The Mischief-Maker Part 39

"I do not receive him," she replied. "I have no interest in his comings or his goings. I have a solemn promise, a promise to which he has subscribed upon his honor, that he shall not seek to cross the threshold of my house. He sent me an amba.s.sador once quite lately to make me a certain proposition connected with you."

"With me?" Julien repeated.

She nodded.

"He has great faith in my powers," she went on, looking him full in the face, "also, apparently, some belief in your susceptibility. Is that unkind of me? Never mind, it is the truth. He imagined, perhaps, that I might help him to rid Paris of your presence. There was just one thing he could offer me which I desired. He came to offer it."

"You refused?" Julien exclaimed.

Her eyes rested upon his. Her expression was faintly provocative.

"How could I accept an offer," she asked, "to deal with a thing which did not belong to me? You have shown no signs at present, Sir Julien, of becoming my abject slave."

The car rushed through a straggling village. All the time she was watching him. Then she threw herself back among the cus.h.i.+ons with a little laugh.

"A week or so ago," she murmured, "I had a fancy that if I had tried--well, that perhaps you were not so different from other men. I should have loathed my conquest, I should probably have loathed you, but I think that I should have expected it. At the present moment," she went on, glancing into a little gold mirror which she had picked up from a heap of trifles lying on the table before her, "at the present moment I am disillusioned. My vanity is wounded though my relief is great. Nevertheless, Sir Julien, tell me what has happened to you during the last few days?"

"Work," Julien replied, "the sort of work I was craving for."

"Not only that," she insisted, setting down the mirror with a sigh.

"There is something else."

"If there is," Julien a.s.sured her, "I am not yet conscious of it."

They had emerged from the country lane along which they had been traveling and were returning now to Paris along the broad highroad.

They were going at a fair speed when suddenly a huge racing car came flas.h.i.+ng by them, covered with dust, and with all the indications of having come a great distance. Madame Christophor leaned forward in her seat and clutched her companion's arm. Her eyes were fixed upon the figure of the man leaning back by the side of the driver.

"You see?" she muttered.

"Herr Freudenberg!" Julien gasped.

She nodded. Already the car had vanished in a cloud of dust.

"He is just from Germany or from the frontier. He very seldom comes all the way by rail. The car is always waiting."

"I shall see him, then, to-night," Julien declared. "Already, without a doubt, he knows. Already he is my enemy. What about you, Madame Christophor?"

"My friend," she promised, "you will have nothing to fear from me. So long as I can forget your s.e.x, I rather like you."

"Are you going to answer my question about the little girl who sent me to you?" he asked.

"I will tell you, if you like," she said. "Mademoiselle Senn was once in my service. She occasionally executes commissions for me in London.

She knows everybody. It was in obedience to my wishes that she gave you that message."

"But why?" Julien demanded. "What interest had you in me?"

"None," she answered a little coldly,--"no personal interest. I sent that message because I discovered that the individual who has just pa.s.sed us in the automobile was framing certain schemes in connection with you if you should come to Paris. Politically as well as personally he and I are enemies. He hates America and the whole Anglo-Saxon race.

It has amused me more than once to thwart his schemes. I intended to set you upon your guard. You see, it is very simple. Mademoiselle Senn wrote me at first that she did not know you and that she feared you were inaccessible. Then she wired me of an accidental meeting and that she had delivered my message. The whole affair is simpler than it seemed, is it not so?... Now listen. I have satisfied your curiosity.

You now shall answer a question. Who is Miss Clonarty?"

Julien gazed at her in astonishment.

"Miss Clonarty?" he repeated.

Madame Christophor nodded.

"The name seems to surprise you. A young English woman called on me to-day in answer to my advertis.e.m.e.nt for a secretary who could write and speak English. She said that her name was Miss Anne Clonarty and she referred me to you."

"If she is the lady whom I suppose she is," Julien replied, "you will be perfectly safe in engaging her."

Madame Christophor looked at him from underneath the lids of her eyes.

"Do you think that I do not know?" she asked, with a shade of contempt in her tone,--"that I do not sometimes read the papers? Do you think that I have not seen that Lady Anne Clonarty, the girl whom you were engaged to marry, disappeared from her home the other day, on the eve of her marriage to another man? It is this girl who comes to me for my situation, is it not so?"

Julien was silent.

"I knew nothing of her coming. I did not even know that you wanted a secretary."

"I wonder why she came to Paris," Madame Christophor remarked. "Is she in love with you?"

"There was never any question of anything of the sort," Julien declared fervently.

"You have seen her since she arrived in Paris?"

"Entirely by accident. I saw her alight from the train. I was at the Gare du Nord to meet Kendricks."

Madame Christophor leaned back in her seat.

"Is it your wish that I engage her?"

"Certainly," Julien replied. "I am sure that you will find her competent. At the same time, I don't know how long she will keep this thing up."

"As a rule I do not care for handsome women around me," Madame Christophor said composedly. "Lady Anne is much too good-looking to please me. She has all the freshness and vitality," she added, dropping her voice a little, "which seem to have left me forever."

"You have experience," Julien reminded her. "Experience in itself is wonderful, even though one has to pay for it."

They were in the streets of Paris now. Madame Christophor shrugged her shoulders and sat up.

"It is one of the misfortunes of my s.e.x," she said, a little bitterly, "that without experience we lack charm--in the eyes of you men, that is to say. It is your own folly.... Are you coming home with me, my friend, or shall I set you down somewhere?"

"As near the Gare du Nord as possible, if you please," Julien begged.

"I have wearied you enough for one afternoon."

Madame Christophor looked at him thoughtfully. There was a slight frown upon her forehead.

"Somewhere near the Gare du Nord!" she repeated.