Stolen Souls. Le Queux William

of the extraordinary career of an adventuress bearing that sobriquet; how she had moved in the best society in Paris and Vienna, and how in the latter city, in a single year, in her character as queen of the demi-monde, she had spent 50,000 pounds, the money of her dupes. Indeed, her adventures had been the talk of Europe.

      “Yes,” he continued, smiling at my astonishment. “No doubt you have read in your English newspapers all about the many ingenious frauds she has perpetrated. For the past five years she has been well-known in various characters in Pau, Rome, Paris, and Vienna; her schemes have invariably been successful, and her escape from the police has been accomplished just at the right moment, in a manner almost incredible. But the audacious boldness of a coup she effected a year ago caused her downfall.”

      “A year ago?” I said. “Was it during the time I knew her?”

      “Yes. While spending the summer at San Sebastian with Mateo Sanchez, – a Bourse adventurer of Madrid, who, under the name of Luis d’Avendaño, passed as her brother, – she conceived, during the Cabinet crisis, a very ingenious scheme for gigantic operations on the Bourse with certain success. The circumstances were remarkable, and your story supplies the facts which have remained until now a mystery. Unaware of the true character of Sanchez, I had employed him as agent in various transactions shortly before the crisis, and he had thus become aware of my intentions to institute certain financial reforms that would affect the Bourse to a considerable extent. ‘The Golden Hand,’ it appears, with her usual shrewdness, pointed out how the knowledge thus acquired would enable him to operate with success, if only he could be certain of my reappointment as Finance Minister, and the pair forthwith carried into effect an ingeniously arranged plan. Apparently you were watched, and, it having been ascertained that, as correspondent of an influential journal, you were a likely person to obtain the very earliest intimation of the formation of the Cabinet, they laid their plans to entrap you.”

      “I confess I little dreamed of foul play when I entered the Villa Guipuzcoa,” I observed.

      “At the trial it was a mystery how they obtained knowledge of the State secret,” he continued. “But it is now quite plain that on the evening when the portfolios were arranged, they, being aware of the devices to which you would probably resort in order to obtain accurate information, enticed you to their house, and then, having ascertained from your own lips that the Ministry had been formed, resolved to carry out their cunningly-devised scheme. They saw that you were the only member of the public who knew the secret, and if they prevented you from despatching it to London, – whence it was certain to be re-telegraphed here, – it would give them time to get to Madrid on the following morning and operate on the Bourse some hours before the announcement of the new Ministry.”

      “She seemed so ingenuous and charming, that I suspected nothing – until – ”

      “Until she attempted to murder you – eh?” he said, taking up her portrait, and gazing upon it with a smile. “To say the least, the plot was a most extraordinary one. By your admission that the crisis was at an end, they knew you held a list of the new Ministers, and as you persisted in your endeavour to catch the train to the frontier, it became necessary for them to possess themselves of the list, and silence you, in order to escape to Madrid, and on the opening of the Bourse next day purchase the stock which they knew would rise immediately the official announcement was published. ‘The Golden Hand’ gave you as a souvenir the flower she wore, in the expectation that you would inhale its fatal perfume, as other victims had done.”

      “It was very similar to a camellia,” I said. “Has anything been ascertained regarding it?”

      “Oh yes. The flower she sometimes wore in her hair, and which appeared rather like a camellia, was at the trial proved to be the Kali Mujah, or death-rose of Sumatra, which is so deadly that its perfume is sufficient to cause unconsciousness, and sometimes even death. It was found that she actually cultivated these flowers, and that on more than one occasion she had used them upon her victims with fatal result. She gave one to you, but you merely placed it in your buttonhole; therefore, just as you were about to depart, her lover gripped you, while she pressed the fatal blossom into your nostrils. Then you lapsed into unconsciousness, and half an hour afterwards the enterprising pair were on their way to Madrid, where, on the following morning, they purchased a quantity of stock, with money secured by your idol Doroteita from one of her dupes, the Comte de Ségonnaux, whose death had been caused by the poisonous blossom in a similar manner to the attempt upon yourself.”

      “Were their operations on the Bourse successful?” I asked.

      “Entirely so. Unaware of these events, I put forward my financial scheme in the Chamber a month afterwards, with the result that the stock they had secured rose to unparalleled prices, and then they effected a gigantic coup, gaining nearly a million pesetas. But the boldness of the scheme caused their downfall, for the colossal extent of their transactions attracted the attention of the police, the result being that eventually the murder of the Comte de Ségonnaux at Toledo was conclusively proved, and your divinity’s identity with ‘The Golden Hand’ fully established.”

      “Were they both tried?” I asked, amazed at his extraordinary story.

      “Yes. Mateo Sanchez was found guilty of being an accessory in the assassination of the Comte, and sentenced at the last sitting of the Assize Court to fifteen years’ imprisonment; while the bewitching Liseta, condemned for the murder, is at present serving a life sentence at the convict prison at Barcelona.”

      A quarter of an hour later I had wished my genial friend the Minister adieu, and, full of grave reflections, crossed the sunlit Puerta del Sol, carrying in my pocket, as a souvenir of a foolish infatuation, the portrait of “The Golden Hand.”

      Chapter Three.

      The Masked Circe

      The success of “The Masked Circe” in last year’s Royal Academy was incontestable, not only for the intrinsic beauty of the picture, but from the fact that the personal charms of a handsome woman were perpetuated without compromising her features. Woman’s vanity often outruns her natural diffidence, and the consciousness of her great beauty stifles the conscience of modesty.

      Visitors to the Academy know the picture. Circe, seated on a throne, with her back to a great circular mirror, presents a half-draped figure of marvellous delicate colouring and beauty of outline. One hand holds aloft a golden wine-goblet, and the other a tapering wand, while upon the tesselated pavement before the daïs purple grapes and yellow roses have been strewn. The black hair of the daughter of Perseis falls in profusion about her bare shoulders, and strays over her breast, but her features are hidden by a half-mask of black silk. The lips, with their arc de cupidon, are slightly parted, disclosing an even row of pearly teeth, and giving an expression of reckless diablerie.

      Of the thousands who have gazed upon it in admiration, none knows the somewhat remarkable story connected with it. As I have been closely associated with it, from the day it was outlined in charcoal, until the evening it was packed in a crate and sent for the inspection of the hanging committee, it is perhaps àpropos that I should relate the narrative.

      The studio of my old friend, Dick Carruthers, the man who painted it, is on Campden Hill, Kensington, within a few hundred yards of where I reside, and in the centre of an aesthetic artistic colony. We have been chums for years, for on many occasions he has displayed his talent as a black and white artist in illustrating my articles and stories in various magazines. He is a popular painter, and as handsome a man as ever had a picture “on the line.”

      Three years ago, when the prologue of this secret drama was enacted, he was in the habit of coming over when the light had faded, to smoke a cigarette and discuss art and literature with me. I was glad of a chat after a hard day’s work at my writing-table, but his companionship had one drawback. He drivelled over a girl he loved, and was forever suggesting that I might take her as a character and drag her into the novel upon which I was engaged.

      One day he drew a cabinet photograph carefully from his pocket, and placed it upon the blotting-pad before me.

      The girl he loved! Bah! I knew her, though I did not tell him so. She was a dark-haired, pink-and-white