THE LADY IN A HURRY
"Ah! your London is such a strange place. So dull, so triste--so very
damp and foggy."
"Not always, mademoiselle," I replied. "You have been there in winter.
You should go in June. In the season it is as pleasant as anywhere else
in the world."
"I have no desire to return. And yet----"
"Well?"
"And yet I have decided to go straight to Boulogne, and across the
Channel."
I had met Julie Rosier under curious circumstances only a few hours
before. I was on a run alone, with the forty "Napier," from Limoges to
London, and on that particular winter's night had pulled up at the small
station of Bersac to send a telegram. I had written out the message,
leaving the car outside, and was walking along the platform, when
the stationmaster, who had been talking with a tall, dark-haired,
good-looking girl, approached me, cap in hand.
"Excuse me, m'sieur, but a lady wishes to ask a great favour of you."
"Of me? What is it?" I inquired, rising.
Glancing at the tall figure in black, I saw that she was not more than
twenty-two at the outside, and that she had the bearing and manner of a
lady.
"Well, m'sieur, she will explain herself," the man said; whereupon the
fair stranger approached, bowing, and exclaimed--
"I trust M'sieur will pardon me for what I am about to ask. I know it is
great presumption on my part, a total stranger, but the fact is that I
am bound to get to Paris to-morrow morning. It is imperative--most
imperative--that I should be there and keep an appointment. I find,
however, that the last train has gone. I thought----" and she hesitated,
with downcast eyes.
"You mean that you want me to allow you to travel in the car,
mademoiselle?" I said, with a smile.
"Ah! m'sieur, if you would--if you only would! It would be an act of
friendship that I would never forget."
She saw my hesitation, and I detected how anxious she became. Her gloved
hands were trembling, and she seemed agitated and pale to the lips.
Again I scrutinised her. There was nothing of the police spy or
adventuress about her. On the contrary, she seemed a very charmingly
modest young woman.
"But surely it would be rather wearisome, mademoiselle?" I said.
"No, no, not at all. I must get to Paris at all costs. Ah! m'sieur, you
will allow me to do as I ask, will you not? Do, I implore you!"
I made no reply; for, truth to tell, although I was not suspicious, I
hesitated to allow the fair stranger to be my travelling companion. It
was against my principle. Yet, reading disinclination in my silence, she
continued--
"Ah! m'sieur, if you only knew in what deadly peril I am! By granting
this favour to me you can----" and she broke off short. "Well," she went
on, "I may as well tell you the truth, m'sieur;" and in her eyes there
was a strange look that I had never seen in those of any woman
before,--"you can save my life."
"Your life?" I echoed, but at that moment the stationmaster, standing at
the buffet door, said--
"Pardon, m'sieur. I am just closing the station. The last train has
departed."
"Do take me!" implored the girl. "Do, m'sieur! Do!"
There was no time for further discussion, therefore I did as she
requested, and a few moments later, with a dressing-case, which was all
the baggage she had, she mounted into the car beside me, and we moved
off northward to the capital.
I offered her the fur rug, and she wrapped it about her knees with the
air of one used to motoring.
And so, hour after hour, we sat and chatted. I asked her if she liked a
cigarette, and she gladly accepted. So we smoked together, while she
told me something of herself. She was a native of Nimes, where her
people had been wealthy landowners, she said, but some unfortunate
speculation on her father's part brought ruin to them, and she was now
governess in the family of a certain Baron de Moret, of the Chateau de
Moret, near Paris.
A governess! I had believed from her dress and manner that she was at
least the daughter of some French aristocrat, and I confess I was
disappointed to find that she was only a superior servant.
"I have just come from Nice," she explained, "on very urgent
business--business that concerns my own self. If I am not in Paris this
morning I shall, in all probability, pay the penalty with my life."
"How? What do you mean?"
In the grey dawn, as we went on towards Paris, I saw that her
countenance was that of a woman who held a secret. At first I had been
conscious that there was something unusual about her, and suspected her
to be an adventuress; but now, on further acquaintance, I became
convinced that she held possession of some knowledge that she was
yearning to betray, yet feared to do so.
One fact that struck me as curious was that, in the course of our
conversation, she showed that she knew my destination was London. This
puzzled me.
"When we arrive in Paris I must leave you to keep my appointments," she
said. "We will meet again at the corner of the Rue Royale, if you really
will take me on to Boulogne with you?"
"Most certainly," was my reply.
"Ah!" she sighed, looking straight into my face with those great dark
eyes that were so luminous, "you do not know--you can never guess what a
great service you have rendered me by allowing me to travel here with
you. My peril is the gravest that--well, that ever threatened a woman;
yet now, by your aid, I shall be able to save myself. Otherwise,
to-morrow my body would have been exposed in the Morgue--the corpse of a
woman unknown."
"These words of yours interest me."
"Ah! m'sieur, you do not know. And I cannot tell you. It is a
secret--ah! if I only dare speak you would help me, I know;" and I saw
in her face a look full of apprehension and distress.
As she raised her hand to push the dark hair from her brow, as though it
oppressed her, my eyes caught sight of something glistening upon her
wrist, half concealed by the lace on her sleeve. It was a magnificent
diamond bangle.
Surely such an ornament would not be worn by a mere governess! I looked
again into her handsome face, and wondered if she were deceiving me.
"If it be in my power to assist you, mademoiselle, I will do so with the
greatest pleasure. But of course I cannot without knowing the
circumstances."
"And I regret that my lips are closed concerning them," she sighed,
looking straight before her despairingly.
"Do you not fear to go alone?"
"I fear them no longer," was her reply, as she glanced at the little
gold watch in her bracelet. "We shall be in Paris before ten
o'clock--thanks to you, m'sieur."
"Well, when you first made the request I had no idea of the urgency of
your journey," I remarked. "But I'm glad, very glad, that I've had an
opportunity of rendering you some slight service."
"Slight, m'sieur? Why, you have saved me. I owe you a debt which I can
never repay--never;" and the laces at her throat rose and fell as she
sighed, her wonderful eyes still fixed upon me.
Gradually the yellow sun rose over the bare frozen lands over which we
were speeding, and when at last we entered Paris, I set her down in the
Place Vendome.
"Au revoir, m'sieur, till twelve, at the Rue Royale," she exclaimed,
with a merry smile and a bow, as she drove away in a cab, leaving me
upon the kerb gazing after her and wondering.
Was she really a governess, as she pretended?
Her clothes, her manner, her smart chatter, her exquisite _chic_, all
revealed good breeding and a high station in life. There was no touch of
cheap shabbiness--or at least I could not detect it.
A few moments before twelve she alighted from the cab at the corner of
the Rue Royale and greeted me merrily. Her face was slightly flushed,
and I thought her hand trembled as I took it. But together we mounted
into the car again.
"You seem a constant traveller on the road, m'sieur," she said, as we
went along.
"I'm a constant traveller," I replied, with a laugh. "A little too
constant, perhaps. One gets wearied with such continual travel as I am
forced to undertake. I never know to-morrow where I may be, and I move
swiftly from one place to another, never spending more than a day or two
in the same place."
I did not, for obvious reasons, tell her my profession.
"But it must be very pleasant to travel so much," she declared. "I would
love to be able to do so. I'm passionately fond of constant change."
Together we went on to Boulogne, crossed to Folkestone, and that same
night at midnight entered London.
On our journey she gave me an address in the Vauxhall Bridge Road,
where, she said, a letter would find her. She refused to tell me her
destination or to allow me to see her into a hansom. This latter fact
caused me considerable reflection. Why had she so suddenly made up her
mind to come to London? and why should I not know whither she went, when
she had told me so many details concerning herself?
Of one fact I felt quite convinced--namely, that she had lied to me. She
was not a governess, as she pretended. Besides, I had been seized by
suspicion that a tall, thin-faced elderly man, rather shabbily dressed,
whom I had noticed idling in the Rue Royale, had followed us by rail. I
thought I saw him outside the Tivoli, in the Strand, where she
descended.
His reappearance there recalled to me that he had watched us in the Rue
Royale, and had appeared intensely interested in all our movements.
Whether my pretty travelling-companion noticed him I do not know. I,
however, watched her as she walked along the Strand carrying her
dressing-bag, and saw the tall man striding after her. Adventurer was
written upon the fellow's face. His grey moustache was upturned, and his
keen grey eyes looked out from beneath shaggy brows, while his dark
threadbare overcoat was tightly buttoned across his chest for greater
warmth.
Without approaching her, he stood back in the shadow, and saw her enter
a hansom and drive towards Charing Cross. It was clear that she was not
going to the address she had given me, for she was driving in the
opposite direction.
My duty was to drive direct to Clifford Street and report to Bindo, but
so interested was I in the thin-faced watcher that I turned the car into
the courtyard of the Cecil in the Strand and left it there, in order to
keep further observation upon the stranger.
Had not mademoiselle declared herself to be in danger of her life? If
so, was it not possible that this fellow, whoever he was, was a secret
assassin?
I did not like the aspect of the affair at all. I ought to have warned
her against him, and I now became filled with regret. She was a complete
mystery, and as I dogged the footsteps of the unknown foreigner--for
that he undoubtedly was--I became more deeply interested in what was in
progress.
He walked to Trafalgar Square, where he hesitated in such a manner as to
show that he was not well acquainted with London. He did not know which
of the converging thoroughfares to take. At last he inquired of the
constable on point duty, and then went up St. Martin's Lane.
As soon as he had turned I approached the policeman and asked what the
stranger wanted, explaining that he was a suspicious character whom I
was following.
"'E's a Frenchman. 'E wants Burton Crescent."
"Where's that?"
"Why, just off the Euston Road--close to Judd Street. I've told 'im the
way."
I took a hansom, and drove to the place in question, a semicircle of
dark-looking, old-fashioned houses of the Bloomsbury type--most of them
let out in apartments. Then, alighting, I loitered for half an hour up
and down, to await the arrival of the stranger.
He came at last, his tall meagre figure looming dark in the lamp-light.
Very eagerly he walked round the Crescent, examining the numbers of the
houses, until he came to one, rather cleaner than the others, of which
he took careful observation.
I, too, took note of the number.
Afterwards, the stranger turned into the Euston Road, crossed to King's
Cross Station, where he sent a telegram, and then went to one of the
small uninviting private hotels in the neighbourhood. Having seen him
there, I returned to Burton Crescent, and for an hour watched the house,
wondering whether the mysterious Julie had taken up her abode there. To
me it seemed as though the stranger had overheard the directions she had
given the cabman.
The windows of the house were closed by green venetian blinds. I could
see that there were lights in most of the rooms, while over the
fan-light of the front door was a small transparent square of glass,
bearing what seemed to be the representation of some Greek saint. The
front steps were well kept, and in the deep basement was a well-lighted
kitchen.
I had been there about half an hour when the door opened, and a
middle-aged man in evening dress, and wearing a black overcoat and crush
hat, emerged. His dark face was an aristocratic one, and as he descended
the steps he drew on his white gloves, for he was evidently on his way
to the theatre. I took good notice of his face, for it was a striking
countenance--one which once seen could never be forgotten.
A man-servant behind him blew a cab-whistle, a hansom came up, and he
drove away. Then I walked up and down in the vicinity, keeping a weary
vigil; for my curiosity was now much excited. The stranger meant
mischief. Of that I was certain.
The one point I wished to clear up was whether Julie Rosier was actually
within that house. But though I watched until I became half frozen in
the drizzling rain, all was in vain. So I took a cab and drove to
Clifford Street, to report my arrival to Count Bindo.
That same night, when I got to my rooms, I wrote a line to the address
Julie had given me, asking whether she would make an appointment to meet
me, as I wished to give her some very important information concerning
herself, and to this on the following day I received a reply asking me
to call at the house in Burton Crescent that evening at nine o'clock.
Naturally I went. My surmise was correct that the house watched by the
stranger was her abode. The fellow was keeping observation upon it with
some evil intent.
The man-servant, on admitting me, showed me into a well-furnished
drawing-room on the first floor, where sat my pretty travelling-companion
ready to receive me.
In French she greeted me very warmly, bade me be seated, and after some
preliminaries inquired the nature of the information which I wished to
impart to her.
Very briefly I told her of the shabby watcher, whereupon she sprang to
her feet with a cry of mingled terror and surprise.
"Describe him--quickly, M'sieur Ewart!" she urged in breathless
agitation.
I did so, and she sat back again in her chair, staring straight before
her.
"Ah!" she gasped, her countenance pale as death. "Then they mean
revenge, after all. Very well! Now that I am forewarned I shall know how
to act."
She rose, and pacing the room in agitation, pushed back the dark hair
from her brow. Then her hands clenched themselves, and her teeth were
set, for she was desperate.
The shabby man was an emissary of her enemies, she told me as much. Yet
in all she said was mystery. At one moment I was convinced that she had
told the truth when she said she was a governess, and at the next I
suspected her of trying to deceive.
Presently, after she had handed me a cigarette, the servant tapped at
the door, and a well-dressed man entered--the same man I had seen leave
the house two nights previously.
"May I introduce you?" mademoiselle asked. "M'sieur Ewart--M'sieur le
Baron de Moret."
"Charmed to make your acquaintance, sir," the Baron said, grasping my
hand. "Mademoiselle here has already spoken of you."
"The satisfaction is mutual, I assure you, Baron," was my reply, and
then we re-seated ourselves and began to chat.
Suddenly mademoiselle made some remark in a language which I did not
understand. The effect it had upon the new-comer was almost electrical.
He started from his seat, glaring at her. Then he began to question her
rapidly in the unknown tongue.
He was a flashily-dressed man, of overbearing manner, with a thick neck
and square, determined chin. It was quite evident that the warning I had
given them aroused their apprehensions, for they held a rapid
consultation, and then Julie went out, returning with another man, a
dark-haired, lowbred-looking foreigner, who spoke the same tongue as his
companions.
They disregarded my presence altogether in their eager consultation,
therefore I rose to go; for I saw that I was not wanted.
Julie held my hand and looked into my eyes in mute appeal. She appeared
anxious to say something to me in private. At least that was my
impression.
When I left the house I passed, at the end of the Crescent, a shabby man
idly smoking. Was he one of the watchers?
Four days went by. Soon my rest would be at an end, and I should be
travelling at a moment's notice with Blythe and Bindo to the farther end
of Europe.
One evening I was passing through the great hall of the Hotel Cecil to
descend to the American bar, where I frequently had a cocktail, when a
neatly-dressed figure in black rose and greeted me. It was Julie, who
had probably been awaiting me an hour or more.
"May I speak to you?" she asked breathlessly, when we had exchanged
greetings. "I wish to apologise for the manner in which I treated you
the other evening."
I assured her that no apologies were needed, and together we strolled up
and down the courtyard between the hotel entrance and the Strand.
"I really ought not to trouble you with my affairs," she said presently,
in an apologetic tone, "but you remember what I told you when you so
kindly allowed me to travel with you--I mean of my peril?"
"Certainly. But I thought it was all over."
"I foolishly believed that it was. But I am watched; I--I'm a marked
woman." Then, after some hesitation, she added, "I wonder if you would
do me another favour. You could save my life, M'sieur Ewart--if you only
would."
"Well, if I can render you such a service, mademoiselle, I shall be only
too delighted. As I told you the other day, my next journey is to
Petersburg, and I may have to start any hour after midnight to-morrow.
What can I do?"
"At present my plans are immature," she answered after a pause. "But why
not dine with me to-morrow night? We have some friends, but we shall be
able to escape them, and discuss the matter alone. Do come."
I accepted, and she taking a hansom in the Strand, drove off.
On the following night at eight I entered the well-furnished
drawing-room in Burton Crescent, where three well-dressed men and three
rather smart ladies were assembled, including my hostess. They were all
foreigners, and among them was the Baron, who appeared to be the most
honoured guest. It was now quite plain that, instead of being a
governess as she had asserted, she was a lady of good family and the
Baron's social equal.
The party was a very pleasant one, and there was considerable merriment
at table. My hostess's apprehension of the previous day had all
disappeared, while the Baron's demeanour was one of calm security.
I sat at my hostess's left hand, and she was particularly gracious to
me, the whole conversation at table being in French.
At last, after dessert, the Baron remarked that, as it was New Year's
Day, we should have snap-dragon, and, with his hostess's permission,
left the dining-room and prepared it. Presently it appeared in a big
antique Worcester bowl, and was placed on the table close to me.
Then the electric light was switched off, and the spirit ignited.
Next moment, with shouts and laughter, the blue flames shedding a weird
light upon our faces, we were pulling the plums out of the fire--a
childish amusement permissible because it was the New Year.
I had placed one in my mouth and swallowed it, but as I was taking a
second from the blue flames I suddenly felt a faintness. At first I put
it down to the heat of the room, but a moment later I felt a sharp spasm
through my heart, and my brain swelled too large for my skull. My jaws
were set. I tried to speak, but was unable to articulate a word.
I saw the fun had stopped and the faces of all were turned upon me
anxiously. The Baron had risen, and his dark countenance peered into
mine with a fiendish, murderous expression.
"I'm ill!" I gasped. "I--I'm sure I'm poisoned!"
The faces of all smiled again, while the Baron uttered some words which
I could not understand, and then there was a dead silence, all still
watching me intently--all except a fair-haired young man opposite me,
who seemed to have fallen back in his chair unconscious.
"You fiends!" I cried, with a great effort, as I struggled to rise.
"What have I done to you that you should--poison--me?"
I know that the Baron grinned in my face, and that I fell forward
heavily upon the table, my heart gripped in the spasm of death.
Of what occurred afterwards I have no recollection, for when I slowly
regained knowledge of things around me, I found myself lying beneath a
bare, leafless hedge in a grass field. I managed to struggle to my feet,
and discovered myself in a bare, flat, open country. As far as I could
judge it was midday. I got to a gate, skirted a hedge, and gained the
main road. With difficulty I walked to the nearest town, a distance of
about four miles, without meeting a soul, and to my surprise found
myself in Hitchin. The spectacle of a man entering the town in evening
dress and hatless in broad daylight was no doubt curious, but I was
anxious to return to London and give information against those who had,
without any apparent motive, laid an ingenious plot to poison me.
At the "Sun" I learned that the time was eleven in the morning. The only
manner in which I could account for my presence in Hitchin was that,
believed to be dead by the Baron and his accomplices, I had been
conveyed in a car to the spot where I was found.
What, I wondered, had become of the fair-haired young man whom I had
seen unconscious opposite me?
A few shillings remained in my pocket, and, strangely enough, beside me
when I recovered consciousness I had found a small fluted phial marked
"Prussic acid--poison." The assassins had attempted to make it apparent
that I had committed suicide!
Two hours later, after a rest and a wash, I borrowed an overcoat and
golf-cap, and took the train to King's Cross. At Judd Street Police
Station I made a statement, and with two plain-clothes officers returned
to the house in Burton Crescent, only to find that the fair Julie and
her friends had flown.
On forcing the door, we found the dining-table just as it had been left
after the poisoned snap-dragon of the previous night. Nothing had been
touched. Only Julie, the Baron, the man-servant, and the guests had all
gone, and the place was deserted.
The police were utterly puzzled at the entire absence of motive.
On my return to my rooms I found orders from Bindo to start at once for
Petersburg, which I was compelled to do. So I left London full of wonder
at my exciting experience, and not until my arrival at Wirballen, the
Russian frontier, six days later, did I discover that, though my
passport remained in my wallet, a special police permit to enable me to
pass in and out of the districts affected by the revolutionary Terror,
was missing! It was a permit which Blythe had cleverly obtained through
one of his friends, a high diplomatist, and without which I could not
move rapidly in Russia.
Was it possible that Julie and her friends had stolen it? Was it to be
believed that the scoundrelly Baron had attempted to take my life by
such dastardly trickery in order to secure that all-powerful document?
That it was of greatest value to any revolutionist I knew quite well,
for upon it was the signature of the Minister of the Interior, and its
bearer, immune from arrest or interference by the police, might come and
go in Russia without let or hindrance.
Were they Russians? Certainly the language they had spoken was not
Russian, but it might have been Polish. Where was the young man who had
been my fellow-victim?
Loss of this special permit caused me considerable inconvenience, for I
had to go to Moscow, and the Terror raging there, I had to get another
permit before I could pass and repass the military cordon.
Yes, Julie Rosier was a mystery. Indeed, the whole affair was a complete
enigma.
I duly returned to London, after assisting Bindo in trying to make a
_coup_ that was unfortunately in vain, and then learnt that the body of
an unknown young man in evening dress had been found in the river Crouch
in Essex, and from the photograph shown me at Scotland Yard I identified
it as that of my fellow-guest.
Through the whole year the adventure has sorely puzzled me, and only the
other day light was thrown upon it in the following manner--
I was in Petersburg again, when I received a polite note from General
Zuroff, the chief of police, requesting me to call upon him. The summons
caused me considerable apprehension I must admit.
On entering his room at the Ministry, he gave me a cigarette, and
commenced to chat. Then suddenly he touched a bell, another door opened,
and I was amazed at seeing before me, between two grey-coated
police-officers, a woman--Julie Rosier!
For an instant she glared at me as though she saw an apparition. Then,
with a loud scream, she fainted.
"Ah!" exclaimed Zuroff. "Then what is reported is correct--eh? You and
your friend the Baron enticed this Englishman to your house in London,
for you knew by some means that he carried the order of the Minister
allowing the bearer free passage everywhere in Russia. You saw that if
you merely stole it he would give information, and it would be
immediately cancelled. Therefore you cleverly plotted to take his life
and make it appear as a case of suicide." Then, with a wave of his hand,
he said, "Take the prisoner back to the fortress."
The woman uttered no word. She only fixed her big dark eyes upon me with
an expression of abject terror, and then the guards led her out.
From a drawer Zuroff took the precious document that had been stolen
from me, saying--
"Julie Rosier--or Sophie Markovitch, as her real name is--was arrested
in a house in the Nevski yesterday, while the Baron was discovered at
the Hotel d'Angleterre. Both are most violent revolutionists, and to
them is due the terrible rioting in Moscow a few months ago. The Baron
was hand in hand with Gapon and his colleagues, but escaped to England,
and has been there for nearly a year, until, as the outcome of the
dastardly plot against you, he altered his appearance, and returned as
George Ewart, chauffeur to Baron Bindo di Ferraris of Rome. The arrests
yesterday were very smartly made."
"But how do you know the details of the attempt upon me?"
"All men can be bought at a price. They were watched constantly while in
London. Besides, one of your fellow-guests of that night--revolutionists
all of them--recently turned police spy and reported the facts. It was
he who gave us information regarding the whereabouts of Sophie and the
Baron."
"But another man--a young fellow with fair hair--ate some of the plums
from the snap-dragon and died."
"Yes; he was young Ivan Kinski--a Pole, who, though a Terrorist, was
suspected by his friends of being a spy. You took one plum only, while
he probably took more. At any rate, you had a very narrow escape. But
you at least have the satisfaction of knowing that Julie will never
again fascinate, and the Baron will never again be given an opportunity
of preparing his fatal snap-dragon."
My friendliness with Zuroff stood us in good stead; for, a week later,
Bindo and Blythe contrived to get a very pretty diamond necklet and pair
of earrings from a lady in Petersburg, which fetched six hundred golden
louis in Amsterdam.