CONFIDES THE STORY OF A TABLE
The discovery of Ernest’s presence in the car was an entirely fresh
development of the mystery. I had been ignorant of his acquaintance
with Keppel, but that they were really close friends was evident by the
rapid, rather apprehensive manner in which they were conversing.
I tried, and tried again, to overhear some of the words spoken, but
in vain. Therefore I was compelled to remain in wonderment until the
conclusion of that long, terribly tiring journey half way across Europe.
Arrived at the Gare de Lyon in Paris, I entered a fiacre and followed
them across the city to the Hotel Terminus, that big caravansary
outside the Gare St. Lazare, where they engaged four rooms on the
first floor--a sitting-room and three bedrooms. Having taken every
precaution to prevent being detected by either of them, I ascertained
that the number of the sitting-room was 206, therefore I engaged 205,
the room adjoining, and ordered a light déjeûner to be taken there. I
was faint, nervous, and tired after being cramped up for thirty hours,
and was resting on the couch, when suddenly voices sounding in the next
room caused me to spring up on the alert in an instant.
Keppel and Ernest were speaking together.
“It’s a risk, of course,” the millionaire was saying in a low voice--“a
great risk.”
“But we’ve run greater in this affair,” the other responded. “You know
how near to arrest I have been.”
I held my breath. Arrest! What could he mean?
“It was fortunate that you escaped as you did.”
“Thanks to you. Had you not concealed me on the Vispera and taken me on
that cruise I should now be in the hands of the police.”
“But they seem to possess no clue,” Keppel observed.
“Fortunately for us, they do not,” answered the man to whom I had given
my heart. And he laughed lightly, as though perfectly confident in his
own safety. “It was that transfer of the notes at the Carnival ball
that puzzled them.”
They were speaking of poor Reggie’s murder!
I held my ear close to the dividing door, striving to catch every word.
I was learning their secret! The two men whom I had least suspected
were actually implicated in that dastardly crime. But what, I wondered,
could have been their motive in taking the poor boy’s life? Certainly
robbery was not the incentive, for to the old Pittsburg inventor sixty
thousand francs was but a paltry sum.
Again I listened, but as I did so the woman entered, and then, taking
leave of her, the two men went forth and down the stairs.
In an instant I resolved to follow them, and ere they had gained
the entrance-hall I had put on my hat and descended. They took a
cab, and first drove up the hill behind St. Lazare to the Boulevard
des Batignolles, descending before a large house where, from an old
concierge in slippers, Ernest received two letters. Both men stood in
the door-way and read the communications through. From their faces I
could see that the letters contained serious news, and for some minutes
they stood in indecision.
At length, however, they re-entered the cab and drove back past the
Opera, through the Rue Rivoli, and across the Pont des Arts, turning
into a labyrinth of narrow, dirty streets beyond the Seine, and
stopping before a small, uninviting-looking hairdresser’s shop.
They were inside for some ten minutes or so, while I stood watching
a short distance off, my head turned away, so that they should not
recognize me if they came forth suddenly.
When they emerged they were laughing good-humoredly, accompanied to the
door by a rather well-dressed man, evidently a hairdresser, for a comb
protruded from his pocket and his hair was brushed up in that style
peculiar to the Parisian coiffeur.
“Good-day, messieurs,” he said in French, bowing them into the fiacre,
“I understand quite clearly. There is nothing to fear, I assure you,
absolutely nothing.”
In that man’s dark eyes, as he stood watching the cab turning, was a
strange, intense look which struck me as familiar. Yes, I had seen
those eyes before, without a doubt. His face was triangular, with broad
forehead and pointed chin--a rather curious personality. Again I looked
at his peculiarly brilliant eyes, and a strange truth flashed suddenly
upon me. Yes, I remembered that curious expression quite distinctly;
it had riveted itself indelibly upon my memory.
He was the man who had worn the owl’s dress in Carnival--the man
who had returned to me the notes stolen from poor Reggie! He was an
accomplice of these two men, of whom I had never entertained suspicion.
The truth came to me as a staggering blow. Ernest was an assassin!
Had he not admitted how near he had been to arrest and congratulated
himself upon his escape? Had not old Keppel aided him by concealing him
on board the Vispera? Once, alas! I had, in my foolish, rosy days of
youth, believed in the man who had made love to me, who had flattered
and caressed me, and who had declared that I should be his always. Ah!
how well I remembered it! How bitterly all the past came back to me!
And yet, until that very hour of my discovery that he was an assassin,
I had never ceased to love him--never for a single instant. We women
are indeed strange creatures.
I re-entered the cab, but in the Boulevard St. Michel my driver
unfortunately lost sight of them. They must, I think, have turned
suddenly into one of the many side-streets and thus reached the Quai.
For a few minutes I sat back in hesitation. Should I return at once to
the hotel? or should I go boldly to that man whom I had so fortunately
discovered and charge him with having had in his possession the stolen
notes? If I adopted the latter course I saw that I should only raise an
alarm, and the pair I was watching would undoubtedly get clean away.
No, the old proverb that “murder will out” had once more asserted its
truth. I had made a most amazing discovery, and now my love for Ernest
as a man having been transformed to hatred of him as an assassin, I
meant to weave a web slowly about them, and when complete I would give
information to the police and thus avenge the poor boy’s death.
Therefore I drove to the nearest telegraph office and wired to Genoa,
urging both Ulrica and Gerald to come to Paris without delay, for I
sorely needed the counsel of the woman who was my best friend and the
man upon whose father rested the terribly strong suspicion. Then I
returned to the Hotel Terminus, and, hearing no one in the sitting-room
adjoining, lay down to rest, sleeping soundly, for with nerves
unstrung, I was utterly worn out by fatigue and constant watchfulness.
When I awoke it was past eight o’clock and quite dark. There was still
no movement in the sitting-room adjoining, therefore I dressed and
went across to dine at the Duval, at the corner of the Rue du Havre,
preferring that cheap restaurant to the table d’hôte of the hotel,
where I might possibly meet the three persons upon whom I was keeping
observation.
An hour later, just as I was crossing the road to re-enter the hotel,
I saw a man standing alone on the steps in hesitation. He wore a dark
beard, and had on a long drab overcoat such as men generally affect on
race-courses, but notwithstanding the disguise I recognized that it
was Ernest. The beard made him look much older, and by the addition
of a few lines to his face he had entirely altered his appearance.
For some moments he puffed pensively at his cigar, then, glancing at
his watch, descended the steps and strolled slowly away, past the
Café Terminus--which was once the object of a desperate attack by
Anarchists--and continued along the Boulevard des Capucines, where he
stopped before that popular rendezvous of Parisians, the Grand Café,
and selecting one of the tables, the last one towards the Madelaine,
placed against the wall of the Café, he ordered a coffee and liqueur.
The night was bright, and the grand boulevards with their blazing
globes of electricity were full of life and movement.
From where I was sitting, at a small brasserie on the opposite side
of the boulevard, I watched him narrowly. He glanced up and down, as
though in constant expectation of meeting some one, and looked at his
watch impatiently. He tossed off his liqueur at a single gulp, but his
coffee remained untasted, for it was evident that he was in a state of
the greatest agitation. He had feared arrest for the murder of Reginald
Thorne, and had taken refuge secretly on the Vispera. Were not his own
words sufficient to convince me of his guilt?
As I looked I saw him, while in the act of pretending to sip his
coffee, bend down close to the marble table, and after making certain
that he was not observed, he scrutinized it carefully. Twice he bent
to look at it closely. Surely, I thought, there must be something of
interest there. Then he glanced at his watch again, paid, and strolled
off down the boulevard.
Whether to follow or whether to investigate that table I was for the
moment undecided. But I resolved upon the latter course; therefore,
crossing the road, I made straight for the seat he had occupied, and
having ordered a sirop proceeded to examine the table. Very quickly I
discovered what had interested him. Scrawled in pencil upon the marble
were some letters quite unintelligible, but evidently a cipher message.
It ran--
“J. TABAC. 22.”
Another inscription had been written there, but it had been lately
erased by some previous customer, who had apparently dipped his fingers
in the drippings of beer or coffee and smeared it across. The writing
was not very easy to discern in the half light, for the table was so
placed as to be in deep shadow. Was it possible that the person who had
erased the first message had written the second? Could it be that this
person was the man whom I had been watching?
I had seen him bend over the table mysteriously, first glancing round
to make sure that no one was watching. Why had he thus betrayed fear
if that message was not one of importance? Goron, the great chief of
the Paris sureté, had told me, when I had met him at dinner once in
New York, how the criminals of Paris were fond of making the tops of
the café tables the means of secret communications, and how many a
crime had been discovered by the police with the aid of the keys they
possessed to certain secret codes.
I looked again at the initial, the word “tobacco,” and the number
twenty-two scrawled on the marble before me, and was puzzled to know
what meaning they could convey. Had Ernest really written them? The
letters were printed, in order, no doubt, to prevent any recognition of
the handwriting. I remembered that he had sat with his hand upon the
table as though toying idly with the matches, and further I noticed
that the liquid with which the erasure had been made was not yet
entirely dry. I touched it with my gloved finger and placed it to my
nose. There was an odor of coffee.
Now if Ernest had really inscribed that cipher message he had
substituted his for the original one written there. With what purpose?
To whom was this unintelligible word addressed? Having regard to the
fact that the tables of cafés are usually washed down by the waiters
every morning, it seemed certain that the person to whom he intended
to convey the message would come there that night. Indeed, he had
constantly looked at his watch, as though in expectation of the arrival
of some one.
I therefore paid the waiter and left, returning some few minutes later
to my previous place in front of the brasserie opposite, determined
to wait and watch. The waiter brought me some illustrated papers, and
while pretending to be absorbed in them I kept my eye upon the table I
had just vacated. A shabby, wizen-faced little man in a silk hat with
flat brim passed and re-passed where I was sitting, and I thought eyed
me rather suspiciously. But perhaps it was only my fancy, for when one
is engaged in the work of bringing home to a criminal his crime, one
is apt to look with undue suspicion on all and sundry. I think I must
have been there nearly half-an-hour when a ragged, unkempt man, who had
slunk past where I was seated and picked up several cigar-ends with a
stick bearing a sharpened wire point, crossed over to the Grand Café
and recommenced his search beneath the tables there. He had secured
several pieces of smokers’ refuse when, in a moment, he darted to the
table in the shadow, and as he stooped, feigning to pick up a piece of
unconsumed cigar, I saw that he glanced eagerly to see what message was
written there.
Just at that moment the wizen-faced man who had evinced such an
extraordinary interest in myself was standing idly upon the curb close
by. He was undoubtedly watching him.
The quick eyes of the old collector of cigar-ends apparently understood
the message in an instant, for with bent back he continued his active
search, yet betrayed no further interest in that table in the shadow.
If he had really gone there in order to ascertain the nature of the
message, he concealed his real purpose admirably. Probably he was used
to being watched by police agents. I saw him hobble along from café to
café, his shrewd, deep-set eyes peering from beneath his gray, shaggy
brows in search of the tiny pieces discarded by smokers.
With him also disappeared the shabby little man whose interest I
had unwittingly aroused, and I remained there still, irresolute and
wondering.
I had paid, and was just about to rise and go, when of a sudden a
well-appointed victoria pulled up in front of the Grand Café, and
from it stepped a small, well-dressed woman wearing a smart hat and
an elaborate cape of the latest mode. Without hesitation she walked
to the table in question and seated herself. In the darkness I could
not distinguish her face, but I saw that even before the waiter could
attend to her she had examined the table and read the message thereon
written.
Was it, I wondered, intended for her?
The waiter brought what she ordered, a “bock,” that favorite beverage
with both Parisians and Parisiennes, and as I watched her narrowly I
saw something which convinced me that the cipher was intended for her
eye. She dipped her finger in the beer and drew it across the writing.
Was she young or old, I wondered? She was settling her cape and
chiffons preparatory to rising and re-entering her carriage, therefore
I rose and crossed the road. As I stepped upon the asphalte on the
opposite side, she crossed to where her smart turn-out stood, brushing
past me as she did so.
The light as it fell across her face revealed a countenance with which
I was, alas! too familiar.
She was the woman who had usurped my place in Ernest’s heart--the
woman whom I had seen in his company at Monte Carlo--the woman who had
laughed at me in triumph across the roulette table, because she knew
that she held him beneath the spell of her extraordinary beauty.