Jimgrim and a Secret Society. Talbot Mundy

plundered from an old New England mansion. The same black-visaged minion who had brought the note and rung the bell led the way up them, we following abreast, in step and silent until Jeremy whistled the first few bars of the “Dead March” from Saul.

      “This feels like kissing a fish,” he exclaimed. “There’s no afterglow. Let’s warm things up!”

      But there was no need. We passed into yet another world before the echo of his words had died. I hardly mean that figuratively either. Through a high, warm gray-and-silver curtain at the stair-head we stepped into a nearly square, enormous room at the back of the house. Four, high-arched, open windows along one side overlooked the Nile.

      Maybe you’ve seen the Nile through a window at night, with the curved spars of boats as old as Moses motionless against the purple sky and the moonlight bathing everything in silver silence? It’s worth the trip.

      The light within the room was of several colors, shining through stained-glass shades and causing all the rich furniture to glow in a sort of opalescent mystery. Simplicity was as much the key-note here as below; but this was simple extravagance. The carpet alone—one piece of old rose hand-work reaching from wall to wall—was likely worth the High Commissioner’s year’s salary; and the tapestry that covered the long wall facing the windows probably contributed to the fall of Marie Antoinette by helping bankrupt the poor devils who had to pay for it.

      There was an Oriental touch, produced by long divans with silken cushions ranged against the walls. A door at the far end was hidden by a curtain of amber heads—old amber, each piece polished into ripeness on a woman’s breast; I walked over and examined them.

      We sat down facing the windows, sinking a foot deep into silken cushions—and sniffed; there was the same scent that was on the envelope—jasmine, I think, mixed with some subtler stuff—and still the same far-away chords of organ music.

      “Let’s sing hymns!” suggested Jeremy. “Or shall I do tricks? I know a dandy one with cushions.”

      “Please do both. I would love to watch you!” said a woman’s voice; and though we hadn’t heard the door move, we could see her behind the amber curtain. She came forward at once.

      “Zelmira Poulakis,” she announced, when we had told our names.

      I may as well say right now, and have done with it, that I know nothing about women of her kind. My mother was a wrinkled old gray-haired lady with nothing subtle about her, but rather a plain straight-forwardness that made you understand; and somehow, she has always stood for Woman in my memory, most of the other types being incomprehensible—welcome to anything if they will let me alone in the smoking-room.

      I suppose Zelmira Poulakis is a type, although I’ve never seen another like her. She is Levantine, and those she-Levantines while they are still young are supple, vivacious, with eyes that say more than their lips, and lips that can kiss, curse or coax with equal genius. She had on a frock all stitched with glittering beetles’ wings, that just a little more than reached her shins, and they were very shapely shins; it was charity and art to show them.

      She had the poise and ease and grace that go with the sort of education women get, who are “presented” at the smaller European courts, and her jewels, which were few, were splendid, but hardly more so than her eyes.

      Jeremy—you can’t put him out of countenance—drew up a sort of throne made of elephants’ tusks, and she sat down facing us, laughing, speaking English with only trace enough of accent to make it pretty.

      “You look rather bewildered and I can’t blame you,” she began. “What must you have thought! But I’ve heard such wonderful accounts of you that I couldn’t resist the temptation. Will you forgive me?”

      “Not we!” laughed Jeremy. “Forgiveness would imply that we didn’t like being here. If Narayan Singh is in your hands he’s all right.”

      “But he isn’t! Oh, he isn’t! If only he were!” she exclaimed with a comical grimace.

      “Suppose you shut up, Jeremy, and let her tell us,” Grim suggested.

      Well, she told us. She was good at telling things, and a beautiful woman in a gorgeous setting is hypnotic, mistrust her how you will. We three listened to the end without interrupting to challenge her statements.

      “Last night,” she began, “there was a ball at the Greek Legation. My husband was Greek, although I am not. I was returning from the ball in my carriage with a friend at about half-past four this morning, and had stopped at the door of my friend’s house about a mile from here to set her down; in fact, she had already left the carriage and my footman was in the act of closing the carriage door, when he was suddenly thrust aside by an enormous Indian dressed in a turban and a blue serge suit. My footman is a giant, but the Indian flung him aside with one hand with hardly an effort, and I’m afraid I screamed.”

      She appeared to be ashamed of having screamed, but Narayan Singh with two quarts of whisky inside him would frighten the Sphinx.

      “My footman returned to the rescue very pluckily,” she went on, “but the Indian threw him under the horses, which frightened them so badly that the coachman had all he could do to keep them from running away. My friend did run away. She has told me since that she ran indoors to get the servants, but by the time she had aroused them I was gone; so she went to bed, and hoped for the best. Philosophic, wasn’t she?”

      Grim was sitting on my right hand. He made no remark, and didn’t change his facial expression; but I did notice a sudden stiffening of his muscles. You’ll see exactly the same thing when an experienced hunter becomes aware of big game creeping out from cover.

      “I don’t know what the Indian intended in the first place.” she continued, “but my scream apparently fired his imagination. He swore terribly in English—said that protecting queens in distress was his only occupation—and jumped into the carriage, shutting the door behind him with a slam that sounded like a big gun going off. That was too much for the horses altogether; they went off at a gallop. Luckily the footman had scrambled out from under their feet, and there is a foot-board behind the carriage; he caught hold of that and climbed on. The carriage went so fast that it was all he could do to hang on, although he tried to climb on the roof and come to my assistance that way; the top of the ­carriage is smooth and slippery, and the feat proved impossible.

      “Really, it was the worst predicament! it was almost totally dark, but I could see the whites of the Indian’s eyes, and his white teeth gleaming in the middle of his black beard, and I nearly fainted. But he sat down opposite me with his arms folded across his breast, and presently I grew calmer and began to think. You gentlemen, who are used to all sorts of wild adventures, would doubtless have known what to do; but I didn’t.

      “I even began to suspect my coachman and footman of being parties to a plot to carry me off somewhere; and the fact that the Indian did not try to molest me made it seem as if he might be acting on behalf of some one else. I found words at last and asked him in English what he wanted.

      “ ‘Nothing under heaven but your Majesty’s instructions!’ he answered. ‘I am Narayan Singh, your servant. Say but the word, your Majesty, and I will accomplish marvels—I will pull the heads off these Egyptians as a crow pulls worms out of a plowed field! Command me! Set me a task! My honor is involved! I have sworn a vow. Henceforward I serve none but queens!’

      “Can you imagine it? I asked him to stop the horses! I couldn’t think of anything else to tell him to do! I knew by the overpowering smell of whisky that he was intoxicated, but he seemed mad in the bargain. I wanted to get rid of him and I’m afraid the thought occurred to me that he might get killed in making the attempt, although I hardly hoped he would really try.

      “However, he didn’t hesitate for a second. The carriage was swaying all over the street, with the wheels grating against a curbstone one minute and skidding sidewise the next, and it was all I could do to keep my seat, to say nothing of standing up. But he opened the door, climbed out, swung himself up on the box beside the coachman, seized the reins, and tugged at them, discovered that was no use,