The Yellow Claw by Sax Rohmer (i like reading books TXT) 📕

gown of silk; and her feet were shod in little amber colored slippers with green buckles. The bodice of her dress opened in a surprising V, displaying the satin texture of her neck and shoulders, and enhancing the barbaric character of her appearance. Her jet black hair was confined by no band or comb, but protruded Bishareen-like around the shapely head. Without doubt, this was the Lady of the Poppies—the original of the picture.

“Dear friends,” said Olaf van Noord, taking the girl's hand, and walking into the studio, “permit me to present my model!”

Following, came a slightly built man who carried himself with a stoop; an olive faced man, who squinted frightfully, and who dressed immaculately.

“What a most... EXTRAORDINARY-looking creature!” whispered Denise Ryland to Helen. “She has undoubted attractions of... a hellish sort... if I may use... the term.”

“She is the strangest looking girl I have ever seen in my life,” replied Helen, who found herself unable to turn her eyes away from Olaf van Noord's model. “Surely she is not a professional model!”

The chatty reporter (his name was Crockett) confided to Helen Cumberly:

“She is not exactly a professional model, I think, Miss Cumberly, but she is one of the van Noord set, and is often to be seen in the more exclusive restaurants, and sometimes in the Cafe Royal.”

“She is possibly a member of the theatrical profession?”

“I think not. She is the only really strange figure (if we exclude Olaf) in this group of poseurs. She is half Burmese, I believe, and a native of Moulmein.”

“Most EXTRAORDINARY creature!” muttered Denise Ryland, focussing upon the Eurasian her gold rimmed glasses—“MOST extraordinary.” She glanced around at the company in general. “I really begin to feel... more and more as though I were... in a private lunatic... asylum. That picture... beyond doubt is the work ... of a madman... a perfect... madman!”

“I, also, begin to be conscious of an uncomfortable sensation,” said Helen, glancing about her almost apprehensively. “Am I dreaming, or did SOME ONE ELSE enter the studio, immediately behind that girl?”

“A squinting man... yes!”

“But a THIRD person?”

“No, my dear... look for yourself. As you say... you are ... dreaming. It's not to be wondered... at!”

Helen laughed, but very uneasily. Evidently it had been an illusion, but an unpleasant illusion; for she should have been prepared to swear that not two, but THREE people had entered! Moreover, although she was unable to detect the presence of any third stranger in the studio, the persuasion that this third person actually was present remained with her, unaccountably, and uncannily.

The lady of the tiger skins was surrounded by an admiring group of unusuals, and Helen, who had turned again to the big canvas, suddenly became aware that the little cross-eyed man was bowing and beaming radiantly before her.

“May I be allowed,” said Olaf van Noord who stood beside him, “to present my friend Mr. Gianapolis, my dear Miss Cumberly?”...

Helen Cumberly found herself compelled to acknowledge the introduction, although she formed an immediate, instinctive distaste for Mr. Gianapolis. But he made such obvious attempts to please, and was so really entertaining a talker, that she unbent towards him a little. His admiration, too, was unconcealed; and no pretty woman, however great her common sense, is entirely admiration-proof.

“Do you not think 'Our Lady of the Poppies' remarkable?” said Gianapolis, pleasantly.

“I think,” replied Denise Ryland,—to whom, also, the Greek had been presented by Olaf van Noord, “that it indicates... a disordered... imagination on the part of... its creator.”

“It is a technical masterpiece,” replied the Greek, smiling, “but hardly a work of imagination; for you have seen the original of the principal figure, and”—he turned to Helen Cumberly—“one need not go very far East for such an interior as that depicted.”

“What!” Helen knitted her brows, prettily—“you do not suggest that such an apartment actually exists either East or West?”

Gianapolis beamed radiantly.

“You would, perhaps, like to see such an apartment?” he suggested.

“I should, certainly,” replied Helen Cumberly. “Not even in a stage setting have I seen anything like it.”

“You have never been to the East?”

“Never, unfortunately. I have desired to go for years, and hope to go some day.”

“In Smyrna you may see such rooms; possibly in Port Said—certainly in Cairo. In Constantinople—yes! But perhaps in Paris; and—who knows?—Sir Richard Burton explored Mecca, but who has explored London?”

Helen Cumberly watched him curiously.

“You excite my curiosity,” she said. “Don't you think”—turning to Denise Ryland—“he is most tantalizing?”

Denise Ryland distended her nostrils scornfully.

“He is telling... fairy tales,” she declared. “He thinks... we are... silly!”

“On the contrary,” declared Gianapolis; “I flatter myself that I am too good a judge of character to make that mistake.”

Helen Cumberly absorbed his entire attention; in everything he sought to claim her interest; and when, ere taking their departure, the girl and her friend walked around the studio to view the other pictures, Gianapolis was the attendant cavalier, and so well as one might judge, in his case, his glance rarely strayed from the piquant beauty of Helen.

When they departed, it was Gianapolis, and not Olaf van Noord, who escorted them to the door and downstairs to the street. The red lips of the Eurasian smiled upon her circle of adulators, but her eyes—her unfathomable eyes—followed every movement of the Greek.