Page 14 (2/2)
And none of it cheap Had that been one of the wealthy patrons Madame Vyrubova had introduced Dr Theiss to? Princess Stana, or that frightful Madao on and on about the Slavic Race’s unique position in the History of the Cosmos?
Or soht she ask, without word of it getting back to the vampire in question, that someone was on his trail?
‘I’h,’ Texel concluded, with his tight manufactured smile, and herded them towards the door ‘Poor Mada’
‘Not at all!’ lied the little lady gallantly ‘Indeed,’ she confided to Lydia, ‘I have frequently thought that dear Dr Theiss should ory’s brain Such genius! Such God-given ability must surely have refined and altered the very substance of his tissuesMany and many a time he has cured my terrible headaches, and the dear Empress’s, too, with just a touchAnd sometimes with only a feords over the telephone’
Lydia was just reh the door into the clinic – even if these people were factory workers and stevedores, she wasn’t going to exhibit herself to theled stork – when she saw Dr Theiss deep in conversation with the woman in the stole of black-and-red sables who had picked hi car at the Princess Stana’s less than a week ago
Lydia quickly put her spectacles back on There was no uineas – nor the woht, Rasputin had said
These de men
She is another of them
Who is this man that you love? The man with the dark halo
Lydia drew a shaky breath Whoever she was, today she earing a Doucet suit of sage-green and gold, which set off her honey coloring without shouting, I cost ! Which, of course, M’sieu Doucet’s suits did
What was it Don Sihtening journey to Constantinople? That even fairly modest investments could accrue a phenomenal amount of interest in two centuries?
Theiss led the lady in the sables to one of the benches, where a young ot to his feet He was clearly a boy from the countryside, recently come in, like so many, for work in the factories: thin, dark-haired, and shy in his faded peasant trousers, his countrified boots and striped red-and-blue shirt The boy started to boardly, but the wo thatthey had been overheard
‘Who is that?’
Interrupted in her enco skills, Mada’ By her tone, it was someone she had met in society at least once or twice ‘One of dear Dr Theiss’s ory spoke of her as he did the other day He is a visionarythough she is a little outré,’ she added, her brow puckering like a gossipy schoolgirl’s ‘I understand she does not go into society much – a , I believe One seldoood for the poor It was she who paid for this building, you know, and I believe for the other laboratory facility dear Dr Theiss spoke of’
‘A cooing to be like so many people and think all Germans are like those terrible Prussians! She is perfectly civilized Just don’t let her talk to you alone--’ Madame Vyrubova dropped her voice as Dr Theiss ca The Russian boy, still standing beside his bench, gazed after her like one struck by a vision ‘She has a positive e, and will talk your ear off about the a nunnery devoted to their veneration--’
‘Rather like my cousin Bertie’s fixation with Joan of Arc, I suppose’
‘Oh, you poor dear! My Aunt Catherine had a fixation or an obsession or whatever it is that they call them, aboutDear Dr Theiss!’ She held out her hands to their host ‘We came to bid you farewell – that is, if dear Madame Asher has seen all that she wishes--?’
‘Thank you’ Lydia clasped the scientist’s hand
‘It has been ottenslect , may I present Dr Asher, a fellow scientist and physician froland?’
‘Scarcely a scientist,’ denied Lydia quickly, seeing the flicker of steely wariness in the other woreen eyes ‘That is, I do lands, you know’
‘Hoonderful!’ Mada had a deep voice for a woman, soft and velvety; tall like Lydia, in her neat subdued syloved in green kid ‘A thousand tis in the newspapers – of wolandI’ very behind the tihts of half the hulance around her, ‘considerably more than half I read, only the other day, how it is research into the glands that will, one day, open the doors of immortality to the human race’
Lydia had read that, too – half-cocked articles in the penny newspapers, extolling lands of ed indefinitely But only the aged ealthy, as far as she could ascertain
‘At the moment,’ she said tactfully, ‘I’ out the relationship of the various elelandular systemOne can’t perceiveat, and at theof commonplaces (‘IS that a Doucet?’), the three ladies were conducted to the doors of the clinic, which opened into a grimy little court off Samsonievsky Prospect Sht a sickly yellow, burning Lydia’s throat and lungs Other stinks led with it, as bad as the clinic they had just left: choked sewers, overflowing latrines in every tenement yard, a dead horse soht up, M’sieu Texel opened the clinic doors for the back to clasp her host’s hand onceher spectacles – saw that the young Russian boy to who had followed the heart in his eyes
He will dreaot into the car
As it pulled away – and Madaory’s miracles and the dozens of other miracle workers (‘Many of theh St Petersburg society, it occurred to Lydia what it was about Mada that had troubled her so
It was so she would not have noticed, she realized – turning in her seat for one last look at Dr Theiss and Madaht before the clinic doors – had she not spent many weeks in the company of Don Simon Ysidro
She couldn’t have sworn to it, but she was al