The Knave of Diamonds.

by Ethel May Dell.

PART I

CHAPTER I

THE MISSING HEART

There came a sudden blare of music from the great ballroom below, and the woman who stood alone at an open window on the first floor shrugged her shoulders and shivered a little. The night air blew in brisk and cold upon her uncovered neck, but except for that slight, involuntary shiver she scarcely seemed aware of it. The room behind her was brilliantly lighted but empty. Some tables had been set for cards, but the cards were untouched. Either the attractions of the ballroom had remained omnipotent, or no one had penetrated to this refuge of the bored--no one save this tall and stately woman robed in shimmering, iridescent green, who stood with her face to the night, breathing the chill air as one who had been on the verge of suffocation. It was evidently she who had flung up the window. Her gloved hands leaned upon the woodwork on each side of it. There was a certain constraint in her whole att.i.tude, a tension that was subtly evident in every graceful line. Her head was slightly bent as though she intently watched or listened for something.

Yet nothing could have been audible where she stood above the hubbub of music, laughter, and stamping feet that rose from below. It filled the night with uproar. Nor was there anything but emptiness in the narrow side-street into which she looked.

The door of the room was ajar and gradually swinging wider in the draught. Very soon it would be wide enough for anyone pa.s.sing in the pa.s.sage outside to spy the slim figure that stood so motionless before the open window. It was almost wide enough now. Surely it was wide enough, for suddenly it ceased to move. The draught continued to eddy round the room, stirring the soft brown hair about the woman's temples, but the door stood still as at the behest of an unseen hand.

For fully half a minute nothing happened; then as suddenly and silently as a picture flashed from a magic lantern slide, a man's head came into view. A man's eyes, dusky, fierce, with something of a stare in them, looked the motionless figure keenly up and down.

There followed another interval as though the intruder were debating with himself upon some plan of action, then, boldly but quite quietly, he pushed the door back and entered.

He was a slight, trim man, clean-shaven, with high cheek-bones that made a long jaw seem the leaner by contrast. His sleek black hair was parted in the middle above his swarthy face, giving an unmistakably foreign touch to his appearance. His tread was light and wary as a cat's.

His eyes swept the room comprehensively as he advanced, coming back to the woman at the window as though magnetically drawn to her. But she remained quite unaware of him, and he, no whit disconcerted, calmly seated himself at one of the tables behind her and took up a pack of cards.

The dance-music in the room below was uproariously gay. Some of the dancers were singing. Now and then a man's voice bellowed through the clamour like the blare of a bull.

Whenever this happened, the man at the table smiled to himself a faint, thin-lipped smile, and the woman at the window shivered again.

Suddenly, during a lull, he spoke. He was counting out the cards into heaps with lightning rapidity, turning up one here and there, and he did not raise his eyes from his occupation.

"I say, you know," he said in a drawl that was slightly nasal, "you will have to tell me how old you are. Is that an obstacle?"

She wheeled round at the first deliberate syllable. The electric light flared upon her pale, proud face. She stood in dead silence, looking at him.

"You mustn't mind," he said persuasively, still without lifting his eyes.

"I swear I'll never tell. Come now!"

Very quietly she turned and closed the window; then with a certain stateliness she advanced to the table at which he sat, and stopped before it.

"I think you are making a mistake," she said, in a voice that had a hint of girlish sweetness about it despite its formality.

He looked up then with a jerk, and the next instant was on his feet.

"Gad! I'm tremendously sorry! What must you take me for? I took you for Mrs. Damer. I beg you will forgive me."

She smiled a little, and some of the severity went out of her face. For a moment that too seemed girlish.

"It is of no consequence. I saw it was a mistake."

"An idiotic mistake!" he declared with emphasis. "And you are not a bit like Mrs. Damer either. Are you waiting for someone? Would you like me to clear out?"

"Certainly not. I am going myself."

"Oh, but don't!" he begged her very seriously. "I shall take it horribly to heart if you do. And really, I don't deserve such a snub as that."

Again she faintly smiled. "I am not feeling malicious, but you are expecting your partner. And I--"

"No, I am not," he a.s.serted. "My partner has basely deserted me for another fellow. I came in here merely because I was wandering about seeking distraction. Please don't go--unless I bore you--in which case you have only to dismiss me."

She turned her eyes questioningly upon the cards before him. "What are you doing with them? Is it a game?"

"Won't you sit down?" he said, "and I will tell you."

She seated herself facing him. "Well?"

He considered the cards for a little, his brows bent. Then, "It is a magician's game," he said. "Let me read your fortune."

She hesitated.

Instantly he looked up. "You are not afraid?"

She met his look, a certain wistfulness in her grey eyes. "Oh, no, not afraid--only sceptical."

"Only sceptical!" he echoed. "That is a worldwide complaint. But anyone with imagination can always pretend. You are not good at pretending?"

"Not particularly."

His eyes challenged hers. "Perhaps you have never needed an anaesthetic?"

he said coolly.

She looked slightly startled. "What do you mean?"

He leaned deliberately forward across the table. "You know what an anaesthetic does, don't you? It cheats the senses of pain. And a little humbug does the same for the mind. Of course you don't believe anything.

I don't myself. But you can't stand for ever and contemplate an abyss of utter ignorance. You must weave a little romance about it for the sake of your self-respect."

She looked straight into the challenging eyes. The wistfulness was still in her own. "Then you are offering to weave a little romance for me?" she said, with a faint involuntary sigh.

He made her a brief bow. "If you will permit me to do so."

"To relieve your boredom?" she suggested with a smile.

"And yours," he smiled back, taking up the cards.

She did not contradict him. She only lowered her eyes to the deft hands that were disposing the cards in mystic array upon the table.

There followed a few moments of silence; then in his careless, unmusical drawl the man spoke.

"Do you mind telling me your first name? It is essential to the game, of course, or I shouldn't presume to ask."