ANOTHER MYSTERY MAN.
“You will let me, won’t you?” Jessica said coaxingly.
She was addressing Yootha, begging her to let her take the place of
the aunt who had been detained at the eleventh hour, and act as her
chaperone during Yootha’s stay at Dieppe.
“I know there have been times when you and Cora have not thought well
of me, I never knew quite why,” she went on, “and I should like you to
be able to assure Cora that she formed a wrong opinion of me. I always
think someone must have told her things, and so prejudiced her against
me.”
Thus Yootha, always generously disposed, also impressionable and ready
to forgive an injury, fancied or otherwise, was soon talked over by
the clever woman. Indeed, the girl went so far as to persuade herself
that she and Cora and Preston, and the others who had tried so hard to
discover Jessica’s antecedents, had suspected her unjustly. And now
on the top of it all had come Jessica’s introduction of Yootha to the
Casino with its _petits chevaux_, Yootha’s subsequent elation at her
success, and Jessica’s extraction of the promise from her that she
would play again with her next day.
“Though I have been lucky all along, I have never been as lucky as
I was to-night,” she said to Yootha as they parted for the night. “I
believe you are my mascot, and to-morrow we will prove if you are or
not!”
Next night Preston excused himself. He said the Casino bored him; in
reality he could not bear Jessica’s company, or the sight of Yootha
gambling. To have opposed Yootha’s wish further than he had done would,
he knew, have been unwise; she might have turned upon him and said
things she would afterwards have regretted saying. So with a major in
the Gunners, whose acquaintance he had made at the Royal Hotel, and who
had been through the war, he started off for an evening walk up the
hill to the back of the town as soon as Jessica and Yootha had gone
across to the Casino, where they were to meet Stapleton and La Planta.
It was one of those warm, balmy nights, the air perfectly still,
which we enjoy so rarely in this country. By the time Preston and his
companions had reached the summit of the steep ascent the moon, in
its second quarter, was shining down across the streets and houses,
imparting to the city the aspect of a toy town, and illuminating
the sea for many a mile beyond it. As they sat contemplating the
picturesque panorama their gaze became focused on the lights of the
Casino.
“Don’t you play at all?” the major, whose name was Guysburg, inquired
as he lit a fresh cigar and offered one to Preston.
“Not now,” Preston answered dryly. “I played too much in my time;
games of chance and backing horses bit me hard when I was almost a boy.”
The major laughed.
“Boys will be boys,” he said lightly, as he puffed at his cigar.
“And fools will be fools,” Preston retorted. “I was one of the fools
who ‘made their prayer,’ and have regretted it ever since.”
“Yet you have no objection to your future wife’s playing? That seems to
me strange.”
“Indeed, I have the strongest objection,” Preston answered quickly,
in a strange voice. “I have been through the mill, and I know what
it means when the craving to gamble gets a grip on you which, try as
you will, you can’t shake off. Unfortunately Miss Hagerston met an
acquaintance here yesterday--that tall, handsome woman--you must have
noticed her--who last night induced her to play, and they won a lot
of money. Miss Hagerston became so exultant that she promised Mrs.
Mervyn-Robertson she would play with her again to-night, and nothing I
could say would dissuade her. I can only hope that to-night their luck
will be reversed, and then Miss Hagerston will see the folly of the
whole thing.”
For a minute the major did not reply. Then he said abruptly:
“Who are the two men who are always in Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson’s
company--I think you said that was her name?”
“Just friends. They are constantly with her in London too, where she
is well-known in Society; some say there is no romance or scandal
associated with their friendship; others say there is.”
For a long while they conversed on various topics, and particularly
about the war. Presently the major said:
“I noticed a person in the hotel to-day who had a curious reputation
before the war--a man called Michaud, Alphonse Michaud. Have you ever
heard of him?”
“Odd, your asking that,” Preston answered. “He was pointed out to me
last night at supper at the Casino--a dark man, rather Jewish looking,
with black wavy hair.”
“That’s the fellow. He was mixed up in several shady affairs some
years before the war, and I understand he is now ‘commander-in-chief’
of a most successful inquiry agency in London, with branches on the
Continent and abroad. I suppose it is the old idea, ‘set a thief to
catch a thief,’” and he laughed.
“What do you know about him?” Preston asked, suddenly interested.
“How the Metropolitan Secret Agency is so successful in ferreting out
secrets in people’s private lives has long puzzled London Society, also
the London police, and I have often heard it hinted that the Agency in
question of which I now understand Michaud is the moving force, has
recourse to questionable methods to obtain its information.”
“That I can believe,” Major Guysburg answered, “if Michaud has to
do with it. Mind, he is an extraordinarily clever man. One ramp he
was generally supposed eight or ten years ago to have had a hand in
concerned the insurance of some valuable stones owned by a diamond
merchant whose place of business is in the Kalverstraat in Amsterdam--I
formerly lived near Rotterdam. Within six months after the insurance
had been effected the stones disappeared from the merchant’s safe,
and to this day nobody knows how the robbery was carried out--the
merchant kept the key of his safe on him day and night. The opinion
in Amsterdam, however, was that Michaud, who had insured the stones
and who was paid the insurance under protest, was himself the thief.
Oh, but there were other queer doings in which he was said to be mixed
up, but they would take too long to tell. Incidentally he was supposed
at one time to have in his possession a remarkable drug, a sort of
perfumed poison, with most peculiar attributes--it was said that the
drug, properly administered, rendered people unconscious, and left
their minds a blank after they recovered consciousness, from a period
before they inhaled it.”
Preston became greatly interested.
“Tell me, major,” he said, “did you read the report recently of the
exhumation of the body of a Jew who died suddenly, and under rather
mysterious circumstances, at a ball at the Albert Hall?”
“No. I am not a great newspaper reader.”
“Well, naturally I was interested in the affair because I and a friend
of mine found the man dead in one of the boxes during the ball,” and he
went on to give Major Guysburg a brief account of what had occurred
that night. “Why I am interested in what you say about that peculiar
drug is that the man who was believed to know something about the
Jew’s death, or rather what caused it, admitted having imported from
Shanghai, for his own use only, he said, a drug apparently similar
to the one you have just mentioned--it may, indeed, have been the
identical drug.”
“Shanghai, did you say? Why, I remember now that is the place where the
drug I have told you about was supposed to have come from.”
“How strange! And there was another affair when apparently some drug
of the sort was used, but on that occasion the victim was La Planta
himself.”
“La Planta! The name sounds familiar. Now where have I heard that name
before?”
He racked his brain for a minute, but in vain.
“La Planta,” Preston said, “was the man believed to know something of
the cause of the Jew’s death, but nothing could be proved against him.
You may be surprised to hear that La Planta is the younger of the two
men constantly with the woman we have just been speaking about, Mrs.
Mervyn-Robertson.”
“Indeed? Then are the lady and her two friends acquainted with Michaud?”
“No, they know him only by sight.”
“Ah! I remember where I have heard of La Planta before,” Guysburg
exclaimed suddenly. “He represented an insurance company in Amsterdam
and was called upon to give expert opinion at the time of the diamond
robbery I have told you about. Yes, and the company he represented,
I remember, was directed by the late Lord Froissart, who committed
suicide some time ago.”
“Really this is remarkable, Major Guysburg,” Preston exclaimed. “You
and I meet at haphazard, we happen to go for a walk, and we find that
we each know several things in which the other is directly interested,
and which seem to fit into each other like bits of a puzzle. Are you
staying long in Dieppe? I should like to talk over several matters with
you, and my future wife would be interested to hear what you have just
told me.”
“And I should be most pleased to tell her. My intention at present is
to stay here a week or ten days longer. After that I may go to New
York.”
It was late when they arrived back at the Royal, where both were
staying, but Yootha had not yet returned from the Casino. Nor had Mrs.
Mervyn-Robertson come back, they were told at the office. They had
just turned to go into the vestibule when they came face to face with
Alphonse Michaud, accompanied by the three women Preston had seen him
with the night before.
“Most remarkable thing I have ever known,” he was saying. “That woman
seems to bewitch the tables.” He turned to the hotel manager who was
passing.
“Tell me,” he said, “do they often break the bank at your Casino?”
“Break the bank?” the manager repeated with a smile. “I have been here
twenty-two years and can remember only one occasion when the bank
failed; that must have been fifteen or more years ago, and the man who
broke it was the son of Don Carlos--a little while previously he had
won sixty thousand pounds at Monte Carlo and taken that sum away. Has
any one broken the bank to-night?” he ended with a laugh.
“Yes, that tall, handsome woman staying here who is generally
accompanied by two men--one a middle-aged man, the other a youth. Who
is she?”
“You must mean Mrs. Mervyn-Robertson,” the manager answered. “You don’t
mean to say that she has broken the bank!”
“She has indeed. She and her two friends and a girl with them sat down
to roulette between half-past eight and nine, and luck pursued them
from the very outset. We have been watching them for a long time, and
I never saw anything like their luck. The mere fact of their backing
a number seemed to make the number come up. After a little while the
crush round the table became so great that few besides those seated
were able to play at all. Finally the croupiers declared the bank was
broken, and that there would be no more play to-night.”
“You will forgive my speaking to you,” Preston cut in, “but are the
people you speak of returning to the hotel now, do you happen to know?
They are friends of mine.”
Michaud looked hard at him.
“Were you not with them at supper at the Casino last night?” he
inquired. “I am sure I saw you there.”
“Quite likely. I was with them.”
“Yes, they are probably on their way back by now. They were waiting,
when I saw them last, for additional police escort,” and he laughed.
“You ought to have been with them to-night, sir,” he added. “You have
missed the opportunity of a lifetime, because they all back the same
numbers, so that you would probably have done the same.”
He had hardly stopped speaking when a car drew up at the hotel
entrance, and Jessica and her party alighted, accompanied by two police
officials.
Preston saw at once that Yootha was almost hysterical. She kept
laughing at nothing, and talking at a great pace the greatest nonsense.
In addition to her bulging bag, she had slung on her arm a common sack
tied at the top with string. Directly she saw her lover she rushed up
to him, flung her arms about his neck, and kissed him passionately in
front of everybody.
“Allow me to congratulate you, ladies and gentlemen,” Michaud said with
a profound bow. “I have been watching your play all the evening, and
your luck is the most astonishing thing I have ever seen. I expect the
Casino will be glad to see the last of you,” and he laughed, “but only
the Casino,” and he ogled Yootha. “Good night, ladies and gentlemen.”
He turned to Preston, “Good night to you, sir,” and with his three
companions, who had been standing by looking rather sour, he passed
through the vestibule and disappeared.
For a quarter of an hour the party, which now included Preston and
Major Guysburg, remained in the vestibule talking over the exciting
evening. Now and again guests returning from the Casino would come up,
apologize for speaking, and then offer their congratulations. The only
two who remained calm, and apparently unaffected by what had happened,
were Preston and the major.
When Preston kissed Yootha good night in the corridor before they
parted for the night, he looked down at her sadly.
“My darling,” he said, “have you forgotten what happened that night at
Henley? The day is approaching when it will be necessary for us to do
one thing or the other regarding Cora, and of course there is only one
thing we can do.”
“How do you mean--‘only one thing’?”
Preston gazed at her, speechless.
“Jessica,” Yootha went on, “was talking to me about Cora this evening,
and hinted to me things about her which, if they are true, would
tempt me never to speak to her again. I am inclined to think we
have overrated Cora, and that her alleged friendship is not wholly
disinterested.”