His dark face gleamed with animation as he spoke and his grey eyes sparkled. When he smiled his white teeth flashed brilliantly in the rays of the afternoon sun which poured through the mullioned windows and when he laughed, tossing his head back like some medieval troubadour in rollicking mood, all the impressionable women there present, young and old, went voyaging for a moment or two into the land of romance, and forgotten memory pictures of scenes from the Arabian Nights came trooping back into their several and respective, not to mention respectable, minds.
Taking it by and large Ranjit Lal, former supernumerary, devious adventurer in a foreign clime, and now, by the grace of one James T. Martin, Prince Rajput Singh, was, in the parlance of the boulevards, a knockout. When the formal festivities were over he was surrounded by a chattering swarm of females of assorted ages and subjected to that particular form of obsequious flattery which is usually reserved by the weaker sex for long-haired pianists and corpulent Italian tenors.
Mr. J. Herbert Denby, feeling himself somewhat out of the picture, viewed the proceedings from a short distance away and particularly noticed one worshiper who had edged herself into a position directly in front of his confrere and who seemed to be trying to entirely monopolize the swarthy-skinned lion of the occasion.
She was at least fifty. There was no doubting that, though she was dressed, with all the gay abandon of a debutante, in a silken frock which did not quite touch the tops of her extremely high boots. She was also inclined to stoutness, though a straight front corset kept her somewhat ample proportions cabined and confined permitting her to present to the world at large at least a semblance of curvilinear grace. There was, Mr. Denby thought, something decidedly suspicious looking about her flaxen tresses whose symmetrically marcelled regularity was relieved by two little curls which hung coyly in front of each ear. She was, it was plain to see, convinced that she was the living embodiment of Peter Pan, the young person who never grew old.
Mr. Denby could hear her high pitched voice and the gurgling laugh with which she punctuated almost every remark.
“I won’t take ‘no’ for an answer, you dear man,” she was saying. “Four thirty tomorrow afternoon in our Indian room—I’ll have just a few notables there and I have just one favor to ask of you. Please bring those perfectly dear gentlemen with whiskers along to help serve. They’ll help my background? Don’t you just love the proper background? It’s so stimulating. Oh, yes, background is the most important thing in life, if you grasp what I mean.”
A grunt escaped a tired looking man next to Mr. Denby. It was so expressive that the eminent authority on the Far East turned a questioning look on his neighbor.
“Who is she?” he inquired.
“That’s Fannie Easton,” replied the tired-looking man. “Old maid sister of Junius P. You’ve heard of him, of course. Oodles of money, houses in Chicago and New York, ranch in California, villa in Florence, three private yachts and not a damned soul to decorate ’em with except that blond nut sundae. Life’s a weird thing, sir. Too much for me.”
Mr. Denby, forgetting his own isolation for the moment, watched the continuation of the episode with a new interest. He saw the gurgling Miss Easton catch hold of his associate’s arm and he observed that the latter was devoting himself to her with assiduous attention as they walked slowly out into the corridor and disappeared, leaving behind a collection of thoroughly disappointed admirers. As the echoes of a silly laugh came floating on the air from some unseen corner of the hallway, something seemed to tell Mr. Denby that all was not well.