to tell him so
when something clicked behind us, and the hall was flooded with light.
Never before had I beheld, and I doubt if I shall ever behold again, a
woman as lovely as the tall, graceful being upon whom our eyes rested
at that instant. In height quite five foot nine, as she stood there beneath
the glow of the electrolier in the luxurious hall, in her dinner dress, the
snowy slope of the shoulders and the deep, curved breast, strong, yet all
so softly, delicately rounded, gleamed like rosy alabaster in the
reflection from the red-shaded light above her.
Our eyes wandered from exquisite figure to exquisite face--and there
was no sense of disappointment. For the face was as nearly perfect as a
woman's may be upon this earth of imperfections. The uplift of the
brow, the curve of the cheek to the rounded chin, the noble sweep of
delicate, dark eyebrows were extraordinarily beautiful. Her hair was "a
net for the sunlight," its colour that of a new chestnut in the spring
when the sun shines hotly upon it, making it glow and shimmer and
glisten with red and yellow and deepest browns. Now it was drawn
about her head in shining twists, and across the front and rather low
down on the brow was a slim and delicate wreath of roses and foliage
in very small diamonds beautifully set in platinum. The gleam of the
diamonds against the red-brown of the wonderful hair was an effect
impossible to describe--yet one felt that the hair would have been the
same miracle without it.
"Mrs. Gastrell! Why, I didn't recognize your voice," I had heard
Osborne exclaim in a tone of amazement just after the light had been
turned on. but my attention had been so centred upon the Vision
standing there before us that I had hardly noticed the remark, or the
emphasis with which it was uttered. I suppose half a minute must have
passed before anybody spoke again, and then it was the woman who
broke the silence.
"Will you show me the purse?" she asked, holding out her hand for it
and addressing Osborne.
On the instant he produced his own and gave it to her. She glanced at it,
then handed it back.
"It is not his," she said quietly. Her gaze rested steadily upon Osborne's
face for some moments, then she said:
"How exceedingly kind of you to come all this way, and in the middle
of the night, just to find out if a purse picked up at your club happens to
belong to the guest of a friend of yours."
In her low, soft voice there was a touch of irony, almost of mockery.
Looking at her now, I felt puzzled. Was she what she appeared to be, or
was this amazing beauty of hers a cloak, a weapon if you will, perhaps
the most dangerous weapon of a clever, scheming woman? Easterton
had told us that Gastrell was a bachelor. Gastrell had declared that he
had never before met either Jack Osborne or myself. Yet here at the
address that Gastrell had given to the taxi-driver was the very woman
the man calling himself Gastrell, with whom Osborne had returned
from Africa, had passed off as his wife.
"My husband isn't in at present," she said calmly, a moment later, "but I
expect him back at any minute. Won't you come in and wait for him?"
Before either of us could answer she had walked across the hall,
unlocked and opened a door, and switched on the light in the room.
Mechanically we followed her. As we entered, a strange, heavy
perfume of some subtle Eastern scent struck my nostrils--I had noticed
it in the hall, but in this room it was pungent, oppressive, even
overpowering. The apartment, I noticed, was luxuriously furnished.
What chiefly attracted my attention, however, were the pictures on the
walls. Beautifully executed, the subjects were, to say the least, peculiar.
The fire in the grate still burned brightly. Upon a table were two
syphons in silver stands, also decanters containing spirits, and several
tumblers. Some of the tumblers had been used. As I sank, some
moments later, into an easy chair, I felt that its leather-covered arms
were warm, as if someone had just vacated it.
And yet the door of this room had been locked. Also, when we had
arrived, no light had been visible in any of the windows of the house,
and the front door had been chained and bolted.
"Make yourselves quite at home," our beautiful hostess said, and, as
she spoke, she placed a box of cigars, newly opened, upon the table at
my elbow. "I am sorry," she added, "that I must leave you now."
There was a curious
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