He laughed until his sides shook.
“You shall give your own orders to my steward,” he consented. “He speaks French.”
“There must be plenty of ice for the champagne,” she insisted.
“We will have an iceberg,” he promised.
“And dinner must not be for at least an hour.”
“Agreed.”
“Then I stay,” she decided.
Suzanne threw herself upon the settee and picked up one of the French papers.
“Before dinner,” she announced, “I like to drink three cocktails. Send for your steward and give him the orders. I am ready for the first one now.”
A steward made his appearance, received his orders and departed. Suzanne threw down the paper and jumped to her feet just in time to evade a caress.
“I shall now explore your saloon,” she exclaimed. “Show me everything. Where is that funny-looking map with the black dots you had on the table the last time I was here?”
“That was not meant for observation,” he grunted. “It is in the safe.”
“Show it me,” she begged.
“But why? You could not understand a line of it. It is a naval affair and you know nothing of the sea.”
“Show me something else then. I do not care what. Tell me where you are going when you leave here.”
The Admiral sighed.
“It will not be a pleasant voyage. I am of the old régime and to leave Constantinople was to me a tragedy.”
“You are going to Constantinople?”
“That way,” he admitted.
“Why?” she asked. “There is no fighting anywhere.”
“The average warship lives for about eighteen years and spends possibly eighteen hours fighting.”
“And the rest of the time?”
“Oh, practice—exercises—manoeuvres.”
“What are you going to do now,” she persisted, “when you leave here, I mean, and when do you leave here?”
“The little miss is curious,” he remarked, looking at her out of the corners of his eyes.
“I am curious about everything,” she confessed. “If you are not going to fight anyone why are those beautiful guns uncovered?”
“Not for use,” he assured her. “We are on a special mission and, Mademoiselle, even though one is blind with love for the most beautiful of the fairies who ever trod the earth, one does not talk to her about the work.”
She looked at him reproachfully.
“You do not trust me.”
“It is the nature of our race,” he confided, “never to trust a woman. We love them but we do not trust.”
“I do not think I shall stay for dinner after all,” Suzanne declared, swinging herself to her feet.
He pulled her down almost roughly.
“You are here and you will stay,” he insisted, with a new note in his tone. “I shall place a sentry on the gangway. My little Suzanne, you cannot play too much with an elderly man who loves you. You have accepted my invitation and you shall dine with me.”
She shrugged her shoulders. After all, she liked him a little better in this mood. The cocktails were brought. She drank hers with approval. He attempted his and spat it out.
“Méchant!” she exclaimed.
“I never eat or drink what I do not like,” he grunted, his thick red lips pursed with disgust. “Sour things are like thin women—they are nothing to us.”
“I am not fat like your Turkish beauties.”
He felt her arm.
“You have the beauty of an angel.”
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she laughed. “You talk like a schoolboy in love—and one has not yet dined.”
Nevertheless, it seemed as though Suzanne’s mission were foredoomed to failure. With dinner the Admiral, vastly more personable in his mess kit,—except that he reeked of scent from his bath,—was a little more coherent, a shade more dignified, but absolutely determined. Suzanne tried all her wiles in vain. In the end she ceased her questioning, dismissed the subject which lay nearest to her heart, and became her old self—provocative, at times almost tender. She had no more difficulty. The thing became almost too easy.
At midnight, humming a gay tune to herself but shivering with fear, she ran gaily down the gangplank, bade the astonished sentry, who looked more than half inclined to stop her, a mocking good-night, and tripped up the steps to the Avenue de la Poissonnerie. She jumped into a little voiture.
“Drive towards the Jetée Casino,” she told the cocher. “As soon as we meet a taxi, stop. I pay you well—four times the fare—if you find a taxi quickly.”
Crack went the man’s whip. She looked fearfully around. The Quay seemed deserted. There was no sign of movement upon the cruiser. Suddenly, she saw a light flash out from one of the portholes. Behind it was the cabin from which she had fled! She leaned over to the cocher shivering. He flogged his horse, only to pull it almost off its haunches at the corner of one of the streets leading to the market.
“Voilà un taxi,” he pointed out.
She thrust a hundred-franc note into the taxi-man’s hand and whispered an address.
“Vite, vite!” she cried.
The taxicab man knew her and laughed. He flourished his cap.
“As Mademoiselle says,” he agreed, and counted the traffic laws as nothing.
Another hundred-franc note and a storm of thanks. Suzanne chose to seek the quickest refuge by entering the vast premises of the International Bureau through the Café des Oiseaux Noirs. It was crowded with a very unsavoury lot of men, but the etiquette of the place prevailed. No one stared at her, no one watched her as she flitted through to the private exit. Madame lent her a hand there. Monsieur patted her on the shoulder.
“Gently, little one,” he advised as he opened the door. “Monsieur will wait.”
She threw them a laughing rejoinder. Already she was well on her way to recovery. She sped down the passage, up some steps, through a door which she opened with a kick, along more passages, downstairs and up—until at last she reached the door of one of the reception rooms of the Bureau. In a moment it was open. She sprang through and, turning round, closed it with a quick passionate movement. Fear had come back to her. She scarcely noticed who it was who had admitted her.
“Listen!” she cried.
“One hears nothing,” Catherine Oronoff reassured her. “More trouble, Suzanne?”
Suzanne shook the door. It was firmly in its place, fastened with a spring lock. She rushed to the window, listened intently, opened it just a crack and peered out. The road below was deserted, the whole square was quiet. She staggered back and sank into a chair.
“More suicides?” the Russian girl asked calmly.
Suzanne searched in her bag with feverish fingers. She drew out a crumpled roll of parchment and thrust it into Catherine’s hand.
“Lock that up,” she begged. “Please—quickly! You have the keys of the safes. Oh, do not stand there looking at me! Someone may come.”
Catherine Oronoff glanced at what she was holding, then she crossed the room swiftly, unlocked the big safe which stood against the wall behind her chair, placed the parchment inside, reset the combination and turned away.
“Well,” she remarked, “whatever this precious thing is that you have committed murder for, it is safe now. Do not faint—be a good girl.”
“Where is—he?” Suzanne demanded.
“In the wireless room. There are messages coming through late to-night.”
“I wish I could see him,” Suzanne faltered. “I think if I heard his voice I should leave off trembling.”
With a contemptuous gesture Catherine turned to her desk, opened a drawer and drew out a flask of brandy. She filled a small glass and brought it across to Suzanne, who swallowed it at a gulp.
“Are you in serious trouble?” she asked.
“I might be,” Suzanne admitted. “I was terrified. I lost my nerve. That old Turk—oh, he was horrible!”
“Ours is not exactly Sunday School work, you should remember,” Catherine remarked. “It is no use your losing your nerve. Mr. Humberstone might come in at any moment. If he sees you in this state he will not trust you again.”
The brandy was doing its work. Suzanne was sitting up in her chair, her open vanity case before her, when the door on the other side of the room was quietly opened and closed. Mark came towards them. She rose to her feet. She was not exactly steady but in her eyes flamed the light of success.
“I have done it,” she announced. “I have got it.”
“Got what?” he asked.
“Suzanne is a little upset,” Catherine interposed drily. “She has a plan or chart of some sort from that Turkish gunboat in the harbour. I have locked it away.”
She crossed the room towards the safe.
“It—it was not easy,” Suzanne faltered. “I lost my nerve—very nearly. He was obstinate, that old Turk. He seemed so easy, and then he changed.”
“So it was the Admiral you suborned,” Mark said smiling.
Catherine returned with the plan in her hand. Mark took it from her and spread it open. For several minutes he stood utterly and entirely absorbed, then he rolled it up again and pointed to the safe.
“That is a very valuable possession,” he admitted. “Lock it up carefully. Tell us all about it.”
“As you know,” she recounted, a different girl now that she was under Mark’s protection, “I had no fortune with the Commander. Twice I have visited the Admiral. I went this afternoon to tea and was nearly sick with sweetmeats and sweet coffee. The Commander rang up from San Rafael. He had gone over there to visit a British warship. He asked for leave until the morning. The Admiral was very pleased.”
“Don’t hurry,” Mark begged, as he shook out a cigarette from his case and lit it. “I am beginning to be jealous of you, Mademoiselle Suzanne. You are getting what they call all the fun of the fair.”
She shuddered. The fear was not quite gone.
“I think I will have no more fun just yet,” she said. “Well, the Admiral said ‘yes’ to the Commander. Then he insisted that I stay for dinner. I stayed. I tried so hard to get him to talk about where he was going or what that plan had been. It was useless. More and more cunning he became. Still I stayed. We had dinner and drank champagne. Then there was coffee in the other room. There was nothing to be done. The old man was terrible. I—put something in his coffee!”
Mark nodded.
“A reasonable thing to do,” he murmured.
“For some time,” she went on, “nothing happened. Then all of a sudden he threw himself back, he was perspiring all over and his face looked awful. He tried to speak and could not. Then he began to groan. I tried to pull him up, but I think he was unconscious. He made awful noises, though, in his throat. I felt sure that he was dying.”
“All very interesting,” Mark observed. “And then?”
“I hurried out—took his keys, and opened the safe where he had told me the chart was. I snatched it out and then I rushed away. I ran down the gangway. The sentry tried to stop me but I was up in the Avenue de la Poissonnerie before he could make up his mind. I got a carriage, then changed into a taxi. Here I am!”
Mark nodded approval.
“You have done well, Suzanne,” he told her. “You have brought me a document of great importance.”
“The hundred thousand francs?”
“Are yours,” he replied with a little bow, “to-morrow morning or to-night—which you will. Meanwhile, remain in your room. You are safe there but nowhere else.”
Suzanne made her way towards the door. From the threshold she curtsied first to Catherine, then to Mark. Then she danced down the corridor towards the wing of the building where her apartments were. The terror had passed. She was no longer haunted by that old man’s face. She heard no more that gurgling cry in her ears.
Suzanne was riotously happy, and because she was happy she found the idea of sleep impossible. She looked longingly at the telephone, but, alas, its use for private purposes—except with special permission—was sternly forbidden by the rules of the Bureau. She slipped out of her gown and practised a few steps of one of the latest dances in front of a mirror, humming gaily to herself. One hundred thousand francs! No debts, plenty of new frocks, a small but precious piece of jewellery which she had long coveted, and fifty thousand francs into the stocking. Bless the old Turk…!
She wearied soon of her pas seul and, fired with a sudden idea, glanced at her watch. It was barely one o’clock. The idea was so wonderful that she was swept off her feet. Away went the remainder of her clothes. Already she hated every garment she had worn that evening. She threw open the door of the bathroom, took a hasty plunge in perfumed water, shook out a marvellous confection of peach-coloured chiffon which she had not as yet worn, paid a good deal of attention to her hair, drew on her stockings and shoes, threw a little cape around her shoulders, and stole out. In less than five minutes she was in the spot she loved most on earth—Maxim’s—greeted by bowing waiters and maîtres d’hôtels, the heavy atmosphere of the room already in her nostrils, her feet moving to the music. Very soon she was surrounded. One of the best tables was hers. She sat there a reigning queen, with an admirer on either side. Champagne was poured into her glass. She drank feverishly. The wine was like a new elixir. All those hateful memories in the background—the cramped cabin, the water gurgling against the side, the fat man with the protuberant eyes lying groaning at her feet, his eyes staring at her, the horrible gaze of a man racked with the fear of death. Ugh! Another glass of wine. A dance with Monsieur le Comte. How he danced! Breathless she regained her place. The ugly memories had vanished. Fresh admirers were always coming. The leader of the orchestra waited for her commands. She chose the music—danced and danced again. Then breathless she leaned back in her place.
“I am exhausted,” she cried. “I must rest. And behold my supper! No more dances for half an hour. Play what you like, André. I am starving. My dinner—oh, it was not a dinner—it was a funeral feast! Now I eat indeed. I starve.”
More champagne—delicious food. André was playing a little morceau for her—something of his own composition. What a world! Jazz music again. In the crash of those opening bars her little cry was unheard, the clatter of the fork she dropped was unnoticed. She sat stiffly in her seat, her eyes were fixed upon the door. It was a terrible vision. Inside, coolly divesting himself of cape and hat, untwining the white scarf from around his throat, stood the Turkish Commander. A maître d’hôtel solicitously pointed towards a table. The Commander glanced around the room. His eyes rested for a moment upon Suzanne’s, and though a few seconds before she had been warm and happy and as near heaven as she was ever likely to go, she felt a queer chill—colder and colder. The blood in her veins seemed to be turning into ice. She must be dying. There was a haze in the room. With slow deliberate footsteps she could see the Commander walking towards her, a very personable figure, well and correctly dressed, an object of apprehension to no one except to her. No one interfered with him. If he chose to pay his respects to Mademoiselle Suzanne what more natural? They were the two handsomest persons in the room. The man who had been sprawling over Suzanne’s table gave place. This newcomer had the air of claiming anything he desired. He reached the table. He leaned towards Suzanne.
“Mademoiselle,” he ordered, “you will return to me that chart.”
“I have no chart,” she faltered.
She saw his hand come stealing out of his jacket pocket. It was underneath his cuff that something glittered, something was coming a little more into evidence. Surely someone could see that he had come to murder her! Someone would help. She opened her lips. No sound.
“You will give me the chart, mademoiselle?”
Five seconds. He raised his arm. The gun was in his hand now, hidden from the others by a napkin he had snatched up. He leaned closer. Arm and gun were plainly visible now. Simultaneously, as it seemed to everyone in t
he room, there was a loud explosion, the crash of the mirror behind Suzanne’s seat, and the disappearance of the Turkish officer.
One second, two seconds, three seconds…The smell of gunpowder was in her nostrils. I must be dead, she thought. Little pieces of glass were falling down behind her. She bent over the table. The Commander was lying upon the floor. Someone was standing there—someone whom she had seen following him through the mist down the room, someone whose presence she thought must have been a dream. Four seconds, five seconds, six…She saw the Turk’s hand steal out onto the dance floor—no longer a swaying mass of people—deserted. With a quick convulsive movement he had the gun once more in his hand, pressed it to his own temple. There were two quick reports and the gun fell on to the floor. The Commander’s head fell back hideously. The man who had struck up his arm disappeared amongst the little oncoming rush of waiters and guests; but without a doubt the Commander was dead, and the hole from his first bullet was there in the mirror about a foot to the right of Suzanne.
CHAPTER XIV
Table of Contents
Monsieur Déchanel, attached to the staff of the Chef de la Sûreté of the district, and paying a morning call upon Mark, shook his head gravely as he accepted a chair and a cigarette. He had the air of a man bowed down with anxiety.
“Am I in trouble again, Monsieur Déchanel?” Mark asked with a smile.
The police official gesticulated eloquently.
“To protect you, sir, is becoming an impossibility,” he declared. “Your Mademoiselle Suzanne, too! C’est inouï! A week or so ago I smuggle the body of one of her victims, who blew out his brains for her sake, onto his battleship for burial, and I aid her escape so that she reaches shelter here unseen and unharmed. And now again an attempted murder—a suicide in Maxim’s at her feet—the one night place in Nice which is under my personal supervision! And, worse than all, you yourself ask for death—risking a life as valuable as yours for the sake of a little cocotte! Monsieur Humberstone, you depress me. I shall tell my chief that I can no longer be responsible for your safety. The situation becomes impossible.”
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