THE TREY O' HEARTS
CHAPTER I
The Message of the Rose
LAPPED deep in the leather-bound luxury of an ample lounge-chair, walled apart from the world by the portentous silences and venerable solitude of the library of London's most exclusive club, Mr. Alan Law sprawled (largely on the nape of his neck), and, squinting discontentedly down his nose, plotted in furtherance of his own selfish ends.
He was exhaustively bored.
He had every legitimate reason to be bored. He had squeezed the orange of amusement dry and had nothing else to do but be bored. And this was England, this was June, this was his twenty-seventh summer; a combination of circumstances so alluring that with almost any other right-minded man it would have proved resistless.
He was, outwardly, a very ordinary person; that is to say, normally sane and good looking, well mannered, well cared for, well dressed. In other respects his was a singular personality. Since childhood he had worked hard, for no good reason that he could see, at learning his duty (and pleasure) in that state of life into which it had pleased God, to call him—but he had yet to earn an honest penny. He was master of a dozen-odd arts and crafts which had thus far rewarded him with nothing but ennui. He possessed and maintained in prime condition the body of an athlete, which served him to no particular end. He knew more about most things, from cabbages to kings, than did ninety-nine out of every hundred denizens of his world, but he didn't know how to avoid boredom. The sum of his wisdom on this subject was to the effect that ennui was inescapable; being good was frightfully wearing on one; misbehaving was worse.
Normally, Mr. Law did behave himself; he was made of the stuff that riches cannot spoil. Left to himself, he would far rather stand at the wheel of a motor boat than beside that of a roulette layout; he preferred playing polo to playing the ponies; hitting the high spots along Montmartre was less amusing, in his esteem, than sailing comfortably over them at an altitude of several thousand feet; while it was never his notion of fun to gulp bromo seltzer as an antidote for last night, and then cocktails to counteract the antidote.
But there were times when it was strongly borne in upon him that he must either break out in some unique and spontaneous manner or blow up. At such times history was apt to be manufactured in bulk. And this—this day of an English June—was one of those times. Mr. Queux was uneasily aware of the unrest simmering within him; very much, no doubt, as Vesuvius is periodically conscious of its divine discontent.
His chair stood by an open window, below which lay an old English garden in full flower, the property of the club and its boast. Through the window a half-hearted breeze wafted gusts of air soporific and heavy with the breath of roses.
Mr. Law drank deep of it, and in spite of his spiritual unrest, sighed slightly and shut his eyes.
An unspoken word troubled the deeps of his consciousness, so that old memories stirred and struggled to its surface. The word was "Rose," and for the time seemed to be the name neither of a woman nor a flower, but oddly of both, as though the two things were one.
He wondered idly why this was so until his mental vision, bridging the gap of a year, conjured up the picture of a lithe, sweet silhouette in white, with red roses at her belt, posed on a terrace of the Riviera against the burning Mediterranean blue.
Mr. Law was dully conscious that he ought to be sorry about something. But he was really very drowsy indeed. And so he fell quietly asleep.
The clock was striking four when he awoke, and before closing his eyes he had noticed that its hands indicated ten minutes to four. So he could not have slept long, if quite long enough to dream of a girl in white, with red roses at her belt, waiting for him on a pierhead in New York harbour.
And he came to smiling a gentle smile that slowly as consciousness cleared gave place to an impatient frown due to the reminder that he was to all intents an outlaw from America, and then by a look of downright bewilderment, due in turn to realization of a minor miracle that had come to pass while he dreamed.
For some few seconds Alan rested as he was, incredulously regarding the rose which had materialized so mysteriously upon the little table at his elbow. He was sure it had not been there when he closed his eyes, and almost as sure that it was not real. What right, indeed, had a red rose to trespass upon the solidly respectable and imaginative precincts of a British club library? Beyond reasonable doubt it was nothing more or less than the figment of a supersentimentalized imagination worked upon by the magic fragrance of the rose garden.
Then of a sudden he sat bolt upright.
In defiance of the injunction that glared at him from every reading table in the room—letters of gold on a black ground, neatly framed:
Mr. Law announced with the emphasis of absolute conviction:
"Well, I'm damned!"
He touched the rose. It was real beyond all question; a warm red rose, fresh plucked. When impulsively he took it by the stem, he discovered a most indisputable thorn—which did service for the traditional pinch.
Thus persuaded that he was not still dreaming, Mr. Law jumped up from his chair and glared suspiciously round the room. A practical joke in that solemn atmosphere was a thing unthinkable; still, there was the rose.
But the room was empty aside from himself and the rose.
Impulsively he struck a call-bell—and repented, haunted by the fear of making himself ridiculous. It was inconceivable that he should demand of the waiter then approaching, "Who, while I slept, made me a present of this rose?"
The waiter entered to find the member leaning nonchalantly against the table, drawing on his gloves.
"You rang, sir?"
"I did. Ah—waiter, I've been asleep, you know."
"Thank you, sir."
"Only a minute or two, of course."
"Quite so, sir."
"I wish to know if anybody entered this room while I was asleep."
"I couldn't say, sir—unless it might 'ave been Mr. Marrophat. 'E's the only other gentleman on this floor of the club-'ouse at present, sir."
"Marrophat? But I don't know him!"
"Thank you, sir."
"Still ... where is he?"
"In the writing-room, sir."
"Thanks."
"Thank you, sir."
"Marrophat? No fear!" Mr. Law assured himself as the waiter left the room.
On the other hand, roses are not introduced into London's most exclusive clubs without some human sponsor.
On his way out Law glanced through the door of the writing-room, and was confirmed in his incredulity. Mr. Marrophat, stodgily rounded over a desk in the corner, was the incarnate genius of superfatted British dignity. Impossible to credit him with anything resembling a sense of humour—or any such spirit of romantic mischief as might prompt one to distribute roses to one's fellow club members.
Perplexed, Alan fled the club, pausing by force of habit only long enough to consult the letter-rack and annex an envelope he found there addressed to him.
It was a white envelope of good quality. The address was typewritten, the stamp English, with a London postmark, half illegible.
Mr. Law tore the envelope open in an absent-minded fashion, and started as if stung. The inclosure was a simple playing card—a Trey of Hearts!
In the writing-room Mr. Marrophat continued to compose. The mental exertion caused him to breathe rather heavily. His colourless thick lips were compressed as if to restrain his tongue from aping the antics of his pen. His starting eyes followed the ink scratches on the telegraph blank with a look of mildly anguished surprise.
In point of fact, he wasn't writing; he was laboriously printing the following words:
"Senex, New York—Rose uttered 3:58 p. m. Trey followed. A. much disturbed. M. P. T."
When he had finished, Mr. Marrophat waved the blank to and fro until the ink was dry. This was not for want of a blotter, but because blotters have been known to reveal secrets when read in a mirror.
Nor was it because the club lacked servants that Mr. Marrophat presently got up, folded his cable message, waddled forth, and proceeded to commit it to the nearest office with his own trustworthy fat hands.
As for Alan Law, he wandered down Pall Mall in a state of daze; he went toward Trafalgar Square. He didn't know where he was going, or even that he was on his way, and he didn't care. For all that, no one who chanced to observe him would have dreamed that he was preoccupied with questioning his own mental integrity; but the hypothetical observer would have shared his misgiving had he suspected that Mr. Law was wearing a rose inside his top hat, to say nothing of a three spot of hearts in the breast pocket of his admirable morning coat.
He could, of course, read quite well the message of the rose. He would not soon forget that year-old parting with his Rose of the Riviera:
"You say you love me but may not marry me—and we must never see each other again. Then promise this, that if ever you change your mind, you'll send for me."
And her promise: "I will send you a rose."
But a year had lapsed with never a sign from her, so that he had grown accustomed to the unflattering belief that she had forgotten him.
And now the sign had come—but in a fashion so strange that he hesitated to accept it. It wouldn't do to jump at conclusions and make one's self ridiculous. Very probably it hadn't come from her at all, but was just an everyday coincidence.
But there was that Trey of Hearts! Now what the deuce did the Trey of Hearts mean?
Now in heraldry the word Trine signifies a group of three. And the Trey of Hearts is a group of three. And the surname of that Rose of his heart's desire was Trine.
Was the card then simply her way of fixing beyond question the identity of the sender of the rose?
Alan ambled aimlessly into Cockspur Street, and of a sudden found himself at a dead halt, transfixed by a poster in one of the show windows.
The poster advertised the newest steamship in the trans-Atlantic service, and the artist had seen fit to delineate his subject at the moment of drawing away from a pierhead in the foreground, on which pierhead a young woman was shown waving a farewell handkerchief—a lithe, sweet silhouette in white with red roses at her belt posed against a sea of burning blue.
Mr. Law drew an incredulous, lemon-gloved hand across his bewildered forehead.
"Three times in the same place in thirty minutes!" he muttered blankly, "There's something uncanny about this … If life itself were not a riddle without a reading—I'd begin to believe in the supernatural! As it is"
When he entered his rooms that evening to dress for dinner it was to find an American Beauty rose ornamenting his dressing-table, pinned to a Trey of Hearts.
Interrogated, his valet deposed ignorance of the matter.
When Alan returned from dinner and the theatre, it was to find a solitary rose reposing with blushing effrontery upon his pillow. The inevitable Trey of Hearts, it appeared, had crawled in between the covers.
That made three of each.
Mr. Law sat down and thought. Then he summoned his valet—and discharged him.
"The Lord," he said, "may love a liar. But I'm human. Here's a month's wages. Clear out of this in three minutes. ..."
When morning came, London had lost Alan Law. No man—nor any woman—had received warning of his disappearance. He was simply vanished from English ken.