Moon of madness
“No. I had heard of him.”
“Really? Is he famous?”
“I suppose he is--in a way.”
“But listen!” Da Cunha exclaimed, “this is _so_ boring! Let us dance.”
“Not until I’ve lost my pound,” said Nanette firmly.
More aimless play, then:
“I saw your Major man when we first went on board, you know,” said
Nanette, casually staking her all on a number. “Jack and I peeped into
the smoke-room, and--he was in there.”
“Really. Is that so?”
“Yes. Wasn’t it odd I should meet him, after--seeing him like that?”
“Very odd.”
Nanette’s fortune was swept away by the croupier. She remained
unperturbed. She kept throwing quick little glances all about the
room, and now:
“Please take me out on the terrace and get me a long, cool drink,” she
asked.
We stood up and crossed to the open doors. Da Cunha grabbed Nanette’s
arm and led her out. As I followed, I glanced aside, and saw Jack
coming in. He looked very flushed. He was literally glaring after the
pair in front of me. I waved to him, but he swung around and went out
again.
It was dark on the terrace and at first I couldn’t see Nanette. Then I
glimpsed a raised white arm over in a distant corner. She was standing
with her back to the railing and Da Cunha stood in front of her,
bending forward, one hand resting beside her and his face very close
to hers.
“What about that long, cool drink?” said I.
Nanette immediately ran to me.
“Oh, please!” she cried. “I’m simply gasping! Where shall we sit?
Somewhere by the windows--where we can watch.”
She was excited, and it was clear enough that Da Cunha had been making
love to her. He turned, and I heard him snap his fingers.
“Why not here?” he suggested. “How beautiful is the view in the
moonlight, with the dark groves and twinkling lamps.”
“No,” said Nanette, selecting a table near an open window. “I feel
chilly and I want to watch the dancing.”
“If you are cold, let us dance.”
Nanette shook her head and opened a tiny jewelled cigarette case. She
bent toward me.
“A match, please,” she begged.
She was quite determined, and so we sat there sipping iced drinks
until Nanette’s mother and Ensleigh joined us. There were inquiries
for Jack, but I said nothing--for the boy had been palpably drunk.
Nanette was unable to mask her preoccupation, constantly looking into
the lighted rooms, then, suddenly, halfway through a Charleston, she
jumped up.
“Come on,” she said to Da Cunha, and threw her wrap to me--“let’s
dance!”
He was on his feet in an instant and the two went in. Nanette’s mother
was playing, and as I stood up I glanced toward the table.
O’Shea was standing watching the play.
Nanette and Da Cunha began to dance. Da Cunha danced perfectly, with
all the sensuous grace of a none-such; but the look in his dark eyes
raised my gorge to a hundred and twenty in the shade. Nanette floated
in his arms like a bit of thistledown; her tiny feet seemed scarcely
to brush the floor. He talked to her constantly, and sometimes she
smiled up at him; but, always, she glanced into the roulette room as
they passed. Ensleigh joined us.
“Yes,” said he, “little Nanette is in the throes of her first
infatuation.”
As he spoke, she went past in Da Cunha’s arms, and frowned at
Ensleigh--because he blocked her view of the roulette table.
“She is,” I agreed.
She danced every dance after that with Da Cunha, becoming more and
more animated as the night wore on. Then her mother moved an
adjournment. Of course, Nanette objected.
“Mumsy,” she said. “Mr. Da Cunha has invited us all to drive up to his
bungalow. We can dance to the Savoy band. Think of it!”
But her mother refused to think of it. Da Cunha was not defeated yet,
however. His car was waiting. He would drive the party to Reid’s. In
the end this invitation was accepted. Nanette, her mother, Ensleigh,
and I elected to go.
“How many can you take?” Nanette asked.
“Oh, six easily.”
“I wonder if anyone else is going back?” said Nanette.
Following her glance:
“I might ask Major O’Shea if he is ready,” said I. “Do you mind,
Senhor da Cunha?”
“But of course not!” he replied, looking like Cæsar Borgia thinking
out a new prescription.
O’Shea thanked me. He preferred to walk.
“And I dislike Senhor Da Cunha,” he added.
Therefore the five of us packed into a flamingo-red Farman that stood
before the Casino. I thought that if brass helmets had been served
out, we should have done credit to any fire brigade. Da Cunha, of
course, had Nanette beside him in front. I could hear his constant
murmur over the roar of the engine. He took us up to Reid’s at an
average of about fifty-five.
Nanette’s mother steered Nanette to bed, and Da Cunha did not stay
long. I sent a page to look for Jack, but he was not in his room.
At about midnight, O’Shea joined us. We went out on to the terrace,
pipes going, and sat watching the fairyland of the gardens below, with
the winking lights of Funchal climbing the slopes beyond. Presently I
heard a faint movement, and:
“Oh!” said a voice in the darkness.
We all turned--and there was Nanette, distracting in déshabille.
“I can’t sleep, and I left my book out here!” she explained.
“Let me look,” said Ensleigh.
But he looked in vain.
“May I stay awhile and smoke a cigarette with you?” Nanette pleaded;
“or were you telling funny stories?”
She stayed--seated on the arm of my chair. There was not much
conversation, but after awhile O’Shea got up and disappeared. Nanette
began to talk, then, with feverish animation, until presently O’Shea
came back, carrying a loose coat.
Very gracefully, he placed it around Nanette’s shoulders.
“You must be cold,” he said.
Nanette glanced up at him, then down again--and shivered. But it was
not because she was cold.
Later, long after Nanette reluctantly had retired to her room, Jack
was driven up from Funchal. We put him to bed without arousing anyone.
“I’ll kill that slimy Da Cunha,” he declared thickly--and went to
sleep.
O’Shea surveyed him through the black-rimmed monocle.
“I wonder if cats and pretty girls know how cruel they are?” he
murmured.
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