The Moonlit Way: A Novel

“And you came to Paris with him?”

“Y-yes.”

“Who was he?”

“I don’t know – ”

“If you don’t name him, I’ll kill you!” he yelled, losing the last vestige of self-control. “What kind of story are you trying to tell me, you lying drab! You’ve got a lover! Confess it!”

“I have not!”

“Liar! So this is how you’ve laughed at me, mocked me, betrayed me, made a fool of me! You! – with your fierce little snappish ways of a virgin! You with your dangerous airs of a tiger-cat if a man so much as laid a finger on your vicious body! So Mademoiselle-Don’t-touch-me had a lover all the while. Max Freund warned me to keep an eye on you!” He lost control of himself again; his voice became a hoarse shout: “Max Freund begged me not to trust you! You filthy little beast! Good God! Was I crazy to believe in you – to talk without reserve in your presence! What kind of imbecile 32 was I to offer you marriage because I was crazy enough to believe that there was no other way to possess you! You – a Levantine dancing girl – a common painted thing of the public footlights – a creature of brasserie and cabaret! And you posed as Mademoiselle Nitouche! A novice! A devotee of chastity! And, by God, your devilish ingenuity at last persuaded me that you actually were what you said you were. And all Paris knew you were fooling me – all Paris was laughing in its dirty sleeve – mocking me – spitting on me – ”

“All Paris,” she said, in an unsteady voice, “gave you credit for being my lover. And I endured it. And you knew it was not true. Yet you never denied it… But as for me, I never had a lover. When I told you that I told you the truth. And it is true to-day as it was yesterday. Nobody believes it of a dancing girl. Now, you no longer believe it. Very well, there is no occasion for melodrama. I tried to fall in love with you: I couldn’t. I did not desire to marry you. You insisted. Very well; you can go.”

“Not before I learn the name of your lover of last night!” he retorted, now almost beside himself with fury, and once more menacing her with his pistol. “I’ll get that much change out of all the money I’ve lavished on you!” he yelled. “Tell me his name or I’ll kill you!”

She reached under her pillow, clutched a jewelled watch and purse, and hurled them at him. She twisted from her arm a gemmed bracelet, tore every flashing ring from her fingers, and flung them in a handful straight at his head.

“There’s some more change for you!” she panted. “Now, leave my bedroom!”

“I’ll have that man’s name first!”

The girl laughed in his distorted face. He was within an ace of shooting her – of firing point-blank into the lovely, flushed features, merely to shatter them, destroy, annihilate. He had the desire to do it. But her breathless, contemptuous laugh broke that impulse – relaxed it, leaving it flaccid. And after an interval something else intervened to stay his hand at the trigger – something that crept into his mind; something he had begun to suspect that she knew. Suddenly he became convinced that she did know it – that she believed that he dared not kill her and stand the investigation of a public trial before a juge d’instruction– that he could not afford to have his own personal affairs scrutinised too closely.

He still wanted to kill her – shoot her there where she sat in bed, watching him out of scornful young eyes. So intense was his need to slay – to disfigure, brutalise this girl who had mocked him, that the raging desire hurt him physically. He leaned back, resting against the silken wall, momentarily weakened by the violence of passion. But his pistol still threatened her.

No; he dared not. There was a better, surer way to utterly destroy her, – a way he had long ago prepared, – not expecting any such contingency as this, but merely as a matter of self-insurance.

His levelled weapon wavered, dropped, held loosely now. He still glared at her out of pallid and blood-shot eyes in silence. After a while:

“You hell-cat,” he said slowly and distinctly. “Who is your English lover? Tell me his name or I’ll beat your face to a pulp!”

“I have no English lover.”

“Do you think,” he went on heavily, disregarding her reply, “that I don’t know why you chose an Englishman? 34 You thought you could blackmail me, didn’t you?”

“How?” she demanded wearily.

Again he ignored her reply:

“Is he one of the Embassy?” he demanded. “Is he some emissary of Grey’s? Does he come from their intelligence department? Or is he only a police jackal? Or some lesser rat?”

She shrugged; her night-robe slipped and she drew it over her shoulder with a quick movement. And the man saw the deep blush spreading over face and throat.

“By God!” he said, “you are an actress! I admit it. But now you are going to learn something about real life. You think you’ve got me, don’t you? – you and your Englishman? Because I have been fool enough to trust you – hide nothing from you – act frankly and openly in your presence. You thought you’d get a hold on me, so that if I ever caught you at your treacherous game you could defy me and extort from me the last penny! You thought all that out – very thriftily and cleverly – you and your Englishman between you – didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“Don’t you? Then why did you ask me the other day whether it was not German money which was paying for the newspaper which I bought?”

“The Mot d’Ordre?”

“Certainly.”

“I asked you that because Ferez Bey is notoriously in Germany’s pay. And Ferez Bey financed the affair. You said so. Besides, you and he discussed it before me in my own salon.”

“And you suspected that I bought the Mot d’Ordre with German money for the purpose of carrying out German propaganda in a Paris daily paper?”

“I don’t know why Ferez Bey gave you the money to buy it.”

“He did not give me the money.”

“You said so. Who did?”

“You!” he fairly yelled.

“W-what!” stammered the girl, confounded.

“Listen to me, you rat!” he said fiercely. “I was not such a fool as you believed me to be. I lavished money on you; you made a fortune for yourself out of your popularity, too. Do you remember endorsing a cheque drawn to your order by Ferez Bey?”

“Yes. You had borrowed every penny I possessed. You said that Ferez Bey owed you as much. So I accepted his cheque – ”

“That cheque paid for the Mot d’Ordre. It is drawn to your order; it bears your endorsement; the Mot d’Ordre was purchased in your name. And it was Max Freund who insisted that I take that precaution. Now, try to blackmail me! – you and your English spy!” he cried triumphantly, his voice breaking into a squeak.

Not yet understanding, merely conscious of some vague and monstrous danger, the girl sat motionless, regarding him intently out of beautiful, intelligent eyes.

He burst into laughter, made falsetto by the hysteria of sheer hatred:

“That’s where you are now!” he said, leering down at her. “Every paper I ever made you sign incriminates you; your cancelled cheque is in the same packet; your dossier is damning and complete. You didn’t know that Ferez Bey was sent across the frontier yesterday, did you? Your English spy didn’t inform you last night, did he?”

“N-no.”

“You lie! You did know it! That was why you 36 stole away last night and met your jackal – to sell him something besides yourself, this time! You knew they had arrested Ferez! I don’t know how you knew it, but you did. And you told your lover. And both of you thought you had me at last, didn’t you?”

“I – what are you trying to say to me – do to me?” she stammered, losing colour for the first time.

“Put you where you belong – you dirty spy!” he said with grinning ferocity. “If there is to be trouble, I’ve prepared for it. When they try you for espionage, they’ll try you as a foreigner – a dancing girl in the pay of Germany – as my mistress whom Max Freund and I discover in treachery to France, and whom I instantly denounce to the proper authorities!”

He shoved his pistol into his breast pocket and put on his marred silk hat.

“Which do you think they will believe – you or the Count d’Eblis?” he demanded, the nervous leer twitching at his heavy lips. “Which do you think they will believe – your denials and counter-accusations against me, or Max Freund’s corroboration, and the evidence of the packet I shall now deliver to the authorities – the packet containing every cursed document necessary to convict you! – you filthy little – ”

The girl bounded from her bed to the floor, her dark eyes blazing:

“Damn you!” she said. “Get out of my bedroom!”

Taken aback, he retreated a pace or two, and, at the furious menace of the little clenched fist, stepped another pace out into the corridor. The door crashed in his face; the bolt shot home.