TO THE VILLA MIMOSA
With feet that seemed to touch nothing more substantial than air, her
eyes brilliant, a wonderful colour in her cheeks, Violet passed through
the heavy, dingy rooms and out through the motley crowd into the portico
of the Casino. She was right! She knew that she had been right! How wise
she had been to borrow that money from Mr. Draconmeyer instead of
sitting down and confessing herself vanquished! The last few hours had
been hours of ecstatic happiness. With calm confidence she had sat in
her place and watched her numbers coming up with marvellous persistence.
It was the most wonderful thing in the world, this. She had had no time
to count her winnings, but at least she knew that she could pay back
every penny she owed. Her little gold satchel was stuffed with notes and
plaques. She felt suddenly younger, curiously light-hearted; hungry,
too, and thirsty. She was, in short, experiencing almost a delirium of
pleasure. And just then, on the steps of the Casino, she came face to
face with her husband.
"Henry!" she called out. "Henry!"
He turned abruptly around. He was looking troubled, and in his hand were
the fragments of a crushed up note.
"Come across to the hotel with me," she begged, forgetful of everything
except her own immense relief. "Come and help me count. I have been
winning. I have won back everything."
He accepted the information with only a polite show of interest. After
all, as she reflected afterwards, he had no idea upon what scale she had
been gambling!
"I am delighted to hear it," he answered. "I'll see you across the road,
if I may, but I have only a few minutes to spare. I have an
appointment."
She was acutely disappointed; unreasonably, furiously angry.
"An appointment!" she exclaimed. "At half-past eleven o'clock at night!
Are you waiting for Felicia Roche?"
"Is there any reason why I should not?" he asked her gravely.
She bit her lips hard. They were crossing the road now. After all, it
was only a few months since she had bidden him go his own way and leave
her to regulate her own friendships.
"No reason at all," she admitted, "only I cannot see why you choose to
advertise yourself with an opera singer--you, an ambitious politician,
who moves with his head in the clouds, and to whom women are no more
than a pastime. Why have you waited all these years to commence a
flirtation under my very nose!"
He looked at her sternly.
"I think that you are a little excited, Violet," he said. "You surely
don't realise what you are saying."
"Excited! Tell me once more--you got my note, the one I wrote this
evening?"
"Certainly."
His brief reply was convincing. She remembered the few impulsive lines
which she had written from her heart in that moment of glad relief.
There was no sign in his face that he had been touched. Even at that
moment he had drawn out his watch and was looking at it.
"Thank you for bringing me here," she said, as they stood upon the steps
of the hotel. "Don't let me keep you."
"After all," he decided, "I think that I shall go up to my room for a
minute. Good night!"
She looked after him, a little amazed. She was conscious of a feeling of
slow anger. His aloofness repelled her, was utterly inexplicable. For
once it was she who was being badly treated. Her moment of exhilaration
had passed. She sat down in the lounge; her satchel, filled with mille
franc notes, lay upon her lap unheeded. She sat there thinking, seeing
nothing of the crowds of fashionably dressed women and men passing in
and out of the hotel; of the gaily-lit square outside, the cool green of
the gardens, the café opposite, the brilliantly-lit Casino. She was back
again for a moment in England. The strain of all this life, whipped into
an artificial froth of pleasure by the constant excitement of the one
accepted vice of the world, had suddenly lost its hold upon her. The
inevitable question had presented itself. She was counting values and
realising....
When at last she rose wearily to her feet, Hunterleys was passing
through the hall of the hotel, on his way out. She looked at him with
aching heart but she made no effort to stop him. He had changed his
clothes for a dark suit and he was also wearing a long travelling coat
and tweed cap. She watched him wistfully until he had disappeared. Then
she turned away, summoned the lift and went up to her rooms. She rang at
once for her maid. She would take a bath, she decided, and go to bed
early. She would wash all the dust of these places away from her, abjure
all manner of excitement and for once sleep peacefully. In the morning
she would see Henry once more. Deep in her heart there still lingered
some faint shadow of doubt as to Draconmeyer and his attitude towards
her. It was scarcely possible that he could have interfered in any way,
and yet.... She would talk to her husband face to face, she would tell
him the things that were in her heart.
She rang the bell for the second time. Only the _femme de chambre_
answered the summons. Madame's maid was not to be found. Madame had not
once retired so early. It was possible that Susanne had gone out. Could
she be of any service? Violet looked at her and hesitated. The woman was
clumsy-fingered and none too tidy. She shook her head and sent her away.
For a moment she thought of undressing herself. Then instead she opened
her satchel and counted the notes. Her breath came more quickly as she
looked at the shower of gold and counted the many oblong strips of paper
with their magic lettering. At last she had it all in heaps. There were
the twenty-five mille he had left with her, and the seventy-five mille
she had borrowed from him. Then towards her own losses there was another
mille, and a matter of five hundred francs in gold. And all this
success, her wonderful recovery, had been done so easily! It was just
because she had had the pluck to go on, because she had followed her
vein. She looked at the money and she walked to the window. Somewhere a
band was playing in the distance. Little parties of men and women in
evening dress were strolling by on their way to the Club. A woman was
laughing as she clung to her escort on the opposite side of the road, by
the gardens. Across at the Café de Paris the people were going in to
supper. The spirit of enjoyment seemed to be in the air--the
light-hearted, fascinating, devil-may-care atmosphere she knew so well.
Violet looked back into the bedroom and she no longer had the impulse to
sleep. Her face had hardened a little. Every one was so happy and she
was so lonely. She stuffed the notes and gold back into her bag, looked
at her hat in the glass and touched her face for a moment with a
powder-puff. Then she left the room, rang for the lift and descended.
"I am going into the Club for an hour or so, if I am wanted," she told
the concierge as she passed out.
* * * * *
Hunterleys, on leaving the hotel, walked rapidly across the square and
found David waiting for him on the opposite side.
"Felicia will be late," the latter explained. "She has to get all that
beastly black stuff off her face. She is horribly nervous about Sidney
and she doesn't want you to wait. I think perhaps she is right, too. She
told me to tell you that Monsieur Lafont himself came to her room and
congratulated her after the curtain had gone down. She is almost
hysterical between happiness and anxiety about Sidney. Where's your
man?"
"I asked him to be a little higher up," Hunterleys replied. "There he
is."
They walked a few steps up the hill and found Richard Lane waiting for
them in his car. The long, grey racer looked almost like some submarine
monster, with its flaring head-lights and torpedo-shaped body which
scarcely cleared the ground.
"Ready for orders, sir," the young man announced, touching his cap.
"Is there room for three of us, in case of an emergency?" Hunterleys
asked.
"The third man has to sit on the floor," Richard pointed out, "but it
isn't so comfortable as it looks."
Hunterleys clambered in and took the vacant place. David Briston
lingered by a little wistfully.
"I feel rather a skunk," he grumbled. "I don't see why I shouldn't come
along."
Hunterleys shook his head.
"There isn't the slightest need for it," he declared firmly. "You go
back and look after Felicia. Tell her we'll get Sidney out of this all
right. Get away with you, Lane, now."
"Where to?"
"To the Villa Mimosa!"
Richard whistled as he thrust in his clutch.
"So that's the game, is it?" he murmured, as they glided off.
Hunterleys leaned towards him.
"Lane," he said, "don't forget that I warned you there might be a little
trouble about to-night. If you feel the slightest hesitation about
involving yourself--"
"Shut up!" Richard interrupted. "Whatever trouble you're ready to face,
I'm all for it, too. Darned queer thing that we should be going to the
Villa Mimosa, though! I am not exactly a popular person with Mr. Grex, I
think."
Hunterleys smiled.
"I saw your sister this afternoon," he remarked. "You are rather a
wonderful young man."
"I knew it was all up with me," Richard replied simply, "when I first
saw that girl. Now look here, Hunterleys, we are almost there. Tell me
exactly what it is you want me to do?"
"I want you," Hunterleys explained, "to risk a smash, if you don't mind.
I want you to run up to the boundaries of the villa gardens, head your
car back for Monte Carlo, and while you are waiting there turn out all
your lights."
"That's easy enough," Richard assented. "I'll turn out the search-light
altogether, and my others are electric, worked by a button. Is this an
elopement act or what?"
"There's a meeting going on in that villa," Hunterleys told him,
"between prominent politicians of three countries. You don't have to
bother much about Secret Service over in the States, although there's
more goes on than you know of in that direction. But over here we have
to make regular use of Secret Service men--spies, if you like to call
them so. The meeting to-night is inimical to England. It is part of a
conspiracy against which I am working. Sidney Roche--Felicia Roche's
brother--who lives here as a newspaper correspondent, is in reality one
of our best Secret Service men. He is taking terrible chances to-night
to learn a little more about the plans which these fellows are
discussing. We are here in case he needs our help to get away. We've
cleared the shrubs away, close to the spot at which I am going to ask
you to wait, and taken the spikes off the fence. It's just a thousand to
one chance that if he's hard pressed for it and heads this way, they may
think that they have him in a trap and take it quietly. That is to say,
they'll wait to capture him instead of shooting."
"Say, you don't mean this seriously?" Richard exclaimed. "They can't do
more than arrest him as a trespasser, or something of that sort,
surely?"
Hunterleys laughed grimly.
"These men wouldn't stick at much," he told his companion. "They're hand
in glove with the authorities here. Anything they did would be hushed up
in the name of the law. These things are never allowed to come out. It
doesn't do any one any good to have them gossiped about. If they caught
Sidney and shot him, we should never make a protest. It's all part of
the game, you know. Now that is the spot I want you to stop at, exactly
where the mimosa tree leans over the path. But first of all, I'd turn
out your head-light."
They slowed down and stopped. Richard extinguished the acetylene
gas-lamp and mounted again to his place. Then he swung the car round and
crawled back upon the reverse until he reached the spot to which
Hunterleys had pointed.
"You're a good fellow, Richard," Hunterleys said softly. "We may have to
wait an hour or two, and it may be that nothing will happen, but it's
giving the fellow a chance, and it gives him confidence, too, to know
that friends are at hand."
"I'm in the game for all it's worth, anyway," Lane declared heartily.
He touched a button and the lights faded away. The two men sat in
silence, both turned a little in their seats towards the villa.