“Not for the _Star_, you understand?” he nodded, still looking at me
fixedly.
“Oh, no, no!” I hastened, truthfully. “I am not playing reporter now,
Henri.”
He appeared to be satisfied, and it did not occur to him to inquire why
else I should be interested.
“Yes,” he went on, slowly, “he has been watched. I have seen it myself.
Several times there was a man who came in, Spanish-looking.”
“Did Mr. Maddox know it?” I inquired, more eager than ever.
Henri shook his head negatively. “Not until one day when La Paquita
was talking to the man. Monsieur came in unexpectedly.”
The manager laughed a little to himself.
“Why do you laugh?” I asked. “What happened?”
“Nothing,” he returned. “It was not what happened. It was what she told
him. So clever, too. She said it was a detective set to trail him by
Mrs. Maddox, that she had flirted with the man and found out.”
“Then you do not think he was a detective?” I asked, puzzled.
“How should I know?” replied Henri, with another question. “It might
have been. It might not have been. She is clever.”
“What did Maddox do?” I persisted. “Was he more cautious?”
Again Henri shook his head. “He gave orders that the man was not to be
admitted. And we? He was a ver’ wealthy man, Mr. Maddox. We could not
afford to lose him.”
“But this Spaniard,” I reiterated, convinced it was the same man whom
we had seen at Westport, “isn’t it possible that Mrs. Maddox really did
pick him out as a detective in the hope that he might get acquainted
with Paquita and so report on her husband?”
“We are just guessing, monsieur,” dodged Henri. “I speak only of the
things I know――and not all of them.”
He had evidently told me in substance about all that he was sure of. I
knew him of old. Even after he had told his story he liked to leave a
sort of “continued in our next” at the close of it, just so that you
would not think he was not what Broadway calls a “live one.” I had
absorbed about all that he had at first hand. It was enough. It gave
me a view of the characters of the chief actors, from an angle which
others did not know. I rose nonchalantly, thanked Henri, and sauntered
out as I had in the old days when the _Star_ picked on me to expose
some new society scandal.
The visit to Henri’s White Light cabaret had shown me one very
important thing, however. Shelby Maddox had known Paquita before the
night of the gay dinner party preceding the arrival of the Maddox
family for the conference on the yacht.
What that might indicate I did not yet venture to guess. And yet I felt
sure that it must prove significant. Else why had Paquita arrived at
Westport at just that particular time? It seemed as though it must have
something to do with the calling of the family conference.
Above all, however, stood forth the strange coincidence of the
murder of Marshall Maddox, head of the family, and the stealing of
the telautomaton, the most valuable single piece of property that the
family owned. There was mystery enough in this case to satisfy even
Kennedy.