overnight, so to speak; and yet always itself, always like no other
city in the world, fascinating....
"Fascinating? But irresistible! How I long for it!" She was distrait
for an instant. "My New York! Monsieur--would you believe?--I dream of
it!"
He had found a key to one chamber in the mansion of her confidence. As
much to herself as to him, unconsciously dropping into English, she
began to talk of her life "at home"....
Her father had been a partner in a great jewellery house, Cottier's, of
Paris, London, and New York. (So that explained it! She was wearing the
blue diamond again tonight, with other jewels worth, in the judgment of
a keen connoisseur, a king's ransom.) Schooled at an exclusive
establishment for the daughters of people of fashion, Eve at an early
age had made her début; but within the year her father died, and her
mother, whose heart had always been in the city of her nativity, closed
the house on East Fifty-seventh street and removed with her daughter to
Paris. There Eve had met her future husband. Shortly after, her mother
died. Eve returned to New York to attend to some business in connection
with her estate, remaining only a few weeks, leaving almost
reluctantly; but the new love was very sweet, she had looked forward
joyfully to the final transplanting of her affections.
And then the War, the short month of long, long days in the apartment
on the avenue des Champs-Elysées, waiting, waiting, while the earth
trembled to the tramp of armed men and the tireless rumbling of
caissons and camions, and the air was vibrant with the savage dialogue
of cannon, ever louder, daily more near....
She fell silent, sitting with bowed head and gaze remote.
From the splendid jewels that adorned the fingers twisting together in
her lap, the firelight struck coruscant gleams.
"Now I hate Paris, I wish never to see it again."
Duchemin uttered a sympathetic murmur.
"But New York--?"
"Ah, but sometimes I think I would give anything to be there once
more!"
The animation with which this confession was delivered proved
transient.
"Then I remind myself I have no one there--a few friends, yes,
acquaintances; but no family ties, no one dear to me."
"But--pardon--you stay here?"
"It is beautiful here, monsieur."
"But such solitude, such isolation--for you, madame!"
"I know. Still, I am fond of the life here; it was here I found myself
again, after my grief. And I am fond of my adopted mother and Louise,
too, and they of me. Indeed, I am all they have left. Louise, of
course, will marry before long, Georges"--she used d'Aubrac's given
name--"will take her away, then Madame de Sévénié will have nobody but
me. And at her age, it would be too sad..."
Across the drawing-room that lady looked up from her cards and sharply
interrogated a manservant who had silently presented himself to her
attention.
"What is it you want, Jean?"
The servant mumbled his justification: An automobile had broken down on
the highroad near the château, the chauffeur was unable to move the car
or make any repairs in the storm, a gentleman had come to the door to
ask....
He moved aside, indicating the doorway to the entrance hall, beyond
which Mr. Phinuit was to be seen, standing with cap in hand, tiny
rivulets running from the folds of his motor-coat and forming pools on
the polished flooring. As in concerted movement Madame de Sévénié, Eve
de Montalais, the curé and Duchemin approached, his cool, intelligent,
good-humoured glance surveyed them swiftly, each in turn, and with
unerring instinct settled on the first as the one to whom he must
address himself.
But the bow with which he also acknowledged the presence of Eve was
hardly less profound; Duchemin himself, at his best, could hardly have
bettered it. His manner, in fact, left nothing to be desired; and the
French in which immediately he begged a thousand pardons for the
intrusion was so admirable that it seemed hard to believe he was the
same man who had, only a few hours earlier, composedly traded the slang
of the States with a chauffeur in front of the Café de l'Univers.
Mr. Phinuit was desolated to think he might be imposing on madame's
good nature, but the accident was positive, the night truly inclement,
madame la comtesse was already suffering from the cold, and if one
might beg shelter for her and the gentlemen of the party while one
telephoned or sent to Nant for another automobile....
But monsieur might feel very sure Madame de Sévénié would never forgive
herself if the hospitality of the Château de Montalais failed at such a
time. She would send servants to the car at once with lights, wraps,
umbrellas....
There was no necessity for that. The remainder of the party had, it
seemed, presumed upon her courtesy in anticipation, and was not far
from the heels of its ambassador. Even while madame was speaking, Jean
was opening the great front doors to those who proved--formal
introductions being duly effect by Mr. Phinuit--to be Madame la
Comtesse de Lorgnes, monsieur le comte, her husband (this was the
well-fed body in tweeds) and Mr. Whitaker Monk, of New York.
These personages were really not at all in a bad way. Their wraps were
well peppered with rain, they were chilly, the footgear of madame la
comtesse was wet and needed changing. But that was the worst of their
plight. And when Mr. Phinuit, learning that there was no telephone, had
accepted an offer of the Montalais motor car to tow the other under
cover and so enable Jules to make repairs, and Eve de Montalais had
carried madame la comtesse off to her own apartment to change her shoes
and stockings, the gentlemen trooped to the drawing-room fire, at the
instance of Madame de Sévénié, and grew quite cheerful under the
combined influence of warmth and wine and biscuits; Duchemin standing
by with a half-rejected doubt to preoccupy him, vaguely disturbed by
the oddness of this rencontre considered in relation to that
injudicious stop for dinner at Nant in the face of the impending storm,
and with Mr. Phinuit's declaration that he didn't give a tupenny damn
if they did all get soaked to their skins.
It seemed far-fetched and ridiculous to imagine that people of their
intelligence--and they were most of them unusually intelligent and
alert, if demeanour and utterances might be taken as criterion--should
adopt any such elaborate machinery of mystification and duplicity in
order to gain an introduction to the Château de Montalais. With what
possible motive...?
But there was the devil of having a mind like Duchemin's: once it
conceived a notion like that, it was all but impossible for him to
dislodge it unless or until something happened to persuade him of his
stupidity.
Now to make his suspicions seem at all reasonable, a motive was
lacking. And that worried the man hugely. He desired most earnestly to
justify his captiousness; and to this end exercised a power of
conscientious observation on his new acquaintances.
Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes he was disposed to pass at face value, as
an innocuous being, good natured enough but none too brilliant, with
much of the disposition of an overgrown boy and a rather boyish
tendency to admire and imitate in others qualities which he did not
himself possess.
Mr. Phinuit had not returned, so there was no present opportunity to
take further note of him; though Duchemin first inferred from Mr.
Monk's manner, and later learned through a chance remark of his, that
Phinuit was his secretary.
Upon this Mr. Monk Duchemin concentrated close attention, satisfied
that he had here to do with an extraordinary personality, if not one
unique.
Mr. Whitaker Monk might have been any age between thirty-five and
fifty-five, so non-committal was that lantern-jawed countenance of a
droll, with its heavy, black, eloquent eyebrows, its high and narrow
forehead merging into an extensive bald spot fringed with greyish hair,
its rather small, blue, illegible eyes, its high-bridged nose and
prominent nostrils, its wide and thin-lipped mouth, its rather
startling pallor. Taller by a head than anybody in the room except
Duchemin, his figure was remarkably thin, yet not ill-proportioned.
Neither was Mr. Monk ill at ease or ungraceful in his actions. Clothed
in that extravagantly correct costume--correct, at least, for a
drawing-room, if never for motoring--he had all the appearance of a
comedian fresh from the hands of his dresser. One naturally expected of
him mere grotesqueries--and found simply the courteous demeanour of a
gentleman of the world. So much for externals. But what more? Nature
herself had cast Mr. Monk in the very mould of a masquerader. What
manner of man was hidden behind the mask? His words and deeds alone
would tell; Duchemin could only weigh the one and await the other.
In the meantime Mr. Monk was sketching rapidly for the benefit of
Madame de Sévénié the excuse for his present plight.
A chance meeting at Monte Carlo, he said, with his old friends, the
Comte et Comtesse de Lorgnes, had resulted in their yielding to his
insistence that they tour with him back to Paris by this roundabout
way.
"A whim of my age, madame." Somehow the nasal intonation of the
American suited singularly well his fluent French; he seemed to have
less trouble with his R's than most Anglo-Saxons. "As a young man--a
younger man--ah, well, in Ninety-four, then--I explored this country on
a walking tour, inspired by Stevenson. You know, perhaps, his diverting
Travels with a Donkey? But I daresay its spirit would hardly have
survived translation.... At all events, I had the whim to revisit some
of those well-remembered scenes. I say some, for naturally it would be
impossible, even with the vastly improved roads of to-day, for my
automobile to penetrate everywhere I wandered afoot. Nor would I wish
it to; a few disappointments, a few failures to recapture something of
that first fine careless rapture, would instill a lyric melancholy; but
too many would make one morbid.... Well, then: at Nant, in those old
days, I once had a famous dinner; and naturally, returning, I must try
to duplicate it, even though it meant going on to Millau in the rain.
But alas! the Café de l'Univers is no more what it was--or I am grown
over critical."
What now of Duchemin's doubts? To tell the sad truth, they were just as
strong as ever. The man was somehow prejudiced: he found Monk's story
entirely too glib, and knew a mean sense of gratification when the curé
interposed a gentle correction.
"But in Ninety-four, monsieur, there was no Café de l'Univers in Nant."
Astonished eyebrows climbed the forehead of Mr. Monk.
"No, monsieur le curé? Truly not? Then it must have been another. How
one's memory will play one false!"
"How strange, then, is coincidence," Madame de Sévénié suggested. "You
who made a walking tour of this country so long ago, monsieur, regard
there that good Monsieur Duchemin, himself engaged upon just such an
undertaking."
Duchemin acknowledged with a humorous little nod Mr. Monk's look of
moderate amazement at this so strange coincidence.
"A whim of my age, monsieur," he said--"a project I have entertained
since youth but always, till of late, lacked leisure to put into
execution."
"But is there anything more wonderful than the workings of the good
God?" madame pursued. "Observe that, if Monsieur Duchemin had been
suffered to indulge his inclination in youth, we should all, I, my
daughter, my grand-daughter, even poor Georges d'Aubrac, would quite
probably be lying dead at the bottom of a cirque at Montpellier-le-Vieux."
Naturally the strangers required to know about that, and Madame de
Sévénié would talk, in fact doted on telling the tale of that great
adventure. Duchemin made a face of resignation, and heard himself
extolled as a paladin for strength, address and valour; the truth being
that he was not at all resigned and would infinitely liefer have been
left out of the limelight. The more he was represented as a person of
consequence, the less fair his chance to study these others at his
leisure, in the comfortable obscurity of their indifference.
Now the enigmatic eyes of Monk were boring into him, seeking to search
his soul, with a question in their stare which he could not read and,
quite likely, would have declined to answer if he could. Also the eyes
of Monsieur le Comte de Lorgnes were very round and constant to him.
And before Madame de Sévénié was finished, Phinuit strolled in and
heard enough to make him subject Duchemin to a not unfriendly, steady
and open inspection.
And when the trumpets had been flourished finally for Duchemin, and he
had dutifully assured madame that she was too generous and had
acknowledged congratulations on his exploit, Phinuit strolled over and
offered a hand.
"Good work," he said in English. "Seen you before, haven't I,
somewhere, Mr. Duchemin?"
Under other circumstances Duchemin, not at all hoodwinked by this too
obvious stratagem, would have taken mean pleasure in looking blank and
begging monsieur to interpret himself in French. But, with or without
cunning, Phinuit's question was well-timed: Eve de Montalais was at
that moment entering the drawing-room with Madame la Comtesse de
Lorgnes, and she knew very well that Duchemin's English was quite as
good as his French.
"At the Café de l'Univers, this afternoon," he replied frankly.
"I remember. You drove away, just before the storm broke, in a
ramshackle rig that must have come out of the Ark."
"To come here, Mr. Phinuit."
"Funny," said Phinuit, with hesitation, "your being there, and then our
turning up here."
Duchemin thought he knew what was on the other's mind. "I was immensely
entertained--do you mind my saying so?--to hear the way your chauffeur
talked to you, monsieur. Tell me: Is it the custom in your country--?"
"Oh, Jules!" said Phinuit, and laughed. "Jules is my younger brother.
When he was demobilised his job was gone, back home, and I wished him
on Mr. Monk as a chauffeur. We're always kidding each other like that."
Now what could be more reasonable? Duchemin wondered, and concluded
that, if anything, it would be the truth. But he did not pretend to
himself that he wasn't, quite illogically and with no provocation
whatsoever, most vilely prejudiced against the lot of them.
"But you must know America, to speak the language as well as you do."
Duchemin nodded: "But very slightly, monsieur."
"I was wondering ... Somehow I can't get it out of my head I've seen
you somewhere before to-day."
"It is quite possible: when one moves about the world, one is
visible--n'est-ce pas, monsieur? But my home," Duchemin added, "is
Paris."
"I guess," said Phinuit in a tone of singular disappointment, "it must
have been there I saw you."
Duchemin's bow signified that he was content to let it go at that.
Moreover, Monk was signalling to Phinuit with his expressive eyebrows.
"What about the car, Phin?"
Examining his wrist watch, Phinuit drew near his employer. "Jules
should not need more than half an hour now, monsieur."
Was there, in this employment of French to respond to a question
couched in English, the suggestion of a subtle correction? From employé
to employer? If not, why must Duchemin have thought so? If so, why did
Monk, without betraying a sign of feeling the reproof, continue in
French?
"Did Jules say half an hour?"
"Yes, monsieur."
"My God!" Monk addressed the company: "If I were pressed for time, I
would rather have one of Jules' half-hours than anybody else's hour and
a half."
"Let us hope, however," the Comtesse de Lorgnes interposed sweetly, "by
that time this so dreadful tempest will have moderated."
"One has that hope," her husband uttered in a sepulchral voice.
"But, if the storm continue," Madame de Sévénié said, "you must not
think of travelling farther--on such a night. The château is large,
there is ample accommodation for all..."
There was a negligible pause, during which Duchemin saw the long lashes
of the Comtesse de Lorgnes curtain momentarily her disastrous violet
eyes: it was a sign of assent. Immediately it was followed by the least
of negative movements of her head. She was looking directly at Phinuit,
who, so far as Duchemin could see, made no sign of any sort, who
neither spoke nor acted on the signals which, indubitably, he had
received. On the other hand, it was Monk who acknowledged the proffered
courtesy.
"Madame de Sévénié is too good, but we could not dream of imposing ...
No, but truly, madame, I am obliged to ask my guests to proceed with me
to Millau to-night regardless of the weather. Important despatches
concerning my business await me there; I must consider them and reply
by cable to-night without fail. It is really of the most pressing
necessity. Otherwise we should be honoured..."
Madame de Sévénié inclined her head. "It must be as monsieur thinks
best."
"But Monsieur Monk!" madame la comtesse exclaimed with vivacity: "do
you know what I have just discovered? You and Madame de Montalais are
compatriots. She is of your New York. You must know each other."
"I have been wondering," Monk admitted, bowing to Eve, "if it were
possible I could be misled by a strong resemblance."
Eve turned to him with a look of surprise. "Yes, monsieur?"
"It is many years ago, you were a young girl then, if it was truly you,
madame; but I have a keen eye for beauty, I do not soon forget it ... I
was in the private office of my friend, Edmund Anstruther, of
Cottier's, one afternoon, selecting a trinket with his advice, and--"
"That was my father, monsieur."
"Then it was you, madame; I felt sure of it. You came in unannounced,
to see your father. He made me known to you as a friend of his, and
requested you to wait in an adjoining office. But that was not
necessary, I had already made up my mind, I left almost immediately. Do
you by any chance remember?"
The effort of the memory knitted Eve's brows; but in the end she shook
her head. "I am sorry, monsieur--"
"But why should you be? Why should you have remembered me? You were a
young girl, then, as I say, and I already a man of middle age. You saw
me once, for perhaps two minutes. It would have been a miracle had I
remained in your memory for as long as a single day. Nevertheless, _I_
remembered."
"I am so glad to meet a friend of my father's, monsieur."
"And I to recall myself to his daughter. I have often wondered ...
Would you mind telling me something, Madame de Montalais?"
"If I can..."
"Your father and I entertained one passion in common, one which he was
better able than I to gratify, for good diamonds and emeralds. I have
often wondered what became of his collection. He had some superb
stones."
"I inherited them, monsieur."
"They did not find their way into Cottier's stock, then?"
The Comtesse de Lorgnes gave a gesture of excitement. "But what a
fortunate woman! You truly have those magnificent emeralds, those
almost matchless diamonds, of which one has heard--the Anstruther
collection?"
"I have them, Madame la Comtesse," said Eve with a smiling nod--"yes."
"But, one presumes, in Paris, in some impregnable strong-box."
"No, madame, here."
"But not here, Madame de Montalais!" To this Eve gave another nod and
smile. "But are you not afraid--?"
"Of what, madame? That they will be stolen? No. They have been in my
possession for years--indeed, I should be unhappy otherwise, for I have
inherited my father's fondness for them--and nobody has ever even
attempted to steal them."
"But what of the affair at Montpellier the other night?" enquired the
Comte de Lorgnes--"that terrible attack upon you of which Madame de
Sévénié has just told us? Surely you would call that an attempt to
steal."
"Simple highway robbery, if you like, monsieur le comte. But even had
it proved successful, I had very few jewels with me. All that mattered,
all that I would have minded losing, were here, in a safe place."
"Nevertheless," said Monk--"if you will permit me to offer a word of
advice--I think you are very unwise."
"It may be, monsieur."
"Nonsense!" Madame de Sévénié declared. "Who would dare attempt to
burglarise the Château de Montalais? Such a thing was never heard of."
"There is always the first time for everything, Madame," Monk suggested
gently. "I fancy it was your first experience of the sort, at
Montpellier."
"A rascally chauffeur from Paris, a few low characters of the
department. Since the war things are not as they were."
"That is the very reason why I suggest, madame--"
"But, monsieur, I assure you all my life I have lived at Montalais.
Monsieur le curé will tell you I know every face hereabouts. And I know
that these poor country-folk, these good-natured dolts of peasants have
not the imagination, much less the courage--"
"But what of criminals from outside, from the great cities, from London
and Paris and Berlin? They have the imagination, the courage, the
skill; and if they ever get wind of the fortune Madame de Montalais
keeps locked up here..."
"What of the Lone Wolf?" the Comtesse de Lorgnes added. "I have heard
that one is once more in France."
Duchemin blinked incredulously at the speaker. "But when did you hear
that, madame la comtesse?"
"Quite recently, monsieur."
"I had understood that the monsieur in question had long since
retired."
"Only for the duration of the war, monsieur, I am afraid."
"It is true, according to all reports," the Comte de Lorgnes said:
"Monsieur Lanyard--that was the name, was it not?"
"If memory serves, monsieur le comte," Duchemin agreed.
"Yes." The count screwed his chubby features into a laughable mask of
gravity. "Now one remembers quite well. He passed as a collector of
objets d'art, especially of fine paintings, in Paris, for years before
the War--this Monsieur Michael Lanyard. Then he disappeared. It was
rumoured that he was of good service to the Allies as a spy, acting
independently; and after the Armistice, I have heard, he did well for
England in the matter of a Bolshevist conspiracy over there. But not
long ago, according to my information, Monsieur the Lone Wolf resigned
from the British Secret Service and returned to France--doubtless to
resume his old practices."
"Perhaps not," Duchemin suggested. "Possibly his reformation was
genuine and lasting."
The Comtesse de Lorgnes laughed that laugh of light derision which is
almost exclusively the laugh of the Parisienne of a certain class.
Remarking this, Duchemin eyed her mildly.
"Madame la Comtesse does not believe that. Well--who knows?--perhaps
she is right. Possibly she knows more of the nature and habits of the
criminal classes than we, sharing as she does, no doubt, the apparently
accurate and precise sources of information of monsieur le comte."
"At all events," Phinuit put in promptly, "I know what I would do if I
possessed a little fortune in jewels, and learned that a thief of the
ability of this Lone Wolf was at large in France: I would charter an
armoured train to convey the loot to the strongest safe deposit vault
in Paris."
"Thereby advertising to the Lone Wolf the exact location of the jewels,
monsieur, so that he might at his leisure make his plans perfect to
burglarise the vaults?"
"Is that likely?" Phinuit jeered.
Duchemin gave a slight shrug.
"One has heard that the fellow had real ability," he said.
The servant Jean came in, caught the eye of Madame de Sévénié, and
announced:
"The chauffeur of Monsieur Monk wishes me to say he has completed
repairs on the automobile, and the rain has ceased."
VII
TURN ABOUT
Duchemin took back with him to Nant, that night, not only monsieur le
curé in the hired calèche, but food in plenty for thought, together
with a nebulous notion, which by the time he woke up next morning had
taken shape as a fixed conviction, that he had better resign himself to
stop on indefinitely at the Grand Hôtel de l'Univers and ... see what
he should see.