Vanno's "surprise" for Mary was a beautiful piece of land which he
wanted to buy for her, in order to have a home where they might come
sometimes, and spend a few weeks alone together in the country where
they had first met and loved each other.
The ground that he had set his heart upon was close to the curé's
garden, and it belonged to Achille Gonzales. Already, at Vanno's
request, the curé had interviewed both Achille and the older Gonzales.
An appointment had been made for three o'clock, and the curé was to have
introduced the two rich peasants, father and son, to the Prince; but
owing to the procession which Vanno and Mary had seen, he was not able
to keep his engagement. And rather strangely, Mary's host had been
prevented by much the same reason, from accepting Vanno's invitation to
meet him "on the land" a little later. He too had a funeral service that
day, but a very different funeral, and one which oppressed "St. George"
Winter with a peculiar sadness. Death, as a rule, did not seem sad to
him; but he had a horror of the habit of gambling, which appeared to his
eyes like an incubus on a man's life, a dead albatross hung round the
neck to rot. And this man who had died and was to be buried in the
cemetery at Monaco had been a gambler for thirty years. He and his faded
wife had existed rather than lived in a third-class hotel, where they
kept on the same rooms year after year, never going away in the summer
unless, if exceptionally prosperous, to spend a few of the hottest weeks
in the mountains. Their tiny rooms were given them at a cheap rate
because the man brought clients to the hotel, "amateurs" who wished to
learn his great system, the system to whose perfecting he had devoted
thirty years. He had advertised himself, and almost believed in himself,
as "_le roi de la roulette_," who for payment of two louis would impart
to any one the secret of unlimited wealth. Ignoring failure, pursuing
success, his own tiny fortune, his wife's youth, had gone. And as his
body went to the grave the whole record of his life--thousands of
roulette cards in neat packets, innumerable notebooks containing the
great secret--lay waiting for the dustman. The man's wife in preparing
to leave Monte Carlo forever had turned all his treasures out of the
trunks where through years they had accumulated, and had them flung into
a huge dust bin kept for the waste things of the hotel kitchen. This
George Winter knew, for the woman had boasted bitterly of the last
revenge she meant to take. "'Dust to dust, ashes to ashes.' Let all be
swept away and forgotten," she had said; and the words haunted the
chaplain, mourning through his brain like the voice of the tideless sea
that moaned ceaselessly under his study window.
He longed to go back to Rose and be cheered by her into hopefulness, to
have her assure him in her warm, loving way that he was doing some good
in this strange place of brilliant gayety and black tragedy; that his
work was not all in vain, though so often he likened it to the task of
Sisyphus. But he found Dick Carleton with Rose, and their faces told him
that there was no hope of comfort.
"Oh, St. George, poor Captain Hannaford is dead!" were Rose's first
words as her husband came into the drawing-room. Then she was sorry that
she had flung the news at him so abruptly, for just too late she read in
his eyes the wistful need of consolation.
"Dead!" he echoed, almost stupidly. He had liked Hannaford, and had
often invited him to play chess in the evenings, hoping with
unconquerable optimism to "wean him from the Casino." The quiet man,
with his black patches, his calm manner and slow smile as unreadable as
the eyes of the Sphinx, had seemed to George Winter a curiously tragic
yet mysteriously attractive figure. "Hannaford dead!" he repeated
slowly.
"I only just heard," Dick explained. "I was down at my hangar tinkering
with the _Flying Fish_, for, you know, I'm taking her to Cannes
to-morrow. Poor Hannaford's hotel isn't far away, and he used to stroll
over and talk to me sometimes. The manager knew that, and sent a boy to
ask me to come in at once. He didn't say what the matter was, except
that something had happened to Hannaford. It seems that lately he's been
in the habit of sleeping through the whole morning, giving orders that
he wasn't to be disturbed till he rang. So when there were no signs of
him to-day at lunch time nobody worried. It was only when two o'clock
came and he hadn't stirred that the _valet de chambre_ began to think it
queer. They have glass transoms over the doors, and they could see his
room was dark. I expect they listened at the keyhole; anyhow, the
landlord was consulted at last, and when they'd knocked and called
without getting any answer, at last they opened the door. Luckily nobody
was about at that time of day--every one out of doors or in the Casino,
so there was no scene. Hannaford was lying as if asleep in bed, but
stone cold; and the doctor they sent for said he must have been dead for
hours. In his hand was a volume of Omar Khayyam, with a faded white rose
for a book marker. There was a bottle half full of veronal tabloids on
the table by the bedside; and he was known to be in the habit of taking
veronal, as he was a bad sleeper. One hopes it was simply--an overdose,
taken accidentally."
"Why should any one suspect the contrary?" Winter asked, his kind voice
sharpened by distress.
Dick was silent, looking at Rose.
"Come and sit by me, dear," she said, holding out her hand to her
husband. He came, sinking down on the sofa with a sense of relief, for
he had been conscious of a weakness in the knees, as if on entering the
room he had stumbled blindly against a bar of iron.
"Dick and I had just got to that part, when you opened the door," Rose
went on. "We are afraid--you said yourself that Captain Hannaford was
changed, the last time he came here."
"Only three days ago," George mused aloud. "He didn't look well. But he
said he was all right."
"He would! You know how he hated to talk of himself or anything he felt,
poor fellow. But I thought even then--I guessed----"
"What?"
"That it was a blow to him, hearing of Mary Grant's engagement." As she
said this, Rose carefully did not look at her cousin. She was not at all
anxious about Dick. She knew that he would "get over it," and even
prophesied to herself that his heart would be "caught in the rebound" by
the first very pretty, very nice girl who happened to be thrown with him
in circumstances at all romantic. Mary was not his first love by any
means, and would certainly not be his last; and meanwhile Rose felt that
unconsciously he was enjoying his own jealous pain. Still, she did not
wish to "rub it in." "We both imagined that Captain Hannaford was in
love with Miss Grant," she explained; for one had to explain these
things to George. She often thought it a wonder that he had come down to
earth long enough to fall in love, himself; but when she observed this
to him, he had answered that it was not coming down to earth.
"We were most of us more or less in that condition," Dick remarked
bravely.
"The rest of you have a great deal left to live for, even without her,"
said Rose. "Captain Hannaford hadn't. But I'm thankful they're not
likely, anyhow, to prove that his death was not--an accident."
"They don't go out of their way to prove such things here, ever," Dick
mumbled.
"People will say," Rose pursued, "that there was no motive for
suicide--nothing to worry about. He'd won heaps of money, and seemed
very keen on the villa he'd bought."
"By Jove, I wonder what'll happen to that unlucky villa now!" Carleton
exclaimed. "Somehow, Hannaford didn't seem the sort of chap to bother
about wills and leaving all his affairs nice and tidy in case anything
happened."
"He told me once that he had no people--that he was entirely alone,"
said George. "Still, he must have had friends, friends far more intimate
than those he made here. Even we were no more than acquaintances. He
gave us no confidence."
"I can't imagine his confiding in any one," Rose said. "But--I'm not at
all sure whether it's a coincidence or not: a letter has just come by
the afternoon post, for Mary Grant, in his handwriting. It has an
Italian stamp, and is post-marked Ventimiglia. Probably he wrote it
yesterday, at the Château Lontana, knowing it wouldn't get to her till
this afternoon, as the posts from Italy are so slow."
"How strange!" George exclaimed. "Strange, and very sad."
"The letter hadn't been in the house five minutes, when Dick came in
with the news of his death."
George's eyes, which appeared always to see something mysteriously
beautiful behind people's heads, fixed themselves on vacancy that did
not seem to be vacant for him. "Hannaford was there in his house alone
yesterday, writing to Miss Grant," he murmured. "How little he thought
that when she read his letter he would be in another world."
"I wonder?" Rose whispered. "It is long after five. Mary will be coming
in soon. Then, perhaps, we shall know."