Jim Frobisher reached Dijon that night at an hour too late for any
visit, but at half-past nine on the next morning he turned with a
thrill of excitement into the little street of Charles-Robert. This
street was bordered upon one side, throughout its length, by a high
garden wall above which great sycamores and chestnut trees rustled
friendlily in a stir of wind. Towards the farther mouth of the
street the wall was broken, first by the end of a house with a florid
observation-window of the Renaissance period which overhung the
footway; and again a little farther on by a pair of elaborate tall
iron gates. Before these gates Jim came to a standstill. He gazed
into the courtyard of the Maison Grenelle, and as he gazed his
excitement died away and he felt a trifle ashamed of it. There
seemed so little cause for excitement.
It was a hot, quiet, cloudless morning. On the left-hand side of the
court women-servants were busy in front of a row of offices; at the
end Jim caught glimpses of a chauffeur moving between a couple of
cars in a garage, and heard him whistling gaily as he moved; on the
right stretched the big house, its steep slate roof marked out gaily
with huge diamond patterns of bright yellow, taking in the sunlight
through all its open windows. The hall door under the horizontal
glass fan stood open. One of the iron gates, too, was ajar. Even
the _sergent-de-ville_ in his white trousers out in the small street
here seemed to be sheltering from the sun in the shadow of the high
wall rather than exercising any real vigilance. It was impossible to
believe, with all this pleasant evidence of normal life, that any
threat was on that house or upon any of its inhabitants.
"And indeed there is no threat," Jim reflected. "I have Hanaud's
word for it."
He pushed the gate open and crossed to the front door. An old
serving-man informed him that Mademoiselle Harlowe did not receive,
but he took Jim's card nevertheless, and knocked upon a door on the
right of the big square hall. As he knocked, he opened the door; and
from his position in the hall Jim looked right through a library to a
window at the end and saw two figures silhouetted against the window,
a man and a girl. The man was protesting, rather extravagantly both
in word and gesture, to Jim's Britannic mind, the girl laughing--a
clear, ringing laugh, with just a touch of cruelty, at the man's
protestations. Jim even caught a word or two of the protest spoken
in French, but with a curiously metallic accent.
"I have been your slave too long," the man cried, and the girl became
aware that the door was open and that the old man stood inside of it
with a card upon a silver salver. She came quickly forward and took
the card. Jim heard the cry of pleasure, and the girl came running
out into the hall.
"You!" she exclaimed, her eyes shining. "I had no right to expect
you so soon. Oh, thank you!" and she gave him both her hands.
Jim did not need her words to recognise in her the "little girl" of
Mr. Haslitt's description. Little in actual height Betty Harlowe
certainly was not, but she was such a slender trifle of a girl that
the epithet seemed in place. Her hair was dark brown in colour, with
a hint of copper where the light caught it, parted on one side and
very neatly dressed about her small head. The broad forehead and
oval face were of a clear pallor and made vivid the fresh scarlet of
her lips; and the large pupils of her grey eyes gave to her a look
which was at once haunting and wistful. As she held out her hands in
a warm gratitude and seized his, she seemed to him a creature of
delicate flame and fragile as fair china. She looked him over with
one swift comprehensive glance and breathed a little sigh of relief.
"I shall give you all my troubles to carry from now on," she said,
with a smile.
"To be sure. That's what I am here for," he answered. "But don't
take me for anything very choice and particular."
Betty laughed again and, holding him by the sleeve, drew him into the
library.
"Monsieur Espinosa," she said, presenting the stranger to Jim. "He
is from Cataluna, but he spends so much of his life in Dijon that we
claim him as a citizen."
The Catalan bowed and showed a fine set of strong white teeth.
"Yes, I have the honour to represent a great Spanish firm of
wine-growers. We buy the wines here to mix with our better brands,
and we sell wine here to mix with their cheaper ones."
"You mustn't give your trade secrets away to me," Jim replied
shortly. He disliked Espinosa on sight, as they say, and he was at
no very great pains to conceal his dislike. Espinosa was altogether
too brilliant a personage. He was a big, broad-shouldered man with
black shining hair and black shining eyes, a florid complexion, a
curled moustache, and gleaming rings upon his fingers.
"Mr. Frobisher has come from London to see me on quite different
business," Betty interposed.
"Yes?" said the Catalan a little defiantly, as though he meant to
hold his ground.
"Yes," replied Betty, and she held out her hand to him. Espinosa
raised it reluctantly to his lips and kissed it.
"I shall see you when you return," said Betty, and she walked to the
door.
"If I go away," Espinosa replied stubbornly. "It is not certain,
Mademoiselle Betty, that I shall go"; and with a ceremonious bow to
Jim he walked out of the room; but not so quickly but that Betty
glanced swiftly from one man to the other with keen comparing eyes,
and Jim detected the glance. She closed the door and turned back to
Jim with a friendly little grimace which somehow put him in a good
humour. He was being compared to another man to his advantage, and
however modest one may be, such a comparison promotes a pleasant
warmth.
"More trouble, Miss Harlowe," he said with a smile, "but this time
the sort of trouble which you must expect for a good many years to
come."
He moved towards her, and they met at one of the two side windows
which looked out upon the courtyard. Betty sat down in the
window-seat.
"I really ought to be grateful to him," she said, "for he made me
laugh. And it seems to me ages since I laughed"; she looked out of
the window and her eyes suddenly filled with tears.
"Oh! don't, please," cried Jim in a voice of trouble.
The smile trembled once more on Betty's lips deliciously.
"I won't," she replied.
"I was so glad to hear you laugh," he continued, "after your unhappy
telegram to my partner and before I told you my good news."
Betty looked up at him eagerly.
"Good news?"
Jim Frobisher took once more from his long envelope the two letters
which Waberski had sent to his firm and handed them to Betty.
"Read them," he said, "and notice the dates."
Betty glanced at the handwriting.
"From Monsieur Boris," she cried, and she settled down in the
window-seat to study them. In her short black frock with her slim
legs in their black silk stockings extended and her feet crossed, and
her head and white neck bent over the sheets of Waberski's letters,
she looked to Jim like a girl fresh from school. She was quick
enough, however, to appreciate the value of the letters.
"Of course I always knew that it was money that Monsieur Boris
wanted," she said. "And when my aunt's will was read and I found
that everything had been left to me, I made up my mind to consult you
and make some arrangement for him."
"There was no obligation upon you," Jim protested. "He wasn't really
a relation at all. He married Mrs. Harlowe's sister, that's all."
"I know," replied Betty, and she laughed. "He always objected to me
because I would call him 'Monsieur Boris' instead of 'uncle.' But I
meant to do something nevertheless. Only he gave me no time. He
bullied me first of all, and I do hate being bullied--don't you, Mr.
Frobisher?"
"I do."
Betty looked at the letters again.
"That's when I snapped me the fingers at him, I suppose," she
continued, with a little gurgle of delight in the phrase.
"Afterwards he brought this horrible charge against me, and to have
suggested any arrangement would have been to plead guilty."
"You were quite right. It would indeed," Jim agreed cordially.
Up to this moment, a suspicion had been lurking at the back of Jim
Frobisher's mind that this girl had been a trifle hard in her
treatment of Boris Waberski. He was a sponger, a wastrel, with no
real claim upon her, it was true. On the other hand, he had no means
of livelihood, and Mrs. Harlowe, from whom Betty drew her fortune,
had been content to endure and support him. Now, however, the
suspicion was laid, the little blemish upon the girl removed and by
her own frankness.
"Then it is all over," Betty said, handing back the letters to Jim
with a sigh of relief. Then she smiled ruefully--"But just for a
little while I was really frightened," she confessed. "You see, I
was sent for and questioned by the examining magistrate. Oh! I
wasn't frightened by the questions, but by him, the man. I've no
doubt it's his business to look severe, but I couldn't help thinking
that if any one looked as terrifically severe as he did, it must be
because he hadn't any brains and wanted you not to know. And people
without brains are always dangerous, aren't they?"
"Yes, that wasn't encouraging," Jim agreed.
"Then he forbade me to use a motor-car, as if he expected me to run
away. And to crown everything, when I came away from the Palais de
Justice, I met some friends outside who gave me a long list of people
who had been condemned and only found to be innocent when it was too
late."
Jim stared at her.
"The brutes!" he cried.
"Well, we have all got friends like that," Betty returned
philosophically. "Mine, however, were particularly odious. For they
actually discussed, as a reason of course, why I should engage the
very best advocate, whether, since Mrs. Harlowe had adopted me, the
charge couldn't be made one of matricide. In which case there could
be no pardon, and I must go to the guillotine with a black veil over
my head and naked feet." She saw horror and indignation in Jim
Frobisher's face and she reached out a hand to him.
"Yes. Malice in the provinces is apt to be a little blunt,
though"--and she lifted a slim foot in a shining slipper and
contemplated it whimsically--"I don't imagine that, given the
circumstances, I should be bothering my head much as to whether I was
wearing my best shoes and stockings or none at all."
"I never heard of so abominable a suggestion," cried Jim.
"You can imagine, at all events, that I came home a little rattled,"
continued Betty, "and why I sent off that silly panicky telegram. I
would have recalled it when I rose to the surface again. But it was
then too late. The telegram had----"
She broke off abruptly with a little rise of inflexion and a sharp
indraw of her breath.
"Who is that?" she asked in a changed voice. She had been speaking
quietly and slowly, with an almost humorous appreciation of the
causes of her fear. Now her question was uttered quickly and anxiety
was predominant in her voice. "Yes, who is that?" she repeated.
A big, heavily built man sauntering past the great iron gates had
suddenly whipped into the courtyard. A fraction of a second before
he was an idler strolling along the path, now he was already
disappearing under the big glass fan of the porch.
"It's Hanaud," Jim replied, and Betty rose to her feet as though a
spring in her had been released, and stood swaying.
"You have nothing to fear from Hanaud," Jim Frobisher reassured her.
"I have shown him those two letters of Waberski. From first to last
he is your friend. Listen. This is what he said to me only
yesterday in Paris."
"Yesterday, in Paris?" Betty asked suddenly.
"Yes, I called upon him at the Sûrété. These were his words. I
remembered them particularly so that I could repeat them to you just
as they were spoken. 'Your little client can lay her pretty head
upon her pillow confident that no injustice will be done to her.'"
The bell of the front door shrilled through the house as Jim finished.
"Then why is he in Dijon? Why is he at the door now?" Betty asked
stubbornly.
But that was the one question which Jim must not answer. He had
received a confidence from Hanaud. He had pledged his word not to
betray it. For a little while longer Betty must believe that
Waberski's accusation against her was the true reason of Hanaud's
presence in Dijon, and not merely an excuse for it.
"Hanaud acts under orders," Jim returned. "He is here because he was
bidden to come"; and to his relief the answer sufficed. In truth,
Betty's thoughts were diverted to some problem to which he had not
the key.
"So you called upon Monsieur Hanaud in Paris," she said, with a warm
smile. "You have forgotten nothing which could help me." She laid a
hand upon the sill of the open window. "I hope that he felt all the
flattery of my panic-stricken telegram to London."
"He was simply regretful that you should have been so distressed."
"So you showed him the telegram?"
"And he destroyed it. It was my excuse for calling upon him with the
letters."
Betty sat down again on the window-seat and lifted a finger for
silence. Outside the door voices were speaking. Then the door was
opened and the old man-servant entered. He carried this time no card
upon a salver, but he was obviously impressed and a trifle flustered.
"Mademoiselle," he began, and Betty interrupted him. All trace of
anxiety had gone from her manner. She was once more mistress of
herself.
"I know, Gaston. Show Monsieur Hanaud in at once."
But Monsieur Hanaud was already in. He bowed with a pleasant
ceremony to Betty Harlowe and shook hands cordially with Jim
Frobisher.
"I was delighted as I came through the court, Mademoiselle, to see
that my friend here was already with you. For he will have told you
that I am not, after all, the ogre of the fairy-books."
"But you never looked up at the windows once," cried Betty in
perplexity.
Hanaud smiled gaily.
"Mademoiselle, it is in the technique of my trade never to look up at
windows and yet to know what is going on behind them. With your
permission?" And he laid his hat and cane upon a big writing-table
in the middle of the room.