“Well, he won’t let you down, Joan. You—shall I say, even you, to be tactful—couldn’t have done better in the raffle.”
Before Joan could reply, a girl in Egyptian costume came past their chairs. Joan stopped her with a gesture.
“Pin this pretty thing in the front of my band, please, Cleopatra. Be sure you get it in the right place.”
She held out the diamond star. Cleopatra took it without comment and fastened it in position hastily.
“Sit down,” Joan invited, “your next partner will find you here when he comes. Tell us about Cæsar and Antony and all the rest of your disreputable past. Make it exciting.”
Cleopatra shook her head.
“Sorry I can’t stop just now. Neither Julius nor Antony put in an appearance to-night, so I’m spending my arts on a mere centurion. He’s a stickler for punctuality—being a Roman soldier.”
She glanced at her wrist-watch.
“I must fly at once. O reservoir! as we say in Egypt, you know.”
With a nod of farewell, she hastened along the alley and out of the winter-garden.
“She seems a trifle nervous about something,” Sir Clinton commented, indifferently.
Joan smoothed down her filmy tunic.
“Isn’t it time we moved?” she asked. “I see Falstaff’s gone away, so you can’t turn him into a white rabbit now; and there doesn’t seem to be anything else you could enchant just at present. The orchestra will be starting in a moment, anyhow.”
She rose as she spoke. Sir Clinton followed her example, and they made their way out of the winter-garden.
“What costume is Michael Clifton wearing to-night?” asked Sir Clinton as the orchestra played the opening bars of the dance. “I ought to congratulate him; and it’s easier to pick him up at a distance if I know how he’s dressed.”
“Look for something in eighteenth-century clothes and a large wig, then,” Joan directed. “He says he’s Macheath out of the Beggar’s Opera. I suppose he’s quite as like that as anything else. You’ll perhaps recognize him best by a large artificial mole at the left corner of his mouth. I observed it particularly myself.”
She noticed that her partner seemed more on the alert than the occasion required.
“What are you worried about?” she demanded. “You seem to be listening for something; and you can’t hear anything, you know, even if you tried, because of the orchestra.”
Sir Clinton shook off his air of preoccupation.
“The fact is, Joan, I’ve been worried all evening. I’m really afraid of something happening to-night. I don’t much like this mask business with all that stuff in the collections. I’ve a feeling in my bones that there might be trouble.”
Joan laughed at his gloomy premonitions.
“You won’t be kept on the rack much longer, that’s one good thing. There’s just this dance, then the march-past for judging the costumes, and then it will be midnight when everybody must unmask. So you’ll have to make the best of your fears in the next half-hour. After that there’ll be no excuse for them.”
“Meanwhile, on with the dance, eh?” said Sir Clinton. “I see it’s no use trying to give you a nightmare. You’re too poor a subject to repay the labour and trouble. Besides, this music’s terribly straining on the vocal cords if one tries to compete with it.”
As he spoke, however, the orchestra reached a diminuendo in the score and sank to comparative quietness. Joan looked here and there about the room as they danced and at last detected the figure for which she was searching.
“That’s Michael over there,” she pointed out, “the one dancing with the girl dressed as . . .”
Across the sound of the music there cut the sharp report of a small-calibre pistol fired in some adjacent room. On the heels of it came the crash and tinkle of falling glass, and, almost simultaneously, a cry for help in a man’s voice.
Sir Clinton let Joan’s hand go and turned to the door; but before he could take a step, the lights above them vanished and the room was plunged in darkness. Joan felt a hand come out and grip her arm.
“That you, Joan?”
“Yes.”
“They’ve taken out the main switch,” Sir Clinton said hurriedly. “Get hold of some man at once and show him where it is. We want the lights as quick as possible. I can trust you not to lose your head. Take a man with you for fear of trouble. We don’t know what’s happening.”
“Very well,” Joan assured him.
“Hurry! “Sir Clinton urged.
His hand dropped from her arm as he moved invisibly away towards the door. In the darkness around her she could hear movements and startled exclamations. The orchestra, after mechanically playing a couple of bars, had fallen to silence. Someone blundered into her and passed on before she could put out her hand.
“Well, at least I know where the door is,” she assured herself; and she began to move towards it.
Meanwhile the cries for help continued to come from the museum. Then, abruptly, they were hushed; and she shuddered as she thought of what that cessation might mean. She moved forward and came to what seemed an unobstructed space on the floor, over which she was able to advance freely.
