CHAPTER XV
M. DE TREPNIAK AT HOME
BUT I am astounded," declared Mrs. Lewisham, "to hear that you have never been to one of M. de Trepniak's Sunday afternoons."
Douglas Carey merely nodded in confirmation of his earlier assurance.
They afforded a strange contrast, these two, seated side by side in Mrs. Lewisham's Rolls Royce. She was accounted one of the smartest women in town, and not to know Mrs. Jack Lewisham was tantamount to an admission of barbarism. She was vivid, with red colouring and a personality to match. She delivered her lightest observations with enormous significance. But, her sentence finished, the fire left her eyes; the word was spoken, the deed was done. She became instantly passive, as if resting, recovering strength for her next intense remark.
Carey, on the contrary, was most expressive when silent. He spoke in an almost even monotone and his gestures were more eloquent than his tongue. Now, he watched his companion, smiling whimsically at her enthusiasm. He had welcomed this opportunity of penetrating into the mystery house of Park Lane. But he was fully aware that it would never have been his, had not Fate—for he was of those who know Chance a myth—literally precipitated Trepniak upon himself and Mrs. Lewisham whilst they stood talking one morning at the corner of Bruton Street.
A skidding car had been the instrument of the gods, and Trepniak, who evidently wished Mrs. Lewisham to be present, could not well exclude Carey from the invitation. Accordingly, he had presented himself at the flat in Mount Street; and since, if Mrs. Lewisham had been calling upon someone next door she would have had the car in waiting, he now found himself seated beside her bound for Trepniak's house in Park Lane, just around the corner, upon a delightful afternoon when a walk was clearly indicated.
"My dear"—Mrs. Lewisham addressed everyone as "my dear," sometimes so far forgetting herself as to call hotel waiters and other people's butlers in this way—"My dear"—she laid her hand upon his knee—"three weeks ago—I think it was three weeks ago—he positively electrified everybody. He is a natural showman, you know, but most delightful. If he had not been a Russian nobleman, or an anarchist, or whatever he is, I am positive he would have been Mr.—what's the name of the man who cannot be locked up:
Carey, badly puzzled, shook his head. Then:
"Well," he replied, "I cannot be locked up, legally."
"Oh, my dear!" Mrs. Lewisham pushed him playfully—"How silly! I mean the man who used to break out of everywhere and be manacled, and defy everyone and everything, and break out of jail, and all that."
"You possibly mean Houdini?" Carey suggested.
"Of course!" cried Mrs. Lewisham. "How forgetful of me! Well, what was I saying? Oh, yes. Three weeks ago he amused us at his house by showing that a man can be in two places at once."
"Really?" said Carey. "It sounds intriguing."
"Oh, it was most intriguing, my dear. I can't describe what he did, but it was perfectly impossible. And here we are. There will be all sorts of interesting people, but you must make him show us something extraordinary. Sometimes he doesn't, unless he is pressed."
With mingled feelings Carey entered the house of Trepniak. The butler was rather disappointing, for his dress was severely correct. But he was a strange-looking man, stout, and with a dull yellow complexion. His hair was black and closely cropped, and he wore side-whiskers, also closely cropped, so that they appeared to have been painted upon his yellow face.
In regard to the house itself, Muir Torrington's words leapt to Carey's mind: "Imagine illustrations by Sidney Sime of some of the worst nightmares of Edgar Allan Poe." Such eccentricities could only be a pose. It was, as Torrington had said, "shop window." Nevertheless, it was so strangely different from anything he had seen, that Carey found himself nonplussed.
The pictures were palpably modern—ultra modern—but the furniture, whilst some of it appeared to be antique, belonged to no known period—to no recognized school. He had never seen such furniture. Indeed, there was nothing in the house of which one might have said, "Ah! a Greuze; this is Chippendale; this, a Persian carpet; here, a Chinese vase." Nothing in the place was definable, so that at first Carey found himself unable to analyze his impressions.
Strangeness was their keynote. Everything was bizarre, unusual, created an uncomfortable sense of unreality; so that he forced his mind to seek some solution; and, at last, the solution came.
There was not one familiar object in Trepniak's house. Down to the ash trays this singularity was carried. He had never seen such ash trays before. The very wallpaper was different—in some of the rooms, hideously different from anything in his experience. The ceilings were not white, nor even painted with figure subjects sometimes met with. They were either canopied with unique material or coloured green or red or purple. In one small room there was a black ceiling. Yet it was not laughable—it was a demented house.
On the one hand, it reminded him of futuristic scenery in some lavishly mounted stage entertainment, but, on the other hand, its collective effect was almost awesome. It bore the impress of the perverted mind which had called it into being. It was as unrestful as an opium dream. In vain one sought for something familiar, for something which might be catalogued, fittingly placed in the niche where it belonged in the history of its kind. In the drawing room, or rather, in an apartment which resembled a scene from Beckford's Vathek, quite a number of well-known people were assembled.
Carey knew many of them. Science and the Arts were represented, but he was somewhat surprised to recognize several members of the Court circle. He began to remodel his estimate of Trepniak. That the man was a charlatan, he was more than ever assured. At the source of his wealth he could not even guess. Carey possessed a trained imagination, and his mind faltered in contemplating the task of equipping uniquely this big house from cellar to roof. It may please a wealthy man to have a carpet woven and designed to his own pattern, to possess a unique tea service, a unique set of furniture, but when everything, great and small, conforms to this specification, that "its like shall not be," the scheme transcends eccentricity; it ceases to be nouveau riche bad taste and becomes monstrous.
There was power here, not only of wealth, but of mind; force, perverted, but to be felt in the very atmosphere. The wealth and the madness of Nero could have accomplished no more, had Nero lived in London. Rumour of it had reached him through channels frivolous and serious, snobbish and cynical. He had wondered and doubted. But the reality swept doubt aside. Wonder remained—and something more.
Trepniak, moving from group to group, was dressed with strict propriety, but the ivory pallor of the man's skin, accentuated by the strange dull red of his closely curling hair growing right down on to his cheek-bones, must have marked him out in any assembly; this, and an impression of intense virility which every movement proclaimed.
His gestures were few but rapid. He walked with nervous, short strides, glancing swiftly from face to face as he talked. The voice was slightly guttural and sometimes he groped for words, giving to certain syllables a curiously Teutonic value. Carey welcomed the opportunity of studying more closely this man with whose life Fate had clearly decreed his own should be interwoven.
Trepniak crossed swiftly to greet the new arrivals. His strange greenish-brown eyes fixed themselves upon Carey, and then, their glance darting swiftly to the face of Mrs. Lewisham, he spoke some conventional words of welcome, bending over her hand in un-English fashion. He turned again to her companion, and:
"My dear Mr. Carey," he said, "it is a pleasure to welcome you here. Why you have never come before I do not know. I hope you will come often again."
"Thanks," Carey replied, fascinated against his will by this singular charlatan.
Trepniak, moving swiftly away to meet someone else, and Mrs. Lewisham darting upon a tall young grenadier, Carey found himself alone. At this moment a hand touched his sleeve, and, turning, he found himself face to face with Madame Sabinov.
Most complex emotions claimed him. He had reason to believe that this woman was an instrument of the enemy, of that enemy whose gigantic power for evil was slowly unfolding itself. Yet she was one whose strange beauty seemed appropriate in that house of unusual things. Her brilliant, sombre eyes watched him unmoved. She was simply but perfectly dressed in a sheath-like gown of black velvet and wore a large drooping hat like that of a Musketeer. She was an object of much interest in the lofty but gloomily appointed saloon; and Carey, whose modesty Muir Torrington had frequently assured him would lead to his downfall, knew that because she had singled him out he also would now become the subject of many inquiries.
"You did not call upon me as you promised," she said softly. "I suppose you have been too busy."
"I am sorry," he replied, "but I have been extremely busy lately, yes."
She continued to watch him, smiling slightly, and:
"Shall we sit down somewhere?" she suggested. "I believe M. de Trepniak is going to amuse us."
They found a seat and were served with tea by one of several attendants who conformed to the rule of the household in being entirely different from any one else's servants. They were Nubians, and wore black uniforms resembling tightly fitting cassocks buttoning right up to the chin, black trousers, and red Arab slippers with upturned points. Upon their heads were closely fitting red turbans.
Their strangeness was not confined to their dress, however, for they were apparently mutes. The crop-headed butler, a perfectly trained major-domo, hovered around, supervising. He spoke excellent English, was deferential, solicitous, but never looked any one in the eyes.
Carey, who had found the situation somewhat exacting, began to recover his composure. Madame Sabinov, gracefully languid, was a charming talker. He distrusted her intensely, the more so since she obviously sought to please. Yet he was keenly alive to the allurement of this woman, whose life, like the life of Trepniak, was a mystery.
They drank some fragrant kind of China tea from little crystal cups unlike any he had seen before.
"This is my first visit to M. de Trepniak's house," he said.
"And does it surprise you?"
"Intensely;" he admitted. "Everything in it appears to be unique."
Madame Sabinov laughed.
"Not only unique, but frequently in execrable taste," she added. "I thought you knew? I thought everyone knew."
"Knew what?" Carey asked curiously.
"About Trepniak's mode of life. Of course he is a millionaire, although I have no idea, no one has any idea, of the source of his millions. In addition, I think he must be mad. Just look at this room. Is it not a nightmare?"
"Well" Carey hesitated, looking about him. "It is very Futuristic."
"Can you imagine," Madame Sabinov continued, "what the cost must be of annually replacing everything in such a house as this?"
"I am afraid I don't follow," said Carey. "Replacing everything? Why should everything be replaced?"
Madame Sabinov shrugged her shoulders. "Why, indeed?" she murmured. "Nevertheless, it is. And they are not merely replaced by duplicates." She laughed at Carey's growing bewilderment, and, taking up one of the curious cups: "To illustrate," she continued, "this tea service was designed and made solely for his use. The designs and moulds and whatever things they use were then destroyed." She put the cup down again. "The same applies to every carpet on the floor, every curtain, every table, every chair."
"But," Carey exclaimed, "You don't mean"
"But," she took him up, laughingly, "I do mean! Everything in this house has been specially designed for M. de Trepniak. Nothing in the place—or at least in that part of it with which I am familiar—is more than one year old. Nothing in the house has its duplicate anywhere in the world; and once a year the entire scheme is changed, from the teaspoons to the dining-room table."
"You mean," Carey said, wondering if he heard aright, "that Trepniak has an annual sale of all his possessions?"
"Not at all." Madame Sabinov laid her hand on his arm, checking him. "These irreplaceable objects, many of which are hideous, some of which are beautiful, since all were designed by clever artists, are destroyed, and new designs take their places. But, ssh! Our host has something to say."