The Cheat (Holman)/Chapter 16
If misfortunes do not come singly, as the proverb says, they seldom come illogically either. They are generally linked up by the chain of cause and effect. There is an accident or a false step and the rest follows inexorably. It is a sort of House that Jack Built of grief. We are caught under a rolling snowball of Fate.
Had Carmelita been in a mood to reason logically and anywhere near as much interested in the past as she was in the future she might have traced her present gathering storm of troubles around the drop of rain that Fate let fall when she innocently yielded to Rao-Singh's suggestion and risked a hundred of his dollars that first night at Canary Cottage. That was the beginning. And now—
The Carmelita who came down to breakfast in her Hedgewood home the morning after the disastrous plunge with Rao-Singh's five thousand dollar check at Canary Cottage was a different creature from the radiant Carmelita who had first come to Hedgewood. She toyed over her grapefruit listlessly. The wrens were chattering outside the open window and the placid waters of the Sound danced invitingly in the sun. But Carmelita was heedless of the fresh glories of nature.
So it was all over, she reflected. In an hour, with the coming of Mrs. Peabody and Mrs. Hurd, perhaps accompanied by Banker Church for Rao-Singh's check, disgrace would be upon her, Carmelita de Cordoba. Misappropriating funds entrusted to her. Hadn't she read in the paper of a bank clerk being sentenced to Sing Sing for ten years for that offense? She took a morbid interest now in trying to recall the details of the story. She shuddered. They would arrive on time, she knew. She looked around her wildly. Why shouldn't she run away before it was too late, disappear utterly? But there was Dudley. Whatever feelings he might be harboring toward her now, as the result of Saturday night's fiasco, whatever he might have said to her in his anger about releasing her, she was bound to him always. She would never run away from him.
There was in Carmelita, even in this moment, a strain of Latin fatalism. Was it not droll? Here she was, daughter of one of the richest men in South America, until a year ago required only to express a wish no matter how extravagant and it would be fulfilled at once. And now she was facing the crisis of her life because she could not anywhere in the world lay her hands upon five thousand dollars. Why, the trousseau she had bought in Paris for her expected marriage with Don Pablo Mendoza had cost three times that.
She could not go to the Hodges. She knew they had been running into a spell of rather straitened financial circumstances themselves, and, besides, even in their palmiest moments they would never have been able to produce five thousand dollars within an hour. Was there anybody within reach who could and would perform such a miracle for her?
And then she wondered why she had not thought of him before. Prince Rao-Singh. "If your creditors get pressing you too hard," had he not once said to her, "come to me." She had not liked the look in his face as he had said it, the expression that seemed to be cherishing the hope that some day she would be hard pressed and would have to go to him. And Dudley would never forgive her if he discovered she had appealed to the Hindu. But when one is desperate—
In her agitation she abandoned her breakfast and walked out into the flower garden in back of the house. The sturdy, squat-backed Italian whom she hired two days a week to take care of the grounds was weeding the flower beds with deft, jerky movements of his strong wrists, whistling as he worked. He saw her, stopped long enough to smile a respectful good morning and to tip his dirtstained slouch hat. Then back to work and whistling. Carmelita lingered, watching him idly, loath to go back into the house where she felt the final scene in her drama of disgrace was to be played.
She was in the garden when the familiar limousine of Mrs. Peabody swung up the drive and stopped in front of the door.
Carmelita, turning white in an instant, did not hesitate. Rushing up the shrub-lined path she hurried into the kitchen and caught her maid just as the latter was preparing to answer the bell.
"Tell them I am not here but will return directly," Carmelita gasped. "Be sure they wait."
Rao-Singh would have to lend her the money now whatever the price or the consequences. Or she would never come back to this house. She would—
Unobserved by the callers to whom the maid was now conveying her mistress' words and showing two chairs upon the piazza, Carmelita hurried over the broad lawns that stretched between her own property and that of Rao-Singh. Luckily no one observed her progress and in ten minutes she was, out of breath, pounding the fancy knocker beside the screen door at the entrance to Rao-Singh's "cottage."
A dark, turbaned Hindu answered the door. Too well trained to register any surprise at the presence of a woman at his master's door at any hour of the day or night, he ushered her into the living-room and disappeared. Carmelita declined the chair he had offered her and shifted from one foot to the other for a few minutes. The Hindu servant reappeared and conveyed the message in broken English that his master desired to see the lady in his study.
Like Rao-Singh's apartment in Paris, this whole house was like a scene from another world. The Indian was a connoisseur of beauty, of rarities, preferably those with an exotic appeal. The floors were laid with oriental rugs that a millionaire collector would have given half his fortune for. A large bronze Buddha set into an altar-like effect seemed to blink at her from one end of the room. The walls were hung with tapestries and a few trophies of big game hunting in his native India. The place was somewhat oppressive and filled with the faint, acrid odor of incense.
And upon every one of his possessions she noticed somewhere the Bengal tiger brand which had first met her eye in Paris. This branding—it seemed to be an obsession with him.
But she heard his deep voice calling to her from the study and presently he was standing in the doorway leading from that room to the living-room. "Please come in where we shall not be disturbed," he invited not without significance, and somehow she felt that he had guessed the object of her mission.
He motioned her to a seat in the study but she was too nervous to accept. Her eyes swept the room as she struggled to formulate her request. He stood beside the desk toying with an ivory paper cutter. The drawer of the desk was open a little and she caught the glint of a metal object in the corner nearest her, a revolver. He followed her eyes and, without seeming to be conscious of any connection between her gaze and his action, casually closed the drawer. A large circular bowl made of dull metal standing upon the table was sending up a thin column of smoke and she was conscious of an irritating little scent in the room. Beside the bowl rested the disk bearing the Bengal tiger seal, still hot, and the ivory jewel box he had been branding.
"What has brought you here so very early in the morning, Carmelita?" he asked.
She moistened her dry lips. There was no
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help for it. She must throw herself upon his mercy. "A month ago you told me, Rao, to come to you if I ever needed help. Well, lam desperately in need of help now. I am in tremendous difficulty and you are the only one I can turn to."
His manner seemed to cool a little at this and he looked at her through shrewd eyes. "How can I serve you?" he asked quietly.
"You know that I owe a large sum of money at Canary Cottage—five thousand dollars. Hayden came to me yesterday and threatened to go to my husband if I did not pay him in full. I was desperate. I owe many other bills besides. I took the check for five thousand dollars which you—gave to the Charity Fête and played roulette with it last night at Canary Cottage, hoping to win and square my debts all around. Well—luck was against me. I lost it all. I am worse off than ever. And the other members of the fête committee are at my house now to take away your five thousand dollar check. I agreed to give it to them this morning, and now, you see, I can't. I'm an embezzler! They can arrest me and put me in jail for what I have done!"
"And you want me to replace my former check with another one for a similar amount at once?"
"Yes—yes."
"After the manner in which your husband insulted me Saturday night—should I now make it possible for you to deceive him further about the state of your finances and bring about a reconciliation between you?"
His tones were cold, cruel. But she was too excited to notice.
"Surely you do not hold me responsible for Dudley's actions Saturday night. You know how much I appreciate all your kindnesses to me, and I will do anything if you will only help me out of this frightful mess."
He came closer to her until he was almost touching her and looked at her in a disturbing, calculating manner.
"You will do anything?"
In her desperation she echoed, "Yes—anything."
He studied her critically through eyes that burned.
"Will you come back here and dine alone with me—to-night?"
She took a step away from him and looked up at him frightened and questioning. His request—or invitation—seemed to be pregnant with sinister significance. But she thought of the two women waiting for her at home, the two instruments of cruel fate who would not be denied. She had not grasped his full meaning. And she took the plunge.
She said almost in a whisper, "Yes, I will come—anything."
Without a word he opened the drawer of his desk, took out his check and sat down at the desk to write. As he blotted the paper he looked at her calculatingly. Amd suddenly as she reached out her hand for the life-saving slip, he seized her in his arms and kissed her hotly upon thelips. For an instant she fought him, then remembering how thoroughly she was at his mercy, yielded with closed eyes. How she hated him at that moment! Reluctantly he let her go.
"Au revoir," he said significantly. But she was gone without a word.
For an instant after her departure Rao-Singh stood in front of his desk fingering the branding disk before him, smiling faintly with the self-satisfied air of a man who has accomplished a task he has been busy upon for a long time and who is just beginning to harvest the fruits of his efforts. Then he pushed the bell upon the desk and Dhinn, his man servant, appeared noiselessly.
"I am having a visitor to-night—a lady," he said to the servant sharply. "I shall want a particularly nice dinner and afterward we must not be disturbed."