Adventure stories; Brothers -- Fiction; Chicago (Ill.) -- Fiction; Detective and mystery stories
To my amazement, she knew the old boy. “Holbein would be thrilled by
you.” And, as she danced with my arm about her, I could feel that she
was sizing me up anew. I had said “Erasmus” as I might have said
Claude or Skeezix; but since she knew Erasmus, naturally she wondered
how I knew. Beets, my predecessor in these garments, would not have
known; but Cleopatra had known for some time that I was not Beets.
About that time came a diversion; in fact, _the_ diversion. Sir Walter
Raleigh, escorting an Elizabethan lady, appeared on the floor. Both
were masked; but under the garb of Raleigh were the limbs of Jerry; and
I knew the Elizabethan lady, too. Here was Christina, come to the ball.
I looked again at her Raleigh, with rapier at his side, dagger at
his waist. Not Jerry, I told myself, with pulses thrilling; here was
Keeban. This was what I was to expect; Keeban, to show off, had carried
Christina to the ball. That day, she had won the last of her money;
this night he had regained her, he was to take her away; but before
going, here was his flourish, his defiance, his display!
He put his arm about her, and, as they began to dance, I heard in the
buzz of voices the whisper of his name. Here was Harry Vine, they
were saying; here was Christina. Between them, they’d more than half
a million; he’d put over his job just as he schemed it. Nobody could
beat that boy; if they tried to, the sod for them.
It looked like madness for them to be here to-night; but madness marks
the big job.
Here was Keeban, Harry Vine. He had boasted that he would bring his
woman, whom some thought had gone away from him. Surely he had arranged
his get-away with her; but before he used it, here he was proving that
she was his.
But she wasn’t his! At least, so Jerry had told me. She’d come with
him, but she was, in fact, no longer his. Something more was on
to-night than that rapiered and daggered Raleigh expected. I danced
with Cleopatra, watching them dance, and also I looked now for the
reappearance of the other Raleigh, who was Jerry.
The number ended; now clapping; now encore. My arms circled Cleopatra;
I clasped her. Keeban clasped Christina.
As I watched his arm go around her, so exactly as Jerry’s clasped his
partner in the dance, I got another jerk. Maybe he was Jerry! Maybe
what was to happen between Jerry and his “friend”, his brother, had
happened outside. I sent that thought out of my head and watched them.
What a pair they made, she young, lithe, full of life, perfect in her
soft proportions. I thought of how I had seen her singing that night
before the shooting and how she received me--like Récamier, on her
couch--afterwards. But here she was dancing another theme. And he,
dancing with her, was quick, graceful, courtly. Clearly they had done
this dance often together. Some one cried out a request and they went
into a fancy figure.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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