On the day following Baraka's liberation, Lady Maud received Margaret's pressing telegram begging her to go to Bayreuth. The message reached her before noon, about the time when Margaret and her companions had come back from their morning walk, and after hesitating for half-an-hour, she telegraphed that she would come with pleasure, and would start at once, which meant that evening.
She had just read the official account of the ruby case in its new aspect, and she did not believe a word of the story. To her mind it was quite clear that Logotheti was still infatuated with the girl, that he had come to London as fast as he could, and that he had deliberately sworn that the ruby was not his, but another one, in order to get her out of trouble. If it was not his it had [{248}] not been stolen from Pinney's, and the whole case fell through at once. If she was declared innocent the stone must be given back to her; he would take it from her as soon as they were alone and return it to his own pocket; and being an Oriental, he would probably beat her for robbing him, but would not let her out of his sight again till he was tired of her. Lady Maud had heard from her late husband how all Turks believed that women had no souls and should be kept under lock and key, and well fed, and soundly beaten now and then for the good of their tempers. This view was exaggerated, but Lady Maud was in a humour to recall it and accept it without criticism, and she made up her mind that before leaving town to join Margaret she would make sure of the facts. No friend of hers should marry a man capable of such outrageous deeds.
If she had not been an impulsive woman she could never have done so much good in the world; and she had really done so much that she believed in her impulses, and acted on them without taking into consideration the possibility that she might be doing harm. But the damage which very actively good people sometimes do quite unintentionally is often greater and more lasting than that done by bad people, because the good ones carry with them the whole resistless weight of real goodness and of real good works already accomplished.
Perhaps that is why honestly convinced reformers sometimes bring about more ruin in a few months than ten years of bribery and corruption have wrought before them. [{249}]
Lady Maud was a reformer, in a sense, and she was afraid of nothing when she thought she was doing right. She went to Logotheti's lodgings and asked to see him, as regardless of what any one should think of her, if she were recognised, as she had been in the old days when she used to go to Van Torp's chambers in the Temple in the evening.
She was told that Logotheti was out of town. Where? The servant did not know that. The lady could see the secretary, who might, perhaps, tell her. He received every one who had business with Monsieur Logotheti.
She went up one flight and was admitted to a very airy sitting-room, simply furnished. There were several large easy-chairs of different shapes, all covered with dark wine-coloured leather, and each furnished with a different appliance for holding a book or writing materials. There was a long bookcase full of books behind glass. There was a writing-table, on which were half-a-dozen monstrously big implements of an expensive kind, but handsome in their way: a paper-cutter hewn from at least a third of an elephant's tusk, and heavy enough to fell a man at a blow; an enormous inkstand, apparently made of a solid brick of silver, without ornament, brightly polished, and having a plain round hole in the middle for ink; a blotting-case of the larger folio size, with a Greek inscription on it in raised letters of gold; a trough of imperial jade, two feet long, in which lay a couple of gold penholders fitted with new pens, and the thickest piece of scarlet sealing-wax [{250}] Lady Maud had ever seen. They were objects of the sort that many rich men receive as presents, or order without looking at them when they are furnishing a place that is to be a mere convenience for a few days in the year. There was nothing personal in what Lady Maud saw, except the books, and she could not have examined them if she had wished to.
The one thing that struck her was a delicate suggestion of sweetness in the fresh air of the room, something that was certainly not a scent, and yet was not that of the perfumes or gums which some Orientals like to burn where they live. She liked it, and wondered what it was, as she glanced about for some one of the unmistakable signs of a woman's presence.
The Swiss secretary had risen ponderously to receive her, and as she did not sit down he remained standing. His vast face was fringed with a beard of no particular colour, and his eyes were fixed and blue in his head, like turquoises set in pale sole leather.
'I am Countess Leven,' she said, 'and I have known Monsieur Logotheti some time. Will you kindly tell me where he is?'