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Page 58
CHAPTER XV. NAIDA
Dusk was falling that evening. Gaily lighted cars offering
glimpses of women in elaborate toilets and of their black-coated
and white-shirted cavaliers thronged Piccadilly, bound for
theatre or restaurant. The workaday shutters were pulled down,
and the night life of London had commenced. The West End was in
possession of an army of pleasure seekers, but Nicol Brinn was
not among their ranks. Wearing his tightly-buttoned dinner
jacket, he stood, hands clasped behind him, staring out of the
window as Detective Inspector Wessex had found him at noon. Only
one who knew him very well could have detected the fact that
anxiety was written upon that Sioux-like face. His gaze seemed to
be directed, not so much upon the fading prospect of the park, as
downward, upon the moving multitude in the street below. Came a
subdued knocking at the door.
"In," said Nicol Brinn.
Hoskins, the neat manservant, entered. "A lady to see you, sir."
Nicol Brinn turned in a flash. For one fleeting instant the
dynamic force beneath the placid surface exhibited itself in
every line of his gaunt face. He was transfigured; he was a man
of monstrous energy, of tremendous enthusiasm. Then the
enthusiasm vanished. He was a creature of stone again; the
familiar and taciturn Nicol Brinn, known and puzzled over in the
club lands of the world.
"Name?"
"She gave none."
"English?"
"No, sir, a foreign lady."
"In."
Hoskins having retired, and having silently closed the door,
Nicol Brinn did an extraordinary thing, a thing which none of his
friends in London, Paris, or New York would ever have supposed
him capable of doing. He raised his clenched hands. "Please God
she has come," he whispered. "Dare I believe it? Dare I believe
it?"
The door was opened again, and Hoskins, standing just inside,
announced: "The lady to see you, sir."
He stepped aside and bowed as a tall, slender woman entered the
room. She wore a long wrap trimmed with fur, the collar turned up
about her face. Three steps forward she took and stopped. Hoskins
withdrew and closed the door.
At that, while Nicol Brinn watched her with completely
transfigured features, the woman allowed the cloak to slip from
her shoulders, and, raising her head, extended both her hands,
uttering a subdued cry of greeting that was almost a sob. She was
dark, with the darkness of the East, but beautiful with a beauty
that was tragic. Her eyes were glorious wells of sadness, seeming
to mirror a soul that had known a hundred ages. Withal she had
the figure of a girl, slender and supple, possessing the poetic
grace and poetry of movement born only in the Orient.
"Naida!" breathed Nicol Brinn, huskily. "Naida!"
His high voice had softened, had grown tremulous. He extended his
hands with a groping movement The woman laughed shudderingly.
Her cloak lying forgotten upon the carpet, she advanced toward
him.
She wore a robe that was distinctly Oriental without being in the
slightest degree barbaric. Her skin was strangely fair, and
jewels sparkled upon her fingers. She conjured up dreams of the
perfumed luxury of the East, and was a figure to fire the
imagination. But Nicol Brinn seemed incapable of movement; his
body was inert, but his eyes were on fire. Into the woman's face
had come anxiety that was purely feminine.
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