‘With pleasure,’ said Mr Quin. ‘We will see what we can do.’
Mr Satterthwaite had an odd sense of comfort and reliance.
The following day he introduced Franklin Rudge and Elizabeth Martin to his friend Mr Harley Quin. He was pleased to see that they got on together. The Countess was not mentioned, but at lunch time he heard news that aroused his attention.
‘Mirabelle is arriving in Monte this evening,’ he confided excitedly to Mr Quin.
‘The Parisian stage favourite?’
‘Yes. I daresay you know–it’s common property–she is the King of Bosnia’s latest craze. He has showered jewels on her, I believe. They say she is the most exacting and extravagant woman in Paris.’
‘It should be interesting to see her and the Countess Czarnova meet tonight.’
‘Exactly what I thought.’
Mirabelle was a tall, thin creature with a wonderful head of dyed fair hair. Her complexion was a pale mauve with orange lips. She was amazingly chic. She was dressed in something that looked like a glorified bird of paradise, and she wore chains of jewels hanging down her bare back. A heavy bracelet set with immense diamonds clasped her left ankle.
She created a sensation when she appeared in the Casino.
‘Your friend the Countess will have a difficulty in outdoing this,’ murmured Mr Quin in Mr Satterthwaite’s ear.
The latter nodded. He was curious to see how the Countess comported herself.
She came late, and a low murmur ran round as she walked unconcernedly to one of the centre roulette tables.
She was dressed in white–a mere straight slip of marocain such as a débutante might have worn and her gleaming white neck and arms were unadorned. She wore not a single jewel.
‘It is clever, that,’ said Mr Satterthwaite with instant approval. ‘She disdains rivalry and turns the tables on her adversary.’
He himself walked over and stood by the table. From time to time he amused himself by placing a stake. Sometimes he won, more often he lost.
There was a terrific run on the last dozen. The numbers 31 and 34 turned up again and again. Stakes flocked to the bottom of the cloth.
With a smile Mr Satterthwaite made his last stake for the evening, and placed the maximum on Number 5.
The Countess in her turn leant forward and placed the maximum on Number 6.
‘Faites vos jeux,’ called the croupier hoarsely. ‘Rien ne va plus. Plus rien.’
The ball span, humming merrily. Mr Satterthwaite thought to himself: ‘This means something different to each of us. Agonies of hope and despair, boredom, idle amusement, life and death.’
Click!
The croupier bent forward to see.
‘Numéro cinque, rouge, impair et manque.’
Mr Satterthwaite had won!
The croupier, having raked in the other stakes, pushed forward Mr Satterthwaite’s winnings. He put out his hand to take them. The Countess did the same. The croupier looked from one to the other of them.
‘A madame,’ he said brusquely.
The Countess picked up the money. Mr Satterthwaite drew back. He remained a gentleman. The Countess looked him full in the face and he returned her glance. One or two of the people round pointed out to the croupier that he had made a mistake, but the man shook his head impatiently. He had decided. That was the end. He raised his raucous cry:
‘Faites vos jeux, Messieurs et Mesdames.’
Mr Satterthwaite rejoined Mr Quin. Beneath his impeccable demeanour, he was feeling extremely indignant. Mr Quin listened sympathetically.
‘Too bad,’ he said, ‘but these things happen.’
‘We are to meet your friend Franklin Rudge later. I am giving a little supper party.’
The three met at midnight, and Mr Quin explained his plan.
‘It is what is called a “Hedges and Highways” party,’ he explained. ‘We choose our meeting place, then each one goes out and is bound in honour to invite the first person he meets.’
Franklin Rudge was amused by the idea.
‘Say, what happens if they won’t accept?’
‘You must use your utmost powers of persuasion.’
‘Good. And where’s the meeting place?’
‘A somewhat Bohemian café–where one can take strange guests. It is called Le Caveau.’
He explained its whereabouts, and the three parted. Mr Satterthwaite was so fortunate as to run straight into Elizabeth Martin and he claimed her joyfully. They reached Le Caveau and descended into a kind of cellar where they found a table spread for supper and lit by old-fashioned candles in candlesticks.
‘We are the first,’ said Mr Satterthwaite. ‘Ah! here comes Franklin–’
He stopped abruptly. With Franklin was the Countess. It was an awkward moment. Elizabeth displayed less graciousness than she might have done. The Countess, as a woman of the world, retained the honours.
Last of all came Mr Quin. With him was a small, dark man, neatly dressed, whose face seemed familiar to Mr Satterthwaite. A moment later he recognized him. It was the croupier who earlier in the evening had made such a lamentable mistake.
‘Let me introduce you to the company, M. Pierre Vaucher,’ said Mr Quin.
The little man seemed confused. Mr Quin performed the necessary introductions easily and lightly. Supper was brought–an excellent supper. Wine came –very excellent wine. Some of the frigidity went out of the atmosphere. The Countess was very silent, so was Elizabeth. Franklin Rudge became talkative. He told various stories–not humorous stories, but serious ones. And quietly and assiduously Mr Quin passed round the wine.
‘I’ll tell you–and this is a true story–about a man who made good,’ said Franklin Rudge impressively.
For one coming from a Prohibition country he had shown no lack of appreciation of champagne.
He told his story–perhaps at somewhat unnecessary length. It was, like many true stories, greatly inferior to fiction.
As he uttered the last word, Pierre Vaucher, opposite him, seemed to wake up. He also had done justice to the champagne. He leaned forward across the table.
‘I, too, will tell you a story,’ he said thickly. ‘But mine is the story of a man who did not make good. It is the story of a man who went, not up, but down the hill. And, like yours, it is a true story.’
‘Pray tell it to us, monsieur,’ said Mr Satterthwaite courteously.
Pierre Vaucher leant back in his chair and looked at the ceiling.
‘It is in Paris that the story begins. There was a man there, a working jeweller. He was young and light-hearted and industrious in his profession. They said there was a future before him. A good marriage was already arranged for him, the bride not too bad-looking, the dowry most satisfactory. And then, what do you think? One morning he sees a girl. Such a miserable little wisp of a girl, messieurs. Beautiful? Yes, perhaps, if she were not half starved. But anyway, for this young man, she has a magic that he cannot resist. She has been struggling to find work, she is virtuous–or at least that is what she tells him. I do not know if it is true.’
The Countess’s voice came suddenly out of the semi-darkness.
‘Why should it not be true? There are many like that.’
‘Well, as I say, the young man believed her. And he married her–an act of folly! His family would have no more to say to him. He had outraged their feelings. He married–I will call her Jeanne–it was a good action. He told her so. He felt that she should be very grateful to him. He had sacrificed much for her sake.’
‘A charming beginning for the poor girl,’ observed the Countess sarcastically.
‘He loved her, yes, but from the beginning she maddened him. She had moods–tantrums–she would be cold to him one day, passionate the next. At last he saw the truth. She had never loved him. She had married him so as to keep body and soul together. That truth hurt him, it hurt him horribly, but he tried his utmost to let nothing appear on the surface. And he still felt he deserved gratitude and obe
dience to his wishes. They quarrelled. She reproached him–Mon Dieu, what did she not reproach him with?
‘You can see the next step, can you not? The thing that was bound to come. She left him. For two years he was alone, working in his little shop with no news of her. He had one friend–absinthe. The business did not prosper so well.
‘And then one day he came into the shop to find her sitting there. She was beautifully dressed. She had rings on her hands. He stood considering her. His heart was beating–but beating! He was at a loss what to do. He would have liked to have beaten her, to have clasped her in his arms, to have thrown her down on the floor and trampled on her, to have thrown himself at her feet. He did none of those things. He took up his pincers and went on with his work. “Madame desires?” he asked formally.
‘That upset her. She did not look for that, see you. “Pierre,” she said, “I have come back.” He laid aside his pincers and looked at her. “You wish to be forgiven?” he said. “You want me to take you back? You are sincerely repentant?” “Do you want me back?” she murmured. Oh! very softly she said it.
‘He knew she was laying a trap for him. He longed to seize her in his arms, but he was too clever for that. He pretended indifference.
‘“I am a Christian man,” he said. “I try to do what the Church directs.” “Ah!” he thought, “I will humble her, humble her to her knees.”
‘But Jeanne, that is what I will call her, flung back her head and laughed. Evil laughter it was. “I mock myself at you, little Pierre,” she said. “Look at these rich clothes, these rings and bracelets. I came to show myself to you. I thought I would make you take me in your arms and when you did so, then–then I would spit in your face and tell you how I hated you!”
‘And on that she went out of the shop. Can you believe, messieurs, that a woman could be as evil as all that–to come back only to torment me?’
‘No,’ said the Countess. ‘I would not believe it, and any man who was not a fool would not believe it either. But all men are blind fools.’
Pierre Vaucher took no notice of her. He went on.
‘And so that young man of whom I tell you sank lower and lower. He drank more absinthe. The little shop was sold over his head. He became of the dregs, of the gutter. Then came the war. Ah! it was good, the war. It took that man out of the gutter and taught him to be a brute beast no longer. It drilled him–and sobered him. He endured cold and pain and the fear of death –but he did not die and when the war ended, he was a man again.
‘It was then, messieurs, that he came South. His lungs had been affected by the gas, they said he must find work in the South. I will not weary you with all the things he did. Suffice it to say that he ended up as a croupier, and there–there in the Casino one evening, he saw her again–the woman who had ruined his life. She did not recognize him, but he recognized her. She appeared to be rich and to lack for nothing–but messieurs, the eyes of a croupier are sharp. There came an evening when she placed her last stake in the world on the table. Ask me not how I know–I do know–one feels these things. Others might not believe. She still had rich clothes–why not pawn them, one would say? But to do that–pah! your credit is gone at once. Her jewels? Ah no! Was I not a jeweller in my time? Long ago the real jewels have gone. The pearls of a King are sold one by one, are replaced with false. And meantime one must eat and pay one’s hotel bill. Yes, and the rich men–well, they have seen one about for many years. Bah! they say–she is over fifty. A younger chicken for my money.’
A long shuddering sigh came out of the windows where the Countess leant back.
‘Yes. It was a great moment, that. Two nights I have watched her. Lose, lose, and lose again. And now the end. She put all on one number. Beside her, an English milord stakes the maximum also–on the next number. The ball rolls…The moment has come, she has lost…
‘Her eyes meet mine. What do I do? I jeopardize my place in the Casino. I rob the English milord. “A Madame” I say, and pay over the money.’
‘Ah!’ There was a crash, as the Countess sprang to her feet and leant across the table, sweeping her glass on to the floor.
‘Why?’ she cried. ‘That’s what I want to know, why did you do it?’
There was a long pause, a pause that seemed interminable, and still those two facing each other across the table looked and looked…It was like a duel.
A mean little smile crept across Pierre Vaucher’s face. He raised his hands.
‘Madame,’ he said, ‘there is such a thing as pity…’
‘Ah!’
She sank down again.
‘I see.’
She was calm, smiling, herself again.
‘An interesting story, M. Vaucher, is it not? Permit me to give you a light for your cigarette.’
She deftly rolled up a spill, and lighted it at the candle and held it towards him. He leaned forward till the flame caught the tip of the cigarette he held between his lips.
Then she rose unexpectedly to her feet.
‘And now I must leave you all. Please–I need no one to escort me.’
Before one could realize it she was gone. Mr Satterthwaite would have hurried out after her, but he was arrested by a startled oath from the Frenchman.
‘A thousand thunders! ’
He was staring at the half-burned spill which the Countess had dropped on the table. He unrolled it.
‘Mon Dieu! ’ he muttered. ‘A fifty thousand franc bank note. You understand? Her winnings tonight. All that she had in the world. And she lighted my cigarette with it! Because she was too proud to accept–pity. Ah! proud, she was always proud as the Devil. She is unique–wonderful.’
He sprang up from his seat and darted out. Mr Satterthwaite and Mr Quin had also risen. The waiter approached Franklin Rudge.
‘La note, monsieur,’ he observed unemotionally.
Mr Quin rescued it from him quickly.
‘I feel kind of lonesome, Elizabeth,’ remarked Franklin Rudge. ‘These foreigners–they beat the band! I don’t understand them. What’s it all mean, anyhow?’
He looked across at her.
‘Gee, it’s good to look at anything so hundred per cent American as you.’ His voice took on the plaintive note of a small child. ‘These foreigners are so odd.’
They thanked Mr Quin and went out into the night together. Mr Quin picked up his change and smiled across at Mr Satterthwaite, who was preening himself like a contented bird.
‘Well,’ said the latter. ‘That’s all gone off splendidly. Our pair of love birds will be all right now.’
‘Which ones?’ asked Mr Quin.
‘Oh!’ said Mr Satterthwaite, taken aback. ‘Oh! yes, well, I suppose you are right, allowing for the Latin point of view and all that–’
He looked dubious.
Mr Quin smiled, and a stained glass panel behind him invested him for just a moment in a motley garment of coloured light.
Chapter 6
The Man from the Sea
Mr Satterthwaite was feeling old. That might not have been surprising since in the estimation of many people he was old. Careless youths said to their partners: ‘Old Satterthwaite? Oh! he must be a hundred–or at any rate about eighty.’ And even the kindest of girls said indulgently, ‘Oh! Satterthwaite. Yes, he’s quite old. He must be sixty.’ Which was almost worse, since he was sixty-nine.
In his own view, however, he was not old. Sixty-nine was an interesting age–an age of infinite possibilities–an age when at last the experience of a lifetime was beginning to tell. But to feel old–that was different, a tired discouraged state of mind when one was inclined to ask oneself depressing questions. What was he after all? A little dried-up elderly man, with neither chick nor child, with no human belongings, only a valuable Art collection which seemed at the moment strangely unsatisfying. No one to care whether he lived or died…
At this point in his meditations Mr Satterthwaite pulled himself up short. What he was thinking was morbid and unprofitable. He knew
well enough, who better, that the chances were that a wife would have hated him or alternatively that he would have hated her, that children would have been a constant source of worry and anxiety, and that demands upon his time and affection would have worried him considerably.
‘To be safe and comfortable,’ said Mr Satterthwaite firmly–that was the thing.
The last thought reminded him of a letter he had received that morning. He drew it from his pocket and re-read it, savouring its contents pleasurably. To begin with, it was from a Duchess, and Mr Satterthwaite liked hearing from Duchesses. It is true that the letter began by demanding a large subscription for charity and but for that would probably never have been written, but the terms in which it was couched were so agreeable that Mr Satterthwaite was able to gloss over the first fact.
So you’ve deserted the Riviera, wrote the Duchess. What is this island of yours like? Cheap? Cannotti put up his prices shamefully this year, and I shan’t go to the Riviera again. I might try your island next year if you report favourably, though I should hate five days on a boat. Still anywhere you recommend is sure to be pretty comfortable–too much so. You’ll get to be one of those people who do nothing but coddle themselves and think of their comfort. There’s only one thing that will save you, Satterthwaite, and that is your inordinate interest in other people’s affairs…
As Mr Satterthwaite folded the letter, a vision came up vividly before him of the Duchess. Her meanness, her unexpected and alarming kindness, her caustic tongue, her indomitable spirit.
Spirit! Everyone needed spirit. He drew out another letter with a German stamp upon it–written by a young singer in whom he had interested himself. It was a grateful affectionate letter.
‘How can I thank you, dear Mr Satterthwaite? It seems too wonderful to think that in a few days I shall be singing Isolde…’
A pity that she had to make her début as Isolde. A charming, hardworking child, Olga, with a beautiful voice but no temperament. He hummed to himself. ‘Nay order him! Pray understand it! I command it. I, Isolde.’ No, the child hadn’t got it in her–the spirit–the indomitable will–all expressed in that final ‘Ich Isoldé!’
The Mysterious Mr Quin Page 10