||||||








， ， ， ,
ſ （ ）
-- … ！！ ！！ ！！ ！！！.


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE





THE DANGEROUS
INHERITANCE
OR
The Mystery of the Tittani Rubies
BY
IZOLA FORRESTER
–4—- --- --
------
l, C &
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
(the fliuergite pregg Cambridge
I92O
&c.


THE NEW YORK
PUBLI( L \ 1 \RY
7'34.321
As ºf: La ºw a Nº
T 11 ºil’s a * * * *** 5
º * - ? L
* - - - -
copyRIGHT, 1919 AND 1920, BY THE NEw IDEA publishing company
coPYRIGHT, 1920, BY Izola For REstER PAGE
ALL RIGHTS Reserved


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
2.
º


THE NFw York
PUBLIC LIBRARY
7'34.42
As ºf Lºve, Y axiſ)
TILaºi,” “ . . . .0.x 8
| *— *—
coPYRIGHT, 1919 AND 1920, BY THE NEw IDEA PUBLISHING
copyRIGHT, 1920, BY Izola For RESTER PAGE
al, L. Rights Reserved
company


>
2.
THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE





THE
DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
CHAPTER I
THE town studio of Signor Jacobelli faced the
west. It was situated on the top floor of an old
eight-storied building in the West Fifties.
Thirty years ago this had been given over
entirely to studios, but now it was broken up
into a more profitable mêlée of semi-com-
mercial establishments and light-housekeeping
apartments.
The signor, having no doubt the Old-World
propensity for permanency, had maintained
his studio here for over twenty years, without
regard for the changing conditions around him,
if indeed he were even conscious of them. His
own immediate outlook and environment had
remained the same. The view to the west and
south from the deep, double-sized windows
had varied little, and held a perpetual fascina-
tion for him. Thin red chimneys in neighborly
groupings on adjacent roofs assumed delicate
color values of amethyst and quivering saf-
frons from Jersey sunsets that turned even


4. THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
the old buildings down towards the river-
front into mystical genii palaces in the early
twilight.
Dust lay unnoted upon bookshelves and
music-racks about the large, friendly room.
The Turkish rug that covered its floor had
long since lost all outline of pattern and was
as exquisite a blur as the rose-flushed sea mist
that hung over the lower end of the island
city.
Carlota stood in a window recess, her back
to the signor and his unexpected guest, her
fingers tying and untying the faded purple
silk cord of the shade. From where he sat in
the old winged armchair by the piano, Ward
caught a perfect silhouette of her profile against
the glow, of western light. Listening to Jaco-
belli's fiery protest in his usual silent way, his
mind dwelt upon the blossoming of this for-
eign flower of girlhood who had so strangely
attracted him from the first time he had ever
looked into her eyes.
The Marchese Veracci had called him up
from the Italian Club two years before, and
had besought his good offices for the grand-
daughter of Margherita Paoli. The following
evening they had called on him by appoint-
ment. He half closed his eyes, recalling the
picture of the girl as he had first seen her. They


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 5
awaited him in the Florentine room. Even then
she had not thought of him, but had stood
before a painting of Sorrento, a view through
the ravine looking seaward, one hand laid on
her breast, her eyes filled with the yearning of
youth's loneliness. She had met him silently,
her hand cold as it rested an instant in his
palm.
And the old Marchese had pleaded her cause
with fervent eloquence.
“I have Jacobelli's word on her voice,” he
said. “What more would you? If you but
speak Guido Jacobelli's name to any European
director, he bows to the old maestro's
dictum.”
“He has retired,” Ward returned.
“Retired, yes, from the money mart.” The
Marchese had beamed upon the great inter-
national banker almost tolerantly. “You can-
not comprehend his attitude. No amount of
money could tempt him to teach the tyro, the
climber, but he has heard Carlota. He knew
Paoli well in Italy. It was her influence and
friendship which first brought him fame and
power. Now he has said that her voice lives
again in the child, but there must be at least
four years of incessant application and train-
ing. To keep her voice divine, she must never
be troubled by material cares. She must have


6 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
an abundance of everything that she needs
that her whole nature may relax and expand
to give her the freedom to devote her whole
life to her career.”
Ward had understood. He knew Guido
Jacobelli. While the old maestro was a high
priest of art, his price for teaching genius was
in proportion to his faith. It had been Car-
lota's own attitude of indifference which had
dominated his decision. While the Marchese
had argued and pleaded for her future, and
Maria Roma, her guardian, had hung upon the
final word from Ward's lips, she had listened
gravely, her attention wandering constantly
to the rare art treasures of the room. Once she
had met his eyes as he asked her a direct ques-
tion.
“You are very young to study seriously. Do
you realize the sacrifices you must make?”
“I have always studied to be a singer, sig-
nor,” Carlota had told him, her eyes even then
disconcerting in their wide intensity. “There
are no sacrifices when you love your voca-
tion.”
Ward had smiled back at the Marchese,
quoting lightly,
“I did renounce the world, its pride and greed
... at eight years old.”
“My dear,” he added, “one of your own


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 7
countrymen has spoken so, Fra Lippo Lippi.
No parallel, though, eh, Veracci” Here we
have the consecration of genius. I will advance
fifty thousand. Is it enough?”
Carlota had met his appraising eyes with
the aloof resentment of an influence that dis-
turbed her.
“Speak, cara mia,” Maria Roma had cried,
tears streaming down her plump cheeks, as she
clasped her arms enthusiastically around her
charge. “Have you no word of thanks?”
And Ward had never forgotten the flash of
challenge in the girl's dark eyes as she had
given him her hand.
“I will succeed and pay you back, signor,”
she had said. He might have been merely a
money-lender to a princess of the de' Medici.
He had made only one stipulation and that
half in jest, though Maria and the Marchese
had agreed most earnestly. She was not to
marry nor become entangled in love affairs
during the period of her tuition. The conces-
sion had completely escaped Carlota's at-
tention. She had wandered by them out into
the wide corridor, stifled by the somber silence
of the great closed rooms. Not a single foun-
tain falling in the distance, not a living flower
anywhere, nothing but age-old treasures in a
palatial, modern museum. He had not spoken


8 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
to her again, only she had heard his last words
to Jacobelli.
“May the fruit fulfill the promise. I will
come to see you now and then.”
Through the two years of study he had kept
his word. Every few months, unawares, he
would come to the old studio and sit for a
while, listening to Jacobelli and watching his
pupil. Even while he never spoke a word of
direct intent to her, Carlota felt a vague un-
easiness in his presence, under the steady
power of his gaze. He carried with him the im-
pression of a compelling, dominant masterful-
ness, all the more irresistible through its
silence and tireless patience. He was in the
late thirties at this time, tall and heavy-set,
his head, with its thick, close-cut blond hair,
thrust forward from a habit of silent intent-
ness. There was the strongest suggestion of
the leonine about him. Once, when she was a
child, Carlota remembered being taken to see
a captive Algerian lion that had just been
brought across for the royal zoo. With a city
mob surging forward to stare at him, the lion
had lain with an imperial languor and indif-
ference, gazing with unblinking eyes beyond
the crowd and the city, seeing only the desert
that held his whole life's desire. Sometimes, in
the studio, during one of Ward's visits, she


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 9
would catch his eyes fixed upon her, while
Jacobelli flamed out into some argument or
dissertation, and she would shrink from the
purpose that lay behind their patience.
To-day the voice of Jacobelli filled the
studio, and Carlota's delicate dark brows con-
tracted sharply as she listened.
“What more can I do? I have given her all
that I know of technique and harmony, and
still her voice lacks that emotional quality
which the greatest alone possess. The divine
voice must have dramatic feeling, intensity.
It must lose itself in the grandest passion of
emotion. The child tries, but what would you?
She does not understand the lack in her own
nature. Her woman soul yet slumbers.”
Ward glanced at him with amused, quizzi-
cal eyes.
“Let it sleep, Jacobelli. Remember Paoli
when she let love conquer her.”
For the moment the old maestro forgot the
figure behind the window curtain. With arms
thrown upward he turned on the banker.
“You know not anything about Paoli! I,
Jacobelli, tell you that! You cannot speak of
her with any understanding. She was a law to
herself in her own generation. Few women can
be that. But I, who know what lay behind the
wall of Tittani, say to you I would rather this


Io THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
child lay dead now, with no fulfillment in her
life, than that she should know the agony and
failure as an artiste that her grandmother did
when she sacrificed her whole womanhood —
for what? Love, pouf!” *
“Can a woman's nature reach its ripest
fulfillment without love?” Ward's tone was
lowered. “History proves that the greatest
geniuses have been those who suffered most.”
“But not the singer, signor.” Jacobelli
paused in his march up and down the studio.
“The singer is something different. It is in-
stinctive. I have heard the most marvelous
impassioned voices pour from the most com-
monplace peasant types. I have heard the
greatest tenor of all times tear the emotions of
thousands to pieces, and step into his dressing-
room to rail at his wife for not providing his
favorite dish for him after the opera, ravioli
and lampreys. The most superb lyric voice of
to-day comes from a little, stout contadina
who picked up centimes around the flower-
market in Naples when I was young. Do you
think she acquired divinity of soul and utter-
ance from some supreme emotion? Ridiculous.
She is a gourmand, a virago, absolutely bour-
geois, yet she sings like a seraph. Why, then,
is it not in Carlota's voice?”
Ward rose leisurely. The old silken curtains


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE II
hung motionless. The shadows were heavy in
the corners of the studio.
“She is a higher type,” he said in a low
voice. “When you agree with me, bring her to
22
1116.


CHAPTER II
AFTER Ward had gone the old Italian maestro
seated himself at the piano, improvising as he
always did when he was disturbed. It was an
enormous old ebony instrument, mellow and
vibrant in its response to his touch. He did
not even look up as Carlota leaned her elbows
upon a pile of dusty folios, watching him anx-
iously. Finally she drew a quick, impatient
breath.
“I wish he would never come here again.”
“It is customary,” Jacobelli shrugged his
expansive shoulders. “You are too sensitive,
my dear. It is you who are conferring a favor
in permitting this person to provide the means
for your education. You will return to him, in
the hour of your triumph, every penny it has
been his privilege to advance at this time.”
“Why does he come here and sit looking at
me in such a way? In the courtyard at home
there were little lizards that came out early in
the morning, gray and cold, with eyes like his,
green in the light. I was always afraid of put-
ting my hand on one of them around the
fountain.”
Jacobelli struck a minor chord, avoiding her
eyes.


14 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
began Carlota slowly, when the little electric
bell at the outer door rang lightly, announcing
Maria Roma at her customary hour of five.
As always, she followed it by half opening the
door, peering around with an arch, recon-
noitering glance.
“Do I intrude?” she asked, with her beam-
ing smile, and entered impressively, always
with the dramatic action as if the orchestra
had sounded her motif. She shook one fore-
finger impressively at Carlota. “You loiter
and take up the maestro's time, gossip and
loiter when you should be studying.”
But Jacobelli waved aside the admonition
with one ample movement of his large, plump
hand. As Carlota went to the inner room for
her cloak and hat, he spoke in an undertone.
“Ward is becoming very much interested
in her. She treats him with indifference. You
must teach her diplomacy. She has too much
arrogance of youth, and absolutely no grati-
tude for what he is doing for her.”
Maria's brilliant dark eyes narrowed with
comprehensive amusement.
“You ask the impossible, Guido. I who have
known all three, Margherita, Bianca, and this
glorious child, tell you the truth, and you will
remember what I say. You can no more teach
the heart of a Paoli to keep its temperament


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 15
within bounds than you can yoke the thunder-
clouds and lightning that sweep down over
our Trentino.”
“And the responsibility is ours,” said Jaco-
belli, with a deep exhalation of his cigarette.
“Given this nature, we are to keep her a
prisoner behind the wall of Tittani, eh?”
Maria sank deeply into the velvet-cushioned
chair beside him, and the two smiled at each
other reminiscently.
“It was a high wall,” she sighed at length.
“I remember your last visit there, Guido, be-
fore the child was born, five years I think it
was. Bianca was a flower then. Such flaming
hair and dark eyes, the true Florentine type.
She was more like Tittani in her looks. Carlota
is a throwback to the grandmother. Ah, my
Guido, was there ever a woman like her? Even
at the last, before he died, when her heart was
torn with agony of renunciation — ”
“She lost her voice,” Jacobelli spoke with
finality. “Yet Ward would tell me love is the
great fulfillment. Did she ever sing again? No.
She buried her art with her love in the grave
of her poet after he had denied her to the
world. You and I, Maria Roma, who know of
this, must protect this child against the traitor
in her own nature.”
Maria sighed doubtfully. She was the large,


16 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
vivid type of the Italian peasant, richly de-
veloped by success and circumstance. Years
before, Sforza, director of La Scala, had
journeyed with friends to a mountain section
of the Trentino. In the purple twilight a voice
had drifted down to them from a band of
vintage workers, homeward bound. It was
Maria Roma at eighteen, a buoyant, deep-
breasted bacchante, her black hair hanging
in thick clusters of curls around her radiant
face.
Enrico Sforza had loved her, more perhaps
for her ardent faithfulness and responsiveness.
She had achieved a sensation in contralto
rôles and he had interested La Paoli in his
peasant love. In middle age, after his death,
Maria had retired to live at the Villa Tittani
with the old diva. Here she had shared with
her in the tragedy of her final years. Fifty
years before, the story of Margherita Paoli
and her love for John Tennant, the English
poet, had been part of the romance of Italy.
Her beauty and genius had opened every door
of success to her. Even on the threshold of
womanhood she had been given all that am-
bition could demand from life, and turning in
the highest hour of her triumphs, she had for-
saken the world for a year, giving the full gift
of her love to Tennant.


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 17
Suddenly she had returned, restless and
hungering for her art. As Maria knew, Ten-
nant had been jealous of her voice and the life
which he could not share, had demanded that
she give up her career for the sake of their
love, and return with him to England. And
she had laughed at him. Love could not bring
full completeness and happiness to a woman of
genius, she had said. It could not satisfy her
for the loss of the divine fire. Tennant had left
Italy, and five years later she married Count
Tittani. Bianca, the mother of Carlota, had
been born at the old villa overlooking the
Campagna. She had spent her childhood here,
and in the convent of Maria Pietà at the head
of the ancient ilex avenue leading up from
Mondragone. Tittani had died when she was
nine, leaving La Paoli the prestige of his name
and wealth combined with her own full meas-
ure of maturity in her art.
It was at this time that Maria had come
nearest to her confidence. Word came from
England to them that Tennant had been
stricken blind, and in the midst of a gala per-
formance of “Traviata,” La Paoli had left all
and gone to him. He had refused to see her
when she reached London. Bertrand Wallace,
his closest friend, had told her simply enough
that he was without means, that he longed to


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 19
“You see, Maria, I have proved the truth
of it in my own heart's blood,” she had said,
“A woman cannot serve two gods. If Bianca
has my voice, help me to teach her this: no
man is content with half of a woman's love or
nature. If she desires to attain to the highest
art, she must sacrifice love.”
Within six months after she had left the
shelter of the convent Bianca had married
Peppino Trelango, son of a dead patriot. The
Contessa had cared for him through his boy-
hood, because she had heard him playing on
his violin once on the old quay at Pontecova
where centuries before the body of the boy
count, Giovanni Borgia, had borne witness
against his brother in the dawn. When Bianca
came home, she had met him in the old gar-
dens, a boy of nineteen, like one of the mar-
ble fauns come to life to teach her youth's
heritage. When the Contessa returned from a
trip to her favorite midsummer retreat at Isola
Bella, she had found the two gone, and Maria
desolate with despair.
It was from this romance that Carlota had
been born. After the death of Peppino in an
Algerian skirmish, Bianca had returned to the
villa behind the old rose-colored wall with her
child. She had lived in the gardens with the
memories of her love, a silent, smiling, stately


20 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
girl who baffled the vivid, emotional La Paoli
by the elusive sensitiveness of her nature.
“She is the wraith of my passion for the
love I denied,” the Contessa would declare. “I
starved for him, and trampled the desire with
my pride while I bore her to Tittani. She is the
very spirit of renunciation, Maria, and she will
drive me to madness with her silence and
resignation. Carlota is not like her. She is a
flame, a beautiful rosebud, all light and move-
ment. She is like I was, God keep her.”
Carlota was four when they bore her mother
down to the old tomb of the Tittani. She could
remember her voice at night when she bent
over her to kiss her, and the fall of her long,
soft hair over her face. Sometimes in their
walks through the gardens, in the quiet years of
her girlhood, she would come to the old tomb
set into the hillside, its iron gates overgrown
with vines, and she would lean her cheek against
them. Assunta, her nurse, would scold her for
not keeping her thoughts on the spiritual.
“Ah, a little that was my mother lies here,”
Carlota would answer. “I may love it, Assunta,
without sinning, may I not, just her beautiful
hair even?”
After Italy entered the war, the villa had
been turned into a hospital, and the fortune
of the Contessa laid at the feet of “La Patria.”


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 2I
“Still, there is some left,” she had told
Maria at the time of her own departure.
Strong in spirit and dominant, she had ruled
to the end, planning and directing Carlota's
future. “I have given the child a heritage and
training that are priceless. If you have to, sell
the jewels in the cinque cento chest. They are
for her. I have not even looked at them since
he died. Take her to America, Maria. Find
there Guido Jacobelli. He was a boy when I
made my début, before your time, the gala
performance of “Rigoletto.' I was a wonderful
Gilda, Maria. Later I gave him his first start.
He is not one who forgets. You will go to him
in New York and he will find you a patron. I
have written to the Marchese Veracci to ex-
pect you and see that you are lodged fittingly.
No economy. Surround her with beauty and
comfort while she studies, but keep her from
love until she has won success. Her mother
sacrificed all for Peppino's kiss. If I were able
I would keep her here behind the wall of
Tittani and never let her see the face of a man
whom she might love. Dust and ashes all,
Maria. The greatest and most enduring is the
memory of a lost love.”
After the closing of the old villa, Carlota and
Signora Roma had come to New York. Maria
had been prodigal in her expenditures. She


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 23
voort or Lafayette. He held his court daily at
the fountain in the center of the Square. Al-
ways with a fresh boutonnière and a smile and
courtly word for every dark-eyed child who
laughed back at him. Sometimes, when he
strolled past the bust of Garibaldi, he would
leave a little spray of flowers on the pedestal.
After dinner he never failed to stroll out into
the twilight and lift his soul in salute to the
cross of light that gleamed on the memorial
tower above the trees.
“It is the one spot in the whole city,” he
told them, “that holds the Old-World glamour
and charm, yet I would not have you and
Carlota living down here. The lines of demar-
cation are too blurred between the workers
and the dreamers. Then, too, there are the
dancing shapes that come to stare and ridicule.
There is a contagion of play here that breaks
the concentration you must put into your
study, my child. Keep away from it at this
period. Later, I could wish you nothing better
than to share in the spirit of comradeship in
art and beauty, yes, and most of all, in hu-
manity. That you will find down here, no
matter how others try to detract from the at-
mosphere, like the very small boys who will
ever toss pebbles at the stained-glass windows
of the saints.”


24 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
Maria Roma had agreed fervently to any-
thing he said. His delighted enthusiasm satis-
fied her that the old Contessa had chosen
rightly in making him joint guardian with her
over Carlota. Guido Jacobelli had retired, he
had told her over their first luncheon en tête-
à-tête at the Italian Club. Money would never
tempt him to teach. Nothing but brilliant
genius in a pupil could ever lure him from his
retreat to give them the full benefit of his
years of experience and study.
“I know him well, and of them all he is still
the wizard, the maestro. Even now, his word
on a voice would open the gates of opportunity
to any singer. Casanova, of the Opera here,
bows to his dictum. If it were anybody but
Margherita Paoli who calls to me, I would say
no, but as it is, ma bella, we will go. Two
places I know where we may find him, at his
old studio in town and his country home at
Arrochar, on Staten Island. We will go there.”
The visit had proven Carlota's crucial hour.
Maria had hovered over her excitedly, feeling
that upon the great old maestro's verdict lay
the entire future fate of her career. The Mar-
chese had called for them and had accompa-
nied them out to Jacobelli's home. It was typi-
cal of his simplicity and love of nature. On the
wooded heights above Kill von Kull at Ar-


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 25
rochar, lay a small colony of Italian artists
and musicians. Their homes were like minia-
ture villas perched above a smaller bay of
Naples when the myriad lights gleamed on
the shipping and distant Jersey hills.
As they walked up the quiet hill street from
the station, Carlota's dark eyes had sparkled
with memories. Surely in this perfect fall day,
with the vivid blue of a cloudless sky above
the deep crimson and gold of autumn foliage,
there was a semblance of the Villa Tittani's
beauty. A rock wall covered with brilliant red
creeper vines surrounded the garden. It seemed
neglected, with shrubbery straggling in groups,
unclipped and straying. The stone flower urns
were overgrown with rank, clambering vines.
In the southeast corner a dancing faun poised
with wary, pointed ears, as if listening sea-
ward. When the Marchese tried to open the
outer vestibule door of the enclosed veranda,
two stately Italian greyhounds rose leisurely
and eyed the callers questioningly.
Within they had found Jacobelli living alone
with his memories. Carlota never forgot the
picture that he made, welcoming them into his
wide, sunlit studio. Swarthy, stout, curly-
haired, frowning at her from heavy eyebrows,
he had seemed to gauge and grasp her whole
capabilities in one swift, cursory glance. She


26 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
had been caressed and encouraged all of her
life, but now, for the first time, she felt her
confidence shaken as she waited by the piano,
facing the piercing eyes and uncompromising
glare of the old maestro. Never once, during
the two years of study under him that fol-
lowed that first visit, had she shaken off that
first impression. Eccentric, proud, profoundly
conscious of his power to make or unmake
queens of the operatic world, he had been a
revelation to her from that day.
The Marchese had pleaded for her elo-
quently, showing the letter he had received
from La Paoli a few weeks before her death.
Jacobelli had listened to it in silence, staring
fixedly at the girl. She was very like her grand-
mother in appearance, he thought. Behind her
stood a towering old terra-cotta jar filled with
scarlet autumn leaves. She looked out at the
sea view, her eyes filled with a dreaming long-
ing. Her hair was heavy and lustrous, growing
back from a low, broad forehead with the
shell-like outline one sees in the portraits of
Beatrice or one of Del Sarto's girl saints. Her
eyes were long and shadowy, heavy-lidded,
aloof. When she was interested or startled,
they opened widely, a deep, warm brown color,
their darkness made more vivid by the rare
rose red of her lips and the peculiar jasmine


28 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
ing time as he smiled at the success of his ex-
periment.
The fruition of that first visit had come
richly in the two years that followed it. Car-
lota was eighteen now, with not alone the
years of her grandmother's careful teaching,
but Jacobelli's unceasing discipline and watch-
fulness as her voice ripened and developed.
One year more and she would be ready for her
début, he said. It was this final year she
dreaded, with Ward's visits to the studio be-
coming more frequent and his interest in her
losing its cloak of patronage.
She was silent on this day, almost during
the entire homeward walk across the Park.
Their apartment had been Maria's choice, se-
lected against the better judgment of even the
Marchese. He had advised a smaller, less ex-
pensive suite farther uptown, but in a con-
servative section. Maria had cast the sugges-
tion from her scornfully. For the struggling
student any environment was of secondary
consideration, but for the sole pupil of Guido
Jacobelli, the protégée of Ogden Ward, there
must be a gilded cage. Between Fifth Avenue
and Madison in the upper Sixties she had
found one that suited her, a spacious apart-
ment that in its richness of tone satisfied her.
It might have been from the Villa Tittani


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 29
itself, by the time Maria had finished its deco-
ration.
“You had worried the maestro to-day,” she
said severely, as they approached the heavy
bronze and crystal entrance. “He could not
even improvise. We are giving our whole
hearts and souls to you for your success, and
you are not grateful.”
Carlota turned her head and smiled at her
tenderly. She was used to the scoldings of the
old prima donna. '
“I am grateful to you, tanta mia,” she said,
slipping her hand under the other's arm. “But
I sometimes think I hate Mr. Ward. When I
hear his footstep I cannot sing any more, and
when he sits there and looks at me I could
jump from the window. I hate his eyes and his
voice and everything about him.”
Maria's dark eyebrows arched in amaze-
ment. She glanced with quick suspicion at the
girl's troubled face.
“But you have no reason — have you?”
Carlota's eyes narrowed with amusement at
her anxiety. As they entered the lower hall, she
stripped off her long gray suède gloves impa-
tiently. The lights were not switched on yet,
and she let one fall near the outer steps. It lay,
a part of the twilight, unnoticed by either her-
self or Maria, but one who came behind them


30 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
picked it up. It was a mere fleeting impression
she caught of him. Maria had stepped into the
elevator when he reached her side to return it,
a curious, poster-like figure, with the uncertain
light accentuating his foreign features and
half-closed, seeking eyes.
“Yes, it is mine, thank you,” she said
gravely, and carried with her upstairs an im-
pression of restless, suppressed dissent and
discontent combined with a haunting fragrance
of a new cigarette smoke. When she reached
the apartment, while Maria hurried to make
Russian tea for them, she stood by the window,
looking down over the boxes of green. Across
the street in the mother-of-pearl gloom, she
could see the glow of the cigarette where the
boy stood, waiting for something, and it held
her with almost a premonition of menace.


CHAPTER III
OVER the tea she was unusually silent, while
Maria, ensconced at last on her favorite chaise
longue, mellowed under the warmth. Carlota's
voice, cool with daring, broke in on her relaxa-
tion.
“Maria, when will you treat me as a
woman?”
Maria's face flushed as she spilled the tea
blindly on the rug.
“You are in love?” she gasped. “Never
would you have thought of such a thing if you
were not in love.”
“Oh, you poor, old preciosa!” Carlota
laughed richly, folding her arms around the
signora's ample shoulders. “I would n't know
love if I met him face to face this minute in
your teacup. But I want to know so much,
Maria. I want to ask you about so many
things. You love me, do you not? Enough to
tell me anything at all I ask you?”
“Ah, do I not,” sighed Maria uneasily. “Is
it about Mr. Ward?”
Carlota drew up a low footstool of rose silk
and ivory carving, and laid her glossy head
close to the one on the pillows.


32 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
“I have said I hate him,” she replied com-
posedly. “Let us forget that I ever have to see
him again. I want you to listen and love me
more than you ever have so you will answer
me truthfully. Why did Signor Jacobelli tell
Mr. Ward to-day that my grandmother sacri-
ficed her whole womanhood and that he would
rather see me dead than have me like her.
What was behind the wall of Tittani that I
never knew about?”
“He is a pompous old egoist,” Maria an-
swered with amazing composure considering
the tumult in her mind. “You remember her?
Did she not live like a queen with her court
even at her age? She was the most regal person
I ever knew. You can remember the life at the
villa? Was it somber or full of unhappiness?
She was the Contessa Tittani. She had every-
thing she wanted. Some day when you have
gained all that she did, we will go back to the
old villa, and spend our summers there. Re-
member your goats, beloved, the little Nini
and Cherubini —”
“They will be gone when we get back,”
Carlota said slowly. “You have lied to me as
you always do, Maria, with love. I will tell you
things I remember that you do not know I
know. I can remember my mother. She was
very white, with eyes like the lower pool in the
º


34 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
it. And Assunta told me, I suppose to keep me
satisfied, that no one had ever found the way
over the wall excepting my mother —”
“Ah, the blind, cackling pullet. If I had
known —” Maria nodded her head with rel-
ish. “She was selling melons in Mondragone
when your mother lived.”
“And when I asked her how my mother
ever climbed the wall”—Carlota's eyes closed
and opened again with dreamy ecstasy — “she
told me she escaped with the wings of love.
After that — don't scold, dear, I love to talk
to you about it, and there is no one else now
— after that I loved the wall better than all
the gardens and the fountains and the grot-
toes even. Won't you tell me what Jacobelli
meant, now? What meaning did he put into
it all, the wall and the unhappiness of my
grandmother and the tragedy of it all?”
Maria Roma was silent for some time.
Slowly she reached for a cigarette and lighted
it, drawing deeply on it as she stared upward
at the ceiling.
“I have waited for this,” she said finally,
with a sigh of resignation. “Some day I knew
you would ask me, and out of all the world, I
would rather tell you, because I will discrimi-
nate between what you should know and what
is best buried in that old garden tomb. Wait.”


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 35
She pushed away Carlota's reaching arms.
“See what I have saved for you out of the
past.”
Impulsively she rose and crossed to the end
of the studio. Hidden here behind old strips of
tapestry and mediaeval embroidery were old
locked chests which had been brought from
Italy with all the care the dower treasures of a
princess might have commanded. Carlota had
never even guessed at their contents. If she
had given the matter a thought at all, she had
believed them filled with little household keep-
sakes, linen, silver, bric-à-brac which Maria
had managed to save for her.
Now she stood in amazement as the old
singer lifted out costume after costume from
the chests, stage raiment and festive gowns of
thirty and forty years before. From carved and
inlaid boxes she drew out gems and decora-
tions that had been lavished on the great diva
and laid them before Carlota, forgetting in the
pride of the moment the discretion of silence
regarding the romance of genius. The girl's
eyes widened with glowing wonder and delight
as she fingered the old treasures, listening to
Maria's vivid, picturesque recital of the reign
of Margherita Paoli.
“She was taller than you, cara mia, majes-
tic, a queen in carriage and expression. She


36 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
never wore other hair than her own. It was
golden bronze and hung in ripples to her knees.
I have woven it in Marguerita's plaits with
these strands of pearls, and coiled it high into
Fedora's crown with this diamond and ruby
tiara. The necklace is here, too.” She piled the
contents of the cases eagerly until she found
it. “Rubies and diamonds. They came from
the crown jewels of Roumania, a part of the
Constantinople loot centuries ago. The crown
prince was exiled to a mountain garrison in the
Caucasus for two years after he gave them to
her, but he never told where they were. This
center ruby in the tiara is from Persia, one of
the finest in the world. Some day you shall
wear them. They will suit you as they did her.
And this – ah, my child, you should have
seen her wearing this in ‘Semiramide.’” She
lifted out a heavy barbaric stomacher en-
crusted in rough, uncut jewels. “This was
given to her by the Rajah of Kadurstan. He
tried to kill himself after the performance one
night in Paris when she refused to see him.
This necklace of opals and emeralds was from
the Grand Duke of Teklahava. It had been
part of the Byzantine loot in the days of Ivan
the Terrible. Ah, but, Carlota, behold, this
was ever about her throat, the medallion hid-
den in her breast from all eyes. Never will I


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 37
forget the night when Tennant gave it to her.
The king had given a farewell banquet for her.
She was decorated and fêted as never any
other singer was. And after it was over, I saw
the two as they stood out in the moonlit loggia
of the palace, and he clasped this about her
white throat. His portrait is in the medallion.
There is a secret spring — wait – so it opens.
Was he not a worthy lover for her?”
Carlota looked long at the pictured face in
the old gold and crystal case. It was old-fash-
ioned in style. The hair was worn long and
curled back thickly from his forehead. It was
the head of an enthusiast, boyish, too, in its
eager intensity, passionate, unsatisfied.
“He does not look happy,” she said slowly.
“I have never heard his name before. Who
was he, Maria?”
Signora slipped from the clouds with a shock
of reality and caught the medallion from her
hand.
“No one, no one at all. See this ring, one single
perfect solitaire surrounded by black pearls, a
gift from the Empress of France, my child.”
Carlota rose, staring down at the wealth of
jewels with puzzled, hurt pride.
“Why have we accepted money from Mr.
Ward to pay for my tuition when we had these
to sell?”


38 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
The vandalism of the suggestion horrified
Maria. She replaced everything with a resolute
hand, locking each case from a small bunch of
keys suspended from a slender chain on her
neck.
“You would market the trophies of your
grandmother!” she said haughtily. “America
has commercialized you. They belong to the
woman you will be. I will give you the keys at
your début.” ->
“I don't care so very much for them. They
are beautiful, but, after all, they are only
things you buy. I asked you for something
richer.” She laid her arms coaxingly about
Maria's throat. “Was my mother happy?”
“If love can make any woman happy, she
was.” Signora Roma's voice broke with agita-
tion. “Do not ask me anything further.”
“She was very young to die, was she not,
only twenty-two? She was younger than I am
now when she first met my father, was n’t she,
Maria?” No answer, but she felt the tears on
her own cheek as she pressed it to Maria's face.
“I think I know what it is you will not tell me.
With all the jewels and triumphs, my grand-
mother lost her love, and somehow, my mother
found love even though she died so young and
was never famous. Is that it?”
Maria suddenly reached her hands upward


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 39
and framed the face above her in a tremulous
CaresS.
“You have the heritage of rebellion; how
can I warn you or teach you to fight it? Your
worst enemy, Carlota, is your own heart. Dis-
trust it. It is the traitor to your individuality
- your genius, whatever you like to call it.”
Carlota stood erect, laughing suddenly, her
arms outstretched widely.
“Listen to this that Assunta told me too,”
she said teasingly. “Once, hundreds of years
ago, the Villa Tittani was part of an old castle.
The wall is all that is left of it, and the old
tower above the grottoes. And there was a
Princess Fiametta —”
Maria made horns with her finger-tips has-
tily.
“Assunta was a scandalous waggle-tongue.
Had I only guessed that she was stuffing your
ears with this sort of gunpowder, I would have
known how to finish her forever. I hear the
bell.”
It was the Marchese, courtly and whimsical
as he glanced shrewdly from one to the other.
“I have come to entreat a favor,” he said
happily. “After I have partaken of your most
excellent tea, ma bella Maria, I will ask it. I
have not the courage yet. How is our little
one?”


40 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
Carlota's brows drew together behind his
back. She waited in silence, listening while the
Marchese brought Maria into a mellow mood
with his little buoyant stories and high lights
of adventure.
“Ah, but I have seen sights to-day, a whole
avenue of traffic held up because a tiny gold-
finch escaped from a bird store on Twenty-
Third Street. It alighted directly in the car
track and shrank there panting and terrified,
and in this hard-hearted, prosaic city, not one
would drive over it. Is not that a fair sign of
the times, my friend? And again, I take the
'bus down the Avenue at dusk for the beauty
of the lights in perspective, like magnolia
blooms if you but half close your eyes. And
yesterday I saw the conductor, a red-cheeked
Irish boy, reading a newspaper that had been
left on a seat. What you think? The baseball
column? The sports? Not at all.” The Mar-
chese chuckled tenderly. “He reads the advice
to young mothers. See? It is the brand new
bambino somewhere with its finger-tips rose-
petaled, holding his heart fast. And a pack of
children on Thompson Street fighting — for
what? A trampled pink carnation. I would
have turned them loose if I could have, in that
meadow of oleanders and the orange grove
beyond, you remember, Maria, as you come


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 41
down from Frascati and below the Campagna
and the sea. Salute!” He sighed reminiscently,
and reached for his teacup. “I am an old ro-
manticist, Carlota. Your youth must be pa-
tient with my maunderings of sentiment.”
Maria retired to the kitchenette to prepare
fresh tea, and Carlota lighted the candles on
the low table by the fire.
“You are happy, yes?” the Marchese asked,
regarding her with the pride he took no pains
to conceal. “Jacobelli tells me it may only be
for one year more, and then, behold! I live for
that first night of triumph.”
Carlota sighed impatiently. It was as though
the sight of the jewels and story of La Paoli's
life had wakened in her youth's urge for ad-
venture. She looked up at the fine old face
wistfully.
“I am lonely. Tanta keeps me as secluded as
if I were in a convent. Surely I am old enough
to go out somewhere. Now that summer is
over, it seems as if I could not stand another
winter. Are n't they bleak here? Every day
when we walk in the Park, I want to turn and
run from it all, the stripped trees and caged
animals, and Maria and Jacobelli, and every-
thing!” Her finger-tips stretched widely. “I
am homesick.”
“No, you are just ennuied, that is all,” said


42 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
the Marchese soothingly. He pursed his lips
until his silver-gray imperial and pointed mus-
tache took on the semblance of a crescent and
scimitar. Yet his eyes twinkled down at her
understandingly. “Sunday evening I go, as is
my custom, to the home of my friend Carroll-
ton Phelps. Many, many interesting people
drop in there at that time. It would be a be-
ginning for you, but, mind, I will not have you
known for what you are. Not a whisper.”
“Are they all” — Carlota checked herself;
not for worlds would she have wounded the deb-
onnair old courtier by even suggesting that he
was past the meridian of life—“famous?”
“No, no, no. They are all aspirants,” he
corrected. “One must show some signs of hav-
ing the germ, at least, of genius before the door
opens widely, but you will find many who are
young like yourself, many. I, myself, will pre-
pare Maria.”
But when the evening came the signora was
indisposed, and insisted on Carlota's remain-
ing with her. The Marchese waved her objec-
tions aside tenderly.
“It is most informal and Mrs. Phelps is
charming. Here in America, Maria, we ad-
just the barriers of etiquette to the whim of
the moment. I will guard her from anything
dangerous, you may be sure.”


44 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
“Oh, no, I will not,” laughed Carlota, kiss-
ing her. “You would have me perpetually
making my début, tanta.” Accordingly she
had chosen her own gown, the hue of an oak
autumn leaf, which fell close to her slender
young figure in mediaeval lines. As she lin-
gered before the mirror before leaving, Carlota
smiled back at her reflection almost with a
challenge. Back at the villa there was an old
painting hanging at a turn in a staircase,
where the sunlight would fall full upon it from
an oriel window high above. It was the Prin-
cess Fiametta, her eyes wearied with the
weight of the golden crown that bound her
brows, her gown the same tint and style as the
one Carlota wore to-night. She turned her gir-
dle sideways so that its line might correspond
with that in the painting, and rumpled her
hair to make the resemblance more striking.
The old legend Assunta had told her re-
curred vividly to-night. She had been merely a
girl princess, imprisoned in the old garden and
towered castle by custom and precedent. And
there had been a young fisherman from the
village at the foot of the mountain, Peppino,
who had come to the Castle. From her tower
window she had seen and loved him, and at a
fête in the village she had dared to escape over
the wall and mingle with the people. Peppino


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 45
had danced with her, and wooed her, not know-
ing she was the princess in disguise, and his
sweetheart had stabbed her through jealousy.
It was the tragedy of youth's eternal quest
after romance and had lost nothing from As-
sunta's impassioned telling.
“To-night, maybe,” Carlota told herself,
half laughingly, half in earnest, as she looked
back in the mirror, “we scale the wall of Tit-
tani.”


CHAPTER IV
THEY passed up a carven, squarely built stair-
case to the second floor. The rooms were lofty
and spacious. It seemed to Carlota, in the first
glance about her, there here prevailed some-
thing of the same spirit that had marked her
grandmother's receptions. Little groups gath-
ered intimately in corners, a girl played some-
thing of Grieg's at the grand piano in the far
room. Her hair had a golden sheen beneath the
lampshade of Chinese embroidery, bronze and
yellow.
The Marchese was in his happiest mood, the
smiling courtier to his finger-tips. He left her
with Mrs. Phelps, a little dark woman with
frankly graying hair, but as the other guests
came up the staircase, Carlota found herself on
a low Moorish stool beside Carrollton Phelps's
chair. He attracted her greatly. During the
drive down the Avenue the Marchese had told
her his story with unction. It was a favorite
tale with him. Phelps had gone abroad in the
earliest days of the war, joining the Lafayette
Escadrille. Only those who knew him inti-
mately before this happened, could appreciate
what his personal gift of service had meant at


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 47
that time even in the great summing-up of sac-
rifice that followed later. He had been a very
successful artist, painting portraits of celebri-
ties and social leaders. He had always been
lavish in entertaining even then, and now,
when he returned at thirty-five, a helpless
paralytic from his final fall, the most amazing
thing had been, as the Marchese expressed it,
that “his wings were unbroken.”
To Carlota, even the expression of his face
brought a certain sense of encouragement, as if
he divined the strangeness that she felt among
all these new faces. His dark hair was prema-
turely whitened like his wife's, but she liked
his lean, virile face, and keen, dark eyes. Even
while his friends came and went beside him, he
kept her there, asking her questions of her life
in Italy.
“The Marchese has told me who you are —
a glorious heritage. Mind you keep the pace,
but don't let them starve you.” His thin,
strong hands gesticulated eagerly. “I know
them. It was the same with me before I went
over, success and more success and then —
husks. Do you know the greatest thing that
came to me from it all? My wife. We were
married just before I left, and she went also,
down in Serbia, where it was hell, you remem-
ber, nursing. I did not see her for four years,


48 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
then her face came out of a gray cloud in a
London hospital and I found the strength to
live even to look at her. Don't let them de-
ceive you, my dear. There is nothing at all in
this thing called life but love and ideals. Will
you tell that fellow to come here, the one with
the violin.”
The man stood by the piano, smiling at
something the girl had just said as she turned
from the keyboard. He bowed as Carlota gave
her message, looked at her with his quizzical,
half-closed eyes near-sightedly, and strolled to
Phelps's side. Presently he returned.
“I have to bring you back. He only wanted
me to meet you.”
“I have been preaching your song of life,”
Phelps said, drawing himself up in his chair
with the quick, restless movement that spoke
of pain-cramped muscles. “This is the spirit of
Serbia and all burdened peoples, Dmitri Ka-
vec. Betty saved his life, and he has retaliated
by keeping me in a ferment of enthusiasm over
his country in her birth-pangs. He is not as
sardonic as he appears. It is a pose.”
Dmitri's face flushed eagerly, a queer, shy
deepening in color like an embarrassed boy.
“I never pose, Miss Trelango. My life is
nothing, understand. I drop it overboard any-
where at all, but I had forgotten how to laugh


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 49
or look at the sun, and Mrs. Phelps has shown
it to me again, that is all. For her sake I put up
with the abuse from this person here. Do you
live down here?”
Carlota shook her head. Some one had taken
the place of the girl at the piano, she could not
see whom, but at the first low, minor chords,
she was aware of a strange thrill of interest.
Dmitri leaned back in the winged armchair
next to Phelps and closed his eyes.
“Now we have some dream pictures,” he
said softly.
Carlota lifted her head eagerly to catch a
glimpse of the player. The other men in the
studio, even Phelps himself, had all seemed to
her like the Marchese and Jacobelli, middle-
aged, sophisticated, impervious to romance or
sentiment, tired of all emotion. But the boy at
the piano was different. He seemed to have for-
gotten the people around him, and yet he led
their fancy where he would with the magic of
his melody and tone pictures.
Looking from face to face Carlota saw the
spell steal over each. The Marchese smiled
with half-closed eyes, living over the joyous
indiscretions of his youth. Mrs. Phelps had
forgotten her guests as she bent over Carroll-
ton, her fingers clasped in his with mothering
tenderness. The girl who had played Grieg


50 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
leaned back her head, her eyes filled with
moody unrest. Dmitri bent forward, his cigar-
ette burning itself to a neglected ash, a little
smile on his lips. Almost imperceptibly his
eyes watched Carlota.
A strange troubled feeling stole over her. It
was as if the music had seized upon her own
secret yearnings and was expressing them in all
its exotic cadence. Suddenly she caught the
eyes of the musician watching her as he played.
The studio was dimly lighted from long, pen-
dent temple lamps. The shifting glow from a
tall candelabra on the piano showed her his
face. It was young, with strong, lean lines, rest-
less, seeking eyes, the chin and mouth lacking
the sensuous weakness of the usual virtuoso.
When he finished he crossed to her, pausing to
answer a few who stopped him on the way.
Dmitri sighed heavily and rose,
“See now, he will come and tell you he has
been waiting for aeons to see your facé. He is all
on fire. Do not extinguish the flame. He will
tread the star path in this mood if you do not
pitch him down to earth.”
Carlota drew back from his amused eyes,
behind a tall Moorish screen of carved olive
fretwork. Why did they all smile at things that
were sacred and beyond all sense of touch or
sound? If the Marchese would only come near,


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 51
she would beg him to leave now, now while it
was all clear and fresh in her mind, the haunt-
ing, hurting sweetness of the music and the
long look between them. And as she found
her breath, he stood beside her. For the mo-
ment they were as isolated as if he had found
her alone in some glade of Fontainebleau, like
Pierrot and Columbine.
“Why did you try to hide from me?” His
tone was low and broken with embarrassment.
“I played to you — you knew that, did n't
you? I tried to get to you before, but Dmitri
had you. Who are you, you pagan girl with the
wonder eyes? Tell me how you slipped in here
to-night. Where I come from, we have gorgeous
night moths; I love them, brown and tawny.
Your eyes are that color, and your face is like a
jasmine lifted to the moon. A warm, amber
moon in late August, don't you know. You'll
think I'm a crazy poet if I keep on, but it's
your own fault. You make me want to be a
poet and everything else that means adoration
of you. Can't you speak to me?”
She closed her eyes as he gripped her hands
in his. It was all so strange, so wrong, she knew
how Maria would banish any such mad emo-
tions, and yet she gloried in the tumult in her
heart, in the swift response to every word he
uttered, the reckless urge within her to turn to


52 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
him. She strove to conquer it, and answer with
Composure.
“I think it is dangerous to speak so. Let us
go to Mr. Phelps.”
“And your eyes say all the while, “I have
found you,” he laughed and took the seat be-
side her. “That's what I told myself when you
looked at me. I've found her. Tell me, truth-
fully, are n't you glad to see me, are n't you?”
Carlota smiled up at him teasingly.
“The man you call Dmitri told me you
would say this to me. You should not let him
spoil the surprise.”
“Did he? I did n't think the old gray fra
had such discernment. Did he tell you my
name? I know yours. It is all the sweethearts
of the ages in one. That last thing I played was
a Celtic love song; I saw you in a silver mist
with the sea behind you and headlands and a
girl moon clambering up the stairway of de-
sire.” He stopped short, eyeing her with boy-
ish curiosity. “I wonder just who you are
really. You came with old Veracci, did n't
you?”
“I am Italian,” Carlota answered gravely.
“I have been here nearly three years. I am a
singer.”
“Are you?” he exclaimed eagerly. “That's
why everything in me called out to you. I was


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 53
in college, the third year, when the war came
over here. I had wanted to go with Carrollton,
but I was just eighteen then, so I promised my
mother I'd wait. She'll love you,” he added
ingenuously. “I went over the next spring
and came through all right; that's how I met
Dmitri. We were all wounded about the same
time.”
“I thought you said you were all right?”
“I mean I did n't get killed or anything like
that. Is n't Phelps a wonder? He'd give a dy-
ing coyote courage to howl. He told me to stick
it out down here. I'm a composer. One of those
kinks of fate put me into a perfectly respecta-
ble, sane Colorado family. Father was head of
some smelter works out there. He started me
through Columbia, with a postgrad. in law
ahead of me, but I met Carrollton and he
heard me play. Now I'm here until I make
good.”
“You will be famous.” Carlota's eyes shone
as she looked up at him. “Never have I heard
such music, and I have listened to —” She
checked herself, a sudden spirit of mischief
prompting her. Was he not Pierrot, poor and
struggling, with his heart a chalice of faith up-
lifted to the stars, while she was a child of
fortune with the pathway to success fair and
broad before her as the sea road to the Cam-


54 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
pagna back home. But for to-night, only to-
night, she would be Columbine for him, stray-
ing, friendless Columbine, seeking shelter from
the storm. “Some day I hope to be a great
singer,” she said softly.
“Do you? You beautiful, dreaming moth
girl. And lessons cost like the very devil here in
New York.” He ran his fingers through his
close-cut blond hair doubtfully, Carlota watch-
ing him shyly, thinking how much his profile
was like that of a certain young emperor's on
an old Roman coin she had. There was the
same straight line from forehead to nostril, the
same touch of youth's arrogance in his curving
lips and cleft, projecting chin. “Do you know,”
he continued confidently, “I am sure I can
help you. I could start you on your lessons, you
know. Don't refuse. I'd love to help you, to
even think I was. I have a rocky old studio
down on the Square; nothing like this; it's
poverty's back door compared to it, but if
you'll come there, I will help you.”
“Oh, but it is impossible,” Carlota ex-
claimed, rising hurriedly. “I never go any-
where alone, it is not the custom with my peo-
ple. It is so very kind of you, but” – she met
his eyes wistfully — “I do not even know
your name.”
“I am Griffeth Ames. Ask Veracci, he knows


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 55
me, so does Phelps. Listen, if you won't come
for your own sake, for God's pity, come for
mine. I'm starving down here for just what
you gave me to-night when I first looked into
yourteyes— inspiration. I must see you and
talk to you about my work; I need you. Will
you come?”
“The heavens would fall if I did,” she
laughed unsteadily, trying to draw her hands
from his clasp.
“Let them crash, who cares?” he said.
“You’ll come to me, I know you will. I'll call
to you with music till you hear.”


CHAPTER V
MARIA was still indisposed on the following
day. She asked many questions about the
evening before, who the guests had been, and
which ones had impressed Carlota. Always her
eyes sought the girl's, testing her answers.
“I should have been happier if you had
been there, tanta,” Carlota told her tenderly.
“You're not worrying still, are you? Nobody
carried me away.”
Maria closed her eyes as if to shut out any
telltale gleam they might have held.
“I blame myself whatever happens,” she
sighed dramatically. “I should never have
shown you the jewels. The ancient Hindoos
are perfectly right. They claim the evil spirits,
when imprisoned in' the earth, produced gold
and gems to ensnare the souls of mankind,
especially women. Ah, mia carina, I am grow-
ing old and careless. You have made no further
engagements?”
“The Marchese did not ask me to go any-
where else.” Carlota bent over a low jar of
cyclamen, her face turned away.
“Assuredly not. I am an old fool. Do not
speak of the jewels to anybody, not even Jaco-


58 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE"
them, yet there had been a lurking, secret fear
in the eyes of the old signora.
At the corner of Fifth Avenue she hailed a
taxicab, and arriving at the studio pleaded a
headache as an excuse for a short lesson. Jaco-
belli was in a trying mood. Over and over
again he railed at her, telling her that after
his months of training, she was not putting
her whole heart and soul into her singing. And
suddenly Carlota leaned her chin on her palms
at the back of the old grand piano, and asked:
“I wonder, maestro, if I were poor and un-
known, and came to you, would you give me
lessons because you had faith in my voice?”
“Certainly not,” exclaimed Jacobelli posi-
tively. “I could never give you enough to win
you the highest fame. The teaching is not suf-
ficient. The great artiste must have peace of
mind. We do not exist upon air; not even a
bird with a celestial voice like yours. No, my
dear, I would have told you to forget your
pride and do exactly as you have done. Secure
the financial backing of a man like Ogden
Ward. I worship art. It has always been my
life, but I recognize, like a sensible man, that
in the times we live in we artists must still
seek the patron even as Angelo and Raphael
did. The public is not strong enough to sus-
tain us. It cannot sustain itself, what would


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 59
you? Some day, when the world is all golden
with peace and plenty and brotherhood, then
the singer will be the beloved prophet once
again, and we shall delight in all the milk and
honey and oil and burnt offerings we require,
without the commonplace formality of con-
tracts.” He laughed at her heartily, leaning over
to pat her hands. “Come early to-morrow;
Mr. Ward will be here.”
She left the studio with a sense of suffocat-
ing rebellion. They were all the same, Jacobelli,
Ward, even Maria. Only the gentle, chivalrous
old Marchese warmed her faith with his ten-
der, hopeful philosophy, and were not his
friends like him, even Dmitri Kavec” What
was it this group had seemed to find in the
fields of scarlet poppies that lifted idealism
and faith in humanity above the creed of
success and individual self-seeking?
As she stepped from the old red-brick build-
ing, a Greek flower vender wheeled his push-
cart to the curb. She looked over the bril-
liantly tinted asters and chrysanthemums
longingly, but purchased merely a spray of
autumn leaves and hurried to the corner where
the Riverside autobuses passed on their way
crosstown to the Avenue,
Following after her leisurely came the man
who had picked up her gloves in the vestibule


6o THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
some nights before. It would have been diffi-
cult to guess his age or nationality. He was
slender, undersized, yet with a strongly knit,
athletic frame that told of military training.
Swarthy-skinned, dark-haired, with the bril-
liant black eyes of the southern races, he
seemed merely a boy until one saw the somber,
detached experience in his expression and
eyes. As Carlota, almost trembling at her own
temerity, stepped into the interior of a Wash-
ington Square 'bus, he followed her, swinging
lightly up the narrow, winding staircase to the
top.
| The number which Griffeth Ames had given
her was on the south side of the Square near
MacDougal Street. It was an old four-story
brownstone building, the last of five of the
same kind sitting back in small flagged yards
from the sidewalk. The paint which had scaled
from its iron portico and balconies merely imi-
tated the stucco front which had crumbled
off in large patches. There were many names
written on soiled cards and slips of white paper
above the rows of bells in the entrance, and
among them she found his. Just within the dim
hall a young Italian girl knelt on a marble-
topped table, polishing the brass ornaments on
the old oval hall mirror. She smiled down ab-
sently as Carlota asked the way.


62 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
and the old grand piano that stood crosswise
in the room compensated for all other lacks.
Ames was visibly embarrassed at her unan-
nounced descent upon his quarters. He sat at
a large, plain table drawn up before the south
light, coatless, collarless, his hair ruffled into
a crest, and ashes everywhere within his arm's-
length radius. Upon one corner of the table
there dozed a large yellow tomcat, palpably a
nomad. -
“I hope I have not come too soon?” she
asked hesitantly.
He swept a pile of magazines and papers
from a chair for her, but she chose the high
window-seat.
“It is n’t that, only I meant to set the stage
for you,” he said ruefully. “I would n't have
had you find me like this for anything. When
Ptolemy and I are alone here working, we just
run a bachelor shop, and forget there are any
other beings in the world.”
“Make it a dress rehearsal, then. I like it up
here very much.” She looked out at the Square,
the vivid autumn foliage accentuating the red
and gold of the foliage and the vari-colored
dresses of the Italian children playing there.
It looked like some reckless, impressionistic
painting, worked out merely in effective, dar-
ing splashes of color laid on with a palette


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 63
knife. From the windows of Maria's chosen
abode uptown, one gazed down upon an in-
definite row of closed, chill, characterless
dwellings, with no gleam of color from street
to street.
“I would like to live down here too,” she
said thoughtfully. “It is very different from
anything I have seen in New York before.”
Ames watched her with eager appreciation.
Her glossy, luxuriant hair waved back from
her low forehead into a loose knot at the nape
of her neck. Her face held the elusive appeal
of La Cigale's. The memory of the old paint-
ing occurred to him with its appealing beauty
and he felt a sudden protective tenderness
towards this waif of summer's idleness.
“It is lonely; that's the only thing about
it,” he said, coming near her. “If it was n't for
Dmitri and the Phelpses I'd throw up the
game sometimes and go West to the smelter.”
“The smelter; what is that?” she asked
curiously.
“Where they separate the ore from the
quartz, you know, the real from the slag.”
“Slag?” she repeated slowly. “Like the
crucible? I know what you mean. I think you
are in it now, here, don't you?”
“Dmitri would love you for that,” he ex-
claimed eagerly. “It's all he talks about, the


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 65
“Does she not look at the candle?” she
asked. “I — I forget when I look at you.”
But when she had finished, he was almost
humble in his supreme gratitude to whatever
fate had sent her to his lone garret. With
boyish fervor and earnestness he told her the
whole world lay at her feet if only he could
find a way to teach her.
“I can show you only the first steps of the
way, and your voice is so glorious now, so per-
fect. Who taught you how to use it?”
“Every one sings in Italy,” Carlota said
evasively. “Even the girls at the fountains
and the boys when they go out in the fishing
fleet. I took only a few lessons there.”
Inwardly, she felt overjoyed at the success
of her ruse, and agreed to come to him twice a
week for lessons if he would accept in payment
whatever she was able to give. But he would
not listen to this.
“It's enough to have you as my pupil. When
other people hear you sing and know that I
have taught you, it will bring me all sorts of
other work. I know. Besides, you inspire me.
Yes, you do. I don't know what it is.” He
drew in a deep breath, watching her. “Guess
we were just a couple of old lazy dubs here,
were n’t we, Ptolemy? I've wanted to work.
It's all been here in my head, till I could n't


66 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
sleep nights with the themes rampant, but I
could n't catch them. They were like fireflies.
Ever try to get them at night? I did when I
was a little chap out West. I always wanted to
train them. Must you go so soon? I did n't get
your full name the other night. Carlota, the
Marchese called you, did n't he?”
“Just call me that,” she told him gravely.
“I would not be allowed to come here if my
people knew. They are very conservative.”
“It does n’t matter, anyway,” he said con-
fidently. “You’ll never use it in your work. I
don't care just so long as you come. Dmitri
said you never would. He walked down here
last night with me. Queer chap, is n’t he? Did
you like him?”
“I did n't notice him,” Carlota spoke
thoughtfully, not realizing the purport of her
own words as she looked up at him on the
threshold of the stairs. “I only remembered
you.”


68 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
even a glimmer of success. To her they were
all that filled her days now with expectancy.
Maria's ill health continued to prevent her
from calling for Carlota every day at the up-
town studio, and while she longed to tell the
Marchese, she feared that even his solicitude
might put an end to the only gleam of romance
or adventure that had come to her. So far as
she knew, no one had discovered her visits to
the Square, yet never did she leave the arched
doorway of her home that the nonchalant
stranger did not follow her. Patiently, without
haste or apparent malevolence, he shadowed
her to Jacobelli's or downtown. Sometimes in
the morning, he would lounge at Cecco's cigar
store around the corner on Madison Avenue,
smoking his endless store of curious, long, thin
cigarettes. From Cecco's one could look
through the middle of the block towards Fifth
Avenue, over the tops of intervening fences.
The only apartment house was the one where
Maria Roma and Carlota lived. And while he
chatted over the latest juggling with the fates
of nations and peoples overseas, he would for-
get to look at Cecco rolling cigarettes, and eye
the distant fire escapes like a bird of prey,
gauging the flight.
One day, as she came from Ames's place,
the impulse swept over Carlota to see the old


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 69
Marchese and tell him. He would understand,
she was sure, and she longed to have him know
Griffeth well, to appreciate his work and help .
him. -
Through Maria and Jacobelli she knew
that even in New York, where the power of
great wealth dominated the will of the people
through its manifold channels of politics, so-
ciety, and charity, yet there was an altar
erected even here to the unknown god of
truth, and the Marchese stood ever as a high
priest of the eternal verities. -
“You must not be discouraged, my dear,”
he had told her one afternoon at tea beside
Maria's couch. “Look beneath the surface of
things. The brass band is always at the head
of the procession. Once one has escaped its
clamor, one may pay attention to the motive
behind the parade, yes? There is always in any
race, in any period, a certain group of people,
in all walks of life, who worship truth wherever
manifest, in art or the grace of right living. It
is absurd to claim that any class has a mo-
nopoly of this spirit. Ogden Ward is a multi-
millionaire, doubtless a thorough robber baron
in his way, yet he serves a certain purpose
through his fascination for the beautiful and
rarest in art. Some day, when, God willing, he
passes on, perhaps his collections will be given


70 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
back to the people. I can do little except en-
courage this spirit wherever I find it. Casa-
nova, of the Opera, is a noble fellow, yet he
must perforce kowtow when the mighty atoms
on the subscribers' list say they will have this
or that. But that does not prevent Casanova
from his personal worship of real art, you see.
I know him very well, indeed, and some day
he will meet you.”
Remembering this, Carlota stepped into a
shop on Eighth Street and telephoned to the
Lafayette. It was the one golden moment
when she felt she must see the Marchese and
tell him everything, take him back with her to
the old studio and make him listen to Ames's
compositions for the new opera. But at that
particular instant the Marchese was meeting
Ogden Ward at his club by appointment, and
the message was left on a slip in his box at the
hotel unheeded.
“I want you to meet Count Jurka; used to
be with the Bulgarian Legation, remember.
He has proven to be a very valuable agent
along the new lines of readjustment. I met him
in Egypt first in connection with the Rhodopis
emeralds. They were found in the royal
mummy, and there was some argument in
connection with them. I had furnished the
means for the research work and I have the


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 71
emeralds. He is quite a savant in his way when
it comes to the history of famous jewels.”
“I do not care for them,” returned the old
Marchese blandly, as he ensconced himself in a
deep leather armchair and smiled. “Relics of
barbarism, my dear Ward; rings in noses and
bangles on leaping toes, merely a variation of
the same impulse in humanity to decorate it-
self that we see to-day in certain types of
women.” -
“And men also. Say it.” Ward leaned for-
ward on the polished table and laid a small
leather case before him. “I like to carry unset
stones around in my pockets, not for decora-
tion. What would you call me, Marchese?”
“An idolator, either of the beautiful or of
the peculiar quality of concentrated value that
seems to lie in jewels.”
Ward lifted out two pearls, wrapped in
tissue papers, and held them in the hollow of
his palm.
“You're right. Here are the largest gems
from the collections of the murdered Empress
Elizabeth of Austria. They always darkened
when she wore them. She had them dipped
regularly in a perforated casket into the sea to
restore the luster. It is not alone the value of
them that interests me. I like stones that have
tragic stories connected with them. There was


72 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
a necklace of pearls around the throat of Marie
Stuart as she was being led to execution. I
have never been able to find them. Jurka is
also a collector and lover of gems from the his-
toric standpoint. He is standing by the desk
now, the tall fellow, fair-haired. Do you recog-
nize him?”
The Marchese looked through the arched
doorway at the man Ward had designated. He
was trying to place where he had seen him,
and suddenly smiled, one forefinger at his
forehead.
“He was at the Lafayette a week ago Sat-
urday, dining with Palmieri, Collector of the
Port, a delightful person.”
“Well posted on the valuation of jewels,”
Ward remarked laconically. He paused to
light his favorite pipe with the air of assured
bonhomie he assumed when relaxed. “How is
Carlota?”
“She progresses well.”
“Why not after two years under Jacobelli?
He tells me her technique is faultless, but she
lacks temperament.”
“He does not know her,” the Marchese
answered placidly. “The temperament is there
dormant. It needs but the awakening. She is
still a child.”
“Her mother married before she was herage.”


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 73
“And never sang at all. Waken the Paoli
nature in a girl like Carlota and you will lose
her. We do not wish her to experience love, to
run the gamut of emotion — it is fatal to a
woman of genius. Then, too, afterwards, you
always reach her through the husband. Hus-
bands of geniuses – ah, my dear Ward, I
could tell you of many catastrophes.”
“Not marriage.” Ward knocked the tobacco
from his coat sleeve that had fallen there while
he had filled his pipe. “An affair possibly. A
quick flurry of passion that might sweep over
her like a clarifying fire, burning out the under-
brush in her nature. You might arrange a quiet
little dinner at my apartment with Signora
Roma and Carlota. I do not think I have
heard her sing lately.”
He rose at the approach of Count Jurka and
presented him. The old Marchese was genial
and full of welcome. Had he not seen him al-
ready down in the haunt of the selective with
Palmierif
“I did not see you there.” Jurka spoke with
a very clear, careful ennunciation, his large
blue eyes never winking as he met the other's
pleased scrutiny. “Palmieri is interested in
some fête for Italian child sufferers of the war
— very worthy object. I wished him to meet
Mrs. Carrington Nevins, who has been most


74 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
helpful to me in organizing committees for my
own stricken land.”
As they sat down Ward began without pre-
amble, his fingers pressing nervously on the
small leather case containing the pearls.
“I told Jurka I thought you could assist
him. He is gathering data on rubies. Do you
know of one called the Zarathustra P. It is a
perfect pigeon blood, second to the largest in
the world.”
“I am absolutely ignorant concerning jew-
els,” smiled the Marchese indulgently. “Con-
sider me a perverted mind.”
Jurka leaned slightly towards him.
“I have already traced it to Italy, but many
years ago. It was part of a collection, rubies
and pearls. I thought it might have come over
here and been disposed of to Mr. Ward. It is
almost impossible now to find out what has
become of most royal jewels, I mean the his-
toric ones. Sooner or later, I have understood,
if their tale of tragedy is terrible enough, they
find their way here.”
Ward did not pick up the opening. Saunter-
ing away from the club up the Avenue, the
Marchese pondered later, not upon the Zar-
athustra ruby, but on Ward's invitation. At
first he hesitated at a crossing, wishing he
might talk it over with Maria, but finally con-


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE is
tenting himself with telephoning to her. Car-
lota caught the rising inflection of exultation
as Maria accepted for them both.
“Certainly I'm well enough to go,” she
cried; then, hanging up the receiver, “Ah, be-
loved child, you do not understand the con-
quest you have made already. But it will not
do to appear too eager. You must learn to act
like your grandmother, distant, gracious, al-
ways the queen.”
But Carlota was supremely indifferent to the
favor shown her by Ward. For weeks she had
been full of strange, gay little moods and sud-
den, tempestuous caresses that left Maria
breathless and speculative. She smiled over
her shoulder now, brushing her long dark
curls before the Venetian mirror.
“Surely, bella mia” — Signora Roma spoke
with emphasis — “surely you comprehend
what this means to your progress. There are
yet two years before you, possibly more, be-
fore you make your début. Therefore, you
must be diplomatic and save your independ-
ence until you are assured that the race is won.
You must appear perfect at Mr. Ward's din-
ner. I will dress you like the starlight, like the
pearl from the sea, très ingénue, so he will see
the great sensation you will make.”
Carlota laughed teasingly.


76 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
“I would love to make my début in some
splendid barbaric opera, where I could wear
cloth of gold and armlets, bangles. I wish I
could sing Semiramide at the very beginning,
or Fedora, and you, you adorable old tanta,
will probably persuade Jacobelli to make me
bow as Juliette or Marguerite.”
“The Veronese are very dark like you, and,
thank God, you will still be slender and maiden-
like,” sighed Maria reflectively. “It is a won-
derful opportunity to impress Mr. Ward. You
had better effect Juliette that night.”
“I don't like this thing you call opportunity.
I like, as the Marchese says, what is to be will
be. I like the inevitable. It must have been
delightful to feel your destiny was written in
the stars.” She pinned her hair up carelessly.
“Mr. Ward is the only person from whom we
have been compelled to borrow money. He will
be repaid amply — in money.”
“Only a person who could appreciate the
priceless value of such a voice as yours could
have had such faith. He is the greatest patron
of the arts in the world — ”
“I hate patronage. It simply means that he
can pay the highest price for what he desires,
that is all.” Carlota turned to her stormily.
“Another may have a million times more
appreciation, more love, more yearning to aid,


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 77
and still stand with hands bound because he
has no money. I hate patronage. I would rather
sell every jewel in your treasure chests than
give a man like Ogden Ward the right to order
my appearance at his dinner.”
At Maria's gesture of despair her mood
changed instantly to one of coaxing tender-
ness. To please her only would she go, not be-
cause Ward wished her to. She had hurried
home after telephoning the Marchese, and his
message had come when she had felt most re-
bellious. It had become increasingly difficult
for her to get away for her lessons with Ames
twice a week. To-day Signora Roma had been
more curious than ever, and it had taken the
most elusive of excuses to soothe her. All man-
ner she had made up so far, little necessary
trips to the art shops, the galleries, the quiet
cathedral, feeling that she was indeed playing
Columbine in the garret studio down on the
Square. Yet she was almost forced to attend a
dinner given by Ward as if it were an honor
bestowed by him. This they would urge her to
do, Maria, Jacobelli, and even the Marchese;
yet, if they knew of her visits to Ames, she
would be compelled to stop them because
they were unconventional.
Almost in a spirit of audacious bravado, she
deliberately started for the studio the follow-


78 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
ing morning. It would be a surprise to Ames,
and she wanted to talk over the dinner with
him. For the first time in weeks the watching
figure was absent from its customary post near
Cecco's store. When she left the 'bus, it
seemed as if she could have lifted her whole
heart to the Quarter in relief. It was like some
enchanted realm to her where hopes and
dreams were tangible, and only facts untrue.
Spring stood tiptoe on the Arch and scattered
her soul-disturbing germs abroad. She knelt at
the edge of the old fountain and mimed at her-
self in the water that had just been permitted
to splash therein from the far-off springs of
Askohan quite as if they had flowed from Cas-
talian founts. She flirted with the rainbow that
hangs over the leaping spray on sunny morn-
ings, and wigwagged joyous discontent to every
possible shepherd in the distance.
From a flower-stand at the corner Carlota
recklessly bought daffodils and narcissus.
They had grown in phalanxes along the wall of
Tittani. Almost she had decided to tell Maria
and Jacobelli she would never go to the dinner,
never accept any more aid from Mr. Ward,
when suddenly she was arrested by the sight
of a dark gray limousine standing at the curb
in front of Ames's residence. Clinging around
it was a flock of little Italian children, trying to


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 79
peer into the interior sanctum, a study in suède
leather with dark red Jacqueminot roses in
slender French gray silver vases in each corner.
She hesitated outside the studio door. A
clear, well-modulated voice came from within,
a woman's voice.
“Twice a week, then, Mr. Ames, and we
will not speak of terms. I have heard of your
wonderful success with beginners, and Natha-
lie's temperament requires an environment
like this, unusual and bizarre, don't you know?
It wilts at any touch of the customary or medi-
ocre that you find in most musical studios up-
town. Here you fairly radiate atmosphere.”
She hesitated just as Ames opened the door.
He looked flushed and elated, and seized her
hand to present her to his callers.
“Oh, but we have already heard of you, Miss
— er — Carlota!” Mrs. Carrington Nevins
exclaimed. “This must be your little Italian
pupil who sings so charmingly, Mr. Ames.
Chandos told us all about you at his tea last
week, how you came and went like a little
flitting city sparrow, and not even Mr. Ames
knew your real name.”
Carlota stood in silence, her chin lifted, her
long lashes downcast as she drew off her gloves
slowly. The daffodils and narcissus lay in the
curve of her arm. She caught a little smile on


8o THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
the face of the girl standing with Ames, this
tall, fair girl with the ice-blue eyes, and a wave
of fiery scorn swept over her at this invasion of
her own particular haunt, Columbine's special
chimney-pot.
“You must hear her sing,” Ames said posi-
tively, going to the piano. “Lay off your
things, Carlota. I want you just to try that
little barcarolle you taught me.”
“I cannot sing to-day, Mr. Ames.” Carlota
met his surprised eyes serenely. “It is impossi-
ble.”
“But just this one —” He stopped abruptly,
warned by the expression of her face.
Mrs. Carrington Nevins raised her lorgnette,
the slenderest excuse for one in carven tortoise
shell and platinum, gazing at the girl amusedly.
“My dear, I believe you are temperamental
like all singers should be. It is your preroga-
tive. But you must remember all that Mr.
Ames is doing for you, and try to obey him.
Is n't she a dear little thing, Nathalie?”
“Do you live right down here in the Sicilian
quarter?” asked Nathalie eagerly. “It’s so
funny. I made mother drive through there to-
day and the car made quite a sensation.”
Carlota turned her head and looked at her
in a haughty, detached way.
“I have never been there. I am a Roman.”


CHAPTER VII
CARLOTA stood aside to let them pass down
the narrow stairs. In the half light from the
dusty skylight overhead she seemed like a
shadow excepting for the light in her eyes. The
sunlight from the studio's south window sent a
lane of gold through the open door, and she
watched Nathalie as she laid her hand in
Ames's lingeringly.
“I shall love it here,” she heard her say, in
her rather plaintive, appealing way. “And I
want you to be sure and stay for dinner Tues-
day. You can suggest things for our Italian
fête next month, can't he, mother?”
“I shall be delighted if I can be of any serv-
ice,” Ames told her, as he followed down the
four flights of stairs to the waiting car.
Even Ptolemy seemed to catch the conta-
gion of trouble in the air and leaped stealthily
out of her way to the top of the piano. Carlota
waited, standing in the center of the floor, her
eyes ablaze with scorn as Ames entered.
“You were exactly like old Pietro, my grand-
mother's courier,” she told him. “I have never
seen you like that before. Who are these peo-
ple? Why did you ask me to sing for them?”
He swept her a low bow jubilantly.


82 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
“Dear, it means ten dollars a lesson. That
is the Mrs. Carrington Nevins and her only
daughter. She will bring me other pupils, too,
from her crowd out on the north shore. You're
my mascot.”
“Did you try her voice?” She spoke very
softly. “Do you intend giving her lessons?”
“I certainly do.” He began rummaging in
the wall cupboard after his stock of china.
“We’re going to celebrate my first real suc-
cess. I'm going to the market and buy a spread
and telephone Dmitri to come down, and you
shall preside and sing.”
“Did you try her voice?” demanded Car-
lota again, her voice a warning of smouldering
anger.
He nodded his head happily. “She has a very
appealing quality, a light lyric soprano, well
pitched and true. Of course she has had a lot
of training.”
Carlota deliberately swept a jar of golden
tulips from the top of the piano to the floor in
crashing fragments. She herself had bought
the jar for him, a squat plaster one, painted in
dull gold and Tuscan fruit tints. It had been
her whim to keep it filled with flowers. There
had been a small urn like it before a statue of
Daphne in the garden at Tittani, and she had
always as a child kept fresh flowers there, she


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 83
told him. Now, it lay like a symbol of broken
faith at her feet. As Ames swung about in
amazement, she drew on her gloves with su-
perb indifference.
“Will you kindly tell me the meaning of
this?” he demanded hotly.
“It means — nothing, signor, nothing at
all. I have an engagement to-day. I cannot
take my lesson from you.”.
But he saw the trouble and pain in her eyes
instantly and caught her hands in his.
“Now, listen, Carlota, you know all this
means to me — to us. They would never have
come at all if it had n't been for you. You
heard what she said. Chandos is the English
painter downstairs. He's heard you sing and
has told them about it.”
Slowly the tears gathered heavily to her
lashes. She had given him the full benefit of all
she had learned from the great Jacobelli, and
now he would give it to this girl for a few pal-
try dollars.
“Why do you have to take her when she
has everything? Go down through the Quarter
and find some poor singer. Take even the chil-
dren. But give it freely, not for money. I cannot
bear to see you acting like old Pietro before
such people. Grateful? Do you think that Ja-
cobelli was ever grateful in his life?”


84 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
“What do you know about Signor Jaco-
belliP'' he demanded teasingly. “You’re angry
because she called you a city sparrow, my
nightingale, and you're right, but I can't af-
ford to turn down such a chance. I've got to
live here if I am to work on my opera and suc-
ceed, and this is enough for me.”
“You may do as you like, but I shall not
come here as long as that girl takes lessons
from you.”
“But can't you see how it will benefit us
both?” He stopped before her impatiently.
“You are my star pupil. Perhaps I might even
persuade Mrs. Nevins to let you sing at one of
her musicales. If I could get her interested in
my opera, think what it would mean for me,
dear —”
“I did not think you were of the kind who
seek patronage,” she said slowly. “I will not
come again. Not for one instant would I sing
for that woman. You have no ideals. I be-
lieved you were altogether different.” -
“Carlota, come back,” he called after her;
but the door shut with a slam that sent Ptol-
emy scurrying for cover, and he stopped short,
frowning with a quick, boyish resentment at
her suspicion of him. Although there had never
been a definite declaration of love between
them, yet their whole acquaintance had ri-


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 85
pened in an atmosphere of romantic glamour,
a piquant, elusive mutual acceptance of each
other idealized. He could not have understood
the surging resentment in Carlota's heart as
she went uptown to take her real lesson from
Jacobelli. Once in the Square she had tossed
the jonquils and daffodils broadcast to the
children around the fountain. Her mind was a
tumult of emotions, of hot rebellion against
Ames's acceptance of her coming as a gift of
Fate that was his due. She knew her identity
was a mystery to him. He had told her of ask-
ing Phelps, and being told she was a protégée
of the Marchese Veracci a young Italian singer
in whom he was interested; that was all.
He had all of the artist's selfish point of
view, she thought. He had not even caught the
personal side of her anger. He saw merely the
professional jealousy of one singer towards an-
other in her antagonism towards Nathalie
Nevins, and this attitude added fuel to Car-
lota's raging indignation against him. He
could not even grasp or understand all that the
visits had meant to her, all that she had given
him gladly. He had not even been musician
enough to distinguish between the quality of
her voice and that of Nathalie. And suddenly
it flashed across her that possibly Jacobelli
was right; that she did lack power and dra-


86 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
matic force, feeling, passion, all that made the
really great singer.
When she reached the studio she flung the
outer door wide even as Maria might have
done. Signor Jacobelli was at the piano amus-
ing himself. The taunting, passionate notes of
the “Habanera” crashed upon her as she
stood a moment transformed utterly from the
somber, unawakened girl he had last met. And
in an instant she had picked up the melody,
provocative, imperative, daring, sauntering
into the room with all of Carmen's tricks at
her finger-tips, at her tongue's end. Jacobelli
turned quickly, catching the new note of pas-
sion and power. She did not appear even to see
him, but flung her whole soul into the song and
the underlying tragedy of its motif.
“Brava!” murmured the old maestro,
huskily. “Try now the “Dance of the Tam-
bourines.’”
As she finished the gypsy song, he sprang
from the bench, kissing her hands in ecstasy.
“I do not know, I do not ask from whence
this has come to you, but I thank God it is
there at last, the divine note for which I have
prayed. So you shall sing for Mr. Ward at his
dinner, ma bella, and take him by storm.”
Carlota's eyes glowed with anger as she
threw aside her cloak and hat. She looked for


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 87
the instant like a reincarnation of the youthful
Paoli, as he remembered her back at La Scala.
“I will not sing for him or be shown off to
him any more,” she told him hotly. “I detest
him and all people like him.”
Jacobelli threw back his head, laughing de-
lightedly.
“Aha! Temper?” he cried. “It is the begin-
ning of temperament, thanks be to God. We
expect it, my dear, sooner or later. The artistic
temperament is like the resistless forces of na-
ture, the storm, the volcano, the tidal wave,
the lightning. Life would be tame without
them in spite of the danger, would it not? We
crave the thrill. Never have I heard the great
dramatic quality before in your voice. Ah, you
shall sing all the glorious colorful rôles they
have had to shelve because there was no one to
sing them.”
Carlota had turned from him and gone to
the west windows, the tears blinding her sight.
Even the agony of one's heart, then, had a
commercial value. Life was merely the arena
where one gave all for applause, where human
emotions merely added to the thrill of sus-
pense. The deeper the reality of the knife-
thrust, the cleverer the counterfeit acting.
“I hate it all,” she sobbed brokenly. “I
wish we could go back to Tittani. Tell them


88 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
my voice is hopeless, maestro, and let me
go.”
Jacobelli lit a cigarette deliberately, eyeing
her thoughtfully. He tipped a chair backwards
and seated himself, rocking slowly on two of
its legs. - -
“Who is he?” he asked gently.
Carlota looked back at him in angry silence,
startled into caution at his words, but he
waved one plump hand at her airily and reas-
suringly.
“Remember, my child, I have known both
your mother and grandmother. History moves
in recurrent cycles, even the history of human
hearts, and particularly when we consider
heredity. I talked with Margherita Paoli when
first she took Bianca from the convent. She
told me her theory of life for a woman of genius
and I agreed with her perfectly. Love in its
perfection is the supreme sacrifice of self, art is
the elevation of self, the crowning of self. They
are at war eternally. So I told her, and she said
she would keep Bianca safe behind the wall of
Tittani while she studied. Never should the
danger of love approach her until her success
was assured, and this creed was impressed
upon your mother, my dear, with what result?
Even while we two fools prated, she was listen-
ing in the garden to the boy Peppino and was


90 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
lived upon. Ah, the wonderful woman she was!
Only as he died, unconscious in her arms,
could she speak to him or caress him, and he
never knew. Think of her pride, imperial in its
abnegation.”
“But my mother was happier.”
He shrugged his shoulders.
“Who can say? Women are complex. Bianca
was all tenderness, a flower of love. She did not
pass the walls to seek adventure, but to escape
from ambition. When I first met her fresh from
La Pietà and heard your grandmother's plans,
I thought, never, never, with such eyes and
lips. And I told her the lines from ‘Romeo et
Juliette’; you know them?
“‘With love's light wing did I o'erperch these walls,
For stony limits cannot hold love out.’”
“I am glad she escaped!” flamed back Car-
lota. “Even my grandmother, who knew in her
own heart that love was all to a woman, would
have shut her own child away from its beauty
and truth —”
“From its agony and devastating influ-
ence,” Jacobelli protested placidly. “To the
woman of genius this is so, my dear. You can-
not discuss it logically because you have never
experienced love. Even I have never loved to
distraction, always with reason, and I have


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 91
been most happy. I have buried two beautiful,
gifted women who adored me.”
Carlota turned suddenly away, afraid of the
flood of words on her lips that she longed to
pour out. It would only arouse suspicion
against her if she went too far, and already the
reaction was setting in, and she felt a great
weariness of body and spirit. Were they not
right, after all, she thought, as she stood by
the window looking riverward? Somewhere
she had read that the yearning after ideals was
merely the soul's subconscious memory of an-
other life. Was it then foolish to seek a path to
the stars through the world of everyday self-
ishness and commercialism? Griffeth accepted
patronage gladly for the sake of his operetta.
She would have had him finish it in the high
seclusion of the garret studio and win recogni-
tion and fame as his right once it had been sub-
mitted to the directors of the Opera. Instead
he must seek the favor of persons like Mrs.
Nevins, must add the weight of their influence
before the magic doors would open to him.
And in order to win Mrs. Nevins's interest and
friendship, he must give lessons to her daughter
and constantly flatter and compromise with
his own critical faculty.
She who loved directness and clarity of vi-
sion and the straight, white road ahead, faced


92 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
suddenly the devious, twisting path that led to
success and popularity. Yet there never was a
straight road that led to a mountain peak, she
thought. Always the winding way, the com-
promise with risk and danger until one reached
the summit of desire. She smiled slowly, and
turned to Jacobelli, smoking in long, leisurely
puffs until she should have changed her mind.
“I will go to Mr. Ward's dinner and sing for
him,” she said.
He laid aside his pipe.
“The caprice and passion of the woman al-
ways move in a circle. Wait but patiently, and
behold, she is back at the starting-point, and
is willing. My dear, you show common sense
and astuteness. Forget all this love nonsense. I
know not what had roused you, but put it
away from you. Ogden Ward can open every
door for you in the operatic world. I would not
be too indifferent and petulant with him. Ah,
if I could only teach you your grandmother's
queenly way, the mingling of alluring charm
and condescension, the aloofness of her
favor —”
Carlota drew on her gloves, watching him
the while.
“I may toss roses from the top of the wall;
that is it, signor?” she said gravely. “I shall
try to remember.”


94 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
in delight. He had never seen her in evening
dress before, and Maria had spared no pains or
thought for this that might be her night of
conquest.
“You shall be Juliette in her triumph,” the
old singer had said. “Cloth of silver with a veil
of lace from the Colonna wedding chests. And
the very cap of seed pearls which your grand-
mother bought from the old antique dealer in
Verona near the bridge as you leave the palace.
And just a girdle of filigree silver, set in pearls
with tassels of them. But for your throat, noth-
ing at all. It is encircled by beauty quite
enough. First I thought to let you wear her
chain of rubies with the black cross. Then the
necklace of opals. She loved them. It came
from Russia and was part of the great Cather-
ine's treasure. One of the Orloffs gave it to
Paoli. I would not have you wear anything to-
night that might bring the evil eye upon you.”
Carlota had laughed at her earnest insist-
ence. She felt no interest in Ward himself, only
a deep-rooted resentment against the circum-
stances which forced her to accept his hospi-
tality when she disliked him. Even now she
merely smiled at his words, and turned eagerly
to greet the old Marchese. The latter's gray
eyebrows arched with approval when he be-
held the result of Maria's costuming.


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 95
“So soon you grow into your kingdom, mia
carina,” he exclaimed half teasingly, half mus-
ingly. “Behold, yesterday, Mr. Ward, it was a
child whom I cajoled with chocolate almonds.
I do assure you, she was the utter gourmand
for them, rummaging into my pockets like a
squirrel, and now we bow to her sovereignty,
is it not so?”
“The bloom fulfills the promise of the bud,”
Ward answered gravely, and Carlota's eyes
held a startled wonderment as he gazed down
at her. It seemed to-night as if his glance even
held a covert challenge that aroused every
element of resentment in her nature. Through-
out the dinner she was reticent and unrespon-
sive. The Marchese, as always, was so ab-
sorbed in his little anecdotes and sallies of wit
that Ward's attentions escaped him. Maria ob-
served, but gave no sign of annoyance; rather,
she was filled with pride at the influence of her
beloved child over so great a man as Ward.
Jacobelli ate and drank as a connoisseur, pay-
ing little attention to the conversation about
him, but relaxing under the mellowing influ-
ence of Ward's wines and Ishigaki's solicitous
ministrations. Finally he caught Carlota's re-
fusal to sing as her host urged her after they
rose from dinner.
“It is no time to-night to show caprice, cara


96 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
mia,” he exclaimed pompously. “Come, I
would have you sing and prove to Mr. Ward
how soon you will triumph at the Opera.”
Carlota's eyes sought the Marchese's in
swift appeal, but he merely nodded to her en-
couragingly above the lifted rim of his glass of
old Amontillado.
“Miss Trelango is only afraid that you will
put her through your professional paces, Jaco-
belli,” Ward interposed easily. “Show the
Marchese and Signora Roma those new photo-
graphs in the east gallery of the excavations at
Rhodopis. You will find the emeralds we took
from the royal mummies there also. Ishigaki
will open the case for you.”
Jacobelli smiled understandingly, and led
the way. The Japanese moved noiselessly
about the salon, turning off a light here and
there until only those in the stone lanterns
gave a nebulous glow. When they were alone,
Ward moved one of the lacquered screens
from its place, disclosing a tall panel of solid
gold embroidery set in ebony. Flamingoes
moved through sunlit marshes.
“This will amuse you,” he said, stepping
upon a convex spring set in the floor. The panel
slipped silently up. “This is my favorite music-
room.” He led the way through the narrow
door into the interior. It was domed with


98 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
self, but Ward had waited two years for this
moment, and she felt her strength leave her as
he held her. The crystal vase crashed behind
him as he tripped backwards over the slender
stand, her hand holding his face from her.
“Maria!” she called. “Maria! Come to me!”
“Let her alone,” warned Jacobelli, placing
himself at the door of the gallery. “She must
learn poise and command of herself.”
Maria glared at him, infuriated.
“Mother of God, when the child needs me!”
she cried, and sped along the salon to the inner
room. The Marchese's glance met that of the
maestro with troubled questioning.
“Surely, he would not attempt anything to
alarm her. You do not think —” The old Ital-
ian spread out his stout, expressive hands.
“I do not think when I am with such a man
as Ogden Ward. He is a law to himself.”
Veracci's expression changed instantly.
From the easy, genial old diplomat there
seemed to fall over his face the mask of the
soldier.
“No man is that,” he answered. “I would
hold him accountable if he has annoyed the
child.”
Before Maria had reached them, Carlota
had released herself. She turned to him with
clenched hands, her face white with anger.


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 99
“Take me home, tanta!” she exclaimed.
“I — I am not well.”
Ward regarded them both with amused
speculation. -
“You are temperamental, my dear, perhaps
a trifle gauche also, too much the gamine in
your play.” He held out one hand to show the
scratch that ran like a scarlet thread along the
skin. “Tell Jacobelli I say it is time to prepare
for her début.”
Carlota stood with her back to the piano, her
eyes filled with quick tears, Maria's caressing
hand on her arm to check her.
“I do not need your permission,” she said
passionately. “I have the voice and I will go
to Casanova myself, and tell him who I am.
He will hear me. And I will pay you back
everything. You do not know that I can eas-
ily. I have my grandmother's jewels —”
“But, my poor foolish one,” cried Maria,
“Casanova would not give you standing-room
in his chorus if you went to him without the
backing of money and patronage.”
“Then I will go back to Italy. Where is the
Marchese, Maria?” She spoke with sudden
quietness and dignity. “I am sorry, Mr. Ward.
Doubtless the fault is mine. I do not seem to
have learned my part according to the rôle ex-
pected of me.”
28442.5


Ioo THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
Ward bowed as she passed him, his own face
tense with repression. Out in the long gallery
Jacobelli waited, detaining the Marchese over
the collection of emeralds. Carlota pleaded a
sudden faintness to account for her departure
and he accompanied them down to Jacobelli's
waiting car, returning for a final glass of his
favorite cordial in Ward's library.
“You are not only the art lover supreme,”
the old gentleman said genially, ensconcing
himself in a deep armchair, “but likewise you
know how to select the rare, the unusual. Be-
fore I had the enjoyment of our personal ac-
quaintance, I had heard of you as an eccentric,
that you carried about in your pockets loose
pearls worth thousands, merely to touch and
gaze on them when you were in the critical
moment of some great financial deal. Is it so?”
Ward smiled non-committally.
“I have collected pearls amongst other
things.”
“Then perhaps you noticed the cap our
Sweet protégée wore to-night, the Juliette
mode, a network of pearls? That is a bit of
very delicate craftsmanship, sixteenth-century
work. Margherita Paoli's collection was
thought marvelous in her day. Every piece has
its own history. She left it intact for Carlota.”
“Where is it?” The unwinking, light gray


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE IoI
t
eyes of the financier watched every shade of
expression on his guest's face.
“I was not in the confidence of the Con-
tessa,” responded the Marchese suavely, al-
most regretfully, as he touched the ash from
his cigarette tip and watched it fall on the
curled leaf of gold repoussé.
Carlota leaned her head back on the suède
cushion in Jacobelli's car, gazing out at the
Avenue's lights as they flashed by. It had been
raining, and they glowed through the wet
glass in prismatic hues like in a spectrum.
Maria's arm was close about her, but she was
silent, inwardly frightened and disturbed at
the dénouement to the dinner. But Jacobelli
was elated and highly amused. He occupied
the uptown seat himself, and sat with a hand
resting on each knee, complacent and benig-
nant.
“Cara mia, I salute!” he exclaimed happily.
“You are an actress as well as a singer. You
could not possibly have entertained him better
or interested him more piquantly.”
“I did not try to interest him,” Carlota re-
plied, wearily. “I hate him and the look in his
eyes.”
She drew in her breath sharply with a tremor
of dread, and returned the quick, understand-
ing pressure of Maria's hand. But the maestro


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 103
apartment, and Maria laid her hands on her
shoulders to look closely into her eyes under
the shaded lights.
“Ah, my dear one, they have hurt you to-
night,” she sighed. “You are not ready yet,
not old enough to manage these men. Some
day it will be as nothing to you, their whims
and notions, their mad passions and threats. A
man in love is the most helpless, pitiful thing
in all the world, never, never dangerous. You
have him at your mercy. What did he say to
you?”
Carlota slipped out of her velvet cloak
tiredly.
“I hardly know. It was so sudden and hor-
rible, the touch of his hands on my flesh, and
his face close to mine. He was a dog to take
advantage of my being there as his guest—”
“Oh, hush! What did he say to you?” urged
Maria shrewdly.
“Nothing at all. He asked me to sing, and
when I had finished he seized me in his arms
and tried to kiss me.”
“I should not have left you alone. Oppor-
tunity makes the thief. It is Jacobelli's fault.
He must have known that Ward desired a
chance of speaking to you. But it is all noth-
ing, cara mia, nothing at all. It was certain he
would fall in love with you. No man could help


IoA THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
it, but he must be taught some gems are price-
less. He did not ask you any questions, then,
about yourself, about the Paoli collection or
the jewels you wore?”
Carlota looked at her wonderingly.
“Of course not. Why should he?”
“I do not want any one to know they are
here in America, out of the Tittani vaults. No-
body is aware of it as yet excepting yourself
and the Marchese. He helped me with the cus-
toms when we came in, he and the delightful
Palmieri. But even to Palmieri they were
merely jewels. He did not know their histo-
ries.”
Carlota watched her anxiously, a quick re-
action of tenderness and solicitude for Maria
sweeping over her, and making her forgetful of
her own trouble.
“You’re worried, dear. Why?” she asked.
“Why?” Maria laughed. “Because I am
doubtless a superstitious old fool. Paoli always
said there was a curse about the rubies and
pearls, rubies for the blood of the people,
pearls for the tears they shed. I wish we had
not brought them.”


CHAPTER IX
THE following morning at nine-thirty, Signor
Jacobelli stood bowing on the threshold of
Casanova's small sanctum in the Opera build-
ing. Armed with Ogden Ward's influence and
his own reputation, his welcome was assured.
Casanova, lean and dark, beamed on his visi-
tor like some comradely Mephisto luxuriating
in dolce far niente. -
“Come in, my friend,” he called. “You re-
lease me from the duty of perusing the new
opera of the great, unknown composer who
insists that I shall discover him. Do you bring
me a new sensation?”
But Jacobelli was mysterious and secretive.
For over an hour he sat in the famous, three-
cornered office, dilating upon the beauty and
genius of Paoli's granddaughter until he knew
he held the interest of the impresario. Sud-
denly Alphonse, the slender, solicitous secre-
tary, peered around the door.
“Mrs. Carrington Nevins,” he whispered
tentatively. “She is alone.”
“You will wait,” Casanova urged, as he
nodded assent. “She is very wealthy, one of
our best subscribers. She wishes to secure some


IoG THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
good singers for her Italian fête. One cannot
refuse, and then she has a daughter whom she
thinks is a Galli-Curci handicapped by posi-
tion and money.”
“I fly,” answered Jacobelli shortly, but as
he turned about, he encountered Mrs. Nevins.
Somehow, with her elaborately arranged gray
hair, fine aquiline profile, and costume of gray
velvet trimmed in silver fox, she brought a
memory of Marie Antoinette, or was it merely
the reminder of some famous actress in the
part? The old maestro paused before her, a
half-comic air of having been captured on the
point of flight.
“I have heard often of you,” she said gra-
ciously. “My daughter Nathalie sings. She is
a wonderful child, and even you, signor, must
recognize genius, though you meet it handi-
capped.”
Casanova's half-closed eyes twinkled at the
inference, but Jacobelli was in a mellow mood.
“I shall be charmed to hear her some time,
madame. Let her not choke her voice upon her
golden spoon.”
“You must hear her soon,” insisted Mrs.
Nevins. “I am getting up a programme for my
Italian fête, the milk fund for the children,
you know, a wonderful cause. Don't you think
Signor Jacobelli might be a help to us, Signor


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 109
t
the table. “You are afraid to look at me for
fear you will surrender.”
“It is an armistice,” she said sedately. “It
, is beneath your dignity as a composer to take
pupils who have not real genius. I still hold to
that. And I shall need celery and romaine and
tomatoes and grapefruit and almonds for my
salad, so you may go out and find them.”
She tied a strip of drapery around her for
an apron, and started preparations for lunch.
Ames leaned from a back window and hailed a
small and willing neighbor to go to the market,
after the needs of the queen, as he said.
They did not speak to each other for some
time. Ames watched her as the sunlight poured
down on her bowed head. He held a melon in
one hand, uplifted absently, a length of scarlet
and black art burlap around his waist.
“You look exactly like one of the melon-
sellers on the quay at Naples,” she told him,
with a little smile. “When the boat stops
there, they crowd around begging you to buy
from them. Lift up your arm and call out.”
“I will do no such thing,” responded Ames
buoyantly. “I decline to pose for your majesty.
Will you deign to name your castle habitat,
that I may call on your most royal parents
and interest them in my humble self?”
She was serious in an instant.


IIo THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
“I have no people, signor. If you could go
with me to the Villa Tittani, you would find a
very little village high up on the rocks above
the Campagna. You know where I mean?
See?”
She dipped her finger-tips in the dregs of
chianti remaining in the bowl beside her where
she had used it in the salad dressing, and
traced a map for him on the bare table-top.
“Here is the winding road from the shore,
and here at the very top there is a villa with
rose-tinted stone walls all about it, very high
walls overgrown with flowers and vines. That
is where the nobility live.” Her eyes were
sparkling with mischief. “Often when I was
little I have seen the Contessa walking on the
terraces. She was so stately and handsome,
and her daughter Bianca was like a real prin-
cess should be, a princess of dreams and fairy-
tales, tall and slender and with eyes like stars.
Then, if you walk on, down through the ilex
avenue, you will come to a very quiet spot
where the old tombs face the sea, and there are
my people, all of them.”
“I’m a brute!” exclaimed Ames, holding
her hands in his with quick, understanding
tenderness. “The way I have let you come and
go without showing any real interest after all
you have done for me.”


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE III
“What have I done? Come down here and
let you teach me and in return told you some
fairy-tales.”
He stared down at her, puzzled as always.
He was twenty-four, and the coasts of chance
and illusion were far more tangible to him than
any of Life's ports of call. He wondered if he
could make her understand all that she had
become to him. He wheeled about and found
his pipe with sudden disgust at his own impo-
tence.
“Carlota, do you know, I've just discovered
something about myself. I’m a beastly poor
amateur at making love. I want to tell you just
how I feel about you slipping in here like a sun-
beam, or – or Ptolemy. You know, I found
him on the fire escape one morning, and he's
stayed here ever since. There was a sparrow,
too, last winter. I left my window open there,
and it flew in out of the storm and perched on
the curtain rod. Fought me every time I tried
to feed it. You seemed to belong to their crowd,
the sunbeam and the sparrow and Ptolemy.
You just came and stayed, and I was a fool; I
took you for granted.”
“You asked me to come, after we first met,”
Carlota corrected him. “I would not come
without the invitation first.”
He bowed low before her.


II2 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
“And I am honored by the royal presence.
I have learned these last two days the strang-
est thing. When you are here and we are
friends, I can work at my best, and when you
are angry with me, it goes just like that, all
my inspiration. So you see you have me at
your mercy.” He turned and rummaged
among the mass of papers and score-sheets on
the piano-top. “I’m going to finish my oper-
etta in a week if you'll stand by me and not
get temperamental, dear. The big chance is
coming now. Mrs. Nevins says she can get me
an immediate hearing from Casanova if she
presents it first at her fête. Is n’t that great?”
Carlota's lips pressed together firmly at the
name. She did not answer.
“You must be glad with me because you
gave me the idea for it. I had been tormented
with a mass of harmonies and tunes that
would not shape into anything. Remember
how I played that first night you met me?
Listen to this and see if you remember it.”
He leaned over the piano towards her, read-
ing aloud the synopsis of the libretto.
“Fiametta is the lonely princess of the
Castle Tittani. She loves Peppino, a fisher-
boy. There is a fête in the village. She dis-
guises herself to go down and mingle with the
people, scaling the walls of Tittani with love's


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 113
magic. She dances with Peppino, who does not
know that she is the princess. He is disguised
as Harlequin. His sweetheart stabs her through
jealousy when Peppino avows his love for her.
She dies in his arms as the people recognize
her as their princess. It is the tragedy of youth's
eternal quest for love beyond all barriers.”
Her head was bent over the salad bowl as
she listened.
“I call it “Fiametta.' Do you like it?” he
asked eagerly. “You don't mind my using the
little story you told me, do you, Carlota? I
may make it immortal.”
“Why must she die, your princess?” she
said wistfully. “I love it all but that. How
could you write it when you had not seen our
beautiful Tittani or known my people.”
“I had seen and known you. That's the
answer. Listen to this.” He flung himself down
at the piano, head back, striking into the
melody that had been his call to her. “This
is your motif.”
Suddenly there came an imperative tap at
the door.
“Open. My arms are full.”
“That's only Dmitri. You met him at the
Phelpses that night.” Ames threw wide the
door. “Enter and join the happy throng.
Comes a Greek bearing gifts.”


114 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
At sight of Carlota, Dmitri dropped his
bundles and made obeisance with sedate
ceremony.
“I had not dreamt that any but myself
would ever climb those stairs to the house of
Ptolemy.”
“I’m the luckiest man in the world. Listen,
Dmitri; quit bowing and understand. This
is — ” Ames hesitated and laughed. “I don't
even know your last name, Carlota. You tell
him. You met each other at Phelps's.”
Carlota looked at the newcomer in her
grave, measuring way. She had not remem-
bered him at all. He was older than Ames, and
without any claims whatever to good looks.
Swarthy, thin, slight, stoop-shouldered, care-
less in dress, there was still something inde-
finably distinguished and reassuring about
him. He might have sat for a bust of the youth-
ful Socrates with his blunt, uneven profile. A
perpetual smile perched on his wide mouth;
not a propitiatory smile, but rather a toler-
ant one. Here was a spirit that might have
waited aeons on the edge of chaos, believing
absolutely in the ultimate birth of cosmic
harmony, even on earth.
“Please! I beg you not to.” He interrupted
her. “I do not wish to know your name. Iden-
tity is the cloak of selfishness. They number


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 115
convicts and name hapless infants. Human
consciousness is a universal lottery where the
lucky numbers win by drawing personality in
lots of genius. Griffeth is a genius. I am one.
You, too, with that face, do not have to be a
genius. You are. Woman, incarnate Love and
Inspiration to us poor devils.”
“Give him work to keep him quiet,” ad-
vised Ames.
But Dmitri picked up his bundles and began
opening them with the air of a high priest at
his ritual.
“I shall prepare a feast for you to-day, a
treat. The brigand stew of Bulgaria. I have
eaten it on mountain heights where even the
goats die of starvation.”
“I think I will go,” Carlota said in her
quick, aloof way, and Dmitri turned to her
eagerly, his face full of a strange, beseeching
charm.
“See, I have disappointed you!” he de-
clared; “when for weeks I have hoped to
catch you here on one of your flights of pas-
sage. First when I saw you at Mr. Phelps's, you
overlooked me absolutely for him.” He nodded
at Ames. “He is merely spectacular. He had
no more vision, no wider horizons than a mole.
When he told me yesterday that you would
never come here again, I understood perfectly.


II.6 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
I told him you would surely return, but I
knew also why you were angry with him. He
stands outside our range of perspective, so
you must forgive him. He blunders like a
baby lamb; you know the kind with large
knees and prodigious ears, utterly hopeless.”
“Grand old Diogenes; all he needs is a tub
and lantern to go into business.” Ames patted
him affectionately. “Put your old lamb on to
stew and stop spouting if we are to eat it to-
day. What do you do first, braise it?”
“Let it alone. He is become the plaything
of the privileged classes.” Dmitri seized his
bundles and made for the kitchenette, where
he declaimed just the same. “How many
times in three days have you motored down
to Long Island? Confess.”
Ames avoided Carlota's questioning, accus-
ing eyes.
“Twice, to give lessons.”
“Twice for lessons, and then you stay all
the afternoon and have dinner also there. The
truth ye cannot bear.”
“When I believed that you were working
hard on your opera and were sorry I did not
come back to you,” Carlota said softly.
“Son of discordance!” Ames flung a cushion
headlong over the partition. “You only want to
set Carlota against me and seize her yourself.”


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 117
“See?” Dmitri's head showed around the
curtain delightedly. “He has already the little
social tricks. To be petty. Still, I like him, so
I will save him. You shall not become the
Harlequin boy of the nouveaux riches. They
will but monopolize your time until a new
warrior of ennui shall appear and grasp the
golden bough from your hand. They will per-
mit you to loll in their beautiful playgrounds
until you imagine yourself indispensable. You
will think you are succeeding, getting in on
the inside, as they say. You will gain patron-
age. You are young and might be popular, but
time is your treasure, and they waste it as
nothing.”
Out of doors spring dallied in the old square,
and Jacobelli, stepping from the interior of a
green motor 'bus just beyond the Arch, lin-
gered to regard almost paternally the tod-
dling, black-eyed babies and fluttering, danc-
ing youngsters that played around the dry
fountain. A flock of pigeons swerved down
from the Judson Memorial Tower and he
smiled at them benignly, seeing those that fed
at noon below the Campanile.
He had tried to induce Casanova to join him
at luncheon down at the Brevoort, but the
director had another engagement and Jaco-
belli had been forced to come alone, something


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 119
distant object with all the splendor of heroism.
Doubtless she was under the spell of her own
natural yearning for love.
And suddenly, even while he rambled and
reasoned, the demigod of Misrule wakened
drowsily and took note of the excellent juxta-
position of certain humans. Jacobelli stopped
dead short, head uplifted like a horse scenting
fire as a voice floated out on the midday air
singing Mimi's duet with a lilting, impetuous
tenor for company. He could have sworn it
was Carlota. Never could there be two such
voices in New York. He tried to locate the
sound, but it seemed to float from him elu-
sively. He cut hastily across the southwest
end of the park, seeking it, and gazed up at
the row of brownstone old studio buildings
across Fourth Street.
At the same moment a young Bulgarian,
smoking a thin long cigarette in the exact cen-
ter of his lips, rose from a seat and followed
him. When Jacobelli crossed the street, intent
and purpose in every move of his rotund figure,
the boy waited, his seal-brown eyes mere slits,
half-lifted lids showing gleams of high lights
as he stared fixedly after him. Outside the
narrow flagged plots, the old teacher hesi-
tated, then entered the dusty hallway of the
house next to Ames's abiding-place. The Bul-


I2O THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
garian smiled and followed after him, lingering
at the corner.
Up in the studio luncheon was over. So suc-
cessful and opulent it had been, this brigand
feast, that Dmitri announced they were all
suffering from the ennui of satiety, that bete
noire of the rich. Carlota was happy once
more. She had read over the libretto of the
operetta while the two argued over points in
the score, had sat at the piano, trying bits here
and there of Fiametta's rôle until, somewhere
down on Bleecker Street, a church chime
reached her ears, and she rose hurriedly. Maria
would be home at two.
“I must leave you,” she said regretfully. .
“And all the dishes to wash!”
“I’ll do them gladly.” Dmitri donned an
apron promptly. “Griff, you take your in-
spiration to the 'bus while I do your work for
you.”
“How do you know that I take the 'bus to
my home?”
She looked back at him teasingly. He waved
both hands comprehensively, dismissing the
query as superfluous.
“Everybody who comes down here takes
the 'bus. It is part of the thrill, the experience
of the unusual. They are the land ferries that
cross the gulf between fact and fancy.”


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE I2I
He began the duet plaintively as he fished
for a strip of drapery and tossed it about his
shoulders for a cloak. Carlota took up the re-
ply of Mimi while she pulled a black-velvet
student cap over her close, glossy ripples of
hair. Out on the landing Ames waited for her
eagerly.
“Listen. You will come again soon, won't
you, dear? Dmitri's a curious sort, but he's all
gold, no alloy. He thinks your voice is great.”
“I like him very much,” she said naïvely.
“Much better than Mrs. Nevins and her
daughter. How many times must you go to
see them this week?”
“Oh, don't! It is n't anything at all, her
interest in my work. She's giving some sort of
a fête for the Italian Relief Fund, a sort of
glorified musicale as I understand it, and she
wants me to give my operetta so her daughter
can sing the mezzo part, Pippa. I intend that
you shall sing Fiametta, the princess.”
“Impossible!” exclaimed Carlota in hushed
alarm. “I never, never could do that, Mr.
Ames.”
“You call me Griffeth,” he swung back hap-
pily. “You are going to sing it just the same,
and it may make your fortune. I know it will
mine. Dmitri's all wrong, you know. He's got
Some sort of a brain kink over this hatred of


I22 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
the rich. I don't dare tell him even who my
father is for fear he may cut my acquaintance.”
“Is your father, then, rich?” Her gaze never
left his face.
“Well, they call him so where we live out
in Colorado. You're in the bondholder class
there after you pass fifty thousand, but I
don't think Dad's in danger of being counted
an enemy of the people yet; just comfortably
dusted.”
He laughed down at her as they crossed the
Square towards the 'bus terminus. And at
exactly the same instant Signor Jacobelli was
bursting without warning or ceremony into a
studio on the second floor where a model
posed. He emerged, nonplussed and furious.
On the third floor the door was locked. He
shook the handle imperatively, and a dis-
turbed but pleasantly modulated voice an-
swered:
“Sorry, old man. Come Monday, will you?”
“It is impossible,” exclaimed the maestro
to himself, when he reached the street, and
stood wiping his forehead with a sense of baf-
fled uncertainty. “Yet there are not two voices
like hers in the world. I shall not wait. Love
is a madness.”
He retraced his steps towards the Brevoort,
determined now to tell Maria his suspicions.


CHAPTER X
WHEN Ames returned to the studio twenty
minutes later, it was still empty. In his own
room over on East Twenty-Eighth Street,
Dmitri sat on a couch, smoking and listening
to the boy Steccho talk of Sofia, of his moun-
tain home, of Maryna his sister, and the little
smiling mother who cooked so excellently.
“The last time we met, we dipped in the
same drinking-bowl, remember?” Dmitri
smiled across at him. “You are too young to
come here in these times. Who has sent you?
Do not tell me if you dare not. I am not afraid.
I will still open wide the door every time you
care to visit me, my friend. Are the little
mother and sister quite safe, you are sure?”
“Oh, absolutely.” Steccho's dark face glowed
with enthusiasm. “Before I come here I see
to that, and they will have more still, much
more.”
“So? Then you are doing well. That is good.
The times are changing about, eh? Are there
any of the others here? I have met no one
since I came. I was wounded and in the hos-
pital for months, so I have lost track of the
old friends.”


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 125
“You did not return, then, afterwards?”
Steccho's glance was uneasy.
“No,” replied Dmitri, lying on his back, and
blowing long, uneven ovals into the air. “I do
not like it all, frankly, my boy. They com-
promise and barter first with this faction,
then with the other. Each is afraid to trust the
other. It has become a great struggle for self-
preservation now that the masters twist the
torture screws of starvation. Life, after all,
once you desert nature, becomes merely a
struggle for the dear old bread and butter in
one form or another. Commerce is built upon
the necessities of human existence under mod-
ern conditions. Personally, I am very radical
on one point. I would kill without mercy the
man who gambles for his own profit on the
necessities of his brother man, his food, his
fuel, his clothing. And I do not believein killing,
as you know. I regard war as a subterfuge, an
exploitation of power. I object to persons in-
fusing into my mind hatred of my brother man
merely because he happens to live on a different
spot of earth than I do, and belongs to a differ-
ent branch of the same human race.”
“There are robbers and murderers in the
brotherhood as well as in the privileged
classes.”
“So, my Steccho has learned to perch


I26 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
safely and sensibly upon the fence between
the warring factions, yes? The rain falls on the
just and the unjust, therefore we must be
merciful likewise.” He sat up and reached for
his violin, playing stray chords, bits of folk-
songs and haunting Czech melodies in minors.
Steccho listened moodily, his eyes almost
closed as he clasped arms about his knees, and
bent his head on them. Dmitri played in si-
lence for nearly half an hour. When he stopped,
the boy looked up at him wistfully.
“When the cause is right, the way must be
right too.”
“What do you mean by the cause?” Dmitri
asked genially. “We live in a day when causes
are hung for sale in any market-place. You
may buy them like indulgences from pilgrim
friars. I would pick my cause with caution.”
“I mean this. No matter what we do, if it is
for some great, beautiful purpose, then it does
not matter, eh?”
“You will stub your toe on that rock, the
end that justifies the means; that is all it
comes to when you are through with reasoning
and sophistry. And I do not like any reasoning
which may be diverted by the idiot Chance, to
his own blind folly. Can you tell me frankly
why you are here? I will keep silent and help
you if I may.”


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 127
Steccho threw away his last cigarette and
rose, stretching himself like an animal im-
patient for a run.
“I am here so that my mother and Maryna
may dwell in the yellow castle forever,” he
answered with a slow smile. “You cannot help,
but I should like to come here and rest now
and then.”
“You will come again soon, my friend,”
Dmitri laid both hands on his shoulders
warmly. “Come often, when you like. If I am
out, look for me over in the squares, or open
the door and be happy as you can until I re-
turn. Light the fire yourself. It awaits you. If
you will come back to-night, I can promise
you such a meal of broiled lamb and rice as
you have not tasted since the home days.”
“Not to-night.” Steccho shook his head. “I
might take you from your friends. I could hear
you singing while I stood in the park there
to-day. The girl had a fine voice.”
“She has genius and is poor. My friend is
giving her lessons so she may sing in his opera
Some day. He is very much interested in her.
It is a romance.” Dmitri smiled whimsically.
“He does not even know her name, but she is
very beautiful. Ah, my Steccho, if you and I,
who are older than the ages in our outlook on
life, could only receive this baptism of joy,


128 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
this love. You would forget your torches and
rivers of blood if the one woman would give
you her lips, yes?”
The boy turned his back on him at the door,
the face of Carlota before his eyes as it had
disturbed and bewildered his purpose ever
since he had first looked upon its beauty and
innocence. His fingers shook as he fumbled
blindly for the doorknob.
“I will come again, Dmitri. Good-night.”
He went directly uptown in the subway.
There is a small carriage entrance to the Hotel
Dupont. By it, you may enter most privately
and unostentatiously a low-ceiled, satin-walled
corridor which leads past a flower-stand and
telephone booth to a single elevator, half con-
cealed in a recess.
Here the boy waited while his name was
sent up to Count Lazlo Jurka. There was a
delay, and presently down in the private ele-
vator came the valet and personal courier of
the Count, a soldierly individual, gray-haired
and austere.
“You always blunder,” he said as he led the
way to the servants' elevator. “You come here
as a tailor, not a guest. He does not expect
you to-night. Have you news?”
Steccho shrugged his shoulders sullenly.
After the meeting with Dmitri his mind was


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 129
unsettled. As they passed by the palm-guarded
tea-room, the great paneled dining-room on
the corner, the rotunda with its rose-hued
walls and marble columns, the leisurely parade
of the late afternoon frequenters, his memory
traveled rapidly back to his old life that Dmitri
had been a part of.
It was a far cry to Rigl, his home village,
eighteen miles out of Sofia if you take the nar-
row mountain trail on horseback. There had
been the childhood there, and later, when he
had worked in Sofia at the little hand-press
bindery, to enable himself to study evenings.
He passed one hand over his eyes restlessly as
the valet opened the door of a corner suite on
the eighth floor and snapped the catch after
them. The small inner salon was empty. Ex-
cepting for scattered daily papers it bore no
trace of use. The door of the dressing-room
was ajar, and Steccho bowed low on its thresh-
old, waiting the word to enter.
Before a large oval mirror Count Jurka tied
his cravat with a deliberate and distinct en-
joyment of the artistry required by the opera-
tion. Clad in underclothes and shirt, he re-
sembled some French courtier, one who might
have just flung off his cloak and hat in a gray
dawn rendezvous, and, balancing his rapier,
awaited his opponent.


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 131
face. The hand that held the cigarettes shook
slightly. The muscles around his lips twitched
under that amused scrutiny.
“Have you found them?”
The question came hard and short finally.
Steccho shook his head.
“Excellenza,” he said eagerly, “the oppor-
tunity has not come. I have followed them
both unceasingly, day and night, and have
seen nothing.”
“You have followed the girl. Day and night
you have followed her, no one else. You have
not yet ascertained where the jewels are kept,
nor whether she has access to them. Are they
in New York or in Italy? Are they in the pos-
session of Maria Roma in their apartment, or
in a safety-deposit vault? Why do you shadow
the girl Carlota unless you are perhaps in love
with her?”
Steccho's eyes were brilliant with resent-
ment that he dared not express in words.
“One must go slowly here, excellenza,” he
said. “It is not Sofia. You yourself would not
have the power to shield me or hold the jewels
if I were caught. One must look the ground
over thoroughly. Possibly, as you say, they
are not even here in America, but have been
left in Italy.”
Jurka smiled slowly.


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 133
tain village until there came a day when Jur-
ka's troops came through. They had quartered
at the inn and scattered among the different
homes. Levano, old Levano, who preached
liberty and peace from his blacksmith forge,
had staggered out into the road after his two
daughters had been violated, and had thrust
his red-hot branding-irons into the face of the
soldiery. Jurka had ground his heel on his
mouth that had stiffened under choked curses.
Later, in an upper room at the inn – He
stared fixedly at the highly polished boots of
Jurka, and sought to fasten his memory solely
on Maryna and the little mother. The Count
had said Maryna was a pretty little thing the
day he had saved Steccho from the troops. She
had run through the crowd in the village and
had knelt to wipe her brother's bruised face.
That was the first time he had seen her, and
she was barely fifteen. It had been later on, in
the upper room at the inn, that Steccho had
sworn to enter the service of the Queen provid-
ing safety might be assured the two left at Rigl.
Whenever, as now, he was tempted to spring
at the white, self-assured throat, he forced him-
self to think of them. He had come to-night pri-
marily to ask if they were still safe, if his excel-
lenza had any news from Rigl, and to shake off
the disquieting effect of Dmitri's philosophy.


134 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
“I have never seen her wear jewels, excel-
lenza,” he answered slowly. “She is very
young, about sixteen. They would not permit
it, probably.”
“She is nineteen and looks older,” returned
the Count curtly.
“Pardon — you have then seen her?”
Jurka made no reply, but met the boy's
eager gaze with calculating suspicion.
“You are feeling your way through the
dark, Steccho. Beware of pricking swords. You
have been allotted a certain task, a very easy
task, merely to find out where these jewels are
if they are concealed in the apartment of Car-
lota Trelango, and to get them at all risks. You
have two women as opponents, and you crawl
and creep and shadow them for weeks. You
were told to enter their abode and search it.
You were told to find out their associates,
their circumstances. What have you accom-
plished save the incessant following of the girl
herself. Are you then infatuated, my Steccho?
It is the eternal failing of youth.”
Steccho's face colored dully. Maryna was
fifteen, the girl Carlota only four years older.
Most of the young girls of Rigl had been given
to the Jurka's soldiery that week, excepting the
three loveliest, — little Roziska, the pale
Wanda destined for the convent, and radiant


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 135
Katinka with eyes like Carlota's, velvety,
luminous. He had always watched her in
church when she knelt in the long shaft of pur-
ple light above the aureole of Saint Genevieve.
If there had been no war, he would have mar-
ried Katinka some day, but the three had been
dragged to the rooms above the inn, reserved
for the high honor of his excellenza's favor.
Were the jewels but part of his plan? If he had
seen Carlota's beauty, would she not become
like the three girls he had seen thrown out to
the soldiers after his excellenza had wearied of
them? He lifted keen eyes to the suave, smiling
face.
“They go nowhere, save to the places I have
already told you.”
Georges grimaced at his servility and pro-
testing palms.
“Recount!” ordered Jurka. “The Mar-
chese, Ward, Jacobelli. Are there more?”
“No more.” The boy's gaze never wavered.
Dmitri had said it was a romance, the affair in
the Square, and they were his friends. It gave
him a curious, inmost thrill of happiness to feel
that he was thwarting the man who had killed
the other girl, Katinka.
The bell of the suite rang lightly. Georges
sprang to his feet, laying an evening suit over
the boy's arm, and pushing him before him


136 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
into the reception-hall. As he opened the door,
he gave voluble directions to the tailor's as-
sistant for the evening garb of the Count. The
hotel page presented several letters on a silver
tray and passed on down the corridor.
“It is not safe for you to come here.” Jurka
opened the letters with a single thrust of a
slender blade. His clean-cut dexterity fasci-
nated Steccho. “Where the devil do you live,
anyway?”
“Twenty-Eighth Street, East,” he lied sim-
ply. “I change often. A friend told me of this
place.”
“Make no friends, I have told you.”
“A former friend whom I had known in
Sofia. I but met him on the street one day, a
very old man, Boris —”
Georges held up his hand with a frown. The
Count perused the first letter he opened twice,
and smiled. It was from Mrs. Carrington Nev-
ins, urgently requesting his presence and as-
sistance in the success of her entertainment at
Belvoir, Long Island.
“The social ruse always wins out, Georges.
We are the emissaries of the queen's mercy;
we wish to study the methods for rehabilitat-
ing the wounded, for salvaging the war wreck-
age of humanity. The exiled queen's heart is
torn with remorse for her poor lost ones. It


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 137
sounds well and opens many doors, among
them, Belvoir.” He laughed and tossed the
letter to Georges. “Accept. It is for a week
from Saturday.”
Steccho waited his pleasure by the door.
Timidly, as Jurka went through his mail, he
ventured to attract his attention once more.
“Excellenza, you have heard some news re-
cently, perhaps from Sofia, from Riglp”
Georges motioned him to leave, but he lin-
gered obstinately.
“You have news of my mother and sister,
yes, of Maryna, excellenza? You remember
Maryna, the little girl who —”
The Count nodded his blond head towards
the door.
“Out!” he said briefly. “Bring me the jewels
by Saturday.”


14o THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
she pleaded with swift reaction. “Forgive me.
I will try, indeed I will. What do you want me
to do? Anything but see Mr. Ward alone.”
“You shall prepare for your début.” Jaco-
belli took up her challenge instantly. “Casa-
nova will place you on the list for next season.
That will give you an entire year for more
study. And you shall flame forth in glory as
Margherita or Gilda —”
“Why not Santuzza or Aida?” Carlota's
temper rose at his suggestion. “Let me sing
these, my maestro, when I am stout and placid
some day, but now, give me the new rôles.”
“You seek the spectacular,” he accused.
“You would be like all of the women. They
must have the greatest rôle of all written for
them alone, dedicated to them. Ah, do I not
know!”
Maria arrived in time to prevent his tirade
against whims. She listened in delight as he
told of the interview with Casanova.
“After it is all settled, she will be sweet and
docile once more,” she promised. “She has not
been the same even to me since that night at
Mr. Ward’s.”
“You think that is the reason, eh?” Jaco-
belli stared moodily before him, feeling it was
the proper time to enlighten Maria. And yet,
how? Were not his suspicions based on air?


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 141
Only the voice down in the Square was actu-
ally proof to himself, and how could he prove
it to others, when he had not even traced it?
“For one thing, she is studying too hard, I
think,” Maria pursued earnestly. “Four les-
sons a week and such long ones; are they not
too much for the child, signor?”
“Four?” repeated Jacobelli, one bushy eye-
brow lifting in amazement. “She tells you she
has four lessons a week?”
“Two hours in the morning, two in the af-
ternoon. It is very strenuous, I think.”
“Doubtless so.” He rose and paced the floor
with rising agitation. Carlota had come to his
studio three times each week, for a two-hour
lesson only. Here was proof positive that she
was straying somewhere into forbidden paths.
“It is absolutely imperative, signora,” he be-
gan huskily, when the suspected one came
from the inner room, humming to herself from
the love tragedy of Mélisande. “Imperative
that she make her début next year,” he fin-
ished conclusively. “Delays are dangerous,
especially when one is overstudying.”
The hidden rebuke passed completely by
Carlota, as she said good-bye, sparkling and
confident, and Jacobelli pondered, with a sense
of responsibility, feeling that he alone knew
the real reason for her deception. Possibly


144 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
And her small, thoroughbred head with its
close, brown curls, the splendid depth and lus-
ter of her dark eyes, the clean, fine curve of
chin and throat, they were an ever-new de-
light to him. She lifted her lashes skywly and
met his gaze with accusing eyes.
“Will — will this girl, your new pupil, sing a
rôle also?”
“Surely, dear,” he told her confidently.
“One must throw some sops to Cerberus,
three-headed monster of wealth and otherwise.
She will only have the mezzo rôle of Nedda.
But you will be my princess girl, singing my
‘Quest of Love' for love of Italy and me. And
some day, when we are very rich, just we two,
we will go to Italy and find your Villa Tittani
with its rose-tinted walls. Would you climb
them to find me?”
Carlota smiled up at him, a flash of quick
mischief in her glance.
“And what of your father who lives in
Colorado? Would he allow you to” — she
hesitated for the word: he had not said to
marry – “to go away after love quests for
rose-walled villas?”
“Dad would n't say a word if I had pro-
duced several successful operas.” Ames went
over to the window and stared quizzically
down at the Square. “The verdict of your fam-


146 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
above the door was a brown casserole in a per-
forated silver stand, crown-shaped. It made a
perfect coronal, Ames declared gravely, setting
it down low over her curls, somewhat heavy
and Byzantine, but most becoming. Dmitri
came in to acclaim her, bringing with him the
first potted azalea he had happened to see in
the market. He set it down on the window-
seat in triumph.
“See how much I love you!” he cried. “It
was very heavy, but I brought it, green tub
and all. Do you know why? Of course not, my
poor simpletons. It is because these flowers grow
wild in abundance in my native land. They are
like the roses of Sharon blossoming in our moun-
tain wildernesses, and the color is like the dawn
flush, like the maiden glow in the cheeks of our
girls.” He regarded the plant reflectively. “It
is very strange how precious a symbol of mem-
ory becomes. My heart leapt when I saw it in
the window, all abloom. How do you like it?”
“I always want to kneel before flowers,”
Carlota said softly, as she touched the petals
with her finger-tips lingeringly. “In Italy you
find flowers before the wayside shrines, and I
liked them better than churches. We had a
shrine in a grotto at the end of the garden—”
She stopped, but neither had noticed her words.
Dmitri was in a fine abstract mood.


148 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
seen by her when you flirt your rapier, and
twirl before her eyes. I hate you.” He turned
to Carlota calmly. “Are you going to sing at
this fête’’’
She smiled in confusion at his earnestness.
“I feel I must because its theme is all about
my princess of Castle Tittani. I am responsible
for it and its success.”
“What name do you think would be good
for her to take, Dmitrif You know I do not
even know her own to this day. It is her whim
to hide it from me. I think if it were really a
beautiful one, she would tell, don't you?”
“Ignore him,” Dmitri told her gravely.
“Names are nothing. I thank God I was a
foundling. No, you did not know that, eh?
There is a certain road that leads to a monas-
tery. If I told you where it is and its name, you
would not know anything about it, but it is
very old, back to the Crusades, a place of
sanctuary for kings and road knights alike.
There is a shrine to Saint Demetra below it. I
was left before it, and a brother found me and
took me to the gray stone refuge. That is quite
all as a basis of fact, but I weave about it the
usual fantasy of desire. First, Demetra is only
our pagan goddess disguised. She is Demeter
of the harvest, the mother of food for the
world, the bountiful, the ever-pitiful. And I


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 149
was named Dmitri. Again, always your found-
ling grows up, imagining he is the lost son of
the king, always of noble blood. But not I,
Dmitri.” He perched himself on the window-
seat, one arm around the azalea tub, smoking
peacefully. “I like to think there were many of
us, and before I came, my mother hoped to
save me, the unwanted one, from the crowded
life. I like to think she found courage, with my
coming, to put me forth to high adventure and
give me what you call ‘the big chance.’ So I
feel brotherhood with all the world; and when
I was fourteen, they put me out of the monas-
tery with a fair education and a fine digestion.
They feed you very well there. The only thing
is, I was undoubtedly ruined for the seats of
the mighty. A good digestion makes a man an
optimist, and I was taught to choose my food
wisely, without satiety. I paraphrase the
prophet. Behold, as a man eateth, so is he.”
“Perhaps they are all alive, your mother,
and the others,” Carlota almost whispered, as
she leaned towards him, listening intently.
“See, I have made you believe in my fan-
tasy, too,” he smiled down at her. “Child,
even if they had existed, they would have died
under the sword of the Turks like all the rest.
I was called Kavec by my friends later on. It
has a pleasant meaning, the giver. I have not


152 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
carpenters, more like the sprightly Queen of
Trianon at her amusements than ever. Her
white curly hair was dressed in high waves,
her house-gown of black chiffon velvet trailing
behind her, and one bewildered Pekinese dog
trying to rest itself on her train whenever she
paused.
“My dear Griff, it is wonderful the progress
you have made!” she exclaimed. “Nathalie is
completely enthralled over her rôle. Such a
tender, appealing little part, is n’t it? One
feels she is merely the toy of fate, torn from
her love by the caprice of the princess. I have
spoken to Casanova of the operetta and he has
half promised to come out. Such a delight-
ful and distinguished audience for your first
effort, the Italian ambassador and his wife,
Ogden Ward, Count and Countess Triolini,
court painter to Humbert years ago, and
Count Jurka, who was court chamberlain to
the unhappy Queen Sophia. The most charm-
ing and unexpected sequence of this fearful
war business has been the eager willingness of
one-time enemies to coöperate now in these
little relief funds. We must all pull together,
must n’t we, and forget now. Jurka is the
handsomest thing you ever saw; looks like a
Zenda hero and all that sort of thing. He is
studying our relief methods for the rehabilita-


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 153
tion of the wounded, a special mission for the
exiled queen; so dear of her, is n’t it?”
Carlota, sitting behind them, heard without
noting the names. Her mind was on Nathalie
and her assumption of authority over Ames.
It was impossible for her to avoid seeing it.
She had watched them together constantly.
Nathalie was beside him all the time, consult-
ing, directing, planning on every detail. She
called him by his nickname with a little, in-
dolent proprietary intonation that enraged
Carlota. Yet she had kept her temper, and
had sung her own rôle with ease and surety.
“Are you quite sure,” Nathalie had asked
her, “that your gown will be of the period and
quite appropriate? It is too bad you could not
have worn it to-day so we might be certain.
You understand, of course, mamma would be
only too pleased to secure exactly the right
one for you if you wish.”
“It is most kind of you,” smiled back Car-
lota serenely. “I have my gown. It is of the
period and suitable for the princess.”
“What name did you wish on the pro-
gramme? I did n't quite catch it, and we are
correcting the last proof on them to-day.”
Carlota thought quickly and gave her new
name with a flash of mischief.
“Paola Roma.”


154 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
“Oh, yes, you are really Italian, are n't
you? How interesting! Griff told us that you
had given him the little story that inspired the
operetta.” Nathalie's slim fingers were busy
with her hair, puffing out the soft blond
strands until it looked bobbed. “Of course,”
she added thoughtfully, “it’s one thing to
give the idea, but quite another to have made
it a reality, is n’t it?”
“I do not consider this a reality of Mr.
Ames's hopes or inspiration.” Carlota's heavy-
lidded eyes glanced over the ballroom interior
as if it had been the side-show of some carnival.
“This is really nothing but a dress rehearsal
from start to finish for him. The reality will be
at the grand opera itself next year.”
“If mamma and Signor Casanova think it
worth while,” Nathalie added smilingly. “It
was so nice of you to come out to-day. Griff
has talked of you a great deal but rather
made you out a little tiger cat in tempera-
ment. He told us how you broke the flower
jar. You must n’t have any attacks out here
to-morrow night, will you? We'll all promise
to make everything easy for you.”
“Better to break the flower jar than to flat
your B,” laughed Carlota wickedly, and the
girl flushed quickly.
Ames had pleaded with her for nearly fifteen


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 155
minutes to beware of one high note she always
missed the purity of. The quick rap of his
baton called them to attention, but the sparkle
did not leave Carlota's eyes, and on the way
home she was silent and unresponsive.
She had planned a dozen different ways how
to escape from Maria's watchfulness the fol-
lowing night. Almost she had decided to take
the Marchese into her confidence, and beg
him to coax the signora away for the evening.
It could not possibly go on much longer, the
deception, nor did she wish it to. She would
appear for him this once, secure the triumph
for him, and afterwards the visits to the Square
would cease. He was too absorbed, too selfish,
she told herself passionately. He was stupid,
too, else he would never have been deceived
by her voice. If he had loved her, he would
have found out about her at all hazards. She
had given him freely, all she knew of art, had
even given him the theme for his operetta,
and he was thankless, as Dmitri said. He took
it for granted that she was a girl of the people,
from the Italian quarter below the Square,
when, if he had merely thought twice, he
might have known, as the protégée of the
Marchese Veracci that first night he had seen
her, she must have been somebody unusual.
“Shall I take you to the entrance?” Ames


156 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
asked, as they neared the apartment. “You
are tired, are n’t you?”
She shook her head.
“Stop at the subway station in the Circle. I
will take a taxi over from there, and say I have
been shopping. Maria is not home, anyway.
She had a call from her lawyer here — ” Sud-
denly she turned and faced him. “How did
you know where I lived? I did not know what
I was saying.”
He took both hands in his, drawing her to
him tenderly.
“Dmitri told me you were from peacock
land. That is what he calls it up this way. He
has a friend who knows you and gave it away.”
“A friend who knows me, Dmitrif” she re-
peated in surprise. “But I — we have no
friends here. What did he tell you?”
“Nothing at all, except that you lived in an
apartment near Central Park, when I had
pictured you on Mulberry or Spring, enriching
the quarter with your sweetness. And I was
tempted to go to the old Marchese and ask
him all about you.”
She drew her hands from his, shrinking
from the mere mention of such a possibility,
foreseeing the excitement that would follow.
Maria, Jacobelli, would the Marchese deem
it his duty to tell them?


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 157
“Listen to me,” she said, with the somber
earnestness that sat so oddly on her youth.
“I forbid you ever to discuss me with any one.
When I wish you to know all about me, I my-
self will tell you. You understand?”
“And I am supposed to bow and say the
queen can do no wrong,” laughed Ames. “You
will tell me yourself after the fête to-morrow
night. There will be a little time between the
end of the operetta and the dancing. Mrs.
Nevins has arranged a special little celebration
for a few and I shall have to stay for that, but
I'll send you back in the car safely.”
“I wish you to leave me here,” she said
abruptly.
The car had turned into Park Avenue from
Fifty-Ninth Street, and against every protest
she left him, walking north towards the St.
Germain, hardly caring whether he watched
her destination or not. As she turned into the
vestibule, the Marchese himself rose to greet
her, smiling, courtly, immaculately garbed as
if he had just stepped from a reception at the
Quirinal. After Ames's threat the sight of him
almost weakened her; and she gave him her
hand in silence.
“I knew if I but waited long enough, you
would surely come,” he said jauntily. “And
the time was not long. I have been loitering in


158 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
the tobacconist's shop at the corner. There is
a man whom one might talk with over the
coffee-cups in any famous center of the world,
Cairo, Bagdad, Calcutta, Constantinople, or a
desert khan in Persia. He was a worker in
enamels before the war, then a spy, and now,
behold, he sells cigarettes with a good con-
science to New Yorkers. An incipient seer.”
Carlota was relieved as he occupied himself
with his own conversation. Maria had not re-
turned when they entered the apartment, and
she threw off her velvet cloak with relief.
“I’ll make us some Russian tea, just as you
like it best,” she promised — “slices of orange
with whole cloves in them. Maria will come
soon. She went to see the lawyer about the
mistake on the jewels, something about the
customs, I think it was.”
The Marchese sat erect.
“The customs on the jewels?” he repeated.
“I saw to that myself when you entered the
port. There could be no possible error. Why
did she not consult me first? Who is this
person?” -
“A friend of Mr. Ward's. Signor Jacobelli
recommended him, I believe. He thought she
might have paid too much, and offered to go
over the list with her.”
“I do not care for our friend and good pa-


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 159
tron, Mr. Ward.” The Marchese's pointed
mustache rose higher. “There is something
sinister about him. Ah,” as Carlota brought a
tea-tray and set it beside him on a low stool,
“so did your beloved grandmother always
serve it in the terrace loggia. You have her
way exactly, my child, and her lovely hands.”
Carlota piled cushions beside him, and
lighted the lamp beneath the tea-kettle. Then
she settled herself comfortably, and looked up
at him as she had so often in the days he spoke
of. Always it had been the Marchese who had
been her confidant.
“Don’t you think that Maria is looking
very tired?”
“I thought her never more attractive and
charming than that evening at Mr. Ward's.”
“But since then. I don't think that she goes
out enough,” Carlota insisted. “She is sacri-
ficing herself too much for me. I beg her to go
and she will not. She says she has nowhere to
go and she knows no one here excepting your-
self.”
“But, my dear child, it must not be!” ex-
claimed the Marchese warmly. “Of course it
has been for your sake that she has secluded
herself here in New York. You can see what a
beauty she was in her day. Signora Roma! I
have heard La Scala resound with her praises,


I6o THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
rise to her triumph! She must not feel that she
is neglected or lonely, such a woman.”
“Perhaps if you would only tell her. She
needs some one who has known her at her
great moments, don't you know?”
“Certainly I know,” he reassured her. “It
was quite right of you to tell me. We will have
a beautiful, quiet little dinner for her to-mor-
row night down at the Brevoort or Lafayette,
yes? Whichever she likes, and afterwards the
opera. The San Remo Company is here from
South America; not so wonderful as the Metro-
politan, but very delightful and intimate. You
persuade her for me, and then at the psycho-
logical moment, as they say over here, we will
take her by storm and make her say yes.”
The outer bell rang lightly.
“Don’t tell her about it now,” warned
Carlota. “It must be done very diplomatically
or she will suspect us. Telephone to her later
that you have the seats and cannot take no
for an answer.”
After he had gone Maria took her accus-
tomed siesta. Veracci had sought to interest
her by talking of the customs matter coming
up again, but she waved him from her laugh-
ingly.
“I will not talk of anything disagreeable
with you. It is quite all right, merely a little


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 161
formality to go through. I assured them we
were not remaining here permanently and the
collection belongs in Italy. Mr. Ward had in-
sured me every courtesy there.”
The Marchese had elevated his expressive
eyebrows, but did not press the point. After
his departure Carlota sat by the window, em-
broidering a headband in rose and gold thread.
How was she to open the jewel chest without
Maria's knowledge. And she must have them
for the princess's court costume. There was
one gown of gold tissue over old-rose metal
cloth, an exquisite mediaeval robe that lay
like a web of sunlight in one of the chests. The
court train was of crimson velvet embroidered
in seed pearls, and with it she longed to wear
the full set of the Zoroaster rubies. Since she
was to be his princess before these people, she
must bear herself royally for his sake.
She sighed, and laid aside her work to look
down at the quiet street. Below strolled a
figure she recognized, Steccho, a belated sen-
tinel. He had lingered in the cigar-shop while
the Marchese chatted to his friend, the worker
in enamels. Halfway through the night he had
sat with him and Dmitri in a basement coffee-
house on East Twenty-Seventh Street, listen-
ing to the new gospel of optimism which Dmitri
loved to spread, he who could see good in all


I62 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
things and believed that service is the stabilizer
of humanity's caprice. Yet, while Steccho had
listened and smoked, he had watched the face
of every newcomer eagerly, hoping to find one
fresh from Rigl. He was growing tired of
playing watchdog for Jurka.
Carlota drew the curtains together as she
encountered his steady, uplifted gaze. Why
did this boy keep guard over her? she won-
dered, and slowly smiled. He did not seem a
menace. There had been a look of admiration
in his eyes the day he had returned her gloves
to her. Jacobelli had told her she must prepare
to accept homage from all, and Ames had said
a friend of Dmitri's had told him where she
lived. She looked out after him as he passed
leisurely down the street. In all the old-time
romances that she loved, there was the “shep-
herd in the distance,” the page who caroled
unseen to Kate the queen, the gondolier who
dared to lift his heart to the rose that touched
a closed lattice. She wondered who he could
be.
Maria sighed and stirred. The telephone
rang on the little painted stand, and Carlota
answered it. It was the Marchese, calling the
signora. She laughed softly as he spoke to her,
the color rising softly in her cheeks.
“Cara mia, it is delightful of him,” she ex-


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 163
claimed, as she hung up the receiver. “He is
the most thoughtful, charming knight errant.
Ah, if you could have seen him thirty years
ago! The handsomest man in all Italy. He has
asked us to dine to-morrow with him and go to
see ‘The Jewels of the Madonna.’ It will do
you good. Jacobelli tells me you will have it in
your repertoire next year.”
A curious light came in Carlota's dark eyes,
a tender, half-penitent light. “The Jewels of
the Madonna,” and she was planning how to
secure the old jewels lying hidden away in the
Florentine chest by the fireplace. Even though
they were her own, she felt a secret, guilty
thrill over deceiving those who loved her.
Surely the “Quest of Love” led one far astray
and alone.
But the signora was in a gaysome mood,
affectionate, pliable. She would have every-
thing en fête. Never was she so happy as when
planning a new costume that should charm
and bewilder. For the dinner she would wear
black velvet with a scarf of Roumanian gypsy
work, intricate embroidery of orange and black
that seemed made for her, Carlota said, as she
draped it around her statuesque shoulders.
“You should wear a heavy necklace of topaz
with that, topaz and emeralds, or just topaz
set in silver.”


164 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
“Heart's treasure, how you know the cor-
rect touch. Get me the key of the small chest.”
“But — are n't you wearing it, dear, around
your neck?”
Maria smiled at her delightedly, archly.
“I find a new hiding-place for it daily, ever
since I have feared it was known we had them
here. To-day it is in the pot of cyclamen. Yes-
terday I put it in the back of the clock. Am I
not wonderful?”
Carlota laughed and discovered the key
planted carefully in the pot of cyclamen as she
said.
“To-night you shall hide it and show if you
are a good mystifier. Look in the third tray
and get out the necklaces. They are in the large
tray.”
The lock gave rustily. Carlota sat on the
floor with the tray on her lap, lifting out the
old necklaces in a dream. They were heavy
and old-fashioned, but set with perfect gems.
She found the topaz one and hung it around
the signora's throat gently.
“It is superb,” she sighed. “I was very at-
tractive in my prime, carina, but never like your
grandmother. Ah, jewels were made for her as
stars for the night. Here, pile them in my drawer
and pick out pearls for yourself. You will wear
white while you can. After thirty it is sad.”


166 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
run out to Belvoir once the Jamaica turnpike
was reached. She ordered a taxi softly over the
house telephone, and turned to the chest. Al-
most wistfully and regretfully she drew the
key from the hiding-place Maria had let her
choose, in the back of an oval silver frame that
held her mother's portrait. Would not Bianca
Trelango understand, more than any other,
her daughter's temptation to aid her love?
“You would not think it wrong, would
you?” she whispered, as she knelt before the
outspread treasures from the past. Maria kept
each piece of jewelry carefully separate and
wrapped in chamois, the pearls in one tray, the
rubies in another, and so on. The largest pieces
lay in their velvet cases at the bottom, tiaras
and stomachers. Carlota hunted through the
chest until she found all she longed for, the
rubies her grandmother had worn in “Semira-
mide.” There were three pieces, the tiara,
necklace, and heavy girdle, each set with the
gems so thickly that she caught her breath
with delight. The rubies were clumsily cut and
needed polishing, but they glowed slumber-
ously against the black velvet case, and the
center stone of the tiara was the superb Zara-
thustra jewel itself, part of the plunder of Per-
sia. The necklace was in sixteen strands of
matched pearls with a double pendant of ru-


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 167
bies. As she stood up to try it around her neck,
she let the heavy golden girdle fall to the floor.
The sudden noise startled her, and she lis-
tened, one hand pressed hard against her beat-
ing heart. The curtains were drawn at the
front windows, but were up here at the fire
escapes. She drew them carefully, and waited,
but there was no sound, nothing but the occa-
sional rumble of a street car over on Madison
Avenue.
The telephone bell rang and she barely kept
back a cry of alarm, forgetting the taxi call she
had sent in. With the costumes in a suitcase
and the jewels in her traveling bag, she went
downstairs, whiter than usual, her eyes wide
and expectant.
“Shall I take the bag outside, miss?” asked
the chauffeur. He reached for it solicitously,
but she held it on her lap with both hands, and
leaned back with closed eyes.
“Thanks, no. Hurry, please. Belvoir, Mrs.
Carrington Nevins's residence at Strathmore.
It is down near the shore past the country
club. Take the shortest way after you leave
the turnpike. How long will it take, do you
think?”
“About an hour.”
As the taxi turned into Park Avenue, she
leaned forward and drew the curtain hastily.


I68 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
Standing on the corner, with his back to the
street, was Steccho talking to Dmitri. Neither
had seen her, but she left the curtains down all
the long, lonely way out to Strathmore, on the
north shore of Long Island. Already the rubies
had laid their crimson fear on her imagination,
and she dreaded she knew not what from the
two silent figures that lingered near her home.
Was Dmitri, too, one to be shunned and
doubted? Why did they seek her? She wished
with all her heart that she had taken the Mar-
chese into her confidence.


CHAPTER XIII
It was after nine when the taxi wheeled around
the crescent drive at Belvoir. Carlota leaned
forward, her sense of beauty thrilled at the
effect of the place in the full moonlight. It was
modeled exactly, as Mrs. Nevins loved to ex-
plain, after Diane de Poitiers's love cote in
France, Chenonceaux.
The fête was in full swing. She did not see
Ames anywhere, but told one of the footmen
who approached her that she was a singer on
the programme. He led the way back of the
gay crowd in the flower-festooned corridors to
an inner court that had been transformed into
an Italian village en fête.
Standing at the head of a wide, curving
staircase was Mrs. Nevins, garbed as Vittoria
Colonna, the noble lady who was Michelan-
gelo's inspiration. Nathalie stood near, a silk
domino only half concealing her chic peasant
dress. At sight of her Carlota caught her
breath involuntarily. Even as a child she had
always loved the fêtes at the Villa Tittani, and
the distinguished guests who had flocked there
around the grand old Contessa. Here she was
merely an unknown singer, passing unnoticed


170 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
through a throng of strangers. The whimsi-
cality of it touched her sense of humor and
amused her. She was indeed Fiametta, moving
unknown among the villagers.
Jacobelli stood chatting with Count D'Is-
tria, the ambassador. They were almost within
arm's length of Carlota as she passed by them,
unseen and unseeing, her eyes seeking only for
Ames.
“You are not overfond, then, of these society
theatricals?” asked the Count. “It is for an
excellent object, the milk fund for Italy.”
Jacobelli lifted bored, deprecating eye-
brows.
“It is torture to me, but what would you?
The lady has a daughter with a voice, and she
will have none but Jacobelli's opinion of its
quality. Therefore I come to-night to oblige.
But, ah, Count, if you could but hear my gen-
ius, my star of evening who will shortly, before
another season, burst into full splendor. You
recall La Paoli’”
D'Istria nodded interestedly.
“Many times I have heard my father speak
of her beauty and art. I have myself been to
her villa during her last years. She reigned
there at Tittani as an ex-empress might have
done.” -
“She was incomparable,” Jacobelli mur-


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 171
mured contentedly. “Then possibly you may
recall the grandchild whom she adored, Bi-
anca's daughter. Her father was the young
artist from Florence whom Paoli befriended,
Peppino Trelango.”
The Count nodded and smiled. A child with
eyes such as Del Sarto loved to paint. Yes,
he remembered her. Delightedly, then, the old
maestro launched into the romance of the
old Contessa's death, of how Maria Roma
had brought Carlota to America, of the Mar-
chese's interest in her, and how Ogden Ward
had insured her success with his patronage.
D'Istria shook his head at the mention of
the financier.
“I would keep her out of his reach,” he ad-
vised. “She is too young to parry the advances
of such a man. Mind, I admire him greatly. He
is a power in the world, a very great patron of
the arts if you will, but likewise, Jacobelli, of
the artistes. Arm's length, I beg.”
“He will be here to-night.” Jacobelli
scanned the crowd, his five feet five over-
topped by many. Suddenly his eyes glowed
with interest, seeing a newcomer enter the
court enclosure. “Is that not Jurka? I have
not seen him since 1915. He was here on some
government work, an attaché at Washington.
A very handsome fellow, is n't he?”


172 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
D'Istria did not glance behind him. Arms
folded, he stood almost at attention, his lips
compressed slightly, his eyes watching Mrs.
Nevins as she came down the wide staircase
with Griffeth Ames.
“There is the type of man whom I admire,”
he said. “He has life and inspiration in his face,
and he walks like one who has ridden the air.”
“I do not know him.” Jacobelli overlooked
the stranger blandly. “Casanova told me Mrs.
Nevins is a collector of celebrities. This is
some youngster whose operetta she is to give a
little try-out to-night, his first chance. I shall
leave as soon as the daughter finishes her aria.”
But the Count appeared interested in the
blond youngster, and merely followed with his
gaze the slim, distinguished figure of the Bul-
garian ex-attaché, as the latter moved through
the throng.
The suite reserved for the singers and other
entertainers was on the second floor. Carlota
resented the line of demarcation between the
professionals and the society participants, but
Ames came to her as soon as he could relin-
quish Mrs. Nevins to Jurka. He was so happy
and buoyant, she dared not say anything to
curb or quell his enthusiasm.
“Forget them all, dear,” he whispered to.
her. “Think of what this may mean for us


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 173
both. I wish Casanova were here. She tried to
get him, but he hates these society round-ups,
and I don't blame him. Did you find your
dressing-room? I got one for you alone.”
After he had gone one of the maids assisted
her to unpack and slip into the court costume.
There was a full-length mirror in the inner
door. She regarded her reflection in it gravely
as the woman arranged her curls, combing
them into soft full clusters around her shoul-
ders. The deep, vivid color of the gown was
strikingly becoming to her.
“You should have some jewels —” she be-
gan.
“They are all there, in my handbag,” Car-
lota directed. As she opened the cases the maid
gave a smothered exclamation of surprise, and
glanced sharply at this girl pupil of Ames,
who, she had heard the other servants say, had
come from the Italian quarter in New York.
Her experience told her these were real jewels
and worth thousands of dollars.
“You will wear them all, miss?” she asked
curiously, lifting the heavy stomacher of gold
links, delicate as certain fragile shells.
Carlota nodded and set the tiara on her head
herself. The great Zarathustra ruby in its
center glowed and sparkled as if it held a heart
of fire. She held out her hands for the necklace.


174 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
“Do you like them?” she asked simply,
smiling for the first time at the maid. “They
came from Italy and were my grandmother's.”
“From Italy?” The woman straightened
back her shoulders. “I am from Averna my-
self. You know Averna, near Romap.”
“Ah, do I not!” Carlota clasped her hands
suddenly to her throat, the tears rising hot and
quick to her lashes. Averna, the little tiny vil-
lage one might see from the end of the gardens,
Averna with its songs lifting on the evening air,
and its little children clambering up the long
steep rocky road, the young goats tumbling
around them. “I — my home was near there,
the Villa Tittani.”
The woman knelt at her feet, folding her
hands to her lips rapturously, and back on her
feet in an instant, calm-faced.
“See how small the sea and world are,” she
said. “I do not work here. I am an extra for
to-night, and I find a face that has looked on
Averna. I know Tittani well —”
A rap came at the door and Ames's voice,
calling to her to hurry. Carlota sighed, drawn
back from the old days.
“Lay out the peasant dress, please, and
don't forget the scarf for the head. It is hand-
embroidered on old linen in red and yellow.”
Before the operetta she ventured to steal


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 175
out of a small balcony from the upper corridor,
overlooking the inner court below. Although
it was still early, they were dancing in one of
the smaller rooms. She saw Ames enter with
others, and recognized Nathalie even in her
domino. All of the débutantes who were to
sing wore them. And was it not as Dmitri
warned her? He was a success with these peo-
ple, she thought, wistfully. He was to reap a
triumph to-night, and she had been foolish
enough to risk her whole career for his, to
jeopardize her future merely to make his
operetta a success.
The woman from Averna had struck a chord
of memory that unnerved her. She felt the
lonely sorrow of Fiametta, the princess in dis-
guise, seeking her love at the festa, and finding
him only as the dancing Harlequin.
Ames sought her once more before the over-
ture. The maid had thrown a black silk domino
around her when she was ready to go down to
the improvised stage, and she drew the hood
closely over her head, concealing the tiara.
“All right?” he whispered confidently.
“Keep your nerve, dear. It all depends on you,
after all. Fiametta carries the action and
sympathy.”
She smiled back into his eyes in silence,
compliant to his wishes, eager for his suc-


178 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
have gone and sings “Cerca d'Amore,” the
quest of love.
It was on this aria that Ames based his
greatest hope, and even as he led the orchestra,
he sensed back of him the thrill which ran
over the audience at the entrée of Carlota. He
himself stared up at her in blank amazement.
She had worn her silk domino up to the final
moment and he had not seen her costume. But
now, as she lifted her voice in the opening
strains of the “Quest” song, he stared and
marveled.
Mrs. Nevins lifted her pince-nez and never
lowered it until the curtain fell on the inter-
lude. Then she remarked to the woman next
her in tones which demanded an explanation
from Mr. Ames, “That girl is wearing a for-
tune in real jewels!”
Jacobelli was near-sighted. Hindered by the
crowd from a clear view of the stage, the
Fiametta motif did not warn him of what was
about to happen, but the first notes of Carlota's
voice shocked him into attention. She was
singing as never before. The rôle appealed to
her, the lonely little princess planning her dis-
guise at the fête, seeking her fisher-boy love.
Her rendering of the aria was a sensation. He
caught a glimpse of D'Istria's face, of Ward's,
and trembled with emotion. In front of him


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 179
was a large, stately grande dame with opera
glasses. He reached for them out of her hand
imperatively.
“You permit, if you please? I cannot see. It
is most imperative that I see, you under-
stand?” .
She stared at him ineffectually, but Jaco-
belli was far too engrossed to notice her. He
had recognized Carlota through the lenses,
and the color rose thickly to his face. The
tragic truth burst upon him. His star had been
stolen from him by this young unknown com-
poser, his flower of genius was already plucked
before his eyes, and flaunted at this miserable
Society fête as the pupil of another.
Even while he stood with the glasses held
close to his eyes, a hand reached over his
shoulder, a peremptory hand, accustomed to
obedience, and took the glasses from him.
“You will pardon me,” Count Jurka said
gently. “It is very urgent that I see closely.”
Impotently Jacobelli glared at him. The
Count's face was absolutely expressionless.
Possibly Georges might have guessed that his
master was laboring under sudden excitement
from the extreme pallor which accentuated his
resemblance to a statue. Calm, youthful, and
blond, he seemed the embodiment of possibly
Endymion or Ganymede, a slender, effete


I8o THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
godling, bored, as Dmitri had said, by the
ennui of satiety.
Ward's face as he watched Carlota wore an
amused, satirical expression. During the inter-
lude Jacobelli started to speak to him, but
was silenced by the “Hush” of those nearest
him. Ames's music held society under a spell,
and Mrs. Nevins was conscious of a strange
mingling of satisfaction and resentment over
the girl Carlota daring to appear with an array
of jewels not one woman in the crowd could
have equaled. -
The climax of the operetta was the stabbing
of Fiametta at the feast. Nathalie sang Nedda
with an immature insouciance that was in
character with the rôle. Peppino was sung by
Jolly Allan, a young bachelor with a rich,
reckless sort of voice. When he danced with
the masked princess at the festa, Nedda
stopped him in a jealous fury, demanding why
he had neglected her. He answered with the
“Quest of Love,” the beautiful waltz song of
the princess. Together, as they sing it, they
dance, until suddenly Nedda stabs her un-
known rival, and as she dies in Peppino's
arms, she is unmasked and the people recog-
nize their princess.
The curtain fell in a tumult of acclamation.
Count Jurka was already bowing low over the


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE ISI
hand of his hostess. It was with the utmost
regret he must take his leave thus early. Only
the opportunity of attending her fête could
have brought him out from town. He congrat-
ulated her on securing the services of — ah,
what was the young girl's name — Miss Roma?
He stepped back to make room for Ward.
Jacobelli had broken away from the crowd,
and was finding his way to the dressing-rooms
beyond the balcony. Ames was already there
before him, proud and joyous, forgetting
everything but Carlota and her amazing tri-
umph. At the entrance to the green and ivory
salon off the balcony, the maestro encountered
Nathalie, and poured forth his suspicions to
her.
“This young singer, this girl, what do you
call her?”
“You mean Miss Romap.” She smiled at
him innocently. “Why, she's a pupil of Mr.
Ames, I believe, from the Italian quarter back
of where he lives on Washington Square.”
Jacobelli stared at her. The memory of the
duet from “Bohème” came back to him with
a jolt of pain. It had been her voice, then, that
day. He had not been mistaken.
“Ah, but everybody is crazy!” he exclaimed
heatedly. “She is my pupil, Carlota Trelango,
the greatest coming singer of the age! Where


182 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
is she? See, I will confront her. I will show him
up and prove that she is my pupil.”
With her hand drawn through his arm, Ames
was leading Carlota down the opposite flight
of stairs into the court when she suddenly
drew back.
“Please, I can't go down there,” she whis-
pered, pleadingly. “Let me go home at once.
I – I am not well; I want to leave now.”
Through the crowd came Ward towards
them leisurely, with the abstracted air that
was his habitually, but he had already seen
her, and she shrank back from his amused,
twisted smile that seemed to degrade all that
this had meant to her. Before Griffeth could
detain her, she had turned and sped back up
the crimson carpeted staircase into the long
salon, and there came face to face with Jaco-
belli.
“Ingrate!” he gasped explosively, beating
the air with both hands at sight of her. He
wheeled about on Ames. “You – you say you
are the great teacher — the maestro, when
you take my greatest pupil from me — from
Jacobelli!”
“It's a damned lie!” Ames retorted shortly.
“She is not your pupil. I've been teaching
her for weeks, months, myself.”


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 183
“But she knows nobody here in America;
it is utterly impossible!” cried the old maestro.
“For two years I have taught her all I know.
You know not what you say.”
Ames caught the glances of those around
them and bit his lip to keep back the words
he longed to hurl at this wild-eyed, explosive
individual.
“Pardon,” he said curtly. “Miss Roma is
my affianced wife. Now I am sure you will
give me credit for being aware of her identity.”
“Listen to him!” Jacobelli's rage boiled
over. He appealed to Nathalie and her little
group of girl friends, to Mrs. Nevins as she
approached them with Ward. “Mr. Ward, I
beseech — I demand that you assist me in
denouncing this impostor. Is not Carlota
Trelango my pupil and the granddaughter of
the great Margherita Paoliº Does she not
make her début at the Opera next season under
CasanovaP”
Mrs. Nevins moved forward deliberately,
and addressed Carlota.
“Won't you kindly end this distressing
scene, Miss Roma, and leave as soon as possi-
ble? I thank you for your services.”
Carlota stood an instant, hesitant and
proud. Ames held the little cold hand on his
arm in a close grasp. Head up, he was her


184 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
champion, but it was a question now which
adversary to engage first, so many assailed her.
In Nathalie's blue eyes was lurking a chal-
lenging ridicule as her gaze met his.
And suddenly D'Istria appeared at the head
of the staircase with several friends. He came
forward into the salon and bowed low over the
hand Carlota extended to him wonderingly,
gratefully.
“Oh, Count D'Istria,” she cried eagerly.
“You are here!”
Perhaps D'Istria himself sensed the meaning
of the silent group around her. He answered
gently, deferentially.
“After these years, signorina, it is with the
greatest pride for our Italy that I greet you
to-night. The last time you were weaving
chains of rosebuds at the old Contessa's knee
in the garden of Tittani. Now, I find you wear-
ing a crown of laurel on your own little head.”
Mrs. Nevins caught her breath swiftly, but
Jacobelli murmured over and over, pacing the
length of the salon alone, as if it gave him the
only inward relief, the one word,
“Ingrate!”


CHAPTER XIV
It was quarter of eleven when Jurka's car left
Belvoir. Along the shore road it sped, a low,
fleeting shadow lured by its own projecting
rays, as if some sinister genie of the night were
drawing it irresistibly on towards the city glow
in the west.
The Count smoked thoughtfully, leisurely,
selecting cigarettes from a black and gold
enameled case as one selects favorites from a
seraglio. Fate had tendered him the informa-
tion he had come to America after, and he
already contemplated a pleasurable return to
Switzerland first, and then to Sofia with the
profits from what he cleverly dubbed Love's
plunder.
He had recognized them the instant Carlota
had stepped into the full light. First the tiara
with its splendid center ruby, the Zarathustra,
and the curious Byzantine setting. The ruby
was one of the three greatest in the world. It
had been taken, centuries before, from a shrine
of the Zoroastrians beyond the Caspian coun-
try. Slipping from hand to hand it had brought
untold carnage and horror to the land whose
queen wore it on her brow. Only half a century


I86 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
before it had been coveted by a woman of the
Balkans whose ambition led her throneward.
She had been maid of honor to an emotional,
harassed queen, and had stepped over her dead
body to wed her son. The price of the ruby had
been one keen, swift knife-thrust through her
heart and another for the blundering, love-
blind prince. Ten years after, the ruby had
been found in a Cairo curio-shop by one who
knew its value, and had been sent out to seek
the jewel marts of Amsterdam. It had been
returned to the Bulgarian state coffers until
Paoli, in the zenith of her beauty and fame,
had received it from the hands of the crown
prince, mounted in the tiara with other gems
fit to bear it company.
The girl Carlota could not be aware of the
value or tremendous significance of the rubies,
Jurka reflected, else why should she subject
herself to the danger of wearing them in pub-
lic? Taken with the necklace and stomacher,
they represented an immense sum, entirely
apart from their peculiar antiquarian value.
Yet she had donned them for this charity fête
as if they had been paste.
Touching the mother-of-pearl button con-
cealed in the buff suède cushions, he drew a
small, black-belted card-case from his breast
pocket, and opened a folded oblong of thin


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 187
tracing-paper. Drawn upon it delicately was
a perfect sketch of the settings holding the
crown rubies. Jurka held it close to the shaded
bulb, studying the detail carefully until the
car approached the city.
“Choose quiet streets,” he ordered through
the speaking-tube. “Make haste!”
His early arrival was unexpected by Georges,
and the valet stood on guard as the key
sounded in the outer lock.
“Pardon, excellenza,” he begged. “I did not
know whom to expect.”
“Find me Steccho at once. Take him in a
taxi to the Park entrance at Columbus Circle.
Dismiss the car there and walk into the shad-
ows of the Park. I will pick you up a hundred
yards beyond the Monument at twelve-
thirty.” He paused to glance at his own reflec-
tion in the long mirror, adding, as to his chauf-
feur, “Make haste!”
Back at Belvoir Carlota had dressed while
Jacobelli paced up and down outside her door.
The maid assisted her excitedly, fondling the
jewels and gown as she packed them.
“You were a triumph, Miss Roma,” she
said. “They talk of nothing but you outside.”
Carlota did not answer. Her face was pale
and determined. Jacobelli had telephoned the .
Lafayette after demanding from her Maria's


188 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
whereabouts. He had had the Marchese paged,
and had asked him most sarcastically where
he imagined Carlota might be at that hour.
Where, returned the old Marchese genially,
but in her own bed, reposing restfully, after a
most severe headache?
“She is not that,” stormed Jacobelli. “She
is out here — at Belvoir, Long Island, at the
home of Mrs. Nevins, wasting her voice for
charity with a person who claims he is her
teacher. I bring her back with me at once.”
The Marchese protested that Carlota could
not have any wrong intentions, that Maria
must not be alarmed.
“Alarmed!” repeated Jacobelli solemnly.
“I would so alarm her that never would she
permit the girl out of her sight until her début.
I tell you this is not a joke, Veracci. She has
scaled the wall of Tittani, mark me. You will
understand when you see this man. Meet us at
the apartment. Not only has she sung here to-
night, but she has wasted also the Paoli jewels.
She has worn the priceless rubies of Marghe-
rita as if they were garnets.”
He lingered in the corridor booth, and Ames
watched eagerly for a glimpse of Carlota before
she left. Mrs. Nevins was delicately, pointedly
cynical and distant with him.
“My dear Mr. Ames, can't you see that this


190 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
ising a genius to have permitted a little infatu-
ation for this girl to ruin your career.”
She left him standing in the ivory and green
salon, furious and helpless. At length the door
of Carlota's dressing-room opened, and she
emerged, slim and demure in her long black
velvet evening cloak. It was made with a
monk's hood falling back from her head, and
as she hesitated, looking cautiously about for
Jacobelli, he thought of Juliet, awaiting the
return of the nurse in the garden.
Before he could reach her Jacobelli ap-
peared, and took her resolutely under his care.
Only one long look passed between them, but
to Ames it was a promissory note from hope
drawn on to-morrow. As he stood alone after
they had gone, the Italian maid came from the
room, and gave him a note, her black eyes
filled with mystery.
“It is from her,” she whispered. “My name
is Assunta Rizzio. My home is within sight of
the tower windows of hers in Italy, and I love
her. You may call upon me if you need me.
See, I live here.”
He smiled gratefully, and crumpled the
card she gave him into his pocket while he
looked at Carlota's last word:
It is all quite true, but I am alone to blame. I
thought Mr. Phelps might have told you, and you


192 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
tention to the score when I see him, if you will
permit.”
With the ambassador's hand-clasp toning
his new outlook on life and opportunity, Ames
passed the long half-circle of waiting cars in
the courtyard, and made for the station on
foot. Dmitri had been right in his estimate of
patronage. In the reaction he longed for a
quiet talk and smoke with him beside the cop-
per brazier.
As Carlota came into the glow of the porte-
cochère's spreading light, Jacobelli took her
handbag from her.
“Mr. Ward is kind enough to take you to
your home,” he said authoritatively. “He will ,
be here presently.”
He set her two suitcases in beside her, but,
she neither answered him nor even met his
glance. Sinking back in the corner of the heav-
ily cushioned car, she closed her eyes, feigning
utter weariness. It was Griffeth's last look that
haunted her thoughts. Would the girl Assunta
give him her note. She knew that she had done
wrong professionally, that she had been guilty
of almost an unpardonable error, yet it was
not of Ward she thought, nor of Casanova and
the chance that she might lose the financier's
patronage. The tender irresistible harmonies
of “Cerca d'Amore” filled her brain. She could


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 193
barely resist humming them, and smiling de-
fiantly at the two moody faces after Ward
joined them, and the car turned towards the
city. Ward smoked small black cigars until the
interior of the car was hazy with smoke and
the maestro coughed irritably, but the other
man paid no attention to him, merely watched
Carlota. Jacobelli rambled on during the trip,
but always striking the same motif.
“This to me, to Jacobelli! My greatest pupil
jeopardizes her whole career by appearing pre-
maturely at a charity fété for an unknown com-
poser.”
“I did it for love of Italy,” Carlota told him
with sudden passion. “If you were truly a pa-
triot, you would be glad.”
“Love of Italy!” Jacobelli groaned at her
stroke of diplomacy. “Bah! Love, yes, but not
for Italy. You are infatuated with this no-
body, this lapper from the saucer of cream
people like Mrs. Nevins sets for patronage.
This is not the professional strain in you of the
Paoli. This is the Peppino Trelango strain. He
delighted in the silken cushion, the easy path
of the rich patron. You are an ingrate!”
He folded his arms and leaned back aus-
terely. Carlota forced herself to keep silent be-
fore Ward. He moved, shifting his position so
that he might see her better. She had drawn the


194 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
velvet monk's hood over her head, but every
arc light they passed threw a flashing radiance
into the car and showed him her pure, beauti-
ful profile, delicately Roman, and the glamour
of her near presence unnerved him.
“And those jewels which you have not the
sense to value!” burst forth Jacobelli again.
“I shall warn the Marchese to act at once as
your guardian and place them in the safety-
deposit vault. You shall not have them to play
with.” -
“I do not want them in the vault. I shall
sell them and pay you and Mr. Ward for every-
thing and return to Italy with Maria.”
“To Italy!” repeated Jacobelli dryly. “Ben
trovato! With this boy here.”
Ward looked with musing eyes at the bag
beside the maestro.
“When you are ready to dispose of them,”
he said deliberately, “come to me. I did not
know you were in possession of these, but I
have heard of the rubies. I collect rare jewels.
The Zarathustra would be brought to me by
dealers ultimately, and I prefer to pay you the
full price if you wish to part with it.”
“I will remember,” Carlota said clearly,
meeting his eyes for the first time.
They left him at the Fifth Avenue entrance
to his club. He made no further allusion to the


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 195
rubies, and Carlota forgot them in listening
to Jacobelli's flood of argument until they
reached the apartment. She would throw up
her career after all they had done for her,
merely in a fit of pique because they objected
to her throwing herself away. The Marchese
and Maria had not returned.
“I shall not trust you,” declared Jacobelli.
“I shall guard you until they come back.”
Carlota faced him suddenly, in the small
vestibule, her eyes brilliant with resentment
and pride.
“I prefer to be alone, signor,” she told him.
“I think even your authority must end here in
my own home.”
He stared at her in amazement, and bowed
as he stepped back from the door.
“I repeat the one word which fits you, in-
grate!”
The door closed, and in the sudden reaction
of nervous tension Carlota sank on the low
couch, her face on her arms. It was nearly
twelve by the clock on Maria's desk. Surely
they would come now any minute, and she
would have to confess everything before
Jacobelli had an opportunity of presenting his
version. Somehow she felt the old Marchese
would sympathize with her, he who was still
a faithful voyageur along the coasts of ro-


196 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
mance, but Maria would see only the wreck of
her career and her ingratitude to Ward.
The memory of him brought back his offer
to purchase the rubies. She opened the bag,
and drew them out on the velvet cushions of
the couch. Maria had called them priceless,
these glowing bits of imprisoned glory. Against
the gray brocade of the cushion, their vivid,
blood-red hue fascinated her, but only with
the thrill at their beauty. She was like Paoli
on whom they had been lavished. There was
no craving in her nature for outer ornamenta-
tion, no lure from wealth or jewels. She touched
them now curiously, half regretfully. Ward
had said he would become their purchaser at
any time when she wished to dispose of them.
She rose with quick resolution and searched
for his telephone number in the book. The bell
rang with startling sharpness in the still room.
She raised the receiver, expecting to hear
Ames, but the suave, cheery tones of the
Marchese sounded over the wire.
“Maria would have me call you up before
we went on to Casanova's reception, to be
sure you were quite all right. You are, yes?
The headache better? Ah, that is good. We
may be late, about two, I think. You are to
rest yourself, understand.”
“Oh, tell her I understand, and she is not


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 197
even to think of me,” Carlota exclaimed
eagerly. “It was dear of you to call me up.”
She hung up after the Marchese's laughing,
courtly rejoinder. Two whole hours before
they would return. It seemed as if Fate had
opened wide the way for her to go. She called
Ward's number with surety. He had not yet
returned, Ishigaki informed her, but was ex-
pected at any moment. He would give him the
message.
At the same moment Georges paused be-
fore a row of low red-brick buildings on
East Twenty-Eighth Street, towards Lexington
Avenue. They were very quiet, private-ap-
pearing residences. Narrow, one-story porches
of iron grill-work clung to each, overhung with
scrawny, rugged vines that defied the city
soil to make them vacate. In the basement of
one was a barber shop, discreet seeming and
customerless. The second floor of another bore
a small sign, “Bulgarian Restaurant.” Each
carried over its entrance bell a slip of white
paper, pasted to the brick, “Furnished Rooms.”
Here, then, Georges hesitated, not knowing
certainly which house held the object of his
quest. It was after midnight by five minutes.
The lights in the restaurant burned low. A
footfall down the street towards the subway
station made him turn. The late pedestrian


198 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
was young and in evening dress, with a rain-
coat flapping back in the swirling autumn
wind. The air was damp and salty with the
scent of the incoming tide up the East River.
He started up the steps of the house next to
the restaurant when Georges accosted him.
Did he know where a man named Steccho
lived, Ferad Steccho?
“I don't live around here,” Ames replied.
“Wait a minute. I'll ask my friend.”
He tapped upon one of the windows open-
ing on the narrow iron porch, and both
heard the sound of a violin within, a queer,
soft harmony of undertones. Dmitri sat cross-
legged on his couch like a merchant in a Bag-
dad bazaar, his head twisted over his violin as
though it had been the head of a girl he loved
held in the curve of his arm.
On a stool beside the table was Steccho,
brewing coffee in a long-handled copper urn
he held over a brazier of charcoal. He started
up at the sound of a step on the porch, but
Dmitri calmed him.
“It is only Griff,” he said, rising to open the
door. Ames stood on the threshold, his hand
on the knob. And the boy at the brazier heard
him ask where Ferad Steccho lived. Before he
could warn Dmitri, Georges had caught the
answer and was bowing before him.


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 199
“I disturb you, I fear,” he said gravely. “I
merely sought an old friend.”
Steccho's face was rigid with alarm and fear.
The skin seemed to tighten over his high,
swarthy cheekbones. His eyes were brilliant,
his lips a mere line of red in the graying tan of
his face.
“I come!” he responded.


CHAPTER XV
DMITRI laid aside his violin, his eyebrows
lifted querulously.
“Now, why do you suppose that black-
browed grenadier comes to my threshold at
dead of night and scares my friend? Sit down,
Griff, sit down. You shall have such a sup of
coffee as you have never tasted before, purest
Mocha straight from Medina in a sack. The
boy was frightened, eh?”
“I did n't notice his face,” Ames retorted.
“God, but I'm tired l’’ He stretched out full
length on the couch after throwing off both
coats. “You are absolutely right, Dmitri. So-
ciety is the pitfall and delusion, the desert of
mirages.”
“It is not a success, then, the opera? Where
is Carlota?” Dmitri talked with a cigarette
balanced unsteadily in one corner of his
mouth, and poured off the top of the coffee
deftly into small cups. “You like a dash of
rose or orange water, yes?”
“I don't care what you give me. I'd drink a
Lethe cocktail to-night,” groaned Ames.“They
took her away from me, Dmitri. She is n’t
poor or friendless or anything of that sort. It's


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 201
a damned lie. She's the granddaughter of the
great Italian diva, Paoli, and Ogden Ward is
her financial backer. It reeks, lad, it reeks of
the commonplace, and the rose of romance is
a wired fraud.”
“That is very good,” Dmitri responded
cheerfully. “A wired fraud peddled by the
fakir Hope on street corners to catch just such
boys as yourself. I told you all about it and
you would not listen to me. Each lover imag-
ines he is completely original in his unique ad-
venture when it is merely the same old rondel
sung over again. She is too beautiful to doubt,
but the more beautiful they are the more you
should doubt.”
Ames sat up, his head bowed.
“You see, the worst of it is no one will be-
lieve I did not know who she was all the time.
She is the accredited pupil of Guido Jacobelli,
and yet she permitted me to introduce her
publicly as my pupil. Why did she ever come
down to the Square and let me make-believe
teach her?”
Dmitri's eyebrows again became expressively
active. He shook a few drops of orange water
from a tiny glass decanterinto each cup of coffee,
and his next remark was apparently a diversion.
“Have you tried to pluck this Rose of
Romance?”


202 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
“Oh, she knows I love her, of course. You
don't have to tell those things outright when
you are persons like Carlota and myself.”
“Ah, to be sure, you sing it to each other;
you play it in divine harmonies on the piano.
I forget.”
“Thank God, that is all.”
“Then you have not let her carry away
your heart and offer of marriage in her little
gold bonbon case?”
Ames shook his head miserably. “No one
will ever believe I did not know who she
was,” he repeated. “She merely told me that
her people, her own people, were all dead
back in Italy. Of course I thought she just
came to me from some neighborhood around
the quarter until you warned me where she
really lived.” -
“My boy,” Dmitri comforted him, “you
love the indefinite. It would have dispelled
the illusion to have trailed her into the bosom
of her family. A family is so commonplace.”
“But she always dressed simply.”
“Simply? You do not recognize the art of
the modiste and tailor. I have myself seen her
wearing a coat or gown that must have cost all
out of reason to her apparent circumstances,
but I said nothing to dispel your happiness.
There was also her voice, her hand, her very


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 203
manner. Griff, you were blind not to see and
know you entertained an angel unawares.”
“I suppose she thought she was helping me,
singing ‘Fiametta' to-night, and instead, it
will ruin my whole career. They will call it an
unthinkable and gigantic piece of unpardon-
able impudence by the time Jacobelli finishes
with me.”
“Stop thinking of yourself all the time.
What of her?” warned Dmitri gently. “She
did not want to go to Belvoir. She did not
want ever even to sing in public, and you
made her do it for you, you renegade. You
get back to your own case. Do you not think
she is suffering too?”
“If I thought she were, I'd be the happiest
man alive,” Ames declared fervently. “If I
thought she really cares anything for me, that
this would n't end everything, I mean.”
“You mean, if she is the girl you believe her
to be, she will not give you up?” Dmitri blew
wavery, violet ovals into the air and sighed.
“I do not envy you people who eternally seek
to win your ideal, to bring it to earth, and
make it domesticated, so to speak. Possibly
this is the greatest thing that could have hap-
pened to either of you. You will be like the
most wonderful lovers in the world — Dante
and Beatrice. To me they are the greatest of


204 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
all because they are divinely ideal. My dear
boy, he had a wife and five children, yet he
beheld her at the bridge over the Arno once,
only once, in the crimson gown, and he im-
mortalized her with his ideal love. Paolo pos-
sessed Francesca's avowal, Abelard had his
memories in his cell, yet Dante, in his poverty
of earthly happiness attained the empyrean
following his dream.”
“I know. They'll tell her all that sort of
thing, too. You people who make a fetish of
the immaterial, who believe that realization.
kills, amuse me.”
“Amusement is the privilege of youth,”
Dmitri answered. “What you do not wish to
understand or enjoy, you laugh away, but I tell
you, your love, if realized, will kill the genius
of you both, and you will find yourselves with
clipped wings, domesticated wild swans ever
yearning after the blue lanes of flight.”
“Every philosopher loves the sound of his
own voice better than that of any woman,”
said Ames.
Dmitri chuckled. “That is possible, quite
possible, my friend. I wish I might call myself
a philosopher, but I am a poor marksman.
Philosophers are men who shoot mental shafts
at the bull's-eye of truth. I have never hit the
inner circle myself.”


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 205
Ames drank his coffee thirstily and reached
his cup for more. “Don’t preach at me,
Dmitri,” he said bitterly. “I have come to
you for straight advice, not a lot of axioms.
Tell me what to do. She has gone away with
Ward and Jacobelli. They will keep her from
me.”
“Wait patiently with confidence,” Dmitri
told him. “You will hear from her. Women are
that way. There is some divine sixth sense
that tells them of the beloved's sufferings.
Stay here with me to-night.”
Ames refused. The coffee had rested and
stimulated him. He merely wanted companion-
ship and the talk with one who believed in his
success. Dmitri's optimism restored his own
confidence in himself. He would walk on down
to the Square, he said, and wait there for
Some word from Carlota.
“What a pity you can't sit down in this
mood and improvise,” Dmitri said regretfully.
“This way you will only walk it off, when if
you could but express it in music – ah, my
friend, what we owe to the mad loves and
erratic moods of genius. I drink to its suf-
fering.”
He accompanied Ames to the door and
waved his hand in comradely fashion to him,
watching until he had turned the corner of


206 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
Madison Avenue. Then, with a quick sigh of
relief, he ran his fingers through his hair and
crossed the balcony to see if there was a light
in Steccho's window next door. It was dark,
but as his hand touched the knob it came in
contact with a letter which had been stuck in
the door. He went back to his own quarters
slowly, and relighted the brazier to make fresh
coffee. The letter lay on the black walnut
stand where he dropped it. It had been mailed
in New York, the outer envelope attested,
but when he examined it closely he was certain
there was a second envelope inside. It was so
that his own mail came to him, sent on through
secret channels from Sofia. He mused specu-
latively on the news it might contain for the
boy, Steccho. He would surely return to tell
him what the midnight visitor had wanted of
him. Possibly this letter had been a forerunner
of the visit. News from the mother and little
sister Maryna, no doubt. He lifted his head
listeningly for a footfall along the silent street,
but none came. And he leaned over the char-
coal blaze as the moments passed, with a
brooding look that was the very expectancy of
fear.
Through the wooded drives of the north end
of the Park Jurka's car proceeded slowly. On
the seat facing the Count, Steccho huddled.


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 207
It was chilly in the early morning, and he was
dressed scantily. The masterfulness of the
other stole his vitality from him. He felt cowed
and driven against his will. As they passed the
penumbra of an arc light he would glance up
at the handsome, easy-mannered figure oppo-
site, his eyes filled with livid hatred.
“You have slipped a cog somewhere, I do
not know just where yet, but it will come to
me,” Jurka said. “You have been following
the girl for a month and you tell me you do
not know where the jewels are. Where were
you last night when she left the house wearing
them?”
“I had watched all day,” Steccho told him
excitedly. “I was in Vorga's tobacco store on
the corner in the afternoon. You can see the
entrance from his window. She could not have
passed out without my having seen her.”
“You lie! You were with Dmitri Kavec. He
is a known spy of the Internationals. Did you
meet him in Sofia?”
Steccho closed his lips stubbornly. Dmitri
was his friend. The car sped through a curving
roadway round the base of a rocky precipice
surmounted by an old blockhouse. In the
darkness the locality lost all semblance of city
scenery and might have been in the mountain
fastnesses of Bulgaria. Jurka leaned forward


208 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
with careless interest, and took note of their
surroundings. “It is like the road to Monastir,”
he said, half to himself. Steccho's eyes stared
at him through the gloom of the car's interior
like those of some wild animal held in leash.
His mother had named it “The Trail of Tears,”
that road from Monastir, where the weak and
young had fled in the great retreat, and had
been trampled to death, or had lingered for
the slower fate from starvation. He himself
had seen the babies, the young girls, the old
people — and the memory was a veritable
glut of butchery. Yet this Count smiled as he
mentioned it as though it had been some tryst
with pleasure which he had kept along that
road from Monastir. And while the boy's
thoughts leaped from one avenging plan to
another, the Count continued:
“I think you lie, Steccho. Perhaps you have
lied to me from the beginning. Perhaps, like
Dmitri, you are a Czech spy. Do you know
why he is here in America?”
“I know nothing about him,” Steccho as-
serted, with a touch of bravado. “We were
friends in Sofia. Both students at the Uni-
versity. I did not even know he was a spy. I
had hoped he could give me news of my
people.”
Jurka touched the bell and the car stopped


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 209
short under the overhanging shadow of autumn
foliage, and as the faint light from an arc
lamp up the road reached the interior, Steccho
saw the round bore of a revolver facing him,
held steadily and easily in Jurka's hand as it
rested on his knee. -
“I could kill you now and have your body
thrown in the bushes yonder. It would be one
way out. When I saved your life you gave in
return certain assurances of faithful service.”
“Ah, but you promised me you would pro-
vide safety for my mother and sister,” Steccho
broke in eagerly. “You hear from them, yes?
I hear they have killed all the girls two years
ago, cut their throats, thrown their bodies in
wells, that they took them up to the moun-
tains for the soldiers. Was Maryna among
those, excellenza?”
“I have given you my word for her safety,”
responded Jurka. “The war is past. You
brood too much over fancied terrors. Listen
to reality. This is what you may fear. If you
do not procure the jewels from this girl to-
night, I will have your throat wrung for you
like a dead fowl. We save bullets for men, not
cowards.”
“And after I get them, we go back, excel-
lenza?” There was almost a whine in the
query. The boy shrank back in the corner of


2Io THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
the car. His cigarette had gone out. His face
looked narrow and pinched in the darkness.
“You will see that I go back to Rigl?”
“Rich for life,” Jurka assured him lan-
guidly. “You will be able to buy the yellow
castle, if you fancy it, and many cattle and
sheep. The queen is not one to forget such
services, my Steccho, nor I. When I meet her
in Switzerland and give her the jewels, I will
tell her of you.”
The muscles of Steccho's face relaxed. After
all, he was a fool to doubt. It was all quite sim-
ple. He would get the jewels. There would be
the journey back as they had come, Georges as
the Count's courier, he as groom, caring for
the two riding-horses, Vriki and Etelka. Then
the heaped-up honors from the exiled queen
herself, and, yes, the yellow castle if the little
tired mother and Maryna still fancied it.
The Count spoke to Georges through the
tube. “Drive to the east entrance nearest
Sixty-Fourth Street,” he ordered. “Stop in-
side the Park.”
He did not speak again until they came to
the entrance. As Steccho swung down to the
pavement, he nodded to him with debonair,
care-free grace. The car turned down Fifth
Avenue and Steccho paused at the corner to
catch the last glimpse of it. Jurka had hummed


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 21 I
a few bars from a favorite waltz back in Sofia.
The tune touched the chords of memory and
home longing as nothing else had done. It was
a waltz of the people played often at the little
village dances where he had met Katinka. As
he walked east on Fifty-Ninth Street he re-
membered her as he had seen her kneeling in
church, bathed in the long glow of purple light
that flowed through the stained-glass aureole
of Saint Genevieve. Always as he had fol-
lowed Carlota from the very first she had re-
minded him of his dead sweetheart. Over and
over, when he had been tempted to betray her
visits to Ames's studio, the words had been
checked on his lips as he met Jurka's eyes and
remembered the day his excellenza's soldiery
had carried the body of the girl from his quar-
ters above the inn.
Twice before he reached the Saint Germain
he stopped dead short, and looked back. But
the lure of the yellow castle drew him for-
ward, and he finally faced the east, eager for
the night's work.


CHAPTER XVI
WARD pushed his chair back from the table,
lighting a cigarette from the match Ishigaki
held towards him.
“Miss Trelango's call came about half an
hour ago?”
“At five minutes past twelve.” The Jap gave
the time with exactness. Ward's face was in-
scrutable.
“Get the car around. I shall want only you
with me, tell Daniels.”
As Ishigaki left the room he stood smoking,
a half smile on his lips. In all probability to-
night he would secure the Zarathustra ruby and
its attendant collection. Jurka, the Bulgarian
he had met at the club, had been after them,
too, he remembered. He had been at the Nev-
ins fête and had seen them. Palmieri had as-
certained that the collection had been declared
by Maria Roma as the personal property of
Carlota Trelango, a minor non-resident alien.
This much his own agent had found out. What
Jurka knew, he had no idea, or his object in
seeking the rubies. Was he, too, infatuated
with the girl herself, and used the jewels
merely as a blind to his own pursuit of her?


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 213
He drew three opals from his pocket and
tossed them like dice before him on the pol-
ished surface of the table. They were perfectly
matched and had come from the lacquered
cabinet of the old empress whose life-span had
bridged the gulf from the rice-fields along the
Yang-tse to the peacock throne at Pekin. He
gazed down at their changing luster musingly.
Carlota had been in her most alluring mood
when he had spoken with her on the telephone
after Ishigaki had delivered her message.
Spirited, combative, aloof, as he liked her best.
The temple chimes in a corner recess sounded
the half-hour. She had said she was alone. Al-
ways, in his experience, every woman had her
price. As he swept the opals up in his hand at
the Jap's low voice, he knew there could be no
compromise now. She had dallied along the
highway of romance and had found the love of
youth awaiting her. Remembering the look of
perfect understanding and faith between her
and Ames as she had passed by him on the
arm of Jacobelli, Ward felt a conscienceless
determination to compel her to take his terms
that night. She could do without the Paoli
gems. Possibly, it might be a rather suitable
tribute, later at her début, for him to present
her with the necklace. He glanced into the tall
Florentine mirror as he folded his scarf be-


214 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
neath his cloak, and followed Ishigaki to the
car at the curb. The boy had only youth and
ambition as assets after all.
In her apartment Carlota had deliberately
set the stage for his reception. Slipping off her
dressing-robe, she clad herself in a straight-cut
evening gown of chiffon velvet, ranging in
color from palest mauve to deepest rose, with
long swaying sleeves of silver metal cloth. Her
face was paler than usual, her eyes brilliant as
she switched off the lights in the apartment,
leaving only the one in the hall and a spray of
rose globes beneath a silken shade at the head
of the couch.
Kneeling before the gas-logs, she opened the
leather bag to look alone for the last time
on the rubies. Behind her a window opened
widely to the keen night air. Once she raised
her head, startled at a sound that seemed to
come from the balconied fire escape. The wind
blew the curtains toward her. It was dark out-
side. The city was sinking into a few hours of
sleep before the rattle of daybreak noises. As
she rose to look out of the window, the outer
bell rang lightly. Standing flat against the
stone wall of the building, not half a yard from
the room, Steccho checked his leap, listening.
If he were discovered now, they would snare
him, no matter what he told. Who would be-


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE als
lieve, unless perhaps the girl herself out of the
grace that was in all women, that he had not
come there to-night to rob her, but to warn
her, to defraud Jurka — not of the jewels, but
of the slender, young purity of this child
woman who had eyes like Katinka. If he could
save her, could keep her for the boy who loved
her, Dmitri's friend in the Square, then per-
haps in some great, merciful way the knowl-
edge of it would come to that unseen Power
for good which Dmitri held still ruled the
world of men and women in spite of the sea of
crimson. Perhaps it might be they would save
his mother and Maryna, these unseen forces,
without his bargaining away his soul and life
with a man like Jurka.
“You are still alone?” Ward's eyes followed
the lines of her figure as she moved away from
him. The changing silver and rose of her gown
reminded him of the opals.
“Maria has gone with the Marchese to
Casanova's reception. They telephoned they
would be back about two. We have not very
much time, you see.” She drew the jewels from
the bag and laid them before him on the round
inlaid table at the head of the couch. The rose
light shone on their beauty almost hungrily,
catching the varying gleams from the deep red
hearts of the rubies. “They are all there, all


21.6 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
that I wore to-night, the tiara, the necklace,
and the girdle. They are worth enough quite to
pay you back for all you have given me, are
they not?”
He looked at them quickly, and turned back
to her as she stood beside the table.
“I will give you my check for two hundred
and fifty thousand. The Zarathustra alone is
worth half of that. You would find it out if I
cheated you, and hate me afterwards. I, too,
hate a cheat.”
Something in his words and tone made her
motionless, chilled and tense. She met his eyes
challengingly.
“You mean that I am not keeping my bar-
gain, Mr. Ward. But it was not a fair one that
you made. You asked the impossible.”
“That you would not get into any affairs
until you had made your success.” He cut her
short sharply. “I was right. To-night proved
it. Left to yourself you have made yourself a
laughing-stock. You ruined your own début
for the sake of this fellow Ames, and smashed
his career by branding him an impostor.”
“I do not believe it. Count D'Istria — you
yourself heard him when he spoke to me — he
would not have recognized me and praised the
opera if – if I had ruined him—Griffeth. You
cannot kill art like that, not when it is real.”


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 217
“You have the patter of his crowd at your
tongue's end,” sneered Ward. “You would
have nothing to do with me when I offered you
my love that night at dinner. You were in-
sulted and fiery as some menaced nun, yet you
meet this Ames in his studio secretly and carry
on an affair with him brazenly, merely because
you think you love him. Do you believe that
love is its own law, then?”
And Carlota, thinking only of the old rose-
tinted wall that bounded the domain of her
dreams, closed her eyes and smiled.
“It is the highest law,” she answered.
“So?” His arms closed about her like a vise
as he crushed her to him. “I take you at your
word. Do you think that I, Ogden Ward,
would be such a damned fool as to let another
man take you or anything else that I wanted
away from me? Did you think you could throw
me a few jewels like bones to a dog, and call
our deal off? I want those rubies because they
are like you. They are all fire and blood and
passion, and I'll have you both.”
He stifled the scream on her lips with one
hand, lifting her on one arm easily while she
fought like a captured wild animal. The table
overturned behind her, and the.jewels slipped
to the rug as the electrolier broke its rose
globes over them. The room was in darkness as


218 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
he felt her suddenly relax limply in his em-
brace. Her hands and lips were cold, yet he
told himself he had not hurt her badly, merely
the pressure on her mouth to keep back the
alarm. As he laid her on the couch Steccho's
curved Turkish blade caught him under the
left shoulder blade, and he rolled backward,
reaching blindly into the darkness as he fell.
The boy waited a few moments, ready for
another thrust, but there was utter silence in
the room, and he drew a deep soft breath of
relief. Kneeling, he gathered up the jewels
carefully, without haste or dread, placing them
in his inner coat pockets, the necklace with its
priceless pendant next to his body where it
was safest, the tiara curving under the belt at
his waist, the girdle looped like a pet serpent
in his pocket. Something else had fallen where
the firelight caught its sparkle. He picked up
one of the old empress's opals and smiled over
its perfect beauty. This might please Maryna.
Before he passed back out of the window, he
bent over Carlota. She lay as if sleeping, with
spent, broken breathing. Ah, he would have
taken her as a wolf, even as Jurka himself, this
man who lay at her feet, but not now, not after
the stroke he had learned in Rigl. She was safe,
quite safe to leave alone with him. He lighted
a cigarette calmly, buttoned his raincoat close


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 219
around his throat, and swung out of the win-
dow and down the fire escape.
Those who place faith in the symbols and
cabals of coincidence might have traced a tri-
angle at that moment with Steccho at one
point, Dmitri's room the apex, and the other
the unlighted studio where Griffeth sat by the
open window, staring out at the Square. The
Bulgarian felt oddly exhilarated now that he
had made his get-away safely. He paused at
Fifty-Ninth Street and Madison Avenue, like
a racer, sure of his victory, resting at the first
lap.
It had been strange, fate forcing the posses-
sion of the rubies upon him. He was fatalist
enough to accept. And it would be better for
the girl Carlota. They would find her in time.
Ward had terrified her, but she was unhurt, he
felt certain, except for the marks on her throat.
He looked back over the way he had come.
There was no sign of alarm yet, no shrill blow-
ing of police whistles, nothing but the custom-
ary flow of crosstown traffic at that hour. He
bought an early paper, and took a car bound
downtown. The jewels themselves reminded
him, as he touched them in his pockets, that he
had not failed when the hour of fate had struck
for him. He bore the wealth of a rajah on his
body, and the knowledge gave him a sup-


222 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
When he mounted the steps of the red-
brick house with the iron railing around its
balcony, there came the low sound of violin-
playing from within. Dmitri then was still
awake. His grate was ablaze with a good fire of
boxwood and charcoal. His coffee waited the
whim of his desire, over the unlighted brazier.
Meanwhile, he said hello, as he expressed it, to
his consort, “Madame Harmony.”
“Behold, she never deserts me,” he would
say to Ames. “She is the most patient yet al-
luring of mistresses, my madame. And when I
caress her, ah, what she tells to me!”
There was no pathos in his music to-night.
A Czech folk-dance spun from his fingers in
curling, whirling, leaping strains of melody
like some strange, intangible confetti of vibra-
tion expressed in notes. The lure of it held the
boy and he waited in the doorway, his dark
eyes filled with a passion of home yearning. So
often he had danced with her, Katinka, to that
same music. At the instant some one on an-
other street blew a car whistle, and he slammed
shut the door, locking it with shaking fingers.


CHAPTER XVII
“Now what?” demanded Dmitri cheerily.
“You look as stark as a dead fish, my friend.
Have some wine.”
Steccho took the full glass gratefully,
drained it, his head thrown far back, and
wiped his lips with a sweep of his hand.
- “I thought it was the police,” he said un-
steadily.
Dmitri lit the fire in the brazier before he
spoke. His eyes were filled with brooding solici-
tude when he looked back at the boy. Steccho's
whole posture showed more than mere exhaus-
tion. There were dejection and fear in the
slouch of his body as he sat forward on the
edge of the couch, his fingers crumpled in his
hair.
“You have done something to-night?”
The boy nodded.
Dmitri measured powdered Arabian coffee
into the copper pot carefully.
“It is a pitiful penalty of wrongdoing,” he
said compassionately, “the little ghosts of fear
one must forever entertain. You have been
followed here?”
“I am not afraid. I am hungry.” A shudder


224 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
like a chill shook his narrow, stooped shoul-
ders. Dmitri eyed him anxiously. “Let us go
around to Barouki, some place where it is
quiet and we can talk.”
“None better than here. Lay off your coat
and lie down. I will have you such a meal in
twenty minutes as you have not tasted in
months, not since you left home. I have broth,
wine, and lamb to broil; grapes and bread and
coffee.” He set a pot of broth over the blaze, .
brought out lamb from the cupboard with a
small, smooth board to cut it on, and sat cross-
legged on the floor before the brazier while he
cut the meat into slices and skewered it with
slices of raw onion between. “I am no wan-
derer at heart, you see. I like my own hearth-
fire even if it is merely a charcoal blaze like
this. I prefer to cook my own meals and know
what I feed upon. Drink that broth.”
Steccho obeyed in moody silence. The reac-
tion had set in after his rebuff at the Dupont.
He drank the broth in deep swallows. The
peace and genial atmosphere of the room had
begun to seep through his consciousness as it
always did. He felt that here he might lie and
sleep for hours, until the fear that dogged his
heels should have lost the scent. He wondered
if the blade had reached the heart. He had
dropped without a cry, the man who desired


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 225
both rubies and her who was more precious
than rubies. If it had not killed him, then he
would waken and accuse – whom would he
accuse? He had seen no assailant in the dark-
ness. Would he, perhaps, say that Carlota had
stabbed him, would he dare when he knew she
had been unconscious in his arms? Besides,
they would discover the rubies were gone; that
would prove she was innocent, that another
had dealt the blow and had taken them. He
yawned exhaustedly.
“You could hide me here, if it had to be,
yes?”
“Doubtless.” Dmitri set a savory mess of
browned lamb on the black oak table and
poured boiled rice into the broth to simmer.
“I could hide you, but you would have to tell
me why you were hiding. In these days we
must guard our friends against their own im-
pulses. Whom have you killed, Ferad?”
The Bulgarian stretched out his palms ex-
citedly.
“And what is that, the death-stroke, nowa-
days? Life is the cheapest thing in the world.”
Dmitri poured wine into two tall metal
drinking-cups. From the Metropolitan Tower
came the strokes of two. He served the rice
in silence, reserving comment, waiting for the
confidence of the other. And suddenly Steccho


226 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
rose from the table. He had eaten with a raven-
ing hunger; now his old air of sullen bravado
returned. He turned pocket after pocket inside
out, emptying the jewels on the table before
Dmitri as if he had been a gamin rolling mar-
bles. Dmitri lifted his brows in relief and
amusement as he looked at them, rubies and
diamonds, rubies and pearls, set in old silver
and gold.
“So, you play with these, my friend,” he
smiled. “I had thought you were grown to a
man's desire. These are the devil's toys to
catch the tinkling fancy of women and girls.
Did you need money? I would have given you
all I had.”
Steccho laughed, his heavy black hair rum-
pled over his forehead. He shook his head im-
patiently. After his long fast, the wine was
stirring his brain to resentment against Jurka.
“I bring them to you that you may choose
for me,” he said. “This is why I am here. They
are the missing crown jewels, the rubies of the
queen.”
Dmitri stared at him incredulously. Yet the
gems lay there before him. The boy spoke the
truth. These were imperial in their beauty and
value. He lifted the pendant, gazing intently
at the Zarathustra ruby, the second largest in
the world.


230 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
He had met Dmitri Kavec there, a teacher
of political economy and sociology, tutoring
younger men to pay his way, writing for cer-
tain Continental papers, talking always of the
day when freedom should dawn. He was a
Czech, with a mingling of Romany blood in his
veins. It showed in his mastery of the violin, in
his dark skin, not swarthy like Steccho's, but
clear and pale as yellow wine with the under-
lay of red. The boy's eyes were furtive, rest-
less, Dmitri's like those of some captive eagle
that sits motionless, watching passing crowds,
alert and fearless. He, Steccho, had felt proud
when he had been asked to join the group of
men who assembled nightly in Dmitri's quar-
ters above the old coffee-house in the lower
square. He had sat and listened to them, learn-
ing much of the underground wiring of secret
diplomacy, much of the patience of the think-
ers and workers. . t
Then had come dissension and a break in the
university club ranks. Dmitri was called a
dreamer, one of those who believed the end
might be reached by brotherhood and teaching
of the people. Even Steccho had chafed at such
doctrine. Rather he liked the fighting, the car-
rying of blazing flambeaux in the race, the song
of the torch, as Dmitri called their propaganda.
After the outbreak of war he had become a


232 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
Straws in the wind, Jurka said, his back to
the fireplace, but signs to the wise. The people
wearied of oppression. They must be taught to
dance to a new tune. With victory Bulgaria
would swallow up her enemies, she would sit
like a brooding lioness, her cubs about her,
renegade Greece, recreant Roumania, Servia
crawling, the Slovacs whipped to heel. And
eager to hear more, Steccho had leaned like a
fool too far forward to catch the low-spoken
words, and a rumble of loosened bricks had
startled the soldiers into action.
He had been forced down by a dozen prick-
ing, reaching sword-points as if he had been a
porcupine in a hole, and had been condemned
to be shot at once against the stable wall in the
courtyard below.
| He had heard the scream of his mother as
the old women held her back, and had tried to
reach her. The soldiers had beaten and kicked
him as he lay in the snow, and Maryna, the
little sister, had burst through the line, and by
some miracle of grace he had been granted his
life at her plea. Jurka had said with grave gal-
lantry, as he smoothed back her heavy silken
flaxen hair, that Saint Ginevra herself had
surely intervened in his behalf.
“So you became a royalist, a serf – rather
than join the gray marchers to the shades?”


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 235
revolutionists, you would deal everybody the
same kind of a hand, and that makes the game
stupid and uninteresting. There is no law of
chance, no thrill to your game. You fatalists
believe that man deals, but Fate shuffles the
cards. Have more to eat.”
“No one can play a fair game with such as
Jurka.” -
- Steccho ignored the proffered food, his face.
on his hands. '
“Then use his own tricks against him. Look
you, my friend, the gambling instinct is the
keenest in all men, for we have learned that,
after all, life is a great gamble. The only thing
you are sure of is that you are sure of nothing.
If I took up this sport, this gambling with
human lives, I would do so for the pure thrill
of it. I like the plunger, the good loser always.
But your Jurka type, he who plays the game
doggedly, who merely wants something for
nothing, you will find him a bad loser. He
plays to win only; the other type of man plays
for the thrill of achievement. Your anarchist,
too, he takes a hand. If he loses, he will say
the game is crooked, and demand a new deal.
If he wins, he plays safe and stops, taking all
the winnings. He is like your aristocrat, after
all; he will amuse himself with solitaire forever
if you give him the chance.”


236 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
Steccho rose moodily, walking up and down
the floor.
“You have stolen to please the lust of
empire,” Dmitri resumed, smoking leisurely.
“You are like the man who is afraid to play
the game, to take a chance himself, so he turns
the wheel for others. If he fares well from the
man who wins, he likes him; if not, then he is
for the man who loses. He listens to what this
man says, Let us break up this house and do
away with gambling forever. We will all play
safe, then, eh? But it is not possible, Ferad. All
philosophy fails to reconcile human nature.
We are all gamblers. The trouble is that your
Jurkas give the game a bad odor, and then the
losers cry out that the whole game is not worth
while. We are too selfish. We forget that we
all lay up riches but for the heirs of to-morrow.
I would make the way easy. I would strive to
clear away the barriers that all might reach
the goal of opportunity. Yet I would not hob-
ble the swift that the slow may keep pace with
them. Will you sleep here to-night?” He laid
his arm around the boy's shoulders. “Do not
think me unsympathetic. It is dangerous to play
the game here, and the weak go under. There
are some that cheat. I think Jurka is a cheat.
We did not fight to make the world safe; that
would be a bore. We fought to make it livable.”


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 237
“I do not care for anything but to see my
mother and sister again,” said Steccho.
Dmitri's brow cleared. “Ah, and I am for-
getting all the good news for you!” he cried,
seizing the letter from the mantel. “Here is
word from home. We will pour more wine and
plan to send you back free from the talons of
the black eagle.”
Steccho's face softened in a glow of tender-
ness as he caught the letter. There came the
noise from without of a footfall on the steps,
hesitant, doubtful. As the boy swept the
jewels from the table, a tapping sounded on
the outer door. Dmitri flung back the drapery
before the door of his bedroom.
“There is the window,” he whispered.
“Watch out before you drop from it.”
The knock came again, this time louder. He
lowered the light and went to answer it.


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 239
from her shoulders and stood in the center of
the room, a slender, isolated figure.
“You are all afraid for yourselves,” she said
slowly, scornfully. “Even you, Dmitri, with all
the brotherliness you profess, think only of
yourself. Griffeth will not be like that. He will
understand that I never can go back there.”
“You are excited and nervous.” Dmitri
took her cold hands in his with the whimsical,
cheery way that never failed to soothe. “Why
should you go to the police? Tell me what
has happened. It is surely a night of witchcraft
when foul fiends prowl. So, now sit down and
be very calm. I can always make you smile,
with my nonsense, you see?”
She tried to meet his eyes, but her own
filled with tears and she bit her lip to keep
control of herself.
“Oh, Dmitri, I am frightened, after all. Did
Griffeth tell you about the fête at Mrs.
Nevins's and — and how I had deceived you
both, when you were so good to me? I only
sang for his sake, so his opera would surely be
a success. I never dreamt that any one would
be there who would recognize me; you believe
me, don't you?” /
Dmitri lit a fresh cigarette with musing
eyes, tossed away the match, and hummed
Fiametta's motif softly under his breath.


242 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
in yet, they told me. I left word for him that I
must see him.”
Dmitri gazed at her glowing, expressive face
with half-closed, retrospective eyes. Surely
Fate had sent her to his door at the one hour
of opportunity. He would save the boy Steccho
from folly and crime, and give Griffeth back
his love.
“Then he must have received your message
after he left here,” he said cheerily. “And he
will surely seek you at your own home. You
must go back there.”
“I never will go back to them. I will wait
for him here,” she insisted. “They will blame
me for everything, for sending to Mr. Ward,
for the loss of the jewels, everything, and I
will not listen to them. I do not care for any-
thing in the whole world but Griffeth.”
“Then you must safeguard him,” Dmitri
urged. “They may suspect him since he knew
of the jewels, and we who live and think as
nomads are ever under suspicion. Have you
not heard it said that all genius is insanity? It
is enough that he lives in the temperamental
zone of the village. Now, my dear child, you
are cold and nervous. You will see how well I
can take care of you. You shall sit here and
drink coffee for a few moments while I go and
telephone to Griffeth. And then” — he knelt


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 243
before the brazier, stirring and blowing the
embers to a blaze – “then we will have the
surprise. When you were very little, did you
not always love the surprise, eh? Sometimes
Life is still indulgent to us; even in our great-
est extremity, she grants us the surprise, and
it is this that keeps up our faith, that some-
how, somewhere, our own shall come to us,
See?” -
“If he is there when you call up, will you
tell him to come here to me?” She looked at
him with longing eyes, and Dmitri smiled
back at her.
“Surely I will. Fate shuffles the cards, re-
member; man only deals them. I have ever
found that we move in circles of coincidence
drawn together like the particles in the spec-
trum by some immutable unseen force of at-
traction to form a cosmic harmony. You like
that, do you? For, see, you go forth in the
night to seek your well-beloved, like the
Shulamite of old. Do you know her, my dear,
among the immortal lovers?” He measured
level spoonfuls of pulverized coffee into the
little copper pot carefully. “Yet you remind
me of her. So. When this boils up the third
time, then you shall drink it while I go for
your surprise.”
Out in the street a car drew up before


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 249
response, and he pushed the door open. Some-
thing there was inside that lay close against
it, impeding his entrance, and he peered
around, thinking the boy had slept there in
heavy exhaustion.
“Ferad!” he called cheerily. “It is day-
break. You sleep late.”
But the boy did not stir. He slept well in the
last bivouac, and, turning, Dmitri beheld the
other stark form beside him, he who had been
the court chamberlain, the debonair Jurka,
the queen's messenger. Crushed in the hand
of Steccho was the letter from Sofia. He un-
clenched the stiffened fingers gently and read
it with half-closed eyes and contracted muscles.
Placing it in his own inner pocket, he searched
both bodies. On Jurka he found a leather wal-
let filled with bank-notes and documents.
There was no time to examine them. He no-
ticed only the Count's personal card and the
address, the Hotel Dupont. In another pocket
was a bunch of keys which he took. Not a sign
was there in the room of the jewels. Only in
Steccho's raincoat pocket he discovered a
large unset opal, one of those toys Ward had
played with, kept by the boy to please
Maryna. He went out as he had come, nod-
ding again to the houseman.
There was no time to waste. There would be


254 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
her to success. They thought that life was
made up only of achievement. Even Maria,
whom she had loved and leaned upon always,
had veered completely over to the enemy, and
found a sacred obligation in keeping her thus,
behind the wall of Tittani. She closed her eyes
as Maria's voice declaimed solemnly:
“With the world at her feet, Paoli tossed it
aside like a withered flower and retired to her
villa with only her friends and her memories.
Bianca, your beloved mother, fled with her
love and died, still half a child. This is only
the very first false dawn of love, carina. You
will forget him in a month. Ah, if I could but
take you back, for even a little while, to the
garden.”
“If you try to part us, I will never sing
again,” Carlota told her tragically. “I will
never accept any aid from Mr. Ward again.”
“Then you are what Jacobelli called you, an
ingrate, after all the love and hope we have
lavished upon you.” Maria was weeping
plenteously, helplessly, as she realized the
power behind Carlota's words.
The outer bell rang, silencing the argument.
Hurriedly she went to open it, while the girl
slipped from the bed, flung a silk robe over
her shoulders, and slipped her feet into satin
mules. If it should be Griffeth, if he had really


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 255
dared to come again to penetrate her tower of
durance, she would force them to let her see
him. She listened eagerly for his voice. Instead
it was a messenger boy, bearing Ames's first
shell into the enemy's camp. He had gone
from the telephone booth, and had spent all
he had in an orgy of roses from a flower-.
stand.
“Return them. There is no answer,” Maria
said firmly.
But the boy was loyal. Stolidly he insisted
there was no place to return them. The gentle-
man had gone on his way. In the doorway
Carlota appeared suddenly and Maria stepped
back from the look in her eyes as she took the
long box as if it had been a tiny bambino.
Holding it close to her breast, she went back
to her bed, her chin pressed against it.
“I shall not even speak to you or look at
you, if you treat me like this, Maria. I am not
a child,” she said haughtily. “Whatever he
sends to me, you will regard it as sacred.”
“You are not responsible. You are unreason-
able and reckless, and I shall lock you in your
room. The Marchese and Jacobelli will be here
later, and then you will tell them the truth
about last night.”
“I will tell them nothing.” Carlota held her
breath, listening to the turn of the lock in the


256 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
door, and shrugged her shoulders as she laid
her face on the red roses. It would not do to
break her heart in solitude, not when she knew
he was thinking of her and trying to reach her.
Dmitri would surely find him and tell him all
that had occurred the previous night. He would
clear him of any charge Ward might lodge
against him. What charge could they bring,
save that he had befriended the boy Steccho
and had loved her? Ingrate, they called her.
The word puzzled her. She found her little red
morocco dictionary in her desk drawer and
looked it up in deepest interest. The definition
was brief and to the point:
“Ingrate: One who is ungrateful.”
Sitting up in bed, girl fashion, she leaned her
elbows on her knees, and thought seriously.
The melody of “Cerca d'Amore” ran through
her mind, the quest of love, and all her being
seemed to become, in some mystical sense, a
chalice to hold this divine essence of love that
had glorified her life. Impulsively she turned
the pages to the word “love.” The definition
was vague and unsatisfactory.
“Love: to have affection.”
She pursed her lips, and gravely sought an-
other route to knowledge.
“Husband: a man who marries a woman.”
This was utterly absurd to a seeker after


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 257
life's greatest, sweetest mystery. She hurried
to “wife,” and found merely an echo.
“Wife: a woman who marries a man.”
Last of all, she found “marriage.” It was
positively trite.
“Marriage: wedlock.”
Under “wedlock” she discovered “mar-
riage.” She hurled the little book from her,
and seized a pencil and pad from the stand be-
side her.
“Love,” she dashed off impetuously, “the
divine gift that joins two hearts for eternity.”
This looked nearer the ecstasy of real truth.
Not that one could even approach in words the
expression of the miracle of love, but this was
closer. In the next room Maria sang a tender
old chant of the nuns at Leguna Marino, the
tiny town that clung to the cliffs below Villa
Tittani. This was a ruse, to lift her mind from
earthly things, she knew, and yet she tried
again, her own improvements in the lexicon of
love. -
“Marriage,” she wrote carefully. “The
blessed union of two souls who love perfectly.”
It was an inspired improvement on the dic-
tionary definition, she thought, and after
“love” she added, “the divine gift that awak-
ens souls to life's meaning.”
Maria would never understand. She would
~


258 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
smile at her pityingly and guard her from the
passion that was her heritage. Jacobelli would
rage and beat the air and denounce all romance
as a detractor of art, but the old Marchese, he
would sympathize with her. Sometimes, when
he sat at dinner with them, smoking leisurely,
a smile of content on his fine old face, she had
often wondered what memories lay behind his
charm of manner and unfailing understanding
with youth's heritage of yearning. With the
rose on the pillow beside her and the little pad
in her hand, she fell asleep.
In the living-room Maria Roma knelt beside
the Florentine chest, selecting the remainder
of the Paoli collection to be deposited in the
safety vault. It was true, as Ward had told
Jacobelli the previous night, coming from the
Nevins fête, neither Carlota nor she had ap-
preciated the full value of the royal gems. The
stolen rubies alone were worth several hundred
thousand dollars, yet Carlota had worn them
as if they had been paste. There was not an-
other stone in the world that could compare in
purity with the Zarathustra ruby. Maria knew
the story of how it had come into the posses-
sion of Margherita Paoli, nearly half a century
before. She had heard of the impassioned
young Balkan prince who had cast all he
owned at the feet of the most beautiful woman


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 261
pressed people, rubies for the blood of the inno-
cent? Regret them not. I have never craved
such things myself, not while there is truth and
beauty and love left to us to cherish.”
Carlota slept heavily, dreamlessly, the sleep
of utter exhaustion of mind and body after the
long night. Through her windows the late au-
tumn sunlight poured an amber glow. A mel-
low stillness seemed to lie over the city as if
the hush of Indian summer had already laid a
finger upon the laughing lips of Manhattan.
Even the ringing of the outer bell when the
Marchese arrived failed to rouse her. He was
smiling and debonair as ever, bearing his cus-
tomary votive offering of flowers. Laying his
gloves upon his hat on the piano, he beamed
upon Maria's anxious face.
“Cheer up, my friend,” he exclaimed. “The
world is very beautiful this afternoon. Where
is Carlota? So, asleep.” He lowered his voice.
“That is better, for you and I, Maria, have
seen life, have looked it in the face and not
quailed, have we not, and we are not afraid,
where she is very young and tender.”
“Ah, what now?” Maria whispered, her
hands pressed to her temples. “He is not
here?”
“He? Who, the boy Griffeth? No, no, my
dear, he is not here. In fact, he may be quite


CHAPTER XX
SAUNTERING from the elevated station at
Eighth Street over to the Square, Jacobelli
mused upon the vagaries of a golden voice.
His point of view was changing with the speed
of an Alpine tourist. Maria had acquainted
him with the decision of Carlota.
“Ah, signor, believe me, she does not feign
illness. Her heart is not breaking. It is freez-
ing, which is worse. Never will she sing again,
she declares, if you deny her the one whom she
loves. She spoke his name in her sleep. It is the
romance beautiful, the divine fire from heaven
alighted upon the altar of a woman's heart, it
is —”
“Enough!" exclaimed Jacobelli. “I capitu-
late. Doubtless she is right. Two — three years
nearly I have taught her all I know, and yet
what is it? She cannot ‘sing the wonderful
heart-throb music as the great woman artiste
must. Not all the technique in the world can
put it into her voice; yet one day she meets the
man she loves, and lo! it is there, she excels. I
knew it when she came to me that day at the
studio after she had quarreled with him. I
heard it then in her voice, the glory — the


268 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
abandon — the power of the woman who
claims the universe for her love. And I am a
fool, Maria, I lose my head entirely. I am
jealous of this unknown teacher who has opened
the heart of my star. I hate him. At the Nevins
fête I make the grand fool of myself, signora.
But now, I see, I bow. Let her have her love if
she will. I have lunched with the Marchese,
and am at peace with the world. After the
honeymoon tell her we will resume her les-
sons.”
He felt marvelously benevolent as he made
his way towards Ames's studio. Possibly his
luncheon chat with the Marchese had much to
do with it, also the fact that later he had seen
Casanova. Count D'Istria had kept his word
to Griffeth, and Casanova, ever ready to ob-
serve the way of the wind with managerial
straws, had promised to bring the operetta to
the immediate attention of the Metropolitan
directors with his sanction on its production
the coming season.
Finding his way up the three flights of
stairs, Jacobelli knocked upon the door with
his cane. Griffeth lay full length upon the
cushions of the dormer window-seat, depressed
and miserable. He had been awake all night,
striving to get into communication with Car-
lota or Dmitri, and had missed them at every


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 269
point. Still his flowers had not been returned.
He had ascertained that much from the lad at
the flower-stand in the old market. He had
sent twice to Dmitri's house and he had not
returned since daybreak, they said.
The rap on the outer door made him spring
to unlock it, expecting either Dmitri or a
message from Carlota. Instead there stood
upon his threshold Guido Jacobelli, from whom
he had been parted by interested friends only
a night before, the one man in New York
whom he regarded as his enemy. He gave him
no invitation to enter, but stood like a glower-
ing, expectant young stag, ready for the on-
slaught of his adversary.
Jacobelli waved him aside airily, and entered
the room, making himself at home in the large
oak armchair, and stroking Ptolemy who
strolled over to inspect him.
“We make friends, what you say, my boy?"
he asked genially. “I forgive you from my
heart all you do to me in the past, see? Why?
Because I, Jacobelli, make the great discovery.
You speak the truth. She is your pupil.”
“What do you mean?” asked Griffeth sus-
piciously. “I heard all that you said of her
last evening. I understand perfectly that she
is Paoli's granddaughter and backed by the
patronage of Ogden Ward. I do not know why


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 273
w
has stated as his opinion that love is stronger
than death and many waters cannot quench
it. I agree with him perfectly. Request our be-
loved Carlota that she will permit my presence
at her nuptials with Pierrot. I have a penchant
for romantic weddings. They recall to me the
fragrance of roses abloom at Vallombrosa.
Once, as we two walked under the olive grove
years ago, you refused me, Maria mia. When
you are tempted to be unyielding and forbid-
ding to these children, these two lovers, remem-
ber Vallombrosa, I implore you. Had you said
yes, I should not have carried the fragrance
of roses as a bitter-sweet memory all my life
long.”
So it happened that, despite her sense of
duty to the last wishes of the old Contessa,
Maria felt a thrill of sympathy in the great
adventure as she followed Carlota into the
studio on the top floor.
“We have come for Carlota's sake,” she
said majestically. “It is against my wishes and
judgment, but we are here, signor. You have
won.”
“What is it, dear?” exclaimed Griffeth, as
he held Carlota's hands in his. “You are cold
as ice, and trembling.” He drew her favorite
Roman chair forward to the open grate fire,
but Carlota drew back.


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 275
"Dmitril” repeated Griffeth. “What do you
mean? Dmitri is my friend. Who is dead?”
“Griffeth, do you remember” – Carlota
lifted her head from his shoulder — “the
young Bulgarian I told you always followed
me? The one Dmitri recognized from the win-
dow here and told me I was never to fear him?
This morning we heard from the old Marchese
that a double murder had been committed
next door to where Dmitri lived. No, please do
not speak yet,” as he gave a startled exclama-
tion. “One of the men was the Bulgarian boy,
and they suspect Dmitri.”
“And you yourself, because you are his
friend,” Maria added solemnly. “The Mar-
chese assured us you would be arrested for
complicity.” -
“But why did you come here last night?”
Carlota hesitated, but Maria's eyes were
tender. -
“Because I wanted you to help me,” she
said slowly. “There was no one else to go to,
and I was in trouble. Mr. Ward came to the
apartment to buy my rubies and while he was
there he was assaulted and robbed.”
“Were you hurt?”
“I fainted.” Carlota's lashes drooped before
his steady gaze. “And afterwards I was afraid
to go back.”


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 277
and walk in the Square and think I am back in
Italy.”
Ames closed the door behind her, leaning
against it, looking longingly at the girl stand-
ing in the light from the dormer windows.
Ptolemy leaped up to her, rubbing his tawny
length affectionately against her, his eyes
gleaming like topaz.
“Dear, look at me,” he said eagerly. “You
came to me again, just as you did that first
day, my wonder girl. Even after everything,
you had faith in me —”
She held her hands out to him, giving them
to his clasp, yet holding him back.
“Have we any right to take our own happi-
ness when it makes so many wretched? Maria,
who brought me up and gave me all her love
and care, and dear old Jacobelli —”
“But they are all willing now. It is n't
selfish, dear. It is our right. Remember how
Dmitri always said we were the inheritors of
all the love dreams of the past, and must hold
the torch high for those who come after us.
You know all you have been to me for months,
what it meant to both of us that first night at
Phelps's when you met my eyes, and it seemed
as if everything in my whole being called out
to you in gladness. Carlota, don't keep me
from you! Why did you come here last night


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 279
of possible exits over adjacent roofs in case of
need. One leaned against the iron railing in the
front yard and chatted with the unwitting
caretaker, and Dmitri passed them all by
jauntily. Would it be wiser, he mused, to tell
Griffeth Ames everything? He had trained
him for months in the new law of humanity's
rights, yet was he not too young to recognize
the imperative need for silence. The breaking
dawn called to Dmitri's imagination. The
chant of the oppressed sounded in his ears, not
the old galley chorus that had kept time to the
rhythm of an Attic boatswain's flute, nor the
call from the steppe prisons that had been the
newborn wail of Russia's freedom. The old
order had already changed. The heavens were
rolling away as a parchment before the new
dayspring. A little struggling here and there,
he told himself, over the earth's surface, a little
blindness in the new light from eyes long used
to darkness, but steadily, inevitably the day-
break would sweep on and in the full sunlight
men should find themselves gazing into one
another's eyes without fear and hatred and
greed.
He mounted the three flights rapidly, two
steps at a time, tapped on the door, and
opened before Griffeth could reach it.
“Aha!” cried Dmitri. “And so we may be


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 281
Griffeth and the girl. Lorrie, of the Central
Bureau, was not a person of dramatic instincts
or emotional possibilities. He stood in the
patch of sunlight from the hall skylight, his
hands in his pockets, his hat pushed back on
his head. The hands grasped two automatics,
but Lorrie never obtruded them on the sensi-
bilities of those he was sent to find until he
found it necessary. He stepped into the room,
a slight smile on his lips as he took in the
group. Behind him stood two of his men.
“Kavec,” he said curtly, “you're under
arrest for the double murder of Jurka and
Steccho.”
Dmitri never stirred.
“But he is my friend, Carrollton Phelps's
friend!” exclaimed Griffeth hotly. “I was with
him up to midnight myself.”
“Don’t worry, you're in too,” returned
Lorrie laconically. “Complicity in the rob-
bery, accessory to the crime, and then some.
Search them.”
“But I was with Mr. Kavec myself until
early this morning,” Carlota declared sud-
denly, her face lifted high, her eyes avoiding
Griffeth's. “He had nothing to do with the
robbery. He did not even know about it until I
told him myself. It is impossible that he could
have done this thing —”.


286 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
Ward. Would you prefer that I state the facts
here, or wait until we arrive at police head-
quarters or possibly the grand jury?”
Ward's face seemed to turn gray as they
looked upon him.
“You can't prove a damned word.” His
eyes, bright and round, met Dmitri's in sud-
den challenge.
“Can I not?” laughed the latter cheerily.
“Ah, my dear Mr. Ward, life is so very strange
and so amusing, and so unexpected, and yet it
is all one grand harmony. I show to you the
jewels, the rubies and pearls of the royal col-
lection. You know where I got them from, and
yet you can sit there and threaten me. You are
a fool, because I have the proof against you!”
Ward rose heavily.
“Call Lorrie,” he gasped. “Marchese, I de-
mand it.”
“You will not call any one until you have
heard me out,” Dmitri said deliberately. “I
have the signed confession and all the corre-
spondence that passed between you and
Georges Yaranek.”
The Marchese moved away from Carlota to
the table. She turned to Griffeth in relief, both
of them listening in silent amazement to
Dmitri's story.
“This man, Ogden Ward, is not the person


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 287
he seems to be,” he said almost gayly, yet
with accusation. “He is not your silent, stern
capitalist and banker, your international pawn-
broker who can kill or save a nation by his
munificent charity. He is also of a most ex-
quisite artistic temperament, a nature which
responds to the richest and priceless in art
and beauty. He will have only the best, your
Mr. Ward. And this is known all over the
world by those who live upon loot for gold. It
was not enough that Count Jurka should re-
cover the missing crown jewels. He must con-
vert them into cash for use in the royalist
cause. And through his own researches he dis-
covered another on the same trail, the trail of
the Zarathustra ruby. This was Ogden Ward,
who wished to add it to his collection, together
with the Orient pearls and other rubies of the
set. Jurka had not been dispatched upon this
secret mission alone. Always, in such cases,
there are two set forth together, that one may
succeed if one should fail. Steccho had told me
this, and of the court chamberlain's trusted
attendant and courier, Georges Yaranek. He
is very clever, but he is nervous. When he dis-
covered the two dead bodies he lost his nerve.
And he left behind two most important things,
the wallet of Jurka, and this letter in the dead
hand of my friend.”


288 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
From the inner hatband of his soft felt hat
he removed the crumpled paper Steccho's
hand had groped for in death, and smoothing
it out, he read it gently, from a student com-
rade. He had written briefly, fatalistically.
There could be nothing worse than all that
had gone before.
Your mother is dead these five months, one of
many aged who died from starvation. Maryna is
lost. I have made careful inquiries, but can only
ascertain that she appealed to Jurka's agent in
this district at the time of the demonstration
made by the royalist faction, and was taken with
other girls from Rigl and adjacent villages to the
mountain camps by the soldiers. None returned
alive.
“Jurka tricked the boy,” Dmitri said
quietly. “He needed him in the work here and
promised in return full protection to his
mother and sister by the queen's own secret
agents. This letter came to Steccho through
my hands the night he took the jewels. He
came to me and told what he had seen in the
Trelango apartment. Shall I speak in detail?”
He smiled most courteously at Ward.
“What you say is immaterial. I was called
by Miss Trelango herself that night to com-
plete a business transaction. I had advanced
certain sums for her musical education and


294 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
Bulgaria. And there was only one man who
would pay in cash the price of the royal rubies,
so Jurka dickered with him, once he struck
the right trail. That man was Ogden Ward.
Oh, I have the correspondence between you,
Mr. Ward,” as Ward rose threateningly. “It is
quite authentic, and nothing missing. Jurka
had to protect himself in case of discovery, and
doubtless saved the evidence in order to com-
mand your full protection. Mr. Ward agreed
in writing to pay $750,000, in full for the five
pieces of the collection, including the Zarathus-
tra ruby, which is the finest pigeon-blood ruby
in the world, they claim. Of course, when he
found he could get them so very much cheaper,
he tried himself and failed.”
“But on the face of it, it is absurd,” sneered
Ward. “Marchese, how could these men have
conveyed that amount in gold at this time to
Europe without discovery?”
“Ah, that was most cleverly provided for
also, by Mr. Ward,” exclaimed Dmitri jocu-
larly. “It was to have been shipped by Mr.
Ward's own bankers as part of a consignment
for the relief of stricken, starving Bulgaria.
Count Jurka himself suggested this plan, since
he was here as one of the relief committee. It
was all really very touching.”
“What if I say that I was aware of the


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 295
whole secret plot, and merely acted as I did to
betray these men, and save the rubies for
Carlota Trelango?”
“It is very apt, but I am afraid it will not
pass,” sighed Dmitri. “The dates on these let-
ters show your dealings with Jurka and Yar-
anek before you even knew that she owned
the rubies.” -
“And where is Yaranek?” asked Ward.
“Why was he not handed over to the police
by you? Why was it necessary for you to have
his sworn statement when he might give his
own testimony? Since you were accumulating
evidence against me, why not go the limit?”
“Well, I will tell you, Mr. Ward, although
I do not think you will ever comprehend my
motives.” Dmitri sat lightly on the edge of
the table and smoked slowly, happily. “I am
a propagandist, but I only propagate my own
propaganda, see? I have my own creed of
right living and it is based upon our mutual
responsibility for other people's welfare and
happiness. I believe in the right to live, but I
do not believe that any human group of peo-
ple has any right to govern others against
their will. So I fight in my own way for the
small, helpless races that get crushed in the
great stampede. And when I can I like to talk
this way. So when I get Georges Yaranek tied


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 297
proper government authorities, we will do so.
We will not permit our plans to interfere with
your wishes.”
Ward strode to the window and stared out
at the Square below, a conflict in his mind.
He had played and lost. Not alone the jewels,
but the girl he had wanted. All his life he had
purchased anything that was necessary to suc-
cess. He had weighed the issues of life itself in
terms of gold. When he turned from the win-
dow, he asked, tersely: “What do you want?”
“I want to go back free and unhampered to
my country,” returned Dmitri, “with Yaranek.
I want the rubies to be left unqualifiedly with
Miss Trelango — ”
“Dmitri, I do not want them!” Carlota
cried entreatingly. “They only bring misery.
You give them back for me to the people you
love. They are not mine or the queen's. They
belong to the children who are starving.”
“The heirs of to-morrow?” smiled Dmitri
whimsically. “I will gladly do so if it is your
wish. Mr. Ward, you are fond of rubies. You
are not interested as we are in international
aspirations, shall we say, or perhaps ideals. It
matters not one iota to you whether the money
for these jewels goes to the royalist cause or
to the feeding of those starving ones, those
little victims of diplomacy, shall we call it?


298 THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE
Will you buy these gems from Miss Trelango,
and I will most gladly convey the consignment
of gold to the little ones that are left alive.”
“Is this your wish?” asked Ward, looking
at Carlota.
Her eyes overflowed with tears. She could
hardly answer as she stood between the Mar-
chese and Griffeth.
“I should love it more than anything,” she
told him. “The Marchese will attend to every-
thing for me if you are willing.”
Suddenly in the doorway stood Maria,
alarmed and prepared to defend her charge at
any price. But Dmitri met her with one of his
low, courtly bows that soothed her pride.
“Signora, you are just in time. Mr. Ward is
being the bountiful fairy godfather to us all.
He grants us each one what we like the best.
I have a rendezvous with a friend. Mr. Ward,
after you. Carlota, Griffeth, I salute love im-
mortal!”
Jauntily he gathered up the papers and
wallet into the old brown leather bag again,
and handed it to the Marchese.
“Will you not personally hold these until I
have sailed, and then destroy them? I make
you our neutral receiver, yes? And will you
not also kindly place the jewels in safe-keep-
ing until Mr. Ward has paid for them?”


THE DANGEROUS INHERITANCE 299
Ward passed without a word down the wind-
ing staircase ahead of him, without a back-
ward glance at the four left in the old studio.
Carlota turned to Griffeth's close embrace,
weeping in deep soft sobs of relief, and the
Marchese smiled at Maria.
“The leaves lie thick in the Square. They
are sweeping them up to burn. Will you walk
with me, Maria, and remember Vallombrosa
while these children follow their own path of
gold? Then we will take up the business of life
once more, and put the rubies and papers in
safety deposit, but for now — ”
He held the door open for her, and they
passed down the way that Ward had gone.
Carlota lifted her head from Griffeth's
shoulder. -
“Heirs of to-morrow, he said,” she whis-
pered.
He kissed her lips. There seemed in their
love almost a symbol of the fulfillment of
years of war, of tears and bloodshed and op-
pression and intolerance, in what would be the
dawn of a new world to those who were indeed
the heirs of to-morrow.
THE END
PROPERTY
9F THE
WEW YORK
3&IHTy LIBRARY


©be thiuergibe press
CAMBRIDGE . Massachusetts
U - S - A