The Penguin Book of Gaslight Crime - Michael Sims [62]
“How do you find me, my dear M’sieur Ewart? Do I look like a Comtesse?” she asked laughing.
“You look perfectly charming, Mademoiselle.”
“Liane, if you please,” she said reprovingly, holding up her slim forefinger. “Liane, Comtesse de Bourbriac, Château de Bourbriac, Côtes du Nord!” and her pretty lips parted, showing her even pearly teeth.
When, half an hour later, we entered the ball-room we found all smart Brussels assembled around a royal prince and his wife who had given their patronage in the cause of charity. The affair was, I saw at a glance, a distinctly society function, for many men from the Ministries were present, and several of the Ambassadors in uniform, together with their staffs, who, wearing their crosses and ribbons, made a brave show, as they do in every ball-room.
We had not been there ten minutes before a tall good-looking young man in a German cavalry uniform strode up in recognition, and bowing low over Valentine’s outstretched hand, said in French:
“My dear Countess! How very delighted we are to have you here with us to-night. You will spare me a dance, will you not? May I be introduced to the Count?”
“My husband—Captain von Stolberg, of the German Embassy.”
And we shook hands. Was this fellow the lover, I wondered?
“I met the Countess at Vichy last autumn,” explained the Captain in very good English. “She spoke very often of you. You were away in Scotland, shooting the grouse,” he said.
“Yes—yes.” I replied for want of something better to say.
We both chatted with the young attaché for a few minutes, and then, as a waltz struck up, he begged a dance of my “wife,” and they both whirled down the room. Valentine was a splendid dancer, and as I watched them I wondered what could be the nature of the plot in progress.
I did not come across my pretty fellow-traveller for half-an-hour, and then I found that the captain had half filled her programme. Therefore I “laid low,” danced once or twice with uninteresting Belgian matrons, and spent the remainder of the night in the fumoir, until I found my “wife” ready to return to the Grand.
When we were back in the salon at the hotel she asked:
“How do you like the Captain, M’sieur Ewart? Is he not—what you call in English—a duck?”
“An overdressed, swaggering young idiot, I call him,” was my prompt reply.
“And there you are right—quite right, my dear M’sieur Ewart. But you see we all have an eye to business in this affair. He will call to-morrow because he is extremely fond of me. Oh! If you had heard all his pretty love phrases! I suppose he has learnt them out of a book. They couldn’t be his own. Germans are not romantic—how can they be? But he—ah! he is Adonis in the flesh—with corsets!” And we laughed merrily together.
“He thinks you are fond of him—eh?”
“Why, of course. He made violent love to me at Vichy. But he was not attaché then.”
“And how am I to treat him when he calls to-morrow?”
“As your bosom friend. Give him confidence—the most perfect confidence. Don’t play the jealous husband yet. “That will come afterwards. Bon soir, m’sieur,” and when I had bowed over her soft little hand she turned, and swept out of the room with a loud frou-frou of her silken train.
That night I sat before the fire smoking for a long time. My companions were evidently playing some deep game upon this young German, a game in which neither trouble nor expense was being spared—a game in which the prize was a level thousand pounds apiece all round. I quite appreciated that I had now become an adventurer, but I had done so out of pure love of adventure.
About four o’clock next afternoon the Captain came to take “fif-o’-clock,” as he called it. He clicked his heels together as he bowed over Valentine’s hand, and she smiled upon him even more sweetly than she had smiled at me when I had helped her into my leather motor-coat. She wore a beautiful toilette,