The Primadonna Part 37

'Yes, of course I do. But I was telling you about Mr. Feist--'

'Dinner is ready,' Margaret said, rising as the servant opened the door.

To her surprise the man came forward. He said that just as he was going to announce dinner Countess Leven had telephoned that she was dining out, and would afterwards stop on her way to the play in the hope of seeing Margaret for a moment. She had seemed to be in a hurry, and had closed the communication before the butler could answer. And dinner was served, he added.

Margaret nodded carelessly, and the two went into the dining-room.

Lady Maud could not possibly come before half-past nine, and there was plenty of time to decide whether she should be admitted or not.

'Mr. Feist has been very ill,' Logotheti said as they sat down to table under the pleasant light, 'and I have been taking care of him, after a fas.h.i.+on.'

Margaret raised her eyebrows a little, for she was beginning to be annoyed at his persistency, and was not much pleased at the prospect of Lady Maud's visit.

'How very odd!' she said, rather coldly. 'I cannot imagine anything more disagreeable.'

'It has been very unpleasant,' Logotheti answered, 'but he seemed to have no particular friends here, and he was all alone at an hotel, and really very ill. So I volunteered.'

'I've no objection to being moderately sorry for a young man who falls ill at an hotel and has no friends,' Margaret said, 'but are you going in for nursing? Is that your latest hobby? It's a long way from art, and even from finance!'

'Isn't it?'

'Yes. I'm beginning to be curious!'

'I thought you would be before long,' Logotheti answered coolly, but suddenly speaking French. 'One of the most delightful things in life is to have one's curiosity roused and then satisfied by very slow degrees!'

'Not too slow, please. The interest might not last to the end.'

'Oh yes, it will, for Mr. Feist plays a part in your life.'

'About as distant as Voltaire's Chinese Mandarin, I fancy,' Margaret suggested.

'Nearer than that, though I did not guess it when I went to see him.

In the first place, it was owing to you that I went to see him the first time.'

'Nonsense!'

'Not at all. Everything that happens to me is connected with you in some way. I came to see you late in the afternoon, on one of your off-days not long ago, hoping that you would ask me to dine, but you were across the river at Lord Creedmore's. I met old Griggs at your door, and as we walked away he told me that Mr. Feist had fallen down in a fit at a club, the night before, and had been sent home in a cab to the Carlton. As I had nothing to do, worth doing, I went to see him. If you had been at home, I should never have gone. That is what I mean when I say that you were the cause of my going to see him.'

'In the same way, if you had been killed by a motor-car as you went away from my door, I should have been the cause of your death!'

'You will be in any case,' laughed Logotheti, 'but that's a detail! I found Mr. Feist in a very bad way.'

'What was the matter with him?' asked Margaret.

'He was committing suicide,' answered the Greek with the utmost calm.

'If I were in Constantinople I should tell you that this turbot is extremely good, but as we are in London I suppose it would be very bad manners to say so, wouldn't it? So I am thinking it.'

'Take the fish for granted, and tell me more about Mr. Feist!'

'I found him standing before the gla.s.s with a razor in his hand and quite near his throat. When he saw me he tried to laugh and said he was just going to shave; I asked him if he generally shaved without soap and water, and he burst into tears.'

'That's rather dreadful,' observed Margaret. 'What did you do?'

'I saved his life, but I don't think he's very grateful yet. Perhaps he may be by and by. When he stopped sobbing he tried to kill me for hindering his destruction, but I had got the razor in my pocket, and his revolver missed fire. That was lucky, for he managed to stick the muzzle against my chest and pull the trigger just as I got him down.

I wished I had brought old Griggs with me, for they say he can bend a good horse-shoe double, even now, and the fellow had the strength of a lunatic in him. It was rather lively for a few seconds, and then he broke down again, and was as limp as a rag, and trembled with fright, as if he saw queer things in the room.'

'You sent for a doctor then?'

'My own, and we took care of him together that night. You may laugh at the idea of my having a doctor, as I never was ill in my life. I have him to dine with me now and then, because he is such good company, and is the best judge of a statue or a picture I know. The habit of taking the human body to pieces teaches you a great deal about the shape of it, you see. In the morning we moved Mr. Feist from the hotel to a small private hospital where cases of that sort are treated. Of course he was perfectly helpless, so we packed his belongings and papers.'

'It was really very kind of you to act the Good Samaritan to a stranger,' Margaret said, but her tone showed that she was disappointed at the tame ending of the story.

'No,' Logotheti answered. 'I was never consciously kind, as you call it. It's not a Greek characteristic to love one's neighbour as one's self. Teutons, Anglo-Saxons, Latins, and, most of all, Asiatics, are charitable, but the old Greeks were not. I don't believe you'll find an instance of a charitable act in all Greek history, drama, and biography! If you did find one I should only say that the exception proves the rule. Charity was left out of us at the beginning, and we never could understand it, except as a foreign sentiment imported with Christianity from Asia. We have had every other virtue, including hospitality. In the _Iliad_ a man declines to kill his enemy on the ground that their people had dined together, which is going rather far, but it is not recorded that any ancient Greek, even Socrates himself, ever felt pity or did an act of spontaneous kindness! I don't believe any one has said that, but it's perfectly true.'

'Then why did you take all that trouble for Mr. Feist?'

'I don't know. People who always know why they do things are great bores. It was probably a caprice that took me to see him, and then it did not occur to me to let him cut his throat, so I took away his razor; and, finally, I telephoned for my doctor, because my misspent life has brought me into contact with Western civilisation. But when we began to pack Mr. Feist's papers I became interested in him.'

'Do you mean to say that you read his letters?' Margaret inquired.

'Why not? If I had let him kill himself, somebody would have read them, as he had not taken the trouble to destroy them!'

'That's a singular point of view.'

'So was Mr. Feist's, as it turned out. I found enough to convince me that he is the writer of all those articles about Van Torp, including the ones in which you are mentioned. The odd thing about it is that I found a very friendly invitation from Van Torp himself, begging Mr.

Feist to go down to Derbys.h.i.+re and stop a week with him.'

Margaret leaned back in her chair and looked at her guest in quiet surprise.

'What does that mean?' she asked. 'Is it possible that Mr. Van Torp has got up this campaign against himself in order to play some trick on the Stock Exchange?'

Logotheti smiled and shook his head.

'That's not the way such things are usually managed,' he answered. 'A hundred years ago a publisher paid a critic to attack a book in order to make it succeed, but in finance abuse doesn't contribute to our success, which is always a question of credit. All these scurrilous articles have set the public very much against Van Torp, from Paris to San Francisco, and this man Feist is responsible for them. He is either insane, or he has some grudge against Van Torp, or else he has been somebody's instrument, which looks the most probable.'

'What did you find amongst his papers?' Margaret asked, quite forgetting her vicarious scruples about reading a sick man's letters.

'A complete set of the articles that have appeared, all neatly filed, and a great many notes for more, besides a lot of stuff written in cypher. It must be a diary, for the days are written out in full and give the days of the week.'

'I wonder whether there was anything about the explosion,' said Margaret thoughtfully. 'He said he was there, did he not?'

'Yes. Do you remember the day?'

'It was a Wednesday, I'm sure, and it was after the middle of March.

My maid can tell us, for she writes down the date and the opera in a little book each time I sing. It's sometimes very convenient. But it's too late now, of course, and, besides, you could not have read the cypher.'

'That's an easy matter,' Logotheti answered. 'All cyphers can be read by experts, if there is no hurry, except the mechanical ones that are written through holes in a square plate which you turn round till the sheet is full. Hardly any one uses those now, because when the square is raised the letters don't form words, and the cable companies will only transmit real words in some known language, or groups of figures.

The diary is written hastily, too, not at all as if it were copied from the sheet on which the perforated plate would have had to be used, and besides, the plate itself would be amongst his things, for he could not read his own notes without it.'