The situation would have been clear to a dullard’s eye so Gregory wasted no time in thought. Seizing a bottle from a nearby table, he knocked it sharply against the wall, smashing off the punt. Then, waving the jagged end, he sailed into the fray.
2
The Coded Telegram
As Gregory leapt he saw a knife flash in the hand of one of the thugs. For a second it looked as if the vicious stroke would pin the young man to the floor, but Gregory struck with all his force. The jagged bottle bit through the flimsy covering of the dock rat’s shoulder and into the grimy flesh beneath. With a sudden scream he dropped his knife and clutched at the torn and bleeding muscle.
The other two swung round, still crouching in the corner over the prostrate man, to face Gregory. With his free hand he seized a chair and flung it—just as the nearest was about to spring. It caught the man below the knees. He staggered wildly, grabbed at a frail table and went down with it on top of him. The other whipped out a knife and, with a quick twist which Gregory recognised in sudden fear as the manner of the expert, drew back his arm to throw it.
But they had all reckoned without the man in the airman’s jacket. He was a hefty fellow, well over six feet tall, and broad in proportion. Despite his recent gruelling, it seemed that he had plenty of fight left in him for his muscular hand closed like a vice round the ankle of the knife thrower and, with a violent jerk, he brought him crashing to the floor.
Then he scrambled to his feet, pushed the girl roughly from his path, gasped out ‘Thanks a lot’ to Gregory, and dashed from the room.
The wounded thug was cursing vilely as he tried to staunch the flow of blood from his shoulder. The other two picked themselves up, and the knife thrower, a sinuous dark young fellow with crisp curly hair, cried wildly, ‘Vite! Vite! Arrêtez-le!’
Without so much as a glance in Gregory’s direction all three thrust themselves through the door and pounded down the stairs in pursuit of their late victim.
Gregory turned to the girl. She seemed to have recovered her self-possession completely and was watching him with a curious intensity beneath which, he just suspected, lay a faint amusement. He raised his eyebrows and smiled.
‘I can excuse many things in the young,’ he said softly, ‘but not bad manners. Now, it would have been quite impossible for me to leave Mademoiselle so suddenly and without even one little word of farewell or a deep sigh of regret. In fact,’ he added seriously as if the thought had just come to him, ‘I should find it difficult to leave Mademoiselle at all!’
‘You follow me from the Casino. I recognise you,’ she stated softly, ignoring his remarks.
‘Lucky for you I did,’ Gregory replied promptly.
She was French as he had supposed but obviously English came quite easily to her. It was the first time that he had had the leisure to study her at close quarters and the quick smile which twitched his thin lips showed that he was in no way disappointed.
A long coat of mink with a heavy double collar now hid her graceful figure, but above it rose her heart-shaped face with its broad low brow and little pointed chin. He admired again the dark pencilled eyebrows which curved back like the two ends of a cupid’s bow, the points rising almost to her temples, and the sleek black hair, parted on the side and flattened on the crown but spreading into a mass of tight jet curls behind her small pink ears and on the nape of her neck. Then he noted the perfection of her skin. It was fresh and healthy as that of a child, and such light make-up as she wore was obviously only a concession to fashion.
As her large dark eyes held his with an unflickering gaze he was suddenly aware that she was no young girl but a very dangerous woman. The type which makes all other women bristle with jealousy and suspicion from the moment they enter a room, and for whom men have killed each other, and themselves, throughout the ages.
For the first time for years a real thrill ran through Gregory’s body and even in that moment the thought came to him how wise he had been not to fritter away his emotions on lesser game while there were still women like this in the world.
‘We must get out of here,’ he said quietly but there was an imperiousness in his voice which had been lacking before, for the noise of the chase had hardly died away below when he caught the sound of hurrying feet from somewhere in the rear of the house. Next moment a door at the back of the room behind a small bar was thrust open and a thick-set bald-headed man in his shirt-sleeves burst in upon them.
As the new-comer’s small dark eyes lit upon the overturned furniture he began shouting in voluble French.
‘What is this! You make a scene in my respectable house! You break the furniture. I see blood! There is murder done! I will call the police!’
‘Shut up!’ snapped Gregory. ‘You were in it yourself I expect. Any more from you and I’ll give you a taste of this.’ He waved the end of the broken bottle, which he still held, aggressively.
The man gnawed his walrus moustache in apparent indecision while he eyed Gregory stupidly for a moment, then he suddenly dived back behind the rampart of his bar and ran from the room as quickly as he had come.
Gregory wasted no time in argument. If the landlord of the place was not in with the thugs he was now making a bee-line for the telephone and the police would be arriving at any moment. Gregory knew just how inconvenient a French police inquiry could prove, even to innocent persons. They might hold him for days as a material witness against the thugs. To be mixed up in anything of that sort was the last thing he desired. But the lesson of Drake and the game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe was one which had always appealed to him. Time enough now to impress the lady first and run from the French police afterwards. So instead of hustling her out he dropped the bottle, held open the door and, removing his hat with a graceful bow, said courteously:
‘Mademoiselle, the time has come for you and me to find pleasanter surroundings. I have a cab below.’
‘I thank you, Monsieur,’ she replied evenly, and the suggestion of a smile which played about her red lips as she walked from the room showed that she was not unappreciative of his poise and gallantry.
As Gregory made his bow, his eye had fallen on a flat, black notecase lying a few feet away from the corner where the tussle had taken place. He stooped swiftly, picked it up, and thrust it in his pocket. Then he strode after the girl and shepherded her swiftly down the stairs.
The street was still empty except for his waiting taxi a hundred yards away. The voices of the few night-birds now raised in excited argument within the café drowned the sound of their footsteps as he took the girl’s arm in a confident grip and with long, but apparently unhurried strides, led her to the cab.
‘The Metropole, Deauville,’ he told the driver, and the man nodded with a quick grin as they climbed in.
The airman and the thugs had probably taken the other direction, Gregory assumed, since the taxi-man said nothing of the chase. Anyhow, the fellow could grin until he burst, for he, Gregory, had got the girl, and what a girl. She seemed to radiate warmth by merely sitting beside him as they bumped over the pavé of the old streets back to the harbour, and a faint delicious odour, not so much a definite perfume as the scent of daily coiffured hair, freshly washed silks and a scrupulously tended person—the hall-marks of a superbly soignée woman—filled the darkness of the taxi. The problem was—how to keep her?
‘What would you like me to call you?’ Gregory asked her suddenly.
‘My name is Sabine.’
‘Delightful—and the other half?’
‘Monsieur is curious, but I do not consider it necessary that I tell. We part soon and it is not—er—convenable that we meet again.’
‘Parfaitement.’ Gregory bowed to her decision but with mental reservations. ‘Sabine it is then but you seem to forget that the police are probably taking down our descriptions at the moment. Unless we can keep clear of them we shall both spend the rest of the night in the lock-up.’
‘You think that—pas de blague?’
�
��I certainly do. That’s why I told this chap to go to the Metropole—and here we are.’
He paid off the taxi with a lavish tip and followed her into the hotel.
‘I leave you only for the moment,’ she said as they reached the entre-salle and he watched her walk in the direction of the ladies’ cloak-room.
But Gregory was not to be caught like that. She might give him the slip if he went into the lounge and sat down at a table so, instead, he took up a position where he could keep the door under observation and occupied himself by examining the notecase which he had collected from the floor of the upstairs café.
A quick survey of its contents caused him to smile with pleasure. Then he slipped the case back into his pocket and, lighting a cigarette, stood waiting for Sabine.
She appeared again a moment later and he noted with satisfaction that she had not left her mink coat in the cloakroom; thus enabling him to put a completely fresh plan into operation without delay. As they passed into the lounge he took her arm again and whispered:
‘We won’t stay here. There are so few people about at this hour we’re certain to be noticed. We’ll go out through the other entrance and along to the Normandie.’
‘But why should there be people in quantity there more than here?’ she questioned.
‘There won’t,’ he answered tersely, ‘but the taxi-man set us down here so it’s as well to get out of this place as quickly as possible in case he’s questioned.’
‘As you will.’ She allowed him to lead her out on to the plage and they walked the few hundred yards to the other hotel. At the entrance he paused and faced her.
‘Listen Sabine!’ he spoke with unusual firmness. ‘Any argument will draw attention to us. I am staying here, so there must be no fuss—you understand? Do as I say or else the police will get us and we shall both spend the night in some uncomfortable gaol.’
‘But …’ She was about to make a protest.
‘Stop it,’ he cut her short abruptly. ‘I hate to remind you of the fact, but it was you who took the fellow who was attacked to the maison de rendezvous, so it is you whom the police will want to talk to. Remember, he may have been murdered by now for all we know.’
‘All right,’ she murmured and when he took her straight over to the lift and upstairs to his room she made no further protest.
‘Now,’ he said, having closed the double doors behind him and thrown his coat upon the bed, ‘I think you had better tell me what you know.’
Again she regarded him with her large, calm, unfrightened eyes. ‘How?’ she asked.
‘There’s something going on, and I want to know about it.’ Gregory’s chin jutted out as he faced her in the quiet room, shut off from the corridor by the private bathroom, clothes closet and miniature hall, with its toile de jouy hangings and rose du barri colouring, warm in the pink lights of the shaded lamps.
He took the worn notecase from his pocket again and added quietly: ‘Perhaps this will help us.’
The case contained 2,440 francs in notes of various denominations, the document which Gregory had already scanned at the Metropole, and a telegram. He spread out the latter and read it carefully.
‘This is written out in pencil; by a woman I should judge. It’s on a sending form so it has not yet been despatched; it says:
COROT CAFE DE LA CLOCHE CALAIS SIXTH 41 44 11 15 THENCE 46 SEVENTH 43 47 EIGHTH 43 AGAIN 47
Well, that doesn’t help us much, since it’s in code,’ he added. ‘But it’s interesting all the same, and confirms my ideas about your charming self. Now, once again, what do you know?’
She stared at him with a lazy insolence in her hazel eyes.
‘If I knew anything why should I tell? Also, I do not regard the chance of being questioned by the police as of sufficient importance to risk my reputation by remaining in your room.’
A sudden smile that could on occasion make Gregory’s lean face so attractive flashed over it. ‘Why?’ he said softly with a new note in his voice. ‘We are both bad hats anyway—aren’t we?’
‘Of course,’ she murmured with an answering smile. ‘And you are—how shall I say?—well, emotionant in your way—one does not often meet an Englishman with your personality—see how frank I have become. But I fear I have no time for gallantry at the moment.’
‘Haven’t you? I think you have.’ Gregory took one of her hands and kissed it.
‘No—no,’ she shook her head. ‘You are a nice person but at this time such follies are apart from me.’
‘Are they?’ He pressed nearer to her and his eyes said infinitely more than his words conveyed. But at that moment the telephone which stood on a little table near the bed shrilled loudly.
It was just behind her and she picked it up without the least hesitation. ‘Ullo,’ she said, ‘merci … ah bon! … Adieu.’ Then she replaced the receiver.
‘As I thought,’ she turned back to him. ‘That call was for me. My friend whom you have seen with me in the Casino has many ways of knowing what I do. Someone in this hotel has told him of my presence here. He assures me that all is arranged so that there is no further likelihood of my being troubled by the police.’
She smiled—a little mocking smile of triumph at Gregory. ‘You understand? I must return to my friend. This little adventure has been quite amusing and I thank you for your courtesy, but now, Monsieur—it is over.’
Gregory smiled too, ‘I hate,’ he said, ‘to seem to press you; but I think you will see the wisdom of remaining here in hiding when I tell you I know from his papers that the man whom you lured to that dive tonight was an officer from Scotland Yard. If the French police knew that they would renew their desire to interview you despite anything that your very clever friend can do. So it seems to me that you are wrong, Mademoiselle, and that this adventure has only just begun.’
3
An Interrupted Idyll
‘You mean to keep me here—against my will?’ For the first time the self-confidence faded from Sabine’s eyes. Almost instinctively she glanced behind her to see if there was another exit from the room.
Gregory faced her across the broad low bed. His back was to the only door which gave on to the miniature hallway of the suite. Tall, lean, the suggestion of a smile pulling at his thin lips, he noted with quiet satisfaction that he had at last broken through her armour of casual ease.
It was now well after one o’clock. Many of the wealthy crowd staying at the Normandie would, he knew, still be at the casino; while those who did not gamble or dance would already be in bed. The double doors, with the small hallway in between, separating the big room from the corridor, muffled the loudest sounds even in the day time; now, the unbroken hush of midnight hours pervaded the great hotel. In the soft light of the rose du barri shaded lamps against the background of the toile de jouy hangings Sabine’s dark beauty glowed warm and alluring.
Not a flicker of an eyelid betrayed Gregory’s determination to take with both hands this golden hour which it seemed that the Gods had decreed for him. The girl was no bread and butter miss but an adventuress, perhaps even a poule de luxe, one of those rare exotic women for the sake of whose caresses millionaires commit crazy follies and sometimes come to ruin, disgrace, and suicide. He had caught her fairly; he was even running some risk of trouble with the police for deliberately concealing her. She must pay toll but she should do so of her own free will in an hour or two. Gregory was by nature the joyful cynic and far too old a hand to rush his fences. He moved round the bed towards her.
‘Listen!’ he said. ‘You lured that chap in the airman’s coat down to that dive where he was set upon.’
‘Monsieur, that is not true.’
Gregory dismissed her protest with a wave of his thin muscular hand. ‘Owing to the break I gave him he may have got clean away. On the other hand, those thugs may have run him down and knifed him.’
‘No—no. If so my friend would have told me of that when he telephoned just now.’
‘Touché!’ Gre
gory exclaimed, his smile broadening into a grin. ‘A confession, my dear Sabine, that those cut-throats were in your friend’s employ, and that you knew it.’
Her dark eyes flashed. ‘Monsieur is clever but it is sometimes dangerous to know too much.’
‘A threat, eh? Come, that’s ungenerous, since you’d be in Deauville police station at this moment if I hadn’t got you out of that café. More, it’s rank ingratitude when I propose to keep you here all night to save you from arrest.’
‘My friend has said that I am in no danger of arrest.’
‘You forget that your description will have been given to the police by the patron of the café. They’ll nab you for certain if you try and leave this hotel.’
‘Nab—what is that?’
‘Pinch—arrest. All the hotel porters and taxi men in Deauville will have been warned to keep a look out for you by this time. Remember, the man whom your friend’s thugs tried to do in was an officer from Scotland Yard. When our special branch men operate on the continent they always keep in touch with the local police, so if he has escaped he will have made his report by now, and the authorities will be wanting you pretty badly.’
For a moment she was silent then, with a little sigh, she sat down on the arm of a low chair. ‘I am so tired,’ she murmured, passing her hand across her eyes. ‘Perhaps you are right, Monsieur, but it is ungallant that you should take advantage of my situation.’
Gregory reassessed his chances. Her regal self-assurance of a few moments before had suddenly disappeared. It was as though a spring inside her had given away; she sat now hunched and dejected, a rather pitiful little figure, acute anxiety in her dark eyes as to the outcome of this difficult position in which her evening’s adventure had landed her.
His experience of women made him certain that she was not shamming. She was an adventuress, of course, but not a poule, otherwise she would never have broken down like this. He was glad of that since it made the affair so much more interesting. Like a good diplomat he prepared himself to make concessions. The gods gave only in their own good time. They had been kind to place so rare a gift within his compass. Now he must wait upon their pleasure.
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