“Since when are you here?”
“Since this morning, by express. Twenty-four hours too late, I know;
for I bought a newspaper at the station. M. de Boiscoran has been found
guilty. And yet I swear I did not lose a minute; and I have well earned
the gratuity which I was promised in case of success.”
“You have been successful, have you?”
“Of course. Did I not tell you in my letter from Jersey that I was sure
of success?”
“You have found Suky?”
“Twenty-four hours after I wrote to you,--in a public-house at Bonly
Bay. She would not come, the wretch!”
“You have brought her, however?”
“Of course. She is at the Hotel de France, where I have left her till I
could come and see you.”
“Does she know any thing?”
“Every thing.”
“Make haste and bring her here.”
From the time when M. Folgat first hoped for this recovery of the
servant-girl, he had made up his mind to make the most of her evidence.
He had slipped a portrait of the Countess Claudieuse into an album of
Dionysia’s, amidst some thirty photographs. He now went for this album,
and had just put it upon the centre-table in the parlor when the agent
came back with his captive.
She was a tall, stout woman of some forty years, with hard features,
masculine manners, and dressed, as all common English-women are, with
great pretensions to fashion.
When M. Folgat questioned her, she answered in very fair, intelligible
French, which was only marred by her strong English accent,--
“I stayed four years at the house in Vine Street; and I should be there
still, but for the war. As soon as I entered upon my duties, I became
aware that I was put in charge of a house in which two lovers had their
meetings. I was not exactly pleased, because, you know, we have our
self-respect; but it was a good place. I had very little to do, and so I
staid. However, my master mistrusted me: I saw that very clearly. When
a meeting was to take place, my master sent me on some errand to
Versailles, to Saint Germain, or even to Orleans. This hurt me so much,
that I determined I would find out what they tried so hard to conceal
from me. It was not very difficult; and the very next week I knew that
my master was no more Sir Francis Burnett than I was; and that he had
borrowed the name from a friend of his.”
“How did you go about to find it out?”
“Oh! very simply. One day, when my master went away on foot, I followed
him, and saw him go into a house in University Street. Before the house
opposite, some servants were standing and talking. I asked them who
the gentleman was; and they told me it was the son of the Marquis de
Boiscoran.”
“So much for the master; but the lady.”
Suky Wood smiled.
“As for the lady,” she replied, “I did the same thing to find her
out. It cost me, however, a great deal more time and a great deal more
patience, because she took the very greatest precautions; and I lost
more than one afternoon in watching her. But, the more she tried to
hide, the more I was curious to know, as a matter of course. At last,
one evening when she left the house in her carriage, I took a cab and
followed her. I traced her thus to her house; and next morning I talked
to the servants there, and they told me that she was a lady who lived
in the province, but came every year to Paris to spend a month with her
parents, and that her name was Countess Claudieuse.”
And Jacques had imagined and strongly maintained that Suky would not
know any thing, in fact, could not know any thing!
“But did you ever see this lady?” asked M. Folgat.
“As well as I see you.”
“Would you recognize her?”
“Among thousands.”
“And if you saw her portrait?”
“I should know it at once.”