Complete Works of a E W Mason

by A. E. W. Mason

  “The poor little girl, she is afraid now, eh? The slender fingers, they do not snap themselves any longer, eh? Well, in a few days we make all right for her.”

  “Yes,” said Jim stoutly.

  “Meanwhile I tear this, do I not?” and Hanaud held up the telegraph form. “It mentions my name. It will be safe with you, no doubt, but it serves no purpose. Everything which is torn up here is burnt in the evening. It is for you to say,” and he dangled the telegram before Jim Frobisher’s eyes.

  “By all means,” said Jim, and Hanaud tore the telegram across. Then he placed the torn pieces together and tore them through once again and dropped them into his waste-paper basket. “So! That is done!” he said. “Now tell me! There is another young English girl in the Maison Grenelle.”

  “Ann Upcott,” said Jim with a nod.

  “Yes, tell me about her.”

  Jim made the same reply to Hanaud which he had made to Mr. Haslitt.

  “I have never seen her in my life. I never heard of her until yesterday.”

  But whereas Mr. Haslitt had received the answer with amazement, Hanaud accepted it without comment.

  “Then we shall both make the acquaintance of that young lady at Dijon,” he said with a smile, and he rose from his chair.

  Jim Frobisher had a feeling that the interview which had begun badly and moved on to cordiality was turning back upon itself and ending not too well. He was conscious of a subtle difference in Hanaud’s manner, not a diminution in his friendliness, but — Jim could find nothing but Hanaud’s own phrase to define the change. He seemed to have caught the hem of the skirt of Chance as it flickered for a second within his range of vision. But when it had flickered Jim could not even conjecture.

  He picked up his hat and stick. Hanaud was already at the door with his hand upon the knob.

  “Good-bye, Monsieur Frobisher, and I thank you sincerely for your visit.”

  “I shall see you in Dijon,” said Jim.

  “Surely,” Hanaud agreed with a smile. “On many occasions. In the office, perhaps, of the examining magistrate. No doubt in the Maison Grenelle.”

  But Jim was not satisfied. It was a real collaboration which Hanaud had appeared a few minutes ago not merely to accept, but even to look forward to. Now, on the contrary, he was evading it.

  “But if we are to work together?” Jim suggested.

  “You might want to reach me quickly,” Hanaud continued. “Yes. And I might want to reach you, if not so quickly, still very secretly. Yes.” He turned the question over in his mind. “You will stay at the Maison Grenelle, I suppose?”

  “No,” said Jim, and he drew a little comfort from Hanaud’s little start of disappointment. “There will be no need for that,” he explained. “Boris Waberski can attempt nothing more. Those two girls will be safe enough.”

  “That’s true,” Hanaud agreed. “You will go, then, to the big hotel in the Place Darcy. For me I shall stay in one that is more obscure, and not under my own name. Whatever chance of secrecy is still left for me, that I shall cling to.”

  He did not volunteer the name of the obscure hotel or the name under which he proposed to masquerade, and Jim was careful not to inquire. Hanaud stood with his hand upon the knob of the door and his eyes thoughtfully resting upon Frobisher’s face.

  “I will trust you with a little trick of mine,” he said, and a smile warmed and lit his face to good-humour. “Do you like the pictures? No — yes? For me, I adore them. Wherever I go I snatch an hour for the cinema. I behold wonderful things and I behold them in the dark — so that while I watch I can talk quietly with a friend, and when the lights go up we are both gone, and only our empty bocks are left to show where we were sitting. The cinemas — yes! With their audiences which constantly change and new people coming in who sit plump down upon your lap because they cannot see an inch beyond their noses, the cinemas are useful. I tell you. But you will not betray my little secret?”

  He ended with a laugh. Jim Frobisher’s spirits were quite revived by this renewal of Hanaud’s confidence. He felt with a curious elation that he had travelled a long way from the sedate dignities of Russell Square. He could not project in his mind any picture of Messrs. Frobisher and Haslitt meeting a client in a dark corner of a cinema theatre off the Marylebone Road, Such manoeuvres were not amongst the firm’s methods, and Jim began to find the change exhilarating. Perhaps, after all, Messrs. Frobisher and Haslitt were a little musty, he reflected. They missed — and he coined a phrase, he, Jim Frobisher! — they missed the ozone of police-work.

  “Of course I’ll keep your secret,” he said with a thrill in his voice. “I should never have thought of so capital a meeting-place.”

  “Good,” said Hanaud. “Then at nine o’clock each night, unless there is something serious to prevent me, I shall be sitting in the big hall of the Grande Taverne. The Grande Taverne is at the corner across the square from the railway station. You can’t mistake it. I shall be on the left-hand side of the hall and close up to the screen and at the edge near the billiard-room. Don’t look for me when the lights are raised, and if I am talking to anyone else, you will avoid me like poison. Is that understood?”

  “Quite,” Jim returned.

  “And you have now two secrets of mine to keep.” Hanaud’s face lost its smile. In some strange way it seemed to sharpen, the light-coloured eyes became very still and grave. “That also is understood, Monsieur Frobisher,” he said. “For I begin to think that we may both of us see strange things before we leave Dijon again for Paris.”

  The moment of gravity passed. With a bow he held open the door. But Jim Frobisher, as he passed out into the corridor, was once again convinced that at some definite point in the interview Hanaud had at all events caught a glimpse of the flickering skirts of Chance, even if he had not grasped them in his hands.

  CHAPTER 4

  BETTY HARLOWE

  JIM FROBISHER REACHED Dijon that night at an hour too late for any visit, but at half-past nine on the next morning he turned with a thrill of excitement into the little street of Charles-Robert. This street was bordered upon one side, throughout its length, by a high garden wall above which great sycamores and chestnut trees rustled friendlily in a stir of wind. Towards the farther mouth of the street the wall was broken, first by the end of a house with a florid observation-window of the Renaissance period which overhung the footway; and again a little farther on by a pair of elaborate tall iron gates. Before these gates Jim came to a standstill. He gazed into the courtyard of the Maison Grenelle, and as he gazed his excitement died away and he felt a trifle ashamed of it. There seemed so little cause for excitement.

  It was a hot, quiet, cloudless morning. On the left-hand side of the court women-servants were busy in front of a row of offices; at the end Jim caught glimpses of a chauffeur moving between a couple of cars in a garage, and heard him whistling gaily as he moved; on the right stretched the big house, its steep slate roof marked out gaily with huge diamond patterns of bright yellow, taking in the sunlight through all its open windows. The hall door under the horizontal glass fan stood open. One of the iron gates, too, was ajar. Even the sergent-de-ville in his white trousers out in the small street here seemed to be sheltering from the sun in the shadow of the high wall rather than exercising any real vigilance. It was impossible to believe, with all this pleasant evidence of normal life, that any threat was on that house or upon any of its inhabitants.

  “And indeed there is no threat,” Jim reflected. “I have Hanaud’s word for it.”

  He pushed the gate open and crossed to the front door. An old serving-man informed him that Mademoiselle Harlowe did not receive, but he took Jim’s card nevertheless, and knocked upon a door on the right of the big square hall. As he knocked, he opened the door; and from his position in the hall Jim looked right through a library to a window at the end and saw two figures silhouetted against the window, a man and a girl. The man was protesting, rather extravagantly both in word and gesture, to Jim�
��s Britannic mind, the girl laughing — a clear, ringing laugh, with just a touch of cruelty, at the man’s protestations. Jim even caught a word or two of the protest spoken in French, but with a curiously metallic accent.

  “I have been your slave too long,” the man cried, and the girl became aware that the door was open and that the old man stood inside of it with a card upon a silver salver. She came quickly forward and took the card. Jim heard the cry of pleasure, and the girl came running out into the hall.

  “You!” she exclaimed, her eyes shining. “I had no right to expect you so soon. Oh, thank you!” and she gave him both her hands.

  Jim did not need her words to recognize in her the “little girl” of Mr. Haslitt’s description. Little in actual height Betty Harlowe certainly was not, but she was such a slender trifle of a girl that the epithet seemed in place. Her hair was dark brown in colour, with a hint of copper where the light caught it, parted on one side and very neatly dressed about her small head. The broad forehead and oval face were of a clear pallor and made vivid the fresh scarlet of her lips; and the large pupils of her grey eyes gave to her a look which was at once haunting and wistful. As she held out her hands in a warm gratitude and seized his, she seemed to him a creature of delicate flame and fragile as fair china. She looked him over with one swift comprehensive glance and breathed a little sigh of relief.

  “I shall give you all my troubles to carry from now on,” she said, with a smile.

  “To be sure. That’s what I am here for,” he answered. “But don’t take me for anything very choice and particular.”

  Betty laughed again and, holding him by the sleeve, drew him into the library.

  “Monsieur Espinosa,” she said, presenting the stranger to Jim. “He is from Cataluna, but he spends so much of his life in Dijon that we claim him as a citizen.”

  The Catalan bowed and showed a fine set of strong white teeth. “Yes, I have the honour to represent a great Spanish firm of wine-growers. We buy the wines here to mix with our better brands, and we sell wine here to mix with their cheaper ones.”

  “You mustn’t give your trade secrets away to me,” Jim replied shortly. He disliked Espinosa on sight, as they say, and he was at no very great pains to conceal his dislike. Espinosa was altogether too brilliant a personage. He was a big, broad-shouldered man with black shining hair and black shining eyes, a florid complexion, a curled moustache, and gleaming rings upon his fingers.

  “Mr. Frobisher has come from London to see me on quite different business,” Betty interposed.

  “Yes?” said the Catalan, a little defiantly, as though he meant to hold his ground.

  “Yes,” replied Betty, and she held out her hand to him. Espinosa raised it reluctantly to his lips and kissed it.

  “I shall see you when you return,” said Betty, and she walked to the door.

  “If I go away,” Espinosa replied stubbornly. “It is not certain, Mademoiselle Betty, that I shall go”; and with a ceremonious bow to Jim he walked out of the room; but not so quickly but that Betty glanced swiftly from one man to the other with keen comparing eyes, and Jim detected the glance. She closed the door and turned back to Jim with a friendly little grimace which somehow put him in a good humour. He was being compared to another man to his advantage, and however modest one may be, such a comparison promotes a pleasant warmth.

  “More trouble, Miss Harlowe,” he said with a smile, “but this time the sort of trouble which you must expect for a good many years to come.”

  He moved towards her, and they met at one of the two side-windows which looked out upon the courtyard. Betty sat down in the window-seat.

  “I really ought to be grateful to him,” she said, “for he made me laugh. And it seems to me ages since I laughed”; she looked out of the window and her eyes suddenly filled with tears.

  “Oh! don’t, please,” cried Jim in a voice of trouble.

  The smile trembled once more on Betty’s lips deliciously. “I won’t,” she replied.

  “I was so glad to hear you laugh,” he continued, “after your unhappy telegram to my partner and before I told you my good news.”

  Betty looked up at him eagerly.

  “Good news?”

  Jim Frobisher took once more from his long envelope the two letters which Waberski had sent to his firm and handed them to Betty.

  “Read them,” he said, “and notice the dates.”

  Betty glanced at the handwriting.

  “From Monsieur Boris,” she cried, and she settled down in the window-seat to study them. In her short black frock with her slim legs in their black silk stockings extended and her feet crossed, and her head and white neck bent over the sheets of Waberski’s letters, she looked to Jim like a girl fresh from school. She was quick enough, however, to appreciate the value of the letters.

  “Of course I always knew that it was money that Monsieur Boris wanted,” she said. “And when my aunt’s will was read and I found that everything had been left to me, I made up my mind to consult you and make some arrangement for him.”

  “There was no obligation upon you,” Jim protested. “He wasn’t really a relation at all. He married Mrs. Harlowe’s sister, that’s all.”

  “I know,” replied Betty, and she laughed. “He always objected to me because I would call him ‘Monsieur Boris’ instead of ‘uncle.’ But I meant to do something nevertheless. Only he gave me no time. He bullied me first of all, and I do hate being bullied — don’t you, Mr. Frobisher?”

  “I do.”

  Betty looked at the letters again. “That’s when I snapped me the fingers at him, I suppose,” she continued, with a little gurgle of delight in the phrase. “Afterwards he brought this horrible charge against me, and to have suggested any arrangement would have been to plead guilty.”

  “You were quite right. It would indeed,” Jim agreed cordially.

  Up to this moment, a suspicion had been lurking at the back of Jim Frobisher’s mind that this girl had been a trifle hard in her treatment of Boris Waberski. He was a sponger, a wastrel, with no real claim upon her, it was true. On the other hand, he had no means of livelihood, and Mrs. Harlowe, from whom Betty drew her fortune, had been content to endure and support him. Now, however, the suspicion was laid, the little blemish upon the girl removed and by her own frankness.

  “Then it is all over,” Betty said, handing back the letters to Jim with a sigh of relief. Then she smiled ruefully— “But just for a little while I was really frightened,” she confessed. “You see, I was sent for and questioned by the examining magistrate. Oh! I wasn’t frightened by the questions, but by him, the man. I’ve no doubt it’s his business to look severe, but I couldn’t help thinking that if anyone looked as terrifically severe as he did, it must be because he hadn’t any brains and wanted you not to know. And people without brains are always dangerous, aren’t they?”

  “Yes, that wasn’t encouraging,” Jim agreed.

  “Then he forbade me to use a motor-car, as if he expected me to run away. And to crown everything, when I came away from the Palais de Justice, I met some friends outside who gave me a long list of people who had been condemned and only found to be innocent when it was too late.”

  Jim stared at her. “The brutes!” he cried.

  “Well, we have all got friends like that,” Betty returned philosophically. “Mine, however, were particularly odious. For they actually discussed, as a reason of course, why I should engage the very best advocate, whether, since Mrs. Harlowe had adopted me, the charge couldn’t be made one of matricide. In which case there could be no pardon, and I must go to the guillotine with a black veil over my head and naked feet.” She saw horror and indignation in Jim Frobisher’s face and she reached out a hand to him.

  “Yes. Malice in the provinces is apt to be a little blunt, though” — and she lifted a slim foot in a shining slipper and contemplated it whimsically— “I don’t imagine that, given the circumstances, I should be bothering my head much as to whether I wa
s wearing my best shoes and stockings or none at all.”

  “I never heard of so abominable a suggestion,” cried Jim.

  “You can imagine, at all events, that I came home a little rattled,” continued Betty, “and why I sent off that silly panicky telegram. I would have recalled it when I rose to the surface again. But it was then too late. The telegram had—” She broke off abruptly with a little rise of inflexion and a sharp indraw of her breath.

  “Who is that?” she asked in a changed voice. She had been speaking quietly and slowly, with an almost humorous appreciation of the causes of her fear. Now her question was uttered quickly and anxiety was predominant in her voice. “Yes, who is that?” she repeated.

  A big, heavily-built man sauntering past the great iron gates had suddenly whipped into the courtyard. A fraction of a second before he was an idler strolling along the path, now he was already disappearing under the big glass fan of the porch.

  “It’s Hanaud,” Jim replied, and Betty rose to her feet as though a spring in her had been released, and stood swaying.

  “You have nothing to fear from Hanaud,” Jim Frobisher reassured her. “I have shown him those two letters of Waberski. From first to last he is your friend. Listen. This is what he said to me only yesterday in Paris.”

  “Yesterday, in Paris?” Betty asked suddenly.

  “Yes, I called upon him at the Sûreté. These were his words. I remembered them particularly so that I could repeat them to you just as they were spoken. ‘Your little client can lay her pretty head upon her pillow, confident that no injustice will be done to her.’”

  The bell of the front door shrilled through the house as Jim finished.

  “Then why is he in Dijon? Why is he at the door now?” Betty asked stubbornly.

  But that was the one question which Jim must not answer. He had received a confidence from Hanaud. He had pledged his word not to betray it. For a little while longer Betty must believe that Waberski’s accusation against her was the true reason of Hanaud’s presence in Dijon, and not merely an excuse for it.