a gentleman has been there recently, acting strangely."
"I"ll be there when the gates open," returned Gerald. "What else?"
"If you find it is true--which I hope to Heaven you don"t--I want you to go to Lord Kneedrock"s solicitor and learn what he knows about it. You may tell him you came from me, and that I desire some steps taken."
He looked at her questioningly. He couldn"t understand her right to make such a demand, but he said nothing, except:
"Who is Lord Kneedrock"s solicitor?"
"A combined mummy and sphinx," she answered. "His name is Widdicombe, and he has chambers in the Inner Temple. Your real task will be to get him to open his mouth. He"s a living storehouse of secrets."
"Won"t your name open it?"
"The name of his majesty wouldn"t open it unless he felt it to be for his client"s interest. I"m afraid you"ll find him a very hard nut to crack, Gerald."
"If I fail, it won"t be for lack of effort," he declared determinedly.
Then she smiled at him in the old way for the first time since he came.