A Secret Society (Spy Thriller). Talbot Mundy

matches to admire the finery. It was lined with velvet, on which an artist had painted cupids and doves. There were solid silver brackets, holding silver tubes, that held real orchids—cypropedium expensivum, as Jeremy identified them.

      The curtains that draped the windows were hand-made lace—Louis the Something-or-other—half as old as France; and the thing to put your feet on was covered with peacocks’ bosoms done in wood, inlaid with semiprecious stones. There were mirrors galore to see your face in, but no way of seeing out of the windows without tearing the lace, and we didn’t feel afraid enough to do that.

      There was nothing to remind us of the ordinary, hum-drum world, except the noisy exhaust of Meldrum Strange’s hired car closely pursuing us, and even that sounded detached, you might say, like the sounds of next-door neighbors whom you don’t yet know.

      We didn’t have to worry about what direction we were taking, since Strange was attending to that, but there seemed to be no effort made to confuse us. We kept to the straight, wide streets, and crossed an arm of the Nile by the stone bridge into the better residential quarter, where mansions stand amid palms and shrubbery behind high stone walls. Nor did we leave the Nile far behind us.

      The faintly lighted interior of the carriage grew suddenly as dark as death as we passed under an echoing arch, and out again on gravel between an avenue of trees. We caught the click behind us of an iron gate, and wondered what Meldrum Strange would do, but hardly had time to think of him before the carriage came to a stand under a portico and the door was opened with a jerk.

      We stepped out into a realm of mystery. We could see part of the outline of a great stone house, built in the semi-Oriental, barbaric style of modern Egypt; but the only light was from a Chinese paper lantern in the middle of the portico roof, throwing quivering golden shadows on a front door that was almost entirely covered with bronze Chinese dragons.

      To right and left was a silhouette of fragrant shrubs against the blue Egyptian night; and there wasn’t a sound except what we made. When the carriage drove away and the click of horseshoes vanished somewhere around a corner there was utter silence, until the man who had brought the message stepped up to the front door like a ghost and pushed an electric bell.

      Did it ever strike you that sound has color? The din that bell made was dazzling, diamond white, reflecting all the colors of the prism in its facets. When I spoke of it afterwards I found that Grim had noticed the same thing.

      It was about two minutes before the door opened. Two black six-footers, who looked smug enough to be eunuchs, swung both leaves of the door wide open suddenly, and stood aside with chins in the air to let us pass.

      * * * * *

      We entered a restfully lighted hall that might have belonged to a monastery, for it was all white stone without an ornament except simplicity. The ceiling was supported by plaster stone arches, and the whole effect was so unexpectedly different from that outside that it froze you into silence. It was like looking forward to the circus and finding yourself in church. There was even dim organ music descending from somewhere out of sight.

      The stairs were on our right hand, of stone, severely plain, with a hand- forged iron balustrade that might have been 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 beads—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