Red Masquerade | Page 5

the opinion of
this gentleman, whatever his qualifications. I have bid four thousand
guineas, and insist that the sale proceed. If there are no further bids, the
canvas is mine."
The auctioneer shrugged, and offered Lanyard an apologetic bow. "I
am sorry--" he began.
"Four thousand guineas!" snapped the prince.
Resigned, the auctioneer resumed:
"Four thousand guineas offered. Are there any more bids? Going--"
"Forty-five hundred!"
Beyond reasonable doubt the princess had spurred herself mercilessly
to find sufficient courage to make this latest bid. Lanyard saw her in a
rigour of despair, hoping against hope. Only too surely something in
the picture, some association--heaven knew what!--was more precious
to her, almost, than life, though she had gone already to the limit of her
means and perhaps a bit beyond. If this bid failed, she was lost. Her

anxiety was pitiful.
"Five thousand!"
In the princess something snapped: she recoiled upon herself, sat
crushed, head drooping, white-gloved hands working in her lap. One
detected an appealing quiver on her lips, and noted, or imagined, a
suspicious brightness beneath the long dark lashes that swiftly screened
her eyes. Her young bosom moved convulsively. She was beaten, near
to tears.
"Five thousand guineas ... going ... going ..."
The face of the prince was a mocking devil-mask in gray and black.
Lanyard found himself loathing it. Impossible to stand idle and see the
creature get the better of an unhappy girl ...
"Five thousand one hundred guineas!"
With his wits in a blur of amaze, Lanyard knew the echo of his own
voice.

IV
THE FOOL AND HIS MONEY
One reflected rather bitterly on the many and obvious oversights of a
putatively all-wise Providence, in especial on its failure so to fashion
the body of man as to enable him on occasion to discipline his own
flesh in the most ignominious manner imaginable.
Lanyard could have kicked himself; that is to say, he wanted to, and
thought it rather a pity he couldn't, and publicly, at that. For the freak
he had just indulged was rank quixotism, something which had as much
place in the code of a man of his calling as milk of human kindness in
the management of a pawnshop.
On second thought, he wasn't so sure. It might have been that quixotism
had inspired his infatuate gesture, but it might quite as conceivably
have been everyday vanity or plain cussedness: a noble impulse to
serve a pretty lady in distress, a spontaneous device to engage her
interest, or a low desire to plague a personality as antipathetic to his
own as that of a rattlesnake.
In point of simple fact (he decided), his impelling motive had been a
mixture of all three.
In all three respects, furthermore, it proved notably successful; in the
two last named without delay.

The Princess Sofia at once took note of Lanyard, with wonder, some
misgivings, and a hint of admiration. For he was not only a personable
person in those days, with a suggestion of devil-may-care in his air that
measurably lifted the curse of his superficial foppishness, but he was
putting a spoke in Prince Victor's wheel. And whosoever did that, by
chance, out of sheer voluptuousness, or with malice prepense, won
immediate title to Sofia's favourable regard. If she couldn't thwart
Victor herself, she would be much obliged to anybody who could and
did; and she was nothing loath to betray her bias by looking kindly
upon her self-appointed champion.
A whispered communication from Lady Diantha did nothing to abate
her overt approbation.
As for Victor, his face of leaden gray took on a tinge of green; he
quaked with rage, and the glare he loosed on Lanyard made that young
man wonder if he were mistaken in believing that the eyes of the prince
shone in that dusky room with something nearly akin to the
phosphorescence to be seen in the eyes of an animal at night.
The notion was amusing: Lanyard paid it the tribute of a quiet smile, in
direct acknowledgment of which Prince Victor snarled:
"Six thousand guineas!"
"And a hundred," Lanyard added.
Brief pause prefaced a bid designed to squelch him completely:
"Ten thousand!"
In a fatigued voice he uttered: "One hundred more."
"Fifteen--!"
This time Lanyard contented himself with nodding to the auctioneer;
and the lips of the latter had barely parted to parrot the bid when Victor
sprang to his feet, his features working, his limbs shaking so that the
legs of the chair beside him, whose back he seized, chattered on the
floor, while the high-pitched voice broke into a screech:
"Twenty!"
And Lanyard said: "And one."
"Twenty thousand one hundred guineas!" chanted the auctioneer. "Are
there any more bids? You, sir--?" He aimed a respectful bow at Prince
Victor, who snubbed him with