Okewood of the Secret Service | Page 7

might be difficulties: another time... But Desmond got up resolutely.
"I'11 be damned if you leave me behind, Maurice," he laughed, "of
course I'm coming, too! She's the most delightful creature I've ever set
eyes on!"
And so it ended by them going through the pass-door together.
CHAPTER III.
MR. MACKWAYTE MEETS AN OLD FRIEND
That night Nur-el-Din kept the stage waiting for five minutes. It was a

climax of a long series of similar unpardonable crimes in the music-hall
code. The result was that Mr. Mackwayte, after taking four enthusiastic
"curtains," stepped off the stage into a perfect pandemonium.
He found Fletcher, the stage manager, livid with rage, surrounded by
the greater part of the large suite with which the dancer traveled. There
was Madame's maid, a trim Frenchwoman, Madame's business
manager, a fat, voluble Italian, Madame's secretary, an olive-skinned
South American youth in an evening coat with velvet collar, and
Madame's principal male dancer in a scanty Egyptian dress with
grotesquely painted face. They were all talking at the same time, and at
intervals Fletcher muttered hotly: "This time she leaves the bill or I
walk out of the theatre!"
Then a clear voice cried:
"Me voila!" and a dainty apparition in an ermine wrap tripped into the
centre of the group, tapped the manager lightly on the shoulder and
said:
"Allons! I am ready!"
Mr. Mackwayte's face creased its mask of paint into a thousand
wrinkles. For, on seeing him, the dancer's face lighted up, and, running
to him with hands outstretched, she cried:
"Tiens! Monsieur Arthur!" while he ejaculated:
"Why, it's little Marcelle!"
But now the stage manager interposed. He whisked Madame's wrap off
her with one hand and with the other, firmly propelled her on to the
stage. She let him have his way with a merry smile, dark eyes and
white teeth flashing, but as she went she said to Mr. Mackwayte:
"My friend, wait for me! Et puis nous causerons! We will 'ave a talk,
nest-ce pas?"

"A very old friend of mine, my dear," Mr. Mackwayte said to Barbara
when, dressed in his street clothes, he rejoined her in the wings where
she stood watching Nur-el-Din dancing. "She was an acrobat in the
Seven Duponts, a turn that earned big money in the old days. It must
be... let's see... getting on for twenty years since I last set eyes on her.
She was a pretty kid in those days! God bless my soul! Little Marcelle
a big star! It's really most amazing!"
Directly she was off the stage, Nur-el-Din cams straight to Mr.
Mackwayte, pushing aside her maid who was waiting with her wrap.
"My friend," she cooed in her pretty broken English, "I am so glad, so
glad to see you. And this is your girl... ah! she 'as your eyes, Monsieur
Arthur, your nice English gray eyes! Such a big girl... ah! but she make
me feel old!"
She laughed, a pretty gurgling laugh, throwing back her head so that
the diamond collar she was wearing heaved and flashed.
"But you will come to my room, hein?" she went on. "Marie, my
wrap!" and she led the way to the lift.
Nur-el-Din's spacious dressing-room seemed to be full of people and
flowers. All her little court was assembled amid a perfect bower of
hot-house blooms and plants". Head and shoulders above everybody
else in the room towered the figure of an officer in uniform, with him
another palpable Englishman in evening dress.
Desmond Okewood thought he had never seen anything in his life more
charming than the picture the dancer made as she came into the room.
Her wrap had fallen open and beneath the broad bars of her
cloth-of-silver dress her bosom yet rose and fell after the exertions of
her dance. A jet black curl had strayed out from beneath her lofty silver
head-dress, and she thrust it back in its place with one little brown
bejeweled hand whilst she extended the other to Strangwise.
"Tiens, mon capitaine!" she said. Desmond was watching her closely,
fascinated by her beauty, but noticed an unwilling, almost a hostile tone,

in her voice.
Strangwise was speaking in his deep voice.
"Marcelle," he said, "I've brought a friend who is anxious to meet you.
Major Desmond Okewood! He and I soldiered together in France!" The
dancer turned her big black eyes full on Desmond as she held out her
hand to him.
"Old friends, new friends," she cried, clapping, her hands like a child,
"I love friends. Captaine, here is a very old friend," she said to
Strangwise as Mr. Mackwayte and Barbara came into the rooms,
"Monsieur Arthur Mackwayte and 'is daughter. I 'ave know Monsieur
Arthur almos' all my life. And, Mademoiselle, permit me? I introduce
le Captaine Strangwise and 'is friend...