Fire-Tongue Read online

  CHAPTER XV. NAIDA

  Dusk was falling that evening. Gaily lighted cars offering glimpses ofwomen in elaborate toilets and of their black-coated and white-shirtedcavaliers thronged Piccadilly, bound for theatre or restaurant. Theworkaday shutters were pulled down, and the night life of Londonhad commenced. The West End was in possession of an army of pleasureseekers, but Nicol Brinn was not among their ranks. Wearing histightly-buttoned dinner jacket, he stood, hands clasped behind him,staring out of the window as Detective Inspector Wessex had found him atnoon. Only one who knew him very well could have detected the fact thatanxiety was written upon that Sioux-like face. His gaze seemed to bedirected, not so much upon the fading prospect of the park, as downward,upon the moving multitude in the street below. Came a subdued knockingat the door.

  "In," said Nicol Brinn.

  Hoskins, the neat manservant, entered. "A lady to see you, sir."

  Nicol Brinn turned in a flash. For one fleeting instant the dynamicforce beneath the placid surface exhibited itself in every line of hisgaunt face. He was transfigured; he was a man of monstrous energy, oftremendous enthusiasm. Then the enthusiasm vanished. He was a creatureof stone again; the familiar and taciturn Nicol Brinn, known and puzzledover in the club lands of the world.

  "Name?"

  "She gave none."

  "English?"

  "No, sir, a foreign lady."

  "In."

  Hoskins having retired, and having silently closed the door, Nicol Brinndid an extraordinary thing, a thing which none of his friends in London,Paris, or New York would ever have supposed him capable of doing. Heraised his clenched hands. "Please God she has come," he whispered."Dare I believe it? Dare I believe it?"

  The door was opened again, and Hoskins, standing just inside, announced:"The lady to see you, sir."

  He stepped aside and bowed as a tall, slender woman entered the room.She wore a long wrap trimmed with fur, the collar turned up about herface. Three steps forward she took and stopped. Hoskins withdrew andclosed the door.

  At that, while Nicol Brinn watched her with completely transfiguredfeatures, the woman allowed the cloak to slip from her shoulders, and,raising her head, extended both her hands, uttering a subdued cry ofgreeting that was almost a sob. She was dark, with the darkness ofthe East, but beautiful with a beauty that was tragic. Her eyes wereglorious wells of sadness, seeming to mirror a soul that had known ahundred ages. Withal she had the figure of a girl, slender and supple,possessing the poetic grace and poetry of movement born only in theOrient.

  "Naida!" breathed Nicol Brinn, huskily. "Naida!"

  His high voice had softened, had grown tremulous. He extended his handswith a groping movement The woman laughed shudderingly.

  Her cloak lying forgotten upon the carpet, she advanced toward him.

  She wore a robe that was distinctly Oriental without being in theslightest degree barbaric. Her skin was strangely fair, and jewelssparkled upon her fingers. She conjured up dreams of the perfumed luxuryof the East, and was a figure to fire the imagination. But Nicol Brinnseemed incapable of movement; his body was inert, but his eyes were onfire. Into the woman's face had come anxiety that was purely feminine.

  "Oh, my big American sweetheart," she whispered, and, approaching himwith a sort of timidity, laid her little hands upon his arm. "Do youstill think I am beautiful?"

  "Beautiful!"

  No man could have recognized the voice of Nicol Brinn. Suddenly his armswere about her like bands of iron, and with a long, wondering sigh shelay back looking up into his face, while he gazed hungrily into hereyes. His lips had almost met hers when softly, almost inaudibly, shesighed: "Nicol!"

  She pronounced the name queerly, giving to i the value of ee, and almostdropping the last letter entirely.

  Their lips met, and for a moment they clung together, this woman ofthe East and man of the West, in utter transgression of that law whichEngland's poet has laid down. It was a reunion speaking of a love sodeep as to be sacred.

  Lifting the woman in his arms lightly as a baby, he carried her to thesettee between the two high windows and placed her there amid Orientalcushions, where she looked like an Eastern queen. He knelt at her feetand, holding both her hands, looked into her face with that wonderingexpression in which there was something incredulous and somethingsorrowful; a look of great and selfless tenderness. The face of Naidawas lighted up, and her big eyes filled with tears. Disengaging one ofher jewelled hands, she ruffled Nicol Brinn's hair.

  "My Nicol," she said, tenderly. "Have I changed so much?"

  Her accent was quaint and fascinating, but her voice was very musical.To the man who knelt at her feet it was the sweetest music in the world.

  "Naida," he whispered. "Naida. Even yet I dare not believe that you arehere."

  "You knew I would come?"

  "How was I to know that you would see my message?"

  She opened her closed left hand and smoothed out a scrap of torn paperwhich she held there. It was from the "Agony" column of that day'sTimes.

  N. November 23, 1913. N. B. See Telephone Directory.

  "I told you long, long ago that I would come if ever you wanted me."

  "Long, long ago," echoed Nicol Brinn. "To me it has seemed a century;to-night it seems a day."

  He watched her with a deep and tireless content. Presently her eyesfell. "Sit here beside me," she said. "I have not long to be here. Putyour arms round me. I have something to tell you."

  He seated himself beside her on the settee, and held her close. "MyNaida!" he breathed softly.

  "Ah, no, no!" she entreated. "Do you want to break my heart?"

  He suddenly released her, clenched his big hands, and stared down at thecarpet. "You have broken mine."

  Impulsively Naida threw her arms around his neck, coiling herself uplithely and characteristically beside him.

  "My big sweetheart," she whispered, crooningly. "Don't say it--don't sayit."

  "I have said it. It is true."

  Turning, fiercely he seized her. "I won't let you go!" he cried, andthere was a strange light in his eyes. "Before I was helpless, now I amnot. This time you have come to me, and you shall stay."

  She shrank away from him terrified, wild-eyed. "Oh, you forget, youforget!"

  "For seven years I have tried to forget. I have been mad, but to-night Iam sane."

  "I trusted you, I trusted you!" she moaned.

  Nicol Brinn clenched his teeth grimly for a moment, and then, holdingher averted face very close to his own, he began to speak in a low,monotonous voice. "For seven years," he said, "I have tried to die,because without you I did not care to live. I have gone into the badlands of the world and into the worst spots of those bad lands. Nightand day your eyes have watched me, and I have wakened from dreams ofyour kisses and gone out to court murder. I have earned the reputationof being something more than human, but I am not. I had everything thatlife could give me except you. Now I have got you, and I am going tokeep you."

  Naida began to weep silently. The low, even voice of Nicol Brinn ceased.He could feel her quivering in his grasp; and, as she sobbed, slowly,slowly the fierce light faded from his eyes.

  "Naida, my Naida, forgive me," he whispered.

  She raised her face, looking up to him pathetically. "I came to you, Icame to you," she moaned. "I promised long ago that I would come. Whatuse is it, all this? You know, you know! Kill me if you like. How oftenhave I asked you to kill me. It would be sweet to die in your arms. Butwhat use to talk so? You are in great danger or you would not have askedme to come. If you don't know it, I tell you--you are in great danger."

  Nicol Brinn released her, stood up, and began slowly to pace about theroom. He deliberately averted his gaze from the settee. "Something hashappened," he began, "which has changed everything. Because you are hereI know that--someone else is here."

  He was answered by a shuddering sigh, but he did not glance in thedirection of the settee.

  "In India I respected what you told
me. Because you were strong, I lovedyou the more. Here in England I can no longer respect the accomplice ofassassins."

  "Assassins? What, is this something new?"

  "With a man's religion, however bloodthirsty it may be, I don't quarrelso long as he sincerely believes in it. But for private assassinationI have no time and no sympathy." It was the old Nicol Brinn who wasspeaking, coldly and incisively. "That--something we both know aboutever moved away from those Indian hills was a possibility I had neverconsidered. When it was suddenly brought home to me that you, you, mightbe here in London, I almost went mad. But the thing that made me realizeit was a horrible thing, a black, dastardly thing. See here."

  He turned and crossed to where the woman was crouching, watching himwith wide-open, fearful eyes. He took both her hands and looked grimlyinto her face. "For seven years I have walked around with a silenttongue and a broken heart. All that is finished. I am going to speak."

  "Ah, no, no!" She was on her feet, her face a mask of tragedy. "Youswore to me, you swore to me!"

  "No oath holds good in the face of murder."

  "Is that why you bring me here? Is that what your message means?"

  "My message means that because of--the thing you know about--I amsuspected of the murder."

  "You? You?"

  "Yes, I, I! Good God! when I realize what your presence here means, Iwish more than ever that I had succeeded in finding death."

  "Please don't say it," came a soft, pleading voice. "What can I do? Whatdo you want me to do?"

  "I want you to release me from that vow made seven years ago."

  Naida uttered a stifled cry. "How is it possible? You understand that itis not possible."

  Nicol Brinn seized her by the shoulders. "Is it possible for me toremain silent while men are murdered here in a civilized country?"

  "Oh," moaned Naida, "what can I do, what can I do?"

  "Give me permission to speak and stay here. Leave the rest to me."

  "You know I cannot stay, my Nicol," she replied, sadly.

  "But," he said with deliberate slowness, "I won't let you go."

  "You must let me go. Already I have been here too long."

  He threw his arms around her and crushed her against him fiercely."Never again," he said. "Never again."

  She pressed her little hands against his shoulders.

  "Listen! Oh, listen!"

  "I shall listen to nothing."

  "But you must--you must! I want to make you understand something. Thismorning I see your note in the papers. Every day, every day for sevenwhole long years, wherever I have been, I have looked. In the papers ofIndia. Sometimes in the papers of France, of England."

  "I never even dreamed that you left India," said Nicol Brinn, hoarsely."It was through the Times of India that I said I would communicate withyou."

  "Once we never left India. Now we do--sometimes. But listen. I preparedto come when--he--"

  Nicol Brinn's clasp of Naida tightened cruelly.

  "Oh, you hurt me!" she moaned. "Please let me speak. He gave me yourname and told me to bring you!"

  "What! What!"

  Nicol Brinn dropped his arms and stood, as a man amazed, watching her.

  "Last night there was a meeting outside London."

  "You don't want me to believe there are English members?"

  "Yes. There are. Many. But let me go on. Somehow--somehow I don'tunderstand--he finds you are one--"

  "My God!"

  "And you are not present last night! Now, do you understand? So hesends me to tell you that a car will be waiting at nine o'clock to-nightoutside the Cavalry Club. The driver will be a Hindu. You know what tosay. Oh, my Nicol, my Nicol, go for my sake! You know it all! Youare clever. You can pretend. You can explain you had no call. If yourefuse--"

  Nicol Brinn nodded grimly. "I understand! But, good God! How has hefound out? How has he found out?"

  "I don't know!" moaned Naida. "Oh, I am frightened--so frightened!"

  A discreet rap sounded upon the door.

  Nicol Brinn crossed and stood, hands clasped behind him, before themantelpiece. "In," he said.

  Hoskins entered. "Detective Sergeant Stokes wishes to see you at once,sir."

  Brinn drew a watch from his waistcoat pocket. Attached to it was a fobfrom which depended a little Chinese Buddha. He consulted the timepieceand returned it to his pocket.

  "Eight-twenty-five," he muttered, and glanced across to whereNaida, wide-eyed, watched him. "Admit Detective Sergeant Stokes ateight-twenty-six, and then lock the door."

  "Very good, sir."

  Hoskins retired imperturbably.