“I was unconscious for a while, and when I recovered the room was still in darkness. I found the push-button in the wall and turned on the lights. Mr. Ward lay on the floor by the couch. He made a sound of moaning and it frightened me. Oh, Dmitri, it was horrible to be alone with him there. I gave him water to drink and saw that he was wounded in the back. He told me to go quietly down and tell Ishigaki who was waiting for him in his car. I must be very careful and give no alarm, he said. He had been stabbed and the jewels were gone. After I had sent the Japanese up to help him, I was afraid to go myself. I wanted Griffeth. I knew they would try to keep me from him.”
“Why did you not call him at the house on the Square?”
“I did,” she protested. “He had not come in yet, they told me. I left word for him that I must see him.”
Dmitri gazed at her glowing, expressive face with half-closed, retrospective eyes. Surely Fate had sent her to his door at the one hour of opportunity. He would save the boy Steccho from folly and crime, and give Griffeth back his love.
“Then he must have received your message after he left here,” he said cheerily. “And he will surely seek you at your own home. You must go back there.”
“I never will go back to them. I will wait for him here,” she insisted. “They will blame me for everything, for sending to Mr. Ward, for the loss of the jewels, everything, and I will not listen to them. I do not care for anything in the whole world but Griffeth.”
“Then you must safeguard him,” Dmitri urged. “They may suspect him since he knew of the jewels, and we who live and think as nomads are ever under suspicion. Have you not heard it said that all genius is insanity? It is enough that he lives in the temperamental zone of the village. Now, my dear child, you are cold and nervous. You will see how well I can take care of you. You shall sit here and drink coffee for a few moments while I go and telephone to Griffeth. And then”—he knelt before the brazier, stirring and blowing the embers to a blaze—“then we will have the surprise. When you were very little, did you not always love the surprise, eh? Sometimes Life is still indulgent to us; even in our greatest extremity, she grants us the surprise, and it is this that keeps up our faith, that somehow, somewhere, our own shall come to us, see?”
“If he is there when you call up, will you tell him to come here to me?” She looked at him with longing eyes, and Dmitri smiled back at her.
“Surely I will. Fate shuffles the cards, remember; man only deals them. I have ever found that we move in circles of coincidence drawn together like the particles in the spectrum by some immutable unseen force of attraction to form a cosmic harmony. You like that, do you? For, see, you go forth in the night to seek your well-beloved, like the Shulamite of old. Do you know her, my dear, among the immortal lovers?” He measured level spoonfuls of pulverized coffee into the little copper pot carefully. “Yet you remind me of her. So. When this boils up the third time, then you shall drink it while I go for your surprise.”
Out in the street a car drew up before the house next door. Count Jurka alighted, scanned the small brass numbers on the door carefully, and ascended the narrow steps. He wore a cloak over his evening suit, the cape thrown back over one shoulder, and as he waited he hummed a waltz air from the last opera he had heard in Bucharest. Surely the road of fortune lay free to the intrepid traveler. They had thought, with the sop of peace thrown to her, that Bulgaria would lie still like a whipped cur. The royalist cause was denied recognition save as the latest king licked the hand that fed him. Only in the old queen, rebellious and restless in her exile, was the spirit of dominion. He smiled as he recalled her favors.