Oxford had veneered
him, but scratch the veneer and one found the sandal-wood of the
East, perfumed, seductive, appealing, but something to be shunned
as brittle and untrustworthy.
Yet he hesitated, seeking to be true to his convictions. Knowing
what he knew already, and what he suspected, it is certain that,
could he have viewed Lou Chada through the eyes of Chief
Inspector Kerry, the affair must have terminated otherwise. But
Sir Noel did not know what Kerry knew. And the pleasure-seeking
Lady Rourke, with her hair of spun gold and her provoking smile,
found Lou Chada dangerously fascinating; almost she was
infatuated--she who had known so much admiration.
Of those joys for which thousands of her plainer sisters yearn
and starve to the end of their days she had experienced a
surfeit. Always she sought for novelty, for new adventures. She
was confident of herself, but yet--and here lay the delicious
thrill--not wholly confident. Many times she had promised to
visit the house of Lou Chada's father--a mystery palace
cunningly painted, a perfumed page from the Arabian poets dropped
amid the interesting squalor of Limehouse.
Perhaps she had never intended to go. Who knows? But on the
night when she came within the ken of Chief Inspector Kerry, Lou
Chada had urged her to do so in his poetically passionate
fashion, and, wanting to go, she had asked herself: "Am I strong
enough? Dare I?"
They had dined, danced, and she had smoked one of the scented
cigarettes which he alone seemed to be able to procure, and
which, on their arrival from the East, were contained in queer
little polished wooden boxes.
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