The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [5180]
Harmony was working on a costume for the Le Grande woman--a gold brocade slashed to the knee at one side and with a fragment of bodice made of gilt tissue. On the day after her encounter with Georgiev she met her.
There was a dispute over the gown, something about the draping. Monia, flushed with irritation, came to the workroom door and glanced over the girls. She singled out Harmony finally and called her.
"Come and put on the American's gown," she ordered. "She wishes--Heaven knows what she wishes!"
Harmony went unwillingly. Nothing she had heard of the Fraulein Le Grande had prepossessed her. Her uneasiness was increased when she found herself obliged to shed her gown and to stand for one terrible moment before the little dressmaker's amused eyes.
"Thou art very lovely, very chic," said Monia. The dress added to rather than relieved Harmony's discomfiture. She donned it in one of the fitting-rooms, made by the simple expedient of curtaining off a corner of the large reception room. The slashed skirt embarrassed her; the low cut made her shrink. Monia was frankly entranced. Above the gold tissue of the bodice rose Harmony's exquisite shoulders. Her hair was gold; even her eyes looked golden. The dressmaker, who worshiped beauty, gave a pull here, a pat there. If only all women were so beautiful in the things she made!
She had an eye for the theatrical also. She posed Harmony behind the curtain, arranged lights, drew down the chiffon so that a bit more of the girl's rounded bosom was revealed. Then she drew the curtain aside and stood smiling.
Le Grande paid the picture the tribute of a second's silence. Then:--
"Exquisite!" she said in English. Then in halting German: "Do not change a line. It is perfect."
Harmony must walk in the gown, turn, sit. Once she caught a glimpse of herself and was startled. She had been wearing black for so long, and now this radiant golden creature was herself. She was enchanted and abashed. The slash in the skirt troubled her: her slender leg had a way of revealing itself.
The ordeal was over at last. The dancer was pleased. She ordered another gown. Harmony, behind the curtain, slipped out of the dress and into her own shabby frock. On the other side of the curtain the dancer was talking. Her voice was loud, but rather agreeable. She smoked a cigarette. Scraps of chatter came to Harmony, and once a laugh.
"That is too pink--something more delicate."
"Here is a shade; hold it to your cheek."
"I am a bad color. I did not sleep last night."
"Still no news, Fraulein?"
"None. He has disappeared utterly. That isn't so bad, is it? I could use more rouge."
"It is being much worn. It is strange, is it not, that a child could be stolen from the hospital and leave no sign!"
The dancer laughed a mirthless laugh. Her voice changed, became nasal, full of venom.
"Oh, they know well enough," she snapped. "Those nurses know, and there's a pig of a red-bearded doctor--I'd like to poison him. Separating mother and child! I'm going to find him, if only to show them they are not so smart after all."
In her anger she had lapsed into English. Harmony, behind her curtain, had clutched at her heart. Jimmy's mother!
CHAPTER XXIII
Jimmy was not so well, although Harmony's flight had had nothing to do with the relapse. He had found Marie a slavishly devoted substitute, and besides Peter had indicated that Harmony's absence was purely temporary. But the breaking-up was inevitable. All day long the child lay in the white bed, apathetic but sleepless. In vain Marie made flower fairies for his pillow, in vain the little mice, now quite tame,