The Hippodrome

Excerpt

CHAPTER I

  "Aujourd'hui le primtetemps, Ninon, demain l'hiver.
  Quoi! tu nas pas l'étoile, est tu vas sur la mer!"
            DE MUSSET.

Count Emile Poleski was obliged to be at the Barcelona Station at five o'clock in the afternoon one hot Friday in May. His business, having to do with that which was known to himself and his associates as "the Cause," necessitated careful attention, and required the performance of certain manoeuvres in such a way that they should be unobserved by the various detectives to whom he was an object of interest.

He looked round, scowling, till he found the man he wanted, and who was to all outward appearances the driver of one of the row of fiacres that waited outside the station. Cigarettes were exchanged, and a tiny slip of paper passed imperceptibly from hand to hand, then he turned ostensibly to watch the incoming train from Port-Bou. As he was on the platform it would be better to look as if he had come to meet someone, and as he had nothing particular to do just then it would make a distraction to watch the various types of humanity arriving at this continental Buenos Ayres, the city of romance, anarchy, commerce and varied vices.

Emile Poleski called it l'entresol de l'enfer, and certainly he was not there by his own choice. It was the centre of intrigue, and to intrigue his life, intellect, and the little money he had left from his Polish estates, were devoted. To him life meant "The Cause," and that exigeant mistress left little room for other and more natural affections.

In his career women did not count, at least they did not count as women. If they had money to spend, or brains and energies that could be utilised, that was a different matter. He had a trick of studying people as one studies natural history through a microscope.

It was all very interesting, but when one had done with the specimens one threw them away and looked about for fresh material.

The train came in, slackened speed and stopped, and its contents resolved themselves into little groups of people all hunting with more or less excitement for their luggage, and porters to convey the same to cabs.

The figure of a girl who had just alighted and was standing alone, caught and held his roving eyes. The pose of her abnormally slim body had all the grace of a figure on a Grecian vase in its clean curves and easy balance.

Her head was beautifully set upon a long throat, and her feet were conspicuously slender and delicate in their high French boots of champagne-coloured kid. Her face, which as far as he could see was of a startling pallor, was obscured by a white lace veil tied loosely round her Panama hat, and left to fall down her back in floating ends; and she wore a rather crumpled, cream-coloured dress.

She stood, looking round, as if uncertain how to act, evidently in expectation of someone to meet her. No one appeared and she moved off in search of a porter. Emile followed at a reasonable distance. Books he found desperately dull, but humanity in any shape or form was attractive to him, and the girl's appearance appealed to a deeply embedded love of the exotic and mysterious....