The Silver Dragon

by Jean S. MacLeod

  ‘This is no time for bluffing,” he said, his harsh accent grating in that tranquil place. “You know you were to bring them here. Nice is getting too hot for us. The gendarmerie is swarming all over the place.”

  He was not altogether an uneducated type, she realized, and he had an air of bravado about him that she found strangely pathetic. Three fingers of his left hand were missing, she noticed, and in spite of his swashbuckling manner and the knife in his belt, he looked afraid.

  She wondered if she should appeal to him and tell him the truth. Tell him that her memory had deserted her. She was on the point of making her confession when he said, “I’m new on this run, but you sent out the right signal.” He caught her arm, hurting her, and she shuddered at the sight of his mutilated hand. “Don’t try to fool around with me,” he warned. “You sent the signal, now hand over the stuff. I haven’t time to monkey around with a woman!”

  They stared at each other in silence, and then, suddenly, a car’s powerful headlights swept across the bay as it turned from the headland road and came steadily toward the villa.

  “Damn you!” her companion cried, glaring at her in the vivid light. “It’s a trap!” He twisted her arm. “Who are you? You’re living here—up at the house?”

  She could see that he was afraid.

  “Yes,” she whispered, “but ...”

  “Then you’ve made a nice hash of things, haven’t you?” he snarled, glaring up at the advancing lights. “There’s someone coming.” He set her free with an angry oath. “Hand over the stuff quickly and clear out.”

  “I haven’t got anything, truly I haven’t,” she protested as the searching headlights went out and the terrace above them was plunged into darkness. “I don’t know what you expected me to bring...”

  “You’re stalling!” he hissed. “You know well enough.” Savagely he thrust her aside as he strode back to the wharf. “Well, get rid of them now the best way you can,” he advised. “If they burn your fingers, then be damned to you. We should have known better than to trust a woman!”

  At the water’s edge he turned. He was no more than a dark silhouette now, outlined against the pewter gray of the sea.

  “I’ll give you one more chance,” he offered. “The Silver Dragon, tomorrow at six.”

  Jumping into the launch, he started the engine, careless now about the sound in the urgency of retreat. The car had come to a standstill on the terrace above them and the noise of the engine as the launch streaked toward the pale gap between the headlands tore the silence into shreds.

  Adele stood quite still. The events of these past few minutes had stunned her into immobility and her eyes seemed glued to the white wake fanning out behind the speeding boat. She caught a brief glimpse of the launch itself as it passed between the headlands into the wider reaches of the Mediterranean, with the sound of its engine growing fainter and fainter until she was left with nothing but the darkness and the silence of the bay.

  When she walked toward the terrace path the crunch of the pebbles beneath her feet seemed magnified a thousandfold and her heart beat a wild tattoo against her ribs. Someone was waiting for her up there at the terrace edge.

  She saw the brief glow of a cigarette and the little circle of light it described as it was tossed aside. Angrily? Contemptuously? Alertly?

  Whoever it was, they had come in the car. She saw its black bulk against the pale stucco of the villa wall as she climbed the final incline, but there was no sign of anyone on the terrace when she reached it. On the gray paving flags the tip of a half-smoked cigarette still glowed beneath the shadow of an overhanging shrub.

  She stood staring down at it for a long moment before she turned toward the house.

  The lights were full on in Dixon’s study and in the drawing room on the other side of the hall. The car she recognized as the taxi Dixon had used before.

  Slowly she crossed to the open front door. The hall lights had not been switched on and a tall shadowy figure stood there, waiting.

  She knew that it was Olivia, and a quick rush of anger rose in her as she switched on the lights. Steadily she met the older woman’s eyes.

  “You chose an odd time to go out for a walk, Adele,” Olivia commented, her eyes hard with suspicion. “What can you find to do down on the shore in the dark?”

  “It wasn’t dark when I set out,” Adele defended herself, “and I didn’t mean to walk quite so far. I intended to keep to the main road and perhaps walk as far as St. Jean and back, but I turned along the garden road instead.”

  “And came to the bay?” Olivia looked interested. “I thought I heard the sound of a launch,” she said.

  The complete unexpectedness of the remark caught Adele unawares. She did not know what to say.

  “Don’t tell me your doctor friend has taken to paying you clandestine visits by sea!” Olivia’s tone was stinging, her green eyes triumphant. “Or have you another lover that my son doesn’t know about?”

  By this time Adele was quivering with rage.

  “How dare you say such a thing!” she cried. “I wouldn’t betray Dixon in such a way.”

  Olivia’s smile was thin.

  “But you would betray him ... for some other reason?” she suggested.

  “That isn’t true!” There was a hint of panic in Adele’s voice now. “I don’t know what may have happened before my accident, but I do know that I would do nothing to ... to dishonor him now.”

  “Ah!” exclaimed Olivia. “The past. It seems to trouble you a great deal. Perhaps the amnesia was the easiest way out.”

  “I don’t know how you can say a thing like that.” Adele was reduced almost to tears. “If I knew about the past it would be easier for me and easier for Dixon, perhaps.”

  “Indeed,” Olivia agreed acidly, “it might be easier for Dixon. A man can’t very well abandon his responsibilities in the circumstances, can he?”

  If it was meant as a leading question, Adele refused to respond to it She was sorry now that she had lost her temper, but it had certainly let her see exactly where she stood with Olivia. They were enemies.

  The thought distressed her because once again she was obsessed by the conviction that its roots lay deep in the past, but she supposed that they could not have gone on pretending much longer.

  She turned away, glancing toward the study door, but it remained firmly closed against all intrusion.

  Olivia was still standing in the hall where she had left her when she reached the top of the staircase. She was not looking up, but Adele had the strange impression that she was aware of her every movement.

  Shaken, she reached her own room and closed the door behind her, leaning back against it as if she had been running a long way and had need to draw breath. Her heart was pounding unevenly and she had to bite her teeth into her lower lip to stop it from trembling.

  What had really happened down there in the bay? Was this her life—some sort of dishonesty or treachery that would injure Dixon if it were discovered? Was this why he hated her—why their marriage had foundered?

  Walking to the window, she looked out at the starry night. There was nothing but distrust and suspicion between them. She had to face that, and the awful thing was that he must have loved her at one time. He must have held her in his arms and kissed her, and she could have remained in the shelter of his embrace for the rest of her life if it had not been for the launch and the bay and the shabby little Frenchman and this dreadful thing in which she was so deeply involved.

  What had she done to forfeit Dixon’s love? For, heaven help her, she was in love with him!

  She must have known it long ago, almost from the beginning, she decided, listening as the taxi started up and drove away. When they had faced each other that first time and he had walked in out of the shadowy night a spark had been struck that had finally set her heart on fire. Had it been like that before? Had she loved him and forgotten and come to love him all over again?

  Love could be so strong. Perhaps ev
en amnesia could not wholly blot it out.

  Thinking far into the night, she tried to remind herself that she knew nothing of his background here in the south of France. He had not come into the open to explain anything to her, but that could be because he did not trust her.

  Toward one o’clock she heard him return and the car drive away again. Where had he been? What had he gone to do? Had he been trying to trace the launch and its shabby occupant? Was he, perhaps, part of this doubtful, furtive setup himself?

  The questions flew around in her tired brain in an endless circle until she was almost too exhausted to think at all, and then she heard his heavy tread come along the corridor past her door and into the room adjoining her own.

  There was no connecting door between the two rooms, but the balcony outside her window also served his. After a while, she heard him pacing out there, smoking in the darkness.

  Impulsively she wanted to go to him, to tell him all she could, but what would she really be able to explain? She could not tell him why the little Frenchman had come to the bay or what he had been looking for. She had not made any attempt to find that out—or a very poor one. She had been too distressed, too much taken by surprise, and she had no memory of what had gone before to help her.

  Always it came back to that. The fact of her amnesia burned into her mind, destroying her power of reasoning until she felt herself incapable of any explanation that he could possibly accept

  She was not, however, wholly devoid of determination. Tomorrow, she thought, I’ll go to The Silver Dragon.

  The Silver Dragon! That was what the Frenchman had said, wasn’t it? And there was a silver dragon down there in Dixon’s study, the quaint little table lighter, which had been based on the curving horn he had brought back from his African safari.

  Dixon used the lighter all the time, but surely it couldn’t have any connection with the rendezvous that had been planned for her down there in the bay? There must be another silver dragon, and she suspected she would find it in Nice.

  “If you come across any sort of clue—any at all,” John had said, “follow it up if you can.”

  It was something she had to do, no matter what the consequences might be.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  It was easy enough to make an excuse for going to Nice.

  “If you want to do any shopping or feel you would like to go to Nice or Monte Carlo for any other reason,” Dixon suggested at breakfast the following morning, “Domenico will take you. He is quite reliable,” he added with a dry smile. “You can trust him implicitly. He runs a small private taxi service in Villefranche and has been driving on the Corniche roads all his life.” Wondering if he were giving her enough rope with which to hang herself, Adele felt tempted to confide everything in him, but at that moment Maria came into the room with a fresh jug of coffee and he rose to go out.

  “I’d like to go to Nice,” she said, “but not till this afternoon.” A telltale color flew into her cheeks. “I ... have to meet someone.”

  Evasion must never have been her strong point, for she could not meet his eyes when he turned at the door to look at her.

  “Just as you wish,” he agreed after what had seemed like an eternity. “Do you want me to collect you?”

  “No.” She was openly flustered now. “Not if I might keep the taxi. I thought I’d like to see something of Nice,” she added lamely.

  “Domenico will wait for you in that case,” he said. He won’t be at all put out. I’m quite sure he has plenty of friends in Nice, too.”

  He had closed the door before she could answer him and she stared down at her empty coffee cup with the coldness of despair in her heart.

  How could she ever reach him when everything she ever tried to do went wrong?

  Olivia rarely made her appearance in the morning much before eleven o’clock, but this morning she came down early.

  “I’ve decided to go along to Monte for lunch,” she announced, selecting a ripe peach from the bowl on the table, but declining Adele’s offer of a cup of coffee. “I have a very old friend living there whom I haven’t seen for months.” Her firm teeth bit into the soft flesh of the peach as she regarded her daughter-in-law through half-closed lids. “Do you want to come?” she asked surprisingly.

  “Oh!” Adele had hardly expected anything like this. There must be some reason for Olivia’s invitation, she decided, some ulterior motive for wanting to take her to Monte Carlo to meet her “very old friend.” Could it be that the friend was also a friend of Dixon? “I’m so sorry,” she added hastily. “I have an appointment in Nice. Otherwise I would have been delighted to come.”

  It would mean, of course, that Olivia was ready to bury the hatchet for Dixon’s sake. She smiled at the older woman in a tentative effort to meet her halfway, but Olivia did not respond.

  “That will mean a car going in both directions,” she frowned. “Is Dixon taking you to Nice?”

  “No.”

  “Oh? Then he can drive me along to Monte.” Olivia looked satisfied. “I’ll tell Maria that we won’t be in for lunch.”

  “I shall be in,” Adele said quickly. “I’m not going to Nice till later in the afternoon.”

  “You can hardly expect Dixon to rush back from Monte to take you,” Olivia pointed out aggressively. “He works very hard and I think he ought to have some relaxation.”

  Adele stood up.

  “Dixon has arranged for a taxi to take me to Nice,” she explained. “Someone called Domenico, who runs a taxi service at Villefranche, will pick me up and take me.”

  “I know Domenico,” Olivia agreed. “We’ll probably take another of his cars.”

  “I was going to suggest to Dixon that he should take John’s car,” Adele said. “I’m sure John wouldn’t, mind.”

  “But Dixon would.” Olivia gave her a very dry smile. “He doesn’t like ... borrowing. I’ve told him often enough that he should buy a car of his own,” she added. “He can quite easily afford it, but he points out that he is only here for about three months of the year.” She sighed. “No, I suppose Jelida is his real love! I sometimes think that yacht means more to him even than I do.” She dropped the peach stone into her rejected coffee cup with a small regretful sigh, which sounded so completely false that Adele walked away before she was tempted to retaliate.

  If she had really made an enemy of Olivia, no good would come of adding fresh fuel to a smoldering fire.

  Dixon came to tell her that he was taking his mother to Monte Carlo.

  “I don’t visit very often,” he said, “but this may excuse me for some time to come!”

  He did not suggest that she should accompany him, as his mother had done, but perhaps Olivia had already told him that she had refused.

  “Will you be late getting back?” she asked.

  He looked at her steadily for a moment.

  “No,” he said. In the brief pause before he turned to the door, it, seemed that he was about to add something, and then he appeared to think better of the impulse and went away.

  Half an hour later a green Renault drove up to the front door and Olivia called to her from the hall. “We’re off, Adele. Such a pity you couldn’t come!” Adele hurried into the hall. Dressed for her luncheon date, Olivia looked superb. She wore a beautifully cut suit of a light honey-beige color with a small feathered hat to match, and her sables were magnificent.

  “A present from Dixon,” she smiled when she saw Adele admiring them. “He has always been so very, very generous to me.”

  Dixon was waiting at the car. He had changed into a conventional light gray lounge suit, and Adele’s heart beat far too rapidly at the sight of him. He had the distinction of most tall men, and the slightly arrogant look about him no longer angered her. She saw it now as the reflection of his complete confidence in his own decisions. He would stand or fall by them without complaint, she realized.

  He did not ask her when she was likely to return from Nice.

  “We should be ba
ck about five,” he said, helping Olivia into the car. “If anything should go wrong with your arrangements, I’ve left word with Domenico where to get in touch with me at Monte Carlo.”

  It was an entirely generous thought, yet it disturbed her for the first part of the lazy sun-filled afternoon. Her light lunch over, she strolled down to the bay and swam for half an hour in the crystal clear water, glorying in the feel of it against her skin and the warmth of the sun on her face. When she looked around her it seemed incredible that anything so sinister as her meeting with the Frenchman could ever have happened here at all. The sky and the sea and the deep green pines fringing the double headlands all looked completely innocent of guile and the villa gazed down at her blandly, smiling away her fears.

  Yet underneath it all she could feel the same sense of hopelessness that her amnesia had brought in its train and the blankness that so often brought her to the edge of despair.

  I’ve got to find out the truth, she told herself doggedly. I've got to discover what it’s all about. Even one tiny clue to the past will be better than nothing.

  John Ordley had advised her to follow up any clue. Within reason, of course, he had meant, and somehow she would have given a great deal for the reassurance of his presence at that moment.

  The taxi came for her at four o’clock, another green Renault, driven by a handsome young Italian with dark flashing eyes and a mass of black curling hair that pushed his peaked cap permanently onto the back of his head. He sang almost all the way to Nice with a happy abandonment that raised Adele’s spirits a little and made her smile.

  “Domenico,” she asked when they were nearly there, “do you know a place called The Silver Dragon? I think it might be a restaurant or a cafe.”

  For the first time she asked herself if she had been wise to make the journey. The Silver Dragon could be a dive in the lowest quarter of the town, a haunt of criminals and cutthroats for all she knew.