“She has genius and is poor. My friend is giving her lessons so she may sing in his opera some day. He is very much interested in her. It is a romance.” Dmitri smiled whimsically. “He does not even know her name, but she is very beautiful. Ah, my Steccho, if you and I, who are older than the ages in our outlook on life, could only receive this baptism of joy, this love. You would forget your torches and rivers of blood if the one woman would give you her lips, yes?”
The boy turned his back on him at the door, the face of Carlota before his eyes as it had disturbed and bewildered his purpose ever since he had first looked upon its beauty and innocence. His fingers shook as he fumbled blindly for the doorknob.
“I will come again, Dmitri. Good-night.”
He went directly uptown in the subway. There is a small carriage entrance to the Hotel Dupont. By it, you may enter most privately and unostentatiously a low-ceiled, satin-walled corridor which leads past a flower-stand and telephone booth to a single elevator, half concealed in a recess.
Here the boy waited while his name was sent up to Count Lazio Jurka. There was a delay, and presently down in the private elevator came the valet and personal courier of the Count, a soldierly individual, gray-haired and austere.
“You always blunder,” he said as he led the way to the servants’ elevator. “You come here as a tailor, not a guest. He does not expect you to-night. Have you news?”
Steccho shrugged his shoulders sullenly. After the meeting with Dmitri his mind was unsettled. As they passed by the palm-guarded tea-room, the great paneled dining-room on the corner, the rotunda with its rose-hued walls and marble columns, the leisurely parade of the late afternoon frequenters, his memory traveled rapidly back to his old life that Dmitri had been a part of.
It was a far cry to Rigl, his home village, eighteen miles out of Sofia if you take the narrow mountain trail on horseback. There had been the childhood there, and later, when he had worked in Sofia at the little hand-press bindery, to enable himself to study evenings. He passed one hand over his eyes restlessly as the valet opened the door of a corner suite on the eighth floor and snapped the catch after them. The small inner salon was empty. Excepting for scattered daily papers it bore no trace of use. The door of the dressing-room was ajar, and Steccho bowed low on its threshold, waiting the word to enter.
Before a large oval mirror Count Jurka tied his cravat with a deliberate and distinct enjoyment of the artistry required by the operation. Clad in underclothes and shirt, he resembled some French courtier, one who might have just flung off his cloak and hat in a gray dawn rendezvous, and, balancing his rapier, awaited his opponent.
He was youthful, blond, serene-eyed, the Count Jurka. Throughout the war of nations those same blue eyes had witnessed unspeakable atrocities with the utmost impersonal calm. The white, pink-nailed hands that dallied over cravats had dipped in the blood of innocents quite as artistically and deliberately as they handled the silk ends now. He was an individual the guillotine would have licked its long steel tongue over after devouring, but there were no guillotines in Sofia, and firing-squads were out of date likewise. The hand of fate deputed its blows to those who worked secretly and left no trace behind save the victim.