CHAPTER V.

“IN FIVE MINUTES”

The days wore on in that lotus-eaters’ paradise and I became an audience of one at a comedy designed to end in drama. There was a mystery that intrigued me vastly, and Ensleigh shared my curiosity.

I could not imagine what the O’Shea was doing in Madeira.

Da Cunha, palpably, had broken his journey to pursue Nanette. He positively haunted the hotel. I found it hard to believe that any such motive had inspired the Major. Ensleigh, with singular density, believed that Nanette was desperately infatuated with Da Cunha. I let him think so, and studied O’Shea.

This strange man spent a large part of every day seated on his balcony, reading and writing. What he read or what he wrote, nobody knew. On occasions, he disappeared for hours: and no one knew where he went.

It was queer, too, how many times Nanette strolled through the unfrequented part of the gardens below this balcony. Sometimes, but rarely, she would be alone, sometimes with Jack, more often with Da Cunha. But, always, she paused to glance in her mirror and powder her nose before she turned the corner. O’Shea, apparently, never noticed her.

She would loiter around the bathing pool for hours in the morning and then suddenly throw off her robe and plunge into the sea with an easy, gliding dive like a young dryad. By this token I would know that O’Shea was sauntering down the steps.

As she went in, Da Cunha and Jack would take the water like twin ducks. It was a miracle that they never tried to drown each other.

O’Shea was a hard man to know; a lonely man. I was honestly proud of the fact that, little by little, he began to unbend to me, to grant me something like friendship. Occasionally he would join me on the cocktail terrace before lunch; and Nanette would ask him for matches and then run back to her mother, Ensleigh, Jack, Da Cunha, and the rest of the party who, amongst them, had enough matches to fire the building.

Da Cunha was ceaselessly persevering in his endeavours to take her for drives, to take her fishing, and to dance with her to the strains of the Savoy band. Her mother negatived these plans.

One day a very (apparently) indignant Nanette came across to where I was sitting with O’Shea. Jack followed.

“Mr. Decies!” she burst out, “Gabriel wants to drive me out to a perfectly wonderful cliff. You lie on the edge and look down I don’t know how many hundred feet. Now, do _you_ see any earthly reason why I shouldn’t go?”

“I don’t suppose Decies sees any earthly reason why _I_ shouldn’t,” said Jack. “But I haven’t been invited.”

“You are always quarrelling with Gabriel,” Nanette retorted, fixing a cigarette in her holder. “Please, Major, would you give me a light?”

As she stooped over the match that he struck for her, I could see her eyes--looking at every wave in his hair, seeking out the hint of powder at his temples, studying his long, sensitive fingers. He threw the match away, and:

“You are such a restless little girl,” he said. “Why not spend a few peaceful hours in the garden, reading? Let me lend you a book.”

Coming from any other source, this suggestion would have provoked a scathing rejoinder, but:

“Thank you,” said Nanette simply, “I will.”

She sat for that entire afternoon in a secluded corner of the garden, a comfortable, empty chair drawn up beside her own, reading a Russian novel--and waiting for O’Shea to join her.

But he didn’t.

That evening the comedy became drama. I was to learn in a few short hours how Nanette’s alluring beauty had averted tragedy from a royal house. And this was how it developed:

A rather special dance had been arranged--I forget why; and O’Shea, quite the best-dressed man in the hotel, was last to go to his room and first down. He could get into black quicker than anyone I have ever met. You may know Reid’s green and yellow jazz cocktail bar? Well, as I looked in, having changed, there was O’Shea on a tall stool studying a dry Martini through his monocle. The way his bow was tied excited my envy; it was a poem in white piqué.

We had the bar to ourselves, and presently: “How long do you expect to stay in Madeira?” I asked.

He shrugged his shoulders and smiled--that rare and revealing smile.

“In the strictest confidence, Decies,” he replied--and suddenly his gray eyes grew steely; he was smiling no longer--“until I have in my possession a certain small black dispatch-box.”

“What!” I exclaimed.

“It contains,” he went on, “some unfortunate correspondence compromising a royal personage; and if it ever reaches the Communist base in London, I hesitate to imagine the consequences.”

“Good heavens!” said I, and formed my lips to convey an unspoken name.

O’Shea nodded.

“Exactly,” he replied. “That was what took me to the Argentine; but the Reds’ man--a dangerous and clever agent--doubled on me in Buenos Aires, and so you met me on my way back to Europe.”

“Then you have it!” I cried.

“No, damn it! I haven’t!” said he; “or would I be sitting on this stool? It’s getting desperate, Decies! There’s a British destroyer standing off Funchal waiting my radio that I’m coming on board!”

I said nothing for a few moments. Then I thanked him for his confidence.

“I confide in you with a definite purpose,” he replied. “I claim to be a judge of men, and I judge you to be one who would stand by in a rough house. I may need help, after all. If I do, the facts being as we know them, can I call on you?”

We solemnly shook hands--as Nanette came racing in.

She was flushed with excitement, and wearing a new frock. Her blue eyes shone like stars when she saw O’Shea. She looked adorable, and was well aware of the fact. Her happiness was that of the girl who knows herself to be perfectly gowned. It was completed now that Fate had ordained O’Shea to be the first man to see her so.

Jumping on to a tall stool:

“Do you like me?” she demanded naïvely.

“You look as though you had come straight from fairyland,” I said. “Let me order you something, to prove you are mortal.”

“Oh, no, please!” cried Nanette. “Mumsy would play Hamlet if she caught me drinking cocktails! Give me just a sip of yours!”

She drank from my glass, watching me with roguish eyes; then, turning to O’Shea:

“Am I smart enough to be honoured with a dance this evening, Major?” she asked--but the note of raillery faded as she met his glance, and she dropped her bobbed head, looking down at tiny blue and silver shoes.

“The honour would be mine, Nanette,” he said, in the gentle way he had of addressing all women.

Nanette bit her lip and jumped to the floor, as her mother came to look for her.

“Good gracious, Nanette!” she exclaimed. “In the _bar_! And your frock, dear! I see, now, why you wouldn’t have me with you to try on!”

“Please _don’t_, Mumsy!” cried Nanette. “Will you _never_ allow me to grow up!”

The blue-and-silver frock was certainly daring for a débutante. It was pure Paris; but Nanette’s sweet shoulders were worth displaying.

“You are altogether too naked, dear!” her mother declared.

“I wear less when I’m swimming!” argued the reasonable Nanette.

“Never mind. Please wear your wrap, dear, or a scarf--at least during dinner.”

And so the famous evening began.

Da Cunha had managed to get himself invited to the dinner party that included Nanette, and Jack sat facing him. Ensleigh, O’Shea, and I shared a bachelor table.

When the dancing began, I missed O’Shea. Nanette danced with me, but very abstractedly, alternately watching the door and the open French windows. There are few things more provoking than to dance with a pretty girl who wants to dance with someone else.

Da Cunha claimed her quite often and she suffered his public love-making in a way that nearly led to an outburst from Jack. The storm broke when O’Shea appeared. Nanette had begun dancing with Jack, but she did not finish. She dragged him across the floor to O’Shea, and:

“Please say you will dance,” she pleaded. She turned to her flushed partner. “Then we will finish our fox-trot, Jack,” she added.

“I hate to refuse,” O’Shea replied, and his voice was very gentle; “but I came down to beg you to excuse me. I find that I must go out--on most urgent business. Don’t be angry. I mean it, Nanette.”

Nanette was not angry--but she was deeply humiliated. Every woman in the room had marked her descent upon the aloof O’Shea, confident in her radiant young beauty.

“I don’t want to dance any more,” she said petulantly, when the Major had gone, “at least, not to this silly band.”

“It’s an excellent band, dear,” her mother replied, watching Nanette with a sudden maternal anxiety.

“They play such old stuff,” Nanette declared. “‘Brown Eyes, Why Are You Blue?’ is wildly out of date. They are liable to break into ‘Rock of Ages’ almost any minute!”

“Then what do you want to do?”

“I want to drive up to Gabriel’s and dance to the Savoy band.”

“Nanette!”--her mother spoke sharply--“I have already told you that I absolutely refuse. You heard what your father said?”

“No, Mumsy, I didn’t,” Nanette replied. “_You_ told me. I would like to ask Pop.”

But “Pop” had retired with a _Financial News_ and three old copies of the _Morning Post_.

“Then I’m going to bed,” Nanette announced. “I have a headache.”

She turned and walked from the ballroom. Da Cunha detained her in the doorway, but only for a moment. Then he crossed the floor and went out on to the terrace. A few minutes later I strolled up to my room to get a pipe. The window was open, and I lingered in the dark for a moment, held by the moon-magic of the night. As I stood there, I heard a soft call:

“Nanette!”

Nanette’s room was below and to the left of mine. I looked out. I could see a slender silvery figure leaning over the balcony.

“Is that you, Gabriel?”

“Yes, dear.”

“In five minutes!”