CHAPTER 18
“I BELONG TO CHINA”
Sir Bertram Morgan was deeply intrigued with Madame Ingomar. He had met her three years before at the villa of a mutual friend in Cairo. Anglo-Egyptian society is not exactly Bohemian, and Sir Bertram, at first, had been surprised to find an obvious, if beautiful, half-caste a guest at this somewhat exclusive establishment.
She was, it appeared, the widow of a physician. But this alone was not enough. And noting the patrician elegance, almost disdain, which characterized the beautiful widow, Sir Bertram had not been surprised to learn later, that on her father’s side there was royal Manchu blood.
An experienced man of the world is the adventuress’s easiest quarry. Sir Bertram, a widower of almost illimitable means, naturally knew much of women; he thought there was no design whose pattern he had not met with at some time. He distrusted Madame Ingomar. But she attracted him in a way that was almost frightening.
They met again on the Riviera a year later.
Discreetly, and as if telling an Oriental fairy tale, she had spoken of the existence of an hereditary secret in her family, smilingly pointing out that the widow of a brilliant, but penniless physician, could not otherwise dress as she dressed.
Other explanations occurred to Sir Bertram at the time, but just when he had been sharpening his wits to deal with this dazzling cocotte, she had disappeared.
It seemed to be a habit of hers.
Now, she was in London. They had met accidentally, or apparently accidentally, and he, anxious to test her, because she was so desirable, had challenged the claims which she had made in France. The challenge, lightly, had been accepted.
The life of Madame Ingomar was a fascinating mystery. Her appointment at a fashionable dance club, made for two o’clock in the morning, was odd. Sir Bertram was in the toils—he knew it; he was prepared to believe that royal blood of China ran in this woman’s veins; prepared to believe that she was really the widow of a distinguished physician; but he had no means of testing these claims. One, however—the hereditary secret—he could test: it came within his special province. And to-night she had offered him an opportunity.
“My dear Madame Ingomar,” he said, and kissed her hand, for his courtly manners were famous throughout Europe. “This is indeed a very great privilege.”
The maitre d’hotel led the way to that table which was always reserved for Sir Bertram whenever he required it. Madame Ingomar declined supper, but drank a glass of wine.
Sir Bertram having draped her white fur wrap across the back other chair, ivory shoulders and perfectly modelled arms were revealed by a gossamer green frock. She smoked almost continuously, not as other women of his acquaintance smoked, but, and it seemed almost a custom of a bygone generation, using a long jade holder.
Her hands were exquisite, her exotic indolence conjured up visions of vanished empires. She talked brilliantly, and Sir Bertram, watching her, decided she was quite the most attractive woman he had ever known. He sighed. He was uncertain other; and he had reached an age, and a position in the world, when the worst thing that could befall him would be to become laughable.
Madame Ingomar caught his glance, smiled, and held it. Her long, narrow eyes, were brilliantly green. He had never seen such eyes. This was their second meeting since her appearance in London and he had noticed as a man who took an interest in women, that whereas most of those upon the dance floor wore dresses which exposed their backs, in some cases to the waist, Madame Ingomar’s frock was of a different pattern.
She had an uncanny trick—it disturbed him—of answering one’s unspoken thoughts; and:
“My frock is not quite the mode,” she murmured smilingly— her voice had the most soothing quality of any voice to which he had ever listened—”you wonder why?”
“Really, my dear Madame Ingomar, you embarrass me. Your dress is completely charming—everything about you is perfect.”
She placed her cigarette-holder in an ash-tray, glancing swiftly about the room.
“I do not live the sheltered life of other women,” she said tensely; “perhaps you would understand me better if you knew something of the things I have suffered.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
She smiled again, and taking a cigarette from Sir Bertram’s open case, fitted it to the jade holder.
“I belong to China,” she murmured, lowering her dark lashes, “and in China, women are treated as ... women.”
This was the kind of conversation which at once intrigued and irritated Sir Bertram. It was her hints at some strange, Oriental background into which from time to time she was absorbed, which first had thrown a noose about his interest. But always ... he doubted.
That she had Chinese blood in her, none could deny. But that she belonged in any other sense to the Far East he was not prepared to admit. These odd references to a mode of life divorced from all ideals of Western culture, were part and parcel with that fabulous story of the hereditary secret.
As Sir Bertram lighted her cigarette. Madame Ingomar glanced up.
Those wonderful eyes held him.
‘You have always mistaken me for an adventuress,” she said. And the music of her voice, because it was pitched in so curious a key, reached him over the strains of the dance band. “In one way you are right, in another you are very wrong. Tonight, I hope to convert you.”
Believe me, I require no conversion; I am your most devoted friend.”
She touched his hand lightly; her long, slender fingers, with extravagantly varnished nails, communicated to Sir Bertram a current of secret understanding which seemed to pulse through his veins, his nerves, and to reach his brain.
He was in love with this Eurasian witch. Every line and curve of her body, every wave of her dark hair, her voice, the perfume of her personality, intoxicated him.
Silently, he mocked himself:—There is no fool like an old fool.
“You are neither old nor a fool,” she said, and slipped slen der fingers into his grasp. ‘You are a clever man whom I admire, very, very much.”
He squeezed those patrician fingers almost cruelly, carried away by the magnetism of this woman’s intense femininity; so that for fully half a minute the uncanny character of those words did not dawn upon him.
Then, it came crashingly. He drew his hand away—and stared at her.
“Why did you say that?” he asked. He was more than startled; he was frightened. “I did not speak.”
‘You spoke to me,” she said, softly. ‘You understand me a little bit, and so I can hear you—sometimes.”
“Good God!”
Madame Ingomar laughed. Her laughter, Sir Bertram thought, was the most deliciously musical which had ever fallen upon his ears.
“In the East,” she said, “when we are interested, we know how to get in touch.”
He watched her in silence. She had turned her glance away, lolling back in her chair, so that she seemed to emerge like an ivory goddess from the mass of white fur, for she had drawn her wrap about her shoulders. She was watching the dancers, and Sir Bertram saw her as an Oriental empress, watching, almost superciliously, a performance organized for her personal entertainment.
Suddenly, she glanced aside at him.
“I promised that to-night I would prove my words,” she said, slowly. “If you wish it, we will go.”
Sir Bertram started. She had called him back from a reverie in which he had been a guest at a strange Eastern banquet.
“I am very happy, here, with you,” he replied. “But what you wish is what I desire to do.”
“Let us go, then. My father has consented to see you.”