CHAPTER I_At the Villa Rose

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AT THE VILLA ROSE

A.E.W. Mason

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. SUMMER LIGHTNING

II. A CRY FOR HELP

III. PERRICHET'S STORY

IV. AT THE VILLA

V. IN THE SALON

VI. HELENE VAUQUIER'S EVIDENCE

VII. A STARTLING DISCOVERY

VIII. THE CAPTAIN OF THE SHIP

IX. MME. DAUVRAY'S MOTOR-CAR

X. NEWS FROM GENEVA

XI. THE UNOPENED LETTER

XII. THE ALUMINIUM FLASK

XIII. IN THE HOUSE AT GENEVA

XIV. MR. RICARDO IS BEWILDERED

XV. CELIA'S STORY

XVI. THE FIRST MOVE

XVII. THE AFTERNOON OF TUESDAY

XVIII. THE SEANCE

XIX. HELENE EXPLAINS

XX. THE GENEVA ROAD

XXI. HANAUD EXPLAINS

AT THE VILLA ROSE

CHAPTER I

SUMMER LIGHTNING

It was Mr. Ricardo's habit as soon as the second week of August came

round to travel to Aix-les-Bains, in Savoy, where for five or six weeks

he lived pleasantly. He pretended to take the waters in the morning, he

went for a ride in his motor-car in the afternoon, he dined at the

Cercle in the evening, and spent an hour or two afterwards in the

baccarat-rooms at the Villa des Fleurs. An enviable, smooth life

without a doubt, and it is certain that his acquaintances envied him.

At the same time, however, they laughed at him and, alas with some

justice; for he was an exaggerated person. He was to be construed in

the comparative. Everything in his life was a trifle overdone, from the

fastidious arrangement of his neckties to the feminine nicety of his

little dinner-parties. In age Mr. Ricardo was approaching the fifties;

in condition he was a widower--a state greatly to his liking, for he

avoided at once the irksomeness of marriage and the reproaches justly

levelled at the bachelor; finally, he was rich, having amassed a

fortune in Mincing Lane, which he had invested in profitable securities.

Ten years of ease, however, had not altogether obliterated in him the

business look. Though he lounged from January to December, he lounged

with the air of a financier taking a holiday; and when he visited, as

he frequently did, the studio of a painter, a stranger would have

hesitated to decide whether he had been drawn thither by a love of art

or by the possibility of an investment. His "acquaintances" have been

mentioned, and the word is suitable. For while he mingled in many

circles, he stood aloof from all. He affected the company of artists,

by whom he was regarded as one ambitious to become a connoisseur; and

amongst the younger business men, who had never dealt with him, he

earned the disrespect reserved for the dilettante. If he had a grief,

it was that he had discovered no great man who in return for practical

favours would engrave his memory in brass. He was a Maecenas without a

Horace, an Earl of Southampton without a Shakespeare. In a word,

Aix-les-Bains in the season was the very place for him; and never for a

moment did it occur to him that he was here to be dipped in agitations,

and hurried from excitement to excitement. The beauty of the little

town, the crowd of well-dressed and agreeable people, the rose-coloured

life of the place, all made their appeal to him. But it was the Villa

des Fleurs which brought him to Aix. Not that he played for anything

more than an occasional louis; nor, on the other hand, was he merely a

cold looker-on. He had a bank-note or two in his pocket on most

evenings at the service of the victims of the tables. But the pleasure

to his curious and dilettante mind lay in the spectacle of the battle

which was waged night after night between raw nature and good manners.

It was extraordinary to him how constantly manners prevailed. There

were, however, exceptions.

For instance. On the first evening of this particular visit he found

the rooms hot, and sauntered out into the little semicircular garden at

the back. He sat there for half an hour under a flawless sky of stars

watching the people come and go in the light of the electric lamps, and

appreciating the gowns and jewels of the women with the eye of a

connoisseur; and then into this starlit quiet there came suddenly a

flash of vivid life. A girl in a soft, clinging frock of white satin

darted swiftly from the rooms and flung herself nervously upon a bench.

She could not, to Ricardo's thinking, be more than twenty years of age.

She was certainly quite young. The supple slenderness of her figure

proved it, and he had moreover caught a glimpse, as she rushed out, of

a fresh and very pretty face; but he had lost sight of it now. For the

girl wore a big black satin hat with a broad brim, from which a couple

of white ostrich feathers curved over at the back, and in the shadow of

that hat her face was masked. All that he could see was a pair of long

diamond eardrops, which sparkled and trembled as she moved her

head--and that she did constantly. Now she stared moodily at the

ground; now she flung herself back; then she twisted nervously to the

right, and then a moment afterwards to the left; and then again she

stared in front of her, swinging a satin slipper backwards and forwards

against the pavement with the petulance of a child. All her movements

were spasmodic; she was on the verge of hysteria. Ricardo was expecting

her to burst into tears, when she sprang up and as swiftly as she had

come she hurried back into the rooms. "Summer lightning," thought Mr.

Ricardo.

Near to him a woman sneered, and a man said, pityingly: "She was

pretty, that little one. It is regrettable that she has lost."

A few minutes afterwards Ricardo finished his cigar and strolled back

into the rooms, making his way to the big table just on the right hand

of the entrance, where the play as a rule runs high. It was clearly

running high to-night. For so deep a crowd thronged about the table that

Ricardo could only by standing on tiptoe see the faces of the players.

Of the banker he could not catch a glimpse. But though the crowd

remained, its units were constantly changing, and it was not long

before Ricardo found himself standing in the front rank of the

spectators, just behind the players seated in the chairs. The oval

green table was spread out beneath him littered with bank-notes.

Ricardo turned his eyes to the left, and saw seated at the middle of

the table the man who was holding the bank. Ricardo recognised him with

a start of surprise. He was a young Englishman, Harry Wethermill, who,

after a brilliant career at Oxford and at Munich, had so turned his

scientific genius to account that he had made a fortune for himself at

the age of twenty-eight.

He sat at the table with the indifferent look of the habitual player

upon his cleanly chiselled face. But it was plain that his good fortune

stayed at his elbow to-night, for opposite to him the croupier was

arranging with extraordinary deftness piles of bank-notes in the order

of their value. The bank was winning heavily. Even as Ricardo looked

Wethermill turned up "a natural," and the croupier swept in the stakes

from either side.

"Faites vos jeux, messieurs. Le jeu est fait?" the croupier cried, all

in a breath, and repeated the words. Wethermill waited with his hand

upon the wooden frame in which the cards were stacked. He glanced round

the table while the stakes were being laid upon the cloth, and suddenly

his face flashed from languor into interest. Almost opposite to him a

small, white-gloved hand holding a five-louis note was thrust forward

between the shoulders of two men seated at the table. Wethermill leaned

forward and shook his head with a smile. With a gesture he refused the

stake. But he was too late. The fingers of the hand had opened, the

note fluttered down on to the cloth, the money was staked.

At once he leaned back in his chair.

"Il y a une suite," he said quietly. He relinquished the bank rather

than play against that five-louis note. The stakes were taken up by

their owners.

The croupier began to count Wethermill's winnings, and Ricardo, curious

to know whose small, delicately gloved hand it was which had brought

the game to so abrupt a termination, leaned forward. He recognised the

young girl in the white satin dress and the big black hat whose nerves

had got the better of her a few minutes since in the garden. He saw her

now clearly, and thought her of an entrancing loveliness. She was

moderately tall, fair of skin, with a fresh colouring upon her cheeks

which she owed to nothing but her youth. Her hair was of a light brown

with a sheen upon it, her forehead broad, her eyes dark and wonderfully

clear. But there was something more than her beauty to attract him. He

had a strong belief that somewhere, some while ago, he had already seen

her. And this belief grew and haunted him. He was still vaguely

puzzling his brains to fix the place when the croupier finished his

reckoning.

"There are two thousand louis in the bank," he cried. "Who will take on

the bank for two thousand louis?"

No one, however, was willing. A fresh bank was put up for sale, and

Wethermill, still sitting in the dealer's chair, bought it. He spoke at

once to an attendant, and the man slipped round the table, and, forcing

his way through the crowd, carried a message to the girl in the black

hat. She looked towards Wethermill and smiled; and the smile made her

face a miracle of tenderness. Then she disappeared, and in a few

moments Ricardo saw a way open in the throng behind the banker, and she

appeared again only a yard or two away, just behind Wethermill. He

turned, and taking her hand into his, shook it chidingly.

"I couldn't let you play against me, Celia," he said, in English; "my

luck's too good to-night. So you shall be my partner instead. I'll put

in the capital and we'll share the winnings."

The girl's face flushed rosily. Her hand still lay clasped in his. She

made no effort to withdraw it.

"I couldn't do that," she exclaimed.

"Why not?" said he. "See!" and loosening her fingers he took from them

the five-louis note and tossed it over to the croupier to be added to

his bank. "Now you can't help yourself. We're partners."

The girl laughed, and the company at the table smiled, half in

sympathy, half with amusement. A chair was brought for her, and she sat

down behind Wethermill, her lips parted, her face joyous with

excitement. But all at once Wethermill's luck deserted him. He renewed

his bank three times, and had lost the greater part of his winnings

when he had dealt the cards through. He took a fourth bank, and rose

from that, too, a loser.

"That's enough, Celia," he said. "Let us go out into the garden; it

will be cooler there."

"I have taken your good luck away," said the girl remorsefully.

Wethermill put his arm through hers.

"You'll have to take yourself away before you can do that," he

answered, and the couple walked together out of Ricardo's hearing.

Ricardo was left to wonder about Celia. She was just one of those

problems which made Aix-les-Bains so unfailingly attractive to him. She

dwelt in some street of Bohemia; so much was clear. The frankness of

her pleasure, of her excitement, and even of her distress proved it.

She passed from one to the other while you could deal a pack of cards.

She was at no pains to wear a mask. Moreover, she was a young girl of

nineteen or twenty, running about those rooms alone, as unembarrassed

as if she had been at home. There was the free use, too, of Christian

names. Certainly she dwelt in Bohemia. But it seemed to Ricardo that

she could pass in any company and yet not be overpassed. She would look

a little more picturesque than most girls of her age, and she was

certainly a good deal more soignee than many, and she had the

Frenchwoman's knack of putting on her clothes. But those would be all

the differences, leaving out the frankness. Ricardo wondered in what

street of Bohemia she dwelt. He wondered still more when he saw her

again half an hour afterwards at the entrance to the Villa des Fleurs.

She came down the long hall with Harry Wethermill at her side. The

couple were walking slowly, and talking as they walked with so complete

an absorption in each other that they were unaware of their

surroundings. At the bottom of the steps a stout woman of fifty-five

over-jewelled, and over-dressed and raddled with paint, watched their

approach with a smile of good-humoured amusement. When they came near

enough to hear she said in French:

"Well, Celie, are you ready to go home?"

The girl looked up with a start.

"Of course, madame," she said, with a certain submissiveness which

surprised Ricardo. "I hope I have not kept you waiting."

She ran to the cloak-room, and came back again with her cloak.

"Good-bye, Harry," she said, dwelling upon his name and looking out

upon him with soft and smiling eyes.

"I shall see you to-morrow evening," he said, holding her hand. Again

she let it stay within his keeping, but she frowned, and a sudden

gravity settled like a cloud upon her face. She turned to the elder

woman with a sort of appeal.

"No, I do not think we shall be here, to-morrow, shall we, madame?" she

said reluctantly.

"Of course not," said madame briskly. "You have not forgotten what we

have planned? No, we shall not be here to-morrow; but the night

after--yes."

Celia turned back again to Wethermill.

"Yes, we have plans for to-morrow," she said, with a very wistful note

of regret in her voice; and seeing that madame was already at the door,

she bent forward and said timidly, "But the night after I shall want

you."

"I shall thank you for wanting me," Wethermill rejoined; and the girl

tore her hand away and ran up the steps.

Harry Wethermill returned to the rooms. Mr. Ricardo did not follow him.

He was too busy with the little problem which had been presented to him

that night. What could that girl, he asked himself, have in common with

the raddled woman she addressed so respectfully? Indeed, there had been

a note of more than respect in her voice. There had been something of

affection. Again Mr. Ricardo found himself wondering in what street in

Bohemia Celia dwelt--and as he walked up to the hotel there came yet