Sylvia & Michael: The later adventures of Sylvia ScarlettMacKenzie, Compton
General
Sylvia & Michael: The later adventures of Sylvia Scarlett
MacKenzie, Compton
Fiction
Neither Zozo nor Maud came to the Trianon that evening; nevertheless,
outside on the playbill was an announcement that next Sunday would
appear Zozo: LE MEILLEUR PRESTIDIGITATEUR DU MONDE.
"It was always so that he was writing himself," said Queenie, when
Sylvia read her the announcement; she spoke in a voice of awe as if the
playbill had been inscribed by a warning fate. In due course the juggler
made a successful first appearance, dressed in green, with a snake of
shimmering tinsel wound round him. They watched the performance from the
wings; when he came off he asked Queenie with a laugh if she would stand
for his dagger act, as in the old days she had stood.
"You've got Maud for that," Sylvia interposed quickly.
"Maud!" he scoffed.
Earlier in the evening she had thundered about the stage in what was
described as the world-famous step-dance of the world-famous American
cowgirl Maud Moffat, to the authentic and original native melody, which
happened this year to be "On the Mississippi," and might just as easily
have been "A Life on the Ocean Wave."
Sylvia was puzzled by the relationship between Zozo and Maud, for there
was evidently nothing even in the nature of affection between them, and
as far as she could make out they had never met until the day he paid
her fare from Galantza to Bucharest. Her first idea had been that he was
a German agent and intended to use Maud in that capacity, her
patriotism, judging by her loud denunciations of England and everything
English, not being very deep. But Sylvia had already outlived the habit
of explaining as a spy every one in war-time that is not immediately and
blatantly obvious. She could imagine nobody less fitted to be a spy than
Maud, who was attractive neither to her compatriots nor to foreigners,
and who, even had she possessed attraction, would have had no brains to
take advantage of it. Yet she came back to the theory that Zozo was a
German agent when she saw with whom he consorted in Bucharest, and she
decided that when he had brought Maud here he had done so in the hope of
having found a useful recruit, but that on discovering her dull
coarseness he had come to the conclusion that her hostility to England
was counterbalanced by England's hostility to her. Sylvia decided that
if her surmises were at all near to being correct she must be
particularly on her guard against any attempt on the part of the Swiss
to corrupt Queenie. She had supposed at first that she should only have
to contend with his lust or with his desire of personal domination; now
it seemed that the argument she had used with Philip to procure Queenie
a passport had really been a sound argument. Superficially Queenie might
not strike anybody as a valuable agent; knowing her charm for men, her
complete malleableness, and her almost painful simplicity, Sylvia could
imagine that she might be a practical weapon in the hands of an
unscrupulous adventurer like the Swiss, who was finding, like so many
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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