But why had Douglas turned himself into a valet, when he had lifted his pupil to be the wife of a baronet? The explanation was simple, and Helena did not hesitate to give it to me. As she had changed from a girl into a young woman, Douglas had realized that her youthful charm was ripening into a mature beauty, and decided that with such an associate, he could do better than steal necklaces and pocketbooks. He now began to dream of a project that would establish both of them once for all in an undisputed fortune; he would arrange a dazzling marriage for Helena, and once the husband had disappeared — naturally or otherwise — take his place.
Meanwhile, he had posed as Helena’s brother and begun to pull wires in India. In the salons of Bombay, they were presented to the governor of the northern provinces, who had become famous through his services rendered the Empire during the troubles in Afghanistan. At this point Sir Archibald Skarlett appears on the scene, a dour Scotsman, who had given proof of his capacity for calculated cruelty in the recent uprising. He fell in love at once with Helena, and married her over the protests of his younger brother, Sir Philip.
In spite of the precautions taken by Douglas, Sir Philip suspected that there was more to Helena’s career than her husband knew. But at the first words of this to Sir Archibald, there was a rupture between the two brothers. Sir Archibald could not conceive that he was the prey of a pair of criminals, but Helena had done nothing to win him. In fact, she dreaded the marriage. Sir Archibald’s age and reputation terrified her.
“Don’t be frightened,” Douglas had told her. “Your husband is old, and has worn himself out in his career in the East. He cannot last more than two or three years more, and then you will be free. We will both be free.”
“Two or three years with a cruel, decrepit and neurasthenic husband! That was the hell that I saw prepared for me.”
But Douglas was unshakable.
“So I let myself be married. And Sir Archibald was mad about me. For a smile he would cover me with jewels. I had any amount of money I wanted at my disposal, and Douglas abused his opportunity. My husband learned that three-fourths of all he gave me passed into my brother’s hands. Finally he forbade me to see him again and put Fathi in charge of me. Now you can understand why this fabulously rich Lady Helena cannot even spend an evening at the Casino unless she has someone at her elbow to lend her a hundred thousand francs!”
Douglas had vanished and resumed his rôle of Mr. Flow. He carried out a number of profitable ventures while waiting for Sir Archibald to do him the kindness of dying. But by some miracle, the baronet’s health began to improve as soon as he left the Orient and returned to Europe. A stay in Italy apparently did him much good. Mr. Flow, growing anxious about his prospects for succeeding to the fortune, decided to supervise matters from nearer at hand. It was then that Sir Archibald became acquainted with Mr. Hooker, from whom he was soon inseparable. The latter, however, found himself obliged to leave his good friends, the baronet and Lady Helena, for important business called him to America. But before leaving, he did the baronet a final service by recommending to him the most perfectly trained of all valets, named Durin, who was to serve him faithfully during the following two years.
But if Durin was on the ground, it meant that Mr. Flow found Sir Archibald too slow in dying.
“That is what I cannot stand!” cried Helena. “All the rest was exciting and harmless. But not murder.... That is different.”
Her voice had become serious, and I saw her knuckles grow white as she clenched her hands — a reassuring sight for me. However unscrupulous her exploits, at least she shrank from murder.
This left us only the future to consider; was I prepared to escape to the other side of the world with Helena and the several millions that her jewels represented? She left no doubts in my mind as to what would have to be accomplished before we could begin our life in the Argentine:
“For me to escape, with the jewels, is impossible,” she explained. “We should have Fathi on our heels in an hour. And besides I should be recognized. Sir Archibald would run to the scene... and we should hear from Durin promptly. Don’t have any illusion about that!... No, I must be beyond suspicion... and you, too, of course, while we are planning our little trip.”
“Beyond suspicion of what?”
“Of the job?”
“What job?”
“Ruddy, you never understand anything.... Listen: some night soon you are to slip into Fathi’s room and steal the jewels... then you disappear, and I join you later.”
I stared at her in amazement.
“I am to steal the jewels from Fathi? But I am not a burglar. I don’t know how—”
“I’ll teach you how, my dear...”
CHAPTER V
YES, YES! BURGLARY under those conditions would not be stealing. Oh, she explained that to me often enough! This would be, in fact, the opposite of a theft! I was merely to bring back to its owner a fortune that she had the legal right to dispose of. Merely a question of moving the jewels from one room to another.
Still, there were certain acts that I could not imagine myself doing. Breaking open a door, picking a lock!
“Think it over,” she said, “I assure you, it is worth it.”
And, taking pity on my inexperience, she outlined the necessary procedure to me:
Adjoining Helena’s apartment was a room which Sir Archibald had rented with the apartment. With the bolt drawn, it communicated with Helena’s bedroom. It was there that Fathi slept, guarding the jewels in the bronze casket, which was placed in a small closet in the wall. Against this closet the Hindu, who never slept in a bed, arranged his couch; a straw mat and a cushion. The door between the two apartments was left ajar at night, and at the slightest call, Fathi hurried to his mistress. Mary slept in the servants’ quarters.
Helena would call. She would suddenly be taken very ill. Fathi would hasten to her side and she would clutch him with the fear of death. She guaranteed to handle that end of it. Meanwhile, I would be busy, using the lavatory across the hall from Fathi’s room as my base of operations.
From that point on, Helena would take charge. The whole matter would be finished the same night, as she had already made her arrangements with a jeweler who did business in the hotel and whose rooms were in the same wing as Helena’s. He would run no risk, for he would receive the jewels from the hands of their owner. He would pay her on the spot and be given a receipt. And the casket would be out of the hotel before dawn.
Certainly it all sounded simple. Yet to me it seemed complicated enough. And having returned to my room, I went over and over in my mind the instructions she had given me.
My God, how hot those August nights were! My window stood wide open, but not a breath of air came in from the sea. My throat was parched. I was still dressed in my dinner clothes, and the mirror showed me the face of Arthur J. Hooker. Victor’s materials evidently were the best, to withstand such a temperature. I passed a brush over my hair, touched up the scar, and went out. I felt that I must walk, I must see somebody. No, a drink was what I needed! The casino was a furnace, the Hall of Chance like a corner in hell. The women in low-cut gowns crowded about the tables with handfuls of gold.
And I did not even have a twenty-franc note. Helena was right; it was intolerable.
But there was still a little change clinking in my pockets, and I found my way to the bar, where Harry at once pounced on me, and drinks were ordered.
As if by magic, members of the International Bar Flies of the World appeared all around me. A set of dice was called for, and a steady run of bad luck added round after round on my account. “After a few gin fizzes and that rum cocktail,” suggested Harry, “there’s nothing to do but break out a bottle of champagne.”
I was still counting on a change of luck to get me out of the hole I was in, but again the dice refused to smile on me. This was what came of stepping out of the hotel for a little stroll. A thousand franc note would not be enough to pay my bill now.
When the par
ty broke up, I fumbled in my pockets, as if feeling for my money.
“Never mind the bill, sir,” said the bartender. “I’ll take care of that.” (He must have seen me with Lady Helena.) “You can pay any time you wish.”
With a condescending wave of my hand, I slipped away. So I was in debt now too! I owed sixteen hundred francs to a bartender. Lady Helena would be proud of her pupil.
Without knowing exactly how I got there, I found myself at her door. She opened to me at once. “I was waiting for you,” she said, “I heard you go out.” She looked me over with a glance of understanding; Mr. Hooker’s brick-red cheeks flamed into scarlet by now, and my words came thickly.
Helena smiled.
“You are just in good form to talk seriously,” she said.
“Helena,” I began with dignity, “I should like to know... if you will permit me to ask... what would happen if Fathi came back into his room while I was... well while I was... busy.”
“He would grab you like an eagle picking up a chicken, my angel. But I should come in at once and ask him to let you go, and explain that you had acted on my orders. All I would have to say would be: ‘No scandal, Fathi!’”
“You would say, ‘No scandal!’... Yes, that’s logical, isn’t it? I hadn’t thought of that” (curious how hard it was to say ‘th’ at times!). “Of course.”
“Perfectly logical. Fathi would have the jewels and there would be no scandal.”
“No scandal at all.”
“Only he would send word to Sir Archibald, and from that day Mr. Hooker would cease to be Sir Archibald’s friend.”
“Thass logical too.”
“Isn’t it?”
“But Helena,” I persevered, “suppose somebody discovered me in the hall at the lock of Fathi’s door?”
“In that case, there would be a scandal, but we would hush it up at once. I would be listening from my room. At any disturbance, I would appear. You would be a devoted friend of mine who had taken pity on me because my husband had left me penniless, and you had consented to get my jewels for me, which certainly belong to me and not to Fathi. I would arrange with the manager, who is very nice and who doesn’t want a scandal either. How does that sound?”
“Thass logical, too.”
“And don’t forget that if any trouble does come, it won’t be you who will suffer from it, but poor Mr. Hooker.”
“I shan’t forget that for a minute,” I promised.
“How could anything be easier than this whole affair?” asked Helena.
And, truly, it seemed to me that nothing could be easier. It was so easy that there were tears in my eyes when I said good night to her and stumbled back to my own room.
A marvellous woman! And full of ideas. For a moment I considered going back to her apartment to explain to her how full of ideas she was.
I stretched myself on the bed, fully dressed, and slept until noon. Then I pulled my clothes off and crawled in between the cool sheets. It was five o’clock when I awoke a second time. My head was splitting as I dragged myself to my feet. But an hour later, after taking a cold shower and ringing for a stiff drink, I was once more on my feet.
Helena had spent the afternoon at the races, where a bookmaker had given her credit for ten thousand francs which she had lost.
“Take off those dinner clothes,” she ordered, when I appeared at her room, “and come back here for me. You have ten minutes to do it in.”
And as I stared at her stupidly:
“Are you still asleep? Hurry up!” And she called Mary to help her take off her gown.
I found her, a quarter of an hour later, in a tailored costume, her head wrapped in a small black toque. She smiled at my bewilderment.
“Are you awake and sober now?” she asked. “You’ll need your wits about you, Ruddy.”
“You can depend on me.”
“Good! Have you thought about that unlucky Mr. Hooker?”
“I have thought about him, and I hope the poor fellow is not going to be too much inconvenienced by what I shall do.”
“Now I begin to like you,” said Helena. “You can’t work with me and be solemn as an owl. But you are improving. Get the bag out from under my bed. It isn’t going to bite you. You came here with it. Nobody will be surprised to see you go out with it. Besides, we are going to bring it back.”
I picked up the cursed bag, which had never seemed so cumbersome before. Where were we going with it? This was not a part of the program. My hand shook and the sweat broke out on my brow. Helena walked unconcernedly down the corridor ahead of me.
In the lobby I was once more besieged by bellboys eager to carry the bag. I defended it weakly, until Helena exclaimed, in impatience:
“Please let them take the bag to my car, Mr. Hooker!”
“Where are we going?” I asked, when the door of the car was closed and we were sitting together in the darkness.
“For a ride.”
We soon left the main highway, and Helena slowed down to pick her way along a dark road under a double row of elms, heavy with darkness and silence. I realized gradually that we were circling the walls of a vast estate. Finally she stopped the car and stepped lightly to the ground.
She glanced rapidly up and down the road, across the fields behind us, and then up to the sky:
“Quick!” she said. “The moon will be up in a little while.”
There was a tone of command in her voice that I could not disobey. Reluctantly, I lifted the bag from the floor of the car, and climbed out after her.
She flitted ahead of me, under the low-branching elms, to a postern gate, the only entrance to the estate from this side. I lowered the bag to the ground and waited.
From an inside pocket of her coat, she drew a keyring, laden with heavy keys, and without hesitation lifted the one that fitted the lock. A moment later, I found myself in a long vegetable garden. Helena herself picked up the bag and closed the gate.
“What are you afraid of?” she asked as I looked anxiously about. “Can’t you see there’s nobody here?”
“Except us.”
She shrugged her shoulders. We were in the rear of a huge Norman villa, with wings extending out on both sides.
Another key that found its lock without fumbling, and we were in the kitchen, obviously the kitchen of a millionaire. Long rows of shining pans hung against the walls; the room was as spacious as a banquet hall. I had time for only a glance before the door shut and we were in darkness. Then a single shaft of light appeared between Helena’s fingers. She was holding a dark lantern. And, in a quiet voice, she commanded:
“Open the bag. We have work to do.”
CHAPTER VI
IT WAS HELENA who opened the bag. The nickel and silver tools, gleaming under the flash of her lantern, lay neatly arranged in their silk pockets. This vision of surgical instruments for drawers, windows, and locks, was like a dash of cold water in my face.
“No, Helena,” I protested. “Anything but this! This was not a part of our plan.”
She broke into a laugh.
“But I have to teach you the trade, don’t I? Pull yourself together, Ruddy. Where do you suppose you are?”
“I don’t know. But I do know that we should both be better off at the hotel.”
“No, we have the whole night to ourselves. I promise you that no one will come to disturb us before morning. The porter is at the other end of the park, in the lodge.”
“Let’s get out while we can.”
Again Lady Helena merely laughed.
“It’s madness,” I whispered. “Suppose the owner, or tenants, came in?”
“But I am the tenant!”
She explained then that the villa, known as “The Elms,” had been rented by Sir Archibald for the summer, and that, with Lady Helena, he had occupied it for a fortnight. Summoned to Scotland by important business, he had abandoned Deauville on a day’s notice, leaving Helena only Fathi and Mary. Helena had expressed a desire to stay at the hotel during
his absence, and Sir Archibald had consented. He had expected then to come back’ in three weeks, but his latest letters announced that he would probably be gone until the middle of September.
“So you see I am in my own home here,” concluded Helena.
“Then why all this concealment?”
“So that no one would see us come in. In the morning, the porter will get a shock when he comes to open the windows. I’d like to see his face; but it won’t be any funnier than yours is now, I assure you.”
“Still I don’t understand.... What are we going to do here?”
“A little burglary in my rooms!”
“But your things are all at the hotel. We can’t carry furniture away.”
“No, we are going to draw a blank.”
“Draw a blank?”
“Yes, and tomorrow you will read in the papers: ‘Last night burglars entered The Elms, the villa rented for the season by Sir Archibald Skarlett, who is at present in Scotland. But the thieves got nothing for their pains, and left as they had come, by an automobile!’”
“I see — they had ‘drawn a blank.’”
“No, you are still stupid. It wasn’t a blank for them, for they knew that they wouldn’t find anything. We are doing it just to keep in form.”
“Why didn’t you say that in the first place.”
“I wanted you to know how it feels, when it’s not just to keep in form.”
The game was beginning to amuse me now. We were in her own house, no one could say a word to us. Certainly, Lady Helena was privileged to choose her own forms of distraction.
“Button up your coat,” she ordered, “so the white shirt won’t show. I am going to put on my costume. Wait for me here.”
She felt in the bag and drew out a second lantern, which she handed to me, explaining how it was to be used. A practical and handy device, that might be useful even to an honest man.
Collected Works of Gaston Leroux Page 460