An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (81 page)

Stella’s voice was quite indifferent.

‘Nearly a thousand pounds,’ Chrissie said. ‘Think of it, Stella. A thousand pounds! Then there’s the bracelet he sent you the first night and that brooch he gave you last week. I haven’t had them valued yet, but the cash I’ve got safe. There’s the bit left over from the dressmaker’s bill, the discount I got at the hat shop and what you’ve brought back from the Casino – altogether four thousand and twenty francs.’

‘That reminds me,’ Stella remarked, ‘I want some money this afternoon. I’ve got to buy myself some perfume.’

‘Buy yourself!’ Chrissie ejaculated. ‘Are you mad? Ask the Rajah for what you want. He’ll give it to you. If you think you’re going to touch one penny of the money I’ve got safe, you’ve got another think coming. Ask him for your perfume and for a lot more things besides.’

‘He may say no!’

‘Oh, do be sensible, Stella, for once. He
likes
you to ask for things. You’re so stupid when a man’s mad about you. He’d give you the moon if it was in his power to do so. And what do you do? You just sit there saying nothing, a silly smile on your face, when if you frowned he might bring you rubies or emeralds to make you look happy again.’

‘It seems so awful to take so much,’ Stella said simply.

Chrissie gripped her chair until the knuckles showed white.

‘So
much!
’ she exclaimed. ‘When he’s got millions! When in his Palace in India he has vaults filled with diamonds and pearls, gold and ivory! You’re a fool, Stella! So much from a man like that! Why, if he draped you in diamonds from head to foot, he wouldn’t notice the difference in his bank balance. Lord, but you make me sick!’

‘All right, Chrissie, I’ll do my best,’ Stella said soothingly, but her voice was not very convincing.

Tense with emotion, Chrissie got up from the chair and walked across to the window again. Suddenly she gave an exclamation.

‘Listen, Stella I’ve thought of something.’

But Stella had already returned to her novel, and with an exclamation of anger Chrissie walked across the room and snatched the book from her hands.

‘
Listen
, I said!’

‘Oh, Chrissie, don’t be so cross! I’ve said I will do my best, haven’t I?

‘Your best is not good enough,’ Chrissie replied angrily. ‘I tell you I’ve thought of something! You know that girl they’re all taking about, the girl in grey with the wonderful pearls?’

‘Do you mean “the Ghost”?’

‘Yes, that’s the one! François told me that all Monte Carlo is gossiping about her.’

‘I’m not surprised,’ Stella said. ‘She’s awfully pretty and she looks sort of different from other women. Of course, wearing grey like that makes her stand out, but it isn’t only that, there’s something in her face – I can’t explain.’

‘And are her pearls as wonderful as François says?’

‘I wouldn’t know,’ Stella replied. ‘They’re sort of grey and dull compared with diamonds, but the Rajah says he’s never seen anything like them. I told him I thought his were much finer.’

‘You would,’ Chrissie remarked scornfully.

‘Now what’s wrong with that?’ Stella enquired. ‘He was as pleased as Punch that I admired something of his.’

Those he wears are his State ones,’ Chrissie said. ‘You know as well as I do that he can’t give them away. But why shouldn’t he buy some for you, why shouldn’t he buy those belonging to the ghost girl?’

Buy her pearls for me?’ Stella asked. ‘But I don’t like pearls. Besides, I don’t expect she wants to sell them.’

Stella! Stella! Do you want to drive me insane?’ Chrissie cried, the expression on her face so wild that Stella stared at her all alarmed. ‘Don’t you understand? If you ask the Rajah for something really valuable and he gives it to you, we’re safe. Francois says those pearls are worth a king’s ransom.’

‘François knows everything!’

‘Ask the Rajah to give the pearls to you as a present. It doesn’t matter, you poor numbskull, if you like pearls or you don’t like them. You won’t wear them, not after we leave here at any rate, but when they’re sold we will be rich, both of us forever.’

‘But supposing he says no?’ Stella suggested.

Is he likely to?’ Chrissie asked scornfully. ‘He’s in love with you and he’ll want to show off. Put him on his mettle, bet him that he won’t have enough money to buy them and if he has, that he won’t be able to get them. That’s the way to make him interested. Once you have got them, it won’t matter to you how quickly he finds someone else.’

Stella gave a little sigh.

‘I see what you mean, Chrissie,’ she said, ‘but it’s awfully difficult – I mean, asking for something as expensive as that. You couldn’t do it for me, could you? Tell him it’s for my birthday or something?’

‘And I suppose, looking into my lovely blue eyes, that he would promise me them at once!’ Chrissie retorted sarcastically. ‘Don’t be a half wit, Stella, you know you’ve got to choose the right moment for a thing like that. Use your brains for once, though Heaven knows you haven’t any, and pick the right moment. It means everything to us. Promise me you will do your best.’

‘I’ll try, Chrissie,’ Stella said meekly. ‘What else did Françoise say about that girl?’

‘He said everyone was talking about her and trying to find out who she was. But the other woman who calls herself her aunt was too clever, and so far they have no idea who they are or where they have come from. Even Alfonse of the
Hôtel de Paris
knows nothing – and that, François says, has never happened before.’

She looks nice,’ Stella said.

Chrissie glanced at her quickly.

‘Now don’t you start thinking she’s too nice for you to want anything that she has,’ she said. ‘I know the way your mind works. Before we know where we are, we will all feel sorry for her and say that she must keep her pearl necklace because it is the only one she has.’

Stella laughed.

‘You’ve got a poor opinion of me, Chrissie.’

‘That’s about the only sensible thing you have said for some time,’ Chrissie replied, and marching out of the room, she slammed the door behind her.

Stella stretched her arms above her head and wished Chrissie would not get so worked up about things. She had always been the same. Perhaps it was because she had had an unhappy childhood.

Stella could remember how unkind her father and mother had been to their elder daughter. They had been acrobats, well spoken of in their profession and both good looking in their own way.

Chrissie had been born after her mother had had a fall. She said the rope was faulty, but her father always said that it was her timing which was wrong, owing, perhaps, to her own unnatural heaviness.

But whatever it was, Chrissie had been born three months early, weakly and malformed, and it was only the appearance of Stella two years later which had healed the wound to their parents’ self esteem at having produced anything so abnormal as their first child.

Stella had been a large, good-tempered baby. She smiled and chuckled her way through babyhood and from the moment she could toddle had been spoilt by everyone in the theatre. It seemed inevitable that Chrissie should be jealous of her young sister, but instead she had taken up a proprietary attitude. Stella was hers, to bully and protect, to tease and defend. If Stella did anything wrong, it was Chrissie who took the blame. If Stella was scolded, Chrissie would defend her pugnaciously. Stella accepted Chrissie’s championship, as she accepted other tributes, with smiling good humour and an equanimity which made no complaint one way or another.

Stella, having finished stretching herself, was just about to start another chapter of her novel when the door opened.

Thinking it was Chrissie returning, she turned her head and saw that instead of her sister it was the Rajah.

‘Hullo!’

Both her voice and her smile were pleasant and flattering, and he crossed the room quickly to the sofa, taking her hand in his and covering it with kisses.

‘I have been riding,’ he said, ‘or I should have come to see you earlier.’

‘You look very smart dressed like that,’ Stella said, and the Rajah’s dark eyes lightened at the compliment.

He was a short, thin little man, and when they stood close to each other, his head barely reached to Stella’s shoulder. Yet he was strong and wiry despite his over-luxurious way of living and the dissipations in which he indulged. But no one could live such a life for long, and in a few years he would be taking to drink and drugs to flog a depreciated vitality and a fading virility.

At the moment, however, the Rajah was young enough to gratify his sensual hedonism without thought of the future. There was a glint in his eyes as he looked down at Stella.

‘Would you like to come and watch the pigeon shooting this afternoon?’ he asked.

‘If you like,’ Stella replied. ‘Though I am not all that keen on guns, they make my head ache.’

‘Then we can go for a drive or – we can stay here.’

There was a sudden fire in the Rajah’s tone as he made the last suggestion.

‘I don’t mind what we do,’ Stella replied lazily.

But I want you to mind,’ he answered quickly. ‘I want to do what pleases you. For my own part I am content when we are together. You look very beautiful today.’

‘That’s because of the dress you gave me,’ Stella said. ‘It came from Paris this morning. Do you like it? I’d better get up so that you can see it properly.’

She made a movement as if to rise, but the Rajah stopped her, his hand against her shoulder.

‘No, lie there,’ he said softly. ‘You look entrancing, a goddess reclining on a cloud.’

‘I’m so glad the cloud is a pretty substantial one,’ Stella laughed.

‘No, no, do not laugh,’ the Rajah interrupted. ‘You are very beautiful. I am very much in love with you! More in love than I have been for a very long time – perhaps ever before.’

Stella smiled sleepily at him, glad that she should be able to give so much pleasure. Then she remembered Chrissie. With difficulty she found the right words.

‘If you love me so much,’ she said at length, ‘would you like to prove it?’

For a moment the warmth seemed to vanish from the Rajah’s eyes, then as he looked down into her eyes and at the fullness of her red lips, he seemed to surrender himself to a sudden impulse.

‘I will prove my love any way you wish,’ he answered.

‘It is something so difficult I don’t believe you could do it,’ Stella said, remembering Chrissie’s instructions to put him on his mettle.

‘There are few things I cannot do,’ the Rajah boasted vainly, and it seemed to Stella a little foolishly.

‘I am wondering if you could buy me the pearls belonging to that girl – the one they call “the Ghost.”

Even as Stella said the words she wondered at her own audacity. It was one thing to accept presents from people anxious to give them, and another thing to ask for something of tremendous value.

Stella had never bothered about standards or having any rules to regulate her behaviour. No one had ever told her that she ought to have any, but while she thought it was kind and nice of people to give her things, yet she felt that to ask for something which hadn’t been offered was greedy and rather indecent. She felt hot and uncomfortable now at having to ask this kind little man for yet another present, and because she was embarrassed, because, as she phrased it in her own mind, it was a bit too much of a good thing when he had given her so much already, her conscience galvanised her into being unexpectedly demonstrative.

For perhaps the first time since she had known him Stella held out her arms spontaneously and as the Rajah bent towards her, she put them round his neck.

‘If it’s too much trouble, don’t you bother about it,’ she whispered, half afraid that Chrissie would overhear her.

The Rajah’s arms closed round her almost fiercely.

‘You shall have anything you want,’ she heard him say, ‘anything! You are beautiful, one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen. I will get those pearls for you whatever they cost – ’

It was when he was dressing for dinner that evening in the Villa Shalimar that the Rajah remembered his promise to Stella. He sent a valet for his
Aide-de-Camp
. The gentleman came hurriedly at the summons. He was in evening dress and carried a silk-lined opera cape over his arm.

‘Are you going out?’ the Rajah enquired.

‘Your Highness informed me that you would not require my services this evening.’

‘No, of course not. I shall see you at the Casino, I presume?’

‘I am not so certain,’ the
Aide-de-Camp
replied. ‘I am dining with a very charming lady.’

The two men’s eyes met and the Rajah gave a short laugh.

‘Good hunting!’ he said.

The
Aide-de-Camp
bowed. ‘Your Highness is most kind.’

‘All the same, I did not send for you to enquire your plans for the evening. I wanted to ask you what you know about this girl who is causing such a stir.’

Mademoiselle Fântóme?’
the
Aide-de-Camp
enquired.

‘Exactly!’

‘Very little, Your Highness. It appears that nothing is known about her.’

‘Everyone says the same,’ the Rajah remarked. Strangely enough, I keep thinking that I have seen her chaperone somewhere before, the one they call
Madame Secret.
As you know, I have no memory for names but I seldom forget a face. I have met her or seen her somewhere, I am absolutely certain of that, and yet the exact moment eludes me. It is not often my memory is at fault.’

‘Indeed not! Your Highness’s memory is astonishing.’

‘Doubtless it will come back to me,’ the Rajah said, ‘but you might make a few inquiries, discreetly, of course, and find out if they are in such prosperous circumstances as they appear. The Manager of the
Hôtel de Paris
is an old friend of mine. Tell him that I want all the information he can give me.’

‘Your Highness can rest assured that I will do my best. If the Manager fails,’ the
Aide-de-Camp
said reflectively, ‘I know someone who might help – a man called Dulton. He can ferret out most things – for a consideration, of course.’