The Clue of the Twisted Candles | Page 7

not only rich, but possibly the
best-looking man in the world."
She shivered a little.
"I have seen a side of Mr. Kara that is not particularly beautiful," she
said. "Oh, John, I am afraid of that man!"
He looked at her in astonishment.
"Afraid?" he asked. "Good heavens, Grace, what a thing to say! Why I
believe he'd do anything for you."
"That is exactly what I am afraid of," she said in a low voice.
She had a reason which she did not reveal. She had first met Remington
Kara in Salonika two years before. She had been doing a tour through
the Balkans with her father - it was the last tour the famous
archeologist made - and had met the man who was fated to have such
an influence upon her life at a dinner given by the American Consul.
Many were the stories which were told about this Greek with his
Jove-like face, his handsome carriage and his limitless wealth. It was
said that his mother was an American lady who had been captured by

Albanian brigands and was sold to one of the Albanian chiefs who fell
in love with her, and for her sake became a Protestant. He had been
educated at Yale and at Oxford, and was known to be the possessor of
vast wealth, and was virtually king of a hill district forty miles out of
Durazzo. Here he reigned supreme, occupying a beautiful house which
he had built by an Italian architect, and the fittings and appointments of
which had been imported from the luxurious centres of the world.
In Albania they called him "Kara Rumo," which meant "The Black
Roman," for no particular reason so far as any one could judge, for his
skin was as fair as a Saxon's, and his close-cropped curls were almost
golden.
He had fallen in love with Grace Terrell. At first his attentions had
amused her, and then there came a time when they frightened her, for
the man's fire and passion had been unmistakable. She had made it
plain to him that he could base no hopes upon her returning his love,
and, in a scene which she even now shuddered to recall, he had
revealed something of his wild and reckless nature. On the following
day she did not see him, but two days later, when returning through the
Bazaar from a dance which had been given by the Governor General,
her carriage was stopped, she was forcibly dragged from its interior,
and her cries were stifled with a cloth impregnated with a scent of a
peculiar aromatic sweetness. Her assailants were about to thrust her
into another carriage, when a party of British bluejackets who had been
on leave came upon the scene, and, without knowing anything of the
nationality of the girl, had rescued her.
In her heart of hearts she did not doubt Kara's complicity in this
medieval attempt to gain a wife, but of this adventure she had told her
husband nothing. Until her marriage she was constantly receiving
valuable presents which she as constantly returned to the only address
she knew - Kara's estate at Lemazo. A few months after her marriage
she had learned through the newspapers that this "leader of Greek
society" had purchased a big house near Cadogan Square, and then, to
her amazement and to her dismay, Kara had scraped an acquaintance
with her husband even before the honeymoon was over.

His visits had been happily few, but the growing intimacy between
John and this strange undisciplined man had been a source of constant
distress to her.
Should she, at this, the eleventh hour, tell her husband all her fears and
her suspicions?
She debated the point for some time. And never was she nearer taking
him into her complete confidence than she was as he sat in the big
armchair by the side of the piano, a little drawn of face, more than a
little absorbed in his own meditations. Had he been less worried she
might have spoken. As it was, she turned the conversation to his last
work, the big mystery story which, if it would not make his fortune,
would mean a considerable increase to his income.
At a quarter to eleven he looked at his watch, and rose. She helped him
on with his coat. He stood for some time irresolutely.
"Is there anything you have forgotten?" she asked.
He asked himself whether he should follow Kara's advice. In any
circumstance it was not a pleasant thing to meet a ferocious little man
who had threatened his life, and to meet him unarmed was tempting
Providence. The whole thing was of course ridiculous, but it was
ridiculous that he should have borrowed, and it was ridiculous that the
borrowing