For a moment he paused, glass raised. His pose was a poem in grace; his mode of surveying those who supped was a tribute so deliciously keen as almost to be insulting. He focussed the table whereat Ronald Brandon and the dancer were seated. Amid a cathedral silence, impressive and oppressive, he traversed the supper-room. To say that he crossed it would be inaccurate and inadequate; he traversed it.
“Sir!”—he bent over Brandon—“one moment. Mademoiselle!”—he smiled upon La Belle Yvette—“might I entreat you to step aside with me?”
She glanced at Brandon, flushing with excitement now that the moment of the “boom” was come. Brandon, who vainly had besought Dewson to recast the comedy—omitting O’Hagan—examined his finger nails. He was acting poorly. In fact he was pronouncedly “fluffy.”
La Belle rose and stepped aside with O’Hagan. She wore an amazingly daring and dazzlingly brilliant evening toilette; a tight-fitting silk gown coloured in imitation of a leopard’s skin. Dewson identified his clients with certain “make-ups” or trademarks. Thus, La Belle Lotus was “the leopard lady.”
Imagine every eye in Varano’s supper-room to be centred upon this wildly picturesque pair. O’Hagan, his cloak cast back in purple splendour, rested one hand upon his hip with a gesture which had not been inconsistent with the act of depressing a rapier hilt.
“Are you quite sure”—he bent towards her with inimitable gallantry—“that a scene here will enhance your professional reputation?”
She glanced up rapidly—and down again, shyly. She could not recall having feared to meet any man’s eye prior to encountering Captain O’Hagan.
“Mr. Dewson—he says so; and Mr. Dewson is so clever. He never makes mistakes.”
“I concede that Mr. Dewson is clever; but nevertheless he makes mistakes, mademoiselle. I am impartial. I can insult Mr. Brandon without involving you in any way. But, if you wish to be involved, command me.”
La Belle felt singularly helpless. Instinctively she divined that the forceful Mr. Dewson and the imperious Captain O’Hagan were advancing to no common end.