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"I thought, under her pillow," she whispered. "She'll find it--"

Harmony came in, to find the Big Soprano heating a curler in the
flame of a candle.

CHAPTER II

Harmony found the little hoard under her pillow that night when,
having seen Scatch and the Big Soprano off at the station, she
had come back alone to the apartment on the Siebensternstrasse.
The trunks were gone now. Only the concerto score still lay on
the piano, where little Scatchett, mentally on the dock at New
York with Henry's arms about her, had forgotten it. The candles
in the great chandelier had died in tears of paraffin that
spattered the floor beneath. One or two of the sockets were still
smoking, and the sharp odor of burning wickends filled the room.

Harmony had come through the garden quickly. She had had an
uneasy sense of being followed, and the garden, with its moaning
trees and slamming gate and the great dark house in the
background, was a forbidding place at best. She had rung the bell
and had stood, her back against the door, eyes and ears strained
in the darkness. She had fancied that a figure had stopped
outside the gate and stood looking in, but the next moment the
gate had swung to and the Portier was fumbling at the lock behind
her.

The Portier had put on his trousers over his night garments, and
his mustache bandage gave him a sinister expression, rather
augmented when he smiled at her. The Portier liked Harmony in
spite of the early morning practicing; she looked like a singer
at the opera for whom he cherished a hidden attachment. The
singer had never seen him, but it was for her he wore the
mustache bandage. Perhaps some day--hopefully! One must be ready!

The Portier gave Harmony a tiny candle and Harmony held out his
tip, the five Hellers of custom. But the Portier was keen, and
Rosa was a niece of his wife and talked more than she should. He
refused the tip with a gesture.

"Bitte, Fraulein!" he said through the bandage. "It is for me a
pleasure to admit you. And perhaps if the Fraulein is cold, a
basin of soup."

The Portier was not pleasant to the eye. His nightshirt was open
over his hairy chest and his feet were bare to the stone floor.
But to Harmony that lonely night he was beautiful. She tried to
speak and could not but she held out her hand in impulsive
gratitude, and the Portier in his best manner bent over and
kissed it. As she reached the curve of the stone staircase,
carrying her tiny candle, the Portier was following her with his
eyes. She was very like the girl of the opera.

The clang of the door below and the rattle of the chain were
comforting to Harmony's ears. From the safety of the darkened
salon she peered out into the garden again, but no skulking
figure detached itself from the shadows, and the gate remained,
for a marvel, closed.

It was when--having picked up her violin in a very passion of
loneliness, only to put it down when she found that the familiar
sounds echoed and reechoed sadly through the silent rooms--it was
when she was ready for bed that she found the money under her
pillow, and a scrawl from Scatchy, a breathless, apologetic
scrawl, little Scatchett having adored her from afar, as the
plain adore the beautiful, the mediocre the gifted:--

DEAREST HARRY [here a large blot, Scatchy being addicted to
blots]: I am honestly frightened when I think what we are doing.
But, oh, my dear, if you could know how pleased we are with
ourselves you'd not deny us this pleasure. Harry, you have
it--the real thing, you know, whatever it is--and I haven't. None
of the rest of us had. And you must stay. To go now, just when
lessons would mean everything--well, you must not think of it. We
have scads to take us home, more than we need, both of us, or at
least--well, I'm lying, and you know it. But we have enough, by
being careful, and we want you to have this. It isn't much, but
it may help. Ten Kronen of it I found to-night under my bed, and
it may be yours anyhow.

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Books | Photos | Paul Mutton | Mon 28th Apr 2025, 8:25

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart