Free Bat-Wing by Sax Rohmer Page A

has met in here
and asked to call upon him have done it, thinking he meant it."
    "And they have not been well received?" said I, lingering.
    "They have had the door shut in their faces!" declared Mrs. Wootton
with a certain indignation. "He either does not remember what he says
or does when he is in drink, or he pretends he doesn't. Oh, dear, it's
a funny world. Well, good-day, sir."
    "Good-day," said I, and came out of the Lavender Arms full of sympathy
with the views of the "old gentry," as outlined by Mrs. Wootton; for
certainly it would seem that this quiet spot in the Surrey Hills had
become a rallying ground for peculiar people.

Chapter VIII - The Call of M'kombo
*
    Of tea upon the veranda of Cray's Folly that afternoon I retain several
notable memories. I got into closer touch with my host and hostess,
without achieving anything like a proper understanding of either of
them, and I procured a new viewpoint of Miss Val Beverley. Her repose
was misleading. She deliberately subjugated her own vital personality
to that of Madame de Stämer, why, I knew not, unless she felt herself
under an obligation to do so. That her blue-gray eyes could be wistful
was true enough, they could also be gay; and once I detected in them a
look of sadness which dispelled the butterfly illusion belonging to her
dainty slenderness, to her mobile lips, to the vagabond curling hair of
russet brown.
    Paul Harley's manner remained absent, but I who knew his moods so well
recognized that this abstraction was no longer real. It was a pose
which he often adopted when in reality he was keenly interested in his
surroundings. It baffled me, however, as effectively as it baffled
others, and whilst at one moment I decided that he was studying Colonel
Menendez, in the next I became convinced that Madame de Stämer was the
subject upon his mental dissecting table.
    That he should find in Madame a fascinating problem did not surprise
me. She must have afforded tempting study for any psychologist. I could
not fathom the nature of the kinship existing between herself and the
Spanish colonel, for Madame de Stämer was French to her fingertips. Her
expressions, her gestures, her whole outlook on life proclaimed the
fashionable Parisienne.
    She possessed a vigorous masculine intelligence and was the most
entertaining companion imaginable. She was daringly outspoken, and it
was hard to believe that her gaiety was forced. Yet, as the afternoon
wore on, I became more and more convinced that such was the case.
    I thought that before affliction visited her Madame de Stämer must have
been a vivacious and a beautiful woman. Her vivacity remained and much
of her beauty, so that it was difficult to believe her snow-white hair
to be a product of nature. Again and again I found myself regarding it
as a powdered coiffure of the Pompadour period and wondering why Madame
wore no patches.
    That a deep and sympathetic understanding existed between herself and
Colonel Menendez was unmistakable. More than once I intercepted glances
from the dark eyes of Madame which were lover-like, yet laden with a
profound sorrow. She was playing a rôle, and I was convinced that
Harley knew this. It was not merely a courageous fight against
affliction on the part of a woman of the world, versed in masking her
real self from the prying eyes of society, it was a studied performance
prompted by some deeper motive.
    She dressed with exquisite taste, and to see her seated there amid her
cushions, gesticulating vivaciously, one would never have supposed that
she was crippled. My admiration for her momentarily increased, the more
so since I could see that she was sincerely fond of Val Beverley, whose
every movement she followed with looks of almost motherly affection.
This was all the more strange as Madame de Stämer whose age, I
supposed, lay somewhere on the sunny side of forty, was of a type which
expects, and wins, admiration, long after the average woman has ceased
to be attractive.
    One endowed