The man in the road, a short, thickset brigand by the look of him,
rushed up to the car, hat in hand, his face beaming.
"_C'est bien, mademoiselle! Ah, mademoiselle, que je suis ravi de vous
voir!_"
"Jacques!--it's Jacques, Roger, the doctor's servant."
On hearing this, Roger expressed his regret at having so nearly ended
the other's career. The little man's animosity had quite vanished, his
black eyes shone with kindly affection which included his late enemy.
"_Ah, ça n'est rien, monsieur, ç'était ma faute, je vous assure!_ And
how goes everything with you, mademoiselle?"
"Quite all right, thank you, Jacques. And you?"
"Ah, what you call so-so--_comme çi, comme ça_. Now I look after
Captain Holliday; he stay at the house, but I think not for long. The
Captain he sleep nearly all day; I not have to cook much for him. But
I learn to make cocktails," he added, with a twinkle.
"I suppose you'll be glad to get the doctor back?"
The little man looked dubious.
"Yes, but I tell you, mademoiselle, I not feel so sure the doctor means
to come back soon, perhaps not for a long time."
"Why, what makes you think that?"
"Ah----" He hesitated, digging the thick toe of his boot in between
the cobble stones and gazing at it thoughtfully. "Mademoiselle, the
doctor say to me the other day, when the Captain go, I can take a long
what-you-call holiday. I can go to my people in Cognac a month, two
months, maybe more. He say he not sure what he will do; perhaps he go
away from Cannes."
"You mean he might give up his practice?" asked Esther, astonished.
Jacques shrugged expressively.
"I know nothing. He always say he hope one day to stop work again, I
cannot tell you. And then he speak yesterday to the Captain and say he
think he will--how do you say?--_sous-louer_ the house."
"Sub-let the house! Then he does mean to go away. How extraordinary!"
"To you, mademoiselle, not to me. I know the doctor for a long time.
_Il fait toujours des bêtises!_"
"Well--I'm glad to have seen you, Jacques. Good-bye and good luck."
She leaned out of the car and shook his hand warmly, an attention which
delighted Jacques's soul beyond measure.
"_Au revoir, mademoiselle! Au revoir, monsieur! Bonne santé!_"
When they had gone on again Roger remarked:
"Your Sartorius is a queer card. No one, to look at him, would think
he could be so temperamental."
"Yet he's first and foremost a scientist. I believe he would almost
starve in order to pursue his work in the laboratory."
The thought in her mind was that the Cliffords must indeed be paying
the doctor well if he could afford to drop his practice in this casual
fashion. A few weeks was one thing, a matter of months was another.
In spite of what Jacques had always told her, she felt there must be
some mistake about it. Perhaps it merely meant the doctor was thinking
of moving to another part of Cannes; she had more or less wondered why
he had chosen the Route de Grasse.
As for Lady Clifford, whether her symptoms were prompted by hysteria or
not, she kept her bed for two days, frequently visited by the doctor.
On the afternoon of the third she emerged from her room, still pale and
wan, but otherwise quite herself. The anti-toxin had done its work,
the typhoid was routed. As she went about passive and subdued, with
pensive eyes and a pathetic droop to her mouth, it was hard to believe
in her insane outburst of only a few days ago. One would not have
believed it possible that she could work herself up into such a rage
over a trifling matter. Indeed, to Esther at least, the cause of Lady
Clifford's fury seemed so inadequate that more than once she found
herself turning it over in her mind with a growing sense of
bewilderment.
Both the old lady and Dr. Sartorius remained in ignorance of the
regrettable happening. Since the patient, miraculous though it
appeared, suffered no bad effects from the shock, Esther had deemed it
the wise course to say nothing about it. After all, it was not the
easiest thing in the world to tell tales on your patient's own wife,
and to do so could only increase the latter's dislike. Better let well
alone.
Two days more went by uneventfully. About three o'clock on the second
afternoon, Esther put on her coat and hat and set out for a walk.
Roger had not been home for lunch, but to her surprise she found him in
the hall, wearing an old tweed overcoat, and engaged with a somewhat
angry air in ramming tobacco down into the bowl of a pipe. It was the
first time she had seen him smoke a pipe. It gave him a different sort
of look.
"Hello! Going for a walk?"
"Yes, I need exercise."
"So do I. I'll come with you if I may. I was just going to start out
alone."
"Wouldn't you rather go alone?"
He looked at her, scorning to reply, then jammed the pipe in his mouth
and reached for his hat and a stick. His chin was particularly
aggressive, his blue eyes smouldered ominously. She forebore to
question him, and they left the house and walked briskly along the road
for two hundred yards before either attempted to break the silence. At
last, with his pipe-stem between his teeth, he spoke.
"I wish," he said in a hard voice, "that people would not tell lies
simply for the sake of lying. A good, thumping lie in the right place
is a thing I thoroughly uphold. But pointless untruths irritate me
beyond measure."
She stole a look at him.
"Perhaps," she ventured, "the person who has incurred your displeasure
believes in the saying of Pudd'nhead Wilson--'Truth is the most
valuable thing we have. Let us economise it!'"
His face relaxed for a moment, then stiffened again.
"No, but hang it, Esther, I'm damned annoyed."
"That's quite apparent."
He strode on again in angry silence, then, with a sudden laugh, became
more communicative.
"It's nothing much. I might as well tell you. By the way, I suppose
as a nurse you are quite in the habit of having people confide in you,
aren't you? Though I hope you realise I don't bare my soul to you
because of your official position. It's more because you happen to
have lashes that turn back in a certain way."
"Many thanks!"
"Well, then, it's about my stepmother--Thérèse. Gad, how that woman
does rub me the wrong way!--A little while ago I came back from the
courts, earlier than usual; it began to rain. I went up to my room to
change, and, what do you think? She was there."
"Lady Clifford in your room? Why?"
"You may well ask. She has never been near it before, to my knowledge;
there's no reason why she should, especially as she's not particularly
fond of me."
"What was she doing there?"
"I'm blessed if I know. When I threw open the door she was in the
middle of the room, I should say on the way out. She looked startled,
naturally. Then she smiled and said she hoped I didn't mind, that she
had slipped in, thinking I was still away, to get a book out of my
bookcase."
"So that was it, was it?"
"Wait till I tell you. I said, certainly, go ahead and help herself,
and she kneeled down in front of the bookshelves and took out a book.
I should have thought no more about it--only I happened to see the
book."
"What was it?"
"You'd never guess. It was _L'Abbé Constantin_."
"_L'Abbé Constantin!_"
"Yes. Can you see Thérèse reading a thing like that, a sweet little
sentimental tale they give young girls in an elementary French course?'
"Oh, so you think that was an excuse?"
"What do you think? I know it was. The point is, why should she have
to invent an excuse for being in my room? No doubt she had a perfectly
good reason for being there, why not say so? I daresay she likes to
see herself in my mirror; it's in rather a good light. Something of
that sort. What exasperates me is that she should think it worth a
lie. Now I shall go on bothering my head as to why she really was
there. I shall be wondering whether she came to read my letters, or
something absurd like that."
He laughed lightly, his good nature restored.
"I suppose," said Esther slowly, "that there are people whose minds
work in devious ways, who'd rather not give their reasons for doing
things."
"You may be right. It doesn't matter a hoot what she does. Oh, by the
way--did you happen to see these items in the Paris _Daily Mail_? They
may interest you."
From the depths of a side pocket he fished up a folded newspaper, which
he handed to her.
"Read these," he said, pointing to a couple of bits in the social
column, juxtaposed.
Following his finger, Esther read aloud:
"Arrivals at Claridge's include Señora Toda and her daughter, Señorita
Inez Toda, who, after spending the winter in the Riviera, are now
returning to their home in Argentina."
"Captain Arthur Holliday, well known in Paris and in Cannes, is staying
at Claridge's before sailing from Marseilles for South America, where
he has important interests."
Esther lapsed into the vernacular of her adopted country.
"Well, what do you know about that?" she exclaimed, turning wide eyes
on her companion. "So he is going, after all."
"So it appears. His Spanish friends have him in tow. I wish them joy."
Esther was silent, wondering if the thought in her mind had also
occurred to Roger, namely that Holliday had at last given up hope that
Sir Charles would die. She wondered, too, how the news would affect
Lady Clifford. Perhaps, indeed, the latter had known days ago of his
departure, in which case her violent emotional burst, as well as her
illness, became more comprehensible.
They made a big circuit, and an hour and a half later turned homeward,
approaching the house from a different direction. While still a little
distance away they caught sight of a small Aberdeen terrier in the act
of disappearing around the corner of a leafy avenue. The dog, red
collar and all, had a familiar appearance.
"Can that be--why, yes, it is Tony!" cried Esther, recognising Lady
Clifford's pet. "He must have slipped out. Here, Tony, Tony!"
The Aberdeen turned and bent upon her an inquiring eye, smiled coyly,
dog fashion, wagged his brief tail, then, instead of coming closer,
wheeled about and dashed off down the avenue.
"That's not like him," Roger said. "He's always such an obedient dog.
Tony, here, Tony!"
Tony, however, had a mind of his own. Paying no heed to Roger's
whistle, he ran without stopping until he joined, far in the distance,
two figures who were walking slowly in the opposite direction.
"He's evidently with someone," Roger remarked. "A man and a woman.
Can your long-sighted eyes see who they are?"
In the growing dusk it was not easy to tell, but there was something
familiar in the big, heavy frame of the man.
"It looks like the doctor," Esther said, hesitating. "And I believe
the woman is Lady Clifford."
As she spoke the pair separated, the woman went on, the dog following,
and the man turned and came back along the avenue. It was the doctor,
there was no doubt about it now.
"I have scarcely ever seen Thérèse out walking before. I wonder what
has come over her?" Roger said as they quickened their pace again.
"What are you in such a hurry for? Don't you want the doctor to see
you?"
"It isn't that; I only feel I'd like to be home first," Esther excused
herself, not quite sure of her own reasons for trying to escape
Sartorius's notice.
"Rubbish. You don't want him to see you with me. Now own up, my dear.
Isn't that true?"
"No, it isn't a bit true. That's too absurd!"
"Well, true or not, why should we mind? We are not the conspirators,"
Roger retorted lightly.
Somehow the word "conspirators," jokingly uttered, gave her a queer,
uncomfortable feeling. There had been something about those two
sauntering figures, so close together, that had emphasised the dim,
instinctive notion she had had before of something between the pair.
Yet what was there strange in Lady Clifford's taking a short stroll
with her private physician?
"More of my nonsense!" was Esther's mental comment as she put the
matter determinedly out of mind.
It was much later in the afternoon, nearly six o'clock, when Lady
Clifford returned in the Rolls. Esther heard her come upstairs and go
to her room, but she did not see her, being busy making Sir Charles
ready for the night. When it came time to take the old man's
temperature she discovered her watch had stopped for want of winding.
She went into the boudoir to look at the clock on the mantelpiece
there, throwing open the door, feeling sure the room was empty.
The next instant she heard herself murmuring "I beg your pardon!" as
she retreated hastily, utterly flabbergasted by what she had seen.
Standing bolt upright on the hearthrug was Roger, his arms awkwardly
embracing Lady Clifford, who leaned against him, her golden head
pressed close to his shoulder, her eyes gazing up at him with every
evidence of clinging affection.
What in heaven's name did it mean?