The Intriguers

“If you please, we will not leave it where it is, with studied coldness on your part. Please tell me how I have offended you.”

Nello spoke with exaggerated courtesy. “Madame, I am too humble to have the right to be offended. I, the mere Director of an Opera, you, one of the idols of Europe.”

The prima donna stamped an impatient foot. “Signor Corsini, you are trying my patience unduly. It is easy to see that you have some fancied grievance. Will you be good enough to explain what it is, or at any rate the nature of it?”

Corsini looked at her steadily. “Madame, you have been good enough to call me your friend. If that is the case, why have I not been invited to those little private suppers at your villa? So many go, that one more would not have made a serious addition.”

Her face went as white as death. “Who has told you such a falsehood?” she stammered.

Nello never took his eyes off her. The white face, the stammering tongue, proved that Golitzine was right. She had secret parties at her villa, and she was dismayed to find that anybody had heard of them.

“A friend of mine, whose name I must not reveal, Madame.”

Without another word Madame Quéro went to her dressing-room. From there she despatched a hasty note to Prince Zouroff.

CHAPTER XIII

La Belle Quéro and the Prince Zouroff were sitting together in the boudoir of the small villa on the outskirts of St. Petersburg.

They were both smoking cigarettes. Madame Quéro looked anxious and perturbed, Zouroff surly and annoyed.

“Inez, you are very unreasonable. Why have you dragged me here at this time of night? If your note had not said ‘very urgent,’ I should not have taken myself away from more important matters.”

La Belle Quéro flicked the ash of her cigarette on the carpet. “Once, my friend, you would have come on the slightest request from me. I should not have been compelled to mark my note urgent, eh?”

The Prince answered a little awkwardly. “Don’t let us be too sentimental, dear child. We have been good friends, we have got to a closer degree of comradeship. Is it not an ideal relationship? Well, what have you to tell me? You have not summoned me here for nothing, I am sure?”

“Not even for the pleasure of your society, my most charming and exquisite Boris?” inquired the prima donna, in a tone of raillery.

The Prince frowned. At the moment, the light caprices of women did not appeal to him.

“You are talking nonsense, my dear Inez. Let us come to the point.”

The Spanish woman came to the point at once, with an angry glitter in her eyes. What a pity that Zouroff was not a little more gentle in his dealings with women!

“Our little secret evening parties have been discovered, that is all. It may give you and me food for reflection.”

The Prince drew a deep breath. “Discovered! It is impossible. Who dares to suspect us?”

“It does not matter who suspects us. It is enough that we are suspected. I suppose the Secret Police have been at work.”

Zouroff thought a few moments, and then a sudden light came to him. He crossed over and grasped the beautiful young woman by the arm.

“Tell me the truth and don’t palter with me,” he thundered in his harsh, raucous tones. “Where have you this information? But I can answer the question myself. It is from that white-livered Italian, Corsini. He is a spy in the pay of Golitzine.”

Madame Quéro endeavoured to utter a faltering negative, but Zouroff, always fond of brutal methods, tightened his grasp on the delicate flesh.

Under the hypnotic influence of this brutal and commanding man, she stammered forth the truth.

“You have guessed right. It was Corsini who told me, in a very brief interview. He had heard the rumour from a friend.”

Zouroff smiled. It was a very sinister smile at the best. The lips curled up, the strong, white, even teeth showed themselves, suggesting the fangs of a wolf.

“So this degenerate Italian is daring to thrust himself across our path, is he? Well, then! the Italian mountebank must disappear.”

Madame Quéro rose to her full height and braved the brutal and truculent Prince.

“I think I have got a word to say in this: If he does disappear, I shall go to the Emperor and tell him the whole truth.”

“You have fallen in love with this young man, eh?” inquired the Prince in a jeering voice.

“No, I will not say that. And besides, he is in love with somebody else. But understand me, if you please” – she spoke with her old imperiousness – “I will not have a hair of this young man’s head harmed. He is young, he is innocent; he shall not fall a victim to your dastardly schemes.”

Boris regarded her with his cold, hard glance. “Suppose I said that, in that case, even La Belle Quéro herself must disappear. What then?”

Tears came into the beautiful woman’s eyes. She looked at him, more compassionate than angry.

“Oh, Boris, have you sunk so low, have you let your ambitions overcome all the softer impulses of your nature? Would you really murder me for fear I should tell, and frustrate your schemes?”

She looked very beautiful as she appealed to him. For a moment the old love for her, the old infatuation surged up in his heart. He clasped her to his breast, and murmured softly the words: “Why are you not heart and soul with me, as you used to be?”

She disengaged herself gently from his embrace; it no longer thrilled her. “You are no longer the same to me, Boris,” she whispered, with the usual subterfuge of the woman. “You have had other loves besides La Belle Quéro.”

“I do not admit that, Inez,” he answered, in his rough, hard tones, a little shaken by his emotion. “But remember, we are bound together by solemn ties, by solemn oaths, to the same cause. Mark my words,” he added, with a sudden access of savagery. “If you play me false in that respect, expect no mercy.”

“If I play you false, Boris, I expect no mercy; I shall get none. I know the manner of man you are.”

“Yes, you know the sort of man I am, Inez. Pursue your little flirtations, if you will. I shall not complain. But once play me false in other matters, and your doom is sealed.”

He strode out of the room, and the face of Madame Quéro went white as she remembered the threat. The Prince loved her in his rough, brutal way, but if she interfered with his plans, he would brush her out of his path with as little compunction as he would kill a fly that annoyed him with its impertinent buzzing.

And then, in a few moments, her thoughts went back to the handsome young Italian, Corsini. She had, in an unguarded moment, given him away. Zouroff’s slow, but unrelenting, vengeance would pursue him. The Prince had said that Corsini must disappear. In this autocratic country people disappeared every day, and nobody seemed to wonder. It was such a common occurrence.

Next day Madame Quéro, very disturbed, sought Corsini at his private office at the Imperial Opera. Her object was to gain a little time before Zouroff could put his evil designs into execution.

She approached him with her most winning smile.

“Signor, you reproached me for not having asked you to my villa. Will you allow me to repair the omission? Will you sup with me, tête-à-tête, on Thursday night?”

She had meant, in this intimate meeting, to give him a few hints as to his personal safety without too closely inculpating Zouroff and his associates, whom she still greatly feared.

Nello expressed a thousand regrets. After his duties at the Opera were over, Prince Zouroff had requested his attendance at his Palace, as Princess Nada had wished to again hear his rendering of the romance which had now become celebrated.

The voice of the prima donna grew agitated. She was very distrustful of Boris and his ways.

“But, Signor Corsini, why go there when you know so well that the Prince is quite indifferent to music? He does not care for any sort, yours or mine.”

Nello darted at her a shrewd glance. “I do not think myself, Madame, that the Prince is a great connoisseur; but he is generally in his box when you sing.”